Archive of Our Own ^beta

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

Chapter Text

xxx

“H-how long ‘ave we been here?”

The room was quiet. Everyone in this ragtag crew who wasn’t out and about searching for medical supplies or drugs under the radar were hunkered down in the room next door. Brian had listened to the leaky faucet in the bathroom sink plink, plink, plink for an hour. It’d been meditative, something to focus on, but now it was grating on his nerves, adding to his sudden dip in mood.

And things blurred together, but he’d been staring at a piece of chipped paint on the wall, its edges turned yellow from decay and dust. 

It was just a spot, but his eyes latched onto it as he’d sunken into his mind.

And the tick, tick, tick of the clock on the wall that perpetually read the incorrect time drilled a hole into his brain right next to the spot where the pain sat, and it made him think, suddenly nearly alarmed that he didn’t know what the answer was.

Mia eyed him as his stomach lurched, an earth-shattering spasm clamping around his midsection, trying not to hyperventilate with agony. One of his hands had come around to rest atop where the wound sat under layers and layers of white wrapping, as if to relieve the echoing pangs of torment.

She eyed him like he should know this.

“Three days.”

And holy shit, it had been three days? It was just hours ago that he got dragged in here, Brian could have sworn.

“Or, rather, it will be three days in a few hours.”

That clarification didn’t help nearly as much as he’d wished.

They had pulled in as dusk was settling in on the surrounding peaks, meaning it’d been almost three days since then. Three days since Brian’d been shot. He didn’t know if any of them had intended to stay this long; probably not. He knew they wanted to be in Mexico, away from US feds and the California Task Force and whatever else was sniffing out their trail.

He wondered if time was slipping away faster than he’d realized. Did the three day’s worth of time seem normal to everyone else?

He barely could remember the drive here. Did they drive? Brian thought so, can kind of remember Mia’s skinny fingers on the wheel. Can remember Dom hovering above him, trying to coax him to keep breathing.

They were assumedly a hundred miles away from Echo Park, give or take, and three times that much that to their desired location in Mexico.

Shit, he couldn’t keep it all straight.

But he saw guilt when it showed, even with sweat impeding his vision. Brian could see the tenseness in Mia, in her shoulders, in how her hands seemed stiff. He knew what she was feeling without even asking, because he knew her.

“Don’t feel bad, Mia. It’s– I’m okay.”

“You aren’t, Brian, you’re–” she stopped short.

You’re dying. 

“Don’t feel guilty. I know you.”

She finally looked up at him, an ocean in her gaze, so fierce he almost had to look away.

He understood. He really did. He got it all, from the hatred to the despair and the anxiety and the pain. She didn’t need to say another word. Brian telling her to not feel bad or guilty wouldn’t prevent it – in the rationalized cavity that was Mia’s mind, she was entitled to how she felt. 

But the bullet really hadn’t been hers to take. By dumb luck, the gun in Bilkins hand had been aimed at her, but that didn’t mean she’d been the sole target. Bilkins was a one-track mind kind of guy. He’d intended to slow them down, as a group – not target Mia.

And Brian had stepped in front of it, no doubt saving her life. 

“Do you remember that one time,” a deep breath and a shuddering exhale, “that one time that Hector thought we’d scheduled a BBQ for Saturday night instead of Sunday?”

She let out a trembling scoff, and if it was a little wet, neither of them commented. She let him change the subject with no protest.

“And all of a sudden, there were, like, fifty people in the backyard that he brought along and we had no fucking clue what was going on?” He continued. “So we had to have two BBQ’s? Because–”

“He was the only one that got the date wrong, and everyone else came on Sunday.” She finished solemnly, smile bittersweet as she finished wrapping his midsection. 

“And you had to make two potato salads and twice as many rolls and it was a disaster.” His hands shook as he gasped and wheezed in place of a laugh. 

She laughed too, a quiet thing.

“This isn’t just a BBQ disaster. This isn’t some sort of race to get enough food out to everyone. I can’t just make another potato salad to fix you, Brian–”

“But you’re doing what you can do.” He tried to placate, softening his eyes. “You’re doing what you can, even when you don’t have to, and it’s making all the difference, Mia.”

Her nose wrinkled, and her chin wobbled, and Brian ignored his wince of movement as his hands settled on top of hers on the duvet between them. 

“Thank you, Mia.”

And Brian knew she was smart – she was wicked smart, smarter than all of the rest of them combined, and for a fleeting second, he wished desperately that she could have gotten the life she deserved. She would have been the best doctor on the whole damn West Coast. 

She was smart, but Brian hoped she got what he was saying, which was they didn’t need to stick around. Her and Dom and the rest of the crew could have been safely tucked away in some sleepy village in Mexico at this point but here they were, risking it all for Brian, who’d betrayed them. 

And maybe he’d redeemed himself in their eyes, and maybe their ledger was wiped clean after all the shit that’d happened, but… Brian just couldn’t imagine it. To be on equal footing again, it seemed unreachable. 

“Besides, I was the one that put you all into that – this mess. If anyone deserves–”

“Brian O’Connor, absolutely not. You did not deserve to get shot."

What he got and what he deserved were, maybe, two different things. Maybe in her eyes. He wasn’t so sure.

This time, a real laugh came out of him, or something closer to a chortle, something deprived and unbelieving and maybe a little bit mournful. She smacked his arm with the corners of her lips upturning in some sort of grimace-smile that escaped her control and rolled her eyes at him while standing to clean up the first-aid kid.

The smack she’d hit him on the arm with had been restrained and pulled and barely even a brush of contact and that was what he’d been reduced to.

It stuck with him.

xxx

He caught sight of himself in the mirror. Brian’d been working through the agonizing wave of pain that accompanied any sort of movement, let alone walking. It blinded him, liquified the muscles in his legs, triggered his gag reflex. 

One of his arms was draped over Vince in a gross fashion, the other had white-knuckled fingers grasping at the back of Dom’s neck. They were on a valiant mission for Brian to relieve his bladder, although he didn’t need to. Mia had asked all misty-eyed and he’d caved. They needed to be busy, feel like they were doing something to better this shitty situation. He got it. He understood. If he could help them feel better, he sure as hell would.

But he didn’t even recognize himself at first.

Sunken eyes. Flat, sweaty strands of hair. He was shirtless, and despite the wrappings taking up most of the real estate on his torso, his skin was pale and clammy and he could count every outdent of his ribs in a grotesque sort of way. His cheekbones were too pointy. His pallor was gray.

Sweat got in his eyes. Mia’d washed him down only an hour ago with a wet rag, but it didn’t matter. 

He looked gaunt. Emaciated. Like someone had tied him up and tortured him for months. 

He didn’t look… alive. He looked like a walking corpse.

He must have been staring. Even Mia’s cold hand on his back didn’t shock him back to reality.

“Come on, buster.” Vince mumbled next to him. They dragged him into the bathroom. Mia and Vince left while the door was partially closed. Dom, of course, kept his eyes politely upward and his muscled forearms holding all of Brian’s dwindling weight as he did his business – or tried. Not much to pee out if he couldn’t keep any liquids down.

“You’re still breathing. That’s all that matters.” Dom argued Brian’s silent grief within himself.

Brian’s breathing was labored and thick and painful in response.

He finished. Got the gray sweats back into position. Ignored the shake of his hands, the way the skin was falling off his fingertips from the fever. Ignored the way his neck was too heavy, the way his head lolled a bit to the side.

His tongue was heavy too, like a weight in his mouth he couldn’t bear. 

“You’re still breathing.”

He was. He was. 

He was?

xxx

He was mostly lucid as he stared at Dom’s form in the chair, an uncomfortable-looking thing with wheels that’d come straight out of the 70’s. It must have been nighttime – the curtain hanging across the window allowed slivers of light from an occasional passing car on the deserted road, illuminating Dom in sporadic bursts of glow.

“You’re on,” a rather pathetic-sounding cough, "watch duty?"

Dom made a dismissive sound that confirmed Brian’s question.

“You think, what? I’m just going to keel over and that’s that?” He didn’t sound angry – or, tried not to be defensive. Because he wasn’t. This was his reality, like it or not. His tone took more of an incredulous note.

“I’m not going to let that happen, Brian.”

And the conviction rang so true to Brian’s ears that he simply couldn’t argue that. 

Instead of fighting, disagreeing that he didn’t need a babysitter, he cleared his throat and ignored a rather excruciating clamp of cramping abdominal muscles. “Then come ‘ere.”

Dom looked at him, and Brian looked back evenly, taking note of the ghost of a smile that appeared on the other man’s lips. “What?”

Brian didn’t know what; he didn’t know why. But, he’d always been like that, impulsive beyond thought. And now that any form of rationality seemed to leave him from time to time, he didn’t really care anymore.

And there was something about Dom as he sat in that chair, something soft and illuminated by the dusty lamp next to him. It was like, Brian was weak and just coming down from a sweaty bout of incoherency, but, this… this was something new. Dom looked like endgame, to him, could have been, maybe would have been, if things had been different. 

“You heard me asshole. Come here.”

Obediently, Dom stood and walked over, toeing off his shoes before sliding next to Brian on the mattress, on top of the duvet like Brian was, going slow to not jostle him. He laid down on his back and stared at the ceiling, not saying a word.

And Brian couldn’t move, he knew this. One flinch or twitch would result in a wave of pain so intense he’d pass out. But, he felt the warmth radiating off of Dom’s body next to him, not touching but hot enough to be a personal furnace.

And they didn’t say anything for a long while. The cream colored popcorn ceiling was something Brian was getting really sick of looking at, and sweats of pain shone on his skin, and his labored breathing echoed in the small room abruptly, but for just one moment, it was okay.

“This sucks.” He mumbled aloud, quietly, not wanting to disturb whatever had settled between them, not wanting to wake Mia, who slept soundlessly on the opposing queen bed on the other side of the room. 

It took Dom an extra second to respond. “Yeah.”

And Brian was going to leave it at that. It’d been enough for him, really; enough to assuage himself for now, to get simultaneously nothing and everything off his chest. But Dom spoke again, permeating the air.

“We’re gonna be okay, though.”

The plural use wasn’t lost on Brian. It wasn’t 'he’ would be okay, because he probably wouldn’t. 

And in any possible other instance, Brian would have rested easy knowing Dom had this handled, everything was under Dom’s control, the raw power of the man, both in his voice and in his capabilities, would make good on his promise.

But as much as he tried, Brian couldn’t believe this promise. 

xxx

The first girl he’d broken up with, the only girl he’d ever broken up with, he’d done it behind the bleachers during sixth grade PE. 

Her name was Cynthia Jane and she had been completely obsessed with him. The bubble gum she chewed used to get stuck in her braces and her feet were, like, four times too large for her body, but she’d given him attention and for a touch-starved child, that’d been enough.

She’d had his name in a heart on the inside cover of her English binder, just like sixth grade girls do, and she’d twirl her hair when he talked to her and when he’d sent her a Valentine’s day card that the junior high arranged to receive fundraiser cash, she’d kissed him on the cheek and he thought it was the grossest thing. Roman laughed at him for his tomato red cheeks for weeks.

And, when he’d had enough, Brian (not so gently, he was twelve, okay?) told her to get lost. And she had tried to hold his hand in protest as he turned to walk back to the kickball game and her red curly hair stuck to her face with tears. 

And then he kicked the ball all the way to Mr. Barker’s house and everyone cheered for him while she sat on a bench in the shade looking really glum.

And then they grew up and advanced grades until they got out of junior high and into the big kid school and it seemed like she never really recovered.

Of course she did, Brian wasn’t that conceited, except… she never really seemed to look happy after that. But maybe she hadn’t been happy before that, he didn’t know. Maybe it was just her, changing with the style and the mood and the aesthetic that was all the rage mid-90’s or some shit. The bags around her eyes got dark and stayed dark. Her hair color changed from cherry to black. She switched tap shoes for black-and-white Converse with spikes on the sides of them.

Brian wondered if she had felt like he did right now, standing there under the metal bleachers listening to a toe-headed, insensitive sixth grader break up with her. Like a bullet had landed in her gut. Like her world was caving in and if she breathed too hard, it’d all fall to pieces within her. Like everything ached and she just wanted it all to go back to normal when she was just a cop trying to become a detective and Dom was just a mechanic and the crew was just that. A crew.

Because there’s something about feeling like the fate of your whole entire world was put on the head of a pin, and one simple gust of breath would send it all tumbling. 

Brian never did see her at graduation. 

xxx

The next morning came and went. His pain came, but didn’t leave. It stayed with him, muddling his senses, his mind, his breathing.

He asks Dom how his own injuries are, remembering the crushed Charger. Or he thinks he asks.

But no answer.

Brain gingerly, oh so gingerly, turns his head to the left. Dom is quietly, intensely – because the man doesn’t do anything any way else – studying a packet of papers. Next to him on the other bed sat an open phonebook, and an atlas that looked to be at least twenty years old.

And he opens his mouth to speak again, because the more he thinks about it, the more he remembers Dom being really messed up from that wreck. His car had flipped, for fucks sake.

But Dom is so focused and the light from the lamp is casting shadows across his form, and Brian thinks he could just sit here all day and stare at him. 

