Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Buck’s been through a lot of shit in his life.

Crushed by a ladder truck, a very public tracheotomy, a pulmonary embolism, his parents, a fucking tsunami. Hell, he’s been struck by lightning and medically dead for over three minutes. 

And yet, of all the ways his life could possibly go to shit, this wasn’t one he’d ever considered.

“It’s called retrograde amnesia,” his doctor says, as if she isn’t standing in a room full of first responders who already know exactly what that means. “In your case, Mr. Buckley, it appears to be post-traumatic retrograde amnesia. Your CT’s showed some slight swelling of the hippocampus immediately post-injury, but we’ve been monitoring that and it’s significantly decreased, but we’d like to get you back in for some more tests just in case.” 

“Just in case of what?” Maddie pipes up from his bedside, the very same place she hasn’t left for hours now. 

She’s got her hand wrapped tight around his own like she’s afraid if she gives him any leeway he might slip out of her grasp and drift away. If Buck’s honest with himself, he hadn’t even felt it there at first. But then again he hasn't felt much of anything since he first heard the words retrograde amnesia. He just feels kind of… numb. 

Numb and a little bit sick, honestly.

“Mostly for monitoring purposes,” she says back, offering them a tight lipped smile that’s probably supposed to be reassuring considering that it’s coming from a doctor. It isn’t. “And for ruling things out now that there’s this new… development.”

Buck makes a noise in the back of his throat, a low, choked off rattle that sounds like something caught between a scoff and a disbelieving little laugh. 

Development, right— she’d said it so fucking casually too, as if the word amnesia isn’t haunting him, as if it isn’t sitting on his chest and crushing him like a ten ton slab of concrete. 

Buck doesn’t need to look around to see the half a dozen pairs of eyes on him, he can feel the weight of their gazes boring into him. “And then what?” he asks before the silence can start to feel too much like pity. “How do we fix–” he gestures vaguely at his head with a hand “–this.” 

His doctor gives him a small, tightlipped smile that does nothing to calm the tropical storm brewing in his stomach. “There is no instant fix for retrograde amnesia; this isn’t a wound we can stitch up or a bone we can mend, it’s more complicated. Oftentimes it’s temporary and resolved within a few days once the brain has come to terms with the shock. Other times it can take longer.”

“How long?” 

Buck thinks that might be Chimney, or maybe Bobby, he can’t quite tell, but the voice is deep and doesn’t waiver, it’s smooth despite the ringing that’s pitching up in his ears. 

“It’s hard to say. Sometimes it can take days or weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years, sometimes–” she cuts herself off before she can voice it, but Buck doesn’t need her to finish. It’s clear enough. 

Sometimes they never come back.

For the first time in his life he kind of feels like he wants to throw a tantrum about it. He wants to tell everybody to get out and pull the blanket up over his head so he can hide himself away and pretend that this isn’t happening, that he hasn’t lost god only knows how many years of his memories; the very things he’d always held so precious to him, the things that made him him. 

It’s— it’s wildly unfair and— and it’s cruel. 

Hell, even after Chimney’d had a rebar rod through his skull he’d walked away with his memories intact. Even after the bridge collapse and the fucking sniper, even after the relentless tidal wave of shit that never seems to stop coming at them, even after the blood loss and the broken bones and the shared concussions, they’d all walked away fine and now… now he gets this. 

It feels like some kind of sick, cosmic joke from the universe and after everything he’s been through, after dying for fuck sake, a little bump on the head feels like it might be the thing that breaks him.

“Evan,” another deep voice that Buck can’t quite make out says. It cuts through the ringing and the beeping in his head that just seems to be getting louder and faster and more incessant and—

Oh.

That’s not in his head. 

That’s his ECG machine; that’s his heart. 

“I want to make it clear, Mr. Buckley,” his doctor says, a fickle attempt at distracting him from the rapid thumpthumpthump of his heart jackrabbiting. “We don’t know. Your memories— they might return tomorrow. You might wake up and they’ll be back, this could all just be a temporary consequence of your head injury, things like that aren’t uncommon. We shouldn’t panic yet, not if we can help it, that definitely won’t help your situation. All your initial scans showed no significant damage aside from a concussion, this is purely for monitoring purposes.” 

It’s, well, not exactly reassuring, but it’s something that he can cling to, at least. It’s hope. 

“So what do we do for now?” he asks, desperate. 

“I think the most important initial thing to do is figure out how much you can remember. For all we know you might’ve just lost a few days or, perhaps, a few weeks at best.” 

“And how do we do that?”

She gestures around the room with the hand that isn’t gripping onto her clipboard. “You’ve got all your best sources of information with you. Maybe they can help you figure out where to start.” 

The hand that’s still holding his tightens and Buck looks up at his sister. The smile she gives him is reticent and terse and, even if he might have felt inclined to believe it, it’s marred by the tears in her eyes. Chimney’s at her side, hand on her waist, and Buck lets himself have a second to be relieved, to be beholden to him for being there for her, for making sure she doesn’t have to go through yet another of his life-altering medical emergencies by herself. At least she’s not alone in this. 

Bobby’s at the foot of his bed, eyes strong and encouraging in the way they always are, in the way that only Bobby’s could be. It makes him think, for a second, that things might not turn out so bad. Hen hovers next to him, her face expressive. She’s never been good at hiding her feelings in situations like these and her furrowed brows and pinched lips do a good job at betraying how she really feels. 

And then Buck’s eyes fall on him. 

The man closest to the door has his arms folded across his chest, one hand clutching at his bicep like he’s trying to physically hold himself together, to stop himself from shaking apart at the seams. Buck can see the indents in his skin from where his fingers are digging in and he has to fight the urge to tell him to cut it out, to beckon him over and get him to drop his hands so that he’s not hurting himself. 

Blue eyes meet his and soften, his shoulders dropping a little like Buck’s eyes on him alone is enough to melt the tension out of him, like candle wax melting near a flame. He’s— Buck isn’t blind, okay— he’s attractive. He’s all muscle and hard edges, jawline sharp and accentuated by the cleft in his chin that Buck has the urge to put his thumb on and see just how well it fits in the little dip there. He gets a small, vigilant, smile and, fuck, now there’s a dimple in his cheek too. 

Hen breaks the silence and Buck makes himself look away. “Do you remember how you ended up here? Like, what caused it?” she asks.

Buck purses his lips and tries to remember. 

He can’t. 

“Do you remember the lightning strike?” Maddie asks.

Chimney doesn’t wait before he chimes in with an untoward “oh, do you remember the bees?”

Hen perks up. “Right, and Gerrard?”

It’s like a whirlwind of information rushing at him all at once, overwhelming and tangible enough to make his head spin. It feels like he can recall some of it, if he really tries, but then he’s trying to recall something else and that memory slips from his grasp before he can grab it and latch on and it’s— it’s fucking frustrating, is what it is. 

“Oh! How about—” 

“Guys,” the same gruff voice that’d called his name earlier interrupts. The man near the doorway takes a minute step forward and, though Buck gets the feeling that he might want to, doesn’t shrink under the weight of six pairs of eyes descending on him. “You’re freaking him out. I think only one of us should ask.” 

It throws him for a loop somewhat, that this man can read him well enough to know that the questioning had set him on a knife’s edge that was already threatening to topple over. 

“Go ahead,” Bobby urges with a wave of his hand. 

The man shakes his head, lips turning down into something that resembles a frown, and Buck makes a small, dejected noise in the back of his throat that only he (and maybe Maddie) hears. 

“No,” he says, voice smaller than it had been. “No it should be someone who’s been with him through everything. One of you guys.” He pauses for a second, assessing eyes landing on Maddie, Chimney, Hen, and then Bobby, before he seems to decide. “Bobby, you do it. He’ll stay calmest if it comes from you.”

“ He's still in the room,” Buck protests, a petulant frown on his lips. 

The thing is, he’s not wrong, Buck knows himself well enough to know that. Bobby’s the best choice at keeping him calm; Bobby’s always been the one who could keep him calm best, he’s been the niggling little voice in the back of Buck’s head that reprimands him whenever he’s about to do something stupid and gives him pause, the surrogate father that, in another universe, he might deserve. Apparently this man knows him well enough to understand that and Buck can’t quite figure out how the fuck he knows and it’s driving him a little crazy. 

“Alright,” Bobby says, cutting his thoughts off before they can start to really spiral. He thinks for a second before he asks: “Buck, do you remember the lightning strike?” 

That one’s easy, a no brainer. “I think it’d be a little hard for even me to forget the time I died, Cap.” 

A small chuckle crescendos through the room. 

“Alright, that’s good. What about what Chim mentioned? Can you remember the incident with the bees? And Gerrard being captain?” 

“Gerrard was captain?” Buck asks, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. Adrenaline shoots through him, spikes the ECG up again and makes him sit up a little straighter. “Did something happen to you, Bobby? Why was Gerrard captain?” 

“I’m fine, I’m good, kid,” he says. It doesn’t sound like a lie, but it doesn’t exactly read as the full truth either. There’s a story there, one he feels desperate to know, like an itch under his skin that he can’t quite get deep enough to scratch, but Bobby’s carrying on before he can push it any further. “Can you remember Chim and Maddie’s wedding?” 

That one’s harder. 

It feels like something he should remember. His big sister's wedding should be a huge deal, but, try as he might, he can’t recall it. Sure enough, when he looks down at Maddie’s hand in his, there’s a new ring on her finger. 

“I remember the engagement,” he tries, a compromise. “I remember you got the ring stuck and you wouldn’t let me cut it off—”

“—it was my engagement ring, Buck—”

“—but no. I don’t think… I can’t remember the wedding.” He takes a second to look up at Maddie, offering her a small smile. “Was it good?” 

She laughs, a bright, chipper sound; it’s the kind of sound that makes him feel like everything’s going to turn out okay. “It was eventful, that’s for sure.”

“Alright, we’ll go back a little more,” Bobby hums. “What about the cruise ship? Do you remember anything about that?” 

There’s something vague and familiar about a cruise ship rattling around his head but it doesn’t feel like anything significant, it doesn’t feel like something that’s worth bringing up on its own. “You mean the one you and Athena went on?”

Bobby nods, hopeful. 

“Yeah, I remember you leaving.”

“And the ship?” Bobby presses, voice tight. “Do you remember the ship?”

He shakes his head, no. 

“Evan,” the voice from earlier calls. 

Buck’s attention goes to him willingly, eagerly, like it’s natural, like it’s instinct, and the rest of the room follows suit. 

“Evan, do you know who I am?” he asks. The muscles in his cheek jump and twitch like he’s grinding his teeth and clenching his jaw, bracing himself for an inevitable impact.

Buck blinks at him, eyes searching. “Should I?”

The room falls deathly silent. 

The clock on the wall stops ticking, the chatter outside the room drifts away, hell, he thinks maybe people stop so much as breathing in the damn room for a few seconds. Maddie’s hand grips his tight enough to bruise and a small hitch of breath by his side is the first thing he hears.

The man looks at him for a beat, shoulders tensing back up to match the set of his jaw. He looks like he wants to say something, like he’s dying to, but then he just turns on his heel and darts out of the room like he can’t quite bear to be in it any longer. 

“Tommy!” Chimney calls from beside Maddie. His hand drops from her waist and he darts around the bed, only swearing the once when he stumbles over his own feet, before following him out of the room.

Buck tries to watch them from between the half-drawn blinds. He thinks he can see Chimney’s hand on the man’s— on what must be Tommy’s, his brain supplies rather unhelpfully— shoulder, and then he’s pulling him in for a hug. The man— Tommy— goes willingly, like all the fight’s been drained out of him, and he clings to him like Chimney’s now the only thing holding him up on his feet. 

Chimney’s eyes meet his through the blinds and then he’s ushering the two of them down the hall and out of sight and Buck feels strangely disappointed by their loss. His thumb strokes across Maddie’s knuckles and, yeah, that must be it. He doesn’t like the thought of her going through this alone without her now apparent husband beside her. 

The room stays silent for a long few seconds even after they’re gone and Buck kind of feels like he’s got one foot hanging off of the ledge of a building. It's like he’s missing out on something huge and incredibly important that everybody except him seems to be clued in on. 

“What?” he asks, shifting uncomfortably on the bed.

“Hey,” Maddie says, calling his attention. “Do you really not know who that is?”

Panic swells in his chest, deep and consuming and he thinks he might throw up about it. It’s someone he should know then— fuck. 

“No,” he says despite the taste of bile rising up in his throat. “Should I? Who is he? He’s important to me?”

“Buck that’s—” a pause, a breath, Buck feels like he’s balancing on a knife's edge that’s one wrong move away from toppling, “—that’s Tommy. He’s your boyfriend.” 

-

So.

He has a boyfriend.

Which is fine! It’s cool. He’s not like— homophobic or anything. He’s an ally! He’s always been an ally! Pride month emoji in his bios and all! 

Except now, apparently, he’s more than that. 

And according to Maddie and the others he’s been more than that for quite some time now. They’re all reluctant to put a definitive timeframe on his relationship with Tommy, either insisting that it’s complicated, or not their place, or that they don’t even exactly know, which, quite honestly, Buck thinks is bullshit. 

He has a boyfriend— he has a hot boyfriend— there’s no way that not a single one of them doesn’t know how long he’s had him for. There’s no way Buck wouldn’t be screaming about it from the rooftops if he landed someone who looked like he’d been carved out of marble and could fly helicopters into freaking hurricanes. It’s just not possible. 

Unless…

Oh god, what if he’s a bad boyfriend? 

What if he’d kept them a secret and forced Tommy in the closet with him or something? What if he’d freaked out and hidden them and that’s why nobody knows how long they’ve been together? That’s not— Buck doesn’t think he’d treat a boyfriend like that, but yesterday he didn’t think he’d have a boyfriend at all, so maybe he doesn’t know himself half as well as he thinks he does. Maybe he is an asshole. Maybe Tommy’s only with him out of obligation because he’s a good guy and Buck’s an asshole but he’s too nice to say anything. Oh god, what if— 

The door swings open and Buck’s spiralling is halted in its tracks. 

“Hey,” the guy— Tommy— says from where he’s frozen in the entryway, hand curled tight around the doorknob. 

He looks… he looks good, though he’s carrying around an air of exhaustion with him like a reaper hanging around for an end of life patient. It doesn’t suit him, he should be smiling. Buck wants to make him smile. There’s a dimple hiding on that face somewhere that he wants to coax out. 

“Hey,” he says back.

“I thought you’d be resting.” 

Buck hums and waves a dismissive hand. “Doctor Flannigan told me to stay awake, I think she’s worried I might start bleeding internally or slip into a coma or something if I close my eyes.” 

It's a morbid joke, but it’s how they cope. After Chimney had been impaled by a rebar rod, he’d made Final Destination jokes for weeks. When he first came back to work whenever there was a problem he would sigh dramatically and announce ‘boy, I need this like a hole in the head’ and wait with baited breath for the groans and laughter that it got him. 

He’d researched it once— the prevalence of gallows humour in first responders. It's easier to laugh at the presence of the gallows than live in fear of it, especially for those who haunt the place constantly. 

Still, Buck half expects to be chastised for it.

After the lightning strike whenever he’d cracked a joke about it his parents would sigh in condemnation and give him a pointed look coupled with an even more disappointed “Evan!” Even now Maddie still swats at him when he makes a comment about it that’s a little too morbid for her taste. 

“Anything to get out of your night shift,” Tommy quips back at him, just as playful.

Buck sits up a little straighter at the retort, shuffling himself up on the bed until he’s mostly upright and propped up by pillows. It’s not that he’s shocked by the reply, more so that it was just unexpected, is all. Maddie had filled him in somewhat and thrown him a few scraps of information about Tommy when he’d probed at her for details. She’d kept it simple and brief, though, worried about disrupting or influencing any of his memories, but from what she had told him, it makes sense. Firefighter, pilot, veteran— it doesn’t surprise him that Tommy’s just as content as he is to hang around the gallows. 

“For the love of god, please don’t sell me out to Bobby,” he adds, serving up his own swing in this morbid game of tennis that they’re playing. 

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

Buck smiles at him, all teeth and lips stretched thin, and he gets one back— and there’s that dimple again. 

It’s the first time he’s seen Tommy properly smile; he’d been understandably somber and quiet earlier, his face drawn into a frown and the sharp edges of his jawline flexing from where he’d been grinding his teeth together. But now, like this, Buck finds himself a little bit obsessed with it; with the way Tommy’s nose crinkles up, the slight squint around his eyes, the way he looks so much younger and softer as the tension bleeds out of his face, that damn dimple. 

He loves making people happy, he lives for it, in fact, and Tommy, it seems, is no exception to that. 

“Where is everyone?” Tommy asks before he can think of a comeback, walking in and glancing around the room like he expects someone to jump out and scream surprise! at him. 

“Bobby’s sorting out temporary cover for my shifts,” he starts, gut twisting with guilt— he hates the idea that anybody else will have to go out of their way because he can’t pull his weight. “Hen had to go check on the kids so Karen could get to work, I don’t exactly know where Chim disappeared to, I’m sure he’s around somewhere, and Maddie said she had to go to the bathroom. I think that’s just her alibi, though. I saw her trailing after a nurse a little while ago, I’m sure she’s hounding them for my scan results.” Buck meets Tommy’s eyes and holds them. “And you’re here.”   

Tommy’s lips turn down for a second, brief enough that it would have been easy to miss if nobody was paying any attention to him. But Buck was— he is. 

“I can go if you want,” Tommy offers sheepishly. “Leave you to get some rest.”

Logic would tell him that that’s the rational thing to do. He doesn’t know this man, it’s as good as having a stranger by his bedside. 

Except it’s not. 

That’s not how it feels. 

Tommy doesn’t feel like a stranger; his presence is warm, comforting, and Buck feels less like a pitied lab rat alone with him in this room than he has since he woke up. 

“No,” he says, the beeping on the ECG machine he’s hooked up to quickening ever so slightly. Tommy’s eyes flicker to it and Buck feels crimson start to taint his cheeks. “I don’t want you to go.”

Unconvinced baby blue eyes meet his. “Are you sure?”

Buck nods. “I’m sure.”

“If you change your mind—“

“—I’ll tell you to get lost. Now can you please, I don’t know, sit or something? Your hovering is spiking my blood pressure.” 

Tommy rolls his eyes and huffs out a breath of air between his lips but he gives in and manoeuvres the bedside chair around until he can drop down in it, facing Buck. It should make him feel jittery, being under the perception of a man he knows the name and a few tidbits of information about; he’s always been a social person but strangers by his bedside is never something he’s been comfortable with. Hell, he’d barely even been comfortable with his parents fretting by his side, this should feel weird, it should feel wrong. But instead it’s just…

It’s shockingly unshocking how comfortable he seems to be with Tommy’s presence. 

It seems to hit them both at once that they’ve been sitting in silence for much longer than should be comfortable and, when Buck opens his mouth to speak, Tommy matches him, the two of them echoing that first syllable throughout the room. 

“I—”

“So—” 

They both pause and look at each other for a few beats of silence, and then they’re breaking out into matching smiles and a single, soft breathy exhale of laughter slips from them both. It’s incredibly domestic and familiar for someone who is as good as a stranger to him.

“You go,” Buck insists.

Tommy seems to take pity on him because he doesn’t protest when he says, “I was just going to ask if anything’s come back to you yet.” 

Buck’s stomach swoops in something he can’t quite put a name to— disappointment, maybe? Or guilt? Or maybe it’s just the fact he hasn’t eaten in god only knows how many hours and he was promised something, anything that he still hasn’t been given and he’s starving. 

“No,” he admits, shoulder slumping.

Disappointment flashes across Tommy’s face and Buck might not know him, but he’s familiar enough with that emotion to know what it looks like, what it feels like, only this must be on another level entirely.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hunching in on himself like if he makes himself small enough, this bed might just swallow him whole. 

Tommy schools his face into something neutral and leans back in the chair. “Why are you apologising?” 

“Well, because I can’t remember, I mean I—” 

“—that’s not your fault, you don’t have anything to be sorry for.” 

Buck wants to protest, he really really does, he’s so used to apologising and trying to fix things and making everything better and it’s killing him that there’s nothing he can do to fix this. 

“It’s not like you lost your memories on purpose,” Tommy acquiesces. “And I know if you had the chance you’d want them back. I don’t blame you, Evan.” 

God, and there he goes using that stupid name of his again. Buck should hate it, he’s hated it for so fucking long, but when Tommy says it it doesn’t feel like he’s talking about a different person entirely, he says it and it drips from his lips all sickly sweet like honey. He says it like he doesn’t look at him and see the war between Buck and Evan that he’s been battling for years; he says it like he’s telling Buck that it’s safe to put down his sword, that he doesn’t have to fight between them anymore. That he can be both, that he is both. He says it like he’s a safe place for Buck to retreat to.

He should ask him about it.

He doesn’t. 

“Still—” Buck starts, fiddling with the scratchy hospital blanket between his fingers, “—I know this can’t be easy on you. I don’t know what I’d be doing if…” 

“If you were me?” Tommy finishes for him, one eyebrow raised. 

Buck cringes a little at the abruptness of it but nods nonetheless. “Yeah, if I were you.” 

“I’m—“ he pauses, jaw clenching in the same way it had earlier and Buck is torn between wanting to reprimand him for grinding his teeth, and wanting to watch the way the muscles in his face jump and twitch and pull taut, “—hanging in there.”

It’s a lie. 

It’s such a lie and Buck has no idea how he knows it is, but he knows it is. 

There’s dark circles under his eyes and a small, red mark on the plumpest part of his lip that’s too neatly shaped to be anything other than the imprint of teeth worrying into flesh. When Buck’s eyes drift, he catches sight of the way Tommy’s scratching at the skin around his thumb almost absentmindedly— it’s probably only the years of pilot training and military precision that’s keeping his leg from bouncing a hole into the floor. He’s not hanging in there at all; he looks like he’s about three minutes and one more piece of bad news away from going thermonuclear and taking the entire hospital down with him Godzilla style. 

“I think I saw that motivational poster at my orthodontist's office one time,” he hums, a pitiful attempt at cutting through the fog of tension that’s starting to roll into the room. 

Tommy’s fingers still and the air shifts to something lighter, easier. “Yeah, it’s the one with the cat hanging onto a tree branch they plaster on the ceiling and force you to stare at.” His eyebrows draw together and his voice shifts into something deeper and bitchier, and Buck is enthralled by him. “Because that’s what I want to look at when I’m an hour deep into a root canal.”

“I think it’s supposed to be inspirational or something.”

“Yeah, well. Whoever made it has clearly never had to rescue a pissed off, bloodthirsty maine coon from an even more pissed off and bloodthirsty neighbor's tree in the middle of a property dispute. That should count as some kind of warfare.”

Buck hums, amused and fond. There’s a story here he probably already knows but he wants to hear it again. “Bloodthirsty?” 

“Bloodthirsty,” Tommy confirms, dead serious. 

It makes him smile— really smile— and if he wasn’t still hooked up to a, quite frankly, ridiculous amount of medical equipment, he could almost forget about the whole amnesia thing. 

“You were lucky to escape with your life,” he says, teasing.

“It was almost thirty pounds of fur and fury, Evan,” Tommy counters. “I’ve seen tigers with less primal rage than that thing.” 

The laugh that slips past his lips is entirely involuntary, but it’s warm and it’s comforting so he lets himself fall into it— into Tommy’s deadpan humour that’s laced with bitchiness and sarcasm— and it doesn’t scare him when he starts to sink. 

It’s absurd timing with everything he’s got going on, but the conversation’s sent his brain running and now all he can think about is whether or not a damn maine coon has ever killed a person and his phone is god knows where and he can’t scratch the itch that’s festering under his skin. He needs to know or this is the only thing he’s going to be thinking about whilst he’s stuck in this stupid bed, in this stupid hospital, with his stupid broken brain, and no stupid memories that he can make himself remember and—

“It hasn’t,” Tommy pipes up from the chair. He’s slumped back in it a little now, his hands tucked into the pocket of his LAFD zip up hoodie. 

“What hasn’t?”

“A maine coon has never killed anyone before, at least, not since the last time you checked.”

Buck blinks at him, a little confused and a lot dumbfounded because how the hell did he know—

“Sorry, you were making that face.”

“I was making a face?”

Tommy hums in affirmation. “It’s the one you get when you’re thinking too hard about something and you need to know right now or you’ll get restless.”

He’s never been known like that before, never been perceived in the kind of way that Tommy seems to perceive him and it’s— it’s unnerving, to say the least. He’s not used to it; he has no idea what to do with it. 

The silence stretches on long enough that Tommy seems to think he’s fucked up, that he’s put his foot in it, and he sits up a little straighter, the line of his shoulders tense and so fucking broad, god. “You told me about it the last time we had this conversation. I know more about owner-pet mortality rates than I ever thought I’d be comfortable knowing. Maybe that’s why I never got a dog.” 

He’s deflecting; Buck might be an amnesiac, but he’s not stupid, he’s done enough of it himself to recognise a deflection when he sees one. He gets the sense that it’s something Tommy’s very familiar with too. 

There’s an obvious elephant in the room that Tommy doesn’t seem willing to broach first. He can see it in the easy way they fall into conversation, in the way Tommy’s eyes keep falling on him and softening, in the way he keeps moving to say something and then instantly second guessing himself. It’s like he’s walking a tightrope without a wire or a safety net and he’s scared to even put one foot in front of the other in case he trips and falls and takes them both down with him. 

Tommy gives him a small, terse smile and shifts to the edge of the chair like he’s about to leave. “Anyway—“

Buck cuts him off abruptly, desperately, the hollow pit in his stomach widening at the thought of Tommy leaving, of being alone in this room again. “Maddie told me about us.”

Well. 

There goes that elephant. 

Tommy goes still on the edge of his seat, his spine rigid, and Buck has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling when his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. “Maddie told you what, exactly?” 

“That we’re,” Buck pauses, gesturing between the two of them with his index finger, “you know. A thing.” 

Tommy huffs out a bemused little sound that might be a laugh and Buck can’t help but think againagainagain. “A thing?” 

Okay, not exactly his smoothest moment, but still.

“Yeah, a thing,” Buck echoes, putting even more emphasis on the word. “Together. A couple. Boyfriends.” 

“Right,” Tommy nods, lacing his fingers together and resting his clasped hands palm-to-palm in his lap. “And how do you feel about that?” 

And that’s… not the question he’d been anticipating, honestly, it’s not even a question he’d considered that much until now. Maybe he should be shocked, he’d been straight yesterday and now he's, what? Gay? Bisexual? Queer? Does he even have a label? God, is that even how it works? He knows sexuality isn’t something that can just be changed, that it’s innate, that you’re born with it, and sure, he’s appreciated a hot guy’s ass before, and he’s undoubtedly attracted to Tommy— Tommy with his chiseled jaw and broad shoulders and baby blue eyes and that damn cleft in his chin and, god, that dimple in his cheek. 

Yeah, maybe he should be shocked, and maybe somewhere in his head he is, but it doesn’t feel bad. It feels like a revelation, and maybe a little bit freeing. It feels silly and cliche to say, but he kind of feels like he’s living a truth he hadn’t realised was his before, like a weight he didn’t know he’d been shouldering is finally gone. 

“I’m good,” Buck finally settles on because yeah. Yeah he is. “I’m really good.” 

Tommy gives him a little smile, caught somewhere between dumbfounded and pleasant surprise like he hadn’t been expecting an answer that positive. “Then I guess that’s good.” 

Still, Buck can see the tension he’s holding and he’s never been one to bite his tongue. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Of course. Anything.” 

“Maddie and the others… why don’t they know how long we’ve been together?” 

Tommy shifts in his chair uncomfortably, fingers clasping and unclasping at each other and— oh god, Buck had been right, hadn’t he? 

“Am I a bad boyfriend? Did I like— did I keep you in the closet or something?” he asks, guilt settling in his bones. 

“Oh god, no, Evan,” Tommy insists, shuffling to the very edge of the seat and resting his palm on Buck’s arm.

It’s the first time he’s touched him and that point of contact alone makes him feel like he’s been struck by lightning all over again. Buck’s arm prickles into goosebumps, the skin under Tommy’s palm warm where it’s blanketed by the heavy weight of it— god, how had he never questioned men before? 

“It’s nothing like that. You’re a good boyfriend. You're funny, and sweet, incredibly charming and gorgeous even if you do move a little fast.” There’s a story there for sure, but Buck doesn’t think now’s the time to push on that particular wound. “You’re good to me. You’re good for me.” 

“So why don’t they know?” he asks because this… this is a wound he feels comfortable pushing on. 

“It’s—” 

“—God help me, Tommy, if you say complicated!”  

Tommy shuts his mouth abruptly, teeth clacking together with the force of it and, yeah, that’s exactly the answer he was about to get and Buck has no idea how it can be complicated. 

“I don’t know what else to say because it is,” Tommy insists. “Or it was, at least. I just,” he cuts himself off with a sigh. “I don’t want to force anything back for you, and I don’t think it’d be good for you to hear secondhand memories from somebody else, least of all me. I think you should let them come back on their own.”

“And if they don’t?” Buck asks, voice quivering. It’s the one thing he’s wanted to ask since he heard 'retrograde amnesia' all those hours ago. 

The idea of them not coming back— of him losing a part of himself that he’ll never even be able to remember losing, that he’ll never get the chance to know what it is he’s lost— is suffocating. He feels like he’s got cinder blocks tied to his feet and he’s been thrown overboard, left to flounder and gasp in a desperate battle for air that he has no hope of winning. 

“Oh, Evan.” Tommy says his name so softly, like the weight of it in his mouth is something he treasures. “They will.”

“You can’t know that, Tommy, you can’t—”

Tommy pushes himself up from his chair and moves to stand flush by his bedside, eyes dark and desperate and intense. The hand on his arm tightens, a reassuring squeeze, and the other comes up to cup his cheek. 

“I can,” he says, thumb brushing over his cheekbone and Buck has to smother the urge to whine at the tenderness of it all. “Evan, there is nobody I know in this world that’s more stubborn than you, and I mean that as a compliment. I know you’ll get them back because there isn’t a world where you’ll accept losing them forever, where you’ll be content with having this—” Tommy pauses for two beeps of his heart from the monitor, grappling with the words he wants to say, before he marches onwards, “—this gap of nothing for the rest of your life. I won’t be surprised if you start remembering things out of sheer force of will and spite alone.” 

Tommy gives him a smile, a soft, private one that makes Buck want to believe in what he’s saying; that makes him think that maybe, impossibly, things might actually be alright. 

“You’ll be okay because that’s what you do. You always bounce back, and it might take a little more effort this time around, but you will. I’ve seen you come back from so much worse than this and I’m…” Tommy sucks in a shaky little breath of air, “I’m not going anywhere.”

They’re close— they’re so close— it wouldn’t take much at all for Buck to bring his hand up to Tommy’s face, to cup his jaw and get his thumb in that damn cleft and bring him in for a kiss. It’d just be another kiss for Tommy, something that they probably do on a daily basis considering that they’re dating, but it’d be their first for him, at least for now. 

“Tommy,” Buck exhales, voice existing somewhere between a plea and a whimper and then—

And then the door to his room swings open and there are shoes squeaking against the linoleum, announcing the arrival of another person, and Tommy’s ripping himself away from him like he’s been burned, like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. It would be amusing, the little deer-in-headlights, kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar, kind of look on his face if Buck didn’t already miss the warmth of his hands and the reassuring weight of his presence by his side. 

“Sorry,” Maddie says from where she’s frozen in the doorway, her hand curled around the doorframe where she’d pushed it open, a mirror image of the way Tommy had looked earlier. Her eyes dart between the two of them, calculating. “Am I interrupting?”

Yes, Buck thinks. 

“No,” Tommy voices for the both of them. He clears his throat a little awkwardly and steps away from Buck’s bedside, gesturing for Maddie to take the chair because of-fucking-course he’s a gentlemen. He probably pulls Buck’s chair out for him when they have dinner and insists on holding the door open for him, probably lays his fucking jacket on the ground so Buck never has to step in a puddle or something insane and cliche and romantic like that. 

It’s stupidly attractive. 

God, how had he ever thought he was straight? 

“Any change?” Maddie asks, slipping into the chair and giving Buck her full attention.

“No, nothing yet,” Buck answers, watching as Tommy puts some distance between him and his sister, maneuvering his way through the room to stand by the other side of his bed. There’s something there he feels like he should question, should push on, but Tommy settles in and gives him a small, reassuring smile, so he drops it for now, content to leave that bruise alone. 

“Did you manage to accost my nurse into giving you any answers?” he hums, playful even as his sister shoots a glare his way. 

“I was not accosting her,” Maddie insists, stubborn. “But no. I lost her somewhere around the third floor.” 

Buck rolls his eyes fondly and extends his hand for her to hold. It’s a trivial action, one they do all the time, but it still carries the weight of over three decades of love and warmth and comfort and they both ease up a little at the contact— it’s just as reassuring for Maddie as it is for him. The silence they lapse into isn't exactly awkward, but it’s a few streets away from the comfortable silence he’d fallen into with Tommy when they were alone. 

“Hey guys,” Bobby says, stepping over the threshold and into the room a minute or so later, breaking the silence they’d lapsed into, thank god. “Look who I found.”

Dr. Flannigan strolls in behind him like this is just a casual day at work for her, like she’s not the single person in this hospital with answers, with the missing piece of the puzzle that his brain is screaming for. Maddie huffs by his side, a little disgruntled that her efforts chasing around nurses had clearly been for nought. He loves her so much. 

“Mr. Buckley,” she says, and her smile doesn’t feel as forced as it had this morning. “How are you feeling?” 

“I’ll let you know when I remember,” Buck jokes. Hey, if he has to live at the gallows, there’s no reason why everybody can’t visit him here too. 

Maddie swats at his arm lightly but by his other side Buck notices the way Tommy’s hand comes up to cover his mouth like he’s trying to hide his smile behind it. It makes him preen, makes him want to stretch out and bathe in the feeling like a cat lounging in a sunbeam. 

“Well the good news is,” Dr. Flannigan begins, flipping through his chart with the precision only a doctor can. “Your scans are all clear. There’s no sign of damage, no indication of subdural hematoma, and all your swelling’s gone down to normal levels, you appear to just have a concussion. I’d say you’ve been very lucky, given the circumstances.” 

Lucky, right. 

With a boyfriend he doesn’t remember getting, a sister who’s wedding he can’t remember going to, and a room full of people who keep side-eyeing him like he’s one more piece of bad news away from tipping over the edge. 

But sure, he’s lucky.

“Has—“

Buck cuts her off with a sigh. “No, there hasn’t been any change, no, I can’t remember anything, yes I would like to go home now.”

“Is that safe?” Bobby asks, standing up a little straighter. “Can he be left alone like this?” 

Dr. Flannigan’s eyes shift to face him. “Well, that brings me to my next point.” 

It makes Buck bristle, the way they’re talking between each other like he’s not even in the room, like he’s some kind of afterthought; a ghost haunting his own gallows. 

He catches sight of Tommy shifting somewhat in his periphery and when he looks up at him, he finds blue eyes already looking back at him like he knows exactly what he’s thinking. The smile he gets is small, a barely there quirk of his lips, but it’s enough to dissuade the churning in his stomach at least for now. 

“Obviously, given the concussion, it’s not advisable for Mr. Buckley to be alone for the next few days–” she pauses, glancing around the room briefly, “–I assume with the amount of family you had here in the last day that that's not going to be a problem.”

“It won’t be,” Maddie assures, squeezing his hand tight. 

“And my memories?” Buck asks because he needs to know. “What about them?”

“I wish it were as simple as an easy fix, but the truth is we don’t know enough about amnesia and its effects on the brain to have a homogenous cure.” There’s a pause for a second whilst his doctor lets that hang in the air, whilst she lets him absorb and process it. “What I can recommend, though, is keeping your routine as close to how it was before. I know, obviously, you won’t remember much of it, but I’m sure your family will be able to help you with that. Keeping up with a routine, following the same kinds of patterns, sticking to your version of normalcy, those kinds of things should, hopefully, ease your brain back into remembering.”

“Normal,” he echoes, lulled somewhat by the feeling of Maddie rubbing circles into the back of his hand with her thumb. “So you mean like, work and—”

“Yeah, nice try, Buck,” Bobby says by the foot of his bed, one eyebrow cocked in fond judgement. “You already have the next few weeks booked off whilst you recover. We’ll reassess as we go.”

Buck sighs and throws his head back against the pillows, glaring up petulantly at the ceiling. One of the tiles is coming loose in the corner and he stares at the gap it makes. 

