#sometimes labels shift

“Hey Lo,” Patton said as he walked into the living room. Virgil had officially moved into an apartment with Roman a few days ago as the spring semester was starting tomorrow. This left Patton and Logan living alone together in the house for the first time since… The Incident.

Patton had just finished cleaning up dinner after getting Logan settled on the couch. The TV was on, but Logan was currently staring past it into space, something he never used to do, but had become a frequent occurrence since getting injured. It worried Patton a bit, but he tried not to think about it.

Logan looked up at him as Patton said his name. He didn’t smile softly at Patton like he usually would have. It made something clog in Patton’s throat.

“Hello,” Logan said.

“I… made us both some tea,” Patton said, holding out the tea mugs as though for his approval.

“Thank you, love.” He still seemed distracted and distant. He turned back towards the television.

Patton nodded and then walked over to set the mugs on the coffee table. Then, he sat down on the couch next to Logan. Years of instinct told him to scootch over closer until their arms and legs intermingled, but he hesitated.

Logan either noticed his hesitation, or noticed his deviation from the norm, because he glanced over at Patton. He lifted the arm closest to Patton and Patton instantly took the invitation, moving closer to curl up under his arm.

Logan pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

It was silent between them for a long moment, only the sound of the television droning on breaking the quiet. The news was on, Patton noted. There was coverage on a supervillain attack Prince had stopped the night before.

“I think I need to retire,” Logan said out of the blue.

Patton drew back to look at him in surprise. “What?” he asked. “You’ve been given medical leave until next fall. You’ll be more than recovered enough to go back to teaching by then.”

Logan looked at him for a moment and then gave him a wry smile. “I wasn’t talking about teaching, my dear.”

“Oh,” Patton said blinking at him. “Oh.” He took a moment to process that statement. “But you… you want to retire?”

“I wouldn’t say want,” Logan said, “but I think it may be the most responsible course of action.”

“You… I know you’re struggling with the leg and everything right now, but you’ll get better.”

“Patton,” Logan said, “you’re a doctor.”

“Exactly!” Patton said, feeling oddly defensive for a reason he couldn’t place. “So, I know exactly how people heal from injuries like yours. You’ll need time, but with physical therapy and…”

Logan cut him off. “With physical therapy,” he said, “I will get much better. I will perhaps walk again, maybe even without a mobility aid eventually, but Patton, I’m 57-years-old. This severe of an injury is not going to heal quickly or completely.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’m getting old,” Logan said. “I’ve been slowing down, and this will not help me speed up. Being Bluebird is physically… and mentally demanding. I won’t be able fully meet those demands again after what happened.”

“That’s not true,” Patton said even though he wasn’t sure of that himself.

“It is,” said Logan. “It’s always something that would happen eventually. This has just… sped up the process.”

“You’re catastrophizing,” Patton said. It was probably an ironic statement to make when Patton’s words sounded so much more upset than his husband’s. “You’re making a rash decision because you feel bad now, but…”

“This isn’t rash,” Logan said, evenly. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot in the last months.”

Patton didn’t know what to say to that.

“Besides,” he said, nodding at the TV. The news had cycled around again while they talked, back to Prince, back to Roman. “I’m not the city’s only long-term hero anymore. Roman had been doing well before and is doing even better now. I will continue to help him on his journey, and it won’t be an immediate transition. Bluebird will still make a few appearances, but I do think it’s time. For my own sake and ultimately for this city’s too.”

Patton hesitated. Logan was right, of course, that this was inevitable. It’s just that Patton had never really thought about it. He didn’t want to think about it, especially now when Logan was still so hurt in multiple ways. He’d been telling himself that eventually things would go back to normal, but Logan had just confirmed Patton’s greatest fear: they wouldn’t.

It felt selfish to be upset, but Patton really couldn’t help it. Patton felt himself gripping onto Logan’s sleeve for support even though support was Patton’s job right now. He felt tears in his eyes, but he resisted letting them fall.

“Are you okay?” Logan asked.

“I…” Patton said. A couple of the tears escaped. “It’s just… I’ve never known a Logan that wasn’t also Bluebird.”

Logan sighed softly. He gently removed Patton’s grasping hand from his shirt sleeve to hold it in his own. “Things change,” he said, doing that thing where he stared into the distance again, “labels shift.”

