THE ROAD IS LONG
Well, I was a lot more inspired to write this chapter (thank the good lord above!). I kinda got into it by thinking about the appearances of Tino, Frankie and Donni coz they need a bit of explaining to make them more real I think…So I got to trawling google for pics of actors and actresses who fit the bill so to speak. Donni was an easy one as I've always seen her as looking like Penelope Cruz. Frankie was a little harder as there are not that many teenage actresses out there that look Italian so I decided that she would most resemble a younger Katie Melua (perhaps with straighter hair). Tino, however, was a pig to decide who he should look like but eventually I decided that he would look like Javier Bardem (recently been in Collateral as a bad guy I think…) but with long hair. I'm so sad…I really need to get out more if I am searching for people who my characters look like…I think I'm going mad…! Anywho, moving swiftly onwards hope this chapter is better than the last one. And thankies for you all keeping with me! Happy reading! Gem xxx Chapter 8: Settling In. Dom sat back in silence having talked until the sun fell from it's prominent position in the sky to dipping just below the horizon. He had talked for hour's non-stop, simply explaining the events of the past few months, letting the burden that he had carried slip out from his lips and hang in the air before them. And they simply listened. Made no judgement, no reproachful comments or telling him what a stupid shit he'd been. But neither did they do anything to reassure him. Tino remained stoic, his face a mask devoid of any emotion whatsoever which Dom had yet to discern as a good or bad thing. He had listened attentively as his younger cousin spoke with short interludes and comments from Letty and Mia. He hadn't so much as flinched throughout the entire retelling. Not batted and eyelid at the mention of the heists, or the races, or the shootings, or even Mia's pregnancy. And still he remained motionless even after Dom had lapsed into silence. Dom forced himself to breathe, to take a deep shuddering inhalation as he waited desperately for something, anything from Tino to take as a sign of his disapproval or the reverse. So focused was he on his cousin's reaction that he didn't feel his own hands start to shake until they juddered against his knees. Letty saw the anxiety that grew on Dom's face and leaned forwards to link her hand with his, stopping his large, usually steady hands from trembling and silently reassuring him that things would be alright no matter what went down. He flashed her an appreciative half-smile before returning his brown gaze to Tino's pensive face. Donni glanced between the two men coiling and uncoiling a strand of her long, ebony hair about her index finger nervously. Finally she broke the heavy hush that had commandeered the room. "Come on, Ti. They're family…" she sighed giving her brother a prod with her foot in an attempt to prompt him into speech. Tino took a deep breath and locked eyes with Donni, running a hand through his silver flecked mane. "It's a lot to take in." he commented, leaning forwards and resting his elbows on his knees. "Before we go any further with this, can you assure me that they won't come for your asses?" Tino glanced at the two young women sitting in support of Dom before levelling his gaze on the younger man with a certain amount of force. The look spoke volumes to them all, letting them know that if Dom had brought his shit down on their heads, then he'd have Tino to deal with and that was not an amusing concept to anyone, Tino least of all. Though Tino Toretto may have been a good ten years Dom's senior and less well built, there was not a doubt that he would give Dom the pounding of his life if anything came close to endangering his daughter and little sister. "I know where you're coming from, Ti." Dom replied raising his hands, palms towards Tino, in a placating gesture. "Frankie don't need to know shit. She needn't even think that we're here for more than an extended holiday if you want." He sighed and scrubbed the hand that wasn't clamped in Letty's death-grip over his stubbly head. "We just need a little time and a place to stay 'til we find our feet down here. We'll be outta your hair before you know it." Tino's tense face softened slightly and he gave a weary smile. "Kid, you're like a little brother to me! You think I'm gonna let you scrounge around to get yourself a rat-assed property when I got this massive fucker and no one to live in it!" Tino laughed and any of the remaining tension that had been left in the atmosphere dissipated. He sat back in his chair and beamed. "I won't have you living anywhere else!" Dom's grin was ecstatic, though it was fuelled more by relief than happiness, and he found himself letting out a breath that he hadn't realised he had been holding in. "You had me going there