#and had to clean up a residents room without being warned it was a hoarders room and they didn't know what was in there

[toontowncreepypasta]

im like oumas whole “i HATE liars i detest them i hope they all kill themselves (literally can’t tell the truth to save his life)” except instead of lying its hating

[lovelylogans]

spring cleaning

there’s a pack rat in the family. who it is will not surprise you.

part of the wyliwf verse.

warnings: food mentions, alcohol mentions, general messiness, jokes about hoarding

pairings: patton/virgil, offscreen logan/roman

word count: 2,412

notes: hi! this is just a quick little fic as i beta and finish off the next chapter of debutante. this is based off the gilmore girls season three episode twelve “lorelai out of water” cold open. takes place the spring after the main storyline, after alliance but before debutante.

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virgil’s phone buzzes at 10:13 am on a sunny spring sunday. he pauses just after he drops off the brunch plates for mrs. torres, babette, and east side tilly, digging around in his back pocket to squint at his recent texts.

logan sanders: Please help.

any other time, this kind of text would probably send anxiety flooding his veins like ice water. as he’s been warned, sure, he’s a little anxious that he’s misreading the situation, but he shakes that aside and snorts.

“called it,” he mutters under his breath, before he wipes his hands on his apron and types out christ, you’re folding easy this year. is that a new record?

a brief pause. then, No, the record was twenty-four minutes. To be fair, that took place when I was ten years old, we were moving into the house, and you were already going to be involved, so I perhaps I should propose that does not count against my spring cleaning record.

ah, that’s right. god, helping patton move had kind of been a nightmare. helping anyone move is a bit of a nightmare, but with patton there’s a whole new layer of shenanigans.

Another buzz. Also, I need this to be hastened along. I have a Socratic seminar in English tomorrow, and though we have settled on a tentative truce I refuse to let Dee achieve the highest grade in the class.

he shoots back i’ll be there asap.

“jean,” he calls to the counter, but jean, having been warned as well, waves him off.

“i got it, at least he waited till the we hit the between-masses lull.”

“you’re the best,” he says, hanging up his apron and ignoring mrs. torres’ hoots about his arms—he's like ninety percent sure she’s spiking her own orange juice so she can have a screwdriver with her pancakes but he hasn’t caught her with a flask in hand yet—and heads out the door.

the citizens of sideshire are fully soaking in the pleasure of a sunny spring day—it’s one of those days, where the weather’s warming up slowly, but there’s sure to be more cold snaps before they fully settle into spring, so lots of people are taking advantage of it. families are sprawled with picnic blankets in the grassy town square. the “long-haired freak” (taylor’s nickname, not his. virgil’s pretty sure his name is dave, but also, he’s not totally sure his name is dave, and as such usually avoids any complications by saying “hey, man,” whenever virgil sees him) is out hawking fruits and vegetables from his garden. lots of people are out on walks, some with earbuds or headphones on, some calling out jolly greetings to other people taking advantage of a blue sky and temperatures that are soaring above freezing.

“hey, virgil.”

“hey, felix,” virgil says, craning his neck to catch sight of—well, he guesses felix and riley are technically his tenants? but that always feels weird to say—his neighboring business owners. felix is busy making sure a promotional poster’s taped to the window. “how’re things?”

“ah, y’know, y’know,” felix says, waving their hands around. “weather’s warming up, so we’re getting into busy season. guess people want to be able to flaunt new ink in the warmer weather, y’know?”

“hey, speaking of—” virgil says.

“oh, yeah,” felix says, scratching at the half of their head that was once shaved bald but is now growing in stubbly. “you wanna have riley do one this time? they can draw up some sketches for you, if you want. or i can, if you want, but it might be a minute ‘cause i’m all hands on deck for this massive full-back piece.”

“nah, riley’ll be cool, it’s been a minute since they’ve done one for me,” virgil says. “i’ll drop by later with some reference photos, ideas and stuff.”

“i’ll make sure they’re refreshed on what your style is before the consultation,” felix says. “appreciate the business.”

“appreciate you and your spouse taking over this empty shop so taylor didn’t get a chance to,” virgil returns, as he usually does whenever felix or their riley thanks him for something. he’s really awkward about accepting gratitude, he’s working on that with emile and patton.

