So this was just a fun little idea that I had. Hope you enjoy...
PS: A note on timelines: I messed around with timelines quite a bit. I pulled the entire F&F universe forward by about seven years, having the first movie take place during Iron Man 2. That timeline gets a bit sticky, because according to Marvel, IM2, Thor and the end part of CA:TFA all take place within like a week of each other, and a week before The Avengers- which means that despite the differing release dates, all three movies take place in April or May of 2012. That was the timeline that I chose to go with in order to work F&F in there around it.
Disclaimer: I do not own any copyright or recognizable material, and am not making money off of this work.
"Just get it done and get your ass back to New York, O'Connor," Sitwell snapped. Brian rolled his eyes and snapped his phone shut, clenching his teeth together to resist the impulse to chuck it through the wall. Fury owed someone a favour who owed someone a favour, and now he was "on loan" for the FBI, and working with the LAPD on some ridiculous little truck jacking thing. Fucking SHIELD, man. If there was any consolation, it was that Sitwell seemed to regard this with as much annoyance as Brian himself did. Sitwell was pretty eager to get this thing over with, so that he could send his highly trained asset out on missions that were actually worth his attention.
Brian wasn't sure if this was meant to embarrass someone, or what—but when he got his hands on whoever was responsible, they'd better keep a solid metal door between themselves and Brian if they didn't want to end up riddled with bullet holes.
He breathed through his nose to try to calm himself down.
"Can I get you more coffee?" Mia Toretto, little sister to Person of Interest number 2 on this case, Dominic Toretto, was standing next to him with a pot of coffee in her hand and a sympathetic expression on her face.
"Yeah, that would be great, thanks," Brian said, not feigning his gratitude.
"Family or girlfriend?" Mia asked conversationally, as she refilled his mug.
"Neither," Brian shook his head. "Old boss. They keep trying to get me to come back, but… it was only ever gonna be temporary, you know? I'd rather be a grease-monkey than a stock-market stooge."
"I hear you," Mia tutted. "I'm in pre-med, but cars… what can I say, we Torettos were born with oil in our veins instead of blood."
Yeah, Brian could definitely appreciate some of the cars that he had seen around here in the last three weeks of staking the place out.
Tanner and Bilkins, the LAPD Sargent and FBI liaison on this case, were both nagging him into a fucking hole in the ground. At least, with three weeks of coming to the diner under his belt, they couldn't really argue with him anymore when he said that he needed to race in order to get Dominic Toretto's attention.
Brian's phone started ringing again, right around the same time as one of the beefy-ass guys in Toretto's gang came wandering in from the front of the store to make calf-eyes at Mia, who seemed oblivious to his attention.
Brian glanced at the caller id, unwilling to deal with shit from Bilkins and Tanner, or more shit from Sitwell today. Instead, he smiled slightly.
"Hey, Nat," he answered the phone.
"How's being on loan for the FBI?" Nat asked, the smirk audible in her voice.
"Boring as shit," Brian replied easily. "How's babysitting?"
Nat let out a disgruntled sigh. "Don't joke about that, it really is babysitting. Stark is like a damn six-year-old. With guns. And an armoured, flying suit. And, you know, a lethal dose of palladium coursing through his bloodstream."
"Anything you can do?" Brian asked, taking pains to keep his side of the conversation mostly neutral.
"Injecting lithium compound will clear his blood in the short term," Nat said. "But it won't fix the problem. He's powering that fucking reactor with palladium, Bri. We have to get him to find another element, but he's kind of gone into self-destruct mode, so I don't imagine that I'm going to enjoy dealing with him."
"What about his suit?" Brian said, certain that 'suit' would be interpreted to mean, dress-slacks, tie and a jacket by the people who could overhear his end of the phone call. "Isn't it making it worse?"
"Yes," Nat sighed irritably. "He keeps using it anyway, Brian, and we don't know how to stop him, even if only to delay the progression. The man is a hot mess. And you know how they always say that Tony Stark didn't really get along with his father?"
"Oh?" Brian fished, taking a sip of his coffee. He made eye-contact with Mia as she good-naturedly fended off the beefy guy's attentions, throwing her a sympathetic look.
"He has daddy issues that you can see from space, Brian," Natasha said exasperatedly.
"So," Brian shrugged. "Guy's got issues—it's not exactly rare. Hell, Nat, I've got daddy issues up the wazoo."
"And at least you admit it," Natasha retorted. "With Stark, it's like this giant fucking land mine that you have no idea that you're about to step on."
