Chapter Text
Tommy had a huge house.
He knew very well that it was absolutely ridiculous. He was a single man living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. He had never worked a job that attracted a fat paycheck and there was certainly no inheritance or family money to speak of (or, for that matter, a family to speak of point blank anymore.)
Owning a sprawling double story house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, multiple living areas and a double garage made zero sense in his situation.
And the thing was, it was kind of accidental. It wasn’t like he had gone out of his way to get such a large house.
He’d started looking to buy a place a few years into working for the LAFD. He felt settled enough in both the city and his new career by that point that he was comfortable making such a long-term decision. He also had a decent enough nest egg which could be used as a down payment, accumulated during his army days since he had left the shitty shared apartment he’d been living in once he enlisted (it wasn’t like he had all that much stuff after those last few years of moving between foster placements and group homes anyway) and, unlike many of his colleagues, his salary didn’t need to support anyone while he served abroad.
Tommy had never really been the kind of person to take risks, so he’d had every intention of buying a safe, mediocre apartment that he could afford with relative ease. Originally he had even limited his search to one-bedroom places – the eventual choice to expand his filters to include two bedrooms felt like a decadent splurge that he didn’t really need.
But he was starting to form friendships at the firehouse and his gym, and it hadn’t been that long since he’d been out of the army meaning there was still a chance that one of his old buddies might reach out and want to catch up, so he thought having a guest room could be justified.
(When he was six, he asked his mom if she thought the bird feeder he was trying to make for their tiny concrete balcony would actually attract some birds.
“If you build it, they will come,” she had joked light-heartedly, and he had grinned and returned to his construction, pretending that he hadn’t noticed the anxiety lining her face or the newest line of bruises snaking up her arm.
The feeder hadn’t been a roaring success by any stretch of the imagination but it did entice the occasional bird to hang around their balcony, especially on those rare occasions that his mom managed to find a couple extra dollars to add some seeds to it alongside the sugar water she usually helped him make.
Seeing those birds enjoying something that he had built had been a bright spot of his childhood.)
And then the 118 was called to rescue a woman whose foot had gotten stuck in a bear trap that definitely shouldn’t have been lying around the backyard of a residential property.
“It’s an estate sale,” she explained to them grumpily, steadfastly staring at something in the distance so that she didn’t have to look at what they were doing with her mangled foot. “My client said his father got extremely paranoid those last few years although he swore that he cleaned it all up for me.”
“Guess attention to detail isn’t his strong suit,” Mark joked as he took her vital signs. The small group of firefighters that were milling around as they waited for her to be ready for transport started looking around the ground warily as though they were convinced a bear trap might spring out of the ground and attack them next.
Tommy wasn’t overly concerned about the traps themselves – they weren’t all that well hidden once you knew what to look for and he had already clocked another one near the side gate – but the idea of an unexpected attack coming from the ground was triggering some uncomfortable memories from his deployment and he was grateful that his colleague’s discomfort helped to mask his own.
“Maybe leave that out of the ad,” Gerrard quipped dryly. He was leaning against the nearby post attached to the back verandah, looking incredibly bored by the rescue.
“At this point, I’d rather ditch the listing altogether,” she snapped frustratedly. She cinched her eyes shut and let out a loud hiss when Howie poked at her foot but kept her composure remarkably well.
She opened her eyes and scanned the firefighters around her, obviously desperate to find another distraction. “Don’t suppose any of you are looking for a house? Big plot, excellent location, recently renovated…”
“Tommy is currently looking to buy, actually.” Sal, the traitor, pointed right at him.
The agent perked up, zeroing in on him the same way he imagined a lion would hone in on a zebra.
“I think this place is out of my price range,” Tommy said hastily, resisting the urge to take a step back. “I’m looking at apartments.”
“This place is on the pricier side,” the agent acknowledged, running her eyes over him. Tommy wondered if she was somehow internally calculating how much money she could extract out of him. “But you know there are plenty of houses in LA that you can get for a damn good price!”
Even the firefighters working on extricating her foot paused to stare at her in disbelief over that claim.
