Archive of Our Own

In the midst of his panic, the phone rang.

He’d forgotten the damn thing was in his pocket. Trying to fish it out while keeping his shaking hand steady on the wheel and not send the Supra into the curb or oncoming traffic, drove all other thoughts from his head for a moment. It felt weirdly good. For a second, he was too busy to think.

Then he saw the number on the little green screen and it all came crashing down on him again, just what had happened, what he’d just done. His mind couldn’t be fast enough, his mouth would never be fast enough to explain away this mountain of shit. He could feel his chest start to ache with the deep, heaving breaths he couldn’t seem to stop taking. He could still practically taste the flames.

The phone’s ring sounded incredibly loud in the tiny cab of the car. He toyed with the idea of just tossing it out the window.

No, he would need this…he could work this. He clicked it on.

“Brian, just what the fuck is going on?” Tanner’s voice came clear through a welter of background noise. Brian could hear Bilkins yelling something that sounded like “Get me—now, damn it!” Brian winced. Tanner never cursed unless he was p-i-s-s-e-d.

“Sergeant?” Tanner had been the one who’d taught him the art of teasing out information. When all else failed, you could play dumb and wait. Since Tanner had been the one to teach him that, there was a moment of silence while they each waited for the other to speak. Finally, Tanner sighed and began.

“Brian, I just got word that one of Toretto’s team went into Good Samaritan DOA. We’ve got four witnesses on Alvarado lighting up the phone lines with reports of a shooting. John Tran is dead. Rampart Division looks like someone set it on fire. Lance Nguyen is in critical condition and might not see the sunset…”

Brian stayed silent. The truck? The train? The other truck? Vince?

Tanner asked quietly. “Brian, did you fire on a suspect and then leave the scene?”

“Yeah, I ah…Had to…” Brian swallowed and cleared his throat. “I had a line on Toretto and he was…”

“Yeah?” Brian could hear the glimmer of hope in Tanner’s voice. Shame snarled up in his throat.

Tanner continued, “You on Toretto? You on him now?”

Brian felt some of the jagged edges tear into his voice. “Sergeant, can you count me out of this for a few hours? I’ve got some ends to tie up before I can report back.”

“The Feds are gonna want something soon, Brian,” Tanner said sadly. “Be good if it were Toretto.”

“Not that easy, Sarge,” Brian cut his eyes sideways. “Dominic Toretto is dead.”

*********************

As an afterthought, he started dialing the number he knew best. It rang and rang…of course, she wasn’t there. She was at the hospital, maybe. Rampart Division, maybe. Maybe, she’d taken advantage of the confusion, jumped in that little Integra of hers and just fucked off to some wild blue yonder. For her sake, he kind of hoped for the latter. After six rings, the line opened and Dom’s voice came, gruff but clear. “Toretto’s. Leave a message.”

The shock of Dom’s voice almost made Brian drop the phone. After a second, Brian wondered why he was so surprised. This was L.A., after all, a big, mean city and if you possibly could, you had a man’s voice on the answering machine. Brian realized that the beep had sounded ten seconds ago.

“Uh, Mia. This is…” OK, that was stupid. She didn’t need him to incriminate her any further. “Mia, I just want…no matter, what you might hear. Mia. Everything is okay. Really.”

He let the silence stretch a little longer and then he clicked off. He could feel his eyes throbbing with each heartbeat and he dug into his eye sockets absently with the heel of his hand. God, this was stupid. A block down, the light turned red and he automatically slowed, leaving himself a car length. He resisted the temptation to lean his head on the steering wheel.

He checked his rearview, side mirrors, scanned the street ahead. He was straining to hear sirens so hard that he was giving himself a headache. A woman yelling close by drew his attention.

A tired-looking woman driving a battered station wagon in the left lane was trying to out-shriek her four bouncing children. Brian blinked slowly. The kids tumbled back and forth in the backseat like a box full of puppies. One little boy caught him looking and waved happily out the window. Kid looked about seven.

Brian smiled back before he realized what he was doing. He looked forward. The left turn signal was just about to go. The mother appeared to be haranguing some higher power now; she was shaking her head and yelling at the roof of her car.

Brian looked back at her son and put his finger to his lips. Just as the station wagon started to pull forward, he threw his cell phone slow enough for the kid to catch. The boy caught it wide-eyed, like Christmas had come early. Brian watched as the car pulled away, wondering when mother would notice their new toy.

That had bought them an extra hour, maybe. Maybe two, if he were lucky. Maybe three.

************************

South of Long Beach, he pulled into a gas station, tanked up, and then parked by the dumpster. He pulled his daily limit out of the ATM. He bought some random snacks and some not-so-random ice and pills. He left the bags on the ground while he popped the trunk, pulling out a wrench and an exacto blade. The decals took ten minutes to pull free; they clung to his hands, forearms, clothes. After what felt like a long time, he balled the last bit up and tossed it in the trash.

Then he started unbolting the wing from the hatchback. It was going to be damned awkward getting the thing off without scratching the Supra to hell and back. Scratches and bolt holes together would look pretty suspicious. Brian gritted his teeth and twisted the wrench gently while holding the spoiler in place.

“Hey man, you need some help?”

Brian turned his head; he couldn’t let go or the whole thing would tumble and probably smash the back window. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

Two black teens strolled into his peripheral vision. Brian caught a flash of their car. Huh. Nissan 240SX. He relaxed a little. Tuners.

“You adjusting the tilt?” The kid who’d spoken first spread his hands over the base of the wing. His pants were so baggy, he could probably hide the spoiler in them.

“Nah, I’m losing it. Not my style anymore. You want it?” Brian asked casually.

They looked at each other and then back at him. The silent kid had raised his eyebrows almost all the way up to his cornrows. The other kid looked suspicious. “You OTR?”

“Oh yeah.” Brian said sincerely. They seemed surprised by his honesty, they both grinned. “Yeah, I could do with this.” muttered the older one under his breath. They braced the wing and lifted it clear when Brian unbolted it. “Can we do anything for you, man?”

Brian took a deep breath. Can I switch cars with you? “Got an extra hoodie?”

The cornrowed kid finally spoke up, “That’s all you want, man?” He’d taken a nervous glance at Brian’s passenger side.

“If you’ve got two, I wouldn’t say no.”

“Sure thing,” The guy who Brian had secretly named Older Brother trotted back to their car. Brian could see from the way he cocked his head that he was already imagining his ride with its new spoiler. Older Brother fished out a sweatshirt from the wheel well of the Nissan and shook the crumbs off it. Then he came back and had a quick whispered conversation with Younger Brother, who grudgingly peeled off his own hoodie.

Brian considered protesting the whole ‘shirt off your back’ thing, but then he remembered that he was a desperate man.

“I don’t suppose I need to mention that you never saw me, right?” Brian smiled a little as Older Brother hefted the wing.

They both turned back to him with eyes turned as blank and innocent as a cow’s.

“Fished it out of the dumpster,” Younger Brother said confidently. Older Brother just said, “Vaya con Dios.” He said it in the Mexican way, almost turning the ‘d’ into a ‘j’. Brian nodded at them as they pulled out, thinking that it just might be a good omen.

Dom stirred as he got back into the car. Dom’s eyes were heavy with pain and the dimples around his mouth looked etched deep. “We’re there?”

Brian dug a hollow in the first bag of ice to rest Dom’s arm on. He slung the hoodie around another bag and pushed it under Dom’s neck. Dom winced, but he didn’t flinch. Brian looked down at him, spread over the reclined seat like a dying god.

“No, we’re not there yet.” Brian murmured. “Not even close.”

*********************

It was early enough in the afternoon that the 405 still moved. Brian stayed in the next to last lane driving on instinct, fast enough to eat up the miles, but not fast enough to get noticed. The numbers were with him. Over half a million people used this interstate every day…what was one orange car in the rainbow spectrum of a six lane freeway?

Brian risked a glance over at Dom. Dom was still losing the fight with consciousness which was A Bad Thing. Brian scrubbed a hand over his face. Damn Dom for being such a stubborn bastard anyway.

Dom should be dead. Watching the Charger spin and slide, Brian had felt his heart pounding on his spine. As strong as Dom was, there was no way to come out of that flip intact. The Charger came to rest looking like a smashed tin can. And Brian thought to himself: no.

No. This can’t have come this far, gone this long. No, it can’t end like this. No.

And miraculously, when Brian ran up with his heart feeling like an overtaxed turbocharger, Dom was breathing. And speaking. And being kind of a smart-ass in that inimitable, Dom-like way. Brian had wanted to clutch Dom to his chest and squeeze. But he didn’t.

The way Dom had…looked at him. The way Dom had nodded. Dom understood. Dom understood what he was doing, Dom knew. And for a moment that was enough, just to see the light of comprehension in Dom’s eyes. Watching his future limp away from him didn’t feel as bad as he’d expected it to. Whatever else happened, Dom would be okay.

Dom had made it almost all the way to the Supra before he’d collapsed.

Brian couldn’t remember much about wrestling Dom into the car. Dom had been heavy, solid, his deadweight almost impossible to move.

He could remember the conversation they’d had when Dom had regained consciousness with crystalline clarity though.

*****************

Dom had come to abruptly, shaken his head in a quick twist, then winced. His eyes had blinked black at the traffic in front of them, then he’d looked at Brian quickly. The erratic pace of LA traffic meant that Brian wasn’t able to do much more than glance down at him. Dom shuddered for a long second and there was a moment of something in his gaze that Brian thought might have been panic. His blood had soaked a dark spot into the headrest.

“We’re almost there,” Brian murmured. It didn’t sound very reassuring.

“Where?” Dom sounded, disconcertingly, all there. His eyes were gleaming with heat.

“Hospital, man. You’re banged up pretty good.”

“Then where?” Dom said, so suddenly savage that Brian could feel the sweat on the back of his neck chill, even in the sun-warmed stuffiness of the car.

“Wherever you want,” Brian said uncertainly. He could sense just what Dom was asking and he didn’t really want to articulate the answer, even to himself at this moment. Dom had relaxed a little at Brian’s words, but he was still breathing unnaturally hard. “But hospital first.”

Dom had shaken his head and scowled down at his feet. “No. No way.”

Dom had sounded so certain that Brian had almost found himself agreeing without question. “You’ve got to, D. You’re not thinking straight.”

Dom’s eyes had glittered at that and his voice came out soaked in menace. “I’m done with this. You really wanna go, fine.” And then Dom had actually reached for the door handle and seemed seconds away from throwing himself out of the moving car.

“Okay, okay,” Brian capitulated quickly. He turned south and drove aimlessly down surface streets while Dom went into another drift. Ten minutes later, Dom pulled himself into consciousness with a jerk and blinked into the sunlight.

“Where are we going?”

“I dunno,” Brian shrugged as if he didn’t care either. “Away from here. Heat’s coming down.”

“Yeah, it’s hot all right,” Dom glared at him suspiciously. It looked like it hurt. “You think you can get us over the border before the…” Dom raised one eyebrow expressively.

Brian felt a small muscle in his neck relax. “Yeah, probably.”

“Then go,” Dom glared a moment more for good measure and then slumped back down into the seat. He blinked at Brian once, then his eyes closed like shutters.

******************

One of the things that Brian had always felt made him a better-than-average cop was his almost perfect recall. Brian could recite conversations verbatim, remember what color shoes a suspect was wearing, and store a thousand insignificant details in his brain. Right now certain paragraphs of his police handbook were scrolling through his mind, he could hear an instructor’s voice on continuous loop: Chapter Five, page eighty-seven: Dealing with Accident Victims.

Dom had a concussion. Somewhere behind his eyes, his brain was bruised and swelling with blood. Nausea, loss of consciousness, spotty vision…somewhere along that line of text were the words ‘coma’ and ‘death’. Brian juiced the gas just a little.

If he ignored all the blood spatter, Dom still looked smooth and untouched. Dom was perfectly still even though pain must be coursing through every nerve by now, unalloyed by adrenaline. Brian imagined Dom swelling underneath his taut skin until it split and the blood gushed out. He looked down at the speedometer. Eighty-five. Any faster and they’d be risking it all.

“Dom, wake up,” Brian said quietly. Then a little louder. Dom stirred but he didn’t open his eyes. Brian hated to do it, but this was important. He reached over and nudged Dom’s injured shoulder with one finger. Dom came awake looking like he was clamping down on a yell.

“The fuck?” Dom’s hand moved reflexively to cup his injured arm.

“You’ve got a concussion,” Brian said miserably. “I’ve gotta wake you up every so often to make sure you’re still…” He couldn’t quite figure out how to finish the sentence. “I’ve gotta wake you up and ask you a few questions, make sure you’re not…stroking out or anything.”

Dom squeezed his eyes shut and then he looked at Brian like Dom was expecting him to be someone else. “So ask then.”

Brian hadn’t been prepared for no display of temper or argument. “Uh, what’s your name?”

