Chapter Text
The thing they don’t tell you about amnesia is that it’s fucking boring.
Case in point: Buck’s only twenty-four into his mandatory fourty-eight hours of screen abstinence and he’s so damn bored he feels like he could cry with it. Though, that could very well be from the incessant throbbing in his skull that hasn’t let up for the past thirty fucking minutes.
His phone’s been abandoned, delegated to the bedside table, and every time it vibrates he has to fight the urge to fling the fucking thing at a wall and find some solace in the sound of it shattering. He’d caved a few hours ago and ended up scrolling on it in a fickle attempt to stave away the boredom that was festering under his skin. The attempt had lasted all of three minutes, though, before the room had started moving around him– the walls swirling together and the floor churning precariously under the bed– and then he’d been back to the inevitable boredom again.
Hell, he’d even tried burying himself in a book that he’d found in one the bedside drawers whilst he definitely was not snooping around, thank you very much. It was some kind of sappy, cheesy romance novel if the cover was anything to go by, yellow with years of wear and tear, dogeared on multiple pages and bookmarked halfway through by what Buck’s pretty sure was some kind of polaroid picture that he hadn’t been brave enough to dislodge, fearful of losing the marked place in it. The words had fought against him, though, and had started running across the paper after just a single page. They may as well have flipped him off and yelled ner ner ner ner ner at him for all the good it had done.
The only logical step from there had been to lay on the bed with a pillow over his face and sulk.
“Is there a reason you’re trying to suffocate yourself with my pillow?” Tommy’s voice hums from the doorway and, even with his vision blocked, Buck can hear the terrible fondness in it.
“There’s a marching band in my head that I’m trying to drown out,” he grumbles, petulant, his voice only slightly muffled.
“And you think a pillow’s going to help with that?”
Buck waves a dismissive hand in the air. “I’m working with what I got.”
“How’s that going for you?”
The metaphorical marching band blows a sad trumpet noise and Buck groans dramatically into the darkness, clutching the pillow tighter against his face. “Awful. What is this thing made of?”
“It’s orthopedic,” Tommy tells him matter-of-factly. “It's supposed to be good for the spine.”
“God, you are an old man.”
The noise Tommy makes from the doorway is low and heady, a disgruntled little sound in the back of his throat. Buck takes a risk and shifts the pillow away from his eyes, curious about the kind of expression he’d be sporting. He only manages to make it a couple of inches off of one eye before the room‘s flooded with light and his head is spinning and he feels nauseous all over again.
“Who put the fucking sun in here?” he complains, squeezing his eyes shut and tugging Tommy’s stupidly heavy orthopedic pillow back over his face like a shield.
There’s a brief click sound over by the doorway followed by the soft padding of footsteps. “I think most people call that a lightbulb, Evan.”
“No,” he whines, shaking his head. “No, it’s definitely the sun.”
It was bright as shit and the room’s already starting to feel warmer than it had five minutes ago. Some asshole definitely unhooked the sun from space and balled it up in this room just to spite him personally— it was probably that Icarus guy, the prick.
Another click echoes through the room, closer to him this time, and when Buck relaxes the pillow in his grip and lets it slip away from his face, he isn’t greeted by a fiery space rock. Instead the room’s bathed in a softer, warmer glow of orange-y yellow that doesn’t make him feel like his head’s about to erupt like Mount Vesuvius. The bedside lamp next to him is on and— oh. Those soft little clicks must have been Tommy turning out the overhead light and putting on the smaller one instead.
“Better?” Tommy asks by his bedside.
Buck’s stomach swoops a little, probably leftover nausea from the astrophysics attack, and he’s a little afraid he might throw up on the carpet or something.
Still, he nods.
“Good.” Tommy emphasises his point by holding a plate out towards him. “I made you a sandwich, thought you might be hungry. And then you can take your painkillers.”
“What sandwich did you make?” he asks, shuffling up the bed a little until he’s sitting with his back against the headboard, orthopedic pillow clutched in his lap.
Tommy smiles at him, all warm and soft and desperately familiar. “Bacon, egg, and avocado. I even toasted the bread in the way you like.”
It must be some kind of pavlovian response because Buck’s mouth instantly starts watering and his stomach lets out the loudest, most unattractive sound he’s ever heard a human make, and he’s heard a lot of unattractive sounds from a lot of humans in his profession.
