Chapter Text
Brian turned off the road between the tall rock pillars that marked the entrance of the driveway. After he was clear of the road, he stopped the truck and put it into park. It was still a good 50 yards or so to the house, but Brian wanted a few moments to get his thoughts together.
As he surveyed the property, he knew that he had the right place without having to recheck the directions. The house was a sprawling, single story structure with enough room for the whole team, even though for one reason or another, their number had been cut in half. The house was also set back from the road for privacy.
But it was the garage that would have made the deal for Dom. It had four full bays.
One of the bay doors was up and Brian could see an impressive array of tools and all the accessories required of a successful garage. There were several cars parked outside the garage, all obviously acquired with an eye toward racing.
From the hints that Mia had dropped in the last few months, Brian knew that Dom had found this place almost two years ago and had rented it, knowing that it was probably only a matter of time before the shit hit the turbo charger and they had to flee the country. He'd obviously started stocking it with the tools of his trade ahead of time. This was too complete a set up to have been put in place in the last couple of months.
Brian switched off the truck's engine and leaned his head back. Tiredly, he rubbed his hands over his face and shut his eyes for a moment. He hadn't had much sleep in the last few days, and it was beginning to catch up with him.
'What the hell am I doing here?' he thought wildly. 'What have I done?'
Now that he was finally sitting here with the end of his quest in sight, it all became so horribly clear to him. He had quit the one job...no, make that career...that he had striven for, for as long as he could remember. He'd left behind all of his friends and colleagues. OK, so he hadn't had that many friends, especially after the fiasco last summer that had started all of this. He'd sold or given away most of his possessions. OK, so there hadn't been many of those either. He never seemed to stay in one place long enough to accumulate many possessions. But he'd left behind everything that he had built in the last few years to chase what might be an illusion.
He'd spent the last eight months trying to make up for all the damage he'd done.
It spoke a lot about were his head was that he saw the results of last summer as 'damage', and not the fruit of careful undercover work. He had put not only his career, but his freedom on the line to make sure that Vince didn't pull any jail time. And he didn't even like the bastard!
He'd flat out lied to Tanner and said that he had been following a lead on the hi-jackers and found Vince wounded by the side of the road, that no one else had been around. When asked about the other people reported at the scene by the Life Flight crew, Brian reported that they were just Good Samaritans who happened to be passing by.
Pretty damn anorexic!
Tanner and Bilkins had known he was lying, of course, but they had no proof. It was just a stroke of luck that the trucker who'd fought back had never materialized. He obviously didn't want to take a chance that charges would be leveled against him. After all, it was a well known fact that none of the other truckers had been hurt during the hi-jackings, just drugged. It might be seen that he'd used excessive force to protect property that wasn't even his.
Brian had been cleared of the death of Johnny Tran, too. There were too many witnesses during the long chase that had seen Tran firing the Mack 10 from the motorcycle. But the IA investigation had been hell.
Lance had been banged up pretty bad when he'd been catapulted over the railing and down the embankment. He'd broken several bones and had been laid up in the prison ward of the hospital for a couple of weeks, but he was currently being held without bond, awaiting trial for Jesse's murder. Brian thought his chances were slim to none that he'd get off. Mia would let Brian know when the trial was set and he needed to come back to testify. But besides Mia and himself, there had been a half a dozen neighbors who had been attracted by the argument between himself and Dom, who'd seen the drive-by shooting.
Then there was Jesse. Brian had taken care of everything for the funeral. He'd notified Jesse's old man in prison, not that the old bastard had really seemed to give a damn one way or another.
He had tried to be there for Mia as much as she would let him, which hadn't been very much at first. It had taken Brian nearly two months to even get Mia to listen to him. She had slammed the door in his face and the phone in his ear. Letters had been returned and marked "Return to Sender". It was only through dogged persistence that Brian had finally gotten her to listen.
