For you two (TFATF/XXX-Crossover)

It was nine in the evening when his car rolled into the spray booth and I still felt like a barrel from the amount of food Michael had stuffed into me over the day. Together with the stiff and aching muscles which hadn't improved much over the day I basically wasn't in the mood to give a damn paintjob to the car, but it was Michael's, and I had to.

At least I had taken the chance to convince him that some two-color paint would look better, and he finally let me do it. It would remain silver on the top portion, but anything beneath the windows would become bright metallic blue.

I sat in the corner of the booth and mixed my paints, curing agents and plasticizer and changed the nozzle on the spray gun. I knew he was standing outside and watched me through the windows in the roller shutter; he always did that.

He knew that paintjobs were something I had to do alone. To me they were like having a love affair with a car because they were so unforgiving, especially with metallic paints. The bigger the flakes, the more Diva the paint, as I used to say. Holding the gun at the wrong angle for just a moment, not moving with the same speed all over, and the paintjob was ruined.

I walked around the car once more, just to make sure once more that I hadn't forgotten anything. All parts covered that shouldn't be painted? Check. Sanded? Check. All parts that should be painted accessible and cleaned with both thinner, silicone remover and anti dust cloths? Check. Primer coated and fillered? Check. With the correct primers for metal and plastic parts? Check. Plasticizer for the plastic parts to add to the paint? Check.

Not that I wouldn't have made either of those mistakes on my mental checklist before from which I had learned.

I checked the pressure once more by test spraying on one of the walls... check. Ready to paint.

I looked at the left fender once more, held the gun away from it, started to let the paint spray and slowly traced my horizontal lines along the side of the car; movements slow, concentrated; my hand leading the gun with my whole arm and wrist. Then the rear, other side and then the front. Then vertical lines around the whole car again. Walked around it once more. Checked if I hadn't forgotten anything; if the paint was even.

Another of those two rounds around the car; horizontal and vertical lines. Another check.

Then I cleaned the gun and poured the clear lacquer into it. Changed the nozzle. Started my way around the car again; this time eight times around; resulting in four full coats of clear.

Last round, checking again. I was satisfied.


For the first time I looked at the window to signal Michael that he should turn the heat on to burn the paint in at 175°F. I wouldn't leave the cabin to flip that switch myself and he had seen me doing paintjobs often so he knew what to do. I still believed that the door shouldn't be opened before the paint had time to cure for some minutes in the heat so that potential dust coming through the opened door wouldn't have a chance to settle into the paint. After all it was dry heat, comparable to a sauna. Bearable.

The moment I raised my arm with the 'turn switch' motion of my hand I saw that Dom and Xander were standing by the windows, too.

I smiled at them, waved my hand. Then I heard the fan in the booth cease to work and the heating immediately kicked in. It didn't bother me; never did. Would take quite some minutes before it was fully heated up in here, though, and that time I had to use.

I cleaned the spray gun again and afterwards carefully removed the masking film from the car, which was much easier while the paint was still relatively fresh. Later attempts, I remembered, often caused the paint to break, leaving ragged edges. Just another thing on my checklist, but when I was finished, I was sweating all over; which, again, was another point on my mental checklist. If I was sweating, then the paint had more than enough time.

I test touched the paint below the rear bumper. Still a bit sticky, but not sticky enough to attract dust. Good. Time for me to leave.

I shivered at the cold that surrounded me outside the cabin. "Hello guys." I said with clattering teeth. Michael was already handing me my jacket.

"Concentrated, hmmm?" Dom asked. I could easily recognize him because he wasn't wearing leather even if he was leaning to Xander's bike that was standing inside the garage.

"Paintjobs don't forgive if you're not concentrated." I shrugged.

"Nice work." Xander said, still peering through the window.

"How was your day?" I still looked at Dom. "And why didn't you wake me when you went away? Or even just leave a note?"

"Thought you were sleeping so nicely..." He replied.

"I slept extremely nicely until noon, thanks, but then I had to get up and if Michael hadn't been there I would still be in bed." I snorted.

"Why?" Dom asked.

"Just because I couldn't move. Still can't really move, that is." I grunted and shot Xander an angry side glance, just to see him grinning through the window of the paint booth.

"Have no idea what you're talking about." Xander murmured to the window.

"Yeah, sure." Michael snorted.

"What are you two doing here, anyway?" I said.

"Oh, just informing you that we won't be at yours or Michael's home tonight." Dom said.

Xander was still grinning through that window, a little more by now.

"And where the hell will you two be instead?" I asked a bit dumb.

"Not there." Dom replied a bit stiff.

"Got that." I grumbled and turned to stare at Xander once more, who was now casually leaning to the gate of the booth, arms crossed before his chest, watching the other three of us with an unreadable expression and cocked eyebrows.

"Stop being so pissed, Dana!" Dom said. "Just a night off. You've had your fun, and now..." His voice faded, he gave Michael a side glance knowing that he wouldn't be able to speak on without giving away what I knew he and his brother were planning for that night.

"I'm not pissed, Dom." I tried to sound calm. "Still have work here when that paint is finished burning; so you just go. I'm tired anyway, so if you two are out of the house I might have a chance to sleep."

Xander stepped away from the gate, chuckling, put his helmet back on and mounted his bike. "Now that this is clarified... you ready to go, Dom?"

Dom stared at me for another moment, then shook his head and climbed on the bike behind Xander, in the process putting on his helmet, too.

"Yeah, ready." He grumbled.

