Archive of Our Own

The first thing that Logico thought when he realized what that feeling was, was that Irratino would be great at this sort of thing.

Most things in life make sense. Most things in life are logical. He could count on one hand the things that couldn’t be organized and explained with grids. With things like that he went to Irratino. The things in Logico’s life that didn’t make sense were as follows: The Occult, the Hollywood film industry, and, as he had just realized, love. And unfortunately he couldn’t go to Irratino for answers about love. Not this love at least.

But it was an awful feeling not understanding something. He didn’t know what to do about love. This love that buried its way into his heart, ripping at his chest. Love that fell like snow over his soul (Logico never thought he would ever speak of his soul. That was another thing to go on the list of things that didn’t make sense). And so the only logical answer to this problem was to categorize it another way. A more, esoteric way. He had seen Irratino do plenty of esoteric forms of deduction, this shouldn’t be too difficult at all.

Method one: Marot

Logico had had his marot read plenty of times. However, this did not mean that he understood what any of the cards meant. He tried to understand them of course, but it seemed to him that the meaning had no connection to what was on the card. 

Irratino had gotten him a marot deck for his birthday, in the hopes that he would learn how to use them. Today would be the first time Logico has opened them with the intention to gain knowledge from higher powers. The only other time he had opened them was to flip through the cards and look at each one, trying to understand what Irratino saw in them.

He sat at his desk in his tiny apartment. Usually the space would be covered in neat piles of papers and grids, but he had cleared it off and lit a candle like how Irratino often did. Clearing the energy or something like that. 

The first card he drew was Miss Saffron. Logico had asked for an instruction booklet when he first got the deck from Irratino, but Irratino had only shaken his head in that floaty way he always did.

“The cards don’t have a defined meaning, Starlight, they mean whatever you feel they mean. You have to learn to trust the vibe.”

This advice didn’t help Logico. Something in him refused to connect with ‘the vibe.’ But, Logico thought, Miss Saffron was the type to change her mind easily. Often when she was locked up in jail, Logico would receive letters from her saying how she decided against murdering someone today. Logico wasn’t very proud of her, despite what she clearly wanted. So, Miss Saffron in some way must indicate change. Or maybe she represented stupidity, or maybe extreme intelligence. Logico could never tell.

Maybe this was ‘the vibe’ that Irratino was always talking about. It was very exciting finally being able to access it.

The next card was the dowsing rod. Weapons symbolized a choice, according to Irratino. And, shockingly, the choice it represented wasn’t always the choice to murder or not. Dowsing rods, in a non murder context, are items that you follow. He quite liked them in that way. They’re direct, they tell you where to go and you go there. Like a GPS. Logico also liked his GPS. But he knew that marot would never speak of something so simple and direct as a GPS. There must be something else he should follow. He couldn’t for the life of him think what that could be.

The last card in his reading almost made him believe in the marot’s abilities for a moment. He didn’t know what the Observatory meant as a card, but he knew how he felt when he saw it (is that what ‘ the vibe’ is? He would have to ask Irratino). The first time he had seen the observatory in person, before he had ever met Irratino, it struck him as the kind of place that one might like to go for a romantic evening. And, once he did meet Irratino, that kind of romantic evening became a regular thought. Logico loved everything about the stars. Mostly because Irratino also did. Logico loved the way Irratino would look up at the night sky and easily draw meaning from the beautiful mess of lights. After Irratino’s apparent death at the lighthouse (and before his dramatic return), Logico would sometimes take a break from his revenge quest to look up at the stars. They would twinkle a message in the only code that he had never learned to decipher. A code that only his closest friend could understand.

Suddenly, when Logico looked around his apartment, it felt quite empty. 

The phone rang once before Irratino picked up.

“Logico! What’s up?” 

“Oh, nothing really, I just wanted to ask how your day was,” Logico responded, leaning back in his chair.

Logico spent the rest of his night on the phone with Irratino. He would have to wait until tomorrow to attempt the next method. 

Method two: Palm reading

Palm reading may be the only thing Logico understood how to do less than marot. It was impossible to ever learn how to palm read when Irratino was the one trying to teach him. Logico was always distracted from the words that Irratino was saying, and instead focused much more on Irratino’s hand in his. How Irratino would linger for a moment each time, staying with their hands together after the reading had ended. Logico wished he didn’t have to do this palm reading himself.

He didn’t often look at his hands. Sometimes they felt more like a tool than an extension of the body, another part of his puzzle. They were more pencil than flesh. Irratino was always more of a colorful person than him. Irratino decorated his hands with rings and nail polish. Logico flipped over his hands to see the backside. Some chips of blue still remained on his nails. Irratino had told him that was his color, and insisted that he wear it. He did have to admit, the color suited him. 

On his palms (this is still a palm reading) the lines stretched across in the way he assumed they did on all palms. Honestly, he couldn’t find anything on his hands that stood out other than the chips of nail polish. 

Logico dug through the cabinet in his bathroom looking for that bottle of nail polish. He found it near the back, almost entirely full. 

When Logico sat back down an hour later to look at his hands again, his nails were blue. 

