debutante
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part of the wyliwf verse.
warnings: mention of creepy adults/pedophilia, transphobia, memory loss problems, food mentions, kissing/making out, arguing,
pairings: logince, moxiety
words: 21,995
notes: there are spoiler warnings for the first three seasons of downton abbey, and dee and logan have a discussion of journalistic ethics that includes a mention of a teacher that is creepy toward teenage girls; it’s an abstract idea for the sake of argument, there is no actual creepy teacher, but i wanted to put a warning in here anyway.
⁂
he really needs to get on patton about getting a new rug for his bedroom, virgil muses.
his bare feet are resting against the hardwood of patton’s floor. patton, who usually clings to inanimate objects with an intensity fueled almost entirely by reminiscing, even patton had admitted he probably should let go of the raggedy bedroom rug, and he’d been meaning to replace it, but. he hasn’t yet. so virgil’s sitting on patton’s bed, waiting for patton to finish brushing his teeth and washing his face, so that they can curl up in bed and go to sleep.
that’s a new thing—it’s not entirely new, but new enough that virgil feels too awkward to just curl up in patton’s bed and wait for him to come back. so. virgil is sitting here, in his pajamas, thinking about patton’s bare bedroom floor and his need for a new rug.
and not thinking about the various strides he and patton have been making in their relationship, slow but sure. virgil knows that patton’s really excited, and eager to move forward in their relationship, and virgil is too, but, surprise surprise, virgil’s anxious about it, so patton’s been very understanding about moving at a much slower pace than he’s used to—“you’re worth it, honey,” patton had said, his chin hooked over virgil’s shoulder as they cuddled at night, “there’s no rush at all. it’s been this long, ya know? i want to do all of this right,” and really, virgil did not deserve patton, he really didn’t.
there’s the sound of bare feet padding down the hallway, though, and virgil looks up, smiling despite himself, as patton opens the door.
“hey,” he says warmly, closing the door behind him and shutting off the light—the lamps on the bedside tables are still lit—and patton continues his path, only detouring to lean down to kiss virgil sweetly before he sits down on his side of the bed.
“hey,” virgil echoes, and at last swings his legs up on the bed, settling back against the pillows. “how was your day?”
this part he likes a lot, too—this, sitting in the same bed, talking about their days. it’s cavity-inducingly domestic.
patton hums, already squirming to be under the covers, and virgil copies him; they’ll move to cuddle once they’re done talking, virgil knows, so he mostly just stays where he is.
“the usual,” patton says. “um—got news of a wedding incoming, so i’m sure i’ll be going nutty about that in… a year and half or so.”
virgil knows that the weddings held at the inns hold some of patton’s favorite and least favorite parts of the job—helping make people happy, seeing people fall in love all over again, making everything so beautiful and lovely, but also, bridezillas and flighty grooms—and he smiles, mentally calculating. “you don’t usually get fall weddings, right? that’s mostly a spring/summer thing.”
“i know!” patton says brightly. “i hope they timed it nice so that it’s a warm fall day, and they get all the pretty leaves falling, and the sun hits the ceremony just right…”
“that sounds nice,” virgil says honestly, because it does—a picturesque fall wedding, sookie making some fancy version of an apple fritter for appetizers, a pumpkin-flavored cake. “fall wedding, i mean. it’s so pretty here in fall, i know we get boosted tourism because of it, but. not many weddings.”
“not many weddings,” patton agrees, and squeezes his arm. “and it’s a lesbian wedding, too, so from the conversation we had, i really think they’re gonna lean into the whole witchy-alternative vibe. the word celestial was thrown around a lot.”
“oh, that’ll be really fun,” virgil says, refining his mental image—black dresses and a tux, maybe, star-studded hairpieces, lots of fairy lights. “you’ll have to remind me when it’s actually being set up, i want to see how they decide to decorate. you never get to do witchy lesbian alternative celestial-themed weddings.”
patton laughs, and leans in a little closer to virgil. “no, i can’t say i’ve ever gotten to help out with a witchy lesbian alternative celestial-themed wedding. so that’ll be fun!”
patton continues with other work things—he has a much sooner wedding in spring, and unfortunately it is not a lesbian wedding, but a double wedding of two sets of insufferably rich twins, so there’s a lot to deal with there—before he winds down and says, “well, that’s about it with me, really, how ‘bout you?”
“um, pretty calm, pretty typical,” virgil says, before he reaches over and squeezes patton’s thigh. “oh, before i forget, the middle davis kid—”
“yeah?”
“—going by brick for now, while they’re trying to figure out what fits better,” virgil says. he leaves his hand on patton’s thigh, because. well. he can.
“brick,” patton says, delighted. “oh, that’s a great nickname for them—every time i see them, they’re insistent that they’re gonna bulk up and hit a growth spurt any day now.”
virgil allows himself a grin—brick is a pretty ironic nickname for a skinny little korean-irish kid who’s been hankering for their growth spurt since they could have possibly hit puberty, and now at age fourteen it was definitely becoming a bit more plaintive, but they also said it’s because they have the subtlety of a brick, so it fits in at least one way.
“they are still using they/them pronouns, right?” patton checks.
“yeah, still they/them,” virgil says. “you’ll have to ask them if they’ve added any pronouns when they turn up for your get cultured day—which is why i brought it up, brick brought by their dress for me to try and alter so that sequins don’t constantly scrape, so that’ll be a fun little challenge.”
“ooh, i hated wearing sequins at their age,” patton says sympathetically, and pats virgil’s arm. “good luck with that one.”
“other than that, though, today was mostly boring, my interesting stuff all has to do with the debutante ball,” virgil admits, rubbing his thumb back and forth over patton’s thigh. “oh, except for the part where kirk’s trying to sell topical funny t-shirts now.”
“ah, kirk,” patton says fondly. “where would the town be, without kirk and his seemingly millions of part-time jobs?”
“yeah, well, the best he could come up with today was rudy ate oatmeal, so i’m not really holding out hope for the funny t-shirt business,” virgil says.
patton snorts, and then tries to pretend he hadn’t—but, really, kirk becomes way less aggravating when you take him as comic relief. virgil knows, it’s the way he’s managed to stand all of kirk’s eccentricities over the years.
“anyway, yeah, that’s about it,” virgil says. “how'd the dinner go—i mean, i know emily at least gave you the dress, so that went okay, right?”
patton shrugs a shoulder and says, “i guess. i mean, i have a feeling this isn’t over, but… gosh, you should have seen her and logan stare each other down.”
“intense, huh?” he prompts, when patton goes quiet. he squeezes his thigh again, because physical touch is one of patton’s top two love languages. he knows, they took the test together.
patton chews his lip, before he says, “he looked like me. back then, i mean. the look on his face. my mom must’ve seen it a million times when i was his age.”
virgil squeezes a little tighter.
he knows that patton’s teenage years were rough. again, patton doesn’t really like to talk about them—virgil doesn’t blame him—but virgil did see patton struggle through the later end of his teens, and he was there for him when he’d broken down in tears. now, with as old as he is, as removed as they are from it, having seen logan and roman grow up and realizing how truly young patton was when they first met, the thought of teenage patton—struggling so fiercely in a house full of people who hadn’t understood him just made him, how hard patton had had to work to get a better life for himself and his son, the years of therapy patton had gone through—just made him want to grab patton in a hug and never let go.
“so,” patton says, pauses, and lets out a sigh. “i don’t—i don’t know. it went okay. but seeing logan copy me like that, i just…”
virgil leans over to kiss patton on the cheek.
“the difference between you as a teenager and logan as a teenager is massive,” he says lowly. “because logan’s got you, and me, and roman, and ms. prince, and rudy. he’s got this whole bizarre town. you had you, and christopher, i guess, but he didn’t understand. you’ve learned coping mechanisms that you passed onto logan, so he knows other ways to redirect his feelings. if he’s being rebellious to help protest something he thinks is sexist or unjust, i think that’s a pretty good reason to rebel. you did a great job with him. he’s a great kid. yeah?”
“yeah,” patton says very quietly. “yeah, he is.”
“you’ve come really far,” he says, and leans to see patton better, and gently pokes at patton’s cheek, just to make him smile, and he adds, “plus, i’d think if teenage-rebel you came to the future to see that your son’s protesting the gender stuff you’d been struggling with, i think that would’ve made you pretty happy, huh?”
and, yes, patton does smile at that, and something in virgil relaxes at the sight.
“yeah,” patton says. “yeah, i think it really would’ve.”
“well, good,” virgil says, and kisses his cheek, before he decides to just kinda go for it and lean in to wrap his arms around patton, initiating the cuddling early. “so, other than that déjà vu—”
“it went okay,” patton says, wiggling into virgil’s arms. “i mean—still weird to look at the dress that my mom bought for me. but other than that, it was okay.”
virgil hums sympathetically, and presses a kiss to patton’s head.
“well,” he says. “i’m gonna adjust it so that it’s logan’s dress, and his dress only. does that help?”
he feels patton smile against his collarbone.
“you know,” he says musingly. “i think it really does.”
⁂
logan has never walked into a store afraid to touch something before.
granted, most stores he walks into are grocery stores or convenience stores; clothing stores, sometimes, mostly before the school year or whenever roman decides he simply must check out the latest collection of things that the outlet mall in woodbridge had to offer. most of the time, the stores logan knew were quiet, maybe with some inoffensive music piped in, with products he knew how to use, or how they looked.
this was not the case in a bridal boutique.
which is where logan and roman are; though logan had the dress once intended for his father, roman still needed to get his own, and had so enticed logan to come along with him to help him choose.
it’s a saturday afternoon, and they’re technically on a date. there’s a bookstore just across the street, and a frozen yogurt parlor near there, and a thrift store they could dive into so logan could see the second-hand books and roman could hunt for some kind of retro statement piece.
logan inspects his hands again. there’s a stray inky blue smear across his hand that must have gotten there when he was taking his notes earlier today. he eyes the pearly-white tulle suspiciously, and takes a step closer to the center of the room, away from any of the merchandise.
objectively, he knows that touching these delicate, temperamental fabrics and testing the sensation of them by running his hand along the skirts won’t harm them, but. logan has laid eyes upon the price tags in this room. he is not going to even slightly risk ruining these dresses, somehow.
roman’s spinning some kind of tale for the bemused, yet seemingly enthusiastic dress attendant—something something debutante ball, something something drag family induction, something something the most experimental stuff you’ve got!—and logan considers a dress a shade of blush pink so light it’s practically white, with a delicate, lacy flower overlay, the whiteness of the flowers being the only thing to really give away the pinkness of the dress itself. he wants to reach out and rub the material between his fingers.
he also knows that, with the location in the store and the quality of the material, the dress likely costs upwards of five thousand dollars. possibly more. maybe even double.
“logan!” and logan looks away, to where roman’s waving him back toward the dressing room section. thank god, somewhere to sit and not worry about accidentally tripping over a dress and leave an irreversible mud print from his shoe, or something.
the attendant burbles something along the lines of “so supportive!” that logan doesn’t really listen to, and doesn’t really have to respond to, because she’s pointing roman in the direction of a dressing room and logan gets to sit down in a chair and finally not worry about catching a ragged edge of his fingernail in a veil and accidentally ripping it in two.
logan waits until the attendant leaves, and says, “you’re really getting a dress from here?”
“it’s not all high-end,” roman says. “they have some old samples that they’re desperate to get rid of—that’s the kind of thing i want.”
logan nods, absorbing this, and his shoulders start to relax. obviously, roman’s monetary discretions are not up to him, at all. considering it comes from either his mother or working at his mother’s studio, therefore it should primarily be roman’s concern or ms. prince’s concern, but it is reassuring to know that roman isn’t about to ransack his college fund to get a pretty dress he’ll wear once as a prank.
the attendant comes back with armfuls of tulle, which roman claps his hands at with excitement, and steps into the dressing room with her. the door closes behind them, and logan can just barely hear their muted conversation beyond the door.
logan digs around in his backpack and pulls out his history textbook, his history notebook, and a pen; he may as well study while roman’s getting primped.
he gets through about a third of the chapter on enlightenment ideals by the time the door opens again.
he puts down his pen and glances up in enough time to carefully fold his lip under his teeth in an attempt not to laugh.
roman makes sure the attendant is occupied with adjusting the train before he pulls a blech! face at logan, one he’s accustomed to seeing whenever someone attempts to serve roman anything with cauliflower.
blech, logan thinks, is right. the fabric looks like it’s made of aluminum foil. it’s all bunched up in the front, like the dress is made of paper that’s been crumpled up by a giant hand, but there’s a long train in the back, and the whole thing is bedecked with big, chunky gems, like plastic rhinestones.
of the pair of them, roman’s always been the more fashionably-minded one, but even logan can tell this dress is not good.
“what do you think?” the attendant asks.
“it’s…. unique,” roman says diplomatically, smoothing his hands along the fabric; the bodice is strange, and clearly not fitted to suit roman’s chest. “definitely on the right track toward campy. but, um—”
“you tend to favor golds over silvers,” logan offers, which is true; one of roman’s signature colors was gold for a reason. “the crumpled look isn’t the best, either. you could certainly pull off a, um—”
he makes a hand gesture, and roman offers, “high-low skirt.”
