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Melanie Weiss ([info]mrsfixit) wrote in [info]inpoormerit,
@ 2010-03-21 19:17:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:colin, colin and mel, mel

Tinkering
Who: Mel and Colin
Where: City Hall
When: Mid-day

Mel was going stir-crazy with nothing to fix and nothing to build. Once the initial shock of their arrival had worn off, Mel's fingers had started to itch...and her parents had learned early that when Mel's fingers were itching, something was bound to end up in pieces.

With no other project to focus her attention on, Mel had decided to take apart the large clock set in the wall of City Hall. It wasn't that she had noticed a problem with it -- it was just that clocks usually possessed such an intricate system of gears... Once the image of so many little pieces popped into Mel's head, she could scarcely think of anything else.

Tools in hand, Mel had settled on the stairs outside of City Hall. Her long hair was pulled back into a hasty bun behind her head, and it was already beginning to slip free of its confines. Mel was so intent on her goal that she scarcely noticed: the large face of the clock sat beside her, and she balanced the backing on her knees. The round pane was easily three feet across -- and although she could not even begin to examine the components in the top half of the clock, her eyes were currently drawn to a nest of gears at its base, all ticking tirelessly away as she carefully worked around them.

Cripes, but this clock needed a good cleaning... It was probably a good thing she came along.


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[info]mrsfixit
2010-03-26 01:36 am UTC (link)
Mel glanced up at the hesitant stranger, affording him the easy, laid-back grin she was well-known for back home, chased by a very unladylike snort. "Nope," she answered him, pausing to pluck a gear out of place. She set it aside, placing it inside the curved dome of the glass clock face to keep it from running away on her.

"If I did, this clock wouldn't be half this filthy. I'm surprised it even runs." Her expression was a little impish, having been caught dismantling the city clock. "But if Belle's going to be the town cook, I guess I'm going to be the town mechanic. And as long as that doesn't make you the town sheriff here to arrest the person vandalizing City Hall, I think we'll get along. I'm Mel. I'd shake your hand, but..." Not only did it require leaning over the entirety of the clock, but a wagggle of her fingers revealed the fine black smudges of dirt on her fingertips.

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-03-26 04:58 am UTC (link)
Okay. Colin was actually affronted more that she was taking his job than anything else. He was a mechanic, after all.

That was just stupid though.

"Colin," he replied. "And I am a mechanic, so a little grease really doesn't bother me." He crouched down a few steps below her. "Why are you cleaning the clock? Was it broken or something?"

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-03-27 05:28 am UTC (link)
"Oh... You're a real mechanic out in the world, huh?" Mel couldn't say she had ever officially held the title. Besides, there weren't really any cars here -- or vehicles of any sort that she saw. Mechanics out in the real world fixed cars. Mechanics here could fix...everything else. It sounded a lot more professional than saying you were the town tinkerer. "Tell you what. I'll relinquish the title to you if we find a car. Sound good?"

Now that the matter of who was what was taken care of, she said, "Actually, I was...really just that bored. But, while I'm in here, I might as well clean it up...if I can get this thing off my lap to get cleaning supplies without breaking it." She paused, admitting readily, "Yeah, my plan wasn't really thought out...like, at all."

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-03-27 09:53 pm UTC (link)
"God I wish," Colin muttered. He'd give anything for a car right now. Not to try and escape with, but just to work on. "I never thought boredom would be a problem when you're trapped someplace. They could have at least given us TVs or something."

Well, she was at least doing something useful. "What you want?" he offered. "I'm not doing anything better. I can go get whatever."

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-03-29 12:38 am UTC (link)
"You're a mechanic, right?" she asked with a grin. "I think I can trust you to get something to clean this grime off. And some rags. We shouldn't need to soak any of it." It was dirty, but keeping it in operating condition had certainly helped to keep the clock from gumming up or letting the grease and grime take over.

No, all it needed was a good cleaning. She was almost disappointed there wasn't more that needed to be done.

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-03-29 06:46 pm UTC (link)
"Probably couldn't hurt to oil it either," he agreed. That was another thing they could do. "I wonder how long this stuff's been here. It looks kinda new."