Not that he’s concerned about appearing attractive in front of Tommy or anything.
Not at all.
The smile stretches into something elated. “I take it that means you’re hungry?”
Buck makes a sound in the back of his throat and snatches the plate up when he’s offered it. He doesn’t even bother moving the pillow out of his lap, instead he balances the plate on it and grabs up one half of the sandwich, taking a ravenous bite right out of the centre, right where the best part of the sandwich is, crusts be damned.
It’s good.
It’s so good that a voice in the back of his head cracks a joke about wifing Tommy up if only so that he can eat like this every day.
He doesn’t say it out loud, not when he has no idea what kind of state they exist in at the moment, not when one poorly timed joke could fracture this equilibrium they’ve slipped into. He’s barely been at Tommy’s place for a day, and most of that had been spent passed out on the couch anyway, he doesn’t want to push this thing too far just yet.
Buck manages to polish off half of the sandwich before his phone vibrates against hardwood again and he groans around his mouthful of food.
“You think it’ll stop if I drown it?” he asks when he notices the way Tommy’s looking at him, eyebrow arched in fond amusement. There’s a glass of water sitting next to it on the nightstand; it wouldn’t be so hard. And it would be for the greater good. A mercy killing, really. Nobody would blame him for one teensy little robot death.
Tommy scoops up his phone before he can finish planning out the elaborate Evan Buckley vs. Siri: The Curious Case of Robocide in his head.
“Why haven’t you turned it off?” he asks, turning the thing over in his hands like he’s never seen one before, like it might as well be some kind of ancient relic with curious markings on it— maybe he’ll start beating it against a rock and put the both of them out of their misery.
“Promised Maddie she’d be able to reach me,” Buck tells him with a small shrug of his shoulders. That had been an important stipulation on her part when she’d agreed that staying with Tommy whilst he healed was the best course of action.
“She has my number,” Tommy says. The screen lights up in his hand and Buck doesn’t miss the way he intentionally avoids looking at it. “She can call me if she needs you, you’re not supposed to be on this thing.”
“You can read them,” Buck says around a mouthful of egg. “It’s not going to bother me, I’m sure we’ve done the same before.”
“Well, I mean, yeah. But this is—”
“—different?” Buck cuts him off, making an exaggerated noise of disappointment in his throat. “Aren’t we supposed to be keeping things normal?”
“But—”
“Disobeying medical orders? What would the doctors have to say about that, hm?”
The corner of Tommy’s lips curl up into an amused smile. “Brat,” he says, and Buck tries not to look as smug as he feels— if it’s at all possible to look smug whilst chewing a mouthful of maple bacon.
He swipes up on the phone, though, and Buck watches his eyes dart back and forth across the screen as he reads them. “Anything interesting?”
“Just well wishes and updates from Chim and the others.” He scrolls a little more before coming to a stop, exhaling a breathy air of laughter from his nose. “Ravi said that B shift had to cut a guy out of a dryer today. Apparently he was playing naked hide and seek with his girlfriend and I guess he was very eager to win.”
Buck laughs and leans over to put his empty plate on the nightstand. He grabs the two painkillers Tommy had brought for him and swallows them easily with a mouthful of water. Sometimes it worries him just how good he is at swallowing pills by now, he’s far more comfortable with it than any person should be.
Tommy locks his phone and puts it down on the bed. He moves like he’s going to take the plate but pauses halfway when his eyes drift over to his own nightstand and catch on something. Buck follows his gaze over until he sees that damn cheesy romance book he must have forgotten to put back when the room had started feeling like it was navigating choppy waters.
“Okay, in my defense,” Buck starts, torn somewhere between mortification and waggishness. “Being a concussed amnesiac is incredibly boring, and I could only manage like, five minutes on my phone reading what I wanted before it made me nauseous and it was right there and I was bored!”
“Evan—”
“—and I only got through like, a single page before I gave up. I don’t think my brain can handle words right now, I think I need a book with pictures or something. Maybe I should call Maddie and get her to bring one of Jee’s books over so I don’t feel like I’m losing my mind.”
“Evan—”
“—and I didn’t lose your place, I swear. I didn’t even fix any of the dogears even though only a heathen uses them instead of a bookmark. I mean, really, Tommy, dogears? Your poor book!”
“Evan!” Tommy finally insists, and Buck feels crimson flood his cheeks when he realises that he’s been rambling. “It’s fine, you’re fine. I’m not upset or anything.”