for a minute, Ti." he growled as he allowed his taut shoulders to sag with fatigue. Tino threw his head back and laughed before giving the younger man's shoulder a slap, making Dom lurch sideways and crash into Letty, before he sobered somewhat. "I just want what's best for my daughter." He replied in a low, poignancy tinged voice. "Frankie has a very sheltered life here and a very peaceful existence since her mother left…" Tino paused and the still raw pain of his now ex-wife's infidelity and abandonment shone in his dark eyes. Slowly he raised them back to meet Dom's, the man who had been there to comfort him six years previously when the devastating event had happened. "I don't want her to have to grow up as fast as you and Mia or Donni and I were forced to. I want her to enjoy her childhood while she still has it. Have fun with friends, going to the cinema, horse riding, getting an education. She's still a little girl at heart and I don't want that tainted." Silence fell over the room and Dom nodded, reaching over to give Tino's shoulder a reassuring pat. "We'll give her that, Ti. We'll help make sure that she has the childhood that none of us had and that every single one of us deserved!" "Here, here." Donni said quietly, clearing a lump of unshed tears from her throat at Dom's emotive words, and the room lapsed into a more comfortable silence than before. -00000- Frankie's head snapped into the direction of the house at the sound of her name, all jovial banter with Jesse momentarily forgotten. She hopped down from her perch atop the fence and began back up towards the open back door where her father stood, beaconing for Jesse to follow her. "Yeah, Dad?" she replied as she neared, taking the wooden steps to the back door two at a time. Tino smiled at his daughter and smoothed a hand over her hair in an affectionate gesture. "You hungry, bambina?" he asked moving aside so that the two teenagers could filter into the open planned lower floor of the detached property. "Starving!" Frankie grinned though she faltered as she took in the subdued demeanour of her extended family. "Lemme guess. You've been talking about me, haven't you?" she demanded, rounding on Tino with a scowl causing him to hold his hands up in mirth and mock surrender. "Only good things, Princess." Tino replied with a wicked grin that goaded his daughter on. She narrowed her eyes dubiously as if scrutinizing her father intensely to determine the extent of his truthfulness. After a long moment, however, she relented reluctantly and moved further into the kitchen-cum-living room-cum-dining room. "Thank God you guys have stopped gossiping like a flock of grannies!" she exclaimed with a cheeky grin, settling herself into the armchair that Donni had vacated to go and prepare dinner for the hungry travellers. "Jesse and I thought we were gonna be out there all night!" "Frankie…" Tino warned with a deep throated growl but she simply offered him a wide-eyed, innocent smile that would have made any man want to cater to her every whim. Tino shook his head in defeat. He'd been trying and failing for sixteen years to ignore his daughter's beguiling nature and that evening was no different. "Alright, Kiddo. You know the routine. It's your night to help Donni with the cooking." He countered, resolving to quash Frankie's control over him by removing her from the near vicinity. "Dad!" Frankie made a loud whining sound in protest, wrinkling her nose in what was swiftly becoming her signature gesture. "Can't I stay and talk to everyone? I've been stuck outside all afternoon and I didn't get to hear any of the exciting crap!" she complained. "Language, young lady!" Tino barked and Frankie replied with a sulky frown that darkened her green gaze. Tino emulated the glare with as much ferocity as his livid child until she finally gave in and huffed, making her way to the kitchen area with a slight stamp in her step. "Feisty little thing, huh, Ti?" Dom noted with a smirk as Tino sank back into his own armchair, rubbing a hand over his forehead as if it throbbed. "You have no idea…" he groaned through clenched teeth and Letty chuckled to herself. "They're all like that at her age." She offered in compensation, shooting glances at both Mia and Jesse who had settled himself on the sofa between Mia and herself. "Girls are the worst though. We can be right little bitches if the mood strikes us." Tino rolled his eyes heavenwards in exasperated accordance. "The mood strikes more often than not in this house!" he muttered bitingly glaring at Frankie's back as she pottered about the kitchen laughing and chattering with Donni as if she had offered to help of her own free will. "I hope she behaved herself out there, Jesse. She has quite a mouth on her." Tino turned his suddenly curious stare to the thin young man who sat crushed between the two women. "Oh…yeah…I noticed." Jesse responded with a