jedibuttercup

Title: Repeating the Miracle
Author: jedibuttercup
Fandom: Fast Five / Fast & the Furious Movies
Rating: M; Brian/Dom
Warnings/Notes: For the 2023 iddyiddybangbang. Indulging myself all over the place again with my Mutants AU 'verse, because what else is this challenge for? Set during Fast Five, but includes a few pieces of information revealed later in the series, particularly The Fast Saga and Fast X, because they just fit in so well with where this universe is heading. Divider image is of two sets of knucklebones (tali) illustrating the title.

Summary: "Close your eyes, Dom, and feel it," Brian urged him. "You know what we need to do. So ask yourself-- are we still on the right course?" 10,200 words

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The car Gisele's boss sent for Brian and Dom a few days after the Braga bust didn't take them far. It stopped at one of those mid-century industrial buildings in an older area of the city that had changed hands enough times its ownership was obscured. But whatever it used to be – warehouse, factory, distribution center – it was something much different now inside the run-down outer shell. This wasn't a case of some criminal's confiscated property put to a convenient use, like the Beverly Hills home the first undercover task force Brian had been a part of set up in when they were stalking Dom's team; this was another level of secret ops bullshit altogether. Brian exchanged a glance with Dom as the government-black sedan came to a halt inside the brightly lit building, then warily opened the door and stepped onto a smooth concrete floor.

The open space around them was filled with every kind of vehicle and high-tech equipment Brian had ever had occasion to lay his hands on, and more. High overhead, industrial pendant lighting cast pools of brightness around focal points of activity: a small army of people in functional shoes and anonymous outfits moving around various stations, typing on keyboards and doing maintenance and talking into phones and radios. And not a one of them were paying the new arrivals any significant attention; definitely the background players of some kind of off-the-books federal task force. The budget shenanigans behind it all probably made very interesting reading.

Secrecy and skill on that level was nearly synonymous with high-level talents in the modern world, both in maintaining it and as a refuge for those who found the straight and narrow a difficult path. When Penning had said that obscurums were above both their paygrade, this was the kind of operation he'd been talking about. Ordinarily, Brian would only rank as small change to such a deep-pocket agency; most authorities didn't rate his primary gift very highly. But what he and Dom had shown they could do when they used their gifts together must have put a thumb on that scale. Especially if Gisele's boss was who he suspected he might be.

The driver, another anonymous agent, led them toward an open internal staircase that climbed up to a set of glass-fronted offices. Brian took a deep breath, then fell in at Dom's shoulder as they followed after him. Leaning on his tychokinetic gift to read the immediate odds and determine the best course of action was nearly second nature to him by now, but the sixth sense he thought of as his probability field felt oddly muffled in that place, as if he was running up against some kind of dampening effect ... or more likely, some kind of interference from another gifted that could counter their abilities. He reached out to brush his fingers against Dom's arm to check in with him and found his sense of Dom's probability field equally muffled, though the brief syncing amplified by the touch was enough to reassure him they were still intent on the same course.

Brian wasn't a telepath, nor any type of empath; and though Dom had his secondary charm, that was projective, not receptive empathy. They couldn't literally read each other the way some mutants could; their synergy was entirely a product of who they were, and who they were to each other. How much that was enhanced by being a pair of tychokinetics was anybody's guess, but Brian found it oddly reassuring that it worked only when and because they chose it. The sync effect couldn't be forced, nor coerced, nor steered to anyone else's design; that was the beauty of it. And that meant that whoever was up there, whatever he wanted, Gisele had probably told the truth: he wanted them to be useful to him, so he would be useful to them. This agency might be recruiting them as deniable third parties, but not as disposable third parties. That meant they didn't need to be able to feel the odds of the meeting going well to know attendance was in their best interests regardless.

The office space they were led to was full of computer equipment, wall-mounted display screens, and a very high-tech table in the center lit up with a wealth of data. Everything gleamed, a dazzling display of expense and efficiency: cool lighting, reflective glass, tall black servers blinking with activity in the background. Another man was leaving as they entered, a big-framed guy, around Dom's size but paler, a logo-free ball cap tilted down to block his face. Dom hesitated as they passed him, almost as if he wanted to turn for a better look, but their guide didn't stop moving and whatever had caught his attention wasn't enough to make him interrupt proceedings. Behind the table, an older man with blue eyes and steel-gray hair was smiling wryly in their direction; definitely the guy in charge. He was dressed in a classic government agent's suit, but cut better than the usual government agent could afford, and the matching black and stainless steel watch on his wrist was worth several thousand dollars if it was worth a penny.

"Mr. Toretto. Mr. O'Conner," he greeted them, nodding first to Dom and then to Brian as the driver closed the door behind them. "I appreciate you taking the time out of your well-deserved vacation to join me here."

"Seemed like an offer it wouldn't be wise to refuse," Dom replied, carefully. "So what do we call you?"

"Me? I'm just a guy," the agent replied, shrugging casually. "I'm Mr. Nobody."

The features weren't familiar to Brian. Nor was the voice. Though to be honest, he hadn't expected them to be. He didn't even recall enough to compare them to with any certainty, and his mother hadn't kept any pictures or videos from her first marriage. Bad memories, he'd always assumed, though now he had to wonder. He remembered the early lessons in using his 'shamrock' abilities – his tychokinesis – much more clearly than anything else; the rest of his early childhood, whether there'd been smiles, or yelling, or tossing the ball around, making dinner or driving him to playdates or school, was largely a blur. His parents had divorced when he was very young – because of his dad's job, his mom had always told him – and the occasional visits afterward had petered out completely by the time he was old enough to discover cars, girls, and the adrenaline rush of using his gifts to earn another kind of attention.

