SNC: Laundry Day
Title: Laundry Day
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters: Helen, The Big Guy
Rating: G
Spoilers/Warnings: None
Summary: Five minutes in a friendship.
A/N: Written for the SFA Flashfic prompt "Clothes," and in response to a meta-question somewhere about whether Helen does her own laundry, and also discussion on my own journal about The Big Guy and his name (or lack thereof).
Laundry Day
by Mad Maudlin
Helen had grown up in a place and a time when laundry was not a necessary skill; even if her life had taken a more conventional turn, her father's fortune would've meant she'd never lacked for servants. She remembered the years before Oxford, watching a succession of housekeepers cart off her hamper and re-appear with a basket of neatly-folded dresses and smallclothes. It wasn't exactly magic-she could describe the chemical properties of soap before she'd lost her milk teeth-but it was a sort of background noise, taken for granted, like so much else when she was young and blinded by big ideas and big dreams.
She is a hundred and fifty years old now, and she has come to take a certain amount of pride in details. The lye soap and hand-cranked mangles are no more, of course; there is a pair of sleek front-loaded washing machines in a room off the kitchen, plus a large-capacity machine for handling bedclothes and towels, and on Tuesday afternoons it is usually close to empty. Helen sets her basket on the counter and sorts the lights from the darks, and the heavier canvas and denim from the delicates-a silk blouse has snuck in somehow, she'll have to make sure that gets sent out tomorrow with the rest of the dry cleaning. She tucks her underthings into lingerie bags, to prevent any unfortunate snagging, and measures out the detergent.
She hears her friend's heavy tread before she sees him--her friend, she had trained herself to think of him so, out of respect for his people's naming taboos. "That's too much soap," he says, dropping his own hamper on the floor.
"Is it?" She checks the labels on the package again. "I've filled it to the line."
Her friend snorts at her, and takes the cap from her hand; he delicately pours out about a third of the liquid detergent. He set it back on the counter with authority, and Helen smiles at him-cannot help but smile, at this large man so far from his home who chooses to occupy himself with her laundry and her life. Often he is the one sorting her laundry as well as his own, when her eyes are on the horizon, when the details escape her; she comes home from a trip abroad or a long meeting and finds the sheets have been changed and the towels folded, a pot of tea and a sandwich waiting for her on the sideboard. She smiles because the enormity of him sometimes overwhelms her.
His people only bare their teeth in anger, but from his eyes she'd say that he's smiling, too.
Author:
mad_maudlin
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters: Helen, The Big Guy
Rating: G
Spoilers/Warnings: None
Summary: Five minutes in a friendship.
A/N: Written for the SFA Flashfic prompt "Clothes," and in response to a meta-question somewhere about whether Helen does her own laundry, and also discussion on my own journal about The Big Guy and his name (or lack thereof).
Laundry Day
by Mad Maudlin
Helen had grown up in a place and a time when laundry was not a necessary skill; even if her life had taken a more conventional turn, her father's fortune would've meant she'd never lacked for servants. She remembered the years before Oxford, watching a succession of housekeepers cart off her hamper and re-appear with a basket of neatly-folded dresses and smallclothes. It wasn't exactly magic-she could describe the chemical properties of soap before she'd lost her milk teeth-but it was a sort of background noise, taken for granted, like so much else when she was young and blinded by big ideas and big dreams.
She is a hundred and fifty years old now, and she has come to take a certain amount of pride in details. The lye soap and hand-cranked mangles are no more, of course; there is a pair of sleek front-loaded washing machines in a room off the kitchen, plus a large-capacity machine for handling bedclothes and towels, and on Tuesday afternoons it is usually close to empty. Helen sets her basket on the counter and sorts the lights from the darks, and the heavier canvas and denim from the delicates-a silk blouse has snuck in somehow, she'll have to make sure that gets sent out tomorrow with the rest of the dry cleaning. She tucks her underthings into lingerie bags, to prevent any unfortunate snagging, and measures out the detergent.
She hears her friend's heavy tread before she sees him--her friend, she had trained herself to think of him so, out of respect for his people's naming taboos. "That's too much soap," he says, dropping his own hamper on the floor.
"Is it?" She checks the labels on the package again. "I've filled it to the line."
Her friend snorts at her, and takes the cap from her hand; he delicately pours out about a third of the liquid detergent. He set it back on the counter with authority, and Helen smiles at him-cannot help but smile, at this large man so far from his home who chooses to occupy himself with her laundry and her life. Often he is the one sorting her laundry as well as his own, when her eyes are on the horizon, when the details escape her; she comes home from a trip abroad or a long meeting and finds the sheets have been changed and the towels folded, a pot of tea and a sandwich waiting for her on the sideboard. She smiles because the enormity of him sometimes overwhelms her.
His people only bare their teeth in anger, but from his eyes she'd say that he's smiling, too.