#i want to be Alone now. i filled my quota of socialization until next weekend i'm sure

[wewontbesleeping]

dude i don't understand night people at ALL. i stayed up until like 2 with some friends, and i'm just WIPED now. it's almost noon and i feel like absolute shit lol.

[awesomehoggirl]

rooftops | chapter one

it’s one of those things that’s known, not taught: everyone has a soulmate, just like everyone breathes and sleeps and has a heart beating in their chest. their name is written on your wrist and it’s up to you to find them from there - but you will, of course. everyone does.

...well, everyone except virgil. everyone in the world, except virgil webb, has a soulmate.

did the universe slip and miss a spot? does life just absolutely hate him? virgil doesn’t know, but he sure would like to.

(in which virgil ignores, hates, detests and loves the empty space on his wrist.)

pairings: prinxiety, logicality, one-sided moxiety warnings: swearing, angst, unrequited crush, bullying, sympathetic deceit (he’s a toddler with a corn snake) chapter two | chapter three | ao3

chapter one: patton moretti is far too sweet

virgil’s wrist was blank. at first, he really didn’t mind.

because when you’re a kid, you just don’t care about the future. when you’re young, applesauce and milk are the only things that matter. don’t know what you’re going to be? who gives a shit! here, crawl around in a box of sand for three hours and you’ve filled your quota for the day. do babies just sit up in the middle of naptime and go ‘woah, oh man, i better start looking for collages or i’ll end up working in retail for the rest of my life!’ then start chewing anxiously on their tiny baby nails whilst considering their degree? no they do not! goddamn it, why couldn’t it stay like that? why couldn’t he just salivate and cry for the rest of his life? why’d he have to get smart?

virgil webb didn’t remember the day he looked at his blank wrist and realised what it really, truly, actually meant in the grand scheme of things. he remembered his mother’s gentle smile and her tortured eyes as she stroked his pale little forearm on the night of his sixth birthday. he didn’t remember what his response was when she started crying.

he didn’t remember.

at some point, though, he learned and acknowledged that he had no name on his wrist: ergo, he had no soulmate, ergo, he was alone for life. did he sink into a depression at the tender age of six, give or take a couple of days? no he did not! he was six! all he cared about was batman and fingerpainting! he probably realised he would die alone, shrugged it off, and went downstairs to push a vase off the table or something.

virgil had a friend - patton moretti, a small, freckly kid with a mess of dark brown curls, two years his senior, who lived next door. their houses were barely a metre apart. if he stood on his windowsill, opened his window and reached, his fingertips could brush the brickwork of the other house. it was comforting.

he and patton were a classic duo. the former was shy and timid whilst the latter was outgoing and lovable - they made a great team. together, they chased cats through fields and climbed trees then fell out of them and conquered the woods in their name, as best friends do.

‘i don’t have... any words on my wrist,’ virgil admitted once, nestled into the crook of a tree.

‘oh, that’s cool,’’ said patton, hanging upside-down from a branch. ‘let’s go look for fairies by the lake!’

they went to different schools but they were closer than brothers, two peas in a pod, and they would stay that way regardless of what it said (or rather, didn’t say) on their wrists. so, for kid virgil, everything was pretty darn great. he had patton and his parents and a gigantic book about bats to read at bedtime, who needed a soulmate?

unfortunately, virgil was not bitten by a vampire or cursed (blessed?) to remain a child for life. instead he did as kids generally do and grew up into a quiet eleven-year-old who soon traded the fingerpaints for a neat little set of colouring pencils. he wore oversized hoodies and didn’t raise his hand in class, so nobody at school found out about his…soulmate-less-ness. there, he was just a shy art kid - a slightly moody, very normal art kid, not really a people-person, as his mother loved to say, a self-declared outcast, not a forced one. older-but-still-young virgil was pretty happy.

until a girl saw his empty wrist during p.e one lesson.

did this girl stop to consider virgil’s feelings before opening her mouth to the entire school? hell no! this was middle school - a juicy piece of gossip was like an instant popularity potion! the truth came out, and the kids in his class, as kids generally do, decided to bully virgil mercilessly from that moment on.

he’d never had reason to consider himself as deformed or wrong before. his parents were supportive, patton was great, and he himself didn’t really mind being different. but now, here, kids were afraid of him. kids took one look at him and assumed he was some kind of freak. kids would avoid him and whisper about him and stay away from him, all because he didn’t have a name on his wrist.

‘you don’t have one because nobody loves you,’ one faceless kid called out to him one lunchtime, before scampering away to snicker at him from afar. virgil had never thought about it like that before.

he decided that he didn’t need a soulmate anyway, and that all the other kids in his school were lame and boring, and that he didn’t need anyone’s company but his own. nobody wanted to sit with him? he didn’t care. now he had a whole lunch table to himself, cool! he was alone for every group project? great! no annoying partners or lack of contribution on their part. no friends? patton was enough, and he saw him on the weekends, so he was doing fine! yes, virgil was fine, fine, fine. he didn’t want to stupid name or a stupid soulmate or a stupid social life or friends.

and so at ten years old, virgil was no longer fine with his wrist’s stark blankness, no matter how he pretended to be.

one night, a few years later, virgil was staring aimlessly out of the window to avoid at his homework when he spotted patton’s silhouette hunched on the roof, face turned away. something cold and heavy filled virgil’s heart, but he shimmied through the open window onto the broad windowsill anyway and hoisted himself onto the warm slate. crossing the daunting gap between rooves was never fun, but he completed the leap with barely a shiver and lowered himself down behind patton. his chocolate curls were mussed and he held his head in his hands.

