Trustfall || Sanders Sides Equestrian AU

Chapter 5 - Beyond Riding

If you'd told Roman a week ago that he would find himself leaning against the fence and watching the driveway waiting for that emo stablehand to arrive, he'd laugh at your face.

Well, surprise surprise. He was now standing doing just that.

The other day they'd swapped phone numbers, and over text they scheduled to meet for their... whatever that was, today. Roman wasn't sure what to call the whole "Virgil teaching him to reconnect with Trigger " thing. Most of the time he didn't want to even focus on it - not because it embarrassed him, of course not! Nothing could hurt Roman's pride.

Keep telling yourself that, a little voice in his head said. So he smacked it in the imaginary head with an imaginary chair. 

There we go, now it was gone.

As he waited for the nightmare of an emo to arrive, Roman's mind wandered pondering what the whole thing was going to be like. What did Virgil exactly plan to "teach" him? Perhaps they would-

The thought was cut short when the boy's figure appeared up the road. He walked with his eyes on the ground, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie and the hood slumped up on his head. Did he have any type of clothing other than hoodies? Roman wondered what he'd look like had he tried to walk with his shoulders straight and his chin up. It was pretty much impossible to visualise.

"I'm gonna be honest with you, I thought you'd be coming here in a car," Roman mentioned as he arrived. Virgil's eyes snapped up to meet Roman's. "Did you actually walk the whole way? Don't you live well into the town centre?"

Virgil shrugged. "My mum takes the car every morning."

"Uh... ever heard about buses? They're quite the revolutionary invention, you're gonna love them."

"Don't have the money to spare on bus rides every day of the week," he grumbled, before slightly widening his dark brown eyes like he didn't mean for that to slip out. "Just- forget it."

He swooshed past him and disappeared into the ranch, and Roman whirled around and leapt to catch up to his fast steps.

"Hold up, where are you going?"

The boy frowned, halting in place. "Uh.. am I missing something? Are we married now?"

"We're supposed to do the Trigger thing," Roman said, lowering his voice at the end in order to maintain complete discretion.

 "I'm sure no one is going to behead you if they hear you say 'the Trigger thing'," Virgil uttered, resuming his walk. Roman followed him into the stables.

"So?"

"Oh, you expect us to go do it right now. Uh... I kinda have work."

Before he could stop himself, Roman found himself blurting, "I'll help you, we'll get whatever you need done faster."

Virgil's eyes darted from one side to another as though searching for a hidden camera before snapping back to meet with Roman's. "That's... strangely selfless of you," he mentioned.

I may or may not be absolutely desperate to do the 'Trigger thing'  already, the voice from earlier said in his head in a bizarre moment of lack of dignity. Roman smacked it silent with a larger imaginary chair.

"Give me some credit, Negative Nancy. What do you need to do before you're laid off?"

Virgil stopped again. "I need to groom and saddle all the school horses so they're ready for the lessons at noon and sweep the corridors. After that I'm allowed like, an hour break before the kids show up. That's when I need to muck out the stalls while the horses are out in lessons."