Brian had groveled and begged for Mia's forgiveness. He thought that the fact that he had spilled his guts about everything and wanted nothing from her except that she might one day forgive him were what had brought her around. She had been suspicious for quite a long time, waiting for him to ask about Dom and the team. Where they were. But after a couple of months of talking, the only thing that he'd ever asked was, 'Are they safe?' When she'd said yes, he'd never mentioned them again. But every once in a while, she would throw out a bit of information, almost like bait, and though he'd desperately wanted to know more, he had never asked. It was partly because he didn't want to lose her trust. She was his touchstone with that few days that had changed his life so . irrevocably. It was also partly as a form of self penance.
Brian thought that perhaps if Jesse hadn't died, his guilt wouldn't have been so strong. But even though he knew intellectually that Jesse's death had been influenced by so many factors, there was that dingy stain of guilt that whispered in his mind, 'If Tran hadn't been so psychotically angry over the raid, and so sure that Dom had been the one to narc on him, he wouldn't have over reacted the way he had.'
Guilt was a wonderfully flexible and malleable quality. It was amorphous and could be stretched and re-stretched innumerable times to cover any and all situations.
Mia was the one thing that Brian felt no ambivalence over in regards to his guilty conscience. She had been an innocent in all of this, and he'd used her. He hadn't looked at it that way at the time, of course. He'd told Mia that he loved her, and at the time, he meant it. Still meant it in a way. Brian did love Mia. He just wasn't 'in love' with her. How could he be? Because he was in love with her brother. Brian was in love with Dominic Toretto.
"Jesus!" Brian said aloud, with heart-felt vehemence. "How the hell did my life get to be such a fucking mess?" He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until the backs of his eyelids became a backdrop for miniature fireworks. Scrubbing at his tired face one more, he clasped his hands together and pressed them against his lips.
That's when he caught sight of the movement out of the corner of his eye.
Standing in the open doorway of the house was Dom. Brian didn't have to be able to make out his facial features to recognize him. He would have known the man anywhere by the shape of his body, his stance, just from an indefinable something that was Dom.
Suddenly Brian's palms were sweating and his hands were trembling. He knew it was from the adrenalin surging through his body and he took several deep breaths to try and calm himself. After a moment, he reached down and started the truck. Putting it into gear, he rolled the remaining distance to the house...to Dom...feeling a mixture of elation and dread. Elation from the thought that, after months of waiting, he'd be with Dom again in just a few moments. Dread from the thought that his time with Dom could be extremely short lived.
Pulling up opposite the front door, Brian put the truck in park again, killed the engine, and got out to walk around the vehicle. He stopped when he was still a few feet from the door.
"Hello, Dom."
Brian marveled that his voice actually sounded almost normal. But he knew that his posture and face gave away his tension and indecisiveness. In the last few months he had lost pretty much all of his ability to deceive and prevaricate. He'd be a really shitty undercover cop now.
It took the other man so long to say anything, that Brian almost decided that Dom was going to let him squirm under his silent, impassive stare.
God! He looked good! He was wearing olive drab cargo pants and one of his white, ribbed wife-beaters that showed off his arms and flat stomach so well. His tan was even deeper than before and the white shirt contrasted beautifully with dark skin.
"You're the last person I expected to see." That voice still sent shivers down along his spine. It was deep and soft, but with a rasp to it. Kind of what Brian imagined it would be like to have a wolf pelt stroked across exposed skin. Longer, coarse hairs would tickle and tease, while the thick, soft undercoat would soothe and seduce.
Brian tried to speak, but his brain only got as far as opening his mouth. After that it left him high and dry. So he just swallowed convulsively.
Why he needed to swallow at all was a mystery, because there wasn't enough moisture in his mouth to lick a stamp. And while he was desperately trying to get his sluggish mind to cooperate, Dom turned around and went back into the house. But at least he had left the door open. It had taken Brian over two months to get to this point with Mia. Suddenly, he felt a little of what he dared to identify as hope.
Taking the last few steps to the screen door, he sucked in a deep, fortifying breath, pulled it open and entered.
