Chapter Text
Tommy 2
“Tommy?”
The large sprawling fields of the Angeles National Golf Club rush past beneath them, a smear of vivid colour that's already blurring with how Tommy’s eyes threaten to burn. The only reason his hands aren’t shaking around the cyclic is because of how tight he’s gripping it; his nails bite into his own palm where they’ve overlapped around the controller. He’s almost heavy handed, reckless on the antitorque pedals, feeling them bite into his heavy duty boots.
“Tommy?”
There’s a sensation of heavy pulling as the tail rotor blades are tilted by the antitorque pedals, and the cyclic is pulled almost a little too far to the left as the main rotor blades are forced abruptly from their neutral position into a steep left turn. The avionics beep angrily at him, before the tachometer levels out.
“Tommy!”
His stomach lurches briefly, a sick heaviness that has him swallowing convulsively. He levels the cyclic out when the helo has done a dramatic left turn, the golf greens replaced by the rushing suburban sights of lit up streets and the long tail of the 210 of the San Fernando Freeway replacing it in Tommy’s right side.
Burbank isn’t that far from the 210, almost parallel to it. The La Tuna Canyon Park separates Burbank from Sunland, with S Kenneth Road being near the base of the Verdugo Mountains. He and Evan-
Fuck.
Evan. Please, please don’t let it be Evan.
Anyone but Evan.
“Kinard!”
“What!”
Lucy doesn’t say anything.
Tommy, breathing heavily, a numbness creeping up on him that’s so familiar and so terrifying in this situation, blinks his blurring eyes. He deliberately loosens his shoulders, heart pounding. The cyclic creaks in his grip.
“What, Lucy?”
“We don’t know if it’s him.”
He flinches.
The cyclic is probably imprinted into the palm of his hand, evidence of just how tense and terrified Tommy truly is.
He’s never been truly okay with guns. His father had owned two, a holdover from his service in the Vietnam war, and he’d liked to get them out to field strip and clean them after two many fingers of whiskey. His mother had shot herself with one, barrel to temple into the wall. Tommy had found her, seen the blood and the brains and the tears she’d shed and he’d cried, wailed, made himself sick in his grief and disgust.
He’d joined the army because he’d wanted to take the first escape possible, knowing that he was becoming just like his father. Tommy isn’t a good man because something inside of him is intrinsically good, not like people he knows, not like Evan . Tommy’s made himself into a better man than his father ever could be, though that isn’t hard, but it was hard for Tommy to undo the teachings and biases that he hadn’t even known he’d learnt.
He’d gotten his fair share of gunshot wounds in Afghanistan and Iraq; he’s littered with scars and memories and piecemeal bites of violence that he can never put into words. He tried to escape his father but had only ended up becoming a ghost of the man, a true Kinard man that spat venom from a deadly tongue and didn’t give a shit.
He and Evan had touched briefly upon his military past, but Evan had never pushed and had only asked that Tommy come to him if he needed anything. Evan was remarkably patient and empathetic despite the fact that he was clearly curious, but he’d never once pushed, and it hurt Tommy in ways he’d never thought it could to know it was because he and Evan share a bundle of nightmares and therapy reasons between them but this was something he’d never wish upon anyone but especially Evan.
“We don’t know if it isn’t.” Tommy says.
He’s numb, cold. His heart thunders beneath his sternum, and it’s a pounding rhythm in Evan’s name.
Evan could be down there, shot and bleeding, terrified and crying and Tommy can do nothing but hope that he makes it there in time. Evan’s been shot, and there’s a growing lake of fear inside of Tommy that threatens to well up and then well out.
He doesn’t entirely know when he fell in love with Evan Buckley, but there’s a canyon that had been carved deep and wide into Tommy’s heart when he’d met the man and he hadn’t realized that it had been filling up since the very first moment he’d tucked his fingers beneath Evan’s jaw and kissed him.
Tommy wants to keep kissing this man, wants to kiss him as boyfriend, a fiancé, as a fucking husband. He’s been so terrified for so long that, suddenly and all at once, since that talk with Sal where it had felt like he was truly given permission to feel that overflowing waterfall of love, Tommy wants everything.
Now, as Tommy thinks of what photo of Evan to slide into pride of place in his wallet, in his helicopter - in Tommy’s life - Evan is bleeding out and Tommy can do nothing.
