cruising on auto-pilot/ kansas

[nicholas bael white]

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i'm livin' life in the fast lane

5280 feet. the equivalent of one mile. and the equivalent of the distance it was to the nearest maintenance shop. what had started out with the day in mile-per-hours was now reduced to a hefty muscle car dead on the side of the street. a good three miles back the engine had coughed, sputtered and wheezed and only now gave up its fight to keep going. Thankfully, bael had been headed toward the shop anyways, had he been going some where else, he would be dialing for a toe-truck. it was a real pain, a thorn in the young man side, and it made him scowl at the metal beast. All the smooth rides they had together only to have problems later on. scrunching up his nose briefly, bael exhaled and shoved the feeling aside, it didn't matter. what did matter was the challenge for getting the car to the place he wanted it while it's engine didn't currently work. all, bael had to do was push it for a good mile. by himself.

there wasn't any other options that he wanted to resort to, and his solution was a practical one. the take-charge personality within him was already too dominant to let him even consider help with something that could be so simply done. leaning casually and passively against the bumper of his car, bael rolled his shoulders and neck, preparing from the long haul head of him. it would be a good workout, he hadn't had one today yet anyways. stepping off the rear, he cast a shaded glance down the strip of road in front of him then back at the car. with the car already in neutral, he braced his body against the shining white painted metal.

sweat striped down the front planes of his chest and dusted the material over his shoulders. not only had he managed to push it a mile, but had also been able to at some point turn the wheel so he could pull the car into the parking lot of the garage. muscles ached, and there was a certain shine to his skin that hadn't been there early. where pride would have been swelling in his chest, he calmed the thought. the task still wasn't finished yet, the car itself still had to be dealt with, there was nothing to be proud about. later, he could think about that later. for now, bael needed to talk with the garage owner and gauge the damage to his wallet it would cause. calm, determined steps drew across the asphalt til they stopped at the concrete of the open garage. "Anyone here?" of course they just had to be busy, "I've got a car out front that needs looked at if you'd bother coming out to look for yourself," he called as he made his need for assistance clear. as he waited, he drew the hem of his grey Henley up to his face and wiped his forehead clear of any sweat shine. first impressions were always taught to be important, too bad he didn't actually care.

tagtarnie/kansas wordsfive one four
notesthat was a bit rambly...it'll get better

template by sophia. Graphic by me.

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[kansas riley rivers]

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WHEN YOU LISTEN TO MY WORDS
I SEE THEM SINKING IN

After weeks of the place being dead Kansas was beyond happy that she was getting overworked at the shop that day, though she never struggled for money thanks to her 'side job' she still hated to see her garage not roll over a profit and it seemed that this month was going to be such a month up until the last 2 days, she had no idea how or why but her phone had been ringing off the hook and the parking lot barely had a space in it. She reveled in this, she hated nothing more that sitting around idly day in and day out like she had been of recent weeks, and there was only so much tinkering on her own car and bike that she could do. It wasn't just the fact that she liked to be occupied that made her love busy days like today, it was simply the joy of getting in there and fixing the cars that came in, she had always been fascinated by cars, always loved playing around with them, taking a piece of junk and turning it into a roaring masterpiece. Of course most of the cars she got in were just simple issues, nothing exciting or special but she still marveled at each different car and the way each was different on the inside and out. She was the kind of girl who liked the simple things in life, nothing she did was really for the cash, her shop was for the chance to do what she loved and make a living from it, the car theft was for the kick it gave her and the feeling of being alive, the pay check after was just an added bonus. And it wasn't hard to tell this after you'd spoke to the girl for more than a few minutes, she was a plain old country girl who only needed money as a necessity to live.

Despite liking the rush of work, Kansas was glad to have her protege in to take some of the work load off her, she probably wasn't the best teacher in the world thanks to her lack of patience and the temper that rose up when she ran out of what little patience she had but the skills she possessed to pass on were worth teaching and the kid seemed to be getting used to her and her way of teaching after a month or so and learning pretty quick, he wasn't even squirming that much under the pressure of such a busy day. As she watched him plug away at the engine of an old Honda she wonder if this was how a proud mother felt, thought she highly doubted it, the woman didn't have a mothering bone in her body, not unless you were 4 legged and covered in fur. If anything, babies scared her and she was convinced they all looked like creepy little aliens that cried constantly and then kids just annoyed her, she wasn't even sure if she liked her own nephew, though she would never be dumb enough to voice that thought to her brother (or anyone else for that matter), no matter how blunt she may be, that would certainly be a nail in an already half buried coffin with him.