“Great,” he huffs, already feeling the telltale signs of restlessness and boredom clawing at his skin. It won’t be long until it reaches his veins and permeates his blood and then he really will be screwed. “So who’s drawn the short straw then?” 

Maddie and Bobby exchange a look with each other— when the hell had the two of them learned to talk in looks?— and lapse into silence. Bobby raises an eyebrow, Maddie cocks her head and purses her lips and Buck, well, Buck kind of wants to scream. 

“It’s fine, you know?” he snaps at them, irritability simmering over like a pot on the boil. “I don’t need a babysitter, it’s just a concussion, I can take care of myself.” 

Dr. Flannigan arches an eyebrow and looks between the four of them. He's seen enough doctors to know that look. It’s the kind of look that means he does need a babysitter and he will be getting one if he wants any chance at going home in the next few hours. 

“It’s not that,” Maddie says. “Like your doctor said, we’re supposed to be keeping things normal and avoiding things that could be overwhelming and, well, it’s just,” she stops, takes a breath like she’s composing herself, and then turns back to look at him, face stern and serious. “You haven’t exactly been spending your time at home recently.”

Buck’s eyebrows draw together in confusion. If he’s not at his home, then where the hell is he?

Maddie’s eyes dart over his shoulder to the last figure in the room and Buck follows them until his gaze drops on— oh. 

Of course it’s Tommy, that makes sense. 

Tommy gives him a tight lipped smile and a semi-awkward wave of his hand. He’s so fucking endearing and charming and attractive and the thought of living in close quarters with him is both thrilling and nerve wracking. There’s something about Tommy that just makes him feel so… just so. That’s the only way he really knows how to describe it.

Tommy stirs up a litany of feelings in him that he can’t quite name. He makes him feel nervous, like he’s a kid with a crush again, and Buck wants to sink his teeth into that feeling and shake it around like a dog with a stuffed toy. He makes him feel a lot and he makes him feel all of it at once and it’s just so much. 

The room is quiet and he knows he’s being given an out, that all he’d have to do is shift uncomfortably, or make a comment, or breathe in the wrong kind of way and all of them, Tommy especially, would be clambering over each other to find somewhere else for him. They’d all be fighting to rearrange their lives and find a place for him to slot in, but the longer the silence goes on, the more that thought is entirely unappealing to him. 

He doesn’t want another place. 

He wants his memories and he wants this unfamiliar aura of comfort and calm that Tommy brings him whenever they’re alone together.

Buck looks up at him, searches his eyes for a few seconds before he gives him a lopsided smile. 

“How do you feel about having a roommate?” 

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?”

Chapter Text

A week and a half after Buck was discharged from the hospital, he ends up right back there again. 

This time, though, he’s being bounced between rooms and ushered between wards, he doesn’t get the luxury of his own room, his own bed. No, now he has to spend his time in a waiting room surrounded by people with stuffy noses and people barely bother to cover their mouths when they cough. 

It’s exhausting.

There’s some obscure telenovela playing on the rickety little television that’s hung way too high up on the wall. It’s a small thing, outdated by at least thirteen years and impossible to see properly from any angle except the one directly across from it and every time someone walks past it, the signal cuts out. 

“I hate hospitals,” Buck grumbles from his hard plastic chair. It’s too small for a man his size and when he shifts even a little, his knee knocks against the man next to him.

Tommy doesn’t seem to mind, though.

“I know,” he says, tearing his eyes away from the telenovela he’s been oddly invested in. One thing he’s learned about Tommy in these past ten days is that he’s a romantic. Anything to do with love and romance, especially in movies, and he’s hooked, putty in the hands of whatever’s got a hold on him. 

Valentine’s day was invented for people like Tommy.

“How’s your head?” Tommy asks, concern dripping in his voice like a faucet left to trickle. 

“I don’t know,” Buck hums, shooting his boyfriend— his boyfriend, christ, ten days and the novelty still hasn’t worn off— a look. “You would know, you tell me.” 

Behind them, the old woman who’s been doing an incredibly poor job of pretending like she hasn’t been eavesdropping on the two of them for the past fifteen minutes, chokes on a breath and squeaks out an undignified sound that has the rest of the waiting room shooting daggers in her direction.

“Evan,” Tommy says nonchalantly. He doesn’t even sound surprised, just mildly amused and a little bit impressed. “That was mean.” 

Buck just shrugs, temper hanging by a thread. “Eavesdroppers get what they deserve.”

The telenovela cuts to an ad break above them and Tommy turns to face him. “Seriously, though. How’s your head?” 

Buck’s been poked and prodded at all morning; he’s had electrodes and sensors stuck to his temples and forehead so much that he still feels sticky from them all. He’s had scan after scan after scan for hours and he’s— he’s fucking grumpy, is what he is. “I would kill to be anywhere but here, Tommy.” 

A nurse walks into the room and Buck has a split second of foolish hope, of thinking that she’s here for him so that they can get all this shit over with, but he’s calling the fucking eavesdropper. And, listen, he’s not a bad person, so he doesn’t wish anything ill on her, he just hopes that whatever it is that she’s in this place for is a mild inconvenience to the rest of her day, that’s all. 

“I wonder what she was here for,” Tommy ponders when she disappears past the doors. He nudges his shoulder against Buck’s. “Probably something to do with her nose.”

“What makes you say that?” 

“Well, she obviously has trouble keeping it out of other people's business. It makes sense that she’d be here for help with that.”

It’s so incredibly unexpected that Buck wants to snort. 

“Tommy,” he croons around a laugh that’s far too inappropriate for a hospital. He’s pretty sure a man six seats down is glaring at them— hey, maybe they’ll make enemies out of the whole waiting room before the day’s done! He doesn’t get a reply but Tommy does bump their shoulders together and offer him a small, private smile that does succeed, if only for a moment or two, in making him feel a little lighter. 

God, he could get lost in that smile, in the cleft of his chin, the crater of his dimple. It’s all so comforting and warm and—

“Evan Buckley?” a voice calls. 

Typical. 

Just as he’s started to not mind the thoughts in his head, they’re interrupted. 

When the two of them get up and follow at her insistence, the nurse leads them down a corridor and past a series of doors. It’s impossible for him not to think about what’s going on behind the closed ones, the news that people might be getting. News much like he’d been given here just over a week ago. Something so life altering and terrifying contained behind a single door. 

“Evan, hi!” Dr. Flannigan beams when they make it to her room. She stands up from behind her desk and reaches her hand out for him to shake. 

“Buck,” he corrects, shaking it nonetheless. He’s not rude.

“Ah, my apologies Mr. Buckley—” 

Buck cuts her off. “No, no. Just Buck, please.” 

He doesn’t want to do the whole cliche ‘Mr. Buckley’s my father’ spiel but being called that reminds him too much of his parents, of therapists and doctors and it’s all just too clinical for him. And Evan, well, nobody calls him that, not really. Nobody except—

Buck turns his head to look at Tommy who conveniently won’t meet his eyes and— ah. Now he’s gone and done it. Now he’s gone and caught a deadly case of foot in fucking mouth disease. The last thing he wants is for Tommy to clam up about it or, god forbid, call him Buck; the thought of that makes him feel a little nauseous for some reason. 

“Please,” Dr. Flannigan says, interrupting him before he can do something stupid like start grovelling and insisting that he didn’t mean it like that. “Have a seat.” 

They both do, albeit a little reluctantly, and she starts to flip through the results of his scans and tests from the day. The anxiety from the waiting room returns full force; it settles deep in the pit of his stomach and makes his leg start bouncing against the linoleum. It only lasts a couple of seconds before a foot is nudging against his own under the desk and, when Buck turns to look at Tommy this time, he’s giving him a tight-lipped smile that’s probably supposed to be reassuring.

It isn’t. 

Not exactly, anyway, but the weight against his foot does make his leg stop bouncing. 

“Well Mr. Bu—” Dr. Flanningan stops herself and meets Buck’s eyes across the desk before quickly switching to, “—well Buck. I’ve taken a look at your tests and everything seems normal, all your scans are clear and there’s no sign of any significant long-term damage. I’d say things look pretty good all things considered.”

Buck just stares at her.

Honestly, he kind of feels like he’s stepped onto another planet with how far removed he feels from ‘pretty good’. 

“So!” she carries on, barreling the conversation forwards when it’s clear that neither of them are feeling inclined to say anything to her. “With that out of the way, how have things been? Are you remembering things yet?”

Buck shrugs one shoulder, a weak, nonchalant gesture. “A little. Some things. Not much, though.”

“Progress is progress!” she beams back at him. God, for a doctor she’s so bright. It’s like this hospital has its own mini sun in her and right now Buck just kind of feels like a storm cloud getting in her way. “If you’re comfortable, would you want to share what you’ve remembered?” 

Honestly, that’s probably one of the last things in the entire world that he wants to do after the day he’s had. He’s tired and cranky and he doesn’t want to spend another hour sitting in a hard plastic chair recounting everything he can remember and even worse, the things he can’t. 

Still. 

He bites the bullet anyway.  

“I remembered my brother-in-law getting encephalitis on his wedding day and all of us running around downtown LA like bloodhounds chasing his scent.” He also remembers how fucking unfair it had felt when he’d learned that Chimney’s memories had cleared up in a matter of days. “I remembered my best friend moving to Texas and I think I got a dog for about three days and—” Buck pauses, bracing himself, “—oh yeah, I remembered my sister had her throat slit! You can probably imagine how that went.”

It had been… bad, to say the least. 

He’d remembered one evening just before him and Tommy were headed to bed. Tommy’s phone had been left on the nightstand and Buck had discovered very quickly that they share pretty much everything with each other, including phones. 

They’d been baking together— as much as Buck directing from the head of the counter and Tommy making sure that he didn’t blow up his stupid oven could possibly be considered together— a few days prior and his hands had been messy, covered in flour and butter and cake batter, and Siri had been no help when he’d called for her (Buck’s still sort of convinced she’s out to get him after the whole robot wars thing) so Tommy had reached for his phone with an amused little grin on his face and unlocked it to set a timer. It only seemed to hit him what he’d done after he’d caught a glimpse of the face Buck must have been making and he’d started apologising profusely, barely dissuaded by the amount of times Buck had insisted that it was fine, that they were supposed to be keeping things normal and that normal would inevitably include things that catch him off guard a little. 

So it wasn’t abnormal for Buck to grab the nearest phone— Tommy’s one— and scroll about on it whilst he waited for the man in question to finish up in the shower. Somehow he’d ended up on his Facebook and, as sparse as it was, it made Buck feel giddy when he found pictures of the two of them together on there. Maddie had commented on one of them so, logically, he went on her profile and saw— 

That fucking scar. 

God.

Ever since he was discharged she’d always been in scarves or high necks around him and Buck had just assumed that this was what she wore now, that she’d changed up her wardrobe in the year he’d lost, not that she’d been hiding something, and definitely not that that something was a slit fucking throat.

Tommy had come out of the shower in just his sweatpants, damp hair dripping onto a chest that Buck couldn’t even stop and appreciate because he couldn’t breathe, not when everything had rushed back so fast. The hospital, the news, the touch-and-go status for hours where his sister's survival had been in limbo. The scar. The fucking serial killer. 

He’d fallen asleep with Maddie on FaceTime that night, something he hadn’t done since he was a little kid desperate for the reassurance that he was loved. 

Dr. Flannigan gives him a pitiful little look and all Buck can think is don’t ask me how that felt don’t ask me how that felt don’t ask me how that felt on a loop in his head before she asks, “and how did that feel?”

If the desk were any lighter and not firmly bolted to the floor, he’d be tempted to flip it. “About as good as you can imagine.” 

She hums, lips pursed in thought, before picking up her pen and scrawling something in that stereotypical doctor-esque chicken scratch on her notepad. Buck kind of wants to stomp his feet and yell tell me tell me tell me! until she caves and reads it all out to him. 

It reminds him too much of when he was a kid and he’d been sent to a mandatory therapy appointment after landing himself yet another hospital visit. He’d reached double digits by April which was, apparently, far more than any normal, well-adjusted child should have. He’d sat across from this old man with grey eyebrows and even greyer hair and answered question after question about his parents and his home life and his own feelings and emotions all whilst this man, this stranger, who thought he had a single lick of insight into Buck’s life pursed his lips and took notes on everything he said like he was a damn lab rat.

He’d wanted to rip the notepad out of his hands then and he wants to do it now too.

“And what about this?” she asks, gesturing her finger between him and Tommy. “Between the two of you? Is there any progress here?” 

Out of the corner of his eye Buck sees Tommy sit up a little straighter, sees the way he squares his shoulders like he’s preparing himself for an oncoming slaughter, like whatever answer Buck gives, he expects for it to slice him to his damn core. 

“We’re adjusting,” Buck says into the silence, well aware that the question’s been hanging in the air for too long. “It’s been good. I mean, I’ve had a few slip ups but Tommy’s helped me through them.” 

“And the memories?” Dr. Flannigan prompts, not bothering to dance around the question. “Has there been any change there? Have you remembered anything, Buck?” 

It’s an innocent enough question, one that’s probably just standard practice and routine for a doctor dealing with an amnesiac, but it still makes his blood turn to ice in his veins. It still makes a cold chill run down his spine. It still makes him feel a bit like he’s about to hurl with the sheer amount of guilt that’s churning in his stomach. 

The two of them are acutely aware that there hasn’t been much change there, even if they’ve never said it out loud. It’s just been this unspoken thing that they both know but giving voice to it is scary— it makes it feel too real.

And now he’s being confronted with it like this in a room where he has no choice but to sit still and take it and it’s… it’s just so much.

“No,” Tommy says for him when the silence stretches into awkward territory. “There’s no change. But we’re working on it.”

“Interesting.” She scribbles more notes down on her pad like his life can be summed up and reduced to a few fucking scribbles on a page. “And why do you think that is?” 

Something coils inside him like a spring that’s been pulled taut, like something that’s stretched right to its limits and is about to fracture under the pressure. It's Hooke’s law in motion and Buck doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to spring back to his original shape. It’s a blind hot something, not so much a rage, more so something like annoyance or indignation, either way it seeps deep into his marrow and now all he wants to do is go. He wants to be as far away from this conversation, this room, this hospital as he physically can be and even then that won’t feel like enough distance between them.   

“You’re the doctor,” Buck snaps, cantankerous. “Shouldn’t you be telling us that?” 

“Evan,” Tommy tries. His fingers twitch on his thigh like he wants to reach out and touch him, to put a hand on Buck’s arm or his leg or whatever part of him he can reach to ground him, to keep him sane, but he thinks better of it and stops himself and that just— that flares the bitterness up even more. He’s slowly feeling more and more like that lab rat trapped in a cage. 

“No no, it’s alright,” Dr. Flannigan insists, offering Tommy a cordial smile. “It’s okay for Eva—” she stops herself again, “—it’s okay for Buck to feel upset, I’m sure anybody would feel the same and I really don’t mean to pry but it’s just… I was curious if you thought there was a reason you were remembering other things but not this.” 

“Do we have to talk about this?” Buck snaps at her, frustration boiling over like a pot left abandoned on the stove. It’s not even like he means it in a nasty way, but this is him she’s talking about and now that thought’s been planted in his head and he can already feel the roots taking hold. 

“Of course not!” she relents. “I just thought we should cover all of our bases, that’s all.” 

There’s a stack of pamphlets on her desk that she side-eyes apprehensively and Buck swears if they get pushed his way he’s going to fucking scream— what could they even begin to say? Amnesia 101: How To Remember The Boyfriend You Forgot You Ever Had?

So, predictably, that’s exactly what begins to happen, of course her hand drifts over to them and she starts to push them in his direction. It would be funny if it were like, a scene out of a movie or something, except this is real life, this is his life and it’s not funny in the slightest. 

“I have to go,” Buck says, standing up from his chair so suddenly that it skids back with a loud scree sound as it scrapes across the floor. At least the pamphlets get paused mid-slide halfway across the desk and now he has plausible deniability for not grabbing them. 

“Mr. Buckley,” she tries but he just— he can’t, okay? 

“You said the scans and tests were fine, so that means I can go right?” he prods, already sidestepping around the chair and backing up towards the door; he half expects it to be gone when he turns around, trapping him in this room, this conversation, forever like his own personal form of Sisyphean punishment. 

“They are,” she confirms. “But I was hoping we could talk more about—” 

“Great, thanks doc, I’m glad everything looks good.” Buck backs up a little more until he hits the door and, oh thank god, the handle’s still there when he grapples for it. “I’m glad there’s no brain damage.”

“Evan,” Tommy tries. He’s stood up from his chair at some point during Buck’s escape attempt and he looks so fucking concerned with his furrowed brows and the frown on his face that Buck feels a little dizzy with it, like he’s seconds away from passing out. 

So, naturally, he yanks the door open and power walks out of the office. He passes the eavesdropper and the nurse that led them to Dr. Flannigan’s room earlier and doesn’t stop to dwell on the looks they give him— in fairness he is practically running out of a doctor’s office. If he saw someone fleeing the way he was, he’d probably side-eye them too.

“Evan!” Tommy’s voice calls from down the hall, a little too loud for a hospital.

Buck’s not a complete monster so he stops a few paces short of the waiting room exit and lets Tommy catch up to him.

“What happened?” he asks when he does and he’s just— he’s so damn sweet and considerate and there’s concern written all over his face and Buck can’t even do the decent thing and remember him the way he’s supposed to.

“Tommy, I just…” Buck trails off, frustration easing back down to a simmer. Tommy doesn’t deserve to have this taken out on him. “I just need some time alone. I need to, I don’t know, I need to go for a walk or something. I’ll call you later.”

“Evan,” Tommy frowns. He looks like he wants to argue, like he wants to push and push and push until Buck caves under the weight of it all but he must see something in his face because then he schools his expression and nods. “Okay. Call if you need anything.”

This time when he leaves Tommy doesn’t try to stop him or chase after him and, honestly, Buck’s not sure whether he’s grateful for that or not. All he knows right now is that he can’t stay in this fucking hospital any longer. It’s making him feel like he’s suffocating, like he’s stuck in a place with a million rooms and no matter how many halls he turns down, no matter how many doors he opens, he can’t find the exit. If he's being painfully honest with himself, it reminds him of his coma. It reminds him of a world where everything had been wrong and he’d struggled to find an exit and it's all just too much. It's like it’s some sick version of purgatory designed to be his own personal Hell— hey, maybe Dante cooked this level up just for him.  

He doesn’t even bother waiting for the elevator. No, that would mean stopping, that would mean standing still and Buck’s at least ninety percent certain that if he stops right now he might actually die or crawl out of his own skin or pass out or— there’s a million possibilities, none of them good, and he’s not prepared to stand there and ponder them all whilst waiting for an elevator that’s inevitably going to have enough people crammed into it, like a human can of sardines, to descend six floors. 

He takes the stairs instead and he takes them two at a time like he’s trying to outrun his own thoughts, like maybe if he moves fast enough they won’t catch up to him. Maddie had called herself a runner once and Buck wonders if this is what it feels like; a desperate need to get away, to put as much distance between himself and the problem as possible. There’s not even relief to be found when he makes it down the stairs, past the lobby, and ends up outside. Sure, he’s outside, but the weight still sits heavy and stifling on his chest. 

So he does the next best thing he can think of and just… starts walking. 

Buck’s lived and served the streets of LA for years at this point, he’s pretty confident he can navigate them and, on the off chance that he can’t, he’s always got his phone. Failing that he’s always got his stellar personality to fall back on! He has no idea how long he walks for or how far he ends up going but he’d stopped seeing street signs for the hospital a couple dozen blocks ago, so it must be a fair distance. The city’s also quieter this far out— it’s not quiet, not exactly, hell, you’d be hard pressed to find a quiet part in the middle of this city— but it’s almost a world away from the hustle and bustle of the hospital. It’s nicer, easier. 

Somewhere along the way he ends up buying a half-full cup of lemonade from a stand run by a kid on the front of their lawn. Buck’s the only other person around but that doesn’t stop the kid from asking for his name and sticking his tongue out in concentration as he writes it oh so neatly on the paper cup. He ornaments it with a bright smiley face sticker and Buck gives him ten dollars for the trouble and gets another smiley face sticker for his. 

There’s a bench about half a block down that he aims for. 

Admittedly when he drops down on it, finally getting off of his feet, his legs do burn a little. But they burn in a good kind of way. The way they usually do after he goes hard at the gym or after a particularly eventful shift, but it makes him feel a little bit more like himself and less like a person who’s just been floating around for the last ten days, who’s been existing in a vacuum of tests and possibilities and confusion. There’d been some hope in there too and, don’t get him wrong, Buck doesn’t think his hope was some kind of wasted effort, he has been remembering things… just not about the person he really wants to remember, the person he’s aching to remember. 

Things with Tommy in the last ten days have been so good and so fucking easy. They’ve come to him naturally like it’s all second nature, like it’s so deeply ingrained in his skin, his veins, his bones, right down to his marrow, to exist in Tommy’s space— in his fucking house. 

Buck’s spent a lot of years bouncing around from place to place; hell, he’s spent years bouncing from state to state, country to country, chasing the feeling of something that he could never quite seem to sink his fingers into. He ran up and down the entire east coast, the length of Pennsylvania, Montana, even Peru, but he’s always felt like he’s been weighed in the balance of his life and found wanting. It’s like he’s never been good enough to fit in a space of his own, like he’s never deserved to. Finding a place has always felt like a fight. So for these ten days to feel so easy during one of the hardest parts of his life… it’s knocked him a little off kilter. To feel so incredibly comfortable with someone after a lifetime of chasing that feeling is something so new and, if he’s honest with himself as comfortable as it is, it’s also equal parts terrifying and frustrating because he can’t remember why he’s so damn comfortable there. Why, of all the people he’s got in his life, he can’t remember the one person that’s supposed to be his. 

It’s not fucking fair and he wants— fuck, he wants to start digging his way through earth and soil and mud, wants his nails stained with it as proof of his desperation, until he reaches whatever deity dwells under there and demand why they had to subject him to this. To forgetting the one thing he’s wanted forever, the thing he would move heaven and hell and all the places in between to get back again.

He wants— no, he needs— to know why everything’s as easy as breathing around Tommy. 

He’s had ten days of them laughing, cracking stupid jokes together, of the two of them bouncing around the kitchen side by side like they fit together perfectly, of Tommy reading to him in those first two days when he was concussed and on a screen-ban, and it’s all just felt so easy, too easy, like it’s all more than he deserves. They’ve made memories. Sure, they’re not his old ones, they’re new and shiny and it’s a start, but if the universe expects him to be grateful for that when it’s robbed him of everything else then it can go and royally fuck itself.

A tap on his knee pulls him out of his slump and when he looks up the kid from the lemonade stand across the street is in front of him. 

“I’m closing shop,” he announces, thrusting another half-full paper cup of lemonade out towards him. It sloshes over the rim and, on closer inspection, Buck notices that the boy's hands are sticky with what was likely the other half of the lemonade. “You can have the last one for free. My daddy said you might need it.” 

“Thanks,” Buck says, sliding the cup into the empty space of his first one. 

“You’re welcome mister!”

The kid rocks back and forth on his heels a little, eyes wide and expectant as he stares at him and, come on, Buck’s always been a sucker for kids so he does what any sane adult faced with an expectant, excitable child would do and appeases him by taking a sip. It’s so much sweeter than his earlier cup that he almost chokes around his mouthful. 

“Mm!” He hums excessively and swallows hard. 

The smile he gets back is wide. It shows off a row of teeth that have the front two missing. “I put extra sweets in it for you!”

“I can tell,” Buck says, holding the cup up in acknowledgement before swirling it around a few times. There’s a whole sugar cube peeking out from the bottom and, yeah, Buck’s pretty certain he’s just swallowed an entire mouthful of sugar like a damn horse.

The kid looks pleased with himself nonetheless and turns back to cross the road. He stops at the curb, looks both ways a couple of times, before crossing and running into the arms of a man— his father, if Buck had to guess— waiting by his lemonade stand. 

The guy’s broad, all wide shoulders that his son can barely fling his arms around, and biceps that flex when he lifts him off his feet. He’s got the same form as Tommy and Buck has to squint from this distance and blink a couple of times just to make sure he’s not been moping around enough that he’s hallucinated his boyfriend as some kind of depression mirage. 

Fuck, he misses him. 

He’s only been away from Tommy for a handful of hours and he misses him.

So he does what any logical, rational amnesiac with a boyfriend they’d built a whole life with but can’t seem to remember a damn thing of, would do in this situation and pulls out his phone. 

And then he waits. 

∞∞∞

Buck doesn’t say anything when he gets picked up and Tommy doesn’t push. He just leaves his radio on low— that’s another thing that Buck’s learned about him in the few days they’ve had together, Tommy loves dad rock and Buck loves that he loves it, loves that he drums his fingers on the steering wheel whilst they sit in traffic, loves that he bobs his head along to the rhythm, loves that Tommy doesn’t give a damn about the cringe of it all, he just likes it and that’s enough for him— and let’s them ride in silence. 

It’s not until they’re about an hour into the drive according to the clock on the dashboard that it hits him. It doesn’t take that long to get from the hospital to Tommy’s place and they haven’t been sitting in traffic for longer than ten minutes total and they’ve passed that road sign at least three times now and that tree at least four and that billboard and—

“Where are we?” Buck asks, sitting up a little straighter in his seat and looking around. He’s not quite sure he can handle any more surprises today, not after this morning. 

To his credit, Tommy actually looks a little nervous. 

“I didn’t know if you wanted to go back yet so I’ve uh,” he pauses and chuckles, a self-depricating little sound. If his hands were free he’d probably be fiddling with them. “I’ve just been driving the same route for the last thirty minutes.” 

Buck just blinks at him. “Are you insane?” 

Tommy deflates so fast, like someone’s just stuck a pin into a balloon. “Yeah, sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed—” 

“Gas prices are extortionate in this economy, Tommy!” Buck huffs, cutting him off with a wave of his hand. “You can’t just— you can’t just waste it driving in circles!”

“I wasn’t wasting it—”

“You were!” he insists, restless. “Driving in circles is wasting your gas and it’s bad for the environment! I want the ice caps to still be around in a hundred years time!”

Tommy turns on his blinker and, when he speaks, the tone of his voice doesn’t even falter which drives Buck crazy. “And me driving around for an extra thirty minutes is going to take out an ice cap, is it?” 

Buck has to fight the urge to slump back in the seat, fold his arms across his chest and pout like a toddler in the middle of a tantrum. “It might.”

They drive in silence for about a minute or so, and just as Buck’s about to glare at that damn billboard— those fucking Chick-fil-A cows feel like they're taunting him at this point— coming up on their left, Tommy takes a right and changes up the route which makes him sit up a little straighter. In the span of three passes, he’s managed to memorise most of the scenery and this, this is different. They make another right and then a left and end up turning into the back of a parking lot, stopping in one of the furthest spots away from the store. There’s only one other car parked nearby and it looks mostly abandoned anyway. 

Tommy turns off the ignition and drops his hands from the wheel. “You want to talk about it?” he asks, the perceptive bastard. 

Buck doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t. But he already knows he’s probably going to end up doing it anyway.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure,” Tommy hums, a disbelieving little sound. “You’re just feeling really passionate about ice caps today?” 

“Maybe I am.”

“And this has absolutely nothing to do with the way you ran out of the hospital like somebody set it on fire behind you?”

“That’s not funny,” Buck grumbles, scratching at the denim of his jeans. “We’re firefighters. You shouldn’t joke about that.”

Tommy sighs. He sounds, well, not exhausted, exactly, it’s more like Buck’s toeing an invisible line he hadn’t even seen drawn in the ground and Tommy’s on the verge of frustration and shutting down completely. It makes him think of the version of him that Buck had seen when he’d first woken in the hospital. That version of Tommy had been colder, a desperate effort to keep himself detached to avoid getting hurt.  Nothing can cut deep enough to hurt if you turn yourself to stone first. 

Buck doesn’t want to go back to that version of him. Not when he’s had this version, his version— the version that names his coffee machine and is obsessed with romance and hums under his breath whilst he’s working on something or concentrating hard, the version that hums to dad rock and makes him laugh even when he doesn’t quite want to— for the last week and a half. 

Buck sighs, his leg bouncing against the car mat. He kind of feels like his whole body’s got the jitters, like if he keeps it locked away for much longer he’ll explode. 

“Please just tell me something about,” he pauses, gesturing his hand between them, “us. The not remembering is driving me crazy— and after today— I just need something.” 

“Evan…” 

“It doesn’t have to be specific, I’m not asking for a play-by-play.”

Tommy sighs and shifts a little to face him. “What do you want to know?” 

“Anything.” Buck shrugs and matches his stance. “I don’t care. Just give me something.” 

When Tommy doesn’t seem inclined to give him an inch, he barrels onwards. Tell me about our first kiss.” 

There’s a hint of pink creeping up onto his cheeks. Tommy looks— he looks almost shy, or bashful, maybe. It brings a unique kind of softness to him that Buck hasn’t really had the chance to see before, and for a second he really thinks Tommy’s going to try and change the subject, that he’s going to skirt around it, find something easier, something safer, to land on, but then he looks out the windscreen and starts talking. 

“It was in your loft,” he begins, eyes following a car as it pulls into the parking lot and does a U-turn. “You’d just accidentally put Eddie in the hospital—” 

“—I put Eddie in the hospital?” 

The indignation in his voice must be startling because Tommy turns to look at him again, a soft, dopey little smile on his face. “You did. You sprained his ankle at a basketball game.” 

“Holy shit,” Buck curses under his breath. 

Something clicks in his head. He doesn’t remember, not really, but something Maddie had cracked a joke about when they’d last spoken echoes in his head. She’d made an offhand comment about all their ankles being safe in Tommy’s place and he’d been confused, but moved on quickly enough to forget about it until now. He remembers the look she’d given him. Like she was waiting for him to make a quip back, like she was waiting for him to remember. 

Well, fuck.

“Why’d I do that?” 

“That’s… probably a bit more complicated,” Tommy says with a shrug. “I don’t know for sure, I’m not in your head. When I came over you made a joke about it and said you wanted my attention and I thought, nah, I’m not that lucky, but I guess you did.” 

Honestly, it’s not something Buck can quite picture himself doing.

Sure, he’s been angry and jealous— incredibly jealous— before, but to go as far as putting his best friend in the hospital? It just doesn’t feel like him.

Though, then he starts picturing Tommy and Eddie spending time together. Spending time together without him. Eddie monopolising his time when all he’d apparently wanted in the first place was just a crumb of Tommy’s attention but no, Eddie had come along and stolen up all the breadcrumbs first and he’d scrambled for it instead like some jealous version of that Brothers Grimm fairytale. Jealousy and anger and, honestly, a little bit of betrayal start to simmer in his gut, an ugly mixture that brews until he feels jittery and squirmy and sort of like he wants to run a lap and then stand in front of Tommy and bark at anybody who gets too close to him.

Actually, yeah. 

Maybe he can picture himself accidentally doing something like that. 

“So technically it’s kind of your fault for hanging out with Eddie instead of me?” Buck teases, desperate to steer this conversation back into safer waters. 

Tommy makes an indignant little noise in the back of his throat. “How was I supposed to know you wanted to hang out with me? Evan, you came to the station and asked for a tour one time and then I never heard from you again until you showed up at basketball and went all Misery on us!” He’s gesturing animatedly with his hands and Buck is fucking enamored by him, god. “I thought you thought I was trying to replace you.” 

“Is that why you kissed me?” he hums back, playful. “Because I maimed my best friend? Did that do it for you?” 

The air shifts back to something more normal and Tommy rolls his eyes in that half-bitchy half-fond way that Buck’s kind of obsessed with. 

“No, not exactly,” he says. “I just wanted to clear the air when I came over. I didn’t want you to hate me or be mad at me or to, I don’t know, cause problems in your life. I didn’t want to be that guy to you, I didn’t want you to remember me like that.” 

Buck shuts his mouth, teeth clacking shut with the suddenness of it all. 

“I’m not blind, I noticed you straight away, Evan. Especially when you called and asked for that tour of harbor, you showed up all smiley and bright, practically bouncing on your feet, and all I could think the whole time was god he’s so cute and god he’s so painfully straight.”

“I guess we were both wrong about that one.” 

The smile Tommy gives him is small but holy fuck, is it blinding. “Yeah, I guess we were.”

“So what made you kiss me then, if you thought I was straight?” Buck asks, impatient. God, he feels like a kid being read a bedtime story to, like they’re four pages away from the end and he’s just been told it’s bedtime and the book’s been put away and he wants to know.

“You just… I don’t know. When I came over you said all these things and you were flirting with me, even if you didn’t realise it at the time and, listen, I’m not the kind of guy who takes risks like that—”

Buck cuts him off with a stout little, “don’t you fly into fires for a living?” 

Tommy shoots him a pointed look. 

“I’m not the kind of guy who takes risks like that in my love life,” he clarifies, putting purposeful emphasis on those last two words. “I was fucking terrified, Evan, but I thought if I don’t kiss him now, I’m going to spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I did so I bit the bullet and I kissed you and you kissed me back.”

God.

The thought of it alone is enough to give him butterflies, to have them dancing up a storm in his stomach, to make him feel jittery with exhilaration and glee. The hairs on his arms stand to attention, goosebumps marring his skin. It’s like his body remembers the reaction it had even if his brain can’t quite put a picture to the words being described to him.

It had to have been good, though, if he’s instinctively reacting like he’s shoved a wet finger into an outlet and now all his nerve endings are lit up and on fire. 

“And then what?” Buck prompts. 

It’s greedy, he knows it is, he only asked for one thing, but now he wants more. He wants it all. Fuck it— he wants that play-by-play he wasn’t asking for earlier and he wants it now. He wants the start to finish on their relationship even if he has to beg for it in this damn car.

Tommy gives him an inch. “And then I asked you out.”

Buck wants a mile. “And?”

“And that’s a whole other story that you didn’t ask me for.” 

“So I’m asking now. What happened on our first date?” he pushes. 

It’s a line in the sand that Tommy doesn’t seem willing to budge on, though.

“Another time,” he compromises. 

As much as Buck wants to push, and he really wants to push, he can recognise the shut down for what it is. It’s a boundary he’s not going to keep prodding at, but it also doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it and it definitely doesn’t mean he’s not going to slump back in his chair and hide the fact that he’s disappointed by it. 

“You want to head back and order from that takeout place you like?” Tommy offers; a desperate attempt at a change in subject. His keys swing back and forth where they’re lodged in the ignition, like they also can’t wait to get out of here. “I think they gave me a coupon last time that we never used so we’ll get like ten bucks off.” 

Predictably, his stomach takes the opportunity to grumble loudly.

Tommy just laughs out a fond little sound. “I’ll take that as a yes.” 

He dismantles his phone from the mount that’s suctioned to his dashboard because he’s an old man at heart; Buck can picture him with one of those old bluetooth pieces hooked over an ear whilst he drives because it’s responsible, Evan!. It’s kind of endearing how much of a technophobe he is. He gets handed the phone and types in Tommy’s passcode easily before navigating to the app he’s told to. 

“We’re pretty far out,” Tommy hums, turning his keys in the ignition and kicking the car back to life. “I’m gonna start driving us back, you order for me.”

“Tommy,” Buck whines.

Suddenly he feels like he’s under a ton of pressure. What if he orders something that Tommy hates? What if he’s allergic to something and Buck has no idea because he can’t remember? God, it’d be just his luck if he ended the day sending his boyfriend into anaphylactic shock. 

Tommy doesn’t waste any time pulling a U-turn and driving out of the parking lot— in fact there’s about seven seconds between Buck complaining and them getting back on the road. 

“Sorry, Evan,” he says, putting his hands in the most cliche learner driver position on the wheel at ten and two, his elbows locked for stability. “I’m driving. Can’t use my phone if I’m driving.”

“I could just read it to you.”

“And distract me on the road? That’s dangerous driving.” 

Buck makes a playful little scoffing noise in the back of his throat but starts scrolling nonetheless. “Says the man who’s blasting dad rock.” 

Tommy just chuckles and flashes a dimple-full smile at the road before he reaches down to the dial and turns it up a little. The music’s still quiet enough, only turned up by a notch or two, like Tommy’s still conscious about his headache from earlier and that makes Buck feel a little giddy. 

The menu’s long and chock-full of enough items that it should be considered some kind of health hazard; there’s no way a kitchen should reasonably be able to prepare this many items and still be good enough that they keep going back. Which, apparently, they do, because half the items on the menu have a greyed out little order again! sticker next to them so he can’t even cheat his way through getting Tommy’s order right. 