“Breathe, Kinard, for fuck sake.”
A heavy thump on the back of his seat and Tommy sucks in the breath he hadn’t realized was caught tight in the midst of his chest, lungs aching and feeling a little like he’s choking.
No. No, he can’t afford to think like that.
Evan is fine; maybe it wasn’t Evan, maybe it was one of the others?
Maybe it’s Bobby, blood splattered and choking on his own blood. Maybe Hen, screaming and trying her best to stem her own blood. Howie, who had so many close calls already, trying to put pressure on his own throat. Maybe it’s Eddie, too many bullet holes in him already, flashing back to the sniper so many years ago.
Tommy hates himself that it sends a fission of relief through him; that he’d feel relief that someone else - anyone else - was shot and in critical condition. It hurts, of course it does; there’s history there with Hen, Howie and Bobby, and he and Eddie have grown closer because of and outside of Evan.
Of course it hurts to think of them, injured and unable to do anything about it, but it's different than it is with Evan.
Thinking of Evan like that? Strong, gentle, love of his life Evan who's been shot at but never felt the pain of being shot. Evan, screaming and crying, bleeding out and barely holding on for life? It makes him sick to his stomach, bile rising until he can feel it in the back of his throat, threatening sick.
“Eddie’s four years older than Evan.” Tommy says, his lips numb.
He thinks of; a thirty four year old male - down with double GSW’s that needs immediate life flighting to Cedars-Sinai. The patient is - critical and has to swallow vomit.
It’s all he can think of.
Evan has been on his mind since he met the man, taking up all of the space Tommy had once tried so hard to ignore when things had gone south with Brandon just before COVID-19. He’d thrown himself into his job to try and get rid of an aching loneliness that he thought he’d never get rid of, and then - and then -
Evan.
Sweet, fumbling, funny Evan who moved too fast and wasn’t even able to call himself bisexual at the start. Who’d sprained his best friend's ankle trying to get Tommy’s attention, and had looked so awestruck the first time Tommy had kissed him. Who’d gone around with stubble burn on his face for a solid two days because he couldn’t get enough of it.
Those three months after breaking up with him had been -
Torture? Indescribable pain? A haze of guilt and regret?
Something that had haunted him like a psychic and physical wound that he’d toted around like a stab wound. He’d carried his regret and his love like it was a physical thing for every single second of those three months; he’d woken with Evan’s cologne in his nose, his toothpaste in his mouth, his chest empty because he’d given Evan his heart and had thrown it away when he’d walked away from Evan with only the flimsy excuse of that he was a mean, awful, undeserving man that would hurt Evan, wrapping up in never wanting to be Evan’s last and so - and so he had.
He’d hurt Evan because Tommy knew he would, would hurt Evan like his father had hurt him, would drag him down and would never be able to love Evan like Evan should be loved.
Evan had called him stupid. Called him self-sacrificial and stupid and that he didn’t care what man Tommy used to be, only the man that he was now and that being someone’s was never about being first or last, it was about being together, before Evan had taken a deep breath and had apologised. He’d apologised for rushing ahead, for not articulating himself properly in the coffee shop all those months ago. That he’d wanted to let Tommy know that Evan was in for the long haul and that he’d leapt before looking which was so in character for him. That he wanted them to try again, to truly get to know one another; each day something new between them, not many first dates or kisses or sex times between them, but they’d do it together.
Just them, Tommy and Evan.
His Evan, who Tommy was so in love with that it felt like he’d dropped his heart into Evan’s lap and had never reached for it back. His Evan, who Tommy would give the world and after for, and who could be dying, bleeding and with his friends and family but not with Tommy. His Evan, who was bleeding out and critical with two gunshot wounds.
“Buck’s in good hands,” Lucy tells him. “Y’know Hen and Chim are good paramedics.”
He can hear the rustle of Lucy and Nico getting things sorted. Readying themselves for whatever they’d find, for how Evan would come into their care, whatever they’d find.
He knows Hen and Howie are good paramedics, fantastic even, but that means incredibly little when beneath their hands is someone who is rapidly becoming Tommy’s entire world.
“I know, Lucy.” Tommy says quietly. It would be almost inaudible if it wasn’t for their radio headsets.
“But you don’t trust them with Buckley?” Nico questions.
