Status: Completed... For Now.

Adrenaline

Corona.

Toretto had been trying for Blair - after seeing her look so alive, so in her element at the races, he couldn’t not. His hair was growing, straight and black it was nearly half an inch long on top of his head. Although he couldn’t stand a beard, stubble grew on his cheeks - a permanent 5-o’clock shadow. She had also accompanied him into town several times to work on his tattoos, his sleeve was coming along nicely; in reality, he just liked going to the bars with her before he was worked on. Toretto was startled about just how hard he would work to get a kiss on the cheek from the redhead - she was infectious, charming, and knew just the right buttons to push on him to get the reaction she wanted. Some people would call it manipulation, but for him it was just another reason to be enamored with her.

Blair and Mia had become even better friends as the snow began to thaw - the saw it as an excuse to go tanning in the super-heated pool on the roof. The sun was out, and the pair were up in the pool while the men secluded themselves in their garages working on their cars. Blair had been trying desperately to get herself a tan, as she had somehow been convinced that the pale redhead look wasn’t working any longer, but she had ended up with a painful sunburn thus far. Mia was laughing at Blair as she went to get a pair of beers for them.

With Blair and Mia both tied up, Toretto got to spend some quality time with the Buster, a luxury he never thought he would have… end sarcasm. He was never really surprised by how little Spillner really knew about cars and why Blair would never let him race for her. It was a fact Spillner complained about nonstop.

“Dude, Blair still hasn’t asked me to go with her. The GT-R could blow all of her other cars out of the water, and she won’t let me do shit.” Toretto sighed, cranking a wrench on a bolt. He didn’t care to mess with the Saleen too much, but the occasional mod or tune-up was necessary, even for the super machine that he had the pleasure of driving. There was a difference in the way Blair treated Mia and Dominic’s cars in relation to all of her others - the Nissan GT-R Brian drove was one of Blair’s. Mia’s Jetta was hers; Dominic’s car was his (except for the bragging rights and the occasional demand for a ride into Tver or Moscow, which Toretto was all too happy to oblige).

“Brian. I don’t drive for her either. So put a sock in it Buster.” Toretto cranked on the nut until it was nice and tight, thick arm muscles bulging painfully against his new tattoo. The artist had told him that stretching it wasn’t such a great idea, but what else was he supposed to do? Toretto was sure it would look fine in the end. “Maybe she won’t let you drive because she’s afraid you’ll break a ninety thousand dollar car. I’d hate to think of how much money that is in fucking rubles!”

Spillner shook his head, reaching for the wrench Toretto held out to him to get it out of his way - the muscle man still had his head inside the engine compartment when the Buster whacked the thin cable rod that held up the hood. The last thing Toretto remembered feeling was the smash of his nose on the engine casing and saying the words “Aw, Shit,”

*****

Blair and Mia paced in the emergency room, Blair peeking in on the surgery every so often - which was usually about when Mia ran to the nearest trash can to vomit. Brian - Blair had gleaned from the near-hysterical man as Blair drive Dominic, the Buster and Mia to the nearest hospital at breakneck speed in the very same vehicle that Toretto had just been crushed in - had managed to knock the support from under the extremely heavy hood of the Mustang, which had come crashing down on Toretto’s shoulders and head. The doctors had told Blair that he was going to have some heavy scarring on his shoulders from the point of impact, and that Toretto wouldn’t have needed emergency surgery if his nose hadn’t been broken so many times in the past.

This fact alone made Blair feel terrible about herself; not only had she forced him into getting tattoos, but apparently she had contributed to a timely nose job as well. Mia, however, was very good at finding the brighter side to situations such as the one in which they found themselves. As she held an extremely upset Brian, stroking his hair gently, she said;

“Well, at least a different face will get the police off him,” She quipped, trying to make Brian feel better. But she had a very good and very valid point - after he got a nose job, Toretto was definitely going to go up on Blair’s list of racers. While she sat in the chair of the hospital, she began to wonder what they were going to do with Toretto’s hulking monster of a nose, what he might look like after a nose job.

