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jedibuttercupPG-13; Fast & Furious 6; 2600 words. A Dom/Brian cut scene in the Metaphysical Gravity 'verse, with SPOILERS for F7.
For all Mia's assurances-- and the evidence of his own experience, in hindsight-- there's still a layer of self-defense in not ever having actually said the words.
Title: Our Story Is Too True To Make Amends
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The world belongs to Justin Lin, Vin Diesel, et. al. The words are mine.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Set during Fast & Furious 6; spoilers for Furious Seven
Summary: For all Mia's assurances-- and the evidence of his own experience, in hindsight-- there's still a layer of self-defense in not ever having actually said the words. 2600 words.
Notes: Finally, more in the Metaphysical Gravity 'verse. Nontraditional romantic dynamics; references to flashbacks featured in Furious Seven. Title's a line from the poem "Where to Begin" by A.J. Odasso, in the Lost Books collection.
Brian's missed Dom more than a little since Jack was born.
He knows that's ridiculous. Dom had told him things would change, and under the circumstances he would have been more surprised if they hadn't. Adding an infant to a household means more time spent on midnight feedings, changing diapers, and pampering the mother of his child than out racing or sharing more than the occasional beer over dinner with the baby's uncle. Dom dotes on Jack-- and it does Brian's heart good to watch Dom with him-- but he and Elena had their own place on the island. Which was just as it should be.
The thing is-- Brian's always had it in the back of his mind that this wouldn't last forever. This place, this life; he's not even sure what he means by that, just that he's never got over that feeling of disconnect with their fugitive lifestyle. When Jack's older, or when they have to move on, or... somehow, some way, he's always thought they'll finally make their way back home. There's an unreality to their life in the Canaries, this golden existence in the flower-covered house with the red shutters and salt spray scenting the air, that leaves him pining for smog and neon lights and streets that were never really his to begin with. Except maybe for those few heady weeks when he'd answered to the name Brian Spilner.
But to have it come to an end like this. He tips back another swallow of beer, then looks up from the file Dom had brought to meet his brother-in-law's pensive gaze.
Mia had gone back inside a while ago to nurse Jack; it's just the two of them outside now in the wicker chairs they'd set up for their barbeque picnic. The sun's getting low in the sky, almost touching the horizon; there's a touch of chill in the breeze raising the fine hairs on his forearms, but Brian hardly feels it. In his mind, he's standing guard over a funeral in LA, stuck on the sidelines with a radio in his ear while the woman he still regrets betraying buries the woman who might as well have been her sister. While the man he doesn't regret derailing his career for undoubtedly looks on from somewhere nearby.
Dom's been quiet ever since Mia gave them her blessing to go. But Brian can see the concern still in his eyes. He wants Brian to stay home with Mia. But that was never going to happen.
He swallows, and tries to find some place to open the conversation. They're better at actions than words, but some things have to be said. Mia's the one who taught him that.
"You know, we never talked about it."
Dom doesn't pretend not to understand. "Those weeks in LA, after Letty came back from the DR."
"Yeah." Brian clears his throat, picking at the label of his Dorada.
Dom tilts his head, considering that, then shrugs. "Didn't really want to hear it, any more than you wanted to tell it. You said she wanted me to come home, and nothing else seemed to matter. But I guess it does matter, now. Did she come to you? Or did you go to her?"
Brian huffs a laugh at that. It's not that he didn't want to tell. Rough as thinking about those days is for him too, he wouldn't have minded sharing those memories. But he's never wanted to cause Dom more pain. "Neither, actually. I was supposed to be on leave when she first got back; I'd just come up from a long undercover assignment. But somehow she'd run across some part of Braga's network and realized how valuable that information would be to the right ears. She was at the local FBI office the one day during my leave I'd come in to do some paperwork. Because it just so happened that office was running the investigation into Braga's cartel."
The sight of her standing at the front desk had frozen him in his tracks, on his way out the door. She'd been maybe a little nervous, he'd thought; cast somehow smaller by a slight inward tuck of her shoulders and a tendency to look away from the agent she was talking to. If he hadn't already been struck to the quick by her mere presence, the sight of her acting so un-Letty-like would have done it. But then she'd looked up and spotted him at the back of the room; and she'd been her familiar self again in the time it had taken to clench a fist.