Buck puts his in first. It’s easy, he knows what he’s craving, and then adds and removes and adds and removes and fucking adds and removes half the damn menu to their basket. Whatever little robot lives in this phone and watches their every move must think Tommy’s having some sort of breakdown.

In the end, he settles for a cheeseburger with sweet potato fries. It’s simple and classic, maybe a little safe, but it’s better than the alternative. 

“What did you get us?” Tommy asks when he locks the phone and drops it into the cup holder. Buck never wants to look at the damn thing again. 

“Depends,” he hums. “Am I being graded on this?” 

The car turns down a side street and they’re met with a line of traffic. 

“Oh absolutely,” Tommy says back, taking his hands off the wheel and shooting a smile Buck’s way. “But if you fail I’m sure we can find a way for you to earn extra credit.” 

It’s heavy and salacious and not at all how Tommy intended it to come across if the dawning realisation on his face is anything to go by. 

Buck cuts him off before he can walk it back. “I got grilled chicken and potato skins which we can share, if you want.” He pauses a little. It kind of feels like he’s just stumbled out of the woods and in front of a firing squad and now everybody’s just stuck in that deer-in-headlights kind of panic. “And I got you sweet potato fries with a cheeseburger, extra onions, no pickles, and a side of avocado. Actually, I think I asked them to put the pickles down as a side, I mean, who doesn’t like pickles, Tommy?”

Tommy looks at him with a blank expression on his face until a few cars behind them honk their horns in quick succession and then he’s forcing himself to look away so he can roll the car forward all of ten inches. 

That can’t be a good sign. 

“So did I fail?” Buck asks, shrinking in the chair a little. 

Tommy’s hands settle back on his thighs, his gaze flickering between Buck and the traffic. “You remembered my order?” 

“That’s your order?”

“Yeah,” Tommy nods. “It’s what I get when I can’t decide what I want. Right down to the avocado and pickle. You remembered that?” 

“No— at least, I don’t think so.” He sits up a little straighter in the seat, shoulders squaring. “I had about nine different things in there before I settled on that. I don’t remember remembering anything. Maybe I did, though? I don’t know…” 

Something settles in his gut, something like excitement and wonder and a little bit of relief. Before he lets it fester too much, though, he turns to Tommy. 

“That’s really your order? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?” 

Tommy shakes his head and puts his hands back on the wheel as they start to inch out of the flow of traffic. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Evan.” 

In the ten days they’ve shared, Tommy’s never lied to him, as far as he knows. He’s never coddled him just to try and make him feel better. Sure, he’s teased him and been playful and they’ve ribbed each other back and forth in a way that feels familiar, but he’s never been cruel, never made Buck feel small or at fault for anything. So there’s no reason for him to start now. 

The feeling in his gut simmers and grows into something more. Something warm.

“Today can’t all be bad then, can it?” Tommy offers hesitantly, like his words are a spark and he’s aiming at a wick surrounded by gasoline. 

Buck hums a content little noise, the corner of his lips pulling up into something like a smile for the first time in hours. “I guess not.” 

∞∞∞

There’s something bugging Buck, something that’s been festering in his head since he’d first listened to the retelling of their first kiss and now it’s just— it’s less of a want to know and more of a need. Like if he doesn’t get his answers soon he might vibrate out of his skin. 

“Can I ask you something?” Buck asks one evening whilst they’re working on the car tucked away in Tommy’s garage together.

“Hm?” he gets back, a half-distracted little noise that he finds incredibly endearing.

Tommy’s still not completely comfortable telling him things but when he does, he prefers to stick to things that he can relay factually rather than emotionally so he doesn’t intrude on Buck’s feelings. He’d told him that he wants those to come back naturally, that he doesn’t want to be the thing that makes him see anything differently than he used to. 

It’s so sweet and charming and Buck’s going to need the number of whatever lab Tommy was cooked up in so he can send them a lifetime's supply of flowers and baked goods. Hell, he’ll hand deliver them once a month if he has to. 

Still, though, the itch under his skin that’s clawing at him for an answer isn’t satisfied.

“Tommy,” he prompts.

He still can’t get over how his name sounds when it drops from his mouth, the drawl that he doesn’t quite have with anybody else, the way it makes him feel all warm and mushy inside. If his life were a romcom, this would be the point where Buck would start rolling his eyes at his own gooeyness.  

Tommy cranes his head to look at him and he must see something in his face because he stills his hands and swivels the rest of his body around to face him. “I’m listening.”

“Glad I’ve got your attention,” he says, the corners of his lips pulling up into the ghost of a smile. 

His stomach swoops a little, nerves and anticipation making it churn, but his curiosity overpowers them both. It’s something he’s been stuck on for a while, maybe since the first time he ever heard Tommy say it, and he hates that he can’t remember the reason why. Nobody else seems to question it either; there’d been no furrowed brows or quizzical looks when he’d said it in the hospital, so it’s normal. And Buck just— he wants to know why. 

He grits his teeth and bites the bullet. 

“Why do you call me Evan?” 

Tommy makes a surprised little noise that even he looks shocked by. There’s a little furrow in his brow, minuscule and undetectable if you weren’t looking for it, but Buck was. Somehow he finds that he always is. His gaze just seems to naturally drift to Tommy, to the set of his shoulders, his hands when he works, the crinkle in his nose when he smiles, the crease in his forehead when he’s confused or thinking really hard about something, just… his everything. 

It’s like he’s always just pulled into Tommy’s orbit, like it’s as easy as gravity. 

“It was, uh—” Tommy starts, pausing to wipe his hand on a stained rag tucked into the waistband of his work jeans, “—it was how you introduced yourself to me when we first met.”

Buck takes a second to think. “The cruise ship?”

“The cruise ship,” he confirms with a nod. “You remember it?”

When he shakes his head, the furrow in Tommy’s brow deepens. 

“Only what you’ve told me. It’s like— like a part of me knows it happened, but when I try and think about it, it’s like it happened to somebody else.” Frustration creeps its way into his voice the way it always seems to whenever this topic of conversation comes up. 

He hates the not remembering.

Tommy puts a hand on his knee and squeezes, drawing him out of his head. “That’s progress, at least.”

He’s smiling when he says it and Buck has a split second to wonder what the optimism would taste like if he kissed it out of his mouth before he’s beating that thought back and zipping it up in the suitcase of things he doesn’t want to risk unpacking just yet. It’s stuffed full and about to burst at the seams, but that’s a problem for future Buck. 

“You were saying?” he prompts, easing the conversation back into familiar territory. The hand on his knee eases up, tenses, and then disappears entirely; there’s a smidge of grease left behind on his jeans. 

“Right, right, sorry. Uh, you came to Harbor with Eddie and Howie after he called for a favor and I didn’t know you back then, but you were standing behind him looking all over the place— you would make a terrible spy, by the way, I could feel the paranoia radiating off of you before I even looked at you properly.” 

There’s an easy fondness in his voice as he talks about this and Buck kind of wants to hear him sound like this forever. 

“I would make an incredible spy, thank you,” he counters, tapping his index finger against his forehead. “I have amnesia, it’s plausible deniability for everything I’ve ever done.”

Tommy cocks an eyebrow and looks up at him, face twisting like he’s torn somewhere between amusement, adoration and affront. He doesn’t challenge him on it though and Buck will take his wins where he can get them, thank you very much.  

“Anyway! Eddie introduced himself first and you hardly looked at me the whole time until Howie said your name and then I had your attention and you introduced yourself as—” Tommy stops, ups his voice into what Buck assumes is supposed to be an impression of him and says, “—Evan, I mean Buck, uh, Evan Buckley.”

Heat floods up the back of his neck and starts creeping its way onto his cheeks. Way to be smooth about it, Buckley, he thinks to himself. It's a familiar thought, the same one he probably thought to himself after stumbling over his own introduction.

“You shook my hand and I asked if this was your first time and you said no I’ve been in a helicopter before,” Tommy smiles to himself, like he’s reliving the memory again, like he can feel the fondness settling in his bones and washing over him. “So I asked if this was your first time stealing one and you laughed and I thought wow, that’s a sound I want to hear again.”

And, listen, Buck’s not proud to admit it, but the feeling in his stomach twists and morphs into something bitter, something acrid. 

He’s jealous. 

He’s jealous that Tommy can remember this— their first meeting, the first time they laid eyes on each other, their beginning— and he can’t. 

He wants to remember this one so badly he feels like he’s on fire with it. He wants to remember how Tommy’s hand felt the first time they touched, the smile he probably had on his face when he teased Buck, the sound of his name for the very first time. He even wants the secondhand embarrassment of apparently losing his cool and stumbling over his own name, for fuck sake. 

“I guess Evan just kind of… I don’t know, stuck, after that? You called and asked me for a tour of the station and I called you it when you showed up and you never said anything. I think maybe a part of me wanted to have that, you know?” Tommy wipes his palms on his jeans at the admission, eyes downcast and shoulders hunched like he’s confessing to something. “It was— special, I guess? I wanted to feel special to you. Different. Maybe I wanted you to remember me.”

It’s not intentional, nowhere near it, but those words hit like a punch to the gut and Buck sucks in a breath of air between his teeth. He can tell the exact second his words register because Tommy snaps his head up, eyes wide with regret and remorse.

“Oh, shit, Evan, I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant, fuck,” Tommy curses, stumbling over his words in his rush to get them out. He reaches out like he wants to touch him, but pauses. “It’s not— I know this isn’t your fault, and that came out wrong. I just meant— I wanted to be significant to you, someone memorable.” 

“It’s alright,” Buck tells him, shifting so he can knock his knee against Tommy’s hand that’s still hovering awkwardly by his side. “I know you didn’t mean it like that.”

“Does it bother you?” Tommy asks, hand resting limply against the side of his knee. 

“Did it bother me before?” 

“Well, no, but this is different. It might be jarring for you to hear it after so long, you know? And I know you haven’t always had the best history with it so if it makes you uncomfortable I can stop, or call you something else, or—”

The thought of that makes him feel sick, and Buck cuts him off before his brain can manage to catch up with his mouth. 

“No!” he insists. “No, I don’t want that. I mean, I like it. When you say it, at least. I like the way it sounds when you say it. You don’t say it like it’s— like it’s something bad, I guess. It just is. When you say it it doesn’t feel like there’s a difference between Evan and Buck; they don’t feel like two different people and I don’t want— I mean, if you still want to… I don’t want you to stop saying it either.”

Tommy’s palm flattens against his leg for a second. His face softens like he’s relieved, like he was waiting for his house of cards to crumble and instead he’s managed to put the last one on top and everything’s fine. 

“Good,” he says simply. “I don’t want to stop calling you it either so I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

The hand on his leg falls away when Tommy turns back to face the car and Buck mourns its loss. 

“Think you could hand me the socket wrench, Evan?”

The inflection on his name is purposeful, heady, and Buck feels a jolt go down his spine like he’s been hit by lightning again. He wants to hear it said like that again, he wants to hear it in every way possible. He wants to know what it sounds like choked off with laughter, he wants to know what it sounds like sleepy and gross with morning breath, what it sounds like whispered against his ear, muffled against his neck, he wants—

He wants. 

It’s not the first time he’s been attracted to Tommy. He has taste, okay? It doesn’t surprise him that he’s ended up with a boyfriend who’s jacked to the heavens and hotter than the ninth circle of hell. He’d clocked his attraction in the hospital room before he’d even known Tommy was his boyfriend, stuck on the sharp lines of his jaw and the muscles in his arms and— god, the fucking cleft in his chin. 

It’s one thing to know he’s attracted to him.

It’s another thing entirely to recognise the deep-seated desire and lust and want in him for what it is. 

His eyes drift to Tommy’s hands; the hands that are stained with grease and so, so thick that he might start drooling about it. He’s so broad and Buck wants to usher the pair of them upstairs and coax Tommy into bed. He wants Tommy to lay on top of him and press his body weight down on him like some sort of human weighted blanket; clothes optional. 

“Evan?” Tommy prompts. 

Shit. 

Buck fumbles around with the tools and grabs one blindly, holding it out. Tommy takes it from him without hesitation, with blind trust, and Buck wants him. 

“This is a crescent wrench,” Tommy says when he gets a look at it, voice playful and teasing and— fuck. Buck wants him. “You wanna try again?”

“You can’t be mean to me, I’m an amnesiac,” Buck points out. He grabs the right wrench and holds it out to him. 

Tommy checks that he’s holding out the right one this time and, when he’s satisfied, he reaches out to take it. “To be fair, you didn’t know the difference between those wrenches when you weren’t an amnesiac, so I can’t judge you too harshly.”

He smirks at him before turning back to the car and Buck has to take a second and remind himself to just breathe— this banter and gentle undercurrent of bitchiness is really working on him and— 

And then Tommy starts using the wrench and his biceps flex and, yeah, there goes that plan.

Fuck…

Fuck.

Chapter Text

Buck’s head is throbbing. 

His brain feels like it’s pounding in his skull, like he’s stuck his head in a blender on full speed and listened to the motors whir for a solid nine hours straight. It rattles again and the violent bzzt! sound makes him groan and shove his face in the pillow under him, a desperate attempt to try and drown out the sound. Apparently that’s becoming a thing for him now; trying to hide from technology in the embrace of a pillow. Once more, it becomes a pattern. 

Next to him the bed shifts, the solid presence of warmth against his back disappearing and taking the heavy weight of the arm around his waist with it too. It’s coupled with one, two, three solid smacks of something against wood before there’s a loud thud sound and— yeah. Buck’s awake now. 

The mattress springs squeak under the shifting weight and a soft “fuck— shit— christ—” comes from the body next to him as it sits up in bed, breathless and scrambling. When Buck rolls himself away from his safe haven in the pillow to face the chaos, his eyes catch on the flush tinting Tommy’s cheeks and the sleep tousled mess of his hair, both illuminated by the glow of a phone in his hands. 

“W’usswrong?” Buck groans, voice thick and heavy with sleep that he’s eager to drift back into. 

Tommy makes a noise and scrolls for a second, eyebrows drawing together as his eyes dart across the screen. 

The silence makes something churn in his gut, something unfamiliar, something that makes him feel nauseous. Buck pushes himself up onto his elbow and that’s when Tommy seems to remember his presence and offers him a tight smile that’s absolutely intended to placate him. 

“Nothing,” he tries to insist, which, bullshit. 

Buck isn’t buying it, not for a second. 

Before he gets the chance to push it a little more, to poke and prod at the bruise until Tommy caves and spills what he’s hiding, the phone in his hands vibrates again and, oh. 

That was the buzzing in his head!

He only gets half a second to bask in the relief of not needing another trip back to Dr. Flannigan before Tommy’s thumbing the screen and holding the phone up to his ear. 

“Kinard speaking,” he says, voice flat and monotone in a way Buck’s never heard it be before. It’s professional, clinical, and a little cold, like he’s trying to keep an element of detachment there. 

Or, he could just be tired, his sleep addled brain supplies, rather unhelpfully, actually, which, great. Now he’s overthinking that too. 

Buck can count on one hand the amount of times he’s heard Tommy answer his phone, and most of them have been to him. He always greets him with a warm “Evan, hey,”, his voice all soft and syrupy like molasses that Buck can’t help but sink into. The only other call he can remember Tommy taking had been from Chimney and he’d answered the phone with some kind of inside joke and a laugh— none of them had been like this. 

“Yes sir,” Tommy says, the dark circle under his left eye prominent from where the phone’s lit up against his cheek, illuminating it. “Yes sir— yes, I understand,” he continues, a hint of restlessness creeping into his voice.

The urge to comfort him, to be the reason some of that tightness slips out of Tommy’s voice is profuse, overwhelming, almost. Buck weighs the odds of this decision and comes to two conclusions; he gets pushed away and Tommy rolls out of bed, continues his conversation elsewhere and Buck hides under the covers until, or even if, he comes back and they both fall asleep decidedly not talking about it, or Tommy doesn’t push him away. No, instead Tommy lets himself lean into his presence, this shoestring of comfort, and finds some solace in it. 

It’s hardly a choice, in the end. 

Buck reaches out and puts his hand on his thigh over the blanket. It’s just a steady weight, a reminder that he’s here and that he’s not going anywhere. 

Tommy’s voice falters for a second and he turns his head to face Buck, eyebrows pinched and lips pursed. His expression softens a little, though, when Buck gives him a barely there smile, just a small quirk of his lips that’s meant to be comforting, and his free hand comes to rest on top of his, a warm, solid weight.

They’re not quite holding hands, more so just resting them together, a bastardised version of that hand stacking game he used to join in on in the playground during recess at school. It would be so easy to turn his over, though, to shift just slightly until his hand is palm up on Tommy’s thigh, for them to slot their fingers together and hold on and just exist with that one point of contact between them, both of them anchored and tethered together. 

“Yes, I understand, sir, but I—” 

Tommy stops, clearly cut off by whoever’s jabbering away in his ear at whatever godawful hour of the morning it is. Buck kind of hates them for it on principle. 

He sighs, shoulders drooping like all the fights drained out of him, and when he speaks again, he sounds resigned. “Yes sir. I’ll be there.”

And then he’s pulling the phone away from his ear and jabbing at the end call button until it sticks and the call drops and his phone goes dark in his hand. 

They sit there for a couple of seconds, the room bathed in a darkness so thick courtesy of every firefighter's favourite blackout blinds, the sounds of their breathing the only thing to interrupt the silence. 

God, he fucking hates silence. 

“What was that about?” Buck asks, breaking it. 

There’s a slight rustling from next to him, probably Tommy turning to try and look at him before he remembers right, darkness. 

“It’s nothing,” he says, pulling his hand away from on top of his. 

Buck tries not to feel too disappointed about it. 

“Tommy,” he insists. He wouldn’t normally push like this— or, hell, maybe he would— but that… that wasn’t a nothing kind of phone call. 

Tommy heaves out a breath into the darkness. “I’m serious, Evan, it was nothing.”

Something bubbles in Buck’s chest, something he hasn’t felt around Tommy before, something he can’t quite stick a single label to. 

Irritation, maybe? 

Or indignation? 

Sourness; definitely. 

It’s not that he thinks Tommy doesn’t trust him enough to tell him what’s going on, because he knows he does. Tommy trusts him, he trusts him so much that he invited a practical stranger to come and live with him. 

Only that’s not what he did. 

No, on Tommy’s end, at least, he’d invited his boyfriend to stay with him and, yeah, maybe Buck’s a little jealous of him for knowing that— he’s big enough to admit it now. 

“Fine,” Buck says petulantly, a frown tugging at his lips. 

He grabs one of the pillows from under his head and folds it up before shifting onto his side and curling his arm around it, a makeshift thing for him to bring against his chest and hold onto; a barrier between him and everything else. 

“Good night, Tommy.”

He squeezes his eyes shut tight in pissed off determination to fall asleep and purposefully doesn’t acknowledge the little sigh that comes from next to him, nor does he acknowledge the little tap tap tap tap tap of Tommy typing away on his phone. He’s counting sheep in his head and he just about makes it to twelve before the phones locked with a soft click and the mattress springs squeak under the shifting weight of Tommy putting it back on the bedside table. 

“Evan.”

Buck squeezes his eyes shut tighter, bright spots of colour swimming in his vision. 

“Evan, I know you’re not asleep.”

“Am too,” Buck grumbles, ill-tempered and petty. 

He’s grumpy, okay? 

Sue him.

A hand moves to rest on his hip and Buck’s stomach flips, the newfound realization that he wants Tommy blaring in the back of his head. The thumb strokes small circles into his skin through the blanket and, christ, Tommy’s hands are big. He kind of wants to feel them everywhere. 

But he’s still feeling petty and affronted so he does what any logical, rational adult would do and he lets out an incredibly loud, incredibly fake sounding snore into the silence of the room. 

The bed creaks a little with Tommy’s laughter. “I’m serious,” he says through his chuckles. “It really was nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like nothing,” Buck caves and huffs back, hugging the pillow tighter against his chest. 

There’s silence next to him and as petty as he’s feeling, Buck isn’t completely childish, so he rolls over onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, an olive branch of sorts for Tommy to take. 

“You’re mad at me,” Tommy points out. 

He shrugs one shoulder. “I’m not mad at you.”

“Okay. So you’re upset with me.”

Buck sucks in a breath between his teeth and curls his hand into the blanket he’s tucked under. “Jesus— Tommy, I’m not upset with you. I just,” he pauses and sighs. “I just want you to trust me, that’s all.”

Tommy’s silent for a second and then there’s two fingers on Buck’s jaw. Two fingers that coax him into rolling his head to the side so the two of them are facing each other. It’s utterly pointless in the dark but still. “You think I don’t trust you?”  

“I think you’re the only person who hasn’t been walking on eggshells around me since the hospital, the only one who hasn’t looked at me and seen a flashing neon sign that screams handle with care, and now you are, and I hate that.”

Maybe it’s the cover of darkness that makes him feel like he can be a little too honest, a little too vulnerable. Maybe he’s bolstered on by the fact that he can’t see Tommy’s face, can’t see the way he’s probably looking at him in the same way everybody else has been for weeks now: a mix of pity and trepidation, like they have to weigh the scales before they say anything to see if this will finally be the thing that tips him over the edge. 

“I trust you,” Tommy tells him, voice stern. 

Buck barely manages to repress a scoff. “Right.”

Tommy leans away again and Buck has a split second of fear, a moment to think that this is it, that this is the thing that’s finally pushed him too far and now he’s going to get up and leave and Buck’ll have to spend the rest of the night alone in a bed that’ll inevitably feel two sizes too big, but then there’s a click and the rooms flooded with a warm, orange light that has Buck blinking at the sudden intrusion of it. 

“Evan,” Tommy starts, rolling away from the bedside lamp and back over to face him. “Evan, look at me.”

Buck does. 

“I trust you,” he says again, voice thick and stern, leaving no room for argument. “More than anyone. The only reason I said it was nothing is because I didn’t want you to worry about anything.”

“So there is something to worry about?”

Tommy gives him a look like Buck’s just proved his point in seven words which, alright, fair enough. 

“I was going to wait and tell you in the morning because I didn’t want you keeping yourself up with your spiraling,” he explains, shifting slightly on the bed so that he’s sitting criss-cross applesauce, the two of them facing each other. “But I can see you’re already doing that.”

“Can you blame me?” Buck asks, picking lint that doesn’t exist off of the duvet. “You get this phone call in the middle of the night and then you get all weird and cryptic with your,” he drops his voice a little, a poor imitation of Tommy’s, “yes sir and your it was nothing, Evan. I mean, what do you expect me to think?”

Hell, maybe there is an explanation for it, maybe it’s something that happens regularly and it can all be explained away easily but Buck can’t fucking remember if it is. 

“Okay, first of all, I do not sound like that—”

“—I mean, you kinda do—”

“—and second of all, it was my captain, Evan.”

Buck’s mouth morphs into a shocked little ‘o’ because, yeah, okay, maybe that makes sense. 

“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” he asks, voice teetering into whining territory. 

Tommy sighs and his shoulders stiffen a little, biceps flexing in his stupid little DIYed muscle tee. God, he’s so fucking broad and apparently allergic to sleeves which is proving to be a problem for Buck’s newfound realisation because now he kind of wants to bite him about it, to sink his teeth into skin and muscle and mark him up and marr his skin so he’s carrying his mark for days and—

“Because there’s a high rise fire a couple miles out of town that’s looking dangerously close to becoming a wildfire and they’re down two pilots— three without me— so he asked if I can come in for a couple of hours tomorrow to help out and I couldn’t say no, but I also didn’t want you to worry about me all night and think I was, I don’t know, abandoning you, I guess.”

That’s the thing that makes Buck tear his gaze away from the ceiling and over to Tommy, the thing that gets him to take in the look on his face, the way his mouths pulled tight in a thin line, the way his eyes keep darting back and forth like he’s nervous, the way he’s the one now picking invisible lint off of his sweatpants. 

“You’re an idiot,” Buck says simply, resolutely.  

Tommy snorts out a laugh and rubs his palms along the cotton. “Yeah, you’ve told me that once or twice.”

“And I mean it!” he insists, pushing himself up so that he’s facing Tommy dead on. “Of course I’m going to worry about you! You’re important to me and you’re walking into something dangerous. I'm pretty sure I was worrying about that long before I went all Dory on you.”

“Is that a Finding Nemo reference?”

“Yes. Now stop talking and let me finish.” 

Their knees brush together on the bed and Buck has to stomp down the burst of want. 

“You worry about me when I’m on duty, right?” He waits for Tommy’s nod before continuing. “Then what makes you think I wouldn’t do the same? What makes you think you don’t deserve it?”

Tommy doesn’t say anything but he does sink his teeth into his bottom lip and Buck knows his tells well enough by now to know that that means he’s touched on one of Tommy’s insecurities. 

“And I don’t think you’re abandoning me. I think it’s a big ask to call you in whilst you’re technically on medical leave, but I get why they did, and I get why you’re going too, Tommy.”

Tommy draws in a breath and straightens up a little, visible relief spreading through him until he starts clearing his throat awkwardly and avoiding Buck’s gaze. “About that…” he grumbles. “I’m not technically on medical leave. I mean, I was for the first like, week or so, but uh… I’m not. Not anymore.” 

Buck blinks at him. 

“My captain’s been begging me to use the vacation days I haven’t touched in the last four years anyway, so I thought why not use it on this.”

And that’s… that’s really something. 

Tommy’s using his vacation days on him— the vacation days that he’s had stored up and kept untouched for years. He could have used them for anything, could have taken a fancy trip out of state, or out of the country. He could have flown to Vegas or Italy or somewhere warm and tropical and far away from wildfires, but he hadn’t, he didn’t. No, instead he’s chosen to spend them stuck at home with Buck. He’s chosen to spend days and weeks taking care of him and making sure he doesn’t go stir crazy and out of his mind with boredom. Fuck.

“You’re using your vacation days to babysit me?” Buck asks, falling somewhere on the spectrum between awestruck and dumbfounded. 

“I don’t think it counts as babysitting to take care of my boyfriend,” Tommy says easily. 

And, fuck, if that doesn’t make him feel giddy— not just Tommy using the b word, though, that’s at least seventy percent of it— but also the thought that he wants to do this, that taking care of him isn’t something Tommy sees as a chore or a hardship or an obligation. It’s such a dangerous thought because now the only thing echoing in Buck’s head is a litany of kissmekissmekissmekissme that starts as a whisper and ends somewhere between a space shuttle launch and the Tunguska meteor in the decibel scale. 

It would be so easy too, all he’d have to do is lean in, they’re close enough that it wouldn’t take much and then they’d be kissing and Tommy would kiss him back, all soft and reverent like he can’t quite believe Buck’s a real, tangible thing that he gets to have, and maybe he’d push him down on his back and hover over him and coax his tongue into his mouth and Buck would moan and bury his hands in his hair and let him take and take and take and take. 

“What time did they ask you to come in?” Buck asks, shifting a little on the bed to try and cover up the fact that his body has taken an incredibly keen interest at the direction his thoughts have taken. 

“Nine,” Tommy answers. 

A quick look over his shoulder (because Tommy’s the kind of man who still keeps an old school alarm clock on his nightstand) tells him that it’s just past four, and if he maths it out right they still have about four hours until he has to leave. That’s at least one more REM cycle. So he takes the initiative and lays back on the bed, untucking his emotional support pillow and shoving it back under his head. 

“Lights out,” Buck hums, gaze flicking towards the space next to him in invitation. 

Tommy takes him up on it with a soft smile and Buck tries not to stare at the strip of skin that he gets flashed with when he reaches over to turn the bedside lamp out. 

They settle back in together easily. Buck manages to last all of ninety-eight seconds before he’s rolling onto his side and reaching behind him to fumble for Tommy’s arm. Once he has it, he coaxes it around his waist and Tommy comes willingly, easily, maybe even a little bit eagerly, and then they’re spooning, they’re purposefully spooning. 

Sure, Buck’s woken up most mornings now with an arm thrown across his waist and soft little puffs of air being exhaled against the back of his neck, but none of them had ever been intentional. They’d always just seemed to drift together in their sleep. Now though… now there’s intent behind it, and it does nothing to quell the raging inferno that the kissmekissmekissme echo has seared into his brain. 

He lets his fingertips dance up and down the skin on Tommy’s arm a few times, a selfish indulgence, and gets his reward in the form of breath stuttering against the back of his neck and the prickling of goosebumps underneath his fingers. 

“Evan?” Tommy whispers into the darkness. 

Buck hums back at him. “Yeah?”

“I told you there was nothing to worry—”

“—if you’re I told you so’ing me right before we go to sleep, you can sleep on the couch—”

“I told you so.”

Buck rolls his eyes and pinches the skin on Tommy’s arm between his thumb and forefinger and when Tommy laughs, his lips brush the back of his neck and Buck has to think so, so many unsexy thoughts and count so many sheep before he can even think about drifting off. 

∞∞∞

He should have worried. 

He absolutely should have worried. 

They’d both slept through the alarm Tommy profusely insists that he set and the only thing that had managed to pull them from sleep had been Tommy’s miserable neighbour— the one that insists on mowing his lawn and trimming his hedge at the same time every Thursday morning whilst blasting eighties music from a portable stereo. There’s no way he can hear the music from it over the trimmers, Buck’s pretty sure he does it just to be an asshole.

“I’m so late, fuck,” Tommy curses, stumbling through the living room into the kitchen, one hand toweling his damp hair dry and the other tapping away at his phone. He’s been bouncing between rooms all morning, flittering about the place like an anxious energizer bunny. “They’re gonna fire me.”

Buck hums from where he’s leaning back against the counter, hands curled around a glass of apple juice. 

“They’re not gonna fire you,” he says, breath fogging up the rim of the glass when he takes a sip. “You’re doing them a favour, Tommy, you didn’t have to go in today.”

Tommy groans and waves a dismissive hand and Buck can almost hear the bitchy little mumble of ‘semantics’ that goes unsaid. It also does nothing to distract him from watching the way a droplet of water rolls its way down his neck, eventually pooling in the divot of his collarbone. 

Buck kind of wants to lick it up. 

Hell, he kind of wants to see how many more droplets he can follow with his tongue until they’re both messy and need to take another shower. 

Preferably together. 

And now he’s thinking about Tommy naked which is just great. Maybe he’s destined to spend the rest of his life in a state of semi-perpetual sexual frustration around him. Maybe he’ll die horny.

Tommy drops the towel he’d been using to dry his hair down onto the counter haphazardly and for a single, fleeting second, his ardor fizzles out in favour of abhorrence and disbelief. 

“That’s how you get damp, Tommy,” he says, snatching the towel up and folding it a few times so it’s not just sitting in a wet heap. 

“I’m sure my kitchen counters have seen worse,” Tommy calls over his shoulder, disappearing out of the room, footsteps thundering up the stairs a second later. 

His absence gives Buck a brief reprieve, a chance to breathe and not be assaulted by the sight of Tommy’s arms in another damn shirt with the sleeves cut low enough that it has to qualify as indecent exposure in at least twelve states— seriously, what the hell does he have against sleeves? Not that Buck’s complaining about it. Though, now he’s thinking about what exactly these counters have seen, thinking about what they’ve seen from them and, yeah. There goes that perpetual horniness. 

God, he feels like a teenager again. Like he’s just discovered porn and jerking off and he keeps getting hard at the drop of a hat, only this hat has arms and biceps and abs and Buck wants to climb him like a tree. 

He busies himself with fiddling with the coffee machine, his back to the rest of the room whilst he wills his fucking dick to behave itself for once in its life. 

“Hey, Evan?” Tommy yells from the hall when he eventually skips back down the stairs. “Have you seen my keys?” 

“Bowl on the coffee table,” he tells him simply, easily. “I told you you need to get a hook for them, where would you be without me?”

The jingling of keys tells him that Tommy’s found them exactly where he said they were. He doesn’t mean to frown when he turns around and Tommy’s got his LAFD hoodie on, unzipped and hanging either side of his waist but still. He’s mourning the loss of those biceps. 

“Lost, for sure,” Tommy hums when he ambles into the kitchen. He catches sight of Buck’s face and matches his frown. “Something wrong?” 

Shit, now he’s done it. 

Now he’s gone and made Tommy worry about him all because he can’t see to get his damn hormones under control, all because he can’t get his dick to fucking behave itself. 

“I can stay, if you need me—”

“No, don’t even think about it,” Buck huffs, a preconceived cocktail of guilt and self-reproach bubbling in his chest. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. If I need you or something feels off, I’ll call you.”

“But what if—”

“If you’re in the air I’ll leave a message, or bombard you with texts until you get sick of me. Or I’ll call Maddie, or Bobby, alright?”

Tommy blinks at him, shuffling across the room to close some of the distance between them. “Promise?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

That seems to ease some of the tension out of Tommy’s shoulders, seems to work away some of the weight he’d started carrying. It still astounds Buck every time he gets evidence of just how much Tommy cares about him, of how invested he is, how he’s all in on him, on them. Buck still doesn’t quite know what he’s done to deserve him, but he’s never claimed to be a selfless man and he’s not about to look this gift horse in the mouth. Not when it’s Tommy he's been gifted. 

“Good.”

They stare at each other for a few charged seconds before Tommy’s phone pings and he’s scrambling for it and the chaos begins all over again. He dashes between rooms, coming back with more and more things every time; his duffle; his boots; a very yellow, very weathered copy of a book that Tommy tells him he’d borrowed from a coworker before he’d taken time off and still feels guilty for hoarding. He almost brains himself on the counter when he hops about with one shoe on, trying to slide his foot into the other without untying the laces and Buck feels so warm just watching him. 

That is until Tommy steals a piece of his untouched toast from his plate and takes a very large, very undignified bite out of it. 

“Hey!” he whines whilst Tommy chews exaggeratedly, crumbs gathered on his bottom lip— all it gets him is a smile and a soft chuckle. 

Tommy finally sinks his foot into his shoe and reaches out for another bite that Buck lets him have because he’s a kind, benevolent boyfriend, thank you. He takes the opportunity to slide the thermos of coffee he’d brewed earlier and the breakfast burrito he’d warmed and wrapped in foil across the counter in Tommy’s direction.

“See if I ever do anything nice for you again.”

He’s a good boyfriend, that doesn’t mean he can’t be a petty one too. 

Tommy stops chewing and swallows his mouthful; Buck has to stop himself from wincing when he sees his throat bob with unchewed toast. “You made me coffee?”

Buck nods. “Coffee and breakfast. So now you don’t have to steal mine.”

Tommy blinks once, twice, three times, and opens his mouth to say something, but then his phone’s ringing and ruining the moment and Tommy groans and answers it, smushing it between his ear and shoulder whilst he gathers up his things. 

“I know, I know, I’m literally leaving right now,” he says into the speaker and has to fumble for it when he shoulders his duffle and throws himself off balance. “Yeah, if traffic’s good, I’ll be there in about thirty.”

Tommy closes the distance between them and grabs his thermos and breakfast burrito from the counter. He’s close enough that Buck can hear his captain grumbling on the other end of the phone, close enough to see the way he frowns and barely resists the urge to roll his eyes at the chastising he’s probably getting— Tommy’s a military man at heart, but he seems to have no problem saying fuck you to authority when push comes to shove. 

“Yes sir, I won’t break any speed laws,” he grumbles in the way that Buck knows means he’s definitely thinking about breaking some speed laws. 

Buck reaches out and pushes the strap of his duffle bag up on his shoulder when it starts to fall and Tommy gives him a grateful smile despite the flogging he seems to be getting on the phone. He stops in front of him, still radiating that energizer bunny energy and closes the distance between them to press their lips together in a brief, chaste kiss that Buck is all too happy to lean into and reciprocate. 

It only lasts a few seconds, five or six at most, and then Tommy’s turning and heading for the door with a “call me if you need me, Evan!” over his shoulder. The door slams shut behind him and Buck listens to the sound of his truck starting up and pulling out of the driveway, muffling the godawful eighties music and the rattling of hedge trimmers. 

The whole thing is over in less than thirty seconds, a brief, normal goodbye. 

It’s only when he’s standing there with the taste of toast on his lips that he never even got to take a bite of that he realises— 

Tommy kissed him. 

Oh fuck.

Tommy kissed him. 

∞∞∞

Buck lasts six hours before he calls Maddie which, honestly, should be considered some kind of Olympic-level achievement considering he feels like he’s about to vibrate out of his fucking skin, and has since Tommy kissed him. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

Since Tommy kissed him. 