“I mean, it’s generally because they need some work,” she allowed, but she didn’t allow that to dampen her newfound enthusiasm for long. “But you’re a big strong firefighter, I’m sure you aren’t afraid of needing to put in a little bit of elbow grease!” She fluttered her eyelashes at him.
Even if that move had ever had a chance of working on him, the wincing and sharp intake of breath when they successfully pulled her foot free would have ruined the effect anyway.
“And houses are a much better investment than apartments,” she gasped out determinedly, fixing him with a smile that did nothing to hide how much pain she was in.
“She’s not wrong,” Gerrard commented, pushing himself off the post to lead them back towards their truck.
Tommy didn’t dare roll his eyes at his captain but he wished he could. It was easy for Gerrard to say – his family had been living in the city for generations. Even in the short time that Tommy had worked at the station, Gerrard had spoken about two different uncles dying and leaving him and his brothers some sort of property to split up between them.
“I’ll look into it,” Tommy said, deciding to throw her a bone since, well, her actual bone was in a terrible state and she looked miserable about it.
That should have been the end of it, except –
“I gave Kate your number,” Mark told him, bounding into the loft and making a beeline for the coffee machine.
Tommy looked up from the sad salad he’d picked up from the convenience store on his way to work this morning. “Huh?”
“The real estate agent we rescued,” Mark clarified, saving Tommy from wracking his brain to try and remember if Mark had mentioned trying to set him up with another one of his friends again. “She was asking what area you wanted to buy in and I figured it was easier to just give her your number.”
“You gave my number to a victim we rescued?” Tommy asked flatly, slightly appalled at the invasion of privacy.
“She was a pretty enough woman; you can always put the number to other uses,” Joe snorted, wriggling his eyebrows and exchanging a high five with Jack.
“Nah, remember, Tommy doesn’t date women he meets on calls.” Sal’s voice was slightly mocking as he reminded his teammates of Tommy’s firm and oft-repeated excuse for why he never took up any of the offers he got from women on a call but Tommy was just grateful that his friend had jumped in to defend him.
“So then go check out a house,” Joe said, shrugging unconcernedly. He grabbed a protein bar from their stash in the back of the cupboard and jogged towards the stairs without waiting for a response.
“Oh, yeah, ‘cause I can afford a house in LA,” Tommy muttered caustically anyway.
“She wasn’t wrong about the whole fixer-upper thing,” Sal said. He gestured at Tommy with the coffee pot and grabbed a second mug when Tommy nodded in response to the silent question. “You can get a decent deal if you’re willing to put in some elbow grease. That’s how my sister and her husband were able to afford their place.”
“Because putting in some elbow grease is exactly what I want to be doing after a long shift,” Tommy scoffed, shaking his head.
“Yeah, alright, that’s a good point,” Sal agreed with a chuckle and a roll of his eyes. “My sister made me help out with some of their projects. Spending multiple 48-offs having to build storage for my niece’s doll collection is not my idea of a good time.”
Privately, Tommy thought that didn’t sound all that bad. He actually really enjoyed working with his hands and he was good at building things. Being able to put that to use while spending time with family, maybe even earning a beaming smile out of an adorable little girl when she saw the new home bestowed to her dolls, would be time well spent in his books.
But he didn’t have a family to rope into helping him with DIY projects, so that wasn’t going to happen for him.
That really should have been the end of it. He was resolved to respond to any potential text from Kate with a polite but firm refusal.
And yet… there was something that stopped him from doing exactly that when Kate texted him a couple weeks later to say that she had found an “AMAZING fixer upper that I think you will LOVE!!”
He had no idea why he couldn’t write back that he wasn’t interested.
There was no logical reason why he agreed to look at the house with her the following Friday when he had no intentions of buying it.
His first impression of the house when he pulled up was ‘jesus that’s big.’
His second was that he could already see what Kate meant about it needing some work: the front lawn was a mess of weeds and overgrown grass and the overly-large lemon tree in the corner seemed to be tilting at a worrying angle. The facade was also peeling and cracking in places although the report Kate had sent through indicated that there were no structural issues and Tommy didn’t see anything to disprove that idea, which meant it was more of a cosmetic thing.
