Not for you (FIN)

I almost got lost between the trailers and cars in the darkness. The occasional wave of sound the air carried over from the various parties didn't help my orientation either and I was more than sure that I walked in circles. Then however I spotted a blue-silver car around the corner of a trailer. It was Brian's.

How much time had passed since I started walking over? Five or ten minutes? It was highly likely that he thought I wasn't coming. Perhaps I should still take that chance and walk away; back to my trailer or better, hook the trailer to the car and get out of this place as fast as possible.

I stared at the ground and shuffled my feet while those thoughts crossed my mind. Looked left, right, and when I had just decided that right now would be a perfect point of time to start running, I heard a deep voice from above which caught me startled.

"You gonna stay down there?"

I didn't look up. Instead, I decided to try and hypnotize my own feet.

"I thought about running, yes."

A short pause, again too long that the reply wouldn't have been well thought over.

"This is Race Wars. Here, we race cars. If you prefer running, you better visit the Olympic games next time."

Snorting, I climbed up at the back of his trailer.

Even in the dim light I could see that his eyes widened a bit when he saw my face. This just proved that he indeed had no idea whom he had waved over.

He looked tired, very tired. The whole posture was slumped, there were dark rings under his eyes. The eyes also seemed a bit reddish. Seemed as I had not been mistaken for interpreting the movement I saw before as wiping tears off, but without doubt, this was Dominic Toretto.

Carefully I climbed over several empty Corona bottles to sit down about two yards away from him. Enough space between us for me to feel comfortable, but not enough space to hide his face from me if I wanted to study it.

For some minutes we just sat on the trailer, letting our eyes wander across the encampment. I took the same position as he, my arms resting on my knees, trying to get used to this awkward situation. I had dreamt about it. I had dreamt about meeting Toretto in many different places and originally thought I had covered all possibilities and situations in which I could possibly meet him, but something like this had been none of them.

"Beer?" A bottle was held into my direction.

"No thanks, no alcohol for me. I'll just hang on to my trustworthy Coke," I said, unscrewing my bottle and taking a sip. He had a mouthful of his beer, took his time to swallow, then his eyes were wandering to me.

"No alcohol?"

"Never. Well there's one exception, but that's not available in this country, so..."

He took another sip from his bottle. "I admire that. Don't you plan to get some sleep tonight?"

"Well, yeah, actually I do."

"With that amount of caffeine in your system? Unlikely."

I laughed out loud. "Dom, I've been on at least three to four bottles of those per day for many years. I daresay if I stop drinking this stuff, I will just die because my system needs the caffeine to run properly. Sleeping is not the problem; staying awake without the caffeine is."

He gave a small chuckle and smiled at his shoes. Raising his eyes to me, he said "So you know my name."

"Who doesn't? Your appearance is not exactly inconspicuous, Toretto"

He snorted. "Yes, some things never change."

"Others do, as I see."

He looked at me questioning.

"Toretto, you up here on this trailer at the opening night of Race Wars, all alone? If I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't believe it. You okay?"

His gaze dropped to his shoes again, closing his knees before his face so that I couldn't see it any more and as the time passed, I knew I would get no answer this time. Which of course made me curious.

"Dom, you alright?"

He started speaking to his shoes. Hell, that was not the Dominic Toretto I had heard of.

"Perhaps you should reconsider running."

It was silently said, a whisper in that deep voice of his, almost unhearable. If the tone of his voice had been just slightly different, I would have thought he was threatening me; but the way he said it made clear that it was just an offer to get away from the trouble he obviously though to be.

I took a deep breath, considered my options for a moment, then slid over to him to get a little closer. A stray Corona bottle rolled its way from the roof of the trailer.

"Dom, what's up?"

"Nothing. Just go."

I touched his shoulder with my hand. It was meant to be a reassuring touch, and I was surprised to notice that he flinched and backed away from it. He stared at me, and there was a deep crease in his brow which normally would have caused me to flee at max possible speed. However, the glittering lines right below his eyes stopped me from doing anything.

