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“I swear to God if you piss in my fucking car, I’m gonna punch you in the face,” Dom growls out – pretty audaciously, Brian might add, considering he got to make use of the rest stop about ninety miles back while Brian took one for the team and filled up the gas tank.
He’s really regretting that act of selflessness now, because he’d no sooner gotten the gas cap back on than Dom came busting back out of the station with his fly still down and his cell raised aloft, Rome’s tinny voice squawking through the speaker about how Jakande’s assassins were spotted on the outskirts of town and closing fast. Any thoughts of hitting the head were instantly gone, both of them leaping into the Charger and then careening back onto the highway like hell was after them…because it was.
The adrenaline had been enough to distract Brian for the first hour or so, his heart in his mouth and his foot heavy on the accelerator, but he’s really feeling it now. If he didn’t need one hand on the wheel and one white-knuckling the gear shift, he’d definitely have both down between his legs. He feels shameless, desperate, and wholly insane.
Like…more insane than usual, if that’s even possible.
“It’s not like I asked them to show up,” he snaps back, jerking the wheel hard to the left to get around a crawling RV – probably some nice, normal all-American family on their way to the coast for vacation with no idea that the fate of the world is hanging in the balance. Is resting on their fucking shoulders, Brian and Dom and the rest of their ragtag little family, for better or for worse. Hopefully not worse.
“The threat still stands,” Dom shoots back, his fingers twitching against the dash and his feet pumping phantom pedals down on the floor mat, clearly wishing he was the one in the driver’s seat.
For the first time ever, Brian wishes that, too. “God,” he groans, jamming his thighs together even as he lets the tires spin out, using the gravel shoulder to get around a stubborn pack of law-abiding citizens. “It hurts, man. Even my teeth fucking hurt!”
“Can’t possibly hurt as much as a bullet to the head,” Dom says, irritatingly sensible and unsympathetic to his plight. “Or terrorists gaining control of the entire goddamn globe.”
Brian grits his teeth. “Not helping.”
“Just drive, O’Conner.”
So Brian does, clinging to every ounce of instinct and finesse he has to navigate the highways while white-hot pain wells up inside of him, burning at his throat, his dick, his eyes. He’s never been much of a crier, especially not about physical pain, but, through the windshield, the road is blurred from more than just their break-neck speed. He blinks hard against it, hoping to God he doesn’t vomit.
Piss is one thing – if he pukes all over Dom’s car, too, he’s better off putting a sack over his head and surrendering to the assassins his damn self.
“Shit, we gotta be far enough ahead by now,” he pleads desperately, squirming in his seat. Thirty minutes ago it might’ve helped – now it only makes him gasp. “I’ve been going almost 120 this whole time and we haven’t heard their engines even once. I gotta pull over, Dom, I’m serious.”
He makes to do just that, but Dom veritably roars, loud as any engine, and grabs the wheel, stubbornly keeping them on the road. “What you gotta do is drive,” he says darkly, fingers digging hard into Brian’s wrist, one more wailing instrument in the cacophony of pain thrumming through his body. “Because I ain’t telling Jack and that little niece of mine that Daddy got blown to bits ‘cause he didn’t go to the bathroom before we got on the road. Mia would kill me!”
“You’re such a dick,” Brian wheezes, slamming his fist into the top of the steering wheel just once to air his frustration before he does what he’s told. Because as much as he doesn’t want to admit it, Dom is right: after everything they’ve been through, everything they’ve accomplished, stopping to get his cock out would be the stupidest fucking way to die. Mia would kill him, too, would resuscitate him long enough to put a cap in his ass with that cute little handgun she keeps in the minivan’s glove compartment, and he’d deserve every bit of it.
But, fucking hell, it hurts like a bitch.
Just when Brian is considering how much he really values his dignity and dividing it by the cost of getting the Charger cleaned and detailed, Dom’s phone rings again and lights up with Mr. Nobody’s name. Dom’s end of the conversation is nothing but grunts, aggravatingly in control even now. He could be receiving the very best news in the world or the very worst and Brian wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
“It’s your lucky day,” he says when he finally hangs up. “Ramsey’s got eyes on Jakande’s attack dogs and she says they’ve given up the chase for now. The team’s at a safehouse about ten miles from here and they want us there STAT. Something about regrouping.”
Brian’s bladder gives an excited lurch at the info, the discomfort ratcheting up to eleven now that the end is in sight. He whimpers because he can’t fucking help it, sacrificing the gear shift for his dick just long enough to squeeze it into submission. He can’t piss himself now – not when he’s so close.
It’s just ten more miles. Well, nine now. He can do nine.
“Thank fuck,” is all he can think to say.
Dom, on the other hand, eyes him warily and asks, the focused rage gone out of his voice, “You gonna be okay?”