A/N:

And that my friends, is the end of Sometimes Labels Shift.

It's been a long time coming and I'm feeling a bit emotional even though it's not the end of the Labeled Universe. We're just moving on to the next chapter.

Virgil found himself pausing in front of Logan’s office door. He felt the need to knock even though he had the keys in his pocket, and rarely ever knocked before anyway. He couldn’t help but stare at Logan’s name on the door.

That seemed silly. That was the sort of thing you did when someone was dead. It wasn’t like Logan was dead.

As though to check the validity of the thought, Virgil pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. The list was in Logan’s notoriously neat handwriting, written not an hour ago.

Virgil had been tasked with picking some things up from Logan’s office, since Logan wasn’t coming back for the rest of the semester. He was on medical leave after his “car accident.”

The list was suddenly shaking in front of Virgil’s eyes.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said, startling Virgil.

Virgil shoved the list back into his pocket and turned.

“Hey Cas,” Virgil said to Logan’s TA. Or, well, ex-TA. Virgil wondered idly if he was out of a job or if another professor would use him for grading. Maybe the professors who were taking over Logan’s classes would have him continue grading for the classes he already was.

Cas seemed to pause. Despite having started the conversation, he did not seem to know where to take it next. He stood a few feet away from Virgil and shifted nervously in place.

“I’m just picking some stuff up for my dad,” Virgil said, aware as he said it that he’d probably never used the title of ‘dad’ in front of Cass.

“Yeah, uh, I heard,” Cas said. “Car accident, right?”

“Yeah, uh, yeah.”

“How is he…?”

“He’s…” Virgil wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Fine’ or ‘alright’ seemed like a lie, but he wasn’t sure how to explain that. “He’s recovering,” Virgil finally decided on. “Plus, he’s in good hands.”

“Right,” Cas said, “your other dad’s a doctor.”

“Yeah.”

The conversation awkwardly died then. Cas shifted a few more times and then cleared his throat.

“Uh,” Cas said, looking at his hands. He was holding a newspaper or something. “I picked up a copy of the Underhall Gazette,” Cas said.

“Cool,” Virgil said for a lack of other things to say.

“I, uh, don’t know why. I’ve already read it since I’m the editor. I usually bring a copy to Professor Sanders to read, so maybe it was just habit…”

He looked up at Virgil.

“Er, I don’t know if he actually cares or if he just reads it because he knows I work on it, but,” Cas offered the paper out, “let him know I’m thinking about him?”

Virgil gave him a half smile. “Of course,” he said, taking the paper.

“Thanks,” Cas said. “Uh, need any help carrying things?”

“Nah, I got it,” Virgil said, “but thanks for the offer.”

Cas seemed to take that as the dismissal it was and nodded. “Okay, see you then,” he said, and turned around to walk back the way he’d come.

With a sigh, Virgil put the paper under his arm and turned back to Logan’s office door. Instead of letting himself think too hard, he pulled out the keys and unlocked the door.

The lights were off, of course, and so Virgil reached over to flip them on. It looked exactly the same as it always did. Logan’s pens and paper were all in order. The filing cabinet was closed and locked. The water bottle Logan used every day was clean and sat in its usual spot when not in use.

Logan’s office was always clean, but it seemed too clean right now even though he knew it was just how Logan always left it at the end of the day. Virgil wasn’t used to being here without Logan’s coat on the rack or his messenger bag near the window. Usually, there was a stack of grading or notebooks out on the table. It looked weird like this.

He took out Logan’s list. For any other person, it would probably take Virgil a bit of work to find everything they wanted, but Logan knew exactly where everything was and had written out the locations in perfect detail.

Virgil went to work. He grabbed Logan’s work laptop as well as his most recent research notes. He also grabbed the ungraded and graded but unreturned papers (though he would take those to the math office instead of home). He shoved the emergency energy bars and soup cans into his backpack since they’d be bad before the office was in use again. Logan had very specific pens and highlighters he wanted as well as a book he’d been reading, so Virgil grabbed those too.

He was done within only a couple of minutes.

He found himself pausing when he was done. He looked around the office. Only a month ago, Virgil had walked in here, stressed about a couple of papers and Logan had sat him down in that chair and told him his office was always open to Virgil. Virgil supposed that was still true. Only Logan wasn’t here.

