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“Look alive, Griffin,” Raven says, dropping a stack of paperwork on Clarke’s desk in her little office in the rear corner of the shop. “I have those preliminary expense reports you asked for.”
It’s at least an inch of unstapled loose-leaf paper, of order forms and itemized receipts and pages of faxed correspondences with a junkyard about scrap metal and hauling services for Raven’s project of the moment.
“Pretty sure I asked for these weeks ago, Reyes,” Clarke rolls her eyes and drops the pen in her hand, “and that I’ve been asking almost every day since.”
There’s a tray on the left side of her desk for incoming documents, a tray on the right for outgoing stuff, and she was in the middle of updating the inventory log—which she had to do before she could call in a round of orders from a local shop—when Raven dropped everything smack in the middle, so that it covered the top half of the sheet Clarke was working on.
Clarke can practically feel her blood pressure rise at the prospect of having to comb through all this. She’ll be at it for days.
“Possibly,” Raven shrugs, dropping into the vacant office chair next to the little book case and rolling it up to sit opposite Clarke, “but did you ask me to collect these stupid things for everybody?”
“Everybody,” Clarke asks, incredulous. “You mean to tell me that everybody in the shop tracked their stuff down, and that it’s all right here?”
“Everybody,” Raven smirks, “I know, I’m good. You don’t have to tell me.”
“You mean to tell me, when I comb through all this, all the half-sheets and torn receipts with god knows what streaked all over them, nothing will be missing?”
“Seriously, Clarke,” Raven scoffs, “Every mechanic in the shop, and all our shit, is in there. Even Echo. You might even say we’re all—”
“Please don’t—” Clarke tries.
“Accounted for,” Raven finishes. And then she grins, just like she did when Clarke had collected everything to make last year’s expense reports, and the year before. “Where’s your sense of humor? That killed the first time.”
The first time, Clarke was so overwhelmed by the unfamiliar sort of paperwork necessary for keeping a brand-new business open and in good standing with the IRS that she would’ve laughed at anything. She laughed hysterically when Harper tripped over an open quart of oil, even cried a little when Anya slipped in the slickness and the lug wrench in her hand went flying.
“This is the third, Raven. Three times now I’ve had to hear it.”
“You’re a lucky girl, always being here when I make it.”
“Try it on me next year, and you’re going to need a new shop manager slash accountant,” Clarke threatens.
“I’m calling bullshit on that,” Raven says, leaning back in her chair and yanking down the zipper on her jumpsuit, “one, because you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you couldn’t boss around all us grease monkeys every day.”
“Pretty sure I could adopt a few feral cats and let them make huge messes and drive me crazy for a much smaller investment, but continue.”
“Two, because, while I’m definitely the brains in every other aspect of our life together, this is your place to shine in that regard.”
“What a compliment,” Clarke says dryly.
Raven shrugs again, and adds, “We both know you’re the only one who understands your filing system, and I would probably tank both our credit and take this place under in like three days without you.”
“I literally just file things by serial number and there’s a drawer for each filing year, Rave plus—”
“Bleh, you’re brilliant, Clarke, but that’s all gibberish,” Raven sighs, “And, three, you love me.”
“Do I,” Clarke asks, even though she’d be hard-pressed to come up with another reason for pooling her savings with Raven’s to open the first all-female mechanic shop in the state.
“You will,” Raven informs her, “when you look through that stack and notice that our receipts and junk are all sorted by mechanic, and in chronological order. I even threw in some sticky notes for your convenience.”
“Holy shit,” Clarke says, actually blown away as she leans forward to confirm that the tops of some of the pages are marked with names: Anya and Echo and Emori and… “I love you.”
“Duh,” Raven says, pushing up out of her seat, “So just keep that in mind, the gratitude and the love, while I run home to grab my lunch, will ya’?”
“Who’s on the floor,” Clarke asks, before Raven can even drag the rolling chair back to its spot.
“Just you and me, babe. Anya had to pop over to Arkadia to pick up a few parts. Roma should be in soon, though.”
Clarke groans, “Pick a timesheet, like, any time sheet, Raven, and find me a shift that Roma wasn’t late for.”
“Golden hands, Clarke,” Raven reminds her, still creeping toward the door, “and she’s nice enough.”
“And her family did our commercials for free, I know.”
“You’ll barely even know you’re here alone, Clarke.”
“Uh, yeah,” Clarke complains, “I will, because Roma will be late, and Anya always hangs around to flirt with that clerk who gets disappointed whenever we have to make the pick-up instead of her, and your mouth is saying lunch, but my instincts are telling me that you’re still doing all the honeymoon sex stuff with Bellamy instead of eating.”