And unwittingly, he thinks of whatever he’s been feeling for Dom for some time now, under the guise that he was a stupid, young, impulsive racer in the LA underground racing scene with something to offer, maybe, and Dom was the guy to be, the guy to know, all muscle and stares and skill. 

What an idiot Brian had been.

Dom’s head comes up, no doubt feeling the gaze, and relaxes, shoulders un-hunching, lowering the papers.

“Brian.” He breathes. “How you feeling?”

He cleared his throat once, twice, trying to decide if it was heartburn in his chest or something else. “Are you okay? From the wreck? Your arm– it was…”

Dom’s eyebrows dropped slightly, as if he didn’t know what Bri was even talking about. 

“Oh, I’m fine.” He brings his arms up, turns them over and flexes demonstratively. “Little sore. It was tender a few days ago. But I’m good.” Brian scrutinized his face, seeing little cuts or tiny nicks dotting his otherwise perfect skin.

And Brian remembered the wreck happened, in real time, several days ago.

“No lasting injuries?”

Dom eyed the white dressing wrapped around Brian’s midsection, sticking out even against the pale skin that used to be tan.

“Could be worse.”

And wasn’t that the fucking truth. Brian scoffed, a bare-bones sort of grin pulling at his lips.

But that peculiar look was still on his damn face, something in his eye that told Brian he wanted to say something else.

“What?” Brian said defensively, unable but wanting to squirm under that gaze.

Dom shook his head slightly, setting the papers next to the other stuff, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, leaning closer to Brian.

“Even in the state you are, you’re still worrying about others.” About me went unsaid, but Brian heard it.

Brian shrugged as best he could while being pressed into a whole heap of pillows against the headboard, then cringing as he realized shrugging may not be the route to go.

“Easy,” Dom soothed next to him.

He coughed quietly. Weak and shaking, he rested his head back in its position, eyes staring at the ceiling above him.

He didn’t know if his concern came from the fact that he felt something for Dom, something stronger than he’d felt for anyone, ever, or if his concern came from the work of being a cop. Watching out for the good citizens of Los Angeles, and all that. Doing his civil duty. 

Shit, he was tired.

“I’ve– I’ve been shot at before. Once by Mr. Leroy ‘cuz Rome ‘n I were trespassing. A bunch of times on duty. Nothing ever hit home, though.” It came out raspy, but Dom understood him. “My luck must’ve run out.”

The room was quiet, and he thought he could hear the quiet rumblings of the AC unit in the corner. Somewhere to his right and behind a wall, he could hear the shower running, probably Mia. 

“I don’t believe in luck.” Of course he didn’t, what a ‘Dominic Toretto’ thing to say.

“Why’s that?”

Brain clocked the corners of Dom’s lips curl upward, staring at him. “We make our own fate. It doesn’t just ‘happen’.”

“You think I asked to get shot?”

“No,” Dom assuaged. “I think fate is a fabricated illusion of desire. To say you ‘ran out of luck’ is to assume you had any to begin with.”

Brian was definitely one hundred percent too gone to have a conversation like this.

But, where was the logic? Were people born with luck? There was no doubt that some people started out better on this planet than others; predisposed genes made sure of that. It was really a lottery of who got ‘luck’ and who didn’t. No one could control that.

And a scene of his mother floated through his brain. She was born unlucky, right? Her parents were higher than a kite most of her life, and look where that got her – a shit husband and a corpse in the ground due to an overdose.

Maybe, maybe Brian was supposed to turn out like his father; cruel, uncaring, abusive, alcoholic. Maybe he was supposed to live off of disability checks and berate and hit his helpless wife and spit on his children while he put his cigarettes out on their skin.

But he didn’t. He had to remind himself day in and day out, he didn’t turn out like him. Brian made his own destiny. He wasn’t just “lucky” that he turned out the way he did. He’d done it himself. He’d chosen his own fate, history and genetics be damned.

And now, everything was up in the air. Everything he’d worked so damn hard not to become had suddenly not meant so much, because who knew if he’d even live to see it through?

“Where’d ya go?” Next to him, Dom gently prodded his shoulder.

“Sorry, I–” 

And then he faltered.

Brian didn’t know. He didn’t know, and it was a jarring realization, because he always knew. Once he figured it out, he ran in that direction until his legs gave out. It’d always been all or nothing.

He knew his father was a drunk and an asshole and an abuser. He knew his mom was addicted to poor relationships and little white pills and those are what killed her. He knew Barstow was the place where dreams went to die and loved it all the same. He knew Juvie was good for him, even if it wasn’t and he knew that he was a damn good cop, even if it didn’t end that was in the department’s eyes.

But now, he didn’t know. Having everything in the air, especially something like his life sat like a lead ball in the pit of his stomach, and wasn’t that fucking ironic.  

The unknowing was what killed him. Because if he didn’t have luck, then how was he still alive? 

But living wasn’t a fate he could choose. He couldn’t make his own choices here. If destiny decided he was done for, then that was that. He couldn’t control fucking death.  

He couldn’t control death. It would take him, as it would take all of them, and he couldn’t control when that would be.

xxx

There were balloons. Gold and silver and white, hanging from the wall or floating up against the roof, bleeding down some semblance of celebration into a party that didn’t make any sense. It was night; the moon shone through the high windows of the rec room in the back of the LAPD police station. 

There were balloons, Brian remembers. 

He painted on a smile despite the dread in his gut. Agatha was his only escape, and they spent more than half of the night sitting at the corner-most table in the back. She told him she was grateful to not be filing meaningless paperwork and fielding Lieutenant Baker’s mistresses’ phone calls, and he told her that he was glad she brought a flask of the strongest stuff, even if imported alcohol was already provided on the buffet table next to the cake that read ‘Congrats Bilkins’. 

Champagne popped towards the front of the room, oozing out expensive contents as everyone rallied, cheering and gesturing and hollering. It was a gaudy scene. Almost animalistic. Someone popped confetti over the clustered heads. Brian watched with disdain and something heavy within him.

Some nameless face that Bilkins had been pursuing for months, caught and cuffed and then more recently, sentenced to death row. 

A man only known by his crime. A man with no name to be recognized, no face to find familiar. Just the label of his mistake and the knowing that he’d be put to death for it.

A man that had cried with grief at his hearing, had specially requested to see the victim’s family to personally apologize, to beg for forgiveness and promise to never drive while under the influence of illegal drugs again, not that he’d ever be granted access to a motor vehicle as long as he was breathing.

A man sentenced to death. And they had a fucking party for it.

Brian had been sick about it. 

Now, though, he wished that guy had his own flask to chug from in his cell just like Agatha had. Brain hung out with criminals now. Maybe he understood it now, better. Crime in general was bad, yeah, but throwing a party over that kind of verdict, no matter what caused it– 

He remembers the look in Bilkins eyes. He remembers Bilkins watching the recording of the sentence over and over. Reading the transcript of the ruling and framing it for a trophy on his wall.

His gallbladder lurched, and the bile burned at his throat.

Brian liked criminals more.

xxx

He slept. Like, he really slept. And it wasn’t some sort of easy sleep. It was deep, and dark, and he wasn’t conscious for it but it was heavy. It was like, one where he’d thought he died, really, but then he’d be blinking awake and groaning and alive.  

And when he couldn’t sleep, he’d stare at the textured ceiling as it spun in his vision, giant circles that made his head dizzy. He’d cry, sometimes, feeling water leak from the corners of his eyes, he thought. Wasn’t sure. It felt like his body was moving, but here he lay, creating a dip in the mattress that would be permanent, along with a stain that probably wouldn’t ever come out.

Brian’s bones felt like dead weight. His muscles rested in some sort of lethargic paralyzation, making it hard to move – not that he wanted to. Every twitch or heartbeat sent shocks of pain through him, and when he wasn’t asleep, he was battling the constant need to puke.

Mia tried to feed him soup with watery eyes and a thin smile, but he couldn’t stomach it. He swallowed the pills and gagged and hoped that the bullet that had tore through him missed his stomach enough to be able to dissolve the pills, even though he knew they wouldn’t work, especially not like he needed them to.

And, when he wasn’t sleeping or fighting nausea, he was lost in a sea of complete agony. Time seemed to lose all meaning, all sense of proprioception out the window. Clenching his eyes shut and clutching the duvet below him didn’t ease his symptoms. Every painful inhale of breath stretched his obliterated abdomen muscles. Tears leaked from his eyes and someone wiped them away with soft tissue, and once, he caught sight of Mia’s eyes matching his own.

Day and night blurred together, he thought, but couldn’t be sure. Mia’s hair changed from time to time, straight to up in a ponytail. Dom’s shirt changed. The creases around his eyes grew deeper.

Sometimes he bled, sometimes he didn’t. Whatever it was, there was too much lost.

Time seemed so stuck, so concrete but imaginative. Brian thought he’d be like this forever, wedged between imagination and reality, constantly in blinding pain and never finding relief.

But, he was wrong.

He jerked awake from a bout of unconsciousness to blink blearily up at Mia, who gently smiled down at him.

“How you doing?”

He used to come up with some sort of bullshitted answer, something short but reassuring.

He couldn’t, now. 

Brian grunted, softly, bluntly, getting shaking hands by his hips against the mattress to bring himself up into a slightly-sitting position. Mia fussed and told him to relax like she did every four or so hours, but he ignored her like he did every time.

Whatever she’d given him the last time they’d done this, it was still weakly rushing through whatever blood he had left in his veins, making him more tired than usual. His head hit the headboard as he tried to shove himself up but just ended there against his will, kinda slumped – he couldn’t keep his eyes open and everything was on fucking fire.

He figured Mia could handle this check-in on her own.

She unwrapped his torso with delicate fingers and began applying whatever ointment came from the shop down the road. Usually, no matter how light she rubbed, it still hurt like a bitch – but this time, he couldn’t even feel her fingers on his skin. It was concerning, yes, but honestly, Brian was glad to feel even a sliver of relief.

He dozed as she tended to him. He trusted her with his life, despite knowing he screwed her over big time. Maybe she wanted to kill him. Maybe she would, right now as his eyes were closed, before the bullet got its chance – but he knew her. He knew her. She was kind and funny and quick to dish shit as fast as it came. She had kind eyes and a kinder smile and if Brian wasn't feeling something questionably significant for Dom already, he could have loved her. Or been in love with her. All that flirting wouldn’t have been for nothing. The date they had at that Mexican place would have been more genuine on Brian’s part. 

And Brian didn’t know if those feelings were reciprocated. Dom wasn’t an easy man to read. Sometimes, Brian was convinced that Dom knew about it all and purposefully flirted with him just to tease him. Other times, Brian thought that Dom didn’t have a fucking clue.

But lately, Brian had been wondering if Dom felt the same for him as he did for Dom. Which went mostly unexplored in Brian’s mind. He didn’t like to think about this kind of stuff – love, attraction, lust, whatever. He’d always been too busy to figure it out.

And that seemed to be the problem, right now. He had too much time on his hands. Too much time to think about shit. It was a floodgate that he couldn’t stop. It was at this time that he also thought about his father and all the wrath that he was.

It wasn’t a good spot to be, right now; emotionally, physically. Mentally.

The bed stopped creaking with Mia’s movement, and he slipped an eyelid open to see. She was looking down at his torso with tears pooling in her eyes, lips softly parted. Her hand hovered over his stomach, shaking like a leaf, not touching him but seemingly wanting to. She’d been like that for a minute, now, frozen in shock.

She looked like she’d seen a ghost. That look didn’t fit her.

That wasn’t good.

“Mia?” He mumbled, tongue heavy.

Her eyes flitted to him, hastily wiping away at her cheeks where the tears had begun to fall. She covered his wound with the wrappings, just draping it across him as if she didn’t want to look at it again. 

“Go back to sleep, Brian. It’s okay.”

But he wasn’t stupid. Even in this state, he wasn’t dumb.

“Not so good?” Shit, his tongue wasn’t working. 

“Shh,” she shushed and eased a thumb over his brow bone, then down across his eyelids, closing them. “I’ve got you.”

But she was still crying. Hot tears ran down her face faster than he could count them, and her left hand was reaching for her phone next to them.

Brian couldn’t fight it. He fell asleep.

xxx

Chapter Text

xxx

He woke up again – or rather faded into existence – sometime later. 

Brian blinked, then again, feeling the immense weight of his limbs, his torso, immediately. The room was barren of anyone except Mia, who was washing her face in the vanity next to the bathroom.

He lay prone for a moment, trying to get his breathing under control, making pathetic attempts to force the ricocheting pain away. The muted rays of the sun shone yellow through the dusty window and it hurt his eyes, making everything feel gross.

She must have noticed he was awake again, because she came over. 

“Breathe, Brain. There ya go.” She did her best to coax him through a violent course of pain, eyes reflecting concern as always.

He was tired, and felt particularly pathetic. A laugh tried to bubble out of him, something self-deprecating and emotionless, but it was too bubbly and metallicy and slimy in his throat, and he gagged on it.

Like a fish. Earl tried to take him fishing once, back in the day. He knocked over the cup of worms and almost gotten the life beaten out of him.

“Shhh,” she shushed him, hands fluttering, gently smoothing the ACE bandage that she’d just redressed his midriff with. “The others will be back soon.” Her best efforts to keep it clean were futile, he knew, they both knew, and her hands were nervous in a way they hadn’t been before. She’d always been steady, it was a constant Brian knew. But, something else was there, and he knew it stemmed from their earlier conversation.

