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“You know what?!” Logan snapped. “Fine. Fine. If you are going to continue this obstinate, defiant behavior, I refuse to partake any longer.”
“All Patton did was say a broken pencil has no point, Specs,” Roman said.
Logan took a deep breath, letting the horror of the moment settle over him afresh. “Right. Well. I believe that I need a moment to collect myself.” He nodded cordially. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Then he turned around and walked out of the house.
“Wait, we can do that!?” Remus demanded.
“Huh.” Virgil blinked. “I always thought we ceased to exist outside the camera’s gaze.”
“Isn’t that true for all of us?” Roman sighed, tossing his perfect hair.
“FUCK philosophy, whale penises, I’m about to go streaking!” Remus cried, before promptly discarding his clothes and rushing out the door.
“Code indigo, code indigo, Logic has left the building!” Roman yelped, running after his brother. “Remus! The last thing Thomas needs is a public indecency– ooh, is that a horse?”
“Holy fuck,” Virgil breathed, gripping his hoodie. “We lost the brain cell. We only had one braincell and we lost it.”
“How do they fit all those horses into an engine?” Thomas gaped at a commercial. “Four hundred horse power… they can’t all fit in there.”
“Not true!” Patton protested to Virgil. “What about the love of my lif– I mean Janus– I mean Deceit, the dark side, who I am not in love with.”
He flashed a panicked grin.
“That’s true!” Virgil smacked a fist into his hand. “We gotta go find the love of my lif– I mean Janus– I mean Deceit, the dark side, who I am not in love with.”
“Let’s go then!” Thomas declared and walked through the door.
“Oh my god,” Virgil said, looking at the Thomas-shaped hole in the door. “I didn’t know he could do that.”
Virgil and Patton rushed after him, finding him laughing at Remus, who was trying to avoid Roman’s dogged attempts to force him back into clothes.
“You’ll never take me alive!” Remus screeched, jumping over the neighbor’s fence. “Oh, well hello there~”
There was a metallic banging, as if someone had smacked the embodiment of dark creativity over the head with a frying pan, and Remus came sailing back over the fence.
“Her hair was very long,” he said, before passing out.
“They killed him!” Patton yelped.
“Roman!” Virgil shouted. “Where’s the other brain cell?”
“Oh, you mean the love of my lif– I mean Janus– I mean Deceit, the dark side, who I am not in love with.“ Roman looked around frantically for a distraction. “Wow, the sun is so bright. Like what’s up with that?”
“Could you all be any more loud?” A lazy voice drawled. “Please, I don’t think the neighbors have filed a noise complaint yet.”
“The love of my lif– I mean Janus– I mean Deceit, the dark side, who I am not in love with!” Thomas shouted up at the roof. “Can you come down here and be my brain cell, please? Logan left.”
“Oh, sure,” Janus said, lazily rolling over onto his stomach, purring in contentment under the heat of the sun. “I’m getting down right now, don’t worry.”
“You don’t seem like you’re coming down!” Patton called up. “You seem like the world’s most beautiful side– I mean a Snacc mamba– I mean–”
“I’m working on my tan.”
“You’re wearing your normal clothes.”
“I know what I said.”
“Well, if the love of my lif– I mean Janus– I mean Deceit, the dark side, who I am not in love with is not going to help, we’ll just have to find Logan ourselves,” Thomas sighed.
“You good there buddy?” A man with a goatee was sat at the bar, as Logan settled down with a heavy sigh. “Long day?”
Logan snorted. “Long… existence.”
“Really?” The man arched an eyebrow. “Rougher than the illegitimate son of a dead prostitute and a Scottish dude?”
“When that bastard, orphan son of a whore and a Scotsman is the literal embodiment of logic, and is continually denied fulfilling his purpose, he can talk,” Logan snorted.
The man cracked a grin, flagging down the bartender. “Ay, Ernesto, two Amoretto sours for me and my new friend here.”
Logan blinked at him. “Altruistic of you.”
He shrugged, lazily. “I got some cash to burn. So…” He leaned forward with an understanding smile. “What’s up?”
Logan felt his own mouth lift in an answering, wry grin. “Oh, where do I even start…”
“Logan!” Thomas called. “Looooogan!”
“Excuse me!?” Patton ran up to a random couple, frantically shaking a crayon drawing at them. “Have you seen this metaphysical human being?!”
Virgil lay flat on his face in the middle of the ground, headphones blasting MCR at full volume.
"He looks like a nerd,” Roman was explaining to some hapless passerby, “like if I was a nerd. And I know that’s impossible, but just imagine with me.”
Remus had been left at the house, obstinately to guard, but mostly to try to convince the love of my lif– I mean Janus– I mean Deceit, the dark side, who the narrator is not in love with, to come down and be a brain cell again.
“Why yes,” Thomas said into his cell phone. “I would be happy to give you my social security number, grandma! I’m so sorry your voice sounds like a middle-aged hacker’s because of your cold.”
