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Title: Car Trouble
Writing Date: 2018.
Rating: Gen.
Warnings: None.
Fandom: AU: Universe.
Characters: Uri Reiss, Kenny Ackerman.
Summary: Sometimes disasters can turn out to be blessings in disguise.
Traffic stretched out down the length of the road like a multi-coloured snake, occasionally emitting beeps and honks of indignation as if that would help it gain momentum. It was barely moving.
Uri sighed, glancing at the clock. 8:37. The illuminated numbers glowed mockingly at him from in amongst the half a dozen other lights and nonsense in the dashboard. His appointment was at half past nine. He tapped his fingers on the wheel as his car crawled forward at roughly half the walking speed of a geriatric hedgehog. His eyes found the clock again, unbidden, and he checked his watch to be sure it hadn't stopped, despite both being connected to the internet. It was always possible the entire internet had stopped. It would be his bloody luck.
8:38.
"Come on," he said to himself. This was not how he'd imagined spending his well-planned Friday morning. He liked to plan. He liked things to go according to plan. He was the sort of man who would happily have a ride-by-ride itinerary at a theme park, with planned food breaks, to maximise what could be done in a day. He didn't like when plans went awry.
He'd turned the radio off twenty minutes ago; he felt it helped him see better. It helped him concentrate, at any rate. He reached wearily for the travel mug in the cupholder, but stopped himself, partly because he'd remembered why he'd let it sit there slowly going tepid, and partly because movement finally seemed to be happening again. Further up, cars were disappearing out of sight. At last, a good thing.
His morning so far had been a disaster.
He'd been comfortable in his big bed, warm and wrapped in the quilt, until the rattle of his bedroom door handle had shattered the peace. In response, he had turned over and buried his face in the pillow, trying to ignore it. When it had come again followed by a pitiful sound that would probably come through the other end of a translation program from cat as "please, I'm dying... it's been eight whole hours... please, help me, I'm not long for this world...", he'd opened one eye.
He knew that meow. It was Sina, his resident furry drama queen.. The other two weren't like that. They were patient. Sina... she was demanding. However, she wasn't usually like that until at least eight, not unless a Daylight Savings switchover happened, and that was almost a month off yet.
Thinking back, he could pinpoint the act of picking up his phone as the exact moment at which his morning had gone decidedly pear-shaped.
He'd found it turned off, on the wrong end of an automatic update. When he'd finally got the cursed thing back on, he had seen that the time had gone past what his alarm had been set for by twenty six minutes. Nearly half seven... with his appointment not until half past nine, he still had time, even if the 'sit about like a zombie with a cup of coffee in his hand' timeslot had been taken up with surprise extra sleep.
He had showered, only to find he was out of shower gel. He'd meant to replace that. It wasn't a problem, shampoo would do the job, it just meant he'd be smelling rather more flowery than he'd intended. He was sure his optician wouldn't judge him too hard for it.
Drying, dressing, teeth cleaning and the rest, had all been done at breakneck speed, until he'd found himself in the kitchen, with three starving cats looking at him sadly from floor level. He'd fed them while he waited for water to heat and toast to brown, and then let them into the garden, crossing them off the list along with the rest of the morning's chores.
Just as he'd brought his coffee cup to his lips he'd caught sight of the clock. 8:04. Nope, too close. He wanted to get to the optician with buckets of time to spare, simply because he hated being late. After pouring it into his travel mug, he'd let himself out of the house, toast between his teeth.
Then he'd gone back in, grabbed his car keys before he ran out of time with the house alarm's grace period, and tried again.
Breakfast on the go it was, then. He had stuck his mug into the holder and pulled out of his drive, carefully trying not to bite too hard lest his toast fall and leave sticky prints on his clothes. He'd done well, and it wasn't until he had almost finished it that he was forced to sacrifice his tie on the altar of the falling marmalade gods.
Oh well, he'd thought. A tie was probably too formal anyway. He'd stowed it in his glovebox just before seeing the sign informing him of a diversion up ahead, one that would take him directly into the school run traffic.
He'd sighed, picked up his coffee for a fortifying sip ... and grimaced as he realised he'd forgotten to add sugar. It had been left to sit there since. Caffeine wasn't worth that bitter taste, not that early in the morning.
Still, at least the traffic was moving now. He'd make it to the optician and get to work afterwards with plenty of time to spare. Besides, it wasn't was if anything else could go wrong, he thought, foolishly, as he pulled to a stop at a red light.
Crunch.
The car lurched forward sharply, pulling the seatbelt taut against Uri's chest. He felt the edge of the polyester ribbon scrape against his neck as his head snapped forward, the locking mechanism the only thing coming between him and a bloody nose courtesy of the steering wheel.
It was probably lucky the airbag hadn't deployed.
The noise, he thought, quite distantly, was a bit like a colossal drinks can being squashed underfoot.
"Ow," he muttered, straightening up. His back hurt. His neck, too. What on earth had-- "No, no, no, no, no..."
That definitely was not a can. It was the back end of his car. His new car. His month old car he'd been so excited to get, in just the right grey colour, with the perfect seats...
He looked into the rear view mirror at what was behind him. An old car, red and with the boxy shape of something that had barely crawled out of the mid-90's, sat there, glaring at him with its dated round little lights as if it was annoyed that he'd dared to be on the same road as it. He flicked on his hazards and unclipped the seatbelt, a little hurt, but mostly unharmed, determined to assess the damage and exchange insurance details even if it would take time he didn't really have.
He got out, pulling his phone from his pocket, and walked around the back.
Oh god.
The owner was already out, lurking at the back of Uri's car, and the front of his own. He didn't look particularly friendly.
Uri approached, not particularly happy about walking up to him, all things considered. Why couldn't the other driver have been a little old lady, or distracted mum? Why did he have to be somebody who looked like he'd put "bar fight participation" in the hobby section of his CV? He started at his shoes -- boots -- and then looked up, all the way up, into a scowling face half hidden by the shadow cast by the brim of a hat. He was probably a few years shy of forty, at a guess, with slightly too long hair for a man of his age. He had a scruff of beard, like he'd tried to make the effort but his growth pattern had called in sick that day, and wore an air of 'generally menacing' like a second skin.
Uri bit back the all too British impulse to apologise for being an inconvenience and tried to ignore the fact that his hands were already trembling slightly in anticipation of an argument he really, really didn't want to have. Or that could have been because he'd just been in a minor car accident, he wasn't entirely sure.
"Sorry, can I just..?" he said, scooting across him to inspect the back of his car. The damage wasn't as bad as it could be. He'd expected crumpling after that noise, but it wasn't too serious, even if it was far from perfect. There was a scrape under the number plate that stood out sharply against the grey paint in the red of the car behind, like claw marks down a flank. The plate itself was fine, and the four silver rings above had escaped damage, but... the scratch...
He took a photo and turned his attention to the other car, snapping one that showed the damage there, too. He wasn't overly worried, just dismayed. Nobody would argue that he was in the wrong when he'd been stationary, and at a stop light at that. It isn't like anyone would buy anybody claiming that he'd performed a 'smash for cash' scam, not in a nearly brand new Audi R8.
"Oi," the owner of the red car said. His voice was deep, deeper than Uri's, and it sounded a little like he gargled with gravel, or potentially an entire shingle beach.
Uri stiffened, and turned. "Yes?" he said, adopting the well-practiced calm-but-firm demeanour he'd cultivated over his career of dealing with difficult people. Being a dentist introduced you to all sorts of interesting personality problems, especially the ones he dealt with during his NHS days. Toothache could do a lot to sour a person's mood.
The man looked down at him, eyes narrowed. "What're you doing taking pictures of the car?" He demanded, gesturing somewhat performatively at the front of his vehicle.
Calling it that was probably doing it a kindness. "Box on wheels" was probably closer to the truth. Close up, it became apparent that it was probably only running on willpower alone. It was, at Uri's best guess, a Volvo 850 that had started out well looked after, but had almost been driven into the ground by a later owner. Probably this one. It was only a surprise that all of the doors matched.
"I'm going to need them for my insurance company," Uri said, not breaking eye contact.
He must have looked foolish, looking up at the man and trying not to seem intimidated. It was rather easier when the scary person was in a chair, with their mouth open, and a half-numb face. This guy was easily a clear foot taller than him, leading Uri to fairly assume that he had to be at least six one, though he was probably taller. He looked mean, standing there in a trenchcoat, and boots that had probably kicked more than a few teeth in, something that made Uri cringe especially, while he himself dithered in a well-fitted suit, all the while still extremely aware that his optician's appointment was ticking ever closer.
"You should do the same," he pointed out, lightly. He took in a short breath and asked: "Do you want to call the police, or should I?"
It didn't have to be done now, it could have been done at any point within twenty four hours of the accident, but now was easier. The didn't take long to arrive, and had the two move their respective cars out of the way of the traffic, and went about sorting things as far as they were able.
The police, fortunately for Uri, were perfectly nice and understanding, even if they seemed less than impressed at the other driver managing to hit a car at a red light. They made extra sure to check his license, and that car's MOT status, but otherwise they did their job, though they had recommended that Uri go to A&E to check him for whiplash, even if he'd declined. It wasn't that bad, he'd insisted.
The other man, it turned out, was a mechanic who was insured under his garage. He'd introduced himself as 'Kenny' during their exchange of details, surname 'Ackerman'. He'd not been as scary as he looked, though Uri could feel his eyes on him as the police went over everything. He happened to be test driving the vehicle of a customer after the repair his colleague had done the night before, to make sure that everything was up to snuff. Apparently it wasn't, because the brakes had halfway failed, and he wasn't happy about there needing to be another repair done. He wasn't going to be driving away from the scene, the police told him, and it seemed to Uri that it took every fibre of the man's being not to make a sarcastic reply. He'd have to call the garage to get the car towed. With dodgy brakes, there was no way they'd allow him to drive anywhere else in it.
"No shit," he'd said.
Uri had walked away from the scene with details, a card for the garage that Kenny-the-Mechanic worked at (he'd given his own in exchange, but the Reiss Dental Clinic likely held rather less weight in a car smash), and the assurance from his own insurance company that he probably wouldn't be losing his no claims bonus, because it was quite likely that after investigation, it would turn out that he wasn't at fault. It must have been something of a novelty to say that to the driver of an Audi.
He even made it to his opticians appointment, and only half an hour late. After apologising and giving the reason for his tardiness, they decided to waive the late fee and slot him into an cancellation's place three appointments after his, so it hadn't set him back too far.
He stopped at a Starbucks before carrying on to work, rather glad he'd scheduled it for half day only. He had originally intended it to be a gift for dealing with his opticians appointment, and the doubtless bad news about his likelihood of needing glasses, as well as giving him time for paperwork, and lunch, but now it was just time he would use to recover. The queue for coffee was rather long in spite of the mid-morning hour, but he didn't complain. A wait was the least of his worries that morning. Instead, he ordered himself a coffee that was more sugary and rather fancier than he'd usually bother with, and certainly not something he'd recommend to any of his patients who wanted to keep their teeth intact, and what he knew was the drink of choice for his receptionist. By the time he got to work it was almost twelve.
Frieda looked up from the desk, her usual smile in place, and Uri watched it slip away in real time. "You're late thi-- Uncle Uri, you look awful."
Uri could have laughed. Instead, he smiled, heaving a sigh. The weight of his full cup of coffee was comforting in his hand, and he put the other one on the desk for his niece. Frieda looked more like her mother than her father, Uri's brother. She had the large, pale eyes of the Reiss family, but her black hair was all her mother's side.
"I have had the worst morning," he admitted, lifting the desk-flap and going through to the staff room.
Frieda put the "ring for service" bell on the counter and followed him through, picking up her coffee on the way, her delight at being given a free Starbucks smothered by concern.
"What on earth happened?" She asked, watching him patiently he sat down at his desk. Her forehead creased when he winced and held a hand to his neck.
"Well," Uri said, taking a fortifying sip from the cup. It was much better than the first disaster. "I overslept, and it rather went downhill from there."
Frieda's expression grew steadily more and more horrified as he went through his day, mentioning everything from his accident with the marmalade to the one with the car. It was like an onion, problems and accidents layered over each other, so that once you picked one off, there'd be another underneath. Uri rather hoped he'd reached the last layer already.
"But the company said that with an incident like mine," he explained, "it will be down to the other man's insurance to cover."
