A/N: This chapter's dedicated to JonathanEllison, who requested an Otto and Oksana oneshot—and, who is having a birthday today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JONATHAN! Feliz cumpleODDños!! 🎉✨🍰🍪🎈🎁

Okay, so, I may or may not secretly really like Otto and Oksana. I never really figured they had any reason to talk to each other when I first started watching the show... but then I read Ships Ahoy and watched Captain Fun. (Sorry Lilac, your fanfic keeps inspiring people to ship things you specifically did not ship in your story. You're just that good at character development. XD) I don't know why, but I really liked the idea that they slowly became friends because Otto comes to the Breakroom to eat so often? It seems like it'd be kinda hard to stay annoyed with Otto, even if you are Oksana. ;D

Also, you're welcome.

Enjoy!

-----

Swish swish.

Shhhhh!

Swish swish.

Shhhhh.

Splish-splash.

Shhhhh.

Clink.

Standing stiff and straight, and moving with a practiced efficiency, Oksana slogged her way through the one thing that always needed done around the Breakroom: dishes.

The Kitchen had two large double-dishwashers for just such an occasion, but it seemed that there was a blob hiding in the bottom more often than not (which, in her opinion, was not worth dealing with), and besides. She was not making another trip on that climbing rope today, if she had anything to say about it.

Lunch was long over, and it was roughly an hour and a half before the agents would start to filter home. Maybe she would even get done soon and get to go home early?

Nope. If a single agent stopped by the Breakroom and wanted something to eat, it was her job to be there. Someone had to offer them what was left of that afternoon's food.

She let out a silent sigh from between her teeth.

Sometimes she hated being the only one who could handle all this.

Swish swish.

Shhhhh!

She didn't need any help. She didn't want any help. She was completely fine by herself, thank you very much. Just look at the last eight years—not one of the so-called 'assistants' Ms. O insisted on sending in ever lasted more than a week. She did it all herself.

Swish swish.

Shhhhh.

Oksana did not like most of the agents' oblivious, chipper attitudes (or most of the agents in general, to be perfectly honest)—but she did, however, have about two portions of heated-up food left, and if they didn't get eaten by the end of work, she would have to stay overtime to wait for the stuff to cool down before it could go in the already-stuffed fridge. No one had bothered to fix the cool-inator for her after it overheated.

And no, she was not going to throw it away. Food was for eating.

The life of the kitchen staff.

Swish swish.

Clink.

She glanced over at the giant pot on the stove, which was almost, just almost empty of the ridiculous amount of spaghetti it once held.

It was a respectable cook's worst nightmare, trying to get rid of all that spaghetti. Once a month, a huge crate of exactly 144 boxes of spaghetti would show up with the rest of her food supplies. At first she'd been suspicious, then guardedly thankful, but after eight consecutive years of it she'd decided to feel extremely annoyed at whoever was sending so much of the stuff. It couldn't be cheap, buying a gross of spaghetti, but maybe there was a reason for that.

She didn't dislike the spaghetti. She just disliked feeling obligated to use it all.

She hid her displeasure relatively well.

Splish-splash.

Clink.

Splish-splash.

Sigh.

----

Exactly seventeen minutes later, the enormous pile of dishes in the sink had been effectively transferred over to the largest break room table, where an equally enormous expanse of dishcloth was covering the surface. It served as a makeshift drying rack, sans an actual rack. She didn't have a real one with her.

That too, was down in the kitchen.

Oksana eyed the door that led to the climbing rope disdainfully.

Unfortunately, her victory here was limited, mostly because of the fact that the majority of agents put their dirty dishes on the two shelved carts that rested against the wall in the far corner—she had quite a few more dishes to do.

But she was used to it. So she grabbed one of the heavily-laden carts by its handle and rolled it over to the sink as if it weighed nothing at all.

She had just begun getting back to work—she literally had just sunk her arms back in the soapy water to start on the first dish—when she heard the soft, rubbery sound of a pair of sneakers entering the Breakroom.

And wherever a pair of sneakers went, an agent was usually in them.

Unfortunately.

"There's spaghetti on the stove," Oksana informed the unknown newcomer, her tone emotionless as always.

Swish-swish. Shhh.

"Cool!" replied a familiar voice, eagerly removing a lunch tray from the stack and joining her at the counter. She glanced up, one eyebrow raised, and Agent Otto grinned back at her.

