#i think this is the longest chapter ive written for tsits

[delimeful]

the shapes in the silence (10)

this fic requested by @fromsomewhereoverthere as a giveaway prize! thank you for your patience!

warnings: crying, repression, people misunderstanding/talking over each other, virgil’s awful no good dissociation, negative talk

Chapter 10

Virgil wasn’t surprised when he woke up on the edge of Patton’s bed distinctly not tiny-dragon-shaped, the moral side starfished out beside him. 

Of course, not being surprised didn’t mean not being very, very panicked, especially when Patton began to sleepmumble indistinctly. It was as sure a sign as any that he was going to be waking up soon. 

Luckily, Patton was much less clingy in sleep than Roman had been, with only a hand thrown over Virgil’s shoulder and an ankle twining under his leg. It was easy enough to sidle away, right up until the mattress disappeared from under him and his stomach lurched as he fell right off the side of the bed with a yelp.

“Humh?” Patton grunted, blankets shifting, and Virgil did the first thing that came to mind with his whole brain in a screaming panic. He rolled under the bed.

There was the creaking of bedsprings above him, and then a muffled yawn. “Mmgh. Puff? Where’re you, buddy?” 

Two feet swung over the edge of the bed to plant themselves on the carpet, and Virgil felt blood rushing in his ears as though he was about to pass out. He’d tried to convince himself last night that maybe Patton wouldn’t be disgusted if he found out, but he knew what kind of luck he had, and it wasn’t the kind that was generous with maybes. 

Feet away, Patton got on his hands and knees to peer under the bed. Virgil shut his eyes tightly, not wanting to see his expression when he finally realized who “Puff” really was. 

There was a pause that felt both too long and too short as Patton shifted again, and then gasped...

“There you are, little guy!” 

Virgil opened his eyes, blinking in surprise at the sight of tiny talons instead of fingers in front of him. He’d changed back? He hadn’t been able to while he was on the bed with Patton, or even earlier, tangled up with Roman. What was different?

Patton wasn’t privy to his confusion, laying flat on his stomach and reaching out a coaxing hand. “Did you have a nightmare, Puff? It’s okay, it’s not real. I know sometimes things seem scary, but we’re together, okay?”

Virgil shook himself, focusing back on the matter at hand. He could worry about his scaly ailment’s odd restrictions later. For now, he had to convince Patton to stop shoving all his bad feelings down.

He slunk out from under the bed, brushing against the back of Patton’s hand as he went, and sat right in front of the moral side’s face, inspecting him sharply. Don’t think I forgot about yesterday, he tried to convey with a glare.    

Patton barely even blinked at a mythical creature full of sharp teeth and claws getting in his space, because that was just the kind of person he was. At the look, he did have the grace to at least appear sheepish. 

“Hey, it’s okay! Don’t worry about me, I’m all better now, see?” He spread his arms out like he was attempting to make a snow angel face-first. “Back to normal size and everything, not a single problem here--!”

A sharp pop that made Virgil recoil with a squeak, and Patton laid before him once again at a diminutive five inches. He sat up with a frown. “Fiddlesticks.” 

Virgil couldn’t make a sarcastic comment about language, so instead he churred at Patton, unimpressed. 

“Okay,” Patton sighed, “I guess maybe we should go talk to the others, huh?” 

--- 

One jaunt over to the commons later, Virgil stood a vigilant guard as Patton showed the others his new stature. 

“And you’re certain no curse triggered it?” Roman asked again, looking troubled. “You weren’t poking at any of my gifts from the imagination or anything?” 

“Nope,” Patton answered, stretching his shoulders absently. “I was just curled up on the floor with Puff, ‘cause he seemed like he could use a hug from a friend, and I…” 

His voice trailed off weakly, a brittle smile beginning to form, and Virgil leaned down to bump his head against Patton’s shoulder in gentle remonstration. Patton stared at him for a long moment, smile still half-frozen on his face, and then let the expression crumple. 