Dom looked like he was running his tongue around the outside of his teeth under his lips. “Dominic Toretto.”

“Where are we going?”

Dom blinked. “South on the 405.”

Whoa. Brian wasn’t sure if literalism was a good thing or a bad thing. “Are you fucking with me?”

Dom blinked again, “Is that your last question?”

Brian just looked at him and after a moment, Dom said, “No. We’re going to Tijuana. For now.”

Brian nodded, “Okay, so you’re clear for another hour.”

Dom nodded back and relaxed back into the seat. Brian watched out of the corner of his eye as pain deepened the lines around Dom’s eyes. Dom seemed to be trying to deepen his breath as best he could. Dom breathed kind of experimentally; testing what kind of range his damaged ribs would give him. Brian started guiltily.

“Hey, I got you this,” Brian fumbled with the bag in the footwell of the backseat. He dug through one-handed and finally unearthed the painkillers. Dom took it from him and winced as he tried to prise the childproof cap off. Brian snatched it back and steered with his knee while he uncapped the bottle of pills.

He shook out four pills past the gauze onto Dom’s palm. Dom gave an abbreviated shrug and took the handful. Brian found a bottle of water and Dom drank it off in one go.

“Gonna be okay,” Brian said softly.

Dom curled one side of his lip. “You asking me or telling me?”

********************

A siren pulled up and past them and Brian felt every shriek in the skin on his balls. He didn’t have much of a plan if an APB had been issued. He had another tank of nitrous and that was about it.

Dom shifted uncomfortably with his eyes closed. He looked like he was past the point where pain would fight past the black oblivion, fight past any painkiller short of morphine. Brian started to wish desperately that he had some. Something, anything to wipe the lines off Dom’s face.

They were almost at the border, which presented its own problems. Hating himself, Brian nudged Dom again. Dom’s eyes flew open, but he didn’t make a sound.

“We’re almost there,” Brian fished the sweatshirt out of the backseat. “You look kind of…”

“Bad,” Dom finished. He pinched the stiffened blood in his t-shirt and it held its shape. Brian couldn’t tell how much of it was Vince’s blood, or Jesse’s or Dom’s own.

“You can take that off and put this on. Or just put this on,” Brian said quickly. Dom had grunted with pain when he’d tried to lift his arm. Brian could see the gleam of sweat on his forehead and upper lip. Dom got his right side into the hoodie but couldn’t manage the left. Listening to him try sounded like someone losing a fistfight.

“Leave it, we’ll stop.” Brian scanned the exits. “Can you move those fingers?”

Dom shook his head a little, then quickly touched all his fingers with his thumb. “They still move. Hurt like hell and where they don’t hurt, they’re numb.”

“Arm’s probably fractured and the shoulder dislocated as well,” Brian said calmly. “You try to brace yourself in the roll, jerks the arm out of the socket, then all your weight plus two thousand pounds of pressure comes down on it.”

Dom flexed his fingers again and grimaced. "Knowing that doesn't make me feel better."

“Should’ve worn your seat belt,” Brian said, deadpan.

Dom turned very slowly to look at him. Brian saw the flash of Dom’s teeth in the corner of his eye.

“Guess I’ll know better next time.”

********************

Pulling Dom out of the car to get him covered up left them both sweating and shaking. As gentle as Brian tried to be, Dom’s arm was past the point where it could be touched. Brian dabbed the dried blood off Dom’s head, praying silently that they could slide past the border without getting out of the car. Dom could pass while he was sitting down, but he could no longer take a step without limping. And his skin was turning an odd shade that was a lot less of the usual gold and a lot more of a sickly gray.

“God damn it, can we just go to a hospital?” Brian didn’t feel the slightest hint of shame for the pleading note in his voice.

Dom spat on the ground. “We’re almost there. Don’t punk out.”

Brian bit down hard on the side of his mouth to keep from punching Dom in his already-slightly-swollen head.

There was always a wait to cross into Tijuana. Brian had forgotten just how many people with guns the border crossing entailed and in his current state, it made his nerves shriek with every passing second.

The word congestion floated through his head. The cars ahead of them were all dazzling in this mid-afternoon sun, their exhaust made the air flicker. They clotted the road like thickened blood in a narrow vein. He glanced at Dom, thought about the tiniest bit of that congestion swelling in Dom's head. As he flashed their driver’s licenses, he imagined one of the many guys in green barking a curt order to step out of the car, sir. Then he imagined flooring it a lá Thelma and Louise, weaving through the sea of cars in all six lanes.

Dom was slipping in and out of consciousness again. It looked okay, it looked like he was just bored enough to nap.

Brian prayed some more and realized that he wasn’t actually addressing God. He was praying to Sergeant Tanner to (please, oh please) have actually given them a few hours of lead time. And it appeared to be working. They slid through the border under a barrage of bored stares.

“We’re here,” Brian was just about to nudge Dom when he blinked and sat up.

“That’s good,” Dom’s throat sounded clogged.

“Where to now?”

Dom looked bland, “Some strip club, I was thinking. Some place with a two-drink minimum.”

Brian opened his mouth and then shut it. “Uh…sure…whatever you want.”

Dom snorted, then winced. “A bed, Brian. Nothing too complicated.”

“You need a doctor.”

“I need to get horizontal.” Dom rubbed his forehead with his good hand. “First things first.”

Brian found a downmarket place on the outskirts of the border zone with a brightly-lit courtyard that they could park in. Considering that this doubled their chances of waking up with the car still there, Brian ignored the ratty carpet and the dripping faucet. It was actually quite clean and almost roomy. The room even had a tiny refrigerator that hummed when Brian plugged it in.

“I’m gonna…” Brian started while Dom sat down and eased himself back. Deep crescents now hollowed the corners of Dom’s eyes. Brian flicked his thumb out the door, “Do you want anything?” Dom blinked at him slowly and closed his eyes.

Outside the sun was starting to set. Brian took a deep, unhurried breath. It felt like the first one he’d had in days.

********************

For some reason, the normal brightly-colored rowdiness of T.J. seemed muted. Brian stopped at a bodega and dully gathered water, sodas and food. Tossed the bags in the Supra on autopilot and cruised down the street looking for anything resembling help. He drove by two farmacias and a clinico all shut tight.

He pulled up in front of a row of shops that appeared to have half of their inventory spread out to the sidewalk. Los Angeles was dotted with little places like this; they sold pretty much everything, if you knew how to ask. Brian bought more supplies, an alarm clock, socks, underwear and some t-shirts advertising Pacifica.

“Quiet today,” Brian said idly as the proprietor tucked his stuff in a blue plastic bag.

“Domingo,” the old man said and shrugged.

He’d forgotten that it was Sunday. Shit.

A young man, dressed in a stylish, Eurotrash way watched him steadily from across the road as he left the store. Brian held his eyes blandly, aware that this be anything from an attempted cruise to an officer of the State Judicial Police. Brian looked a challenge until the other man looked away. Brian willed away his paranoia…the guy probably just liked the car.

Somewhere, a bell was tolling. Brian cursed at himself, realizing how much time had passed. On the drive back, he arranged and rearranged words trying to hit on the magic sentence that would make Dom go to a hospital.

When he got back, the dark room was empty.

********************

“Dom?” Brian scanned the room and thought about his gun, still in the wheel well of the car. Silence. Then a thump on the pasteboard wall. Brian nearly tripped on the remains of Dom’s t-shirt. He picked it up and fingered the scalloped edge where Dom had ripped it up the front.

Brian approached the half-open bathroom door cautiously. The air got heavier. “Dom?”

Though a part of his mind had been putting together all the clues, some part of him was still shocked at the sight of Dom in the bathtub. Brian ducked back from the door with quick flames of wet, supine and naked all over heating his face.

“Brian, get over here,” Dom’s voice came muffled, but clear. Brian watched his feet take the few steps, carpet, carpet, linoleum tile. Then he looked at the toilet and flashed his eyes sideways at Dom’s face. “Yeah?”

Dom had a threadbare washcloth spread over his shoulder. Slowly he pulled it up over his face and skull then looked at Brian soberly. He was gleaming wet and his eyes looked very bright. “This was probably a bad idea.”

Brian breathed out and opened his mouth to…what? Argue? Then he realized that Dom was talking about the bath. Dom was looking down unhappily at the puddles of water on the floor. It looked like he had tried to haul himself out of the tub a couple of times and had been unable to get the trick.

Brian found himself wondering how Dom had managed to get himself completely undressed in the first place. Bruises were darkening like twilight shadows down Dom’s chest. The water was slightly browned with blood. "It's getting cold."

“So…uhm.” Brian stared at the showerhead and bobbed his chin like he was thinking. He extended a hand and braced like they were going to arm-wrestle.

Dom rolled his eyes. “Get a towel and mop up a little. Otherwise I’ll pull you in, not myself out.”

Brian carefully pulled two towels off the rack. They were slightly stiff like they had been line-dried. He dropped one on the floor and toed it around, assiduously watching his shoes. When he dared look at Dom’s face again, Dom looked vaguely annoyed. “While we’re young, maybe?”

Brian made his face blank, draped the other towel over his shoulder, and picked a tile on the wall to watch while he offered his arm. His sneakers squeaked on the wet floor as Dom’s weight pulled him sideways. There were a bad few seconds where it seemed like Dom would yank him right into the tub and then they were balanced tentatively upright. Dom skin was hot and smooth, dragging along the back of Brian’s forearm.

Brian jerked his chin at the towel on his shoulder. The heat and steam combined were making sweat prickle under his arms. He chanced a look at Dom’s face. Dom was blinking rapidly and taking heavy, gasping breaths. Fighting to stay conscious. Brian suddenly felt swamped in misery and directionless guilt. He cupped a light hand under Dom’s good arm, guiding it to lean on the wall.

When Dom was steady, Brian circled his waist quickly with a towel, rolling the top over until it was tight. Dom flinched a little and then stared into Brian’s face. His eyelashes were still thick and dark with water. Brian stopped breathing.

“Thank you,” Dom said gruffly. His left arm still hung in a sickeningly limp way and the skin under his shoulder blade was turning purple-black. He started to shuffle toward the door, caught himself and wheezed. Brian managed to catch him before he stumbled.

While it was weirdly awful, it was also slightly thrilling to see Dom’s grace turned to awkwardness, Dom’s quiet confidence rendered unsteady and unsure. Brian tightened the muscle in his arm and tried to guide them off the slippery tile. Dom got a little steadier on the carpet. They hobbled to the bed like it was the end of some grueling three-legged race. Brian eased Dom onto the edge of the bed so slowly; he felt his own muscles start to burn.

Dom closed his eyes for a while and swayed but he didn’t lie down. Brian upended some of his bags of supplies on the floor in Dom’s sightline. Dom examined them dully and nodded. “Pills?”

Brian sifted through the pile on the floor before remembering that there was a blister pack in his pocket. He doled out two.

Dom was looking at the Ace bandages dubiously, “You think those’ll work?”

“Better than nothing. I’ll do them tight enough you won’t break apart if you cough.” Brian tried to sound confident. Dom nodded and seemed to be making an effort to arrange himself carefully, perched on the side of the bed.

Brian took a deep breath. I have to do this now?

He found a point on the wall six inches to the left of Dom’s shoulder. He fixed his gaze on a chip in the pasteboard while he wrapped the rough bandages around Dom from his nipples to his belly button, trying to find the right balance between tight and loose.

Dom smelled wet. No hint of sweat, blood, gasoline or dust anymore. It seemed to take a long time…hell, it did take a long time. He had to move slowly because he couldn’t risk nudging Dom’s arm. Brian suddenly felt light-headed and realized that he hadn’t taken a breath for over a minute. It was hopeless. His nose and mouth were still filled Dom’s wet scent even when he didn’t breathe.

He glanced up quickly to see if Dom had noticed. Dom’s eyes were heavy on him, something too heavy for words in those black depths. Hatred, maybe.

Brian rocked back on his heels. “You’re done.”

Dom stroked his right hand over his new carapace of bandage. “One more thing.”

Brian nodded expectantly. One look at Dom’s face made it clear what the thing was and Brian tried not to shrink away. “I can’t do that, man.”

“You have to.”

“I can’t,” Brian felt like someone was stepping on his throat. “You’ve got other fractures for sure and if I push, they could....”

Dom sighed and shook his head. “This is killing me, Brian. Each hour it gets worse. Pretty soon it’ll be so swollen that it won’t go back at all and then I’ll be fucked. It’ll never heal right.”

“Give those pills a chance to kick in,” Brian played for time, but Dom was already shaking his head.

“The heat loosened it up a little,” Dom dropped his chin to his chest for a moment. “It’s now or never. Please.”

Brian stood up. Surely this had to be over soon. He wondered how much more he could take.

Dom swore when Brian tucked a hand under his swollen elbow. Brian tried to pull away and Dom swore louder. Dom ground his teeth and it sounded like bones rubbing together.