Blair pulled her long red hair out of her face as the doctors rolled a groggy Toretto out of the operating room and into a private room, speaking rapid Russian. Unconsciously, Blair translated from Brian and Mia as the followed him into the room.

“And the surgery went great, yadda yadda yadda sternum, deviated septum fixed, something medical about the cartilage. We shouldn’t let him break it any more because that wouldn’t end well, he might end up looking like Michael Jackson, bla bla bla. Overall one of the easiest nose jobs they‘ve ever had the pleasure of doing.” Mia laughed so hard she was gasping, leaning on Brian as they trailed behind the gurney.

Blair couldn’t believe her eyes when they got to Toretto’s room. He wasn’t going to need to stay overnight at all, just come back for an eventual check up, but that didn’t mean he looked great. The doctors said his nose was going to look fantastic after the swelling went down, but both Mia and Blair agreed that it looked even bigger and more misshapen than it had before the nose job!

Still feeling groggy and quite numb, Toretto couldn’t understand why everyone was laughing at him until he was finally able to stand and look into the mirror across the room.

“What the fuck, Buster!” His throaty growl escalated to a shout as he saw his misshapen and huge nose, barely covered by the strip of tape down its center. He couldn’t breathe through it for the huge amount of gauze packed inside it to keep it from collapsing. All of this compounded with the fact that Blair had just paid for him to have his nose done, and the muscled man jumped on Brian, beginning to throttle him senseless as Blair and Mia pulled on him, both screaming at the top of their lungs.

“Knock it off Dominic! He didn’t mean to!” Mia screamed, as Blair shouted “Toretto, stop! He’s just a Buster!”

*****

A week later, Blair and Toretto returned to the hospital to get the bandages and gauze removed and undergo a final checkup. His healing process hadn’t been a fun one, Mia and Blair both knew how difficult it was now to remove gauze packing and add new stuff to a nostril with a pair of tweezers without causing an enormous amount of pain to the person in question. One night, Blair awoke to Toretto pounding on her door, because he had attempted to blow his nose in his sleep and ended up with a nosebleed that didn’t stop for over twenty minutes. She had thought that one would require another trip top the hospital - this time for a blood transfusion. Blair had even cancelled her racer’s weekly trip into Helsinki for the weekend street racing there because of Toretto’s incapacitated state; and partially because she didn’t want him to miss such an awesome trip.

Blair had to admit it was worth it, though. Toretto looked all right - with the aid of the drugs he had been given for the pain in his nose, he had forced the tattoo artist to finish his sleeve completely. If she hadn’t known him, she wouldn’t recognize him at all.

“This is great Dominic, really.” She smiled brightly as she sucked down a shot of vodka, reveling in the strange newness of Toretto’s new figure.

“You really like it, huh?” He smiled cockily to one side, toying with the gauge earring Blair had convinced him to get - he was trying to stretch his ears to be just a little bit bigger than hers, in order to look manlier. “Did you not like the way I looked before?” Toretto said, just trying to push Blair’s buttons. Unfortunately for him, she could push harder.

“Ugh, you were just so damned ugly; I could barely even look at you sometimes. The only reason I kept you around was because you’re a kick ass driver.” Toretto threw his head back and laughed that same, deep-throated laugh Blair had loved from before. He wasn’t a different man, she knew, he just looked different. Blair clasped his hand as they left the bar, pulling him close so that she could whisper in his ear.

“Are you up for racing in Helsinki tomorrow? Would you like to?” Toretto raised an eyebrow, looking down at the crazed little redhead beside her.

“Are you insane? Of course! When the fuck do we leave?” He paused for a moment, and then decided to add; “You’re not bringing Spillner, are you? He keeps bellyaching about not racing.”

“It’s because I don’t want him to wreck a fucking ninety-thousand dollar car!”

Toretto laughed until his stomach hurt on the drive home.
♠ ♠ ♠
Title: Minutemen.

I'm going to put this in the description, too, but...
Toretto before Ch. 7
Toretto after Ch. 7