Reptile - Janus Angst

Chapter Six

Roman slunk down the corridor and back into the kitchen with a disappointed and defeated look on his face.

The others looked up as he came in.

"He said no, huh?" Virgil asked quietly.

"He said no," Roman echoed in an upset tone.

Patton sighed softly and looked down with sad, almost guilty, eyes.

"This is our fault," he said quietly. "If we'd just taken things a little slower -"

"There's no point sulking about it," Logan told him. "Virgil, like you said earlier, you were in Janus' position once. What do you think would be the best course of action from here?" he prompted.

Virgil bit his lip.

"I'm not sure. Janus and I are two different sides and... leave him alone, I guess?" he tried. "That's all I can really think of."

"Will that be enough?" Patton asked.

Virgil nodded slowly then slowly grew more confident as he ran his answer through his mind.

"Yeah... yeah, leaving him alone sounds like the best idea. Based on my own experience, and no offence to you, Pop-star, but after a few hours of you being all up in my personal bubble, I wanted nothing more than to hide in my room for three days," he said with a slight grin.

"Ok, yeah, that's fair," Patton said with his arms folded and a small smile on his face.

Friday came quickly.

It was soon evening, heading towards eight, and Janus was curled up next to his fire.

He smiled bitterly as he realised how much time he'd been spending by it recently.

His hands had stopped hurting earlier in the day (thank every deity in existence) but the entire of his left hand was now covered in scales and his nails had sharpened and hardened into talons of the same colour. His right hand had scales up to just over the knuckles.

He stared at his scaled hands as they glittered in the light of the fire.

They honestly looked very pretty, and Janus was sure he would've enjoyed this if he understood what was happening.

He heard the clock in the corridor chime eight.

The others must be starting now, he thought.

He hummed a little. An aggressive little tune to get some of his frustration out.

Why was he becoming more reptilian? He'd shared his name and gotten accepted by Thomas and the others - nothing there sounded like it would cause him to suddenly start losing his humanity.

He reluctantly got up from the fire and went over to his desk to do some work. Hopefully that would distract him from his confusion and swirling questions.

Logan, Roman, Patton, and Virgil were all sat in the living room on the sofa, all of them but Logan wearing onesies, looking through their selection of movies.

"No draw of the hat this time, Princey?" Virgil asked.

"We said we were gonna leave Janus alone, and getting the hat would mean having to sneak into his room," Roman replied with disappointment in his voice.

"You could just ask if you could borrow his hat," Logan said matter-of-factly. "Or just conjure up one of your own."

"Yeah, but there's something fun about sneaking into the sneak's room," Roman told him with a small grin. "How about Beauty and the Beast? The original."