Kansas was tweeking away underneath a car when she heard the voice out front and was just wheeling herself out when the second shout came. "Not like I'm busy or anything" she grumbled to herself grabbing a cloth on her way out to attempt to clean some of the oil off her hands, to no avail. First impressions may have been a concern for some people but Kansas had never really cared what anyone though of her from first or long standing impressions, so the fact she had black smeared on her cheek and nose, the plait she had put in that morning had all but fallen out and the overalls she was wearing were torn and covered in oil and who knows what else didn't even cross her mind. "Am coming, am comin" she grumbled this louder in her thick southern drawl, loud enough for the demanding customer to hear her as she made her way to the front. "Right, hey, how ya' doing, am Kansas. What seems to be your..." she reeled off in a less than chirpy tone until she noticed how hot, bothered and sweaty the man in front of her was "Did you push that here? In this heat?" her slightly bored tone had dropped some and she raised her brow in a bewildered sort of way looking between the guy and his car a couple of times before he answered her.

Words: 600ish | Status: finished | Muse: sleepy | Notes: sorry if this sucks, or doesn't even make sense. 2am excuse.

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[nicholas bael white]

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i'm livin' life in the fast lane

As the young man waited for any sign of assistance, he looked around, surveying the scenery of the garage. To bael it appeared like any other garage; open spaces to put broken down cars for working and obvious tools laying around ready to be used. it was all really practical, and as he scrunched his eyes in thought, technical too. he mused with the idea that it was much like the work he did on crash victims, or just emergency victims. While he worked to quickly patch up the fragile human body, mechanics toiled to fix the cars with just as much care and passion. Even with that in mind, bael didn't feel any comradeship with them, not a hint. However, he did admire the work the maintenance men ad women did, he wouldn't have a car if he wasn't for them, so there was some sense of gratitude but it just wasn't very visible. it had top be calming, putting a car back together. It was the same feeling he get when he did his job, not that seeing people mangled was calming, but the work was a normalcy that he didn't get most times. It was half the reason he took as many shifts as he did, but only just half the reason. The other half had the paramedic swaying on his two feet for a moment. Just the thought of sleep was daunting. So far, and he was counting, two weeks had blurred into one long unending day, there had been nothing to differentiated the 24 hours between each day, it simply just continued out of his control.

A distinctly displeased voice snapped him out of this reflection, green-gold eyes catching a feminine form emerge and walk toward him. had the woman been more smudged and oiled, bael would have let her get away with the busy excuse, but as it were, she wasn't all that disheveled. Dismissing her appearance as she began to speak again, he slipped his palms into his jean's back pockets, as he watched her eyes. there was a change in her tone and in her eyes, bael had to adjust quickly to gauge her sudden shift. like hers, his eyes were throw over his shoulder to glance at the muscle car sitting still in the exact place he left it. "Yes," he said plainly as if he pushed his car around all the time in the summer. internally, he was curious as to why the how he got his car here really mattered when the what was wrong with it should be the more important question.

he supposed that the distraction to her earlier unhappy tone was a benefit for him, having a girl curious was better then having a girl annoyed. he wasn't the best when it came to women, or really people in general for that matter, but he knew the basics. and the basics said never make a women upset. Flicking his attention back to the attendant, bael decided to get right to the heart of what was troubling him, his voice rumbling he continued, "the engine has been stalling all week and just gave out a mile back, i'm here to have it looked at." the worry was that the whole engine had to be scraped, if that was the case then he would have to just get a new car. the thought wasn't really pleasing. Or there could just be something detached inside, which was much more preferable cause. it was more cost effective to replace a part then an entire car, besides bael wasn't really willing to give up his BOSS 302 1969 mustang, it had taken him a while to find someone that had a good one and he'd hate to go through all that again. "So, can you help me or not," he stated it bluntly, rather then really asking, he wanted to know if he was wasting his time.

tagtarnie/kansas wordssix five six notes the car. well, i feel this is a lot better

template by sophia. Graphic by me.

