Riordanverse Flash Fic Fridays 2025
Drew Tanaka has been standing in this stupid mechanic shop for 45 minutes trying to get ahold of someone, and if she gets one more sideways look from a 35-year-old mom with box-dyed hair who hates her life, she’s going to scream or punch someone.
She rounds on the person who spoke to her, eyebrows knitting together and mouth opening to snap a retort, when she sees not a bitchy mother but a short girl in a mechanic’s uniform.
“What?” Drew asks, taken aback. The girl is shorter than her, but broader and more muscular. She has tanned skin, curly brown hair, and biceps that bulge beneath her work shirt. She’s wearing a red bandana to hold her hair back. She looks like one of those female action heroes—all she’s missing is a Rosie the Riveter shade of lipstick.
“Done,” the girl says, jutting her chin toward the desk Drew has been standing in front of for an hour. “Do you still need to pay, or are you done?”
“I—” Drew huffs and places her hands on her hips, looking down at the girl. “Do I look done to you? I’ve been standing here for a full fucking hour and no one has bothered to help me. My car is billowing white smoke out in your parking lot and no one will help. What kind of a place is this, anyway?”
The girl doesn’t back away or look fazed in the least. She merely cocks her head to the side, a dark curl falling in her face, before saying, “It’s our lunch break, dumbass. That’s why no one is here.”
“Well you might want to think about putting up a fucking sign or something,” Drew says with flaming cheeks.
The girl snorts, tucking a greasy rag into her back pocket. “I’ll keep that in mind. Now, why don’t we go look at your smoking car?”
“What about the rest of us?” snaps one of the previously mentioned box-dyed-hair bitchy moms also waiting in the shop.
“She was here first, wasn’t she?” the mechanic snaps, motioning to Drew. “I’ll be right with you, alright?! Jesus.”
She walks out the front door into the parking lot, so Drew follows, and that’s when she sees a neon green piece of paper taped to the front door. GONE TO LUNCH, BACK AT 1:30 reads the sign.
Drew hangs her head in shame and follows the short mechanic to her car, which is still billowing white smoke even though it’s been sitting in the lot for as long as Drew has been standing inside. The girl pops the hood and bends over, inspecting the car’s guts.
Drew hangs back and watches her, deciding to take a nicer approach this time. “So, any idea what’s wrong with it?”
The girl pokes and prods a few things before closing the hood and wiping her dirtied hands on her pants. “Well, white smoke like that is typically a sign something’s wrong with your car's cooling system.”
Drew blinks in confusion. The girl grins.
“It’s probably a blown head gasket or a coolant leak,” she says. “Both fixable.”
“Right, okay,” Drew says, processing the information. She’s got to get to work soon, and though she’s pretty sure she already knows the answer to her question, but she asks it anyway. “Is that something you can fix right now?”
The girl rubs the back of her neck, “Well… I’ll have to get all up in there and take a better look. But I can’t this afternoon, I’ve got half a dozen assholes in there waiting to have their cars fixed, too. If I work on it tonight after hours, I could probably have it ready for you by tomorrow night. I’ve got all the parts I need, so I won’t have to go scrounge anything up.”
Drew does not like the way this girl says scrounge, as if her car is some beater that could be fixed with junk from a car lot. But she’s already been a bit of a bitch to her already, so instead of snapping, Drew says, “Fine. That works for me.”
She follows the mechanic back inside the shop, where she fills out paperwork and hands over her car keys. The keys are on a carabiner (hot pink), where a few other decorative trinkets hang. There’s a set of dice, a fake pink candy heart, a bedazzled lighter, and a keychain with Debbie Harry’s face on it.
“I love Blondie,” the girl says, admiring the keychain. “You’ve got good taste.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Drew snorts.
“Oh yeah?” the girl asks, dropping Drew’s car keys into a desk drawer. “What else do you like?”
“Bikini Kill, obviously,” Drew starts, hands on her hips. “Hole. Le Tigre isn’t half bad. Sleater-Kinney, and—”
“I fuckin’ love Sleater-Kinney,” she interrupts. “What’s your favorite album?”
Drew blinks at her, unaccustomed to people knowing what she’s talking about. Her sisters never appreciated her music taste (Silena preferred pop, Piper preferred rock, and Lacy’s too young to care), so she’s grown used to keeping her thoughts to herself. It wasn’t until she met Clarisse and Katie that she realized other girls liked the things she did. Better yet, they liked girls like she did.
“Alright, I’m impressed,” Drew mutters. “You’ve got good taste. I like their new album, but I’m partial to their self-titled debut. A fellow musician’s gotta support the first work, you know?”
“Yeah,” Drew says, leaning up against the counter and enjoying the way it pisses off the waiting moms. “My band’s called The Argo.”
Clarisse wants to change their name again, and Drew kind of agrees, but Will really likes the nerdy implications of the Argo. Drew’s pretty sure with some mild bullying she can get him to go along with Swearing Sirens, which is what she and Clarisse want.
“Sick,” the girl says. “I’ll have to listen to Sleater-Kinney’s debut album, then. You seem like you know what you’re talking about, Miss…?”
“My name’s Drew,” she says. “And you are?”
“Nyssa,” she answers with a smirk.
“Okay, Nyssa, well don’t just listen to it because I told you to,” Drew snaps. She holds her hand out in front of herself, admiring her freshly painted black nails. “Do it to support the arts.”
“Listen, I don’t argue with pretty girls. They tell me to do something, I do it,” Nyssa muses.
Drew flushes, her mind drawing a blank on what to say next. She knows she’s already wasted too much of her free time here, and she’s going to be even more late to work because she hasn’t called a ride to pick her up yet, but she can’t seem to let the conversation die.