There was something about Mr. Nobody's body language, though; something about the way the guy stood there, one hand fingering something in his pocket. Something like, say, a lucky talus; Brian had to have picked up the habit somewhere, after all. He glanced at the silver cross necklace Dom had retrieved from where Letty left it in his dad's Charger, thinking about the way talismans passed from hand to hand, and felt a certainty that had nothing to do with logic or odds crystalize in his thoughts.

"I doubt you were ever 'just' anything," he said, aiming a crooked smile across the table. "But sure, let's go with that. Long time, no see, Mr. Nobody."

Silver eyebrows arched above a carefully indifferent expression. "Oh? I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage there."

Brian gave a dry chuckle, brushing his shoulder against Dom's for reassurance. "I admit, it's kind of hard to recognize what you don't remember in the first place, even without any kind of talent involved. But what you told Gisele? 'Any shamrock who can make more than one Venus Throw in quick succession?' Yeah, that was pretty distinctive." He pulled his own talus out of his pocket and set it on the edge of the table, Roman numeral IV facing upward.

Mr. Nobody's hand stilled in his pocket as he glanced at the talus; his expression went very flat for a moment, but then he took a sharp breath and slipped back into that bland, easy smile. "Sorry to disappoint. Old memories can fool you; and the gift is rare enough that educational sources for it are pretty sparse. I'm not surprised the terminology sounded familiar," he said lightly. "But you know, there's a young woman you should meet sometime. Name of Tess. Several years your junior, but she carries one of those too. Though she doesn't share your gift, I'm afraid; she's a 'porter. Recruited right out of school; the job always keeps her hopping."

There were layers and layers under that circuitous wording; more than just the evasiveness that was probably the only acknowledgement he'd ever get. Brian could practically sense the 'Danger: Land Mines' signs buried in everything the man didn't say, and the implications sank like a rock in his gut. Recruited as soon as it was legal to do so. A much more obvious, highly-valued gift. Born several years after him ... probably around the time Brian's dad had disappeared out of his life for good. Sorry to disappoint.

Yeah, he could connect the dots there. As difficult as his childhood had been, at least he'd had options, something this Tess likely hadn't been allowed. Teleporters were on the same level as obscurums: gifts that were hard to defend against, that could theoretically change the balance of power, so rare they might as well be myths. If it had been obvious enough in her childhood for the government to notice, it was easy to see how a parent already in that government's power might have made certain choices to protect both his children. And yet here Brian was, getting involved in that world anyway.

What were the odds? It was probably a good thing he couldn't read them right now. "If I get the chance, I think we'd have some things to talk about, then," he replied, striving for an equally bland tone.

"That's not what we're here for today, though," Dom said, a concerned note in his voice as he shot a glance toward Brian.

"No, it's not," Mr. Nobody acknowledged, gesturing at the smart table between them. A series of images flashed up on its surface: a young man in military gear with close cropped hair and a narrow mustache; an older man in an expensive sand-colored suit behind a heavy wooden desk; the close-packed streets of a South American city; a young darker-skinned woman, an infant tucked against her chest, with a hand on Vince's arm; Letty in a hospital bed with a fresh bandage on her face.

"You're standing on the edge of a world of secrets and shadows, my young friends," he continued. "Up to this point, your files have made for interesting reading, but not exactly blockbuster material; youthful mistakes and low-level shenanigans, however inspired. But you have two drug lords to your credit now between you, a childhood friend now caught up in the business of a third, and a former SAS operative with a very nasty talent and all sorts of unsavory connections just had reason to learn your names. Ordinarily, I'd wait until your bonafides were better established to make this pitch, but a pair of Fortune's favored with that many strings of fate busily wrapping themselves around you? That's a hell of an opportunity for us both."

Brian picked up the talus again, turning it over in his hand as he scanned the pictures. Dom was right, his own personal crisis could wait; it had waited this long, after all. Letty's fate – and Vince's – were more important. "In other words, we've already offered our hostages to fortune, and passed the last safe exit several miles back," he summed up, dryly. "So we might as well buckle up and join forces if we want to survive the ride."

"I couldn't have put it more eloquently myself," Mr. Nobody replied with a wry, almost apologetic smile. "So shall we get to the problem developing in Rio?"

He tapped the picture of Vince, and the files visible on the table reconfigured. The man in the light suit – probably the drug lord – stayed, as did the favela, but several other faces and locations flashed up around them, surrounded by text documents written in what was probably português brasileiro. Brian spoke barely any Portuguese – he was much more fluent in Spanish – but the written forms of the two languages had a lot more similarities than the spoken pronunciations, enough to recognize several significant key words.

Dom glanced over the images, gaze lingering on the spot where Letty's picture had been, and frowned. "Gotta ask. You know Vince is a litmus; not the strongest passive empath, maybe, but good enough at least to know when the energy someone's putting out ain't what it should be. He fingered Brian from the start, before any of the rest of us had any idea he was a cop, despite some pretty creative evasive use of his talent. Vince would never willingly work for a man like Braga, or worse. So how's his problem more urgent than rescuing Letty?"

"You mean besides the fact that she likely doesn't even remember she needs rescuing?" Mr. Nobody shrugged. "I doubt your friend has ever actually met Hernán Reyes. But that's the problem when you live under the radar in a town where one man largely runs the off-the-books economy. Everything's connected back to him somehow, even if the connection is buried, and odds are the men your friend deals with racing cars or buying guns also know about his talent. As long as they're careful about who interacts with him in person, then that's more a selling point than a problem; one more layer of deniability for their business. But now that he's in, getting him out again without courting the same fate as an honest cop or a rival might be a bit of a tall order."

"And that's why you came to us," Brian realized. Especially if by anteing up now, he could hit multiple birds with one stone: boosting his agency's capabilities, making up a little for all the things he'd never admit, and calling dibs before another agency caught wind of what Brian and Dom could do. "You have business there too, or want to, and Reyes is definitely going to see your people as rivals."

