Who: Jimmy Darling lobsterboy & Yuffie Kisaragi wutain What: Meeting by happenstance When: Thursday, Oct. 29, midday Where: Campus Courtyard where Yuffie attends college Rating: General Audiences Warnings: None. Status: Completed/Partner Thread
~*~
Rainbow Motor Repairs didn't generally do calls out to a location. They were known for their skills, talents, and abilities with reconstruction of classics. Jimmy was the new guy, trying to make himself more useful than being a warm body when their main mechanic was out mowing lawns. A call came in for a local college campus stating they had a student who'd hit a professor's car. The catch was the bumpers were locked, making it impossible to tow either vehicle without tearing the bumpers of both completely off.
Took Jimmy five hours to get them apart, but he managed. One had only minor dents he was able to take care of right there on the spot. The professor was great about it. Guy gave him his insurance information and a tip big enough to make him feel like a thousand bucks. His ma hadn't made tips that size working on all those sets. Jimmy was reassured all over again he was doing the right thing. There was no reason to go chasing fame when all he really wanted was to fix what was broken.
His boss told him to hang out to make sure the other guy got picked up by the tow. They'd have to do some real work on it. Lucky the kid had great insurance.
Jimmy watched the car come and go before shrugging it all off to head to the campus courtyard. It was nicer than most of the city parks. He found a bench off a path to sit on where he started eating his PB&J sandwich. One of these days? He might have a kid who'd get to go to a place like this. That seemed like a nice thing to think about while he was trying to get himself together enough to head back to the garage. It'd been too long since he'd eaten. His hands were shaking, fingers drawing, nothing good coming out of that.
Someone was heading through in a hurry, Jimmy drew a leg up onto the bench, frowning as he asked, "Sorry. Need me to move?"
Hopefully it was just a student in a rush to get somewhere and not someone prepared to pick at him for being a greasemonkey dirtying up their campus.
~*~
Most days Yuffie had everything under control.
Her bags were always packed the night before, she made sure her tires were good for the next day when she put her bike away, she always had her class work done before it’s due day and her outfit was laid out ready to get dressed. This worked every day that she was due for class. At least it happened every day that her downstairs neighbour didn’t have stupid loud parties which kept waking her up during the night and then the power on the block goes out and kills her alarm so that she doesn’t even get the wake up she needs.
Frustrating didn’t cover it. Least of all when she had projects due and she’d assigned extra time in the morning to get some more work in, rather than use it to rush around getting to college so she didn’t miss her class. The Prof really wasn’t nice to people who came in uber later.
It meant that Yuffie was just a tiny, teensy, ickle bitty bit behind on her life stills project for her Photography course. And while she knew it wasn’t super important, it was still her minor and she still wanted a good grade because middle finger Pops she was going to nail this college stuff so there.
“Actually, do you mind if I take your picture? It’s nothing creepy I promise, I just need a picture. I’m doing a course and I need pictures of different types of people and I’ve only got one more that I need for the piece and I don’t have time to go off campus because traffic gets all insane right now and I need this for the afternoon classes or I’ll be one short and that’ll throw the whole symmetry of the set off and then I’ll need to come up with something else and I don’t have time to start over because I gotta get it in for tomorrow morning.” Yuffie finally stopped to take a breath, feeling a little light headed as she clutched to her modest camera and offered her most dazzling, winning, sweetest smile to maybe entice him to agree to one silly little photo of a guy on a bench with a sandwich.
“Please?”
~*~
Guys who got asked to have their picture taken were famous, rich, or pretty much any guys other than Jimmy Darling. He grinned at the rambling woman, settling back onto the bench a little more leisurely, legs sprawled out and head cocked to the side to consider her. She sure was something. He wasn't sure what, but something. Jimmy was willing to place serious money on her causing a lot of sleepless nights for whoever had to wrangle her at home. His ma woulda killed a daughter of hers if she'd went on that way to a grubby guy on a bench.
"Sure. I even got a fresh haircut recently. Should make for about as good as it'll get for me. Can't say too many people are banging down my door asking for my picture."
It was an unusual request. He had gotten looks as a kid growing up around the stage life. His ma had been quite the character; Jimmy was known to everyone on set as her boy. Some of the ones with mouths on them commented about how Jimmy didn't look like hers. They were the ones who liked to poke at his ma about her own looks. She'd been a stout woman, handsome rather than pretty, and Jimmy would've died for her. A person could look at Jimmy's knuckles to see how well he'd taken to people poking fun at his ma.
