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Chapter Text

Buck 1 

Staring sightlessly up at the ceiling as he waited for sleep to come was doing nothing but sending Buck’s eyes funny.

Coming back to the House after a gruelling five hours at a multiple vehicular pile up just south of Verdugo Viejo, Bobby had sent them to get cleaned up before they’d quickly scoffed a truly delicious spaghetti bolognese that Bobby had put in the slow cooker. Buck and Eddie had ended up slumped together on the island, shoulder to shoulder and head to head as they snoozed against one another with Chimney and Hen staring blearily at their repacked inventory kits down on the apparatus floor. It had been when Serrano had misspelled excitement - ‘ ecitnent’ - in last week's newspaper crossword puzzle as she fell asleep that Bobby had thrown his hands up and ordered them into the cots, bleary eyed and squinting against the dim light as he’d followed his own advice.

They were just past midway through a twenty four hour shift, Buck’s third consecutive one before he and Tommy had a full five days PTO to go to see the Botanical Gardens and the Moonlight Amphitheatre up in Vista. Buck had been debating adding the Antique Gas and Steam Engine museum to the itinerary, mostly because he’d heard that they’d recently come into ownership of a mostly intact and fully working steam fire engine from the nineteen twenties and he’d ended up going on a deep dive at five in the morning as Tommy snoozed between his legs. They’d planned to play tourist, relaxing in the sun and bouncing from restaurant to attraction to their hotel bedroom.

The thought of those five days off up in Vista is the only thing keeping Buck going right now, exhaustion weighing his steps and keeping his eyes burning and gritty.  Despite a boiling hot shower that had relaxed muscles Buck hadn't even known were sore, sleep is more elusive than ever. His digital watch blares zero one fifteen in glaring red up at him and Buck has been lying here for more than hour with only a vague headache pounding to life beneath his eyes and a list of aviation facts from a half hearted research bender for Christopher.

Eddie was sprawled out on his own bunk kitty cat corner with Buck’s, bunk heads pressed together in a ninety degree corner.  Normally, people laid with their feet close to, but he and Eddie generally lay in the bunks and chatted in low voices as everyone wound down in their own way. Even as Buck had laid there, phone in hand with the light dimmed, Eddie had succumbed to sleep pretty quickly, quite literally mid sentence about how Christopher wanted to do a school report on aviation and its mark on history, but hadn’t been quite sure where to start exactly, and so had asked Eddie if he could ask Buck to ask Tommy, as if Eddie wasn’t Tommy's friend too. Buck had been thirty minutes deep into a deep dive of aviation facts that he peripherally knew from exposure with Tommy and the rest of his friends and coworkers at 217; Captain Ramirez  - “Call me Diego, feel as if I know you already with how Kinard goes on about you!” - had near enough piled Buck with books and research that were kept about their Van Nuys headquarters and Tommy kept complaining Buck was stealing his coworkers and how Buck better not get his pilot license otherwise Tommy was in danger of losing his job, too.

He keeps a perpetually open Notes tab on his phone for things like this; he likes lists. Tends to alphabetize them, notes down the facts he wants, and what he ends up deep diving into though half the time they tend to jump around with no clear correlation despite the fact that Buck knows he made the leap somewhere in his research dive.

When the ceiling starts to swim in front of Buck’s eyes and his phone starts to show low battery from how he’s kept it clutched to his chest rather than charging it, Buck gives it up.

He swings himself up from the bunk, wincing as his boots thud a little loudly in the quiet room. Eddie’s soft whistling snores are almost drowned out by Hen’s white noise machine and the way Chimney mutters something about purple unicorns and Jee-Yun. Buck grins into the gloom as he shrugs on his LAFD hoodie; Buck had been the one to win a four foot tall sparkly purple and pink unicorn when he and Tommy with Eddie and Christopher had gone to the arcade before Christopher had gone for a sleep over at a friends house. There’s a photo strip on his and Tommy’s fridge, Buck in Tommy’s lap and the unicorn in Buck’s lap as he makes the unicorn kiss Tommy on the cheek as Buck kisses the other.

Santiago gives a soft snore as Buck opens the door, a dim shaft of golden light thankfully just missing the man’s face. Sousa snorts and rolls over in his bunk. Serrano tilts her head and waves at him as Buck slips out.

The apparatus floor is as silent as the bunk room, ladder trucks and fire engines eerie in the dimmed golden glow instead of the usual fluorescent brightness. It had taken Buck a while to get used to the eerie emptiness of the Fire House at night when he’d first been a probie; his travels around the United States and his youth had had Buck staying up all night most of the time, strobe lights and drinks hazing his memories until they felt like dreams, constantly surrounded by too loud music and ever shifting people. Peru had been a sunlit dream of ease and belonging that he hadn’t really felt anywhere else. Training for the SEAL’s had given him that in a way; a sort of camaraderie beaten into you but that was underlined by the fact that the DI’s had set them up in competition against one another. Buck had enjoyed it, as much as you could enjoy being broken down and then being rebuilt until you barely recognized yourself, but there had been an underlying feeling, a tension that he’d only felt when back at home with his parents, that something was missing, as if this was something he could but not something he would love.

Los Angeles had been a welcomed reprieve; he’d followed Connor from Peru to LA and hadn’t looked back since. He hadn’t known he was going to join the Fire Academy when he arrived, but now he wonders how he never thought of it before. Between everything, the fear and the loss and the gut wrenching grief of everything, LA had given him friends, a family, had given him purpose. Had given him Maddie back, had given him a brother, had given him Eddie and Christopher.

LA had given him Tommy.

The dimmed lights of the mezzanine blind Buck briefly as he rounds the top of the stairs. Much like the apparatus floor, the mezzanine kitchen is deserted; remains of a few late night meals of the left over garlic bread and the soaking slow cooker ceramic pot in the sink let Buck know someone was up and about. A half empty glass of water lets him know it was probably Sousa - an amazing engine driver but with the utter inability to finish drinks and the even more exasperating inability to wash that glass up.

Buck scrubs a hand over his face. If he was at home and stricken with sudden insomnia, he’d either bake or clean. Tommy’s been enjoying the fruits of his labour and recipe searching, and had loved the apple cinnamon scones with spiced clotted cream the other day and Eddie had nearly taken Bobby’s hand off the day before when the man had reached for another bite of tres leches cake which Eddie has now taken to guarding zealously. Lucy at the 217 keeps laughing about how Rafael had moaned about having to let his belt out two notches since Buck and Tommy had started dating.

Baking would have been able to get his mind off things, something about the predetermined measurements and the kneading of dough that you had to do just right otherwise it could all fall apart had his mind distracted enough that it would be the middle of the morning until he realized, or Tommy had woken up. But it was the middle of the shift and anything he had in House at the moment would require loud equipment or time enough that the klaxons would ring and he’d have to abandon it.

He plugs his phone into the charger, lighting up briefly so Buck can see the lock screen photo. It’s him and Tommy, both of them shirtless and showing the hairy pelt of his partner’s chest, damp with sweat and sunscreen. Tommy’s wearing the smile that always makes Buck more than a little weak at the knees; eyes and cheeks crinkled up with the width and size of it, dimpled and and chin cleft prominent as he holds Buck in a bridal carry, the sun blinding but nothing compared to how Tommy looks at Buck, as if he never wants to look away again. As he’s watching, his phone lights up and a preview of a text message pops into view.

[0124] Tommy <3: Just finishing up in Condor Peak and should be heading back soon. Hope you’ve had a good shift, baby, stay safe!

Fondness tucks itself into every crevice of Buck’s being, helpless against the wash of love as he stares at the easy given love and affection that Tommy affords him. Buck doesn’t think he’s ever felt like this, not even with Abby. Being with Tommy is as easy as breathing, like something has slotted into place and the world has suddenly shifted on its axis and showed Buck that this is how love should be. Effortless, equal, but with a level of work to keep that trust and communication working. Buck had never thought he could have this, that he didn’t deserve something like this, and Dr Copeland had had a lot to say about that.

He pulls down the text that had so enraptured him and replies;

[0126] Me: Hope everything went well, big guy! See you soon, and stay safe <3

He purposefully clicks the screen off, knowing that Tommy was probably refueling and going through preflight checks and so wouldn’t be able to answer.

Shucking the arms of his hoodie up to his elbows, Buck picked up the powdery pink gloves Sousa had gotten as a joke and started on the dishes. It was the sort of mindless work that Buck tried to avoid when he was tired but unable to sleep; mindless when his mind needed something to concentrate and fixate on lest he wanted it to drift to things he didn’t want it to. Now though, it gets him thinking of Tommy. 

Dr. Copeland and he have been talking more often than before, almost twice a week for the last few months. After having mandatory sessions post lightning strike, in a turn of events it had been Buck who’d requested the extra therapy sessions. When his and Tommy’s first few dates had ended up in a little bit of a disaster and with Buck having more than a few small breakdowns over how stupid he felt about not knowing something so apparently vital to his identity and many - so many - research binges that had him blurting out fact and stories to everyone who stood still long enough to listen, Buck had been sat down by well meaning friends and asked if he knew he was spiralling. He hadn’t, not really, not consciously. 

It’s only when he looks down that Buck realizes he’s been washing the same plate for a few minutes. He clenches his eyes shut for a moment, before placing the dish on the draining board and reaching for something else.

Dr. Copeland and he had started discussing Buck’s habits in relationships, even when he’d unmeaningly trapped Taylor in the relationship by moving her in after making a mistake. Buck hadn't meant to, but that didn’t erase the fact he had . The sessions had been hard, still were honestly, but Buck couldn’t deny that they were worth it. Dr. Copeland’s virtual office had seen more than a few crying sessions and sobbing as Buck had been forced to come to terms with the fact that he thought himself undeserving of love unless he was useful and that a lot of his validation came externally because he’d never been given the proper tools to give it to himself when he was a child. It had put a lot of things in perspective, and Buck had ended up spending a lot of time dissecting a lot of his reactions, especially in regards to feeling ignored; the lawsuit had been put into a more different light and Buck had spent a long night sobbing into Tommy’s comforting and handsome chest for comfort.

The soft and familiar tread of Bobby from the darkened hallway connecting to the mezzanine to the administration offices knocks Buck from his thoughts, placing the last dish on the draining board, discarding the damp gloves. 

“Didn’t know you were returning to the one-eighteen, Tommy.”

Buck laughed, turning around. Bobby smiles at him as he flicks on the kettle, sleep drawn face thrown into shadows. His hair is rumpled on one side, with pillow lines stretching across his cheek. 

Buck looks down at his hoodie as Bobby grabs two mugs from the cupboard; it’s LAFD issued, in the usual navy blue with the departmental insignia inscribed on the right breast. It’s only when he looks beneath the printed shield that he sees LAFD AIR OPERATIONS in tiny white lettering. Buck laughs helplessly. No wonder it had felt looser in the waist and tighter in the shoulders, even as the arms fell almost to his finger tips. Buck’s department issued hoodies were well fitted, enough give in the torso that he could move and shift comfortably, looking good but practical. It’s only as he pays proper attention that he realizes Tommy’s hoodie falls a little looser and lower than Buck’s own. It feels a little like a hug.

“Hadn’t even realized, Cap,” Buck laughs quietly in the deserted kitchen. “Couldn’t sleep?”

He turns to Bobby, murmuring a quiet thank you as he takes his usual mug - a pale pink with sparkly writing proclaiming you are deer to me! around a prancing deer that Maddie and Chimney had given him with love from Jee-Yun for his birthday - and cradles it in his palm.

Bobby sighs, settling across from him against the kitchen island. 

“Just couldn’t get back to sleep.” Bobby says. He blows on the steam curling up from his own mug - a tattered Bruce Springsteen printed on the sides from his and Bobby’s concert - and Buck does the same, hunching over his own drink. Bobby peers at him from over the rim. 

“What about you, kid?” Bobby asks, and there’s a sort of knowing glean in his eyes. “You’re usually sacked out by now, especially with your shift pattern this week.”

Buck can’t deny the fondness that wells up in his chest. He and Bobby have had their ups and downs, and for a long time Buck had thought they’d both destroyed the growing relationship between them in the wake of the lawsuit. Bobby had been all but screaming at him that he was worried and had gone about it the wrong way, and Buck had fallen back onto old coping mechanisms of needing to be useful to be loved, thinking he had to fight for the right to be loved. Both of them had done damage, and it had stained their relationship, both in and out of work, for a long while after the lawsuit and it had taken time for them to be both on an even keel with one another. It had taken a little longer for Buck to feel as if Bobby trusted him, and for Bobby to actually trust him and there was still a part of Buck that often slipped into that headspace, that perhaps Bobby didn’t trust him to know his skills and his limitations and when he was able to push.

Therapy, Buck decides, was fucking wild.

Very useful, but wild. If someone had told the Buck of yesteryears past that he’d be in a somewhat emotionally healthy place and regularly went to therapy and liked having healthy communication with his boyfriend and friends, Buck probably would have needed a mandatory psych hold.

“I’m excited,” He admits, swallowing another gulp of coffee. It burns briefly at the back of his throat. “Tommy and I are heading to Vista the day after we finish our last shifts, and it’s- it’s gonna be nice just being able to switch off and be with one another for a few days, y’know?”

“How are things going with you and Tommy? It’s coming up to almost a year, isn’t it?”

Buck has to swallow the immediate and instinctive eleven months and fourteen days that bubbles up happily. Perhaps Bobby can sense the helpless love that Buck is hopeless to push back, because Bobby only smiles at him, shadowed but no less happy for him. 

“Almost a year,” Buck says casually. He’s never been less casual, honestly. There’s a tone of excitement that he can never hide when he talks about Tommy. He deliberately avoids looking at the massive Kinard Fund mason jar that Chimney rattles at him every time he mentions Tommy, or lights up when Tommy gets in contact. “I’ve-I’m-”

Buck gestures, a little helpless in his utter fondness. Coffee almost slops over the rim.

“I’m glad,” Bobby tells him. He drains the rest of his mug, and nudges Buck out of the way with a soft elbow to the side. Buck leans against the side of the dish drainer. Bobby rinses his mug, and turns so he’s resting a hip against the counter in front of the sink, arms crossed loosely over his chest. “I’ve never seen you so settled, so sure of yourself, Buck.”

Buck flushes, he can feel it around his throat, creeping up to his jaw and cheeks. His ears burn.

“Yeah?” 

“I’m glad that you’ve managed to find someone that makes you feel like that, especially with everything that’s happened in the last few years,” Bobby says. In the dim light of the kitchen, there’s a look of what Buck can’t help but label love on his face. “Are you happy?”

Buck can’t choke the words out through the tight knot in his throat. He clutches at his slowly cooling mug, takes a swig just to try and collect his thoughts.

“Yeah,” Buck says after a moment. “Yeah, I’m so happy with him, Bobby, I really am.”

Then;

“I - I think I love him, Bobby,” He admits softly. It’s the first time he’s actually said it outloud; allowed a physical manifestation or label to be put onto his emotions, the way he feels about Tommy, the breathlessness, the sheer happiness . “No, no, I know I love him, I just haven’t told him, y’know? Pr-pretty sure he loves me too but fuck, I dunno if I’d be able to say it if- if he doesn’t say it back. I’ve-I’ve never felt like this, Bobby, and I dunno what to do with myself some days I just love him so fucking much.”

A hand beneath the base of his mug takes it gently from him, putting it in the sink. Another hand resting heavily on his shoulder, thumb resting against his right collarbone, and Buck can’t help but lean into it. 

“I’m so proud of you, son,” Bobby says, his free hand clasping the back of Buck’s nape, squeezing gently. “You’ve grown into an amazing man right before my eyes, and I’ve never been prouder than to know that amazing man.”

“Jeez, Bobby,” Buck laughs wetly, rubbing an eye with his wrist. His right hand grasps Bobby’s right wrist, feeling the tendons of it as Bobby’s thumb presses into below his clavicle. “Tryin’ to make me cry?”

Bobby laughs softly, shakes Buck lightly by his shoulder. 

“All that therapy gets you in touch with your emotions, kid.” Bobby smiles. He squeezes Buck’s shoulder and nape before pulling back.

“Don’t I fuckin’ know.” Buck scrubs hastily at his eyes. 

Bobby gives him the respect of turning away, allowing Buck to pull himself together without an audience. In the silence of the mezzanine kitchen, Buck and Bobby slip on to the tall breakfast bar chairs, sitting across from one another. Over Bobby’s shoulder, Buck can see the silhouette of the Ladder Truck, can trace the ambulance siren boxes in the silvery moonlight and dim fluorescents. On the counter, Buck’s phone lights up briefly, flashing that photo of him and Tommy before it falls to blackness again.

For a moment, he and Bobby sit in silence, with Bobby staring down at his clasped hands. Then;

“You gonna tell him?” 

“Thought about when we go to Vista,” Buck says, pressing his hands against the chilled counter top before tucking them into Tommy’s hoodie sleeves. His nail snags on a loose thread that he carefully unspools. “I just-”

“You love him so much you never know how to put it into words?” 

“Yeah.”

Buck looks up from where he’s been tying that loose thread into a bow, and bites back a grin when he sees how Bobby fiddles with his golden wedding ring, turning it over and over on his finger.

“When Athena and I decided to give it a proper go,” Bobby says slowly, as if carefully picking every word. Buck leans forward, bracing his elbows on the edge of the breakfast bar. “I never thought I’d deserve a love like Marcy and I had. We weren’t perfect, far from it, but. But Marcy was my wife and my best friend for years, and when I lost her and the kids, I felt like something had been…. carved out of me.”

Buck sits, enraptured. He and Bobby are close, Buck knows, and they’ve talked about a lot of things that blurs the line between captain and subordinate and even friends outside of work and family, but there has always been a fragile wall between them - between everyone bar Athena really - about Bobby’s dead family. That Bobby is talking about Marcy, Bobby Jr and Brooke now, to Buck …

“It’s taken me a while to realize that I do deserve a love like that again, but that it can never be exactly like what Marcy and I had. Marcy and Athena are two different people, and to compare them to one another does them both a massive disservice. When Athena and I decided to do this properly, I told her that I thought my love was-was broken, unworthy. I’d killed Marcy and Bobby Jr and Brooke after all, ah ah, let me finish, kiddo-”

Bobby holds up a hand when Buck makes an enraged noise in the back of his throat, mouth opening to argue. Buck sinks back into his seat, mutinous. 

“She said that none of us were born unworthy or undeserving of love, that our actions and choices made and shaped us. Yes, I’d made a mistake but I was paying my penance and was trying to even my score; it wasn’t like before, when we first met, Buck, where I was just a, a shell of a man, just trying to save as many as I killed and then intending to kill myself. I’m trying to become the man my children will be proud of, that my wife will be proud of, both Marcy and Athena.” 

Bobby stares down at his wedding ring, the chips and the dings that will be replaced by a black silicon ring when on call. 

“Telling Athena that I loved her? I was so nervous I sat in my car for nearly twenty minutes before going into her house. I wanted to tell her so badly, but I would always get caught up in my head, in my insecurity and the man I used to be that I was trying to repair. But when I did tell her, Buck?”

Bobby laughs, scrubbing a hand down his face, fisting his hands beneath his chin. His eyes are crinkled into a smile in the kitchen’s gloom.

Buck watches him, heart a knot in his throat, the corner of the breakfast bar cutting into his chest. He traces the name AVIATOR KINARD inscribed in printed letters beneath LAFD AIR OPERATIONS , and wonders what Tommy would say if Buck said he could see more than just a relationship with Tommy, that he saw a future, with rings and a shared surname and home. Wonders what Tommy would say when Buck says “I love you, I think you’re the other half of my heart ”, if he’d say it back.

“Athena wasn’t who I thought I was going to spend my life with,” Bobby tells him, and though there’s a wealth of unmoored grief in his voice, beneath there’s a note of utmost pride and joy that almost overshadows it. “But she’s who I chose. I told her I loved her and it was like I’d been waiting from the very first moment I saw her to say it. We have our problems, just as any other couples do, but she’s my wife and I’m her husband. We choose each other every day that we love each other.”

Buck bites his bottom lip until almost blood, feels the way his eyes burn, spools the loose thread into a bow around his ring finger, a cheap fantasy of what he truly wants. Bobby has opened his heart to Buck in a shadowed mezzanine kitchen at work, breaking himself in twain to try and give Buck the courage to do it himself to his own heart.

“What-what if he, what if Tommy doesn’t-?”

Bobby leans forward, presses a hand over Bucks. His body-warm wedding ring is a siren call against the back of Buck’s left hand. He thinks, briefly, of Tommy’s large hands; calloused and work roughened, with his short nails he clips in the bathroom when Buck brushes his teeth at the sink, how the veins pop when he holds Buck’s own hand, wonders what they would look like with a ring around his left ring finger, silver and battered with age and love.

“Then he isn’t the person for you,” Bobby tells him frankly. Buck stares at the table top. “You tell him goodbye, you nurse a broken heart with support from friends and family and you find a way to carry on. But-”

Bobby ducks his head, forcing Buck to make eye contact. Bobby reaches both hands across the breakfast bar now, squeezes Buck’s wrists gently. 

“That man, Buck? He’s head over heels for you, kid, I’ve never seen Tommy so happy, and I’ve never seen you as happy as I have since you and he got together. He looks at you as if he needs you to breathe; he loves you, Buck, maybe you just need to love yourself a little more to see that.”

Buck takes a moment to breathe, eyes burning, chest feeling a little like it’s caving in on itself.

“You sound like Dr. Copeland.” Buck jests tearily, smiling through his scratchy throat. 

Bobby laughs, leaning back. Buck feels a little bereft after losing the grounding touch.

“She’s a smart woman, Buck, you should listen to her.” 

“I’ll tell her you said that,” Buck tells him. “She’s gonna be insufferable about it, too.”

Buck scrubs his hands over his face, through his curls, then curses when he gets caught in them. 

Bobby just shakes his head, standing away from the kitchen table. The clock on the oven says zero two zero five in blaring red when they both glance at it. 

“Try and get some more sleep, huh, kid?” Bobby says, hand clasped on Buck’s shoulder to give him a shake. “Hopefully get another hour or so before-”

Bobby doesn’t even get to finish his sentence before the klaxons whine to life, shattering the silence of the Fire House. 

“Before that.” Bobby laughs.

Buck only shakes his head, shouldering his hoodie off as he reaches for his phone. 

Over the shrieking klaxons and the sudden clattering of life as almost a dozen boots hit the apparatus floor as Buck and Bobby jog down the mezzanine stairs, the tannoy speakers click to life with a familiar voice.

“Attention Station One-Eighteen. Ladder One-Eighteen. RA One-Eighteen. Suspected heart attack victim stuck in a house at six-two-six S Kenneth Road, Burbank, nine-one-five-zero-one. Attention Station One-Eighteen. Ladder One-Eighteen. RA-”

The familiar voice of Dispatch fades into the shrieks of the Ladder Truck and Ambulance sirens, casting strange shadows across the night-dark streets of West Glendale.

Chapter Text

Tommy 1

Squinting through the windshield of the cockpit as he went through his usual preflight checklist, Tommy can’t help but wonder when he’d finally be able to get home.

They’d been called to Condor Peaks Trailhead not long after eleven at night with reports of three campers having gotten lost on the trailhead when they’d had a bit too much to drink and one of them had taken a stumble. Park Rangers had managed to corral the two uninjured ones and transport them down to the Big Tujunga Reservoir Helipad after calling in medevac and lifeflight. Lucy and Nico had had the fun job of rappelling down from the Fire-Evac-01-217 fuselage into a narrow canyon just off the trailhead to try and find their missing man, and from Lucy’s breathless curse as Tommy watched them from the pilot seat, been able to find him before he’d taken a header down a steep fall which would have made everything more complicated that it was already. 

Normally Tommy was all for unusual and even complicated rescues, but for the past few hours he’d been having to calm himself down from just leaving shift, practically begging internally to not have to do overtime. He and Evan only had a few hours left of their last shifts before they were both due time off, and Tommy can’t quite put into words just how much he was looking forward to going to Vista with Evan. They’d been planning this for the last few weeks when both their Captains had separately pulled them in and ‘gently suggested’ taking some PTO since they’d accumulated so much and rarely took time off, that and the HR admins were starting to crack down on PTO. Tommy had been more than happy to take time off since he’d made it official with Evan, and they’d taken weekends off here and there to simply spend time one another or do things with friends and family, but there was something special about this few days up in Vista, no one but him and Evan and the activities Evan had planned to the very minute on his adorable clipboard before Tommy had pulled him away from it to allow some planning room.

Tommy had had to pull himself away from imagining the start of the few days off together; having breakfast and sharing soft kisses before they stripped and tried to sleep for a few hours before piling into Tommy’s truck and heading to Vista, nothing but him and Evan and the hand he’d put on Evan’s thigh because it made Evan blush pink and rosy.

Lucy had been bemoaning all shift that Tommy was to put his face straight, that she was sick of looking at the literal definition of heart eyes and that she’d been close to just quitting if Tommy didn’t stop looking so in love. 

Thankfully, the missing hiker’s injuries had been minor and so he’d been taken by the Park Rangers to his friends for a long lecture about wilderness safety and why drinking alcohol on a secluded trailhead was an exceptionally stupid way to die.

Tommy looks down from checking his avionics, glowering a little at the navigational instruments as one beeps before settling, when a heavy smack lands against the pilot side door. Lucy grins up at him, hair blown around her face from the rotor blades. Her shoulder lamp almost blinds him and he squints back down at her.

“Almost ready, Kinard?” She shouts over the winds. Tommy reads her lips more than actually hears what she says, hearing muffled by the headset. 

“Just last minute checks!” He hollers back through the open door window. “Finish fueling and we should be good to go!”

Lucy gives him a double thumbs up and bounces away, shoulders curved in from the rotor blade updraft. From the side windows, Tommy can see how she joins a gaggle of Park Rangers helping to refuel the helo, muscling her way in to make sure they aren’t fucking the AW-139 up. That would just be Tommy’s luck.

He pulls up the NOTAMs, making sure that any relevant notices to airmen were still the same and hadn’t changed in the last hour or so that Fire-Evac-01-217 had been grounded after rescuing the hikers. At least the weather briefing showed that it was still a balmy Los Angeles early morning. The avionics show no decline after the instruments had beeped angrily, and he makes a quick note in the Squawk book stuffed down by his right thigh to make sure it was checked out tomorrow when maintenance was due. Normally it was Tommy doing maintenance; it was something he enjoyed doing and it allowed him peace and quiet when he needed a moment, and it gave him the security to know that his helo had been properly tuned and looked after. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his guys, but Tommy was the main pilot of this particular AW-139, and he had been since he’d transferred to Air Ops. He and this girl had been through a lot.

Watching as the fuel gauge slowly went up until they were almost full, Tommy couldn't help pulling out his phone from the padded inner pocket of his flight suit. He means to immediately unlock it, but then the lock screen lights up and Tommy is helpless to do anything but stare at it, grinning.

Evan’s beautiful smile beams back at him, bright blue eyes glistening in the blinding sun from where he’s sprawled between Tommy’s legs, shadowing his dimples. He was resting against Tommy, back against his chest as Tommy wrapped him up and held him close. They’d gone hiking in Bailey Canyon, just him and Evan, and they’d stopped for a picnic just off one of the lesser used tracks, trading kisses between bites of sandwiches and sips of water and juice. They’d sat there for the longest time, soaking in the sun, chatting on and off. Tommy had looked at Evan and had known he was helplessly in love with this man, with his soft heart and beautiful soul and the way Evan looked at Tommy like he never wanted him to go. 

Tommy had quietly promised himself that he’d do anything to keep this, and he’d nearly blurted it out then, that he was helplessly and hopelessly infatuated with this man, utterly gone on Evan Buckley and he’d barely been able to keep it inside. He wondered what Evan would say if Tommy had told him that, what Evan would say if Tommy wanted everything with him, if he’d say yes, if he’d do that small, almost disbelieving smile he always gets when he and Tommy kiss, what he’d do if Tommy said I think you’re the other half of my soul, what he’d do if Tommy helplessly, hopelessly said I’m so in love with you that my heart beats for the sound of you saying my name.

Sal had called him a hopeless fuckin’ idiot when Tommy had phoned him the day after, panic strangling the pit of his throat until he’d made nothing but choking noises down the phone. Sal had had to talk him down from an almost panic attack before Tommy had managed to choke it out; finally managed to say just how deep he was in, just how fucking gone he was on the sunshine that was Evan Buckley. Afterwards, Sal had then laughed and laughed , calling him a cradle robber and a hopeless romantic. Tommy had hung up, answered when Sal had rang back and then hung up again when Sal had laughed again.

“T,” Sal had said the day after, when they’d met for coffee, his bulky body shoved into a tiny bistro chair that wobbled precariously. “T, I ain’t ever seen you so happy, don’t you go sabotagin’ yourself - again, I might say - when you’ve found something that you want so badly to keep, okay? That kid is head over tits for you, my man, and you’re good for one another. Ain’t no need to go borrowin’ trouble if there ain’t no trouble, huh?”

“What if I-?”  Tommy had said, shoulders curled inwards, hands tight around his cooling mug of latte. “What if I overwhelm him, what if he leaves, what if he doesn’t-”

Sal had reached forward, wrapping a hand around Tommy’s shaking wrist. He and Sal had never really been men that had talked about their feelings; leaving the 118, even when Bobby had become Captain, had been for the best. There had been so many things left ingrained that Gerrard leaving couldn’t wipe it out, couldn’t wipe clean that particular slate. Even now, things still back slid and sometimes Tommy felt like he was still that boy, cold and terrified, curled up in a closet and hoping that women - that Abby - would fix him. Tommy hadn’t needed fixing, not really. He’d just needed to be brave , to believe in himself; he would forever regret how he’d hurt both himself and Abby but there had been a lesson there that Tommy had taken to heart when he’d realized. He couldn’t stay that scared little boy forever, not if he truly wanted to live.

Sal had shaken his wrist, fingertips biting into Tommy’s pulse point.

“If he don’t what?”

“Love me.” Tommy had whispered, small and hurting and aching. In that moment, he wasn’t a man almost approaching his fifties, a army veteran with a well established career and years of therapy behind him, he’d been a fourteen year old boy hiding from his drunk father who’d threatened he’d beat the gay outta him if he caught him fuckin’ around with that Carson boy again.

“Then he don’t love you,” Sal had said, with that unflinching steeliness he’d grown into after leaving the 118. His hands had tightened around Tommy’s wrist and had made him face the answer that Tommy hadn’t particularly wanted to think of. “You can’t make someone love you, T, and if he don’t, he’s a stupid cunt who doesn’t know what an amazing man you are, and I’ll be here to get you roarin’ drunk until you don’t remember anything but singin’ Celine Dion karaoke in a dive bar but T? Tommy.” 

Tommy had been helpless to do anything but stare at Sal, a knot in his throat.

“That kid loves you so fuckin’ much it’s sickenin’. I ain’t ever seen you as happy as you have been with your boy, and he looks at you like he needs you to breathe; like he knows nothin’ else but how to love you. He’s so fuckin’ gone on you, T. He loves you so much, don’t disrespect both a’ you by thinkin’ you ain’t it for one another .”

Tommy hadn’t been able to do anything but scrub his hands over his face, feeling the rasp of two day old panic scruff and the way his eyes burn, having threatened tears.

“You deserve to be loved, T,” Sal had told him quietly. “Let him love you.”

“Fuck,” Tommy had said. He’d scuffed his fists over his eyes, wiping away tears. “Fuck.”

Tommy had drowned the last of his latte, cold and overly sugary. 

“I love him, Sal, I love him so goddamn fucking much,” Tommy had said, proud, loudly. “I gotta tell him I wanna marry him one day, shit, give him babies if he wants.”

Sal had laughed, slapping the table even as his knee had nearly toppled it. 

“I’m your best man.” Sal had said, as if Evan saying yes was already guaranteed.

A heavy thump on the back of his chair makes Tommy jump, the light of his phone abruptly fading.

