by
DevilChild
Fandom: The Fast and The Furious
Rating: For Mature Readers
Pairing: Dom/Bri; Bri/Mia
Author's Note: A TF&TF High School AU inspired by an onlist challange. Thanks to Dawn and Bone for the beta. Thanks to Khal for additional helpful commentary.
Copyright and Disclaimer: The Fast and The Furious and the characters from it are creations of Gary Scott Thompson, Eric Bergquist, and David Ayer. I make no claims their ownership or creation. This bit of not for profit modern folklore (thank you Prof. Jenkins) is mine.
Her lips were soft and warm and wet, and the flavor of them just said, "Mia" and Brian just kept kissing her as his body moved against her, and in her, and she cried his name with each stroke and he was so close, so close ....
And suddenly the body changed. And he was kissing Dom, devouring Dom and it was the best feeling ever --
-- with a strangled groan Brian sat up, shaking.
No. Fucking. Way.
No fucking way.
But Brian couldn't ignore the evidence as it cooled and became sticky in his pajama bottoms.
He changed, and resolutely thought of Mia until sleep claimed him again.
~oo(0)oo~
Monday at school, Dom caught him in the hallway and pulled him aside. "I've been thinking about Pimp My Ride," he said. "Do you have a camcorder?"
"No," Brian replied.
Dom's face fell.
"But I do have a digital camera that can do some video clips. I've got a flash card big enough to do up to 2 minutes of video," Brian said.
Dom nodded thoughtfully. "Well, it's not like they're expecting the world's greatest looking video. You do have a way to get everything all edited together, right?"
Brian smiled and said, "Dude, I have a Mac. We can get it done."
Dom flashed a killer smile and clapped him on the arm. "Great. Start shooting."
~oo(0)oo~
The days fell into a rhythm for Brian as the end of the second quarter drew near and the holidays approached. School. Soccer Practice. Toretto house -- sometimes doing homework with Mia, but mostly just hanging out. Home for dinner with Mom. Homework &TV. Bed. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Fridays and weekends were all Toretto all the time. Friday nights were spent at football games (the team had made the playoffs) in the bleachers with Dom, Leon, and Jesse, sometimes Letty, while Mia and Vince were on the field below, and afterwards there was pizza. A few hours each Saturday were usually devoted to working a bit on Leon's Mustang -- which was his dad's -- or tuning Dom's Civic to get every last bit of juice out of it for some street races. Or, before it got too chilly, they barbequed a lot of food on the grill out back. A few times, Nick Toretto took them out to vast empty parking lots and warehouse districts and gave them all lessons in how to drive, and Brian loved pushing his MR2 to the limits and seeing just what, exactly, it could do.
All of this gave Brian the perfect excuse to bring his camera and TV link cable along. He'd snap a few stills, and then shoot a few more seconds of footage for the Pimp My Ride project.
The only fly in the ointment was that Brian hadn't heard a word from Rome. He had sent three letters to Rome, even gave him the new phone number, but so far, not a single reply or call. The phone calls Brian could understand -- Rome probably wanted to spend his phone privilege talking to his family.
Brian sighed as he opened the door to his house. He came home straight after soccer practice because nobody was going to be at the Toretto's this afternoon. Leon had work, Mia had cheerleading for a basketball game, and Dom had to take a shift at the store.
Normally Brian's mom made it home about 15 minutes before he did, which worked out well for both of them, but tonight Brian beat her home by a good two hours. He swung by the mailbox to see if the newest issue of Sports Illustrated had come in yet.
Nope. But there was a letter from an inmate at the Herman G. Stark Youth Correctional -- Rome! Woo hoo! Psyched, Brian tore into it.
In Rome's familiar scrawl the letter began:
Brian,
What the fuck is up with you? I've asked in my last three letters if you could come and visit during visiting hours on Saturdays, and haven't heard jack from you, and, needless to say, it's pissing me off. I don't even know why I'm bothering to write any more --
Rome had written. Rome had been writing him on a regular basis.
And there was only one explanation for not getting a single letter.
Mom.
She had gotten them all and not passed them on.
Brian had heard about people 'shaking with rage'. He had never done it before. A part of him wanted to yell and scream at his mother the moment she walked through the door. A part of him wanted to smash that collection of ugly Hummel figurines she kept in the china cabinet. And a calmer part of Brian argued that he should do nothing, say nothing, but just keep on as if he had not discovered anything.