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[kansas riley rivers]

[div style="background-image:url(http://fotos.fotoflexer.com/14811e15048cb1fd2dee021f6e408130.jpg); height: 285; width: 350; font-size: 0; background: -moz-linear-gradient(bottom, #d5d2d2, rgba(255,255,255,0), rgba(0,0,0,0)), url(http://fotos.fotoflexer.com/f8bd9ff54ea1cdb11d673a377c5fb510.jpg);[br"]-webkit-mask-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(rgba(0,0,1,1)), to(rgba(0,0,0,0)));]hi

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WHEN YOU LISTEN TO MY WORDS
I SEE THEM SINKING IN

The way some people ran and some people punched walls when they were wound up and needed a release, Kansas used fixing cars, it calmed her, the methodical work of plugging away at a broken and bettered motor, it was a sure way of knowing how pissed off at you she was after an argument, if she just stormed to another room, she was probably going to forgive you in an hour or so but if she ran off to her garage to tinker with one of her beat down vehicle, you could be pretty sure she wouldn't be letting you off the hook for a while. It was also the place she went when she was feeling down, when she first moved to LA, right after her trip to the hospital thanks to the fight between her and her old man, she barely left the garage save when she was looking for jobs. It was a tough time for her, she knew no one in town, missed her home, couldn't get the words people around town had said about her when they saw the bruise marks on her neck. The only thing that calmed her then was working on her car. Of course the first mentioned things (running and punching walls) also worked for the brunette, they were usually the parts that came before the car, she'd argue with someone, hit a wall, or a table or just the person she was actually arguing with, then she would run from where ever she was to her garage, and then the working on the car. She was well know, especially back home for her temper, she didn't get the nickname of Crazy Kans for nothing and when she lost it, she usually lost it bad though it took a lot to bring that side out of her, she was much better at shrugging things and not giving a flying -excuse my french- fuck about much of anything.

The reason for the woman's less that cheery demeanor that day didn't lie with how busy it was but with the phone call she's had that morning, a call from one of her middle brothers giving her a hard time about the fact she had declined the invite to his wedding, to say it hadn't ended well was an understatement and had put her in quite the foul mood all day. She didn't mean to be rude to the man in front of her but his demand for immediate attention had knocked an already irritated nerve. His plain and straight to the point answer to her question made her switch back to professional mode, he clearly wasn't here for a conversation and she wasn't planning on making him have one if she didn't have to. Though she was still a little curious as to why he had pushed it, and how far, if it was just down the road she would have understood though he didn't seem the type that would work up such a sweat from a short trip, even in that weather. "Right," she replied, plainly and in a much more matter-of-factly fashion before she started to make towards the car, waiting for him to explain what kind of damage she was looking for as they walked.

As he talked she nodded a couple of times, if only to be polite and indicate she was listening to him but she stopped in her tracks when she caught onto the word 'mile' a little after he'd said it with the same bemused look across her face "Wait, what? You pushed this thing a whole mile?" she looked once again between him and the car a couple of times. She snapped herself out of it, remembering his fairly blunt reply to her last question and finished the few steps between her and the car "A mean, you never heard of a tow truck or somethin'?" she couldn't help but put that comment out there. She wouldn't have even charged for a mile trip if he'd called saying he was on his way when it happened. With that out of her system she turned her attention off the guy and back to his car "Anyway..." she popped the hood, "Yes I can help you, as long as it's not completely screwed" she insisted bluntly, she was always a little funny when it came to people asking things like that, it wasn't rare that she got guys in here who didn't think she could do the job because she was a woman so she was always quick to big herself up. She prepped up the hood and peered in for a little while, poking around, reaching over so far it looked as though she may fall in until she pulled herself back out to give a verdict "It's not good but it could be worse, you CDR valves ruined and your crankshaft is in some need of serious TLC, but it's fixable..." she reeled all this off, not knowing, or really caring, if he understood what she was going on about, if he asked she would explain in Layman's terms, or she'd just tell him a price, that was normally what people wanted to know, or in this case, not. It wasn't going to be a cheap fix, or a quick one.