"Do you actually want to go through all the paperwork to be officially read in on any potential top-secret shenanigans I can neither confirm nor deny?" Mr. Nobody replied with a smirk. "Or would you rather see if the pair of you can turn that rather fascinating joint talent you recently displayed for finding the one good outcome in a deck full of bad options into a repeatable miracle?"

"Calling it a miracle might be stretching the definition a little," Dom frowned. "We didn't come here to have our egos detailed; I just want to make sure we're not getting taken for a ride. You understand, I don't got the best experience with law enforcement."

Mr. Nobody's eyebrows went up, and he shot a deliberate look at Brian as if to point out the contradiction. "Present company excluded?"

"Nah, he means me, too," Brian chuckled, a rueful grin pulling reluctantly at the corner of his mouth. Talk about experiences he'd never thought he'd have: his mom had been gone a long time, and he wouldn't have believed the trajectory of his and Dom's relationship himself if he hadn't been there for all of it. "This is the five years later epilogue. You like the sync effect, be glad you weren't there for the dissonance. Enough said about that. Besides, I figure it's even odds if I ever walk back into that office, anyway. If you're giving us a drug lord in Rio as a warmup, I'm not even sure I want to know what you think it'll take to get to Letty, and somehow I don't think it's going to be downhill from there."

"Well, I hope you find it a slightly more appealing choice than Scylla and Charybdis," Mr. Nobody said, spreading his hands wide, then switched his attention back to Dom. "So what's it going to be?"

"You know what it's going to be," Dom replied, voice a low rumble. "But it's going to be on our terms. And our schedule. With our choice of crew. You say we ain't established our bonafides yet, well you ain't either. So let's see how Rio goes. Everything comes up roses, then we'll talk about what comes next."

"Down to the dickering, then. Good!" Mr. Nobody broke into a more genuine smile, then waved an imperious hand, palm up, toward one of the other agents in the room. The agent tossed him a thumb drive; Mr. Nobody dropped it onto the table, then with a few more taps and swipes gathered all the open data files on its expansive screen, followed by the shrunk icons representing the earlier data removed from the display, toward the spot where the thumb drive rested. A loading bar appeared, swiftly filling as the files downloaded onto the drive.

"We'll need to nail down a few specifics before we send you out to gather that crew. Funding, for example. But as a starting gesture, that's all the relevant data on Reyes ... plus what we know about Owen Shaw, the obscurum we suspect was using Braga's cartel as a supplier."

Brian picked the drive up off the table when the loading bar disappeared, then slid it into his pocket along with the lucky talus. He wouldn't want to plug it into any computer he'd ever use again – if there wasn't tracking software on that drive, he'd eat the Skyline's fender – but cheap, disposable laptops weren't that hard to find. It was both a good and bad sign they were getting Letty's data upfront; better chances of the agency being on the up-and-up, but it also implied her situation really was difficult enough that even with it, they'd be hard pressed to find an angle to get her out on their own.

It was also the kind of thing Brian himself would have done to earn someone's cooperation if his instincts had urged it, the kind of low-level use of his talent that had made him very slick at getting information out of people that didn't necessarily want to share it. Inclining him toward just the right things to say, questions to ask, gestures to make to build a connection. He'd probably have been reading today's conversation that way too ... if someone hadn't made sure that wouldn't work. The same someone probably using the same gift on them now.

He took a deep breath, then let it out in a conflicted exhale. Nothing about that possibility changed what they were there for ... and it wasn't like they wouldn't have opportunities to course correct later if it turned out to be necessary. Once they walked out of this meeting, the things they agreed to might shift their starting point, but they'd still be able to gauge the drift from there. And as new as things were between him and Dom, in another sense they weren't new at all, and he trusted their ability to get out of any trap together a lot more than he feared walking into a setup. If the government wanted him, they clearly could have had him a long time ago.

"All right, we're listening," Brian said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Tell us more."


"Officially, they sent him on vacation," Dom said over the phone to his old friend. "Unofficially, they're pretty sure I was involved, and they're giving him enough rope to hang us both."

That wasn't enough to placate Vince, not over the phone; it probably wouldn't be even in person, no matter that Brian wasn't setting off his passive empathy by pretending to be someone else anymore. Vince had been Dom's friend since they were both in single digits, and wherever the blame might lie, Brian's arrival had split that friendship apart. And now Brian was the one at Dom's side. Regardless of the details, that was enough foundation for an epic grudge. But Dom's appeal was close enough to the truth for Vince to believe, and to be willing to host them until they found their feet again far from the long arm of American law enforcement.

There'd never been any question of telling him why they were really coming in advance, any more than there'd been any convincing Rome that Brian wasn't the author of all his misfortunes when his invulnerable ass got sent to jail. And even if Vince got over his offended ego to believe them, asking him to keep his cool and not act any different before they arrived would just be asking for trouble. Even his and Dom's joint talent wasn't enough to overcome odds that long, not at that distance, and it wasn't just Vince's life that would be at risk.

Time enough to convince him when they got there. Time enough to recruit the rest of their team, too, after they'd seen the lay of the land. It wasn't as though Mr. Nobody probably didn't already have a file on all their close associates, but it was only polite to offer them an opportunity to turn them down without the agency directly listening in, and a certain amount of customization would probably be necessary anyway. Gisele Yashar and her bullseye talent were a given – Mr. Nobody had already given them a date to meet up with her in Rio – but Mia's college courses couldn't really be put on hold without sacrificing the whole semester, Leon and Jesse were unlikely to come back even for Vince, and most of the rest of their contacts only knew one or the other of them, not both. Integrating a bunch of strange talents could get a little chaotic at the best of times.

"Besides," Brian shrugged one long evening as the sun set somewhere far to the right, the road unspooling endlessly under the wheels of the Charger. "We're going to have to frame it as a job, or most of them are going to turn us down regardless, and I wouldn't blame them. They don't know Vince, and their experiences with law enforcement mostly aren't any better than yours."