"No, I won't. Listen Dom, I can clearly see that you have some kind of problem. Want to talk? Sometimes it's easier to talk about problems to strangers than to friends because their opinion is unbiased..."

He gave a small, harsh laughter.

"Unbiased stranger? Fuck, you know my name. Plus you figure I have a problem when I'm sitting here all by myself. How unbiased, or rather, 'stranger' can you possibly be?" He took a sip from his bottle, then cocked his head to look at me. "Who the hell are you anyway?"

"Your memory is a bit fogged, it seems. I'm driving the 'shopping cart' you so generously laughed about this evening when I arrived."

His eyes widened. "The small German car?"

"Yepp."

He chuckled. "Then you were Vince's ride?"

"Yes, I was."

"So much on the unbiased stranger."

"We didn't exactly talk about you while we drove. In fact it was more like me trying to avoid his strange questions about my love life and cursing about his shitty driving directions most of the time."

"I gathered that from what I saw from the signals of your tracking device. Drove a nice, big loop at the state border."

We both chuckled and took another sip.

"You have a name, shopping cart driver?"

"Just as everyone else, yes."

He elbowed me. "Can't you give straight answers?"

"Yes I can, given that I'm not asked stupid questions. Dana's the name. Sorry, I thought Vince had told you."

"If he did I wouldn't ask, right? Don't happen to have a last name, do you?"

"Sure, that would be Schmidt. Or Smith in English."

Now he became curious.

"You're not English?"

"No, I'm just the same as my car - German. Vince didn't tell you?"

"No, he didn't; said we would have to find out ourselves. Funny, I thought all German girls were called Heidi."

"Funny, and aren't all American guys called Johnny?"

"Point taken," he laughed.

"So what's with you sitting up here? Not the party animal any more?"

He looked at me intensely for a number of seconds before dropping his gaze and speaking to his shoes again.

"No, I think I've grown out of that."

My brows raised. "Bullshit. You're Dom Toretto, I mean, big guy, a gazillion of girls at your feet, cars so fast that they can rip themselves apart and always on the run, making fun of the cops..." I tried to sound a bit funny, but obviously took it serious. His gaze flew to me, and I could see anger etching his creased brow.

"Have you ever been on the run, Dana? Have you any idea what that is like?"

I looked at the roof of the trailer, having no answer, and he continued.

"It's like hell. You can't walk around in daytime, and if you look like me, even night time walking is very difficult without being recognized by people who are not, well, supposed to recognize me. Instead of going to parties, you will stay on roofs and balconies, just to have a better view if, and when, cops are coming so that you will be the first one to take off. Fuck, you can't even sleep!" He dropped his voice, almost whispering again. "I haven't slept more than three hours in one piece in the last five years ever since that day... and I'm tired, Dana, so tired."

He didn't need to tell me what 'that day' was; and somehow it seemed that he knew it. The day of Race Wars five years ago, when he and his friends tried to steal that truck, leaving Vince with the injuries, Letty without the ability to drive and Brian without his badge.

It was the day Michael always referred to as 'the day Toretto wrecked his gang'.

I sighed. "I'm sorry, Dom. Vince told me you had changed, but I didn't quite believe it. After everything I heard about you before, I thought you wouldn't care."

He groaned. "Not care? How couldn't I? I was left with nothing after all that, except a shitty car with a mostly broken engine and blood stained clothes. I even wrecked my father's car that day. I didn't have an apartment for five years, let alone a house, I slept in my cars because I was too scared to go into a motel. I bought clothes not to own them but to change them."

He snorted.

"I was so damn sure that I never wanted to go to prison again when this run started, but frankly, for eight hours of undisturbed sleep I would even consider the mattress of a cell. Not to speak of clean clothes and a shower every day. Even when I spent some time in Asia, I still didn't stop being so cautious. Isn't that just pathetic?"

He looked away from me, but I saw the glittering tear that ran down his cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, leaving behind a smeared dirt mark. Looking closely, I found that there were several of those dirt marks on his face.

