AN: This chapter is rated M for drug use and the implication of adult topics. Please accept my warning to look elsewhere for reading material if these topics will bother you. To answer some asked questions, I don't know when Catalyst will be finished. The last chapter is going to be hella long, for one thing. To be honest I haven't done much more than brainstorm it yet. It's spring and I feel young and carefree and happy and I wanted to write something frivolous and fun. This is the result. This is a hundred and twenty thousand words long at this point, here on my HDD, and it's only been about three weeks I've been writing it. I had to do something fun for myself and this is it. Catalyst will be finished, but I really want the ending to resonate, so I'm not going to force it. When I go back and think about the comment about the character being autobiographical and to be careful what I let people presume…How so? She's not really autobiographical anyway. She's just sorta loosely based off me. It seemed like she'd fit in pretty good if she was a mechanic and a street racer and if I use my own looks in terms of hair and dress at least I don't have to have an imagination. A lot of how she reacts and talks is how I react and talk, but she's not supposed to be me. Just inspired by me, and I'd love to see a person really named Tempest. I think it's a hella cool name. Of course, I'm biased. ;) If you're still with me, enjoy, and please feel free to leave a review.

The Funeral of a Good Girl

By – TempestRaces

Chapter Six – Of Sleeping In and Broken Locks

Dom looked at Leon over the breakfast table the next morning. "Where is everyone else from the dungeon?" Dom used their pet name for the basement.

"Still asleep."

"It's Monday. Why are they still asleep for?"

"Because Jesse and Tempest went out to a huge rave last night. I have no doubt they made it home around five or six, no doubt still drunk or worse when they rolled in."

"Ok, that explains about Jesse. Where's V?"

"Bed," Leon answered.

"Well, go wake him up. We're not all on vacation. He's supposed to come to work with us until Jesse starts back."

"I ain't wakin' him up." Leon shook his head. No way was he walking into Vince's room when he wasn't alone in there.

"I'll do it than. Shit, I know he's got a temper but he ain't gonna kill any of his own friends."

"I'd let it go this time dawg," Leon said as he attempted to warn Dom off his plan.

Dom just shook his head and started down the stairs. Letty looked at Leon. "He's got Jesse's cousin in his bedroom doesn't he?"

Leon's head snapped up from where he had been contemplating his breakfast. "How'd you know?"

"I came downstairs this morning around six to get a drink and I heard something strange from down there. I started down the stairs and then I realized what the sounds were," Letty smirked. "And I realized whose voices I was hearing. They're not exactly tame when they go at it, are they?"

"Not when they fight, and not when they, well," Leon left the rest of his statement up to her imagination.

Dom stomped back up the stairs. "I guess V's gettin' up when he wants today."

"Why? He yell at you that bad?" Letty asked, feigning ignorance.

"When I walked into the room and he wasn't alone and him and the person he wasn't alone with didn't have anything on under the sheets I didn't stick around to wait for him to wake up." He turned to Leon. "Didn't you tell me that they fought yesterday and didn't say two words to each other after about two pm?"

"Yeah, but I guess things changed."

"That'd be one way to put it. Let's get a move on. We're short Jesse as it is."

They all headed to the garage and Mia headed for her café, leaving the house in silence.

Vince woke up at around ten o'clock. He figured he better get up and go to the garage before Dom disowned him for life. He didn't work at the garage as a rule, but when Dom had asked him if he would while Jesse took some time off he'd said yes. Then he blew off Dom to sleep in with the very reason they were giving Jesse time off. He got dressed before turning back to his bed. He figured he'd just leave her to sleep a while longer. Once he had left her alone in the bed she'd stretched out on her stomach in a sprawl which took up the better part of his double bed. Her movement must have caused the blankets to move as they were now tangled around her waist, revealing the line of small bumps which made up her spine and the angles of her shoulder blades, all awash in her tumbled hair, still silky straight from whatever she'd done the day before to remove the riotous curls. He missed those curls, he mused with a frown. Their untamed nature suited her way more than the same sleek style as so many other people sported.

He untangled her and pulled the blankets up to her neck. He somehow knew if someone walked in, like if Jesse came looking for her, she wouldn't want him to know how naked she was. He didn't want to look too closely at what the thoughts of Dom or Leon walking in on her looking like she did made him feel. He just knew he didn't want to share her like that with either of them. He left the room and headed up the stairs. He was momentarily tempted to wake her up and ask her to make him breakfast, but figured he'd slip by the café and get Mia to feed him before he went to Dom's. Besides, he had no idea if she could even cook. She thought that fruit constituted a meal, after all. Thoughts of her probable outrage over being asked to make him breakfast, just assuming she could cook simply because she was female made him grin. She'd be supremely pissed off. But even that would be ok because she'd look so damn fine while she ranted.

He parked out front of their little lunch counter and walked in. "How you doin', Mia?"

"Fine. What are you doing here?"

He shook his head. She was always so short with him. "Woke up too late to get food at home. I thought I'd grab somethin' here before I go find out what's up at the shop."