There’s a knock at the door, two quick raps of knuckles against glass, and then he’s out of the living room like a shot— he’s never moved so damn fast in his life. 

“What took you so long?” Buck huffs as soon as he rips it open, Maddie’s smiling face greeting him on the other side. 

“Hello to you too,” she says, nudging her way past him and inside. 

He kicks the door shut behind her and winces at the slam it makes. Maddie gives him a pointed look that makes him feel like a teenager again, like he’s about to be on the receiving end of one of her well-intended lectures that he really can’t handle right now. 

“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, shrugging her bag to the floor and leaving it there. 

“Nothing.”

Which— okay, that isn’t exactly the case. Nothing’s wrong, not really, not after this morning and that kiss. Wrong doesn’t feel like the right word to describe how he’s feeling. And how he’s feeling is like he’s one move away from the glass floor he’s standing on cracking and crumbling underneath his feet, sending him plummeting down to the ground, down to reality again. He’s lost count of the amount of times he’s pinched himself since this morning and Bobby’s replied to all of his texts which means it’s not another coma dream, that it’s real. 

Buck’s about to open his mouth to clarify but the wildly inappropriate chipper jingle of a news segment plays from the other room and he’s rushing away from her to check on it. 

“Buck, where’s the fire?” Maddie teases, trailing after him. 

“About sixty miles that way,” he grumbles, cocking his head to the left and moving to stand behind the couch, hands curled tight around the backrest for support. 

“Right, Tommy told us they called him in.”

“Tommy called you?”

Maddie nods at him, a slight jerk of her head that he catches from the corner of his eye. “Yeah. He just wanted us to be aware in case something happened, or you needed somebody.”

Buck’s phone feels like it’s burning a hole into his jeans, right through fabric and skin and muscle and bone and down deep into his marrow. “How long ago did he call?”

“I don’t know, a couple of hours, why?”

The restless energy buzzes under his skin again, loud and fluorescent like one of those neon bug zappers, the kind that make a persistent godawful thrmmm! noise whenever they’re plugged in. The news shifts over to the segment he’s been religiously keeping an eye on— updates on the damn fire— and Buck perks up a little and then almost immediately deflates when he realises it’s essentially just a rerun of what they’d shown an hour ago. 

The buzzing gets louder and louder and louder until he starts pacing the length of the floor behind the couch, legs weak and hands shaking. 

“Is there a reason you’re trying to wear a hole in the floor?” Maddie asks. Her voice is tight but highlighted with her usual lilt; like she’s worried about him but trying to keep up appearances for normalcy’s sake. 

“Tommy’s working that fire,” he says simply, like that explains everything. 

“Alright?” she says, more of a question, prompting him to keep going. 

Buck does. “They grounded all aircrafts an hour ago, the fire’s climbing too high for them to operate safely.” His phone cuts deeper into his marrow. “Tommy hasn’t texted me back.”

Maddie perches on the arm of the couch, watching him wear away this particular ten foot stretch of Tommy’s floor. “Okay? So maybe they called him in for ground support. He does that too, you know?”

“No, I’d have seen him,” he tells her, jutting his chin in the direction of the television. “I haven’t seen him yet.”

“Buck, are you stalking your boyfriend?” she teases, her lips pulling up into a smile that he’d usually be matching with one of his own but this is different— he can’t. Not now.

“No, Maddie, it’s not that,” he says, shoulders heaving around a sigh. “We’d been texting all day and then, I don't know, something shifted, and now he’s not replying to me.”

“I’m sure you’re just being paranoid, Buck, Tommy wouldn’t do th—”

Buck cuts her off. “He kissed me this morning.”

Maddie blinks at him, once, twice, three times. “Okay?”

“He kissed me for the first time this morning.”

Buck watches her face flit through at least five different emotions in the space of about three seconds— confusion, clarity, understanding, shock, and something else he can’t quite put his finger on. 

He barrels onwards anyway. “Well, obviously not the first first time, I’m sure he’s kissed me before but this was—”

“—the first time he’s kissed you since the amnesia?” 

Buck nods at her. 

“You’ve been here for almost a month, and this is the first time you’ve kissed?” she asks, eyes wide in… disbelief, maybe? Or surprise?

“Yeah,” he says simply, pointedly. 

“Do you—” Maddie pauses for a second, fishing the remote up from the coffee table and turning the news down. Perceptive as ever, she doesn’t mute it all the way, only enough that they can have their conversation without the state of the world bringing them down. “Did you not want him to kiss you or something? Is that why you’re freaking out?”

The question catches him so much off guard that he pauses his pacing; his legs burn a little from all the movement and he makes a mental note to goad Tommy into letting him use his home gym again and— great. 

Now he’s thinking about Tommy working out with him. Tommy covered in a thin sheen of sweat, Tommy in one of those obscene tank tops with the arms cut low, Tommy spotting him whilst he lifts and uses the bench press, Tommy leaning down to help him, his top pulling taut across his chest, one of his nipples peeking out of the gap that Buck still wants to sink his fucking teeth into. Tommy pressing up against his back whilst he helps him work out, Tommy’s sweat soaking into his shirt and dampening his skin, the way he’d taste— fuck, the way he’d smell. 

Buck clears his throat and wills the heat in his groin to redirect to literally any other part of his body.

“No, I did,” he promises. “I mean, have you seen him? Of course I did. He’s just— I don’t know. Sometimes I can tell he wants to touch me, sometimes he reaches out, but it’s like he won’t let himself. And he was running on fumes this morning, we woke up late, and I think he just… forgot what we are, I guess— that we’re not what we were.” 

It’s something that’s been niggling at his brain for a while now, but he’s never been brave enough to bring it up, to voice it outside of that suitcase stuffed to the brim with things he doesn’t want to talk about, to so much as think about. Only now he’s unzipped it and the pressure’s releasing and it’s just a matter of time before the zipper explodes and he ends up buried under the mountain of baggage he’s been trying to repress. 

“And it’s not like he’s never touched me,” Buck continues; apparently he’s unleashed a tirade he’s been holding back. “I mean, we’ve been sleeping together, it’d be hard for him not to—”

Maddie cuts him off. “You’ve been sleeping together?” she squawks, eyes wide. “You haven’t kissed, but you’ve been sleeping together? Seriously, Buck?”

“Just sleeping, Maddie!” he insists, scrambling. “Oh my god, we’re just sleeping in the same bed. We haven’t been having sex! Not that I wouldn't have sex with him if he asked because I would—”

“—I know way too much about your sex life—”

“—I really would.”

Buck lets himself get caught up in that for a second, the thought of Tommy’s hands on him, those hands he’s spent so long thinking obscene things about, so long he’s spent just staring at. 

Fuck, Tommy has nice hands. And they’re so big too, bigger than his and Buck has to wonder how they’d feel on his hips, holding him down, on his thighs, around his di—

“Please, never tell me what you’re thinking about that makes you look like that,” Maddie grumbles, and Buck has to fight the urge to race to the nearest mirror to see exactly what his face is doing. 

“My point being,” Buck resumes, clearing his throat a little awkwardly. He sort of feels like a kid who’s just been caught passing notes back and forth in class by the teacher. “I’m worried. He’s never not texted me back for this long and I don’t know if it’s something I did or if it’s the fire or something else but— I just can’t shake the feeling something's off.” 

Maddie nods at him, lips pursed. “I guess that explains why you’ve been watching the news all day,” she says. It doesn’t feel like judgement, not from her, it feels more like an understanding of sorts. She knows what it’s like to love a firefighter and have to watch from the sidelines. “You said you were texting when he got all weird on you?” 

He nods. “Yeah. Things were fine and then they weren’t.”

“Can I see?”

“See what?”

“Your phone.”

A sudden surge of protectiveness ripples through him. It’s not like he has anything to hide from her, their texts had been normal, innocent, but he can’t shake the possessive feeling in his bones when he thinks about handing his phone over, when he thinks about somebody else, somebody who isn’t him or Tommy, scrolling through their conversations. 

“I, uh…” Buck trails off. His mouth feels dry, and when he swallows his throat clicks audibly. 

Maddie grimaces at him. “Please, if you were sexting, tell me now before I scar myself for life!”

“We weren’t sexting, oh my god, Maddie!”

Now that’s a thought he won’t be able to get out of his head for a while, though. 

Tommy texts so proper, all full stops and capital letters with a sporadic emoji from time to time. It’s a stark contrast to the way Buck likes to text, which is, to put simply, whatever takes the least amount of time, and now Buck can’t help but wonder how he would sext. 

How much would it take for that decorum to break? How fast could he get Tommy foregoing the punctuation in favor of sheer pleasure and desire and lust. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to text with one hand, it’s even harder to text with one hand occupied, with a brain that’s got one goal in mind, with trembling thighs and curled toes and a throbbing coc—

“You’re making the face again!” Maddie groans, swatting at his thigh with the back of his hand. “Just gimme your phone.”

Buck does, if only to spare himself the embarrassment, and switch the topic of conversation to literally anything else but the potential of sexting with Tommy. She snatches it from him with a half-hearted huff and starts to navigate through their text thread. 

“Did he say anything about the kiss before he left?” Maddie asks when she reaches the end of the thread, handing his phone back to him. 

He takes it from her with a frown. “No, he was so frazzled I don’t think he even realised what he’d done until—”

“Until you made a joke about kissing and telling?” she interrupts. 

“Wait. You think...” Buck’s eyes go wide and he scrambles to unlock his phone again. He scrolls up about a dozen messages and, yep. There it is. The harmless little joke he’d sent without thinking twice about, the joke he hadn’t thought anything of until now. “You think that freaked him out?”

“Knowing him? Probably.”

Something flares up in his stomach again. It’s that ugly, bitter feeling that he hates is so easy to recognise at this point. 

It’s too fucking familiar. 

He knows his sister, sometimes he thinks he knows her better than he knows himself, so he knows that it was just an innocent comment, that it didn’t have any sort of meaning behind it but the bitter sting of jealousy still claws at his skin and leaves him feeling raw and aching, like the aftermath of a sunburn. He wants to be the one that knows Tommy, and, sure, maybe somewhere in his head he does, but what’s the damn point of it all if he can’t remember that he does. 

“I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a joke,” he insists, trying to bury the jealousy at the bottom of that overflowing suitcase. 

“I know. Tommy probably knows that too, he’s just…” she sighs and shifts a little on the couch, sitting with her back against the armrest so she can look up at him properly. “If this really is the first time something like that’s happened between you two he’s probably blaming himself for, I don’t know, pushing you, I guess? He’s probably talked himself into thinking this is all his fault and that he’s the bad guy here.”

And Buck hates that thought. 

It makes him want to march down to harbor station, grab Tommy by his shoulders and shake him about until he’s knocked some damn sense into that head of his. He’s his boyfriend, for fuck sake. 

“But I wanted him to,” Buck says, resisting the urge to pout. 

“Does Tommy know that? Have you two talked about this before?” 

He shakes his head with a sigh. 

Conversation and words have never been his strongest suit. He’s more impulsive than words can handle sometimes; a man of action rather than a wordsmith. 

“Well, you should.” Maddie makes it sound so easy— like one conversation would solve all their problems when it doesn’t feel that simple. “You’re both big boys,” she continues, her tone sardonic. “One conversation won’t kill you.”

“It might,” Buck grumbles under his breath, petulant and a little bratty. 

“Then I promise to give you a good send off. We’ll have chrysanthemums at your funeral.”

Buck makes an indignant noise in the back of his throat and, because he’s still her little brother at his core, ruffles her hair when he walks past her to drop down heavily onto the couch. 

The news is still playing softly in the background, the current anchor relaying weather details. There’ll be rain soon, apparently, which should help with the fire. 

“So…” Maddie hums after the silence drags on too long. She’s got that look on her face, the one he knows too well, the one he'd grown up with. She’d given him the same look when he was a kid, thirteen years old and sat on her bed, gushing about the first girl he’d ever had a proper crush on.  “How was it?”

“How was what?”

“The kiss, Buck.”

Heat creeps up the back of his neck. It's a feeling he’s becoming far, far too familiar with considering he’s in his thirties and not a teenage boy with a crush anymore. It’s not a bad feeling… just different. Just new. 

“It was good,” he says simply. “It was like… I don’t know, it didn’t feel like it was a first kiss like I thought it might. It kind of…” Buck pauses, searching for the words. “Okay, you know when you’ve been out all day for whatever, maybe shopping or something, I don’t know, that part’s not important. But you’ve been out all day and the one thing you want more than anything is to just go home, but you still have hours before you can. And then when you’re finished and you get home it’s like a huge feeling of relief. Like ‘ah, finally’, you know? Like you can breathe again. That’s kinda how it felt.”

Maddie coos at him, a soft little awwww noise that makes Buck want to hide his face in his hands and do something utterly pathetic like giggle and twirl his hair, maybe even kick his feet a little. 

“Can we please talk about anything else?” he pleads, batting at the butterflies in his stomach until they settle into calm, steady flutters rather than a tornado of activity. 

Maddie claps her hands together eagerly. “Oh, finally. You know, Robbie’s in his scratching phase and he keeps screaming whenever we try to clip his nails, I feel like a human scratching post!”

∞∞∞

When Buck rouses later, the room is darker than it had been before he fell asleep. 

It’s no longer flooded with vivid white light, instead there’s a warmer glow coming from the hall and the reflection of whatever sitcom is looping on the television. Outside the windows he’d forgotten to draw the curtains on, the sky's black, the streets only illuminated by the soft glow of porch lamps and the occasional beam from a passing car's headlights. 

There’s also a hand on his arm and a figure shrouded in darkness that makes him jump, the intrusion unexpected. 

“Sorry! Sorry,” a deep, warm voice apologises, tone laced with something that Buck thinks might be amusement. 

Ah, he knows this voice. 

“Jesus, Tommy,” he says, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand and trying to slow the beating of his heart before he ends up tachycardic or something. Wouldn’t that just be the cherry on top of this day. 

The breath Tommy exhales through his nose is light and airy and full of mirth that he doesn’t bother hiding this time. 

“What time is it?” Buck asks, pushing himself up into a sitting position. 

“Just gone nine.”

“Have you eaten? There’s leftovers from dinner— I didn’t know when you’d be back so I made you some just in case.”

Tommy winces, lips turning down with something that, if Buck knows him as well as he thinks he does by now, might be guilt. “The guys ordered pizza at the station, I had a couple slices. Will it save for tomorrow?”

Buck nods, picking an invisible piece of lint off of the blanket and flicking it to the floor. “Yeah, it’s just pasta. No big deal.”

There’s an awkwardness hanging in the air between them in a way there’s never been before. It hadn’t even been this permeable when he’d woken up in the hospital with no clue that he had a boyfriend. This one feels thick and stifling like a buildup of smoke in a room during a house fire. 

“We should talk.”

Tommy gives him a look that Buck can’t make out in the darkness. “I sort of figured that was coming.”

The two of them shuffle about, a routine they seem to have down well at this point. It still floors him sometimes just how easily they seem to slot into each other's lives, like they’re two imperfect puzzle pieces that seem to somehow, despite all odds, match up perfectly. Tommy sinks into the couch next to him and Buck curls his legs up to make room for him, his back against the armrest in a mirror position of the way Maddie had been sitting earlier. 

“Evan, I’m sorry—”

“You were ignoring me today—”

They both talk at the same time and despite the gravity of the situation, despite the heavy weight that’s been settled on his chest since Maddie left, Buck laughs, a soft little chortle in his throat that’s probably entirely inappropriate considering the circumstances. 

When Tommy doesn’t move to speak, Buck tries again. “You were ignoring me today.” 

It’s not a question— he’d had enough time after Maddie left to come to that realization. He’s not even particularly angry about it either, if anything he’s worried. 

“I’m sorry,” Tommy says again. He looks small, a feat that should be impossible considering he’s jacked as hell, but his hunched shoulders and drawn brows make him seem so much smaller than what he is. “I shouldn’t have ignored you. For what it’s worth, I would have come home. If you needed me, I mean.”

Buck shrugs one shoulder and purses his lips. He never doubted that. He knows that, had he texted him about it being an emergency, all pretences would have gone out the window and Tommy would have come for him. He’s figured out enough about their dynamic by now to know that that’s how they work— one of them calls, the other comes. 

“I know.”

“Still, Evan. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

It feels a little like they’re on the precipice of having two different conversations, that Tommy’s talking about something different, something more than just ignoring him, that they haven't broached yet. 

“Which part?” 

“Both— all of it, I mean,” Tommy sighs, pushing a hand through his hair. He looks tired, incredibly so, far behind the point of work exhaustion; it’s like he’s carrying a weight around his neck and it’s suffocating him. “For ignoring you and for,” he stops, drawing in a breath, “for this morning. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

Buck blinks at him. “You’re apologising for kissing me?”

Tommy nods, eyes downcast and frame slumped. “Yeah. Yes. And listen— if you want some space, I get it. I can take the spare room, or— or the couch if you want. Or I can stay somewhere else, I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable her—”

“Tommy,” he interrupts, voice clear and solid as it cuts through his boyfriends— his boyfriend, god, isn’t that just the crux of everything— rambling. “Look at me.”

He doesn’t. 

No, instead he keeps his gaze focused forward, eyes fixed on the curtains, body ram rod straight like he’s bracing himself for an inevitable blow that’s about to come. 

Buck frowns and shifts his good leg under him. He puts all his weight on it and knee-shuffles down the couch until he’s against Tommy’s side instead of looking at him from the other end of it, from a distance. “Look at me.”

This time, Tommy does. 

“I’m not mad at you or upset with you or any of the things you’ve spent all day overthinking about,” Buck tells him. He watches the way Tommy’s shoulders sag a little in relief, like the Sisyphean boulder he’s been pushing around all day has finally cut him some slack and hasn’t rolled right back down the hill to the start again. “I didn’t even think it was a big deal until you got all cagey and closed off on me. You’re my boyfriend, you’re allowed to kiss me.”

“But—”

“No,” he insists, covering Tommy’s mouth with his hand to stop him from talking. “No buts. You’re my boyfriend which means you get to kiss me if you want to. And, I mean, it’s not like I didn’t want it, or like I didn’t enjoy it, it was— it was good. Nice.”

God, there goes those butterflies wreaking havoc in his stomach again. They seem to be relentless when it comes to Tommy, when it comes to feelings and Tommy, constantly kicking up tiny tornadoes for him to deal with.

Tommy’s mouth twitches under his palm. Buck takes the hint and moves it away. 

“You liked it?” he asks, a playful, teasing edge to his voice. 

“You’re fishing for compliments,” Buck hums, deadpan. He leaves his hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “I’m not stroking your ego.”

“I’ve been losing my mind all day, Evan—”

“—kinda your own fault for that one. If you had just texted me back like a normal person we could have saved you so much trouble.”

Tommy sticks his bottom lip out in a pout that looks equal parts endearing and ridiculous on a man of his stature. “I could barely even eat the pizza, it was dire, Evan. I had to be pulled off evac until I got my head on straight.”

Buck huffs out a laugh through his nose. He’s so captivated by Tommy it’s downright embarrassing— all it takes is a single pout and a few desperate words and Buck wants to sink into him, to become putty in his hands, to be moulded into whatever shape Tommy needs him to be. It’s not a feeling he ever thought he’d be familiar with, not like this, and now that he knows what it’s like, he’s a little addicted to it. 

It’s not a feeling he wants to give up. 

Tommy’s pout doesn’t ease. There’s dark circles under his eyes that corroborate the kind of day he’s had and all Buck can hear in his head is a tornado siren of kisshimkisshimkisshim, an incessant wail crying out for him to fix it, to ease away the last bits of tension Tommy’s still carrying around like Atlas. 

It’s not a difficult choice, in the end, and hedonism was always inevitably going to be the thing he caved for, so he does. 

He brings his hand up to Tommy’s jaw, gently tilting his head towards him and then starts to lean in. Half of him expects Tommy to pull away, to put a stop to it with a palm against his chest and a polite ‘Evan, no’ but he doesn’t, not even when Buck can feel the sharp intake and exhale of breath against his lips, not even when the stray section of hair clinging to Tommy’s head with sweat and grime from the days fire tickles against his own forehead. He leans in and Tommy doesn’t tell him no, and when he tilts his head Tommy does too, like they’re both connected by some invisible string that’s holding them together, like it’s that easy and— hell, maybe it is. Maybe this is where they go from here. 

Buck closes the last little crevice of space between them and then they’re kissing. 

They’re kissing, fuck. 

It’s not the kind of kiss that’s running off of fumes and familiarity, it’s a proper one, one with intention and purpose behind it. One that has Buck drawing in a breath through his nose when lips meet lips, one that has him not even caring when their noses bump a little awkwardly or when he pushes into it a little more, a little too eagerly, and almost topples forward into Tommy’s lap in his haste. 

A hand falls to his hip, keeping him upright. One of his own drifts to Tommy’s thigh, the other pressed against the back of the couch so he can use it for leverage, to push into the kiss without tumbling into him. 

Tommy’s mouth parts against his and then there’s a tongue darting out to tease against his bottom lip, a barely there ghost of a touch that Buck would never have felt had he not been waiting, hoping, for it. It disappears just as fast and it’s only his frustration with Tommy’s constant exercise of self-restraint that has him adding teeth, that has him scraping them over his bottom lip and sinking into the flesh for a second before they part, desperate to catch their breath. 

They don’t go far at first, just parting enough to suck in the same few breaths of air, to feel them exhaled back against spit-slick lips, cold in the kind of way that sends goosebumps up the length of his spine and straight into his skull. 

Buck counts the next six beats of his heart— a feat that should be commended, honestly, given how it's racing faster than the flutter of a hummingbird's wings— before he leans away properly, kneeling back on his haunches. 

“Compliment enough for you?” he hums, tongue darting out to swipe at his lips. 

The heat in his stomach radiates when Tommy’s eyes dart down and follow the motion. It would be so easy to throw a leg over him, to put his knees either side of Tommy’s thighs and shift into his lap and get his hands in his hair and kiss and kiss and kiss until they’re both breathless and desperate and worked up into a frenzy. 

“My ego’s kind of a fragile thing,” Tommy says, tongue swiping at his own bottom lip which does absolutely nothing to quell the urge he has to sink into his boyfriend's lap and live there forever. 

Buck nods, serving up his own swing. “I guess I’ll have to keep stroking it for you then.”

Tommy’s eyes go dark, his pupils blown wide when Buck catches a glimpse of them illuminated by the headlights of a passing car outside. His fingers flex where they’re resting on his thighs like he’s fighting the urge to reach out and touch, to push and pull and grab until he’s got his hands on skin and he’s digging fingers in, trying to crawl inside him and never leave. 

It’s a pretty impressive swing, if he does say so himself. Definitely worth home run points. 

“We should…” Buck starts, clearing his throat a little, flustered. He's kinda glad they never turned the lights on with how hot his face feels. “It’s getting late.”

“Right.” 

They stand from the couch, Tommy moving first and offering Buck his hand, hauling him up to his feet incredibly easily once he takes it. It’s an impressive display of just how strong and capable Tommy is, of how he could probably push Buck around, hold him down, pin him where he wants him and, fuck, that’s a new feeling. He’s always been stronger than the women he’s dated, always been conscious of his strength compared to theirs but with Tommy… the thought is thrilling. 

“Let me just lock up and jump in the shower, I still smell like smoke, and then I’ll be with you.”

Buck nods at him and starts to head towards the stairs. He makes it about five steps before he’s stopped, Tommy’s grip on his hand still firm and unrelenting. 

“Wha—”

Tommy cuts him off. “For the record, you’re my boyfriend too. The same rules apply.”

He lets go after that, gently brushing past Buck with a hand on the small of his back that has him feeling like he’s about to swoon like a fucking Victorian maiden. He might need the fainting couch, or a turn about the room or four. 

Buck manages to make his way up to the bedroom on unstable legs and he wastes no time throwing himself onto the bed and staring up at the ceiling, heart racing and mind running just as fast to try and keep up. 

‘You’re my boyfriend’, Buck had said to him earlier, ‘which means you get to kiss me if you want to’ and Tommy’d just echoed that sentiment right back to him. 

Tommy wants Buck to kiss him. 

Tommy wants Buck to kiss him. 

And Buck wants to kiss him too. 

God, he hasn’t felt this giddy over a kiss since he was fifteen and he’d played tonsil tennis with a girl way out of his league and been blown off after five minutes of awkward, sloppy frenching. Only Tommy hasn’t blown him off because Tommy wants to kiss him— fuck. 

The butterflies are working up a storm again. At this rate, with the tiny hurricanes they seem insistent on creating in his stomach, under his skin, right the way down to his marrow, he wouldn’t be surprised if he woke up in Oz. 

In the bathroom, the shower starts up. 

Tommy’s twelve feet away from him. 

Twelve feet away from him and naked and he wants Buck to kiss him and he’s naked. 

Buck has to roll on his stomach and bury his face in a pillow to get himself under control and three times makes this a pattern which can only mean one thing. 

He’s officially and incredibly fucked. 

Well.

Hopefully.

Chapter Text

The all clear for Buck’s return to work comes just over a month after his accident with, of course, the additional caveat that he sticks to light duty for the foreseeable future. 

Both Bobby and his doctor had put strict emphasis on light duty and a part of him wanted (and still wants) to protest the order, to insist to the both of them that, even if he still can’t remember everything, he’s fine. 

Well. 

He’s mostly fine. 

He’s a lot better than he was three weeks ago, at the very least. 

When he remembers things now, it doesn’t keep him up at night— not unless they’re exceptionally taxing. In the last week he’s only been bowled over by a memory once, that’s progress! 

Remembering Bobby’s heart attack had hit him like a freight train, though. He’d woken in the middle of the night in a cold sweat that only seemed to get colder when all his calls went unanswered, three am be damned. Tommy had woken up to him sitting on the edge of the bed with his head between his knees trying to stave off the panic attack that was thrumming under his skin, thick and pulsating like one of those industrial speakers at a concert. He’d put a hand on his back and Buck had flinched so hard he could practically see all the progress they’d made in the physical affection department going up in smoke in front of him. 

The panic attack knocked him on his ass when it eventually hit, but by the time he came out of it, clammy and weak and exhausted, Tommy’d got Bobby on the phone and he could breathe again. He’d tried to leave, to give the two of them space and privacy, but Buck had just clung to his hand and coaxed him back into bed and let Tommy run his fingers through his hair, down his arm, across his bare back, ghosting them across whatever skin was within his reach. Buck had been half asleep when the phone was pried away from his ear. 

That phone call is also where Bobby had spilled the beans about his not-so-secret secret welcome back to work! surprise party-slash-barbecue extravaganza. 

Which is exactly how he finds himself at Bobby and Athena’s place the Friday before his first Monday morning shift. 

He’s been hugged and cheered on by so many of his friends, his family— Hen, Ravi, Bobby, Athena, Chimney, Maddie, Eddie— all of them making a point to mention how proud they are of him, or how happy and relieved they are to have him back, to make their team whole again. 

It’s the first time Buck’s been around this many people at once since he left the hospital. A part of him expects it to feel stifling, to feel suffocating— he’s spent so long and become so incredibly comfortable with living in Tommy’s pocket, with the two of them existing in their own little bubble, bar the occasional visitor or two calling— but it just… doesn’t. 

There’s a familiar ease to it all that he’s able to sink into. It’s not so much a happiness, though that’s definitely a part of it, but it’s more a feeling of contentment, of peace.

Here, with Tommy’s arm around the back of the rattan couch the two of them are sharing, tucked into each others sides in a way that’s both choice and necessity— they’re both way too tall and jacked to be sharing this thing— here, with Tommy’s thumb occasionally brushing against his shoulder whilst the people he love laugh and drink and chatter around him, Buck thinks if he had to pick a moment to spend eternity in, this one would be pretty high up on the top of his list. 

Of course, like most good things, it doesn’t last. 

A few hours deep into it, Tommy shifts next to him, the weight of his arm falling away with him and Buck watches him deposit the same half-full beer he’s been nursing since they arrived down on the coffee table. Nobody else seems to be paying too much attention to him, nor to his movement. 

“I’ll be right back,” Tommy says, soft and quiet and just for him. 

Buck nods, the rest of the world shifting into nothing but background noise. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says with a little shrug and a smile that looks too strained around the edges to be believable. “Bathroom.” 

It doesn’t feel like the whole truth and, honestly, a part of Buck wants to push on it. A part of him wants to sink his nails into Tommy’s shoulders and shake him until he spills whatever it is that’s really bothering him, but the bigger, more insecure part of him doesn’t want to be pushy, especially not in front of all their friends like this. 

It’d be different if they were alone, maybe, the two of them tucked up on Tommy’s couch, or his bed, or anywhere in the comfort of home— it wouldn’t feel so daunting. Buck wouldn’t mind baring the rawest, most vulnerable parts of his soul there, where it’s safe. He wouldn’t mind clawing and pulling at those threads until he’s unravelling himself, until he’s a bloody mess, served up on a silver platter. 

But they’re not home. 

And if Buck tried to tug on either of their threads like this, in front of their captive audience, it would only end badly. 

So he just… watches him go. 

He watches Tommy excuse himself with a polite nod to the others, watches him walk across the garden— he sticks to the path the whole time, purposefully avoiding cutting across the grass like the rest of them have been doing all evening— watches him nudge the sliding glass door open and then watches him disappear inside, out of sight. 

Things are fine for the first handful of minutes, he feels fine, but as the passage of time creeps ever onwards he starts to feel more and more like he’s been thrown off kilter. He feels all kinds of shifty. All kinds of wrong.

Conversations are still flowing around him, light and easy, and he smiles in all the right places, laughs along with everybody when they laugh, and chimes in whenever somebody says his name or drags him into conversation, but he’s so acutely aware of that damn door across the garden that he takes almost none of it in. 

The space next to him grows cold, no longer clinging to the remnants of Tommy’s body heat that he’d left behind, and that’s his final straw.

His drink hits the table and half a dozen eyes fall on him. 

“I’m just gonna…” Buck trails off, waving a hand at the house aimlessly. 

He doesn’t wait for acknowledgement from anybody before he’s up and following the same path Tommy had taken no more than fifteen minutes ago. The conversations drift quieter and quieter the further away he gets, until it trails off altogether once he’s inside. 

He finds Tommy in the kitchen of all places, decidedly not the room he said he’d be in, and he’s— he’s doing the fucking dishes, god. He’s rinsing them off and getting soap suds all over the counter and Buck just… leans in the doorway and watches him. He watches the tight set of his shoulders, the way his hands move with skill and ease, the way he’s careful with Bobby and Athena’s glasses, the way he’s purposefully occupying himself with something to do. 

Tommy always needs something to do with his hands when he gets like this, when he gets  overwhelmed or stressed or tense. It eases something in him, the thought that he’s being useful, which is, honestly, a feeling Buck can understand all too well. Maybe that’s why he can’t hold this against him.

He watches him get through three more plates, a worrying amount of silverware, and an oven dish before he decides to make himself known.

“You know,” Buck hums, a playful lilt to his voice. “If Athena catches you doing this whilst she’s hosting, I think she might kill you herself.”

Tommy jumps, startled at his sudden appearance, and sends water sloshing down the front of his shirt soaking it through. 

“Jesus, Evan,” he says. “How long have you been standing there?”

Despite the worry that’s been simmering on a low heat in his bones since Tommy got up and walked away from him, Buck laughs. He pushes himself up from the wall he’s leaning on and walks a little further into the kitchen. 

“Long enough to know that Bobby’s going to unpack everything you’ve put in that dishwasher as soon as we leave so he can repack it the right way.”

Tommy gives his own half-hearted laugh and starts dabbing at his wet shirt with one of the rags on the counter. It’s not his usual laugh, not the rich, deep sound that makes Buck feel all warm inside— it’s not the kind of sound that he lets marinate in his bones, not the kind of sound he lets himself sink into. It’s softer, quieter, more reserved. 

“There isn’t a right way to pack a dishwasher,” Tommy counters, even though there absolutely is, thank you very much. “What are you doing here? You should be outside.”

“Looking for you,” Buck tells him simply, honestly. 

“Well, you found me.”

“Doing someone else’s dishes at a party.”

Tommy doesn’t meet his eyes. “You should go back out there, the others are probably missing you.”

The way he says it is so… Buck can’t quite put his finger on it but it feels— it feels jealous, maybe? Or insecure? Like Tommy’s envious of the fact that everybody else gets to miss him and he doesn’t. 

Yeah, fuck that. 

“I missed you.”

The hand that’s still clutching at the rag tightens, cotton straining under the grip. “You don’t know me, Evan.”

A punch to the gut would have hurt less.Hell, being struck by lightning would have hurt less and he’s allowed to make that comparison. It knocks all the breath out of him and leaves him shaking— it’s like someone’s poured a bucket of ice water over him and ran off, leaving him standing there with ringing ears and shaking limbs. 

“I know you,” he says, suddenly feeling incredibly defensive over the whole thing because he does. 

He knows Tommy. 

He knows him so damn well— he knows how he likes his coffee (straight black or ridiculously sweet depending on his mood), how he likes his food, knows what kind of movies he likes and that he only owns four pairs of shoes in total because ‘that’s all I need, Evan’. He knows that Tommy snores after a long shift, that he’s more affectionate in the morning when he’s still half asleep because Buck’s basked in those mornings for the past four weeks, indulging in all the affection wherever he could. He knows that Tommy won’t kill spiders, that he works on cars when he needs to destress, he knows how he likes his eggs, how he takes showers that are too hot, ones that steam up the entire bathroom like it’s a sauna. He knows how he tastes. How he kisses. 

Tommy’s lips quirk up into a small, sad smile and he drops the rag back onto the counter, shirt still damp. “Maybe not enough.”

And, god, Buck’s been through so many emotions in the past month— he’s become fast friends with frustration and irritation, but not so much anger. Sure, he’s had his moments, but it’s not one that he let himself sink too deeply into, not one that he let himself dwell on too much for fear of spiralling, but he feels it now. That and something that tastes a little bit like fear creeping around in the back of his throat when he swallows. 

He steps up to Tommy, maybe a little closer than he should, intent to get his point across. “I know you.”

“Ev—”

“—no, let me talk. I know you, Tommy. I might not remember everything about you, but I know you. I know who you are. I know how you make me feel.”

Tommy leans against the thin counter strip that separates the sink from the edge, the back of his shirt darkening as it gets damp with the water spilled from the earlier dishwashing. “And how’s that?”

“Safe,” Buck answers immediately; it’s not something he has to think too hard on, he’s known how Tommy makes him feel for a while now. “You make me feel safe. When you left, when you came inside and I was out there by myself with the others listening to them talk about things I can barely remember them saying I felt… god, I don’t even know, but it wasn’t as bad when you were there, nothing ever is, and all I could think about was where you went and why you left and when you’d be back. I couldn’t even make it fifteen minutes before I came looking for you.”

The tension builds in Tommy’s form. It starts in his jaw, the muscles spasming as he grinds his teeth together— he catches himself after a couple of seconds and tries to force himself to relax only to start clenching them again another second or so later— and ends up working its way down his shoulders until he’s standing rigid. 

Buck’s reminded, not for the first time, that Tommy’s a military man. That he became fast friends with precision and stringency and callousness at an age far, far too young, that he defaults to it whenever he starts feeling things too severely, when he wants to close himself off and appear stoic. It’s easy for him, it’s familiar. He’s also reminded of just how much Tommy feels the need to move around, how he always needs to feel busy, needs something to do with his hands. It’s why his garage is a smorgasbord of hobbies— an eclectic mix of everything from muay thai to his own semi-professional garage that he uses to work on old cars. 

Rigidity and stiffness don't suit him; he’s not made for it. 

“I’m sorry,” Tommy tells him, arms shifting to fold across his chest, one of his hands clasping at his arm like he’s holding himself together. “I shouldn’t have left you out there, that’s my fault.”

“No, Tommy, that’s not what I’m saying, fuck.” 

It’s Buck’s turn to feel restless, to feel like he has to take a lap to purge some of the agitation that’s swirling around under his skin, a post-impressionist piece to rival Starry Night itself. He feels like oil spilled on a canvas, loose and unmoored and without any sort of direction to keep him tethered. 

“I can take care of myself, you don’t need to babysit me to stop me from breaking, you just…” he pauses, taking a second to draw in a breath when his words come out at a mile a minute. Tommy’s looking back at him expectantly, a mix of trepidation and anticipation warring across his face and Buck thinks fuck it and adds, “things are easier when you’re around, I think. I don’t have to pretend around you.”