"Never mind that," she said, shaking herself out of her shocked stupor. "Are you all right?"
"I think so. I pulled my neck with the impact, but it's not so bad. A bit stiff. The police said I should go to A&E, but I really didn't want to miss my appointment."
She looked at him with a warning on her face. It was subtle, but he could see the face of his older brother there, threatening to tell their parents about something that he'd done that he wasn't supposed to.
"You know I'll have to tell Dad," she said.
There it was.
"Oh no, don't," he said. "You know what he'll say."
"'Blah blah bloody Audi drivers'..?" Frieda grinned. "Don't worry, I'll tell him a nice, sensible Volvo got you."
"Does he still--" Uri started.
"Yep. That's why I'm going to tell him," Frieda said brightly. "Might shut him up for five minutes." Frieda sipped her coffee. That, as far as Uri was concerned, a good sign. It meant she'd relaxed enough to not admonish him any more. "How'd your appointment go?"
"I have to wear glasses," he said dully.
"Reading, or all the time?"
"Just for reading," he didn't sound any happier. "I pick them up next week."
"Oh... well, that could be worse," she said.
It could be better, too, he thought. He doubted glasses would suit him much and it wasn't as if contact lenses were a sensible alternative. "I feel old, needing reading glasses."
"Nonsense," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "You're only thirty three."
"Still," he said. He thought back to trying on a bunch of different frames just over an hour ago and not liking many of them. In the end, he'd opted for half-frames, so he could at least look over them at the television. He'd decided to eschew the horn-rimmed monstrosities that the assistant had recommended. He figured the few bits of grey in his otherwise ashy blond hair had influenced her into that suggestion. "So, what's up for today?"
He hadn't looked at his schedule in advance, but he was rather glad that he was at his own practice instead of the NHS one across the city that he did a half-day in. He enjoyed helping people, it made a change to the high-cost cosmetic procedures he performed otherwise, but some of the patients were extraordinarily difficult. Some of his could be too, but they were usually only rich people with entitlement complexes. The ones who had a lot of problems and limited income could be hard, especially when it came to extractions being necessary treatment and replacements being considered 'cosmetic' and, as such, expensive.
"Your first is Mrs. Milner," Frieda told him, trying to keep the wince from her face. "Root canal, and crown fitting."
"Oh good," Uri said, wearily. Root canals were seldom simple or short procedures and Mrs. Milner was definitely one of his difficult patients. He was fairly certain he could remove her entire jaw and work on it in another room and she'd still complain it was hurting.
He looked up at the sound of the bell on the desk. He didn't have any bookings for a good hour yet, so that was hopefully a booking, and not somebody wanting him immediately. He wasn't in the mood for an emergency.
"Don't worry, the rest are easy for the day. All whitenings and cleanings," she reassured him, turning to go back to reception to see who needed her at the desk. She stopped in the doorway. "Oh... and Uncle Uri? You have odd socks on," she said, and disappeared through to attend to the person who had rung the bell.
Uri looked down and lifted the hems of his trousers a touch. Well, she wasn't wrong. The dark blue sock on his right foot stood out in sharp contrast to the dark orange one on the left.
"Of course I do," he muttered.
There it was. The centre of the onion. Curled under all the car accidents, glasses, sugarless coffee, cats and oversleeping... a pair of odd socks. Typical.
* * * * *
Uri flopped onto his sofa later that evening with a sigh cut short by a wince. His neck had been aching more and more as the day wore on, a situation no doubt aggravated by him being bent over his patients all day. Especially Mrs. Milner, who had been every bit as awkward as he'd expected. He'd stopped for a takeaway on the way home, got in, let the cats in and fed them, nipping Sina's whining in the bud, and poured himself a glass of wine. He looked at the blank television screen with a frown, having forgotten to turn it on, and dragged himself up to grab the controls from the coffee table to switch it on.
He settled for some Friday night nonsense and tucked into his curry, opting to eat it from the container, if only so he didn't have to do any washing up. He could have stuck it in the dishwasher, but he seldom used it. It seemed a waste of time using every single plate in the house until there was enough to do a full load. Washing with use was easier.
Thank goodness for Saturdays. At least tomorrow his practice was closed, except for the few hours when his weekend receptionist was there to get the phone for appointments, and he absolutely didn't have to leave the house unless he wanted to. He was fairly sure he didn't want to, even now. He spent the rest of the evening on the sofa, with Maria and Rose sitting on and by him, respectively. Sina, still holding the morning against him, had taken to looking at him morosely from an armchair.
Topping his bad day off with an early night he felt he'd earned, Uri fell asleep with all three of his cats curled up on his bed and no alarm to worry about. Sina might still be holding a grudge, but she wasn't about to turn down a spot on the bed for it.
If he'd thought that putting the day to rest would be the last of his worries, Uri was sorely mistaken.
Never mind having an easy Saturday, he barely got out of bed all weekend. He ordered dinner in on Saturday and, unable to face cooking on Sunday, he had the leftovers then. He missed church, too.
He only got through the next week on painkillers given to him by the GP he'd been positive he didn't need to see. Apparently there wasn't much to be done for whiplash, though this was a mild case, she assured him, in the same gentle if blasé way Uri told his own patients they'd feel a bit of pulling while a tooth was being extracted. He had been advised to go on as normally as he could, which wasn't exactly easy when it really rather hurt, made it hard to sleep and all of his work involved standing with his head bent forward.
By Wednesday he'd cancelled his NHS appointments to get some rest. When he told them about the car accident (he did not mention how mild it was) he was assured that there were others that could take over for that afternoon, but it didn't stop him feeling somewhat guilty. On the Friday, a full week after it all happened, he felt like he'd accomplished something when he picked up his glasses. He even felt a little better when Frieda said they looked nice, and then invited him over to dinner with the family.
His brother not-so-subtly lectured him for not pressing the issue, but he managed not to mention Audis or Volvos, leading Uri to think that Frieda really had shut up up with that. He could have argued, but he was too tired and achy to do much more than brush it off. It had only been a week. These things weren't often quick, especially not for minor scratches to very expensive cars. He decided, even as Rod blustered over the lovely roast dinner his wife had prepared, that he'd give it another week.
It was Thursday when he received a call.
He had been at his office desk, filling out patient paperwork when his phone had started dancing across the table. He winced as he looked up a little quickly, the movement sending a sharp stab of pain down his back. Unknown number. That wasn't unusual, but they were usually cold calls. Still, after everything that had happened recently, he decided to answer it. There were rather more reasons than usual for a stranger to be calling him.
"Hello?" He said, deciding not to answer with his name and give any potential cold caller from Sky, Virgin Media, or whatever else, an in with a personal detail.
"Uh... hi, this Uri Reiss?" The voice on the other end said, without the requisite slightly-too-long pause of a call center worker.
Uri was impressed. The caller had managed to pronounce both of his names incorrectly. Usually people got at least one right, but he didn't bother to issue a correction. "Yes, that's me. Who's calling?"
"Kenny Ackerman," he said. "The... uh, car smash guy."
As if he could forget. He remembered the brief conversation they'd had at the accident, before he'd gone off to talk to the police officer. He'd been gruff, but not as scary as he'd initially looked, even if he had been sarcastic at the nice copper.
"Oh... yes, hello. Is there a problem?" He asked, leaning back in his chair and wondering when he was able to take more painkillers. The strong ones that helped him sleep were a no-go during the day when he had sharp instruments in the mouths of sometimes nervous people, but ibuprofen took the edge off, at the very least.
"No, no problem, I was just thinking about the scratch on the car," he said, and Uri noticed for the first time just how aggressively local he sounded. Uri lacked the stereotypical 'London' accent, instead speaking like a newsreader. Mr. Ackerman sounded rather more like a Del Boy, if rougher, and less whimsical. "We do repairs at my garage," he elaborated.
Uri narrowed his eyes, even if there was nobody there to see it. It was possible that he could repair the damage he'd caused but he was slightly wary of it bypassing the insurance company. "Mmmmm..?"
The wariness must have shown in that one syllable, because Kenny said "obviously you don't have to agree over the phone, but if you want to come down sometime next week we could discuss it. No pressure."
Uri picked up the card he'd got from Kenny at the scene and turned it over in his fingers. It wasn't a bad card. It wasn't as fancy as his, but Kenny ran a mechanic and car repair business, not a dentist. People valued fancy rather more when it had to do with making your smile look prettier than they did when it had anything to do with car repairs. It read "Ackerman & Caven". Well, he couldn't say much for the lack of imagination, it wasn't like he'd named his clinic like a hair salon, with a snappy pun and a fun logo. It was just the 'Reiss Dental Clinic'.
"All right," he said, looking at the address. It was in Barnet. "It might have to be during the evening though, I work long hours."
"No problem. If it's gonna be later than seven, just gimme a ring on this number," he said.
"Will do," Uri replied. "Thanks."
Kenny hung up. Uri raised his eyebrows, half sure it was a ploy to bypass a pricey claim, but it wasn't like he had anything to lose. He worked in a garage, after all. It would make sense to want to handle it to avoid a lengthy claim process.
He opted not to tell Frieda about the call, mostly because he didn't want it getting back to his brother. Frieda wasn't untrustworthy, it was just that Rod was a busybody, and always had been. He always said that it was because their father had charged him with looking after Uri, his often unwell kid brother, but he was sure he was just a bit nosy. Even after they had both grown up, and even since Uri's health issues had mostly resolved themselves, he still felt a burning need to stick his oar into his business.
Literally, in fact. While Uri had opted to go into dentistry, a fairly lucrative medical field with many years worth of university to get through and quite a bit of prestige, Rod had decided to become an accountant, a more boring option, but a safer one in the long run. Their different jobs had resulted in drastically different lives, with Rod having married and started a family young, staying in the large family home, and Uri moving into his own flat after coming back from university. He'd had a few dalliances there but had ended up ultimately single, and not at all unhappy about it, into his early thirties. Rod preached the virtues of family life when he could corner Uri long enough for him to listen, but Uri had always brushed it off. It hadn't been until he had admitted that his handful of short-lived relationships during his time away from home had been with men that Rod had stopped pestering him quite so much, even if he had asked when he was going to get into bed with something other than work, much to Uri's chagrin. It also hadn't kept him away from or out of his business. He'd asked him to move back into the Reiss home when their father had died, half because he'd left the estate to them both, house included, but when Uri refused Rod had, quite fairly, offered to buy his half of the house. He, after all, had children to pass it onto. Uri had accepted that offer, knowing full well how much the house was worth.
These days, Rod handled the accounts for the Reiss Dental Clinic, making sure that it was a family business regardless of Uri's less than optimal family situation. It was the right amount of distance for them both, though Uri had stretched the physical proximity a few miles when he'd moved out of his flat and into a bigger house on the outskirts of Harrow. Rod seldom visited, citing a dislike of his cats and the traffic, but Frieda popped round often. It took an hour to drive from his house to his practice in Haringey, but it was worth it for the big garden and spacious floor plan.
Uri doubted that Frieda would agree with his decision to meet the mechanic, either. She might not have been a busybody like her father, but she had picked up a few tricks from him.
He sat back in his chair and sighed, looking up at the clock. Two whitening treatments, a clean and a veneer application, and then he could go home.
"Mr. Reiss?"
A face, small and nervous, appeared around the door of his office, half-concealed by a mask. It was his newest dental assistant, Rose. She'd smiled when she'd found out that she had the same name as one of his cats, and it had made Uri kindly disposed towards her, not that he was ever any other way. Rod called him soft. Uri insisted that it was possible to be nice without being soft.
"Mm?"
"It's time for your one fifteen," she said. "Mr. Cavendish. Tooth whitening. He's being a bit ... impatient."
Uri glanced at the clock again. It was ten past one, but he knew Mr. Cavendish. He had him mentally filed as "Hi, Cavendish, call me Dave" complete with a smarmy voice, and remembered him as trying to make things go very quickly, with many missed calls during his appointments, because he was just so busy. High flier, you know. Important job.
"Of course he is," Uri said, pushing out his chair and getting to his feet. "I'll take him now."
At least, after that was done, he could take another painkiller. That was all that kept him going.
