Chemistry - A Sander's Sides Fanfiction

- 42 -

Virgil sat -- or rather huddled -- in front of the fire pit, his knees pulled up to his chest as he seeked refuge in the folds of the canvas chair. His eyes were locked on the dancing orange flames, drawn there by the hypnotizing light and flickering bits of glittery ash. Virgil had buried his hands in his sweatshirt pocket, the hood pulled up and tied around his face so that no warmth could possibly escape. It was damn cold, and he was having none of it.

Part of Virgil wanted desperately to give in to the voice that begged him to crawl into Roman's lap and fall asleep, but that was not an action that he would be comfortable taking -- at least in the presence of Logan and Patton. Instead, Virgil opted for shivering gloomily in his canvas chair, savoring the warm, lingering taste of the pulled pork sandwiches that Patton had so generously cooked for all of them.

Currently, Patton, Logan, and Roman were engaged in a casual conversation about something-or-other, which Virgil could not hear because of his hood. Sure, he could have tried to listen, but he wasn't feeling very conversational at the moment.

The reason for this? Virgil was nervous.

Crazy, right? Not, anticipatedly, because of the blood chilling possibility of bears and/or snakes and/or tarantulas crawling into his tent whilst he slept -- though that was a concern -- but because of something far less fantastical and definitely far less intriguing:

Nightmares.

Ah yes, the terrifying staples of Virgil's life that had not left him like they should have when both his high voice and self esteem had. Virgil didn't get them much anymore -- in fact, he only ever got them when he was in a new place. Since his mom and him tended to move a lot, it hadn't taken Virgil long to realize that he was only retaining nightmares for the first few nights in a new house. It wasn't so bad in those situations because no one outside of the house could hear him screaming his lungs out and his mother had become highly adept in waking him from his harrowing hell of sleep with unflinching efficiency. However, a barely-thick-enough-to-keep-the-raccoons-out tent filled with three other people and, inconveniently, no mother was the fact that was making Virgil particularly anxious.

He had, admittedly, brought a stress-relief stuffed mountain lion named Ilma -- that he was showing no one -- to hopefully help calm him down a bit in crisis. Virgil also contemplated strangling himself in blankets and tying a sweatshirt over his mouth so that if he woke up sobbing he wouldn't disturb anyone.

The nightmare was always the same. It was often flashes of shapes and shadows, this looming feeling of intense panic. Virgil could never remember what the entire dream was when he awoke, but it was often some odd fusion of visuals that, for some reason, were absolutely terrifying. A dark room with shadows on the walls and figures in the doorway, strange objects from his childhood, shuddering branches outside the window, the understanding that he was in a life or death situation. Virgil, unsurprisingly, had been quite the paranoid child, and it was this lingering feeling that haunted him. Sure, it was the usual, but that didn't make it any better.

Virgil had gone to therapy for it when he was younger but the sessions had never completely succeeded in eradicating his nightmare. Virgil wasn't exactly sure why. However, it was only really personally unpleasant when his disturbance inconvenienced other people; most of the time, this wasn't much of a problem, considering his mom had long accepted that Virgil's nightmare was a fact of life that came with moving. This didn't stop him from apologizing and still feeling guilty now and again, but she had reassured him enough times to get it through his head that she didn't really mind all that much.

Virgil was pulled from his anxious thoughts and back into the present when he heard somebody calling his name. "Are you coming, Virgil?" Roman's face came into focus.