Oksana had to keep herself from turning away to glare at the wall. She much preferred being brusque about things and somewhat bitter, but try as she might, the fact that this rookie refused to be intimidated by her—and worse, rubbed it in by being honestly friendly—made it annoyingly hard to do with him.

"Which one is it?" Otto asked, looking over at the stove, upon which sat about nine pots and pans of various sizes. Most of those needed washed, too.

"Far left," she droned in reply, looking back down to her dishes.

Clink-clink, clunk. Otto had apparently already found himself a plate and had pulled off the huge lid to the spaghetti, peering down inside. "Wow, this thing was full earlier," he commented, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

Yes, and I'd like it to be empty now.

Outwardly, Oksana only gave a slight shrug. "You agents won't stop eating."

Otto chuckled as he grabbed a pair of plastic tongs and began to fill up his plate. "Yeah, true. How much spaghetti did you say you make every day again?"

She rinsed another bowl and set it aside to dry. "I don't make it every day. But today, sixty boxes," she replied in a slightly unhappy monotone, trying to concentrate on ignoring him. It was a bit hard to do, considering how Otto had begun noisily lifting the lids of all the other stock pots to check them for food. "Don't bother. They're empty."

"Heh. I knew that."

No, he didn't. She glanced at him, but he didn't notice, too focused on staring at his plate in deep thought.

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers, face lighting up with realization. "Oh yeah!" Otto looked up to meet her gaze, raising an eyebrow curiously. "Do you still have any of that sauce left?"

Oksana returned her attention to her dishes. "Right in front of you." It was literally the saucepan that was about four inches from him.

"Thanks. I had some earlier, but, y'know, wanted to make sure there was some for everybody. It was so good!"

Oksana continued scrubbing at the dish she was working on, though somewhere deep inside, she was forcing herself to not look grateful for the compliment.

"Of course it was," she replied simply, running some water over the plate. "I made it."

Instead of acting uncomfortable or uncertain at her instinctive flatness, Otto only chuckled, scooping out a large pile of spaghetti sauce.

If you had asked Oksana, she would have been perfectly fine with ending the discussion there.

But nobody ever asked Oksana, did they?

"Can I guess what the secret ingredient is?"

Evidently, there was a bit more sauce left than she'd anticipated, too. Otto only scraped the bottom of the pan once, and had already obscured his spaghetti in tomato sauce. Great. More leftovers to deal with.

She glanced briefly upward in annoyance. "There isn't a secret ingredient."

"Okay, can I guess the regular ingredients? Caraway!"

"Obviously." You could see caraway seeds in the sauce even if you weren't looking for them.

Otto grabbed a fork from one of the silverware containers and spun it heroically in his hand, before stabbing it into the spaghetti as he stared at it. "And... cilantro!"

"No."

"Really? Darn." Otto snuck in a bite before he sat down at the nearby table, to Oksana's disdain. To his credit, he didn't spill any of it. He struck an overly-thoughtful expression, chewing seriously. "...Aha! I know—Basil, right?"

Oksana pulled another of the multitude of bowls off the rack and spun her scrub brush around the inside of it, proceeding to ignore him.

This—after a few extra mouthfuls of spaghetti—seemed to get Otto's attention.

The sound of the fork scraping dully across the plastic plate disappeared, and she glanced over briefly just in time to catch Otto's half-curious, half-apologetic look.

"Oh, you still have a ton of dishes to do," he observed, quickly dropping his fork and hopping up out of his swivel chair. "Here, I can help. Olive and I got all our work done early."

Oksana just gave him a look, and though she was still irritated and displeased with today, her voice came out sounding more tired than anything. "Just finish eating."

Otto, now given an apparent dilemma, paused reluctantly and glanced back at his food, where it sat half-eaten and abandoned on the Breakroom's table. Somehow, it managed to look lonely. Oksana had to stifle the urge to tell it to knock it off—food wasn't supposed to look lonely, and if it did, it was probably some clever scheme of its not to be left alone.

...But actually, she didn't care. So never mind.

She continued gradually—efficiently, but still at a painfully crawling pace—adding washed dishes to the stack she had created on a dish towel by the sink.

Oksana was not easily surprised—and this was no exception. She was, however, not truthfully expecting it when Otto showed up at her side, snapping on a pair of elbow-length yellow gloves and offering a cordial, determined grin.

"Nah, I'll help."

"I don't need help."

"I know, but maybe it'll go a little faster and you can get home earlier?"