“Man, wipe that lovesick expression off your face before I puke.” Nico grumbles, retreating back into the bowels of the AW-139. 

Tommy turns just enough to see the aeromedic going through his own preflight checks, double checking his emergency med bag equipment. Thankfully they hadn’t had to use a lot of the equipment with the three dumbass hikers, scratches and bruises that had been disinfected and given minor care instructions to, and so it didn’t give Nico the retreat that he’d hopefully wished for.

“Just because you’re still painfully single -”

Nico throws an opened sterile wipe packet at him; they watch it flutter to the floor between them wordlessly. Tommy snorted as Nico looked at him, pained.

“That was as pathetic as your love life, Valdez.” Tommy laughs, ducking when Nico throws a bandage at him. Tommy throws it back, laughing loud when it lands right back into the med bag.

“Fuck, now I gotta recount it all!” Nico groans, throwing his head back. There’s a slight delay between mouth movement and hearing him, and it only makes Tommy smile.

“Better hurry it up, Nico, we’re almost ready to go.” 

“I hope your vacation sucks, Kinard,” Nico grouses. “I hope it pisses it down and you can’t do anything.”

Through the side mirrors, he can see Lucy double checking the fuel system, making sure that the fuel cap was installed properly. She straightens up, still being buffeted by the updrafts before she’s jogging back over to the front of the fuselage, giving a thumbs up.

“Oh no,” Tommy says, deadpan. “Having to stay in a hotel with my sexy, beautiful boyfriend and nothing else to do, how would I ever survive?”

“A fuckin’ animal, Kinard, that’s what you are.”

“A beast , actually, thank you very much, Valdez.”

Tommy gives Lucy his own thumbs up through the open door window, before he turns back to his phone. He gives himself only a second to stare, enraptured, at Evan’s grinning face and beautiful blue eyes before he thumbs his phone open. He’s threatened to get sucked into staring up at his and Evan’s faces shoved together, both of them grinning wide up to dimples, before he pulls up his and Evan’s chat to hide his home screen.

He stares with an almost helpless grin at their last message exchange, just before this call and hurriedly written as Tommy had jogged to his helo.

[2305] Me: Gotta go now, baby. Looking forward to seeing you soon, stay safe!

[2315] Baby <3: Just in the rig for a call, looking like a big MVA. Stay safe, can’t wait to see you either!

He hopes that the call went well; Evan wouldn’t have called him if he’d thought Tommy was still on a call, but if something had gone particularly wrong, Evan would have at least texted to let him know something was up, or if Evan was unable, surely one of the others would have at least let him know, just like Tommy’s crew knew to let Evan know if something was wrong. They hadn’t had a talk about emergency contacts just yet, it having been pushed back over and over; maybe when Tommy tells Evan he loves him this week, they could have that conversation too.

Lucy gives a heavy thump to the fuselage side as she clambers in, headset settling onto her hair as she and Nico fasten themselves into the bowels of the helo. Normally, Lucy would sit up front with Tommy, but she’d been shadowing Nico recently as a training aeromedic and she was so close to becoming dual certified; she’d been thinking about changing permanently to aeromedic, but hadn’t quite made the decision just yet. Quickly, he types a quick message, excitement pooling in the pit of his belly as he thinks of how little hours he’s got left before he sees Evan again.

[0124] Me: Just finishing up in Condor Peak and should be heading back soon. Hope you’ve had a good shift, baby, stay safe!

Before Tommy even finishes verifying flight controls and engine instruments, his phone lights up, a brief look of Evan’s beautiful smile and the preview of his reply.

[0126] Baby <3: Hope everything went well, big guy! See you soon, and stay safe <3

It takes everything in Tommy not to melt; instead, he heart reacts to the message before locking his phone and tucking it back into the padded inner pocket of his flight suit. 

“Everyone ready?” Tommy asks, flicking the last of the engine controls on. The rear rotor blades start to life, a heavy whirring hum vibrating through the fuselage. 

Two double thumbs up shown in the mirror, and Tommy clicks over to air traffic dispatch, watching how the Park Rangers finish pulling the rest of their equipment off of the helipad, a stray hat being thrown off an unprepared head from the rotor blade winds.

“Traffic Control, this is F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven, leaving B-T helipad, heading back to VKND-two-one-seven.” Tommy says into the radio, hearing the brief static that always makes him wince before a familiar voice breaks through it.

“Copy, F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven, this is Traffic Control, permission to leave B-T helipad and back to base, safe flight, Kinard. ” 

“Copy that, Traffic Control; F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven heading back to base.” Static gives way to silence, and Tommy gazes out of the cockpit windscreen, traces the ragged tops of mountains and tall trees that break up the Los Angeles skyline, able to see the road grid even from this far, illuminated and constantly on the go.

Tommy had never really imagined himself living in a city like LA; he’d lived up in Hobson, Montana until he was old enough to enlist as soon as he’d turned seventeen and then he’d joined the Army and had mostly lived out of a sandy tent and a slowly disintegrating duffle until he’d been discharged when he was twenty nine, bitter and angry and so repressed he hadn’t know what was wrong with him. He hadn’t even meant to land in LA originally, they’d been handing out Firefighter flyers at the VA where Hatfield, an old army buddy, had dragged him to when he’d found Tommy drunk and lonely in his extended stay, and Tommy had gone where Hatfield had dragged him, tired and exhausted and feeling like he hadn’t know where he started and his damage began, hadn’t even know how to begin healing or if he ever could, or if he ever wanted to.

The army had been his life for almost ten years, and Tommy had honestly thought he’d die out there, in Afghanistan or Iraq; had thought that he had wanted to honestly. He’d had only his Nonna and Nonno to worry about him, his mom five years dead at her own hand when he was twelve, and his dad all too proud to say his pussy son was turning a new leaf and turning into a proper man, just like his old man and Tommy had promised to never let himself become his dad, had wondered if he’d turn into his mom instead, with her heavy tiredness and lack of energy.

Maybe it wasn’t a surprise, really, that he’d ended up in such a bustling city like Los Angeles; loud and rough and forever on the move, it was worlds away from the quiet of his hometown where it had only be him and his dad and the car garage Thomas Kinard Senior had owned and ran, often with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, and the weight of his wife’s suicide on his shoulders, because everyone knew why poor Maria Kinard had offed herself, a no good alcoholic husband and a weird son, who wouldn’t wanna run?

The feel of the cyclic pitch control bites into his hand, and for a second he can feel the weight of his phone in his padded inner pocket; instead of his dads hand on the back of his neck and the sour scent of whiskey hot breath, Tommy imagines how Evan rubs his fingers over Tommy’s scalp, the blunt of his short nails scrubbing at his scalp, the wash of warm breath as he pressed a kiss to Tommy’s temple when Evan woke him for breakfast in bed, the shameless and all encompassing way Evan loves everything but especially Tommy, like he’s never known another way to love.

“Earth to Kinaaaaard!” Staticky and loud, Lucy’s voice shocks through Tommy’s headset, but he can sense the edge to it. He and Lucy haven’t worked all that long in hindsight, only a few years or so since she left the 118, but for a first responder, a few years was long enough to know your partner; it had to be. She could tell something was off. “Need to get going, lover boy, otherwise you’re gonna stand your man up!”

Tommy forcibly pulls himself into the here and now, gazing for a moment at the Big Tujunga Canyon and valleys, the dark of the skies and how the electrical road grid of Los Angeles exposes the shadows of its own secrets.

Maybe he hadn't meant to come to LA all those years ago, on a whim and dragged by a well meaning army buddy who’d been terrified that Tommy was gonna kill himself too, and maybe he’d become the worst of himself beneath Gerrard but he'd earned his home here, had been given friends and family, had been given himself.

Had been given Evan.

That was worth everything and anything Tommy could ever say. He’d sabotaged them before, broken them up and shattered Evan’s heart into pieces to try and save his own; having gone into the relationship with one foot already out of the door, sure that Evan could never want Tommy as much as Tommy wanted him. They’d both needed to learn something, about themselves and one another, and they had; so sure that even with the hurt and heart wrenching panic that Tommy would never be enough, and that Evan would be too much, they’d figured it out.

There’s a sensation of pulling, gravity doing its utmost best to keep a grasp of them before, with the slightest tug that has Tommy pressing lightly on the antitorque pedals and then tilting the cyclic control aft wards as the helo nose tilts forward a little too much as the tail rotor blade judders further to life, it loosens its grip and they’re climbing slowly into the air. 

Weightlessness, instead of a heavy weight.

They hover, climbing slowly until they’ve reached the appropriate height, the collective warming slowly in his hand. Tommy will never get sick of the feeling, the confidence, the adrenaline flying gives him.

Tommy had been a pilot in the army; had gone to flight school. He’d been so desperate to escape his dad that he’d taken the first thing he could to get away; it hadn’t been because he was patriotic or thought he could make the world a better place by getting shot at overseas, his decision had been selfish, an escape that had given him PTSD and a boat load of mental health issues on top of his shit.

It’s taken Tommy a long time to realize that even though he’s escaped his father, there’s a part of him still trapped in the small town of Hobson with a dead body for a mom and a an alcoholic wannabe for a dad where he’s terrified and so fucking sad . It’s taken Tommy a long time to realize that even though he’d escaped, he’d been so scared for so long that he doesn’t know how to be.

He’s still that scared seventeen year old, wanting to belong, to be loved and for someone to stay but so scared that they wouldn’t and determined to leave before they did.

“You lookin’ forward to your gaycation, Kinard?” Lucy says from the fuselage with a shit eating grin that Tommy can just see from the corner of his eye. 

Nico, with a long suffering expression, elbows her in the side.

“I’m gonna toss you outta this copter, I swear to fuck, Donato,” Nico hisses. “You’re gonna get him started again.”

“Oh, you want me to start again?” Tommy grins. “I’m gonna get a cute little photo of Evan printed out and stick it right in the cockpit just so I can see his beautiful face whenever I want and I’m gonna kiss it every time I think about about him and start missing, maybe get a tasteful nudie to shove in my wallet to-”

“Fuck sake , Lucy!” Nico groans over Tommy’s kissing noises. He bangs his head against the fuselage side.

Lucy side eyes him. “Dude, just make a sex tape already. Surprised we haven’t found you jerking it in the copter before, honestly.”

Lucy can never find out about last week in the helicopter when he’d been alone on a seventy two hour shift. She’ll never let him live it down. 

Tommy deliberately doesn’t look at the back of the fuselage floor even as he gives a wolfish grin he knows Lucy can see in the cockpit window. The starless night sky expands around them, Condor Trail blooming beneath them as a set of pinprick headlights steer slowly beneath them; perhaps one of the Park Rangers that had helped them with the drunk and stupid hikers.

“No!” Lucy gasps. 

Tommy’s sure if it wasn’t for her harness, she’d have thrown herself into the cockpit, such was her enjoyment of finding out Tommy had videoed Evan. When he turns his head away from the displays, flexing the antitorque pedals into a more neutral position as they properly level out, he can see her screaming into her hands. He twists the throttle slightly, keeping an eye on the fuel carburetor. The helo levels properly, humming beneath his body. It’s with easy movements made smooth with repetition and training that Tommy has the helo flying forward, barely a hitch in the movement as the swash plate changes the pitch of the rotor blades.

“I knew Buckley was a little freak,” Lucy cackles, tinny through the headsets. “I knew it.”

Nico looks a little like he wants to throw himself out of the helo, eyes boring into the back of Tommy’s head.

“I dearly don’t want to know, Kinard.” Nico tells him, aggrieved. 

“Wouldn’t want to make you jealous, Valdez.” Tommy simpers, like the asshole he is.

“Ain’t got nothing to be jealous about, old man,” Nico shoots back. “Gonna end up throwin’ your back out and I’m gonna point and laugh .”

“Age gap jokes?” Tommy deadpans. “Is that the lowest you’re gonna sink to?”

Tommy can’t deny that the gap between him and Evan was over what most people considered proper; but Evan was nearing his mid thirties and yes, Tommy was coming up to his forty-ninth birthday in the next few months, but they’d both had a wealth of experiences between them and they were both grown ass men.

Whatever Nico shoots back is lost on Tommy as he stares at the little stretch of cockpit display that’s blank and empty of either electronic display or controls. 

Tommy has thought about it, printing a little photo of Evan out and stashing it on the helo. He probably would have already if only he used this helo, but this wasn’t his personal one and the thought of another pilot gazing longingly at a well loved photo of his partner had something curdling in the pit of his belly.

Tommy wasn’t a possessive man by nature; he left before others could leave and hurt him, and it’s what he’d done to Evan when the man had put him on a pedestal though it had only hurt them both before they’d gotten their heads out their asses. Evan alighted something inside of him that he couldn’t put a name too or ever put out, something that itched at the caveman instinct at the back of his head that looked at Evan and said mine.

He’d never felt like this before, set alight and yet as cool as the ocean waters. Tommy wasn’t prone to dramatics, he kept himself into little boxes neatly labelled that he sometimes had a hard time prying open, but it was like when he and Evan had decided to give it another try, Evan had pried open every single box and allowed Tommy to feel.

Evan had flooded Tommy’s life with color, and he never wants to be without it again.

Maybe he should get one, print out a smiling Evan and tuck it into his wallet, keep it close to his heart.

His CO over in Afghanistan had had a picture of her husband in a locket around her neck, sand worn and the pattern disintegrated beneath how she would stroke her thumb over it constantly. She’d kiss it before and after every mission, and Tommy had ached at that devotion, at that loyalty. 

He thinks of the exact photo he’d print; Evan in vivid color, putting the sun and the skies to shame. Tommy had taken it at Evan's first visit to him at Van Nuys after they'd started properly dating, wide eyed and open mouth, quite literally vibrating with his excitement. He’d tried on Tommy’s blue flight suit, bare chested beneath it and the zip somewhere between his abs, curls ruffling in the open air of the bays. He’d looked a little like an old school pin-up, shoulders straining the fabric, biceps pressing against the blue of it, a glimpse of a nipple having sent Tommy into a tailspin for an hour after. It had been his face though that had captivated Tommy, that large dimpling smile that stretched from ear to ear, eyes crinkling with the force of it, baby blue eyes matching the blue of Tommy’s flight suit, the name KINARD stretching across his right breast pocket. He’d leant against Tommy’s personal helicopter, against the nose of it, gentle and exhilarated, looking like he belonged there.

He’d been beautiful and dizzying and Tommy’s.

“He’s got that lovesick look on his face, again.” Valdez hisses. 

Below and just in front of them, the peaks of Mount Lukens stretch into the horizon, shadowed by the starless night, a small drifting of cloud obscuring the very bottom of them as the helo flies past them. 

“I dread to think what the one-eighteen have to put up with. The baking is a bonus, though.”

“Ugh right?” Nico groans. “I’d kill for those marzipan croissants, I dunno what Buckley does to it, but I’d marry those croissants if I could.”

Through the cockpit windscreen, the lights of Los Angeles grow stark and brighter, a never ending buzz of life that’s been Tommy’s life for so many years he can hardly imagine being anywhere else. Seventeen year old Tommy Kinard would never have thought himself capable of this; having escaped, doing a job he loves with people he’s comfortable with that he trusts, contemplating marrying a man that he loves more than life itself, telling that man just how much Tommy loves him. It’s an almost bittersweet feeling, he’d tried so hard for so many years, sabotaging himself and he’d almost lost it, had almost lost Evan because they’d both been too scared of simply showing themselves.

“F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven, this is Traffic Control, come in F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven.”  

Reaching up, Tommy flicks to the channel made for Air Traffic Control; there’s a buzz in his ear, static for a moment as the radio fizzes

“Read you loud and clear, Traffic Control, this is Kinard with F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven.” 

“F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven, what’s your current fuel status?”  

A glance at the fuel gauge isn’t really required; Lucy had filled the tank when back at Big Tujunga helipad and they’d barely used any fuel on the flight to the Trail or to the helipad. 

Behind him, he can feel the glance Nico and Lucy exchange.

“Just under a full tank, Traffic Control, what seems to be the issue?”

Something cold curls in the pit of Tommy’s belly when Traffic Control seems to hesitate .

Mount Lukens brightens into the edge of Sunland, a sprawling wealth of golf green to the right of him. He’s never liked golf.

Then, not Traffic Control, but Dispatch.

“F-E-zero-one-two-one-seven, please divert to Joaquin Miller Park, seven-twenty E Providencia in Burbank. We’ve had a mayday call from Station One-Eighteen; firefighter - a thirty four year old male -  down with double GSWs that needs immediate life flighting to Cedars-Sinai. The scene is safe but the patient is - critical. Please be advised that there is an active four-alarm fire just west of Brace Canyon Park.”

“Oh shit.” Lucy says, soft.

“Copy, Dispatch, diverting to Joaquin Miller Park.” Tommy says, numbly.

Chapter Text

Buck 2

It’s a few minutes from the House when Eddie, hair having hastily been patted down and pillow creases slowly fading, speaks through the headset.

“What’re we doing in Burbank, Cap, I thought the Sixteen covered that area?” Eddie’s voice is hoarse and crackly over the headset, a slight delay between mouth movement and hearing him as Buck squints in the low light of the truck cab. 

Bobby turns in his seat, his own headset crooked.

“The Sixteen does usually cover the Burbank area, you’re right, however Dispatch says they and their sister house are currently answering a four alarm fire near Brace Canyon, and this call is just outside our operating zone so they’ve called us in.”

It does make sense, Buck thinks. If he remembers right, S Kenneth Road isn’t too far from Grandview and El Miradero, which just borders Glendale, and it’s about an eleven minute drive from West Glendale and the 118 Station House at the speed limit. Normal Los Angeles traffic usually has it up to almost eight minutes in the Engine, even with it being almost half past two in the morning.

“Now, Dispatch says a concerned woman called about her husband; suspected heart attack in an elderly man who fell when trying to get to their car and the wife is too frail to move the patient from the front door where he’s collapsed. We’re going to have to move quickly and carefully, okay?”

There’s a chorus of yeah Cap's through the head sets and Buck watches the night shadowed city of Los Angeles slide by the cab window, a blur of fluorescent nightlife and the orange glow of road lights. 

Los Angeles is probably the biggest city Buck has ever lived in; the biggest but not the busiest. That, Buck thinks, would have to be Sunampe, one of the districts in Chinca, Peru where he’d followed Connor from. He’d been a bartender working in Las Totoritas, occasionally working across the road in El Racimo de Uva when they’d needed a hand and didn’t mind paying Buck under the table. He’d enjoyed it; chatty and fast paced with families and college kids on spring break or on holiday, Buck had never hurt for people to talk to, and his boss had just been happy that Buck was conversational in Spanish and didn’t need his hand held constantly. He’d been happy in Sunampe, part of the reason why he’d settled in that district though Callao held a special place in his heart for introducing him to chifa chicharrones that he could never find anywhere else that tasted as good.

A knee knocking against his drags Buck from his day dream of chifa chicharrones and arroz con camarones and trying to hunt down a decent Peruvian restaurant when he and Tommy next do date night. He automatically knocks his knee back against theirs.

Eddie grins at him through the shadows that slide across the truck cab, and when Eddie leans forward, elbows on his knees and hands hanging between them, clasped together, Buck follows suit, feeling the pull of his seat belt. 

“Where were you?” Eddie asks loudly enough to be heard over the roaring engine and shrieking sirens, mouth nearly to Buck’s ear as he tries to avoid speaking into the headset mic for some semblance of privacy. “I woke up just before the alarm and you weren’t there.”

Buck shrugs, close enough that he can feel how Eddie huffs through his nose, almost temple to temple as Buck tugs at his fingers. He watches how Eddie clenches his own fingers into a fist, skin pulled taut over his scarred knuckles. Buck lingers on the left middle knuckle, misshapen and knocked off centre from Eddie’s misspent street fighting phase.

“Just couldn’t sleep.” Buck says, and he watches how Eddie’s brows furrow together. 

Despite the traffic that sees them dodging carrying on on San Fernando Road and taking a right onto Grandview Avenue, and then pulling onto W Kenneth Road, they’re still making good time, managing to avoid the usual rush of traffic that usually surrounds Glendale DMV. In the truck cab, everyone else carries on their own conversations, giving Buck and Eddie the thin veneer of privacy.

“Any particular reason?” Eddie demands, and his hand is a burning brand on Buck’s left knee despite the thick fabric of his uniform trousers. No point wearing turn-outs when there wasn’t a potential fire.

For a moment, Buck wonders if he should lie, tell Eddie something real but ultimately untrue for the current situation on why he couldn’t sleep; Eddie is, after all, Tommy’s friend too, had actually been Tommy’s friend first . Eddie had been nothing but supportive of his and Tommy’s relationship though, and has been one of their biggest supporters actually. He and Eddie were also trying this thing called honesty and communication in their friendship too.

“I think I’m gonna tell Tommy I love him!” Buck says over the way the Ladder Truck pulls to a stop outside of Joaquin Miller Park, sirens and lights throwing shadows and the suburb in deep relief in the red and blue klaxons.

There’s a mad scramble as the RA unit, manned by Hen in the driver's seat, pulls up on the other side of the road closer to 626 S Kenneth Road. Silence falls abruptly as Sousa cuts the sirens of the Ladder Truck as the team filters from both Truck and RA, bathed in the fluorescent blue and red of its revolving lights. Distantly, Buck can hear Bobby radioing Dispatch to let them know that Station 118 is on scene as requested, and that the scene is secure.

“About time, Buck!” Eddie says as he smacks Buck on the shoulder. It’s hard enough to knock Buck forward slightly as he pulls a halligan from the equipment cubby in the truck side. “When’re you gonna tell him?”

“When we go up to Vista soon,” Buck tells him, shouldering his own safety equipment. He and Eddie fall into step with one another, Santiago and Serrano hot on their heels as they head towards where Bobby is already debriefing Hen and Chimney. “We’re spending a few more days than we originally planned so we can see some sights and be a bit lazy, y’know? Make it a bit of a staycation.”

Eddie looks as if he’s going to continue, mouth opening and leaning in close but Bobby claps his hands and calls for attention with nothing but his presence and by opening his mouth.

“Alright everyone!” Bobby calls loud enough to be heard from the back of the RA unit where Hen and Chimney are grabbing their own equipment. “Buck, Eddie, I want you to try and find an entrance point, Dispatch says there should be an easily accessible back door. Chimney and Hen will be following you and they’ll take control when you reach the patient, any questions, no? Get going, people.”

Buck and Eddie turn to one another, safety equipment and halligans already secured in their belts as they bump wrists, Santiago and Serrano lagging behind to get their own details.

626 S Kenneth Road was on the very end of the street, shadowed by a large tree that waved happily in the very early morning hours wind. Hen and Chimney are on their heels as Buck ducks around the side that borders E Cedar Avenue. A set of low steps direct them into a medium walled back garden, further shaded by swaying trees. Every window is dark, and Buck clicks his shoulder lamp on as he scrambles over the low set wall dividing front and back gardens, hearing the others do the same, a wide swath of the garden illuminating in the harsh fluorescents, exposing neatly cut grass and a my children are veterans sign proudly pinned to a outer wall by a patio table and chairs.

“Hey, Cap,” Buck murmurs into the radio, sweeping his shoulder lamp from side to side. “We sure there’s a medical emergency here? Windows and doors are dark without any movement, over.”

There’s a brief moment of radio silence. Eddie calls out when he finds the back door, locked and unmoving behind a mosquito net door, voice shouting LAFD throughout the shadows as he opens the net door and bangs heavily against the main one.

“Dispatch confirms this is the place,” Bobby’s voice crackles over the radio. “They’re both elderly, not able to move around much. Maybe they aren’t able to make it to the back door. Carry on and breach when you can, Buck, over.”

“We’ve been having a lot of hoax calls the past few weeks, Cap, are we sure this isn’t another one?’ Hen asks, sceptical. Buck can see how she and Chim share a look in the shadowed overlook as they get into position.

For the past few weeks, three or more if Buck remembers, Dispatch had been fielding hoax calls to both fire and police departments, ranging from either nuisance calls or serious ones that would have had cops or firefighters out in force, either to sweep for a missing person or to fight back a four alarm five, taking valuable resources from the places that actually needed it. Tommy had come home complaining enough times about calls of stranded hikers in difficult canyons that had turned out to be hoaxes that Buck could recite his complaints word for word. Athena had been called out just the other day for a suspected domestic disturbance only to then rock up to the address and it to be entirely empty. She’d been furious as she’d stormed into the Firehouse, having shouldered Bobby out of the way so she could take her anger out on the dough he’d been kneading.

The brass had put out press statements and interviews into why the hoax calls were to stop and what the consequences could be if resources couldn’t be allocated properly, but it hadn’t done much luck, hoax calls coming in at least almost every day, leaving both departments ran ragged and unsure if the calls would be true calls, but unable to take the risk that it was.

“Can’t take that risk, guys, ” Bobby says. “Carry on with trying to find a way in .”

“Copy that, Cap,” Eddie says into his own radio. “Found the back door, gonna need to break it in, over.”

He and Eddie do a furious if silent game of rock, paper, scissors to see who breaks the heavy back door down, watched on by Hen who rolls her eyes and Chimney, who grins around his mouthful of gum. They’d try doing a breach with the halligan, but the door jamb showed signs of rotting, worn thin from rain and wind. The halligan was more likely to sink too deep into the wood than actually displace it properly.

“Alright guys, watch out.” Buck says.

He steps back a few feet, bracing his sides and setting his shoulders. Eddie positions himself to keep the net door open to the side. It’s with a low grunt that Buck races forward, shoving his shoulder into the sturdy door. It splinters briefly inwards, and Buck absorbs the bounce back of it as it launches him back a few steps. Using the momentum, Buck lunges forward again, pain sparking down his right shoulder as the door splinters and then breaks, separating from the door frame and swinging quickly inwards and then bouncing backwards.

“LAFD!” Buck shouts as he pulls the door open the rest of the way, splintering in his gloved hand.

The interior is just as dark as the exterior, Buck’s lamp illuminating a portion of the dark stained wood floor, a mirror hanging above the side table and a stooped, trembling figure in the door frame just to the left of it, arms up in front of them-

“Fire Depart-” Buck starts.

A bright flash of light, a crack-pop, blood in his mouth, against his face-

“-ment - uhck.”

He chokes, spasming. His lungs refuse to rise.

Another flash, another crack-pop.

A sniper?

The mirror is a heavy thing, golden and ornate; like a ghost, it shows a pale faced figure illuminated in a fluorescent light. Wide eyed, mouth dropped, the figure staggers back, as if punched, taken off balanced. Buck blinks slowly as something red glistens upon that pale faced figure.

Then;

“Buck! Oh fuck, Buck -”

Oh.

Pain, all encompassing, threatens to drown him. It leaves him hazy, wilted. Something scorching and wet blooms against his chest, the side of his neck. He staggers back, breathless, dizzy. The mirror slips from view and so does that pale faced figure. Buck tries to step forward, raise a hand; someone needs help and Buck can help them, needs to help Eddie -

His arms refuse to rise, deadweight anchors that have him collapsing back into the hands that drag him from a wavering door jamb. 

“Buck!” 

Harsh, staticky. 

Bobby, is Bobby hurt?

Hands, too many and yet not enough. They grasp him, pull at the sturdy lines of his uniform. They pull at his shoulders, yanking and tearing and pushing and pulling. Stars burst in front of his eyes, something hot and coppery fills his mouth; he’s drowning, he’s drowning -

“Mayday! Mayday!” Someone is shouting; loud and terrified. Buck makes a noise in the back of his throat, tries to croak something out but his breath catches and his eyes are hazing over again, he can’t see, why can’t he see -

“Shots fired! Firefighter is down! I repeat; mayday, mayday! Firefighter Buckley has been shot-”

Oh.

Hen, face pallid and terrified. She hovers above him, her eyes wide, her mouth ever moving. Buck’s too far away to hear.

Time distorts, pulling and twisting; it’s like sand in an hourglass. 

The world tilts, unfocused as if a great hand has smeared through it; a heavy weight presses against the right side of his chest and Buck hiccups , eyes burning. It hurts, why are they hurting him?

Chimney, voice wavering but his hands never do. Buck’s so glad he met Maddie. They’re so good for one another. 

Another heavy weight, padded but so sore still; a candle flamed into an inferno.

He tries to scream, but he can’t get the breath, chokes on the liquid suffocating him. He can feel it splatter out, down his face, beneath his head.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” A woman screams. 

“Buck!” Shouted; raw and strained. Buck coughs, a groan tearing from his throat. He tries to move, stomach straining as he attempts to get up, fire tears at him, licks furiously up his chest into his neck, hands grasping in a panic; someones shouting for him, something’s happened, he doesn’t know what but someone needs help.

“ We didn’t realize, I thought you were breaking in -” Sobbing, gutted, grieving.

Something tight squeezes his upper arm, too tight, until pain, until it’s lost in an ocean of dizziness that has the world tilting even whilst lying down.

Why aren’t they letting him help?

“Two GSW’s; one just beneath the right clavicle, the other just missing the jugular-” Hen sounds panicked beneath her usual professional tone. Is someone hurt?

The night is starless. Clouds have obscured the velvet of the night sky, the suburban lights barely penetrating through the thin layer. He’s cold, tremblingly so.

“Two lines in-” 

He thinks of his - of their - bed, large and soft and comfortable. He’d fallen asleep last night across Tommy’s chest, warm and cared for, to Tommy reading from his shitty detective crime novel. He’d felt the tender affection of fingers scratching at his scalp, how they’d skirted down to gently stroke over the shell of his ear; a tenderweight of love that had soothed Buck to sleep like nothing else ever could.

“Heart rate is one-ten and climbing, BP is-” The world tips, tilts. Why is Hen in his and Tommy’s bedroom? “-ush saline, lactate ringers, he’s losing too much bl-”

A heavy weight, harsh and incomparable, presses itself against the right side again. Buck grunts, cries out. He suddenly thinks he knows how Atlas felt, pressed beneath an inconceivable weight into the ground. He’s trying so hard to surface but sleep has a hold of him-

“Grab the Quikclot, we need to stop this blood-”

A hand around his neck, his throat; he wheezes, flails a hand as something presses harder against his torso - he wants them to stop, why won’t they stop -

“Is he going to be alright?” Someone weeps. “I didn’t mean-”

“-don’t care !” Eddie, that’s Eddie, why is he shouting, what’s wrong- “ Let us do our jobs!”

Buck wheezes. The starless night creeps over him like a blanket. Clouds haze over the very edges of his vision.

“Could try TXA-?”

“Not with his clotting history, too much of a risk, especially using the Quikclots-”

“Shit.” Bobby, that’s Bobby. Worried and voice trembling.

Buck tries to turn, reaching a hand towards his Captain. His body betrays him, weak, heavy. An anchor at sea, unmoving against the unstoppable tides

“BP’s down to sixty-four over forty-one, heartbeat is rapid and weak-”

His heart’s a hummingbird in his chest.

He and Christopher were going to go to the zoo after his and Tommy’s holiday. They had a bird section that Buck could spend hours in, but it was the bat cave that truly held his heart. He could stand still for hours, feeling the breeze of their wings, the tiny catch of claws on his clothes.

“He’s desatting!” Hen, her voice breaking. She’s scared, cracking right down the seams. Buck reaches for her, but she’s out of reach.

A face blocks the starless night from view, but the clouds remain at the very edges of his vision, encroaching in. He squints, choking on air, on something hot and scorching and should be so familiar but he can’t quite reach it.

“Edd’e.” Slurring, barely able to garble it out. 

Something in his chest is broken. Cracked open, heart exposed.

A hand, warm and tender and damp, rests against his chilled cheek. Eddie’s upside face appears. Blood strewn across his face, eyes wild and wet. He looks- 

“Y’okay?” Buck tries to say. Gags on spit, on the wet hotness that slips down the back of his throat. Instead, it spills from the corners of his mouth, down his chin, to his jaw.

Eddie looks gutted.

“Stay awake,” Eddie says instead. Blood is smeared up his throat, dampening his work collar. “You need to stay awake, okay, brother?”

