Chapter Text
Above all, Logan hates ambiguity.
Solutions should be simple. Yes or no. Do or do not. To be or not to be.
“That is the question.” Logan mumbles to himself, his eyes glazing over once more at the screen in front of him. The monologue he’s quoting is about suicide, but the simplicity of the excerpt is a strange comfort. There are two options. You pick one or the other, and you either go on to regret the choice or not. It’s easy. Dichotomous.
Feelings make simplicity impossible. Everything is nuanced and flexible. Laws can be bent or broken because of contexts or emotions. People don’t fit into neat checkmark boxes. Personalities and opinions create infinite variations on what should be definitive truths.
It’s infuriating.
Logan sits staring at his laptop for what felt like hours, trying to fill out financial documents. Thomas had trouble filing taxes this year, apparently “YouTuber” and “professional make believer” are hard things to validate to the U.S. government. Logan knew this was important, he was the only Side well equipped to handle this task, and the deadline to file was unbearably soon. He had to do this.
There was absolutely no other option.
Still he stared, motionless, at the text bar blinking on and off. On and off, again and again. It is so late. He’s usually screen-free by 9pm, in bed by 10pm. It must be almost three in the morning by now. The cursor does not move.
Something is wrong with Logan.
He’s sure of it. A sickness of some sort, perhaps a strain of mind-illness he wasn’t aware of. Sides could get “sick,” after all, maybe his miserable state is a physical manifestation of something Thomas is going through.
Yes. That has to be it. Logan’s equivalent to Roman’s literal bruised ego, or how Patton becomes feverish when Thomas gets “heartburn.”
Of course. It’s simple, probably a stress-induced migraine or something.
Except it’s not the same. This feeling is not physical.
The thought wedged itself in Logan’s head stubbornly, a figurative worm in his ear.
More like a devil on my shoulder, he thought.
All the more frustrating, the root of this dysfunction was a comment Remus made days ago.
Logan scoffed to himself, Remus, of all sides, was getting to him. Ridiculous. He was supposed to be better than that.
...
Comparatively, it was the least inane comment Remus had made all day. After throwing himself down the stairs for the nth time, he’d popped up (battered and bloody), and sat with Logan on the couch, watching a nature documentary.
Well, not really sat, but hovered ominously over one of the cushions. Logan assumed he was tired, and just needed something real to ground him. They’d taken to watching documentaries recently, and Logan sipped his coffee waiting for Remus to make some raunchy comment about the birds dancing on the screen.
Instead, he threw a metaphorical curveball aimed directly at Logan’s skull.
“Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a girl?” He asked.
The room seemed to narrow a tad. Odd. Logan decided not to pay it any mind and approach Remus’ question with curiosity.
“Why do you ask?"
A frilled arm gestured to the screen, “Well, like, male birds get the cool mohawks and shit and the females look like plain Jane losers. In people, it's totally the opposite. Men look worse than women, like, 102 percent of the time. And all the cool looking ones are gay, and they just try to look like women. So why wouldn’t I wanna look like a broad?”
The thought was strangely insightful, for Remus, anyway.
“Oh, and tits. Duh.”
There it was.
Logan wasn’t paying attention to Remus’ justification, though. The initial question was echoing in his mind, gaining volume.
"Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a girl?"
Logan’s hands started moving as if of their own accord, picking at his cuticles. He was sweating, he thought from behind a figurative wall of glass. He was taking far too long to respond, and probably looked odd doing so.
Commanding his body to still and his face to neutralize, Logan replied.
“No, I suppose I haven’t given much thought to being a woman, since we are all a part of Thomas, who is a cisgender man.” The logic in his response was sound, his tone casual, not that Remus would've cared if it wasn't.
Remus tilted his head at this remark, like a confused animal, “Well, that doesn’t mean anything, we can be whatever the hell we want.” He sounded genuine, which was a strange tonality for Logan to hear from the brash side.
Logan simply hummed in response, as if to say “fair enough.”
Hopefully Remus either didn't notice or care about how peculiar Logan was behaving. He felt a discomfort that started out negligible, but within moments his scalp prickled, his shirt was suddenly itchy, his glasses slid down his face no matter how many times he pushed them back up the bridge of his nose.
Overwhelmed by seemingly nothing at all. Pathetic.
It was time to go.
Standing, Logan told Remus he had business to attend to, a schedule to make that hopefully would not be ruined by the side now lounging on the couch (said with a half-hearted glare). Remus gave his best shit eating grin as Logan sank down to his room.
In the days since, Logan has spent much more time in his room than usual. He didn’t want to deal with these irrational, nonsensical feelings.
Something has to be wrong with him.
Shit.
He needs to talk to Janus.