Plenty of Treasures

Silver Sailboats and Spacemen

Note: I don't know where this came from, honestly. It's 3AM and I just had a sudden burst of inspiration. Hope you enjoy it anyway!

Pairing(s): Romanic Prinxiety

Warnings: Strong language, alcohol, drinking, insect mention, and violence mention (brief, not graphic)
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Drinking doesn’t always have to end with bruised shins and shameful flushing.

It can be just like this. Just you and one other person, bubbling stomach’s and tingling throats reminding you that what you say might not actually be true. Barely-there sailboats resting for the evening in a lake of black, or can it really be called a lake when that said ‘lake’ is a void? A void luring human curiosity up past our solar system, into an imperfect vacuum of glitter and egg-headed extradimensional beings.

In your inebriated state, you can imagine those little spacemen sleeping in those sailboats. But wouldn’t the light and smell of gas keep them awake? No. Because they don’t have a sense of smell, and they prefer sleeping with the light on. Maybe they invite the egg-heads over for dinner sometimes. Maybe there’s no such thing as dinner up there. What if ‘dinner’ to them is counting the moons of Saturn? Or, discovering things that they know humanity will never understand? Sounds casual enough.

Though, if you were going to discover a new type of star, who would you want to do that with? A lover? A best friend? If spacemen and egg-heads aren’t supposed to get along, wouldn’t that make them enemies?

Maybe there’s no such thing as an enemy up there.

Pale fingers picking out blades of grass, no logic to his decision as to which strand would die, Virgil thinks about who he’d like to discover a galaxy with. He’s humming a tune, whether it’s familiar or not, Virgil isn’t sure, but it’s pretty. And Virgil finds his eyes fluttering closed. Will he hear it better if he can’t see?

“What type of bug d’you think will be our overlord?”

His velvety voice is slurred, but somehow, Virgil can make out his question. Such an interesting question too. Body jostling with the energy of an exaggerated shrug, those same pale fingers twist one particularly long blade of grass into a knot. “I dunno. Maybe… a spider? Though, I don’t think Patton would like that much.”

At the mention of his brother, Roman snorts into his hand and nods in agreement, eyes scanning the grass before sliding up to meet Virgil’s. “Agreed. I think… a caterpillar.”

“Oh?”

“I mean,” he pauses, and Virgil doesn’t think it’s the process of deliberation that’s the cause of it, “I mean, they haven’t even reached their ultimate form! Once they turn into a butterfly, we’re fuckin’ done for.”

Laughter feels nice when you aren’t thinking too much about it.

When you’re not focused on how loud it is, or about how nasally it may sound. What if it sounds fake? You’re not thinking about that when you’re debating the pros and cons of a butterfly overlord, and at the same time, wondering what the spacemen in those glowing little boats dream about. Is it the same thing you dream about? Or do they make sense? Maybe their reality is nonsense, whilst their dreams are in a perfect timeline. A glimpse of red in the corner of Virgil’s eye.

Does ‘dreaming’ for them involve so much longing?

“What’s the weirdest dream you’ve ever had?” asks Virgil, as a pin of sangria pokes him in the eye.

Roman is quiet for the longest time. Or is he? Time is scary, to be honest. If an hour in your mind is a second in reality, then how do you know which one is real?

Probably the one in reality, but it’s still scary to think about.

Blowing nutmeg into the air, chapped lips press together in thought. “There was another me, no… Hold on.” He takes a second to lay flat against the cold earth beneath them, watching the sailboats with dazed interest. “I was me, right?”

“Right.”

“But there were two other me’s, right?”

“Neat.”

Fingers reaching up to leave a handprint in the sky, Roman forgets to breathe for a moment. “They start fighting, which isn’t good, until one of them eventually just starts eating the other.” A button nose scrunches upwards. “Was gross.”

Virgil hums distantly, focusing on the lines he can see carved into Roman’s tanned palms. He kind of wishes he could palm-read. Definitely a conversation starter. He wonders what Roman’s future entails. Maybe they’ll discover a planet together. Or, maybe he’s destined to find one on his own.

What kind of conversation starters do the spacemen use with the egg-heads? Do they need conversation starters? Or, is the fabrication of their existence enough to get them talking? Humans talk about that stuff a lot too, after all. But just not as much. Maybe the spacemen and egg-heads don’t talk about that stuff at all. They might be the type of people who believe that ignorance is bliss. Virgil certainly is.

“C’mere.” Roman’s voice is softly beckoning him to shuffle beside him, and so he shifts, dropping backwards to crush any surviving blades of grass from his precious massacre. Their shoulders touch.

It’s not too surprising; Roman has always been an affectionate drunk.

And Virgil, though not too keen on initiating it, actually rather enjoys physical contact. Fingers brush together, bursting air from lungs and keeping chestnut gazes alert to the flickering of the sailboats above them. If Virgil thinks hard enough, will the spacemen hear him? Would they have any advice on how to slow the racing of his pulse? Or, on what works best to crush your hopes until you don’t expect silence from the blistering nothingness? Do they even know what advice is?

Do they still hope?

Loosely laced, their fingers shake with vulnerability and, if they concentrate hard enough, the lines on their palms almost seem to fit perfectly. Like a puzzle.

Or maybe not a puzzle. They’re more complicated than they want this to be.

“What d’you think will happen tomorrow?” Roman asks, words a little less slurred.

Nothing exciting. There’s no holiday, no birthday he’s forgotten about, and he’d have to have a job to get a paycheck. But Virgil knows that that’s not what he means.

Roman has always looked for the ‘tomorrows’, the ‘next Wednesdays’, and always tries to pretend that ‘yesterdays’ are merely a myth told by leeches. He enjoys the upward spiral of an idea, and despises the plummet of a creativity burnout. And something about how he keeps to his ambition, even when his inhibitions are lowered to the point of decomposition, tightens his grip on the warm hand above his. “Well,” he murmurs, “we could always read through the script for that play thing?”

“It has to be something you’ll enjoy too,” Roman protests, turning his head to grin at him, all dopey and filled with muffled attraction, “Virgil.”

Is forgetting how to use your lungs a universal experience, or has Virgil completely given himself over to the spacemen in the sky? His head automatically snaps to look at his star-discovering partner, and as the close proximity between them gets smaller, his brain comes up with a story that can float those sailboats into tomorrow.

Maybe the egg-heads don’t just come around for dinner. The spacemen might just really like their company. And maybe, just maybe, the egg-heads like their somewhat cocky knock-knock jokes.