Chapter Text
xxx
They were on the road for a whole six and a half hours before they had to stop.
Brian knew he looked like hell had frozen over. Brian felt like hell had frozen over.
His typical tan, golden skin was sheet white and clammy. Sweat dripped down his forehead in rolls, the locks of his hair stuck to the skin. He’d bled through all his hastily packed shirts and most of Dom’s, and even a few of Leon’s, and the current white tee he donned was shucked up around his armpits.
The thing was – the biting, bitter reality of a bad situation gone worse – blood was essential to the functioning of the human body. So, they’d tried to keep it in him – hopelessly, panickedly, stuck underneath stubby fingernails and lining cuticles crimson.
And Dom had held Brian’s guts in his hands as they drove, buckets of it seeping out of the wound. And then, he’d desperately held Brian’s face, sticky fingerprints leaving red on his cheeks, asking him to hold on, begging him to stay awake.
But he was so fucking tired, like he’d never been tired before. It wasn’t normal, maybe it wasn’t real. He didn’t know.
And then Dom dug those fucking tweezers into the crater in his stomach and pulled out a lump of metal, compacted on one side, and Brian’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, nonsense pouring out of him like the blood was.
The bullet was discarded somewhere on the ground, tweezers forgotten about, zippo lost in the fray, and they were faced with a new problem, one more pressing than the last, one that required immediate attention.
It had been preventing the massive loss of blood, like a plug to a really leaky drain – but now that the stopper was removed, the gush came in full force.
“Mia, we need to stop the bleeding–” Dom was above him, hands gentle and scrambling to keep Brian’s mindless thrashing from touching the oozing wound.
The drunken feeling of cold metal sliding into him and pulling out a mass of iron stuck to Brian’s skin, making it crawl, made goosebumps appear on flushed and traumatized skin, and oh shit–
“Here.” She tossed back a roll of white gauze and several towels that looked too nice to be getting blood on, Brian thought fleetingly. “Pack it!”
Dom immediately grabbed the towels and pressed them to Brian’s stomach, pressing hard, and Brian was seeing stars while his own hands clutched desperately at anything, one finding purchase on the side of the driver’s seat, the other floundering–
“Dom, put your finger on his wound!”
Wait. Wait, what?
“Mia!” Dom shouted, appalled.
Brian tried to voice a protest of his own, but all that came out was a gurgle.
“It’s the best way to stop the bleeding immediately! Direct pressure on the site of entry!”
A second’s hesitation, and then Dom’s finger was pressing on the hole that had just housed a bullet, and–
And the pain.
Oh fuck, the pain.
It wasn’t–
It wasn’t like anything Brian had ever experienced.
He couldn’t see. He couldn’t see.
It was like all of his senses shut off. It was like his throat tightened so intensely he couldn’t breathe. His spine spasmed. His chest muscles cramped.
“Brian, keep breathing for me.”
But how?
Brian didn’t realize he was keening, a sound of horrible howling erupting from his throat, back arched in some sort of backwards attempt to relieve the onslaught of violence on his body.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry–”
Brian’s pale fingers shot up to grip at Dom’s wrist, but the pressure didn’t relax, and he was going to actually fucking explode into nothing, but–
It must have helped, because the waterfall of crimson pouring down his skin and soaking into his clothing lessened. The breath Dom was holding above him seemed to exhale out of him slowly.
But the pain didn’t lighten.
And Brian’s adrenaline leveled out. His flight-or-flight shut down. He fell asleep.
And he’d woken up to a wrapped torso, muggy head and numbness. But the numbness was better than the inevitable pain, which would come, which was already here, threatening to choke him.
Dom’s heavy hand resting on his knee put a small warmth in his core, and he looked down at Brian, who was resting his head on a thick thigh.
Brian thought this was okay. He’d be okay. The sun was glowing, filtering through Mia’s hair as she drove, and Dom was looking at him with soft eyes, eyelashes catching on each other with each blink, and Brian wasn’t sure of the timeline, and everything– everything was fuzzy, in his mind, but he concluded everything’d be okay.
But, he realized the soft look in Dom’s eyes wasn’t simply soft – it was worry, more worry than he’d even be able to comprehend. It was dark brown pools full of unsettling concern, a tidal wave of emotion barely contained within them.
And his mouth was moving, saying something firm and prompting, but Brian didn’t hear him – the sun shone just right, creating a flash of rainbow through the window next to Dom’s head. It was nice. It was pretty. This would all turn out okay. He could feel the panic in Dom’s other hand as it desperately pressed something cotton to his abdomen. It was okay.