He scrubs a hand over his face now, remembering the surge of anger in her expression, the way she'd narrowed her eyes and turned back to Trinh with crackling self-assurance in every line of her bearing. Not long after that, he'd found himself reinstated, read in on the Braga investigation, and assigned as her handler. Whatever Letty's motivation had been, it hadn't been long before they'd both torn themselves open on the sharp edges of that enforced partnership; what they'd ended up with after the inevitable shouting match, he's never quite been sure how to quantify. More than an asset or an ally, not exactly a friend. But he'd never in a million years have dared to call her sis.
He can still hear the way her voice shook ever so slightly when she'd called to report that her scheme had worked; that she was in.
Dom snorts, his expression rueful. "Used to say I didn't believe in fate. But what are the odds?"
Brian's voice is thick with remembered grief as he replies. "Yeah, exactly. She said the same thing to me, once. Bullied the story of the last five years out of me, gave me a lot of shit for it. And never told me a damn thing she didn't have to, never mind any of the other agents. She was worried from the start about there being a mole." He reaches out to trace his fingertips over the three-quarter black and white profile; she doesn't look happy. But she does look alive: impossibly, unbelievably.
"That's why you were still looking for Park, the day I found him," Dom nods. "I'd wondered."
"I should never have sent her in there without backup, or at least more information. We'd already lost two CIs to Braga's guys; I should have known better." He shakes his head, blinking the welling warmth out of his eyes. He knows his loss is nothing compared to Dom's or Mia's; but it gets to him every time, thinking about those brief weeks he and Letty had got to know each other without the Torettos around as buffer, and how brutally her life had been cut short because he hadn't done enough to protect her. Tough as she was, he'd been the one with the badge, and the tech, and the guns; she'd been the one taking all the risks.
"A mole, huh." Dom looks down, a line forming between his brows as he thinks. "That coffin wasn't empty."
"No." Brian shakes his head. "I'll have to, I dunno. Not my job anymore. But if Letty's alive... maybe I'll drop an anonymous tip. The woman we buried; either way, her family deserves to know what happened to her."
"Never quite gonna leave the whole cop thing behind, are you." It's more a statement than a question.
"You can take the police out of the officer; but not the officer out of the cop," Brian observes with a crooked smile. "Just turns out, I care about family more."
"Lucky for us," Dom replies, then frowns more deeply, glancing up to meet Brian's eyes again. His gaze is focused and sharp, more so than it's been this entire conversation. "Lucky for Letty. How did she know?"
"Know what?"
"Last she saw of LA, Vince was being life-flighted off the side of the road, and I was in no mood to talk; I just wanted her safe. Mia was the one who told her the details, later, and she was still pretty pissed at you then. So why would Letty want your help?"
Brian swallows; he'd never considered that question, but yeah, it does seem kind of strange.
Provided you're missing one particular piece of data. He hadn't yet admitted it to himself then, but in retrospect, she must've known exactly what she was implying.
Did she ever have that conversation with Dom? Or did Mia confront him, too? Brian shifts in his chair, uncomfortable at that thought. For all Mia's assurances-- and the evidence of his own experience, in hindsight-- there's still a layer of self-defense in not ever having actually said the words. The way he feels-- it just isn't something guys admit to, where they're from. The idea of throwing it all out there and getting burned for it has more power to make his gut quake than the entirety of that vault chase in Rio, constantly skating a hair's breadth from disaster, or clasping Mia's hand in the delivery room, waiting for their son to be born.
"Because she knew exactly how much we had in common," he admits roughly, not breaking away from Dom's gaze.
The silence drags on for a minute, as Brian stares into Dom's eyes, watching Dom stare back; the tension in the air between them is almost a living thing. He sees the exact moment the scale tips, when Dom realizes what message Brian is trying to give him; he flinches as though he's been jabbed with something sharp, and dark eyes widen in something not quite rejection-- but not quite reciprocation, either.
"Brian...." he rumbles warningly, his voice gone even deeper than usual, like honey poured over gravel.
"I, uh... didn't actually say anything," Brian hurries to fill the gap forming between them with words. Having gone so far, he can't look away now; call it masochism, he wants to see the punch coming, if it comes. "But according to Mia, I'm kind of obvious about it. Dramatic gestures, 'til death do us part, the whole nine yards. Says it's a good thing her ego doesn't need as much tending as yours."
