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senditcolton · 14 days

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call my bluff... call you babe (5)

CHAPTER FIVE

summary - what’s that saying? drunk words are sober thoughts? after a night out at a bar with the team, Madeleine is left wondering if drunk actions mean the same.

word count - 4k

warnings - alcohol consumption & cheating, kind of (you’ll understand)

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Although the air was still sharp and crisp with the chill of winter, Madeleine’s life had never felt warmer. And that heat had nothing to do with the bodies packed into the downtown Denver bar adjacent to the Pepsi Center. Or, at least not the bodies of strangers.

Instead, it was the bodies of Avalanche players and their partners – her friends – crowded in the corner section of the bar that made Madeleine feel as if the joy and happiness of summer was surrounding her constantly. Part of her still couldn’t believe that this was her life – a life that had changed so rapidly in the past seven months. But when Gravy handed her another tequila shot with a smirk, she gladly accepts, thinking that if this was a dream that she would eventually wake from, she wanted to make the most of every moment offered.

The tequila goes down her throat with a concerning ease and she leans back against Cale’s shoulder, sitting next to her. She can feel his chuckle, his body angling towards her causing her to sink deeper into his embrace.

“Still doing alright?” he whispers into her hair. Madeleine just looks back at him, never tiring at sight of his normally rosy cheeks darkening whenever he drinks.

“Never better,” she replies with a grin, one that Cale reciprocates before he leans in and places a soft kiss on her lips.

The connection that she had shared with Cale was a little over a month old and so far, it was really nice. He was genuine, respectful, and sweet. It was refreshing, especially since this was the first time she dated since Logan; a relationship that ended up being filled with deception and disdain.

Her relationship with the defensemen was still casual – nothing permanently defined, nothing official. But Madeleine liked it that way. It was easier.

An all too familiar laugh pulls her attention away from Cale, her eyes moving to were Tyson stood at the dartboard with JT, a beer in his hand as he watched his friend throw.

“I’m gonna go see if Tyson is losing,” she jokes, pushing away from Cale and scooting out of the booth seat. Cale’s only reply is a small nod before turning back to the conversation he was having with Nate and Mikko. Madeleine slips out of the corner section her friends claimed, weaving her way through the crowd until she reaches the dartboard area where Tyson and JT stood.

“Who’s winning?” she calls out, the two pairs of brown eyes looking towards her as she hops onto one of the barstools at the tables lining the wall.

“Tyson,” JT replies. “But not by much.” Madeleine watches as JT gathers his dart before walking away, Tyson taking his place behind the tape on the hardwood floor.

“I’m just surprised he is winning,” she laughs, her eyes turning towards her best friend.

“Hey, I was pretty good at this back in high school,” Tyson says, the joking indignation clear in his voice as he lines up his shot.

“Lucky for you, the red and green on the board aren’t relevant to the point system. If they did, it might be a little harder for your colorblind eyes.”

JT lets out a snort of a laugh, almost inhaling his beer next to Madeleine. Her blue eyes sparkle with humor as Tyson shoots her a playful glare before collecting his darts from the board.

“Even if they meant anything, you’ve still never managed to beat me,” he teases, settling next to her.

“Only because I just have terrible hand-eye coordination. One of the many reasons why you became a professional athlete and I became a librarian.”

“Josty, you’ve never tried to teach your best friend how to play?” JT asks.

“Why would I? If I do, she becomes better than me and there goes my guaranteed win.”

“Wow, so honorable.”

“Hey, take any advantage you can,” Tyson laughs, with a shrug and a wink thrown in her direction. The action causes Maddie to roll her eyes in jest, her head shaking from side to side.

“If you ask Cale, I’m sure he’d be happy to help,” JT tells Madeleine from across the table, a wicked smirk playing on his lips.

“I don’t think it would help,” she laughs in response. “Cale has already tried to teach me how to play pool– unsuccessfully, I might add. I guess I’m just a lost cause.”

“Really, Cale taught you how to play pool? When?” Tyson asks.

“Attempted to teach me. And it was during, I think, our third or fourth date. Why?”

“No reason,” he replies, the inflection of his tone being anything but casual, despite his best attempts to be blasé. His true feelings are only punctuated by an errant throw of his last dart, the point of it digging into the plain cork surrounding the dartboard.

Madeleine can’t stop the laugh that comes at the sight of Tyson’s head falling backward in defeat while JT cheers next to her. The ginger playfully bounds away from the tables, something about Tyson paying for the next round falling from his lips. Tyson just sighs before settling back next to Madeleine, taking the last swigs of his beer from the amber bottle.

There is a brief silence, the only sound being the clicking of the darts hitting each other as Tyson rolls them across the hardwood top of the table.

“Do you want my help?” Tyson asks. “Playing darts, I mean?” he clarifies, picking up the red darts and extending them towards Madeleine.

“I’m not sure,” she hesitates. “Ryan and Clare somehow convinced me to take a few tequila shots so that’ll probably make me worse than I normally am.”

“Who knows? Maybe the alcohol will stop you from overthinking,” Tyson teases, his eyes sparkling in that good-natured way that always made her resolve weaken.

“Is that my weakness? Overthinking? It has nothing to with just having bad reflexes?”

“I think so. It’s your, um… Aegean heel,” he says with a proud flourish. Madeleine laughs at his complete – yet completely misplaced – confidence.

“Achilles heel,” she gently corrects, loving the way Tyson’s cheeks fill with color. “But pretty damn close; same first letter, right culture. I’m impressed.”

“Let it be known I’m not just a dumb jock with a handsome face.”

“You know I’d never think that.”

“Which part?”

Madeleine hums, the inflection indicating a silent question, to which Tyson replies.

“You don’t think I’m dumb or you don’t think I’m attractive?” he elaborates.

This time, it’s her turn to feel her cheeks to heat up, faster than Madeleine would care to admit. She mutters a quick and teasing ‘shut up.’ Her response causes a cackle to escape Tyson, his head thrown back in delight. Thankfully, he doesn’t linger on her reaction, nor does he force her to give an answer. Instead, he simply holds out the darts again, the silent offer still standing.

She sighs, before taking the darts from his hand, the smile on Tyson’s face spreading even further than she thought possible.

Madeleine sweeps her hand out towards the dartboard, beckoning Tyson to go first. He accepts, walking up to the tape line. Maddie keeps her eyes glued to him, taking multiple mental notes about how he is standing, how he angles his body, how he positions his arms, and how he releases the dart.

JT wanders his way back to the tables, a beer in each hand, when Tyson is adding up his points.

“Did he feel that bad about losing that he’s picking on an easy target?” JT jokes, a sarcastic ‘ha-ha’ falling from Tyson’s lips at his friend’s words.

“Nah, he promised to help me,” Madeleine explains. “But he’ll probably still win anyway.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” comes JT’s reply, accompanied with his shoulder knocking against hers. “I think you can knock this guy down a peg or two.”

The gentle encouragement is what JT leaves Maddie with, dropping off one of the bottles for Tyson before moving back to the collection of tables where a few teammates still lingered. Madeleine turns her attention back to Tyson, who was walking back towards her, an expectant look on his face.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” he says, gesturing to the board. He just smiles at Madeleine’s accusatory look, one that screams ‘you’re supposed to be teaching me.’

“Have to know what you need help with before I can give you advice,” Tyson explains.

Madeleine sighs before pushing herself off the barstool, coming to stand behind the tape on the floor. She tries to remember how Tyson stood, placing one of her feet back as she leans forward. Madeleine takes a dart in her hand and focuses on the bullseye before tossing the small arrow. The dart – expectedly – does not go where she willed it, instead hitting the lower part of the board.

She hears a chuckle escape Tyson and is about to shoot him a glare but when her eyes drift in that direction, he had pushed himself off the wall and was walking towards her.

“You’re left-handed, Maddie,” he says, coming to fill the space behind her. “Switch your stance.”

Madeleine follows his directions, placing her left foot forward and her right foot back.

“Now, you don’t want to lean forward,” Tyson instructs, his hands landing on her shoulders as he pulls her back until her body stands straight. “Now the only other tip is to have the dart tilted a little upward, because that way when it arcs as it falls, it’ll land where you want it to instead of lower than you aimed.”

Madeleine takes each piece of advice, the heat of Tyson’s palms seeping through her shirt. She takes a deep breath, aiming for the inner ring this time instead of the bullseye. The dart flies from her hand and lands a little to the left but still in the correct ring. Even that minor success has a smile appearing on Madeleine’s face, her head turning to look back towards Tyson in excitement. He returns the grin, slightly squeezing her shoulders before returning to the table. Madeleine tries not to mourn the loss of his presence behind her, instead channeling her focusing back to the dartboard.

Their first game continues until Tyson decidedly wins. Even in the loss, Madeleine was happy their scores weren’t leagues a part from each other. The narrow gap between their points makes Maddie want to try again, convincing Tyson into another game with a plead and a convincing lip quiver.

About halfway through, Cale walks up to them both, his tan jacket already on his shoulders.

“Hey, Madeleine, I’m headed out. Do you still need a ride?”

“I think I’ll stay here for a little while longer,” she replies. “The train is still running so I should be fine. Thanks for offer though.”

“Of course,” Cale replies.

He leans into Madeleine, wrapping her arms around her in a hug before he pulls away. Cale presses a quick kiss onto her cheek, causing a giggle to escape her lips. Neither of them notices Tyson’s faltered throw, the dart secure in the space between the soft board and the metal frame. Cale simply departs with a quick wave to the two of them. Madeleine’s eyes follow him until he disappears from her sight. The sensation of cold glass pressed against her bare upper arm causes Maddie’s eyes to jump back to Tyson, now standing next to her with a grin on his face and a bottle in his hand.

“Not leaving with your boyfriend?” he asks, the tease in his voice almost a little too cloying.

“I’m not going anywhere until I’ve successfully deflated your ego,” she chirps back, practically bounding to the dartboard.

After a few more beers for Tyson, another two losses for Madeleine, and too many playful quips to count shared between them, Maddie within reach of her first win. Part of her has to thank the alcohol: Tyson’s continue consumption made his throws less accurate than before while her sobriety during this impromptu tournament helped her focus become clearer, her shots becoming cleaner.

In her last turn, she takes a few deep breaths, before firing at the dartboard. Her aim is precise, the darts falling in the exact wedges that she wanted them to. The points add up and Madeleine can’t stop the cheer that escapes her when she realizes that she finally beat Tyson; a victory that was only six years in the making, from their homes in Canada to this random bar in Colorado.

Madeleine spins to face Tyson, her arms still thrown up in excitement. Her eyes meet her best friend’s bright gaze, the smile on his face not dimming as he walks to her.

It catches her off guard when his body swerves around her and Madeleine’s excitement briefly dims, thinking that Tyson was going to be an uncharacteristically sore loser. But that thought is quickly disproven after he places his darts back into the cup attached to the board and rapidly flipping his body towards her, scooping her up into his arms for a celebratory hug. The laughter that falls from Madeleine is involuntary, her arms wrapping around Tyson’s shoulders as he starts to twirl her around, her body still held firmly in his grasp.

The weight of them together, coupled with Tyson’s not totally sober state has his feet tripping over each other, their center of gravity tilting to the side. Madeleine thankfully finds the ground, planting her feet and holding onto Tyson so his body doesn’t meet the hardwood floor with a hard thud.

The giggles still linger on Madeleine’s lips as Tyson regains his balance, moving back and reintroducing space between them, although his hands remain firmly on her hips, his grip strong. She looks up at Tyson, about make a joke about how mad Coach Bednar would be if he injured himself playing darts. But when her blue eyes connect to his deep brown ones, the jest catches in her throat.

Because Tyson – her best friend, the person that she’s known for years, the person that she missed, and the person that she was so thankful returned to her life – was looking at her. But more than that, he was staring at with such desire, a desire that hadn’t been directed towards her in what felt like years, that all of her thoughts abandoned her.

She just keeps her eyes locked to his, uncertain where this was heading but not determined to end it. The situation felt precarious, as if one misstep, one wrong assumption could send everything crashing down. Her gaze dancing over Tyson’s face, waiting for him to make the next move. She doesn’t miss the subtle flex of his hands on her hip, doesn’t miss the way his eyes soften as he drinks the uncertainty painted on her features.

The tension continues, Madeleine’s nerves spiking and out of habit, she takes her bottom lip into her mouth. Her teeth latch onto some of the loose skin and she tugs at it in worry, causing Tyson’s gaze to dart down towards her lips. Madeleine registers the departure of one of his hands leave its place on her hips but her mind falters at the new sensation of Tyson’s fingers coming to gently rest underneath her chin. The pad of his thumb lifts and lands on her bottom lip before pulling the skin down – a gentle encouragement for her to release it from her bite. She does, her mouth falling open slightly at Tyson’s behest. His thumb doesn’t fall away, instead moving across the dampened skin, brushing over the small split that Madeleine’s fretting opened.

The salt from Tyson’s finger stings as it touches the cut but Maddie realizes that she doesn’t mind it; the sensation grounding her to the moment.

She can feel Tyson’s hold shift, as if his entire body was debating every move. The tension is heavy, almost oppressive, the weight of nine years of words left unsaid hanging in the air above them. Madeleine feels her eyes inexplicably well with tears, as if the wait was too much to bear.

She doesn’t mean for it to happen, but when she blinks, a single drop falls from the ledge of her lower lashes, rolling down her cheek. The movement calls Tyson’s attention to the tear before his gaze returns to hers, the question plainly displayed on his face.

“Please,” is the only word that manages to escape from Madeleine’s throat.

