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"Everybody in for the night?"
Brian isn't ready for Dom's sudden presence at his shoulder, but he absorbs the shock and lets it roll through him the way he's been trained. It's easy when it's Dom. After all this time, he supposes he should be more shocked if Dom weren't there. "Yeah." He looks out into the darkness, deeper than he'd ever known it could be, before he turns.
Dom is sober and calm, the way he always gets at night. They all get like this at night, because when the sun goes down and they retreat, they can stop moving and pretend everything is the way it used to be. His hand is heavy on Brian's shoulder until he moves to slap Vince and Edwin on the back. "Okay, night watch. Next shift comes on at two. Radio in if you have any trouble." He's been saying the same thing every night for six months, but they find comfort in routine.
They leave their watchmen at the narrow mouth of the cave and follow the passage to the main cavern, where they'd set up camp back when they'd been stunned and scraped and dragging barely enough supplies to get them through the first night. Now, it houses rows of cots and the occasional bed, illuminated by the fire pits they'd constructed from scrap metal.
The day he and Dom had carried in a few old sofas, Brian had watched Letty fling herself onto the cushions, and thought: this is home. Even Dom had smiled at Letty's familiar self-satisfied sprawl. Letty doesn't let any of it get to her. If anything, she feeds from the thrill of uncertainty, as though she'd spent her whole life longing for the earth to buckle and burn around her.
They stop at the end of the passage and survey the main room, where their inner circle has come together for card games and talk about the old days. Some of them have broken off: those who still like to brood alone, a couple wanting privacy, and at the furthest fire pit: Mia, reading a book, her back straight and rigid.
Dom's hand is on Brian again, a rough squeeze at the back of his neck. "Still getting the cold shoulder?" he murmurs. For now, it's just the two of them; as soon as they step out, everyone will want a small piece of them—their reassurance, tomorrow's plan, fragments of news. This hesitation is the same every night, whether they'd admit it or not.
Brian watches Mia turn the page, her face half in shadow. "It's been six months; she's not likely to change her mind."
"You haven't even tried."
"I respect her decision," Brian says—true enough, but close enough to a lie that he can't look at Dom when he says it. Yeah, Mia had felt betrayed when he'd told her he was a cop, but Brian had thought maybe an apocalypse would be enough to make her let go. Apparently, Brian has a lot to learn about women.
"It doesn't look good," Dom says. "Not to the rest of the team." His thumb scrapes along beneath Brian's hairline, beneath the tangled mess that's earned him the nickname goldilocks. They've all let their hair grow long, except Dom, who stays clean-shaven as much as he can. Goosebumps ripple across Brian's shoulders and down his spine at the touch. Mia is angry with him, but not angry enough to rat him out to the others. He needs to believe in you had been all she'd said when he'd asked her about it, and that was the last time they'd spoken: two months ago.
"I'll see what I can do," he says. "It might help if she got out more. Maybe she can help Letty out with Jesse's project."
"Now you're thinking," Dom says, and rubs his palm over Brian's head. "I knew all that pretty hair wasn't smothering that brain of yours." Brian ducks away only because he feels like he should, and the ensuing tussle brings them out into the open.
"Dom. Dom, Dom, Dom," Jesse says, stumbling up in a parka that swallows his small frame. The fires only do so much, and they're so far underground. "I can't find anything to do. I mean…" His hands twitch in the air, his eyes wide and pleading. "There isn't any work, you know? Just these guys who want me to play, I don't know, poker." He glances sideways at Hector and his crew, who are dealing out cards into Jesse's empty place.
"That's cool, Jess," Dom says. "Why don't you keep them company until we get you some real work, okay?"
"No engines," Jesse says. It's a question in his tone, his words skewed by confusion, and Brian admires the way Dom meets Jesse' eyes, no matter how much it hurts.
"Not yet," Dom says, low and rough.
Jesse's eyes dart around the cave, from Dom to Brian, and finally land on his own fingernails—still dirty, as though he's been working on phantom engines in his sleep. "Is it because of what happened at Race Wars?" he asks.
Brian opens his mouth to jump in—it's the first time Jesse has mentioned what happened—and Dom has the same expression on his face: ambushed, uncertain, and a touch of anguish. "Yeah, buddy," he says. "It's because of what happened. Do you remember?" he ventures, but Jesse has already wandered off, lighting a cigarette with a tarnished Winston lighter on his way to the poker table. If Jesse remembers anything, he isn't saying.
"I think he'll be okay," Brian says. "He's remembering some stuff, lately."
Dom's shoulders are square, but he looks broken. "He was never okay," he says, and shrugs away from Brian. "Maybe he would've been okay eventually, but not now. Not after this. Hell, I don't even want him to remember."
