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greenninjagal-blog · 2 years ago

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Deja Vu pt 10

Here we go. Are you ready?

If you’re new around here you can find the first chapter [here] or if you just want a refresher you can find the previous chapter [here!]

Summary: Sometimes communication is the hardest thing to do. Other times you have a Virgil in the area.

Word Count: 12296

Read on Ao3 || Hero Worship Series || My General Writing Masterlist

“What?” Remus says, blinking for a moment as he tries to recenter himself from where this conversation went. The world doesn’t start shaking like an earthquake, and there’s no air raid sirens, nor streets outside filled with screaming, but Virgil slams shut a cabinet drawer in the kitchen that makes the silverware rattle far louder than Remus thinks it should be able to and it feels exactly like the world the is about to fracture apart like an egg.

Janus drags a hand up to his hair and tugs on a fistfull like he usually does when he’s reached a step in his brilliant plots that he can’t work his way around. Like he was waiting for Remus to reach out and take his hand and demand they go out to get shitty fast food and not think about things. Like he was hoping that Remus would lean forward those last few inches and steal a kiss or four and make all the impossible things seem possible. Like he’d forgotten that Remus was clinically trained in the art of fighting destiny to make Janus’s goals reachable.

((Remus spent far too long daydreaming about that simple action to not have his heart twist and knot at the sight of it.))

“I swear I’m not making this up,” Janus says. “It’s like…really minor mind control, and it can only affect a few people at a time who meet her gaze, but the effect stabilizes over time. The longer she can get you to look at her the more control she has over your actions until you don’t even realize that the actions you’re taking aren’t yours.”

Like the movies, or comics. Puppetmaster style. One glance and your mind isn’t your own. Why does that sound more ridiculous than Remus who can exchange bodily harm for access to a billion and one futures that don’t suit his needs?

“I was going to tell you,” Janus says, rush, rush, rushing like he’s a waterfall of words and if he doesn’t get them all out before Remus takes another breath the whole world is going to blow up and really end. “In the coffee shop. But I thought that you would back out once you realized how big and bad everything could be, and so I chickened out because I—I can’t do this alone. None of this, Remus. I wouldn’t have even started without you. So instead I told myself I would tell you later. After.”

Remus remembers that moment. It feels like decades ago and seconds ago, old enough to be caught in the footnotes of an outdated textbook and recent enough that if Remus blinks he’ll be holding his iced coffee again crammed up against Janus in the middle of a crowd stupidly believing that the world is much bigger than him, Roman, and five words. He’d been thinking about kissing Janus, about the taste of his latte, about the way his lips slide into that perfect little smirk that drives Remus to want to do anything for him. Janus had been talking about owing him something, as if Janus’s attention, company, and time wasn’t the most valuable thing Remus had gotten from anyone in his entire life.

It’s insane. Remus feels like he’s going insane.

Weren’t they supposed to be kissing? Isn’t that what happened in the stories when someone confesses their undying, totally painfully obvious affections? How did he mess this up as well?

“Are you saying Roman is being mind controlled?” Remus asks, rasps, chokes. His throat is dry all over again, and the floor is swaying under his feet. If he weren’t sitting down already he thinks that he’d be lying on the floor, in another puddle of blood for Virgil to hate cleaning up. ((Why, why, why, why does everything come back to fucking Roman?)) “Because if this is based just on him acting like an asshole I have bad news: he has….always been like that.”

Always been acting like he’s the greatest thing ever, always been acting like he needs nothing and no one, always been acting like Remus isn’t worth the air he breathes and he’s just sick. Just sadistic. Just a sociopath with no regard for human life.

Ha.

“I’m not making this up,” Janus repeats. “Remus, I wouldn’t lie about this. Not to you. You know I wouldn’t lie about this, right?”

“Janus,” Virgil says, like a warning, but Remus isn’t sure who it’s to or what it's about.

“I’m not lying!”

The air is full and tense and heavy, like trying to breathe in liquid cement through a straw. Remus hasn’t had practical experience in that type of hell before, and he’s not appreciating this trial run either: there's a foreign aura dancing around Janus, hovering over his head like an invisible swarm of insects waiting for the perfect moment to attack and Janus curls around himself, hands squeezing his own arms hard enough to bruise as he stares at Remus but also anywhere else.

He doesn’t look like the stranger with green eyes who caught his coin in the air and then bet with it, he doesn’t look like the Dee who confidently got himself killed a billion times trusting that Remus would redirect fate its—fucking—self to keep him alive, he doesn’t even look like the Janus who snipped and snapped at Virgil and still brought back Thai food that they would enjoy.

He doesn’t look like anyone Remus knows. Just a shadow, a shell, a fake—

((Remus has seen him wear millions of faces, billions of smiles, and trillions of eye shades, but there had always been something at his core that was undeniably him that Remus could pick out even when he was dying. He searches through the man in front of him and comes up so horribly empty part of him feels dizzy.))

"I'm not making it up," Janus says, desperately. "I swear— "

If Remus didn’t know better, didn’t know Dee like the back of his hand, didn’t know Dee like the color of his own blood, like the beat of his own heart, like the taste of powdered pills on his own tongue; if Remus didn’t know that Dee didn’t do hysteria, he would assume that Dee-who-is-Janus is being hysterical.

His fingers are curled into the couch cushions, his nails digging into the fabric so deeply that there’s no sign of his chipped nail polish. His mouth tastes like copper, like metal, like cyanide and arsenic and gravedirt and he wants to scream that Roman can’t be mind controlled, you can’t be right about this, Dee, Janus, please, please, don’t be right about this, I’ll do anything for you, just please take it back.

Janus isn’t breathing and Remus doesn’t feel like he is, either. There’s something in his throat and it feels like a boulder, and he’s staring at Janus who is his friend, who he loves, who is about to cry and Remus needs to stop it--

--by any means possible. His mouth opens--

“Don’t.”

Remus’s mouth is still closed, and he’s still there staring at Janus about to cry and Virgil’s voice is echoing in his head like a foghorn at a 3AM that didn’t happen.

Virgil who’s voice could do incredible things, Virgil who pushed back against Janus in all the ways that Remus never would, Virgil who just cleaned his blood out of the carpet and told Remus that he doesn’t have much left and he doesn’t know what the right thing to say is and time is passing and Remus is passing with it. There’s the flicker of power in the back of his mind, the easy-to-unlock latch that unfurls his spine and makes the worry and panic go away, the switch of his vision where he blinks and the consequences don’t stay so he can say whatever he wants and do whatever he doesn’t want to do and he can die a thousand times and still live and he can watch his friends and family get murdered a million times and still have a chance to save them. It’s there and if Remus thinks too hard he’ll feel like he’s back on the side of the highway with Janus’s blood dripping down his fist from a conversation he’d been too scared to have because whatever Remus loves he makes a fucking mess out of.

Remus chokes on his tongue, biting down on the traitorous thing before he gives Janus another reason to cry.

No, he can do this. He doesn’t need his power this time.

He’s… He’s not scared. He doesn’t need a safety net for a conversation.

Virgil is staring at him, hard and daring and worried; a man glaring at the receding ocean waves knowing that a tsunami is coming and there’s no time to run and Remus is not going to make him clean blood out of the carpet again.

