#im gonna put all the ships and triggers and everything in the masterpost but not the individual chapters because they dont really apply

[virmillion]

I’ll Bring You the Moon - T minus 60 seconds

Masterpost - Previous Chapter [this is the first chapter] - Next Chapter - ao3

Words: 3,492

“Yikes, already dipping out for the day?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Well, hey, at least you finished all the major work for the week, right? Now you just get to relax on breaks.”

“That’s what you think.” Logan grins as he squeezes into the stairwell, nodding his thanks as one of the other interns holds the door open for him. She hefts her messenger bag higher on her shoulders before stooping to grab something off the floor and hand it to Logan.

“Butterfingers.”

“Thanks, Almond Joy.” Logan tilts his head as she slides the pen behind his ear, where it’s rarely obedient enough to stay. “It was Joy, right?”

“Right.” Joy lets the door slip shut as Logan begins his descent, still cocking his head to the side in hopes that the pen won’t fall again.

Five flights of stairs and two near-fumbles with the stack of papers in his arms later, Logan averts his gaze as he strolls through the front door. Lingering just outside the entrance is one of his bosses, holding a cup of coffee and a travel thermos of oatmeal. Logan stares at his shoes as the warm spring air smacks him in the face like a soggy paper towel, hoping against hope that his boss won’t—

Nope. “Hey, Lucas, can you hang back a sec?” To be fair, it wasn’t Mx. Oatmeal calling him, but Logan holds in a groan anyway. He begrudgingly turns to see another of the fifth floor interns—Cassidy, if memory serves him correctly—rushing for the exit and clutching a mess of folders to her chest. The blue and red symbols decorating the logo on her cap look frayed enough to fall right off. “Oh, I’m so glad I caught you! Here, they wanted us to do these reports, too,” Cassidy says, fanning out her burden flat until her eyes come to rest on a thick manila folder. She holds it out to Logan, continuing, “I heard you were set to be done early today, but I wanted to make sure you weren’t walking in to a master disaster of aluminum and plaster tomorrow because they decided to wait until the last minute.”

As a floormate of hers, Logan has long since grown used to the haphazard, uh, cadence with which Cassidy talks. He barely lifts an eyebrow, merely thumbing through some of his new papers and scrunching his nose to adjust his glasses. His heart comes incredibly close to tottering right off the cliff it calls home when he sees the bright red seal obscuring the last few pages. Classified information enclosed—NASA clearance level eight.

“Ah, Cassidy?” Logan says, squinting at the bold words and praying she hasn’t left yet. “Which ‘they’ are we talking about when we say we’re waiting until the last minute?” When she hesitates to answer, Logan glances up. Saying the gleam in her eye is disorienting would be an understatement.

“Oh, you know, only the tippity toppitiest, higher uppitiest ‘they’ we have. Higher than Mx. Oatmeal, actually. Higher than Katie-Lee, too, I think. We’re not even supposed to discuss the contents of our own folders with each other, that’s how secret it is. Why, what’s in yours?”

“I feel like you kind of missed the whole thing you just said about these folders being secret,” Logan says, snapping his folder shut and placing it in the middle of his already oversized stack. “Was that it?”

“Yup!” Cassidy spins on her heel and walks back in through the out door, shuffling her feet so she doesn’t cross paths with Mx. Oatmeal. Logan waits until she disappears into the elevator and the lobby appears silent before turning to leave again.

“Well, I can’t exactly take this straight home,” Logan mumbles to himself. Work life separate from home life, and all that fun stuff. “Maybe to a cafe? No, too loud, too public. A bookstore’s probably too shady to walk into, dressed for work like this.” Realizing he’s blocking both the exit and the ramp from the sidewalk to the street as he currently stands, Logan’s feet carry him to the right, pacing alongside the bike lane as he continues muttering and arguing with himself.

Before he can win and lose at his own squabble that everyone occupying the world around him is politely pretending not to notice, Logan’s feet deposit him in front of a long, wide, concrete staircase. Crowning the top is a set of sleek marble pillars, which frame a pair of gleaming gold and umber doors. Logan shrugs and starts climbing.

Just inside the doors—cool to the touch and smooth along the center from how many people handle them, if anyone’s keeping track—are a few white foldout tables, with a set of downdressed security guards to match. While the other three cast disinterested looks at Logan before focusing back on their pebbly table, one leaps to his feet and bounds over to Logan—that is, if a five foot man with wrists thick enough to wear headbands as bracelets can bound. The smile on his face is a stunning contrast to the bulky biceps rippling beneath the strict set of a pressed blue button-up and khakis.

