#unfortunately being a theater kid is a permanent fixture

[unfortunate-bambi]

Peak art set up

[mothmanhamlet]

A Few Angsty Haikus

Analogical, 2584 words, high school au, fluffffffff, I don’t think there are any warnings to speak of.

Roman gets Virgil to use his services to ask out his crush. Bad poetry ensues.

Roman Prince was many things. He was a jock, a self proclaimed “Matchmaking God”, and the biggest theater nerd Virgil had ever known. Most importantly, Roman would be dead if he didn’t stop begging Virgil in the next 30 seconds.

“Come onnnnnn, please,” Roman begged. They were pinning flyers for Roman’s new “business” idea to the corkboard outside of their math class. Or rather, Roman was pinning flyers, Virgil was just there for moral support. Moral support apparently included attempts at making him Roman’s first customer.

“No,” Virgil said, crossing his arms and leaning on the wall.

“Listen, it benefits both of us! I need my services to get out into the world and you happen to be the perfect candidate!” Roman reasoned, moving his hands a concerning amount for someone who was holding sharp objects.

The services in question were a complicated list of steps Roman called a “confession session”. The idea was that someone filled out the application and Roman would plan out an elaborate display of something that he promised would be spectacularly romantic. ��

“No. Absolutely not.” Virgil didn’t even bother looking at Roman, his eyes were too busy scanning around the hallway. School ended not even two minutes ago, so there were still people there. He looked to see who could see him, who could see the poster. Pitifully, Logan was still there, Virgil’s super-genius crush. If Logan saw that poster, his opinion of Virgil would immediately drop. He was too good for that kind of thing.

Roman, sadly, caught Virgil looking just a little too long at Logan and got a brilliant idea. “Well I say you should get a second opinion. Oh Lo-”

Virgil’s hand practically flew to Roman’s mouth, nearly tackling him in the process. Logan, thankfully, didn’t move an inch.

“Do it and you’re dead,” Virgil whispered through gritted teeth. Against his palm, Virgil heard a muffled noise that sounded something like “But can you stop me?”. He looked back at Logan, who was still trying to fit three books and a globe into his already full backpack, and then at Roman, who was looking at Virgil with his eyebrows raised as if to say, “Your move”. At least if he let Roman do this, the embarrassment would be delayed.

“I’ll say yes if you don’t yell when I remove my hand.” Roman nodded and Virgil released his grip on his face, slight red marks where he had pressed rather aggressively. Roman pulled out his phone and started typing.

“I’m emailing you a link to the website. Fill out the form so I can make it spectacular!” Roman said, all too cheery for someone who had to blackmail him into doing it. Virgil just rolled his eyes and started walking down the hallway, trying to shake the small bits of attention that their (rather loud) conversation had gained.

****

Virgil sat down on the purple bean bag chair in his cluttered room and reached for his computer. It was a light grey color and covered in various stickers, his headphones a permanent fixture in its side. He clicked on the link and was immediately redirected to a flashy red and gold website that used hearts like they were commas and used clip art that probably hadn’t seen the light of day since the 90’s. Roman was creative, but sometimes his execution was subpar and unfortunately this was one of those times. Virgil leaned back and read over the questions.  

          1. What is your prospective boyfriend/girlfriend/datemate’s favorite love song?

          2. What type of flower best encapsulates their personality?

          3. Balloons, streamers, confetti, or all?

The rest of the questions followed suit in a similar fashion, and there were a lot. Maybe 30 or so until Virgil got to the end of the application.  

“Who the hell has a favorite kind of sprinkle?” Virgil muttered to himself, trying to work through the questions. Even more surprising than how specific the questions were, was that Virgil actually knew most of the answers. He had never really bought into the whole pining-after-someone-he’d-never-met thing (pretending he even had a choice in the matter), so obviously he had to fall for his lab partner/project partner/person he sat next to in every class. Apparently the teachers thought it was funny to pair up the kid named “Sanders” and the one named “Saunders”. It was that, or just some alphabetization. Either way, it meant they had spent a lot of time together in their first three years of high school. Logan was distant at first, but after a while they opened up to each other. Which was a little weird because Virgil was pretty much the world’s worst lab partner, always assuming so strongly what would happen and planning to mess up, which in turn tended to mess them up. Now they seemed to talk about anything and everything, Virgil’s speaking ability permitted. Logan loved tea and Sherlock and classic literature (Victorianism not Romanticism) and jam and being right and debates and space. He really loved space. Whenever anyone brought up space his eyes lit up and it practically made Virgil’s heart do backflips. He was just glad one of the questions wasn’t “what do you like about them?” because Virgil could have written an essay. What was there, however, was far worse. 