Irrationally, he felt tears prickle at his eyes. He’d done his best not to cry after Logan was let out of the hospital but suppressing that caught up to him now. He lowered himself into Logan’s desk chair and let himself cry.

He wasn’t sure how long he took to calm down. He’d put his head on Logan’s desk at some point and his face stuck to a piece of scrap paper when he lifted it up. It fell off, fluttering back to the desk.

He managed to choke out a laugh at that.

When he looked back up, his eyes caught on three framed photos on Logan’s desk. He’d seen them before, of course. In fact, he’d felt obliged to complain when he’d seen two pictures of himself looking rather silly. He found his heart warm at the sight of them now.

Logan couldn’t help but smile slightly to himself at the framed picture he’d just put on his desk. Logan didn’t have too many personal artifacts on his desk in his on-campus office. He had a few photos and exactly one trinket (a little tiny snow globe with a klein bottle, or at least a 3-D representation of one, in it). All of these were courtesy of Patton. The new photo he’d just put up had been courtesy of Patton as well. His husband had forwarded him the picture this morning after finding it on the university’s social media.

It was a photo Logan had never seen of his son before, one that must have been taken by some student group during one of the welcome week activities this past August. He was wearing the T-shirt incoming freshman had gotten as a gift for being one of the first 500 students at one of the welcoming activities this year. (Virgil had been very proud of himself for getting it.) Logan could tell it had just been given to him as the shirt he’d originally been wearing was poking out from under it at the neck. He must have just pulled it on over what he'd been wearing.

Virgil had gone to every one of those welcome week activities, mostly for the “free shit.”

In the photo, Virgil’s hair was soaking wet from a water balloon that had at some point been tossed at him. (Logan had been sure to stay far away from the quad that day). There was still a bit of bright orange rubber in his hair.

He looked happy, like any normal freshman. The people around him in the photo, his classmates, his roommate, his professors would have no idea looking at that photo what he’d gone through in his earlier teenage years. It no longer showed on his face.

Well, at least, it did not show all the time.

The new photo sat next to a photo of the entire wedding party from Logan and Patton’s wedding. Three of the seven people in the wedding photo were dead. Logan had put that photo away for years and hadn’t taken it back out until, well, around when he’d adopted Virgil.

The last photo was one of just Patton and Virgil from only a few months after Virgil had come to live with them. Logan had taken the photo himself. Patton was asleep in an armchair and Virgil was looking at the camera curiously. Patton had framed that photo and brought it to Logan’s office himself. It had been the only one on his desk for a while; Logan had never touched it.

The boy in that picture was very different than the one in the photo Logan had just had printed off and framed that morning. Yet, they were the same. And it would be the same boy who would blast his way into Logan’s office 15 minutes from now. He had a 30-minute break between classes, and he apparently considered Logan’s personal space his own personal space.

He was right.

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Labeled Master Post.

“My office hours start in 10 minutes,” Logan reminded. He’d been answering emails for the past half hour or so while Virgil chilled (his posture very purposefully incorrect with his legs resting on the wall) on one of his office chairs.

Virgil hummed, flicking through his notes for his next class. “So?”

“You,” Logan said, “are being exiled from this room during office hours.”

“Why?” Virgil asked with a frown.

“Because last time you and my TA got into an argument about which of the dining halls was the most haunted, terrifying two of my freshman calculus students.”

Virgil stifled a grin at that. Cas was a senior who had been Logan’s TA a few semesters now. He and Virgil got along pretty well… to Logan’s chagrin.

“It doesn’t matter that they were freshmen,” Virgil argued. “I’m a freshman too! I knew it was just a joke.”

“You are a freshman who has half lived on this campus for the last couple of summers,” Logan pointed out dryly, looking over his glasses at Virgil. “You don’t count.” He returned his eyes to his computer. “Now out.”

Virgil frowned at him, but that was fair enough. “Fine,” he groused, moving to pick up his notes and stuff them in his backpack. “I want coffee anyway.” He slung the backpack over his shoulder and stretched before moving to hover at Logan’s side.

Logan glanced at him. “Yes?”

“Can I have money for coffee?”

“The dining hall has coffee.”

“Haven’t you heard?” Virgil asked with a grin. “Dining hall’s haunted.”

Logan scoffed.

