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i-am-bitterly-jittery · 4 months

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On Death's Doorstep (pt 42/53)

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Word count: 2164

Rating: teen

Pairings: Karrot Kings, minor Anxceit, familial Moceit, minor boring heterosexual ocs

Warnings: identity theft, depression, kidnapping, mentioned threats of violence, mentions of drugs

~~~START~~~

Sophie Lafferty was a mousy woman, awkward in the extreme, and was prone to bouts of eccentricity, but despite all that, she had a reputation for being a hard worker. Usually, during this point of the summer, she’d be off on vacation with her family for two weeks, but this year both of her parents were sick, so the vacation had been pushed to August.

Sophie worked a desk job in the legal department of the MAA, the work could be boring at times, and most of what she did was research assigned to her by the higher ups about some historic building that a supervillain had blown a hole through, or the insurance policy on a billionaire’s skyscraper that had mysteriously been damaged in a fight that happened twelve blocks away, or a similar case to the one they were working that had happened ten years ago on the other side of the country. One day, Sophie thought, she’d be one of those higher ups, maybe even appearing as a counselor in a court case or two. But that wouldn’t be for a long time yet, for now, she would have to content herself with following the paper trail of one Logan Crofter until he mysteriously dropped off the face of the earth six years ago to see if there was any hint of where he’d gone.

It was the kind of project that could catapult her career if she did find something, but unfortunately for Sophie Lafferty, she was currently on a cruise to the Bahamas with her family — including her parents, who weren’t any kind of sick except, perhaps, seasick — while someone who looked a lot like Sophie, and talked a lot like Sophie told her bosses that her vacation had been postponed while thoroughly bungling their research on Prof. Crofter.

Usually, Janus’s impersonation act didn’t last long — a couple hours to kidnap a politician, a day to infiltrate a shitty business — but this was a deeper operation than usual. In two weeks, Sophie would be back and the jig would be up, so they would need to get all the information on where Virgil was being kept, what kind of security was in place, and when the best time to act would be and stage a rescue before the MAA knew there’d been a security breach. No pressure.

“Morning, Soph!” A security guard said, stopping next to Sophie’s desk for a moment. Sophie and Lee were very friendly, a fact that was both an asset and a hindrance to Janus — on the one hand, Lee had a greater chance of noticing something was off with Sophie, but on the other hand, Janus might have use for a security guard later, depending on how things shook out.

“Hi Lee.” The voice modulator itched against Janus’s neck, but they resisted the urge to fiddle with it.

“Sorry to hear about your vacation.”

“It’s okay, I wouldn’t want to go without my parents anyway. Besides, we’ll go in August. What about you, any big summer plans?” Janus couldn’t force themself to smile even if they tried, but that hardly mattered to the illusion — Sophie’s lips curled upwards in the expression of a person who honestly cared what this man did with his life.

“Nah, I’m more of a winter sports guy,” Lee grinned as though that were in any way impressive.

“Oh.” It was, based on Janus’s observations, usually around this point in a conversation that Sophie ran out of things to say, so they said nothing.

Lee stood there for a moment, marinating in the awkward silence before clearing his throat. “Well, I should be going now.”

“Yeah.” Please leave.

“Bye Soph.”

“Yeah.”

Janus resisted the urge to gag as Lee walked away, there were other people in the office who might hear if they did, even if their actual face was hidden.

Turning back to their work, Janus found an article about a boat that sank in the Gulf of Mexico two weeks after Logan dropped off the radar, everyone on board had drowned. They added it to the research on Prof. Crofter they were assembling, they were amusing themself by reimagining Logan as more of the Walter White type, maybe he’d drowned while smuggling drugs — Logan would hate this interpretation (for many reasons, not the least of which being how close to the truth it was) but it was exactly the kind of thing that would fuzz the radar while still looking like Janus was actually working.

A small usb drive sat innocently plugged into the computer, scanning away for the kind of security and monitoring there was on Sophie’s desktop before Janus started with their actual work.

Their day was long and boring. They stole Jared’s lunch just to amuse themself — he almost had a full-blown temper-tantrum when he opened the fridge to find his tupperware full of bland chicken missing. Lilie from accounting spent almost an hour monologuing at them about… something, honestly Janus hadn’t been paying attention. And at the end of the day, everyone gathered in the break room to celebrate Jason’s birthday — it took everything they had not to burst out laughing when they realized.

Finally, as they were gathering their stuff to leave for the day, their hacker drive finished its work. They would need to wait until they got home to see what kind of security they were working with, but at least that meant they could get started first thing tomorrow — plus, they had already outlined most of the details in their Crofter-equals-drug-smuggler “theory”, so they should be good for the next week or so as far as Sophie’s work went.

They drove Sophie’s car back to Sophie’s building where they parked in Sophie’s parking spot and walked up to Sophie's apartment. Her lights had been set on a timer to make it look like she was spending the night there, but as soon as Janus entered, they left again, this time hiding themself from sight completely. They walked down the block to where their own car was parked, and then proceeded to drive back to their actual home.

What they should do was go straight upstairs to Logan so they could go over the MAA system’s security, but instead what they did was detour to what was formerly Roman’s apartment before they moving in with his sister and was now, after a couple reconfigurations of the housing arrangements, the — hopefully temporary — apartment of Thomas and Nico Sanders-Flores and their grandson Patton.