          27. Write 10-20 poems about them.

Now Virgil was an emo nightmare of a person, but he did deviate from the trend in one key factor: He couldn’t write poems. No angsty sonnets for him, no haikus about suffering, no half-baked attempts to write his own songs. Nothing.

Virgil got up from his comfortable chair and started sifting through boxes on the floor, looking for something he’d rather forget. Underneath one particularly dusty pile of biology notes, he found what he’d been looking for, a beat up composition notebook that had served as his 6th grade English notebook. He flipped through the pages, stopping when he finally found the page labeled “poetry rules”. How he remembered this page, he had no idea, but was at least partially thankful for it.  

Haikus: 3 lines. 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. Doesn’t have to rhyme.  

Well that seemed easy enough.

****

Your eyes look really nice  

Magnified by your glasses  

Blue as the ocean   

Your hair looks fluffy  

I want to touch it sometimes  

So soft and shiny  

****  

Logan anticipated a lot of things. He anticipated his AP World History teacher to say something dull or ignorant during class. He anticipated the way his earl grey would taste every morning, bitter with hints of citrus. He even, on occasion, anticipated the perpetrator in his mystery novels, attempting to figure it out before the detective did. What Logan did not anticipate was two of his friends running towards him before he could enter school for the day.

“Logan, something absolutely delightful happened inside,” Dolos said, dressed in a peculiar combination of a suit and rubber gloves. Remus nodded vigorously next to him, munching on what seemed to be frosting in an empty deodorant bottle.

“There’s something inside your locker Nerdy Wolverine!” Remus said, making an attempt at teasing out his own curiosity while simultaneously applying a neon green fake mustache to his upper lip.

“Remus, if it is rats again, I am really not interested, especially after last time-” Logan began, thinking back to the year they had decided to share a locker.

“Of course. Because we totally put it in there,” Dolos interrupted, rolling his eyes.

“I personally think it’s a jar full of angry hornets that’s set to break when you open your locker, releasing into the school and stinging everyone but Dolos says that’s “unrealistic” because he’s no fun,” Remus said, waving his hands around to simulate a hornet infestation.

“But if you didn’t put anything there, how do you know there is something in there to begin with?” Logan asked.  

“There was a sign on your locker,” Dolos said, gesturing to the door, “But don’t worry, it’s super tasteful.” With that, the two walked off, snickering. Despite the fact that school started in 20 minutes, they walked away from school.

Logan arrived at his locker, not knowing what exactly to prepare for. What he found, was his locker covered in dark blue paper hearts, “There’s a surprise inside” written on them. It was more distinctive    than he would have liked, but it certainly wasn’t the worst thing he could have come across. The hearts managed not to cover his lock, so he could easily open his locker, however what was on the inside proved the hearts correct, for it was definitely a surprise.

His locker was covered along the walls, flowers, candy, and streamers occupying any blank space along the sides. In the back of his locker, there was blue poster paper with words Logan didn’t bother to read. On the small shelf he had in his locker, he found sugar cookies in the pattern of the Microsoft logo, littered with little blue sprinkles.  

The most interesting thing however, was on the side of the door. Around twenty pieces of paper folded into little red paper hearts stuck with string onto the inside of his locker door. What was even more intriguing was the fact that there seemed to be words written on them. Carefully, he plucked one of them and unfolded it.

You smile so bright  

Your laugh makes me want to cry  

But in a good way  

Ok, so it wasn’t a great poem, but nevertheless Logan thought it had a particular quaint authenticity to it. He pulled them off, one by one, careful not to rip them. In every heart, he found a haiku of similar quality and theme. Virgil would probably enjoy them, and for a moment Logan considered giving him something like this. Virgil seemed to have a certain affection for particularly bad poetry, and Logan had an affection for Virgil. Besides, it seemed that some of the poems were just lyrics from some of Virgil’s favorite songs, something about falling boys and chemistry.  

