Snake Boy

~ Chapter Fifteen ~

{Possible trigger warnings: minor fighting, minor swearing

If I miss something, I apologize and please let me know}

Now the teasing started.

"Oh I bet you just loooove his scales, doncha? Wanna feel those fangs on your lips when you two make out?"

"Roman."

"Aw and he probably totally trusts you because you're the one who saved him."

"Roman."

"If you two get together I bet people would believe you if you tried to-"

"Roman!"

"Ow!"

Logan had swung at his classmate before he even thought about it. His fist caught Roman on the side of the face, just under his right eye, and sent him stumbling back a pace. Logan froze, about to apologize, then froze and shook his head. "I told you I'd punch you."

"Technically you said you'd break my nose." Roman grunted, gingerly touching his cheekbone.

"Don't push it." Logan glared at him.

Roman went over to the sink and took a few large pieces of paper towels, getting them wet with cold water and putting them on the side of his face. 

"I don't know what to do about that, Lo." He finally said as he was finishing up. "Dor's shy, and he doesn't know a lot about the world."

"I'm aware, Roman."

"Maybe you could use snake mating rituals or something, you know all about that right?"

Logan stared at his friend. "What the f*ck Roman?"

Roman held his hands up in a defensive stance. "I'm just spitballing, okay? I want to help, I genuinely do."

"I don't know if I can do anything about it." Logan sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. "But I'm having trouble focusing, and I want to help him because he wants to try and have a normal life."

He looked over at Roman, waiting for an answer. His classmate was staring at a corner of the ceiling, and Logan knew him well enough to recognize his thinking face.

"I think you're going to have to back off of it for a little bit, Logan. He's never really even left your house yet, he probably doesn't understand the concept of a significant other too well. If you need it, I can give you an outlet to talk about it, but with Dor your best bet seems to be letting it be."

Logan slumped against the wall. "I know. That's what I was thinking too... Is it strange that I feel protective of him? I enjoy being needed, and he relies on me quite a bit. I feel as if I need to do battle with everything that may stand in his way, like you do with Patton."

"I do not 'do battle' with everything that's in Patton's way!" Roman scoffed.

"You threatened to punch out a freshman for accidentally bumping into him in the hallway two weeks ago."

"Okay that was one time."

Logan raised an eyebrow. "I can assure you that it isn't."

"When did we start talking about me? Let's get back to you and Dor." Roman crossed his arms. "If you want me to start introducing the concept of romance and love to him, I'm totally down for it. It would be weird for you to, you normally aren't like that, but I suppose everyone knows that I'm ever the romantic."

"No." Logan shook his head after a moment. "That feels too much like grooming to me. It would make me uneasy."

"Then you're just gonna have to let nature run its course, however that may work out." Roman shrugged and patted him on the shoulder. "Stay strong, Calculator Watch. You've gone this long, you've got this."

"Thank you for your help." Logan said sarcastically, picking up his backpack and unlocking the bathroom door. "I do wonder what I would do without you."

"No problem, compadre!" Roman grinned and walked off as the bell rang.

~~~ That Evening, After Dinner ~~~

Logan closed his notebook and set it aside as he finished his AP Biology homework. With that done, he had no more homework for the rest of the week, so he could do whatever he wanted.

Dorrian was curled up on the papasan, under what looked like half a dozen blankets. He was reading Logan's battered copy of Frankenstein that he'd bought at a rummage sale years ago. Logan allowed himself a tiny smile and pulled up a new window on his computer.

The Violet Tarot Traveling Circus's website was pulled up on one of his other windows, and Logan moved the tab over to this one. Clicking his tongue absentmindedly, he continued to scroll backwards through the years of newspaper clippings that had been scanned and uploaded onto the site.

Dorrian was about his age, and he was getting closer and closer to his birth year, so the article had to be somewhere nearby. Logan ticked off dates as he went, so if he needed to pull it up later he would be able to find it. If he even found it, that was.

Nothing. His birth date came and went, and Logan searched an extra two years before he would have been born just to be sure. Not a single newspaper clipping about the new 'exhibit' and nothing about a snake boy. He grunted in annoyance and opened Google.

'Snake Boy Violet Tarot'

The articles about Dorrian's disappearance showed up first. There were about half a dozen of them, including one calling off the search with the announcement that he must have died. Logan scrolled past those and kept looking. He had to find something about this if he wanted to get anywhere with finding out who had made Dorrian the way he was.

Finally he got lucky. A newspaper from a place called Grangeville, Idaho brightly proclaimed that the Tarot's most recent addition to their exhibits was "an incredible showing of nature's fancy, the whimsical and inexplicable creativity of natural evolution."

"Natural evolution, my a**." Logan muttered. He bookmarked the article and then copied the whole thing and pasted it into a Word document, just to be safe. This was starting to feel fishy, and he wanted to make sure he wasn't going to lose information.

A small thump across the room pulled his attention away from the computer. Logan looked up to find that Dorrian had dropped the book, having fallen asleep.

He got up and picked up the book, carefully marking the page that it had landed on and hoping it was the one Dorrian was on. Setting it aside, he adjusted the blankets a little so his friend was better covered.

"Sleep well, mon bijou."

God, Roman really was getting to him.

{Love makes you do crazy things, apparently}