“-’m tired…” It’s rasped out of him.

“ - a thirty four year old male, two GSW’s to the right clavicle and near the jugular, in critical condition -”

Rapid beeping, getting faster and faster.

“Don’t you dare!” Fingers, once gentle turn hurting. Fingertips dig into the cliff of his jaw, tilting his head back. Tears and blood blind him, dripping down cheek to temple to ear. Awash in water, baptised in coughed up blood.

“ - he doesn’t have ten minutes! We need that lifeflight now, Dispatch!”

Buck still can’t remember when he’d had a pulmonary embolism at his own welcome back party. He wonders if this is what felt like; dizzying, rapid, an out of body experience that threatens to drag him beneath the waves. Scorching hot blood choking him

“Gotta-got’a…” His voice fails him, rasping, dying in his throat. 

He’s dying. 

He’s dying, lying on a dew chilled garden beneath the night sky where Tommy should be flying in, handsome and competent and so happy and fuck, Buck’s so in love with him it hurts more than this pain ever could, but it pales to the thought that he’s leaving Tommy.

“-they’ve said Lifeflight is three minutes out! The Two-Seventeen was closest-”

Just another person in a line of people to have broken Tommy’s heart when he’d been let in.

“...don’t wan’a die, Eds,” Buck gargles. He tries to reach a hand up, and wonders if the light breaching through the cloud cover is Tommy, somehow having known to come and rescue him. “...can’t leave jus’ yet..”

“No, you can't, can you?” Eddie tells him. His eyes are wide, wet. Eddie’s crying. “You’ve got shit to tell us, okay? Chris- and Tommy-”

One of the strongest men Buck knows is weeping.

“Get him on the backboard!” Chim sounds panicked, harried. Buck’s never heard him like that before.

“Sorry, brother, this is gonna hurt, okay?” Those fingertips have turned gentle again, cradled into the jut of Buck’s jaw. 

“Three, two -”

Buck can’t help the thin cry through clenched teeth that has his neck spasming, lungs choking as he tries to breathe through the pain. Dizzy, the darkness encroaches, the clouds creeping ever further. 

He’s turned onto his left side, heavy hands still gripping his right. All at once, he’s both the heaviest and the lightest he’s ever been; trapped beneath the hurting but healing hands of his friends and family, blood slick and tear damp and sweat sticky. 

Rapid beeping, faster and faster.

The world tilts dizzyingly. Nausea curdles in the pit of his stomach, fire lancing through his shoulder and clavicle. Darkness beckons, but the hand on the top of his head, trembling, keeps him grounded even as his own body fights against him.

A roaring sound, rhythmic and constant, a heavy breeze that just touches him. 

Buck turns towards it, magnetized. 

“You’re alright, son,” Bobby tells him, orders him, as if Bobby could simply stop time and death and Buck’s own body in its tracks. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

The blue and red lights of the Ladder Truck, illuminating the street, but still Buck’s eyes threaten failure, blurring until it melts into one.

“Oh fuck, is that Buck ?” 

Familiar, the voice’s name is just on the tip of his tongue. But Buck only turns inwards, upwards. Bobby holds the weight of his head and shoulders on a swaying backboard. 

“‘-we didn’t know it was him !” A male voice, just as familiar. “Kinard’s the pilot!”

Tommy. Tommy’s here, is Tommy hurt?

“...got’a..got’a tell ‘im, pops-” Buck pleads, rasps. Like grains of sand through an hourglass, his vision darkens, chest stuttering; the night sky beckons, and Buck is helpless to stop it. “..got’a tell ‘im, tell …tell T’mmy-”

The winds roar. His anchor heavy body is as light as air. 

“S’rry, s’rry-”

His body sways, a perpetual motion, bobbing like a boat on the water.

“He’s decompensating!”

Rapid beeping, faster and faster and faster.

As clear as day; “Love him.”

It stops, suddenly.

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.

Chapter Text

Buck 3

His alarm is going off, rapid beeping, getting faster and faster.

Buck groans, burying his face deeper into the pillow beneath his head, rubbing his cheek against it. His head bounces when his pillow laughs and Buck tightens an arm around the bulk of it, squeezing gently to cuddle closer.

“Time to get up, baby,” his pillow tells him. “We’ve gotta get our stuff packed up and get on the road.”

“Shhh,” Buck says. “You’re my pillow right now, not my boyfriend.”

Unfairly, his pillow moves. A large hand strokes down the broad of his back, following the curve of his spine, warm and calloused and a lovely weight to it that has Buck arching into the movement, a soft moan escaping. It strokes up and down his back, before it cups the back of his neck, blunt fingers tangling with the hairs at his nape.

“No, c’mon, Evan,” his pillow says, scratching the back of his head. “We’ve been looking forward to this for ages.”

They have. They’ve had these few days planned up in Vista for a while now, and Buck had given them an itinerary that had Tommy taking his clipboard away only to drown him in pleasure and then give him the clipboard back when Buck couldn’t think straight. They’d just finished their last hours of twenty four hour shifts, and now they have five full days to themselves where nothing could go wrong.

The plan had been to finish their shifts, which would have been early in the morning, crash for a few hours at home and then be on the road for at least two o’clock where they'd get breakfast on the go as they headed to Vista. Now though, Buck just really wanted to stay in bed with the love of his life and sleep for a week. 

The shift had been tough; they’d had back to back calls at the start of the night,some annoying, some stupid but half way they’d ended up in a multiple vehicular pile up for five hours and then, only after two hours rest, they’d ended up back out to cover Station House 16 that had ended up being a hoax call.

“Counterpoint,” Buck says, voice muffled in the crook of Tommy’s shoulder. “I’m comfortable and sleepy, and you’re extremely warm and comfortable to sleep on, we should just do this for the five days we have off.”

Tommy laughs, bright and airy. The hand scratching the back of his head stops, and Buck whines, lifting his head to try and encourage Tommy’s hand back. Sunlight pours in through the half pulled to curtains, and Buck has to squint against the way it falls across his face with how he’s lower down the bed.

“No can do, Evan, you’ve got something to tell me,” Tommy says. He grins down at Buck, eyes crinkling and chin dimpling. Buck doesn’t resist the urge to kiss it, feeling Tommy’s stubble scratching at his skin as he rubs a thumb over the bolt of Tommy’s jaw. “I’ve got something to tell you later, as well, huh?”

Buck stills.

Tommy’s still smiling against his mouth, licking into it and tasting morning breath no doubt, but there’s an almost - anguished tone to his voice, rough and tearful. Buck would never call Tommy an overly emotional man; by virtue of either his upbringing, the army and having been a closeted man under DADT, and then beneath Gerrard, Tommy has never been exceptionally open with his emotions, though Tommy’s proven that can be cut off at the knees in regards to Buck himself.

However, they’re in bed. Tommy and he are sprawled out in Tommy’s bed without a stitch of clothing on, their shifts had been rough and long but they hadn’t been injured outside of the usual collection of bruises and bumps that are a firefighter’s usual lot. Buck is sprawled out against Tommy’s side, half on his chest, a leg tossed over his hips as Tommy holds him close and kisses him like he’s drowning. 

Buck pulls back, leveraging himself up on an elbow. The thumb still rubbing circles over the jut of Tommy’s left jaw side slips further up, and Buck is then cradling Tommy’s jaw, chin settling into the fat of Buck’s palm.

“You alright, big guy?” Buck asks, pressing a soft kiss to the rough of Tommy’s jaw, feeling how the bristles skitter over his lips.

For a single moment, Tommy’s expression crumbles.

His eyes are wide and red, tear rimmed at the edges as his mouth gasps soundlessly, an open gash of disbelieving grief. He looks unmoored, unmade, in the worst possible way. He looks as though his chest has been cracked wide in two, and he can’t quite believe it.

Something cold curls in the pit of Buck’s stomach.

He presses closer, enough that he’s almost straddling Tommy, both hands framing that beautiful face.

“T’mmy?” It comes out rough and broken. Buck swallows, and he tastes copper, wet and iron-heavy. “T’mmy, a-are you-”

Like an elastic stretched to its limit and threatening to snap back, Tommy takes a deep breath. His eyes crinkle into a grin, eyes bright and almost icy in the sun that falls across his face, highlighting the handsome slope of his nose, the sweat beaded on his cupid’s bow.

“Shh, Evan, don’t try to speak, okay, I’m here.” Tommy soothes him. 

Hands, large and calloused and warm, grip at his hips. They squeeze gently into the soft flesh there, and then drag up to his ribs, fingertips petting the rippling muscles as Buck tightens his core just to see how it makes Tommy’s pupils blow out like it normally does. Those hands move fully up to his right side, thumbing softly over his nipples because Tommy is a tease. One hand stays on his waist, fingers tightening and relaxing, then Tommy is digging an affectionate thumb  a few inches beneath his right clavicle and for a single moment -

Pressure.

A heavy weight that Buck can’t move from. Coldness against his back with a spreading warmth, and an heavy, unmoving pressure just over his right chest. Pain blooms, hideous and cruel and instant. 

“Tommy!” Buck gasps. He tries to wriggle back, but Tommy doesn’t move.  “T’mmy!”  

A pained whimper. Tommy keeps pressing and pressing, an immovable heft to him that he shouldn’t have. Buck writhes, hips bucking, shoulders trying to force themselves away but he can’t, he can’t, why can’t he move-

Why are they hurting him?

“Hey, baby,” Tommy says.  “You alright, where did you go?”

A stifled gasp, harsh and almost whimpering. Buck collapses forward, and it’s only Tommy’s large hands catching him that he doesn’t slump onto the bed.

“Must’ve caught a bruise.” Buck wheezes. Tommy shifts, turning onto his side, leveraging himself up on an elbow.

“Ouch,” He winces, and a hand touches gently at the crook of Buck’s right shoulder, before it ghosts down for fingertips to touch beneath his right clavicle. “Baby, I thought you said you weren’t hurt?”

Buck looks down, and beneath Tommy’s tentative fingers, a bruise has bloomed.

“What-?” 

Ocean blue and merlot red bruises have bloomed against Buck’s skin; missing his jugular but ghosting up his throat and to the ball of his shoulder. Below that, just missing the jut of his collarbone, bruises bloom too, deeper and darker here, spreading out.

“Oh!” Buck gasps. “I didn’t even realize, I must’ve caught it in the MVA?”

Tommy sits up straight, the duvet slipping off as he leans closer. A hand hovers over the ball of Buck’s shoulder, before resting tentatively against the fresh bruise. Tommy’s hands have always been hot, but now they’re scorching which has Buck furrowing his brow. The swollen tissue beneath the bruise should be hotter than the surrounding skin, and no matter how hot Tommy always runs, he shouldn’t be hotter than the broken capillaries beneath the skin.

There’s a rapid beeping, getting faster and faster. Buck frowns, reaching over to switch the alarm on his phone off again. He could have sworn he’d turned it off properly. He turns back to Tommy.

Tommy runs a gentle thumb over the ball of his shoulder, squeezing his bicep softly.

“They look sore,” Tommy says, concerned. There’s a furrow in between his strong brows. “Are you gonna be alright sitting in the car for however long? Let me get the heat packs.”

Tommy makes moves to get up out of bed, throwing the duvet fully off.

Buck makes a noise in the back of his throat, and he pushes himself up off the bed, flinching a little as his feet touch the cool hardwood flooring, just missing the rugs they usually have besides the bed.

“Don’t worry, we need to grab a shower anyway, the heat will help,” Buck tells him. Tommy just stares at him for a moment. “I’ll stand beneath the water for a few minutes, okay? We can pack the heat patches and the cream just in case, sweetheart.”

Tommy points a threatening finger at him. Buck has to flatten the fond smile that tries to break through.

“If you even dare to try and hide your pain-” Tommy threatens.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll spank me after I heal.” Buck grins.

Tommy huffs, hands on his hips. He’s standing there, naked with the sun falling over his chest. He steps closer, until he’s practically looming over Buck, standing in between Buck’s spread thighs.

“Until you cry."

“You say that like it’s a punishment,” Buck teases playfully, hands creeping up the back of Tommy’s thighs, fingertips feeling the play of muscles and how it moves as Tommy leans further into his touch. He palms a handful of bare ass, squeezing gently. He laughs when Tommy flexes, purposefully making his ass bounce. “Maybe I should just spank this ass.”

Buck leans forward, nuzzling into the thick layer of hair above Tommy’s cock, biting gently. 

Tommy laughs through his shivers; a hand slips into the thick rumple of curls and clenches. Buck moans softly, refusing to move for a moment as Tommy pulls on his hair to get his head to tip back just so he can feel the tug, before he lets the authoritative movement tug him back enough that he can rest his chin on Tommy’s abs, staring up at Tommy pleadingly.

“I’m not the absolute whore for getting spanked and then fucked, am I, Evan?” Tommy’s nails scratches pleasantly over his scalp, and Buck just hums quietly in the back of his throat, languidly looking up at his partner, doused in the golden sunlight and looking as beautiful now as he did when Buck first saw him, about to fly them into a category five hurricane after barely thinking it over for a full minute. “No, that’s my sweet, bratty baby, isn’t it?”

Buck bats his eyelashes, tilting his head so he can press an open mouthed kiss just below Tommy’s belly button, feeling the muscles jump beneath his touch.

“But Daddy,” Buck grins sharply. “You hit me so nicely, how am I supposed to not love it when you spank and fuck me?”

Tommy huffs a laugh, bending down and using the proprietary hand in Buck’s hair to tug him gently back so Tommy can kiss him. Buck moans softly, pressing further against Tommy’s damp mouth, the scratch of dry morning skin making him shiver, as pain prickles across his scalp, hair pulling a little from where Tommy uses his hair as a hand hold to drag Buck to where Tommy wants him.

When Tommy pulls away, Buck chases him.

“Nooooooo,” Buck complains, fingers chasing after Tommy’s broad shoulders that Buck can’t get enough of. “C’mon, we were just gettin’ to the good part.”

“No can do, baby,” Tommy says, instead of kissing Buck, like he should. “We’ve got showers and bags to pack; we don’t want to mess with your rigid and well planned schedule and itinerary, do we?”

Buck pauses. He thinks of the clipboard Tommy had smuggled out of the 217 House and given to Buck with a conspiratorial wink and a grin that Buck knew was to make sure Chimney and Hen saw him with it just to see their reactions. 

He had made sure that their schedule and itinerary was well thought out and well planned out; Buck glances at his watch, frowning when the watch face blurs for a moment, before it fritz’ back into view. They’re in front of their scheduled leaving time; packing the bags and then the truck wouldn’t take too long. They were doing breakfast on the go, so they didn’t need to worry about food. They’ve got a good thirty minutes to have showers and pack up, which is more than enough time.

Tommy laughs, as if knowing he’s already won.

“C’mon then, my beautiful little dictator,” Tommy says, ghosting gentle fingers over Buck’s bruised shoulders, before he tugs him up. “We’ve got a schedule to keep.”

“Ooh, keep talking Daddy,” Buck teases. “You’re getting me sooo hot.”

Tommy turns to him, straight faced and dead panned.

“Schedules, timelines, word documents, taxes, taxes,” Tommy tells him. “Colour coded checklists. Excel spreadsheets.”

“Ohh, I love a good spreadsheet.”

“'Cause you’re a little freak like that, baby.”

It doesn’t take them long to shower, despite the fact that they kept getting side tracked, and with Tommy pressing soft, almost airy, kisses to Buck’s injured shoulder and clavicle. It’s even easier and quicker to dress and start packing their bags in between open mouthed kisses and open palmed gropes and touches that makes the 118 and the 217 crews threaten to tie them up if they don't stop. 

In twenty five minutes, five minutes ahead of schedule, he and Tommy are washed, dressed and packed, throwing the duffles - with LAFD and ARMY emblazoned on them respectively - into the back of Tommy’s black pick up truck, a cooler and food bag thrown into the back bench seat.

“Why did we pack the heat patches and cream?” Tommy asks as he rummages around in the back seat, having forgotten to take his wallet from his jacket pocket that he usually wears. “Are you alright, I thought you said you didn’t get hurt on shift?”

Buck frowns, hopping up into the truck cab. His shoulder is a little stiff and sore when he pulls his seatbelt on, and his neck creaks and flares with a brief pain when he turns to face the driver's seat, but he doesn’t remember getting anything other than the collection of bruises and bumps that are a firefighters usual lot.

“No, or at least I don’t remember getting anything. Maybe I got banged up at the MVA, we were working on it for a while, and y’know how my leg can get. ”

Tommy hums, and Buck watches as he turns the key, hearing how the engine turns over and vibrates the seat for a moment.

“So long as you're sure, Evan,” Tommy says, though there's a concerned lilt to his voice. They showered together, Tommy would know if Buck had any bruises that he hadn’t put there himself. “Just lemme know if you’re gonna be alright sitting in the car for however long, okay?”

For a brief moment, Buck feels a sense of something ; like they’ve already had this conversation, something just out of reach that he can’t quite grasp. Instead;

“I know,” Buck laughs, squeezing one of Tommy’s formidable thighs through his thick jeans. “I need to tell you otherwise-”

“I’ll spank your cute little ass until it’s pink and you’re crying.”

“You say that like it’s a punishment.” Buck laughs. The words are familiar and teasing in his mouth, but there’s something strange, a little sour to each syllable, like the conversations a little out of rote. 

They pull out of the driveway, Tommy’s arm thrown over the back of the front bench seat and just brushing against Buck’s shoulder. He doesn’t even try to hide the silly grin etched across his face or even how he leans into the soft touch.

The black top thwump-thwumps beneath the heavy duty wheels, and Tommy grins over at him; his hand leaves the gearshift and rests on Buck’s thigh, large and hot through his heavy duty trousers. Buck doesn’t really drive with Tommy; Tommy likes driving and his truck is big and comfortable enough that when they're together they usually take it. Buck takes the Jeep to work and on solo outings, but he quite likes being in Tommy’s truck, having Tommy’s hand on his thigh. Chimney had called him a passenger princess and Buck had just laughed.

There’s a rapid beeping, louder and louder.

Buck curses, hips lifting as he digs into his front pocket. His phone alarm is going off, the rapid beeping getting faster and faster. 

“I’ve never known you to snooze your alarm so much.” Tommy teases, squeezing Buck’s thigh. 

“I could have sworn I’d turned it fully off.” Buck says, frowning down at his phone. Fingers suddenly made clumsy has him swearing again.

He pauses.

His phone continues to beep rapidly, faster and faster, and he stares blankly at the lock screen. It should be the one of he and Tommy, shirtless and sweaty and slathered in sunscreen as Tommy cheerfully and easily hefts Buck into his arms. Now though, the screen has melted, fritzing until only lines and squiggles distort the screen. Buck blinks, and a small picture of him and Tommy smile up at him.

The beeping stops.

He locks his phone, tossing it into the dashboard drawer at the front of the truck.

“All good?” Tommy asks. There’s a concerned crease to his brows, and his eyes switch rapidly from the road to Buck and back.

“Yeah,” Buck says. He makes a deliberate effort to smooth his own brows, turning a smile to Tommy, enjoying how Tommy looks when he’s relaxed and driving, the window down and his curls flying in the breeze drawn from the blacktop. Buck never thought he’d be attracted to someone just driving before, but it’s Tommy. “Just coulda sworn I’d switched it fully off.”

“We’ve both been on long shifts, maybe you just missed it when you woke up.”

“Maybe.” 

Buck leans forward, turning the knob of the old fashioned radio Tommy had installed just the other week. For a minute, there’s only static and then;

“-be advised this is F-E-zero-one-two-” There’s a heavy burst of static, obscuring words. “- standing by for immediate extraction.”

Buck looks at Tommy, almost expecting Tommy to be looking back at him.

He is. He is, but there’s something wrong. He’s frozen, reaching for his seatbelt with shaking hands. His face is pale, mouth open and eyes wet and wide, rimmed with desperate tears. The cyclic of the truck spins wildly in place for a moment. There’s an open splash of grief , of hurt etched into Tommy’s face, a wealth of despair as he silently screams, his mouth nothing less than an open wound.

“Tommy?” He tries to unclench one of Tommy’s hands, drapes his own over the one closest. “T’mmy ?”

The radio bursts into static, and Buck jumps. 

“-four-six. Trauma team is standing by ready to receive.”

Chapter Text

Tommy 3

The waiting room is as quiet as a hospital waiting room could ever be, even at four am in the morning.

Cedars-Sinai’s waiting room is large and wide and it takes Tommy a quick moment to find what he’s looking for. Eddie’s already managed to grab a spot nearest the emergency room doors when Tommy had been able to free himself of the heaviest cobwebbing of panic that had grasped him as soon as he heard thirty four year old male with double GSW’s in critical condition and had been able to stagger down the heliport stairs and into the waiting room.

He could see that the rest of the 118 weren't there yet, nor Maddie. Tommy isn’t entirely surprised; Dispatch was thirty minutes away and that was without any traffic and if Maddie had been able to get out straight away. Eddie was the only member of the 118 there, mostly because he hadn’t given anyone the chance when he’d thrown himself into the fuselage. In the helo, it had been an easy - ha - five to ten minutes, but in a ground vehicle, just from the scene to the hospital was nearly forty minutes, never mind the fact that they’d have to get back to West Glendale and drop off the Ladder Truck. Regardless of that, Bobby, Howie and Hen were still on shift, and would be until eight in the morning which was slowly dwindling closer. 

“Eddie!” Tommy doesn’t need to shout, but it’s a close thing.

Eddie’s head jumps up, eyes wide. When he sees it’s Tommy, something flashes across his face that looks a lot like terror before it’s suddenly covered up expertly. 

Tommy’s at Eddie’s side at a near run, and Eddie stands up too, still in his bloodied LAFD uniform. Blood is smeared up to his elbows, on his face. His hair is disheveled, eyes wide and red rimmed, a wealth of grief and guilt in that pallid face. His hands are shaking.

For a moment, staring at Eddie and Evan’s blood, all Tommy can think about is the fuselage of the helicopter; how he’d caught the barest glimpses of it before Lucy had bodily dragged him around. It had been bathed in blood, red and glistening and fresh . He’d seen Evan being resuscitated with a tube down his fucking throat to fucking breathe for him-

“I’m sorry, Tommy, I’m so sorry.” Eddie comes into hearing like a badly tuned radio. He’s twisting his fingers and hands, over and over. The blood - Evan’s blood, something distant and cold points out - is just starting to dry, flaking off and staining the white floor.

“Eddie,” Tommy says, and Eddie flinches; a small movement that Tommy wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been staring Eddie full in the face. “Eddie,c’mon, lets…let's get you washed up.”

He can’t do anything for Evan. He’s helpless and weak with Evan behind those tightly shut Emergency Room doors, no doubt having been taken up to surgery to be sutured up and to see if the bullets, if they’re still in there, can be removed. Tommy himself has a small bullet fragment in his right calf, it makes flying coach a little more trouble, but there hadn’t been any need to remove it when digging around for it would just make things worse.

No, Tommy can’t do anything for Evan, and the panic that gripped him when he’d seen Evan being resuscitated is trying to cling to him, cold and merciless and with claws that would rip and tear Tommy right now, so he needs to focus on something. 

Eddie, Evan’s best friend and to whom Tommy has become closer to in recent months, is one such thing.

“Buck,” Eddie starts. His voice is starting to waver. He’s staring blindly down at the blood on his hands. “What if-”

Tommy has to take a deep breath, deliberately letting it go in a smooth motion to try and stamp down the cold nausea swirling in the pit of his belly, the panic starting to grip at his throat. He can’t spiral. Not now. Not now, Kinard.

“We’ll let the receptionist know,” Tommy says, proud that it comes out unwavering. “And-Evan isn’t going to be ready just…just yet.”

For a moment, Eddie wavers, wavering on his feet and his eyes blink reflexively shut in a flinch. 

“I need-I need to get cleaned up.” Eddie says, a suddenly frantic edge to his voice. 

“Let me help.” Tommy says. 

Eddie opens his mouth, tries to say something, but Tommy simply looks at him. There’s a wealth of panic beneath the poorly stretched thin veneer of calm and Eddie must be able to see just how close Tommy is to truly losing it if he has to sit by himself and in silence in a nearly empty waiting room, because Eddie closes his mouth, and just nods.

There’s a bathroom just to the side of the reception desk that spans the wide length of the waiting room, pointing directly towards the Emergency Room doors. It’s only a moment for Tommy to let the receptionist - someone vaguely familiar that greets Eddie by name and gives them both a sympathetic smile - know that if any one comes out or in for Evan Buckley they’d be in the bathroom tidying up. Helpfully, she mentions she’ll try and grab a spare scrub uniform for Eddie to change into. Tommy can barely get the thank you out of his mouth.

Tommy deliberately doesn’t look at the blood seeping into navy blue fabric. 

In contrast, it seems to be the only thing Eddie can even look at right now. His hands had been covered in medical gloves, and spared most of the massacre that his arms, chest and thighs have been given, but there must have been a tear or a hole in his left glove, because blood has seeped into the lines and ridges of his knuckles, the beds of his nails. Eddie only stares ahead after staring at his cuticles, as if staring at it made it realer.

Tommy wishes it wasn’t. Wants to go back to being to this morning, when he and Evan had been in bed, naked and warm and gloriously in love and planning their vacation with Tommy planning to say I love you, Evan for the first time to the man he loves. He wants to go back those several crucial hours and make them both call in sick, say they couldn’t come in and stay in bed and make love until they were sore and spent and so in love Tommy couldn’t hold it back anymore and just blurted it out, helpless with the strength of it.

Fabric creaks threateningly beneath his grip, and Tommy deliberately relaxes his fist against Eddie’s shoulder. It’s only by sheer will and strength that Tommy propels them both forward towards the bathroom, Eddie pliant and obedient beneath his hand.

The bathroom is wide and just as empty as the waiting room, decked out in fluorescent white bulbs that reflect off the large swath of mirrors opposite the stalls and urinals. 

Eddie is simply a body allowing Tommy to pilot him as Tommy propels him towards the sinks, deliberately avoiding looking into the mirrors as Tommy turns the tap on, allowing it to warm up. A knock on the door, and a porter is opening it, gesturing with a pair of scrubs that Tommy takes with a muted thanks. They’re left alone.

This isn’t the first time Tommy has had to wash the blood off someone else's hands. A rare first responder who hasn’t; Tommy had had to do this to Sal more than once, and Sal had done it to him just the same. 

There’s a quiet intimacy in washing someone else's hands, even more so in the quiet vulnerability after a bad call or shift. Tommy often doesn’t have blood on his hands, usually lead pilot in rescues though he occasionally works on the few limited fire engines Van Nuys has when they can’t find someone to cover and there’s enough pilots around that they’re able to spare him. Evan doesn’t often either, but there’s been times enough that Tommy can remember them easily.

He’d sit Evan down at the kitchen sink on one of the breakfast bar stools, would have him sit for a few minutes with his hands beneath the lukewarm water and Evan would simply watch the pinkish water swirl down the drain, drained and empty of strength himself. Tommy would stand behind him, taking Evan’s weight against his chest as he massaged hard hand soap into Evan’s hands. Evan’s hands could never be called pretty, but Tommy loved them all the same. His nails were short and blunt, fingers thick and with some length to them, knuckles bony and skin stretched over them, calloused and rough from a lifetime of working with his hands. No, they could never be called pretty, but Tommy loved them because they were Evan ’s. Hard working and calloused, but so gentle and kind.

Eddie is just as quiet as Evan usually is when Tommy does this.

Eddie puts his own hands in the lukewarm water, but it seems as if something has just disconnected in Eddie, as if seeing his own best friend - Tommy’s fucking partner, something screams, wails, grieves - gunned down in front of him has damaged something intrinsic in him. It must be different, Tommy thinks, when you’re overseas. He’d seen a lot of people gunned down when he was in the army, and imagines Eddie must have too, especially being a medic; but there was a clear difference when it was over there and over here. As if it was clearer, sharper.

It had taken Tommy a long time to settle into civilian life, and the LAFD had assisted with that alongside Hatfield who’d been the one to drag him kicking and screaming to LA. Sometimes he thinks he still hasn’t fully settled, pieces left in the sandy dunes of Afghanistan and Iraq and all the other places in between. 

Tommy hadn’t known it had been Eddie who was the first firefighter shot when the SWAT sniper had turned against his own, not until it had been Evan who’d whispered it into his throat in the dead of night after watching a movie with too much gore and too many guns that Tommy didn’t really watch himself, and Evan had murmured how he thought it would have been so much better if he’d been shot instead of Eddie, and how Evan had climbed all those ladders at the crane because he couldn’t bare to see anyone else hurt in the 118, in his family.

He wonders if that’s how Eddie is feeling; if he’s feeling a portion of the guilt and gutting grief that Evan had talked about. Tommy knows that feeling; has felt comrades and friends bleed out beneath his inexpert hands, had felt himself bleed out beneath his own hands and hadn’t truly known how to stop it. He’d held Maria Kinard’s head in tiny twelve year old hands and didn't know what to do.

This feels a little like that. 

He didn't know how to help his mother and so had helped his father instead, for all the good it did.

But Evan is not Maria Kinard and Eddie is not Thomas Kinard, and Tommy is not a twelve year old boy who was so proud to be named after his daddy that he went by Thomas Jr for the first thirteen years of his life.

Eddie’s hands tremble beneath his; liquid soap lathering quickly. It’s turned pinkish, blood draining into the sink as Eddie continues to simply stare down into the basin, breath quietly trembling. He looks as wrecked as Tommy feels, as if something is splintering apart inside of him and he isn’t quite sure how to deal with the wreckage.

“He- he-” Eddie can’t even get the words out, shoulder butting up against Tommy’s with how he wavers side to side. Eddie looks up, and so does Tommy. Their eyes catch in the mirror.

Like Evan, he and Eddie have known one another for just over a year between his and Evan’s first break up and the three month period in which they just suffered. They’ve grown closer in the year and change that he and Evan have been giving it another go, and though he’ll never be as close to Eddie as Evan is, they’ve cultivated their own close friendship outside of work and Evan. 

“What happened, Eddie?” Tommy asks, desperate to both know and for Eddie to not be able to get the words out. He wants to know, but fuck, something tells him that he desperately doesn’t want to know.

In the mirror, Eddie’s bottom lip trembles. He bites it hard, eyes blinking quickly. He looks up at the ceiling briefly, as if trying to stave off tears. Something cold curdles in the pit of Tommy’s stomach. Like Tommy, Eddie is not an emotional man, not outwardly anyway.

“Fuck, man, I don’t even know,” Eddie says quietly. His eyes dart from Tommy’s to the sink and back. He looks close to breaking. “We- we got to the house, it was…it was supposed to be a routine medical call y’know? Old man havin’ a heart attack and he’d blocked the front door so Bu-Buck and I we went round back.”

Eddie’s hands clench down; blunt nails dig into Tommy’s hands. The water still runs pinkish.

“We- we had to break down the door and we played a game - a stupid fucking game - to see who’d go first, y’know what Buck and I are like.”

Tommy can see it, can picture it crystal fucking clear. The way Evan and Eddie would go around back, doing rock paper scissors to see who’d break down a stubborn door; they always do rock paper scissors for things like this, Tommy knows, and Eddie will always throw rock because it’s the only way he can ever win against Christopher, and Evan knows that so he always throws paper just to fuck with Eddie. He can imagine the way Evan would fist pump, would throw himself against that door, opening it-

“It was…it was so fucking dark everywhere, Tommy,” Eddie carries on, voice wavering. With numb hands, Tommy turns off the tap, water finally running clear. Both of their hands are trembling. “We asked Cap if we had to proceed, but we couldn’t- we couldn’t risk it, why the fuck did we risk it, Tommy, why the fuck -”

“Hey!” Tommy barks sharply. 

He doesn’t shout, but there’s an authoritative edge that Eddie responds to and has him freezing his frantic movements, hands clenching around the paper towel Tommy shoves into them.