But things went downhill fast.
It was the coughing. Weak, small at first – but grew to a mountainous heave of shoulder, lung- shuddering event that had Dom holding his chest front and back, trying to keep him together. It was Brian trying to keep his eyes from rolling into the back of his head from the overwhelming brutality of pain that washed over him with each breath.
It was being completely speechless with agony, whiting out his senses, doubling over in pain, gritting his teeth so hard he thought his jaw would break. He thought he was groaning, thready sounding things, couldn’t be sure.
It was the walkie, somewhere, when he got some sense of his hearing back, tinny and sounding like Vince’s voice. Mia talked into it, quickly.
It was his blood, the thing he needed, spilling through the dressing and around the barrier of towel or discarded jacket hastily pressed to his torso, down his trembling ribcage and onto the pristine upholstery of the backseat of Dom’s car.
It might stain, Brian thought desperately, half out of his mind and delirious. The stain’ll be there forever, even if he won’t be.
It was Mia yelling in the front, fingers gripping the steering wheel like her life depended on it, knuckles and face white.
And Brian tried to think of everything he’d learned in the academy, from life experience, from juvie about blood flow and open wounds and repentance of sins.
Staunch the bleeding as quickly as you can. Apply pressure. Pray to God. Read your bible. If it bleeds through, don’t remove the material, just apply more on top. Use confessional booths. Elevate.
But how the fuck was he supposed to elevate the wound when it sat just a foot below his delicately-placed heart?
The sheer agony disrupted any coherent train of thought, like his brain ached, like any sense of rationality went completely out the window, and if he could just think for one fucking minute–
Brian laughed bitterly, the feeling ripping through him almost as intensely as the bullet had. He could see Dom’s eyes looking at him with more focus now, not just his wound. His hands were bloody from where they pressed against his stomach. Brian didn’t like the color red, never had, and especially didn’t now.
“Brian–” Dom edged, concern lacing his voice. He knew he looked crazy, definitely, bleeding out and laughing like a madman. His hands shook, shook, so bad that his fingers couldn’t move the hair away from his face, and he threw his head back, skin pulling tight against his adam's apple to laugh again, sounding deprived and deranged but he couldn’t think and it was all happening so fucking fast–
And maybe his cackling was making the bleeding worse. According to Dom’s stressed eyebrows, to his frantic, red hands everywhere, it was. He was saying things to Brian, lips moving, throat working, white teeth blinding him, but nothing reached his ears. Brian wondered if his own teeth were stained red. Wondered if that added to the severity of the situation.
The burning in his chest didn’t find relief, maybe it got worse, but the desperate, insistent niggle in his brain did. The muscles in his back relaxed, as much as they could. His vision got hazy, distant.
And he didn’t sleep, not really, not like last time. More of just, checked out. Closed his eyes and tuned everything out, except the pain, the overwhelming, nauseating pain. Because that would have been impossible.
And his head still rested on Dom, who looked down at him in distress. He looked like the vein in his forehead was going to pop.
Brian thought he felt fingers card through his hair, thought of those red fingers coloring his blonde curls but didn’t give a shit because it felt good.
In and out of reality, he focused on that – those fingers. And breathing, which was getting increasingly more difficult by the minute, and trying to harness the very force of gravity to keep the blood inside of him.
They found a motel pretty quickly. Or slowly, Brian wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel like he was in the car very long, but he was sore, so.
That could have also been due to getting fucking shot.
The place they pulled into looked like a dump, but that was exactly what they needed right now — somewhere in the middle of nowhere, alone and withered and completely vacant.
It was a bitch getting him out of the car, or so he thought by the amount of grunting Dom was doing and the severity of Vince’s cuss words.
He rested an arm across Dom’s shoulders and the other on Vince’s. Brian knew he wasn’t going to make it far, and they’d parked relatively close to their rooms, but it wasn’t going to happen. His knees gave out first, followed by the strength in his biceps.
“Wait, wai–” the small protest led into a fit of coughs, and he worked to keep himself conscious.
But, the two men hauling his pathetic ass were three steps ahead of him. In a flash, Dom fisted the back of his shirt while Vince’s fingers slipped through the loop in the back of his jeans — they were unbuttoned, fly open to not put pressure on his wound, but the extra support was still effective. He didn’t hit the pavement like he’d expected.
And the noises he was making — in any other case, Brian would have been fucking embarrassed. He couldn’t be bothered, though. It was something between a groan and a wheeze, too high-pitched and thready.