nervous laugh evoking a more thorough examination from Tino's dark eyes. "Not that it's a bad thing!" he added hastily, eyes wide with horror at how his comment had sounded. "We actually have a lot in common. It's nice to be able to talk to someone who understands where you're coming from." He paused and shot Dom a skittish, fleeting look then offering Tino an apprehensive smile. "As you can probably tell, Jesse is a bit of a motor-mouth himself." Dom injected with a deep laugh when Letty elbowed him in the side, prompting him to intervene before Tino's overprotective, fatherly instincts kicked in any harder. "Indeed." Tino answered tersely, putting as much intimidation into his posture and features as he could without turning the atmosphere totally hostile. "So, you work for my cuz, hey?" "Yeah…" Jesse mumbled unable to hold Tino's smouldering stare for more than a few seconds at a time. "S'been what? Three, four years?" "'Bout that." Dom said with a knowing grin at Tino's actions. So often he had applied the same techniques to one of Mia's new boyfriends, though there hadn't been many and none at all after the cop…That thought triggered an immense culling of Dom's cheerfulness and he drifted into his own thoughts, unaware of the grilling that his cousin was giving to Jesse. Letty tore her gaze from the amusing situation before her when Dom fell suddenly into another of his increasingly frequent pensive silences. She tried regaining his attention by squeezing his hand between hers but he was obviously too worn down, too exhausted to fight the thoughts that swam in the back of everyone's minds. His unguarded face made him resemble the frightened 18 year old he had been when they had carted him away to Lompoc Prison after going 'wrench-happy' on the man who had caused his father's death. The sight of her powerful, usually confident Dom looking so lost almost broke Letty's heart. She stood abruptly, giving a firm tug on his hand and arresting everyone's attention. "Y'know, Tino. It's been a real long day for all of us. You wouldn't mind if Dom and I take a rain-check on that dinner and turn in for the night, would you?" she asked, not taking her concerned eyes from Dom's. A smile of relief and gratitude flickered at the corners of his lips as he mouthed a silent 'thank you' to her for understanding his needs when he wasn't even sure that he did. Tino observed their mute exchange and replied with a knowing grin. He could see that the bond linking the two together was profound. "Sure thing. We'll have dinner altogether tomorrow night, yeah?" he answered. "Spaghetti. I'm cooking." Letty turned her smiling eyes briefly to Tino, giving him an appreciative nod, and then settled her glance back onto Dom. "Yeah, sounds good." she spoke hauling Dom to his feet. "C'mon, you. Your fuel tank is runnin' on low. It just ain't healthy to have only three hours sleep in as many days!" Dom managed a shattered smirk. "Yes ma'am!" he quipped teasingly, shooting Tino a conspiratorial wink, making the older man snort. "What!" Dom demanded, holding his hands palm down on his chest as if hurt by his cousin's insinuating noise. "Gotta do what my girl tells me to, cuz." he defended with a shrug. "She's the boss!" Letty and Mia shared similar looks on non-amusement but Tino shook his head and sucked in the air through his teeth, making a hissing sound of admonishment. "That's blasphemy, Dominic." he said feigning seriousness. "See that lovely little finger of hers? She's got you wrapped right round it!" Dom threw his head back and laughed. "Amen to that, Ti." He countered fixing his predatory glare onto Letty as she attempted to tug him in the direction of the stairs. "And I wouldn't have it any other way!" "Ding, ding, ding! Correct answer, give the man a prize!" Mia called sarcastically, rolling her eyes as Letty lost the last ounce of her patience and fisted her hands in the front of Dom's T-shirt, physically dragging him towards the staircase. "Night y'all!" Letty growled with little more than a backwards glance and a slight wave of her hand. Dom muttered something unintelligible along similar lines allowing himself to be lead away. "Your bedroom is the one right next to the bathroom." Donni called up after them, the bare wooden floors creaking in their wake as they ascended and moved across the landing. "Well," Tino said finally, turning his attention back to his youngest cousin and the scrawny teenager that his daughter seemed to have befriended. "More food for us, yes?" -00000- Phewies! This one is hopefully better than the last chapter which was majorly sucky! Hope that everyone likes it and it is a little bit longer than usual. As always comments and thoughts are always welcome and deeply appreciated! Thankies for reading! Working on the next chapter as we speak so be prepared for some more Dom/Letty-ness!
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