"What's going on at the shop is Dom's likely to rip you a new one."

"For what?"

"You said you'd get up and go help them today."

"I did get up and I will go help them. Do you expect me to go hungry?"

"If you weren't working up an appetite at night doing things you shouldn't be doing you'd be able to get up in the morning at the appropriate hour and eat breakfast with your family." She looked at the love bites all over both sides of his neck and shook her head.

"You almost sound jealous," he said with a smirk.

"Not in this lifetime." She watched as a scowl replaced his smirk. "If I thought you really liked that girl I'd be over the moon happy for you. But since I think you're just using her while it's convenient I'm disgusted with you and it's going to take a long time before it goes away."

"Hey! I do really like her. She's great. And nothin' happened between me'n her that she didn't want, too."

"So what? Did you point blank tell her that you never saw one girl two nights in a row before and that you only saw her two nights in a row because she's staying in our house? You could find her great and like her as a friend like the rest of us and not start sleeping with her too!"

"I'm not gonna talk about this any more, least of all with you. You don't understand."

"I understand just fine. You're a pig who'll use any woman who'll have you. What's not to understand?"

"Fuck this. I'm goin for a drive. If Dom comes lookin' for me, tell him you don't know where I went when your bitchy attitude set me off, ok?"

"You never could handle being told the truth if it wasn't what you wanted to hear V," Mia called after his retreating back.

He held his hand over his shoulder with his middle finger raised. She let him leave with a sigh. She'd done her best to put an idea into his head that what he was doing wasn't right. Now it was up to him to see what he did with it.

After tearing around aimlessly for an hour Vince headed home. He wasn't in the mood to put up with the rest of his team and figured he'd go home and hole up somewhere so he didn't have to. He parked the car at the curb and noted the only other car home was the lightning painted Skyline. So either Tempest was still there, or she'd left with Jesse.

He banged into the house, down the stairs and into his room. He paused in the door. Tempest was still in his bed, wearing her underwear from the night before and one of his undershirts, which swam on her. She had the lamp on and was curled up in all his pillows against the headboard of his bed, her legs crossed feet to thighs, and with her nose buried in a book. When she noticed him she tried to hide the book under the pillows, like she didn't want him to know she was reading.

"If you're awake, why are you still in bed and not dressed," he growled as he walked fully into the room.

"Dunno. I really didn't feel good when I woke up and I still don't." She looked up at him and realized he was ripping for a fight. She could tell by his stiff posture and the sneer on his face. While she'd normally oblige him and enjoy dancing verbal circles around him, she just didn't have it in her to cope with him in a mood. She was feeling too down and depressed to fight back. She'd just end up letting him make her cry and she wouldn't allow that to happen. She unfolded herself and got up, pulling her book out from under the pillow as she went. "I'll leave you, since you seem like you're looking to be alone."

"What'd ya know? You're not as dumb as you look."

She went out the door without a word, and closed it behind her. She pulled on a pair of yoga pants and pulled off Vince's shirt before looking in her bag for something else to wear.

When she let his insult slide without having anything to say about it, some of his anger dissipated. She was seriously not ok if she had let that one go. When he thought about it, her face had been quite pale and her eyes red rimmed. He knew he'd only said what he had hoping to goad her into a fight that would let him relieve some of his stress. He opened his door and went to step out of his room to go and find her. He found she hadn't gotten far. She was standing in the living room with her back to him, some sort of wide leg pants of a soft material sitting around her hips and nothing on yet up top. She finally decided on a sports top and pulled it on. She then lay down on the couch, facing the back of it and pulled a blanket over her body. He leaned on his door frame and watched her for a moment. He wished he hadn't stuck around to watch her at all when her knees came up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them before her shoulders started to shake.

She was crying. There was nothing worse for a man to deal with than a crying female. He turned to go back into his room. She'd sort herself out if he left her alone long enough, he told himself. Too bad he didn't get his door closed fast enough to miss her pulling the pillow out from under her head and into her arms before burying her face into it to muffle the sounds of crying she was now making, sobbing brokenly like nothing would ever be right with her again. Great! He couldn't just walk away and leave her alone and that miserable. Not if he didn't want to call himself an asshole for the rest of the day.

She really didn't know what had come over her, but she was just so down. She was often down the day after she took X, but not this down. It was horrible. She hated to cry but everything just looked so bleak that she couldn't help herself. She knew it was all in her head and that it would pass, but until it did she was just going to have to ride it out. Vince was wrong, she was every bit as dumb as she looked to get into something she had known would make her feel like shit after the euphoria was gone. She sniffled in a very unladylike fashion and thanked god for the darkness she was in which suited her mood so well and the fact she was alone and didn't have to worry about anyone seeing her so broken down.

"What's with the waterworks, Trouble?"

She felt the couch dip at her back under his weight as he sat down in the hollow at the small of her back. She didn't answer him or acknowledge him in any other way. She was too embarrassed about her conduct to dare. She never let anyone see her cry. Not since she was about six years old and learned that to the men in the world, tears were a weakness. Her tears were a weakness she didn't often indulge in, let alone allow anyone to know about.

