Work Text:
“Ack!”
Ruby threw her arms up in front of her face, as much as she could from the tight underside of the van where she was currently squished. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much. Oil sputtered out of the now open line in inconsistent spurts for several seconds, splashing rainbow-black into her scrunched-up face before it dawned on her that she could simply tighten the nut she’d just loosened back up instead of getting drenched. It took a few extra tries, given the slickness now coating her hands and tools and everything in reach, really, but in a few hearty turns she managed, until the flow slowed to little more than sparse drips, few and far between. At the criss-cross of pipes, lit mainly by the now filthy penlight she’d dropped beside her in preparation of the onslaught, she stared, noting which line the oil waterfall had just come spurting out of. Notably,
“Is it broken?” Pencil called to her flatly, interrupting Ruby’s train of thought.
“Uh, kinda.”
Ruby slid out awkwardly, looking up to find Pencil leaning over her, lips pressed in an impatient line.
“There’s oil in the fuel line? It’s not supposed to be there” Ruby reported, sitting up. Pencil’s brows jumped up at that.
“Oil?” she pondered this for a minute as Ruby pulled herself to her feet, tools in hand. And, when the answer, or, rather, culprit, seemed to dawn on her, Pencil turned her eyes to the third and final person in the ramshackle little garage.
“Match?”
The match in question, disinterestedly fiddling her way through staticy stations on the slightly rusted radio, looked at them.
“What?”
Pencil’s look went steely.
“Hey! I didn’t—” Match yelped defensively, catching on.
“Match.”
Match looked between Pencil, the van, and Ruby, weighing her options carefully.
“Ok but it was like. Really early in the morning right.”
Pencil pinched her brows, sighing.
As the two bickered—or, more accurately, Match defended her inexplicable mixing up of oil and gas while Pencil regarded her, unamused—Ruby trotted over to the workbench. A little wooden thing she’d found on the side of the road a while back, which her friends had helped her paint in chaotic, patchmark colours last month, now it was a mess of assorted tools and broken things in need of fixing and gifts her friends had given her that she liked to keep around. Much of the garage was like that, clustered with little gifts and memorabilia: Book’s radio sticking halfway out of the clustered shelf, Bubble’s plant growing wild on the windowsill, Flower’s scarf, the newest edition, living on her workbench until she could find it a proper home. Treasured things.
She tossed her wrench down haphazardly, knocking a pile of bolts around in the process.
“You know what, whatever” Pencil said, yielding, “Can you fix it?”
Ruby turned to them.
“Yep!” she chirped, reaching blindly for a rag, “It’s pretty easy,” she set about wiping the mess off her face quickly and easily as she continued, “I’ve just gotta clean the oil out!”
Eyes now clear, she pulled the soft cloth from her face, blinking at the duo currently staring at her from several steps away like she’d suggested turning the van inside-out. Pencil looked between Ruby and the cloth in her hands.
“Uh, Ruby? Did you mean to do that?”
“Do what?” Ruby replied, blissfully ignorant right up until she looked down at the rag currently bunched up in her hands. Now, in most circumstances, the rags she kept around the garage were either old disused dish rags or scraps of leftover fabric from Flower that she otherwise couldn’t make much use of, all of which were matted with grease and grime that, even after washing, still left them dulled and greyed and rough-feeling. What she was holding , however, was bright blue with yellow trim and baby blanket soft, sparkling slightly in the morning light that came in through the window. She unbunched it, letting one end tumble out of her hand and onto the floor in all its scarfy, now oil-soaked glory.
Ohhh , Ruby thought, Flower’s gonna be mad .
Match and Pencil exchanged a look, then, in an act of true loyalty,
“Yeeeaaah,” Match said, “we’ve gotta gooo.”
Ruby’s eyes snapped up to them, slipping out the door.
“What?”
“Yeah, we’re busy,” Pencil responded quickly, turning the corner out of view, “have fun with that.”
And, after a moment, she called as an afterthought,
“Call us when the van’s fixed!”
“Oh! I could paint it!”
Several hours later, Ruby sat at the workbench, the scarf Flower had gifted her sprawled out across it. On the floor were bottles of just about every cleaning supply she could get her mitts on—dish soap, laundry detergent, scouring powder, even—all emptied in half-baked attempts to lift the stains to no avail. They had made the situation considerably worse, if anything, as the bleach in some products had burned white patches into some of the unsoiled parts of the fabric, avoiding the oil stains almost entirely by the looks of it. At the thought of paints, though, she hopped to her feet, clattering about the shelves and knocking a few things off in the process.
