So this was inspired by the prompt "My cat steals underwear and I come home to find you chasing my cat to get your underwear back."
From this post on Tumblr: ma-ghostly-petite .tumblr post/146424416379/awkward-first-meetings-aus (Minus spaces of course)
It kind of ran away from me and became a full length story. Also, my cat actually does steal not only underwear, but bras and socks as well. Just for those skeptics out there. ;)
I don't own Ghostbusters and any mistakes are my own.
Erin Gilbert had never really been that great at going on dates. As hard as she tried and as well as the dates seemed to go at the time, somehow they never extended past a first. Even the few relationships she'd had were short, the longest in a while being a few months with a man who finally told her that it simply "wasn't working out." Erin would have bought the excuse, especially since she had been feeling the same way, if she had not seen him sharing a steamy kiss with an acquaintance of hers at a university event just a few hours later. An acquaintance who had told her all about the man she had been seeing for the past few weeks. Erin felt stupid when she realized that she and her coworker had been seeing the same man. She had left the event early and cried alone in the shower that night.
Ever since this incident her best friend Abby had been trying to set her up. Erin hated being set up on dates and told her friend just that but Abby wasn't hearing it. Every time Erin complained about her lamentable love life Abby started in again until Erin finally stopped saying anything to her friend on the topic. This, of course, didn't stop Abby from trying. They had been best friends since high school when being the two weirdos who researched ghosts had bonded them. They had even gone through a short period of toying with the idea of dating one another before deciding that they worked much better as friends. Erin had been terrified of losing Abby's friendship and Abby had realized that while she could stand Erin's buttoned down tendencies in a friendship, as a girlfriend they drove her absolutely insane. They had mutually agreed to remain friends, and while Abby had gone on to embrace her growing and changing sexuality Erin had remained determinedly "straight," Abby being the only person in her life who knew about her repressed bisexuality.
On afternoons Erin didn't have to work office hours at Columbia University they would meet in Abby's basement lab at the Kenneth T. Higgins Institute of Science to work on their research. Erin had left their history of ghost hunting behind for several lonely years following an anxiety riddled argument over Erin's public image and the possibility of her getting tenure in the future. Eventually Erin had realized that she had made a terrible mistake and reached out to Abby who had been more than happy to mend things between them. The years of friendship they had shared didn't die easily and they had settled comfortably into their old routine, Abby only sometimes making references to Erin's ditching her right before a talk show interview about the book they had written. Erin still felt terrible about the incident but tried hard to make up for it by supporting Abby and their work fully. She acknowledged that she would probably never be granted tenure while working on projects like this but couldn't really find it within herself to care. She had changed a lot since she and Abby had come back together.
But not enough to allow her friend to set her up on a blind date.
"Erin, you really need to get laid," Abby offered helpfully to her friend who was slumped over her desk, her head in her hands. She had just gone on a tirade about midterms and how they were more stressful on the teachers than on the students and how none of her students really cared and how they all hated her and she was just feeling so tense. Abby moved behind her chair and began rubbing her shoulders and Erin blushed horribly at the involuntary groan that left her at the contact. While she wouldn't have put it quite as crudely as Abby had, she silently agreed with her friend. It had been a while.
Abby, on the other hand, took her groan as agreement and launched right back into her usual campaign for Erin to allow her to set her up on a date. "Look, I met this engineer at a conference a few weeks ago. Imagine if you dated an engineer! Imagine if we had an engineer on our team! Think of what we could accomplish Erin."
Erin peered up at her through her bangs, refusing to lift her head from the desk and allow Abby to realize that she was actually considering the offer. Just a little. "You know, I know a little about engineering myself…" she said, trailing off at the other woman's expression. The last time Erin had tried to actually accomplish something in that particular branch of science they had almost been kicked out of the Institute for the minor explosion that had nearly taken out half of their lab. Erin had had to chop off several inches of hair to get rid of the singed parts and Abby had spent weeks without eyebrows. "Fine, fine, I won't try to build anything. But you want to set me up just so we can have an engineer on our team? Abby, really?" she groaned again, the sound much less pleasure-filled this time. "Besides, what if I start to date this guy, it goes horribly wrong, and then we're left in an awkward situation?"