Buck blinks at him. “You’re not?”
“It’s a book,” Tommy says, like it’s the simplest, most obvious thing in the world. “I should have known you’d be going stir crazy by now, sitting still isn’t really your forte. If anything, I’m more upset with the fact you said you were on your phone.”
Even so, Tommy still doesn’t sound mad at him, his voice still has that playful lilt to it, that teasing drawl and slight smile on his lips that makes him feel kind of crazy, actually.
“It was important,” he insists.
Tommy doesn’t look convinced. “Sure, I’ll bite, what was so important?”
“Okay, so important was a bit of a stretch,” Buck says, a sudden wave of insecurity washing over him. It was just… it’d been niggling at his brain all afternoon and it wasn’t like he could just take himself to the library or something. He’d needed to scratch that damn itch in his head or he really would have gone stir crazy. But what if Tommy didn’t get that? What if he found that annoying or thought it was stupid and childish or something?
“Tell me,” Tommy insists, all gentle and soft.
Well. In for a penny or whatever the hell they say.
“There’s a spider in your bathroom and I got curious about it. And then I remembered something I read once about mayflies only living for like, a day, but I couldn’t remember exactly so I—” he pauses and sighs, “—I was reading about their lifespan.”
The room is silent for about six beats of his heart in his ears and then Tommy just… nods. Like that’s everything he needed to hear. He abandons his mission for the plate and taps at Buck’s thigh instead, gesturing for him to move.
“Budge over,” he says when it doesn’t elicit the response he’d so clearly wanted.
Buck does as he’s told and shuffles over to the other side of the bed, bringing the damn pillow with him too because it might as well be his life support at this point, his anchor in a storm.
Tommy slides right onto the bed next to him, careful to keep distance between them and make sure they’re not touching which, well, Buck can’t say he’s not disappointed about. He remembers all too well how it’d felt in the hospital with Tommy’s hand on his thigh, the heavy, warm weight of it soothing, comforting. He shuffles up a little and pulls his own phone out of the pocket of his jeans.
“Tommy, what…?” Buck trails off, eyebrows furrowed.
“I know you, Evan,” Tommy hums. “I’m willing to bet five minutes on your phone wasn’t anywhere near enough to satisfy your curiosity. Did you even get your answer?”
Buck shakes his head, his tongue a heavy weight in his mouth that he’s afraid to use. I know you, Evan, echoes in his head like a stereo stuck on loop, a rapid chorus of I know you, I know you, I know you that makes it hard to swallow when he tries to.
Tommy taps away on it for a few seconds and when Buck manages to squint his eyes and catch a glimpse of his screen, he’s scrolling through articles of fucking mayflies and their lifespan and Buck kind of feels like he’s been punched in the stomach in a good way, in the best way. He must make some kind of noise because Tommy’s looking over at him and freezing up, like he thinks he’s crossed some kind of boundary he didn’t even know existed. It’s the kind of reaction he’d had back in the hospital when he thought he’d pushed something too far.
“Is this okay?” Tommy asks, insecurity clinging to the edges of his words.
Buck kind of wants to curl up around him and hiss at anybody who ever gets too close. “You’re going to read to me about mayflies?”
Tommy nods. “If you’re okay with it. I don’t have to—”
“No!” he insists. “No, I mean— yes, I’d like that. If you want to, that is. If I’m not bothering you.”
Some of the tension bleeds out of Tommy’s shoulders and the smile he gives him is so soft and sweet, like a vat of melted chocolate; and Buck’s dug a guy out of one of those, he can attest to that sentiment.
“You’re not bothering me.”
And then he starts to read and Buck does try and listen, he really really does, not only because he genuinely wants to know, but also because it feels like a disservice to have Tommy read to him and then take none of it in, but his mind is still looping I know you on repeat because, yeah. Apparently he does.
Tommy seems to know him well enough to recognise the start of a spiral when Buck’s having one, knows him well enough to bring him his apparent favourite type of sandwich, to know his phone passcode. He knows him well enough to tease him and joke with him in all the right kinds of ways— their back and forth banter is so comfortable and easy to sink into and Buck doesn’t feel the urge to stare at the cracks in the floor when they rib at each other goodnaturedly.
I know you.