“Visitor, student, or lost?” he asks. His voice sounds like someone tried to cut construction paper with safety scissors drenched in glue and glitter. But, like, in a good way. A youthful glow sort of voice, if that makes sense. Logan doesn’t get paid enough to be this observant at his internship, but at least it’s a decent form of entertainment.

“Sorry, I don’t—” Logan begins, but he can barely get the words out before the guard’s eyes drop to his stack of papers.

“Oh, ten dollars says you’re from Otalini High. Uniforms and a heavy workload, am I right?” The guard bends down to brace his hands on his knees, looking up and down at Logan’s pile. “Or maybe Allognathini, I hear there’s a major crackdown on physical evidence this year. Finals, am I right?”

Logan blinks.

“Nah, go with your gut,” the guard continues. His companions looks incredibly bored, but when Logan glances at them for a daring rescue, they make themselves look incredibly busy counting the tiles along the vaulted ceiling. “Anyhoodle, you got your student ID so I can sign you in?”

“I, um.” Logan hesitates, not sure how to dash this guard’s dreams of correctly guessing his high school. Especially when Logan graduated years ago.

“Gotcha, gotcha. Hands too full, am I right?” The guard scrabbles for a pen and paper from one of the tables. “How about I just write your ID number, and you can get back to me when you sign out?”

Logan decides bluntness is best. “I’m not a student.”

The guard freezes. “Are you sure you aren’t a student?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Really? Wow. Really?”

Logan does not particularly appreciate this guy’s incredulous tone. “Really. I’m just an intern at an office nearby, and I didn’t want to take my work home.”

“Got any ID to prove that?”

“No, but I’ve got this badge with my name and building clearance, and twenty dollars for a day pass to come in here.” Logan tilts his left shoulder forward, displaying the name badge.

“Oh, that’s not necessary—it’s free admission on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” Logan is doing his best not to be exasperated at the apparently unnecessary delay. He does not succeed. The guard claps Logan on the back with a laugh, watching him struggle to keep his papers in order. “If y’ever need anything, just holler. Name’s Patton, but I bet you knew that.” Logan bites his tongue to keep from asking how he could have possibly known that.

As his mind traces back over the stern red warning packed in his stack of papers and folders and, apparently, top secret developments, Logan absently hugs his arms closer to his chest. He veers left for what looks to be an abstract art exhibit, mercifully lacking in attendees. The expansive tiled room is dotted every few yards with an oversized (probably fake) palm tree, around which are plush red benches. Logan sits on the bench smack in the center of the room, hoping most people’s instincts to hug the walls will benefit him here. He sets the stack at his side and slips out a few pages, hiding the manila folder between plain, unassuming blue ones. Maintaining a cool nonchalance, he casts his eyes at a new painting every so often, pretending to take notes on them in the manila folder. He wonders whether he looks like a fool to be doing this, but ultimately decides he doesn’t care. At least, not until a gaggle of kids—clearly high school students—sweeps in.

Logan lowers the folder to his lap, pretending to deeply consider the mess of squares (with one disobedient circle, of course) on a canvas a few feet away from the storm of newcomers. A swarm of teens in deep maroon and navy blue, with the occasional plaid skirt or preppy blazer tossed in for flavor, stands in an obstructive huddle blocking the entrance. Some of the kids have their phones out and are typing furiously, others scribble on clipboards with pens and highlighters, and still more have their sleeves pushed past their elbows to scrawl along their forearms in sharpie.

At the head of it all is a single person in a dark green cardigan and tattered skinny jeans, waving his arms like a skydiving penguin and somehow commanding the undivided attention of a solid fifteen teenagers. One of the kids raises a pencil in the air—one of those overly expensive, engraved family heirlooms, to be sure—and points the eraser at the painting the guy in the cardigan is blocking. Cardigan Man wags a pair of finger guns at the kid before smacking a hand on the wall beside the painting. He opens his mouth as if to yell something, but only a whisper comes out, whatever it is sending the whole pack of students into a giggling fit. Logan scrunches his nose to adjust his glasses and pointedly stares at a corner of the painting, peeking out just past Cardigan Man’s right shoulder. It looks like a paintbrush sneezed on it. On—on the painting, not on Cardigan Man’s shoulder.