He wasn't sure what the woman wanted from him in terms of a picture. It sounded as if she only wanted him sitting there holding his lunch. Jimmy decided to hold still, look off at anything except her, and hope for the best. He wasn't the type to get flustered from attention which helped a lot. Blushing guys were just weird to him. Jimmy liked being proud of himself even if his looks weren't much to write home about. He worked hard which counted for more than looks in his mind. Good-looking guys got only so far before their looks couldn't take them any farther.
The sky was the limit for Jimmy.
Conspiratorially, he muttered, "Tell me if I look like an idiot. I can move or whatever or smile or not smile. You just let me know. I'd hate for you to get low marks over a shot of me."
~*~
Giving a bright grin, Yuffie just shifted her camera, lining up for what she considered a decent enough shot -she wasn’t like a full blown skilled photographer, it was just her minor to make up some extra time and something she thought was interesting. “Don’t worry, it’s not like that.” Yuffie was more bothered about diversity, getting different looks, different people.
“What is it you do? I mean, are you going to class here? It’s a pretty big campus, so I know I don’t see everyone all the time, and I don’t always really pay attention to them all anyway.” Yuffie just gave a shrug. UC Irvine wasn’t the biggest campus, but it was big enough and had enough classes that Yuffie was well aware that it was impossible to know everyone. She didn’t go to many parties either, so she really didn’t know many people outside of her classes. Which was fine.
Since it was supposed to be a natural shot, Yuffie waited until the guy was a little more relaxed, just keeping a small glance on the screen to make sure the shot was lined up before smiling at the guy and making eye contact -always an important factor in meeting new people!
~*~
College girls weren't the kind of women Jimmy tended to associate with though he thought this one was the type to give the others a good name. She was sweet in a strange way. It was almost as if she were younger than her years, more innocent. California didn't exactly breed innocence in its youth. He figured her people had likely raised her well only to have to fight back a grin at how much his thoughts echoed his mother's voice. They said women eventually started to sound like their mothers, what was his issue then?
Keeping eye contact was easier for Jimmy than most. He'd grown up around the sets. 'Talk to the camera with your eyes,' had been one of the mantras of his youth. No one knew how to play the system the way his ma had in her day. She'd not had the looks, but she'd had the mind for it all. Jimmy never got the bug for fame; to him, it was always a headache he'd rather not have. He figured taking a picture or two for some girl was hardly the same thing as being in the movies.
Felt nice all the same.
"I'm a mechanic. Got out here to answer a call for a fender-bender. Fixed one on site. The other's towed to our shop. I'll likely wind up taking that one, too. Main mechanic has other interests. I consider it good for me since it means his job might be mine soon."
She didn't look spoiled the way some Cali girls looked when they came from money.
"What about you? What you studying here? You don't have the look of a trust fund baby."
~*~
Yuffie hit the clicker three times while he was talking, just as interested in what he said as he was when she got her shot and score! She’d have an awesome project for this semester.
“Oh cool!” Yuffie’d always been interested in mechanics, how things worked. For a while it was people, how they formed and grew and what made a person into the way they were. But eventually Yuffie grew to learn that no one thing could define everyone, and that each person was far too complicated to break down into their parts. Machines were easier, less complex and more manageable. Yuffie had tended to hang out with the mechanics at every one of her old man’s fairgrounds, avidly watching while they fixed or constructed the stands and rides. “You work nearby then? Or are you just waiting for a ride back?”
There were a scary number of students with fancy cars on campus, guys that were all about flashing their rides and showing off. Yuffie really kind of hated the parking lot because of it -almost none of them knew how to properly handle their vehicles and Yuffie wasn’t looking to get run over, thank you.
“I’m a mechanic too,” sort of, in a way, a roundabout kind of way. “Well, I’m gonna be. I’m taking mechanical engineering. I’m on to my second year, but I do photography too, it’s my minor this year. I really wanna get a good grade because it’ll really pad out my qualifications, you know? And it means I’ve got a fall back, I guess. I mean, it’s not like I think I’m not gonna be a good engineer, I’m gonna be really great. But like, I guess it’s in case I hit a lull? Or like… Winter! Like when it gets more about shopping for the holidays or whatever. No one needs a mechanical engineer then, do they?” Ideally, Yuffie would be the designer and construction, which meant she might need to take some pictures of things, and she wanted them to be nice, so she’d use this to get good at it.