‘pat? are you…’ patton swung around, his eyes wet and shining. not for the first time of the late, virgil’s eyes wandered to the words on his honey-dark wrist, and everything fell into place with an unsettling click.

‘that boy,’ virgil whispered, numb with something almost like fear. ‘did you find out his name?’

‘yes,’ breathed patton, trembling. ‘it’s logan. he’s logan. he’s my soulmate.’

they sat in silence for a moment, a warm breeze ruffling their hair as they gazed up at the heather sky, dotted with hazy stars.

‘how’d you find out?’

‘well…’ patton took a deep, shaky breath,

‘i passed him in the corridor as usual and he looked kind of stressed or tired so i said “why do flamingos sleep with one leg up?” and he went “to retain body heat-“ and i yelled “because if they slept with two legs up they would fall over!” and he rolled his eyes and groaned and said “you are the worst person i have ever met-“‘

‘geez, harsh…’

‘and then i said “no, i’m patton!” and he let out this soft little wheeze which he tried to cover up with a cough and my heart was thumping so i was like “are you okay?” and he said really quietly “no, i’m logan” then smacked himself with his chemistry textbook and ran to his next class! and i tried to follow him but he…’ patton paused to gulp for air, his frenzied smile falling a touch, ‘he was gone.’

‘you sure he’s the right logan?’ virgil asked (out of genuine interest, absolutely not false hope).

‘i looked him up in the yearbook, he’s definitely logan lockheart! and he’s my age but in the grade above me, and he’s really really smart and serious, and vee, i’m so… i’m so confused!’ patton hugged his knees, fresh tears welling up in his eyes. virgil nodded slightly in encouragement. he couldn’t quite catch his breath. ‘i like him, i really do, but… i don’t understand. i always thought he’d be… y’know, different. sweet! an animal lover! someone who laughs a lot and likes dog walks on the beach! not… well, him.’

‘aww, pat…’ virgil ran a hopefully comforting hand over patton’s back. ‘he could still be those things, you know. you barely know him.’ or not. there could be a mistake. we could both be soulmateless together.

patton’s lip trembled but he forced a smile. ‘you’re right, vee. assumptions are bad and i shouldn’t have judged him so quickly.’

a mistake. a flaw in the system. maybe logan didn’t have patton’s name on his wrist! it was wrong to hope, evil to hope, but all the same…

pat’s sniffles diminished into a comfortable silence as a dark flush spread across the horizon and the warm tiles below them began to grow colder. the great willow which grew in between their gardens nodded and whispered in the breeze, silhouetted against a rosy sky. something was crumbling in virgil’s chest, some deep-rooted fantasy he’d never acknowledged before.

after a while, patton turned with a gentle smile. ‘the sunset’s lovely, isn’t it?’

‘mmm,’ murmured virgil. he didn’t quite have patton’s eye for beauty, but it certainly was very nice.

‘it’s getting cold, anyway. i’d best be going in. hey! you can come over for dinner if you want! mom’s making our special pasta recipe.’

oh, he wanted to accept. he ached to, to laugh and slip through patton’s window and joke around with his mother and play with his little brother declan, to help put the garlic bread in the oven and to breathe in the heavy scent of woodsmoke and spice, to be part of the beautiful mundanity of the moretti family for just a minute, just a second. through the settling darkness, virgil caught sight of patton’s wrist again. logan lockheart, it read, plain as day.

‘vee? coming?’

‘i…’ virgil swallowed, tears beginning to rise up in his eyes. ‘i have to go. congrats, though. really. it’s great.’

he jumped down onto his windowsill and ducked through the window, pulling the shutters tightly closed.

he might’ve heard the frantic knocking. he might’ve heard his best friend’s gentle voice, confused and afraid, calling out to him. he might’ve heard patton’s mother yell something in italian and the choked-up reply. he might’ve heard patton’s blue converse scraping against the windowframe as he turned away.

it was far easier to pretend he hadn’t.

the next day, virgil would knock on patton’s door, eyes full of tears and stuttered apologies. patton would forgive him, and they’d hug before going indoors. the kitchen would be cozy and cluttered, his mother would ruffle virgil’s hair and offer him a lick of her wooden spoon, declan would be playing with his corn snake under the table. they’d rush into the garden to follow the family cat on its trails, under the hedge and across the brook and into the cool, dark woods. they’d climb a mossy oak, talk awhile, then slip back down to chase bejewelled dragonflies as they flitted idly over the lake. they’d run up the banks and through the fields, fall into the long tufts of grass and lie, dreaming, until the sun sank lower into the sky. they’d return home with armfuls of flowers, which mrs. moretti would gather into an exquisite glass vase and set on the table with dinner. they would eat together under the soft glow of the fairylights, which declan loved. ‘they look like stars,’ the five-year-old would giggle through a mouthful of pasta. everyone would smile.

but for now, virgil threw himself into his pillow and cried himself to sleep.