"There's a crate of beer down in the west tunnel," Brian says, watching the others take Jesse in and make him a part of their game. It's not so bad. As long as Jesse has Mia to touch his face, Letty to kick him gently on the shins, and Vince to rub roughened knuckles over his head, he'll be fine. As long as he has Dom to follow and Brian to lean on, that kid is better off than most of the people left on the planet—however few that may be.
"I wouldn't say no to that."
Dom softens after the first few swigs of beer, which he doesn't take until he and Brian have made the rounds and checked in with everyone from Letty to Edwin's girl, who doesn't say much anymore but lights incense every night, so the scent of cedar and spiced Jasmine lingers even during the day. He always settles into a green corduroy loveseat, and everyone knows that if Letty doesn't take the other side, Brian will.
Letty hasn't taken the other side in months.
"Team is always team," Dom has said taken to saying, his eyes all over Letty, and she's said it back a few times, enough that Brian feels okay taking her place next to Dom. Brian sits beside Dom, facing the fires, the shadows of their people moving around the room and settling in for the night.
"Word is Johnny Tran has something to do with our fuel contact being nearly a week late."
At the edge of his vision, Brian sees Dom's jaw clench. "I heard the same thing today. I didn't know he made it out alive."
Brian shrugs and rubs the rim of his bottle over his lip. "Apparently he did, and they took over that old warehouse about thirty miles south--and not just a couple guys. They had a whole lot of family out at Race Wars."
"They don't outnumber us." Dom's voice is always so even, but Brian can read him. He's worried, and maybe a little satisfied about having somewhere to channel his anger.
"We're about even, but their group is all fighters, Dom. We've got Hector, Mia, Jesse…"
"Yeah, but can we take 'em?" Dom arches an eyebrow and Brian shoots him a grin. This is familiar; this is how it was before.
"They don't stand a chance."
"We worked damn hard to get that terminal up and running again," Dom says. "Like hell I'll let those slimy bastards get their hands on our fuel. We're gonna go places."
Mia's head lifts toward them at the sound of his voice. It's not clear whether or not she understood the words, but she read Dom's tone, and as she worries the page of her book between her fingers, she shakes her head. She's always reading, as though her life hasn't suffered any interruption. "Go where?" she asks lightly, shaking her head. "We don't even know what's left."
"That's the point of the fuel," Dom retorts. "We get a fleet of cars up and running, we can go see what's out there. What, you wanna stay in this cave forever?"
She shrugs, her hair slipping down around her shoulders. "I feel safer here than I ever did in the old neighborhood."
Brian shuts his eyes and takes a swig of beer. Mia's angry with him and taking it out on Dom by hitting below the belt.
"Mia," Brian begins, even though he has no right.
"So she likes it here, big deal." Letty straddles the seat next to Mia and gives Brian hard look. "I've seen some of the places people are trying to make it out there, and this is a fucking palace."
"Yeah, because we worked our asses off on this palace," Dom says. "I take care of my own, got it?"
"We know, man," Brian says lightly, and between them, presses the side of his hand to Dom's thigh, a small reassurance that would have been out of line back before all this happened, but there's a new order now, complicated new rules and understandings of what people need. Brian hasn't thought it through too much. He just goes with his instincts, and sure enough, Dom's leg loosens against the pad of Brian's thumb.
"It's okay here," Jesse says from behind his fan of cards, foot tapping nervously on the ground. His voice cracks, but at least he's talking. "I like that you guys are here."
"We're glad you're here too, buddy." The corner of Dom's mouth lifts as he raises his bottle in Jesse's direction.
Letty snorts, Mia goes back to her book, and everyone goes back to what they'd been doing. "We need to check out Tran's setup tomorrow," Brian says.
"I'll drive. We'll go late afternoon; I'll put a couple guys on guard duty and let Mia tag along with Letty on her job."
"Sounds like a plan," Brian says, and they clink their bottles together before drinking the rest in silence.
*
"Rest your eyes, girl," Letty says. Mia doesn't protest as Letty eases the book out of her hands and lets its corner thump on the vinyl of the tabletop. "What're you doing all this reading for?"
Mia looks small these days, but stronger than before. "Somebody will need to fix these guys up. And you," she says with a smile that has just the slightest spark of warmth behind it.
"Nah, I'm living the quiet life, now," Letty says. "Nobody left to fight, right?" She doesn't miss the way Mia's eyes drift over to Brian.
"I won't hold my breath," Mia says, and then her smile is back on Letty, as sedate as she's always been; heavy-lidded; knowing. "Who knows what you'll find when you go out exploring one of these days."
