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“Virgil! Stop! I’m fine! Stop it!” A teenage age Thomas was sitting on the couch, Virgil sitting nearly on top of him with a bottle of something. Thomas was leaning back as far as he could, but that didn’t help as Virgil dabbed at a particularly nasty cut on his cheek. Thomas appeared to be trapped under Virgil slightly, just enough that he could not escape from under Virgil.
“No, let me do this or it’ll get infected and it’ll be my fault that you could die! I don’t want you hurt, so. Let. Me. At. It!” Virgil looked to be in his late 20s early thirties and was wearing comfy clothes, a purple shirt with a black and purple plaid hoodie and fuzzy black socks with white outlined cartoon bats on them. But he might as well have been wearing a doctor’s uniform for all the medical equipment that was laying on the coffee table. It looked as if Virgil had robbed a whole damn hospital for all the bandages and over the counter medicines there were scattered across it.
“Papa! I can do this myself! I’m not 5 anymore! I can take care of myself!” Thomas half-yelled, pushing Virgil’s arm away from his face, trying to grab the medicine for Virgil’s hands as well. Thomas failed to do so, and Virgil took the opportunity to dab the cloth in his hand on the cut. Thomas winced at the pain of whatever was soaking it, likely an antiseptic.
“Ow! Papa!” Thomas whined grabbing at the cloth in Virgil’s hand, but again failing as Virgil managed to get the cloth out of reach.
“This will help it not get infected, I’m sorry it hurts, but I. Have. To. Do. This!” Virgil grunts out the last fews words, navigating Thomas’s squirming, dabbing the cloth on Thomas’s face once more.
“I’m hearing yelling what going on here?” Patton says as he peeked his head in, walking in when he sees the scene before him.
Thomas opened his mouth to respond, likely to plead with Patton to get him out of there, but Virgil spoke first. His face was distraught, a little bit of an overreaction to the fairly shallow and medium sized cut on Thomas’s face.
“Pat, our little batling got a cut on his face and won’t tell me where it’s from or let me treat it!” Virgil pouted, and Patton clearly saw Thomas rolling his eyes behind Virgil’s back, sending a quick stern expression Thomas’s way.
Remus suddenly appeared, neither of the three noticing his arrival until he screeched loudly, causing everyone to jump.
“Oh, is deep enough that I can stitch up? I’ve always wanted to use the skills I’ve learned from doing it to myself!” Remus cackled, Virgil frowning deep at Remus.
“Absolutely not! It’s a small cut, but even small cuts can get infected and-” Virgil argued, he looked like he was beginning to spiral when Janus walked through the door, looking unimpressed, wearing a bath robe and a pair of pajama pants as well as a mud face mask, carrying a single glass of wine.
Janus took one look at Virgil, raising one eyebrow before stretching out the hand with the wine to Thomas, asking, “You want some wine for the pain? It’ll help.”
Thomas groaned as Virgil hissed at Janus, pulling Thomas away from the wine, “No thanks, Mom, I-”
Logan walked into the room, seeing Janus holding out wine to Thomas, shooting Janus a disapproving glare, slowly shaking his head personally at Janus. “Janus, you can’t be giving alcohol to minors, he’s 14 for christ’s sake!”
Janus rolled his eyes, “Society is a lie, it’s rules mean nothing and it’s foundation is made solely of lies, I don’t subscribe to rules other people I have never met have placed on me.”
Roman appeared from behind Logan, apparently having been listening as he replied with a hand on his hip, eyebrows sky high, “So philosophical, Janus the manace, but can we refrain from doing things that could get him taken away from us by this society you so diligently say is a lie?”
Janus hissed at Roman, but begrudgingly brought back his hand, bringing his wine instead up to his lips, finishing the rest of it, grumbling something about the system being lies as he trudged into the kitchen, his slippers creating an interesting sound on the carpet and when the ground switched to tile.
Virgil again tried to dab at the wound, but Thomas was ready this time, dodging his face out of the way, making a sound of protest. Virgil was ready to try again when a tight grip on Virgil’s hand stopped him. Virgil whipped around to see that Patton was holding onto Virgil’s wrist a stony expression on his face.
Ignoring Virgil’s protests, Patton plucked the cloth and bottle of medicine near effortlessly from Virgil’s hands, turning and handing the supplies to Thomas, who’s eyes lit up smiling as Patton handed him the supplies. Thomas squeezed Patton’s hand before he took the cloth.
“Thanks Dad.” Thomas said, rolling his eyes when Patton ruffled his hair lovingly.
“Anything for you, Thomas.” Patton responded, smiling gently. Once Patton turned around, however, he leveled a glare at 3 of the 5 people in the room other than Thomas.
“Now, we are going to leave Thomas alone, I’ll stay here and see if he wants to talk, I know we’re all concerned, but we need to let him be free to at the very least try to take care of himself. No buts.” Patton instructed everyone else, stopping Virgil’s protest in it’s tracks with the last sentence and a glare.
“Haha, butts!” Remus cackled, roaring with laughter, sticking his tongue out at Patton when Patton looked at him, an intense disapproval on his face directed at Remus as he gestured with his head for everyone to leave.
Not wanting to defy Patton, everyone silently filed out, Logan stopping briefly to raise his eyebrow at Patton. Patton vehemently shook his head, expression much more gentle as Logan hadn’t encouraged any of what happened, quite the opposite in fact.
Thomas gazed at Patton in awe, “I didn’t know you could do that! Papa was so insistent, how did you get him to listen just like that?”
Patton smiled, dimples forming in his cheeks, one deeper than the other.
“When you’re a dad, you learn how to weaponize your disappointment, and no one likes a disappointed Dad in this house, right?” Patton prompted.
Thomas nodded his head, “You look like your going to not give me any cookies when you do that, so I definitely don’t like your disappointed face.”
Patton ruffled Thomas’s hair again, stopping when Thomas squeaked in protest.
“Well, after this, you might even get a second cookie for having to deal with that cut, but before that, as you’re cleaning your wound, are... you okay with telling me what happened? Virgil can be a bit overprotective, but you know he means well, but because he’s so concerned he-”
“-has an odd way of expressing it, yeah, I know.” Thomas finished for Patton, bowing his head, staring at the cloth while biting his lip. His mind appeared to replay whatever happened to him, his shoulders tensing up, Thomas closing his eyes before he snapped his eyes open, hesitantly meeting Patton’s open and gentle gaze.
“I’ll... I’ll tell you what happened, keeping it from you will only worry you more now...” Thomas rubbed the back of his neck before starting.
“So... I was coming home....”