Work Text:
When you know someone for fifteen years, see them every single day, habits and routines are inevitable.
Mr. Steel gets into the office an hour and a half after he’s supposed to. Rita, who gets into the office an hour and twenty five minutes after she’s supposed to, is sitting at her desk, watching streams and munching on snacks and yup she’s definitely been here all of this time, just look at how comfy she is! Her shoes are off! She’s forty minutes into this episode! Mr. Steel, grunts hello, and after her episode’s over she goes and gets him some coffee and herself some juice, because she ain’t allowed to have coffee, doctors orders and also every single boss she’s ever had. Whatever. Stuff’s too bitter for her anyways.
Mr. Steel then sits inside his office, alternately leafing through cold cases that he ain’t even getting paid for any longer or brooding off into the distance in the direction of his broken fan in the corner. If he goes too long without a new case, he starts drinking too. Rita pushes every case they get onto him in the hopes that they’ll catch his interest, and burns through stream marathons and donut cases. Paints her nails, catches up with Frannie on the comms.
If he gets bored, he shouts at her to do her job through the door, she pretends to mishear him, he makes a frustrated noise and gets up to open the door and properly shout at her, and she talks some common sense back at him like ‘but there ain’t any work to do, boss’, he tells her to take the day off then, she reminds that he doesn’t know how to search for things or work the computer in case someone calls, he throws up his hands in frustration, and then they find something more specific to argue about until either a customer calls or the psychic upstairs comes and complains about the noise ruining their ‘ambiance’. At which point Mr. Steel starts arguing with the psychic instead, Rita either going back to her streams or enjoying the show in front of her.
Mr. Steel is like a cat, you see. He may not feel like getting touched, or even looking in your direction, but he wants for someone else to be in the room with him or else he gets lonely and listless and (more) upset. Rita loves cats, and cats love her. She knows how to handle ‘em. Mr. Steel doesn’t really want for her to go away. He just thinks that ‘go away, Rita’ or ‘I swear to god I’m going to fire you, Rita’ is what he should say. Rita’s great at ignoring the things he says that she shouldn’t pay attention to, and that’s why they’re still such great friends! She wishes more people would get that knack for handling him. Not that she minds being Mr. Steel’s best friend, it’s just that it wouldn’t hurt for him to have more of them.
Mr. Steel gets drunk and hungover and sullen and quiet and distant like clockwork for about four days straight on multiple anniversaries too, only some of which Rita know the meaning of. Trying to stop it makes him real nasty, so she just helps clean up at the end of it. Drags him clumsily onto the office couch when it’s time for him to sleep and for her to close up, banging him up a bit on the way like a limp, uncooperative, unwieldy doll that keeps clipping furniture and knocking stacks of paper onto the floor and slurring complaints and meandering threats of unemployment that never go anywhere. Makes excuses to anyone looking to hire Mr. Steel for cases during that time, because even though they need the money he can’t even really put his coat on the right way during the anniversaries.
When Mr. Steel comes back after going missing for two weeks missing one eye, she thinks (after thinking a lot of other things first) ‘well at least I’ll know what the meaning of this anniversary will be’.
That’s a whole year away, though. And a year’s enough time to build a lot of other habits and routines too.
They don’t really get off work at the same time. Mr. Steel shoos her off so he can brood about his latest case and maybe drink a bottle of some nasty tasting stuff and then fall asleep at his desk and sabotage his spine, or he’s out there doing leg work well past midnight, by which she means getting shot at and running around in the sewers. Mr. Steel isn’t so great at the communications, but she’s got a sense of smell, okay, and she really wishes he’d just get himself a hot air balloon or something so he could escape off into the skies instead, like a dashing hero from the streams.