Just being around Tommy makes everything feel easier. He’d tried staying at his loft a few days ago half in the hope that it might bring something back, and half because he felt a little guilty monopolising Tommy’s space all the time. It only lasted about six hours before he was back on Tommy’s doorstep an hour or so past midnight, exhausted and desperate for familiarity and safety again. Tommy (who looked just as exhausted as him) didn’t even say anything, didn’t even look surprised, he just stepped aside and let Buck in and coaxed him upstairs. 

Blue eyes soften where they’re looking at him, but still carry an edge of haunting to them, like Tommy’s walking around his own gallows, scared to leave it even though he’s been pardoned. It feels like they’re on the precipice of something— something that’s so fragile and already splintering at the seams, something that could fracture entirely if he pushes it too far too fast. 

So instead of pushing he leans in close, bridging the gap between them until Buck can feel the familiar warmth radiating from his boyfriend. He reaches one hand up behind them, scoops up a handful of soap bubbles from the water in the sink and swipes it across Tommy’s mouth with a smile. 

“I forgive you for leaving me out there.”

Across from him Tommy huffs out a breath of air, foam and bubbles flying off from around his mouth and Buck laughs, high pitched and delighted, when they hit his face. He reaches behind himself and Buck realises too late what he’s doing, only managing to make it five or six steps away from him before Tommy’s crowding up against him and swiping his own handful of suds across his face. 

Buck blows out his own mouthful of air, sending bubbles rocketing back into Tommy’s face and the look he gives him when they hit him rips another laugh out of Buck’s throat, a light, carefree sort of sound that he’s only ever heard himself make around Tommy. He scrubs at his mouth with the back of his hand, ridding himself of the suds whilst he catches his breath from the laughter and then they’re both just standing there chest-to-chest, breathing hard, their hearts jackrabbiting in their rib cage. 

Buck has no idea which one of them moves first— hell, maybe they both do, maybe it’s less of a conscious decision and more just another case of the two of them being pulled into each other's orbit, a force just as intrinsic and necessary as gravity— but then they’re kissing. 

It only lasts a second because Tommy tastes like dish soap and he’s still got bubbles clinging to his mouth and chin so Buck pulls back and uses his sleeve to wipe them away from his mouth and then they go right back to kissing again and it’s— it’s so good. It’s nothing like how they’ve kissed before; this is purposeful, it has intention behind it and neither of them seem to be willing to pull away yet. Tommy’s hands go down to his waist and Buck’s own hands move to his arms, his shoulders, fingers gripping at the little hairs at the nape of Tommy’s neck, wherever he can grab. He wants to touch him everywhere, wants to get his hands on him and never ever stop come hell or high water. 

They kiss and kiss and kiss until Tommy starts nudging at him, ushering him backwards, and Buck follows his lead willingly until his back hits the counter and then his legs are ripped out from under him. The sudden weightlessness makes him gasp against Tommy’s mouth until he realises that oh— Tommy’s hauled him up onto the counter with two strong, steady hands under his thighs and if he thought he was toeing the line of interest before, now he’s rocketed all the way ahead to desperate like some R-rated game of chutes and ladders. There’s so much heat twisting and coiling in his gut he could probably power a small village through winter. 

Buck shuffles himself to the edge of the counter, displeased by some of the distance that gathered between them, and brackets his legs around Tommy’s hips so there’s no risk of them drifting again. A beat passes and then they’re kissing again, open-mouthed and a little sloppy and so much dirtier and ardent than they ever have. 

Fuck, he wants him so bad. 

It feels like something that should scare him— this enormous feeling of sheer need that’s boiling him alive, but it doesn’t because this is Tommy and Buck’s safe with him. He could shake apart in his arms and he knows Tommy would hold him through it and put the shattered pieces of him back together again with duct tape and superglue. 

Tommy trails his hands up from where they’d been settled on his thighs, past his hips, and slides them under the back of his shirt, palms pressed to the bare skin on the small of his back. He’s spent so long thinking about these hands and everything they could do to him and now they’re finally on him and Buck’s not quite sure this isn’t a dream or one of his fantasies come to fruition. 

They part from the kiss with a sloppy smack of lips— he already knows that sound is going to haunt him forever, probably. It’s not even a filthy sound, it’s normal, it’s standard, but it’s also him and Tommy making it, him and Tommy making it together. 

“Tommy,” Buck half-moans half-whines.

Tommy hums in answer, mouth too occupied with pressing kisses across his jawline and down onto his neck, stubble prickling at Buck’s skin everywhere he goes. His tongue joins just as fast, and then comes the teeth. He doesn't sink them into flesh in the way a part of Buck craves, no, instead Tommy just teases them across his skin, letting him feel the weight of them, reminding him that they’re there and he can, the ghost of a threat that Buck desperately wants him to follow through with. 

He stops somewhere near his collarbone and starts sucking and Buck jolts on the counter, his legs tightening around Tommy’s waist. It has the added bonus of pressing them together even more, the crotch of his jeans level with Tommy’s stomach and he wants to start wriggling, to start grinding so bad he feels sick with it. He wants to shuck Tommy’s shirt halfway up his chest, wants to feel skin on skin, he wants fucking everything. By the time Tommy pulls back he’s pretty sure there’s a decent sized hickey— a fucking hickey, christ, now he really does feel like a horny teenager again— sucked into his skin, framed by some pretty admirable indentations of teeth. 

Their eyes meet for just a second, long enough for Buck to see how the eyes staring back at him are blown almost entirely black with lust, framed only by the tiniest ring of baby blue as emphasis, and then they’re kissing again. 

Buck lets his hand trail down Tommy’s chest and up the front of his shirt, fingers skimming across the abs that’ve been blue-balling him for the past month— he’d caught glimpses of them every time Tommy walked out of the shower in just a towel, every time he’d been a sweaty mess after working out and his shirt had stuck to him with sweat that he’d quickly rid himself of, every time he stretched his arms a little too high above his head, making his shirt ride up in just the right way. 

If it were anybody else, Buck might be inclined to think they were doing it on purpose. 

His fingers ghost across soft, toned skin and Tommy makes a noise against his mouth that exists somewhere between a contented hum and a moan that makes Buck want to strip him down and get his hands everywhere to see what other noises he can pull out of him. 

Tommy’s teeth sink into his bottom lip and tug and it stings in the best kind of way; a way that he didn’t think could get better until it’s being soothed with the soft press of a tongue and, come on, Buck’s only human, and he’s a damn hedonist at heart, what else is he supposed to do but slide his own tongue into the mix? He ghosts it against Tommy’s, teasing at it until they’re essentially just tongue-fucking each others mouths. 

His hands drift further down until they hit something cold and metal— the button on an indecently fitting pair of jeans— and Tommy doesn’t seem inclined to stop him so Buck doesn’t. He fumbles with it for a few seconds until his fingers remember what they’re good for and then he manages to pop it open. He’s so, so close to sliding his hand inside, to getting it where he’s wanted it for so fucking long at this point, and Tommy’s making aborted little gasps and moans against his mouth that prove he want this too and—

And then the sound of a door sliding open reverberates through the otherwise quiet kitchen, the sound of laughter from the rest of their friends drifting in from the garden. Two voices follow it and then Tommy’s ripping himself away from Buck so fast he almost slides down from the counter in his daze. 

They stare at each other for a second, eyes dark, mouths red, and then Tommy’s face falls. 

“Fuck, Evan,” he curses, fumbling the button of his jeans closed again.

“Tom—”

Tommy doesn’t give him the chance. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, shit,” he says, and then he’s darting out of the kitchen so fast Buck’s surprised there isn’t a comical outline of him left behind Wile E. Coyote style. 

By the time Buck’s brain switches back on and he remembers that his limbs are limbs and he needs to use them, Tommy’s already got so much distance on him.

“Tommy!” he calls out, stumbling down from the counter and following after him. 

He bumps into Maddie on the way and she frowns at him, steadying him with a hand on his arm, but he doesn’t have time to stop because Tommy’s still fucking running and he’s not slowing down so he can’t either. 

Her and Athena’s eyes follow him as he heads for the front door that’s still wide open. Buck barely even manages to make it halfway down the driveway before Tommy’s truck is pulling away, the sound of the engine revving reverberating in his head like he’s standing next to a jumbo jet rather than just watching his boyfriend drive off. 

The sick, sinking feeling in his stomach is back again, vicious and intense and vibrating like he’s pissed off a bunch of wasps, like he’s swallowed their nest and now they’re out for revenge. It feels so familiar, too familiar, and he can’t explain or even remember why, all he knows is that he hates it, that he wants to sink to the floor and curl up in a ball or something equally pathetic. 

A hand brushes against his arm and Buck jolts.

“Are you alright?” Maddie asks, her eyes flitting between him and the empty space where Tommy’s truck had just been. 

The smile he gives her is half-hearted and he knows damn well that she sees right through it. “Can you drive me home?” 

“Of course, let me just tell Chim and say goodbye to the others. You wan—”

Buck cuts her off. “No.”

If he goes back in there right now and has half a dozen pitying looks thrown at him, it really will be the thing that breaks him. 

She squeezes his arm reassuringly and, instead of trying to change his mind, passes him her car keys and tells him to let himself in whilst she makes her rounds. 

So he does. 

Buck sinks into the passenger seat and stares out at the driveway, leg bouncing uneasily whilst he waits.

The clock on the dashboard ticks over slowly, turning sixty seconds into what feels like six hundred. In his pocket his phone vibrates and Buck has a fleeting, hopeful second of maybe it’s Tommy! before he’s violently brought back down to reality when his home screen lights up with a stupid delivery app promotion. He tries to dismiss it and almost tosses the damn thing out the window when it unlocks instead. A memory pops up from his camera roll and he taps it instinctively. 

It’s nothing special— just an inconsequential picture of the sidewalk, but it’s enough to have him scrolling through the rest of his gallery whilst he waits. 

There’s so many pictures of Tommy, of him and Tommy, from before his accident that he has no memory of taking, that he has barely any context for. It's like they were taken by somebody else, somebody who walked around inside his body but wasn’t him even though it absolutely was. He likes looking at them, though, likes seeing Tommy through the eyes of the person he can’t remember being. There’s others too, tons of pictures of random baked goods, of Jee-Yun and even a few of Robbie, of dinners and dates and screenshots of reminders that probably ended up buried under everything else, doing absolutely nothing to remind him of whatever it is he needed it for. 

Contrary to what people like to tease him for, Buck isn’t actually stupid— it hasn’t escaped his notice that there’s a huge gap in his album where Tommy isn’t in any pictures, where the baked goods seem to reach their peak at a few dozen in a row, where things seem sparse and a little detached. It lasts months, but he hasn’t been brave enough to think too hard about it, let alone voice it out loud and actually ask about it yet. 

“Sorry, sorry, that took longer than I thought,” Maddie says, slipping into the driver's seat and shutting the door behind her. She thrusts a few tupperware containers at him which he takes, trading her for the keys. “From Bobby, the bottom one’s mine, though, so don’t even think about eyeing up my potato salad.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, deadpan, cradling the tupperware boxes in his lap like they’re his last lifeline. 

They make it about five blocks without a word before Maddie breaks it. 

“So are we going to talk about what happened?”

Buck’s still got his phone in his hand; it’s unlocked and open on his gallery, on the pictures he’d just been scrolling through, on the months where something was so obviously missing.

“Did Tommy break up with me?”

Maddie hits the brakes so suddenly that their leftovers would have been toast had he not been cradling them like a newborn. They both jolt forwards, seatbelts cutting uncomfortably into them— the road is thankfully empty so at least they’re not running the risk of causing a pile up. Wouldn’t that just be the cherry on top of this fucked up sundae. 

“Shit, sorry,” she curses, fumbling out an apology as she tries to start the car up again. It stalls a few times before kicking back into gear and they can start driving again. 

That reaction feels as good as any answer could possibly be, but he still wants to know. “Well?”

Her hands tighten around the wheel as she says, “I don’t know, Buck. What did he say before he ran off?”

Buck blinks at her once, twice, three times until understanding clicks in his head and— god no. That’s not what he meant. Everything that just happened… yeah, there’s no way that was a breakup. 

At least he doesn’t think it was. 

“Not now,” he clarifies. “A few months ago. There was… something happened with us, didn’t it? Nobody wants to say anything about it but I’m not stupid, Maddie. There’s months of him missing from my phone, I know something happened.”

Hell, maybe that’s the reason nobody could give him a definitive answer on exactly how long they’d been together when he’d asked them in the hospital. 

“Have you asked him about it?” Maddie asks. 

“No.”

“Maybe you should.”

“I’m not sure he’d tell me if I did.”

“He would if you asked. But you have to actually ask, Buck.”

They drive in silence for a bit, Buck clinging to his phone and the tupperware containers like if he holds them tight enough he might just be able to shield himself from the rest of the shit life’s inevitably about to throw at him. 

“What happened back there?” Maddie asks again when they hit traffic, her eyes soft with concern when she looks his way. 

Buck’s never really considered himself a shy person before, especially when it comes to things like sex— he’s always thought the more you talk about it, the better it’ll be, it’s never really been something that he considers taboo— but this is his sister, this is his sister asking about Tommy. It’s enough to make the tips of his ears flush. 

“I hate that I can recognise that fact at this point,” Maddie grumbles, but there’s no real heat behind her words, just the usual edge of playfulness that she gets when she likes to tease him. “Please just… spare me the details.”

So he does. 

“We were kissing, making out I guess, and it was good. It was fun. We were both into it, like, really into it.” Buck’s still got half a row of teeth marks scored into his neck and a hickey that throbs every time he thinks about it to prove that. “And then it was like— I don’t know, it was like something switched, and he told me he was sorry and ran off before I could say anything.”

“He just left?”

Buck nods. “Yeah. I get the feeling he does that.”

Four weeks with him and Buck can see how Tommy clings to avoidance and isolation when things go wrong; he’d done the same thing the first time the two of them kissed. He’d shut him out because it was easier than the alternative— when things get hard and Tommy gets scared, he runs. 

Maddie doesn’t say anything for a minute or so, not until the traffic starts inching forwards again. “This happened before, right? When he kissed you for the first time and got all—” she lifts a hand from the wheel and makes an absent gesture with it, “—shifty about it after?”

“Yeah, but we talked about that.”

“Did you talk about it, Buck, or did you talk about it?” 

He blinks at her, confused. “We… talked about it?”

She huffs out a bemused laugh. “What I mean is, did you tell him that you freaked out when he disappeared on you? That I had to come over and talk you down from a ledge—”

“—I was not on a ledge—”

“—and stop you from wearing a hole in his floor? Is that how that conversation went?” 

Buck sinks a little further down in his seat. It’s not like he was purposefully avoiding all of that, he’d just… been distracted, is all.

“Not in so many words.”

“So what did you talk about?” 

“I told him it wasn’t a big deal and that I wasn’t mad at him. That he’s my boyfriend and he’s allowed to kiss me whenever he wants to.”

The look Maddie gives him is so incredibly unamused and rejective. It’s the most scathing look she’s ever given him— and he’s been on the receiving end of a lot of her scathing looks in the thirty-odd years he’s been alive. Suddenly he’s fourteen again and she’s yelling at him for doing something dangerous whilst sticking a bandaid over his knee. 

“You want my advice?” she asks, inhaling a breath. “He’s spooked. I know you guys have kissed before but this is different. I’m guessing this was more than just a kiss?”

Buck’s ears are still ringing with the sound of Tommy’s moans, with his little gasps and the slick sounds their mouths had made. His lips still tingle and his neck is still throbbing. His fingers still itch with the damn urge to reach out and explore more skin, to work more buttons open, to pull down a zipper, to sink further in until he meets his goal and—

Yeah. 

He’d probably say it was more than a kiss. 

“So he thinks he’s pushed you into something,” Maddie continues when she’s met with a silence that’s probably answer enough for her

“But I want him to push,” Buck protests, a little petulantly. He’s sick to damn death of this cat and mouse game between them. “And he obviously does too, he’s just— I don’t know, holding himself back because he thinks he has to for my sake.” 

“So tell him that.” 

A car swerves in front of them, desperate to skip the traffic and merge into their lane, and Buck gets a brief second of reprieve as his sister curses up a storm at them. She’s always been terrible with road rage which, honestly, he still finds a little amusing. 

“And I mean really tell him, Buck. Don’t just talk around it because it’s not going to get you anywhere. Knowing him you’ll just—”

Buck cuts her off. “You’ve said that before, ‘knowing him’. What does that even mean?”

Maddie’s hands curl around the wheel a little tighter like she’s preparing for an impact that’s yet to hit. “It means I know him much better than I’d like to admit, especially with all of this. It’s easy for us to try and hide away when things get difficult, you know? To close off. We both run because staying and facing the alternative is scary.”

And fuck. 

If that doesn’t hit him like another punch to the damn gut. 

It sends him right back to one of the very first moments they met— well, not technically met, more so one of the clearer first moments he has of them— with Tommy stood in his hospital room, face full of hope and fear, fighting a war between being pragmatic and being optimistic, whilst he asked him if he knew who he was. Some of the light in him that Buck’s become obsessed with over the last few weeks had died when he’d said no, and he hadn’t even seen it go out at first, hadn’t even realised it had until now.

And then Tommy had turned on his heel and left— he’d run. 

He’d run just like he had earlier, just like he had the first time they’d kissed. If he thinks about it, really thinks about it, Tommy’s been running in so many ways that he never thought to sit and contemplate until now. It’s there in the way he rolls out of bed some mornings before he thinks Buck’s awake to put some distance between them, in the way he left the barbecue this afternoon and hid himself away in Bobby’s kitchen, in the way Tommy always seems to give him distance when the others are around like he doesn’t quite think he deserves to have a monopoly on his time. Sure, maybe he doesn’t go far, but he still flees. 

The common denominator between everything, though, is that even when Tommy does run… he always seems to come back. He always seems to let Buck in again. 

Now that he’s thought about it, it’s easy to see the similarities between Maddie and Tommy. Maybe that’s where some of the trepidation he’d sensed in the first days had come from. It’s not easy being confronted with a mirror, not when it forces you to look at all the parts of yourself that you try to hide from, that you hate. 

“This whole thing,” Maddie continues. “It’s been hard on all of us, it’s probably been worse for Tommy. At least you still knew us, for him it’s like— like being in love with a stranger, I guess. Someone you know, someone who’s supposed to know you, but they don’t; they’re walking around with a face that’s supposed to know all these parts of you that nobody else does and they don’t. I think it’s been harder on him than any of us like to think about. Maybe we should have done more for him too.” 

“It’s not your fault,” Buck says quickly, desperate to reassure her. 

“And it’s not yours either. Nor is it Tommy’s, if you care about him the way I think you do, just talk to him.”

Buck only has a few seconds to dwell on that before the cars rolling to a stop. He looks out at the road and it’s— it’s not the road he’s come to think of as home. It’s not the home he’d been asking for when he said it. They’re outside his loft. 

“Oh!” he says, flustered. “Oh, when I uh— when I asked you to take me home— I don’t think— I mean, I think I—”

Maddie cocks an eyebrow and smiles in his direction, all teeth and teasing in a way that’s so sisterly it makes him feel like a kid again. 

“Did you mean Tommy’s place?”

He nods. 

She hums a small noise in the back of her throat and then starts to pull back out of the parking spot. “I should start charging you for gas.”

Still. She doesn’t complain about it for the rest of the drive. 

∞∞∞

Buck makes it about three steps through the front door before he runs into Tommy. Hell, the front door doesn’t even get the chance to click shut before he runs into Tommy. 

They stare at each other for a moment, suspended in the shock of it all, before Buck’s eyes drop. Tommy’s got a duffel bag in his hands— a duffel bag that looks full to the brim. The sleeve of one of his shirts is caught in the zipper, no doubt missed in the haste of trying to cram the thing closed.

“Where are you going?” Buck asks, a little dumbfounded. 

He’d just come home to his boyfriend packing, he’s allowed to be a little bewildered. 

Tommy’s fingers curl tighter around the straps, the death grip he has on it turning his knuckles white. “I got a room somewhere,” he says with a little shrug. “Thought I’d give you your space.”

It’s enough to make Buck pause, to make his breath catch somewhere in the back of his throat. 

“You were just going to leave? Without saying anything.”

Tommy bristles a little. “I sent Eddie a text. Told him to come check on you in a few hours.”

Buck drops his keys into the bowl by the door. Tommy’s set sit next to the bowl and it just reminds Buck of all the times they’ve squabbled about that, about how Tommy’s insistence to pointedly not use the bowl for their keys drives Buck insane because ‘it’s literally right there, Tommy, in fact, it takes more effort to miss the thing than it does to aim for it!’ He’s half convinced Tommy’s doing it on purpose to rile him up so the two of them end up bickering goodnaturedly and so fucking domestically. 

“You weren’t going to say anything to me?” he asks, stopping a few paces away from Tommy. 

His face is tense and guarded, impossibly closed off. “I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.”

The last few feet of distance between them gets bridged easily and Buck reaches down, uncurling Tommy’s fingers from the duffle and gently prying it from his hand.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he says simply before walking off into the living room bag and all. 

Tommy watches him go for a beat too long before he’s trawling after him. “Evan—” 

“No. We’re talking about this.”

“There’s nothing to say—”

“There’s everything to say!” Buck insists, toeing the line between desperation and frustration. 

He flings the duffel down onto the couch next to him and is half tempted to sit on the thing when he sees the way Tommy’s eyeing it up like he’s prepared to lunge for it at any given opportunity. 

“This is the second time you’ve run off after kissing me,” he points out, aiming for nonchalant and missing it by a mile. “If you keep this up you might start giving me the wrong idea.”

Tommy’s arms cross over his chest, one hand clutching at his bicep like he’s physically trying to hold himself together. “It’s not you—”

“—god, Tommy, if that sentence ends with it’s me I think I might throttle you.”

His mouth clacks shut so violently that Buck worries a little for the state of his teeth. It’s also answer enough; that’s exactly where that sentence had been headed. 

The silence lasts about six seconds. 

“It is me, though.”

Frustration simmers in his gut, festering on a low heat like water left to boil— but there’s no handy wooden spoon trick here to stop him from bubbling over. 

Tommy barrels onwards. “That’s why I’m trying to give you some space—”

“For fuck sake, Tommy, I don’t want space!” Buck yells back. “Did you not listen to a word I said earlier? When I told you that you make me feel safe? Why would I want space from that?” 

“Safe, right,” Tommy scoffs, breathing out a humorless laugh, like this whole thing is some kind of joke that they’re both missing the punchline for. “I practically jumped you in Bobby’s kitchen.”

“Is that what this whole thing is about? You think you— fuck, I don’t even know— you think you accosted me or something?” 

The guilt on Tommy’s face is plain to see and Buck wants to take him by the shoulders and shake some fucking sense into him. 

“We can’t keep doing this,” Buck says, steadfast. “Every time it feels like we’re making progress with this,” he gestures between them absently, “you shut me out again. It’s like we make it a couple steps forward and then we end up right back at the starting line again.”

“I know—” 

“No, Tommy, I don’t think you do!” 

“Oh believe me, I do.”

There’s something there, something in Tommy’s voice, that makes Buck feel like he’s missing out on something, like he’s not been privy to a vital piece of information that this conversation needs. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s nothing—”

“You obviously have something to say, so just say it!”

“Come on, Evan,” Tommy protests with a resigned little sigh, and even from across the room Buck can see the way his fingers are digging into his arms, grounding himself. “We’ve been clinging to whatever’s been left between us for a month now and we’ve barely made it across the starting line.”

Buck bristles right back, shoulders squaring defensively. “It’s not like I haven’t been trying, Tommy.”

The smile Tommy gives him is sad and a little resigned. “I know you have and maybe… maybe that’s the worst part. I don’t know— maybe there’s a reason you’ve been remembering the others and not me.”

Yeah, there goes that pot. 

It’s not simmering anymore, now it’s boiled over, now the water’s sizzling against the stovetop and steaming up with enough smoke to rival Mount Vesuvius. 

“You think I don’t know that?” he snaps back. 

This is it— the breaking point they’ve been dodging for weeks now. It feels like it’s approaching so rapidly, so intensely, that they can’t do anything to stop it. It’s like they’re hurtling towards a cliff's edge and the brakes aren’t working. 

”You think I’m not reminded about that every day? Because I am, Tommy. Do you have any idea what it’s like to wake up and have this— this feeling in your chest that lasts for like a second before it burns out and goes up in smoke? I’ve spent so many mornings just lying there next to you trying to catch it and I can’t because I can’t even remember what it is I’m supposed to be feeling so I have no idea what to chase! It’s like, I don’t know, trying to catch lightning in a fucking bottle and it’s so fucking frustrating!”

Tommy blinks at him, lips parted and mouth hanging open in a shocked little ‘o’ shape. It doesn’t exactly feel like a weight's been lifted from his shoulders, it’s not that kind of relief, it feels more like— like the buildup whilst a balloon gets inflated more and more until it’s about to burst and the whole room’s on edge waiting for the bang! and then it finally does and the relief is palpable. Then the next one starts inflating. 

Still, Tommy doesn’t say anything, so Buck takes that as his sign to barrel onwards. 

“You’re not the only one who lost someone, you know? The difference is you remember who you lost and I’m not that lucky. I don’t get all these memories of you to lean into for comfort. It’s like chasing a ghost.” 

Tommy’s fingers dig a little harder into his bicep. “Evan, I’m sorry.”

“No, I don’t need you to apologise, Tommy.”

Tommy looks like he’s one tug on a loose thread away from unravelling at the seams and Buck wants to comfort him so damn badly but he knows that if he does they’ll just end up trimming that thread down so it’s out of sight, cut short enough until it unravels more and more until eventually there’s nothing left to unravel, christ. 

“I’m so sorry, fuck,” he continues, dismissing Buck’s insistence. 

“You—”

“Please don’t tell me I need to apologise to you, Evan. I do.”

There’s something simmering again— only it doesn’t feel like water this time, it feels like oil, like it’s spitting and flying all over the place and everything’s about to be sent up in flames. 

“Why?” he asks. 

“Because it’s my fault!” Tommy snaps, his voice loud and harsh.

It catches Buck so off guard that it honest-to-god knocks all the words from the tip of his tongue and rips the air from his lungs. 

“It’s my fault,” he repeats, steadfast. 

It’s the most convinced he’s ever seen Tommy look at just about anything and that thought—it scares him. He opens his mouth to interrupt, but Tommy’s determined to keep going. 

“The accident, your memories, all of it. It’s my fault, I’m the reason they’re gone…”

Chapter Text

Of all the things Buck was expecting to hear, that wasn’t one of them. Hell, that wasn’t even on the fucking list of possibilities he would have ever even considered. 

“What?” he asks, dumbfounded. 

Tommy’s jaw clenches, his shoulders squaring like he’s bracing himself. “You heard me,” he insists, stubborn. “That whole day— your memories, you getting hurt in the first place… it’s my fault. All of it’s my fault.”

There’s a lump in Buck’s throat that’s getting harder and harder to swallow around. The pit in his stomach sprouts vines and buries its roots deep in his bones. 

“No,” he says with a shake of his head, just as stubborn. “No, Bobby said it was an accident. He said it was just wrong place wrong time, it could have happened to anyone—”

“—but it didn’t happen to just anyone, did it?” Tommy counters, serving his own swing up in this morbid game of tennis that they’re playing. “It happened to you and it’s all my fault.”

It sets Buck on edge— their back and forth feels less like they’re playing with a tennis ball and more like they’re bouncing a fucking grenade between them and it’s only a matter of time until it explodes in one of their faces. He feels like he’s been pulled taut, his shoulders tense and spine forced ram rod straight, like a puppet on strings that are fraying at the seams. It’s just a matter of time until he falls. 

“That doesn’t make any sense, Tommy,” he offers up, desperately grasping at strings and trying to make them all connect in his head. “You don’t even work with us!”

“No, no I don’t mean it like that,” Tommy says, coupling it with a small shake of his head. 

It does nothing to quell the churning in Buck’s stomach. He’s got one foot hanging off the edge of a cliff and he’s just ignored the age-old advice and looked down at the drop. Now his stomach feels like it’s sunk all the way down to the rocks below. 

“Then how?” he asks, confused. There’s a million and one possibilities rocketing through his head and only like, a dozen or so of them don’t make him want to take the other foot off the edge of that cliff too. “How do you mean it?” 

Tommy gives him a look, eyes sad and brows furrowed. It looks like it’s physically painful for him to do this, for them to be having this conversation. 

Hell.

Maybe it is. 

“Evan, please,” he tries, one hand rubbing over his face and pinching at the bridge of his nose. 

“I need to know,” Buck insists, desperation clawing its way under skin and tissue and bone until it’s sinking into his marrow. “You can’t just— Tommy you can’t just say that it's your fault and then not explain!”

Something in his voice must make Tommy break. Maybe it’s the desperation, or maybe he’s noticed the slight tremor Buck’s hands have taken on. 

Either way, he drops his hand away from his face and sucks in a breath. 

“It was— I mean— I—” Tommy stutters, choking around his words. 

He’s never sounded this unsure, this terrified, of anything before and Buck thinks he might hurl. 

Tommy takes a second, shoulders sagging as resignation hits him. “We had a fight.”

It hangs in the air between them for a moment or two. Buck expects more, another hit of the grenade to his side of the net, but it doesn’t come. 

“We had a fight?” 

“Yeah.” 

He blinks once, twice, three times.

The explanation still doesn’t come. 

“And then what?” Buck prompts, half-frustrated and half-bewildered. “You— what? Orchestrated half a building to collapse on top of me as revenge or something?” 

“Evan,” Tommy chides.

Evidently this attempt at gallows humor is a step too far for him. 

“Then what, Tommy?” he sighs, gesturing erratically with his hands. “Because from where I’m standing, it’s a pretty huge leap from we had a fight to it's my fault you lost your memories! There’s got to be at least half a dozen stops we have to go through before we arrive at that station.” 

It’s not even just that that gives him pause. In the last month, nobody’s mentioned anything about a fight to him, nobody’s even so much as alluded to it— not Eddie, not Hen, not Bobby, not even Maddie. If this fight happened to be as big of a thing as Tommy seems to insist it is, surely he would have mentioned it to at least one of them. It just doesn’t make sense for him not to, not if it’s as bad as he wants him to believe. 

“It wasn’t just an argument,” Tommy says like he knows exactly what path Buck had just been walking in his own head, the perceptive bastard. “We’ve had arguments before. This was a bad fight, Evan.”

“Right.” 

There’s a hint of disbelief in his voice— it’s not even necessarily that he doesn’t believe what he’s hearing, it’s just that, well, Tommy has a tendency to try and shoulder the burdens of the fucking universe all by himself. It’s like he thinks he’s Atlas, like he’s been tasked with holding the world up for eternity and if he so much as breathes for a second, if his grip falters and he lets go of some of that burden, the world will stop turning and it’ll be all his fault. 

“So what did we fight about?”

Somehow, impossibly, Tommy clams up even more. 

“I can’t tell you that,” he says and Buck wants to fucking scream. “Believe me, I want to—”

“—so tell me!”

It’s not fair. 

It’s not fucking fair. 

Not in the slightest, and he hasn’t felt this jaded since he woke up in the hospital and heard the words ‘retrograde amnesia’ for the first time. Not since half a dozen of the people he loves more than anything in the world stared at him with concerned faces and pitying looks that made him feel— well, a bit like this. A little annoyed and a lot frustrated. 

These are his memories. His memories. And he doesn’t even get to fucking have access to them. They’re just locked up somewhere, held hostage behind boarded up doors and thick, impenetrable walls and he can’t get to them. 

“Evan…” Tommy trails off with a sigh. “I wish I could, I do. But I don’t— this isn’t something I want you to remember from me. I don’t want you to get my version of what happened, I want you to remember this on your own.”

“And if I don’t?” Buck counters, frustration clinging to the edges of his voice.

He doesn’t get an answer, not at first. Tommy just looks at him with desperate, wide eyes. 

“What if it doesn’t come back? What if I never remember? What then? Will you just let me walk around with this— this huge gap missing that you’re convinced is your fault?" 

“No, of course not!”

Buck just looks back at him, equally as desperate. “Then when?” he asks. “How long do we keep this going? A month? Six months? A year? How long, Tommy?” 

It doesn’t feel like they’re just talking about this fight thing anymore. Sure, that’s the crux of it, but god, this is the fear that’s been haunting him for the last four weeks finally given a voice.

What if he never remembers— what if he’s just stuck in this perpetual loop of chasing ghosts for the rest of his life? What if it’s the thing that breaks them? Tommy didn’t sign up for this, Buck can’t even fucking blame him. 

“I don’t know!” Tommy finally relents, shoulders sagging like the fights slowly draining out of him. “I don’t know, Evan. But this… it’s not that simple. I want you to remember, I know you will, but if I tell you now and I end up influencing your feelings or your memory of our fight I don’t—” he sucks in a breath, shoulders squaring back up again, “—I don’t think I could forgive myself. Not for this.”

“Fine,” Buck relents, albeit reluctantly. “You can’t tell me what that fight was about? Fine. We can put that on pause for now. But you have to tell me why you think this is all your fault.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” 

Buck shakes his head. 

It very much isn’t. 

“We had a fight right before your shift and then you got hurt at work.”

Tommy lets that hang in the air like it’s the answer to everything, like he’s just given Buck all the answers he’s been screaming for for the last ten minutes. 

He just blinks back at him. “So?” 

“We had a fight,” Tommy insists, putting emphasis on the word like he thinks Buck doesn’t quite understand the importance of it, like he should be able to piece the whole puzzle together from the scraps he’s thrown at him. “And then you got hurt at work, Evan.”

“And that’s your fault because?” 

The noise Tommy makes in the back of his throat is disgruntled, a heavy sigh that lives somewhere between exasperation and disbelief. “Because— because if you weren’t distracted then you wouldn’t have been hurt! You might have seen an entire building coming down on top of you quicker and got out in time!” 

It’s so damn ridiculous, so much of a reach to come to that conclusion, and so incredibly like Tommy to burden himself with the guilt of something nobody even blames him for. Buck almost wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. The guffaw’s already building up in his throat and trying to claw its way out but the look on Tommy’s face is too solemn, too serious, so he chokes it down, desperate not to topple whatever precipice they’re teetering on. Desperate not to ruin them.

“You think I’d blame you? For that?” he settles on instead. “I’ve been doing my job a long time and I’m good at it, I’ve done it with bigger things on my mind, Tommy!”

“It’s not about whether I think you would!” Tommy snaps back, his own frustration reaching a boiling point. “It’s about whether you should! You should blame me, Evan.”

Buck shakes his head, stepping up to Tommy so they’re close enough to share breath. “You don’t get to decide that for me.” 

And, god, if that isn’t the most infuriating part of all of this…

So much of the last month has been beyond his control— the constant tests, chasing ghosts, the way the world seems to have been tiptoeing around him, what he remembers, who he remembers, and when. He hasn’t even been able to throw himself into work, one of the few things he lives for, one of the things that make up the very essence of who he is as a person, to take his mind off of everything. He was banned from that too.

Everything the world’s thrown at him for the past thirty-three days has just been decided for him. Every. Damn. Thing. 

And now, apparently, there’s this too.

Tommy’s looking at him with skeptical eyes and Buck— he can’t take it. 

“I’m serious!” he near enough yells. “Who I blame for my accident, if I even blame anybody at all, isn’t up to you. That’s my choice, mine, and you don’t get to just— you don’t get to take that from me! You don’t get to try and make it for me, okay? Not you, not anyone. And I don’t blame you, I couldn’t.”

“You don’t even remember what you’re not blaming me for,” Tommy swings back and, yep, that does it. 

The grenade they’ve been playing tennis with has finally gone off. 

It’s enough to reopen that sick, sinking feeling in the pit of Buck’s stomach again, enough to rip the stitches he once patched himself up with and leave him feeling raw and hollow. It’s like there’s a black hole inside him that’s intent on swallowing him up from the inside out.

Tommy’s never once thrown his amnesia at him, not really, and definitely not like this and it’s— it’s too much. 

It fucking hurts.

For the first time in the month he’s been here, he feels… he feels pitied. It’s something he’s never felt from Tommy before and it makes him want to double over and start heaving. 

“Is this why you let me stay with you?” Buck snaps back, irate. “Because you feel guilty? Because you think you have some kind of— some kind of obligation to me because you think it's your fault? Is that what this is?”

“Buck—”

It’s like a punch to the gut, like someone’s just shoved their elbow into his stomach and knocked all the wind out of him. It’s like he’s been dunked in ice water and the shock makes him gasp, makes him try to suck in an instinctive breath that only forces him to inhale a lungful of water that burns on the way down. It’s like he’s Achilles, like he’s been dunked in the river Styx by Thetis, only his weak point isn’t his heel, it’s hearing Tommy say his damn name like that— with an undercurrent of foreboding and resignation.