It was forever. The parking lot was forever. Dom shushed him and whispered reassurances into his ears, but they went mostly unheard. Vince tapped his left knee when they’d stopped for a moment, and Brian realized a second later that meant step. He really wasn’t pulling any of his own weight here, literally, but they stepped up onto the sidewalk and he needed to lift his feet.
It hurt. Shit, it fucking hurt.
He hurt, all over. It was indescribable. One second, his skin was so hot it was going to melt off his body and the next, he was in the Arctic, clammy and shivering. His hands trembled. It was like every nerve ending in his body had been set on fire, too sensitive and too receptive, but almost dull with constant, constant pain.
One of the two queens in the first room was automatically Brian’s. Dom and Vince set him gently down on the bed, the mattress already going to be a problem by the stiff springs. He’d tried to keep some sense of dignity to him as they had dragged him through the parking lot, but the groan that escaped him as he gingerly laid on the spotless – not for long – white duvet signaled he didn’t have any dignity left.
Vince might tease him about this when he was better. He hoped so.
The rest of the crew took the other room they’d paid for under a false name, filing through the conjoining door at Dom’s corralling and closing it softly behind them.
Not that Brian noticed. He was sweating and trying to just fucking breathe, even a simple one, just one full breath. He was squirming, trying to find immediate relief, but the movement also threatened to drown him in agony, neither one doing what he wanted.
Mia cataloged what they had like it was her one purpose. She tore apart first aid kits and assembled wound dressings and blood staunches and whatever else took up space on the worn-looking desk in the corner.
And they’d all agreed to settle for a day or two, even with the threat of being found lingering in the back of their minds.
In between Brian’s fever dreams and bouts of nausea, he thought of Tanner. He thought of his bland, tan suit, and the way his lip would curl up when the coffee was too bitter, and how he’d only ever given Brian honesty and empathy and something confusedly akin to fatherly affection.
He thought of how, after everything was said and done, that was his only regret; not the quarter mile race that resulted in a smashed Dodge, not leaving his house behind, not taking a bullet to the gut.
Just Tanner. Just Brian’s betrayal, and it burned like acid in his throat.
He knew he was getting worse when he couldn’t hold consciousness anymore, lethargically in and out of it, legs tingling, head fuzzy, gut on fire – worse than fire, he wanted to rip his abdomen out and throw it away.
His fevering eyelids slammed shut, head pounding, breathing labored, and it came out in short gasps and went in as painful drags. It sounded bad, knew Mia and Dom and everyone heard it, like every scrape of an inhale was just another stab of panic.
Time wasn’t a luxury. He knew that. He knew more than any of them.
He wasn’t ready to die.
And, when he had voiced this concern, choking on his own spit and the realizing that this was a possibility–
Mia began to weakly protest, but Dom shut him up immediately, denying loudly and forcefully that that wasn’t going to happen, and they weren’t going to let him die.
Brain didn’t know much anymore, but he did know that death wasn’t something they had control over.
And then he passed out.
xxx
Sometime later, he pukes.
Luckily, there had been the ice bucket sitting perfectly placed on the floor near his head which caught the majority of the soup broth and bile.
Unluckily and to no surprise, it hurt. Holy fuck, it hurt. It was all he could do to not pass out. Brian could have gone through another lifetime without feeling this kind of pain.
And the thing was, he didn’t even know what internal organ the bullet had obliterated. Muscles were out of the question, as it was obvious they were completely destroyed, but he didn’t know the layout of the human body, not really. He didn’t know where his stomach sat, where his large intestine curled around the miles and miles of his small intestine.
He wondered if his stomach had a hole in it where it shouldn’t. That wouldn’t be good. Stomach acid was only meant to be confined in the stomach, there was no doubt about that. Brian couldn’t imagine what was leaking where it shouldn't be leaking. What sort of liquids weren’t in their correct spot.
He dry heaved again, head swimming full of something strong and cottony. He heard Mia’s soft footsteps on the shitty carpet rush over, a hand on his back, hesitant but soothing.
“Take it easy, there ya go…”
He inhaled sharply, a dry noise that sounded a lot like a whale bouncing off the probably-too-thin motel walls. Hot tears ran down his face, he realized distantly, and he didn’t think he was crying. The tears were a culmination of frustration and vomiting and sheer, complete pain.
