AN: Sooo, this was me. Written for round two at atlantis_lvw, prompt: "repairs, no more than 400 words".
The Useless Little Garage in the Middle of Nowhere
Later, John would say it was luck that had his car break down just outside the dirty little town of Atlantis, Ohio.
After he'd gotten towed to a crammed garage by some weird-haired guy who'd been muttering words with far too many consonants and little to no vowels during the entire ride, a dirt-streaked mechanic announced that "two of the cylinders are dead, your valve sealings are porous, several of your pistons are worn out, and how the hell did you even get this far in that death trap?"
To all of which John simply shrugged and asked a) how long, and b) how much. Then he asked again, pointing out that all he had were two hundred bucks. The consonant guy had snorted in disgust and left, and the mechanic had shot him a pitying glance before pointing out that "this is a workshop, not the Salvation Army".
Then they'd had dirty sex on the backseat of his car, after which the mechanic had agreed that if John could keep up that performance for the next few nights until the engine was fixed, he'd be satisfied with 150 bucks.
For a self-claimed genius at engineering, Rodney – the mechanic – wasn't all that good at repairing stuff. After he replaced the valve sealings, there was oil in the camshafts. Then he fixed the cylinders, and the whole fuel injection system went haywire. Finally, right after he'd swapped the cranks, the spark plugs turned out to be rusty.
And every night, John paid for whatever work Rodney had done on his car that day.
More often than not, they'd hang out together before or after sex, catching a movie or just talking about life, the universe and all that other stuff. Or John would watch Rodney work, broad hands and long fingers deftly fixing whatever problem was presented to them, with only one exception. John's car.
And as the third week rolled around, John grew tired of pretending they were in a business relationship.
"This car is never going to be fixed, is it?"
Rodney eyed him warily.
"Do you have a problem with that?"
"Not really, no."
John assumed that there were worse things than settling down with a cranky, smart, funny, infuriatingly stubborn guy in the middle of nowhere. But he made Rodney bottom that night.
After all, he didn't really have a bill to pay anymore.