Sanders Sides One Shots

Nickname

I haven't watched This Is Us, but my mom told me about it and that inspired this one-shot. No spoilers for This Is Us though, cuz even I haven't seen it.

AU, so the Sides are real people.

Ship: Prinxiety (not really romantic)

Trigger warning: panic attack, I guess? I'm still learning how to properly call these out.

...

Roman remembered the first time he had ever heard someone call him by his nickname.

It was in his second year of college, and he had finally moved out of an on-campus dorm. Being the social guy he is, he had befriended his dorm roommate, Virgil, due to how hard he tried to get the younger male to open up to him.

Although they didn't usually hang out too much, since Virgil was quite an introvert, he was always around whenever Roman needed his help, even if he was trying to practice lines at three in the morning and needed someone to play another character.

These were the rare times in which Roman didn't see him as the anxious guy he always was. Although, most times, his fears got the best of him, and Roman had begun to refer to him as 'Anxiety' occasionally only a few months into the semester. Virgil didn't seem to mind so long as Roman didn't mean it with ill-intent, which he didn't.

In return for helping him with his acting degree, Roman often helped Virgil with his writing degree, reading rough draft after rough draft of whatever he was working on. Virgil was afraid of not being good enough, so he asked Roman to critique his writing as much as he could, which Roman gladly did.

The two of them had agreed to move into a 4 bedroom and 4 bathroom apartment together after completing their first year. They were matched up with two other guys in their apartment.

Patton was in his third year of veterinary school, and was older than all of them, having already achieved a four-year undergraduate degree prior to vet school. He always took time out of his own busy schedule to help the others whenever they asked of it, no matter how ridiculous the request, and this was about when he started getting called 'Dad'.

The most ridiculous of requests was when Roman got stuck at the airport because his flight home had been cancelled due to a hurricane. Having nowhere else to go for the storm, and fearing the stay in the airport, Patton had driven four hours from his cousin's home where he was sheltered to pick Roman up.

Logan, a double major for education and astronomy, was in his fifth year, aiming for a Master's degree in Science after completing his Bachelor's degree in Science and Education. He often spouted random information and talked as though he was a walking thesaurus, so he was more often than not referred to as 'Teach'.

Even Logan had helped Roman with his second-year classes, most of which he had taken as well.

It had been a few months into the semester when a group of girls down the hall from them had passed out flyers, stating that they were going to throw a party before the exam season started up the next month. Talk of the party had to be pretty hush-hush to keep it from the workers of the apartment complex, but Roman still knew that there were a lot of people planning to be at the party.

This is why he dragged all of his roommates that Friday night down the hall after making sure they were all dressed appropriately. "Give me that!"

Roman pulled down the knot of Logan's necktie and threw it into a planter at the corner of the hall. Logan glared at him, but didn't make a move to retrieve it. Roman had already yelled at him to take it off several times before they left the apartment, which he hadn't.