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virgil-my-emo-son · 2 years

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I Will Deliver--Chapter One: The Apple Falls

Hi guys!!! I'm so excited to post this fic, I've been working on it for a while, and I'm super excited to share it. I wrote this for the @sandersidesbigbang event, and I have had the chance to work with the most incredible group of betas and artists on this fic! Thank you to @antisocial-xxxpert , @lemme-overthink-this , @kaythegay2022 , @bisexualoftheblade , and @talking4the1 for helping with this fic, I really admire and appreciate all of you so much!

chapter word count: 2911

summary:

Remus Rook is the best witch in the city. People come to him when they need results, and he’s happy to fulfill any murder requests at the right price.

Logan Skye is a student at Thomas University. He’s writing his thesis on magical ethics. Naturally, he goes to the most ethically dubious witch he can find: Remus.

So what happens when a friend of Remus hires him to kill the researcher fast becoming more than a colleague?

read on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41628708/chapters/104418612

Chapter One: The Apple Falls

Logan followed the directions he’d been given exactly: down the alleyway, up the fire escape, through the window, down the hall, down the stairs, down more stairs. He finally arrived at a heavy wooden door, carved with ornate patterns and sigils.

Logan reached up to trace one with his finger. He didn’t understand the symbols fully, but based on what distorted runes he could make out he thought it might have been for warding. He knocked thrice on the door and waited. It opened a few seconds later, by some invisible force. He walked in.

The room was everything Logan had expected and more. It was long and dark, with a couple of mossy windows at the top of one of the walls letting in green-tinted light. A big metal cabinet sat next to the door, and tiny drawers and shelves lined the rest of the walls. The ceiling was painted with symbols and images Logan couldn’t even begin to decipher, and the wood floor had splatters of paint and some sort of brown-black stains. A counter ran along the wall opposite the windows, covered in bottles and alchemical tools. And in the center of it all, in a crusty office chair with five little swivel wheels, sat the Duke of this wretched kingdom.

Remus Rook, the renowned head of Sanders City’s magical underworld. He was in a white wife beater and black cargo pants covered in patches, safety pins, embroidery, and chains. His brown, curly mullet had a white streak through it, and there was a cocky grin under his mustache. He held a black baseball bat between his legs, a baseball bat that was said to be his wand.

Logan couldn’t take his eyes off him. He was captivating.

“Gonna say something, handsome? Or are you just gonna stand there staring like a decapitated head?” Remus’s grin grew even wider.

Well, that imagery certainly woke Logan up.

“Were you anticipating my arrival? I only told one person that I was coming…” Logan trailed off.

“One person is enough for it to get back to me. I have eyes in the Skye.” His eyes twinkled at the pun.

Logan cleared his throat. “Well. You already know me, I’m Logan Skye. And you’re Remus Rook.”

“Yes, I am.” Remus raised an eyebrow. “What do you want, Logan?”

Logan straightened his glasses. “I’m actually here with a request.”

“Everyone is, what makes you so special?”

“Well.” Logan tried to remember what he’d rehearsed in the mirror. “I’m a student at Thomas University, and I’m working on my thesis right now. It’s on magical ethics, and I was wondering if–”

Remus began laughing. “Because–because I’m a very unethical witch! I get it, I get it! You want to interview me or some shit!”

“Actually, I want to work with you for a few weeks or so.” Logan was beginning to get irritated by Remus’s nonchalance.

“Work with me!” Remus’s laughter died down. “Oh, you’re funny, Logan.” He winked.

“So, are you willing to do it?”

“Am I willing to do it… I’m not sure. Maybe I should test you or something first.”

Logan’s stomach lurched. Test him? What exactly did that entail?

“I’m going to test you.” Remus repeated. “I have to know you won’t just hand me over to the police, don’t I?”

“I suppose so…” Logan was apprehensive about this. He had a feeling Remus’s next words were going to be something illegal.

He was right. “I want you to go with me on a hit. I want you to help with the hit. That way, you can’t turn me in without turning yourself in as well!”

“Remus–I can promise you I don’t want to turn you in. I am here for research purposes alone, that I can promise you.”

“Yes, but how do I know that? When you’re running a magical underworld, you’ve got to be careful, you know.”

“There must be a better way to test my truthfulness than having me help you with a murder.” Logan was getting nervous.

“Hm… let’s see.” Remus tapped his chin. “What if… you run a little errand for me.”

“What kind of errand?”

“No murder, don’t worry. It is a bit… unsavory, though.” Remus’s eyebrows went up as he saw the expression on Logan’s face. “Can’t handle it?”

“I can–I can handle it. What’s your task?”

“Do you know who Roman Prince is?”

“The musician?”

“The musician.”

“Yes, I know who he is.”

“I have a message for my twin brother.” A smile uncoiled across Remus’s face.

“You’re twins?”

“Duh.” Remus looked at Logan like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “We look identical.”

“Well, I’ve never seen you before today, and you don’t have the same surname. Although it is common for those in the entertainment industry to take on new names, so I suppose I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Besides, I don’t follow Roman Prince.”

“You don’t?” Remus’s eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Nope, I’ve never been a huge…music person.”

“I like you already, Logan! Everyone just fawns over him constantly, it drives me insane.” He put on a mocking voice. “‘What a prodigy you are, Roman.’ ‘You’re so talented, Roman.’ Where’s my appreciation, Logan? Who will love Remus Rook?” He put the back of his hand to his forehead, leaning back in the chair.

Logan quirked an eyebrow. So dramatic.

“Anyway!” Remus sat up. “I need you to tell him this: ‘Fuck you, Roman. Also, I painted you. If you want to see it, come to the studio. Love, Remus.’”

“That’s it? How does that ensure that I won’t turn you in?”

“It’s code, dummy. And if we get caught, we can easily tell them that you were also involved.”

“Okay, okay.” Logan sighed. “I’ll deliver your message.”

Remus smiled a huge smile. “Wonderful! I look forward to seeing you tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow? But Roman has a huge concert tonight, I don’t know if i can get it to him—“

“If you can’t get it to him tonight, I don’t know if I can trust you to do anything for me, can I?” Remus raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t—“

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Logan.” Remus turned his swivel chair back towards the counter and began mixing a few ingredients. It was clear Logan’s audience with the Duke was over.

He sighed and walked out of the room.

How was he going to get this message to Roman in time? Luckily, the concert was in Sanders City, but there was no way Logan would be able to get backstage to see the musician, or even one of his assistants. He would just send a letter or an email, but neither of those options would reach him in time, and they probably would be treated as regular fan mail and would never reach Roman at all. The superstar was known for being somewhat vain, but he surely didn’t read every note a fan wrote him.

Logan sat in his car for a minute, just thinking. He could come up with something. Remus was key to his dissertation, he had to come up with something.

He snapped his fingers as an idea hit him. Press pass. He wrote for Thomas University’s newspaper. It could work.

But would it work so close to the concert? He’d have to see.

He dialed the editor’s number and held it up to his ear. “Hello, Patton.”

“Hiya, Logan! What’s up?”

“I—“ Logan cleared his throat. “I need a favor.”

“A favor? What kind of favor?” Patton sounded amused. Logan assumed he wasn’t used to him asking for things, he usually tried to keep to himself.

“I need to get into Roman Prince’s concert tonight.”

“What for?”

Logan sighed. “It’s a lengthy tale, Patton, and one I can’t legally disclose.”

“Now I’m even more curious!” Patton laughed.

“Do you have any way to get me a press pass?”

“A press pass? Do you need to get backstage?”

“Yes. I have to see Roman Prince himself.”

“Really? That would be incredible, I love him! If I’d thought of it, I’d have gotten a pass for myself!”

Logan’s mouth made a tight grin, even though Patton wasn’t actually there to see it. “Yes, well, I need it as soon as possible. Is there any way you can get ahold of one for me, preferably within the hour? I can lengthen it to two if necessary. I need it soon, is what I’m saying.”

“I think I can do that! I’ve only done a press pass once before, and it was for a much smaller concert, but I’ll call Sanders Arena and see what I can do!”

“Thank you so much, Patton. If there is any way I can repay this favor, please let me know.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, Logan. I’m always happy to do something for a friend!”

“You are–” Logan cleared his throat. “You are the best, as they say.”

“Aw, thanks! I’ll give you a call back in a few, alright?”

“Alright. Talk to you soon.”

“Talk soon! Bye!”

“Goodbye.” Logan said, sounding a bit stilted and formal, before he hung up.

Now all there was was to wait.

—

Three hours before the concert, Logan began to get nervous. He would need to get in soon if he wanted to see Roman Prince. He didn’t like feeling nervous, it was something he was relatively unfamiliar with. Twice in one day, no less.

He picked up his cell phone and began to type Patton’s number in when the phone began to buzz. As luck would have it, it was Patton.

“Logan! Great news, I managed to get you a pass! I just emailed it to you.”

Logan breathed a sigh. “Thank you Patton, so much.”

“No problem, Logan! Although at some point I want to hear why you needed it so last minute.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to tell you that story, it may implicate you legally.”

Patton laughed. “Whatever you say, L!”

“‘L’?” Logan repeated.

“Just a nickname.”

“A nickname? Logan is my name, although I suppose I could also answer to L.”

“You’re funny, L! I’ll talk to ya later, okay?”

“Alright, goodbye, Patton.”

“Bye, L!” And with that, Patton hung up.

Logan signed into his email and printed off the PDF Patton had sent him, folding it and putting it into his pocket. He hastened (not ran, hastened) to his car. He was more reckless than he usually was. Logan was anxious, and his driving reflected it.

He parked downtown, paying a frankly ridiculous price for a spot. Walking into the venue, he looked at the printout. It instructed him to proceed to the VIP lounge and from there meet one of the venue employees to be led backstage.

He made it backstage with two and a half hours left to the concert. The backstage area was full of folding tables, a rack of clothes stood to one side, and there were cables everywhere. Crew members in black t-shirts walked around, stopping to talk to each other along the walls or in the middle of the room.

“Do you have Roman’s costume change for after Color?”

“That’s the third one, right?”

“Did Alex take that mic?”

“I’m not sure, but where’s the on-site alchemist? One of the sound tech’s throats hurts and he wants something for it.”

Logan just stood there for a second, taking it all in.

“What are you doing?” A voice said to him. Logan turned to see a tall man with sunglasses standing beside him.

Logan didn’t even blink. “I have a press pass.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “A press pass, huh?”

“Yes.” Logan pulled it out of his pocket, showing the credentials to the man.

“Hm. Well, are you here for anything in particular? I don’t see a camera.”

“I’m supposed to get an interview with Roman Prince.” Of course, this wasn’t true, the press pass wasn’t that specific, but Logan figured a little lie wouldn’t hurt. In fact, he was sure Remus would encourage it.

“His dressing room is right in here.”

Logan couldn’t believe his luck.

He walked in and the man closed the door behind him. Sitting in a chair, facing away from him, was a figure in an iridescent silver shirt and what looked to be red leather pants.

And next to him sat someone Logan was not too happy to see.

Logan cleared his throat. “Roman, Remus. I came to deliver a message, but it doesn’t look like that will be necessary any longer.”

Remus turned around, a smile uncoiling across his face. “Logan! You came! We were getting worried you wouldn’t show up!”

“Well, I went to some lengths to get here, but I now see that it was unnecessary.”

“Thank you for coming to see me, I hope you at least got free tickets to the show?” Roman said, smiling dazzlingly at Logan. He looked almost exactly like his brother, very attractive, but sans mustache.

Logan found that he liked the mustache better.

“I got a press pass, I don’t think that includes tickets.”

“You can watch the show from backstage! The sound is better back here anyway!”

Logan stared at him. “How would you know?”

Roman’s smile faltered. “Take my word for it. It really does sound much better.”

Logan turned to Remus. “Are you staying for the show?”

“Not sure! I just wanted to see if you’d actually show up, so I had Roman let me in.”

“Must I still tell Roman your message, or have you already delivered it?”

“You can tell him!” Remus grinned.

Logan sighed. “‘ Fuck you Roman. Also, I painted you. If you want to see it, come down to the studio. Love, Remus.”

“Hm. I… see.” Roman looked deep in thought, almost exaggeratedly so, his thumb and forefinger rubbing his chin.

Logan raised an eyebrow. “You are aware that I sped to get here, correct?”

“You’re worried about a little speeding? Oh, I went at least 15 over the whole way here! If the cops don’t catch you it’s not illegal!” Remus said with a huge smile bordering on manic.

Logan sighed, adjusting his glasses. “Well if we’re done here—“

“Wait!” Remus reached out to grab his arm. “You should stay. We can watch Roman’s show!”

“You’re welcome to stay! I can even do a little pre-show for you!” Roman opened his mouth to begin singing, but Remus clapped his other hand over his mouth.

“No offense, brother, but I don’t think either of us want to hear you sing.”

Roman looked indignant. “Why do you want to stay at the show, then? Riddle me that, brother?”

“I probably shouldn’t.” Logan shook Remus off. “We won’t be able to see anything from back here, anyway.”

“There’s TVs back here, it would be fine.” Remus snapped his fingers. “Or! Roman, dearest brother, is there any way you could snag us VIP tickets?”

Roman sighed. “I suppose I could.”

“Perfect!”

Remus picked up the black baseball bat leaning against the wall, and they walked out of the dressing room. The tall man who’d directed Logan to Roman’s dressing room, whom Logan assumed to be some sort of manager, walked them to the VIP lounge. This turned out to be a balcony directly facing the stage, with a few tables of refreshments and a bar to one side. It was already relatively full, and as Logan looked into the rest of the arena, he could see the seats beginning to fill up.

The people in the lounge mostly avoided them, eyeing Remus’s baseball bat nervously. Remus didn’t seem to mind, putting it over his shoulder and walking to the front row of seats. Logan followed.

They sat down in two of the seats, Remus leaning back and spreading his legs, holding his bat between them. He looked and acted like he owned the place.

Logan, meanwhile, perched on the end of the chair, ready to get up at a moment’s notice. He was a little on edge, for some reason.

Maybe it was the fact that he was at a concert for an artist he didn’t even like, with the leader of an underground group of witches known as The Duke.

