Broke up with my Foreign Car [Bobby]

[RIN COOPER]

There it was again, that shudder right when she got to the top of second gear. Rin scowled and turned left instead of right, looping back around the access road she'd been on so that she could push the Volvo up and down the gears again and listen for it, feel for it.

Yeah, she wasn't imagining things. The shudder was there, and the grinding in the gears that some people probably wouldn't even hear yet but she knew only too well. Rin's '67 Volvo 122 was a project car, one she and her stepfather had worked on together for years. Rin had seen the humpty-bumpty, absurd looking Swedish car with a For Sale sign and a four hundred dollar OBO price tag sitting on a street corner near her junior high school when she was thirteen and had fallen in love. She'd dragged her Dad down with her to look at it, wanting to get him to tell her all about the rustbucket car and informing him with all the certainty of a pubescent suburban princess that she wanted that car when she turned sixteen, definitely.

Oscar being the kind of man he was, he hadn't even tried to argue with Rin about how she'd probably feel differently about it in three years when all her friends were driving Cabriolet convertibles and new Beetles. Instead he'd bought the Volvo, had it towed back to the house, and started the process of doing a frame-on restoration with Rin's help.

They'd pulled the Volvo's anemic 66 horsepower 4-speed and replaced it with a Buick 215, upgraded the brakes and front end, put in a better transmission, and then scrubbed the entire car down to the bare steel before doing a cosmetic revamp that left it a deep, rich silver color that looked nothing like the original Volvo silver paint but which Rin loved dearly, especially with the bright chrome and the well-restored black vinyl interior. It wasn't the kind of car that most young women would go crazy for, but Rin adored her car, everything about it, and thanks to Oscar's unending patience she also knew everything about her car.

Including the sad fact that it burned through transmissions faster than it ought to. It was the V8, that badass 215 just munched the Lokar transmissions. Stupid things were slushboxes anyway, they'd always meant to put a better mount in but hadn't ever been able to find the parts when they needed them. This time, though, she was taking a little time and doing it right. Looks like she was spending a night or two in South Dakota.

And so the next morning, armed with her toolbox, Google Maps to a couple of local pick-and-pull type places, and a determination to deal with this transmission thing once and for all, Rin set out to find herself a T-5.

The bus boy at the Chili's where she'd had dinner the night before had recommended a place called Singer's Salvage. He said that the guy who ran the place was a little cranky but he knew his stuff. Cranky Rin could deal with, as long as he knew what he was talking about, so she drove out to the Salvage Yard, wincing a little every time she had to change gears. The grind was getting louder. She could actually probably get another thousand miles out of it before the tranny went entirely, but Rin would never do that to her baby, never.

She pulled in through the big chain link gates and to a drive that sat against a big rundown house surrounded by outbuildings. A peeling tin sign said to honk for service, so she blew a soft blast on her horn to see if anybody wanted to emerge.

[atrb=border,0,true] Tagged: Bobby Location: Singer's Auto Salvage : Sioux Falls, SD Time of Day: Early Afternoon Soundtrack: Fairy Tale - Sara Bareilles OOC: One of her several areas of extreme stubbornness revolves around her car.

[BOBBY SINGER]

Bobby had been puttering around the small confinde area that made up his kitchen making a small enough breakfast to feed himself and brew a pot of coffee. He wanted to get his basic need of food and coffee met before he started on any of the work he needed to get done which was a very long list of assorted jobs around the junkyard. It was probably going to take him a good chuck of the morning to even get halfway through with the list before he started getting calls from his fellow hunters.

After he had finished his breakfast he moved his dishes and coffee cup to the sink and left them there as he would get to them later on as he needed to get a headstart on the cars outside. Walking from the kitchen he headed to the backdoor and stepped through to get to his work station that was an open aired area with a simple work bench near by.