Hot rage swelled up again. No. He couldn't let her get away with this. How dare she do something this completely fucked up and shitty!
Brian hopped on his bike and pedaled like mad for Toretto's. He hoped the store would be fairly quiet so that he could have a good talk with Dom.
Bustling through the door he said, "Dom! I need to ask a favor."
Dom shrugged as if to say "ask".
Taking a deep breath, Brian began, "I've got this friend, Rome, who's in big trouble --"
"Nope. Not posting bail." Dom crossed his arms.
Brian paused a moment, not quite sure of what to make of this little nugget of insight into Dom's world that he had just gained, but quickly gathered himself and forged ahead. "It's about three months too late for that. He's already in Chino. He's a good guy, but got talked into something stupid because ... because I wasn't there anymore to keep his ass out of trouble. Anyhow," Brian's voice broke as the magnitude of his mother's betrayal slammed into him yet again, "My-my mom's been keeping his letters from me, and I'm so mad at her I'm going to be grounded for life. I was wondering if I could talk you into letting him mail his letters to your house. That way you or Mia could give them to me."
Dom nodded yes.
Brian gulped and said, "If I give you gas money, can I talk you into driving me out there once I'm not grounded? Or at least covering for me while I drive out there?"
Dom's brow furrowed in thought. "I'm just not getting one thing here, Brian. Why are you going to be grounded?"
"Do you think I'm letting her get away with this?!" Brian shouted.
Dom shrugged again. "What, like yelling at her and telling her that you know will do any good?"
With a sigh, Brian deflated. Dom could just see exactly what to do sometimes. It's what made him such a good sounding board. Dom knew how to shut up and just listen better than anybody.
"Look," Dom said, "don't tell your mom jack. Parents, once they've made up their minds -- shit. Mia and I would love for our dad to stop working himself into an early grave. We'd get by with his money if he got a regular job as a mechanic or the money from this place, but back to you -- I'll drive you over to visit your friend. I've been kind of wanting to take a road trip in the Civic."
Brian laughed. "Chino isn't exactly a road trip. It's like two hours, tops, if traffic is shitty."
"Yeah, but it's something different. I almost never make it out to that side of things."
Feeling much less ground down, Brian beamed. "Thanks, Dom. You're a real friend."
It was probably just his eyes playing tricks on him, but Brian could've sworn that for a split second, Dom looked almost sad before his usual calm and in charge expression slipped into place.
~oo(0)oo~
Not saying anything to his mom about the letter the moment she walked through the door took a great deal of effort.
Brian sat at the kitchen table, forcing himself to say nothing as she made dinner.
Finally, after Brian had poured himself a glass of milk and was about to tuck in, she said, "Bri-bri, why are you staring at me like that?"
"Like what?" he snapped. Hmmm. Maybe he had been giving her the evil-eye. Quickly he added, "I had a shitty day at school. And I don't like that nickname. I'm not seven anymore."
"Language. And do you want to tell me about it?"
"No. Not really."
She put her fork down. "Brian."
"What?"
"Don't you 'what' me."
Brian gave a sigh just short of a groan. "I just had a bad day is all." A split second later he improvised. "I found out that somebody lied to me today, and okay, I'm still kind of pissed off about it. Pissed off at myself that I even believed them for like, point four five of a second."
"Oh, Brian," his mom crooned soothingly, "Is there anything I can do?"
"No," Brian said, proud of himself for not saying, "Yeah, you can stop stealing my fucking mail." He shoved in another bite of Tuna Helper with peas and started chewing. God. He was so fucking tired of Hamburger/Tuna/Chicken Helper. Mom's home cooking had gone out the window when she got this job. It seemed like all they ever ate these days was one dish meals from a box or grocery store rotisserie chicken and green beans.
"It was Mia, wasn't it?"
"What?!" Brian choked on a pea. "No Mom, it wasn't Mia."
"It is, I can tell."
Brian rolled his eyes at his mother. A big no-no, but still.
"Then who was it?"
God. She wasn't going to let this go. He thought for a moment and said, "Vince."
"Do I know him?"
"No. He's a friend of Dom's. He's had a long time crush on Mia and keeps trying to break us up."
His mother took a swallow of her wine and said thoughtfully, "You know, maybe you and Mia ought to slow down. Seventeen is awful young to be going steady. She's what, sixteen?"