"It's personal for us," Dom agreed, cutting a look over at him from the driver's seat. "Because of Vince. And because of whatever that was back there with Mr. Nobody. When you asked Gisele about him, you said his invitation reminded you of the man who'd trained you, but that it didn't mean anything. That's not what it sounded like when you were talking to him, though. 'Hard to recognize what you don't remember'. And then all that stuff about his daughter. Not the kind of thing you say to a stranger."

Brian snorted, reaching into his pocket to run his fingers over the talus again. It was hard to know how to approach the subject. Hard to even talk about it out loud. But it probably did need to be aired, even if just this once. "Hey, Dom. What do you remember about your father?"

Dom glanced at him again, the fading glow of the horizon casting ruddy shadows across his furrowed brow. "My father?" he asked, putting a pointed emphasis on the last word before answering the question. "He used to ... he used to have a barbecue every Sunday after church. For anybody in the neighborhood...."

He went on like that for a bit, recounting warm memories, a pained nostalgia in his voice. Detailing the love and family and example of responsibility that had shaped him as a young man; everything he'd lost in one terrible day on a racetrack, and had been trying to recapture in various ways ever since. Brian's heart ached, listening to it; both for what he'd never had, and for what Dom and Mia hadn't had long enough. Meeting Mr. Nobody had complicated that picture, but it hadn't really fixed anything; it couldn't.

"I remember everything about my father," Dom concluded. "Everything."

"That's just it," Brian replied, rubbing a hand over the opposite arm in a half-unconscious, self-soothing gesture as he glanced out the window. "I don't remember shit about my dad. I don't remember him yelling; I don't remember him smiling. He was almost never there, even when I was little. And one day he just stopped coming back at all. Until Gisele turned up at your house, I hadn't even thought of him in years."

"...And you think that was him," Dom concluded, tone grim as the last of the blanks he'd obviously been wondering about filled in. "Wait. Then all that about his kid...?"

"Yeah." Brian shrugged. "Probably my half-sister. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so; I don't see why he'd have mentioned her otherwise. So I guess I should have said it couldn't mean anything, because that was probably the most explanation I'm ever going to get. Maybe if we stick with the agency long enough, I'll get to meet her. I wonder if even she knows, if he was trying to protect us both."

"That's fucked up," Dom said, shaking his head, then sighed. "But I guess I shouldn't throw stones. You know it's rare, even now, for a whole family to carry noticeable mutations? Complex recessive DNA, all that bullshit that's been in the news ever since tech got advanced enough they could try to sequence the causes. Figure out why some of them run true and others are so scattershot."

"Yeah," Brian replied, frowning. He hadn't thought about that aspect of it; how a mom with a minor gift for helping plants grow and a father with tychokinesis had produced a dual-gifted son ... and apparently whoever Tess' mother had been had given him a sister with a mutation most people didn't believe existed outside of comic books. Talented humans did tend to clump together – as an intersecting minority status all its own, often hated both for the same us-versus-them reasons minorities always were and for those inherent to their unasked-for abilities – but frequently still had completely mundane children, further complicating the picture.

"I've heard the theory that humans have always had a certain percentage of minor psychic abilities, but since they were only fueled by the limited energy of our nervous systems, the effects weren't scientifically measurable ... not until that year with no summer in the eighteen hundreds. Every culture has myths about people with strange abilities; if you read with an open mind, there's a lot of evidence. But whatever happened two centuries ago, whatever ended up in the atmosphere, it was like a massive on-switch amplifying everything. If it hadn't been for the fact that a lot of powerful families turned out to have the right genetics – probably part of why they thrived in the first place – the Inquisition might've made a comeback. But since it was everywhere, in every country and level of society, and the on-set was gradual enough it got written off as superstition a lot at first, it mostly just got folded into all the other societal upheavals already in motion. Hasn't been until fairly recently that there's been time and space for the scientists to start figuring it out."

"And in the meantime, criminal organizations – and agencies like Mr. Nobody's – have been busy grabbing up everyone who caught their attention. It was probably only a matter of time even for us," Dom commented, resignedly. "The authorities at the track had a truth-teller they used to make sure none of the drivers had any physical enhancements that could affect a race, but otherwise they didn't give a shit, and Abuelita always cautioned us to keep our gifts on the down-low. People knew, but we mostly escaped any serious attention ... at least until the heists. But you ... even without contact with your father, with juvie and aiding and abetting on your record, you were still a cop and then an FBI agent. And you said Verone made you an offer, too."

"Yeah," Brian nodded, wondering where this was going. "Once I met Rome in juvie ... I've told you a little about that, right? We were both young and dumb and a little too concerned with impressing each other to really care about discretion. I might not've seemed all that powerful, but I was lucky, and even without the talent for it that gets noticed, for better and for worse. I got the 'straighten your life out, son' speech often enough I wonder sometimes what would've happened if I didn't. Not like there were a lot of more appealing opportunities where I grew up. Sounds like you had a much tighter community."

"Yeah," Dom said, heavily. "And a lot of family history. Mom was a shocker; some kind of electrokinetic gift. Never got the details, but she wasn't first-generation. Dad was a charmer; lot of those on his side of the family, sometimes other mental gifts, though I was the first trickster we knew of. Mia takes after one of Abuelita's generation. And Jakob...." Dom swallowed at the name. "Jakob took after our mother."

Dom normally didn't talk that much about his past. They were still getting to know each other on some levels; that kind of meshing of lives took time, especially with so much else on their plates, and no one was owed anyone else's secrets. But Brian knew the rough shape of it from Dom's file, and the name Jakob didn't fit anywhere in that picture. Nor did the sense of intangible pressure that had been building in the air over the course of the conversation, as sharp to his sixth sense as it had been dulled in Mr. Nobody's offices.

As if what they were discussing now would have an outsized impact on all their future possibilities. There was old pain written in the set of Dom's jaw, and the way his grip flexed on the wheel; Brian didn't need the prodding of his gift to tell him to tread carefully. "You had a brother?"