He decided that it would be cheating to look up how he was meant to be doing this. It would go against everything the Irratino had been telling him, about how there's no right way to commune with the spirits. This, Logico thought, implied that there were only wrong ways, but Irratino denied that to be the case. There are no right or wrong ways, all ways are both good and bad in equal amounts.

And so, he made a list in his head of all the things he could tell from looking at his palms. 

1. Now that it was winter, he needed to start using some sort of hand lotion again
2. Looking at where the lines in his palms were, he could tell that he folded his hands in mostly symmetrical ways
3. His hands were quite bare, besides from the nail polish (but that’s not on his palms)
4. He might look good in a ring
5. He should consider asking Irratino for a ring

Method three: Bibliomancy

Logico looked through the bookshelves in the detective club in search of a book that would work for what he was attempting. He didn’t necessarily know what would make a book work for this, but he assumed it could be practically anything as long as he felt drawn to it.

The first book that he felt drawn to was one of his favorites, which probably explained why he was drawn to it. “The Murder of A School Teacher”, by Dame Obsidian of course. It was about this high school where Lady Blackstone had begun working as an English teacher. In it, another teacher at the school had died and she needed to solve the mystery. In this one she was aided (or hindered in the case of one of them) by two of the boys who went to the school, Tim and Carlos. Tim reminded Logico a lot of himself when he was in highschool, but Carlos was very pretentious, someone you wouldn’t want to be around. 

Logico picked up the book and went to sit down in a chair. He closed his eyes and flipped to a random page and put his finger to a word. When he opened his eyes, he saw that it was the word tell . 

He did the same thing again. Carlos . At this point Logico decided that this method would not work, since he did not know anyone named Carlos and so would not be able to tell Carlos anything. But he continued anyway, since he had nothing else to do.

You. love. him.

Since this was the end of a sentence, Logico closed the book. He thought for a moment about all the people he’s ever met, but he could not think of a single person named Carlos. Nor did he know anyone who was like the character Carlos. Carlos (the book character) was obnoxious, always running off to fight pretend monsters and bragging to people about how much better his life was than theirs. Tim liked Carlos, the two were dating, or at least heavily implied to be. It was sort of an opposites attract thing, with Tim being all about solving mysteries and Carlos being all about fighting monsters. Very unrealistic.

If it had said Irratino instead of Carlos, then at least it would make a little bit of sense, but Irratino was not in this book as it was a work of fiction.

And so, Logico decided that this was another method that was all made up. That was unfortunate.

Method four: Interpreting dreams

Logico had a lot of dreams about Irratino. They involved plenty of things, but this particular one involved a coffee shop. The two of them sat opposite each other in a booth. Irratino had a newspaper in front of him (which was simultaneously a regular newspaper and a deck of Marot cards).

When Logico looked out the window, he saw a wasteland. 

The barista brought them both drinks, a hot chocolate for Logico and a coffee for Irratino. 

“Why do you always get coffee?” Logico asked.

“I have to stay awake, Starlight. The loop won’t stop if you fall asleep too soon.”

Logico understood what this meant. 

The barista called his name, as an indication that it was time to pay the check.

He walked to where the barista was and discovered the hedge maze from the Institute. He followed it for a while, still in search of the check. Night fell around him, and so Logico gave up on paying. When he returned to his seat, Irratino was still sipping on his coffee.

“Do you need me to pay for the check?” Irratino asked. Logico shook his head.

“I couldn’t figure out how to get through the maze,” he said.

"Well then,” Irratino responded, “We don’t have to pay if we don’t have the check.”

He stood up and held out his hand to help Logico up. Logico took it.

Irratino linked his and Logicos arms together as they walked out.

“You know I love you, Starlight?”

Logico only nodded.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Logico woke up at six am and stared at the ceiling. It was an hour before he got up and began his day. He thought that there might be some symbolism in that dream. The maze could represent a winding and difficult journey. The real maze, the one designed by Escher, was practically impossible to get out of. Irratino had never let Logico into it, and once he admitted that he himself did not confidently know how to traverse it. Maybe the coffee shop represented comfort, he had always liked coffee shops. And Irratino’s declaration of love could represent the friendship that Irratino felt for Logico. That one was a long shot, but Logico didn’t want to think about what that part actually represented. It was too early in the morning.

However, there was one thing he knew for sure that this dream was telling him.

Method five: Reading coffee grounds

Irratino arrived at the coffee shop exactly on time. Logico, however, arrived ten minutes late.

“Logico! I was starting to think you weren’t going to show!” Irratino said, smiling. Logico sat down across from him and sighed.

“There was a murder on the way, the Amazing Aureolin killed a petshop owner.” Logico said in apology.

“Oh I hope the animals are all okay,” Irratino replied, furrowing his eyebrows and taking a sip of the latte that sat in front of him.

“All the animals are fine, I made sure of it.”

Logico ordered himself a coffee and the two of them had another perfect conversation that seemed to last both forever and no time at all. 