And, he’d heard the hushed conversation Mia had with presumably Dom on the phone an hour ago, floating between reality and whatever sat in his mind like a dark cloud.

There was a fed passing through town. Just passing through, it seemed, but Leon drove all the way to Lampert to get any suspecting persons off their trail. The rest of them scoured the area in hunt of feds or suspicious out-of-towners, not that they really knew who classified as such. 

But, Brian was working with criminals. They knew how to spot someone affiliated with the law, undercover or not. 

Not working. Living? Co-existing? 

He wanted to ask where they were, although he felt he probably knew, and he wanted to know what time it was, and what day it was too.

He didn’t though. Felt like it didn’t matter anymore, really. 

“Mia,” his voice was deep, hoarse. “Am-am I really worth all of this?” Brian went ahead and answered his own question with a fervency in his voice. "No."

“Brian, shut up." The words came out harsh, almost biting, and he’d never heard that kind of tone from her. Panicked. Desperate. He didn’t like it, and for a fleeting second, felt bad that he was the reason behind it. “No matter what shit we’ve been through, we’re family. Nothing is going to change that. No lying, no running, no prison sentences.”

And Brian knew that meant a lot, especially coming from her. He’d used her as a way into this family. At first, she was a means to an end, but now, he’d take a bullet for her – and did, four days ago, standing between her and Bilkins at Toretto’s Garage. But, the weight of the bullet was Brian’s to take, anyways. Bilkins was only minutes behind him and Dom, after the crash, after swooping into 1327 to grab a few essentials, and desperately calling everyone to tell them to meet at the garage with a go-bag. 

Brian should have known the feds, somebody, was that close on their trail; he was once one of them, and he dropped the ball. He should have been two steps ahead. Fucking stupid.  

The silver lining in the situation was that Bilkins had been alone, and despite his level of fury towards Brian, he couldn’t take all seven of them at once. In a fit of rage and a desperate attempt to stop them, he’d blindly shot in the general direction of the crew loading their things into the few vehicles – but, Brian had at least seen that coming – and flung himself into the line of fire that would have gone straight through Mia’s heart.

And, ironically, it’d been Vince who’d whipped his gun out of the back of his pants and shot Bilkins in the leg, providing them their tire-squealing escape after Dom had scraped an injured and dazed Brian off the pavement and heaved him into the idle car.

But now, it seemed the only escape Brian was going to get was a prison hospital or death. And neither seemed very good.

Another round of weak, thready coughs faded enough for him to take some sharp inhales, clutching at the wounded area above his belly button. He wheezed, resting his head back on the wall of pillows that separated him from the dusty headboard, eye line catching on the yellowed painting being shadowed and illuminated by the sunrays. Brush strokes depicted a shoddy scene in Norway, or maybe Wyoming, of a drooping pine tree somewhere in the forest. 

And something in him dislodged, jerking away from its spot near his heart, hitting against the inside of his breastbone. It felt wrong, and a little bit jarring, if he could work up enough reaction for that.

He was weak. He wasn’t lucid. He was dying. Really dying, not like in a cop show.

He was dying.

“Brian,” Mia started, too quiet and voice wobbly, unsure. "You stupid idiot. You should have just given Dom your keys and ran – then you wouldn’t be in this situation. You got shot. You got shot, damnit. You took a bullet for one of us, for me. But you didn’t need to do that. You’re in this position because of us.”

“The way I see it,” he whispered, feeling his brain start to slip out of consciousness, nothing but yellowed sunlight and Norway – or maybe Wyoming – on his brain. "You’re all in this situation because of me. I-I came into your lives with all this shit. The very least I could have done for you, Mia, was take a bullet to the stomach that would have gone right into your heart. You would have been dead. I’m not.”

He wasn’t. But time was ticking, and his grip was slipping.

Norway. Trees.

She was shaking her head. “That makes us more than even, then.”

“Mia,” he placed a clammy hand on hers where it rested on his abdomen and hers was too warm, and it burnt him. “I don’t regret.” She sniffled, once, twice, and her other hand shot up to wipe away the tears that had finally fallen again, the tears that seemed to constantly flow from her eyes because of him.  

“You hang on, Brian, Don’t you fucking die. Dom will kill you.” And he let out a sharp exhale at that, because it was ironic, and kinda funny that his death would exact revenge with the endgame of death, and he definitely shouldn’t be laughing, because fuck, that hurt.

And maybe that was the final signal, nature or fate or whatever shit telling him it was almost here, the end, when he couldn’t hold a conversation anymore.

And he fell unconscious again to the thought of a lone pine tree in the middle of Norway.

xxx

He could hear people around him, quiet, a small scuffle of bodies congregated around the bed he lay on, passed out cold.

Brian couldn't be sure, but it felt as if his fever was back. He was sweating again, but shivering terribly, and the blackness of the back of his eyelids did nothing to quench the nausea rotating in his brain. 

What did he do to deserve this kind of pain?

And immediately, he knew the answer. What a stupid thing to ask.

xxx

Brian’s in a rare state of lucidity as they gather around him.

“You guys,” a cough, one that made them cringe. “Don’t be stupid. Just leave me.”

Dom shushed him, putting a comforting hand on his knee, and how the fuck was Brian supposed to argue with a man that said nothing but shushed? 

He coughed, that dislodged piece in his chest working itself further into the muscle that sat there, and it hurt, like a knife to the chest. He felt something wet ease itself over his tongue and slide past cracked lips, pooling at the side of his mouth.

His fevered eyelids opened, skin too thin, to see the crew gathered around, like a fucking seance or something.

Or like a funeral. Maybe a funeral. His eyes slid closed again, irises burning with dryness. 

He was a cop. Or, had been a cop, before it all. He’d seen the worst of the worst, had other people’s blood on his hand, literally and figuratively. There wasn’t anything gruesome he hadn’t seen, or tripped over, or held in his hands as it oozed through his fingers and down his expensive dress pants. 

So, he’d been witness to his fair share of tragedies – which is why he recognized his own too-thready breathing. Hours ago, it was desperate inhales and panicked exhales, ignoring the pain and the too-bright lights shooting lines across his vision and the sound of the cracked AC unit against the wall nearly sounding worse than he did.

But now, he wasn’t drinking in gulps of painful air like his life depended on it (which it did). He wasn’t desperate for oxygen. He didn’t even really feel like he needed it anymore, which was quickly becoming a concern.

He inhaled, but his voice box was too close to the opposing wall of his throat, and his lungs had felt like the depth of the ocean only a day ago, deep and not willing to fill properly. But now, they felt as surface level as Rome and his sandbox in the fifth grade, before Earl came out and kicked it all over the place.

His lungs were paper thin, and his breathing was spotty and shallow and his exhales were soft, hissing sort of noises.

A washcloth was placed on his forehead, the particles feeling harsh against his skin, and the flinch that came from him didn’t go unnoticed as the administrative hand stilted for a moment. Brian’s eyes cracked a hair, muscles in his face sore, the flinch sending shockwaves of pain from his wounded abdomen.

He heard– he heard Jesse sniffling somewhere to his right, partially hidden by the slanted lighting of the bathroom. He heard Leon consoling him.

He’d done this to these people.

Dom looked down at him, his face a rare array of emotion. In the small, dingy room, Brian couldn’t see anyone else, but faintly heard the conjoining door close softly. Dom must have sent them away for a minute. This must be a moment of having his guard down, if only for two seconds of precious time. Even the fearless leader needs a breather every now and then.

“Brian,” Dom whispered his name, and Brian’s scattered and worn mind saw his lips move, almost in reverence, a soft lull to his ears. 

He wanted to whisper Dom back, to give him a shitty one-liner about the situation or ask how the gang was holding up or ask him when Brian was expected to die, but all that came out was a simple wheeze and a weak, shoulder-shuddering excuse for a cough.

The quick look that ran through Dom’s face was enough to send Brian into his own spiral of worry, because if the guy that orchestrated semi hijackings and laughed in the face of LA gangs and handled the irate smell of Vince on the daily was worried, then it must really be bad.

Life threatening. 

Not for the first time, Brian wanted to know, on the timeline of life and whatnot, where he stood. 

“It’s okay,” Dom eased, griping one of Bri’s hands with his own, and reaching the other up and against the slight stubble on his jawline, trying to maneuver his head to allow more air into his esophagus, and Brian felt weird about it, but was too weak to push him away. “Just breathe.”

Brian’s eyelids drooped at the sides, and he wondered if Dom could hear the rattle of his lungs this close.

“Bri,” Dom tried, face still scrunched in contemplation, in worry. “Brian, you need a hospital.”

Shit, that’s not a good idea. Brian tried to raise his voice, but it was wheezy and drowned up by Dom’s steady, concerned one. 

“I’ve searched every aid store from here to Santa Quin. Nothing has what you need. Nowhere carries a medical kit equipt to fix a gunshot wound.”

Was that even such a thing? Brian didn’t think so. He definitely would have heard about it in the academy, or seen it at home, especially with the amount this crew got into trouble. 

No, not home. 1327. Echo Park. Not home. He wasn’t sure if he still belonged there, anymore. Wasn’t sure if he’d be welcomed back.

That thought alone was enough to ripple a cramp through his lower stomach, echoing up through the gaping hole in his torso, and his back raised off the springy mattress in sheer, white agony, teeth clenching together to ride it out as his vision lost sight of Dom, lost sight of anything except dancing black spots.

“Woah, woah, easy. Take it easy, just breathe.” Dom’s hand remained in Brian’s hand, which couldn’t have been pleasant with the sweat, but the other moved from his jaw to his shoulder, trying to find purchase to keep him from doing acrobatics on the bed. “There ya go.”

He hissed through clenched teeth, gums threatening to dissolve into nothing. A new wave of sweat broke out across his already-damp hairline, blonde curls definitely looking waterlogged. 

“Brian, you need a doctor.” He forced an inhale, lungs protesting weakly, trying to object to any sort of half-cooked plan this man was going to propose to him. “No, just listen.” Dom eased his face closer, eyes a swimming pool of worry, almost swallowing Brian whole. “Brian, you’re going to die in this really shitty bed in the middle of nowhere if we don’t get you some help.” His voice was strong and wavering and full of guilt and anxiety, and the contrast struck Brian a little sideways.

The spot in his heart that was dislodged shifted, just a bit, and he grit his teeth.

“I know you don’t want to go to a hospital.” The man above him sighed minutely, head jerking down to look at Brian’s shoddily-wrapped torso, examining the speckles of blood already showing through the cotton. “Hell, I don’t want you to either.” Dom’s eyes bounced back up to his own, brows forever furrowed in concern. “But I also don’t want you to die.”

Brian could agree with that. His fingers shifted in Dom’s, but the man didn’t relent. 

“Your fever skyrocketed a day ago, and hasn’t come back down. You know what sepsis is, Bri?”

He wasn’t fucking stupid.

“Blood poisoning. It’s splotched around your wound. You have sepsis, Brian.”

Blood poisoning.

Shit. His stomach sank.

“You can’t live with untreated sepsis, baby.”

Brian knew that. Of course he knew that. Barstow High School didn’t teach him much, and he attended even less, but he didn’t live under a rock; untreated sepsis can kill in less than 12 hours. 

Willing or not, he’d be dead by, at this rate, lunchtime. 

But it wasn’t worth it. Seriously, the risk just wasn’t worth it. He’d made a lot of mistakes, and had twice as many regrets. Dom wasn’t going back to prison, he’d said that months ago, and Brian believed the hell out of him.

And Brian wouldn’t be the reason Dom got a more permanent trip to Lompoc. He’d simply die before that happened.

He’d done this to these people.

“Dom,” he croaked. “It’s too d-dangerous.” He took a breath as best he could, lungs creaking in protest. “You can’t risk it.”

“Let me worry about that.” The corner of Dom’s lips curled up in a poor attempt at a smile, but it came across as a grimace, too full of trouble, and his teeth didn’t show like a real Dominic smile would have revealed. 

But Brian wanted to say more, more that wouldn’t become unstuck from his throat. He wanted to say how he, Brian O’Connor, resident ex-cop, wasn’t worth it. He’d done a lot of shitty things, the biggest being lie to the people that, surprise, he grew to love the most – and, maybe it was poetic justice or some shit that he lay on this lumpy mattress as the sound of tires peeling out of the parking lot hit his ears and he just fade into nothing.

Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was his fate, to desperately wanting to fit in somewhere, with people that loved and cared for each other, and to finally find it but then to just, die.

He’d finally found it. He’d done it. Take that, Earl.  

And the bitterness and the irony hit him, making his already-nauseated head spin something fierce.

“Why do you care, Dom?” The fire in his voice wasn’t much of a fire, and Dom’s brows shifted from worry to confusion. “I-I lied to you, ‘member?” A cough, an involuntary squeeze to Dom’s hand despite the anger coming out of him from left field. “I’m a cop, Dom."

But nothing in Dom’s expression changed. He looked chagrin and accepting of it all, and Brian almost hated it. 

He wanted Dom to hate him as much as he hated himself.

