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2016-08-05
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Objects in Mirrors

Summary:

The thing was, you really could find out anything about anyone on the internet as long as you had a name.

Or, the many ways in which a one night stand complicates Brian's life.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

He didn’t make a habit of it, but on the days when he’d pulled traffic duty (dull) or he’d had to break up a domestic dispute (horrifying) or babysit a crime scene (boring), Brian would sometimes go out and pick people up in bars. 

He had a system, one that worked to his advantage all things considered, and it invariably left all involved parties satisfied. No awkward mornings after, no stilted breakfast conversations, and no questions asked. 

Brian didn’t even realize he’d fucked up until it was way too late, sometime after he’d stood toe to toe with Dominic Toretto outside the market for the first time, more than four weeks after Tanner had tapped him for the job.

There hadn’t been anything too out of the ordinary that day. No gruesome murders, no abject boredom - hell, even the weather had been better than average - but instead of heading home after his shift Brian had gone to the bar instead. 

One drink turned into two, and then three, and then the guy had walked in. 

(Rome had been on his mind that day, and maybe that’s really why Brian had gone out, but he wasn’t going to think about that any more than he absolutely had to. Today marked three years and a handful of weeks since Rome had been sentenced, and Brian’s more recent attempts to contact him once he got out had resulted in a recorded message telling him that the number had been disconnected, but he wasn’t thinking about that either.)

It was the shaved head that caught Brian’s attention at first, and then, as his eyes slid down the guy’s body, it was the way he moved through the room; like he owned it and everyone in it. 

If it would get him out of his head, Brian could stand to be owned for an hour or two. 

He’d waited until the guy’s gaze had wandered over him, and then Brian smiled at him. It was a 50/50 chance in this particular bar that he was into men, and even if he wasn’t, Brian was confident enough that he could avoid a potential fight if it came to that. But luck was with him, and the guy walked up to Brian with just the hint of a smirk on his lips. 

Brian swallowed the last of his drink and twisted slightly to set the empty glass down on the polished wood behind him. “I think I’m finished. Wanna come home with me?”

Dark eyebrows lifted up in surprise, and sure, it wasn’t Brian’s best line, but he wasn’t all that interested in beating around the bush tonight. 

“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

Brian shrugged. If it didn’t work on this one, then someone else would do just as well. 

The guy was studying him and not trying to hide it, and Brian’s curiosity roused itself enough to wonder what he was seeing to put that look on his face. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to matter: the guy’s lips quirked up and he nodded. “Alright.”

It was a short walk to Brian’s house, and to his relief his companion didn’t try and make conversation. When they reached his house Brian locked the door behind them and let himself be pinned to the door as the guy crowded him, one muscled thigh pushing between his own and a big hand in his hair.

Yeah, this was what he’d wanted tonight.

He was hard in his jeans and his mouth felt nicely bruised by the time they broke away from each other, and Brian took the opportunity to point out that hey, there was a perfectly good bed in the house, did he maybe want to fuck Brian in it, and in no time at all Brian was face down in his own sheets and trying not to make too much noise as slick fingers worked into him.

Later still, when he was well and truly fucked out, he’d thought the night had turned out quite well. His last thought was that hopefully the sound of someone breathing next to him wouldn’t be enough to stop him from getting a good night’s rest. 

When he woke up he was already sitting upright in bed and his phone was ringing, the abrupt noise of it far too shrill in the quiet of his bedroom. The phone was already in his hand.

‘Work’ read the display, and Brian tapped the green button before the phone could trill angrily at him again. He kept meaning to change the ringtone to something less awful, but hadn’t quite got around to it yet. “O’Conner,” he said, and tried to will himself to be as awake as he sounded.

The almost grey quality to the light coming in from the window meant it was very early in the morning, and definitely too early for someone to be calling him on his day off. 

“Good morning, Brian,” said Tanner, and Brian blinked at the strain he could so clearly hear in his sergeant’s voice. “I’m sorry about this - I know it’s your day off - but we’re in need of some assistance today. Can you come in?”

“Yeah, of course,” Brian said around a yawn, because it was Tanner asking and Brian liked Tanner. “I can be there in half an hour.”

“Good, good. Thank you, Brian. See you soon.”

“Yeah,” he said, and Tanner thanked him again and then hung up. Brian looked at the time on the phone and then scrubbed a hand over his face, grimacing. 

Too early. 

He got up and showered, and it was only when he stepped back into the bedroom that he realized the guy from last night was still there. He looked to be sleeping, his back to Brian, and Brian stood rooted to the floor in momentary indecision before continuing in and getting dressed. 

It wasn’t exactly polite to bring someone home, let them stay the night (however inadvertently), and then kick them out of bed at ridiculous o’clock in the morning, but if he woke up on his own then it wouldn’t be on Brian, would it?