Letty hopes they find something—someone, anything—on one of their scavenge trips. It doesn't matter if the pets of suburbia have mutated into frothing beasts; she needs something to rail against. Her belly aches with it every morning: the predictable routine of going out every morning and coming back in before dark. The few people they've encountered in the past six months have hidden themselves away before Letty could see their faces, and Dom doesn't think they should be bothered. Neither does Brian, despite the fact that these people might have valuable information, such as what the fuck is going on.
"Is it bedtime or what?" She asks, sliding the book closer to her chest in case Mia says just a little longer the way she does so often.
Mia eyes the book and smiles again—that's got to be some kind of record for one day. Maybe it was all that talk about how freaking wonderful this cave is, but Mia's spirits are high.
"You know you pissed off Dom, right?"
"I know." Mia stands up and makes her way to her bed, furthest from the entrance and always cold, and Letty follows.
"Crash with you tonight?" Aside from Dom and Brian, most people switch up their bed partners, which doesn't mean anything other than the fact that they all need something different from day to day, and Mia is just as likely to wake up with Dom as she is with Letty. Letty's noticed that most people defer to Jesse; and while Letty doesn't mind his restless thrashing, she likes it more when he settles in with Dom, and spends hours in peace. Brian has some success, but it's Dom who really calms him. That kid hasn't been the same since Race Wars, but who has?
Mia nods and pulls her blankets back. She has one of the better beds—it's bigger, too—but Letty likes it because she'll be damned if the old gang gets split up. This new group is working out, but it's big, and she doesn't want anyone to forget that the original crew is still tight and always in charge.
When they're under the covers, Letty stares at the dark place where the ceiling disappears and listens to the sound of Dom and Brian making their final rounds, checking the fire and murmuring back and forth. They're making plans, and Letty stifles a trill of excitement that rises up from nowhere. Something's happening, and she'll find out in the morning. She shuts her eyes and listens some more. Brian sounds wound tight and Dom is loose and drawling, which means it's something dangerous. Her toes curl under the blankets.
"What are they up to, now?" Mia asks, her voice slow and sleepy. She's sleepy a lot, these days: reading or sleepy or just sitting, which makes her a good companion for Jesse while Mia's out searching for…something.
"Something good," Letty says. A while back she'd have been all over it, but she's learned to ration out pleasure the same way they ration everything else. "I'll tell you tomorrow, and then we'll talk about-" She rolls over and puts her mouth against Mia's ear. "Jesse's surprise."
Mia slaps her away and Letty laughs, a sound she knows carries; her gift to everyone else.
"Night, girl," she says, and uses the pocket of heat behind Mia's knees to forget it's forty fucking degrees in here.
*
She wakes when Vince stumbles against the bed around dawn, with a furious curse and a grab at his leg, which everyone knows hurts him most of the time, but especially at night. "There are better ways to get into my bed," she says as she pulls him down with an arm around his neck so he can't struggle away. "C'mon, take the warm spot," she urges, and he only halfheartedly fights her before he falls into the space she leaves behind.
She likes to be up first, to make the day's plans with Dom and Brian while the rest of the world slumbers on. She likes the way they look in sleep; the way Mia's fingers curl over the side of the mattress, the way Hector hugs his pillow to his chest, and the honest, naked bedhead of the girls who used to spend their days in the salon.
Brian is at the mouth of the cave, looking across the desert, hands shoved into his pockets.
"I'll never get used to it," she says of the hazy indigo tint to the sunrise.
"Yeah," he says, but that's not what he's thinking about. At least, she doesn't think it is. It seems like she can't read anyone anymore, because all the suspicious shit that used to trip her alarms can be chalked up to the fact that everyone is fucked up by what happened at Race Wars. The rich kids are the worst, because they were off on their own, bored and rebellious. They didn't have anyone at Race Wars, which means their families are dead or missing.
At least Letty knows what happened to her people.
"We're scouting out Tran's setup today," he says, without taking his eyes off the horizon. "If we don't come back, you're in charge."
"If we don't come back, find some fuel and go east," Dom says, approaching from behind. She shuts her eyes and leans back against him, but it's different, now. He feels more like a colleague, maybe the same way he feels to Mia. But he's still warm and solid and she likes his arms around her. "There's gotta be something left out there."
"No way," she says. "Me and Vince aren't having that 'let us go in peace' bullshit."
"Vince is hurt," Dom says.
"He's strong," she insists. He's hurting, not hurt. "Don't write him off, Dom."
"He wouldn't do that," Brian says, and Letty rolls her eyes when Dom actually lets Brian speak for him. She really can't read anyone anymore.