But, all he got through squinted eyes was a simple, one-shouldered shrug that seemed more complicated than that and a blink. “I think we’re even.”

Nope. He didn’t like that. Mia’d already said that to him, tried that argument. Obviously Dom and her had been talking.

"Dom," he stressed, throat now gritty. “I fucking lied to you. I was going to turn you in–"

“Yeah, but you didn’t.” His eyes were intense, brown pools flaring. “Brian, yeah, okay, that was shitty, but it was your job, right? You didn’t even know us then. And, you’ve made up for it. You pulled Vince off that truck. You saved his life, and his arm. You took care of Tran, both of them. I mean,” he huffed, gesturing down with the one hand not clutching Brian’s fingers. “ Look at yourself. You took a bullet for us, from a man on your side."

But Brian wasn’t relenting. He shook his head, desperate for hate, like the guilt clawing at his throat.

“And now, because of that bullet, we need to get you to a hospital.”

And shit, was that easier said than done.

He wanted to protest. He wanted to stand up and punch Dom in the mouth and list off the many, many reasons why this was a bad idea. They were on the run. They’d be thrown in jail so fucking fast. Someone would recognize them, it was a miracle no one had yet, as small as this town was, with all the galavanting Dom had done to find him medical shit. They’d have to–

All Brian had to do was flex his midsection in a poor attempt to get off the bed and he was nearly howling in pain, bile rising in the back of his throat, vision whiting out, very soul quaking and threatening to shake apart. His hands clenched and trembled, and he wouldn’t be surprised to see finger holes in the stained duvet.

And then, he was out.

xxx

Norway.

The country sat in the back of his mind, even floating through nothingness. It was like he’d been there before, smelled Norwegian air and experienced it.

Expect, maybe it was that dusty painting on the wall, illuminated by shunted sunlight through the frosted glass windows. Maybe it was all in his head.

But it wasn’t all in his head. He’d seen the picture with his own two eyes, and whoever painted it must have seen it with his own two eyes too. Or maybe it was all in his head too, the painter’s, painting scenes from imagination only.

Brian hoped not. He hoped that places like that really existed, with no pain or trauma or blood or gaping gun wounds. 

He felt delicate hands wrapping around his torso, a small lift of pressure and cool air hitting his exposed skin. The pressure hurt, but also made things not so stabbingly painful, which didn’t make sense, but he was in his head. Nothing here did. 

He must have been muttering, because those same delicate hands were soothing across his face, across the five o’clock shadow he wore. It should have been more growth than that, with the days and days it’d been since he’d shaved, but his hair follicles weren’t super active, never had been.

And, really, he’d had bigger things to worry about.

A voice belonging to those delicate – and cold – hands gently shushed him, calming him, trying to make sense of the mumbling but also quiet it too. Brian’s eyelids were glued shut, and he wasn’t so sure all of this wasn’t just in his head either, like Norway maybe.

Maybe Norway had a beach. He really loved the beach. 

The area she sat lifted for a moment, the mattress reflating, and then deflating again as she sat again. Something unscrewed, a soft squish.

Still floating. But in what? Air? Water?

He should go surfing. 

A sharp pain bit him, hot and quick, and he jerked, a groan in the back of his throat. The sensation of a coldness hit him, just above his belly button, the skin feeling too tight, his spine on fire, licking all the way to the back of his neck and to his elbows. The backs of his arms ached, he realized, the inner linings of his nervous system ricocheting like faulty fireworks up and down the tendons that buried themselves in his elbows. 

Mia soothed him from somewhere above, light hitting his eyelids and casting shadows against them. “It’s an antibiotic ointment. Nothing crazy.” But her voice rang dejected, as if she wished it was something crazy.

Her hands wrapped around his torso again, the weird slump he was in allowing careful passage behind his back between two squashed and sweat-ridden pillows. He probably stunk.

He remembered to breathe – or wheeze – mind senseless, hands fuzzy like a static tv. His ass was numb, jeans unbuttoned and twisted around his legs, thin blanket hanging off the lower half of his body doing nothing but feeding the fever that flared through him.

“Dom’s out looking for the closest hospital,” she told him, finishing the wrap. Brian grunted softly, hearing everything she was trying to say. It has to be small, but not too small, qualified to handle an almost, soon-to-be fatal gunshot wound, inconspicuous, but not too shabby. 

He still wanted to make his argument. They didn’t need to do this for him. They shouldn’t. He wasn’t worth the risk.

He finally got his eyelids to crack open, feeling like absolute shit, feeling beyond absolute shit, and a spark of panic faintly shot through him, because he couldn’t even stay conscious, eyes closing just as they opened, away from the tears slipping down Mia’s face, away from Vince’s constipated look behind her, away from Letty sitting in the corner chair, knee bouncing up and down a hundred miles an hour–

“Hang in there, Bri. Please.” Mia whispered, reaching for his limp hand, but he was nearly gone again, headed to the recesses of his mind, Norway. “I mean it. We’re gonna get you help.”

He thought of Dom, finding a hospital, risking it all for him, thinking of how maybe he and Dom could spend some time in Norway together, or at a warm beach. The beach might be better. He’d like it more, probably. Surfing. Dom. Dom. 

Out.

xxx

He moaned, or something akin to it. The light coming from above the sink was too bright. It was dark outside still, he noticed by lack of light underneath the black curtain across the window. His face was on fire. He wondered if the skin was peeling off his checks. 

But that didn’t compare to the inferno that sat just beneath the mottled skin above his belly button.

He didn’t see the injury, really, hadn’t seen it in a few days, didn’t really get a good look at it in the first place – but he could fucking feel it. It had its own heartbeat, pounding away in the leaking arteries below the skin. It felt red, tight. Mostly numb. Brian was positive it was swollen and inflamed. 

Things were ramping up; it was getting worse, everything was getting worse. A quick decline, a drop off a cliff, whatever. 

And he hadn’t ever had sepsis so he didn’t have anything to compare it to, but this – this was what it felt like, he was sure. 

Nauseating agony, so fierce he was blinded.

And it wasn’t so much the feeling, even though that fucking sucked, but knowing that the very lifesource that ran through you was tainted, poisoned, and there wasn’t anything within their reach to stop it. 

But he was aware, sometimes, trying to hold onto mental stability like a lifeline. He knew that he babbled nonsense and saw things that weren’t really there, and those were signs of septic shock. 

So, Brian tried to list what he knew; gunshot wound, motel in California, avoiding feds, can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t breathe. Can’t stay awake, can’t stay alive–

He wanted Mia to write those on his hand so he could remember when he was incoherent and delusional, but the words didn’t come out right and she gave him another damp cloth to the forehead – which was nice, and helped his fever a bit, but not what he wanted.

And she’d read him a list of sepsis symptoms from her phone a bit ago – not to scare him but to make him aware of what comes with blood poisoning and to let them know if he began experiencing any of it.

High fever, fast heart rate, rapid breathing. Disorientation. Confusion. Decrease in urine production. 

There were two problems, though; one, he’d been suffering through all the symptoms she’d read him because of a gunshot wound already, so it was kind of a moot point. Where the symptoms for a bullet wound ended and the sepsis started, he didn’t know. He guessed it really didn’t matter.

And then her voice caught as she told him about delusions. Seeing things that weren’t there or hearing stuff that didn’t happen. She told him how scary it would be.

Which brought about problem number two; he’d already been having delusions for a whole day and a half now, before the sepsis had come about. Brian didn’t mention it.

He’d also learned what hemorrhagic rash was: a horrible array of pinpricked blood spots around the wound on his stomach, surface-level and bright red. Brian had asked Mia if that’s what he had, if that’s how she knew about the sepsis. She unwrapped his torso and swallowed in a way that made him think she was trying not to gag and that’d answered that.

And then he slept.

Or, didn’t sleep.

But, he did close his eyes and wish for some different fate and wiggle his toes to confirm his spine was still sort of intact.

And Brian floated somewhere between here and there, not quite believing but not seeing either. Even in this world, in his head, so far removed from reality, he could feel pain. His legs radiated a dull ache that he couldn’t scratch away. His lungs hated him right now.

But the hole in him created by a tic-tac sized piece of metal caused infection and fever and a million other things and now sepsis that he’d die from pretty quick.

He wondered if Bilkins felt bad. Bastard. Probably not.

But, he did really wonder if Tanner felt bad. If Tanner even knew. 

Unwillingly, he’d never admit this, he had just sort of latched onto Tanner; the man was almost a father figure to him. They’d met when Brian got right out of Juvie – when Brian was simultaneously hardened and the most susceptible he’d even be. 

He wondered if they were looking. The feds were, definitely, but not for the reasons he wanted. But he wondered if Tanner was looking. He hoped he wasn’t.

He hoped he was.

Not to find them and turn them in, but just to know that Tanner cared. 

For Brian to know that Tanner cares for him just as much as he does for him. 

xxx

Existing under the weight of a seriously fatal poison running through his body was weird; although, Brian had been going through so much lately, his system was probably in a state of chronic, ongoing shock. It didn’t occur to him the enormity of the situation until later.

The silent tears that tracked down his face while the crew made a game plan in the next room over would tell a story that Brian would never be able to.

xxx

There was nothing, nothing but distant voices pouring over an atlas of the area reaching his ears faintly, and then– something. 

Something steady. Something strong. Powerful enough to break him but gentle enough to fix him.

Dom.

The bed dipped with his weight – and then kept dipping as the man moved upward, getting level with Brian’s prone body. He laid down, much like that one night. 

“It’s time, baby.”

A noise escaped Brian’s lips, and fingers began carding through his hair.

“We’re gonna do this together, okay?”

“I don’t want to,” a whimper, as pathetic as Brian thought it probably was.

But Dom was steady. He was so sure, all the time. Reassuring.

“I know. I know, but we can do this.”

“I can’t, Dom.” 

“Yes you can. I’m going to do all the hard parts.”

"Dom–”

“I love you.”

And Brian opened his eyes – he opened them and saw Dom standing at the foot of the bed, eyebrows drawn together, a map hanging in a limp hand.

“Are you okay?”

Brian blinked, mouth slack.

“Brian? Can you hear me?”

He turned his head to the spot next to him on the bed – empty, no dips in the mattress or warmness or creases from another body.

He nodded numbly, the most obvious answer being no, fuck, no, he’s not okay, he’s hallucinating and everything’s not good because reality was blurring and he’s dying–

“We found a hospital. We need to go.”

Three words bounced around in Brian’s head like a ghost.

I love you.

He swallowed thickly, burying the pain and confusion in the back of his mind.

Reality seemed to be something he needed to fight for right now. 

He didn’t realize–

He didn’t think…

Brian did a double take to make sure this Dom, this Dom was really in front of him. 

He was. And he wanted more than what Brian could give him right now.

And if there was something – something nagging in the back of his mostly-delusional mind, something that said he wanted, wanted that to be real – he didn’t linger on it. 

xxx

Chapter Text

xxx

He thinks, maybe, it was at this point that he decided dying would be okay. 

But, dying is easy. This, what he was doing – that was harder. Brian wasn’t a quitter, never had been, except this– 

This was different. 

“Just be still, Bri. We’re going to do all the hard parts, okay? Remember to breathe.” Dom coached above him, eyeing Vince, who stood on the other side of the bed, trying to figure out how they were going to get him anywhere, let alone the front seat of a cramped car.

If he wasn’t so sick, so injured, so close to death, this would have been comical.

His only response was a groan, eyelids gently fluttering, fighting for consciousness. He needed to be awake. It felt like every time he slipped into dreamworld was just another time he wouldn’t wake up again, and that would defeat the whole purpose of the battle he’d been fighting. 

On second thought, this was going to hurt like a bitch. Maybe he should go back to being unconscious. 

Dom’s arm snaked around his back slowly, warm fingertips grazing over the planes of his shoulder blades. They found purchase against his ribs, which felt too bony, too defined, and by the way those fingers piano key’d around, Dom felt it too. 

He’d only eaten what they’d shoved into him against his will, plain toast and a bite of a banana and some wheat rice. The electrolyte mix made him cough up a lung, almost literally, and the banana had been too slimy for his liking.

“Okay, Vince…” Dom mumbled, deep voice catching Brian’s ears and melting down his scalp. He felt unfamiliar hands palming at his calves, lifting slightly, and he bit his tongue roughly to keep from crying out, a wave of nausea hitting him stronger than before. He wasn't an anatomist, far from it, but anything that pulled or touched or even thought about his abdominal muscles was a hard no go. 

“Sorry,” Vince said above him, and Brian wondered how he was lifting much with that gimp arm of his. Not that Brian’s legs weighed anything substantial. He’d probably lost a dime’s worth of weight in the last few days, maybe even most of a quarter. 

And, on second thought, Brian wondered how Dom was going to lift him with his own bad arm, from the train tracks when he’d wrecked. He’d told Brian that it wasn’t so bad, that he was healing, but Brian had literally been there for the crash, it seen it happen with his own two eyes; it had been fucking bad. Potentially fatal.

He wanted to voice all of this, but–

His legs were elevated a fraction more and pain ricocheted through him, and his fingers clenched on someone’s wrist, hard, signaling a quit it or I’ll kill you. The movements halted, and Brian pulled air in through his nose, eyes finally finding the willpower to open. Albeit blurry, he could make out a giant bald head hovering over him. 

