Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s well known by everyone by now; you’re not allowed to touch Janus.

There’s been enough subtle flinches and less-subtle hisses made by him any time another Side even so much as tried to approach him for it to be an unspoken but understood rule that he’s not a fan of being touched. Even Patton, for all of his well-meaning attempts at welcoming Janus into the FamILY, has learned by now that he just can’t dish out any of his “world-famous dad hugs” and expect them to go well with the deceitful side.

So yeah, as far as anyone’s concerned, Janus doesn’t like to be touched.

And that’s just how he wants you to think.

Listen, everyone’s got a reputation to uphold. Logan is “serious”, Patton is “happy”, Roman is “confident”. Even when everyone knows that that isn’t always the case, it’s still more or less the expected default of their demeanor. It’s just what’s “normal” for them.

Janus is the villain.

And villains don’t let themselves get soft, or vulnerable, or God forbid needy.

Villains don’t ask for hugs.

Not even when they’re right there in arm’s reach, willing and waiting.

So he hisses at the prospect of cuddles, he scoffs as the suggestion of sympathy, and he makes sure he’s kept at every possible distance from the other sides, both literal and figurative.

His spot on the couch is on the far end, where he can hardly even see the tv but he’s also out of anyone’s reach. He doesn’t even have a reserved seat at the kitchen table, opting instead for standing in the corner with his meal or just grabbing his plate and disappearing. And he never, ever lets himself open up to any side.

There’s no telling what’ll happen if he exposes any of his secrets to someone, or what they’ll do with such sensitive information once they have it. Realistically, he knows they’re all too good to do anything terribly hurtful to him, not even the ones who have the biggest reasons to do so, and that those who somehow don’t hold any resentment towards him would only take his confessions as some sort of polite bonding opportunities. He knows that he’d only be met with sympathy and understanding if he ever felt so bold as to open up like that, but he won’t let them prove him wrong.

It's easier than you’d think, being so guarded. The one thing easier than lying to someone is not telling them anything, and as far as Janus is concerned he really has nothing to say to anyone. They don’t need to know what he’s doing or thinking, and he doesn’t need to tell them. Anything he says is a planned part of a script, every expression he makes is a subtle performance.

A performance made only that much easier thanks to his serpentine features.

See, the thing is, it was all technically Thomas’ doing. Maybe not deliberately, but on some subconscious level, it’s what he decided made the most sense. Liars and villains are commonly portrayed as snakes in folklore and mythology, leading all the way back to the serpent of Eden tricking Adam and Eve into sinning. It only made sense for Thomas to associate Janus with snakes.

He is Deceit, after all.

But there are a lot of things that snakes can and can’t do that set them apart from mammals. Most notably, they’re cold-blooded. This means they can’t produce any body heat of their own and have to resort on external sources to stay warm. Janus, of course, has already been thoroughly prepared for this by supplying his room with a surplus of heat lamps, space heaters, and heated blankets to keep himself from freezing over. Snakes also shed their scales. Again, easily manageable with enough humidifiers and time to take care of himself.

Snakes also can’t cry.

Don’t misunderstand, Janus has tried more times than he’d care to count. Sad movies will put him in a dour mood but they can’t coax any tears to form, and chopping onions only ever makes him want to gag, not cry. So no, Janus physically isn’t capable of crying like his almost peers.

It does come with its perks, of course. It’s much easier to pretend to be fine when you don’t need to force down any rogue signs of sadness, and he’s tried making himself cry so many times now that he’s practically an expert at pretending to tear up, a perfect act for gaining sympathy if need be.

Still, sometimes he wonders how it must feel to actually cry like that. It must feel cathartic, and maybe even freeing to an extent, not like he’d ever let himself be seen crying even if he could.

But he can’t, and he never will, because this is how Thomas perceives him and it can’t be changed or undone. He may as well use these traits to his advantage, perfecting his performances and keeping the others out of reach while he tells himself he can handle being a little cold.

*

The others are having a movie night. They’ve apparently made this a regular group event, one where they all gather around in their ridiculous onesies while they seem to do anything but watch whatever Disney movie Roman rigged in the votes.