It is a broken plea, soft and staccato. A plea for what, Madeleine wasn’t certain. For him to stop? For him to come closer?

Her lack of clarification leaves Tyson to interpret. Madeleine can feel his hold on her tighten as he pulls her closer, the press of his hand underneath her chin lifting her head. He leans in, seemingly in slow motion, and Madeleine can’t stop her eyes from fluttering close.

It is a moment of complete uncertainty before Madeleine feels the press of Tyson’s lips against hers.

It is delicate, gentle, a mere whisper of a kiss. But as soon as the sensation registers on her skin and in her brain, the trance she was stuck in breaks and Madeleine finally moves.

Her hands creep back, dancing over Tyson’s shoulders to the nape of his neck, her fingers teasing the curls there. She steps closer to press their bodies together, the warmth of him flooding her senses. Tyson’s lips stay politely on hers, unmoving, until Madeleine pushes herself up to him. She returns the kiss with a fervor that could only be described as hunger. Hunger for him, for this, for more.

Tyson responds quickly to her need, kissing her again before opening his mouth, his tongue pressing against the seam of her lips. She gladly grants him access, the floodgates opening and pure desire rushing forward. Tyson’s hand slides from her chin to grip the back of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair, keeping her as close to him as he can.

The way they tangle together is almost animalistic, as if all caution had disappeared and left the two of them to reckon with their untold yearning.

But the previously dim lights of the bar flip to fluorescent, signaling last call, the shock of the brightness causes Tyson and Madeleine to jump away from each other, their hands retreating from the other’s body. The white light crashes over them and when their eyes connect, it is as if the harsh overhead bulbs brought reason with it, recapturing their emotions, and returning them to the gilded cages they previously existed in.

“Shit,” Tyson curses. “Shit, I’m so sorry, Maddie.”

Madeleine wants to say it’s okay, if only to lessen his panic, but she can’t make the words form. Because she knows the statement would be a lie: nothing about this was right.

Tyson was her best friend. She was dating his teammate. She wasn’t supposed to kiss him in a bar when she came here with someone else.

The remembrance of Cale causes her to turn her head towards the corner booth in fear. A voice tells her what she already knows: he isn’t there. But she still worries that maybe Andre or Nate or, even worse, Gabe and Mel were still there and saw her and Tyson lost in each other’s lips.

A sigh of relief falls from her when she doesn’t see any of her friends, the only bodies still lingering belonging to a few regulars and bartenders picking up the abandoned bottles, cans, and glasses.

“I…” she starts, her throat constricting around the syllables. She swallows, gathering herself and piecing her thoughts back together, before forcing herself to speak.

“It’s – it’s really late,” she says. “I should go.”

She turns back towards Tyson, their eyes connecting. Madeleine tries not to notice how his expression shifts from alarm, to confusion, to sadness at her words. The space between them turns, the expanse feeling like a cold and barren wasteland – so different from the warmth and fire that was jumping between them mere seconds ago.

Tyson sighs and Madeleine watches as his entire demeanor changes, as if he was building a brick wall between them before he looks back at her with perfect practiced apathy.

“Is the train running this late?” he asks. It takes a minute for Madeleine to realize that he was talking about the RTD line, her go-to mode of transport between DU and the Pepsi Center.

“Oh,” she says, her mind racking the Light Rail schedule until she realizes that it was almost two hours since the last train departed. “No,” she sighs. “I guess I’ll just call an Uber.”

She turns away from Tyson, fishing her phone out of her pocket and she is about to open the app before she feels Tyson nudge her arm. She ignores the lingering sparks that his touch brings and looks back to see him holding out his car keys to her.

“Just take my car. It’s still in the parking lot of the arena.”

“I – it’s fine, Tyson. I can pay for an Uber.”

“Please. I’m… not sober enough to drive so I wouldn’t be able to get it until tomorrow either way. This way I know it’s safe in your lot. Plus, this way you wouldn’t have to rely on a stranger to get you home.”

The subtle way that he shows how much he cares for her and her safety leaves Maddie’s head spinning. How many signs has she’s missed? Did Tyson always feel like this towards her? How many times had she brushed off his advances with the excuse of their long-term friendship blurring the lines and acting as a smoke screen?

She wants to know, to get to the truth of everything. But right now, she was too tired, too confused to seek those answers. Instead, she takes Tyson’s keys from his hand.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I can drive you home, if you want.”

“That’s okay,” he replies with a shrug. “I’ve got a spare set of keys at home. I’ll use those tomorrow when I pick up my car. So you don’t have to get up early.”

This time, the pang that echoes through Madeleine’s ribcage is painful, her instinct assuming the worst: he was separating himself from her, creating a distance between them. Part of her worries that it wasn’t going to be temporary. But she doesn’t voice these concerns.

She just offers him another gentle ‘thank you’ and a small nod. Tyson gives her a half-hearted smile before he turns to the small table, the one that they occupied for hours, and gathers the empty beer bottles his hands. He wishes her a soft ‘good night’ as he passes by her towards the bar, presumably to recycle the bottles and close his tab.

There was no reason for Madeleine to hang around but her body doesn’t seem to want to move, still stuck in that moment she shared with Tyson and what it all meant – not only for their past but for their future. She didn’t want to leave these loose threads hanging. No, she wanted to know exactly which one would return her life to what it used to be, which one would mend the gap between her and her best friend, and which one would make everything unravel at the seams.

Eventually, her logic and her exhaustion win out and successfully coax her to throw on her coat and move towards the exit.

The chill from the February air hits Madeleine as she pushes open the sturdy oak door of the bar. The sensation is a pleasant one, the fresh air clearing her head – or at the very least, emptying her mind of any thought except the desire to get home to her warm and comfortable bed. She moves forward, leaving the bar and all those complications behind her.

She can feel the weight of a pair of eyes on her as she departs; brown eyes that she knew better than her own. Eyes that could open her up and read her with an ease than no one else ever could.

Madeleine wills herself not to look back.

taglist: @starjoyyy @fallinallincurls @kenna-thomson @tkachvkmatthew @m00nlightdelights @cixrosie

#nicole writes #CMBCYB #tyson jost fic #tyson jost imagine #tyson jost fluff #tyson jost x oc #buffalo sabres fic #buffalo sabres imagine #nhl fic #nhl imagine #hockey fic #hockey imagine

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roguekassa · 19 days

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love bringing yall fluff with the guts au (which is still going on dw!) but let me introduce you to : intrulogical hurt/comfort (?)

monk au!!!!!!

we meet detective remus monk, a man with ocd and plagued by intrusive thoughts/nightmares about his husband’s, logan ellison, death.

he hires his first assistant, virgil fleming who has a young son named patton who reminds him all the time that the world is better with him in it. virgil eventually quits in order to finish schooling but Remus supports him entirely. (he closes Logan’s office in order to pay for it but he doesn’t seem to mind.)

his second assistant, roman teeger also has a little boy named janus who reminds him so much (too much) of logan with his quick wit.

remus hadn’t meant to solve the first murder case of the counselor nor did he mean to solve the next one of the librarian nor the missing maid.

he doesn’t understand how people are just - Not seeing what he sees. How could they not see shoes squeaked clean? Cigarette buds that are one too many?

but the only case he can’t solve is logan’s. logan’s pretty face getting into the car on their driveway only for it to never return again.

he doesn’t like to tell people that he sees logan in his dreams, his soft fingers on his. he can almost smell the daisy perfume he would always put on before going to his class.

#sanders sides #ts sanders sides #logan sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #remus sanders #patton sanders #janus sanders #intrulogical #monk au

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risingsh0t · 11 months

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OC TAG GAME.

apologies that this took me forever! i was tagged by @aragorngf @corvosattano @minaharkers @jackiesarch @marivenah @aartyom @leviiackrman @nightbloodbix @chuckhansen @fenharel @gwynbleidd @shellibisshe @detectivelokis and @sstewyhosseini , THANK YOU ALL MWAH 💖

—FAVORITE OC (AT THE MOMENT)

definitely a difficult task, but i think willa has potential to retain this title. she's protective, compassionate, and a good cook -- like what's not to love?? yet she also has her complexities because of hard decisions she's had to make and her loyalties. i put a lot of myself in her story and she has one of the most thorough backgrounds i've given to an oc. i find she brings me a lot of comfort and i'll continue to return to her.

—OLDEST OC

technically, this title would probably go to my shepard since i played the m*ss effect trilogy in high school. but, she's not very well developed aside from the general base character. therefore i'm giving it to wren...who's not very old. a year and a half old. but oc creation is more of a recent creative outlet for me so she's definitely going to stay extra special.

—NEWEST OC

my spider-woman and my crochet artist girlie. very excited about both! although piper kind of swept in and took the braincell while i was still working on yaz.

—MEANEST OC

i mean. she's a demon who tortured people in hell for centuries. and not a demon looking to be reformed or anything, she literally thrives off chaos. she's not constantly aggressively mean though.

—SOFTEST OC

i...actually have a lot of soft ocs apparently 😭 but nicole has such a big heart. despite the people she's lost, she remains a warm and kind and fiercely protective presence for those she loves.

honorable mentions: juliet rhodes, oriane, willa lau, piper perrault, cyrus virani, daeana velaryon

—MOST ALOOF/STANDOFFISH OC

she just doesn't really like talking or people. she assumes they'll let her down if she gets too close. but she's a hard worker and her jobs require some amount of socializing so she'll do it lmao

honorable mentions: logan campbell, darcy campbell, poe newman, kerenza astrya

—SMARTEST OC

has a phD, is a librarian. she's worked and lived in several different countries. speaks six different languages. she intimidates me, honestly.

honorable mentions: wren elsher, melina holmes, piper perrault

—DUMBEST (AFFECTIONATE) OC

my silly guys. zane kinda has himbo energy, tries to be a good father but doesn't always do the "right" thing. with cyrus it's pure vibes. kate specifically brings out the dumb in him because he's so smitten.

—OC I'D BE FRIENDS WITH IRL

a punk pop princess! she'd be so much fun to have as a friend... and she's an extremely loyal, ride or die, friend.

honorable mentions: willa lau, piper perrault, nicole ortiz, anzu adachi

tagging: @indorilnerevarine @loriane-elmuerto @calenhads @shadowglens @leondaltons @malefiicarum @morvaris @umbertors @ladysanjo @florbelles @unholymilf @confidentandgood @jacobseed @arklay + anyone else who wants to! sorry if you were already tagged and/or did this forever ago!

#tag game #oc: willa #oc: wren #oc: piper #oc: yaz #oc: clio #oc: nicole #oc: arielle #oc: zane #oc: cyrus #oc: daphne #so many 😂

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greenninjagal-blog · 1 year

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The Rumor Mill Game (pt5)

Long time, no see. :) If you’ve forgotten what’s going on, you can find the previous chapter [here!] Or if you’re new to this, find the start [here!]

Summary: Office coworkers Logan and Remus have created the rumor that they are married and have a son, except that Logan kinda yelled that he didn’t have a son in front of a bunch of people.

Virgil is well....Virgil is going to change that. And he definitely has the blackmail to do it.

Word Count: 8346

Read on Ao3 || My General Writing Masterlist

Okay. So. It wasn’t like when Logan and Remus showed up at the restaurant, Virgil expected Logan to want to adopt him. For one thing, Virgil had parents. For another, Logan had never once shown even a remote interest in having a hand in the responsibility of keeping another, living, breathing being alive.

Virgil knew that. He prompted Logan once about it-- because Virgil at his core was a fucking masochist who needed to have his heart ripped out and stomped on sometimes just to prove he knew what life was like. There had been some stupid math homework that he had guilted Logan into helping him with during Logan’s lunch break (like the man wanted to be doing calculus while out eating-- he was a fucking accountant; he already did this all day for his job), and the problem had involved dogs, so Virgil had made up some stupid idiotic story about once owning a dog just to see if maybe Logan might have like a hundred dogs at home and oh yeah, what difference is a child compared to that, right? At least, you know how to feed yourself and can be trusted outside without a leash, sure I’ll take you in, Virgil! Do you want to call me Dad?

Yeah. And somehow Virgil was still failing his creative writing class-- he didn’t understand it either.

Logan didn’t have dogs at home. Or cats. Virgil was pretty sure he didn’t even have dust bunnies.

And Virgil of all people knew what type of burden children could be. You had to give them time and money and entertainment and if you didn’t then everyone would call you a terrible person! Once you had a kid, you really never had time to yourself to do things you liked to do because a kid was always in the way! How many times had Virgil’s mother reminded him that he was preventing her from enjoying her weekend after she spent all week working her tireless jobs and making him food and keeping the house? How many times had his father answered the door and started swearing because he forgot it was his week and he invited his girlfriend over and she didn’t know Virgil existed so Virgil was either going to spend the whole night in his room pretending to be a piece of furniture or his dad was going to have to cancel?

Virgil was a commitment! He knew it! He was another mouth to feed, his growth spurts just kept happening--he’ll never forget the fury on his mother’s face when she found out he outgrew the shoes she got him for Christmas by late January-- not to mention school fees. School lunch? More like School sit-in-the-library-and-tell-the-librarians-he’s-just-not-hungry. His personal finance class was his own living nightmare because he got to listen to every other kid in the entire class complain about how dumb it is that everything cost money, like bread hadn't always cost at least three dollars. There was a girl named Sally who told the teacher that she’d just show her boobs to the checkout clerk to get it for free so that she could keep up with her fictional mani pedi appointment, after the teacher told her she couldn’t just call her dad and ask for more money.