A weak cough tore through him, and he cringed, grateful it was just a cough with the amount his head was spinning.

“There ya go. You’re doing great.” 

Or at least, that’s what he thought he heard. His senses were deteriorating fast, ears ringing too loud and echoing off the fluid cavities in his brain.

Dom slid his other hand under Vince’s, supporting Brian’s calves. He’d begun to exhale in short gasps, trying to channel the overwhelming and blinding, searing pain that filled his body. 

But then, Dom was counting to three like a parrot or some sort of annoying bird, and why was he–

And Brian was in the air, hand clutching a broad, muscly shoulder desperately, back of his throat contracting like a tidal wave and gagging, and Mia’s cool hand – why the fuck was she always so cold? – was keeping his curls off his forehead as he swore up a storm in between gags, vision gone, barely listening to Dom’s apology and encouragement spoken quietly from somewhere, seemingly a million miles away, because his insides were being ripped apart, couldn’t anyone see that?

Maybe he should be embarrassed, being carried bridal style like some pretentious whore or something. He would be, if he wasn’t in such a shitty way. 

His ears faded out to a low hum, feeling himself gasp in pain, whimper for relief but not hearing it. His fever-burnt cheeks felt the change in temperature as Dom stepped into the parking lot, orbital muscles cramping from the force of his closed eyes.

Every step that Dom took was a jar to his very skeleton, and the literal gaping hole in his stomach, the width of a #2 pencil, threatened to kill him. He wondered, briefly, if this really was it. He wasn’t okay with it a day ago, but now he was. If Brian were coherent enough, he’d start praying for relief from his misery. 

In fact, maybe that’s what they were doing. Dom wasn’t taking him to his car – he was taking him out back, next to that weird shack behind the motel they’d crashed at. Brian knew the gun that sat in between Dom’s ripped back muscles and the waistband of his pants. He was going to kill him. Dom was going to kill him. He was dead weight. He was slowing them down. They needed to be in Mexico, should have been days ago, out of the FBI’s radar and onto sand with a coconut in hand.

That’s what Mia meant by ‘we’re getting you help’. They’re helping him. And themselves.

“We’re not killing you, buster.” Vince. “We’re taking you to a hospital.”

Oh, perfect. Reassurance from Vince. He’d tried to hold up his charade of ‘I’m doing fine, yeah, don’t worry’, but that ended days ago – he was bummed that Vince had seen him like this, out of everything. He hoped that the man wouldn’t hold it over his head forever.

He hoped there was a forever with these people.

Brian didn’t even know he was saying any of that out loud. More like gurgling, probably, with the bubbling blood and bile rising up his esophagus.

His eyes opened with the jostling, and nothing looked familiar.

Where was he again? Arizona? That didn’t sound right. He wasn’t one for gambling on slots anyway. Waste of resources. Cars always had his bet. Pink slips couldn’t be passed up, especially if the rims weren’t chromed. Chrome was tacky. Cars were reliable, weren’t rigged for conning people out of money like gambling. 

Cars can be converted, refined, molded into something new, cultured to perfection and tuned to magnificence. Slots – slots were a poor man’s chokehold.

Brian thought he lost time, somewhere, between the motel and the walk and the car. He couldn’t remember, couldn’t remember–

Oh, Rome’s mom’s house. With the sprawling, decrepit flower bed that sat below a less-than perfect front porch, the white paint peeling off the bench swing. Her voice rang in his ears, above the breeze that whispered promises of death. Him and Rome weren’t eating their food, and had resorted to wrestling on the living room floor.

“Eat your sandwiches, boys, and stop roughhousing. You’re going to give me a hernia.”

And Brian had won, of course, but not honestly. He was a cheater when he needed to be, when it mattered.

Brian’s ass hit leather, and the smell of blood and oil and rubber and Dom’s cologne wafted to his nose – the only working sense he had left, honestly – and he remembered. Vince’s hand cradled the back of his head as he moved to avoid slamming it on the frame of the charger. He felt his eyes roll aimlessly across what was in front of him; two concerned sets of eyes, typically harsh but uncharacteristically soft, gazed with unease.

He wasn’t anywhere but nestled in between Dom’s forearms as he crouched to meet Brian’s level, being tucked into the front seat of the Charger like a toddler, the remains of a bullet to the gut threatening to kill him if the weight of his guilt or humiliation didn’t do it first.

If the delusions didn’t do it first, he realized a fraction of a second later. It was getting increasingly worse, keeping it all straight. Why had he been thinking of Roman’s mom’s house?

Oh, the flowers that lined the stuccoed wall of the motel were tulips, just like hers had been, with the sprawling, decrepit flower bed that sat below a less-than perfect front porch, the white paint peeling– 

And then, just as he got his eyes open for the umpteenth time, he tipped his head forward and puked phlegm and blood all over the pavement, dribbling down his chin and across the front of his blue shirt, collar sweat stains looking decent compared to the new mess.

Dom almost yelped, an alarmed noise erupting from him, rocking back of his heels to avoid the spray. Vince groaned in disgust, and somewhere in the distance, Mia made a noise of alarm herself. 

Brian inhaled a gasp, hands clutching at the dash and the leather lining of the seat, eyes wide and watering from the bile, head shaking minutely and probably in shock. The bullet wound burned, burned like nothing he’d ever felt before, sweat rolling down his face.

“That’s not good. That’s really not good.” Vince said, pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket and handing it over to Dom, who gently began to wipe him up.

“Dom,” he gasped, the world hazy. “I’m gonna die.” Brian didn’t know where this verbal omission was coming from. “I’m gonna die anyway. L- look at me. They can’t save me. Don’t risk it.”

But Dom shushed him, acting as if Brian had just been casually talking about the weather or some shit. But Brian wasn’t an idiot. He saw the look of alarm cross the other man’s face as the realized what Bri was throwing up was actual blood, which meant serious internal bleeding, not to mentioned it was fucking poisoned. 

His watering and burning eyes shot up to Vince, who stood behind Dom like a statue. It was times like this that he actually didn’t hate Vince; his face was impassive, not giving anything away, not trying to save Brian’s life by doing whatever necessary. He was a realist.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Letty and Leon loading the other two cars up with their duffels. Jesse was smoking by the side of the motel, and Mia was inside, probably cloroxing surfaces to rid their fingerprints. 

The sun was rising, peeking over the mountains and shooting chaotic rays of light, signaling a new day – but Brian’s heart sunk, because this didn’t feel like a new day for him, it felt like his last day, like the short gasps coming from him and the shaky hands and the vomit and the barely-consciousness would be over in just a few short hours. The panic that gripped his heart suddenly disappeared, vanished, and the piece dislodged from his heart fell back into place, a slot waiting for it to return safely.

He didn’t feel – anything, anymore. Nothing negative, nothing positive. Just, nothing, except Dom still wiping up his face and down his neck.

His hands still gripped Dom’s shoulders, and he was looking above the bald head, beyond the weird, stoic gargoyle thing Vince was doing, gaze stuck on the mountain line in the distance, where the sun was beginning to make an appearance. It was golden, almost ethereal, in a way, and it reminded him of his mother, soft hair and skin. Maybe he’d get to see her soon.

“Bri, you still with me?” But it came fuzzy, like they were underwater. Like they were at the beach.

“You wanna surf?" His voice was warbled, he thought. Yeah, he could surf right now. Him and Rome used to go, sometimes. Speed had always been his thing. Surfing gave him the same high that driving did, the same high that skateboarding had too, and probably snowboarding, if he could have had the opportunity to try it – except, with surfboarding, different elements came into play. Instead of tire tread, he had to watch his fin. And sharks. There weren't any sharks on the road.

Dom’s eyes went from the ministrations of cleaning up his shirt to Brian’s own, where they were glazed to the distance. 

“Yeah, we can go surfing.” He said casually, something heavy in the back of his tone. “When you’re better.”

Brain could feel the uneasiness begin to settle in Dom like a blanket. It radiated off of him, stilted the movements of his arms. He realized. He knew. Brian was spouting nonsense like lava and Dom saw the reality, the weight of it all. He’d always done that. Brian wasn’t an open book, couldn’t have been with his profession, but to Dom, he was.

Dom’s uneasiness came from something, probably a lot of things. Maybe he looked like death. Knew it, down in his bones.

He remembered looking at death in his mom, as she lay cold on the floor.

“My mom,” it came out as almost a whimper, and that wasn’t what he was going for. “I’m gonna see–”

"Brian," Dom forced, panicked, and it was the most forceful he’d said anything, maybe ever, to Brian. He’d yelled and sworn and called him all kinds of shit names, but this, this was different. Too emotional. Too scared. He didn’t like Dom being scared, it didn’t fit. "Shut up."

It was interesting to think that Dom, the man who’d found out Brian was a cop, who’d left him in the desert, didn’t want him dead. He deserved to be dead, right? He’d lied to these people. He’d lied to Dom. Only days ago Dom wanted him dead, and now, the bald man was desperately clutching his knee and cleaning up the puke off of him like his life depended on it. 

Just days ago, Brian knew he didn’t want to die. He had run from it, multiple times in his life, even as a young child when his dad got too drunk and too rough. He ran from it in Juvie, and everyday as a Los Angeles cop. 

Now though, he wasn’t running from it. He looked it in the face and wanted to say, ‘I’m tired, and I’m good now’.

But, instead, he felt blood rising up his throat again, but it wasn’t mixed with bile. It sat at the junction of where his esophagus met his trachea, the weird flappy thing protesting, and he coughed once, a deep kind of cough that brought the blood up, coating his lips.

It didn’t hurt, the cough. He didn’t hurt anymore. In fact, he’d forgotten about the bullet wound in his stomach. His eyes looked down, almost in slow motion, his neck creaking in protest. Underneath his blue tee, the gauze pulled tight, and he watched as a redness spread out like butterfly wings, through the cotton, staining his shirt. 

For the first time, his eyes met Dom’s, and they were wide.

Dom grabbed the towel on the ground and pressed to Brian’s stomach, desperately instructing him to hold onto it, to press harder, damnit, but Brian was– he was going, could feel it, reality merging with a wall of fog. 

“Mia!” Dom yelled, too loud, jarring Brian’s ears. “Mia, now!”

The cars started somewhere to his left, Civic engines purring to life. Dom eased him back against the seat, tucking that ratty blanket around him. He didn’t really know where it came from, but it was fitting that it’d magically appeared right as they got to the motel, right when things started getting really bad, and it had just stuck with him like glue. It didn’t do anything to help, didn’t even provide any warmth, but he clutched onto it regardless.

They pulled out of the parking lot, grateful it was a always-completely-vacant kinda place, where no one was looking at them or trying to turn them in. They flew down the empty, almost crumbling road, Dom taking up the rear of the trio. Sunlight hit it softly, guiding their way.

His mouth was wet with blood but dry with thirst, and the thought of drinking any sort of liquid made him want to get shot again and save himself the pain. 

The Charger’s engine below vibrated the cab gently with raw, unadulterated potential. Brian worked down a swallow, spit catching. He felt depleted, like he was almost used up. His battery was at zero. And, his battery represented his life, this time. This wasn’t something he could sleep off. This wasn’t something he could carb-load for. 

He wondered about Mexico, briefly, fleetingly. He wondered if he’d make it there. He wondered about Heaven. He wondered if he’d make it there. It was perspective, he knew. To some people, he was a good person. To others, not. He tried to do what he thought was best, but sometimes, it wasn’t. Fighting crime wasn’t good, according to criminals. Doing crime wasn’t good, according to the feds and LAPD. It was perspective.

He wondered if God sided with the law or the do-good criminals with too-big of heart’s.

Brian wondered what side he ended up on, after it was all said and done. The criminals, he speculated. And that was okay. He didn’t have any regrets, really. Except Tanner, who still sat in the back of his chest like a lead ball. 

He wondered what he would have done in Mexico. Surf, probably. Flirted with Dom maybe. Cooked. Fished. He wondered what would have happened had he chosen a different fucking career path.

He’d forgotten about the towel that he was supposed to be pressing to his midsection. Figured it didn’t matter now.

And then, as the road took a rather sharp right, the Civics stayed on on the pavement, easing around the corner with practiced precision, Vince and Letty’s handling skills hard at work – but Dom took a left.

The road was nice, yeah, constructed with wide shoulders and almost as smooth as it would have been surfaced. But, it was dirt, and as Dom tore down the road with seemingly all intents of killing them both, a large trail of dust left in their wake.

“Hang on, Brian.” The man mumbled, pulling the tires steady from the transition, working what looked like a burner phone out of his pocket. He quickly punched in a number.

It rang only once before Brian could make out a raised voice from the other end.

“The plan is a go. You and the others head to Mexico.” A pause. “They might recognize him. We can’t have all six of us in town still, that’s too much of a target.” Another pause. “I’ll hang low until he gets the meds he needs, and we’ll work our way down.”

Maybe where they were staying in Mexico had a beach. Brian hoped so. His eyes tried to roll into the back of his head, but he fought it, hand wrapping around his torso gently, shoulders nearly caving in on themselves. He eyed the heater, debating if he could reach the knob. 

“Mia, I know. It’s okay. Let me talk to Vince.” Brian didn’t think his arm would extend all the way to the dash, but it was so fucking cold in this car, geez.  