“Roman’s…” not mind controlled, not getting an easy way out, not the victim here. His lungs are aflame. The seconds are piling up like bricks around him, and Remus closes his eyes and forces himself to try again.

Janus trusted him. Janus told him his name, his real one that belonged to the version of him that he never shows anyone with blue grey eyes and green scales and hands that were always cold. Janus trusted him with this too.

“I don’t think you’re making it up,” Remus says, strangled and dying but based on the shuddering breath Janus takes in it’s the right thing to say. “You don’t—You, Dee, Janus, You—don’t do that. Your mom or whoever can mind control people. I’m just saying that Roman— Roman doesn’t need to be mind controlled into… any of this. He’s not...He’s always been…”

Remus had been eight years old. Roman had been his everything.

Part of him wants to vomit, whether it be blood or words or the icy black feeling that seems to have wrapped around his rib cage and squeezed away the memory of warmth. He wants to vomit and expel every bad thought and feeling inside before his nerves come back and the jittery feeling shakes him into a molotov cocktail. He wants to tell them that Roman doesn’t get to have the easy explanation for every shitty thing he’s done, he doesn’t get to destroy Remus’s life over and over and over and then get to say “I was mind controlled, I didn’t mean it! Remus, you have to forgive me! I never would have driven you out of your own home if I had been in control of my own actions!”

Because Remus has spent nights lying awake thinking about the feel of his mother’s fingers in his mouth checking to make sure he swallowed his pills, thinking about the creak of the burgundy leather couch in his psychiatrist's office as he tells Remus it’s okay if the pills had been working, he doesn’t need to pretend otherwise, thinking about the scent of cleaning supplies as the Principal forces him to clean the graffiti sharpie insults off his own locker while Roman laughs with his friends ten feet away and about how he lied to himself when he thought drinking the bleach would hurt more than the current burning in his chest.

It’s not fucking fair.

“Calling it mind control is insulting,” Virgil says, like he knows that Remus is about to drown before Remus even realizes his own thoughts are crushing his lungs. The emo reporter comes storming back into the room with a fistful of silverware and napkins with a brand name of some fast food place that must be nearby and cheap.

His entrance brings all the oxygen that Janus and him had lost in this strangled parody they were pretending could be called “communication”. Virgil nudges Janus towards the sofa, the end opposite of Remus, and Janus stumbles and sits like he’d never heard of the idea of sitting before; a broken animatronic too rusted to be of use anymore. Janus isn’t looking at him, and Remus can’t look away and the space between them is farther than the distance between the fucking planets.

“It’s more like advanced persuasion.” Virgil continues, because he’s not distracted by seven inches, three centimeters, I love you, My mom is a supervillain, and the worst timing that there ever was to have passed. “You can fight it if you know what to expect and she can’t make you kill someone unless you already had the premonition to commit a murder. Hypnosis is a better description.”

He stops right in front of Remus, their legs almost touching because of how close the coffee table is behind him, and Virgil is holding a box with a fork on top and staring hard and fervently at him. “His hands aren’t clean, Remus. He hurt you and was encouraged to and it’s fucking sickening and awful.”

((Remus is twenty one years old. He wishes to every deity out there that anyone had ever believed in that someone would had told eight year old him this. He wishes that he met Virgil before. He wishes that Janus, Virgil, and him had already had this conversation. He wishes that he was normal.))

“Just because Witchall’s power is involved, doesn’t mean that he’s absolved of all wrong doing,” Virgil says, slow and steady and so, so very certain. “I’ll make sure of it myself.”

It feels like the inside of a casino, brimming and overflowing with people in sparkly outfits, shouting and laughing and yelling, the slot machines ringing and the chips shifting, the cards shuffling, and Janus holding a purple coin like a promise and Remus is not going to cry about it.

“Eat,” Virgil says, putting the box in his shaking hands. “This is the good stuff.”

Then he turns to the side and eyes Janus with a suspicious look. If Janus notices, which seems very unJanus like to have not noticed, he doesn’t react at all, merely clasping his hands together tightly and counting out robotically measured breaths, in a way that Remus doesn’t like seeing and likes listening to even less.

I did that. And it wouldn’t have happened if he had just looked into the future and found the right thing to say. It wouldn’t be happening if he had just—

“You too,” Virgil says, flicking the side of Janus’s arm and pretending like he doesn’t see Janus flinch anymore than he doesn’t see the strangely discolored patch on the carpet under their feet that smells like bleach. “I believe you, he believes you. The only one who is uncertain is you, Janus.”

Janus laughs the same way that he had when Roman had said Remus didn’t have a power. Disbelieving and condescending and startled, brimming with the usual confidence but making Remus's heart throb painfully in his chest. He thinks about holding Janus's hand, clenching their fingers together so tightly that he stops being able to tell which digit is his and which is Janus's and stops caring about it too and somewhere far away Roman blows up into a thousand pieces and not a single person cries about it.

But Remus can’t even twitch his own hand and Janus’s palms are occupied with trying to break all the bones in his own fingers seven inches away from him.

“I’m not… I’m not lying.”

“You’re not lying,” Virgil repeats, solidifying it into existence as if it hadn’t already been a fact.

“I believe you,” Remus adds to reinforce. Because he does. He does. He knows what those words can do, the type of magic they possess that even people without super abilities can wield, the way that a single phrase can haunt someone to the ends of the universe and back.

Remus has never been on this side before, but Janus is sitting there so incredibly desperate for a reassurance, so incredibly in need of someone to look at him, so incredibly wanting to hear the exact words that Remus grew up dismembering himself for a chance to hear. He’d wanted for someone to believe him for so long; Remus doesn't know why it never occurred to him that Janus might need to hear the same phrase from him.

((Why? The voice in the back of his mind that he doesn't want to hear asks. Why was it so hard for Roman-Mom-thedoctors-thestudentstheteachershisfriends to say it? It’s so easy. Remus breathes, the sky is blue, he believes Janus.))

"Janus," Remus says, pausing when Janus jumps like someone electrocuted him. His eyes jump towards Remus, like a magnet, like a gunshot, like the world is ending and he wants Remus to be the last thing he ever sees and Remus swallows back the panic in his gut at the thought. "You are not a liar."

He wants to open his arms. He wants to wrap Janus up in a hug and tell him that he actually thinks Janus is a really shitty liar and has a terrible poker face. He wants to breathe in that cardamom and shoe polish scent and tell him that Janus can tell a million lies and still not be a liar.

"I've seen liars," Remus continues, hands twisting around the fast food container and squeezing. "Real liars who kept telling me I was making things up for attention. Who told me I was sick. Who played nice to my face and then purposely excluded me from everything. Who smiled politely when I talked but never listened and indulged me when everything good was happening for them then decided it wasn’t fun anymore when it stopped them from doing what they wanted and then I—"

(( --topples to the ground, screaming, glass and silver sparkles shatter all around them like pretty little snowflakes, Mom and Dad come running and the screaming doesn’t stop because Remus is on top of him slamming the bloody base into Roman's face again and again and again and Remus, Remus, what is wrong with you?! REMUS GET OFF OF HIM! ROMAN CAN YOU HEAR ME SWEETHEART? I NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAD YOU-- ))

Remus shakes with his whole body, and he thinks of grey-blue eyes, the sharp twist of a smile, dragon wings and warm hands dragging him out of the rain and laughter, so much laughter in the face of five words that have scared Remus since the dawn of time and then he's dislodging the memory that never happened with several hundred instances that did.

