#familial loceit

[naminethewriter]

Reminiscence

Let's have a Blast from the Past for @loceitweek Day 6, both in the story and as a callback! Because this is set in my AU where Logan and Remus are Janus' fathers! The other stories related to this - but not necessary to have read to understand this - are Today's Topic: Snakes, The Third Snake Plan and As Long As You Try Your Best. (I would make them into a series, I just don't have a good name for it...)

Masterpost | Loceit Week 2023 Masterpost | Ao3

Summary: Janus is about to move to college. It's a big change for both him and his fathers.

Content Warnings: mentions of snakes

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Janus sighed as he looked around the room. It was so weird seeing so empty. This had been his room, his safe haven his entire life but now it was time to leave for college. It still felt unreal to him.

A knock on his open door pulled him out of his thoughts. He looked over to see his father leaning against the frame. He was smiling but it seemed not quite genuine.

“How is the packing coming along?”

“I’m mostly done,” Janus hummed, again surveying the room. “This feels really weird though.”

“It does, doesn’t it? I always thought that the tearful goodbyes as the child heads off to college in movies were very overexaggerated but now that I’m faced with the reality myself? I can see where they are coming from.”

“Well, I didn’t think you would be the emotional one about my move and not Dad.”

“Oh, believe me, he will be more emotional than me when you actually get in the car. These kinds of things hit him more in the moment than during the built-up.”

“Yeah, I know.” Janus smiled sadly. He was excited to go to college, to stand on his own two feet and meet new people while also having Virgil around still (he said that he agreed to go to the same college as his cousin because of his anxiety but secretly he’s very happy to have Virgil as a constant himself. Also removes the issue about having to get along with a stranger as his roommate,) but he would miss his dads.

“Repurposing this room will take some time to get used to as well,” his father added, finally walking inside and towards Janus’ desk on which some mementos were gathered.

“You didn’t need to do that right away, by the way. I will come to visit during breaks, you know,” Janus snorted, joining his father as he leafed through a photo album.

“It wasn’t needed in the sense that we needed the space, but I think it is better for both your Dad’s and my headspace to do so. Maintaining this room just for you to eventually visit us is not the kind of parent I want to be. There will be a place to sleep for you here, always, of course but it won’t just be yours anymore unless you move back in at some point. Which you are free to do for any reason, of course.”

“Thanks, Papa,” Janus laughed, leaning against his father’s side as they looked at the pictures together. “Oh, look, it’s Jake, John and Joey!” He pointed to a picture of himself around seven years old with three snakes wrapped around his arms and neck. “I miss those three.”

“I imagine you would. You were devastated when they passed.” Logan laid a hand on his son’s shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly.

“Yeah, they were my best friends for so long,” Janus whispered, thumbing over the photo once. “Did Dad ever tell you I took Jake to great-aunt Cathy’s funeral?” Logan let go of his shoulder and faced him with a raised brow.

“He did not. Why would he allow you to do that?”

“Oh, he didn’t,” Janus laughed. “I just told him about it when I convinced him to buy me John.”

“I see. You have always been very good at wrapping Remus around your finger. He just never learned how to say no to you.”

“Oh, please, I could wrap you around my finger just as well.”

“I can’t truly deny that,” Logan laughed.

“What are you two talking about without me?” Janus’ other father suddenly called from the door, making the other two turn around to face him.

“Just reminiscing a bit, dear,” Logan explained and held out a hand to Remus as an invitation to join them. “Want to take some time to just look at some pictures together?”

“Hell yeah! Anything that gets me out of carrying me stuff to the garage!”

Janus chuckled as he watched his Dad’s antics. He was going to miss both of his fathers so much but as strange as that may sound, he kinda looked forward to it.

[specs-and-capelets]

my art for the final contract by @meadowofbluebells for the @tss-storytime !!! i am so excited for you all to read the story >:D

more stuff under the cut :)

[askdeceitsanders]

Kiss, Marry, Kill - Patton, Logan, Virgil

Marry Logan, give Virgil a forehead kiss, kill Patton

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Different | Still the Same

Hi! I just read your story "Different" (Sanders Sides Loceit mafia au) and I was wondering if you would consider writing a part 2? If you’d rather not, I will happily continue to consume all that you’ve already written. Your writing is amazing! – anon

Read on Ao3 Part 1

Warnings: interrogation, someone gets run over by a car

Pairings: loceit

Word Count: 2823

When one grows up in a world where shadows can speak, whispers are as good as shouts, and fear is far more important that love, one isn't used to...loyalty.

Janus certainly isn't, not after years and years of perfecting the lie of loyalty, working his way through the nest with a blinding smile to hide the way the knife in his grasp catches the light.

And now...now the old king is dead.

Long Live the King.

***

Janus and Logan have an...understanding. A surprisingly proactive threat shifts its course.

One of the least discussed and thus most overlooked aspects of successfully running the family is the importance of ‘informal’ meetings.

Now, of course, there are informal meetings and ‘informal’ meetings. The former, of course, is reserved for those who are truly family, the ones who know all of the cards you hold close to your chest and could carve bullets out of themselves for your sake. The latter is something Janus knew he would despise, but this…

If he has to listen to the heaving time vampire sitting across from him utter one more syllable about loyalty and faith, he’s going to flay the skin from his throat and demonstrate just how a larynx works to produce sound so he understands how much of the universe’s finite energy he’s wasting.

He settles for taking another drink from his glass, an underling scurrying over to refill it as soon as it’s flat enough not to spill. The ice clinks against the side as he swirls it around, contemplating how the man’s teeth would look mounted on his desk plate. A bit gruesome and over the top for the family’s modern image, to be sure, and yet there is something fulfilling about a nod to the classics, hm? Anything to keep him distracted enough not to seriously contemplate ripping the man’s tongue out so this meeting can be over with.

Across the room, Logan stands with his hands behind his back. He’s wearing the blue suit again, the navy one with the diamond tie pin Janus gifted him when they’d first made it high enough that he could afford such a thing. He’s been wearing blue more often recently.

Janus couldn’t possibly know why that could be.

“Wouldn’t you agree, my good man?”

Ah, right. The waste of oxygen had continued to waste oxygen as he’d drifted off into admiring the cut of Logan’s figure. He returns his gaze almost lazily to the man’s face, raising an eyebrow and taking a silent sip of his drink. The man seems to take it as a disagreement, or chastisement—though likely not for the true crime he’s committing right now, which is wasting Janus’s time—and begins to ramble on about…oh, something meant to be flattering and appeasing but really just goes in one ear and out the other.

He wonders idly if he might be able to persuade Logan to go over the rules he’d drafted about not wasting his time with frivolous and clumsy words, but Logan had been the reasonable one of the two of them.

Policing language outright won’t do anything other than highlight the areas where enemies may strike.

Which was ultimately correct, but that didn’t mean Janus had to like it. And he could fantasize about being able to throw things like this out of his building.

Speaking of which, he’s heard enough of this for today, thank you very much. He shifts his weight to the other side of the chair and sets his glass down with a sharp tink.

“Well, thank you for your time,” one of the smarter cohorts says, quickly delivering a not-so-subtle slap to the droning vacuum’s arm and standing to bow, “we thank you for your hospitality, sir.”

Janus raises his hands with a polite smile. “What is this but family? My doors are always open to you.”

“How generous of you.”

That one might actually have promise, he muses as they quickly scoop up the pounds of flesh and extricate them from the room—and Janus’s very expensive liquor—if they can be severed from their vacuous parasite.

He lets out a sigh as the doors shut behind them. Logan performs the requisite security check to make sure they’re actually alone, and turns to face him with his hands folded politely in front of him, awaiting instruction.

“What did you think of our guests, Logan?”

“The family’s doors are indeed open to all, as you so wisely said, sir.”

Janus snorts. “Never let it be said that courtesy isn’t as biting as a curse when it needs to be.”

Logan cracks a smile and nods his head demurely. Janus has never gotten him to gloat the way he deserves to, not even while drunk. Then again, the times he’s seen Logan actually drink, not just politely sip at a glass of something can be counted on one hand. The man is his driver, after all.

Janus sighs, picking up his glass and finishing it with a slight hiss. The underling hurries to pour him more but he waves them away. Logan opens the door wordlessly and the underling scurries out—clever one, that one. Also shows promise, though doesn’t have quite enough spine to be a decent enforcer. A mole, maybe. The cousin down by the bookstore has been asking for another little sneak to send out lately.

Never let it be said Janus would deny any others the opportunity to gain his approval.

“Satisfied, sir?”

Janus looks up at the sound of Logan’s voice, a slow smile spreading across his face as he motions to another of the bottles on the bar by the door. Something actually worth savoring this time. Logan picks it up and crosses to his massive desk. Janus holds out his glass and Logan pours the amber liquid with a slight twist of his wrist, so as not to waste a single drop.

“Who taught you how to pour like that?”

“I worked as a waiter for several years before I joined the family,” Logan says, setting the bottle down and replacing the top, “there were not always the type of people who could afford this sort of drink, but they made sure we knew how not to waste it anyway.”

Janus hums, reaching up to tap the diamond at the end of the pin. “And were you as sharply dressed? I can just imagine you in one of the adorable little black vests and aprons.”

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the maître ds, so my uniform was just black.”

Janus tuts. “What a waste. Not that you look bad in all black, of course.”

It rolls right off of Logan, as it always does. At some point, he’ll figure out a way to get under Logan’s skin.

“Will that be all, sir?”

“Mm. Send one of the little birds down to the docks, tell them the wind’s to blow cold from the east next month.”

“Right away, sir.”

Logan walks out of the office, the door closing behind him, and Janus spends the next 72 hours ripping himself to shreds for not calling him back and sending someone else.

What is the point, he screams wordlessly as he sits at Logan’s beside, watching the man sleep off the last of the anesthesia, of all this power if I cannot do anything with it?

You did plenty, says the voice that sounds suspiciously like Logan in his head, now you just have to wait, sir.

Wait, yes.

The waste of space, it seemed, had noticed Janus’s disinterest in anything his presence had to offer, and devised an ill-advised plan to exact some form of petty retribution. Namely, waiting until Logan had left the building to abduct him and tie him up in one of the family’s warehouses.

Conveniently forgetting that one, Logan had at least three emergency trackers on him at all times, and two, that the warehouse in question had cameras in it.

It had taken less than ten minutes once Logan regained consciousness to find him, and less than two minutes after that for a car to be on its way and Janus to be watching the feed from the cameras in his office.

“Think about it,” the time vampire was saying as he paced back and forth in front of Logan tied to a chair—such a lack of imagination, and they didn’t even do it justice—“Janus isn’t fit to be Don of this family! You know it, I know it, hell, half that family knows it!”

Janus scoffs, taking another drink. Half the family is too scared of him to do anything, the other half are too smart to. This little stain on the sidewalk not included.

