Not for you (FIN)

I woke to the sound of a car speeding by outside. It took me a moment to remember where I was and what happened the evening before, and a look at the clock showed me that it was just after 8am. I froze when I felt that there was a weight draped over my body. Slowly taking a look, I realized that Dom had draped his arm over the coverlet and me while we slept, but if that had happened consciously I couldn't say.

I didn't know if I wanted to smile or scream, but in the end. I decided to just lay still for a moment. At least he didn't touch my skin, so it was bearable.

I could see that his hand had grabbed the pillow I lay on as if he wanted to make sure that I wouldn't go away without him noticing; but again I couldn't tell if he had intentionally done that or if that was just the way he always slept when he had someone beside him.

He was still quietly snoring, and I realized that if I wanted to get up, I would eventually have to wake him, unless I came up with a different plan than to remove his arm from me.

Then I had an idea. I slid below the cover, slowly and carefully twisting and wiggling my way out towards the end of the bed. I pulled my second pillow behind me, which replaced my body so that he still had something he could drape his arm over without noticing that I was gone.

As I had finally managed to completely slip out, I stood by the bed for a moment and watched him, shifting in his sleep, taking a firmer hold on the pillow, snuggling closer to the other pillow that replaced my body.

The little devil on my shoulder whispered that it wasn't such a good idea to get up yet, but I just shrugged it off, pulled a new jumpsuit from the cabinet and headed for the shower. On my way I also checked the washing machine, which was finished with Dom's clothes. The pants and underwear looked fresh and clean, but the shirt didn't take the drier treatment so well and showed some holes where before just a few tiny punctures had been. The socks also weren't exactly in a condition that I would have called wearable, but there was probably nothing I could do about it.

When I was finished, Dom was still sound asleep. I smiled, then put on my baseball cap, unlocked the door and headed for my car, started it with less gas and sound than usually in order not to wake up Dom and drove off.

I found a truck that sold breakfast by the beginning of the encampment and bought fresh bread, donuts and croissants, then headed back for the trailer. On my way, I noticed a small seller of clothes and stopped. I didn't have any problem knocking the salesman from his trailer's bed; I wanted Dom to have not only fresh but unharmed clothes.

He didn't have much that interested me, but then something in a box in the back of the sales truck caught my eye. The dealer looked a bit confused when I asked for it but handled it to me nevertheless.

A bright blue, sleeveless shirt with a v-shaped neckline; the writing on the chest reading 'American Muscle' in a script font. I smiled. That was so Dominic! I bought it instantly, together with fresh socks for which I had to ask before I got them.

Then I headed back for my trailer and parked my car as silently as I had driven off.

As I stepped into the trailer I noticed that Dom was still asleep, his position not having changed. I smiled again. He looked just sweet the way he lay there. I chuckled, realizing that before this, it never dawned to me to entitle Dominic Toretto as being 'sweet'. Menacing, impressive, big, tough and a massive amount of likely titles, yes; but sweet?

Then I heard my cell phone ringing; but no number was on the display. Frowning, I took the call; and quickly so, not to wake up Dom from the ringing.

"Ya?" I said, more silently than usual.

"It's me." Said a voice in German at the other end of the line.

"And who's 'me'?" I asked, keeping the conversation German.

"Michael."

Oh shit. Why, on all of the days he could have called me in the last months, did he have to pick this morning? And why couldn't I see his phone number all of a sudden?

"Hi Michael," I said, locking myself in the shower, "you still alive?"

"Yes. And you?"

"Much so, yes."

"Where are you? Your voice sounds strange."

"I'm in the shower of my trailer."

"I can't hear water running. Why don't you get out there so that you don't sound as if you were talking from a grave?"

"I like my shower. It's comfortable and cool." I said, trying to avoid what I knew would come when he was asking questions this way.

"A-ha. It's not more like so that there's someone else with you in the trailer?"

"Hey, want to hear something cool? I'm at Racewars." I tried, but obviously without success.

"Oh, and at Racewars you spend your time in the shower?"

"It's early morning here, Michael."

"You found them." It was not a question.

"No, actually it's more like so that one of them found me some days ago."

"And that 'one of them' is not coincidentally currently occupying your trailer's bed?"

"No." Hey, it wasn't even a lie! The first of them who had found me was Vince, so...

"But someone is occupying your bed?"