"Not in my file, huh?" Dom said dryly. "Yeah, I was afraid of that."

It felt a lot like the moment in the garage with the Charger five years ago, when Dom had first spoken about his father's death. At the time, Brian had still had a crush on Mia, but even then the resonance between him and Dom had felt weightier than any other relationship in his life. "Younger or older?"

"Younger, between me and Mia. He was there that day too at the track; actually confronted Linder first." Dom's jaw worked, more old pain welling up. "Kid had the Toretto temper, and Linder was making excuses for what happened and calling him useless to his face."

Brian had wondered, ever since Sergeant Tanner had shoved the file in his face, why the wrench; why Dom had lost control enough to go after the man who'd caused his father's death with physical violence instead of his talents. He'd seen what Dom could do with his charm when he didn't give a shit about collateral damage; David Park was probably still recovering from it. But protecting family was one of his sure triggers, and a younger brother who could have been eighteen or nineteen at best? Yeah, he could see it.

"You lost your shit," he said, wincing. "I probably would have, too."

"Yeah," Dom acknowledged. "Didn't know what to do after, except tell him it was all gonna be okay. It wasn't until later, when I had time to think behind bars, that I realized some things about that race. Something had gone wrong with the car; it shouldn't have exploded the way it did. But Dad had been talking about a misfire, and Jakob had been the last one under the hood. He'd been reading circuits and energy flows since the first time he laid hands on an engine; there was no way he hadn't noticed a flaw like that. So I confronted him about it when I got out. Hoped he'd push back, say something to prove I had it all wrong."

"But he didn't." Like a funhouse mirror of what happened with him and Rome, with worse consequences.

"No. I gave him an ultimatum; beat me or leave town. But he didn't fight it, or deny it, or even really try to win the race – and he could have; it had been years since I'd been behind the wheel. He just kept driving, and we didn't hear from him again. I was too angry at first to care. But then a few years later, his name started disappearing off all the family's official documentation."

Brian inhaled sharply. "You thought he was dead?"

"I thought a lot of things," Dom growled. "Did some stupid shit. Some of which you were there for." He shot Brian a wry look. "Then today ... my skin prickled around one of those agents like it always did when Jakob was upset. In the middle of an agency that obviously collects people with mutations in need of an assist."

"The guy coming down the stairs," Brian realized. Another random event that might not be so random after all, when it was them involved. "He looked down when he passed us, so we couldn't see his face."

"Maybe," Dom said, face twisted in a way that reminded Brian a lot of how it had felt to hear Gisele unexpectedly quote one of his father's lines. "Though if it's true, he's a ghost now, like your Mr. Nobody. If there ever was an explanation, I'm probably further from hearing it now than ever. But maybe if we stick around the agency long enough...."

Family business in more ways than one. Brian swallowed, then reached over to rest a hand on Dom's thigh and gestured with his chin toward the highway verge. "Hey, pull over for a minute, would you?"

Dom frowned, but did as he asked, easing off to the side of the road at the next safe place. They were on a long, straight stretch between towns, with nothing but the ribbon of asphalt and the darkening scenery within view; there'd be other cars before long, but at that moment, it felt like they were the only two people in the world. Brian waited until the Charger was fully stopped, then shifted his hand to Dom's face, demanding all his focus.

"Hey," he said, firmly. Dom had that quarter-mile-at-a-time distance in his gaze again, and Brian wasn't having it. "I get that we're both dealing with a lot of old buried shit here. Things that have been haunting us for years. But remember what you told me? The odds were against us apart, but together we're going to run the table?"

"Yeah," Dom said slowly, with undertones of your point?

"So whatever they think's going to happen here, they're not in control now. We are. We finish this job for Vince, we do the next one for Letty, that gets us deeper into the agency. And that gets us to Jakob. Even if he's not with them directly, they have the resources to find out what happened to him. We'll get your answers."

Dom searched his face for a moment, all the dark emotion that had settled in him over the course of their conversation breaking up a little in the face of Brian's determined optimism. "You're sure."

"Close your eyes, Dom, and feel it," Brian urged him. "You know what we need to do. So ask yourself – are we still on the right course?"

Brian could feel the shift in the air as Dom blew out a breath and followed his advice, concentrating heavily on using his tychokinesis to feel out the potentialities branching in front of them. "Ride or die," he murmured, lashes sweeping down across his cheeks. Then he blinked his eyes open again and snagged a hand in Brian's shirt, abruptly pulling him half-over the center console into Dom's lap.

Something in the car was digging a little awkwardly into his hip, and he kept banging an arm on the window or the steering wheel as he tried to get a little more comfortable; neither of them were exactly small guys. But Brian wasn't about to complain; making out with Dom never got old. He was used to leaning on his ability to sense the best possible next move to make things better for himself and his partner, but that tended to leave him in the driver's seat of a relationship; having the talent used on him right back made everything more unpredictable and yet more balanced at the same time, hot as hell in more ways than one. He never knew what to expect, but he always had a good time getting there, and he knew that Dom did too.

A long moment later, Dom opened his eyes, then pressed their foreheads together and rested a hand against the back of Brian's neck, an anchoring weight that was more comforting than it had any right to be. "It ain't just about me. We'll get your answers, too."

There were a lot of things Brian could have said in response. But he didn't need to exert his talent again to know which one would set the right tone for what came next.

"That's all right. I got all the answers I really need right here."


Rio de Janeiro sprawled in the middle of a metropolitan area at least as heavily populated as Greater Los Angeles in a hotter, wetter climate. Vince's directions led them to one of the city's favelas, a poor and densely packed working-class neighborhood full of people that looked at them guardedly like the outsiders they were. Vince seemed to have already rooted himself there deeply, though, and only part of that could be due to his girlfriend Rosa, a kind woman with sharp, knowing eyes. He welcomed Dom with a warm, backslapping hug, claiming him to all the wary neighbors, and his snarled "Buster" in Brian's direction was a lot less biting than it used to be.