Dom forced breath through his mouth. His uninjured hand was clutching his knee, turning the skin pale around its grip. “Just…quickly. Don’t hesitate.”

“You need to bite down on something.” Brian looked over all their stuff and then unlaced his belt. He doubled it and handed it over. Dom breathed out and threaded it slowly through his tightened jaw. This needed the same quality that made a successful racer: he just couldn’t think about consequences. He tightened his grip on Dom’s elbow, tilted up and shoved.

It wasn’t a click or a pop. It sounded more like a muffled crunch. Brian tasted a splash of bile at the back of his throat. Dom spat the leather out and blinked slowly. He nodded at Brian and made a sound that might have been the word ‘good’. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped forward onto Brian’s chest.

*********************

The motel’s office had lots of photocopied flyers advertising shows and drink specials around town. It also had a jar full of loose cigarettes that were going two for a peso. Brian left the coin on the counter and got halfway back to the room before he remembered that he was lacking an essential ingredient.

He walked back toward the office. He nearly collided with a screen door as an older man stepped out of his room.

The man looked like he lived at the hotel. He had a settled look about him that seemed to indicate a long residency rather than someone with someplace to be. He stepped forward eagerly as if he would be glad for the company.

“Fuero?”

Brian nodded gratefully.

The man’s lank hair fell over his face as he leaned forward to offer Brian the light. Brian focused on his gnarled fingers, the knuckles lined with old grease. Brian took a long drag and almost choked on it. The nicotine buzzing in his veins almost made up for the rancid taste. He took another drag.

“You’re too young to be so worried,” The man said in perfectly plain English. He smiled reassuringly and Brian actually felt reassured. They were doing okay; they were safe, at least for the moment. Dom was alive and Brian would keep him that way.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

When Brian reached their room, he glanced back. The man was still watching him, still smiling.

*************************

Dom’s creased face seemed to reproach him from the depths of unconsciousness. He should have woken Dom up right away, but he just couldn’t deal. Dom’s pain was starting to overflow and seep into things. But focusing on Dom was better than thinking about all the scattered wreckage they’d left behind, not all of it automotive.

“Dom…Dom, wake up,” Brian’s hand hovered over Dom’s body, seeking a safe place to shake. He finally alighted on Dom’s knee. Dom still felt damp, lightly sheened with sweat.

Dom’s jaw clacked as he swam up into wakefulness. He blinked at Brian and frowned until his forehead was one big furrow. “What?” It came out in a cough.

Brian had forgotten what he was trying to do, for a long second he feared he’d woken Dom up for nothing. “Uh, do you wanna eat something?”

Dom stared balefully, “I’d rather fuck a cactus.”

The peculiar visual those words conjured up cut through the haze in his mind. “What’s your name?”

“Dominic Toretto.”

“Where are you from?”

“Echo Park. Los Angeles.” Dom glowered even harder. Even his teeth looked scornful.

“How old are you?”

“Old enough. That’s four questions.”

Brian blinked. “Yeah?”

“You said you only needed three.”

Brian sat down. “Did I say that? When?”

“That’s six,” Dom fidgeted uncomfortably on the bed. “My turn now.”

Brian gripped the coverlet and made his face bland.

Dom’s voice came out so rough it was almost unintelligible, “Can they fuck Mia for this?”

Brian opened his mouth, then stopped and said carefully, “I’m going to have to ask you another question.”

Dom rolled his eyes and his eyebrows snarled up.

Brian took it for assent and asked, “Does any money trail end with her?”

Dom shook his head.

“Then she should be all right.”

Dom blinked slowly in relief, then closed his eyes again.

**************

“Dom, wake up.”

“God…damn it.” Dom seemed to jerk himself awake. He touched his tongue to his lower lip and glowered down at his left side. “You’re serious about this.”

“You can live with a busted arm, busted ribs.” Brian picked at the seam of the quilted polyester coverlet. “But not with a busted head.”

“Quickly,” Dom rasped.

“What’s your name?”

“Dominic Toretto.”

Brian drew a blank. “Uh, what’s your favorite color?”

Dom made an ‘Are you for real?’ face. “Chrome. Last question.”

In the heat of Dom’s glare, Brian tried to come up with something. A whole assembly line of questions rocketed through his head, each one stupider than the last. Dom beckoned impatiently.

“Uh…ah, what’s my name?”

Dom blinked, rocked his head to one side and his lip curled. “I don’t know anymore.”

******************

“Wake up, D.”

Dom groaned, sounding like a large animal’s death throes. “What time is it?”

“Late.” Brian rolled his head on his neck, trying to feel less sleepy and stupid. “What’s your name?”

“Dominic…Toretto.” The words were broken by a yawn, the yawn was broken by a wince.

“What’s your cell phone number?”

“Oh Jesus. Are you really…fuck. 323-687-6110”

“Good. What year did you buy that RX-7?”

“1999.”

“OK, so we’re good for another hour.”

“I got a question.”

Brian steeled himself. “OK. Shoot.”

“Why three?”

“Three questions?”

“Yeah, why’s three the magic number?”

Brian shrugged, “Dunno. Something I learned playing ball in high school. I think it’s because even concussed, you can bullshit for two questions. But the third will hang you up, third’ll get you.”

Dom nodded and then asked unexpectedly, “You played football?’

“Yeah,” Brian swallowed. He shrank back under the sheet, feeling suddenly shy.

“What position?”

Brian cleared his throat. “Receiver.”

Dom nodded as if he’d known it all along.

******************

The alarm shrieked into the blackness. Brian slapped it silent and let his head hang for a second before propping his aching body upright. He ran his hand up the lamp, flicking it on with the tips of his fingers.

He blinked for a second, processing the fact that he’d actually been asleep. Somehow in the fevered spirals of thought, he’d actually managed to drift off. He rubbed his eyes and tried to squeeze his head back into shape.

“Dom, Dom.” Brian used his foot to shake the other mattress. “What’s your name?”

Dom didn’t move. Brian tilted the lampshade to do a vitals check. Dom was breathing thinly and his mouth still kept a trace of tension tightening its edges. The shallow, hitching breath made Brian’s gut churn. Here we are: you, me and your subdural hematoma.

“Dom?” Brian sat up and reached for Dom’s knee. Dom’s towel had gotten bunched up, so Brain attempted to pull it chastely straight. A band of heat cuffed his wrist and tightened like a garrote.

“Shit!” Brian twisted against the thumb and managed to get his hand back with some of the muscles un-pulped. It was too easy to forget that Dom’s right hand and arm worked fine. “God damn it, I’m trying to help you.”

Dom was panting, pumping hard breaths through his nose and mouth. His eyes looked like ball bearings.

“Look I didn’t ask for any of this,” Dom was obviously trying to snarl, but it came out weak. “You wanna get your merit badge, do it on someone else.”

“Fine,” Brian spat. “I’ll take you back tomorrow and drop you by the tracks. That cool with you?”

They glared at each other until Dom had to shift his weight.

“Why are you doing this?” Dom rasped. His eyelids looked heavy with pain.

Brian unclenched his teeth. “Why are you being such a dick?”

“Is that your second question?” Dom asked without a hint of humor.

“What’s Mia’s middle name?” Brian asked flatly. It wasn’t a particularly good question since he didn’t actually know the answer, but he figured he could bluff it. Surely that had been in a file somewhere.

“Christina.” Dom’s voice sounded like he was keeping it on a tight leash.

“Tran totaled my…?”

“Mitsubishi Eclipse.” Dom replied. “My Mitsubishi Eclipse.”

“Fine, you’re good.” Brian flipped the alarm forward and cut the lights. Then he flopped back down on the creaking bed and turned to face the opposite wall.

“Uh-uh.” Dom’s voice seemed even deeper in full darkness. “It’s my turn.”

Brian breathed deep. “Go.”

“Are you a cop?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Dom didn’t inflect the question.

“The way shit went down yesterday, it’s kinda hard to nail down the point of no return.” The bitterness felt rancid in Brian’s mouth. “Cops aren’t supposed to…well, pretty much everything I did.”

“So you’re…fired?”

“Yeah,” Brian bit out. “Probably on the hook for some shit too.” If he shut his eyes, he could see Tran’s head lolling, so he kept them open and focused on the yellow-gray shadows that the swaying curtains painted on the wall.

Dom paused for so long; Brian thought he’d drifted off again. Finally, Dom grated in the same tone he’d used beside the pulverized Charger, “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“I’m sorry,” Brian said, sweet as acid. “But that’s four.”

*************************

“Brian, Brian.” Dom’s harsh voice woke him. Brian blinked blearily at the clock, shit, it was almost dawn. He sat up and pulled the clock off the nightstand, vaguely noticing that Dom had managed to stand up.

“Brian!” Dom’s voice cut through his haze. Dom was clutching the wall, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Brian blinked up at him and asked stupidly, “This thing broken?”

“I turned it off.” Dom had been chewing on his lips for a while; they were dark red and glistening. “Look, I need something.”

Brian blinked again and a feeling thrummed through him like someone had just put their hand low down on his stomach. “What?”

Dom had been clenching and unclenching his hands, now he hammered the right fist on the wall. “You had some pills, where are they?”

For pain. He needs something for pain. Brian stood up and patted his pockets. “In the car, I think. Hold on.”

Outside, the sky was gray, misty and cool. Brian felt the asphalt bite into his bare feet as he walked the few steps to the car. He felt very awake all of a sudden. Counting back he realized that he must have slept for at least four hours. He tried to remember the last time that Dom had taken a pill.

Dom was rolling his forehead back and forth on the wall when Brian got back. Guilt filled the back of his throat, so his voice came out rough. “How many do you want?”

A muscle was jumping in Dom’s jaw, “All of them.”

“Let’s start with four.” Brian said with a firmness he didn’t feel.

Dom’s fingers were flexing and relaxing and it didn’t look like something he could control. His skin was still tinged with gray like the pain was poisoning him. “Crush them up or something.”

Brian nodded. He uncrumpled a plastic bag from his shopping excursion, tucked the pills inside and rolled a bottle over them until they were pulverized. As an afterthought, he poured some bottled water into a glass with the white-blue powder.

Dom didn’t exactly snatch the glass from his hand, but he drank off the concoction in less time than it took for Brian to throw the bag away. If it was bitter, Dom never flinched from the taste.

“Better?” Brian wanted to lie back down, but Dom was still blocking the beds.

“No, not really.” Dom kept trying to look down at himself, but apparently some long muscle in his back or neck was rebelling. Dom would tilt his head and wince. Apparently he wasn't quite lucid enough to remember that there was a mirror in the bathroom.

“How long have you been awake?” Brian shook off the urge to get close enough to examine Dom’s pupils. Doubtful that Dom would ever let him get that close, unless he was desperate or angry.

“Since you woke me the last time.” The muscle in Dom’s jaw was still going like a metronome.

Shit. That had been hours ago. Hours while Dom had been alone with his thoughts and no pills. And letting Brian sleep, the stubborn bastard.

Looking at the way Dom’s eyes darted around the walls, Brian got a sense of how little of the ache was physical at this point. Dom needed some relief from it soon or he was going to crack wide.

Brian considered going out and trawling the zona turistica until he found a 24 hour farmacia that catered to pharmacologically-minded tourists. But leaving a pain-maddened Dom alone for that long seemed like yet another bad idea.

“Hold on for a second,” Brian located his shoes and slid into them. The sky outside was shifting from gray to yellow-pink.

Jesse had put the tanks in the hatchback of the Supra, camouflaged under what was supposed to look like a really bitching stereo system. He screwed the valve tight on the left one and reached down to slice through the hose. It split with a low hiss and he pulled the tank free of the bracket easily.

Dom was hunched over on the bed, awkwardly wiping the sweat off his neck with the ragged washcloth. Dom stopped rubbing his abused mouth when Brian set the bottle in front of him. He stared at the tank for a second, then tilted up to look at Brian. “Clever.”

Brian knelt down and turned the valve fully open, keeping the hose pinched shut. “A couple of hits off of this should get you past the worst of it.”

Dom just looked at him until Brian reached out and cupped both hands over Dom’s nose and mouth. It seemed like Dom was going to say something into Brian’s palms, but he just took a deep breath and then another. The cool, moist spray of nitrous mixed with the steam of Dom’s breath made Brian’s palms damp. Brian pinched the hose between his thumb and index finger and pulled back so Dom could take a good gulp of plain air.

He didn’t have to ask if it was working. Dom had already squinted involuntarily while the muscles in his lips tightened on reflex. It almost looked like a smile…the only reason it was called ‘laughing gas’.

He cupped his hands again and this time Dom leaned into them. “Better?”

Dom’s breath ghosted over Brian’s wrists as he took a long hit of the nitrous. Brian could feel the hard muscle in Dom’s cheek and jaw soften.

“Don’t let it go so long next time.” Brian muttered.

Dom winced a little, or maybe it was the gas twitching the nerves in his face. His chest was hitching slightly. "You know, when it hurts like this I can't think."