"Well, I'm currently not occupying my bed, so...." I definitely didn't want to lie to him. However, the truth would also not be the best choice...

"...so someone else is occupying it all alone now."

"Sort of," I groaned. There. I was waiting for the nuclear explosion on the other end of the line.

"Oh, let me guess. He's bald." His voice was dripping with sarcasm.

"Sort of."

"No, really? Oh, how did I get that idea?" He laughed, it was a short and not very happy sarcastic laughter.

"Don't know, you tell me?"

"I told you months ago that it would come to this. And, had a nice night?"

"I had a nice night, Michael, but it's not about what you think."

"Of course not, because now he will marry you and you will live happily ever after."

"I think the guy in my bed has other problems than thinking about something like that. Besides, and I know you won't believe this, nothing happened last night, except of some talking and sleeping."

"I believe that the guy has other problems, the biggest probably being his attitude and criminal record; but I don't believe that nothing happened. I know Toretto."

"You don't, and that's your biggest problem."

"Don't doubt that after a night in your bed, you know him better than I ever want to know him. I've heard enough about him. And, how was he? Did you let him touch your face?"

I felt an unbelievable amount of anger rising in me.

"MICHAEL! How dare you? Damn, you know I would never let anyone..."

He laughed, interrupting me with a harsh laughter I never thought he was capable of producing.

"Ha-ha-ha! You know what? I'm sitting here, worrying about you and what do I find out? You're already Toretto's next bitch. The one thing you said you would never become."

"I'm not his bitch, Michael." I hissed. "And I am not your 'bitch' either, so you don't have any saying in who spends the night in my bed! Hell, I don't even know why I am telling you this!"

"Never mind, I'll kill him if I see him."

"Don't think so, you're too peaceful for that. Besides, I doubt Toretto would come to Germany." I said.

Longer pause, then finally, he said something. "Funny."

"What's funny?"

"It's funny that you think I'm in Germany."

I stared blankly at the door of my shower. "What?!?"

"Forget it. Well, I wish you much fun with your... companion."

"Where are you? And he's not my-" I tried to say, but he had already hung up the phone.

I continued to stare at the door, made a mental note to call Dirk later to ask about Michael's whereabouts and then finally got out of the shower.

I laid out the breakfast supplies for Dom on the kitchen counter so that he would see them when he got up. I placed his clothes, including the new shirt and socks, right beside the breakfast, wrote a small post-it with the words 'Trash that or use as polishing cloths', stuck it to the old T-shirt and socks which I laid out on a crumbled heap on the floor before the counter, made two croissants with butter for myself, grabbed a Coke from the fridge and silently slipped outside the trailer.

I decided that this was a good point of time to check my car before the races would start, so I pulled my toolboxes from the cabinets on the outsides of the trailer and checked and re-checked everything that would be of any importance on that day. I was also still angry from Michael's call, and working on the car would at least let the energy produced by my anger flow into something useful.

When I lay beneath the propped up car and was almost finished checking the exhaust system for the second time, I noticed some shoes next to my leg before my car. Oh.. those socks I knew!

Dom knelt down next to the car, put his head low so that he could look at me and smiled. The blue shirt, revealing his musculous biceps and the color accenting his tan looked so good on him that I caught my breath. "Morning Heidi," he smiled, taking a big bite from a donut in his hand.

"Morning Johnny." I tried not to look at him. What Michael had said about me being Toretto's next bitch had probably left some kind of mark on me.

"Care to explain where that," he pointed at his shirt, "and those," he pointed at his socks, "came from?"

"Dealer," I pressed through my gritted teeth while I was tightening the screws on the exhaust for the umpteenth time.

"What have I done to deserve this?" The rest of the donut just disappeared in his mouth, the other hand came into view, bringing forth a second donut.

"You behaved," I hissed, temporarily letting my attention slip from the screws, which resulted in the tool slipping off and my hand getting into painful contact with the car's floor. "Ouch!" I pulled my hand to my mouth and sucked off the blood from the small tear in the skin.

He laughed. "Thanks. What you're doing there? Wrecking your hands?"

"No, checking the car, smartass!"

"C'mon, have some breakfast with me."

"No thanks, I already had. Plus, I have to finish this."

"I could lend you a hand later so you can do it faster?"

"I don't need a hand, unless you can take this bruised one of mine off and attach yours to my arm. I prefer checking alone."

