Archive of Our Own

NC-17 for sex and violence

That which is done out of love takes place beyond good and evil

                                                                                    -Friedrich Nietzsche

                                                                                    Jenseits Gut und Böse

Officer Brian O’Conner hated robberies, hated break-ins, hated vandalism and hated ‘routine traffic stops’.  But that was nothing in comparison to how much he absolutely despised and abhorred domestic violence calls.

“Ma’am, there are several private facilities if you don’t want to go to the city shelter. Saint Mark’s for example…”

“Don’t quite know why you keep talking,” the sallow woman folded her skinny arms. “Since I obviously ain’t listening.” The freckles blazed on her white face in the same way the bruises were starting to stain the pale skin of her arms and collarbone. 

Brian couldn’t quite keep himself from sighing. The ones where the neighbors called it in were the worst. The chaos that must have reigned before someone got off their duff to call didn’t bear thinking about. He had another weapon in his arsenal, right?  What was it again? Oh yeah, boyish charm.

Brian leaned in to speak conspiratorially, “Do you have children, Mrs. Jones?”

She was standing straight despite the pain he could see drawn tight in the edges of her eyes. “They’re grown and gone. Which is where you should be: gone.”

Brian tried once more, “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

And that seemed to touch her slightly, she turned away to look down the street. Then she looked back at her tiny house, glowing with lights where his partner restrained her drunk, seething husband. She seemed uncertain for a second. Then she squared her shoulders and turned to face Brian again.

“Yeah, it does,” was all she said before she stalked back into the house.

“God, I hate that shit,” Officer Rick Choi burst out as soon as they were back in their car.

“Don’t we all?” Brian said abstractedly as he maneuvered the squad car through the quiet streets. There was already such a long list of things that he didn’t let himself think about, it was easy to add one more.

“Why doesn’t she just press charges? I bet that guy’s going to kill her. Maybe not this year, but sometime soon. And they’ll say it was our fault for not putting him away. Maybe I could go back.” Rick’s eyes seemed to light up with the idea. “Maybe I could go back and say something that would get him to take a swing at me. I bet he hates Asians. Assaulting a police officer is what?  Five to ten?”

“She’d probably be the first witness to accuse you of harassment. Leave it alone. She’s got to make the choice.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Rick sighed with the weight of the world on his twenty-two year old shoulders. “Love makes you do really stupid things.”

Brian just nodded. 

The black and white purred down the hill to where the neighborhood began to turn more urban, even kind of funky. Little bars and cafés springing up in ones and twos, people laughing in the cool spring air. Music poured out into the street as doors opened and closed. A slight ripple passed through the outdoor crowd as they noticed the cruising police car.

“Brian,” Rick’s voice managed to combine both amusement and annoyance. “Weren’t we just talking about harassment? That guy’s not doing anything and he’s about to get pissed.”

Brian wrenched his mind back to the present where he was embarrassed to discover that he was unconsciously trailing one of the bar patrons back to his car. The man had been casting surreptitious glances back at the cop car following him and he was getting pissed, standing very straight, seeming to swell inside his leather jacket.  Brian nodded and waved slightly as he passed by. Rick snorted.

“Jeez, I’ve heard of police profiling but you are something else, man.” Rick chuckled. “What is it with you and the dark ones with shaved heads?”

“Looked like someone I know,” Brian grunted. He tilted his head down and hoped that the unsteady street light would mask his face.

“Yeah, whatever,” Rick held up his index finger. “One day, I will unravel the mystery of Brian O’Conner.”

“Only if you want to die of boredom.”

He’d been back on patrol for nearly a year. They’d let him know, in no uncertain terms, that he was lucky to have a job at all. Now he was sharing a car with the greenest of rookies, on the crappiest of shifts, in the dullest of neighborhoods in the entirety of Southern California.

And for some reason, Brian was okay with it.  It was almost easy to slip into the routine of waking up, eating, shaving, shining his shoes, buttoning himself into his blue uniform. Driving around from dusk to dawn, shooting the shit with Rick. Rick was a great partner. Kept him from thinking too much, which was all he needed.  It was as if all the fight and ambition in him had driven off one day. In an orange car.

“You’re quieter than usual tonight,” Rick’s voice broke in, gently.

Brian raised one hand from the wheel in a blessing gesture. “You must learn to cultivate peace within yourself, Grasshopper.”

“Jeez, man, you white boys are so inscrutable. So hard to know what you’re thinking.”

“And we all look the same to you?” Brian asked innocently. And they both cracked up.

They were still laughing when the radio crackled to life.

“All units, all units, we have a 3134 in progress in Axbow. All units in the area please respond now.”

“I don’t recognize that call sign,” Brian picked up the radio and handed it to Rick. “Your academy days are closer than mine. What’s a 3134?”

Rick’s smooth face had wrinkled with concentration. “31- means fire. I remember that part.”

Brian frowned at the steering wheel. “Call in with our loc and try to get more from dispatch.”

Rick nodded, “Dispatch, this is car 9053. We’re currently on La Cienda headed south, crossing the highway. We can get to Axbow in thirty, but not faster.”  He glanced at Brian and winked.

The tinny voice came back on with the same monotone delivery that somehow sounded slightly annoyed. “All units, all units, we have a fire in a state facility and fugitive situation. All units please respond.”

“What’s in Axbow?” Rick asked, cradling the handset.

“Big holding facility there. Local lockup for two counties, CHP, and they use it as a way station for transferring LA perps upstate.”

“Wow. So thrilling. And so early in the shift,” Rick spoke ironically but Brian could feel his excitement. The graveyard shift was such a long slog punctuated by the petty nastiness of suburban crime that anything out of the ordinary began to sound cool.

Brian teased, “Thirty minutes?  Thought you knew me better than that.”

Rick turned his lips up primly, “I wanted to inspire you, hotshot.”

Brian laughed, turned on his rack of lights and made the car a blur.

**********

They smelled the smoke almost two miles from the jail. The hair on the back of Brian’s neck started to do a prickly dance. Rounding the last corner in an impromptu parade of police cars, it was all he could do to keep driving forward to the heart of the hellish conflagration.  The fire had passed its peak but it was still roaring and licking the concrete block walls. Cinders streaked up into the air like little comets. Above it all, helicopters buzzed, their searchlights swinging crazily.

Luckily, someone was directing traffic, sending the emergency vehicles to the fire, guiding all the police cars to a semi-circle around a small outbuilding that stood some distance away from the main facility. Maybe an old gatehouse, Brian realized as he and Rick trudged up to the tiny building that seemed to be overrun with cops.

Brian recognized the guy in charge without hesitation. A tired-looking cop nearing fifty, his hair prematurely white, held two cell phones and a radio mike.  A couple of people in the crowd held up their own cell phones. Brian glanced around. It looked like the regular patrol of two precincts was already there. Hot stuff.

The white-haired cop was speaking in a declaiming tone.  A pretty Latina civilian ran up and waved a sheaf of paper under his nose. The older cop took the paper without missing a beat.

“OK, people, we have no casualties but currently one entire wing of fugitives. One wing equals fifty scumbags, folks. So we’re obviously a little concerned. Now, Connie here has put together sheets on these assholes. Note the letters on the top left corners next to the mug shots. For our purposes, ‘A’ equals highest priority: a violent, repeat offender. ‘B’ is first-time violent offender. ‘C’ is a blanket assessment for everyone else. Currently none of them are armed, but you should play it that way because they’ve been known to improvise.”

Brian managed to lean in and sneak a peek at the older cop’s nametag. Sergeant Riordan. Brian’s stomach tightened a little as he entertained a brief fantasy of himself in twenty years standing where the beleaguered Sergeant was standing now. Guarding the barn door, after the cows had fled to Nevada.

 Brian snapped himself out of it as Riordan started in again, “I hope I don’t need to tell you how our priorities lie. If you have any questions, come and see me after the briefing. So far as we know these guys are on foot, so I want a perimeter set up for a four mile radius. Every road leading out of here. I want the rest of you on a house to house search starting here.” He pointed to a map spread over the hood of a patrol car. “Units count off from this point going counterclockwise. Double up on interstate feeders. Everyone take a complete list…you can divvy them up between yourselves later. Let’s move.”

Brian and Rick glanced at each other, tacitly settling who would pick up the list of escapees and who would ascertain which street they were assigned. The area around the gatehouse quickly became a sea of elbows and shoulders. They managed to extricate themselves and they trotted back to their car to beat the swelling blue tide of lights and sirens.

“What have we got?” asked Rick as he slid smoothly into the already rolling patrol car. He squinted at the photocopied sheets in the fading light of the fire.

“Roscomar Street. It’s about a mile south of here. I’m not going to blaze up…no sense in letting them know we’re coming, obviously.”

“Good idea,” Rick kept trying gamely to decipher the list as they glided under streetlights. “You ever done a house to house?”

“Once,” Brian admitted. “It was a while ago.”

“What’s it like?”

“Tedious. Exhausting. Stressful. Boring.”

“Boring and tedious mean kind of the same thing,” Rick said reasonably.

“It was really boring,” Brian shot back. “I can’t really emphasize that enough.”

“What if we find one of these dudes and he’s, like, taken some entire family hostage?”

“I’ll distract him and you shoot him,” Brian said half-seriously guiding the car to a halt.

But Rick nodded gravely as if he approved of the plan. They got out and walked to the front of the first unassuming house in the unassuming neighborhood.

“You’re not going to have a look at the sheets?” Rick was flipping his Maglite in a graceful circle, the only hint that he was nervous.

“Later.”

“How are you gonna know who’s the fugitive?”

“Hmmmmm,” Brian pretended to think it over. “I’m guessing whoever starts running when they see us is probably the fugitive.”

Rick rolled his eyes heavenward and grinned.

Later, Rick would agree that the search was both boring and tedious. Explaining to bleary-eyed homeowners that they needed to search their yards due to fugitives in the area grew wearing after about five minutes. They found themselves growing hoarse providing reassurances. That added to about seven bored housewives who wanted to make the hardworking protectors of the peace ‘a cup of something’ ensured that each house and garden took about twenty minutes to search. A dragnet of alleys and shrubbery turned up nothing more exciting than a tabby cat.

They finished the street and radioed in as the sky was lightening. The shift was over; APBs had gone out statewide.  There was nothing left to do.

Brian was torn between relief and disappointment. Being a beat cop was like being a janitor. That’s why most cops wanted to make detective. A detective sometimes had the opportunity to prevent a crime. A beat cop just cleaned up the aftermath.

“Hey man, can you drive? I’m, like, going cross-eyed.”

Rick wasn’t too tired to make his eyes bulge comically. “You sure I shouldn’t take you to the hospital? ‘Cause you’re obviously not feeling well.”

“Hey, c’mon. I let you drive last week,” Brian protested.

“You let me park last week,” Rick grumbled good-naturedly as he adjusted the seat.

“Where are those sheets?” Brian rubbed his eyes.

Rick passed them over and they rolled on in silence.

“Sorry I doubted you, man,” Rick spoke up suddenly.

Brian made a puzzled face.

“It was pretty fucking boring,” Rick’s dark eyes twinkled. “Don’t quite know what I was expecting.”

“That’s cop life for you,” Brian mumbled distractedly leafing through the pages of angry faces “Boring, boring, boring until it’s…” he fell silent abruptly.

“Until it’s what?” Rick masterfully negotiated the precinct lot. He thumped Brian on the shoulder when he’d snagged a choice spot. “Don’t space out on me now, dude.”

Brian looked up blankly. “What? Ah…sorry.”

“Until it’s what, man? Don’t be shy…give me the benefit of your infinite wisdom.”

Brian pulled his thoughts back to the last few minutes before the world had gone all screwy. He replayed the conversation and answered, “Until it’s your life flashing before your eyes. See you tomorrow, dude, same time, same place.”

And before Rick could pull the key from the ignition, Brian had vanished.

**********

It was hard trying to sleep from three in the afternoon until eleven PM.  Hard enough on a normal body, going against all its natural rhythms. Brian lay in bed staring at the thick blanket that served as curtains, listening to the birds twittering. Doubly hard if you were a cop and had to will away the stresses of a working night that could leave you shuddering.  And with dreams like mine, almost impossible.

He rolled onto his back. Even pleasant dreams could make him wake up sweating. Sometimes he was back in the car the Feds had given him. Roaring down some stretch of highway with all his muscles coaxing every ounce of momentum from the machine. And then he’d hear Dom’s voice in his head, nice work. Sometimes Dom would be sitting beside him, turning to him with serious eyes. Sometimes it would be Vince’s voice he heard in his head, he’s a cop.

Vince. Brian rolled back over and looked at the papers still spread out on the bedroom floor. He traced his finger over the small portrait. Vincent M. Stevens. Vince’s chin was lowered in his mug shot, he looked out from under his heavy brows with an expression that was probably meant to be menacing.

To someone who didn’t know Vince, maybe, he’d look like all the other faces on the page, snarling, defiant, enraged. But to Brian who had actually seen Vince being all of those things, Vince just looked frightened in his mug shot. Scared and hopeless. It was hard to believe that this was the face that turned up in so many of his nightmares.

Well, they weren’t really nightmares. Just uneasy dreams. Brian wondered when they would stop. Wasn’t sure if he really wanted them to; they were his only nighttime companion.

The worst were the dreams that replicated his working life in every detail. He would be driving along, teasing or laughing with Rick, until a brief silence descended. When Brian looked over at his partner, his eyes would be drawn to the thin trickle of blood that dripped from Rick’s ear. Trembling with horror, he would inevitably reach out to shake Rick gently only to find as his partner’s head lolled back that his handsome Korean face had morphed to Johnny Tran’s cold features.