I stared at them when I saw Dom's hand sliding through the pockets in Xander's jacket; the same thing I had done the night before and I knew that Dom was already feeling his brother's skin beneath his fingers.

Dammit, I thought. Thinking about it was one thing, doing it myself was one thing, but seeing another person - Dom in particular - do it was entirely something else. I felt a cold, stabbing pain in my heart; the sting of jealousy I hadn't felt for ages.

I looked at Xander's face again, saw the mirth sparkling in his eyes and knew that he knew what I was thinking - and that he enjoyed it immensely.

"Have a nice quiet night. Enjoy it while you can." He said chuckling, started the bike and a second later, they were gone and only the fading roaring of the engine outside was proof that they had been here at all. I stared after them into the darkness of the night nevertheless.

A hand holding a Feigling appeared before my eyes.

"Thought you could need that now." Michael's voice said softly from behind me.

"That and several of its tiny friends, yes." I growled, snatched the bottle, unscrewed it and gulped the shot down, still staring into the darkness. Finally I threw the bottle into that dark night outside the garage and turned around.

Michael was sitting on the wielding apparatus, arms crossed, and watched me.

"From what I've just seen, especially from the way you looked after them and threw that bottle, I could conclude many things concerning those two." He said slowly, thoughtfully. "None of them, however, are complying to any of the laws in this or any other country I know."

"Stop concluding, Michael." I grumbled.

"Interesting that you didn't say I'm wrong or ask me what the hell I'm thinking." He said.

I looked at him, he looked at me. Our eyes and expressions spoke more than a thousand words. I knew that he knew, he knew that I knew; and we both knew it was better not to talk about what we knew.

"You know what? I hate him too." He finally continued.

"Hate who?" I asked.

"Xander, of course, that self centered bastard. Being good at doing certain things is a good thing. Knowing that you're good at doing certain things is another good thing. Bragging with and harping around on that knowledge, however, is bad. And I've never seen anyone as self confident, harping and bragging as that guy." He spat out on the floor next to him, a sour expression on his face.

"He's not like that all the time. Most of the time, yes; but I've seen two seconds yesterday when he wasn't like this and I'd like to find out more about those two seconds."

"Wow!" He exclaimed with an extremely ironical voice. "Two seconds? In what - four hours or so? Damn, you're right, I was soooo wrong about Xander. Nice guy, indeed." He shook his head, the lips pressed on each other.

"Told you that you wouldn't understand it." I replied quiet.

For some more minutes, we just stared at each other.

"Cinema tonight?" He finally asked sighing. "Late show should still be possible. Perhaps with Vince and Brian, I bet they're bored to death at my home and there should be some movie in the original version, unsynchronized."

"Cinema would be brilliant, yes." I said.

"Good, then let's go. That heating will shut down by itself, and we can get the car out tomorrow. We still have the SUV to drive; let's go and get the others." He said and pushed me out of the garage.

The movie, together with a large amount of popcorn, nachos, coke and laughter indeed helped to improve my mood a bit. It seemed that everyone knew what Xander and Dom were doing, but none of us talked about it.

For the first time in over a year I slept on Michael's couch and enjoyed it immensely, especially when I woke up - by noon, again - and found that they had prepared breakfast; taken at lunch time.

Good to be among the boys again, I thought.

Vince and I were at our usual wordplays again which an outsider would have probably mistaken as arguments bordering to beating; Brian with his flat, mostly sexually oriented jokes made me laugh, and Michael just commented dryly on everything, as usual.

Almost as it had been in the US, shortly after the race when Michael had found us.

Relaxing, I thought. I should do that more often.

Just of course that I wouldn't be able to do that much more often before they went back to the States. But the way it was I couldn't go back with them. I knew if I would end that relationship with Dom, there was no way I could ever face him again. And not seeing him again would make it extremely difficult for me to see the others, too.

They didn't give me too much time to think about that; after that "breakfastlunch" I was dragged to the garage to show my work on Michael's car to Brian and Vince.

Then Michael had the weird yet good idea to sort out his car parts. He owned a lot of them, all collected over the past two decades; and I bet that among those piles of bumpers, fenders, doors, hoods and other stuff there were some parts he hadn't seen for a likely long time. Now, before packing that stuff into a container to have it shipped to the US, was probably the perfect time to sort out the ones he didn't really need. Who had a need for twenty left front fenders for the same car, anyway?

And this is how the afternoon to evening went: Sorting through large piles of metal, picking out the better ones, the intermediate ones were put on different piles to be sold and the ones that were beyond repair were trashed.

I guessed that by the evening the four of us together had sorted our ways through approximately five tons of parts. That's at least how my arms felt.

I looked at the clock; half past eight. So late already, I thought.

"Boys..." I said. "You'll have to excuse me, I'm tired like hell and if I don't see my bed really soon I'm gonna drop down dead."

"Yes, you go do that, Dana. Sleep is good. Thanks for the help and the paintjob. I owe you." Michael said.

"Not again, Michael." I laughed. "I think we know each other long enough to not owe each other every time we do something for one another."

"Maybe, but it's still better to thank someone for something than to take their help as granted." He replied. "And if you need help getting up again, don't hesitate to call me."

"I won't." I said, leaving him with the double meaning of those words.

Yeah, another night of undisturbed sleep would do me good. Dom and Xander hadn't shown up or called the whole day; I assumed that they wouldn't show up this evening either.

And the only question I had to answer now was bath or shower - because I needed either of both really badly now.