23


I am a sucker for platonic logince, so... qwq


Patton was in the entranceway when they found him, looking up at Ali Blacksky's' portrait with an unreadable expression. He didn't notice the detectives at first, but they noticed him and something sinister.

In his hand, Patton held a large carving knife. It was wicked and sharp and it glinted in the light. Logan felt his heart stop and his blood freeze at the sight of it. Roman quickly clamped his hand over his mouth so he didn't gasp and give the game away. The knife was big, freakishly big, and its' edge was crude yet professional.

Slowly, Patton moved his arm up robotically, reaching up on tiptoes, and pressing the point of the knife into Ali's' forehead. Then he dragged it down swiftly, ripping the canvas perfectly in half, and then letting it fall from his hand to the floor.

Then he jumped and screamed as if scared of what he'd done. "Oh, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" He cried out to himself, padding and pulling at the sliced painting, tugging at the edges and trying to place them back together. "Oh, no, why did I do that? Why did I do that? I'm sorry!"

He stepped on the flat edge of the knife and yelped, then scrambled to pick it up, looking about desperately. "Oh no, oh no, what did I do!" He wailed, holding the knife at arms' length like it was a hissing, poisonous snake. Patton dived for a small side table, pulling open the drawer with a madman's' enthusiasm and shoved in the knife, before slamming it shut.

"I gotta go, I gotta go," He started whispering to himself as he backed away from the knife and the torn painting. His hand found the doorknob and he didn't hesitate to flee outside, leaving the door wide open.

The two detectives stood still for a moment, neither speaking. Logan was still processing it.

Patton, a happy, chirpy man, rips a picture of the deceased with a carving knife from head to toe and instantly begins to panic. He attempts badly to hide the knife before leaving the scene in the midst of a mental breakdown. This house was filled with curiosities.

"Hey, Logan," Roman said. "Is it good that I recorded the whole thing?"

The older one spun around, wide-eyed. "You did?!"

"Yeah, on the voice recorder," Roman revealed the recorder tucked neatly in his palm. "Obviously, I couldn't get a video, but I had turned it on for the fingerprinting, I thought it might be useful."

Logan picked up the recorder, looking at it with a slowly forming grin. "Y'know, Roman, sometimes I keep forgetting that you know how to do your job. Well done."

Roman scoffed, but he seemed to swell at the praise, with a barely concealable grin on his face. "Well, I am the second-best detective in the police force, after you."

Logan hesitated, then softly placed the recorder back in Romans' hand. "I'm not in the police force," He said quietly. "I'm just helping Archie out."

Quickly, Roman bowed his head. "Sorry, I forgot."

"It's fine," Logan assured him, making his way thoughtfully over to the painting. "I just don't want to go back." He glanced back at Roman. "I told you about my last case. I'm sure you can understand."

Roman looked up again. "If I'm not overstepping my boundaries, Sir Croft," He said, using Logans' official title without a hint of irony, "I think you're taking the cowards' way out."

Logan turned around on his heel in an instant, staring Roman down. For a moment, it looked like he was going to shout Roman down, to remind him who he was talking to. But he took a small breath and nodded at Roman. "Continue."

"I-I think that you're never going to be happy until you rejoin the police force," Roman said, his voice shaky only a little. "If you keep getting caught up on one bad case, then you'll never be able to move on. During this one case, you've already seemed to cheer up a lot and you're way more relaxed than you were when you first came back. I think, if you just rejoin and keep working on cases, you'll start to be happy again!"

The detective tilted his head. "You think I'm not happy?"

Roman quickly backtracked. "W-Well, I don't mean to a-assume what's been going on, of course, y-you are my boss, technically, but, if I could say that this is from, maybe, a f-friends' perspective, then it wouldn't seem as awkward? Or is that more awkward? Uh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything-"

"It's alright, Roman," Logan calmly interrupted, with a small wave of his hand. "I guess I have not enjoyed my eight months off. But I still don't want to return to action just yet."

Hesitantly, as if he still expected to be yelled at, Roman nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Oh, and, by the way, Roman," Logan said with an unusually genuine smile on his face. "It is not awkward to have said that as a friend."

Roman stood a little straighter at that, eyes wide with surprise. Logan nodded at him respectfully. "Now, we've got to catch ourselves a butler."

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