Brian twists his face into a glower and pops the clutch, shifting to pass three cars at once. “Oh, so now you care. Cool.”
Dom huffs in exasperation, smacking him on the back of the head. “Don’t be a bitch about it,” he orders gruffly. “Of course I care, I just care about not dying more.” Then he sighs, shaking his head in Brian’s peripheral vision. “Six more miles, Bri. You got this.”
Bile rushes up the back of Brian’s throat, drowning his answer in acid. He just guns it through the tail end of a stale yellow and doesn’t say a word.
.
It’s all Dom can do not to curse when Little Nobody answers the door, ushering them into the safehouse in that irritating manner of his, all smug and superior like his shit don’t stink.
…or like he’s never been dying to take a leak, which is what Dom is worried about. Because Brian has never known what’s good for him and, even if it’s hypocritical for Dom of all people to think it, he’s the exact kind of fucking idiot to hurt himself trying to one-up this baby-faced candy-ass.
Brian doesn’t have anything to prove to Mr. Nobody’s little pet, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try it.
“Tell ‘em to wait a sec,” Dom says, trying to preemptively swerve around the inevitable crash site laid out before them. “The buster here’s gotta—”
But Brian cuts him off with a glare and a quick, clipped, “Nothing. I’ve gotta nothing.”
Dom sighs but lets it go. Despite all evidence to the contrary – namely, the fact that Dom had to practically carry Brian out of the Charger and up the porch stairs because his legs were trembling and his knees wouldn’t stop knocking together – Brian is a grown man. If he wants to inflict more pain upon himself because he gives a damn what some twenty-one-year-old kid thinks of him, that’s his prerogative.
It still kinda makes Dom want to shake him, though. It’s not 2001 anymore.
But whatever. They follow the bouncing baby down the basement steps to where Mr. Nobody has set up shop, grabbing hands and slapping backs with their relieved team. Letty even pushes up on her tiptoes to give Dom a kiss – a real one, firm and insistent like she’d been worried about him and not just the idea of him. He tugs gentle fingers through her hair and then nods for Nobody to take the floor.
Brian stays silent throughout the entire debrief, his body rigid and wound tight and his eyes intermittently fluttering closed. It’s obvious to Dom that he’s holding onto his composure by a single thread, but that’s only because he was there with him, had watched him start to unravel at the seams. To everyone else he’s the perfect picture of control, exhausted but still alive, still kicking. At one point, Rome breaks into one of his huge, toothy grins and slaps Brian hard on the back, complimenting his driving, and Brian and Dom both wince, one from the pain of being jarred and one in sympathy.
When Brian groans and digs his fingers into the denim of his jeans – on his outer thighs, not anywhere helpful – Dom makes himself look away. It’s all the privacy he can offer him.
That is, until Nobody adjourns the meeting and Rome, Tej, and Ramsey make a beeline for the stairs in search of some food, clearing out quick. At Letty’s questioning look, one eyebrow quirked nearly to her hairline, Dom gives her an assuring nod and jerks his chin upwards, sending her after them. Then they’re finally alone.
Well, they would be, anyway, if Little Nobody would get his sniveling nose out of their assholes.
“I don’t remember needing a babysitter,” Dom says, putting every bit of his natural intimidation behind it. He crosses his arms, looking the guy up and down from across the dingy room. “We’ve been doing this shit since before your balls dropped, kid.”
“Yeah, and jumping from one side of the law to the other when it best suits you,” he scoffs. “Excuse me if I’m not ready to let you have free rein of a government-funded safehouse yet.”
Dom could get into it with him, knows he could do what he does best and send the kid running without laying a finger on him, but they don’t have that kind of time. Brian has collapsed back against one of the concrete walls, right hand brought up to cover his eyes. His whole body is shaking.
So Dom lets out a harsh whistle through his teeth instead, a satisfying rush of power crashing over his body when a collection of footsteps instantly sounds over their heads and Rome, Tej, and Letty appear at the top of the stairs. He doesn’t have to say a word, just cuts his eyes over to Nobodito and lets them do the rest. They’ve herded him, whining and complaining, up to the main floor within seconds.
“How you holding up?” Dom asks quietly, pushing his way into Brian’s space now that their audience is gone.
Brian laughs a little, the sharp, desperate sound cutting off into a moan of pain. “If I take a single step, I’m gonna piss my pants, that’s how I’m holding up,” he hisses, a flash of anger that has nothing to do with Dom and everything to do with the frankly ridiculous situation he’s gotten himself into.
“You’re a dumbass,” Dom tells him fondly, sliding a hand between Brian’s lower back and the rough wall and tugging at him to urge him forward. “There’s a can right around the corner, you just gotta get moving.”
