InsaneJournal

Who: Emma Swan and Tinkerbell
When: Mid June
Where: Tink’s Garage
What: Car Work?
Rating/Warnings: Low/None
Status: Complete



Tink was in her office, going through some paperwork. The business had been doing well enough that she’d hired on some mechanics to make this place run properly. But that meant more paperwork. Pay stubs and health insurance and all sorts of things she’d never had to deal with before. She was much better with cars than she was with paperwork, but she was trying.

And the accountant was wonderful. He helped her make sure all her t’s were crossed and her i’s dotted.

She glanced up when someone came into the lobby and broke into a smile. “Emma Swan?”

“Hey Tink,” rather than shop around and look for a garage, Emma had figured why not just keep up with Tinkerbell’s anyway? The woman was friendly and smart and did a good job on her car before so, why not? “How’s it going?”

Considering Emma’s car had been chugging along for years, it was practically a miracle that she hadn’t drove it off the side of the road at some point. But, more recently there was a hell of a lot of crazy things going on and somehow her car got jacked something terrible. “So, my car kind of sounds like it’s training for the opera whenever it hits twenty, you got some space to give it a look?”

“Hey.” Tink broke into a grin and climbed up from her spot behind the desk. She moved around the giant contraption to join Emma in the lobby. “Pretty good. Keeping busy. How about you? Settling in all right?” She asked, going through the motions of what was good to do socially. She liked Emma.

“Hmm? Oh. Of course I can.” This was a garage, after all. “You wanna pull up into the island three?” She said, and motioned toward the third slot in the garage. “I’ll check ‘er out myself.”

“I can only complain a little.” All in all, weird stuff aside, Emma was decidedly happy. She was getting by. Or she would be if her car would get with the program and stop taking a crapper on her. “Island three, no probs.”

Getting the car where Tink pointed, Emma almost tried to keep it from going too fast to start screaming, but then figured, well, better Tink hear the god awful noise to know just what Emma was talking about. Letting the car hit twenty in the parking lot before getting into the island she was pointed to, Emma just winced a little as she got out.

“I have literally no idea just what the hell is wrong with it.”

Tink could hear the awful noises before Emma could. It didn’t have to be going at speed for Tink to hear that something was wrong. She helped guide Emma and the car into the right place, and then nodded a bit. “It’s hard to hear our babies making those god-awful sounds,” Tink said softly. “Let’s pop the hood and have a look. I have a few ideas.”

There were other mechanics working on other cars in the garage, but they weren’t taking much notice of the blonde mechanic and blonde car owner who’d just joined them. Tink moved to the hood to pull the thing open and started inspecting the car’s insides.

“You’re pretty much a God send, I know nothing about this stuff.” She knew how to change her oil and how to make sure her radiator had enough water but that was about as far as Emma’s understanding of cars went.

Standing a little out of the way, Emma just crossed over her arms to let Tink work. “I mean, she’s kind of an old baby too, my mom got her when I started driving.” And her parents had been gone a long time now. “I just dunno if she’s giving up the ghost now.”

“Hey, we all have our strengths. Mine just happens to be machines.” Tink gave the other woman a smile, then got to work. She checked different parts of the engine, starting with the fluids and the hoses, then moved onto other parts. “It’s possible. I think we might need to replace a few parts. I’ve got some things in stock here in the garage, but I might have to special order one.”

New parts and changing things over, it all just sounded like she was waiting for the engine to practically explode from the the car. And, okay, she knew that she needed her car, but it was a little more than that. It was sentimental. This rusted bucket of near scrap had been across country with her.

But financially, she most definitely could not afford to just spend on saving a lost cause. Yes, her car meant a lot to her, but she needed to eat. And memories, well, they were just memories, weren’t they? “How much are you thinking this’ll be?”

“We can probably get her up and running for a couple hundred,” Tink said, now wiping the grease from her hands onto a rag. “Give or take. For more we can do better things. Depends on how much you want to spend.” She turned her attention back over to Emma.

“How much do you want to spend?” Tink could only discount so far before she started losing money. And while that was good for friendships, it was really bad for business.