Tommy swallows.
“I trust them with my life,” Tommy says, heartsore and heartsick. “I won’t ever trust anyone with Evan’s.”
“Not even yourself?” Lucy asks.
How could he ever tell anyone that he sometimes thinks Evan is the only reason for living?
“Not even then.” He says instead.
La Tuna Canyon Park’s ridges and mountains slowly slope down beneath them, giving way to golf greens that rapidly give way to the very edges of Burbank. He can see the very edges of flickering flames of the reported four alarm fire just westward of Brace Canyon, an entire area of suburban houses up in flames and steadily burning. Drought’s have been particularly bad this year, gardens dry and tinder for any spark that went near them. Only last week, the 217 had provided air support up in Alvin’s Rock due to a campfire having broken past a particularly shabby fire line.
Wildwood Canyon gives way to the Sunset Debris Basin, and from there, they’re properly entering suburban Burbank, a tight knit cloister of houses and schools that Tommy’s drove past when on the way to IKEA or when he’s visited his friends down on Bel Aire Drive.
Evan told him once that he still can’t go down the street where the 118 Ladder truck exploded or the street where Eddie was shot; that he can vividly and viscerally remember each incident in numerous different ways. The Ladder Truck incident is more the memory of weight, the blur of blood and bombs and the repeated efforts to lift the Ladder Truck off of him, the terror of potentially losing his leg. When Eddie was shot, Evan had whispered to him in a too dark bathroom and having shaken himself awake with a panic attack, he could remember the copper taste of blood on his tongue, the way Eddie’s eyes had widened, the pool of blood beneath him, the way the Ladder Truck had seemed to loom over him.
He’d tasted blood for months after, Evan had wept.
Tommy can taste blood now, but this is his own. Lip bitten until blood pools in and he’s swallowing it. He wonders if Eddie would taste Evan’s blood, if it would spatter over Eddie’s face like his blood had Evan’s. He’d seen the photos online but hadn’t quite grasped that those two firefighters were Evan and Eddie; he’d seen the white button up beneath a navy uniform, a man hoisting up his partner and dragging him bodily to safety.
He wonders if he’s going to be able to drive down S Kenneth Road now, if he’ll forever think about this ; hearing that someone from the 118 - thirty four year old male with double GSW’s in critical condition - was shot and in critical condition. If he’ll ever forget the way his stomach had swooped, the way his hands had gone numb and his lips had started to tingle. The panic that had ebbed and flowed as he imagined Evan’s blood does beneath familiar hands having to hurt to try and heal.
Behind the helo, the billowing smoke of Brace Canyon’s four alarm fire starts to dissipate as he grasps hold of the collective pitch control, lowering it in slow increments. He imagines he can feel the whine of the rotor blades, each angle of incidence changed by a single movement. He watches the electronic altimeters flicker slowly downwards as the helo closes in on Joaquin Miller Park, the tachometers flickering correspondingly with the altimeters to indicate loss of altitude, and the decrease of blade rotations.
Beneath them, Joaquin Miller Park is a small square of green and sand, cast into shadows by the night sky and the revolving red and blue lights that flicker on the trees and bushes thrown about in the rotor blade updrafts. There’s a large Ladder Truck with the white filled in numbers of 1-1-8 emblazoned on it, a familiarly red ambulance parked opposite.
Tommy can barely make out any details, not with the darkness of the night pressing in, shadows made long and casting strange shapes with the torchlight from the helo and the lights of the Truck and RA unit.
“Dispatch,” Tommy says, voice trembling. “This is F-E-one-zero-two-one-seven at requested location, taking down to pick up a critical patient for a lifeflight to Cedars-Sinai, level one trauma. Scene is secure.”
There’s a heavy thud that makes Tommy’s teeth clatter together as they touch down. Before Dispatch and Traffic control can even get anything off, Lucy and Nico have thrown the fuselage side door open, headsets thrown off and gear at the ready.
“Copy, F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven,” Dispatch says. She’s terrifyingly familiar, a quaver to her voice. “We’ve cleared things with Cedars-Sinai for you to land at their Alpha site helo-pad. ”
“Affirmative, Dispatch. I’ll let them know more information when we have it.”
