Work Text:
If you've never seen a MG in person, you aren't ready for it. They're gorgeous. Sleek and smooth and a little old fashioned in a way that makes you want to touch. A modern car has nothing on the curves of a classic. Get me up under a MGB or a Midget and I'll be happy for days.
It's why I took the job, even though the pay isn't what you'd make at a standard service station. There's something about the cars: the history; the maintenance manuals, with their generations of margin notes and thumbprints. They belong in a museum: we knew these cars. We loved these cars. We kept them running.
Kent's dad was the original owner, and his notes are the roughest, strikes across broad white spaces, smudged with oil. Kent's are filled alongside, pencil, already careful of space and mistakes. Mine are on post-it notes, ballpoint and light yellow paper. Sometimes I write them out three or four times before I stick them in. I don't know if Kent looks at them, but I like knowing I can take them out. I'm not really a part of the history of this place. I never will be.
Not that I would take them with me if I go. And not that I want to go. But you never know. I didn't want to leave Liverpool but here I am anyway.
The foster family in Liverpool had three cars up on blocks in the backgarden. Kitty said she collected kids and Jules collected cars. It worked for them. Worked for me too. Kitty wasn't my biggest fan, but Jules didn't mind a quiet pair of eyes watching him, tools being passed his way when he reached for them. He didn't talk a lot either, but when he bought the Mini ('74) he patted the hood and said, "Happy Birthday, Simon."
I took the bus to the junkyard nearly every weekend for two years. Picked parts for Jules for pocket money and used it on my own parts. I got the Mini running three days before I got my provisional license.
I drove it once. To drop it off with the posh bloke who bought it.
I saw the bloke driving it a few times before Jules and Kitty started rowing and she decided to get rid of me.
That car got me my apprenticeship, paid for my tools, and landed me my job.
It's a good job, too. Except that sometimes you see a car that makes you want to scream. Like today, some posh git brought in an MG, forest green, soft top. Lovely original paint that's clearly been sitting out in a carpark somewhere for years just being rained on.
And that's not the worst of it. Because this car must have been running on wishes and good luck for the last six thousand miles. When I asked him where they'd been having it looked after, he said: "Honestly I don't know if Fiona ever brought it into a shop."
I held out hope. Perhaps Fiona was his senile gran. Perhaps Fiona couldn't remember where she'd taken it, or didn't keep the papers, or her friendly neighbor cleaned the spark plugs and injectors and topped up the coolant and the engine oil.
Then I opened the bonnet.
Kent's garage doesn't have a waiting room. One side of the garage is home to a bench seat we pulled out of a VW bus when some hippy kids brought it in to convert it to a mobile home, and two rims with a piece of wood on top for a table.
The posh bloke looks out of place on the VW bench, but in an appealing way. Like a flower growing out of a rock wall.
He's pretty.
The bonnet keeps him from seeing the tears that spring to my eyes when I look at the engine. Covered in dirt and engine sludge, dried up lines, rust everywhere. I stroke one hand down the side panel. "We'll get you set to right, don't you worry."
I walk over to him, and pull up our workstool. "Hey, so…"
He looks up. His eyes are a sparkling grey, like the ocean on a cloudy day. He hums in his throat and quirks his lips into a half-smile.
"It's in pretty rough shape. You're honestly lucky you made it here."
"Yes, the sounds the engine made were… concerning."
"The body is in good shape, so you've been lucky there, but the engine is going to need a lot of work. Supply lines, half dozen new parts, lubing, tuning. There's a lot of corrosion and rust. I can get you running today, and put parts on order, but it's not going to be cheap." He waves his hand at this, as I suspected he would. Men in clothes like his don't usually balk at our rates. "And you'll need to come in every three months or 3,000 miles at a minimum once we're through with the initial reconditioning."
His shoulders straighten a bit at that, and he narrows his eyes at me. "Yes, certainly." His eyes flick down to the patch on my coveralls. "Simon. What's your family name?"
"No family," I say, "But the name is Snow."
He purses his lips. "Baz Pitch," he says. It's really unfair how handsome he is, even sour and staid. "How long to get the car running today?"
I look at the clock. It's just after eleven. "I'll write you an estimate and a scope of work for the whole thing, then I'll take my lunch break and get started. Probably done by tea today, and then I'll want you back in two or three weeks."
"Can I treat you to lunch?" he asks, sounding as though the words are being shoved through him by some unseen force.
"Nah, mate, that's okay," I say, and turn towards the scrub sink. My hands are always covered in oil, but I'm not going to give this bloke a smudgy estimate. His face is cut from glass, he looks like he abhors a mess.
I'm a mess.
"I insist. I saw your face when I said it hasn't been to a mechanic since the dawn of time. I think I owe you some comfort food. What's good around here?"
There's a gyro stand down the street that's to die for, but the place is a dive and it's a four-napkin-a-sandwich minimum for me.
"You like gyros?" I ask.