Abby smirked. "Look, just give this a shot. You've been going about this dating thing entirely the wrong way and I'm going to fix that for you, okay? Trust me, this will be different. And you need something different."
"Another time Abby?" Erin said, her voice pained. "I have a date tonight and if it goes badly I'll consider taking you up on your offer."
"That's not a no!" Abby hooted triumphantly and retreated to her own desk, leaving Erin in peace for the time being.
Erin had never been great at going on dates. In fact, Erin was notoriously terrible at going on dates. So terrible in fact, that she had avoided them since her last miserable break up. Dates made her anxious to the point of almost making herself sick, and she was not above using that as an excuse to get out of ones that she had a particularly bad feeling about. Abby, on the other hand, loved when Erin went out on dates, even if Erin hadn't allowed her to pick out the date herself. While Abby was excited, Erin found her anxiety increasing as the day wore on. It reached a peak when Abby told her to go home early and get ready for her date and to wear something fun for goodness sake, not the stuffy librarian suits that she normally wore. Erin flushed scarlet when Abby suggested that the librarian suits could be fetish fuel and vowed to wear something a little more of this century.
When she returned home she decided that a shower was in order before any dressing up could happen. With midterm week coming to a close Erin was pretty sure that she was sporting some unpleasant stress sweat that she wanted to wash away before meeting her date. Plus Abby had brought some kind of noxious chemical into the lab that she was carefully experimenting with and the smell had seeped into both of their clothes. Erin could still smell it on her skin and although she had met her date in the STEM program at Columbia she doubted that the smell was attractive in the slightest. Almost as an afterthought she threw the window to her bedroom open in the hopes that some fresh air would help the smell dissipate.
She walked over to her closet and began rifling through her selection even though she knew what she was going to choose. Someone had once told her practically in the same breath that a little black dress was too much for a first date and that she looked good in green. She had gone out the same week and bought a dark green dress that fell to mid-thigh and showed off just enough cleavage to catch someone's interest but not enough to be considered un-Erin. Paired with a thin black sweater and black low-heeled pumps she thought it actually looked pretty classy. She also appreciated that the dress had pockets that she had the back habit of putting her hands in when she was particularly nervous, and was supportive enough that she didn't need to wear a bra. She wore the dress for every first date she had been on since buying it, which hadn't been that many, and although the dates almost never worked out she secretly considered it her lucky dress.
Erin lay the dress on her bed and before she could think too long and get nervous pulled a pair of black lace underwear from her drawer and laid it on top. It's ok, she told herself, wringing her hands anxiously. If you do happen to get lucky tonight you'll be glad you wore them. And if not, no one's the wiser. She knew it would take an act of God for her to feel comfortable or confident enough to take things that far on a first date, but she left the scrap of fabric out anyway. Taking a deep breath she walked to the bathroom and shut the door behind her, leaving the date outfit lying on the bed for when she got out of the shower.
Erin allowed herself an extra long shower to help calm her nerves, and she had to admit that she did indeed feel a little better when she emerged, steam drifting into her bedroom as she toweled off her hair. She would need to find her hair dryer eventually. It was probably under her bed or somewhere else just as obscure since she hardly ever used it anymore. She turned to her bed and was preparing to kneel down to check underneath it when she noticed something strange. Her underwear was gone.
"What the…" she muttered, picking the dress up and checking underneath it before pulling the blankets off her bed entirely and shaking them to see if the garment had somehow gotten tangled in them. When it didn't reveal itself she walked in a full arc around the foot of her bed. The underwear was nowhere to be found. Erin felt goosebumps erupt on her skin at the idea that someone had come in and stolen her underwear before brushing off the feeling with an uneasy chuckle. Who would come into her bedroom and steal her underwear without even touching anything else? She had a laptop and jewelry to steal as well but nothing else appeared disturbed. Surely she must have put the scrap of fabric somewhere else or taken it into the bathroom with her and forgotten.
She was about to turn around and walk back to the bathroom to check there when she heard a strange noise. Looking up she realized that there was a cat sitting in the open window of her bedroom. How on earth had she missed that before? It was sitting there licking its paw and underneath it was her underwear.
Erin felt her jaw drop as she looked at the cat innocently sitting there on her underwear. She didn't have much experience with animals, having never owned anything more complicated than a goldfish in her entire life, but she had never heard of a cat stealing clothing before. She approached the cat cautiously, clearing her throat.
