Work Text:
“Now where are they?”
You balance your bag on your hip and fumble through your pockets. Car keys, no, old house keys, no, spare change, no… new keys, there you go. You push the door open, drop your bag by the door, and try not to sneeze at the dust that floats up as you step inside.
You survey the main floor. It’s all one big room with a counter stretching around the perimeter and a till at the back. The stacks of pots in the corner are clean, albeit dusty--good old Auntie Rosa liked to keep the place tidy, you recall.
You’ve got a lot to do to get the shop up and running; Aunt Rosa said she hadn’t been able to do much in the way of maintenance for a few years. You’re kind of glad to have something mindless to do to keep your mind off of everything. At least you won’t have your phone going off every fifteen minutes with another snapchat from Vriska anymore.
Rolling up your sleeves, you start the hunt for cleaning supplies.
You jiggle the door handle, trying to get the key to fit inside the slot. It takes a few tries but eventually the lock turns. (You’ll have to take a look at that later.)The place is empty, but you’ve got deliveries coming, starting tomorrow--soon you’ll have the place up and running.
For now, you head upstairs (oh right, I don’t have a bed yet, I should have brought a sleeping bag) and then up onto the roof. The view is pretty good for the suburb-ish outskirts of downtown--maybe you’ll be able to take up stargazing again.
The last time you went stargazing it was with Grandpa. It’ll be nice to look up at the night sky and imagine him there with you.
You stick the vase under the faucet and when you turn the water on the knob breaks off in your hand.
“Are you fucking serious--” You’re not even trying to keep your voice down anymore. “Come on, I don’t need a broken sink,” you whine, unsuccessfully trying to turn the water off.
“Are you fucking serious,” floats in through your open window, quickly followed by “Come on, I don’t need a broken sink.”
Well, it’s not like you’re doing anything important in here. You lean out the window and call, “Do you need a hand?”
In the pause before you get a response, you wonder why you offered. You’ve met your next-door neighbor, sure, and you give each other cordial waves if you pass each other, but you haven’t really interacted much for living next door to each other.
“Right now I could certainly use one,” she says. (You’re pretty sure her name is Kanaya.) “The door’s open.”
You hang a little ‘out to lunch, be back in fifteen’ sign on the door even though it’s four-ish in the afternoon and grab your toolbox from under the sink. If nothing else, your Grandpa taught you how to fix things.
You find Kanaya in the back of Maryam Flowers trying unsuccessfully to turn off a faucet without a handle. It’s already managed to spray her pretty thoroughly and she looks rather out of her depth.
She pulls away and grabs a rag, leaving the sink open for you. It’s an old sink, a lot like ones you’re used to dealing with, so all it takes is a pair of pliers and some elbow grease to get the water turned off.
You wipe your glasses on the hem of your shirt and Kanaya starts wiping up the spray of water surrounding the sink.
“It’s Jade, right?” she asks, wringing out the rag and drying her hands on her skirt.
“Yeah.” You take a moment to look around, now that you’re not focused on sink fixing. The place is bursting with flowers, some cut and some still potted, with a few enterprising vines crawling up the walls. The whole place smells floral. It’s nice.
She puts the broken handle back on the sink and pats it. “Thanks for dealing with that. I’ve never had that sink fail on me quite so much before.” Her smile is tentative, like she hasn’t practiced it much lately.
“Look, let me take you out to dinner--it’s the least I can do since you saved me from having to call a plumber,” you say.
“Alright, alright,” Jade laughs, holding her hands up in surrender. “Where are we going?”
“How do you feel about Chinese food?”
“That’s the big dipper right there, and if you follow the edge of the ladle you can see the north star.”
You look up where Jade’s pointing. It’s easy to find the stars she’s pointing at, but you keep getting distracted by something a little closer to earth.
Her glasses are shining with reflected starlight and she looks so lovely, pointing out the few constellations visible through the light pollution.
“...You’re not really listening, are you,” you say, looking down from the stars.
Kanaya’s cheeks turn a little pink. “I was just--”
“I’m not mad,” you say, resting your hand on top of hers.
Her eyes flick down to your lips. “Oh. Good.”
“Would you like to kiss me, Kanaya?”
“Yes please,” she says, and that’s all the urging you need.