“We both know you have a department meeting at 3 today,” Virgil reminded him, “and you won’t have time to get your normal cup of coffee. Do you really want me to get you dining hall coffee?”

Logan sighed and reached for his wallet. He pulled out a 20-dollar bill.

“You want change back?” Virgil asked, taking it.

“No,” Logan replied. “Use it to buy a snack.”

“Cool,” Virgil said with a grin. He leaned forward to give Logan a quick side hug. “I’ll bring it by at the end of your office hour before your meeting. Iced latte with no sugar and extra whipped cream, yeah?” Virgil asked, his hand already on the door.

“Do not,” Logan said firmly. Virgil pretended to ignore him and closed the door with a snap behind him. He grinned at the couple of students waiting outside Logan’s office for his office hours to begin. Then, he began making his way down the familiar path to the Hideout.

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Labeled Master Post.

Virgil hesitated outside of Logan’s office door in a way he hadn’t done since the first summer he spent with him and Patton. He knew Logan was in there and probably just busy grading unless he’d already finished all of it. Logan was predictable like that.

Logan was… Logan was very predictable. So predictable that Virgil knew exactly what would happen if he knocked on that door and said what he’d come here to say.

And yet he hesitated.

It was like there were two Virgil’s in his head, at odds with one another. One Virgil knew everything was alright and was going to be alright and that Logan would help it feel alright much quicker. The other Virgil wanted to drop out of college, find a small space somewhere, and curl up into a ball while waiting to die. These two Virgil’s existed completely separate from one another, unable to affect each other or inspire Virgil to action, and left him rooted to the spot outside his dad’s office.

He was finally unfrozen when the door to Logan’s office swung open revealing Logan’s TA, Cas. “Oh, hi Virgil,” Cas said as though there wasn’t anything unusual about this, though for him there probably wasn’t.

Virgil swallowed down the go-cry-in-a-corner Virgil for a moment and said “Hey.”

Cas smiled and held the door open for him.

Well, Virgil supposed he didn’t have a choice now. (It was probably for the best.)

He walked through the door into Logan’s office, doing his best to not let Cas see his anxiety. The door closed behind him.

Logan glanced up at him briefly and seemed unconcerned when he saw it was him. “Hello, Virgil,” he said, turning back to his computer. “This isn’t the usual time you invade my office. Do you need something?”

Even if Virgil could think of words to say right now, they would probably have died in his throat. There were 3 seconds of silence, 4. After a 5 second pause, Logan looked back up at him.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

Virgil tugged at the sleeves of his hoodie and nodded. He had Logan’s full attention now and that was a relief for the rational part of him that had brought him here even while it made the anxious side of him squirm.

Logan stood up from his chair and rounded his desk. “Sit,” he told Virgil. Virgil sat.

He could feel Logan studying him but couldn’t bring himself to meet his eyes.

“Physical?” Logan asked. It was always the first thing Logan checked even though physical injury rarely put Virgil in this state. Virgil shook his head. “Social?” Virgil shook his head again. “Academic?” Virgil hesitated but then nodded.

“I see,” Logan said. “It is Thursday afternoon. Is anything past due, due tonight, or due tomorrow.”

Virgil shook his head.

“Okay. Then I will take you home tonight for the weekend.”

“I have class tomorrow,” Virgil managed to say, wringing his hands.

“You have class with Dr. Simmons,” Logan said. “She has mental health days in her syllabus for a reason. This is the reason.”

“I can go,” Virgil said quietly. “I’ll be fine.”

“You certainly could,” Logan agreed. “You do not need to.”

Virgil felt a bit of the vice grip that had been squeezing his chest loosen. “I need to…” he tried tentatively.

“You need to pack an overnight bag while I teach my last class of the day,” Logan said, “and then sit on your bed watching whatever silly Youtube things you do while waiting for me to pick you up. We will discuss what needs to be done with your schoolwork tomorrow afternoon after you have had time to rest. You will have the entire weekend to complete whatever task is worrying you.”

“I shouldn’t skip class.”

Logan waved him off. “Do you know how many classes I skipped for worse reasons as a student?” he asked. “And now I’m a professor dealing with students skipping my courses for even worse reasons than that.”

“…Okay.”

