For Shawnied777
'Chocolate' by Kylie Minogue
If love were liquid it would drown me,
In a placeless place would find me,
In a heart shape come around me and then,
Melt me slowly down,
If love were human it would know me,
In a lost space come and show me,
Hold me and control me and then,
Melt me slowly down
Like chocolate, Tastes so good,
Dom kicked off his boots at the front door, Mia would kill him for trekking engine oil into the carpet, and in sock clad feet made his way into the front room. He'd spent most of the day at the garage that used to be his place of work, trying to put things in order and also do a little work on the Dodge Charger he was restoring. Somehow his life didn't seem complete unless there was a Charger in it. Something similar went for Letty which was why he had also spent a fair amount of time on the phone giving directions to the people dropping off the Plymouth Road Runner he'd tracked down. It ad arrived just before he left and would be a nice surprise for her.
He paused in the doorway for a moment as deja vu sent a wave of dizziness rolling through him and such an intense pain gripped his heart that for a moment it became hard to breath. The past seemed to spring from nowhere, winding tendrils of memory around him as he started to the people playing computer games in his front room and tried to come to terms with what he was seeing. Dom wasn't sure how long he would have stood there, being metaphorically mugged in memory lane, had the infant on the sofa not spotted him and burbled out her delighted greeting.
The sound of his niece's happy laughter broke whatever spell it was that Dom had been caught up in and banished the ghosts of his past back to where they had risen from. Looking with fresh eyes he could now see that the two men lying on the floor playing the latest first person race game were in fact Brian and Han. Logically he'd know it would be them Brian lived there and he'd seen Han's car on the drive way which was why he'd had to park on the road. But for a moment some part of him had insisted that it was Leon and Jesse he was looking at and that Vince would walk in at any second.
Ever since he had been forced to leave it all those years ago some part of Dom had always dreamed of coming back to 1327. He'd just never realised how many ghosts he'd be bringing home with him.
Brian had looked up instantly Jessie started her happy baby babble, seen in a glance that she was all right, so pulled a ridiculously comical face at her before noticing his brother in law had entered the room. The blond felt momentarily embarrassed, rationalised he was a father so blew a wet raspberry at his daughter before returning his attention to Dom. On the screen his forgotten car smashed into a wall and exploded in a ball of fire.
"Hey man." He said as he pushed himself to his feet, before turning and sweeping his daughter up into his arms causing her to coo happily at the attention.
Dom smiled as he watched the way Jessie's big blue eyes, like those of a Persian kitten, lit up as she found herself in her father's arms. The picture the two of them made was something a little bit magical. Jessie had taken after Mia in most respects such as dark hair and golden skin, not to mention her sunny disposition, but her eyes she had inherited from Brain. It was as he compared the child to her mother that Dom realised that not only was Mia absent but there was no female presence anywhere.
"Where are they?" Dom asked, his previous sense of unease had vanished as he watched his niece now it returned full force, so much so that it almost felt as if ice were sliding down his spine.
He didn't need to elaborate who they were, everyone in the room already knew. Mia and Letty had been best friends, and from the get go Mia had also gotten on reasonable well with Gisele. So everyone had assumed that when the three were together Mia would be able to keep things on a relatively even footing and keep everyone happy. As it turned out they had been wrong, but not in the way that they had expected. Instead of three women who got on relativity well there was a three girl gang who if left to their own devises would be running the country in under a week.
Growing up Dom had thought that Mia and Letty being best friends caused more trouble than any man should be forced to deal with. Fast forwarding a decade and adding Gisele to the mix made him understand just how easy his life had been back then.
"They went out a while ago." Han said with a shrugged most of his attention was still fixed on the game but he never the less summarised from Dom's growl that his answer wasn't enough. "They should be back any minuet. Gisele called to say they were on their way."
Dom bit back his first response which would have been something stupid about girls going out and splashing about money the didn't have. It was ridicules, as they all had more money than they knew what to do with, it was just that being back in his childhood home made him remember a time when he and Letty and the team had had to fight to make both ends meet. And hadn't they done some bloody stupid things to get those ends to join up, the memory of it still made him shudder slightly.
"Where'd they go?" He asked in the cautious tones of someone who was expecting not to like the answer they got and who wouldn't be surprised if firearms turned out be involved in someway. It wasn't that Dom had trust issues, just the opposite in fact, he fully trusted Mia, Letty and Gisele to find trouble anywhere they went.
"Shopping." Han responded vaguely as he concentrated on making his computer simulated car drift effortlessly through a series of hairpin bends.
"Shopping?" Dom repeated before he could stop himself, he did so hate sounding like a dumb parrot and it wasn't as if the word or the concept of shopping was one he was unfamiliar with. It was just it hadn't been what he was expecting.
"You know what day it is right?" Brian questioned while he once more made faces at his daughter, who responded by chortling happily and grabbing fistfuls of his hair and tugging hard. He winced, and reflected that Dom might be onto something as far as the whole shaved head thing was concerned.
Dom for his part glanced down was his watch, it was one of those that as well as telling you the time also told you the day and the date, though it did leave out the month. Looking mildly perplexed he said, "Saturday."