Virgil scored a perfect A on that assignment, if anyone was wondering. The teacher pulled him back after class to ask him if he was interested in going to a seminar outside of class time for the Next Business Owners of America(™) since he was meticulous with his number crunching. Virgil would have loved to, if it hadn’t been three hours away, pay-for-your-own-food, and hey, how about you bring your parents along? I’d love to meet them and let them know what a great son they’re raising!

Virgil had said he wasn’t interested. His teacher had insisted he’d take a flyer anyway, and now it was stuffed in the bottom of his backpack like a forty ton weight he was lugging around everywhere just to see if it really did get heavier as the day in question approached.

((There was still a week left for reservations. There was still a week left for reservations and Virgil was still very certain that if he did go and he didn’t tell his parents, neither of them would notice he’d gone missing and they would never remember him again and then where would he be?))

So yeah, Virgil was a commitment. Any child was a commitment. Basically a blackhole of money. Any self respecting, successful adult could probably take one look at him and think setting a couple hundred dollar bills on fire is less expensive and more eco friendly than trying to take in a teenager.

Logan probably had thought that, too. Virgil wouldn’t blame him for that.

He just… expected it to hurt a little less. But well. Logan had always been straightforward and it doesn’t get more straightforward than “HE IS NOT AND WON'T EVER BE OUR CHILD”.

Virgil liked that Logan was straightforward. He didn’t have to guess through passive aggressive comments or backhanded compliments to figure out what was being said when Logan was talking.

And really it hadn’t even been anything new being said there. Virgil got to stand there and not cry and very calmly ask Logan and Remus to step outside because they were upsetting the other patrons. Yep totally. Just the other patrons. Not Virgil because Virgil had never been their kid and he had his own parents and there were other kids with less who needed more and he hadn’t been going to mention the flyer or seminar to Logan so it didn’t even feel like the kick to the teeth that it should have been.

But if Virgil’s manager was going to give him a paid break to go stand outside and with a free soda and some mango sticky rice the man made him specifically, then Virgil was going to take it and enjoy it and definitely not cry or text Janus about. In fact he took it and he sat out back and wondered how on earth Remus landed a guy like Logan.

Because Logan was cool. He was smart, pleasant and polite and patient and other words that started with “P”. Virgil had seen Remus a handful of times-- just the few that he’d been desperate enough to get out of his mother’s house but didn’t have money for food-- but those times had been enough for Virgil to get a very super good fucking grasp on who Remus Prince was.

He was loud to Logan’s calm, eye-catching to Logan’s plainness, obnoxious to Logan’s civility. Even when Virgil had watched them walk in together, hands together, ring present it felt like someone grabbed the rug from under him and tugged.

Because-- and Virgil meant this from the bottom of his heart-- Remus was a fucking nightmare demon from hell. There were a lot of people who scared Virgil to no end, but Remus? Remus was on a whole other level.

Remus was The Adult(™) that Virgil avoided like the plague, that Virgil memorized the schedule for when he would be at the food kitchen for, that Virgil laid awake at night running scenarios about because Remus would be the only stupid asshole brave enough to blatantly ask The Question.

Because Remus remembered Virgil’s face, remembered what he looked like, what he wore, and where he liked to sit away from everyone else. Remus remembered Virgil like he wanted to when not even Virgil’s parents wanted to remember him.

Because there wasn’t a shadow dark enough for Virgil to hide in that would keep Remus from seeing him, and Virgil didn’t know a single thing that could keep him from asking hey, is everything okay at home?

No it’s not. Thanks for asking. And hey, I know you’re a mandatory reporter, so pretty please don’t call social services because Virgil cannot think of anything worse than being picked up out of everything he’d struggled to build here and plopped into the hands of someone who would insist they knew how to live his life better.

He didn’t want a family that would see him as just another meal ticket: free money from the government to take in the kid who was too anxious to sleep at night sometimes. Even thinking about the bad families-- the die hard religious people who would call him a sin if they knew he was gay, the abusers that might see him as a free punching back that spit out money sometimes, the too-nice,-but too-many-other-kids-to-worry-about-him couple that might only take him in out of guilt and pity-- made Virgil’s heart beat so hard he could barely breathe.

But what was worse was thinking about the good families. You know, the ones that most of the kids at school went home to? A mother who would insist that he wear brighter colors and eat all his vegetables and join every after school program because it looked good on a resume? A father who would insist that he apply to Harvard and Yale and take summer internships across the country or do hard labor outside because it built character? The ones who would say to him hey, you don’t need that job anymore so just go ahead and quit and we’ll supply everything you could possibly want and you better hope you don’t disappoint us like your first set of parents because then we’ll have the power to take it all away!

Logan… Logan was a safe daydream, okay? He was just a quiet guy who came in for Thai sometimes and ate by himself, tipped nicely, and didn’t try to send his food back because it was “too orange”. He was reasonable and knew when to stop asking questions and he probably wouldn’t care if Virgil kept his job and or if he kept wearing black and didn’t try to apply to schools that would probably eat him alive. Logan smiled at him, and helped with Virgil’s homework, and maybe if Logan hadn’t wanted to be the center of Virgil’s very pitiful stupid, secret wishes, he shouldn’t have been the first person to tell Virgil “good job” since Virgil had been eight.

“Fuck,” Virgil said, shoving another spoonful of mango rice into his mouth.

“Oh, please, do keep catastrophizing in my front seat,” Janus said in his stupid ass rich person tone. “I’m certain that will solve all your problems.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Virgil snapped back at him.

Janus stretched back in the driver's seat, hands above his head, folded neatly with those black biker gloves on still, and his shirt riding up his stomach in the way that makes Virgil kinda hate him. He had his eyes closed for the most part of it all; still content to sunbathe in the front seat as he had been doing for the better part of an hour now, but he opened the right just to side eye Virgil in that unbothered way of his that speaks to how amusing he found watching Virgil self destruct to be.

“Darling--” He said.

“Don’t,” Virgil jabbed his plastic spoon towards him threateningly. “Don’t start with me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Janus said. “Only merely ending what has been a truly delightful date with my very wonderful boyfriend who is certainly not-at-all distracted by a problem he has made up in his beautiful amazing brain.”

“Shut up.”

“I’ve known Logan since I was in diapers, Virgil,” Janus says. “He’s almost like a second father to me. You are worrying over nothing.”

“It’s not nothing!” Virgil said shrilly.

And that is when Janus finally dropped his arms back down and twisted to face Virgil completely. His eyes, which normally were filled with mischief and spite, were floating with a sincerity that made Virgil’s stomach do flips. The freckles on his face were just barely noticeable, the shine of his lipgloss still freshly applied and waiting to be ruined. His dark hair was highlighted with gold stripes, which Virgil knew from experience looked very dashing when hands were run though it.

“Virgil,” Janus said, soft and kind and knowing. “My own father wouldn’t hesitate if you asked him. And you know that there would be a room in my house painted purple with your own kitchen and fridge by three hours after you asked him.”

“Your father plays mind games,” Virgil said weakly.

“Are you still obsessed with the swear jar?”

“I’m not obsessed!” Virgil shot back. “It freaks me out, okay? The whole swear jar being a place that you both put money so that you have funds to pay for something if you didn’t want him knowing you were paying for? That’s like John Kramer levels of jigsaw puzzles. I can’t handle that on a daily basis! My heart would just fucking stop!”

“My father does not have any intentions of testing your will to live,” Janus said flatly. “Or whatever it is that happens in the Saw movies. He runs a company that’s sole goal is to make lives easier and more affordable. When he turns fifty he plans on giving the whole company to me, and then I will wait exactly one week before selling half the shares to you for a dollar and then you can handle all the gross business stuff and I will handle the very funny human complaints.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually,” Janus said. “He has it written in his main diary that’s stashed behind the headboard that he’s going to give it to me when he’s sixty, but the secret one he doesn’t think I’ve found yet that is stashed in the false wall behind the washer says fifty. Also the second secret one in the false bottom puzzle box drawer in his office says fifty too.”

Virgil stared at him, waiting a whole beat, but Janus merely raised an eyebrow.

“You understand that’s not normal shit, right?” Virgil asked him. “You understand that your father and you are the most insane people I’ve met, right? Why does he have three diaries? Why are two of them secret? Why do you know there are two secret ones?”

Janus frowned. “There’s three, but the third one is just all about how much he loves me and his billions of lists of things to get for me for my birthday every year. Sometimes I add ridiculous stuff to the list in his handwriting to see if he’ll get me it. That’s how I got my snake.”

“Unbelievable,” Virgil said, staring at him. Part of him was utterly terrified of Janus, of how casually he could say things like that, of how Virgil is pretty sure Janus had the means and the ability to hide his body if Janus decided one day Virgil was annoying him too much, but the larger part of him is just overwhelmed with an embarrassing amount of awe and love.

Something about that must have shown on his face because Janus’s eyes melted like ice cream and his lips curled into a smile that could have coaxed flowers to bloom if their car was parked in a meadow instead of a parking garage.

“I love you too,” Janus said. “Now will you please go into the building and blackmail Logan into being your pretend dad so I can have all my boyfriend’s attention during our dates?”

“Asshole,” Virgil said, leaning over the center console to catch him in a kiss.

Janus hummed enthusiastically, as if he’d been waiting for Virgil to do that all day. Virgil did his best to not roll his eyes.

Janus pulled back first, licking his lips as if to make sure the last of his cherry lip gloss had been cleaned up so that he could apply another coat once Virgil was out of his sight, and finding it satisfactory. “I’m going to eat the rest of your mango rice.”

Virgil handed him the little container, half eaten and not enjoyed quite as much as it should have been due to impending doom. Janus, who was rich enough to have his own plastic spoon, still used Virgil’s. Virgil grabbed the handle of the plastic bag for the other two carry out containers and pulled it into his lap.

“I’m going to get arrested.”

Janus waved a hand. “Get out of my car, Virgil. You can mope when you get back.”

“Pay my bail?”

Janus smiled at him, soft and sunny and causing all the sickening, disgusting butterflies in his stomach to flutter around. Virgil wasn’t sure why, considering he’d also watched Janus eat pavement at the skateboarding park once late at night, and then cry like a baby about it, and then demand that Virgil tell no one about it.

“Always,” Janus said, like he meant it, like he was making a promise, like he loved Virgil and wanted what was best for him even when Virgil didn’t have a single thing to give him in return.

He didn’t realize that he had a stupid smile on his face until he was ten feet from the car holding the bag of take out to his chest like some middle schooler who just got asked out by her crush. He swears at nothing, because of course Janus could draw this sort of reaction out of him over fucking bail money, what the hell. There was nothing romantic about bail money. There wasn’t anything romantic about Janus.

The same way there wasn’t anything nerve wracking about Patton Hart, or terrifying about Remus Prince, or fatherly about Logan Ackroyd.

He nearly tripped and face planted trying to walk into the lobby. His shoe caught on the tile floor and his balance went sideways and his heart jumped out of his throat into his mouth and nearly onto the floor with the mango rice he had just eaten.

There were about ten people wondering in the lobby, doing various tasks: three people in business suits discussing lunch plans, a janitor mopping up an area with cautious signs around it, two people waiting for one of the three elevators, two people at the front desk and a receptionist who was talking to a delivery man from a pizza place across town. And Virgil was pretty sure all of them saw him almost lay himself out on the floor.

It was fine. It was totally fine! If they asked what was wrong with him he would say something like Oh I haven’t possessed a human in at least a century or You guys didn’t see that rat? It was huge! or my plan was to lie my way up to the upper floors but I figured that I might as well give up and let you arrest me now. Do you want to call security or just hand me the phone and I’ll do it myself?

He hesitated on his feet for a moment, wondering if he could get away with going straight into the elevators even though he knows they require a keycard. Janus told him that much in their run throughs while preparing for this. But still the fluttering hopeful part of him was wishing that security risks weren’t a thing and he could just… walk upstairs.

Instead he steeled himself and headed in a direct line towards the receptionist’s desk. All he had to do was convince her to give him a visitor’s badge and let him go upstairs without calling either Logan or Remus who would definitely tell her they don’t have a son.

He was honestly already so lucky they hadn’t announced to the whole building via company-wide email that they didn’t have a child at all. Although the longer he hesitated the more of a chance there was that one or both of them were writing that email right now.

The receptionist nodded to him when he stalled his walk a few paces away from the desk, but continued her discussion with the delivery man. Instead the man and the woman lingering to the side had their eyes on him, watching with opening curious expressions that made Virgil want to hiss at them the way he hissed at the workers in the food bank-kitchen that he visited on weeks when his mother couldn’t be bothered to keep food in the house or his father had forgotten to leave him enough money to buy himself a pizza while he went out on another date.

You know. Before Remus had hissed right back at him and Virgil had realized oh shit, that guy remembered him and this was going to be a problem.

“Watcha doing here, kid?” the guy at the desk asked, taking a sip of his coffee. He was closer than the woman, with a crooked tie and a salt-and-pepper beard that made him look old instead of distinguished or whatever he was trying for.

“I’m looking for my dads,” Virgil said and holy shit this was a bad decision. “Lo-Logan Ackroyd, and Remus P-Prince.” He swallowed nervously, digging his fingers into the boxes of take out and trying hard not to let his spine fold like a chocolate éclair.

The man chokes, nearly spitting up his coffee all over his tie. “No way! You’re the kid?”

“Jeff!” The lady with the frizzy hair hissed.

“What!” Jeff exclaimed. “You heard what Logan said!” The man turned back to Virgil and Virgil forced himself not to take a step back or sprint for Janus’s car or melt into a puddle of human goo or start crying. “Man, that guy really is an unfeeling robot. How old are you? Fifteen? Sixteen?”