“Good,” Logan said. “Now would you like a hug?” Despite everything, he couldn’t help but smile slightly at the business-like tone Logan took to ask. Maybe at one point he would have felt uncomfortable about it, but now he knew it was just Logan making sure he was comfortable with it before touching him.

Virgil nodded.

“Thank you,” Virgil said once Logan had reached forward to hug him.

“Anytime,” Logan said back. “My office is always open for you.”

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Labeled Master Post.

When the doorbell to the safe house rang, Remy found himself flinching to his own embarrassment. However, when he looked at Emile over the little kitchen table, the tension around his eyes told him he wasn’t the only one on edge.

“Probably just someone trying to sell us solar power panels,” Remy said. “I’ll go tell them we rent.”

Emile nodded and followed him without a word. He picked up the gun that had been laying on the table between them and carried it with him. Remy knew Emile wasn’t exactly a fan of guns, so seeing him pick it up with so little hesitation both made him feel better and worse.

Emile hung back out of sight of the door while Remy approached, though he did his best to stay where he thought his shadow couldn’t be seen through the pulled curtain on the front door window. Cautiously he stretched so he could glance out of the curtain.

The fear that had been rolling in his stomach swiftly transitioned into being pissed off.

He almost ripped the door off its hinges. He probably would have if Logan was any worse at picking safe houses. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Logan himself in all his dumb motherfucking beaten to hell glory was sitting (not standing because Remy was well aware he had a broken leg) outside the safe house.

“Good evening, Remington,” he said irritatingly calmly. He was in a wheelchair. What had Patton been thinking getting him a wheelchair? Now he was mobile. And a mobile Logan, as was evident, was an idiot.

“Give me one reason,” Remy said, gripping the door frame so hard he was afraid he might bend it, structurally sound or no, “not to finish the job right now you bitch.”

“There is a task that must be done, and Patton is not in the mental state to do it.”

“And you’re in the physical state to do it?!” Remy asked. “How the fuck did you even get here?”

“I designed my vehicle years ago for adequate functionality no matter what my physical and mental state,” Logan explained. Remy glanced behind him to see a car he’d never seen before and didn’t recognize the make or model of at all.

“You have a concussion, dumbass.”

“It is mostly self-driving when needed,” Logan waved him off.

“Mostly?! I fucking hate you.”

Emile had approached, sans gun after hearing the conversation going on. “Perhaps we should keep this conversation quieter,” he suggested, in a more level tone.

“That is likely for the best,” Logan agreed.

“You can shut your mouth,” Remy snapped at him, though he did keep his tone quieter. “Why don’t we go inside?”

He realized his mistake instantly when Logan glanced meaningly at the porch steps. Right. That explained why the man hadn’t used his complicated secret knock. He couldn’t get up onto the porch and was likely still suffering from power exhaustion. Fucker shouldn’t have even put forth the effort to ring the doorbell. “Or I’ll just come to your car,” Remy said, glancing back at Emile. Emile nodded and stepped back into the house.

Remy went down the steps and whacked Logan’s hands away from the wheelchair wheels.

“I managed to get here,” Logan reminded him, a little bit grumpy which was actually a nice change from the businesslike tone he’d been taking so far.

“You are supposed to be on bedrest, so fuck you,” Remy replied, moving to push him towards the car. “Now how do you get in and out of this thing?”

“Step back,” Logan said. Remy did with a raised eyebrow and then had to bite his tongue to keep from making a loud exclamation of shock. It went too fast for him to quite make out what happened and if he didn’t know better, it looked like the car basically just… swallowed Logan wheelchair and all. In a blink, Logan was in the driver’s seat.

Remy gaped at him for a moment before shaking himself and rounding the car to get into the passenger seat the normal way.

“Okay,” Remy said, once seated. “Explain to me why I’m not driving you immediately back to Patton so he can put you into a medically induced coma until you heal.”

“Well, for starters, I am in the driver’s seat.”

Remy rolled his eyes.

Logan took a breath. “I am very injured,” he said. “In a way I cannot hide in my personal life. At this point, it seems unlikely we are already compromised. Delaying returning to our normal lives is very quickly becoming more of a risk to our identities than continuing to hide.”

“And?”

“We need to crash my personal car,” Logan said, “and I need to go to the emergency room.”

“Oh… shit.”

“Will you help me?”

