Sometimes Having Terrible Aim Is Worth It
Pairing: Analogince Word count: 4,492 Logan uses he/they pronouns cw: swearing, snowball fights, mentions of murder, implied bad parents, i might have made lore for this at 1am while bored whoops
Overall, Roman and Logan were happy with their neighborhood. The location was convenient for both of their works (the theatre and the high school) and the environment was very lax. It was a low-crime, middle-class neighborhood with people who seemed very nice.
Roman, the sociable one, had made friends with many of the people on their block, only leaving a couple of houses alone. He had told Logan that all the people he had talked with were amiable people worthy of their friendship. So, Logan had accompanied his boyfriend during conversations with their neighbors on occasion, despite being an introvert with a general disappointment in the human race.
It wasn’t with ease that Roman was able to leave the house on their right alone. He had been warned not to bother the man who lived there as soon as he had moved in and started to make friends with his new neighbors. A blonde woman who Roman guessed to be about twenty years older than him had knocked on the door the evening after the two had moved in and given them the gist of the neighborhood. Her name was Janet, and she had told them about which houses had kids (as well as which kids were the best or quietest), how many people lived at each house, what each resident was like, and finally, about the man who lived next door.
Apparently, he was introverted and creepy, didn’t have friends, had the scariest Halloween decorations, worked at an age-old psychiatric hospital, and was rude and disagreeable. Janet had sufficiently discouraged Roman and Logan from interacting with him, but even if she hadn’t, the reports from their other neighbors would have done the job.
One kid said she had knocked on his door on Halloween, and he had opened the door and snarled at her with a realistic vampire outfit on, laughing evilly as she ran away. One mother said she had gone to his house to ask for a cup of sugar, and he had given her a cup of salt instead. Three kids all said they had seen him near the haunted house on Fridays. There was a rumor going around that he had killed the previous owners of the house Roman and Logan now resided in because their cat had made a small scratch on his car (Logan and Roman were less inclined to believe that last rumor; it was evidence-less, unlike the others).
But, other than the next-door neighbor they were both terrified of, Roman and Logan liked their living situation very much.
It was January, right in the middle of winter. The weather refused to let their area forget this fact; the week had started out with a snowstorm and after one day of pause, it had snowed every day for the next four days. It was now Friday, the fourth consecutive day of having snow, and the neighborhood kids had calmed about the state of the weather. Earlier in the week, Roman and Logan would often look out their window to find kids playing in the snow. Now, the excitement had dialed down and the kids were exhausted. The couple figured that sometime in the middle of the next week, the kids would be back to causing snowy chaos, but there was still almost a week until that hypothesis would be put to the test. At the current time, the block was quiet.
Roman appeared next to Logan, who was reading. He perched himself on the armrest of Logan's armchair and put an arm around his boyfriend.
"Hey, Logan?" Roman asked, taking a lock of Logan's hair and twirling it between his fingers.
"What is it you want, darling?" Logan replied, not looking up from his book.
Roman frowned. "I never said I wanted something."
"You called me Logan," he explained like it were obvious, "so, you want something."
Roman rolled his eyes, wishing his boyfriend wasn't so observant. "I want to have a snowball fight outside."
Logan raised an eyebrow, keeping his eyes on the novel in his hands. "I assume that you want me to join?"
Roman nodded. "Who else would I fight?"
"I also imagine you will annoy me about this subject until I acquiesce, or the snow melts?"
Roman nodded again.
"What's in it for me?"
Roman furrowed his eyebrows in thought. "Well...maybe, after the fight, we can curl up next to each other on the couch in our blankets, hot chocolate in hand, and we can watch Doctor Who or whatever while we snuggle."
Logan bit his lip.
"You know you want to."
Logan rolled their eyes. "I most certainly do not."
Roman grinned at him cheekily. "Bullshit," he said sweetly, "now come with me."
He took the book from Logan's hands and set it on the table. He grabbed a receipt from nearby and put it on the open pages, before slamming the novel shut and pulling his boyfriend to his feet.
Logan made a noise of surprise as he was dragged to the door by his boyfriend.
"Roman, wait!" Logan exclaimed, putting a hand on Roman's arm. "Let me get my gloves and hat on first."
Logan, who was already in a blue patterned sweater and dark purple scarf, dashed to his and Roman's room. He opened his closet and picked out his navy blue beanie and red gloves. He put them on quickly, not wanting to have to deal with Roman's manhandling once again.
He raced back to Roman who was waiting for him at the door impatiently. When he saw Logan, his expression brightened to one of adoration.
"Oh my gosh, mi querido, you look adorable!"
