Work Text:
A dust bunny skitters across the floor as Avery steps into the apartment. “Derek, your apartment is kind of dirty… as in, really, really dirty.”
“Um… yeah,” Derek mutters, embarrassed. “It is kind of dirty.”
“No, like, really dirty. We have got to clean this.”
“This is four months of dirtiness, Avery - we can’t clean it in a few hours, or even a day,” Derek says, glancing around. The ragged carpet on the ground - red, gold outline - has a few dull brown stains on it that might be blood - Avery’s honestly not too sure. A few off-gray dust bunnies shift at every disturbance. The air is stale and smells faintly of sweat and some sharp odor that he guesses is dust. The grimy window - it was dirty even before this ordeal, but it’s worse now - hasn’t been opened in months. The lightbulb is out of commission, but it’s not like it could turn on anyways, because Avery’s pretty sure Derek can’t pay electricity bills while glued to his computer. The desk has some old stains on it from a spilled Soylent bottle, as well as some disgusting yellow stuff that he suspects Derek threw up. He doesn’t know! Not for sure! His chair has even more of the yellow stuff, and there’s a mountain of plastic bottles by the black wire trash can. Clearly, Derek’s aim could use some improvement…
He doesn’t even know what Derek’s bedroom looks like.
Maybe this was a mistake…
“Well… at least we could start?” Avery says, intimidated by the state of the apartment.
“Um, sure,” Derek says, holding back a laugh.
“Not my fault you trashed your apartment.”
“Well, it’s not like I had any choice about it!”
“...Fair.”
First to go is the laptop. There is exactly no way that either Derek or Avery will ever, in their lives, allow that computer to stay. In fact, both of them will try to avoid gray Macbooks as best they can.
Next is the desk - after all, as Avery put it, “having radioactive yellow stuff on your desk is a sure sign of crazy stuff.” And they’re trying to get back to normal (not to mention that Derek Knows they need to blend in, but Avery doesn’t need to know that).
The mat goes too, because neither Avery nor Derek want to try to clean out months-old bloodstains. “I don’t think it can even be done, anyways.”
After that, it’s a vacuum borrowed from one of Avery’s friend’s - Derek doesn’t think any of his friends would be interested in giving them a vacuum, judging by the measly four notifications he’s gotten in four months - to clean up the dust bunnies.
“It looks a bit better,” Avery sighs. It’s been six hours.
“A bit?”
“We still have to clean up your bedroom.”