And here's the next part! This chapter is more on the fluffy side, I think? Sorry in advance if it isn't; I tend to veer into angst even when I'm trying not to, and things apparently end up more angsty than I thought.

Oh, and just a head's up: it's not really super important for this part, but for the sake of a future part of this fic I have planned, let's just pretend Janus didn't remove his glove when he revealed his name. Like, everything else happened the same, he just didn't take his glove off when he raised his hand.

XXX

It had been a while now since Janus had that discussion with the other sides and Thomas. It had been rocky, really rocky, at first, but the arguments and anger seemed to have slowly dissipated. Janus was surprised to find that even his own anger at the sides was mostly gone now, replaced more by uncertainty (and fear if he was being honest, but he was Deceit) than anything else. He ventured out of his room a bit more now, and he still spent some time with Remus. Actually, he had been trying to spend a bit more time with him now than before because he didn't want Dark Creativity to feel left out. Luckily, Remus didn't seem too bothered by not being included too, but maybe the man had managed to trick himself into thinking he wasn't upset by it. Janus never really could tell the difference between the truth and such an extreme form of lying to oneself because even the person themself didn't know they were lying at that point. But regardless, Remus did seem to enjoy having more frequent company, even if it was only him.

But yes, things were slowly getting… better? Was that the right word? He thought so, at least. Now that he was less angry about the past, spending time with the others was nice on occasion. They were actually including him in some of their videos with Thomas now, and not just as a villain. It wasn't every video, but the other sides weren't always all there every time, anyway. And beyond that, they were talking to him in the mindscape now, even when they weren't arguing. Sometimes Patton would just start chatting while cooking something, or Roman would start rambling about Disney movies, or Logan would ask his opinion on something. Even Virgil was talking to him now. For a while after that initial discussion, Virgil had avoided him a bit, though that was apparently more because he didn't like to deal with the uncomfortable emotions and not that he hated Janus. And they may or may not have needed to have an explicit discussion about that.

Well, the point was that things were better now, and they were better than Janus had thought they ever could be.

There was, however, a bit of a draw-back to all of this, and Janus hadn't really even thought this would be a potential issue because the very idea of it sounded ridiculous until it started to be a problem. Actually, he still didn't really understand how this could possibly be a real issue, but against everything, it was.

And that issue was that Janus didn't exactly know what to do with all of this attention. Sure, it wasn't like the others were falling over to spend time with him or anything, but he wasn't even really used to having this level of casual conversation with people, especially the Light Sides, let alone people actually seeking him out and inviting him to participate in something.

It was actually rather overwhelming, and he ended up declining their invitations about half the time even when a part of him wanted to accept.

But, seeing as Roman was now standing in his open doorway, apparently declining the invitation to movie night wasn't an acceptable option this time.

"Come on, Sir Snakes-a-lot, you haven't been to a single movie night yet!" Roman whined, hands on his hips. "I'm starting to think you don't like Disney movies!"

Janus rolled his eyes.

"I'm not part of Thomas, remember?"

"But then why don't you want to come to movie night?"

Janus, of course, wasn't going to tell Roman that he didn't like the idea of movie night because he would be expected to stay for the entirety of at least the whole movie. And that was if they only watched one. Based on the way everyone was just a bit more dead on their feet after every movie night, Janus got the sense that it was usually more than one movie.

Instead of saying all that, Janus just shrugged.

"Oh, come on, why don't you bring your snake?" Roman suggested. "Maybe your snake wants to watch a movie."

"... Really, Roman?"

"You don't know! Maybe your snake has been longing to watch Mulan this whole time, and you've been depriving it!" Roman spoke in mock horror.

Of course Roman had to mention his favorite Disney movie. During one of Roman's Disney rambles, Janus had revealed that he liked the dragon and the fact that Mulan was lying for most of the movie, and now Roman had apparently decided to use that as ammunition against him.

And it worked.

"Fine," he agreed.

"Fine like actually fine, or fine like you're lying, and you actually mean the opposite of fine?" Roman asked, unsure of Janus's intentions with the answer.

Instead of replying, Janus just gave Roman a look and went to retrieve his snake without closing the door. Upon his return to the doorframe, however, Roman apparently had something else to say.

"Are you really going to wear that to movie night?"

Janus looked down at his clothes and didn't see a problem with them. They were the same clothes he wore almost every day, at least when he left his room.

"And what, exactly, isn't wrong with what I'm not wearing?" Janus asked.

"They just don't look very… comfortable," Roman answered, waving a hand around. "We usually wear pajamas for this kind of thing. Makes it easier to lounge on the couches, and we usually end up sleeping in the living room anyway."

"... I'm going to sleep in the living room."

"Well, I guess you don't have to, but it's still better if you wear pajamas!" Roman exclaimed. "I mean, you're wearing a dress shirt and boots!"