“Vince… yeah, yeah. Get them to Mexico. We’ll be close behind. Yeah, I know.” A pause, and a silent glance his way. Brian’s head slid down the seat a fraction, ass shifting. He didn’t have the strength to pull himself back up, and a bead of sweat rolled into his eyeball, but his other hand was too busy clutching the door handle.

“Yeah, that address we talked about. Watch out for unmarked vehicles. Throw that phone out the window.”

The sun hit Brian’s face, but the visor wasn’t wide enough to block it. Dom’s hand reached over, knee holding the wheel, and swung it around to the other side. Much better. 

“Okay, be careful. There’s extra cash in the Civic’s jockey box. Take care of them. See you soon.”

The phone was tossed out the window, into the weeds that lined the dirt road. 

“Just a few minutes, Bri.”

At this point, a few minutes was the difference between life and death. But it was good. He was patient. Had to be, to be a cop, to deal with his father, to endure juvie.

He was good.

The rubber pressing to the pavement at an unholy speed below him hummed, an insistent white noise that sounded cold and promising of death.

I’m coming, it whispered. 

The skeletons in his closet were getting heavier by the minute.

“You remember the plan?”

He surely didn’t, but bobbed his head up and down in agreement. 

“We passed a garage about a mile back, coming from the other direction, the one with the orange siding, remember? It had that old baby blue Bronco out back, with the chromed out rims.”

Oh yeah, that plan. “I ‘memeber.” And he did remember. He’d wanted to scoff at those stupid ass rims and their stupid ass detail up close and personal and check out the specs for whatever was under the hood, but they hadn’t had the time, and he’d nearly convulsed with pain on their way to find somewhere to lay low.

“72 hours, I’ll meet you there, then we’ll go.” Brian remembered a night ago, when he floated in and out of consciousness like a fish hook, listening to the crew argue about the plan. Dom wanted to hang out closer to the hospital, hovering, so Brian didn’t have to hike back to any sort of preset meeting spot. But, consensus was negative. 

The garage was the closest actual landmark to the hospital, one in the opposite direction of the general path to the hospital. And, there was a sick ‘74 Bronco parked out back, rusted and weathered. To them, gearheads and mechanics, it was a landmark indeed. 

Besides, it was only a mile. He’d walked father in worse conditions. He’d be fine, especially just coming off of a morphine kick. He’d probably be able to run there.

“Surgery’ll be first. Then… meds and sleep. 72 hours will be enough.” The convincing that laced his words seemingly wasn’t just for the man with a bullet wound in his gut.

“Okay.” He shuddered, trying to keep his mind from cracking. “I’ll mee’you there.”

His head was fuzzy, like his head had detached from his neck and floated somewhere above. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to remember the plan. 

“If ‘m not there, don’t– don’t wait."

"Brian–"

“You've got everyone else. They need you, Dom.” Brian forced a smile through gritted teeth and fought back a cough, his body hunched in on itself. “If anything happens to me ‘n there, I-I’ve dealt with those egotistical assholes before. I was one, ‘member?”

But that didn’t seem to relieve the pressure in Dom’s chest, built up like a brewing storm. “If anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself. Anything less than you coming out on top of this isn’t an option, Bri.”

Brian let out a sharp exhale that was supposed to be a laugh. “Yeah, well, if anything happens, I’ll haunt you.”

Dom shot him a sharp glance, obviously not liking the idea of Brian’s ghost, or the idea of any of this. They rode in silence for a bit, conversation died out and left a bad taste in their mouths. The sound of Brian’s rattled breathing filled the space between them. Dom flipped the heater on, blowing warm air on his feet and to his shoulders. Brian relaxed a fraction, as much as his body would allow under the circumstances. 

He delusionally thought, staring at shaking fingers gripping the edge of the leather seat, how things could have been different. He would have confessed to them his career, maybe. On his own terms and not in desperation. Not that they’d want him around, or perhaps even alive, after that. He would have started up another project car. Really raced at Race Wars, won some good cash. 

He thought about Dom. Dominic Toretto, the enigma, the myth, the untouchable man himself, hauling his dead ass to a hospital, looking considerably more concerned than he’d ever been facing three other elite machines on the wave of a checkered flag, more concerned than he should have been.  

The man that wasn’t afraid of anything. Ever. Not Lompoc, not the cops or the feds. Not his own past, which seemed rather hairy, or even Brian’s past, which was arguably hairier. 

But he looked rather afraid now. Brian recognized the tense lines around his eyes, the scrutiny of his gaze across the nothingness they drove through, the white knuckles at the wheel.

He didn’t get it. 

The back of his throat had that gurgle to it, distorting his voice in a wet way, but he had to know.

“Why aren’t you in Mexico already?” It came out soft, weak.

Dom just looked at him, consternated, brows drawn so tight he was definitely developing a headache from the tension but – like Brian was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen, like the sun, like a blind man seeing for the first time. That sure as hell wasn’t true – he literally looked like death. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” Dom’s voice was equally as soft, eyes bouncing to the road briefly before coming back. “Brian, I–”

But then he stopped, like he’d run out of words, a pen out of ink. His head shook slightly, almost as if Brian was an idiot for not getting it, for not seeing whatever was rotating around in Dom’s head.

He’d taken classes in the academy, ones that taught deduction skills and patterns. He could sense a quick mood change and read between even the hardest and most hidden of lines. He was trained to spot shit like this, is the point. It wasn’t as obvious as Dom was making it out to be.

“You’re family now. We take care of each other.”

“But– but how can I be family after everything?”

The look that crossed Dom’s face was one of understanding, a softening clarity darting through the lines in his face but he didn’t relent, not in the slightest.

“How could you not be?"  

It was a gentle declaration, and Brian couldn’t grasp it in its entirety. A juxtaposition of quiet honesty that nearly stopped his breathing.

Simple, to the point, but nonetheless, a sentence that changed the course of Brian’s thinking permanently.

And that piece in his heart that’d been giving him troubles shifted slightly – not dislodged, but quaked, trembled. 

"I don’t–” and then a violent cough ripped through him, harder than any other before. It tore at his trachea, ripping it apart, feeling it hot and metallicy. Specks of blood flew from his reddened lips, splotching on the inside of the windshield, dotting the dash like the Hawaiian Islands. 

"Shit–” Dom cussed, reaching the end of the unfinished road and swerving the car onto a paved one, tires squealing in protest. His hand reached over to cradle Brian’s head from jerking with the momentum, and Brian’s hand wiped at his mouth, head hitting the headrest with a thump, laying across his blood soaked shirt in agony.

The sun shone through the windshield, illuminating the blood that sat there, outlining it and casting a shadow across Dom’s face. Dom’s face, that looked scared, eyes wide, lips parted, darting from the road to Brian and back, several times, like a ping pong ball. 

This was different; this wasn’t just thinking about death, wondering when it would get here – this was experiencing it. 

He could feel himself begin to slip.

Not off the leather seat, that all the sudden was the most comfortable thing he’d ever slumped in, but mentally, emotionally maybe. His neck felt too weak, his head too heavy. The constant thrum of ache and pain that ran through him, up his spine and into every nerve, eased away, as if the wind picked it up and carried it off.

He didn’t hurt anymore.

The pain was gone – but not just physical pain, from the gun or the fever or the puking – but all the pain he held onto from his childhood, the loss of his best friend and everything from Juvie. It wasn’t just pain, but any negative feeling he harbored for years. He didn’t hurt anymore, and it was simultaneously both freeing and terrifying.

“Brian,” Dom insisted, somewhere to his left, sounding a million miles away. "Brian, hang on. Don’t you dare die on me, you hear? Brian!”

He thought of his mom. Of his dad. Of Roman, who he hadn’t seen in years. He wondered if he was still mad at him. He thought of Mia, in another car, on her way to Mexico safe and sound. He thought of Vince and Letty and Leon and Jesse. He thought of his third grade teacher, who definitely noticed the signs of domestic abuse on his skin but didn’t say anything. He thought of Bilkins. He thought of Tanner.

The hospital was in sight now, and he faintly heard the engine beneath him roar, Dom pushing the car to get there faster. Even this close to death, he noticed a good engine when it counted. A true gearhead he was. Not a cop, although he was damn good, but a real car guy. Cars were home to him. 

Brian decided he did end up on the criminal’s side after all. Not a lawman, but a man that belonged to LA’s racing scene. A man that belonged to Dom’s garage and Dom’s home. 

He swallowed, mentally trying to prepare himself for whatever was about to happen.

He was okay, at this point.

The Charger skidded to a stop at the front doors of the glowing red letters that read Emergency Room. Dom jumped out, door creaking in protest, and ran around the car, opening Brian’s door. 

But he couldn’t stop the slipping from happening. 

He finally gave way to the pull behind his eyelids, the color of his eyes disappearing up. He could hear Dom’s coaxing, a panicked, deep sort of lullaby. Hands eased around his shoulders, pulling Brian towards his torso, and those wild, blonde, sweaty curls hit the cotton of his black shirt. Brian liked this spot, he decided delusionally. He liked having pecs underneath his cheek, insistent hands at his back. It was nice. The rumble of Dom’s words echoed throughout his chest and against Brian’s face. The vibrations were supposed to encourage him to stay awake, stay alive, but they were doing quite the opposite.

He didn’t hurt anymore. This was the perfect place to die.

His hands went numb, the tremor behind his knees finally stopped, the ache that ran in the backs of his arms and had made a home in his gut ceased.

Dom heaved, or more like drug, his body out of the car, and Brian wasn’t any help, limp as a rag doll, no function of his limbs. They made it halfway to the entrance before Brian could hear the yelling in the background, ever getting louder, something about help and wound and drop-off.  

“-ian, Brian, listen, okay? This is important. You stay awake. Fight for it. I know you’re hurting, but listen to me, baby.” His eyes cracked open with too much effort, completely drained. He knew his mouth was lax, tongue probably lolling about like a loser. “72 hours, remember? Get the meds you need, get the sleep, okay? Meet me by that Bronco. All you gotta do is get there and I’ll do the rest. I’ll be waiting. I’ll wait, Bri, and then we’ll hightail it out of here.”

He hit the concrete ever so gently, large hands palming methodically at safe spots on his back, the chill seeping through his shirt. Dom hovered over him, same wide eyes, same wrinkly forehead. A forehead he would miss.

“These people are going to help you, Brian, but I have to go, okay?” Dom was panting – from exertion, probably, even though he was jacked – but from desperation, and anxiety, and Brian knew just as well what it felt like to leave something behind, it was panic-inducing. “Three days, Bri. Don’t die."  

The voices got louder, as if they were barreling toward them. His eyes focused only by a miracle, on Dom’s pools of brown, and read everything he couldn’t say, didn’t have time to say. Dom was a strong man, literally and figuratively, but Brian finally understood. He hadn’t seen that look directed at him often – it was the same look his mother held in her eyes for the first six years of his life. 

It was affection.

He needed permission. He needed Brian to tell him it was okay. That it was going to be okay.

“G-go.” It was merely a whisper that bubbled out of him, a red gurgle accompanying, but Dom heard it still.

Brian finally understood why Dom didn’t leave him for the crows four days ago, or anytime after that. He understood why Dom couldn’t answer that question as they burned rubber to get here. It was complicated, and it was messy, and it was love.

He heard the Charger roar back to life and peel away, leaving the same way it came in, the sound of the Hemi engine getting fainter by the second.

The voices got louder and louder, and then they were almost on top of him, shouting for someone to get the fucking operation table ready.

He felt below, hand grazing over his wound. It came up red, so red, worse than before, and there was blood mixing with the chill underneath him, staining the concrete, oozing away from him and blossoming on the ground. That wasn’t good; this was a quaint hospital of a tiny town, and now he was tarnishing their reputation with careless bleeding.

It was love. 

His eyes slipped closed, and felt that piece in his heart dissolve, filling his chest cavity with a pressure that released itself through his mouth, like an exhale of hot air, a finality of effort, one that drained him of life, and he was gone.

xxx

Chapter Text

xxx

Bright lights, something around him spun, holy shit, his face was on fire–

Hands around him manhandled him, he thought, lifted him with care and precision. His bones creaked something fierce, and he couldn’t–

He–

Where was he? Because…

Agh, he couldn’t get enough air, and why was the room spinning so fucking badly–

“Sir, please–”

He tried to reach out, to something, to the white light above him, it looked like the sun, or the flash of beckoning light he saw once when he crashed his skateboard a little too hard and Roman’s mother had to stitch up his head on her floral-printed couch and force feed him Tylenol for days–

“Don’t move, buddy–”

“BP’s dropping again.”

“Pulse is thready, he needs–”

That fucking beeping noise was going to–

Everything hurt, ached, screamed with an inflammation he’d never experienced–

If he wasn’t so– preoccupied, he would puke, but that didn’t seem like an option, and why did he hurt so bad?

