Work Text:
Ymir knew the ins and outs of swindling little kids like the back of her filthy, filthy hand.
Every summer morning she drove her rounds from First Street to the town center, through neighborhoods of sun-bleached adobe houses with giant saguaro cacti jutting like telephone poles above the rooftops, on past the dog park, and straight to City Hall, stopping every couple of blocks to take on hordes of sweaty children whose pockets jangled with coins.
For a part-time job, driving an ice cream truck was a pretty sweet deal.
So maybe customer service wasn’t exactly Ymir’s strong point. And there were downsides to the job—small children, shitty air conditioning, and shitty, shitty music. But in a small town right in the middle of the desert—a town so small that even Baskin-Robbins had yet to sink its teeth into the soft flesh of the economy—the ice cream truck business was surprisingly lucrative.
Charging five dollars for a SpongeBob ice cream bar may be pushing some ethical boundaries, but, Ymir reasoned, after all, she was in it for the money.
Ymir whistled as she drove past the library and turned the corner to City Hall. It was late afternoon and the sun was still high overhead, meaning that after lunch, she had plenty of time to play videogames and watch Netflix.
Just as she pulled into the parking lot, a small, blonde blur in a power suit scurried out from behind the dumpster and into the truck’s path.
Ymir slammed her foot on the brake, swearing loudly.
The woman froze and stared up at her with eyes like big, baby-blue lasers. A thin line of blood trickled from her nose.
Then she turned and ran away.
Ymir lifted a hand to her heart, which was pounding furiously in her chest.
“Holy shit,” she said.
“Let me get this straight,” Levi said, narrowing his eyes. The back of his plush, orthopedic office chair towered over his head. “You show up to work two hours late covered in crap, with Kleenex stuffed up your nose. And—” he paused, seemingly collecting himself, “—you don’t even have coffee.”
“Well,” Christa said, “Um.”
“And you have the nerve to ask for an ice cream break.”
“Not a break, exactly,” she said weakly.
“No,” Levi said. “I can’t believe I can’t fire you. Bring me a cup of coffee before you go back to your desk.”
He swiveled his office chair around with a huff.
As an attractive young woman in a patriarchal system, Christa was no stranger to disappointment. But, to be honest, she hadn’t expected to become so thoroughly acquainted.
It had been hard enough realizing that her dreams of moving to a big city were more distant than ever, but that morning she had knocked her face into a garbage can, was almost killed by an ice cream truck, and now she was getting chewed out by her boss on her first day of work.
Christa trudged to the rec room with a sigh and leaned against the counter as she waited for the coffee to brew. She poked tentatively at the bruise blooming on her face and her split lip.
“You should put ice on that.”
Christa jumped.
A tall, lanky woman leaned against the doorway of the room in a way clearly meant to look suave. She cleared her throat and Christa watched as she raked her greasy-looking hair away from her face. She looked oddly familiar.
“Okay,” Christa said. “Thanks?”
The stranger shuffled awkwardly.
“Uh,” she said. “Yeah. Sorry about this morning.”
Christa stared.
“What?”
“You know,” the woman said, “I almost hit you with my truck.” She shoved her hands into her pockets. “But, you know, it was kind of your fault.”
“Oh. You,” Christa said. “You made me late for work.”
She raised her hands defensively.
“You made yourself late for work,” she said.
“What are you even doing here? This room is employee-only.”
“I deliver ice cream,” she said. “By the way, hypothetically, if I asked, would you want to go on a date with me?”
“What?” Christa said. “No.”
She shrugged shamelessly.
“Don’t you wanna know where else I have freckles?” she said, waggling her eyebrows.
“No,” Christa said. “Bye.”
She poured coffee into Levi’s favorite mug, which was inexplicably large and shaped like a human head, and quickly walked away.
“Come on,” Ymir said. “Come on. I’ll give you a free cone if you tell me her name.”
Annie looked up at Ymir with expressionless eyes.
“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” she said crisply. “And I’m allergic to dairy.”
"That’s because you have no soul," Ymir said. "Please, Satan. Help me out."
The tiny blonde lady studied her nails carefully.
"Well," Annie said. "Unfortunately, she doesn't appear to have a name."
"What?"
"The woman you're looking for literally has no name on any of her official documents," Annie said. "Good luck."