"I’ve seen liars," Remus repeats. "And Jan...you're the most honest person I know. If you say she can brainwash people…. then she can abso— fucking—lutely brainwash people.”

"I told people," Janus says softly, eyes wet and shiny and small. "I told so many people when— when she loosened her control enough that I could think— teachers, my friends, the maids and cooks and the police and no one would...they wouldn't….” He swallows hard. “They would tell my mother. And she would make sure I never talked to anyone again. Pulled me out of school to homeschool me, put bars on my window so I couldn’t sneak out, told the maids I had a contagious disease and couldn’t be in contact with anyone—"

Janus takes a deep shuddering breath. “Virgil was the first person who believed me. My first…real friend, and the first spark of hope I had in years.”

Remus sneaks a quick look at the reporter, who looks to be doing his best to pretend like Janus is a stranger standing a few feet away at the supermarket, speaking another language entirely into a phone. His lips are pressed together tightly, with the tips of his fangs threatening to cut up his bottom lip if he keeps staunchly refusing to look in the direction of Janus and acknowledge any type of feeling at all.

“How did you meet?”

A neutral question, Remus thinks. Or not. His heart is beating way too fast thinking about young Janus with bright eyes, young Janus with his mother’s hands digging into his shoulders in warning, young Janus being kept in the house away from anyone until he feels like a ghost in his own home, young Janus shaking apart, alone, lone, lonely without a single other person who is not family to talk to him for weeks…

Janus huffs out a short almost-a-laugh-almost-a-sob laugh and Virgil tries to scowl but he’s halfway into his own take out container, and preoccupied with the scent of tangy marinated chicken rising from inside.

“My mom,” Virgil says, plopping himself on the coffee table surface with his feet up on the sofa in the no-man’s-land between Remus and Janus, “worked as a maid for the Witchall residence for seven years. Single parent trying to raise a kid didn’t leave a lot of room for excess money so where she could save she did, you know? Brought me to work with her and as long as I wasn’t touching anything or doing anything it was okay. Witchall was always polite in front of my mother. My mother adored her.”

He spears a piece of mango and Remus gets the rest of the idea pretty quickly.

“I wasn’t allowed to talk to him,” Janus says quietly. “Literally. She told me to stop acknowledging he existed and after that I wasn’t able to see or hear him when he was in the same room as me.”

“It was really fucked up,” Virgil adds. “If I hadn’t known what either of them could do I would have been really messed up for the rest of my life— no don’t give me that look, Jay. I’m not messed up! I choose to live like this!”

“Cindy introduced herself to me because despite having lived here for a whole year she has never gotten the chance to meet you,” Janus counters with less than half the usual snark that he has.

“Who the fuck is Cindy?”

“Time out,” Remus calls, “You knew?”

Remus did not mean for it to come out slightly bent, slightly broken, slightly like he’s got something in his throat and it's not a piece of shrimp that’s painfully scraping through his esophagus in a way that would totally make sense for him to be choked up over. He clears his throat and does not look at either of them and it doesn’t mean a thing because Virgil can probably hear the painful swallow and the stuttering beat of his heart.

Virgil nods without any judgment. “Yeah. I, uh, my power manifested pretty early on in my life. I wasn’t born with it, but I was one or two when silence became a mythical idea, and my parents couldn’t understand why I was unable to go to sleep because I was hearing the buzzing of the next door neighbors’ fridge. I don’t think my dad ever figured it out; something must have tipped my mom off and they got into a fight and my dad raised his hand towards me… But yeah my mom got me out of there pretty quick… what was I saying? Oh, yeah, I’ve been able to hear through walls since I was really young. I tried telling my mom something was wrong with the Witchalls, but it was the best job she’d had with the best hours and it provided for me so she told me to pretend like it wasn’t happening.”

Virgil tilts his head with a bit of a rueful smile on his face that Remus almost believes is true. If it weren’t for the death grip on his fork, if it weren’t for the darkness in his eyes, if it weren’t for the way his body has gone still.

“It was a good job; it paid well,” Virgil says, too cheery to actually mean it. “If you have enough money, people are willing to look away from anything. Keep quiet… don’t cause noise… or you’ll be next in the line of fire.

“So yeah,” Virgil stuffs a piece of chicken in his mouth. “I knew what Witchall was doing to Janus. I knew that he physically couldn’t see me.”

“He left me notes,” Janus whispers.

“She couldn’t exactly demand he stop being able to read,” Virgil explains. “And for a long time she didn’t realize that he was getting notes, or that I was sending them.”

“Burn after reading.” Janus loosens slightly more, not-quite relaxing but something close. His fingernails wrap around the edge of his food container and finally pops it open to reveal some type of spicy red curry and Remus becomes acutely aware he’s the only one not eating and he can’t actually remember the last time he ate. “I paid twenty bucks to a pothead at my prestigious school to give me his lighter and then I kept it hidden under the false floorboard in my room, just to prove I could have something she didn’t know about. Then the letters started and it came in handy…” He rubs his sleeve over his cheeks, wiping away the tears and taking a deep breath. “She, ah, she caught me trying to burn one. She made me tell her who they were from and then…she fired his mom. Immediately.”

Remus glances at Virgil who does the equivalent of looking like a chipmunk with too much food in its mouth. He frantically swallows multiple times, almost choking (such a bad way to go), almost breathing in chicken (a slightly more interesting way to go).

“It wasn’t that bad!” He says. “Uh, well, it was for a bit. But uh, I got older and mom was more busy with her two jobs so she wasn’t around as much. Public school put me on the radar of some computer guys, and then some hackers…and well, have you seen what the internet can do? She’s beautiful. Anyone can get any information in a matter of seconds, and once it's posted it's so hard to erase completely. And it can be anonymous. No more looking away, no more keeping quiet because anyone who sees it won’t know it’s me posting.”

He sounds reverent, the disciple of a goddess so real that kinda sorta makes Remus want to convert. The internet had always been just another tool to him, just something that was there, sometimes he even got news articles on his phone or looked up directions to the nearest fast food place when they were off driving or watched a few episodes of a mindless TV show from a pirated site. Virgil has a slight grin on his face when he talks about it with a wonder on his face, awed and happy in the way that Remus is about Janus.

Virgil taps his fingers along his container, the grin on his face slipping away as quickly as it had come.

“Uh, shouldn’t have known,” he corrects himself, poking at his food. “They shouldn’t have known it was me posting.”

He takes a deep breath and when he looks back up it's directly at Remus, eyes dark and haunted. “Turns out with enough money you can hire people to do anything she wants, no questions asked. Have you ever been kidnapped?”

((Remus has. In a future that didn’t happen in the blurry area between Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio there had been a friendly guy with a too wide smile who liked picking up eighteen year old hitchhikers and leaving their corpses on the side of the interstates. But it’s not that important.))