Dom sucks in a breath, not pretending to misunderstand that, either. "Mia knows?" he says, an unexpected note of surprise in his voice; and something about the tight lines around his eyes....
It's Brian's turn to take a sharp breath, abruptly recognizing the mirror of his own apprehension. Of Dom holding something back. And with that internal snap of realignment, the fear currently turning his guts to water transmutes abruptly into adrenaline, sending his heart thundering in his chest.
It's not... desire. Not the way he usually thinks of it; the punch of heat in his groin, the electric curl up his spine, the urge to lose himself in his wife's body, to coax those helpless, pleasured cries from her mouth. That's maybe been the weirdest part of all this, for him; part of the reason he fought admitting it for so long. He doesn't want to fuck Dom. He doesn't want Dom to fuck him. It would have been simpler if he had. But being this close to him. Tearing down the walls between them. Being, as Mia once put it, breathless and intense in his company. He's never experienced anything else like it, not even in his lifelong friendship with Rome, though their most reckless days just after juvie might come close.
He'd scour the globe to give Mia anything she asked for; is doing his best to build a family with her, because that's what she wants, what she deserves. But for Dom, he'd burn the whole world down to its foundations.
The man he most wants to be is the man he sees reflected in Dom's eyes, in those moments. And if that's not what being in love is, then hundreds of years of romantic literature have got it all wrong.
So, yeah. He's a little fucked up, and he knows it. He's in love with both his wife and her brother, and pretty damn lucky that his wife not only figured it out before him, but is okay with it, too. But he's starting to finally believe Mia was also right about how Dom feels; and he's not actually sure how he feels about that. Particularly since Dom doesn't seem very happy about it.
Their chairs are maybe a foot apart; his kicked-out feet bracketing one of Dom's, the kind of unselfconscious trespass of personal space that's marked their friendship since the beginning. When Brian straightens in his chair and drops his bottle on the little round table, then leans forward, he barely has to reach to drop his hand on Dom's thigh just above the knee.
"Yeah," he says, quietly. "She knows."
A faint tremor goes through the muscle under his fingers, though not a flicker of it crosses Dom's face. The lines around his eyes only seem to deepen, which doesn't reassure Brian at all.
Silence stretches; Brian doesn't move, ingrained cop instincts telling him to wait out Dom's answer, and Dom searching his face as he grapples with some internal decision.
When he finally speaks, it's not at all what Brian was expecting.
"I married her," he says, reaching for the silver cross necklace he's worn every day since Brian took him off that bus. The same way Letty had worn it, until she'd hung it from the rearview in the Charger. "In the Dominican Republic. Letty. With the priest, the white dress, candles everywhere. The works. She swore to me that day that I'd never be alone again. And then the heat came down on us... and I left her."
Nausea flips like a landed fish in Brian's stomach, and he draws his hand back as though it had been scalded. "God. Dom. Why didn't you... I'm so sorry."
Letty had never breathed a word; though in retrospect, he really can't blame her. And he should have known better than to say anything, he sees now, even without that detail; what a shitty, insensitive thing to do.
To his surprise, though, Dom's hand flashes out to grab his the moment he tries to pull away, turning it so they're clasped wrist to wrist. Then his dark eyes soften further, a last barrier breaking.
"Mia doesn't know. Or anyone else. Even Elena only knows that it happened, not the details. I didn't want sympathy, or pity; for a long time, all I wanted was revenge. But the thing is, Brian... Letty may not have been there these last few years, but she didn't break that promise, either. Not like I did. When she roped you in, she knew what she was doing."
Brian's breath catches; and three words from the desert where they'd captured Braga, as unexpected then as Dom's admission now, return to him. "Ain't running anymore," he says.
One corner of Dom's mouth tucks in, like the ghost of a smile. "Running ain't freedom," he replies.
"We're going to get her back, Dom." His first reaction to that photo had been rejection; denial, and pain at the reminder. It hurts no less now, but the stakes have just been raised.
Dom's grip tightens on Brian's arm; then he lets go and sits back in his chair. Dusk has fallen, but Brian can still see the warmth in his expression. "I know."
Message received. Letty comes first, and then....
Brian's imagination fails at that ellipsis. But for the first time since they settled on the island, he feels whole.
