WIP Wednesday #3

WIP Wednesday #3

“I probably should have put this down when I was clipping your wing fur,” she muttered, brushing clumps of fur roughly off the edge of her bed before she lay the towel down where he had been sitting.

“Here,” she patted it, and N clambered back onto the sheets, parking himself in the middle of the cloth. She gently hovered her hands over his waist before placing them there, giving him a little push, and he complied with her silent request, scooting a few inches forward. Uzi smiled and ran her fingers up the small of his back and he straightened up with a cheerful trill. “Alright, lets finally get you sorted.”

---

It's Wednesday again, friends! I have a bit of a longer preview for you guys below the 'read more' because I was feeling particularly soft over them this week hehe. Enjoy a cute little moment where Uzi cleans up her sweet boy!

N watched her curiously, twisting his shoulders to peek back at her, and she gave him an affectionate, yet distracted chin scratch as she reached for the bottle of surgical spirit in her kit, setting it aside. She dumped a bowl of batteries out onto the bedside table, indifferent to the fact they simply rolled right off the edge, and very carefully poured a few glugs of distilled water into its bottom along with the last dregs of the ancient shampoo. The plan was simple enough; she would use this to help tackle his mane, while she used a spare rag dabbed with alcohol to wipe clean the years worth of oil build up on his casing.

Uzi pulled on a pair of vinyl gloves from her kit carefully – even though her body was now host to squishy, probably pretty damp internal organs, the idea of water leaking into the joins of her fingers still filled her with instinctual dread. The last thing she wanted was to fry a circuit in her arm or something - regenerating missing limbs or healing over a gaping hole in her chest was one thing, but she had no idea how well her Solver could cope with water damage.

Scowling at the mixture with apprehension, Uzi pointed a finger at the bowl firmly. “Don’t. Kill me.” She muttered threateningly. She heard N snort, his back bouncing with a little giggle.

“Should I be worried at all about this?”

“No, you’re fine. Probably.” Uzi swirled her protected fingers about carefully in the water until soapy bubbles danced on its surface. She was pretty confident in N’s safety. She was only planning on using the foam itself, and even if a little water made its way onto his casing, he’d spent who-knew-how-long living out in an eternal, deathly snow-storm. Cyn must have made him weatherproof - a few drops of water was probably nothing to him.

Uzi scooped up a handful of soapy bubbled and scrunched them into the fibres of his mane, lathering them between her fingers. Almost instantly the soft, pale pink suds swallowed up the dust and oil, fading to grim greys and near blacks. She worked her fingers through the fur enthusiastically, scrunching and twirling it and massaging the soap into the hairline where it met his casing. She could hear and feel him purring again and she smiled, delighting in how the prickled spines softened as clumps parted into something softer.

“That nice?” She asked fondly, as she watched his tail wag cheerfully.

“Mhm,” he hummed softly. “It’s feels like a massage…”

The colour of his mane was more vibrant than she initially realised. As the years of grime, dust and oil faded with each new addition of shampoo, the dull gold stripes brightened to a vibrant yellow not unlike the hue of the hazard strips lining his wrists, thighs and heels. It already looked so much healthier, despite the haphazard length and missing sections along its stretch. The wonders a simple wash could do for a drone.

With a clean rag, Uzi ruffled the fur from the base of his tail up to between his shoulders to remove the foam, and then, she repeated the process again. She couldn’t deny the relief – this was working, it was actually working. The bubbles foamed a duller pink, but a pink nonetheless, as the last remnants of his life in the wild washed away. This time as she dried his mane, it puffed up; fluffing out and bristling, each individual hair now free from the crusted prisons they had endured.

“It’s pretty,” she didn’t mean to say it out loud, but she was glad she did when N offered her the fondest smile over his shoulder.

“…It is?”

“Yeah,” she pulled the gloves off and tossed them on the floor so that she could truly feel the difference for herself. The tactile sensors of her finger pads revelled in the softness, and how it twitched gently under her fingers as she hovered them slowly over their tips. Then she dug them into the thick fluff, scratching near the roots and N’s whole body rumbled in delighted approval. His tail thumped joyfully against the mattress again, once, twice, and then curled around her, draping itself loosely around her waist.