For the rest of the week, Ymir drove her route listlessly, scowling at every child she saw.
Fucking kids, she thought. Fucking cacti. Fucking toxic waste center.
But one day, as she pulled into the City Hall parking lot, she spotted Laser-Eyes sitting on the curb, her head in her hands.
"Hey," Ymir said, scrambling out of the truck. "It's you again."
"Hi,” she said, her voice muffled. “Can I ask you for a favor?”
"Babe," Ymir said. "I'll do anything."
"Please take me to the garbage dump," she said. "I threw out my boss's skull mug."
Well it wasn't romantic, but it could work.
"Get in," she said gallantly, and before Christa could even buckle her seat belt, Ymir was careening haphazardly out of the parking lot.
"So," Ymir yelled over the loud ice cream truck music. "What's your name?"
"Christoria," Christa shouted back. "Oh, hell. I meant Christa."
"Christoria, huh?" Ymir gave her a shit-eating grin. "Your parents must really hate you."
An icy silence fell in the truck.
"Shit," Ymir said. "Did I say something?"
"Do you even know where you're going?" Christa asked stiffly. "This isn't the route Google Maps said to take."
"That's because Google Maps can't talk.”
"Technically," Christa said, "it can."
Ymir squirmed in her seat.
Christa had the face of a baby angel but Ymir was willing to bet that, like Annie, she was actually a tiny blonde ball of pure destructive rage. Why was it, Ymir wondered, that all of the short women in her life could kick her ass?
It was kind of hot.
"Don't worry, babe," she said. "I know this city like the back of my hand."
"Right," Christa said entirely without conviction.
"So," Ymir said. "What do you do here?"
"I work in the human waste department," Christa said.
"Wow, um," Ymir said. "That's kind of harsh."
"No, like garbage," Christa said. "Sewers. Recycling. I make coffee and environmental impact reports."
Ymir glanced away, shifty-eyed, thinking about all of the plastic ice cream wrappers strewn all over the city.
"And that's why we're heading to the junkyard?"
"No," Christa said wearily. "I told you. I accidentally tossed out my boss's human head mug a couple of days ago." She threw her hands in the air. "I made a weak cup of coffee and he told me to 'toss it out,' so I threw the whole goddamn thing away, cup and all."
Ymir snickered.
"Sticking it to the man?"
"I can't afford to stick it to the man," Christa said. "I'm actually really underqualified for this job. I don't even have a college degree."
"Then," Ymir said, making a rude gesture at the driver next to her, "how did you get it?"
“Local nepotism,” Christa said absentmindedly. “My dad has money. A lot of money.”
"Hang on,” Ymir said. “When exactly did you toss out that cup?"
"Wednesday." Christa fiddled with a piece of her hair.
"Shit," Ymir said. "It's not even going to be in the junkyard yet. Did you go through the dumpsters behind City Hall?"
"Oh, God," Christa said. "I didn't even think of that. I'm so, so sorry."
Ymir made a wild u-turn and drove off into the sunset, tires screeching.
They made it about halfway to City Hall before the front tire popped.
"Fucking hell," Ymir said. "Not again."
"Oh no," Christa said faintly. "No, no, no. Please tell me you have a spare tire."
Ymir snorted.
"Where would I put a spare tire? In the freezer?" Upon seeing Christa's horrified face, Ymir patted her back awkwardly. "Hey, have some ice cream. You might feel better."
Christa groaned and buried her face in her hands.
"By the way," Ymir said casually, "do you know how to change a tire?"
"I can't even drive," Christa said. She looked like someone had hit her over the head with a two-by-four.
"Whoa, calm down," Ymir said. "I can call some friends. Take deep breaths."
Once Ymir stepped out to make a call, Christa let herself really wallow in misery for exactly thirty seconds. Then she tied her hair up in a ponytail and stepped outside.
"I'm going to walk," she announced.
Ymir gave her a withering look and hung up.
"It's 105 degrees right now," she said. "The soles of my shoes literally melted onto the ground."
Christa peered at the pavement. It was true—the bottoms of Ymir's shoes looked strangely gloopy.
"When there's a will, there's a way," she said.
"Not when City Hall is 10 miles from here," Ymir said. She sounded bemused. "Jesus, are you okay? You look a little wobbly."
