Across the Tracks Redux Ch. 01

"Hey... Hey lady... Wake up." He swallowed nervously, wondering if he should call 911, "C'mon. Upsy Daisy, wakey wakey eggs and bakey."

Ariel slowly came to, and hearing that last one brought her fully back awake. It was so nonsensical and silly, that she couldn't help but giggle a little at it. She opened her eyes, almost comically amused by the worried look on his face.

"Don't worry, big guy. I'm okay." He let go of her feet and she sat up, rubbing the back of her neck for a moment before slowly getting to her feet and back on the stool. His hovering to catch her in case she fell again was also kind of cute, just because of how large he was. It was like a giant bear trying to pick up a teacup.

Otis felt relieved by it, and waved off her assurances that she didn't need something, went into the lobby and bought her a bottle of water and a little thing of crackers from the vending machine. That helped people that had just fainted, right? Crackers and water? As he handed them off to her, he leaned against her car for a moment.

"So. Glad as I am you're okay, do you mind telling me why you fainted? Is it like a blood sugar thing? Cause if it is, I really think you should sit in the lobby, just in case."

Ariel chewed her lip for a moment, but she couldn't make her mind up. She thought it would be a good idea to tell him, but at the same time, she didn't want to open up that part of her life up to him. Even if he was who he said he was, then that just made her more scared to open up. So she did something that she was terrible at. She lied.

"Yea, I think it's just a blood sugar thing." Her face flushed a little, but she kept her eyes down and forged through, "I haven't really eaten in... wow, a pretty long time." She ate one of the crackers, shrugging, "So hopefully these will help. Thank you."

She could see the doubt in his eyes, but she hoped that he would just let it go. She didn't want to talk about it, she didn't want to have to discuss it, but she was worried that if he pushed it, she wouldn't be able to not tell him. So she picked at some stray threads on her jeans, and then ate a second cracker.

Otis had a feeling she wasn't telling the truth, but that wasn't really his business, was it? It wasn't like they were friends, or they had some kind of history that made it where she had to tell him the truth. He had his own shit that he wanted to keep private and not talk to other people about, so he could understand privacy. He knew she had the crackers, but he still reached into his tool box, rummaging around for a moment before pulling out a candy bar and holding it out to her.

"This will probably help with your blood sugar a bit better than the crackers will." He smiled, but inwardly screamed at himself because it was one of his Butterfingers he had offered her, which was his absolute favorite candy bar. But he couldn't really take it back now, could he?

Ariel tentatively reached out for the candy bar, adding it to the amount of food that she was slowly amassing the more time she spent in this shop next to this guy. It was actually a little strange. He was the hard looking guy, but he was actually one of the most mothering people she had ever met. But she had to admit, she liked that kind of personality in him. She was still musing in thought when he spoke.

"Mind if I turn on some music?"

Ariel jumped a little in her seat, startled once again by his voice appearing from nowhere. She merely nodded her head. She didn't want him to hear the little startled note that her voice would have had, she didn't want to make him feel uncomfortable. Again.

She studied his movements once again, watching him move with a grace that belied his size. She grinned a small grin and let it get quiet again as he looked for a song on his phone, and she decided she would be the one to break the silence this time. He had dropped the top of his coveralls, tying them around his waist, and she could see more of his tattoos now that his arms weren't as covered.

Some of them were obviously done at home, or with sewing needles, but a lot more of them were very well done, and she could tell a lot of thought was put into how they looked. As the music started to play and he stretched to set his phone back down, the sleeve of his shirt moved just enough that she could see one on his arm. It was photorealistic, a dark grey wolf and an angry boar around a sword, letters that looked like they were carved into stone underneath it all.

She cleared her throat, hoping she didn't startle him with speaking. Not like he kept doing to her, unintentionally.

"What's that tattoo mean?"

Her voice was clear and high, almost like the sound of a bell, and as lost as he was in what he was doing, it made him jump. Her following giggle at him jumping sounded like wind chimes. The metal kind that were small, like what someone had in their garden.

Great, he thought, Next I'll be comparing her beauty to the moon or something like that. Before that thought had even finished running through his brain, he already deciding he was wrong. Her beauty was like the moon on the sea. Pale, but almost cold, the kind of night that made you want a sweater, but you still wanted to be out there to see it. He finally drew himself out of his own thoughts, getting completely flustered at how much she, and all of her questions and just her presence was disrupting his world.