“... I think I needed a friend hug, too.” 

Roman and Logan exchanged panicked glances for a moment, and Virgil huffed a small puff of smoke at them pointedly. Huh. He hadn’t known he could do that. 

Before either of them could speak, however, Patton shifted back to normal with a pop and some flailing that knocked over most of the objects nearby. Virgil jumped nimbly to the couch to be out of range. In hindsight, they probably shouldn’t have people who were going to abruptly jump in size stand on a slightly-messy table.

Patton sniffled, adjusting his disheveled glasses, moving to roll off the table. He looked like he was on the brink of apologizing for his feelings again, so Virgil growled and scaled Roman’s arm to reach his shoulder, cuffing him over the head with a wing. Show him support, already!

Roman shot him an offended look, but moved forwards anyhow, offering Patton a hand up. The moral side took it and then was promptly tugged into a hug, Princey lifting him right off the ground for a moment. Still clinging to Roman’s shoulder, Virgil could see Patton’s surprised expression relax and descend into small sobs as he finally let go.  

“Hey, hey,” Roman offered soothingly. “Don’t worry about it, Pat. We all have our bad days, nothing wrong with that.” 

Patton shook his head slightly, but didn’t say anything to the contrary, and Virgil leaned forwards to gently butt foreheads with him before Roman finally released him. 

“How about we help you with breakfast? I can fry up some excellent bacon, if I do say so myself, and Specs is excellent at waffle measurements.” Roman winked, leaning in to stage whisper to Patton. “I'm sure we can sneak in some chocolate chips by the time the batter is ready.” 

Logan rolled his eyes, snapping his fingers and exchanging his normal attire for an apron with the NASA logo on it. “With the advantage I have in attention span, I believe my waffles are at no real risk from the two of you.”  

Roman gasped in outrage, and Patton managed a teary chuckle. “You’re going to eat those words! And some delicious chocolate chip waffles!” 

Virgil balanced delicately on Roman’s shoulders as they all moved to the kitchen, and he chirped in warning before using the creative side as a springboard to clamber up the side of the fridge. Princey snorted at his scramble, but before long all three of the human-shaped sides were busy bustling around the kitchen and Virgil was free to curl up on top of his excellent vantage point and take a well-deserved nap. 

-

“Anxiety?” 

Virgil jerked awake automatically, half-ready to duck away from a blow and snarl a retort, but-- he glanced down at his talons. Still Puff. Then, what…? 

“Padre, I know you try to see the best in everyone, but I don’t want that guy anywhere near Puff,” Roman was saying, piling the last pieces of crisp bacon onto a plate with a little more force than necessary. “You should’ve heard the way he talked about him, it just makes me— ugh!” 

He threw his hands up emphatically, and stalked over to the dining table to set the plate down. Patton followed with a dish of waffles stacked high, looking conflicted. Virgil absently noted that Logan had let them get the chocolate chips in after all.

“I know, they don’t seem to get along, but maybe if we all just sat at a dinner together…” he tried, but his voice was weak. 

“For once, I have to agree with Roman,” Logan chimed in, carrying a cup of freshly poured coffee to his seat. “Even without Puff to take into account, I suspect that strong negative emotion is the last thing Morality needs to deal with right now.” 

“And we all know that’s what Anxiety will bring to the table,” Roman added, stabbing a fork viciously into his waffle. “That Negative Nancy never has anything nice to say to anyone.” 

“I… I guess,” Patton said, moving to sit in his own chair with one last look cast over to the stairs.

Virgil felt a tightening in his throat that probably meant he was going to be all sorts of emotional about this moment later, when he was human. Sometimes the anxiety-dampening feature this form came with was handy, he reflected as he glided down to the floor with only a little wobbling. It wouldn’t do him any good to be acting sad when they weren’t even talking about him. 

Something in his mind twinged. He slowed his trot across the carpet for a moment, reviewing his last thought.

… Puff. They weren’t talking about Puff. He was still Anxiety, like it or not. 

