Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As the rest of his brothers stare, stunned, at the screen of the monitor, Logan quietly slides into his practiced (forced) calm, batting down the rising tide of his hysteria. Now is absolutely not the time. He slips to the side, his fingers moving by muscle memory as he attempts to track the video transmission signal. He vaguely registers Janus gently pushing Thomas aside, speechless as he is, and taking over the “negotiation”, his voice maintaining his usual smooth and steady smugness.

Nevermind that they can all see his fingers picking at the seam of his gloves. His tell since youth that he’d trained himself out of once their careers had properly taken off (once Virgil had gone). He hasn’t seen Janus do that in years.

The first time, he and Patton had just been introduced to their new siblings. “Logan, Patton, meet Virgil and Janus,” Father had told them, a hand on Logan’s shoulder and the other on Patton’s head.

He remembered they had been standing in the living room of his house, his soon-to-be stepmother and step-siblings looking very much out of place and uncomfortable. While Patton, ever the social butterfly, had bounded forward to greet them, he had silently observed. The other boys had inherited the narrow jaw and soft brown hair of their mother, the latter somehow—he decided it was amusing—curling over all three of their foreheads in the exact same way.

(Janus, in recent years, gelled it back fiercely, or else it was pressed flat under his usual bowler hat. Neither the twins nor Thomas shared the same trait.)

Virgil had been heavily slouched, hands curled tightly around the hem of his large hoodie, dark eyes on the ground. Whenever they darted up to look at them, Logan saw how heavily shadowed they were, eyebags ringing the lower lids thickly. He looked even more exhausted than his mother.

His subtle vigilance was so greatly-honed (Logan only realised just how Virgil showed his protectiveness years down the line) that he didn’t even notice Janus was there until he peeked out from behind Virgil. Even then, Logan couldn’t see much else of him except for his hands, which had crept out to hang onto Virgil’s sleeve, and the scar crawling up one half of his face, too large for such a small boy. Too large for anyone, really. For some reason, his eyes immediately focused on the picked nails of his fingers, the skin around them ragged, red and irritated. Bleeding slightly too.

Without a word, he had slipped off to find the first-aid kit in the bathroom. As he had turned the corner, he remembered his father had given a sigh.

“My apologies,” he heard, “he’s rather prickly towards others…”

There had been a twinge of…something…in his chest. Something painful. But he ignored it as he picked out some ointment and a few band-aids with Spyro the Dragon on it.

When he made it back to the living room, his new family had migrated to sitting on the couch. When walked up to the two boys huddled together on the soft cushions, he didn’t remember what exactly he had said after presenting his items, but he did remember the warm swelling of pride when Virgil finally looked him in the eye to thank him quietly. Especially so, since he was long-used to being the socially and emotionally stunted one of the family, but it seemed they hadn’t even opened up to Patton yet.

This? This was a first, and it remained a warm memory, even until today.

Even still, after that first meeting it took a while before the others warmed up to him and Patton, to even begin to ease around them. It took many viewings of Disney, a number of sessions of Cluedo and poker, before he started to see Virgil’s habits of climbing onto the kitchen counter to sit, or Janus’s penchant for napping in the sun on the porch like a grandma.

Janus first smiled so, so widely, when he ate Patton’s cookies for the first time, before immediately schooling it into smoothness again. But it had been there, and Patton’s baking experiments increased by tenfold over the next week. Janus and Virgil both tried to help and learn, but their attempts were disasters, and they were soon banned from the kitchen. It was especially funny, since their mother was a fantastic cook, and when they got more comfortable it was a common point of teasing amongst them.

Virgil, he took over a year to crack. Logan could recall, clear as day, during the wedding, when he turned his head towards his siblings and almost dropped his clipboard of tasks (the day had to be perfect!!!) when he saw the upward curve of Virgil’s lips, looking at how happy his mother was.

His smile appeared more and more, as the years passed and the twins, then Thomas were born, and he fussed over them more than even their mother did.

Which is why, now, when Virgil is before his eyes again for the first time in three years, he is sure (as well as his family) that he’s willing to do just about anything to see him smile again.

He can see and feel Remus’s hand land on the head of the chair behind him, leaning forward with the characteristic focus of his (it’s usually seen when he’s planning chaos. Which is all the time, really). His hands are still flying over the keys, unwilling to let himself slip into emotion at this critical junction. There will be time later, when Virgil is back with them.

The computer pings, and his breath catches.

It found something.