I’ll see you around, Buck, echoes in his head, a sentence he’s never heard before, not with this inflection, and if it’s some sort of prophetic vision or a warning he’ll be damned if he ever lets this get far enough to hear those five words out loud. 

“Don’t,” he insists, halting Tommy mid-word. “I know what you’re trying to do, Tommy, don’t do that to me. Not again.”

“I wasn’t—”

Buck doesn’t let him get any further.

“You were, you were. The last time you said that— the last time you called me that—” he says, voice trembling and his heart starting to jackrabbit in his chest. 

Tommy shifts forward, barely an inch, but it’s enough to bridge the gap that’s been widening between them.

“You remember?” he asks, voice soft and gentle. It’s the same way one would talk to a wounded animal that’s backed itself into a corner and is one wrong move away from gnashing its teeth, from lashing out and tearing into skin and muscle to protect itself. 

“No.” 

A pause. 

“Kind of?”

Another pause. 

“I don’t know.” 

There’s a dull thudding in Buck’s ears, a rapid thump thump thump that’s drowning out his ability to think— it’s thundering like he’s got his ear pressed up against the base of a snare drum and Led Zeppelin’s in the middle of churning out a solo. 

“Evan,” he hears through the rhythm, an anchor in his storm, a lifeline. 

The drumming just gets louder.

“Evan, breathe.”

Strong hands guide him backwards until his legs hit the couch and he can sink down on it. Tommy follows after him and slides down right next to him. He keeps a hand on his arm the whole time and, when he tries to move it away all self-conscious like he thinks Buck doesn’t want him touching him, Buck grabs onto it. He winds their fingers together and holds onto it so tight he thinks he can feel the creak of bones grinding under his hand. His head feels fuzzy, like it’s made of old television static, or like he’s been underwater too long and things are starting to get blurred at the edges. 

Christ, of all the things he could remember about Tommy, the first thing he gets is their fucking break up. 

That’s not fucking fair. 

“You broke up with me,” he says once he’s caught his breath. His tongue still feels like lead in his mouth, but at least it’s moving. 

“Yeah,” Tommy shrugs. 

There’s a hint of something in his voice— shame, maybe? Or regret? 

“Because you were scared of me?”

“It wasn’t as simple as that, no.”

“Because you were scared I was going to end up hurting you?” Buck clarifies. 

They’re still holding hands. Tommy’s still rubbing small circles into his skin with his thumb.  

“Yeah.” 

A part of him can understand that— the fear that comes with the urge to cling to something so tightly you end up smothering it, or being smothered by it. It’s the running part he doesn’t get. He’d rather be smothered to death than left on the side of the road, abandoned. 

“What changed?” Buck asks.

Tommy’s thumb falters against the back of his hand, stilling the absent patterns he’s been tracing onto skin. It’s easy enough to recognise the signs of him starting to clam up again and, as much as Buck wants to bat his hand away until he’s the one rubbing soothing little circles into Tommy’s skin instead, he resists it. Instead he knocks their knees together, just a brief little touch that could be waved away as nothing more than an accident. 

“Obviously you’re not scared of me anymore.” 

He means it as a joke, just a little bit of levity to try and dissipate some of the tension, but boy, does it miss the mark.

Tommy looks at him with disbelief written all over his face. “Is that what you think?” he asks, aghast. “You think I’m not afraid anymore?” 

Buck blinks at him. “Aren’t you?”

A humourless laugh is huffed out from between Tommy’s lips and then— then the hand in his is gone. 

“Evan, you scare the shit out of me!”

It’s like another punch to the gut, another bucket of cold water thrown over him, another drowning… 

“Do you have any idea— any idea— what it was like to get that call?” Tommy continues without missing a beat, without so much as giving Buck a second to catch his thoughts, his breath. “To have Bobby tell me that I needed to get to the hospital? For a second I thought— I really thought—”

Tommy forces himself to stop, like he’s scared of the words or something. He sucks in one of the biggest intakes of breath Buck’s ever seen a person take— maybe they’re both drowning here— and pushes himself up from the couch, putting distance between them again. 

“I’ve never been more scared of anything in my entire life, not even a war zone had me that scared, Evan! The second between Bobby telling me ‘you need to get to the hospital’ and ‘he’s alive’ was one of the worst moments of my life. I don’t think I took a breath the entire drive to the hospital.”

Buck’s had his fair share of terrifying calls before, sure, and being on the receiving end of them is never easy. He's watched Chimney get calls about Maddie, watched Bobby listen to Athena get hurt through a radio with no way to get to her, but he’s never had that call for someone who’s supposed to be his person. Not like that, anyway.

Tommy barrels onwards. “I barely remember sitting in that waiting room either and the others— they were worried, but they looked so comfortable there. Like they were used to it.” He chuckles, but it’s humorless. “Bobby told me that you’d pull through, that you always do, and I thought fuck, you’re here too often for him to be making a promise like that to me. He was right, of course, and you did wake up and I don’t think I’ve ever felt relief like that but then—” 

Tommy stops again. 

He swallows hard, so hard that Buck can hear the audible click of his throat, can see the way his adams apple bobs. It’s like his body’s fighting the words, like it’s trying to choke them down, down, down, deep enough so that it can bury them under a stoic exterior and a faux-aura of confidence. 

“But then you didn’t remember me and I thought—”

It’s all Buck can stomach.

The way Tommy’s face crumbles in on itself, the way he looks so fucking small for a six-foot-something jacked firefighter, the way he looks like he’s just grabbed a live wire and he’s waiting for the current to jolt through him. 

It’s too much.

“Tommy,” he interrupts, looking up at him with soft eyes. “I’m…”

And, really, how is he supposed to finish that sentence? Fine? They both know that would be  the biggest lie since the Trojan Horse snuck into Troy. Alive? Sure, but that doesn’t feel like enough, not with the spiral Tommy’s rapidly sending himself down. 

“Here,” he settles on. “Here, and yours.” 

“But you almost weren’t!” Tommy snaps back, voice acrid and louder than he’s ever heard it before. “I remember what your doctor said, that you were lucky! That your life— that it hinged on luck, that the only thing that kept you here with me like you said, was luck.”

The worst part of all of this is that Buck can’t even deny it. 

He knows how impossibly lucky he was to crawl out of that building alive. He's had an abysmal amount of luck in his life, coupled with an even more abysmal amount of misfortune. He’s been struck by lightning and somehow lived through it, for fuck sake! If the universe isn’t out there rolling a dice to decide on what new kind of shit to inflict on him this week, he doesn’t know what else it could possibly be.

“And one day the world will decide that I don’t deserve you anymore. Whether it’s by happenstance or a bit of bad luck or,” Tommy sucks in a breath and braces himself. “Or whether it’s you that’ll make the choice. Maybe you’ll decide one day that I don’t deserve you, that I never have and that’ll be it and—” 

He forces himself to stop pacing, to stop pushing his fingers through his hair like he’s seconds away from tearing strands of it out with his fingers as some sort of fucked up grounding technique. He goes rigid again and squares his jaw— bracing himself. 

“One day I’m going to lose you, Evan, and it’s going to be the thing that kills me. So yes, you scare the everloving shit out of me.” 

It’s enough to have Buck replaying everything he hadn’t really let himself think about in the last month; everything he let himself just gloss over. 

Sometimes he would catch Tommy looking at him like he couldn’t quite believe Buck was real, that he was here and he got to have him. He’s lost count of the amount of times he caught Tommy looking at him like he wanted to reach out and touch, to sink fingers into familiar skin and bone and hold on for dear life, but at the very last second, he always stopped himself. 

He’s been chasing an echo down a corridor this whole time and Buck had never even fucking noticed. 

“That’s why you keep running out on me and pushing me away,” he muses. 

He doesn’t mean it as a slight, more so just an observation, but it makes Tommy flinch nonetheless. His shoulders hunch and his face collapses— but he doesn’t deny it. 

“Tommy,” he says, voice soft and raw. “Tommy, look at me.”

He doesn’t. 

He keeps his gaze focused on a spot on the far wall so, instead, Buck reaches out to him. He curls a hand around Tommy’s wrist, gingerly coaxes his fingers out from where they’re curled into a fist, and slots his own fingers into the gaps between them. 

“Look at me.” 

This time, Tommy does.

His eyes are red and a little wet and Buck wants to bundle him up and hide him away from the rest of the world forever. 

“I can’t promise nothing will ever happen to me—”

“—I know that, Evan, I do.”

Buck doesn’t let him keep going. “Let me finish, please.” 

When he’s met with silence, he carries on. 

“Both our jobs mean neither of us can promise a thing like that, not really, and yeah, that’s scary, it’s fucking terrifying. The other week when you were called in for that fire I watched the news the whole time you were gone because I was— I was so scared, Tommy.”

“You never told me that.”

“I have an incredibly cool reputation to uphold,” he hums, playful. 

The hint of a smile pulls at Tommy’s lips and Buck does what he’s wanted to do since they let go of each other's hands and starts brushing his thumb over Tommy’s knuckles. 

“My point is, I can’t promise something won’t happen to me on the job, things always seem to happen to me, but I can promise that at the end of it all, I want to come home to you.” Buck lets that hang for a second, intent on making sure that Tommy really hears it. “You’re the first person I look for when I walk into a room, Tommy. You make me feel safe and— and I like you a lot. More than I've ever liked anybody.”

Tommy opens his mouth like he wants to say something but he’s still got that self-deprecating little look in his eye, so Buck doesn’t let him get that far. 

“I’m scared too, I am. I’m scared that something will happen to you on the job. I’m scared that I’ll never be able to remember you the way I should. I’m scared that it— us— that we won’t be like we were and that one day you’ll decide I’m not worth the hassle anymore and leave and,” the laugh that bubbles up in his throat is humorless and afraid. “I couldn’t even blame you for that. You didn’t sign up for any of this.”

“Evan…”

There’s a lump rapidly building in his throat that he can barely swallow around. “But I meant it when I said that you make me feel safe and, yeah, maybe I can’t remember exactly why that is yet, but I want to. In the hospital a few weeks ago you called me stubborn, and I am. I will be. But I can’t— I don’t want to have to do this alone, Tommy.”

The couch next to him dips with familiar weight, Tommy’s hand gripping back just as tight when he sits. 

“You won’t have to,” he promises. “You have me, you do.”

“Then I need you to start trusting me when I say I know what I want.”

“I do trust you.”

Buck gives him a pointed look. “Tommy, you run for the hills as soon as you think you’ve done something I might not like, or push a little more than usual. I’m sure you trust me, I don’t think you’d put up with me if you didn’t—”

“—I’m not putting up with you, Evan. I like having you here.”

Ah, fuck. 

There go those butterflies again. 

“Then you can’t keep running out on me all the time,” he insists. “I don’t need you to make a martyr of yourself for me, I don’t need you to fall on your own sword whenever you think you’ve done something wrong, I just need you.”

To his credit, Tommy does look a little scolded by it. 

“I can’t promise I won’t fuck that up.”

God, his sister was right.

Tommy is a runner through and through. 

“I can’t promise I won’t fuck things up either. But all I’m asking is that you trust me enough to let me tell you if you’ve pushed something too far instead of just assuming. Especially with the sex stuff, there’s only so many times I can endure being blueballed before you do some sort of permanent damage to me.” 

Tommy laughs, a breathy little chuckle that escapes from his lips. Buck considers it a win— he loves the sound of Tommy’s laugh, adores it, even. He’s become so attuned to it in the last four weeks that he could probably pick that sound out of a crowd whilst blindfolded and dizzy like some kind of Tommy-centric echolocation.

The quiet lingers for a breath too long. It’s how Buck knows Tommy’s gearing himself up for something. 

“So earlier…” he starts, looking at Buck like he’s about to throw them both over the cliff they’ve been teetering on. “I didn’t push you too far?”

“Christ, no, Tommy,” Buck insists without missing a beat. Call him desperate or eager or whatever— he is. “It was… it was good, great, actually. I liked it a lot. A lot.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They’re both smiling at each other like idiots and Buck wants to kiss him so badly, wants Tommy to kiss him so badly, but the cliffsedge is fragile and they’re already on unsteady ground as it is. 

So he walks them back to safer ground. 

“I mean, not the part where you left me sitting on the counter with your teeth still imprinted in my neck and my,” he stops, waving a hand in the general direction of his crotch for emphasis. “Problem.”

Tommy’s eyes dip to the bruise that he worked into the side of his neck a few hours ago. The last Buck checked on it, it’d been a splotchy purple color, the capillaries under his skin broken and flushed at the torment and he wants more of them. 

The hand that’s not laced with his own comes up to his neck and Tommy brushes over the hickey— the hickey, christ— with his thumb. It’s soft, gentle, a barely there hint of pressure, but it still has Buck’s toes curling in his socks. 

“Does it hurt?” Tommy asks, voice preemptively laced with an apology Buck knows he’s prepared to give.

He shakes his head. “No, not at all. It’s… kind of the opposite actually. It feels good. I like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, Tommy.” 

The thumb on his neck presses down a little harder and Buck has to sink his teeth into his bottom lip to stop himself from doing something stupid like moaning. He’s pretty sure his breath hitches, though, and Tommy’s a perceptive bastard, so of course he catches it. 

“If you’re trying to make it up to me,” Buck hums, head lolling back a little, neck bared. “It’s working.” 

Tommy hums back and then leans in, pressing a feather-light kiss to the mark once, twice, three times, a barely there hint of pressure. 

It’s not something he’s ever really experienced before, this level of devotion and tenderness and reverence. It shoots straight down to his groin— Buck wants to crawl into Tommy’s lap, shove him back against the couch, and have his wicked way with him. He wants to strip him bare, to get his hands on those abs, those thighs, that cock. 

He aims for the second best option instead and shifts on the couch, planting his foot against the floor for leverage so he can manoeuvre himself up and a little to the right until they’re kissing. 

It’s nothing like it had been earlier. 

It’s not frenzied, or hurried, not a furious clash of mouths and teeth and tongues desperate to reach their peak. No, this one is slower. Deeper. 

It’s Tommy’s thumb moving from his neck up to his jaw and pressing down on it until Buck gets the hint and opens his mouth. It’s Tommy’s tongue sliding into his mouth, purposefully teasing against his own. It’s that same tongue licking at the roof of his mouth, across his teeth, everywhere, like he’s being devoured whole. 

It’s purposeful and meaningful, full of longing and intent that feels bone deep. 

It’s a fucking Herculean task to pull away from it, to put some distance between them before they end up getting carried away on the damn couch of all places— he’d never be able to look at it the same way again if they did, especially with the carousel of visitors its had over the last few weeks.

“Take me to bed,” Buck hums, breath ghosting against Tommy’s lips. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he’s exhausted. 

Tommy’s eyebrows shoot up so high they practically disappear into his hairline. 

“Just to bed,” he clarifies, biting back a guffaw. “Oh my god, exactly how horny do you think I am?” 

The eyebrows stay somewhere in his hairline and Tommy looks at him like he thinks he’s ridiculous in the most affectionate way. “I mean, I have first hand experience with how insatiable you are, so I’d say very.”

Buck shudders, a multitude of very inappropriate thoughts flitting through his head. Tommy’s hands, his mouth, his tongue, his fingers, his cock. All of them on him, in him. 

“Yeah, well,” he says, cheeks flushing. “That’s tomorrow's problem, you can make up for blueballing me in the morning.” 

He pushes himself up from the couch and holds his hand out to Tommy, wriggling his fingers in the kind of way he hopes conveys his intent. 

Tommy gets the hint and takes it easily, using the leverage to haul himself up from the couch. Buck takes a second to be mildly impressed that he barely moves on his feet— sure, he’s fit, it’s part of the job description as a firefighter, but Tommy is jacked beyond belief and being able to haul him up to his feet is impressive, thank you very much. 

“What makes you think you deserve it?” Tommy asks and oh. 

That’s very much a thing for him if the way his pulse jumps and starts racing is anything to go by. 

“Maybe I’ll show you tomorrow,” Buck serves back. He starts heading toward the stairs, gently tugging on Tommy’s hand to get him to follow. 

“Promises,” Tommy hums, plastering himself against Buck’s back and hooking his chin over his shoulder.

It’s a pain to manage the stairs like that and the only thing that stops him from tripping over when he stumbles up the step at the top is Tommy’s arm around his waist. He keeps them plastered together and held upright like he wants the two of them to meld together until it’s impossible for them to distinguish where one of them ends and the other begins. 

It’s so fucking endearing and does absolutely nothing to kill the interest his dick’s been taking in this turn of events for the last fifteen minutes. 

They get changed for bed on opposite sides of the room— Buck’s not sure he could find the beginnings of his frazzled self control if he caught a glimpse of all that bare, exposed skin, ripe for the picking. 

When they finally make it into bed, the exhaustion catches up to him so rapidly that all Buck can do is roll into Tommy’s side, into the arm he opens for him, bury his face in his shoulder, and pass out, content. 

Chapter Text

Buck wakes up slowly, syrupy, all loose-limbed and pliant, like honey trickling off of a spoon. He lays there, content to let himself just drip. 

He also wakes to an arm thrown over his waist, small puffs of air being exhaled against the back of his neck, and something prodding against his hip. 

And— listen. 

Bucks no stranger to morning wood. 

Hell, he’s no stranger to Tommy’s morning wood. 

He’s felt it nudging at his hip, his back, his thighs multiple mornings in the last month before Tommy had woken, groggy and grumpy. Once he realised his situation, though, he always jumped at the chance to put distance between them, immediately running for the shower every time. 

It was something akin to torture for Buck to just lay there in their bed knowing what he was doing, knowing that Tommy was in that shower, one hand wrapped around his cock, knowing he was fucking into his fist with his teeth sunk deep into the meat of his own arm to stifle any noises and not give himself away. He was always so careful about it, always rolled away so gently and tiptoed around the place, aware of the fact that Buck was asleep— or so he thought.

So many times Buck had wondered what would happen if he knocked on the door, if he made some noise, if he called out for Tommy, said his name in a breathy little voice just as he tipped himself over the precipice. Most of all, though, he wondered what Tommy was thinking about— if he was thinking about him, the warmth he’d left behind in bed, if he was desperate to come back, to crawl in next to Buck and rouse him with purposeful hands. 

So many mornings had been spent with him just turning it all over in his head, wondering, desperate, chasing the touch of memories he could never quite latch onto. 

The thought makes him want to pout. 

It’s still so unfair that he doesn’t get any of his memories (barring that unfortunate one), but especially of this, of the weight of Tommy against him, on top of him, inside of him. 

He’s just a man, a weak, desperate man, so it’s not like anyone can blame him when he starts shifting his hips in aborted little thrusts and slow grinds that have the cock against his hip throbbing and sliding enticingly close to his ass. 

“Evan,” the sleepy voice from behind him says and Buck goes still like he’s just been caught doing something he shouldn’t. 

That is, until Tommy’s hand drifts from his hip and starts fiddling with the waistband of his sweatpants and Buck’s so close to begging his tongue feels heavy with it. 

“Good morning to you too,” Tommy hums, fingers splayed against his skin. 

His forefinger drifts below the waistband fortuitously and that’s it— that’s all he can take. Buck’s turning on his side and rolling over to face Tommy between one beat of his heart and the next. 

“Morning,” Buck says back and doesn’t even get the chance to think fuck it before he’s kissing him. 

It should be gross considering they’re both still sporting two cases of morning breath, bed head, and neither of them have had the chance to rub the sleep from their eyes but, like most things with Tommy, it just isn’t. It’s easy, and he doesn’t care about any of the technicalities or how he thinks he should feel. 

Besides, Buck’s not an idiot, he knows the ins and outs and all the intricacies that gay sex entails and he knows himself. He loves sex, he’s always loved sex, he’s had a lot of it and he has no reason to believe that would be any different with Tommy. Tommy who’s jacked beyond belief with an— if what he’d felt against his hip and ass were anything to go by— impressive arsenal of his own to behold, there’s no way they weren’t fucking like rabbits, not a damn chance, so he’s pretty sure they’ve kissed with worse things in their mouth. 

They kiss and kiss, a mix of teeth and tongue and breathy little moans that are all far too raunchy and filthy considering they’ve both been awake for a grand total of five minutes. 

“Evan, we should—”

“If you say stop,” Buck whines, sinking his teeth into Tommy’s bottom lip and tugging. “You blueballed me last night, I think I’ll go insane if you do it again.”

“I did not blueball you,” Tommy scoffs back, indignant. 

“No?” he says, arching an eyebrow in doubt. “What would you call making out with me in Bobby’s kitchen, on his counter, and then running out on me? What do you call the couch?”

Buck gets coaxed onto his back so Tommy can lay a few careful, considerate kisses into the crook of his neck. 

“A tactical retreat.”

The laugh that bubbles out of him is entirely involuntary and way too loud for the morning hour, but Tommy doesn’t seem to mind. He hums back, a low grumble that vibrates through his chest.

“Then you have something to make up to me, don’t you?” Buck counters. 

He stretches his arms above his head a little, biceps flexing and abs clenching. Somewhere in the middle of their heavy petting his sweatpants have shuffled down low on his hips, exposing the root of his cock, and, listen, Buck knows he’s objectively good looking, he knows Tommy’s attracted to him, and he’s not above using what he has to get what he wants.

If the way Tommy’s eyes darken at the sight of him preening is anything to go by, it’s working. 

“Evan…” 

“Didn’t we just talk about this last night? I thought you agreed to start trusting me when I say I know what I want.”

“I do trust you,” Tommy says, leaning up on his arms so that he can look down at Buck, all stoic and serious. “I just want you to be sure that you want this, really want it, you know?” 

God, Buck needs to find whatever factory cooked this man up and add them to his Christmas card list because there’s no way he’s real, there's no way he can just exist like this. 

“I want it,” he promises, adamant. “I do. This isn’t…” Buck pauses for a second before deciding what the hell! “This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about it, alright? You just… Tommy you drive me crazy, I think yesterday proved that, and I want this. I want you.”

Evidently there’s something in his voice that reassures Tommy enough because then he’s dropping a kiss to his forehead and reaching over to the nightstand on his side of his bed— his side because they have sides, fuck— and fumbling around in it. Things clang together awkwardly and Buck has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing when Tommy curses and grumbles under his breath. 

“Aha!” he beams triumphantly when he finally returns, brandishing a little bottle. 

It’s half-full and the implications of that make him feel a little bit crazy.

Buck watches him pop the cap open, watches him squirt a decent amount out onto his fingers and rub them together until they’re coated and slick. The cap’s thumbed closed again and dropped onto the bed next to them for easy access in case they need it— when they need it, fucking fuck. 

“If something doesn’t feel good—”

Buck cuts him off. “I’ll tell you. Please just— just put your fingers in me, god.” 

“I prefer Tommy.” 

It’s such a fucking dad joke, so incredibly apt coming from Tommy, and Buck wants to kick himself for being into it, for the way his dick twitches in interest at his general dorkiness. It might also have something to do with the way his sweatpants get shimmied down around his ankles, though, or maybe even the way the pad of Tommy’s index finger is pressing against his hole, circling it like he’s coaxing it into relaxing, before he pushes it in slowly, agonisingly so. 

It’s not uncomfortable, not really, just a little… strange. But he’s been curious before and he’s had girlfriends who enjoyed similar things, so it’s not the first time he’s been played with like this. Tommy’s fingers are thicker, though, rougher and more calloused from working on cars, and the muay thai, and being a fucking pilot, god. 

Apparently competence is a thing for him.

“Another,” Buck prompts after a minute or so of being played with. 

One is good, easy, but two… he wants the stretch of it. 

Tommy doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t make him wait or beg or plead for it, he just pulls his hand back enough to add his middle finger in with the first. It slides in easily, perfectly, and it punches another moan out of his chest.

“So gorgeous like this for me,” Tommy says simply, like it’s just an observation. 

He slides his fingers past the first knuckle all the way down to the second and then curls them and Buck— he jolts, back arching up from the bed and thighs tightening around Tommy’s waist. It’s like he’s just stuck his finger in a plug socket and felt it reverberate all throughout his body. 

“Tommy!” he gasps, and that’s as far as he gets because then Tommy’s hitting it again and again and again and Buck feels flayed open, nerve-endings exposed for every gust of wind to light up.

A third finger joins the second.

Buck can tell Tommy’s being more careful this time, aware of the difference in stretch between two and three and whilst he’s grateful for it, for Tommy handling him like he’s something holy, like he wants to get on his knees and worship at his altar, he wants more. 

He wants it all. 

“I’m ready,” Buck whines. As much as he loves the way Tommy’s toying with him, fingering him like he’s getting paid for it, he wants more.

“Evan—”

“If you make me beg for this…” 

Tommy rolls his eyes fondly. “I wasn’t going to.” 

Buck gives him a look.

“Alright, fine, maybe a little. But can you blame me? You look so good when you’re begging me for things.”

Buck chokes back the noise in his throat and shuffles his hips impatiently. “Yes. I can, actually. Now please hurry up and fuck me, Tommy.”

The slick slide of fingers slipping out of him is maddening, but the expectation of knowing he’s about to get what he’s desperate for is even more so.

“It’s easier for your first time on your knees,” Tommy says, lips brushing against the ticklish spot right by the back of Buck’s ear that he didn’t even realise was a thing for him until this very second, fuck.

“Well it’s a good thing this isn’t my first time then,” he counters, back arching up from the bed a little when Tommy’s teeth tug at the lobe of his ear. 

“Evan.”

“Like this,” Buck insists, demands. “I want to see you, I want it like this.” 

Tommy looks like he wants to push more, to insist, and Buck has half a mind of his own to shove him onto his back, straddle his hips and have him like that if it means he gets what he wants faster. 

He doesn’t have to, though.

“Fine,” Tommy relents, dropping a sweet kiss to the corner of Buck’s mouth. “But if it hurts, or it doesn’t feel good—”

“I’ll tell you.”

“You promise?” 

“Tommy,” Buck whines half in frustration at the deprivation. “Have you ever hurt me doing this before?”

The smile that takes over Tommy’s face is nothing short of wicked. “Not in ways that you haven’t asked me for.”

The skin on his arms prickles up into goosebumps at the implications of that, cock twitching where it’s laying, hard and flushed and leaning against his stomach. “Fuck, that’s hot, we’re revisiting that later. But for the love of god, Tommy, please just put your dick in me.” 

It’s enough to get him what he wants.

Tommy strips himself of his clothes and grasps his cock in his hand, slicking it up again and smearing the lube about— Buck’s neck yells at him in protest when he cranes it up awkwardly to get a look. 

Fuck, it’s such a nice dick, and the slick shine of it does nothing to dissuade that thought. It’s long and thick and about three seconds away from being inside him. 

When he’s sure it’s slick enough, Tommy shuffles forward on his knees and presses the blunt head of his cock right up against his hole. The hand not clutching his dick drops down onto the pillow next to his head and Buck’s just a man who isn’t in the business of denying himself what he wants so he presses his lips to Tommy’s wrist in a small, chaste kiss. He’s half convinced he can feel the pulse racing under his mouth. 

The pressure against his hole increases, Tommy sliding his hips a little further forwards, a little deeper, until the blunt head of his cock slips inside him. Buck’s pretty sure he blacks out for a couple seconds and when his soul returns to his body, his toes are curled and he’s holding his breath.

“Relax,” Tommy hums from above him. 

A thumb nudges against his rim where it’s stretched wide around the cock breaching him. He doesn’t push it in like Buck half expects him to, instead he starts rubbing soothing little circles around it in an effort to get him to let go and stop tensing. 

It’s hot as hell and if he thought he had any chance of getting it, Buck would be begging for him to slide that thumb in right next to his cock.  

“Breathe for me.”

Buck does. 

It’s the most intense three breaths of his fucking life, but he does. 

“That’s it,” Tommy praises. “You’re doing so good, baby, let me in.” 

And Buck— Buck whines.

It’s a noise he’s never heard himself make before, a high pitched, needy little mewl that tears its way out of the back of his throat and echoes off the walls in the room. 

“Fucking hell! Who needs a dick this big, what the fuck, Tommy?” Buck curses, teetering on the precipice of too much. “Is it all in?”

“Almost,” he reassures, thumb never letting up on rubbing small circles around Buck’s hole and perineum. 

Buck drops his head back and moans, cheeks flushed. 

Inside him, Tommy bottoms out, his hips hitting flush against Buck’s ass and they both go stock still— if he thought he was stretched out on three fingers, that was nothing compared to the feeling of being stuffed full like this. His skin feels like it’s on fucking fire. There's sweat pooling in the divot of his collarbones and Tommy leans down to lap at it, making Buck’s cock dribble out a steady stream of precum against his stomach. 

“Good?” he hums. 

Buck swats a heavy hand at him absently. “Like you don’t already know.” 

“Maybe I like hearing it.” 

It is. 

It’s so good that Buck can’t exactly find the words to form how good it is, and he knows a lot of words. Too bad they’ve all been shoved out of his head, replaced with the feeling of being stuffed so overwhelmingly full with cock. 

“Evan—” 

“It’s good,” he mewls.

He knows Tommy, knows that, even though he’s teasing him for it, it’s less about having his ego stroked and more about making sure that he’s okay, that he’s not hurting him. 

Buck cranes his neck a little and Tommy gets the hint and meets him halfway in a kiss.

“Tell me when you want me to move,” Tommy hums, pressing soft little fleeting kisses on his chin, his jaw, his nose, his birthmark, everywhere his mouth can reach without his hips shifting too abruptly. 

It’s enough to make Buck relax a little, enough to have the muscles he’s been clenching in his thighs and his abs slacken, enough to make him desperate for moremoremore. 

“Move,” he pleads.

And Tommy does. 

He shifts his hips back, pulling out of him about halfway before he thrusts forwards again, a shallow little thing that’s no doubt meant to help Buck get used to the feeling of something bigger and thicker than three fingers fucking into him, but it still takes his breath away. It still has him rolling his head back against that fucking orthopedic pillow that’s been haunting him for months, still punches a moan out of him that feels so involuntary it surprises him that he’s the one making it.

It doesn’t feel new exactly, it doesn’t feel like a first time. It feels more like he’s remembering something— like riding a bike! Except this bike is a cock and infinitely more fun than he’s ever had whilst cycling. 

Tommy doesn’t let up. He pulls his cock out that little bit more every time until there’s nothing left inside him but the tip that Buck keeps clenching around desperately, trying to keep it inside.

“Tommy,” Buck whines, fingers digging into his biceps. “Please.” 

“Gorgeous, so gorgeous, stunning like this, Evan,” Tommy babbles back. It’s not dirty talk, far from it, but it still has Buck’s cock leaking. “Perfect, all spread out for me, stretched on my cock.”

And, come on.

Buck’s just a man.

A man that hasn’t fucked or been fucked in over a month. A man who’s had nothing inside him and been inside nothing, a man who’s become acutely reacquainted with his right hand over the last thirty days. So is it any wonder that those words are enough to send him hurtling towards the edge embarrassingly quickly?

“Keep talking to me like that and this’ll be over too soon,” Buck tells him. He slides his hands up from Tommy’s biceps to his back, sweat slicking the way. 

Tommy doesn’t grace him with a reply, no, instead he just snaps his hips forwards, sheathing his cock fully inside him with a loud slap of skin-on-skin.

“Fucking, fuck!” Buck cries, wails. 

It kind of feels like being struck by lightning in a good way, in the best kind of way. It doesn’t have the chance to start anywhere or build from something, he feels it in all his limbs at once; in the curl of his toes and the clench of his fingers in Tommy’s skin, in the way his mouth goes slack and his eyes roll back into his head. 

Tommy drops his head to press sloppy open-mouthed kisses against Buck’s neck, his tongue circling the hickey he sucked into his skin yesterday like he wants to darken it, make it ripe with blood until it’s bruised and even more tender. 

“More,” he moans, desperate for it. “Please, more.” 

And Tommy gives it to him.

He pulls out of him almost fully again— it’s almost Pavlovian the way Buck clenches and tries to suck his cock back into him, to keep it in him even when he’s begging for something that requires the opposite— and then slams forward again.

“Tommy, Tommy,” Buck whines, because that’s apparently the only thing his brain knows how to say right now.

That and fuck and more and please, apparently. 

Tommy keeps it up, a steady slam of his hips hitting his ass and his cock sliding against his walls until Buck feels like he might die from it. Hell, if this is how he goes, he’ll be more than fine with it. 

It’s all so slick and the wet squelch of lube as Tommy fucks into him makes everything so much more intense. Being able to hear it and feel it at the same time has his cock dripping constantly on his stomach, the head flushed an angry purpley-red color with how desperate he is for release. 

“Tommy, fuck,” he starts, his thought interrupted as a few uh uh uh’s are fucked out of him. “Gonna— fucking shit, fuck!— I’m gonna come, please.”

Suddenly there’s a hand around his cock, a tight fist that he fucks up into. It shifts him away from Tommy’s cock inside him, though, so then he’s grinding back down, a carnal game of seesaw that has him seeing stars.

“You can come,” Tommy hums, flicking his wrist on the upstroke so perfectly, just the way he likes.

Tommy knows so much about him, what makes him tick, what makes him clench, what makes him leak and Buck wants— he wants all of it, everything. He wants Tommy to remind him, to show him all the ways he knows to drive him crazy, all the ways even he forgot. 

“Give it to me, Evan, show me how good you can come for me.” 

And that’s it.

That’s all it takes. 

Tommy’s hips fucking into him once, twice, three times more, matching it with the jerking of his wrist and then Buck’s coming. Holy fuck, he’s coming so damn much. It feels like it goes on forever, like it’s never going to end, like everything in his body is leaking out of his cock and messing up his stomach and chest, painting it white with his cum. 

“Jesus Christ, Evan,” Tommy curses, blinking down at Buck whilst still holding himself up with one arm. “I’ve never seen you cum that much, holy shit.” 

“Been a while,” he points out, limbs shaky, arm flailing weakly.

Hey, they don’t call him firehose for nothing. 

Buck’s also acutely aware of the fact that Tommy still hasn’t come, that his cock is throbbing inside him, that he can feel it throbbing, fuck. It’s almost enough to make him get hard again even though he only came about thirty-three seconds ago. 

“You’re into it, aren’t you?” he hums, watching the way Tommy eyes up the frankly ungodly amount of cum that’s clinging to his stomach, pooling in the divots of his abs, between his pecs, mixing with the sweat and precum that’s  already been making a mess of him.

“Can you blame me?” Tommy counters and he looks— fuck, he looks like he wants to lean down and clean him up with his fucking tongue.

Buck clenches around him, smirking when that punches a guttural moan out of his throat. 

“You look like you want to eat me,” he teases.

Blue eyes darken above him, irises stretched thin. “Don’t tempt me.” 

Goosebumps prickle across his skin and down his spine and his cock twitches valiantly. 

“Keep going.” 

Tommy blinks at him. “Are you sure?” 

“You haven’t come, Tommy.”

“I don’t need to—” 

“I’d be offended if you didn’t. Keep going.” 

He looks like he wants to protest, like he wants to double down and insist that he doesn’t need to come, that this wasn’t about him, and Buck has half a mind to shove him off of him, push him down on the bed and sink down on top of him and get him to come that way. 

Tommy doesn’t exactly thrust on his next move, no, it’s more like he fucking grinds into him, hips rolling in small little figure-eights like he’s making space for himself inside of Buck. He grinds harder, bullying his cock deeper inside him, nudging against his prostate and sending sparks flooding through exhausted limbs. 

It’s everything. 

Buck clenches around him again and Tommy practically growls, a low noise that rumbles through his chest. 

“Brat,” he hisses. 

“Don’t pretend you’re not into it.” 

“Never said—” Tommy pauses for a second, grunting around a thrust “—that.”

He’s still far too composed for someone who’s buried inside something warm and wet and tight for Buck’s liking. He wants to crack it, to take a pickaxe to that composure and chip away at it until it breaks and crumbles to dust. 

“Gonna come,” he warns and Buck’s brain screams yesyesyes at him, a litany of pleas that he doesn’t let fall from his slips. 

Tommy gives about half a dozen more desperate, uncoordinated thrusts as he hurtles towards the edge, and then he’s pulling out. He knee-shuffles his way up the bed and starts stripping his cock with his right hand— the same right hand that’s been subject to so many of Buck’s fantasies across the past month, and now he’s watching him jerk himself off, fuck fuck fucking fuck. 