“She hired some people to find out who was posting bad things about her and then she hired more people to kidnap me from my own apartment,” Virgil says. “My mom wasn’t home. They told me if I screamed they would kill anyone who came to help. And then they dragged me all the way back to the mansion of hell from the nightmare dimension and when I wouldn’t fall for her sith lord evil mind tricks she…”

He trails off. Remus fills in the blanks a million different ways and wonders if Virgil realizes that the fact he’s alive, able to move and talk and breathe without a machine means he outwitted hundreds of younger Remus’s.

The apartment feels silent and empty without any conversation. Not even the fridge in the kitchen makes a noise; if Remus didn’t know better he would have thought that he somehow fell directly back into the white nothingness that Patton conjured when he took away Remus’s power. Virgil stares at his food, and Janus watches the wall across the room as if it might start moving when he looked away. Remus isn’t sure what to say or do or think so he doesn’t.

“She ordered me to kill him,” Janus says finally. “And I wanted to make her happy. By any means possible.”

Remus doesn’t dare close his eyes, doesn’t dare think about younger Janus fighting, fighting, fighting against a hopeless situation, against those damning set of words. He doesn’t consider how Janus might have been the same age as Remus was when he took a snowglobe to Roman’s head and didn’t stop swinging because Roman cut the last strings of Remus’s sanity, or about the feel of blood on his hands, the sick twist of his insides when he realizes that there’s no way out, the mounting understanding that everything is wrong and won’t ever be right again because someone you trusted is just a monster on the inside and somehow you’re about to pay the price for it—

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work very well,” Virgil continues, breezily waving to his living, breathing, exceptionally attractive self. “He took a sonic blast straight to the face, and it knocked him out. Then I dragged his ass out of there, held him hostage for a few months with about twenty rolls of duct tape and my personal charm until I could reteach him how to think for himself.” He paused, pointing at Remus’s take out container with his fork. “If you don’t want that, I’ll put it in my fridge and make you something else. Like jello. Or ramen. Or more jello.”

“Why do you even have a stove if all you consume is jello and ramen?” Janus asks like a drowning man lunges for a life preserver.

“Why do you wear three piece suits even though they cost way too much and you ruin them anyway?”

“Not all of us can live in our emo phase for our entire lives, Virgil,” Janus says with just enough of an eye movement to imply an eye roll, as if he wasn’t sitting nice and pretty in ripped a hard rock band tee, a choker, and black combat boots with metal spikes. Remus hadn’t seen him in anything close to this type of dress before— not even one those few times that they mixed up bags and Janus had worn of Remus’s shirts for the day when they were just driving— but fuck Remus if he didn’t pull it off just as well.

“And not all of us have stoves that work, Janus,” Virgil says. “The landlord is dragging his feet about getting someone to fix it so I’m working around it for another three days before I send him a very lovely recording of his affair, and offer to forward it to his wife’s work computer if he doesn’t get it fixed for me immediately.”

“If you have the time to dig up his affair, then why don’t you just find someone to come fix the stove yourself?”

“Will you stop critiquing everything I do?” Virgil snaps out nudging Janus with his foot. “You don’t see me telling you all the better ways there were to relieve all of your mom’s benefactors of their wealth and means.”

Janus blinks and then twitches in his seat to face Remus, his knee half up on the sofa. “Please Remus, ask me what Virgil and I have been talking about for the past two days even when I very clearly have not been wanting to talk about it.”

“That’s completely not necessary—” Virgil starts.

“Oh no, I believe it is completely necessary—”

There’s a lot more to the story, Remus thinks. Virgil didn’t mention the part where he and Janus were in a relationship, where Virgil was Janus’s partner before Remus even knew what a casino was, where there was an argument of some kind, a break, and Janus was left desperate enough by himself to lunge for a cash box in front of a stranger he just met like it wasn’t a suicide. There are bits and pieces to the story that make Remus’s skin itch, his lungs burn, his lips dry out. There’s a history so strong between Janus and Virgil that Remus’s stupid little “I love you” seems even stupider than he could imagine.

What is a few heists compared to an entire childhood? What is Remus compared to Virgil?

But Janus is looking at him, not at Virgil. His gaze is hesitant and worried with the wispy edges of panic trailing in his cloudy sky eyes like phantoms and Remus is counting, counting, counting those few inches between them again as if Virgil’s feet weren’t between them at all.

Virgil is also looking at him, and for a split second Virgil’s dark mysterious eyes flick back to his own feet, raised on his own couch, and he jerks back and drops them to the floor as if he was embarrassed suddenly.

“I’m not saying your ways weren’t effective, or eye catching! You certainly made a fucking statement when you swooped down from the sky and crashed the ceremony and made The Prince choke on his words. All I’m saying is that it would be easier— did you just fucking snort?” Virgil says, looking at Remus as if he’s particularly offended.

“Janus has a rare disease, didn’t you know?” Remus says. “We can’t do anything the easy way or all his organs will explode from the lack of drama.”

There’s a beat and then Virgil laughs, a light buzzing in the air that makes the room hazy for a moment before he gets himself back under control.

“Slander! Libel! How dare you call me dramatic!” Janus says, wounded. “All of my actions are completely reasonable! Logical even! Rational!”

((There are trillions of bad endings that Janus could get; Remus has seen most of them. He can’t help glancing at Virgil and wondering if this might be what a good ending would be like for once. He can’t help wondering if he would mind so much if he still gets to see Janus smile once or twice.

Remus reaches out and picks up his take out container, and thinks that he doesn’t quite mind not knowing the rest of the story’s details.))

“Hey, Snakes and Ladders,” Remus says, tilting his head to catch Janus’s gaze before it goes back to his take out. “I can see the future, you don’t tell lies. When we figure out what’s wrong with Virgil, we can start a fucked up club. I’m thinking of calling it “Lords of Being Fucked Over By Everyone Else” but I’ll take other suggestions.”

“Hey! There’s nothing wrong with me,” Virgil says defensively.

“I can change that,” Remus says at the same time as Janus lets out a weak, “Liar.”

He sounds more like himself, like the bits and edges are melding back together. Remus can’t help the relief that swarms through him, any more than he can keep away the swell of affection at the sight of stir fried broccoli and beef in his container.

“But you’re right,” Janus says, letting out a breath he didn’t seem to realize he was holding. He swallows some of his curry before continuing as if he needs a breath before he rips off a bandaid. “We should have a name, going forward. If you want to go forward.”

Remus thinks about reaching out, holding his hand, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles, memorizing each of the muscles and veins and he says, “Wherever you go, I’m following.”

((Remus is twenty one years old, but he thinks that he means it with all of his soul, speaking a fact of the universe into being right along with the sun rises, the earth spins, wherever you go I’m following you.))

Janus almost smiles. Remus almost lunges across the sofa to kiss him.

Virgil lets out a self-amused hum, picking out some rice from his container. He taps his foot on the ground a few times, lounging comfortably on the table the way Remus imagines he doesn’t get many reasons to. “I hope you didn’t have any ideas already.”

“Why not?” ((Which Remus believes is Janus-ese for “I have exactly seven picked out already.”))

“Because you already have names?” Virgil says, like this is common knowledge that everyone should be aware of. He pats around his body and then blindly at the table for something before clicking his tongue and holding a hand out. Janus frowns at the offending limb, but after another second he reaches into his back pocket (dark skinny jeans that Remus thinks belong to Virgil because he would absolutely have remembered Janus wearing that himself), unlocks his phone, and then hands it over.