He finished buttoning up his uniform and cast one last look at the bed; the guy had shifted, and the curve of a cheekbone was just barely visible in the grey light, but that was it. 

Oh well. Brian could always leave a note asking the guy to lock up when he left. 

It wasn’t like there was anything worth stealing in the house anyway. 

The irony of someone stealing anything from a cop’s house made him smile a little, and that tiny thread of amusement carried him through the drive to the station.

Weeks later, his body smarting from having been thrown into at least two cars and also possibly the ground - seriously, ow - he’d finally gotten his first face to face interaction with a major player in the underground racing scene. 

Toretto was doing a lot of shouting but that was fine with Brian, who was pretty pissed off himself at the fact that Toretto’s bruiser friend had got in a few good punches. Brian would be feeling those tomorrow. 

“Spilner, huh?” Toretto was saying, and then he raised his eyes up from the fake driver’s license to look at Brian and Brian was hit with the strangest sense of déjà vu - but in the next moment he had to shake it off, because Toretto’s expression had gone flat and hard, and Brian had work to do. “Sounds like the name of a serial killer,” Toretto added. “Don’t come around here again.”

“Man, that’s bullshit,” Brian said, and his mouth kept going before he could listen to the smarter side of himself, that part of him that Tanner had gone to such lengths to encourage. ”All I wanted was a sandwich." 

The second he said it Brian knew it was the wrong thing to say. If he’d had any chance of Toretto letting up on him before, then Brian had just lost it.

“You’re done,” Toretto said, and now he was very quiet. “Don’t make me say it again.”

And because Brian wasn’t a complete idiot, he didn’t. 

Harry hooked him up with the necessary NOS in between a hell of a lot of cowed grumbling, and a couple hours later Brian was at the race, inching his way through the crowd and trying to spot Toretto for another shot.

Brian let himself get drawn into a couple rounds of oneupmanship with some of the higher ups while he waited for Toretto to show (Hector Guglielmi and Edwin Atkins, Brian remembered from the files; they’d do as potential alternates if he failed with Toretto).

Someone in this crowd knew who was doing the hijackings, and Brian was determined to find out who. It was only a matter of time before they arrested the criminals. 

The sound of multiple high-performance engines coming closer put a stop to all the trash talk as Toretto and his gang showed up, and when the mass of bodies shifted enough for Brian to get a better look he saw Toretto up close and personal with a couple of girls. Ortiz, the woman the files had said was Toretto’s girlfriend, didn’t seem too happy about the arrangement. 

And that was putting it mildly. 

Ortiz started in on the girls before she turned on Toretto, which was just as well for Brian, because a guy who was trying to avoid an unpleasant scene was just what Brian needed to play off of right then.

The best part was that it worked; it was too easy to see Toretto trying to decide if he should put up a fight over Brian’s presence, but Brian hadn’t done anything that Toretto could object to, and anyway: what reasonable person would refuse what Brian was offering?

Toretto could be trusted to be very reasonable, as it turned out. “You’re in,” Toretto said, magnanimous in the face of the prize that was the Bureau’s Eclipse, and Brian carefully kept his satisfaction at a job well done off his face.

Much later, when he was reporting in at the safe house, he’d avoid mentioning just what a rush it had been, racing against Toretto. 

Bilkins would only have been furious, Brian would reason to himself, and Tanner would have been disappointed in that quiet way of his that cut through Brian worse than any knife. 

Bad enough he’d lost the car in such a spectacular fashion. 

Having to stand there in the crowd while Toretto laid out all his faults for everyone to hear was brutal, but Brian didn’t think anything could stop him from grinning until his face hurt. 

Punching the NOS had been incredible, better than the best sex he’d ever had, and when he’d finally managed to come to a stop he’d had to sit there for an endless moment, his hands shaking on the wheel, before he’d been able to get it together enough to drive back. 

The shaking had stopped, but now he couldn’t stop smiling.

Of course then the cops had shown up, and that really put a wrench in Brian’s plans for tonight of getting close to Toretto under the guise of ‘earning back his car’. 

He lost sight of Toretto somewhere in the chaos, and it wasn’t until he was making his own way back into the city proper that he realized the figure currently on the run from a squad car was Toretto himself. 

Brian let himself grin.

Things were looking up.

The worst part, the absolute worst part, was that even while he was leading the cops on a chase and causing cars to crash into things, and even while Brian was trying not to cause too much damage or, more importantly, kill anyone, and yet also make sure that they got away clean, the worst part was that Brian loved every second of it. 

It was exhilarating, and he hadn’t felt excitement like this since he’d been boosting cars with Rome back in the day to go joyriding. 