“god, could you imagine taylor next door,” felix says with a theatric shudder. “bad enough he runs half the town.”

“i’ll call tomorrow to make the appointment?”

felix flashes him a thumbs up, and virgil raises a hand in farewell as he continues on his way.

he ends up pushing his sleeves up to his elbows as he walks to the sanders’ house, occasionally saying hey to other residents of sideshire, or tilting his face up to the sun. 

this winter’s been brutal, even worse than it usually is for the northeast, with absurd amounts of blizzards and ice. on the days where it wasn’t shoveling ridiculous amounts of snow on the whole town, the sky had been gray and overcast, and what little sun there was could barely stream weakly through the clouds. 

but now, the sun sinks softly into his exposed skin, warming him without overheating him thanks to the breeze, carrying the sweet scent of tentatively blooming flowers planted by particularly audacious gardeners.

it is a perfect, lovely spring day. 

by the time he gets to the cheerful yellow clapboard house, he’s taken enough deep, calming breaths to ensure that he is a calming presence. he ascends the stairs of the wraparound porch—oh, huh, looks like patton or logan’s making an attempt at being a gardener, that looks like mountain mint—and knocks lightly on the front door.

“please come in,” logan shouts, sounding exasperated, and virgil obligingly pushes the door open.

he toes off his shoes, even as he overhears patton’s voice, cajoling.

“hug-a-world! c’mon, you’ve gotta remember your hug-a-world!”

hug-a-world, virgil mouths to himself, before it comes back to him in sudden, vivid technicolor and he rounds the corner.

and, sure enough, surrounded by the detritus of the sanders home, patton and logan sit in a hastily-cleared space in the middle of their living room, patton holding a stuffed ball tight to his chest.

“of course i remember the hug-a-world,” logan says, still with that tone of exasperation, but lessened now at the sight of a beloved childhood toy. 

“you can’t make me throw away your hug-a-world,” patton declares viciously, which would almost be believably threatening if he were not clutching a stuffed ball made to look like a globe to his chest, and if his curly hair was not sticking up in a configuration that virgil thinks of as chaotically unruly, and if he were not wearing a pink-and-blue sweater he usually busts out around easter, and if someone did not know patton as a person. “you learned all seven of your continents on hug-a-world!”

see, without fail, almost every year patton gets suckered into the whole concept of the spring clean. and, without fail, logan or virgil will try to point out that he does this every year, and patton insists no, really, this time for sure he’ll get rid of some of the clutter around this house, it’s about time!, and then he gets sidetracked getting attached to objects he finds that he suddenly cannot bear to get rid of, despite the fact that said objects have typically been buried away in a dark closet all the rest of the year.

which means that logan and virgil sit with him and try to point that out, and patton wavers, before he decides to keep or donate or trash it, and it seems like it’s going okay, until the next thing he touches turns out to be another thing that he suddenly cannot bear to give up.

it’s gotten a little better since that time they introduced the marie kondo method, but also, that much worse, because of course he insists that everything sparks joy! 

but this is way more mess than usual. there are cardboard boxes and piles of clothes and bits and bobs that are in piles that come up to his ribs. virgil squints it at it suspiciously.

“attic,” logan says wearily, in explanation. “he got boxes out of the attic.”

oh, shit, the attic. god, that thing is stuffed to the brim with boxes, no wonder the living room looks like someone upended the odds-and-ends drawer for a giant into the house.

“but—c’mon,” patton says, in that same sweetly coaxing tone that usually makes them all throw up their hands and leave the rest of this spring cleaning mess for next year’s spring clean. he holds out the hug-a-world to logan. “hold it. marie says so.”

“marie does not realize that she has a special case with my hoarder of a father and therefore should customize the approach of sparks joy, because you have too wide a definition,” logan says, but he reaches out and takes the hug-a-world with both hands anyways.

virgil examines logan holding it, thinking suddenly of a much tinier logan with a gap in his front teeth holding the same toy in the same way, though the fabric had been much more vibrant shades of blue and green then. there had been a solid stretch of time that the hug-a-world had been the toy that logan had hugged falling asleep, back in the poolhouse. he’d taken the hug-a-world to the diner and to school and all around the inn and to the princes’ apartment and back again.

a side of logan’s mouth twitches up, and then, as if suddenly conscious of it, he forces the corners of his mouth to turn down as he stares at it.