The door swung open, Kate’s voice calling out a greeting before he could inspect the front porch properly (it definitely hadn’t been well maintained, going by the number of cracks in the dry and dull wood).
“Hey, how’s the foot?” Tommy asked, stepping up to the front door.
Kate shuffled to the side awkwardly, clearly not used to the bulky crutches she was using.
“Eh, you know how it is, I’m sure,” she said dismissively. She raised her hand as though she was about to wave him in and then realised she was about to lose her balance so gestured with her head instead. “Now, come take a look at this beauty.”
His first thought when he walked in was ‘ wow, it’s ugly.’
Like, the decor was so ugly it was bordering on satirical: burnt orange carpet paired with violet walls, floral-patterned curtains, and bright green furniture.
Tommy was no interior decorator, but he refused to believe that anyone could have ever considered this to be fashionable.
“Isn’t it something?” Kate asked, a bit smug, like she thought his speechlessness was due to awe and not horror.
“It’s definitely… something is a good word.”
In fairness, once they walked in a few more steps, it became apparent how spacious it was. In fact, even stuffed full of furniture, the living space felt cavernous in comparison to the small shoebox-y apartments he had gotten used to living in.
Despite their questionable taste in decor, the previous owners must have been ahead of the curve in some ways because it was also remarkably open and airy for being such an old house. Tommy had never had many friends at school, but he had been invited to the occasional party or gathering and what he remembered about those houses was that they were always segmented into small, closed off rooms.
Standing near the edge of the living room, he could see the bottom of the stairs which were on the other side of the room, the wide archway that led to the kitchen and, glancing up, there was also a decent view of part of the upstairs landing.
“Obviously the decor needs work but that’s one of the reasons why a house of this size is going for so cheap –”
Tommy listened as she rattled off the particulars of the house, his eyes wide. Kate had told him that she was showing him the house before the listing even went live, so this was the first time he was hearing it all and it only accentuated the feeling that he was wasting both of their time.
“That’s, uh, a little big for me,” he said, jumping in before she could go into more detail about the “opportunities offered by the myriad of fruit trees in the backyard.”
She cocked her head, confused.
“It’s just me… I don’t think I need four bedrooms and three bathrooms just for myself.” Tommy chuckled awkwardly, wishing he had managed to assert himself more firmly.
“Think of it as perfect future-proofing,” Kate suggested, undeterred. “See, through here you have the perfect space for some wild parties.”
She led him through the living room which he now realised connected to another living space in a wonky sort of L-shape. This one was set up with a billiard table and various associated paraphernalia – all dusty from disuse. One of the walls had floor to ceiling windows, with a glass sliding door in the middle leading to the backyard which looked just as wild and unkempt as the front yard was.
“And then once you settle down with a nice young lady, you could turn it into a formal dining room, which is what this space was made for originally.”
Tommy’s stomach jolted uncomfortably.
“The backyard has plenty of space for a barbecue area for entertaining and then maybe for a play area for children,” she continued, oblivious to his reaction.
His stomach jolted again, but this time it was more of an ache.
“And, it’s very unusual for houses in this era,” Kate kept going as she moved back through the first living space towards the stairs where it turned out there was another corridor with three doors, “but you’ve got a good-sized bedroom and a full bathroom down on this floor.” She pushed open the first door, which turned out to be for the aforementioned bathroom. “I figure that could be very useful for a firefighter, you know, in case you get injured or something. I don’t have a shower on my first floor and, let me tell you, it’s been a nightmare.”
“It would be useful,” Tommy admitted reluctantly, not wanting to encourage her. The shower-over-bath scenario would have to be changed to actually achieve that benefit – as would the kaleidoscopic neon tiles because he didn’t even want to think about the effect those would have for someone on heavy duty painkillers.
Not that it mattered, since he could get the benefit of having a full bath on the same floor he slept on by buying a normal apartment where everything was on one floor by default.
