Chop Suey

by JayoftheSea

Jesse and Leon were the imports of the team, best friends since childhood, like Vince and Dom. But the team doesn't actually know all that much about their lives before... or anyone else in it.

A/N: This is one of several in-progress fics that I have going. I decided to post what I have so far of all of them, mostly to gauge if there's even any interest in them before writing more. No promises on if or when I will continue any of them, but drop a review to let me know if you'd be interested in more.

_p_a_g_e_b_r_e_a_k_

A lot of the nurses can't handle being on the Critical Care Unit for extended periods of time - a lot of them will do it for a few months, then switch to a different floor for awhile for a break before coming back - but she doesn't mind it. She considers it the perfect balance. Patients are still in critical condition, keeping her on her toes, ready for anything at a moment's notice, but without the extreme noise and chaos of the ER, or the high-pressure and massive egos that grace the surgical suites. Her days are just the right amount of exciting and interesting, without ever having to get too attached to patients, because they're only here transitionally.

Until her brother ends up there, anyway. Hard not to be attached to that one, not that she's allowed to care for him. Stupid laws. She CAN take care of his friend, though, who is also here, but has no idea who she is, not that he cares in his pain-and-drug filled state. She's just gotten back from a section of rooms on her rounds and is filling in charts at the nurse's station when Marnie joins her from the direction of Jesse's room with a small stack of her own charts to fill in.

"How's he doin'?" she asks the older woman anxiously.

Marnie looks at the usually composed girl for a minute before answering. "Think he'll be ready for his next surgery tomorrow. His lungs haven't collapsed all day, and his heart rate has been steady. If it stays that way all night, they'll wanna get in and start making repairs on everything else asap."

Jesse had been brought in three days ago, riddled with bullets, but miraculously alive. Jamie had been near the end of her shift when she'd gotten the notification from the administrators that she needed to get down to surgery immediately to sign paperwork as his next of kin, and the subsequent two days had been touch and go as various lobes of his lung re-collapsed and had to be re-inflated. The surgeons had deemed it too dangerous to try and repair any of the other damage before they could tell if his lungs were going to be strong enough to make it or not.

Understandably. They'd been turned to Swiss cheese by an Uzi.

Jamie breathed a sigh of relief and flicked the chart she was working on closed, picking up the pile and turning to re-deposit them back in the folder pouches on the outside of each patient room, knowing that Jesse's friend, Vince, is in the next block of rooms she's due to check in on.

From talking to Jesse and Leon the last couple years, she knows he's always been grumpy, but a good friend to them. He was brought in by helicopter, actually before Jesse, not that she had any way of knowing that, and is only still in Critical Care because his arm needs to be very closely monitored for internal bleeding. Huge chunks of muscle had been torn free from the bone and also crushed with what they are guessing was some kind of braided wire, but he won't tell them. He's lucky he hasn't lost the arm yet, and that isn't completely out of the question yet.

Vince has scared a couple of the other nurses on the floor, but Jamie simply ignores the vitriol that spews from his mouth whenever he's awake. She's never been incredibly emotional, it's hard to get her to take things personally at all, and the fact that she knows everyone he considered family except Jesse and the girl, Mia, who comes by every day, has abandoned him and he must be in an incredible amount of pain, even if he won't tell them how much so they can properly medicate him, make it even harder for her to take issue with his attitude.

Whether he respects her for her lack of fear of him or whether it gets under his skin seems to depend on the time of day. It's her first night shift with him, so it could go either way.

He's awake when she walks in, staring blankly at the tv, which is playing infomercials by now. Jamie picks up his chart and looks over the notes from the day nurse, shaking her head that the woman hadn't bothered to give him any painkillers at all, only the intravenous antibiotics, and the notes that the patient had been uncooperative about changing his dressings, so that hadn't been done after dinner.

That's when Mia would've been here, so, yeah, he would've been extra unruly.

Wordlessly, Jamie gathers what she needs to clean him up and change all his dressings, piling it on the rolling table on his right side and getting to work, ignoring the glare he sends her way she she carefully peels off the gauze on his arm starting at the shoulder. He doesn't fight her, knowing it needs to be done, having not been earlier, but he's clearly not pleased, trying to stare her down as she meticulously begins cleaning both his wounds and the incisions from the surgery to reattach his muscles and ligaments.

Being the first time he's not on any painkillers at all since he's gotten here, Vince squints through the admittedly fucking terrible pain and realizes she looks familiar. "Where do I know you from?"

Her paler blue eyes meet his bright but foggy ones, startled. They've never met before he got out of recovery and moved to this floor, and she'd be amazed if either her brother or Leon had any personal photos sitting out. "I don't know. I look like my brother, I guess. I mean, we're twins, so…."

"What's your brother's name?"

"Jesse Owens."

It took Vince a moment to process that. "Jess never told us…"

Jamie shrugs as she gets back to her task. "Probably just never occurred to him. And if he never said anything, Le wouldn't have either." Vince scowls at that mention of Leon, and she briefly joins him, but the fact remains that he and Jesse and Jaime had known each other since they were tots, and there are few childhood stories of theirs worth telling that don't also include him.

"How's Jess today?" Vince asks.

"Better, according to the other nurses. He'll probably be back in surgery tomorrow."

The man's brow furrows. "You don't see him?"

Jamie shakes her head. "Not yet today. I worked a double yesterday, and had a meeting with our dad's lawyer this afternoon before my shift. I won't have time until my lunch."

He doesn't seem to have a response to that, and she's nearly done, so they're quiet as she carefully wraps his arm in fresh gauze. She's throwing away all the packaging as she asks, "So, are you going to finally tell us what level of pain you're in?" Vince's only answer is a scowl, and Jamie sighs. "It's not like we're asking just for the hell of it, you know." This seems to startle him, bringing his eyes up to meet hers even as she puts her hands on her hips. "We ask so we can give you the appropriate amount and type of painkillers, and keep a closer eye on if anything might be wrong that we can't necessarily see just from changing the dressings."

Thinking about it for a moment, VInce concedes the logic before briefly describing the pain he's feeling. She nods, asking "And I take it you aren't a fan of how out-of-it we've been keeping you since we've had to guess for the past couple days?" He agrees. "Alright. I'll go grab something that'll take the edge off so you can sleep without having you all doped up, and make a note in your chart, but if you want to keep it that way, you gotta start being more cooperative with the other nurses." When he again agrees, she gives him a half-smile and he suddenly sees the resemblance between her and Jesse very strongly. "Good. Now, do you want Jello or pudding with your meds?"

Marnie had been correct in her assessment. Jamie clocked out from her 12-hour shift at 9 am, just as the surgeon who had repaired Jesse's lungs days before came out of his room, finding her and saying that he'd like to get Jesse into surgery right away to remove the remaining bullets and begin repairing his other organs. Jesse was moved to be prepped even as Jamie signed the small mountain of paperwork, and, once she was done, she spoke briefly with one of the surgical staff, telling them if they need anything she'd be in either the employee locker room or down in the cafeteria.

In the locker room, she gathers her change of clothes, shower kit, and towel from her locker, turning toward the shower stalls, stopping outside an empty one and taking several deep breaths before forcing herself into it, setting her things down on the bench and locking the door quickly. Turning the water on to warm up a little, she strips, careful to pile her dirty clothes on the bench as well, before stepping under the spray and pulling out the little bottle of shower gel and her loofah, scrubbing down quickly, then washing and conditioning her hair just as fast. As soon as she's thoroughly rinsed off, the water is turned off, and she's squeezing out her hair and drying off, pulling on her clean outfit of leggings and a tee shirt that she's pretty sure she had stolen from Jesse years ago and wrapping her stuff up in the damp towel before stepping quickly out of the stall, breathing a sigh of relief the moment she steps out of the small space.

Jesse got the ADHD, while Jamie had received anxiety issues. People's first guess would be OCD, but that isn't the issue. No, just irrational anxieties, like enclosed spaces. Ones like shower stalls. And cars. They make her feel like her brain is trying to crawl out her ears and eyes. There's other things, too, some of which are from experience. Like waiting rooms, which is why she had told the surgical nurses she'd be in the cafeteria instead.

Chucking everything back in her locker, she slips her feet into her riding boots and zips them up, slipping on a zip-up hoodie and stuffing her wallet, work ID, and cell phone into the pockets before shutting her locker and spinning the combination lock, knowing she'll be here awhile and there's no point in taking all her stuff with her to just hang out and wait for word on Jess. Jamie makes her way to the cafeteria and through the early lunch line. She knows she should eat some real food, having not done so since about this time yesterday, but she feels nauseous at the sight of it, and grabs a couple Red Bulls, along with some Skittles and Sour Patch Kids, and an apple with a little single serving thingy of peanut butter.

The cashier doesn't even flick an eyebrow, and Jamie is soon settling down at a table in the corner to start very slowly munching and sipping her way through her haul of sugar and caffeine.

Another few days and both Vince and Jesse have been moved to regular rooms. The same room, actually, after some arranging on Jamie's part. Vince was still a gruff and grumpy bastard, but he'd laid off the nurses a bit. Jesse had had two additional surgeries, and is being kept sedated in an attempt to get him through the worst of the pain of healing without having him on heavy narcotics.

Vince is simultaneously grateful for being able to see his friend there, alive, and unnerved at the sight of him.

"It doesn't look natural." Jamie's voice startles him out of his examination of Jesse. It's mid-morning, and she's standing in the doorway, looking freshly showered but exhausted, wearing slightly loose jeans and a simple tee shirt, hoodie tied around her slightly narrow hips, backpack over one shoulder and motorcycle helmet in hand. He thinks this is the first time he's seen her in anything but her work scrubs, and he realizes that, if she and Jesse were to stand side-by-side, he could really tell they are twins as she'd mentioned that first night they'd talked. She's only an inch or two shorter than his friend, and they have the same build. On Jesse, it makes him look vaguely scrawny and awkward, and on Jamie, it looks a little gangly and awkward. Her hair is longer, pulled back in a braid, but the same blond, and light blue eyes.

Finding his voice, Vince finally responds, "Yeah. Too still."