“—right, high-low skirt, but the bodice isn’t the best, either,” logan continues. “something more theatrical would suit your personality, certainly, but i think that’s more in terms of, you know. a very outdated dress, or maybe something ostentatious, but not—”
“not this kind of ostentatious, yeah,” roman finishes for him, and the attendant looks between them, seemingly starting to question why she took in two teenage boys to try on dresses. the look falters, though, and she pastes a smile onto her face—professionalism must prevail, logan supposes.
“back to the dressing room, then!”
she trots roman out in a few other options—an a-line dress with a lacy bodice and a tulle skirt, a trumpet dress with chantilly lace and a sheer back, a relatively simple a-line dress that roman keeps twisting around in to gleefully poke at the massive bow perched at the small of his back—and logan offers commentary when asked. as she sees roman adjust the bow again, the attendant smiles.
“you like the bow?”
“i like the bow,” roman agrees, grinning. “i look like a birthday present.”
“all right,” she says. “i’ll bring out something a bit more experimental again—”
at the looks on their faces, she adds, “not quite as avant-garde as the first dress. actually, it’s fairly old-fashioned, but i think it might have that theatrical aspect you’re looking for. i’ll go back and change you out of this one and bring it back for you so you can take a look, does that sound good?”
roman agrees, and accepts her hand down off the stand, with a wink at logan, before they go off into the dressing room together. logan turns again to his history textbook; he’s nearly done with the chapter, which means one less thing to stress about when he should be focusing on a date with roman.
he can hear roman laugh from inside the dressing room and, unbidden, the corners of his mouth lift, too. either this dress is hilariously terrible, or roman’s thrilled at the idea of wearing this dress which he thinks is perfect for him.
when roman hops up onto the stand, logan honestly can’t tell which it is.
it’s like some fashion designer decided to stick every terrible fashion trend from the eighties onto one dress. there are big, puffy balloon sleeves made of tulle, secured with rosettes, in addition to typical spaghetti straps with smaller rosettes all over them; there’s a panel of beading down the bodice; there’s an overlay of rows and rows of ruffly tulle over a skirt of satin.
and, of course, there is a big, fluffy bow, perched right at the small of roman’s back.
it is extra. it is absurd. it is dramatic.
“i love it,” roman says gleefully. “oh, my goodness, it’s so much!”
it is, of course, roman.
“you look beautiful,” logan offers, and roman flashes a radiant smile in his direction, before he turns to offer his exuberant thanks to the attendant, who seems relieved (”we’ve had that sample longer than i’ve worked here, i’m sure they’ll be thrilled we’re rid of it!”) and takes roman into the dressing room, to help him out of the dress and go ring him up.
logan packs up his history book with some satisfaction; he has succeeded in taking notes for this chapter, which meant that frees up some time tomorrow, which meant he could probably work to get ahead in his latin class.
or, more likely, his dad would insist he go out and do something fun, despite the fact that he’s clearly doing something fun now. and yes, fine, he’s brought his textbooks, but clearly there was time to study here, so logan will provide this chapter of notes as an example as to why studying in the midst of a date was necessary.
logan slings his backpack over his shoulder just as roman emerges from the dressing room, in the same outfit he’d been in before he’d enlisted on a dress-shopping extravaganza; despite the fact that he’s wearing a red linen button-down tucked into a pair of high-waisted, dark-washed jeans, along with a dark overcoat to fight any of the last of the spring chill, a look that still seems very put-together—it seems almost like he’s a little underdressed, after all of the wedding dresses.
he doesn’t voice this—underdressed or not, roman constantly looks lovely—and instead he offers his arm, saying, “shall we go pay?”
“we shall,” roman says in an officious british accent, probably making fun of logan, just a little, but he laces his arm through logan’s anyway, and tugs him out of the dressing room area, to the front, where he chitchats cheerfully with the attendant and takes the truly massive garment bag, hoisting it above his head to avoid letting it drag on the ground.
“virgil’s going to have a hell of a time with this dress,” roman says gleefully. “should we go and grab a cummerbund for him? you know, just to make things easier for him.”
“he’s going to complain the whole time he gets all dressed up,” logan points out.
“i know,” roman says brightly, and tugs logan again. “c’mon, let’s go drop this in the car so we can go get fro-yo. i hope they’ve got gummy worms, i wanna make the super-fruity bowl this time.”
“so it falls to me to make some chocolatey flavor, i suppose,” logan says; for the pair of them frozen yogurt, unlike lucy’s, is prone to sharing, and as to avoid unfortunate flavor combinations, such as pineapple tart and whoppers, each of them make a bowl for each flavor—one for fruity flavors, and one for chocolatey flavors. “do you think i should combine coffee and fudge brownie?”
roman kisses him on the cheek, even as he’s pushing the door of the dress store open. “you’re a genius, my darling love.”
logan realizes in the middle of a bowl of coffee-chocolate frozen yogurt that roman’s managed to get him to leave behind his textbooks in the car, along with the dress.
he can’t bring himself to mind all that much.
⁂
this plan straight out of the plot of an early 2000s movie, if early 2000s movies had meaningful and visible trans characters, is somehow working.
dee still can’t believe it, somehow, even after a weekend of getting texts from known-but-aren’t-supposed-to-be-known members of secret societies like the porcellians (the porks, to those in the know, and dee is most decisively in the know) and the clairs and the skull and dagger and the sphinx club and the order of the gorgon’s head—truly the secret society names at this school were something else.
he’s consulting his list on his way to meet up with logan to give him a morning update (could use some more involvement from the knights of the lamp and the old crows, and if he’s truly dreaming big he’ll try to crack all twelve of the twelve peers) when he glances up to see logan at his locker, looking truly startled as he’s being accosted by a freshman, who is waving a piece of paper at him with a fierce look on her face, her voice loud, but dee can’t quite make it out over the chatter and clatter of the morning crowd getting their books for the morning, and catching up over the latest weekend gossip.
as he gets closer, he realizes who it is. poppy mcmaster, whose legal full name is so genuinely atrocious that he could only feel pity for her when he’d scanned all the freshman’s files early in the year. who in their right minds named a child coppelia parthenope mcmaster and expected them not to get brutally bullied? unless, of course, they somehow preternaturally knew that poppy would turn out with the kind of aggressive, single-minded ambition whose brashness made her preschool teacher cry.
he mostly knows her because their families move in similar social circles, as ten generations of mcmaster have attended harvard. she stands at all of 5’2”, quite a bit shorter than logan, and yet she seems to be threatening him.
dee sidles closer to get a better look at her—dirty blonde hair pulled half-up, intense dark brown eyes, chilton uniform in perfect regulation—and approaches right as she’s saying, “some discretion, for the love of god—”
“dee,” logan says, spotting him. “um, this is—” and he glances at her, eyebrows furrowing. “you didn’t say your name.”
“coppelia mcmaster,” dee says, partially to show off but also because, coppelia. “or are you going by parthenope again? or something short for parthenope, anyway.”
poppy scowls at him, fierce, and snarls out, “poppy.”
“of course, of course,” dee says placidly. “poppy. how long has it been? i don’t think we’ve spoken since your bat mitzvah. mazel tov, once again.”
“todah,” poppy says, with the kind of tone one usually reserves for saying thanks for a present they resoundingly dislike. “you’re involved in this whole debutante plot, aren’t you?”
“well, yes,” dee says. “logan’s brainchild, of course, but one could say we’re co-parenting.”
poppy then proceeds to shove a familiar piece of paper into his hands, and she says, “mr. gardiner nearly saw and grabbed this if i hadn’t pretended it was a participation sheet from the student council.”
dee sucks in a breath, turning over the sign-up sheet—oh, wonderful, they have gotten another member of the twelve peers—but his eyes also land on the Contact Logan Sanders for details.
“thank you,” dee says at last, and turns his eyes to logan. “how many of these are up around the school?”
“three,” logan says. “that one included.”
“well, we’ll have to take them down,” dee says decisively.
“what?” logan says.
“you’ll get in trouble,” poppy says. “detention, suspension, maybe.”
“we are planning to disrupt a large social event for the daughters of the american revolution,” dee says, and glances at logan. “as you can likely imagine, social protest is not exactly the kind of press attention chilton would like to receive.”
logan scowls, and says, “tinker versus des moines—”
“—was a public school,” poppy says impatiently. “i know you came from the backends, sanders, but this is a private school. different rules apply to us.”
“plus, we’re recruiting for protest,” dee says. “i’m not sure how well the tinker test will hold up for us, and i’d rather not find out. the word’s been spread enough, we can further recruit over private text message and dms.”
logan concedes this point with a nod, and he says to dee, “i’ll defer to your judgement.” then, to poppy, “thank you for interfering. that would have complicated matters unnecessarily.”
poppy shrugs, and says matter-of-factly, “it’s common knowledge that either of you will likely be editor when i enter the franklin junior year, i may as well attempt to establish myself as one of your proteges this early on to improve my chances for being assigned the better pieces junior year, and to provide an even clearer path to editor senior year.”
logan looks startled at that, and dee turns admiring eyes to poppy—he’d known her ambitions, of course, but planning this far in advance was preparation that dee could appreciate.
she says to logan, “do you have an escort yet?”
“um,” logan says. “no. no, i don’t.”
“all right then,” poppy says, and fishes out a reporter’s notepad from the side pocket of her backpack, removing a pen from her breast pocket, scrawling, and then ripping out the paper and handing it to him. “consider the slot filled. i’ll do it.”
logan looks at the paper—her phone number—and then back at her. “you’re joining?”
“obviously,” poppy says. “the clairs are involved. my cousin was a clair, her mother was a clair. the connections you make with clairs last the rest of your life. if this helps me get closer to joining with them, i’ll do it, just so i won’t have to spend all year killing myself to get in. plus my mother has been insistent i attend a debutante ball for ages now, she’ll be crushed i’m doing it in a tux, and crushed that i’m not going for the puff route like her, but these are the sacrifices we must make.”
she doesn’t sound particularly sorry about crushing her own mother, but logan acknowledges this with a nod, digging around in his own backpack for a flyer before handing it to her.
“everyone is going to attend a sort of crash-course in debutante ball culture,” he says. “the dance, the bow, the curtsy, so on. here is the address and any supplies you should bring. do you already have a tux, or should i send you some information for rentals?”
“rentals,” poppy says, and exchanges a look with dee—dee knows logan wasn’t raised in all this, but seriously, a rental?
“i take that as a no,” logan says, undeterred, before he zips up his backpack again.
“fantastic,” poppy says. “i was wondering about the strategy for establishing a working relationship with you, i’ve known him,” she flicks a dismissive gesture toward dee, “for years. it just so happens that this route will also help take care of my social life and allow me to enact some form of teenage rebellion, because it’s been scientifically proven that teenagers who rebel constructively form a robust sense of self and are more likely to a have a clear sense of direction, beliefs, or relational commitment, and those who don’t may find it hard to settle or focus on building a meaningful and satisfying life. this is excellent multi-tasking.”
poppy looks delighted. logan looks like he might be developing a headache. dee has found this a typical reaction to people within proximity of poppy.
⁂
virgil looks up as the bell rings and immediately steps out from behind the counter.
brick is struggling cheerfully with a stack of tupperware in their arms, and virgil takes the top few so that brick can see.
“i got it,” brick complains.
“i don’t want you tripping over chairs, i’m sure you can handle the weight,” virgil says. “i was thinking you could set up over at this table here—right by the door, but out-of-the-way enough so that you don’t have to deal with anyone bumping into you. that cool?”
“yeah, that’s cool,” brick says. “thanks, virgil!” and immediately sets down the tupperware on the table in question. virgil follows suit, setting down his own load, and arches his eyebrows, impressed.
“you guys could put fran and lucy out of business with all these baked goods,” he says.
because that’s what brick is here for—the first shift of kids manning a table for a bake sale, to raise funds to make sure the sideshire kids can afford their slots in the debutante ball.
brick stares at him for a few seconds.
“sarcasm,” he elaborates, because brick doesn’t really pick up on that too well, most of the time.
“got it,” brick says. “um, i’m gonna go help ellie—they brought a few other things, so save up that comment for them, i’m sure they’d get it.”
“need any help?” he says, knowing full well that brick will say—
“nah, i got it!” brick says, and darts out of the diner again. virgil waits by the door, just in case they need someone to open it for them—which they do, brick with another load of tupperware, and elliott with a poster tucked under their arm, a register in hand, and a plastic jar under their other arm.
“hi, elliott,” virgil says.
“hi, virgil,” elliott says.
“right over here,” virgil says, gesturing to the table, “do you need any help?”
“um, do you have tape?” elliott asks, frowning. “i just realized i don’t have any.”
“tape, got it,” virgil says, and ducks into the back to see if he’s got any in his office.
by the time he’s come back out, brick and elliott are already seated behind the table, arranging the last of the opened tupperware, with the plastic jar having a sign taped over it saying DONATIONS FOR THE BALL, and virgil pauses to dig a ten out of his pocket, dropping it in the jar before he hands over the scotch tape.
“thanks, virgil!” brick cheers, as elliott quietly thanks virgil for the tape and goes about taping the poster to the front of the table. it’s definitely homemade—there’s glitter, and marker, and there’s a little flyer taped beside it that explains what exactly they’re trying to do at the debutante ball.