“Hey, kiddo,” Patton said, shooting him a smile before leaning over to offer him an arm up. He shook the errant thoughts away, deciding that he should eat first. 

It was better that they didn’t go get Anxiety anyways. Then he’d have to sneak off to play his role or risk them getting suspicious of an empty room. Between being forced through another tense, glare-filled breakfast as Anxiety or sitting content as the tiny dragon people actually liked, the latter was clearly the better option. It just made sense. Who would want Anxiety over Puff, anyways? 

“Speaking of Puff,” Logan started, nodding at him politely, “I was considering the shrinking occurrences again while cooking. Morality, you said Puff was there when you first reduced in size, correct?” 

“Mmhm!” Patton hummed through a mouthful of waffle. Virgil paused in dragging another piece of bacon to himself to tilt his head at Logan curiously. 

“Roman, you believed your reduced size was due to a curse, but Puff was also with you when you first transformed, was he not?” 

“Well, yes, but I’m not entirely sure I like where you’re going with this,” Roman said, frowning. “Surely you can’t be implying that Puff is the cause?” 

Logan didn’t falter, pushing his glasses up slightly as he peered at Virgil. “He is currently the only constant variable in the two cases, seeing as neither I nor Anxiety have been subject to this… shrinking phenomenon. We still don’t know where he came from, and—“ 

“Stop right there, Specs. First Anxiety, now you? There is nothing bad about Puff!” Roman insisted, and if Virgil wasn’t so busy watching the two of them glare, he would have laughed. 

“That’s not what I was—“ 

“Roman’s right, kiddo,” Patton cut in this time, placing a hand on Virgil’s ridged back supportively. “I know you want to get to the bottom of this, but that’s no reason to start accusing friends.” 

Logan took a deep breath. “I know that, I’m simply suggesting that we investigate all possible causes. Unless you want to be left doll-sized without warning at random periods?” 

“I think we’re learning to handle it pretty well,” Patton offered optimistically. Roman nodded, looking a bit smug. 

“Personally, I've had enough practice that I’m confident I can reverse the transformation at will! You’re falling behind, Snorelock Holmes.” 

Virgil ducked back slightly, watching as Logan visibly grit his teeth. “I—“ he faltered for a moment, lips thinning, and then stood. “I am going to retire to my room. I will speak with you all at a later date.” 

He immediately sunk out, ignoring Patton’s protests. Roman rolled his eyes, and then visibly remembered that he was supposed to be cheering Patton up and turned back to the moral side. “Look, we’ll let Calculator Watch cool his jets by doing sudoku puzzles or whatever it is he enjoys. In the meantime, I was thinking of having a movie marathon, which you are most certainly invited to. Maybe some classic Disney will lift your spirits?” 

Patton nodded slowly, still looking slightly troubled. “It feels wrong to let him storm off like that, but  I don’t want to make him upset by pushing…” 

“Then it’s settled!” Roman decreed, rising to his feet and sweeping a few dishes off the table into his hands. “I’ll clean up here and prepare some snacks-- other than myself-- so you go pick a movie to start with.”   

Virgil left the last piece of bacon on his plate untouched, appetite suddenly gone as a strange compulsion tugged at his chest. He jumped down to follow Patton over to the couch, and then slowly ambled over to the stairs as Patton began shifting through their movie cabinet. If he could just make his motions casual enough...

“Puff? Where’re you going, buddy?”

Virgil twisted to peer over his shoulder at Patton, who seemed curious but thankfully not upset. He glanced up at the hall that led to Logan’s room, and then back to Patton. Wasn’t it obvious?

“You’re gonna go check on Logan?” Patton asked, and Virgil hopped up another step in confirmation, waiting to see what the moral side thought. “I see… Maybe you’ll know what to do better than I do. Stay safe, okay?” 

That was a relief. If it had been Roman, he probably would have had a much more difficult time scampering off. The prince was bizarrely attached to his dragon self. 