That one was the worst.

Brian sighed at the cottage cheese stucco on his ceiling. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to sleep today. He’d been drifting along, trying to keep himself from feeling. From remembering. Trying to let himself believe that fate would allow him to escape. Trying to let himself believe that that was what he wanted.

Hopeless. He felt around on the floor for the phone and dialed. When the soft buzzes indicated that the line was ringing, it occurred to Brian that he had no idea what he was going to say.

Brian was just about to hang up when the line connected with a gruff ‘Hello’.

“Sergeant?” Brian said softly.

There was a long pause and an even longer sigh.

“Brian,” Tanner said quietly.

“Sergeant, I need a favor.”

Tanner’s voice was tired, almost weighted down with what Brian imagined was disappointment. “Fresh out of favors right now, Brian.

If Tanner wasn’t going to be convinced, he’d have just said, ‘no’. But Tanner had left the door slightly open. Time for the boyish charm.

“Sergeant, don’t you think I deserve a second chance? Forgiveness, redemption, all that ‘prodigal son returns to the fold’ kind of crap?”

Brian can almost hear the chuckle that Tanner was restraining. Brian smiled into the phone. It’s so close he can taste it.

“What do you need?” Tanner asked finally.

“I need to know who’s heading up the Axbow fire investigation. I need an introduction to this person. I could be useful, very useful, if you can smooth over the details. But I need to work it alone and it might cut into my sick days.”

Tanner was quiet for so long that Brian wiggled the phone jack in the cradle. Then just an exhaled, ‘OK.” And click.

Brian grinned up at the ceiling. Good, this is good.

And then the glow began to fade. Tanner had been his mentor on the force, taking a father’s pride in Brian’s minor accomplishments. Tanner had recommended him for the undercover assignment that had made Brian the envy of the precinct. Of course, then the Feds had screwed both of them.

And even though Brian had never said anything about the botched operation, Tanner somehow knew that Brian’s loyalty was no longer his to command. Brian could feel Tanner’s distance growing in the wake of the incident, until they barely spoke.

Am I meant to bring grief to anyone who trusts me?

Brian rolled to his side and closed his eyes. I’m not lying. I do want redemption. Forgiveness. I just didn’t say whose.

**********

 “Sergeant Riordan? May I come in?” Brian ducked under the low lintel of their temporary basement HQ. It had been easy to find, being right across the street from the ruin of the jail. The smell of smoke would probably hover for weeks.

“Do I know you?” Riordan favored Brian with his full regard. Eyes blue and shockingly clear, despite the fact that Riordan could not have slept for almost a day now. Brian hadn’t slept either but he was quite sure that it was obvious. He’d called in sick pretty convincingly.

“No, I’m with the one-seven. My partner and I responded to your 3134 last night. My name is Brian O’Conner.”

“Oh yes, your sergeant called. We’re just getting started with this, so if you’d sit down…we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” 

Riordan walked to the front of the room to a board which had a plan of the first floor of the holding facility. Brian slid into a chair next to a cluster of cops whose only unifying characteristic was their serious faces. The pretty Latina from the previous night handed Brian another sheaf of copied papers.

“This was definitely arson. LAFD specialists confirmed this four hours ago. We suspected arson from the first because of where the blaze started and the extremely bad timing, considering that we were hosting the transfers to the King City lockup for exactly eight hours.   The fire started here,” He gestured to a point in the front row of cell blocks. “And spread back to the end of the hall. For some reason, the alarm systems in place did not react until the fire was pretty well established. But in the end, the override responded and released all doors simultaneously. In the confusion of the evacuation, the crowd bunching toward the back exit managed to overpower their guard. Now, those of you who know me, know I’m not one to waste time with the blame game…”

Riordan paused and looked vaguely sad, “This is an older facility. We’ve been on-line for an upgrade to our alarms and personnel for some time. A shame, that something like this has to happen before the mayor gets his thumb out of his ass.”

There was a generalized titter of agreement. Riordan seemed to perk up a little.

“LAFD tells me that the accelerant used to start the blaze was a pretty common substance, silicon filler that’s often used by mechanics and electricians. That may be a lead, it may not be. Captain Martinez has generously offered his cell phone number to anyone who’d like more details.” Riordan wrote the number on the chalkboard and continued.

 “Now we’ve made significant progress picking up the more predictable of these sons of bitches. We’re down to fifteen loose cons. Connie’s put together their full transfer sheets and she’s got contact details for their complete files. I’ve got my people working the returnees, but my thought is: whoever was smart enough to put this shit together is smart enough to lay low. I want you to check all known accomplices, relatives, friends. I want to find out who’s behind this, folks.”

Riordan bowed his head as if he was about to say a benediction but when he stayed quiet, the seated cops began to stir and pepper him with questions.

Quickly, Brian leafed through the copied pages. Relief shot through him when he came to Vince’s sheet, the twelfth one down, Vincent M. Stevens, Born 1969, Tarzana. Brian was suddenly suffused with a moment of insight as to why Vince acted like such a prized jackass most of the time. Even with 24 years standing beside Dominic Toretto, Vince still felt he had to make everyone forget that he was just some white boy from the Valley. Goddamnit, was he just going to stand here and empathize with Vince? What was his next move?

“So what’s your connection to all of this?” Brian nearly fell off the chair at the quiet voice behind him. The attractive civilian politely ignored his undignified posture and extended her hand, “Connie Cedillo. I’m a police aide. I noticed you last night…your partner’s not joining you?”

Brian tried to swallow his sigh. He hoped not everyone last night had been as observant as the lovely Connie. He surreptitiously checked her fingers for rings. Single women had a tendency to find the Officers Choi and O’Conner in uniform the equivalent of the one-two punch.

He gave his smile an anxious, shy quality. “Uhm, I’m kind of personally involved with this and Rick, uh, my partner, isn’t.” God, he sounded like a complete dolt.

Connie nodded slowly but still seemed puzzled. She didn’t ask anything, just waited for the rest of the story. Brian took a deep breath and continued. “One of the fugitives was kind of my collar. I think I could probably track him down. I’d…ah…I’d  like to try anyway.”

“’Kind of’ your collar?” Connie’s face wrinkled with an expression that was almost a grin. 

“Uhm, it’s a … long story. Look actually, I’ve got some questions and it looks like Sergeant Riordan is pretty busy. Maybe you could help me?” He did his best to look like an Eagle Scout.

Connie looked up from under lowered lashes and purred, “Well, I’ll try.”

**********

Connie had access that she wasn’t afraid to show off, when Brian suggested that the drawing of the burnt jail was confusing, she hadn’t hesitated to lead him under the yellow tape to the charred interior.

“They think the fire started right about here,” she gestured to the start of what had been the first corridor. “You can see that the cells form lines that don’t connect. That prevents a mass escape in a situation just like this. It’s like the teeth of a comb. Cell blocks can be sealed, incidents confined to just one wing. Of course, we cleared everyone out after this but you can see that the back of the building was barely touched.”

Taking his tone from her, Brian was again pure professional. “Who usually occupied this wing?”

“Well, that’s kind of the weird part,” Connie frowned at the soot stained walls. “Down here,” Her voice echoed in the ruined passageway. “Were typically two day transfers, guys going from city lockup to Lompoc or from there to King City or Bakersfield. They kept them here if there were fewer than fifty. Only overnight. You see, they could pull the buses up to the end of the corridor here and load them without wasting too much personnel on supervision.”

“What’s weird about that?”

“Well, where the fire started was much further forward.” She walked back up to the ruined shell of what had been the booking station. “If the firemen are right, the fire must’ve started in what we called the drunk tank. Practically under the duty sergeant’s nose.” She frowned at the floor, picked up some sodden, half-burned paper and then dropped it, disgustedly.  “These cells had long benches that could have been fuel. Problem is, there wasn’t anyone special in there at the time. And as you see, the booking paperwork for the random pickups is papier machê.” 

 Brian asked reasonably.  “Didn’t they have a surveillance tape?”

Connie shook her head as if trying to clear it. “Smoke damaged the tape pretty badly.”

“Well,” Brian’s cop instincts perked up a little. “When did they change the tape? The previous one might have something…”

Suddenly her dark eyes snapped and she turned around and darted back across the street. Brian trotted after her. When he caught up, she was muttering to herself. “Yesterday was Saturday, right? They should’ve changed the tape at eight pm. With any luck, Jim will still have it. You’ll have to excuse me.” Connie suddenly turned to Brian contritely. “I haven’t slept and my brain’s not working.”

 Brian made some remark about the infrequency of his own brain working, no matter how much sleep he got. Connie smiled and looked as if she wanted to pat him approvingly.

“This is thirty hours before the flare-up,” grunted Jim as he cued up the first tape. Brian did the math. The fire must have started, or been noticed, at 1:00 AM Friday morning.

The duty sergeant was dozing lightly, while the gray light from the video played over his face. Connie nudged him as people flitted across the screen and he rubbed his head and mumbled a name or, more often, an offense. He chirked up slightly as the videotaped evening wore on.

“That guy’s indecent exposure. He’s kind of a hoot.”

“Does he have a name?” Connie asked acidly. She had procured a notebook and was jotting everything down.

“He’s been in before. Regularly. We call him Dirty Harry.”

Connie sighed, “Think he’s left off flashing for pyromania?”

“Doubtful. These next two are two halves of a bar brawl. Sorenson, Matthew and Thompson, Jeffrey. They sobered up pretty quick so we let them go ‘round one.”

“They weren’t charged?”

“No, they hadn’t busted anything up ‘cept each other and usually they’re the best of friends. Most of the folks in those cells aren’t formally charged. They just need a time-out.”

Brian sank down in his chair as the tape played on, wondering why he was there, why he wasn’t out looking for Vince.  Why was he keeping with the charade that he was investigating this for anything other than his own motives? What the hell was he trying to prove?

Something was needling the back of Brian’s head, little pinpricks of a half-remembered thought. Silicon filler that’s often used by mechanics. His memory flashed to the afternoon that they’d hooked up the nozzles to juice up his 2JZ ugly duckling. Laughing, Dom had called it that, the ugly duckling. As he’d nudged Brian and led him off for the obligatory afternoon Corona, Dom had leaned in and almost whispered, don’t worry, day after tomorrow, she’ll be a swan.

Brian could still smell the odd metallic smell of the silicon they’d used that day. It’s only flammable until it dries completely. The silicon took ten hours to dry and could create an almost smokeless heat in the interim.

They fast-forwarded the tapes occasionally in the long periods where no one checked in or out. They had slowly crept up to Thursday night, teenage joyriders, drunk and disorderlies, one memorable pandering offense. The last tape slowly wound up to 20:00 while Connie tapped her pen in an effort to stay awake. 

 In the midst of all the Thursday night chaos, Brian’s eyes were abruptly drawn to a solitary figure standing loosely flanked by a patrolman. Wearing a hooded coat wasn’t a felony in Los Angeles, but it certainly marked you as eccentric.  He was about to speak up when Connie saved him the trouble.

“…Okay, so teenagers probably out. Who’s the big guy?”

The duty sergeant paused as if searching his memory.  “Public intoxication, I think. That one was weird.”

“Weird how? What’s his name?”

“Dominguez, Victor. Big and mean-looking, but quiet. No trouble. We released him four hours later to his own recognizance.” There was a small click and then the tape paused for a moment before ejecting itself.

“Dominguez, huh?” Connie leaned forward, “If that guy’s Hispanic, I’ll eat my hat.”

 “Well, guess you would know,” the duty sergeant stretched his arms above his head. “They don’t pay me to make decisions like that. But that was one of the weird things. Another thing was that they pulled him in for public drunkenness but I don’t think he’d had a drop.”

Brian had frozen as the camera tracked over the figures. The gray light traced over the broad face throwing the hollow of the eyes into stark relief, the wide lips like some figure in marble.  Some small voice in his head murmured, happy now?

Dom.

He cleared his throat under the cover of a cough. “Connie, I’ve got a friend down in Central who could probably scan the images through ASIP. See if anything comes up.”

She turned to him and rubbed her forehead wearily. “Good idea. Jim, put O’Conner on the evidence chain for the tape…”

**********

 “Rick?”

“Brian! How’re you feeling?”

Brian paused for a second. “Kind of weird. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, buddy. Real cool. Gina and I are going out for dinner later, want me to bring you anything? You coming in?”

“Nah, don’t think so. I’m still not feeling quite right.”

“Well, don’t come back until you do, man. Nothing’s more important than your health.”

Brian grinned into the phone. Only Rick could say something like that without sounding like a total cheeseball. Brian looked up the street at the rows of signs in Spanish, Russian, Korean, Chinese. He was on the corner of Maple and Ninth, as good a place as any to change the entire course of his life. 

“Rick, did I ever tell you that you’re a great guy? Don’t laugh, man, I mean it. And you’re going to be a great cop.”

“Hey, I know that, man. I got a great partner. Why’re you…” Rick trailed off for a long awkward moment. “Get better soon, Brian. Do whatever you have to do to get better.”

Brian looked down at the cracked concrete. “I will, buddy.” Such little words had to say so much.  Rick was a smart guy. He was figuring this out. He wasn’t going to make Brian lie.

Brian hung up the phone and looked south to the freeway. Known accomplices, relatives, friends.

**********

Brian had such a pronounced sense of déjà vu as he rounded the dim corner that would take him to the back lot of the Gato Negro, he was almost unsurprised when a fist shot out of the darkness and tried to split his cheekbone open. The impact knocked him down to one knee, but even with that sudden flower of pain and the scanty light that filled the alley, Brian recognized the hulking form that stood over him. Brian surged up off the pavement behind the momentum of his swinging fists just as a disbelieving voice asked, “Brian?”