Jamie unashamedly picks his chart off the wall and looks it over briefly before replacing it and doing the same with her brother's. "I just got off work, need to get home and crash, just wanted to check on you guys on my way out. I know Mia probably has you covered, but, just in case… you need anything?"

"Only if you got somethin' that'll get us outta here quicker." Vince answers.

The response is a brief, lopsided grin before her face goes serious. "Do you… have you… heard from Leon? Does he know about Jess?"

Vince growls out, "Nah, I aint heard shit from him, Dom or Letty. Mia says they're in the wind until we're sure it's safe for them to come back, won't tell me anything else that's goin' on." his good hand is clenched into a fist, and Jamie doesn't blame him for his anger at all.

"I don't have confirmation, of course, but the rumors are that you got kidnapped by Tran from RaceWars and forced onto some transfer truck?" she says quietly, not really asking a question as much as informing him, knowing he probably has no idea what's going on. She'd only heard yesterday when she'd started asking around about Leon. When Vince just kept watching her, she continued. "I know you probably can't say much, but Hector's and Edwin's crews both put up witnesses that saw you getting grabbed after Jesse split after losing the race for dad's car. They said there had already been rumors of beef between your team and Tran before…" A long moment of eye contact before Vince nods, in either confirmation or thanks. "Anyway, I'm beat. I'm gonna head out." with this, Jamie turns and heads out, leaving Vince to contemplate the answers he's just been handed from an unlikely source.

Mia either hadn't had or hadn't been forthcoming with any information about what was going on, saying only that she'd been briefly questioned a couple times by the cops, but that they seemed to believe her when she said she didn't know anything. They had yet to turn up to question him, and he supposes that that explains why. Someone, who is yet to be determined, had played it all off as Tran trying to set him up to take the fall. They had even gone as far as to drum up the team's allies to give false testimony.

Vince's thoughts are interrupted as his new least favorite person, the physiotherapist, enters the room with his usual cheery smile for the twice-daily torture session.

"Man, Dom and Letty're whatever, but all it'll take to get Leon back here is for Vince to roll up to Hector's bar with your arm around Jamie one night."

Vince has been out of the hospital for two weeks, and Jesse has been awake for a couple days, and, Vince tunes back into the conversation the slightly younger man is having with Mia at the mention of the still somewhat mysterious woman.

Mia looks confused. "Who's Jamie?"

Oh yeah. Vince hadn't told her.

Jesse looks equally confused, as though he doesn't realize he's never said word one about having a sibling around the team. "My sister? She's a nurse here, I figured you would've run into her while I was out."

Mia shakes her head and looks to Vince, who shrugs his good shoulder and grumbles out, "She works nights up on the Critical Care floor. Took care o' me for awhile. Stopped by every couple days once we got moved down here." Mia's now annoyed, and Jesse looks relieved.

The woman asks, "Well, why would Leon come back just because Vince shows up with her at a bar?" rather incredulously, and Jess, who wears his every emotion on his sleeve, wilts.

In a sad voice, he says, "It's a long story…."

Vince's brow goes up. "They have a thing?" That would be weird. Other than her blond hair, Jamie's about as polar opposite of Leon's type as she could be and still be female.

This question makes Jesse visibly shudder, and Mia's eyebrow joins Vince's. "God, no!" he exclaims.

Before he can elaborate, they are interrupted by the person in question walking into the room.

"What are we 'God no'ing?'" Jamie asks even as she moves to take off her backpack and set it on the counter, unzipping it.

"You and Le." Jess answers shortly, giving no other context.

"It's not like they're the first people to wonder." this is said as Jamie unpacks a slightly beat-up looking laptop from her bag, along with a pair of headphones, and a bundle of clothing. She leaves it all on the counter for later and turns around, locking eyes with Mia briefly and introducing herself shortly. "Jamie."

"Mia. Nice to meet you."

"I was just telling them that Le would be back in about 2.3 seconds if Vince took you to el Gato Negro and put an arm around you." Jesse explains, watching as his sister moves toward Vince's bad arm and ignores the grumpy glare she gets as she begins gently moving moving and prodding his arm.

"Yeah, that would get him back before he remembers that he's in for an ass whoopin' from me for taking off in the first place."

Mia butts in. "So, Jamie, Jesse's never mentioned you before…"

Jamie smiles wryly. "Yeah, that's what Vince said." and moves to begin checking her brother over, gently swatting at his hand as it idly moved to scratch at the spot where his IV tube went into his arm.

Vince can't tell if it's Jess's ADHD or if he's trying to steer the conversation away from having to answer why he'd never talked about his sister before, but the next this out of the guys' mouth is completely unrelated. "Have you talked to Dad lately?"

Jamie nods. "Went and saw him last week. His visits just got reinstated after the move."

Jesse lights up. "They finally busted him down to medium?! Wait? I missed his first in-person visit?! Damnit!"

Vince and Mia's eyes meet. The team has always been aware that Jesse's dad was in prison, but the fact that he'd been in high security was news, and they are now wondering what exactly he is in for.

"He understands why you couldn't make it. He said you should just worry about getting better. He ain't even upset about the car."

"You told him?!"

"You almost died, Jesse, of course I fucking told him. You were in a medically induced coma for nearly a month, what was I suppose to tell him, that you were just too busy to answer his phone calls?" This makes Jesse pout, and Jamie knows she has won the argument. She sighs and takes mercy. "Just focus on your physio, and you should be almost back to normal by the parole hearing next year." Between the bullets and the surgeries, most of his major muscle groups had been shredded. In the bad way. And that's not taking the nerve damage into account; he'll have to completely relearn how to walk again.

The group chats for awhile until Mia reminds Vince that they need to get downstairs for *his* physio appointment, and she grills him on the way down about what he knows about Jamie, which isn't much. Despite none of their conversations being intimate or personal, Vince finds himself reluctant to share them with Mia, and he doesn't know why.

He's distracted through his whole appointment.

The next three months float by in a weird sort of stasis. Jesse is settled in a long-term bed at the hospital, and Vince and Mia visit him nearly every day, sometimes also running into Jamie there. Vince slowly regains use of his right arm, first with the frustrating process of relearning how to pick up a fork, then use various other tools, and write. He promised his therapist that his handwriting had never been great anyway, so the current chicken scratch he is putting out is very nearly the standard it had been previously.

The day he is cleared to drive again, he gives his beloved Maxima a final check-over and gives an uncharacteristically happy grin to a smiling Mia as he climbs into the driver's seat. She stands on the porch waving him off in the moderate warmth of the early-December afternoon as he takes off down the road.

A tank and a half of gas and several hours later, he decides he wants to check out some night life for the first time in months and pulls up to a metal club off of Sunset that he hasn't been to in awhile, that he can never get any of the team to go to, because all they listen to is rap and hiphop. He doesn't mind their music most of the time, but he's a metalhead at heart.

After parking in the lot next door, he pays the cover and heads in. It's Wednesday night, so it isn't packed, but the band on stage isn't bad and the crowd is decent. That band's set is over by the time he has a beer in hand, and they are breaking down to let the last band of the night onstage. The house lights are slightly brighter through this process and Vince looks around at the crowd as he sips his beer, having to do a double and triple take to verify what he's seeing.

In black cargo pants and combat boots, studded belt and wallet chain, and a black wife beater is… Jamie? Her hair is down, longer than he'd expected for some reason, looking tousled and hanging to her waist, and she has makeup around her eyes. And are those tattoos? Not a few, either. Pieces on both shoulders, one flowing down to a quarter-sleeve. She turns to talk to someone and he sees that the one on the other shoulder goes over it completely, continuing on over her collar bone onto her chest. With his gaze drawn to the area, his brain very belatedly also registers that she has tits. They're on the small side, small enough that he's pretty sure she isn't wearing a bra and they still look perky.

He's known from jump that she's female, of course, but it's like this is the first time he's really comprehending that she's a girl with girl parts and not just some sexless nurse and he feels like he's 14 again even as he thinks that. Maybe that's it, though. Because it's the first time he's seen her anywhere but her job. Even when she's off duty, she's gotta be aware of how she looks and stuff while she's visiting Jess; she's still at her place of employment, after all.

The house lights go back down as the final band takes the stage for the evening, and Vince's attention is drawn away as everyone moves to either get closer to the stage, or move to get a good view, and he loses sight of Jamie in the slight crowd.

Vince tries to keep his attention on the band through their set - they're actually pretty good, and he makes a mental note to grab one of their cds from the merch booth on his way out - but his attention is periodically caught by glimpses of Jamie's blond hair as she slam-dances along with the crowd off to one side of the stage, while a small mosh pit forms on the other side.

What he gauges to be near the end of the set, he chucks his now-empty beer cup in a nearby trashcan and moves to get at the merch booth before the horde descends when the music stops, ignoring the merch girl batting her eyes and not-so-inconspicuously adjusting her top to show off more cleavage. He's had his fair share of racer chasers and other various skanks, but he's just not feelin' it tonight. No, tonight was just about celebrating his return to relative normalcy. Being able to drive again means he can now return to day-to-day tasks. Soon, he'll be able to start lifting again, and, once that happens, he can start working on cars for real again.

CD acquired, he meanders outside,slowly making his way down the sidewalk toward the parking lot, in no hurry, but wanting to beat the crush to get out of the building.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd ask if you are following me or something." a voice says off to one side, and he looks over to find Jamie has somehow beaten him out - probably a side door or something - and is sitting astride a motorcycle pulled up next to the building on the edge of the lot, half helmet covering her head and hair now pulled back. He can't identify the make in the sparsely lit parking lot, but it's definitely a cruising bike. Nothing like the racing bikes that he's accustomed to seeing around the scene.

Vince raises up his right arm and briefly explains "Cleared to drive. Came out to celebrate." and she nods.

"Congrats."

Interaction over, she reaches to start up her bike, and Vince blurts out, "You just here for this band?" before he knows what he's doing.

Jamie pauses, hand still floating halfway to the starter switch. "I drop in a couple times a month on my night off. Blow off some steam."

It's Vinces turn to nod, and he scrambles for what to say next, having not planned to make conversation, and not having ever really talked to her about anything but Jesse. "You should come by the Fort some time. I know Mia would like to get to know you better, and… well, we're running kinda short on family these days…."

