On one wombat-hand, Steve was a fan of being independent and doing things for himself. On the other wombat, he really resented his parents going on vacation and leaving him to fend for himself. Even if it was just for a long weekend, how did she expect him to plan ahead and NOT have a giant pile of laundry with all his favorite articles of clothing in it blocking his door from closing properly?

Despite some sleepy squeaks of protest, he thought rolling all the clothing into a laundry bag was rather successful. He had also managed to position his shoulder under the bag in just such the right way that he could clutch the end to his chest with his arm and hoist the bag on his bag. Steve mentally reminded himself to thank the Colonel for adding extra weight on top to prevent the canvas bag from slipping.

He had even opened the taxi door and paid his fair successfully, to a point of pride.

Yet now, in the face of these terrifying and awful circumstances, Steve’s confidence was completely shattered; his soul crushingly defeated by the dexterity demanded of the task before him.

For who in their right mind would require you to stick tiny metal coins into an even tinier metal slot just to operate the washing machine?

Jocelyn did not own a lot of clothes, which meant she had to do laundry pretty much every weekend in order to not gross herself out with her own scent. That, in turn, worked out, because it meant that she really only had one load to do each time, and when you only had one load, it was fairly easy to tie onto the back of her motorcycle.

Since she had gotten it, she had managed to make a decent stencil of the order's logo, which was no easy task, and had spray painted it on either side, right over the NYPD print. She'd also managed to change the flashing lights to red and white,eliminating the blue. At some point she might tinker with the siren to see if she could get it to actually play the notes of a song, but she hadn't yet gotten around to it.

Jocelyn rode past the laundromat closest to the Sanctuary without stopping. She knew from experience that it was scuzzy and smelled like things she wished she wasn't able to immediately identify. She was not going to be washing her clothes there. Ever.

The next closest laundromat was near the edge of Order territory, where the actual line of influence was a little bit fuzzy. It was clean though, which Jocelyn appreciated.

As she walked in, she got a whiff of some exotic rodent thing she'd only ever smelled at a zoo, teenage mutant boy laundry, and Bounce sheets. That was the last thing she was going to be able to smell for the next two hours.

Jocelyn sneezed several times in a row. She grabbed a tissue from the box she'd brought with her and dabbed at her runny nose.

She never could figure out why people used so many fake-flower scented things.

Achoo!

Laundry day. It was the worst.

Achoo!

Steve was supremely glad that he managed to maneuver the quarters into the tiny slit in the side of the mammoth machine. It clunked and growled something fierce as it wrestled with his slacks, but in the end, the battle was won and it vomited forth his damp garments with only the slightest provocation and tugging.

So there he stood, tottering under the weight of a heaping mound of soaking laundry when a rather lovely lady walked in. Steve started to smile, but saw her wrinkle her nose and quickly corrected his countenance into a suitable scowl.

He returned his attention to the task at... but no matter which way he turned or maneuvered, he couldn't quite free up a wombat to open the door to the drier. The Colonel was no where to be seen. Steve hopped around, trying to shift the great mass in his arms to one side, but a pant leg drifted loose of the bundle and nearly had a fatal brush with the floor. Steve quickly corrected to the other side, but lost all progress on the shift.

Things were not going well.

Poor inexperienced boy. Jocelyn sniffled, set her basket down on the first convenient flat surface and grabbed for one of the facial tissues that was poking out from the box that rode on the very top of the laundry litter.

Gotta open the dryer before taking out the laundry, silly.

Without even stopping to think about whether he would appreciate her help or not, she swung open the door for him. She couldn't see his hands, under all that laundry, so she was opperating under the assumption that the only reason he was impaired at this laundry thing was because his mother had done most of his for him up to this point.

“Dere you go,” she sniffled and turned back to her own machine. She carefully checked for any loose articles in the washer, especially red ones, before she added any of her own things. She had to remove something that had been the strap from something or another and had gotten stuck and possibly severed from the rest of its... nope, that was the entire garment right there. Jocelyn's kleenex had more surface area.

Speaking of which, she could feel a tickle coming on, grabbed for a tissue...

A-a-aCHOO!

… and didn't make it in time. She sneezed instead right on the only thing she had in her hand.

Someone was not going to want that back.

Some kind soul took pity on him and opened a dryer for him. Though he couldn't get a visual on the culprit, he suspected the hot chick, because the stodgy old lady glaring disapprovingly over her issue of Time magazine was not likely to get off her fat, paisley patterned corduroys to come to anyone's aid, and she was the only other occupant of the coin laundry at the moment.

He shoved his clothing into the small port-hole to another dimension. The wombats squirmed and wriggled, attempting to free themselves from all the socks, sleeves, etc. He finally managed to extract them from the dryer and looked around to make sure he got everything in there. While several articles of clothing had tottered off the top of the pile, he was relatively pleased to see that none of them were the embarrassing kind.

>>"A-a-aCHOO!"

Since Thanks were not really his 'thing' Steve seized this opportunity to grab a kleenex (with the aid of the Lieutenant) to offer by way of thanks to allergy(?) stricken girl, currently pleasingly bent into her drier.

"Here," he announced confidently, striking a strong, wide stance. Then he saw that in additional to a tissue, he was also holding out a pair of satin snoopy boxers. And there was no time to withdraw or hide them...

Jocelyn turned to look for a garbage can in which to drop the now sneezed upon postage stamp with strings. There had to be one somewhere, because people needed to throw away those damnable scented dryer sheets somewhere, unless they hung then inside the air vents for maximum air exposure.

Jerkwads.

She wasn't seeing a garbage can anywhere, and she couldn't start loading her laundry until she disposed of this non-kleenex.

Uh-oh. She could feel another sneeze coming on.

>>“Here.”

Someone thrust something toward her, with confidence. She didn't look too closely, she just grabbed at it then buried her sneeze in it.

'It' being a pair of silky, cartoon covered, still-wet-from-the-washer, teenaged boy undergarments.

Jocelyn stood there, holding two sneeze defiled pairs of unmentionables with her nose red and her eyes watery, staring at a forlorn looking young man whom she just now realized had some kind of rodents for hands, one of whom was holding an actual tissue out ever so helpfully.

She couldn't help it. She started to laugh. Belly aching, tears running down cheeks, laughing. What a first impression, on both their parts.

Once she could catch her breath, she did take his proffered tissue to wipe away her tears and dab at her runny nose.

“I'm sorry. Sorry,” she grinned, “about Snoopy.” Heehee.