“Jeff!” The woman yelled. “I’m sorry, sweetheart; don’t mind him.”

“I’m seventeen?” Virgil said. “And it’s.. uh.” He swallowed, glancing at the receptionist who still looked to be deep in the conversation with the delivery man. “It’s-- it’s okay. I know what it sounded like yesterday. It wasn’t exactly… uh… Logan and Remus aren’t my parents!”

The man and the woman were looking at him now, with twin gazes just short of being hungry. Virgil felt distinctly like he’d just jumped into a lake full of piranhas and kindly asked them not to eat him alive, please and thanks. He took a deep breath, trying to untense his shoulders.

What had Janus said? It was like tearing off a bandaid?

“I’m adopted! But my parents, like the real ones, are still around. They just don’t have custody, you know? Logan and Remus do, because they are good people! Totally good people who probab--I mean definitely haven’t committed unspeakable crimes or anything of the like that could be proven in the court of law! But like yesterday, haha, I mean things haven’t always been easy because like, I’m kinda difficult and I don’t call them dad or anything because I have a dad already who is not Logan and I told Logan I didn’t want to call him dad and so he doesn’t really call me son and definitely not his son, you know? He really didn’t mean it like how it sounded because he’s cool and haha, yeah isn’t that like a horrible coincidence that it sounded bad? But he’s-- Logan I mean-- is really good! Really nice and helps me with my math homework. A really, uhm. He’s a good guy. You know?”

The receptionist was looking at him now, too. And so was the delivery man, their conversation entirely forgotten.

Virgil swallowed like he was drowning, wishing that he could shut up because there was no way these all competent adults were going to buy that horrible, terrible story that wasn’t even really a story as much as just a bunch of gibberish tossed out with Logan’s name in it. It was like he hadn’t even practiced with Janus at all. He barely even got a foot in the door before he just started talking! Did these people even know Logan? Or did he just spit out a fake life story to some random people in the company lobby and would absolutely never be able to show his face here again?

“On second thought, I’ll just go,” Virgil rasped out, and turned on his heel, preparing to bolt for the doors before security could be called for the random kid who just tried to buy his way into a company HQ building with cold Thai food and a fake story about fake parents who would never even want to consider being real parents. Would they charge him with espionage for that? Could they? Is there even bail for espionage accounts?!

“Oh no no no!” The woman exclaimed suddenly, putting her coffee directly on the receptionist counter. “Oh honey, I am so sorry! Of course Logan is a good da-fathe-- I mean a good guardian! Jeff and I didn’t mean to make you think we didn’t know that!”

“Did I say unfeeling?” The man said, laughing nervously and tugging at the collar of his shirt. “I meant unrelenting! An unrelenting robot who has nothing but… love… in his…uh heart. Hey, do you think that maybe you could not bring up this conversation to him? I like my job.”

Virgil couldn’t breathe. Like actually could fucking not. He was going to have to sit down because there was no way that should have worked at all. The woman and the man were doing a piss-poor job of having a subtle conversation under their breaths about which of them was going to get fired as if Virgil actually did have sway with Logan and Remus. The relief was so overwhelming it was terrifying.

Shit, is this what Janus felt every time he made up a lie? If so, Virgil might be able to understand it. He doubted straight ecstasy would come close to this feeling.

The take out boxes creaked in his sweaty, clammy hands as the woman turned back towards Virgil with a too-bright, too-wide smile, that reminded him of his mother when she was on the phone with his teachers who called to let her know that he was failing the class: placating and fake and screaming that she completely believed him and was not even going to bother asking for the other parties side of the story.

“Why don’t we get you upstairs, honey?” she said. “Candy will get you your own personal badge and then you won’t even have to stop around here and talk to us silly old people. Candy?”

“Uh, yeah,” The receptionist said. “I’ll get it to Mr. Ackroyd by the end of the day tomorrow.”

The other woman smiled at him and started guiding him towards the elevators, her badge dangling in her hand. “I’m sure your dads are expecting you, right?”

“It’s a uh…surprise, actually,” Virgil stuttered. “Big surprise.”

“Oh that’s lovely! What a thoughtful son!”

Yep, Virgil thought, swallowing back the urge to vomit all over her knockoff Christian Louboutin pumps (and the fact that Virgil knew they’re knockoffs is equally nauseating, damnit Janus). The thought, though, just for that moment, gave Virgil something to focus on (Janus’s stupid face, the taste of his lipgloss, “I’ll pay your bail.”). He clung to his take out boxes, and stood at least three feet away from the woman, and tried not to feel like he just entered the elevator to hell when the doors slowly rolled shut.

The woman might be talking to him, chatting with her pleasant and polite voice that does nothing to actually put Virgil at ease. Janus probably would be in his fucking element right here, probably soften her up further with a few on-the-spot made up stories that make him out to be a humble yet high achieving son (only half lies: Janus was high achieving, but the day he acted humble about anything would be the day that Virgil did stand up comedy for the whole school during his lunch block). Still that sort of thing would make Logan and Remus look really good, right?

Virgil should be saying something. He should tell her that he loves his parents and that they are the perfect family and Logan and Remus don’t have a 90% chance of responding “who?” when this woman tries to say he’s their son. He shouldn’t be standing ramrod still in the elevator, holding take out food so close to himself it might look as if he’s trying to wear it, or breathing so loud that people in the lobby could still hear him, what the fuck is wrong with him--

“Hey hun,” the woman said. “I don’t think I caught your name, now. What was that again?”

Virgil swallowed hard, forcing his tongue to unstick from the roof of his mouth. “Uh… Virgil. My name is Virgil.”

Why did that sound like he was making it up? That wasn’t even a lie! His name was Virgil! Unless it wasn’t? Would he have even known if Virgil wasn’t the name his parents-- real parents-- had given him?

“Virgil,” she repeated pleasantly. “That’s a wonderful name.”

“Yep, it’s mine. Totally mine. Why wouldn’t it be mine?”

Her eyebrows creased in confusion and Virgil debated slamming his head against the reflective metal doors. Before he could get to the part where he follows through on that one, the elevator diiiiinged! And the floor settled to a stop.

“Oh wonderful,” the woman said. “Now would you like to visit Remus first or Logan? Logan has his own office but Remus has a cubical nearby if you want.”

Virgil honestly hadn’t thought he would get this far. He’d been half convinced that Remus would just be… in the lobby, ready to discount his lies, or Logan would be in the parking lot ready to ask him who exactly he was because surely a random restaurant worker wasn’t worth remembering, or Janus would be telling him that he was an idiot and embarrassing and why are we even dating again?

He opened his mouth but no words were coming out, certainly not ones that would make any of this better than the dumpster fire it was already.

“Jen,” A voice said from nearby. Virgil almost jumped right out of his skin, but it turned out just to be another worker in the office: dyed orange hair and an infinity scarf and hiding behind a stack of files almost as tall as they were. They were looking at Virgil though with a nervous expression as if they thought Virgil was the herald of the workplace firing squad or the next round of interns that would eventually take their job. “Uh, who is your… uhm…?”

“Quin,” the woman said warmly, as if she had been just as put off by Virgil’s lack of response as he himself had been. “This is Virgil. You know, Remus and Logan’s son that they talk about all the time? He brought them a surprise lunch! Isn’t that sweet?”

Ah fuck, they talk about having a son?! Did Logan and Remus actually have a son?! Did Janus just forget to tell him about that?!

Janus, what the fuck?!

The new person’s eyes widened as they took in Virgil’s appearance, which was very much out of place in the entire building. He’d worn his jeans with the least amount of holes in them but his only pair of shoes at the moment were these converse and he’d scribbled black sharpie on them out of boredom in his history class last year. He didn’t exactly look anything like someone who lived with Logan might, considering Virgil had never seen Logan not wearing a business suit, but this was the best outfit he could come up with from his closet.

“Uh yeah, totally. Uhm.” The person said nervously and then leaned in close to the woman and whispered, as if Virgil wouldn’t be able to hear them at all, “Uh, didn’t Logan…uhm… say….?”

The woman laughed painfully in a way that made Virgil wonder what exactly they had all done when under the impression that Logan was an asshole who didn’t love his son (a son he didn’t have because Virgil was not his son and even if Virgil was he wouldn’t blame Logan for not wanting him).

“Oh it was just a misunderstanding! Virgil told Jeff and I about it downstairs. We can have lunch together today and I’ll tell you all about it!”

Virgil frowned slightly, because well… he didn’t exactly mind that people would be talking about it-- that was part of the whole plan anyway, to have people talk about-- but something in him was insulted that it would be shared so blaise. Like, didn’t his homelife situation feel even an ounce personal or private? This woman was just going… to talk about him… and Logan… and Remus…and their private, totally real family business over lunch like she knew everything about it and had the right and authority to disclose that information?

For a second, Virgil was half tempted to tell her that he was also royalty of a distance country and that it was super secret because there were people who would kill to know his whereabouts and they could be anyone, ma’am, and they could be anywhere and now that you know they’ll definitely come after you too. Did you know the last person whom I told, went missing within ten hours and the police are still finding body parts of them around the city?… Anyway, have fun sleeping tonight. Fucker.

“Quin!” A familiar voice yelled from around the corner, causing the person in front of Virgil to leap into the air almost a whole foot. The files they were carrying nearly took flight, but Virgil couldn’t bring himself to worry about them when he was busy watching a rolling chair skid out from a cubicle and bring him face-to-face with Remus Prince.

If hearing Logan say Virgil would never been his son was bad on Virgil, it looked like it had been absolute hell on Remus: the guy didn’t really advertise mental stability on a regular day, but now there were bags under his eyes, what looked like an actual rats nest in his hair, and his shirt was on both backwards and stained that spoke either of having never known what a washing machine was or he killed someone in his cubicle.

Whatever had gone down after Virgil (calmly, not crying, not hurt) asked them to leave must have been bad, if it got the guy who barely knew him to look like he’d been playing matador to eighteen wheelers on the highway.

Virgil knew the exact moment that Remus recognized (remembered, knew) him, too, even though his stupid monkey instinct brain had been shrieking that if he stood still Remus wouldn’t have been able to see him at all.

“Virgil,” Remus said, running a hand through his hair as if to pluck out whatever creature was in it and offer it to him as a greeting. His eyes darted towards the other adults around him with curiosity, as he stood up and kicked his chair behind him back into a cubicle. “What…are ya doing here, kid?”

“Uh, lunch?” Virgil says, surprisingly calm for someone whose brain was nothing but static and swears and scream-sobbing.

Remus stared at the bag in Virgil’s hands, and then up at him and then back at the bag. Virgil wondered for a moment if he had mixed up the plastic bags in Janus’s cars, accidentally grabbing the bag of live, feral squirrels instead of the takeout.

“Lunch,” Remus echoed. “For me?”

Virgil didn’t blame him for being suspicious. Virgil had never come close to acting comfortable in Remus’s presence and he knew it. Remus took whatever Virgil threw at him (hisses, sharp barbed words, the worst soda combinations Virgil could think of) and acted complete unphased, like Virgil was acting normal, like there was nothing wrong with him, like he enjoyed Virgil’s weird attempts at scaring him off.

Virgil took a deep breath and then set his jaw. “Yeah. You. And Logan. Like a family lunch. You. Me. Logan. I thought it would be nice. To talk. And stuff. As a family.”

“Family!” Another other woman from the cubicle behind Remus squealed. And then seemed to realize the attention had landed on her. “Oh sorry! Just pretend I’m not here!”

“Gladly,” Virgil said. He swore he saw Remus’s lips flicker into a wicked grin at the sound, but it was gone in another moment. Fast enough to give whiplash and remind Virgil why exactly Remus was nearly as terrifying as Patton Hart in terms of mind-fuckery shenanigans.

“Anyway,” Virgil said, forcing himself to look at Remus in the eye and challenging him to cut in. “I know that Lo was beating himself up about everything that happened, even though I told him it was… fine and that we talked everything out last night. I was worried about what your coworkers might be saying, even though it's none of their business, and you guys are really fucking good parents.”

Remus smiled, and then he laughed, and part of Virgil thought that he was definitely calling Virgil’s bluff and security at the same time. But instead the man reached out and ruffled Virgil’s hair the same way his real father hadn’t done in ten years. It was so jarring and sudden that Virgil just stood there and took it and definitely did not have to swallow back the sudden urge to cry.

“You are absolutely going to get me killed by Logan,” Remus said, low enough that it was probably just meant for Virgil. “Hey, LOGAN! DARLING, LOVE OF MY LIFE--!”

A door down the narrow hall swung over, nearly so sharp that it dented the inner wall and Logan stuck his head out “Remus, I swear to Newton you better have--Virgil?”

The man jerked forward, although he looked a bit more like he would have loved to slam the door closed again. His glasses had fingerprints on the lenses, and his shirt was the same shade as yesterday, although it did look like someone washed and ironed it, unlike Remus. Whatever morning he had, was certainly not going well, if the scowl that had been on his face was anything to go by.

Still Virgil waved at him, like his hands weren’t shaking, his knees weren’t about to give out, and his stomach wasn’t about to relocate to the office building’s tile floor because rent was cheaper.

“I--” Logan ran a hand through his tie, nervously, although Virgil had never seen Logan nervous. He was confident, honest, brutal; but that made his compliments feel like nobel prizes when they were given out and his scathing remarks hurt all that much more. ((You are not our son and never will be.)) “Virgil, what are you doing here?”

Remus was grinning, though, winking at Virgil as if there was a secret he didn’t know about happening. “Didn’t know you, Lo? Our son brought us lunch.”

