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“Colors go with darks, Theo.”
“The load is too small. We gotta put the colors in.”
“Then we’ll set it to quick wash. That way we won’t use so much water.”
“Yeah, but the soap suds up enough to wash a whole load, so we’ll be wasting a ton of soap with a tiny ass load that way.”
“Theo, don’t you dare put that towel in with my polos or I swear I will not blow you for a week.”
Theo freezes in the middle of attempting to dump said hot pink Hawaiian flowered beach towel into the washing machine basket, right over Liam’s white and powder blue knit polos where the load would arguably be the perfect balance with the terry material on top.
“Should I even be hearing this?” Mason deadpans from the countertop where he’s lounging oh so comfily with his legs pretzeled together and his phone balanced on one thigh as he takes a long, gurgling drag of his Capri Sun. Probably (most definitely) courtesy of the secret stock that Liam and Theo keep at the back of their pantry for when Alec inevitably pops over.
“You shouldn’t,” says Liam to his best friend, “because you shouldn’t even be here.”
“I’m literally waiting for your asses to get done with loading the laundry so we can go already.”
“Well, maybe if you didn’t have an addiction to showing up half an hour early to everything, you wouldn’t have to wait!” Liam flails his arms in demonstration, then lunges for Theo when the chimera tries sneaking his burgundy sweatpants into the washing machine. “Theodore Raeken, what the fuck did I just tell you!”
Theo serves him an unimpressed look. “Not to stick the pink towel in. Ergo, not sticking the pink towel in.”
“I’ll stick something else up your ass,” Liam mutters, batting away Theo’s hands and curling his fingers around his boyfriend’s wrist to keep him back and away from ruining the load further.
The smirk is audible in Theo’s retort. “Sounds like a good time to me.”
“Ugh. I do still have to eat breakfast, you know,” Mason complains, hypocritically. Like an absolute hypocrite. Because he and Corey sticking their tongues down each other’s throats at every other brunch when they think Liam and Theo are too busy arguing about the menu options isn’t an appetite killer.
“I’m serious. Stay back. Lemme finish this.” Liam shakes Theo’s wrist, letting the chimera’s limp hand flop around in emphasis. He proceeds to drag Theo to and fro as he bends down and picks up the correct items from the pile on the floor in bunches, shaking them out and spreading them around the agitator inside the washing machine.
Over Liam’s shoulder, Theo and Mason’s gaze meet in a brief but loaded look. Mason drops his gaze down to where Liam’s hand is still intertwined with Theo’s, then back up, letting the corner of his mouth twitch. Theo raises a single brow, daring him to comment.
Oblivious to the silent exchange going on behind him, Liam slams the washer lid closed, clicks it on, and then sticks his head into the dryer to recover the load from last night. He wrinkles his nose at the first item that tumbles out.
Brows raised and lip caught between his teeth, Liam swivels around and waves the top in Theo’s face. “What,” he asks mildly, “do you suppose this is?”
Theo’s heart somersaults through a journey of truly diverse emotions. Schooling his voice, he replies coolly, “My purple sweater. What did you think it was?”
“Huh.” Liam pushes his jaw to the side, obviously battling a shit-eating grin. “Really? Couldn’t tell.”
Another obnoxious gurgle of juice announces Mason’s decision to likewise be an asshole about this. He grabs the once-upon-a-time-a-decent-looking-sweater and holds it up to Theo’s torso, smirking when the hem falls short of his midriff. “Looks more like a crop top to me.”
“Maybe so,” is Theo’s neutral response.
“Theo,” Liam sighs. “You did read the tag inside, right? It said not to toss it in the dryer. This isn’t pre-shrunk cotton.”
“Maybe I wanted to toss it in the dryer and make it a crop top. Ever considered that?” Theo snarks.
Mason clucks his tongue. “Theo, Theo, Theo. If you’d wanted a crop top, all you had to ask and I’d’ve given you, like, twenty last Christmas.”
Liam is full-on grinning now. Still somehow clutching Theo’s fingers, he uses his free hand to slap Theo’s chest with the woebegone purple victim of the chimera’s domestic escapades. He reaches back into the dryer—the little shit—and produces another questionably sized item.
“And this?” he asks. Like a little shit.
“Crop top and denim shorts,” Theo replies. Tongue in cheek.
“You mean hotpants.” Mason shamelessly has his phone out and is recording by now. “You’re so trying them on now while I film this.”
“Do not send that to Alec.”
“I’m so sending this to Alec.”
“Liam, help me.”
“Not helping you do shit,” Liam says cheerfully. He reaches forward to tug Theo’s sleep shirt up and over his shoulders, wrestling the cotton off, and grabs Theo’s floppy arms to thrust them into the armholes of his new piece of haute couture. Theo simply stands there, mouth and eyes pressed into flat slits, as Mason enables his best friend with breathless cackles on his phone recording.
With his biceps bulging and his toned abs obscenely exposed from the bottom of his sweater, Theo deadpans, “You guys done playing Ken Doll now?”
“Just admit that you forgot to read the tag and I promise I won’t embarrass you too much,” Liam whispers conspiratorially.
“I read the tag.”
“Dude,” says Mason. “You can memorize the names and locations of all the arteries in a human body but you couldn’t figure out what not to put in the dryer. You obviously didn’t read the tag.”
“Sorry if the Dread Doctors were a little too preoccupied to teach me how to do laundry,” Theo says, rolling his eyes.
“Wait, so what did you do with like, stains and shit?” says Liam. He’s currently got his arms wrapped around his boyfriend, and he pulls back an inch to crane his head up and look at Theo. The gesture is (debatably, Theo contends) adorable.
“Don’t ask that,” Mason implores Liam. “He’s literally gonna say he lapped up the blood or something.”
“I did not ‘lap up the blood or something.’ I’m a little more civilized than that,” Theo scoffs.
Liam coughs into his shoulder.
“...I threw away the clothes and stole new ones,” Theo admits.
Liam’s face does something funny, somewhere between snickering and melting in empathy. “It’s okay, babe, no more stealing. I’ll buy you a new sweater,” he assures Theo.
“Great,” Theo replies in a tone that says anything but. “Can you make sure next time it’s preshrunk cotton?”
“No,” Mason protests, waving his phone around. “Liam, you’ve shown the man’s abs to the world now. Crop tops it is. There’s no going back now.”