Virgil sticks his fork in his mouth, sets his container on a pile of forgotten scrap papers and napkins, and uses both hands to type and swipe on the screen for a minute, searching for something with a single minded focus that makes Remus jealous for all of five heartbeats before he remembers there’s food in front of him.

Virgil turns the phone back around to show them some online chat with dozens of users. Remus leans forward to get a better look at the text on the screen despite the protests of his ribs, guts, and muscles.

“‘Dread Assembly’’” Janus reads off. “‘Spite Order’, ‘Brotherhood of Vengeance’— I have met and fought twelve year olds with better naming capabilities.”

“Who are all these people?” Remus asks. “Why do they care?”

“Fans,” Virgil says, relinquishing the phone into Janus’s capable hands. “Or well, most of them are. Some of them are pretty neutral on their stances, and there’s a few against you guys that want to weigh in. I keep them updated on your exploits since I noticed the trend of the benefactors of the Witchall campaign getting systematically financially crippled, and so those that know how to read know everything I knew about you guys up to two days ago. They’ve been asking for updates ever since Janus name dropped me on live TV. I got so many followers yesterday….” He shrugs. “The good news is that this website is really good at protecting the community and so they’ve been fending off the FBE and associated law enforcement that are trying to shut this down. Bad news is that it’s probably only going to work for another like… three days? Four? I’ve already been trying to hook up with some coders that can build me another secret secure site, but vetting has been taking time.”

“Vetting?”

“Yeah, like making sure they didn’t sell their usernames to the FBE so I’m not walking into a trap,” Virgil leans back, nearly knocking over an abandoned coffee mug. “Witchall has been after me for a while now, and I’m not about to slip up doing stupid shit no matter how much Janus makes me want to.”

“I resent that,” Janus comments, although from the way he’s scrolling through his phone, he most likely didn’t actually hear what Virgil said but likes the idea of arguing it anyway. Remus remembers suddenly, being at a diner with his feet up on the opposing couch and thinking about kissing Janus over a plate of french toast just to get his attention back for a few more seconds.

“‘Erinyes,’” Janus says, finally. “The Furies. From Greek Mythology. Goddesses of vengeance who punished men for their crimes. That's who they want to name us after? I think I liked the Morari more. More gender neutral and what not. Also I’m offended; they are supposed to be the ugliest of women—am I that bad looking?”

Virgil rolls his eyes so hard Remus is impressed they don’t get stuck. “You had too much of a Percy Jackson phase to not be enjoying this name. You are the deity of vengeance, Janus. The champion of victims, the person who makes sure those who think they are untouchable get absolutely owned.“

Janus does that expression of his in which he is smiling but tries to hide it (which he calls his poker face), so Remus believes that Virgil managed to convince him to stick with the name. Honestly, he doesn’t know much Greek Mythology—the myth of Cassandra and her tragic end had hit him like a wrecking ball and caught him somewhere between obsession and terror that left him with more anxiety than was possible to hide, and when his psychiatrist had caught wind of what had him so wound up the man had told his mother and his mother had banned Greek Mythology from the house.

Roman had gotten furious at Remus for it, if Remus remembered correctly. The local community theater had been putting on Ajax, and Roman had scored the role of Agemenmon, and there had been at least three days of arguing between them in order for Roman to practice his lines while Remus was home.

Roman didn’t talk to him directly for a week after that.

So admittedly he doesn’t care much for the name, but he’s not against it, and if Janus likes it then Remus will live with it too. That’s enough for him.

“Also another point in its favor,” Virgil says. “Homer, aka probably the most well known Greek Writer Guy for all things Ancient Greek according to people who are neither Greek nor had an obsession with Greek Mythology, never specified a number of Furies, so potentially as you get allies you don’t have to change the name. You can build an interconnected web of sections of people to fight this fight and all of you can be called Erinyes. You can’t do that with the Moirai.”

“I could,” Janus says.

“Erinyes also have snake weapons and icons, and that’s just free real estate to show off.”

Janus scowls. “Shut up.” He clicks off his phone, shoving it back in his pocket before he goes back to eating his Thai food, and Virgil leans back again looking satisfied with whatever rate that Janus’s heart is beating at and Remus does not think about how much he would like to see either of their smiles pointed at him.

“I would never trust that many people,” Janus says after another minute, his eyes darting towards Remus for a second. “A team name like this needs to be more. You saw with that Firespark child—”

“Flamestrike,” Virgil says.

“—names are easy to hide behind, distance yourself from who you are as a person. He called himself a hero and decided that he could make life and death calls. I don’t want to have dozens of people running around assuming that just because they call themselves Erinyes that they can deal out justice as they see fit.”

“Only as you seem fit, then?” Virgil asks in a way that is so innocent that it's not innocent at all. Janus narrows his eyes at him, his lips curling into a displeased frown.

“Nah,” Remus cuts in loosely, twirling his fork in the air. “I get a say, too. Group decisions and all that. It’s basically a democracy in our club. Do you want to join? Our application process is really easy to fill out.”

“Wait, what?” Virgil says.

“Yeah,” Remus says. “All we need is two thousand dollars, the name you want to be called, and a picture of you in a cat girl costume, or a sexy french maid costume, whichever you have in your closet right now, you weeb.”

Virgil’s whole face blushes with a red that could either be embarrassment or anger or panic and his box of food gets crushed between his hands spitting out fried rice and some suspiciously spicy looking sauce onto the bleached rug below, but Janus’s laugh tumbles out of him like a freefall. Remus’s entire stomach swoops with far too much elation; it’s like jumping off a skyscraper, with the only sound he can hear being Janus’s wonderful, golden laugh as gravity tugs him down in an iron grip, except that there’s never any contact with the ground (or a windshield, with the glass slicing through his neck again and again and again—). It’s an amazing feeling. Remus wants to say something more, something else, something that keeps him smiling forever.

“People would do it!” Virgil splutters. “Not me, but people out there would do that if you said that was all it took! FBE people would do it, if that were all it took.”

“I don’t want to see Janus’s mom in a cat girl costume.” Remus says and immediately regrets ever being born when Janus’s laughter chokes off, and Virgil’s frown deepens. He’s mentally kicking himself in the dick by the time that Janus has his breath back and is looking down at his food again like it’s not actually edible as much as a prop of something else to focus on that’s not them.

“She wouldn’t,” Virgil says, to further bring the mood back to the reality that Dragana Witchall is a bitch and the only good thing she ever did was birth Janus. “But she might make one of her subordinates do it. Not Princeps, but like… I don’t know, Zeal?”

“Zeal?” Remus echoes.

“Oh,” Virgil says. “The Prince’s kinda-secret-but-not-really partner. You fought him a little bit at the thing— glasses, polo, curly blond hair and freckles?”

Remus remembers a toothy smile, a pleasant voice amidst the chaos, a hand raised towards someone who was protecting others and a white light that spelled death and danger and the name “Patton” on his tongue like a curse.