Vince moved with a skittering sideways step, trying to stay outside the reach of his opponent. Brian couldn’t stop himself from landing one-two just right under Vince’s ribcage, but his heat subsided quickly. Vince was here, Dom couldn’t be far away. Vince took the blows with a startled breath and somehow kept himself from retaliating, which seemed weird considering the way of things.

It was also the first time Brian had ever heard his real name on Vince’s lips. The novelty was enough to make him almost forget his anger. Almost.

They circled each other warily for a few seconds and then spoke in unison.

“Where’s Dom?”

“I thought you…”

“What do you mean…?”

Brian could feel himself mirroring Vince’s perpetual stormy scowl. His disappointment was bitter in his mouth. Surprisingly, it was Vince who looked away first.

“C’mon, we can’t talk here. Let’s go up the boulevard and I’ll buy you a beer.”

Brian jerked his chin at the Gato Negro. “Is Hector in there?”

“Naw, man. I’ve been looking everywhere. For everyone.” Vince turned away quickly and shambled off toward an anonymous bar. He turned to look back appraisingly at Brian. “Figures the first person I’d find would be you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Brian couldn’t keep the edge from his voice. He wanted to play it cool but it wasn’t happening.

“’Cause you were the last person I was expecting. Were you following me back there? You gonna arrest me?”

“I was looking for Hector. I just park back there so no one jacks my car.”

“What are you driving nowadays?”

Brian opened his mouth to tell Vince to can the small talk when he suddenly noticed that they were currently walking through the front of some crappy crowded bar. It would pay to be discreet until they could speak privately. Had Vince grown a brain during his stint upstate?

“Nothing special,” Brian muttered as Vince accosted some wannabe porn star who was slumming as a waitress.

“Hey, darling, you got any quiet tables? Me ‘n my buddy need to talk business.” Brian had forgotten (if he had ever known) that Vince could be charming in a thuggish way. Vince had the waitress laughing and promising the coldest pitcher of Corona in the Southland before she had finished escorting them to a lonely back booth.

When they got settled, they paused for a long moment taking each others’ measure. Vince was paler and thinner, which was only natural. For some reason, his pale skin made his eyes seem even brighter. Brian began to feel twitchy under Vince’s piercing regard. Vince could always see so clearly.

Vince leaned forward, his mouth almost twisted into a leer. “You look like shit, Brian Earl Spilner.”

“Dom busted you out.” Brian said quietly.

“Yeah,” Vince sighed. “You know about that, huh? I didn’t quite know the plan before it all went down, though. I just knew something was in the works. The fire starting seemed like a good time to take my chances. It was only later that it began to seem…orchestrated.”

“He didn’t tell you where to go later? How to meet up with him?” Brian couldn’t quite believe it.

“No, goddamnit!” suddenly Vince was leaning forward, pulsing with rage. “We couldn’t fucking communicate! You think he came on visiting day? Think we had lots of late-night phone calls?”

“How did you know that something was ‘in the works’?” Brian had no time for Vince’s anger. It was almost like pressure building in his chest, the swelling heat before a lightning strike, this need to find Dom.

“Mia.” Vince bit the name off like a challenge. “What, she didn’t tell you?”

Brian leaned back into the shadows of the booth.  “I haven’t seen her since…that day. Either of them.”

“Huh,” Vince leaned back and seemed to sink in on himself. He examined his beer and mulled over Brian’s words. After two minutes of silence, Vince pulled his eyes up to Brian’s and began to talk rapidly.

“Look, Brian, I want to…”

“It’s okay,” Brian cut in.

“No, I gotta say this. Me and Dom have been friends since we were kids, right? Mostly getting into all kinds of trouble together and he’s always been the one I could count on to save my ass. Every time. No matter what. It became almost like a joke between us.”

Vince stared at the neon Budweiser sign. “After he came back from Lompoc, it was different, not as wild. He got quieter. He’d still save my bacon, but get pissed at me for the risks I took. It was like then he realized how…fucked up and breakable everything is.”

Vince paused and changed tack.

“I had a lot of time to think. Up there. Not much else to do. Mia wrote me and that’s all I was living for. For the first time, Dom wasn’t watching my back. Dom didn’t have to tell me that the inside was tough…spent half my time looking over my shoulders for the gooks, the other half staying away from everybody else…you know what I did, first thing I busted out?”

“What?”

1. “I broke into an empty trailer and slept for twelve hours. I didn’t care if some redneck came home and blasted me to pieces or they picked me up and put me back inside…it was the first real night’s sleep I had in almost a year.”    

The smartest thing you could have done, but Brian didn’t give the thought voice. Vince fell silent. Brian was just about to suggest that they start moving somewhere, anywhere when Vince spoke up again.

“Hospital was worse than prison. Kept thinking I was back on that truck. An instant replay, over and over. The worst part was: I kept seeing Dom’s face. I kept seeing the moment when he realized that he couldn’t help me.”

Brian stayed quiet. He’d seen that look in his nightmares as well.

“But you could,” Vince looked up from where he was rubbing his knuckles through a puddle of beer. “You did. And you didn’t have to.”

“It’s okay…” Brian started.

“Goddamnit, it’s not okay!” Vince leaned forward his face clenched with a ferocity that made his eyes gleam. “The way I treated you was shit, man and it’s not okay. You’re being…what you were saved my ass. Jesse would have…” Vince trailed off and then his face hardened as he looked up. “Jail’s better than dead. You still a cop?” 

Brian didn’t hesitate. “Not anymore. I guess Mia told you…everything?”

“She didn’t have to tell me,” Vince actually grinned. “I already knew, remember?”

And now they could almost laugh quietly together.

**********

 “So what are you driving nowadays?” Brian asked as they left the bar.

Vince shrugged, “Whatever’s easiest to boost. How do you think I got the clothes and the cash? You wouldn’t believe the loads of shit people leave in their cars.”

“Not exactly the best way to keep a low profile,” Brian said mildly.

“Naw, I guess not.” Vince grinned again. “Had to get down south somehow. Gotta go a little further yet.”

“What’s up?”

“Races tonight. In Irvine.”

Brian’s heart started to thump a little faster. “You think mutual friends might come?”

“Don’t see why not. That’s where Hector is.”

“Why don’t we snag my ride, y’know, make the trip down a little less thrilling?”

Vince bobbed his head. “You drive, I’ll navigate,” he said in an exaggerated surfer drawl.

Brian tensed for a second and then realized that Vince was making a joke. They were actually going to laugh together for the second time in half an hour. Brian had often found himself wondering what Dom had seen in Vince. Sometimes Brian pitied Dom for his loyalty to a childhood friend who hadn’t grown up. Obviously, Brian hadn’t seen the whole picture. When he wasn’t acting like a pit bull defending his territory, Vince was kind of a fun guy.

“Vince and Brian’s Excellent Adventure,” Brian joked as they strode up to his car.

Vince rolled his eyes, “More like the Bogus Journey, man, I hate Orange County.”

“Oh no?” Brian mimed shock. “C’mon, there’s like the, uh, y’know the ah….suburban bliss.”

Vince arched his eyebrow. They both snickered.

“You know, if they try to bust it up, get the hell out quick, man,” Brian turned serious. “They made it a misdemeanor offense to get caught even watching a race in Irvine. They’ll book and print everyone they pick up and that’d be it for you.”

“That sucks!” Vince was vehement. “What is this, Soviet Russia? Whatever happened to that ‘live free or die’ crap?”

“Dunno, man, guess for that you gotta go to Mexico.”

Vince nodded meditatively and was silent until Brian pulled onto the highway. “What are you doing to keep yourself in plugs, if you ain’t a cop anymore? Mia said that you evened it up for Jesse but let Dom walk. Guess they busted you pretty hard for that, huh?”

Brian felt his spine stiffening. He never imagined in a million years that he’d be having this conversation with Vince. Any moment, I’m going to wake up.

“Yeah, I’m lucky that I didn’t end up your cellmate. I shot Tran and that was kind of a tangled IA web for a while. His family’s got serious bank…”

Vince was nodding briskly, as if he approved, “Lance dead too? That mother was such a sick fuck…”

“Don’t really know what happened there,” Brian frowned. “By the time I thought to ask questions, they weren’t telling me anything. Dom hurt him. Saw it with my own eyes. He may be dead.”

 Vince kept bobbing his head but it looked like he had stopped listening. He mumbled something that sounded like, hope so.

“So anyway,” Brian tried to wrap up. “They busted me back to patrolman, which was good, because the only other thing I’m good for would have been security guard or maybe bounty hunter. Which isn’t exactly one of the more well-respected professions around.”

Vince was looking at him really hard, “So when’d you stop being a patrolman?”

“About two hours ago.”

Vince blew out his breath hard and clenched his fists. Brian tightened his grip on the steering wheel and tried to make his face blank.  Surely, Vince wouldn’t take a swing while they were barreling down the 405 south at 70 miles per?

“What are you saying, man? And just what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”  Vince’s voice had an edge that could slice through an artery but Brian could tell he was actually trying to keep his temper. Prison really does change you, I guess.

“I just…” Brian cleared his throat but it still came out kind of choked. “I just want a do-over.”

The fire and anger seemed to drain from Vince in a slow wave. He washed his hand over his beard and looked off into the glittering forest of suburban light. When he spoke again, Brian had to lean in to hear him, “I get that. But it ain’t gonna happen. For either of us.”

“Yeah,” Brian said miserably. “But hey, you got to apologize in person…why can’t I?”

“Yeah,” Vince sounded bone-tired. “You want to apologize so bad, you’ll give your life away to do it?”

“Yes.”

Vince turned to face Brian again, “You know, people always think that things would be better if other people understood them. Like if people understand you, they’re gonna like you, right? When usually the opposite is true. Mia said…well, Mia said a lot of things.”

“You always ‘understood’ me really well,” Brian spoke in a low voice. You can get a burger and fries for $2.95, faggot!

“Yeah, I did. I do,” Vince sighed. “Doesn’t mean I really like it.”

Brian waited. A few miles of highway slipped by. Vince was such a complete creature of instinct, it was strange to watch him thinking. Brian could almost feel him thinking.

“Dom should listen to you,” Vince nodded at the dashboard. “When you apologize. I’ll make sure that he does.”

“Thanks, man.” Again the words came out really quiet. This new Vince was so… unexpected. Brian’s heart swelled to fill his windpipe, cutting off anything else he would have said. They drove along in silence.

“Stripper,” Vince said suddenly, apropos of absolutely nothing.

“What?”

“I think you’re selling yourself short on the job front. Security guard? Not fat and slow enough. Bounty hunter? Not quite ex-con enough.”

“So a stripper?” Brian tried to keep a straight face.

“You could’ve been a hit with the sorority girls. Raked in big bucks from the bachelorette parties. I mean, you already have the uniform,” Vince glanced sideways with a wicked gleam in his eye.

“Obviously, you’ve never seen me dance,” Two could play at this game.

Vince made his eyes go wide, “Didn’t realize that the dancing was all that important. I thought it was more about the size of your nightstick…”

Brian snapped his fingers in a eureka! gesture. “Or maybe I could’ve just put on my favorite dress and got myself out on the street…”

And Vince did take a swing at him then, but it was a playful punch, a don’t-bust-my-balls kind of punch. Brian blocked it with his open palm and thwapped Vince on the forehead. They grinned at each other like idiots.

********

The designated racing street was a service road behind some anonymous office park. They pulled into one of the many parking lots since Brian’s car wasn’t really up to competing with the buffed and polished confections that lined the raceway proper. After switching the ignition off, Brian reached between Vince’s knees to pull all his papers from the glovebox. Vince grunted and pushed himself out of the car.

“You planning on racing this baby for slips?” Vince ran his hands over the hood in an exaggerated caress. “Can’t say I think that’s the greatest idea. What’s your best time in this,  sixty seconds? No, wait…ninety?”

Brian grinned ruefully as he opened the trunk for his screwdriver. Vince watched as he pulled the plates off the front and back of the crappy old Ford.

“Hey, if you’re going to be a missing person, might as well do it right. Take ‘em a while to trace it from the VIN.”

Vince shook his head slightly, “You are something else, man.  Did you keep your gun?”

“No, I left it in my locker. I’ve got a back-up piece…”

“You got it on you?”

“No, it’s in a safe place. I can get it later.”

Vince grimaced, “Might have been useful. I would have got something, but I didn’t find that much cash. Keep your head down. Not everyone’s going to be happy to see us.”

Brian paused for a beat, considering this. “Vince, I’m not sure anyone’s going to be happy to see us.”

Vince smirked, “Speak for yourself, punk. The ladies are always happy when I arrive.” He began a rolling strut down the lot.

Brian started singing, ‘Just a Gigolo’ almost under his breath.  Vince turned and did a little float like a butterfly, sting like a bee shadowbox. Then they both settled into a prison yard walk, head down, no eye contact. Not really looking, but seeing everything.

They started ambling around, scanning the crowd. The usual suspects lined both sides of the road, while the serious folk began trying to stage up.  People crowded around the rows of shiny cars trying to be cool or, at the very least, look cool. It was a chaotic scene, racers arguing, spectators shouting. Brian wondered at the lack of order. It didn’t seem like there would ever be a race for all the posing and trash talk.

“It was like this before,” Vince murmured.

“Before what?”

“Before Dom.”

They kept looking. They caught a glimpse of Edwin through a crowd of groupies but didn’t see anyone else they knew. Brian was beginning to feel slightly desperate.