He didn't get around to going to the garage until he had an early finish the following Wednesday. The morning had consisted of a few fillings at the other clinic, and then a slew of small procedures and a crown fitting in the afternoon. It didn't require a call ahead. He pulled up in the yard at just before five, rather glad that the pre-Spring evenings had started to lighten enough that he it wasn't pitch black when he did. The sign, a simple black and white affair done up to look old fashioned, matched the one on the card.
Through the window, he frowned at the mess that the interior of the garage seemed to be in. They were all like that, in his experience. His last car, plagued with problems towards the end of its life, had spent a lot of time receiving palliative care in a place like this and he was almost used to the equipment, spare parts and empty and probably slowly furring coffee and tea mugs left around the place. Outside, where the cars were, both those under and outside of the overhanging half-roof, was rather tidier save the odd oil stain.
He turned the engine off and got out, pocketing his keys. There were three people visible, all dressed in overalls, who had looked up from their repairs, or newspapers, to eye his vehicle. He doubted, somehow, that they saw them much. All of their current patients were relatively normal looking cars, aside from what looked like a botch-job on a would-be souped up Honda Civic and one rather older than all of the others half hidden by a dust sheet. The Volvo, he noticed, was conspicuous by its absence.
He dithered for a moment, wondering where he was supposed to go to talk to somebody. Nobody had come over and he wasn't sure whether it was just poor customer service, that they'd all clocked off for the day or that his job had already been allocated. If he accepted it, anyway. He considered calling the number on the card when Kenny Ackerman came out of what Uri assumed was the office.
"Recognised your car," he said.
"Is this a bad time? I can come back if--"
"It's fine, it's fine," Kenny said, with a grin. He looked rather less scary away from the site of an accident. "Can I take a look?"
Uri nodded. Somehow, he thought, Kenny walked a little bit ... arrogantly. There was something about the set of his shoulders and length of his strides that made him look cocky. His hair, now not half-covered by a hat, looked like it could use a wash, too, though not as much as his hands, which were oil-stained and black under the nails because of it. When he crouched at the rear of the car, Uri was put in mind of a spider.
"Not as bad as it could be," he said, running a fingertip over the scratches. Uri almost winced, concerned that he'd leave oil on the already ruined paintwork. "This Daytona Grey Pearl?"
Uri blinked. "Uh... what?"
"The paint colour," Kenny clarified.
Uri thought back to when he'd bought it. He'd ... had enough money spare to buy it new, from a dealership, to his specification. He'd chosen colours, interior, what extras he'd wanted... Rod hadn't been pleased that he'd spent a little of the money from the house on it, even though it had been sitting there for eighteen months untouched, but Uri didn't much care. Was it that grey, or one of the others... ah. He pulled out his phone. He had saved the information in case he'd ever need it.
"Ah... yes," he said. "That's right." It surprised him that he knew, at a glance, but it surprised people not of his profession that he remembered the names of all the different teeth and their positions, so he put it down to it just being a different area of expertise.
"Y'know, I could do this for you," Kenny said, straightening up and sounding a little too much like a cowboy builder offering to fix a roof leak for Uri's comfort. "It'll be one hell of an expensive paint job, but obviously it won't cost you a penny."
"You keep the colour in stock?" Uri asked, feeling a little stupid. He had no idea. For all he knew, the inside of the garage was stacked with different paint colours, like Homebase, but for cars.
"No," Kenny said, doing him a favour and not giving him a pitying look. Uri appreciated that. He wouldn't expect Kenny to know what a buccal filling was, after all. "But I can get Caven to order it in."
"How long would it take..?" Even if the estimated arrival was a few weeks, an official claim would undoubtedly take longer.
"Usually takes about... ten days," Kenny said, wrinkling one side of his nose as he thought about it, eyes fixed skyward as he estimated. They were the same colour as the overcast sky, and the expression on his face gave him a vaguely wolfish look. "If you wanna go for it, I can give you a call when it's in. Shouldn't take more than a few days to fix it up and I can give you a car in the meantime."
It would certainly speed up the repair process. Driving a fancy car wasn't quite as fun when it looked like it had come off worse in a fight. A faster turnaround time seemed like a good deal, especially since it would only be Kenny's insurance company paying out anyway. A courtesy car wasn't a bad addition, either.
"So long as it hasn't had work done on it by whoever did that Volvo," Uri said, giving a smile. "I'd sooner not get into any other accidents."
Kenny barked a laugh and a few of the people in the garage looked up. One of them, a blonde woman, pointed at the office door and got a wave from Kenny in return. "Don't worry," he said, wearing a grin that showed too many teeth. Surprisingly good teeth too, in Uri's professional opinion. "The dipshit responsible for that little fuck-up was given a dressing down. How's your neck, anyway?"
"My... Oh. It's been better," he admitted, touching it reflexively with a hand. "How do you know..?"
"Most people who come in here for rear-ending repairs end up with whiplash," Kenny said, giving a shrug. "You said you were fine at the time, but most of 'em do. Takes a night sleeping on it to kick in."
"Yeah... it seemed okay at the time, but I woke up feeling like I'd been put on the rack," Uri said.
"Sorry." He sounded genuinely sorry, too. He could have been flippant; it wasn't like the brakes failing was his fault. "I hope you took some time off work."
"A few days," he said with a shrug, a shrug that he wished he hadn't done. Well, it was a day. He wouldn't have turned down two weeks recovery, but work was work, and when you owned your own practice cancelling on people wasn't entirely fair.
"Good. So yeah, I'll give you a call when the paint's in?" Kenny asked, offering a hand.
"All right," Uri nodded. "That sounds good." He eyed his hand, oil-stained and rather large, and decided to shake it anyway, concerned it might have been considered rude if he hadn't, and he was sure there was a sparkle in Kenny's eyes, like he had expected him to refuse. He didn't even look at it to see if there was any oil on him until after he'd settled back into his car.
* * * * *
Uri pulled off his gloves and sat in his chair, glad that his lunchbreak, late though it was, was coming up. He really must stop taking root canals before lunchtime, they were time intensive and took a toll on his wrist. With rain hitting the frosted windows like it was, it just made for a depressing afternoon.
"That wasn't so bad," Rose said, wiping down the chair and replacing the disposable cover.
"It was one of the better ones," Uri admitted. There had been no mishaps, no issues with the anaesthetic or complaints from the patient. "I need a cup of coffee before anything else, would you mind filling in the file?"
"Of course," she smiled. It was part of her duties, after all.
Uri stopped to pick up his phone from his office and headed to the kitchenette for a caffeine fix. Two missed calls. He put a pod into the the coffee machine and unlocked his phone. Then he remembered to put his cup in place so he didn't end up with a wonderful cup of coffee all over the counter.
'Ackerman, Kenny (mechanic)' showed as the caller. Had it been that long already? Ten days, he'd said. It couldn't have been more than six. It was always possible he'd changed his mind. Or couldn't get hold of the paint. It might be difficult, being a specialty colour from a specific manufacturer, but he hoped it wasn't bad news. Instead of delaying the inevitable he called the number.
"Finally," Kenny said, in lieu of a greeting.
Uri raised his eyebrows, feeling that response was more than a little rude. "Sorry," he said, and then kicked himself for apologising when he had no real reason to. "I was working. Root canal. What did you call about?"
"Your paint's in," he said, his voice sounding surprisingly bright. He must have been impatient with the good news, rather than grouchy. Uri didn't think his response any less rude because of it, but it was slightly better than the alternative. "Come in anytime."
"Oh," Uri said, surprised. "That was fast."
"I had Caven put a rush on it for you," he sounded almost deliberately casual, like somebody saying something was 'nothing' after they'd put a considerable amount of effort in.
"Thank you," he told him gratefully. He hadn't expected that, not from somebody like him. He couldn't claim to know him, but he seemed a little like somebody who would grouchily quibble over being given a few pence short in his change. "My last appointment today is a short one at five forty five, I could get there before seven if the traffic's good?"
"Perfect," Kenny said. "See you then."
Click.
Uri didn't really want to part with his car. He knew he had to, of course, but he didn't want to. He wanted to keep it, and for it to be miraculously all right without him having to leave it with strangers for a few days. He was sure he'd feel the same way about having to leave his cats in the care of other people, but that train of thought led him to realise he hadn't taken a holiday in actual years, so he tried not to think about it. He wound down the window and rather wished he hadn't when a breeze blew a cold spatter of rain in at him. It wasn't as bad as it had been at lunchtime, when it had streaked down the windows and rattled the glass, but it hadn't stopped either.
"Oi, Uri," a familiar voice came, from underneath the roof.
It was Kenny, avoiding the rain. The work area, covered by the canopy, was dry. There was a proper interior too, with a locking door, though he presumed they only took vehicles in there when they were done for the night.
He'd said his name wrong again. Uri sighed, quite used to it, but resolved to correct him next time. He beckoned him under the shelter, and Uri carefully turned, parking up once out of the rain. He got out.
"You wanna come into the office?" Kenny asked, starting over there before Uri got to answer. He wondered why he'd bothered to phrase it as a question.
He followed, feeling a little like a child being taken to see the headmaster.
Kenny's office was, for a start, not just Kenny's. It had two desks, one tidy and organised, with separate trays for different things, and a neat line of pens, and one that looked like it had fallen victim to the world's smallest precision missile strike. Papers were arranged into haphazard piles and there were pens crammed into a mug with a broken handle. It had a picture of a husky on it, its blue eyes bright in its dark face. There was even an empty kit kat wrapper abandoned there.
Kenny sat, to Uri's surprise, at the tidy desk. He wondered if he'd done that for show, to make him think that his desk wasn't the one that looked like a miniature bombsite.
The rest of the office was filled with what he would expect from a garage. A safe, no doubt screwed to the floor, various toolboxes, a coffee machine that Uri estimated was about five hundred years old, and the requisite booby calendar on the wall. He raised his eyebrows.
"That's Caven's doing," Kenny said, having followed his line of sight.
"Oh," said Uri.
"Coffee?" He asked.
"... um, no, thank you. I had one before I left."
"I'd say it was your loss, but it tastes like shit," Kenny grinned.
"I'd say it was kind of you to offer, but in light of that..." Uri gave a laugh. He'd never quite mastered not sounding awkward when he did.
"So, I'll need you to sign some stuff before you leave the car," he said, pulling some papers from the pile. "Just to keep things above board. It's carbon paper, so you'll keep a copy. Take a seat, read through it, don't want you going home and worrying about fine print."
Uri looked around and grabbed the nearest chair. It was the one from the other desk, presumably Caven's. His name was on the sign, after all. He pulled it up and took the documents to read.
He could feel Kenny's eyes on him as he did, and found it rather distracting, like he was in an exam. He read it all twice, just to make sure. When he was happy that it wouldn't transfer ownership, or relinquish his soul, he took a pen and signed and dated the lines provided.
"How long do you estimate it will take?" He asked, handing the papers over.
"Should have it back with you, good as new, by... Thursday?"
"That's not bad," he said, feeling a little better. "You mentioned a courtesy car? I do need to get home."
"Of course, let me bring it round for you. I saved you our most reliable one," Kenny grinned.
And that was how Uri, that night, came to be pulling up on his lovely tree-shaded drive, rather later than usual, in a rather new, if violently orange, Peugeot 208.
* * * * *
Uri was glad to return it on the Thursday. He hadn't wanted a phonecall more than the one that told him that his sodding car was finished. Parking the lurid orange monster in his designated parking space outside the clinic, where his beloved Audi R8 was supposed to sit, was almost embarrassing. Especially since even Rose's little Mini was nicer.
He pulled into the garage, pleased to see his car waiting for him. He couldn't see the back, but he parked up alongside it in the courtesy car and got out, the keyring of the keys over his finger for safekeeping. He looked at where the scratch had been and breathed a sigh of relief. It was perfect. It wasn't even obvious where the repair had been done. It was a fine job. Not seeing Kenny around, he went to the office and knocked the door.
The blonde woman he'd seen before opened it. She looked somewhat severe, and she was a good few inches taller than him. Uri wondered if she was Kenny's wife.
"You're the Audi guy, right?" She asked, as if she didn't already know.
"Ah... yes," Uri said. "Kenny called to say it was ready to collect..?"
"Yeah, he's inside," she said, jabbing her thumb behind her and moving aside. "Go on in."