(x-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
quarter_mile and at AO3)
For all Mia's assurances-- and the evidence of his own experience, in hindsight-- there's still a layer of self-defense in not ever having actually said the words.
Title: Our Story Is Too True To Make Amends
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The world belongs to Justin Lin, Vin Diesel, et. al. The words are mine.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Set during Fast & Furious 6; spoilers for Furious Seven
Summary: For all Mia's assurances-- and the evidence of his own experience, in hindsight-- there's still a layer of self-defense in not ever having actually said the words. 2600 words.
Notes: Finally, more in the Metaphysical Gravity 'verse. Nontraditional romantic dynamics; references to flashbacks featured in Furious Seven. Title's a line from the poem "Where to Begin" by A.J. Odasso, in the Lost Books collection.
Brian's missed Dom more than a little since Jack was born.
He knows that's ridiculous. Dom had told him things would change, and under the circumstances he would have been more surprised if they hadn't. Adding an infant to a household means more time spent on midnight feedings, changing diapers, and pampering the mother of his child than out racing or sharing more than the occasional beer over dinner with the baby's uncle. Dom dotes on Jack-- and it does Brian's heart good to watch Dom with him-- but he and Elena had their own place on the island. Which was just as it should be.
The thing is-- Brian's always had it in the back of his mind that this wouldn't last forever. This place, this life; he's not even sure what he means by that, just that he's never got over that feeling of disconnect with their fugitive lifestyle. When Jack's older, or when they have to move on, or... somehow, some way, he's always thought they'll finally make their way back home. There's an unreality to their life in the Canaries, this golden existence in the flower-covered house with the red shutters and salt spray scenting the air, that leaves him pining for smog and neon lights and streets that were never really his to begin with. Except maybe for those few heady weeks when he'd answered to the name Brian Spilner.
But to have it come to an end like this. He tips back another swallow of beer, then looks up from the file Dom had brought to meet his brother-in-law's pensive gaze.
Mia had gone back inside a while ago to nurse Jack; it's just the two of them outside now in the wicker chairs they'd set up for their barbeque picnic. The sun's getting low in the sky, almost touching the horizon; there's a touch of chill in the breeze raising the fine hairs on his forearms, but Brian hardly feels it. In his mind, he's standing guard over a funeral in LA, stuck on the sidelines with a radio in his ear while the woman he still regrets betraying buries the woman who might as well have been her sister. While the man he doesn't regret derailing his career for undoubtedly looks on from somewhere nearby.
Dom's been quiet ever since Mia gave them her blessing to go. But Brian can see the concern still in his eyes. He wants Brian to stay home with Mia. But that was never going to happen.
He swallows, and tries to find some place to open the conversation. They're better at actions than words, but some things have to be said. Mia's the one who taught him that.
"You know, we never talked about it."
Dom doesn't pretend not to understand. "Those weeks in LA, after Letty came back from the DR."
"Yeah." Brian clears his throat, picking at the label of his Dorada.
Dom tilts his head, considering that, then shrugs. "Didn't really want to hear it, any more than you wanted to tell it. You said she wanted me to come home, and nothing else seemed to matter. But I guess it does matter, now. Did she come to you? Or did you go to her?"
Brian huffs a laugh at that. It's not that he didn't want to tell. Rough as thinking about those days is for him too, he wouldn't have minded sharing those memories. But he's never wanted to cause Dom more pain. "Neither, actually. I was supposed to be on leave when she first got back; I'd just come up from a long undercover assignment. But somehow she'd run across some part of Braga's network and realized how valuable that information would be to the right ears. She was at the local FBI office the one day during my leave I'd come in to do some paperwork. Because it just so happened that office was running the investigation into Braga's cartel."
The sight of her standing at the front desk had frozen him in his tracks, on his way out the door. She'd been maybe a little nervous, he'd thought; cast somehow smaller by a slight inward tuck of her shoulders and a tendency to look away from the agent she was talking to. If he hadn't already been struck to the quick by her mere presence, the sight of her acting so un-Letty-like would have done it. But then she'd looked up and spotted him at the back of the room; and she'd been her familiar self again in the time it had taken to clench a fist.