“Can you blame me,” Raven says, a little dreamily, slouching against the wall.
“That means I’ll be sitting here, one eye on all this,” Clarke waves a hand over the mess on her desk, “the other on the garage, and I’ll have to talk to customers. Customers, Raven. They’re the worst, and they can smell my discomfort.”
“Anybody ever tell you you’re too smart for your own good?”
“You,” Clarke responds, folding her hands over the bottom-half of the inventory.
“All of that might be true,” Raven admits, “and it might also be true that someone is only making a big deal about my hot, married sex life and Anya’s tawdry flirting with clerk girl because they haven’t even been on a date in months—”
“I’m—”
“A horny mess,” Raven fills in, “Trust me, everyone knows. But you’ll be fine, Clarke. Nobody’s even going to come in, and if they do, just pretend they aren’t keeping our business alive, be your cute, friendly self and sit them down somewhere with a cup of water or something. I’ll be right back, I swear.”
“Fine,” Clarke begrudgingly says, “but I’m going to teach you all about this filing system when you’re back.”
“I love you,” Raven beams, and Clarke knows that means her best friend is going to use every move possible to avoid looking at the system, “I’ll be quick. Thirty minutes, tops.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Clarke says, pushing the stack Raven dropped further away to get back to the inventory as Raven disappears through the door.
Raven’s been gone fifteen minutes when Clarke looks up through the clear glass of the office window to see a car pulling up to the open garage door.
She sighs and pushes up from her desk to greet the customer at the door.
Clarke does most of the paperwork, and she grumbles about it plenty, but she prefers it to dealing with people nine times out of ten. She’d rather leave it to one of the mechanics, who are happy to smile and ask questions and field the sort of casual condescension that comes from the men who drive up without realizing they’ll be turning over their cars to lady mechanics with their girl hands and girl tools—which really refers to all their tools, though Clarke barely gets through a month without one of the girls huffing into the office, because it’s the break room, too, and telling her that another man has felt the need to joke about them marring his car with pink lug nuts or something—or to Raven, who takes a special delight in answering honest questions and seems genuinely unbothered by the idiots who dare to doubt her.
But Roma is late and Anya hasn’t gotten back from macking on that clerk and Raven is, actually, Clarke doesn’t want to know what Raven’s up to right now, but the point is that Clarke co-owns an auto shop, and that means she has to speak to the occasional customer.
It’s a short walk, from the back office to the front of the garage, one littered with little obstacles along the way, and Clarke’s considering throttling Emori if she keeps forgetting to recoil the air hose when she’s done with it. When Clarke gets to the front, there’s a woman standing beside her car, a mid-size black sedan of some kind.
Clarke doesn’t really know the difference.
She’s on her phone, typing away with both hands beside her open door, in an impossibly sharp-looking skirt suit, all pin stripes and cleanly pressed lines. She doesn’t even look up as Clarke approaches, doesn’t slow her typing or either close or move away from her door.
Clarke is going to offer the cheery, but impersonal Hi there. How can I help you, but the woman beats her to the punch.
“Can you fit me in for an oil change in the next twenty minutes? I’m in a serious rush.”
She looks up then, this woman with long brown hair pulled back off her face and cheekbones that could probably rival Anya’s, and Clarke is supposed to try to placate her until somebody, literally anybody, shows up for their shift.
Clarke is supposed to be polite and apologetic and offer her a paper cup of water or a mug of weak coffee and a seat on the guest couch in the waiting room that’s only slightly larger than the office.
Instead, Clarke gets caught off guard by this woman who, if she’s being honest, is so good-looking that Clarke sort of thinks she might not be real.
Instead, Clarke says, “Yeah, I mean, yes. We can, uh, we can do that.”
The woman smiles then, nothing very broad or warm, just the polite smile of a person who got the answer she was looking for, but it’s still a very nice-looking smile and it makes Clarke grin like an idiot.
“No Echo today,” the woman asks, “I think she’s done my last few oil changes.”
“Nope,” Clarke says, “She’s off.”
The woman hums somewhat thoughtfully and says, “I didn’t realize you were one of the mechanics.”
Clarke should take the out before she embarrasses herself any further, but she already agreed to do the oil change, and so she semi-truthfully says, “I’m usually in the office.”
“Yeah, I know,” the woman says, “I’ve seen you from afar a few times, just pictured you as the management type.”
She doesn’t stumble or stutter or walk back on her words, doesn’t seem particularly bothered with the implication that she’s looked, on multiple occasions, into the huge windows of Clarke’s office and looked her over without the blonde ever noticing.
“No offense, of course,” the woman says quickly, “I’m sure you’re more than capable.”
“Mhm,” Clarke nods, still feeling sort of dumb. “I work here.”