Logan leveled him with a glare that Virgil was an extreme fan of. Something he saw Logan give a rude customer at the restaurant once and had ever since been trying to replicate because it was the perfect blend of you’re embarrassing yourself and I’d burn down your house with you in it if I had a lighter on me right now.

And Remus didn’t even look a bit put off by it. It must have been a married couple thing. Or a Remus thing. Or a Remus-was-married-and-got-that-look-enough-to-build-up-an-immunity thing

“What did you do?” Logan asked his husband.

“Logan!” The woman from the lobby scolded. “I can’t believe you! Your wonderful, sweet son walked all the way here to bring you lunch and you--”

“Yeah, our totally sweet son!” Remus chimed in. “He just came in here. All by himself!”

Logan ignored them both, turning his clinical gaze on Virgil the same way the counselors of his previous schools would when his teachers informed them that he was “purposely” failing their classes. Straight and cutting and you are not my son and never will be and--

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your work,” Virgil said in a small voice. “I can come back another time. Or never. I just… I thought… you guys came to visit me yesterday and we never really got lunch so I brought you Pad Thai with tofu. And uhm…” Please. I could make a good son. You don’t even know me yet.

The women around him all took a sharp intake of breath, the person with the orange hair absolutely whimpered as if he’d stabbed them.

“I just… wanted to spend time with you,” Virgil said. “To, uhm, talk.”

“Holy fuck, you’re ruthless,” Remus murmured under his breath, and it nearly felt like praise. He wasn’t exactly sure what the fuck he was being praised for, but he must have done something right.

Logan’s face ran through emotions too fast for Virgil to catch them and classify them. His lungs were pounding against his ribs, trying to expand past what a normal human can breathe for, but then Logan’s eyes melted a fraction, and Virgil thought he could walk on air.

“Of course,” Logan said. “I-- of course, Virgil. Why… why don’t you and Remus come in here and we’ll have lunch.”

Virgil didn’t sprint towards him, but he could understand if everyone else in the office made the mistake of thinking he did. He heard Remus say something about kids that made it sound like he was feeding into that whole Virgil-is-his-son thing further. However all Virgil could think was Logan, and Logan’s Office Away From People, and I didn’t think I was going to get this far did the elevator break and did it crash to the ground killing me on impact?

Remus closed the door behind himself, trapping Virgil in the office with the two adults. It looked a lot like… well… an office. There weren’t any pictures of Remus or anyone on the walls. There weren’t even knick knacks on the desk. Impersonal, kinda cold, uncomfortable, as if Logan didn’t want any distractions from his 9 to 5 day shift or simply did not like anything-- which Virgil knew wasn’t true because the man was married and once went on a rant about space when Virgil was serving him. There was an Excel sheet pulled up on the computer which it seemed that Logan had been correcting before he’d been disturbed by Virgil’s… mess.

((There was a chair in the corner with a suit jacket tossed over it. It didn’t match the one Logan was wearing today.))

The room was silent for a whole second while all three of them listened to the people outside go back to whatever their jobs were.

Then.

“Did you,” Remus started slowly, a light in his eyes that made Virgil’s knees threaten to give out. “Did you just spread the rumor that Logan and I are good parents?! That’s so ballsy, kid!”

Virgil wasn’t sure how much of his smile looked like a grimace. He held out the boxes of food to Logan and Remus. “I am, uh, blackmailing you. Both of you.”

“Blackmailing,” Logan echoed, as Remus grabbed his shoulder and shook them both at a frequency that probably wasn’t safe for humans to be shaken at. “I think I need to sit down. This is not....”

“Oh my god,” Remus whispered. “Holy mother of Culthulu on a butt fucking stick! He’s playing The Game!”

“Game?” Virgil repeated, trying to reign in all the terror welding in his throat that honestly he was surprised hadn’t straight up killed him already. “Uh no-- I don’t-- Look, it’s really simple! I just need Logan to pretend to be my dad for a day. Like shake hands with my teacher, tell him everything is a-okay at home, and then we don’t ever have to speak about it again! Or speak to each other again! Unless you need your coworkers to think you’re a decent person-- not saying that you aren’t! Because I know you both are! Obviously! Because I wouldn’t agree to a three hour car ride with murderers-- did I even say it was a three hour car ride? Oh fuck I’m sorry, this was stupid--”

“Is there a reason things are not… “a-okay” at home?” Logan said, just short of sounding strangled.

Luckily before Virgil could start sobbing Remus threw a hand over Logan’s mouth and leaned forward. “The kid wants you to play parent, Lolo! Stop thinking so much!”

Logan batted his hand away. “Why me? Why not Remus? Or your actual parents?” Logan asked. “Why… me?”

Virgil wilted back despite his best efforts, already feeling his face do that stupid thing where it heats up beyond humiliation and his entire soul craves spontaneous combustion. “Please don’t make me say it.”

But Logan and Remus apparently couldn’t read minds (fuckkkkk) and just continued to stare at him in baffled confusion. Virgil curled his hands into fists and forced himself to stare at the wall behind Logan’s head and state, out loud, for everyone to hear, “You’re cool.”

“Cool,” Logan echoed. “I’m cool. I’m so cool that you think that makes up for the fact that--”

“Look, my actual parents would be excited if they found out a serial killer grabbed me off the street,” Virgil blurted out. “Remus freaks me the fuck out-- no offense, or actually a lot of offense, please stop grinning at me like that-- and you’re cool, don’t ask me to do anything stupid, never told me I was stupid for not understanding calc-- fuck calc-- so yeah you’re at the top of my adults I trust list right now and I just need someone to be my parent for one day so I can go to this seminar that I really want to go to about business finances management. After that you can tell your coworkers whatever the fuck you guys want from me! Tell them I died! I don’t care! I just… please. Just for ten hours. I’ll find a way to pay for gas, food, and housing so you won’t have to spend a dime!”

“Absolutely not--”

“Please!” Virgil said.

“You’re not paying for it!” Logan said. He shoved his glasses up to his hairline and massaged the bridge of his nose and Virgil’s heart stopped in his chest, leaving him as frozen as a statue.

Remus leaned back against Logan’s desk, far too casual. “So….you’re going?”

Logan didn’t answer right away. Virgil didn’t often subscribe to the idea that hope felt like a fluttery thing, but goddamnit did hope feel like a moth with a broken wing struggling to find some way through a glass window pane. He felt like he was going to be sick; he felt like he was going to pass out.

Logan placed a hand on his desk to steady himself. “...where… is this event.”

“YES!” Virgil couldn’t help himself. Luckily, Remus and Logan didn’t look too bothered by his outburst. He dug the crumpled folded flyer from his pocket and smoothed it out for Logan to look at, which he accepted easily, already scanning the red, green, and blue writing with a critical eye.

Virgil knew he was grinning stupidly-- like more stupid than when he watched Janus trip on the sidewalk or answer a question with an abundance of confidence just to be wrong-- but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. He tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear and turned halfway, to find that Remus was picking through the takeout boxes, and watching him.

“Uh,” Virgil said, smile dropping. “Sorry. That I’ll be stealing your husband for a day. Is… is that okay? Do you guys need to talk about that?”

Remus snorted. “Yeah so, funny story: Logan and I aren’t actually--”

“--in need of discussing it,” Logan cut in, suddenly talking over Remus without looking up from the flyer, or his phone where he was googling something. “I seem to recall a conversation where…. What was it? Ah yes: Just because you let me put a ring on your hand does not mean that either of us controls the other.”

“Oh my god, were you guys actually going to have a divorce?” Virgil blurted out. “Oh shit, did I just make this worse?”

“No,” Remus and Logan said at the same time, in such an agreement that it startled both of them and Virgil raised his hands in a placating move.

“No, kid,” Remus said. “Logan and I just need to have a… conversation.”

“More than one,” Logan added.

“About what we want out of…this.”

“Yes. This.”

Virgil glanced between them. “You guys are acting weird and I don’t like it.”

“Virgil, I am concerned about the statement you made about your parents not caring if a serial killer killed you,” Logan said. “Please, elaborate.”

“It’s not important,” Virgil said automatically. “Really. I think whatever the two of you have going on is far more detail worthy--”

“I also would like you to know that I will not be starting any rumors about you having died, especially not to my coworkers. Remus?”

“The game is not fun when people are getting hurt,” Remus… agreed? Virgil wasn’t sure exactly what was going on. “So, for the foreseeable future you are going to be our son, which is technically providing a service, wouldn’t you agree, Lo?”

“Yes. Providing a service requires a payment. How does thirty dollars an hour sound?”

“What the fuck,” Virgil said. “Wait--”

“This event is an all day affair, which means both of us will be too tired to do any driving afterwards, so that means a hotel,” Logan continued. “Remus, I assumed that you would like to join? Excellent. I’ll have Patton approve your days off. Two bedrooms. Virgil, you mentioned you like to sleep in so I assume a check out around noon the following day, plus a three hour drive back here, would make a total of…. Around twenty seven hours. Which comes out to a total of eight hundred ten dollars. Does that sound adequate?”

Virgil looked at Remus. “I think I made a mistake.”

Remus laughed at him. “I think we should round it to an even thousand.”

“No!” Virgil shrieked. “That was not a solution!”

“Face it, kid. You just won yourself two sugar daddies in one go.”

“Stop talking!” Virgil said. “You are not going to pay me to be your son on a trip that I am blackmailing you into going on!”

“Sure we are,” Remus said, talking through a mouth of food. “Gotta make up for all the birthdays we missed for our son.”

Virgil thought he was going to melt into the floor. But uh, it was nice? Kinda? Logan was definitely holding a piece of a smile on his normally stoic face and Remus was almost chill and they had been in this room together for a whole five minutes and nothing had exploded and neither of them had tried to kill him for pretending to be their son or otherwise revealed that they were insanely evil.

So, yeah. When Virgil saw them in the restaurant he didn’t think he was going to actually get adopted, but well…Virgil was tentatively hopeful for how this might turn out.

(Part 6)

#sanders sides #intrulogical #anxceit #remus sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #patton sanders #Hahah yeah that certainly is one way to gain a son #fake marriage #fake dating #fake adoption???#Rumor Mill Au #sympathetic remus #Maybe having a child really will save this marriage #Far too many OCs #Virgil has a +20 to Charisma despite literally everything #Because I make the rules

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sandersidesbigbang · 6 months

Text

Growing up, and other lies told to children

Writer: @sometimes-love-is-enough

Betas:

@puppy-princey

Artist:

@shadow-rhelm

Art link

Rating: Teen

Ships: light romantic Moceit, mostly platonic Logan-Janus

Summary:

Janus’s entire deal with being a slightly evil anarchist librarian in a stolen bookmobile would be going a whole lot better if he didn’t have to deal with UNEXPECTED FEELINGS OF EMPATHY brought about by A VERY SMALL EIGHT YEAR OLD wearing A NECKTIE TOO BIG FOR HIM who has SERIOUS PROBLEMS WITH THE HEADMISTRESS OF HIS SCHOOL, and also don’t forget the psychic powers.

AO3 | Tumblr

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ijustkindalikebooks · 9 months

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Review: The Boyfriend Candidate by Ashley Winstead.

As a shy school librarian, Alexis Stone is comfortable keeping out of the spotlight. But when she’s dumped for being too meek—in bed!—the humiliation is a wake-up call. She decides she needs to change, and what better way to kick-start her new more adventurous life than with her first one-night stand? Enter Logan, the gorgeous, foul-mouthed stranger she meets at a hotel bar. Logan is audacious and filterless, making him Alexis’s opposite—and boy, do opposites attract! Just as she’s about to fulfill her hookup wish, the hotel catches fire in a freak lightning storm—and in their rush to escape, Logan is discovered carrying her into the street, where people are waiting with cameras. Cameras Logan promptly—and shockingly—flees. Alexis is bewildered until breaking news hits: pictures of her and Logan escaping the fire are all over the internet. It turns out Logan is none other than Logan Arthur, the hotshot politician challenging the Texas governor’s seat. The salacious images are poised to sink his career—and jeopardize Alexis’s job—until a solution is proposed: to squash the scandal, he and Alexis could pretend to be in a relationship until election day…in two months. What could possibly go wrong?

For me, if you combine Politics and pretty much any fictional genre, I will be there and when I read the description of this book, I knew I would love this and I really did, I mean a librarian as well? Sign me up, as soon as possible.

When you begin this book, don't really expect to stop reading it. This plot has such a great pace and you will be flipping pages as this couple's chemistry goes off the charts. I really appreciate the characters throughout this book, they feel really fleshed out and well written throughout - it does feel like it's part of a universe almost (I only found out reading reviews here after writing this that this book is part of a series? With characters here in a different book).

Plot wise, I really respect the things this book touches upon in this book, romance yes, but also family relationships, how you feel about yourself and grief and loss. I think this book really handles all these really important moments so well and it definitely makes me want to read more from this author.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the copy for honest review, I am so glad I requested it!