Janus knocked politely, and after a moment, Nico answered the door. It was always awkward to spend time with Thomas and Nico — seeing how Janus had kidnapped them and all — but they were Virgil’s parents, and Patton’s grandparents, and Janus would just have to work through the awkwardness.

“Oh, hi Janus,” Nico gave them a strained smile, which Janus returned in kind.

Before they could say their own polite greeting, however, the smoke alarm began to sound.

“Thomas Sanders!” Nico turned and yelled into the apartment. He walked away from the door, leaving it open, so Janus took that as an invitation. “I turned my back on you for less than a second! How did you burn something already?”

Janus followed Nico to the kitchen where they found Thomas desperately fanning an inflamed pan in a futile attempt at putting it out.

“I don’t know!” Thomas cried as Nico got the fire extinguisher out from under the sink and put out the fire.

“I can see where Virgil got his kitchen skills from,” Janus commented dryly. To Janus’s surprise, Thomas actually laughed at that.

Nico shook his head in exasperation. “I’ve been trying so hard to teach either of them how to make anything. It might just be impossible.”

“It’s not so bad,” Janus pointed out. “Virgil’s been getting the hang of it.”

“Really?” Nico asked, looking excited for all of one second before it was replaced with a look of intense sadness. “I guess… I guess it’s been a while since we’ve seen him.”

Janus cursed themself internally; their score was currently Janus: 1, awkwardness: 1.

“Uh, where’s Patton?” They asked, knowing that at least Patton didn’t mind when they were awkward.

Thomas frowned and Nico turned away from them entirely.

“He’s in the living room,” Thomas explained. “Today hasn’t been a good day.”

“Oh.” Janus: 1, awkwardness: 2. “I’ll, um…” Janus pointed towards the living room, then walked away.

Awkwardness: 3.

Patton was curled in a ball on the floor in front of the couch, The Princess and the Frog was playing on the TV, but Patton didn’t seem to notice.

“Hey, Pat,” Janus said softly, taking a seat next to the kid and attempting to put their hand on his back. Their hand sank through him as they realized what Thomas meant by it not being a good day. “How are you feeling today?”

The question wasn’t necessary, even if the intangibility didn’t give him away, Patton projected when he had strong emotions, and the sadness rolling off him reminded Janus of themself at their mama’s funeral.

Patton didn’t answer, or even look at them, so Janus contented themself with quietly sitting beside him.

After several minutes and a song about what the main characters would do once they were human, Patton spoke up, quietly. “Mommy, will you tell me a story?”

Janus startled, but any thought of correcting the boy went out the window when they found Patton staring at them with big, watery eyes.

“Of course, dear,” Janus said instead, tamping down any trace of panic. “How about the story of when I met your daddy?”

Patton nodded eagerly, so Janus launched into the story.

“It was probably about six or seven years ago — before you were born — and I was a law student. Frankie hadn’t joined the business yet, but he had been selling black market gadgets for a few years and had already decided to take me under his wing, so to speak — he likes to think he was my mentor because he was a criminal first, but I was a supervillain first, so it’s really six of one, half dozen of the other.

“Now, in one of my classes we had recently discussed a situation that had been in the news about the chief of police. I felt that the chief was getting away with some nasty stuff with no repercussions, so I decided to… scare him a little bit — it’s not like I was really going to drop him off that building.” It suddenly occurred to Janus that this might not be the best story for a five-year-old, but Patton looked enraptured, so they continued.

“I had just gotten him to make a blubbery confession for my camera when we were interrupted. Your dad was dressed like a grade A dork, horns greener than you can believe–”

“Daddy doesn’t have horns,” Patton frowned, leaning his whole weight into Janus’s arm.

“It’s an expression, kiddo, what I mean was, he was new to the business and it was obvious. Now, he ordered me to ‘let that poor man go!’ and I was tempted to follow his order to the letter, but turning the chief into a martyr wasn’t on my agenda at that time, so I brought him back on the roof and let him flop like a fish.

“‘Poor?’ I said. ‘No, not yet he’s not.’ Your dad didn’t like that. He was cute, all angry and just, I just couldn’t stop myself from flirting. Most heroes, once someone as fruity as me starts flirting with them, go from cute-angry to bigot-angry pretty quickly, but Virgil just got more flustered.

“I may have gotten a little too in to flirting with him, and he nearly managed to catch me when he make some bright starburst in front of my eyes, causing me to see spots, but I’d had years of experience to fall back on, and I knew when it was time to cut and run. The chief wasn’t in any position to catch me — he was still experiencing adverse effects to altitude — so I made a mental illusion of myself in your dad’s mind and had it fly away, mostly to test whether or not your dad could fly.”

“He can’t,” Patton said.

“No,” Janus agreed. “He can’t, so he stooped down to help the chief while I waltzed away at my leisure — that trick never worked on him again, by the way.”

“Hey guys,” Thomas interrupted gently. “Dinner’s ready.”

“Okay,” Patton stood, sadness no longer leaking from his pores. “Thanks, mommy.”

He wrapped his little arms around his neck before running off to collide with his grandpa’s legs.

“Pop pop?” Patton asked as Thomas lifted him into his arms. “Can we have cookies after dinner?”

“Sure kiddo,” Thomas smiled. “Whatever you want.”

Thomas smiled at Janus before turning to carry Patton to the table, and Janus felt a little bit of tension leak from them. Janus: 2, awkwardness: 3.

~~~END~~~

Y’know that awkwardness when you’re meeting your significant other’s parents after you kidnapped them because your significant other has been kidnapped, and also your significant other’s child has spontaneously begun referring to you as their parent?

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 @awful-at-naming-things @lunatatic

#sanders sides #ts sanders sides #janus sanders #patton sanders #thomas sanders #nico flores #karrot kings #anxceit #on death’s doorstep #superhero au #thursday writes #my writing #sanders sides fanfiction

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