"Then there's the fact that everyone sees just what I was in what I am. They figure I'm up for the most adventurous and lawbreaking things, but as soon as they find that I'm not and rather into running and hiding, they just turn their backs on me. You know, back then in our house with the team it was always so crowded that I sometimes wished for some silence. But now I just feel alone sometimes. Not lonely, but alone. Never before figured this could hurt so much. And still, in public, I have to be the cool guy in order to not embarrass the people that are left of my team and of who I sometimes think that they're just with me either because they pity me or because I might still get back into my old shape. Which I just don't feel like doing."

Another dirt streak was added to the other side of his face, and I started to pity the guy. For which, of course, I right away chided myself, because being pitied was probably the least thing he wanted.

"That's bad... really, really bad..." For some moments I just thought about what he had said. Then I finally spoke, the voice no more than a whisper. "Dom?"

I touched his shoulder again, and this time, he just flinched, but didn't pull away. Instead, he looked at me.

"Listen, I don't know you. Have heard a lot of things... but still, I don't know you. Nevertheless I think that every human being should be granted the possibility to sleep. My trailer is located at the other end of the camp and if anyone would be searching for you - the guys, cops, whatever - they would sure as hell search one of your team's trailers first; mine would probably be the last they'd look at. I am just offering this once, and I hope you can swallow your goddamn pride when I do. If you want to sleep... shower... get fresh clothes... you can come over to my trailer. And don't think that I offer this lightly; I never offered something like this to anyone else before."

He stared at me for almost a minute, and I figured that if he would stare much longer, he would stare holes into the places where my eyes were. Then he finally spoke, and for the first time he looked me right in the eye when he did.

"You're not a cop." It wasn't a statement, it was a question.

Instead of answering, I pulled out my wallet and showed him my German ID card. "See," I said, "I'm not even a US citizen. I can't be a cop."

"That could be a fake ID." He replied, handing me the card back. "Plus, you could be a German cop."

"Yeah, but what kind of authority would a German cop have here? And you also said that you would sleep on a cell mattress for eight hours, so why would you care?"

"You aware I have a record and that cops are at my neck all the time?"

"No, really? Oh, good, thank you so much for mentioning it. Under these circumstances I am sorry to say that..." I took a pause, having said the words in a way that he would know I wasn't really serious about them. "...my offer has, of course, not changed. Think I'm stupid?"

"It's stupid to invite someone like me into your trailer, yes. If I'm caught being with you, you can be damn sure that you will be asked a lot of not very pleasant questions too."

"Well, I sort of had some hours of unpleasant questioning when I drove with Vince, so I guess I already have some practice." I smiled.

He just shook his head, giving me that stare again.

"Give me a reason to trust you."

I considered for a moment.

"No, instead I'm giving myself a reason to trust you."

Without further explanation, I pulled the spare keys from my pocket and threw them at him. He caught them in a fluid motion, staring at them, tracing the Opel sign on the car key with his thumb.

I just got up and climbed down the back of the trailer. "If you want to follow, do it now," I said. I knew he would hear me.

For some time I wasn't sure if he was following me, until I heard the steps behind me. He didn't catch up with me, always stayed behind a bit. Most of the time he would slow down so that it seemed there was no one behind me, but occasionally it seemed as if he was no further than a yard away. I didn't look back a single time.

To my own surprise I managed to find my trailer without problems, and had almost thought that I had lost Dom on the last twenty yards or so. At least I had heard no footsteps behind me any more. Perhaps he was scanning the surroundings. I had no idea.

As I wanted to open the door I was shocked when it was opened from inside the moment I touched the handle. Dom was already inside, looking down at me with a face that showed no emotions. I stared at him open mouthed.

"You catching flies out there with your mouth open or get in? It's your trailer, after all."

I closed my mouth with an audible click, then slipped through the door which wasn't so simple as Dom didn't bother to move an inch. Behind me the door was closed and locked with my spare key, which remained dangling in the keyhole.