Even now he’s sitting next to him in bed reading to him about the life cycle of a goddamn mayfly all because Buck was a little curious about something, all because the screen was making him nauseous, all because he’s concussed and bored and restless, all because he’s Tommy and he knows him.
And Buck just— Buck doesn’t know him at all.
“You didn’t get any of that, did you?” Tommy asks god only knows how many minutes later. He doesn’t even seem mad about the fact that Buck’s been lost in his own damn head— fuck, how is he real?
Buck works his teeth into his lip, guilt and exhaustion prickling at his skin. “Sorry, I think I’m crashing, I think it’s the painkillers.”
Stupid fucking hospital and their drowsy meds.
Tommy hums in amusement next to him. “I set the guest room up,” he says, the telltale click of an iPhone locking filling the gap of silence. “There’s still a couple boxes in there, but I cleaned it up pretty good for you.”
Something settles on Buck’s chest again, a heavy kind of weight that makes his heart kick up and his breath come a little faster. It reminds him of when he was a kid, of the summers he’d spend in the pool by himself trying to see how long he could hold his breath— one time he’d pushed himself so hard he’d had to cling to the edges and just breathe for a solid three minutes after. He’d still beat his personal record though, so, worth it.
He doesn’t feel that kind of vindication with this. No, this feels more like panic, like he’s facing a rejection. It’s the kind of way he feels when he’s about to lose something right before he sinks his fingers in and claws his way under skin and bone until he’s reached marrow that he can live in.
“Is that where I usually sleep?” he asks, toeing the line of this fragile little thing they’ve fallen into.
The room is dark and when Buck risks a glance up, Tommy’s already looking back at him.
“No,” Tommy says honestly, gently, the way one would placate a wounded animal. “No, usually you sleep where you are. I just thought, considering, well, everything, you might want to, well…”
“My doctor said we should keep things normal, keep them how they were.” Buck’s palms are sweating— why are they sweating? He feels like he did when he was fourteen and asking a girl out for the first time, the way he’d felt when he’d asked if he could kiss his high school crush for the first time except this is his boyfriend. He doesn’t need to ask for the things he already has and the whole thing is innocent anyway, innocuous. It’s just them sleeping together, not sleeping together. He wipes his hands on the pillow. “I want to remember, I want my memories back and I don’t think banishing myself to the guest room will help with that.”
Tommy looks at him like he can’t quite believe he’s a real person but nods anyway. “As long as you’re sure.”
Buck nods back which feels a little ridiculous. They’re just nodding at each other like a pair of bobble headed figures. “I’m sure.”
“I’ll still keep it set up for you in case you change your mind, or you get uncomfortable or need a break or an escape or— for any reason. It’ll be there if you want it.”
Fuck. How is he real? Tommy’s so fucking considerate and accommodating and Buck’s never felt this taken care of before. It’s a feeling he doesn’t quite know what to do with so he shoves it down for now, packs it away in an overfilled suitcase full of things he doesn’t want to think about for now— it’s stuffed to the brim and he’s well aware that it’s going to burst on him soon, but that’s a problem for future Buck. He sits on the damn thing for good measure.
Tommy breaks the silence first. “You should get some rest.”
Buck nods again and feels a little stupid for it. “Yeah.”
And then his damn body betrays him and he has to cover a yawn with the back of his hand. Tommy makes like he’s going to move and Buck’s hand flies away from his mouth and down to his wrist before his brain has a second to stop and fucking think.
Tommy’s eyes dart down to where they’re touching and they’re both just looking until—
“Do you think—” Buck starts, cutting himself off abruptly a second after. It’s not a fair ask, not in the slightest, and he doesn’t want to be seen as some kind of burden, as some sort of obligation. “Never mind, sorry.”
Tommy just settles back onto the bed. “Tell me.”
“It’s stupid.”
“Evan, tell me.”
God, he’s gotta remember to send a fruit basket to whatever lab cooked this man up because there’s no way he’s real.
“I was just— I was going to ask—”
Jesus, he’s fucking shy. He’s almost in his mid-thirties, he’s dated and kissed and fucked his way through a decent amount of LA, he shouldn’t fucking be shy over this.
“—would you stay? A-and maybe— could you read to me some more? It helps. With the silence, I mean. It’s okay if you don’t want to, though! I can find a podcast— or some white noise or something, or—”
“I’ll stay,” Tommy confirms and Buck feels the weight on his chest ease up. “You want to hear more about mayflies? Or are we shelving this one?”