Call him selfish or egocentric, whatever, but he’s a hedonist at heart, and he’s not about to deny himself the simple pleasure of getting his hand around Tommy’s dick to feel the heavy weight of it twitch and throb as he comes. The moan that rips out of Tommy when he does, when he replaces that hand with his own and starts stroking him, a brisk pace coupled with a few teases of his thumb across the head that’s leaking profusely, is rough. It’s a heady little sound that gets stuck in his throat and cut off halfway as he comes, his cock spilling and spilling and spilling, adding to the mess that’s already covering Buck’s stomach and chest. 

It’s so hot. So fucking hot. Top ten hottest things that’s ever happened to him— probably even top five— and he’s a little affronted that they haven’t been doing this for the past month. 

Tommy taps at his thigh when he catches his breath and Buck uncurls his legs from around him; it cramps a little when he flexes it and stretches it out which makes him wince. 

Tommy notices because of course Tommy notices. He helps ease it back down, rubs his thumb into the calf muscle so deep and good that it punches a groan out of him. 

It’s almost better than the sex. 

Almost.

He kisses Buck’s shoulder and then rolls off, collapsing down onto his back on the bed next to him so they’re both just staring up at the ceiling, breathless and panting. Their shoulders press flush against one another, sticking together with drying cum and sweat. 

“Is it always like that?” Buck asks between desperate inhales of air.

Next to him Tommy laughs, a low rumble that starts in his chest and builds its way up towards his throat. 

“Are you laughing at me?” he scoffs, outraged. “After you just fucked half my brain out of my head?” 

“No,” Tommy reassures around a chuckle. He drops another kiss to Buck’s shoulder in silent apology. “No it’s just… that’s what you asked the first time we had sex.” 

Buck’s mouth drops open in a little ‘o’ shape. 

“I’m giving you an ego, aren’t I?”

“It’s a little late for that, sweetheart. My head barely fits through the door as it is.” 

Buck rolls his eyes but it’s fond— everything he seems to do around Tommy is so incredibly fucking fond.

“To answer your question,” Tommy starts up again, interrupting the silence they’ve lapsed into. “No, it’s not always like that.” 

Buck only gets a moment of thinly-veiled disappointment before he’s barrelling onwards. 

“But it is with us. We’ve always been good at this part.” 

Buck perks up a little like a damn dog with a bone. “Yeah?” 

Tommy hums an affirmation from next to him. “Down, boy.”

Something bubbles in his gut and, yeah, okay, that’s something he wants to revisit. 

Hell, he wants to revisit everything with Tommy. He wants to know how it all feels with him. He wants to feel him get hard in his hand, wants to feel him get hard in his mouth, wants to discover all the ways they fit together so perfectly not just outside of bed, but in it too. It might even be less of a want and more of a need; like if he doesn’t get this on a semi-regular basis, it might actually kill him.

They stay like that for a while, side-by-side and breathless, basking in their little bubble of aftermath. It’s good, it’s perfect, and Buck kind of wants to live in this moment forever.

This is what a perfect Saturday should feel like, he thinks. 

“Sex and breakfast,” Buck hums eventually, running his finger through the, quite frankly, disgusting mess of sweat and spit and cum on his stomach. 

He’s well aware of Tommy’s eyes following the movement and, well, he’s a little shit at heart so he can hardly be blamed when he does what any other little shit would do and sucks his middle and forefinger into his mouth. It’s not a nice taste, exactly, but it’s not foul either and it’s so incredibly worth it for the way Tommy’s eyes start to darken again. Buck makes a show of swallowing and the shiver that trickles down his spine when it hits him that the mix of them is in his stomach is only like, twenty percent forced. 

“We won’t make it to the breakfast part if you keep that up,” Tommy says. 

He pulls Buck’s hand away from his mouth and replaces where his fingers had just been with his tongue like he’s trying to chase the taste of everything he just swallowed out of his mouth. 

It’s disgusting. 

It’s so gross. 

It’s also another one of the top five hottest moments of his damn life. 

“Maybe that’s the plan,” Buck hums when they part. 

A string of saliva dangles between their lips until it snaps and breaks against his chin. Buck feels his hole clench around nothing and he’s suddenly raring to go again, his cock twitching where it’s laying against his stomach, interested. 

“Think you’ve got another one in you?” he asks, gaze dropping to Tommy’s own cock. God, he’s got a stunning dick, Buck wants it everywhere. He wants it in his ass and his throat at the same time— now there’s a fantasy he’s keeping stored away in his spank bank. “Or are you tapping out, old man?” 

Tommy’s on him in seconds. 

He rolls his weight on top of him, their skin hot and gross and slick with an ungodly amount of bodily fluids. 

“I’m not even a decade older than you, Evan.”

“So old,” Buck hums, tipping his head back when Tommy’s mouth makes its way to his neck, tongue and teeth and mouth alternating a litany of patterns. 

“Yeah?”

“Uh huh.”

“I thought this old man just fucked your brain out of your head?” 

It barely even counts as dirty talk, it’s just a statement, a matter of fact, but it’s enough to make heat swell in his gut, to have him grappling at Tommy’s waist until he manages to get a hand around his dick, to use their combined mess of sweat and lube and cum to slick the way when he starts jerking him off in short, teasing strokes. 

“I’m still thinking,” he counters, bratty. “Obviously you didn’t fuck it out enough.”

Tommy sinks his teeth into his jugular. “I guess I’ll have to try again if you can still think enough to be a brat.”

Buck nods the most enthusiastic nod he’s ever nodded. “It’s for science.”

They shuffle about a little awkwardly on the bed, maneuvering around each other until Tommy’s between his thighs again and he’s got one of Buck’s legs on his shoulder, spreading him wide. 

“Well, if it’s for science,” Tommy coos and then slides back into him. 

Fuck— he’s not even fully hard yet, not like he was the first time he fed his cock inside him, no, he’s only halfway there this time, spurred on by some groping and a little foreplay. It means that Buck gets to feel all of it when he starts getting harder, means he gets to feel the way he throbs inside him, the way his cock pulsates with blood and gets harder, gets bigger, and fills him up even more. 

It must be a little frustrating, hell, maybe even bordering on a little painful on Tommy’s end, but Tommy’s looking at him like none of that matters, like the only thing he cares about is watching Buck’s face and how his mouth drops open in a little ‘o’ shape, how his eyes flutter closed when things start getting more intense, how his eyebrows furrow and his cheeks flush in pleasure; pleasure that he gets to give him. 

“Not bad for an old man, huh?” Tommy teases, giving an aborted little thrust of his hips that has Buck flexing his toes. 

“You’re not even fully hard yet,” he counters, playful and bratty, just like Tommy had said, just the way he seems to like. 

The cock inside him throbs. 

“And that’s my fault? Shouldn’t you be giving me something nice and sweet to fuck into?” 

That almost makes Buck mewl. The way Tommy’s talking to him, soft and teasing and a little degrading, the way he fucks him, slow and aborted like he wants to get Buck to beg for it. It’s like Tommy knows exactly the buttons to press to have him leaking, knows exactly how to play his body like it’s an instrument he’s spent decades studying and fine tuning until he’s perfected it, until he could play it in his damn sleep. 

It’s only half involuntary when Buck clenches around him, ripping a moan out of Tommy’s throat that’s so guttural, so primal, in nature. 

“Fuck, that’s good,” Tommy curses, rolling his hips in a little figure-eight. “You got so tight for me, sweetheart. My good boy, all mine.” 

His second orgasm creeps up on him so violently and unexpectedly that he doesn’t even realise he’s started coming until it hits his stomach, adding to the mess already there. 

“Fuck, shit, fuck, fuck, daddy, fuck,” he whines through it, arms and legs and every other extremity on his body clenching and trembling and shaking their way through it. It’s mind blowing, awe-inspiring, he wants it again and again and again. 

Tommy, to his credit, stills his hips, nestling them flush against his ass and kissing at his ankle, his thigh, his hand when Buck reaches out to grab at him, pretty much any part of his body his lips can get a hold of. It does nothing to work him through his orgasm, if anything it just makes him tremble that much harder, like he’s stuck on fucking vibrate mode or something. 

“Tommy,” he mewls when he remembers he has a voice, short nails digging into broad shoulders. When his hips shift, the cock inside him sinks so deep it might as well be in his throat and, fuck, now he’s thinking about that fantasy again. “Please.”

“What are you begging me for, honey?” Tommy asks, sickly sweet. 

“In me,” Buck begs, desperate and a little out of it. “In me, please.”

It’s not something he realised he needed until he said it, until the thought hit him like a freight train gunning full speed down the tracks, brakes obliterated. The thought of Tommy pulling out and coming on his stomach again, of covering him in it, is, admittedly incredibly fucking hot, but also not what he needs. He doesn’t want to watch him strip his cock or watch him spill his cum on him again, no matter how much of a sight it was the last time, no matter how much the sight of that cock is going to be seared into his memory for the rest of for-fucking-ever, hopefully.

He wants it inside him. 

Scratch that— he needs it inside him. 

“Please, please,” he whines again when Tommy goes still. 

“Evan…” Tommy trails off, hesitant. 

It’s frustrating and maddening and Buck wants to spend the rest of his life bleeding cracks into this man's self control. 

“You said you’d trust me, said you’d trust that I know what I want.”

“I know, but this—”

“Is what I want.”

Buck’s never claimed to be a saint, nor someone who plays fair, so he lets his leg drop down from Tommy’s shoulder and hitches them both up around his waist instead, ankles crossed at the small of his back. It has the added benefit of bringing them flush together, of locking them together— Buck’s a strong guy and he’s especially proud of his leg routine. Sure, if Tommy asked, he’d move them, but with the way he’s looking at him, eyes blown wide and mouth parted in a moan, he knows this isn’t how this is going to end. 

“Inside me, Tommy,” he says again, a beg, a plea. 

“Are you sure?” Tommy asks, because he’s so fucking considerate even when he’s balls deep inside of him, fuck.

“Your concern for me is so hot and I’m extremely attracted to you right now,” Buck says, breath coming in short, sharp pants. “But if you don’t come inside me in the next sixty seconds I might actually die. And then you’ll have to explain to the world that I died because you wouldn’t come inside me. Is that what you want?”

Tommy rolls his eyes in a way that, were it anybody else, might make Buck shrink a little. But this is Tommy and he knows him, trusts him, enough to know that there’s no malice or judgement in any of it. It’s just fondness and affection. 

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he hums. He sounds composed, but Buck can hear the strain that’s clinging to the edges of his voice as he fights back his second orgasm. “You’ve always been a bit of a cumslut.” 

It’s the single hottest thing he’s ever been called and he clamps down around Tommy’s cock like a fucking vice, like he’s trying to keep it there, sheathed inside him, forever. It makes Tommy cry out— a noise Buck wants to hear him make again and again, a noise he wants to hear him make every day because of him, because Buck’s the one that’s done this to him— and then he’s coming, spilling inside him all hot and wet whilst his cock throbs its way through it.

“Fuck— christ, Tommy,” Buck curses, whines, mewls. 

It’s so messy and unlike anything he’s ever felt before, being filled up from the inside, and he’s… fuck it, he’s already addicted to it. A part of him’s already counting down the minutes until they can go another round and he can be filled up like this again and again and again. He’s going to burn every condom in sight.

“I’m gonna pull out now,” Tommy warns, his thumb massaging small circles into the fat of Buck’s ass. “It’ll feel different than earlier, okay?” 

As much as he wants to protest, wants to tighten his legs around Tommy and keep him sheathed inside him forever and ever until the world goes dark and falls apart around them, Buck nods, boneless and spent.

It’s a terribly weird sensation, Tommy sliding out of him and leaving a piece of him behind. He feels— he feels wet and messy and owned, and when the come starts to slide out of him he clenches, eager to keep it in. It slides out of him nonetheless, though, a pointless endeavor, and Buck kind of wants to throw a tantrum about it, wants to kick up a fuss until Tommy takes pity on him and scoops it all up and shoves it back into him with his fingers until it’s deep inside him again.

They both lay next to each other again, sweaty and sated, a disgusting mix of cum and saliva and sweat that they both know is going to end up drying and making them feel even more gross, but neither of them are prepared to move away just yet. 

“Hey did I…” Buck starts eventually. Heat travels up the back of his neck and pools in his stomach and— dammit, no, two in less than twenty minutes is enough for now, even if he has to beat his dick back into submission. “Did I call you, uh… did I call you daddy in there somewhere?”

Tommy looks at him for a little too long, so long, in fact, that Buck starts to worry he’s fucked something up, that he’s said something wrong. And then he breaks out into a smile, the asshole. 

“Oh yeah,” Tommy hums, dropping a kiss to Buck’s shoulder in silent apology for teasing him.  

Okay. 

Maybe he can forgive him. 

Tommy doesn’t look shocked, though, so—

“It’s a thing?” he asks, curious. “For us?” 

Tommy nods, the hair not stuck to his forehead with sweat tickling against Buck’s collarbone. “Yeah, it's a thing.”

Honestly, he hadn’t even realised he said it until they were basking in their afterglow, sweaty and sated and disgusting, and the whole thing started looping in his head again, from good boy to daddy to all mine. 

It’s not exactly a revelation, nor is it entirely shocking. It’s not a secret that he’s got daddy issues— it’s not a secret that he’s got family issues in general— it’s just not something he really considered before. When he said it it was like it just ripped out of him without a thought, like it was just normal, which, apparently, it is. 

“And the uh… the cumslut thing?”

“Also a thing.”

“Oh,” Buck says, nodding. “Cool.”

Tommy gives him a look. “You’re not freaking out?”

“Why would I be freaking out?”

“Two brand spanking new kink discoveries in the middle of your first time getting fucked?” 

Buck shudders at the spanking of it all. 

Tommy notices, of course he does. “Poor choice of words,” he hums, hand sliding down to rest near Buck’s ass nonetheless. “But yes, that’s also a thing before you ask.” 

“Please, I have been spanked and done the spanking before, I know that much,” Buck protests, barely resisting the urge to stick his bottom lip out in a pout. “And that wasn’t my first time getting fucked. It wasn’t even my first time getting fucked by you.”

“A brand spanking new kink discovery in the middle of your first time getting fucked by me that you can remember?” Tommy offers. 

It's a compromise so ridiculous but when Buck rolls his eyes at him, it’s still incredibly fond. 

“Either way,” he says with a small shrug. “I’m not freaking out about it.”

“Good.” 

Tommy presses a kiss to his shoulder, mouthing his way across sweaty skin and up towards his collarbone where Buck knows he’s got two, at the very least, impressive hickeys that will be a bitch to cover up come his shift on Monday. 

“If you get me hard again you have to take responsibility for it,” he grumbles.

“Don’t I always?” Tommy punctuates his words with a kiss to the centre of his chest and then, much to Buck’s dismay, rolls back onto his side of the bed.

“Is this where I get the breakfast part of the sex and breakfast?” Buck hums, tilting his head to the side a little so that he can get a better look at his boyfriend.

“We should shower first.”

The urge to groan and hide his face in one of the pillows is strong, but he holds off, if only to spare the sheets a little bit of dignity. 

Well.

As much as they can be spared considering they’re already covered in cum and lube and sweat, a triumvirate of bodily fluids.

“I think you fucked all the energy out of me,” he whines, burying his face in his hands instead. 

“Poor baby,” Tommy coos, tugging his hands away from his face by his wrists and pinning them next to his head. It’s almost enough to have him raring to go again. Almost. 

“You did this to me,” he pouts. 

“Then I suppose, like you said, I’ll have to take responsibility.” 

Tommy leans down and kisses him and it’s nothing like their frantic, frenzied kissing before, this is… it’s sweet and tender and loving despite the fact they’re both still covered in cum and Buck just— he likes him so much it feels a little dangerous to his health. 

“Yeah?” 

“Mhm,” Tommy hums when they part, nudging their noses together affectionately. “Bath instead, and then I’ll make you breakfast.” He stops for a second, glancing at the old-fashioned alarm clock on the bedside table before correcting himself with a stunted, “well, brunch.” 

Of course his stomach chooses that second to betray him, a loud, unattractive gurgle breaching the quiet. 

The eyebrow Tommy cocks at him is amused and so fucking fond. “Or I can do breakfast first?” 

Buck barely manages to stop himself from rolling over and burying his face in the pillow again; the sheets have already been through so much, he doesn’t need to add the mess on his stomach to their sacrifice. 

“You’re so mean to me.” 

“Please, Evan, I felt how tight you got when I called you a cumslut,” Tommy counters with a devilish grin on his face.

His dick twitches where it’s resting on his stomach, flaccid but still eager to go again. 

“So mean!” Buck huffs again. “Go make me food. And bring me a towel.” 

Tommy drops a kiss on the tip of his nose and rolls out of bed bare-assed, his cock bobbing as he walks until he hides them both away in a ratty pair of sweatpants. That alone should violate at least sixteen state laws; maybe he’ll get a petition going or something— Tommy Kinard vs. the State of Los Angeles: a Case of National Indecency. Decency? Whatever. It’s Still Considered a Crime. 

He gets to contemplate the logistics of his case for about sixty seconds before Tommy’s back with a warm, damp towel that he uses to clean away the worst of the mess from his stomach. He spends some time cleaning Buck’s thighs too before dipping it between his legs and scooping up the mess of cum that’s still clinging to his ass and his hole and it’s just— it’s so—

Buck’s had a lot of sex.

A lot of sex. 

Some of which he’s less proud of than others, but he’s never felt so cared for afterwards. Nobody’s ever touched him with this much reverence before, like he’s something precious, something holy, something to be cradled and treasured and worshipped. Nobody’s ever treated him like they were lucky to have had him like this, like they were privileged to be let inside of him. 

It’s over just as quick as it began and Buck has to bite down on his tongue to stop himself from saying something stupid, from begging for the two of them to get dirty again just so they have to get clean afterwards and he can feel even more of this. 

“I’ll bring breakfast up,” Tommy says once he’s wiped him down and then he’s heading towards the door, towel still in his arms. 

“Brunch,” Buck calls after him dumbly. 

The laugh from the hall reverberates through his skin, his bloodstream, his bones. It sinks deep into him and warms him from the inside out and he… he wants this forever. 

Fuck. He wants this forever.

Chapter Text

Bucks not sulking, okay? 

He’s not.  

He’s an adult and adults don’t sulk.

It’s just that when he pictured being back at work, he pictured actually being back at work, you know? 

Instead he’s been designated as the man left behind today— which is fine! He’s fine with it! It’s an important job, he knows that! 

Someone has to manage the station whilst everybody’s out on call he just… didn’t think he would be the one doing it, is all. It’s a job he hasn’t done in years, not since he mellowed out from his 1.0 days when Bobby was constantly benching him because of his recklessness and it’s— it’s fine! It’s all good! Buck can handle it!

Sure, he doesn’t get to go out on calls and save people like he was born to do but—

Okay, so maybe he’s sulking a little.  

On the upside, though, it does mean he and Tommy get to text back and forth pretty much nonstop whenever the team is called out. It’s kind of nice having him so close even though he’s still over an hour away at home. 

Eddie had cracked a joke about the two of them living in each other's pockets when he caught the two of them texting back and forth in the morning. “It’s not even been three hours,” he’d said, and Buck had clutched his phone protectively to his chest like he was shielding Tommy from view.

Whatever. 

Even if he’s right, it’s a nice pocket to live in. Tommy’s got him set up with a blanket and soft pillows— he’ll choose this pocket any day. 

The read receipt pops up at the bottom and, when Tommy’s typing bubble doesn’t immediately resume, Buck groans audibly into the silence of the firehouse. Nobody’s around to hear him be dramatic anyway so it’s fine. He’s just about to start rooting around in the fridge to find something else to bake when a video call request pops up.

It’s almost embarrassing how quickly he hits accept.

Tommy’s camera doesn’t even have time to load properly before he’s speaking. “Did you change your mind on the phone sex?” 

“Christ, Evan,” Tommy laughs. It takes another few seconds for him to come into focus, for the camera to decide to do its job and display his boyfriend in all his high definition glory. It’s not fair how good he still looks half-pixelated through a phone. “What if I’d been outside?”

“Then the good people of LA would know that you’re getting lucky on the regular,” Buck hums. He props his phone up on a stray bag of flour so he doesn’t have to hold it up the whole time.

“Weren’t you just complaining to me that we haven’t had enough sex?”

“That was ten minutes ago. Keep up, Tommy.”

Even through the phone Buck can see the fondness on Tommy’s face when he rolls his eyes at him. 

“So Bobby made you the man behind today?” he asks.

It’s a terribly unsubtle way of steering the conversation to safer waters.

But fine.

Buck’ll play ball for now.

“Yeah. I mean I get why; I’m supposed to be easing myself back into work but I’m so bored! I’m not built for probie life, Tommy,” he whines, resting his arms on the counter and leaning down to get a better look at the screen. “I think I need to, like, bake Ravi apology bread or something for his probie era.” 

“What did you do to Ravi in his probie era?” Tommy’s voice crackles through the speakers. 

Buck’s suddenly struck with a very vivid memory of himself wielding a chainsaw. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

The camera shifts a little and then goes still— when Tommy walks back into frame he’s wiping his hands on a rag. Great. That means he’s working on one of his cars, probably in one of his indecent tank tops covered in grease and sweat and Buck’s not even there to see it. Could this day get any worse?

“You know you’re cute when you pout.”

Buck perks up. If he had a tail, it’d be wagging so hard right now. “Yeah?” 

Tommy hums an affirmative little noise that’s only half muffled by the glitch in their video call.

“Cute enough to—”

“We’re not having phone sex whilst you’re at work, Evan.”

The pout on his face only gets more intense and if he’s playing it up a little for the way Tommy’s face lights up on his screen, well, there’s nobody else around to know. 

“Who knew I was dating such a prude,” he says, tone light and playful.

Still, Tommy’s brows furrow in indignation. “I don’t think that’s the word you should be using after this past weekend.”

God, what a weekend it had been.

He hasn’t had a sex marathon in years, at least not one that he can remember, anyway, but once that first barrier was broken Tommy had been so incredibly eager to give him anything he asked for anywhere he asked for it. And Buck had wanted a lot. The amount of times he’s come in the last forty-eight hours would probably be worrying to anybody without the refractory period of a saint. Tommy had been particularly excited to reintroduce him to the joys of being eaten out— he must have spent an impressive amount of hours with his head buried in between Buck’s legs in the last two days— and, fuck, he’s kind of convinced he met God himself on the edge of his boyfriends tongue. 

In a similar vein, Buck had taken to sucking dick like a duck to water. It honestly might be a little concerning how much he loves it, but it doesn’t exactly come as a shock. He’s always been partial to giving head and making someone come with just his mouth and his tongue, so having Tommy fucking his face and shooting the evidence of just how much he enjoyed himself down his throat, well, it was a natural conclusion to draw. 

“Where’d you go, sweetheart?” Tommy hums through the phone.

Buck blinks himself back to the present. “What?”

“I lost you for a couple seconds there.” His smile turns dark, a little predatory, and Buck goes from interested to almost completely hard so fast it’s almost painful. “Looks like you were enjoying yourself.” 

“You’re such a dick,” he huffs, wiping his hands on the dishtowel and praying that it’s not as obvious as he thinks it is when he adjusts himself in his pants. If the way Tommy’s smirk widens is anything to go by, it absolutely is. 

Downstairs the sound of trucks rolling back in floods the station. 

“I’ve gotta go,” Buck says, remorseful. “They’re back.”

Tommy nods, albeit a little disappointedly. “Sure.” 

“Don’t cook,” he reminds him, holding up a fork at his phone in warning. “I’m bringing leftovers home. Short ribs.” 

“You sure you don’t want to save any for B shift?” 

“Tommy, there’s enough here to feed both shifts for the next three days, they won’t miss out on much.” 

“Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

Buck cuts him off. “No.”

“But what if I—” 

“Still no.”

“But—”

“I’m hanging up on you now.” 

“Evan!”

“Goodbye, Tommy.” 

The call disconnects just as the rest of his team scramble their way upstairs. Buck lets his gaze sweep over them— they look a little tired but otherwise no worse than they did when they left. 

“Good call?” he asks from behind the counter. 

“Arcade fire. Some kid rewired the game to hit the jackpot every time and the game short-circuited and caught fire. We had to stop him swinging on the manager for not honouring the tickets,” Chimney says. He crosses the room and comes to lean on the counter across from Buck. “Was that Tommy you were talking to?”

Buck goes still. He doesn’t exactly know why he does, Chimney talks to Maddie all the time on shift, Hen and Bobby do the same with their wives, there’s no reason for him to feel like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. “What makes you say that?” 

“You’ve got your Tommy smile on,” he adds with a wicked grin.

“My Tommy smile?”

“Yeah, you know, the smile you alwa—”

He’s cut off by Hen leaning on the counter next to him and not-so-subtly knocking her shoulder into his. “What he means is that you look happy, Buck.”

Chimney scowls at her and rubs at his shoulder. “Right,” he relents nonetheless. 

“Oh!” Buck shrills. He’s not exactly proud of the noise he makes but the confirmation that he looks happy around Tommy, so much so that the people he’s known for years can see it, makes him feel a little bit giddy. “Yeah, it was.”

Hen hums in acknowledgement and that’s it, then they all drop it. She lifts the foil off of one of his ceramic dishes and Buck slaps at her hand in admonishment.

“It’s resting. Tell me about the arcade fire.” 

∞∞∞

The firehouse is officially out of food. 

Buck’s cooked everything he could possibly get his hands on and now the fridge is stocked full of enough food to feed both shifts twice over and still have enough left for most of them to take home, and then some. Everything’s been labelled accordingly, including the tupperware he’s set aside to take home to Tommy, he’s cleaned the kitchen and the station floor, restocked the ambulances left behind, washed down the glass, cleaned the locker room, even taken care of the bathrooms.

Basically he’s done everything that could possibly need doing and, despite that, he still feels like a fucking energiser bunny. 

He’s seriously considering DoorDashing an order of flour and eggs just so he can have something to do that isn’t staring at the clock above the oven; a cake would definitely raise spirits after the grueling shift he’s had to watch everybody endure for the past six hours. 

Just as he’s about to unlock his phone, a shrill whistle echoes through the upstairs area. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this place so clean,” a voice says from over by the stairs. 

Buck whirls around fast enough he’s a little worried about giving himself whiplash in his neck. “Tommy?”

Tommy lifts his hand in a little wave that’s so endearing and adorable on him. Buck wants to pinch his cheeks. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood.” Tommy gives a little shrug of his shoulders like it’s nothing, like he doesn’t live an hour away from the station— and that’s with light traffic on a good day. “Thought I’d stop by.” 

“Liar.” He doesn’t mean to push so hard, not really, but the niggling voice in the back of his head is desperate to know. “Who called you? It was Chim, wasn’t it? I keep telling him what I did doesn’t even count and he’s mad for nothing and—”

“Evan, honey, breathe.” Tommy crosses the length of the loft and stops on the other side of the counter. “Nobody called me. You’ve been acting off all day, and I was going to pick you up after your shift anyway. Now I’m just a little early, figured you might want some company.” 

Butterflies flit about in Buck’s stomach. The thought that Tommy saw him spinning out all day and decided to come down just to check on him… it’s a lot. Not in a bad way, just in a different way. A way he’s not used to. A way that, if he’s honest with himself, he doesn't think he’ll ever get used to. 

It’s like for so long he’s been benched, forced to sit back and watch everybody around him slot perfectly into where they’re supposed to be with their person— Maddie and Chim, Bobby and Athena, Hen and Karen— and, sure, he’s come pretty close to it a couple of times, but he always ends up right back on the bench. He’s never felt like a first choice, like someone’s conscious decision, before. 

Not before Tommy, at least. 

Tommy who sees him on that bench and doesn’t just choose him, doesn’t just invite him off of it, no, he picks the whole thing up and carries it around with him so Buck doesn’t have to move. Tommy who meets him more than halfway so often that Buck feels kind of delirious with it. 

He must be quiet for too long because Tommy takes a step away from the counter and starts rubbing at the back of his neck with his hand. “I can go, if you don’t want me here, I mean. It’s no big deal, I probably should have called ahead anyway—”

“No!” Buck yelps, heart skipping a beat or two in his chest. It’s a little too loud and definitely too eager if the way Tommy’s stunned into silence is anything to go by. “I mean, no I don’t want you to go. Please stay.”

The smile he gets back is nothing less than mesmerising. 

“So, why’s Howie mad at you anyway?” Tommy asks, shrugging his jacket off and draping it over one of the chairs at the island— it’s a little thing, something most people would do, but it means he’s staying. 

“Oh, that.” He makes a face. “It’s nothing, he’s just being paranoid.”

Tommy makes an unconvinced noise but doesn’t press on that particular bruise any further. Instead he zeroes in on the dusting of flour that’s caught in Buck’s hair and the mountain of dishes he was in the middle of unloading from the dishwasher. 

“You weren’t kidding when you said you’ve been busy, huh?” he says, lips twitching like he’s trying to fight back a smile. 

“It’s not funny!” Buck insists around a whine. “I’ve cooked everything in the fridge and before you showed up I was like three seconds away from ordering flour. I think I’m having a crisis.” 

Tommy saunters over to the fridge like he thinks Buck’s exaggerating and then, once he opens it and the evidence of his boredom is plain to see, his mouth drops open a little in surprise. “It’s not bad!” he tries, but his voice is an octave or two higher than it normally is. “You’re just being… diligent.” 

Buck scoffs at him. “Yeah. That’s one word for it. I told you I’m not built for probie life, Tommy.” 

“Hey, at least the station won’t go hungry for a few days!”

That is a bonus, he supposes. Though it does mean when he comes in tomorrow he won’t have a damn thing to do because all the cooking will have already been done. He’ll have to settle for scrubbing the floors an obsessive number of times— by the time he’s done the station will be eating their dinner off of it.

Tommy’s smile morphs into something wicked. “You might have caused a national food crisis for the population of LA, but the station will be eating so good.”

Buck throws the dishtowel hooked over his shoulder at him. 

It’s definitely not at all sexy when he catches it mid-air and throws it over his own shoulder. Nope, not at all.

Tommy closes the distance between them and crowds him up against the counter, hands dropping to his waist. “I have to admit, you do look kinda sexy with flour all in your hair.”

“Oh yeah?” Buck breathes, looking up at him through his lashes in the kind of way he knows from the last weekend gets him exactly what he wants. Most of the time, anyway. 

“Mhm,” Tommy hums. “It’s really doing it for me.”

“You should have seen me an hour ago, I had flour on my face and my apron and everything.”

“So hot.”

“I’m glad I can help fulfill this chef fantasy of yours.” 

Buck can’t tell which one of them moves first, but then they’re kissing— as much as it can be called a kiss when they’re both smiling against each other's mouths and breathing out little giggles the whole time.

“If you’re the chef,” Tommy starts when they break apart. They don’t go very far, admittedly, the two of them just putting enough distance between them so they’re not trading breaths. “What does that make me? Am I your assistant?”

“Do you want to be my assistant?” 

Two big hands creep under the bottom of his shirt, finger skimming against toned skin. “I think I’ll be whatever you want me to be.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yes, chef.” 

Christ, Buck likes him so much. 

He likes Tommy all the time, but it’s a special kind of feeling when he’s being silly with him like this. It happens a lot, far more often than he’s used to, whether they’re teasing each other with stupid roleplay like this, or being insufferable in the kitchen together whilst they cook breakfast, or laughing together during sex. It’s all just— it’s something he’s never really had, not before Tommy, anyway, and it makes something hot and heavy sit low in his gut.

Buck cocks his head behind them. “You wanna—”

That’s as far as he gets before a high pitched wail is cutting him off from the floor below. “Help!”

The two of them lock eyes for a second before they’re scrambling out of the kitchen and over towards the railing. There’s a woman down there looking up at them, red-faced and breathless as she clutches a small child-sized bundle in her arms.

“It’s my daughter!” the frantic, worried voice calls up to them. “Something’s wrong with her— please. I didn’t know where else to go.” 

Buck moves toward the stairs first and Tommy follows right after him. The mom meets them at the bottom, her daughter sniffling into her neck.

“What happened?” he asks, lips turned down in a frown. 

“I don’t know!” she says, breath coming in fast pants. “She just— she keeps crying whenever I put her down a-and it’s not a normal cry. She sounds— it’s like she’s in pain and I didn’t know where else to go and this place was closest.”

“I’ll call an ambulance,” Tommy offers from beside him, already rooting around in his jeans for his phone.

“No!” the woman insists, desperate. 

She reaches out and clasps Tommy’s wrist and Buck feels himself bristle at the contact. It’s not a threat, especially not from someone so frail, someone who’s maybe one-thirty soaking wet and carrying a child in their arms, but it still has a protective heat taking root in his soul. 

“No ambulance,” she repeats. “We don’t… we can’t afford it. Please, we don’t have insurance, I can’t afford the premium and this will bankrupt me. It’s just us… please, no ambulance, not yet.” 

Tommy nods and moves his hand away from his pocket.

“Our paramedics are responding to a call.” Buck watches the way her shoulders deflate and rushes to fix it. “But I can— we can take a look, if you’d like, to get an idea of what’s going on?” 

The woman nods eagerly and hitches her kid up higher when she starts to slip from her arms. She looks exhausted, dark eyes and matted hair shoved up into a rough ponytail. She’s holding her daughter so tightly in her arms, though, and looks like she’d bare her teeth at anybody who tried to separate them. 

Buck wants to help them so bad he almost feels sick with it. 

“Let’s sit her down.” 

He leads the four of them over to the makeshift bench where they usually keep their turnouts and gestures for her to take a seat. It takes a minute for the kid to detach herself from her mom but when she finally does, Buck kneels down in front of her so he’s eye-level.

“Hi there!” he beams in that soft little voice he reserves for children and small animals. “I’m Buck, what’s your name?”

The kid just shakes her head and sticks her thumb in her mouth. 

“Her name’s Evie,” her mom supplies.

“Evelyn!” Evie adds stubbornly. She looks like she wants to stomp her foot— if she had the strength for it, anyway.

“That’s a cool name!” Buck beams at her. “You know, my name’s Evan, that’s almost the same!” 

Evelyn takes her thumb out of her mouth and narrows her eyes at him. “You said your name was Buck.”

It’s so childishly observant that it makes him want to laugh. 

He’s always had a soft spot for kids. There's just something about the way they see the world and how trusting they can be of other people when they need help; there’s a sort of unique childlike wonder that he admires in it, maybe even misses a little. When you work a job like this for as long as he has, it’s easy to get caught up in pessimism, to get stuck on the worst kind of ways he’s seen people treat each other, but then he’s faced with this again and it edges the clouds away.

“It is,” Buck tells her with a nod. “My real name’s Evan, but people call me Buck. It’s like a nickname.”

Evelyn nods back at him. “Mommy calls me troublemaker.”

“I call him that too,” Tommy hums from behind them and Buck has to resist the urge to look over his shoulder and stick his tongue out at him. It gets a laugh out of Evelyn, though, and she doesn’t look like she’s three seconds away from bursting into tears again— Buck’ll take his wins where he can get them. 

“Do you mind if we look at your leg, Evelyn?”

She looks towards her mom for reassurance and once she gets a tight-lipped smile and an encouraging nod she turns back to him. “You can look.”

Buck beams at her. “Thank you! I’m going to touch it in a few places, you tell me if anything I do makes it hurt, alright?” 

Once she promises to do just that Buck starts prodding gently at her leg, trying to find the spot that's sore.

He gives her calf a light squeeze, nothing.

He taps at her knee, nothing.

He lifts her leg and rotates her ankle and, whilst she flinches a little like she’s expecting pain, she tells him that it doesn’t hurt. 

“Evie—”

“Evelyn,” she interrupts, adamant. 

“Evelyn,” Buck repeats apologetically. “Does your leg still hurt now?”

Evelyn shakes her head. 

“Good! Do you think you can stand up for me?”

She hops down from the ledge onto her feet and then all hell breaks loose; she buckles, sways forward and wails in pain. All three adults move at once but Buck’s the closest so he gets there first and lifts her back onto the ledge. The crying stops again.

“Evelyn, can we take off your shoes?” Buck asks her.

She looks at her mom again and, once she gets the encouragement, nods through her tearful hiccups of air and sniffles. Buck rests her leg on his knee and unfastens the velcro on her little sneakers. Once he’s managed to get it off she clams up a little and tries to wriggle her foot away.

“Woah!” Tommy leans down next to Buck on his knees so he’s face-to-face with Evelyn. “Is that Bluey on your shoes?” he asks with excitement that only seems, like, seventy percent forced.