If it were only a request, you see, she could refuse. Chances were she would refuse, flat-out and bluntly, without a second thought or the slightest batting of an eye. She was in charge of the Breakroom, after all—she had the authority to say no. But Otto hadn't asked to help with the dishes—he jumped right in and got to work.

And frankly, she wasn't aware her somewhat limited authority allowed her to oppose that.

He probably just feels guilty. He uses more dishes than anyone. He wants to help to compensate for that.

So? Was there anything wrong with that?

He... feels bad for me. He thinks I can hardly handle it on my own. He thinks I need the help.

He pities me.

In any other situation, her skin would bristle at the thought, but she found it strangely hard to convince herself of something she didn't believe.

No... he doesn't. He's just trying to be useful.

But she didn't want any help, she didn't need any help. This was her job, not his.

She was the only one who got ever got everything clean enough, who didn't leave bits of hardened food stuck to the dishes. She much preferred doing it alone and doing it right than having to follow up on and fix everything her so-called help did.

But Otto was already scrubbing deftly away at the plates and bowls, not taking more than a moment to clean them thoroughly, and not forgetting to clean the underside like so many of her assistants did.

Suddenly aware that it was slightly awkward to mentally question someone's integrity when they were standing elbow-to-elbow with you sloshing away in the sink, Oksana took an imperceptible breath and forced herself to quit trying to find fault with an agent for once. Particularly with the closest person she had to a friend.

And hesitantly, cautiously, after a good few minutes of Otto's work and Soundcheck humming, Oksana deduced that he might've been doing as good of a job washing dishes as she was.

Almost.

---

Doing the dishes always took forever, it seemed, but multiplying the effort by two halved the time.

This way, it only took whatever half of forever was. Apparently about twenty-one and a half minutes.

Every so often, Otto would take a break from washing to move the rapidly stacks of clean dishes over to the drying table—just like he was doing now, with the last dishes that had been on the racks.

"Cool, that wasn't too bad," Otto remarked, sounding satisfied with their work. He positioned the bowls and plates in a tilted fashion, each propped up on another so air could flow beneath them. "Told you it'd go way faster!"

Oksana opened her mouth to respond, but it occurred to her that she wasn't certain what to do but agree, so she closed it and settled for a nondescript "Mhm" as she hung up her rubber gloves. It was best to reuse them when they weren't torn from excessive wear.

Now came the less grueling part. Oksana fished behind her back, pulling out a small, trapezoidal gadget lined with blue stripes. The pots and pans stood dauntingly on the stove and counters, empty of all but food residue.

One at a time, she swept the pot-and-pan-clean-inator over each of her cooking pots. If the plate-and-bowl-clean-inator ever did half as good of a job, especially after certain scientists claimed to have fixed it, then doing the dishes might not have been such a chore.

Upon hearing the gadget's low, electrical hum as it zapped the metal pots, Otto looked up from where he was setting the last of the dishes to dry.

"Oh, did you want some spaghetti?" he asked, causing her to pause in front of the one the pasta had been in. Her eyes narrowed slightly. Hadn't he eaten it all before? "I saved you some."

No, evidently he had not.

By instinct, displeasure began to well up inside Oksana.

I didn't want you to save any, she retorted from inside the safe confines of her mind. I need it all gone, Otto. I've wanted it gone all day.

But she was well-practiced at concealing her thoughts, so she forced herself to merely stare at him.

"I was hoping you would eat it all."

Otto didn't seem to be affected by her unhappiness. He never did, really. Instead, he grinned in embarrassment.

"Well, I was gonna," he began, chuckling and rubbing the back of his neck as he shrugged, "but I sorta already ate a whole pizza not too long ago." He dropped his arm and met her gaze with a sheepish grin. "Besides, you're busy working every time I see you. And that's a lot. When do you ever get to eat?"

As much as she selfishly wanted it to stay, the sour feeling inside Oksana suddenly dissolved.

...Oh.

It did worse than just dissolve. It replaced itself with the very strange, warm feeling she only ever got on the practically nonexistent occasions when someone acted like they cared about her.

You're trying to be nice.

Okay, how on earth was she feeling content and irritated at the same time?

Stop it, Otto. You're wasting your time being nice.

This—all this—was why she didn't make friends.

I don't want it. Or... deserve it.

"...I have to taste-test when I'm cooking," she replied flatly, though it struck her how incredibly emotionless her own voice sounded to her ears. Well... good. She didn't want to show emotion, anyhow. "That counts as a meal."