Kenny was, again, sat at the tidy desk. The messy one had been tidied up a little, and the kit kat wrapper had gone, but it was still a disaster compared to the other. There was a mug on Kenny's desk, no longer steaming but still full of coffee. The outside was printed with a repeated pattern of the word 'Ken' in the Barbie font. A joke gift, Uri assumed, smiling a little. He was sure he'd been thrilled to receive it.
"Your wait's over," Kenny said, sitting back in his chair. Uri could see his long legs stretched under the desk and crossed at the ankles. "Didn't take too long, did it?"
"No, it didn't," Uri said, gratefully. "Thank you. Are you sure it's all right?"
"Yeah, it's fine," he said. "I'll square it with the insurance company. I appreciate you saving me the hassle," he told him, smiling. "And the claim."
"That's all right," Uri said, feeling a little silly for saying it. It hadn't changed anything on his end. He wouldn't have been footing the bill regardless. "It looks really good. Good as new."
"Told you, didn't I?"
He had, yes. Uri hadn't been sure whether to believe that he could make his car perfect again, but he had, and he was grateful. He signed the forms to get it back, getting copies for himself again, and folded them up to take with him, with the keys, which he exchanged for the ones to the ugly orange thing.
The blond woman picked up another set of keys from the messy desk and walked to the door, giving Kenny a smack up the back of the head on the way past. He looked at her, eyebrows raised, and she gave him a very pointed look, and then left, closing the door behind her. Uri looked at Kenny's hand. Well, he wasn't wearing a wedding ring, so they probably weren't married.
"Is that your..?" Uri asked.
"No," Kenny said quickly. "No, no way. That's Caven, she's my business partner."
Uri blinked. That was Caven? He felt a stab of guilt for not having considered that she was a mechanic, let alone a co-owner. Kenny must have seen it on his face, because he gave a laugh. It turned into a wide grin when Uri glanced up at the calendar again.
"Yeah, I know," he said, agreeing with Uri's unvoiced comment, and then took a sip of his apparently cold coffee. It made him grimace, though after what he'd said last time, that could have been as much because of the taste as the temperature. "Hey, Uri," wrong again. "What do you say I take you for a drink to say thanks for letting me sort the car out?"
"I..." Uri blinked a few times and gave an awkward little smile. "...well, I don't really drink," he admitted. Plus, he'd thought about the sort of bars he could imagine Kenny in, and it made him nervous already.
"...what about dinner instead?" He asked.
"... ah..." he felt his face go a little warm. Surely he wasn't really asking him out to dinner.
"It'll be somewhere nice," Kenny said, taking advantage of his hesitation.
"... all right, sure," Uri agreed, unable to keep the smile off his face. He tried to ignore the flush. He was sure Kenny had noticed it, because he was grinning, if more like a fox than a cheshire cat.
"How about tomorrow?" Kenny suggested.
"That sounds good," Uri said, nodding. "My last appointment tomorrow is at four fifteen, so just give me enough time to get home and change and that's fine."
"All right, I'll text you with the details," Kenny said, grinning again.
Uri walked out of the office feeling slightly dazed and wondering if that had actually happened. Surely not. Surely he'd blacked out for a moment. He shook his head and got into his car, his own lovely car, and adjusted the seat. Somebody else, somebody taller than him, had obviously driven it to and from the interior while it had been out of his possession, and adjusted the seat accordingly. Once he was happy, he headed home.
* * * * *
He'd been distracted the evening of his car's return, but he'd slept better knowing that it was safely back on his drive, and whole and perfect again. The following day, between all of his morning appointments, he checked his phone for the details Kenny had promised him, half sure he'd been joking. It wasn't until he sat down with a fresh cup of coffee at lunch time that he saw the text waiting for him.
'Got a table at Panorama. Pick you up at 7?? address the same as on form???'
Seven wasn't so bad. It gave him time to get home and shower, and change. He replied with a positive to both of those questions, and gave Panorama a bit of a google. Greek, that was interesting. Not bad reviews on Trip Advisor either. It was in Barnet, so that wasn't too far away from either the garage, or where Uri lived, all things considered.
He put a coffee on, feeling better with the tension of the unknown alleviated.
Frieda came in, a bag from Pret A Manger in her hand. She had been able to nip out to grab a bite while their last appointment went on, given that she didn't have to sign anybody in until after lunch. Uri was almost jealous, but smiled when she handed him a wrap.
"Oh, thank you," he said, bright.
"No problem," she said, sitting in the other chair. "I didn't get you a coffee, I figured you'd have one on by the time I got back. Oh, and I passed Rose. She was heading to Costa."
Uri lifted his cup. "You know me too well," he said, unwrapping his lunch.
"Oh, Dad called while I was out," Frieda said, pulling her own sandwich out of its little box. "He asked if you wanted to come over after work. Mum's making spaghetti and meaballs."
Uri felt himself go warm again, but mastered it. Or tried to. "Ah, give him my apologies. I have plans for this evening." He picked at the unwanted salad on the wrap, drawing a bit of coriander out and putting it back in the box to be disposed of with the cardboard.
"... what plans?" She asked. He saw her looking at him when he looked up.
"I'm going out for dinner," he shrugged, trying to seem casual.
"Is it a date?" She asked, lifting her sandwich to her mouth, being entirely better at being casual than he was.
"... kind of, yeah."
"...Uncle Uri, you didn't say. Who's the mystery man?" She grinned, taking a bite to ensure her mouth was full and he felt pressured to answer. It was a trick her dad liked to pull, too.
"... I'm not saying anything yet," he said, airily. "Besides, it's only dinner. It might not go anywhere. Don't tell your dad."
* * * * *
Uri got home and ready in good time. He'd been mildly concerned that some awful emergency appointment would come in at the last minute to spoil his plans, but nothing had happened. He got home, showered, changed into something smart casual, and then changed again. He killed time by feeding the cats and letting them out for an hour, and then gathering them back in and leaving them in the conservatory all safe and warm until he got home. Maria had pawed at the glass separating the kitchen from the conservatory with her single front leg, mewing sadly, but he hadn't given in. He wasn't going to have his evening ruined with surprise hairballs, or worse.
A car pulled into his drive at five to seven. Not bad, Uri thought. He grabbed his coat, set the alarm, and stepped out. It was getting onto Spring, but it was still cold. The evenings were lighter, but not quite light enough. The car waiting for him was a BMW. Not new, but well cared for.
Kenny wound the window down and gave him a wave. He did not get out and open the passenger door for him, but Uri was glad of that. Kenny didn't seem much like a gentleman, so he didn't want him to go out of his way on his account. Uri walked around and opened the door.
"Ready?" Kenny asked.
He scrubbed up well, Uri thought. His hair looked clean, if still long. His beard, if you could call it that, had been neatened up, but left there, obviously an intentional feature and not just laziness in progress. His hands, and nails, were very clean, and he was dressed in a similar smart-casual way to Uri himself, albeit, he would wager, without the ridiculous labels in the back.
"Certainly," he said.
The traffic wasn't too bad and he drove well, Uri thought, considering his first experience of him had been a Volvo to the rear bumper. It wasn't entirely his fault, but the fact that he apparently usually drove a BMW made him laugh, not that he could really comment on that. Both of their choices had a tendency to have idiots for drivers, but he was glad they both bucked the trend. They chatted about the day's work, both the fixing of cars and the fixing of teeth. The conversation continued much in that vein once they had been seated in the restaurant, too. It was a nice place, quiet and pretty, and although the service was a little slow, the starters, at least, were rather good, but not so good that conversation was impossible to hold over them.
"So why dentistry?" Kenny asked at last.
Uri thought about it. He'd been asked this question a lot. The idea of dealing with the mouths of strangers disgusted a lot of people and he couldn't blame them, especially with the state of some teeth he'd dealt with. Broken or missing teeth, bombed out teeth, abscesses... it wasn't a pleasant job sometimes. "I had a biology degree, so I decided to go into ... uh, a lucrative field. I didn't fancy nursing and surgery is a bit ... visceral for me. My limits are extractions and I try to avoid wisdom teeth if I have to. Why did you decide to become a mechanic?"
"I did an apprenticeship when I was younger," Kenny said. Uri had discovered that he was thirty seven earlier in the conversation, so he wasn't much older than him. "I met Caven during it, and she did a bit of Business in uni, so we decided to make a go of it. It's not bad work. I can live on it, I like cars, and I have enough spare cash to help my sister out a bit."
"You have a sister?" Uri asked, spearing his last cherry tomato on his fork, popping it into his mouth, and laying it down.
"Yeah, younger than me. She had a kid. He's a right little shit," Kenny said, shaking his head, but grinning a little all the same. "Though last I heard he's putting himself through night school while working daytime, so he can get through Uni, so that's pretty good. He's doing better than I did."
"That's good, at least. He didn't bother with college?"
"Nah, he was too busy getting warnings off coppers and driving my sister crazy to go," Kenny said, shaking his head. "He's improved."
"That's fair. I have an older brother," Uri said. "Rod, he's married with children and has the superiority complex to go with it," he didn't resist a roll of the eyes.
"... Rod?" Kenny asked, pausing with his glass halfway to his mouth.
"... Yeah, Rod. Roderick, but nobody's called him that since Mom was alive," Uri smiled. "And she only did it angrily."
"...Weird combination. Roderick and ... Uri?" Kenny asked. And there it was again.
"It's, um, Uri, actually. There's no Y," he tried not to sound awkward, but he'd never been very good at being authoritative over the mispronunciation of his name. He'd promised himself he'd get better at it.
"Seriously? You've been letting me say it wrong all this time?" Kenny laughed a little. "I thought it was like Uri Geller."
Uri gave a laugh himself at that. "It is like Uri Geller, but everybody says his name wrong, too."
"Oh. No spoons either?"
"Oh god, don't," Uri laughed, rolling his eyes properly that time. "The best I can offer in retaliation is a South Park comment, and that would be rubbish."
"Yeah fair play," Kenny sipped from his glass of wine, giving him a smile like he'd heard that one more than once, too. He'd opted to have one glass of the house white, then switch to something else, because he was driving. Uri thought that rather sensible. "Uri Reiss. Huh."
"... It's like 'rice', actually." Uri said, feeling especially awkward over a second correction. 'Race' was a common wrong option, and the one Kenny had gone for, though 'Reese' wasn't unknown.
"...like Challenge Anneka?"
"Wow, now I feel really old," Uri paused in sipping from his own glass, laughing a little, and looked up as he saw a server approach. "But yes. Or, as most people point out, like the food."
"Well, that too," Kenny said, giving a shrug and a tilt of the head. "You got any middle names I can cock up, for good measure?"
"No, fortunately," Uri said, leaning back so the waiter could pick up the empty plates.
"Your mains will be out shortly," he said, whisking them away.
They didn't take too long, but they took rather longer than Uri would have expected. Kenny didn't seem to mind. The chatter kept things interesting while they waited for the food and, fortunately, it was worth waiting for. He would have been disappointed if it had been terrible after all that.
The desserts weren't too bad either, even if the choice was somewhat limited. Uri had gone for something small, a selection of Greek Pastries, just to top it off, and not take advantage of his date's generosity. Kenny had gone for the same, but only because there wasn't a great deal of choice to be had. Uri had offered to split the bill with him, largely because his meal of swordfish hadn't come cheap. Kenny had refused.
When they left, Uri was still in a good mood. He'd had dates before that had been rather dismal, with large gaps in the conversation and awkward talks about politics ruining the evening. This one had gone rather well, he thought.
Kenny drove him back home and pulled up on his drive. "There you go," he said, his expression suggesting that he had enjoyed his evening as much as Uri had.
"Thank you," Uri said. He looked out of the window at his door, the light on the porch having lit up at their arrival. He stayed quiet for a moment. Well, you only live once, don't you? "Do you want to come in for a coffee?" He asked.
"Yeah," he said, smiling again. It was a smile, not a grin. It looked nice on him. "Why not?"
Writing Date: 2018.
Rating: Gen.
Warnings: None.
Fandom: AU: Universe.
Characters: Uri Reiss, Kenny Ackerman.
Summary: Sometimes disasters can turn out to be blessings in disguise.
Traffic stretched out down the length of the road like a multi-coloured snake, occasionally emitting beeps and honks of indignation as if that would help it gain momentum. It was barely moving.