#booklr #books #fiction #bookblr #book #review #reviews #book review #book reviews #romance #the boyfriend candidate #ashley winstead

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prodigal-explorer · 11 months

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roasting side kinnies except i'm actually really mean to all of them

if you get offended easily please leave i don't wanna actually hurt anyone's feelings /g

alright now on with the show! i'm warning y'all this is gonna be so mean cuz i hate when people are like "roasting side kinnies!!" and then are super nice to all of them except their least favorite like no i believe in equality, everyone gets roasted for real here.

roman kinnies: (i'm roasting myself here) not everything is about you. please put the hero complex away, nobody cares. you're selfish as fuck and you take without giving so much that you just expect everyone else to be okay with it. if anybody messes with your makeup routine, they're a dead bitch, and honestly, that's really pathetic. no matter how much makeup you wear, you're probably gonna look even uglier than when you had none on.

logan kinnies: literally stop talking about how underrated logan is, he's not underrated anymore! everyone likes logan! you constantly need to be right all the time and you pick fights for no reason just so you can win them. we get it! you're smart! but honestly you probably aren't as smart as you think you are. half the time you just sound like the human equivalent of the nerd emoji.

virgil kinnies: please for the love of god stop talking about how you're the therapist friend. you're not. you're literally the one who dumps all your problems onto people. no actual therapist friends constantly whine about how they're the therapist friend. also please stop infantilizing yourself it's really embarrassing to watch. you're not a "smol bean" or a "tuf lil guy". also stop with the whole "janus abused virgil and it's canon" thing like it's not canon. this is sanders sides not an anime.

janus kinnies: it's okay you can just say you have no personality. because literally what is this man's personality? nothing. you think your sarcastic lil jokes are funny and that they're roasting people but they honestly make me curdle up in secondhand embarrassment. you refuse to accept that janus was in the wrong for manipulating roman, and that he totally had the middle school librarian thing coming. you just kin virgil and want to be different, i know what you are. you're a fucking aquarius (i am too).

remus kinnies: okay half of y'all aren't even remus kinnies because you guys mischaracterize him so bad. get out of here with the "poor wittle remus just wants the same treatment roman gets" like no the fuck he doesn't and roman doesn't even have it that good. also please stop spamming song lyrics we are so tired of reading the lyrics to forbidden fruit. also forbidden fruit sucks ass, someone had to say it.

patton kinnies: ah yes i saved my least favorite for last. you guys have victim complexes bigger than the catholic church. literally all of y'all are annoying as fuck but not in the cute way. in the "jesus christ please stop pretending to be an innocent angel who has never done anything bad" way. i know defending patton is your full time job because he's done so much awful shit but y'all boutta be fired because "he's trying his best" is literally not a reason come on now. it's ironic that you guys are the least sympathetic tss fans i know but also not because patton is not that sympathetic either.

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #tss #roman sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #janus sanders #remus sanders #patton sanders #sanders sides fandom #ez's rambles #tw for me being a meanie #like really mean #is it obvious that i fucking hate patton #but this is just for funsies please don't dox me #like i literally roasted roman too and i kin him this is all in good fun

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anxiouslyfred · 1 year

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Stranger in This World

This is my gift for @under-the-blue-moonlight as part of the gift exchange arranged by @sanderssidesgiftxchange

Thank you to @8beez for beta reading this

Summary: Logan took some time to figure out he's trans and couldn't transition at all until he moves to college. Once he's there he finds there's still more to figure out about himself and the world while Patton meets him and decided they're going to be friends

Warnings: transphobic parents

This is all in one part but if it’s easier for you to read in chapters they are separated on AO3 here. either way I’ve left the separate chapter titles in on here.

/\/\

Stranger In This World

Logan was learning about himself and how he views who he is, how being spoken to as female felt wrong and just shook it off since he's always felt that way.

The librarian stepped out from the reception desk, gesturing for Logan to follow as he said, “Well, right away, Miss. I know just the book you mean.”

Logan held back his shudder, coaching himself not to react or question why the gender that had been given to him felt so uncomfortable.

Instead he nodded, looking over the shelves as he followed the school librarian. “I hope so, otherwise I'll have to ask the city library to order it in for me.” He stated.

“Here it is, although it does seem a rather macabre subject for a young girl like yourself.” The man stated, pulling a book from the shelf he'd led them too.

“Biology does not cease to exist after a person dies, nor, I assume, does the importance of what was learnt from them before stricter guidelines were put in place for scientists studying our bodies.” Logan nodded resolutely, taking the book and turning to the check out desk before something more could be said. His thoughts were just as much wondering if restrictive gender titles and treatment continued after death as well. Hopefully learning about the decomposing body would sufficiently remove those thoughts from his mind.

When stargazing, Logan was able to identify all of the constellations but could not understand the people on his own planet. It was one of the few studies that he’d refer to as a hobby rather than simply a way to learn more about the world.

The stars were simple. They had movements that Logan could track and map and fixed positions in the sky thanks to their distance from Earth. Logan could understand them.

He spent his evenings, after finding other subjects dull, out in the garden, laying down to stargaze in comfort; or watching from his window seat when his father decided it was too cold to let his daughter outside. How that was intended to protect Logan from the dangers of cold was bizarre given that when it was of similar temperatures in the day he'd still be sent to school in multiple layers, and that it would get just as dark at night during the summer as the winter and fall. The combination of cold and dark did not seem sufficient for him to need protection from it at all.

Logan didn’t feel completely alone however. His mother attempted to be there for him, and they’d spend time together discussing the feelings of alienation he experienced and hoping for some support.

“When are you going to invite some of your friends over, Sweetie?” Logan's mother sounds coaxing, as if she expected this version of the question to have Logan suddenly rattling off names of his friends and why their homes are better or the reasons they haven't come over before.

He gave her a flat look, attempting to raise one eyebrow as novels described expressing disdain or confusion over an undesired question. “Which friends might those be, Mother? I've told you before that I don't understand people and they don't like me in return.”

“Alison, I'm sure you have at least a few friends. Why, when I was your age, I had 3 other girls that I was inseparable from.” She smiles, leaning back as if her memories relax her.

“Most of them decide I'm too bizarre when I explain that the biology books I am studying currently are an attempt to understand just why my own body feels so uncomfortable. The rest decide they'll find better friends elsewhere if I ask them about disliking the ways we are addressed and how it so often seems titles are only used to talk down to those of the female sex.” Logan explained succinctly, partially hoping his mother would understand his feelings and partially aiming to escape this attempt to encourage him to socialise as rapidly as possible.

School was often difficult, not because of the lessons, but because of how people interact, what they expect him to want to discuss or how they assume he'll play when none of it actually interests him and their perceptions of him feel like strangers, especially should they be mentioned in conversation.

In a science class one of his male classmates glared at him when they were paired together for the science project. “I'm not doing something on flowers. We're dissecting the frog and you can deal with the gore.” Jake grumbled, speaking before Logan could and interrupting his attempt to ask which of the 3 tasks Jake wanted to do.

Logan raised his eyebrows. “Considering this is a team project and your grades are the lowest between the two of us, I'd think taking my preferences into consideration would do you well. After all, our teacher is very willing to call out and separately grade team projects should Mrs Fletcher realise the amount of effort put in is uneven.” He stated.

“Like some nerd girl is going to throw away her grade just because she didn't get a say,” Jake scoffed. “We're cutting a frog up and you can deal with it. I'm not going to pander to some squeamish squealing.”

“So instead of being reasonable and asking my views, you are simply stereotyping and casting judgements with zero evidence or grounding in reality? I'm beginning to understand why you are so close to failing the majority of our science classes.” Logan straightened his glasses. “Very well, however. I'll inform Mrs Fletcher we'll do the dissection, although I must inform you that the project descriptions do not include details of what we will be dissecting.”

The teacher looked up at his approach, smiling. “So Alison, have you and Jake decided on your project already?”

“Jake is rather insistent that we do the dissection and microscope study. I've decided it's not worth the argument to investigate the beehive workings.” Logan agreed. “Would I be able to have the details of those projects in order to attempt on my own as personal studies?”

Mrs Fletcher pulled two sheets out of the piles to give to him. “Such is the mindset of many men.” She commiserated, as if there was nothing to be done for the reaction beyond just keeping the peace. Despite having just taken the path of least resistance for the project, Logan disagreed that there was nothing to be done, especially for teachers who noticeably held power over their students.

Hearing the lies everyone said, about the teenage years being the best years of a person’s life, or the intelligence of the men with money or power, made Logan’s blood run cold, metaphorically speaking. He looked at those people denying science and arguing that they must be right because of their standing and worried over science getting slowly destroyed by them all.

The books he read were safe, and non-fiction or fiction, they were teaching him more and more about the world. Logan felt enchanted by these stories of people so different from himself and tried to imagine what the man inventing the lightbulb would have felt, how the woman who first flew around the Earth might have felt, and just what surgeons must go through each time someone trusts their life in their hands. He explored the true lives of people in their biographies and understood more of the fictional tales as he learnt to read about what the story was meant to convey beyond the fantastical elements of it.

The world was a harsh place to Logan where he knew none of his choices would be taken into consideration when his parents discussed the life he was studying for. He was just certain that he wouldn't turn his back on it in favour of books forever though. It was why Logan applied to all the colleges that he had done.

His mother offered ideas that would keep Logan as her little girl but allow him some self exploration. She'd accept that Logan doesn't fit in, nor want to fit in at school or with the other children she assumed were his friends, but dismissed entirely any thought that he could be male. That isn't how genders or sex works in her mind and a simple feeling is completely bewildering to her.

“You know, after what you said the other week, I've been wondering if we should arrange a hair cut for you. Perhaps you can find a short style that would be more comfortable for you. A bob perhaps.” His mother suggested while Logan was in the kitchen one afternoon, finishing the homework he'd received.

He looked over at her, a slightly confused smile already forced onto his face. “We spoke about how I feel different to the other kids at school and that I don't fit in with them. How will a new hairstyle help that?”

“It's self-exploration, Honey. You know how many styles I went through in my teenage years, yet you seem insistent on barely even getting out of your school uniform if you can help it. Let's try getting you a new look.” She coaxed, bringing one of the photo albums from her school years over. “I'm sure you'd be making friends if you were comfortable in what you look like.”

He gave her a flat glare but recognised the determination in her expression. “So if I said I wanted to try picking out clothes from the mens section?” He let the sentence hang, waiting for her reaction.

“That sounds like the rebellion I was expecting you to go for. You've always had that tomboy energy about you, my lovely daughter.” His mother probably didn't realise she'd emphasised the last word but Logan saw what she was really saying, that he would always be female to her, no matter what he wore.

Logan retreated from his schoolmates as much as possible, essentially living in or just outside the library for every breaktime at his school. It meant the things that interested him were soon things he knew everything available to him about and with computer access that includes the scientific studies of gender and transgender affirming surgeries.

He learnt who he was more because he researched and read personal descriptions of how other people have felt while exploring their personal identities even though he does follow some of his mothers ideas.

“Well I wasn't expecting you to go quite that short, but I'm sure I can calm your father down if he's upset by your self-exploration.” Logan simply smirked at his mother, having bit his tongue on his true reaction to his hair cut once she'd returned. His hairdresser knew how much he felt like himself with this short hair now and that was plenty.

Instead he nodded at her, “Yes, it's definitely going to take a while to adjust for all of us. Are you still okay with the shopping spree you suggested to expand my wardrobe?”

“Of course, although we must get at least one nice dress. Your prom is this year and there are doubtless going to be other parties you'll need to dress up for.” His mother rattled off. “Don't worry, I know you want to look in the mens department but we can do that after you've picked a few things out, I'm sure.”

Logan rolled his eyes, silently thankful she'd turned away from him now. He already knew what outfits he'd prefer to wear and was hoping that he could convince his mother to allow them, even if that meant getting a few skirts to appease her first.

Safe in the City

Logan’s mother had been asking about a boy from school. She'd suggested that he both liked Logan and would make a good boyfriend and somehow that had been enough to break the resolve he'd had.

Ever since realising his body was all wrong, he'd made plans to get out, to escape this small town for somewhere that he could transition and still study the sciences that fascinated him. He'd thrown the acceptance letter for the college he'd chosen at her, saying that he'd be leaving long before anything could happen with any boys around their town.

His father argued, stating his little girl would never do that. “You are my daughter. I’ve known you since the hour you were born, and you were planning to stay close for college. You told me you were intending to remain local.”

“No Father! You told me that! As a matter of fact, you declared when the college application process was first spoken about that I’d have to remain at home so you wouldn’t have to trust your princess in dorms around wild college boys.” Logan immediately countered. “I never agreed to that and if you want a list of how many colleges I chose to apply to and just how distant they are from here, I can provide that for you. The closest is three states away.”

The argument only got worse from there, everything from the major mentioned on his college acceptance letter to the attached form for dorms Logan had forgotten he’d already filled out showing he’d stated a preference for mixed-gender dorms. Anything that his father didn’t like was being insulted and rejected as something their daughter would willingly do.

Things said in anger got to the point where Logan insisted on his parents telling him what they think is on his mind intending to tear it all down with logic, reasoning and honesty. He’d actually walked away after insisting on that instead of waiting for a reply, so he was surprised to find 2 pages next to his plate at dinner that night.

His father’s read: Alison Sanders is my lovely daughter, a princess well studied in the sciences and a fan of all forms of literature. She’s intelligent enough to understand a good marriage to a decent family is the best way to build herself a comfortable life even if whatever friends of hers have her convinced that rebellion and self-interest for her independence are more important than making connections currently. She’ll go to the local college and see in a few months that this is all for the best.

His mother’s was kinder: Alison is my daughter, fiercely independent and facing issues that I can’t understand very well but am sure she’s investigated and researched until knowing the best thing for her. She’s a sweet lonely child who has always valued her own independence and I worry over what dangers that independence might bring to her life.

Logan decided not to begin the argument again after reading the two pages, instead he would write out a description of himself, only editing it enough to continue referring to himself as female. His father’s anger over choosing a college that wasn’t agreed had been enough to prevent him from trusting them to react well to Logan being transgender.