“Well,” Remy said, “I’m not letting Patton or Virgil for that matter do it, so I fucking guess.”

“If it helps, I believe my powers have recovered enough that neither of us will need to be in the car during the crash.”

“It doesn’t help. I hadn’t even been considering that. Fuck you.”

Logan was silent, giving him a moment.

Remy took a deep breath. Man, this had been a fucking disaster of a few days.

“You better…” he said. “You better get better soon, so I can beat the shit out of you myself. Okay?”

Logan didn’t say anything for a long moment. He just stared out of the windshield with an expression on his face Remy couldn’t identify. It was a bit terrifying.

“I appreciate it,” Logan finally said. “You are a good friend.”

“Yeah, well,” Remy said. “Fuck.”

“‘Fuck’ is a good summary of recent events,” Logan said. “At least it’s a better summary than I can come up with.”

Remy snorted out a laugh and shook his head.

Logan moved his hands on the car wheel very slightly and Remy was startled when the car hummed to life under them.

“We will also need to cover for the fact that my injuries are already beginning to heal once I get to the hospital,” Logan said.

“Yeah, I can handle that for you too,” Remy promised. It would be a long night, but not the longest one in recent memory.

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Labeled Master Post.

“You don’t have to go,” Logan said when Patton was halfway through pulling off his shirt. Patton finished pulling off the shirt to squint at him. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, so Logan’s form was blurry, but he was sitting on their bed looking at him.

“I know I don’t have to go,” said Patton. He turned to grab the sleeping shirt he’d set out and pulled it over his head.

“Virgil wouldn’t care,” Logan said. “I would be the more likely candidate to take him shopping for such a thing considering the research I’ve done into the topic anyway. I doubt he has any expectations that you will come.”

Patton frowned as he slipped his glasses back onto his face, turning Logan from a blurry mess of blue into a man wearing a blue t-shirt. “Maybe he wouldn’t,” Patton said, “but you don’t know that.”

“Patton,” Logan said, his brow creased in the way that it did only when he was attempting to do a very difficult math equation or was trying to process emotions on the fly. “You once almost had a panic attack because a musician attempted to hand you a violin.”

“That was years ago,” Patton bristled, “and I’d been having a bad day. The violin was not the problem.”

“Perhaps not,” Logan agreed, “but it was a problem.”

“A music shop is not a house of horrors for me,” Patton said. It was the truth even if it felt just a bit like a lie. What he remembered from the music shop of his childhood, the one he’d have to go to for new music books every time he completed his old ones, was an old man who would freeze Patton in place with his gaze (even when he wasn’t actually doing so with his powers), ancient instruments on the walls that Patton’s young mind had imagined being used in blood rituals, and an overwhelming sense of foreboding. He thought normal music shops probably were not like that.

Logan was still frowning, so Patton crossed to the bed and reached for his face. He kissed him on the nose.

“I want to be there,” he told Logan. “Playing the clarinet is something that Virgil loves, and I want to support him in every way I can. I will not be like my mother and that both means not making him play an instrument if he doesn’t want to and encouraging him to do so if he does want to.”

It was easier said than done. If Patton had ever gotten joy from playing a violin, he did not remember it. Thoughts of playing a musical instrument filled him with an uncomfortable squirming sensation even after all of these years. It was a knee-jerk reaction to not want Virgil to experience the same thing, but he was not his knee-jerk reactions. He’d been very careful to keep his instinctual thoughts to himself (and occasionally to Logan when it felt unhealthy to keep them bottled up).

Virgil liked playing music. It made him happy. Sometimes Patton had to remind himself of that in order to react appropriately, but that was okay. It was a little more effort in an area most people wouldn’t even have to think about, but it was worth it.

“He does want to,” Patton continued, “so even if that desire isn’t something I will ever be able to relate to, I still need to show up.”

The face between Patton’s hands still seemed unsure. “This is just a small thing,” Logan said. “We already know you’ll be going to all of his performances. You can show up for him without going on this specific outing.”

“Life is made up of small things,” Patton said, shaking his head, “and it’s also short. I am a 56-year-old man. I refuse to live my life in fear of a string instrument. Anymore.”

“Still,” Logan said, reaching up to cup Patton’s hand still on his cheek.

Patton just rolled his eyes fondly. “I appreciate the concern,” he said, “but I’m going.”