"I know," Brian pushed his hands back over Dom's face for one last hit. "It'll be better soon."

"No, it won't," Dom pulled back, but his face was already more relaxed and his eyelids were fluttering.

************************

Dom slept and Brian watched him sleep in the scant hours before the shops opened. Trying to work out in his head just how many pills Dom had taken, stretched over how many hours was almost sufficiently distracting from the other thoughts that wanted to crowd up to the forefront of his skull. If he closed his eyes for too long, Johnny Tran’s face rippled up out of the darkness. The feel of his hand gripping his weapon, trigger slick with sweat, arm braced for the recoil...

He could understand what Dom meant. Focusing on lessening Dom's pain kept his own mental anguish at bay, but who knew how long that would last?

He went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. It wasn’t enough. He stripped down for a shower, noting his own bruises and cuts. Distantly, like they were on someone else's body. They hurt vaguely, itched more. He scratched at them absently, waiting for the water to warm up. He rubbed the back of his hand over the stubble on his face and blinked away the sudden sting in his eyes.

He felt a little better after he’d cleaned himself up somewhat. He pulled on a new t-shirt and his old jeans, feeling the cotton dampen and cling to him, since there weren’t any towels left. He was almost out the door, when Dom cleared his throat from his dark corner. Brian paused within reach of the edge of the shadowed bed.

“What are you doing?” Dom had pulled himself up to a seat on the edge of his bed and he hulked there ominously.

“Took a…shower. Gonna go…” Brian made some noncommittal gesture at the door. “Food.”

Dom blinked slowly. “No, I mean…what are you doing?”

Dom either didn’t notice or didn’t care that he was still wrapped in a towel and Ace bandages and little else. Brian shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Keeping you alive, I guess,” Brian almost snapped.

“Why?” Dom cocked his head sideways and asked like he really wanted to know.

“Why not?” Brian’s jaw had tightened up so quickly, it was almost tough to force the words out. He felt his face flush in the heat of a sudden fury, suddenly so angry at Dom that he couldn’t quite look at him. The words most likely to infuriate Dom floated up to his lips. “I’m supposed to protect and serve.”

“Not anymore,” Dom said in a soft rumble and in a ‘Most Likely to Infuriate’ sweepstakes, those words were the clear winners.

Brian blinked through the sudden haze in his mind and abruptly Dom’s eyes were big and glossy and black and very close. Dom was looking up at him with a carefully blank face. Dom seemed to be waiting for something. Brian could see his nostrils flare slightly on every breath.

“You gonna hit me?” Dom raised his eyebrows a little. The words seemed to come from very far away.

Brian looked down at his fists and very deliberately cracked the knuckle in his left, then his right thumb. Maybe he had been. Maybe that was the reason he was here, in good striking distance, inches away. His head felt like a fountain welling up blood. Maybe he had been seconds away from driving his fist into Dom’s abused head, crunching bone into bone. He felt stiff all over with the need to punch something.

“No,” Brian grated out. “I’m not going to hit you.”

Dom’s hands were spread out behind him, bracing himself dark on the white sheets, the right hand taking most of the weight.

Dom held his gaze for a second longer, then dropped his chin to his chest. He rolled his head sideways and looked up at Brian from under his eyelashes. There was some shady calculation in his eyes, almost hidden by something sly and inviting. “You should maybe. I probably deserve it.”

Brian felt like someone had poured sand in his mouth.

“You still carrying?” Incongruously, Dom’s voice filled the room like warm syrup.

“You know I am,” it came out sounding almost normal.

Brian could see the pink of Dom's tongue in the shadow of his mouth. Dom looked at him and Brian could see the naked invitation there, the it would just take a second. He understood precisely what Dom was almost asking for.

Looking into Dom’s heavy eyes, he could almost imagine Dom tilting his cheekbone into the pressure of the barrel, almost nuzzling it.

Brian turned on his heel and left then, slamming the door hard enough to make the building shake. He slammed the car door too, and slammed it into reverse, almost taking out a battered Ford Fiesta on the far side of the lot. He jerked the wheel into four more angry turns before the road opened up enough to let the engine thrum soothe the furious hiccupping beat of his heart.

He drove until the slum turned into a scrubby desert and pulled off onto the shoulder. He got out and slammed the car door half a dozen more times, before the muscle in his shoulder started to really complain and the bright morning sun gave him a headache.

“Shit,” Brian dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. He leaned on the car and breathed and buried everything he was feeling in a very shallow grave.

***********************

The white bag of food had already turned clear with grease by the time he got back. The combined scents of the lime and salt were making Brian almost lightheaded with hunger. Even Dom didn’t protest when Brian set a few carefully unwrapped tortillas on bedside table next to his head. Dom didn’t look toward Brian as he took a few careful sips of the drink Brian gave him. The way he kept his chin tucked down; it almost looked like shame.

Dom heaved himself up into a sitting position to eat. Brian watched carefully, mindful of every wince and twitch. Dom seemed painfully vulnerable: he took deep breaths between bites and sometimes seemed to lose the will to chew. It was obvious that he was just forcing himself to eat. He kept at it doggedly, though, lifting his cup with a hand that barely shook.

“Quit looking at me like that,” Dom mumbled into his tortilla. “Don’t you have some bullshit questions you could be asking?”

Brian felt another splash of quick fury. He took a long gulp of soda to wash it away. Any vulnerability or shame was obviously an illusion. There was some small, mean part of him that whispered that he could and should exploit this situation just a little.

“Why do you hate cops?”

Dom straightened slowly from where he’d curled around his food. He stopped half-heartedly chewing and just looked at Brian.

Brian stared back, guarding his face from any expression.

Dom crumpled what was left of his tortilla and tossed it in the trash with his good hand. “I’m going to answer that with two numbers. You’ve got to guess the questions that the numbers answer.”

“So what numbers?” Brian asked after a second.

“Sixteen and five.” Dom cradled his left arm with his right and leaned back against the wall.

“There are bullshit questions, then there are bullshit answers,” Brian shifted on the bed until he was mimicking Dom’s pose. “This isn’t how the game is played.” They stared at each other across the room.

“It's a game?” Dom cocked his head and looked the dare so hard into Brian’s eyes that Brian had to hold himself tight to keep from shivering.

“Sixteen: how old you were when you got your license. Five: how old you were when you first drove a car.” Brian said quickly.

“Nope,” Dom cocked his head the other way. “But it’s a nice thought.” When Dom mocked, it sounded like a purr.

“Quit fucking with me,” Brian said without moving his lips.

Dom raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth, then seemed to reconsider whatever he was going to say. “Sixteen was how old I was when I was first braced by the cops. Five is the number of times it’s happened since then.”

“Collect a record, shit happens.” Brian crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“No record back then, you must know that.” Dom leaned forward a little. “Didn’t like my face, I guess.”

Dom rocked back and rolled his lower lip under his teeth. “That’s the eastside reality: LAPD never wants justice, just us.”

“What do you want me to say, that I’m sorry?” Brian tried to bring his voice down; it sounded unnaturally loud.

“We’re just talking,” Dom leaned back again. “You asked me, I told you.”

“Is that why you were jacking the trucks?” Brian couldn’t help but sneer a little. “Just wanted to fulfill everyone’s expectations?”

“Am I fulfilling yours?” Dom enunciated very distinctly. “Officer O’Conner?”

Brian turned his head up and blinked at the ceiling.

“That move…you know, where they grab your arm and they stick their thumb just…there.” Dom pointed at the faint blue veins inside his wrist. “And then they twist your arm up so your fingers are almost brushing your shoulder blades…” Dom’s right hand made a graceful twisting motion. He tilted his head and locked eyes with Brian. “They must teach you that special, don’t they?”

“It's better than a sleeper hold,” Brian said with a coolness he didn’t feel. “Or a Taser.”

Dom showed all his teeth for a second, “Oh if you say so. Isn’t there something else they teach you, something like ‘a person is innocent until pro…’”

“I get it.” Brian interrupted. “It’s not exactly a subtle point you’re making.”

Dom’s eyes glittered and his lips curled up, “Oh yeah, subtle and the LAPD, that’s a match made in heaven, fucking cake and ice cream, peanut butter and chocolate…”

“Just shut the fuck up already.” Brian snarled furiously, and to his surprise Dom did.

They glared at each other for what felt like an hour. Dom looked away first, but it didn’t feel like a concession. It felt like a boxer regrouping for another round. Brian braced himself.

“I knew you weren’t what you said you were,” Dom said unexpectedly.

Brian swallowed wrong and coughed. He tried to cover it. “Yeah? When?”

Dom rolled his head on his neck, looking like he was trying to find a comfortable position. “When Tran trashed the Eclipse.”

Brian turned the memory back and forth in his head and came up empty. “How’s that?”

“Cool as you are,” Dom pointed up at the ceiling. “No one would be that cool if they’d tuned that baby. Jesse would have fucking cried, just for starters. But you were subzero. Ergo…” Dom turned and looked straight at Brian. “…it wasn’t your car.”

“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” Brian licked the roof of his mouth which was still bone-dry. “So why’d you let me hang around?”

Dom’s face softened out of a scowl for a second. He pressed his lips together, then shrugged. “You got any more pills?”

Brian was opening his mouth to say that Dom would get his pills when Brian got his answer, but the tight lines in the corners of Dom’s eyes kept him silent.

*************************

“Wake up dude,” Brian grabbed the edge of the mattress and shook it. Dom’s weight kept it taut so it didn’t give very much.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Dom’s voice sounded like rocks thrown into deep, still water. Kind of echo-y and bleak.

“Yeah, well…” Brian sighed. He himself had been brooding fruitlessly for an hour. His frown felt permanently etched into his forehead. “Question time.”

“Quickly,” Dom looked like something off the top of a sarcophagus. His arms were folded over his chest and he blinked at the ceiling.

“What was the first thing that we did to the Supra?” Car questions were always soothing and safe. If you didn’t think about Jesse.

“Suspension,” Dom said dully. “After the bodywork, which doesn’t really count, since we outsourced.”

“What was the last thing we did to it?”

“Paint.” Dom squinted. “Decals.”

“Why were we racing? There at the end?” Brian asked lightly and carefully.

Dom tilted his head slightly and slid his eyes over. “What else were we going to do, Brian?”

The sincerity in Dom’s voice left Brian feeling oddly chastened. “Is that your first question?” Brian took refuge in a lame evasion.

“It is my turn.” Dom slurred a little; the meds and exhaustion and stress were obviously each taking their cut. “My turn,” he repeated more belligerently.

Shit, but Brian was getting tired of hearing that. “Okay. Go for it.” He tried to settle himself on the bed more comfortably and look unconcerned.

Dom turned and just looked at him for long minutes, and Brian was getting ready to crack and tell him to just ask already, when Dom cleared his throat.

“Who do you love the most, your mom or your dad?”

Brian snorted. “What kind of a fucking question is that? Who do you love the most, your mom—”

“You got your three. My turn. Answer.”

Brian exhaled through his nose. “Mom.”

Dom nodded slightly, then kept nodding to himself like he was thinking of something else or maybe it hurt to stay completely still. Brian took a page out of Dom’s book and folded his arms over his chest. Dom’s odd question left him feeling like there was a belt stretched from his throat to the base of his spine and it was fraying and just about ready to break. He desperately, desperately needed to think about something else…anything else.

“Dom,” The word was out, loosed before he even realized he’d spoken. The grayness was coming closer, any moment it was going to take him.

Dom just turned to look at him and his face was mild, if still sculpted by pain and pressure. Dom raised his eyebrows.

“What are you thinking about?” Brian asked quickly, hoping that Dom just wouldn’t shut him down again as over his quota.

But Dom just bowed his head and his mouth almost twisted into a small grin. “I was just thinking of something my mom used to say.”

“Yeah?” Brian turned completely onto his side. “What’d she used to say?”

“Pride goeth before destruction…” Dom took a deep breath. “And a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Brian lay back down and looked at the ceiling. “Isn’t that from the Bible?”

“I didn’t say she said it first.” Dom said, sounding slightly testy. “It was just something she used to say.”

“Relax, relax.” Brian pinched the bridge of his nose and realized he felt a little better.

“So what are you thinking about?” Dom sounded really close all of a sudden and Brian looked over to where Dom had rucked himself up the headboard. Dom was looking down at him and it made the back of his neck tingle.

“Nothing,” Brian said quickly, without thinking.

Dom raised one eyebrow dubiously and opened his mouth, probably to remind Brian that it was his goddamned turn, so Brian filled in before he could start.

“I’m just kinda… trying to…” Brian sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know how to say this.”

“Use lots of words,” Dom said quietly. Brian couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.

“It’s just…” Brian licked his lips nervously. “We can’t go back. I mean, we really can’t. Under no circumstances. You will go to jail. I will go to jail. Not good times. As far as LA is concerned, we might as well be dead.”