He was going to say that to Kate, he really was, but she opened the door to the adjacent bedroom and it felt like the moment to comment on it was lost.
“Unfortunately no built-in storage,” she informed him as he stepped into the room. “Only the master bedroom has that, but it means you can choose the layout of the room yourself.”
Tommy had to give it to her, it was an interesting way to spin ‘you’ll need to spend money on more furniture.’
He took a perfunctory glance around the room – it was a good size and there was a large window which let in plenty of light. And, while it had the same orange carpet as the rest of the place, the walls weren’t an eyesore. They could probably still do with a fresh coat of paint, but overall there wasn’t much that would need to be done to make the room habitable.
Kate opened the third door as soon as he stepped out, showing him a utility room that was thankfully quite basic: just a washing machine, dryer, a deep sink and a little nook where an ironing board was set up. There was also an ancient-looking wooden door which led to the backyard.
“Very practical,” Kate said sagely.
“Definitely more so than the decor,” Tommy commented with a forced chuckle, attempting to plant the seed that he would not be buying the damn house.
“Oh, that’s so easy to change. In fact – I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, I didn’t even tell the owners because I wanted to show you the place first and I figure I owe you one for the rescue,” Kate said, lowering her voice like she was confiding in him, “but often houses from this era have hardwood floors under the carpet.” She poked the hallway carpet with her crutch for emphasis. “And it’s usually in excellent condition because it was never used. Rip up the carpet, fresh coat of varnish, and hello stunning floors which barely hit the hip pocket.”
Kate was staring at him expectantly, like she was waiting for a reply.
“I’m sure it would look great,” he finally said, feeling awkward and strangely defeated.
It wasn’t a lie either; he was sure that the place did have the potential to look fantastic once it was fixed up. And maybe if it had been a one-storey and it was only this first floor, Tommy actually would have considered buying it even though it still would have been bigger overall than even the two-bedroom places he had scoped out thus far.
Speaking of which, Kate was now eyeing off the stairs with trepidation, clearly psyching herself up to clamber up them with her crutches.
“We don’t need to go upstairs,” he said hastily, not wanting her to go through that much trouble when he wasn’t going to buy the house. “I, uh – this gives me enough of an idea, I don’t need to see it.”
She levelled him with an unimpressed look. “You can’t buy a house without seeing half of it,” she scolded, sounding more like a mother than the professional she’d been up until now. “That’s just asking for trouble.”
The correct response to that would have been to tell her that he wasn’t planning on buying the damn house.
“I’ll, uh, go look at it on my own?”
“Alright,” she acquiesced, seemingly unaware that he was now chastising himself internally for not taking yet another opportunity to shut the whole thing down. “Let me know if you have any questions.”
There would definitely be no questions, Tommy told himself firmly as he bound up the stairs. He was going to take a cursory look around and then head back down and leave.
The stairs took him to quite a large landing that must have been used by the previous owners as a play area for their children because there was a large set of shelves that was full to the brim with various toys and books. There was also another television up here, though this one was smaller than the one downstairs, and a Nintendo 64 was stashed under the TV unit.
It was incredibly homely, so much so that a spike of longing went through his chest because it was so painfully unfamiliar to him.
He found himself taking a few steps closer to the old, soft couch, drawn in by the giant stuffed rabbit sitting on top of it. The toy was obviously well loved: the colour of the fur was faded and there were patches on the head and the stomach where it had become matted and sparse.
(Tommy had once owned a massive teddy bear, although he only knew that because of old pictures rather than having any particular memory of it. Mr Hot Fuzz had been sent to him by his grandmother in Italy and his mother had taken quite a few photos of him sitting with the bear that dwarfed his tiny frame to send back to her.
He was too young to remember what happened to it; all he knew for certain was that it had never made the interstate journey they’d made after the whispers of his dad’s behaviour towards his mom had pissed his dad off enough to insist they needed a fresh start.
She had convinced him that he was too old for a new bear when he had begged for a new one. Tommy realised now that it was because she couldn’t afford it but back then, all of seven years old, he had struggled to understand why he had to be her ‘big brave boy’ all of a sudden.)