She looks at him weirdly for a moment before smiling slightly. "I'll keep that in mind… Y'know, I know we're both pissed at Leon, but Jesse wasn't kidding about how to get him back here real quick, if you want to."

It takes Vince a few seconds to remember the conversation she's talking about. "You guys said you and Le ain't a thing. Why would us hittin' up a bar get him back, then?"

"It's a long story, and you and I are nowhere near the level of close that we'd need to be for me to tell it to you. Let's just say, Le's real protective of me… and it has to do with why dad's locked up."

"So, how do we work on gettin' to that level of close?" the words escape his mouth with no input from his brain.

Jamie stares him down for a few seconds then says "I'll let you know." before pushing the starter switch and letting her bike roar to life.

Conversation over for real this time, then. They nod their goodbyes and Vince continues on his previous trajectory towards his car, vaguely aware that she waits for him to be in it and for it to be started before she puts her bike into gear and pulls out of the lot, skipping the official exit and riding across the sidewalk, thumping down off the curb between two cars that are parked on the street, barely pausing to check for oncoming traffic before pulling out and roaring off.

In mid-January, the doctors say that Jesse will be able to go home in a few weeks, after being in the hospital for just over 5 months. It's at this point that Mia and Vince decide it's time to light the beacon to get Leon home, since it'll apparently be so easy. Mia has been able to keep the store open, and Vince has had the garage open part-time with help from some of Hector's guys who were looking for a little easy part-time work in exchange for space to work on their personal cars in off-hours, but Jesse being home would put an extra strain on the two of them, and an extra pair of hands would be a huge help, and Jamie just can't be there all the time around work.

Since she and Vince had run into each other at the club, they had been getting to know each other better, and she'd been getting to know Mia as well, stopping by the house at least twice a week for dinner with the two of them. Jamie and Vince had hung out several times, at her place or at the club or at the garage while he did whatever to his Maxima, and they text regularly.

She happens to have Friday night off the week after Vince and Mia realize they're going to need Leon, so they schedule their appearance for races that week.

Jamie shows up at the house at the time Vince had told her to find out that Mia is still getting ready, so she and Vince sit in the living room and wait. He's watching something on the TV, but she's sitting and trying to count her breathing and stave off a panic attack. Eventually Mia comes down,and Jamie has another source of anxiety, wondering if she should've worn something different. Needing to ride to get over here, she'd worn more or less what she would've if she'd been going to the club - tight black jeans with her studded belt and wallet chain, combat boots, black wife beater, thick eyeliner and mascara.

Mia is wearing a teeny tiny skirt and a top that looks more like a small napkin with some strings, and her hair and makeup are done to perfection.

Vince doesn't seem phased, however, simply grunting out a "Finally" when Mia appears and ushering them out the door and locking it behind them. Mia climbs into her own baby blue car, and Vince seems to finally notice something's off as he watches Jamie shakingly force herself into the passenger seat of his car, waiting for him to start it and rolling down the electric window before closing the door.

She doesn't put on her seatbelt, and is still visibly shaking as they idle in the driveway. "Are you okay?" he asks, worried.

Jamie takes a shuddering but deep breath before answering. "I have issues with enclosed spaces. If we're going, will you please just go so I can get out."

'Well, that explains the bike' he thinks as he reverses quickly out, taking off for the address he'd gotten via text awhile ago, knowing Mia will keep up.

They roll up 25 minutes later to a moderate amount of fanfare. It's nothing like what the whole crew use to get, but it's the first time any part of Team Toretto has been spotted at races since RaceWars, so there's some excitement. Jamie is out of the car as soon as the parking brake is touched, and Vince rolls up her window before following her out. He reaches her side at the front quarterpanel and easily throws his arm around her shoulders as Mia greets some people she hasn't seen in months, noting Hector is already on his way over

"Ey, mano, you have no fuckin' idea how good it is to see you guys around here, man." Hector greets with a bro hug.

"It's good to be back bro." Vince says, even meaning it. This journey might have an ulterior motive, but he has missed it.

Hector motions to Jamie. "You gonna introduce us?"

"I'm Jamie. Jesse's little sister." Jamie beats him to it, reaching out to shake the hand Hector offers her.

"Little sister?" Vince questions, having not heard that part before.

She rolls her eyes. "By 2 minutes and 13 seconds, and he'll never let me forget it. I still maintain that his ADHD ass just got impatient and shoved me out of the way."

They all laugh, and Jamie plays her part, sliding an arm around Vince's waist and hooking her thumb through his belt loop as he begins taking her around to introduce her to people and show her the sights, such as they are.

Eventually, Hector finds them again, telling Vince he's been challenged for a race. Vince looks at Jamie, seeing her frazzled nerves edging closer to the surface than they had been earlier, but she simply smiles and pushes him off, telling him she'll go find Mia.

Since it's a challenge, he only has the one punk to contend with, and he wins, though not as easily as he'd have liked. After collecting his winnings, Vince is trying to decide if he has to put up on the traditional party later, when Hector saves him by yelling out that the after-party is at el Gato, around the same time that Jamie re-appears at Vince's side. He leans down to ask if she's ok to hit up the party, and she puts a hand on his stomach to lean back up to answer in his ear that she'll be ok as long as they don't stay too long.

He knows they're purposefully being extra intimate so that word will get back to Leon, who they know keeps up on the gossip like a little old lady, but, for a moment, Vince wants to forget and pretend it's real.

Jamie, Mia, and Vince are just finishing dinner on Monday evening when Leon squeals up to the house. As his car door slams, Jamie looks Vince in the eye and says, "Let me handle this." before getting up and moving to intercept him in the living room. She's standing in the living room with her arms crossed over her chest when he comes bursting through the door, and Leon stops dead in his tracks at the blank look on her face.

They stare at each other, and, as always, Leon breaks first. "Jamie-"

"Close the door, Leonard. We don't need the whole neighborhood hearing our business."

Full first name. Even, emotionless tone. Shit. He follows her order silently. She points to the couch and he sits on one end.

"Before you try and go all ninja warrior protector on Vince, it was just an act to get you home from where-ever it was that you fucked off to when you left Jesse to die alone in the hospital and Vince and Mia to take the fall for all of you." Leon opens his mouth to protest before clicking it shut again at the vicious glare he gets in return. "No. You are going to sit there and listen to this and take it like a man, then, tomorrow, you're going to go to the hospital and give all your pathetic excuses to Jesse, and he'll forgive you instantly, then you can sit with him while he's in physio and see what his life is now."

He sat and listened, and Vince and Mia sat in the next room, also listening, as Jamie told him in gruesome detail what Jesse had gone through just to stay alive, before starting on stories of Vince in Critical Care, many of which Vince doesn't even remember, probably due to the drugs they were pumping into him for the pain. When she gets to Mia having to handle it all alone, Vince gets up and enters the room behind her, stopping her with a hand to the shoulder.

"Time." With this reminder, Jamie glances at the clock.

Sighing, she says, "I have to get to work." Looking at Leon appraisingly, she asks, "Can I trust you to be in a house with him?"

Leon nods. "Yeah… I know you just did it to get my attention." he says quietly. Vince has never heard the normally very confident man sound so downtrodden.

"If you're hungry, I'm sure Mia has been keeping a plate warm for you." Jamie says even as she gathers her boots from their place by the door and pulls them on.

"Guilty." Mia declares from the doorway between the living and dining rooms.

Vince follows Jamie out the door and down the front walk to her bike, stopping next to her as she secures her helmet on her head. He sees the slight shake in her hand and wonders if it's residual anger at Leon or another thing like small spaces. She moves to swing onto the bike, but he stops her with a hand on her upper arm, moving them to be face-to-face instead. "You good?" he asks, searching her face.

Jamie sighs and closes her eyes briefly before looking up at him. "I will be." She looks sad, and stressed, and frustrated,and something else that he can't put a name to, but he believes her, and he knows she really does need to get going or she'll be late for work. So, he pulls her in for a quick hug and receives a squeeze in return before releasing her and stepping back so she can climb onto her bike and quickly get settled before taking off.

Once she has turned the corner and the sound of her Indian has blended with the distant sound of traffic from the main road, Vince turns and moves back into the house, finding Leon at the kitchen table eating the plate Mia had indeed kept warm for him through the lecture from Jamie while Mia works on the dishes. Leon pauses as Vince walks in, looking up at him as if worried Vince is going to immediately start beating his ass, but Vince just grabs a beer out of the fridge for each of them and pops the tops for handing them around and sitting in a chair across from Le.

Le goes back to his food and beer, but watches Vinces warily.

Eventually, Vince rubs a hand over his face tiredly and sighs. "Man, we called you back because we're gonna need your help with the garage and Jesse coming home. Even if we didn't need you whole for that, I'm pretty sure Jamie's gonna be better at making you suffer than any beat down from me could ever hope to be."

Everyone seemed to think Vince has a hair-trigger temper and conveniently forget that it was him that held shit together for the girls when Tony died and Dom got locked up. He'll admit he's grumpy a lot, but it takes a hell of a lot to get him to actually throw a punch. Unless it's Dom, because that's the only way Vince can get through to him when he's being stubborn. No. Since they were kids, it's always been Dom jumping into fights and Vince having to end them.

At his declaration, Leon looks some mix of relieved and even more worried. Vince is right. A beating would be painful, but over relatively quickly. Jamie, on the other hand, could hold a grudge when she wanted to. She couldn't be bothered most of the time, but that only drove it home all the more when she did. It meant you had REALLY fucked up.

Feeling better at least with Vince, Leon says, "I promised her I wouldn't go all protective asshole on you, but, seriously, dude…. That's a one-time deal." He and V do the stare-down and even Mia turns around from the sink. "I ain't gonna claim to know what's going on after bein' back 5 minutes, but I am warning you right now, anything more than friendly or sisterly comes up between you, we're gonna have problems."

Mia's eyes flick between the men and Vince takes a slow drag off his brew, eyes not leaving Leon's.

Eventually, he responds. "You're right. You don't know shit about what's going on. As for anything that might happen, I don't see how it's any of your business unless one of us decides to make it your business."