Uri sighed, glancing at the clock. 8:37. The illuminated numbers glowed mockingly at him from in amongst the half a dozen other lights and nonsense in the dashboard. His appointment was at half past nine. He tapped his fingers on the wheel as his car crawled forward at roughly half the walking speed of a geriatric hedgehog. His eyes found the clock again, unbidden, and he checked his watch to be sure it hadn't stopped, despite both being connected to the internet. It was always possible the entire internet had stopped. It would be his bloody luck.
8:38.
"Come on," he said to himself. This was not how he'd imagined spending his well-planned Friday morning. He liked to plan. He liked things to go according to plan. He was the sort of man who would happily have a ride-by-ride itinerary at a theme park, with planned food breaks, to maximise what could be done in a day. He didn't like when plans went awry.
He'd turned the radio off twenty minutes ago; he felt it helped him see better. It helped him concentrate, at any rate. He reached wearily for the travel mug in the cupholder, but stopped himself, partly because he'd remembered why he'd let it sit there slowly going tepid, and partly because movement finally seemed to be happening again. Further up, cars were disappearing out of sight. At last, a good thing.
His morning so far had been a disaster.
He'd been comfortable in his big bed, warm and wrapped in the quilt, until the rattle of his bedroom door handle had shattered the peace. In response, he had turned over and buried his face in the pillow, trying to ignore it. When it had come again followed by a pitiful sound that would probably come through the other end of a translation program from cat as "please, I'm dying... it's been eight whole hours... please, help me, I'm not long for this world...", he'd opened one eye.
He knew that meow. It was Sina, his resident furry drama queen.. The other two weren't like that. They were patient. Sina... she was demanding. However, she wasn't usually like that until at least eight, not unless a Daylight Savings switchover happened, and that was almost a month off yet.
Thinking back, he could pinpoint the act of picking up his phone as the exact moment at which his morning had gone decidedly pear-shaped.
He'd found it turned off, on the wrong end of an automatic update. When he'd finally got the cursed thing back on, he had seen that the time had gone past what his alarm had been set for by twenty six minutes. Nearly half seven... with his appointment not until half past nine, he still had time, even if the 'sit about like a zombie with a cup of coffee in his hand' timeslot had been taken up with surprise extra sleep.
He had showered, only to find he was out of shower gel. He'd meant to replace that. It wasn't a problem, shampoo would do the job, it just meant he'd be smelling rather more flowery than he'd intended. He was sure his optician wouldn't judge him too hard for it.
Drying, dressing, teeth cleaning and the rest, had all been done at breakneck speed, until he'd found himself in the kitchen, with three starving cats looking at him sadly from floor level. He'd fed them while he waited for water to heat and toast to brown, and then let them into the garden, crossing them off the list along with the rest of the morning's chores.
Just as he'd brought his coffee cup to his lips he'd caught sight of the clock. 8:04. Nope, too close. He wanted to get to the optician with buckets of time to spare, simply because he hated being late. After pouring it into his travel mug, he'd let himself out of the house, toast between his teeth.
Then he'd gone back in, grabbed his car keys before he ran out of time with the house alarm's grace period, and tried again.
Breakfast on the go it was, then. He had stuck his mug into the holder and pulled out of his drive, carefully trying not to bite too hard lest his toast fall and leave sticky prints on his clothes. He'd done well, and it wasn't until he had almost finished it that he was forced to sacrifice his tie on the altar of the falling marmalade gods.
Oh well, he'd thought. A tie was probably too formal anyway. He'd stowed it in his glovebox just before seeing the sign informing him of a diversion up ahead, one that would take him directly into the school run traffic.
He'd sighed, picked up his coffee for a fortifying sip ... and grimaced as he realised he'd forgotten to add sugar. It had been left to sit there since. Caffeine wasn't worth that bitter taste, not that early in the morning.
Still, at least the traffic was moving now. He'd make it to the optician and get to work afterwards with plenty of time to spare. Besides, it wasn't was if anything else could go wrong, he thought, foolishly, as he pulled to a stop at a red light.
Crunch.
The car lurched forward sharply, pulling the seatbelt taut against Uri's chest. He felt the edge of the polyester ribbon scrape against his neck as his head snapped forward, the locking mechanism the only thing coming between him and a bloody nose courtesy of the steering wheel.
It was probably lucky the airbag hadn't deployed.
The noise, he thought, quite distantly, was a bit like a colossal drinks can being squashed underfoot.
"Ow," he muttered, straightening up. His back hurt. His neck, too. What on earth had-- "No, no, no, no, no..."
That definitely was not a can. It was the back end of his car. His new car. His month old car he'd been so excited to get, in just the right grey colour, with the perfect seats...
He looked into the rear view mirror at what was behind him. An old car, red and with the boxy shape of something that had barely crawled out of the mid-90's, sat there, glaring at him with its dated round little lights as if it was annoyed that he'd dared to be on the same road as it. He flicked on his hazards and unclipped the seatbelt, a little hurt, but mostly unharmed, determined to assess the damage and exchange insurance details even if it would take time he didn't really have.
He got out, pulling his phone from his pocket, and walked around the back.
Oh god.
The owner was already out, lurking at the back of Uri's car, and the front of his own. He didn't look particularly friendly.
Uri approached, not particularly happy about walking up to him, all things considered. Why couldn't the other driver have been a little old lady, or distracted mum? Why did he have to be somebody who looked like he'd put "bar fight participation" in the hobby section of his CV? He started at his shoes -- boots -- and then looked up, all the way up, into a scowling face half hidden by the shadow cast by the brim of a hat. He was probably a few years shy of forty, at a guess, with slightly too long hair for a man of his age. He had a scruff of beard, like he'd tried to make the effort but his growth pattern had called in sick that day, and wore an air of 'generally menacing' like a second skin.
Uri bit back the all too British impulse to apologise for being an inconvenience and tried to ignore the fact that his hands were already trembling slightly in anticipation of an argument he really, really didn't want to have. Or that could have been because he'd just been in a minor car accident, he wasn't entirely sure.
"Sorry, can I just..?" he said, scooting across him to inspect the back of his car. The damage wasn't as bad as it could be. He'd expected crumpling after that noise, but it wasn't too serious, even if it was far from perfect. There was a scrape under the number plate that stood out sharply against the grey paint in the red of the car behind, like claw marks down a flank. The plate itself was fine, and the four silver rings above had escaped damage, but... the scratch...
He took a photo and turned his attention to the other car, snapping one that showed the damage there, too. He wasn't overly worried, just dismayed. Nobody would argue that he was in the wrong when he'd been stationary, and at a stop light at that. It isn't like anyone would buy anybody claiming that he'd performed a 'smash for cash' scam, not in a nearly brand new Audi R8.
"Oi," the owner of the red car said. His voice was deep, deeper than Uri's, and it sounded a little like he gargled with gravel, or potentially an entire shingle beach.
Uri stiffened, and turned. "Yes?" he said, adopting the well-practiced calm-but-firm demeanour he'd cultivated over his career of dealing with difficult people. Being a dentist introduced you to all sorts of interesting personality problems, especially the ones he dealt with during his NHS days. Toothache could do a lot to sour a person's mood.
The man looked down at him, eyes narrowed. "What're you doing taking pictures of the car?" He demanded, gesturing somewhat performatively at the front of his vehicle.
Calling it that was probably doing it a kindness. "Box on wheels" was probably closer to the truth. Close up, it became apparent that it was probably only running on willpower alone. It was, at Uri's best guess, a Volvo 850 that had started out well looked after, but had almost been driven into the ground by a later owner. Probably this one. It was only a surprise that all of the doors matched.
"I'm going to need them for my insurance company," Uri said, not breaking eye contact.
He must have looked foolish, looking up at the man and trying not to seem intimidated. It was rather easier when the scary person was in a chair, with their mouth open, and a half-numb face. This guy was easily a clear foot taller than him, leading Uri to fairly assume that he had to be at least six one, though he was probably taller. He looked mean, standing there in a trenchcoat, and boots that had probably kicked more than a few teeth in, something that made Uri cringe especially, while he himself dithered in a well-fitted suit, all the while still extremely aware that his optician's appointment was ticking ever closer.
"You should do the same," he pointed out, lightly. He took in a short breath and asked: "Do you want to call the police, or should I?"
It didn't have to be done now, it could have been done at any point within twenty four hours of the accident, but now was easier. The didn't take long to arrive, and had the two move their respective cars out of the way of the traffic, and went about sorting things as far as they were able.
The police, fortunately for Uri, were perfectly nice and understanding, even if they seemed less than impressed at the other driver managing to hit a car at a red light. They made extra sure to check his license, and that car's MOT status, but otherwise they did their job, though they had recommended that Uri go to A&E to check him for whiplash, even if he'd declined. It wasn't that bad, he'd insisted.
The other man, it turned out, was a mechanic who was insured under his garage. He'd introduced himself as 'Kenny' during their exchange of details, surname 'Ackerman'. He'd not been as scary as he looked, though Uri could feel his eyes on him as the police went over everything. He happened to be test driving the vehicle of a customer after the repair his colleague had done the night before, to make sure that everything was up to snuff. Apparently it wasn't, because the brakes had halfway failed, and he wasn't happy about there needing to be another repair done. He wasn't going to be driving away from the scene, the police told him, and it seemed to Uri that it took every fibre of the man's being not to make a sarcastic reply. He'd have to call the garage to get the car towed. With dodgy brakes, there was no way they'd allow him to drive anywhere else in it.
"No shit," he'd said.
Uri had walked away from the scene with details, a card for the garage that Kenny-the-Mechanic worked at (he'd given his own in exchange, but the Reiss Dental Clinic likely held rather less weight in a car smash), and the assurance from his own insurance company that he probably wouldn't be losing his no claims bonus, because it was quite likely that after investigation, it would turn out that he wasn't at fault. It must have been something of a novelty to say that to the driver of an Audi.
He even made it to his opticians appointment, and only half an hour late. After apologising and giving the reason for his tardiness, they decided to waive the late fee and slot him into an cancellation's place three appointments after his, so it hadn't set him back too far.
He stopped at a Starbucks before carrying on to work, rather glad he'd scheduled it for half day only. He had originally intended it to be a gift for dealing with his opticians appointment, and the doubtless bad news about his likelihood of needing glasses, as well as giving him time for paperwork, and lunch, but now it was just time he would use to recover. The queue for coffee was rather long in spite of the mid-morning hour, but he didn't complain. A wait was the least of his worries that morning. Instead, he ordered himself a coffee that was more sugary and rather fancier than he'd usually bother with, and certainly not something he'd recommend to any of his patients who wanted to keep their teeth intact, and what he knew was the drink of choice for his receptionist. By the time he got to work it was almost twelve.
Frieda looked up from the desk, her usual smile in place, and Uri watched it slip away in real time. "You're late thi-- Uncle Uri, you look awful."
Uri could have laughed. Instead, he smiled, heaving a sigh. The weight of his full cup of coffee was comforting in his hand, and he put the other one on the desk for his niece. Frieda looked more like her mother than her father, Uri's brother. She had the large, pale eyes of the Reiss family, but her black hair was all her mother's side.
"I have had the worst morning," he admitted, lifting the desk-flap and going through to the staff room.
Frieda put the "ring for service" bell on the counter and followed him through, picking up her coffee on the way, her delight at being given a free Starbucks smothered by concern.
"What on earth happened?" She asked, watching him patiently he sat down at his desk. Her forehead creased when he winced and held a hand to his neck.
"Well," Uri said, taking a fortifying sip from the cup. It was much better than the first disaster. "I overslept, and it rather went downhill from there."
Frieda's expression grew steadily more and more horrified as he went through his day, mentioning everything from his accident with the marmalade to the one with the car. It was like an onion, problems and accidents layered over each other, so that once you picked one off, there'd be another underneath. Uri rather hoped he'd reached the last layer already.
"But the company said that with an incident like mine," he explained, "it will be down to the other man's insurance to cover."
"Never mind that," she said, shaking herself out of her shocked stupor. "Are you all right?"
"I think so. I pulled my neck with the impact, but it's not so bad. A bit stiff. The police said I should go to A&E, but I really didn't want to miss my appointment."
She looked at him with a warning on her face. It was subtle, but he could see the face of his older brother there, threatening to tell their parents about something that he'd done that he wasn't supposed to.
"You know I'll have to tell Dad," she said.
There it was.
"Oh no, don't," he said. "You know what he'll say."