“His real name is Patton Hart,” Virgil continues. “I checked him out while we were waiting for you to wake up. Thanks to the name you gave us, which I'm not going to ask about how you knew, it really wasn't all that hard afterwards to get a last name. Some guy on Reddit actually dumped his phone number online so I’m sure he’s not having a good time right now. There’s not much on him. He made the honor roll at his school from middle school to sophomore year, and then his grades totally crashed, which meant that he got kicked from all his school clubs— which meant every club in existence. Seriously. I got second hand anxiety reading the online yearbook club lists. But other than that… nothing. He has two parents who live in Virginia with their two pet cats Snowball and Momo. No incidents that I could see that would have drawn your mom to him, Jay.”

Janus frowns. “What’s his power?”

“Taking away others’,” Remus says, clipped. “ French Maid costumes don’t seem like his style. He dresses too much like a youth pastor and it's weird. Do you think that he likes to be called Daddy?”

Janus snorts into his take out box. Virgil grimaces, but then shakes his head and blinks.

“Wait, did you say ‘takes away powers’?”

Remus tilts his head just enough for his neck to screech in agony and pretends like he doesn’t hear the scream of all those people that had been hiding behind that wind barrier, like he doesn’t see the silhouette of Janus falling right out of the sky, like he doesn’t breathe in for a moment and taste the white nothingness of whatever that white light had done to his future vision.

“Yeah,” Remus says in his best approximation of everything-is-fine. “Takes away.”

Virgil frowns. “Huh.” He chews on a piece of chicken. “Mostly I’ve been seeing him shadowing The Prince around. I had guessed that he was a partner on some level to him because he was always in the background of the photos taken. My theory was that he could boost powers. But I guess taking them away is a much more effective measure for making sure The Prince never loses.”

“Okay, yeah, then what the hell is Roman’s power?” Remus asked and then realized a second later that maybe he didn’t actually want to know the answer to that. Surely out of all of them, Remus should have been the one to know. He grew up with Roman; didn’t that suggest that he should have noticed something power-like? Shouldn’t it have been as obvious as Remus’s future sight?

Except that he didn’t know. Hadn’t known. Because Roman never told him. Because Roman let him grow up thinking he was crazy. Because Roman never cared about him, never trusted him, and Remus had given everything for him, but now he was maybe-brainwashed and that everything he had given meant nothing.

Janus has that look in his eye that says he wants to know (and use and manipulate and scheme) and Virgil shifts in his seat with the urge to talk, and Remus braces himself for the worst.

“It’s pretty hit or miss on if siblings will even get powers; One kid can trigger nuclear bombs when they sneeze and the other can have absolutely nothing at all. But generally if both siblings have powers, those powers are connected,” Virgil says, twirling his fork in the air with the confidence of the genetic scientist that he was not. Remus is still impressed. “There’s a few studies on it, but most of it is unconfirmed and unproven since like…superpowers are a new phenomenon and ethics is a thing and if people can explain away something they will—which yeah I’m sure you are already super aware of, sorry. I was going to write a few essays on it myself, but the combination of being kidnapped and hunted for sport and teaching Janus how to be a real boy forced me to drop it. I still have some PDF prints of the stuff published if you’re interested in the real science of it. Thank the deities that be for Sci Hub—where was I going with this?”

“You think Roman and I have connected powers,” Remus clarified around the stranglehold on his throat that feels like his brother, a self declared superhero’s hands. “What like… he sees the future too?”

That had been a theory between him and Janus. They had been in their hotel room, practically lying side by side with their phones between them and newspapers dating back months about The Prince’s actions when they set up their plan for Janus’s TV debut: it had been sickeningly terrible realization back then when he had been staring at the front page new articles plastered with The Prince’s face and wondering how he avoided expelling blood from every orifice. Now know that it’s Roman’s stupid face under that mask….

Remus stabs a piece of pineapple particularly hard and does not think about stabbing Roman in the face.

“No?” Virgil says, like he can’t possibly imagine how Remus came to that conclusion. “He controls probability.”

Remus stares at him as Virgil chases after a clump of fried rice in his carton without actually explaining what that could possibly mean. Janus, at least, is wearing a similar expression: something confused and prideful, desperately not understanding but not willing to ask. He instead clears his throat and places his box on the table next to Virgil’s side which causes Virgil to glance up.

“What?”

“Probability?” Janus repeats innocently. “Dice rolls? Should I ask him to flip a coin next time we meet?”

Virgil chews on the edge of his fork lightly, the sides of his fangs scraping the metal gently, and then drops it into his carton and places it on the table behind him. He looks around the mess and then jumps to his feet, nearly trips over Remus’s fragile legs, and scurries to the mess of papers and pens and textbooks on the counter. He gathers a handful of pens and dumps them on the sofa cushion between the three of them.

Janus grimaces like Virgil is a cat that just brought him a dead mouse, but Virgil doesn’t react. He picks up three of the pens (a red ball point, a black sharpie that’s missing a cap and a yellow highlighter) and keeps them in his hand.

“Both of you pick a writing utensil,” Virgil says motioning to the ones on the table.

Janus and Remus share a look but in the end Remus lunges forward and swipes the green gel pen and Janus gingerly picks up a pencil with a bitten off eraser holding it between his fingers at a distance.

“Okay, this is how you see the future, Remus,” Virgil says. “The quote-unquote correct way. No matter how many times you look, the both of you will pick those same writing utensils, unless you interact in a way that changes that, like telling Janus, for example, that the pencil is dipped in poison.”

“Ha,” Janus says in a very deadpan.

“But!” Virgil continues, motioning for them to hand the pen and pencil and he places them back on the sofa how they were before. “The Prince… uh your brother, Remus, he controls the probability of things happening. So, uh, when he uses his powers he…” Virgil picks up all the pens on the table and he replaces them with the ones from his own hand. “...switches them out.

“So now your only options are the ones newly placed in front of you. That’s why Remus doesn’t see what’s coming: Roman physically changes what is happening after he’s seen what it is.”

Janus stares at the new options intently.

Remus rocks back on his seat picking at a piece of broccoli stuck in his back teeth. “I don’t get it. Sometimes I can see what he’s doing and sometimes his stuff doesn’t work at all. What about that?”

Virgil twirls the pencil in his hand. “Well I assume that instead of pens, he’s manipulating number probabilities. Like percentages? Where 100 percent is a guarantee that something will happen and 0 percent is a guarantee that thing won’t happen. So if there’s say…a 2 percent chance Janus’ll launch across a stage and punch The Prince in the face, he switches that probability to a 98 percent Janus will launch across the stage and deck him in the face and successfully makes him look like a fucking unhinged superpowered supervillain on live TV. Congratulations.”

Janus doesn’t actually sneer but it’s a close thing.

Virgil turns to Remus and continues, “That’s why sometimes things still run the way you expect. Sometimes that 2 percent chance still beats out the 98. When The Prince had you pinned on the ground and told you it was over—remember that? You probably felt a swell of helplessness or sudden loss of will to fight, right?”

“You’re Done, Remus.” Roman had yelled hands around Remus’s throat, squeeze, squeeze, squeezing. “Time to give up.”

Remus pretends like he doesn’t taste blood in his mouth and Virgil at least is polite enough not to mention how his heart is hammering in his chest, slamming against his ribcage until those bones give in and break and all their hard work of keeping him alive these past few days becomes meaningless.