"So how's it feel to be on the other side of a wanted poster?" he jabbed again half-heartedly, once he'd welcomed them both indoors and pressed a bottle of local beer into their hands.

"Wouldn't be the first time, even if I was," Brian snorted, amused by the surprise in Vince's face. "Yeah, I figured you missed the news bulletins after I ran from the cops in LA. Aiding and abetting, obstruction of justice, you know how it goes."

"Then how the hell did you end up with a badge again?" Vince scoffed, shaking his head.

"Lot of water under that bridge," Brian shrugged. "If you guessed someone wanted to use me more than they wanted me in jail, you probably wouldn't be far wrong. Not that different this time, either. Boss didn't fire me; he just put me on PTO and made a lot of veiled comments about getting my head on straight. Technically, I'm not due back for at least another month."

"Then what's this really about?" Vince frowned, glancing between them. "If the point is not to go back at all, you could've gone to ground in a lot of other places."

"That would be on account of a little bird that told us you've been working for the drug lord running Rio," Dom spoke up, staring levelly at his old friend.

"Well, that little bird told you wrong." Vince sat back in his chair, frown deepening. "I don't work for Reyes. I mean, maybe I've done a few jobs with some of his guys, but just stuff like we were doing back home. You know I don't mess with that shit, man. I got Rosa and Nico to think about."

"Yeah, you do." The growling undertone in Dom's voice deepened. "And I know you're not that dumb. People like him collect talents, and if we could hear what you were up to all the way back home, you've definitely put yourself on his radar. How long do you think you've got before they stop letting you pick your jobs and start telling you which jobs to pick?"

"Look, you haven't been here, Dom." The stubborn lines in Vince's expression deepened, and he pointed at Dom with the neck of his beer bottle. "I can't go home. Because of him." The bottle shifted to point at Brian. "You didn't trust me when it mattered, and now I'm stuck doing whatever I gotta do to keep food on the table. What does it really matter where the jobs come from? Besides, I'm small change compared to the kind of guys that end up in Reyes' inner circle. I do the shit I sign up for, I stay in my lane, and they don't drag me out of it."

"That's bullshit," Brian snorted. "No, I'm serious. You can't go home because of what you did. Just like I couldn't go home because of what I did, until I found a way to make it right."

"You haven't made up shit," Vince spat, half-rising from his chair, habitual irritation sharpening back into real anger.

"Vince," Dom growled.

"It's all right, I got this," Brian said, setting a hand on Dom's arm. Normally, he'd be flexing his gift to find a way to de-escalate, but that wouldn't work on Vince; even if he couldn't sense Brian trying to manipulate him, backing down would just convince him he'd been right all along. "You think I was talking about making it up to you? Did you actually forget I had a life of my own before we met? Friends, a career, a boss I respected, hell, I even had a 401k. I traded all of that away for your family, and I didn't even get to keep it. Not until Letty came back, looking for a way to clear Dom's record."

"Yeah, and you got her killed! Dom, why are we even listening to this?" Vince gave his old friend an incredulous look.

"Are you listening?" Dom replied, raising his eyebrows. "Or are you holding onto a grudge so hard you can't even read the room? You're right, I did ignore you about Brian back then – but mostly because he was screening you out, and I saw something you didn't. But he ain't screening you out now."

That threw Vince off enough that he simmered down again, settling back in his chair as he stared at Brian. "What could you possibly say that could make up for any of that?"

"Like I told Mia," Brian replied, making an effort to clamp down on his temper too, "if I'd said no, Letty would have found some other way to risk herself trying to bring Dom home. I'm not her alpha. And none of us knew Braga was working for a fucking wiper. She's not actually dead; they made her disappear. And as soon as we have the means to go after that asshole, we're getting her back. But we need a hell of a lot more resources first. So maybe we thought we could hit two jackpots with one pull. But if you're comfortable with that Sword of Damocles hanging over your neck, maybe we find some other way to get what we need."

Every fucking word of that was true, and he could see the alarmed realization dawning over Vince's face as he sensed Brian's conviction. "A wiper? I thought those were boogeymen."

"Exactly," Dom said, mouth set in a bitter line. "Which is why a whole other group of boogeymen got all up in our business after we took down Braga and started pulling threads. And why we need to know now if you're on board, or if we gotta make other plans. We take down Reyes, we see what their word's good for. We fail their audition, well. Things'll get more difficult, but like Brian said, we'll find some other way to get to Letty."

They'd had time to look over Mr. Nobody's files between long days in the car. Owen Shaw really was on a whole other level than anyone else they'd faced; his military spec-ops background alone would give him an edge, and he and his crew had funds and gear nearly a match to what Mr. Nobody could offer, not to mention a complete lack of care for collateral damage. It would be tough to reach him, never mind steal Letty back, without official backing. But they'd got this far without it, and there were certain compromises neither of them could comfortably make.

Vince's expression went through several contortions, but now that Dom had got through to him, most of his contrary fire had gone out. He punched the table instead, then took a long draught of his beer and sighed disgustedly. "Spooks. Fucking figures. And you come here warning me about Reyes collecting talents?"

"Tell us something we don't know," Brian replied, very dryly. "But I think I'll stick with the option that has the best odds of letting me keep my family this time, thanks."

"Fuck. What the hell am I going to tell Rosa?" Vince said, rubbing a hand over his beard. "If you go after Reyes, whether I help or not, I won't be welcome around here anymore. He's got a lot of guys; they're like cockroaches, and a lot of 'em are talented. Even if you take him down you won't get them all, and I'm not as lucky as you are."

"That's up to you," Brian shrugged. "Do you think they'll come after her if they figure out something's up before we're done? Is there some family or friend she can visit for a little while, keep her out of the line of fire?"