Words: 900ish | Status: finished | Muse: sleepy | Notes: I'm just gonna point out, I have have no idea about cars so i literally just googled car engines and pick 2 parts to be broken.

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[nicholas bael white]

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i'm livin' life in the fast lane

Bael wasn’t much of a talker. The smaller the conversation, the more at peace he was. Or as close to peace one can get without sleeping. What ever the cause, bael didn’t like to talk; larges groups of people were worse than just one, but one was still enough to make him express the bare minimum. It was hard to rationalize just how much other people talked. Some could chatter like auctioneers. Some could stutter and stumble till it took five minutes to just get an idea out. Some could even talk so much that the whole direction of the conversation would a do a 180. It was confusing as hell and hard to follow, but he’d sit there completely out of his element and take it like he understood every word. And he didn’t understand every, it was just that his interest was never quite up to par. Those people made him want to just isolate himself again and purge all the unnecessary words from his system; a good round of pumping iron or run through the neighborhood would do him good. Luckily the brunette that came out to help him wasn’t one the described people, and it had bael rolling his shoulders in ease. She seemed to accept the answer without really asking for more about it. Then again, he wasn’t the best with judging people’s behavior, so he figure there was a percentage that he could be wrong.

His boots followed hers and he walked back to the car in question. Getting close to it, he scowled at the object. It had decided not to work at the most inconvenient time ever; it deserved a little resentment from the man. When the brunette spoke up after his request, he shot her an arched eyebrow. Was it so hard to imagine that he could use physical force to do something? She was acting like this whole ordeal was impossible, but it wasn’t. Bael crunched his brows together as he looked at her blatantly, he didn’t need to deal with her confusion right now. And almost immediately, the conversation shifted again and that little fact of how far he had pushed his car was swept under the rug. But as that passed, the man’s brows sunk lower and his arms folded annoyingly over his torso as she mentioned a tow-trunk. There was an urge, somewhere within him, that made him want to bark out that, yes, he knew what a tow-trunk was and, no, he didn’t need the help. He could handle it himself. But after a second to gauge the reaction he would get from that, he just inhaled calmly and stared at her like the comment flew right over his dark hair. Bael wanted to blame the lack of sleep on his sharp patience. He usually had a higher tolerance; however, when he didn’t sleep for days on end, his nerves and attitude got short. Reining his control back in, he waited, standing stiffly next to the hood of his car. With the brunette’s hair under the hood, he stole the moment to close his eyes and just inhale and exhale smoothly in that certain way that mimicked sleep. Instinct told him that it would take a few moments to search his engine over for any problem, so he’d use the time he had to at least mellow his mind.

After what could have only been a minute later, that same sharp, business tone hit the young man’s ears again. Blinking slowly, he flicked his attention back to her before letting the green-gold irises fall toward the engine as she explained. It was complete gibberish, plain and simple. No nod, no confused quirk of an eyebrow, he just took it in stride and trusted that she knew what she was talking about. It was her job after all, it wasn’t like people argued with him when he was patching them up, they just wanted to no die. And right now bael just wanted to make is car work again. “Okay,” he started, letting his hands fall back to his sides loosely, “how much are those repairs going to cost me?” that was the biggest concern, he made the average pay check and repairs were always expensive and could break a wallet. Leaning on the edge of the white and black mustang, he tried to fish out his leather fold from his back pocket. Pausing half-way through the action the young man added, “How long is a repair like that going to take you? An hour? Two hours? Because I’m going to need my car for work later tonight.” That had been rather snappy. He didn’t mean it but it just flew out, and now he wasn’t sure how to amend the statement.

tagtarnie/kansas wordsseven nine five notes the car. xP i don't know much about cars either lol

template by sophia. Graphic by me.

