Of Soap Bubbles and Frozen Yogurt
Summary: Two mismatched characters come to understand one another a bit better while on a trip to the Laundromat. Drake/Wendy friendshippy.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, and they don't like me. Well, Joker likes me well enough, as I didn't insistently pick on him this time. But Drake's starting to hate me. Which makes me sad, as I wuv Drake.
"Drake!"
Drake Anderson groaned despairingly to himself and rolled his eyes, half-tempted to ignore the cheerful, slightly frantic shout from behind him.
Well, more than half-tempted. It would be easy; just keep walking – he was certain he could walk faster than she could run – and duck into an alley somewhere to lose her. She'd never find him, and would probably give up looking pretty quick. Yup, easy.
He stopped and turned, shooting a half-smile at the little blonde clad in shorts and some sort of strappy pink thing that he was pretty sure his daughter had in all different colours for summer, and sneakers scampering over the sun-warmed concrete of the sidewalk towards him.
"Hey."
Damned conscience.
When she caught up with him, Wendy was silent for a moment, doubled over and trying to catch her breath. Then she straightened up, hefted the large cloth bag over her shoulder and beamed at him.
"Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
"Laundromat," he replied, gesturing to the duffel bag slung over his shoulder and internally bidding any chance of the quiet, relaxing trip he had a strange fondness for due to the happy college memories it conjured up a sad goodbye. "Don't want to get home just in time to do a huge load of laundry."
"Oh, I'm going to the launderette right now, too!" she said in a tone of delighted surprise, as though this contended for one of the greatest discoveries in recent years.
"I don't believe it," he groaned in barely disguised dismay.
"I know! Isn't that a funny coincidence? Well, let's hurry; there's one nearby, but it tends to fill up midmorning like this, and we'll have to wait."
She continued on ahead of him, and he stared disbelievingly at the back of her head.
"She can't really be that stupid," he muttered. "Right?"
"This is strange," Wendy noted, frowning, as her gaze roamed over the large, bright launderette, its walls and center lined with washing and drying machines. Notably absent were the customers and laundry. "It's usually crowded by this time everyday."
"It's not the weekend," he reminded her flatly. So why the Hell aren't you at work, and out of my hair?
"Oh, right!" She laughed self-consciously, rubbing the back of her head. "I don't usually have days off mid-week, so I've been living in Saturday all day."
"Why do you have the day off?" he asked on his way over to one of the machines.
"I just took it off," she shrugged absently, much to his dismay following him and setting her bag down in front of the machine next to his. "I had to take my days off sometime, you know, and I'd rather do it when the weather's nice."
"You couldn't just go on a vacation like everyone else," Drake grumbled.
"I'm going on vacation!" she protested. "But only for five days, and I have two weeks of vacation time, so I have four extra days to use. I'm taking some time off to go home at Christmas, too," she explained.
Drake watched her for a moment, then turned back to the task of loading his darks into the machine in front of him.
"Right."
"I wonder why the attendant isn't here, though," she mused, glancing about curiously.
"I don't know, but I envy him," Drake muttered.
Wendy frowned slightly at this, the expression slightly hurt, then seemed to shake it off, and watched him shove a small bundle of garments through the open door.
"I thought you said you had a whole load to do."
"Yeah; so?"
"You've got two tee-shirts, four socks, and…is that a bandana?"
"Anyone can have a bad hair-day," Drake reminded her through gritted teeth, looking pointedly at the blonde mass that she had attempted to pull back into a ponytail, from which most of her hair was escaping.
"Right," she said with an embarrassed laugh, trying to tug some small strands back behind her ear, before dropping her sack onto the floor and digging through it.
Drake quickly averted his gaze as several pairs of small cotton undies came out of the bag.
"You know, there are a lot of other machines here…"
"Isn't it strange? Even on a Wednesday morning, I would have thought there would be more people here!"
Maybe she can be that stupid, Drake admitted reluctantly. Joker must have the patience of a saint.
Fifteen minutes later had not changed Drake's mind on this point, and had only served to make him start longing for that same oddly-named man to dance through the door in a tutu and fairy wings, and grant him some of the patience he apparently had in spades to be able to deal on a daily basis with this cheerful little idiot.