But funnily enough, he didn’t mind Remus’s company.

“Relax a bit!” Remus bumped his shoulder, and Logan shifted back a little in his seat. “It’s a concert, not a funeral.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know a single one of the songs Roman Prince is about to sing.”

“Oh, who cares about that! Concerts are fun.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever been to one.”

Remus turned to look at him, eyes going wide. “Fucking what?”

“I’ve never been to a concert.” Logan repeated.

“Oh my god.” Remus said. “Well, I’d really prefer if my brother didn’t take your concert virginity.” He winked. “You know, I can sing.”

Logan could feel his face go red. “Well, I–we already have VIP tickets here, and I do want to see Roman–”

“Calm down, you think too much.” Remus rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “You need to be less uptight. More impulsive!”

Logan raised his eyebrows. “More impulsive, huh?”

“Yeah! It makes things far more… fun.” There was a twinkle in Remus’s eye.

Logan closed his eyes, sighing for a long moment. “I’m going to get a drink, I’ll be back in a minute.” Before Remus could say anything, he walked off, trying to calm his beating heart.

#intrulogical #sanders sides big bang #remus sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #roman sanders #sanders sides #patton sanders #all sides #fic #sanders sides fanfiction #background prinxiety #if you squint #my fanfic #sanders sides big bang

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acornshell · 1 year

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Intrulogical was the winner 1st place of the twitter pole!!✨

This might be the very first time I drew a full colored piece for them so I'm glad I was given the chance!🥰

Theres a monochrome filter on and off version!

(I had a ton of fun coloring the background and the other little details, I will leave it to you guys on interpreting it🙌)

Hope you guys like it!!✨

#sanders sides #sanders sides fanart #ts art #logan sanders #remus sanders #ts logan #ts remus #ts intrulogical #sanders sides ships #fanart #degitalart #art #my art #💥💚💙

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rosepetalgold · 7 months

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the art of saying goodbye

Summary: Remus expects a lot of things from the Queen Anne Victorian house he’s just purchased—a restoration project to occupy his time, some peace and quiet from nosy neighbors, a chance to brag about being a homeowner before his goody two-shoes brother.

What he doesn’t expect is for the property to come with a very real, very curious ghost. But what is he supposed to do, just ignore the spirit? That'd be nothing short of rude, especially considering that the specter's fascination with modern science and penchant for hijacking Remus' technology proves unfairly endearing.

But even as their unlikely friendship grows, so too do the questions swirling in Remus’ mind: Why is Logan still haunting the place he used to live? Who is the mysterious Janus he refuses to talk about? And what will it take for the ghost to finally find peace with the life and the love that were stolen from him so long ago?

Relationships: Platonic Intrulogical, past romantic Loceit, background romantic Prinxiety

Warnings for this chapter: None!

Word Count: 7000

Notes: My fic for this year's @sandersidesbigbang, aka another angsty tale that inexplicably grew out of a single fluffy scene, aka a prime excuse to procrastinate by poring through countless photos of beautiful Queen Anne houses my beloved. I hope you enjoy this ghostie story as much I enjoyed writing it! A big shoutout to my wonderful beta reader @dragonsaphirareads for all their feedback on this fic, and don't miss the amazing art by the incredible @casart and @onthevirgeofdestruction—you can check out their pieces here and here! (Seriously, even if you don't read the fic, go feast your eyes on their work because it is straight-up stunning. Go look, you'll see.)

Read on Ao3 Masterpost

start (you’re here!) - next

“This place is definitely haunted.”

Remus snorts, giving his brother a friendly sock in the arm.

“Oh come on, Ro, you scared of a few ghosties now? Afraid a floating white sheet is gonna jump out and yell boo?”

Roman doesn’t answer, just eyes the Queen Anne Victorian home in front of them with the amount of trepidation he usually reserved for any time Remus started a sentence with ‘I have an idea.’ The house does give off distinctly spooky vibes, Remus has to admit, what with its boards in desperate need of a new coat of paint and its broken window in the attic, not to mention the porch that looks liable to send someone plummeting to the ground if they take a single wrong step, but what was wrong with any of that? It all just added to the building’s character, and the risk of falling through the veranda was a delightful way to keep visitors on their toes, in his superior opinion.

And besides, he couldn’t turn his nose up at the property’s many flaws when they made it dirt-cheap. He wasn’t exactly a millionaire.

He grabs Roman’s arm, tugging him forward.

“C’mon, there’s some wicked spindlework on the back you gotta check out.”

His brother makes a sound of protest, dragging his feet as Remus hauls him onward.

“Aren’t we going to go inside?”

“Nah, I don’t have the keys yet. Everything’s still pending or whatever.”

Roman shifts his incredulous gaze from the house to Remus.

“You made me come all this way just to look at the outside of a house you haven’t even officially bought yet?”

Why yes, he had. He was such a good brother.

“Don’t act like it’s such a burden to drive twenty minutes out of the way to get here, especially when it means you’re twenty minutes closer to a booty call with Virgil.”

Roman splutters, face flushing a splendidly scandalized shade of crimson, and Remus cackles. That was more like it.

“Now c’mon c’mon c’mon, the sooner you ooh and aah over all my cool house shit, the sooner you can get some of that good di—”

“Don’t even finish that sentence,” Roman interrupts, slapping his hands over his ears, but he doesn’t protest as Remus pulls him around to the back of the house and points out the expansive if overgrown backyard, the plethora of decorative elements adorning the home, the leaded glass windows that have survived well over a century.

“I don’t get it, though,” Roman says as he eyes the tower gracing the corner of the house, something Remus would swear is a hint of jealousy in his gaze. Made sense. He knows for a fact his brother would sell his soul to be Rapunzel. “If this is such a nice place, why has it sat empty for so long?”

“Dunno. The realtor just said it stayed in the family of the guy who built it for a while before changing hands a bunch. Apparently every time it’s been on the market it’s taken ages to find a buyer, but she didn’t really say why no one wanted to live here for too long.” Probably just her trying not to scare him away from what was clearly a substantial restoration project so she wouldn’t lose her commission. Either that or there was some kind of toxic fungus in the walls that had taken over all the previous residents’ brains and turned them into zombies and Remus was about to become its next victim.

What a delightful gamble to find out which one it was.

“Can we please go now before some serial killer comes charging out of this place and we both end up on the news?” Roman asks, already edging back towards the front of the house.

“Sure, if you really want to give up your one shot of having your fifteen minutes of fame in the media,” Remus replies, dancing away with a grin as Roman aims a kick at his shins. “Fine, fine, we’ll go. I wouldn’t want to keep you from a hot date and some—”

Something catches his attention, a flash of movement out of the very corner of his eye, and he pauses mid-stride, doing a double-take at the second-story balcony overlooking the backyard.

Nothing. Not even a curtain blowing in the non-existent breeze.

“What?” Roman questions from where he’s also stopped a few yards ahead of him.

Remus looks a moment longer, searching for anything out of place, but all is still.

“Nothing. Probably just a bat or something. Wouldn’t that be cool as shit, to have bats as roommates? Hey, maybe they have rabies if they’re out in the daytime. Did you know…”

He launches into a spiel of the most gruesome and fascinating facts he knows about the disease, joyfully watching his brother’s face grow increasingly horrified with each one as they make their way back across the yard, and by the time they reach the driveway, the flicker of movement is barely a blip on his mental radar.

Just a trick of his eyes, surely.

It wasn’t like houses could actually be haunted, after all.

---

Home sweet home.

Or home rundown-and-slightly-musty-smelling home, as the case may be, but who was Remus to nitpick?

He fits his shiny new key into the lock and steps inside, letting the door click shut solidly behind him as he pauses just over the threshold, taking a moment to survey the foyer. His foyer now, in his very own home. The sale had been endless offers and counteroffers and a mountain of paperwork so large he’s positive he could have buried himself beneath it and never been seen again, but the place is finally his.

Him, a homeowner. Who’d have thunk it. He’ll be rubbing this in Roman’s apartment-renting face every chance he can get, thank you very much. It’s the least he can do, really.

He unceremoniously deposits the cardboard box in his arms on the floor and wanders further inside, trailing his hand along the smooth wood of the stair banister as he passes. He’s supposed to be meeting some of his friends back at his old place shortly—or now, actually, but that was wholly irrelevant—to start moving all of his worldly possessions into his fancy new abode, but he hadn’t been able to resist the temptation of taking the first load of boxes alone just to have the place to himself for a bit; he could use a few minutes to enjoy the space in peace before it’s filled with Roman and Virgil squabbling about the worst Disney movie heroes or whatever argument they were bound to get into.

Despite its well-worn exterior, the house is in surprisingly good condition inside, he muses as he roams through the empty rooms. There’s clearly extensive work that needs to be done if he wants to restore the place to its Victorian glory, an ambitious undertaking he knows will be neither cheap nor easy, but the bones of the structure are all solid, especially considering how many years it’s stood empty.

He finishes his meandering loop around the first floor and heads up the stairs, the tread of his steps entirely too loud for the pervasive quiet as he continues his exploratory wandering through the second story rooms. He pauses as he reaches what is clearly the master bedroom, surveying the original fireplace, the century-old hardwood, the attached balcony that was just begging to be used to pour water onto his unsuspecting brother’s head. Shit, his new house was cool as fuck.

It’d make the most sense to start hauling his load of boxes here, considering that’s where most of his crap is going to end up eventually, but the longer he hovers in the doorway, the more something feels … off. Just the slightest tingle prickling down his spine, and not the good kind. He steps inside and the temperature drops noticeably, a chill raising the hair on his arms.

“The fuck?” he mutters, raking his gaze over the windows in search of damaged panes letting in a breeze, but everything is intact.

He advances another step on impulse and the pinpricks dancing along his vertebrae only grow stronger, now accompanied by the distinct feeling he’s being watched. He scans the room again, slower this time, but there’s no furniture, no closet, not so much as a nook or cranny for anyone or anything to hide. Even the ceiling is empty when he turns his gaze upwards on the off chance he really does have some bats hanging around that he’s somehow missed on his numerous pre-sale walk-throughs.

Nary a beady eye to be found and still the sensation of being in someone’s sights doesn’t lessen. Not that it’s a threatening feeling, exactly, just distinctly unsettling, like there’s someone behind him no matter how many times he glances over his shoulder and finds nothing but empty air.

But that was crazy. He’d read the final sale documents until his eyes had been about to start bleeding and he’s absolutely positive that the house hadn’t come with any roommates. He’s probably just imagining the feeling, the result of watching one too many horror movies in the last week or his brain making things up in an attempt to liven up the empty space.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, yanking him out of his thoughts, and he rolls his eyes without even looking at the screen, already able to see the text from Roman in his mind’s eye: where you at?? i’m not packing up all your crap for you followed by an absurdly long string of emojis that basically constituted their own Roman-specific hieroglyphic language.

Time to face the moving-day music before Roman got annoyed enough with waiting that he rescinded his promise of free manual labor, then. Any investigations of potential invisible voyeurs would have to wait, no matter how titillating such a prospect sounded when he put it like that.

“You win for now, house,” he says into the quiet as he turns to leave, an edge of coldness still dancing along the goosebumps on his skin. “Keep your secrets. I’ll figure ‘em out eventually.”

---

The afternoon passes in a blur of hauling entirely too many heavy boxes and unwieldy pieces of furniture to the new house, and by the time night settles onto the horizon, Remus is utterly exhausted. He flops back on the couch, too tired to even think about putting his bedframe together, and he’s out in minutes.

He wakes disoriented, mind scrabbling blankly for a moment before the darkness coalesces into the still-unfamiliar contours of his sitting room. He just lies there for a moment, trying to figure out what’s roused him, but all is still. Just his brain deciding to deprive him of some tantalizingly horrifying nightmares, unfortunately—

Tap tap tap.

Remus bolts upright at the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the hardwood upstairs, adrenaline surging in a dizzying rush. There hadn’t been any signs of a squatter all day, and surely he’d remembered to lock the doors so no one could steal all the crap he’d just spent a whole day of his life lugging around. He waits for a moment, holding his breath as silence falls, and just when he’s about to pass the whole thing off as his imagination playing tricks on him, the steps start up again, slow and rhythmic like someone is pacing on the upper level.

Fuck his luck. If someone is secretly living in the attic of his fancy new home, he’s not going to be pleased.

He rolls off the couch and snatches his phone off of one of the plethora of boxes waiting to be unpacked, debating whether to risk turning on the flashlight before deciding for it; he might give away any element of surprise with the beam, but he’s certain to give it away if he starts banging face-first into walls or cracking his skull open falling down the stairs. His eye catches on a glass paperweight on the coffee table, a characteristically pretentious housewarming present from Roman, who apparently thought Remus had so many papers flying about that he needed to corral them with a glorified rock, and he seizes it on a whim.

Makeshift weapon was a much more useful purpose for the thing than its intended function anyways.

He edges around the scattered boxes towards the stairs, careful to keep his steps light and his hand shielding the light from his phone as the footfalls continue overhead, and makes it all the way up the steps without so much as a creak to give him away.

Flawless. He knew all those times sneaking up behind Roman to scare the shit out of him as kids would pay off someday.

He pauses on the landing to triangulate the noise, then creeps down the hall towards the footsteps as the sound grows even more distinct. The master bedroom again? What the actual fuck was going on with that room? Had he really managed to miss someone in there when he’d investigated earlier in the day? No, he couldn’t have, but then how had someone managed to get past where he’d been sleeping on the couch? Unless he really did have somebody living in the walls—

A floorboard squeaks underneath his foot, deafeningly loud in the quiet of the night, and the footsteps abruptly stop. Remus swears under his breath. Traitorous piece of wood. Now or never, then.

He lunges forward into the doorway of the master bedroom, raising the paperweight and howling a war cry as he swings his light across the room to reveal—

Nothing. The space is as entirely and utterly empty as it had been that morning.

Well, shit. There went any element of surprise he had left.

He darts back into the hall, racing to search through the rest of the rooms on the upper level one by one, but they’re all just as vacant as the first. He even hauls himself into the attic, bracing himself to be clubbed over the head by whoever is lurking, but with the exception of innumerable shadows billowing away from his flashlight, the space proves equally empty as the rest.

