Lavender and Gold - Dante Reyes x Reader [Fast X]

Chapter 17: Days Go By

✧.* -2023: London + Somewhere in Arizona- ✧.*

When Ramsey, Roman, Tej, and Han arrived in London on the cargo ship, having stowed away in a shipping container full of expensive aftershave back in Rome, Ramsey couldn't help but sigh in apprehension at being back in her home city. It has been quite a few years since she last set foot in London, and that was for many reasons, including the fact she would like to avoid all of the memories the city brings up. She immediately thinks of her college years with y/n with a bittersweet smile and then remembers the boy they both left behind and winces. Bowie.

Ramsey and Bowie had always had a tumultuous and very reluctant friendship, only really tolerating the other for the sake of y/n, but that awkward emotional gap between them had been mended in a night only to be broken slowly over many days. They had reconciled and bared some of their secrets to each other along with y/n more than a decade ago, but in the years since bitterness had seeped in at the fact they could never share y/n equally, and the guilt of being selfish with their mutual friend turned into resentment for the other.

Bowie has told Ramsey that he thinks she stole y/n away from him, which she denies but a little smugly. Ramsey thinks he's a child who doesn't understand that y/n can't be the one to fix his messy life. Bowie is practically y/n's younger brother but that deep bond between them blinds y/n to how dirty Bowie's hands have gotten over his years on the dark side of the internet and in the shady parts of London. Ramsey thinks he's a deadbeat and she knows he agrees. She misses him sometimes, the toothy kid who'd show up at parties and selling substances he shouldn't have even known about, the kid who could always cheer y/n up like magic, but juvenile delinquents lose their charm with their age.

She can't find it in herself to feel too bad about how y/n and Bowie have seemingly grown apart over the years as while Ramsey is sure it's painful for both of them given how close those two were, he's a risk with his underworld connections. Ramsey knows she is perhaps a much bigger risk to y/n with her partnership with Dominic, but since Jakob is y/n's primary connection to the Toretto clan and therefore to its dangers, she can pretend that she is somehow better as a friend for y/n and that she doesn't feed the danger that has begun to rear its head dangerously thanks to everything that happened in Rome.

She worries for y/n whom she knew was in Rome at the same time as them, and as soon as she can she will figure out a way to check on her friend. Until then, Ramsey keeps in mind that if anything happens Jakob has y/n's back as y/n's second best friend and that in the end Dominic and the crew always come out on top, and surely that inhuman luck must extend to y/n.

The issue is that Ramsey had recognized something in the clashing aspects of the man who derailed their mission in Rome, he had been simultaneously flamboyant in the luxurious but theatrical way she had seen y/n slip into over the years but also hard and almost sadistic in his amusement at all of the destruction. From what y/n has told her about the boy from her past, the one whom y/n would speak of with an intense mixture of both love and hate, the man seemed like the older more intense version of y/n's Dante. She can't be totally sure, at least not yet, but something in her gut is telling her she's right.

The now four-person crew, still informally headed by the over-confident Roman, tumble out of the sickly sweet air of the metal shipping container, the air inside having become almost fatally thick with the scent of the aftershave as bottle after bottle broke on the journey, primarily due to Roman's lack of coordination and his pleasure at how annoyed Tej would get at every shattered bottle.

After getting out of the shipping container the four of them weaved through the stacks of containers on the ship, sticking to the shadows like a shitty spy movie until they finally found their way off the boat and into the shipping yard's outdated office building. The room they settle in is one of those rather dingy-looking paneled wall rooms with a multitude of marked-up whiteboards and dust-collecting degrees hung up. Roman stands in the middle of the room observing it with no particular interest, still acting the part of the self-assured leader, and Han leans up against a cabinet and fiddles with some of the office-type nick-nacks its surface is littered with.