“And you! You know you’re better than running around picking up that guy’s laundry!” He sees Logan heroically surprise a grimace as the man gets closer to him. “You could be one of them, you know, instead of just a driver. You could be calling the shots, you could have your own driver, eh?”

“Could you be any worse at this,” Janus mutters to himself as he sees a similar expression flicker across Logan’s face on the screen, “did you even do the slightest bit of research?”

Clearly not, because then he wouldn’t known that Logan couldn’t be bought or intimidated.

“Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear,” Logan says with a smooth, clear voice, “there is nothing that you could offer me that would sway my loyalty.”

The man scoffs, which is an even bigger waste of oxygen, and looks at Logan with something like disgust. Janus thinks he might want to poison this one slowly. “So, what, that’s it? You’re happy to just be a guard dog for the rest of your life? Where’s your ambition? Where’s your love for the family? Huh? He pay you to get off in the cars too, is that why?”

Janus wrinkles his nose. Tacky. On the other screen, he sees that the car is almost there.

“Well?” The parasite is too busy being outraged at someone having dignity and a sense of loyalty to notice that Logan’s hands are not as still as they should be. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Logan tilts his head, pretending to consider it, and Janus can see the light glint off his teeth as he smiles.

“Woof.”

Oh.

Oh.

Alright, then.

In the privacy of his own office, Janus can admit to being knocked off his game long enough to miss the first few glorious moments of watching Logan go to work. The sounds of yells and gunfire bring his attention back just in time to see two of the lackeys disposed of quickly and efficiently—oh, including the smart one, what a shame—as the waste of space runs to a car and takes off. Logan sighs, fixes his suit, and goes for his phone, presumably to text Janus about the clean-up and new security threat. Janus reaches for his phone, already anticipating the short buzz, only to hear a squeal of tires and glance back—

—just in time to see the car run Logan over.

For long seconds, he can only stare blankly. At the crumpled body on the empty warehouse floor. He’s too still. A pool of red is growing underneath him. The light keeps catching that damned diamond tie pin.

The car pulls up while he’s in shock, men rushing out and calling for medical attention, something, a doctor, anything. Someone says something about calling him and he fumbles blindly for his phone, answering on the first ring.

“Yes?”

He doesn’t hear any words other than McCallum’s hurt, and hospital, and not sure if he’s gonna make it.

Which is absurd. Logan will make it. Logan will be fine. He has to be fine. Logan is always fine.

And so, here he is, at Logan’s beside, after the doctor had told him that McCallum was very lucky, sir, he should make a full recovery, but he’ll need to rest for a while.

He’ll hate that, Janus had almost said, because Logan could sit still for hours on a stakeout as long as he was doing something, but being forced to do nothing? Not his Logan.

That was another thing he’d had to come to terms with as he sat here: since when had he begun to think of Logan as his?

The answer comes a little too quickly and sounds far too much like Logan. As soon as something threatened to take me away, sir.

Don’t get smart with me, McCallum. Wake up already so I can scold you for getting yourself caught so easily.

And as if he could hear him, sweet loyal Logan lets out a low groan and opens his eyes.

He looks around, eyes far wider and softer without the dark frames of his glasses, until they land on Janus. He tries to put on his professional, polite face but oh, he’s all scraped and bruised and he just looks like, well, a little puppy that’s come in from the cold.

“Sir,” he manages through a dry and ruined throat, “I’m sorry, I think I’m going to have to request some additional time off.”

Janus hums as he reaches for a cup of water with a straw in it. “Well, after all this time I’d say it’s about right. Do you have any idea how many vacation days you’ve yet to use?”

“You don’t give me vacation days.”

“Don’t I? Well, I should.” Janus holds the straw up carefully. “There, drink slowly, now.”

Logan does, his throat rolling painfully against the sickly white sheets as he manages half the cup. Janus sets it back aside, reaching out to tuck Logan's hair back from his face.

”What did the doctor say?”

“That as long as you rest, Janus says, pointedly raising his eyebrows, “you should make a full recovery.”

Logan’s little pout is enough to make him chuckle and tap his cheek.

“Don’t give me that face, sweetie, you’re the one who decided to embrace a car.”

But oh, the poor thing immediately looks like a kicked puppy and he relents immediately, leaning down to brush his gloved thumb along the butterfly stitches on Logan’s lip.

“I’m sorry, sir, it won’t happen again, they—“

“Shh, shh, I know. I was watching.”

Logan stills, his eyes widening. “You…were?”

“Mhm.”

“How…long?”

Janus smirks, leaning a little closer. “I believe it was woof?”

Logan blinks and a pretty little flush comes to his cheeks. Oh, so this is what it looks like when he blushes? How precious. Janus can and will hoard this version of Logan all to himself, thank you.

“It’s alright,” he says, taking pity on the poor man when he looks like he wants to throw himself back in front of that car, “there’s no one I’d rather have as my guard dog.”

“I didn’t know you were watching, sir,” Logan mumbles, not meeting his gaze.

“Mm, would you have done something different if you did?”

“I wouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?” Logan mumbles something under his breath and Janus tilts his chin up with a gloved knuckle. “A little louder, if you please?”

“…I didn’t want you to tease me about it.”

“But I have to tease you, Logan, you know I do.” He chuckles when Logan honest to God whines slightly and brushes his thumb along the unscathed part of his chin. “It’s alright, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Add it to the list, I suppose.”

”I think I’d prefer to think of it as a leash. Alright, alright,” he laughs when Logan’s expression contorts and he shifts away from his touch, “I’m done, I’m done.”

”Will there be anything else, sir?”

“Come now, don’t be like that.” Janus cups Logan’s face in his hands and turns him back to look at him. “It’s alright, Logan, really.”

Logan’s mouth screws up as though he’s stopping himself from saying something and it takes a few gentle prompts to get him to sigh. “I just want to help, sir.”

“And you do a marvelous job of it,” he says back quietly, “and I meant it: there is no one I would rather have by my side.”

Logan glances up. “Or at your heels?”

“Or at my heels.” He cards his fingers through Logan’s hair. “Perhaps I won’t give you those vacation days after all, and just keep you in the house so I can look after you.”

“You don’t need to do that, sir.”

“Someone needs to make sure you don’t pop your stitches.” Logan laughs a little self-deprecatingly and Janus shakes his head. “Is the thought of staying here really so awful?”

“No, sir,” he says softly, “of course it isn’t.”

“Wonderful. Now, I can see your eyes wanting to close, so why don’t you go back to sleep and we can sort you out when you wake up again, hm?”

“Yes, sir.”

Janus keeps watch over him again as he slips back to sleep, brushing his hair back from his face and twisting the little curl near his forehead around his gloved finger. Things would be a little different for the next few weeks, but when had something different been a bad thing?

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[anxiousgaypanicking]

Sanders Sides: Miscellaneous Smut Masterlist! (Part Two)

The kinks, ships, and prompts listed for each post so you can know what you want to read (in case the titles aren't descriptive enough)!

(Listed in order of oldest to newest!) (And how they're formatted on my AO3)

Part One

1. Rules + Info + Requests

2. Chapter Summaries

3. Payment:  DRLAMP (Janus x Remus x Logan x Virgil x Patton x Roman), Sex, Double Penetration, Riding, Handjobs, Face Fucking, Degradation, Tears, Spit Prompt: Can you do one with Bottom Sub Patton x Everyone where he just likes to pay with sex

4. Video Games: Dukexiety (Remus x Virgil), Exhibition, Sex Prompt: Smaller person (likely Virgil), and bigger person (likely Remy or Remus.) Of course they play video games, however, Virgil wants attention and R won't give it to him because "but video games, babe!" So, Virgil ride's R while he plays video games. Probably in a voice chat too.

5. Vulnerable:  Logicality (Logan x Patton), Sex, Breeding Speak, A/B/O Dynamics, Hickeys Prompt: Hurt comfort and a/b/o where Patton(Alpha) and Logan(Alpha) have been married for a while and lately they've finally started to have sex because Patton grew up in a very traditional family and he has a hard time submitting to Logan without feeling shameful and humiliating. Logan realizes and softly helps Pat into sub space. Top!Logan and bottom!Patton. Plus points if Logan's a sweet husband

6. Bug: Intruloceit (Remus x Logan x Janus), Vore, Detailed Digestion, Sex, Felching Prompt: Plsplspls intruloceit vore

7. Boob Job: Loceit (Logan x Janus), Nipple Play, Oversensitivity, Humping, Dacryphilia Prompt: Maybe Janus would even have to press his pecs together and fuck the fat tits Logan essentially has.

8. Home Alone:  Demus (Janus x Remus), Toys, Plugs, Hair Pulling, Thigh Fucking Prompt: A roommate who constantly makes noise like he's getting off/fucked and like, lays in bed twitching like he's got somethin in his ass, so what happens when someone buys him a thrusting/vibrating dildo/plug via amazon and it shows up when he's home alone? Does he use it alone? Does he get caught by the roommate who bought it? That day? Eventually? Ever? Pairing of your choice

9. Assume: Intruality (Remus x Patton), Sex, Degradation, Restraints, Spanking Prompt: Could you maybe do something with intruality where Patton's like assumed by everyone that he has no idea what sex is while Remus is the opposite and no one knows how they're together. And behind closed doors Patton's really dominant and dirty, his pure an innocent act is all fake and he loves putting Remus in his place, tying him up, spanking him and degrading him until he's begging for Patton to fuck him

10. Human Need: Logicality (Logan x Patton), Sex, Breeding Kinks, Cockwarming Prompt: How about some logicality with Logan having a breeding kink and denying it and Patton telling him he has a breeding kink (and that's okay) but Logan keeps insisting it's just his 'human need to reproduce, so of course he'd want to get the person he loves pregnant.' and Patton's just like 'yeah, okay, sure.' top Logan and bottom Pat

11. At Long Last: Dukexiety (Remus x Virgil), Voodoo, Sex, Felching Prompt: Hey mate so I'm a sucker for Virgil being rendered helpless and overstimulated so like could I put a request in for Virgil × Remus with Remus finally getting a hold of Virgil's voodoo doll?/Remus finally getting a hold of Virgil's voodoo doll?