Ever since the day he’d sent Hector to find the wounded Dom and get him out of harm’s way, hovering in the recesses of Brian’s head was the conviction that the reason he couldn’t find Dom was only because he wasn’t really looking. Now that he’d begun to look…

They had come to the far edge of the milling scene when the call echoed in a wave through the mob. COPS! COPS! COP S! The crowd burst into a frenzy like a kicked anthill. The shouts and screams blended with the roar of a hundred engines.

Vince and Brian spared one look at one another and then darted for the car. They managed to stay together while dodging a gauntlet of people whose only speed came from the cars they drove. Vince actually had to hurdle over some girls who had collapsed in a giggling drunken heap.

Brian could hear the sirens getting louder and he found an extra burst of speed within himself. His legs pumped harder in rhythm with Vince’s long strides. Shit, shit, shit.

Vince would go back to prison. Brian would have a lot of explaining to do himself. And the specter of hope that had glowed in him since seeing Dom’s blurred face on the video was beginning to die.

Suddenly a car screeched up onto the sidewalk directly in front of them. A beautiful glossy black Nissan with tinted windows. Large for a racing car. Perfect for a getaway car, thought Brian. Trust Dom to show up right on time at the last minute. He shared a glance with Vince as they tried to pull themselves up from their headlong race. Relief flooded through him.

And then the flood turned to ice in his bone marrow as the window glided down and the red laser sight of a Glock 9mm centered on his chest. Vince and Brian were suddenly surrounded by a buzzing swarm of menacing men on Kawasakis.

“Get in,” said Lance Nguyen.

**********

Confucius say, it ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings

Back in the walled lot of the T&K seafood wholesaler. The rows of statues made an eerie audience. Coplike, Brian had started inventorying their captors. Six. Very heavily armed. Odds looked… baddish.

Lance had been silent on the drive over just looking at the two men in his backseat. Vince hadn’t been able to avoid a little struggle and was now defiantly bleeding all over the leather. When the car pulled to a halt and they were motioned out by the gun barrel, Vince leaned over and deliberately spit on the floor of the car. Lance seemed unmoved and addressed Vince mildly.

 “I don’t like you. I never have.”

Brian wondered how Lance could manage to make such innocuous words sound so sinister. Vince sneered down at Lance, “That’s a shame, since I just love you, cutie.” 

Lance tilted his head minutely and one of his thugs casually drove the butt of his MAK-90 into Vince’s stomach, doubling him over. Brian tried to reach for him but the gun barrels jabbed him back.

Lance turned to speak to Brian. His eyes gleamed feverishly but his voice was toneless. 

“You shot Johnny in the back.”

Brian wasn’t sure if he could gain any advantage by mentioning that he’d actually shot Johnny in the chest, by virtue of the fact that Johnny had turned almost completely around on his bike, in order to better fill Brian full of lead. Somehow, he knew Lance wasn’t really interested.

“Where’s Toretto?”

“I don’t know.”

Lance tilted his head, “I wonder what I’m going to have to do to make you tell me.”

“Do what you like; it’s not going to make me know where Toretto is.”

“He’s not here, but you are.” Lance’s eyes seemed to somehow extend beyond the confines of his face. He sounded vaguely pleased. “So you’ll have to hurt enough for both of you.”

He made another barely seen gesture that sent one of the bike riders into the dark garage behind them. Moments stretched interminably as Brian felt a rifle nosing between the vertebrae of his spine and Vince wheezed on the asphalt. Brian squinted at the guy when he emerged, not immediately able to identify what instrument of torture Lance would unleash upon them next. The guy was carrying…

Rope. Lots of rope.

Vince lunged up and forward with a roar and attempted to snatch the MAK-90 from the man standing nearest him. Brian saw his chance, twisted and cold-cocked the guy behind him and kicked him a glancing blow over his kneecap. Brian was reaching for a fallen weapon when someone kicked him in the back of his knee. A fourth guy stepped up behind the struggling Vince with what looked like a crowbar. He swung it gracefully at the back of Vince’s head where it connected with a very ungraceful sound.  Vince sagged forward onto the disputed rifle and a shot echoed through the lot. Vince seemed pressed to his initial assailant in a partial embrace until the thug stepped aside and let Vince’s body slump to the ground.

Brian started toward Vince automatically, the weapons forgotten, Oh God, not Vince, not now, when he was blindsided by a blow to the jaw that rocked his head and another that split his lip like a ripe plum. Another kick from behind sent him sprawling, followed by more kicks as he tried to crawl forward. Vince was so still.

A hand fisted in his hair and drew him up to his knees. Lance walked around into Brian’s sightline, though Brian still strained to see around him to Vince’s motionless form. Lance slapped him broadly sending Brian’s blood in a wide arc. Lance curled his lip and wiped his hand slowly on Brian’s shirt. He leaned down and stared at Brian for what felt like an hour. Brian stared back defiantly despite the cold circle being etched into the back of his neck by one of the myriad guns. Then Lance ran his tongue over Brian’s bloody lip. Brian’s growing tide of fear was threaded with a wave of nausea.

One of Lance’s henchmen rested another gun against Brian’s cheekbone, while another guy leaned down and started tying his hands and then fumbling with his feet. Brian kept focus on the glittering hardness of Lance’s eyes. He could not allow himself to think about what might happen next.

Lance brusquely told one of the thugs to go call…someone and tell them that they were going to be a little late. Part of Brian was glad that whatever they had in mind was apparently not going to take long. He started saying a half-remembered Hail Mary for Vince.

Lance stepped backward at some unseen signal. Brian got another shove that put him flat on the pavement. When he realized that his arms were somewhat loose he started to push himself upward but was quickly tangled in a web of rope. The ropes linked his wrists and ankles with…Weird. They hadn’t tied him up…they’d tied him…Brian began to feel a little uneasy.

Holy Mary Mother of God, this couldn’t be what it looked like. As the first of the bikers revved up, and Brian felt his bonds tightening his mind finally found the words drawn and quartered somewhere deep in his memory. Holy Shit.

Lance was getting medieval on his ass.

The four powerful Kawasakis started to accelerate gently. Brian felt a sudden jerk in his pelvis as one of the riders goosed the gas a little too hard. Then he felt himself levitating. There was no pain at first. The guys on the bikes pulled forward with almost military precision. They handled their machines like they’d done this before. Which truly didn’t bear thinking about.

Strung out between four bikes, Brian now hovered about three feet off the ground and the pressure was starting to edge toward unbearable. He clenched his fists and attempted to draw his arms and legs inward but that just made muscles screech and he quickly tried to make himself go limp again. Christ in a bucket, this was actually happening. He wondered if having his limbs torn off would kill him or if he still had a bullet in the brain to look forward to. All they had to do was juice the gas…

With a muffled pop, searing impossible ache jagged down his left arm. After the blaze of white heat had subsided and he could pry his eyes open, the words floated through his head, shoulder, dislocated. Such a hollow, distant, clinical term. Made it sound as if his shoulder had just decided to move to the suburbs. He was willing to bet that whoever had come up with the name hadn’t ever had his arm yanked out of its socket. He realized that soon he was going to start screaming and he might not be able to stop.

Surely he was going to pass out. Surely his consciousness was just about to decide that it would be better off elsewhere.

If he concentrated he could feel the whining buzz of each separate bike engine in his bloodstream. He could hear Lance laughing. And beneath it all, a lower rumbling growl that was getting louder. Every inch of his skin felt the stretch. It was starting to get almost impossible to breathe…not much longer now.

At that moment, things started to move so fast that they became a kaleidoscope of blurry images. Two cars burst through the gates. One jerked to a squealing stop and the front window rolled down. The snout of a sawed-off shotgun nosed out. Brian saw powder flame from the muzzle and the pressure in his right arm was suddenly gone as a rider and bike toppled. The other car didn’t slow down as it plowed forward and settled into a curve like a bowling ball into unsteady pins. It crashed into the first bike with enough momentum to send both the rider and machine airborne. By the time the first rider landed in a heap, the second was catapulted through the air screaming thinly. 

Released from the steady counter pull, the last bike dragged Brian’s body six yards before the big car, which he now realized was a Plymouth, ran it down, crunching the bike into splayed metal sending the rider up and over the hood. Then the car turned to Lance who was baying incoherently and attempting to shoot something that would cripple the inexorable machine.

Lance was pulling on the trigger so hard that his automatic did a herky-jerky dance at the end of his arm. The big Plymouth was accelerating into the face of a lead hailstorm. Another shotgun blast and Lance went down on one knee still firing at the big car. The car’s grille seemed to smile wickedly and Brian could almost hear it saying, you like metal, kid? Well, here’s a whole lot of metal for you. It slid into Lance almost in slow motion with no other protest than a wet crunching slurp. The slower speed combined with the sheer weight of the old American steel left what remained of Lance a heap on the concrete.

The Plymouth pulled to a stop and for a moment, silence reigned.

The windshield was webbed with cracks that made it completely opaque. The crushed front half appeared to be grinding sparks from the front wheels. The body was studded with a pox of holes. It seemed impossible that anyone still lived inside. Brian had a flash that maybe there wasn’t actually anyone in the car. Oh yeah, right, dude. Christine just rescued you.

And then, with a decisive clunk, the door swung open and Dom slid out smoothly.

Dimly, Brian was aware that they were caught in some odd reversed replay of their last meeting. Dom appeared whole, untouched, leashed power. His face didn’t show a hint of surprise. His white T-shirt glowed pristinely.  Best of all, Dom was striding toward him instead of limping away.

At that moment, predictably, Dom’s car exploded.

The burst of bright light turned Dom’s form into a shadow that strode forward like an avenging angel from the wreckage of hell. The wave of heat that washed over Brian was followed by a jarring shockwave. As the debris began to rain down around them and Dom knelt down beside him, Brian’s treacherous brain thought, this is all that I wanted.

“Brian?”  Dom did sound a little surprised. That voice traced over him like a touch.

“I’m sorry,” was all Brian could gasp out between long breaths. Dom shook his head slowly and traced his thumb lightly over Brian’s jaw where it was starting to swell.

Brian tried to push himself upright and couldn’t. Tried to point toward Vince’s body and couldn’t. Bones, muscles, tendons, nothing would cooperate. He almost sobbed. Dom turned to follow Brian’s gaze. Edwin had crouched over Vince and was motioning Dom over. Dom looked back down at Brian and asked, “Are you OK?”

“I think so,” Brian tried to pull himself together, literally. “They shot Vince.”

Very gently, Dom worked his arm under Brian’s scraped back and push/pulled him delicately upright. Only a sheer force of will kept him from sagging right back down. Brian buckled once or twice and Dom was there to catch him. Brian felt ridiculously bad for messing up Dom’s T-shirt with smears of blood. It was then he realized that he was going into shock.

“Can you walk?” Dom asked. Brian nodded and shuffled unsteadily along behind Dom, feeling a bit like a scarecrow with loose straw.

Dom knelt beside Vince and pushed his shoulder while cradling his battered head. Sickly, Brian realized that the dark shadow spreading down Vince’s left side was liquid. He started to babble, “We came down to Irvine together, looking for you at a race. That’s where Lance ambushed us. I tried t…”

“He’s still alive,” Dom’s voice cut through the din in his head.

Brian felt as though someone had just stayed his execution. “Uh, are you sure?”

“Well, he’s breathing and his heart is beating. What’s your diagnosis?”

Despite the ripping agony in his knees, Brian knelt down beside Vince and gingerly peeled back the ripped and blood-soaked shirt. Blood was seeping from a dime-sized wound on the edge of Vince’s armpit. Far from the heart and lungs and below the collarbone. Brian tried to quell the surge of hope and said, “Took a nasty knock to the head. With, like, a crowbar.”

Dom actually snorted. “Oh, it’ll take more than that to dent that thick skull. He’ll probably wake up soon. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Brian nodded and they all turned to look at the burning wreckage that was Dom’s car.

Edwin said gruffly, “Man, hauling bleeding white boys around Westchester was not on the agenda for the evening. Meet you back at the crib.”

 Dom snorted again. He trotted over to the crumpled pile that had been Lance and patted around for a few seconds. He edged the keys loose and beeped the black Nissan open. Sirens were beginning to yodel in the distance.

Dom walked back muttering something that sounded like, “eye for a fucking eye” and swung Vince into a fireman’s carry. Brian managed to hobble after them, his left arm dangling like fruit of the pain tree. Dom had deposited Vince in the backseat by the time Brian joined them.

Dom looked at him seriously for a moment as Brian limped to the passenger’s side and started fumbling one-handed with the door handle. Brian had almost gotten the door open when suddenly Dom was there.

“Hold on to the car a second.”

Brian obliged. Dom wrapped his fingers tentatively around Brian’s left hand. Dom raised Brian’s injured arm to the level of his shoulder slowly, cradling the elbow in his fist. He looked Brian straight in the eye and said softly:

“This isn’t going to feel good.”

Brian nodded. In one short thrust, Dom jammed the arm up and inward. Brian felt another muffled ‘pop’ and the silver-gray of the streetlights turned black.

**********

He swam up to consciousness as the car pulled up under a light. Brian’s eyes focused on the sign ‘Crenshaw’ and something. South Central, maybe the best neighborhood in the world to be in if you had a bullet wound that couldn’t see a doctor.

They glided up a driveway to a nondescript house. Dom had rolled down all the windows and a pack of dogs clustered around the car, yipping and nosing at the occupants excitedly. Brian caught a glimpse of a female form at the window. Then Edwin was wading through the doggy melée and unlocking the back garage.

They made a sad slow procession getting into the house. Dom carried Vince and Edwin lent a shoulder to Brian. A young woman ushered them into a small dining room and yanked the tablecloth off the table before indicating that Vince could lie there comfortably. She didn’t seem put out in the least.