Leon looks incredulous for a moment before letting out a chuckle. "You don't know." Vince's face goes blank, thinking back to the vague comment about Le being protective and it having something to do with Jamie and Jesse's dad being in max security prison. "Man, it ain't my place. But if she ever tells you, and you don't run screaming, you'll be the first." With this, Leon shoves the last bite of his roast in his mouth and gets up, scraping his plate over the garbage can and gently dropping his dishes in the soapy water, tapping a chaste kiss on Mia's cheek and thanking her for dinner, mumbling something about bags as he walks to the back door.

He's back a couple minutes later, and Mia's done with the dishes, waiting for the sink to drain, and Vince is nowhere to be seen, so Le just takes his duffle bag down to the basement and his old room, which still has all his stuff bar the handful of things he'd taken with him.

The walls down here are pretty thick, but he can hear the occasional high notes floating through the wall he shares with Vince and knows the older man must be playing his guitar, probably thinking over what Leon had said. Leon's glad. He doesn't want to have to be the protective brother towards Vince, and Vince is actually a pretty thoughtful dude most of the time. Maybe Leon can get him to rethink whatever it is he had been thinking about with Jamie. She hadn't seemed to notice how Vince had looked at her, but Leon had, and he didn't like it.

Things around the house get more lively over the next few weeks. Leon being around means a little extra noise, then Jesse coming home means that they are nearly the full team again, and Jamie is around even more to spend time with Jesse, though she adamantly gives Leon the cold shoulder.

Jesse has these arm-brace-crutch things for getting around the house, since there aren't any bedrooms on the ground floor, and a wheelchair for when he's not feeling up to walking using those, and for being out of the house. He still has physical therapy daily, which Vince, Leon, and Mia take turns taking him to, and they juggle the shop and the garage around that. Leon being back is a huge help, and even Jesse is at the shop working, albeit exclusively on light work, and they still have some of Hector's guys in helping out, which also bring in more business as the people they would normally be helping out for cash and beer in their home garages start coming to DT instead.

It isn't a cash cow, by any means, but the garage and shop are taking care of themselves, and Vince sets Jesse's mad math and hacking skills the task of SLOWLY and CAREFULLY beginning to wash the money they had made in the heists through the businesses without it looking suspicious. Jesse's not a finance guy, really, but he can sure as hell hack databases to find out how other dirty businesses do it and adapt their process. Vince poses the situation as Jesse needing to figure out how to hack their business structure and add in extra information without getting caught, and Jesse's off and running. It's not that different from hacking to get information. It's just a matter of patience, and he promised Vince to come to him first if he felt himself starting to lose grip on the patience and wanting to just make a big move and be done with it.

That's how they'd both almost gotten killed less than 9 months ago, after all.

The store is actually the easiest. Vince pulls out cash from the offshore accounts to fill the safe at home, and, every day, Mia takes some of it, simply ringing in extra sales, putting the cash in the till and setting the food in boxes at the back, or just tallied on a piece of paper and left in the fridge, then, at the end of the week, cars get loaded up and a donation is made to the food bank. They make sure she starts slowly, even writing out a schedule of how much should be done on what days, which gets taped to the inside of the safe door, so it doesn't look suspicious. The sales are logged in the till batch at the end of the day, their food order and deposit always correspond with sales, and they're helping out those less fortunate. Wins all around. It ain't fast, but it works, and, by all accounts, it's nothing but a popular neighborhood corner store that makes okay sandwiches.

The garage is harder. More people, a lot more paperwork. There's nowhere to donate auto parts to the needy to get rid of them. They can put in occasional fake service papers that only require consumables that they stock in bulk, but that barely moves any money.

They settle on a rudimentary system of having customers pay what they actually owe (even undercharging them claiming there's some special on that week), then, later, entering a higher amount into the computer and padding the difference in the bank deposit and shredding all the paper receipts that customers sign, planning to claim ignorance if they ever get audited. With the dawning of the technology age, they figure they'll get a fine for not knowing that they need to keep the paper backup even though everything's on the computer, then have to figure out something else later.

In April, Vince buys a Harley.

Leon's immediately suspicious that it's some weird play to get in Jamie's pants, but Mia placates him by telling him that V had actually had a bike before a car back in high school. He'd sold it when Dom went to prison to buy an old beater which he'd subsequently fixed up into her first car while he drove Dom's old Corvette, racing it until he had enough to get Letty's Silvia race-ready. Letty had wanted to get him his own car next, but he insisted there was no point while Dom was still locked up and he could just drive the 'vette, so the next project had been Mia's Acura, which was several steps up from the reliable but boring hatchback she'd been driving to school and back. It was only once the girls had both done some cleaning up at RaceWars one year that they pooled their money and surprised Vince with his Maxima - factory with a blown engine and fried wiring, at the time.

Le doesn't know what to think of that. He'd known, intellectually, that Vince had taken care of the girls and the businesses while Dom had been locked up - hell, it had been near the end of that time that him and Jess had started hanging around more regularly - but he'd always somehow assumed that the team's cars, other than him and Jess, had been mostly Dom's doing. Which is kinda stupid, in retrospect. The guy had been locked up for nearly 3 years, and Leon remembers the buzz from when Vince had rolled up in his Maxima the first time instead of Dom's Corvette. He decides to wait and see.

Vince, for his part, hadn't bought the bike because of Jamie. Not entirely at least. Seeing her on her bike had mostly just made him realize how much he'd missed his. He'd sold it nearly 6 years ago to get the then-16-year-old Mia her first car so she could get herself to school and the store afterward, while he took care of the garage. Letty, 18 and graduated months previously, gamely watched the store during the day while Mia was at school, taking off with no small amount of relief to get greasy at 3:15 once the younger girl showed up to man the counter and do homework between customers.

Anyway, if he'd had the passing thought that maybe Jamie'd go for a ride with him, that is hardly the reason he had got the bike.

They do go for rides, but not quite as he'd thought.

The brief image he'd had of her on his bitch seat, arms wrapped around him doesn't really pan out, but he has fun nonetheless as they cruise side-by-side up PCH out past Malibu and hit Oxnard before turning back inland to circle back toward LA. In deference to her predominantly nighttime schedule, she'd gone home to sleep for a few hours after work and they'd left in early afternoon, so it's dinnertime when she reaches over to tap his arm and signals for him to follow her as she pulls off the highway somewhere near Calabasas, leading him to a roadside diner next to a service station with nothing else nearby that he can see.

Conversation covers bikes and whatever other random things come up as they eat burgers and fries, drinking milkshakes, not in a hurry. When they are done, Vince throws down cash to cover both of their meals and ignores her slight frown as she slowly puts her own wallet away. The pair pulls back out, not getting back on the highway as he'd expected, but taking to smaller back roads instead. A brief ride on Mulholland, then he grins over at her as she leads him onto the Old Topanga Canyon Road. This northernmost section of it is full of twists, turns, and switchbacks,making for a fun and challenging ride, and the scenery is nothing to sniff at.

Eventually, they meet up with the new Topanga Canyon road, but he is again surprised when they are barely on it a few minutes before she turns off toward Tuna Canyon. More fun riding. It's a little after 8 when they pull of into the parking area at the Tuna Canyon trailhead, both taking off their helmets and sitting sideways on their bikes to take in the view down the canyon and out over the ocean. It's late enough that the sun is descending toward the horizon, but sunset hasn't properly started yet.

"Have either of them told you yet?" Jamie's voice breaks through the companionable silence. When Vince just looks at her confused, she elaborates. "Why dad's in jail? Why Le's so protective?" He shakes his head. "I graduated early. Went off to USC. Couldn't afford a car, so I got a dorm so I wouldn't have to commute. Met a guy, older, ended up moving in with him. Typical 17 year old story. Then, after awhile, he started…" Vince fists have clenched where they are resting on his jean-clad thighs, and she trails off as she sees out of the corner of her eye. "Very long story short, eventually, I wasn't allowed to do anything except go to class and do homework and house chores. Not even call home. Dad got worried. Showed up one day around my 19th birthday. Found Marcus….. Well… Dad beat him to hell and back. He ended up dying a couple days later in the hospital."

There's several long minutes of silence as Vince processes this. Then, he offers up some information that neither of them expected. "My dad was a drunk; beat on my mom when I was a kid, then me when I got older and started tryin' to stand up to him." Vague, like her story had been, but enough to tell her he can relate. "Mom took off when I was 14, and Mia's dad, Tony, just walked into our house, helped me pack my stuff, and moved me into the Fort."

The next day it's Vince's turn to take Jesse to therapy, and something's bugging him about the whole thing.

"Hey, Jess? Can I ask you something?"

This is out of character enough for Jesse to be on guard. "Yeah…?"

Vince fidgets slightly in his seat. They're in traffic. "Jamie told me why your dad's in jail."

Jesse waits for more, but there doesn't seem to be any. "O..kay?"

Vince sighs. "I just don't get it." Jesse doesn't know how to respond to that, but Vince thankfully continues this time. "Why Le's so much more protective of her, I mean. Y'all have known each other forever, I get that, but you're her brother. Shouldn't you be the one up my ass about my intentions or whatever?"

Oh. That. Jesse relaxes somewhat. "She told you why dad's in jail, but did she tell you what that fuckwad actually did to her to make dad react that way?" he asks.

"No…" Vince says slowly. "Not really."

"Me either." Jesse says, prompting Vince to look over at him critically. Jesse explains. "Look, man, when it all went down, she made me promise to not go looking for details, and her and dad both made me promise to not go to the hearings and shit. I thought I would be smart, called Le. He was living in Phoenix then. He came home when I told him what went down. Dad never denied what he did. Plead guilty to whatever, but there was still a hearing for a judge to hear evidence and determine exact charges and sentencing and shit." Jesse looks out his window, brow furrowed as he remembers back to that day. "Le left that morning to go to the hearing saying he'd come home and tell me everything. Then, when he actually got home… he looked fucking broken, man. He just sat down next to me on the couch and started crying. Not a little, but these, like, massive sobs and I'd never seen him cry like that, not even when his mom died. When he calmed down, he wouldn't tell me anything. Just made me promise him the same thing I'd promised Jamie and dad. That, no matter what, I would never, ever go looking for details. No matter what database I hacked, no matter how curious I got." He meets the other man's eyes across the car. "And I haven't. Whatever it was, it made my dad, who never even spanked us when we were little, beat a guy, ultimately to death, and it broke Leon. It broke Jamie, too, for a long time. She's still working on getting herself put back together. I don't want to know." They're silent for a minute as they both go back to staring at the creeping traffic, then Jesse speaks again. "I think she also needed me to not know. To have someone that still treated her more or less normal…. I don't know what's going on with you guys, but if she's ever willing to tell you, and you hurt her, I don't give a fuck how weak I feel, I will beat you to death with my crutches if I have to."