He scrubs a hand over his face now, remembering the surge of anger in her expression, the way she'd narrowed her eyes and turned back to Trinh with crackling self-assurance in every line of her bearing. Not long after that, he'd found himself reinstated, read in on the Braga investigation, and assigned as her handler. Whatever Letty's motivation had been, it hadn't been long before they'd both torn themselves open on the sharp edges of that enforced partnership; what they'd ended up with after the inevitable shouting match, he's never quite been sure how to quantify. More than an asset or an ally, not exactly a friend. But he'd never in a million years have dared to call her sis.
He can still hear the way her voice shook ever so slightly when she'd called to report that her scheme had worked; that she was in.
Dom snorts, his expression rueful. "Used to say I didn't believe in fate. But what are the odds?"
Brian's voice is thick with remembered grief as he replies. "Yeah, exactly. She said the same thing to me, once. Bullied the story of the last five years out of me, gave me a lot of shit for it. And never told me a damn thing she didn't have to, never mind any of the other agents. She was worried from the start about there being a mole." He reaches out to trace his fingertips over the three-quarter black and white profile; she doesn't look happy. But she does look alive: impossibly, unbelievably.
"That's why you were still looking for Park, the day I found him," Dom nods. "I'd wondered."
"I should never have sent her in there without backup, or at least more information. We'd already lost two CIs to Braga's guys; I should have known better." He shakes his head, blinking the welling warmth out of his eyes. He knows his loss is nothing compared to Dom's or Mia's; but it gets to him every time, thinking about those brief weeks he and Letty had got to know each other without the Torettos around as buffer, and how brutally her life had been cut short because he hadn't done enough to protect her. Tough as she was, he'd been the one with the badge, and the tech, and the guns; she'd been the one taking all the risks.
"A mole, huh." Dom looks down, a line forming between his brows as he thinks. "That coffin wasn't empty."
"No." Brian shakes his head. "I'll have to, I dunno. Not my job anymore. But if Letty's alive... maybe I'll drop an anonymous tip. The woman we buried; either way, her family deserves to know what happened to her."
"Never quite gonna leave the whole cop thing behind, are you." It's more a statement than a question.
"You can take the police out of the officer; but not the officer out of the cop," Brian observes with a crooked smile. "Just turns out, I care about family more."
"Lucky for us," Dom replies, then frowns more deeply, glancing up to meet Brian's eyes again. His gaze is focused and sharp, more so than it's been this entire conversation. "Lucky for Letty. How did she know?"
"Know what?"
"Last she saw of LA, Vince was being life-flighted off the side of the road, and I was in no mood to talk; I just wanted her safe. Mia was the one who told her the details, later, and she was still pretty pissed at you then. So why would Letty want your help?"
Brian swallows; he'd never considered that question, but yeah, it does seem kind of strange.
Provided you're missing one particular piece of data. He hadn't yet admitted it to himself then, but in retrospect, she must've known exactly what she was implying.
Did she ever have that conversation with Dom? Or did Mia confront him, too? Brian shifts in his chair, uncomfortable at that thought. For all Mia's assurances-- and the evidence of his own experience, in hindsight-- there's still a layer of self-defense in not ever having actually said the words. The way he feels-- it just isn't something guys admit to, where they're from. The idea of throwing it all out there and getting burned for it has more power to make his gut quake than the entirety of that vault chase in Rio, constantly skating a hair's breadth from disaster, or clasping Mia's hand in the delivery room, waiting for their son to be born.
"Because she knew exactly how much we had in common," he admits roughly, not breaking away from Dom's gaze.
The silence drags on for a minute, as Brian stares into Dom's eyes, watching Dom stare back; the tension in the air between them is almost a living thing. He sees the exact moment the scale tips, when Dom realizes what message Brian is trying to give him; he flinches as though he's been jabbed with something sharp, and dark eyes widen in something not quite rejection-- but not quite reciprocation, either.
"Brian...." he rumbles warningly, his voice gone even deeper than usual, like honey poured over gravel.
"I, uh... didn't actually say anything," Brian hurries to fill the gap forming between them with words. Having gone so far, he can't look away now; call it masochism, he wants to see the punch coming, if it comes. "But according to Mia, I'm kind of obvious about it. Dramatic gestures, 'til death do us part, the whole nine yards. Says it's a good thing her ego doesn't need as much tending as yours."