“you want drinks?” virgil asks, tucking his thumbs into his front pockets. “on the house.”
“ooh, cocoa, please!” brick says. “the—the minty one. do you still do the minty one?”
“i still do the minty one,” virgil says. “peppermint should be a year-round flavor. ellie, you want anything?”
“cocoa/coffee,” elliott says.
“that stunts your growth,” brick points out.
“i’m taller than you,” elliott tells brick, who bristles and immediately opens their mouth, and virgil ducks out to get their drinks.
by the time he brings back the two steaming mugs, brick is finishing off their tirade with “—i’ll end up built like korra, and then you will see.”
“drinks!” virgil says, and sets the mugs down in front of them. “uh, just so you know, we hit one of those weird lulls, so we’ve probably got half an hour or so before things start picking up for dinner rush.”
both of them make noises of acknowledgement.
“so,” virgil says, settling in a chair near them. “elliott, i know you were thinking about what you were gonna wear slash do, did you decide that?”
“i, um,” elliott says, fingers tracing the rim of the mug. “i thought i’d wear, like, a half-dress half-tux thing. i dunno if i’m gonna debut or escort yet, though, that kinda depends.”
“that sounds cool,” virgil says encouragingly. “do you have a picture?”
elliott does, but since it’s only partly designed—their sister liked messing around with fabrics like that—it turns out all the sideshire kids who are planning on going to the ball are in a groupchat, so after elliott’s phone pings with a message from there, there’s a brief tangent that ensues because elliott sends out virgil says hi to everyone and a picture of the bake sale, so virgil gets to hear about everyone’s plans which is also cool. and he also records a video with brick that brick pinky-promises to just send in the chat, so he ends up learning one of the latest memes that the kids are watching these days. god, he’s old.
“the debutante thing’s really awesome,” virgil says. “i kind of wish i’d gotten the chance to do it back in the day.”
elliott looks up at him, and says, “you do?”
“yeah,” virgil says. “i mean, i’m not roman or anything, but i still wear makeup a lot of the time, i’ve got a few makeup palettes, i wore some skirts back in the day—”
brick’s head snaps up at that, and they say, “you did?”
virgil blinks—he’s not sure why this is surprising, but.
“yeah, i did,” virgil says. “i bet i’ve probably still got them buried in my closet somewhere. my heels, too.”
this also gets elliott’s attention.
“you do?” elliott says.
“i mean, maybe,” virgil says. “i might have donated them, i dunno, but—”
“why don’t you wear skirts or heels anymore?” brick says.
“well, right now?” virgil says, and gestures to the outside. “it’s cold. but, uh—i don’t really know.”
and it hits him—he doesn’t really know. he just kind of kept going for jeans.
“just a habit, i guess,” he continues to the kids, because i don’t know is a bit of a weak answer. “it’s easier to match things with jeans. plus, it looks kinda weird to wear a nice flowing skirt and then just, like, a hoodie and a pair of sneakers i wear all day because i stand all the time. and wearing heels while i stand all day is just asking for a sprained ankle.”
“yeah, that makes sense,” elliott says. “sneakers kinda clash too.”
“but you wear boots too,” brick says, and points. “you’re wearing boots today.”
virgil glances down at his combat boots, the ones that he’s also got the gel foot insoles in. “well, yeah. i guess i am.”
“and leggings or tights would probably help with cold,” elliott says.
virgil looks between them, and says, “you two want me to wear a skirt, don’t you?”
“yes,” they both chorus, unapologetic.
virgil pauses, considering this. well. he definitely has at least one skirt, maybe more, they’re probably just tucked away where he doesn’t see them everyday. and he is fully down for these kids running in there and shaking up the patriarchy. and he does support men, or anyone on the gender spectrum who doesn’t fit soundly in the box of “woman,” wearing more traditionally feminine clothing, as long as they’re comfortable with it. and the surprised looks on these kids faces when he’d mentioned he used to wear skirts more often, and then the studies he’s read of how much representation means to kids...
he turns and calls out, “jean?”
“yeah?” jean calls from the back.
“i’m gonna run upstairs for a second, would you mind keeping an eye on things out here?”
jean calls back an affirmative, and brick and elliott exchange a look, before turning back to virgil.
“are you—?”
“maybe,” virgil says, standing, feeling a strange sort of excitement just from their excitement, but also, it’s been a really long time since he’s worn a skirt, and he’d liked wearing skirts. “again, i can’t remember if i’ve donated ‘em, but—”
“awesome,” elliott says, while brick is nodding along with them, wide-eyed.
“all right,” virgil says, and then, “uh, cool” and makes his awkward exit, heading upstairs for his apartment.
it takes a bit of digging, but he does manage to find where he’s stashed his skirts over the years. he’d even managed to fold them neatly before he put them away, so they’re not even that wrinkled or anything. and then he remembers the various struggles of matching an outfit with a skirt, because in his mind, a skirt outfit has to be at least a little fancy, and so after he examines and discards nearly every shirt in his wardrobe he ends up pairing a plum, long-sleeved button-down with a black pleated skirt that falls down to his ankles, even after he tries to make the skirt a bit high-waisted.
and then he gets a little more carried away, and smokes out his dark eyeshadow and pops some purple glitter in the crease and the inner corner and does a little cat-eye for the eyeliner and puts on plum lipstick, before something in his brain says back away from the makeup products, you are in danger of re-enacting your teenage emo phase, and so he does, not without a bit of a longing look at the black eyeshadow, because this is fun. why hasn’t he done something like this in so long?
he has to pick up his skirt one hand as he walks his way down the stairs, before he tugs aside the curtain that covers up the stairs that lead up to his apartment, and steps out from behind the counter.
brick and elliott swivel to look at him in almost-hilarious unison. and then they just. stare.
oh, the staring. the whole staring thing is why he hasn’t done something like this in so long.
virgil clears his throat, running a hand through his hair to make sure it isn’t too messy. “is it that bad?” he tries to joke.
“i,” brick says, voice strangled, “am gay.”
“uh,” virgil says, unsure of what to really say to someone less than half his age declaring that, then, “i’m with patton, happily so, and also, i am way too old for you, you are a kid.”
elliott rolls their eyes, and says, “they mean you look, um. good. you look really good,” and then they elbow brick in the ribs. brick shakes themself.
“yeah!” brick says. “you look. good. you look good!”
the bell above the door jangles, then, which means brick and elliott are distracted by attempting to sell baked goods, and virgil escapes to behind the counter, ready to start up for the dinner rush.
(he does take a few seconds to remind brick and elliott that anyone over eighteen is too old for them, at the moment, and the dangers of grooming, and also he is here if they need to talk about being concerned for anyone or if they need someone to talk to, in general, before brick says, “ugh, fine, jeez, you sound like the guidance counselor” so that takes care of that particular situation, virgil guesses.)
virgil does get a few compliments on his appearance, throughout the dinner rush, and also a few questions about why he’s dressing up nice, which means he can direct their attention to the baked goods table (brick and elliott leave after a couple hours, and so a couple more sideshire high students start their shift) and the cause that they’re raising money for, so. things are going well.
he ducks back in the kitchen, for a minute, when the staring gets to be a bit Much and he needs to take a second to breathe. he’s not super anxious, necessarily, it’s just—well, he frequently has the thought people are looking at me, which tends to make him anxious, and that’s true tonight, so. he needs to take a bit of a breather. and so he cooks.
cooking’s been a good outlet for his anxiety, ever since he was a kid and didn’t really get what anxiety was, ever since he was an asshole teenager who had recently been wrangled into his first therapy session by his parents following a doctor’s diagnosis. it’s almost always the same—if you follow the same directions, you’ll get the same result, almost always. and, sure, it could be an outlet for creativity, too, if he so chose, but right now he’s grilling burgers and assembling salads and making pasta. it’s an adventure in multitasking he does almost every day. he knows what to do, and so he does it.
he feels calmer by the time they’re in the midst of the dinner rush, partially because of the time spent in here, but also because the increased business is something that’s also familiar and somewhat comforting. so he chances poking his head out of the kitchen door, evaluating if he’s ready to enter back into the fray and start helping out with the waiters.
he pokes his head out just in time to see roman, logan, and patton sliding into a booth, and he breathes a soft sigh of relief—those are people he can definitely go over to and not start to feel nervous just because they’re looking at him.
he’s about to fully step out and make his way over unnoticed by everyone else, except—
roman looks up, and makes eye contact with him, and declares “virgil! i came as soon as i heard!” loud enough that virgil can hear it over the background music and the dull roar of the dinner rush conversations.
virgil winces a little, before he sheepishly walks over to the table. he probably should have expected this, given roman’s vocal and often repeated desires to give virgil a makeover.
all three of them come into view—roman, eager at last that virgil is stepping outside of his typical fashion comfort zone; logan, mostly neutral if a bit curious; and patton, who is staring at him, eyes wide behind his glasses, and visibly swallowing. a flare of heat burns to life in virgil’s stomach at that, and so he turns his attention to roman, so that he doesn’t start blushing and his thoughts don’t become immediately obvious.
roman looks him up and down, surveying him, before he says, “you look like a goth femboy version of a librarian fantasy.”
virgil runs a hand down the skirt, a little self-conscious. “oh.”
“but,” roman says, pulling a face at him, seemingly detecting virgil’s mood change, “at least you’re showing some sense of style. this is an improvement over your daily wear, believe me. one would even say substantial.”
“oh,” virgil says, more sarcastic this time, with an eye-roll to boot.
“however,” roman says, “can i request that you at least extend your color palette to something that would not look at home as a poster for an emo pre-teen? and your foundation, virgil, you do not have warm undertones, you have neutral undertones, if you’re going to start wearing makeup more you need to have a summer and winter foundation—”
virgil reaches over to flick roman’s ear, and roman complains “heyyy” before logan glances up at him.
“why wear a skirt today in particular?” logan says.
“oh,” virgil says, and jabs a thumb in the direction of the bake sale table. “y’know, i figured i’d support you kids. people ask me why i’m all dressed up and so i get to point ‘em there, and then, you know, solidarity,” he says, taking his skirt in hand and swishing it a little. “win win.”
“all right,” logan says and looks across the table at roman, cocking his head.
“roman,” he says. “what is a ‘femboy.’”
roman folds his lip under his teeth.
“um,” roman says. “well, y’see—”
“i’ll get you some waters!” virgil says, before he has to bear witness to roman explaining that concept to his boyfriend and his boyfriend’s dad. he knows that a femboy is just people who are male or non-binary presenting themselves in a feminine way, the word kind of started around his teenage years, but he also knows that particular expression on roman’s face means that virgil has probably missed some segment of Youth Internet Culture that might provide the backstory behind the newfound popularity of the word a bit… complex.
by the time virgil comes back, logan is jotting something down on one of the notecards he carries around with him all the time, and roman looks normal, so the conversation must not have been too awkward, but patton—
well. patton looks at him, once again looks like he’s swallowing his own tongue, and turns his face back down to the table, but not before virgil can spot the pinkness in his cheeks.
oh. interesting.
virgil has to swallow himself, before he readies the notepad.
“what do you want for dinner?” he says, in a tone that is perhaps a bit gruffer than normal, and patton immediately and not-very-subtly puts a hand over the back of his neck to hide that that’s going pink too.
very interesting.
virgil doesn’t get much of a chance to observe this interesting phenomenon—it is dinner rush, after all, and he’s got other customers—but when he does observe it, it brightens that low flame in his stomach, like someone slowly turning the knob on a gas stove, and patton grows gradually more bold.
looking at patton’s general personality, one would probably assume that he’s a generally shy boyfriend—hand-holding and kisses aplenty, to be sure, but fairly unassuming when it comes to public displays of attention.
looking at patton’s general personality, one would probably not assume that patton is a flirt.
but he is—he is absolutely a flirt, and a startlingly adept one at that, so when virgil swings by the table perhaps a bit more frequently than he usually would, patton stares at him with a little smirk on his face and with zero shame as his eyes roam over virgil’s face, his arms, his mouth.
patton looks up at him from under his eyelashes, biting his lip just so, and virgil nearly drops patton’s plate—and notices, distractedly, that patton has managed to use virgil’s distraction to finesse his way into a helping of fries instead of the vegetables or salad that virgil would usually suggest.
and when virgil brings over the bill, handing it to patton, patton takes the bill and then takes virgil’s hand and kisses his knuckles with a cheerful “thanks, honey!” and virgil has certainly forgotten any anxiety that might stem from someone staring, because it’s patton who’s staring at him.
patton, who had gotten so flustered at the sight of virgil in a skirt that his eyes nearly popped out of his head; and now, patton, resting his lips against his knuckles for just a moment, lingering, and virgil feels like an elizabethan maiden about to make her way to the fainting couch because of it.
virgil excuses himself to settle the bill, and also maybe rest a cool hand against his own cheek. honestly. it was a kiss on his hand.
he’s about to go back the table and hand back patton’s card, but he glances up as the bell jangles, roman and logan already leaving, and patton stepping close to the register, his hands behind his back, rocking up onto his toes and back onto his heels.
“hey,” virgil says, and shakes himself, before he offers patton’s card. “um. here.”