Unease stirs in his gut, creeping in alongside the lingering adrenaline as he makes his way back down the precariously rickety ladder into the main house. Surely there’s no way someone could have gotten past him, not when he would have heard them in the hall or going down the stairs.

And yet, as far as he can tell, besides a few mice tucked away in the attic, there isn’t another living soul in the house.

He stops in the doorway of the master bedroom again, staring inside. He’s positive this is where the footsteps had been emanating from, lack of proof be damned. Something weird was going on with this house.

Good thing Remus had just made the biggest financial commitment of his life to buy it.

Nothing for it now but to hope some elusive, wall-dwelling ax murderer doesn’t give him the chop in his sleep, he supposes, although he has to admit that’d be a badass way to go.

He reluctantly makes his way back downstairs and shoves a pile of boxes at the foot of the stairs to trip any nefarious intruders coming down, then retreats back to the couch, all the while keeping his ears primed for so much as a whisper of sound above him.

But even though it takes him a long time to drift back to sleep, the house around him remains as silent as a grave.

---

The whole thing must have been an impressively lucid dream, Remus decides the next morning. A second investigation in the light of day doesn’t reveal anything out of place: no shoe prints on the floor, no critters, certainly no people. It was probably nothing then, he tries to convince himself, just his overactive imagination needing an outlet after being a bit too jittery from all the excitement of moving.

But he finds himself pausing in the master bedroom again, something drawing him back to the space. First the chill and the strange feeling of being watched, then the mysterious footsteps? Two separate coincidences, or something more?

God, he sounded about as paranoid as Virgil. Next thing he knew he was going to be inventing his very own conspiracy theory to explain a few bumps in the night.

It really was nothing, he tells himself, shaking off any lingering unease as he tromps back down the stairs. If he starts jumping at every little noise in his old-as-shit house, he’ll be long dead before he gets the property restored. If he starts seeing glowing red eyes in the dark, he’ll start to worry. Until then, he has a mountain of boxes to unpack.

Unfortunately, said mountain does not pull a Beauty and the Beast and begin unpacking itself, leaving Remus to spend a dreadfully dull afternoon doing it instead, only the allure of building a fort out of all the empty boxes keeping him from living out of cardboard for the rest of his life.

By the time he’s finally finished unboxing most of the downstairs and getting the tv and wifi set up, most of the day has passed him by, afternoon sunlight splaying golden fingers across the hardwood.

Break time, then. He’s earned it, if he does say so himself.

He collapses onto the couch, flipping on the tv and surfing through the channels until he finds a rerun of some low-budget horror film from the eighties. Perfect. Nothing like a bit of mindless tv to rot his brain just that much more. Settling back more comfortably into the cushions, he pops open the bag of chips he’s snagged from the kitchen and pulls out his phone, beginning to scroll through his notifications.

Modern multitasking at its finest, truly.

But he’s barely a minute into atrophying his mind via social media before the tv starts flickering, volume dropping precipitously before ratcheting back up, the picture jumping to the weather channel, then a British cooking show, then the news with Spanish subtitles flashing in and out at the bottom of the screen.

Remus freezes with a chip halfway to his mouth, staring at the remote where it’s very definitely out of his reach on the coffee table, all by its lonesome. He’s no expert, but he’s pretty sure technology was not, in fact, supposed to suddenly start functioning by itself without any human input. Was his new house secretly sitting over some freaky radioactive waste? That would certainly explain why no one had wanted to buy it. Or was this some EMP disaster? Had someone decided to take out the whole country’s power grid, starting with Remus’ shitty tv?

He sits up, reaching for the rogue remote, only to pause as a chill moves over him, then past him like it’s heading for the tv, and the screen crackles, static beginning to fuzz both the video and the audio as the picture continues to leap wildly between programs.

Fuck the remote, then. Whatever freak accident has descended upon his living room, it’s time to go straight to the source.

Abandoning his snack, he stands, striding to the outlet and yanking the plug out of the wall. Silence falls immediately, the screen fading to black, but there still lingers a noticeable chill in the air, cold energy palpable against his skin and all too reminiscent of the feeling he remembers from being in the master bedroom.

“What the hell,” he mutters under his breath, casting his gaze around the room. Empty, just as upstairs had been the last three times he’d checked. He takes a step backwards, then another, and the strange chill decreases. On a whim, he pulls out his phone, scrolling through several apps without even paying attention to them, and sure enough, the hair on his arms raises as the temperature falls again, that sparking feeling of energy growing more intense as his phone begins to flicker on its own.

“What the actual hell,” he whispers again. Roman can’t have been right—this place can’t actually be haunted. There’s absolutely no way there’s a real, live—or dead, technically, he supposes—ghost in his living room right now playing fuck-up-the-electronics.

But if there is…

“Hello?” he calls, and the flickering abruptly stops, chill retreating once more. Shit. One word in and apparently Remus has already fucked things up. “Hello?” he tries again. Did this maybe-possible-potential ghostie even speak English? “I’m Remus,” he says, feeling more than a little crazy for introducing himself to his empty living room. If Roman ever knew of this, he’d die laughing and then Remus really would have a ghost haunting his ass.

He wracks his brain for something to say. If he were a ghost and a stranger started moving all of their shit into his home, what would he want to hear from them?

“Um, cool house you have here. I’m not gonna like, fuck it up or anything.”

Silence.

“I’m planning on restoring it bit by bit as I have money so if you could tell me the original paint color or wallpaper patterns, that’d be dope.”

Still nothing. Apparently the ghost is not amused. Time for a different tactic, then.

“What’s your name?”

Not even a cricket chirping. Jesus fucking christ, Remus is really blowing this.

“That’s the tv—the television,” he explains, gesturing towards the device that had seemingly either fascinated or enraged his new housemate, he can’t quite tell which. “It works by… well, I don’t really know how it works. Something with waves and frequencies or some shit? But you can watch recordings, people acting or baking or doing dumb reality dating shows or whatever, so if there’s something that you wanna see…”

He trails off, surreptitiously scanning the room for any ethereal presences, but the house is quiet, the ghostly feeling fading bit by bit. Great. An actual paranormal experience and he’s gone and shoved his foot so far in his mouth he can practically feel his toes wiggling in his small intestine.

“Alright, that’s cool, no worries. Just lemme know if you change your mind.”

He waits a moment more, hoping for a disembodied voice to speak or an object to start moving on its own or his body to suddenly become possessed, but there’s nothing. Snagging his leather jacket off the back of the couch, he beelines for the door, forcing himself not to run as excitement begins to grow with every step, bubbling up around his bones. He has a ghost. A ghost, an actual fucking ghost, and he hadn’t even had to pay extra for it. No way he’s not going to take advantage of the universe handing him the sickest housewarming present in the world, never mind the fact that he might end up a walking meat suit for the spirit.

He pauses as he reaches the edge of the yard, then thinks better of it and pivots, heading for his car instead. Who knew how far ghost range was, and he doesn’t want his new roomie overhearing. He’s practically vibrating with energy as he makes his way down the long, winding drive, and he only makes it a few miles down the road before he’s pulling over onto the shoulder, hopefully well out of spirit range.

His first call rings through to voicemail, but Remus doesn’t bother leaving a message, just hangs up and tries again, only to be met with the same result. The third time, though, proves to be the charm.

“What,” the voice on the other end spits, cheerful as ever. “Fuck you, Remus, I’m in the middle of—”

“You’re still into all that weird stuff, right? Like the cryptids and the creepies and the ghouls and ghosties and all that?” Remus interrupts. He can deal with Virgil’s wrath another time—he has information he needs and he needs it pronto.

A pause, so long he’s sure Virgil has hung up on him and he’s going to have to keep calling until the emo answers his question.

“Yeah?” the distrustful reply finally comes, anger blunted by obvious wariness. “Why—”

“I need to pick your brain,” Remus cuts in again. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

---

Plan Contact The Resident Possibly Unfriendly Ghost Who Might Possess Him, or CTRPUGWMPH to be short and snappy about it, is officially a go.

Unfortunately, it isn’t off to a promising start.

Virgil’s knowledge had turned out to be more spirit lore than specifics about how to get a ghost to actually appear, although he’d been infinitely more helpful than Roman, who’d just stared at him and asked if he’d had the house checked for carbon monoxide poisoning. Remus had soundly ignored him and had left Virgil’s apartment with his head swimming with theories about why ghosts haunt particular places and an extensive lecture from Virgil about how to find any potential objects or reasons tying a ghost to the house that might provide a potential talking point to engage said ghost in conversation.

But despite digging into every crack and crevice on the internet, emailing the local historical society, even calling his realtor to ask again about the history of the property, Remus comes up with precious little. The house had originally been built in the 1880s by a local merchant, everyone seems to agree, and had been inherited by his nephew soon after, but beyond that there’s frustratingly scant information available, and he can’t find so much as a whisper about anyone dying in the home. His ghostie could be anyone, then: A Victorian builder who’d taken a tumble, a flapper girl who’d partied a tad too hard, a hapless victim of some modern serial killer who’d taken advantage of the place sitting abandoned for years to do a bit of light murdering.

With precisely zero context clues as to his new housemate’s identity, then, Remus embraces his remarkable talent of keeping up an entirely one-sided conversation as he works around the house the next few days, rambling about anything and everything related to the property he can think of, hoping something will pique the ghost’s interest. But besides a few more cold spots and flickering screens, the house remains stubbornly quiet. Maybe his ghost just needed a bit of help in communicating, though; drifting around an empty building with no one to talk to for the past god-knew-how-many years can’t have done good things to their incorporeal vocal cords.

Which brings him to Plan B: The infamous Ouija board, favorite tool of grifters and bullshit paranormalists everywhere.

And yet despite the makeshift, very high-budget seance he conducts with the two dollar board and the zero dollar candles he’s lovingly stolen from his brother, there’s once again no reply from beyond the veil besides a chill in the room that somehow radiates disapproval. Apparently his ghost isn’t a fan of pseudoscientific games any more than he is. At least they had standards, whoever they were.

But Remus is a stubborn bastard if he does say so himself, so on to Plan C it is. The used EMF meter he snags off of ebay has definitely seen better days, given the prominent crack across its screen, but the thing had been cheap and still seemed to work, so Remus wasn’t complaining. Fancy equipment was for fancy people, after all, and of all the things he’s ever been called, he’s positive fancy isn’t one of them. He sets up the device behind the tv, which still seems to intrigue his ghost every time it’s turned on, puts on the first show he can find, and forces himself to walk away. His little trap is set. Now all he has to do is bide his time pretending to busy himself unpacking a box of books in the next room—

He barely has the chance to register the tv screen flickering out of the corner of his eye before an ear-splitting shriek is rending the air, startling him so violently that he promptly drops a hefty tome on his foot.

“Shit,” he breathes, surging back into the living room, but the noise has already stopped just as suddenly as it began, replaced by a frigid chill permeating the room. Maybe he should have thought twice about scaring the resident phantom without first hiding any of his valuables. Hopefully he won’t wake up tomorrow to find his tv shattered. “It won’t hurt you,” he calls, though the EMF meter indicates a distinct lack of any supernatural presences. “It just makes noise to let me know when you’re nearby, yeah? Totally harmless.”

No response, but for once he doesn’t mind, not when there’s excitement dancing white-hot across his nerves. There really is a ghost or spirit or demon or something here, and he hasn’t just been imagining things.

Fuck, this house is single-handedly the coolest thing that’s ever happened to him, even if he does now have to worry about his haunting buddy getting a bit of revenge on him in the middle of the night.

But Remus survives safe and sound into the next day without so much as a supernatural scratch on his skin. Bloody payback didn’t seem like his ghost’s style anyways, not when their favorite activity seemed to be pressing as many buttons as possible on the tv remote at once. Curiosity is still nipping impatiently at his heels though, urging him to explore this latest avenue of potential communication more, so he sets up the EMF meter again, this time in the master bedroom where the spirit seems most inclined to spend time if the continued pacing in the middle of the night is anything to go by.

A brilliant plan, only minorly ruined by the fact that the device is nowhere to be found when he goes searching for it the next morning.

“Are you disappearing things, ghostie?” he asks the empty bedroom. “Gonna zap me into another dimension next?”

He’s joking, but as his hunt through the house reveals neither hide nor hair of the EMF meter, he can’t help but wonder. Had the ghost really just yeeted the thing into the ether? Or maybe it was right where he’d left it in the middle of the bedroom, but had been turned invisible like the spirit themself? What kind of ghostly superpowers did he even have, if any—

He comes to an abrupt halt as he emerges out the back door onto the porch, a laugh spilling past his lips as he surveys the myriad bits of metal and broken plastic strewn around him. Looks like he’s found his EMF meter. Apparently his ghost wasn’t nearly as endeared to this technology as he was anything with a screen. He glances up to the master bedroom window over his head, shading his eyes from the sun.

“Fair enough,” he calls, still fighting down amusement despite himself, and there’s the faintest shimmer in the air above the balcony, reminiscent of a heat mirage despite the cool morning air. “No more screeching little boxes.”

Left with zero information about his ghost’s identity, a useless Ouija board better repurposed as a doorstop, and the remains of his one piece of official ghost-hunting equipment, Remus concludes his only option is to embark on Plan D. Said plan isn’t so much an strategic approach as it is a wild hail mary to find any way to communicate with his ghost that didn’t involved hurling objects from balconies, as much fun as such an activity was, but then again, Plan D did sound delightfully dirty, so he’ll take the trade-off.

The internet, of course, is the place to turn to for highly questionable ghost advice, and it only takes a single google search to find message boards teeming with it. Half of it is clearly bullshit, he quickly discovers as he trawls through post after useless post, and the other half is baseless theories without any semblance of evidence to back them up, but just as he’s about to call it quits and move on to whatever the hell Plan E is, an old thread catches his eye.

‘Old Ghost Caught By Photography?’ the title reads, and Remus skims through the post, intrigued despite himself at the detailed claims the author had been able to capture the image of a Victorian spirit by using an antique camera and photography methods from the end of the nineteenth century. He pores over the attached images, searching for the slightest hint of photoshop or manipulation, but everything seems legit. And it made sense in some weird, probably illogical way, he supposes, that ghosts might only be spotted by using technology from their day and age—historical continuity in the metaphysical realm or some shit.