Janus had been invited. Patton insisted on extending an open invitation every time there was a movie night, and Janus declined every time. Movie nights meant being far too physically close to the other sides, which meant he would be at risk of accidentally being pulled into an impromptu snuggle pile if he ever let his guard down even by a tiny bit. And on the off chance that that didn’t happen, there was still the certainty that Roman and Virgil would all but chase him out of the room before he could sit down.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to be there.

Turns out if you sit at just the right spot on the stairs, at this one specific angle, you can get a halfway decent view of the tv without being seen from the couch. Janus is sitting up there now, with a bottle of wine in hand and a lazy half-smile on his face.

If you were to ask him what he was doing here, he’d say he was eavesdropping and scoping out any gossip or drama. Whether or not you believed him was entirely up to you.

He’s already lost track of whichever movie is on the partially obstructed screen, with his attention focused instead on the cheerful chatter made by the other sides on the couch. It’s almost like a fun little drinking game; take a small sip every time Roman interrupts the movie or another side, take a big sip every time the group talks about an issue instead of focusing on the movie, and chug every time they all start laughing.

His bottle of wine is nearly empty and they’ve still got half of a movie left to go, thanks to all the chugging he’s been doing as part of his little game.

They’re really having fun down there, huh?

It’s especially hard to resist the urge to join them on nights like this, when their joy and camaraderie is almost contagious, but he can’t afford to give into that temptation.

Remember how you’re always told not to feed wild animals, even the really cute ones at the park? The reason behind that rule is that giving food to them will only encourage them to interact with people even more, putting them at risk of being roadkill or any number of similarly gruesome fates.

It’s better for them, in the long run, to deprive them of that misguided kindness, lest their newfound domesticity lead to their downfall.

Janus knows better than to let himself be fed, that it’s safer in the long run to ignore that knot in his chest that twists and tugs and cries out at night for a warmth he can’t seem to replicate no matter how hard he tries.

Deep down, he knows it’s that he’s touch starved. It’s the only thing that makes sense, really, but wat can he do about it? It’s not like he can just creep up to Patton with his tail between his legs and beg for affection born of pity and obligation, and even if he did, it’d only encourage him to grow even more needy for any kind of touch. He’d be clingy, desperate, and worst of all, vulnerable. He’d be pathetic putty in the hands of anyone who cared to hold him, neglecting his own responsibilities in favor of fleeting physical affection.

He'd be ruined, and he can’t allow that no matter the cost.

Janus finishes the last of his wine and slumps against the railing with a quiet sigh, focusing instead on the sound of people much happier than him and on how he isn’t ever going to join them.

*

“—okay?”

Janus stirs awake, only realizing by doing so that he had fallen asleep in the first place. His neck is stiff and his back in sore, which he belatedly realizes is due to the fact that he’s still leaning against the railing on the stairs.

Is the movie already over? He can’t hear any sounds from the living room so everyone must be in their rooms already.

But there had been a noise that woke him just now, right?

Janus blinks blearily a few times, finally focusing on the blurry silhouette standing before him.

“What are you doing?” the faintly familiar figure asks.

There’s a distant part of Janus that is trying to warn the rest of him that he’s been caught, that someone’s discovered him and he needs to come up with a convincing enough lie to salvage this.

The rest of him is still too busy trying to make the world stop spinning to think of much else.

“I’ll leave,” he mutters, despite not yet rising to his feet. “jus’ takin’ a break, is all.”

There’s a quiet sigh, or he thinks he hears a sigh, before the other person talks again.

“How about you have some water real quick before you go? I think it’d really help.”

Unfortunately, he agrees.

Now it’s Janus’ turn to maybe-sigh as he slowly drags himself to his unsteady feet. “Fine, whatever.”

Getting down the stairs is… awkward, to say the least, made only more difficult since Janus refused to allow any help from whomever decided to wake and worry over him.

This mystery “Whomever” is already waiting at the couch with a glass of water, and as he sits in the glow of a lamp that has yet to be turned off, Janus finally acknowledges him to be Thomas himself.

Of course it was going to be him.

Janus sits down at the end of the couch, keeping a deliberate distance from Thomas as he does so. He quietly accepts the offered water and drinks as much of it as he can while Thomas watches.

Why is he watching?

“Were you sitting up there the whole time?” he asks once Janus finishes his glass.

“Define ‘whole time’.”

“Since we started the movie.”

Oh, he really doesn’t like where this is going.

