Some old Volkwagen*Fast and Furious*

Chapter 11 - Real Car, Part 1

Brian had said they had time to think it through, so after their talk in the kitchen, he'd left them to it. It was only afterwards that Nelly realised perhaps she shouldn't have heard all that she had heard - all the other friends had gone after all and in the end this matter concerned only Mia and Dom: they were the real family and Brian had been Mia's boyfriend. So after Brian had left, Nelly excused herself and went outside, sitting down on the steps leading up to the front porch. Also, she needed to think, even though she suspected it would be leading her nowhere. There had just been so much new information tonight...

It didn't take long before the front door opened and Dom stepped outside. "You alright?" he asked and his voice was all calm again and almost - worried. Nelly looked up. "I'm fine." - He sat down next to her. The crickets were chirping and it could've been the most perfect summer night. After a while Dom asked quietly: "Why'd you do that?" - Nelly frowned. "What?" - He looked the other way. "Stood up for me like that, in front of Brian, an officer. He's right about the trucks and I've been stealing cars all my life. Just not these. I'd be stupid if I dared a coup like that right here in LA where everybody's looking for me anyway." - Nelly blushed slightly. "How much did you hear?" - Dom seemed to be suppressing a grin. "I followed you almost immediately after you had left the living-room - it was late and all and I didn't want you opening the door to some stranger. There are many weird people in this part of town." - Nelly tried to recollect what she'd said, but she couldn't even quite remember: it had all happened on the spur of the moment. "I... I thought Brian had come to arrest you. That's what he said when we met on the campus. And I couldn't just let him walk in on you; I couldn't just let him in. And I didn't think he would actually try and force me. I mean... you know him better than I do, but I wouldn't have thought he's a bad character." - Dom chuckled. "He is not - he's just picked the wrong loyalties, that's all." - "But he did let you go once?" - Dom slowly shook his head. "He owed me a ten second car."

Nelly all of a sudden realised how close Dom was sitting and the electricity should have been visible as sparks in the air. She tried to compose herself. "So what are you going to do?" - Dom looked into her eyes for a while, with a slight frown. "You think I should trust him again, don't you?" - Nelly looked away quickly. How had he seen that? "Let's put it that way," Nelly finally began, fingering the seam of her short skirt. "If he was not trustworthy, that would mean he'd play a double-double-game. Like having talked to his boss and telling him he was going to tell us he wanted to help you not getting caught, gaining your trust that way and then arrest you." Nelly frowned, this was making knots into her brain - but Dom seemed to have been able to follow her. So she went on. "Also, this would mean he'd actually believe you stole the cars, for if he didn't, he could have simply arrested you today - without having to gain your trust to get a confession. If he was playing double-double, he's taken a huge risk just now because he's given you the chance to flee - he had to, in order to keep up his pretence. - He was Mia's boyfriend, right?" - Dom nodded curtly. - "But he loved her truly, even though he was deceiving her?" - "Well, he says so and Mia believes him," Dom said, not sounding convinced himself. - "That means he got personally involved. It probably hurt him to have to blow his cover and destroy this new world he'd just found a place in. So I can imagine that his life sucked after having disappointed both you and the police." - Dom's eyes had never left her face. "So you think he's being honest this time?" - "Well, I think it might not be unlikely he is. - Or is he rather of the cunning kind? - I don't know him." - Dom chuckled again. "No, I wouldn't say he's cunning."

A strap of Nelly's vest top had slipped from her shoulder while she had been talking and now Dom pushed it up again - gently, almost as if he were scared to tear the fabric. Nelly tried really hard not to think about it to stop herself from blushing and giving herself away - so she just continued talking. "Besides, I don't know what the options are. If you try and trust him - or pretend to, vigilance has never hurt anyone, after all - you'll buy yourself a huge amount of time. Brian won't get a confession, since there's nothing to confess. As I said, if he... if he had wanted to merely arrest you, he could've done that already..." Nelly was slowly but surely losing her train of thought; Dom's left hand that had pushed up the strap was now playing with a strand of her hair, his elbow he had set down on the step Nelly was leaning on. After a while she asked with a voice barely more than a whisper: "Where's Mia?" - Dom was drawing circles on her neck with her finger. "She's in her room - needs to figure some things out. I thought she'd gotten over Brian, but I guess I was wrong." His arm was almost around Nelly's neck now. "I'd like to punch Brian for many reasons, but more than anything else because he broke Mia's heart." - Nelly nodded slowly. "Yeah, that wasn't too clever, getting involved like that. I don't know how he'd imagined it all to end; some day it had to come out he was an officer. - Although I don't know to what an extent people can control it at all." The sun had almost set, but Dom seemed to be radiating heat. Nelly closed her eyes, trying to capture the feeling...

Pictures flickered in front of her eyes, Brian and Mia and Betty - a lot of Betty and all the things they'd talked about. Dom was everywhere, anyway. Suddenly, she had the weird sensation of being lifted, flying... Caught somewhere between sleeping and waking, Nelly finally realised her impression hadn't been altogether wrong: she wasn't flying, of course, but she was being carried. By Dom. From the pale moonlight that shone in through a window, Nelly could see he was just climbing the steps to the upper storey where Mia and her room were. "You could've just put me down on the couch," Nelly mumbled. She could hardly keep her eyes open long enough to see him grin. "And where would I have slept?" he asked quietly and then added with a chuckle: "Don't worry, it's not the first time I've been doing this." - "You mean Mia or Letty?" He had probably carried them to bed dozens of times. "No," he said and locked his eyes with hers. It took a few seconds before the meaning of his words seeped through the fog of tiredness into Nelly's brain and she froze. They had arrived at the top of the stairs and Dom put her down, frowning. "What's up?" - Nelly felt a blush creeping up her neck and she was quite awake all of a sudden. After the race... "You said I'd gone to bed myself that night." - "Yeah. You weren't supposed to notice." He smiled a crooked smile at her and then gently pushed her towards her bedroom door. "You should get some sleep." He was standing so close and Nelly at first didn't know how to move. - "We might have to get up early tomorrow morning - I'm sure O'Connor will turn up." - Nelly nodded and grinned. "Let him come," she said with a spark in her eye, threw one last look at Dom and then disappeared in her room.