“Yeah,” Dom said slowly. He didn't nod.

“Yeah,” Brian sighed again. “And I just can’t…quite…I don’t know how to….I don’t know where we’re going to go from here. I can’t see the way back, I can’t see the way forward. It’s like we’re trapped in some kind of weird limbo.”

Brian watched as Dom’s shoulders twitched like he was chuckling. "It's not funny."

"I'm not actually laughing." Dom stroked his own closed eyelids with his undamaged hand. Dom looked at him suddenly and Brian almost flinched from the heat of his gaze. “Make no mistake, Brian. This isn’t limbo. This is hell.”

Brian lay still and tuned his breath to Dom's. The short, shallow breaths left him feeling unsatisfied and on edge, but still dulled and stupid. The smell of the room was starting to be noticeable, sweat, blood, the reek of pain.

Brian said softly, “My mom used to say something.”

“Yeah?” Dom took a deep breath and looked patient. “What’d she say?”

“She said that when you’re going through hell, you should keep going.”

Dom blinked a little and muttered, "Smart lady."

******************

"Just a few more minutes," Brian said, unscrewing the bottle of water so that Dom could take a swig. Dom was sweating, little beads on the top of his lip and forehead, big gouts of dampness stained his shirt in the hollow of his neck and underarms. Dom kept his eyes closed and didn't even bother to nod at Brian's words. Sitting in one position for (Brian checked the clock) almost ninety minutes was more than most people probably could have done at this point. Brian bit the inside of his mouth to quell the temptation to tilt Dom's eyes into the light and examine them.

"Seňor?" Brian looked up quickly, but the nurse was signaling to an older man beside them who had a blood-soaked rag clutched above his right eye. Brian pulled his feet back as the guy carefully navigated the row of molded plastic seats.

His jaw hurt. He suspected that he’d been grinding his teeth as he slept. Though just closing his eyes and lying still put him in a black hole that he couldn't really call sleeping. He woke up feeling like someone had stuffed him in a box and kicked him in the jaw a couple of times. Brian pushed it aside.

Dom had started breathing heavily as morning turned into afternoon and hadn’t protested too vigorously when Brian had tentatively suggested a hospital visit. He’d blacked out for a little while after getting settled into the car, the memory of which was still making Brian’s hands shake.

"I'm sorry this is taking so long." Brian said tonelessly to the floor. There seemed to be no good place to put his eyes. The clinic's waiting room was filled with people in various iterations of torn up, from the obvious (a man in the corner grimacing and clutching his arm, flanked by his co-workers) to the subtle (a single woman who stared straight ahead, oblivious to the tears streaming down her face).

"You have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility." Dom blinked and opened his eyes. He seemed very awake all of a sudden. His eyes were shiny like he was in the first stages of a happy drunk. Punch-drunk on pain and painkillers.

Brian yawned. "Yeah, probably." He wished for a moment he could join the little boys of the large family on their left and lie full-length on the floor. The whole process of getting Dom up, dressed and in the car had sprung Brian's nerves like over-stressed metal. He felt like just yawning would put cracks in him.

The nurse appeared again, shielded with a clipboard. The silent, weeping woman was swept away. Dom's eyes followed the nurse. Brian suddenly noticed that the woman looked uncannily like Mia.

"She'll be fine," he said softly, easily reading Dom's thoughts.

Dom cut his eyes over and he looked like he was trying to smile and frown at the same time. "I know." There was a longish pause. "Probably better off without me around for awhile." Another pause and then Dom spoke almost under his breath. "She never liked it."

“Yeah, I remember,” Brian said thoughtlessly.

That piqued Dom’s interest, cut through his pain preoccupation. “Yeah...she said something?”

Brian swallowed, realizing it was too late to backtrack. “She said something about you wanting her to become a doctor so that she could put you back together again for free when you crashed.”

Dom’s face was blank for a moment and then his eye twitched and his entire face twisted into a grimace. “Ouch.”

“I’m sorry. I didn't mean...I'm not...trying to…,” Brian said helplessly. “That’s just what she said.”

“Oh, I believe you,” Dom swallowed hard and made another one of those twisted, pained half-smiles “You know, ever since you started telling me the truth, things have just....sucked. I kinda wish you would start lying to me again.”

Brian folded his arms and squeezed his chest. Dom's casual, almost joking remark made him feel like he'd seen his own headstone. “I don’t think I can do that anymore.”

“No?” Dom cocked his head. “You sure?”

“Nah, man.” Brian ducked his head a little. Bantering with Dom felt weird and weirdly familiar. “We’re one hundred percent from here on out.”

Dom looked like he would say something, but after a minute he shrugged and muttered. “Guess I could always go back to lying to myself.”

“Doesn’t strike me as that’s you, man.” Brian said.

"Oh, that's me. That's all me." Dom said cryptically.

Brian wanted to ask or say something, but just then the nurse showed up and it was their turn.

They shuffled into a narrow corridor that seemed to be divided up into even tinier cubicles. Dom trailed the nurse into one and turned and shook his head slightly at Brian when he tried to follow. Brian stood for a second uncertainly before a drably dressed woman with another clipboard waved him into a battered chair in an alcove.

Brian took a deep breath and slouched until his head nudged the wall. He started to count the seconds between his breaths, then suddenly it was like a switch was flipped and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He was at the top of the arch on a rollercoaster and his entire body tightened against the vertigo and nausea and the never-ceasing pull of gravity.

He closed his eyes because it did no good to have them open: the memory of Johnny Tran’s bike sliding, sliding, sliding until it pulled up with a horizontal bounce overlaid the bland cinderblock of the real world. Johnny’s back had snapped like a whip when the first bullet caught him. Brian could still feel the recoil in his arm, the staccato jolt. He hadn’t been thinking, he’d been thinking that it was stupid, he couldn’t hit a moving target at that range, this was like something out of some stupid cop show…

His vision was starting to get funny, kind of blurry and gray. He felt someone nudge him insistently and he blinked to clear his eyes. A woman stood in front of him, holding something out to him. He took it, feeling the crinkle of thick paper in his fingers. A paper bag. The texture felt odd in his rapidly numbing fingers.

The doctor or nurse frowned at him anxiously for a second, took the bag back and opened it with a professional wrist snap. Cupping the bag’s mouth in the circle of her hand, she pressed it to Brian’s face with a firmness that pushed his head into the wall. After a few breaths, he got the sense of it and circled his hand around hers. Some deep breaths of the recycled air and the grayness started to dim. The drab colors soaked back into the corridor in front of him.

By the time he’d stopped hyperventilating, the nurse or doctor had vanished again. The hall was empty. He was alone, holding the bag.

**********************

Dom's shoulders seemed straighter when he emerged. The white of Dom's sling looked almost green under the fluorescent lights. Brian expected for the nurse to spend some half-hearted minutes trying to get Dom to check himself in or go to a proper hospital, but she seemed to recognize the futility of it better than he did. She fussed with her clipboard for a moment, took their money, then left.

Brian followed a step behind for the first hundred yards out of the hospital, before he realized what a tenuous hold Dom was keeping on his walk. Dom was pacing himself very carefully and it made his steps slow. Dom paused for a second, pressing one hand, then one hip into a streetlight. Brian stopped and Dom reached out blindly, transferring most of his weight to Brian’s shoulder.

“Car,” Dom gasped, like maybe that was all he could manage. Gently, Brian tried to jerk more of Dom’s weight onto his side and they moved onward like the end of a grueling marathon.

From the front stoop of a shop, an older couple watched them crossing the street, clucking at each other disapprovingly. Brian stiffened, then realized that they must just look like two no-account gringos already stumbling drunk before the sun went down. He relaxed a little.

Dom slumped into the front seat and pressed his lips together so hard that they disappeared.

“She give you a script?” Brian asked. His own head was throbbing with what felt like a quart of extra blood.

Dom held out the slip of paper in two fingers silently. Brian put the car in gear.

After he filled the prescription for high-octane pain relief, Brian hesitated for a moment, watching Dom doze through the windscreen. Dom was way too big for the car; Brian could barely see the seat behind him. He remembered that Dom had seemed to fit perfectly the day they’d raced up PCH. It was like Dom had swollen between that day and this one….like rage and grief had inflated him.

Dom managed to get the pills into his mouth and even roused himself enough to notice where Brian was driving. “Not back to that place.”

Brian shifted in his seat uneasily. “Why?”

“Why not?” Dom tried to give him a fierce look, but it came out weak. Brian shrugged and got onto something that claimed to be a highway and Dom watched him for a while before he relaxed.

"How are you doing?" Brian asked just to be talking.

"How fucked is that question?" Dom returned. "I mean, the doing part. Usually, if you've got the time to ask, you aren't doing shit."

"How are you?" Brian tried again.

Dom cut his eyes over sourly. "Still alive."

"Where are we going?" Brian asked hurriedly to change the subject.

"Away," Dom said, pointing one finger at the horizon.

"Let's mix it up a little...." Brian suggested, huffing a half-sigh. "Why don't you ask me questions."

"Yeah," Dom said, but then showed no inclination to actually ask something. Brian tried to engage all his energy in driving, but as the road stretched straight and empty before them, he found that vertiginous feeling creeping up on him again.

After twenty miles, Dom asked, "Vince is going to jail, isn't he?"

Brian raised his shoulder. "Depends."

"Don't lie to me," Dom didn't bother putting any kind of warning note in his voice.

"I don't know. There are a lot of variables." Brian kept his thumbs hooked over the steering wheel while he spread his fingers. "But yeah, he could go down."

Dom nodded. He picked fretfully at the edge of the bandage where it brushed his wrist.

Brian rubbed the back of his head unconsciously. "But he is one tough motherfucker, is Vince."

"Nah, not as much as you might think," Dom said unexpectedly. Brian looked sideways to catch the shadow of Dom’s grin. Dom continued. "I mean, really, that much macho posturing, don't you think it's a little over the top for a real badass?"

"Dunno," Brian checked his mirrors, road was still almost empty. "Not being a real badass, I would not know."

"He was a real sweet kid," Dom chewed his lower lip. "When we were in middle school and way too cool for everything, he'd still hold Mia's hand when she crossed the street. He didn't care if anyone laughed. I remember trying to explain that to my mom once."

"Why?" Brian dared a glance over.

Dom caught his eye. "Because she thought he was a bad influence."

Brian nodded.

"And here all along," Dom suddenly dug a finger under the bandage, his eyes flickered with the sudden pain. "It was me."

"Dom..." Brian started, unsure of how he was going to finish.

"He's going away because of me, Brian." Dom massaged his forehead with stiffened fingers. "Nothing you're about to say makes that any less true."

"I'm not..." Brian trailed off. "Look, you didn't have a gun to his head..."

"No, what I did was worse," Dom knocked his fist into the door panel and winced. "He was my brother."

"Yeah..." Brian said slowly. "But he still didn't have to say yes."

"Christ, Brian, that's..." Dom seemed to swallow whatever he was about to say. "...that's...unrealistic. Where we come from, a friend asks you to do something, you do it."

"Where I come from, we do the same thing." Brian said. "And the moment we say yes, we accept any and all consequences."

"What are you saying?" Dom shook his head. "He trusted me to see him through it...he didn't think..."

"Dom, he jumped onto a speeding 18-wheeler." Brian was firm. "Maybe he never said that he was willing to die for you, but actions speak louder than goddamn words."

Dom sat back, leaning hard on his good hand.

Brian continued. "Just because you couldn't accept the consequences for him, for any of them, it doesn't mean that they didn't know what they were doing. They knew what they were risking and they did it anyway."

"They?" Dom was turning that gray-pale again. Brian hoped it was just the fading light.

"Vince. Letty. Leon." Brian said tonelessly. "Jesse."

Another five miles vanished.

"And you too?" Dom asked.

Brian just looked past him and pointed, "That looks like a good place to stop."

************************

Brian went through all the motions that he had…just yesterday or the day before…and got them another dark, slightly shabby room. This one was full of the deep, chilled almost-scent of the Pacific. Dom proclaimed it acceptable by limping in and collapsing on the bed.

The tiny town's one restaurant was closed, but there was a taqueria around a bend in the road. Brian wasn’t the slightest bit close to any feeling that could be described as hunger and he was positive that Dom was even further away, but the sun was in the right spot so it was time to eat. The car needed gas and they needed food. Something to fill up their inner spaces.

Brian found himself making an inventory as he trudged up to the awning of the trailer, blasted by the aggressive scent of onions fried in lard. He could still read. He could even read in Spanish, the hand-drawn sign of all that was on offer at this humble establishment. He could still speak and be understood. He could still do enough math to hand over the right number of pesos. Somewhere, somehow he’d acquired pesos and that was something else he could do.

He walked back to the car, chewing absently on one of the generous, saltcrispy nachos that they’d thrust into the bag. Enough food for now and later. He still had all his teeth, he could still chew. He could still choreograph all the movements that sent the spark from the ignition, fed the cylinders their required fuel. He could still drive.