*
With Dom pressed against his back, Brian drives a bike Edwin's brother had scavenged. Dom hates riding shotgun, but he hates bikes even more—neither of which means a thing. The important thing is that he trusts Brian to do this; trusts Brian. It should make Brian feel good, but all he can think is that Dom wouldn't be so quick to trust if he knew about the badge wearing a thin patch through Brian's back pocket.
With the air dry in his lungs and the sun warm on his forearms, Brian clears his head and concentrates on the drive.
"You getting all moody on me?" Dom asks as they park behind a cluster of dead trees. He squints as he turns away from the sun and regards Brian with mild suspicion.
"Nah," Brian says. He rolls his shoulders and shakes it off. "Just ready to get this over with."
"I hear you," he says, and leans against the bike, arms crossed over his chest. "Want to hear something crazy? It almost feels good to be pissed at Tran again."
Brian laughs, the sound he knows Dom wants to hear. "Try not to take him out before we get the information. He may have contacts we can use."
"Always thinking," Dom says. He rubs a palm over Brian's messy hair and jerks his thumb toward the lights of the warehouse. The sun is just about below the horizon. "Let's go see what they're up to."
Tran should be smarter than this. His whole setup is too open. Brian and Dom have worked to make damn sure nobody knows where to find them, but light spills out from the barred windows as they out Tran's gang, all as gaunt and humorless as before. Their place is dirty and industrial, with stockpiles of weapons in every corner. "Typical Tran priorities," Dom mutters. "Guns and blow over food and beds." Dom likes his comforts in life, all the good things involved with food and family and rest after a hard day's work.
The Trans really do like their weapons. It's funny that Brian is thinking this just as he's jabbed by the unmistakable steel of a gun in his back. The press of it is familiar, part of a life he'd almost forgotten. "I don't seem to remember issuing an invitation," Tran hisses in his ear, and where the hell is Dom?
"I just wanted to see if the rumors were true," Brian says, slowly raising his hands. On their way to Tran's setup, there hadn't been people for miles; no tents, no makeshift huts, nothing you'd see anywhere else. Tran didn't get this privacy by asking nicely; there's nothing to keep him from smoking Brian right now.
Tran's wrist is a sharp angle against his throat—too sharp—and Brian knows he could take Tran down. Back in the cave they lift and carry and strip down to show off the results, but Tran is wasting away. Too bad the gun is as solid as ever; it bruises as much as Brian remembers.
"There's nothing left but rumors," Tran says.
"Yeah, well, they're the new currency." Brian's breath is coming too fast; he knows Tran can feel the thump of fear in his pulse, but he can't die and let Dom find out after it's too late to explain.
"What's the matter? You used to be cooler, Spilner."
"And you used to be able to see a ten-ton truck coming at you," Brian hears Dom say from behind. It startles Tran more than it ought to—maybe Tran is the one who's lost his cool—and the barrel jerks so hard it scrapes Brian's backbone as he stumbles away. Dom has always favored a shotgun, which he keeps pressed to Tran's head as though it weighs nothing.
"Enough bullshit, Tran." Dom's shoulders gleam in the fading light as he tightens his grip on the barrel. "I'm only going to tell you this once: you need to find your own fuel source. It took us four months to get ours up and running, so we're not giving it up, especially not to you," Dom says. Johnny just laughs, a hard, pinched sound.
"You sure you're pointing that thing at the right guy?" He's high on something; Brian can see it in his eyes.
"What're you talking about?" Brian asks, even though he knows. He knows, because the truth always comes out, especially on days when there's been a gun to his back. These are the days when everything goes wrong, and since everything hasn't completely gone to shit, he knows there's more. He'll be lucky if he's not spitting blood in the next five minutes.
"It's the best joke on what's left of this planet," Johnny laughs. "Dominic Toretto's partnered up with a fucking cop and he doesn't even know it."
Panic surges up in Brian's chest and then settles just as quickly, because at least it's over. At least he doesn't have to imagine the look on Dom's face anymore—hell, he doesn't even have to look. His eyes roll up toward the sky, the same greenish nighttime haze they've seen ever since the fires died down a few months ago. The move saves him the sight of Dom's expression, but he still hears the danger in Dom's growl. "What did you say?"
Brian has to look. Dom has Tran's arm twisted up behind his back, and he looks about two seconds away from pulling the trigger.
"You heard what I said," Tran says with a dry gasp. "Spilner's been on your ass this whole time."
"No," Brian blurts, and steps toward Tran, weapon and all. "That part's not true. It was never like that."
"Mia," Dom says, and the word digs in deep, sticks exactly where it's supposed to, because yes, he's wronged Mia, and Mia knows, and Mia hadn't told Dom. It means all of that, but those are just the parts relating to Mia. There are other parts, the parts Brian wants to protect most, parts that relate to why he'd gone on letting Dom think he was safe.