He uses the mirror to nod at Nico and Lucy, who throw themselves out of the helo with speeds reserved for the most intense of rescues. He and Lucy have worked longest together, a fair few years when Lucy had left the 118; she’d bounced around as a floater for a while before coming to the 217. Nico had joined Air Ops only a year or so ago, having been an Army medic before he mustered out and joined LAFD and then Air Ops when his predecessor had retired. Regardless, they’ve worked well in the few months that Tommy has been paired with Lucy and Nico, and they’ve done some pretty harrowing rescues together.
Tommy never thought that it would be Evan they’d be having to rescue.
Some part of him - the part that is constantly pulling him towards where he saw his team mates vanish into the night’s shadows, where he knows either his friends or the love of his fucking life is lying, hurt and injured - wants to throw the pilot door open. Some part of him wants to go fuck protocol and fuck procedures . Some part of him wants to go, this is Evan, I should be there.
But what could Tommy do to help that two paramedics and two army medics aren’t going to do?
The pilot needs to stay with the helo; to make sure that it doesn’t get stolen, to make sure that when the aeromedics and the patient get back that they can take off as soon as possible.
Tommy can’t help on the medical side; he’d helped in the army - has had his hands over more than enough bullet wounds and shrapnel injuries to staunch the blood flow - and had had the usual rudimentary EMT training that all firefighters are required to have but there is little he could do to truly help.
Instead, Tommy fights back the part of him that points north to wherever Evan is. Instead, Tommy shoves the part of him that wants nothing more than to throw the pilot door open and run towards Evan, heart only a few feet from him and his throat closing like a vice.
He keeps the rotor blades and tail rotor at the ready, hearing the heavy thwump-thwump-thwump that he would know in his dreams. He makes sure that the antitorque pedals and the cyclic are in neutral, keeps a hand primed for the throttle and collective pitch control. He makes sure that he’s fucking ready.
“ETA to you in two minutes, Tommy!” Lucy’s voice shouts through the radio. She sounds shaken, gutted in two. “Tommy, it’s- wait, no no, keep breathin-”
The transmission cuts out, abrupt.
Pain blooms, numb and distant, in Tommy’s hands, a shout building in his throat. He’s smacked his hands against the display; his wrists ache with the force.
“Evan!”
It’s ripped from his throat, a roar that dwindles into a whimper.
“Fuck. Evan.”
He presses the palms of his hands into his face. Digs fingers into the jut of his brow. Stars burst into life, heels of his palms digging into his eyelids. His feet kick the side of the fuselage, the pilot door shuddering in its frame. Fuck .
Fuck!
He kicks the pilot door again, lashes out at the helo display; pain blossoms quick and decadent, his throat is raw and sore and it’s only when he shoves his hands over his mouth that he realizes it’s because he’s screaming, the sound lost in the whirring of the rotor blades.
His nails dig into his cheeks, stubble and skin.
Tommy would never call himself an emotional man; he’s been called the exact opposite, actually. Upright, stoic and dry are all words that Tommy has heard used to describe himself, a quip - sarcastic or deflecting - ready at the tip of his tongue when required. Evan had pried open a door inside of Tommy that had already been cracked open by the arrival of Bobby at the 118 and the ousting of Vincent Gerrard. Walls that Tommy had built and reinforced from childhood to the army to having to try and survive under Gerrard and becoming a man that Tommy knew his father would have been proud of, had slowly been decaying with the changes.
Transferring to the 217 and being able to reach the skies, to touch the cloud for the first time like he wanted since he was fourteen and watched his first aviation show, huddled around the telly at the t.v shop had shattered all but the lightest of those walls, and it had allowed Tommy to become comfortable and confident in his skin that he’d never been able to do before. Evan had been the last sledgehammer, the last hurricane to blow into Tommy’s life and leave it shattered but messy and alive in a way that had thrown him completely off.
He wonders if he’d feel it if Evan dies. If something so intrinsic and vital would die in the middle of Tommy’s chest, if he’d know the exact moment that Evan Buckley died and left the world - left Tommy - a colder, dimmer place.
It feels a little like his chest is about to crack in two.
“Incoming!” Nico shouts over the radio, harried and too loud. In the brief second where the radio was still depressed, he can hear the background noises; a harsh breathing, begging, vital signs and numbers that go mainly over Tommy’s head and then- and then ;
“T’mmy, T’mmy.”
Evan, alive.