Logan huffed. "I am not adorable."
Roman laughed. "Yes, you are."
Logan knew that arguing was hopeless.
They took the accusation to heart for a moment. "What if the neighbors see our fight and it ruins my reputation and they never take me seriously again?"
"One, they will be too far away from us to recognize you. Two, they won't care. Three, I'm going to be annoying you for the next two months about a snowball fight so if you refuse, they'll judge you for choosing someone as loud and annoying as myself as your boyfriend."
Logan nodded. "Fair enough."
The two exited their house. Logan put his arms around his torso and shivered, the sudden change in temperature shocking his body, but Roman ran ahead. He immediately crouched down to the ground and formed a snowball, aiming directly for Logan’s stomach, and missing by a couple of feet. Logan gave him a disappointed look.
Roman huffed and returned to building a snowball. Logan shivered again, watching the small flecks of white flutter down from the clouds above and land on their suburban neighborhood. Logan was removed from their thoughts when a snowball collided with his stomach.
He stumbled back half a step, but steadied his stance and glared at his boyfriend. Another snowball was thrown his way, but Logan dodged and watched it disperse against the door.
“You might want to join me in the yard, Specs, if you don’t want me to break a window.”
Logan followed his suggestion, running to the front yard and immediately forming a snowball. They threw it at their unsuspecting boyfriend who was in the process of making another snowball. It hit him square in the chest, making him fall backwards.
“Oh, you’re in for it, mi luz.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “You’ve hit me twice, I’ve hit you once. I’m hardly the-”
A snowball to the lungs effectively shut them up.
---
Roman and Logan were hiding behind their respective walls of snow. Throughout the fight, they had been creating their own walls to hide behind to avoid getting hit. The fight would continue until either surrender or unconsciousness occurred, and both knew the former would be the hardest to achieve.
Since the two were both overachievers and never half-assed anything, their respective snow walls were two and a half feet high, roughly four inches in thickness, and approximately two feet wide. Roman had drawn an ‘R’ into his for dramatic effect, and Logan had hit the ‘R’ purposely with a snowball twice.
Neither knew how much time had passed, nor could they sense just how cold they were. All they could think about was demolishing their beloved in a violent war of snow, where only one could be crowned victor.
They were so unfocused that they didn’t notice a door opening and closing. Their eyes were so zeroed in on each other that Logan couldn’t see anything but his weapon and his target.
Logan knew the second the snowball left his hands that he would not land the shot. They were off by at least a couple of feet. They paid it no mind, however, and focused on evading Roman’s next attack.
The snowball landed with an audible smack.
That was unusual; dodged snowballs normally landed soundlessly on the ground.
What was also unusual was the yelp accompanying the sound.
Two shocked heads turned and watched as an unfamiliar man was thrown off his balance from Logan’s ruthlessly packed snowball. He didn’t fall to the ground, no, he was too scary and intimidating for that kind of humiliation to ever befall him. But, he was inconvenienced just enough so that Roman and Logan were terrified for their lives.
Logan hadn’t hit any old neighbor that lived on their block. He had hit the man who lived to their right.
The man who was evil, scary, probably a serial killer; the person that even the adults were scared of. He overdid Halloween, had no friends, and worked at a psychiatric hospital. He could probably kill them if he wanted to. According to the rumors, he had killed for lesser motives.
His eyes locked with both of the men at once, and Logan and Roman had never been more scared in their time together. He was terrifying.
With a black shirt, black jeans, black and purple hair, and a black hoodie, the man next door with tattoos creeping up his neck and black eyeshadow under his eyes looked very much the part the rest of the street had cast him as.
Logan and Roman were truly and undeniably fucked.
When the neighbor stopped glaring at them and walked to his car, Logan and Roman simultaneously craned their necks back to face each other, a terrified look in both of their eyes. Suddenly, all their competitive fire was extinguished and they looked at the snow on the ground with fear and regret instead of devious fun.
Their neighbor got something from his car and returned inside, casting sideways glances at Roman and Logan as he passed them. He slammed his door shut, causing both men to flinch.
From day one, the couple had been warned by kindergarteners and middle-aged women alike that they were unfortunate to be neighbors with the man next door. It was today that this was proven. All they could do was wait for their demise.
Roman threw a snowball at Logan’s face in anger at his actions and bad aim. For the first time in this fight, he wished he had been hit by that snowball.
There was a four minute period where the two were internally debating their options of either going back inside or apologizing to their fearsome neighbor. Occasionally, they would make eye contact with each other, but no words were actually spoken. Roman, the extrovert, considered knocking on his door to make a quick and hasty apology while Logan, the introvert, thought about writing an apology letter and sliding it under his door.
