She pulls the shutter doors of the garage down with a great crash, the tools on the small table beside the door shudder as the latch closes. She walks around the side of the car, inspecting it closely. She looks at a few minor scratches and dents, notes a few chips in the paint, and a small crack in the front windshield. Nothing too major so far. She pulls a pen from the messy bun on top of her head, jots down the notes on her clipboard and returns the pen to its hair-nest.
She opens the driver-side door, fumbles for a moment, then finds the hood latch and pulls it. The hood shudders, but doesn't lift. She slams the drivers door closed and walks slowly around the front of the truck, her heavy boots ringing out as they strike against the cool cement of the shop floor. She reaches the front of the hood, slipping a finger between the hood and the grill and feeling around for a moment. She finds the safety latch, she wraps her finger around it and pulls in one smooth movement she lifts the hood of the hatchback's front hood and holds it up, letting the hydraulics in the hood keep it there. The car is jacked up about a foot and a half, which would provide her room to get underneath later, but makes it a little annoying to reach the various levers and buttons.
She looks over the motor, noting some dings and grease, but nothing major broken, then checks the oil. Drawing out the dipstick, drying it carefully, before reinserting it and drawing it out again. It's incredibly low. Typical. Drivers hear some weird noise driving home and bring their cars into the shop without a second thought, having not checked their oil in years.
The only choice here is how much to charge him. He'd brought the car to her shop late and the lights out front of the shop had been dim the last few weeks, so she hadn't gotten a good look at him. She tucks the clipboard under her arm and turns towards the front office.
She opens the door slowly, drawing the clipboard from her under-arm but stopping before she reads the name aloud. He's obviously the only other person here at this time of night.
"Sir, it's-" She pauses for a moment, looking the man up and down as he turns to her. He's handsome, not a muscular man but a sturdy build, gentle brown eyes and hair that rides that line between a light brown and dark blonde. She quickly sees how her night could go different. "I just wanted to get a little more information." She smiles at him, he immediately smiles back, standing from his chair and taking a step towards her. He stretches a bit as he adjusts to standing.
"Sure, yea, what do you need to know?" He slips his hands into his pockets as he readies his mind to recall the three things he knows about cars. Refilling wiper fluid, changing the air filter, and keeping his brake light lubricant topped off. He's pretty sure his dad made at least one of those up.
"First off, where were you at when you heard the noise?" She slides the clipboard from under her arm and holds it at the ready, pulling the pen from her hair again.
"Yea, maybe 5-10 minutes up the road, a real bad rattling- kinda knocking sound?" He reaches a hand up to scratch his scalp, clearly nervous at the incredibly basic question. "Honestly I was excited to see your shop, I thought for sure I was going to have to have it towed or something."
"How much maintenance do you do on the ol' girl?" She jots down notes, but doesn't actually write anything, just scribbling little circles on the page.
"I-uhhh-" He stammers and searches for the words, "Look I'm sorry I'm a computer programmer, I don't know shit about cars. I do very little." He looks down to the floor for a moment, then back up to her. Noticing for the first time her beautiful skin and dark brown hair. He looked her up and down for a moment, taking in how her olive jumpsuit hugged her curves and how the top unzipped just enough to show the top of her tank-top underneath and the little cleavage it showed above it's hem, but still left so much to the imag- he stopped himself. This isn't the time or the place, is it?
"Ok, interesting, do you drive through here often? Boyfriend or girlfriend live around here?" She tenses up, wondering if the question strained credulity too much. She pushes herself to relax, to not make the situation weird if he sniffs her out. "Or mom, family, work maybe?"
He pauses for a moment, hesitating to answer as he searches her body language for her true intentions. He flashes a slight smile, the slowly responds.
"No no." He says quietly his eyes dropping to the ground, then flicking back up to meet hers. She's smiling now, just a little but it's clearly a smile. "No family around here. No girlfriend at all. I was in the area on a date- well it was supposed to be a date. She never showed so-" He held out his hands in an awkward shrug.
"Oh well- that's rough." Her smirk shines through a little more than anticipated. He sees it, picking up that something is off. "Well would you be willing to come on back and give me a hand?" She leans back on the counter of the customer waiting area, her posture loosening somewhat as she does.
"Uh- yea sure is it something bad?" He asks nervously, confused on what the vibe in the room is.
"Well not so bad, more I could just use a hand. Sal would normally be here to help but he's out for his anniversary tonight, so it's just me here. No one else." She lets another smirk slip through as she kicks away from the counter, turning and heading back towards his car. "Leave your coat there, it's warm enough back here you won't need it."
He tosses his jacket on the old plastic chair and follows her through the door into the shop. He can't help but watch her hips sway as she walks, he swears they're swaying far more than they did when she walked into the customer area, but puts it out of his mind.
She routes around the car, leaning against the front grill, a slight but devious smile.
"How about this, you need to learn some about basic maintenance, and I'm bored sitting around here all night." She turns, leaning forward over the exposed engine of the car. He settles against a long metal table to the side of the car, watching her reach into the car's guts and brush some gooey lump of dirt off of a plastic cap. "So you help me fix your car, grab me tools and learn a bit about some of the basics, and I'll get your car running for free. Sound like a deal?" She turns to him as the sentence ends, looking him up and down one more time. He's dressed simply. A loose long-sleeve shirt, simple and clean blue-jeans.
"Yea-uhh yea sounds good." His hand reaches up, gently rubbing at the back of his neck, looking from her, to the large air compressor behind her, then back to her. He can't tell if he's picking up a romantic vibe, or just a bored 24 hour employee."I can think of at least a hundred worse ways to spend my night."
"Alright, well lets get started then!" She turns back to the car, a practically imperceptible hop in her step as she reaches into the car, grabbing a hold of a small plastic cap and giving it a firm turn. "Hold this." She reaches out her hand towards him, a small yellow cap in her hand smudged in years- maybe decades- of engine grease and grime.
He takes a couple steps, closing the distance between them and reaches forward, grabbing the small cap and holding it out in front of himself.
"Nailed it." He said with sarcastic satisfaction. He tried to look over the small cap in his hands, but she was stretching across the engine just beyond, creating a powerful distraction for him. As she stretched, looking over the engine, he watched the material of her jumpsuit pull taught over her ass, outlining it's form. He catches himself, again questioning the vibe he's picking up and immediately flicking his eyes up to the ceiling. "So this is a cap or something?" She pulls back away from the car righting herself and grabbing a rag from the table and wiping her hands off idly.
"You identified a cap!" She says, and incredibly patronizing tone in her voice, "Great job! That's your oil cap, you take that off to refill your oil when it's low." She stops turning to him and extending a hand up towards his head. She gently places a hand on top of his head, which she can just barely reach, and quietly speaks.
"Good boy." Her entire tone changes from that of a slightly annoyed night-shift worker to a slick and sultry register. Her hand lingers a moment on his head, his eyes begin to scan up and down her form, looking for a clue as to what is happening here. Before he can crack the code, she retracts her hand and turns back to the car. "There's still some oil in there, so we'll need to drain that. Something tells me if you've run low enough on oil for it to be an issue, you probably haven't changed your oil in a while."
"I-uh- yea ok." He's a little stunned as she so quickly pivots back to her work, suddenly a true professional again. She grabs a creeper board from under the table in front of the car, placing it on the floor and lying down on it.