“Mia–” he gasped, voice box shaking, jaw quivering, trying to ignore his wrecked torso for one second. “Mia, I–”
“Don’t talk. It’s okay.” She quieted, rubbing his back at where he was twisted over the side of the bed. Brian was glad she hushed him; he didn’t know what exactly he was going to say, anyways, except something that sounded desperate and begging and he didn’t want to stoop that low yet.
The weird design in the carpet made senseless shapes dance across his vision, like one of those children telescope things – a kaleidoscope, maybe. He didn’t like it. It made his head spin.
“It’s–”
“Brian, please,” she sounded like she was begging. “Don’t talk. It’s okay. I’m here.”
So he didn’t. He gagged into the bucket that was supposed to hold ice and tried to decide if he was freezing or burning up and feebly attempted to keep the guts in his stomach instead of spilling them out like the bile he’d just expelled.
It was coming back now, in small, fractured increments. He got flashes of himself, lying on the oil-stained pavement outside of DT Precision, in shock, eyes wide, mouth agape, hand reaching down, down, down to only come up red, red, red. He remembers not realizing, at first, what the red meant; he’d been shot. Holy fuck, he’d been shot.
Brian remembers the immediate pain, the overwhelming, nearly shattering pain that hadn’t left him since that very moment.
He remembers only a bit after that; someone, probably Dom, who was never more than two steps away from him, lately, with a big heart and even bigger forearms, picked him up off the ground and heaved him into a waiting vehicle.
He remembers cursing. Can remember hearing Leon reigning in a screaming Jesse, Mia and Letty clutching at each other and forcing the other to move, go, we gotta go, shit, Brain, he’s, he’s been–
He remembers Bilkins standing behind a smoking gun.
Doesn’t remember the incredulous look on his face, after. Doesn’t remember the alarm in his eyes. The regret in his posture.
Probably because it wasn’t there.
Probably because it wasn’t there.
xxx
He woke slowly, in a haze. His eyes were fuzzy, but could hear the soft dramatics of the TV on the wall. He moved his hands around, feeling the tingling in his wrists.
Trying to make sure he was still alive.
Dom’s blurry form came into view, hovering over him with searching eyes like Brian was something in a petri dish.
“Hang in there.” The deepness of his voice could have made anything sound harsh, but it sounded quiet, heavy. Brian hated it, the pity, the worry.
And, he couldn’t ignore the facts. Dom didn’t ask him. He knew. He already knew how Brian felt.
He was getting worse. A steady decline with death as the finish line.
This wasn’t the first time he’d prepared for death, looked it nearly in the face and accepted it. It was, however, different this time; he’d never been shot, sure, but the situation, his own disposition, was off this time.
It took him more than a second to realize that probably contributed to having, gaining, a family – or, a group of people who kinda-sorta still cared about him. It hit him differently, kind of sideways. This time, he had relationships to lose with his death. People he would be leaving behind, if he– if he…
Holy shit.
Brian was positively burning from the inside out, translating to sweat in his hair and slicking his spine. He speculated that infection had set in, probably, but couldn’t work his hands well enough to check it out. Mia hadn’t said anything to him yet, and he knew she was checking his gruesome wound every hour or more, so maybe he was okay. He was just going to put his faith in whatever cleansing ritual Mia was doing on the regular.
But the low-grade fever he was running switched gears to high, and the possibility of infection increased.
He didn’t know how quickly infection could set in, but this wound, it was major – felt major. Looked major in the faces of those that quietly passed around him. Part of him felt bad for putting that look on Mia’s face. He didn’t like it. She was– her features were too soft to wear such a troubled look.
The window to his left was black, and it took him a second to realize the void was actually signaling it was night outside, and not just a meaningless color. He must have been out for some time, a long time actually, like hours and hours. When Brian handed Dom his keys on the railroad track, the sun had been at its peak in the sky.
Or, had that been days ago? He’d been here for a minute, right? Like, several minutes.
What month was it?
Lucidity came in waves, but it didn’t matter because he didn’t know when he was lucid, couldn’t tell. He was thinking coherently for a moment. Right? Better get it all out now. He turned to Dom to say something, but flinched as a prod of pain got him with the movement, trying to inhale air through tight lungs. Dom appeared again – when had he left? – and placed something warm and wet across his forehead.
Brian’s hand shot up to grip Dom’s wrist in cold fingers, and the sudden movement from the almost-dead guy made Dom jump slightly.
“No hospitals,” Brian rasped, looking up at him through foggy vision.
Dom looked down at him, an ocean between them, a storm in those dark eyes. But Brian knew Dom understood what he was saying without actually needing to say it verbally.
It’s too risky. We’re on the run. Public places are too dangerous.
