Title: Turns by scheherezhad

It's Quatre's week to do laundry. That means everything will come back hung, folded, mended, starched, pressed, or otherwise dealt with exactly like the labels say. I don't know how he has the patience to do it all--and I know he does it himself, every last bit. I actually hung out with Quatre one time while he did some of it. He's pretty handy with an iron, which I wasn't expecting, what with him growing up with a jillion people to do it for him.

Sometimes I think that I can smell his cologne on my shirts when I get them back.

After seeing him handle our clothes like a professional, I tried to pick up some of the slack in my weeks. I mean, I'm the kind of guy who'd make a pile for lights and a pile for darks, chuck one in with a scoop of detergent, and toss everyone's stuff on their beds when it was done. After Q, I actually put a little effort into sorting and folding and all.

Trowa is the neatest folder. He folds shirts like those girls at pricey "casual" stores. When he does pants, they always come out perfectly even all the way down, then he hangs them on special pants hangers that no one else uses. The guy even folds socks instead of rolling them into balls (he says that ruins their elastic).

On Heero's weeks, it takes forever because he sorts everyone's stuff individually. That means a five loads of whites, five loads of darks, and five loads of colors, each going through the washer and the dryer. I razz him about being obsessive-compulsive, but he quit reacting after the day he spent half an hour telling me exactly why it was technically more efficient. Something about the overall cleanness-to-resource consumption ratio. I don't know, exactly, since I got real good at tuning him out when he's on those rants.

Wufei is the most fun. Well, I should say, I personally find his laundry habits to be the most amusing. For one, he turns almost everything inside out before tossing it in the washer. He claims it keeps colors from fading and fuzzing, and it keeps designs from getting ruined as fast. I think he's right about that, but it still strikes me as funny that he's worried about the design on his "going out" shirt cracking. The best part, though, is that he won't touch anyone else's underwear. He uses a shirt like a glove to pick up underwear and put them in the wash, then to take them out of the dryer. When he returns everyone's clothes, everything's pretty much folded, but our underwear is always in the basket for us to sort ourselves.

I wander down to the basement, and Quatre's there, hanging and folding, iron at the ready.

"Hey, Q?"

"Yes, Duo?"

He's got that smile that secretly makes my knees jelly. "You want some help?"

"Sure. That'd be nice."

I love Quatre's week.