"'Blah blah bloody Audi drivers'..?" Frieda grinned. "Don't worry, I'll tell him a nice, sensible Volvo got you."
"Does he still--" Uri started.
"Yep. That's why I'm going to tell him," Frieda said brightly. "Might shut him up for five minutes." Frieda sipped her coffee. That, as far as Uri was concerned, a good sign. It meant she'd relaxed enough to not admonish him any more. "How'd your appointment go?"
"I have to wear glasses," he said dully.
"Reading, or all the time?"
"Just for reading," he didn't sound any happier. "I pick them up next week."
"Oh... well, that could be worse," she said.
It could be better, too, he thought. He doubted glasses would suit him much and it wasn't as if contact lenses were a sensible alternative. "I feel old, needing reading glasses."
"Nonsense," she said, waving her hand dismissively. "You're only thirty three."
"Still," he said. He thought back to trying on a bunch of different frames just over an hour ago and not liking many of them. In the end, he'd opted for half-frames, so he could at least look over them at the television. He'd decided to eschew the horn-rimmed monstrosities that the assistant had recommended. He figured the few bits of grey in his otherwise ashy blond hair had influenced her into that suggestion. "So, what's up for today?"
He hadn't looked at his schedule in advance, but he was rather glad that he was at his own practice instead of the NHS one across the city that he did a half-day in. He enjoyed helping people, it made a change to the high-cost cosmetic procedures he performed otherwise, but some of the patients were extraordinarily difficult. Some of his could be too, but they were usually only rich people with entitlement complexes. The ones who had a lot of problems and limited income could be hard, especially when it came to extractions being necessary treatment and replacements being considered 'cosmetic' and, as such, expensive.
"Your first is Mrs. Milner," Frieda told him, trying to keep the wince from her face. "Root canal, and crown fitting."
"Oh good," Uri said, wearily. Root canals were seldom simple or short procedures and Mrs. Milner was definitely one of his difficult patients. He was fairly certain he could remove her entire jaw and work on it in another room and she'd still complain it was hurting.
He looked up at the sound of the bell on the desk. He didn't have any bookings for a good hour yet, so that was hopefully a booking, and not somebody wanting him immediately. He wasn't in the mood for an emergency.
"Don't worry, the rest are easy for the day. All whitenings and cleanings," she reassured him, turning to go back to reception to see who needed her at the desk. She stopped in the doorway. "Oh... and Uncle Uri? You have odd socks on," she said, and disappeared through to attend to the person who had rung the bell.
Uri looked down and lifted the hems of his trousers a touch. Well, she wasn't wrong. The dark blue sock on his right foot stood out in sharp contrast to the dark orange one on the left.
"Of course I do," he muttered.
There it was. The centre of the onion. Curled under all the car accidents, glasses, sugarless coffee, cats and oversleeping... a pair of odd socks. Typical.
Uri flopped onto his sofa later that evening with a sigh cut short by a wince. His neck had been aching more and more as the day wore on, a situation no doubt aggravated by him being bent over his patients all day. Especially Mrs. Milner, who had been every bit as awkward as he'd expected. He'd stopped for a takeaway on the way home, got in, let the cats in and fed them, nipping Sina's whining in the bud, and poured himself a glass of wine. He looked at the blank television screen with a frown, having forgotten to turn it on, and dragged himself up to grab the controls from the coffee table to switch it on.
He settled for some Friday night nonsense and tucked into his curry, opting to eat it from the container, if only so he didn't have to do any washing up. He could have stuck it in the dishwasher, but he seldom used it. It seemed a waste of time using every single plate in the house until there was enough to do a full load. Washing with use was easier.
Thank goodness for Saturdays. At least tomorrow his practice was closed, except for the few hours when his weekend receptionist was there to get the phone for appointments, and he absolutely didn't have to leave the house unless he wanted to. He was fairly sure he didn't want to, even now. He spent the rest of the evening on the sofa, with Maria and Rose sitting on and by him, respectively. Sina, still holding the morning against him, had taken to looking at him morosely from an armchair.
Topping his bad day off with an early night he felt he'd earned, Uri fell asleep with all three of his cats curled up on his bed and no alarm to worry about. Sina might still be holding a grudge, but she wasn't about to turn down a spot on the bed for it.
If he'd thought that putting the day to rest would be the last of his worries, Uri was sorely mistaken.
Never mind having an easy Saturday, he barely got out of bed all weekend. He ordered dinner in on Saturday and, unable to face cooking on Sunday, he had the leftovers then. He missed church, too.
He only got through the next week on painkillers given to him by the GP he'd been positive he didn't need to see. Apparently there wasn't much to be done for whiplash, though this was a mild case, she assured him, in the same gentle if blasé way Uri told his own patients they'd feel a bit of pulling while a tooth was being extracted. He had been advised to go on as normally as he could, which wasn't exactly easy when it really rather hurt, made it hard to sleep and all of his work involved standing with his head bent forward.
By Wednesday he'd cancelled his NHS appointments to get some rest. When he told them about the car accident (he did not mention how mild it was) he was assured that there were others that could take over for that afternoon, but it didn't stop him feeling somewhat guilty. On the Friday, a full week after it all happened, he felt like he'd accomplished something when he picked up his glasses. He even felt a little better when Frieda said they looked nice, and then invited him over to dinner with the family.
His brother not-so-subtly lectured him for not pressing the issue, but he managed not to mention Audis or Volvos, leading Uri to think that Frieda really had shut up up with that. He could have argued, but he was too tired and achy to do much more than brush it off. It had only been a week. These things weren't often quick, especially not for minor scratches to very expensive cars. He decided, even as Rod blustered over the lovely roast dinner his wife had prepared, that he'd give it another week.
It was Thursday when he received a call.
He had been at his office desk, filling out patient paperwork when his phone had started dancing across the table. He winced as he looked up a little quickly, the movement sending a sharp stab of pain down his back. Unknown number. That wasn't unusual, but they were usually cold calls. Still, after everything that had happened recently, he decided to answer it. There were rather more reasons than usual for a stranger to be calling him.
"Hello?" He said, deciding not to answer with his name and give any potential cold caller from Sky, Virgin Media, or whatever else, an in with a personal detail.
"Uh... hi, this Uri Reiss?" The voice on the other end said, without the requisite slightly-too-long pause of a call center worker.
Uri was impressed. The caller had managed to pronounce both of his names incorrectly. Usually people got at least one right, but he didn't bother to issue a correction. "Yes, that's me. Who's calling?"
"Kenny Ackerman," he said. "The... uh, car smash guy."
As if he could forget. He remembered the brief conversation they'd had at the accident, before he'd gone off to talk to the police officer. He'd been gruff, but not as scary as he'd initially looked, even if he had been sarcastic at the nice copper.
"Oh... yes, hello. Is there a problem?" He asked, leaning back in his chair and wondering when he was able to take more painkillers. The strong ones that helped him sleep were a no-go during the day when he had sharp instruments in the mouths of sometimes nervous people, but ibuprofen took the edge off, at the very least.
"No, no problem, I was just thinking about the scratch on the car," he said, and Uri noticed for the first time just how aggressively local he sounded. Uri lacked the stereotypical 'London' accent, instead speaking like a newsreader. Mr. Ackerman sounded rather more like a Del Boy, if rougher, and less whimsical. "We do repairs at my garage," he elaborated.
Uri narrowed his eyes, even if there was nobody there to see it. It was possible that he could repair the damage he'd caused but he was slightly wary of it bypassing the insurance company. "Mmmmm..?"
The wariness must have shown in that one syllable, because Kenny said "obviously you don't have to agree over the phone, but if you want to come down sometime next week we could discuss it. No pressure."
Uri picked up the card he'd got from Kenny at the scene and turned it over in his fingers. It wasn't a bad card. It wasn't as fancy as his, but Kenny ran a mechanic and car repair business, not a dentist. People valued fancy rather more when it had to do with making your smile look prettier than they did when it had anything to do with car repairs. It read "Ackerman & Caven". Well, he couldn't say much for the lack of imagination, it wasn't like he'd named his clinic like a hair salon, with a snappy pun and a fun logo. It was just the 'Reiss Dental Clinic'.
"All right," he said, looking at the address. It was in Barnet. "It might have to be during the evening though, I work long hours."
"No problem. If it's gonna be later than seven, just gimme a ring on this number," he said.
"Will do," Uri replied. "Thanks."
Kenny hung up. Uri raised his eyebrows, half sure it was a ploy to bypass a pricey claim, but it wasn't like he had anything to lose. He worked in a garage, after all. It would make sense to want to handle it to avoid a lengthy claim process.
He opted not to tell Frieda about the call, mostly because he didn't want it getting back to his brother. Frieda wasn't untrustworthy, it was just that Rod was a busybody, and always had been. He always said that it was because their father had charged him with looking after Uri, his often unwell kid brother, but he was sure he was just a bit nosy. Even after they had both grown up, and even since Uri's health issues had mostly resolved themselves, he still felt a burning need to stick his oar into his business.
Literally, in fact. While Uri had opted to go into dentistry, a fairly lucrative medical field with many years worth of university to get through and quite a bit of prestige, Rod had decided to become an accountant, a more boring option, but a safer one in the long run. Their different jobs had resulted in drastically different lives, with Rod having married and started a family young, staying in the large family home, and Uri moving into his own flat after coming back from university. He'd had a few dalliances there but had ended up ultimately single, and not at all unhappy about it, into his early thirties. Rod preached the virtues of family life when he could corner Uri long enough for him to listen, but Uri had always brushed it off. It hadn't been until he had admitted that his handful of short-lived relationships during his time away from home had been with men that Rod had stopped pestering him quite so much, even if he had asked when he was going to get into bed with something other than work, much to Uri's chagrin. It also hadn't kept him away from or out of his business. He'd asked him to move back into the Reiss home when their father had died, half because he'd left the estate to them both, house included, but when Uri refused Rod had, quite fairly, offered to buy his half of the house. He, after all, had children to pass it onto. Uri had accepted that offer, knowing full well how much the house was worth.
These days, Rod handled the accounts for the Reiss Dental Clinic, making sure that it was a family business regardless of Uri's less than optimal family situation. It was the right amount of distance for them both, though Uri had stretched the physical proximity a few miles when he'd moved out of his flat and into a bigger house on the outskirts of Harrow. Rod seldom visited, citing a dislike of his cats and the traffic, but Frieda popped round often. It took an hour to drive from his house to his practice in Haringey, but it was worth it for the big garden and spacious floor plan.
Uri doubted that Frieda would agree with his decision to meet the mechanic, either. She might not have been a busybody like her father, but she had picked up a few tricks from him.
He sat back in his chair and sighed, looking up at the clock. Two whitening treatments, a clean and a veneer application, and then he could go home.
"Mr. Reiss?"
A face, small and nervous, appeared around the door of his office, half-concealed by a mask. It was his newest dental assistant, Rose. She'd smiled when she'd found out that she had the same name as one of his cats, and it had made Uri kindly disposed towards her, not that he was ever any other way. Rod called him soft. Uri insisted that it was possible to be nice without being soft.
"Mm?"
"It's time for your one fifteen," she said. "Mr. Cavendish. Tooth whitening. He's being a bit ... impatient."
Uri glanced at the clock again. It was ten past one, but he knew Mr. Cavendish. He had him mentally filed as "Hi, Cavendish, call me Dave" complete with a smarmy voice, and remembered him as trying to make things go very quickly, with many missed calls during his appointments, because he was just so busy. High flier, you know. Important job.
"Of course he is," Uri said, pushing out his chair and getting to his feet. "I'll take him now."
At least, after that was done, he could take another painkiller. That was all that kept him going.
He didn't get around to going to the garage until he had an early finish the following Wednesday. The morning had consisted of a few fillings at the other clinic, and then a slew of small procedures and a crown fitting in the afternoon. It didn't require a call ahead. He pulled up in the yard at just before five, rather glad that the pre-Spring evenings had started to lighten enough that he it wasn't pitch black when he did. The sign, a simple black and white affair done up to look old fashioned, matched the one on the card.
Through the window, he frowned at the mess that the interior of the garage seemed to be in. They were all like that, in his experience. His last car, plagued with problems towards the end of its life, had spent a lot of time receiving palliative care in a place like this and he was almost used to the equipment, spare parts and empty and probably slowly furring coffee and tea mugs left around the place. Outside, where the cars were, both those under and outside of the overhanging half-roof, was rather tidier save the odd oil stain.