“It’s an excellent versatile space, right.”
Tommy’s hand jolted back from the rabbit when Kate’s voice rang out. He glanced around and realised that she had moved back into the living room where she would be able to see the edge of this room.
Tommy called back a generic response to acknowledge he’d heard her before moving swiftly to see the rest of the rooms, shaking his head violently and silently scolding himself for getting distracted and acting weird about a child’s playroom.
He walked through the floor quickly, only allowing himself a few glances in each room. The decor wasn’t quite as glaring up here, although he couldn’t say that bright aquamarine would be his first choice of carpet colour. The two bedrooms were a decent size, as was the main bathroom; although, like the one downstairs, it desperately needed updating.
The master bedroom was at the end of the hallway. It was huge, at least double the size of the other bedrooms if you counted the expansive walk-in robe. Most of the back wall was taken up by sprawling in-built shelving which had been custom-made to fit around a King-size bed. The shelves probably needed a coat of paint but it was obvious that the build was a high-quality solid wood.
There was so much storage space in this one room that Tommy didn’t even think he would be able to fill it up with everything he currently had in his apartment.
Keeping to the theme, the ensuite bathroom was old and ugly but big. In addition to the bathtub and shower – which were at least separate in this one – it had a double vanity, which only served to remind Tommy how ill-suited the house was for him.
Like, seriously, what the hell did he need two sinks for?
Or, for that matter, what the hell would he do with this giant sprawling place in general?
He said as much to Kate, once he got back downstairs.
“You’ll be surprised at how quickly it will start to feel small,” she chuckled, smiling brightly at him, apparently not yet realising that he would only disappoint her. “Now, lucky last: let’s go look at the kitchen!”
It was the last room, Tommy told himself as he trailed after her reluctantly. He might as well see the last room before finally returning home to go scrolling through zillow listings for apartments that were actually suited to his lifestyle and budget.
If the upper floor had been a subdued reprieve from the chaotic decor, then the kitchen was the exact opposite with its orange laminate cabinets, canary yellow splashback, and pale pink benchtop atop the black and white chequered linoleum floors.
“Isn’t it an excellent layout?” Kate said enthusiastically, skipping over the eyesore with a practised ease that betrayed how long she must have been doing this job.
“Once you look past the, uh, colour scheme, I guess…”
Kate waved her arm dismissively, almost knocking a chair over with her crutch. “That’s all just cosmetics; it’s a simple fix.”
Tommy hummed non-committedly, thinking that she was probably underselling the work and cost involved in doing that.
“But what you can do with the space you’ve got here – now that would be hard to replicate anywhere else.”
He could give her that one. The actual layout of the kitchen was very functional, with plenty of free space and cabinetry to store appliances and do any prep work. There were stools tucked under a lip on one side of the freestanding bench which would allow someone to sit and watch while the host cooked. There was also plenty of natural light streaming in through large glass double doors that looked to be another entrance into the backyard.
On the other end, there was also a large nook with a table. It was possibly the most understated thing in the entire house: a simple wooden table with a bowl of fruit in the middle and six plain wooden chairs tucked underneath it.
It was undeniably a great kitchen, but Tommy was generally not the kind of person who spent much time cooking.
“Can you imagine it?” Kate asked, her voice slightly hushed.
Not really, Tommy thought to himself, amused at her tactics despite himself.
But he didn’t say it out loud, and that would be his downfall.
“It’s early in the morning, you’ve got a gorgeous view of the sunrise coming through while you cook breakfast,” Kate nodded towards the doors and then started to move along the length of the bench towards the table, her crutches squeaking slightly against the floor. “And, in a few years, maybe you’ll have a special someone standing there, making dinner, or maybe it will be you, and they’ll be sitting with the kids because they want to play a game or they want to do their homework…”
Tommy’s breath caught in his throat.
(Other than at the station or in the army, Tommy had never really experienced kitchens as communal spaces. The kitchens they’d had when he lived with his mom had been small and closed off and she had needed every last inch of space to be able to make anything so Tommy was never able to just hang out with her while she cooked.
