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virmillion · 5 years

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With only two days left to go before the new office is finally open and he can at last return to work, Logan is bored out of his mind. He tilts his head up from his position on the floor with his feet up on the wall and looks at Virgil, who shrugs.

“Just because I know art history doesn’t mean I know anything about whatever modern scene you’re trying to peddle. How should I know what you want to do for fun?”

“We’ve got a functional car now, right? We might as well use it.”

“To do what? The only places we go outside of work are, like, the park. And Patton’s house, I guess, but I don’t know why you’d use your car to go hassle him.”

“We could just get in the car and drive, see where we end up?”

“As if there isn’t literally an endless list of places we could go or random directions we could take.”

“Not like we have any better options. Not like you’re suggesting any, for that matter.”

“You have absolutely got me there, my dude.”

Logan takes this as the most solid of agreements he could hope for and pushes his foot off the wall, doing half of a backwards somersault to get to his knees. Virgil, in a much less graceful manner (despite whatever dance experience Logan is convinced he’s hiding from him), tumbles off the couch and lands in a heap on the floor. He luckily seems to find his footing by the time Logan pockets the keys and insurance papers, doing a spectacular job of not tripping on his way down the stairs.

Logan clicks the lock button on the fob, reassuring himself it still works despite having just gotten it, y’know, yesterday. As he presses the unlock button on the handle, Virgil yanks on the passenger door at exactly the right moment to re-lock his door. Logan sighs and presses it again before sliding into his seat.

For a used lease, it isn’t in the worst possible shape. A few tears in the leather of the seat, some bleach stains, some scuff marks, but certainly good enough that it won’t crap out on them in the middle of a busy highway. At the very least, Kathy’s deal regarding further interests in a motorcycle was more than fair. Logan is pretty sure this car will survive the next couple years in one piece, anyway, so it’s hardly worth worrying about.

Virgil does not agree with this sentiment.

“What if that spot didn’t show up in the trust papers and they charge you for it when you turn it in?”

“Then we’ll be out thirty bucks and the next lessee will enjoy a cleaner car.”

“What if you lock the keys in the car and your phone dies and your late for work?”

“Then I politely ask the nearest shop if I could borrow their phone for roadside assistance.”

“What if you forget the number?”

“Google.”

“What if—”

“Virgil.”

“What?”

Logan sweeps a hand around to indicate the parking lot, from which they still haven’t moved an inch. “If any of that happens, we will deal with it when it comes.” He holds up his phone and swipes away the dormant background apps. “Full battery.” He scratches at a stain on the console with his fingernail, picking it off with ease. “We can always clean it ourselves.” He takes Virgil’s hand in his own, feeling the bands between them. “And if nothing else, we’ve got each other.”

Virgil nods, clearly still unconvinced, but reaches for the aux cord and plugs in his phone. “Dibs on music hijackery.”

“I don’t think that’s quite how dibs work,” Logan says, but he doesn’t protest when Alec Benjamin’s voice pours from the speakers. As they approach a traffic light, Logan assigns each direction a number—left one, right two, straight three. “Pick a number, one through nine.”

“Seven.” Logan clicks on his indicator and pulls into the left turn lane. Once the next light pops up—two directions with a one way street cutting through the middle—Logan reassigns the numbers, one through ten, with going straight being designated as odd numbers.

“Pick a number, one through ten.”

“Four.”

Logan turns, quirking one eyebrow as Virgil rapid-fire skips through a solid fifteen songs in a row, only allowed a discordant opening beat to play each time.

“One through three,” Virgil grumbles.

“Now that’s no fun,” Logan chides lightly. “Where’s the variety, the panache? And three. One through ten.”

“Eight.” Logan sees the word on his lips more than he hears it, turning right as some song about tongues by a horizon band starts blaring from the speakers. The short stints of number selections continue for a good twenty minutes or so, with only the vaguest occasional commentary from Logan, before Virgil speaks up again.

“I’m getting close to the end of my repertoire.” Mind you, he’s played a maximum of seven songs to completion by this point.

“You’ve hardly played anything yet. How many songs do you have?”

“Five hundred forty-two.”

“And you only wanted to listen to seven.”

“Correct.”

“So why not delete the other five thirty-five?”