And not only because then he'd get to laugh at Joker looking like the fairy that he – Drake – had always suspected he – Joker – was.
Of course, that revelation would be kind of hard on the aforementioned cheerful little idiot…who was, currently, trying to pin down an out-of-control washing machine by throwing her entire weight onto it, and being taken for a free ride for her troubles.
"I want to get off!" Wendy wailed, clinging tightly to the machine as it began its third rather wobbly circuit of the room. "I hate machines!"
"I'm starting to agree," Drake muttered, hiding his head in his hand.
"I never liked carnival rides, anyway!"
"That's a washing machine," he informed her flatly.
"I'm going to fall off!"
He smirked slightly, not really sure what to make of the sudden, unexpected urge to laugh.
"If you do, get out of the way fast."
"Drake! Help! What do I do?"
Go home. Now, he suggested silently. Too bad he couldn't actually say it out loud. Much as he wanted to.
"Try turning it off," he called.
"How do I do that?"
"Open the door," he replied through gritted teeth.
"But I already put the money in! I won't get it back if I interrupt the cycle!"
"Then I guess you should shut up and enjoy the ride." Especially the first part.
"Oh, fine!"
Carefully turning around so that she was facing the same way as the front of the machine, Wendy leaned down and seized the handle, and then tugged the door open.
And a scene of chaos and abundant soap bubbles followed.
"Great," Drake grumbled three minutes later, mopping the soapy water off his face with a towel someone had left behind. "You know, I've never seen a washing machine explode like that. You really have a gift, don't you?"
"I didn't get my money back," Wendy pouted, flicking a clump of dripping wet hair out of her eyes. "And I don't understand how I got sprayed with water, when I was sitting on top of the machine."
"Like I said, you have a gift," Drake repeated, balling up the towel and tossing it to the blonde seated on top of the slightly damaged washing machine, as though in a pose of triumph and dominance over her vanquished foe.
She sent him a beaming smile of thanks, and began to blot delicately at the front of her shirt. He averted his eyes quickly as it became immediately obvious that thin pale pink fabric reacted in much the same way to large quantities of water as thin white fabric, and had become quite transparent.
"Do you think they're going to make me pay for the damage?" she asked anxiously.
"I don't know. Maybe." He shook his head. "How did you manage to break it, anyway? Did you throw some dishes in there with your laundry?"
"No! I only put in a few shirts, three pairs of slacks, two dresses, and some pairs of—"
"Yeah, I know, thanks," he interrupted her hastily, not entirely sure he wanted to know if this little bonehead would be clueless enough to start discussing her underwear with someone next thing to a stranger.
"Em. Sorry," she said with a sheepish smile. "Anyway, I just used the machine the way one ordinarily uses a washing machine! I didn't do anything wrong! I think it's the owner's fault for having a clearly unsafe machine in here in the first place," she finished airily, arms crossed and nose slightly in the air.
Drake dropped his head to his hand for a brief, shining moment of rest, and then climbed off the bench.
"Look, just throw your stuff in a new machine, and then get far away from it. I'll make sure it doesn't blow up."
"Drake! I'm not that bad!" she protested.
"Yeah, well, I'm not giving you a chance to prove yourself wrong. The security cameras probably caught me here, too, so I'm probably going to end up paying half the repair bill. So let's not make it any worse."
Before she could react with anything more than an astonished gape, he grabbed her under both arms and lifted her off the machine, setting her down a few feet away, and then unloaded the bundle of clothes, still soapy and drenched, and threw them into a different machine.
"You have any more change?" he called over his shoulder.
"Just a minute," she replied absently, and he suppressed with great difficulty the urge to roll his eyes at the sight of her carefully examining and poking at the change slot on the slightly damaged machine. "I'm trying to get mine back."
"Forget it," he grumbled, pulling some coins from his pocket. Then he glared at her. "You owe me."
"I'll buy you ice cream," she suggested hopefully.
He stared blankly.
"Ice cream," he repeated flatly.
"Well," she said with a defensive shrug, "I don't have any more change on me. I'll have to break a bill. So you'll have to come with me to the ice cream shop anyway."
"Why don't you use the change machi—" Drake bit off the rest of this question as his eyes lit once again on the vanquished washing machine, and images of what would happen if he let her near the usually harmless change machine began to float through his head.
