Mahogany and Teakwood

Chapter 26: Amaranthus

your motive unstable

you're like an unwinding cable car

It was one month, to the day, of Roman's departure.

Virgil, painting in his room, heard the front door open not half an hour after Logan and Patton had left for the evening. They must have forgotten something, he reasoned. He turned his music up, not thinking much of it.

Patton had started spending less time at the apartment, but only because he and Logan began going on, well, dates. Patton continued to call them "outings", but Virgil guessed that was due to the unconscious homophobia he'd picked up from his adopted family rather than a desire to keep the relationship secret.

The three did occasionally have meals together at the apartment—Patton was nearly as good a cook as Roman, it turned out—but more often than not, Logan would disappear in the early evening and return hours later, exuding such effervescent contentment that Virgil could hardly bear to look at him.

Since they had to keep the relationship hidden from Patton's family, Patton never spent the night; and since they kept most of their "couple-y" behavior confined to their dates, Virgil, fortunately, wasn't subjected to much of them together.

Unfortunately, Virgil's vivid, self-tormenting imagination was happy to fill in the blanks, which inevitably led to him paying flowery homage to the porcelain throne at 2AM.

He hated feeling like this.

He still considered Patton his best friend, and Patton was just so happy and innocent about the whole thing that Virgil alternated between feeling sourly envious and utterly disgusted with himself.

On the worst days, he lay in bed, barely able to breathe, and thought about Roman's offer of escape.

But most days, like today, he buried his feelings in drawing class, paints, and music, and managed to maintain a veneer of normalcy—enough to fool Logan, anyway. Virgil was pretty sure Patton sensed he wasn't as okay as he feigned, but knowing Patton, he probably attributed Virgil's isolation and moodiness to Roman's absence.

Virgil was currently trying to create a difficult melodic shade to match a song called 'Beautiful', something between blue and yellow-orange-gold that veered very red on some notes, yet not really any of those. The challenge was that outside of Virgil's brain, blue and orange lay on opposite sides of the color wheel. Directly mixing them created an ugly brownish gray.

He was so absorbed in blending colors that he didn't register the knocking on his door right away.

"Logan!" he sputtered when he finally opened the door, flushing from his neck to his ears.

The half-faery looked uncharacteristically hesitant, though the rest of him was immaculate: black dress pants, navy long sleeved dress shirt, and a blue striped tie he'd taken to wearing lately. Virgil suspected it to be a gift from Patton.

"I..." Logan cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses, making them glint. "I fear this may require your assistance."

This?

Virgil heard wet sniffling coming from the living room. His frown deepened, and he pushed past the half-faery, wiping his hands on a paper towel as he went.

Patton huddled miserably on the sofa next to a sleeping Nic, feet tucked under, arms wrapped around himself, looking more upset than Virgil had ever seen him outside of Arcadia. His glasses sat on the coffee table, and redness ringed his eyes.