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Dom is yelling almost incoherently, now, with Brian yelling in reply, with Mia yelling in protest. It’s all a lot of yelling. Dom charges forward and takes Brian by his arms and legs, picks him up in his flaming resentment. Brian flies into the shelves and topples them down with his fall, glass shattering, trinkets smashing against the hardwood. When Brian hits the floor with a harsh intake of breath, almost a weak yelp or wince, he doesn’t get back up. He doesn’t say anything other than the pained yelp that had escaped him once his ribcage clattered with the wood.
“Dom,” Mia breathes, high-strung.
“Fuck.” Dom exhales, rubbing a rough hand over his head. “Brian?” He asks, voice smaller. Much, much smaller, that stark of a difference to how much he’d yelled until his throat ran dry at Brian. The worst part was Brian’s begging for mercy and to be heard out. Dom only heard it after everything went silent.
Brian’s lying on a heap of shattered glass. There’s blood beneath him. Not too much (ie. not enough for Dom to worry yet) though it’s obvious to have done harm. “Dom,” Mia chastises again, voice barely there. “Is he okay?”
Dom looks Brian up and down. He looks much more like the buster he’d met five years back, saying he “almost had” him, this way. His face looks at peace. Last time he saw him this way was when they were younger. “Yeah,” Dom assesses Brian’s shallow but there breathing. “Yeah, he’ll be fine. Help me get him off this glass.”
“Jesus,” Mia shook her head, immediately crouching down by Brian’s still form, trying hard not to get her knees in the glass. She tucks her hands around his ankles, hoisting them up. From across her, Dom does the same with Brian’s shoulders, hooking his hands and lifting. They carry them down the step and drop him off carefully onto the rug, turning him around to lie on his stomach. “I’ll get some alcohol and a rag. You check his pulse.”
“It’s beating,” Dom agonises, watching Mia’s consistently crestfallen face as she disappears around the bend. Dom feels Brian’s heart beat now. Slow. He feels it against his knee. He brought Brian’s head into his lap when they’d lowered him. Now his heart beats slowly against his leg. At times like these, Dom would grasp at the cross around his neck, run his ragged thumb down the encrusted edges of the charm, feel solace in the familiar ridges and bumps. He couldn’t now. Instead, he dropped an awkward hand into Brian’s hair. It’s short, now. Back when it was longer, still curly, blonder, it was easier to card your hands through. Dom wishes he’d done it more often, now. “Fuck,” he muttered, mainly to himself. He found the scrappy edges of Brian’s haircut and allowed himself to scratch at him like one would at a cat’s ears, or a dog’s snout.
Eventually, Mia comes through. She doesn’t mention Dom’s hand in Brian’s hair if she notices it, which she almost definitely does. She just dutifully drops to her knees and with freshly cleaned hands (Dom can smell the magnolia soap on her) starts plucking glass out of Brian’s back, poking out of him like cactus spikes. After each piece of glass, she deposits it into a porcelain bowl. Once she’s sure all the glass is out of the way, Dom helps her remove Brian’s shirt.
Brian used to be skinny. When they met, he had some muscle, sure, but he was small. He made up for it in height. Dom didn’t know if it was a skipping meals thing or a careless thing, but he didn’t stick around long enough to ask. Brian seems to have grown into his frame moreso than before over the time that Dom had been away. He’s prominently more built now, even with the tiny punctures made across his back. Mia runs the alcohol-soaked rag over them. He cleans him up then patches him up with about a million Band-Aids to stop the bleeding while they wait for him to wake up.
They slowly rise from the rug with weak knees from having been sat by him so long, blowing out respective breaths of relief.
“Give him a pillow,” Mia whispers her request, wiping her hands down her skirt.
Dom doesn’t question her and instead heads straight for the couch. He grabs one of the thicker pillows, dropping it on the floor ahead of Brian. He crouches and lifts Brian’s head up by his hair and jaw, slightly kicking the pillow to settle underneath his slumbering head. Once done, the Toretto’s sit on the couch lacking one of the pillows and watch Brian lying on their rug.
“Dominic,” Mia starts, slowly regaining her voice. “Why did you do that?”
“He . . .” Dom takes a breath, steeling himself. He grinds his teeth, hard. He shakes his head, rattling his thought-of statement out of it. “Knocked him out good, huh?”
Mia laughs softly at him, sounding sad. “He could’ve taken you,” she shrugs, if only to rile her brother up a bit. After all, it’s what siblings do.