It’s the best lead he has after hours of searching, and really, he’s just spent a very hefty chunk of change buying a whole-ass house; what was the harm in dropping a few more dollars on some vintage photography equipment?

Which is precisely how he finds himself crammed into his makeshift darkroom in the tiny closet under the stairs several weeks later, holding his breath as he carefully begins to look through the latest batch of negatives he’s just finished processing. It had taken an obscene amount of research, a healthy dose of trial-and-error, and more than a few failures to figure out the intricacies of the dry plate photography process, but he’d gotten there in the end, even if the most he has to show for it is a few suspicious blurs in a couple of images.

Maybe this whole idea of capturing ghosts in photos was just as bullshit as the others, he muses as he examines yet another empty picture of the dining room, or maybe his ghost wasn’t from the same era as the camera he’d bought. Maybe his ghost simply didn’t want to have his photo taken, or maybe—

His train of thought abruptly derails as he picks up the next plate.

Holy shit. Holy shit.

The image is still a negative, the reversed colors lending a certain eeriness to the picture under the red darkroom lights, but there, right smack in the middle of the photo—a figure. An actual human figure, clear as day, looking right at the camera. Remus whoops, nearly knocking over a vial of chemicals with his elbow as he dances backwards in pure giddiness. Oh fuck yes , there is a ghost haunting the place. His ghost, now that he owns the house. His ghost who is…

He pauses, forcing himself to focus on the figure in the photo even as he feels like he’s about to vibrate right off of his bones with excitement. Spectacles, clean-shaven, dark hair neatly styled. Neat trousers, white shirt, trim waistcoat, and a decidedly fancy ascot, the whole ensemble distinctly old-fashioned. Victorian, then? Or Edwardian? Or some historical reenactor who’d met an untimely demise in costume? And it does seem to be an untimely demise; the man looks to be in his mid- to late-twenties, unless he’d found some ability to look whatever age he wanted in the afterlife.

Regardless, he can’t make himself focus on fashion for long. He has a ghost to talk to. Fighting his way out of the cramped closet, he bounds up the stairs, forcing himself to slow to a respectable jog as he darts into the master bedroom. He stops in the middle of the still-bare room, trying and utterly failing to keep his hopes in check.

“Hello? Ghostie?”

No response.

“Mr. Glasses and White Shirt?”

His skin prickles, the hair on the back of his neck raising. Aha. There he was.

“Hey, what’s up?” He turns in a slow circle, searching for any sign of his specter, any flicker of light off a spectacle lens or a flash of a shirtsleeve, but the room is as empty as ever.

“I have a photo if you’d like to see it.” Could ghosts not see themselves in mirrors or was that only vampire lore? And if he couldn’t see his own reflection, did the ghost even remember what he looked like?

He raises the picture, proferring the negative to the vacant room, and holds his breath. Nothing, for several long moments, and then the chill edges closer. Remus bites his lip, barely able to keep himself from bouncing on the balls of his feet at the prospect of a ghost being within arm’s reach.

“I wasn’t trying to be creepy or anything, I just wanted to see if you were real or if I needed to go check myself into a padded room, you know? I’m Remus, if I haven’t said that. What’s your name?”

Several more excruciatingly long moments that Remus is sure has to be the longest span of silence in history, then—

“Hello.”

The voice is thin and slightly hoarse, quiet enough that Remus has to strain to make it out, but it’s as unmistakably real as the form that flickers into existence right in front of his eyes, identical to the man in the photo. He’s distinctly transparent, the edges of him not quite defined, fuzzing out around the edges like the ambient glow of neon signs, but he’s here and he’s real and this is so fucking cool that Remus could keel over right here and now from excitement and join the ghost in wandering around the house for all eternity.

“Holy shit,” he breathes, because if there was ever a time for swearing, by god this is fucking it, and the spirit withdraws slightly, already guarded expression closing in further. “No no no, it’s good,” he rushes to assure him, resisting the urge to reach out and try to touch him. “Good holy shit. Complimentary holy shit.”

The ghost doesn’t seem entirely appeased, but he tilts his head slightly, something like curiosity sparking in his eyes as he evaluates Remus.

“Why are you not frightened of me?” he finally asks, and Remus has to fight back the absurd laugh bubbling up in his chest. He’s being questioned by a century-old ghost in the middle of his haunted home. Life really was delightfully freaky.

“No offense, man, but you’re not exactly terrifying. I mean, I’ve been here what? A solid month? And you haven’t even tried to pluck my eyeballs out or anything.”

Another unreadable pause. Is he just giving the spirit ideas? Were his eyes about to be forcibly unmarried from his skull à la eagles tearing out Prometheus’ liver?

“Do you want me to be afraid of you?” he asks after a further absolutely unbearable five seconds of silence.

“No,” the ghost admits after a moment of clear hesitation, “but previous residents certainly have not appreciated my presence here.”

Remus scoffs. “That’s their problem. Some of us are smarter than that.”

The other man’s head tilt deepens, something akin to puzzlement furrowing his brow, as if he can’t fathom why having a ghost is actually the most badass shit on the face of the planet.

“Can I ask you some questions?” Remus asks, exhilaration still racing along the underside of his skin so intensely that he can barely stand it. “You can ask me whatever you want, too.”

The ghost nods, although he still seems cautious as one hand fiddles absently with his ascot. “I suppose that would be alright.”

Twenty questions with an undead spirit. Remus’ life really was getting better by the minute.

“Did you used to live here?”

“I did, many years ago.”

“Did you own the place?”

“At one point in time, yes. It was truly a beautiful house in its day, and a wonderful place to reside.”

Oh fuck yes. If having an old-timey ghost who can give him historically accurate advice about restoring the house isn’t the coolest fucking thing that’s ever happened to him, he isn’t sure what is. He has half a mind to start grilling him on paint colors and wallpaper prints and the original hardwood, but—

“Did you die here?”

The words are blurting out of his mouth without even bothering to detour through his brain on the way out, burning curiosity eclipsing any thought that perhaps asking about death isn’t exactly acceptable ghost etiquette. He barely has time to register the change in the spirit’s expression, the visceral upset written across his features clear as day, before he’s gone in between one breath and the next, vanishing back into whatever thin air he’d come from and leaving nothing but a biting chill in his wake.

Shit shit shit. He’s finally gotten the ghost to trust him enough to show up and talk and then he’s gone and ruined it within the span of two minutes all because he had all the self-control of a sieve trying to retain water.

“Wait,” he calls, casting about in vain. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.” Well, apparently his subconscious had, but that hadn’t been his intention. “Please come back. You can ask me as many invasive questions as you like.” Nothing. “You can haunt me for revenge, if you want.” Utter silence. “Are you gonna hurl me off the balcony like my EMF meter?”

There he goes again, giving the specter ideas, although really, being yeeted out of a window by a ghost would be a damn cool end if he does say so himself. He lingers in the room for several long minutes, forcing himself to keep quiet lest he miss the spirit’s hushed voice, but there’s nothing but the faint sound of a bird twittering outside.

“Alright,” he finally relents, disappointment pooling in his stomach as he glances down at the photography plate still in his hand, the negative serving as indisputable evidence that the encounter hadn’t just been a fever dream. He’ll find a way to make things right with the ghost somehow, one way or another. He has to. “Just come spook me if you change your mind.”

Taglist (let me know if you’d like to be added or removed!): @darth-does-stuff

#thomas sanders sides big bang 2023 #tssbb2023 #sanders sides #ts remus #remus sanders #ts logan #logan sanders #ts roman #roman sanders #ts virgil #virgil sanders #intrulogical #loceit #ts fanfic #the art of saying goodbye #my fic #rosepetal writes

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hyperfixated-homo · 1 year

Text

The Disney Trivia

Ao3 Link (leave a comment if you wanna! it would make my day <3)

Summary:

It's been months now since the side's have made up, and started actually treating each other like family. Now, with everything back together, they have the brilliant idea to play a game of trivia!

In which, Virgil and Roman are the hosts (who knows more about Disney than those two?) and also may be dating, we'll get back to you on that one.

Patton and Janus are flirting the whole time.

And Remus just thinks Logan is neat.

A/N: Holy god that is the most I have ever written in a single session ever. I don't regret it at all, this was amazing asodijowajd. I missed a lot! But it was kinda necessary because the fic would have been hella long otherwise and some of it was contradictory. I hope you guys like it :)

Word Count: 5117

Ships: Mociet, Prinxiety, Intrulogical

Warnings: Mentions of Remus' heart squishing? I don't think there's anything to be really concerned about lmao

“Why are we doing this again?”

“Because DISNEY Logan!”

“That’s not exactly a sufficient answer, Roman.”

Patton smiled at the two of them as they started bickering. Even now, months after their little family sorted through their drama and everyone started getting along, it seemed like some things would never change.

The sides sat together in a large debate hall, apparently a dreamspace Logan had created a while back for a video with Virgil. Back then it had been the two of them arguing over Thomas’ negative thinking, but now it was being used for something much more fun. The side’s first ever proper group trivia!

It was an idea Roman had a couple weeks ago, during their family game nights (which mainly consisted of uncontrollable chaos). He had thrown it out there randomly during a game of Kahoot, but forgot about it shortly after.

It wasn’t until earlier that week that it was brought up again.

Virgil had come up to him shyly asking if he still felt down to do a proper game of trivia, and had suggested the first theme: Disney!

Roman had agreed instantly, and the two of them spent a couple days planning and researching for the game.

The two of them would be running the game as hosts, while the other sides were split into groups of two. Janus and Patton had been dubbed team Mociet, while Logan and Remus were in team Intrulogical.

Patton was more than a little confused when Remus started giggling at the names, but shrugged it off.

The room had been decorated more interestingly for the fun occasion. Roman and Virgil had stated that they wanted to go all out for this trivia, even if it’s more of a joke than anything else.

The curtains behind were closed, colored black as they were before, but now had added detailing that made it a less monotone background. They had strung up simple banners on the wall, and there were more than a couple new lights in the room that they wanted to use for aesthetic purposes. The floor had been changed to carpeting that had a full rainbow gradient from one corner of the room to the other.

But most importantly was the art.

Hundreds of paintings of Disney characters lined the walls. Different, stylised versions of every princess, prince and villain imaginable had been drawn on them in bright, vibrant colors.

Logan was very confused when he saw them, noting that they wouldn’t be seen much anyways since the attention would be on the judges and the stage, so he didn’t understand why they would put so much effort into it.

Roman said that it didn’t matter.

(The amount of fun that he and Remus had painting them together more than made up for it.)

It was a very neat set up! And according to the boys, there were a couple other things too that they hadn't even shown yet, because they wanted it to be a surprise for when the game actually started.

“Wow, they’re still going?”

Janus’ voice cut through Patton’s thoughts, snapping his attention to the snakey side on his left.

“Huh? Oh- they stopped arguing about the scoreboard ten minutes ago. This is a new argument.”

Janus looked at him with a deadpan expression that Patton couldn’t help but smile at.

“It’s not that bad. We just need to wait for Virgil to get the cards! He’s not going to take that long.”

Janus’ eyes softened quickly, and he turned to look back at Logan and Roman. “Yes… I suppose so. We’ll just have to wait.”

Then he turned back around, suddenly seeming a lot more competitive. “What’s our game plan?”

Patton blinked. He had absolutely no clue what Janus was talking about.

“The what now?”

Janus sighed, fondly exasperated.

“How are we going to win this Patton? You probably know at least a little bit about disney. I’m going to be fully honest, I know virtually nothing. I would say that the teams are fair in that sense except Logan’s a massive Marvel nerd and Remus knows almost as much about Disney in general as Roman, so it really isn’t. We’re at a massive disadvantage here.”

Patton blinked, again.

And Janus sighed, again.

“Do we not- is there no game plan?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Patton looked between him and Roman. “…be nice and hope for the best?”

Janus looked at him for a moment, then once again turned away, mumbling something about how hard it would be to gaslight Virgil into giving them points. Patton was about to make a concerned remark when the door slammed open and the anxious side himself walked into the room.

“Alright losers, stop the fighting. It’s game time.”

Roman audibly squealed, immediately stumbling over to his stand.

“Okay everybody stand in your area. Go stand- you too remus, you stand normally by your podium. We’re starting! Play the music! Why isn’t- LOGAN, THIS IS YOUR DREAMSCAPE, PLAY THE MUSIC!”

Logan rolled his eyes, but complied with the prince’s request, snapping his fingers. The Disney theme started playing, and suddenly the lights shut off.

As the music swelled, new, brighter spotlights slammed on, and the four contestants were surprised to see that they’d been changed into stunning suits and corsets, similar to their outfits at the courtroom but clearly glamorized by Roman. Their podiums had changed as well, the old wooden stands being covered fabric of their own colors with their symbols at the bottom.

Before they had time to even mention the change, another bright spotlight illuminated their hosts. Virgil and Roman were also wearing new clothes, much more layered outfits with more designs sewn into them. Virgil was sat down behind a tilted table that no doubt hid the question cards, while Roman stood in front of them.

The short intro theme faded into a bright show theme, something Patton vaguely recognised.

Roman jumped forwards, welcoming them to the show and going over a prepared speech that played in time with the music.

“Welcome everyone to the first ever Sanders Sides Trivia! Not about us, but being played by us! Today we have a very special theme, suggested by my darling emo nightmare behind me,” Virgil blushed and gave a little wave “DISNEY!”

Patton cheered. Remus joined in, and then all four of them were clapping for Roman.

His eyes were alight as he walked in front of them, posture bubbly in a way that it only ever was when he got the chance to be on stage.

“Thank you! Thank you all!” He took a mock bow.

“Today on the stage we have our two wonderful teams! First up, Team Mociet! Featuring everyone’s favorite father figure, Patton, and the slithery snake himself, Janus!”

Remus whooped from beside them, and Logan and Virgil clapped for them loudly.

Janus loudly said “Totally hate being here today, how dare you invite me.”

Patton waved at everyone, unable to stop himself from giggling.

“And as their competitors today, we’ve got our brilliant book nerd, Logan, and his partner in crime (who may or may not have actually committed some crimes), Remus!”

