Work Text:
“Kristen?”
“Mmhm?”
“Your hands are kinda sweaty.”
“Oh!” Kristen pulled her hands off of Riz’s face where she had been covering his eyes before remembering her mission, holding them out in front of his face for a half second before letting her arms flop to her side. “Just– keep your eyes closed, ok? It’s a surprise.”
Riz sighed but kept his eyes closed like she asked. He had been able to convince her to let him walk up Mordred’s stairs on his own, but she had insisted on covering his eyes since he had reached the landing.
“Ok, eyes closed,” she double checked he wasn’t peaking before picking him up under the arms and setting him on her shoulder, Riz only just barely wobbling as he adjusted himself. She figured it would be easier to move him if he didn’t have to walk. Less chance of slipping at least.
“Please don’t fall,” he groaned as she felt his claws knead into the soft cotton of her t-shirt.
“I won’t,” she rolled her eyes, walking them down the hall and past the bedrooms that spanned across the second floor of the manor. “And stop doing that thing with your ears, that’s cheating.”
Ears pinning themselves back against his skull, Riz pressed his eyes tighter shut, perturbed at being called out. Kristen knew that he couldn’t help it, he wanted to know where they were going, but it wasn’t like someone was going to get the jump on them. Riz could stand to have his guard down for a little bit.
She was careful as she walked them down the hallway, extra conscious as she walked knowing that if she tripped with Riz on her shoulder she would never hear the end of it.
“Ok,” she nodded as she reached the right door, rocking her heels a little bit and trying not to think about whether or not he would like it.
“Can I open my eyes now?”
“Mmhm.”
Standing with him on her shoulder, she couldn’t see when he opened his eyes, but she could feel it in the way his tail relaxed where it had been wrapped around her shoulder, the feeling of claws carefully pulling themselves out of the fabric of her shirt as he crawled down her.
From the outside it didn’t look like much, just another door in the hallway lined with them. It wasn’t particularly ornate like the door to the tower or the formal dining room they rarely used, just simple wood with a plaque in between the four panels reading “open”.
Riz looked back at her, eyebrows raised but she just nodded, biting her cheek to keep from grinning like a lunatic. Sue her, she was excited.
Seeming to figure it wasn’t some sort of trick, Riz turned the knob, letting the heavy door fall open.
“Oh.”
The room had been a passion project over the summer, something she had been working on with Jawbone during odd weekends and the few days she hadn’t been hanging out with her friends. Almost all of the furniture had been picked up off the side of the road or sourced from the strange collections of things that littered the odd rooms of the manor. The only really new things in the room were the cork boards lining the walls, a project that Kristen had commissioned the Thistlespring’s for and had to fight them to pay for. It wasn’t the fanciest in the world, but she had worked hard to put it all together.
“Is it–” Riz’s jaw opened and clicked closed as he spotted the pins and string on the big desk in the middle of the room, a pile of all the spare sticky notes she could find next to them. “Kristen this is–”
“–it’s ours,” she said firmly, knowing he was going to say it was too much. It really wasn’t. It wasn’t a terribly big room, just big enough for the oversized desk she had found and the desk chairs, though she had also managed a couch, shoved in the corner alongside a side table and small bookshelf she borrowed from the attic. “I figured if you’re gonna be my co-president–”
“–vice-president.”
She waved her hand. “Whatever. You help me a lot, even though you don’t have to, and so I just wanted us to have a space where we can do president-y stuff where it isn’t getting in the way of your mystery stuff. Plus,” she walked past the couch and came around the side of the desk, plopping down in the bigger of the two desk chairs she had mustered up, “this way even if you do wanna do mystery stuff while you're here, you have space for it here instead of on the Evil Clue Board.”
The Evil Clue board was a monstrosity built out of testing the limits of what Adaine’s jacket could give them. It was a grotesque conglomeration of cheap, tiny cork boards all shoved together on the back of a frame they had curse broken and had to cover up since breaking said curse made the painting just tragic to look at. It was currently sitting behind one of the couches in the den, but Kristen figured if Riz liked the office enough they could move it up there that day. The jury still seemed to be out.
“It’s not that bad,” he defended half-heartedly, coming around the desk, seeming surprised to see another desk chair there for him.
“It fell apart last week, and we lost like, half your notes,” she reminded him, watching as she adjusted the chair to the height of the desk, pulling the footrest up with him so his feet weren’t dangling.
That chair had been one of the harder things to source, needing to find a small folk chair that would be able to reach tall enough to sit at a desk they could both use. She had lucked out, spotting it when Fabian had reluctantly given her a ride to Gorgon's during what must have been a bulk trash pick up day. Fabian had refused to let her bring it on his bike, something about it being a hazard, but Gorgug had driven her back to pick it up and bring it back to the manor. It had needed a little cleaning and some oil to keep it from squeaking, but as she watched Riz lean back in it, she was elated to see that it was perfect.
“You don’t have to do mystery stuff here, obviously,” she clarified, all of a sudden worried she was overstepping. “I know how much you love your office, I just know that’s for like, your big work mysteries, and I figured this maybe could just be for like… us mysteries, kinda. Or not, it can just be for president stuff. Whatever you want.”
She probably could have rambled on for another five minutes, but she was gladly cut off as Riz tackled her in a hug. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” she mumbled as she hugged him back, letting the nervous thing in her chest settle as he buzzed against her.
Pulling back he leaned against her, looking around the room and Kristen could practically see the wheels in his head turning, most likely putting together an idea to set up the space better than the haphazard way she had set it up so far.
“Wait. Is that a coffee machine?”
“Yes, but it comes with rules.”