Otto blinked at this, seeming confused for a second, before leaning back on his feet and looking utterly appalled.

"Taste-testing does not count as a meal!" he exclaimed in protest, staring at her like she'd grown a second head. Or worse, hadn't had time to sit down and eat lunch in a while. Was that really even a surprise? When did she have time to sit down, period?

"That—That's barely a snack! Taste-testing is like a tiny awesome bonus snack between meals! You can't go all day by just taste-testing!"

You don't cook as much food as I do, her brain countered, but he looked genuinely upset to the point where she had to turn away and find a rag to wipe off the counters.

"Maybe you can't," she retorted, just barely suppressing an eye roll. "It works. I'm not hungry."

That wasn't a lie, but neither was it very true. She simply made so much food that even when she was hungry, she was usually too sick of being around food to enjoy eating much. So, she hovered at a near-constant state of in-between.

She ran the rag she'd found under hot water, wrung it out, and turned to go wipe down the tables with it. But when she turned around, she found that she could barely stop herself before she ran into Otto, who had somehow materialized only a few inches behind her.

She did not jump. At all. She merely stiffened up and drew back very quickly—there was a difference.

But in her split second of distraction, Otto swiped the washrag from her, grinning triumphantly. She immediately scowled, but as usual, he didn't appear to notice.

"C'monnn, Oksana, you gotta have some of your spaghetti sauce," he all but pleaded, holding the rag behind his back when she tried to snatch it away from him. "It's awesome! You can't work with food all day and not have some of your spaghetti sauce!"

Upon missing her chance to grab the rag, Oksana gave up on chasing it and took a small step back, folding her arms. She stared unhappily at Otto, trying to get her thoughts across before she had to come out and say them.

I appreciate your help. Thank you. I'm glad you liked my sauce.

But don't ever tell me what to do.

Otto, as usual, either didn't get sense her displeasure or pretended not to. Did he just want to avoid any unpleasant aspects of conversation?

"Please?" he asked, sounding friendly and hopeful but just a little bit tired. A pang of something unfamiliar—guilt—struck her stomach lightly. "You work way harder than I do, and I don't know what I'd do if I didn't sit down and have lunch every day."

You'd get used to it, her brain threw back, but it was just a reflex to think that way. She was slowly beginning to realize that maybe she should attempt being as reserved in the inside as she was on the outside.

"I'm fine," Oksana muttered sharply, a tired huff coming through in her voice.

Next time, please eat all the spaghetti. We don't need to be having this conversation.

Investigation agents were unexceptionably two things, in her experience: oddly happy with life, and relentless. As one, Otto looked a bit guilty and a bit concerned, but mostly, his expression was friendly and hopeful.

"I saved enough for both of us," he added sheepishly, and she realized that perhaps she'd underestimated the amount of servings left. Otto had eaten at least two before they'd done the dishes. "We could have it together."

UghhhHHH.

There was silence for a long moment, her looking at the floor beside him and him looking at her.

"...Alright," Oksana replied, silently releasing a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Apparently she'd been looking away, because now she met his gaze again, and he looked content and relieved.

She didn't smile, of course. She never did. But credit was needed where credit was due.

"Thanks, Otto," she muttered through a sigh, hoping her eyes conveyed that she didn't mean to be so blunt with him. Because really, she didn't go out of her way to be. She was just so used to being frustrated with everyone. "...For doing the dishes with me."

For putting up with me, is what she wanted to say, and for a moment she wasn't sure if she'd accidentally said it or not. Uncertain but very tired, she stared at him emotionlessly and hoped he would understand.

He must have, because he finally held out the washrag to her and grinned.

"Yeah, no prob!" he replied cheerily, not looking like he held anything against her. It genuinely surprised her how much of a relief that was.

Otto's grins were contagious to almost everyone, but she was the exception.

Or so she thought.

It was wry and faint, because she was very out of practice—but the expression creeping onto her face was probably a smile.

---

A/N: THIS DIDN'T DO IT JUSTICE AT ALL *throws a pillow* *jumps up and down on the pillow* *seams break and feathers fly everywhere*

XD Sorry guys, I tried. This should've been a lot better; I wanted to represent this ship as something that could fit in really well with the canon universe. This was... attempt #1 at that. I'll have to try again with this ship later on. XD

Hope it wasn't too bad, Jonathan! Happy birthday, and wishing you an awesome year to come!!

(Lest anybody worry, this will undergo some and/or a lot of editing so it reads better. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and hope you enjoyed!)