“thanks,” patton says, tucking the card into his pocket, before he bites his lip. “um. could we go up to your apartment and get the book i asked to borrow?”
what book, virgil wonders, before patton hastily adds, “if you have time, i mean, i don’t wanna—take you away too long,” and oh, he wants to go—okay. okay.
“i have time,” virgil answers, maybe a little too quickly. “um—sarah,” he calls, “me ‘n patton are going upstairs for a little bit, so—”
“we’ve got things down here,” sarah says, “go, go” and so they go, patton reaching out to grab virgil’s hand and squeeze, running a thumb over his knuckles. and so they ascend the stairs.
virgil shuts the door behind them, and turns to face patton.
“i was, um,” patton clarifies. “i was asking to come up here to see if you wanted to kiss for a little bit.”
“i know,” virgil says, then adds, because consent is important, “i do.”
“oh thank god,” patton breathes out, and before virgil can get out a response, patton surges up against him, rocking up onto his tiptoes and pressing virgil back into the wall, and virgil barely has the time to wrap his arms around him before patton’s kissing him with searing heat.
patton is a remarkable kisser, genuinely the best that virgil thinks he’s ever been fortunate enough to kiss, and patton knows the precise angle to tilt his head and the precise way to possessively splay a hand at the back of virgil’s neck to make the kiss deep and heady and excellent, a kiss so downright lascivious that virgil’s thoughts about retiring to a damn fainting couch doesn’t seem near dramatic enough.
virgil is distantly aware that patton must be rocked up onto his tiptoes, and he splays his hand at patton’s waist, squeezing him gently, giving himself the excuse that it might help patton keep his balance a bit better, and also because his hand fits so beautifully at patton’s waist it could make virgil cry, the warmth of him even through his sweater and the way he can feel patton breathing in unsteady breaths, so maybe virgil isn’t the only one who is losing it here a little.
simultaneously, like they’ve choreographed it, they stumble back together until patton’s knees hit the arm of the couch and virgil practically falls on top of him, virgil barely breaking the kiss to make sure he hasn’t crushed him before patton’s twining his fingers into virgil’s hair and dragging him back into the kiss, wriggling a little so that his thigh is pushed between virgil’s, and virgil groans into his mouth, patton greedily swallowing the sound.
time goes a bit fuzzy, then, everything narrowed down to patton’s breathy gasps and the slick slide of his lips and the warmth and pressure of a thigh between his own and patton’s wandering, unabashed hands in his hair, on his back, wandering down to give him a cheeky squeeze, gripping at his thigh, like patton’s using the touches to punctuate a sentence that virgil has no hope of reading but it sure sounds nice anyway.
and then there’s a loud sound—someone’s dropped dishes downstairs—and they break apart, the pair of them looking toward the apartment door, startled, and as soon as it sinks in what it is that’s happened, they look back at each other.
patton’s smiling up at him, plum lipstick smeared all around his mouth, coy and unashamed, but with a little quirk at the corners that tells him that make out time is probably over. it is an image that immediately sears itself into virgil’s brain that will probably pop up at incredibly inconvenient moments, but he cannot really feel bothered about that right now, because christ is that unexpectedly hot.
virgil clears his throat, because there’s never exactly a non-awkward way to end something like this, that is until patton’s brow creases and he reaches forward to touch virgil’s lips.
“oh, no,” patton says, a little distressed, “i messed it up!”
“i can redo it,” virgil promises immediately, barely even thinking of the words before they’re out of his mouth in attempt to make that coy little smile come back, and he clears his throat to try and make his voice go back up to its usual octave, not the gruff and low near-growl that came out of his mouth. “um—you kind of have—”
patton’s brow creases even more, before he wiggles a hand free from under virgil and smears a finger beneath his bottom lip, holding it up to see for himself, and he giggles.
“i guess i do,” he says, and beams up at virgil. “be a dear, would you? i don’t wanna walk out there and make it too obvious that we’ve been mackin’ on each other this whole time.”
virgil nods, and, regretfully, rolls off of patton to go to the bathroom, attempting to steady his breath the whole way.
he bends to get the makeup remover from under the sink, and straightens, at last looking at himself in the mirror.
he looks thoroughly kissed.
his plum lipstick is smeared all around his mouth, down his chin, which shows off how his lips have reddened and gone a little swollen; his black hair is ruffled, especially sticking up in the back; and the generally gobsmacked, slightly stupid look on his face is a dead giveaway that he’s been spending time kissing patton.
there’s the soft padding of footsteps, arms wrapped around his waist, a face pressed between his shoulderblades, before patton pokes his head around him to see himself in the mirror, too.
he bursts into more giggles at the sight of them—matching messy lipstick, matching messy hair, matching slightly stunned look, except on patton it doesn’t look stupid at all, it looks like he’s thrilled with himself, a smirk playing around the corner of his mouths, like a particularly flirtatious cat who’s caught particularly prettily painted canary.
virgil can’t help but grin, too, and patton arches up to press a deliberate kiss to tendon of virgil’s neck, and virgil’s grin turns into a groan, more out of frustration than anything.
“what?” patton says, smiling playfully at him in the mirror.
“if you keep doing that,” virgil says, and then he’s at a loss for words, but patton seems to get it, slipping out from behind virgil but still leaving an arm wrapped around his waist.
“i don’t particularly want to stop, either,” patton agrees, before he reaches up to turn virgil’s attention away from the mirror, and so that he’s looking directly into patton’s eyes instead. patton continues, voice lush and full of promise, “i’d keep you up here all night, if you wanted, but, well.”
“we’re taking it slow,” virgil says ruefully.
“we’re taking it slow,” patton agrees. “plus, you’ve got a diner to close, and i’ve got a kid at home who’ll probably stay up too late reading if i don’t bug him about bedtime.”
“yeah,” virgil says, but he can’t help but sigh a little—they’ve both agreed that moving slowly is the responsible thing to do, they’ve talked about it a lot, first to agree to slow then later to refine their mutual definitions of slow, which turned out to be pretty damn different at first, but. well.
“i know,” patton agrees fervently. and he really does—he’s literally the only other person right know who understands exactly how virgil’s feeling, and that sets him at ease more than anything.
“all right,” virgil says, and peels back the top of the makeup removal wipes package, removing one. “lemme see your face.”
patton obligingly tips up his chin at virgil, smiling.
virgil cups the underside of his jaw and works to clean off patton’s face, gently rubbing away the plum smears around patton’s mouth with a purposefully soft hand.
it takes a few wipes for virgil’s lips to twitch up into a smile, too.
“stop it,” virgil scolds, without any heat.
“stop what?” patton says, still smiling.
“you’re smiling at me,” virgil says.
“what, i can’t be a little happy that i spent some quality time with my fella?” patton asks.
virgil ducks his head, because that’s one of his top two love languages, and patton knows it. instead, he says, “‘course you can, i am, too. but you’re gloating.”
patton’s grin widens, and virgil sighs, lowering his hand—he won’t be able to help patton at all with patton grinning up at him like that.
“i have,” patton says, “the prettiest fella. i’m allowed to feel at least a little smug that you’re the belle of the ball tonight, darling.”
“stop,” virgil grumbles, looking away.
“what?” patton says. “it’s true! you’re gorgeous, honey.”
virgil mutters under his breath and rubs at the back of his neck—he isn’t the best with accepting compliments, he never has been, especially when it comes to things like this.
but, well—
“so,” virgil says, staring at the makeup wipe in his hand. “you… liked it?”
“liked it?” patton says.
“y’know,” virgil mumbles, and gestures vaguely up and down his body—the skirt, the makeup. “it.”
patton grins up at him, and tugs him down a little so that they’re eye-to-eye.
“i,” patton purrs, “love the skirt.”
it takes a little bit longer to get polished back up after that. and if, perhaps, virgil walks around the diner a bit more at ease than before, with a bit of a stupid smile on his face even after patton blows him a kiss on his way out of the door, well. that’s virgil’s business.
⁂
christopher calls when logan’s studying at the diner. his dad’s already headed home, most of his dinner conversation having been rhapsodizing his deeply-held desire to put on his pajamas. virgil’s busy behind the counter settling everyone’s bills now that the bulk of dinner rush is over.
it’s still unusual enough to logan that christopher brings himself to call semi-regularly now—even stranger that it’s weekly, and on a set schedule. wednesday nights at seven. he even remembers to call precisely on schedule, most of the time. but still—every time his cellphone buzzes and lights up with a photo of him and christopher and dad at a sanders-hosted thanksgiving a few years back, he’s surprised.
it takes quite a bit of work to unlearn sixteen years that consisted mostly of irregular, unscheduled visits and not showing up when the visits are actually scheduled, logan supposes.
“hey, kiddo!” christopher says brightly.
“hi, dad,” logan says, digging around for a bookmark, before giving up and placing a clean knife in his science textbook to mark the page and closing it.
a moment later, logan curses his mental preoccupation with studying and the upcoming phone conversation he’ll have to have—the napkins are right there.
“so, what’re you up to?”
“studying.”
“you’re always studying,” christopher says, and there’s something in the tone that sets logan’s teeth on edge; he knows that christopher isn’t exactly academically inclined, and in fact would likely be better described as an academic anarchist, seeming to disdain upon the opportunities and privileges he was given with no strings attached that logan would almost certainly kill to have, not to mention many other people who would put it to better use, but. it’s not the time to pick a fight, logan supposes.
“yes, well,” logan says. “i have science test this week.”
“you’ve always got tests.”
“chilton is an academically rigorous school,” logan says, in a tone that implies he’s explained this a hundred times, because he has. “and i would like to maintain my position as a competitor for the top of my class. how are… things?”
this allows him a brief reprieve—since the official collapse of christopher’s business, not too long after he’d visited last fall, he’s been picking up a variety of odd jobs and temporary work, whatever catches his interest—christopher spends about five minutes explaining that he’s found some temporary work at a bar, now, to make some spare cash as he looks for something more permanent during the day.
“—but yeah, that’s about all that’s going on with me right now.” a pause. then, christopher prompts, “how about you?”
logan shrugs, even though christopher can’t see it. “not very much. the test. i think i did well on a pop quiz on monday—”
he explains his various schoolwork and extracurricular activities—christopher hums in all sorts of places—before he adds, “oh, and roman and i went on a date on saturday.”
“hey, finally, something fun!” christopher says. before logan can even say something like but the debate team’s mock trial was fun, he says, “what’d you do on your date?”
“we had frozen yogurt,” logan says, “and roman wanted to go to a thrift store to get some things, and we both got a couple books, and roman got something for the ball, so that’s good—”
“whoa,” christopher says, “hang on, rewind. the ball?! what ball?”
logan winces.
because, well. it’s complex to navigate building a relationship that he initially blackmailed his father into, rather than have him propose to his dad. it’s even more complex to figure out how to handle a dad who had, for sixteen years, mostly showed up in irregular, unscheduled visits and not showing up when the visits are actually scheduled.
he has a dad. for the vast majority of his life, patton has been the only biologically-related adult on whom he could rely. if there was ever anything a parent needed to be involved in, whether it be a parent/teacher conference, or parent’s night, or a parent volunteer for his classroom—he’s always penned down patton sanders without a second thought. virgil, occasionally, if he’d known that his dad had a scheduling conflict, but—always, patton first. that’s just the way it is. christopher had never even stepped foot in sideshire before last fall.
but now, well. now, he has to navigate should i have asked him to come back for this? because the rules say he needs his dad to escort him.
and for so long, he has been so used to only having one of those. (well. two, but one biological dad. the other one kind of adopted him on sight and now he fusses after logan getting proper vegetable and protein intake.)
having both parents be involved in your life is even more unnecessarily complicated than i could have anticipated, logan thinks, before he pinches the bridge of his nose.
“um, yes. a ball. the daughters of the american revolution debutante ball, to be more specific.”
“you’re kidding,” christopher breathes out. “jeez, what kind of dirt does emily have on you that you had to recruit your boyfriend to escort some girls, too?”
logan blinks. “i have no idea why a handful of soil would motivate me to do that?”
“no, like—” christopher begins, and, perhaps, logan was overemphasizing his usual ignorance for use of slang just to give himself a break.
“well, that isn’t the case, regardless,” logan says, before he decides to just get it over with. “he was getting a dress. we both have one. we’re going to be the debutantes, not the escorts.”
there’s a pause.
“is this a gay thing?”
logan cringes, ever so slightly—christopher sounds more bemused than anything, so logan doesn’t think it’s a necessarily passive-aggressive comment, rather a more genuinely ignorant one.
“no, it’s not—” logan says, and pinches the bridge of his nose a little harder. “it’s not, um. a gay thing. we’re recruiting a lot of chilton students and sideshire kids to join in, it’s more of a public statement than anything.”
“oh,” christopher says, still with that tone of bemusement. then, “a public statement of what?”
“we’re making a statement about how sexist it is that society still deems it appropriate to trot young women around like that,” logan says. “we—the boys, i mean—are wearing dresses as a gesture of support and solidarity with them.”
“oh,” christopher repeats.
there’s an even longer pause.
“how many people did you say you got to join in?”
“we’re almost at forty, the last time i checked,” logan says, and christopher whistles lowly.
“your grandma’s gonna throw a fit.”
“we told her, actually,” logan says. “i wanted to see if she still had the dress she was going to make dad wear.”
“and how’d she take that?”
“she’s making me wear heels,” logan grouses, and christopher laughs.
