InsaneJournal

There was a storm blowing in, still a couple of hours away but from her position hanging a hundred and fifty feet in the air Lyra could already feel the wind starting to turn. Looking at the approaching weather, her supervisor Les had already decided to ground the team just as soon as they were done on this office block. It meant the last job of the day would have to be postponed, which meant less pay, and normally Lyra should have had tomorrow free to do the job then instead but she’d said she’d work at Taco Bell to cover some sickness. Had to keep the Taco bosses happy – had to make up for saying no when they asked her to work Saturday, cuz Saturday was when she was meeting her cousins.

Manager Ainsley looked less than happy about the no, despite how apologetic she made herself. It worried her a tiny bit, she needed him to keep calling her first when people called in sick; Taco Bell was a reliable chunk of hours and she could eat for free on the job and if she lost shifts as punishment for not being reliable – read, forever on call – it was gonna hurt.

February, and a hike in the rent, was only a month and a half away. But it was gonna be okay. Lyra’d get her scheduling on and make it all work out. Jocelyn might be looking grim and determined about it, but since her birthday Lyra found it hard to be disheartened by anything; the night had just been so good and she’d felt just… so goddamn wonderful. Rosario loved her, Patrick was so excited by getting to know her, and Avery thought she was hot. Home might be a fucking challenge right now, but god, what a liferaft she had.

Besides, Patrick's connections had hooked her up with another job prospect and she was hoping she could fit in several hours there if she started early in the mornings, before a Taco shift, on the days she wasn't washing windows. Her income in that area was already taking a dive; today was part of a bigger trend as the weather got colder and wetter and windier and more frozen. Less demand, less literal ability to work, less need for contractors by the business and less hours in a safety harness for Lyra.

And carpenter Will wasn't super far away, at least the job was still in Brooklyn. Speaking of close jobs, Nat's shop was close too, although as she’d learned yesterday afternoon, nothing was really close when you had to lug a bar fridge back to your apartment to fix it.

At least Jemma's dad Dante was around for the holiday season, so Lyra hadn’t had to worry about guarding the torn out guts of a bar fridge from a three year old's curiosity. Her mom had been home, though.

Her mom had been home a lot this week, which was… not great. Two days after meeting Patrick again and one day after her long conversation with the priest, she'd broken up with her boyfriend. Lyra did not want to examine what this meant, so instead of wondering (or asking) she was simply looking at it through the same annoyed lens as Jocelyn was. Jem being suddenly single (single and not looking) meant she was eating at home more, which meant they were spending more on food, which made a difference because Jem's philosophy when it came to food was 'treat yo'self' which didn't gel with a Jocelyn budget.

As Lyra dragged the fridge into the kitchen it was impossible to miss how badly the Jocelyn budget had been abused. Jem was baking, and all sorts of fancy ingredients (cream cheese! Two kinds of chocolate and fresh fruit!) spread out over the benches.

"Is that cashew butter?" Lyra had asked, rubbing the strained muscles in her arms as she looked over the carnage. The packaging she recognised; one of the bougie places the next block over. "What are you doing?"

"Church bake sale!" Jem had said brightly, laying out some paper cupcake liners patterned with gold. "I volunteered. Thought it was time I gave something back… I'm doing a triple batch! We could take some to Patrick even."

"Um," Lyra had said uncertainly, not sure she was ready for her parental worlds to overlap again. Like ever again, at this rate. "Did you buy all this stuff?"

"Oh don't start, baby," Jem had sounded a little put-upon. "It's for a good cause."

Lyra had decided not to start, but only because she hadn't been sure she'd be able to stop quickly, and she'd needed to see how dead the bar fridge was. She’d dragged it into her room, cleared a space that wasn’t really big enough on the floor, and put her headphones in so she wouldn’t hear the inevitable eruption when Jocelyn got home and saw what Jem had made of her budget.


At least the really rather brutal cold was a whole world away from life at home. Cold, sure, but Lyra was layered up like a lasagna and feeling like a pioneering Arctic explorer, and the hat that Jocelyn had knitted for her was undeniably cute. Even with her helmet on over it, the city was a mass of chilly low cloud behind her, and it made for some great instagram shots.

Take the ‘pioneering Arctic explorer’ vibes away, though, and it was boring. One window was the same as the next, and buildings like this had hundreds. There was some skill involved in it, sure, but no creativity, no creation. She was just cleaning bird shit and city shit off glass, over and over and over, and some days felt so long she half expected to have lost another three months when she stepped back onto solid concrete and unclipped her harness.

But, at least once she’d got the knack she could let her mind wander. She could go over the memory of harmonizing with her dad at karaoke, or rehash the things she wished she’d yelled at Apollo (not fun, but not boring!) or think about what it was gonna be like to meet her cousins in person for the first time, or if she really wanted to warm up, like today she really wanted to warm up, she could think about making out with Avery on his couch, his tongue in her mouth, his fingers finding their way between her legs and not stopping in a way that was just… so damn hot.

Imagination and memory, the best weapons against the cold and the crap of the world.

With the glare from the sky reflection off the glass, Lyra didn’t even notice the woman on the other side of the window till her face was like, right there, and Lyra jumped in surprise and immediately felt caught out. She had to laugh at herself, because it wasn’t like the woman could tell what she’d been thinking. With a sheepish grin, Lyra waved her squeegee at her through the glass.