He chirped once and continued to scale the stairs, claws finding easy purchase on the carpeted corners. It was only once he’d vanished from view that he began to slow, wondering what exactly his plan was. Logan was upset, that much he knew, but how could he fix it? He was Anxiety, and dark sides weren’t really known for ‘fixing’ things. 

There was another tug in his chest, an urge to go-find-protect that only increased with his certainty that Logan was hurting. He took a deep breath, shaking his wings out. First things first, there was no way Logan wanted to see him like this, not after his theory about Puff was the reason he’d gotten agitated in the first place. 

Not to mention, he didn’t particularly want to reveal anything more about Puff to the intelligent side when he barely knew what was going on himself. He focused for a moment, closing his eyes and pulling for the harsh cold edges of his real form. When he opened his eyes again, the world around him was visible from a human eye level once more, and his lungs felt as though they were being constricted.

He stuttered through a few shallow inhales, and then firmly stomped down the panic and racing thoughts down before they could reverse his transformation. He was Anxiety now, and that meant everything that came with it. He’d deal with the panic attack later.

Unfortunately, including his less-than-popular social status, he reflected as he knocked on Logan’s door for the third time. “Logic, it’s me-- shoot, I guess we all kind of sound the same, huh? It’s Anxiety. Are you going to let me in or not?”

Silence. 

“What, did you drown in a lab sample or something? Come on, I know you can hear me.” 

Not a peep from behind the door, but the certainty that Logan was feeling threatened and overwhelmed only increased. His hands twitched uselessly at his sides for a few moments, and then he growled in frustration. “Screw it, I’m going in.” 

Surprisingly, Logan’s door wasn’t locked, the handle twisting easily under his grip. He entered with careful steps and stopped short. It wasn’t a particularly large room, professional-looking with not many places to hide. Logan wasn’t visible on the bed or at his desk, and he didn’t seem the type to dive into a closet to hide from someone. 

Despite the evidence before his eyes, he knew that Logan had to be in the room, which meant that he was tiny. Everyone in this part of the mindscape had officially had a turn, it seemed. Virgil forced his thoughts away from that line of thinking, since he couldn’t afford to have a panic attack at the moment. 

“Logan? I know you’re in here, dude.” After a moment of hesitation, he knelt on the floor, watching the ground carefully. 

There. He doubted he’d have caught it if he wasn’t Anxiety, but there had been the slightest movement in the corner of his eye, under the desk. Without thinking, he turned his head to look closer, and was rewarded with the sight of a tiny form stumbling back a few panicked steps.

“Hey-- wait!” Virgil lunged forwards, chin meeting carpet as he just barely reached his goal. He heard Logan yelp as hands bracketed into a curved shape around him, the tiny side backing into his fingers for a moment before jerking away. 

“Anx— Anxiety, what is the meaning of this?” Logan said, tilting his chin up and trying to conceal the way he was slightly shaky. Afraid of him. 

Virgil kept his hands still, resisting the urge to scowl. “Relax. I’m not going to grab you. Here, just—” He glanced behind Logan, and nudged him forwards slightly, ignoring the glower sent his way with practiced ease. Once he deemed the nerd secure, he pulled his hands away, propping himself up on his elbows. 

“If you’re finished assaulting my person, I’d appreciate an explanation. Now,” Logan demanded, looking increasingly exasperated. 

Virgil rolled his eyes, pointing. “You were about to take a nosedive, Pocket Protector.”

Logan turned and blinked at the open heating duct on the floor under the desk. The one he’d been about to trip back onto, resulting in at best a sore backside and at worst a bone-breaking fall. “... I see. Well, you have my gratitude, though I doubt I would have encountered such a difficulty if you hadn’t decided to intrude upon my abode.”

Virgil narrowed his eyes, and Logan coughed tactfully before continuing. “It’s irrelevant now. What was it that you needed?” 

“Me?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “You’re the one who’s literally pint-sized at the moment.” 