Buck shuffles down on the bed until he’s got his head resting on one of the pillows. It’s not the orthopedic one, no, that one he’s still clutching against his chest so he doesn’t do something stupid like reach out and cling to Tommy like some amnesiac version of an octopus. “Shelve it. Dealers choice, I probably won’t be awake long enough to take in most of it.”
Tommy chuckles to himself, fingers flying across his phone screen. “Oh, you’re going to regret giving me that kind of power.”
The white light from his phone highlights his face and Buck uses this chance to take him in, to really look at him. The little circles under his eyes look darker, contoured by shadows, and Buck wonders when the last time he got a proper night's sleep was. A part of him wants to tug Tommy down with him, to toss his phone to the floor, to shove the pillow in his arms under his head, to crack a joke about him being an old man with his special sleep pillow and listen to his breathing even out until he falls asleep, content.
He wonders if Tommy snores. He looks like he would; like he’d be the kind of guy to immediately pass out after a long day with his mouth open, the snores echoing in an otherwise quiet room, and then immediately deny the accusation when confronted with it. Buck kind of wants to hear it. He’s never wanted to hear a person snore before but Tommy is— he’s different. He’s new.
He wants to learn everything about him.
“You ready?” Tommy asks when he finally settles on an article.
Buck hums his affirmation and lets his eyes fall shut; staring at Tommy is a dangerous game and the last thing he wants to do is scare him out of bed by giving him dopey little heart eyes or something.
He makes it all of five sentences into the history of some sedan being sealed away in a time capsule for fifty years before he’s out.
∞∞∞
Living with Tommy, as it turns out, is one of the easiest things in the world. The two of them seem to slip into it so naturally, like it’s as simple as breathing, like it’s just that easy. The sun rises, the sun sets, the two of them occupy each other's space seamlessly. Buck’s had roommates before, hell, he lived with Taylor for months, but none of that had come to him as simply or felt as innate, as being in the same space as Tommy does— it makes him wonder why he still even has his own place. It feels redundant, pointless.
He’s officially out of his mandatory screen abstinence and has been for a day or two by now, though whenever he’s around a piece of technology he catches Tommy side eyeing it like he’s worried it’s going to come to life and beat a concussion back into him.
Like right now, Tommy’s got one shoe on and he’s hobbling about the room trying to force his foot into the other whilst simultaneously shooting death glares at the phone in Buck’s hand. At some point the back of his shoe gets caught on his heel and he has to do that stupid little hop-jump-skip maneuver before his foot slides in properly.
It’s amusing.
It’s endearing.
It’s, for some reason, incredibly attractive to him.
Buck doesn't realise he’s staring, a fond smile tugging one corner of his lips up, until Tommy arches an eyebrow at him, half in amusement, half in bewilderment, like he can’t quite figure out why Buck’s looking at him like that.
On the couch across from him Hen clears her throat and his attention snaps back to her. She’s looking at him like she knows something and he feels like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t which is entirely irrational— he was just smiling at his boyfriend! He’s allowed to do that! But that doesn’t do anything to dissuade the heat from creeping up the back of his neck and prickling the tips of his ears red.
“You were saying?” she prompts, eyes flickering down to the phone in his hand encouragingly.
Right— they’d been in the middle of what she’d affectionately dubbed a ‘medical experiment’ when she’d first walked through the door.
Well, she’d looked around in awe at the place first, eyes taking in the house and the furniture and the stupidly expensive coffee brewer with more buttons and knobs than can be counted on one hand which, yeah, Buck understands that feeling. He was in awe of Tommy’s baby the first time he’d tried, and failed, to brew himself a coffee too. Tommy had ushered him out of the way when he’d fiddled too much and Buck had hopped up onto the island and sat there whilst he talked him through the step-by-step process of it because of course Buck’s dating a coffee snob. There’s craft beer with suspiciously faded labels in his fridge, but coffee is where Tommy draws the line.
“She’s a temperamental thing,” Tommy had told him, patting the side of the machine with a few affectionate taps. “But if you treat her right, she’ll make you the best cup of coffee you’ve ever had.”
And, loathe as he is to admit it, he was right.
The rest of Tommy’s house is decorated sparsely, but it’s easy to see what parts of it are loved; where his passions lie. So far Buck’s got the coffee maker, the home cinema system, and a few random baking machines he can’t seem to draw a link between, noted down on the list he’s been building in his head; a thrilling game of discovery that’s just his to play.