It was cool and dark inside, like most Hispanic architecture, to compensate for the warmer weather. That was a far as Brian got in his perusal of the interior decor. He followed the sound of clinking glass until he entered the kitchen. Dom was bent over in the open door of the refrigerator.
"You wanna beer?" Dom asked. When he straightened up he had two bottles of Corona in his right hand. Brian felt an insane desire to giggle. So much of this conversation seemed familiar.
"Sure," he answered, accepting the open bottle.
The big man turned away without saying anything else and walked out through the back door. Closing his eyes for a moment, Brian pressed the icy bottle against his forehead and rolled it back and forth. It felt like his brain was on fire.
Following Dom, he found a small patio. Dom was sitting at a table beneath a ramada of slatted wood nearly sagging with a riotous growth of hot pink bougainvillea. Taking another chair in the cool shade, Brian took a nervous gulp of his beer and looked up to find Dom staring silently at him.
No one gave 'enigmatic face' like Dom.
"How are you, Dom?" All he got in reply was a noncommittal nod.
"How's Vince doing? Has he completely recovered?" Again, just the nod.
The other man's silence was daunting, and a little eerie. Desperately, Brian tried one more time. "Where are Vince and Leon?"
He didn't need to ask about Letty. He knew from Mia that Letty had left several months ago.
"What are you doing here, Brian? What is it you want?" Dom's voice was just about as expressionless as it could get. It betrayed no more emotion than his face.
Brian sat forward in the chair, resting his forearms on the table, and toyed with the Corona label. He couldn't meet the other man's eyes. "I had to come," he said, his tone was low and matter-of-fact.
"Why?" Dom demanded, this time a little more forcefully.
"I had to!" Brian repeated almost fiercely, this time with an edge of desperation in his voice.
Dom regarded Brian silently for a few moments, then tried another tack. "Why now? Why after all of these months?"
Brian's shoulders sketched a quick shrug. "Mia told me you finally asked about me," he said simply.
"So...let me get this straight. It's been...what...eight months. Suddenly you find out I make what could have been a totally off hand comment about you, and you drop everything to come down here. Is that about right?"
Brian felt a fierce elation sweep through him. '...what could have been...' he had said, not 'what was...' an off hand comment. He felt a calm quickly ride in on the rush of feeling, and he could finally take a leap of faith. "I figured it was the only chance I was going to get."
"Chance for what?" Dom's voice had become intense, and his gaze was demanding.
"The chance to be with you. To find out if you want me in the same way that I want you."
They'd switched roles now. Brian was the calm one while Dom was so visibly agitated that his nostrils were flaring with the force of his exhalations.
"How do you want me?" Dom demanded roughly.
Brian smiled serenely. It was true, the truth did set you free. "In my life...in my bed...in my body. I knew that when I came down here there would have to be either one of two outcomes for me."
"And what would those be?" Dom seemed a little more calm now that Brian had actually said the words.
"That I'd either have to fuck you or forget you."
Dom's gaze was more contemplative now, his expression faintly amused. "Fuck me? " he asked mildly.
"It's just a figure of speech," Brian smiled. "Actually, I was thinking of the other way around." His eyes and voice grew dreamy. "Sometimes, at night, in my fantasies, I can almost feel you so deep inside of me that I don't know where you leave off and I begin." Brian didn't voice his other desires. There would time enough for them later.
Dom's breathing had accelerated again. "Maybe we should take this discussion into the bedroom," he said intently.
"The garage," Brian countered gently.
"What?" Brian smiled at the nonplussed look on Dom's face.
"In the garage," he repeated. "It's one of my best fantasies. My first fantasy. I want you to fuck me for the first time while I'm spread out on the hood of your car."
Dom stared at him blankly for a moment. Then a slow smile spread across his face. "You know. For a middle class white boy, you gotta a serious streak of kink in you." His smile became a grin. "I like that!"
He pushed back his chair and stood. "The garage it is then."