Vince only nods solemnly, having no idea if Jesse is even looking at him to see it or not.

It's the most sincere big brother talk he'd ever received, and, consequently, the first he finds himself taking seriously. And he hasn't even decided if he'd going to ask her out or not yet.

Summer rolls in properly, and Jesse's dad convinces him to just scrap the Jetta. "Too much bad luck attached to that car, boy. If it'll make you feel better, trade it for somethin' else at the junkyard and built me somethin' new." Jesse starts rambling about a dream car and Joseph, his dad, cuts in before he can drift off into automotive dreamland. "Run everything by your sister." This pulls Jesse up short.

"But dad-"

"No buts. I know you love cars and want me to have the best, but your sister has always been better about knowing my taste than you have. I'm not saying have her dictate everything, just compromise with her. OK?"

"OK." Jesse suddenly sounds like a sullen teenager again.

Later, Leon cheers him up. "Jesse, look at it this way. You and Jamie will compromise on a car for your dad, then, by the time he's paroled and driving it, you'll be cleared to drive again and you can finally get started on YOUR car."

Through June, Mia thinks she's being sneaky about taking phone calls away from him and slowly packing up Letty and Dom's stuff, taking it out to the RX that's sitting behind the shed under a car cover, but Vince sees, and he starts making some preparations himself. If she's packing stuff out to the car, that means Dom and Letty aren't planning on staying, probably not even seeing the team. They just want to get their stuff and Dom's car - since they already have Letty's - and steal away before anyone notices they're there.

Vince understands, in a way. They wanna travel and not have the responsibility of the team and the house and the 's up to them, but he'll be damned if he lets all his hard work get snatched away from him again when Dom gets bored and decides it's time to come home. So, he goes to Tony's old lawyer, the guy that has always taken care of the business stuff, and explains. The lawyer, Larry, shakes his head and tells Vince that this is the right thing to do - what Tony would've done - and draws up all the paperwork. Vince, having been named Dominic's Power of Attorney to take care of business matters when he'd gone inside years ago, signs on Dom's behalf, and now Mia is the sole owner and proprietor of a house and two businesses. The lawyer keeps the originals, and Vince takes three sets of copies, as well a the extra papers he's going to ask Mia to sign to make him a partner in the garage, which he thinks she will without too much fuss. Except for a little over a year and a half when Dom was both home and in a stable enough place to do it himself, Vince has basically been running the shop since he'd graduated, Tony having been handing the reins over what he thought would be temporarily to focus on what he knew would be his final few racing seasons.

He waits for a day that he has some time home alone before taking Dom's copy of the paperwork out to the car, pulling out the bottom-most suitcase from the trunk, opening it, and shoving the envelope to the bottom under all the clothes, before carefully repacking everything how Mia had had it, then giving the car a once-over to make sure it's ready to be driven after sitting for 10 months. Mia couldn't possibly grow up in this family without learning the basics, so he sees the fresh battery and spark plugs, full fluids. He checks the tire pressure and pulls out the air compressor to fill them up while no one is home, peeking at the brake pads while he's down there and noting that he should grab some and throw them at least in the car. Then, he has a moment of pettiness and decides that if Dom can't tell he is due for new brake pads and take care of it his fucking self, that's not Vince's problem.

The team throw their usual 4th of July BBQ, which is really most of the street throwing a block party that most of the neighborhood shows up to, and Vince is the grillmaster. About a week later, the RX is gone, and he sits Mia down in the office at the store the day after it has disappeared.

She's irate at first, on Dom's behalf. "How could you do this to him?! He trusted you to take care of everything for him, Vince!"

"I AM taking care of everything, Mia! That's WHY I'm doing this!" It's the first time he's raised his voice to her since he'd caught her sneaking out of the house to go to a frat party when she was 17. He stands and paces, tugging frustratedly at his hair. "Mia, we both know he's not coming back. Not anytime soon." She opens her mouth in protest and he cuts her off. "No. I know you packed up all their shit and got the RX ready to go. They picked it up yesterday." This shuts Mia up and she looks sheepish. "Mi... Dom, your pops… the thing they trusted me with the most was looking out for you. That's what I'm doing here. Even me becoming a partner in the garage, it's so you don't have to worry about running it, being responsible for it. You already got the store to worry about. If Dom wants to fuck off around the world and travel that's his choice, but he ain't gonna swoop back in here next year or 10 years from now and have a cushy fucking life waiting on a silver platter. It's you and me keeping all this shit floating, and WE are going to be the ones that make a life off of it." Tired, he flops down in one of the chairs in the office. "If you don't want me to be a partner, that's up to you, I'll still keep runnin' everything. But the Dom decision is final. He needs to live with the consequences of his choices."

Mia leans forward and picks up a pen, signing the papers, laughing as she realizes that the new name for the business outlined there is one she has suggested to her father when she was like 6.

In late August, the motley family proprietors of Vroom Auto, plus Jamie, are sitting down to dinner.

It's the middle of an unrelated conversation when Jesse abruptly elbows Jamie in the ribs, asking "Why are you being so stubborn about it?!"

She elbows him back. "I'm NOT being stubborn!"

Jesse turns for help. "Le!"

"You both know where I stand on this."

"Stand on what?" Mia asks.

"Me moving" "Jamie moving in with strangers" is the jumbled reply from the twins

"Back up." Vince demands.

Le cuts in. "Jamie's roommates are having a baby, asked her to find a new place cuz they need her room for the nursery. Jesse doesn't want her moving into a new room rental with people we don't know."

"So, find an apartment." Vince says logically.

Jamie shakes her head immediately. "Between the hours I work and how much I'm here and other stuff I do, I basically just need somewhere to sleep, shower and do laundry. The price of apartments in LA? Not worth the money for the time I'd be spending there."

"So you'll move in here then." This comes from Mia, silencing the rest of the group as they look at her. "What? She just said all she needs is a room, and we have two empty ones upstairs. She won't be wasting money on a place she's never at, we'll see her more, and she isn't moving in with strangers. Problem solved. Plus, it'll be nice to have another girl around."

They're moving her in a few days later, and Mia insists on Jamie taking the master suite.

"But it's YOUR house, Mia!"

"Yeah, but I still think of that as my Dad or Dom and Letty's room. I would feel weird. Plus, I have all my stuff in my room and the bathroom how I like it. Seriously. If I ever change my mind, I'll say something and we can swap. It's not a big deal."

The remainder of Dom and Letty's things, along with the furniture that had been in there had been either donated or packed away into the attic.

Jamie motions to the pieces of her desk and says "That first." to Vince and Leon, who each grab and end of the biggest piece and lift, while she picks up her comfy spinny desk chair and follows them inside, directing them to the spot she want it on the wall next to the door, pointing out the side that the adjoining piece will attach to creat an L shape against the bathroom wall. The next trip upstairs has Leon carrying the remaining main piece of desk while Vince carefully maneuvers the shelving unit that sits atop it, and Jamie and Mia both carry the major components of her desktop computer.

Another point and indicate session shows the boys where she wants the bed, bookcase, and dresser, and they get to the final big pieces while Jamie and Mia lug a suitcase and a duffle bag of clothes, followed by boxes of miscellany. Jesse appears at some point, immediately settling in to set up her computer, returning the laptop he'd borrowed months previously in the hospital at the same time, and setting that up right next to her desktop.

Jamie orders them all pizza to say thanks for helping her move, and Leon says, "Y'know, for someone who says she doesn't spend much time at home, you sure have a lot of shit."

She responds by throwing a piece of pepperoni at his face.

While they now see her most evenings for dinner, her presence in the house is elsewise pretty tangential. The hospital takes advantage of the fact that she is fine with working nights and is well accustomed to the schedule, and she works a lot, usually working for 7 or 8 day stretches before getting 2 or 3 off, with occasional double-shifts thrown in. As such, they are all typically at the store or garage by the time she gets home from work around 9:45 am, and she rolls out of bed anywhere between 3 and 6 pm. The store and the garage both close at 6, which puts everyone home around 6:20, and dinner is on the table between 7 and 7:30. If Jamie has to work, she leaves straight after dinner. Unless it's one of her rare days off, it is pretty difficult to tell she actually lives there.

Vince is disappointed by that. He'd been quietly excited that she was moving into the Fort, thinking they're be able to spend more time together. In reality, it had made him realize how much sleep she'd been missing out on to hang out with them before, when she lived halfway across town.

He's sitting on the front porch contemplating it one evening, listening to the sounds of the guys duking it out on the playstation inside and the distant sound of Mia on the phone with someone, when Jamie sits down on the bench next to him.

"Sorry we haven't been able to hang much." she says, as if reading his mind.

"It's cool," he says,picking slightly at the corner of the label on his beer bottle. "Wish you woulda said how much hanging out was cutting into your sleep before."

She shrugs. "It wasn't, really. I wasn't scheduled nearly as many hours then." When she doesn't continue, he grunts what he hopes is a prompt to keep going. "We're short staffed right now. This happens periodically. It'll let up soon."

'Soon' ends up being November. Somehow, Jamie has landed the whole of Thanksgiving weekend off, and she's hiding out in the shed with Vince while Mia cooks up a storm on Thursday.

Vince is fixing up Tony's Charger, not knowing when Dom will be back to do it and no longer being able to bear knowing it's sitting out here wasting away in a twisted mess. Jamie is mostly keeping him company and occasionally providing an extra pair of hands.

Vince is convinced he's imagining things, or turning into a 13 year old chick, as he thinks that she might be standing a lot closer than she really needs to or is brushing up against him on purpose.