“Sure.” Dom indulges her. He can’t look away from Brian. He should’ve taken him in that Toyota Supra with him. He shouldn’t have accepted the keys. God, he’s in over his head. The sickness he feels over his own mercy for somebody who whisked Letty out from beneath him triumphs all of his sentimental aches, though. The anger is back. “He was running Letty.”
“If you listened to him, Dom . . .” Mia complains, running a long-suffering hand through her hair. Does it again in a self-soothing gesture. “Maybe he had a reason. He tried to explain.”
Dom grits his teeth again and it makes his head hurt. He stands with vindication from the couch, adrenaline and unfiltered rage the only thing keeping him going, like a good can of nitrous oxide. He barrels through to the dining room and swipes Brian’s phone off the table, untucking Letty’s cell from his back pocket. Walking back to his sister on the sofa, he unlatches both and searches for the corresponding telephone numbers. There are voicemails. He opens Letty’s first, listening as static from Brian’s cell number turns into words.
“Letty,” he breathes, almost tearful, if Dom didn’t know any better. “Letty, I’m so fucking glad you decided to call. I’m sorry I couldn’t answer last time. Please, please call me back. You want this as much as I do.”
When Dom meets Mia’s eyes, she’s tearing up, too. Dom blinks furiously. He presses into Brian’s voicemail next. This one was recorded the night before Brian’s reply.
“Brian, it’s Letty. I know you remember me, because who could forget?” She laughs slightly, this sweet sound. “I need your help. I know Dom and the guys hate you and whatever for being a traitor. Now, I’m not saying I don’t, but the Toyota was good hush money. And you got Dom out. Which is what I need you to do again. Call me.”
Dom swallows past the enormous lump in his throat. He blames his getting choked up at whatever’s in the air, pollen, but he knows now. Brian’s “I want this as much as you do” referring to Dom’s immunity? His freedom? Dom didn’t expect Brian’s keeping tabs of him for a moment. Didn’t expect Brian to be in the FBI after all.
He listens to the last dated voicemail. Two days after Letty’s proposition, one day after Brian’s belated reply.
Brian’s voice starts up. “Hey, Letty.” He seems much calmer, as if they had finally come to a conclusion on how to set Dom free. On how to nail Braga, in other words. “You know, I thought of you guys the entire time I was out there. Three years back I did this stunt with Roman, this crazy drug lord shit. Now I’m back in fucking law enforcement.” Mia and Dom listened without interrupting Brian’s past words whatsoever, enraptured. Brian sounds slightly tipsy, his honesty electrifying. “I wonder how Dom’s doing. It helps, being in the FBI.” He laughs to himself, “I get to check up on him like that. Mia, too. Check on Vince sometimes. And you, obviously.” He sighs sadly and Dom can’t help but to sigh, too. “I wish we met under different circumstances. We’d have more barbecues together. More movies. More parties. More fucking races. God . . .” He trails off. He sounds incredibly sorry for himself. Nevertheless, Dom can’t help but feel sorry, too. “I miss you. That’s all I wanted to say. If you happen to see Dom, tell him I say hi, okay? And . . .okay, no, that’s it. Fuck, this is embarrassing. Ignore this. I don’t know how to delete voicemails.”
Mia’s laughing when the voicemail clicks off. “God, he was plastered, wasn’t he?” She laughs. There are tear tracks on her face and Dom could kill Brian right now for making his little sister cry, but he’s crying, too. Yet they laugh.
“Yeah,” Dom easily agrees.
“Ugh,” comes a groan from the rug. The pair immediately snap their necks to the side to see Brian stir, waking from his knock out. They scramble off the couch and onto the floor around Brian, keeping a safe distance with their knees in the hardwood. Brian splays his arms out ahead of him to allow him some leverage in lifting himself up, but just the strain of stretching his arms causes the cuts over his back to burn, earning him a long wince like a kicked stray.
“You alright?” Dom asks, disbelieving of how tender his own voice sounds.
“Yeah,” Brian replies, voice barely there, more of a whine. “Fuck, it hurts. What happened?”
Dom’s ears burn red with shame. “I threw you into the shelves.”
Brian tries to sit up again but can’t bring himself to, his breath hitching with every straining movement. He stops trying and rests defeated on the rug, now stiff again as a log. “Ah. Right.” He sighs with recollection.
“But now I know I was wrong.”
“Wow,” Brian laughs, “didn’t think I’d ever hear those words from you.”
Dom smiles down at him. “Smartass.”
Brian’s face is disfigured from the pillow he melts into, though he smiles, too. Dom stretches his arm out to curl his fingers into Brian’s short hair. Brian’s eyes flutter closed. Dom, for a fleeting moment, feels as though everything might work out. And maybe not just for him. For Brian, too.