For the first time, Brian admitted to himself that this might be a little more dangerous than he’d previously thought, and it had absolutely nothing to do with all the normal dangers he faced as a cop every day. 

It was enough to kill any lingering sense of joy he felt, which was good, because that was when Toretto decided to speak up.

“You’re not who I was expecting.”

Brian huffed a laugh and darted a glance at him. “Yeah, well, I thought you might let me keep my car if I got into your good graces.”

“You mean my car,” Toretto said, mild as you please, but when Brian looked at him again to check his face he didn’t seem angry. He was, however, studying Brian again. “You drive like you’ve done this before.”

Brian looked at the road and then almost immediately back at Toretto. “Nah,” he said. “Just lucky I guess.”

“Yeah, and that’d be why Brian Earl Spilner has a two year juvie record for boosting cars, right?”

Huh. Toretto had done his homework. Brian was a little impressed. And the fact that Toretto had looked into him meant that he had made an impression. That could only be a good thing. 

“What do you want me to say, man? It’s not exactly something I advertise.” 

He looked over again to see Toretto shaking his head. There was something almost amused about the set of his mouth. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

And before Brian could even begin to work out how to respond to that there was a fucking gun pointing at him through the open window, and a shitload of motorcycles had moved to surround the car, and the freak brandishing the gun at him was ordering him to follow them. 

Toretto sighed. “It’s gonna be a long-ass night,” he said, and slumped back against the seat. 

Brian would have asked him what was happening, but the unknown guy was still pointing a gun at them, and he was getting more impatient by the second. 

And of course Brian didn’t have any weapons on him. Fuck. 

They pulled to a stop near some trucks, and then Toretto and some other guy (Johnny Tran, and why was that name familiar?) spent some time having a rather tense, semi-pleasant conversation while the freak with the gun stared rather intently at Brian. Brian stared back and refused to break first.

“What the hell was that?” he asked when the last motorcycle had disappeared from sight. 

But Toretto only shook his head, said, “It’s a long story. Let’s just get out of here.” 

And Brian was fine with that plan, really, except that that was when the fucking bikes showed up again and shot up the Eclipse before tearing off again. 

Brian stared at the bullet holes in the car as the sound of engines faded away in the cool night air, and it wasn’t until he heard Toretto shouting at him that he saw the flames licking at the front of the car, where the tanks of NOS were, and understood the danger. 

They’d picked themselves up off the ground, after, and Brian had done a quick visual assessment of them both to make sure there weren’t any injuries that needed to be treated. But he couldn’t see any impact points, and there wasn’t any blood that he could make out.

The fact that a car had just exploded in front of them didn’t seem to faze Toretto much, and Brian was having a hard time refraining from asking the obvious question. 

“What the hell just happened?” he asked when it became apparent that Toretto wasn’t going to volunteer anything, and he came to a stop right there in the middle of the road. 

Toretto went a few steps further before he turned around to look at Brian, and Brian brought his hands up in a well? sort of gesture and kept waiting.

Some serious shit had just gone down.

Toretto rubbed at his forehead with one hand. “It’s a long story,” he said, and yeah right: like hell Brian was going to settle for that. They’d blown up his car.

“I think you’ll find I’ve got time,” Brian said, because even if they called a cab right now it would be at least an hour to get back.

“Alright, alright, let’s just get out of here first,” Toretto said, and Brian narrowed his eyes at him in warning before starting down the pavement again.

Brian was watching for it, so he saw it when Toretto started glancing at him after they’d put a couple hundred yards between them and Little Saigon. His expression was on the edge of being sheepish; a far cry from both the confidence Brian had gotten used to seeing in surveillance photos and the harsh lines that had been present in Toretto’s mug shots. 

“I may have slept with his sister,” Toretto said. And then he added, “And a business deal went sour. That didn’t help.” 

Brian whistled, impressed despite himself. Looked like Johnny Tran could hold a grudge. “You don’t do anything by halves, huh? Shit, Dom.”

Toretto grimaced. “About that.” He stopped suddenly, and Brian came to a stop as well. “You really don’t remember me,” he said, bemused. 

“Uh.” What? “Should I?”

Toretto was moving towards him, and what had been a comfortable four feet of space between them was slowly shrinking down to half that, then even less, until Toretto was standing right in front of him. 

Brian fought the bizarre and sudden urge to lean forward.

“You didn’t just roll in from Arizona a couple weeks ago and start working at Harry’s,” Toretto said, and Brian wrenched his attention back up to Toretto’s eyes; a chill had washed over him despite the heat coming off of Toretto’s body. He could feel it through the leather jacket Toretto was wearing.