“Yeah,” Remus says.

“Yeah,” Virgil echoes. “He totally did that to you. And you still beat the odds and threw him off. It was amazing! I thought you both were done for; seriously I almost stopped the stream so no one would have to see it, but then you launched him—”

Janus clears his throat pointedly. “You’re fanboying again.”

“And you’re jealous that you aren’t nearly as cool as he is,” Virgil shoots back without hesitation, fanged grin all the way. Remus isn’t sure what the feeling in his stomach is, but it's so warm he thinks he might be burning from the inside.

Janus throws a napkin at Virgil who throws a pen back, and their voices are prickly but nice. Janus’s tongue sticks out of his mouth in a childish taunt that Remus has never seen him do, and Virgil fumbles over his food making a yelp as he nearly knocks their dinner on the ground and they both seem… happy. Content.

Good. A good ending.

“How’s probability connected to seeing the future?” Remus asks.

Virgil’s grin widens just a bit as he turns back to Remus. “I think it’s like…okay you know how when you see the future, you can change it by manipulating your own actions? That’s you changing yourself to affect the terrain. Your brother, on the other hand, changes the terrain to affect himself. You’re inverses!”

“You got all that from observing the two of them interact,” Janus says, blandly, “and yet you still think that there might be an uncharted part of the planet where dinosaurs still live and breathe.”

“You won’t be scoffing when a velociraptor tears you apart.”

“I can be a velociraptor anytime I want!” Janus says. “Literally! Any time!”

“And yet you aren’t one now,” Virgil says easily. “Lame.”

“Remus can’t be a velociraptor, ever! Are you calling him lame?”

Virgil scowls, jabbing his fork in Janus’s direction as if he was the bane of the whole world. “Don’t you dare, Witchall. Remus is infinitely better than you will ever be!”

“Well yes, of course, that is a given—” Janus says and apparently startles himself with the admission because he clamps down on his tongue so hard that he nearly draws blood. His cheeks flush and he glances at Remus as if he was hoping Remus hadn’t been paying attention. “I mean…well, actually you know what I mean. Surely this must have come up in one of the futures! There is no way that I haven’t already said it so there’s not really a need for me to say it again—”

Virgil nods along with what Janus is saying for a moment before he turns towards Remus and very peacefully opens his mouth. Remus is expecting some snappy comment, a low tiered insult towards Janus that he’s beginning to think is just how they handle any type of emotion between each other.

What comes out is 100% Janus’s voice. “Hey, Remus, I’m stupid and dumb and not worthy of your attention or affections but I’m equally in love with you as you are with me.”

“I do not sound like that!” Janus yelps.

The world is swaying under his feet. Remus’s eyes dart down to his knuckles to make sure they aren’t bleeding from a swing at Janus’s face the last time he heard anything close to those words. His heart is beating in his bruised throat and his tongue got lost in the back of his throat, and there’s something horribly fragile in his chest built out of glass words.

Virgil and Janus are snapping at each other again, filling the air with frantic vibrations as Janus’s cheeks flush and insist on something, something, something. Remus doesn’t hear any of it.

“Do you mean it?” Remus asks because he’s a masochist.

Janus freezes his hand on Virgil’s jacket collar, just barely short of choking the life out of Virgil who looks rather unconcerned about it all things considered.

“Remus…” He says. “Yes. I—I’m yours. If you would have me.”

If you would have me, he says, like there’s a future, a world, a universe where Remus would ever not want to cling to the shining warmth and trust that hangs around Janus. Like there is a chance that after everything that’s been laid on the table between them, Remus would turn his back. Like Janus hasn’t seen the ugliest parts of Remus and brought him back to life anyway.

Like Remus didn’t mean it when he said wherever you go, I’m following.

There’s seven inches between them and then there is not because Janus is sitting right next to him on the sofa on top of the forgotten writing utensils, their thighs touching in a way that seems innocuous and also very sinful.

“I love you,” Remus says, and that’s all because Janus is kissing him.

Virgil catches Remus’s take out box right before it slips between his hands and time passes but also does not because Remus does not know anything other than cardamom, shoe polish, red curry, and JanusJanusJanus, IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou—

Janus’s fingers twirl between Remus’s own, squeezing gently even when he pulls back. Janus presses another kiss to his cheek, to his cheek bone, to his forehead and then he presses their heads together. Remus feels dizzy, and fuzzy, and wonderful beyond belief. He’s almost giddy. If his ribs weren’t barely held together with scotch tape, his bones brittle and likely to snap if he twitches wrong, his lungs not preoccupied with trying to host a thousand buzzing bees, well… he thinks he might get up and scream to the whole world.

“So, what now?” Remus asks breathlessly. “Roman’s maybe-brainwashed, maybe-not, and that Zeal guy is probably going to try to convert us to the great religion of Mommy MindMelter—”

“Why would you call her that?” Virgil says.

“—But we stopped that FBE thing, right?” Remus continues. “What do we do next, raid some TV station and tell them all that your mom is trying to take over the world? Do we have some physical proof? We can drop it at a police station like Batman or something. Does the FBI or Homeland Security take drop ins? Oh shit, wait, does your mom control those? I don’t know what the Secretary of Defense does; I failed my government course in highschool… Why are you both making that face?”

Janus has a pinched expression on his face, like he just realized that Remus put hot sauce in his sweet tea again without him noticing because he was too busy reading on his phone to pay attention to Remus. Virgil grimaces and they shoot each other a glance in a way that makes Remus think he’s out on a not-very-funny joke.

“About that…” Janus says, scraping his tongue on his teeth to get rid of the imaginary taste.

“You didn’t stop shit,” Virgil says. “You delayed the opening of the FBE center here in Portland. By three days. The place opens up tomorrow at 10 am. They’re also adding a doubled security force at the doors, metal detectors, and The Prince and Zeal are supposed to be there to handle the crowd as well as offering autographs. It’s been all over the news, along with a very flattering picture of you covered in blood torn from the cameras two days ago. Neither of you are getting within 100 feet of that building without like… a shit ton of luck. And a world ending event.”

“Something more world ending-y than Dragana Witchall?” Remus asks.

“Unfortunately,” Janus says, rather glumly. “My mother is very well versed in long cons and manipulating public opinion. She appeals to the higher forms of government with super soldiers ready and willing to fight, and frames it as a heroic deed that only the most honorable can achieve to keep the public complacent. If one of her pieces dies… well, she can just find another to replace them until she gets enough of a following that when she runs for whatever position she crafts for herself, she’ll win or start a civil war on those in power.”

“People would really fight for her?” Remus says, and then remembers that it takes two seconds for Janus’s body to fall off a stage. “Nevermind.”

Janus threads his hand unoccupied through his hair again, musing the blonde locks. Remus thinks about plucking that hand too from his hair and interlocking their fingers and… just holding them together. Like a tether, like a net, like an anchor. For all the futures (and presents) where he’s kissed Janus until he’s run out of breath, somehow the simple thought of holding his hand seems suddenly, surprisingly scandalous of him.