“’Cause I’m not in the mood to listen to them now , but I might be later.”

“Fair enough. One through nine.”

“Five.”

Logan drives straight, eyeing the strip mall fast approaching on the right. “How about we go to Ikea?”

“Why would we go to Ikea?”

“Could be fun, wandering around and getting lost in the aisles and all that manner of doing. Plus, hey, we could always get some furniture.”

“Right, because the apartment isn’t crowded enough already. Surely more things will fit in the same space.” Logan considers this and shrugs, but nevertheless he flicks on his right turn indicator and pulls into the parking lot. And a spot not too far from the doors. Nice.

Virgil smacks the back of his hand into Logan’s chest when he moves to cut the engine. “Wait, there’s only twenty-five seconds left in this song.” So they sit and they wait for the song to play itself out, Virgil bouncing along and Logan watching how the longer pieces of his dyed hair claw past his undercut to the nape of his neck. “Okay, now we can go.” Virgil climbs out of the car first, already bounding for the entrance by the time Logan locks the doors behind them.

“Someone’s in a hurry,” Logan remarks, scrubbing at a smudge on his glasses with his shirt. He squints at Virgil’s blurry silhouette, which is nearly to the undefined entrance already. “Since when did furniture shopping excite you?”

“Since I remembered that Ikea has, like, the best cinnamon rolls.”

“I never agreed to making any purchases today.”

“You never agreed to making any furniture purchases today. You never said cinnamon rolls were off the table, so hurry up.”

This is how Logan finds himself sandwiched between a family of five in front of him and an elderly lady behind him. Virgil, the little snot, lingers at the edge of the line, nowhere near as cramped as Logan. More than a little squished as he does so, Logan leans over to Virgil and mumbles, “I am not getting you the six pack.”

Virgil hardly seems to hear him, pawing through his wallet (Logan’s wallet, that is) for some bills on the west side of crumpled. “Yeah, sure, cool deal my dude.”

Singular cinnamon roll in hand, Virgil follows Logan from the counter some ten minutes later, the latter being extra careful not to touch the parts of his husband’s hand that are drenched in sugar.

“Skhur khoo gon’t wah skhung?” Virgil asks—well, that’s what it sounds like he asks, but Logan likes to think himself pretty darn decent at reading context clues. That is, the context clues of Virgil’s full mouth and the way he’s prodding the roll in Logan’s direction.

“I’m good,” Logan says, holding up his hands as if to calm a rabid child. Virgil shrugs and tears off another piece, smearing icing across his chin in the process, and Logan wonders whether he should feel enamoured or disgusted. Maybe a little bit of both.

By the time they reach what Virgil referred to as ‘guh koch uk guh gnazje’—’the top of the maze,’ as Logan managed to parcel out—the roll is completely gone and Virgil is licking his fingers clean, pulling them from his lips with a pop .

“You are incorrigible,” Logan informs Virgil, watching him wipe his fingers off on the hem of his shirt.

“Not like anyone else’ll notice.” Virgil zips up his jacket and holds his arms out to the sides, as if to say tada to a nonexistent audience. “See? Good as gone.”

“I suppose.” Logan glances at the arrows underfoot, tracing their path up to a map standee. “Let’s try to figure out where we want to go before we get completely lost.”

“Aw, that’s no fun,” Virgil grumbles. He pokes at an area on the map. “If we’re gonna do it the cheater’s way, I want to hit up the office and study displays.”

Logan nods, dragging a finger along the picture and tapping the you are here dot. “Okay, that shouldn’t be too impossible. We just need to go through bedding here, past the living room section there, and we can bypass the kitchen part with this shortcut here.”

“Works for me,” Virgil says, already a good fifteen feet away. Logan exhales and moves quickly to catch up, following Virgil down the winding path and wondering how long it’ll take them to get completely lost.

“Hey, wait, hold up,” Virgil says suddenly, stopping sharply enough that Logan has to feint right to avoid smacking his face between Virgil’s shoulder blades.

“What is it?” Virgil tilts his head toward a display room in the bedding section, with several blankets and a surplus of pillows and some glow in the dark stars on the wall and a bedside table and—“Why did you stop me for this?”

“’Cause that could be us.” Virgil’s voice takes on a strange quality, sort of airy and wistful, a combination that completely baffles Logan.