Logan opened his mouth to speak.

“No more talking,” Patton said, using his hands to gently push Logan back onto the bed. He leaned most of his weight on him, though his toes still touched the floor. “Just cuddles.”

Logan hesitated, but then gave in. “Very well,” he agreed and then paused a moment. “Could we perhaps cuddle in a more reasonable position?”

“No,” said Patton, tucking his head into Logan’s chest with a smile. Logan sighed under him and reached up to pat his hair.

Patton knew he’d be able to face any music store as long as Logan was with him.

“Face the music,” Patton whispered with a giggle. Logan groaned.

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Labeled Master Post.

Unlike all of the members of the Sander’s family, Roman’s secret identity was not possibly compromised by Bluebird’s capture and subsequent rescue. That was a good thing of course, but it did mean that he didn’t have a good reason not to attend his classes the next day. 

He’d wanted to skip, but Dr. Patton (though sympathetic) had pointed out that considering he did have a personal connection to their family, there being a record of him deviating from his normal schedule on that particular day would raise a red flag to anyone looking for red flags.  

That had been a good point, so Roman was, unfortunately, sitting through a midafternoon history course. At least, physically he was sitting there. Mentally... 

“Roman,” a familiar voice said. Roman flinched and looked up from where he’d been staring blankly at his empty notebook. 

“What?” Roman asked. “Remus?” 

“I was waiting for you outside,” Remus said. “Your entire class has already left, dude.” 

Roman blinked and glanced at the classroom. As Remus had said, the entire class was empty except for his professor who smiled awkwardly when they noticed Roman looked at them. 

Roman groaned and let his head flop against his desk for a moment before moving to shove his stuff into his backpack. 

“Still want to go to McElroy’s today?” Remus asked. 

Remus and Roman went to McElroy’s every week at this time. This class ended at 3pm and then Roman had another one at 6pm, so it wasn’t worth going back to his apartment. Remus had classes until 2:30pm, so it was a good time to meet up. McElroy’s was usually dead at this time since it was perfectly between the lunch and dinner rush, and they sold brownies for half off every Thursday. 

“Yeah, of course,” Roman said even though he really didn’t feel like eating anything. Or drinking anything. Really, he just wanted to go to bed. Yet, still, he knew it was best not to deviate from his normal schedule. 

So, he let Remus lead him to the student union. At this point, the people working there didn’t even ask for their order. Remus handed over his student ID for them to swipe and they gave him two brownies, a cherry coke, and a strawberry soda. Then, they took their normal table near the back of the restaurant. 

They were silent for a few minutes. Roman stared at his brownie and didn’t touch his strawberry soda except to put a straw in it. 

Eventually Remus shifted, causing Roman to finally look away from his brownie and at him. “You doing okay?” he asked. Remus’s brownie was already long gone, Roman noted. 

“Fine,” Roman replied, looking away. 

“Long night of... partying?” Remus asked, taking a casual slurp of his coke. 

“Yes,” Roman confirmed. “Partying.” 

“You can’t let partying affect your daily life like this,” Remus said firmly. “We’ve talked about this.” 

“It was a special circumstance,” Roman said. 

“You...” 

“Drop it,” Roman snapped and then sighed when he noted Remus’s startled expression. He rubbed a hand across his face and went back to staring at his brownie. “Just drop it. Just this once.” 

Roman wasn’t looking at him, but he could feel Remus studying him. Roman felt the air shift as Remus activated his perception powers to make anyone nearby ignore them. Even with that protection, he leaned forward so only Roman could hear him speak in a whisper. “Is it about what’s on the news today?” 

Roman nodded. 

“What fucking happened?” Remus asked. 

“I can’t say,” Roman said. 

“What?” Remus asked, genuinely confused. That was fair since Remus was the one person Roman told about all of Prince’s escapades. “Why not?” 

“It’s not my secret to tell.” 

“Whose then?” Remus asked. 

Roman just shook his head. 

There was a pause. Remus chewed on his straw. “Oh,” Remus said after a few seconds, and knowing Remus, he’d probably managed to figure out whose secret it was on his own. Even if he didn’t, he’d probably be able to in the coming days when Bluebird was uncharacteristically missing. 

“He okay?” 

Roman shook his head. “Alive,” he said. 

“Fuck.”