Eddie takes two deliberately deep and even breathes. His shoulders don’t relax, still tense and bunched up, but the frantic madness that had lingered around him eases and ebbs just a little.

“We thought it was an actual call,” Eddie tells him, and there’s a sort of deadened tone to him now, his eyes refusing to meet Tommy’s. “Buck-he’d opened the door and he just-I don’t know what happened, Tommy, there was a - and he just - he just fell and I caught him, Tommy, I swear, I fucking caught him but he still- he still -”

Eddie doesn’t burst into tears, but it’s a near thing. 

His still damp hands grasp the front of Tommy’s flight suit, broad knuckles digging into Tommy’s heaving sternum. For a moment, Tommy welcomes the bruising press, grounding him as much as it probably grounds Eddie. The dampness seeps into the LAFD issued t-shirt Tommy wears beneath the flight suit, and it feels a little like blood. 

Evan’s blood.

For a single moment - a single, second long, awful awful moment - Tommy feels good, feels right watching how Eddie is shaking to pieces, grieving and shattering into a thousand tiny splinters right in front of Tommy. He hates that he does, that he’s defaulted to that awful man he used to be, that awful kid he used to be, because Tommy can’t afford to fall to pieces right now; not when Eddie is falling to pieces just recounting it, and Maddie is going to be a mess when she eventually comes bursting in and the rest of the 118-

Tommy can’t fall to pieces right now, and it soothes a part of himself that he hates and calls cruel and petty, that making Eddie recount it is enough to have the man trembling, because he needs to be the one staying strong, he needs to be the one that makes sure everyone else is alright. He’s failed already tonight in more than just one way; not being able to protect Evan and then having that fucking panic attack when Evan was being resuscitated on the heliport.

Tommy can’t afford to fall apart again, not now. Not ever.

Instead of all the things that are making Tommy’s chest crack in two and spew out like an oil spill, Tommy grasps Eddie by the shaking wrists, and says what Tommy wants to hear himself.

“It wasn’t your fault, Eddie, okay?” Tommy says. His chest spasms, and that thin veneer of calm is rapidly deteriorating. “It wasn’t your fault, you couldn’t have known.”

“We’ve been having fake calls all month,” Eddie spits. There’s a sudden anger to him, vitriolic. Tommy doesn’t say anything; anger is never the base emotion, only a symptom of something deeper. “We asked if we should carry on and Bobby said yes and now my best friend is lying on a surgical table after being shot fucking twice and there was nothing I could do about it. He died, Tommy! I felt his ribs crack and snap beneath my hands as I tried to keep his heart pumping and it was my fucking fault, Tommy! It should have been me!”

Tommy only just catches the fist Eddie throws to the long line of mirrors. He can’t quite stop the man from taking the swing, but he stops Eddie from absolutely shattering his hand. He tightens his grip. Eddie looks at him, eyes blazing but there's a wealth of despair just behind those bared, gritted teeth and the anger Eddie uses as a shield.

For Tommy himself, there’s an ocean of something that lingers just beneath his stomach, twisting and churning. His heart is permanently lodged in his throat, waterlogged with how much love he has to swallow when he thinks about Evan.

“You can’t say that,” Tommy says, low and solid. “You do not get to say that to me, and you do not get to say that to Evan, do you understand?”

Eddie tries to tug his arm back but for all that Eddie is a considerable man, Tommy is bigger, stronger. He doesn’t let go, only stares unflinchingly at Eddie through the mirror.

“Evan once told me that he said it should have been him when you were shot by Copeland,” Tommy doesn’t pay attention to the flinch Eddie gives, the way his wrist jerks in Tommy’s hand. “I want you to think about how that made you feel; how fucking shit you felt and how guilty and awful you felt, because you can’t do that, Eddie, that isn’t on you just like it wasn’t on Evan all those years ago, okay?”

Eddie refuses to look at him, but Tommy doesn’t give a choice, eyes locked through the mirror.

“This wasn’t your fault, Eddie, you could have done nothing to prevent this. Me sayin’ ain’t gonna do shit against survivor’s guilt, I know that, but Eddie, you gotta give yourself some compassion.”

In the mirror, Eddie’s eyes slide close; hiding the tears that threaten to fall. 

“I can still taste his blood.” Eddie whispers, like a prayer.

“So taste it,” Tommy says. “Taste it and know that Evan is alive because you brought him back to us.”

Eddie’s eyes open, and he stares at Tommy through that mirror.

“Buck- Buck couldn’t stand red sauces for ages after the sniper,” Eddie says after a long moment. “He tried to make a tomato based pasta sauce at mine when I was first discharged and he just ... crumbled.”

Tommy doesn’t say anything, ignoring the way his heart wrenches when he thinks of twenty something Evan, watching his best friend get shot and having to try and save him whilst under active fire. Tommy had had to wear a bulletproof vest beneath his flight suit, he remembers; it had made him slip into that more colder, more focused part of him that was so reminiscent of the army, of getting the job done and nothing else. He’d had nightmares for weeks after, of the army and his father, but it had never really touched Air Operations like it had done a lot of other Fire Houses. He’d been saddened and aggrieved for his fellow firefighters, but he’d mainly spent time up in the air on helo rescues and so had been classed as low priority as the sniper - Ethan Copeland, he remembers vaguely - had held Los Angeles in terror.

“I ended up…I ended up quitting my job, thinking it was what Chris wanted, but - but I was still in danger, no matter what I did. No matter at Dispatch or out in the field, there was no fucking difference,and sometimes I wonder if I ever left the battlefield or if I’m still stuck in that fucking chopper with my team mates but this-” Eddies face crumples. “This is too real to be a nightmare.”

Tommy’s heart clenches. 

There’s nothing he can truly say that will ever make Eddie feel better about this, there’s nothing Tommy can say or do that will ever make himself feel better about Evan being shot and having to have CPR performed on him twice. No matter how they spin it, Evan Buckley was shot and died twice.

“The longest he’s ever been down was three minutes seventeen seconds,” Eddie says, out of the blue. “When he got struck by lightning, y’know? I ah - I tried to lift him up by my bare hands and I couldn’t do it, man, I couldn’t lift him up, not like he did to me all those years ago.”

Tommy knows. They’d spent a day in bed tracing one another's bodies when they’d first got back together; comparing scars and blemishes and all the ways that they’d tried so hard to know one another but had just missed the mark. Tommy had been a man used to not being fought for and Evan had been a man used to being abandoned and they had meshed in just about the worst way possible at the start but they’d fought for one another and Tommy had made the vow to not walk away needlessly, not again.

There had been no scars left from the lightning strike; lichtenberg scars only lasted for either a few moments or even a few weeks, it had been years at that point and each electrical scar - from throat to chest to abdomen to hip to knee, Evan had said - had dissipated before Tommy had ever known Evan. But in his dreams, Tommy can see them sometimes; he dreams of Evan dead and cold, pallid and still like Evan Buckley never is. He dreams of blood and empty blue eyes and never being able to know the best man Tommy had ever had the pleasure to know. Tommy dreams of Evan’s death and never of his future because Tommy’s so scared to think of it even now, even when he’s constantly got I love you tucked beneath his tongue and thinks about his mom’s wedding ring but doesn’t know if he wants to sully his relationship with the bad energy of his own parents.

He just never thought he’d actually be faced with Evan’s death in the waking world instead.

“I wash his hair after he has a bad shift,” Tommy says instead of all the ways he’s going to tear himself to shreds if Evan doesn’t live. “He gets headaches and migraines so easily, y’know, and washing his hair makes them better. I like to sit beside him on the bathside and shampoo and condition his hair because I can, because he lets me.”

Eddie looks at him, quietly. The shattered air around him has quietened, soothed itself. 

“I used to comb Shannon’s hair,” Eddie admits quietly. “I’d sit behind her on the bed as she studied and I’d brush her hair over and over, feel it between my fingers, she let me practise braiding it and she’d show me how to make sure never to comb from the top but from the ends to the middle and then the top; when I was in Afghanistan, her- her hair was always tangled, in a haphazard bun. It was our favourite thing to do together, even when we were fighting.”

Eddie presses the palms of his hands into his eyes, rubs them against his eyelids brutally. 

“We weren’t good for one another, but God I loved her in any way I could,” Eddie says. “No matter what, Shannon will always be a part of me that I can never shake away, even if we didn’t have Christopher, Shannon will always be with me, and I don’t want to cut that piece out even if it makes me want to scream and cry.”

Tommy looks at him, this man who's giving Tommy his vulnerability and expecting the same. Neither of them are emotional men; Tommy uses shields of sarcasm and dead panness to hide his, and for a while, it sounded like Eddie used anger and rage to hide his own hurt and sadness. Maybe it’s easier doing it with someone like themselves, because they’re both uncomfortable and stunted with it.

All of sudden, Tommy’s reminded of himself and Sal all those years ago, beneath Gerrard.

“I love him,” Tommy confesses abruptly. Eddie freezes. “When we go- when we were going to Vista, I was gonna tell him.”

“Tommy.” Eddie whispers; there’s a strange tone to his voice, something inexplicably knowing.

“I love him so much, Eddie, I don’t even know where to put it,” Tommy says, his chest is cracking in two again, love pouring out and throttling him at the same time. “I love him so much; I want everything with him, Eddie, I wanna get engaged, wanna get married, I wanna call him my husband, wanna tell him I love him every fucking day -”

A hand grasps his wrist. Tommy looks up at the ceiling, blinking furiously. 

“You will,” Eddie says, a strange tone of confidence to him that he’d lacked before. “Buck’s gonna survive this and you’re gonna tell him that you love him, and you wanna marry him and you’re gonna get hitched and like, I don’t know, hyphenate your names or whatever, who cares.”

“I thought Mr. Evan Kinard sounded nice.” Tommy laughs.

If it’s a little damp, Eddie thankfully doesn’t point it out.

“Yeah, that’s true actually,” Eddie says instead. “Now that Maddie’s a Han, I don’t think he’s all that attached to the Buckley name. That, and I’m pretty sure he was wearing one of your hoodies around the Fire House.”

Tommy refuses to cry, not now, not when he’s at least kept himself on a somewhat even keel. He can’t, not now.

“He keeps stealing them,” Tommy says. He grabs the scrub uniform, and thrusts it into Eddie’s dry, unbloodied hands. “Here, get changed, I’m gonna be in the waiting room.”

“Tommy, wait-” Eddie tries to stop him.

Tommy throws a hand up to placate him as he pushes through the swinging bathroom door, the other swiping frantically at his tearing eyes.

Chapter Text

Buck 4

The radio is playing softly in the kitchen.

The volumes on low, and Buck can barely hear the soft strains of the random station he’d kept it on. Instead, he hums along to the vaguely pop-rockish sounding song, paying careful attention to the peppers as he dices them into thin strips. He’s already diced the onions, sitting inside a little bowl just beside the stovetop, the chicken marinating in the cajun seasoning and the water for the rice set on the far side of the stovetop, having been washed several times already.

“-my old clothes but you, you wear it better -” A mournful voice croons through the radio static as Buck carefully scrapes the diced peppers in another glass bowl just next to the onions. 

It’s with careful hands that he washes the knife and the cutting board - wooden, not plastic, Buck had been very adamant that he would not have plastic cutting boards in his kitchen - up in the generous sink. He and Tommy haven’t been moved in for long, a handful of weeks at most, and Buck had expected there to be a certain level of discomfort to it, despite the fact that Buck had been coming over regularly for date night, even if he didn’t always stay the night, at least once a week. 

“-call you every hour just to tell you that I’m losing my mind-”

It’s been a challenge, Buck thinks, but it’s one that he’s enjoyed and both he and Tommy had risen to the occasion magnificently. It’s strange to have someone in his space all of the time because, even though he and Tommy had spent most of their time together, at the end of the day they’d gone home to their separate houses and had only cohabited for a set number of days. It’s fun, all truth be told.

“-wish I could’ve stayed, only thing keeping us apart is-”

It’s nice to know that Tommy wants him in his space, that he’s carved out space in his home and in his life specially just for Buck, space that Buck had never thought he’d see again, not after that out of the blue break up that had been fraught with unspoken tension and miscommunication and terror on both theirs parts.

It’s nice to know that Buck gets to have this; standing and cooking in their kitchen, their radio playing a random song that he doesn’t exactly know but has heard around a few times and likes enough to bop his head too as he carefully rinses the knife and dries it. The kitchen is tidy already, though the kitchen island doesn’t generally have a lot of clutter to it anyway. Tommy’s hobby stuff is spread around the house, confined to certain rooms that have been co-opted for its full use like his gym just off the garage and the car lift that Buck enjoys watching Tommy work under.

The kitchen, large and with a truly beautiful stove and oven that had melted Buck on the spot when he’d first caught sight of it, has largely become Buck’s domain, though Tommy makes a mean biscuit and gravy and can cook and bake when it catches his fancy. 

“-running like a mad dog, only thing that keeps us apart-”

But it’s the reading room and office that truly has Buck’s heart. Kitty corner to their bedroom, Tommy has bookshelves full of airfix models, from planes to helicopters that outnumber the former; Buck thinks he could sit in there for hours on a research bing as Tommy hunches over his tattered desk and carefully glues little airfix models together with his magnifying goggles on his face that makes him go googly eyed when he looks up.

In the house, in their house, there isn’t a single part of it that doesn’t have both of their stamps on it. Every part of Buck’s life has Tommy’s thumb print scorched into the vein of it, and maybe that should be scary, should make pull away and wonder if if he truly wants his life to look like this when, only a few months ago, Tommy had left; walked out of the loft door whilst spewing some bullshit because he was scared of the depths of his own feelings and of feeling like he didn't deserve the love Buck could give him.

Instead;

“-I’m coming home-”

Buck has never felt more settled, more right in his decision to say yes when Tommy had carefully broached the idea of Buck moving in to his, as if hesitant of jinxing something. There was just something about this; him and Tommy, in their shared domestic space and being able to enjoy it, enjoy being together and in love, not wondering if there was an expiry date to it.

“-another plane, I’m not gonna take it - “

Having been able to sit and think and that long conversation he and Tommy had shared that had stretched into the early morning hours of the day, curled into Tommy’s couch with glasses of soda and fizzy around them because they hadn’t wanted to get drunk for it, it had put a lot of things that Tommy had done in the six months that they’d previously been together into awful, tragic perspective.

“-straight to you, paid double for the tickets-”

Buck strikes the hob on, keeping careful watch of the fire as he grabs his favourite Wok, drizzling a careful amount of oil as the pan heats up, the extractor fan above the hob whirring cheerfully to life.

He’d been angry at first, hurt and a little humiliated actually, when they’d first broken up. One of the first questions he’d asked had been why; what had the point been when Tommy had already assigned them an expiration date, why would Tommy essentially lead him on like that, when Tommy had had to know how invested Buck was, and how seemingly invested Tommy was.

Tommy had just about broke Buck’s in heart in fucking two.

“-know you’re sleeping, where I’m supposed to be in, wish I could’ve stayed -”

He’d been scared. Terrified to his very core of just how much he’d let himself fall in love with Buck, had let himself think of a future when he’d known that this couldn’t last; that Buck couldn’t love Tommy like Buck would. He’d been terrified and had remained terrified in the full six months they’d been together, the feeling just beneath the surface even as he smiled and laughed and loved Buck with everything but a quarter of his heart that he hadn't been able to fully give to him. Terrified that Buck had put him up on a pedestal when Buck truly thinks it had been the other way, not that Buck hadn’t - that he still doesn’t in a way - but Tommy had been so wrapped up in Buck being perfect and out of his league that he hadn’t quite realized that wasn’t the point .

He tips the chicken in first, hearing the satisfying sizzle of seasoned chicken hitting the vegetable oil. For a moment, as the radio’s low volume dips further as the music slows down a little and then segues into a more bluesy sounding  indie song, the sizzling changes.

“-would leave me laughing in their wake, some of them wouldn’t lay me low-”

There’s a strange buzzing, low grade and constant, more of an irritant than anything. He looked down, and where there had been a transparent yellowish oil, now was red. Fresh and slick and bubbling in the heat of the stovetop. Buck stops .

“-this was a different kind of love-”

 He stares blankly at the pan of blood, seeing it running down the sides, hissing as it hits the open flames. It smells clean; clinical and like disinfectant though it shouldn’t, it should smell foul, awful and coppery-

The radio fritzes for a moment; the bluesy song from before suddenly distorting, stretching, shivering for a single moment. The singer, a woman with a low and silky tone that ordinarily Buck would appreciate, deepens, distorts before, like an elastic band stretched too tightly-

“-just managed to miss the jugular, he was-”

 - it snaps back into place.

“- was a different kind of love-”

He can smell chicken. His chest is suddenly free of pressure, that band wrapped around his lungs dissipating with each breath and he can smell chicken, sizzling on the stove top with cajun drifting upwards. Buck gasps for a single moment, a hand reaching up towards his chest, the other clutching the side.

“-sometimes the only solace I can find are my own fever dreams-”

Something cold slips down his back, settles in the pit of his belly for a moment. 

He doesn’t quite know what’s going on, only that it feels like something is wrong but he can’t quite figure it out. Maybe it’s because Tommy’s been gone, called in to cover a shift at the last minute when it should have been one of their meagre handfuls of days off together this week. 

Maybe he’s just missing his boyfriend, sleep deprived from his own shifts and the excitement of actually living with Tommy.

“-between the world and me, tell me, what will it be?”

When the seasoned chicken is cooked, Buck tips it carefully into a glass bowl, returning the pan back to the stove as he then throws the onions and the peppers in alongside a splash of vegetable oil for maintenance. As the other ingredients cook, Buck drizzles the honey he and Tommy had brought from the farmers market last week onto the steaming cajun chicken, making sure the syrup coats every piece. He covers it with a tea towel to try and keep as much heat in as he can. 

“- tell me, who do you love? Between the world and me, now what will it be?”

The hob piece beneath the pan for the rice click-whirrs into life and Buck sprinkles a generous amount of salt into the water, watching it sink to the bottom before he stirs it with a silver tablespoon. It doesn’t take the water long to boil, and he’s already meticulously portioned out and washed the white rice beforehand, and so it goes in quickly and efficiently.

He stirs the peppers and onions, watching how the onions turn translucent and then golden, the peppers shrivelling at the very edges. He turns away, fisting a bulb of garlic from the bushel hanging by the fridge. Tommy had been asking for garlic butter and coriander rice since Buck had first made it him a week ago, and it had always gone down well in the Fire House and with Chris when he’d paired it with cajun and honey seasoned chicken and so he’d decided that he’d cook it Tommy for when he’d come back home.

“- tell me, who do you love? Between the world and me, now what will it be?”

The garlic is easily peeled and minced into tiny pieces, mixed into a large vat of butter. The coriander - taken from the plant growing happily on the window sill that Buck had brought with him when he’d moved in - is next, cut into equally tiny pieces that are mixed into the butter too, before being set to the side.

The peppers and onions are finished, cooked perfectly and the peppers still having that slight bite to them that he knows Tommy prefers. He turns the heat low, tipping the honeyed cajun chicken into the pan and mixing efficiently, making sure the honey coats the pepper and onions too. He takes a small bite of rice from the other pan, hand hovering beneath the fork. Still a little too raw, he thinks, rinsing the fork.

The bluesy song is starting to fade out entirely now, a more gothic touched folk song eking slowly into the sun bleached kitchen.

“- I’ll repeat your name again and always-” a dreamy voice croons.

The rice is done now, that raw bite taken from it. Buck hums absently alongside the song as he turns the stove tops off, dashing a teaspoon amount of water in with the chicken, pepper and onions before he drains the water. After draining, Buck adds the garlic and coriander butter, stirring it furiously into the rice. 

“- tender friend with who I planned to spend the rest of the years of my life -”

As he’s plating the rice onto two plates, portioning out the chicken, peppers and onions, he can hear the jangle of keys, turning in the front door before it swings open; the door shuts, a duffle dropping heavily onto the floor, the shuffle of boots being taken off. Tommy calls out cheerfully;

“I’m home, baby!” The floorboards squeak beneath Tommy’s careful footsteps. “And it smells delicious.”

Buck jumps, laughing when two large arms wrap tightly around his waist, a broad chest pressing against his back as a soft mouth finds the nape of his neck. For such a large man, Tommy can be exceptionally quiet when he wants to be, and he often uses it to sneak up on Buck for extra cuddles.

“-awake until late while you sleep your last sleep, what are you dreaming this time?”

Tommy’s a long line of heat behind him, pressed close until even air can’t escape. Tommy presses another kiss, dry and whiskery with his growing stubble, against the shell of Buck’s ear, humming softly as Tommy tucks himself further into Buck’s back, arms squeezing him gently. 

“Missed you today,” Tommy murmurs softly, his hands pressing against the front of Buck’s apron. “Couldn’t stop thinking ‘bout you in our house.”

One hand slides up to give a gentle squeeze of one of Buck’s pecs before it slides back down his belly, an almost proprietary touch above his belt line. Their plates are ready, and Tommy no doubt has to be hungry, but instead, he starts a gentle sway, moving them from side to side to a beat only Tommy can hear, as if he can’t bear to part with Buck more than he already has been for the day.

“Missed you too, love,” Buck says. He cups his hands over Tommy’s, linking their fingers, strokes a thumb over the bulbous knuckles of Tommy’s large hands, feeling the dry skin and calluses of a fighter who occasionally forgets to wrap their hands. He’ll help lotion them later, Buck thinks. “Have a good day?”

Tommy gives an absentminded hum, the tip of his nose branding a hot line of affection from Buck’s jugular to the jut of his jaw, pressing an open mouthed kiss to the bolt of it, nipping gently, before it tucks behind Buck’s ear once more. Tommy’s eyelashes flutter softly against the rim of Buck’s ear, a butterfly soft gesture as Buck leans into the sturdiness of his partner’s chest.

“Better now that I’m with you.” Tommy says, and Buck smiles a little helplessly. 

Tommy presses them into the countertop, a hard line that presses into Buck’s hips as he takes some of Tommy’s weight, and he wants to turn around, pressing his own chest against Tommy’s but he can’t bear to pull away.

“You’re such a cheese,” Buck tells him fondly, as if he hadn’t melted at it. “C’mon, tell me, how was your day?”

“Such a taskmaster.” Tommy groans into the side of Buck’s head, as if Buck’s asked him to do something monumental and exhausting. Buck laughs, snorting into a high pitched squeak when fingers pinch at his left side, just over his ribs where Tommy knows he’s exorbitantly ticklish. 

“No nooo, don’t, dooooooon’tttt, oh my god.” It’s high pitched and squeaky, exactly how Buck goes when he’s tickled and Tommy knows that because he’d been the one to drag his fingers up Buck’s ribs two months into their first starting out and had Buck squeaking and hiccupping on his lap. 

“You’re cute when you snort, baby.” Tommy giggles.

Large hands at Buck’s waist turn him bodily. He squints against the bright fluorescent light of the kitchen, blinking the stars from his eyes when Tommy kisses his chin, mouthing to his jaw. Buck can’t help himself, sneaking hands up Tommy’s henley, feeling the play of taut muscles over ribs, and the layer of flesh that Buck delights in sinking his fingers into. Tommy, unluckily, is not ticklish on his sides, only on the bottoms of his feet.

“It’s been - eventful,” Tommy allows, pulling back a little. In the light of the kitchen and the slowly setting sun that had bleached the kitchen golden and now barely touches it, he looks washed out and pale, tired and red rimmed around the eyes. There’s a sort of reluctance in his face, and he crushes Buck against him, until Buck can barely move. “Firefighter was shot twice, he’s in critical condition apparently; Lucy, Nico and I lifeflighted him to Cedars with his work partner.”

For a moment, Buck can taste blood. It’s splattered across his face, against his lashes; he can taste blood and tears and there’s a searing pain, aching and burning, against his right side. He could choke on it.

Hands, large and warm, press against his face. Tommy is right in front of him, warm breathing skittering damply across his mouth. His face is- his face -

“-poor guy,” Tommy’s mouth says. “Firefighter, got shot two times in front of his team; they had to stop him from bleeding out-”

“T’mmy?” Buck whimpers.

A slow beeping, getting louder and faster. There’s something down his throat, he can’t breathe, why can’t he breathe what are they doing to him they need to st-

“You’re okay, baby,” Tommy says. He strokes a broad thumb beneath Buck’s eyes, and Buck blinks, eyelashes catching on Tommy’s blunt nails. “You with me, Evan? There we go, look at those pretty baby blues.”

A reedy gasp, pulled deep from his chest, and still Buck can barely breathe. There’s a band around his lungs, around his chest; something deep down his throat that catches every breath he tries to take. He stares, wide eyes that threaten tears as he tries and fails each time to pull air in.

A hand pulls away from his face, tilts it up and then Tommy is pressing a sweet kiss to his cheek, nipping gently at the skin. Buck gives a shuddering breath, panic ebbing as suddenly as it had filled him. 

“You’ve been on edge for the last few days,” Tommy murmurs quietly, jaw resting against Buck’s temple. “What’s the matter, baby?”

For a moment, Buck wants nothing more than to crawl into bed. Dig himself deep in the duvet on his and Tommy’s bed and have his boyfriend stretch out on top of him like a particularly warm and snug weighted blanket, allow Tommy’s hands and touches and love to wipe away everything negative. 

“I don’t know,” Buck whispers instead. Tommy cups a hand around the back of his head, pulls him into his shoulder. The darkness blocks out the suddenly burning fluorescent lights, perfectly circular. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Panic threatens, hands winding feverishly tight in the front of Tommy's henley. 

He can feel each rise and fall, the way Tommy’s heart beats in his chest; he’s spent enough times wide awake and unable to sleep with his eyes fixed to Tommy’s chest or a hand on Tommy’s pulse because he likes the knowledge that Tommy is here, with him that he knows Tommy’s resting heart rate, the way each breath pulls at his chest, how his back rises when he’s on his front.

“There we go, Evan.” Tommy murmurs, hand heavy on the back of Buck’s head. His hand is large enough that it encompasses the majority of Buck’s head, fingers scrubbing through the bristles of Buck’s hair.

“Tommy.” Another title sits behind Buck’s teeth, a softness - a vulnerability - that Buck isn’t quite ready for, not just yet.

Tommy’s other hand sweeps up and down Buck’s back, large and heavy and so warm, sweeping from the nape of his neck down the sine wave of his spine to the top of the curve of his ass and back.

“There we go, baby,” Tommy tells him. Then; “Breathe for me, sweetheart, love of my life, absolute radiant bratty sunshine of mine who eats all my strawberry and yoghurt protein bars.”

It serves its purpose, Buck laughing helplessly into Tommy’s shoulder, fingers tightening in his shirt before loosening. Buck clings close regardless, presses a closed mouth kiss of thanks and love to Tommy’s broad shoulder.

Tommy doesn’t let him pull back; he tugs a little on Buck’s curls who, ignoring the brief spark of pleasure that bubbles up in his gut, follows the tug and lets Tommy press an affectionate kiss to the birthmark above his eyebrow, feeling the dryness of Tommy’s mouth against the sensitive skin.

“Y’know what we should do to cheer you up?” Tommy asks, a smile pressed against Buck’s temple that has his chest clenching pleasantly.

Buck presses himself closer, lets Tommy sway them side to side once more. For a moment, Tommy reaches forward, and there’s a click, the radio blurting static. For a moment, the static fritzes, stretching, distorting -

“-his blood pressure and heart rate is stabilizing; let’s carry on. Let’s get the plate on his collarbone situated-”

“ Oh, we don’t need to hear about that, do we?” Tommy’s mouth says.

- before Tommy reaches again, and the static blurts again, before smoothing out again.

Tommy wraps his arms around Buck again, hands resting tender on the swell of his hips, temple pressed against temple as Buck clings back to him, feeling the thu-thud of Tommy’s heart against his own.

A poppy bass filters from the radio, joined by a rhythmic clash of cymbals overlaying before a smooth male voice croons;

“‘Children, behave’, that’s what they say when we’re together.” Tommy James and the Shondells sing through the radio as Buck’s Tommy smiles widely. Buck can feel the slow crinkle of the man’s eyes against his temple as he smiles, pressing the width of it against the side of Buck’s head, nose buried in the curls just long enough to spill from the crown of Buck’s head.

“‘And watch how you play’, they don’t understand and so we’re running just as far as we can!”

With each rhythmic clash, Buck feels how Tommy uses his hands to guide Buck’s hips from side to side, a sweeping motion as Buck gets further into it and uses his own momentum. This isn’t something they’ve done before; dancing in the kitchen with an old song on the radio, but there’s a fearless joy to Tommy’s movement and that he wants to share something so effortlessly adorable and so obviously close to Tommy that Buck can’t help feeling his own joy fizzing helplessly in his belly, endlessly fond of this man in front of him.

With each strum of guitar and clash, Tommy twists his hips, and Buck laughs, throwing his head back as he twists his own, a little more off beat than Tommy but feeling the excitement building in his chest, the boundless love he can feel making his cheeks hurt with the force of his grin. Their hands slip to one another's, clutching tightly as they twist their hips and lower bodies in opposite directions.

“Holding on to one another’s hands! Trying to get away into the night-”

“And then you put your arms around me as we tumble to ground and then you say-” Tommy’s singing voice is deep and almost velvety, clearly unpolished and more than a little off key, but it has Buck’s cheeks flushing pink, eyes almost shut with the force of his laughter, something hot and tender fizzing in the pit of his belly.

It’s Buck that pulls Tommy closer, chest to chest, stomach to stomach as he winds a hand around Tommy’s waist and clutches his other hand to his. Tommy laughs himself, eyes bright and joyful in the kitchen light, chin cleft shadowed and dimpling handsomely as he holds Buck’s shoulder, fingers intertwined in Bucks with his other.

It’s together that they try to sing; 

“I think we’re alone now!” Buck and Tommy sing, a little too loud and a little too off key, grinning at one another. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone ah-rah-ound!”

Buck’s helpless in his adoration when Tommy pulls away, both of their hands arms length away, before twirling back into one another, dipping one another side to side. 

“I think we’re alone now! The beating of our hearts is the only sound!” Buck’s voice cracks right down the middle, and Tommy’s laugh is long and snorting, nose wrinkling up as he cackles. 

Buck grins through his own laughter, heart thundering as he takes most of Tommy’s considerable weight, feeling the pleasant burn in the ache of his shoulders. Fuck, he loves this man.

“Look at the waaaay we gotta hide what we’re doing.” The radio calls out, Buck and Tommy laughing too hard as they sway off beat and off rhythm to sing again.

“Cause what would they saaaay if they ever knew?”  

Tommy pulls away, sweat on the bow of his upper lip, teeth digging into the bottom as he bites his lip with the force of his grin. He’s beautiful, effortless with his joy and laughter, pink blooming on the apples of his crinkling cheeks, eyes lit up and so bright with the force of his laughter. He looks so happy , Buck thinks. He is happy, Buck hopes. Buck is. 

He’s so fucking happy he could burst, the feeling fizzing up until it sits in the back of his throat, all the love for this man sat beneath his tongue, behind the clench of his teeth. He’s so in love and so happy with this man, Buck thinks. He never wants this to end.

“And so we’re running just as fast as we can! Holding onto one another’s hands!”

Buck’s grins when Tommy twirls him; he ducks beneath Tommy’s arm, shimmying and swaying to the beat. Tommy immediately brings him back in, Buck’s back against his chest as they sway energetically. 

He’s magnetic, Buck thinks, cheeks hurting with the force of his smile.

“Tryin’ to get away into the night, and then you put your arms around me.” Tommy croons lovingly into his ear, breath warm and damp as it skitters against Buck’s cheek. He feels a little like he’s sunk into a warm bath.

For a moment, it’s as if there’s a spotlight on them, fluorescent and bright, blinding in its intensity. Buck squints up at the ceiling, as if there truly is something there, each light perfectly circular, only an inch or so apart. 

“-as we tumble to the ground and then you say-”

He’s pulled from it as Tommy twists him, Buck twirling on the balls of his feet as he lets Tommy lead him, piloting his body however he wants, trusting and knowing that Tommy would keep him safe.