“–and he refuses to even touch any of the knowledge he acquired through his education,” Logan rambled, cheeks hot with anger and five shots of vodka. “We have a- a whole degree in chemical engineering, which is fucking…” He pulled out a vocab card and squinted at it. “’Leet’, yet he does nothing with it, insisting on waisting his time with professional make-believe!”
“Tell me about it,” Logan’s new friend groaned, three shots and several cocktails in himself. “I was a substitute teacher, man, and then all of a sudden– Pew! – I’ve got a whole-ass musical happening.”
“Teacher!” Logan yelped, reaching out and downing another vodka shot. “Woo! Yes! Yes- that is… good. Fun… yesss…”
He rested the side of his head against the countertop, looking at his new friend with big eyes. “I’m already in love with a half-good, half-bad, half-boy, but if I wasn’t, we’d be married by now.”
Solemnly, Logan’s friend put a hand on his shoulder. “I feel the same way.”
“Logan!” Thomas called, prying up a man hole and peering down into it. “Logie! Here, Logie Logie Logie.”
“Nothing down here!” Remus called up, floating in the sewage, absolutely thriving. “And the love of my lif– I mean Janus– I mean Deceit, the dark side, who I am not in love with, refuses to get down.”
“Aw,” Thomas said, then brightened up. “I know! If I tweet out my home address, he’ll know where to come back to!”
“Brilliant!” Roman declared.
Virgil and Patton were too busy wafting books around, in the hopes that Logan would pick up on their scent, to comment.
“You… you know what’s awesome?” Logan’s new friend said, blinking blearing up at the ceiling. They were slumped over each other in a booth, heads buzzing. “Rapping. I fucking… I fucking love rapping.”
“I like rapping,” Logan said, dreamily. “I fucking destroyed the embodiment of creativity in a rap battle one time.”
His friend nodded, seriously. “I did the same thing to Thomas Jefferson.”
“You’re my best friend,” Logan mumbled into his chest.
“Hell yeah,” his friend muttered into another glass of beer.
“Hm,” Thomas said. “I tweeted out my home address, but my friends are now texting me, frantically wondering if something is wrong. What should I do?”
“Say something cryptic and shut off your phone,” Virgil and Remus said, simultaneously.
Thomas nodded seriously. “I thought as much.”
“You ever think about history,” Logan rambled, “like really think about history.”
“Yeah,” Logan’s friend said, thinking of his many, many awards. “I’ve thought about history a few times.”
“Like… white people messed everything up,” Logan sighed, sipping at his unidentifiable drink. “And men did too. If we could just… let a matriarchy happen, everything would be okay.”
“You good, buddy?” Logan’s friend, who had slightly sobered up, asked. “What are you drinking there?”
Logan chugged the whole thing, then looked him dead in the eye. “Respecting women juice.”
In the end, it was Remus who found Logan, as he saw a bar and decided the best possible thing Thomas could do at that moment was get roaring drunk.
Patton, once inside, held up his crayon drawing and blubbered “hiuawve u sewn thiuds manjk hersd loijgioc,” which, as any bartender well-versed in speaking emotionally repressed, could tell you, translates roughly into “dear sir, do forgive my intrusion into your most lovely establishment, however, I am quite desperately searching for my lost comrade, of the ancient Logos persuasion, whom I am quite distressed to have beyond my scope of vision.”
“Oh yeah,” Ernesto said, nodding his head towards the booth in the far corner. “He’s right over there.”
Indeed, the side in question was slumped over on a table, sitting across from a man with his back to them, rambling something about rap, or possibly the perils of being a substitute english reacher.
“LOGAN!” They all cried.
“‘go away,” Logan groaned into his arms. “’m not your Logic anymore. I’m Lin’s now, I decided.”
The man next to Logan turned around with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, is he a friend of yours? I hope you weren’t too worried.”
Thomas blinked. Rubbed his eyes. Blinked again.
The man before him did not change.
“Lin Manuel Miranda?” he squeaked.
Logan raised his head blearily. “Who?”
“Don’t worry about it, buddy,” three time Tony and Grammy Award Winner Lin Manuel Miranda said, patting his head gently.
“’kay,” Logan said, putting his head back down.
“Can you come back, please?” Patton flashed his puppy-dog eyes. “We’re worried about you.”
Logan took another shot.
“Janus is worried about you,” Virgil hedged.
Logan’s head snapped around. “The love of my lif– I mean Janus– I mean Deceit, the dark side, who I am not in love with?”
“Totally,” Thomas drawled, reaching out to take Logan’s hand. “He’s sick with worry. So sick he couldn’t even make it.” As soon as he touched Logan, he paused, frowning. “I think I enabled several people to commit identity fraud today.”
“Happens to the best of us,” three time Tony and Grammy Award Winner Lin Manuel Miranda soothed.
“I’m in love with you,” Roman said.
“I get that a lot.”
And so Logan Sanders, one hangover and one new best friend later, was safely returned to his family, and slept the night through.
At least, until he was woken up by the mob of famders outside Thomas’s house.