"I mean the date man." Brian was sounding board, but the glint in those too blue eyes along with the twitch of his mouth betrayed the fact that he was enjoying himself. Or at least he was up until Jessie gave his hair another sharp tug, alarmingly his daughter seemed to be taking after her god mother in certain respects, she defiantly seemed to have inherited Letty's violent streak.
"The fifteenth." Dom growled as he patients slowly drained away though he was somewhat mollified by the way Brian seemed to be suffering at his daughter's podgy little hands.
"Of…?" Brian couldn't hide his amused grin though he did direct it at Jessie, trying to make out that she was the one he was finding entertaining.
Dom was getting less and less amused, would it really kill Brian to simply give him a straight answer just this once? If he hadn't have still been holding Jessie in his arms Dom would have seriously considered smacking him up side the head in case that knocked the information loose. Instead he opened his mouth to roar, but not so loudly that it would upset the dark haired child, but the front door opened before he got to the first word.
"What he means is it's the fifteenth of February Dominic," Mia said as she strode through the door, high end shopping bags dangling from both hands, her two cohorts following obediently behind her. "It's half price chocolate day."
"What!?" He Dom couldn't stop his shocked bellow and saw amusement on every face, save Han's who was still game focused, because of it. "But Letty doesn't like chocolate."
This prompted Gisele to snicker as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard, which caused Han to leap up, game suddenly forgotten, and make a beeline for her. There was something dark and possessive but also rather besotted about his expression and it would have been on of the funniest thing Dom had ever seen had it not been for the fact that his eyes were fixed on Letty.
"You don't really like chocolate. Or at least you didn't used to like chocolate much. Take it or leave it, didn't really care one way or the other." Dom knew he was sounding confused and that he was rambling and that everyone else was finding the whole thing extremely funny. "Do you like chocolate now? You could have told me if you did."
"No Dom, I still don't like chocolate." Letty said dropping her bags before crossing over to him, she at least was trying to hid her smile even if she was doing so without much success. "But that doesn't stop me from going with the girls to buy it."
"Plus with Letty we can carry a lot more." Gisele said and it was a fact that couldn't be deigned. Though she was recovering better than anyone had expected, especially considering at one point they had thought her dead, the fact remained that Gisele still wasn't all that steady on her feet. More than one small bag of high end chocolate and she'd end up going tail over teakettle on the sidewalk.
"And you know," Mia added as she gave Brain a perfunctory kiss before deftly transferring Jessie from his arms into her own embrace. "You're aunty isn't just clever she's also strong and has incredible staying power and -"
"Shut up." Dom mumbled irritably, cutting off his sister mid flow, as he wrapped his arm around Letty and she all but melted into him.
It was Mia speaking, and speaking to Jessie at that, so it wouldn't mean anything but her words could easily have been taken the wrong way. It was always possible for someone in this house to find a double meaning behind anything said especially when coupled with the sly smirk Letty was currently giving him. It was a look that made him wonder if he could swipe any of the chocolate the ghastly trio had bought just so he could melt it onto Letty's skin and lick it off again.
"And," Gisele continued, completely ignoring the warning look Dom shot in her direction as his mind struggled to make its way out of the gutter. "Since she doesn't like chocolate we brought her treacle toffee instead."
The smile she produced was one that normally liked to spend it's days sunning its self on sandbanks while waiting for unwary swimmers. Gisele knew exactly the sort of comment he'd been expecting her to make and had seen his relief when her words had turned out to be free of innuendo. It wasn't that Dom was a prude, it was just that he had only just got Letty back and wasn't yet will to share her all that much.
"Hmm," Letty hummed contentedly rubbing sensually up against Dom as she did, she had never had any qualms about having an audience and evidently still didn't. "I like toffee."
As suggestive comments went it was decidedly lacking, but her tone of voice, not to mention the way she moved subtly against him had Dom's mind diving back down into the gutter. Not that it ever took much, most people would disagree but to him Letty had the sort of voice that could make reading out the weekly shopping list sound like phone sex. Also it didn't hurt that she chose that moment to softly kiss the corner of his mouth.
Heat spiralled through him and the next thing Dom knew one of his hands was cupping Letty's butt and the taste of her was all over his tongue. Also Mia was stalking out of the room, Jessie still cooing happily in her arms, muttering alternately about tea and adults acting like horny teens. The last words he made out before his sister vanished from hearing range were along the lines of, "Get a room."
For a moment Dom thought about point out that he didn't need to get a room as the whole damn house belonged to him, but he decided against it. There was no point starting that sort of argument, he'd neatly lay out all the reasons that he was in the right then Mia would just steamroll over them like an out of control tank. So instead he dropped his arm from around Letty's shoulder and instead took her hand and started to lead her in the general direction of the front door.
"Come on, there's something at the garage I want to show you." Her eyes lit up like dark fire as her expression became one of eager anticipation which caused Dom to add as an after thought, "And grab some of that chocolate, you know, just in case."
(A/N) So as a sort of apology for being late with the V. Day update I thought I'd give you another update super fast. And one that just so happens to celebrate one of my favourite holidays, Half Price Chocolate Day! The song doesn't fit quite as well as I hoped but since it was the inspiration I won't change it, and I think it fits quite well with what Dom and Letty will get up to in the garage. Later all.
Lamanth xx