"Funny, I always had other people to check my cars for me."

"Funny, I always prefer to check myself. Nobody can be as thorough as the driver."

"Point taken. Come on, breakfast." He grabbed my feet and started to pull me out from under the car. I wanted to protest and jerked my head up, only to bang my forehead painfully against the screws of the exhaust system. "Ouch! Shit! Fuck, Dom, OUCH!"

He had pulled me out completely, and while he had probably grinned all the time while doing this, his expression changing to honest concern. "Shit, did I hurt you?"

I wiped my brow, just to find blood on the back of my hand.

"No, just like many other things, I did that myself."

"Thoroughly. You have the bloody imprint of a screw on your forehead."

"Thanks for praising my work, Johnny." I jumped up and strolled towards the trailer without looking back, jumped in and only halted when I stood in front of the bathroom mirror.

"Fuck!" I cursed at my own sight, simultaneously hearing Dom getting into the trailer.

The screw had really left a nice imprint on my forehead, the sharp edges having torn the skin and causing it to bleed. Other than that, my face held an interesting collection of dirt marks from grease, brake dust and other stuff I couldn't identify. My hands looked as if I had washed them in a pot with coal dust.

I looked up and noticed Dom standing right behind me, looking at me concerned. "That needs to be treated or it will leave a scar if dirt gets into it," he said.

"You also playing doctor now? I have had worse wounds than that." I answered.

"And not just a few of them left scars on you." He said without any sign of mocking.

I whirled around. "How would you know that?" I was really angry at that point, about myself because I had inflicted that wound upon myself, about him for pulling me out, and especially because he pretended to be concerned, as it seemed.

"Saw it." He held my stare with an unbelievable calm gaze.

I suddenly remembered something. "You spied on me in the shower last night!" So I hadn't just imagined that clicking of the door!

He still looked at me, his eyes never shifting from my face. "Yes, I did."

I was close to throwing a tantrum. "I told you not to touch me! I told you to sleep!"

He smiled a sly smile. "Yeah, but you never said nothing about not looking, Heidi!"

"It's Dana, Johnny!" I spat, turned around, applied exfoliating soap to my hands and started scrubbing with more force than usual.

"Gods, you're scrubbing the skin off your hands!"

"So what?!" I noticed that the volume of my voice had increased.

"Listen, what the hell are you so damn angry about?"

Good question. I took a moment to think about it. What was I angry about?

Michael's call? I should have been used to those conversations with him by now; perhaps I was just a bit out of practice. The bruise on my forehead also definitely wasn't the reason. Dom inviting me for breakfast wasn't either. I was so close to figuring out about what I was really angry about, when suddenly two hands came from behind, stilling the still frantic scrubbing movements of my hands by grabbing my palms.

I could feel his chest pressing to my back; his arms around me, his hands holding mine, his fingers carefully caressing the abused skin of my fingers.

"Don't. You'll only hurt yourself." He whispered into my ear. I looked up, seeing him stand behind me, his eyes on mine through the mirror.

"Don't," I said.

He started to carefully wash the soap and sand from my hands, never looking away from my eyes.

"Don't what?" His look and whispered, almost purred question were challenging, his arms squeezed my shoulders.

"Just don't," I said and looked towards the door, unable to hold his gaze any more.

"Look at me. Don't what?"

I looked at him and at that moment, I practically blacked out when I saw in the mirror what he did. He held my hands, turned his head and pressed a light kiss to my cheek. That was all it took; I freaked.

I have no idea how I did it, but I kicked his shin hard, struggling to free myself from his grab, which I surprisingly managed.

"I told you not to touch me! If you're looking for a bitch, go outside, there are hundreds that would willingly throw their arms and legs around you as soon as they have peeled themselves from the beds they spent the last night in! Fuck you!"

My voice was high pitched and close to screaming as I stumbled to the door. I felt, no, saw my eyes watering, blurring my vision as I jumped out of the door, running towards my car, jumped in, had the guts to lock the door behind me and started the engine.

By that time, he was already standing at my door, rattling the handle without success. My windows were closed, the engine roaring loud so I couldn't hear what he was probably screaming at me. I drove backwards at a fast pace, he tried to keep up with me but didn't manage.

When I was finally sure that there was enough space between him and me, I turned the car around and drove off, heading towards the desert without really knowing what I was doing. I just had to get out of this place, and fast.