He smiles, and I dry my hands. "Absolutely." He takes two steps towards the VW bench, then says, "Actually, I need to make a call, I'll be right back," and then heads outside.
I don't really expect him to come back: he's too posh, too handsome and well-put-together to actually want to have anything to do with me.
When I look up from writing the estimate twenty minutes later, he's leaning against the door to the shop, legs crossed at the ankles, backlit by the summer sun. I can't see his face or his eyes, but I can see the sweep of his nose and the line of his hips and the curve of his thighs.
He makes me want to touch .
Instead, I hand him the estimate, and he folds it crisply and slides it into his pocket. "Lead the way," he says. I start walking, he follows.
"So, Simon Snow. I was expecting someone decidedly more mid-fifties and balding when I came in today."
"Oh, yeah, Kent's the owner. He does Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursday mornings. I'm Wednesday afternoons, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays." And Sundays. But that's for my baby. "Where'd he find you?"
"Tesco. Just lurking next to the car when I came out with my shopping."
I laugh. "He does that." Kent's main marketing staple is classic car shows. Usually no one comes to see us when he fawns over their car in a parking lot, because most everyone who drives a vintage car does work on it themself, and if they aren't using the car as a showpiece, they can't afford us. But it can be fun to get someone to pop the bonnet and show off their work. Or in this case, look at their shoes and their car and immediately realize that they desperately need some help.
I hope Baz didn't pop the bonnet for Kent in the Tesco lot. He probably would have had an aneurysm.
"When'd you get the car?" I ask.
"This summer." He says. "Fiona's having a kid, and the backseat isn't exactly carseat friendly, so I bought it off her."
"I hope you got a deal."
His smile is like a shark's, bright and full of teeth and tempting . "I did." Then his smile gets a little bit soft. "I have a lot of good memories in that car. Fi picked me up from my first late night in Vauxhall in it. Tried to make me sit in the backseat, because 'the front seat isn't for slags', and then I asked how she was going to drive from the back."
He chuckles. I glance over. His eyes are firmly front, and I think I understand what he's just said to me.
Because Vauxhall is where all the gay clubs are.
And I've never… I mean, I've only ever…
"I've never been," I say. "I grew up everywhere but London. Closest we have here is Salt Hill Park after ten."
He looks over at me then, quickly, startled. My face feels as red as a tomato, but his smile isn't harsh anymore, it's beautiful. It's awed and soft and delighted. It makes me smile back.
"Oxford is the same," he says. "Student parties and hookups. It's… not really my scene."
"Same." I went to Salt Hill once. When I was eighteen. Found a guy, went to the bushes. It wasn't… well, it wasn't bad. It just wasn't anything. I felt separate from myself. A step away, like I was looking down on what was happening from a remove. By the time we were through, the lights at the park seemed so much brighter than when we started, and the guy I was with looked all of sixteen. It all made me itchy and uncomfortable; I never went back.
"So, I take it Fiona isn't your dearly departed gran, then?" I ask him.
It startles a laugh out of him. "No," he says, "My layabout aunt. Or, well, I suppose she's not a layout anymore."
We get to the shop and order our gyros. He orders the same thing as me and follows me to the tiny park bench a few blocks down. We dig into our sandwiches and chips and he brings out the shark smile again after his first bite.
"This is good."
I smile back.
I'm not good at small talk. I'm not good at getting-to-know-you or terrible-weather-isn't-it or how-about-Arsenal. I tried for a while, but it never got me anywhere. When I need to be around people, I go to a cafe or a movie or to do my shopping. Kent asks me to dinner with his family a couple of times a month, and I can ask his wife about her knitting and their birdfeeders and their daughters, and Kent's always game to talk about the Triumph, so we can fill the space. But I don't know what to say to this handsome boy who told me first thing, without using quite as many words, that he's probably gay and definitely interested.
So, I just eat. When I'm finished with my sandwich and chips, he hands me his half-empty bag of chips and I eat those too.
"Earlier," he finally says, when I'm wiping my face and hands with the extra napkins I snagged. "When you were telling me when I need to come in to get the car looked after." He pauses, and I think back to it. I don't think I said anything unusual. I wonder if I've taken this wrong. "Do you know what that was?"
"What what was?"
"You said… every three months or 3,000 miles. It was like it punched me. It was powerful."
I think back.
And I do know.
"Do you do that often?"
It happens a lot when I speak, I don't say. I shrug.
"What kinds of other things can you do it with?"
I shrug. "Have a nice day, thanks for nothing, we'll get you sorted." Usually it happens when I really mean it. I always mean it when I say 'come back in three months or 3,000 miles', and it always happens then. But no one's ever noticed before.
"Try this," he says, and holds out his gyro wrapper to me. I reach for it, but he says "No, watch me first." He takes a deep breath and shakes a stick from his sleeve into his hand. He points it at the wrapper. " Into thin air ." There's a rush of feeling, in the way he says the words, like when I say things, but from outside. Brushing across my skin rather than bubbling up from inside me. The wrapper vanishes.