"Hey there kitty," she said, extending a hand slowly. "Here, kitty kitty." The cat looked up from washing its paw but paid her no mind. Instead it started attacking the lacy material, catching it with its claws and chewing on it ferociously. "No kitty don't do that!" Erin made a grab for the garment but the cat hissed and picked it up in its teeth before jumping out the window and onto the sidewalk below.
Erin found herself frozen in a state of mild shock. She didn't know cats very well but she had never heard of a cat doing that. What she did know was that cats move fast and that if she had any hope of getting her underwear back she would have to act quickly. Pulling her towel tighter around herself she climbed bodily out the window without a second thought.
The cat had already darted several feet down the sidewalk and was sitting there licking itself again, her underwear sitting right there in the open where anyone could see. Never mind the fact that she was standing out on the sidewalk wearing nothing but a towel.
"Come here kitty," she said through gritted teeth, tiptoeing toward the creature and wincing at the feel of the rough sidewalk against her bare feet. She had never been a child who played outside much, mostly preferring sitting inside with a good book, and when she did play outside she certainly didn't do it barefooted. But here she was, chasing a damned cat down the sidewalk to retrieve her underwear. Underwear she saved specifically for dates she had a good feeling about at that. She certainly wouldn't be wearing them tonight. Not after they had been dragged through the dirt in a cat's mouth.
As soon as she got within two feet of the cat it picked up her underwear and trotted off down the sidewalk once more, tail in the air to show her its impertinent little backside. They continued in this fashion for several more minutes, Erin coming within feet of the cat and the cat waiting until she was close enough to grab it before taking off again, until Erin very literally bumped into another person. She had been so focused on the cat that she hadn't even noticed the person standing in the path. She bounced off of them, nearly landing flat on her ass but recovering at the last moment. She looked up to meet the stranger's stunning blue eyes that were partially hidden behind yellow tinted glasses perched low on her nose. The woman was carrying several brown grocery bags and didn't seem fazed in the slightest by the unexpected sight of Erin clad only in a towel chasing a cat down the street.
"I'm so sorry," Erin stuttered out, feeling her face and chest flush bright red in embarrassment at the situation she had found herself in. "I can explain," she trailed off, realizing that she couldn't, in fact, explain. Lucky for her, however, the cat approached the woman and began rubbing against her legs, Erin's underwear still in its mouth.
"Schrödinger!" the woman said, somehow managing to balance her grocery bags and scoop the cat up at the same time. "Did you steal this lovely lady's underwear? I thought we talked about this." She carefully extracted the garment from the cat's mouth and handed it back to Erin, who took it with mild disgust. The woman awkwardly extended a hand past the cat and grocery bags and Erin grasped it cautiously.
"I'm Holtzmann," she said, giving Erin's hand a surprisingly firm shake. "He does this to everyone. He even steals my bras." She grinned and Erin found that she enjoyed the low tones of her voice. "I just moved in down the street. Are we neighbors?" She gestured with her head to the apartment complex at the end of the block and her glasses bounced on her nose.
"Ah, sort of," Erin replied, clutching her towel. "I'm Erin. I live down the street in that direction. Welcome to the neighborhood?"
"Thanks," Holtzmann said, ignoring her unsure tone with a beaming smile. "You may want to close your windows next time you plan to have your delicates out and about. Or we could meet like this again. Your choice." She winked and Erin felt her heart skip a beat. Her eyes trailed up to her messily pinned up hair and down to her boots and mismatched socks.
"I'd prefer if next time I were wearing clothes," she replied, allowing a small smile to break through at the low chuckle the comment brought out of Holtzmann.
"My loss," she said with a cheeky grin, turning toward the apartment complex with the cat winding around her ankles. Erin was impressed that she didn't trip. "Come on Dingbat," she said to the cat. "Let's go home. We should do this again sometime," she called over her shoulder to Erin, who was still rooted to the spot watching the slight sway of her hips that she suspected was affected for her sake. She laughed awkwardly but did not say no, turning back to her house to finish getting prepared for her date. And to pick out different underwear.
If you're just reading this for the first time, this fic is actually complete, but I'm gonna post a chapter at a time anyway to give you that lovely suspense. ;) Reviews make me a happy camper!