The sun was scorching the back of Christa's neck; she could tell that her face was already bright red. Suddenly, the ground felt very unsteady.
Ymir watched in shock as Christa crumpled to the ground.
Shit, she thought.
Christa woke up shivering in the back of a moving vehicle.
It’s finally happened, she thought. I've been kidnapped, and now I'm going to die.
Slowly, she opened her eyes and found herself surrounded by boxes of ice cream. She immediately closed her eyes again.
Why the hell not. At this point, she figured she had pretty much already used up her share of bad luck, so why not just take a nap and let the ice cream truck take her wherever the hell it was going.
“Are you awake yet?” Ymir yelled.
“No,” Christa said.
“Thank God,” Ymir shouted. “We’re almost at City Hall. I stopped by Home Depot for trash shovels, so we’re good to go.”
“Great,” Christa said. “That’s fantastic.”
Ymir ignored her.
“We just have one problem,” she said.
“What is it?” Christa asked listlessly.
“I might have stolen a tire,” Ymir said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Christa sat up.
“Who did you steal a tire from?” she asked.
“The black car that’s following us,” Ymir replied.
Looking out the back window, Christa found herself staring straight through the windshield of a black BMW and into the eyes of an angry man with impressively shaped eyebrows. She thought for a moment.
“You need to step on the gas,” she said. “Right now, If you want to lose him.”
The truck shot forward with an awful sputtering noise.
“You’re the girl of my dreams,” Ymir said.
“That’s ridiculous, we can’t be Bonnie and Clyde. We’re practically on our way to do a community service project right now,” Ymir said.
“Well you stole a tire and I threw away my boss’s coffee mug,” Christa said. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
“I might be able to get into the mood,” Ymir admitted. “If this goddamn truck would stop playing ‘It’s A Small World.’”
Christa glanced nervously at the rear view mirror.
“Hey,” she said. “I think he’s gone.”
Ymir cheered, then swerved violently into the City Hall parking lot.
Christa and Ymir knocked down another dumpster with a loud crash.
“Why are we even trying to dig this mug out of the trash?” Ymir asked, annoyed. “Why don’t we, I don’t know, just fucking get a new one?”
“Okay, well, if you think it’s so easy why don’t you try looking for a mug shaped like head on eBay and tell me what you find,” Christa snapped. “I don’t know where he got that thing. He probably stole it from a mortician.”
“Stole what from a mortician?”
Ymir looked up slowly and found a short man standing behind Christa with a look on his face that made her shiver.
“Shit,” she said.
“I was going to cut you some slack,” Levi said, “because Annie told me you had food poisoning. You don’t look like you have food poisoning. You look like your death wish was to be buried in a mountain of garbage.”
Christa’s huge laser eyes were practically drilling holes into the ground.
“You’re fucking fired,” he said. “Congratulations. Erwin is going to kill me.”
“It’s my second week of work,” Christa protested weakly.
“Okay,” Levi said. “Then congratulations on getting fired on your second week of work. Do you want that on a cake?”
“Fight the system,” Ymir said. She gave Christa a fist-bump. “Come on babe, let’s go home.”
Ymir drove the two of them to the dog park, where they sat beneath the shade of a big oak tree.
The sun looked like a big, glowing egg yolk sliding down the horizon, and the clouds were the color of grapefruit, Ymir thought. She hadn't eaten all day.
“I can’t believe it,” Christa said. “The mug wasn’t in the City Hall garbage, it wasn’t in the office trash can, and the garbage trucks haven’t even picked up this week’s trash yet. Where the hell did it go?”
“Hm,” Ymir said. “Sounds like a whole lot of not-your-problem.”
She draped her arm over Christa’s narrow shoulders and slurped noisily at her ice cream bar. Christa had a sort of haunted look on her face, but still, Ymir’s stomach fluttered when she rested her head on Ymir’s shoulder.
“Oh, fuck it,” Christa said suddenly. And then her hands were in Ymir’s hair, pulling her face down to mash their lips clumsily together. Ymir kissed back enthusiastically, her hands hovering awkwardly in the general vicinity of Christa’s waist.
When they broke apart, Christa looked stricken.
“Babe,” Ymir whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“You," Christa said. "What's your name?"
The End