Work Text:
Quill grimaces when he smells one of his shirts and throws it in the laundry basket when he deems it unwearable. Unfortunately, that meant that he was out of proper t-shirts and he had to dig a tank top out of the dresser to put on. Cassie was currently in San Francisco visiting her mom and stepdad, and Scott would be working all day. Laundry couldn't wait because both he and Scott were completely out of clean underwear and that only happened because Cassie wasn't home to do their laundry.
Quill suddenly realized how much she did for them and was tempted to ask Stephen to portal her home for an hour...but that would just look bad. He could probably do a little bit of laundry. He wasn't that helpless. So with a little bit of self instilled confidence, he grabbed the laundry basket from the closet and carried it down to their laundry room, with a baby fox clinging to his sweatpants. Flynn was thankfully content to hang onto his leg while Quill looked at the washing machine with rapidly growing dread when he realized it wouldn't be as easy as he originally thought.
"What the fuck?" Quill mumbles when he sees all the different dials and settings. "Cassie you fucking angel."
The celestial eventually throws caution to the wind and sets the dials to the best of his knowledge. He did know for a fact what the size dial was so he set that to the largest setting...but everything else? Random temperature and whatever the hell those numbers meant. As the water started, Quill threw in all of the clothes and then looked at the assortment of jugs on the shelf above the machine. He grabbed what he saw Cassie use most (he did read it because he knew about bleach) and poured the liquid soap in by gut instinct.
He really had no idea what he was doing.
Flynn finally gets bored and starts crying loudly for his attention, and the god scowls and tries to shake the creature off as he closes the lid to the machine. "You're so fucking needy! What do you want?!" Quill gripes half-heartedly.
The fox clambers up his leg and his chest to his usual perch on Quill's shoulders so he can lick the god's face incessantly. The man grumbles and pushes the fox's face away from his as he leaves the laundry room and walks into the kitchen. He was hungry and Flynn always ate when he did, so it would hopefully quiet the fox. It took a couple of days to teach him that he wasn't allowed to sit at the table or on Quill while they were eating (unless invited), but now he knew to climb down and sit on the ground. When Quill made his sandwich and cut up some raw meat for Flynn, he carried both plates to the table and waited for the fox to climb down before he sat down. As the god takes his first bite, Flynn paws at his leg with a whine before standing on his hind legs while placing both paws on Quill's leg.
"You know I'm not going to give you the entire plate at once. You don't know how to eat slowly."
The celestial grabs a few pieces of meat with his free hand and feeds them to Flynn, and the two eat their lunch, Quill making sure he doesn't use the hand that handled the meat until he washed it. The fox licks his muzzle when he finishes the last of what Quill gives him, and the god gets up to put the plates in the sink and wash his hands. He really needed to grovel on his knees to Cassie because she did so much for them, and Quill didn't thank her enough. She did most of the cooking (Scott did a little cooking for times like these when Cassie wasn't home), she did their laundry, she cleaned...and on top of all of that, she did incredibly well in school.
Flynn yaps when the buzzer for the washing machine goes off and Quill snorts when the baby fox dashes in the direction. "Yeah I heard it."
To Quill's surprise, the clothes all looked fine as he transferred them to the dryer, so he decided to just do the same with the dials on the dryer as well. He did have to nudge Flynn away with his foot when he kept trying to look into the dryer, and the fox eventually climbed back onto Quill's leg to watch the man finish transferring the clothes. Flynn had a habit of stealing Quill's shirts and that was probably what he was thinking of doing since it was comforting. The first day Quill went to work, he came home to Scott and Cassie looking frazzled, and Flynn came tearing out of nowhere and almost screaming as he jumped onto the celestial.
He hated when he wasn't with Quill every minute of every day. Scott told him that Flynn whined, cried, and every other form of sad noises shortly after he left for work and didn't stop until Cassie gave him one of his dirty shirts. The kit took the shirt and curled up with it on Quill's side of the bed and didn't move until he got home. Another time, Cassie was doing laundry and had to wash the shirts that Flynn had collected on the pet bed he used when Quill was away...and what she said happened had Quill in tears from laughing so hard.
The fox had sat in front of the washer and dryer and cried as he waited to get the shirts back. When Cassie finally offered him one of Quill's shirts, Flynn only cried and laid down because it no longer smelled like him. So now Cassie tried to leave at least one shirt so Flynn wouldn't panic because he still cried whenever Quill left. The celestial was seriously considering trying to take him to work at least but he wasn't sure how well that would go.
"Come on. No! Leave it!" Quill scolds when Flynn tries to grab one of his shirts from the dryer.
He closes the door after moving the kit away a third time, and then leaves the laundry room again to wait for the clothes to dry by watching TV. When Quill lays down on the couch, Flynn hops up onto him and curls up between his neck and shoulder, and purrs. Not only did the fox doze off, but so did Quill, and they slept for a lot longer than the man had planned on. In fact, when he woke up, Scott had just gotten home.
"What did you do today?" The younger man asks and Quill snorts as he sits up, causing Flynn to tumble onto his lap with a grumpy yip.
"We might need new clothes." He jokes. "I attempted to do laundry."
Scott raises an eyebrow. "You did laundry?"
"It needed to be done."
Quill gets up off the couch and follows Scott into the laundry room and watches as the former thief assesses the possible damage. He pulls everything out and into the basket and checks the shirts with obvious amazement.
"I think you managed to successfully do our laundry." Scott says with a bit of a laugh.
"Well give me a shirt so I can give the baby my tank top." Quill says as he strips off the piece of clothing.
Scott hands him one of his shirts, and when he put it on, it fit perfectly fine. It hadn't shrunk or stretched out, and there was no discoloration. His attempt at laundry was nothing short of a miracle, but he did it. They had clean clothes again, and Flynn had an article of clothing that smelled like Quill. The second the celestial dropped his tank top on Flynn, the kit took it away with a happy yip to put on his bed.
"He'll be back to hang on my pants in a minute." Quill huffs and Scott laughs as he stands with the basket.
"We'll meet him in the bedroom. I'm sure he'll want to help fold the laundry."
"Flynn with the laundry is like Tibbs with wrapping paper."
The couple head up to their room to hang up or fold their clothes to put away, and as they predicted, Flynn jumped onto the bed to 'help' them. It took the fox a couple of tries to get onto the bed, but he finally managed it and hopped around the bed happily. He would grab a sock or a pair of pants by the leg and bring it to Quill and the two humans would fold and put away their laundry. Even Quill had to admit it was cute when Flynn helped.
"Thanks buddy." Quill roughly (but gently) ruffles the fur on Flynn's head after taking the last sock from him. "That's the last of it." He says as he tosses the folded socks to Scott who puts them away in the dresser.
"Never thought we'd have help with laundry in the shape of a fox." Scott looks at Flynn and watches as he grabs Quill's boxers and jumps off the bed and lands with a tumble. "Or one that steals underwear."
Quill's head snaps up and he looks over at the baby fox as he drags the boxers toward his bed. "Flynn! No! Not those! I gave you my shirt! Stop stealing all of my clothes you little hoarder!"
He lunges over and snags his boxers from the kit who yaps at him in annoyance.
"You should have called him Swiper." Scott jokes and Quill looks at him in confusion.
"Why?"
"It's the name of a fox in a kids cartoon. He steals things."
Quill points at Flynn. "Swiper no swiping."
"That is literally what they say in the cartoon." Scott laughs.
"It's accurate for this little thief." Quill throws the thankfully still clean boxers in the dresser. "At least I'll know where to look first if my clothes start going missing."
Scott grins. "Oh I have someone to blame it on now."
"I've got two brats now."