Work Text:
Pelageya Sergeyevna is a girl that prefers to keep her mouth clean.
She sees swearing as something of a habit that sticks to you and refuses to come off no matter how hard you scrub at it, and which begins to seep into the rest of your life.
One moment, it’s oh shit when you drop a vase, the next you’re saying what the fuck at your workplace in front of your boss when they say something like Pela you’re being given a new assignment even though you just got back from a three month work trip .
Also, she’s sixteen. Those kinds of words are meant for adults who have stress and way too much on their plates to keep living like that.
Point is, she doesn’t swear.
But for this…she’ll make a little exception.
“ Lynxy. Lynxy. LYNX!”
“W-what, Pela?”
“Lynxy, can you tell me why the fuck you’re leaving me with two grown-ups I barely know to take care of Serval’s workshop while you guys are away for a week?!”
Lynx begins to sweat.
“Uhh…listen, my big sis and brother really needs to take time off once in a while and we haven’t spent time together for a long, long time! Plus, it’s just a week! All the people coming in only need quick repairs, I’m sure three of you can handle that!”
“I- Lynx! Are you being serious?! Serval’s girlfriend is a doctor, Sampo is a master thief, and I’m an intelligence officer! What does that have to do with repairing instruments and machines and heaters and whatnot?”
Pela sees her girlfriend nervously tap her foot on the ground at a quick speed, looking at the clock in the corner of the workshop.
“Pela, I’m really, really sorry! I’ll make it up to you when we get back, I promise! We gotta go now, though, so byeeeeeee!”
Lynx begins to run out of the workshop for the train, but not before Pela pulls her back for a kiss first.
“Goodbye, Lynxy, but don’t blame me if something burns down when you get back.”
“Hehe! Alright, thanks so much, Pela!”
With a long, heartfelt sigh, Pela waves to Lynx as the explorer practically flies over to her brother and sister, who then all hurry to the train to not miss theirs.
Then, she turns back and walks into the Neverwinter Workshop and begins to analyse the state of said workshop, her brow furrowing and her forehead creasing more and more as she sees the mess of Serval’s stuff, boxes and boxes and boxes of who knows what, windows that need to be washed, doors with rusty hinges…
Just then, she feels a foreign hand on her shoulder and instinctively turns around, giving her best elbow-gutting to the unidentified person.
“Yowch! What the heck!”
From that, Pela can already tell who it is.
“Oh, for the love of…Sampo, don’t touch anything! I don’t trust you!” She basically screams into the thief’s face.
“Nat! Pel’s bullying me!” Sampo whines, seemingly to the person behind him.
“Sampo, don’t pretend like you didn’t just give her the shock of her life. You did deserve that. Also, if I didn’t know you personally, I wouldn’t trust you with my girlfriend’s things either.” The person behind him steps out, and Pela sees long, bluish-grey hair tied back, warm eyes, and a kind smile, and instantly feels comforted.
“U-Uh, hello, I’m Pelageya. Lynx’s…girlfriend. You can call me Pela, though.” She fumbles over her words, embarrassingly enough.
“Hi there, Pela. I’m Natasha, a doctor in the Underworld. I’m Serval’s partner, somehow.”
The whole thing is said with a laugh and a kind of gentle sweetness and grace that can only be gained by working with children, and it fits the way Natasha looks perfectly. Pela can see why Serval and Natasha would be together.
After acquainting with Natasha, she turns to Sampo with a glare.
“Alright, now remind me why he’s here?...” Natasha looks at Pela like she’s trying to suppress a smile.
Sampo dramatically flops onto the beaten-up couch. “Weeeeeell, I happen to have…gotten, uh…” Quietly whispering the last part, he looks to the doctor for some help. Big mistake, Sampo.
Natasha happily takes over. “Sampo got slammed into a wall by Gepard, and the rest is history. Actually - you should probably take it slow with him since his sexual history doesn’t have much in it, probably.”
The con artist just goes a dark shade of red and gets up to say something in Natasha’s ear. With a cheeky grin, the grey-haired woman asks, “What was that?”
“I- I bottom, okay?!”
Silence.
Pela groans. Adults can be so stupid sometimes.
She manages to say, “We’re here to perform maintenance and take care of the workshop while they’re away, not to talk about the activities of two dumb gay men, okay?”
Sampo somehow has the energy to look offended.
“Hey, Geppie isn’t dumb!”
“She has a point, Sampo.”
After that, it actually goes pretty smoothly. The work gets divided up - Pela organises, Natasha cleans, and Sampo does the tinkering. He’s surprisingly good with fixing the strings on electric guitars.
Pela guesses that he’s good friends with Serval.
Eventually, it turns ten p.m. on the dot and Pela locks the doors of the workshop, ready to jump onto the couch and fall asleep.
Then, Natasha comes out from the backroom with a giggling and clearly inebriated Sampo over her shoulder.
Pela just stares in disbelief.
“What happened?! Serval doesn’t keep alcohol in here!”
Natasha shakes her head and sighs. “You’re right. He broke into those… weed brownies , or whatever they’re called, that my girlfriend makes sometimes.”
Oh, dear Qlipoth, Pela cannot believe her fucking ears right now.
“ He’s fucking high?” Is all that she can seethe out.
“Yup.”
“I- Oh, for…”
Then, because of how crazy Pela is going, she starts thinking. She doesn’t have work tomorrow. She should be fine.
Clearly, Natasha can see the gears turning in the intelligence officer’s head. “Pela, you’re sixteen. No.”
Pela can’t even anymore. She runs for the plate. Natasha tries to stop her. Pela is smaller, though, and much faster.
She bites into the brownie and swallows.
Roughly half an hour later, the doctor has to deal with a high manchild and a high literal child laughing on the floor, rolling in circles.
Quietly, she thinks of all her decisions leading up to this.
Then, with her hidden strength, once they fall asleep, she hauls both of them into bed, tucks them in, pulls out her phone, and dials Serval.
The voice from the other side is chipper and energetic.
“Hi, Nat! How is it? Keeping everything in good shape?”
“Honey, your sister’s girlfriend and your brother’s boyfriend were both high before I put them to bed. Mind explaining the brownies before I make the terrible decision to have one myself?”
(The banter continues until the next morning, when the other two wake up and they all have breakfast.)