“remember?” patton repeats, staring at logan and the hug-a-world fondly. “we used to take turns to squeeze it as tight as we could and then wherever our pinkies would end up, that’s where we were going to go together when you grew up.”

“yes,” logan says, and then loses the fight against his mouth, because it twitches up into a smile again. “many a trip to uzbekistan was planned that way.”

“look!” patton says, pointing and tilting his head. “that’s canada, then, where’d your other one get you?”

logan moves his other pinky in order to squint at the faded fabric. “i believe that’s cambodia. possibly vietnam, i was rather splitting the border.” 

“why not both?” patton says pragmatically, or as pragmatically as he can sound planning a potential trip based off hugging a ball. 

logan hesitates, holding the ball.

“look,” patton says. “hey, how about virgil helps clean it up, and the hug-a-world can live in your room?”

logan chews at the inside of his lip.

“if it sparks joy,” patton sing-songs.

logan heaves a sigh.

“the hug-a-world will live in my room, then,” he says, before looking to virgil. “we’ve started a pile for you right here,” and pats a pile of what mostly looks like clothes that can be either repaired, repurposed, or sneakily donated.

virgil takes a breath, and says, “i’ll crack open a window and put on some music, then. patton, you take your allergy medicine today?”

patton tilts his head to think about it.

“that’s a no,” virgil says. “i’ll grab it on the way. water, snacks? we’re gonna be here for a while.”

“are we?” logan says doubtfully, twisting to look at him.

“we are finishing spring clean this year!” patton insists. “i mean it this time!”

logan arches his eyebrows at virgil, and virgil mouths play along, and logan sighs before he turns back to the pile, pulling out an old jacket at random.

“i have never seen you wear this. it should be donated.”

“that was from raf, we can’t just toss it!” patton cries out in dismay, and virgil heads for the kitchen.

he fills up three glasses of water, chops up some celery and apples, fills up three mini ramekins with peanut butter, and sets it all on a tray, along with the round white pill that patton takes for his allergies. 

he plugs in his phone and scrolls to a roman-made playlist, lowering the volume so that they’ll be able to hear each other, and proceeds to make his meandering way around the piles of Stuff as best he can without knocking anything over.

on his way, he moves to crack open the windows of the living room, allowing the floral-scented air to waft into the messy room, to hear the chirping of the birds under patton and logan’s debating.

he pushes aside a pile of old books on the coffee table and sets the tray down, mostly ignored as logan manages to triumph and tosses the jacket into a box labeled DONATE.

virgil settles down next to his pile, sitting in criss-cross-applesauce, and gosh all of the clutter of patton and logan’s lives looms over them like a mountain at this angle. 

“okay,” virgil says encouragingly. “good, that’s good! raf’s old jacket will probably make some other teenager very happy to have it.”

patton sighs, staring after the jacket. “yeah, i guess.”

“this is good,” virgil says stubbornly, before tugging at a piece of fabric sticking out at random and unearthing a blanket.

“oh, i was wondering where that got off to!” patton says, delighted. 

“i thought that got lost in the moving shuffle,” virgil agrees, because the last time he saw this he was pretty sure it was tossed over the back of their rented apartment couch.

“so this blanket has not been washed in at least six years,” logan says.

“well, that can be fixed!” patton points out. “i say keep.”

“we’re never going to finish,” logan groans.

“of course we’re gonna finish!” patton says.

“yeah, logan,” virgil says unconvincingly. “listen to your dad.” 

patton beams at him, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek; logan rolls his eyes, before he turns his attention to the blanket.

“so, you claim keep for your room,” logan says. “you already have so many blankets.”

“well, we can always use more blankets!” patton points out. “worse comes to worse, we’ll put it in the linen closet.”

logan tilts his head, before he sighs, and places it in a pile of other fabrics that they seem to have decided to keep.

“all right, fine,” he says, then fishes out another piece of fabric. “next item—”

“look how fast we settled that!” patton says brightly.

“pretty fast,” virgil agrees dutifully.

“we’ll totally finish spring clean this year,” patton says confidently.

(they do not finish spring clean this year.)