“It’s a power-debt dynamic,” Janus says clinically. “She makes people believe they owe her something to the point where even those that she’s not mind-controlling will act on her commands without hesitation. You heard your brother. He thinks he owes her, and he’s willing to parade around promoting her cause because of it, and if it comes to a fight…Remus, I’m sorry, but Roman will likely die for her, too.”

Right. Because Remus had picked up a gun in his haze of fury and he kept shooting and Roman hadn’t backed down even when they were inches apart. At the time, it had seemed like just another thing that Roman would do by himself, no mind control needed; he always liked to be the hero to Remus’s force-fed villainy. But even if Remus wants to peel his own skin off at the sight of his brother, stopping him wouldn’t stop the bigger problem of the power hungry sociopath trying to gain world domination.

Remus has seen Roman die more ways than he can count, handled half of them personally, and isn’t sure if he wants it to stick or if he wants Roman to live until he’s 115. His head hurts to think about it, and there are other things to think about in the meantime (Janus, Janus’s hands, Janus’s lips, Janus tongue….)

“The dedication… the guilt…” Janus says. “I know what it’s like to be under her control better than anyone.”

“I would have died for her; I would have killed for her,” is not said out loud, in this time, but Remus doesn’t have to go searching through futures to know that Janus is thinking it. By the dark look in Virgil’s eyes, he seems to know it too.

It’s weird to think for a moment and imagine that instead of Roman’s pompous ass up on that stage smiling for the cameras, talking about duty and honor and glory, it might have been Janus. Or well… not Janus. Someone less opinionated, someone less real, someone who doesn’t argue or cuss or beat up children in Idahoan Malls or get flustered over the words I love you. Someone who doesn’t think on planes world’s beyond what Remus can plan and plays 5-D Chess with his words but still has a shitty poker face and can’t stand messes. It would be like someone tore out everything that made Janus Janus, and shoved something else in.

There’s a swell of appreciation in Remus for Virgil at that moment, for reaching out, and then refusing to leave him behind, dragging Janus kicking and screaming towards the future that they were currently living, and every other little detail that Remus will never know about.

“Roman’s always gotta be the hero,” Remus comments, squeezing Janus’s hand in his own as he stares at the cut Roman’s rapier had given him. It hadn’t hurt in the moment with all the adrenaline and fury coursing through him, but now the neat precise stitching itched and ached sharply. “If I show up anywhere he’s going to come running. I could lure him away from the FBE.”

Janus nods politely at the information, which is because he probably already figured that much out. His nose twitches as if he’s doing complex mind boggling arithmetic, and he sets his head against Remus’s shoulder, like he’s not afraid of ripping apart Remus’s fragile skin. He’s warm, warm, warm.

“That would be good,” he says. “Considering I can’t land a hit on him without your help…. If he’s distracted I can sneak into the FBE and destroy their files and shut down their location before they have a chance to actually harm anyone, and then I can sneak back out with a different face in the chaos.”

He has his scheming face on, and Remus pretends that his heart doesn’t do a flip at the sight of it fitting so rightly on his face: the look that belongs on him, the powerful confidence of someone who knows what they’re doing and knows how to do it well, the easiest thing in the world to fall in love with, and even easier to trust with everything that Remus is.

“Sounds like a plan,” Remus says, cracking his neck. “I’m going to need a gun.”

He pretends like the beat where Janus doesn’t immediately say anything and Virgil chokes on his food doesn’t strike him directly in the chest.

“I’m not going to kill him,” Remus says.

“It’s not that we don’t believe you,” Virgil says. “But like… if you google unhinged right now, your face is the first thing that comes up. I don’t really think we can just stroll into a gun shop and demand a gun. Plus I think Oregon requires a background check with a purchase, which you are absolutely not going to pass, Janus won’t pass, and it won’t be a quick process to get through even if I pass. I really don’t think guns are the way to go with this.”

Janus hums deep in his chest. “Does it have to be a gun?”

Remus tries not to feel like he’s being ganged up on. “Unless you know of something that has the same range and is easy to use. If this whole probability thing is true, then he’s going to need to be extra focused on a bullet to make sure it doesn’t hurt anyone, and it will give me some room to stall for time without needing to use my power.”

“And the last thing you guys need is Remus using his power,” Virgil says, pointedly noting the floor where they had cleaned up the blood earlier. It’s strange that all of their feet and shoes are standing over it, in such a small area, so close together and Remus can’t figure out why he thinks that should be strange.

Still, Virgil has a point; Remus doubts that he’d be an effective distraction for very long if one peak at the future sent him directly to the morgue without passing GO or collecting $200. At the very most he can only imagine that he might be able to out maneuver Roman one time—belief in his power or not before his body decomposes on the spot.

“No offense,” Virgil adds.

Remus contemplates sticking his fork down his throat just to make himself vomit up everything he just ate.

“I don’t think you can offend me if you tried,” he says instead, because he does feel a little bad about making Virgil clean up his blood after he already said he was squeamish, after he just rubbed his relationship with Janus right in his face, after, after, after. Half digested Thai food, however cool it would look, probably would be crossing the line into unforgivable territory that even his strange admiration for Remus couldn’t withstand.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Bold implications from someone who got flustered over a dick joke earlier.”

“That doesn’t count!” Virgil says quickly. “We were having a moment! And you ruined the moment with a dick joke!”

“Is there ever a better time for a dick joke?”

“Any other time! Literally!”

“Virgil! I can’t believe you think my grandmother’s funeral is an appropriate time to joke about whipping it out. How nasty! Shame on you.”

“I did not say that!”

“Does my grandmother’s funeral not count as any other time?”

“I’m starting to think you don’t even have a grandmother!”

“If I did, would her funeral be a good time for a handjob--?”

“I have a plan,” Janus decides suddenly.

A hurt look flashes across Virgil’s face, for a split second, and Remus thinks that if he blinked he definitely would have missed it entirely. In its place is a solid wall of boredom and he reaches out and plops his take out container on the coffee table right next to Janus’s forgotten curry.

“Oh good,” Virgil says. “So you’re going to be evacuating my apartment?”

“Don’t sound so sad, my dear,” Janus says. “You have a part in it still.”

“The fuck I do! I’ve done enough for you in my lifetime and I’m not looking to be arrested and-or get thrown in some super secret Antarctic jail for world-ending threats, which the two of you are, by the way. Thanks, but no thanks. I nursed Remus back to health, gave you a place to lay low, but if that is over, then I want no part of what you’re planning next.”

"Oh, I don’t know," Janus sighs theatrically, catching Remus's gaze out of the corner of his eye and winking. "I think you can do something more. It would hardly take more than an hour of your time and you would be perfectly fine after. All limbs attached, I promise!"

“Oh no,” Virgil says, catching sight of the gaze they just shared. “Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely not what?” Janus asks innocently, with a pleasant smile that borders on threatening. He stands up, nearly towering over where Virgil is folded on the couch, and there’s a shadow over his face that Remus absolutely loves.

“If you had to clarify I’d have all my limbs attached afterwards I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t know what it is, but I’m not going to help you,” Virgil says stubbornly. “I’m done with all the crimes, I’m done with your schemes! I let go of that life when you left the first time! In fact, there’s not a single thing you can do or say that will get me off this couch!”

And, at that, Remus can’t help but grin.

[Chapter Eleven]

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