Picking up the nearest lest dirty rag off the work bench he walked over to the car that he had been recently working on. That was until the Winchester boys called and had him spend the last two days scouring up some obscure lore that they needed for finishing the job they had been working. He was rather close with those two boys but sometimes it got on his nerves how much they had him doing favors for him when he had needed to be working on cars to bring in his paycheck. Which mostly helped funded his research and other necessities that he needed to take care of around his house.

Bobby let out a deep sign just thinking about Dean's call that he was sure that was going to come in sometime that day. He forced himself to refocus and get started on fixing the engine on the current project car he had infront of him. In no time he found himself falling into his usually work habits where the world slowly became only him and the engine he was working on. Which lasted for a while until a car hork brought him out of his focus. He wondered who it could be that was holking and he hoped that it was not Rufus, as he did not want to see that son of a bitch anytime soon.

Grabbing at the rag he had brought with him he quickly wiped his hands down and started heading towards the front gate to the junk yard to see who in the hell was honking for him.

[RIN COOPER]

[atrb=style, width: 500px; height: 400px; background: #0a090b url(http://teaandheresy.com/moon/rin02back.jpg) no-repeat center bottom, bTable][atrb=valign,bottom][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellspacing,15,true][atrb=style, padding: 15px; color: #aa9a90; width: 280px; background-color: #0a090b; opacity: 0.7; filter:alpha(opacity=70); border: 1px solid #857266; -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 12px #000;-webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 12px #000;box-shadow: 3px 3px 12px #000;] When Rin saw somebody coming around the far side of one of the buildings she cut off the Volvo and got out, closing the door with a solid >thunk< behind her. Rin was dressed to work on her car, in a faded black camisole and ragged old jeans. Of course, she was still herself so she also had a little makeup on, and a cutey Day of the Dead necklace, and while her hair was braided tightly in a single long plait that fell down her back, the end was tied off with a jaunty red ribbon bow. There was a fading bruise around her throat, sized about like a jumbo economy-sized demon had wrapped his hand around her neck to hold in her in place. It was characteristic of Rin that she hadn't tried to hide it, with clothing or cosmetics. That night in Lincoln was real, it had happened and she'd survived it and she wasn't going to be ashamed. She smiled at the older bearded man who was approaching her, leaning back against the front fender of her car until he was close enough for easy conversation without shouting or whatever. "Hey. How you doing this morning?" She watched his approach, making a certain number of snap judgments about him just in the time it took him to get up to where she was at. Rin might be a magnet for trouble but she actually had good people sense and what she got off this guy added up to Safe. Sure, his hands were a little grubby and his trucker cap more than a little, but his bearing was calm and direct, and the wrinkles around his mouth spoke of hard life and good humor. People talk about the eyes being the windows of the soul, but she'd never entirely bought into that. Mouths told her so much more. Our mouths are mobile and directed, we move them ourselves. We choose the shapes of our words and the width of our smiles, and because we move them so much Rin had always found that they showed personality far more cleanly than the eyes ever could. Because this man, presumably the Singer of Singer's Salvage, had a kindly-shaped mouth inside the frame of his shaggy beard, Rin's smile widened a notch and her words picked up a little extra friendliness as she explained what brought her out here so early on a Thursday. "My trannie's going. I'm looking to replace it with a T-5, but if I order a new one I'll get some TREMEC piece of crap. I'm looking for a real T-5, a Borg-Warner, maybe out of an early eighties Mustang or Capri if you've got it?" A quick eye-roll, humorous and self-deprecating both. "Truth? I'm not sure I can mod it myself or I'd look for one of the ones out of an old Chevy S-10." She reached around behind her and popped the hood, propping it up on the stick to show him her engine block, displaying the way that the rebuilt 215 filled the compartment at a much tighter fit than the original engine. It was a nice clean install, her Dad wasn't one for skipping steps. "You think you can help me out?"

[atrb=valign,bottom]

[cs=2][atrb=style, height: 40px; ]