Evan, breathing and talking in some way.
Evan, having said his name.
His chest doesn’t crack but it does cave in, a heavy weight pressing in on him at all sides.
Evan, bleeding, crying, having stopped breathing.
Evan, near fucking death.
Hands over his mouth, deafening a scream that’s swept up in the helo’s updraft. From Tommy’s soul to God’s cruel ears. Blunt nails dig into his cheeks, scoring red hot lines down the skin.
He’s crying. Tommy’s crying and he doesn’t know how to stop it.
He’s never felt like this; panic strangling his throat, stomach swooping. He almost wishes for the numbness back, it would make everything so much easier, as if reality has been smeared over by a large hand, but how could Tommy ever wish to not feel this, too not feel the overwhelming relief at knowing that, at least for now, Evan is alive.
Commotion to the right, and a small crowd of people are running. Lucy’s blonde bob is illuminated in red and blue, Eddie’s cheeks thrown into damp relief, Nico’s tensed jaw that he only ever does when he’s worried but it’s Bobby’s haunted expression, wide eyed and terse mouthed, as he brings up the rear that has Tommy’s heart clenching.
A dull do-whwoop of a police car siren just cuts into the deafening roar of the rotor blades. Sergeant Grant clambers from her cruiser, wide eyed.
Tommy can barely take his eyes off the way Eddie bullies his way into the front, red on his hands - blood on his hands - as they clatter through the chicken wire fence that surrounds Joaquin Miller Park.
Panic is only staved off by the fact that he has to get the helo started. The rotor blades uptick, the pitch controller and throttle heavy and body warm beneath his wavering hands.
In moments, stages, he can see someone buckled into the backboard, loose curls damp with blood, a chest struggling to rise against the weight needed to keep pressure on those wounds. Tommy swallows, his dry throat on fire, eyes burning as tears threaten.
Evan.
His heart beats in a rhythm in Evan’s name, bounding, thundering. It matches the off-pitch heartbeat on the lifePAK shoved hurriedly between Evan’s long legs.
Eddie hauls himself up into the bowels of the fuselage, baseball sliding, ping ponging off the opposite door. He’s bloodied and breathing heavily, wild eyed and teeth bared as he yanks the backboard in after him. He looks how Tommy feels; unmoored, unmade. Lucy is next, hands red and a streak of blood beneath her clenched jaw. Nico after, given a foot upwards by Howie, who looks shattered.
For a moment, Howie stares at him, lost, gutted, grieving, hands bloody.
Tommy isn’t grieving Evan just yet.
Not when Evan is still breathing, his heart still beating.
For a moment, as if Tommy’s eyes are magnetized, he glimpses Evan through the press of bodies trying so hard to keep him alive.
He’s still in ways Evan never is, not even in sleep. His head turned to the left as Eddie presses already sodden fingers against the gunshot wound near his jugular, already pale skin turned pallid and wax-like, his eyes washed out and almost empty. The fuselage door bangs shut, Hen’s terrified face obscured from view, Bobby collapsing into his wife’s arms.
Tommy doesn’t care. He can’t care, not when he and his helo are carrying the most precious thing in his life.
“We need to go!” Eddie shouts through the headset Nico had manhandled onto him. “We lost him once already-”
Something cracks, shatters. For a brief moment, when Tommy was screaming, crying, the world had truly been a colder, dimmer place; a candle instead of a five alarm fire, a drought instead of a waterfall. His teeth clench, jaw flexing. It’s only by rote that he engages the antitorque pedals, lifting the cyclic and hearing the whines of the rotor blades.
A heavy sensation of pulling, gravity giving way and Tommy has to grip the cyclic in a heavy hand as the tail dips a little too far, forcing the nose into the air before Tommy corrects it with a deft hand. Behind him, they’ve managed to buckle Evan’s backboard in to make sure he doesn’t skid around, a quietness in the hive of activity above and around him.
“You’re gonna be okay, brother,” Eddie is saying behind him. “You’re gonna be just fuckin’ fine, huh, Buck? Y’know how I know? Because I’m here, and Tommy’s here-”
As they hover, updrafts and winds taking them high over the suburban streets of Burbank as the helo levels out, Tommy can’t help how he bodily turns himself to see Evan, still and shot but breathing.
“Keep him still!” Nico’s voice echoes in the fuselage, edged with worry.