“well, can’t say i expected her to be especially nice about anything,” christopher says. “so, tell me all about this massive prank you’re cooking up, then, i knew that some of my teenage troublemaking had to rub off on you somehow.”
though logan wants to say it’s not a prank, he supposes that it doesn’t exactly harm the movement if christopher thinks that; it’s not like he’s about to tell christopher the real reason, after all.
but logan tells him, all about the chilton kids, and the sideshire kids, and the upcoming Culture Day that his dad and isadora were organizing, and the bake sale that the sideshire kids were doing to raise money to actually enter into the ball in the first place, and the way logan’s had to hide sign-up sheets from teachers, and it seems to go okay.
that is, until christopher says, “hey, i guess if you’re going as a debutante, you need your dad to escort you, right?”
“oh,” logan says, and coughs. “um, actually, dad’s already doing that.”
there’s another long pause.
“oh.”
“i mean,” logan says, and shrugs, even though christopher can’t see it. “you’re saving up for other things, you hardly need to come out from california just to do this.”
“i would’ve,” christopher says, defensively. “if you’d asked.”
“right,” logan says, and the sarcasm slips through before he can even really attempt to modulate it into something resembling politeness.
“i would’ve,” he repeats, more insistently. “i know i haven’t been the best—”
“look, i have to get back to studying,” logan says, cutting off whatever platitude about i know i wasn’t present for you throughout your childhood, when you most would have needed the stability of your other parent, but i am trying now after you had to blackmail me into not upsetting your life, “next week, we’ll talk?”
another pause. a defeated sigh.
“sure, kid,” he says. “yeah. i’ll talk to you next week. same time. love you.”
logan flounders, for a moment, before he says, “next week, then, bye,” and hangs up before christopher can return the farewell salutation.
logan takes a moment to lift his glasses so he can press the base of his palms into his eyes, before he resettles them on his nose and opens his science textbook again.
the conversations with christopher are… something. they tend to go cordially most of the time, even, it’s just—
well. like he’d thought earlier. he’s so used to having one parent, and christopher only ever making contact irregularly. no guarantee for birthdays, no guarantee for christmases, no guarantee for thanksgivings. no guarantee for if logan really wanted to lean on someone, if he’d be there, solid and steady, or if logan would be sent sprawling to the ground. metaphorically.
it’s a bit like that cartoon that logan recalls, as a child—lucy, holding the football, insisting that she wouldn’t yank it away at the last second, leaving charlie brown tumbling head-over-heels.
christopher has insisted that he wouldn’t yank the ball quite literally since logan was born. forgive logan if sixteen years of ending up flat on his back hadn’t exactly endeared him to exactly trust that christopher would hold the ball steady, even if christopher had ended up being much more punctual and consistent with phone calls than expected.
it’s just—difficult. to adjust. to really believe that christopher might stick around, this time.
he suddenly feels his (already immense) sense of respect for patton rise all the more, because he trusts people like this all the time, no matter how many times he’d ended up flat on his face; logan’s thought it naivete for so long, that now that he’s attempting to practice it, he finds himself… well, if he’s to continue the metaphor, he’s found himself unwilling to even attempt the run-up to the ball.
logan attempts to shake himself, as if the thought is something that he can dislodge, like water in his ears. he refocuses on his textbook and readies his pen for any notes that he needs to take. which he does, for a while, his pen scratching a familiar rhythm under the quiet rush of other people’s conversation, and the soft, inoffensive music the diner plays, that is, until the plastic of the pen cracks under the force of his grip. logan scowls, and tosses the pen aside.
“here.”
logan looks up, startled; virgil’s standing over him, holding a small plate. he’s wearing another skirt today—purple, and it falls just below his tights-clad knees.
“what’s that?”
virgil sets down the plate, careful to avoid any notebooks, pens, or textbooks. there’s a slice of loganberry pie on it, which is actually logan’s favorite, despite the downside of the many puns his dad has made about logan liking loganberry pie.
“you look like you need pie.”
“i do?” logan says cluelessly.
“pen tossing usually signals the need for pie,” he says.
“you,” logan says. “brought me pie.”
virgil arches his eyebrows. “i could take it back.”
“thank you,” logan says quickly, sliding the plate toward himself, as if virgil would snatch it away, and virgil snorts, reaching out to ruffle logan’s hair before he retreats back to the counter, and—
and it really is just the sugar that has logan’s shoulders relaxing as he stares at his science notes, he tells himself.
⁂
the science test is predictably grueling. logan sits at his lunch table, his brain still tracking over various formulas and small facts he’d memorized, as if in a half-stunned stupor.
there’s the sound of a tray clacking on the table. logan looks up, startled.
dee, in his usual cape and hat, looks over at him, and arches his eyebrows as if daring him to say something. after logan blinks at him owlishly, dee resumes settling himself, as if he has sat at logan’s lunch table a great many times and not at all as if this isn’t the first time he’s done this.
come to think of it, logan’s uncertain if he’s ever even seen dee during their lunch period before. he sets aside the question of then where does he eat??? and instead reaches into his lunchbox, grabbing something at random to start eating.
a clementine. okay.
logan starts peeling the clementine as dee gets his lunch tray in order, and dee says, very casually, “would you like to come over so we can discuss arrangements?”
logan’s fingernail catches; he resists the urge to curse as he punctures the fruit, and instead reaches for a napkin to wipe his hand dry of juice.
“arrangements…?”
dee looks at him. “for the project.”
logan’s test-addled brain then proceeds to panic and mentally trace over every single one of his shared classes with dee, attempting to pinpoint how on earth he possibly could have overlooked an upcoming project, before—
oh.
“i—yes,” logan says, and resumes peeling the clementine. “yes, that works out fine, i think. um—do you live near a bus stop?”
dee flaps a gloved hand at him dismissively. “i’ll have one of the drivers take you back home.”
one of the drivers??? then, he has even one driver???? what on earth necessitates plural drivers???
“i… sure,” logan says, rather than comment on that, “i’ll text my dad and tell him i’ll be home late.”
dee nods, and so logan eats his clementine in sections as dee’s lunch tray depletes with a rate of speed that would already be impressive if not compounded by the fact that logan doesn’t even really see him eat, before he pulls out his phone and texts his dad, I’m going over to Dee’s after school, I’ll let you know how long I’ll be there when I have a better idea of the time frame.
he’s walking to his next class when his phone buzzes, and he glances at his phone.
Dad: okay!!! say hi to the adults and be on your best behavior! love you, have fun!!!
he is uncertain how much ‘fun’ will weigh into the activities for any event at dee slange’s house.
⁂
dee’s pretending to be on his phone almost the entire time a chauffeur drives them back (he could have driven, but he hadn’t felt like it this morning, so therefore he didn’t have his car in the afternoon) but really he’s looking out of the corner of his eyes at logan.
logan is sitting stiffly, and he has been since he’d gotten into the car; it’s as if he’s nervous he might scuff up the leather if he moves. he’s holding his backpack in his lap, and his eyes keep darting to the driver, suit-clad and silent, and out the window, before glancing at dee, and then back out the window.
as they creep up to the gate, and the chauffeur inputs the code that’ll open the gate so they can drive up the maple-lined driveway, to the house, dee has abandoned the ruse entirely, because logan looks the most confused dee’s ever seen him look.
the look only grows more obvious once they break past the trees, and logan actually gets a good look at the house; dee knows the townhome was designed to be magnificent, especially on first glance, but he’s been so accustomed to it that seeing logan’s eyes dart from the fountain in the middle of the driveway to the sprawl of primroses and lavender and hydrangeas and all the rest of the landscaping, and the towering height of it all, the brick crowded with overgrown ivy and climbing roses. the historic townhome may not have multiple wings, and it might not really hold a candle to the ultra-modern mansion where his parents live, but it still, certainly, is impressive.
“you live here?” logan says, stunned.
“obviously?” dee says.
he’s tempted to say something like if you ever saw my parents’ house, maybe pull up that old e-edition of a magazine that had covered it once, just to see logan’s eyes pop out of his head, but the chauffeur puts the car in park and logan’s saying “thank you, sir,” and scrambling out of the car as quick as he can.
dee arches a brow, and the chauffeur moves to open the door for him, because he was raised with manners, jesus, wasn’t this emily and richard sanders’ grandson? one would think he’d know something about how to comport himself.
his brain provides several mental images, though: the little yellow clapboard house logan lived in, the absurdly picturesque tiny town full of brick buildings and repurposed barns and colonial charm, logan’s voice saying, my dad and i were effectively homeless until i turned six, and feels a strange clenching in his chest.
dee shoves it down and arranges his face into his typical boredom by the time he’s walking up to the front door, logan quickly falling into step behind him.
he opens the door—the chauffeur’s going around to the servant’s entrance—and by the time he’s stepping through the door, nanny has materialized at his side, and looks only slightly surprised that there is another teenage boy with him.
logan is too busy looking around at the entry hall—the rugs, the paintings, the furniture, the post-its stuck up on the front door—to really notice any of that, for which dee can’t help but breathe a little sigh of relief.
“hello, we have a guest,” nanny says.
“i told granmè,” dee says, and his stomach sinks as nanny gives him a sideways look, as if to say you know better than to let that serve as a notification system anymore, before she refocuses on logan.
“your name, young sir?”
“um, logan,” he says, looking boggled that he’s being called sir, and adds, “sanders. logan sanders.”
“emily and richard’s boy?”
“their grandson, yes,” logan says, looking to dee for some kind of help; dee would shrug at him, if he wasn’t kind of enjoying watching the usually unflappable logan flounder a little bit.
nanny nods, and says, “welcome to the lavandelands,” which is technically the townhome’s name, but they only ever use it to introduce the house to new visitors, so dee forgets the townhome has a name at all until it comes up again—it’s the same with the manor, which is technically the hearthfields. logan doesn’t seem to notice, nodding at her like he can’t think of anything else to do.
nanny turns to dee, instead, and asks, “would you care for any refreshments?”
“just the usual tea should suffice,” dee says. nanny looks at logan.
“um,” he says again—dee is a little delighted, because he has never heard logan get so knocked off-center before, and after all this attempted antagonizing about his grades all it took was bringing him to his house—“just—just water’s fine. thank you.”
nanny nods, says, “i’ll be with your grandmother in the greenhouse. mr. sanders, it was a pleasure to meet you, please have mr. slange ring for us if you require anything,” and sweeps off.
“you have a greenhouse?” logan says blankly.
“we have a greenhouse,” dee confirms. “you can see it later, if you’d like. shall we go study?”
logan nods, and falls into step behind dee; dee considers going to the dining room, the way logan did when they were making posters at his house, but he wants nanny, bertie, ingrid, and martha to have plausible deniability in case his parents demand to know if they’d heard anything about this, and so he leads logan up the staircase and into his room.
it’s been cleaned today recently, he can tell; it smells like the lemon candles he likes, the ones martha lights whenever she airs out his room, so the room is in its tidiest iteration; vacuumed rugs, swept and mopped hardwoods, dust-free surfaces, with a made bed and no mess anywhere anywhere.
it practically seems like a hotel room, if not for the legal pad on his desk with his handwriting on it.
and of course, logan crosses almost immediately to the desk; dee only catches on a minute later, when he bends slightly to get a better look inside the vivarium.
“luke, leia, and han, right?” logan says, glancing at dee for confirmation before scanning the plants and rocks; dee crosses over, too, and gestures toward the rock in the back corner—mostly hidden by plants, but the sun lamp shines directly upon it.
“they like to nap here,” dee says, and he’s right—luke and han are curled up, sunning themselves, and logan makes an ahh noise when he spots them too.
“they’re larger than i expected,” logan says, staring at them, eyes lit up with curiosity.
“mm,” dee says vaguely. “females tend to be longer and bulkier than males. leia’s biggest, she’s a little over two feet.”
“where is she?” logan says. “you said she was the checkered one.”
dee tries his hardest not to seem surprised, but—logan remembers his snake’s markings. from a a throwaway comment he made nearly a month ago.
“probably hiding,” dee says. “she likes to stick near the water, so she’s probably curled up under the lip—”
logan kneels down, all the better to see, and he says, “i see her!”
“asleep?”
“i think so,” logan says, and frowns. “i’m not as familiar with snakes as i am with other reptiles, though.”
dee blinks. “which reptiles are you familiar with?”
“frogs, mostly,” logan admits. “lots of frogs and toads would be around the pool, when we lived at the inn, and they’re very common in the pond there. salamanders and lizards, sometimes, during summers. i had a brief phase of hunting for reptiles and bugs, i thought i would be a reptile research journalist, or something—i kept bringing them home and dad had to pretend he wasn’t scared of any creepy-crawly bugs or scaly things, he’d call over virgil so that there was someone i could show all the bugs to who wouldn’t get freaked out.”
dee has a mental image, then, of logan—shorter, and baby-faced, holding up a salamander and babbling to this mysterious virgil about its various properties, who would nod and ask questions and generally care what a child thought, his dad shoving down his fear long enough to listen to logan, because it’s something that interested him, something that logan cared about.
and then a memory of himself, hip-deep in snake research books, trying to tell his new adopted parents all about why snakes were so interesting and cool, and receiving three snakes for his first birthday state-side and overhearing maybe she’ll shut up about the stupid snakes now, his mother saying at least we won’t have to see them, they’ll be in her room, maybe she’ll stay there more and children should be seen and not heard as nanny and martha tidied up the wrapping paper from his birthday party—
he squashes the not-jealousy with extreme prejudice.