Pausing for a moment to savor the fantasy of heaving the bowl of tuna noodle glop at his mother, Brian chugged his milk, then said, "Mom, I don't want to see another girl. Mia and I hardly see enough of each other as it is. She's got a job, she's serious about grades, and she's a cheerleader. I don't want to talk about it, and I'm not going to break up with her just because you say so or because of some stupid lie that some jerk said, okay?" He shoved back from the table without waiting to be excused.
His mom didn't say anything, but the white tension lines around the edges of her mouth spoke volumes. He snorted in amusement as he placed his dishes in the dishwasher. Where did she get off? Back in Barstow, she wanted him to have a steady girlfriend and spend less time with Rome. Now that he had a steady girlfriend, she wanted Brian to break up with her. Whatever. Not sparing her a glance, Brian went to his room, shut the door, and didn't talk to her for the rest of the evening.
Opening the drawer, he took out the old composition book and poured it all in.
~oo(0)oo~
Thanksgiving was next week. Back in Barstow, most of the times they just ended up at the Joiners, friends of his mom's, for dinner. Since Brian had nothing in common with Steve Joiner other than the fact that they both lived in Barstow and went to the same school, he just ate, said a few words to everybody, and spent the next three hours wishing that the next three hours would pass by faster.
What Brian really wanted for Thanksgiving was to have his friends over and hang out all day to eat and watch football, and he would snuggle up to Mia on the couch. He still couldn't believe sometimes that he was dating this perfect, smart, complete babe. And, Dom's on again off again relationship with Letty might be on again, so that way he and Mia wouldn't be the only couple.
But there was no way in hell that Brian's mom would cook food for a group like Team Toretto, nor would she fit in at the Toretto house at all. Her one meeting with Nick Toretto had been ... strained. God. His mom had always been something of a keeping up with the Joneses snob, but since she had taken this job with Blue Sun, it had gotten ten tons worse.
As he came into the kitchen for dinner, he noticed his mom at the table, waiting.
Uh-oh.
"Brian, my boss is giving a formal, black tie Thanksgiving dinner ..."
Sometimes, his mom could actually be cool. Brian smiled, "And you know how much I do not dig that stuff."
She smiled. "Thanksgiving's never really been a big holiday for us. I'll bet if I help you bake some pies, you can crash the festivities over at Mia's house."
"It won't be crashing. Mia and Dom already asked. I haven't answered yet." But inside, Brian was saying, she's giving me her blessing to spend time at Mia and Dom's?! Maybe she wasn't such a snob after all. "I'll just explain to Mia and Dom that the choice is a black tie or time with them, and that's not a choice at all."
His mother raised an eyebrow at the phrase "Mia and Dom".
"What? She's my girlfriend, he's my best friend."
Smiling slightly sadly, his mom said, "She's a good girl, but you can do so much better than him."
Okay, she was a fucking snob.
"Y'know, Mom, I'm sorry that I don't like stiff and formal black tie dinners where people ass kiss their bosses, and I've figured out that I'll just have to live with the fact that you're never going to like any of my friends. Yeah, Dom is going to have a job where he works with his hands. So fucking what?
"In the mean time, he helps his father run a business, keeps his grades up enough to wrestle, helps take care of a hyperactive kid who isn't even his own brother, does chores around the house, and is teaching himself so he can take the Honda certified mechanic's test. So yeah, when he graduates, he's going to go to his $20 an hour job and after a few years, he's going to take what he knows about cars and the day to day running of a business and look into starting his own shop. So yeah, he's a complete fucking works with his hands low life grease monkey," Brian spat the words out.
"I just wish you would make friends with --"
"With guys like that nice Steve Joiner? Mom, the guy was a fucking triphead. He dealt pot and ecstasy."
His mom looked at him, mouth agape for several moments before gathering her wits and saying acidly, "Yes, well, your good friend Rome is in prison."
Brian felt a strange, perfect calm flow through him. "Yes, I know," he replied.
"How?"
"I called his house from a pay phone when he didn't reply to my emails."
"Oh."
"And I've also found out that you've been keeping his letters from me."
Brian thought that that little bombshell would shock and fluster his mom, that she would go angry and evasive and he could move in for the guilt trip score. Instead, with perfect iciness she replied, "You are not going to associate with him, ever again. Do you understand?"