Brian just laughed. For once, it seemed like maybe this little embarrassment of an "undercover job" was getting him a better deal than Nat, who sounded like she had had it up to here. And in this case, here was probably only reachable with the damn hubble.
And then he got it. "Oh," he breathed. "Oh, Natasha Romanoff," he cooed into the phone. "You like him, don't you? He keeps doing shit that might get him killed, and he's a fucking mess, and you actually like the man."
"I respect him," Natasha corrected sharply.
Brian started laughing so hard that he doubled over onto the bar-top to keep from falling off of his chair. Natasha didn't like very many people—and the fact that she actually liked a man that was so obviously such a pain in the ass?
"If you tell anyone, I will kill you with my thighs," Natasha hissed. Then she sucked in a horrified breath. "If you tell Barton, O'Connor, I won't make it quick."
"Calm down, woman," Brian said, something that he'd never have dared to say to Natasha if there weren't several hundred miles of space between them. "I won't tell Barton. Only…"
Natasha groaned. "What do you want?"
Brian grinned, enjoying a moment where he had actually managed to get something over on Natasha.
"Oh, I don't know," Brian said cheerfully, before abruptly remembering that no, Tony Stark lived in Malibu and there wasn't hundreds of miles of space between them—more like thirty. "I'll settle for your eternal gratitude and agree never to mention it again," he added quickly.
"Realized how close Malibu and L.A. are, did you?" Natasha purred at him. Brian groaned.
"Shut up, Nat. And please don't kill me," he added rapidly.
Natasha swore in Russian, and Brian sat up straight. "Trouble?" he asked.
"Pepper's calling," Natasha said. "I have to go. Good luck on your… race."
"Shut up, Nat," Brian sang. "And good luck with your babysitting job."
Natasha hung up on him, and he dropped his phone to the counter. Mia had prodded around the muscle—Vince, that was his name, right, it was in the files—to stop in front of him again.
"Was that the girlfriend?" Mia asked.
Brian laughed. "As if I could be so lucky," he sighed. "No, Natasha is way too much woman for me—for anyone, honestly."
...
"Report, O'Connor," Coulson ordered.
Brian sighed. "It's definitely Toretto," he said. "The financials in the garage and his café both indicate recent capital investment revenue that couldn't have come from anywhere else. Additionally, he isn't nearly as much of a loose cannon as we had initially feared; he has hot buttons and he's dangerous if you hit them—but no more or less than anyone else. The driver that he nearly killed with a socket wrench, it was the driver that had been in an accident with his father on the racetrack a week previously—the accident that killed his father, in fact. He's in very good physical condition, and, of course, he's an excellent driver—potentially an enhanced, x-gene positive or something similar. His fighting skills have mostly been learned in street fights and bar brawls, but he has the bones of decent talent and it wouldn't take much to get him into proper fighting form. If you get his loyalty, you have it for life—and he'd do anything for those he considers family. His moral compass seems to be pretty solid, despite the truck hijacking—I assume that his motivation is mostly money, and once that problem is taken-care-of, he would stop pretty easily."
"So," Coulson prompted.
"Recommended immediate recruitment for extraction and non-covert operations," Brian gave his recommendation without hesitation. "He can't tell a lie worth a damn, and actually pretending to be someone that he isn't would be totally beyond him; undercover work isn't suggested at this time. Though, let me tell you this—get the man trained up a bit, and he'd make a hell of a distraction."
"All right," Coulson said. "Send me the reports and I'll take it to Fury. Try to stall the feds for a few more days, maybe do something stupid like get caught snooping around his garage and tell them that you have to lay low for a few days before you can get anything concrete. It's so much easier if we get to recruitment before they charge him for anything, do you know how much paperwork I'd have to do to get his record expunged?"
"Yes sir," Brian answered. "And sir?"
"Yes, Specialist O'Connor?" Coulson asked smoothly.
"I'm so glad you're back from New Mexico, sir," Brian said fervently. Sitwell had been driving him up the wall. Coulson handled most of the specialists, simply because while they were all highly talented operatives, they were also difficult to work with and had issues with authority pretty much as a blanket flaw. Coulson, though, had first been busy in Malibu with Nat, and then in New Mexico with Barton, and Brian's mission had been deemed lower priority.
Coulson sharpened. "Any difficulties to report, Specialist O'Connor?" Coulson was also extremely protective of his operatives, since most handlers tended to get nasty when their agents wouldn't toe the line.
"No, no," Brian said quickly. "Agent Sitwell was fine, just… kind of naggy."