Logan shifts his focus to a different painting, panning his movement ahead a moment before the tour group continues to catch up to him. He finds his eyes drawn to the way the cardigan swishes, bouncing to the rhythm of the guy’s stride. Almost a glide, really, with how smoothly he moves. His head hardly bounces between his steps. Logan wonders whether he doesn’t have some dance experience under those heels that barely touch the ground.

“Group Theta of Otalini Prep, you are late for your report time to the lobby,” a cold voice announces from an outdated set of speakers mounted along the walls. “Proceed to the entrance doors immediately. Any delay in arrival will result in a ten percent dock to your final grade.” A panic flies through the group as they pocket their phones, clip their pens to their clipboards, and roll down their sleeves to hide the notes inked on their skin. They scramble for the exit, tossing out farewells and thank you’s to Cardigan Man as they barrel for the unsuspecting security guards. At least Patton will have people whose energies match his own for a while.

Cardigan Man—or Cadmium, as Logan decides he’s going to call him, because that makes so much more sense—rolls his shoulders forward and cracks the kinks in his neck, watching the last of the students race for the lobby. When no more teens appear to be forthcoming, he moves for Logan’s bench, sitting on the opposite side of it from him. Logan slips the manila folder back into his pile of papers, praying it hadn’t been sitting open on his lap that entire time as he feels for the pen Joy slipped behind his ear. Gone, of course, but that’s hardly surprising.

Logan slips a spare pen out of his pocket and tries to inconspicuously toss it across the floor, probably looking incredibly conspicuous as he does so. He scoops his papers under an arm and stands, bending down as he does so to pretend to search for his ‘lost’ pen. Every time he reaches it, he kicks it a few steps further, feigning lighthearted frustration at himself. It rapidly turns to genuine surprise when he walks straight into Cadmium—or, rather, into his legs, which are sprawled out and away from the bench. Logan snatches his pen and drops onto the bench a couple cushions away, staring at the ground and willing his face to stop burning. Oddly enough, Cadmium didn’t seem to notice. Logan pulls out his phone and fumbles around with the chess app, looking at absolutely anything besides Cadmium, who mercifully hasn’t questioned Logan’s blunder.

After what seems like hours, Logan dares a glance to his left and sees Cadmium’s head lolling back on the top of the bench. A peek at his phone reveals that only eleven minutes have passed. Logan decides his phone must be lying, but he looks closer at Cadmium anyway.

His lips are slightly parted, and if it weren’t for his closed eyes and the way his soft breaths are gently buffeting his purple bangs, Cadmium would look for all the world like he was simply admiring the underside of the fake leaves overhead. Logan cranes his own neck, wondering how that could possibly be a comfortable position for sleeping, but his curiosity subsides when he notices the design on Cadmium’s shirt. In a bright tennis ball green—or yellow, if you’re the kind of monster who thinks tennis balls are yellow—and a font that looks like comic sans got itself a two year degree in baking with a concentration in chocolate croissants, it reads ‘tour guide?’ Logan can’t decide whether it’s supposed to mean people are supposed to guide him on tours, ask him for tours, or question the validity of the tours he’s about to guide them on.

Near the entryway where Cadmium had first swept in, dripping in all his green cardigan-clad glory, a huddle of kids in shirts with ‘Allognathini’ scrawled across the front peers around the corner. They survey the room and murmur amongst themselves, several of them pausing to give Logan a once-over. His work clothes probably aren’t helping his whole ‘not a tour guide’ image. He elbows Cadmium on a hunch, looking anywhere but at him when he wakes.

Cadmium jerks up, recoiling from Logan’s touch and sweeping his fading purple bangs out of his face. His eyes lock on Logan’s obvious attempt at excessive nonchalance, then shift to the group of students. As Cadmium stands and rubs the sleep from his eyes, Logan dares another glance at him. Cadmium, of course, chooses that exact moment to turn back, his gaze locking with Logan’s.

Just to be clear, it isn’t love at first sight, so put that out of your mind before anything else. It’s hardly acquaintances at first sight. Cadmium shoots Logan a quick nod of thanks—barely a smile, let alone verbal acknowledgement of the favor—before setting off for the group. He properly musses up his hair as he goes, and Logan finds himself lingering on the army of bracelets and rings peeking out from under the cardigan sleeve. With every step he takes, Cadmium melts deeper into the swagger he had with the earlier tour group—a complete and near-unrecognizable one-eighty from the exhausted (albeit peaceful) face passed out on the bench mere minutes ago.