There had been a few foster homes that he had been placed in that had decent-sized kitchens, but he was never able to stay for long enough to feel comfortable just… hanging out in there like that. And then after that, it was all group homes where the kitchen was generally off-limits to the kids altogether.
As for having somewhere to sit and do homework…
Tommy remembered one particular teacher in middle school who had been utterly convinced that he was a slacker because his homework was always sloppy and often incomplete.
He set long essays with short deadlines and Tommy had struggled massively to get them done when his only choices about where to write it were the table next to a blaring television or sitting on his bed and leaning on a heavy textbook.)
The images playing out in Tommy’s head probably didn’t quite match what Kate had intended but he was unwillingly captivated by it all the same.
“Wait, you actually bought it?” Howie said, staring at Tommy over the top of his coffee, slack jawed from shock.
Sal whistled, also looking surprised.
“Technically I’ve only put in an offer,” Tommy corrected. He had to exert a decent amount of effort to stop his shoulders from inching up and betraying his awkwardness. “It might not be accepted. I did kinda lowball them.”
He hadn’t had much of a choice but to lowball them – it was, at the end of the day, a very large house in Los Angeles and that inevitably carried with it a hefty price tag. Even with the lowball offer it was a lot more than Tommy had been planning to spend. If it got accepted, the down payment would all but wipe out his savings and the mortgage payment would take up an uncomfortably high proportion of his salary.
“Guess we’ll just wish you luck for now,” Howie said, shaking his head, looking puzzled.
“Good luck, man,” Sal echoed, slapping Tommy’s shoulder.
“Thanks, guys,” Tommy murmured in response, his nerves fluttering as he was once again reminded of the magnitude of what he was doing.
He couldn’t even be all that sure if he wanted that luck to get his offer accepted or rejected.
“How do you feel?” Kate asked him, her giddy enthusiasm a stark contrast to the dizzying apprehension that had started coursing through him as soon as she’d said the word ‘accepted.’
“It’s… I have no idea what I’m going to do with such a big space,” he managed to get out.
Kate laughed. “Oh, like I told you: once you start filling it up, you would be surprised at the way it will suddenly feel small.”
Tommy glanced around his apartment. He was sitting on the couch in the living room and from this vantage point he could literally see the entire place.
“Yeah, I doubt that.”
“Wait, what?”
Even though the exclamation had come from Howie, the rest of the crew were also staring at him with varying levels of incredulity painted on their faces.
Apparently none of them had expected to hear ‘I moved into my new house’ as a response to the innocuous conversation someone had started about what they’d all done during their time off.
It wasn’t like Tommy had purposefully kept it from them, it just hadn’t come up. He’d gotten lucky that the finalisation of the sale coincided with an unusually long break between shifts and so he’d resolved to knock out the whole move during that time, which also had the additional bonus of letting him exit his lease quickly so he wasn’t paying rent for any longer than he needed to.
“How does it feel, being in your own place?” Gerrard asked, for once sounding like he was genuinely interested in the conversation.
Tommy shrugged. “The mortgage is definitely anxiety inducing,” he offered blithely, not letting on how deep-set the panic had been when he saw the scarily large number listed as a negative on his bank statement.
Gerrard chuckled and leaned over to slap Tommy’s shoulder. “Sounds about right.”
“The real question is, when’s the housewarming?” Sal pointed his fork at Tommy expectantly.
“Let me make sure you don’t get a migraine when you walk in first,” Tommy said, raising his hands with a mock shudder. “The previous owners had, uh, interesting tastes that I wouldn’t want to subject you to.”
“Now I’m kinda curious,” Howie commented idly, looking intrigued.
“Let’s just say I’m going to start by ripping up the orange carpet.”
“Oof.” Mark winced at the imagery. “Sounds like you’ll have a lot of projects keeping you busy.”
And the obvious next question following on from that was ‘how big is the place’, so Tommy was resigned but not all that surprised when it was asked. He’d known from the beginning that he was going to get shit from them over the ludicrous size of the property so he braced himself for exactly that.