I’m sorry I betrayed you and I’m sorry I’m a cop and I’m not worth all of this.
Well, maybe Dom didn’t fully get that last part. Brian didn’t know. If he did, he wouldn't let on.
Dom perched down on the bed next to him and slipped a white pill into Brian’s lax mouth, followed by a cup of lukewarm water. The water was metallicy and sharp against his tongue, but he didn’t realize how dehydrated he was. The pill went down with minimal grief, and without knowing what it was, Brian already knew it wouldn’t help.
This type of wound, it wasn’t something to be fixed by a simple over-the-counter 6-hour pain reliever.
“No hospitals, Dom.” Brian said, a little clearer now. Dom’s eyes traced the drop of perspiration running between his eyes. “We can’t."
He really meant you can’t. Brian was a pig, an undercover one. His well being didn’t seem to matter much anymore. This crew were criminals, sure, but ones with hearts of gold. Stealing definitely didn’t warrant death. Lying your way into a family and continually lying about who you were with intent to send them all to jail and then ruining their lives to the extent of causing them to go on the run for their livelihood might.
He didn’t say ‘just let me die’ but he might as well have, and Dom knew that.
“I’m going out again. We gotta look for supplies.”
Brian’s teeth bit down on his bottom lip, swallowing a groan, inhaling sharply several times through his nose.
Through gritted teeth, he said, “be careful”.
Don’t be risky for me.
Don’t stick your neck out too far for me, please.
Dom’s brown eyes bore into his, and Brian wanted to drown in them. The other man’s thumb made small circles into Brian’s arm, soothing and fleeting. “We’ll be back.”
Don’t go at all.
Don’t go for me.
Please.
In the mental evaluation from several years ago that Brian had been required to take to become a police officer, the psychologist evaluating him took one look at him, face value and right out of juvie, and saw right through him. She told him something he hadn’t wanted to hear, and it had been out of the blue, and completely unprompted, and Brian hadn’t been able to let that shit go.
‘Emotions that get buried alive never die. Will you be able to perform in this field, Mr. O’Connor?’
Except, what happened when he was buried alive? What if it weren’t just his feelings that had been hidden in the earth?
Dom went out the door, followed closely by Leon and Vince, and the noise of the door shutting against the rotting wooden frame shook Brian to his core.
His feelings were rising to the surface of a carefully patched piece of earth.
Emotion brought weakness. It made it real. This was real.
Out came Brian’s blood, which had spilled all over the cement at DT’s garage, and with it, the repressed emotions he’d hidden and ignored and buried in order to be the fucking best at his job – which he had been.
Through a fog of torture and sleep, he heard Dom, Vince, and Leon come back in later, only a few items between the three of them.
And he wondered if it had been worth it.
And he wondered if he was worth it.
xxx
Trips to the bathroom were nothing short of violent. He couldn’t even perform basic functions lying on a bed for 24 hours of the day. How was he supposed to pee? Standing up, no doubt?
However, his intake was low, almost nonexistent and would have been if it weren’t for Mia, which translated to a low output.
And they’d tried to shower him, but it took a half hour-ish, seemingly, to get him just in a sitting position on the bed. And then he’d tried to puke and seizures seemed just on the horizon and Brian had threatened to simply combust and that’d been the end of that. Mia dragged a cool washcloth over his skin until he was right and shivering, and that was the extent of cleaning him up. He was sweaty most of the time, thanks to the open wound in his torso, and there was just no combatting that.
Reality stopped existing, time didn’t matter or even seem real. One second, he could remember things, stupid, meaningless things, like where he kept his keys on top of the fridge next to Dom’s, how he only wore one brand of sunglasses because it was the only brand his dad refused to.
But the next second, he didn’t even know what sunglasses were, couldn’t remember he even drove or liked cars or anything. His timeline was becoming fudged. It was a hell of a battle deciding that the hand he was holding in front of his face was real.
And it affected his pain. Lessened it, somehow, kinda – but not enough. Altered it, definitely. He still spent enough time, all of his time, gasping and groaning and now, mumbling nonsense as it spilled out of his mouth, words wild and strung together at random to make only fractions of sentences, and he knew it was happening, sometimes, but couldn’t stop it.
Brian was aware that he was still losing blood; Mia tried not to hover, he could tell as she’d skirt around the end of the bed, but she’d hold her hands up close to her chest in a way that looked like she was trying to restrain herself from reaching out. And, when the time felt appropriate for her, she’d come over and gently sit on the empty spot on the mattress next to his left hip and unravel the top layers of the dressings to reveal a red splotch underneath – and with all the patience and carefully practiced calmness in the world, she’d wrap him up in new bandages and tell him to go back to sleep.