He turned the engine off and got out, pocketing his keys. There were three people visible, all dressed in overalls, who had looked up from their repairs, or newspapers, to eye his vehicle. He doubted, somehow, that they saw them much. All of their current patients were relatively normal looking cars, aside from what looked like a botch-job on a would-be souped up Honda Civic and one rather older than all of the others half hidden by a dust sheet. The Volvo, he noticed, was conspicuous by its absence.
He dithered for a moment, wondering where he was supposed to go to talk to somebody. Nobody had come over and he wasn't sure whether it was just poor customer service, that they'd all clocked off for the day or that his job had already been allocated. If he accepted it, anyway. He considered calling the number on the card when Kenny Ackerman came out of what Uri assumed was the office.
"Recognised your car," he said.
"Is this a bad time? I can come back if--"
"It's fine, it's fine," Kenny said, with a grin. He looked rather less scary away from the site of an accident. "Can I take a look?"
Uri nodded. Somehow, he thought, Kenny walked a little bit ... arrogantly. There was something about the set of his shoulders and length of his strides that made him look cocky. His hair, now not half-covered by a hat, looked like it could use a wash, too, though not as much as his hands, which were oil-stained and black under the nails because of it. When he crouched at the rear of the car, Uri was put in mind of a spider.
"Not as bad as it could be," he said, running a fingertip over the scratches. Uri almost winced, concerned that he'd leave oil on the already ruined paintwork. "This Daytona Grey Pearl?"
Uri blinked. "Uh... what?"
"The paint colour," Kenny clarified.
Uri thought back to when he'd bought it. He'd ... had enough money spare to buy it new, from a dealership, to his specification. He'd chosen colours, interior, what extras he'd wanted... Rod hadn't been pleased that he'd spent a little of the money from the house on it, even though it had been sitting there for eighteen months untouched, but Uri didn't much care. Was it that grey, or one of the others... ah. He pulled out his phone. He had saved the information in case he'd ever need it.
"Ah... yes," he said. "That's right." It surprised him that he knew, at a glance, but it surprised people not of his profession that he remembered the names of all the different teeth and their positions, so he put it down to it just being a different area of expertise.
"Y'know, I could do this for you," Kenny said, straightening up and sounding a little too much like a cowboy builder offering to fix a roof leak for Uri's comfort. "It'll be one hell of an expensive paint job, but obviously it won't cost you a penny."
"You keep the colour in stock?" Uri asked, feeling a little stupid. He had no idea. For all he knew, the inside of the garage was stacked with different paint colours, like Homebase, but for cars.
"No," Kenny said, doing him a favour and not giving him a pitying look. Uri appreciated that. He wouldn't expect Kenny to know what a buccal filling was, after all. "But I can get Caven to order it in."
"How long would it take..?" Even if the estimated arrival was a few weeks, an official claim would undoubtedly take longer.
"Usually takes about... ten days," Kenny said, wrinkling one side of his nose as he thought about it, eyes fixed skyward as he estimated. They were the same colour as the overcast sky, and the expression on his face gave him a vaguely wolfish look. "If you wanna go for it, I can give you a call when it's in. Shouldn't take more than a few days to fix it up and I can give you a car in the meantime."
It would certainly speed up the repair process. Driving a fancy car wasn't quite as fun when it looked like it had come off worse in a fight. A faster turnaround time seemed like a good deal, especially since it would only be Kenny's insurance company paying out anyway. A courtesy car wasn't a bad addition, either.
"So long as it hasn't had work done on it by whoever did that Volvo," Uri said, giving a smile. "I'd sooner not get into any other accidents."
Kenny barked a laugh and a few of the people in the garage looked up. One of them, a blonde woman, pointed at the office door and got a wave from Kenny in return. "Don't worry," he said, wearing a grin that showed too many teeth. Surprisingly good teeth too, in Uri's professional opinion. "The dipshit responsible for that little fuck-up was given a dressing down. How's your neck, anyway?"
"My... Oh. It's been better," he admitted, touching it reflexively with a hand. "How do you know..?"
"Most people who come in here for rear-ending repairs end up with whiplash," Kenny said, giving a shrug. "You said you were fine at the time, but most of 'em do. Takes a night sleeping on it to kick in."
"Yeah... it seemed okay at the time, but I woke up feeling like I'd been put on the rack," Uri said.
"Sorry." He sounded genuinely sorry, too. He could have been flippant; it wasn't like the brakes failing was his fault. "I hope you took some time off work."
"A few days," he said with a shrug, a shrug that he wished he hadn't done. Well, it was a day. He wouldn't have turned down two weeks recovery, but work was work, and when you owned your own practice cancelling on people wasn't entirely fair.
"Good. So yeah, I'll give you a call when the paint's in?" Kenny asked, offering a hand.
"All right," Uri nodded. "That sounds good." He eyed his hand, oil-stained and rather large, and decided to shake it anyway, concerned it might have been considered rude if he hadn't, and he was sure there was a sparkle in Kenny's eyes, like he had expected him to refuse. He didn't even look at it to see if there was any oil on him until after he'd settled back into his car.
Uri pulled off his gloves and sat in his chair, glad that his lunchbreak, late though it was, was coming up. He really must stop taking root canals before lunchtime, they were time intensive and took a toll on his wrist. With rain hitting the frosted windows like it was, it just made for a depressing afternoon.
"That wasn't so bad," Rose said, wiping down the chair and replacing the disposable cover.
"It was one of the better ones," Uri admitted. There had been no mishaps, no issues with the anaesthetic or complaints from the patient. "I need a cup of coffee before anything else, would you mind filling in the file?"
"Of course," she smiled. It was part of her duties, after all.
Uri stopped to pick up his phone from his office and headed to the kitchenette for a caffeine fix. Two missed calls. He put a pod into the the coffee machine and unlocked his phone. Then he remembered to put his cup in place so he didn't end up with a wonderful cup of coffee all over the counter.
'Ackerman, Kenny (mechanic)' showed as the caller. Had it been that long already? Ten days, he'd said. It couldn't have been more than six. It was always possible he'd changed his mind. Or couldn't get hold of the paint. It might be difficult, being a specialty colour from a specific manufacturer, but he hoped it wasn't bad news. Instead of delaying the inevitable he called the number.
"Finally," Kenny said, in lieu of a greeting.
Uri raised his eyebrows, feeling that response was more than a little rude. "Sorry," he said, and then kicked himself for apologising when he had no real reason to. "I was working. Root canal. What did you call about?"
"Your paint's in," he said, his voice sounding surprisingly bright. He must have been impatient with the good news, rather than grouchy. Uri didn't think his response any less rude because of it, but it was slightly better than the alternative. "Come in anytime."
"Oh," Uri said, surprised. "That was fast."
"I had Caven put a rush on it for you," he sounded almost deliberately casual, like somebody saying something was 'nothing' after they'd put a considerable amount of effort in.
"Thank you," he told him gratefully. He hadn't expected that, not from somebody like him. He couldn't claim to know him, but he seemed a little like somebody who would grouchily quibble over being given a few pence short in his change. "My last appointment today is a short one at five forty five, I could get there before seven if the traffic's good?"
"Perfect," Kenny said. "See you then."
Click.
Uri didn't really want to part with his car. He knew he had to, of course, but he didn't want to. He wanted to keep it, and for it to be miraculously all right without him having to leave it with strangers for a few days. He was sure he'd feel the same way about having to leave his cats in the care of other people, but that train of thought led him to realise he hadn't taken a holiday in actual years, so he tried not to think about it. He wound down the window and rather wished he hadn't when a breeze blew a cold spatter of rain in at him. It wasn't as bad as it had been at lunchtime, when it had streaked down the windows and rattled the glass, but it hadn't stopped either.
"Oi, Uri," a familiar voice came, from underneath the roof.
It was Kenny, avoiding the rain. The work area, covered by the canopy, was dry. There was a proper interior too, with a locking door, though he presumed they only took vehicles in there when they were done for the night.
He'd said his name wrong again. Uri sighed, quite used to it, but resolved to correct him next time. He beckoned him under the shelter, and Uri carefully turned, parking up once out of the rain. He got out.
"You wanna come into the office?" Kenny asked, starting over there before Uri got to answer. He wondered why he'd bothered to phrase it as a question.
He followed, feeling a little like a child being taken to see the headmaster.
Kenny's office was, for a start, not just Kenny's. It had two desks, one tidy and organised, with separate trays for different things, and a neat line of pens, and one that looked like it had fallen victim to the world's smallest precision missile strike. Papers were arranged into haphazard piles and there were pens crammed into a mug with a broken handle. It had a picture of a husky on it, its blue eyes bright in its dark face. There was even an empty kit kat wrapper abandoned there.
Kenny sat, to Uri's surprise, at the tidy desk. He wondered if he'd done that for show, to make him think that his desk wasn't the one that looked like a miniature bombsite.
The rest of the office was filled with what he would expect from a garage. A safe, no doubt screwed to the floor, various toolboxes, a coffee machine that Uri estimated was about five hundred years old, and the requisite booby calendar on the wall. He raised his eyebrows.
"That's Caven's doing," Kenny said, having followed his line of sight.
"Oh," said Uri.
"Coffee?" He asked.
"... um, no, thank you. I had one before I left."
"I'd say it was your loss, but it tastes like shit," Kenny grinned.
"I'd say it was kind of you to offer, but in light of that..." Uri gave a laugh. He'd never quite mastered not sounding awkward when he did.
"So, I'll need you to sign some stuff before you leave the car," he said, pulling some papers from the pile. "Just to keep things above board. It's carbon paper, so you'll keep a copy. Take a seat, read through it, don't want you going home and worrying about fine print."
Uri looked around and grabbed the nearest chair. It was the one from the other desk, presumably Caven's. His name was on the sign, after all. He pulled it up and took the documents to read.
He could feel Kenny's eyes on him as he did, and found it rather distracting, like he was in an exam. He read it all twice, just to make sure. When he was happy that it wouldn't transfer ownership, or relinquish his soul, he took a pen and signed and dated the lines provided.
"How long do you estimate it will take?" He asked, handing the papers over.
"Should have it back with you, good as new, by... Thursday?"
"That's not bad," he said, feeling a little better. "You mentioned a courtesy car? I do need to get home."
"Of course, let me bring it round for you. I saved you our most reliable one," Kenny grinned.
And that was how Uri, that night, came to be pulling up on his lovely tree-shaded drive, rather later than usual, in a rather new, if violently orange, Peugeot 208.
Uri was glad to return it on the Thursday. He hadn't wanted a phonecall more than the one that told him that his sodding car was finished. Parking the lurid orange monster in his designated parking space outside the clinic, where his beloved Audi R8 was supposed to sit, was almost embarrassing. Especially since even Rose's little Mini was nicer.
He pulled into the garage, pleased to see his car waiting for him. He couldn't see the back, but he parked up alongside it in the courtesy car and got out, the keyring of the keys over his finger for safekeeping. He looked at where the scratch had been and breathed a sigh of relief. It was perfect. It wasn't even obvious where the repair had been done. It was a fine job. Not seeing Kenny around, he went to the office and knocked the door.
The blonde woman he'd seen before opened it. She looked somewhat severe, and she was a good few inches taller than him. Uri wondered if she was Kenny's wife.
"You're the Audi guy, right?" She asked, as if she didn't already know.
"Ah... yes," Uri said. "Kenny called to say it was ready to collect..?"
"Yeah, he's inside," she said, jabbing her thumb behind her and moving aside. "Go on in."
Kenny was, again, sat at the tidy desk. The messy one had been tidied up a little, and the kit kat wrapper had gone, but it was still a disaster compared to the other. There was a mug on Kenny's desk, no longer steaming but still full of coffee. The outside was printed with a repeated pattern of the word 'Ken' in the Barbie font. A joke gift, Uri assumed, smiling a little. He was sure he'd been thrilled to receive it.
"Your wait's over," Kenny said, sitting back in his chair. Uri could see his long legs stretched under the desk and crossed at the ankles. "Didn't take too long, did it?"
"No, it didn't," Uri said, gratefully. "Thank you. Are you sure it's all right?"
"Yeah, it's fine," he said. "I'll square it with the insurance company. I appreciate you saving me the hassle," he told him, smiling. "And the claim."