“What are you -“ talking about, he was going to say, but Toretto moved in another inch until they were breathing each other’s air, and huh, he was a little taller than Toretto when they were both upright - 

He blinked a couple times.

“Oh, shit,” he said, and his voice was uneven but there wasn’t anything he could do about that right now, because this was the guy he’d brought home weeks ago, right before he’d been recruited for this job, the guy that Brian had forgotten to see off before they fell asleep; the guy who’d made out with him for ages against his front door. 

“There we go,” Toretto said, and his voice was rich with satisfaction. “So, Brian, what are you really doing here?”

The worst part, the absolute worst part of this whole fucked up situation, was that the words on the tip of his tongue were I’m a cop and that was troubling on a whole bunch of levels that Brian couldn’t afford to think of right then. 

What he held on to was that Brian had been tapped for this job because he was good, not just because he knew his way around an engine; he was better than this. 

So, as mildly as he could, he said, ”You came home with me when you have a girlfriend?“ because that was at least one bit that Brian didn’t have mixed feelings about. ”That’s not cool, man. You should have said something." The touch of indignation in his voice was even real. Brian had never liked messing around with someone if they were already involved unless all parties knew about it up front.

Only it turned out that was the wrong thing to say because Toretto reared back and stared at him in disbelief. The movement put another couple inches between them, and it was exceedingly frustrating that Brian noticed that at all, and more so that he regretted it.

Jesus, O’Conner, get a hold of yourself. But it was like Toretto had flipped a switch in him and now it was all he could do to try not to remember that night a month ago. He hadn’t even been drunk enough for the memory to be hazy.

I should have said something?” Toretto sneered. ”You’re a cop!" 

And obviously Toretto was grasping at straws there, because he couldn’t possibly know that for sure, but something froze Brian’s mouth before he could speak to deny it: I’m not a cop, of course I’m not a cop, I’m from Arizona and I was renting a house but that fell through, and now I’m working at Harry’s and he lets me use a cot in the back, my name is Brian Earl Spilner…

But words wouldn’t come, and after a second Toretto took a step back and said, “Jesus Christ.”

Yeah. Pretty much.

Brian opened his mouth, only there really wasn’t anything to say, and maybe he really wasn’t better than this after all. 

He wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened but at some point they’d started walking again. 

After what seemed like hours but had probably been a lot shorter than that Brian remembered he had a cell phone. Turned out it was late but not nearly as late as he had originally thought, and all in all it had only been about 45 minutes since the race had started.

It felt like longer.

“This is a strange way of arresting someone,” Dom said, and Brian waited a couple moments for the rest of that sentence before realizing that that was all he was getting. 

He shook his head. ”I’m not arresting you. That’s not what this is.”

Dom had stopped on the sidewalk and when Brian looked back his dark eyes were as serious as Brian had ever seen them. “I did two years in Lompoc. I’m not ever going back.”

A muscle in Dom’s cheek was twitching from how hard he was clenching his teeth. Brian wanted to go over to him and smooth it out with his thumb, wanted to put his hands all over Dom, to kiss him again and pull his body in tight against his own.

“I know,” he said instead of doing any of those things. "I’ve read your file. Dom, I’m not going to arrest you for street racing. I’m not here for that.” 

Dom looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. “So tell me what are you here for if it’s not the racing.”

Brian snorted. “I’m undercover and you think I’m going to tell you why just because you’ve had your dick in me? I don’t think so. I don’t owe you anything. Let’s not pretend that you were anything more than a good time.”

He said it to remind himself more than anything because he did want to tell Dom what he was doing, what he was looking for, and that kind of thinking was dangerous. 

First off, Dom had a girlfriend and, secondly but probably more importantly, Dom was involved in criminal activity, minor though it may have been, and Brian was a cop. 

It would never work.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt when Dom - no, Toretto, Toretto - looked at him steadily and then started walking again.

“You’re a cop,” Toretto said over his shoulder. “Not much of a good time.”

That hurt too, and Brian let himself have a moment to feel it in the safety of Toretto’s turned back before he pushed it down and started moving.

The first unoccupied taxi they saw didn’t pull over for Toretto when he hailed it, despite its light being on, and the second one didn’t stop either. 

The third time one came by they looked at each other for a moment before Brian stepped forward to hail it while Toretto took a step back.

The driver’s eyes flicked uneasily to Toretto when he slid in beside Brian, but he nodded when Brian told him Toretto’s address and then didn’t try to make conversation, which was just fine with Brian. 

He almost sort of got it, had seen that kind of thing at the LAPD too, but that didn’t make it any less stupid. Brian wasn’t anything like scared of Toretto, but he’d grant that the shaved head, the leather jacket, and the sheer size of the man made him appear threatening. 