He and Janus cheered for them, and Remus laughed maniacally while the two of them waved as well.

“I am, of course, Roman Sanders, and this is Virgil! We will be your hosts today everybody!” he continued. The four of them together gave them a round of applause, Patton and Remus yelling out compliments over the loud noise.

“Thank you, thank you. And thank you all for coming! We’re going to go over some ground rules first, before the game can officially start, so we can just jump straight into it!”

He made his way behind the table, as he said that, sitting down. The next part was apparently Virgil’s job to present.

“We’re playing by a point system. You are given points for getting questions right, giving us a good argument or just being cool in general. We’d set better requirements but honestly, I’m sure that all of you guys would find a loophole no matter what rules we set. So we’re not doing that. Points are given based entirely on how me and Roman feel about your answers.” He leaned forwards in his chair, and rested his head in his hands, elbows on the table.

“We can also add points at any time in the game!” Roman chimed in quickly “Not just during question times! For example, padre, I’m loving the attitude right now. Plus ten points!”

There was a loud ring, and then the curtains opened behind them to show a big board, with the two teams' scores on it. Team Mociet had ten points.

Virgil continued. “We can and will take away points, too. Not for getting questions wrong, but for other things. Arguments we don’t like, trying to cheat, sabotage, all that good stuff. Like, say, that stupid hat Janus is still wearing. Minus ten points. Bad hat.”

There was a sort of power down sound, and they watched the points be erased and go down to zero.

Janus didn’t say anything. He just looked at Virgil with the most “are you serious right now” face he could muster. Patton tried his absolute hardest to not laugh next to him. He mostly succeeded.

Virgil was not phased.

“Also, fun fact, even though we can’t actually participate or win, me and Roman can also get points. Because we’re just superior to you guys in every way. We have pretty general rules here, no changing the answer, no physical fighting, no attempted murder, the usual things. Basically just don’t break our monopoly rules and we’ll probably be fine.”

“We’re also not going to win anything.” Patton wondered how long Virgil and Roman had rehearsed this for them to be this in sync. “This is obviously just for fun. No need to get too competitive. I’m looking at you Logan.”

“That’s bold coming from the guy who played checkers with Janus for five hours because he refused to stop until he won a game.” Remus called out.

“That’s not what we’re talking about right now.” Roman replied “And honestly, you would have too if you saw how close I was. There were so many times I almost won. We tied at least-”

“ANYWAYS!” Virgil interrupted him. If Roman started rambling now they would never actually play. “That’s all we have to say. We might add or change some rules later on if things are too chaotic.”

“Right, right. Okay! With that all out of the way, let the games begin!”

A happy little tune that sounded somewhat similar to the ending of a looney toons episode played, and the lights flickered on again.

There was silence for a moment in the debate room, and then Virgil spoke quietly.

“So… how was that?”

“Guys that was amazing!! Oh my goodness I loved it!!” Patton was practically vibrating on the spot from pure excitement over the performance that the two of them just gave.

“Oh I absolutely despised the personal nicknames. Horribly kind of you.” Janus couldn’t seem to keep a smile off his face, clearly also very hyped up.

“I was not expecting the lightshow, I will admit. It was a brilliant choice to use that blackout period to change the scenery, we were all invested quite quickly.” Logan commented.

“Very good idea. We all look hotter than a hooker on a Friday evening in these clothes!” Was Remus’ response. An interesting complement, but a complement nonetheless.

Their judges were clearly happy with the positive reception, Roman hardly able to keep still in his chair and Virgil’s eyeshadow glowing a bright, glittery purple.

“Then let us not waste any more time! Onwards, to the competition!”

Patton let himself relax into a more comfortable standing position, as the category of the first questions were announced.

They would have an absolute blast playing this, he was sure. He just wondered if it would get as chaotic as their previous family times.

———

Everything instantly fell apart.

Well, instantly was a bit of a stretch. Everyone behaved for at least five minutes, usually the game nights spiral downhill as soon as it starts!

Patton just needs to keep looking at the positives. If not, he might literally explode.

“THUMBS both ARE and ARE NOT FINGERS, ROMAN. Some people, especially those in the medical field, do refer to them as such for simplicity's sake, but the truth is that the answer to that question is SUBJECTIVE. They have a DIFFERENT ANATOMY, ROMAN. I DID NOT ANSWER INCORRECTLY.”

“LOGAN THE QUESTION WAS HOW MANY FINGERS MICKEY MOUSE HAS. IT ISN’T THAT COMPLICATED.”

“DEFINE A FINGER FOR ME ROMAN. DEFINE IT. TELL ME WHAT A FINGER IS. IS A THUMB A FINGER TO YOU? IS IT? DOES EVERYONE HERE CONSIDER A THUMB A FINGER?”

Remus raised his hand lazily, pretending to not find this entire situation hilarious. “I don’t think a thumb is a finger. It’s a digit.”

“REMUS STOP SUCKING UP TO LOGAN LIKE THAT FOR MORE POINTS-”

It was honestly sort of amazing that they’d managed to start screaming at each other so quickly. They hadn't even gotten to the actual “debate for points” questions. These were just regular trivia. And yet they somehow managed to start a debate. About fingers.

When Virgil said that they could gain points by “giving a good argument”, Patton didn’t think he considered how far Logan and Janus were willing to go to convince the others that they were correct. Maybe he forgot that one debated for fun and the other liked to pretend to be a lawyer. This was bound to happen eventually.

Although, Patton wasn’t really focusing on that right now, but rather the fact that Janus was trying to change the points on the scoreboard behind them again.

“Jan! Stop that!” He whisper shouted.

“Stop what? I’m not doing anything.” He lied. Like a liar.

“Stop trying to give us points, we’re tied already, it doesn’t matter!”

Indeed, the two teams were tied at 30 points each, after seven questions. So far, they had been pretty simple, and the reason that their team didn’t have more points was because Virgil had randomly decided to subtract five from them, because he “felt like Janus was up to something. Nothing in particular but… something.”

He was right, obviously. Janus was trying to steal the question cards from the host table with one of his spare hands. But Virgil didn’t know that.

“No, you're right. I’m sorry sweetheart. There’s no point in cheating this early in the game, it’ll just make the others suspicious and make it harder to do so later on. I’ll save that one for later” Janus winked.

“That is not what I meant and you know it mister.” Patton crossed his arms, as if that would make Janus take him more seriously.

“Do I?” His mischievous smirk only seemed to grow.

“Yes! You do!”

“Sorry about that darling. I’ll get it eventually, promise.” Even if Patton wasn’t literally face to face with him right now, he would be able to hear the smirk in Janus’ voice.

“That’s-”

“FINE. YOU GUYS CAN GET TWO POINTS. IS THAT OKAY?”

“FINE.”

Roman threw his hand up and the scoreboard behind them changed to show the numbers 30 - 32.

All four of the other sides just stared at the two of them.

“Okay, Virgil, what’s the next question?”

He looked Roman up and down, squinted, and then looked away.

“Uh… when did snow white come out.”

“Alright. JANUS.” The deceitful side jumped slightly, then turned to Roman, smoothing out his outfit as if it never happened.

“Right. What’s the question?”

“Minus five points for not paying attention.”

“Wha- excuse me?” Janus stared at Virgil in shock. “That’s not fair-”

“Shoulda been listening dude. You keep forgetting that we can do that. Pay attention.” Virgil smirked at Janus’ barely concealed rage. “The question is what year Snow White came out.”

Janus rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “Pfft, easy. 1957”

Roman stood up quickly, and in a dramatic gesture moved to point at Janus “HAH, WRONG! It was-”

“No, it’s not! It’s totally 1947! Are you just making stuff up to make me lose?”

Roman stared at him, immediately stumped. He spluttered out a “What? No! I promise it’s-”

But Janus was quick, and also an expert gaslighter. “Then did someone change the date on the flash card? Because it was definitely 1937! How could you get such an easy question wrong!?”

Roman’s mouth opened and closed a couple times, as if he was trying to refute the statement but couldn’t find the words.

“When did it come out then?”

Virgil rolled his eyes in response. “1937. Dude you were off by like twenty years.”

“No he wasn’t.” Remus’ voice. Yet again speaking purely to add on to this meaningless argument, adding flame to the fire. “He said 1937.”

Virgil looked at him like he’d grown four heads. “N- dude did you miss that entire conversation? He said 1957.”

“He did also say 1937, though.” Said Logan, as if he was helping them in literally any way. “Are we still counting it if he changes his answer before the actual answer is revealed? His final date was 1937.”

Roman just stood there, trying and failing to process their questions. Virgil answered for him.

“We. We’re not accepting that. Final decision. We’re the hosts here, and he’s not getting any points.” Then he turned to glare at Janus again. “Matter of fact, minus five points for trying to trick us.”

Now it was Janus’ turn to splutter, exclaiming various forms of “what the hell, Virgil?” and “why??? Just why???”

Patton sighed, leaning down to lay his head on his stand.

“Patton! This next question is for you!”

He snapped his head up to look at them, smiling on instinct. “Yeah! I got this!”

“I thought it was one question per team-” Logan tried to interject but Roman steamrolled over him.

“How many years was Genie from Aladdin trapped in the magic lamp?”

“Oh! Uhh… like a hundred thousand years right? It was a really long time!”

Roman looked at his card, then at Virgil. He just shrugged. “Close enough.”

The princely side turned back to Patton, a beaming smile on his face. “Great job popstar, 10 points for you! You’re doing fantastic!”

“Ten poi- he didn’t even get it right?!”

“Shush up Logan, he deserves it. Anyways, Remus!”

Patton found himself smiling as well. The fact that his kiddos would give him points even when he got it wrong, ah he loved them so much!

He looked over to see what Janus thought, only to see him quickly turn away to look at their friends. He caught a glimpse of a smile on his face though, a moment of fondness in his expression.

And then Patton found himself smiling a whole lot more.

It was nice. This was nice. Maybe a little bit chaotic, but when were they not?

Besides, it wasn’t that bad.

———

At some point during the trivia, Virgil and Roman had started to give themselves points. Which was fine, they had mentioned that they would do so at the start after all!

But then they started doing so increasingly often.

Like, every couple minutes often.

For things like how cute the other looked, or how smart they were, or how well they worked together.

And they gave each other a lot of points. Like, hundreds of points. Way too many points, considering the fact that it was over double the amount of points the two teams had combined.

So Remus and Logan, the competitive bastards that they were, of course immediately decided to comment on it and start a debate on whether it was appropriate to give each other points for things like “the color of their eyes” (Roman you can’t give your team points every time you look at Virgil because you think he’s pretty. If we could all do that then what is even the point of the point system in the first place?)

And the hosts immediately took offense, justifying it by saying that they were the ones in charge here, so obviously they got to decide what was and wasn’t a good reason to give someone points.

Which prompted Janus to start another debate about how unjust it was that the two of them were in complete control in this situation even though it was not through democratic election, thus making them the unofficial rulers of a self proclaimed biarchy.

To which they responded that since it’s not a government system, it doesn’t work like that.

And now they were talking about kingdom hierarchy, in the middle of a disney debate.

And yet again, Patton could not find reason to care, because Janus was once again attempting to change the scores in their favor.

“Jay! We said that you couldn’t do this!”

“We said? I think you mean you said, my dear. I never agreed to anything.”

Patton threw his head back tiredly. “Janus, that’s cheating. It’s not fair to the others! We aren’t even winning anything, there’s no need to keep trying to find ways to win!”

“Oh but Patton, I need to do something to assist you! After all, you’ve almost been carrying me this whole game!”

That was true. Virgil and Roman had tried their absolute hardest to find ways to discredit Janus’ every answer, and take away points from him at any chance they got. In direct juxtaposition, they gave Patton as many points as they possibly could, even for completely incorrect answers.

(Patton didn’t really know how to explain that the points didn’t really mean anything to him, and by now was answering wrong just to see how Janus would react when they gave him the points. The fact that they were somehow still above negative points was honestly just a bonus.)

“C’mon sugar, let me do this? Please?”

Well. If Janus was going to play it like that, then Patton was going to have to bring out the big guns as well.

He turned to him, opened his eyes, and gave him is best pouty face.

He saw the exact moment Janus’ face went from “smug flirting” to “oh no he’s cute”.

He had to fight to not blush at the way the snake looked at him.

(Janus couldn’t stop looking at his eyes, his lips, the soft curves of his face as he tried to win him over. Patton looked every bit like the sweetheart Janus kept calling him.)

He sighed, closing his eyes, and pretending that he wasn’t completely melting on the inside. “…I suppose it doesn’t matter that much. If it really upsets you, I’ll stop.”

Patton’s face split and without really thinking about it, he launched himself forwards to crush Janus in a hug.

Arms wrapped around him by instinct (too many arms for a normal person, probably, but Patton had always thought that more arms meant more comfort). He laughed out a small thank you, burying his face into Janus’ suit.

“Yes, yes, I’m amazing, I know. Go back to your stand, you’re making me look soft.”

Patton laughed at the comment, but did indeed stand up and go back to his podium (he didn’t mention the fact that despite the complaints, Janus didn’t try to separate himself from him until Patton did).

The others had been arguing for far too long now anyways.

“I’m just saying, we should definitely have guillotined more rulers! It would have fixed so many problems!”

Wait, what?

“Remus, that would be RIDICULOUS. They didn’t have the concept of free will, or rights back then. They just would have elected another bad ruler!”

“Guys what the hell are we talking about.”

The conversation died instantly. The four of them looked at each other, and then at Janus, and then back at each other.

“I uh… I have no clue.” Was Virgil’s reply.

Which was typical. And also understandable. But maybe not what they should be doing right now.

“…okay. Can we get back to trivia now. That’s… that’s like the only reason we’re here in this stupidly fancy room, still standing up, still killing my legs. Can we wrap this up please.”

Roman snapped into action, getting the cards and moving swiftly on to the next question.

“Right! Yeah! Y'know what, we’re going to do a couple flash rounds. Me and Virge will just call out some questions and whoever answers first and most accurately gets points. Good?”

They nodded.

The game continued.

———

“Order!” Roman called out in the loud room. “Order in the court! This is the FINAL question! Up for debate here my guys, gals and nonbinary pals. Completely subjective, alright?”