“Yeah, uh, you do,” the woman says, sort of laughs, even, making no sign that she knows how strange Clarke is behaving, “Are you going to…is that what you’re going to wear?”
“Huh,” Clarke starts to ask, and then she looks down and realizes she’s in her business casual office wear—because one condition she and Raven agreed to when they decided to open the shop was that Clarke wouldn’t be expected to wear coveralls or anything with her name sewn on it—and says, “No, I’ll just go get into some coveralls.”
She’s walking away from the woman toward the metal container that houses the soft, but so-not-Clarke’s-style one-piece jumpsuits, and starts stepping into one of them when she hears the woman speaking up again.
“Should I pull into the garage.”
And…should she?
Clarke doesn’t usually handle this, has watched Fox wave people forward for some jobs, and watched Harper hop into the driver’s seat for others.
“Nope,” Clarke decides, walking back to her, “I’ve got it, you can wait in the lobby.”
The woman nods then, short and sure, and doesn’t wait for Clarke open any doors like Raven and the others sometimes do for customers, and then Clarke is alone with her car, key still in the ignition.
And…Clarke can do this. Clarke has, in the most desperate of moments, when Raven and all of their employees were otherwise occupied, had to slowly, carefully drive a car onto a track that will suspend it in air. She’s technically qualified in accomplishing the barest of minimums, so she’s sure she can do this.
And, Clarke doesn’t really do her own oil changes, not when Raven’s been doing them for years, but she knows the parts. She knows what things look like, more or less. She has to, for order forms and inventory crosscheck, and she sort of knows where things are going.
The woman is in the lobby and the key is in the ignition and Clarke isn’t sure why she’s doing any of this, but she’s pretty sure there’s nothing she can really fuck up with this—and she’s quietly hoping that Raven’s back in time to take over—when she realizes she’s already fucked up.
The key is in the ignition, the woman is in the lobby, and, when Clarke slips into the driver’s seat, she realizes the car has a stick shift.
Clarke has only ever driven automatic cars.
She doesn’t even know how to get the damn thing over the threshold of the garage.
“What are you doing,” a voice asks, and Clarke snaps her head up to see Anya grinning at her, “And is that mine?”
“What? No,” Clarke says, but she looks down, and, sure enough, Anya’s name is over her chest.
“You know, even though we call you a control freak sometimes, I don’t think any of us has ever actually thought you were going to do our job for us. Or as us.”
“I’m not impersonating you,” Clarke argues.
Anya raises her eyebrows.
“Fine, I kind of am. But I have a good reason,” Clarke tells her, stealing a glance at the brunette sitting in the lobby on her phone. “And keep in mind that I sign your checks and am solely responsible for getting you reimbursed when you buy parts out of pocket.”
“Pretty sure Reyes could sign them just as handily but explain.”
“There’s—don’t look,” Clarke begs, “there’s a very busy woman waiting for an oil change in the lobby right now—”
Of course, Anya snaps her head in the woman’s direction, and connects the dots.
“Ah, I see. A super hot corporate babe needed a lube job, and after seeing that face you couldn’t turn her down.”
“Don’t be gross.”
“Am I wrong?”
Clarke glares, but shakes her head.
“Then what’s the problem? I would say you just remembered that you don’t have a any of the necessary certificates for this, but somehow I don’t think that’s what’s stopping you.”
“I can’t drive a stick.”
“Clarke, I know it’s been a while, but the rhythm comes—”
Clarke socks her in the shoulder hard enough that Anya winces, “My car’s an automatic. This is a manual. And she’s in a rush, Anya.”
“You’re no fun these days,” Anya rolls her eyes, “Get out.”
“Then she’s going to know—”
“That hot lady,” Anya interrupts, “her name’s Lexa something. She comes in a few times a year, super polite, and she’s pretty much glued to her phone until we’re ready to take her credit card. She won’t notice if you aren’t the one pulling it in.”
Clarke doesn’t fight it after that. She takes advantage of a rare bit of sincerity from Anya, and lets the other woman pull the car in. Then she stands at Anya’s side as she makes a five-minute job of changing the woman’s—Lexa’s—oil, and listens seriously while Anya explains what she’s doing, and more attentively than any of the times when Raven tried to explain it.
She only checks over her shoulder once, to see whether the woman has looked up to notice that Anya’s doing all the work.
By the time Anya pulls the car back out, Roma has showed up, and Raven’s back, too, and Clarke’s not excited for both of them to know how embarrassing she’s been in the last ten minutes. She considers herself lucky when Raven autopilots back to the office and Roma busies herself near the batteries.