Once she’d taken the place in, Hen had airdropped him some pictures from her phone, some new, some old, and they’d been trying to figure out what he remembered from them.
”I don’t remember this one,” he tells her, zooming in a little like if he magnifies the details, something will come back to him.
It doesn’t.
She frowns for a second before schooling her face and dropping her hand to his knee. “They’ll come back. We just need to give it some time.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he says, deadpan.
It may be petulant and immature but— screw it, he’s allowed to be petulant and immature for once. There’s a year of his life missing and the fucked up part is that it’s still there. It’s not like somebody cut him open and snatched his memories from him, they haven’t been taken or stolen or lost, they’re still in his head somewhere, barred up behind a door full of locks and chains and Indiana Jones-esque traps. He just can’t get to them no matter how hard he claws and kicks and rams at the damn thing. The worst part of it all is knowing that Tommy’s on the other side of that door; knowing that everything they had, everything they built, everything that led them to this point of easiness, to Buck feeling more at home in a stranger's house than he’s ever felt anywhere before, is so close, but just out of reach.
Buck jolts a little when footsteps squeak across the floorboards and a hand pushes through the curls at the nape of his neck. The hand is gone just as quickly as it appeared, though, like Tommy’s caught himself in the middle of doing something he shouldn’t be.
“You know,” he says from where he’s standing behind the couch, glaring down at Buck’s phone like it’s personally wronged him. His cheeks are tinted pink, like he’s embarrassed by what he’s just done. “I should have let you drown that thing when I had the chance.”
Buck rolls his eyes but it’s fond, it’s very fond. “Don’t let the robots hear you say that,” he hums, lolling his head back onto the backrest of the couch so he’s looking at Tommy upside down. It’s unfair how stupidly attractive he still is from this angle. “They might resent you for trying to kill one of their own.”
The shrug he gets back is nonchalant and unbothered. “They’d deserve it.”
Buck’s eyes flicker over to the coffee machine.
“That’s different! She would never!” Tommy gasps in faux-horror at the very idea of his beloved coffee machine turning on him. “She’s loyal.”
“That’s what they all say.”
Tommy grumbles something under his breath petulantly and Buck has to sink his teeth into the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling. “He didn’t mean it, don’t listen to him,” he says over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. “If she breaks on us, you’re getting her fixed.”
Buck hums in acknowledgment. “Sure, I’ll get us a new one.”
“You can’t replace her!” Tommy splutters back, indignant. “She’s— she’s irreplaceable, Evan!”
“Tommy, I need you to be honest with me here,” he says back, shifting one of his legs under the other and turning to face him properly, face solemn and serious. “Are you having a love affair with your coffee machine?”
“Yes, absolutely,” Tommy says without missing a beat and it’s so unexpected that Buck snorts out an incredibly unattractive half-laugh half-scoff out of his nose.
As much as Tommy likes to exude an aura of a suave, confident man, Buck’s so quickly discovering that yeah, whilst he can be those things, there’s so much more to him buried a few inches deep, just waiting for someone to pick up a shovel and dig up the mounds of dirt he’s buried it under. He’s a dork; the kind of man who talks to his coffee machine, and collects steelbook editions of all his favourite movies because “physical is just better, Evan”, and hums under his breath when he’s working or when he thinks nobody’s listening. He’s also kind and considerate and so, so charming. Everything about Tommy makes him feel at ease, makes him feel safe despite everything.
“Still,” Tommy interrupts, bouncing one of his hands against the other in the way Buck’s noticed him doing when things start to get a little too intense or overwhelming, like it’s a nervous tick of his. “You shouldn’t be on that thing too much, robot wars be damned.”
“Hen, will you please tell him to stop fussing,” Buck hums, accepting the airdrop from her when it comes through.
“Hen—” Tommy counters, voice low and deep and bitchy in the kind of way that has Buck looking up at him from his phone, “—will you please tell Evan that prolonged exposure to screens post-concussion can significantly delay healing time. In your professional medical opinion, of course.”
“Hen, will you please tell Tommy that I did my time. I even bumped it up to seventy-two hours to be extra cautious and safe because somebody insisted.”