12. Spring Break:  Anxceit (Virgil x Janus), Feederism, Handjobs, Blowjobs, Finger Sucking Prompt: Any case I can get more feederism my way? Maybe sub! V and dom!pat or jan or both yk- Dom is worried sub isn't eating enough bc busy college life and decides durin a spring vacation or smtg to have a feedin session to fix it :D

13. Begging For Your Body: Intruality (Remus x Patton), Sex, Overstimulation, Grinding Prompt: Intruality with soft!dom Patton and bottom Remus. The main plot of this would be that maybe Remus was feeling down, having intrusive thoughts (as he does), specifically about his body image, and Patton is there to comfort him and love up on him <3. Kinks are praise, grinding, begging (from the dom perspective, (ex: "Please, Please let me make you feel good, baby?"), overstimulation, multiple orgasms, and a lot of pet names-)

14. Aftercare: Analogical (Virgil x Logan), Sex, Bondage, Degradation, Choking Prompt: I'm a sucker for big aftercare- especially after something like a brutal scene with a partner lol Analogical Kinks: Choking, praise, degrading and bondage- but ending with explicit aftercare? For the base storyline do whatever you wish! Have free-range :))

15. Cock Snack: Analoceitmus (Virgil x Logan x Janus x Remus), Micro/Macro, Oral Play, Cock Vore, Restraints, Cum Digestion, Sex, Fingering, Edging, Crying Prompt: P. 3 of c vore fic? 

[thomas-sanders-shipname-glossary]

Sanders Sides OTP Names

Glossary Masterpost

A list of the shipnames of Sanders Sides Characters that include two people! Orange is included with temporary shipnames until we know more about him, as has been voted in this poll! Ordered by however it made sense to me.

All names with a (*) came from this post by @treenissanderssidesstuff which I found to be fun alternatives. Edit: All Sides/Nico shipnames were made by me (as were the King/Roman and Remus ones), as I haven't found any elsewhere. If you have your own ideas for them, please message me!

1) Patton / Roman - Royality, Royalty*

2) Patton / Logan - Logicality, Motivate *

3) Patton / Virgil - Moxiety, Moxie*

4) Patton / Janus - Moceit, Patceit, Dogma*

5) Patton / Remus - Intruality, Momus, Moduke, Duality*

6) Patton / Thomas - Patmas, Thomality

7) Patton / Nico - Patco, Nitton

8) Patton / King - Moking

9) Patton / Orange - Pange, Oratton, Morange

10) Roman / Logan - Logince, Procudure*

11) Roman / Virgil - Prinxiety, Proximate*

12) Roman / Janus - Roceit, Princeit, Drama Club*

13) Roman / Remus - Remrom, Romrem

! For platonic/familial relationship, please use Creativitwins!

14) Roman / Thomas - Romthom, Romas

15) Roman / Nico - Roco, Niman

16) Roman / King - Roking, Romking, Kingman

17) Roman /Orange - Rorange, Pringe

18) Logan / Virgil - Analogical, Analog*

19) Logan / Janus - Loceit, Decipher

20) Logan / Remus - Intrulogical, Lomus, Reproductive*

21) Logan / Thomas - Lomas

22) Logan / Nico - Loco, Nigan

23) Logan / King - Loking

24) Logan / Orange - Lorange, Logange, Loge

25) Virgil / Janus - Anxceit, Hissterics*

26) Virgil / Remus - Dukexiety, Vimus, Virus*

27) Virgil / Thomas - Thvi, Thomxiety

28) Virgil / Nico - Vico, Nirgil

29) Virgil / King - Kingxiety, Viking

30) Virgil / Orange - Anxange, Virange, Orgil

31) Janus / Remus - Dukeceit, Demus, Remceit, Receit*, Intruceit, Trashnoodle

32) Janus / Thomas - Thomceit

33) Janus / Nico - Janico, Ninus

34) Janus / King - Kingceit

35) Janus / Orange - Oranceit, Jange

36) Remus / Thomas - Intrumas

37) Remus / Nico - Remco, Nimus

38) Remus / King - Intruking, Kingmus

39) Remus / Orange - Intruorange, Intrange

40) Thomas / Nico - Karrot Kings, Pintroverts

41) Thomas / King - Kingmas

42) Thomas / Orange - Thorange, Thomge

43) Nico / King - Kingco, Nicing, Nicoking

44) Nico / Orange - Nicorange

45) King / Orange - Kingange, Kirange

[i-am-bitterly-jittery]

On Death's Doorstep (pt 35/?)

[<First],,,,[<Prev],[Next>] [ODD Masterlist]

Word count: 1231

Rating: Teen

Pairings: Anxceit, platonic Loceit

Warnings: unhealthy family dynamics

~~~START~~~

Logan was feeling… conflicted.  

On the one hand, he had done it. Not only had he conquered death, but he had his daughter back in his life, and she knew who he was.  

On the other hand, Remy hated him.  

And of course, on some level he understood where she was coming from, he hadn’t been around to raise her, he was a supervillain, he had inadvertently made her incapable of escaping building collapse, and he had technically experimented on her without her consent, but none of that changed that he was her father. He loved her, everything he did — as an inventor, as a supervillain, as a scientist — had been for her, whether he’d known it at the time or not.  

Still, she hated him. She wanted to stay with Virgil rather than with him — which, if Logan thought about it with his rational mind, made sense; Virgil was a superhero and a public figure; children in the city had been encouraged to go to him if they needed help for years.   

The rational part of Logan’s mind, however, was not currently in charge, a fact that was further exacerbated by the knowledge that his mother, through little fault of her own, was incapable of giving him the privacy he needed to work through his thoughts and feelings.  

“You just need to give her time, dear,” Barbra told him over breakfast, grating at his already frayed nerves by turning his thoughts into their topic of conversation. For several days now, Logan had been feeling like a teenager again, his thoughts open for public discussion — he was well versed in sidestepping his mother’s abilities, yes, but one could hardly spend their entire day focusing on Windows 95 screensavers.  

“She likes Janus more than me,” Logan pointed out petulantly. Normally, he would not admit his petty feelings out loud, but saying them rather than thinking them at least gave him the illusion of sharing information of his own accord. “They are a supervillain just the same as I am. The twins I could understand as they have no plans or ambitions past acquiring pretty things and having a good time, but Janus is functionally no different than me!” 

“They didn’t come with confusing labels for Remy to wrap her head around,” Barbra said. “They’re a supervillain and a random stranger; you’re a supervillain, a random stranger, and her estranged father that she doesn’t remember. She needs time.” 

Logan frowned. His mother had had dinner with the rest of the household the previous night, which was nice insofar as it gave Logan a small reprise to think, but terrible because he could now add her to the list of people Remy liked better than him.  

Barbra’s face softened before twisting up in surprise. “Oh!” 

Before Logan could ask her what she had seen — and he knew that she had seen something — there was a frantic knocking at the door. Knowing that whoever was waiting on the other side was the source of his mother’s surprise — distress? — Logan went to answer it without questioning his mother further.  

On the other side, he found Janus, practically doubled over from exertion.  

“Janus–” 

“Virgil’s gone,” they panted, thrusting a paper into Logan’s chest.  

Logan would question them further, but his mother was there, leading Janus into a chair and handing them a glass of water before he could even begin to form a follow up question. Virgil? Gone? With his cuffs removed he certainly had the means to leave, but why would he? 

Belatedly, Logan remembered the paper Janus had given him, he unfolded it to find a hand-written note. Whoever had written it had remarkably neat handwriting, with only faint lines where the writer had foregone picking their pen up all the way between letters betraying the writer’s anxiety.  

Dear Janus, 

I’m sorry about leaving this way, but I hope you can understand that I had to… 

The letter went on to describe how Virgil’s fathers had been kidnapped by a supervillain, how Virgil had been almost certain that this was a trap that had been laid for him, and how he hoped Janus would look after Patton until he returned. The only thing that suggested that Virgil did not think he would come back was the section where he implored Janus to give Patton the letter Virgil had written for him when they felt he was old enough.  

Logan stared at the letter for a moment longer.  

“You have already checked Roman’s apartment?” He finally asked, certain he already knew the answer. There was a feeling building up in Logan’s chest that he could not identify, but he did not enjoy it.  

“Dread,” Barbra said, softly so as to not interrupt Janus. 

“I did, Patton was thankfully still asleep, but Remy was awake. Virgil left her a letter too, explaining that he’d gone.” 

“Right…” The gears in Logan’s brain were turning, he didn’t have quite the full picture yet, but regrouping in Roman’s apartment seemed like the best course of action; have everyone all together both to plan their next steps and to look after Patton when he inevitably learned that he was — at least temporarily — down now two fathers. “Mother, if you could–” 

“Already on it, dear,” Barbra assured him, slipping out of the apartment to go wake the twins.  

“Janus,” Logan started once she was gone. “I believe it would be best if we moved this downstairs.” 

“He didn’t even try to ask for help,” Janus said, they had finished catching their breath from the climb up to Logan’s apartment, but Logan now realized that they were having a greater emotional response than he had anticipated. “Why didn’t he ask for help? I would have dropped everything to help him.” 

“I–” Logan started before deciding that honesty would be a better tactic. “The first thing that you need to remember about most superheroes is that they are, at their core, self-sacrificing idiots — that is how they became superheroes — and the second thing you need to remember, this time about Virgil specifically, is that a dangerous combination of too strong a hero-complex, and too little self-worth, have made him incredibly easy to manipulate, even if he knows that it is happening.” 

“Why is he like this?” Janus groaned, barely paying attention to Logan at all.  

“I do not know, but either way, I believe it would be best that we do not leave Remy on her own when Patton wakes up.” 

“Shit, Patton!” Janus lurched to their feet. “I don’t know how to be a parent!” 

“We can cross that bridge if we come to it,” Logan assured them, gently coaxing them towards the door. “But if it does come to that, you are hardly alone, and I assure you, Patton is quite fond of you.” 

“Logan,” Janus gasped, turning their full attention on Logan for the first time since handing him Virgil’s letter. Logan had never seen his friend quite so uncertain in their eight years of friendship.  

“I know, Janus,” he said, placing a steadying hand on Janus’s shoulder. “But we will fix this. We will get Virgil back.” 

Virgil was a part of their family now. Janus had certainly started the process by insisting that they keep him, but Logan had finished it by asking for Virgil’s help and figuratively laying himself bare before the hero. They would get him back.  

~~~END~~~

I've had this done for like a week now, but I thought the chapter was going to keep going so I didn't post it. But as it turns out the next part makes more sense as Janus POV and I think it was gonna get kinda long, so it's two separate chapters now

ODD taglist

@royalty-of-all-things-snuggly @pixelated-pineapple @arsonic-knight @misunderstood-shadowling @lost-in-thought-20 @remy-the-lemon-berry @jinxcrafter @apinkline2715 @gothfoxx @donutsarepartybagels @xoaningout @meganmoneky14

[chillykitty]

Sander Sides vampire & werewolves au >:3

twas on my list of things to do for art fight but didnt get to until teams were announced and i like had to (especially cause im team werewolf with a handful of vampire/vampire like OCs and no werewolves)

artfight

uhh story stuff below cut

Loceit, prinxiety, & intruality

Characters/story:

Janus - mentally/physically 26-27ish - turned in the 1900s/1910s as a child - was gifted a Victorian house from his adopted vampire family that he now lives in as a bit of a recluse. He allowed Virgil to stay after he was turned and together they keep up the act of being Normal Humans. He allows a werewolf pack to rent part of the property since it has a large yard and forest that he doesn't use. It's only because he has no use for the land and he thinks the supposed rivalry between vampires and werewolves that some like to play up is absurd. it has nothing to do with how charming he thinks one of the wolves is, nothing at all. (I do realize it's dumb as hell to make Janus a landlord but 'rent' is usually 'buy me dinner' or 'be my chess opponent, Virgil keeps refusing to be'). He’s got a port wine stain birthmark.