"That's all right," Uri said, feeling a little silly for saying it. It hadn't changed anything on his end. He wouldn't have been footing the bill regardless. "It looks really good. Good as new."
"Told you, didn't I?"
He had, yes. Uri hadn't been sure whether to believe that he could make his car perfect again, but he had, and he was grateful. He signed the forms to get it back, getting copies for himself again, and folded them up to take with him, with the keys, which he exchanged for the ones to the ugly orange thing.
The blond woman picked up another set of keys from the messy desk and walked to the door, giving Kenny a smack up the back of the head on the way past. He looked at her, eyebrows raised, and she gave him a very pointed look, and then left, closing the door behind her. Uri looked at Kenny's hand. Well, he wasn't wearing a wedding ring, so they probably weren't married.
"Is that your..?" Uri asked.
"No," Kenny said quickly. "No, no way. That's Caven, she's my business partner."
Uri blinked. That was Caven? He felt a stab of guilt for not having considered that she was a mechanic, let alone a co-owner. Kenny must have seen it on his face, because he gave a laugh. It turned into a wide grin when Uri glanced up at the calendar again.
"Yeah, I know," he said, agreeing with Uri's unvoiced comment, and then took a sip of his apparently cold coffee. It made him grimace, though after what he'd said last time, that could have been as much because of the taste as the temperature. "Hey, Uri," wrong again. "What do you say I take you for a drink to say thanks for letting me sort the car out?"
"I..." Uri blinked a few times and gave an awkward little smile. "...well, I don't really drink," he admitted. Plus, he'd thought about the sort of bars he could imagine Kenny in, and it made him nervous already.
"...what about dinner instead?" He asked.
"... ah..." he felt his face go a little warm. Surely he wasn't really asking him out to dinner.
"It'll be somewhere nice," Kenny said, taking advantage of his hesitation.
"... all right, sure," Uri agreed, unable to keep the smile off his face. He tried to ignore the flush. He was sure Kenny had noticed it, because he was grinning, if more like a fox than a cheshire cat.
"How about tomorrow?" Kenny suggested.
"That sounds good," Uri said, nodding. "My last appointment tomorrow is at four fifteen, so just give me enough time to get home and change and that's fine."
"All right, I'll text you with the details," Kenny said, grinning again.
Uri walked out of the office feeling slightly dazed and wondering if that had actually happened. Surely not. Surely he'd blacked out for a moment. He shook his head and got into his car, his own lovely car, and adjusted the seat. Somebody else, somebody taller than him, had obviously driven it to and from the interior while it had been out of his possession, and adjusted the seat accordingly. Once he was happy, he headed home.
He'd been distracted the evening of his car's return, but he'd slept better knowing that it was safely back on his drive, and whole and perfect again. The following day, between all of his morning appointments, he checked his phone for the details Kenny had promised him, half sure he'd been joking. It wasn't until he sat down with a fresh cup of coffee at lunch time that he saw the text waiting for him.
'Got a table at Panorama. Pick you up at 7?? address the same as on form???'
Seven wasn't so bad. It gave him time to get home and shower, and change. He replied with a positive to both of those questions, and gave Panorama a bit of a google. Greek, that was interesting. Not bad reviews on Trip Advisor either. It was in Barnet, so that wasn't too far away from either the garage, or where Uri lived, all things considered.
He put a coffee on, feeling better with the tension of the unknown alleviated.
Frieda came in, a bag from Pret A Manger in her hand. She had been able to nip out to grab a bite while their last appointment went on, given that she didn't have to sign anybody in until after lunch. Uri was almost jealous, but smiled when she handed him a wrap.
"Oh, thank you," he said, bright.
"No problem," she said, sitting in the other chair. "I didn't get you a coffee, I figured you'd have one on by the time I got back. Oh, and I passed Rose. She was heading to Costa."
Uri lifted his cup. "You know me too well," he said, unwrapping his lunch.
"Oh, Dad called while I was out," Frieda said, pulling her own sandwich out of its little box. "He asked if you wanted to come over after work. Mum's making spaghetti and meaballs."
Uri felt himself go warm again, but mastered it. Or tried to. "Ah, give him my apologies. I have plans for this evening." He picked at the unwanted salad on the wrap, drawing a bit of coriander out and putting it back in the box to be disposed of with the cardboard.
"... what plans?" She asked. He saw her looking at him when he looked up.
"I'm going out for dinner," he shrugged, trying to seem casual.
"Is it a date?" She asked, lifting her sandwich to her mouth, being entirely better at being casual than he was.
"... kind of, yeah."
"...Uncle Uri, you didn't say. Who's the mystery man?" She grinned, taking a bite to ensure her mouth was full and he felt pressured to answer. It was a trick her dad liked to pull, too.
"... I'm not saying anything yet," he said, airily. "Besides, it's only dinner. It might not go anywhere. Don't tell your dad."
Uri got home and ready in good time. He'd been mildly concerned that some awful emergency appointment would come in at the last minute to spoil his plans, but nothing had happened. He got home, showered, changed into something smart casual, and then changed again. He killed time by feeding the cats and letting them out for an hour, and then gathering them back in and leaving them in the conservatory all safe and warm until he got home. Maria had pawed at the glass separating the kitchen from the conservatory with her single front leg, mewing sadly, but he hadn't given in. He wasn't going to have his evening ruined with surprise hairballs, or worse.
A car pulled into his drive at five to seven. Not bad, Uri thought. He grabbed his coat, set the alarm, and stepped out. It was getting onto Spring, but it was still cold. The evenings were lighter, but not quite light enough. The car waiting for him was a BMW. Not new, but well cared for.
Kenny wound the window down and gave him a wave. He did not get out and open the passenger door for him, but Uri was glad of that. Kenny didn't seem much like a gentleman, so he didn't want him to go out of his way on his account. Uri walked around and opened the door.
"Ready?" Kenny asked.
He scrubbed up well, Uri thought. His hair looked clean, if still long. His beard, if you could call it that, had been neatened up, but left there, obviously an intentional feature and not just laziness in progress. His hands, and nails, were very clean, and he was dressed in a similar smart-casual way to Uri himself, albeit, he would wager, without the ridiculous labels in the back.
"Certainly," he said.
The traffic wasn't too bad and he drove well, Uri thought, considering his first experience of him had been a Volvo to the rear bumper. It wasn't entirely his fault, but the fact that he apparently usually drove a BMW made him laugh, not that he could really comment on that. Both of their choices had a tendency to have idiots for drivers, but he was glad they both bucked the trend. They chatted about the day's work, both the fixing of cars and the fixing of teeth. The conversation continued much in that vein once they had been seated in the restaurant, too. It was a nice place, quiet and pretty, and although the service was a little slow, the starters, at least, were rather good, but not so good that conversation was impossible to hold over them.
"So why dentistry?" Kenny asked at last.
Uri thought about it. He'd been asked this question a lot. The idea of dealing with the mouths of strangers disgusted a lot of people and he couldn't blame them, especially with the state of some teeth he'd dealt with. Broken or missing teeth, bombed out teeth, abscesses... it wasn't a pleasant job sometimes. "I had a biology degree, so I decided to go into ... uh, a lucrative field. I didn't fancy nursing and surgery is a bit ... visceral for me. My limits are extractions and I try to avoid wisdom teeth if I have to. Why did you decide to become a mechanic?"
"I did an apprenticeship when I was younger," Kenny said. Uri had discovered that he was thirty seven earlier in the conversation, so he wasn't much older than him. "I met Caven during it, and she did a bit of Business in uni, so we decided to make a go of it. It's not bad work. I can live on it, I like cars, and I have enough spare cash to help my sister out a bit."
"You have a sister?" Uri asked, spearing his last cherry tomato on his fork, popping it into his mouth, and laying it down.
"Yeah, younger than me. She had a kid. He's a right little shit," Kenny said, shaking his head, but grinning a little all the same. "Though last I heard he's putting himself through night school while working daytime, so he can get through Uni, so that's pretty good. He's doing better than I did."
"That's good, at least. He didn't bother with college?"
"Nah, he was too busy getting warnings off coppers and driving my sister crazy to go," Kenny said, shaking his head. "He's improved."
"That's fair. I have an older brother," Uri said. "Rod, he's married with children and has the superiority complex to go with it," he didn't resist a roll of the eyes.
"... Rod?" Kenny asked, pausing with his glass halfway to his mouth.
"... Yeah, Rod. Roderick, but nobody's called him that since Mom was alive," Uri smiled. "And she only did it angrily."
"...Weird combination. Roderick and ... Uri?" Kenny asked. And there it was again.
"It's, um, Uri, actually. There's no Y," he tried not to sound awkward, but he'd never been very good at being authoritative over the mispronunciation of his name. He'd promised himself he'd get better at it.
"Seriously? You've been letting me say it wrong all this time?" Kenny laughed a little. "I thought it was like Uri Geller."
Uri gave a laugh himself at that. "It is like Uri Geller, but everybody says his name wrong, too."
"Oh. No spoons either?"
"Oh god, don't," Uri laughed, rolling his eyes properly that time. "The best I can offer in retaliation is a South Park comment, and that would be rubbish."
"Yeah fair play," Kenny sipped from his glass of wine, giving him a smile like he'd heard that one more than once, too. He'd opted to have one glass of the house white, then switch to something else, because he was driving. Uri thought that rather sensible. "Uri Reiss. Huh."
"... It's like 'rice', actually." Uri said, feeling especially awkward over a second correction. 'Race' was a common wrong option, and the one Kenny had gone for, though 'Reese' wasn't unknown.
"...like Challenge Anneka?"
"Wow, now I feel really old," Uri paused in sipping from his own glass, laughing a little, and looked up as he saw a server approach. "But yes. Or, as most people point out, like the food."
"Well, that too," Kenny said, giving a shrug and a tilt of the head. "You got any middle names I can cock up, for good measure?"
"No, fortunately," Uri said, leaning back so the waiter could pick up the empty plates.
"Your mains will be out shortly," he said, whisking them away.
They didn't take too long, but they took rather longer than Uri would have expected. Kenny didn't seem to mind. The chatter kept things interesting while they waited for the food and, fortunately, it was worth waiting for. He would have been disappointed if it had been terrible after all that.
The desserts weren't too bad either, even if the choice was somewhat limited. Uri had gone for something small, a selection of Greek Pastries, just to top it off, and not take advantage of his date's generosity. Kenny had gone for the same, but only because there wasn't a great deal of choice to be had. Uri had offered to split the bill with him, largely because his meal of swordfish hadn't come cheap. Kenny had refused.
When they left, Uri was still in a good mood. He'd had dates before that had been rather dismal, with large gaps in the conversation and awkward talks about politics ruining the evening. This one had gone rather well, he thought.
Kenny drove him back home and pulled up on his drive. "There you go," he said, his expression suggesting that he had enjoyed his evening as much as Uri had.
"Thank you," Uri said. He looked out of the window at his door, the light on the porch having lit up at their arrival. He stayed quiet for a moment. Well, you only live once, don't you? "Do you want to come in for a coffee?" He asked.
"Yeah," he said, smiling again. It was a smile, not a grin. It looked nice on him. "Why not?"
Definitely not boring so far!!
Date: 2018-10-27 12:32 am (UTC)From:Still laughing. Zombie timeslot!
This is not boring, this is FUN, like, every single little description bit is interesting and amusing?? How??
Also Uri is SUCH a loser about his perfect car, ahahaha.
"bar fight participation" pffffffffft seriously!
Poor Uri and his career of dealing with difficult people. I love him already.
All right, more comments-while-reading in next textbox! XD
I love Uri okay
Date: 2018-10-27 12:59 am (UTC)From:Oh no, odd socks!!
And he goes to church, too? He's so stuffy <3 But he manages to somehow have a really fun internal monologue while being stuffy. Babbin. <3
Also I love how rough and awkward Kenny comes off as sounding over the phone.
omg I can just imagine Rod preaching the virtues of family life. He's such a self-important sod. /sicks Kenny on him
finish iiiiiiit
Date: 2018-10-27 01:09 am (UTC)From:Poor Uri and his neck and his difficult patients... He needs someone to hug him at the end of the day. I want Kenny to keep being a bit weirdly nice to him.
And about the unfinished bits, I vote for a date! =D
/makes you write more, oops