“Keys,” Anya says, dropping them in Clarke’s palm, “Just be normal, okay? She’s a good customer, and she probably hasn’t even noticed how fucking strange you’ve been.”
“You’re probably right,” Clarke says.
“Almost always,” Anya tells her, as Clarke starts to back away, “but, for real, don’t be any weirder. No drooling or crying.”
“Noted,” Clarke says, rolling her eyes.
“And don’t forget, if your hands touch when she gives you her card, don’t be creepy and weepy-eyed over it. Works in the movies, not so much in real life.”
“I hate you.”
“And don’t forget to charge her,” Anya laughs, “no discounts, either. The woman who does our books is kind of a bitch about it.”
“Good luck on your next pay check,” Clarke tells her.
“You’re welcome,” Anya says just as Clarke gets to the lobby door.
The brunette looks up then, as Clarke walks in the door, and she has an odd expression that Clarke can’t place.
“You’re good to go,” Clarke says, getting behind the register, “I just have to ring you up.”
The woman gets out of her chair, pockets her phone, and stands on the other side of the register, reaching into her bag for her card.
Silence stretches between them for a long few seconds, and Clarke isn’t going to try to stop it, not when she’s only just barely avoided embarrassment, but the brunette breaks it.
The itemized receipt is printing when the brunette asks, “So…are you new to this whole mechanic thing, or…”
“I,” Clarke starts, gearing up to dig herself further into this lie that she had no reason to tell, but, this woman is a regular, and she’s seen Clarke before, and she’ll probably notice if Clarke never works on another car again, “You were right earlier. I’m more the managing type.”
“Yeah,” Lexa says, and she lets out this short burst of laughter, “I gathered, by the way you hovered over Anya’s shoulder while she changed my oil.”
“You saw that, then?”
“Yeah…” Lexa says looking down at paper Clarke slides her way and handing over her card. Their hands don’t touch, and Clarke doesn’t cry or drool or whatever. “You’re the managing type, and I’m the observant type.”
The brunette smiles then, and Clarke smiles back.
“Is there a reason why you tried to convince me you were going to change my oil when, by the looks of it, you couldn’t get it inside?”
Clarke stutters out her laughter. It dies when she catches sight of Anya and Roma, side-by-side watching through the window.
“Observant seems like an understatement,” Clarke says, impressed.
“And that statement seems like a way to avoid answering my question,” Lexa smirks.
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes,” Clarke says again, and now Raven is against the window, stood back just far enough that Lexa wouldn’t know she was there if Clarke’s eyes didn’t bug out at the heart shape Raven was making with her hands through the window. “There’s a reason.”
Lexa turns in time to see Raven, just hovering, practically attached to the glass, but luckily a second too late to see the heart. She looks back to Clarke quizzically, narrows her eyes for a second, but not in a threatening way.
It makes Clarke feel even more exposed than a gorgeous woman knowing she can’t drive a stick shift or do an oil change.
Clarke hands Lexa her card, spins the printed receipt around for her to sign, passes her a pen.
“Any chance you’ll tell me the reason today?”
“Probably not,” Clarke says, “It’s kind of embarrassing.”
Lexa looks at her again, green eyes boring into Clarke’s, and the woman seems to come to some understanding.
“Maybe next time,” is what she says to Clarke, and the blonde’s mind goes to the months that span between oil changes, but then Lexa adds, and in a quiet somewhat less sure voice, “I should probably get my tires rotated soon. Any chance you want to pretend to do that, too? Maybe Thursday afternoon?”
“I usually take Thursday off,” Clarke says.
“Friday then?”
“Friday works,” Clarke smiles. “and I know even less about tires.”
“In that case, we can leave it to the professionals and you can tell me more about this mysterious reason.”
“I'll pencil you into my schedule,” Clarke says.
“Sounds like a plan, Anya.”
Clarke grimaces, “Clarke, actually. These aren’t my clothes.”
“Clarke,” Lexa says, and then she holds out her hand for Clarke to shake, “I like that even better. I’m Lexa.”
Their hands are touching then, Clarke’s gripping firmly on to Lexa’s, and she’s trying not to be all gross and romcom-y when it occurs to Clarke that she should ask, “Is there a reason why you let me pretend I could work on your car even when you clearly knew I couldn’t?”
Lexa still hasn’t let go of Clarke’s hand when she says, “Yeah, there’s a reason.”
Clarke thinks that's all she's going to get out of Lexa, that the woman in the pressed skirt suit who's probably already spent too much time in the shop will be as coy as Clarke has been, but the brunette surprises her.
They aren't shaking hands as much as holding hands when Lexa admits, “The gorgeous woman I've been seeing from afar for months finally spoke to me, so I figured I'd let her do whatever she wanted.”