“oh, and the occasional turtle,” logan adds, breaking dee’s train of thought. “not many snakes, though; not many of the inn’s employees were keen on letting the five-year-old try to find out if one was venomous or not, so i’d be stuck watching if they ever found one.”
“...right,” dee says, unsure of what to really say to that. also, he’s a bit busy listening to the purposefully-heavy footsteps coming down the hall.
“so i’ve never seen snakes up close like this,” logan finishes, and dee just. nods.
fortunately, a knock on the door breaks any lingering awkwardness; dee calls out “come in!” and nanny comes in with a tray of a typical afternoon tea.
“just leave that on the storage bench, thank you, nanny,” dee says briskly, and so nanny sets the tray of snacks on the bench at the base of dee’s bed, before she presents a water bottle to logan, and says, “there’s a chilled glass for you on the tray.”
“oh,” logan says, and takes it. “um. thank you.”
almost as if he’s unable to help it, his fingernails tap-tap-tap against the water bottle as he looks at the design, whatever sense of culture shock that might have faded after looking at the snakes rearing right back.
“thank you, nanny, that will do,” dee says, and nanny nods to him, before she departs and closes the door on the way out.
“this water bottle is made of glass,” logan says, as if it’s a question.
dee arches an eyebrow at him. “do you not like water served in glass? do you only like plastic containers for your water? shall i call for nanny to get you a plastic cup?”
“no,” logan says, “no, it’s just—” and he squints at the label, before he looks up at dee and says, “this bottle of water is from a glacier.”
“you can keep the bottle, if you like,” dee says, “we have plenty more.”
“the source is only accessible from the ocean.”
“yes, i heard you,” dee says. “it’s not like i would already know this, since i have lived in this house and had that water for years, but do go on.”
“our goal was to create the world’s first luxury premium glacier water product with unmatched quality—purity—elegance. created from an award-winning source, from the hat mountain glacier in beautiful british columbia, canada, we have captured the hearts of water connoisseurs worldwide,” logan reads from the label, and looks up at him. “dee.”
“i don’t understand what your issue is with the water,” dee says, even though he’s very aware that logan’s issue is primarily you even have fancy WATER?! but it’s fun to see how absolutely bemused he is over it. “if it’s good enough for water connoisseurs worldwide, it should certainly be good enough for you.”
logan hesitates, before he sits on the bench at the end of dee’s bed, and picks up the chilled glass. oh, nanny set out to impress, that’s one of the nice crystal glasses that granmè only ever really brings out for parties.
it also has the added benefit of logan’s eyes becoming even rounder behind his glasses, and looking between the water bottle and the glass, as if weighing if he’s blue-blooded enough to consume it, or if he’s so much of a commoner that taking a sip of it will cause him death, like the false grail in indiana jones.
evidently, the combined hayden-sanders genes must win out, because he carefully pours himself a glass, and then looks even more hopelessly confused when he turns his attention to the tea tray.
really, dee at the start of the school year would be clapping his hands in absolute glee at how much he’s managed to catch logan off-guard.
“are these cucumber sandwiches?” logan asks faintly.
“ooh, yes,” dee says, plucking one for himself and promptly shoving it into his mouth, fast, so that sanders won’t notice while his attention is captured by their snack. “plus pear and stilton, here, and ham-brie-apple, and pesto chicken, and those ones are prosciutto-fig, i think. of course there’s scones and clotted cream, battenburg, crumpets...”
“you,” logan says, looking hopelessly lost, “you just asked for tea?”
dee looks at him, amused, even as he’s pouring himself a cup of tea. “my grandfather was english, sanders. it’s afternoon tea.”
logan blinks, before he says, “i didn’t know that. that your grandfather’s english, i mean.”
“and my grandmother’s french,” dee says. “my particular branch of slanges relocated to the americas much later than your branch of sanders did.”
“you know that?” logan says, startled.
“of course,” dee says. “sanders’ came over on the mayflower, daughters of the american revolution, et cetera et cetera. our grandmothers have been friends for years, did you really think i wouldn’t know?”
he waits a beat, before he adds, “and, well. know your enemy.”
“i suppose you took that much more seriously than i did,” logan says at last, before he reaches for a safe option—a blueberry scone—and cracks it open, spreading it with jam.
“yes,” dee says pridefully, “yes, i did.”
logan rolls his eyes, even as he plops a generous helping of clotted cream on top—
“oh, cornish method, interesting,” dee says, just to see that confused look come rearing back, and is immediately satisfied—
before logan shakes himself, and says, “why did your grandparents relocate here, anyway?”
dee tries his very best not to brighten too obviously, it’s just—it’s been so long since someone so blatantly handed him an excuse to spin stories on a platter.
“well, that’s a very interesting story,” dee says, leaning back, “and really, it all starts with my great-grandfather. or, rather, my great-grandfather’s very distant cousins. you see, my family had a lordship—”
logan looks at him, surprised.
“—a very minor lordship,” dee says, “technically barons, not dukes or anything. you probably wouldn’t have heard of them, it’s not like they were major members of the house of lords or anything. anyway, my great-grandfather didn’t know that, because again, he was a very distant cousin, and the main line of the family had three daughters. no women could inherit.”
logan frowns. “sexist.”
“mm, quite,” dee says. “anyways, they were counting on a closer cousin to inherit—a second cousin, i believe—but he tragically died in a boating accident, and so the family came calling to my cousin—who was a solicitor at the time—and brought him to the estate, which was called,” dee quickly casts about for an alike-enough name, “...upton priory.”
and so dee goes on cribbing details from the first three seasons of downton abbey, changing names and having a merry old time. logan gets close to realizing—he says “that sounds rather familiar, actually,” when dee reiterates the whole plotline of his supposed great-grandfather’s valet getting arrested for supposedly murdering his wife, to which dee says, “it was quite a scandal, perhaps you’re remembering the details from your grandmother, goodness knows she’d find it fascinating,” which buys him even more time until he kills off his great-grandfather, the matthew stand-in, after the birth of their second child.
logan frowns, and says, “well, that’s rather sad, but—i thought you said your grandfather was eldest? why would he give up a lordship?”
“why else, sanders?” dee says, and gestures expansively. “love.”
logan arches his eyebrows, and takes another sandwich—he seems quite partial to the pesto chicken and ham-apple-brie—and says, “go on, then.”
and so dee goes on stealing details and weaving a story, this time from the king’s speech, explaining how his grandmother was a divorcée (she is not) and his grandfather wanted to marry her anyway, as they’d met and she’d become his mistress during an outing to new york (possibly true, but in the same way that the moon landing being faked is possibly true) but as she was a divorcée (again, untrue) and he was a prominent member of the church of england (as far as he knows his grandfather was a catholic) to have a lord marry a divorcée had caused quite the drama between the family, and then dee cribs even more details from downton abbey to describe the fight, mounting and dramatic and full of high passions, going on for another fifteen minutes, until his grandfather finally decided—
“to abdicate the throne?” logan finishes dryly; they’ve picked the tea tray mostly clean of snacks, by now, and logan’s long since finished his water and has stolen a cup of tea. “i didn’t realize you were a descendant of edward the eighth. should i have been calling you your majesty this whole time?”
dee tries his very hardest not to pout, but he does cross his arms. “how long have you suspected?”
“around the time you said he gave a lordship ‘for love,’” logan says, “but i knew for sure when you started talking about how your grandmother became a mistress in new york. she’s french.”
“damn!” dee says, not really angry at all, but still, he had to keep up appearances. “i managed to fool brad with that whole backstory until he saw the king’s speech five years later.”
and then dee waits; he waits for logan to get mad, or to snap at him for wasting time, something that dee will attempt to brush off and maybe even laugh at. he waits for logan—journalism-obsessed, fact-checking, scientifically-minded logan—to react to what was dee, essentially, lying straight to his face for about half an hour.
but then:
“well, that’s brad,” logan says, “it doesn’t take much to fool him, i’d imagine.”
dee smiles, pleased. “no, it doesn’t.”
“so where was the other stuff from?” logan says. “upton priory, i mean. i’m assuming that doesn’t exist. i know the story from somewhere.”
he’s… curious.
he’s curious??? dee repeats to himself—this is logan, who is, as stated, journalism-obsessed, fact-checking, scientifically-minded—he doesn’t seem mad. he just seems… intrigued.
this bears much more investigation that dee would have thought prior to inviting him over.
“downton abbey,” dee allows. “i can’t believe you caught onto the historical significance of edward the eighth meeting his mistress in new york, and yet i throw three season’s worth of downton abbey at you and not even a little bit of recognition.”
logan shrugs. “i’m not very good with pop culture. that’s more—” and very suddenly he looks like he wants to slap a hand to his forehead, if logan was at all prone to dramatic, cliché gestures like that. “roman. he was going on for days about matthew dying in the same season they killed off sybil, that’s where i heard all of it before, it’s from roman.”
“the boyfriend,” dee says.
“yes, the boyfriend,” logan says, “who is very excited for the excuse to wear a pretty ballgown, by the way.”
dee accepts this for the subject change it is, and digs out his notebook and a pen.
“right, then,” he says. “as previously discussed, i’m handling chilton participants, and i’m pleased to announce that with the addition of ana salazar, the entirety of the clairosophic society are involved.”
“oh, excellent,” logan says, and so dee goes on listing chilton students they’ve enlisted—he’d been right, recruiting the puffs and the skull and dagger had caused a wave of wannabes to join in too—and they discuss setting up a form for people to ensure that they’ve paid their way in, dee eventually digging out his laptop and making a couple drafts of one.
as he does that, logan talks about the sideshire students (behind on payments, but they’re doing an ongoing bake sale at virgil’s, which, dee doesn’t know how small town things work, but he supposes he should trust that logan knows what he’s talking about) and logan taps his own notebook with his pen, going over all of the entrants and discussing anything that needs finer-tuning—not very much on their end, it turns out, but they’ll definitely need to have another meeting after what logan’s dad is apparently calling get cultured day, where he and logan’s boyfriend’s mother will teach everyone the dance they’ll need to know and the proper way to curtsy and so on.
logan scans over his notes, nodding in satisfaction, before he says, “we were a bit oversaturated on debutantes, the clairosophic society should help balance things out with escorts.”
“ana wants to go with janey,” dee corrects. “so she and janey are already taken, but otherwise—”
he blinks. “ana and janey are dating?”
dee looks at him, amused. “you know nothing about the social stratosphere at chilton, do you?”
“i don’t have much tolerance for gossip,” logan says.
“really?” dee says. “i’d think that as a journalist you’d keep an eye out for these kinds of things.”
“i don’t report on gossip,” logan says. “what do i look like, francie jarvis? anyone else who lives and breathes that rag?”
“what, the jefferson?” dee says. “are you kidding? that’s the most useful thing that chilton’s ever provided me, and i’m including the education, here.”
“useful?” logan repeats, looking as offended as dee had expected him to look when logan would catch on to dee lying his ass off for half an hour straight. interesting.
“well, admittedly, they can be rather behind when it comes to certain things,” dee says thoughtfully, “but the chaos that happens on the day it comes out? masterful.”
logan frowns. “i thought you wanted to work on the franklin.”
“oh, i do,” dee says. “like i said, they’re not exactly cutting edge, i can do better with a well-coordinated social media check than they can do with an entire staff full of rumormongers. the whole,” and he flaps a hand, “truth and investigation thing, for the franklin, that’s interesting. besides, the franklin has more effect when it targets adults; with the jefferson, they just want to confirm that the algebra and the calculus teachers are having an affair, which they are—”
logan looks perplexed. “how do you—”
“—don’t ask,” dee says. “believe me, i wish i didn’t know.”
his eyes narrow, as if to say why should i believe you? which, good. he’s learning.
“but in the franklin, one can publish a deep-dive anonymous investigation and get shady male teachers tossed out of the schools on their ear for their too-frequent uniform checks and saying that uniform skirts are distracting. the franklin has more real-world power.”
“not that an investigation of an adult potentially preying upon teenage girls isn’t important,” logan says, “because it certainly is, but journalism isn’t about acquiring power. it’s about holding those in power accountable.”
“isn’t that the same thing?” dee points out.
“no,” logan says.
“but it is,” dee says. “because the concept of holding power is so multi-faceted. everyone’s idea of power is different. the upper class has power, the president has power, the people protesting have power. people like francie jarvis and tristan have power, but then, so do you and i. but all of those kinds of power are different.”
“well, that i agree with,” logan says cautiously, and then he frowns. “how do i have power?”
dee looks at him. he looks at him harder.
“what?”
“you’re kidding,” dee says. “you’re a sanders and a hayden.”
“the haydens are not particularly pleased that i am a hayden,” logan says. “the haydens would adore nothing more than to tidily remove me from the family tree.”
interesting.
“but they can’t tidily remove you being a hayden from everyone’s memory,” dee points out. “and, well. power can be privilege.”
“well, i certainly have privilege,” logan says. “i’m white, i’m a cis male, i’m attached to an affluent family.” he frowns, and amends, “families, i suppose.”