Tommy’s heart shots into his mouth; Evan is no longer still. He’s squirming on the backboard, managing to wiggle his left arm from the black buckles meant to keep him safe. He throws a trembling hand towards the cockpit, falling short; it leaves a streak of blood against gunmetal grey. His eyes, glassy and almost empty, are suddenly affixed on Tommy, a wordless sound escaping his bloodied mouth, colourless lips grimacing.
“Hey, hey, baby, you’re safe, you’re good.” Tommy croons softly but Evan can’t hear him.
Lucy has to throw herself across Evan’s chest, drawing an almost animalistic scream but that doesn’t stop the man from trying to strain forwards, face upturned, eyes fixated.
Fixated on Tommy.
He’d only started to panic, to move when he’d heard Tommy’s name, when he’d seen Tommy.
He has to hurriedly look back forward into the cockpit when the helo starts to list a too far right, correcting with the pitch controller and forcing the antitorque pedals into a more neutral position.
Behind him, a scared noise, trying to force words through no doubt numb lips. Tommy’s heart breaks. As the suburban streets of Burbank race beneath them, melding into the Mount Sinai Memorial Park, Tommy reaches over into the co-pilot seat, fumbling briefly with a headset even as he thumbs the radio for Dispatch.
“Dispatch, this is Kinard with F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven with our critical patient on board. We’re three minutes out from Cedars. Let them know to prep a trauma bay for severe blood loss and two GSW’s. Ple-” For the first time since patching through, Tommy’s voice breaks. “Please let Dispatcher Maddie Han know that her- that her brother is in critical condition and to get to the hospital as soon as possible.”
Dispatch - Linda - gives a shuddering wet breath.
“Affimative, F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven. We’ll make Cedars aware of your ETA. Maddie-Maddie’s just leaving the floor and is on her way,” Another shuddering breath. “ The One-Eighteen are making sure the scene is wrapped up and will then be heading to Cedars.”
“Can- Can you let Captain Ramirez of the Two-One-Seven know that-” Forcibly, Tommy shoves that panic down, takes a deep breath. Static crackles. “Let him know that I’ll be staying at the hospital with Firefighter Buckley?”
“Will do, Pilot Kinard,” Dispatch says. “Our hopes and prayers are with you and Buck at this time.”
Tommy doesn’t dignify that with an answer.
As soon as Dispatch thumbs away, Tommy gives a shuddering breath. He throws the headset towards Lucy.
“Put these on Evan.” It’s a demand. Evan’s glassy eyes bore into him, the cliff of his jaw an ocean of blood. Tommy doesn’t know how aware Evan is, but he’s at least aware enough that he knows that Tommy is here, he keeps reaching forward, desperate, fumbling.
Mount Sinai Memorial Park is left behind, melding into the bare hills of the Hollywood sign, the Hollywood Reservoir coming into close contact, an ocean of darkness looming before them.
“He can hear you now, Tommy.” Lucy says softly.
Over the headset, there’s a wet splat; bloodied bandages slipping from a squirming body. For a moment, Tommy can only hear ragged breathing, a soft whine, the brief gargle of blood behind teeth. Then;
“T’mmy -”
Tommy shoves a hand over his mouth, barely blocking the sob that breaks free.
“Hi, baby,” Tommy croaks. “Missed you so much, sweetheart.”
“T’mmy,” Evan coughs, wet and harsh. He sounds like he’s drowning, breathless and slipping. “A-are you-”
A wet wheeze.
“Breathe, Buckley!” Nico growls. Through the headset, Tommy can hear the way Evan coughs, the gurgle of something caught in the back of his throat, the barely heard vibrations of a suction machine. The wet squelch of hemostatic bandages against open, weeping wounds.
“Shh, Evan, don’t try to speak, okay, I’m here,” Tommy soothes. “It’s my turn to distract you, right now.”
He longs to reach back, touch Evan with his own hands, to make sure that he’s alive, that he’s okay, that he’s here. Instead, his hands tighten on the cyclic and the pitch controller, metal and plastic biting into his hands where he wants soft flesh and a pulse giving proof of life.
“Mis-missed you .” Evan wheezes, each word a piecemeal bite of suffering.
