The aroma of leather books and printed paper greeted the duo as the glass doors of the public library swung open. Skye and Klaus climbed the stairs towards the second floor, both pairs of eyes processing how many aisles just a community library could hold. While Klaus glowed at the sight and smell of it all, Skye ignored the books. Instead, she focused on the people that were roaming about on the second floor.

Skye spotted a middle aged, stocky-built man clutching a clump of papers as thick as his hands. If she had to guess, just bumping into him or letting even one paper slip would make the entire collection explode. Her eyes then fixed themselves to a group of teenagers working together at a table. They couldn’t have been older than middle schoolers. She missed the days where she could carry a backpack bigger than herself with ease, but her years of doing engine swaps made her shoulders scream in agony at the memories and at the sight of it in front of her.

Meanwhile, Klaus remained fixated on the books, as he stopped multiple times during their venture to pick out different books to read later. He remained glued to the left side of the aisle, which was dominated by romance and adventure novels. Skye remained to the right, humming as she picked and opened a thin book that turned out to be an instructional guide for replacing head gaskets, which was a task that made her spine freeze over. “Who could have guessed you were a bookworm?” Skye deadpanned.

“I've read a few things here and there, sure. What about yourself?"

The Rouxland District Library wasn’t the worst place to go to, she thought. Of course, it was times like these that she wished she could’ve gone to a local car show instead. Perhaps take a rare trip to the gaming store across town she frequented as a teenager, or even go to the beach. Maybe Jade will shut up if I get a tan. "Any books about cars are cool." When it came to books, however, she could read textbooks for a school assignment or to learn a thing or two about the slew of new cars that came out every year. Since becoming a college student, there was an extra incentive to stock up on modern automotive knowledge, and remained convinced that any other reading material would crowd out what she learned. Those exams were her bitch, damn it.

“Aaanyway, there’s something I want to show you. Come on!” Klaus proceeded to briskly walk past Skye and further into the sea of bookshelves. Not long after he rounded a corner, the young man reemerged from the corner and waved at her. Skye sighed, putting the book down and then following him. He’ll only keep bugging me if I say no at this point. It wasn’t a long walk, but the lights were noticeably dimmer compared to where they last were. There was a mustier odor in this part of the library as well; if Skye’s nose could turn itself off, it would’ve been a relief from the olfactory assault.

At the end of their short journey was a tall, wide, wooden door adorned with a metal handle and a keypad. As he began to press the buttons, Skye leaned against a wall as she crossed her arms and planted the sole of her shoe against the wall. She looked up to see a tiny, black half of a sphere in the ceiling. From her crossed arms, a hand emerged and gave a small wave. Out of the blue, she felt a hand wrap around her forearm as she was yanked into darkness. What remained of the light from outside became a sliver as the door clicked shut. “If you try anything funny, I’m kicking your–” Light suddenly filled the room, but it was so bright that she had to shield her eyes. When she could open them again, she found that the room looked akin to a Lost & Found. Klaus remained silent as she took a tour of the room.

Lining the walls were tall, metal shelves holding hard covered school textbooks ranging from sociology to mathematics, from paperback foreign language workbooks to the generic black and white notebooks Skye was all too familiar with. As she looked around, she came to realize that despite a treasure trove of cracked, colorful smartphones being contained by a shoe box and winter scarves that coiled around each other and other small items like pythons strangled their prey, there wasn't anything too special about the room in her eyes.

She had to admit that there was some appeal to the abandoned pair of sandals hiding in a row of running shoes that had holes and frayed shoelaces, plus there was something similarly tempting to the ruby necklace strung around a baseball cap that had been coated with grass stains, but other than potentially stealing someone's lost stuff, there wasn't a point to being in here.

"Welcome to my little hideout," Klaus gestured to the small room. "It isn't much, but we've got snacks, books.. snacks. Want one?" He offered a half eaten bag of chips, to which Skye put up a hand to dismiss it. "More for me!" He reached into it and shoveled a handful into his mouth as some of the chips landed on the floor and broke apart, then crunched under the soles of his shoes as he walked over to a beat up mattress on the floor. "Could you believe someone left an entire mattress in here?"