“oh, good,” dee says. “you’re a sane person who recognizes white privilege, i won’t have to kick you out.”
also—attached to an affluent family, not part of an affluent family. more intrigue.
“anyways. you have plenty of power—take chilton, for example. say you wrote that piece on a pedophilic teacher that i was talking about. it would be due to your actions, your hard work and diligence, that removed him from his post. that doesn’t seem like power, to you?”
logan shakes his head, and repeats, “that’s what journalism’s about. just because there are effect from the story i write, to hold said teacher accountable, that doesn’t mean that is personally driven from me. that would be a response—from parents, from students, from headmaster charleston, eventually. there are responsibilities that journalists have, important ones, and we serve a purpose for society. perhaps the story has a powerful impact, or the story is emotionally powerful. that doesn’t mean that i am powerful. i didn’t direct people to fire him, i didn’t influence anyone. i would have presented the facts and exposed his wrongdoings, that’s all.”
“well, i suppose it does depend on your definition of powerful, that’s accurate enough,” dee says thoughtfully. “but the more philosophical idea of what is power? isn’t what i’m trying to address, at the moment, i’m addressing you. another example, then—academically, you’re powerful. tristan dugray would pay a tidy sum for any one of your study guides.”
logan frowns. “i wouldn’t cheat.”
“yes, yes, you’re very moral and ethical, good for you, you’ve passed the after-school special test,” dee says dismissively, “but specifically, for this definition of power, it’s a certain level of strength. but that’s a different kind of power, than, say—”
“tristan dugray never getting in trouble for his foolish pranks because of who his father is,” logan says.
“right,” dee says, “although you’re wrong on that front, he’s a prank on a bad day away from being sent to military school, but—yes, you’re seeing my point. power varies, power changes.”
“well, i never disagreed with that,” he says. “but those aiming for power—their main idea is almost never let’s be a journalist! unless they’re decisively within the yellow journalism era, or if they are fictional character charles foster kane. and even then, he was a media magnate, his attempts at journalism were just to manipulate public opinion and make a lot of money.”
dee sighs longingly and says, “if i were white, that would be my ideal era to work in.”
“what,” logan says, and suddenly they’re talking about yellow journalism—logan is very boring and against it, because he likes things like accuracy and facts—and then logan looks like he’s about to blow steam out of his ears when dee tells him that his ultimate career goal is to write for and maybe run something like the national enquirer, which leads to even more discussions on journalism, things like what qualifies someone to be a journalist and who decides what journalism is, and they’re on a little side-tangent about journalism as portrayed in films when there’s a knock on his door.
“mister slange, mister sanders, dinner is ready,” nanny says, and dee tries his best not to startle, because—logan’s been here for three hours. and he has not once gotten annoyed at dee for reasons outside of journalistic, ethical, or moral debate, and even then, logan seems to set all of that aside relatively easily.
and dee, apart from making up his entire ancestral backstory, has barely even lied.
“coming!” dee says, and then to logan, “i hope you like snail caviar.”
an expression of panic pops up on logan’s face, and dee laughs at him.
“kidding,” he says reassuringly. “it’s french onion soup and croque monsieurs.”
logan looks relieved, and he even laughs, and then proceeds to bump into dee, the way that friends on tv shows jostle each other when one tells a particularly biting joke, and then logan pauses, looking at dee.
very suddenly, dee thinks, oh.
does he think he’s my friend?
they’ve been debating for the better part of two hours, and dee lied to him for half an hour, and dee has been purposefully throwing as many rich-people things into conversation as possible to get logan looking baffled, and logan thinks that they are friends.
is that what friends do?
dee clears his throat, before he grabs logan’s bicep in a way he hopes is normal and does not at all give away that he has not had a friend since he immigrated to the united states, and says, “come on, then, i’ll let you stick your head in the library on the way.”
“you have a library?!” logan asks eagerly, following along as dee tugs him down the hall, and dee tries his very best not to smile too openly.
⁂
dee’s house is…a lot. it’s a lot.
(dee had pulled up a picture of his parents’ house to show off how it could be his own personal xanadu, when they’d been talking about citizen kane, and logan has mentally tabulated the publication he was talking about to fact-check that, because that—that was just absurd, even more so than this one.)
but the smell of french onion soup and croque monsieurs—essentially french ham-and-cheese, either sandwiches or baked lasagna style—is a little more comforting. logan knows these smells, baking bread and ham and melting cheese and onions—granted, virgil’s diner does a french onion soup, but he’s sure it’s not as fancy as what he’s about to eat with dee.
and, as they cross into the dining room, his grandmother, seated at the head of the table.
logan’s technically had lunch with mrs. slange before; it had been at the country club, and he’d been more preoccupied with glowering at dee, but he has met her and spoken with her. she’d been nice; she’d spoken to his grandmother quite a lot about landscaping, and flowers. azaleas in particular, he’s fairly certain.
she’s a rather diminutive woman, her already short stature shrunk down even more from age; her hair is thin and pure white, fluffing up in a way that makes logan think of dandelion fuzz. her face is wrinkled, especially with smile lines around her eyes, her mouth. she’s wearing a cardigan over a button-down, much like his grandmother wears on particularly casual days, but whereas his grandmother prefers solid colors, mrs. slange’s cardigan is white with embroidered pink and purple flowers; it matches her pastel pink button-down.
by all accounts, she should register in logan’s mind as a fragile old woman; a nice one, one that seems to have more concern about her flowers than anything else. but there’s something glinting in her eyes—flinty, icy blue—that reminds him very much of dee, despite the fact that they are not biologically related.
it’s cunning, logan thinks, or intelligence—she must have both in spades, to help raise someone like dee.
she smiles at dee, and says something in french—logan can manage a basic spanish conversation due to his proximity to the princes, and he’s taking latin classes, but he’s absolutely hopeless with french unless he lucks out and they say something with a latin root word—and dee responds in kind. logan notes that their accents are different. logan puts together, barely a second after he notices, that one of haiti’s two official languages is french.
logan spares a second to wonder if dee can speak the other, haitian creole, before his grandmother turns to him directly and says—something in french. he has no clue what.
“il ne peut pas parler français, granmè, utiliser l'anglais,” dee says, looking almost a little amused at logan’s expense—well, logan can put together he can’t speak french, use english, just based off of context clues.
she starts a sentence in french, pauses, furrows her brow, as if unpuzzling it, and then continues in lightly accented english, “welcome to our home.”
“thank you very much for having me,” logan says, his dad’s be on your best behavior! text at the forefront of his mind, with his dad saying evelyn, right? i always liked her shortly behind. “your home is beautiful; the landscaping’s lovely.”
her wrinkled face settles into its worn lines she smiles.
“mer—” she begins, shakes her head, takes a breath, and then continues, “thank you very much. the roses are finicky little things, this time of year, i’m quite pleased with how they’ve turned out. i think they’ve thrown their last primadonna fit until fall rolls around again.”
and from there, it’s easy to prod her into conversation as they eat the soup course—logan mentally apologizes to virgil, but if he’d taste it, he’d probably agree that this french onion soup is better than his, too—just by asking about the various plants she tends to favor, the particular conditions that each seems to like. the conversation seems perfectly fine, if not for dee staring at the pair of them out of the corners of his eyes, as if monitoring their conversation to make sure neither of them says anything unseemly.
which is a little unsettling—logan doesn’t think he’s said anything horribly rude to an old person lately, unless one counted his paternal grandparents last fall—but the conversation seems to be fine. logan admits that most of his knowledge of plants is theoretical, scientific, which prods her into asking about their shared science course, and dee takes over that conversation.
it’s fine. the whole dinner is fine, and it seems to be going well, even, and he keeps on thinking so and thinking so as he digs into the main course of croque monsieurs, and she says—
“how do you find the meal, christopher?”
it takes logan a second to register what’s wrong with that statement, and, as soon as it does, unwittingly, his eyes flash to dee.
dee has frozen, fork halfway to his mouth. it’s like he has to buffer for a moment before he visibly stiffens, setting the fork down. logan is about to excuse it as a slip of the tongue—she had known both his parents, surely, perhaps it was just a misstatement. most people in his grandparents’ sphere exalted his resemblance to christopher, even though he was quite clearly a carbon copy of patton excepting his sharper bone structure, straighter hair, and thinner frame, until—
“logan, granmè,” dee says, in a very gentle tone that does not at all match his fists curling up on the table. “this is logan, christopher’s son. do you remember? we had lunch with him and emily.”
her brow furrows, and she says, “right. of course. logan.”
she quite sounds like she thinks that dee is pulling one over her head, and she’s going along with it, the way one did when a small child was pulling an incredibly obvious joke on them.
she maintains that tone and slips a couple more times—christopher, how are straub and francine? as logan’s halving his croque monsieur; christopher, didn’t you say you were going out to california? when the maid, as tight-faced as dee, is setting dessert on the table.
and it dawns on him, slowly: why dee had to prompt her to use english, when she was born speaking french, and why it had taken her a few seconds to clearly switch over in her head when dee went from french to english at the drop of a hat; why there were so many post-its near the front door; why the household staff had seemed surprised at a visitor, despite the fact that dee had told his grandmother he was bringing home a guest; why his grandmother had said she’s coming out less and less lately, it’s been a while since we’ve had a good, long chat; dee keeping a keen eye out, as if he’s monitoring what they’ll say; not for him, logan realizes, for her.
she has a disease. she’s aware enough that her gardens are in splendid shape, she’s aware enough that she clearly knows who dee is, but. but she can’t remember who logan is.
it is an exceedingly awkward dessert.
he can’t deny the chocolate-raspberry souffle is absolutely delicious, though.
⁂
the dinner is over. nanny is taking granmè to the library. logan and dee are left alone at the dinner table.
dee has been mentally preparing for this since his grandmother’s first slip—comebacks, things to say, particularly acerbic and witty things he could summon up if logan is rude about it. he’s ready.
that is, until logan just says, “can i see the greenhouse?”
dee blinks at him. “what?”
“the greenhouse,” logan repeats. “you said i could see it after dinner. can i?”
okay, dee thinks. changing the setting of the argument. he isn’t sure what logan’s play is here, but—
“sure,” dee agrees, and stands, purposefully languid and unhurried. “follow me.”
and so he leads logan through the narrow hallways of the house, mostly ignoring logan as they go (“is that a velázquez?” he demands of a painting, which dee doesn’t really deign answer to—of course it’s a velázquez, does his family seem like the type to settle for a framed imitation) and at last comes to the door of the greenhouse, which he opens without ceremony.
logan walks in. dee expects him to maybe go to sit down, and ask dee why his elderly grandmother thought he was his estranged father, but no—logan beelines straight for the hostas.
well. okay. dee trails after him, meandering vaguely around the greenhouse. logan’s route seems to make sense to him, and only him, but he pokes his nose close to each plant, adjusting his glasses on his nose as he crouches to examine the soil, the roots; if dee was walking into this situation with no prior context, he’d think perhaps that logan was an enterprising botanist who had just gained entry to a highly regarded greenhouse.
but logan is just in the greenhouse of an old lady with memory problems, who he did not know was an old lady with memory problems until she repeatedly referred to him by his father’s name.
and so dee follows as logan examines fauna, and flora, and the goddamn soil. everytime logan hums with interest, dee thinks it’s a precursor to the beginning of this conversation, but no, he’s just humming at the plants. the plants. they’re plants, his grandmother’s plants, so he’s used to his grandmother being very fond of them and rambling about them even if he’s mostly indifferent about them, most of his emotion toward plants being if it makes granmè happy. the key word in that sentence is granmè. he does not particularly care if these plants make logan happy. he cares what logan will say about his grandmother.
they’ve looped three-quarters of the way around the greenhouse by the time dee’s patience runs out.
“well?!” and it tears out of him in a kind of snarl. logan, from where he’s crouched beside the lilies, blinks at him, his fingers resting on the arm of his glasses, as if he’s about to adjust them again.
“what?”
“what,” dee repeats, then, “what?!” and before he can even think about it, he has his bowler hat in one hand, thwacking logan over the head with it.
“ow!” logan says, clearly more out of the surprise of being thwacked when he wasn’t expecting it. that, or logan is a big baby, dee didn’t even swing that hard.
“what,” dee repeats, jamming his hat over his head again before logan can see any semblance of hat hair, “what, are you kidding me, sanders, of all the times to go quiet when you clearly have questions, you choose now?! say something!”
logan blinks at him, before he says, very slowly, “about…”
“my grandmother,” dee snaps.
“ah,” logan says, then, almost like he’s reciting something for his latin class, “i am… sorry that she is ill, and i respect your privacy during this time?”
dee actually leans forward because of the force of the Look he is giving logan.
“you know i’m bad at this kind of thing,” he says defensively. “what do you expect me to say?”
“i don’t—!” dee says, and nearly throws up his hands, but he is not allowing himself to get that carried away. “i expect you to say something! not just wander around the greenhouse and let me wait and see if you say something stupid!”
logan looks at him, and says, “was that insensitive of me?”
dee’s eyes must look close to popping out of his head, because logan’s hands are already rising to protect the crown of his head, like he expects dee to hit him with his hat again.
“do you,” he says, and gives dee a strange look, “do you want to talk about it?”
“not particularly!”