“I’ve missed you too, baby,” Tommy says. Through the windshield, Cedars-Sinai’s well lit helicopter landing pad is a bastion in the shadows. “You’re gonna be just fine, okay? We’re all here, and don’t forget, we’ve got that holiday we’re both looking forward too huh-”
“Gotta- gotta tell you-” Evan chokes out. A weight against the back of his pilot seat, and for a moment, Tommy is helpless to do anything but stare against the pallid hand resting against his thigh, blood beneath those blunt nails, dirt strewn across the knuckles. Blood seeps into his flight suit. “Gotta…gotta-”
“You can tell me later, kid,” Tommy says desperately. “I’ve got something to tell you later, as well, huh? Something that you’re gonna be so happy about, Evan, I can’t wait to tell you.”
The cyclic creaks beneath his grip, the throttle’s cap twisting further than it should. Desperation and grief has always made his strength brutish, he thinks.
He’d made such an effort, when he’d run away from home the army, to be gentle. He hadn’t always managed it, either physically or mentally, to anyone or himself. But Evan -
Evan made it so easy to be gentle, to be soft.
“Y’know when we go to Vista?” Tommy asks, forcibly throttling the panic that rises in his voice. His chest is caving in. “I-ah, I found that a museum there has got hold of an authentic nineteen-twenties steam fire engine that’s in pretty good shape.”
There’s a sort of wheezing breath, thin and harsh. It sounds like a poor imitation of Evan’s usual laugh.
“T’mmy- ” Rasped, over and over, in time with the hammering of Tommy’s heart.
Behind him, barely audible over Tommy’s own heartbeat and the slight whimper Evan let out as someone pressed down.
“I saw it while looking at things to do on holiday, and I knew that you’d like it. I- I was gonna book tickets for the tour and surprise you; it’s an authentic Shand Mason, one of the horse drawn carriages that was made in England? It’s in really good shape, apparently.”
His voice cracks. Evan continues to hold on, even if just barely.
Tommy can’t hear what’s happening behind him, not really. Without the headsets, Tommy would be relying on hand signals and body language as the rotor blades drowned everything but the loudest shots out. He’s almost grateful for it; that he can’t hear the way they press hemostatic bandages against gunshot wounds that never should be Evan’s body.
“You- you do so much for us, y’know? And don’t- don’t think I don’t know about how you keep looking up aviation museums for us to go to together,” Tommy gives a teary laugh. “I know you’re gonna get so excited when you see this thing, it’s a - it’s a beast apparently.”
Cedars-Sinai creeps ever closer, but not quite close enough. The hand against Tommy’s seat, bloodied fingers just touching, curling against Tommy’s flight suit. Tommy can’t help himself, unmoored and unmade as Evan bleeds almost to death in the back of his helo; he lets go of the cyclic with one hand, tangles his own shaking fingers with Evan’s.
“But you gotta hold on, okay sweetheart? You gotta hold on so- so I can tell you my secret that I should’ve told you ages ago, and- and so we can go see your Shand Mason, huh? I’m gonna have to search you to make sure you don’t try and steal it, ha.”
He bites his bottom lip until blood; Evan’s so cold.
Tommy clenches his fingers around Evans, determined to warm them up, would give Evan all the blood in his body, would give him every single breath between here and Tommy’s death if he could, would take the wounds if it was physically possible.
“You gotta fight, Evan.” Tommy whispers quietly. “Please- please you- you can’t-”
He creeps his hand down, presses his longest finger against Evan’s pulse point. Evan’s own fingers are too weak, curled against Tommy’s wrist, paperwhite and as heavy as a paperweight. Evan’s heartbeat, normally so steady and reassuring, is racing, weak and fluttering, echoing twice in Tommy’s ears through the lifePAK.
“You can’t leave me.”
Cedars-Sinai heliport is beneath them, illuminated brightly by spot lights. As Tommy peers through the pilot window, he can just glimpse a small crowd of people in scrubs, looking up at the helo spot light as Tommy slowly presses the antitorque pedals, the cyclic turning. The rotor blades twist too.
It breaks Tommy’s heart to release Evan’s clammy hand, and he feels the loss like an organ’s been ripped out of him, but he needs to, has to. Regardless of the fact that Tommy’s entire world and heart is lying in the back of his helicopter, bleeding out and near death, Tommy is, at the moment, an LAFD pilot and not just Evan Buckley’s boyfriend.