“I think we’re alone now,-”

Tommy spins him out, effortless in his movement and Buck is dizzyingly unable to stop the helpless laughter that bubbles up, heart thundering, stomach fluttering. Tommy’s beautiful like this, laughing and dancing and singing in that deep, unpolished voice that still gives Buck butterflies.

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone ah-rah-round.” Tommy sings softly. 

Rapid beeping, getting faster and faster.

He sweeps Buck back into his arms, pressing an open mouthed kiss to his mouth. He tastes of sweat; salt and tears, blood where he’s bitten the inside of his mouth like he does when he’s near panic. Why would he be near panicking?

The radio gives a blurt of static;

“-widening the incision from the original GSW site -”

“I think we’re alone now.” Tommy sobs. 

Buck tries to look at him, stomach clenching, dizzying in his own panic. 

Tommy sways with him, gentle and tender, his face still with that same, eye crinkling grin that made Buck almost walk into a post when it was first turned to him. He looks so happy. 

Tommy dips him, Buck’s back arching over his forearm, and the display of strength has Buck’s chest lurching, throat tightening; his stomach curls but it’s cold and sickly, he can’t breathe -

Tommy slips a hand from his waist up to his right shoulder, a strong hand pressing up against his jugular. Buck grins, happy and light, something still so heavy in his belly. Then;

The radio croons, peppy and smooth;

“The beating of our hearts-”

“-get the plate and screws ready please-”

Pain blossoms, immediate.

“-vitals are destabilising, we’re about to-”

“-is the only sound!”

Buck chokes. Searing, blinding pain claws at him, leaves him breathless. His chest refuses to rise, his lungs refusing to expand. He chokes, on panic, on spit, on blood. He coughs weakly, and he gags ; gags on spit, on the wet hotness that spills down the back of his throat. He chokes again, and it spills from the corners of his mouth, down his chin, to his jaw. The knife doesn’t move.

Rapid beeping, getting faster and faster.

“I think we’re alone now.” Tommy sings cheerfully. He grins down at Buck, eyes bright and crinkling still, cheeks dimpling handsomely. He’s sweating with the effort of dancing still, pooling into his collarbones, henley damp with it, tears damp on his cheeks. Something roils in the pit of Buck’s stomach.

Tommy presses harder against the knife - the scalpel - in Buck’s shoulder, twists it with tender hands; his thumb presses against the skin beside it, stretched thin and taut; Buck whimpers, thin and reedy. Why is Tommy hurting him?

“T’mmy-”

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone around,” The radio’s staticky voice croons.

“I think we’re alone now,” Tommy tells him, and Buck is helpless, unable to do anything. 

“The beating of our hearts is the only sound. ” 

Tommy lifts him almost effortlessly, and Buck gurgles helplessly on the blood that threatens to choke him as Tommy manipulates his body, lifts his right shoulder, pulling on the knife still dug deep in there. His fingers are limp in Tommy’s hand, legs unable to take his own weight as his feet scrabble uselessly against the tiled kitchen floor-

“-he’s waking up! Put him under again, now!”

Tommy dances with him, each touch fond and tender. Buck lists limply in his arms, blood leaking down, hot and scorching against his side, feet slipping uselessly in the pool beneath them.

“-the beating of our hearts is the only sound.” The radio sings happily.

Chapter Text

Tommy 4

The waiting room has steadily filled up over the last few hours.

Eddie had rejoined him in the waiting room relatively quickly, hair and face freshly damp with his scrub uniform on and his LAFD uniform trashed and ready for the incinerators. Maddie had joined them, tearful and red faced, forty five minutes later. She’d taken one look at the both of them and had burst properly into tears, sandwiched between the two of them. It had been Tommy who’d told her about what had happened, nails biting into his palms to try and keep him grounded as Maddie asked question after question after question.

Eventually, information exhausted and with no coming news from the Emergency Room, she’d been forced into a comfortable armchair in their claimed corner, one hand desperately gripping Tommy’s and the other tightly clutching her phone like a lifeline. 

Three hours after Maddie’s hurricane-esque entrance and at the end of their shift, Bobby had arrived with a still on shift and in uniform Athena in tow, with sandwiches and coffees that they’d distributed out. Hen had followed not long after, having to take Denny and Mara to school as Karen had had an early shift. After Hen, Howie had followed with a change of clothes for Maddie, Jee-Yun enjoying an impromptu play date with Anne Lee to profuse thanks from Maddie and Howie. 

For a single moment, Tommy is overwhelmed; he never thought he’d get to have this, enveloped so easily into a family, showing so much love and support for each other. If anyone had ever deserved that, it was Evan, and, as Evan always insists, Tommy does too. He still hesitates to actually believe it, something or some quiet voice in the back of his head that has such a grip on Tommy that it’s an active fight to believe that he’s worth it. When he’d left the 118, apparently only three months before Evan had been inducted as probie, they’d shifted apart as was only natural. Tommy had had his own hands full with juggling a new position and certifying for extras; Sal had been recently promoted to Lieutenant and on the fast track to Captain of the 122. He and Sal had kept in touch as much as they could, but there had been complicated feelings with the rest of the 118 that Tommy hadn’t been able to really breach. He’d done so in the end, of course, apologetic and shame having burned away the last of his pride in regards to how he’d treated Hen and Howie when under Gerrard. 

Eddie, who’d been sat rigid in the seat besides Tommy after Maddie had burrowed herself into Howie’s side on the other side of Tommy and staring down at his phone, sighs quietly. He claps Tommy on the shoulder, leaning in.

“I’ve gotta go,” Eddie says. “Gotta get Chris ready for school because Carla can’t stay over this morning.”

“No worries man,” Tommy says. Eddie had calmed from how he was before, but there was still a razor thin edge of panic to a lot of his movements. “Take care of yourself, tell Christopher I said hello, yeah?”

“Will do, let me know if anything changes and take care of yourself, huh?”

They fist bump, knuckle to knuckles. Tommy watches with vague eyes as Eddie makes his rounds with everyone else, the way he cups the back of Maddie’s head when she presses into his chest for a close hug. Maddie wasn’t a Buckley anymore and in a few years, hopefully Evan wouldn’t be either, but there was just something about the Buckley siblings that had their hugs feeling like you’d just dipped into a perfectly temperature bath. 

Their group is now down by one - or two, something cold and panicky says in the back of Tommy’s head - and Tommy still feels so unmoored and unmade that he has to fist his hands between his knees to make sure no one can see their shaking.

He’d messaged Sal after his almost breakdown having fled the bathroom, held back by nothing but sheer force of will, but his best friend was still on a scene that was still burning even after two hours of non stop activity there. Sal was Incident Command and so couldn’t easily get away when Evan nor Tommy wasn’t exactly classed as immediate family. Sal hadn’t been able to chat for long, only letting Tommy know that he’d be there as soon as he could, but he couldn’t put a time on it, though B-shift should be coming any time soon to relieve them and then Sal could hand off IC to someone else. Sal had offered a pair of clothes and an overnight bag, and Tommy nearly weeps at the thought of getting out of his flight suit and uniform. He wonders if he could tell Sal to get some of Evan’s clothes, just so he could feel some sort of connection; get to smell Evan’s cologne, the scent of him, anything to make it seem like Evan was with him, was next to him and that they were waiting for someone else who was in surgery.

His hands still shake, fingers tangled with each other between his knees. In desperate need of something to do but entirely reluctant to move from his seat just in case someone comes out with news of Evan, Tommy takes the still wrapped sandwich that Bobbyhad shoved into his hand when he’d first arrived with a raised eyebrow. Sat opposite him, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and a rosary clutched in his palms, Bobby raises that same eyebrow again over his fists.

Tommy grimaces. 

He isn’t hungry, not really, despite the fact that he hasn’t eaten anything since before being called to Condor Peak Trailhead, the call he’d been finishing up before the awful words of a thirty four year old male with double GSW’s in critical condition that had so abruptly turned Tommy’s world on its head. Stress has always turned Tommy off food and Evan had despaired jokingly that the numerous baked goods Evan had stress baked during their break up had been for nothing. 

Evan had made little finger foods, last time Tommy had been turned off his food, snacky little things that Tommy usually went for when he could be bothered; he’d packed Tommy little lunch bags with cheesy notes and hearts that Tommy had laughed so hard he’d snorted to his Captains utmost delight.

Now, Evan so close and yet so far away from him at the same time, even Bobby’s disapproving eyebrow isn’t enough for Tommy to want to gulp down a lukewarm hospital sandwich when panic strangles his throat and his chest is cracking in twain, heartsore and heartsick in ways he never thought he ever could be.

“Tommy.” Bobby says quietly. Besides him, Athena answers her chirping cell phone, moving away from the bulk of the group. Tommy can see how her eyes are affixed to their group however, a subtle grief hidden in the folds of her face

“Bobby.” Tommy says, deliberately obtuse. He knows what Bobby’s doing; he’s seen the man do it enough times to Evan to know what’s coming. But Bobby is a ruthless man when he needs to be, usually softened by his care for his team; but when that ruthlessness and care combine, Bobby truly is the papa bear Evan always accuses him of being.

“Buck wouldn’t want you to starve yourself,” Bobby tells him, as if Tommy doesn’t already fucking know that. “You need to take care of yourself, too, Tommy.”

It’s only the deep, deliberate breath Tommy forces himself to take that keeps the vitriolic words crowding behind his teeth back. Tommy has never done well with being coddled, not even by Evan sometimes, though he’s trying his hardest to accept it, but Bobby’s words reek of a patronising edge that the man probably doesn’t even realize is there, or maybe it’s just because Tommy is so on edge.

“I know, Bobby,” Tommy says instead. He picks listlessly at the crumpling wrapping of his sandwich. Bacon, lettuce and tomato with mayo; Tommy snorts. He thinks suddenly, longingly, fondly of Evan’s cheesesteak sandwiches he’d made for their second first date. “But right now, I don’t think I can quite stomach it.”

“Alright,” Bobby says. He peers over his clasped hands, eyes worried and bruised. “Buck’s strong, and he’s a fighter, you know that, Tommy.”

Tommy throws the sandwich on the small table in front of them, suddenly sick. 

“Evan is the strongest man I’ve ever known.” Tommy says instead of the way he wants to wail and scream that this isn’t fucking fair. Evan is strong and he is a fighter, but he shouldn’t have to be. Evan shouldn’t be fighting for his fucking life in the fucking hospital because someone got fucking trigger happy.

Maybe it was unfair but Tommy wasn’t interested in fair right now, not when Evan - the love of his life, the beat of his heart - was still in surgery with no news on how he was because someone thought it would be fun to send the 118 on a hoax call that ended up with Evan being shot twice and needing to be resuscitated twice. 

Tommy doesn’t care about fairness right now.

Tommy leans forward, elbows to his knees. He scrubs his hands over his face, feeling the steady growth of stubble, the way his skin feels a little too tight with lack of sleep. He digs the tips of his fingers into his eyes until he sees stars, blooming into life in the darkness. He drags his hands down, covering his mouth as his bottom lip trembles.

“Tommy -” Bobby says, and there’s a wealth of compassion in his steady voice. A slender hand touches at his shoulder though, and Bobby leans back, a hand against Athena’s hip, just below her belt.

“Lou’s calling me back in,” Athena says apologetically. “More news on the person who shot Buckaroo but he can’t tell me a lot over the phone, but I’ll let you know what I can, when I can.”

Bobby smiles up at his wife, the crinkles of his eyes cutting deeper. He looks settled in a way he’d never looked when he first started, something intrinsic having shifted in the man since Tommy had started working with him. Tommy presses his palm further against his mouth, forces his bottom lip to stop trembling, please.

Evan, please. 

“Thanks for coming, Athena,” Tommy clears his throat, forcing himself to sound as normal as he possibly can. “Bobby or I will make sure you get updated when we know anything.”

“Make sure you do,” She says, but the way she rests a hand on Tommy’s shoulder takes the bite of her words. She ducks close, squeezing his shoulder. Her thumb rests briefly against the bolt of his jaw. “Buck isn’t the only one I was here for, Tommy, don’t you forget that, alright?”

He forces a grin, ducking his head when Athena makes her rounds to everyone else too. 

Another one gone, and Tommy wishes that he wasn’t count them down like they were leaving indefinitely, with Evan in near pieces on a surgery table and Tommy knowing that he’d probably never be able to tell if Evan’s heart stopped and refused to start again and hating that he’d never feel it, would never know until some strange doctor or nurse came out to offer their condolences. 

Tommy can picture it right now.

The Emergency Room doors would swing open, with a scrub clad nurse with curling hair and a grim look on her face looking around the waiting room to find the-

“Family of Evan Buckley?”

“That’s us!” Maddie shoots up. Tommy flinches.

-and Tommy would have to pretend that his heart isn’t beating out of his chest and falling with a sad splat to the floor when the nurse offers her condolences and says 

“-lost him on the table- ”

- that they did everything they could but Evan didn’t survive, Evan didn’t fucking make it -

“-managed to get him back. He’d lost a large amount of blood and was given multiple transfusions-”

- and then Tommy would have to go home to an empty house and drink himself stupid and maybe to death because what was his life without Evan in it -

“-GSW’s put a a large strain on his body, as did the hypovolemic shock-”  

- and when he wasn’t able to say that he loved Evan like he’d never loved anyone else and Tommy hadn’t been able to say that because he was a coward -

“-we did everything we could but it was very much touch and go from the beginning, woke up during the surgery but-”

- he was a fucking coward that had never thought he could have this and Evan was fucking dead ; Evan was dead and gone and Tommy might as well be the same - 

“ -we managed to stabilize his collarbone from where the bullet had ricocheted with a small plate; we left bullet fragments in as it wasn’t deemed a risk to Evan and we didn’t want to open him even further-”

- because he’d never know the exact time Evan’s heartbeat stopped, he’ll only ever know the time that they gave up on him, gave up on them -

“ - penetrating traumatic pneumothorax that we’ve put a chest-tube in to drain and inflate - “

A hand, slender and strong on the nape of his neck, forces his head between his knees.

“Breathe!” Maddie demands.

Tommy tries, he does; tries to force his chest to rise and fall, tries to get his lungs to work but he can’t, not when they’re going to come out and say that Evan is dead and gone and Tommy might as well be the same. Tommy hadn’t planned to get a couples plot in a graveyard, not yet anyway, but maybe he could ask Maddie to make sure they at least got buried together, holding hands for the rest of eternity because Tommy can’t do this, or maybe he can but he sure as fuck doesn’t want to do this without Evan-

“He’s alive, Tommy,” Someone bullies their way in front of him, hands gripping his wrists and pulling them away from his face. “Buck’s alive.”

He’s not. Evan’s dead and Tommy isn’t and if the world - the fucking universe - had any sense it would take Tommy and not Evan. 

God, fuck, please not Evan, please.

Hands grasp his face, strong and large but still so gentle. They jerk his head up, and Tommy wheezes .

Sal smells like smoke and gasoline, caustic and foul; there’s still ash and soot smeared across his face and he’s still in his heavy turnouts with his 122 Captain helmet atop his head. He looks at Tommy as if he’s never seen him before, as if Tommy is unravelling before his very eyes and he is, Tommy is; he’s unravelling, splintering apart, and Tommy doesn’t know how to stop it and Sal looks like he doesn’t either. The only person that could do so was dead and still and fucking cold on a surgery table and soon a mortuary table-

“He hates the cold, Sal,” Tommy gasps, and his hands have wound themselves into Sal’s shirt beneath those heavy turnouts. “Evan can’t stand the cold, his leg, they’re gonna- they can’t, Sal, they can’t -”

“Look at me, man,” Sal demands. “No, look at me, Kinard!”

“Don’t let them take him, please, Sal, they can’t take him from me, they can’t -”

Those hands don’t let his face turn away, palms biting into his jaw, fingers digging into the bristles at the nape of Tommy’s neck.

“The kid’s alive, Tommy,” Sal tells him. There’s a wealth of sympathy, of compassion, in his eyes that so very nearly breaks Tommy.“Your boys survived and he ain’t leavin’ you just yet, alright? So you gotta get outta your head and see your boy.”

Tommy’s bottom lip trembles. Sal must see, because his face softens, and he hooks a hand around the back of Tommy’s head, pulling him forward into Sal’s shoulder.

“C’mon,” Sal says quietly, chin pressing against the crown of Tommy’s head. “Let's get you cleaned up and you can go and see Buck, okay?”

Like a child, Sal hoists him up, physically manhandling Tommy until he can actually get his legs working. Sal propels him through the waiting room, where he can see a teary eyed Maddie listening intently to the curly haired nurse that had opened the ER doors. She catches his eye when they pass, and Tommy nearly keels over when she takes his hand in hers, squeezing softly like she always does with Evan. 

Howie doesn’t release her hand but does take a step towards Sal, speaking with him in an undertone, a worried look on his face. Both Howie and Sal give him and Maddie unreadable looks. It should irk him but it doesn’t; he doesn’t think he has any room for any emotion apart from grief and worry.

“He’s in recovery, but they’ll be taking him up to the ICU in a moment,” She says quietly, and her voice wavers. She presses her lips together, before giving him a tremulous smile “We’ll go see him and then you can stay, okay?”

Tommy can barely croak out his thanks, shame curling into the pit of his belly that has him turning his face away and letting Sal lead him into the bathroom that only a few hours ago, Tommy had been talking Eddie down from his own panic attack.

There’s a certain sense of irony in it, that Tommy had tried so hard to be strong for everyone, had tried so hard to stave away the panic that had lingered beneath a thinly covered mask and it had just been the mere mention of Evan that had so easily broken down all his walls.

With the ease of repetition, Sal shoves him so he’s sat on a toilet lid, a heavy duffle with ARMY emblazoned upon it having been pulled from nowhere.

Heavy headed, that sense of shame still mixing with the sick curl of panic and grief that’s anchored him for the last few hours, Tommy can only watch as Sal shoulders out of the heavy turnouts, Captain’s helmet hung up on a tap like it’s a coat hook. Through burning eyes that still haven’t cried proper tears, Tommy watches Sal wash his hands in the sink, and thinks of how he wants to go back all those days ago, where he’d washed Evan’s hands with soap and had then kissed each finger until the man was giggling and wriggling, trying to get away as Tommy pretended to playfully eat them. He wants to go back even just hours ago, where he’d thought Evan was on shift, as safe as he ever could be as a firefighter; wished he’d made them both call in sick and just headed up to Vista a day early.

“I haven’t told him.” Tommy says, listlessly. His chest is cracked and emptied; his heart lies cold on a hospital bed up in the Intensive Care Unit. 

He can see himself in the mirror; a pallid figure too big for how small he really feels right now, eyes red and empty. He’s an empty husk. Sal carries on washing his hands, but he keeps Tommy’s gaze through the long line of mirrors. He scrubs his hands over his face, smearing soot and ash further as the water drains black and foul.

“I know, T.” Sal says. 

There’s a wealth of emotion in his voice, and for a single moment, Tommy wants to run. He wants to stride out of the hospital bathroom, into the waiting room and then just fully out of the hospital itself. He wants to run and hide beneath his duvets and wait for all of this - the pain, the terror, the grief - to blow over, to fall asleep and then wake up, knowing that all of this was just a particularly vivid fever dream. 

Tommy can’t do that. Not now, not when Evan and he had promised one another, not when leaving this bathroom and this waiting room and this hospital would be Tommy leaving his heart entirely, not like before where for three months without Evan had Tommy walking around with a hole in his heart. 

Evan’s in possession of it in its entirety now, all of it’s battered and broken and splintering pieces and Tommy can never get it back, not now; even if he tried, so many shards would stay with Evan and Tommy would never survive, even if he ever wanted to.

Sal turns the tap off, and the sudden stop of rushing water makes Tommy all too aware of how his breathing is ragged, wheezing in his chest as he sits on the toilet lid in a cubicle, scared and ashamed about it. 

“I can’t do this without him, Sal,” Tommy croaks. “I don’t ever wanna do this without Evan again.”

Sal’s suddenly in front of him, like Tommy’s lost time, and maybe he has; just sat in this liminal space with nothing but his best friend and his grief. 

“Don’t you dare, T,” Sal says. “Don’t you dare go borrowin’ trouble that you ain’t got just yet, yeah? Buck is alive and that is all you gotta concentrate on right now, so we’re gonna get you outta these clothes and into some fresh ones and then you’re gonna go see your boy and he’s gonna wake up, alright, T? He’s gonna wake up and you’re gonna tell him you’re so stupidly in fuckin’ love with him and he’s gonna snog your face off like you’re fuckin’ middle schoolers.”

Tommy can’t help the wheezing laugh that escapes, chest tightening even as he imagines it. As sudden as he starts, he can’t stop laughing, ribs aching as he tries to breathe through the forceful ache, stomach jumping as his muscles spasm. He can’t stop laughing and he doesn’t know why; only that everything burns and Tommy hasn’t cried yet even in his panic but he’s crying now, in this stupid bathroom in this stupid waiting room of this stupid hospital and Tommy doesn’t want to be here anymore, he doesn’t want Evan to be here anymore, he wants them up in Vista, loved out and fucked out and having told one another that they love each other and maybe Tommy should grab his mom’s wedding ring because this is all just so fucked - 

Abruptly, Tommy’s tucked into Sal’s shoulder again, and he’s helpless to do anything but fist his hands into the back of Sal’s shirt and hold on.

Chapter Text

Buck 5

“How’s my baby doin’?” Tommy croons as he cracks the front door open.

Buck lifts his head, giving a tired grin as he watches the man close the door softly. There’s a bouquet of flowers that Buck can’t quite glimpse, and a bag displaying the pharmacy logo from down the street. Both are placed on the kitchen island, Tommy disappearing from view for a moment before he rounds around the back of the couch.

He’s shed both jacket and outer shirt, alongside his shoes and socks. There’s something so delightful about seeing him so domestic and comfortable, with bare arms and shoulders, equally bare toes curling against the hardwood floor. 

Tommy leans a hip against the arm of the couch, that small smile etched across his face.

“No longer pukin’.” Buck grimaces, leaning his head into Tommy’s hand when the man creeps closer and presses his thumb beneath Buck’s no doubt red rimmed eyes. Tommy makes a sympathetic noise in the back of his throat, leaning down to press a sweet kiss to the crown of Buck’s head.

“Glad that the anti-emetic is working,” Tommy says softly. He smoothes the hair back from Buck’s sweat damp forehead, short nails scratching softly over the scalp. “Picked up the rest of your pain killers and the extra Bleedstop since they didn’t give you the full prescription last time.”

“You’re amazing, y’know that, love?” Buck leans up, grimacing when it jostles his leg even as he pouts upwards, leaning up on an elbow against the couch arm.

“Glad that you’re realizing that, baby.” Tommy grins into their kiss, a hand skimming across Buck’s jaw to smooth over the almost fully healed road rash scarring from the asphalt.

“Absolute angel.” Buck mutters. Tommy’s hair is soft and short shaved beneath his questing fingers, bristly around his ear as Buck reaches a hand to stroke over the smooth shell of it. 

“Good to know that you’re still sorta high on painkillers.” Tommy laughs softly.

“Just high on seeing you.” Buck grins.

Things are foggy right now, cloudy around the edges from the oramorph the hospital had allowed him to take home on a need to take basis, but despite it, he’s pleasantly languid and relaxed with the painkillers and muscle relaxants. He’s not high, just a little fuzzy.

“Sweet-talker, Evan; you’re gonna make me blush.” 

Tommy is straight faced, but there’s a slight crinkle to his eyes that lets Buck know he’s biting the inside of his cheek to get it that way.

“High on seeing my baaaaaaaby.” Buck sing-songs, just to see how that straight face melts into a flushing grin, eyes crinkling and dimples deepening. 

“I think my baby is a little out of it and needs a nap.” Tommy murmurs.

Tommy’s squatted down by the couch now, elbows on the cushions as he leans his face against the arm of the couch. Buck sighs, arrested by the sight of him. 

He’s so beautiful, Buck thinks. Tommy’s been so kind and patient with him. He doesn’t know how he’d have survived the aftermath of the Ladder Truck bombing without him.

“Missed you when you were out.” Buck says; he feels more than a little sloppy around the edges now, like Tommy coming back has let him relax fully. 

“Baby, I was only gone for twenty minutes.” Tommy laughs softly. Buck watches through half lidded eyes as he shifts a little, legs stretching out in front of him. One of those large hands skim over Buck’s hip, squeezing through the basketball shorts before running up and down the fiberglass thigh length cast. 

“Yeah, and I missed you for twenty one of those minutes.”

It still hurts to move, Buck can’t deny that, but he twists enough that he’s more on his side than his back, curling further so he can press a kiss to the tender side of Tommy’s head, right on his temple. Tommy’s gone red; Tommy doesn’t blush like Buck, who tends to go bright red in his cheeks when he’s embarrassed. Tommy’s ears tend to go red rather than his face, and he tends to rub the back of his neck when he can’t quite figure out what to do with his hands.

He does it now, laughing beneath his breath as a hand rubs the nape of his neck; his eyes are crinkled with the force of his smile and Buck has to remind himself to breathe. 

I love you crowds at the back of his teeth, a sudden reminder of just how much Buck does love this man. Tommy’s been so patient and kind and loving with him since they started dating not long after the 7.1 earthquake, and even more so during the recovery of his leg.

Tommy leans in, almost conspiratorially.

“I miss you when I blink, too.” 

Buck gasps. 

“Oh baby, don’t cry, please.” Large hands grasp his face, cupping his cheeks gently. Thumbs press beneath his eyes, wiping away a tear Buck hadn’t even realized had been brewing. 

“Happy tears, Tommy,” Buck says. He leans further into the touch. “Very happy tears.”

“So long as they are happy.” Tommy murmurs. 

He presses the point of his nose into Buck’s, before his head tips and he’s pressing slightly dry lips to Buck’s mouth, slanting them perfectly together. Buck sighs into it, a hand dropping down to clutch at the tatty collar of Tommy’s sleeveless tee. One of Tommy’s hand drops too, fingertips infinitely gentle as they skim over the scarring road rash at Buck’s jaw, following the thick line of it down the side of his neck, a thumb digging briefly into his right side collarbone where pain blooms briefly.

He gasps softly, pulling back for a moment. 

“Alright?” Tommy asks immediately. He pulls back too, a hand immediately coming to rest just above Buck’s cast, hovering there. “Is it your leg or-”

Buck shakes his head, leaning so he isn’t resting on his right side.

“Just a-” Buck gasps, shakes his head like a dog as the pain blossoms again, deeper and aching down by his ribs and into his arm pit. “Just a cramp, I think.”

Tommy hisses, a short breath sucked in between his teeth. His brows furrows in sympathy. 

“Bruises giving you trouble, still?” 

Buck grimaces, nodding as he tries to massage the ache away, just at the base of his neck on the right side where the road rash scarring starts, the impact of being thrown from the truck to hard asphalt having left abrasions and heavy bruises that have started to lighten, though the blood thinners haven’t exactly helped, having prolonged the worst of it.

“Thought the leg would be the worst part,” Buck huffs a choppy laugh. “Somehow it’s the bruises that are the bitch of it.”

Tommy grimaces in sympathy, smoothing Buck’s hair back from his face, leaning in to press a kiss to his birthmark.

“How about we get you naked and I rub some soothing aloe cream on for you?”

“You’ve never sounded more attractive.” Buck groans.

“Some truly lofty aspirations.” Tommy laughs. He groans when his knees crack as he stands. 

“Old man.” Buck laughs at him. He laughs harder when Tommy glares down at him, hands on his hips. 

“You’re one to talk, Mr. Can’t Get Up The Stairs Without Being Carried.”

“And you enjoy every single time you carry my ass.”

Tommy gives him a playful caustic stare from where he’s grabbed the aloe vera gel from where they keep it in the fridge. He’s lit up golden from behind as he strides across the kitchen, the sunset pressing against the windows and blinding Buck briefly with its beauty. Tommy’s always been a handsome man, beautiful in ways that Buck has never truly been able to put into words lest he gets tongue tied, but washed in gilt and drowned in gold, Tommy Kinard has never looked more lovely, more himself.

Buck wonders what he’d look like, drenched in the morning sun as they watched it crest over the horizon; what he’d look like resting against the back door with a cup of coffee in hand and Buck at his side, watching the sun drown their shared garden with gold, eyelashes gilt and blond in the light, the shadows and dips of his dimples and wrinkles. 

I love you, he wants to say, scream it from the rooftops, whisper it into the quiet night of their bedroom. I love you and he means it entirely, so sincerely - in ways he never thought he could ever feel, in ways he never thought he’d deserve.

Instead;

“You’re so good to me.” Buck says.

Tommy stoops for a moment. His hands are chilled because of the aloe vera bottle, and Buck leans into it as Tommy presses the fat of his thumb into Buck’s birthmark. 

“You deserve someone being good to you.” He says quietly, as if he hasn’t said something that guts Buck; everything about this man guts him in the best of ways.

“I wish I could be better to you.” Buck says. He knows he hasn’t been the best for the past few weeks since being discharged, since the bombing; in pain and dependent on people, relying on them in ways that have become foreign and unfamiliar.  

He wonders what things would have been like if he hadn't met Tommy, hadn’t fallen in love with a man who knows what it means to be there and who lets Buck be himself. Knows things would have been so much different; whether Buck would have faded into the background, out of sight and out of mind for the rest of the 118 crew, whether he’d had felt so alone he’d contemplate ending it all.

“You are good to me, baby,” Tommy says. It’s with tender hands that he helps Buck undress, shrugging the too large short sleeve top that smells entirely of Tommy’s cologne off. “It’s not your fault that you’ve had something awful and traumatic happen to you. Could you stand to be a little less bitchy about it, sure, but I know that you’re in pain-”

Buck hisses, grimacing when the top pulls at his clavicle.

“Shit, Evan,” Tommy sucks a breath in between his teeth. “I didn’t realize they were still this bad.”

Tender fingers hover just before touching against the blooming bruises at the base of his throat and clavicle, both on the right side. After the bomb had been detonated, Buck and several other firefighters had been thrown from the Ladder Truck. The others - Harper, Serrano, and Goodwin - had been thrown completely clear from the Truck and had ended up with their own handful of injuries, but it had been Buck that had been pinned, quite literally flipped from the Captain’s seat and onto unforgiving asphalt. Road rash and fractures had been a common complaint from all four of them, and Buck had made his worst by trying to squirm away with nowhere to go, and repetitive attempts to try and get the Truck off of him. He’d landed heavily on his side, and had actually fractured his right sided clavicle with the force of it, which had made it harder to use crutches for a while.

The blood thinners he’d been put on after having the hardware in his leg had prolonged the bruises and let new ones form easily over the top of them until his body felt like one giant bruise in a state of sore just-pressed tenderness.

These bruises didn’t look anything like those bruises.

“Did you fall, Evan?” Tommy asks, frowning. Concern is heavy in his voice. 

Buck looks down, a quick flick of his eyes to only then do a double take. Heavy darkness bleeding into a navy blue into sickly colours have blossomed from his clavicle to the base of his neck, like a felt tip bleeding onto cheap paper. 

“You’d have known if I did.” Buck points out and it’s true. 

Since Buck’s leaving the hospital, Tommy’s been with him for nearly that amount of time. He’d gone in briefly for work and to discuss what leave he could take so that Buck wasn’t alone. Buck had been adamant that he could go back to Harbor if he wanted to, that Buck could - and would   - make due, but Tommy had been immovable and unconcerned with maybe not being able to get the time off. 

Don’t mistake Buck for not being grateful; he is, massively so, but he hadn’t wanted Tommy to pause his life just because someone had tried to blow Buck up, but when he’d tried to tell Tommy that, it had ended up in a small Cold War of trying to get one another to see their side before it had ended up with Tommy begging Buck to realize just how much he meant to Tommy and that Tommy was there because he wanted to be, and not just because of obligation.

“These look so much worse than the other day.” Buck says, surprised.