"Yeah, well, catch me if you can." Brian gave a vicious smile and snarled across the table, "Go ahead and ground me if it makes you feel better, if it makes you feel like you're doing something to protect me. Just don't hypocrite too much the next time you and your religious reich Republican friends get all bibled up, okay?" Brian spun on his heels, snagged his keys, and marched out the door. His mom yelled after him to get back right now, but Brian didn't give a damn as he revved the engine to redline and tore out of there.
He drove around in circles for 15 minutes before ending up Dom's. It was the rarest of rare occasions. Dom was home and nobody else. Leon was at work. Mia was with some classmates working on a group project for history, while Jesse was at a friend's house watching some anime. Nick was at the store and Vince, for once, happened to be at his house. Just him and Dom. Which was kind of cool, because while Mia always had a sympathetic ear, some things just went better when said to another guy.
Dom sat on his end of the couch and listened, Playstation forgotten, as Brian vented his end of things. When Brian finished, Dom said, "Damn. That's completely fucked. Tell you what, Brian. Come over first thing in the morning on Thanksgiving and we'll drive out to visit Rome and be back in time for dinner."
Brian beamed in thanks. This was just so ... Dom. To think about what other people needed and just do it. It's what Mom just didn't get about what made Dom so completely amazing as a person.
After a minute, reality crashed back in. Brian gave a rueful laugh and said, "I can't believe I went ahead and told her to ground me."
Dom smirked. "Genius move. Either way you win."
Brian raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"
Dom shrugged eloquently. "You don't care. She can't kill you, and she won't take soccer away because there go scholarships if she does, so grounding you was the scariest thing she had, and you're not scared of it. And if she ends up grounding you now, she ends up looking like a complete bitch and she knows it." He grinned.
Calm. Analytical. Mediocre at book learning, but street smarts had made Dom as good at reading people as anybody Brian had ever met. Problem solved. Brian flopped down on the couch next to Dom and picked up a controller.
After a few moments of Resident Evil, Dom glanced over at him and asked, almost hesitantly, "You want to go run Mulholland tonight?"
Brian blew away a zombie and said, "What?"
"Mulholland Drive. This really cool road along the crest of the Hollywood hills. When I'm -- when shit's just going wrong, I like to go up and drive along Mulholland."
"Sounds cool."
"Good, I'll tap on your window around two."
"You mean two in the morning?!"
"Best time to go out there and do it. Almost no traffic. It's just you and the road coming at you out of the black." Brian glanced over at Dom to see that the look in his eyes had grown distant, almost dreamy, the game completely forgotten. Dom continued, his voice almost yearning, "When I run Mulholland, or I'm flying down a quarter mile, it's the only time I really feel alive. It's the only time I'm ever free." He looked at Brian, his eyes large and bright with naked emotion -- but just for an instant. Then the usual reserve slammed back into place.
Brian almost wondered if he'd imagined the longing he saw there.
~oo(0)oo~
The sound of something smacking against his window in the middle of the night startled Brian out of a very vivid dream about playing in the World Cup with David Beckham. Slipping his shoes on and grabbing his coat, he tiptoed down the stairs and outside. It was cold out, but not nearly as cold as it got in the thin desert air of Barstow this time of year.
As they took the freeway north and west, Brian marveled at how empty it was, and yet at the same time, he wondered why anybody would be out at 2am on a cold November night at all.
Over the muted thump of some trance techno, Dom said softly, "Yeah, you wonder what brings the rest of the people out. What kind of jobs they have that gets them up in the middle of the night, or what kind of errand they're running, or where they're going. Or maybe, there's some of them like you. Driving because they can't sleep and can't take staring at cottage cheese on the ceiling a moment longer. I guarantee you that we'll see at least three other people out on Mulholland, and they're there for the same reasons -- they can't sleep and want the thrill of whipping around those s-bends."
Brian nodded. Perhaps it was the darkness -- the only lights in the car being the dim glow of the dash and the stereo -- but it seemed like some sort of private movie theatre, so they only spoke to each other if something absolutely had to be said.
Dom said that they were going to make the run from West to East. Start in Sherman Oaks and end up on the Hollywood freeway not far from Echo Park. That way they wouldn't have far to drive when Dom started feeling sleepy. The Civic began quietly cutting its way through suburbs and Brian found himself wondering about the people who lived in these neighborhood, wondered what their houses and yards and cars said about them.