Virgil - mentally/physically 25 - turned in the early 00's as a teenager - he was attacked by a rogue vampire and struggled to adjust until he met Janus, and then continued to struggle to adjust, but he eventually learned to appreciate that turning got him a friend, which is more than what he used to have. Never outgrew his emo phase and never will.

Ember - Mentally/physically 28 - actually a couple hundred - Janus' adoptive sister, she lives a while away but likes visiting her baby brother. She acts like she's way older than Janus but as far as vampires go she's not that much older. Has a light hearted rivalry going on with Roman and Virgil, her rivalry with Roman is over the top silly and dramatic, her rivalry with Virgil is casually flipping each other off as a greeting. she's albino, dyes her hair for goth reasons, and you decide if her brows are dyed/colored in/shaved and drawn on. her eyes do that thing some albino ppls eyes do where it look red/purple in some lightning when its actually blue, moreso than normal because vampire red tint (she is the dragon witch. dragon witch my beloved)

Roman - mentally/physically 24 - just turned - himbo <3 he was dating Virgil, and it had just been long enough that Virgil was actually going to make it serious and tell Roman about his vampire-ness, though he kept getting nervous and putting it off. Something (car crash? Mugging? idk??) happens and leaves Roman mortally wounded and Virgil is certain that Roman won’t live long enough for an ambulance to arrive so he turns him and then feels awful about turning someone without their permission. Roman adjusts as best he can and forces himself not to dwell because he understands why Virgil did it and frankly he would've done the same if roles were reversed. But if he does think about it too long he dreads the fact that he might outlive his twin. His shirt is Totally Not Bunnicula cause i think its funny

Logan - mentally/physically 25, actually 30 - Born a werewolf - he met Janus by happenstance and when he brought up him and his cousin were looking for a place to live, Janus offered up his yard and Logan had insisted on compensating him for it. Neither Janus or Logan are truly in denial about their feelings for each other but they don’t really discuss it and mildly dodge questions when asked even though it’s like very clear they like each other. They definitely are dating but I don't think they've had a non-emotionally constipated conversation about this. Patton - mentally/physically 25, actually 25 - born a werewolf - when he was young most of his cousins and siblings found him annoying, they were never outright mean, but usually didn’t seem to want to include him, Patton could never be sure if they were actually being nice or if they just didnt want to get in trouble with their parents. His cousin, Logan tolerated him fine though, clearly stating when he was doing something that bothered him and worked through a compromise (autistic besties using direct communication ftw). So Patton would always spend all his time following Logan around at extended pack gatherings. When he got a bit older, he got more confident in his socializing and stopped caring so much about what others thought, his love for pups often made him a defacto babysitter which he didn’t mind, but he was still always closest with Logan. It was only natural that they’d move out as a pack together.

Remus - mentally/physically 24 - just turned - Remus was smart and also stupid.. Smart enough to realize something was off about his brother and stupid enough to not write off the impossible, good thing too, because he was right. He was already suspicious but got his confirmation when he literally walked in on his brother drinking some drunk person’s blood. He of course helped hide the (still very alive, just passed out) body before really asking questions, but when he did ask questions, he kept insisting until he got the basic gist. Including that his brother would outlive him. Naturally he asks to be turned right there and then but all 3 vampires repeatedly refuse. He doesn’t let it go though and when he finds out there are two immortal werewolves who could turn him living in the backyard, he doesnt think twice to find them and ask them. Patton is weak for sob stories so he (with Logan’s begrudging approval) turns Remus and Remus joins their pack.

Worldbuilding: 

werewolf packs are like little groups that live together, made up of actual bio families, close friend group and/or polycules, sometimes a mix of those 3, sometimes not. Werewolf vibes idk. Extended packs are any packs that are any degree biologically connected, which means they get massive. (like a unrelated pack of 3 each have the packs they came from, which then come with packs of their cousins/piblings/grandparents/ect which then come with more packs of cousins/piblings/grandparents/ect from the other side of the family and so on)

vampires and werewolves are functionally immortal, people born as or turned into vampires and werewolves before the age of 25 keep aging as normal until then, and then it slows down significantly, pretty much no one knows how long their lifespan is because they get killed or die from something else long before they make it to old age. They're resistant to being killed but it can happen (see cliche vamp/were killing methods. Crosses don't do anything to them tho.)

Werewolves find it easier to stay as wolves around the time of the full moon and as humans around the time of the new moon, and are often lethargic when trying to go against this. They will typically start to wolf out at any strong emotion, while they can resist this (though it's harder near a full moon) plenty of werewolves (Patton+Remus) just let it happen and deal with getting tangled in their clothing as dogs. (Remus, of course, doesn't care if he's seen nude after shifting but most wolves shift back to human in privacy and try to keep clothes nearby. In werewolf only areas it's p common to half strip and shift, but that's about it)

Vampires' eyes have a red tint to them but not enough to be pointed out by mortals as they'd think it's a trick of the light (insert something scifi-y about reflecting off of blood vessels here)

Both are naturally very protective/possessive(though not toxically so, unless they're like, bad people) but werewolves are extremely social creatures and go into instinct mode when they get too worried about someone in their pack/they consider to be their pack, so much so that they might unreasonably lash out at another packmate because they don't want anyone to touch the one they're worried about. (angst angst angst)

Vampires struggle to control themselves around blood. They can and should eat normal food sometimes but actually need blood frequently to live, can make it a long while on animal blood but still need a human's every so often.

[5am-the-foxing-hour]

wolfsbane au: are there any ships besides loceit or is that the main one?

also how did they all meet?

As of now, only Loceit is planned (but if that'll be romantic, platonic or familial... no hecking clue XD), but who knows there might be more when I actually sit down and write it! HHHHHHHHHHHHHhh-

Remus and Roman knew each other since being brought into the world XD

Logan met Remus and Roman first, since the fey twins were the ones who approached him first after the first night he spent in the forest. Because Young Logan had grown tired from how the people in the town he was from behaved around himself and his mother (also a witch). Remus tried to scare him off, while Roman got intrigued by what he was doing. In the end Remus's curiosity to took over and the two fay gave him a piece of their forest to build his house and have his garden and all he would need on. (Even if most of the Forest sees Logan as just as much of a caregiver as Remus and Roman are.)

Virgil accidentally met them when a storm surprised him while out flying (bat form). He only stayed until the storm was over, but enjoyed the more relaxed atmosphere compared to the cramped, stale, at times hostile, air of the castle the Coven he's part of resides in. So he mostly crashes on Logan's couch whenever the coven get's too much for him. Logan didn't mention it when days became weeks and later months and soon years. Sure Virgil still leaves for different periods of time for vampire/coven related matters, but his home is more Logan's cottage than the castle, even if the time spent with Logan is but a sliver of his time spent at the castle.

Logan was the one who met Patton first, during one of the festivals in the closest towns. Logan tends to set up a small stall and sell/trade salves, medicine and ointments, with some random good luck, good harvest and protection charms. Patton was still part of a group of hunters then, but the group wasn't the best, and used their hunter status as a reason to treat others as lesser than them. Something Patton didn't really like, but he was young and didn't know anything but what he's been told about monsters and stuff of magic being evil and bad. Meeting Logan starts to change his views for the better. And their paths cross almost every festival. The others doesn't fully trust Patton at first, because what if it's all just a scheme to get close to them and strike when they least expect it. Logan is the only one who finds that doubtful, because Patton stuck out amongst the other hunters in that group due to his good heart.

Now when it comes to Janus, he wasn't fully couscous when he and Logan met. Having barely managed to escape alive from an attack by a lone hunter. Logan found him half dead and brought him to his cottage to nurse him back to health. Since the hunter had used silver weapons. Cue Janus not really knowing where to go, while also wanting to repay Logan's hospitality somehow.

[virgeandhis-pocket-protector]

Ayo @prince-rowan-of-the-forest tagged me in the "getting to know your fellow fanfic authors" writing tag game! I'm putting this in a new post cause the original one was gettin long.

Go see Rowan's answers here! (https://www.tumblr.com/prince-rowan-of-the-forest/730426008116822016/aaaaa-thanks-for-the-tag-when-did-you-post-your?)

My answers beneath the read more.

When did you post your first fanfic?

Lordy. Back in 2019, I posted an extremely rough draft of a multi-chapter Sanders Sides (or 'SaSi') fanfic called Kingdoms for a Mind (or 'KFAM') on Wattpad. Either that one or a now tossed SaSi fic called Fear No More (guess which side was the focus in that one. Guess. Hint: It's the anxious guy.)

First Character you wrote for:

Virgil from Sanders Sides, I thiiiiink? Although I wrote for most of the sides at that point, too. Virgil was my little baby boy though.

Main character(s) you're currently writing for:

Logan, Janus, Virgil, Patton, and Remus in the updated version of KFAM i'm working on, and Patton and Roman in a new SaSi/The Mechanisms crossover.

Character(s) you haven't written about before but plan on writing about soon:

Mostly non-SaSi stuff. I have some fic ideas for a Pure Vessel/Pale King angst (from the Hollow Knight video game) or Diggory and Percy from Hello from the Hallowoods (highly recommended queer drama podcast).

Fandom(s) you're currently writing for:

SANDERS SIDES and the mechansisms and star wars and someday probably hollow knight and hello from the hallowoods oh and me and my friend's D&D campaign, but that's mostly original stuff.

Platonic pairing(s) you currently write for:

Tehe. All SaSi platonic duos, pretty much, like the whole group. Platonic/familial Janus, Logan, and Virgil is a favorite though. And I love my creativitwins angst.

Romantic pairing(s) you currently write for:

Analogical, Anxceit, and Royality, among others like loceit, intruality, and prinxiety.