A couple of hundred wouldn’t break her, but if it was only a short term fix… well… “A couple hundred should be fine, yeah.” Obviously a business needed to make money, she wasn’t about to ask for favours like that, but she figured she could deal with that really.

“Okay, yeah, it’ll be fine, go ahead and just… fix away.” Even if she wasn’t intending on running away, she still needed her car to get to work and anything else that happened around town. Which was fairly unpredictable at the best of times.

“Not a problem.” Tink moved through the garage to the storage area and started looking at the boxes on the shelves. “You can sit in the lobby to wait, if you want?” She called back to Emma. “Or hang out. It’s up to you. There’s a chair by the computer over there. It’s probably mostly clean.”

Tink had to read the boxes carefully and make sure she got the right parts. That was important. She wanted to do a good job fixing up Emma’s car not only for the business, but for their friendship, too.

“I’ll hang out, if it’s not a problem?” Why wait around in an empty lobby when she can have a catch up with Tink, since it was a little more interesting than waiting around reading old magazines or playing games on her phone.

Mostly clean meant clean enough, and Emma perched herself there, just watching Tink work. It wasn’t like she really knew what it all was, but it was still interesting. “How’s the reintroduction to the world after Pokemon coming along?”

“Not a problem,” Tink said, and motioned toward the chair. She found the parts she needed on the shelves, and was really glad she didn’t have phone around to try and find them. She’d called in a favor on another car recently, and didn’t want to have to owe more.

She came back over to the car and started about her work. She could chat and work at the same time, it was pretty simple stuff, replacing these bits. “Pretty good. My boyfriend seems amused at the sheer amount of video games in my life, so that’s helpful.” She grinned. “It’d suck to be with someone who was anti-gamer-girl.”

Watching Tink work wasn’t really telling in anything at all, other than she was just doing her job. Emma was happy to just sit and watch anyway. “We all have our little vices, at least it’s just video games.”

There were plenty of other things to be obsessed with. Digital animal training was fairly safe. “Well, yeah, that would probably be a deal breaker.” It was a joke, really. Because people put up with a lot of things for a relationship. “Been together long?”

Tink knew what she was doing. Her hands moved expertly, untwisting screws, removing parts, replacing parts, all that stuff. She was spending most of her concentration on the car, but had plenty left over to keep up the conversation with Emma. “...a few months now? But like… our first weekend together was spent during that strangeness where people could only tell the truth? So we know each other better after a few months than I’ve ever known anyone.” Tink wasn’t sure why that came out of her mouth, but she knew it was the truth.

Wow, she’d thought vampires and body swapping was bad. She could just imagine the trouble there would be if it was impossible to say anything but the truth. It wasn’t like she had a lot of secrets, but there were some personal stuff that she’d rather keep exactly like that. Private and personal.

“That sounds kinda crazy, but it makes sense around here.” At least it meant going into a relationship knowing some important things, it probably took a lot of the stress off, easing into it better. “But it must be nice, feeling like you really know each other, but still being in that newness.” Emma had felt like that once, and it hadn’t even been in this life, but her dreams.

Tink was pretty much now an open book to Anders. She’d told him things she’d never told anyone before--including her previous boyfriend and lovers. It was weird admitting all that stuff, but it felt good to know he received it well, and that he was confessing things to her, too. Things she would never, ever tell another soul.

“Right?” Tink asked, continuing her work on the car. “It’s… amazing. I’m just… head over heels for this guy. It’s new and exciting, but at the same time… more comfortable than I’ve ever been before, too.” She wasn’t exactly good with boys.

“Good, those are good feelings, good things.” Emma remembered that, dream-feeling, maybe a little in this life for her first boyfriend too. But those fluttery feelings in the chest, the giddy head over heels thing, she’d only really felt that once.

“So, tell me about him, what’s he like?” Talking about boys wasn’t something Emma had done in a while, but she remembered working in a diner in Idaho where Carol, one of the other girls, would come in every few days to tell them about the latest idiot thing her husband had done, or the sweetest thing he’d said. Gossiping about boys was kind of fun.