“I still have some,” she said, sticking her tongue out a bit as she dug, “…here!”
She pulled out a can of spraypaint in the completely wrong shade, holding it aloft like treasure.
“See?”
“I think Flower might notice that,” Book said gently, leaning on the hood of the supervan, a pencil and notepad with several scrawled-out cleaning ideas in her hands. After Ruby had exhausted her own ideas, she’d called up Book as a last resort, figuring, the smart friend that she was, that she’d be able to come up with something . Book hadn’t been thrilled to work with water, not wanting her pages soaked, but she’d still come by with a list of cleaning hacks that she’d ripped off the internet in hand. And after two boxes of baking soda, three tubes of toothpaste, and nearly gassing themselves with ammonia and bleach, they were left, still, at step one. Lower, even, all things considered. Book tapped the pencil against the hood.
“Maybe you could just tell her you lost it?”
“Hmm, I don’t know, she’d get pretty sad if I did that. And mad.” Ruby replied.
“Madder than she would be, though?”
“Maybe?” Ruby pondered the possibilities for a moment, “Yeah, maybe”
Silence settled over them, broken by Ruby, a moment later, shaking the can, “Are you sure the spraypaint won't work?”
It was then, before Book could reply, that a voice called from outside,
“Ruby!”
Ruby dropped the can. The two shared a look, not quite of panic, necessarily, but some undeniable alarm. By the sound of it, Flower was heading straight for them. Ruby scrabled for the workbench, taking the scarf in hand.
“Is that—”
“Cover for me?”
“...What?” Book blinked, slightly puzzled, before Ruby ducked behind the van, vanishing from view.
“Ruby, what are you doing?”
“Sneaking out the window!”
Book looked at the window, a long, thin cut-out poised up high along the far wall. Much thinner than Ruby.
“I don’t think that’s—”
“Ruby!” Flower’s shout cut Book’s rebuttal short, rounding the corner and descending on the seemingly Ruby-free garage. Ruby began to creep slowly across the room. Stealthy, she tried to be, weaving around the odds and ends on the floor as Flower entered.
“Book!” she said, emphatic. Book struggled a bit to play it cool. “Is Ruby around?”
It was then that Ruby elbowed one of the empty soap bottles, sending several clattering to the floor in a cacophonous, if brief, domino chain.
“Nope,” Book replied once it was over. “Haven’t seen her.”
For a half-second, both Book and Ruby held their breaths, frozen, waiting for Flower to trot behind the van and catch her red-handed.
“What was that?” Flower asked instead.
“The van.” Book answered quickly, “It’s the exhaust. It uh. Ruptured”
It was all over, they figured. They were dead.
“Oh, ok,” They breathed a sigh of relief at that. Thank god almost none of their friends knew anything about cars. Ruby quickly continued her scrabbling,
“Well, if you see her, can you tell her I—”
Right up until she tripped over the end of the scarf, sending her tumbling out from behind the van and into the open with a noticeable clatter. Both objects turned to her.
“Ruby! There you are!” Flower all but shouted upon spotting her. A pink bag hung off her arm, and she seemed so awash with excitement that she was nearly buzzing. Ruby just barely managed to hide the scarf behind her back. “Do you still have the scarf I gave you?”
Trying to hide her mild panic, Ruby looked beyond Flower to Book, who shook her head fervently, mouthing ‘no’ at her almost overdramatically.
“Umm…Yeah!” Ruby replied like it was the most obvious answer in the world. Book buried her face in her hands. “But!” she tried to backtrack at that, “I don’t—”
“Good, cause you need to throw it away”
Ruby froze. Her arms dropped to her sides, and the scarf came into view with them. Oblivious to, or perhaps simply not acknowledging, her shock, Flower began digging through the bag.
“Huh?”
“I messed up the stitching, and the colours are kind of…eh,” Flower said, and, with all the bravado of a mad scientist presenting their latest creation “you should just get rid of it, cause I’ve got something even better!”
In a dramatic flourish, she pulled out another scarf, this one wider but seemingly of a lighter weight fabric than the one currently clutched in Ruby’s hand. Unlike the solid tone of the original, this one bore a gradient of more gentle, subdued blues stretching from either end, a delicate viney patterning sewn along the edges in glittering turquoise thread. Flower held it out to her, smirking almost cockily.
“What do you think? Pretty good right?”
Ruby stared at it a moment, letting the old scarf fall from her hand.
“It’s beautiful!”
She reached for it, but Flower snatched it back, spying the still slightly soiled state of Ruby’s fingers.
“Wait” Flower said, cringing only slightly, “wash your hands first. They’re kinda gross.”