At first, Patton had been excited when Janus asked him if he wanted to bake something together. He'd been doing his best with befriending the 'Dark Sides' (and was marginally more successful with Janus), and this was the first time Janus had been the one to initiate them spending time together.
His excitement, however, was turning more into concern the longer they were in the kitchen. He was pretty sure Janus had a headache again, and since he'd seen him take painkillers less than an hour ago, he couldn't really offer them to him again so soon. He also, for some reason, seemed to be having a hard time finding the right ingredients. Earlier, he'd gotten the bags of flour and sugar mixed up, and now, he was squinting at the many jars of jelly in their collection, occasionally holding one up close to his face.
"Hey, Janus, are you okay?" Patton asked. "If your head hurts too much, we can take a break and finish this later."
Janus turned to look at him, still squinting.
"Hm? No, my head doesn't really hurt too much right now," Janus denied. "I just… can't quite find the strawberry jelly."
Patton blinked, freezing for just a moment.
"What?" he questioned. "Are we out? I mean, I guess we could ask Roman to conjure up some more real quick…"
He turned, about to leave the kitchen to find the princely side, until he heard Janus answer his question.
"I… don't know?" Janus admitted, sounding confused.
At this, Patton turned back around, his concern spiking even higher. To begin with, it was a tone that he almost never heard from Janus. It was also a strange response, because either there was or wasn't strawberry jelly. They'd taken out all of it, so if there wasn't any strawberry in the stash, then they clearly needed more. It shouldn't be confusing. Patton glanced at the jelly in Janus's hand: raspberry, the color quite close to strawberry. Then, he looked at all the jelly on the counter and saw that Janus had pushed away the ones like blueberry and marmalade- essentially anything that wasn't some shade of red. And almost immediately, he spotted the strawberry jelly amongst those that remained.
It was right there. Janus should have been able to find it.
"Hey, Kiddo, are you sure you're okay?" he asked as he came closer and picked up the jar. "The strawberry jelly is right here."
"Oh," Janus gasped, almost surprised. "Well. I guess we're not out, then."
He started moving to put the rest of the jelly away, but Patton lightly grabbed his wrist.
"I think we should maybe sit down for a few minutes," Patton suggested.
Janus rolled his eyes.
"I'm fine, Patton," he insisted. "I've just been having a bit more difficulty reading things lately."
This, of course, didn't ease Patton's concerns at all.
"That's… not good, I don't think?" Patton told him.
But Janus just shrugged.
"I think it has something to do with the headaches. The worse the headaches have gotten, the harder it's been for me to read. So, hopefully, the headaches go away soon. But let's just finish this before it's time to start dinner."
Patton didn't really want to just move on, but he also didn't want to push too hard. After all, he didn't want to dissuade Janus from spending time with him again because he didn't want to get nagged. And he did have a point about it getting closer to dinner time.
So, for the time-being, he placed the issue on the back-burner, deciding he would address it again once everything was in the oven and they were waiting for it to finish baking.
XXX
Roman strode into the kitchen, and surprisingly, everyone else was there as well. Virgil was hovering by the coffee pot, Logan was chopping something (most likely in preparation for dinner), Patton was putting something in the oven, Janus was sitting at the table with his head buried in his arms, and Remus was poking him.
"I can't believe you all decided to have a party, and you didn't invite me," Roman gasped in mock offense. "How utterly rude."
"Hey, Princey," Virgil greeted, taking his eyes off the coffee pot for a moment.
"Oh, hi, Roman!" Patton greeted, a bit less energetic than usual. "Janus and I were baking Victoria sandwiches. I guess everyone else kinda just ended up here. Logan's starting the salad for dinner, though."
He noticed Logan perk up at the mention of Victoria sandwiches, and he only barely held back his smirk at the thought that Logan was probably hovering in the kitchen for the chance to swipe one of the jelly-filled treats as soon as possible. Virgil was obviously there for caffeine, and well, it appeared that his brother was there solely to pester Janus.
"Remus, would you stop poking me?" the man requested. "I'm not dead."
"Eh, just checking. You never know."