Tink grinned. She liked talking about Anders. It was weird, though… growing up with two older brothers and not being good with people, she rarely had the chance to gossip about boys. Now she kinda loved it. “Well, he’s a doctor. He runs a free clinic, as well as working at the hospital. He has this cat, Sir Pounce. And he takes his cat on walks.”

“That’s how we met. He was out for a walk with his cat, and I was in the park flying on a broken wing.” ...maybe she shouldn’t have said that last part.

“Oh hey, I think I’ve talked to him.” She wouldn’t say ‘crazy’ cat man, not at all. But she did remember the man with the cat with the strange name -but then pets always ended up with strange names, didn’t they? Taking a cat for a walk was just a little bit out there, although it was possibly just to make sure nothing happened to the poor thing.

She’d probably be protective of any pet she ever got too. If she did that.

But of course, she was a little more focused on something else. “Um, broken wing? Like… wing wing?” The OC was strange, but she hadn’t seen anyone with wings yet.

Tink climbed out from under the car. “He’s really friendly. I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s got a wonderful… soul.” That wasn’t quite the word she was looking for, but she shrugged it off.

“Oh. Right. Yeah.” Tink gave her shoulders a gentle shake, and a pair of iridescent, fairy wings popped through the hand-sewn sleeves in her coveralls. She’d designed the wing holes herself, and they made a huge difference when it came to giving the things a stretch.

“I’m sort of a fairy.”

Emma was more than sure they could talk a little more about Tink’s boyfriend, get a little more personal and ‘girl talk’ about his soul and the like. But she was largely distracted by the fact that… “Sort of a fairy?” How was someone sort of anything like that at all?

“Wow, okay um…” It was a little more of a reveal than most things, but then apparently the people she was dreaming about were from some enchanted forest. “So… your wings are okay now, right?” They looked okay. They looked more than okay, and Emma may or may not have her mouth hanging open.

“Oh. Yeah. It’s a long story.” Tink said, waving her hand to brush that off. She popped her wings back in under her coveralls so she could get back to work on Emma’s car. “...But they’ve healed up. I can fly, too. I guess I’m more than sort of a fairy. I mean, I’m a lot taller than six inches, like I am in most of my dreams. Obviously.”

“Well,” it wasn’t the weirdest thing she’d heard, wasn’t even the weirdest thing this week, since you know, vampires. “You’re definitely the tallest fairy I’ve ever met.” And the first, but that wasn’t really needing added. “So flying, huh. What’s that like?”

Tink simply grinned proudly in response. Yes, she was definitely a tall fairy. And proud. (Not the Pride kind of fairy, either. Just the normal kind.) “It’s pretty amazing. I took Anders with me. We flew into the mountains for some backpacking.” Being in the wilderness with her boyfriend and sleeping under the stars was ridiculously romantic. “After all the Dreams, I’m actually more awkward when I’m not flying.”

“I could get that, probably feel more used to flying than walking,” after all, if you could fly, why would you walk? And if Tink was a fairy the whole time in her dreams? Well, that would make more sense to fly everywhere, right? Probably learn to fly instead of walking.

“I’m kinda jealous right now.” Emma was teasing, mostly. But really, flying must be amazing.

Tink chuckled softly. “Well, you’ll have to come try it out sometime. You know all you need is a little pixie dust and happy thoughts.” Tink had those in spades, though she needed the happy thoughts less than the next person. Her wings helped with that. She could fly with or without happiness on her mind.

“You know, I might take you up on that some time.” Scary as the prospect might be the chance of flying would be amazing, and nothing in the OC really seemed impossible either, so why not? Definitely something she’d try at some point. “I’ll let you know, we could maybe arrange something, you know when you’re free.”

And suddenly the idea of paying through the nose for her car wasn’t horrible.

“Here.” Tink pulled a business card out and held it out the other woman. Hey, making friends was great, right? And Tink sure needed more of those. She smiled warmly, glad that she could share the faith, trust and pixie dust. “Call me sometime.”