“As far as you know, I may have only been there for five minutes when you ran into me.”

Thomas makes a face. “Were you, though?”

Janus narrows his eyes at him, arguably the strongest retort he can make right now.

“None of your business” he snapped.

“Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Thomas replies, a newer and gentler look on his face now. “I was just wondering.”

“Why?”

“Well… you do know you’re welcome to come to movie nights, right?”

“So what if I am?” Janus sighs, far too ready to just go to his room and get some proper sleep. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Wh—of course it does,” Thomas exclaims. “You’re a part of things now, we’ve all accepted you!”

Janus can’t hold back a scoff. “Oh really? Everyone has accepted me?”

The wince that crosses Thomas’ face doesn’t go unnoticed. “Well—I mean… I’ve accepted you, and as far as I’m concerned you have a seat at the table just like any other side. I don’t want you thinking you can’t be a part of things for whatever reason, okay?”

Janus considers himself lucky he’s too tired to do any serious emoting right now, because otherwise he might have almost looked touched.

“That’s kind, but you don’t need to worry about me. It’s better like this, anyway.”

He doesn’t even need to look at Thomas to know he’s staring right at him with some awful wide-eyed expression.

“…What do you mean by that?” he eventually asks.

“Oh, please,” Janus says with a practiced smirk. “I thought it was obvious that I was better suited to be a villain.”

“But do you want to be one?”

Janus doesn’t mean to falter at that. Don’t get him wrong, being the villain can be fun from time to time, but he didn’t exactly choose it from himself either. He didn’t choose to be known as “Deceit”, he didn’t choose to be a snake, and he certainly didn’t choose to be vilified from day one.

He just… made the best he could with the cards he was dealt.

When Janus finally realizes he hasn’t said anything yet, he looks back up to see Thomas looking at him like he’s never truly looked at him before. Like this is the first time he’s really seen him.

“Oh, buddy,” he coos, and that’s the only warning Janus gets before he’s pulled into something solid, real, and warm.

Warmth washes over him in an instant, almost enough to make him flinch just from how much it is and he doesn’t know if it hurts or it’s just that new, but either way he can’t bring himself to tear away from this impossible thing that’s taken a hold of him.

“Hey, shh, it’s okay,” Thomas murmurs, and even though his voice sounds a thousand miles away something deep and soothing rumbles against Janus’ chest as he finally recognizes that he’s being hugged. “It’ll be okay, alright? Just breathe for me.”

Has he really stopped breathing? A brief but deliberate inhale informs him that he has, and now it’s all he can do to keep focusing on those breaths through his tired, drunken haze and the fact that Thomas is hugging him like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

Janus feels the thing in his chest trying to claw its way out and scream for more, more, more, and he realizes with a gasp that he’s never felt warmer or safer in his life, and that he’d just about die if he ever went without this for even another second.

I’ve been ruined, he thinks to himself. I’ve taken what was never mine.

“You’re allowed to cry, you know,” Thomas whispers, his voice nearly overwhelming. “It’s okay if you need to.”

Janus wants to explain that he can’t, the rules of his nature won’t let him and Thomas is the one that did this to him in the first place but he doesn’t blame him as long as he keeps holding him like this, but all that comes out is a wretched sob as his eyes start to burn and his vision blurs.

He barely has time to think “what’s happening” before he feels something wet running down his cheek, followed by another and yet another.

Tears, the back of his mind concludes. This must be what tears feel like.

Sure enough, he starts feeling himself cry in earnest, with what must be buckets of tears starting to fall from his eyes as he begins to shake and sob against all disbelief.

Thomas holds him all the while, murmuring quiet reassurances and occasionally stroking his back with a love and tenderness that Janus had long since accepted he’d never earn, let alone receive.

The one part of his mind that’s still somewhat functional comes to the realization that of course he’s crying now, Thomas said he could.

And Thomas was the one that said he couldn’t before; he set that rule, and he can break it.

He thinks this may be a miracle, or maybe a punishment, that he can now truly weep and be almost human at that same time that Thomas fully embraced him in such a way, but as his tears finally run their course and the warmth has fully bled into his bones, he wonders if being this vulnerable is really as bad as he thought.

Maybe he doesn’t always have to be a villain, he decides.

Maybe now he can be safe.