His eyes wouldn’t focus. His eyes wouldn’t focus. But his eyelids wouldn’t stay open, and the dark haired man hovering wouldn’t stop prodding him, and–

His back arched, a horrible keening noise jumping from his lips, and something cold and metal touched his bare stomach and he hated it, and everything whited out and his esophagus went sharp and his toes went numb, and what–

He felt his fingers grip the edge of something, something hard and cold, except his hand slipped across the surface because he forgot about the blood that coated his fingers, his own blood, and his head thrashed to the side, the pressure in his chest building, mounting, growing to something or–

His chest felt like electricity, like it was on fire, some type of pressure he’d never felt, and he raised his head to look down at his bareness, but someone was pushing his head back down, except–

His face was so hot it was going to burn off, and Brian heard the word ‘fever’ from somewhere around him but it didn’t make sense– 

Coolness hit his veins, eliciting a hiss from his lips, and some poor form of a sentence gurgled across his tongue but even he didn’t know what he was trying to say, and..

And…

The cool took away the fire in his veins and replaced it with something… something…

xxx

And then, he was back.

Not gently, not softly. It was more like a rude awakening, Something that his father would do when he was in junior high, between the time his mom died and he left to live at Roman’s place. Dump a bucket of water on his head too-early in the morning or put his cigarettes out on the delicate skin of his collarbone before school started.

Really, a simple nudge would have sufficed – but his father was an abuser and a bastard, and that was the kind of thing bastards did.

And, reality must have been that same way; unforgiving.

His eyes flew open all too fast, trying to take a big breath, because he was experiencing a blank in memory, and he didn’t know where he was, or why there was something tube-ish and bulky shoved into his mouth and down his throat. He wanted to gag, feeling his trachea constrict against the machine’s will, and another forceful burst of air was shoved down his throat and expanded his lungs. He gave a weak cough, the tube unforgiving and rigid. 

Somewhere behind him, another machine – or maybe the same, it wouldn’t have made a difference to him – let out a cacophony of beeps, chirping, and he didn’t know if it was in alarm or simple recalibration now that he’d decided he wasn’t going to die after all. 

Like an unwarranted flood, the past few days came back into his brain, his recall finally working properly. With the memories, the gunshot wound, the shitty motel they’d crashed it, came the pain.

He gasped, or did the equivalent with his trachea full of plastic, as a hand shot to his abdomen, fingertips skirting over medical-grade dressings. And, much to his surprise and appreciation, it didn’t hurt. 

But that came with the realization that his abdomen was the only thing that didn’t ache. His head pounded with the force of a migraine, and his shoulders were tight with skin that had suffered serious fever, and the ventilator from hell hooked into him pushed air into his lungs that made him cringe with pain.

He had a small clip hooked to a pointer finger, and a needle the size of a pencil tapped into a vein at the crook of his elbow, slowly dripping some sort of clear solution into him. Probably morphine, definitely something only offered inside a hospital for serious and dire medical reasons.

He took mental stock of himself, slowly, trying to gather himself. His feet, ankles, legs were okay. Bladder was a little on the full side, but upon further concentration, that didn’t seem to matter with what felt like a catheter in him. Ass was sore from reclining on it. His torso was the worst, obviously, but it didn’t feel swollen or infected anymore, so that was a plus.

His lungs hurt, and his arms and shoulders ached, but for the most part, whatever they had dripping into him was staving away the pain, and his lips pulled a little loopy.

And he was in a hospital, that much was clear. The gown that lay over him delicately said as much, and if he thought long enough, he could get fleeting glimpses of Dom against the black of his eyelids, driving him to the emergency room with speed and desperation and laying over him in the parking lot looking ready to battle the sun and more for Brian. And then he drove away, and Brian died, he thinks, for just a moment.

Shit. Death. 25 years old and he’d died. Really died, like his heart gave out and everything, and he slid the collar of his gown down a little bit with his free hand to reveal two, large patches of skin that looked a bit darker than the rest of his tan, which confirmed his suspicions.

They’d shocked him back to life.

Because he’d been dead. 

Okay. That much he knew, which didn’t ease the situation in the slightest. If anything, it nearly made it worse.

He didn’t know about the blood poisoning, or what they knew about him, or anything beyond that wooden, heavy looking door that separated him from the rest of the bustling world. 

And he didn’t know, genuinely, if he was dreaming. Everything in the room was tinted, the edges of measly looking furniture pressed up against eggshell-colored walls outlined with a rainbow of color only he could see. Were there two desks in here? Brian blinked hard, trying to clear his vision. 

Phew, his head spun, and he worked his throat around the plastic, trying not to gag again. 

Distantly, in the back of his mind, he could feel the lethargic pull of the strong-as-shit drugs pumping into him, and as his eyes darted around, the also got slow, and his eyelids got heavy, and the rectangle paneled light above him shot rays of artificial yellow light scattered about the room, and yeah, he was losing consciousness, and his head hit the pressed pillowcase, and he was out.

xxx

The next time he woke, it was less harsh.

Or, maybe it was several times after the first. Brian didn’t have any recollection of waking, but against his eyelids, the sun bathed him gently in light; the blinds must have been shifted, so someone had to have been in and out.

His mother’s voice called above him, something soft and eager. He squenched his eyes, briefly, coming to terms with waking up. It was like pulling himself out of a dark hole, harder than it’d been in a while to wake up. 

But, he opened his eyes and a woman with dark hair and dark eyes looked expectantly above him, smile pointed but gentle. Not his mom. In fact, not his house.

For the second time, it all came back to him.

“How’re you feeling, hon?” She asked, working her fingers into some latex gloves. 

He blinked, the pillows under him too big and too firm, though his head was sunk in pretty far. How was he feeling? He was alive, right? He was still living, breathing.

Upon further inspection, his hand that wasn’t trapped by lines and needles and finger clamps came up to his mouth, feeling it normal, no tubing blocking his ability to eat or breathe. His fingers came away clean and not red.

The nurse’s fingers gently eased his own down, away from his face. “There ya go. We removed your ventilator just an hour ago. You seem to be breathing okay, which is what we want. The catheter and the cannula stay, though.” She adjusted something on one of the many machines, hearing it beep annoyingly, giving him a side glance, then another. One leg of her purple scrubs had a loose string on it, and he wanted to pull it off. “And the IV. Those meds are doin’ you some good.”

Brian tried to nod, but his neck was stiff. He cleared his throat several times to get his voice box to cooperate, at least slightly, ignoring the embarrassing crack in his voice. “A-and this?” He gestured to the junction of his elbow.

She handed him a dixie cup from somewhere, full of cold water. He sipped it generously. “That’s the picc line, and it stays as well. That’s fighting the sepsis battle going on inside of you.”

He forgot about that. He also forgot about the literal gunshot wound decorating his stomach.

“You’ve had a rough few days, it seems. That gunshot wound in your abdomen was looking pretty bad, but we’ve cleaned it and sewed you up good. You’re getting the best antibiotics around.” She moved around the bed to where his drip line sat, adjusting and wiggling some connections, clicking away on the pad below it.

“My name’s Heather. Can you tell me yours?”

Yeah, he could, but then she’d know that he was at large and running from the biggest law enforcement agency in the country. That wasn’t a good plan.

The plan!  

Dom’s plan, the one where they’d agreed to meet up at the Bronco a mile back. Brian had forgotten, just like he said he would. Honestly, he was still reeling at the fact that he was alive and not dead out there on the concrete. He’d been a dead man walking – or, rather, a dead man wheezing and shaking and coughing up a lung. He was on borrowed time.

He panicked, eyes darting to the clock on the wall, reading at a quick glance sometime just after one in the afternoon. His brain shuddered to remember when he’d got here. The sun had just begun to peek over the mountain line. He remembered the soft glow of easy yellow light that’d not fit the scene of death and despair he’d been in. 

He’d been here half a day, give or take. Okay, not too bad. He still had two and a half days to get himself together, at least on his feet, and find the exit. Ready or not, he felt confident – or at least a little better about his current chances of survival – and he’d find Dom and they’d go. 

And maybe one of Dom’s sturdy hands would latch onto his knee as they drove and make soothing circles with a thumb and Brian would sleep all the way down.

Yeah, that sounded nice.

Okay. Two and a half days. That’d be plenty of time. A walk in the park. 

“Can you tell me your name?” Heather repeated in front of him, closer, eyes softer. He didn’t know how to play this – but just settled for dumb. It was too hard to do any other sort of tactic, and he really could play a convincing amnesiac, especially because it was partly true. He was already spotty at best, mentally, so this was going to be a battle. This really put new meaning to the phrase ‘deny until you die’. Expect he’d already died, so maybe it was a moot point.

He did remember himself, and he remembered everything, and for the next sixty-something hours, it was going to be a balancing act to make everyone think he didn’t.

“N-no.”

“Okay, it’s okay.” She soothed, hands placating. “What about what happened? Do you remember what happened to your stomach?” Her voice was kind, and he paused, trying to fake remember. Really, he didn’t have to fake the in-pain-but-contemplative look on his face – the more he was awake, the worse the aches and throbs settled in his bones and down the long muscles of his back. 

He shook his head, feeling the tension in his neck twinge. He’d had migraines before, in all their glory, the shaky hands and the cognitive impairment and shit but this – the after effects of a literal bullet wound made everything seem worse, understandably, but fuzzy and he couldn’t comprehend it.

And the harder he contemplated, the more his torso fucking ached, ached to the point of dizziness, delirium, his sternum shook so fiercely he didn’t know if it’d ever stop.

And then Brian dry heaved, a plastic container quickly shoved under his mouth thanks to Heather’s quick reflexes. He puked up everything in his stomach, which was nothing but vitriol and stomach acid, gasping for relief as his stomach muscles clenched and heaved. The hole in him screamed with fire and his free hand clutched at it over the layers and layers of gauze. 

Holy shit.

Above him, Heather was coaxing him to get it all out… or to stop nearly convulsing at risk of messing up his injuries even more. He didn’t know. Couldn’t imagine violent shakes of puking would do a gunshot wound any good. 

He came up for breath, eyes watering with ferocity, blurring his vision. He felt the telltale signs of a fever creep up his arms and it gave him goosebumps.

“I-I don’t remember.” His voice was hoarse, and the taste of puke rancid in his mouth. Another dixie cup was placed into his shaking fingers as the puke bucket disappeared, running water to his left washing it out. He swished once, twice, spit the water back into the cup and handed it off.

“More?” She questioned, eyebrows raised. He minutely shook his head, feeling it ready to explode.

“With a trauma like the one you’ve been through, sometimes, for our own protection, our mind blocks it out. We call this retrograde amnesia here in the medical world. But, hang in there, okay? It’ll come back.”

“Maybe with time.” He gasped nonchalantly, then winced at the movement. Heather pulled the blanket tighter around him and found the remote to ease the bed back. His eyes felt heavy. He was so tired. “‘S only been a few hours anyway.”

His eyelids slipped closed, hearing Heather settle things beside him, seemingly not alarmed that Brian had the consciousness of a 90-year old man with dementia. 

“No worries. Our brains are incredible organs. Memory doesn’t usually come back within the first few days, especially not after… only thirty hours. If you are amnesiac, we don’t expect recovery that fast. Get some rest.”

Wait. Thirty hours?

Thirty hours.

It’d been thirty fucking hours.

Not six. Not six like he’d thought. It’d been over a day since he got here. He’d been out for a day.

But– but he’d thought that it’d only been six hours. Dom had just dropped him off, just this morning, Brian remembered. 

But it hadn’t been this morning – it’d been yesterday morning, a whole extra day.

He had shorter time than he’d thought.

The surgery – the surgery must have been long, long enough to knock him out for a whole day.

His eyes shot to the clock again, feeling betrayed. Against his will, his lungs contracted, painfully, and he needed to– he needed to…  

Despite the panic in him, he realized she must have adjusted his levels, given him a shot of Lorazepam or something else to make him sleep. What was that thing people said? The brain recovers faster while unconscious, and the link between brain recovery and sleep was increased when… 

And he slept.

xxx

Upon further research, it sounded like he’d been admitted around 7:00 in the morning, hitting the operation table just after that. For such a small hospital, they worked quickly, much to Brian’s appreciation. They’d removed a few, minuscule pieces of metal that had splintered off of the bullet and sewn his insides back together. A good portion of his large intestine had been ripped to shreds, along with several major arteries and veins. It was a literal fucking miracle he didn’t bleed out – but his body had tried to, that was for sure.

The doctor, a stout, balding man, said he was lucky; if the bullet had been half an inch to the left, his spine would have been severed, and he would have been paralyzed and dead within the minute. Missed most vital organs, saved him a hell of a lot more trouble. Nicked part of his pancreas, but nothing that wasn’t fixed in surgery.

He guesses that’d be something – the only thing, really – to thank Bilkins for. His terrible aim.

All three layers of his surface abdominal muscles would need reconstruction and physical therapy, as well as several muscles that lined his back. Dr. Thomas also listed a plethora of additional ailments he’d experience for the next few days, if not a few months; a minor fever, unexplained cramping, tingling, weakness, numbness, and overall lethargy, just to name a few. 

And the sepsis was another story – but the hospital staff were doing what they could, and the antibiotics were being pumped into him in buckets. Side effects of sepsis were supposed to be the same as the bullet wound, give or take. Some would persist, some wouldn’t. He wasn’t too keen on the idea of having a permanently compromised immune system, or the possibility of organ failure.

But, he was alive, and he was breathing, and he was going to walk out of here in 40 hours, unbeknownst to them.