Your top three tags on AO3 (if you post your works on AO3):

Character tags: 1. Original Characters 2. Morality | Patton Sanders 3. Anxiety | Virgil Sanders Relationship tags: 1. Analogical (romantic) 2. Virgil & Roman (platonic) 3. Creativitwins (platonic)

Your current platform where you post your works:

Archive of Our Own (Ao3)! Here's my acc.* (https://archiveofourown.org/users/pancakewithapen/profile) *PSA that I haven't posted anything new in a while. Feel free to read my 3-year-old stuff tho. And if you're feeling extra special, please please bully me about posting stuff I really gotta -v-

Snippet of A WIP you're currently working on:

"The fire cracks. Leaning against a fallen tree, only a few miles away from where their journey began all those weeks ago, Logan realizes he has forgotten how to lie to himself. With conscious, newfound honesty, Logan senses that he is not just uncomfortable. He is angry. Janus doesn’t need to know. Why, in a million years, would Janus even deserve to know? Logan’s feeling are private, they are his, and they do not have to be spoken to anyone. Ever. Logan looks down toward the grass. Why do you care? He almost spits out, but in his periphery, he can see Janus still looking towards the woods. The other’s hands are placed gingerly in his own lap. His mouth is turned down, but his eyes are wide and alert. Janus longs for Virgil to return, too, just as Logan is. He feels the same urges Logan feels. Janus must already know the answer to his question. He knows. He must hate that he knows. He thinks Logan will either save his feelings or put him out of his misery and either option is nicer than conscious ignorance. Perhaps Janus has come to find he can’t lie to himself either. Logan’s stomach churns. They must be talking about these feelings, once so sweet and freeing, in the bitterest configuration possible." (From "Kingdoms for a Mind 2" — a Sanders sides fic)

-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-

No-pressure tagging some of my favorite fanfic authors:

@i-will-physically-fight-you @late-to-the-fandom @anxious-mess19 @vinbee631 @groovyghostie @annaizscribbling @emo-nightmares @girlboypatton @lily-janus

This is also @pancakewithamace, btw, in case you don't recognize this blog!

[darksides-dutchess]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gotta say, this year has been quite the adventure, with all the bumps and the hiccups along the way but I'm so glad to have such amazing friends and family to help me along the way. So in order celebrate my birthday, I have decided to make a lil gift for myself of course its loceit come one guys you all should know me by now

Taglist to all my amazing friends who I have decided to subtly add to the piece as a way to remind myself of all teh love and support they have given me all this time: @remus-of-reston @thecrowslullaby @liemonyellow @warcats-cat @lost-in-thought-20 @nadiestar @treenissanderssidesstuff @edupunkn00b @lickoutyourbrains @intergalactic-iguana @typically-untypical @aidensm8 @beauty-and-passion @candied-peach @cannibal-fat @starshard17 @artist-hope @the-duke-of-nuts

[naminethewriter]

As Long As You Try Your Best

Day 4 and we’re going back to my small AU where Logan & Remus are Janus’ dads, which I now dubbed Janus and His Dads AU because I decided it needed a name five minutes ago and didn’t come up with anything better 😅 This story can be read as a stand alone but if you want to check out the related posts you’ll find them here (there’s like 4 total now). Hope you enjoy 🥰 @loceitweek2022

Here on Ao3

Masterpost | Loceit Week 2022 Masterpost

Summary: Logan has a question to ask his son about school. His son isn't very keen on answering.

“Janus?” Logan called, looking for his son.

 “Yeah?” He heard back, apparently from upstairs.

 “Would you please join me in the living room for a moment?” Instead of an answer he heard footsteps coming closer until Janus appeared in the door, one of his snakes coiled around one arm.

 “Yes, Papa?” he asked, eyes wide and curious. Logan was afraid this conversation wasn’t going to be pleasant.

“I just talked with your uncle Patton on the phone. He says hi.”

 “Oh, okay. If that’s all, I’ll go back upstairs and…” Suddenly Janus seemed very eager to escape. Logan didn’t let him.

 “Not so fast, young man.” Janus froze, his shoulders tense and he refused to look directly at his father. “Patton mentioned that Virgil brought back your latest vocabulary test. You haven’t mentioned that you got them back to me yet. Is there a reason for that?”

 “Ummm… About that…” Janus eyes nervously bounced around the room. “The test… I didn’t tell you about it because… I lost it!”

 “You lost it?” Janus eagerly nodded, rocking back and forth on his feet nervously.

 “Yeah. I’m sorry.” Logan eyes his son who was still refusing to look at him.

 “Where did you lose it? Maybe we can find it if I help you look.”

 “NO!” Janus shouted. Logan raised an eyebrow at his sudden volume and Janus quickly tried to explain. “It was outside! On my way back. I was thirsty so I opened my bag to grab my bottle and the test slipped out. The wind carried it away before I could grab it.” He seemed to gain more confidence in his story as he told it but Logan would not be fooled.

 “I see. So if I were to go upstairs right now and look in your bag I would not find the test, correct?” Janus paled, his mouth opening but no words came out. Logan sighed and moved passed him towards the stairs. Janus didn’t stop him but followed while chewing on his lip most likely trying to find an excuse to keep his father out of his room. He didn’t think of anything fast enough.

 Logan entered his son’s room and immediately spotted his school bag placed on the desk chair. He grabbed it, opened it and pulled out its contents one by one. Janus placed his snake back with the other two before watching his father pull out the piece of paper he’d been trying to hide. Logan studied it before sighing and motioning towards the bed.

 “Sit down, please.” Janus moved to do so without a word. Logan kneeled down next to him so they were about the same height. “Jay, please look at me and explain why you felt the need to lie to me about this.” He laid the piece of paper on the bed next to Janus, displaying the result of 8/20. His son glanced at it before looking away, tears starting to gather in his eyes.

 “I wasn’t gonna lie, I just wanted to talk to Mrs. Dot about it before I showed you. I know I could do better, but I was feeling icky when we took the test and… I didn’t want you to be mad at me.” Logan gently reached out to take his son’s hands in his own, finally making eye contact again.

 “I promise you, Janus, I will never be mad at you for a simple grade. Not as long as I’m sure you did your very best. And I can see you tried here.” At this point Janus had started crying and Logan pulled out a handkerchief to catch gently wipe his face. “You could have told Mrs. Dot that you weren’t feeling well, I’m sure she would have let you take the test another time.”

 “The others always say that’s cheating, that the kids who do that just fake it to get out of it. And they’re very mean to the ones who do,” Janus sniffled, squeezing his Papa’s hand in his. Logan nodded.

 “That isn’t very nice of them. I will have to speak about this with your teachers soon.” His son didn’t seem too thrilled about the idea but didn’t argue. “Promise me you will not lie about grades and tests to me or your dad anymore and I’ll make you some hot cocoa with marshmallows, how does that sound?”

 “O-okay.” Janus was still sniffling, but he smiled softly at his father. Logan smiled back and hugged him, only letting go when Janus made the first move to pull away. He couldn’t have asked for a better son.

[the-princey-pie]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗 (apologies for sending chain letters but i'll be honest: i DO find myself wanting to know which of an author's works they're most excited about at any given moment.)

Ayeee thank you for the neat ask game! I do wonder too what's someone's favorite works and why! Everyone who sees this feel free o do it too cause imma send this along on anon <3

Summer Wine In Verdant Winters

The last longer fantasy AU I've written about Virgil running a tavern to hide from his traumatic past. Naturally it comes back to haunt him. It has a cottagecore setting with some high fantasy elements on top of the found family and I've salviated writing all the food descriptions

Damocles' Gambit

Admittedly, I'm cheating here a bit by linking the entire series. But this has arranged marriage turned found family with some delicious hurt/comfort where King Thomas gets to be the best dad we all wished we had

Burning Fireflies

It's the best Roceit I've ever written where Roman is the loyal knight going after the runaway thief Janus - I'm just a sucker for tales about loyality and the tragedy that comes with it when it's mistrusted

Noblesse Oblige

Stemming from my Bridgerton obsession I just had to make it gay. So then we have some fake dating turned real feelings Loceit with a little mystery twist for spice. I cried while writing it but it's also the most beautiful imagery I've managed to this day

A Tad(pole) Tied Up At The Moment

The first Baldur's Gate 3 fanfic I've ever written (and am currently writing) where Astarion gets whumped properly before he gets the comfort from Halsin he deserves

[askdeceitsanders]

(For Virgil)

GIVE HIM (Roman) KITHES KISSES

(For Janus)

GIVE THEM (Remus and Logan) A KITHES KISSES

Virgil: already planned on it anon

Roman: can you not drop me this time

Virgil: no promises *Grabs Roman by the sash and gives kith*

Fine fine *gives Logan and Remus each a kith*

Virgil: mama ew-

i will triple ground you

Virgil: fine fine but youre still gross

[transfemlogan]

revys shipping habits:

1. is romance repulsed & dislikes fictional romance. doesnt actually ship all that often & is neutral on most sasi ships

2. Prefers platonic/familial relationships (for example: i do not care 4 romantic demus, but i love platonic demus)

3. The only ships i dislike r the popular ones, l*gicality & pr*nxiety. I also do not like moceit. (I dislike the "opposites attract" trope in media)

4. Big fan of logan ships, especially analogical, loceit, & analoceit.

[rosepetalgold]

all the silver stolen (will one day turn to gold) 1

Summary: Janus is an exceptionally good thief, if he does say so himself. Sure, his life of petty crime alongside Virgil and Remus isn’t ideal, exactly, but it’s good enough—until he tries to pickpocket the wrong person and learns three life-changing things: One, mages are terrifyingly real, go by the name of Logan, and do not appreciate being stolen from. Two, Remus has a twin brother. And three, Remus is actually the crown prince of the neighboring country, forced to start a new life after being framed for treason and left for dead in a brutal coup.

Whisked off to a new nation with Remus and Virgil, Janus struggles to adjust to high society and a life of court politics and intrigue, his inherent distrust of magic and his rocky—to put it lightly—relationship with Logan only complicating matters further. Trouble soon begins brewing in the kingdom as well, bringing with it whispers of old threats to the newly reunited princes, and when things go horribly wrong, Janus is forced to confront two questions with extraordinary consequences: How selfish is he, exactly? And just what is he prepared to sacrifice for those he loves?

Relationships: Romantic Loceit, background romantic Prinxiety, found family all around

Warnings for this chapter: Injury to a main character (for a full list of major warnings, check the tags on Ao3)

Word Count: 7316

Notes: My fic for the Thomas Sanders Big Bang 2022 (@sandersidesbigbang)! This is by far the longest fic I've ever written, and although it is responsible for me spending countless hours staring blankly at a google doc, it has definitely been a labor of love. I'm so excited to share it, and I hope you enjoy! Updates weekly!

A huge thank you to my wonderful beta readers Peregrin (@iclaimedtobethebetterbard) and Saphira (@dragonsaphirareads) for all their help wrangling the plot into something coherent and for all their feedback, as well as for not once complaining despite this beast of a fic more than doubling in length from its original estimated word count. They are truly amazing, and this story wouldn't be the same without them!

Also be sure to check out the absolutely stunning art from the two incredible artists I got to work with, Crow (@thecrowslullaby) and Hedgey (@hedgeyart)! I will link to Crow's work in the respective chapters, but in the meantime you can both dazzle your eyes and get a spoiler-free teaser of the later part of the fic by heading over to Hedgey's piece right here.