Dom sucks in a breath, not pretending to misunderstand that, either. "Mia knows?" he says, an unexpected note of surprise in his voice; and something about the tight lines around his eyes....
It's Brian's turn to take a sharp breath, abruptly recognizing the mirror of his own apprehension. Of Dom holding something back. And with that internal snap of realignment, the fear currently turning his guts to water transmutes abruptly into adrenaline, sending his heart thundering in his chest.
It's not... desire. Not the way he usually thinks of it; the punch of heat in his groin, the electric curl up his spine, the urge to lose himself in his wife's body, to coax those helpless, pleasured cries from her mouth. That's maybe been the weirdest part of all this, for him; part of the reason he fought admitting it for so long. He doesn't want to fuck Dom. He doesn't want Dom to fuck him. It would have been simpler if he had. But being this close to him. Tearing down the walls between them. Being, as Mia once put it, breathless and intense in his company. He's never experienced anything else like it, not even in his lifelong friendship with Rome, though their most reckless days just after juvie might come close.
He'd scour the globe to give Mia anything she asked for; is doing his best to build a family with her, because that's what she wants, what she deserves. But for Dom, he'd burn the whole world down to its foundations.
The man he most wants to be is the man he sees reflected in Dom's eyes, in those moments. And if that's not what being in love is, then hundreds of years of romantic literature have got it all wrong.
So, yeah. He's a little fucked up, and he knows it. He's in love with both his wife and her brother, and pretty damn lucky that his wife not only figured it out before him, but is okay with it, too. But he's starting to finally believe Mia was also right about how Dom feels; and he's not actually sure how he feels about that. Particularly since Dom doesn't seem very happy about it.
Their chairs are maybe a foot apart; his kicked-out feet bracketing one of Dom's, the kind of unselfconscious trespass of personal space that's marked their friendship since the beginning. When Brian straightens in his chair and drops his bottle on the little round table, then leans forward, he barely has to reach to drop his hand on Dom's thigh just above the knee.
"Yeah," he says, quietly. "She knows."
A faint tremor goes through the muscle under his fingers, though not a flicker of it crosses Dom's face. The lines around his eyes only seem to deepen, which doesn't reassure Brian at all.
Silence stretches; Brian doesn't move, ingrained cop instincts telling him to wait out Dom's answer, and Dom searching his face as he grapples with some internal decision.
When he finally speaks, it's not at all what Brian was expecting.
"I married her," he says, reaching for the silver cross necklace he's worn every day since Brian took him off that bus. The same way Letty had worn it, until she'd hung it from the rearview in the Charger. "In the Dominican Republic. Letty. With the priest, the white dress, candles everywhere. The works. She swore to me that day that I'd never be alone again. And then the heat came down on us... and I left her."
Nausea flips like a landed fish in Brian's stomach, and he draws his hand back as though it had been scalded. "God. Dom. Why didn't you... I'm so sorry."
Letty had never breathed a word; though in retrospect, he really can't blame her. And he should have known better than to say anything, he sees now, even without that detail; what a shitty, insensitive thing to do.
To his surprise, though, Dom's hand flashes out to grab his the moment he tries to pull away, turning it so they're clasped wrist to wrist. Then his dark eyes soften further, a last barrier breaking.
"Mia doesn't know. Or anyone else. Even Elena only knows that it happened, not the details. I didn't want sympathy, or pity; for a long time, all I wanted was revenge. But the thing is, Brian... Letty may not have been there these last few years, but she didn't break that promise, either. Not like I did. When she roped you in, she knew what she was doing."
Brian's breath catches; and three words from the desert where they'd captured Braga, as unexpected then as Dom's admission now, return to him. "Ain't running anymore," he says.
One corner of Dom's mouth tucks in, like the ghost of a smile. "Running ain't freedom," he replies.
"We're going to get her back, Dom." His first reaction to that photo had been rejection; denial, and pain at the reminder. It hurts no less now, but the stakes have just been raised.
Dom's grip tightens on Brian's arm; then he lets go and sits back in his chair. Dusk has fallen, but Brian can still see the warmth in his expression. "I know."
Message received. Letty comes first, and then....
Brian's imagination fails at that ellipsis. But for the first time since they settled on the island, he feels whole.
(x-posted to
quarter_mile and at AO3)
