#it seemed the better way | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

iclaimedtobethebetterbard · 2 years

Text

it seemed the better way - chapter 1

Fandom: Sanders Sides Characters: Janus, others in future chapters Rating: General audiences Relationships: None in this chapter Warnings: None for this chapter, angst in future Word count: 2028 Note: Ty to @anxious-logic for betaing!!

Read on AO3!

My writing masterpost

start - previous - here - next - masterpost

–

Chapter 1

The first thing that ever happened to Janus was waking up.

His eyes slid open; he was warm, burrowed under fluffy yellow blankets with big, warm pillows surrounding him. Yellow sunlight spilled across the ceiling, made even more vivid and golden by the yellow of the walls.

Yellow is a good color, was the first thing he decided.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and stretching. His bed was far too big for him, a tremendous affair made of fancy, shiny dark wood, with four posts reaching up to the ceiling that seemed very far away, and thick yellow curtains gathered at each of the posts. His sheets were a soft, shiny material—satin, his mind supplied just as soon as he started to wonder what it was—and there was something in his lap. He looked down at it.

A long, stuffed toy snake, made of shiny textured green fabric with a soft yellow minky belly, and a tongue of pink felt stuck out in a permanent blep. Janus felt his own tongue poke out from between his lips, mirroring it.

He grinned to himself and climbed out from under the covers. It was less warm outside of them, but not so much so that he regretted it; the whole room seemed to be pleasantly warm. He crawled to the edge of the bed, dragging the snake with him. He sat on the edge of the bed with his feet dangling down—legs not yet long enough to reach the ground—and pushed off, falling the few inches to the floor with a soft thump as he landed on a thick, plush rug.

He discovered a pair of slippers, again yellow, lined with creamy white fur that was soft and warm as could be when he slid his toes into them. He draped the snake around his shoulders, discovering it had a comfortable weight to it, and stroked his fingertips back and forth along the top of its head. The snake thus securely arranged, he padded across the room to where he could see a full-length mirror.

Two brown eyes peeking out of a pale face from under a mop of brown hair met his gaze. He was wearing silky-soft pajamas, pale yellow ones with up-and-down stripes of a shinier, darker yellow. The shirt was shortsleeved and buttoned down the front, with a collar that folded down and made him feel nice and fancy. His cheeks were soft and round, and so were his hands, all chubby with dimpled knuckles.

Janus turned from the mirror and hurried to explore the rest of the room, which was lined with windows above his head that let sunlight pour in from all directions. There was a table, just the right height for him with chairs to match. It had a big bowl of apples in the middle, dozens of juice boxes stacked neatly beside it, and a plate with silverware at one seat. One corner of the room seemed to be a delightful little reading nook, overflowing with soft pillows and stuffed animals and a wooden bookshelf with sides that looked like apple trees. There was a dresser and, right next to it, a chest that Janus instinctively knew was full of dress-up costumes; likewise, he could tell that the low cupboards set against another wall were full of toys. One wall had an open door in it, leading to a bathroom; Janus could see fluffy towels and a big bathtub and a huge bottle of bubble bath on the counter.

There was another door on another wall of the room, this one big and tall and made of dark heavy wood. Janus—

Janus didn’t know what was outside of that door.

Everything inside the room felt familiar and safe, perfectly his, like his own little domain. He knew, instinctively, what each thing he looked at was, and where to go to find anything he wanted within the room. But he had no idea what was outside that door. He didn’t even quite feel like the door belonged with everything else in the room.

He frowned and marched over to the door. There was a big handle made of dark metal, almost at his eye level; he barely had to bend down to peek through the keyhole. He couldn’t see much—it looked like a hall, with boring white walls and plain brown carpet and regular daytime sunlight instead of the warm golden sunlight that filled every corner of Janus’s room. It was unfamiliar—and yet, a little familiar, too, but in a different way than anything else, a way that felt removed from Janus himself. The room felt familiar like a part of him. This hallway was definitely not his in the same way the room was.

He didn’t like it.

He looked around for a key, to lock out whatever was in that strange almost-familiar hallway, and only a second later felt something heavy and too cold in his hand, an unpleasant feeling that made his teeth hurt and his skin crawl. Looking down, he found a big wrought-iron key in his hand, and wasted no time in locking the door and dropping the key. It vanished before it hit the floor.

Janus rubbed his hands up and down on his soft pajama shirt to get rid of the leftover tingly-bad-wrong feeling the metal had made. He had a little bit of the feeling left in his teeth, too, so he went back to the table and picked out an apple. Every single apple in the bowl looked delicious, big and round, some red-yellow swirled and some green, all bound to be crisp and ripe and juicy. Not even one of them had bruises or wrinkles or was too small. After deliberating for a moment, Janus selected a sweet red one with only a little bit of yellow.