“Yeah, well, maybe you should have some standards,” Drew snorts.
“You’re right,” Nysa agrees with a smirk. “Maybe I should.”
“I see what you did there,” Drew laughs.
“Good,” Nyssa responds. “Listen, Drew, as much as I’d love to stand here and talk about music with someone as pretty and knowledgeable as yourself, I’m pretty sure Karen back there is going to split my head open with a hubcap if I don’t go check on her station wagon.”
Drew glances over her shoulder at the woman in question and nearly laughs when she sees the woman is red with rage, a lit cigarette in each hand as she glares at Drew and Nyssa.
“Fair enough,” Drew says, laughing again. “I wish you all the luck.”
Nyssa gives her a faux salute, that happy-go-lucky grin still on her face. “See you tomorrow.”
“Why are you putting on lipstick to go to the mechanic? ”
Drew bites her tongue to keep herself from chewing out her temporary driver, Clarisse La Rue. She was the only one in the band who had time to pick Drew up and a working vehicle (which is debatable, since the van breaks down more often than Drew does).
“One should always look their best, La Rue,” Drew tuts, patting her black lipstick dry. “You’d do well to remember that.”
Clarisse looks down at her outfit—baggy jeans and a stained wife-pleaser—and says, “What’s wrong with this?”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response.”
She opens the passenger door of the van and steps into the parking lot, immediately swiveling her head to look for her beloved car. It’s the only thing her mother gave her that Drew actually liked and appreciated.
“Yo, is this place where Nyssa works?” Clarisse hollers from the van.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about or who that is,” Drew lies.
“You know, Nyssa? My teammate? You literally met her last semester at our gig,” Clarisse says. Ohhhh , maybe that’s why the short mechanic had seemed so familiar the other day. “She just got back into town from summer break. Yeah, I think this is it!”
“Well, thanks for the ride!” Drew chirps, turning to smile at her friend and bandmate. “See you at practice.”
“You sure you’re alright here on your own? What if your car isn’t fixed yet?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Drew says determinedly.
As Clarisse slowly directs the van out of the lot, Drew sets her sights on the shop door. Through the windowed panes of the front, she spots Nyssa behind the desk. For once, the lobby seems to be deserted—no bitchy moms in sight.
Drew smooths down her black skirt, fixes her bangs, and walks through the door. Inside, Blondie’s song “Call Me” is blaring over the speakers. The music is so loud, in fact, that Nyssa very clearly does not hear the bell on the door.
She keeps on dancing, tossing her head back and forth and smacking imaginary drums in the air. Drew stifles a laugh and leans up against the doorframe to watch.
Nyssa is dressed in those same grease-stained coveralls, only today her curls are pulled into a ratty bun atop her head. When she turns, eyes widening as she notices her audience, Drew notices a Hello Kitty bandaid is pressed over the bridge of her nose. Somehow, for reasons that remain a mystery to Drew, it’s endearing rather than embarrassing.
“Oh, hey,” Nyssa says, flushing a bright red and immediately turning the volume down.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Drew snorts. “Nice moves, Barrera.”
“Thanks,” Nyssa responds, wiggling her eyebrows. Not easily embarrassed, then, Drew notes. She finds she sort of likes that. “Your car is, um, ready. Here, follow me.”
She leads Drew out a side door to the parking lot, where Drew’s beloved baby blue 1995 Land Rover Range Rover is waiting. Nyssa tosses her the keys, which Drew barely manages to catch, and says, “Start it up.”
Drew slips into the driver’s seat, leaving the door open, and starts the car. To her amazement, no smoke comes spilling out of her car. She beams, and turns off her car to excitedly say, “You did it!”
“Worked overtime to get it done by today, but hell yeah I did,” Nyssa says, eyeing the car appreciatively. “She’ll run beautifully.”
“How much do I owe you?” Drew asks, reaching for her purse.
Drew freezes, fingers on the zipper of her bag. She slides out of her car and leans up against it, eyeing Nyssa skeptically.
“Dinner,” Nyssa repeats, grinning. “You, me, food. Sound like something you’d be interested in?”
“I don’t date,” Drew says.
“Not asking you to,” Nyssa says with an easy shrug. “Just dinner. We’ll see where it goes.”
Drew narrows her eyes on Nyssa, trying to find a loophole or the hidden punchline of a joke. Because there has to be one. Drew doesn’t get asked out very often by other girls—mostly because queer women can’t always tell she’s queer. She wears her punk clothes and black lipstick, sure, but she’s still femme.
She has no problem turning down the dozens of men who try their luck, but she’s finding it a hell of a lot harder to turn down this short, pretty, happy-go-lucky mechanic with dirt smudged on her face.
“I can’t tonight,” Drew finally says, regretting that it’s the truth. “I’ve got band practice in an hour.”
Nyssa’s face falls, “Ah… no problem. Maybe some other time.”
“Well…” Drew trails off, ignoring the fluttering in her stomach as she looks at Nyssa. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a stray piece of paper. She scribbles her phone number on it, presses a kiss to it, and snorts when the remnants of her black lipstick smear on the lined paper.
“Here,” Drew says, handing it to Nyssa. “I’m free at eight. If you’re not wearing that when you come pick me up, we can catch a late dinner.”
Nyssa blinks once, twice, like she can’t believe her luck. She accepts the paper with a shaky hand, face flushing when she sees the lipstick.
Drew slides into her car, lowers her sunglasses onto her face, and starts the engine. She rolls down the window and smirks at Nyssa, saying, “Call me.”
https://archiveofourown.org/works/64012651