Coulson snorted. "Good luck, Specialist," he offered, before hanging up the phone. Brian removed his cell from his ear and sighed. He supposed that they should thank their lucky stars that Dominic Toretto was such an idiot, because he never would have gotten their attention if he hadn't been a person of interest in this case. However, the fact that he was hijacking semi-trucks in the middle of the highway made it difficult to appreciate his particular brand of semi-suicidal stupidity.
At least his adrenaline addiction would fit in nicely. And the feds were going to throw a fucking fit over it, which was always funny, doubly-so for Brian now that he'd been dealing with Bilkins' wannabe father-figure attitude and Tanner's micro-management for the past few weeks.
...
"You're not a cop," Dom was glaring at him accusingly, probably too pissed at Brian for lying to appreciate the irony that he was now getting angry with Brian for not being a cop, after getting so angry at him when he'd thought that he was.
"No," Brian agreed, leaning back against his chair legs and propping his feet on the table.
"You're not Brian Spilner, either," Dom added.
"Nope," Brian said cheerfully, popping his lips on the 'p' because he knew that it made him sound extra nonchalant.
"What are you, then?" Dom demanded exasperatedly, his annoyance overtaking his genuine anger, which had been Brian's intention all along.
He grinned and rocked the chair back down. "Specialist Brian O'Connor, codename Bullitt, Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division," he said, offering a hand. Dom dumbly grasped it, and shook back.
"You can just call us SHIELD," Coulson said, having entered the room behind Brian and let the door shut again.
Dom stared from Brian to Coulson, to back again.
"This is my handler, Agent Phil Coulson," Brian added genially.
"What," Dom muttered. "What the hell am I even doing here? Fine, yes, I was jacking those trucks," he added, clearly incensed. "But why am I not in lockup?"
Coulson grinned a little bit, and tossed a thick folder onto the table in front of Dom. "Welcome to SHIELD, Mr. Toretto," he stated smoothly.
"They brought me in on the truck-jacking case through what our agencies would call inter-agency cooperation," Brian elaborated. "And what most of our agents would call 'Fury pimping me out like a whore'."
"O'Connor," Coulson snapped.
"Sorry, sorry, inappropriate black humor," Brian said genially.
Dom gave him a confused look—probably because the joke was only funny, and also only 'inappropriate black humor', if you understood how often SHIELD used people as honey traps, and how often Brian (and other people, Nat specifically) had to go on missions that involved genuinely pimping them out like whores.
"O'Connor was brought in because the FBI recognized the need for an undercover agent with advanced enough driving skills to successfully infiltrate the street racing circuit," Coulson continued for him.
"And Fury owed some FBI bigshot a favor," Brian muttered.
Coulson sighed. "Yes, that too."
"What is this?" Dom demanded, flipping through the folder.
"That is the SHIELD benefits package," Coulson said. "Includes very good health and dental, along with life-insurance if you aren't killed in the line of duty. If you are killed in the line of duty, then there's additional hazard-pay as well."
"What the fuck," Dom muttered.
"Once the case files crossed my desk—necessary, since inter-agency cooperation comes with full disclosure on what they are using my operative for, especially when potentially dangerous undercover work is involved—your file sent up several red-flags that resulted in you being tapped for recruitment. After that, O'Connor was re-tasked with keeping the FBI busy and running an assessment and profile of both your skills and personality."
"You want me to be a spy?" Dom asked hoarsely, staring at Coulson in abject shock. "Man, O'Connor could tell you that I can't lie worth a damn. And, hang on—potentially dangerous? What do you think that we might have done to him, killed him? We wouldn't have even if he'd actually been a cop—"
"The Trans, Dom," Brian interjected. "I consider any cover that requires me to be in the vicinity of a person like Johnny Tran without an arsenal to be high-risk."
"An arsenal?" Dom asked faintly.
Brian smirked and started stripping weaponry off of his person. Dom stared at him in faint shock as he dumped four knives, three miniature incendiary devices, a tazer, two ICERs and five guns on the table in front of him.
"I think you missed a spot," Dom managed to snark, though he was clearly kind of shocked.
"You can never have too much firepower," Brian said philosophically.
"Not a spy," Coulson said. "The movies cover the spies, Mr. Toretto. But spies need extraction plans, they need backup, they need drivers and muscle—both of which you are excellent at. Occasionally, we may send you to a stretch of highway with a Ferrari and rocket launcher, and tell you to cause as big of a mess as possible in order to remove attention from our undercover operative's actions elsewhere."