Likely, they'd both end up dead, their corpses riddled with wounds from coins shot out of the thing at deadly velocity.
"Yeah, okay, let's get ice cream," he finally said, voice carefully nonchalant. Spending any more time with her was a pain, he told himself, ignoring the urge to laugh as she bounced slightly, shifting her weight repeatedly from one foot to the other, before slipping in a puddle of water and catching herself on the washing machine, unfortunately inadvertently delivering a sharp blow with her knee, but it was better than getting killed.
What a great epitaph that would be: Shuffled off this mortal coil at the hands of a change machine.
"I hope the attendant doesn't get in trouble," Wendy said anxiously forty-five minutes later, shifting against the cushions of the booth inside the ice cream shop they'd had so much trouble finding, leading Drake to wonder in annoyance if she could do anything right; if she didn't even know her own area, he didn't hold out much hope.
"We left a note," he reminded her edgily. "They'll call you if there was serious damage."
"Well, yes, but I just mean, I hope the attendant doesn't get in trouble for being away long enough for two customers to destroy a machine."
"One customer," he corrected flatly. "I didn't touch the damn thing."
She smiled impishly, strands of damp hair curling slightly about her face. He looked away abruptly as the undeniable fact she may be a moron, but she was a cute moron once again tempted him to be a little nicer.
"You were the one who told me to open the door instead of just unplugging it," she reminded him lightly.
He glared briefly at her, unable to drudge up the urge to say something well and truly mean as long as she was grinning like that, and resenting the hell out of it.
Not to mention, the fact that she was kind of right. He'd only been interested in seeing if she'd actually do it.
Worse luck to them both that she had.
Well, clearly this was not his lucky day; his ice cream buddy should be enough to tell anyone that.
He was spared any further rumination on his terrible luck in ending up eating ice cream with a cute, lively girl to pass the time until his flight back home later tonight, instead of filling it watching bad television in his hotel room – if he could make the damn thing work – by the arrival of their orders.
"Right; one low-fat vanilla frozen yogurt with sprinkles, and one hot fudge sundae, extra nuts," the young redheaded waiter announced cheerfully, sliding the cut glass dishes onto the table in front of them.
Drake surveyed the frozen yogurt in baffled revulsion that he noticed Wendy hiding a grin at out of the corner of his eye.
Wendy surveyed the hot fudge sundae in wistfully noble self-sacrifice that Drake had to try very hard not to smirk at as the waiter made a noise of understanding and switched the dishes, commenting that Drake hadn't seemed much the frozen yogurt type to him.
These damn women, always ordering this awful crap they didn't even like, just to lose weight they didn't need to.
He shuddered at the thought that his daughter would probably start with that shit someday.
And, in shuddering, he nearly missed it when the redheaded youth grinned and asked,
"So, having a nice date?"
Drake snorted.
"More like community service."
The waiter blinked, gave the tiny blonde seated opposite the burly American an appreciative once-over, then leaned over and muttered conspiratorially,
"If you don't like her, I'll take her off your hands for you."
"Yeah, okay, beat it," he said sharply as he noticed the livid gaze of two big blue eyes nearly burning twin holes in the young man's back.
"Right, sorry," the boy said hastily, scampering away.
Drake picked up his spoon, preparing to dig into his sundae at any angle that presented itself, when the same furious glare that his little companion had given the waiter caught his eye.
But the waiter was gone. That meant…
Oh, shit.
"What?" he demanded grumpily, all the more grumpily for a tugging of guilt at the uncomfortable sensation that maybe he'd been a little out of line.
The next instant, his vision was obscured by the nauseating off-white crap that had previously been in the little dish in front of Wendy, and the top of his head was very suddenly very, very cold.
"Community service!" she demanded furiously as he groped uncertainly for the glass dish resting on the top of his head. "Well, excuse me for directing you to the nearest launderette this morning instead of letting you wander around, and for actually staying there to do my own laundry instead of bloody well going across town, just because you're a great big grouch! And excuse me for making you interfere like that and finish my load of laundry for me!"
"It looked like you were going to blow up the whole damn place!" he said in a vicious whisper, dragging her back into her seat. "And keep your voice down! People are staring!"