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[kansas riley rivers]

[div style="background-image:url(http://fotos.fotoflexer.com/14811e15048cb1fd2dee021f6e408130.jpg); height: 285; width: 350; font-size: 0; background: -moz-linear-gradient(bottom, #d5d2d2, rgba(255,255,255,0), rgba(0,0,0,0)), url(http://fotos.fotoflexer.com/f8bd9ff54ea1cdb11d673a377c5fb510.jpg);[br"]-webkit-mask-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(rgba(0,0,1,1)), to(rgba(0,0,0,0)));]hi

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WHEN YOU LISTEN TO MY WORDS
I SEE THEM SINKING IN

Given the opportunity, Kansas could talk for days on end, she wasn't a fan of silence between people or just in general, if she was home alone she would constantly be making some kind of noise whether it be singing to herself, tapping counters and drumming on counters, whistling or things of the like. If it was for long periods though she usually stuck the radio on or the tv, just for background noise other than the odd car driving by. Silence creeped her out when she was alone, she had a pretty active imagination and a keen ear so if it was quite and she picked up a random creek of floorboards of other, unexplained noises she tended to get carried away with ideas of what it was and scared herself. Not that she was scared of much at all, she could more than hold her own, as the guy a few years back had found when he broke into her house to be greeted by a baseball bat and a fearless brunette, the police hadn't know what to do when they turned up to find the trespasser curled up in the fetal position with a few broken ribs and an angry Kansas stood over him, all she'd said was that he was lucky she'd reached for the bat and not something more lethal. When it came to silences between people she always found it made things awkward, if people weren't talking she often felt the need to fill the empty air with some kind of chit-chat. All this said, you had to give her credit for knowing when she should shut up though and she wasn't bad at gauging those who weren't as fond of small talk and conversing like the man in front of her right then. Or at least she tried to hold her tongue, it's the thought that counts after all.

On the subject of how the man got the car their, the woman's confusion wasn't in the how he had done it, he seemed fairly fit and though it was a fair way, it was certainly doable, evidently. Her confusion was more focused on the why, it didn't seem like a logical -or a sane- decision to push a car a whole mile when there were other options, what also baffled her was his reaction to her confusion, like he thought that was normal? She shook the thought from her head and decided it best just to move on since he seemed less than impressed with her reaction and questioning though she still wanted to get the bottom of why. 'Maybe he's just a little crazy, shouldn't go throwing around judgment' she mentally talked to herself as she often did, even when she was trying to be quite and not yabber on like she knew she could she was still carrying on in her own little head, she'd even managed to figure out how to keep her own inner monologue going and actually concentrate and conversations with actual other people.

It hadn't taken Kansas long to figure what was up with the less than talkative guys car because she already had a clue of what she was looking for, even with his less than descriptive explanation of what had happened. She had been working on cars since she could comprehend what a car was, well maybe that was a slight exaggeration but from a young age, so she knew her way around a car engine better than she knew the back of her hand, she spent a lot more time looking at engines than she did the back of her hand for a start. It wasn't just her experience that gave her the edge, she always had good instincts, or so she was told, she could tell what was up with a car just by the sound of it half the time. As she rattled off what was up with the car and as he looked at her like she was talking Cantonese she took another peak at the car though she knew she wasn't going to find anything else. She was about to answer his question on price when he talked again and asked when it would be out by, she couldn't help but let out a snorted laugh before she slapped her hand to her mouth when she realized how rude that reaction was. "Am sorry." she almost sounded sincere and it would have been were it not for his less than polite asking. "But yeah, no, honey." she said leaning against the car, she had got sick of playing the professional business woman part because it really wasn't her and he was starting to grind on her already agitated nerves again. "Sorry to break it to you but you're gonna have to find some other way of getting to work, unless you wanna push this thing all the way there too." she said sarcastically, sure he wouldn't take it well but at then end of her caring either way. "Even if I wasn't up to my eyeballs in other broken motors a repair like this, it's gonna be a while, I don't have a Mustang CDR valves tree in the back you know, it'll have to be ordered, and then fitting it isn't an easy job either, it's not like a spark plug." she knew what she was telling him he wasn't going to wanna hear but the mildly attitudy way she was telling him probably wasn't helping. "As for cost, you're looking at, say" she paused to do the math in her head, not a strong area for her, or a quick one, "Six, Six Fifty? Maybe more depending what price I get for the new valve" she said placing her hand on the front of the car and leaning. He wouldn't get a better quote than that anywhere else, her criminal side of work also meant she knew people, people who could get her things for lower, not quite legal prices.

Words: mehish | Status: finished | Muse: eh | Notes: I suck so bad at first meeting threads, sorry this sucked.

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