Work Text:
Professor Logan Logic was sitting at his bedroom desk while grading papers and eating a slice of toast with Logan’s Berry jam. His fingers pinning a pen between its joints, while he crisscrossed along the page marking the papers with mistakes. “Wrong, wrong, correct—mmm—wrong” He mumbled with a mouthful of toast. He was exhausted and threw the pages aside. “It’s winter break. I can put this off one night for some self enrichment,” Logan reasoned with himself as he rose and left the office.
He passed Patton’s room and listened in; the rest of the group had been heavily into some new video-game they’d bought, but Logan wasn’t exactly the most interested. He was busy with work and over the years he’d found video-games very childish--too childish for his tastes. He was a bit lonely, but felt the others were busy and instead traveled further down the hall before emerging into the living room and grabbing the remote before clicking on the television.
As the television flickered to life and the main screen loaded, he made a bowl of popcorn (which Patton stole a portion of before Logan shooed him out like a rat), and plopped down onto the couch. He flicked through the stations before happily landing on an old rerun of Sherlock Holmes. Logan smiled as he relaxed and listened too the rerun. He missed watching hilarious comedic stories like this, as he watched the show his eyes got heavy and dropped to block his face.
“Detective Logic!”
Logan shook awake looking about, there before him was Patton dressed head to toe in old victorian clothes… brightly colored victorian clothes… “Patton what’s going on?” “Logan the police commissioner called, they have a case for you.”
“A case?”
Logan was trying to wrap his brain around what he’d just heard before Patton dragged him out of his apartment, even it looked very Victorian with some steampunk eccentricities here and there. “I must be dreaming!?” Logan yelled mentally as he was pulled left and right down the street. He nearly collided into a street-light pole six different times.
Logan reasoned he must have fallen asleep while watching the tv and that now he had to solve this case to awaken, which bothered him much. “Ah! Detective Logic, we’ve been waiting! We know you’d tell us off, but we believe it to be a vampire.”
Logan mentally laughed,”That’s hilarious! Vampire’s don’t exist!” Nonetheless he brushed himself and pretended like nothing was wrong and played along. He wondered what brought about the thought as he hadn’t been engaging in anything with vampires recently, but it may have been something from his past… He mentally shrugged as he looked about.
There were definitely teeth marks, but Logan suspected a mugging gone wrong as the teeth marks were clearly not human. “Detective Logic? You’ve been staring at the corpse for a while?”
“Looks like a failed mugging, otherwise ignore vampirism--they don’t exist. There’s a logical explanation for everything.”
When he spun around to leave he was no-longer in the morgue, he was now in a pub while in his unicorn onesie. He was watching Patton dance and sing to his heart's content while playing some stringed instrument in front of a large audience. Roman was nearby with a rapier and fancy attire laughing over a mug of some frothy liquid.
He walked over to Roman and pulled up a seat. “I think I’m going crazy.” He said as he glanced about. “Why’s that Logan?” The other said with a foamy mustache as he plopped the empty mug on the table with a hearty laugh. “Every minute feels weird and like the world’s shifting slightly.”
“Like what?”
“I swear a second ago I was Sherlock Holmes and solving a case with a vampire and now… well now I’m here.”
“Logan, are you sure you’re not just regretting not spending your time with us and your brain is processing what our game night may have been?” The voice was unexpected as Virgil leaned back against his shoulder with Janus talking behind him. “We invited you but you always close yourself off… Maybe you need to try going back to the fun professor you started as… We kinda miss it.”
Logan focused on the two newcomers and the world melted to a dark alley where they each stood on an opposing wall from him. Virgil was subtly laughing with more purple accents than he normally did and some white streaks in his hair. On the other hand, Janus was cloaked in darker colors, clicky teeth, and giggled a little more high-pitched than he normally did while waving a dagger in one hand and a coin pouch in the other,” You chose work over happiness and even when you wanted to relax, you did it alone.”
“But I don’t want to be seen as a bother?!”
“Dork.”