They pulled up in front of the house not long after and Toretto paid the driver. When Toretto had gotten out and Brian didn’t move to follow him out of the car Toretto ducked down to look at him for a long moment through the door he’d left ajar. 

Maybe he’d expected Brian to get out with him.

“I can drive you back,” Toretto said. “No point paying for a cab if you don’t have to.” 

Brian felt his mouth twitch. “What, you have another car stashed around somewhere?” he asked, and Toretto’s brow furrowed as if he’d forgotten that they’d escaped in Brian’s car and that the Mazda was somewhere else. 

“Besides,” Brian said, and nodded at the house. The blare of music and loud voices was clearly audible even from the street. “Sounds like there’s a party going on.”

“Yeah,” Toretto said, but he didn’t look back at the house. “There always is.” 

They stared at each other as Brian waited for Toretto to decide he’d had enough and go inside, but Toretto didn’t.

“We’ve been fighting,” Toretto said, and Brian blinked at the non-sequitur. “Letty and me. Last month, and now too. The last couple years, really, off and on. We take breaks to cool down sometimes.”

Brian thought back to the girls at the race and to Letty’s reaction. “It doesn’t seem like you’re on a break now.”

Toretto was still looking at him, the rich brown of his eyes warm and steady. “Do you want me to be?”

They went to Brian’s place.

If Brian hadn’t known that Dom already knew the truth about him he never would have done it, never would have broken cover like that; in every other situation he’d have brought someone to Harry’s back room and the cot there. Not that he’d ever thought he’d end up doing that while on assignment.

But Dom did know, and there wasn’t any point in pretending that Brian was anything other than Brian O’Conner right now. After the last couple of weeks it was refreshing to be himself. 

Once the taxi had dropped them off and they were standing in the driveway alone again Brian asked, “When did you know?”

Dom raised an eyebrow at him. “Today, after I pulled you off of Vince.”

It was easy to remember how up in his space Dom had gotten that afternoon. He must have remembered the same way that Brian had, if he hadn’t already figured it out from the license.

Brian rubbed at one of the places where Vince had managed to leave a bruise. “Your friend is an asshole,” he said without any real heat. 

Dom shrugged and didn’t seem too broken up about Brian’s declaration. “He’s in love with Mia. And you were flirting with her.”

Brian tried to stifle his smile at the possessive tone. “Jealous?”

“He’s always jealous.”

Brian was grinning now. “Not him. You.”

“Was I jealous that you were flirting with my sister? No.” When Brian still didn’t say anything Dom grudgingly said, “Maybe a little. Once I remembered you.”

“I could flirt with you.” He moved a little closer. 

Dom said, somewhat exasperated, “O’Conner, you’ve been flirting with me all night,” and Brian paused mid-step on his way to Dom, more thrown than he wanted to admit to at the sound of his real name coming out of Dom’s mouth. 

“What?” Dom said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Brian said. It was fine. 

Dom took a step toward him and when Brian didn’t move away he moved closer. There was barely a foot between them. “You look like you’re about to either run or hit me, and you don’t seem like the running type.”

And that was just too fucking funny. Brian had to laugh, and Dom was staring at him like he was confused but not concerned. Brian heard what he sounded like right now and it wasn’t nice at all, it was harsh and biting and hurt his throat, but Dom still wasn’t looking at him like he was crazy. “One day,” he said when he could breath easily again, “I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.”

Dom’s lips quirked. “Don’t think I won’t hold you to that. I don’t have to call you O’Conner,” he added.

“It’s not - I just wasn’t expecting it,” Brian said. Trying to recapture the playful mood they’d had just minutes before, he said, “So tell me more about how I’ve been flirting with you.”

Dom accepted the redirection without a blink. “You kept looking at me, before and after the race, and earlier at the Market, like you were waiting for me to do something.”

Brian let his hand wander up Dom’s arm and said, “Oh yeah? Like what?”

Dom just looked at him, his eyes glinting from the streetlights, and remained silent. 

He was using Brian’s own tactics against him. Bastard.

Brian really hadn’t been flirting with Dom - not consciously at least - but it was fun to think that he had. 

He put his other hand on Dom’s chest and nudged the leather aside, pressed his palm against the warm cloth covering the muscles there; felt Dom’s chest expand as he took a deep, shuddering breath. 

“Did you use up what little speed you had in the race or-” Brian flicked his thumb over Dom’s nipple and leaned forward to mouth at his neck, just under his ear. “-Or, ah, are you going to get this show on the road?” 

“I kinda like you like this,” Brian admitted. 

“We’re in public.”

Brian hummed against Dom’s neck. “Yup.” 

Dom chuckled, though it sounded strained. “Outside your house. Your neighbours will talk.”

