Tally Marks (Thomas Sanders PolySanders/LAMP fanfiction)

8

Patton was the last to arrive at school that morning.

After panicking over his current situation he realized he didn't have that much time to get ready. He had to rush out of the door, and had to skip breakfast. He didn't care that much-he doubted he would have been able to eat anything without feeling nauseous anyways. He did care that his lateness was already causing his friends to be concerned.

They hadn't said anything yet, but he could tell. The moment he turned up at school out of breath from running to make it on time the three of them had shared worried glances. They smiled at him and he returned it, but he knew they noticed something off.

He couldn't help but feel mad at himself because of how unconvincing he was. He hadn't done a good enough job of pretending things were okay, and now they would know something was wrong. They would question him about it, he knew they would, and he was such a terrible liar and they would find out, and they would hate him, and he would be all alone.

"How are you feeling today, Patton?" Logan asked, voice quiet. He knew something was wrong. He was going to hate him he was going to hate him he was going to hate him-

"I'm fine!" Patton managed to say, slightly more convincing than his smile before. "It's very nice out this morning, isn't it?" He hoped his change of subject wasn't too obvious. He waited a moment, watching as the three of them shared a glance. After a moment the others agreed with him, seeming to decide that everything was alright, and Patton sighed in relief. He had been sure he already ruined everything.

Soon everyone was talking again like they normally would, and Patton was glad for that. The others didn't even notice that he wasn't speaking as much as usual, too busy talking to each other. Maybe things would be okay, Patton told himself. Maybe he could keep all of this up, and they would never have to know.

****

There was no way Patton could keep this up forever.

It was nearing lunch time, and Patton was tempted to fake an illness to get away from the school so he wouldn't have to go. He couldn't face his friends. He couldn't face Logan. He couldn't handle lying to them over and over again.

Even if he did, he knew this couldn't last. As much as he didn't want to admit it, he knew he would slip up one day. It wasn't as if the tallies on his arms would ever go away-he was stuck with them, and some day the makeup wouldn't work anymore. He would run out, or he would forget about it, something was bound to happen.

How could this have even happened to him? It was weird, wasn't it? He loved Logan so so much. How could he fall in love with someone else too? It didn't make any sense. He was happy with Logan, and he had felt perfectly content with him before all of this happened. He still loved him, he knew he did, but then why did he gain feelings for the others too?

Roman and Virgil had been great friends to him. He had known Roman for years, and despite only meeting Virgil last year he was just as close with him as he was with Roman. He cared about them both, and he couldn't stand the idea of ruining that all because of some stupid feelings he didn't even understand.

Now that he was thinking about it though, he did kind of understand. He thought about Roman, how handsome he was, and how kind. Sure he teased them all, called them names and joked a lot, but they all understood it as his way of letting them know he cared about them. He thought about Virgil. Who at first was nervous and quiet, but now fit right in alongside them all. He also had his own way of showing his feelings towards the others, and remembering the first time he had opened up to Patton and called him his best friend still made him grin.

Yes, now that he thought about it it made a lot of sense. Of course he loved them all-only now he was surprised he hadn't realized it sooner. The marks didn't appear until you were in love, but he had complicated feelings for them long before the marks showed up.

Still, he told himself, it didn't matter if it made sense or not. He couldn't tell them, and nothing would ever come out of it.

Patton's thoughts continued to plague him throughout lunch. He found that, just like that morning, he couldn't get himself to eat anything. His stomach was twisting itself in knots, only getting worse each time his friends would try to talk to him. He gave short answers to any questions, and was too lost in his thoughts to notice the others worry for him.

By the end of the day, Logan had had enough of Patton's strange actions. He knew something was wrong, and he was going to figure out what.

"Patton!" Logan called, reaching out to hold his boyfriend's arm and stop him from rushing away from the school, which is what he seemed to be doing. "Patton, could we please talk somewhere for a moment?"

"I... I'm sorry Logan, I don't really want to talk right now." Patton muttered, not facing Logan. He tried to get his arm from Logan's grip, so Logan let go.

"That's why I want to talk to you." Logan frowned, stepping forward to see Patton's face. "You're not acting like yourself at all. What's wrong, Patton?"

"It's nothing Logan. I don't want to talk about it." Patton insisted, beginning to walk away. Logan followed him.

"Patton please, we are all worried about you. All we want is to help, we want to be sure you're okay Patton." He reached out for him again. "Please talk to me, Pat-"

Patton whirled around to face Logan as his hand touched his arm, glaring at him and making him freeze. "Logan, can you just stop?" He raised his voice, something really unusual for Patton and terrifying to Logan. His voice lowered to a soft whimper as he spoke next, and Logan felt his heart figuratively break. "Please?"

Lol okay so I forgot to add this onto the last part-you all were very concerned about foreshadowing in chapter 6, and I gotta say that's really amusing considering there was no intentional foreshadowing there. Nah-but there has already been some foreshadowing in one of the chapters before that one. Dunno if you'll be able to find it tho. Anyways, I just thought that was funny and also I'm hoping that someone will go back and try and find the foreshadowing bc it's fun when people guess things and I can't tell them whether they're right or not lol.

I also may be posting another chapter Wednesday if I'm able to finish another part by then(which shouldn't be too hard, I've already written half of it). I just really wanna continue getting chapters out for this quickly-this book is great and I'm loving working on it, and I really want to get it finished so I can pay more attention to some other books. I think I'm going to work on them one at a time to make things easier on me. But anyways, I hope that's good news.

Thanks so much for reading, and let me know what you think of the chapter. Hope you liked it. Bye!-Bob