It was at that point that Remus leaned back in his chair, going far enough that the chair itself was only balancing on the back legs. Janus himself sat up, rubbing his temple for a moment before allowing his hands to settle onto his lap.
"… Were you asleep?" Roman questioned.
"No."
"I don't know, you looked pretty asleep to me," Remus disagreed.
"No, I think I looked pretty dead to you."
That made Remus let out a loud cackle, which in turn made Janus flinch.
"Whoops. Sorry, Dee."
They'd all gotten pretty used to Janus's headaches by now, so Roman barely even took notice of the flinching. Patton, however, apparently thought it was important to bring it up.
"Is your headache any better, Kiddo?"
"Yeah, it's not even that bad today."
And normally (or at least, since they found out about the headaches), that would have been the end of it. But it wasn't. Instead, Patton bit his lip, clearly wanting to say something else.
"Janus, can you check how long the cake is supposed to bake?" Patton requested, suddenly appearing to have changed the subject.
Janus himself seemed to have been momentarily caught off-guard, but he quickly shifted to pick up the recipe card sitting on the table. He held it close to his face and narrowed his eyes, staring at the piece of paper much longer than he should have needed to find the bake time.
"… I think it says 30 minutes? Or maybe 20…," Janus replied, almost mumbling. "I don't know. Remus, can you read it?"
Suddenly, everyone's attention was solely on Janus.
Why couldn't Janus read a recipe?
Of course, the deceitful side quickly noticed that everyone's attention was suddenly directed at him, and he crossed his arms in discomfort. If it had been anyone else, Roman would have thought he was embarrassed about asking for help.
With a frown, Remus slowly took the paper and almost immediately read the time out loud:
"It says about 20 minutes…"
His eyebrows furrowed deeper.
"… DeeDee, could you not read it…?"
Now, Roman was sure he saw some pink dusting Janus's cheeks.
"… The headaches have been making it hard for me to read things lately."
Suddenly, Roman was reminded of that seemingly innocuous time they'd been sitting in the living room. That was already a while ago. If he'd thought about it, he would have assumed that the difficulty was the large amount of small text on the page being difficult to read with a headache. But the letters on the recipe card were much larger, and it was only one sentence he needed to find. Could Janus not read at all anymore? And that time in the living room really was a while ago, now- had he been unable to read for that long?
"What the fuck," Virgil said, almost exhaling the words. "That is not normal, dude! Headaches aren't supposed to make it so you can't read anymore!"
Roman could tell that Virgil's mind was already coming up with a thousand worst-case scenarios- and unfortunately, as the seriousness of this revelation dawned on him, Roman realized that they might not be able to refute them all.
"That… is concerning," Logan agreed. "I'm not quite sure what would cause intense headaches and the sudden inability to read, but it could be quite serious."
Janus looked away from them.
"I wouldn't say it's sudden," Janus rejected. "Like I told Patton earlier, it's been getting harder as the headaches have gotten worse. So it'll… probably be fine once the headaches go away?"
His sentence ended in uncertainty, and it was clear that the man was attempting to lie to himself (and rather unsuccessfully, either because of or despite his role as Deceit).
"And I can… kinda make things out sometimes?" he added, as if that really made the situation much better.
XXX
"Janus, can you estimate about how long you've had these symptoms?" Logan asked.
Janus thought for a moment.
"Well, I've had the headaches for a pretty long time. A few years, maybe? But they weren't that bad until a few months ago. And I started having trouble reading some time after that, but it hasn't been this bad until a few weeks ago," he answered, obviously not liking what he himself had to say.
"Hm."
What would cause headaches and the loss of reading ability? Was it a normal illness of some kind, or was it something specific to the sides? Had something from the Imagination caused it? Or maybe a shift in the Mindscape? Was it related to something in Thomas's life?
As Logan thought, he mindlessly plucked his glasses from his face and started cleaning them with a cloth. Instantly, the kitchen and sides around him blurred, but everything returned to stark clarity once the glasses returned to their usual location.
He froze for a moment, blinking with the realization.
Perhaps they were a little confused on the cause and effect here.
Perhaps Janus wasn't having trouble reading because of his headaches.
Perhaps his headaches and reading issues were both caused by something else- a confounding variable.
