Chapter Text
Wash The Stain Away was a neighborhood establishment. It had been there longer than anyone could remember, and while washer 3 would only work after you had kicked it exactly three times and dryer 4 would singe your clothes if you didn’t sit on it for the last twenty minutes of your load, every one did their laundry there, from the business folks four blocks away, to the college students living in the cheaper apartments on the block.
Wash The Stain Away was open 22.5 hours a day, 7 days a week, and its owners were never ever to be found if your change got eaten, but most people who frequented Wash The Stain Away were the kind to pay it forward when it happened to someone else, because well, it was going to happen to them someday too.
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Allison seems to attract trouble, as much as she tells her father that that’s not the case and that cities are super safe. In the first week of June alone, she stops four people from walking out in front of buses while texting. One of the women had been trying to eat a crêpe and text and walk at the same time, leaving Allison with a smear of Nutella down the front of her Hurray for the Riff Raff shirt and a curt apology from the woman in question. One man spilled his iced coffee all over the white lace skirt she had been wearing out for the first time.
In May, she stopped a young boy from running into a display of cereal at the grocery store down the street from her apartment only to turn around herself and slip into a puddle, knocking over a display of pasta sauce. That’s how a pair of once white socks end up permanently pink.
One time she tripped a man who was trying to steal a woman’s purse without getting anything dropped on her, at least.
Unfortunately for her, though, most encounters where she ends up helping people end with her getting something dropped on her or her clothing. She’s a frequent customer of Wash The Stain Away, because of their long hours and general lack of judging of the frequency with which she does laundry.
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Stiles isn’t a clumsy person, as he’ll tell anyone who will listen. He will admit that he’s a little absentminded, though. Being an artist who prefers paint to any other medium, then, does not turn out well for his clothing. He ends up with smudges over all of his clothes, and as much as he enjoyed tie-dye as a kid, it doesn’t really fit into his adulthood aesthetic aspirations.
Luckily for him, he’s been doing his own laundry forever and by now is a genius at getting stains out of his clothes.
Unluckily for him, ever since his ex-roommate kicked him out of their nice apartment with a washer and dryer, he’s had to get used to using a laundromat and trying to get into a schedule for cleaning his clothes.
Wash The Stain Away is a gift from the heavens though, recommended by one of the guys he became instant friends with from his building. The hours fit his insomniatic schedule, and no one’s judged him for sitting around in only boxers because he forgot he didn’t have any clean pants left.