“Control Tower, CA-four-six, be advised this is F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven, carrying your double GSW, have your team standing by for immediate extraction.” Tommy barely keeps his voice steady, and has to resist the urge to look back.
“F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven, this is Control Tower, CA-four-six. Trauma team is standing by ready to receive. ”
It’s only because of repetition that Tommy can land the helicopter so easily; he’s done so many of these life flights to Cedars-Sinai and so many other hospitals in the Los Angeles area that he could probably do it blindfolded. This is the first time he’s done it with his fuselage covered in the blood of his lover, feeling a heart hammering fear that this could be the last time he ever sees that person. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to get into the helicopter - any helicopter - without seeing Evan’s pallid, still face; blood strewn across his skin and LAFD uniform, without hearing the wheezing gasp of lungs too weak to pull in sufficient breaths.
It goes as well as it did in Joaquin Miller Park, a heavy thing that makes his teeth clatter even as he tries to be as gentle as possible.
The fuselage doors are ripped open immediately, doctors and nurses reaching in. A familiar one grasps the bottom of Evan’s backboard even as Eddie immediately shifts himself out, mouth moving as he shouts over the rotor blades.
For a single moment, Tommy freezes, watching in fluorescent illuminated 4-D as Evan is taken from him, shoved onto a gurney. As his hands reach for his harness, Tommy can only see how someone is hiked up onto the edge of the gurney, hair flying in her face as she- as she-
Tommy knows.
Tommy has done CPR many times in both the army and LAFD, whether for training or for the real deal, Tommy Kinard has had blood engrained into his palms, into his knuckles, beneath his nails. He’s even had Evan’s blood stain some of his skin before, but those were petty cuts, minor things that they’d been able to patch up with their considerable - and probably almost paranoid - first aid kit. Tommy’s even done CPR on friends, family; it’s a rare first responder that hasn’t honestly.
But Tommy’s never done CPR on Evan, he never wants to; he never wanted to see Evan receiving CPR either. He hadn’t seen the first time, held hostage in a helo so he could life flight Evan in time to a hospital for critical, life saving care, but he’s seen it now.
He wheezes.
He can’t breathe, lungs refusing to move, chest refusing to rise. He clutches at his harness, feels the plastic coating digging into his palms, knuckles blanching white, popping out uncomfortably. He stares, unseeingly, into the night sky of Los Angeles.
The city that had given him Evan and now might take him away again so easily.
The pilot door is ripped open.
Lucy’s hair whips around her face, the ends damp with -
Evan.
God, fuck, Evan.
Lucy’s yelling. Her mouth is moving, her cheeks flushed but Tommy can only stare at that dried smear of blood, evidence that this isn’t a dream, that Tommy can’t just smack his head on the helo electronic display and just - wake up.
Tommy just wants to wake up.
“Hey!” Lucy comes into hearing like a badly tuned radio. Her hands yank brutally at Tommy’s harness, the belts coming free and retracting automatically. Tommy falls forward, vision blurring, his chest hurts.
A calloused hand - smaller than the hand he really wants - touches at his face, his jaw. Lucy physically turns his face, yanks his head to look at her. Her eyes are wide, face concerned; that smear of blood on her jaw is still there.
Bile rises.
Lucy must realise it; twin hands double fist the front of his flight suit, quite literally dragging him from the pilot seat. His knees ache, feet twinging as he falls heavily against them. Tommy retches, vile and burning, clogging his nostrils, as he leans heavily against both fuselage and friend.
He coughs, stomach cramping, turning - twisting. He spits, leaning palms against knees as he pushes himself up and away.
“Go,” Lucy tells him, hand on his elbow. “Follow him, alright?”
“He’s-he’s-”
“He’s tough, Tommy,” Lucy argues. She bodily twists him so he’s facing her, his back to the - to the - “Don’t think about that, okay? He’s a fighter, and he’s gonna be just fuckin’ fine, huh, so don’t go borrowing trouble.”
She shoves him towards where Evan had disappeared, surrounded by medical personnel that are going to try and save Tommy’s heart and light and fucking soul.
“Nico and I will sort the chopper out, okay, just- go and be with your boy, and - let us know when there’s news, yeah?”
Tommy only nods, heart in his throat as he turns.
He needs-
He needs Evan.