"Janus, do things look blurry?" he asked, his tone verging on urgent.
Janus blinked back at him.
"… I suppose things are a bit blurrier than usual?"
Logan couldn't help the stare he responded to Janus with.
"The normal amount of blurriness is none!" Virgil suddenly shouted.
"Do you have to yell…?" Janus asked. "And what do you mean, none? Things are blurry sometimes! That's why you have to hold things close to you to see them!"
"Oh my fucking god," Virgil exclaimed, exasperated. "No, things are usually not blurry unless they're close to you! You just can't fucking see!"
"Huh? I can see!" Janus argued. "I see you! And Remus! And the kitchen! I think I'd notice if I was blind!"
"Apparently the fuck not!"
"Alright, let's not get too riled up," Logan cut in. "Janus, Virgil isn't saying that you're completely blind. However, there is almost definitely something wrong with your vision."
He paused for a moment, not quite sure if he needed to be delicate or not.
"You probably need glasses."
"Glasses?"
"Yes, like the ones Patton and I wear," Logan nodded. "Do you know what glasses do?"
Janus narrowed his eyes at him, this time in what was most definitely a glare.
"Yes, I know what glasses do," he growled. "How many times are you all going to assume I'm an idiot?"
"Okay, well, you don't know that things aren't supposed to be blurry, so for all we know, you just thought glasses were for fashion," Roman pointed out.
"And how was I supposed to know things aren't blurry?" Janus questioned. "Things have always been blurry! They've just gotten blurrier!"
"Always?" Patton spoke, his voice sad. "Oh, Kiddo…"
The implication was clear: Janus had likely needed glasses just as long as they had, and somehow, no one, including Janus himself, had noticed.
"Okay, so you know that glasses correct your vision so things aren't blurry, but that never made you think that seeing things as blurry was a reason to need glasses?" Roman continued.
Janus's cheeks were growing redder.
"I thought it was a normal amount of blurriness!"
"There is no 'normal' amount of blurriness!"
Logan didn't bring up the fact that things that were incredibly far could appear blurry. He was practically certain that Janus was not referring to things in a far-away landscape. He seemed to be referring to things within at least the same room as himself. And if he couldn't even read something right in front of him…
"Alright, that's enough," Logan reminded them. "At least we found the solution to the problem: after you get glasses, the headaches should eventually go away, and you'll be able to see just fine. Though, considering our age, it's a bit strange that your eyes have gotten much worse this quickly. And since you can't see things you're reading, you may actually need bifocals."
Janus took a very long, deep breath in.
"So, I've seriously spent my entire life not seeing correctly?"
"Well… more-or-less. It's hard to say exactly when your vision got bad enough to need glasses now that we're in our thirties."
Janus let his face fall into his hands.
"Motherfucker…"
XXX
As it turned out, Janus did need glasses, and Logan was right in predicting that he needed bifocals. He'd been brought to an eye doctor in the Imagination almost immediately, and he couldn't even read the top line of the eye chart. About an hour later, their hypothesis was confirmed:
He couldn't see shit.
It took a little while to have his glasses made, albeit much faster than it would take for real prescription glasses, and now, he held a case containing them. He was a bit apprehensive about actually putting them on. If he'd really been seeing the world incorrectly for most of his life, this was going to be a pretty big change. Sure, maybe his eyesight had been much clearer when he was a child, but he couldn't exactly remember it now. It's not like his vision had deteriorated rapidly or anything. For the most part, the blurriness increased too slowly for him to notice, and it was really only now that he was having a hard time seeing up close that he really started having too much trouble to go about his business as usual.
But, well, even if things being some degree of blurry was normal for him, and was more than tired of the headaches.
And so, he cracked open the case.
XXX
And there's the end!
It might be a tad dramatic (as I tend to write), but I personally find it pretty overwhelming when I get new glasses and have to adjust to a new level of clarity again (luckily my prescription has mostly stayed the same since I graduated high school). Fun fact, I can only see a few inches away without my glasses, and my dad can't see ANYTHING without his. My whole family has bad eyes.
This fic is mostly an excuse to have Janus wear glasses lol. I should draw it at some point.
Thanks for reading :3
XXX