“I would estimate my current height is closer to a half-pint,” Logan corrected, “and regardless, it’s none of your concern.” 

“It’s my concern when it means I could be next,” he countered, thinking fast. “You’re Thomas’s intellect, you’ve got to have some idea of what’s happening. Why it’s happening.”

“I do have a hypothesis, however, regarding--” Logan cut himself off, face falling into a frown. Virgil could see the wheels turning in his little head, and resisted the urge to wince. “You were eavesdropping.”

It wasn’t really a question, but Virgil answered anyways with an echo of his usual smirk. “Remember, I’m always listening.”  

“You only listen to yourself,” Logan snapped back with surprising ferocity. Virgil opened his mouth, but the logical side wasn’t done. “You’re the same as the others, too emotional to actually use your brain for anything but your own feedback loop. You’re only listening to me because you think I'm on your side of this conflict.” 

“That’s not true,” Virgil interjected, shifting to sit up with a frown. Logan took another step away, craning his neck up, but didn’t back down.

“Oh?” Logan said, sounding incredulous enough to make Virgil’s hackles rise. “What would you think, then, if I said that I believed Puff wasn't behaving maliciously?” 

Virgil bit his tongue on his instinctive response, forcing himself to take a moment and think about the suggestion without letting any of his insider knowledge of the situation slip. If Patton had found a sentient monster that everyone seemed to love, and then everyone exposed to it had started shifting mass at around the same time? Yeah, he would absolutely have a healthy suspicion, and more than a few conspiracy theories on the topic.

The real question was, would he be restrained enough to trust Logan’s judgement? He hesitated.

“Look, I can’t not be suspicious, but…,” Virgil sighed at the slight slump of Logan’s shoulders. “Ugh, whatever. You’ve spent more time near that little monster than me. If you think it isn't trying to hurt anyone on purpose, then fine, I’ll follow your lead until-- I mean, unless-- unless things get dicey.”  

“You… are being genuine.” The scrutinizing look that Logan gave him was almost insulting, but fair. He was still a dark side, after all, and even now he was hiding his actual motivations to keep himself safe. 

Virgil shrugged. “You generally know what you’re talking about. It’d be stupid not to listen to you, and I may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. I leave that to Princey-- woah!” 

With a loud thunk, Logan had returned to his normal size, half his body knocking against the underside of the desk. Virgil did wince this time. “Ouch.” 

Of course, when he emerged from under the desk, necktie askew, he barely even seemed to notice the bump, eyes alight as he looked at his hands. “Did you see that?” 

“A bit hard to miss,” Virgil muttered, and was promptly ignored as Logan scrambled through a pile of notebooks for the right one to jot his new findings down in, mumbling to himself about triggers and overlapping variables. 

Virgil sighed in faux annoyance, careful to conceal the relieved smile he felt coming on at the sight of a return to status quo. “Alright, nerd, I’m leaving. Remember to sleep, or Thomas will stay up on wikipedia all night, and I’ll make him google creepypasta as payback.” 

“Wait, Anxiety,” Logan looked up, his pen stilling on the page. “You do know that if you ever suffer from this affliction, you can reach out, correct? I’m aware we are not always on the best of terms, but such a shift can be… disorienting, to say the least. It would be illogical of me to leave you to face it alone.”  

“Yeah,” Virgil rolled his eyes, “I know. Don’t worry, Teach, I’m aware that you want to know about  every instance of this shrinking thing.” 

Logan frowned as though he wanted to say something else that might embarrass them both, so Virgil spared him the effort by saluting shortly before sinking out. 

As soon as he was in the hall again, he knocked a fist to his shoulder in a self-soothing motion, panic rising up like a wave. He’d promised himself he’d deal with these feelings, but with them bearing down on him like this… 

He turned towards the faint sound of Lilo & Stitch in the commons, and released his grip on his human form, feeling the stress fade into the background as he became Puff again. 

He could afford a little more time like this, couldn’t he?