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Three years ago Virgil’s life changed forever. It’s been a wild ride since, but among the weirdest things that have happened as a result of being flung into a crazy, spectacular, fantastic world include (but are very much not limited to):
-That time he accidentally earned a life debt from the Dragon Witch of Downtown;
-Fighting a horde of pixies disguised as wasps on Midsummer’s Eve when they tried to fuse into some kind of pixish superentity that would’ve taken over the entire park system of the city;
-Ending up dripping wet and furious in front of the shockingly human mayor when things had gone very wrong with a local kelpie;
-Off the back of that- being officially inaugurated as the city’s Gatekeeper of the Odd and Atypically-Terrestrial (yeah he had a hand in coming up with that name and you bet he’d made sure it made a cool acronym);
-Oh, and adopting a veritable menagerie of magical-or-otherwise individuals into a patchwork family of six (sometimes five; it’s complicated).
That last one stands out, doesn’t it?
It certainly stands out to Virgil, who is only in his mid-twenties and very much under-qualified for basically everything his daily life now consists of. Saving and watching over the border between the sub- and sur-reality that makes up the city is one thing, and thanks to his handy-dandy (possibly granted by Death question mark) power of invisibility he can get those responsibilities done without too much issue or risk, and literally vanish when he needs the time away from it all. But the kids? You don’t duck out on kids- especially not these ones.
They’d never let him, for one thing. For another; he would never, ever want to.
Technically two of them aren’t actually kids; they’re just part of the family, but he’s fallen into the habit of parenting everyone he comes across now and they’ve yet to complain. Well, D.C. complains regularly, but Virgil knows it’s just for show. The other three (he says three; they could be two today but he hasn’t checked yet) are all actual children, and definitely require his parenting to stay alive.
Almost as if summoned the door to his room opens and little footsteps skitter in over the wooden floor. With a soft huff of effort Patton pulls himself up onto the bed, all soft blond curls and smiles, displaying the missing front teeth they’d had a whole debacle about the tooth fairy over. Virgil groans dramatically which makes the kid giggle, and he rolls over so Patton can come and sit on his chest and play with his bangs. He needs to dye those again soon, Virgil thinks as he yawns.
“It’s so late, you’re so sleepy!” Patton trills. His voice is high and sweet and there’s a note to it that makes Virgil wonder for the billionth time since the kid started talking if there’s something other than human in Patton’s background. He makes a mental reminder to check in with the Witches who ran the orphanage Patton had been dumped in when he goes to get his hair-dye, because if the boy turns out to be part siren or banshee then Virgil will definitely need the heads up.
For now the power of Patton’s cute pout is dangerous enough as it is. “You know, I used to sleep in every morning and not get up until lunchtime, until you guys came along,” Virgil says, booping Patton on the nose. The boy makes a face and rolls his eyes (he’d learned that from Logan) before clambering off him and walking to the end of the bed, where he hurls himself off and lands neatly on the floor a few feet away (he’d learned that from either Roman or Remus, or both). It doesn’t give Virgil as much of a heart attack as it had when he’d started doing it, because somehow he has yet to injure himself on landing. It’s pretty impressive really, and Virgil is just a teeny bit proud of his so- of the boy.
“We want pancakes!” Patton yells as he races out of the door, and an answering roar of ‘Pancakes!’ from down the hall signals that Roman and Remus are up as well.
It’s so early, ugh. But the kids are up; so he’s gotta be up. That’s how it works when you’re a parent, he’s learned.
Virgil glances over to the enormous tank on the far side of the room, meeting a pair of black eyes and a flickering tongue where the yellow anaconda is hanging out on the carefully selected plants that litter the floor of the terrarium. D.C., his best friend-slash-first-pseudo-family member, is snickering softly, and yawns while they hold eye contact, giving Virgil a pointed twitch of the head in the direction of the door before he slithers off to curl back up in his favourite corner under the sunlamp, out of sight. Traitor. He knows damn well he’s the only thing that can currently distract the twins while Virgil is trying to get things done as efficiently as possible. Fine, the human will just have to get him back another time then.
Logan appears at his door on the way past to the living room, drawn by the noise. He stops and looks in on Virgil, who gives him a little wave as he rolls out of bed. “You are required in the kitchen, Mr. Gatekeeper,” the android says, and then he’s gone again. Virgil shakes his head fondly. He could do without constantly being referred to by his title, but Logan is a bit of a work in progress.
Since being rescued from a nasty fae lab under the Library, Logan’s processors have been a little screwy. How he even manages to function without the fae who built him powering him directly is quite the mystery, but function he does, and they’re working on finding him some better memory banks to help with the acquisition of new knowledge as soon as possible. For now the android knows a lot of things, but is shockingly naive, and Virgil has had his hands full trying to acclimate the poor guy to the real world, instead of the world of books he’d previously known.
Everything else aside, though, Logan does have a point. There’s already a lot of concerning noise coming from along the corridor and with a baby Hydra with a penchant for shape-shifting and a terrifying grasp of the concept of divide and conquer; a fearless and far too easily led seven year old with a face that will get him literally everything his heart desires; an android who knows probably more than all the experts in the world combined but is the walking definition of 'you spent so long wondering if you could that you never stopped to think whether or not you should’; Virgil needs to hurry up before the place is burned down. He’s their only impulse control, after all.
So he breaks into a jog once he’s pulled his hoodie over his t-shirt, disappearing out of the room to try and supervise his unorthodox and wonderful family.
D.C. blinks at the disturbance and smiles to himself. “He’ll be fine,” he murmurs, tongue flickering once before he settles back to sleep to the distant sounds of glorious chaos.