He didn't know himself and after all the things he'd learnt is beyond aware that the way he is is too uncomfortable for him, but trying to learn what makes him feel like himself would remain a quiet goal, not pursued but to remain aware of.

One thing he has been sure about for months is that having breasts is not for him and he's gone from wearing sports bras to a sneakily ordered binder to feel better in his body. His mother thinks it's just a more scientifically fashioned bra after she asked about it.

Logan just stated that their views of his life are wrong and how empty they appear to him. He basically tore up everything they are claiming will fulfil him point by point one evening, and that had been what finally made them let him leave home. There's a week of separate arguments where he's asking to be supported and allowed to go but instead just gets more instruction and orders on how to be the perfect girl his father thought they were raising and their support of his college aspirations shrunk until it's just the savings account he'd arranged for himself he has to support himself in the move.

The note he left on the table before leaving home for college read: Your daughter Alison is her own person. She is a scientist and will build her profession researching the wonders of space and nature. If a romance happens to occur in her life then it will be on her own terms, and in no way will it focus on getting anything other than companionship and understanding from another person.

Pretty Lies

In the city, Logan finds himself fascinated by the people. He’ll find himself studying in cafes and parks just watching them all.There’s so much more life in the city away from the town he’d grown up in, and somehow wherever Logan decided to study there was someone interesting to wonder about, or a group of friends he now actually wondered what it might be like to be a part of.

He's still looking up at the stars and yearning for the intergalactic knowledge of astronomy but also now learning how other people act together and in the city he's less likely to meet people he makes social errors with a second time.

Then he turns too quickly with a coffee he’d just brought and sees it splatter over the top of a boy in front of him. “I’m sorry. Are you okay? This was just made. Let me grab a few napkins.” The words tumble from Logan’s lips as he’s startled to realise what had happened. Thankfully the kiosk in the park did have napkins and the tender was already handing them over.

“I’m fine, Kiddo. It was an accident.We’re all good here.” The boy still took the napkins, wiping at his top, but grinning through his glasses at Logan. “What’s your name anyway? You’ve been studying by that tree the entire time I’ve been walking here.”

“Logan.” He blinks a little as the name left his lips. He hadn’t introduced himself by that name before, but it had become his own name at least in his mind since he’d settled on it for his new name.

“I’m Patton, are you studying at the college?” Patton’s grin must have been making his cheeks ache from how wide it was, but Logan didn’t think it was fake.

Logan blinks again, straightening his glasses and turning away. “Yes, I am. Excuse me, I need to return to my homework. Apologies again for spilling my coffee over you.” He wasn’t prepared for conversation so took the ready excuse, silently pleased when it wasn’t challenged and he could return to his books. There is no urgency for coursework to be done when it is still the first week of term.

He meets Patton again, away from the park they'd originally met in and this time his sharp words and comments don't get the boy to leave him alone. They encounter each other in a lecture hall, Patton calling his name out and jogging over.

“I thought I recognised you. Is this your first year as well, or have you got to take this to make up some credits?” Patton asks, following as Logan files into one of the rows of seats.

Logan straightens his glasses, glancing to the front in the hopes the lecturer would have arrived. “It’s my first year, but I’m quite resolved on having a science major so this will be a requirement undoubtedly.”

“Cool. I’m holding off on declaring my major for a while, but I’ll probably do something that’ll lead to a caring role, or maybe cooking.” Patton cheerfully replies, thankfully focusing on the lecture when the lecturer started class.

Logan was feeling like the t-shirts and jeans are just another uniform he hates already. He’d chosen them after he'd decided they were what all the boys around him wore but found himself fidgeting in his seat at the loose fabric. As much as he’d like to change his wardrobe again, Logan had no idea if he could start wearing suits or something else, especially on his budget.

Patton had been glancing over at him throughout the lecture, brow furrowing occasionally. “Hey Logan?” He asks once the lecture is over, pausing the other from getting up to leave. “You’ve seemed uncomfortable in your clothes today. Are you allergic to the fabric or your detergent? One of my cousins has that issue.”

“It’s not an allergy and who are you to know what I’m comfortable in.” Logan snaps, just wanting to get away from someone he didn’t know asking intrusive questions.

“I might not know you well, but I do know people fidget more when they’re uncomfortable and I’ve seen you studying around enough it can’t be discomfort for being in the lecture.” Patton’s words are still quiet, coaxing Logan to remain and talk.

Logan shrugs one shoulder at that, half disguising the action by picking his bag up. “I suppose you are right, but I’ve spent my entire life in uniforms to fit into society. I shall adjust to this one just like those.”

“Why can’t you dress the way you want to?” The question made him think, an assessing gaze scanning over Patton’s smile.

“Why are you so concerned about it? I’m merely a stranger to you, a classmate apparently.” Logan had to ask, glaring slightly.

Patton stands now, realising the lecture hall is empty now. “I’d like to be your friend. Can’t manage that if I don’t talk to you. Besides, if you want to try finding something you like to wear, charity shops and thrift stores are at least a fairly cheap place to begin.”

“I - I think that would be acceptable.” Logan stutters his words in the moment of his confusion. “I’ll let you know if I do manage to budget a trip to explore the city's thrift stores.”

Logan doesn’t view that as the start of the friendship, but it’s comforting to know there is someone who wants to get to know him.

Logan stops feeling like the smartest person around after a few classes where he learns from other students as much as his lecturers.

“Of course Freud's observations were influenced by the people employing him and an aversion to displeasing them for fears his funding would be removed. Therefore we can’t be certain what his personal beliefs were from his works now.” Logan rationalises during a psychology discussion group he had taken out of curiosity and Patton was taking to decide whether he’d be interested in becoming a therapist.

A girl opposite him stood in response. “I’d argue that we can know what his personal beliefs were from that actually. First, we can tell that to Freud funding was more important than integrity and the welfare of his patients. Secondly, given the repetition of a few basic beliefs in Freud's works, we can be certain that he did believe in these things that now seem immoral to us.”

Logan nods at the reasoning, making notes over what has been said as the discussion of Freud’s work continued.

Patton is there in many of Logan’s classes, frowning at insults Logan doesn't entirely register as such, and calling him out for failing to follow normal social cues (or what Patton refers to as basic human decency occasionally, although Logan has not observed some of the actions being common at all) but also explaining them and asking if Logan is okay with him doing so.

“Well that lecture was tedious. We’ve all had classes covering that subject during high school, surely those students struggling must have failed those classes.” Logan mutters as they leave a chemistry lecture.

Patton shakes his head. “I was one of the students struggling to understand that lecture and asking additional questions. Are you meaning to insult me, or have you forgotten what you’ve learnt from additional reading during your high school years compared to what was learnt in class?”

Logan turns to him at that, brow furrowed and absently straightening his glasses. “No insult was intended to anyone. Struggling and still trying to understand and learn more is an admirable trait. It’s just frustrating that I’m unable to increase the speed of my studies while things are explained in multiple ways to others.” He explains after a moment, ignoring a snicker that came from behind him. “Are you able to say where you’ve learnt everything you know?” He adds, realising that Patton was right over the amount he could have learnt from additional reading.

“Only so far as the subjects weren’t ones I was interested in.” Patton laughs, accepting the explanation as apology enough.

Crying had been something Logan had decided he wouldn't do after accepting he was male. Emotions had always been explained away for him as just a thing girls did, feeling their emotions more strongly than men but now Patton is looking at him and comforting him, saying it's fine for boys to cry, that there's no need to listen to toxic masculinity and he can be quiet here.

Logan was the one to suggest they study together. He thought about it after Patton mentions struggling in a few lectures that he had thought were included in high school education and decides that it would be a pleasant way to spend time, especially since the other was so insistent on becoming his friend.

“So, I think it’s time for a short break from study.” Patton declares after half an hour. They’d previously discussed the studies on breaks helping people learn so, as much as Logan wasn’t ready for one, he did begin to push the textbooks to one side.

Taking that as agreement, Patton smiles before asking, “What’s your family like? I’ve never heard you mention them and you know all about mine.”

“Only because you feel the need to refer to them daily.” Logan counters, before letting his expression become neutral again. “They’re controlling, even down to my mother attempting to control any rebellion I might have had. I haven’t stayed in touch since coming here.”

“That sounds lonely. Are you okay?” Patton’s smile had dropped, replaced with concern that felt unwarranted.

“Of course I am. I’m more myself than they would have ever let me be.” Logan insists but could see his words weren’t reassuring Patton at all.

He shakes his head, one hand coming to rest over Logan’s. “It’s okay to be hurt that they wouldn’t accept who you are, Logan. There’s no shame in crying or being sad over family not supporting you.” Patton comforts.

Logan shook his head as well, trying to clear his rising emotions. He knows Patton is right, but currently there is studying to be done. Thankfully there is no argument when he reaches for their textbooks again, saying something about chemical reactions.

Their meetings carry on going like that, but Logan never comes out as trans to Patton. There's always something that one or other of them says that reveals something Patton can help Logan with in figuring himself out, while distracting him from thoughts that this vital part of his identity remains hidden.

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me

Building himself again after having all his life be one thing, then deciding to transform himself entirely when somewhere new even months after being at college keeps Logan feeling on edge. It didn’t seem real and felt more like an illusion of being able to be himself rather than the opportunity to actually do so.

Logan had occasionally faced anger from people before, but, especially the times that Patton would make comforting gestures, it seemed to be happening more frequently now.

“You playing pretend you’re female, Sanders?” The jeer comes unexpectedly as he is heading to the park.

“I have no desire to do that, so perhaps enlighten me over what you’re so annoyed by?” He turns, an eyebrow raised as he recognises a few other students that regularly attended the cafe he and Patton study at.

“Looked like you wanted to earlier. All puppy eyes as if you wanted to be Pat’s girlfriend.” The boy mocks making his voice a higher pitch.

With that jeer Logan decides he doesn’t want to entertain the conversation at all. “Perhaps you should make an appointment at the optometrist. Maybe they’ll be able to explain the conclusions you’ve needlessly jumped to. Or would a psychiatrist aid you more? I’m not sure, either way, I’ve got studying to do.” His steps are faster than his usual walking pace as he leaves, but the possibility of the student deciding to assault him was too far above 0% for Logan to remain calm while leaving.

He doesn't understand why he's still getting judged for somehow not behaving like a man correctly, even though the girls always used to say he was too much like a boy to be their friend.

Logan sometimes questions if his transition is actually the right thing for him, or if he isn't strong enough to handle the discrimination and judgement that comes with it. It wasn't that he wanted to change any of it, but at times like this it was tempting. There, stood before him, was the boy his mother had tried suggesting he dated, only months before.

“Alison, You look like you threw all that self-care you preached out of the window as soon as you reached college,” The boy looks him over, brow furrowing for a moment when he registers how flat the binder made Logan's chest. “Not sure quite how you managed some of the destruction to your appearance you've gone on though.”

Logan lets himself scoff. “Of course you don't. And actually self-care is still vitally important to me, but it's just adapted to my new environment rather than the one you knew me in. People act differently in safe environs than they do unsafe ones, you are aware?”

“Yeah, like this place is unsafe. I know you've looked up everything about anywhere you might have studied and do not believe for one second you would have chosen a college in a city with a high crime rate.” The boy tries to counter, blinking at the smirk now directed at him.

“You should not presume to know my reasoning for where I choose to study.” He turns and walks away at that, ignoring the niggling thoughts in the back of his mind that this was all wrong and he should have listened to his mother. She had always wanted the best for him, or said so at least.

His phone has 30 messages showing on it after their lecture. Logan had been deliberately ignoring it since encountering the boy. Even still it was in the bottom of his bag while he was out of his room.

“Can you help me read through these, Patton?” He asks, making a spur of the moment decision at the end of their lecture. It might be helpful to have a friend supporting him while reading whatever his family had sent to him now.

Logan would prefer to say that there isn't a set instance he can identify to set off his questioning but knew that beyond the encounter with the boy from his hometown, it had been a million small things that people who didn't know he'd transitioned explained under the assumption he knew nothing about growing up female. Occasionally it was the reverse that also hurt, male friends trying to relate with assumed shared childhood experiences, never realising how boys and girls are socialised so differently and Logan was lacking the experience they spoke of.

Patton is always willing to help Logan with his struggles, be they needing help to understand a sociology lecture, or simply just being support while he reads through a mass of messages from his family. That was why Logan asks for his help, but it was also why he is now hesitating over actually sharing them.

“Come on Logan, you can’t just stare at your phone all evening.” Patton tries to tease, but there is a shaky uncertain note to his voice.

Logan’s silence and the tension running through him now seemed to be unsettling him, almost as much as the idea of revealing the faults of his body is to Logan. He takes a moment to shake his head. “I’m sorry Patton. I thought I wanted support over the barrage of messages my parents have sent this afternoon, but now I don’t believe you would want to know so much about my family life.” He tries to explain, noticing as he spoke that his voice is even more shaky than Patton’s had been.

“Nope, not letting you do something that’s scaring you alone. Give me that phone and I’ll read them out for you. If you need to cry, you know I’m here to comfort you.” Patton decides after a moment, reaching out for the phone and grinning when Logan automatically moves it away from him. “You know I’ve got 3 brothers, do you think I’m above some rough-housing to help you face whatever’s going on?”

Logan steps back then. “Rough-housing? That’s actually an activity boys are allowed to do growing up? I’ve never been allowed to even get close to it. A sensible girl remains calm and keeps her posture straight while reading.” He states, before blinking at the words. It felt like a perfectly normal explanation to give but definitely reveals the very thing he’d been worrying about sharing.