“Hen, will you—”
“Hen isn’t telling anybody anything if you two keep treating her like a third wheel!” Hen says, eyes darting between the pair of them and the show they’re putting on, amusement obvious in the way her lips are curled up into the beginnings of a smile.
Buck feels the tips of his ears get hotter.
“Anything?” she prompts, cocking her head in the direction of his phone.
There’s a group shot on his screen, the whole 118 and their families huddled together and beaming at a camera.
“Isn’t this from years ago?” he asks, confused. “That one Christmas at the station? This was years before everything I forgot, why wouldn’t I remember this?”
Hen swats at his knee with the back of her hand. “It’s a little something called a control variable, we use those in science, you know?” She thumbs through her phone, scrolling in a seemingly random direction. “Alright, let me find another.”
“I’m gonna head to the store,” Tommy says from the living room doorway. “I need to pick some stuff up.” He eyes the two of them and Buck gets the feeling that it’s less of a need and more of an excuse he’s making to give the two of them space, to not feel like he’s hovering or getting in the way and being generally obtrusive like he thinks he is.
A part of Buck wants to tell him to stay. He wants to hear him clattering about with pots and pans in the kitchen whilst he starts prepping for dinner, wants to hear his footsteps scurrying about the house, wants to hear him humming some obscure nineties music or theme song under his breath whilst he works, he wants his presence and he wants it loud and obnoxious and real. But the other part of him knows that it’s not a fair ask, that it’s not fair of him to monopolise Tommy’s time like that, that he probably needs a break and a breather from all of this too and, sure, Buck might be a little selfish, but he’s not that selfish.
So he just smiles at him and gives him a nod.
Tommy turns to go and Buck sits up a little straighter. “Oh, hey, wait!” he insists. “Can you pick up—”
“Butter. Unsalted, right?”
There’s a flood of something warm that blooms in Buck’s chest at the fact that Tommy remembered. “And—”
He gets cut off again. “Vanilla extract. The good stuff, not the kind they package up in bright colours and sell to kids,” he says, a faint echo of the exact words Buck had said to him yesterday.
Buck narrows his eyes at him. “I feel like you’re making fun of me right now.”
Tommy brings his hand up to his heart in faux indignation and gasps out a jocular, “who? Me? Never!”
Buck’s still smiling at the space he’d just occupied when Tommy heads for the door with a brief “call me if you need anything!” over his shoulder. In fact he’s still smiling at the door after it slams closed after him.
“You’re baking?” Hen asks, pulling his gaze away from the doorway and over to her. She doesn’t look like she’s about to comment on the dopey grin on his face, so at least that’s something.
“Yeah,” he nods, suddenly feeling bashful, of all things.
There’s an embarrassing amount of cookies and loaves hidden away in Tommy’s fridge and if he was going to feel shy about it at any point, it should have been when Tommy rearranged his craft beer shelf to make it all fit. Not now.
Hen looks over her shoulder into the kitchen— the downstairs of the house is mostly open plan, at least between the living room and the kitchen, so it’s not a hardship for her to run her gaze across the counters like she expects them to be covered in a bunch of flour and sugar that she’d missed on her first sweep. It’s not, though, because Buck is a responsible baker who cleans his workstation after himself, thank you very much.
Still, the look on her face makes him feel anxious, unsettled in his own skin.
“Is that not… something I do?” he asks, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.
The baking— it had started innocently enough. Buck doesn’t remember being obsessed with it before and he has no idea how he knows to work half of the machines that Tommy’s got stowed away in his kitchen cupboards (and on top of his fridge and in the pantry and in the drawers and, anywhere there’s space, really) but he does. He hadn’t meant for it to become a thing either, but he’d been bored and restless during his screen expulsion and once he’d spotted the fancy Kitchenaid mixer tucked neatly away in one of the cupboards that he definitely wasn’t snooping through, it was over for him.
The cookies had been easy enough to make and they’d come out of the oven well enough, if slightly charred around the edges.
Okay, maybe a little more than slightly charred.
But still edible! He just had to pick around the darkened parts! The parts that were—
Okay.
So he’d burned them.
Tommy had emerged from the garage at the smell of baked goods burning and caught Buck standing over a tray of charred cookies. His face must have been doing something bad because he hadn’t even cracked a joke, he’d just told Buck that his oven was old and temperamental and then taught him how to use it without burning everything.
“You know you could just get a new oven,” Buck had said when he’d loaded a fresh batch of cookies into it for a second time, the temperature cut down by half because Tommy’s oven apparently burns hotter than the pits of Tartarus.