With a sigh, Janus snapped his fingers, and his outfit changed into something more casual. It wasn't quite at the level of his pajamas, but he had switched out his dress shirt for something closer to the polo shirt Patton wore, but with longer sleeves, and his pants were looser. He had also switched his shoes to slippers, though his socks remained on, as did his signature yellow gloves. Roman gave him a once-over.

"Good enough!" he declared and began walking toward the commons.

Deceit followed behind him, wrapping his snake around his shoulders and wondering how easy/difficult it would be to slip away if he felt the desire to do so.

Before long, Janus found himself sitting on the floor by the couch while 'I'll Make a Man out of You' played on the screen.

"Janus, would you like some popcorn?" Logan asked him eventually, lifting the bowl slightly.

"No, thank you," Janus replied, his eyes focused on the screen more than the other side.

When he felt the bowl lightly touching his arm, he realized what had happened.

"Ah, I was lying just now," Deceit told Logic, trying to correct the misunderstanding.

Logan gave him a quizzical look.

"Wait, so were you lying about wanting popcorn, or you were lying about not wanting popcorn?" Logan asked to clarify.

"I definitely want popcorn," Janus said, trying to exaggerate his words even more than normal to make it clear he was lying.

Which seemed to not have really worked.

"... Is that a lie?"

"I am not lying."

Well, this was certainly much more confusion than was really needed for the simple action of refusing an offered snack. And apparently Roman agreed with this sentiment because he let out an annoyed groan.

"We really need to figure out a way to tell if you're lying or not!" Roman exclaimed. "It's like, you'll lie about every tiny thing for days, and then, out of nowhere, you'll just randomly tell the truth! It's confusing!"

Janus shrugged at the creative side, still feeling like his lies were a lot more obvious than they apparently were. Yes, the other sides could easily pick up on the lies that twisted his grammar strangely, but when his sentences sounded right, they suddenly had a hard time figuring out whether there was a truth sprinkled in somewhere. But couldn't they hear the way he tended to emphasize words more when he was telling a lie (at least, when he wasn't really trying to fool people)?

"I certainly don't speak differently when I'm lying," Janus answered, trying to give an example.

"Um… Janus, you always talk like that…," Patton chimed in.

That took him aback.

"Do I?" Deceit questioned, blinking.

Really? That one had seemed extremely obvious to him.

"Yes," Logan responded.

He saw Virgil shift on the couch.

"Nah, there's a difference, but it's pretty slight. It's hard to tell unless you've spent a lot of time with him. Sometimes it's still hard to tell," he told the others. "We came up with a system for figuring out what's a lie, though, when everything gets all mixed up and confusing."

"Ah, right, that," Janus mused, more to himself than the others.

"And what's that?" Roman asked.

"The sky is green, and I want popcorn," Janus spoke.

"... What?"

"If Janus says the sky is blue, or whatever color he thinks it is at the time, I guess, then whatever he says after it is the truth. If he says the sky is green, it's a lie," Virgil explained. "We came up with that back when we were kids."

"Oh… that works, I guess."

"For certain situations, at least," Logan added. "We might need to look into another system in case this one ends up leading to confusion as well."

"Leading to confusion, how? If the sky really is green?"

"We are within the mindscape, and the rules that apply to the real world do not always apply here," Logan explained. "The sky turning green is certainly a possibility."

"Well, since it hasn't ever actually happened, maybe we can just cross that bridge when we come to it," Virgil suggested.

"What's this? Panic at the Everywhere isn't worried about an outrageous future scenario?" Roman interjected.

"Can it, Princey."

Yes, this certainly was… odd. At least they hadn't tried to insist that he tell the truth more. Because, while he could tell the truth, he couldn't do it too much, and he couldn't always control it.

Soon, the chatter had faded away, and everyone's attention turned back toward the movie. Or it would have if Patton didn't almost immediately start talking again.

"Are you sure you don't want any popcorn, Janus?" Patton asked.

Instead of replying verbally, Janus held up one of his hands and wiggled his fingers, obviously calling attention to his gloves.

"You... don't want to get butter on your gloves?" Patton guessed, and Janus nodded.

"Well, can't you just take them off?" Roman questioned.

Janus moved his legs into a different position on the floor.

"Ah, but if I took them off, you would see my dragon claws," he joked.

"Wait, your hands are dragon claws?!" Patton exclaimed.

"Absolutely."

"Wow, tha-"

"That was a lie, Patton. Or a joke. Either way, it wasn't intended to be believed."

"Oh."

And so their night continued, with more chatter than actual watching of any of the movies they put on, which should have annoyed Janus, but it really didn't.

Janus, despite his intentions, woke up in the living room the next morning, a blanket pulled over him, and the other sides asleep nearby.

He really hadn't seen any of this coming.

XXX

This part is just this one chapter, so I hope to see you in the next part!