Eventually, they are called in for dinner, and it's a delicious and lively affair. Afterward, they caox Mia away from the dishes and Jamie, Jesse and Leon pull Mia and Vince into their old holiday family tradition of after-dinner board games. After two cutthroat rounds of Monopoly, Mia is yawning, and Jamie pushes her up the stairs, telling her to take a bath and go to bed, and then turning and shoving Leon and Jesse into the kitchen, telling them to do the dishes. They put up a token argument, but do as they're told, well aware that Mia spoils them most of the time.

In all the ruckus, Vince had disappeared back out to the shed, this time with a six-pack and a bottle of whiskey. The holidays are when he misses Tony the most, and being out here, working on the car, helps him feel closer to his surrogate father. He isn't surprised when Jamie joins him again, picking up the bottle of whiskey from where it's sat next to the tool box and taking a draught from it, before grabbing his open beer and doing the same to chase the burn before bothering to open one for herself.

An hour later, he gives up the pretense of working on the car and moves to join her on the beat-up couch off to one side of the shed, and they arrange themself to sit sideways on it, facing each other with their little collection of booze between them. They unhurriedly pass the whiskey back and forth as Vince tells her stories about Tony. Learning about cars, both here in this shed, working on this same charger alongside Dom, and at the garage. Going to the track, being in charge of Mia, keeping her entertained and out of the way of the pit crew. Sneaking out at night after fights with his dad and getting the snot beat out of him, sleeping on this couch until Tony realized and insisted he come inside and sleep on a cot in Dom's room, then, one day, bunk beds appearing in Dom's room instead. How Letty, in a similar situation, had bunked with Mia for years in much the same way until Tony had realized they would need their own space as teenagers and finished the rooms in the basement. Teaching all four kids how to handle both businesses, helping them with homework.

"He sounds amazing," Jamie says, smiling at Vince.

He finds himself smiling back at her, feeling better. "He was." He feels like a living, breathing cliche as he realizes that they have somehow shifted to be much closer together than they had been initially, and his slightly whiskey-saturated brain struggles to comprehend how that had happened as he stares down at her. One thing he's certain of is that it's Jamie that makes the next move.

Her hand comes up to the side of his neck, almost cupping his jaw, and she leans up, planting her lips on his. Vince forgets to breathe, and she's pulling back before he processes what's happening, but he chases her down, not letting her get far before his lips recapture hers and his arms snake around her lower back, pulling her up so she's sitting sideways on his lap. Her free hand makes it's way into his hair, threading through it and tugging lightly, making him growl lowly against her mouth, and she responds by sucking his lower lip in between her own and nibbling on it.

They're interrupted by the loud squeak of the back screen door and Jesse and Leon's voices making their way towards the shed, and Vince is pretty sure Jamie teleports back to be leaning casually against the other arm of the couch as the guys walk in. He's not fully aware of what is said, including what comes out of his own mouth, but he eventually clues in that the guys have settled in sitting on the floor and are telling stories of Jamie and Jesse's dad that he knows he isn't going to remember, and hopes he can play it off as being drunk later. Eventually, they all wander back into the house. Leon and Jesse head downstairs, citing being tired, and Jamie heads upstairs, but he knows it won't be for too long, so he loiters in the kitchen, ostensibly considering whether he wants to bother with a midnight snack, until she reappears in the living room carrying a book, her sketchpad and pencil case, and a Walkman.

He knows she gets paranoid on her nights off about waking Mia moving around too much upstairs, so she tends to spend them either away from the house or doing quiet things in the living room.

She's still standing as he makes it to the living room, having just set down her things on the side table by the armchair, and she turns towards him to ask what he's still doing up, but he cuts her off with a kiss. She responds eagerly, opening up to him at the slightest prompting, and he swirls his tongue lightly against hers, pulling out a delicious sound. Her fingers just slipping under the hem of his thermal shirt snap him out of it and he pulls back, giving her a heated look.

"Couldn't go to bed without a goodnight kiss." he grinds out before slowly pulling away. She looks dazed, and he feels smug as he makes his way quickly downstairs, forcing himself into a cold shower instead of hauling her straight to either of their beds.

The guys and Mia go to the races more nowadays, but keep their attendance intentionally sporadic, sometimes going for a few weeks in a row and sometimes not going for a month at a time. That Friday after Thanksgiving, they turn up, and have warned Jamie that they have planned to throw one of their previously customary after parties at the house. She holes up in her room well before she expects them to return, locking her door lest any wayward guests try to stumble in. Since moving in, she's acquired a squashy armchair that's perfect for curling up in and placed it next to the window, which overlooks the driveway at the side of the house. When the team pulls up, she's surprised to see her brother climb out of a car she doesn't recognize, and realizes that Vince or Le must have won a race where someone threw in their slip instead of cash. It actually works out. Jess had just gotten done with Dad's car, since his parole hearing is in a few weeks, and he has declared it fit for dad but boring to drive, which is why he had ridden with Mia tonight anyway. Jamie had made sure dad's car was top of the line street ready, but no more. Jesse didn't want to risk getting challenged and not being able to race because his car wasn't built for racing.

This new car is obviously at least on it's way to being race appropriate, and she's sure Jesse is already mentally making modifications to it. She shudders to think what god-awful color he's going to pick for it. She loves the boy, but she wonders sometimes if he isn't at least somewhat colorblind.

People start pouring into the house, and the noise picks up. Mia and Jesse both come up and try to get her to join the party, but she refuses, citing just not feeling up for the crowd, the same excuse she'd used to beg off of the races.

In reality, she isn't sure if she can watch all the race skanks around Vince. Jamie isn't sure what is going on with them after last night, but she has been to a few races with the team by now, seen how girls hang off of him, even seen some of the ones he brings home on occasion, and she doesn't want to end up freaking out and ruin the night for the team. They aren't in as deep as they use to be, but they all obviously still love the scene, and they have a lot of respect in it. They don't need some spastic sister swinging in out of nowhere and ruining it over a few kisses when they might mean absolutely nothing. Or maybe that's her anxiety talking. Either way, she thinks it's a better idea all around if she just stays up here.

It's past 3 when she emerges from her book to realize it's quiet again, and her stomach grumbles, reminding her that it's "lunch"time. Marking her place, she stretches and gets up to go forage for food.

Jamie picks her way through the living room quietly, around a few passed-out people, noting that the place is significantly less trashed than she would've imagined, and makes her way to the kitchen. She's eating a sandwich when she glances through the kitchen window and realizes that Vince is in the back yard, laying back on the picnic table fingers moving idly over what looks like a bottle of water. She finishes off the last few bites of her food as she makes her way out. There's no sneaking with that squeaky screen door, so he doesn't startle when she sits backwards on the bench, leaning back against the table near his shoulder. He shifts closer so his shoulder rests between her shoulder blades.

"Missed you tonight." he says softly.

Jamie's hands twist together in her lap as she looks down at them. "Oh." She pauses. "I wasn't sure…."

Vince sighs as he catches on. "I'm not really sure either, but I'm not that much of an asshole. I wouldn't…" She relaxes minutely, and there's several minutes of silence, more comfortable this time. "Jesse told me. Obviously not much more than you did, but… enough." She's tense again, and he worries she's about to bolt. "I just don't know where you're at, and it's kinda freaking me out. I don't… I can't hurt you, Jamie. For a lotta reasons." Many of the reasons, he doesn't understand himself yet, he just knows that he can't, so he hopes she doesn't question him on it.

He hears her swallow a couple times and doing what he has learned is her measured breathing to try and control her anxiety.

Eventually, she replies, "I can't tell you where I'm at. There's…. There's no map, for things like this. I…." he waits, sensing that this is something she has either never done or it has never gone well. "There's scars." this part is almost whispered, and he doesn't know what to say. "Physically, I mean."

Oh. He'd actually assumed she meant metaphorical, so he guesses it's a good thing she has clarified. He knows they must be below her hips, because he's seen her in as little as a bikini top. Then he remembers a couple times he's seen her in board shorts and his stomach drops to somewhere around his knees as he realizes what's between her knees and hips that there might be scars on and if she's about to tell him other people have reacted badly to them, he might need to punch something. Suddenly, he can't wait for her dad to be out on parole so he can shake the man's hand and buy him a steak and lobster dinner, because if what Vince suddenly suspects is anything close to what happened to her, he would've killed the fucker that did it too.

"Most people just ghost me once they see." Exactly the words he dreaded hearing, but the next ones were somehow worse. "Except a few, who are just bizarrely fascinated by them." She sighs again, and seems at least a little comforted that he's still there. "Either way, it's like all they see is some scars. All of a sudden, I'm not a person that they like anymore, just some old wounds that they either can't look at or can't look away from."

Vince swings himself to sit, then stand, setting down his water and moving to pull her up to stand in front of him. She balances herself with hands on his stomach, and he puts one of his on her hip and the other moves up to cradle her head, tipping it up so their eyes meet. "Well, I can't promise how I'm going to react to seeing them, because the thought of someone…. Makes my blood boil. But I can promise that you are more than just some pussy that I am looking to get into, and I am sure as hell not going to push you to do anything you aren't damn sure you are ready to." Jamie's face relaxes to the barest hint of a smile and he leans in to kiss her softly, liking the way her hands curl into fists around hist shirt.

After a minute, he pulls back, saying, "C'mon. I know it's still early for you, but I'm fuckin' tired." and grabs her by the hand to lead her inside, pausing to grab a handful of the little two-pill packets of aspirin from a box in the pantry she hadn't noticed before and a few bottles of Gatorade, leaving them on the coffee table, obviously for the people passed out in the living room. One more kiss at the base of the stairs and he gives her a light shove up them before retreating towards the basement.

Jamie falls asleep early, around 6, and is up correspondingly early at noon, walking downstairs to find their final guests gone and everyone just dishing up brunch.

Mia spots her first, checking the clock to make sure she's not missing something. "Hey you. Did we wake you?"

A round of greeting from the boys follows, muffled by mouthsful of french toast and sausage.

Jamie grabs herself a plate and sits down to join them. "No, I just fell asleep early." she explains as she starts dishing herself up. "Are you guys opening up shop today?"

Mia nods, answering, "For a few hours, yeah. People are usually still eating leftovers, but they're starting to run out of milk and butter by now, so it's worth it to go in for awhile today."