Read on Ao3 Masterpost

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Janus is an exceptionally good thief, if he does say so himself. Such a claim isn’t even bragging, not when he has the proof to back it up; he knows how to slip unnoticed through empty and crowded marketplaces alike, knows how to steal coin purses and jewelry and watches right off of any unsuspecting person and leave them none the wiser of his actions, knows how to sell what he’s acquired for a fair price on the black market. He’s had to learn such things just to survive, especially given how he’d first found himself on the streets, young and frightened and overwhelmed, a life of crime the only thing standing between himself and a long, slow death of starvation.

But more than being a talented thief, Janus is a smart thief. He knows how to select the best mark while avoiding the plainclothes guards just waiting to catch an unwary pickpocket, knows how to take advantage of a distraction or create one himself, knows how to judge which risks are worth taking and which are better left unchanced. His quick fingers may be what has granted him enough food and money to keep himself alive, but it’s his even quicker mind that has allowed him to evade the common thief’s fate of a short drop and a sudden stop for so many years.

Unfortunately, Janus is also currently a desperate thief, and desperate thieves are apt to do extraordinarily dangerous things, which is how he finds himself fumbling his lockpicks into his freezing hands as he crouches outside a fancy stone building in the middle of the night, no backup in sight and only the barest bones of a plan rattling around inside his skull. Breaking into any building, let alone an apothecary, is high-risk enough that he would normally never even consider such a thing, loath to put himself in such a perilous situation when he’s perfectly content weaving through crowds as his fingers dance in and out of pockets. But Virgil had taken a nasty fall by the run-down blacksmith’s forge a few days prior, gashing his leg open on a jagged piece of metal sticking out of a scrap pile, and the wound was now clearly infected, angrily inflamed and leaking foul-smelling pus as Virgil grew clammy and delirious.

If it were anyone else, Janus would have simply told them to hope for the best but make peace with whatever gods they believed in in the likely event of the worst, but Virgil is nothing if not an exception to all of Janus’ rules. Janus had practically raised the other man despite being only a handful of years older than him, had taken him in and tried his best to keep him clothed and fed while he’d taught him how to steal, nevermind that he’d barely been able to support himself, let alone anyone else. It had taken a lot from both of them to build trust, and even more for their wary alliance to slowly bloom into genuine friendship, but somehow, impossibly, it had, the venom in their sarcastic comments and snarky remarks mellowed save for the occasional argument.

Remus had come along a few years later and fallen in easily to make their duo a trio, more because of his uncanny ability to always be around and his refusal to leave rather than because of any official invitation to join. There had been something odd about him from the very beginning, something in the hint of an accent that sometimes slipped out and the foreign cut of his clothes and the shimmering gold necklace that he always wore against his chest and refused to take off, the sum of it all enough to give Janus pause, but he’d proven himself early by getting Janus out of a bind with some guards and his eyes had lit up with unrestrained glee when Janus had begun to plot crimes with him, so into the group he’d come. Given his own undisclosed past, Janus has never pressed Remus to lay bare his secrets, content just to take any observations he makes and tuck them away to mull over when he has a spare moment, trying to tease Remus’ life story from the scraps of details he’s collected and never getting too far because really, he has better things to worry about, like where he’ll get food for the day or how to get Virgil new boots in the middle of winter.

It’s comfortingly familiar by now, the way they work together, two of them operating in tandem to distract and pickpocket their mark while the third keeps a lookout, years of practice making the three of them a formidable team. Occasionally they’ll split up to cover more ground or one of them will find an odd job and jump at the opportunity for a few guaranteed coins, but for the most part they stick together, finding safety in numbers and taking comfort in knowing that someone they trust is watching their backs.

Tonight, though, with Virgil down for the count and Remus watching over him, it’s just Janus. The pressure of potentially having Virgil’s life in his hands is doing wonders for his nerves, truly. That churning sensation in his stomach is adding a delightful bit of excitement to what would otherwise clearly be a dreadfully boring situation.

Despite the severity of Virgil’s injury, taking him to a healer had been soundly out of the question; physicians’ rates were much too high for the three of them to afford even if they cashed out their meager savings, and even if they could have somehow found the money, they couldn’t risk a doctor getting suspicious about how a trio of obvious street urchins had managed to afford his services.

So breaking into the apothecary it is.

Virgil had always been the best lockpick out of the three of them, but Janus manages to wiggle the tiny tools into the lock, biting back a string of curses that would make even Remus blush as he struggles to to maneuver the instruments properly.

Rude of people to actually lock their doors and protect their valuables. Completely uncalled for.

Finally, after entirely too many minutes of fiddling with the picks with bated breath, there’s the tiniest of clicks and the knob turns easily under his hand when he tests it. Success, and it had only taken him three times as long as it would have Virgil. Surely stealing a bit of medicine will be child’s play in comparison.

He eases the door open, wary of any squealing hinges and ready to flee at the first sign of movement, but everything is silent and still as he slips inside. There’s enough moonlight filtering in through the windows to illuminate the space in a silvery glow, and he pauses for a moment, taking stock. Off to his right, in the back of a shop, stands a tall cabinet with a multitude of small drawers, doubtless housing fresh and dried ingredients of all sorts, but although Janus is tempted, he edges past it. He knows enough basic first aid to be able to make common ointments for minor injuries and ailments, but the drawers look like they’re liable to squeak if he so much as looks at them wrong, and he doesn’t want to risk mixing up ingredients in the dark and killing Virgil with some kind of poison on accident. The other man might be just a tad upset with him if he did that.

What he’s really after are the medicines that have already been prepared, which he assumes are significantly less likely to make him an accidental murderer, and as he creeps further into the shop on silent feet he discovers there’s a whole display of them near the front windows, colorful glass jars a washed-out rainbow in the moonbeams.

Perfect. One little snatch and he’ll be gone before anyone even knew he was here, in and out in less time than it takes to brew a proper cup of tea, his extraordinary talents once again having saved the day, except—

Except the jars are labeled with small slips of paper adorned with writing instead of pictures like the cheap medicines he’s used to, and Janus—

Janus can’t read.

Shit. Of all the times for his lack of a formal education to come back and bite him, of course it would be when Virgil’s life hung in the balance. What a lovely sense of humor the universe had.

He resists the urge to swear aloud and glares at the jars instead on the off chance doing so will magically solve his problem. The jars themselves should offer some clues, but he’s not familiar with this particular apothecary, doesn’t know how their medicines are color-coded. Is the little crimson container for burns, since red was associated with fire? Or is it to stop bleeding? Or is it neither of those, representing something else entirely? Janus doesn’t know.

Time to improvise, then. He hasn’t gotten this far only to be foiled by some inky squiggles.

Casting another wary glance around the quiet shop, he shifts closer to the display and the row of jars lined up neatly atop the shelves. Samples of some kind, perhaps, but their purpose is less important than the fact that they look infinitely easier to handle without clinking together than the jars clustered together on the shelves. He goes down the line one by one, carefully unscrewing each little container’s lid and sniffing the contents, trying to recognize the scent of any ingredients that might treat infected wounds.

 Not the red, definitely not the orange, maybe the yellow?

He’s getting antsy, nerves crawling along his skin and skittering down his spine, his instincts screaming at him that he needs to get out, this is taking too long, he’s already been here for more time than he’d planned. But unless he’s suddenly been granted the ability to produce medicine out of thin air, he doesn’t have any other option than to go through the jars as quickly as possible. Taking a pot of each color and figuring out their uses later is a last resort, not only because he doesn’t have anything to wrap them in so they don’t clink together in his bag but also because he doesn’t want this to be a high-profile theft. Taking copious amounts of medicine is bound to put the guards on high alert, which is the last thing he needs when their trio is already running perilously low on food and supplies and will need to be out and about stealing to replenish them.

No, if he can only find the damn jar he wants, he’ll just take that and be gone and with any luck the apothecary owner will think they’ve simply misplaced it somewhere and not even realize they’ve been robbed.

Not the light or dark green jars, but the blue smells familiar—

A shriek splits the air, so shrill and unexpected that Janus’ whole body goes white with razor-sharp panic in an instant, his knife in his grip before he can even parse where the sound has come from or what’s happening, the purple jar he’d been holding slipping out of his hand and shattering into an incriminating pile of shards at his feet, the heady scent of lavender filling the air. No. No no no, there hadn’t been anyone else here, he was sure of it, how—who—

There’s a figure on the other side of the shop, standing in the doorway of what Janus had assumed to be nothing more than a storage closet and which he now realizes, entirely too late, is in fact a stairway to the second floor, which must serve as the healer’s residence and not an extension of the shop as he’d thought.

Apparently he needed to add ‘making correct assumptions’ to his list of innumerable talents.

He’s moving on instinct before he can even take a breath, lunging to grab the little blue jar—stars, he doesn’t even know for sure if it’s the right medicine—before he’s bolting for the exit, fear snapping in his veins, the only thought in his head run run RUN.

“No, wait! Stop!”

Right, of course he’s going to pause for the person who has just caught him stealing red-handed, just wait around to be hauled off to jail for his crimes. Why doesn’t he strike up some small talk while he’s at it?

He’s across the shop and out the back door in a heartbeat, pure adrenaline propelling him forwards as he tucks the precious jar into the safety of his bag, his footsteps echoing dully against the hard-packed dirt in the still night air as he attempts to wrangle rational thought back into his head. Getting caught by the shopkeeper was hardly ideal, but a glance over his shoulder proves they’re not coming after him, and as long as no one else has heard their shriek he should be able to make a clean getaway—

“Hey!”

His heart is pounding so hard in his own ears that he hardly hears the gruff shout, barely sees a form suddenly loom in his peripheral vision, but he certainly feels the hand that snags his cloak for a moment before he manages to wrench free. The healer, trying to cut him off? How the fuck had he managed to outpace Janus?

But when he glances backward he’s met not with the sight of pastel pajamas and blonde curls but of a dark uniform and a sword flashing as it’s drawn from its sheath.

One of the Guard. Stars, couldn’t a man just steal some medicine in peace anymore?

He forces himself to go faster, hurtling headlong down the empty street as he tries to think. He isn’t familiar with this area, doesn’t know its ins and outs like he does his own neighborhood, but if he can just find a side street he should be able to lose the guard in the labyrinth of alleys lacing the city. He veers down the first promising opening he sees, the deeper shadows welcoming him in—

—and promptly finds himself met with a dead end.

Fuck.

He whirls, his only option to backtrack to the main road before he’s cornered, only to find a broad figure already blocking his only way out, sword in hand. Janus is trapped.

Fuck.

“Come on, don’t make this hard on yourself, boy,” the guard growls, advancing forward a step, and Janus can’t help but skitter back in turn, eyes fixed on the glinting blade in the other man’s hand. He can’t get caught now, not when he still has the medicine in his bag, not when Virgil is doubtless still caught in the deadly grip of fever and infection. Janus getting thrown in jail would be nothing less than a death sentence for both of them.

