Chapter Text
It took another day before Roman brought out the decorations.
This was fine; he and Logan both had to glue down the rest of their respective covers on their special books and attach the end sheets, and Roman also needed to dye his leather red.
Once he was done with that, though, he brought out the decorations. "Okay, my friends, bring out your books!"
"Oh, I wasn't going to decorate my cottonbound book..."
Roman tapped a finger on the desk. "I get it, you like simple, but at least add something so that you have an easy way to remember which side's the front."
Logan thought about that. "I suppose I could add one sequin to it."
"Now, I still have to add my corner protectors, so I'm not quite ready for this," Roman set everything up, complete with pushing around some books and flat boxes to make stairs to reach the tops of things and leaving caps ajar on their bottles, "but you don't have to wait for me anymore." Then he grabbed his book and four ornate metal triangles. "I'm taking these out to the garage so that I'm not shaking the table while you're trying to work. I'm not expecting you to be able to close things completely, but at least make sure to get the caps to cover their bottles completely when you're done with them, okay?"
"We will."
The door closed, and Virgil raced into the maze of junk boxes. Logan followed at a more sedate pace, looking up at labels. "Leaf primer."
"Is that one of the open ones? You may as well close it again, we probably won't be using it until Princey gets it out for himself."
"True," Logan climbed onto the box next to it to give the lid a shove, "those large sheets of gold leaf are too much for us to use, we are better off waiting for him to put them on his book and dusting off the excess."
"I'm looking for purple rhinestones and silver or gold sequins," Virgil called. "You said something about a sequin yourself?"
"Yes, a blue one - preferably dark blue. Oh, and if you're doing what I think you're doing, get two 'silver or gold' sequins and a dark blue rhinestone, I shall be doing that same thing with my more decorated book."
"Okay, I'm looking over here, you look over there."
Thus split up, they hunted, keeping eyes out for both things.
Logan found the rhinestones, while Virgil found the sequins. He did have to stir through them carefully with a toothpick, trying to find the colors that were wanted, but he eventually surfaced with a dark blue one, two gold ones and two silver ones, while Logan found a purple rhinestone and a dark blue rhinestone.
Logan's dark blue sequin was glued onto the front of his cotton book, while Virgil dithered back and forth trying to decide if the "amethyst" looked better with a gold setting or a silver one.
Logan placed his "sapphire" onto the gold sequin. "If Roman is truly going to use the gold leaf, it would match better to use the 'gold' sequin."
"Yeah, there's that." Virgil mirrored Logan, picked up the two unused sequins and ran to put them back in their bin.
Fifteen minutes later, Logan deemed his cottonbound book dry, picked it up, and calmly headed off to put it inside his nook. Virgil had apparently decided that while he could glue down the sequin, trying to put gold decorations on would be easier without the rhinestone in the way.
Soon after that, Roman came back in. "Corners protected, now it's time for gold."
Virgil smirked.
"Are you done with this stuff?"
"Yeah, we pulled out the stuff we're using."
Roman slapped trays shut and pushed them aside to make room for his enormous book. Then he started marking lines.
When Logan came back, he walked right up to Roman and climbed onto one of the corner protectors. "I believe when it comes to the gold leaf, Virgil and I shall stagger our progress with yours at least at first. We shall be using what you shed from your book, after all."
"Oh, hey, Logan! Yeah, sure. I got out snacks."
"I saw." Logan took the hint and went with Virgil over to the snack tray while Roman finished marking his front cover lines, painted over them with primer, waited for the correct length of time, and then patted down large sheets of gold leaf onto them. After which, he joined them at the snack plate.
A little while later, after both Logan and Virgil had painted some primer onto their back covers ("I believe Roman plans on just dusting off his gold leaf right on top of our books, and with that lack of control we should ensure that the first surface to receive gold is on the back"), they stepped a safe distance back to wait.
And true to Logan's prediction, when Roman started using a paintbrush to brush off the gold from his book's cover, he dusted it off directly on top of the tiny books, completely hiding them under gold shavings. "Now I'm going to put some protector stuff onto this."
"Take your time. And this is plenty, we don't need any more." Logan picked his way carefully through the gold to reach the books, with Virgil trailing behind.
Needless to say, by the time all sides of the books big and small had received lines of gold, Logan and Virgil had gold glitter all over their clothes and in their hair. As the borrowers took their remaining decorations and their books to the other side of the table where the glue cap was, Roman brought out the vacuum cleaner to pick up the remaining shavings. (He had asked if they wanted to save the gold, and neither did. "Using gold leaf is completely circumstantial," was what Logan said about it, "as it isn't something that we are likely to use every day, there is no reason to put any into storage.")
"Okay, we're almost completely cleaned up." Roman held a hand out to the two borrowers. "You both need a shower. I can turn the sink into Spray Mode for you."
Virgil laughed a little and hopped up, followed by Logan. "Yeah, we can just take showers with our clothes on, it's fine."
"It isn't as if our clothing does not also need to be washed."