Experiment: Alleviating the Mind

Logan’s mind has been plagued with emotions; feelings that he utmost refuses to even entertain. They’ve been proving to retract his focus from important tasks, skew his vision and challenge his ideologies about the current state of Thomas’ psyche. However, these changes are less than ideal. Distracting Logan has proved to revoke critical decision making that have left Thomas indisposed in terrible moments. 

Therefore, he has been determined to find a fix to his issue. Scouring the internet through multiple VPNs so that none of the sides could track his searches. Not that the others would even suspect he was indisposed to begin with but he does to be safe. 

First attempt led to nowhere useful, both google and every search bar within 45 pages had any form of information he could reliably use within the mindscape. He would have scoured more -up to the end page like he would with any other experiment- but Thomas had called him and the other sides up to converse on another topic so that was cut short. 

The second attempt led to similar results going through with the rest of the other 55 pages. If only the results could show forced close proximity it may have helped. Alas most of the advice was “give yourself time and space” or "acknowledge the thoughts and accept them”.

Ergo, he turned to reddit, they seemed to have the answer to most issues with relevant experts willing to help. Sometimes. Unfortunately most of the topics had no relevance to him, or how to cope with similar feelings. Almost like the people on these subreddits focussed on entire beings and not facets of their personalities.

Sighing, he resolved himself into not finding anything remotely useful until the third from the bottom of the subreddit caught his eye. “Facets and Feelings.” They labelled it, instantly intrigued, Logan clicked on it and scanned through the question, opening each comment left under. Most of the anonymous users had little to say, confused on what “Facets” were. However, one comment understood, they had a few commenters chained below. Each of them described similar problems to himself, they were too distracted to properly do their job. All of them had credited this one feasible solution.

Thus, here Logan was. Sitting in his room once again staring at a blank word document like he has done thousands of times before. Although with a different objective in mind, writing a story. He wasn’t sure what had drawn him to this solution initially, the other sides seemed to embody creativity or a similar role within their own person so why was he here? Creativity might not be his strong suit, or the morality that is shown throughout the story within the created characters, but he was damned if he wouldn’t try. Experimentation was his forte.

Blinking once, then twice, his fingers began the process of formatting his document. Title, headers, subsections, sizing, font, underline, italics and bolded into his perfected formal and consistent style. Keeping his pattern seemed to generate another one of those feelings, an image that has been plaguing his mind over the past month.

The Duke of Creativity, Remus Sanders.

Thomas and Nico had thankfully had the foresight to plan ahead for their next trip (unlike the art mural they spontaneously went to a week before) and decided to share a picnic, watching the sun set over the horizon. It was a splendid experience, Thomas truly needed a planned and less stressful break after the month he had before. Not only was the good mood used by Thomas, all of the sides had agreed to take the time out of the mindscape to admire their surroundings. Setting up their own picnic behind Thomas and Nico trying to give the illusion of solitude with the six sides only a mere 10 meters away.

Unfortunately, that had led to chaos as per usual of the sides. Remus and Roman sprinting up and down steep dunes, sometimes getting to the top before and pushing the other, forcing them tumbling down to crash into the backs of Logan and Patton sitting under a conveniently placed umbrella. Virgil barely escapes their wrath by sitting off to a diagonal, closest to Thomas although sometimes chiming into Logan and Patton’s conversation by adding a snarky comment that always got a giggle out of the moral side. Janus stretched out a little ways away from Logan’s side, well aware if he got any closer he would be squished by Remus or shielded from the last rays of sunshine.

After the sun had finally set almost an hour later, Thomas turned towards Nico, letting his sides escape his peripheral vision, muttering his and Nico’s conversation over lapping waves inching towards them. 

Then Remus got one of his ideas and as soon as Roman reached the top of the dune, tackled the Prince so they were rolling down together, pushing off each other to not land in a tangle of limbs. Successfully, Princey had rolled into a smaller pile of sand near Virgil, and pulling the metaphorical short straw, Remus couldn’t change his trajectory enough to avoid crashing into Logan with a larger impact than his previous times. Sending him face first into their sand covered blanket, with Remus landing almost sideways curled around Logan but somehow still half on top on the Logical side. Letting out a sigh he swivels his head as Remus makes no effort to move and just seductively raises his eyebrows a few times as they lock eyes. Only then Logan properly took in Remus’ almost ethereal glow, soft autumn light rays bouncing off his high cheekbones almost covering them in a faint rouge. Remus blew an almost secret kiss and wink combo to Logan before sitting up and curving his back almost 360 degrees, cracking every joint as he sat back up straight. Acting as though the moment was nothing more than just that, nothing like the perceived minute that it felt like for Logan, he couldn’t help staring at the Duke, almost chasing his gaze once again.

Breaking Logan out of his trance, Janus sat up, resigned to losing the sunlight for the night before saying his farewells. Logan took a few breaths, forcing the heat flooding his cheeks back down to his heart before sitting up muttering a simple goodbye and sinking out.

To say Logan couldn’t stop noticing the Duke afterwards was an understatement. He seemed to be everywhere after, not that he wouldn’t usually be in the mindscape common room. Thomas’ determination to accept every part of himself had always led him to at least try and let Remus in, although not fully understanding his value just yet which was very admirable on his part. Despite the fact that Logan knew almost every word in the English lexicon, he couldn’t put a word to what made him chase Remus’ attention (at least not a word he was willing to admit to himself back then). All he could think about for the next few days was that fleeting moment where their eyes met under a fall’s sun. Where their bodies slotted together over a mismatch of sand on multicoloured cotton. 

So, he was rather distracted from his duties. Whenever he set out to do some much needed work, to get his head down and plan Thomas’ schedule and back ups on back ups of schedules; he couldn’t focus. Not with that forsaken image that pops up into his head whenever he’s alone, feeling his face and neck rush blood away from the other cells desperately in need of some much needed glucose and oxygen. It was becoming ridiculous, he didn't get distracted, he was Logic for Logic’s sake! He couldn’t waste Thomas’ time and energy on some unrequited love that Logan knew deep down would never work. That was Remus just being his charmingly disturbing self and what he has done to Logan was no fault of his and was purely a fault of Logan's.

Taking a much needed breath, Logan slowly reopened his eyes, noticing how words and sentences filled up the pages in front of him, hundreds of lines detailing his beach experience that had plagued his mind for a month straight. It worked. Logan’s mind had finally screeched to a halt, his thoughts silent for a few moments as he admired his newly crafted story. Experiment completed, he supposed. A rather surprising success to say the least, but a great and almost satisfying result.

Glancing at the bottom right corner of his screen his eyes widened as he realised it was 02:06am. Daydreaming had been proven to spend almost four hours writing, most likely on and off as his subconscious remembered to type, taking it one sentence at a time. He will have to test how this daydreaming while writing ability works. Nonetheless, that will be for another day, when Logan is better rested and properly note taking his statistics and deductions.