The thing is, he's never been safer to anyone. From the beginning, he'd never planned for Dom to take the fall for the hijackings, right up through the moment he'd realized Dom deserves to take the fall for it, and including now, when it doesn't even matter anymore. He would never do that.
"We can talk about what it was like later," Dom says, jabbing Tran with the shotgun. His eyes haven't left Tran's face. "Right now we've got to figure out how we can convince this strung-out motherfucker not to mess with our stuff."
"Why don't we just give him a warning," Brian says. They don't need a war right now, and there's something about Tran's miserable caught expression that he relates to. "We always know where we can find them if they make the same mistake."
"That what it was? A mistake?" Dom demands, and after Tran gives a slow, silent nod, shoves him away. "I don't expect we'll be seeing much of each other," he warns.
"Fine," Tran says, smoothing his jacket. He glances up at Brian. "When you find yourself alone, O'Connor, we could always use some extra security over here."
*
Brian can't catch his breath on the way back to the bike. Dom goes too fast, and ignores his own rules about keeping an eye on the perimeter. His head is down and unprotected, so Brian picks up the slack and makes sure they're not being followed.
"Gimme the keys," Dom says when they reach the bike. It takes Brian a second to realize what he means, but then he hands them over, reeling. For once, Brian climbs on back and has to trust Dom even though the bike spins through the dark faster than Brian would dare. He doesn't take care with his turns and for a few minutes Brian thinks he's going to miss the cave entirely, but then he shuts the lights down and circles back around to the front, killing the engine as soon as they get inside.
Brian catches Dom's arm before they can dismount. "Are you gonna let me explain?"
"That depends. Are you a cop?"
Brian refuses to say yes because of all the things it would imply. "Not how you think. Dom, you have to listen."
"Get your ass off," Dom says, as cold as he'd been with Tran, but with something thick and ugly behind it, and leaves Brian at the mouth of the cave with Vince and Letty, who've watched the whole thing from their post.
Vince shines a flashlight on his face, then shuts it off. "Is that right, Spilner? You're a cop?"
Brian sags against the dank wall of the tunnel. "Yeah." A world ago, Vince would have beaten his face into the ground, but Brian had risked his neck to pull Vince out of a hole six months ago while everyone else was busy trying to stay alive. That act had bought him gratitude, and then a period of resentment, and after a while, a pretty solid friendship.
"No kidding," Letty says, as though she hasn't quite decided what to do with the information. "Maybe you'd better keep this one on the downlow, because Jesse is not ready for that shit."
"So that's why Mia dumped your ass," Vince finally says.
"Mia was too good for me."
"Mia's too good for all of us," Vince snorts. "Seriously, a cop? And you're on Dom's ass?"
"I was never on Dom," he snaps. "The feds were convinced it was Dom pulling those jobs with the trucks, but I was an idiot. I thought it was everybody but Dom, but when I finally found out the truth, I was already…" He shrugs in the dark, knowing they can't see him. "It was a long time ago," he says.
"You're telling me," Letty says. "You wanna take over for me until shift change? Somebody should talk to Dom."
"Sure." Brian feels his way over to the stool where the night watchers perch, and catches the scent of Letty's hair as they collide. She used to smell of motor oil and cologne; now she smells of an underground creature and the hint something floral, a shampoo she never would've used before. When she's gone, Vince leaves things quiet for a while before he makes a sound of frustration.
"Damn it, Spilner," he says. "What the fuck are we supposed to do with this? Where do you stand as of right now?"
If only Dom had asked the same thing. "You know where I stand," he says fiercely. "I'm in this for keeps, and I had that decided way before Race Wars."
That's what they call it, now. Race Wars: the day everything had changed, when the Earth had betrayed them mid-cheer. He doesn't know what people call it in other places, but as far as he's traveled, he's only met other survivors from Race Wars.
"I believe you, man," Vince says. "I totally called cop, though."
"Congratulations," Brian says, and spends the next three hours staring out into the desert.
*
There aren't many places to go for privacy once the sun goes down, but the cave is big enough that there's room for everyone to have a little breathing room. Dom is sitting near a wall and cleaning his shotgun, meticulous and inscrutable.
"So, how'd it go with Johnny Tran?" She lowers herself onto a stool and rests her hands on her knees.
"Depends on who you ask," Dom says. "Tran had a shitty day, but it turned out okay for our team."
"Except for the part where Spilner's a cop."
Dom keeps his head down, and his hand slows on the barrel. "Yeah, except for that."