The second he said it, he cursed under his breath as a tiny, impish voice that sounded remarkably like Maggie suggested that they might be staring at the frozen yogurt on his head, not at the pretty lady's little tirade.
"I don't care!" that same pretty lady shot back, voice growing slightly shrill, and slightly wobbly.
"Listen," he said exasperatedly, reaching for a napkin to wipe the freezing goop out of his eyes. "Maybe I shouldn't have said that, but you're the one who's been sticking to me like glue all morning. Do you even know a hint when you get one?"
Her glare turned from white-hot to freezing.
"Believe me, I caught on to your brilliantly subtle attempts to tell me to bugger off, but I thought I'd try to be polite anyway. Because I certainly wasn't going to find a different launderette just because you were sulking at me. And you weren't exactly in a tearing hurry to tell me that you didn't want to come for ice cream. Thought you'd show the pathetic, stupid little girl a bit of pity and grace her with your company, did you?"
His mouth opened and shut a few times.
"I'm not as stupid as you think, you know," she continued, and he wondered if a meteor shower would slow her down at this point. Great. Figured he had to be here when years – or months; whatever – of bitterness finally led to a therapeutic outburst. "I don't know why it doesn't occur to anyone that I probably wouldn't have been hired in the first place if I was as much of an idiot as they seem to think!"
"Listen, maybe you should—"
"You men are just far too fond of assuming that no one knows anything but you, and that if a girl's trying to be nice, she obviously wants to go to bed with you."
He choked slightly at this completely out-of-the-blue, completely embarrassing little side-note.
"What!"
"You were assuming that, admit it! That's why you were trying so hard to make me leave! There's no other reason that any logical human being would take such violent exception to someone else visiting the same launderette."
Okay, so maybe she had a point, Drake admitted silently. Maybe he'd been a bit illogical. But he did not suspect her of trying to get him in the sack! The mere thought, he decided, forcibly shoving the mental image from earlier that day of her transparent tee-shirt out of his head, was horrifying.
"But it isn't just you," she continued, by now up out of her seat and pacing feverishly in front of their booth. "Mr. Joker does the same thing! Just because I try to be cheerful and friendly and pleasant instead of snapping his head off when he speaks to me, and just because I obey my bloody boss without complaining, and even try to look like I like it on occasion, he assumes that I'm mad about him!"
"Uh…you aren't?"
"No!" she exclaimed furiously. "I have uncles I'm more attracted to romantically than him! But he's an arrogant ass who can't get it through his head that a girl could possibly look at him without falling in love with him, and so I have to deal with people giving me these sympathetic, amused looks all the time, and whenever I smile too much at him, he turns into a bloody ice block and is horrid to get along with for the rest of the day, because he wants to 'discourage the unwanted attentions!'"
He sat back in stunned silence for a moment as she dropped back into her chair, chest heaving slightly from the exertion of a fairly dramatic outburst.
Finally, he found his voice.
"Have to admit, I didn't see that coming."
"Obviously. You men are all brilliant at completely missing the point," she said icily, before turning on her heel and stalking away.
He sighed as the sound of decidedly angry footsteps faded, and ignored the curious, amused, or accusing looks he was receiving from the other patrons of the ice cream shop. A drop of yogurt rolled down his lip, and he licked it off.
"Godawful stuff," he muttered.
"Hey," he greeted ten minutes later, falling into step beside her as she left the ice cream shop. He sent up a brief prayer of thanksgiving to Lady Luck that she seemed to be over the 'vocal fury' portion of today's program. Now, if he could just stop feeling bad that she'd moved onto the 'tired and miserable' portion, especially when he noticed that her eyes looked a little wet. "I took care of the bill."
"I know," she said with a tiny, forced smile. "The waiter told me. Thanks. But I don't have any change for you now."
"It's fine," he said quickly. "I thought I kind of owed you for…"
"For being a grump? I suppose I still didn't have to dump my ice cream on your head. Sorry."
"Sure," he chuckled, then sobered. "I didn't mean to upset you."
"It's alright," she said she said with another smile that was obviously taking a lot of effort to hold. "I suppose men just don't like women to be friendly when they aren't graceful, brilliant, sophisticated knockouts."
"And arrogant as all hell?" he added with a snort.
She stared up at him curiously.
"What does that mean?"