On the short trip back, he continued making a very detailed inventory of all the things that he hadn’t given up or hadn’t been taken away. It was soothing, like the crash of the breakers on the beach.

******************

Dom was standing up when Brian opened the door. They shared a quick glance before Brian shouldered himself fully into the room. Brian put the bag down on the small table inside the door, making it obvious that he wasn’t here to force anyone to do anything. Food is here, eat or not.

Dom ate at the table. He seemed hungry for the first time. Brian had turned to face the window as he chewed absently, but he watched Dom in his peripheral vision. Dom looked like he was having some kind of internal conversation with a third party. He would pause and blink upward occasionally.

After the meal, Dom moved heavily into the bathroom, but didn’t shut the door. Another audible grunt and Brian could hear the taps rush open, water gushing into the bath.

“Hey,” Brian moved toward the bathroom door and spoke loud enough to be heard over the water. “Can I take a leak before you get too, ah…?”

Dom turned back, blank-faced, his right arm already snaked out of his new t-shirt. The cotton of the shirt was still too dense and new to cling, but it looked like Dom was still girding himself up to do the quick over-the-head, off-the-recently-dislocated shoulder jerk and tug. On autopilot, Brian plucked at the collar and delicately lifted the shirt over Dom’s bent head and eased it over the cast.

Dom half-nodded and they switched places. Brian did his business, vaguely aware that the door was still open, that the intimacy in the room was almost as thick as the steam. Dom had gotten his boots unlaced and was pre-occupied with shedding them. Brian shook himself, refastened and washed his hands, snatching them back from the basin tap that was already boiling hot.

“You having second thoughts?” Dom was braced on the doorjamb and Brian could almost imagine that a tiny hint of humor colored his voice. Brian paused for a second, glanced at the towel rack and just shook droplets of water off his hands. He wasn’t sure what Dom was asking, wasn’t sure if an answer was required. He hoped not.

Dom wasn’t moving. He was leaning hard on his right side and Brian doubted that if he came up on the sinister side that Dom would pivot like a swinging door. He wiped his hands across the front of his jeans and sidled forward anyway. “You gonna let me through?”

Dom dropped his eyes and his lip twisted a little, whether it was in pain or amusement, Brian couldn’t tell. “You didn’t answer me.” Dom had absorbed the rules of the game; he didn’t waste a potential question on follow up.

Brian knew that the soft voices aside, this was a challenge, a little test of dominance and will. He moved up even closer, putting all his fear and uncertainty into a hidden place. He was almost toe to toe with Dom now, thus Dom would have to tilt his head ever-so-slightly to be eye to eye. He let his eyes harden; hoping Dom would get that this wasn’t the time to push.

Dom drew his eyes up to look Brian full in the face when it struck Brian that he’d made a tactical error, a stupid rookie mistake. Dom was pretty well-versed in dominance games, after all.

“Cold feet?” Dom murmured and smoothly shifted his elbow from the door to Brian’s shoulder. Brian froze, the weight of Dom’s bare arm held him motionless. Dom grinned crookedly and squeezed a proprietary hand over the back of Brian’s neck. “Cold feet, shit.” At this point their foreheads were almost touching. Dom continued, “By now I bet you’re cold all over.”

Mia had leaned on him like this once. The memory made him shiver. The way her hair brushed his neck, sleek, smooth and heavy as a horsetail. The vanilla-floral scent of her. How light and easy it was to take all her weight as she relaxed and leaned into his shoulder, trusting as a child.

Dom smelled thick and hot, sweat overlaying the vague iodine-bandage scent. He was relaxed, but not enough to let Brian feel all his weight. After a long second, Dom ruffled the back of his hair like it was of no consequence and limped a few steps to the bath and Brian unfroze.

********************

While Dom soaked up enough warm wetness to cocoon himself from the throb of his battered ribs, Brian anesthetized himself with television and tequila. It wasn’t working so well. He had never really noticed before how loud the pop of gunfire resounded on primetime television. He switched around until he found something that looked like ‘Dynasty’ in Spanish.

Dom emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam. The white of his cast contrasted starkly with the parti-colored bruises down his side. Brian just looked at him for a second. Dom seemed to have sharpened appreciably, even just in the last hour. That prescription must have been hot stuff, because Dom almost looked relaxed. Not like someone who could barely walk unassisted four hours ago. Dom gazed back at Brian as if seeing him for the first time.

Dom dried himself off as best he could one-handed, then turned and paid what looked like serious attention to the TV. One of the bulbs was blown on the side table lamp and Dom was half in shadow.

Brian shifted uncomfortably and considered what would be a sufficiently unmockable way of saying ‘put some clothes on, for Christ’s sake.’ It was hopeless. Dom was fully unconscious of social conventions like that. He probably regarded his body as just another broken tool that needed taping up. Dom was the kind of guy who invited strangers back to a messy house; he wasn’t going to get coy just because Brian wanted him to.

“You okay?” Brian bit his tongue a little. For some reason, he couldn’t seem to shake this constant need for reassurance.

Dom pulled the corner of his lip up in a familiar sneer, punctuated by a familiar snort. “I’ve been better.”

Brian thought about responding in kind, but then just took another sip. “Mind if I sack out for a while?”

Dom grimaced again, “I’m not your dad.” He gave Brian a longer look. “You’re not my nurse.”

Inexplicably, Brian felt his face get hot, he mumbled ‘whatever’ while shucking off his shoes.

He jerked his shirt over his head, contemplated taking a shower for a nanosecond then realized that it would probably sober him up. Dom’s eyes had sharpened still further for some reason.

“What is this?” Dom asked softly. He sat down on the other bed and pointed at his forearm. Brian looked at where Dom was pointing, then realized that he was supposed to be looking at his own forearm.

Brian glanced down at the long, abraded bruise, then shrugged. “Dunno. Relic of the jump, maybe.”

“Jump?” Dom sounded blank.

“From Mia’s car to the truck?” Brian hazarded. “From the truck to her car?”

Dom nodded slowly. “Anywhere else?”

He had niggling little cuts on the back of his neck and arms from broken glass. His knees and elbows were scraped and raw from leaping back and forth on unforgiving metal and fiberglass. The outside of his left thigh ached almost like it was burned. Brian spread his hand over the most shredded skin on his arm and shrugged. Dom’s slowly returning observation skills were a good sign, as long as they weren’t used on Brian.

Brian dropped his eyes and yanked off his socks. Dom sighed and rubbed his mouth and chin with his good hand. After a second, Brian dared a glance up, hoping that he’d successfully closed the subject.

Abruptly his perspective shifted and the left side of his face exploded in eye-watering pain. He blinked down at the floor in disbelief.

He looked back up at Dom and remembered to shut his mouth. “Did you just slap me?”

Belatedly, anger welled up and he surged to his feet wanting to put Dom’s punk ass through the floor. The rage was two steps ahead of his brain because even injured, Dom was still heavier and balanced. Dom was also standing too close so when Brian stood up, Dom just shoved him back down with the hard side of his cast. If it hurt, Dom wasn’t showing.

“You got all your answers,” Dom was snarling at him. “You owe me that much.”

Brian stuck his tongue into his hot cheek. “You are fucking delusional if you think I owe you a goddamned thing.”

“An answer!” Dom was so close, Brian could only see discrete parts of his face. An eye, half of his nose, cheekbone. “You can’t stick it to me like you’ve been and then bitch out.”

“Here!” Brian pointed at his stinging face. “It hurts here, you self-righteous prick.”

Dom’s face tightened and he shifted his weight back marginally. His right knee was still pressed between Brian’s, so the edge of the bed took most of the weight.

“You piss me off like no one else.” Dom growled. “Which is really saying something.”

Sensing the moment, Brian darted a hand around the back of Dom’s left knee and jerked while shoving the heel of his palm into Dom’s diaphragm. Dom went down like a tree falls; he landed flat on his back on the opposite bed with a startled grunt.

“Likewise,” Brian had to stand up to enjoy the victory and it made the blood rush to his head. His knees almost buckled, but Dom wasn’t in a position to notice.

Dom was blinking at the ceiling and gasping those short little half-breaths. Brian abruptly felt worse than if Dom had punched him.

“Hey, I’m…” Brian moved around to the other side of Dom’s bed to get a better look at his face.

Dom held up a restraining hand and rasped. “If you say you’re sorry, I will kill you right now. It might take me a while, but I will.”

“I wasn’t going…” Brian stopped when he realized he was lying. He braced himself cautiously and sat on the floor. He rubbed his face while Dom wheezed.

“I need to know,” Dom said finally.

“I’m fine,” Brian tried to put a reassuring note in his voice.

“I thought you were going…” Dom still sounded ragged. “…to stop lying to me.”

“Oh shit,” Brian almost laughed and he had to wrap his arms around his chest to stop himself.

“I need to know.” Dom repeated. Brian could feel Dom’s breath on his ear.

“Fucked myself pretty good on the first try. At least I didn’t break my knee.” Brian pointed at his left thigh. “Some cuts, but nothing big. Just scrapes and bruises. I did worse learning to skateboard.”

Dom was silent for a long time. Brian had time to wonder just why it had been so hard to say the first time. He turned to look down at Dom cautiously, their heads were too close together and the angle was weird. Dom was scrutinizing him thoroughly, still clutching his abused abdomen.

“Don’t hit me,” Brian said softly.

Dom winced and almost looked sheepish. “Don’t hold out on me.”

“You got questions, ask ‘em.” Brian steeled himself.

Dom grunted, “Think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.”

Brian raised his eyebrows and cut his eyes sideways. “Okaaaay.”

“Okay smartass.” Dom shook his head. “When did you leave home?”

“How old was I, you mean?” Brian was kind of surprised, that seemed like a softball unless it had a sting in the tail. Dom nodded.

“Nineteen.” Brian stopped and corrected himself. “Nineteen the final time. I kinda…tried it out a couple of times.”

“What’s the stupidest thing you ever did?”

Brian paused. He tried to say lightly, “You think I could pick just one?”

“Don’t be funny,” Dom muttered. “It hurts to laugh.”

“How about, ‘I’m doing it?’” It made his mouth a little sour with panic to say it aloud.

Dom just nodded slowly, “Better.”

“Do I get a turn?”

“Who says I’m finished?”

“You had three.” The rules were now ironclad.

Dom rolled his eyes and his head exaggeratedly. “Whatever.”

Since he was already kind of freaked, he upped the stakes a little. “Why am I still here?”

Dom rolled his head back and looked out from under heavy lids. "Who's gonna drive if you're not here, Brian?"

"I'm not buying it, D." Brian returned. "Feels…” He rubbed his thumb over his cheek. “Like you’re bouncing back. You could drive to Tierra del Fuego with that arm."

"Maybe." Dom let Brian feel the weight of his regard for a long minute. “It’s gonna sound weird.”

Brian jerked his chin. "Hit me."

"It's....relaxing to have you around. I don't have to explain anything to you 'cause you were there." Dom cocked his head. "Buying that?"

"Maybe," Brian answered. He felt disappointed, but he wasn't quite sure why.

"The only thing worse than this entire situation would be having to explain this entire situation." Dom said sincerely. Brian stood up slowly and leaned on the wall.

"Or it might also be because you always do and say the very last thing I expect," Dom continued. "Keeps it real."

Dom pushed himself into the right position on the bed and his eyes dragged shut. He wasn’t sleeping, just breathing. Brian opened his mouth to protest and then decided to quit while he was ahead.

***************

Brian woke up almost nauseated by the fractured half-memory of his last dream. His thoughts were full of flames and sun; he was sweating and shivering all at once. Dom was up, standing by the window. Shirtless in the early morning light, Dom was scratching lightly underneath his cast and trying to flex his left arm. The way he was holding his hands made him look like some statue in a church, a saint pronouncing benediction on those who would martyr him.

Brian thought: And on the third day, He arose from the dead.

When he stirred, Dom turned to look at him. Brian slid his feet onto the floor and fumbled for his jeans self-consciously. “You want something to eat?”

Dom shook his head and looked grimly thoughtful.

“You wanna leave?”

Another headshake.

“So what do you want?” Brian knew he was leaving himself open to a rant or a diatribe with a question like that, but Dom just stared at him and said quietly, “Mia.”

Brian pressed the heels of his palms into the hollow of his eye sockets. It felt like someone had left their spare ice pick back there, poking into the soft part of his skull.

“Just to know she’s okay.” Dom’s voice came from the darkness.

“So call,” Brian started digging around in his pockets for all the peso coins he had accumulated. He dumped a pile on the table. “They probably sell phone cards downstairs somewhere.”

“You think it’d be okay?” Dom was watching his face very carefully.

It took Brian a second to realize that Dom had been standing around waiting for his approval. The feeling was heady and made him feel slightly cruel. He raised one shoulder. “I’m not your dad. Or your nurse.”