Neither of their ideas needed to be put to action, however, since the neighbor exited his house once again.
The two resisted the overwhelming urge to cower in fear. They had never seen him before, and now they had seen him twice in less than ten minutes? Clearly, they had ticked him off.
In an effort to not make it look as though they were staring, Logan and Roman stuck their gazes on each other. Each could tell that their partner was resisting their instincts telling them to run as far away as they could as fast as possible. But they couldn’t be rude—not when that man lived right next to them and could approach their house at any time. The serial killer rumors suddenly seemed more plausible.
What greeted them (or rather, Logan) instead, was a snowball to the back.
Logan, who was tenser than a taut rope, stumbled from the harsh impact. When he was able to regain his stance, his head whipped around to look at his attacker.
The neighbor had on, of all things, a smile.
He had discarded his hoodie for a fluffy black sweater with purple bats on it. He was now in a black beanie and had on midnight blue gloves. While his winter attire was surprising considering he already had a hoodie and didn’t seem to leave his house much, the mischievous smile was the most perplexing of all new things about their neighbor. Neither Logan nor Roman could make sense of it, except that it let them see the infamously creepy stranger in a new light.
Logan huffed out a bemused laugh, staring at the neighbor (who looked to be similar in age to them) like he was a gripping plot twist in a novel that unexpectedly ended happily. He shook his head a bit, but crouched down and formed another snowball. He made sure not to throw it as hard as the first one he had thrown at the stranger.
The man dodged it with ease, running closer to the snow-covered couple’s house. He swiped some snow off the porch rail and quickly packed it before throwing it at Roman, who was too busy being bewildered to do anything to dodge. He gasped in offense and coughed when the snowball collided with his sternum, and directed a playful glare at his attacker. He threw a snowball at him in return.
The neighbor easily dodged that one, but wasn’t able to dodge the snowball Logan had thrown his way. His attention switched over to the bespectacled assailant, looking at them just in time to see him throw another snowball at his boyfriend.
“How the hell did you make a snowball that quickly, cariño?”
“I have a snow wall, Ro. What do you think I put behind it? Action figures?” Logan retorted sarcastically.
Roman rolled his eyes and formed another snowball, sending it through the air and smack into Logan’s wall. “Every man for himself!”
The neighbor laughed at that, and the snowball fight continued.
---
As it turned out, Logan and Roman were at a disadvantage from already being out in the snow before their neighbor joined in. He was able to make them both surrender eventually, but not before Roman had aimed a snowball at a precise place on the back of his neck where the snow fell down the back of his shirt.
Logan was the wiser out of the couple and had surrendered first (not without a fight, though). He figured he deserved it; he had been the one to disturb the stranger, after all. This made him able to watch as both Roman and the stranger started to shiver more and more as the fight had continued.
When Roman finally did surrender, Logan laughed in his face and then put an arm around him. Logan took one hand in his and was able to tell his fingers were numb.
“You just never know when to quit, do you?” they sighed fondly.
“I did eventually!” protested Roman indignantly.
The stranger chuckled from beside him. “Would’ve been easier for your poor body if you’d surrendered when you knew you were gonna lose.”
It was the first time they’d heard him speak; snowball fights weren’t exactly the best place to start a conversation. His voice was low, about as deep as expected from a scary man in all black. However, it didn’t hold any fearful qualities or scratchiness like the kids had described. The couple thought it sounded like coffee on a cool winter’s morning (which didn’t make sense since coffee wasn’t a sound, but it was all that they could use to describe it, nonetheless).
“And when would that have been?”
“The second I joined in.”
Logan hid a laugh behind their hand. Roman glared at him for encouraging their neighbor.
“No idiot surrenders the second another person joins,” Roman muttered.
“Exactly,” the man said with a wink. Logan was able to spot him curling his arms around himself, probably from being cold.
Roman gasped loudly when he finally realized what the stranger was saying. “How dare you!”
He stumbled out of Logan’s arms and collected more snow off the porch railing, making it into a large, messy ball and chucking it at the stranger.
It hit his face. Not hard in any shape or form; no harm would be done, but it was still a bunch of cold water shoved in his face and falling into the front of his sweater.
The stranger furiously batted at the snow on his face.
“Serves you right,” Roman mumbled.
Logan rolled his eyes. “Sorry, that must’ve been freezing.”
The man nodded.
“Come on in,” Logan invited, opening the door. “We can make you some hot chocolate.”
Roman rushed inside, running to the storage closet that had extra blankets.
