Chapter Text
“Logan..what are these?”
It’s a calm Tuesday afternoon when Patton pops his head into Logan’s room, he had done so merely to ask the other if he wished to partake in a cute puzzle that Roman had just summoned for him. Truth be told, he had also come up here out of worry as well, the last thing that he wanted for Logan to be working himself to the bone, and the logical side hadn’t come out since breakfast.
However, upon looking inside he couldn’t help but to stop and look in awe, it is the first time that Patton has seen the inside of Logan’s room in some time, and yet despite the fact that it had been a really long while, the change of it still surprised him. Not everything looked different, the glow in the dark stars that Patton had given to Logan many Christmases ago was still stuck on the ceiling and walls. Logan still had his bookshelves put up full of all the books that both he and Thomas had read in the past, and even his Ravenclaw rug was there just as it had always been on the smooth wooden floors.
The only difference that really seemed to stick out was the bottles.
There were dozens of them, all dotting the shelves that Logan had up for years. Yellows, blues, reds, greens, and purples. Primary colors that Patton would have honestly never expected to see in Logan’s room, the logical side had a style, and when he liked his style Patton knew that he liked to stick to it. It was almost blasphemy for him to do anything but that, and yet there were the bottles that were up there as if they had always been up there. Several of them, now that he got a closer look at them had a fine layer of dust on them. They had been here for a while, so how hadn’t he noticed them?
Reaching forward Patton went to pick one of the dusty bottles up, it had a normal thick glass container only with a cork bottling in the strange substance inside.
“Don’t touch them!” Logan quickly snapped, his hand instantly wrapping around Patton’s wrist just as his fingers were about to graze the glass bottle, and the expression on Logan’s face held something that Patton hadn’t seen in...well ever.
Logan’s bottom lip was captured in between his teeth as the logical side chewed on it and his eyes stared back at Patton, just looking into them Patton say something in them, something that felt impossible to grasp as Logan’s eyes drifted away from the moral side’s face. Almost as if he felt ashamed by snapping at Patton in such a way, as he slowly unwrapped his fingers from around the moral side’s wrist leaving Patton to rub at where he had just been touched.
It was the oddest thing ever, but… Logan’s touch was icy cold.
“I apologize for my unwarranted suddenness, but these hold some of my experiments. They can become dangerous if tampered with, and I don’t wish for you to hurt yourself, Patton.” Logan explained, ignoring the way that the yellow bottle off to the side rocked faintly back and forth as he spoke. He was the only one, thankfully, who noticed it moving. “What was it that you interrupted my work for?”
It sounded a lot harsher when he said it like that, but it was too late now, and Logan didn’t give a single hint that his own words had bothered him.
Especially as Patton beamed at him, “You’re forgiven!” The moral side chirped at him the hand dropping from his wrist as he rocked back and forth on his heels like a child all hyped up on sugar. “Do you want to do a puzzle? Roman just summoned one that has a picture of puppies and kittens on it, you look like you could use a break after all.:”
Looking around himself, it suddenly seemed to have dawned on Logan that he was surrounded by his rough drafts of work that he had been working and working on throughout the day. Some even for things weeks in advance, even so though…
“I don’t think that I can pull myself away from my work now, perhaps at a later hour I may come down,” Logan suggested, ignoring the way that the indigo-colored bottle rocked on the shelf above his bed when Patton’s bright smile dimmed to a sad smile, not that Patton would ever admit that it was a sad smile at all. “How about...one more hour?” He instead offered, and in response to the beautiful and sublimely warm smile that was aimed at him and only him, the bright fluorescent pink bottle practically trembled on the shelf next to his collection of Doctor Who DVDs.
“That’s perfect!” Patton’s smile brightened at the promise, it was certainly more than he had expected to get from Logan, and an hour was nothing in compared to the hours he had figured he was going to have to wait. “I’ll make us some lunch while you’re working then.” And as if to tease Logan just a little bit more, Patton leaned in ruffling Logan’s neat slicked back hair. Releasing the curls that Logan so meticulously tried to constantly keep in place, but Patton liked it this way, it was adorable to see the curls flopping in Logan’s face. He wished that he could see Logan like this more often, but he knew that wishing for miracles when it came to Logan was like wishing for Roman to use a little less glitter when it came to anything. It wasn’t going to happen.
So ignoring the scoff from Logan as the logical side immediately went to straighten his hair, Patton turned darting from the room like the childish fifth grader who had just pulled the pigtails of the girl he liked. Slamming the door on his way out.
The bottle on the shelf closest to the door rocked almost mockingly in response to the sudden and rather violent action.
A bright yellow one, the same color as the sunflowers that Roman had once summoned on Patton’s birthday tipped, the curved bottom of the bottle no longer stable as it started to fall from the edge.
Panic and fear wasn’t normally something that Logan allowed himself to feel, but at that moment, with his messed up hair forgotten, caution was thrown to the wind. As he stumbled at first, jerking his body into action before he suddenly dove for the bottle watching it fall. As the seconds, at first, seemed all too slow before they suddenly sped up again, everything was happening way too fast now.
Especially as the bottle thumped against the end of his fingers propelling it away from his hand and into the wall, the moment it cracked Logan felt it rather than saw it. The moment it broke it felt like someone had shoved a javelin of feelings right into his chest, just to twist it around in order to make the experience as painful as he possibly could. His glasses fell off of his face when he landed although that was the last thing he cared around as he scrambled over, reaching for the bottle, even though he already knew what the end result was.
A long crack ran through the entirety of the bottle, and the bright color that was once been inside was now gone. To top it off, he ached, his chest ached like nothing he had ever felt before. The bottle tumbled from his numb hands and before Logan knew it, he was grasping at his chest, his mouth open as he gasped for air, only he couldn’t bring himself to make his lungs actually work. His mouth was open and when he opened his eyes again he saw the blurry surface of the floor as he stared blankly out, only it didn’t end there either. As his muscles twitched and spasmed, as if an electric shock had been forced through them at an impossibly high voltage.
It doesn’t hurt.
I don’t have feelings.
They didn’t hurt me.
I don’t feel lonesome for being left out.
Words are just words, so therefor what he said couldn’t hurt me.
I’m needed.
I’m wanted.
I’m necessary.
The one lie he hadn’t told himself was true, it hurt a hell of a lot more putting it all back in than it had putting those damned emotions and those lies in the bottles.