Looking to the boys, Jamie asks, "What about you guys?"

Vince swallows first to reply. "Pretty much the same. We'll open up for a few hours, get a handful of oil changes and tune-ups, then probably spend the rest of the day tearing apart Jesse's new car."

"Oh, yeah, I saw you rollin' up in it last night, Jess. What are the plans for it?"

This, of course, sets Jesse chattering for the remainder of the meal, with interjections from the other two guys whenever he pauses to scarf a few bites of his food every time Mia commands him to eat.

At the end of the meal, Jamie gathers the plates, waving Mia off, and telling Jesse that she's sure his new Protege will be great once he's done with all the mods he wants to make, but telling him to run the paint color by her first.

As they're pulling shoes on, Leon says, "Hey, we'll have to do the Real Test once it's done!"

"Yeah!" Jesse exclaims even as they hear Jamie groan from the kitchen. "C'mon Jamie, it's been forever!"

"Because I don't do cars anymore!" is the answering exclamation.

"Anymore?" Vince asks curiously. "I thought she didn't do cars at all?"

"We all learned to drive together. We only had the one car for the three of us, so we'd take it out to the desert and see who could get the best time." Jesse explains.

"Jamie usually won." Leon says to Vince before half-shouting back into the kitchen "But if we can get it ready in time it would be such a great birthday present for Jesse."

"Oh it SO WOULD!" Jesse agrees.

Vince had forgotten that Jesse's - and, of course, by extension, Jamie's - birthday is coming up, right before Christmas. His, Mia's, and Leon's birthdays had all passed in the spring relatively quietly with a few gifts and going out for dinner. Leon usually makes a bit more of a deal out of Jesse's though. It had been very low-key last year between Leon being in the wind and Jesse being in the Hospital, and it hadn't even occurred to Vince at the time that it was also Jamie's birthday.

There's loud clinking as Jamie does the dishes and he imagines her standing in front of the sink sighing and pretending she didn't hear Leon. Mia comes down the stairs looking interested in the exchange that she'd probably heard at least most of, and they all take off, having been waiting for her as she was the last one in last night, and is blocking them in.

Later that day, Jesse's holed up in the closet they had long ago turned into his office running simulations for different specs on the new car, and Vince seizes his chance to talk to Leon alone as they work on gutting the car, going slow and making sure all the screws and mounts stay with the appropriate parts in case they decide to end up putting them back in, and cleaning everything as they go.

"Her anxiety about spaces, being in cars… is that from…" he asks haltingly.

Leon sighs. "She's always had the anxiety stuff, even when we were kids, but it's been a lot worse since then. She used to get nervous if she was in the car too long, but it took, like, a trip outta the city for her to get antsy. Didn't like small spaces, or crowds, or all the other stuff that makes her anxious, but she could deal with it for awhile before it really started gettin' to her, y'know?" There's a pause as they continue working, then. "You been up to her room since we moved her in?"

Vince is caught off guard. "No." he says, somewhat defensively, aware that Leon had cottoned onto his feeling for Jamie long ago.

"It's cool man, I wasn't accusing, just asking." Le says. "She took the closet door off. Even with that, she can barely walk in there for a few seconds to either get something or hang stuff up." Another moment of silence. "That's where he… kept her." Vince goes completely still. "Their bedroom closet." Vince thinks he might be sick and knows he'll be taking the doors off his own closet when he gets home. "She has meds that she can take when it really starts gettin' to her, but she hates 'em. Says they make her feel like a robot. Like nothing's real and life becomes a video game or something."

After a few minutes, Vince collects himself and starts working again, almost missing Le's next question. "How much has she told you?"

"Some… mostly about stuff that's happened since…. How people have reacted to, uh, the scars…."

"Have you seen 'em?"

"No."

Leon takes a second to wipe his hands on a rag before dropping his head and rubbing at his eyes, like he's trying to wipe an image from his brain. "I haven't since she's healed, but I saw the pictures from the ER." he heaves a huge breath. "Jo's lawyer presented the whole case to the judge, pictures and all, to show why he did it. What he walked into that apartment and saw the bastard doing to her. Prosecution didn't even really argue. Everyone agreed it wasn't premeditated or any shit like that. 9 years for manslaughter with parole after 5 and a half with good behavior is barely a slap on the wrist, legally."

They slowly get back to work, and Vince does some math. "So, it's 6 years next month, right?"

Le nods. "Government never does shit on time. They were 10 months late moving him from max to medium security, nearly 6 months late getting him in front of the parole board, if he even gets there in a two weeks when he's scheduled to now instead of getting put off again."

"Takin' him out for whatever dinner he wants when he's out." Leon meets his eyes and they have a moment of understanding each other before Jesse comes rushing excitedly out towards them, oblivious to the low mood.

Joseph's parole hearing does get put off again, but his lawyer kicks up a fuss about it now being more than 6 months overdue and this being the third deferment on the board's part, and he's put at the top of the docket for the next series of hearings in the third week of January.

December 20th rolls around, and Jamie manages to get off work early to join them for the big birthday breakfast that Mia makes for her and Jesse. Afterward, Vince and Leon drag Jesse to work over his protests that he shouldn't have to work on his birthday, telling him that he needs to let Jamie sleep if he wants her to be able to keep her promise to go to races with them that night.

It had been easy for Jamie to get her scheduled days off to fall on her birthday and the couple days after, because Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are, of course, the most requested days off, and also some of the busiest in the hospital, so all she had to do was sign up as one of the volunteers to work them and the rest had sorted itself out.

That evening, she made dinner before Mia got home and could protest. Not that Mia didn't try to anyway, but she stopped when she saw how happy Jesse was that Jamie had made what was apparently Jesse's favorite dish - Leon's mother's tuna casserole - and Leon didn't say anything, but she suspects that the spicy four bean salad side dish that he takes four helpings of is one of his childhood favorites. She makes a note to let Jamie cook more.

Gifts come after dinner. Jesse gets a couple new video games from Vince, some fancy joystick for his computer games from Leon, and some new clothes from Mia - if someone else didn't buy them for him, he'd keep wearing the same pair of jeans and tee shirt until they are rags.

Jamie's gifts are less predictable, varying by how well each of them know her. Mia, the least close, had wandered in and taken note of a few of the authors that Jamie has several books by, finding their latest at the bookstore and cross checking them against the lost of what was already on Jamie's shelves that she'd written down before buying a handful. Vince, more familiar with her tastes, gives her a stack of CDs he's pretty sure she hasn't had time to buy the past several months.

Mia and Vince look confused as Leon doesn't give anything to Jamie, and Jamie and Jesse don't give each other anything. It gets explained fairly quickly, though.

"They always do something for each other instead of buying something." Leon says when Mia questions it.

"And you don't get Jamie anything because...?" Vince questions.

Jamie answers. "This year, because he's massively helping me with my thing for Jess, so that's his present to me." She refuses to elaborate further, simply pointing out to Mia that she should head up and start getting ready.

"What about you?" Mia questions.

"Since when does Jamie take more than 10 minutes to get ready for anything?" Vince replies looking at Mia incredulously. He isn't wrong. After the first few times of going and feeling self conscious, Jamie had pretty much gotten over looking like a metal girl lost in skankville, more than content to stick with her basic eye makeup that takes 3 minutes to do, and just brushing her hair so it doesn't look like a complete mess, throwing on whatever clothes she would wear to see a gig.

Point taken, Mia heads upstairs.

At some point, Jamie goes up and gets ready, but is back in less than 10 minutes, as promised, and still well before Mia makes an appearance. As they pile into cars, Vince frowns as Jamie climbs into Leon's Skyline, used to her coming with him when she goes with them to races, but she had said Leon was helping her with whatever for Jess, so it probably had to do with that.

When they arrive, rounds begin, though Jesse stays pretty much by his Protege, since it's the first appearance at races with it. Vince watches as Leon talks to Hector, handing the man two separate bundles of cash, and knows races are being arranged. Definitely Jesse's debut in the Protege, and Vince would bet a nut the other one will be Jamie, probably in Le's Skyline, as a surprise for Jess. He moves over toward her where she's standing somewhat stiffly next to the Skyline and sees that she already has Leon's keys in hand, and is fiddling with them. He stops closer than is really necessary, practically pasted against her side, and puts a hand on her lower back, leaning down to speak in her ear so no one around them overhears.

"You'll do great."

She's high strung, obviously keyed up anticipating the race, and he can't wait to see her on the blacktop. He suddenly understands race skanks a little better.

"You've never even seen me drive." she says, leaning into him.

"I know Le's never let ME drive the Skyline to the store for milk, much less race it."

She grins up at him somewhat sheepishly, knowing he has a point. Leon had built up solid racing cred even before him and Jess had been adopted into Team Toretto, and if you can impress Leon enough for him to trust you with his car, you are pretty fucking good.

"I still have an unfair advantage, though. He just thinks I'm better than him because I used to beat him back before he had a good car."

Vince shrugs that off carelessly. "It's takes more skill to beat someone when you're driving a shitty car."

They're interrupted by the man himself as he comes back from his conversation with Hector. "Jess'll be up first. Easier selection. He's gonna be more careful picking who you're up against, spread the word, let bets start going around. You're in my Skyline, which is a big thing, and you are a total unknown, so your race is gonna get a buzz goin'."

Indeed, it's only 20 minutes before Jesse is pulling up to the line, and Vince watches the race, glad he'd been correct in what he'd been telling Dom for years - that if only they could pry the guy out of that slow as fuck Jetta, he'd be good. There's some sloppy stuff that Vince vows to take him out to work on soon, but Jesse scratches out a win, by a nose.

15 minutes later, he finds his way back to the group. "You're racing?!" he asks Jamie excitedly. Obviously word had made it's way around to him that the chick that's sometimes there with them is putting up in the famous yellow Skyline.

"Happy birthday." is her reply as he picks her up in a bear hug and spins her around.

They hang out for 10 more minutes, chatting to people who wander over trying to scope out this chick who has never made much of an impression before, before Hector comes over to tell them he finally got a good lineup, but it includes a slip.

Leon pops off with, "Man, when is there ever a race against my Skyline that is JUST for cash?" making them all laugh.