If you asked Logan why he kept coming back to the art museum after that unplanned first visit, he’d tell you it was because of the calm atmosphere and visually interesting environment. This would be a lie, but it’s still what he would tell you. What he probably would not tell you (the truth, to be clear) is that he’s incredibly interested in seeing the other hundred and seventy nine degrees woven into Cadmium’s cardigan.

But yes, all of this to say that Logan returns to the museum several times, long after completing the workload in his top secret packet, and he almost never says a word to Cadmium. He simply arrives, deals with Patton, and observes the rest. A few failed attempts to cross paths with the tour guide make it increasingly obvious that Cadmium only ever makes an appearance on Tuesdays and Thursdays—free admission days, though Logan is still waiting for the jury to come back on whether that’s a coincidence or not.

More often than not, Logan will actively try to avoid Cadmium (once he’s verified the tour guide is, you know, there ), but apparently his tours span the entire museum, so there’s no escaping the guy. He eventually sheds his pride over the whole thing about eight visits later and tags along on a tour populated by small children with bookish helicopter parents. He makes a point not to join any of the high school tours, though, as that would look more than a little odd, but he admires how differently Cadmium presents information between students getting a grade and people just enjoying a day at a museum. Where students hear all about the artist’s lives and how their upbringing could provide a unique perspective on possible interpretations of the underlying meanings in their work, children tend to get illuminati-style rabbit holes. One of Logan’s favorite pastimes—after finishing any leftover work he didn’t leave at the office, of course—is tracking how many layers Cadmium can go into about each painting. While eight tours isn’t a very big sample to pull from, Cadmium has managed to not repeat any of his conspiracy theories, not even when discussing completely disparate works.

The best rabbit hole Logan has heard so far is as follows: “The tree is green, which is the color of money, the printing of which is directly correlated to inflation, which is also a noun used to discuss blowing up balloons. Bombs also blow up, and bombs are the bob-ombs in super mario bros. I used to play the demos of those games on the display consoles at Target. A target is used in archery, which is a sport. Soccer is also a sport. Soccer is called football in Germany. Germany participated in a war. So did the United States of America, also known by the acronym ‘USA.’ JPEG is also an acronym, which is a manner of lossy compression for digital images, circa wikipedia’s contribution from Richard F. Haines’ 1992 technical report. Therefore, this painting is loss dot jpg.”

Logan still hasn’t worked out whether Cadmium rehearsed all that or just made it up on the spot.

The first time he finally spoke to the guy—this being right after Cadmium had made a stunning connection between petticoats and ukuleles, mind you—he was wrapping up a tour and making a beeline for the door. Even as Logan held back, content to watch him push up the sleeves of his cardigan to check his watch, Cadmium seemed a little hesitant to go. He turned back and spoke in a much less cheery tone than Logan had come to expect from the tours. “What’s your deal?”

This gives Logan a moment’s pause, to put it gently. To put it bluntly, it feels like a flying bowling ball buried itself in his abdomen. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re always hanging around my tours, so what’s your deal? Do you want, like, a private tour or something? Are you an overachieving Otalinite? Because I don’t really do personal tours, if you couldn’t tell.”

“Oh, no, I, um,” Logan stutters, his fluttery hands finding a panicked home near his collarbone. “I’m, ah, I’m not a student.”

“Good for you, fight the system. I still don’t do private tours.”

Logan bites at his lower lip, uncertain how to respond. “Got it. Sorry, did you want me to stop tagging along on your tours, or…?”

Cadmium crosses his arms and looks Logan up and down. Logan wonders whether he’s secretly unimpressed with what he sees. “Nah, you look smart enough to draw in parents that want to breed genius children. Just stop pretending not to notice when I pass you with a group of students in tow, yeah? It’s weird, and you’re not fooling anyone.” He sticks his hand out. Logan stares at it, baffled. “This is the part where you shake it,” he says in a stage whisper. “Stop peddling your D level act of passivity and you can keep tagging along, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Logan finally says, shaking the hand. It’s colder than he’d expected—somewhere around freezing, actually.

“Cool. See you Tuesday, then.” Cadmium breaks off the handshake first. Logan watches him go, warming up his chilled fingers with his other hand.