Vince shook his head. "I don't know, maybe? Most of the people she knows are from here, though. You know, she's the reason I stopped running? I was free-falling through South America, hitting every hellhole on the way down, and then there she was, smiling at me like I was actually worth something. And then there was Nico. What was I supposed to do, try to get a straight job to support them with no legit ID and who knew what still hanging over my head from LA? And now I'm gonna lose another home."

He didn't quite say because of you, but the half-hearted glare conveyed the message well enough. "Then let's make sure you don't lose this family, too," Brian replied. "These guys who're trying to recruit us, I get the impression they'll give us a certain amount of leeway so long as we get the job done. Like Dom said, this is an audition; they want more from us than just taking down Reyes. So we'll make sure Rosa and Nico's safety is part of the compensation package, maybe send them to join Mia in LA."

"And then what, go after Reyes with just the three of us?" Vince raised a skeptical eyebrow. "That's suicide."

"Who said it would be just the three of us?" Dom spread his hands. "Got a few numbers to call. Just had to talk to you first. Wasn't going to do it any other way."

Vince looked a little mollified at that and heaved a resigned sigh. "All right. Shit. Of course I'll back you, you're my brother. Even if that means I gotta put up with him, too." He jerked his chin toward Brian.

Relief washed through Brian; this had probably been the hardest conversation they needed to have, and he'd been honestly worried it wouldn't go their way. Odds would have been better if it had been just Dom, but he had scoffed at Brian when he offered to bow out: Ride or die, remember? "Just wait 'til you meet Rome. You won't be bitching so much about me, then," he grinned.

Dom sprawled more loosely in his chair, the relaxing set of his shoulders echoing Brian's reaction. "I still ain't met him yet, either. You talk this guy up anymore, I'm gonna start to wonder," he joked.

"Aw, c'mon, he's basically my Vince," Brian teased back. "Unless there's something about your friendship you haven't told me about yet?" He gestured with his beer bottle between them.

"Shit, I didn't think this through," Vince objected instantly, expression half-aghast, half-amused. "If I gotta put up with you flirting in front of me now – intentionally, I mean, looking back I probably should have seen this coming – then the least you could do is not drag me into it."

"Sorry, man," Brian replied, chuckling. "Though, that reminds me. When do Rosa and Nico get home? I was serious about doing what we can to keep her safe, but until you can talk to her about it, we should probably keep this out of your house as much as possible. You know another place we could do our planning and setup?"

"Could use some information, too," Dom added. "Exactly how much do you know about Reyes' business?"

"Not as much as you need," Vince admitted, "but probably enough to get you started. The guy I usually deal with, I don't think he realizes how much Portuguese I know. He said something in front of me once about Reyes' cash houses. Plural. Which only makes sense, right? He has a lot of money to keep off the grid. Never heard where they're located, but I have a pretty good idea about one of them."

Multiple cash houses likely meant eight, maybe even nine digits in American dollars; definitely a job they could sell their other friends on. Those who wanted to stick with the crew afterward could; those who didn't would still go home with a nice chunk of change. "That does sound like a good place to start," Brian mused. "We find that one, we can find the rest from there. You know a shapeshifter, right?" He glanced at Dom.

"Yeah," Dom confirmed, nodding. "A real chameleon; Han can blend in anywhere."

"Rome's a tank, but his real skill is bullshitting; he can talk himself in and out of any situation. And Tej, one of the guys I ran with out in Miami, is a technomancer; if it runs on code, he can sweet-talk it."

"Couple of guys I met in the DR: one of them's a pack-type feral like Letty, always had problems with authorities, the other's mundane, but they're good with explosives and they make a good team. If it's behind walls, they can get to it," Dom added.

"And let's not forget our backup bullseye." The way Gisele interacted with the rest of the team would tell them a lot both about her, and about the kind of ship Mr. Nobody ran, both things they needed to know.

"Shit, were you on the run the last five years, or were you networking?" Vince snorted. "Okay, maybe we do have a chance."

"Sometimes, a chance is all you need," Dom agreed, smiling wryly.

"Yeah, especially when you can cheat the odds," Vince shook his head. "Man, if we coulda seen ourselves now when we were sixteen, I wouldn't have believed it."

"Me neither," Brian agreed, meeting Dom's gaze. "But I wouldn't take back any of it, not if it put me here now."

"Took the words out of my mouth." Dom's smile turned a little heated – and Vince abruptly pushed back his chair, making an irritated noise.

"Okay, that's enough of that. You guys've had a long drive; why don't you get some rest, and I'll talk to Rosa and see about tracking down an empty factory or something for you to use."

"Thanks, Vince." Dom rose to give Vince another tight hug, then collected his beer bottle and headed for the spare bed.

There was something else Brian wanted to say before following. "Hey, man, thanks. I know you didn't ask for us to come crashing down on you like this, but you're Dom's, and it worried me that you were on an intelligence agency's radar as connected to Reyes. Don't know what these guys want with his territory, but I didn't love the idea of you ending up collateral damage, no matter how you felt about me."

"Don't love the idea of being attached to no federal agency, either. But you gotta do what you gotta do. Think they'll straighten my record out?" Without Dom in the room, Vince's attitude was less blustery and more intense, but he wasn't actively angry anymore, just the usual low-grade gruffness.

Brian shrugged. "If they want to keep using us, especially if we need to interact with any other agencies, they'll have to do that for all of us. Getting Braga cleared Dom of the truck heists, but only the truck heists, and a lot of the others have shit on their records, too. If you're on the crew, you're on the crew."

Vince sighed, then thrust out a grudging hand. "Thanks for what you've done for Dom. Even with Letty gone, there's a weight off his shoulders; I can tell."

Another thing Brian had done for him that Vince couldn't. "No problem, man. He does the same for me." He briefly clasped Vince's hand, then nodded and followed after his lover.