He had kinda looked at the gunshot wound early on, sprawled out in the back of Dom’s car as they’d kicked up dust going over 140mph on a backroad and tried to stop the hemorrhage erupting from him – it hadn’t really been visible with all the red. His skin had been ripped and torn and he hadn’t gotten a good look.
But as Mia’s gentle fingers tended to it, Brian couldn’t imagine the sight of it now. It’d been over a day, probably, since it happened. It definitely looked mottled, he was sure, bruised and inflamed and all-around disgusting and swollen.
But Mia didn’t flinch at it, and he didn’t realize until dwelling on it how grateful he was for her stoicism. Anything less than that, Brian thought he might dissolve away into nothing.
He wondered about the scar he might have. A tiny pucker of healed skin representing a whole host of feelings crammed into two seconds of a poorly-made decision on Bilkin’s behalf.
And Brian hadn’t ever gotten along with the man, per se; they were different levels of law enforcement function, different levels of hierarchy. Brian was lower than Bilkins in the pecking order, which meant he’d do Bilkin’s dirty work.
But Brian didn’t think the guy would shoot him.
And it may not have been aimed directly at Brian, but there was a gun discharged. Bilkins meant to do damage. It wasn’t an accident. The man had intended to do whatever he could to slow the group down.
And how fitting that the very officer that had betrayed Bilkins and the precinct and basically all of Los Angeles was standing there, in between where the bullet was headed and where it had been coming from.
So, in Brian’s eyes, the fed had every intention of harming him. He’d get a slap on the wrist and a write-up, maybe, and six weeks in the hospital recovering from the slug that Vince put in his knee and he’d be off again, bossing around another lower level officer or hunting down another criminal.
Or hunting the crew, with or without Brian. He didn’t know where any of them would be in six weeks. Hiding, hopefully. Safe. Secure.
He didn’t know where he’d be in six weeks. Couldn’t even guarantee he’d still be upright and breathing.
xxx
Dom and Letty returned from another venture out to search for things they wouldn’t be able to find, like fucking miracles or the fountain of youth. Over his own labored breathing, Brian could hear the rumple of materials as they dumped their findings out across the desk in the corner of the room.
“You really look like shit, buster.” Letty eyed him from the space next to the tv, the weariness in her eyes shrouded by fake annoyance Brian read immediately as concern, as alarm.
Brian coughed a laugh and swallowed the phlegm that came up. “Thanks, Let. You really,” a sharp inhale, a little too wheezy, “know how to flatter a guy.”
She looked at him for a second longer, seemingly not daring to come closer, like a gunshot wound was contagious.
An accusatory, small finger was pointed at him. “Don’t get worse, you hear?”
He nodded, grunting through the pain, and then she’d disappeared into the next motel room over.
Dom came around, holding something in his hands, fidgeting with it.
“Letty’s willpower alone would keep me alive.” He panted, trying to prop himself up on the headboard.
Dom chuckled, but Brian was pretty sure that was just for his benefit. He opened his mouth and several white pills landed on his tongue, followed by a swoosh of water. They went down like the rest of them. He’d stopped trying to know what they were, what they were promised to do, to cure.
Mia brought over a white takeout box and handed it to Dom, who looked at Brian with bright eyes. “I picked up your favorite.”
Brian groaned, one arm coming over to rest across his bandages gently. “Oh, oh fuck no.”
Dom opened the box. “Don’t worry. It’s just mashed potatoes and some plain pasta. Nothing crazy.”
Except, that did sound crazy. That sounded like he wasn’t in the state to eat anything, let alone that. How ironic would it be to have a bullet wound in your body but die of starvation?
And it was even crazier that Brian allowed Dom to feed him, only if it was just a few excruciatingly painful bites of each.
This sucked. This whole thing sucked, so fucking bad Brian wanted to cry. But, it wasn’t just about him. He was the one with the extra hole in his body, sure, but this affected all of them. And, in a complicated, roundabout way, he’d caused all of this. And, they’d all bent over backwards to keep him just functioning.
Brian was on the edge of sanity, caught somewhere between reality and his lack of lucidity, but – but if this was what placated Dom, Brian would let the man spoon feed him the world’s boringest foods and be quiet while the blood dripped down the back of his throat and seeped through the gauze hugging his abs and just try to remember who he was.
xxx