Black and Blue (Roman Angst)

exhausted

Roman was exhausted

It was Monday when he woke up again, blinking wearily as he pushed his body up into a sitting position against the cool stone wall. Of course Roman didn't know it was Monday specifically, the window from the basement had been boarded up since before they moved in which made time tricky to keep track of. Moments would bleed into hours and hours into days until Roman could barely distinguish whether he had been locked in the cellar for months or minutes.

He blearily rubbed his eyes, ignoring the dust and grime that covered his hands as he really didn't have the energy to care about his appearance. He admittedly didn't have much energy to care about much these days, everything seemed to blur together in a coalesced mess of problems that he wasn't at all motivated to deal with.

His friends were-

Remus' friends were really the only thing he had in his life to look forward to. Despite their frankly quite annoying food offerings, they were good company and at least pretended to tolerate his presence within their group. Remus hadn't been too kind after he realised that Roman had made reluctant friends with Virgil - for what reason the emo had approached him that day was still a mystery to him - which led to Roman eventually meeting Patton and Janus before being literally dragged to their lunch group to 'eat' with them.

They were truly a strange gathering of people indeed. Roman barely even knew them.

He sighed to himself, shifting into a more comfortable position (if one even existed) on the sunken mattress he had resigned himself to sleeping on for the past... ten naps? He had faced this punishment dozens of times before and no matter how many times he tried to count the seconds that passed, he had long grown used to not knowing how many hours of his life he was wasting away on the pathetic excuse for a mattress that would be better described as a thin blanket between himself and the floor.

He didn't enjoy being down here in the dark but he wasn't exactly looking forward to getting out either. In the basement, despite being dingy and damp and cold; it was safe. He was alone down here, he didn't need to deal with the stress of school or disappointing his friends or upsetting his family - that all came after he was let out. As much as he hated it, staying down in the basement would be better than being with his family.

Roman grimaced, he had completely forgotten about school. He had been given a lot of homework over the weekend and he hadn't even been able to do any of it. Not that under normal circumstances he would've completed it all, he was far too used to doing school work by torchlight since he was usually busy with chores until he was sent to his room for the right (usually after 11 knowing his parents).

It was pretty pathetic, he supposed. He couldn't even finish his own minimal workload and compared to his Remus' friends, it could barely be considered a workload at all. Roman did the minimum he could do for every class and was his grades were scraping by at a pass. Remus' friends on the other hand were working so much harder: Virgil was working on dozens of art projects and commissions at a time, Logan was studying basically every spare second of every day to the point that they sometimes had to pry his work out of his hands, Patton was spending his free time getting tutored for both English and Math and Janus had his hands full with Drama club and preparations for the next spring musical. Roman could only wonder how they had the energy to do it all?

Everyone was bruised, and red, and hungry, and so... so tired, weren't they?

"Alright boy, get off your lazy ass before I drag you up here myself," Roman was snapped out of his thoughts by his father's voice, sharp and rough as always, calling from the top of the stairs leading down to the basement. Roman peeled himself off of the mattress and near ran up the stairs, nearly tripping in his haste to reach where his father stood, Mr Prince didn't approve of tardiness after all.

"Thank you sir," Roman muttered as his father shoved him roughly through the door into the hallway. His father grunted and slammed the door behind him.

"Your mother needs help in the kitchen." He told Roman curtly before stalking down the hallway in the opposite direction. Roman rubbed the sleep from his eyes and followed his father's orders. His mother was cooking dinner in the kitchen, dirty plates had piled up in the sink and the counters and kitchen island were filthy. She took one look at his dishevelled appearance and scoffed at him.

"Clean up this mess that you've made." Roman frowned, had she forgotten that they had kept him downstairs for days, presuming that the rest of his family couldn't have gone through that many meals in one day? It wouldn't be the first time that his parents had ignored the fact that they had isolated him in the basement before but Roman knew better than to correct her. He responded with a simple "Yes ma'am." and got to work wiping down the counters and loading the dishwasher. He set out three clean plates, glasses and cutlery, knowing damn well that he wouldn't get a meal after a punishment so mild - and believe him, he has had worse than being isolated before.

His mother looked over his work, scanning for any mistakes Roman might've made. Surprisingly, she seemed to deem his tidying to be acceptable and rolled an apple across the table from the fruit bowl. Roman looked down at it in shock and back to his mother but by now Mrs Prince had went straight back to ignoring him, Roman wouldn't object to food and he was planning on savouring every bite. He bit into the apple with a loud crunch, letting the sweet taste flood his starved senses, resisting the urge to scarf it down.

"If you are going to be so disgusting when eating then get out of my sight." His mother barked, Roman moved the apple away from his mouth - was this a trap? "I'm not going to give you any food if you are going to be so disrespectful towards me either boy, don't forget who feeds you."

No-one. Roman's brain supplied unhelpfully. Roman pushed that thought to the back of his mind as he wracked his brain for what he did wrong. He realised with a start that he hadn't thanked his mother for the meal, gosh how rude was he?

"Thank you for the apple, I'm sorry for being so disgusting." His mother eyed him dangerously.

"Throw it in the trash." Roman's eyes widened as his mother spoke. He messed up that badly? He felt somewhere between crying or passing out from exhaustion but he followed his mother's command and tossed the apple with barely a bite out of it into the trashcan. His mother frowned.

"I can't believe we have to waste such good food on something as worthless as you." Roman didn't know either. "Do me a favour and get out of my sight." Roman nodded solemnly and sped out of the kitchen, nearly sprinting up the stairs until he reached his room and slipped inside.

His room was nicer than the basement but it still wasn't safe. No amount of nice bedding or movie posters could protect him from his father's wrath if he were to storm into the room. Roman wasn't allowed a lock on his door after all, he was such a horrible person that he didn't deserve to have privacy.

Roman all but flung himself on his bed torn between bursting into tears or attempting to do any of the homework that he had neglected during his punishment. He eventually pulled his phone out from under his pillow. His eyes widened at the date, it was 5:16pm on Monday. Monday. He had missed an entire day of school? That meant more work, that meant questions, that meant excuses.

He noticed numbly that Remus' friends had messaged him throughout the day, Virgil at 10am mentioning some art theory exercise that they had to complete for Wednesday and Remy, some dude from his maths class who he occasionally chatted with, who sent him some pictures of a note they had taken during class along with a meme of Mike Wazowski with some maths pun beneath it. Roman chuckled lightly before shutting off his phone, resigning himself to his homework for the next several hours.

It wasn't until the sun had set and several hours trying to decipher the word swimming in front of him that Roman's earlier thought sprung back to the front of his mind.

This was...normal right? Doing homework in the dark of night? Not being allowed to eat because you were rude? Being trapped in the basement for being at the wrong place at the wrong time?

Yes, Roman reasoned, it was normal. It had always been normal. It had to be normal.

Roman passed out.