"Something I did?" he probed.

She shook her head no.

"You sure?" he asked before rubbing her back in slow circles, hoping to calm her down. If nothing was wrong, why was she still sobbing? "'Cause you really don't seem like nothing's wrong with you."

"I'm just not feeling good," she said. It came out in a shuddering, watery tone that made him wince.

"Why aren't you feeling good?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes after I party at a rave I don't feel very well the next day. It's worse today for some reason than I ever remember it."

"Anything I can do?"

She again didn't answer with more than a side to side shake of her head.

"You sure?"

"Yeah," she answered. Her voice was barely audible.

"You wanna be alone?"

"Yeah."

Though she answered yes, he was fairly sure the real answer was no, she was just worried about taking more of his bad attitude. He pulled the blanket off her and scooped her up off the couch. "Good, so do I. We'll go be alone together. Get your book." He waited until she leaned down and did as he asked before he carried her into his room and lay down with her across his lap, leaning against his chest with her head under his chin. "You read and I'll brood, ok?"

It forced a small smile to her lips. "Ok." She read for about half an hour, feeling his eyes on her the whole time. "So," she asked, putting her book down across her thigh. "What are you brooding about while you stare at me?"

"Gettin' attitude from Mia."

"About what?"

He realized he really couldn't answer that one in present company unless he wanted to ruin the pleasant solitude of their time together with a discussion about what the reality of their relationship was. "Um, about fact that I was supposed to get up and go to the garage today but I didn't get up in time to get breakfast. I went to the café to get something to eat before I caught up with the guys and she got pissed at me for expecting her to feed me after she already made breakfast for everyone else and after I was late for work."

"So why aren't you at the garage now?"

"I got pissed at her so I just came home. I knew I wasn't going to be fit company to be around other people."

"Sorry I got in your way."

"Don't be. I'm the one who shot my mouth off."

"Yeah, but I'm getting used to that when it comes to you and your big mouth," she said. A ghost of a smile crossed her face.

"You're no slouch in the big mouth department either, Trouble."

"But I always knew that and freely admitted it. You, on the other hand, tried to pretend you were just tough and cool."

He laughed. He couldn't help it. "You get away with murder around me Trouble, and I don't know why I allow it."

"Because you live in eternal hope of getting in my pants again?"

"Yeah, there's some truth to that, I guess," he chuckled. There was more to it, but he wasn't going there with her. He sure wasn't going to tell her how much he liked it when her anger brought out the jade flecks in her eyes, or the way her passion for arguing with him reminded him of her passion doing other things with him. "So, we gonna lay here all afternoon with me watching you read, or is there some other activity I could talk you into participating in with me?"

"Is this other activity you have in mind one we get to go out in public to do, or is it one that involves us with a lock on the door and a lot less clothing?"

"Well, at first it was one that involved going out in public, but now you put the other idea in my head."

"It's only one. We have time to do the latter and be gone to do the former before the team gets home."

He threw back his head and laughed. "I like how you think."

"I'm not sure you think enough for me to like how you do it, but I sure do like how you do other things," she smirked up at him tauntingly.

"Oh, you do, huh?"

"Yeah. I guess it's a good thing that you're useful in some way."

He took her book from her and set it on the night stand before hooking his hand under her knee and lifting her leg over his head, before setting it down. Now she was sitting in his lap, facing him with one of her feet beside each of his hips. His hands tangled in her hair, his mouth found hers, and all thoughts he had of being annoyed at anything flew right out of his head.

As she lay curled against the expanse of his chest some time later, she checked the time on the bedside clock. She marvelled at the amount of time which passed like a blur when they were alone together. She sighed, unsettled still.

"You ok?"

"You gonna ask me if I'm ok every time I sigh for the rest of my life?" she teased.

"No. But I am gonna tell you one thing."

"And what's that?"

"You really need a shower."

She looked up into his laughing blue eyes in outrage. "You need one worse." She started to untangle her limbs from his. "But because you were so rude, I'm going first."

"No you ain't. It's my bathroom so I get to go first."

"I'm the guest so you're obligated to let me go first."

"I'm not that gentlemanly."

"I'm just gonna beat you into the room and lock you out then." She got up and opened the door a crack, peaking around for company. Not spotting any she threw the door open wide and dashed to her bag, grabbing two towels and the bag with her shampoo and conditioner. She glanced at the open door of Vince's room and saw he was still in bed. She darted into the bathroom and locked the door.

He got up leisurely, stretched hugely and grabbed a towel out of his closet. He wrapped it around his waist, still chuckling to himself about Tempest both running through the house naked and about her thinking she could lock him out of the bathroom. Little did she know, the lock didn't really work and hadn't since the time Jesse had passed out in the bathroom and Leon had to break the door down to get in. He opened the door easily despite the lock and hung his towel over the back of the door knob.