Edwin had whipped out his cell phone and was giving instructions in rapid low tones, while pulling off Vince’s gory shirt. The young woman came back with some soft white cloth that still smelled faintly of bleach. She made two pads and pressed them to either side of the gunshot wound. She motioned Brian down onto one of the dining room chairs and gestured for him to keep up the pressure. She vanished into the kitchen and came back with three packages of frozen peas and corn. She made a little pillow for Vince with two of them and handed the last one to Brian. He pressed it to his aching face gratefully.

Brian floated in and out of a waking sleep while Edwin and Dom talked. People arrived and took over the care of Vince. Someone took away Brian’s peas and gave him a proper icepack. The young woman made some sandwiches that the rescuers munched between bursts of activity.  

Vince woke up when they started to clean his shoulder. His opening eyes fell on Dom. He reached his hand out before he took in the tiny dining room and the figures hovering over him. He whispered hoarsely, “Sight for dead eyes. Where’s..?”

Dom grabbed Vince’s hand and leaned over him, whispering into his ear. Watching from where he sat in the corner, Brian couldn’t quite keep his eyes from stinging. He felt like he was about to fall off the chair and shatter into pieces. He couldn’t tilt his head back because of the cuts and scrapes on his skull and he couldn’t rest his chin on his hand. He was starting to feel very, very sick.

Dom whispered to Vince until he drifted off into unconsciousness again, the pain lines in his face slightly fainter.

Dom looked up at Edwin and asked, “Is he gonna be OK?”

Edwin went over and exchanged some quick words with the lady in charge. “Yeah, he should be. He’s lost some blood, but they’ve got stuff they can give him. He’s got a whatchamacallit? A concussion? But nothing we can’t handle. He’s got six or seven lives left, dog.”

“Cops are gonna be looking for that car,” Dom jerked his head in the direction of the Nissan.

“You want I should take care of it?” Edwin offered generously.

“I don’t want you to feel the heat. I’ll ditch it in S.D.”

Edwin rubbed his chin, “If you’re going, you should go sooner rather than later. We left at least four corpses in that lot. I took my shells, but I don’t know if they could get any prints off what’s left of your car.”

Edwin flashed a look at his girlfriend and then continued.

“You’ve got a few hours at least. But I don’t think this guy should be moved,” Edwin gestured at Vince. “Why don’t you leave him here? We’ve got an extra bedroom we can put him in. No one saw you come…well, no one who’d say anything.”

Dom took a hard look at Vince and then at Brian’s huddled form. “I guess that’ll be OK. We’ll come back later when we don’t look so fucked up.”

Some small part of Brian’s mind was aware that Dom had said, ‘we’, that Dom was gesturing for him to get up and leave with him. Dom felt responsible for him or something. Did Dom want to kill him as much as he wanted to die? He shook his head slowly trying to clear it. Irrational. If Dom wanted him dead…he’d have just left him to the wolves.

Edwin tossed them some nylon jackets and they slipped them on out in the driveway while the dogs looked on.  “D’you think that assclown juiced up this freakin’ hearse?” Edwin mused, lightly tapping the hood of the Nissan. “Could be useful.”

“No room up front and the backseat is solid. Maybe in the trunk,” Dom clicked it open and then ducked down to investigate in the pale street light. He rummaged around for a few moments and then paused. “Huh….well, that should come in handy.”

Edwin rolled over to see for himself. After a long minute, he began to chuckle.

“Only you, Dom,” Edwin slapped him on the back. “I boost a car; it’s a long five upstate. You nab one, it’s…” he leaned halfway into the trunk to get a closer look. “$120,000 or thereabouts. Unreal.” 

Dom pulled out a few bricks of bills and thrust them at Edwin. “Here, for your trouble.”

Edwin demurred but as Dom continued to brandish the cash and Brian made encouraging noises, he was finally cajoled into accepting some of the stash. Brian wondered what Lance was planning for that kind of money and then it occurred to him that he’d rather not know. His back screamed in protest as he slid into the passenger seat. Dom slid in beside him and Edwin pushed the door closed.

“Don’t worry about V, bro. We’ll take care of him.”

“I’ll come up to get him in a few days,” Dom assured him.

“Send somebody,” Edwin said, running a hand over his cornrows. “They ain’t gonna let this go for a while. How’re you gonna slide past the border in this car?”

“We’ll take the tram.”

Edwin started to laugh. “Snowman, you taking lessons from this freak? Cool Hand Luke. Call for updates.”

**********

The muffled hum of the engine made the ride down bearable. Brian was not quite sure how long it took; it felt like forever. He kept drifting. He needed to focus all his energy into the bright pinpoint of his consciousness and keeping his limbs strung together. Sometimes he was convinced that this was all just a long dream but then some edge pressed into a bruise and he had to try not to flinch. He tried to remember the last time he hurt quite so bad.  

“You’re hurt worse than you’re letting on,” Dom had read his thoughts and sounded like he was trying not to be angry. Brian tried to shrug but he had stiffened up considerably in the past hours. He was starting to feel the itch that heralds blood-swelling and his voice came out hoarse and sharp at the same time.

“It’s just pain, Dom,” His swollen lip gave him a slight lisp. “It goes away.”

Dom looked at him sharply; his eyes glinting. Dom spoke so low that Brian wasn’t sure he had actually spoken at all. “That hasn’t been my experience, Brian.”

Brian couldn’t begin to answer that so he shut up and tried not to feel.

**********

They pulled up in another quiet street overshadowed by tall buildings. Dom loped up to read the parking sign and seemed satisfied that the car and its blood-soaked upholstery would stay unnoticed until Monday. Brian could hear a pulse of music from somewhere close by. Dom asked him again if he could walk and he nodded, but he couldn’t speak. They walked two blocks and turned a corner and the city groove spread out around them.

The gaslamps flickered in the misty light off the harbor. People were milling about in groups talking in the over-loud voices that distinguish the very intoxicated. Some turned to stare at the new arrivals. Brian had to concentrate on placing his feet and keeping his body moving. But he noticed after the third time someone crossed to the other side of the street to avoid them.

“You seen yourself?” Dom’s voice was quiet. He motioned for Brian to raise his eyes to the reflecting glass of a dark windowpane.

 Brian’s face looked like someone had stepped on it repeatedly. Black eyes, busted lip, swelling along the jaw pulled it lopsided. “Perfect disguise, I guess,” He tried to sound as if he didn’t give a shit.

Dom looked like he was about to say something, but then he just shook his head and looked away. 

Like Los Angeles, San Diego bars close by 2:00 AM. Like Los Angeles, it doesn’t mean the party is over. Tijuana lies only a short ride away and there the beer stays cold and scene stays hot well into the early hours. The city fathers of San Diego wisely decided that more public transport was essential to cutting down drunk-driving border casualties so they built a tram to connect the two cities.  Soldiers, sailors and college kids make it a premium Friday night destination. Dom and Brian tried to blend into the mob around the station. They boarded and the crowd melted away from them leaving them a seat to themselves in the last car. Brian leaned back and his consciousness rolled to and fro like a wave.

“Whoa, what happened to your friend? Looks like he’s hurt pretty bad,” this from a caramel blonde scented with lime and tequila. Her friends tittered, snapping gum, twirling hair, nervous as horses around blood. Through slitted eyes, Brian watched Dom’s head turn.

“Yeah, well,” Dom tilted his head and said with heavy irony, “You should see the other guy.”

Emboldened she asked, “Shouldn’t he, like, go to a hospital?”

“S’where we’re going…know a doc in T.J.” Dom said vaguely.

“Are you in the service?” she asked. If he could, Brian would roll his eyes. He had probably ripped a dozen ligaments and this woman was blithely trying to pick Dom up. He slumped back into a hopeless sprawl. And suddenly an arm tightened around him pulling him up to an easier posture. Dom’s arm. Dom tugged him until Brian’s head lolled on his shoulder and Brian’s right leg was in perfect alignment with Dom’s left. Dom’s hand spread over Brian’s ribs, supporting him while leaving his aching shoulder untouched.

“No,” Dom growled and the shut-the-fuck-up vibe finally penetrated the sorority girl’s drunken haze. Conversation died until the tram pulled up in Tijuana.

The college girls stumbled out, but the blonde lingered as Dom stood and hefted Brian up to his feet.

“Do you need some help?” she asked hesitantly.

“Thanks, but I’ve got him,” Dom threw this over his shoulder as he marched away, one arm wrapped around Brian like a steel cable.

The flashing lights, dust and noise made Brian’s head whirl. He had a vague impression of Dom leaving him sitting on a sidewalk, of hurried conversations in Spanish and Dom putting a bottle of water in his hand.  Before he knew it they were back in another car, this one older and smelling of cigarettes with a bench seat in the front. Dom made one more stop before they rumbled out of town. The green light of the farmacia burned into Brian’s eyes until he remembered to close them.

Dom slid back into the car with two white pills glowing on his dark palm. “Take this.”

Brian could almost raise his eyebrows. Dom sighed, pinched one pill and shoved it in Brian’s unresisting mouth. “It’s Tylenol with codeine.” Dom tilted the water bottle until Brian could choke down the pill. He tipped the other pill onto Brian’s tongue more gently. “Don’t need a prescription here. Two should be enough for now. We have another couple of hours in the car.”   

Brian was tempted to ask why he couldn’t just lie down in the back seat. Something in Dom’s face told him that it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask. Dom wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on him in the back seat.

If Brian was hurt more than he was letting on, Dom was more concerned than he was letting on.

Brian floated off on a cloud of codeine and didn’t wake up until they arrived in Baja.

**********

There was murmuring in his ears. A chant of vague encouraging sounds. “C’mon, Brian get up, it’s just a few steps to the house. Just push up a little.” He opened his eyes to look at Dom’s helpless expression. Dom couldn’t fit his body into passenger side enough to wrap his arms around Brian’s chest and he obviously didn’t want to start yanking on his arms. Brian obligingly tried to push up off the seat and grunted with the effort. Somehow they got free of the car before Brian collapsed.

1. They were in a wide courtyard surrounded by the faint scent of jasmine and motor oil. Something about the feel of the air let Brian know that they were about halfway up a hill and it was almost dawn.   

A slim figure darted forward from the light of the house. “Dom?” an urgent feminine voice called. Brian’s legs stopped working and he stumbled. Holy Christ. Mia.

“Where’s Vince?”

“He’s OK,” Dom’s voice was placating.

“Brian?” Her eyes snapped as she looked disbelievingly up into his face. He could already hear a note of betrayal in her voice.

Those crackling brown eyes almost made Brian wish he was back on Lance’s tender mercies. He would give almost anything not to have to look Mia in the face again. Suddenly he realized that he could find strength in his own weakness. She wouldn’t dare attack while he was hurt, right?  He paused for a second until Dom had closed the slight gap between their strides and just let gravity have its way. He slumped back into Dom’s arms. A moment later, it didn’t matter what Mia would say, because the black quicksand had closed over Brian and he was down for the count.

**********

Through a veil of darkness and pain, faint impressions filtered through. He was finally flat. On something soft. A fierce, quick voice jabbed at a low, slower rumble. Light flashed on him briefly; a door opened and closed. Brian tried to get up, but the world spun and his body sang with agony. The effort sent him back down. Blackness. A broad hand stroked over his forehead, then cradled his skull. Drew him up, tucked pills between his lips, and helped him drink.

**********

When Brian woke again, it was dark. Pitch dark except for the stars. He desperately needed to pee.

He struggled up into a sitting position. It was a little easier; the pills hadn’t worn off yet. The floor felt like ice to his bare feet. He got himself upright and shuffled to where he thought the door was. He kept feeling like he was going to totter and fall, but he made it to the far wall and ran his hands in a broad arc until he found the knob. Pulling the door open made sweat break out on his forehead, but he managed it.

If anything, the darkness was even more complete in the hallway. Brian leaned on the wall while he carefully felt his way forward. If he fell now, he might not be able to keep from yelling. Mia and Dom needed their sleep. He inched forward, brushing his fingertips along the wall for guidance. Suddenly, the hard, cool, smooth of the plaster turned warm. Brian nearly yelped in surprise. Dom. Standing silent in a doorway. Adrenaline prickles stung in Brian’s fingers and toes. He dropped his hand from Dom’s chest so quickly it hurt.

Dom didn’t say a word, just nudged him gently aside. Dom ambled down the hallway at a pace that Brian could follow, tapping lightly on each of the doorways. Dom switched the light on in the tiny bathroom and retreated. When Brian was done, he limped up the hall to where Dom was standing beside his doorway.

“You need more pills?”

“No, I’m good” It was true. He still ached but he felt like he was on the other side of the worst of it. The pain was like that of a viciously over-hard workout that would slowly fade. While Brian got himself horizontal, Dom settled into a dark corner of the room. Brian thought sleepily, there must be a chair there.

Dom’s voice coalesced from darkness. “You don’t feel any warmth or swelling, anywhere?”

What? That seemed like a strange question in Brian’s half-awake brain. Then it came to him: internal bleeding. He tried to reassure Dom in a muzzy voice, “No, really, I’m okay.  I’ll be okay.”

Dom’s gaze covered him like a blanket. I can’t sleep with him there, with him watching…I can’t but before those words fully crossed his mind, Brian was asleep.

**********

He woke to find light streaming in on him in a room that was obviously a guest bedroom, simply furnished in a rustic style. A bed, a chair, a nightstand. The sound of dishes rattling somewhere.  

He must have really conked out because he was wearing only his boxer shorts and he had no memory of getting undressed. His clothes were folded neatly in the chair that Dom must have occupied last night. Someone had washed them carefully with an eye toward removing the bloodstains. The slight stiffness showed that they had been line-dried. He had a sudden flash of a childhood memory, running between swaying damp sheets in his backyard.

