Obfuscating Our Pain
Obfuscating Our Pain
Rating: PG-13
Chapter: One-shot (Sort of a sequel/companion to Oil for Blood and Blood on My Hands and Scars Still Bleeding Oil )
Fandom: Fast and Furious Series (A little bit of Assassin's Creed, if you squint. I'm not incorporating the whole game into the story just some of the basics and stuff like a brotherhood of assassins and the way they're initiated)
Character POV: Jessie
A/N: Hey look, they're getting progressively longer! I hope those of you who read this have liked it so far. I've decided I'm probably going to save Dom and Brian for last, and Have the whole team's perspective on them and the goings on around them first before We hit those Two's thoughts and Feelings on the matter.
Jessie rolled his eyes as he took a long draw off his cigarette, trying not to throw his half empty Corona at Vince. The idiot was once again grumbling about the Buster and how could Mia even bother to talk to him; it was getting annoying. But then again, the two had wildly clashing personalities, so he supposed this was all he could hope for before Brian and Vince eventually began to get to know each other.
Vince didn't know one thing about Brian, well that wasn't true, the things he'd said about going to juvie were true, but he didn't understand how Brian felt being with them, here, being family with them. Didn’t understand his family life or his past or what it takes to survive growing up the way they did.
It had just been him, Brian, and Mia at home that day and Brian was changing the oil in Mia's Honda while she did homework for her nursing classes.
He wasn't supposed to see them, he was sure, the scars all up down his back and chest and upper arms, and he was pretty sure they disappeared down beneath his pants to his legs as well from the looks of it. It was why Brian had always worn those baggy clothes, they were cool enough that he didn't have take his shirt off in front of others and covered him sufficiently without causing others to ask questions; it was a coping mechanism, something he himself had done once upon a time. He had seen scars like that on his own chest from before he'd run away from his junkie Ma and her abusive boyfriends and met Leon who took him in before they met Dom.
With almost no one home, Brian probably had thought he had gone to the garage with the others, Brian must have felt comfortable enough to take his shirt off because when he had gone out there to offer Brian a drink and tell him lunch was almost ready the man was bare from the waist up. Pale smooth old scars and some raised not yet fully healed scars crisscrossed the slightly tanned back he faced. The contrast between the tanned skin and the light pink scars brought them into stark clarity and Jesse felt an immediate understanding with the man before him. So treating it how he liked his own faded marks treated, he merely snagged Brian's arm and dragged him into the house for lunch, pushing a beer into his hand and chattering about what he was thinking about doing to the supra next.
He could see the taller blonde's confusion but did nothing to dispel it right then, just chattered and ate until he started to talk about how he met Leon and then Dom. Mia watching and listening, too, never having heard the full story before and her heart breaking a little for both of them and the understanding she could see between them both. But there was something else between them now, a camaraderie between two people who had survived their families and grown to be stable, if not productive because they might try but neither of them were good at being on the straight and narrow apparently, members of society.
With the understanding between the two of them there was a shift in how they interacted, something neither of them really noticed until Leon had brought it up when Brian wasn’t around and they were together in their shared room. Jessie had normally avoided contact except from Leon and Dom everywhere except the top of his head and that was only when he had a hat on, like a layer of protection from any harm, so him allowing Brian, an outsider to their family, was unexpected. But Leon quickly understood when he shrugged and simply said that Brian knew what it was like growing up, Leon himself having grown up with a, nonviolent at least, alcoholic mother and absentee father. Any tension between Leon and Brian almost visually dissolved at the knowledge and Leon found himself watching the older blond, looking for the tell-tale signs of what Jessie had obscurely hinted at.
After waking up from being shot he could tell that Leon had gone back to his earlier distrust of the elder blond, but Jessie had seen and even felt those scars, saw the lost, floundering look in those ice blue eyes. He may have lied about his job and part of his name, but Brian had been on the up and up.
He wouldn’t have destroyed the evidence, give Dom his keys, or killed the Trans if he hadn’t; no cop gives up his life like that unless he had a reason too, and they seemed to be Brian’s reason. And even if he hadn’t made up his own mind that way, asking Mia to tell him about who the real Brian was would have convinced him. Despite all of Vince’s grumblings that everything Brian had told her was a lie, Jessie and Mia both knew for what it was and after explaining to Leon just what kind and how many scars the blond had covering his form and the knowledge that they were makeup of any sort he understood too, even if he was still a little pissed.
The long recovery in the ICU and the later PT gave him a lot of time to think about how to explain to Dom why he still wanted Brian there, just like working in the shop and keeping the books for the garage gave Mia time to calm down about their missing friend and contemplate how to tell Dom she’d known about Brian for a while before the Wars. Jessie had known that Mia had tried to convince Dom and the others to not pull the heist, he’d known she knew something was going to happen but the tension was there and to get away from it he’d done his own monumentally stupid thing of that week.
Families fight all the time, they don’t always get along perfectly, Jessie and Leon knew this the best out of all of them. They would all get through it, would learn what all Brian O’Connor was keeping from his new family, and hopefully they’d understand why with little explanation. Because explaining to Vince and Letty why he and Leon understood Brian’s actions was going to be one of the hardest things any of them would have to do since neither didn’t know anything about their family life before the Toretto’s and Brian’s was so much worse than either of theirs that it made Jessie physically ache to remember some of the marks on Brian’s body.
Only time would tell how it all played out, but Jessie doubted his “Car Gods” would let their family fall apart so easily. They may not have been all family by blood, but out of the wanting to be family.
