Chapter Text
Una was kneeling on the storytime rug, hair frizzing out from her normally immaculate high ponytail and a spray bottle of carpet cleaner in one hand, when La’an walked into the meeting room. She looked focused, frazzled. Exhausted. It was a perversely satisfying sight.
La’an leaned carefully forward onto the rickety cart stacked high with foam blocks and assorted sensory toys, “So, how was storytime?”
Una glanced up, blowing a strand of hair out of her face with a huff. It fell promptly back over her eye. “Did they tell you in grad school how many bodily fluids you would encounter in this job?” she asked by way of a response. “Because they never told me, and that feels like a pretty egregious oversight right now.”
La’an snorted. “They’re children. I think the bodily fluids bit is just common sense.”
Una looked poised to disagree, but as she opened her mouth to respond, her hand slipped, sliding directly into a particularly unpleasant milky yellow spot.
“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” La’an said, grimacing.
Una gazed despairingly down at her hand for a moment before letting out a deep sigh and continuing to scrub at the rapidly-setting stain. “Did you at least have a good time at your old branch?”
La’an hesitated. She had, in fact, thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to provide emergency coverage. The change of pace was always nice, but there was something more as well, that she was having a difficult time articulating. She missed her old position, but at the same time she was deeply glad that it was no longer hers. “Don’t do that,” she said instead, kneeling down to Una’s level and grabbing a wipe. “You’re rubbing whatever that is into the carpet, and this thing only gets professionally cleaned once a year.”
Una stared at her with that unnerving expression that always made La’an feel as though she knew every thought running through her head. “That wasn’t an answer.”
Because of course, Una wasn’t going to let her change the subject just like that. She had known La’an far too long to fall for something that obvious, knew too well the conflicted feelings she had about both her position here and her choice to accept it.
It was the unfortunate side effect of working with someone who was actually your friend, who had been there for the best and worst of the particularly turbulent few years leading up to La’ans transfer. Who cared, and had cared long enough for that to actually be something acceptable.
“It was… weird,” La’an said at last. “Good, mostly, but still weird. It was nice to see the kids again. They called me a traitor for leaving.”
“That’s… a good thing?” Una asked, hesitantly.
“I don’t know,” La’an admitted. “They take it personally, a bit. No one sticks around there for long, and I was there longer than most. I think some of them thought I was there to stay.”
That she had fully planned on staying went unsaid. Una already knew that, and La’an had no desire to rehash her decision to leave. They had done that already, dozens of times, both before and after she had actually done so.
“They still remember the rules I taught them,” La’an said, trying to shift to a happier topic. Or at least a funnier one. “Apparently they quote them to each other when they’re angry.”
This was something Una didn’t know about, was something that she never would have understood or approved of. It certainly wasn’t something that ever would have flown here, but, well, needs must.
“Do I want to know what the rules are?” Una asked, brows drawn.
La’an shrugged. It felt a bit like confessing to a crime. “The most common one was: Fifty feet outside the building if you’re going to fight, because Ms. La’an doesn’t want to have to fill out paperwork. I used to have them recite it to me when someone tried to start something. It was weirdly effective at deescalating most situations.”
To her surprise, Una started to laugh, hard enough that her shoulders shook. “Why am I not surprised that that’s the approach that worked for you?”
La’an scowled. “I feel like that’s an insult.”
“It’s not,” Una assured her, her expression oddly tender. “You were really good there, the kids loved you. Neera used to sing your praises to anyone who would listen. And also anyone who wouldn’t. You know how she is. By the time you put in to transfer, Chris thought you were God’s gift to children’s librarians.”
“Yeah, well. Apparently when I get bored of the fact that nothing interesting ever happens here, Neera wants me back.”
Una’s expression shifted immediately to one of mild panic. “You can’t leave,” she said, with a fervor that took La’an aback. “I cannot handle having to cover family storytime until they replace you. I’m not cut out for children.”
“Nice to know I’d be missed.” La’an rolled her eyes. “Also, you have a regular who calls asking for you, specifically, to read to him from books about feet. I’ll stick to the kids. At least when they’re terrible, it’s usually not on purpose.”
“Yeah, but that’s just gross. This,” Una waved at the soiled rug between them, “is disgusting.”
Una reached up to swipe the hair out of her face, but La’an caught her hand before she managed to make contact. “You’re covered in… I don’t want to know,” she said, with a meaningful glance at the sodden wipe still clutched in manicured fingers.
La'an quickly dropped Una’s hand, pruned fingers reaching for the bottle of carpet cleaner and spritzing the rug. Una wasn’t wrong, this was particularly vile even by her admittedly high standards. “I’m not leaving, anyway. I transferred here for a reason. So you’re safe from storytime for a while longer.”
“Thank god. One of the kids screamed the entire hour like she was being tortured. I don’t know how you don’t just have a constant migraine.”
“You’re being dramatic,” La’an told her. “Also, I keep a bottle of Tylenol in my desk. Quinn does that every week.”
Una looked horrified.
“Did they like the books?” La’an asked, trying to sound more casual than she felt. Not that she would ever tell Una, but she had redone her entire storytime plan when she learned Una would be covering it, tried to make it more palatable to someone who wasn’t accustomed to the standard level of chaos that storytime involved. The intersection of “books Una might like” and “books toddlers might like,” it turned out, was fairly small.
And it wasn’t like she expected that Una was going to enjoy any part of storytime, exactly. But some part of her always cared, more than she was prepared to admit, what Una thought about her work.
“They did,” Una said. “I’ll admit I had my doubts, I had no idea children’s books got so weird. But you really know your audience.”
La’an grimaced, doing her best to take the compliment in stride. “It’s all trial and error. I just pay attention.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.” The scolding tone was betrayed by the soft smile tugging at the corners of Una’s lips. “It’s a skill, what you do. I could never.”
“You could,” La’an argued, though on some level she knew that wasn’t quite true. Una had never had much of a way with children, had never quite figured out how to speak their language.
“I absolutely could not,” Una insisted. “I would lose all touch with reality within days. Just this nearly did me in.”
“You’re being dramatic again.”
Una chuckled. “Maybe I am.” A pause, then, “You’re off at five today?”
“I am.”
“Excellent,” Una said decisively. “You can buy me dinner to ease the trauma of the day.”
La’an stared at her, trying to ascertain some kind of intent from the order. That was normal friend behavior, wasn’t it? Friends went out to dinner, treated each other, teased each other. “I could do that.”
“And coffee tomorrow. There was so much screaming.”
La’an almost told Una not to push her luck. But there was something oddly appealing about the thought of bringing her coffee - knowing her order, delivering it personally… “And coffee tomorrow,” she conceded.”
“Perfect,” Una said, sunny and cheerful in that particular way of hers that always seemed to get her whatever she wanted. “It’s a date.”