Sometimes, though, they do. Sometimes she needs to stay late to get some computer stuff (illegal hacking stuff) done for him, or he gets sick of looking at his desk and his files and the general detritus that infects any frequent living space of Juno Steel, and he storms out early along with her. Or they’ve got a friend date. She spends all day with Mr. Steel, but going out to the movies or a nice cafe is just different, alright? Plus, Frannie actually insists on silently watching the movie, while Mr. Steel talks with her about it. Insults and snarks for villains in silly outfits and heroes acting stupid, attempts to put together the clues and foreshadowing and predict who the killer is before the main character figure it out themselves, and many, many tangents, along with the occasional “I’VE GOT IT!” as something one of the characters said makes him spring up from his seat with a shout and sprint out of the movie theatre.
The other people in the theatre don’t seem to like them much, and Rita’s got no idea why.
Anyways, Rita finally manages to wheedle Mr. Steel to go and watch a movie with her again. It’s a treat kinda thing, an occasional splurge, and the boss is real bad at treating himself unless it also hurts him, like a bar fight or just the bar itself. She’s gotta whine and pester for days or weeks to make it happen, every time, until finally a situation comes up where Mr. Steel’s really needs something from her and she gets to say ‘in exchange for what?’
He always says ‘not getting fired, Rita.’
(Mr. Steel always brings up firing her so much, and he never does it. It’s almost like he doesn’t want for her to forget that her not having this job is an option, a possibility. Pointing out the exit sign for her again and again, waiting for her to remember that she can leave, but that’s just another one of those things about Mr. Steel that you’re just supposed to ignore. It’s just a running joke, is all.)
And she always says, ‘nuh uh, you gotta do better than that, boss.’
And he sighs and grumbles and complains, but then he agrees to go out on a date with her. Always. And he doesn’t miss it or get sick or forget or leave her hanging. He just shows up, dressed like always, not prettied up or anything, but sober and slowing down his footsteps so she can keep up in her four inch heels, enough space left between them so that she doesn’t accidentally smack him in the face with her hand gestures like she did that one time.
You might think that he doesn’t like their dates from how much he fights against them, but she knows. She sees him grin in the glow of the movie screen, huff soft, quiet chuckles at some of the things she says. It’s like not wanting to get up and go to all of the trouble of starting a shower, but then not wanting to leave once you’re in. He likes it, and nothing he says will convince her otherwise.
She’s got so many patterns and rituals with Mr. Steel that some conversations and interactions feel like an old comfy armchair or a favorite romcom, the beats so comforting and safe and amusing in their familiarity. Maybe that’s why the slightest beat that’s off rings so weirdly.
They’re walking to a movie, and his mouth is in an upsetted twist even though they’re past the resistance phase. His shoulders are hunched, and his steps are just a bit too large, fast, hurried, like he wants to get there already, but not in an excited way, just like he wants to be not here, in the crowded streets. She’s practically jogging to keep up.
“Mr. Steel!” she protests, taking many very quick small steps. She’s wearing a pencil skirt, damn it. She’s gonna snap a heel and fall down and die. She wishes she’d willed everything to Frannie instead of splitting it two ways.
“What?” he snaps.
“You’re gonna lose me,” she huffs, hair in her eyes, purse bouncing, hoop earrings and bracelets jangling.
He glances back at her, his expression sours further for a moment with a flash of guilt, and he slows down a bit.
Someone walking past them accidentally clips him a bit, just a bit of a bump that barely has them stumbling before they hurry off without so much as a sorry (no one’s gotta any manners in this city) and Mr. Steel flinches, hard, turning his whole body around to look at their retreating back. A woman walking past gives him a weird look and Rita looks, and thinks, and she gets one of those ah moments, like when she realizes who the real love interest is, or that that character never really died at all, it has to be them.
She catches up and loops her arms around one of his, something she’s never really done before. He looks down at her like she’s up to something weird.
“So’s you don’t walk off without me again,” she explains, squeezes his arm.
“... Right,” he says, and walks. She keeps him close and tethered to her, and walks in his blindspot so that no one can bump into him or surprise him.
And just like that, the old habit has something new added to it. It’ll become soft and faded and comfortable and unremarkable like an old, favorite shirt in no time though, she’s sure.