Logico considered never telling Irratino that he was in love. It would be easier that way, it was logical that way. The friendship would stay the same, and he would always be able to have this. If he confessed, then it could either go very well, or very poorly, and those odds were not ones that Logico wanted to rely on. This distance was fine. From across a table he could see Irratino’s smile, the way he would absentmindedly twist his hair. And, in his lesser moments, Logico thought that getting closer than this distance would destroy him. 

“You painted your nails!” Irratino exclaimed, taking Logico’s hand into his own to examine them closer.

Logico tried to ignore that he was most certainly blushing.

“I found the polish you gave me. I thought it looked nice last time,” he explained.

“It’s beautiful! Wow, I have great taste in color,” Irratino said, still looking at the blue.

“Well don’t flatter yourself too much,” Logico laughed.

“Hey if you were the one to pick out this color for me then I would be flattering you just as much as I'm flattering myself,” Irratino said, dropping Logico’s hand and taking a sip of his coffee. Logico rolled his eyes.

The coffee in front of him slowly depleted. At the bottom of the mug, he could see some coffee grounds. He thought that it might be risky to attempt another method right now, but looking up he could tell that Irratino wasn’t watching him very closely. Instead, he was talking about something that Numerologist Night had done the other day, some sort of discovery. A new number, maybe. Logico looked back down at his mug and took a final sip of coffee, revealing the rest of the grounds.

In what Logico would consider a not so subtle message, the coffee grounds formed the shape of a heart.

The Solution 

Hours later, when the two of them finally left the café, Irratino offered to drive Logico home. It would be nicer than public transport, he had said. Logico couldn’t argue with that. 

Throughout the car ride home Logico couldn’t hear Irratino’s words over the sound of his thoughts. When he was dropped off at his building, he was only able to stand outside the door, running his hands up and down his arms. He was like this for a good minute, standing in the cold while Irratino waited to leave. 

“Hey Starlight, are you okay?” Irratino asked after some time, his head tilted in worry. 

“Come inside the apartment with me,” Logico said in response. It wasn’t a very smart decision, not a very logical one. But what was the point of trying to be esoteric if in the end he only followed the logic. 

Slowly, Irratino exited the car. He walked up to Logico and placed a hand on his back, leading him into the building.

The apartment was warm, which helped Logico stop tensing up. At least, enough to throw his coat onto a coat rack and begin to pace. Irratino put his coat onto the next hook on the rack and sat down on the couch.

“Logico, I’m worried about you. You’re acting weird,” Irratino said, his voice steady.

Logico stopped pacing and turned to look at Irratino.

“How much do you trust in your methods?” He asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, your marot and your voices you hear in the waves, how much do you believe in that?”

“I believe in that the exact same as you believe in the grids, why?”

Logico walked up to the couch and sat down next to Irratino.

“I’ve been trying out some of your methods,” Logico began to explain.

“Oh?” Irratino’s face brightened, “What did you learn?”

“I think,” Logico paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts, “I think I have to tell you something.”

“Well, I’m sure it can’t be that difficult to tell me,” Irratino said, tucking a piece of hair behind his ear. 

“You would think that,” Logico said, chuckling, “It’s just that I’m worried how you’ll react.”

“Try me”

Everything was silent for a moment.

“Do you like me?” Logico asked in an attempt at testing the waters.

Irratino laughed, “Logico, of course I like you, you’re my best friend.”

Logico signed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He supposed there was no way to test the waters here. 

“Look, I’ve known you for a while now, and all the signs or whatever you call them are telling me that I need to say this, so here I go. I have feelings for you, romantic ones, and they aren’t going away. I noticed them first when I thought you had died but they were probably there for a while before. And recently, well I think that I’m in love with you.”

Irratino didn’t respond.

“And you don’t have to lie and tell me you feel the same if you don’t,” Logico continued, “But please just turn me down quickly. And let us still be friends tomorrow?” 

Irratino had a look in his annoyingly emerald eyes that Logico couldn’t decipher. He never liked to be reminded of how terrible he was at reading emotion, but now was an especially bad time. 

And then a smile slowly began to creep onto Irratino’s face. And then he started to laugh. Logico furrowed his brow in confusion. This was not how it was supposed to go.

“What,” he said, trying to stop his hands from shaking, “is this funny? I’m baring my heart to you, what could possibly be funny about that?”

Irratino took a deep breath and stopped laughing, but his grin was still there. He placed his hands on Logico’s shoulders.

“Logico,” He stifled another laugh, “has anyone ever told you just how incredibly stupid you are?”

“What do you mean stupid?”

“I mean you’re stupid! Of course I have feelings for you, I thought you were going to tell me to stop being so obvious about it!” 

“So, you like me too?” It was a bad question, and Logico knew it, but there was nothing else he could think of to say.

Instead of replying with any words, Irratino moved his hands from Logico’s shoulders to the sides of his face and leaned forward to kiss him. It was so sudden that Logico didn’t have a chance to process what was happening until it was over. Irratino looked into his eyes and smiled.

“Does it seem like I like you too?”

Logico’s heart was beating so fast that for a moment he thought he needed to call an ambulance. But as he looked into Irratino’s eyes, he realized that what he really needed was to kiss him again. And so he did. Irratino broke away and pressed their foreheads together.

“You know I love you, Starlight?”

Logico only nodded.