He's never been a big talker, but there's something behind this silence that makes Letty want to touch him real nice and then send him back to Brian so Brian can talk his way back in the way he's so good at doing. When Letty'd seen Brian those first few weeks at the lunch counter—and god, that seems so long ago—she'd have sworn there was no way Dom would let Brian keep eating Mia's tuna sandwiches, much less let him in his house, into his garage, for fuck's sake. Dom doesn't do that, but Brian had flashed that reckless smile and approached Dom with sweet interest, and that had been it. Sweet interest doesn't exist in their neighborhood; there are only competitive assholes or sly weasels trying to get something they haven't earned.
"He proved himself, Dom," she says. "I know what you're thinking, but you need to move past all that old shit and look at what you've got."
"What do I have, Letty?" he asks, and he's never looked at her like this before, like she has some kind of answer he can't live without. His hands are still on the barrel of the shotgun, but they've stilled. He wants this.
"You've got us," she says, glancing up across the room through her hair. "You've got this place. You've got him."
"Sounds more like he has me."
"He never wanted you," she says. "Not like that." She's about to say more, but Mia rushes over, the wide cuffs of her sweater flying, and drops to her knees beside Dom.
"Vince told me," she says, holding onto Dom's arm. No one else gets away with that, but Mia, so untouchable herself, has access to everyone.
"Funny, nobody told me."
Mia sighs and presses her cheek to Dom's bicep. "Because look at him, Dom."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Just look at him," she says again, and Letty couldn't have said it any better.
*
The good thing about Vince is that ever since his accident, he knows how to keep his mouth shut, so Brian can sit with him in silence, listen to the scuffle and screech of the night life without having to explain himself.
Logically, Brian knows he can't blame Dom. There's no other way Dom could have reacted, yet Brian can't ignore the helpless twist of dismay in his chest that says they should be past this, that Dom should have said so fucking what? and made Brian walk home as retribution: end drama. Maybe he's wrong to think that way. He owes Dom, and Mia was right all along; Dom is like gravity. All Brian's life, people have wanted to be his best friend, but Brian hadn't ever felt the need to make someone his until Dom.
What he'd done hadn't been a big lie. It had barely breached the surface. Everything beneath had been real; everything he's ever had with Dom and Mia and the rest of them has been real.
"Think he'll ever hear me out?" he says, folding his arms over his chest and tucking his chin into the coat he wears every night after the temperature drops.
"It's not like he can avoid you," Vince says, but he turns out to be wrong.
Dom is ever-conscious of appearances, of how all the people they've taken in need to feel safe, so he doesn't clock Brian, or give any outward sign that their relationship has changed. Other than instructions and questions about how Brian wants to do approach their next day's task, he doesn't say a word. That cool contact is almost worse than no contact, but Brian is forced to play along. Dom wouldn't respect groveling, and to apologize without an explanation would be like an admission of something that isn't quite true.
So Brian kneels next to Dom as they work on the door frame they've been working on and pretends he doesn't wish he could bust Dom's chops the few times he misses with the hammer until Dom cracks a smile and gets him in a headlock that's always felt more like a hug. He talks to Dom about their surprise for Jesse—ready, according to Letty—and pretends he doesn't want to stop the whole thing until things are right. It's not completely selfish; he can see the misery in the set of Dom's shoulders, and the way he doesn't have patience for anyone.
Brian knows better than to approach him when there are others around, so he waits until they're in for the night and Dom has ventured further back toward the running water where they bathe.
"It's only been a few days," Dom says when he senses Brian behind him. He keeps his voice soft, because sound carries in this place, and Dom likes his privacy.
"Yeah, it's been days," Brian says, reckless because he has nothing to lose. "I find it hard to believe you don't have anything to say to me."
Dom sits down and starts unlacing his boots. "Excuse me if I'm not quite there yet."
Brian hovers near, but not near enough to get hit. "We've got a lot to do, Dom; you need to get there."
When Dom finally looks up, his eyes glint in the fire and Brian recognizes what he sees there. Dom isn't cutting him a break right now, but he hasn't written him off yet, either.
"I'm just saying," he says when Dom stands up and kicks off his boots. "I've earned the chance to explain myself."
Dom gives him a dark look as he strips off his sweater and t-shirt. "That's right; you're all about earning your own way."
"I never lied to you."
"Yeah, we're not talking about this. I'm not talking about this," Dom says as he sheds the rest of his clothes and takes a bar of soap under the cool running water. They keep a fire back here, but it's still cold, and it doesn't take him long to clean up and dry off. He puts on clean underwear and the same clothes he wore today, and only then does he sit down near the fire and say "Why are you still here?"
"Because, Dom," Brian says, running on pure desperation. "I wouldn't have ever met you if it hadn't been for the assignment, and maybe it makes me a lousy cop that I chose what you had over what I had, but it was my choice to make, and you can't just write me off!"