Dom blinked very slowly, licked his lower lip, and said in a voice that promised trouble. “Would it be safe?”

“No.” Brian leaned back on his hands. “Probably not.”

Dom’s face kind of crumpled and he quickly looked back out the window.

Brian took a deep breath and shrugged into his t-shirt. He jerked his shoes on. “Back in a minute.” He swept the pile of coins into his palm. He slammed the door on whatever Dom was saying.

He wasn’t going to find a pay phone that worked, or at least not one that took change. She wasn’t going to be at home, anyway. She was going to hang up on him. There were so many reasons that this little errand would not succeed. Except that it did. When her voice came on the line, a colorless ‘Hello’, he winced.

“Is that you?” she asked after a long moment of silence.

He clenched the phone tighter. He could practically hear the click as the trap and trace warrant came into effect even though he knew he was imagining it.

“Is it you?”

His heart started to beat sideways as her voice tightened on that last syllable.

“Yeah.” He said softly.

There was a little hitching sound and then she said, “Is it true?”

Christ, this was going to happen earlier than he ever imagined. “No, not like you think.”

“You know what I’m thinking?” Again, it was a ghost’s voice. It seemed to suck something out of him; he felt completely hollow inside.

It crashed down on him at that moment. If Dom had had some kind of contingency plan that was half-implemented. If Jesse and Letty had had instructions to scatter and not get in touch if it all went south. Jesse dead in front of her, Vince as good as. She was the queen on the chessboard, watching her knights get swept away.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I just needed some time.”

She didn’t say anything to that. For a moment he thought he’d lost the connection, then he realized that she was crying. He felt a tremor in his own jaw. Hollow things crush easily.

“So it’s not true,” She sniffed hard. He was pathetically grateful for her oblique statements; of course, she would have realized that someone was listening for clues. He hoped it wasn’t Tanner.

“No,” He tried to think of something else to say. “No.”

“I wanted it to stop,” she said unexpectedly. “But not like this.”

“Yeah,” he said and then the connection terminated.

It was still early. No one was around, so he sat down on the pavement next to the phone until he could stand again.

****************

“You called her,” Dom looked at him expectantly.

“Yeah,” Brian sat down on the bed and then stood up. “She’s fine.” He brushed his palms over his jeans. Christ, every half hour a quiz, every hour a test and now the final fucking exam. He couldn’t seem to stop fidgeting. His heart was beating in a funny tempo.

Dom cocked his head and looked suspicious. “If she’s so fine, why’re you twitching like you just lost your stash of meth?”

“I….” Brian thought about suggesting breakfast again. His stomach tightened painfully and he tasted bile.

A cascade of expressions poured over Dom’s face. His hand was warm on Brian’s shoulder. “You’re scaring me.”

Brian swallowed a sob. “I really didn’t want it to go down like it did.”

“You think I did?” Dom should have sounded mad, but he didn’t. He tightened his grip a little. “What’s got you so freaked all of a sudden?”

“I’m not…” Brian blinked. He wasn’t even looking at Dom, but he could feel Dom’s scowl. This was going to be the battle royale; Dom looked strong enough to fight again, finally.

“We keep forgetting someone.” Brian pulled away from Dom’s hand. His skin felt so cold, Dom’s hand was almost burning him.

“Who?” Dom’s voice hit an especially low note.

“The truck driver,” Brian tried to suck in more air. It felt as thin as a mountaintop.

“The trucker who tried to kill us all over consumer electronics?” Dom’s eyes darkened, “Him I haven’t forgotten.”

“No,” Brian continued. “Not him. The other one.” He had to turn away from Dom’s unwavering, button-black eyes.

“The guy you launched the Charger off. Nearly crushed his cab.” Brian sat down. “You remember him now?”

Dom rolled his lips under his teeth until they went white. “Don’t tell me he’s...”

Brian stood up again. It wasn’t so obvious that he was shaking if he just kept moving. “He got pretty banged up. Hit his head.”

“But he was okay,” Dom reached for his shoulder again, but Brian shrugged away.

“I think so. I didn’t stay to make sure.” Brian made himself keep talking. “There were sirens everywhere. I just needed more time.”

“Brian, sit down.” Dom kept trying to catch his eyes, but Brian couldn’t seem to stop his little circuit around the room.

“I can’t.” Brian could feel himself blinking, but it felt like his eyes had been exposed for too long, they were dry and tight. “I got you into the car…”

Dom nodded slowly.

“I put a bullet in the Charger.” He definitely couldn’t sit still to say that. “Figured you hadn’t touched that second tank and it went up like the Chinese New Year.”

“To distract them,” Dom looked astonishingly calm.

“Yeah. Yeah. Then the trucker came over to me, to us and he said, ‘shit, he looks bad do you think he’s going to make it?” Brian paused. “You were pretty out of it by then.” And there was blood all over you.

“And you did something?” Dom prompted after a minute.

“No,” Brian said faintly. “I said something.”

“Brian?” Dom prompted again after another minute. Brian tried to swallow and it didn’t quite work. Dom tapped him lightly on his back while he finished coughing. Dom was kind of nudging him and making him sit down. The comforter was some shiny polyester and very slippery. Brian wanted to slide right down to the floor, but it felt like Dom was almost holding him in place.

“Brian, what did you say?” Dom’s voice sounded distant.

“I said that I thought you were dead.” Brian muttered. “Because I knew he would remember. He was out of it, he was going into shock, but he would remember the Charger burning and that I’d…what I’d said.”

“So he’d tell them that.” Again, Dom sounded muted and distant.

“And I….that’s what I told my sergeant too.” Brian kept sucking hard on the air, but it wasn’t doing any good. “I…panicked a little and I needed time.” He clutched at Dom’s words like a life preserver, “To distract them.”

“So Mia’s been thinking I was dead for two days.” Dom sounded closer now, but Brian could barely hear it over the sound of rushing blood in his ears and gulping air.

“Brian,” Dom was saying, but it echoed. “Brian, can you…”

In a moment of ice-white clarity, Brian suddenly understood why they called it a downward spiral. The room appeared to be bobbing and spinning while sinking into darkness. Dom’s voice vibrated in his ear while the earth went black.

**********************************

Returning to consciousness was not peaceful; he surged up out of his depths like a swimmer fighting a stormy sea. It was dark. He was in bed, the coverlet was brushing his chin. He thrashed around for a moment and suddenly Dom was there, there was light. The curtains had parted. Dom had a hand on his back and was shushing him.

Brian closed his mouth, just moments after realizing he was babbling incoherently. Dom had grabbed the edge of the covers and was pressing down on him relentlessly. For a second, Brian felt suffocated by the tight compress of the sheets over his chest and shoulders and then after a while it became kind of soothing. He relaxed into the pressure.

Dom had pressed his chin to his chest and was watching Brian dubiously. After Brian had held himself still for 120 seconds, Dom sighed and loosed his grip on the sheets.

Dom sat back on the edge of the bed and rubbed his right hand over his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Brian said in a very small voice.

“What, for having a panic attack?” Dom’s eyes were hooded. “I’d say you were due.”

Dom pointed at the nightstand. Brian craned his neck a little, then grabbed the bottle of water. Dom watched him drink and looked like he was trying not to say anything. The silence got awkward very quickly.

“That’s never happened to me before.” Brian said finally.

For some reason, Dom huffed a quick laugh. Brian did too when he realized what it sounded like.

“I’d offer you a pill,” Dom leaned back on the heels of his hands, neatly avoiding Brian’s legs. “But I don’t think it’d help.”

“I’m sorry,” Brian said again.

Dom rolled his eyes and looked pissed. “Quit that shit. We’re cool, right? You gonna freak out again?”

“Maybe,” Brian said honestly.

Unexpectedly, Dom grinned. “Well, you know…it’s your turn.”

“We’re taking turns?” Brian felt kind of stupid and blank, like his brain was in the early stages of a reboot.

Dom patted him, then stood up. “Gonna go call Mia.” He held up a hand when Brian tried to sit up, “Don’t. Relax. It’s on my head. Back in a sec.”

Brian managed to hold himself still for what felt like an eternity. For some reason, he couldn’t complete a thought or hold onto an idea. A random jumble of images crowded him; odd thoughts and names like Fatburger and Glendale and the house always wins slid through his head like he was driving through a Dali painting.
Dom was back again, sitting on the bed with one hand on Brian’s shoulder. Brian snapped his focus back on Dom’s face gratefully, everything else receded.

“You’re not mad.” Brian hadn’t been expecting to say that. He felt an odd moment of sheer elation; if he was crazy, he could say and do just any damn thing.

Dom frowned, “Nah, not…no…It’s complicated.”

Brian jiggled his head. Dom looked deep into his face worriedly. “What’s your name?”

“Brian…” Brian turned his chin to the side, this sounded like a trick question. “Patrick. O’Conner.”

Dom pressed his right fist into his lips.

“Is that a problem?” Brian felt a sudden wave of suspicion.

“I was just thinking that was an incredibly ethnic name for a white person.”

“Irish both sides, what’re you gonna do?” Brian said without moving his lips. “Wait a second, are you mocking me?”

“Maybe a little.” Dom admitted. “How’d they come up with ‘Brian Earl Whosis?’”

“Dunno,” Brian shrugged. “Picked it out of a hat. Random name generator. Maybe they took it off the FBI’s Most Wanted list, what’s it matter?”

“Didn’t suit you really,” Dom said. “You gonna freak out again?”

“Maybe,” He said begrudgingly, but this time he felt pretty sure that he wouldn’t.

Dom stood up. “I think you should go take a shower til the hot water runs out. You’ll feel…” He made a non-committal gesture and pulled Brian’s covers down halfway.

Brian sat up slowly and opened his mouth. Dom held up three fingers so Brian shut up and took his advice.

By the time he had finished his protracted ablutions, Dom had gone out and scared up some chow. When the smell hit his nose, he was abruptly starving. After he’d wolfed down a few bites, it occurred to him to look out the window. It was easily mid-afternoon. The food was so delicious; he kept having to consciously remind himself to chew it.

When he finally looked up from the carnage of the paper bags and foil-wrapped packages, Dom was giving him what could only be called a ‘once over’. Brian wiped his mouth self-consciously.

“You seem better,” Dom said mildly.

Brian leaned back. “So do you.”

They regarded each other over the table.

“A lot better.” Brian said finally.

Dom raised one corner of his mouth, acknowledging that he saw through Brian’s ruse to ask questions without actually asking a question. Dom leaned forward, his forearms on the table. “You forget that I’ve done this before.”

“This exact thing?” Brian blinked. “It’s not in your file.”

“Yeah, you’re funny.” Dom leaned back again and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “No, the whole fucking-up-your-entire-life-and-everyone-else’s thing. That. I’ve done it before.”

Brian was silent.

Dom cocked his head. “I imagine that’s in the file.”

Brian nodded slowly.

“I’m kind of hoping to get better with practice,” Dom said seriously.

Brian inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly so that he would not collapse into embarrassing, hysterical laughter.

“So why’d you do what you did?” Dom continued, jerking his head northward. “Up there.”

Brian shrugged. “I dunno.”

“You dunno?” Dom sounded just on the edge of incredulous. “You don’t know? Your entire life is gone and ‘I dunno’ is what you’re going with?”

“Dom, you may be great mechanic, but you’re a shitty therapist,” Brian said honestly.

Dom pulled himself back, even looking a little ashamed. “I’m….sorry. it’s just…well, what are you going to do now?”

Brian slumped a little further into his seat. “I dunno.”

Dom opened his mouth, then leaned back and stroked his chin with his right hand. “OK.”

“Thanks for trying,” Brian said sarcastically.

Dom leaned forward again; he winced a little as the cast pressed into the table’s edge. “I told you before that you had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.” Dom paused and Brian saw a flash of teeth. “Maybe that goes with the job.”

“But Brian…I do know how much of this is on me…why are you doing that?”

Brian realized that he was unconsciously shaking his head. “It’s not all on you.”

“The hell it’s not.” Dom didn’t sound angry, just…uncompromising. “I remember. Everything.”

Brian mimicked Dom’s gesture, he pinched the inside corners of his eyes to release the pressure in his head. “I don’t feel like talking right now.”

Dom looked fierce for a second, then he kind of slumped and shrugged. Almost wordlessly, they agreed to go out and walk around a little, soaking up the sea air until the long dusk came down.

They made it back to the motel in darkness. The lights wreathing the parking lot glowed, misted in the marine chill. Brian sat on the bed, feeling Dom’s glances as he unlaced his shoes. Dom didn’t say anything, but his fleeting looks felt like reassuring little touches. Brian lay back and blocked out everything except the sound of his own breath. It sounded loud and slightly ragged, so he gave up and listened to Dom’s instead.

*******************

Brian woke up sweaty and aching and needing to pee. He peeled off the sheets that had mummified him. During his ungraceful shuffle to the bathroom, he took in the fact that the morning was pretty well gone and afternoon light was just beginning to blaze behind their flimsy curtains. Somehow, they had gotten through another agonizing day.