“My pops owns a couple of places around the coast,” slipping further and further east every time he could. “So, he’s covering my course.” Yuffie just gave a shrug before skipping a little closer. “You wanna see your picture?”
~*~
"Sure," Jimmy agreed, smiling at the barrage of words and enthusiasm from the woman.
There were too many jobs to count where mechanical engineers were useful year-round. He wasn't going to get into it with her. For all he knew? She was telling him what he wanted to hear or what she thought he wanted to hear in order to get him to go along with helping her with her project. Jimmy put nothing past people any longer. His ma had taught him cynicism wasn't necessarily the worst attitude to have on life. Cynics might not live as happy, but they tended to live longer since they were less likely to get cut down.
He sat up to look at the pictures she'd taken. There was little anticipation in him to see himself immortalized. Jimmy looked decent, but not better than that. It wasn't as if she could Photoshop him on her camera. With all the work he'd put into separating the two cars earlier, he figured he'd be lucky if he didn't look like a bum with sweat stains all over his shirt. Myrcella had done a good job on his hair. That was something.
It made sense to him his photographer had a daddy paying her way in school. Those kinds of girls didn't really need to worry about a solid grasp on their future. They weren't in any danger of starving regardless of how they turned out.
"I got my bike here. I'm a motorbike kind of guy. Cars and trucks are great. They just don't get me through rush hour quite as fast and me? I need fast over flash."
Jimmy liked his bike. It was old yet sturdy. He wouldn't complain about it even if he did have to work on it more often than he'd like to admit.
~*~
Plopping herself down at his side, Yuffie changed the settings on the camera to show the picture. She kind of liked the grimy look it had -like he had just done the work he’d obviously just done. Pretty clear he wasn’t one of those stuck up law students that wandered around with their noses in the air. She’d gotten two different pictures, and both were entirely usable. Yuffie prefered the candid appearance anyway, poses were just so fake and overdone; girls ended up with duck lips, men puffed up their chests, more time was spent on hair than anything else. It was just annoying.
“I like them better in natural light, because then you get some pretty shades. I’m not super keen on editing things but like sometimes people get those flares in their eyes where they look like they’re possessed by something, so I do need to take those out too.” Demon eyes in photos happened, but it wasn’t too hard to take those out.
“I’m not overly keen on anything fast.” Weird, how she grew up around all these fairgrounds, the roller coasters and tea-cups and tilt-a-whirls, and Yuffie was the biggest sufferer of motion sickness that she knew. Everyone said she’d grow out of it, but Yuffie was still waiting for that to happen. “I have to cycle, because even if I keep looking forward in a car, I’ll puke.”
Probably not the best conversation topic, but Yuffie wasn’t really up to date on social cues like that.
~*~
The first bike Jimmy had learned to ride had been a tall bike. It'd stood approximately seven feet in height and he'd gotten on using stilts from one of the stunt men. His ma had left him alone with the stunt crew while she'd shot her scenes as an extra. They had lived on that set during one of the happiest times in his life. No one had treated them any differently though his mother was only an extra. Jimmy had made friends. There had even been school on set where he'd learned something instead of hiding his head down hoping no one asked him anything.
The idea of only being able to ride a bicycle around?
He thought that seemed a hard road to go, especially considering the size of the OC.
Whistling, he said, "That's a rough way to get around. First bicycle I ever tried was a tall bike and then a big wheel. Circus equipment on a set where my ma was working. I like bikes. Not anything against them. It's only I like to be able to go where I need to go on my own steam. Hard to get from one side of the city to the other on something self-propelled. You're a tough girl."
She had done a good job with his photos. Jimmy thought he looked natural in them. They were appealing in that they captured him as a working stiff without making him look miserable. Some guys who were blue collars hated everything about their jobs. Jimmy wasn't one of those. He liked mechanic work. Working with his hands made him feel accomplished. He made people's lives easier. There was nothing quite like being able to resolve a problem preventing something from running---literally being able to make something come alive again? That was magic to Jimmy.
"You ever been on a motorcycle?"
~*~
“A tall bike? Wow, I’ve never tried any of those. I mean, I had a go at a unicycle once but my balance was kind of poop.” Yuffie had needed the stabilizers on the side of her bike until she was a lot older than most kids, but she was so much better now, she knew how to manage her weight and the bike and the momentum, it all worked for her now. “I like the exercise, I mean, half of the time I’m stuck in class all day, this keeps me active.”