It was like the room was spinning when he turned again, everything was melting and he was uncomfortable again, now there was Remus before him. He was wielding a slightly different mace and was very dusty lavender. “You’ve left us high-and-dry, sooooo I’m not only eating your deodorant but als-” Before he could finish Emile appeared and shoved him into the void.
“Ignore Remus! As a friend, I suggest you branch out more and find things more fitting towards yourself, but your isolation only pushes you farther away from us.” Picani said; he was wearing weird leafy clothes and a little badge with gold plant things.
His brain kept wrapping and wrapping, knotting and knotting, and eventually gave out. Too much information, too much--he wanted to scream. If this was a lucid dream, why was he so out of control!
“Because it isn’t a lucid dream. Take a deep breath.”
Logan calmed himself down and looked up. Before him was an outstretched hand and there was Remy. “We both know what you need to do, but will you, is the question.”
"... I’m not sure…”
“Are you scared Logan?”
“No… Yes….” He muttered back as the world slowly fixed itself back into the living room and he looked over to Remy at his side. “Come join us--Broaden your horizons, and leave the work at work…. You always avoid us and focus solely on your job--It’s time to stop.”
“... Alright.”
And as if on cue he snapped up and barely a second had passed before he grabbed the bowl and hurried into Patton’s room.
“Can I still play?”
“Yes!”
Logan nearly fell over, the noise of everyone excitedly yelling surprised him.
“So how does this work exactly?” Logan said as he made himself comfortable on one of the beanbags next to Remy. “Well we’re all playing starter characters--except Patton, but he’s hosting as the custom character--a bard.… Remy stayed up all night and found us a mod that lets us have an unlimited party size!” Roman said before getting cut off by Remus,” He even gave us some additional companion character playables!” Everyone nodded before Virgil interjected,” However it’s buggy and we’ve been having issues… I think we’ve been venting some of them to you, sorry if that’s caused you any stress.”
Logan shook his head,”Nope, actually part of the reason I wanted to play. What characters are left… or what’s not taken…?” Virgil instantly shut down all the ruckus of noise as everyone yelled their character excitedly,” I’m playing Shadowheart--she’s a cleric, Roman’s playing Wyll--a warlock (He wanted to play Lae’zel, but found her a little to rough around the edges at the start), Janus is playing Astarion--he’s a vampire rogue, Remus is playing Minthara--she’s a paladin, but he’s being weird so ignore him…. Picani is playing Halsin a druid… and we already told you Patton’s…”
“I’m playing Karlach, she’s a barbarian... I think you’ll like Gale, he’s very intellectual and is a big nerd. Oh and he’s a wizard.” Remy said, patting him on the shoulder with a subtle wink, as if he knew about the conversation with Logan’s figment version of him earlier.
The gaggle excitedly showed him the controls and he would be lying if he’d said he missed sitting and watching Sherlock--This was much more exciting!
Hours later the group had barely made it through the goblin camp and struggled through so many bugs with Minthara and Halsin’s story segments. They thanked the fictional Baldur’s Gates gods for save and load when things got buggy. Especially when they were learning how to give Gale Shovel… Oh my, did that take forever.
Near the end slowly members of the group began falling asleep on each other and became a large pile. Logan, Remy, and Emile were lucky enough to slip out and relax in the living room with the rest of the popcorn Remus didn’t spill everywhere.
“I enjoyed that more than I thought I would.”
“We’re glad--We’d hoped you joined earlier, but since we’d bugged out so much you’d hopped in at just the right time.”
“I know… Well I hope you two sleep well, I’m going to my room to rest.”
“I wish you the most pleasant dreams… and remember to leave the work at work. ”
Logan almost had whiplash when he turned around to see Remy give him a wink before cuddling up on the armrest with a pillow. He wanted to run back and ask questions, but somewhere in his head said to leave it alone and go to bed… so he did.
“ Leave my work at work… I can do that.” He smiled as he tucked himself comfortably wrapped in his unicorn onesie and blankets.