Patton blinks in return, hand coming up to straighten his glasses in a mirror of the action Logan habitually made. “And is it because someone from your hometown saw you as the man you are that you’ve got so many messages to go through?” He asks, no longer reaching for the phone and watching Logan carefully as if uncertain on how his words would be taken. The judgement Logan had expected to see was nowhere in his face though, only concern.

“Yes, a boy my mother tried to arrange for me to court a number of times. He didn’t realise I’ve socially transitioned though, only that I don’t look as feminine as he expected me to.” Logan answers succinctly. The current conversation is far more important than anything from earlier in the day or waiting on his phone to him now.

Patton nods slowly. “Okay then. Let’s go through them and find out how judgemental they’re being, but only if you want to. Otherwise it’s perfectly fine to just delete all of their messages and pretend you never received them.”

“I need to know what they’re saying.” He admits, glancing down at his phone again, “And what you’re thinking. Are you okay with - with me not being like you thought?” It is too difficult to use the word transgender in that moment so Logan adjusts just enough for the question to still be understood.

“Of course, Logan! Of course! You’re my intelligent scientist friend who helps me study the things I’m confused by. That hasn’t changed at all. Now I just know that your confused looks over some things are because we had very different childhoods not just because of family differences.” Patton rambles his acceptance, nodding in an exaggerated way just to reassure Logan.

The messages don’t seem quite so daunting to go through with his friend there to help and reassure him.

That is when Patton starts to understand just how much Logan has been trying to fit into another mould of his own imagining. It’s concern as much as curiosity that makes him ask just what framework Logan is using for becoming male, as well as if that's actually who he truly wants to be. Patton doesn’t know what it’s like transitioning to the right gender but suspect it would be more comfortable if Logan would focus on his interests and studies, letting his outfits and body decisions come with time, in small discoveries over what feels comfortable or not.

“It feels like I've wasted a million years just trying to get this figured out, why would letting myself ignore it in favour of astronomy help?” Logan asks in confusion when it is brought up at one point.

He'd always viewed learning, even about himself as a cemented thing. Once something is known then it is so unless evidence comes to prove otherwise, which means every fact should be tested constantly, especially for things so vital to a person as their identity.

“People change and grow over time, Lo. Who's to say if what makes you comfortable will still do so in a year, but your interrogating it constantly seems like it's hurting you, or at least stopping you from enjoying what you have now.” Patton's words in reply are gentle. “You aren’t in a race to get answers on your gender immediately, Honey.”

Talk Amongst Yourselves

Sharing memories and regrets with Patton over a sleepless night takes them to the park. They each have nights like it every now and then. This time Logan is the one to text first, thoughts of his family and his studies chasing each other around his mind and preventing him from sleeping.

They meet in silence though, their messages having been vague over why they couldn’t sleep and laying together in a clear area. Patton's the one who begins talking after they've been laying next to each other for a while. He murmurs about how he'd only before looked up at the stars on long car journeys with his family, but on his trip home this time all he'll think of now are his memories of lying with Logan having him explain the constellations and stories behind them.

“I’ve always looked up at them. They’re my favourite thing to learn about.” Logan admits in reply, one hand absently tracing over the constellations he can spot although tonight Patton doesn’t ask about them.

Patton’s hand rests on the arm that isn’t pointing for a moment. “This is a much calmer scene than those drives are. I can see why you love looking up at them.”

“I can’t imagine how a drive could be stressful when you were just a passenger.” Logan pauses tracing the sky, rolling his head to look at him.

“It wasn’t stressful, but exciting. My family would be around each other again and I’d get to play with my cousins.” Patton’s ramble is when Logan realises how lonely he feels disconnected from his family as connected as he is.

“Sounds nice. Mine, well, my family weren’t like that. If we ever had long journey’s to visit relatives there was always some work or errand that my father had merged into the trip.” He tries to talk about some of his own memories but gets caught not knowing how to refer to himself, fumbling over a dead name that hurts to remember his parents will still use for him. “And my presence often felt like I was there to distract our relatives. They loved fawning over me? Alison? The child I was?”

In the moment, Patton just says “Don’t use any name for yourself if it makes you uncomfortable; just skip over the things people said using it.”

Logan nods, “It was nice though, journeys and visits like that meant I could have a few days to read and learn about anything I like without having to justify it in relation to schoolwork. I’d be reading any moment that I wasn’t expected to make conversation, including on the drives.”

“No wonder you’re such a genius now then.” Patton grins at him, gently teasing in his tone. “How did you justify the star gazing?”

“By my goals, my lifetime aspiration, to become a scientist, an astronomist to be precise.” Logan stated.

Patton made a quiet noise, looking back to the stars again. “I still don’t know what my lifetime aspiration would be. I just know I want to care for people.”

It's a few days later that Patton attempts to help further, trying to get in contact with Logan's family for a visit.

“Hello, Mr Sanders?” Patton isn’t really sure of how he is going to begin the conversation now he’s actually had his call answered. He had at least mentioned the idea of calling them to Logan and had offered to be the one to do so which was why he had their number, but the impatient greeting had him feeling more uncertain over this plan.

“Yes? Who is this and why are you calling me?” Mr Sanders is nothing like Logan, expecting things to be done his way or not at all. That is the impression his tone was giving to Patton at least.

“I’m Patton, one of your child’s friends. You were mentioned the other day and I was wondering if you intended to visit while school is in session. It seems odd that you haven’t before since my family visit every couple of months.” He doesn’t like speaking so formally but hated the idea of misgendering his friend even more so. Given the messages from the other week it was clear that Logan wasn’t out to his family yet, so this was Patton’s compromise for the call.

There is a moment before he gets a reply. “If Alison is so desperate for a visit she should call us herself. From what the son of our neighbours has said, her rebellion is still continuing strong and the silence she’s given us since leaving is evidence of it also.” The brusque dismissal isn’t just of Patton’s call but of everything Logan is deciding to do with his life. It horrifies Patton to realise that.

“Are you sure? Your kiddo talks about trying to learn everything for you and you’re disregarding everything that doesn’t fit some pin thin ideal you’ve formed?” Patton’s words are surprised and confused.

“Pin thin ideal? Are you judging someone you haven’t met, you pretentious brat?! Learn not to meddle in things!” The yell is the last thing to come before Mr Sanders hangs up. Patton isn’t too upset about that. He had expected there to be issues after going through the messages with Logan, but the vitriol he heard felt excessive.

He still goes to tell Logan what he attempted to do as well as the outcome of it, praising Logan for being such a good man after getting raised by that bad person.

With a sad smile, Logan just asks to forget about it, to let the past be the past, no matter how many promises his family had failed to uphold.

He had lived his life back at home as someone he isn't. He'd fitted the place his parents put him into and acted like the little girl they'd expected.

Now he is staring at his parents across the road from his college and wondering what on earth they were about to say. Especially after hearing about Patton’s call to his father this had seemed like something that would never happen.

“Hey, Pat? Do you need help studying for the test next week?” He calls, turning away from them.

“Alison! Aren't you going to greet your family!” The yell comes before he could do much more than catch up to where Patton is, and he knew that as much as he wants to ignore them now he couldn't. His friends knew the name from his previous life and would make the connection easily.

A glance at Patton shows he's also stopped now and is turning around with a large grin that seems fake compared to others Logan had seen. “Hello. You must be my friend's family. Unfortunately we've got an important exam to study for so neither of us have the time to indulge your visit. I'm sure you understand.”

“I'm sorry, are you saying I'm not allowed to spend time with my daughter?” Logan holds his reaction to his mothers words back automatically after years of practice, but Patton's grin momentarily looks more like a snarl.

“Actually I'm saying that people come to college to study and learn and any decent parents would understand that preparing for an exam is more important than a visit they didn't bother to let their child know was happening.” Patton's words are sharper than Logan had heard them yet, and he is a little confused to realise they are in defence of him.

Still he does step forward. “Mother, father, Patton's right. We've already planned to study tonight. He's helping me with the chemistry module.” The reverse was actually true, but he knew they never believed in his intelligence, at least not in scientific subjects.

“This is the friend that was so desperate for us to come visit a few weeks ago? Not so friendly now apparently. And is he the one you're destroying your appearance for? And wearing sports bras?” His father frowns, looking him over and shaking his head. “You had such lovely hair and nice clothes and you seem to have just thrown it all away since moving here.”

“I'm dressing how I want to dress rather than in a wardrobe you decided for me and have my hair styled precisely how I choose. That is not for you to comment on and not the subject we need to be focusing on. Now if you want to discuss the properties of dimethicone that get it used in hair conditioners that would at least be tangentially related to our studies but still superfluous information. Given your expression of confusion however I can see that inviting you to join in our studies would be counterproductive to our preparations for the exam.” Logan rattles off the sentence, remembering one of the ingredients listed on his conditioners back home after having used that as an excuse to study more science a few times.

His mother calls Patton back a week later, changing the script.

“Is Alison okay?” Patton stays silent for a moment after hearing the question, trying to remember who has his number that would be asking that. Also momentarily wondering who on earth Alison is. “Sorry for calling out of the blue but she seemed tense when Gerald insisted on visiting last weekend and this was the number you called us from.”

That sentence has him clearing his throat, suddenly realising who has called him, “Mrs Sanders?” He asks anyway, just to confirm.

“Yes, that's me. Can you tell me is my daughter is okay?” She sounds more confident now that she’s been recognised.

“Yes, she’s fine, just very focused on her studies currently.” Patton is glad it was over the phone as he couldn’t hold back a wince at using the wrong pronouns for his friend. Logan glances over at that, looking up from the studying they were doing when his phone rang.

Despite an eyebrow being raised at him, Patton remains focused on the call, providing an address when Mrs Sanders requests it so she could send a few things to Logan.

Once Patton hangs up, Logan has already closed and stacked their books to one side. “So you didn’t seem to expect that call.” He states, waiting to see if he’ll get an explanation.

“Your mom is sending a few things that she thinks you should have.” Patton agrees.

“My Mother? And she didn’t even ask to speak to me to yell about how we refused to spend time with them last week?” Logan asks, sceptical.

He nods, “Only wanted to check you’re okay, Kiddo and get an address for whatever it is she’s sending.”

“At least we know it won’t be explosives or a chemical trap. I think my father might be malicious enough to do that but she wouldn’t be.” Logan decides after a moment thinking over the things he’d heard Patton say during the call. “It’s being delivered to your dormitory?”

“Yes. I decided that after last week it’s probably best not to give them your address. They really aren’t nice, are they?”

“I guess we’ll have to see what I receive before ruling mother out completely.”

Included in the package is details of a savings account that had been intended for Logan's college fund but never given to him, as well as a number of photos with notes talking about what a sweet little girl he was and how proud she is of her daughter.

Logan pushes the photos away after only a short period looking through them and says goodbye to a past that wasn't his, but makes sure to visit the bank and get everything sorted so he has total control of the savings account.

Love is a Question Mark

Affection isn't a strange feeling to Logan. He'd felt it quite regularly when among his family, even after he'd realised he could never thrive around them.

It is still alarming to realise that he is feeling some strong affection for Patton. He hadn't come to college to make friends, or party as a few of their classmates claimed was the biggest perk of studying away from home but had been grateful to realise that friendships had formed regardless. This level of affection felt different, more romantic than the normal affection he encounters however.

At the same time he wants to explore it, if he could find the words to express that without sounding like someone he isn't. Everything he'd read or watched about love had been done in flowery language, even the scientific papers cataloguing the ways love and other emotions actually impact people tended to have sections swerve into poetic language that Logan wasn't inclined to write for his own experiences, nor did it feel right to use someone else's words.

Patton attempts to express that he's falling for Logan and Logan tries to agree he reciprocates but falls upon the failings of language to say it.

They decide to stick together in an almost relationship for a while because Logan wants to try but hasn't been in a relationship before, not for lack of desire but for lack of understanding of other people.

At some point Patton gets upset by being called “Nothing special to me” but Logan soon points out that he can't understand the logic of emotions and how in a world as connected and populated as ours nobody is special unless they've got some major achievement so how can love like that work.

It was the laughter that did it. Patton and Logan were taking a walk through the park, having a break from their studies after a difficult exam and a dog had come running over to them.

Patton immediately knelt down for it, glancing around to see if he could spot the owner while petting the animal and startled into laughter when it jumps up to lick his face. Logan finds himself shaking his head to clear it from the rush of affection he is sure was strong enough to be called love while watching the scene.

“This is all a big question mark, but I want you around.” Logan exclaims that evening, neither of them quite ready to call a date simply because they weren't certain over how serious the other is. “Who else is going to steal my work when I'm getting stressed and replace it with a documentary you know I'll just sit and argue with? Literally nobody knows me like that, and you've done everything I can imagine to convince me that I'm actually worth all this effort. And you? I cannot imagine being half so happy in myself if there came a day where I didn't have you talking to me.”

“So what do you want to do about the question mark?” Patton sits up straighter, brow furrowing a little as he tried to figure out what Logan was saying.

Logan leans back a little. “I'm saying this is a date and you are my partner. I'm saying that whomever I might become if we called this off can be left for a possibility in some distant future because I cannot imagine you simply walking out of here when you refused to even when I was little more than a stranger to you. Do you disagree?”

“I don't. Honey, I've wanted to call you my boyfriend for months longer than we've had these possible dates carrying on. Making it official sounds awesome!” Patton's excitement grows with every word and if Logan didn't lean over intending to just kiss his cheek as he had before then he might have begun squealing. Their lips met instead of lips to cheek, but it felt perfect.

#logicality #logan sanders #patton sanders #trans logan sanders #college au #coming out #cw tansphobic parents

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