"But," Dom said persistently. "What about the trucks?"
Coulson rolled his eyes. "We don't care about that, Mr. Toretto."
"Huh?" Dom said.
"SHIELD doesn't care what you do in your off-time, Toretto. I street race. Nat occasionally 'goes on vacation' in Eastern Europe and assassinates people on her way across the globe. Barton has a kind of alarming propensity for beating rigged circus games, which, frankly, should concern you guys—I mean, what does that say about him?" Brian said to Coulson. "Nobody cares what you do. It isn't just, like, they turn a blind eye. They don't care."
"We concern ourselves with matters of national and international security," Coulson said quietly. "Our operatives are highly skilled, and highly specialized, and they require coping mechanisms that are often illegal, unhealthy, or both. We trust you with the fate of the planet, Mr. Toretto. We ought to trust you to know where the line is, too. Nobody will watch you, nobody will bother you; and if you ever find yourself in a jail cell, you will be given a number to call and report to, and they will quietly have you released and arrange for the paperwork regarding your arrest to disappear. This will happen regardless of if the situation is an incident of public drunkenness or a bar brawl. Or a street race," he added knowingly.
"Our profilers would have caught any serious sociopathic tendencies in your initial file, and even if they had missed it, O'Connor does recruitment for a reason—he would have found indication of any alarming habits. We do ask that you avoid stupidity like DUIs and other things that might harm bystanders," Coulson added mildly.
"Street racing is dangerous," Dom said dryly. "It harms plenty of bystanders."
"Anyone present at a street race is not a bystander," Coulson countered. "Anyone present at a street race is aware of the potential danger, and has chosen to take that risk by being there. Nobody wanders around a street race unaware of what is taking place."
"You would have caught any alarming habits," Dom said flintily to Brian. "What does that mean?"
"I'm a profiler," Brian said, shrugging one shoulder. "I'm an excellent liar, I'm great at getting people to trust me, and I can read people and their habits and their emotions."
"And what do you mean by alarming habits?" Dom added. "Isn't street racing an alarming habit? Isn't hijacking semi-truck cargo and selling it on the black market?"
"He meant like, serial killer tendencies," Brian said dryly. "Shit like, slicing up small animals in the shed, lighting puppies on fire for fun… you know, Criminal Minds crap. Let me tell you, if they'd sent me to assess Tran for recruitment, Agent Coulson and I would have been having a very different conversation, and it would have ended with me saying no, no, a thousand times no, safeword."
Dom snorted, clearly appreciating Brian's filthy sense of humor. Coulson sighed exasperatedly.
"Okay, but as much as I despised Tran," Dom said. "I'm pretty sure that he never sliced up a small animal in the shed or lit a puppy on fire for fun."
"Well that kind of stuff would be a very alarming red flag," Brian allowed. "But. Okay, this is gonna piss you off, because it's gonna remind you that I have a file somewhere where all of this stuff is written about you. But. Tran has classic power-trip tendencies; he enjoys feeling powerful to the point of purposely putting down the defenceless in order to feed the rush. He's a borderline narcissist and entertains delusions of importance beyond his means—and can be dangerous when people don't give him the respect and deference that he believes that he deserves. See: him blowing up a car with both of us, and a bunch of his guys right next to it, because you gave him a bit of lip and clearly weren't afraid of him."
Dom stared. "You sound like you swallowed one of Mia's psychology textbooks."
"Well," Brian allowed. "Forensic psychology. Everyone assessing recruitment has to be able to run a professional profile without backup."
"So," Dom looked at Brian. "You were undercover for SHIELD and assessing my suitability for recruitment, within the feds, where you were supposedly undercover to find out if I was jacking trucks."
"Yes," Brian agreed. "Though, I figured out for sure that you were jacking trucks within like, the first three days after I'd gotten in with you."
"… How?" Dom asked, stunned. "We didn't trust you that fast," he added, somewhat defensively.
"Ah, no," Brian said sheepishly. "I got into your computers and the financials. Both the garage and the café had had recent capital investment, and you had no other source of cash. Money always tells."
"You didn't have a warrant," Dom stated, looking at him.
"I wasn't looking for evidence that would hold up in court," Brian said. "I just needed to know whether-or-not you did it. I needed to know if I had to keep the feds off your ass or not."
"Some inter-agency cooperation," Dom commented.
"I disagree," Coulson murmured. "The truck-jackings will stop, because you have no reason to continue them—and that was why we agreed to help them."
"And what if I don't want to be recruited?" Dom demanded belligerently.