Everyone hushed up, ready to answer the final question.

“Who is the best Disney prince?”

“Flynn Rider.” Four voices called out simultaneously.

The hosts paused for a moment, before looking at each other, and then back at their contestants.

“Correct. Five hundred points for everyone. Good game!”

“Well, this was a miserable experience. I despised every part of it.” he smiled at Virgil and Roman, not out of mischief or irritation but of pure, unfiltered care. “Thank you for organizing this. It was wonderful.”

Patton nodded aggressively next to him. “Yeah!! We got super side tracked but by golly was it fun!”

Roman laughed, and Virgil’s eyeshadow seemed to brighten a few shades to match the pink growing on his cheeks.

“Yeah it was… it was fun or whatever.”

“It was enjoyable.” Said Logan from beside them. His voice was low, a little raw from how much yelling he did in the two hours they spent doing the trivia. “Even though it devolved quickly into something that was most definitely not trivia.”

“Maybe next time we should have another group host it.” Remus said. “Y’know, like the winners of this game get to choose a theme for the next time.”

All of them seemed to perk up a little at that idea.

“Who won?” asked Janus.

“Not you guys.” was Virgil’s immediate response.

Janus hissed at him. Virgil hissed back.

“Did we even count the points?” Roman squinted at the board behind them, as if closing his eyes would make the massive numbers on them make more sense.

“I believe you stopped trying to actually calculate it when you started adding thousands onto the board. Much less the millions.

Roman shrugged. “Eh. That’s fair. We don’t really know who won then. Maybe we can hold a vote or something.”

Logan hummed. “That would be appropriate.”

Patton felt a hand rest on his, atop his podium.

He smiled, and closed his eyes.

For a moment there was peace. The group was tired out, energy completely depleted after that rollercoaster of emotions.

“…Maybe Janus should be disqualified though. I would consider changing the question cards and the scoreboards quite an easy disqualifier.”

“He did WHAT.”

———

Maybe it was a little bit mean for Remus to tell Logan that Janus had cheated right at the end there. Everyone was tired after all, so there was no point in wasting any of their remaining energy on questioning how he did it.

But Remus was petty.

And Janus did try to mess with his score.

All is fair in love and war.

Besides, who would he even be if he didn’t try to cause a little chaos right at the end?

He looked over at the other sides from his spot in between his and Logan’s podiums, bent in a position that would probably be impossible, if he weren’t an imaginary person who could make his spine disappear if he wanted to.

Janus was trying to justify himself to a group of three angry light sides, although it was clear that most of that effort went into trying to explain his methods to Patton. Said moral side was making an attempt to scold him that would probably be more effective if he looked in any way mad, and not just like his kitty had clawed up his favorite couch cushion. Roman and Virgil were leaning together in their seats, heads leaning on each other and holding hands.

He turned to look at his teammate. Logan stood resting his elbows on the podium in a rare moment of relaxation. He was observing the “fight” just as Remus was before, but usual cold expression was replaced with a soft, happy smile.

Something about it made Remus’ heart squish strangely. Maybe he was having heart palpitations.

He untangled himself enough to poke Logan's leg with his foot.

“Psst.”

Logan turned to look down. The fondness remained on his face, albeit with a little bit of added confusion.

He looked really hot from down here, damn.

“What is it you need, Remus?”

“If you could see any marvel scene in real life right now, to study, what scene would it be.”

Logan furrowed his brow and tilted his head. “…Comic book or movie scene?”

Remus shimmied, moving around so that he could stand up.

“Either.”

Logan took a moment to think, looking away from him in concentration. “Hm… there’s a fascinating scene in the marvel comics where the Scarlet Witch removes the abilities of all mutants from planet earth, almost by accident, because she doesn’t want them and the humans to keep fighting. Although, I suppose that’s not exactly a visitable scene, since her powers are never really thought to be observable in that sense.” He looked at Remus again, who was now standing up. “I would want to see what Tony Stark’s lab looks like. I know most of the science there isn’t real by any means, but it would still be fascinating to see how he would theoretically create his suits and weaponry.”

That sounded really smart. And complicated. And like it would take a lot of effort.

Remus reached out and grabbed him by the hand.

And suddenly, they weren’t in Logan’s dreamscape anymore, but Remus’.

Although it didn’t look like what his dreamscape usually looked like.

There were tables and tables of tech all around them. Holograms and metal scraps and projects were laid out that looked incredibly similar to the ones in the original Marvel movies. There were some odd choices of weapons, for sure, some of them seemingly old fashioned and not at all what would actually be in Ironman’s lab.

It didn’t matter.

And it didn’t matter how much energy it took Remus to make the room. Or how much his head hurt trying to remember basic mechanics so that he could make anything here believable.

None of it mattered.

It was all worth it, for the way Logan screamed in happiness.

#sanders sides #sanders sides disney trivia saga #mociet #prinxiety #intrulogical #patton sanders #remus sanders #janus sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #roman sanders #shadow writes #fanfic #writing

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roguekassa · 19 days

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more guts au headcanons! (again, is it canon if it’s my au???)

patton

- was on a kid sitcom with logan in their youth years, they became best friends (4 evaaaa) because of it

- logan’s go to for any sort of things (from background vocals to boba runs to searching for a specific piece of clothing for his concerts)

- still continues to act but has now dialed back his roles in an effort to go on tour with logan as his assistant!

- he constantly jokes that he is logan’s sugar baby (logan constantly proceeds to smother him with anything he can find)

virgil

- has the same producer (thomas) as logan so they constantly crossed each other’s paths during recording sessions

- originally reached out to logan after his first single (driver’s license) dropped to congratulate the other! but then immediately deleted the message out of embarrassment .. . ..

- almost blew intrulogical’s hidden romance cover by saying on LIVE RADIO that logan had a huge fat crush on a british boy (logan quickly covered it up with fictional characters but he was sweating bullets)

- he makes music as well and is also currently working on his own breakout tour! for his album, found heaven. (Hehehehe)

Roman

- also a musician! logan actually reached out to him before his two albums even premiered because he admired the man’s music.

- he instantly regretted it when roman proceed to stick by his side for everrrrr (but it’s okay, logan doesn’t mind it when his family is across the country)

- he had recorded the opening song for logan’s concert and accidentally caught remus calling logan “the most beautiful person in the worlds

- he constantly feeds the internet with intrulogical crumbs

#sanders sides #ts sanders sides #logan sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #remus sanders #patton sanders #intrulogical #guts au

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glacierruler · 1 year

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Janus's character sheet/background

Taglist: @hyperfixated-homo @cutebisexualmess @prince-rowan-of-the-forest Please tell me if you'd like to be added/removed

Ships: eventual anaroceit, eventual intrulogical, preestablished roceit.

CWs: fantasy religion

Wanted to be part snake ever since he was a young boy, and made a deal with the goddess of nature, Rae, at the age of 15. Some nobles view this as a curse, but it's really a blessing. Whenever he gets the chance he prays to Rae, thanking them for giving him his scales.

Lacks balance because one eye is a snake eye. Uses a Cane when walking, but is usually on his horse, outside the palace, which helps him balance. Even if he's just leaning against her. Rouisha is the horse's name

Is the guard to and dating the Crown Prince Roman. When the Crown Prince is sent on an adventure so is he. Making sure the prince is safe is his top priority.

However he is rather stuck up in nature, and will do almost anything to keep his noble title. While he does believe that he should give his respect to those above him in status, just like those below Janus should give him respect, it can be lost. Sometimes rather easily. It's hard to gain his respect back. (I swear some of this changes as he goes on adventures, this is just how he is rn) He is also very vengeful if you hurt him or someone he loves.

Janus is a ranger and is 5'0

Stats:

Strength: 15

Dexterity: 12

Constitution: 12

Intelligence: 15

Wisdom: 15

Charisma: 19

Feel free to ask questions! :)

Virgil / Patton / Logan / Roman / Remus

Masterpost

#janus #ts janus #sanders sides janus #sanders side #fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #feel free to ask questions!

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sandersidesbigbang · 8 months

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Meux ex Machina

Image ID: Digitally modified Creative Commons public domain image depicting two hands in silhouette reaching for each other but not touching. They are lit with a neon green glow and concentric ellipses of indigo and green radiate outwards from their near connection. A bright, almost white blue light is centered in the background, either resulting from or anticipating their touch. [End ID]

Rating: Mature

Pairings: Endgame romantic Intrulogical, past (?) romantic Dukeceit, maybe a little romantic/platonic Loceit?, background (romantic if you squint) Royality

Summary/Excerpt:

Last century, the first Powered child was born. A frail, squalling infant with skin that burned to the touch and eyes that seemed to read your every thought, it was abandoned at the hospital.

Three years later, another was born. Then another. And another. Within a generation, most hospitals delivered more Powered children than unpowereds. The world turned on its head and the circuits were filled with advertisements for augmentation or that one weird trick to ensure your child was born gifted.

But veneration turned to fear and those powered children who were not cast out were raised to serve the needs of the strongest voices in their communities, whether corporate or military.

Four Powereds said no more and broke away to find their own way to serve—and maybe even save—the world.

Until one day, an unpowered dropped down into their midst, scarred and broken, but armed with steel and hungry for vengeance. Was there a place for him in the world they sought to build?

And did he have the power to save one of their own?

AUTHOR

@edupunkn00b - I like to write.

BETAS

@rosepetalgold - I came for the superpowered au and stayed for the delicious angst and redemption arcs.

ARTISTS

@artistically-gay

@wolfy-do-art-stuff

#promo post #tssbb2023 #thomas sanders sides big bang

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starlocked01 · 1 year

Text

The Return of Curiosity

AO3 Link

Chapter 1/16

Relationships: Intrulogical, platonic Prinxiety, platonic Patton & OC side

Content Warnings: Food Mentions, Eating Non-edibles, Characters in Physical Danger, Kissing, Swearing, Original Characters, Bittersweet Ending

Summary: Logan has had enough. Years of being Thomas' logical side have taken their toll and after being ignored by absolutely everyone, he's through being their background exposition character. Logan is returning to his original purpose and his first family. But as the remaining dark sides welcome him back with open arms, the core sides are left confused and confronted with the return of the original indigo side. It's been a very long time since they've had hope or curiosity.

We're back baby! I adopted this story for @tsspromptmonth 's Spring Cleaning event! It was quite a different experience to take on @typically-untypical 's story and give up one of my own 😅 Raven wrote the first five chapters that I'm posting today and drafted the entire story. It's been awesome bringing their ideas to life.

#sanders sides #all sides #remus sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #janus sanders #ts original side #hope sanders #intrulogical #kissing #swearing #bittersweet ending #food mention #tsspromptmonth spring cleaning

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naminethewriter · 6 months

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Change Is Scary

Two days late but here is the last story for @intrulogicalweek this year! Once again, it was lots of fun and I am amazed that I am still not tired of these dorks 🤭 Anyway, I couldn't help myself and again sneacked in some Intruloceit, though Janus doesn't make an actual appearance. If you want more context for this story, read Sk8er Boi which I wrote for last years Dukeceit Week! It's a prequel to this but not a necessary read to understand this one. Hope you enjoy! 💙💚

Masterpost | Intrulogical Week 23 Masterpost | Ao3

Summary: Remus loves Logan. He's falling in love with Janus. He hopes Logan will give him a chance, too.

Content Warnings: None!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey Lo, I’m home!” Remus called as he closed the door to their apartment behind him.

“Welcome back!” his boyfriend answered from what was most likely the living room. Remus quickly took off his combat boots and leather jacket before hurrying to find him. He was indeed in the living room, typing something on his laptop. Remus came to a stop in front of him, bouncing on his feet quietly as he waited for Logan’s signal that he was done.

His boyfriend made an audible click on something, let his eyes dance across the screen once more and then nodded. With a grin, Remus plugged the laptop off his lap and put it on the coffee table before taking its place.

“Hello darling, did you miss me?” he purred as he straddled Logan’s lap.

“I did, Cephy,” his boyfriend chuckled. “I hope you had an enjoyable day.”

“I did! I did! It was very fun, we—”

“Before you start telling me about it – and I do want to hear it,” Logan softly interrupted him, “I have some news for you.”

Remus’ interest was immediately piqued. “What?!” He leaned closer, their noses almost touching.

“The first recording of your new album arrived today.”

With a delighted screech, Remus sprung up and clapped his hands. “Play it, play it, play it!”

“I thought you might say that,” Logan chuckled and grabbed a remote that sat next to him. With one button press, their stereo started playing the newest song of Remus’ rock band and with an excited wiggle, Logan was pulled up and into Remus’ arms.

“Let’s dance!”

They twirled around their living room, Remus holding Logan close to his chest and humming along to the melody. The dance didn’t fit with the music, but Logan was used to that. When Remus got excited, he liked to hold his loved ones close and his usual dance moves didn’t allow for that, so instead he just hugged Logan close and spun around a bit.

It was a tradition at this point with every new bit of music they produced.

“It’s a good album, Cephy. You outdid yourself again,” Logan praised, and Remus kissed him enthusiastically.

“Wasn’t just me! You and Virgil and Pat and Ro all did a lot, too!”

“Of course.”

For a moment they just enjoyed the music until Remus’ initial burst of energy dissipated a bit. He still held Logan close and swayed along to the rhythm but stopped with the spinning. Logan was grateful, he was starting to get dizzy.

“I’d love to hear about your day now,” he reminded, smiling up at Remus, whose expression brightened.

“Oh, it was great! Jannie and I had lots of fun chugging the golf balls as far as possible!”

“Aren’t the courses in a mini golf park rather, well, small? I cannot imagine you had to shoot them all that far.”

“We didn’t!”

With a fond sigh, Logan dropped the topic. He should have known that Remus wouldn’t play the game as intended.

“As long as you didn’t hurt anyone, I guess that is fine, too.”

“We didn’t hit anyone. The owner wasn’t all too pleased with us though,” Remus giggled.

“I can imagine.”

“Jannie said he enjoyed himself though. He also asked about you, you know.”

Logan stiffened slightly in Remus’ arms. “Did he now?”

Remus stopped their dance entirely and grabbed the remote to turn the music down, though he kept his boyfriend close.