When he had finished reading through the poems, Logan decided to have a better look at the poster in the back of his locker. Looking at the giant words on the paper answered some of his questions, but caused even more. Logan, I like you a lot. Go out with me? - Virgil.

 It made sense, that this whole display was a confession of sorts, however what didn’t make sense was the fact that it wasn’t, well, Virgil. Virgil was a little bit extra sometimes, but from what Logan knew of him, he was far too nervous to do something like this. And if it was Virgil, then where was he? Unless he had run off somewhere-

Virgil had definitely run off somewhere. He looked at his watch. He had fifteen minutes till class started, which was probably enough time to find him.

****

Virgil was, for lack of a better phrase, freaking the hell out. He got to school really early, early enough to intercept Logan, who got to school like half an hour before he really needed to. The night before, he realized he couldn’t go through with the showy confession. Logan would probably hate it and then maybe hate him, which would of course happen after Logan rejected him so then Logan would stop talking to him because Virgil embarrassed him with it and then Roman would hate him because it didn’t work and then his life would fall apart. So instead he decided to get to school early enough to intercept Logan and confess to him before he could see the giant confession, then explain what had happened when he got rejected and got it so Logan was never surprised with whatever Roman planned. He would wait in the empty classroom Logan spent study hall in (he worked out an arrangement with the science teachers) and wait for Logan, who usually came there before his locker. He felt like such a stalker knowing that, when in reality he just asked Logan’s friend Dolos.

Which would have worked out great, except Virgil couldn’t stop freaking out. He was just staring at the clock, anxiously waiting for him to come in, all the while mentally running through every worst case scenario. He had around 13 minutes before school started, which meant Logan had to be there. It would be any minute before-

“Hello?”

Logan was there, dressed formally as always, hair slicked back with a polo shirt and tie. Virgil was there too, but he was sitting on a table, staring at the clock above the door.

“Hi Logan,” Virgil said as calmly as he could, which happened to be not calmly at all. “I have, uh, something for you.”

Virgil reached behind him for the card he had made. He painted a swirly blue sky with Logan’s favorite constellation on it. Hopefully he would like it more than the giant display.

“It’s very nice looking,” Logan commented, looking at the front. “It even has Vega on it, my favorite.”

Logan probably didn’t even know what was going on. Virgil thought he was amazing, but even he had to admit Logan was clinically oblivious. Logan opened up the card, looking a little confused and surprised. But not angry or disappointed. So that was a step in the right direction.

Logan flipped around the card to show him the inside. Logan, would you like to maybe go out with me?  “Yes? Assuming you are asking what it seems you are asking, I would love to go out with you.”

What?

Virgil wasn’t sure if he was happy or confused or surprised, the emotions blending in the pit of his stomach. But he said yes. Logan said yes.  

“Y-yes? Are you sure?”

“Yes Virgil, I’m certain.”

Virgil let out a breath. He was in a calmer place and honestly a little light-headed. Logan sat next to him on the table, looking like he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Ok. In that case, be careful when you visit your locker. There’s something in there that’s a little, uh, extra,” Virgil said, trying to be as vague as possible. Logan’s face scrunched up in confusion.

“If you’re talking about the confession you made, I have already seen it. I apologize if I ruined any surprises.”

“You- But- You saw it? And you don’t hate me now?” Virgil asked, it a bit of a frenzy.

“No, not at all. I particularly liked the poems.”

Virgil was surprised. Flabbergasted. Betrayed. He could no longer tell if he wanted to punch or hug Roman. Maybe both.

“It was actually Roman’s idea, but I’m glad you don’t hate me,” Virgil said, wringing his hands and looking at Logan. “I also don’t have too much planned for the actual, um, date. I kind of assumed you’d say no.”

“You do like jumping to conclusions. Fortunately, I am prepared. There’s a new documentary on one of Jupiter’s moons, Callisto, and it will be playing Friday at seven thirty. Does that sound enjoyable?”

Virgil simply nodded with a smile.

“Perfect, I will pick you up at seven. It is, as they say, a date.” Logan said, surprisingly well prepared for someone who didn’t know he would be asked out. Both of them slid off the table, standing back on the ground. Just as Logan began to leave, Virgil reached out and tentatively caught his hand. Logan’s eyebrows raised for a moment, then turned more relaxed.

Slowly and happily, the two walked out together, hand in hand.