Brian makes a strangled noise, slapping Dom’s hand away like some kind of playground fight. “I can’t! I’m fucking telling you—” Then his eyes go wide and he bends at the waist, hectic red rising in his cheeks and spreading across the back of his neck. “Fuck!”
“Fuck,” Dom agrees, running a comforting hand over Brian’s shoulders while his eyes frantically search the area for a solution, any solution. Then he laughs, mirthless and disbelieving. “Why would you do this to yourself?”
“Because I’m a dumbass,” Brian grits out before breaking off to pant for air, hands propped on his shaking knees. “You already said it. Now fucking help me, Dom!”
Dom whirls away from him, throwing his hands in the air. “That’s what I’m trying to do!”
Then his eyes land on an old fast-food cup discarded at the very top of the wastepaper basket and he’s scrambling across the room before he even really thinks about it. His brain is completely devoid of sense and logistics, driven only by base need – Brian’s, not his own, of course. Even if it sort of feels like the same thing at the moment.
“Just fucking—use this,” he says, thrusting it at Brian who doesn’t take even a second to argue, a steady stream of shit shit shit falling out of his mouth while he fumbles for the fly of his pants.
If Dom had his way, he’d leave the cup in Brian’s very capable hands and then book it upstairs, distancing himself from his best friend – his brother, his fucking brother-in-law – while the dude does his business. But Dom only gets his way from behind the wheel, not down in drafty basements out in the asscrack of nowhere, so Brian loses hold of the cup and whines when it hits the floor, looking up at Dom with honest-to-God tears in his eyes.
Jesus fucking Christ.
“You owe me one,” he grumbles, scooping the cup back up and shoving it beneath Brian’s dick right as the first spurt of piss falls into it with a splash. Dom wrinkles his nose at the vulgar sound of it, but he can’t be too grossed out because instead of opening the floodgates, Brian just gasps in pain.
After holding back for hours, the poor guy is too hyped up to let it go, teeth clenched and practically vibrating where he stands. Deep down, Dom does feel kind of bad for how dismissive he was of Brian’s predicament back in the Charger, so he swallows back his pride and mumbles, “Hey, c’mon, it’s okay.”
“H-Hurts,” Brian stutters through quick breaths, right on the edge of hyperventilating. His voice is much too loud in the echoing space, any sense of discretion chased away by blind desperation. “C-Can’t do it.”
Silently cursing everything that led them up to this moment, Dom clamps his free hand over Brian’s mouth to quiet him. Brian’s eyes go huge but he doesn’t fight against it, even sags forward into Dom’s grip just the tiniest bit. “There you go,” Dom says, nonsensical soothing words that barely mean anything. “Deep breaths, Bri. Just relax.”
It takes a few heavy, distressed seconds, but Brian finds a way to obey, his nostrils flaring as he draws in as much air as he can and then slowly lets it out. When the dam finally breaks, Dom is grateful that he’s already put a muzzle on him, his palm muffling the embarrassing whimpers of hard-won relief that would’ve given Brian away otherwise. The cup gets heavier as time goes on and Brian’s body does, too, listing forward until Dom is the only thing holding him upright.
“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Dom tells him, though he can’t keep the amusement out of his voice. “You’re thirty-five fucking years old, Buster.”
Brian grunts something that sounds like I know, shuddering as the last little bit splashes into the cup in painful fits and starts. Dom is past disgust at this point, so he merely raises an eyebrow at the moron using him as a full-body crutch and asks, “You done?”
“Mmhm,” Brian says behind his hand, nodding at about a hundred miles an hour. He draws in a huge, shaking breath when Dom finally ungags him, then drops his forehead onto Dom’s shoulder like he’s trying to hide away. “That’s the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Nah,” Dom drawls, giving him a hard clap on the back. “Knowing you? I doubt it.”
Brian snorts a laugh in response.
After a while, Dom shifts awkwardly, cringing when the contents of the cup audibly slosh. “Listen, you know I love you,” he starts, then whispers a sardonic little clearly to himself. “But your cock’s still out and that’s too much even for me. Plus, you gotta dump this in the shitter ‘cause I ain’t doin’ it.”
“Oh shit, right, yeah,” Brian says, stepping back from Dom with less urgency than one would expect…except it’s Brian, so it’s not actually all that surprising. By the time he tucks himself away, does his jeans back up, and disposes of the evidence, that megawatt smile is back in place like it was never gone. “Next time we’re on the run and you gotta take a leak, I’ll return the favor. Preferably, before we’re surrounded by government assholes.”
Dom shakes his head at him, the gesture familiar after years of being neck-deep in Brian O’Conner’s personal brand of crazy. “There’s something wrong with you.”
Brian just flips him the bird. “Says you,” he shoots back and then they head upstairs to save the world.