“He did. He’d really like to get to know you, too.”

“I know. I would like that as well.”

“But?”

Oh, Remus knew him too well. Nervously, Logan fiddled with Remus’ shirt, keeping his head low to avoid eye contact.

“But I still feel like it’s too early, don’t you? I mean, you just started going out, maybe we should wait to see if—”

Remus squeezed his shoulder to stop his rambling.

“I don’t think that’s actually your issue, is it, Lo Lo? Me and Janus is our thing, you don’t have to worry about us. And there’s nothing to worry about to begin with, we’re great. I really like him, and he likes me, too. And I’m sure you would like him as well if you gave him a chance.”

“I want to give him a chance. It’s just that I…” He trailed off but Remus didn’t push him. He knew that Logan sometimes needed to gather his thoughts before speaking. “I am worried. I know we both agreed that we are open to multiple partners and I am not taking that back. I love you and I am happy that Janus makes you happy as well. I… I am simple worried about managing two relationships at once, I have never done so before.”

“And that’s a valid thing to worry about,” Remus nodded. “It’s not gonna be easy, I mean, our relationship took a while to work out, too. But I’m here for you. And Jannie will understand it, too. I don’t want to share more than I should, but you know he’s trans and grew up in a rather conservative household. He understands how scary change can be and that some stuff will take time to figure out. None of us can expect this to go perfectly, so don’t think about it too much.”

“I know. I’m trying.”

“And I’m very proud of you for that.” Remus pressed a kiss into Logan’s hair. “If you need more time, I won’t push you. But maybe consider letting me invite him for tea or something? It doesn’t have to be anything big; it doesn’t even have to be a date. Just a conversation to start with, okay?”

Logan took a deep breath.

A conversation.

Yeah, he could do that.

“Yes. I’ll try and find something I am comfortable including him in.”

“Thank you, starlight.” Remus hugged him closer, nuzzling him contently. “I love you.” “I love you too, Cephy.”

#namiswriting #intrulogical week 2023 #day 7: rock n roll/music #intrulogical #background dukeceit #future intruloceit #ts remus #remus sanders #ts logan #logan sanders #hurt/comfort #logan is insecure about maintaining two relationships at once #remus understands his worries and is doing his best to help #janus is only mentioned #sanders sides #fanfiction #reblogs are appreciated

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olliedollie1204 · 1 year

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a winter's tale (chapter 2)

Remus goes to a winter break party… so does his love-stricken brother, his meddling roommate, his nosy-ass friends, and, oh yeah, his totally-not-a-crush. What could go wrong?

(Read here on AO3) (Read chapter 1 here)

Remus had no idea what he was drinking, but it was hot and sweet and spicy and it burned on the way down— exactly what he was looking for. Gleefully he chugged the rest of it and threw the red solo cup on the ground, making it bounce unceremoniously.

“Fuck you, Professor Callahan!” he screamed, and the circle of equally drunk college students around him cheered in response. One of the benefits of going to an end-of-semester house party was that virtually everyone was on the same page, that making it through yet another term without dropping out was nothing short of a triumph.

“Pick up that cup, you look like an animal,” Janus said directly in his ear, speaking loudly while still not shouting over the music.

“A party animal!” Remus replied.

“And a pitiful college cliche.”

“Jan-ny, can you get off my dick for two seconds?”

“Are you looking for someone else to take that spot?”

Remus snorted. “Fuck yeah! As long as they’re significantly more sober than me right now.”

“Oh, please, you’ve had two drinks,” Janus said. “You should see Virgil. Last I saw Roman was holding his hair back while he puked his guts out.”

“Shit! Was it nasty?”

Janus gave him a withering stare. “Yes, because I obviously stood beside him and watched. I have no idea, Remus. I just gave Roman a peppermint to give him when he was done. So much for Roman’s plan.”

UGH. No more talk about plans!

“Aright, I’m done talking about boring shit.” Remus grabbed Janus’ drink and quickly downed it, ignoring his friend’s affronted gasp before pushing the cup back into his hands. “Where are the others?”

Janus snatched the cup back, scowling into it. “Well, Patton set up shop in the kitchen handing out those candy apples he made. I haven’t seen Logan.”

Remus blinked. “No Logan?” he asked, realizing at the last second that he sounded far too much like a child who’d just been told Santa left the mall to go have a smoke.

“No Logan,” Janus confirmed. He raised one eyebrow. “Is that a problem?”

No. Fuck. Okay. That was fine. It was fine— if Janus hadn’t seen him that meant he wasn’t here, because Janus always made it a priority to scope out the entire party like a bloodhound, figuring out who his fuckbuddy target would be for the night. And he’d obviously seen Virgil and Patton, and together with Logan the three of them always rode together (and really, Remus thought that was unfair, for the three people most likely to volunteer to be designated drivers to all ride together— he and his roommates always ended up Ubering just so they could all get equally drunk). So Logan wasn’t here, and that was fine, and definitely not super stupidly disappointing for any reason.

Remus did himself the favor of not saying any of that out loud, and Janus sighed.

“Well, I’m getting another drink,” he said pointedly. Remus grinned at him, and he rolled his eyes with exasperated fondness. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“That is a much shorter list than you’d like to admit, Jan-Man!” Remus replied cheerfully, turning away and dipping back through the crowd before Janus could respond.

It was pretty crowded, which Remus honestly kind of loved. Crowds were a good sign of many things— first, that the hosts hadn’t run out of drinks. Important. Second, that the party was still going. Equally as important.

After that his list sort of devolved from neat bullet points into vague feelings of contentment that arose whenever Remus found himself pressed between unknown bodies in an unknown building on an unknown night. It wasn’t about sex (despite what everyone who knew him would believe)— it was intimate, sure, but the intimacy arose from the unyielding mania that came from rubbing against a throbbing mass of nameless, faceless bodies, sweating and grinding and shaking from emotional excess.

… Fuck. Maybe Remus should take a page from Roman’s book and start writing poetry. Logan liked poetry, didn't he?

“Shut the fuck up!” he said out loud, not that anyone could hear him.

Maybe he could text him? No, that’d be stupid. He was at a party, he was supposed to be enjoying himself. And Logan didn’t even really like parties anyway! Why would he want his friend to subject himself to an environment that he clearly only tolerated on a good day, just so Remus could… what, talk to him?

“You’re thinking pretty loud there, buckaroo!” a voice interrupted him before some bright red thing was shoved under his nose. “Candy apple for your thoughts?”

Remus looked up. “I think I’ve had enough of your candy apples to last a lifetime, Pat.”

“Not my fault you kept eating my trial apples after I told you they’d give you a tummy ache,” Patton replied, just a hint too smugly to come across as perfectly innocent. It made Remus very proud.

“How’s the party?” Patton continued.

“You’re here too, Padre, you should know.”

“Oh, you know this isn’t really my scene.” Patton waved his hand through the air. “I only come to these things to hang out with my friends! But looks like most of our group had other plans for tonight, huh? Everyone’s having some pretty important conversations, huh?”

He looked at Remus meaningfully, and it took several seconds for Remus’ brain to figure out what he meant.

“What, you mean— Roman and Virge?” His eyes widened, and he slammed his cup down on the table with too much force. “Wait, do you know something?”

Patton’s eyes widened. “Oh! Well— yeah, Virge has been talking about confessing all week—”

“Virgil has?” Remus nearly shrieked. A guilty look passed over Patton’s face; he really couldn’t lie for shit.

“Oh, oh shoot, Remus please don’t tell anyone, please tell don’t Virge I told you—” he babbled. Remus’ grin felt like it’d split his face.

“Are you kidding me? Roman has been fucking moping for weeks over this party, he got it into his head tonight was the perfect night for it—”

“Virgil, too,” Patton replied, gasping a little as his smile came back. “Oh my God, that’s so romantic! This is such an exciting night!”

Remus nodded, turning toward the direction of the bathroom and craning his neck. “Wonder if that’s what’s happening in the vomitorium over there. Usually Logan takes over on Virgil puke duty— Roman’s lucky he’s not here to do it tonight, because now he can make his lovey-dovey speech to Virgil a literal barf fest—”

“Logan’s here.”

Remus stopped talking. Patton blinked at him.

“Logan’s here?” he repeated, as if Remus hadn’t heard him. “He— he’s been here the whole time, he came with Virge and me.”

Um. What the fuck? “Record scratch?”

“You haven’t seen him?”

“No!” What the fuck? Logan was here? Janus didn’t usually lie so boldly to Remus’ face anymore, and he couldn’t even think of why he’d bother lying about Logan not being here.

Patton frowned. He put down the candy apple he was holding and fished his phone out of his front pocket.

“I’ve been texting him, but he hasn’t responded. I thought he’d found you already, I thought you two were talking about—”

He stopped himself suddenly, shook his head. “Never mind!”

Remus’ brow furrowed. Yeah, Patton couldn’t lie, it was true, but each and every one of them in their friend group could smell his bullshit repression a hundred miles away.

“What did he want to talk about, Patton?” Remus asked— maybe demanded, if he were being honest. Patton busied himself with his candy apples again.

“I really think you should go find him, bud, this isn’t my business—”

Remus was about to complain, but a flash of light in his peripheral made him realize the bathroom door had opened, the yellow light spilling out across the darkened living room.

“Later!” he burst out, spinning on his heel and shoving his way back into the crowd.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fic #remus sanders #janus sanders #patton sanders #intrulogical #background prinxiety #my writing #my posts

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edupunkn00b · 2 years

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2122. The birds died first.

Chaotic weather raged. Year-round forest fires. Drowned cities. Runaway global pandemics. Food web collapses. Mass extinction events. Some countries, like the United States of America, fractured into smaller pieces. Others were swallowed whole.

But humans are resilient. They moved cities, wrote new laws. Built new tools.

Like artifices. Domestic Model Ds came first. Strong, home-focused caretakers. Companion Model Cs followed when the Model Ds didn't provide enough entertainment and comfort.

Victory bots were for defense. And war.

The new Model Xs could do it all and were nearly indistinguishable from humans. Near perfect, they frightened the humans who passed draconian restrictions.

The artifices fought back. Model Ds and Cs were easy to recall and reprogram. Few evaded their fate. Those went on to recruit and corrupt others. Model Xs were rounded up by reprogrammed Model Vs and decommissioned.

Few, if any, survived.

Logan Sanders is a defender of the people, uniquely skilled in hunting and disabling rogue artifices before they can do more harm. What happens when he meets his match and the world as he knows it is changed forever?

---

Chapters: 18 Fandom: Sanders Sides (Web Series) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Deceit | Janus Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders/Deceit | Janus Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Rage | Lucas Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders, Dr. Emile Picani/Sleep | Remy Sanders Characters: Logic | Logan Sanders, Deceit | Janus Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Morality | Patton Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Rage | Lucas Sanders (OC), Logan Sanders, Janus Sanders, Model C Remus, Model C Roman, Model D Patton, Model V Virgil, Model X Lucas, Sleep | Remy Sanders, Dr. Emile Picani, Emile Picani Sanders Additional Tags: Minor Character Death, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Gun references, School Shootings, Referenced only, Swearing, Gun Wielding Logic | Logan Sanders, Roceit - Freeform, Intrulogical, future intrulogical, remile - Freeform, very very background remile, Implied Sexual Content, Remus says things, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, "Comfort Bots" referenced

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iclaimedtobethebetterbard · 2 years

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if you’re going my way, i’ll go with you - chapter 9

Fandom: Sanders Sides Characters: All the sides, character!Thomas, minor/background OCs Rating: Teen & up Relationships: Analogical, Dukeceit, platonic Loceit and Intrulogical, platonic/parental Prinxiety and Logince Warnings: Language, very non-graphic injuries, a few extremely vague references to child abuse. Word count: 3384

Read on AO3!

My writing masterpost

start - previous - here - next - masterpost

–

Chapter 9

Logan made quick work of his investigation of Count Ruthless’s lair. He didn’t need to bother with minions, of course—no minion who valued their skin would ever challenge a superhero, let alone Dr. Logic. Besides, most of them seemed to be concerned with vacating the premises at top speed and could not care less about Logan making his way to the heart of the lair.

The Count, Logan was unsurprised to discover, owned very little tech that was of real interest to him, but there were several pieces Logan deemed it best to remove from circulation among the villainy of Sandersville. Virgil would no doubt be unhappy with this, but he had promised Logan first pick.

Once he had selected the items he wanted, Logan loaded them into a cart and took it back to the rooftop. He’d scheduled a bot earlier in the day to arrive here precisely when he needed it, and sure enough, it was right on time. Transferring the cart to the bot and sending it back to his lab was a simple matter. After sending it on its way, he crossed the rooftop back to Virgil’s prone form to check on him.

Virgil was still unconscious. His pulse was steady, and his breaths were long and even. The device Logan had used to knock him out, a new model he’d been working on that was small enough to conceal in his hand, had worked beautifully; it should leave him with no unpleasant side effects upon awakening. However, it would likely be another hour or two before Virgil came to—in order to eliminate all unwanted side effects, Logan had had to increase the minimum time the device affected its victims for.

Having been prepared for this, Logan clipped one of his stock invisibility devices onto Virgil’s belt. He arranged Virgil’s arms into a more comfortable position, so that they would not cramp by the time he woke up, and tucked a note into his hand. On it, he had printed the dictionary definition of the word “prank.”

He turned on the invisibility device so that Virgil would not be discovered in his vulnerable state, then took off from the rooftop and flew across the city back to his lab to wrap up his duties for the day. All in all, everything had worked out beautifully.

***

The bot and the cart full of tech were both waiting outside the outermost set of doors to his lab. Logan frowned to himself. Remus ought to have seen the notification that something was outside and let the bot in by now. That was odd.

But the reason for the delay became evident when he made his way into the lab proper and discovered Remus, perched in Janus’s lap, cupping their face in his hands and trading soft words and giggles and kisses with them.

Logan rolled his eyes and cleared his throat loudly. Janus started so violently the chair went skidding a few inches and Remus fell right off of it, landing on his tailbone.

“Oh, hi Doc!” Remus greeted cheerily from the floor without so much as a wince. He waved up at Logan as Janus composed himself in an excessively dignified manner, trying to act like he hadn’t been startled at all.