That made them stronger than any other.
Rating: PG-13
Chapter: One-shot (Sort of a sequel/companion to Oil for Blood and Blood on My Hands and Scars Still Bleeding Oil )
Fandom: Fast and Furious Series (A little bit of Assassin's Creed, if you squint. I'm not incorporating the whole game into the story just some of the basics and stuff like a brotherhood of assassins and the way they're initiated)
Character POV: Jessie
A/N: Hey look, they're getting progressively longer! I hope those of you who read this have liked it so far. I've decided I'm probably going to save Dom and Brian for last, and Have the whole team's perspective on them and the goings on around them first before We hit those Two's thoughts and Feelings on the matter.
Jessie rolled his eyes as he took a long draw off his cigarette, trying not to throw his half empty Corona at Vince. The idiot was once again grumbling about the Buster and how could Mia even bother to talk to him; it was getting annoying. But then again, the two had wildly clashing personalities, so he supposed this was all he could hope for before Brian and Vince eventually began to get to know each other.
Vince didn't know one thing about Brian, well that wasn't true, the things he'd said about going to juvie were true, but he didn't understand how Brian felt being with them, here, being family with them. Didn’t understand his family life or his past or what it takes to survive growing up the way they did.
It had just been him, Brian, and Mia at home that day and Brian was changing the oil in Mia's Honda while she did homework for her nursing classes.
He wasn't supposed to see them, he was sure, the scars all up down his back and chest and upper arms, and he was pretty sure they disappeared down beneath his pants to his legs as well from the looks of it. It was why Brian had always worn those baggy clothes, they were cool enough that he didn't have take his shirt off in front of others and covered him sufficiently without causing others to ask questions; it was a coping mechanism, something he himself had done once upon a time. He had seen scars like that on his own chest from before he'd run away from his junkie Ma and her abusive boyfriends and met Leon who took him in before they met Dom.
With almost no one home, Brian probably had thought he had gone to the garage with the others, Brian must have felt comfortable enough to take his shirt off because when he had gone out there to offer Brian a drink and tell him lunch was almost ready the man was bare from the waist up. Pale smooth old scars and some raised not yet fully healed scars crisscrossed the slightly tanned back he faced. The contrast between the tanned skin and the light pink scars brought them into stark clarity and Jesse felt an immediate understanding with the man before him. So treating it how he liked his own faded marks treated, he merely snagged Brian's arm and dragged him into the house for lunch, pushing a beer into his hand and chattering about what he was thinking about doing to the supra next.
He could see the taller blonde's confusion but did nothing to dispel it right then, just chattered and ate until he started to talk about how he met Leon and then Dom. Mia watching and listening, too, never having heard the full story before and her heart breaking a little for both of them and the understanding she could see between them both. But there was something else between them now, a camaraderie between two people who had survived their families and grown to be stable, if not productive because they might try but neither of them were good at being on the straight and narrow apparently, members of society.
With the understanding between the two of them there was a shift in how they interacted, something neither of them really noticed until Leon had brought it up when Brian wasn’t around and they were together in their shared room. Jessie had normally avoided contact except from Leon and Dom everywhere except the top of his head and that was only when he had a hat on, like a layer of protection from any harm, so him allowing Brian, an outsider to their family, was unexpected. But Leon quickly understood when he shrugged and simply said that Brian knew what it was like growing up, Leon himself having grown up with a, nonviolent at least, alcoholic mother and absentee father. Any tension between Leon and Brian almost visually dissolved at the knowledge and Leon found himself watching the older blond, looking for the tell-tale signs of what Jessie had obscurely hinted at.
After waking up from being shot he could tell that Leon had gone back to his earlier distrust of the elder blond, but Jessie had seen and even felt those scars, saw the lost, floundering look in those ice blue eyes. He may have lied about his job and part of his name, but Brian had been on the up and up.
He wouldn’t have destroyed the evidence, give Dom his keys, or killed the Trans if he hadn’t; no cop gives up his life like that unless he had a reason too, and they seemed to be Brian’s reason. And even if he hadn’t made up his own mind that way, asking Mia to tell him about who the real Brian was would have convinced him. Despite all of Vince’s grumblings that everything Brian had told her was a lie, Jessie and Mia both knew for what it was and after explaining to Leon just what kind and how many scars the blond had covering his form and the knowledge that they were makeup of any sort he understood too, even if he was still a little pissed.
The long recovery in the ICU and the later PT gave him a lot of time to think about how to explain to Dom why he still wanted Brian there, just like working in the shop and keeping the books for the garage gave Mia time to calm down about their missing friend and contemplate how to tell Dom she’d known about Brian for a while before the Wars. Jessie had known that Mia had tried to convince Dom and the others to not pull the heist, he’d known she knew something was going to happen but the tension was there and to get away from it he’d done his own monumentally stupid thing of that week.
Families fight all the time, they don’t always get along perfectly, Jessie and Leon knew this the best out of all of them. They would all get through it, would learn what all Brian O’Connor was keeping from his new family, and hopefully they’d understand why with little explanation. Because explaining to Vince and Letty why he and Leon understood Brian’s actions was going to be one of the hardest things any of them would have to do since neither didn’t know anything about their family life before the Toretto’s and Brian’s was so much worse than either of theirs that it made Jessie physically ache to remember some of the marks on Brian’s body.
Only time would tell how it all played out, but Jessie doubted his “Car Gods” would let their family fall apart so easily. They may not have been all family by blood, but out of the wanting to be family.
That made them stronger than any other.