"Then you go home," Coulson said. "The truck-jacking has been taken care of. We aren't holding anything over your head or blackmailing you, Mr. Toretto. Blackmailed operatives tend to make poor operatives."
"You'll say yes," Brian added, smirking.
"And why is that, O'Connor?" Dom was obviously testing the name on his tongue.
"Because you want to," Brian said. "Because you were only half jacking trucks for the money, you were also doing it for the thrill. And trust me when I say that this job is hardly short on thrill."
Dom looked at Brian. He looked at Coulson. Then he looked down at the pile of paperwork on the table. "Where do I sign?"
Coulson opened his mouth to let out some snark about paperwork, likely, when his phone rang.
"Apologies, I have to take this," Coulson stated, answering it quickly. "Coulson," he said, rapidly businesslike. Then, "What?"
Brian turned to stare. Coulson was the most unflappable man that he knew.
Coulson covered the mouthpiece of his phone. "O'Connor, we're going to level three emergency and your leave is being put off."
"Yes," Brian, who despised mandatory leave nearly as much as he despised the mandatory psych eval that came with it, hissed triumphantly. Coulson glared at him, and Brian shifted. "Oh, I mean, what happened," he tried lamely. "I hope no one got hurt."
Then Coulson blinked, clearly still stunned. "They found Captain America," he said faintly.
Brian blinked. "Okay, that's really great that they've finally brought him home," he said. "But finding a body in the ocean doesn't really warrant a level-three emergency, does it?"
"O'Connor," Coulson said. "He's still alive. Pack your bags, you're going to New York."
"Yes," Brian hissed again. The racing scene was fantastic in New York.
"You're going to help keep an eye on the facility in Staten Island," Coulson said dryly.
"Is this some sort of scheme to make me so desperate to get out of there that I'll take literally any other option—including mandatory leave? Or is this just so that I stop fucking with the psych department's heads?" Brian asked conversationally.
"It would be nice, O'Connor, if you and Barton stopped driving our psychiatrists to quitting on the spot. And O'Connor? Yes, we know about the bet," Coulson sighed. "But no. Barton asked for backup in the facility, and Romanoff is chasing up something unrelated in Asia. Apparently the subject is… misbehaving. Barton thinks we might need getaway drivers, and Selvig is too enamoured with the cube to care that it could be dangerous."
Brian blinked. "Physicists," he said disgustedly.
"I'll get someone in here to get the paperwork signed, Mr. Toretto," Coulson said. "O'Connor needs to get his ass on a quinjet, stat, and I'll be following soon enough, after I make a few stops along the way."
Brian nodded. "Jet ready for me?"
"Wheels up in fifteen, O'Connor," Coulson ordered.
"Yes, sir," Brian said sharply. "Oh, hey, Dom," he added. "I'm sorry I didn't say this earlier, it just got lost in all of the confusion. Jesse's here. I called SHIELD and had him brought in, they've got him in the medbay. They were sending him into surgery when I lost touch with them, but he should be out by now."
"Jesse's alive?" Dom said, looking gobsmacked and relieved all at once.
"Yeah," Brian said, smiling softly. "Jesse's alive. If he made it through surgery, he should pull through. At least, based on what I saw of his wounds. Vince… well, I had to call the LAPD for medevac for him—you were there," he added wryly. "He got medical attention right away, so hopefully he'll be all right as well. You'll want to call Letty and Leon before they get to the border so that they know that this… incident has been expunged from their records. They'll want to lie low for a bit, because they're sadly stuck in the middle of what is about to be a huge inter-agency pissing match. The feds hate it when SHIELD mucks around in their cases. Leon will want to pay off that speeding ticket," he added. "Just in case. And Dom, tell Mia… tell Mia I'm sorry, please?"
"Hey, O'Connor," Dom said quietly. "Thanks," he added. "And as long as you weren't pretending to be falling for Mia?" His eyebrow arched up dangerously.
"I wasn't," Brian said quickly. "I… your sister is sort of, exactly my type, Dom," he said wryly. "I knew from the beginning that I should have stayed back, actually. It's not like it was necessary to get into your crew."
"Well as long as you weren't faking, you don't have anything to apologize for," Dom murmured. "You just… saved us from all of my fuck-ups. And once I explain to Mia, she'll agree with me. Come by when you get home," he added, when Brian turned to the door.
"Will do," Brian said, swiftly masking his relief that the new family that he'd found, entirely by accident, wasn't going to kick him out for this. They might be angry, but if Dom had come around enough to get over it, the rest would too.