The Civic snaked up the hill and along the crest, Dom keeping the needle pegged at an even 65. Brian found himself white knuckling it at times when Dom blew through curves clearly marked 35 on a road designed for a leisurely Sunday drive. Beneath them, on both sides of the ridge as far as the eye could see, greater metro LA spread out, a glittering swath of gold, platinum, and copper sequins. Awesome.
Brian spared a glance at Dom as they whipped around another curve.
The expression on Dom's face was a mixture of rapture and deadly concentration. Dom's brow had a slight furrow while his eyes gleamed with something more than the lights of the dashboard, something Brian couldn't quite find a word for. But, in the end, it was his lips that caught and held Brian's attention. Large, and lush, the bottom one moist and shining with a thin gloss of saliva, because Dom chewed it in moments of intense concentration as the Civic rocketed through the bends, but parted now, as Dom's breath panted softly through them.
(Did they taste like Mia's? Was it different? Were they softer?)
With a soft moan under his breath, Brian tore his eyes from Dom's mouth and forced himself to look at the road, the looming blackness, the glittering city below ... anything except Dom.
Without warning, Dom braked hard, cranked the wheel and sent them sliding broadside into a scenic turnout. When Brian's heart dropped back down into its normal place, he found Dom leaning over, pointing out a few Studio City landmarks, but Brian barely heard a word Dom said because all he could think about was Dom, so close to him, and if he turned his head --
(that mouth would be right there, and all he would have to do ...)
He groaned inwardly. If it was Rome, Brian might try it. Give in to this completely insane urge to kiss another guy and just chalk it up to one of those crazy things you do with a crazy guy like Rome. Not that he and Rome had ever kissed. They just got straight to the business of relief.
But this wasn't Rome.
It was Dom.
Brian wasn't about to take that chance. Not with a guy whose sister he was dating. Not with a guy who could snap him like a twig and leave him here, miles from home. And how the fuck would he explain that to his mom? "Uh, hi Mom. I snuck out in the middle of the night and kissed my girlfriend's brother who proceeded to beat me a good one and then dumped me on Mulholland drive 20 minutes from the Hollywood freeway. Can you come pick me up?" Not freaking likely.
But that didn't even touch on the real question. The godzilla sized question rampaging through his brain -- since when the fuck did he want to kiss a guy?!
(Since forever. Just as much as girls. Maybe more, even.)
What the fuck was up with that shit?
(Nothing.)
Girls. He liked girls. He wanted Mia. She was everything a guy should want.
(Yes. But you want Dom, too.)
Just before Brian's brain went into meltdown, Dom's presence over his shoulder vanished and Dom turned the car off, unbuckled, and got out.
Gasping with relief, Brian followed.
It was cold on the ridge, not near freezing, but noticeably colder than it had been down in Echo Park. Brian wondered if it ever did get cold enough to freeze in LA, wondered if it ever got cold enough up on this ridge to give everything a ghostly white rime of frost. Or, were they too close to the ocean for that? It was weird. The idea that the calendar could say "November", but lawns stayed green because they hadn't had a freeze yet.
"Does it ever freeze up here?"
Dom shrugged. "Don't know. I've gotten out and seen my breath a lot of times, and I've had to use my defroster. Why?"
"We should do this again some night in January or December, when there's a really crisp cold, and everything" Brian gestured at the lights below "will be super clear, and it will seem like --"
"You can almost reach out and touch it," Dom murmured softly, almost in his ear.
Rattled, Brian stepped to the right and spun.
It almost seemed like --
(Dom was coming on to him)
-- a date with a girl you don't know that well, but really like a lot and Dom was acting like a guy too nervous and shy and unsure of her feelings about him to make the first move.
Yeah, right. Because no way in hell could that be possible.
Brian studied Dom's profile intently for a moment, but saw only a blank, emotionless slate. Eyes that glimmered in the dark, but only because they reflected the lights of the city below. A shiver ran through Brian. "It's late, I'm cold, I'll be in the car."
Dom paused for a moment, deep in thought. "Alright, you do that," he rasped in a tone that made Brian think that he had discovered something, but wasn't quite sure what.
The rest of the drive home continued at breakneck speed, and in near silence, neither of them feeling the need to fill the air with words.
Dom simply nodded as he drove off. Brian, feeling like a zombie, crawled into bed.
Morning came much too soon.
Last Updated: 5/14/09