The Melting Pot Complex

Chapter Twenty-Five ~ Virgil

~~~Two Days Later~~~

"I brought you lunch." Patton peeked into the room, smiling. "How are you feeling?"

Virgil grunted and rolled his head back. "Same as always... thanks."

"Can I... can I show you something?" Patton asked hesitantly.

"Sure, what's up?"

Patton crawled onto the bed next to him and pulled Virgil's laptop into his own lap.

"You gotta promise to watch it all the way through, okay?"

Virgil frowned. "Why?"

"Please, Vee?"

He'd never been able to say no to those sad eyes.

"Okay, fine."

Patton nodded and turned the computer screen away while he looked something up. Virgil worked on eating his lunch and watched suspiciously.

The screen was angled back towards him as a familiar voice began to speak. Virgil made a move to grab the laptop and Patton pulled it away.

"You promised!"

Virgil growled and hunched down as much as his brace would let him. "Fine."

Patton restarted the video and Virgil glared at the screen silently.

Roman fiddled with his hands for a few moments before starting his intro, looking a lot more subdued than usual.

"Hello to you all, Ladies, Lords, and Non-binary Royalty. This is, unfortunately, going to be a very serious video today..."

Their roommate took a deep breath and looked down at his desktop.

"This is really hard for me to do, because I promised myself when I started YouTube that I'd never do anything requiring one of these... This is my first - and hopefully only - apology video."

Virgil raised his eyebrows and glanced at Patton.

"This is a long time coming," Roman continued, his voice sounding tight. "And I'm incredibly upset with myself for not realizing it sooner... I owe AmethystHailstorm an apology."

He sighed and splayed his hands out on the table in front of him.

"I've argued with Hailstorm for almost four years. I never in a million years imagined that I would move in with him. I thought I was in the right, I believed that what I said was excusable because of what he had said.

"I was so wrong, and it took being in the same room as him to realize that. If any of you listen to our apartment podcast, you might have realized what was going on at the end of the last one... we took the argument to the living room and I said some very regrettable things."

Roman blew out a sharp breath and shook his head a little, muttering to himself, "do not cry. Do not." 

He looked up again. "To make a very long story short, Hailstorm now has a broken collarbone, and I feel as if it's my fault. I didn't want to make this a public affair, but he currently, and rightfully, won't speak to me. V*****-"

Virgil blinked. Roman must have used his actual name, but censored it with a beep and a black bar over his mouth.

"-when you see this, I want you to know it's sincere. And I know you'll see it because I'm asking Patton to show you once I'm done posting it. I've been an a** and if there is anything at all that I can do to make it up to you, please let me know. I'm so sorry, for what I've said and done."

Roman wiped a few tears quickly and offered a weak smile at the camera. "See you next time, beauties. Stay safe."

And then the video was over. Virgil didn't say anything when Patton looked at him.

"So..."

"I watched it." Virgil said flatly. "Could you leave? I have to think about some stuff."

Patton looked a little hurt, but got up. "Yeah, uh... promise you'll think about it?"

Virgil grunted and his friend took the now empty plate from his lunch.

Once Patton had gone he scrolled down into the comments of the video. A lot of people thought it was a joke. There was some hate for him, as usual, but Virgil kept looking. He wasn't sure what he was trying to find.

Then he saw a comment about how Roman's acting was getting better and a memory pushed itself to the front of his mind.

At the beginning of the Q and A, Roman had been asked what he found hardest about acting. He'd gone on a ten minute rant about how he just couldn't cry on command, and how directors for previous performances he'd done always had to devise clever ways to make it seem like he was tearing up.

There were no cuts in the video.

"Huh."

{I have a friend who had to wear a shoulder immobilizer when he broke his collarbone, and he said hearing it called a brace freaked him out so bad because they'd already explained how it was connected to him, so I incorporated that some... also the story of HOW he broke his collarbone makes me laugh, and I always feel bad for it oops-

He was playing Ghost in the Graveyard at a graduation party, and he and a friend were running down the hill away from the seeker. She tripped and fell, and he tripped over her and went flying like five or six feet and landed directly on his shoulder}