“A-are you s-su-re?” the stranger said, syllables separate and repetitive from his shivering. The snow in his face caused his teeth to chatter.
“Of course,” Logan said, “it’s our—well, mostly my fault, that you got cold anyway. I’m Logan. He/they pronouns.”
Virgil chuckled. “L-log-an, h-uh? Was st-st-starting to thi-nk y-you were j-just gi-v-ven a b-bunch of p-pet names at b-birth.”
Logan blushed furiously, but laughed. Roman referred to him with Spanish terms of endearment more than he did his legal name.
“At this point, I might as well have been. I tend to respond to any unfamiliar word that vaguely sounds like Spanish now.”
They ushered the freezing stranger inside. Roman had returned from the storage closet with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and another under his arm. Logan took the blanket that wasn’t shrouding his shivering boyfriend and wrapped it around the stranger’s shoulders, who tugged it tighter around himself eagerly.
Logan went to the kitchen, putting three mugs of milk into the microwave and setting it for two minutes. They then returned to Roman and their neighbor who were shivering in silence.
“Thanks for joining us,” Roman said, “that was fun.”
“It was,” he agreed, shivering starting to calm down. “T-thank you for letting me p-participate.” Not fully, however.
“Of course,” said Logan, putting an arm on Roman’s shoulders. “I totally meant that snowball as an invitation. Fully intentional.”
The other two laughed, knowing that was a lie. The microwave beeped, and Logan left them to take the mugs from the microwave. He put the hot cocoa powder in and stirred the mugs, before picking them up.
He entered the living room to see that Roman had sat on the left of the couch and the stranger in the middle. Logan put their mugs in front of them and put down a mug for themself. He sat down next to the stranger.
“Might I ask your name, oh Master of the Snowball?” Roman asked.
The stranger snorted. “That’s much better than my name. My name’s Virgil. He/him.”
Logan smiled to himself. “Not at all, that’s a very nice name.”
Virgil choked on the hot chocolate he was sipping. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
“Fits your aesthetic,” Roman remarked.
Virgil opened his mouth, looking offended. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
It was obviously a joke, but Logan and Roman knew they had to tell Virgil of the rumors and his reputation. Especially now that they saw him as a good guy.
“Halloween,” Roman started to list, “everyday-is-spooky-season aesthetic, seems like the type of guy to work at a haunted house.”
Virgil scoffed. “Those places are stupid; not scary at all. If you want to go to a haunted house, make your house the haunted house.”
Well, now they had the Virgil-goes-to-a-haunted-house-weekly theory debunked.
“You do have ghosts on your sweater,” Logan supplied, taking a sip of the hot chocolate.
“They’re cute ghosts, though,” Roman said as soon as Virgil opened his mouth to argue. He pointed at one on his sweater. “See? Look at the lil’ faces.”
“My sister got it for me for Christmas.”
“If I knew your sister, that would probably explain the cute faces.”
“Oh, believe me, it would.”
Logan chuckled as he watched the two exchange conversation. He took another sip of his hot chocolate.
“So, um, I heard moving trucks outside your house about a month ago. Was that y’all? You new here?” asked Virgil.
“Affirmative,” Logan confirmed.
“Yeah, it’s our very first house together!” Roman said happily.
Virgil smiled. “That’s sickeningly adorable.”
“I am sickeningly adorable,” Roman said like it was a badge of honor.
“I agree,” Logan said.
A comfortable silence befell the group.
Virgil fidgeted, looking at Roman nervously. “Bit awkward question this far into the conversation, but I never caught your name-”
“Roman~” sang the man in question. He would have held the note out for an impressively long time if he didn’t take a sip of hot cocoa.
“Cool,” said Virgil awkwardly. “And I suppose, Roman and Logan, oh wow y’all’s names rhyme that is so romantic, anyway-”
Roman gasped, covering his mouth. His eyes lit up. “They do!”
“Are you just noticing this, Roman?” asked Logan.
“Of course!” Roman exclaimed in reply. “If I knew our names rhymed, I would have already written many a rhyming poem about our love.”
“That’s very nice, Love.”
“Don’t be snippy, mi cielo, you know you’d love it,” Roman huffed. “Virgil, don’t you think he’d love it?”
Virgil just rolled his eyes fondly, not wanting to get caught up in the middle of a lover’s spat.
“Don’t bring Virgil into this, Roman. You should put the subject aside, considering he was in the middle of saying something before you interrupted.”
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask. Did our neighbors happen to...um...tell you what they thought of me? Ruin first impressions? It would explain your terrified expressions when we first saw each other.”
Roman and Logan looked at each other worriedly.