And she had thigh muscles that were like steel.
“Oh, no. No, I hopped a train once and had to get off at like the next stop because I was gonna barf everywhere.” Probably not the best of conversation topics, but Yuffie and modes of transport had a very rocky relationship. “I can’t really go very far in cars or anything, like everything needs to be a short trip.” Travelling from one fairground to the next was sometimes a major hassle that her Pops got frustrated at all the time.
Scuffing her shoe on the sidewalk, Yuffie just shrugged. “My stomach is pretty weak.”
~*~ Knowing one's weaknesses wasn't bad to Jimmy. He knew he got along better as a result of knowing where he stood in the world. He finished off his sandwich while she was talking. If any other woman had told him as much as this one had in the span of a few minutes, Jimmy likely would have found a way to excuse himself. She was charming enough to have him grinning regardless of the topic. It didn't hurt he'd been on sets for horror films where the extras walked around in full make-up for hours.
Jimmy could eat through anything.
"Hey, could be worse: your brain could be pretty weak. If I had my choice between being smart and having a stomach issue? I'd learn to carry a barf bag everywhere."
He balled up his lunch bag as he stood, stretching to work out the kinks of having been on the bench longer than expected. There was going to be hours worth of work waiting on him at the shop. Jimmy figured he wouldn't get out before dark. If he was lucky, Winchester would stick around to help. If not, there were always other shop workers like that Nux kid and Jimmy could use the overtime. Bills never stopped coming in regardless of how much he OT he worked which was its own source of confusion.
"You need anything else from me before I head back to the shop? I'm gonna be there late. I can tell already."
~*~
Yuffie supposed being smart was nice. At least, she thought she was smart. She was smart enough. Gus, the knife thrower at one of the fairgrounds had always told her to keep up reading, doing her own workings while her Pops shifted around from one place to the next. It was a godsend that Yuffie had some brains to keep up with school work every time they moved to the next place.
“Yeah, but if I could, I’d be smart and have a strong stomach.” Because motorbikes looked really fun, and rollercoasters, she’d love to be able to ride them, just once without needing to empty her stomach half way through. “But that’s probably being greedy.” And she’d been told not to be greedy, at least she thought that was the point of the lesson after she barfed everywhere one Halloween a few years back.
“No, I think that’s it,” Yuffie bounced up, rocking on her heels and toes with a giant grin on her face. “Oh, but I don’t know if I might need a permission thing later.” There were certain aspects she needed permission for. “Oh, what garage do you work in? I’ll stop by if I need you to sign something that says you said it’s cool for me to use your face. Not like your actual face, cause that would be weird and stuff, but just like the picture of you, so that like we don’t need to pixel it out or whatever. Cause I think that really ruins it. But yeah, I might need that so... “ Sometimes, Yuffie really did forget when to stop.
“Oh! I’m Yuffie, by the way. I maybe should’ve led with that…” Introductions were difficult sometimes.
~*~
"Jimmy Darling. Good to meet you, Yuffie. I work over at Rainbow Motor Repair. Look me up some time if you need any shots in a garage or that permission thing."
There was no policy against people coming or going at the garage. Winchester sure wouldn't care. He was pretty enough to like having his picture taken---or at least Jimmy figured that would be the case for him. No one cared about having guests at the garage so long as the work got done. Given Jimmy was doing most of the work with Nux and a few other part-timers? He figured he could extend the invite without it being a thing. He'd argue for Yuffie anyway. She seemed like good people.
Jimmy like to go to bat for good people.
Waving at her, he tossed the balled-up lunch bag into the nearest trash can, "Nothing but net. I'll make sure you get a few slick shots if you need them. The main mechanic? He's a looker. I figure you'd likely get a great grade if you got him doing anything at all. Pretty faces make pretty prints, right? Whatever. I'm heading back to work. See you around, Yuffie."
He headed toward his bike, hoping he wouldn't spend the rest of his night at the garage. That sandwich only went so far and Jimmy hated working on an empty stomach. Figures he'd let himself get distracted by a girl. If his ma had still been alive, she'd have been cackling away while clucking her tongue at him. Too bad the only way he would ever hear his mother again was in his head. A guy only got one mother; Jimmy would have done anything to get his own back. Such was life and death though: couldn't have one without the other.