It's true. People are so desperate to go up against the legendary car that they'll do anything. Having no need for multiple cars, he usually just takes the slip and tells the owners they can have it back when he gets the money that they should've put up for the buy in.

Usually.

No distractions left to be had, Jamie climbs in behind the wheel and starts her up. This had been in the works for a bit, and there had been a couple nights over the past few weeks that Le had made sure to park on the street and leave his keys in the living room, letting her take the car out and get familiar with shifting left-handed. As such, she has no issues pulling slowly through the crowd as it parts for her and the three others up to the line. It's waiting for the all clear from whoever's manning the scanners that has her anxiety ratcheting up, and she counts her breathing slowly, blinking hard to keep the tunnel vision at bay.

The wait drags on, and it sounds like it's decided that there isn't likely to be another major crime to distract the cops in the next few minutes, so they may as well get this race in and break up before it gets called in.

The subsequent 12 seconds are a blur of changing gears and nitrous oxide.

She doesn't actually realize she's won until she gets out of the car and is surrounded by people cheering at her, and Hector is shoving three wads of cash and a pink slip into her hands. Eventually, she retreats back into the car, just shy of hypoventilating, and forces several deep breaths in before pulling back to where the team had parked. There's a new car sitting there, body kit making it impossible for her to identify make or model on a glance, and Leon is shaking the keys at her as she pulls up, so she supposes it's the one she had just won. Jamie feels herself disassociating rapidly as she exits the Skyline, handing Leon his keys and one of the rolls of cash for the one he'd put up for her to race, and taking the keys to the new car.

It feels like a movie with no sound as she realizes that the whole team are looking at her worriedly, and she knows she says something, but has no idea what. She wills her body toward the new car, and has just shut the door and adjusted the seat forward before the world turns into spinning red and blue lights, and she goes on autopilot jamming the key into the ignition and hightailing it out, distantly glad that the car is at least a dark color and lacking in the typical flashy neon and chrome shit that some racers prefer. Once she's out of the meelee, the cops take off after the flashy cars, and it's easy for her to blend into the normal, if slightly sparse, traffic.

Mind still not properly in her body, it takes Jamie driving around awhile before she figures out both where she is and where she's supposed to be going. Once she's on the freeway heading the correct direction, she also realizes that the vibrating on her ass is not, in fact, some weird quirk of an unfamiliar car, but the cell phone that's in her back pocket. Leaning to one side briefly, she pulls it out, but doesn't answer, instead setting it facedown on the passenger seat so she doesn't have to see the little screen on the front of the Nextel lighting up as the team keep calling her.

'Shit. How long has it been? They're probably all home already' she thinks vaguely as she hits the buttons to roll both windows down, hoping some air will help pull her back into herself enough to not die in a fiery crash before she makes it back to Echo Park.

It works, kinda. By the time she rolls up the windows and yanks the parking brake into place in the street spot in front of the house, she's somewhat aware of herself again, but her whole body still feels plasticy and fake. The team is waiting up for her and she is barely in the front door before everyone's talking at her, expressing their worry. It only takes one person moving to hug her to make her flinch, and some tiny corner of her mind registers that it's Vince and she feels horrible. Leon intercedes, and she knows he has realized what's happening as he sends Jesse upstairs to start a bath for her.

Jamie technically hears everything that Leon tells Vince and Mia, but only really catches a word here and there. Attack. Sensory. Overwhelmed. She realizes he's telling them what's going on, why she's just standing there, staring at them blankly and shaking, and she's embarrassed. God, why had she thought she could handle this? So fucking weak.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Jesse's face is in front of hers and he's repeating her name. When her eyes finally focus on him as much as she can make them, he keeps the communication short and simple. "Bath." accompanied by a finger pointing up the stairs. He repeats it twice more, giving her several seconds in between to work on processing, and then starts ushering her up the stairs with the slightest touches of fingertips over clothing, careful not to crowd her. Before she really realizes what's going on, she's in the ensuite bathroom off her bedroom, staring at the old clawfoot tub, which is now about two-thirds full of water and lavender-scented bubbles. Her body catches the scent and goes on auto-pilot, pulling clothing and jewelry off and climbing in the tub. She only uses those bubbles for exactly this situation, and her and Jess and Le have gotten her subconscious trained.

Outside the cracked door, Jesse listens until it sounds like she's settled and he can hear her fingers dragging through the hot water rhythmically. Knowing she'll be fine for awhile, he relaxes a little and goes downstairs to report in to the group. Leon's only mildly worried - him and Jess have been through this, so he knows she just needs time and a little help to pull out of it - but Mia is straight up fretting and Vince looks full-on freaked out.

"I made the water as hot as I could, and she got in okay. Someone should check on the temperature in like 45 minutes." he says as he rejoins them in the living room.

They spend the next 20 minutes explaining to Vince and Mia that Jamie's anxiety sometimes overwhelms her, causing an anxiety attack, and explaining the symptoms and how to help her if they notice she's acting weird.

Mia and Jesse eventually head for bed, but Leon says he'll stay up to check on Jamie, and Vince stays with him, admitting after the others are gone that he'd felt completely helpless when he'd seen that there was something wrong and he didn't know what to do, and he wants to know how to handle things like this. They throw on a movie and watch a third of it before Leon pauses it and motions for Vince to follow him upstairs.

As the two men enter Jamie's bedroom, Leon explains, "This is mostly to check how responsive she is. If she is responding to sound like a knock on the bathroom door and asking how she's doing, then we're good to just leave her. If she isn't then we need to go in and check on her. If the bathwater is cold, we might need to get her out and wrapped up to stay warm while we drain the tub and put new water in."

"OK." Vince says.

Leon stops in the middle of the room, turning to the other man. "I know you wanna learn how to do this, and she'll appreciate it in the long run, but she gets real embarrassed by her attacks. Don't confront her about it. It can actually cause another one." Vince nods very seriously. "She'll talk to you about it, just let her do it on her time." if his final piece of advice before he moves to the bathroom door, tapping on it gently.

Before he can ask anything, a tiny voice that Vince can barely believe belong to Jamie says "I'm here."

Leon says, "Ok, hon. You need anything 'fore I go to bed?"

That same tiny voice floats out. "Can you turn on my blanket?"

"Yeah, pun'kin, I'll turn it on now, and it'll be nice and toasty for you when you're ready to come out."

With this, Leon moves towards the bed, bending down to pull a folded blanket from underneath near the head of the bed. He flicks the comforter back and starts carefully spreading the other blanket on the bed before reaching for one of the corners of it and running his hand down what Vince belatedly realizes is a cord until he finds the little dial, and turns the electric blanket on to medium-high before spreading the comforter back over it. He motions Vince out of the room ahead of him, closing the door behind them before he explains.

"The attacks always cause an adrenaline dump, which tanks her blood sugar and makes her freezing- which is why we put her in the hot bath and she wants the electric blanket. Getting some food in her would be the best option, but she typically doesn't have much of an appetite for at least a day after. I might be able to get her to eat some eggs and half a piece of toast in the morning, and some soup later in the day, but that'll be it."

Vince's mind boggles at all of the information being thrown at it, and he tries to stow away all of it. He's more glad than ever that he hadn't jumped in head first into asking her out months ago when he'd wanted to. Not because he's rethinking it, but because, with every new thing he learns about her, the more obvious it becomes that being her friend first is the most important thing. He wants to take care of her like he has never wanted to take care of anyone else before, and everything else can wait.

And that alone is scaring him enough that he needs time to process it and get used to the idea, for his own sanity.

No, slower is definitely better in their case. Even if they end up kissing every time they are alone and he ends up in a cold shower.

Leon goes to bed, but Vince knows he won't be able to sleep any time soon, so he just runs downstairs to get changed into a pair of sweats and a beater to be more comfortable before heading back up to the living room and hitting play on the random action flick Leon had selected earlier. When it's over, he gives in to the urge to head upstairs again. Seeing that there's a beam of soft light at the bottom of Jamie's door, he knocks gently, hearing the soft 'come in' before he pushes it open.

Inside, he finds her sitting up in bed, several pillows propped up against the headboard behind her, and the electric blanket wrapped around her back, with her comforter wrapped around her front. "Hey." he greets, keeping his voice low, remembering Le saying she might still be sensitive to sounds for a day or so, and that the higher pitches are always worse.

Her eyes are still foggy, but she seems to be more present than she had been earlier in the midst of the attack. "Hey," she says back, as Vince moves to perch on the end of her bed.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, and Vince thinks, at first, that the constant motion of her hand on her arm is her rubbing the blanket, then the blanket shifts slightly and he realizes she's dragging her nails up and down the skin of the opposite arm, and it's starting to look really red. Without thinking, he leans forward and puts his hand over hers. Belatedly, he remembers that he was supposed to wait for her to initiate physical contact, but she doesn't seem to react badly, simply stopping the motion and looking down at his hand covering hers. After a minute, both of her hands move, slowly coming up to rub over the one he'd reached out with, and she seemed fixated on the texture of the various little calluses and scars covering it.

"Vince?" she says.

"Yeah?"

"Will you stay up here with me tonight?" she sounds like a little kid that has had a nightmare and doesn't want to sleep alone, and there is no part of him that can or even wants to deny her any comfort he can offer.

"Yeah." With this, he gently pulls his hand away and gets up to move around to the other side of the bed, and she drops the electric blanket off to the side after turning it off, the bedside lamp getting turned off quickly after, and the pillows are rearranged quickly before she joins Vince laying down. Unsure, he had settled on his back off to the other side, but she doesn't hesitate to cuddle up to his side and throw the comforter over both of them, resting her head on his shoulder and curling one of her legs over his. He shifts to put his arm around her so they are both more comfortable, now unsurprised to feel her softly running her fingers back and forth over the ribbing of his tank top.

The room is still slightly light even with the light off and he realizes the sun is starting to come up. She'd been MIA for over 3 hours after races had broken up, and they'd all been worried sick, especially once they hadn't gotten a call from the police station for one of them to come post bail. It didn't make him feel better to know that she'd been basically driving around completely unaware of herself for most of that time until she'd managed to snap out of it enough to get herself home. Anything could've happened to her.