“...Maybe?” Roman asked quietly.
“There’s a small possibility...” Logan whispered.
“Y’all, I’m not mad if it happened, I just wanna know.”
Logan sighed. “Yes, yes they did.”
“What’d they say?”
“Multiple people said different things,” Logan began. “Janet talked to us first. She’s the blonde, short-haired, blue-eyed-”
“-Used to be a soccer mom, baby blue house?” Virgil asked. Logan nodded. “Met her when I first moved in, and once after that.”
“Her, yes. She told us, quite frankly, to not come near you.”
Virgil started to close in on himself. “Like how?”
“Said you were creepy, rude, introverted, no friends, freaky-as-all-hell Halloween decorations, apparently knew where you worked,” Roman told him, then noticed Virgil’s shrinking and stopped with the accusations. “I doubt almost all of that now, since you’re obviously not creepy and definitely have friends with that personality, but she may have been accurate with Halloween decor.”
“She was,” Virgil confirmed. “Go big or go home.”
“I believe you are normally home during Halloween, are you not?” asked Logan, confused.
Roman laughed. “Of course, mi amor.”
“Where do I work, in Janet terms?” asked Virgil, a smile tugging at his lips.
“Some old psychiatric hospital out of town.”
Virgil doubled over in laughter. He put his mug on the coffee table so it wouldn’t spill and held his head in his hands.
When he regained himself, still giggling, he replied.
“That’s inaccurate,” Virgil said plainly. “I don’t have a degree for that. See, there’s an old abandoned psychiatric hospital two miles away from the airport that is on the same road as the airport. It’s out of use, so that’s a stupid assumption to make. I guess I could maybe see why she made it though; I work at the airport.”
“Oh?” asked Logan, intrigued.
“Yeah, I’m an air traffic controller,” said Virgil with a shrug. “It ain’t that interesting. I recently got fully certified, though, which is cool. It pays well, I’m good at paying constant attention to things that could potentially end badly, and the high-stress comes from having to give my unwavering and full attention, which is something I can do well.”
“Less stressful than home and college, I guess, huh?” Roman guessed.
“Exactly, it's a spa compared to my parents,” Virgil said with a laugh. “But yeah, that’s hysterical. I definitely do not work at a psychiatric hospital.”
“I suppose what the kids said is untrue if what the adults said is false,” Logan mused.
“Oh dear lord, what did they say,” Virgil groaned.
“One girl told us about the rumor that you killed the people who used to live here,” Roman said, and Virgil immediately laughed. “Her mother said she asked for a cup of sugar and you gave her a cup of salt instead.”
“I hadn’t slept in five days and realized my mistake two hours later,” Virgil explained immediately. “I remember that one.”
Logan snorted. “One boy said you go to the haunted house on Fridays, which is obviously untrue.”
“Yeah. One, they’re stupid, two, that one’s only open in October and November, three, that one ain’t even scary. It has a good and free parking lot, though, and I volunteer at an at-risk youth center every Friday a couple blocks down that has really shitty parking.”
Roman shook his head. “Wow, we really got you wrong.”
“You were misled,” Virgil corrected. “It’s not your fault.”
“You know what, you’re right!” Roman agreed. “We were robbed.”
Virgil raised an eyebrow. “Of what?”
“Of friendship,” Logan said, taking a sip from his drink. “Roman would have been banging on your door two days after moving, wanting to get to know you. But, after a momentous amount of ‘rude’ and ‘disagreeable’—” Virgil frowned, “—he was persuaded not to. Our loss, especially considering you are neither of those two adjectives.”
Virgil smiled. “Thank you.”
Logan looked into Virgil’s chestnut brown eyes, and was able to spot the specks of gray in them. They gave Virgil a warm smile. “For what? It is our pleasure to be given the chance to know you.”
Roman groaned. “I try 24/7 to be dramatic and you do it without trying.”
Virgil, blushing, giggled. “You’re both good at it.”
Roman beamed at him. “I’m thrilled you think so, Nico di Angel-o.”
“Nico’s surname can be interpreted to mean ‘of the angels’ already, Roman, I don’t think you need to emphas-”
“Shhhh, Specs, let me shower our guest with compliments.”
Virgil’s face was on fire. “Do y’all have any movies?”
~
Taglist: @somehow-i-got-an-account @justanotherhumanstuff @fander-fic-recs @neo-neo-neo
~
I wrote most of that when I went into a blur for three hours and looked at the time after I finished the draft to see that I had wasted all the time I had to do homework. It was worth it. I don’t know why but I’m really attached to this AU? If you want to see more of it please tell me. I hope you liked it!