And yet here he finds himself, nothing but high stone walls around him and a larger, stronger opponent he surely can’t best in a fight in front of him.

Not a physical fight, at least, but a mind game or two, a few dirty tricks thrown in to round things off? That Janus is willing to gamble on.

“Okay,” he concedes, letting his voice tremble slightly as the guard takes another stride into the alley. “Okay, just please don’t hurt me, sir.”

The man visibly preens at the honorific, sword tip lowering slightly, and Janus resists the urge to roll his eyes even as his pulse still hammers entirely too quickly in his ears. Honestly. These brutes made playing their ego entirely too easy.

“Put the knife down,” the man orders, and Janus obligingly crouches, the ground freezing even on his half-numb hands as he lays his palms flat on the dirt.

“I’m sorry, sir, please don’t hurt me,” he whimpers as he curls in on himself, the very picture of contrition.

“That’s right, you just cooperate and no one’s going to get hurt here.”

“Of course, sir,” Janus snivels as a pair of black boots come into view of his downcast gaze, followed a moment later by a sword tip. “Anything you say—”

He surges upwards, knife sweeping in front of him as he lunges past the guard, and for the barest fraction of a moment he thinks he’s made it, that his plan has actually worked, that brains have triumphed over brawn—

Pain explodes in his side, a white-hot line of fire that makes black stars burst across his vision and wrenches a strangled cry from his lips, but he has to keep moving, has to go, has to get away while he still has even a sliver of a chance, and he can’t stop, he can’t stop, he can’t stop even if it feels like he’s just been torn right in half.

He doesn’t even know how he manages to make it to the end of the alley and back onto the main road, given how blank his mind has gone with panic and adrenaline; he’s just there, in between one wave of black stars and the next, lurching for the first side street he sees and praying to all the gods he doesn’t even believe in that it’s not another dead end. If he can just make it into the twisting maze of alleyways, he should be able to lose the guard, provided he doesn’t bleed out in the process.

“Get back here, you little shit!”

The furious voice and its accompanying footfalls are far closer than Janus would like, but he doesn’t dare look behind him. If he’s going to get a sword through the spine, the last thing he wants is to see it coming.

“Guard!” Another voice splitting the air behind him. The healer? “Hey, guard!”

The guard’s steps falter, the other man clearly debating whether it’s worth it to continue pursuing a petty thief at the risk of failing to help a wealthy noble in need, and his hesitation is all the opportunity Janus needs to fling himself around a corner into another alley.

Stars above, please don’t be another dead end, please please please—

There must be some higher power after all, some deity who finally takes pity on him, or perhaps fate has simply decided to give him a fighting chance, because the narrow street tees into two at the end. He picks a direction at random, hope leaping treacherously in his chest that he’s at last found a way out of this mess, only to be dashed at the sound of footfalls picking up again behind him, the guard apparently having decided Janus is somehow more important than the healer.

Janus would be flattered if it didn’t mean he was about to either be sliced into ribbons or thrown into jail and sentenced to hang. As it is, he’s less than enthused.

Fear is biting at his heels, urging him faster, but he’s already lagging, lungs burning as he gasps for air, black and red spots encroaching on any spare sliver of vision, searing pain ripping through his body with every step as he jostles his new injury. He can’t keep going like this, not without collapsing within the next minute, and even though the guard behind him may be all brute force and no brain, Janus is pretty sure even he would notice Janus’ body sprawled in the middle of the street.

He scans around him as he flees further up the alley, searching for any place to take cover, but there’s nothing but unscalable walls around him. Nothing, nothing, nothing, until suddenly—there. A tiny gap between two buildings, cloaked in impenetrable shadows. He stumbles to a halt, blowing out whatever tiny bit of air he has left in his lungs in order to make himself as small as possible as he desperately wedges himself into the space. Even then, and despite Janus’ slim stature from years of malnutrition, it’s a tight fit, and he’s barely managed to squeeze himself all the way in before there’s heavy footsteps drawing closer, slowing to a jog and then a walk as the guard clearly tries to deduce where his victim has disappeared to.

Too late does Janus realize that if the other man had any intelligence at all, he would just go find a torch or lantern and track Janus using the bloodtrail he’s undoubtedly left in his wake, but there’s precisely nothing he can do about that now. He crams a handful of cloak into his mouth, both to muffle his pants of pain and to hide the cloud of his breath in the frigid air, turning his head away from the alleyway lest the glint of light off of his eyes give him away.

Given how his wonderful luck is going, he can only brace himself for a blade to come spearing into his ribs, easy as stabbing fish in a barrel, but the footsteps move right past him without a hitch, continuing down the street until they escape Janus’ earshot altogether. But Janus doesn’t move a muscle, despite the fact that his right foot is sinking into something squishy he does not ever want to identify and the smell of rotting food and dead animal is so heavy and cloying in his nose that he has to fight down bile.

Patience. If he can survive a sword almost making his insides be on the outside, he can survive sharing a claustrophobically small space with a few dead rats.

Sure enough, the footfalls return a few minutes later, slower this time as the guard backtracks his steps. Janus hardly dares breathe, sure his luck won’t hold a second time, but once again the other man continues past his hiding place without pause, apparently none the wiser to his quarry literally being within arm’s reach.

A flawless escape if Janus does say so himself, nevermind the fact that he’s taken a sword blade to the ribs in the process. That little detail was wholly inconsequential.

Still, it’s a long while that he bides his time, waiting until he’s satisfied the guard isn’t going to come back a third time, and even then he forces himself to wait some more, just in case. By the time he finally edges out of his little nook and back into the alley proper, his feet and hands have long since gone numb and the black spots in his vision have returned in full force, any movement that pulls at his side even the slightest bit sending ripples of agony through his ribs now that the numbing effects of his adrenaline rush have worn off.

A shame he’s neither brave enough nor stupid enough to try retuning to the apothecary, considering he could really use some painkillers right now.

He keeps his arm firmly pressed against the wound, desperate to keep as much pressure as he can stand on the injury even as a fresh line of warmth trickling down his waist informs him he hasn’t managed to stop the bleeding. He should probably check on it, he knows, try to fashion some kind of bandage from his shirt, but his stomach is already queasy enough that he doesn’t trust he’d be able to witness whatever damage has been wrought upon him without passing out, so his arm will have to suffice.

Out of sight, out of mind, he tells himself. It was fine. He was fine. Everything was fine. If he just repeats it enough times, maybe he’ll begin to believe it, despite the fact that the world tilts alarmingly when he dares a tiny step forward. He hasn’t keeled over and died yet, so the injury can’t be that bad, can it?

It doesn’t matter. Janus just needs to suck it up and get home to deliver the medicine to Virgil before the other man kicks the bucket and all of this has been in vain.

It’s a risk to return to their hideout when there’s a chance the guard chasing him might lie in wait for him to reappear and follow him back home, but it seems an equal risk to spend too much time on the streets when the other man, if not the whole of the night guard by now, is looking for him. He compromises by opting to take the long way back to the impoverished underbelly of the city, secreting himself away in the shadows of back alleys as he muffles his pants of pain into his cloak, biting down so hard on the fabric shoved into his mouth that he’s surprised he doesn’t put holes in it.

It takes him several times longer than it should to return to familiar surroundings, given that he has to pause every few steps either to listen for any guards or to wait for the world to stop spinning around him, but he never dares stop for too long, not as it grows increasingly unlikely that he’ll be able to haul himself back up if he collapses on the ground like his body is begging him to.

It’s nearly dawn by the time he finally deems he isn’t being followed and crosses the final few streets to their little hovel, and he allows himself a single moment to grimace against the pain biting into every single inch of his body, gritting his teeth against the overwhelming sensation. And then he’s pulling himself upright, schooling his features into an expressionless mask as he raps their familiar passcode rhythm on the door and pushes inside.

Virgil is just where he’d left him, still unconscious on the mattress pulled up close to the fireplace, shifting restlessly in his sleep and babbling something nonsensical under his breath, and Janus can’t help a silent sigh of relief that the other man hasn’t expired in his absence.

“Did you get it?” Remus asks immediately from where he’s trying to coax some water down Virgil’s throat, and Janus digs in his bag to hold up the little jar of medicine, careful to keep his other arm pressed securely to his side to hide his injury. He knew having a cloak dark enough to hide bloodstains would come in handy one day. “Good, cause this wound is getting nastier by the second and as fun as it would be to try out a bone saw, I don’t think little Virgie would appreciate only having one leg.”

Janus wrinkles his nose at the mental image of Remus and the havoc he could wreak with such an instrument, just the thought of such carnage turning his stomach. He’s already lost enough blood tonight for the three of them. He doesn’t even want to contemplate one of them losing any more via amputation.

“Good thing he’s unconscious; he would tear you to pieces for calling him Virgie.”

“I’d like to see him try,” Remus retorts, but his face is lined with worry as he brushes a stray lock of hair off Virgil’s forehead. Shit. Things must be going from bad to worse if even Remus is this concerned.

Janus hurries to rinse his hands off in the bowl of water on the table, making a mental note to discard the now crimson liquid before Remus can see it, unceremoniously drying his hands on his pants as he crouches next to the other man. The movement pulls sharply at his wound, sending yet another wave of black spots dancing across his vision, and he has to bite back a hiss of pain as he wavers slightly. Don’t pass out now, not now, not before helping Virgil—

Remus casts him a sidelong glance, seeming to notice something is wrong.

“You okay, Janny?”

No, Janus is about to say, not unless you want to go find a guard with a sword so we can all have matching wounds.

But then he unscrews the lid off the little jar of salve and dips a finger in to find—

Nothing.

Cold panic snaps up his spine, shot nerves surging protestingly back to life. No, there’s no way he could have stolen an empty jar. He was a thoroughly accomplished thief, and thoroughly accomplished thieves simply did not make mistakes like accidentally grabbing the wrong pot of medicine.

Unless, perhaps, they were the tiniest bit distracted by the dark and the healer screaming at the sight of them and the fear turning their mind blank.

He braces himself for the worst, to have to return to the apothecary and try to steal something else, but when he tilts the jar to peer in he’s met with the sight of a cream ointment, albeit barely enough to coat the bottom of the glass. He swears viciously as he tips the container towards Remus for him to see, and the other man wrinkles his face up in annoyance at the lack of medicine.

“That sucks,” he pronounces. “Would have been nice to have had some extra in case someone gets a hand bitten off by a pack of stray dogs or something.”

“Fuck. Fuck.” Tears of frustration are suddenly pricking at the back of Janus’ eyes and he forces them back through sheer willpower, absolutely refusing to cry in front of Remus. Just because he’s exhausted and injured and absolutely nothing has gone right tonight doesn’t mean he’s going to make it anyone else’s problem. Virgil is the one who needs attention. Janus needs to pull himself together and start being useful.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Remus says, peering into the jar again. “There’s enough here for Virgil.”