"Simple," he shrugged. "The kind of woman you just described is the kind who doesn't think anyone's good enough for her, and treats a man like shit when she has one."
"Well, not all men mind that," she pointed out. "They don't care if a woman is generally a horrible person, as long as she fulfills a woman's first duty, to be shagging eye candy, and nothing else.
He stopped dead and stared, somewhere between amused and impressed, at the venom in her tone. So, this cheerful little doll of a girl could say something nasty without losing her temper first.
Hell, the fact that she could lose her temper instead of just beamingly missing the point for all eternity was shocking enough.
"So, you live somewhere around here? I'll walk you home," he offered, catching up to her easily in a few steps.
"Do you want to come up for some lunch?"
He raised an eyebrow and smirked a bit.
"We just had ice cream."
She sent him a playfully stern frown.
"Drake Anderson, I don't know how you were raised, but my mother certainly didn't bring me up to think of ice cream as a healthy, balanced meal! And anyway," she added with a sheepish grin as her stomach gurgled slightly, "most of my ice cream ended up on your head."
"Well, if nothing else, maybe I'll borrow your bathroom long enough to wash it out," he grumbled good-naturedly.
She giggled.
"People are starting to look at you a little funny. And I think there's a bird giving you a hungry look."
"That's better," Drake announced twenty minutes later as he strode from the small washroom, hair freshly washed. "I thought I was going to be sick if I had to smell that disgusting vanilla yogurt much longer."
"It isn't that bad," she said, swatting his arm.
"Sure; keep telling yourself that," he said, dropping the towel over her head, and laughed, arms crossed and shoulders shaking slightly, as she staggered about, hands out and groping blindly, dismayed little squeaks drifting out from beneath the fluffy terrycloth sheet.
"Drake!" she exclaimed, annoyed, when she finally managed to navigate her way out from under it.
"Yeah?" he asked, hiding a grin.
"You're mean!"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm a jerk," he said.
"Let's just go have lunch," she huffed. "I made sandwiches and soup."
He nodded, and followed her toward the apartment's small kitchen, decorated entirely in yellow and touches of deep blue. Disturbing, he decided.
She stopped, and peered over her shoulder at him.
"You really are a git, you know."
Once they had settled comfortably at the tiny kitchen table, just big enough for the two of them and the vase of bright yellow tulips she had in the center – everything about this place seemed to be tiny, including its owner – the meal passed in silence, save for sporadic remarks from Wendy about the weather, the attendant's face when he or she got back to the launderette, the look on the waiter's face at the ice cream shop when he realized he would have to clean up after her little fit.
Finally, somewhere into the third sandwich – since those were tiny, too, Drake reflected with an internal smile and shake of his head – he looked up.
"Let me ask you something."
She set down her glass of orange juice and looked up curiously.
"Hmm?"
"What you said earlier, about how Joker's wrong when he assumes you've got it bad for him – have you ever thought of explaining that to him?"
She stared incredulously at him.
"Right," she laughed. "I should tell him that he's being a pompous ass by assuming that I fancy him, because I have uncles I would snog sooner than him. I might as well dump a pot of tea on his head!"
Drake chuckled.
"I'd pay money to see that."
"So would I," she said emphatically. "That is, someone else dumping tea on Mr. Joker's head. As long as it wasn't scalding hot – that would just be mean."
"If it's not scalding, I only pay half price to see it," he warned.
Wendy giggled.
"What on earth did he do to you?"
He glared sharply at her.
"Before or after I got called away two days before my daughter's eighth birthday for a mission that turned out to be nothing someone else couldn't have handled?"
She backed away from him, shrinking into her chair. He sighed.
"Sorry. It's not his fault; I know that. It's part of the job. But it's hard to explain to an eight-year old girl why her daddy's not going to be around on her birthday again this year, when he promised he'd throw her a huge party to make up for the last three."
"It must be awful," she said, eyes wide, sympathetic, and slightly teary. "I hope you can celebrate together when you get back."
He chuckled.
"Yeah, we're having her party next week. Fifteen screaming kids destroying my house. Was only going to be ten, but I let her invite a few extras, since we had to put it off. So if Joker comes into work bitching about getting my home repair bills, you'll know why."
"I'm sure you'll have fun pretending every second is pure pain," she giggled.
