She wore jeans and a heather grey Henley, clean, which meant she hadn’t been tinkering with her bike today, probably just crashing on the couch to watch the game, have a few beers, and enjoy a quiet night in. She needed that once in a while—the stillness and the solitude. Too many nights like that though, and she’d need to go out and burn something.
“Someone we gotta take out?” She crossed her arms tightly as she drew closer and saw the state of Mal’s face. “Or there some other reason yer bustin’ up my safe house?”
Mal didn’t realize how exhausted he was until he let his tension go. “Dom…sorry. Didn’t know you were here.” She tended to squat wherever it suited her, though she had a few favored safe houses. Even if there wasn’t any place that was solely hers, wherever she was, washersin her mind.
“Not much of an answer, Frosty. Don’t remember that shiner from Ludgate neither. Tell me who I need to torch. Been itchin’ to set somethin’ on fire anyway. Someone’sjust as good if they’re causin’ you this kinda grief. You only destroy shit when yer beyond pissed. Never handle it like a normal person and pick a bar fight, nah, you gotta take it out on somethin’ that doesn’t hit back.” She shook her head like she’d never understood that about Mal. But she did understand; she understood Mal better than anyone. It just wasn’t something theysaid.
Mal never hurt people when he got angry. Oh he hurt people plenty, out of necessity or for certain benefits, but never out of anger.Too big a risk that one day he’d do it to the wrong someone, and he never wanted to risk being like that. Like his father.
So he hurt things instead of people when the anger and grief got so bad that he needed a way to let it out with his fists. Took a crowbar to his own motorcycle once. But those situations were few and far between. Usually, there wasn’t much to make him mad enough to lose his cool.
“Get in here,” Dom commanded when Mal continued to stand there staring like an idiot. She snatched him by the arm and dragged him behind her the rest of the way into the safe house. “Yer enough of a mess as it is without punchin’ glass.”
It wasn’t the first time Dom had manhandled Mal to take care of him when he was half in his own world. Few people could toss Mal around like that and make him feel safer for it rather than wary.
Dom brought him into the main room, where the hockey game was on and an empty bottle of beer sat next to a newly opened one on the coffee table, and pushed him down onto the sofa. Disappearing for a moment, she soon came back with a first aid kit.
Déjà vu—again.
Mal swallowed the bile in his throat.
“Now what the hell happened?” Dom asked as she took out a pair of tweezers, disinfectant, and gauze.
Mal still had his trench coat on. He didn’t know what to say. It was too fresh. And this wasDom. They didn’t have heart to hearts.
“Gimme your god damn hand, dumbass,” she gruffed out, before roughly grabbing Mal’s wrist. For all her irritation and seeming brutishness, her hands were gentle as she pulled the glass from Mal’s knuckles with the tweezers. The practiced motion reminded Mal too keenly of weeks ago when he’d done the same for Danny after breaking the wine glass.
Damn it.
“Mal…” Dom grumbled, full of impatience but also softer, weary—worried.
“Had a house call from Dunkirk,” Mal said and proceeded to tell Dom all about it. He’d seen Dom briefly during the week after the heist, so he’d already explained about Ludgate. Dunkirk was a whole other issue, but Dom understood.
“So Zeus came over in the nick of time and saved yer ass. What’s the big deal? You do somethin’ stupid after?”
Mal felt his face contort as he warred with himself to look angry rather than stricken.
Dom huffed. “You went and fell in love with the kid, didn’t ya?”
The pain of her picking glass out of his hand wasn’t enough of a distraction. Mal closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Don’t say it.” He couldn’t handle an ‘I told you so’ right now.
“I won’t,” she said. Then, after a pause, “But Idid.”
Choking on a laugh, Mal was far too close to sobbing. People always thought Dom was just dumb muscle. They had no idea. She sat back and paid attention while everyone around her was busy underestimating her intellect. She noticed things other people didn’t. Picked up on the nuances of enemies and strangers. So when it was someone she knew, few as those numbers were, she was almost never wrong.
“What happened?” she asked again.
Mal opened his eyes. His hand was clean now as Dom swiped disinfectant over the cuts and started to bind his hand in gauze. He didn’t have the luxury of fast healing like Danny. “I told him.”
“Yeah? And what he say?”
“He left.”
Mal could feel Dom’s frown even without looking at her. “I’m guessin’ you don’t wanna hit the streets and cause a little mayhem to spite him, huh?”
Exhaling, Mal choked on another short, shaky laugh. “No, Dom.”
She grunted acknowledgment, then nodded at the screen still playing the game on mute. “Wanna stay in and get drunk?”