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-03-31 04:30 am UTC (link)
"Sand has a way of crawling into things," Mel answered with a light shrug. She hadn't seen much to identify when the city had been built -- everything looked entirely normal but for the fact they were on some desertd island somewhere with no escape. "But I'm sure you know that."

Putting the clock aside, delicately, careful not to scratch the surface. Once the clock had been settled atop her toolbox, Mel wiped her hands carelessly on her pants and rose with a grin.

"Where're you from, anyway?"

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-03-31 09:22 pm UTC (link)
Not that he dealt with a lot of sand in Michigan. But yeah, he understood. Colin nodded.

He returned her grin tentatively. "Michigan. A little town called Dexter. You?" Normal conversation seemed so weird right now. But comforting at the same time.

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-04-03 05:49 am UTC (link)
"I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota, but I've been pretty much everywhere in the Midwest -- except to Dexter." With a roll of her shoulders, she carried on, as though this were the most natural thing in the world. Once the initial panic had worn away, Mel had gone right back to being Mel -- and running around with her hands flailing in the air was certainly not the way she had lived her life. This -- one step at a time -- was how she had always survived, through school, through her miscarriage, and through rehab. It was also how she planned to survive the Island.

"But I was living in Chicago when this all happened." She gestured around to the empty town. "I never liked small towns much. I never really fit in... Working with machines is kind of a boy's club." The way she said it, too, was in that laid-back, oh-well sort of way she had. "People in big cities don't care who fixed their vacuum so long as it runs."

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-04-03 07:34 pm UTC (link)
Colin chuckled at that. "It's kind of one of those places that you blink and miss the exit on the interstate," he admitted. He was still pretty lost and nervous, but finding another American who was basically in the same profession helped. It made the place less scary and foreign.

He laughed and nodded. "Although every female grease monkey I know can hold her own just fine." He shrugged and nodded. "I suppose that's true." He wouldn't know, he hadn't spent much time in Ann Arbor or Detroit, let alone anyplace as big as Chicago.

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-04-03 08:43 pm UTC (link)
"Maybe it's just because I'm from a big city," she answered with a laugh. Pulling open the door to the hardware store, she stepped inside and held it open long enough for Colin to follow her in.

Plucking a basket from the pile at the door, she slung it over her arm as she made her way into the store.

"This place is pretty crazy, huh?" she asked with a glance over her shoulder. "I mean, if they were going to provide all this stuff for us, why did they put in a store with a cash register?" That was just weird. It probably worked, too.

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-04-04 02:07 am UTC (link)
Colin caught the door and followed her in, then shut it behind him. This was weird and oddly normal at the same time. And for some reason, he had Small Town by John Cougar Mellencamp stuck in his head.

"Crazy is an understatement," he agreed as he looked around the store. "I don't think I want to understand these people. They are completely fucked up."

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-04-04 02:53 am UTC (link)
"I agree," Mel answered as she paused, marvelling at the package in front of her. Just because she liked to tinker did not, unfortunately, mean she found work tinkering -- at least not of the official kind of work she had hoped to find. Had she been able to, she might have seen packages like this before -- but, this not being the case, this was a new and fascinating experience for her. "Colin," she began, at once seizing upon the familiarity of his name as she held up the package. "Did you know you can buy shop rags?" That was what old t-shirts were for, wasn't it? Her laughter was almost snorted as she added, "What a waste of freaking money!"

Since they weren't trading money for the goods, the package went into her cart -- it would be easier than trying to find a clean piece of her t-shirt. Mel had a bad habit of using her clothes as over-sized rags, but she had never minded it much: she didn't wear dresses to change oil, after all.

"Where were we? Oh, right. Crazytown." Her gaze was a trifle more serious when she said, "It's kind of nuts, but I can't stop thinking about how hungry my cat must be getting back home."

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-04-04 06:48 pm UTC (link)
Colin laughed and shook his head. "Yeah," he admitted. "We buy 'em all the time. Even between me and Robbie, we don't have enough old tee shirts to use. And we go through a lot of those. Especially when somebody brings in their old clunker that they don't keep up."

And back home was the wrong thing to bring up to him. His mind immediately went to his family. "Yeah," he agreed quietly. "My family's gotta be going crazy by now." Which he shouldn't be thinking about since he couldn't do anything about it. But he was and it was making him sick to think about how crazy with worry they must be.