Brian scraped his teeth lightly over Dom’s skin and felt the full-body shiver he tried to hide, then grinned. “I don’t know my neighbours,” he said, and pulled back to laugh at the affronted expression on Dom’s face. 

“You don’t know your neighbours? What kind of person doesn’t know their neighbours?”

“It hasn’t bothered me so far,” Brian said. He tilted his head and squinted at Dom. “You realize that you’ve just interrupted us to talk about my neighbours, of all things, who are most likely asleep by now.”

“We’re not having sex on your front lawn,” Dom replied. “What was it you said last time? ’I have a perfectly good bed’?”

Brian laughed and ducked his head a little. It was so weird to think about their first encounter now with the shiny new context of who Dom actually was. Brian still wasn’t sure how they’d gotten here, but he wasn’t about to complain. “Yeah, I did say that,” Brian said. 

Dom’s hand moved up Brian’s back in a slow caress. “So do you want to fuck me in it or what?”

Brian kept his face easy through long practice but he couldn’t control the sudden twitch in his fingers where they were pressed up against Dom’s chest, and Dom chuckled and said, “Yeah, you want that.”

And really, like Brian was going to argue with that assessment. Dom was a pretty smart guy.

Actually getting to the bed was a far more difficult prospect than it had been the last time. Brian’s memories of that night seemed a little off: he remembered being in the bar, being up against the door, and riling Dom up into fucking him hard and fast. There hadn’t been a whole lot of in-between, but maybe that was just the way it had felt at the time.

Now he kept getting distracted by all the skin on display when he stripped off Dom’s shirt, and long minutes would go by until he realized that they were simply necking like teenagers in his front hallway, Brian’s t-shirt rucked up but not yet all the way off and Dom’s own shirt and jacket strewn somewhere on the floor. 

They even still had their pants on, and for all his hurry when they’d been outside Dom didn’t seem too inclined to move them along any faster now that they were safely indoors and away from non-existent prying eyes. 

But that could have had more to do with how Brian kept kissing him every time he opened his mouth. Since they’d started up again Dom hadn’t refused him even a single time, and it was fucking heady the way Dom was letting Brian explore without a hint of resistance. 

He dropped a hand down to toy with the waistband of Dom’s pants and Dom pushed his hips forward and licked at Brian’s mouth; inhaled sharply when Brian curled his fingers around the hard shape of Dom’s cock through his jeans. One of Dom’s hands was in his hair, scratching lightly over his scalp, and Brian hit the ground harder than he’d expected, his knees smarting with the impact, and laughed at himself: he’d been so wrapped up in Dom that he’d forgotten they were in the foyer with the concrete floor and not in the living room or bedroom where there was carpet.

He got the belt undone and when he went for the zipper Dom bent at the waist and dragged Brian’s shirt off over his head. Dom’s eyes were dark and approving, and Brian preened a little, spread his legs and leaned back on his heels enough to make the picture even nicer. 

“You’re gorgeous,” Dom said, his voice low and serious, and for the first time in a while Brian felt himself flushing. There was something about the way that Dom spoke that just… got to him.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Brian said, and managed to get Dom’s underwear and pants around his knees on the second try, which wasn’t even that bad considering how much his hands wanted to shake. Dom’s thighs tightened even further under his hands when Brian really started in on his cock, the teasing licks and casual fondling of his balls gone in favour of tight, wet suction and hands that wandered with a purpose. 

He’d just gotten into a good rhythm when Dom’s hands tightened on his hair in warning, and Brian opened his eyes and let his mouth go slack. Dom was a wreck, which for him meant he was flushed and breathing hard, his abdominal muscles taut with strain, and Brian lifted a hand and smoothed his thumb across them while he waited for Dom to get his breath back. 

Waiting for Dom wasn’t enough to stop him from curling his tongue around Dom’s cock a few times though, and his reward was Dom’s hips stuttering forward before he caught himself and pulled away. 

Brian licked his lips and tilted his head back at Dom, who was now a good couple feet away from him, and stared at him. “Everything okay?” he asked after a long moment in which nothing happened.

Dom kicked his boots off and stepped out of his jeans, and Brian let himself be distracted by the sight of him standing so unashamedly naked and hard in Brian’s house. His ass and the strong lines of his back were another very nice image, and Brian almost missed the sound of Dom’s voice with how intently he was staring. 

Dom had turned around again, and his lip was curled up in mocking amusement as he repeated, “You coming?” and walked into Brian’s bedroom. 

Brian looked at the now empty room, said, “That was the plan,” and scrambled to his feet with the sound of Dom’s laughter in his ears.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, and Dom looked up at him from where he was slowly fisting his own cock. On Brian’s bed. Spread out and naked and just waiting for Brian to -

Somehow between the doorway and the bed he’d lost his shoes and his jeans, and then he was on Dom and shoving his hand aside so that Brian could jack him off instead and rub up against him, could push his dick against the hard lines of Dom’s hip and smear trails of wet all over his skin. 