“that’s what i thought!” logan says. “i assumed the prior agreement of you wanting to speak to me about anything that particularly affects you would take precedence—”
agreement, dee mouths, and mentally backtracks, until—
“my parents wanting to out me and you coming up with this whole debutante plot and my grandmother having dementia are two different categories!”
“i didn’t think that a statement like ‘if you want to talk about it, i am here’ needed categorization!”
“the previously agreed upon ‘it’ was specifically about my parents’ plot to out me by way of american daughters of the revolution!” dee says, near-hysterical.
“okay!” logan says, “okay, fine, i put forward the terms of that particular definition of ‘it’ being broadened to anything particularly troublesome in your life and wait on your acceptance, or your proposal on how exactly to renegotiate ‘it’, does that help?”
dee stares at him, jaw hanging open, and says, “there is no way that you are an actual person, are you serious?!”
“i don’t know what you want from me,” logan says, near-mournful, and the absolute absurdity of the situation sinks in enough that dee starts laughing.
his parents want to very publicly out him without his consent, his grandmother has dementia that will only get worse and worse and it will only be a matter of time before his parents realize what is happening and send her into a nursing home and force him to move back in with them, the household staff who are the closest people he had previously considered friends have no choice but increase their focuses on spying on him for his parents in order to distract them from noticing anything wrong with granmè, or else risk unemployment, and logan is here talking about renegotiations like they’re on a legal team, and talking sure as shit isn’t an option, so dee can’t do anything but laugh.
“christ,” he says, and half-crumples, half-slides to the ground beside logan, who looks very bemused. “putain de merde, sanders.”
“i’m assuming that’s impolite,” logan says primly, and dee snorts.
“yeah,” dee says, in the same tone would say duh. “yeah, impolite, let’s go with that, shall we?”
logan pauses, for a few seconds, as if allowing dee to get his bearings, before he says "dementia?" with a tone of curiosity that has dee swiveling his head to glower at him.
"sorry," logan says, not sounding particularly sorry.
"journalist habit," dee mutters, beating logan to the punch for his own excuse.
"yes."
they sit in silence for a little longer.
"i didn't know she knows that particular side of the family," logan says. "the haydens, i mean."
"oh, yes," dee says absently. "we probably lunch with them about twice a year, sometimes more—less now, though, now that they've moved away."
"huh," logan says, then, "what are they like?"
"what, you don't know?" dee says, glancing at him.
"not particularly," logan says. "i've only met them three times, and considering i was still in the hospital post-birth for one of them and was learning how to crawl for the other—"
"huh," dee echoes.
how weird it must be for logan, to hear that dee's had more regular interactions with his grandparents. both sets, probably; he would have remembered if logan had gotten dragged into various family gatherings the way he has.
"they," logan says, purses his lips, and says, "the haydens were particularly transphobic."
"yeah, well," dee says. "that doesn't surprise me."
"homophobic too," logan says, and he glances at his hands before he looks sideways at dee. "deviant was the exact word used in my presence. i'm assuming there was more, but dad kicked me out of the room before i could hear anything else."
dee rolls around various replies in his mouth. he could offer sympathy, or something equally socially accepted and something dee would have no problem letting roll off his tongue like a well-rehearsed monologue.
but.
he would tell all of those monologues to people who don't know that he's trans, that have never been to either of his houses, that have never listened to him spin a lie for half an hour and not be mad about it. he would tell all of these monologues to someone who didn't know that his grandmother has alzheimer's.
so dee doesn't offer a monologue. he offers something that he assumes logan might appreciate, something he'd recognize in a fellow colleague: curiosity.
"which dad?" dee asks. "patton or—"
"patton," logan says, cutting him off. "christopher walked me out, though, to make sure i actually stayed out."
another pause. it seems like curiosity hasn't been the outright wrong move, so dee strives for more questions.
"are you close?" dee says. "with christopher. i've only met him a couple times."
logan's mouth twists downward at the edges.
"i don't suppose you'd be willing to offer definitive parameters for close, would you?"
"no, not really," dee says. "closeness is subjective."
logan shrugs a shoulder. he looks almost uncomfortable.
"what?" dee says, interest now piqued—because if he didn't know any better, he'd say logan looked guilty.
"i," logan says carefully, "might have blackmailed him."
"you what," dee says, turning to face logan head-on, not even bothering to hide his shock. or his delight. he doesn't bother hiding that either.
"after the visit last fall, he," and the corners of his mouth twist down even further. "well, that doesn't matter anymore. anyway, i dug up as much of his public financial and legal records that i possibly could and made him a deal that i'd extend equal efforts in getting to know him as he would getting to know me. we have a standing weekly phone call now."
"you blackmailed him?" dee says gleefully.
"with public information," logan says huffily. "it's not like i hired a private investigator or anything—"
"nuh-uh, nope, you used the word blackmail," dee says merrily. "you don't even have to justify it with saying where you got the information, you still used information you dug up on him to coerce him into a deal. that is the textbook definition of blackmail."
"i don't know if it's the textbook definition—"
"nope!" dee says. "nope, i'm not listening to your semantics. you blackmailed someone."
"you don't need to sound so thrilled about it," logan grumbles.
"are you kidding?" dee demands. "this is by far one of the most interesting things i've ever heard about you. please tell me there's more misbehavior like this in your past—no, no, wait! i'll figure it out myself!"
"good luck with that," logan says. and then, almost randomly, "everyone says i look like him."
dee stays quiet—give the interviewee time to consider their answer, if it's short, mel had lectured once. always leave a couple of seconds for them to think about if they want to add on to their answer before you move to an entirely different question.
"i mean," logan says, and runs a hand through his hair. "other than this, i don't particularly understand why. i pretty clearly favor my dad—ugh, patton, i favor patton, this is the problem with two dads—but everyone says i look like christopher. my grandparents—both sides—their friends, a couple teachers. it's usually rather frustrating, and though i can't prove it, i have a feeling it's somewhat rooted in transphobia, for most of those friends."
he pauses a beat, as if understanding where he's going with this particular line of conversation. dee suddenly feels a lot less excited about the potential for uncovering any more of logan's past misconduct.
"but," logan says. "it, ah. it makes more sense, if your grandmother has more recently had contact with that particular side of my family—"
"don't," dee says, and the exhaustion in his voice almost stuns him.
"don't what?"
"don't," dee says, and flaps a hand. "don't make excuses for her. she has alzheimer's, she's not stupid. everyone's patronizing her now and i hate it, even though i find myself doing it sometimes, it's like everyone's scared that they'll somehow catch the alzheimer's if they don't talk to her like she's a toddler."
and now logan's the one who's quiet, just for a little bit, like he's strategizing how to carry out the rest of the interview.
except, dee thinks, this isn't an interview. this is a conversation. this is that talking thing that logan offered so readily, back when dee had come out, back before logan came up with this whole absurd debutante plan.
it's just—difficult. to consider turning this strategizing, conniving part of his brain off. he isn't sure if he ever has, ever since he was first notified it was there in the first place. why would he turn this piece of himself off when it protected him, when it kept him aloof and above it all and safe to conduct himself in the way that felt most true to him? if it took lying and manipulating along the way, so be it. he has no patience for attempts at moralizing the way he lives his life. immanuel kant was a fucking moron who would have gotten himself and his friend killed because he decided his perfect duty was to always tell the truth. what was the point of something like truth if it hurt you? if it put you in danger?
it's not even a choice.
or, at least. it has never been a choice. because logan is no murderer at the door, or machiavelli-wannabe gossip, or high-society rich person who held so much more power than one could even think of through backdoor deals and secret donations, who had adopted a poor orphan from haiti because it might look good as an accessory, and people would think them charitable, and they would barely even thinking about that poor orphan from haiti growing into their own person with pesky, inconvenient things like wants and needs and opinions.
telling the truth would logan would be... telling the truth to logan. logan, who lived in a tiny, pleasantville knockoff town with things like dance marathons and punnily-named cat-themed stores. logan, who had once blackmailed his own father in order to obtain a standing weekly phone call. logan, who had a trans dad, and who had a boyfriend that he had brought to the school dance, and danced with him, and kissed him, and it didn't even occur to him to care who might see, who might disapprove.
logan, who was once homeless and penniless, and who had extended various sources of information that dee had in his hands, ready to drop into the public eye at any given moment.
logan, who had just sat and talked about citizen kane with him and didn't catch onto three seasons worth of downton abbey but immediately clocked a reference to wallis simpson. logan, who had looked helplessly confused at the sight of fancy water and finger sandwiches and afternoon tea.
logan, who might think that they are friends.
it might become more of a choice then, dee thinks.
so when logan asks, very quietly, "how long have you known that she's sick?" it only takes dee swallowing down the saliva rising in his throat to be able to answer.
"she was diagnosed about three and a half months ago," he says. "but i've known something's wrong for a lot longer than that."
logan swallows, too, and dips his head in a brief nod, as if to show he's absorbed the information.
"i'm sorry," he says.
dee could say any number of things: she could live as long as twenty years after her diagnosis, but it's more commonly four to eight years. or one day she's going to forget who i am and i am absolutely terrified. or when my parents catch on they're going to send her away to a nursing home, and i won't be able to live here anymore, and i'll go crazy if i have to stay in that house for too long, their screaming and shouting will drive me crazy. or you don't even know the half of it, the household staff that you probably think are so nice and who practically raised me have no choice but to spy on every little thing i do because otherwise they'll get fired.
but for as much as dee can briefly turn off that part of his mind, he cannot turn it off all at once. there is no way he's opening the floodgates of information like that. they might be friends, but dee isn't in hysterics. he can control himself. he can control this.
"yeah," dee says, and tips back his head to look up at the ceiling; half of it is glass, leading up to where it joins the rest of the house. the sky is bleak and black tonight, with no moon or stars in sight. "yeah, me too."
⁂
the chauffeur closes the door behind logan, and logan has to fight the urge to jump, even though the chauffeur was also holding the door open for logan to get into the car in the first place.
he has to shake himself before he turns to look at the front door of the lavandelands; dee is standing outside, letting the light spill out of the house and backlight him enough that logan can see him leaning against one of the columns, one arm casually wrapped around his stomach. his bowler hat overcasts his eyes.
"your address, sir?" the chauffeur says, and logan has to fight the urge not to jump again. he tells the chauffeur the address to virgil's, anyways, and turns his head to look at dee again.
haltingly, he lifts his hand and waves, just a little bit awkward. dee's shadowed form doesn't move.
there's a brief moment where logan's left with his hand raised in the air, and he cringes to himself ever so slightly before he starts to lower it.
but then, dee lifts a gloved hand, and tosses logan a lazy, three-fingered salute off his bowling cap, and logan tries to smile a little bit. he can't quite manage it, but he's pretty sure the chauffeur isn't judging him for not looking pleasant enough, as the chauffeur’s a bit busy pulling the car into a neat, three-pointed turn, before beginning to drive away.
logan glances over his shoulder, just enough to see dee, shoulders slightly slumped, re-enter the house. logan lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding and redirects his attention to his phone, which he's mostly been neglecting this entire bizarre sojourn at dee's.
he takes enough time to text his dad and virgil that he'll be dropped off at virgil's, so he can pick up a study snack before he heads back to their house, and reassures his dad that he doesn't have to wait up for him or anything.
he reads a text from roman—a brief complaint about a girl in his dance class, not one of the ones he teaches but the class he actually takes, and logan sends a response that he hopes sounds like the proper, thoughtful response to a mostly inconsequential venting message from his boyfriend.
and then he sits and stares at his homescreen, still that selfie of roman, his dad, and virgil that they took last fall, when he was staying at his grandparents, before everything with thanksgiving and patton's pneumonia had rather tidily messed that week up.
because he has his dad, and his other dad, and virgil, who consists as a dad figure, and he has ms. prince, in her way, and he has roman, a wonderful supportive boyfriend who he has always been able to talk to throughout most of his life. he has rudy, even if he has never particularly leaned on rudy as a means of support. he has maria, and meredith and mark, and his host of cousins from the danes side of the family. he has his grandparents in their own strange ways, even if their relationship prior to this school year would best be described as stilted. he has friends from sideshire high and his teachers and mentors that he left there.
dee has practically no one.
it seems so obvious, looking back at the start of the school year, how dee had seemed so desperate to cling to his academic superiority over everyone in the grade, because that's what he has. he has an ill grandmother, and exceptional grades, and three snakes. he has a former nanny and the rest of a household staff who seem more preoccupied with his grandmother's care. he has his secretive stance in the chilton social ladder, but he didn't have friends.
logan worries his lip between his teeth. he is incredibly ill-equipped to handle this kind of situation. honestly, he's probably fortunate he only escaped with dee hitting him with his bowler hat; anyone who attempted to have an emotion-centric conversation with logan knew that he wasn't exactly the ideal person to talk to. that's never been his forte.
it has always been his dad's. his dad, who dee had seemed fascinated with, who certainly had a certain level of similarity in their life experiences. and though logan, of course, would never betray confidences...
he could, perhaps, offer some of his vast support system for dee to partake in. leave the choice to him, of course, but. but at least logan would have tried.
and so logan takes a breath, and sends out a text.
Logan Sanders: Dad, would it be all right if I asked Dee sleep over the night of the Culture Day you're planning with Ms. Prince?
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