The toilet seat was still up, all he had to do was unzip, untuck and aim. Brian propped one hand on the cinderblock wall and let his head slump into his upper arm. His bare toes curled against the slight dampness that still soaked the linoleum. He tried to relax and finally managed it.

Thinking about nothing. This might work for a while if they both really concentrated hard on thinking about nothing. Not thinking maybe. If they could work themselves into some sort of trance state that would let them move and live without knocking against too many sharp edges, the machine would continue to grind forward. Brian practiced thinking about nothing in particular, looking down at the dingy glow of the porcelain.

He yawned hard enough to make his jaw hurt and then gave himself a quick shake. He had rolled his weight back onto his heels to step back when he became aware that he most definitely wasn’t alone.

The fever-hot dark presence allowed Brian a quick glance backward before grabbing his hair and jerking him sideways, hard enough to slam his temple into the cold wall. Brian didn’t feel it as pain, it jagged through him as a sudden shock that kept him immobilized while Dom snatched Brian’s wrist up into a delicate place in the middle of his back.

Braced by the cops, Brian thought vaguely as he attempted to pivot out of the hold. Dom had anticipated him, placing one foot with care. Brian teetered on the side of his own foot as he realized that any more leaning or twisting would just put him further off balance. He stilled, breathing and feeling Dom’s heat along the back of his thigh.

“Dom, what…” Technically he still had one hand free, but he had to keep it spread over the wall to keep Dom’s weight from forcing him onto his knees. For some reason, there was no leverage to be gained from the wall, no good place to set his hands or feet, Brian was stuck between the hard, cold slipperiness of the toilet and the hard, hot smoothness of Dom's chest which was inexplicably pressed to Brian's back. He was trapped, motionless, in this awkward, impossible situation.

“No more questions,” Dom breathed into Brian’s hairline. Brian could feel Dom's thumb stroke over the delicate hollow of the wrist currently twisted into the hollow of his back. If Dom pressed hard there, Brian's hand would involuntarily clench. Anticipating it, he cupped his fingers, feeling his knuckles brush against the edge of Dom's prominent pectoral muscle. Dom's indrawn breath drew across his neck.

"What is this?" Brian asked anyway. He felt heavy suddenly, like someone had filled his veins with maximum weight hot oil. The breadth of Dom's shoulders pressing into him felt almost four feet wide. Dom chuckled. Brian didn’t hear it; it was more like he felt it. Dom’s chuckle caught at him like fingernails catching on skin. It tingled.

Something about this was more perplexing and…unsatisfying…than weird or frightening. Dom drew up closer, nudging him forward and Brian blinked at the tile.

“You don’t know? You’re gonna try and sell me that?” Brian felt again the hot shudder of Dom’s laughter. “Or even worse, try to tell me you don’t want..?”

His earlobe was vibrating as Dom’s breath drew at him, goosebumps cascaded down his neck. Brian’s mouth was now completely dry so he choked on his, “I don’t…”

"You are such a punk," Unexpectedly, Brian's skin thrilled to a sudden pain; had Dom bitten him? "From the very first, you’ve lied like you breathe."

"No I don't," His breath was coming harder; he could almost feel how bad this was in the pit of his stomach. His stomach felt volcanic and the heat was spreading to odd corners.

"Huh," Long fingers threaded up through his hair. Dom's hot breath huffed out in a chuckle. "In law enforcement circles, I think that would be known as getting off on a technicality."

Dom jerked Brian's head back an inch or two, his neck was now completely exposed. Everything felt exposed, his shirt was gone and his pants were just about to slide off his hips.

“When I asked you…you remember, I did ask…back at Hector’s?” Dom’s voice tickled over Brian’s shoulder blades and crept up the back of his neck. “You didn’t say a thing, remember? You remember how you let your body lie, when your mouth wouldn’t?”

Dom hooked his thumb gently into Brian’s belly button. Brian shuddered violently, feeling the hot press of Dom’s body in all kinds of new places. Dom’s other hand curled over the hollow of Brian’s pelvis and his voice made Brian’s earlobe tingle. “Now I think your mouth is lying, but you…” Dom punctuated this with a hard squeeze. “Are finally telling the truth.”

The hand slid down and cupped Brian’s tightening balls fast enough to make him yelp with the sudden heat and friction. He could feel himself burst out in sweat all over; his heaving breath made his erection throb.

Dom would feel his light sweat, just enough to make his skin drag slowly over the curve of Brian’s ass. Brian pressed his hands hard into the wall; they were darkly tanned against the white tile. Dom had finally let his hand free in favor of grabbing him hard on his neck, on his hip bone, fingers combing down his ribs, it felt like Dom had hands everywhere. It suddenly occurred to Brian that this was more about his punishment than his pleasure. Dom’s fingers were cruel, clutching at him, and his mouth was hard, his teeth stung.

The steam of Dom’s breath on his neck and the furious rhythm of the hand on him and heat in him increased until it felt like he’d…, until he…

…woke up sweaty and aching and needing to pee. Brian gasped at the ceiling and tried to peel off the sheets that had mummified him …

"Oh fuck," the words barely got past the deep wheeze of his frantic breath. He felt lightheaded. His arms were numb and slightly prickly; he had been sleeping twisted with his arms caught underneath his full weight. He dragged himself fully onto his back and flexed and unflexed his tingling hands. He jerked his arms down by his sides when the edge of his palm grazed his nipple. His whole body felt oddly…tender.

He squeezed his eyes shut, not sure if he was trying to banish the dream or lock it in place. In the midst of this, Dom cleared his throat. Abruptly, Brian went from feeling a little tender and exposed to feeling burnt alive by shame and positively flayed of flesh.

Brian slowly peeled his eyes open. Dom was sitting, fully clothed, on the other bed meditatively stroking his thumb along his lower lip.

Brian tried to unobtrusively arrange the covers around himself, hiding. He wondered how long he could plead fragile mental state.

“I was, uh…having a…dreaming.” Brian said lamely.

Dom quirked his eyebrows and sat up straighter, “Yeah. Wasn’t sure if I should wake you.”

“Why?” Brian tried a casual yawn. “Did I say anything?”

Dom shrugged one shoulder, stood up and headed for the bathroom. “Yeah, kinda.”

Brian pressed his tongue very hard into the roof of his mouth while pressing a quelling hand on his morning erection which was almost starting to ache. Dom’s cryptic words had both his body and mind equally confused; now his face was tingling alongside his hands and fingers.

The combined heat waves of shame and lust were receding somewhat. Brian pressed his fists into his eye sockets and started talking himself down off the ledge.

Post-traumatic stress disorder: they’d both been feeling completely whacked-out emotions for days. Dom himself had been lurching from suicidal grief, fear, and rage to moments of his particular sardonic humor like a drunken frat boy dodging kegs. Brian had been pushing himself so hard not to feel anything; it was no wonder that at this very moment, he felt everything. Including masses of incredibly inappropriate things.

This could be completely normal. Maybe Dom hadn’t noticed. What was there to notice?

Brian had his jeans on and his shoes laced by the time Dom returned. “Let’s keep moving.”

Dom looked at him hard, and then nodded. Brian kept pace with him all the way to the car, moving slowly, deliberately in the morning sun. Brian thought that he could get used to traveling this light. No bags, just cash. Everything he had fit into his pockets.

Dom was quiet as Brian drove, only occasionally pointing at things he wanted Brian to look at.

They stopped for an early lunch while the sun was still aslant. Dom paid and exchanged a little banter with the waitress about his cast. She tried valiantly to flirt with them, but quickly sensed that it was a losing proposition.

After they ate, they wandered down to the beach that fringed the town. It was nothing flashy and thus deserted except for a lone guy at the south end with a couple of donkeys.

Brian plodded along the sand until he realized that he didn’t want to and stopped. Dom took a few more steps, noticed and turned. He walked back to where Brian sat, facing the surf.

Brian soaked up the peace of the beach and thought what are you afraid of now? It felt like the worst had happened.

Dom looked out at the breakers for a long while then turned to face north. He nudged Brian gently with his foot. “You wanna go?”

“Nah. I have questions.” Brian dug his feet into the sand stubbornly. “More than three.”

Dom looked at him sidelong. “Yeah, well. Guess we’ve got time.”

He hunkered down slowly onto the sand next to Brian. Brian considered offering him a hand, but Dom managed solo.

“Ask away.”

“It doesn’t hurt your ribs to walk on the beach?” Brian started shyly.

“Yeah, it does.” Dom squinted up at the sun. “I’m ignoring it.”

“Why’re you so quiet all morning?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Dom pressed his fingertips together and leaned into them.

“Thinking about what?”

“Going back,” Dom smiled a little at Brian’s expression. “To L.A.”

Brian blinked slowly and wondered if he could be dreaming this. “Remember when I said that that wasn’t a good idea?”

“Sure, I remember.” Dom twisted that little half-smile that he’d flashed at Brian just right before they’d cleared the train. “But Mia needs someone around. I turn myself in, maybe they don’t fuck Vince quite so hard. I could see Jesse…” he trailed off.

“They’ve got you cold for the grandest of grand larceny.” Brian protested. “I won’t be able to help you.”

Dom shrugged. “I can turn over my fence…I can do that, ‘cause he’d dime me in a heartbeat. Plus, ‘make restitution’ or something. Give the cash back.”

Brian opened his mouth and nothing came out for a while. “That won’t…they’ll still….”

Dom was almost grinning now, he looked positively light-hearted.

Brian rubbed his forehead. “Thought you’d die before you’d go back inside.”

“Aw, man.” Dom wrinkled his nose. “I may have just said that to impress you.”

Brian gawked.

“And I know it might not look like it now.” Dom stood up, rolled his shoulders back and struck a pose. “But I’m not just semi-tough. I can do some time. In a worthy cause.”

“Huh.” Brian rubbed his face. This was a dream, he just knew it. “But I don’t think I can.”

Dom looked troubled, and then his face cleared. “You’re going back a hero. End of story.”

“I see,” Brian said very carefully.

Dom shifted into a more natural slouch. Watching, Brian might have almost said that he looked uncertain. “What do you think?”

“I think my head’s gonna explode.” Brian made a ‘kapow’ gesture. “Why?”

Dom smiled again, but didn’t speak. He slowly knelt back down onto the cool sand.

After a moment, Brian prompted, “Did you hear…”

“Yeah, I can hear you.” Dom shot him a sardonic look. “Christ, one second to think, maybe? Too much to ask?”

“Oh, you’re gonna start thinking now?” Brian asked innocently. Dom raised one eyebrow with great dignity. He looked back out at the surf and seemed to decide something.

“You asked me a question that I never answered.” Dom said unexpectedly.

“Ye-ah?” Brian said slowly. “Seems like I did.”

“Who I loved most, my mom or my dad?”

Brian frowned. That hadn’t been the one he was thinking of, but he obviously needed to see where Dom was going with this.

“My parents are dead,” Dom aborted a small gesture…like he had almost crossed himself. “And this stays between us.”

Brian leveled his best blue gaze at Dom and sighed. “Who’m I gonna tell?”

“Right. So my mom was a saint and too good for this earth and we all worshipped the ground she walked on.” Dom paused. “But I loved my dad the most.”

Brian started chewing on his lower lip. This was making him feel very strange, like he was outside himself watching Dom kneeling beside him from about ten feet up.

Dom went on, “I didn’t realize at the time how…special it was. I thought everyone’s dad was…just as perfect as mine. He always just got me.”

Brian felt his throat tighten until he couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t even say stop.

“When my mom died,” Dom looked up. “I could grieve. I could cry with Mia. And it felt like it would never stop hurting, but it did get better.”

Dom was silent for seven waves. “When I lost my dad, I just…I threw myself away. I turned myself into something that should have been thrown away. I went more than a little crazy because I couldn’t imagine life without him.”

Dom turned to look straight at Brian, “I destroyed my own life and someone else’s just because I couldn’t imagine life without him.”

Brian wanted to look away. Dom’s eyes and voice were unwavering. “You know what I mean.”

Was that a question? Was he supposed to answer? Brian tore his eyes back to the surf.

Dom’s voice came lower, “I think you do.”

“Yeah,” Brian said faintly. He blinked and his mental image of Kenny Linder’s broken face was momentarily overlaid with Johnny Tran’s.

“What you want to give me, I don’t want to take.” Dom said so low that Brian thought he’d imagined it. He looked back at Dom who was suddenly quite close.

“I want you to survive,” Dom said simply. “so…that’s why.”

Brian took a deep breath.

Dom said softly, "You got another question, Brian?"

Brian’s lips worked the air for a second, then he whispered, "You're going to make me ask?"

Dom smiled a soft reflection of his usual 180 degree smile. He reached out and traced his thumb, feather-light, over Brian's eyebrow. Brian felt Dom’s breath on his cheek as Dom murmured, "Nah, you don't need to."

End