He found the bathroom easily and spent a little time probing his hurts in the mirror. Bandages and the lingering scent of alcohol showed that someone had been working on him while he slept. The cuts itched where they were seaming. He broke the scab on his lip while pushing at his swollen jaw and fresh blood spilled over his chin until he mopped it up.

Brian slowly ventured out to the kitchen that seemed to line one side of the house. Treading lightly down the corridor, he glanced into the vacant rooms. One was obviously Dom’s, the other obviously Mia’s. The rest appeared unoccupied, so that told him something. He glanced into the kitchen before he stepped past the threshold. This was going to be…uncomfortable.

He was going to need to watch, to observe so that he didn’t have to ask questions that would make him even more unpopular.

Mia was standing at the counter with her back to him, patting hamburgers into shape. She turned when he came in and quickly turned back to her task. She slammed a skillet onto the stove with a bang. Brian steeled himself and went to sit at the end of the table farthest from her.

“You feel better?” she asked, in a voice of studied unconcern.

“Yes,” Brian responded hesitantly, “Thank you.”

She kept talking, softly, as if she was talking to herself. “He goes up to get Vince, he comes back with you. Is it an even trade, I wonder? Do you just make a habit of turning up like a bad penny, every time we find a moment of peace?”

“Mia, you have every right to be mad at me…”

She turned to him and her eyes widened disbelievingly, “Can you hear what you’re saying? ‘I have every right to be mad at you’ Guess what, Brian? I am mad at you…whether or not I have the right.”

Brian couldn’t help wincing, even though he’d always known that Mia’s righteous wrath would catch up with him someday.

She turned away and said, “Remember when you told me that the reason you were there was because of me and being friends with Dom was just a bonus? I thought about that a lot. It meant a lot to me when you said that.” She turned back and brandished a spatula. “Well, it turns out that you were there to bust my brother and fucking me was just a bonus. How do you think that feels, huh?”

“Mia, I never meant…” It sounded really stupid in his head so he dropped it. “I tried to make it right when I could…I made sure your brother came back to you.”

“Yes,” Her voice sounded like one long sigh. “You sent him back to me, despite his best efforts to off himself. I’m grateful for that, I really am. But now, every time he looks at me, he sees that when it all winds up, I’m the one who sold him out to a cop with a pretty face.”

Mia turned away from him again, from his face. “I’m his sister, Brian. You’d known him, what? A month?”

It felt like longer, Brian thought. But not nearly long enough.

“He doesn’t trust me anymore, Brian. He says he does. He may even think he does. But he doesn’t.” Her voice was getting rougher. She was about to cry.  

Her pain was like a burn; it felt like he was physically hurting her just by being near. He started to back away.

“Mia, I’m sorry,” It was lame, it was soooo lame, but it was all he had. He got to the door before she looked at him.

She raised her head and her eyes glittered, “Sorry? You’re sorry for that? Brian, that’s not even the worst of it! Why did you stop lying to me, if you’re going to keep lying to yourself?”

He tripped down the stairs and bolted to the garage. Escape. No use pretending that he didn’t know what she was talking about.  Odd, that with all that had happened, when he got into Dom’s presence, he could still relax. Is there any way in hell that I can make this all right again?

Dom was idly scrubbing a carburetor with an old toothbrush and drinking a Corona. The late afternoon light gave his skin a faint gold luster. Brian slumped down into the backseat of a gutted Toyota.

“You feel any better?” Brian was beginning to recognize the warmth in Dom’s voice and it gave him a twinge.

“Mia thinks you don’t trust her anymore. Because of me,” Brian stammered out in a rush. He simply couldn’t be cagey and circumspect anymore. This was all too important.

Dom’s beer paused on the way to his mouth. “That answer didn’t really fit the question.”

Brian stayed miserably quiet. If he was quiet, Dom would probably keep talking.

Dom didn’t disappoint him.

“You know, sometimes you can hurt someone so bad, they can’t love you anymore,” Dom mused softly, his eyes in the far distance. “It doesn’t mean that they’re not loyal to you…they would love you if they could, they’re just hurt too bad.”

“Sometimes it’s mental… Sometimes it’s physical…” Dom stopped and looked up. Brian knew how much this was costing Dom by the length of the pauses. It felt like there was a hole in Brian’s stomach and his guts were draining out. “Sometimes, it’s both. But if you look at someone and all you see is pain, there’s no way it’s going to work, is there?”

Brian couldn’t talk now if he wanted to.

“Pain brings a lot of clarity to your thoughts. You see things clearly. You can see if someone else’s motives are selfish. And they can see you at your weakest. Maybe you lose your self-respect.”

“So, is that what Mia did to you?” this comes out in a rasp. Brian’s throat is thick with the unspoken question, is that what I did to you?

Dom looked at him like he was almost surprised that Brian was still there.

“No,” Dom rumbled like a thunderstorm “It’s what I did to Letty.”

And he walked out of the garage and down the hill to where the sun was swelling on the horizon and he didn’t come back until after midnight.

 **********

Mia left the next day. Brian woke up early and found her throwing a bag and a cooler into a car that looked eerily familiar, but dark blue, not orange. He went out and stood behind the car, blocking her exit. If she just up and left, Dom would never forgive him.

“Where are you going?” he ventured, even though he was sure that he didn’t have the right to ask.

“To help Vince,” she said shortly, swinging around to the driver’s side. “I’ll be back when he can come down.”

“Be careful,” He said weakly, but sincere. She glanced at him suddenly and paused with her hands on the steering wheel.

“Don’t hurt him,” she said in a low voice. He had to lean in to catch it.

Brian started, “That’s not g…” and then he was struck by the déjà vu all over again. He’d made some promises to Dom that he obviously hadn’t kept. This time, maybe, he could be true.

“I won’t,” he brushed her shoulder with his fingertips, “I promise.”

She raised her eyebrows like she was about to say something and then just nodded. She slammed back into a reverse arc and then jabbed the accelerator and roared off down the hill. Brian limped inside, took some pills and then scrambled enough eggs to feed a small army.

Dom didn’t say anything for a full hour after he woke up, but Brian wasn’t worried because as far as he could remember, that was normal Dom behavior.

After they ate, they slowly moved out to the garage.  Dom indicated a bench seat on the floor that had been ripped out of the sacrificial Plymouth. Every time Brian tried to lift a finger to help, Dom frowned at him so elaborately; Brian had no trouble getting the picture. He accepted the unspoken coddling for two hours until Dom tried to shift a bumper onto an old Dodge with only the span of his arms. Brian pushed up to his feet.

“Have you grown another arm when I wasn’t looking?”

Dom fixed him with a lizard eye. Brian continued, “There’s no way you can do that by yourself, dude. I’m damaged, yeah, but I can lift a fender. Jeez, don’t be a dumbass.”

“Keep talking like that, O’Conner.” Dom replied, still trying to balance the fender. “I’ll dislocate your other shoulder.”

Brian snorted and caught the far end of the gleaming chrome. With his help, it glided into place like the last piece of a puzzle.

Now that the ground rules had been established, they could talk.

“Sorry that I took off like that,” Dom seemed to be carefully not-looking in his direction. “Didn’t mean to leave you alone with her.”

“Better that way,” Brian reassured him. It had been, too. When Brian told her what Dom had said in the garage, Mia had burst into tears. Mia told him about the morning that they had woken to find Letty and Leon simply gone and how Dom had refused to go look for them. Eventually, Mia let Brian comfort her with an awkward embrace. If he and Mia couldn’t be friends, at least they weren’t enemies.

“She worries too much,” Dom muttered.

“Don’t blame her, really.”

 “I do trust her,” Dom was still not looking at anything in particular. “I don’t know how to convince her that I do. We haven’t been talking like we should.”

“Because of me.”

It seemed like Dom was about to deny it, but then he wavered, “Maybe.”

 He suddenly looked directly at Brian and flashed what might have been a grin. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, okay?”

Brian tried to shrug. “Don’t think I could take much more, yeah?”

And Dom laughed and that was enough for the day.

**********

The next morning, Brian raised his head from the sink to find Dom’s reflection watching him. Dom’s lips twisted up and he traced two fingers over the bruises around Brian’s shoulder blade. 

“Does it hurt?”

Brian tried to shrug, God, I’m a slow learner, and winced. He turned abruptly and bared his teeth. “No, it feels great. Really.”

Dom threw up a hand in mock alarm and then beckoned him into the kitchen, “Ice it? You think?”

Shirtless, Brian felt unaccountably naked with most of his hurts showing. He scratched idly with his good hand around one of the cuts on his lower back. “Couldn’t hurt, I guess. Problem is: I can’t hold it where it needs to be.”

Dom was standing close enough to feel his breath, Brian realized. Dom’s hands sketched lightly over the wide bruise and suddenly Brian couldn’t breathe at all. Luckily, Dom stepped away before it became noticeable. “Whoever did the number on your jaw didn’t use their fist...” Dom reached out and ran his finger lightly over Brian’s face. “See, it’s got a definite edge…guess they used a rifle butt or something.”

“Gotta say I wasn’t noticing much at that point.” Brian tried to rub away the tingle where Dom’s finger had been. “Does it really make a difference?”

Dom shrugged. “Lucky, yeah? You could have lost teeth.”

“Yeah, well, I’m Irish.” Brian gave Dom another tooth-baring grin. “Lucky, lucky, lucky.”

Dom rigged him an icepack with a long athletic sock, some plastic wrap and a C-clamp. When Dom draped it on him, Brian shivered and hoped Dom would think it was the cold.

 “You are an engineering genius, man.”

Dom gave him a strangely sad look and it looked like a smart-ass remark was dying on his lips. Dom’s lopsided grin seemed forced, “Yeah, well, don’t you forget it.”

Dom was wrapping another handful of ice in a dishtowel as he spoke and he unexpectedly reached forward and pressed it to Brian’s mouth. Brian couldn’t help jerking back in surprise. He noticed at once the red flower that had bloomed on the cotton. Brian swiped a hand over his lips and it came away carmine red.  Dom smiled a tiny, wry smile and offered up the icepack again. After Brian took it, he strode out to the garage.  Brian followed after his heart slowed down.

Dom didn’t let him do anything, but it was fun to watch and self-medicate. The sound of Dom’s voice poured over Brian like syrup. The hurt was fading.

**********

By unspoken agreement, they stretched out in lawn chairs after dinner.  The stillness started penetrating Brian’s bones. The fading light was softening all the edges, turning everything a faint gray-green. Abruptly, the power in the house went out, casting the courtyard into further shadow.

“That happen often?” Brian asked after a bit.

“Often enough,” Dom’s face looked like it did in the grainy security video. Shades of gray. “You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?”

“Fucking terrified of it, man,” Brian was gratified to hear Dom’s chuckle. He could follow the sound of Dom’s laughter into the garage and back as Dom returned with a lantern. The light was steady with only the occasional flicker as the evening breeze picked up. Dom settled back down in his chair and for a while, silence reigned.

“Why are you here?” Such a simple question, really.

“Someone who I respect told me once that there were all kinds of family and I would have to choose mine. So I’m choosing.”

That sounds so real, so solid. It’s hard to believe that it’s only half-true.

“You want to be part of my family?”  Dom’s voice was toneless.

Brian bobbed his head slowly, “Something like that. You know… if you’ll have me.”

Dom was quiet for an eternity. Brian tried to keep from looking at him. It occurred to him that he had no idea what Dom was thinking. “It’s dangerous.”

Brian almost wanted to laugh, “Life’s dangerous, man. No one survives.”

Dom stood up suddenly and paced to the edge of the courtyard. In daytime, he would have been able to see the wide green swath of the hill and the ocean, even the beach if the angle was right. But now it was nothing, blackness, void.

“Why now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why are you here, now? When Edwin called me and told me he’d seen you with Vince, I thought he’d just hit the reef a little too hard,” Dom’s voice seemed impatient. “I had planned to find Vince…you were…unexpected.”

“When there’s a mass jailbreak in L.A. county who do you think they call? The Mounties?” Brian sounded more sarcastic than he wanted to be. “Busting Vince out, not a hard guess to figure out who masterminded that.”

“Ah, so you were involved in a professional capacity,” Dom was plenty sarcastic himself. “How did you know it was us? Structure fire is a pretty…uncertain way of clearing a building.”

“Spear guns and souped-up Hondas are a pretty uncertain way of scoring off a semi, dude,” Yow. Brian tried to stop his runaway mouth. “You think seeing Vince’s sheet on a list of fugitives would have gone under my radar? And then your face on the security tape clinched the deal.”

Dom suddenly stopped pacing and Brian could hear the edge in his trying-to-be-calm voice. “The security tape wasn’t destroyed by the fire?”

“No,” Brian said very quietly, “It was destroyed by me.”

At that moment the lights flooded back on and Brian was startled to find Dom standing over him, almost straddling his legs. Dom’s look was so intense it almost blistered Brian’s skin, but his voice was surprisingly gentle. “Why?”

“All part of that choice I’m making,” Brian couldn’t help but mumble this.

Dom leaned in a little closer, “What do you want?”

That question put Brian’s thoughts in a whirl and he ducked his head quickly before any of them showed on his face. “Another beer, if you’re having one,” Such a fucking coward, O’Conner.

For a second, Brian thought that Dom was going to call him on it, force the truth from him, twist his arm or something. But then Dom settled back into himself, shrugged slightly and disappeared into the house.

After long minutes, Brian was just about to wrestle himself up out of the lawn chair when a bottle clicked down on the table beside him. Warm hands spread over his shoulders; he felt warm breath through his hair and the ghost of a voice said, “Welcome to the family.”

There was a slight pressure on the top of his head that was quickly gone and suddenly, he was alone.