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Skye didn’t respond; she couldn’t respond. What could she say? She didn’t know. The mechanic watched him plop down on a beat up, stained mattress that squeaked in protest of his weight. Empty snack backs littered the ground close to the mattress, and among the mess was a small table lamp plugged into an outlet. Upon second glance, she noticed the lamp was perched atop a hard covered book for entry level psychology. "Why?"

"Life at home sucked, so I needed a place to go to get away from it all," he lamented, turning onto his back so he had an upside down image of Skye holding one of her hips. "Since we're working together, I wanted to establish trust, so now you know about my little secret."

"How did you avoid getting caught?" Skye questioned, coming to his side and leaning against the wall. She couldn't stand to look at the mattress for too long. Suddenly, car grease didn't seem too filthy after all. "Better yet, how did you get your hands on the code at all?"

Klaus sat up abruptly and crossed his legs over each other as he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I.. work here?" he smiled nervously as he watched Skye's eyes sharpen, glaring daggers into his soul as their eyes met. "Yep, that's my secret all right. Come on, if I was making enough money to pay bills, I wouldn't have turned to the criminal life. I don't break into famous mechanics' houses for kicks!" If he hadn't said that, Skye was sure she would've sucker punched him for holding out on money that could've been needed, but then again, he had only worked with her for a month. If he had kept this a secret for a year, that would've been a different story. "For what it's worth, I-I can put my money in an emergency fund and then we can--"

"Keep the chump change. Compared to me, you make pennies." Klaus could only breathe a sigh of relief. "Maybe it'll come of use in a dire situation, so I'll establish a rent price, but I don't want your whole bank account. Now, was there anything else you needed me to know?"

"Yeah, actually," Klaus got up from his mattress and motioned to a metal shelf where he pulled out a long piece of fabric. Under the light, it was colored in different shades of pink, green, and blue. In its current state, it was flat and reflected the light in such a way that she could tell it was made of silk. He gave one to Skye; as she thought, its soft texture made it seem like it could slip between her fingers at any moment. With another rustling of a box of jewelry as he knocked away various pieces of silver chains and bejeweled pendants, he pulled out an identical copy. "See? We match! I want us to be more than just an employee and an employer, or a mentor and an apprentice. I want us to really get to know each other if we're going to live and work together."

"Why not live here?"

"Tried it," Klaus bemoaned. "I learned my lesson the first time, thank you."

Skye didn't look up at her apprentice; she remained fixated on this fabric. She watched him put it on his wrist, tying it up and making it look like a makeshift bracelet. The more she fixated on it, she thought of the different ways she could use it. Maybe when he wasn't watching, she'll use it to clean herself of the car grease or wipe sweat off of her head with it. To hell with it. She tied it around her neck.

"You look amazing." Klaus seemed stunned by her appearance, although she couldn't get a grasp on her appearance post-scarf. "Well? how do I look?" Skye could only muster a thumbs-up and tell him he looked cool. Out of left field, Klaus pulled out his smartphone and wrapped his arm around Skye, his thumb on the button on the screen to take a photo, but the photo he took was of her struggling to get out of his grasp as his face was smooshed by a hand, giving him a smooshed grin as she had glared daggers at him. Now free of his grip, he held his hands up in defense. "I-I'm sorry! I got carried away! I just wanted to post it to my social media to advertise your business!"

"At least ask first," Skye huffed. "Though I suppose some advertising won't hurt. I'll let it slide, but do it again and you're sleeping on the lawn." She then gripped him by the arm. "Now let's get the hell out of here. We have a car to return."

An hour later, the car they had worked on at home was delivered safely to the customer's house, with a new engine that purred like a kitten and a tank full of gas to tear up the road with. The driver expressed his gratitude, and gave Skye and Klaus two hundred more dollars than they originally charged, which was a generous tip that had Skye gushing hours after the fact. She split up the money into savings, and another portion that she solemnly parted ways with as her cash was exchanged for more food than usual in a week's shopping trip.

As she was putting away the groceries, her mind kept replaying the conversation between her and the man she returned the car to. It was all going as normal as it could be; price, driving habits, "care" instructions for engines in general - one such instruction being only getting high quality fuel as often as possible. The conversation turned to her and Klaus's scarves near the end; his eyes were fixated on them as he spoke, occasionally humming as he remarked that he hadn't seen scarves "like those" in years, whatever that meant.