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-04-05 01:13 am UTC (link)
There was no use dwelling on it, Mel agreed. Yet, she couldn't help it. She supposed this was harder on those with families they were close to -- but her cat couldn't feed himself, and that worried her.

Rather than answer him, she picked up a squishy stress ball, giving it a good squeeze through its mesh covering before turning to face Colin. She had never been good at dealing with emotions, much less talking about them. It was much easier to avoid the topic altogether.

"Heads up!" she sang out, lobbing the stress ball at his chest. Plenty of baseball with the boys had given her a decent arm -- and, fortunately for Colin -- good aim.

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-04-05 05:01 pm UTC (link)
It was a cat. They were more self-sufficient than people gave them credit for. Unless she had the cat tightly locked up, it was probably fine. It'd go kill birds or mice or mooch off the neighbors. That's how his shop ended up with a feline mascot. Emily had fed the damned thing once and it kept coming back. Cats were just like that.

Colin had never had to learn how to. The biggest catastrophe in his life up until this craziness had been his best friend seeing his sister behind his back. Which had turned out just fine. He'd never been to a funeral even, both of his grandmothers and one grandfather were still alive, the other grandfather had died when he was a baby. His parents were happily married and all in all, his life had been pretty damned good.

So he wasn't at prepared to deal with anything this big, crazy and fucked up. The warning she called managed to catch his attention long enough that once the ball bounced off his chest, he caught it with a loud hack of air.

"What'd you do that for?" he demanded, although a smile was playing at the edge of his lips. It was a good distraction from things he really didn't want to think about right now.

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-04-05 07:32 pm UTC (link)
Mel deliberately picked up another of the squishy balls, feeling the shifting of the materials inside the ball between her fingertips.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time," she answered with a mischievous smirk. Hefting the ball in her hand, she lobbed the second one his way too.

Mel really was just a big kid at heart...and nothing seemed more entertaining than randomly flinging stress balls at people.

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-04-06 03:35 am UTC (link)
The second one he actually caught before it whacked him anywhere.

That was how she wanted to play, huh? "Oh, it is so on." Colin smirked back before lobbing one, then the other stress ball back at her. Yeah, this was better than worrying about his family or what these whackjobs were going to do to them.

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-04-06 01:41 pm UTC (link)
Mel laughed, raising her arms (and therefore the basket) in mock-defense. The basket bounced against her torso when the ball hit it, making her realize that, perhaps, it was not the best thing to be holding during a stress ball fight.

"I have to warn you," she began, peeking from over her arm. "I have a lot more balls than you do." She paused, snickered, then added cheerfully, "And mine might be bigger too."

That was the reason Mel had never gotten along with girly girls -- her sense of humor ran along the same tomboyish lines as her hobbies.

Setting the basket down in a manner that could be called dropping it, she picked up two more of the stress balls to toss in his direction.

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-04-09 04:24 am UTC (link)
Colin laughed at her comment. "Bring it on," he challenged, trying not to think how utterly absurd a stress ball fight was under the circumstances. Apparently, they were going as crazy as the people who'd kidnapped them.

He managed to catch the first one, and took the second one in the shoulder. He winged the one he caught at her and ducked down to grab the other one. Luckily, stress balls didn't roll very far.

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[info]mrsfixit
2010-04-13 02:18 am UTC (link)
The exchange of stress balls was short-lived, as it became apparent that Mel was no strategist. As Colin's balls bounced off her shoulders, her arms, and other parts of her body, Mel whipped them in his direction, three for each one he sent back her direction. She had good aim, but her haste to empty her basket first certainly did not contribute positively to her onslaught.

At last, she had been completely disarmed by her wild attempt to out-throw him, and, with a laugh, she scampered for cover behind a display of garden seeds -- flimsy cover at best.

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[info]smalltownguy
2010-04-13 07:02 pm UTC (link)
Neither was Colin and she probably hit him twice as much as he hit her, just because she had more ammo. He laughed as she ran out and went for cover.

"Is that all you got?" he challenged, nailing the display hard with one. "I thought you had more balls?" Okay, that was a horrible thing to say to a woman, but somehow, he doubted Mel would be offended. She seemed like one of the 'one of the guys' types.

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