“Holy shit.” Mark stared at him, mouth agape so widely that they could all see his half-eaten eggs, which was all kinds of gross. “I thought you said you wanted a 2-bedder.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have given that real estate chick his number,” Sal said wryly. He had already managed to shake off his surprise, his eyebrows returning to their normal position. “She must’ve been better at sales than we thought.”
“She was very persuasive,” Tommy agreed, careful to avoid the urge to give too much detail.
“I’ll say,” Howie muttered, shaking his head. “What do you even need a place that big for?”
“It’ll make a nice young lady very happy one day,” Gerrard rumbled approvingly.
Tommy dropped his gaze to the remnants of his breakfast, barely even acknowledging another bracing slap on the shoulder even though it was unheard of to get two approving gestures from their cantankerous captain in a single shift.
“You’re a provider, Tommy – good on you.”
He got up from the table with his plate, signalling that their meal time was done so the rest of them followed suit, the conversation basically over as they dispersed to complete their various chores.
Sal, on dish duty, started collecting all their plates. “Can’t wait for the housewarming so I can see the place in person,” he said to Tommy as he collected his plate.
The sentiment helped to chase away some of that curdling anxiety because this was exactly what Tommy wanted. “I’ll make sure we can do it soon,” he said, determined to get through at least those first renovations quickly.
He started with the living room.
It made sense, he reasoned with himself. While it was true that the kitchen and bathrooms were in dire need of getting work done, they were still functional and they would be the most expensive renovations to do. Tommy was already feeling uncomfortable with how little money he had left in his savings so he wanted to let that build up a bit more before he tackled those projects.
He could have done the bedrooms upstairs but that would have been for his benefit only. Getting the downstairs done meant he could invite others to enjoy the space with him.
And also, the sooner that damn orange carpet was gone the better.
The walls took him a surprisingly long time to do, since they needed some solid sanding sessions and several coats of thick white paint to properly cover up the violet. He went for a basic off-white for most of the walls but added a light blue feature wall where the television would be.
The floor ended up being the simpler job: Kate had been on the money with her prediction about what lay underneath the carpet, and the floorboards only needed some sanding and a tonne of varnish to be usable.
That was one point where he was incredibly grateful for the size of the house: the downstairs stunk of varnish for at least a week, badly enough that he was half-tempted to borrow an oxygen mask from the station so that he could comfortably walk through the entrance and get to the stairs. But the place was big enough that he could go up to his bedroom and close the door and he didn’t smell a thing.
Once those two big things were done, he moved his furniture back downstairs to decide how to arrange it.
It all looked laughingly small in the space.
Which – it didn’t really matter. The furniture still worked for him.
But if he wanted to be able to invite people over…
Tommy ended up wiping away most of what little savings he had managed to accumulate again by buying a fancy new TV and a sprawling, amazingly comfortable couch.
He also managed to find a foosball table on some online marketplace for fifty bucks. It was no pool table but it would work well as entertainment and it fit into that side addition to the living room.
With all of that done, he invited his crewmates for a housewarming, timing it so that it was on the same night as a big sports game which they could watch together.
It was the exact kind of night he had wanted to have: fun, friends, and booze, all together in a place he owned.
He took plenty of ribbing over the terrible decor in the kitchen and bathroom – Howie insisted that it was the bathroom tiles that had made him throw up and not the six tequila shots he’d had in the span of two hours – and he realised that he was starting to feel kind of proud of the place when he had to resist the urge to preen any time someone expressed admiration for the work he’d done so far on it.
The party only started to wrap up past one in the morning. Tommy offered to let people crash overnight but no one took him up on it so he padded through the house alone after bidding a final goodbye to Sal somewhere around two-thirty.
He flicked off the lights before heading for the stairs, the moonlight pouring in through the large windows offering enough illumination for him to navigate to the stairs. Although the space was becoming increasingly familiar to him, the shadows and the silence after hours of light and company did make it seem a little spooky.
Tommy shook that feeling off.
It had been a really good night.
(The ache in his chest was from over-indulging on the alcohol and eating far too much greasy take-out, obviously.)