Tommy makes a noise of discontent, frowning heavily. He presses a soft hand to Buck’s unbruised shoulder, and Buck goes without complaint, topless, and relaxing as best he can into the sofa.

“See if the aloe vera does anything for it,” Tommy says. He pulls the small coffee table closer, perching on the very edge of it. “But, baby, if these get any worse we’re going to the doctors.”

“Ahh, honey, I’m sure it’s fine, ain’t no need-”

Tommy clicks his tongue.

“Don’t fight me on this, Evan,” Tommy says. There’s a tremble to the very edge of his voice. “I’m not having you get any worse or - god forbid - throw a blood clot because of your pride.”

“It’s not my damn-!” Buck deliberately takes a deep breath, blows it out through his nose.

“It’s not because of my pride,” Buck says after a moment. Tommy’s watching him from the coffee table, he looks as if he isn’t quite sure what to say. “I just- I don’t want-”

Buck gesticulates wildly, unsure of how to put it into words. He’s not quite sure whether it’s because he can’t quite find those words, or if he’s worried about how Tommy would take them.

“You don’t want people to worry about you,” Tommy says quietly. “Or, you don’t want to inconvenience people.”

“Yes,” Buck says. He tries to lean up on his elbow, only to let out a squeak of pain when he lands weirdly on his right side. “Yes, that’s exactly it, I don’t- Tommy, you do so much for me already, I don’t want to put even more on you.”

Tommy sighs. He leans forward, and he holds one of Buck’s hands. Buck watches with wide eyes and a caving stomach as Tommy lifts Buck’s hand. He presses a tender kiss to the palm of Buck’s hand, lips dry and bitten against the skin.

“Evan,” Tommy says gravely. “I say this with so much fondness and love for you, baby-”

“...Okay?” Buck says, there isn’t much he can say to that. 

He hopes Tommy isn’t breaking up with him, he doesn’t know if he could survive that. 

“You’re a bit of an idiot.”

Stung, Buck tries to pull back. 

“Ah, ah, hear me out first, please.” Tommy says. He doesn’t let go of Buck’s hand, but doesn’t make an attempt to force Buck to touch him more. 

“What, after you’ve called me stupid?” Buck shots back, wounded. 

He’d never thought Tommy would be one of those people that called him stupid, or - or dumb , or even an idiot .

“I didn’t say you were stupid, Evan,” Tommy says patiently. “I said that you’re a bit of an idiot if you think that I don’t want you to put those things on me; I’m your partner , I want you to rely on me.”

Something cold and unsure that had been roiling beneath his skin settles a little. Buck tightens his grip on Tommy’s hand.

“Oh.” Buck says.

“Yeah,” Tommy says, infinitely and beautifully bitchy, “Oh, he says.”

“Shut up.” Buck laughs, flushing red.

“You’re too cute, baby.” Tommy says softly. He leans forward, pressing the tip of his nose to Buck’s for a single moment. Buck tries his hardest to keep a straight face, reluctant to break any further than he already has.

It’s useless in the end; Tommy twists his head this way and that, rubbing the tips of their noses together, and Buck can feel his lips twitching involuntarily, but it’s when Tommy pretends to chomp at the end of his nose and makes a silly little fwwwwuping sound as he blows a raspberry that Buck breaks. A high and reedy giggle, and then Tommy is grinning up at him, tips of his ear reddening as he watches.

“I’m sorry,” Buck says after, the odd giggle bubbling up here and there. “I’m just-” 

Again, Buck gesticulates a little helplessly. 

“Not entirely used to this.”

Tommy makes a face that Buck can’t quite describe, but it looks a little like heartbreak, something that should never be at home on Tommy’s face. 

Tommy deserves the world; he deserves every good and kind and gentle thing, and sometimes Buck is sure that isn’t him, but he thinks that this time he wants to be selfish, wants to be those good and kind and gentle things that Tommy deserves. He’s trying to be those things, but with the bombing, he feels little more like a burden than anything else, though he’s trying so hard not to be.

“You aren’t a responsibility, Evan.” Tommy says a moment. His brows are furrowed, and he’s leaning against the side of the couch, resting heavily against the couch cushions. Buck should really try and tug him onto it, to help his knees.

“I know, Tommy,” Buck says. Tommy scoffs. “I do, I do know that, I just-I - don’t want you to feel like you have to stay be - because of everything.”

“I’m here because I want to be,” Tommy tells him, a hardness to the edge of his voice. “I’m here because you’re my partner and I want to help you, this has nothing to do with- with obligation or fucking responsibility, Evan.” 

Tommy pauses, takes a deep and deliberate breath. His face smoothes out with the graceful execution of deliberation. In the time Buck has gotten to know and love Tommy, he has the tendency to shut down when hurt or startled, or even when he’s particularly overwhelmed. 

“I’m sorry.” Buck says quietly. Tommy shakes his head.

“I don’t even think you understand what you’re apologising for anymore, Evan,” Tommy sighs. “I’m here because I want to be.”

“I know that,” Buck tells him. With difficulty, aches blossoming over his right clavicle as he reaches out with his arm, he takes one of Tommy’s hands that have been resting against his knee. It’s clammy with condensation from the aloe vera gel. “I’m sorry because I’ve - because I’ve hurt you, even - even though I didn’t mean to.”

Tommy stares at him for one long moment. Buck isn’t exactly sure what he’s searching for, but Buck gets a front row seat to how Tommy’s face relaxes in subtle increments; how each muscle of his face drops, crinkling in the corners of his eyes and across his temple as a slow smile spreads across his face.

Buck lifts his right hand again, presses it to the cleft in Tommy’s chin, feels stubble and hard bone.

“I’m sorry too, baby,” Tommy says softly. “I just-I wish I could take all your hurt and pain away, especially now with everything going on.”

“You do, Tom, you do,” Buck says, desperate. “You make me feel- you make me feel seen and loved and-and you take all the bad things away, if only for a moment.”

Buck has the pleasure of watching Tommy’s face change. Like the sun breaking through the clouds at sunrise, a soft smile breaks through; Tommy bites his bottom lip but it doesn’t hide the way that his ears are turning red.

“You make me feel seen too, Evan,” Tommy says quietly. He leans forward, aloe vera gel discarded on the coffee table. His hands are still clammy as he brushes the back of his knuckles over the jut of Buck’s jaw, his thumb pressing against the curve of Buck’s chin. Buck is helpless to do anything but lean into it. “You’re so- so incredibly important to me, sweetheart, and I feel so - Evan?”

Buck startles; he’d been engrossed in Tommy’s face and the sweet words - the warmth that they had inspired. 

“Tom?”

But Tommy isn’t looking him full in the face anymore; horror spreads like ripples across his face. Eyes wide and stuck fast on where his hand had slipped downwards to the base of Buck’s throat. For a moment; Tommy simply stares at him, chest heaving, terrified. It’s only when Buck tries to move, to look at what has the man so fixated that it seems to break something inside of him.

“Evan? ” Tommy whispers. “Evan, baby, please-”

“Tommy?” Buck asks, gentle. He’s never seen him like this before; unmoored, unmade. Like something intrinsic has been broken inside of him. “Honey, what’s the matter?”

Tommy doesn’t answer; it’s as if he can’t. Panic and terror have swept everything away. Tommy has never been an outwardly expressive man; he’d told Buck bits and pieces about his childhood, and how he’d been taught that men should never show emotions, that they made men weak. He’s made a lot of progress since his being a kid, but there’s a part of Tommy that still shuts down or goes blank when it comes to emotions that he can’t quite understand unless they tend to overwhelm him.

It’s still hard to move, with both his cast and the lingering body pains from impacting with the asphalt, but Buck tries; he leans forward, presses his jaw further into Tommy’s palm, where his thumb is slowly dragging to and fro against clean shaven skin. His hand clamps tight around Tommy’s knee, digging into the bony cap of it. 

“Talk to me, love,” Buck begs. “What’s going on, where have you gone?”

For a moment, Tommy’s mouth opens, lips trembling. He looks gutted.

Then;

“Oh, Evan,”Tommy whispers. “Evan, baby, sweetheart please, please you need-”

What Buck needs, he never quite finds out.

Like an elastic stretched just enough - 

“ Tommy?” Buck asks, urgently. 

- almost too much - 

Tommy keens, he’s cracking down the very middle.

- too much too much - 

“Please, baby, I can’t - I can’t do this without you.”

- it snaps back into place.

“Tommy?”

“Baby?” Tommy sobs. “Baby - Evan - please, please.”

There’s blood on Tommy’s hand. Where it had been resting against Buck’s right side; it comes away wet with blood.

“T’mmy ?”

Chapter Text

Tommy 5

Sal near enough carries him to Evan’s ICU room.

In the few dragging minutes between bathroom break down and forcibly balancing himself back onto a knife’s edge, Evan has been moved from the surgical recovery suites and into his Intensive Care Unit room after the others had visited him in the recovery suite. 

Tommy’s feet are almost numb, his stomach threatening to rebel with every step they get closer to Evan. They’d passed a tearful Maddie and Howie as they’d chatted quietly outside of the ICU’s door; Maddie pressing her forehead against her husband’s shoulder as he’d tucked her as close as she could possibly get.

Howie had had blood deep beneath his nails, still.

 Maddie had only moved away enough to grasp Tommy’s hands in hers, doe eyes big and wide and wet and it’s not very often that Tommy can see the similarities in the Buckley siblings but like this; terrified and near tears but with a well of inner strength that Tommy could never get close to, it’s so very obvious to see that Evan and Maddie are related - both by blood and trauma.

Maddie had said, voice tear wet and trembling around the edges but with a confidence borne from knowledge; “He’s going to be okay,” She’d promised Tommy. “Buck knows he’s got so much left to live for.”

There’s a ghost of a word lingering on the end of that; that for a long time Evan didn’t think he had a lot to live for and that it had only been sheer stubbornness and his desperation to be seen that had allowed Evan to continue living, despite how often he’d thrown himself head first into situations that most would never have survived.

Tommy sometimes wonders what would have happened if he and Evan had met earlier; he’d broken off his engagement with Abby around the same time that he’d transferred to Harbour, having seen it as a way to become someone new, someone better that tried to be better than he had once been.  It hadn’t always worked, but time and energy and reluctant therapy had helped. 

Not six months after transferring, Tommy had heard rumours about a probie over at the 118 who was known for hard headedness - the stories had never really pinned a name to them, not all of them anyway, but after Howie’s run in with a rebar and multiple apologies, Tommy had reconnected with Howie and Hen and some others at the 118 again. It had been Hen who’d been somewhat caustic of the probie - a manchild, she’d called him with a grimace - but had followed it up with a note of how he had his heart in the right place and a loyal streak to put a golden retriever to shame. High praise from a woman who tolerated little bullshit and had the means to back that ill-tolerance up. 

When Tommy wants to dig into his own soft underbelly to try and gut himself, he thinks that he’d have broken sweet and reckless twenty six year old Evan Buckley into a thousand toxic pieces; he’d been working on himself, especially post breaking the engagement, but there had been a lot of things that Tommy had had to unlearn, things that he hadn’t really thought he’d taken on board, but Tommy supposes things like that have a way of creeping up on you without you realizing. As much as he wishes he and Evan could have had more time, he wouldn’t wish that on Evan - not on that young and stupidly sweet, desperate for any affection he could ever get, Evan.

“What if he-” Tommy gasps.

“Shut up, T,” Sal hisses. “Don’t you dare.”

Normally amused by Sal’s caustic humor and forwardness, Tommy aborts a flinch into a particularly violent blink, reflexive if a little obvious. Sal’s arm around his suddenly feels like a ten tonne anchor, and Tommy is slowly drowning on dry land.

He doesn’t know what he’d do if Evan Buckley died, Tommy thinks. He isn’t quite sure he’d actually survive; he’d be nothing more than a ghost with its most important parts missing - nothing more than a zombie with its heart and soul still dug deep six feet beneath the earth. Evan isn’t allowed to die, he thinks. If anyone is to die, Tommy thinks quietly, God please let it be me .

Sal jerks to a stop.

Evan’s ICU room is only a few feet away; locked behind another pair of double doors where Tommy can just see the blurs of shadows moving behind the half pulled curtains. Instead of knocking on those doors and being let through, Sal has jerked them to a stop and, suddenly furious - fucking incandescent with rage - Tommy rounds on him. He stops short at Sal’s face.

It’s cold, like Sal’s face never is, carved from stone. Something hard and hurting has settled in the deep shadows of his face. Tommy’s mouth shuts without his permission. Sal has always been shorter - if stockier - than Tommy, but the man has a way, a physicality to him that has always put Tommy in mind of his CO’s; authoritative and knowing that they’re going to be listened to because they’re the only ones who won’t fuck shit up.

“If you go in there thinkin’ that he’s gonna to die,” Sal says quietly. “Buck is gonna feel that.”

A gut-punch would have been less hurtful. Even whilst sparring, Sal has never pulled any punches.

“That kid's gonna need all the help and good shit he can possibly get, T,” Sal tells him. “I understand that you’re goin’ through your own shit and that this is somethin’ I could never get, but T - T, brother, unless the doctors say something about him not possibly makin’ it, you need to stay positive.”

Breathing hurts. Living hurts. Tommy has never been an optimist; his dad had always said to keep your wishes low because then if it doesn’t come true, you aren’t going to be disappointed. That had always been at the back of Tommy’s mind, from childhood to teenager stupidity to even his adult life where he was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Evan was the positive one - Evan was the one who thought the best of people, who woke up every day and lit up the world with just himself. As a child, Maria Kinard used to read her son Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland when his dad used to drink himself into such a stupor that he’d pass out. She’d always used to say that impossible things were never truly impossible; make a list, his mom would say, and suddenly impossible things only became impossible when you let them.

That had died with his mom, gone with her head and the wall they’d had to replaster because they couldn’t scrub it clean.

To think of Evan like that; gone in a single moment - it hurts worse than anything Tommy ever thought could. He turns towards Sal, who only grabs his shoulder, thumb digging into the clavicle enough for it to hurt; the ache blossoms and he welcomes the hurt.

But those impossible things made possible - that was Evan . Everything impossible became possible when Tommy was around him - breathing, living, loving. 

“Stay positive,” Tommy repeats. It sounds faint even to him. Sal eyes him, dubious. Then; “What if- what if if he’s already- already-”

Tommy can’t even say the word, finds his voice giving out.

“That’s the funniest soundin’ “stay positive” I’ve ever fuckin’ heard, Kinard.” Sal tells him.

Involuntarily, a laugh bubbles up, and Tommy swallows both it and the sudden guilt that comes along with it.

“I don’t know how to do this without him anymore, Sal.” Tommy whispers.

A large hand grasps the nape of his neck, shakes him like scruffing a recalcitrant cat. 

“You’ve done it before without him, brother, and you can do it again.”

“I don’t want to, Sal. I don’t- life without Evan ?”

“Don’t -” Sal warns. He points a finger inches from Tommy’s face.

“Inconceivable.” Tommy’s mouth threatens a smile, nothing more than a weak tremor even through the numbness of his face.

“Oh for fuck ’s sake,” Sal groans but his mouth twitches. 

Guilt floods in after the amusement, a brief high followed immediately by a swinging low that guts Tommy. He chokes on his own tongue, swallows it down and presses into the ache of Sal’s hand against his shoulder.

The doors to Evan’s ICU room looms ahead.

“C’mon, T,” Sal says quietly. The hand on his shoulder propels Tommy forward gently; for such a rough man, Sal does soft so instinctively. “Let’s go say hello to your boy.”

They’re buzzed through with little fanfare; security protocols Tommy is well aware of as a first responder. He’s never really been on the receiving end of it, not like this.

Cedars-Sinai Intensive Care Unit is as stark and white as its waiting room; dimly lit with a backdrop of quietly beeping machines and a nurses station stacked with paperwork and the staff mainly dispersed with only a single person standing just to the side. She’s staring right at them.

“Tommy Kinard?” She asks in a hushed voice. “Maddie - Buck’s sister - let me know that you're his partner and will be staying with him when appropriate?”

Tommy gives a single nod, lips clenched tight enough to almost hurt. Sal is a monolith at his side.

“Can- can I see him?” He asks, hoarse.

“Of course,” The woman says. She sounds endlessly kind,and it soothes some of Tommy’s frazzle nerves. Evan deserves all the kindness he can get. “I’m Alicia, I’ll be looking after him today so if you have any questions or need anything, let me know, okay?”

“Thank you.” Tommy rasps.

She then turns to Sal.

“Unfortunately, sir, I can only allow one person to stay,” To her credit, she does look genuinely apologetic. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Sal turns immediately to him. 

“Are you gonna be okay?” He asks.

Tommy’s immediate and instinctive response is no, but he takes a deep breath and thinks about how he’s going to be seeing Evan in just a few steps. 

“I’ll be fine, Sal.” Tommy says. Sal’s face is caustic.

“Alright if I walk him to his boy’s room?” Sal asks Alicia. She gives a brief smile.

“Of course, though I can’t allow you to stay for long.” 

Alicia leads them only a few steps away, just a ways off from the nurses station. Another two nurses step out and away from Evan’s half curtained off room with a quick exchange of words to Alicia that Tommy can’t quite hear. Alicia’s face turns grim for a moment, shadowed in the dim lighting as she turns away from them. Tommy’s gut clenches.

For a brief second, as the third nurse lingers, Tommy hears; “ electrolyte imbalance worsening- anesthesia, maybe?” before Alicia notices Tommy watching them. She gives a slightly anemic smile before waving them closer. Outside Evan’s room, with no doors but two half pulled curtains acting as a door and a wide window with half closed blinds.

“I do need to warn you,” Alicia says. “There’s a lot of wires and machines that are monitoring Buck, and I know the ventilator can look scary, but it’s just to give his battered lungs a chance to try and heal, especially with the drain attached to his chest, okay?”

“Thank you.” Tommy says again. All his words escape him. He’s never been a particularly verbose man but this is a new low. Everything has gone away, and he can’t get them back.

“Sir, I can allow you to stay for another five with your friend, but then I’m going to have to kindly ask you to leave,” Alicia’s voice is endlessly kind but there’s a current of steel under threading her tone. She waits until Sal has nodded, before saying; “If you need anything, press the call bell.”

She leaves. Tommy breathes and stares blankly into Evan’s dimly lit room.

“Tommy?” Sal asks quietly. His hand presses against Tommy’s shoulder.

Tommy breathes heavily - shakily -  in through his nose and out through his mouth. For all that he’d panicked about wanting  - needing - to see Evan, suddenly he can’t move those last few feet.

“C’mon, brother.” Sal says softly. 

Feet unrooted, Tommy walks towards the love of his life’s ICU room. 

Hands shaking, Tommy pulls back the curtain of Evan’s room. He steps into the dim light.

He gives a low moan, aching. He clutches Sal’s shoulder, feels the tension in that too.

This isn’t the first time that Tommy has seen someone in the hospital, or even in the ICU; from family to friends to co-workers, it’s a rare military personnel or first responder that hasn’t either been in the hospital or had someone they know in one. 

Tommy had thought he was ready; that he could do this, that he was prepared to see Evan - sweet, cranky and bratty in the mornings if he didn’t get his good morning kiss in sufficient enough time, loving Evan - in a hospital bed for something more serious than a dislocated shoulder. Let it be known that Tommy Kinard is a fool - an absolute fool. There was no way to be prepared for this.

Evan lies, pale and still apart from the mechanical rise and fall of his bruised chest. Through the heavy bandages and tape wrapped around his shoulder and securing itself around his waist, Tommy can see the lingering edges of bruises; hand prints prominent in the black and blue from CPR. He wonders who did it; how many times Evan’s ribs were bent and bowed and then broken  beneath the pressure. Pulpy and bruised, Evan is a million broken pieces that Tommy can’t even begin to gather.

At his side, a slender pipe spirals down, fitted towards a chest drain, and two other pipes - slenderer and higher up than the chest drain - snake out from Evan’s shoulder; wound drains already filling slowly with dark liquid. There’s several IV poles surrounding him, quietly blinking machines with fluids and a blood transfusion snake down too, IV cannulas in both arms.

It’s only when he feels the bed bump against his knees that Tommy is able to look Evan full in the face.

He swallows, heart aching.

Sallow and bloodless despite the ongoing transfusion, Evan’s face is drawn and pulled into sharp relief. His curls are matted against his forehead, long eyelashes hidden beneath thin strips of vertical tape closing his eyes - protocol, Tommy recalls vaguely, when vented. 

Tommy glances only briefly at the vent, thinks of it threaded down Evan’s throat, into his lungs to keep him breathing, and has to breathe through his nausea, looking away. 

“Hey, baby.” Tommy rasps. He steps closer, carefully avoiding wires and tubes. 

Whoosh-klick, goes Evan’s ventilator.

Grief, heavy and hurting, sinks further in.

Hesitantly, Tommy’s hand hovers over Evan’s sweat damp forehead. He can’t bear to touch him almost, scared that if he so much as lays a hand on him, Evan will crumble to pieces, will disappear, or that his chest will stop rising and Tommy will be helpless to bring him back. 

“I-” Tommy swallows both words and despair. Evan’s forehead is clammy, chilled and slick, and his curls stick up haphazardly when Tommy carefully sweeps them back. He twines one around his forefinger, watching as it springs back to shape when he lets it go. There’s a chair set by the head of Evan’s bed.

Tommy sinks into it, knees weak.

God, fuck, Evan.

“Jesus, kid.” Sal breathes, horrified. 

Tommy doesn’t look up at him, instead reaching a hand out to brush tender knuckles across the high of Evan’s cheek, smearing the fat of his thumb beneath the bruised hollows of Evan’s eyes. For a second - in another world - Tommy can think back to doing this when Evan is still asleep, face upturned towards the sun, and Tommy is breathless with the love he feels for this man, but then sleek tape undercuts his thumb and Tommy is back in the here and now; his beloved lying cold and still in a hospital bed, having gone far away from him, somewhere that Tommy can’t follow, not really.

On Evan’s upper arm, a blood pressure cuff whooshes and then constricts. To the side, there’s a wide screen displaying Evan’s heart rate and blood oxygen levels with numbers ticking up to signify his blood pressure. Constant monitoring to make sure they can keep an eye on him, because Evan was dead not too long ago and Tommy wouldn’t have known - he wouldn’t have felt it. 

A sob chokes him, has him gasping behind a tight hand pressed against his mouth. He chokes it down, eyes burning. Sal’s hand is a heavy weight at the nape of his neck.

“We were so close to being happy, Sal.” Tommy rasps. 

It’s only by the force of Evan’s limp touch that he keeps breathing, timing his own to the mechanical rise and fall of Evan’s chest. 

“I dunno how to do this without him anymore, Sal.” Tommy chokes out. 

Fingertips dig into his nape, shake him like a recalcitrant dog.

“You ain’t gotta do it without him, T,” Sal says. There’s something brittle to his tone now, as if he can’t believe his own words. “Buck’s strong, T, you just gotta have faith in ‘im.”

“I have all the faith in Evan,” Tommy says, hoarsely. He thumbs softly over Evan’s temple, against the short bristles of his hair. “I just- I’m not prepared to lose him, Sal, not again - not…not like this.”

A soft knock against the door, and Alicia’s dark head pops through.

“I’m sorry, but I think it’s time for your friend to go.” To her credit, she does look genuinely apologetic.

Tommy’s heart stops. He wants to ask them to let Sal stay; it feels as if Sal is the only thing keeping Tommy glued together and if Sal leaves, Tommy will fly into a million, shattered pieces.

“T-” Sal says.

“Can’t he-?” Tommy almost begs. Alicia winces at him.

“I am sorry.” She says softly. 

Sal looks almost shattered, something fragile beneath the surface of his face as he sweeps his gaze from Tommy to Evan and back.

“Keep me updated?” Sal asks quietly. There’s strength in his grip on Tommy’s shoulder. 

Tommy shudders a breath, leans into the touch for a moment. 

Evan’s ventilator goes whoosh-klick.

“Thanks, Sal.” Tommy rasps, grateful in ways he can never put into words.

“Don’t need to thank me, brother,” Sal says, hoarse. “Just take care of yourself, and princess, too.”

A tremulous grin that falls before it’s even fully formed.

“Take care, Sal.”

Tommy watches as Sal lingers at the door, concern folded into the furrow of his brow. He hovers, hesitating. It takes Alicia taking him gently by the elbow and physically leading the man away. Affection for his best friend blooms quietly in the pit of his belly; Sal likes to play the hardass but underneath that rock hard exterior, he’s a goddamn chihuahua. First time Hen had ever said that to the man, he’d flushed red and stuttered for half a minute before stalking away, back of his neck a siren call to Hen’s laughter.

“Got even Sal wrapped around your finger, baby.” Tommy chokes out with a laugh.

He frowns up at Evan’s vital signs; his blood pressure is still low even with the transfusion, but Tommy isn’t as well and as intensively trained as the nurses and doctors here are. He knows enough first aid to keep himself or others patched up, but it’s got nothing on aero- or paramedic training. 

Instead, he delicately holds Evan’s limp hand in two of his. Strokes his thumb across the broad expanse of Evan’s bony knuckles. Presses a dry mouthed kiss to it, and tries not to look at the blood embedded in the grooves of skin.

“Hell of a day, kid.” Tommy says into the palm of Evan’s hand. He buries his nose in the tight stretched skin between thumb and forefinger, kisses it softly, before pressing a kiss to each finger tip, before back to the middle of his palm.

Evan always liked it when Tommy would kiss his hand; turned pink and wide eyed with wonder when Tommy had first done so, and Tommy had been so taken with his reaction that he’d kept doing it just to see it.

“What’re you doin’ to me, Evan?” Tommy asks, hoarsely. “How have you got me fucking tail spinning so easily at the thought of losing you?”

Tommy knows. Tommy’s known for months, since before they got back together, probably before the break up even happened if he’s honest and truthful with himself in ways he often isn’t. Those three words have been chewed up and swallowed back for weeks, for months, now, and every time he sees Evan, Tommy has to stop himself from spilling his heart right there and then.

I love you has always been hard to say, but suddenly it’s never been easier, tripping off his tongue and Tommy knows Evan would look incandescent, would look beautiful in the aftermath of Tommy saying it.

But there’s a modicum of that old insecure man inside of him that stops him; and so instead of I love you, Tommy says;

“I can’t do this without you.” with tears in his eyes and his voice hoarse and breaking.

“Please, Evan - baby, goddamn beloved, don’t make me do this by myself.”

There’s a hitch in the ventilator, and Tommy’s head shoots up. His hand hovers over the call button but Evan seems to settle after choking, a brief blare of alarm that quietens as quickly as it rocked to life. A wary eye keeping close eye on Evan’s chest, Tommy tucks his hands back around Evan’s. 

“I need you to wake up as soon as you can, baby,” Tommy says quietly. His throat is torn, scratchy with tears in the back of his eyes. “I’m gonna need you to fight as best you can back to me, alright, Evan?”

If this was a movie, either a romantic comedy or some other genre, Evan would stir; he’d flutter those long eyelashes open that hadn’t been taped, and he’d reach a shaking but strong hand to touch at the cliff of Tommy’s tear wet jaw. If this was a movie, Evan wouldn’t be in the hospital, if this was a goddamn movie, Tommy would have gotten there just in time to tackle Evan out of the way, maybe have taken the bullet for himself. If this was a goddamn fucking movie , Tommy would know that Evan could hear him, would hear every word of comfort and desperate pleading that Tommy scraped from a raw throat. 

Instead, Evan’s ventilator is the only quiet answer, the slow whoosh-klick that is starting to burn itself into the very back of Tommy’s mind. A steady bu-beep gets faster, rapid and shrill in the background.

“Oh Evan,” Tommy squeezes his hand, tight enough the skin blanches. Evan remains unmoving. “Evan, baby, sweetheart , please, please you need to try and come back to me.”

Tommy reaches a hand up, unable to help himself as he presses a shaking palm against Evan’s pallid cheek; brushes a thumb over that sleek tape, eyelashes fanning briefly against his thumb when he skims the fat of his thumb over the hollows of those eyes. 

 The blood pressure cuff squeezes, ticking slowly up - it slows - slows - 

Perhaps it’s the lack of adrenaline, perhaps it’s the way Tommy has been on a knife’s edge since hearing about Evan being shot over the radio, perhaps it’s the way normally Evan would have nuzzled his face into Tommy’s hand, would’ve given that sweet little grin as he kissed at the fat of Tommy’s palm, but for a second that feels like a lifetime, something swells up and then swells over .

“Please, baby, I can’t - I can’t do this without you.”

Tears fall, hot and desperate; not for the first nor last time, Tommy Kinard’s heart is wrenched in twain by the man in front of him whom he desperately loves but cannot help.

He rests a hang against Evan’s mechanically rising chest, needing the beat of his heart beneath his hands even with the heart monitor; the other slaps over his mouth and Tommy tries so hard to swallow the noises, swallow his sorrow. He’s used to this; as a kid, as a soldier, as a firefighter after hard scenes and calls but the dam has burst, cracked and shattered by tender and loving hands that have a name. A noise bursts free, worn and broken and Tommy hunches over, heart threatening failure; a faultline had given, useless and shredded.

A strange noise, and Tommy coughs, sure it had been him, mired in his own misery. But it comes again, and the sturdy chest beneath his hand hiccups, spasms. A strangled sound, choking and guttural. 

An alarm screeches.

Tommy shoots to his feet, instinctively pressing the alarm button.

“Baby?” It comes out a sob, frantic and desperate.  

Evan convulses, choking, head pressing into the pillow beneath it. His chest caves in - rises mechanically - falls mechanically - it doesn’t - it doesn’t - 

Another alarm screeches.

“I need help here!” Tommy roars. His throat tears. He flattens the head of the bed.

Tommy Kinard has done CPR before; but he’s never done it on Evan. 

Evan’s chest bows beneath his hands, fragile and cracked ribs bowing further than normal, shifting beneath his weight. Evan shifts bodily beneath him, loose limbed and lax, like a doll, like a - like a body . 

“Baby - Evan, please - please.”

The room floods, strong hands reaching forward and Tommy has to stamp on the urge to shrug them off. Instead, against all instinct and love that has Tommy wanting to reach forward and give his heart to his love, Tommy lets them drag him back.

A single nurse stays at his side, and Tommy finds himself staring blankly as the medical staff shove Evan’s blanket to his waist, pulling a cord on the air mattress. Medical jargon that fizzles before it even reaches Tommy’s ears, a haze of fog falling over his eyes. The nurse at his side - Alicia, Tommy thinks distantly - steers him out of Evan’s room. She’s talking to him, Tommy knows, can hear the soft buzz of her voice but the words escape him. 

Instead, Tommy presses his forehead against the cool of the window of Evan’s room. A hand presses against the glass, fingertips blanching white.

Evan’s dying, Tommy thinks. He’s leaving, he’s fucking dying, and Tommy can do nothing.

Tommy doesn’t dare close his eyes, but the tears fall all the same.

Chapter Text

Buck 6

WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK

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WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK WAKE UP BUCK

WAKE UP EVAN, PLEASE

Chapter Text

Tommy 7

Tommy knows exactly where he is when he awakes.

The almost caustic scent of cleaning agents and the slow beeping of Evan’s hospital equipment makes it impossible for Tommy not to know whether he’s on the verge of sleep, exhaustion from back to back shifts or freshly waking up.

For a moment, Tommy refuses to open his eyes. Refuses to wake up in a world where Evan is still sleeping, where those beautiful blue eyes won’t open when Tommy rolls over and blink sleepily at him like they usually do. Instead, with his feet resting on the bars beneath Evan’s hospital bed and his head resting near the top of the bed so he can hold Evans' unmoving hand in his, Tommy keeps his eyes closed.

For a single, second long moment, Tommy can make himself think that they’re at home, that Evan is unhurt and that Tommy has fallen asleep hunched over his latest airfix model in their hobby room, and Evan is resting against his knee, where he tends to rest when he wants to be close to Tommy but is still so sleepy and doesn’t want to be in the way, no matter how much Tommy says he never will be.