"Which one? There's quite a few."

She pointed to the tattoo on his right forearm, starting at his wrist and going halfway up. He studied it for a moment, ordering his thoughts to explain it.

"Promise not to laugh first?"

She looked at him, for a moment, and then a small smile broke out on her face.

"I mean, I can promise, but if you tell me it's something funny and tried to get me to promise not to laugh on purpose, then I'm going to throw this candy wrapper at you, I mean it."

He looked at her for a moment, then that big smile grew across his face, and he started laughing. His laugh was a deep, belly laugh kind of laugh, a little raspy at the edges. Laughing and smiling made his eyes squint up until they were almost not visible, his cheeks round from the width of his smile.

"Okay, I can live with that." His fingers traced the design, and then he spoke again, "It's a version of the Ludovisi Ares', which I think is one of the most beautiful statues ever created. We added some stuff to the imagery, like the boar and the wolf, because they're symbols of him as well. And the text says Son of Ares." He shrugged, turning to his work bench, "I was always fighting. Always. I picked fights with anyone, it didn't matter how many people, didn't matter why. I just fought. So I got a tattoo of Ares, because I felt like a god of fighting would make me a little luckier. I got it about three years ago," He laughed a little again, "Funnily enough, haven't really got into a fight since."

He started to work on the car again, waiting to hear what she was going to say. He had explained it to some people before, and they had given him shit for it. He'd heard a lot about why it wasn't a good tattoo, but it was his. He thought the reasoning was good, and the artwork was definitely good. He had saved up for a long time to get this tattoo, and to get it done right.

"What a coincidence." He heard her say it, and he looked up from the engine bay of her car, an eyebrow raised in question. Before he could say anything, she started to explain.

"Ariel's not my first name. I was adopted when I was younger, and before I was adopted my name was Alena." There was a clatter as the wrench he was using slipped, hitting the floor. He cursed under his breath, climbing under the car to get the wrench. "Do you know who Alena is, in mythology?" Ariel asked, leaning forward as he crawled out from under the car.

Otis looked up at her, taking in her face. She was a beautiful woman, and he felt it even more like this. They were sharing stories, talking to each other, more than he had talked to a woman in the past few years it felt like. And the way she was leaned forward and the way he was trying to stand made him feel like one of them was about to lean in to kiss the other. He cleared his throat, trying to get rid of that little thought, and then stood up, before leaning back into the engine bay to keep working.

"I'm pretty sure, but I'd like to hear you explain it." His teeth flashed in a smile as he looked at her for a moment, "I like hearing you talk."

Ariel almost shivered. It was like something in his voice had changed, and it seemed to make some part inside of her react to it. It was deeper, even huskier somehow, like he had been breathing in smoke for an hour, the undercurrent of his voice sounding even more masculine, which hadn't seemed possible when she first heard his deep voice.

It wasn't unpleasant at all, as a matter of fact, she wanted to hear it more often. She almost thought about trying to figure out how to make him sound like that again. The little voice in the back of her mind, the one that sounded like her mother, reminded her that she was from the right side of town, across the tracks, and that he was a mechanic that at least worked on this side, if not lived out here as well. She cleared her own throat, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

"She was Poseidon's daughter, and Ares fell in love with her. Part of the myth is that she wanted Ares to stop being the God of War, and she wanted him to be a god of wild things, like he was viewed for a long time in Thrace. But Zues didn't want that, so he conspired with Poseidon to make sure they couldn't be together. Poseidon also didn't want to give up his daughter to Ares, so he turned her into a star." This was something her birth mother had told her, explaining her name when she was young, "And they say that Ares still pines over Alena, looking up at her star at night and wishing he could be with her."

Her voice had dropped into a whisper almost, and she clasped her hands in her lap. She still thought it was such a sad love story, that they had been separated by their fates and their families, and the kind of separation that could never be fixed. A man that pined for a star, who was immortal and had to miss her for all eternity.

His voice was gruffer as he spoke, and he bent down to work on the engine.

"I need to get to work so we can get you back on the road."