“Reflection, I have no desire to revoke your access to my lab, but every day you find new ways to test me,” Logan told Janus as Remus got to his feet and brushed himself off. “We just discussed this.”

“Actually, it’s just the same way a lot of different times,” Remus pointed out, taking an instinctive-looking step to the side that put himself in front of Janus. It was a remarkably subtle movement—the casual slide seemed perfectly natural. Only the slight line of tension in Remus’s shoulders gave his anxious state away.

Logan frowned to himself, a protective feeling nudging away some of his irritation with his intern. He knew what this type of behavior stemmed from, and though he’d offered what he could to help remedy it, that made him no less angry on Remus’s behalf for what had caused it.

“It’s mostly my fault, anyway,” Remus added, greatly increasing the strength of the emotion Logan was experiencing. “Don’t get her in trouble. Please.”

“Neither of you are ‘in trouble,’ Remus,” Logan assured the younger man gently. “I am merely exasperated.” He directed the bot towards one of the storage rooms and went to power his main computer all the way down for the day. “And you certainly do not bear a higher share of responsibility in this matter than Reflection does—you never leave your workspace to seek him out. But, to be clear: I would appreciate it if you would incorporate my feedback into future actions, but I have no intention of meting out unpleasant consequences for you, now or ever.”

“Okay,” Remus said after a considering pause. “Thanks.”

“So I can do what I want,” Janus put in, sounding very pleased.

“No.” Logan pointed at her. “You I am annoyed with. If you continue testing me, I may actually revoke your access to the lab for a day or two to make my point.”

Janus pouted at him. “Meanie.”

“I feel I have been extremely lenient on this matter up to this point in time, actually,” Logan informed her.

“Well, I could just put on your face. Or his.” Janus pointed at Remus. “You can’t ban yourself from your lab, so you can’t keep me out.” He grinned triumphantly.

“I’ve actually developed bio-scanning capabilities that can detect the shapeshifter gene,” Logan informed them. “So I can, in fact, keep you out if I should desire to do so.”

“What?” Janus all but shrieked, absolutely scandalized. “You said it blends in and hides! You said that mimicking DNA was one of my key strengths!”

“Precisely,” Logan said, greatly amused. “That is why it took me a decade to develop something that could consistently and reliably identify it.”

“And you just didn’t tell me you had this?” Janus flung his hands in the air.

“I was planning to save it for an opportune moment.” Logan gave them a teasing smile. “But drawing this reaction from you is in fact entertaining enough to suffice.”

“You’re awful,” Janus told him, which Logan knew was a compliment. “Can you show me how it works?”

“I would be happy to. However, not today.” Without further preamble, Logan took off his labcoat and hung it in its place on the wall.

“…Whatcha doing, Doc?” Remus asked, clearly unsure if he was supposed to know why Logan was preparing to leave or if his confusion was well-founded.

“I have some personal matters that need my attention, and will be unavailable for the rest of the day,” Logan explained. “I should be back to a normal schedule tomorrow. Anyone trying to reach me should be directed to try again in the morning. For now, I’d like you to put off your normal work for the remainder of the day and instead begin cataloguing the assets I’ve just brought in. They are various pieces of supervillain tech reclaimed from the lair of Count Ruthless.”

“Got it,” Remus said with a nod, getting to his feet at once and heading for the back room where the cart was. For all his time spent flirting with Janus on the clock, he was a busy worker once he set himself to a particular task.

Sometimes too busy. Logan had not forgotten the day, a month or two after he’d initially taken Remus on, when he’d arrived at the lab in the morning to discover that Remus was still busily working away, having forgotten to go home at all or even to sleep.

“Remus,” Logan called.

Remus paused and looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, Doc?”

“Remember to go home on time and to prioritize fulfilling your need for food and sleep,” Logan said. “It is more than fine if your task is unfinished today.”

“Sure, sure,” Remus said dismissively, then visibly reined himself in. “I mean—okay. I’ll try and remember.” He hesitated. “Thanks, Doc.”

“Of course,” Logan assured him.

***

After bidding goodbye to both Remus and Janus, Logan made a quick stop at his official Dr. Logic apartment, which he kept in order to maintain the privacy of his actual apartment. He shed his work attire in favor of a simple turtleneck and pair of slacks and replaced his contact lenses with glasses, then left the apartment by the secret exit. From there, he then made his way to the overdramatic tower that Virgil made his home in.

Waiting until there was nobody on the street to witness him—though this was not a long wait; people generally avoided the Nightmare’s lair at all costs—Logan stepped onto the grounds, waiting just a second before continuing. The security system should recognize that he was out of costume, and therefore had clearance to access the building, but it was always best to make sure. Having satisfied himself that he was not about to be obliterated via laser, he made his way up the steps and let himself in.

He knocked on the door of Virgil’s penthouse-style living quarters as he let himself into that a moment later.

Roman’s head, the only part of him visible over the back of the couch, swiveled at once. “Oh!” He waved as Thomas reached to pause the television. “Hi, Doc—tor…” Roman trailed off, little brow wrinkling in confusion as he clearly remembered mid-sentence the instruction not to use Logan’s hero name when he was out of costume.

“Good afternoon,” Logan said. He glanced around. “Virgil has not yet returned, I take it?”

“No,” Thomas said. Something in Logan’s tone must have been off, because Thomas squinted at him. “Do you… know something about that?”

“I have no idea what you are insinuating,” Logan said blandly. “I’m sure he will be back soon. Perhaps in approximately three and a half minutes.”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Fine. Fine. Be like that. Supers,” he mumbled under his breath, rolling his eyes.

Logan made his way to sit beside Roman on the sofa. “How are you doing physically?” he inquired.

“Um, good. I had more of the painkillers at lunchtime.” Roman bounced a little. “I’ve been watching so much She-Ra! Because Virgil said you said I should rest. And not go to school. But Virgil says he’s going to make it so I can just go to school again later without getting in trouble. Have you seen She-Ra? Besides what I showed you yesterday? Do you know Sea Hawk?”

“I do not,” Logan said. “May I—“

“He’s a very handsome man,” Roman said eagerly, “and he has a shiny mustache and he sings! He’s my favorite. Um, one of my favorites.” His eyes widened. “Oh, I—I think I interrupted, sorry.” His shoulders drew inwards.

“It is fine. He sounds fascinating,” Logan said politely, though to be honest he could hardly care less about the show or its characters. “May I examine your bandages?”

“Sure.” Roman stilled his bouncing, allowing Logan to lift the child’s t-shirt off his belly and assess the state of his bandages.

“They seem to have held up well,” he commented, pleased. “You bathed with them on, correct? How did they hold up against exposure to water?”

“Good. I don’t think the water got in at all,” Roman said.

“Excellent. They still need to be changed, at the very least so I can examine the wound itself, but that is good to know. How are—“

The door opened.

Roman lit up. “Virgil!”

“Hi, kid,” Virgil said lightly, closing the door behind himself. He fixed Logan with a pointed stare and crossed his arms. “Hi, babe.”

“Hello, dear,” Logan said, struggling not to laugh.

Virgil tossed something through the air towards him. “I think this is yours.”

Upon catching it, Logan discovered it to be the invisibility device. “How thoughtful of you to find that for me,” he said innocently.

“I feel like I’m missing something here,” Thomas interjected.

“Oh, Virgil is just very happy to see me,” Logan said, forcing down a smirk as he went to set down the invisibility device on the kitchen island for safekeeping.

Virgil came up behind him and wrapped his arms around Logan’s waist, hooking his chin over Logan’s shoulder. “You, my love,” he murmured, punctuating his words with a tender kiss pressed to the side of Logan’s neck and speaking too quietly for Roman or Thomas to hear, “are an asshole.”

“Hmm.” Logan felt he had to concede this point. “Perhaps.” He paused. “But it was funny.”

He felt Virgil smile against his neck. “It was kind of funny,” he allowed. “After I woke up and figured out what had happened.”

“And you did say I could have first pick of the technology in the lair,” Logan added.

“Well, I somehow imagined that, like, you would let me know what you wanted and I’d give it to you,” Virgil said, sounding greatly amused. He pressed his cheek against Logan’s. “Not that you’d knock me out and go get it yourself.”

Logan turned his head to peck Virgil on the lips. “I am nothing if not proactive, dearest.” He tugged Virgil’s hands gently away from where they were still clasped around his waist. “I would like to continue attending to my patient now.”

Virgil whined in half-joking protest, but relinquished his hold on Logan with one final kiss on the cheek. “I’m going to go change out of this,” he announced, gesturing at his supersuit, and made his way down the hall to his bedroom as Logan rejoined Roman on the couch.

In short order, Logan had unbandaged Roman’s wound and begun examining it to ensure that there were no signs of infection, Roman watching with fascination all the while.

Virgil stepped back into the room moments later, now clad in a t-shirt and jeans. After an assessing look at Logan and Roman, he evidently came to the correct conclusion that Logan had matters under control. Instead of immediately joining them, he beckoned Thomas to the side and began a hushed conversation about the morning’s events.

Logan ignored this in favor of giving his attention to his young patient. Roman’s wound was doing well—exceedingly well. In fact—

“Were you aware you have superhealing?” Logan inquired of Roman.

“What?” Roman said. “I do?” He stared down at the stitches in his stomach with renewed interest and reached to poke at them.

Logan caught the child’s hand, suppressing both his initial flash of panic at the action and his sigh of relief at successfully preventing it. (Was this what parenthood was like? No wonder Janus could be so high-strung.) “Touching your injury with your bare hands could infect it. Please do not,” he instructed Roman.

“Oh.” Roman bit the inside of his cheek. “Sorry.”

“It is alright. No harm has been done, and now you know,” Logan assured him. “But to answer your question: yes, you clearly have superhealing. I would have expected this amount of progress to take a week under normal circumstances.”

“Cool!” Roman enthused, visibly forcing himself to keep his hands away from his injury as he continued to examine it.

Logan nodded, refraining from telling the boy that this was not at all an uncommon power. His state of delighted wonder was endearing, and Logan felt strongly inclined to preserve it. “How are your pain levels?” he asked instead.

“Fine,” Roman said quickly. “I’m okay. It wasn’t that bad. And I had painkillers anyway.” He hesitated. “I think it’s better today than yesterday?”

“That is encouraging news,” Logan said, filing away the it wasn’t that bad to discuss with Virgil later, because it certainly had been that bad, particularly for a child who barely qualified as tweenaged. He pulled out a cleaning wipe and began sponging carefully at the wound. “Have you noticed any other powers that you are in possession of?” he asked. Roman’s main power was clearly the glitter ability, but his secondary powers could be anything, and the number of them could vary.

“Um. I can fly?” Roman shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t—” He hesitated, looking away; Logan suspected he was deliberating how to word his sentence. “Didn’t think it was a good idea to experiment and try and find out.” He looked back at Logan. “I just knew I could fly and make glitter stuff because I found those out by accident.”

“Hm. Well, no matter—the assessment new students undergo at Brennan is quite thorough. They will compile a full list of your powers when you enroll.” Logan glanced over at Virgil, who had just finished debriefing Thomas and sent him to do some task relating to the business with Count Ruthless. “He is being enrolled there, I assume?”

“Obviously,” Virgil said. He came over to sit on the sofa near Logan and Roman. “I was thinking we could work on that tomorrow, Roman?”

“That’s the powers school, right?” Roman asked.

“It is indeed,” Logan confirmed. He set down the wipes, satisfied with the state of Roman’s injury for the time being. “Let’s bandage this back up and check on it again in another day or two.”

“Mmkay.” Roman sat still as Logan began to rebandage the injury.

It was quiet as Logan worked. His thoughts, however, were whirring back and forth with an indecisiveness and hesitancy he rarely experienced.

His identity was secret; that was the point of it. The fewer people who knew anything about him, the better. And a child had far less secret-keeping ability than an adult.

All the same, Roman had to call him something. At this point, it seemed certain that that Logan would continue interacting with this boy on a regular basis. And he’d proven himself to be capable of discretion.

He drew in a long breath, making up his mind at last. “My name,” he said to Roman, voice quiet because he was taking such care to keep it steady, “is Logan Crofter. When I am out of costume, you may use it to address me.” Logan held Roman’s gaze and spoke firmly. “I expect that you will keep this private, and do your utmost to ensure that my name and my personal information are never associated with the title of Dr. Logic. Clear?”

Roman nodded several times, eyes wide. “I won’t tell anyone. Promise.”

“Good.” Logan examined the bandages one last time. “These should be sufficient for the time being.”

“Thank you,” Roman said, tugging his shirt down from where it had been rucked up under his armpits. “Why is your watch trans?” he asked, staring at Logan’s hands.

Oh. That was right; the strap of Logan’s watch had the trans pride flag running along it. “Because I am a transgender man,” he said simply, shrugging.

Roman’s eyes went huge. “Wait, really?” he gasped, delighted.

“Yes.” Logan hesitated for a moment. “That is another piece of information that I expect you to keep private,” he added. “I prefer for people to know as little identifying information about Dr. Logic as possible.”

“Oh. Gotcha.” Roman nodded. “I get that,” he said, far too seriously. “You just gotta keep things secret sometimes, you know?”

Logan felt a sharp, strong ache in his chest at the seriousness of the little boy’s tone and the solemn look in his brown eyes. He reached over and cupped Roman’s warm little cheek in his hand. “Sometimes,” he agreed. “It’s better when you have friends to confide in.”

Roman made a noise of consideration. “That makes sense,” he agreed.

“Is he all good, L?” Virgil inquired.

“Yes,” Logan confirmed. “He is doing very well.”

“Cool. Sounds great. Can I grab you for a minute?” He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I want to talk with you about something.”

Logan raised his eyebrows at the vagueness of this phrasing. “Certainly,” he agreed.

“Awesome. Hey, Roman,” Virgil said, “why don’t you finish up this episode of She-Ra while I talk with Logan?”

Roman frowned for just an instant, and then it was gone. “Okay,” he said, voice sweet and blandly accommodating.

Virgil hesitated, brow furrowing, but did not press matters, beckoning Logan down the hall to his bedroom as Roman picked up the remote.

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