Then the heart monitor beeps, quiet and unobtrusive normally, but it has Tommy’s hand clenching tighter around Evans, sure that he’s going to hear that rapid beeping go faster and faster only to just suddenly- stop.

He’s heard it enough in his sleep the past three days; woken up on edge at every change and every time a noise was heard. He’s been on the very edge since he ended up lifeflighting the love of his life to Cedars-Sinai, through having a panic attack and genuinely thinking that the man was dead. He thinks the only time he won’t be on edge is when Evan wakes up, and the doctors aren’t sure if he will.

Sometime between apparently waking up in surgery, calling out for Tommy, and Tommy having an emotional breakdown in his best friend’s arms and Tommy having to do CPR on his loves limp body, Evan had slipped into a coma; had gone somewhere Tommy couldn’t properly reach him, couldn’t help him again.

It had nearly sent Tommy into a tailspin all over again, sure that when he stepped into Evan’s ICU room, he’d simply see a dead body, devoid of life and the passion and energy Evan always exudes. But he’d lived. Evan was alive, comatosed but alive, and Tommy would forever hope he’d wake up every time he sees him.

They hadn’t been able to give a reason for the coma, mainly that Evan had been under a tremendous amount of stress. He’d been shot twice, had coded more than twice after losing a not insignificant amount of blood and they’d had to reinforce his collarbone with a small plate where the bullet had ricocheted of the bone, fracturing it and having to do a fracture fixation surgery, the surgery where Evan had awoken.

Tommy scrubs his face with his free hand, almost enough for it to hurt. He scratches at the short growth of hair at his jaw, wrinkling his nose when he cards a hand through his hair and feels the greasy ends. He hasn’t gone home since Evan was admitted; living solely on the things that Sal had packed for him and the few bits and pieces that the 118 had dropped off when they’d visited every day. He’d made use of the limited facilities in the ICU family rooms, and the nursing staff had been incredibly patient with him and Evan’s revolving door of visitors, though he couldn’t imagine that patience would go much further if he smelt as terrible as he no doubt looked. 

Maddie had promised to do the laundry for him when she and Howie had visited them yesterday, both of them with pallid faces and exhausted eyes, tremulous smiles as if Tommy couldn’t tell that Maddie had probably cried herself to sleep and Howie hadn’t been much better; shattered and guilty, with blood still beneath his fingernails that he couldn’t quite reach. Bobby was due today, maybe with Athena in tow, though apparently things had been chaotic with Evan’s case that she wasn’t ‘officially’ working on.

They hadn’t been given much information on the case via official channels, and Athena had had little share with them too, kept away from the majority of the case by a Detective Ransone who was in charge of it and she’d apparently been reluctant to do anything that could fuck the case up in any way. From what little Tommy had been able to gather, both the 118 and the elderly couple that lived in 626 S Kenneth Road had been victims of the recent spate of hoax emergency 911 calls.

Tommy sighs, stretching his back this way and that, feeling every bit his forty nine years of age, before he clutches Evan’s hand tighter and turns towards the bed.

As it has been for the past three days, Evan remains unmoving upon his hospital bed. 

He’s pallid and still like he never usually is, flat on his back with the head of the bed elevated to roughly thirty five degrees. Maddie had quietly explained that it was to aid in the prevention of ventilation acquired pneumonia and aspiration. Tommy had briefly wished he hadn’t asked. Evan's been on the ventilator since surgery and coding, mainly to give his weakened lungs a chance to recuperate since the bullet that had fractured his clavicle had ricocheted downwards, landing mostly by his armpit but one piece had punctured his lung. The chest drain was doing its job, for both air drainage and lung inflation, and the surgical wound drain was draining well and would be removed at the same time, but that doesn't mean Tommy doesn't flinch every time he sees the large sleek plaster on Evan’s side, hiding the inch thick plastic tube that coils towards the floor into a see-through container, nor the thinner passive drainage tubes a few feet further up.

His curls are limp and unwashed, brushed back from his forehead from how Tommy runs his fingers through it, his eyelids pale and translucent beneath the dimmed lights, and his lips are chapped around the thin flexible tube of the endotracheal, the stabilization straps padded by the gauze that Tommy had carefully slipped beneath them when he saw how raw Evan’s cheeks were getting.

“Mornin’ baby,” Tommy says quietly. He brings Evan's hand up, presses a soft kiss to his knuckles, rests his chin on their hands as he smiles tremulously at his partner. “I’m just gonna have a quick shower as the nurses do med rounds and then I’ll be right back, alright?”

Evan doesn’t say anything, only the whoosh-klick pause of Evan’s ventilator pump in a rhythmic cycle sounding. 

“Wake up for me, alright baby?” Tommy asks. His voice cracks. “Wake up for me Evan, please .”

Only Evan's ventilator - whoosh-klick - answers.

Tommy darts his eyes up to the ceiling, as if that will be able to stop the tears burning the back of his eyes. He blinks quickly, sniffs - before he takes a deep breath and presses a kiss to the back of Evan’s cold hand. Just outside of the small room where the open door faces the nurses desk, he can hear the nurses getting ready for the morning rounds.

“I’ll only be a few minutes,” Tommy promises him. “Then I’ll be right with you.”

It's an almost herculean effort to pull himself away. He stoops from where he’s stood, pressing a chaste kiss to Evan’s forehead, smoothing back those greasy curls, fingernails catching on the tangled strands. He stands there for the longest time, standing and holding Evan’s hand; he can’t quite make himself pull away. He knows he should, but every time he thinks about pulling away, it makes something itch in the back of his head, something cold and aching; panicky whenever he lets Evan out of his eyesight.

Regardless, as the nurse steps in and murmurs something about changing Evan’s intravenous fluids, Tommy ends up stepping out, a towel and clothes in hand. The family rooms are just off to the right of the ICU entrance; a small and almost barren sitting room with two bathrooms fitted with a shower, sink and toilet for convenience sake. 

It’s almost awful to say, but as he stands beneath the hot water, he feels just a little better, just a little more human. He feels like himself for the first time since the helicopter, since hearing the awful words of a thirty four year old male with double GSW’s in critical condition and knowing deep in his bones that that had been Evan, his Evan.

Tommy deliberately tips his face into the hot water, lets it pound against the tender lids of his eyes as he scrubs shampoo through his hair, tries to wash away the panic he can feel trying to cling to him. He’s been in a state of panic since he first heard from ATC. He hasn’t cried since his breakdown in Sal’s arms and when he’d first gone to see Evan in his ICU room, almost refuses to let himself feel that state of despair and depression and grief again, despite the fact that he can feel it bubbling up at the back of his throat every moment that Evan doesn’t wake up.

They’ve given Evan a good prognosis despite everything; the blood loss had been bordering on severe and had resulted in several blood transfusions and he was on precautionary blood thinners - injections this time apparently, and Tommy flinched every time he saw the bruises on Evan’s lower belly - to prevent possible clots due to his past history of a pulmonary embolism but his vitals were holding as steady as they could. The drain was supposed to be coming out in a few days as Evan’s lung had shown good progress and was slowly healing, and the doctor had shown ‘cautious optimism’ about Evan being able to come off the ventilator should that happen.

Cautious optimism, Bobby had said with a wry grin, was the best prognosis they’d ever given Buck, I think. Tommy had had to sit with his head in his hands and work on his suspension of disbelief for a few long moments.

He’d known that it had been Evan who was caught beneath the Ladder Truck all those years ago; he’d kept in touch with Howie and Hen periodically and had gotten in touch to make sure they were all okay and Howie had updated him about how it was Tommy’s replacement that had gotten injured. It had been Bobby who’d touched on the blood thinners with an apologetic lilt in his voice and it had been Eddie who’d brought up the tsunami in the same breath as Christopher and Buck saving him .

At the time, Tommy had known it was Evan Buckley that all that had happened to but he hadn't known Evan ; it hadn't been personal for Tommy like it was now. 

Tommy had had to grapple with the fact that so many different times he could have lost Evan before he’d even gotten the chance to fully know him, and the lightning strike had been the cherry on top of a shit sundae, especially when Tommy had found out about it because Evan had had such a severe panic attack he’d fainted right into Tommy’s arms as soon as Tommy had unlocked the front door, sodden and wincing at every flash of lightning. Three minutes and seventeen seconds, Eddie had said. 

So; cautious fucking optimism it was, even if Tommy feels like screaming at all of them for being so flippant. This was, luck of all luck, the first time he or Evan had ever been properly injured on the job since being together, this time and the first time, and so Tommy had never had to do this, not really.

It’s a rare first responder that hasn’t sat at someone's bedside; friend or family or lover. Tommy had swung by when Howie had had rebar shoved through his skull and when he’d been stabbed by Maddie’s shitty - and thankfully dead - ex-husband, but time and distance had dulled that ache into a half remembered bruise. He’d visited Bobby briefly when he’d been shot by the same sniper that had shot Eddie, though Tommy hadn’t known him then, only very peripherally aware of the newer members of his old Fire House. He’d somehow kept missing Evan, and sometimes Tommy wonders what would have happened if they’d met earlier, had realized things earlier.

Tommy’s never really had to do this; his mother’s suicide had taken her out in one gunshot, his dad still living unfortunately, his Nonna and Nonno fit as fiddles despite them getting on in age. Out of his relationships, only Abby had been a first responder but she’d been a Dispatcher, which according to Evan hadn’t even been classed as a first responder until very recently in California, and so rarely put in the line of danger and she’d then spent most of the end of their failed engagement and relationship with Patricia who was getting worse with her dementia. 

The 118 that Tommy had been apart of under Gerrard and even when Bobby had taken over had rarely seen the bad luck that the 118 now seemed to attract, and there was a vague part of Tommy that had simply went thank fuck for that when Howie and Hen had been sharing their adventures when he’d first been dating Evan and reigniting their friendships.

Now though, he thinks he’d give anything to have a share of that bad luck, would take all of it if it meant that he could spare Evan just even a moment of what he’s going through now. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to work besides Evan; he’s seen how intense and focused the man is, and thinks it would be like working hand in hand with fire itself.

Ignoring the urge to drown himself in the shitty water pressure of the hospital shower, Tommy finishes scrubbing the shampoo from his hair and rinses himself off. For a moment, he presses his forehead against the warmed tiles, clenches his eyes shut, lets himself feel that deep empty pit that’s taking up space in his belly. 

He’s never had to do this with a partner - a romantic partner - before and he doesn’t quite understand… anything, if he’s honest.

He’s anxious and scared and so fucking terrified of how he reacted when he thought for those long minutes that Evan was dead. He’s still trying to shake off the cobwebs of panic stricken, all consuming grief where he thought Evan was dead and how he’d just - shattered.

For a long moment the earth had stood still and his heart had stopped beating because he’d thought Evan’s had for good. He’s never had that before, not this empty pit in the base of his belly that threatens to drown him if he even thinks of it for a single moment; he’s not had this knot in the back of his throat that threatens tears every time he hears a too long monotone beep of Evan’s heart monitor. He’s so fucking scared and he doesn’t know what to do, where to put that terror because it’s just so foreign .

What he really wants is to go home. 

He wants to wake up with Evan in his bed, sleep warm and laze in the sun where Tommy always forgets to pull the curtains too. He wants to cook breakfast in their kitchen, singing along to the radio and wishing he’d get the courage to pull Evan into his arms and dance with him like he so desperately wants to but wonders if Evan would find it too cheesy.  He wants to trade kisses over breakfast, and then having to rush to get to work because they lingered too long in the shower and getting dressed. He wants to drop Evan off because his shift starts earlier and Evan likes him driving him around because Evan trusts him. He wants to keep checking his phone during shifts because Evan always messages him and Tommy can never help himself and will always reply back when he’s able, he wants to hear that beautiful voice ramble over voice messages about facts and the deep dives that no one but Evan can really parse how he got into but that Tommy loves to listen to because it’s Evan. He wants - he wants - 

He wants -

Tommy smacks his hand against the shower wall. Chokes on a sob.

He wants Evan.

He wants Evan to wake up, wants Evan to have never been fucking shot in the first place but beggars can’t be choosers, because otherwise he and Evan would be a thousand miles away from Cedars-Sinai, fucked out and loved out, tanned and smiling and walking funny down the streets of Vista. He wants to be able to tell Evan that Tommy loves him, wants the whole world and the whole package with him. He’s waited this long because he keeps waiting for the right moment, to show Evan just how truly loved he is, how Tommy would give everything he has to this man, would give himself and the world but there never seems to be an opportunity, and then if there is, it’s his own fear getting in the way. 

If beggars were choosers, Tommy would be in that fucking hospital bed and Evan would be unhurt, uninjured and never having felt the gutpunch sear of a bullet wound.

He wants Evan.

God, fuck Evan, please.

A shower tile threatens to crack beneath his fist, pain searing through the side of his hand, and Tommy clenches his fist tighter, wishes his nails were long enough to feel the bite of into his palm. Instead, he smacks his forehead against it, once - twice - before he simply rests his head there for one long moment.

Evan is going to wake up, he thinks to himself. The prognosis is good and the doctors are cautiously fucking optimistic; it shouldn’t matter that Evan hasn’t woken up in three - almost four - long days, that he’s been lying in the ICU bed with monitors and a chest drain and that fucking ventilator that goes whoosh-klick where normally Evan would be filling up the room with his facts and random information dumps and Tommy would be helpless in his urge to kiss him and love him and breathe in every scrap of sunshine Evan could ever give him.

Tommy fumbles blindly for the shower controls, dousing himself briefly in arctic cold water before he manages to grasp the right handle and turns it off. He stands there, shivering.

He doesn’t know what to do.

A knock against the small bathroom door and Tommy startles, nearly slipping on the wet tile. 

“Tommy?” 

Fuck.

“Gimme a minute.” Tommy calls. 

He thanks the army and the fire department for how quick he can get dressed and undressed; that and he and Sal used to time one another in a bet to see who could get in and out of turnouts faster. Regardless, he’s pulling a henley over still somewhat damp skin as he kicks the door open.

Bobby smiles at him over the two coffee cups he’s holding; they aren’t from the hospital and Tommy gives brief thanks to both God and Bobby that he doesn’t have to have any more of that swill. Tommy had had better coffee when the supply lines in Afghanistan had been compromised and they’d almost resorted to boiling someone's boots for tea.

“Thanks.” He says, and takes the coffee, feeling the heat of it sear into his palm.

Bobby claps a hand onto the back of his shoulder. 

“C’mon,” He says. “Athena’s already with Buck, and there’s some news from Lou.”

Tommy only makes a confused noise around a mouthful of too sugary coffee.

Lou, Bobby explains as they tread the familiar path to Evan’s ICU room in front and to the right of the nurses station, is the detective in charge of Evan’s case. Detective Ransone is familiar with Evan, Bobby proceeds to explain, but not close and so doesn’t pose as a conflict of interest as much as Athena would be even as a Sergeant and not a Detective. 

Tommy could care very little for what police members are familiar or friendly with Evan, so long as they get news on what’s happening with the case and what’s going to be done about the hoax calls that have plagued Los Angeles for the past few weeks.

The first view of Evan that Tommy gets makes his knees go weak.

He should be used to this. 

He’s been with Evan for all of these days in the ICU, and very little has changed in regards to the equipment and leads that Evan has been put on for monitoring. Perhaps it’s because this is actually the longest Tommy has been away from Evan since his admittance that maybe he’d - expected something to have changed. Maybe he’d thought it would be like the movies; where the first time Tommy is properly away, that Evan would wake up and then Tommy would walk into the hospital room and drop his coffee - because the actors always have coffee, no matter where they’d gone to - and would breathe out Evan’s name with such love and disbelief and then they’d kiss, would exchange i love you s and the whole scene would fade to black.

That isn’t what happens.

Instead;

Athena looks up from where she’d been talking to Evan, sat on the edge of the chair and holding Evan’s limp hand, brushing limp curls away from his forehead and adjusting the leads of his ECG as if she can’t quite help herself, as if she needs something to do with her hands. Tommy understands.

Across the bed from her is another man, tall and lithe, maybe just a little older than Bobby, maybe of an age with him. A thick scar wraps around his throat. Tommy tries not to stare.

“Lou,” Bobby smiles. Ah, Tommy thinks. “How have you been?”

Detective Ransone gives a thin-lipped smile, shakes Bobby’s hand and then Tommy’s. Tommy doesn’t really take him in, drifting to Evan’s side instead. He smiles wordlessly at Athena, who gives him a sharp eyed stare, as if she can peer inside of his head with only a glance. Tommy wouldn’t be surprised.

“Have a good night?” Athena asks, with a knowing tone. Tommy’s coffee sits rotten in the pit of his belly. 

“Same as the night before.” Is all he says. Athena hums, a glint in her eyes. 

Athena stands, and before Tommy can protest, she quite literally manhandles him back into the chair with a hand against his chest. Tommy blinks.

Evan’s ventilator goes whoosh-klick. 

Tommy huffs out a quiet laugh, and he doesn’t pay attention to how Athena watches him with searching eyes as he leans forward. 

“Hi, Evan.” Tommy murmurs. He presses a kiss to Evan’s chilled forehead, brushes his thumb across the arch of his cheekbones. Evan doesn’t say anything, and it makes something quiet and cold clench tightly in Tommy’s stomach.

Instead, he takes Evan’s hand into his; presses the palm against his face, kisses it briefly. Normally, Evan would brush a thumb beneath his eyes, would have an almost shy smile against his face as if he couldn’t quite believe he could have this, could have Tommy. Instead, Tommy has to bury his face into a limp palm, taking care of the cannula just in the middle of Evan’s forearm because his veins had collapsed when he’d been brought in due to blood loss and dehydration.

A hand against his shoulder and Tommy looks up, letting Evan’s hand slip free from his face but never letting go.

Bobby stands at his side, squeezing his shoulder. Tommy briefly wonders if this is what Evan feels when Bobby does the same to him.

Detective Ransone and Athena are both on the opposite side of Evan’s bed; the other man holding a file emblazoned with LAPD in stark white writing.

“First off, I’d like to offer my condolences for Buckley’s injuries,” Detective Ransone says, soundly genuinely aggrieved. “Secondly, I’ve come down myself to offer a word on what’s happening with Buckley’s case, since Athena is close to just going out on her own and we’d like to not have someone shot again right now.”

Ransone grimaces, flickering an apologetic wince at his thoughtless words.

“As we’re all first responders,” Ransone gives Tommy a quick look. “Bobby’s told me you’re AirOps for the FD, I’m sure you’re aware of the hoax calls that have been happening for the past few weeks that have put us all in danger?”

Tommy sighs, and he leans forward so he can curl a hand around Evans head; stroking the limp curls that desperately need a wash calms him down, soothes the panic that still roils beneath his skin. He and Evan have talked enough about the hoax calls and how they’ve both been sent to their respective share of them. 

Ransone flicks open the file, reading from it with a professional tone.

“Bradley and Josephine Williams of six-two-six S Kenneth Road in Burbank had never called nine-one-one to report a medical emergency and had been dead asleep when they were made aware of a banging noise at their back door.”

Tommy closes his eyes slowly. He presses his forehead against Evan’s knuckles, feeling the bite of pain. He can imagine exactly what had happened and how it had gone down. 

“They thought it might have been the wind, but then it came again and Mrs Williams sent her husband down with their personal weapon - an FN five-seven USG - to try and deter their trespassers. Mr Williams nearly fell down the stairs and so Mrs Williams grabbed the firearm and was the one to go downstairs just as their back door was kicked open by a tall man in dark clothes.”

“They didn’t hear Buck call out LAFD?” Athena says, a little incredulous. Ransone sighs.

“They’re in their seventies, Athena,” Ransone says, file closed and tucked beneath his arm. “The one-eighteen witness statements state that yeah, Buckley and Diaz called out LAFD when they first entered the property and again when Buckley broke down the back door, but both of the Williams’ are hard of hearing and weren’t exactly in a head space to put on their hearing aids.”

“Wait-” Athena says. Tommy looks up at her, frowning. “Bradley and Josephine Williams - they’re not Officer Tilly Williams’ parents, are they?” 

Ransone heaves a sigh. 

“Should have known.” Ransone says, lifting his eyes skyward. 

“The FN five-seven was used by the US army in the War in Afghanistan.” Tommy says quietly. 

He’d know. He has one packed away securely in his gun safe that’s attached to his bedside cabinet. Evan knows the combination and has a passing familiarity with guns but has never liked them. Neither does Tommy, but protection is protection and that hand gun had been given to him when he’d been discharged. Not something ordinarily done, but a lot of people had looked the other way after his discharge and they’d done so to a lot of the other soldiers.

“Airforce?” Ransone asks, eyeing him. Tommy shakes his head.

“Army.” Tommy says. 

People are always so surprised when he says he didn’t even think about the Airforce but the military had been an escape route and so was piloting in a way. Now though, he can’t imagine not being a pilot, up in the air with a set of wings to call his own.

“And now a pilot?” 

“Always a pilot.” Tommy smiles, a little grimly. Ransone nods. 

“Bradley and Josephine Williams had two children that joined the army and were shipped out to Afghanistan; their oldest, Stephen, died overseas and their daughter, Tilly, became an officer in LAPD after her discharge,” Ransone reports. “The weapon that Buckley was shot with was a service weapon that Officer Williams had retired from her own personal use and gifted to her aging parents as a personal protection weapon.”

“Do we know who called the hoax call in?” Bobby asks. His hand tightens on Tommy’s shoulder.

Ransone shakes his head; unsurprising, Tommy thinks, disappointed all the same.

“Not yet,” He says. “We’ve still got so many leads that we’re trying to follow and track down, and Buckley’s case is yet another in a long line of happenings because of the calls.”

Athena pinches the bridge of her nose.

“So we’ve got fuck all, is what you’re saying?” She dead pans. Ransone shrugs, gesturing a little helplessly.

“I’m on Buckley’s case but I’m not in control of the hoax calls case, I’m sorry, Athena.” 

Athena waves a hand, her other set on her hip.

“No, no, it’s not your fault, Lou, thanks for coming down here and letting us know what you know.”

Ransone smiles but there seems to be something on the tip of his tongue that he doesn’t quite know how to say.

“What is it?” Tommy asks and then, when Ransone turns to look at him, eyebrows raised. “You’ve got something else to say; what is it, Detective?”

Athena turns herself, raising her own eyebrow. Bobby squeezes Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy has to resist the urge to lean into it. Instead, he squeezes Evan’s limp one, hearing the whoosh-klick of Evan’s ventilator as if from far away.

“You don’t have to say anything now, this is going to be up to Buckley when he awakes,” Ransone says, and there’s a pit of gratitude in Tommy’s belly that Ransone says when and not if . “But Mr and Mrs Williams have requested to see Buckley when he is awake to - apologise.”

“Apologise.” Tommy says flatly. 

Perhaps it’s a little unfair. Bradley and Josephine Williams didn’t ask for this; they didn’t deliberately set out to hurt Evan and in fact had been victims themselves of the hoax callers that had terrified them enough that they’d felt a gun was their only source of protection. It isn’t even Officer Williams' fault, who had given them the personal protection weapon. The only people truly at fault were the people who were doing the hoax callers.

That doesn’t change the fact that Evan nearly died. He did die, heart having stopped three times and very nearly a fourth. That doesn’t change the fact that Evan is lying here, in front of Tommy, in an ICU bed in a level one trauma hospital because he was shot twice; he’s on a ventilator to give his collapsed lung a rest because of how much trauma it had undertaken.

Evan almost died and Tommy has a very limited capacity for forgiveness right now.

It’s selfish, and silly, and maybe Evan will want to meet them when he wakes up, but right now, there is no one Tommy wants further from his partner, thinking his heart would tear itself in two if he had to see the woman who had shot the man he loves. 

To his credit, Ransone doesn’t make a case for them.

“We’ll see,” Tommy says, instead. “What’s going to happen after?”

Ransone tucks his free hand into his jean pocket, face haggard. Tommy watches him, how he shifts on his feet. Tommy thinks he knows what the detective is going to say, and it doesn’t surprise him for all that there’s a pit of rage in the well of his belly. 

“Mrs Williams has pleaded guilty to shooting Buckley, which will cut her sentencing down, especially since her report shows that she feared for her life and she thought she was using reasonable force. Castle Doctrine was put in effect as soon as Buckley stepped over the threshold, and though Mr and Mrs Williams didn’t know Buckley didn’t have any weapons on him, the fact that there were several of you and that she feared for her life, well-”

Ransone gestures, a little helpless. Athena sighs.

Tommy only looks away.

Evan is still pale and unmoving, the whoosh-klick of his ventilator something that Tommy could set his watch too. Tommy leans forward, feeling how his chest presses against the side of the hospital bed, so he can curl a hand around the crown of Evan’s head. He knows what Evan will want, and could almost hear what the man would say. The Williams’ had been a victim as much as Evan himself had been, the man would say; that font of empathy that had drawn Tommy to him as much as it sometimes infuriated him. 

“We’ll see what Evan says when he wakes up,” Tommy says quietly, cutting through the soft conversations the other three were having. His hand clenches around Evan’s hand, presses a kiss to the calloused palm. “He’s triggered the ventilator a time or two and so they’re hoping to wean him off in a day as his lungs are healing nicely so the drain will be coming out soon. We’ll let you know when's a good time to come around, Detective Ransone.”

“Thank you, Mr Kinard,” Ransone says. He shakes Bobby’s hand and hugs Athena briefly. He only nods to Tommy, who doesn’t move himself away from Evan. “Athena has my number if you have any questions; give my best to Buckley when he wakes up.”

“Will do, Lou.” Athena says, and she presses a hand to Ransone’s elbow to lead him out. Their voices grow quieter and softer as they move away, but Tommy doesn’t particularly care to try and follow their conversation.

Bobby’s hand on his shoulder squeezes gently.

“How’re you doing, Tommy?” Bobby asks quietly. 

For a moment, Tommy simply looks down at Evan. He traces the slope of his nose, the bridge of his brow, his pink birthmark that Tommy always kisses in the morning because it makes Evan go pink in the cheeks and duck his head. He traces the fan of his pale eyelashes, half hidden beneath the white tape holding them fully closed. 

“What was it like?” 

Tommy doesn’t necessarily mean to ask it, but now that it’s slipped it, it’s all he can think about.

“I don’t understand.” Bobby says; from the corner of his eye, Tommy can see that he’s frowning.

“When he was struck by lightning,” Tommy says. “Eddie said he was de- down for-”

Bobby sighs.

“Three minutes and seventeen seconds.”

Bobby leaves his side, and for a second, Tommy mourns the lack of touch, before Bobby rests against the side of Evan’s hospital bed, and he places a hand on Evan’s blanket covered knee, squeezing gently.

“It was- hard,” Bobby says; he laughs softly, but there’s a brittle edge to it. “It was… weeks before he woke up, and even then they thought he wouldn’t. He was so close to the CPR threshold, where they say oxygen loss and brain damage is inevitable, but we didn’t care about that, not really; so long as Buck woke up we could deal with everything that came after.”

Bobby gives a shuddering breath, scrubbing a shaking hand over his face. For a moment, Bobby looks every year of his age; tired and drained and scared. Tommy wonders if he looks like that too.

“We’d had an entire schedule set up for visiting,” He says, and his eyes are fastened on Evan’s sunken face. “We never wanted him to be alone, not again. It was hard, and it’s hard now, seeing him like this, but-”

Here, Bobby turns towards him. There’s a wealth of emotion behind those eyes, and Tommy swallows thickly. He grasps Evan’s hand tighter, feeling the notches of his knuckles. There’s still blood beneath Evan’s nails.

“I’m so glad that he has you,” Bobby tells him. Tommy’s chest catches. “I’m so glad that you love him like you do, as much as you do.”

“How do you-”

“It’s easy to see, Tommy.”

For a second, Tommy has to swallow the knot of emotions blocking his throat, his tongue thick in his mouth. 

Things with Evan have never been exactly smooth; their first six months dating, they hadn’t even been reading from the same book, let alone the same page and it had coloured their expectations and knowledge of one another. Tommy hadn’t felt comfortable to show all of his messy bits and pieces and Evan had been so happy in finding himself that he hadn’t exactly dug deep enough to try and find those grooves. They’d done the same things in such different ways that they hadn’t been sure of what was wrong, and Tommy had been in panic mode when he’d broken it off with Evan in his loft that first time. Even then, with all of the problems and the rocky foundation that had been their relationship at the time, Evan had made it so easy to love him, to see the sun in his eyes and the sincerity of his emotions and actions even if they hadn’t been well thought out. 

He wonders if it had been easy to see it then, too.

Evan was easy to love, and Tommy says that, voice thick, with his mouth buried in the knuckles of Evan’s hand.

“He is,” Bobby says, and he sounds so fond that it cracks Tommy’s chest in twain. “He’s loved a lot more than he ever thinks; he’s never been the easiest on himself, and sometimes he doesn’t know what to do with all the love that he holds-”

Tommy laughs, just as fond.

“Don’t have to tell me twice, Bobby.”

Bobby grins, huffing his own laugh. 

“I don’t, do I? We’ve heard all about that disaster,” Bobby squeezes Evan’s knee again, shifting on the side of the bed. “But he means well , and when you’ve been loved by someone like Buck …”

“It’s hard to forget a love like that,” Tommy whispers. “Being loved like that.”

He swallows the sob that wants to escape, backs of his eyes burning. 

“I love him so much, Bobby,” Tommy gasps. “I can’t believe it sometimes, y’know? That I love him like I do; I’ve never really thought about the future but fuck, Bobby, I love him so much I don’t know where to put all that emotion, or even what to do with it-”

Tommy scrubs his free hand over his face, scrunches his nose. As if determined not to be left out, Evan’s ventilator gives a loud whoosh-klick and Tommy huffs a laugh helplessly.

“I asked Sal if he thought Evan loved me.”

“Ah,” Bobby smiles, a small knowing one. “I do remember Sal’s particular brand of comfort.”

“Called me a hopeless fucking idiot.”

“That sounds exactly like Sal.” Bobby laughs.

For a moment, Tommy and Bobby are silent. Tommy leans forward and he tucks his hand around the crown of Evan’s head, sinking into the curls, scratching over his scalp. Evan will hate how his curls have matted with sweat and blood and disinfectant when he wakes up. 

Maybe they’ll let Tommy wash it. He’s used to washing Evan’s hair after a bad day or a migraine, but there’s something infinitely more intimate about doing it whilst Evan is sick and comatose. For a moment he thinks in sickness and in health, Tommy wheezes with the force of it.

“I’ve never had to do this before, Bobby,” Tommy confides quietly. He presses a kiss to Evan’s forehead, keeps his mouth there for a moment longer. “I’ve never had another partner whose done what we do or something similar, or got hurt like Evan has and I don’t-”

“You don’t know what to do?” Bobby guesses quietly. Tommy nods.

“It’s hard being on this side, isn’t it?” Bobby states. He shifts until he’s able to lean against the bottom of Evan’s hospital bed. 

Tommy hesitates.

“Have you-have you ever?”

“I have,” Bobby says. His jaw clenches. “Just the once.”

“Can I ask what happened?” 

“I was attacked.” A hard voice says. Athena presses a tender kiss to Bobby’s cheek, her hand pressed against the other. She leans against Bobby’s side, her eyes affixed on Evan.

“I don’t mean to bring up bad memories,” Tommy shifts, uncomfortable. “You don’t need to…”

“No, it’s okay, Tommy, I know you don’t mean anything by it.” Athena’s hand is a lot smaller than her husbands, but it still has the comforting strength to it when she squeezes Tommy’s bicep.

For a moment, they simply stare at Evan, whose ventilator whoosh-klicks , as if to remind them why they were here. Tommy couldn’t forget even if he wanted to.

“Jeffrey fucking Hudson.” Athena says after a moment. 

“Oh fuck.” Tommy breathes. 

He’d heard about the man, had followed the case peripherally as many people did but he hadn’t searched for information, hadn’t delved deeper than what the press and the news had been reporting on. To know now that it had been Athena who was the Sergeant who’d apprehended him, who had been brutally beaten and almost assaulted lent the case a darker twist. 