He laughed again, and then fell silent for a long moment.
"So. You really don't have a thing for Joker."
She sighed.
"I do love him, but not a bit in that way. I've been working for him for ages, and he's always been kind, considerate, and understanding. It meant a lot that he could look at a silly girl who can't walk without tripping, and see someone who can be competent. I only wonder sometimes if he's changed his mind," she finished glumly, staring unseeingly at one of the bright yellow flowers in the middle of the kitchen table.
He said nothing, his sandwich hovering somewhere between the plate and his mouth. Kind of surprising that she'd tell him this, he thought, nevertheless feeling for her – she was obviously just too good at hiding her intelligence. He wondered if she had picked up the habit consciously. He thought briefly of asking, but before he could form the question into something that wasn't completely tactless, she continued.
"I know that he doesn't think I'm brainless, really, because he still talks important things over with me, and I doubt he'd waste the time if he thought I'd nothing to offer, but the rest of the time it seems like he directly associates being cheerful with being stupid. And with falling madly in love with the first man to smile at me."
She fell silent again, pushing her half-eaten sandwich absently around her plate. He said nothing; damned if he ever knew what to say to an upset woman.
Then, suddenly, she looked up and smiled brightly and completely artificially.
"Sorry; I'm probably boring you."
"No, it's fine," he said. "Hey; I know you're not an airhead, if it means anything."
This time, her smile was slightly more genuine.
"It means a lot; thank-you."
He looked away, feeling awkward. His watch caught his eye, and he checked it more closely.
"Damn," he muttered. "I better get going; I wanted to get to the airport early."
"Right," she said, leaping up with startling abruptness to collect their dishes.
"Thanks for the sandwiches," he added, shifting from one foot to the other a bit awkwardly.
She smiled brightly over her shoulder as she set everything in the sink, and then turned and started toward the door.
"This was fun, wasn't it?" she said suddenly.
Halfway out the door, he turned and shot her a disbelieving look.
"Yeah, it was great. I really liked the part where I ended up covered in soap suds, and just as soon as that dried, ended up with your dessert on my head."
"Well, other than that," she said, looking away and blushing sheepishly.
He rolled his eyes slightly.
"Yeah, sure. We should do it again sometime. Without the Laundromat. And the ice cream."
"So, I'll just make sandwiches, and you'll wash your hair," she surmised with a teasing smile.
"Oh, shut up," he grumbled, nevertheless unable to fight back a smile.
She grinned.
"You've wanted to say that all day, haven't you?"
He stopped, a few steps down the hallway from her door, and smirked over his shoulder.
"Not in the last few hours."
"Getting soft, aren't you?" she noted playfully.
He mock-glared, then shot her one more smile, and started down the hallway again.
And the next day, a thoroughly mystified Joker listened to Wendy's cheerful periodic bursts into song – not unpleasant to hear, just something she hadn't done since she had been told by a well-meaning woman, much to her disgust, that she was 'so cute' – all that morning, before telephoning Drake Anderson to discuss his payment for the recently concluded mission that had involved him, who advised him ironically to be careful around his secretary – she had a temper to be avoided. He'd never, he added, seen a woman so thoughtlessly waste ice cream, just to teach a man a thing or two about how to treat her.
Giving no sign of the multitudes of idle questions filling his mind, Joker only chuckled politely and assured Drake that he would keep it in mind.
Upon ending the phone call, Joker watched the little blonde industriously tidying his office, closely for a moment.
He opened his mouth to ask what on earth all that had been about, then shook his head.
There were times, he decided, that a man was just better off, not to mention happier, not knowing.
End Notes: Hehe! Welcome to another exercise in pointlessness from Rhianwen the Random Read or Die Fan Author. I was playing with a couple things in this. Namely, the lovely, ever-amusing dynamic I insist upon imagining that Drake and Wendy would have.
Also, I should explain this sudden certainty of mine that she isn't really madly in love with her boss. I was talking to an online friend a while ago, who had just seen Read or Die for a while, and who asked where the heck I got that impression about her. So, I watched again, and realized that I have no idea. Really, she's no more shiny-eyed and adoring than I am to my boss when I work in the summers. And if I've got a crush on my boss because of it, well, frankly, it's news to me. I doubt it's news she'd herald with any great joy.