What just happened?

He flashed back to one of the good times, that lazy barbeque afternoon. Vince’s weird little make-up gesture after his minor rebellion. The almost-guilty look that Dom had shot him.

 Did Dominic Toretto just kiss me?

Brian could barely sleep that night and for the first time in a while, it wasn’t from pain.

**********

Dom said he had lots of errands to run, so Brian spent the following day lazing about the house and garage. He got so engrossed in tinkering with the Toyota, he didn’t see the light changing and didn’t hear the car pull up.

“What do you think you’re doing?”  Dom sounded pissed.

Awkwardly, Brian scrambled up from the floor. “Well, saw you were working on the…uh…transmission…” The words died in his throat as Dom continued to glower.

“Step away from the car,” Dom turned and stalked to the house. “Come with me.”

Brian followed him feeling both sheepish and defiant. What the fuck was going on? Did Dom think he didn’t know what he was doing? Unacceptable.

Dom was standing in front of the room that had become Brian’s. When Brian neared, Dom stalked inside and pointed at the bed. When Brian was inclined to hesitate, Dom nudged him with a fist in the small of his back.

“Dom, really, I’m…”

“Brian, take a vacation from being the fucking Energizer bunny, okay?” Dom cut him off. He pointed at Brian with his index finger and himself with his thumb. “You know you’re tough, I know you’re tough, there’s no one here you have to prove anything to. So give it a rest, alright?”

Dom seemed to soften as Brian settled on the bed. “Look, I appreciate you working on that piece of shit out there. But right now, your job is making those bruises fade. You’re a lot more useful to me when you can actually move, got it?”

“Can’t keep a good man down,” Brian said airily, trying to break the tension.

Dom lowered his chin and growled, “Oh, there’s ways. Don’t push it.”

**********

Dom brought him another icepack and dinner that Brian ate in bed, while Dom sat in the corner reading the paper. Brian took a section and they read in companionable silence. After an hour, Brian shifted to get up. Dom glared at him until Brian mouthed, bathroom. Dom didn’t start reading again until Brian was settled back in bed.

“Did you think I was gonna make a break for it?”

“Wouldn’t have gotten far,” Dom muttered.

“Do you think Mia is doing this to Vince?”

“I’m absolutely positive,” Dom replied without raising his eyes from the newspaper. “She’s probably got him tied to the bed.”

“Kinky,” Brian cocked his head saucily.

Dom looked at him and arched his eyebrow.

“Don’t go getting any ideas,” Brian looked around for a weapon. “I’m bad news when I’m cornered.”

Dom chuckled and went to get more ice. “Here, put this on your eyes. They’re looking a lot better. If you ice ‘em now, they might not look like a pair of eight balls by tomorrow.”

Brian grumbled, but obeyed, “Can’t I do this later? If I just lie here, I’m going to go nuts. You got a radio?”

Brian heard the scrape as Dom draws his chair closer to the bed. “I’ll read you a bedtime story.”

Brian shifted uncomfortably, “What kind of story?”

“It’s called ‘Dream Machines’, Dom rattled some pages, “Got us a little…pornography…while I was in town.”

“You mean…”

“Ye-ah, baby. The first chapter is called, “the Bugatti EB16-4 Veyron,” Brian settled down while Dom continued. “The heart of this new superexotic is an 8.0 liter W-16 engine (essentially a 90-degree joining of two of Volkswagen’s VR-8 powerplants, which have a 15-degree offset between alternating cylinders) that produces a prodigious 1001 bhp at 6000 rpm and 922 pounds per foot of torque at 5500 rpm. The engine, which has four turbochargers is relatively compact at 29 inches long and 31 inches wide.”

“What’s its top speed?” Brian interjected.

“Be patient, man,” Brian could hear the grin in Dom’s voice, “The gearbox is a 7-speed paddle-activated manual with no clutch pedal. The double-clutch gearbox provides shifts in less than two-tenths of a second and transmits power to all four wheels via its permanent all-wheel-drive system. Bugatti claims a top speed of 252 mph for the Veyron and 0-186 mph in less than 14 seconds…

“Think of what it could do with a little Nos.” Brian wiggled his eyebrows.

“Probably blast off into space, now are you going to shut up and let me read?”

By the time Dom had finished Road & Track, Brian was fast asleep.

**********

Looking in the mirror the next morning, Brian almost recognized himself. He stretched his arms to their full length and it hurt, but it was bearable.

Dom was already working on the Toyota. Brian went out and spread his arms expansively as if he wanted to pull the entire garage into a hug.

Dom looked at him for a long silent moment and it should have felt uncomfortable, but for some reason, it wasn’t. Dom finally tossed Brian the air hose and asked, “So, you’re open for business, huh?”

“Know what they say about idle hands…”

“Guess you been lollygagging around enough,” Dom rolled his eyes. “Push that button for the lift, man, the clutch on this bitch has been ground to powder…finally got the parts.”

It took three hours, but they fixed it. When the rhythm of work was winding down, Brian turned serious. He had left this too long unsaid.

“I never…uh…thanked you.” Brian looked away from Dom’s questioning gaze. “I mean, a few more seconds all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t have put me together again.”

“It was a bad scene,” Dom said quietly.

Brian tried to focus on Dom as his muscles shuddered with sense memory. He tried to shake it off.  “Hey, it could have been worse.”

Dom shot him a look, “Uh, how exactly?”

Good question. “They could have used piano wire?”

Dom snorted a quick breath that might have been a laugh, but his voice was serious too, “How do you do that? Or maybe ‘why’ is the better question?” Dom gestured impatiently. He was twisting a socket wrench, click,click,click.

“What do you mean?”

“When I was younger, I thought that I was invincible. Didn’t take me too long to learn different. But you…you haven’t…learned yet. I mean most people who’d had something like that happen to them would still be in therapy twenty years from now…do you ever feel fear?”

All the time. “Well…yeah, sure I do.”

“You don’t act like it,” Dom sounded vaguely accusing.

“I don’t have anything to lose, man,” Brian scratched at the seam on his lip. “That’s why.”

Dom stared at him for almost a minute and then he was moving forward into his space. Brian didn’t budge. For some reason, it was important that he didn’t back off an inch. Dom was a foot away when he said softly, “Well, now you do.”

Then Dom did something unexpected and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching, Brian’s right eye gazing deep into the shadowed blackness of Dom’s right eye. “So behave accordingly, okay?”

 Dom broke the contact when Brian nodded. Dom strode off to the house, wiping his hands on a rag. Brian followed slowly, surreptitiously rubbing his eyebrow.

Surely he would have remembered if Dom had always…touched him this much?

**********

Dom is driving, they’re racing together. Dom’s in the driver seat; the velocity is pushing Brian back into the passenger side. They’re laughing with pleasure. Brian feels the pull of speed on the sides of his lips; his eyes are watering. They’re going to win.

Brian sees the truck first and he doesn’t even have time to speak, but his hand reaches out of its own accord. He looks at Dom, Dom looks at him and they are airborne. A crazy, rollercoaster loop-the-loop. They don’t even have time to breathe. The first impact tosses them forward and all the glass shatters in a crescendo. The car slides forward as it topples end-over-end in a clumsy metallic ballet. Long seconds before the world stops spinning even after they crunch to a halt. With his first thought, Brian reaches to Dom. Dom’s forehead is already seeping blood; it tracks around his eye seeking the path of least resistance. Dom’s eyes flutter open and when he speaks, blood gushes from his mouth. “Brian.”

Brian’s chest is aching, he watches his own fist clench in the cotton of Dom’s shirt. The blood is hot on the back of his hand.

“Brian?” Somehow Dom’s voice had gotten louder and more insistent. “Brian?”

Brian woke to find Dom’s shadowy form crouched next to him. Dom was gripping the elbow of Brian’s uninjured arm and shaking it lightly. Brian blinked into the darkness and said, “Nightmare?”

“Yeah,” Dom’s whisper tickled his ear.

“Sorry to wake you, man.”

“S’alright. I was awake.” Now that Brian’s eyes have adjusted, he can see Dom’s face in the silver light of the moon. “I had my own.”

“Had your own what? Nightmare?”

Dom nodded.

“You want to talk about it?” As the words left his mouth, Brian thought to himself that this might go on record as the most bizarre conversation that they’d ever had.

Dom shook his head and then did something completely unexpected.

Dom pressed his elbow down onto the bed, nudged Brian’s good shoulder and slid into the space beside Brian. Suddenly, the fading images of his dream seemed less than insubstantial.

Dom was squashing him. No, wait, that wasn’t really true. Dom was barely touching him, their shoulders brushing. But to Brian the air was thin; it felt as though he’d have to start panting to get enough oxygen.

Maybe he was still dreaming. He resisted the urge to reach out and pinch the warm darkness that was Dom. Hopefully, Dom would start talking soon because… Brian pulled the sheets into an inconspicuous heap around his crotch. It was ridiculous; two grown men couldn’t fit in a bed this size.

 Brian wanted to make a joke, to say something snarky and insouciant. Words failed him.

“Did you know that my dad’s team was licensed to the circuit?” Brian turned to face Dom’s profile as he offered up this apparent non sequitur.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that they were insured, Brian. When my dad died, the insurance company took a while but eventually they coughed up a check to compensate for our ‘pain and suffering’, just about the time I got out of prison. I never told anyone. Never acted different.”

Brian filled his gaze with Dom. There didn’t seem to be anything he could say that wouldn’t sound completely inadequate.

“My point in telling you this is just to prove to you that what we did, what happened on the trucks, it wasn’t about money. Got that? It was for kicks. We never wanted to hurt anybody. We never did hurt anybody. It was about the rush. That’s why we did it that way. So the truckers couldn’t ever get blamed or implicated for the thefts, so the only thing that suffered was the bottom line of some multinational corporation.”

“The law says what’s right and wrong, but the law isn’t really about people. The law doesn’t know what it’s like to watch your father burn. It doesn’t feel the rage that would let you ruin a man’s life. It can take away the debt, but it can’t ever take away the guilt.”

Brian shifted to face Dom more completely and their shoulders brushed together again. Dom’s shoulder was stiff, strung taut with some emotion.

“I thought I knew about good and bad, right and wrong. But those feelings…prison…changed me. It became about me, about my tribe, protecting my people.”

Misery, thought Brian. Dom wasn’t saying exactly what he was thinking. For some reason, Dom appeared to be giving in to his night fears completely. His body radiated misery and heat.

“What are you saying?”

Dom paused for a 100-count. “I’m saying that I’ll go back to LA with you. I’ll take the fall for the trucks, the murders, killing Lance even though I can’t feel guilty about it.”

What the hell? Brian realized that he was unconsciously shaking his head, no no no. This weird conversation had suddenly nosedived into Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

.

“If that’s what you want.” Dom’s lips were pressed tight together now, his eyes shifted rapidly, faint gleams in the half-light. It occurred to Brian that he’d seen that look before. When Dom had cast him that furious, hopeless glance over his shoulder from where he’d cradled Jesse’s body. The look that said, do something.

“I’m not going back, why would you think that I wanted to, Dominic? That I wanted that?” Brian tried to make his voice emphatic, though his mouth was completely dry.

Dom speaks in a ghost voice. “I’m not a good person.”

Brian dared to reach out and bump Dom’s elbow with his fist. He rested his hand on the crook of Dom’s arm. “Neither am I.”

Dom’s voice was now so low, it shook Brian’s bones. “The best moment in my life was when you roared past me out on Highway 86. You were there when things seemed…unsalvageable. You saved me as much as you saved Vince. But then ten minutes later... You, Jesse, Tran, Lance, the Charger… I thought I’d go crazy that day. For a long while afterwards, I was crazy.”

Dom turned to face him more completely. He looked at Brian’s face like he was trying to memorize it. “I just want to know: are there any limits to the sacrifices you’ll make for me?”

Brian tried again for lightness, which wasn’t in keeping with how tightly he was squeezing Dom’s elbow. “Apparently not.”

Dom did a very strange thing then. He wrapped his hand around Brian’s and examined it for a while. He stroked his fingers lightly over the fading rope burn on Brian’s wrists. Then he brought Brian’s hand up and pressed it to his lips. “Make one more.”

Brian had frozen at this first, innocent touch, but his mind raced. This is a dream, this can’t be what it feels like, I must be going crazy.

Dom’s voice seemed to come from far away. “Does this hurt?”

Brian could find the strength to shake his head. Dom scootched closer and pressed his lips to Brian’s brow bone. “Does this?”

“No,” Brian’s voice was faint. Dom kissed his neck and then waited for approval while his hand spread across Brian’s chest.

It was real. It was Dom’s hand on his chest. It felt so good. So solid and heavy. Dom was into this. Dom was into this, his thumb circling Brian’s nipple; his tongue tasting the space behind Brian’s ear.

Brian let go of the last of the doubts that were tearing him apart and gave himself up to the warmth and the darkness. “Dom,” he said, softly. “Dom, this isn’t a sacrifice.” He feathered his fingers over Dom’s cheekbone and stroked those broad lips with his tongue.  By the time that he pressed his lips to Dom’s, they were both shaking.

Brian’s lips were still sore, but Dom’s lips were trembling. Brian never imagined that Dom’s thick fingers could be so gentle. For the first time in his life, Brian’s arousal went further than his skin and his dick. It felt like the long-buried desire for Dominic had soaked into his bones. Dom kept lifting up random body parts and just tasting them as if Brian were a banquet he was determined to savor. He let Brian’s hands trace over him but it was obvious that this wasn’t just about lust, about dominance. This was the first (or maybe the last) step in a complicated getting-to-know-you that could last all night.