Dom is silent for a long stretch of time, but he keeps eye contact that Brian doesn't break, until he's breathing like he's just had a run-in with Tran's gun, and verging on an anger he can't explain.
Finally, Dom presses his mouth into a flat line and scratches the side of his head. "And why can't I do that?" he asks.
Brian stares. Does he really not know? "Because we're a good team. We are, and you know it, and it's not just that. I thought we were. I always thought we'd…" He stops himself and takes a step back. They're not here yet, no matter how much he wants to be. "Maybe we should just talk later," he says, and doesn't stick around to see Dom's response.
*
Jesse gets twitchy when they take him out too long, which means that they're only a third of the way to their destination before he has his face pressed to his knees. "The sun isn't the same," he complains constantly. No one bothers to tell him everything is fine; Brian just gives him an awkward pat on the back. His fingers collide and tangle briefly with Mia's. She'd had the same idea from the other side of Jesse, where she sits wedged next to Dom, who drives fast and focused. At least some things haven't changed.
Mia withdraws her hand with a smile that means he's in her good graces for the moment.
The pickup truck is their sole vehicle, but it won't be, if everything goes as planned. They've been scavenging for months, dragging every part they can find to an out-of-the-way garage where they'd given the former owner a proper burial and taken it over as their own. It's for everyone, but most of all it's for Jesse, who's been going out of his mind with nothing to engage his mind except for Race Wars, and Brian can tell that's what's been spinning through his head and keeping him so nervous and haunted. Brian knows better than to fall into that. He's been a cop long enough that he doesn't dare go back to the place where the ground was splitting open and people were falling and Brian couldn't catch them all.
He glances over at Dom, whose attention is fixed on the road, and wonders what he thinks. They've never talked about it, but Dom hadn't been able to save Leon any more than Brian had. They'd both heard him yell, but it had been Vince who'd managed to hang on, even bleeding and broken, so it had been Vince Brian had climbed down and pulled out, while Mia had screamed for him not to go.
"We're almost there, Jess," Dom says.
Brian wipes his face with his hand and takes shallow, even breaths until the garage appears on the horizon.
*
Jesse goes nonverbal when Dom yanks the garage door and it goes thundering up. He has to touch everything, nail-bitten fingers worrying over tires and pistons and injectors, and then the words start to come. "Dom, Dom, this is…can I start with the…no, this one's a beauty, I'll start with this one," he says, climbing on the hood of a dusty, banged-up Integra. He presses his face to the red smoke-discolored finish and hugs the car with outstretched arms while Letty cheers him on and Vince laughs so hard he has to sit down.
When he slides down, he spots the Mitsubishi Eclipse that they'd debated on saving, and points with both hands. "No. Brian, we're gonna do this one first, right guys?"
"Whatever you want," Brian says. "But you're gonna be doing things old school."
"I am up to the challenge," Jesse says, already rummaging through the tools.
In a way, Brian envies him. Jesse could do anything and get that fond smile from Dom. Even if he messed up, he'd be forgiven, but Dom expects different things from Brian; it's been understood from the beginning. There's a dynamic of equality between them that's one part competition, one part respect, and one part—if Brian is right, and he's not always sure—attraction. Brian had always wondered what would happen to that dynamic if Dom found him out, and now he knows.
The problem is, Brian still feels those things on his end.
*
"With the Trans out here, we're gonna need a 24 hour watch on this place," Dom says, just as Letty starts to make sounds about leaving. Brian is two steps behind her.
In the second it takes Letty to turn away from Dom, Brian sees the exhaustion in her eyes, but then she blinks and it's gone. "Sure. You need me out here tonight?"
Dom starts locking up the back door. "Nah. You take everybody back; me and Brian will cover it. Come back tomorrow."
Letty raises an eyebrow. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," Brian says, even though his stomach had flopped uncomfortably at Dom's announcement. "I got it."
Mia pries Jesse away from the engine and pushes him toward the door. "Good luck," she says under her breath as she passes.
"We want him alive in the morning, Dom," Vince calls over his shoulder, and then they're alone.
"I guess we should set up camp in that office," Brian says. Dom is a room away, but he holds Brian's eyes, and neither of them move.
"So, you're a cop," Dom says. The sun is dying quickly, in the same verdant tones as morning.
"Yeah," Brian says, "I guess I am. But I was with you, Dom. Ever since that day you showed me the Charger…maybe before."
"Then you were on the wrong side," Dom says. "Because it was me pulling those semi jobs."
"I know."
"You know? So, that's it? See, that's not enough information for me. Because I know you; I know you play it by ear, and no matter which way I spin it, I can't find a way where you were a hundred percent guaranteed to stay on board."