He even did his best to keep quiet afterward, out of consideration for their host. But he didn't feel too guilty about failing, either; seriously, what had he expected? They were basically on an adventure honeymoon.


No one they contacted turned them down. The money and the challenge were enough for most; the clean records helped with the rest; and for not a few of them, the prospect of signing up to do a good deed or three without sacrificing their own freedom or instincts was an added garnish. They even picked up a local to help them coordinate, a street racer named Isabel that Vince vouched for after they won a few cars from the local scene to use in their plans. Isabel had a sister with the police – an honest cop who'd followed her fallen husband's footsteps onto the force, and was no friend of Reyes as a result – and knew a lot about the situation in Rio from a different angle than Vince or Rosa.

Gisele showed up with the rest, and with her their connection back to the agency; Rosa wasn't happy to leave her friends, but didn't argue either, and was on her way to LA before they even finished casing the cash houses. The rest of the group suffered through the usual early posturing friction as they got to know each other, but by the end of the first week, were already falling in behind Dom and Brian's joint leadership like a well oiled team. Not a better team than Dom's first, necessarily, or the group Brian had worked with in Miami, but a more mature one maybe, and definitely better suited to the challenges ahead of them.

Even Gisele seemed to feel the family-vibe effects of Dom's charm; he wasn't intentionally trying to influence them, but the vibe was as much a part of him as his muscles and driving skill, that gravity Mia had talked about back when Brian and Dom first met. It was cheesy, and a little ridiculous considering the scope of what they were planning, but it also worked, and Brian was definitely not immune. The kind of lives they had all led tore connections apart; maybe that made them more susceptible than they would have been otherwise, but the fact that it wasn't one-sided more than made up for it.

Things only escalated after they needled Reyes into consolidating the cash and figured out what they'd need to liberate it out from under a bunch of corrupt cops' noses. Surveillance, buying equipment, and collecting the handprint they'd need to get past the safe's lock were challenging enough, but their team had the skills; but even Dom and Brian's luck wasn't enough to push their acquired cars fast enough to evade the station's cameras. Which somehow led to stealing several cop cruisers and a garbage truck, several running battles with Reyes' goons, and finally a direct assault and escape dragging a ten-ton vault through the streets of Rio. The odds against that working without snagging the cables, twisting them, or colliding with innocent spectators along the route were probably microscopic – the one good outcome in a deck of bad options; Brian wondered if that really did count as a miracle, and if so, how many they'd have to pull off to be considered saints – but it worked.

Some clever team sleight-of-hand swapped the full vault for an empty one, setting them up for a showy finale, and throughout that insane two-vehicle moving heist Brian and Dom moved like one will in two bodies, leaning so hard on their synced tychokinesis that they didn't need to even see or speak to each other to know exactly what moves to make every step of the way. It wasn't only the vault scraping against the street that was throwing sparks; the synergy between them was like the best, most energizing high he'd ever had. It was an insane level of trust and connection considering how short a time they'd objectively been together, but it felt right, and Brian wasn't in the habit of questioning his instincts. Next to Dom was obviously where he was meant to be.

The hardest swerve in the entire plan came at the very end, when they realized that enough cops had stuck with the chase that they could still catch them, even if they managed to jettison the safe on a lengthy, narrow bridge as they had planned. Even if Reyes stopped to secure it and triggered the surprise they'd left inside, some of his men would get around it to run them down. Dom hesitated, turning to look at Brian across the gap between their cars, then held up the radio.

"There's still too many of 'em. I'm gonna have to cut you loose."

"What – I'm not leaving you!" Brian objected. This whole thing had only even worked because they were doing it together; even if he was willing to keep going alone, Dom's chances of surviving would drop, and that that was just not on.

"Not asking you to leave me," Dom growled, urgently. "But what comes next won't work with both of us still chained to the vault. Besides – we may've got the money, but no guarantee that we've finished the job. I need you to follow, clean up behind me."

Abruptly, the audacious shape of what he was planning became clear: Dom was going to whip around and use the vault as a fucking wrecking ball. "Promise me you can do this," he pleaded.

"I promise," Dom said, gaze meeting Brian's. Then he shifted his thumb to the buttons wired into the cable ejection system and fired Brian's.

The ensuing ballet of heavyweight kinetic chaos was the wildest thing Brian had ever seen. The vault had been a heavy enough drag for two specifically reinforced cars; it took a shot of NOS just to get it moving back in the other direction with only one, and every turn of the wheel threatened to send not only the car but also the vault tumbling out of control. Brian's luck-sense was already worn thin just reaching that point, he had no idea how Dom was still managing it alone, but he did the best he could to back him up, following close enough that the area of effect of their talents still overlapped. Car after on-rushing cop car collided with the vault, the cable, the guardrail, or all three in succession, wrecking and flipping into the water and scattering Reyes' henchmen all over the concrete. Brian did as Dom had asked, cleaning up behind him, conscience utterly clear as he followed the path laid down by the odds for least possible future risk to the family, and didn't apply the brakes until Dom flung himself clear, using vault and Charger PPV as spinning counterweights to utterly crush the last two oncoming vehicles: Reyes' SUV and his machine-gun wielding guard.

Brian did the necessary cleanup there, too, then gave Dom a crooked smile and jerked his chin toward the passenger door of his car, reminded of that last chase in LA five years before. They'd come a long way since Brian had offered Dom his keys, but some things hadn't changed, and at this point Brian didn't expect they ever would. "Hell of a mess," he said.

"Not the first time," Dom snorted as he took the offered invitation. "Probably won't be the last. Now let's get back to the team before the rest of his goons catch us." There were still more sirens coming.

Brian didn't need any more direction, but he still took just a moment more to lean between the seats and express his opinion of that incredible display. Then he pulled back, grinning wildly, and pressed his pedal to the metal, speeding off toward their challenging, dangerous future.

(or read at AO3)