“It has character,” Tommy defended and, well, that was one word for it.
Buck had had a few, less dignified words of his own for it.
“No! No, it is,” Hen adds, rushing to reassure him. She shifts uncomfortably on the couch, crossing and uncrossing her legs at the ankles like she’s feeling restless. “I just… haven’t seen you do it in a while, that’s all. I thought something might be up.”
That does nothing to reassure the overthinking little voice in his head, the voice that has him questioning everything. Why would something be up just because he’s decided he wants to bake? That doesn’t make sense. He just— he just enjoys it, that’s all. And he’s good at it too! Even with Tommy’s demonic oven standing in his way.
“Well, I know the kids and Karen would love some of baker Buck’s cookies,” she says, and Buck might be an amnesiac but he’s not stupid. He can tell there’s something there that she’s avoiding, something that she’s talking around, but it’s not a thread he feels like tugging on, not now that the house feels a little too big and he feels a little too small.
They sit in silence for a few seconds and it’s not not uncomfortable, but it’s not exactly an easy one either. It’s only bearable because it carries the weight of years of friendship in it.
“How are things going?” Hen pipes up, clearly sick of the silence. “Here, I mean,” she gestures vaguely around the house. “With Tommy?”
That’s— well, it’s not exactly a safer topic, not with the way something swells and peaks in his stomach, like the few seconds suspended in the air before the drop in a rollercoaster, not with the way he feels shy again, like a teenager with a crush on a girl miles out of his league. But it’s something.
“As well as can be expected considering—” he pauses for a second, waving his free hand in the general direction of his head, “—all of this. Tommy’s been great, really great.”
“You guys haven’t been fighting or anything? I mean, it’d be understandable considering,” she cocks her head at his playfully, mimicking the gesture he’d made a second ago and Buck cracks and smiles in her direction.
“No, everything’s been— it’s been good,” Buck tells her. He glances up at the doorway again like he expects Tommy to materialise there just from Buck gushing about him alone.
He doesn’t, though, which is both a relief and a disappointment.
“He’s been helping me with everything. He helped me with the baking stuff, he read to me whilst I was banned from my phone, he’s been making me laugh.”
Which isn’t something he’s felt like doing lately, quite frankly. But Tommy has a way of coaxing it out of him; Tommy with his deadpan humor and his sarcasm and his bitchiness; Tommy who seems to be able to go toe-to-toe with him in a way that he’s never had before. His quips don’t hurt when he says them. Buck doesn’t feel the urge to shrink himself as a person around him, to put himself in a plastic bag and vacuum seal it closed, and he gets the feeling that even if he tried to, Tommy would cut it open and banish all the vacuums from the house.
He’s only technically known him for four days, but there’s an easiness to him.
To them.
When Buck blinks himself out of his thoughts, Hen's staring at him with a smile on her face that feels too knowing. It’s the kind of smile that makes him feel like she knows exactly what was just going on inside his head.
“What?” he prompts. His ears don’t burn this time, but only just.
“Nothing, nothing,” she says, but her smile only gets wider. “Is that a blush I can see?”
Buck groans and hides his face in his hands, his phone falling forgotten in his lap.
There’s always been a kind of effortlessness in their friendship. When they’re together like this, Hen doesn’t mince her words. She doesn’t hold back from poking fun at him, from teasing him in the way one would tease a little brother. His friendships have always come easy to him, but his friendship with Hen has always been one of the easiest. She’s been in his corner since day one, she’s seen him at his worst— Buck wouldn’t be where he is now, or even who he is now, without her.
“Okay,” he relents, dropping his hands from his face and sighing dramatically. Next to him Hen leans in, hanging on his words. “I guess I can see why I liked him.”
Liked? Likes?
He hardly gets the chance to ponder the difference between the two.
“Buck!” Hen gasps, all mock scandal and outrage. “Do you have a crush on your boyfriend?”
Buck throws one of the couch cushions at her.
His phone chimes in his lap through her laughter and when he looks down, a new airdrop request has come through. He accepts it, if only to shift this conversation back towards something safer. It loads easily and staring back at him is a picture of five of them— him, Eddie, Chimney, Hen and Tommy— at some kind of ceremony.
Buck squints, zooms in, and perks up a little.
“Hey, when did we all get medals?”