"You can't know anything a hundred percent," Brian argues, moving slowly toward Dom. If he could just get closer, maybe this could be a real conversation.
"I need to know things a hundred percent," Dom says. "I need trust, Brian." Brian gets a shiver low in his spine when Dom drops his voice down like this, a rumble across his skin.
"Then trust me. There are some things you can't fake," he adds. They need to get a light on soon, but Brian isn't going to do it; he wants Dom to pick up where he's going, because they've never gone there before, and now they never might.
"I know that," Dom says. "That's why I'm so pissed at you." He shakes his head and rubs the back of his neck with his palm. "What were you going to say the other night? You started to say where we'd end up. You and me."
Brian hesitates. There's a reason he hadn't finished. He doesn't know what Dom sees when he looks at him anymore, and he needs more time to find out. "It's nothing," he finally says.
"No, you say it," Dom says. "You owe me that much. You can be the one to say it, Spilner; you be the one left hanging out there like an idiot."
"Fine." Dom has been leaning against the wall this whole time, but Brian has been moving, and now he crowds Dom against the wall without touching him. "I was going to say I always thought that one of these nights you'd get in my bed because you wanted to, and not because we ran out of room. And…" He cups Dom's cheek in a way he's never seen anyone do but has always wanted for himself. "And I'd do this, and you'd let me."
Brian touches Dom's mouth with loose knuckles: a test to see how Dom feels about the assumptions Brian is making here. He's had it planned for ages; he's always known he'd be the one forced to make the first move. His persistence is what's gotten him through life so far, and it gets him a little further with Dom when he kisses that stubborn jaw and then his neck, hands spread across his shoulders the whole time.
He slides his palms down over Dom's biceps when their mouths touch for the first time. He needs something to hold onto, because he's pretty freaked out until Dom's lips open with a gust of breath and the barest sound. He makes his kiss his apology, his reassurance, the promise of trust that Dom needs—soft at first and then deeper, with a scrape of teeth over Dom's lower lip and then a swipe of tongue over the same spot. Brian wants in there, wants to feel that old connection any way he can, and when his tongue touches Dom's, Dom comes alive and grabs Brian by the waist of his jeans to yank him closer.
"You thought right," Dom murmurs against his mouth. His style is slow and deep, and hard enough that it's a thrill to push back. He rides Dom's thigh with a hand on his ass and a mouth on his throat, and he's not sure if Dom's soft "oh, fuck," is in response to the sounds he can't stop making or the hand he gets between them in order to rub Dom through his jeans. They move together as well as they work together, and it's been so long since anyone touched Brian like this that he feels as though he's been cut open and now bleeds arousal, as though Dom has found a new way to hurt him that doesn't hurt at all. His only consolation is the desperate jerk of Dom's hips and the clutch of his hand on Brian's ass that says it's been just as long for him, that he wants this just as much.
"Get up on the workbench," Dom says, turning them, shoving, still taking kiss after kiss as they maneuver Brian up, and then Dom is opening his pants, holding Brian's dick in his hand and jerking it while they both watch. The air is cool but Brian is sweating, his t-shirt stuck to his back and his hands sliding all over the steel workbench as he tries to hold still, hold in the pleasure, hold his tongue in check. He tries, but then he sees Dom wet his lips and bend forward. When Dom rubs a thumb over the tip, the pleasure floods through all his weak spots, and he comes in hard pulses that Dom pulls out of him with that strong, twisting hand. He falls back onto his elbows and says, "Dom," but Dom just raises an eyebrow and wipes his hand on a rag.
"There are less messy ways to do this," he says. Brian is well aware of those ways, of how close he'd just come to having Dom's mouth on him, and he groans, mostly in disappointment.
"It's been a while," he says, sitting up and pulling Dom in by the front of his shirt. "It's hard to jerk off with thirty people in the room." He gets Dom's pants open and kisses him with a stroke to his thick erection. He's so wet at the tip that Brian's palm glides easily over the hot, tight skin.
"You don't seem that out of practice to me," Dom gasps. His cool is slipping. A torque wrench falls off the table and clangs against the concrete floor.
Just a few hours ago he'd been cut off from Dom, but now their mouths are pressed together, rough and wet and full of everything that's ever been between them. Dom is hot and alive in his hand, and when Brian speeds up, Dom presses his face into Brian's shoulder and squeezes him tight, shaking all over. He's half up on the table by now, displaced parts everywhere—fuck it, Jesse can fix it tomorrow—and they don't move for a long while.
"I want this." Brian doesn't have to worry about whether Dom gets his meaning; he always does. As if to prove it, his fingers stroke a gentle path over Brian's belly.
"We already have it," Dom says, and kisses him in the dark.
*