Ariel felt like she had just been rebuked, and the silence that came from that felt uneasy. Why had he been so gruff all of the sudden? He had went from saying that he liked to hear her talk to as if he didn't want to speak to her at all. A little flash of anger came in through the confusion, and she almost grabbed onto it. Who was this man to talk to her like that? Nobody. He was just some nobody that worked on cars for a living, and what he said or did shouldn't matter to her. But she was feeling like it did, and she didn't like it.

Otis felt bad for talking to her like that, but he had too. He was so close to telling her exactly what he thought of her at the moment. She was so beautiful, in every single kind of way that he could see. Her eyes, her lips, her skin, everything. Even her voice was beautiful, and that was just unfair. People had to have some kind of flaw, and it was apparent that she didn't have one of those, best he could see. Perfection was frightening.

And even knowing that she knew Greek mythology, that was another fantastic link in the chain. He loved myths and legends, had entire shelves dedicated to books that covered them at home. Chains didn't work well in those myths, and since he had tattoos of creatures that had several issues with chains, like his tattoo of Fenris, that only made him think that a chain was the worst thing he could get caught up in right now. He began to work a little faster, trying to get her out of here faster, before he was completely snagged on an unattainable star.

Almost an hour later, he finally closed the hood of the car. There was a smudge of grease above his eye, his heads were filthy, and he started to grab a shop rag to clean up. He had replaced the serpentine belt, and luckily it hadn't jammed up anything like the water pump. He had completely flushed the transmission, which had taken almost thirty two quarts of fluid to show clean fluid. Finally an oil change had been thrown on top of that, because he didn't trust any part of this car at this point.

"It's as fixed as I can make it. It really needs a complete overhaul or a junkyard." He sighed, managing to get the majority of grease and oil from his hands before tossing the rag in the shop bucket. That was what he got for forgetting to put on his gloves first. "I know that that isn't always an option though, so you should be able to get a couple more thousand miles out of it. I just would avoid the highways, anything that requires going about fifty five, and you need to baby the hell out of that transmission. No hard take offs, no slamming the shifter, and do your best not to miss gears when shifting."

"How much do I owe you?"

She put as much ice and distance in her voice as she could possibly muster, and Otis knew that it was because he had been gruff to her other. Okay, he thought, I probably deserve that. He lifted his hands in a peace gesture, smiling slightly. (But not fully, she noticed.) He could use the money, but he was going to chalk this one up to a good deed.

"Consider it my good deed for the week." He laughed, shaking his head, "Have to try and buy my way into whatever cosmic lottery decides you win the cash money lottery."

Ariel nodded shortly, if he wanted to work for free that was fine with her. If he didn't want money, that wasn't her problem. Probably do something stupid with the money anyways, or at least that was what her mother would say about it all. After he backed her car off the work area, she started to get into it and he scrabbled at a piece of paper before standing next to her car and handing her the paper. It said;

"Otis C. Andrei

Roadside Assistance

24/7

555-542-1991"

She felt some of her icy exterior breaking, because this was probably the sweetest thing anyone had done for her in awhile. It was obvious he didn't run an actual roadside assistance service, and was just trying to be helpful in case anything happened to her or the car.

She actually thought about him for a second, his shyness, his non-talkativeness, and realized how big a deal this must have been for him to break his shell and give her something as personal as his number. It had probably taken more for him to break out of his shell and talk to her and do this than she had really understood. She stood just inside the door of her car, leaning up and giving him a kiss on the cheek before sitting in the driver's seat and shutting the door. She put the car in gear, getting ready to drive off.

:"I may call even if I don't break down. Thanks for everything!" She smiled at the deep crimson blush all over his face.

"Please dear God don't have let her see me blush.." Otis said in a soft whisper to himself. He knew that she probably had, though. His face turned red at the slightest bit of embarrassment, so there was no doubt that she had seen him flush the second her lips had touched his cheek.

He slowly walked around the shop, his safe haven, where nothing ever touched him. As impossible as it seemed, it was like in the space of the hour and a half it took him to fix her monstrosity, she had permeated his shop. He could smell her fragrance over all the other odors of an auto shop, car paint, oil, grease all of it. He had never felt anything like this, and he didn't even know her. He walked to the front of the shop and grabbed a smoke. As the haze of grey filtered up into the sky, he sighed.

He knew that he was stuck on a star now, and didn't know if he would ever get a chance to see it again, even with the sun down.