“No sense of follow through,” Dom muttered, and rolled them over. Brian blinked up at him as Dom straddled his thighs and leaned forward, and Brian smiled and kissed him again because he could. 

“I do okay,” Brian said to defend himself, and Dom snorted and began to rummage in the drawer of the nightstand. 

“You’re lucky you’re pretty, is what you are,” he said, and wasn’t impressed when Brian batted his eyelashes at him. 

“I know, I’m too pretty,” Brian said, and even though he was smiling when he said it Dom stopped looking through the drawer and turned back to face him. 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” 

Brian shrugged. It was what it was. Dom wasn’t the first person to say so.

Dom moved so he was sitting on his heels where he was still perched over Brian’s thighs and studied him. “I love Vince,” he said out of the blue, and Brian lifted an eyebrow at him incredulously. “He’s like my brother; I’ve known him since the third grade. I would do anything for him.” 

Uh. This was an interesting time to bring that up. “Yeah, okay.”

“But watching you beat the crap out of him today and the fact that you didn’t back down after was hot. Maybe that says something about me; I don’t really care.” He curled his fingers around Brian’s dick and started to stroke. “You’re goddamn irresistible, sure, but that’s not why I’m doing this.”

Brian swallowed and tried not to buck his hips, though admittedly with Dom’s weight pinning him down there wasn’t very far he could go. “So, uh,” he said, and Dom rolled his eyes expansively.

“Christ, Brian, what is it going to take for you to get on with it already?”

“Rain check?” Brian asked, and Dom honest to god growled at him, which was hilarious. Brian patted Dom on the ass to get him to lift up a bit and then encouraged him to move up the bed a little, and that worked out very well for both of them when Brian got his mouth around Dom’s cock again. He ran his hands up and down Dom’s sides and over his ass, and then ran his fingers down the cleft and teased there for a while, making sure never to let Dom get to the edge of orgasm and pulling back hurriedly when he forgot. 

Dom’s swearing intensified when Brian finally pushed in just the very tip of one dry finger, and then Dom’s body shifted in an odd way. Brian was about to pull off and ask about it when something plastic hit him, one thing and then another almost immediately, and Brian grinned as much as he could with his lips stretched tight around Dom’s cock. 

He found a sweet rhythm and lost himself in the feel of Dom, adding another couple fingers when he felt like it and making Dom thrust into his throat with surprise. Dom’s legs were shaking with effort when Brian finally took pity on him and pulled away for real, pushing him over onto his back and sliding into him in one glorious, smooth glide. 

He couldn’t stop kissing him, not even when Dom was shuddering and pulsing wetly onto his stomach, not even when he went over the edge himself and had to shut his eyes tight against how good it felt. 

He was wrung out after, no energy to move much less try to clean them up, and after the first failed attempt of getting out of bed Dom snorted and pulled him closer. They managed to wipe the worst of the mess off with the sheet, and Brian fell asleep with Dom’s arm around him.

“It’s Toretto, Brian, it’s always been Toretto.”

They’d been… not exactly hiding it, but not being obvious about it either. Brian was still looking for the hijackers when he wasn’t losing himself in Dom, and Dom still had a sister and a best friend that were wary of Brian, and an ex-girlfriend (Ex? Were they? Brian had never managed to find that out for sure) that didn’t like him much at all, and somewhere in all of the time he’d spent with Dom and his team another truck had been hit. 

Tanner was convinced it was Dom, and Bilkins was breathing down Brian’s neck about his activities and lack of results, but neither of them seemed to have guessed about Brian’s - well, they hadn’t guessed about Dom and Brian wasn’t volunteering the information. 

Not quite yet. 

Just because he hadn’t had any leads yet didn’t mean it was Dom. 

It didn’t.

One night, before the most recent truck had been hit and Tanner’s words were echoing in Brian’s head, Brian and Dom had had a sleepy conversation.

Dom had wanted to know how long Brian was going to be around, and Brian had shrugged, said he wasn’t sure. Probably not that much longer, he’d said, because in cases like these the criminals always wanted one more score, one more hit, and eventually the situation got the better of them and they went down.

He’d only meant that he wouldn’t be undercover anymore once it happened. But Dom went quiet in a way that set off alarm bells in Brian’s mind, and he’d kissed him as reassuringly as he knew how, to say that he was going to stick around after. He’d thought - he’d thought a lot of things.

Of course in hindsight they’d been having two separate conversations. 