Speaking of – Brian recited the plan in his head like a mantra, worried about actually forgetting it instead of just pretending.

Out the door, down the dirt road the opposite way they came, find the Bronco with shit rims, easy peasy.

He laid his head back against the pillows, ignoring the slowly-growing flare of ache and pain in his abdomen. 

Find Dom. Find Dom.  

xxx

Time was a fickle thing.

It took almost 35 hours for Brian to remember how much he hated hospitals. 

They weren’t a place where he wanted to be, ever. 

He’d frequented them too often, way more often than he’d like to. As a self-proclaimed daredevil, Elementary School Brian always had scrapes and cuts and an occasional broken bone. Then, as a racer and car fanatic, High School Brian spent a good portion of his time getting stitches in or CT scans for possible internal bleeding – under a different name, of course. No need to alert his father, who, ironically, would have been just another reason for a hospital visit. 

Besides, when his mom died, he’d spent too much time in a hospital getting way too many pitying looks. He was just a kid. Hospitals reminded him too much of a time in his life he didn’t care to remember.

Even as an adult, as a cop, he’d spent hours and hours in the ER, filling out paperwork for cases he’d picked up or dropping off crackheads or – more recently, as, technically, an undercover cop with second guesses lingering in the back of his mind – checking up on the crew. Vince was a notorious drunk, and that meant dangerous and wild and knife-brandishing. Jesse was just, well, Jesse, all chaos and no ability to self-regulate.

So, hospitals reminded him of pain. Which was appropriate, considering how much pain he was in right now. 

Around hour 36, he took a deep breath, testing the expansion of his lungs. They hurt still, but not unbearably so. He figured, with a day and a half to go, that’d give him extra time to heal just a little bit more. The skin on his chest was tender to the touch but that was on the bottom of his current running list of “problems with Brian”. The list was getting rather long, but things were moving around, so that was okay.

Really, he was just coming to terms with the fact that he’d slept almost a whole day away. He was on a time crunch. Every hour mattered. He wondered what Dom was doing to spend his time. Sleeping, maybe. Quietly thinking to himself, taking a breather away from Letty’s pestering and Vince’s bitching and Mia’s crying. Hopefully staying out of trouble and away from the cops. 

Heather brought him dinner. She cheerfully put the tray on the cart next to his bed, easing his relaxed position into one that he’d be able to eat in. 

“How we doin’, hon?” She asked, putting gloves on. Brian eyed the contents of his supposed dinner. Mashed potatoes, jello, a sealed fruit cup, and some sort of brothy soup that looked more like what he’d thrown up yesterday than anything else. At his facial expression, Heather explained.

“You’ve experienced a GSW to the abdomen, a rather severe one. And you coded. Twice. Soft foods only.” As much as his nose scrunched, he appreciated her not babying him. She eased him up into a sitting position, and it was the first real time he’d needed to support himself. He’d been to the bathroom, sure, but that was with a nurse guiding him and, embarrassingly enough, a tennis-balled walker. His back trembled, and the sharp right angle created by his body was almost enough to make him groan out a protest, but he stayed silent.

He was leaving soon, and this was important. He had to walk himself down the hallway, down the road. He had to be strong enough to do that. 

Nurse Heather pulled the bedsheet down to reveal his thin gown, to which she opened the top lace behind his neck to show his wrappings. He languidly watched as her hands unwrapped him, trying to focus his brain enough to keep himself upright, trying to decide if small talk was the way to go.

“You got any kids?”

“You got a name?” 

Brian’s head jerked, neck muscles protesting. Did she know? There’s no way she could know he was faking it. He didn’t have any tells, the police academy made sure of that, and they hadn’t had enough real interaction for him to give anything away. 

If she knew, it was all over. Goodbye, Mexico. Hello, Cali State Penitentiary. 

Her eyes darted from the ministrations on his torso, smiling. “Just kidding. Don’t rush it. It might cause more damage to your memory processing.”

Brain didn’t think that was very fucking funny. 

“I have two. Mya and James. They’re eight and five, respectively. A handful, that’s for sure. Last week, Mya spilled uncooked penne pasta all over the pantry floor, and our family dog, Sparky, tried to eat it all up. She just wanted to make a pasta necklace, she claimed.” Heather smiled at him, softer this time, getting to the end of the wrapping. “James stomped them into dust. I’m still finding pasta debris in there.”

She set the dressing aside, gently peeling off the gauze. It wasn’t yellowed, which was good. No infection.

Nurse Heather gingerly thumbed at the skin around the puncture. It was the first time Brian had seen it since before he’d been admitted, and honestly, it was looking pretty good for a used-to-be gaping hole. The skin in the area wasn’t jolted red or puffy. It was a bit inflamed, but not nearly like it had been, when he was teetering on the edge of death. Whatever medications they were feeding him were working like a damn charm.

But, the criss-cross stitching decorating his stomach hid most of what he wanted to see.

“Well, it’s looking better, so that’s good.” She clicked her tongue, moving to grab the salve in a serious looking bottle. She applied just a bit, and the chillness of it made him hiss. 

“Any kids yourself?”

He nearly scoffed. “Nah.”

And then froze. “At least, I don’t think so.” 

Shit, he needed to play the part better. He discreetly eyed Heather, but she seemed unfazed, so he thought he was in the clear.

Nurse Heather put the lid back on the ointment and tugged her gloves off, putting on new ones. “Yeah, well, I’m sure it’s saving you a lot of trouble.”

He didn’t say anything, but agreed silently. With her new gloves, she put a new folding off white, fresh gauze on it and applied a clear adhesive so it wouldn’t move around. She began wrapping him back up, hands skimming the skin on his back and suddenly, he was a bit self-conscious of the few moles dotting his skin.

“You’re thinking I’m gonna live?” He deadpanned, teasing.

“At this point, I don’t know…” she quipped. “Spry, young kid like yourself? Yeah, you’re slowly coming out of the woods. But,” she eyed his face. “You still need lots of rest. In fact, you look a little tired to me.”

Yeah, he figured he’d be tired for months after this shitshow.

“Eat what you can.” She nodded to his tray. “Eat enough, and then you can sleep.”

He frowned, remembering the meal beckoning to him. She left with his empty promise to try his best, redressing him in his gown and setting the bed back to a good position. He groaned, the thought of consuming anything plaguing his brain and shaking up his stomach. 

He choked down a chunk of a pear and a mandarin orange from the fruit cup and a fourth of the broth, then settled for the jello. It was raspberry flavored and arguably his favorite of the flavors. Still, it was sawdust in his mouth. He slurped it down, eyeing the pink thing he’d puked in earlier, debating if he was going to need it or not, and fell asleep thinking of Heather yelling at him for not eating enough.

xxx

He’d forgotten how absolutely impossible it was to get a full night’s rest in a hospital. 

Nurses were the nosiest sons of bitches he’d ever met. Every half hour, every hour, a new nurse would clammer into his room, saying all sorts of bullshit greetings and prod and poke and pull open his eyelids. There were always in his business, every single fucking hour of the night. 

At hour 47, when the clock on the wall read just after 6:00 in the morning, he’d decided it was time for him to just wake up. For all the preaching they did about gunshot victims getting enough sleep, they sure were disrupting that.

Immediately, he felt a small sense of clarity. His brain wasn’t sitting in a noggin full of haze. He felt like all the neurons in his mind were slowly coming alive. He felt better. His mind felt ready to solve world hunger or something. Bring on the multiplication tables.

His body, however, wasn’t on board. His torso protested when he’d tried to stretch his arms out, which wasn’t what he was wanting to feel. It was sore, more sore than he’d probably every felt in his life – and he’d done a lot of really stupid shit, especially before Juvie. Him and Rome weren’t known for wearing helmets or elbow pads when they’d jump shopping carts off ramps.

And in Juvie, fights broke out on the daily. He’d made it a point to avoid those kinds of crowds, the ones that fought like it was a personality trait. But, much to his dismay, people always wanted to punch him. No, actually, they’d heckle him about his ‘pretty boy’ looks or his cool demeanor or almost anything else, and what was he supposed to do? Sit there like a little bitch? So, he’d throw the first punch. And, on every occasion except for two, he’d throw the last punch as well.

He wasn’t skinny, he was lean. And scrappy.

The point was, he knew what being sore meant. He’d experienced it hundreds of times, felt it in his muscles like a piece of him. But this – this was another level. 

Brian hissed through his teeth as he attempted to give his aching tailbone some respite. He eased himself to the left a bit, his spine feeling like a line of fire through his back, the abdominal muscles trembling with use. They’d been reconstructed, sewn together as best they could, but it’d take time for them to heal.

And, he’d just begun to notice the bruising. An array of black had been brewing for quite some time now. From his days in the Academy, he’d learned that the longer a bruise took to show, the more severe the injury – so, it made sense in some twisted way that it took a week past the actual injury date for bruising to finally show.

And show it did; during one of his half-hour rude wakeup calls sometime in the middle of the night that he didn’t ask for, a graveyard nurse changed his wraps. He was half asleep and groggy, but his dazed eyeline drifted down to the unwrapped injury and jerked in shock. Blacks and purples and deep navy blues painted his abdomen like a really shitty art project, from the waistband of his boxers to the bottom of his ribs, expanding out to touch at his hip bones. The outline of the bruise was colored yellow.

The stitching held his stomach together just as it had hours ago when he’d looked at it last, but the rich violet that surrounded eight little markings stretching the little extra skin he had on his stomach made him almost sick. 

At his obvious alarm, the nurse looked up from his ministrations. “Don’t worry. Considering the extent of the injury, this is normal. Bruising means healing, and healing means getting out of here.”

Yeah, well, little did this guy know, his bruises weren’t going to determine his exit time.

And, with a sigh of dismay, he didn’t even want to think about the state of his six-pack after this. It was going to take a lot of weights to get him back to, at least, a small definition.

“Does this hospital have a gym?” He grumbled, alright trying to go back to sleep despite the nurse’s prodding.

He just laughed above him.

xxx

Brian considered himself to be of a reasonable disposition – which was shocking considering the whirlwind of a fucked up childhood he had.

He was pretty level-headed. He kept his cool. His cool got him things that he wouldn’t have been able to attain otherwise.

However, he was getting pretty fucking annoyed at the sheer soreness that was settling in his muscles and taking over his bones.

He bobbed in and out of consciousness for the next hour, tossing and turning – not literally, because moving shot spikes of pain through him.

Or breathing. Or blinking. Really, anything he did brought pain.

Hospitals were boring. And gross. And Brian was a textbook overthinker, an analyzer, which wasn’t good when all he could do was sit in his pain and think.

And sit in his pain he did. 

Most of the time he felt loopy, out of his mind with the amount of drugs they had him on, but he was convinced that no dosage of anything could numb the pain of a gunshot wound. 

And – he’d been so hung up on the wound he could see, he’d nearly forgotten about the one he couldn’t see.

“You’re a healthy young man, which helps immensely. However, you came in here with a several-day-old gunshot wound to your abdomen, which does not bode well for the septicemia running through your veins.”

Brian looked at the doctor in front of him, hands discreetly fisting the covers at his sides.

“We have you on a very rigorous course of antibiotics that are fighting that blood poisoning. The thing we’re worried about now, though, is that the intravenous antibiotics you’re receiving aren’t working as effectively as we’d like them to.”

Brian held his eyesight steady on the doctor in front of him, trying not to eye the clock on the wall. Dealing with any major illness could set him back, and he’d miss the small window of escape with Dom. 

Apparently, this was an ‘official checkup’ or some shit – but how ‘official’ could a checkup be if the patient didn’t even remember who he was? So, Brian wasn’t sure; the doctor had gone over nearly everything possible. They’d gone over his sewn-up stomach hole, talked about the extensive bruising and how the longer the bruise took to show, the worse the wound was. They went over the rigorous sessions of physical therapy Brian would be attending some weeks down the road (even though he wouldn’t be attending).  

And then the doctor looked at the chart nurse Heather brought in and the expression on his face became very worried.

“We’re going to do a urine sample, as well as more blood samples. We’re also going to push twice the amount of fluids you’re receiving. This is something we’re going to follow very closely. For now,” the doctor sighed and stood up from the chair, “make sure you’re resting plenty and eating a substantial amount. The rest will also help the amnesia you’re suffering from.”

Brian agreed, mind running, and thanked the doctor, while nurse Heather hung another bag of something clear and sloshy on the rack above his head.

They cleared out, leaving Brian alone and in an uncomfortable hospital bed. Fleetingly, he wished someone were here in the empty chair next to his bed. He laid his head back, and rolled it to look out the window. 

So, basically – he really wasn’t out of the woods yet.

The quietness lingered in his ears, echoing in some sort of nothingness, and it sucked, but it was his reality; he’d always been alone. Rome had been there, of course, and offered more support than Brian felt like he deserved, but – his parent’s house in Barstow, his own house in LA, knew nothing but emptiness. It’d always been him against the world. That’s how he was raised – or, not raised.  

But Dom and his crew – the light at the end of some sort of really fucked up tunnel. They filled that hole inside of him somewhere that craved human bond. Sometimes he hated them – but he also loved them, and really, really appreciated them. 

They filled that hole inside of his heart that held anger and contempt. And he wished they were here now.

xxx