"What just happened?"
"You try."
I don't know why I'm going along with this. I'm going to feel a fool in about twenty-seven seconds. I crumple up my gyro wrapper and hold it in front of me. I point my finger at it. " Into thin air ."
The wrapper vanishes.
My mouth drops open.
Baz's mouth drops open. "Huh."
"What?"
"I've never met anyone before who could do that and didn't already know they could. And without an instrument."
"Wait," I laugh. He looks so serious, so adorably thoughtful. "Wait, you know more people who can do…that?"
"It's called speaking with magic, and yes. Several."
"What—do you go around and just make trash disappear? Where does it go?"
"You can do more than just make trash disappear, Simon. What happens when you tell people to come back in three months? Or have a nice day?"
"Uh, they come back in three months. And, I don't know because it's usually shop clerks."
His mouth does this little thing at the corners, like he's caught between frowning and smiling. "You'll be able to do a lot of things."
"Well, right now, I need to fix your car," I say, and I shove his chip bag and napkins inside mine, hold it on my hand and say " Into thin air " again. The chip bags vanish. The napkins vanish.
He's quiet on the way back to the shop. I am too. My mind is racing. Maybe… maybe this is where I belong. Maybe this is why I've never belonged anywhere else. I'm practically shaking in my skin. I need to get my hands on some tools. Need to get grounded and working and moving.
I toss up the bonnet when we get through the door, and Baz sits back down on the VW bench. He pulls a book and a highlighter out of his satchel and I get to work flushing valves and replacing lines.
It's part of the reason I have the Triumph. And why I don't usually keep a car for longer than it takes to get it in good condition. Getting my hands dirty calms me down. Doing the work. The grit underneath my fingernails, the texture of the oil. The curves. Cars make sense. They follow the rules, they don't shout at you or never talk to you or make fun of you. They're there and when they have problems, I can fix them. I can make them better than they were before they came under my hands. I can help them breathe and they help me breathe.
When the engine of the MG is cleaned and lubed and as shipshape as I can make it without parts, I drop the bonnet back into place and look over at Baz.
He looks up at me.
"Want to see how it runs?"
He stands up and slides into the driver's seat. I climb in next to him. He turns the key and it does nothing.
He slides his stick out of his sleeve (it's probably a magic wand, isn't it? Blimey) and says " Gentlemen, start your engines ." The car purrs to life.
"So, your ignition switch is broken," I say, and he looks over at me. "What other… magic… do you use on the car?"
"Knowing Fiona, I think it's safe to assume that the car was running 90% by virtue of magic: pedal to the metal, all roads lead to Rome, slow and steady wins the race, make way for the king, get home safely."
Pedal to the metal is clear, slow and steady wins the race as well, but I'm curious what the others might do. "Can you show me?" I ask.
He pulls a pair of sunglasses from his chest pocket, slips them on, and turns back to reverse out of the garage.
It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. He shifts smoothly, expertly, and when we're on the road, his wand slides into his hand again and he says " Safe as houses ," back at the shop. Then once we're driving, he says " Pedal to the metal " towards the steering wheel. The engine picks up speed, grinding where the clutch master cylinder is failing to engage fully.
"Stop," I say. "Yeah, that's a bad sound."
He laughs. "I gathered." He puts his hand on my knee, and I start so badly that he immediately takes it away. "Want to see the others?"
"Sure," I say, and he cycles through the rest of the spells with varied results. Most of them don't seem to act on the engine directly, but the ones that do make unerringly ominous noises. Brakes, clutch, and ignition are all varying degrees of shot. I'd rebuild the engine, if it were my car.
He pulls into the parking spot in front of the garage and climbs out.
He follows me into the shop and leans against the desk as I hand him his invoice and process his card. I slide him the receipt and hand him a pen. Our fingers brush as he takes the pen from me, and I start again.
"I'm sorry," he says, voice sounding regretful and kind. "I shouldn't have assumed that you were interested."
"I am," I say, and once again, my cheeks heat and my stomach leaps up into my throat. "I'm just not used to being touched."
His frown is small, the corners of his lips twitching downward. "Do you want to be?"
My whole body goes tight like a bowstring, seizing like metal on metal, the way I've lived stuttering against my hopes and dreams like rust and debris. I want it so badly I don't know if I can have it. I don't know if I'll survive it.
I nod, tightly.
He smiles, and puts one hand over mine where it rests on the counter. "Okay then."
When he touches me, my body goes woosh . I don't know any other way to describe it. I feel like something being dropped, something being released, like I've let out a breath I've been holding for my whole life. His hand is cool and soft and I want to take hold of him and wrap him up in me and feel this way forever .
I turn my hand over, and he slides his fingers in between mine. "Can I take you to dinner?" he asks.
I nod, mutely. He squeezes my hand. "Tonight?"
I nod again.
"Now?"
I nod.
He smiles.