He relaxed almost as soon as he bit into it, the flesh crunching between his teeth and juice dripping down his chin—he caught it by wiping the back of his hand along the drip and then licking his hand off. The last of the bad feeling was gone, and he had an apple. This was probably the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Not that all that many things had happened to him since he woke up. That had only been a little while ago. But even still, eating an apple was probably one of the best things ever.

He took another bite, and felt an odd sort of give in his mouth; when he had chewed and swallowed, he ran back to the mirror and examined his mouth, opening it as wide as he could and poking at the spot—one of his front bottom teeth—with his tongue. It wiggled just the tiniest bit; wiggling it with his fingers budged it a little more, but not very much. It was loose, but it probably wouldn’t fall out very soon—although, to be fair, he had no idea exactly how losing a tooth actually worked. Nevertheless, he was satisfied enough to return to the apple, which, even as crunchy as it was, did not do much to loosen his tooth further as he ate.

When he had eaten every bit of apple he could get without biting into sharp nasty core, he dropped the core, wondering if it would disappear like the key had. It did, which made him bounce on his toes.

His hands and cheeks were unpleasantly sticky with dried apple juice, so running to the bathroom and climbing up on the stepstool so he could reach the big sink—with water just the right temperature of warm—was the next order of business. He washed the stickiness away, discovering that his hand soap smelled like lemons and made lots of bubbles on his hands, and that the towels were every bit as soft and fluffy as they looked.

He liked his pajamas very much, but he was starting to be curious about what sorts of clothes he had, so he made his way to the dresser and opened all the drawers one by one, then the dress-up chest. The clothes were folded up in neat squares, and the dress-ups were a pile that was fun to dig through; there were lots of cool outfits, like a witch, and a pirate, and a fancy jacket, and a long cloak with a hood, and all sorts of things. There was a whole collection of hats—a bowler hat, and a witch’s hat, and a wizard’s hat, and a baseball hat, and a beret, and a tricorn hat with a feather, and more, more, more. Janus discovered, with all the rightness and satisfaction of a puzzle piece falling into place, that he liked hats very much.

He picked out a long-sleeved yellow shirt, warm rich buttery yellow made of soft stretchy cotton fabric and no tag at the neck to scratch. With it, he paired socks with snake faces on the toes and scale patterns on the rest of them, and a pair of soft stretchy dark gray leggings, and then over that he pulled on a pair of overalls with a sunflower on the chest pocket. The metal of the buckles was coated in a white plasticky substance that prevented the bad feeling from getting into his fingers or his teeth, and the leggings he had on beneath the overalls kept the rough denim from touching any of his skin. It was almost perfect.

In the top drawer of the dresser, the smallest one, were lots and lots of different gloves. Janus spent some time perusing them; there were knitted gloves, satin ones, fingerless ones, black and gray and white and yellow, some long with arms on them and some only hand sized, and even some with embroidery or buttons. After examining many pairs, and trying on a few, Janus selected a pair that were heather gray, with a little crocheted bumblebee sewn onto each wrist, and black dotted lines making a loopy little flight pattern. There were buttons on the inside of the wrists, which took him a moment to figure out, but made the gloves fit nice and snug when he did.

Finally, he sorted through the pile of hats in the dress-up chest, picked out a gray newsboy cap, and fitted it onto his head. He picked up his stuffed snake, which he had left on top of the dresser, and draped it once more around his shoulders. Satisfied, he wandered back to the table, putting one juicebox in each of his three overall pockets and picking another one up in his hands.

Thus equipped, he made a beeline for the reading nook, selecting a picture book that he had never—always—never—often—never seen before, but that looked good—favorite—no, not his favorite—someone else’s, someone important—but still good, even if not his own personal favorite. He couldn’t read all the words yet, only the most familiar short ones like “and” and “the,” but he found that he knew enough of the story to enjoy the book regardless, and anyway the pictures were very good to look at.

He sipped at his juice, feeling delightfully content. He could do this for ages, and then maybe take a nap in the nice warm bed, and then go look in the cupboards and see what kind of toys he had, and then—

The doorknob rattled, and Janus tensed up. The lock held, and after a moment, whoever it was began to knock. They didn’t stop, a bang-bang-bang of fists that was starting to make Janus’s head hurt already.

He frowned, closed his book very carefully indeed, set it down delicately on the yellow beanbag chair, and took his juicebox in hand, marching over to the door. He yanked it open, barely even realizing that he hadn’t unlocked it first and it had opened at his merest touch, and gave his most intimidating glare. “What do you want?” he snapped, and then froze.

“Hi!” said a boy who looked almost exactly like Janus’s own reflection had in the mirror. “I’m Creativity!”

Taglist (ask to be added/removed!) (since I am posting the whole story all at once I am only putting the taglist on this chapter so as not to spam lol): @theimprobabledreamersworld @the-sympathetic-villain @just-a-little-anxious @your-local-crackhead-gremlin

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #thatsthat24 #ts storytime 2022 submission #janus sanders #ts janus #king creativity #patton sanders #ts patton #ts fic #ts fanart #peregrin writes #it seemed the better way

13 notes · View notes