But not for me, Janus thinks, but he can’t say it, can’t reveal his own injury, not when the jar is so tiny and there’s so little ointment left and all he can remember is Virgil looking up at him that morning, dark gaze so pained and vulnerable even as he’d tried to hide it as Janus had promised that he’d find him some medicine.

No. Janus is selfish about many things, has had to be just in order to survive, but he’s never been able to be selfish when it comes to Virgil and Remus. He can’t be selfish about this.

Besides, there’s a chance he won’t even need the medicine; he’s suffered plenty of injuries before that have healed on their own, nevermind that little voice in the back of his head whispering that none of those wounds had been nearly as bad as this one.

So he dips his fingers back into the jar and carefully spreads the salve on Virgil’s wound, not stopping until the container is empty of even a speck of ointment and the medicine has been rubbed gently into every inch of angry red skin. Remus fusses over rebandaging the injury and tucking Virgil back in while Janus slips the empty jar into a basket of various other small, stolen items. They won’t be able to sell it, not right away, not with the Guard looking for anything connected to the apothecary break-in, but they might be able to trade it for something down the line.

“Did you run into any trouble while you were out?” Remus asks as he slumps back onto the floor by the fireplace, fiddling with the edge of the blankets.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Janus replies smoothly, and it’s not even a lie—he had handled it, had managed to evade being caught and had made it home all (or mostly, he supposes) in one piece. What did it matter that he’d met with the business end of a sword while he was out? Give it a few months and the injury would be just another scar on Janus’ skin, one more unspoken story of a bind he’d gotten himself out of with his superior wit and talent.

Either that or he would be dead of blood loss or infection and it wouldn’t be his problem anymore. One or the other.

Remus gives him a sidelong look like he doesn’t quite believe Janus’ lie, eyes narrowing and mouth opening to no doubt ask more prying questions, and Janus hurriedly cuts in before he can get the chance.

“Will you go see what you can find for breakfast? I know Ms. Fordham at the bakery has a soft spot for Virgil, but she might give you some day-old bread for a good price if you’re there early and offer to haul in the flour deliveries.”

Remus still has that look in his eye like he’s going to push the issue, a heavy silence falling between the two of them as he locks Janus into a staring contest, an unspoken battle of wills that Janus doubts he’s going to win in his current state. The only people more stubborn than him were his own gods-damned family.

Time to play dirty, then.

“I wouldn’t want Virgil to wake up hungry with nothing to eat,” he presses.

Remus stares at him for another long moment, those clever eyes searching Janus’ for any hint of something amiss, and Janus forces himself to hold his gaze with an impassive expression. Nothing’s wrong, he tries to communicate telepathically. Nothing’s wrong, just go get breakfast and everything will be okay. I absolutely am not about to pass out from blood loss and join Virgil on the floor.

He doubts he’s giving a convincing performance of being fine, but it must be just enough, because Remus finally huffs and gives in, heaving himself up off the ground and muttering something Janus sincerely doubts is flattering as he swipes his cloak off the hook by the door.

“Don’t use the bone saw without me,” he orders, which Janus interprets as make sure Virgil doesn’t take a turn for the worse.

“Pinky promise,” Janus swears, holding out his hand, and Remus takes a moment to latch his finger around Janus’ before disappearing out the door into the dull, pre-dawn light.

Janus counts to ten, then fifty, a hundred, making sure Remus is well and truly gone, before he allows himself to double over with a strangled groan, squeezing his eyes shut and digging his nails into his thigh as the full extent of his injury finally hits him.

Fuck, this hurt. If he wanted to know what it felt like to have tongues of fire licking at his ribs, he would have just asked Remus if he wanted to practice his arson skills.

He draws in a deep breath on instinct, trying to breathe through the pain if nothing else, and the agony surges, spearing through his chest into his muscles and tendons and veins and coiling around his heart until he can barely breathe, wrenching a sound suspiciously close to a whimper from his throat, and it’s all he can do to just exist in the pain for a moment.

Okay. No deep breaths, then.

Exhaustion is dragging at him even through the pain, weighing down his eyelids and leadening his bones now that the adrenaline of being chased and tending to Virgil is wearing off, and he wants nothing more than to collapse right here on the ground next to Virgil and just sleep, slipping into sweet unconsciousness where he doesn’t have to worry about whether Virgil will get better or whether his own injury will become infected or whether the Guard will come crashing through the door at any moment to arrest all three of them.

But if he doesn’t tend to his wound before he falls into bed, he’s just going to end up in Virgil’s position in a few days when it gets infected, not to mention he’ll have to explain the bloodstains he’s leaving on the floor to Remus.

Actually, knowing Remus, he would be beyond delighted at the latter and eagerly demand to know where the blood was from, but Janus doesn’t trust his mental capacities at the moment to come up with any halfway believable lie.

“Lucky bastard,” he hisses at Virgil, who is still slumbering away pain-free and blissfully unaware of Janus’ predicament. He begins to inch himself across the floor to the table, taking tiny sips of air to try to calm the fire still battering his ribs. The world spins alarmingly around him as he uses the piece of furniture to claw himself upright, and he sways unsteadily on his feet once he gets there.

“Come on,” he mutters, some distant part of his mind whispering that he should really be alarmed that he’s devolved into talking to himself. “It’s just a little blood loss. How bad can it be?”

He keeps one hand on the wall for support as he makes his way past the curtain dividing the main living space from what serves as their bedroom. The main mattress has been moved into the other room next to the fireplace so they don’t freeze in their sleep in the colder months, but there’s a smaller bed here, salvaged off the street and put back together by Remus, and Janus eases himself onto it.

It’s a slow, agonizing process to get his shirt off, any movement or stretch pulling at his injury, and he has to stop more than once for the stars that dance in his vision, but he finally works his way free of the garment. A sharp breath hisses between his teeth as he cranes his neck down to examine the injury, nausea turning his stomach. It’s not a pretty sight, the dried blood flaking down his side disturbed by trails of fresh crimson still leaking from the wound, and Janus spits out a swear, then another, and another. If he’d known this was how things were going to go, he would have stolen everything he could carry from the apothecary instead of trying to keep a low profile by only taking one paltry jar of salve.

Next time—if he lives to see a next time—he’s taking the whole damn shelf of medicine, clinking jars be damned.

There’s a pitcher of water on the nightstand and he uses it and a rag to clean the injury as best he can, agony sparking up his spine whenever a drop of freezing water or the edge of the fabric gets too close to the jagged gash, but he forces himself to hurry, knowing Remus won’t be gone long. The bed is an absolute mess by the time he’s done, scarlet water settling into stains on the sheets, but that’s a problem for future Janus. He has bigger worries at the moment than laundry.

Between the ice-cold water and the chill in the air he’s shivering now, and he’s quick to dry off as best he can before moving on to bandaging. Their stockpile of nice bandages is almost depleted and Janus isn’t willing to take the few remaining in case Virgil needs them, so he opts for their homemade bandages instead, which is a generous term for it, considering that they’re fashioned from scraps of fabric too worn out to function as clothes anymore, but Janus isn’t in any position to be picky. As long as it stops the bleeding, it’ll do.

The pain is at least becoming familiar, if not exactly pleasant, as he winds the long, spiraling strips tightly around his ribs, even as his stomach churns at the thought that so much blood that is supposed to be inside his body is very much not. Just beet juice, he tells himself, not above lying to himself if it means not passing out on the bedroom floor. Just beet juice on your hands and the bandages and the bed, nothing more.

Almost done. He shoves his torn and bloodstained shirt under the mattress out of sight of curious eyes and forces himself up to grab another one from the pile in the corner, very nearly finding himself on the ground from the way the world tilts violently around him as he staggers upright. He’s panting with pain and exertion by the time he finally manages to get the blasted thing on, but the sense of relief that washes over him once he does is immediate. His secret is safe for now, at least. No one else needed to worry about him.

The bed is almost irresistibly tempting, but he stumbles his way back into the main room, collapsing heavily on the floor next to Virgil to sit as a guard until Remus gets back.

“You heard nothing,” he tells the other man as he scuffs at the half-dried bloodstains on the floorboards with his boot, smearing them into less incriminating streaks. “Everything is fine.”

Virgil doesn’t deign to respond beyond drooling onto his own arm, and Janus groans, tipping his head back against the wall as his eyelids drag closed of their own volition. He can’t sleep, not yet, not until Remus returns, but maybe he’ll just rest his eyes for a moment, just a few seconds…

He wakes with a heavy groan in his chest, the pain in his ribs fiercely unrelenting, and he curls in on himself instinctively, the phantom feel of a sword biting into his ribs entirely too real. Fuck, he’d really been hoping that whole apothecary debacle had been nothing more than a strikingly vivid nightmare. Apparently not.

“Nice guard job you’re doing there, Jan.”

He squints one eye open, glaring at Remus where he’s sprawled on the floor on the other side of Virgil.

“Good thing I wasn’t planning on doing anything nefarious. I could have killed both of you and you were so out of it you would’ve just floated right into the light.”

Janus scowls at him, nowhere near the mood to joke about anyone dying. The possibility hit just a little too close to home for comfort at the moment.

“Here,” Remus says, entirely unaffected by Janus’ look, offering him a slice of bread. “You were right about Ms. Fordham.”

Of course he was. Janus is always right.

He nibbles through the bread while Remus rambles on about a mishap with one of the flour bags, his stomach still roiling even though he’s ravenous. He realizes halfway through that Virgil is frighteningly still, but when he scrambles to check he realizes it’s because the other man is sleeping peacefully for the first time in days.

Last night had been worth it, then, no matter that Janus can’t breathe too deeply or move too suddenly without feeling like a knife is being twisted into his side. Janus was more than willing to be collateral damage if it meant Virgil healing.

Remus leaves before long, off in search of any other odd jobs he can do for a few coins to keep them fed, and Janus spends the afternoon on the floor, dozing on and off and trying to coax some broth down Virgil’s throat. The other wakes that evening, in pain but coherent, and Janus helps him slowly eat a real meal while Remus carefully washes and rebandages his leg. 

“How kind of you to finally rejoin the waking world,” Janus tells the younger man as he checks Remus’ progress for the third time in as many minutes, making sure he’s not winding the bandages too tightly. “I’ve so enjoyed pulling your weight around here while you indulged in a little nap, you know.”

“You could use a nap,” Virgil mutters snippily. “Although I doubt any amount of beauty sleep could fix your face.”

It’s hardly a devastating response, especially given that Janus’ face is undeniably flawless if he does say so himself, but a coil of tension unwinds in his gut at the retort. If Virgil can roll his eyes and keep up a bit of banter, he must be on the mend.

That’s the important thing, nevermind that Janus’ own injury is only getting more painful, the untreated wound a recipe for disaster. Virgil is okay, and that’s all that matters. As for himself, all he can do is wait and hope things get better.

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