When Dom’s hand closed around his cock, Brian did stop breathing entirely. He only remembered to start again when Dom sank his teeth into his earlobe. Dom’s calluses pressed into the tender skin with a perfect match of rough to smooth. Just Dom’s knuckles pressing into his lower belly made Brian hiss with anticipation.  Dom drew it out unbearably long, refusing to obey any rhythm. He knelt between Brian’s legs and probed all his soft places, palmed his balls and pulled them gently. He leaned up, drawing his thumb along Brian’s long vein and the last thing that Brian saw before his head exploded was the gleam of Dom’s teeth in the moonlight.

Brian struggled to stay conscious with his blood rushing every which way. He came to with Dom’s heat and weight spread inexorably around him. Dom appeared to be falling asleep, with little attention spared for his own dying erection that was wedged comfortably in the curve of Brian’s pelvis.

“Dom,” So much of him just wanted to let it go. To just file it in the box of inexplicable good things that happened to him, some redress for all the bad. But he had to know who this strange new, non-heterosexual person was, hiding in Dom’s body. “Dom, why…?”

“You’re fearless.” Dom hooked his chin over Brian’s shoulder. “You make me remember that I am too.”

“Dom?” He whispered one last question “What did you dream?”

Dom exhaled slowly, “Dreamed about the other night in Westchester. That I came too late.”

And that told Brian all that he really needed to know. They slept again, dreamlessly.

**********

Brian woke up to the sunshine with an unaccustomed weight on his hip that turned out to be Dom’s hand. Brian stiffened minimally. This was it: the Day of Judgment. If Dom was going to have any vestige of a straight man freak-out, that time had come. The light was innocent and golden, but to Brian it seemed brutally harsh, spreading over the bed. Leaving not the barest hint of mystery between them.

When the hand tightened on his hip and pulled him flat on his back, Brian became aware that he was in bed with a very large predator. Dom’s eyes gleamed with a feral light. He leaned forward and his lips tightened over his teeth. One meaty arm had snaked under Brian’s shoulders and a broad hand palmed his head. Fingers tightened in his hair.

Brian willed himself to relax. He raised his chin and looked at Dom from under lowered lids.

“You want something?” It was a mystery even to himself, how he held onto his cool in the face of such barely caged passion.

“I want everything.” And Dom’s lust hit him like a tropical storm.

Brian had to squeeze his eyes shut because he discovered that combining all five senses in a sexual encounter with Dominic Toretto was an easy way to prematurely ejaculate.

Brian quickly realized that Dom was less hesitant, even more confident in the sunshine because it was easier to avoid touching the hurt places. Dom stroked him from head to toe and then seemed to want to revisit everything with his mouth. Brian got impatient quickly and with a well-timed push and shove, became king of the mountain of Dom. He commenced his own exploration by burying his teeth in Dom’s pectoral muscle and using his hands to map territory.

Dom let Brian twist around on top of him for a few minutes before abruptly rolling back on top. Brian gasped under his weight and reflected that it was not unlike having sex in a washing machine. Gotta get back a little control. Element of surprise.

Brian smacked Dom across his ass as hard as he could with his open palm. When Dom leaned back a little to protest, Brian thrust his knee between Dom’s legs. Dom’s sudden cautious stillness made it easy for Brian to lever him over onto his back. When Dom tried to sit up, Brian quelled him by jamming three fingers into Dom’s mouth and leaning down to capture Dom’s cock in his own mouth.

Dom’s cock was just as large and hard as the rest of him and Brian had to do a lot of adjusting to get the angle just right. He determined that it was easiest to lie along Dom’s side, facing his legs and tilting his chin down, squeezing him hard. Dom was rendered curiously immobile for the first few minutes until Brian got a rhythm going. Dom’s fingers scrabbled over Brian’s hips and legs trying to find purchase. Brian tentatively worked his slickened fingers between Dom’s clenched ass cheeks. Dom was reduced to a vocabulary of incoherent grunts and moans. It was very gratifying. He’d always had the vague suspicion that Dom would be noisy in bed.

Brian pulled up at the last moment. It was wildly exciting to watch Dom’s cock erupt like a volcano over his hand, his wrist. God, that was a lot of come. He was suddenly glad that he wasn’t choking on it. When Dom came back to earth and opened his eyes, Brian nudged him. “Been a while since you’ve done this, huh?”

Dom reached out and clumsily tousled Brian’s hair. “Never actually done anything quite like this.”

Oh. Brian rested his cheek on Dom’s bicep and marveled at him. Dom finally shook off his post-coital stupor and asked, “What are you grinning at?”

“This is just…easier…than I thought it would be,”

Dom’s mouth was half-open, he wasn’t panting now exactly, just breathing deeply. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Guess the hard part is over.”

For some reason, this struck them both as inexplicably hilarious and the bed shook with their laughter. Even though Brian’s body ached, it felt absolutely amazing to laugh with Dom again.

**********

Dom let him work as hard as he wanted in the garage. They were perfectly in sync again. It was a good thing too, otherwise things might not have gotten completely finished before one or the other of them gave in to their appetites. Mid-afternoon, Dom declared they were done. He then wrapped his arms around Brian’s waist, made quick work of his button fly and explained in excruciating detail the merits of spark ignition versus compression ignition while he jerked Brian off.

“And so that’s why the diesel isn’t so popular in America. Some kinds, that is.” With that thought, Brian spilled his juice on the concrete. He sagged back into Dom’s arms with his bones softening. He’d never imagined that Dom was so spontaneous. And adventurous. Speaking of adventurous…

 Brian ground his ass into Dom’s denim clad erection and shot his most seductive look over his shoulder. “Hey, do you want to…fill in the blanks, so to speak?” Dom looked at him wide-eyed for a few seconds then he bit his lip and rolled his eyes for all the world like a shocked debutante. “You mean, go—alltheway?” he stage whispered with his hand theatrically covering his mouth.

Brian regarded him coolly, “Well, not if you’re going to be a dick about it.”

“Sorry.” Dom had raised his fist and Brian realized that Dom had unconsciously wanted to do ‘the guy thing’ and punch him approvingly somewhere but had then reconsidered. So Brian punched him gently on the spot where he had bitten him that morning. Dom grinned a surprised grin, “It just seems like that might…hurt. And that’s like, the last thing I wanna do.”

“You worry too much, dude. Think I can take the collective crap of the LAPD, FBI, the most sadistic Asian street gang in LA and still be hurt by little ol’ you?” Brian laced his fingers through the belt loops on Dom’s coveralls and drew their hips together. “Only one thing you can do to hurt me…and it’s not that.” He nuzzled Dom’s ear invitingly.

Dom had that special catch in his voice, which Brian had discovered meant that he was very…stimulated.  “You want to do this now?”

Brian rubbed his head across Dom’s skull in a way he knew must be unbearably ticklish. “When you’re ready.”

Dom leaned back and stroked a finger over the small scar that still marred Brian’s mouth. He shrugged. “Okay.”

Well, that was easy, Brian thought as he followed Dom into the house. But Dom made no move then and considering what he had said, Brian couldn’t very well push it. He masked his anticipation through beers, conversation, dinner, more beers, more conversation. When he got out of the shower that night, to find Dom already asleep, he began to feel a little foolish.

He sighed and slipped into his eighteen inches of space. He tried to lie still and even out his breathing. He tried not to fidget. But after the third or fourth time that he flopped over and punched the pillow, Dom laid a hand over the small of his back and whispered, “Why so restless?”

Dom drew himself up over Brian’s back so they were spooned together. His knee nudged between Brian’s legs, his cock ground against Brian’s ass. Between the heat, the weight and the skin-searing arousal, it was now impossible to contemplate sleeping.

“uh, I was just…” Brian petered out when Dom reached between his legs and squeezed him. Dom’s cock had filled and lengthened, it stroked against Brian in counterpoint while Dom worked his boxers loose.

“You want to do this now?” That voice whispering in his ear almost brought Brian off right then. Dom fumbled at the nightstand and pulled out something that looked like hand cream. Dom’s fingers on his back were like raindrops. Dom worked his fingers inside Brian, pulling and stretching for what felt like an hour. By the time Dom sunk down inside of him, Brian’s cock was leaking, aching until it felt like the skin would just peel from him.

Dom’s thrust were so firm; he was almost rough. He cradled Brian’s cock in his slick hand, jacking him slowly with an unbearably tight grip. Brian came quickly and so was able to fully enjoy Dom’s release. As those mighty thrusts became ragged, while Dom moaned his name into his ear, Brian knew for the first time, that it had all been worth it.

The next morning, Brian got up first and put some care into shaving. He’d noticed Dom scratching bemusedly at reddened flesh on his chest. Dom hadn’t made the connection yet, but Brian was determined that there was to be no more beard burn. After he’d slowly sloughed off eight days worth of prickly hair, he appreciated how quickly he had mended. His face was almost back to normal. He still had a bump on his jaw that his fingers were drawn to, trying to prod away the niggling hurt.

“Healing up good,” Dom filled the door behind him.

Brian smiled at Dom’s reflection. “Soon I’ll be ready to arm-wrestle. Don’t think I’ll ever look quite the same, though.”

Dom grimaced, “That’s bullshit.” Dom made a vague circle with his hand. “You’re still…you.”

Brian turned around and leaned back with his hands on the edge of the sink. “You were about to say, ‘pretty’, weren’t you?”

Dom looked shocked. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, you were. I could see the word forming in your head. It’s okay. I’ve been called worse.” Brian nudged Dom’s feet with his toe. “Guys called me ‘pretty boy’ all the time when I was younger.”

“It doesn’t…uhm…bother you?” Dom was looking at Brian’s toes like they had the key to eternal peace and consciousness.

Brian folded his arms. “I don’t think about it enough for it to bother me. If that’s all they see, it’s their mistake.”

Dom leaned forward from the waist and placed his hands on the counter on either side of Brian. His hot breath on Brian’s chest instantly stirred Brian’s cock to a diamond hardness. Dom licked his nipple and tilted his head to look up at Brian’s flushed face. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

Brian felt sucker-punched by joy. He put his hands on either side of Dom’s face and pulled him into a vicious battery of kisses. “Fucking.” Longish pause while he sucked on Dom’s tongue.  “Adorable.”

Breakfast was late.

**********

Making an unscheduled trip to Ensenada after Dom had unwittingly shredded Brian’s only pair of jeans, it suddenly occurred to Brian that there was a whole world out there that wasn’t aware that things had changed.

“When do you think Vince and Mia will be back?” He asked Dom casually.

“When they’re ready, I guess.”`

“Will anything…uh…change?”

Dom shot him a startled look and then the corner of his mouth went up. Brian braced himself for the teasing. “Uh, that thing we did on the kitchen table?” Dom made a very descriptive gesture. “Probably won’t do that again. Behind closed doors is the order of the day.”

Brian grinned but wasn’t drawn in, “You think they’ll…understand?”

“Dunno,” Dom rubbed the back of his head as if he were seriously considering it for the first time. “I think they will. I hope they will. Don’t really feel like I need to justify my choices to anyone.”

Dom added, almost under his breath, “Vince’ll probably act like a jerk, but secretly he’ll be thrilled.”

“What? Why?” Brian shot Dom a horrified look. “You don’t mean that Vince…”

Dom gave him a puzzled look and then guffawed. “Suggest that to him please. Just make sure I’m there when you do it. Wouldn’t miss that for the world.” Dom slapped the steering wheel, still chuckling. “S’not what I meant. You know why, if you think about it.”

He shot Brian an expectant look.

“Because he’s in love with Mia.” They said in unison. They grinned at each other and Brian leaned back. The rest of the world could go fuck itself.

In the dusty confines of the town, it’s barely a hardship to keep from touching. What Brian finds almost impossible is to keep from looking. Dom seems so alive. His body just thrums with energy. The veins in his forehead, the tendons in his neck. The dip of his collarbone. The gleam of sweat on his temple nearly gave Brian an erection.  He tried to play it super-cool. Dom seemed unaffected, introducing Brian when he had to as another mechanic. They got stared at a lot, but then they always did.

On the way back, Brian was almost dozing when Dom pulled the car to the non-existent shoulder. The road was empty, the light turned everything a dark pink.

“Why are we stopping?”

“No reason,” Dom slid out of the driver’s seat. Brian got out too. Dom went around to the passenger side, pulled Brian into the backseat and violated several Mexican laws. Obviously, Dom didn’t have too much anxiety about what the rest of the world thought, either.

**********

All their projects were done, so they cleaned the garage. On a low shelf, Dom found the grocery bag, full of Lance’s cash.

“What are you going to do with that?” Brian nodded at the sad little stacks of bills.

Dom looked at him like he’d lost his marbles, “Buy you a car…what did you think?”

Brian tried to keep the smile off his face. “You don’t owe me one.”

Dom nudged him playfully. “Sure I do. I owe you a lot.”

Just then, a car rumbled up into the driveway and parked in front of the house. Dom shot Brian a puzzled look and they both went to see what was up. Dom paused in the doorway and held Brian up with a hand on his shoulder. Dom murmured, “Well, I’ll be damned.” 

Mia was pulling Vince, none too gently, from the passenger side of the blue car. The hatchback, the back seat and every available surface appeared to be crammed with random bags, boxes, even a guitar case. Vince was playfully trying to pull her back into the car. Then he got out and looked at all the stuff. He said something inaudible to Mia that made her throw back her head with delighted laughter.

Brian wanted to call out to them, to walk out into the sunshine and help them, but he was suddenly shy. He whispered to Dom, “We’ve got a lot to tell them.”

Dom looked at him and his lips twisted into Dom’s patented smirk. “Considering that new ring she’s wearing…I’d say they have a lot to tell us.”

The end.