“Yeah,” Athena sighs heavily. “Not something I like to think of, obviously. But I refuse to let that man take any more from me than he already has. He beat the hell out of me, Tommy, and it was broadcasted over dispatch.”

Despite her frank words, there’s a darker undertone to them that unsettles him. He thinks of the few details he remembers of Jeffrey Hudson, the nickname he’d been given by the media and feels something go cold and still in his stomach as he flicks his gaze to Athena and then away.

She doesn’t look away from him. 

“We listened to it happen,” Bobby says quietly. He threads a free arm around Athena’s waist, pulls close, a hand on her hip. “It was terrifying and I thought so many times that I’d lost her. But even if we hadn't heard it over the radio, the fact that it was Athena - my partner, my wife - was enough for me to almost lose it completely. ”

“I’d like to say it gets easier,” Athena tells him, a sympathetic look etched on her face. “I’d like to say that your heart stops pounding, that the anxiety gets better and you never worry about your partner coming home when they leave the house but-” 

She shrugs, hands gesturing to encompass Evan’s hospital room.

“It’s always going to be that way. You’ll get used to it, but you’ll never be fully rid of it, and I think, if you do - well, I don’t need to say that that’s not a good thing.”

“No,” Tommy murmurs. He presses the pad of his thumb into Evan’s knuckles, sweeps it down his finger, presses his thumb to the blunt nail there. “No, it isn’t.”

Athena leans forward, squeezes his bicep until he looks up at her.

“He’s going to be alright, Tommy.” She tells him.

Tommy doesn’t say anything. 

“He’s told me about Ali,” Tommy says after a while. Athena’s face immediately hardens, and Bobby’s mouth flattens. “About how she’d left after.”

It’s true; Evan had told him about Ali Martin in fits and starts, a mix of emotions as if he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about her, like he couldn’t quite parse out how he does feel about her. She’d been a good woman, Evan had said, a good woman in a difficult situation that hadn’t known what to do who hadn’t been prepared for the reality.

“He said she hadn’t been prepared for what life could be as a first responder, nor as their partner.”

“It’s one thing to know that your partner could be hurt,” Athena tells him, a surprising amount of grace to her tone. “But it’s another thing entirely, when your partner is hurt, and especially when it was something like Buck’s injury, even more so when they decide that they still want to do that job.”

“It’s different when it’s someone you love.” Bobby says quietly. 

Evan’s ventilator whoosh-klicks, as if in agreement.

Chapter Text

Buck 7

Hands are in his hair.

Buck hums softly, tipping his head back into the tender hands that scrub gently at his aching scalp. There’s a deep laugh, a rumbling that comes straight from someone's chest, and it makes Buck’s head rumble in turn too, lifting lightly as the person behind him inhales and then exhales in a rhythmic motion.

Buck’s always been a fan of sleeping on someone’s chest or shoulders; he’s fallen asleep on Hen and Eddie’s shoulders before, either at work or at home, has ended up snoozing against even Bobby’s chest for a brief spell after the Truck Bombing and when physical therapy had been hell. He and Chim have ended up propping one another up after a long shift and they'd sat down on the too comfortable sofa.

His favourite place to fall asleep is Tommy’s chest.

Broad and warm and lightly haired, Tommy’s chest was an amazing pillow that Buck had drooled and slept on more than enough times, tucked tightly against Tommy’s side, the heavy weight of a comforting arm wrapped around his waist or sweeping up and down Buck’s back. Sometimes, Buck will wake still sprawled out on Tommy’s chest, sometimes right on top of him, and will wonder at the fact that he gets to have this.

Maybe Buck’s favourite place is just Tommy.

“Don’t fall asleep on me yet, baby.” A soft voice says, the chest at his back vibrating with the words. 

Buck can’t find the shape of words that crowd at the front of his mouth, and so simply hums, sinking further against that warm chest and the almost too hot water of the bath he and Tommy are cradled in. Bubbly bath water lap at his chest, his knees chilled and goose pimpled from where he’s had to bend his legs to properly fit into the tub, bracketed by Tommy’s own

Warm water drips down Buck’s nape, and he hums again, head tilting further onto the large bicep Tommy props onto the bathside, resting it there as Tommy presses a kiss behind Buck’s ear. Another whiskery kiss is pressed against his neck, Tommy nuzzling his nose in right behind Buck’s ear lobe, breath warm against water damp skin. Buck smiles, tilts his head just enough to nip at Tommy’s damp forearm, laughing when it makes Tommy jolt a little.

The bath water ripples, slopping over the bath rim.

“Brat.” Tommy giggles, nipping at Buck’s ear lobe, pulling lightly.

Buck tucks his shoulder up, laughing quietly even as he squirms in Tommy’s hold. The water ripples around them, bubbles undulating with each movement. Tommy slaps bubbles out of his hand before Buck can launch them at him, a heavy arm wrapping around Buck’s waist beneath the water and caging him back against that broad, wet chest. 

“Next time, I’m gonna drown you in bubbles.” Tommy tells him fondly.

Tommy always sounds like that with him; fond, happy, in love with. 

It’s something that Buck has always craved, wanted like an addiction and he’d been using the wrong sort of drugs. He has it now, with gentle touches and being someone’s first priority and in the house keys that dangle next to the extra set of car keys. In the kitchen where two matching mugs sit, in the bathroom where two toothbrushes sit bristle to bristle together, like they’re kissing and Buck had laughed when he’d caught Tommy positioning them purposefully. In the bedroom where their clothes are mixed and they share drawers and pictures of them litter almost every surface and their chosen sides of the bed. In the living room with their favourite movies and favourite books, Buck’s Netflix login and Tommy’s Amazon Prime login on the same telly, both of their names attached to each profile. Even in the garage, a jeep next to a truck, matching keys on one another's keyrings.

Like this, in the bath; in love and bathing together, Buck’s hair damp with bubbles and mussed with Tommy washing his hair. Buck rests against Tommy because it’s his turn to be in front in the bathtub and it means he can run tender fingers down Tommy’s thighs and see how the man shivers and pulls him close.

“You wouldn’t,” Buck says, instead of all of this. “Next time is your turn in front, you wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

Tommy pauses. The chart had been drawn up because they’d both liked sharing baths and showers, but both liked being the little spoon and had nearly come to playful blows about it that had ended in sex and Buck’s clipboard being only slightly desecrated. The chart is kept even when they’re in Vista on holiday and sharing a bath they’d been delighted to see.

“I do like being in front,” Tommy concedes. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t give you an absolutely magnificent bubble beard if I had too.”

Buck laughs until he snorts, which makes Tommy snort in turn. Something fizzles up in the pit of Buck’s belly, leaves his love welling up and then welling over until Buck wishes he could fully hand it over to Tommy; just show him how he makes Buck feel. Buck’s always been described as overly emotional, over dramatic with himself and his feelings, but how could he not be when Tommy makes him feel like this ?

The words crowd at the front of his teeth, but something stops him, like this isn’t quite the time and even as disappointment curdles in the pit of his belly, Buck still turns.

His aim is off, softly kissing at Tommy’s cleft chin. The hair there - more full beard than stubble now after just over three days off - is whiskery, tickling at Buck’s lips, sharp pricks over his sensitive jaw. 

“What was that for?” Tommy asks quietly. A hand comes up, damp with bubbles and bathwater, and blunt nails scratch tenderly over Buck’s scalp. Buck’s helpless against it, head tipping back until Tommy cradles his head in his palm, still scratching softly at the back of his skull, threaded through damp curls.

“Just for being you,” Buck murmurs. The bathwater slops over the edge a little as he turns, just enough that he can comfortably press a thumb against the cleft of Tommy’s chin, pressing against the beard hairs in the rift after. “You make me so happy, love, you really do.”

Tommy pauses for a moment. He stares at Buck, eyes searching him for a long second. Tommy’s always been able to do this, in a way; able to look at Buck and see the truth of him. It hadn’t started out like that, not at first, but now Buck wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tommy swallows, and Buck can feel the heavy bob of his Adam's apple against the backs of his fingers. He leans in close, enough to feel the skitter of his damp breathe. Tommy’s hand tightens just a little in his curls, a little zing of pleasure that has a flush rising in Buck’s cheeks that Tommy’s other hand covers.

Tommy’s hands are big, massive almost, matching his considerable size and width. Regardless of that though, Tommy has always been gentle with him; a soft tenderness that Buck hadn’t realized he’d ever properly craved. From chin to jaw to temple, Tommy’s hand brackets his face until Buck can nuzzle into it, pressing a kiss to the calloused palm of it.

“You make me happy, too.” Tommy says softly.

Tommy’s thumb sweeps across the apple of his cheek, pressing gently against the thin skin of his eye before tracing the slope and jut of his nose. It presses against the bow of Buck’s mouth, thumbing his bottom lip down until Tommy must be able to see teeth. Buck’s helpless against the way he leans into it, kissing breathlessly at the fat of Tommy’s thumb, catching it with his lips and sucking gently. Tommy makes a gut wrenching noise, soft and beneath his breath. His thumb pins Buck’s tongue to the bottom of his mouth, a string of saliva collecting between mouth and thumb when Tommy withdraws. Buck sucks at that too, making sure Tommy can see him swallowing

Tommy’s eyes, already dark and piercing, blow wider; colour eaten up by pupils. With the strange angle they’re at, Buck can’t get the leverage to tilt his head back fully, not without pain or strain. That doesn’t stop Tommy from pressing that still spit slick thumb against Buck’s mouth once more, petting over the flesh of Buck’s tongue, fingers curled awkwardly around the jut of Buck’s chin and jaw. The hand still in his curls tilts his head back, sparks fireworking down his spine with each pull. Soft, gentle, Tommy’s thumb is a relentless press into his mouth, an almost invasion if it hadn’t been for how fervent Buck was in sucking at it like he would Tommy’s erection. Tommy’s own mouth falls open just a little, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s doing.

Buck wonders if Tommy would spit in his mouth if he asked.

Buck makes a noise in the back of his throat he doesn’t think he’s ever made before.

Water sloshes over the bath rim when Buck tries to turn further, but he can’t quite get the right leverage and huffs a laugh into Tommy’s hand when he slips a little.

Tommy laughs too, and though his eyes are still dark with lust, there’s a sense of love and adoration just tucked into the dimples of his smile. His invading thumb presses against the flat of Buck’s tongue before it’s gone, smeared against the fat of Buck’s bottom lip, as close to a kiss as they can manage right now. Buck has to resist the urge to suck at it again, arousal sparking in the pit of his groin as Tommy licks at his own thumb, tasting Buck’s spit and his own flesh. One last past of a spit slick thumb against his lip, and then Tommy is pulling back from his hunched position, kept from going too far with one of Buck’s hands at the jut of his jaw, thumb pressed to the underside of it, stroking to and fro.

“I don’t know how I ever thought I could let you go.” Tommy confesses quietly.

A thousand words crowd behind Buck’s teeth; teetering on the tip of his tongue. Instead, Buck leans backwards and upwards, presses a sweet kiss to the tender underside of Tommy’s jaw, and feels the whiskery itch of beard hair. He rubs against it for a moment, smelling Tommy’s favourite scent of sandalwood and pear body wash and Buck’s preferred lavender bubble bath that helps with his muscles.

“We found one another not long after.” Buck murmurs, damp hand pressing against the underside of Tommy’s jaw before he lets it fall into the water, shivering at the warmth there.

“I’m never leaving you again.” Tommy whispers.

The jut of his nose pressed against the back of Buck’s ear, and Buck leans into it, smiling when Tommy presses a kiss to the thin skin there.

“Now, c’mon, lemme finish washing your hair before we turn into prunes.”

A well built arm reaches past Buck’s head to grab the bottles of shampoo and conditioner and Buck can’t resist the urge to bite . He leans forward, kissing at the thick bulge of tricep muscle on the underside of Tommy’s arm, laving a quick tongue between the slope of it before he -

“Ow!” Tommy laughs loudly, rubbing his spit damp arm with his free hand. “What was that for?”

Buck tilts his head back, grinning widely enough his cheeks almost hurt.

“You always look so tasty,” Buck grins. “Had to make sure you tasted as good as you look.”

“You’re a menace, Evan,” Tommy laughs, pressing a kiss to Buck’s damp hair line. “I’d say I’d get you back, but that’ll just lead to sex and I want to wash your hair, so stop distracting me.”

“I have never - in my life - ever distracted you.” Buck lies, like a liar.

Tommy pauses, a small blob of pale coloured shampoo in the middle of his palm. He raises his eyebrows incredulously. He looks down at where Buck is petting at the thick trunks of Tommy’s thighs, scratching with his short nails. 

Buck grins, unashamed.

Tommy laughs, smacking his palms together and slathering his hands with the shampoo before he slides a hand into Buck’s curls, using them as a hand hold to tilt Buck’s head back softly.

Shivers run down Buck’s spine, settling like carbonation at the small of his back but instead of letting it keep fizzing, he leans back into the broad warm chest behind him, humming softly as Tommy’s calloused fingertips scrub gently at the soaked curls, scratching lightly over his scalp.

Three words linger on the tip of his tongue, words that have become increasingly harder to choke back, to swallow down, the longer Buck goes without saying them. It’s not that he doesn't want to say then; thinks he would scream it from the very mountain tops if he was able to, but Tommy deserves better. Tommy deserves to be wined and dined, showed how beautiful and lovable he is, just how in love with him Buck truly is, and there never seems to be the right time.

Tommy presses tender fingertips to the thin skin just by his temple and Buck hums, shoulder relaxing from where they’d slowly tensed. Shampoo has leaked down to his nape, sinking down to his aching collarbone. 

Tommy’s unfairly good with his hands, Buck thinks. He lets out a soft moan when a thumb presses at the base of his skull, tight circles that apply just enough pressure. Head massages are supposed to be good for migraines, he’s heard, maybe he’ll have to ask Tommy to do one when he’s got a migraine or headache brewing.

“Head back, baby,” Tommy murmurs. Buck does so with Tommy’s fingers on the underside of his jaw. “That’s it, watch your eyes, good boy.”

It seems reflexive, but the good boy still has Buck shivering, doing whatever Tommy asks with little question as pleasure and happiness fizzles to life in the pit of his belly.

Warm water sloshes over his head, sluicing over his scalp and down his nape, kept from his face by a hand cupped around his hairline. Buck sinks further into the warm water, eyes closed, leaning heavily against the broad chest behind him as Tommy takes care of him.

Tommy’s always took such good care of him, and has never not made him feel safe or loved or happy. If he could stay like this, warm and loved and cared for, Buck thinks he’d never leave. Buck sighs, wishing he could turn properly to kiss Tommy, but the tender fingers cleansing his hair of shampoo stops him. Those fingers disappear, before warm water sluices over his hair again, washing down his chest, the bath water rippling with it. 

He can feel some dripping down from his forehead, where it must have snuck past Tommy’s guarding hand.

“Baby?” A soft voice asks. “Baby - you - me?”

“Why are you doing your fake mouth static, love?” Buck laughs.

“Baby- Evan?”

Water drips into his ears this time, collecting in the curves of them. More drips into his eyes and Buck blinks reflexively, eyes tearing as he tries to use his hands to wipe the water from them. His arms are heavy though, tired and exhausted, as he tries to pull them from the warm bed they’re pressed into.

“Take it easy, baby.” A familiar voice murmurs, breaking through the fog bank. 

“T’-” 

His throat burns, dry and sore, as though someone has reached down and throttled him. Pain blooms with every word he tries to speak, every movement he makes.

He blinks again and again, and the darkness recedes with every moment. Light, bright and just this side of blinding, breaks through and Buck flinches back, a murmur at the back of his aching throat. A large hand, just as warm as the bath water from only a few minutes again, comes up to cover his eyes. His eyelashes catch on the tender palm when his eyes flinch close again.

“Evan?” A soft voice says.

Buck turns towards that familiar name in that familiar voice.

Each blink of bleary eyes makes things clearer, details coming into definition. 

“Press the call button.” Someone says from far away.

His hair is wet, and for a moment, he thinks back to being in a bathtub with Tommy and water sloshing over the rim. A large hand, damp against his skin, rests against his face, a thumb stroking over the delicate skin of his cheek.

A bleary face - dark hair shot through with grey - blue eyes crinkled - a wide hesitant smile -

“T’mmy?” More of a rasp, but Buck tries to breathe through the pain. 

“You with us, baby?” Tommy asks. He sounds gutted, scooped out. 

He sounds exhausted.

A slow beeping comes into hearing, soft enough that Buck would have missed it at first. It keeps time with his heart in his chest, and something tugs at his arm and opposite hand. His neck doesn’t support his head, heavy and weak, as he tries to look around. His right clavicle burns for a moment, before a hand slips beneath his head, big enough to cradle it entirely, and lowers his head back.

“Watch yourself, kid,” Tommy whispers. “Gotta be careful, alright.”

Buck tries to turn his head, but the base of his throat tears, hot and painful, and he lets his neck go limp. Tommy’s hand is gone from beneath his head, but he’s closer, a hand resting against his cheek, the other stroking Buck’s aching head.

“Tommy ?” 

“Hey, baby.” Tommy smiles through his tears.

Buck lifts a heavy arm, but he can’t quite lift it; it’s as if he’s disconnected from his body, static where feeling should be. 

Instead;

“Cryin’?” Buck tries to question, tongue numb and fat, clumsy in his mouth. “You - okay?”

Tommy’s eyes blur with tears, red rimmed; his eyelashes tent in the welter of his misery. He scoffs; that fond, bitchy sound he always makes.

“I’m better now, Evan,” Tommy says. His thumb pets to and fro over the thin skin beneath Buck’s right eye. “So much better.”

Tommy simply stares at him for a long moment - as if he can’t quite believe his eyes - before he presses a tender kiss to Buck’s aching temple.

“D’you want some water?” Tommy asks softly. 

Buck tries to clear his voice, but it makes him cough; something cracks deep in his chest and sides, hoarse and hurting, he can’t quite catch his breath before he forces a deep breath through his nose at Tommy’s patient prompting. Deep breaths hurt, like a weight is sitting on the middle of his chest.

“Try this, sweetheart,” Tommy says, and a glass is pressed to his dried mouth. "Slowly, slowly.”

 Buck has to force himself not to gulp it down, not that Tommy allows it with how he only lets a thin stream in drips and drabs.

“Thanks.” Buck tries to croak; it’s a little lost in translation but Tommy only smiles, wipes away a drop of water spilled onto Buck’s chin.

A soft sound, and then another voice.

“Mr. Buckley?” A woman asks softly. 

Buck tries to lift his head again, but Tommy’s hand is enough to stop him, tender in its weight against his face.

“Hi?” Buck rasps, confused. Fog lingers in the very corners of his memory, confusion lingering in every question he isn’t sure how to ask. 

A short woman dressed in uniform comes forward, opposite Tommy. She smiles warmly down at him, though her eyes dart around the room. When her eyes stop just over his shoulder, Buck tries to turn around before Tommy presses his hand against his right shoulder, encouraging him to lie back again.

“Try not to get up, alright, Evan,” Tommy asks, pleading almost. “Let the nurse make sure you’re okay and we’ll explain alright?” 

It’s only because of how - distraught Tommy looks; as if he’s been gutted, scooped out hollow of everything he’s ever loved and he isn’t quite sure what to do now that his hands are emptied that Buck acquiesces. Those beautiful eyes that Buck has so easily fallen in love with are blue and red rimmed, wide and pleading. Buck doesn’t know what’s happened, why Tommy looks as if his heart has fallen from his chest but he so badly wants to help, scoop up that heart and place it back where it belongs because Tommy shouldn’t be hurt, shouldn’t be looking like that .

“Okay,” Buck says. “Okay.” 

He’d do anything for Tommy; would do anything for the crinkled eyed dimpled smile Tommy gives him in that very second.

He shifts, trying to get comfortable, tries to use his right  arm; pain blossoms in his chest, deep in his sternum that seems to crackle with every breath. Something stops his right arm from moving, strapped across his side and chest. 

He blinks up at the patiently waiting woman - the patiently waiting nurse.

She gives a smile, jotting something down on a heavy duty protected phone. 

“Hi, Mr. Buckley,” The nurse says. “I’m just going to quickly take your blood pressure whilst we chat, if that’s okay?”

“That's... fine?”

The nurse smiles down at him, and then at Tommy, before she turns to the side and there’s a click before a sudden pressure against his left upper arm. Buck winces, and Tommy makes a soft noise in the back of his throat, thumb stroking back and forth over the pounding of Buck’s temple once more, resting softly against the width of his birthmark above his eyebrow.

“Can I ask what you remember?” The nurse asks as the machine quietly ticks up and up.

Buck would dearly love to say that he knows exactly what’s going on, but there’s a massive blank spot, an empty collection of moments right in the centre of his memories that no matter how hard he tries to reach for, he can’t quite touch. 

He looks up at Tommy in mute appeal.

“You don’t remember anything?” Tommy queries softly. He’s resting on the edge of the hospital bed, as if he can’t quite bear to move any further. Buck goes to nod his head, before Tommy stops him, a tender hand on his face. “Not yet, baby, you’re gonna be in pain if you do that.”

For a moment, Buck tries to think properly, tries to reach past the fog.

He remembers…

Not a lot, honestly. He remembers it being night time, and remembers being on shift with everyone. He remembers flashes, piecemeal bits and pieces that don’t quite make up the entire puzzle that his mosaic memories should be completing effortlessly. He remembers talking with Tommy over a quiet breakfast, tangled in bed before work and checking things off a clipboard as Tommy laughed into his throat. He remembers -

“- trying to get away into the night, and then you put your arms around me -”

But they’ve never done that; Buck has always wanted to, but a shyness he’s never thought he’d feel with Tommy, a bashful embarrassment that had stopped him from making that last move when they were in the kitchen, or sitting in the living room.

“I don’t-” Buck stares at Tommy, begging. “What’s- what happened?”

His heart pounds, numbness encroaches; he doesn’t know how long it’s been, only that he has been asleep. The fog of a coma is familiar, a half forgotten memory that he can’t quite capture. 

“Mr. Buckley, you need to calm down-”

The blood pressure cuff has long been deflated, and it’s only stiff muscles and exhaustion that have Buck struggling to lift his left arm. He manages it though, catching weakly at Tommy’s wrist. His fingers shake, weak with their own weight.

“Tom, please.” 

Tommy looks down at him, face breaking in the few seconds where he looks at Buck. 

“It’s okay, Evan, everyone is okay, you’re the only one hurt,” Tommy says. “I promise you, you were the only one hurt.”

Buck looks at him, wavers between his calm, red rimmed eyes. Tommy has - maybe not always - learned to read him, and Buck has done the same in turn; they’ve learned tells and ticks, and when the other is lying.

Tommy isn’t lying, and there’s a frisson of relief that further pushes back the brain fog that weighs him down.

“Okay,” Buck says. “Okay, but what did happen?”

Tommy’s mouth immediately thins. Fuck .

“You were shot, Mr. Buckley.” The nurse says, quite literally ripping the bandaid off.

“What ?” Buck croaks.

“You were shot, baby,” Tommy says softly. When he lifts a hand to smooth Buck’s hair from his forehead, it’s shaking. Tommy’s hands are shaking. “Twice.”

“Did-why was I shot?”

Tommy closes his eyes for a moment, before those eyes open again. 

Oh.

His eyes are wide, wet. Tommy’s crying.

Wait, wait - 

“- you’ve got shit to tell us, okay? Chris- and Tommy -”

One of the strongest men Buck knows is weeping.

Oh.

“Chris?” Buck gasps, he turns to the nurse, whose eyes dart from Buck to Tommy to the side of the room Buck can’t see. “Chris- was Chris there?”

Buck turns urgently towards Tommy, tries to lift himself up onto his elbows. 

Rapid beeping, faster and faster.

“You and Chris - why were you - you were there,” Something catches in his chest, burning and tearing. A hand on his left shoulder, a heavy weight that Buck tries to fight against but can’t quite gather the strength. “Don’t, don’t - y-you told me no one else was hurt.”

“Baby, baby please.” Tommy begs. 

Rapid beeping, faster and faster.

“A-a-are you okay? You didn’t get hurt? Tommy-”

Those massive hands cup Buck’s cheeks, rubbing free the tears that Buck hadn’t even known he’d shed. Buck’s free hand curls around Tommy’s elbow, uses it as a hand hold so he can wrap trembling fingers back around Tommy' s wrist, feeling the flex of tendons and muscles as those thumbs move.

“Tommy .” Buck begs.

“Listen to me, Evan,” Tommy orders. “Chris and I weren’t there. Only you were hurt, okay? It was an accident on the job and you were caught in the middle. No one else was hurt, I promise, so you need to breathe.”

Those blue eyes are unwavering, steady and sure. Tommy’s thumbs still brush beneath his eyes, soothing movements. He can feel the steady beat of Tommy’s heart beneath his index finger. 

“Okay,” Buck says. “O-o-okay, I trust you. I trust you.”

“I know, kid, you’re alright, I’ve got you.” 

Deep breaths unsettle him, his ribs hurting and the movement making his right shoulder and side of his throat hurt, but the action makes something balance inside of his chest as he mimics Tommy’s exaggerated breaths. 

The nurse coughs politely, a small smile on her face.

“It’s nice to see you fully awake, Mr. Buckley,” The nurse tells him. “I’m Alicia and I’ve been looking after you for the past few days.” 

There’s a note of repetition to her voice, as if she’s said this a few times already.

“Hi, Alicia.” Buck croaks. “I’m Buck.”

“Hi, Buck,” Alicia grins. “Like Mr. Kinard - Tommy has already said, you were shot twice; once in the right clavicle and once near the right jugular, just on the side of your neck.”

Oh shit, Buck thinks faintly. His hands tighten on Tommy’s wrist, fingers climbing up until they tangle with Tommy’s. Dry and calloused, they’re a familiar feel that settles the roiling of Buck’s stomach. 

“The bullet that hit your right clavicle sheared off the bone and ricocheted into your ribs, causing a traumatic pneumothorax. That has been resolved, and the chest drain was taken out three days ago, the ventilator was taken out the day after the drain removal.”

For a moment, Buck is back, all those years ago. He’s staring at a man in a hospital bed with an endotracheal tube in his throat and a gunshot wound from a sniper in his shoulder, not knowing whether he was going to wake up. He thinks of how - empty he’d felt then, unmoored and devastated. 

He turns wide eyes towards Tommy. Thinks of Tommy in his place, staring at the man he loves, with a ventilator and wound drains and two gunshot wounds and feels his heart wrench. 

God, fuck, Tommy.

“The ricochet did fracture the bone enough that we’ve had to stabilize it with a small one inch plate and two small screws; you’ve been placed onto anticoagulants both because of your temporary coma and your history of blood clots and your PE.”

“An-and they’re temp-temporary, right?” Buck asks, heart in his throat. His hand tightens around Tommy’s.

Nurse Alicia smiles sympathetically.

“They are temporary, Buck, it’s policy when someone is in a coma to place them on anticoagulants and with your history and the use of hemostatic bandages whilst keeping pressure on your wounds, we wanted to make sure that we kept on top of things.”

There’s a flash of relief that sparks up Bucks spine despite the nervousness and terror that had flashed through him. He and Bobby have talked the pulmonary embolism and the blood thinners and the resulting lawsuit to death; he knows he can trust Bobby and that they’ve both grown from that dark time in Buck’s life, but there’s still a part of Buck where he’s ten - eleven - twelve - twenty something - just begging for his parents to look at him, to love him and Bobby’s actions had triggered every button of that ten-eleven-twelve-twenty something crying for someone to love him, anyway they can.

“And- the screws? It-it was the hardware before that caused the problems in the first place.”

“They were cobalt and chrome plated screws,” Alicia explains. “The ones in your shoulder are made of titanium - your surgeon thought about using stainless steel, but with your reactive history against the previous screws, she thought it best to go hypoallergenic as a preventive.”

“Other than your GSW’s and the new hardware in your clavicle,” Here, Alicia hesitates. “You’ve got multiple fractured ribs and a deep crack in your sternum from repeated cycles of CPR.”

Oh.

Tommy makes a noise, fractured, wounded. 

Oh .

He thinks of three minutes and seventeen seconds. 

It’s like an album of his greatest hits in a single traumatic moment.

“How-how many-?” His tongue is numb, fat and clumsy in his mouth once more.

“...four rounds of CPR,” Alicia says quietly. “Equalling roughly to a time of three minutes thirty one seconds.”

Fuck.

Brain death after your heart stops occurs at four to six minutes. Immediate CPR would lessen the severity of brain damage, but brain damage occurs as soon as the heart stops, regardless of how quickly it was administered. 

In his life Evan Buckley’s heart has stopped five times. Evan Buckley, in his thirty four years of life, has clinically been dead for six minutes and forty eight seconds. Almost seven minutes.

His eyes burn.

He chokes back his tears, feels the burn in the back of his throat, how his chest spasms. 

He wonders who’d administered CPR; after the lightning strike, Chimney had apologised, in tears, because he’d been the one to start CPR and hadn’t been able to get him back. It had been Eddie who’d taken over as the ambulance had arrived at the hospital and who’d got his heart beating again. 

Chimney had apologised, as if there was a fundamental defect in him that had made him fail in bringing Buck back. Buck had hugged him, both of them in tears, and had said that’s stupid, had had we’re brothers, had said it wasn’t your fault because there wasn’t a world where Buck wouldn’t forgive Chimney when there wasn’t anything to forgive. 

Rapid beeping, faster and faster.

Chimney had said it should have been me, and Buck had said it shouldn’t have been anyone, because he remembers sitting at Eddie’s bedside and choking out it should have been me and the empty pit that his heart and stomach had been in, and never wanted for Chimney to feel like that. Had said it took me a long while to realize the tsunami wasn’t my fault and Chimney had said that was a natural disaster, you couldn’t have predicted tha- and Chimney had said oh, oh and Buck had said yeah, yeah because he’d know exactly what Chimney was feeling and wished that Chimney didn’t know.

“Tommy.” Buck gasps. 

Hands, big and strong and warm, touch at his face, cradle his cheeks. From chin to jaw to temple, Tommy’s hands bracket his face, wiping desperate tears away. 

“Tommy-”  

His arms refused to cooperate; one strapped down across his chest and  the other feeling like a weight is wrapped around it, but he tightens his grip around Tommy’s wrist, until he’s sure he can burrow into it, wants to crawl inside of his partner until all of this just seems like a bad dream.

Rapid beeping, getting faster and faster.

“I know, Evan,” Tommy whispers, mouth damp against his temple. “I know, baby.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Sorry for what, Buck doesn’t know; it seems to be the only words that come out of his mouth. His heartbeat bounds in his ears in unison, both in blood rushing and the rapid beeping of the heart monitor. Tommy’s face wavers in front of his own, tears threatening - threatening - having already fallen.

A forehead presses against his, brow to brow, nose tip to nose tip. His breath keeps hitching, catching in each painful cry. Tommy’s blue eyes are just as red rimmed, just as damp with tears. When he blinks reflexively, their eyelashes catch.

“Look at me, Evan.” Tommy asks. 

Buck shakes his head, barely able to move through the pain. He clenches his eyes shut, grasps at Tommy’s chest with his remaining free hand. A sob rattles free.

“Evan, please.”

It’s the please that does it; breaking and desperate. 

Their eyelashes catch when Buck opens tear damp eyes. Tommy is still there, still blessedly alive with his own tear wet eyes. Forehead to forehead, brow to brow, nose tip to nose tip. From heel to palm to fingertip, Tommy’s hands are large and warm and trembling against his face. 

“You’re okay, Evan,” Tommy tells him. Those large thumbs brush tears away. “You’re alive, baby, and that’s all that matters right now.”

“I’m alive.” Buck repeats, voice trembling. He can’t quite believe it. 

Six minutes and forty eight seconds.

Fuck.

“I’m alive.” Buck cries. 

He doesn’t quite feel it.