It wasn’t Hector, and it wasn’t even Johnny fucking Tran, and no one else had the skills to pull off something like this. 

And it wasn’t anyone outside of the scene. 

“You son of a bitch,” he said, and his voice didn’t shake. 

Dom looked up at him, surprised; the bastard had the gall to actually be surprised right now, Jesus fuck, as soon as Brian could feel his body again he was going to be sick. 

“What-“

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out? What, did you think I was that shit at my job? Jesus, Toretto, you fucking played me.”

They were in the garage. The rest of Dom’s entourage had cleared out already, and it was just the two of them now in this place where Brian had only had pleasant memories. 

Dom was quiet for long moment, and to Brian’s horror he found that he was waiting for Dom to deny it, to claim ignorance over the terrible things Brian was saying, for it all to be a mistake. 

But Dom only looked at Brian, and then said, “I didn’t play you.”

Fuck. 

It was real.

“You knew,” Brian said. “You knew what I was looking for and you did this anyway.”

He didn’t know what he meant, wasn’t sure which ‘this’ hurt more: that Dom had hijacked the trucks at all was stupid, that Dom had done it in such a reckless manner was beyond idiotic, but that Dom had started up with Brian all the while knowing that he was a cop, that he kept it up even when he knew that Brian felt - 

He stared at Dom and couldn’t find words.

Tanner said: Nothing, really? 

Bilkins said: What kind of stupid do you think I am, O’Conner?

Brian said nothing.

But the case was eventually shelved. ‘Insufficient evidence.’ What a joke. 

Miami was about as far away from LA as he could get without having to brave the cold northern regions, so Miami was where he stayed. 

He came home one day to an unfamiliar Dodge sitting in his driveway, and even though he hadn’t been a cop recently he hadn’t lost the instincts. 

He got the drop on the first guy and used him as a shield for the second, only something was off about the whole situation: the first guy wasn’t struggling in Brian’s hold, the second hadn’t moved from his position against the wall, and he couldn’t see any weapons. 

Then the guy in Brian’s arms said, “What the fuck, Bri, way to roll out the welcome mat,” and it was Rome’s voice.

What the fuck? He let go and stumbled back a step, trying to wrap his head around what was going on here.

“Rome?” Brian almost wanted to wince at how stunned he sounded, but in the next moment Rome was hugging him, a proper hug, and Brian closed his eyes and got his arms around Rome too.

“Yeah, O’Conner, it’s me. I was mad at you for a long time, but I’m over it now, okay? We’re good.”

“What are you-“

Rome hit him on the arm and then let go, trying to put some distance between them the way he always used to after they’d gotten emotional, and talked over Brian. “Well, about that-“

“-even doing here, how did you-“

“-you see, actually, your boy found me, and we talked, and then-“

“-find me, I’m in fucking Florida, wait what, what boy?”

Rome blinked at him and waved a hand. “You know, your boy.” 

And, huh, the second guy was Dom. 

Brian sat down, only there wasn’t a chair behind him and he ended up sitting on the floor, but that was okay, he was allowed to be a little shocked. 

Rome said, “You got any food in here? I’m starving.”

Rome had turned his nose up at the sandwich of dubious origins in Brian’s fridge, and after having looked between Brian and Dom he’d announced that he was going to get some real food, because Brian obviously didn’t know how to entertain guests. 

Brian had watched him go, and then there wasn’t anything else to distract him from Dom.

He wasn’t going to be first one to say something; he wasn’t. 

Dom said, “I looked for you,” and Brian cleared his throat because he didn’t think he could breathe otherwise. 

“Looks like you found me,” Brian said as flippantly as he could manage, which considering that he’d literally fallen to the floor in shock over seeing Dom was not actually as nonchalant as he might have hoped. “What are you doing here?”

Dom took a step toward him and then stopped when Brian tensed up. “I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “I.” 

Brian waited, but Dom had stopped talking and was looking at him beseechingly. 

Brian shifted on the chair he’d been trying to slouch on carelessly, but for some reason it wasn’t working out. It was a pretty uncomfortable chair, actually, and Brian wasn’t sure why he’d bought it. 

The front door opened and Rome poked his head in. “Oh, for… Dominic, you are such a fool. Brian, he’s in love with you. Okay? Y’all good now? Can I finally leave you to it?”

“Thank you, Roman,” Dom sighed. “Now go away.”

“So, uh,” Brian said once the door had closed. “You love me?”

“I’d have got to it eventually,” Dom muttered. He raised his voice. “But yes. Can I-”

“Yeah,” Brian said, and stood up. 

“You didn’t hear what I was going to say,” Dom said, smiling. It had been a long time since Brian had seen that.

“Doesn’t matter,” Brian said, and grinned. “The answer is yes.”

Notes:

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