“I don’t think I quite follow you.”

“See how normal it is? It’s literally just a bed with some decorations but, like, that’s how some people’s homes actually are. That’s the kind of thing that we could make our normal.”

“I don’t think I quite understand what you’re trying to get across here.”

Virgil gives an exasperated sigh, glances about them, and launches himself at the bed. Logan freezes, his hands caught somewhere between wringing themselves out and trying to stop him. Posing atop the bed, Virgil peeks out at Logan from between his elbows and squints his eyes so they almost look sleepy—more squinty than sleepy, but Logan gets the point well enough.

“This is an actual, genuine, legitimate thing that we could have, and it could just—just be. ”

“I don’t think—”

“Then stop thinking.” Virgil props himself up on his elbows and stares at Logan, more than long enough to make him uncomfortable. (This admittedly doesn’t take very long, but still.) “There’s no, like, grand point I’m trying to make here. I’m just saying that this display is something that some people actually have, and it’s manufactured, yeah, it’s whatever, but it’s still something that exists, and something we could have, something that—it could—I don’t know, I think I lost my point somewhere in there. I can’t really put it into words, but d’you know what I mean? Don’t answer that.” His face taking on a stunning shade of crimson, Virgil slides off the bed and speedwalks to the next department.

“Well, hey, hang on,” Logan calls, jogging to catch up. When he does (by no small amount of effort), he has to hold Virgil’s shoulder in place to keep him from getting away again. “Just because I don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s invalid.”

“Doesn’t mean it is valid, either.” Virgil is staring intently at the ground, as if it might get up and run away when he’s not looking.

“Okay, so then let me try.”

“Try what?”

Rather than answer, Logan steps off the arrow-lined path and stands beside an elbow couch covered in decorative pillows. “This could be us, too, right? A normal, everyday thing that doesn’t mean much to anyone else, but it could be a sort of symbol of the life we choose to forge together? Was that what you meant about the bedding display?”

“Kind of, but not really, but you tried your best.” Virgil stifles a laugh as Logan perches on the arm of the couch and rests his chin on his fist. “What are you doing, dork?”

“I’m thinking…” Logan mumbles, drawing out the second syllable. “I’m thinking… I’m thinking…”

“You are so weird.” Virgil shifts his weight between his feet for a moment, then bolts down the path, easily escaping Logan’s sight as the latter scrambles to get off the couch arm without tripping over himself. Logan weaves between the scattered clumps of people doing, you know, real serious shopping, doing his best not to full out sprint in his efforts to catch up with Virgil’s silhouette as it disappears around the next corner every time he gets it back in his sights.

“Stop doing that!” Logan groans once he finally reaches Virgil, who appears entranced by the fancier displays of kitchenware. “We were supposed to take a shortcut back there.”

“Yeah, but maybe I wanted to look at utensils and stuff.” Virgil spins around and holds up a wooden block shaped like a porcupine, its spines consisting of all manner of forks and spoons and knives. “Look at this one! Her name is Polly.”

Logan cranes his neck to look for a tag declaring as much, electing not to suggest that a better name might be ‘Caesar.’ “Where does it say that?”

“In my heart.” Virgil places the porcupine back on the shelf and continues down the aisle, now checking out a nesting set of measuring cups.

“We don’t need kitchenware stuff, you know.” Logan is confident that his words are falling on dear ears, but he continues his lecture anyway. “We rarely cook anything so complex as to require new tools. We don’t even use the ones we already have.”

“What’s your point?” The question seems too halfhearted to be anything more than vague encouragement for Logan to keep talking as Virgil pokes his nose into a standing hutch display. “Hey, look how nice this wood is! Even better than the frames at the museum. D’you think they’d give me a raise if I went in and criticized their choice of woodwork for displaying the art?”

“Probably not, since you don’t have a legal salary in the first place.” Logan picks up a set of cups, lifting them over his head to inspect the undersides by the fluorescent beam lights.

“Fair enough.” With no further warning, Virgil backs up from the hutch and darts down the path into the next section. Logan sighs, not bothering to call out another ‘stop doing that’ before setting down the cups and chasing after him, narrowly dodging two women leaning their heads together to admire a kitchen display.

#labhwrites #mine #i'll bring you the moon #ibytm

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