Evelyn stops squirming and looks at Tommy with curious eyes like she’s analysing his intentions. When he doesn’t shrink away under the scrutiny, she seems satisfied and nods. 

Tommy smiles at her, a bright little thing that shows off his dimple. “That’s cool, I love Bluey too. Who’s your favorite? I like Pom Pom the best.” 

It’s enough to make Buck do a double take because, what the fuck? 

“She’s cool,” Evelyn shrugs. “But I’m too big for Bluey now, these are my messy shoes. Mommy lets me wear them at the park.” 

“Hey, I’m so much bigger than you and I’m not too big for Bluey!” he protests in a voice Buck’s never heard him use before. It’s all soft and serious, but not overwhelmingly so. He’s talking to Evelyn like she’s a person, not just a child, and it’s working. 

“You don’t really like Bluey, do you?”

“I do too!”

“But you’re bigger than me!”

Tommy holds his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart and brings them up to his eyeline. “Only by this much.”

“No! That’s silly,” she says around a bark of laughter. “You’re way bigger.” 

Buck takes advantage of the distraction and starts to work the sock off of her foot without risking another crying fit and— yeah. 

That’ll do it. 

There’s a thin, sharp splinter, a few inches in length, embedded in her skin that’s pressing into the ball of her foot. The pain must be exacerbated every time she puts weight on it, which would explain the crying. 

He gestures to the mom to get a look and when she sees it her face falls and then rises in quick succession, a tornado of both relief and pain and guilt; relief that it’s not a broken leg, pain that her daughter’s hurting, and guilt for not realising sooner. Buck’s seen this song and dance a hundred times in parents with hurt kids. 

“Evelyn,” Buck hums, interrupting the back-and-forth she and Tommy have fallen into. “You’ve got a little something in your foot. If you let me get it out it should make it all better.” 

“Will it hurt?” she asks with a wobbly bottom lip. 

“A little.” Buck’s a lot of things, but he’s not about to lie to a child about expecting pain. “But then once it’s out it’ll be all better and you’ll be able to stand again.” 

She looks to her mom with wide, wet eyes and when she opens her arms, Evelyn scrambles into her lap and sits with her back to her chest. It’s so endearing and painfully obvious how much these two love each other that Buck kind of wants to cry about it. It’s the kind of love every parent should have for their child and every child should feel from their parents. 

Tommy hands him the first aid kit from under the bench and settles in by his side, helping to hold Evelyn’s leg still. 

“You want to keep talking to Tommy about Bluey?” Buck offers. It’s only half for his own benefit. 

“We weren’t talking about Bluey anymore,” she says with a little shrug.

“Yeah,” Tommy pipes up, stripping the cover off of the tweezers and holding them out to Buck. “It’s all about Stitch now.” 

Evelyn nods and points at her shirt. It’s sporting a picture of this little blue alien creature with an abysmally large and, quite frankly, terrifying smile. Hell, if he saw this thing as a kid he might be inclined to feel a little afraid of it. 

“You know, I have a friend who worked on his new movie,” Tommy tells her and boy, Buck’s never seen a kid light up so fast. 

“You do? That’s so cool! Did your friend get to work with Stitch? What was he like?” she asks, listing off rapid-fire questions without pausing for breath, much less an answer. “Did he get a picture? Can I see? Please can I see?”

Buck takes advantage of her distraction and uses the tweezers to grip the tip of the splinter that’s poking out of her skin. She squirms a little when he starts tugging and it’s only Tommy promising her that he’ll get his friend to pass on a message to the little blue alien that manages to calm her down. It’s easy enough to slide it free after that and, when it’s finally out and he holds it up to the light, Evelyn looks at it with wide eyes.

“That was in my foot?” she asks, voice breathless in disbelief. 

“Yep,” Buck hums, popping the ‘p’ at the end. 

Evelyn leans in closer like she’s trying to inspect it. Eventually she nods, decidedly satisfied. “Cool.”

And then she’s scrambling off her moms lap and turning back to Tommy and the two of them are chattering away about cartoons and kids movies and pop culture, ninety-percent of which goes right over his head. Honestly, if they weren’t dealing with a child, Buck might be inclined to feel a little offended by it all— he might as well have just performed a minor surgery and he’s getting no praise for it! 

“Thank you,” Evelyn’s mom says to him. The relief on her face is palpable which is praise enough for him. 

“It’s no big deal.” 

“It is to me. Seriously, thank you.” 

Buck offers her a smile and disposes of the splinter in a ziploc bag. “I need to fill out an incident form. It’s nothing major, don’t worry, it’s just to say that something happened here and we handled it. I’ll just need to get some information, if that’s alright?” 

“Of course, anything you need.” Evelyn’s mom turns to her and pulls her out of her conversation with Tommy. “Evie, sweetheart, we need to go and do something important for the firefighters, okay?”

“Mommy, can I stay here with Tommy?” Evelyn asks. She’s got that innocent little face on, the one that all kids seem to use when they’re asking for something they desperately want. Usually it's ice cream or five more minutes before bedtime, though.

Tommy, on the other hand, has that deer-in-headlights kind of look on his face like he can’t quite believe that of all the people in the room, Evelyn wants to stay with him instead of one of them.

“Only if Tommy’s alright with it.”

Wide, expectant eyes fall on him and Buck watches him crumble in real time. 

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, that’s fine. We’ll just— we’ll wait here for you,” Tommy stutters. He’s barely got the words out before Evelyn’s roping him back into what looks like an incredibly serious conversation.

It’s so damn endearing and adorable that Buck almost wants to stay and watch it play out but he’s still on the clock and he has a job to do, so he leads the two of them to Bobby’s office and fumbles around until he finds an incident report tucked away in one of the folders. They fill out the form together quick enough; it’s mostly just the basics anyway. Names, numbers, details of the incident, resolution, all that boring menial stuff that he’s usually incredibly happy to leave to Bobby. 

“You two make a good couple,” Evelyn’s mom— Josie, he finds out— says when they finish. She’s got a little smirk on her face and she seems so much lighter now that she’s not frazzled with panic. 

Heat prickles up the back of Buck’s neck. He didn’t think they’d been that obvious about it. 

“What gave it away?” he asks, curious. 

“I mean, it wasn’t that obvious at first. I kind of thought you might just be work partners initially,” she explains, one shoulder rising in a half-shrug. “But then I saw the way he looked at you and the way you looked at him right back. Don’t get me wrong, you make a pretty good team working together too, but I could tell that there was more to it.” 

The validation makes him want to preen a little, if he’s honest. He’s never really thought about Tommy as his partner before. Boyfriend, sure, but partner just feels so… pointed. 

A few years ago he’d read a thing on one of his late night scrolling sessions. It was a myth of some sort, something about humans once being made of four arms, four legs, and two faces but being split in two because the world was afraid of the kind of power that gave them. So they ended up spending eternity wandering, desperately searching for their other half, their partner, to feel complete again. Tommy being the other half of him, of being the person that makes him whole again, scares the everloving fuck out of him with just how much he wants it to be true. 

“How long have you two been together?” Josie asks when he doesn’t reply.

And Buck, he doesn’t mean to, but he laughs.

Weeks ago he woke up in a hospital bed and asked the same question of half a dozen people who couldn’t give him a straight answer… and he gets it now.

“It’s complicated.”

Outside the office the sound of a horn blaring echoes through the fire station and makes him jump. “That’s my team,” he explains, filing the report away and leaving it on Bobby’s desk for him. “I should probably go explain why my boyfriend’s out there with a six year old.” 

Josie laughs, a bright and cheery sound. She seems like the kind of person who would light up a room just by walking into it, the kind of person who would hang back to walk next to the friend left behind on the sidewalk and make sure everybody feels listened to; the kind of person who could make anybody feel special.

Both firetrucks are there when he walks back out from Bobby’s office and Tommy and half of his team are crowded around Evelyn who’s sitting in the front of the truck with one of the headsets over her ears. It’s way too big and the only thing keeping it from slipping off of her head is Tommy’s hand holding it in place. 

“Is there something you and Tommy forgot to tell us?” Hen teases when she saddles up beside him.

It’s a dangerous thought— and one that’s already managing to grow roots in his head in the six seconds of silence after her question. 

Buck loves kids, he’s always loved kids. Babysitting Jee and Robbie is one of his favorite things to do in the entire world and, sure, he’s always wanted some of his own but with the kind of job he has… it just never felt feasible for him. And with Tommy also being a firefighter… 

Still.

His heart doesn’t seem to get that message. It clenches and twists and skips a beat or two when he sees Evelyn jumping out of the truck into Tommy’s arms. He catches her easily and spins her around and Buck doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the sound of her giggling squeals. He’s already skipped like thirteen steps ahead in their relationship and now he’s thinking about that sound echoing around Tommy’s house.

“Buck?” Hen prompts, snapping her fingers in front of his face and drawing his attention away. 

“Hm? What?” 

The look she gives him is far too knowing— he refuses to dwell on it. “Tommy gave us the rundown and she let me look at her foot. You did good.”

Buck lights up a little like someone’s just switched on the Christmas lights downtown. “Oh, thanks! It was nothing.”

Hen rolls her eyes at him, but it’s fond and carries the weight of their friendship in it. “You got a scared six year old to sit down and let you take a splinter out of her foot, I don’t think that’s nothing.”

“Tommy helped.”

“I’m sure he did.” 

When Evelyn catches sight of her mom across the room she squirms out of Tommy’s arms and runs over to her and, god, he wants something like that. Maybe it’s too soon to be thinking those kinds of thoughts, it’s still technically only been just over a month for him, even if it hasn’t really, even if he still technically doesn’t have an accurate estimation on how long it’s really been. Maybe it’s not that soon after all. 

“Hey,” Buck says when Tommy walks over to him.

Tommy smiles at him and nudges their shoulders together. “Hey.”

“Josie— Evelyn’s mom— was just asking me how long we’ve been together.”

“Yeah?” Tommy cocks an eyebrow. “What did you tell her?” 

Buck sinks his teeth into his bottom lip to stop himself from smiling too wide and giving the game away. “I uh,” he clears his throat. “I told her it was complicated.” 

The laugh that Tommy barks out next to him is gruff and unexpected and Buck laps it up like a starving man's first meal. 

“I’m going to take her home now,” Josie says, appearing next to them so quietly Buck almost thinks he summoned her with his words. Evelyn’s blinking blearily in her arms. “I think you two wore her out, but she wanted to say goodbye first.”

As if on cue, the little girl raises her head to look at them. 

“Bye Buck,” her gaze shifts. “Bye Tommy.” She reaches forward in her moms arms and slaps her little hand on Tommy’s chest a few times and, when she leans away again, Tommy’s wearing a brand new sticker of a cartoon sun with a smiley face and sunglasses. “I only had one left, mommy said you two could share it.”

Tommy looks… god, he looks like he’s on the verge of something Buck can’t quite put a name to. He looks, not sad, exactly, but something similar. Melancholic, maybe? Like he’s yearning.

“We will!” he says for both of them, waving at her until she and Josie have disappeared out of sight. 

The rest of the shift is still milling around downstairs chattering to each other, or heading for the showers, or working the firetruck down; either way, it’s too busy for the conversation he wants to have so he grabs Tommy’s hand and tugs on it, cocking his head in the direction of the stairs. He goes easily and nobody gives them a second look as they pass. 

The loft is, thankfully, empty when they get up there. Buck drags them a good distance away from the stairs and more towards the kitchen. This is not a conversation he wants being overheard.

“Where’d your head go down there?” he asks, keeping hold of Tommy’s hand even when they come to a stop.

The look Tommy gives him is blank and neutral, like he thinks if he schools his face enough Buck will forget about what happened down there. 

Tough luck.

“I saw your face, Tommy.”

Tommy relents with a sigh. “It’s just,” he pauses and looks down at the sticker on his shirt with a twisted expression, “kids, you know?”

“Is this a phobia or something that I should know about?” he teases, trying to add a tiny bit of levity to the situation. He gets a smile back so at least some of it successfully seeps into the cracks. 

Tommy sits himself down in one of the stools by the island. “No, it’s just…” he trails off. “Fuck, I don’t even know how to explain it.”

Buck stays quiet and gives him the time he needs to process the thoughts in his head, to form the sentence he wants to say. 

“I love kids,” he settles on. “I do, I really do, but I just… having one trust me like that? I don’t know, Evan, it messes me up a little. All I can see is me ending up like my father and fucking them up beyond repair.”

“Hey,” Buck says, bullying his way between Tommy’s legs. He cups his jaw and uses that hold to tilt his head up so that they’re looking at each other. “You are not your father, Tommy. You and Evelyn barely spent any time together and she was obsessed with you.”

Tommy’s hands settle on his hips, thumbs rubbing small circles into his skin over his shirt. “I know that, I do. There’s just… it’s different when it’s somebody else's kid. I can’t fuck them up permanently if I can give them back.”

It’s not the first time Buck’s had the urge to tuck Tommy up in his arm and hide him away from the rest of the world, to find whatever deity’s been fucking him over for far too long and get them to quit it. He’d fucking throw down his gauntlet and go through a thousand duels if it meant that Tommy could find the peace and solace that he deserves. He also has some very choice words for his father, should their paths ever cross, but that’s another story entirely.

Tommy doesn’t say much after that. Instead he just curls his arms around Buck’s waist in a hug and buries his face in his chest like he needs this, like it’s grounding him and keeping him sane, helping to recalibrate the thoughts in his head and Buck is just so incredibly content to let him. The world could end around them and he’d be fine with it as long as he got to stand here forever. 

“Have we had this conversation before?” he asks after a minute or so— the chattering’s getting louder downstairs as the shift nears its close and he wants to finish this conversation before they’re interrupted. “The kids conversation. Do you want them?”

Under him, Tommy tenses. 

Oh yeah, he’s royally fucked this one. Foot meet mouth. 

“Sorry, sorry. We don’t have to talk about it,” Buck scrambles, moving to take a step back. The hands around his waist stop him from going too far, though.

“I don’t know,” Tommy admits. His voice is rough and shaky, far smaller than Buck’s ever heard him sound before. 

A week ago Tommy probably would have run from this conversation but now, like this, he’s leaning into it, giving back exactly what Buck’s putting forward and it must be terrifying for him to be this open, especially when there’s a room full of people milling about downstairs without a clue what’s going on above them. It feels silly to say that he’s proud of their growth, but he is. 

“That’s fair—” 

Tommy cuts him off. “I’m not saying no, because I know you do. You’ve never said it, but I know you do. You love kids and you’d be such a good dad, you’d spoil any kid of yours rotten, but I’m just… I don’t know if I could be that. A good dad, I mean, and that scares the shit out of me.” 

God, why’d he have to bring this conversation up at the damn firehouse? It’s the most inopportune time and place they could be doing this but it’s far too late to back out now. 

“I think everybody’s afraid of that.” Hell, Buck knows he is. “Nobody wants to fuck up a kid, least of all their own kid. But I think— just the fact that you’re afraid of that makes me think you’d be a pretty good dad. No shitty parent worries about fucking their kid up, they just do it.” 

Tommy rests his chin on his chest so he’s looking up at him, eyes soft and gaze adoring. 

“Besides,” Buck continues. “You wouldn’t be doing it alone. Whoever it is that’s lucky enough to have a kid with you—” he purposefully doesn’t listen to the pleading voice in the back of his head that’s screaming me me me! oh please pick me! on a loop, “—would share the weight of it all too.” 

That seems to ease something in him. It unfurls some of the tension in Tommy’s shoulders and brings back some of the light in his eyes. Buck kind of wants to preen at the fact that he did that. 

“Yeah?” he hums.

Buck nods down at him. “Yeah.”

And then he kisses him, just a soft little press of lips against lips that’s meant to be grounding and reassuring, but Tommy leans back in for more and one kiss turns into two turns into three turns into the pair of them standing there trading little kisses back and forth like it’s the only thing that’s keeping the earth turning. 

“Please stop making out where we eat,” a voice calls from over by the stairs.

Buck leans away from Tommy’s mouth long enough to press their foreheads together with a groan before he reluctantly unwinds himself from him and shoots a glare over in Chimney’s direction. 

“We weren’t making ou—”

Chimney cuts him off. “You were making out,” he says, deadpan. “I’m pretty sure there was tongue involved.” 

Buck glares at him. “Why were you watching?”

“I was trying to figure out if I could hit my target from here without a civilian casualty,” Chimney pauses and looks over his shoulder. “No offense, Tommy.” 

Tommy holds his hands up placatingly. “None taken.”

“You can’t still be mad at me, Chim!” he huffs, throwing his arms up a little dramatically. “It’s been hours, and our shift’s almost over!”

Chimney slams his hands down on the countertop in a way that’s sixty-percent serious, forty-percent exaggeration, tops. “I absolutely can.” He points a finger at him for emphasis. “You invoked the Q word gods.”

“I did not!”

“Is that what you did?” Tommy says at the same time as him.

Buck whips around to face him. “I didn’t invoke them!” he insists, petulant.

“Oh, that’s exactly what he did!” Chimney pipes up. “Imagine it: a nice, normal shift, we’d just dealt with a fire at an arcade and we come back and this guy,” he jabs his finger in Buck’s direction again, “says ‘boy, it sure is qui’—” Chimney pauses, a mimicry of the way Buck had earlier (albeit exaggerated by a few more seconds) “—ite an interesting shift’. You pissed them off, Buckley! And now we’ve had weird non-stop calls for hours!”

Yeah, okay. 

So maybe he’d pissed them off a little bit. 

Next to him Tommy lets out a shrill whistle that sounds both impressed and disbelieving. “Sounds like they were giving you a warning.” 

Buck turns his glare on him. “Who’s side are you on?” 

“Hey, I have a shift tomorrow! I’m on the side of whoever isn’t going to get me cursed with the wrath of the Q-word gods!” 

“Ha!” Chimney quips, fist pumping the air like he’s just won the grand prize on a game show. “See! Even your boyfriend’s on my side!”

Buck narrows his eyes. “Traitor.” 

“Aw, come on, Evan, don’t be like that,” Tommy coos at him. If they were alone, he’d be pouting, Buck’s sure of it. “I’ll make it up to you later.” 

That perks him up a little, gets him up on his hind legs with his ears raised like a puppy that’s just heard its name being called. “Yeah?” 

“Mhm,” Tommy hums, dropping his hand to the small of Buck’s back. 

“You promise?”

“Have I ever let you down?” 

“I don’t know,” he lets his eyes drift down to Tommy’s crotch and back up again. “We’ve only been reacquainted for a few days.” 

“Please stop flirting where we eat,” Chimney interrupts, his eyes darting back and forth between them. “And why’s Tommy making it up to you? Come to think of it, shouldn’t you be making it up to me for ruining my shift?” 

Yeah. 

There goes any interest his dick might have had in this conversation. 

“Well,” he starts, voice taking on a sadistic lilt. Next to him Tommy groans; he recognises the cadence. “Tommy’s making it up to me with sex stuff, I don’t think any of us want to make it up to you like that.” 

The sigh Chimney lets out is deep and resigned. “I’m beginning to think we know too much about each other's lives.” 

“Hey, you asked!”

“And I’m regretting that more and more by the second.” 

The rest of the team starts to join them one by one. They’re in that awkward transitional period of the shift where it’s not quite late enough for them to be sure they won’t get another call and not quite early enough for all of B shift to have clocked in yet so they’re all just milling about, desperately hoping another call won’t come through.

It only takes about three minutes for someone to check the fridge.

“Did I miss the memo about us feeding the five thousand?” Ravi asks, staring into the fridge like he’s never seen one before.

“I’m pretty sure there’s enough in there to feed the ten thousand,” Hen gawps from next to him.

“Whatever happened to gratitude, huh?” Buck huffs, teetering between bashfulness and indignation. “Nobody says thank you for making so much food that we all get to take some home to our families and don’t have to worry about dinner anymore.”

“Hey, is that the short rib—” 

“Hands off!” Buck yelps, rushing over to the fridge and grabbing the tupperware he labelled before anybody else gets the chance to paw at it. “That’s for Tommy.”

Disappointment and protests ring out but when Buck looks across the room and see’s Tommy’s soft little smile, he doesn’t quite care enough to listen to them.

Bobby lets them all go not long after everybody takes turns calling dibs on his food with the reassurance that he’s filed the incident report Buck had left on his desk. The goodbye’s are brief, they’ll all be back to do this again in about eighteen hours anyway so there’s not much point in lingering when they all have people they’re desperate to get home to. He leaves with Tommy— his person— first, tupperwares stacked precariously in his arms like a dicey game of Jenga.

Tommy keeps his hand on the small of his back the entire walk to his car and even opens the door for him when they get there. It’s such a little thing and it happens so often that it’s basically second nature for them by now, but Buck still wants to swoon about it every single time it happens.

“What are you doing?” Tommy asks when he climbs into the driver's side of the car and notices Buck tapping away on his phone. 

“Making a list.”

“A list of what?”

The soft click of an iPhone locking echoes in the otherwise quiet car. “All the ways you can make it up to me.”

It’s a dangerous game to play whilst they’re still in the parking lot and an hour away from home but it’s also enticing. It’s like the few seconds spent on the edge of a plane before a skydive— thrilling and perilous all rolled into one. 

Tommy hums in acknowledgement and starts his truck. “And what did you come up with?” 

“I’m glad you asked.” He shifts to face his boyfriend as much as the seatbelt will allow and holds up one finger. “First I’m heating up the short rib and we’re eating because I guarantee you skipped lunch, am I wrong?”

The silence is affirmation enough.

“Exactly, and we can talk about your day.” Buck raises another finger. “Second, I’m showering.” He lets his voice drip into something deeper, more sultry, at the disappointed look on Tommy’s face. “So are you, and I get to suck you off. This was supposed to be part of phase one but since science hasn’t invented a way for me to talk with your dick in my mouth, I’ve compromised.”

Tommy puts on his blinker and pulls out of his parking lot. “Sounds agreeable. What’s in step three?”

“Step three,” Buck holds up a third finger. “You take me to bed and you get to do whatever you want to me for like an hour whilst your old man stamina recharges. I have something in mind but you gotta work for it if you want me to tell you.”

“Old man stamina?” Tommy echoes. He’s focused on the road, but Buck can see the amusement on his face. 

“Yeah. I’m kinda into it, though, which is lucky for you.”

“Oh, so lucky.”

“And fourth,” he adds the final finger. “Then we can fuck. I haven’t decided how yet, though. I kind of want to ride you, but I also kind of want it on my knees like yesterday. I’m pretty sure I can still feel you inside me from that, fuck, it was so good.”

Tommy’s hands tighten around the wheel, knuckles turning white. “Evan, sweetheart, I am more than happy to give you all of that but we have to make it home in one piece first. Stop trying to get me hard while I’m driving.”

And, listen, Buck’s a little shit at heart, but he’s also a firefighter with some degree of responsibility so he waits until they pull up at a red light to reach over and palm at Tommy’s cock through his jeans. Sure enough, he’s already interested, his dick starting to chub up in his pants. 

“You’re so easy for me,” he hums. 

Tommy’s hips cant up into his hand and Buck keeps it there for a bit longer, cupping his cock and digging in with the heel of his palm for a few blissful seconds of relief before he's pulling away, hand dropping back in his lap.

“Evan—”

“The light’s green, Tommy.”

A horn sounds behind them and Buck has to bite his lip to hide his smirk. 

“God, you’re in for it when we get home,” Tommy tells him and Buck— he shudders at both the promise and the home of it all. 

Honestly?

Worth it.

Chapter Text

“Where are you taking me?”

It’s a cold night— scratch that, it’s a fucking freezing night— and, though they’ve only been walking outside for a couple of minutes at most, the tips of Buck’s fingertips are beginning to turn numb. 

And, oh yeah. 

He’s also fucking blindfolded. 

“We’re almost there,” Tommy promises. He’s got his hands on Buck’s hips from behind and he’s using the grip to guide him about, to help him walk, because Buck can’t see where he’s going and he hasn’t been able to see for a solid ten minutes now. 

“Tommy,” he groans, cold and petulant and confused. “I hate surprises.”

The hands on his hips tighten. “Now you know how I feel. Every day with you is another surprise, Evan.”

“Yeah, but you’re not blindfolded the whole time!”

Tommy laughs from behind him, a soft, warm chortle in the back of his throat. They walk in silence for a couple more seconds, the hands on his hips holding him steady when Buck stumbles and almost trips over a stray rock on the sidewalk; it’s not his most dignified moment, but he is blindfolded, so nobody’s allowed to hold it against him. 

“If this is some secret sex thing—” he starts once he’s righted himself “—you could have just asked. I would never say no to secret sex things with you.”

A startled noise comes from next to him, far too high pitched and feminine to belong to who he desperately hopes it belongs to, and then there’s the sound of heels clacking against the sidewalk as whoever it was he just mortified hurries away from them. 

“Did I just…”

“Yep,” Tommy hums, popping the ‘p’ sound at the end of it and because he’s an absolute bastard and Buck’s never going to forgive him for this he says, “you should have seen her face. I think you just scandalised an old woman.” 

“I hate you so much, I hope you know that.”

Tommy just laughs and presses himself up against Buck’s back— he only leans into it for warmth, that’s all, he swears. 

He’s also a filthy, filthy liar, so there’s that.

“Sure you do.”

“So much,” Buck grumbles to himself. 

He lets Tommy guide him down the street nonetheless, lets those hands twist his hips in the direction they’re moving, lets Tommy’s breath ghost against his ear when he says “we’re taking a right”, he even lets Tommy lift him off of his feet for a brief, fleeting second where he absolutely doesn’t yelp about it— in fact, the noise he makes is incredibly dignified and masculine— before he’s being deposited back on the ground. The hands disappear from him as Tommy hops over whatever threshold he’d just been lifted over and it’s… it’s an incredibly daunting and vulnerable feeling without him behind him.

“Tommy,” Buck says, heart jackrabbiting a little. 

He trusts Tommy; he knows he wouldn’t leave him, not like this, not now, but there’s something about standing alone god only knows where whilst he’s blindfolded without his boyfriends presence, without the weight of his hands on his hips to anchor him, to guide him, that feels incredible disconcerting. 

“I’m here,” Tommy promises, pressing his hand to the small of Buck’s back, a physical point of contact to anchor him. “And so are we. I’m going to take this off now, alright?”

Two hands travel to the blindfold that’s tied around his eyes and make quick work of the knot. Once it’s off, Buck blinks a couple of times, eyes adjusting now that he’s able to see again. 

It’s dark, much darker than he was expecting; the rooms bathed in a soft orangey-yellow glow, evidently coming from the few camping lanterns that are set up around the room. The room they’re in is big and the light doesn’t travel very far, casting for just a few feet before it trails off into darkness— it’s not even bright enough that his eyes need to adjust after being shrouded in dark for so long. 

The rest of the room is… well, derelict would be an understatement. 

Tables and chairs are overturned and thrown around the room haphazardly, the ceiling seems to have collapsed in more than a few places and Buck’s not exactly confident in the structural integrity of the floor under their feet. It looks fire damaged the way a property does after flames eat through everything— a reverse phoenix. Where they rise from the flames reborn, all that seems to be left behind here is ash and devastation. 

“Tommy, is there a reason you’ve kidnapped me and brought me to a dilapidated building that looks like it’s a week away from being condemned?” Buck asks, settling on humour instead of confusion. There has to be some kind of explanation as to why they’re here; Tommy wouldn’t just drag them both to a building like this without a reason. 

“Do you recognise this place?” he asks, gesturing around the room with one of his hands. 

Buck blinks at him. “Should I?”

It makes Tommy frown, makes his shoulders sag a little in disappointment and no, no Buck hates that look on his face. It makes him feel like he’s failed him, that this is another way he’s failed them since the amnesia. The place obviously has some sort of significance to them, otherwise they wouldn’t be here, so Buck inhales a breath— a terrible idea, really, since the building still smells faintly of the smoke and ash that clings to wood after a fire— and takes another look. 

The chairs are basic; wooden things with mostly four legs, some of which are charred and burned away, coupled with red padding on the seat for what’s probably supposed to be comfort. The tables are just as basic; square and wooden with checkered tablecloths melted and fused into some of them. The metal frames are mostly untouched and the few that are warped by fire all seem to be closest to the kitchen. The booth tables are, quite frankly in his professional opinion, unsalvageable— the upholstery’s all melted beyond repair, fused together with the frame and recognisable only as some sort of monstrosity from Frankenstein’s lab. 

The walls are blackened with ash and burned down to the structure in some places, but on the bits that aren’t, Buck thinks it looks kind of nice. Rustic, maybe? It’s got a homey feel to it. There’s a few stained glass pieces around which are mostly intact, aside from a few sporadic cracks here and there, that serve as prominent display pieces. They’re clean, maintained well, and obviously well loved. Tucked away in the very corner under a particularly twisted looking booth there’s a neon sign. Most of the letters are missing, melted away, and only three remain, unlit and barely clinging to life: P, Z, and A. 

It takes a minute, but a few pieces seem to slot together. 

“Oh!” Buck breathes into the silence, a shaky little thing that his voice cracks around. “Is this…”

Tommy looks at him expectantly. “Yeah?”

“You took me here,” he continues, spurred on by the way Tommy lights up a little in the same way he always does when Buck remembers something. “We had dates here. You took me here so much, you love this place! What happened to it?” 

Tommy shrugs. “It burned down about a week before your accident and it’s just been left like this since. The owners don’t really know what to do with it, I guess.”

Which is understandable, he supposes. They see it a lot in their line of work; the damage is extensive and even if the insurance pays out, sometimes fixing things back up is more hassle than it’s worth.

“I’m sorry, Tommy.”

“Don’t be, that’s not why I brought you here.”

Tommy saddles up behind him again, drops his hands back to Buck’s waist— it’s still such a pleasant surprise how easily and willingly Tommy touches him these days— and maneuvers the two of them a few steps, careful of the broken glass and loose bits of floorboard, before stopping in the centre of the room. Right there, in the middle of the floor is—

Is a fucking picnic blanket. 

A picnic blanket with two plates and two glasses and a bottle of champagne and—

“Sorry I couldn’t get us a table,” Tommy hums from behind him, as if Buck could give a shit about a table when he’s— when he’s laid out a fucking picnic blanket and prepared food for them in their own date spot and holy shit Buck feels dizzy with how much he likes this man. 

“This is better than a table.”

“I think I owe Bobby a new blanket.” He drops his hands from Buck’s waist and gestures absently to the little plaid thing. “We’re never getting the smell of ash out of this one.”

“Worth it,” Buck says with a small shrug because it is. 

It really fucking is. 

He’ll buy Bobby a hundred damn blankets if it means he gets to have this. 

Tommy coaxes him over to the blanket and they sit opposite each other criss-cross applesauce style; the damn butterflies he’s become so intimately acquainted with these past few months start kicking up a storm in his stomach. Buck always thought the movies were exaggerating, that there was no way it was a real thing, that butterflies were just some overblown cliche that people made up, desperate for some kind of physical sign that their feelings were real, that it wasn’t all in their heads, but of course Tommy proved him wrong. Of course Tommy manages to take every romantic cliche in the book and prove them all real and attainable and profound. 

“Sorry I couldn't get us a picnic basket,” Tommy hums, fishing around behind one of the overturned tables before returning with a weathered paper bag. “They’re notoriously hard to find, you know? I asked so many people and as much as I wanted this to feel—” he pauses, waving a hand around at the room “—real, I also wasn’t going to drop eighty bucks on a wicker basket. Eighty bucks, I mean, seriously? So I took my eighty bucks and got you that fancy cheese you like from the farmers market inste—”

“Tommy,” Buck cuts him off. His mouth shuts so fast that Buck’s a little worried for the state of his teeth. “You took me to our date spot and laid out a picnic blanket and got us food. It’s perfect.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Tommy beams at him and unscrews the cap on their champagne with a little “safety first, I’m not about to pop a cork in here” before pouring them both half a flute each. 

“It’s Miceli’s, right?” Buck asks, both of them holding their glass in the air mid-toast. “This place? We had our first date here.”

Tommy clinks their glasses together and puts the flute down without bothering to take a sip. “It is,” he confirms. “And we did.”

“We had pizza. You wouldn’t let me pay no matter how much I insisted—”

“—I’m the one who asked you out, Evan—”

“—and I’ve never had someone do that for me before. You made, you make, me feel special.”

Tommy gives him a smile that could rival the damn sun, and he mentally pours one out for ever laughing at that Icarus guy because, yeah. Yeah, if Tommy were the sun, he’d do the same. He gets it now; the flight being worth the fall and all. 

“You are special, Evan,” he says easily, simply, like it’s the most obvious fact in the world.

Christ, Buck wants him. 

The enormity of how much he always seems to want him is equal parts thrilling and terrifying. He’s never wanted anybody so much before— and he’s a hedonist, he’s wanted and indulged a lot in his lifetime— it’s like there’s a current of wantwantwant that thrums under the surface of his skin whenever Tommy’s near. 

He’s also, unfortunately, a responsible firefighter who wouldn’t risk fucking in a fragile building that’s a hair’s breadth away from being condemned. 

Tommy barrels onwards, oblivious to the war he’s fighting with his own desire. “You’re the most special guy I’ve ever met. You’re funny, and sweet, and stubborn, and impulsive, and so incredibly hot.”

Okay.

So maybe he doesn’t have to be that responsible. 

“If you keep sweet talking me like that we’re going to end up defiling this place in a way it’s never seen before,” Buck tells him. 

Tommy’s smile gets impossibly wider. He starts unpacking the food tucked away in the paper bag; there’s cheese and grapes and crackers and a little meat selection that Buck knows cost at least half a month's salary— they’ve walked past the stall at the farmers market enough times for him to recognise it. At some point it had turned into a game; the two of them would see how many times they could get away with walking up and down the same aisle to snag free samples before the stall owner started glaring at them and setting them on fire in her mind. They’ve never actually bought anything until now, though, mostly because Buck insists that she’s scary and “she’ll probably poison whatever we get to keep us away from her samples, Tommy!”

“Don’t worry, I watched her bag it all up and I didn’t see a trace of belladonna or arsenic in sight,” Tommy says like he knows exactly what Buck’s remembering. He’s wearing a smug little smile too, so he probably does, and it’s doing nothing to reduce the want in his bones down from a boil to a simmer. 

The last thing he pulls out is a tupperware container that had been in his fridge this morning full of Buck’s cookies. “Janet’s the only stall with cookies at the market, and yours are way better anyway, so.” Tommy holds the container up and shakes it a little as evidence. 

Ha. 

Suck it, Janet. 

“You’re so getting lucky tonight,” Buck hums around a bite of cheese, the corners of his lips pulling up into the beginnings of a smirk. 

Tommy pops a grape into his mouth in such an obscene way that it should violate some law, any law, fuck. “Promises, promises.”

The rest of the room stays quiet whilst they eat, almost unnaturally so. It’s kind of eerie, to be in a place that’s supposed to be full of music and chatter and laughter but just… isn’t. 

It’s like existing in a house full of ghosts.

“So,” Tommy starts, holding a piece of prosciutto wrapped mozzarella up to Buck’s lips. He takes it happily and swipes his tongue across the thumb pressed against his bottom lip— hey nobody said he had to play fair! “Do you remember anything else about this place?” 

“Not too much, no,” he tells him around his mouthful of meat and cheese. “I remember the pizza we had, and, like I said, you wouldn’t let me pay. I remember we were laughing, I remember being happy. You poured me beer and—”

Buck stops, eyebrows drawing together as he grapples with the memory that’s just bounced around in his head and made him dizzy. He kind of feels like he’s stood right underneath a church bell as it rings out. 

Across from him, Tommy smirks. 

“Oh god, Eddie crashed our date?”

The smirk turns into a full blown laugh. “In fairness, he was also on his own date, but yeah, he did. That’s not the worst of it, though.”

Buck gestures animatedly with his hands, almost knocking his flute of champagne over. “How can that not be the worst of it? Our date was interrupted by my best friend, what could possibly make it—”

He stops again. 

The pieces slot into place. 

Oh god. 

“Oh god,” he voices, echoing the sentiment in his head. 

Tommy’s still laughing, a deep rumble in his chest that gets cut off every time he stops for a breath. It’s his real laugh, not the gruff, breathy one he dons when they’re around other people. This one’s carefree, unabashed.

“Oh god, did I actually say that?”

“Mhm!” Tommy hums, far too gleeful considering Buck’s currently praying for the earth's crust to open up and suck him down into the core, into literally any layer of Dante’s damn inferno. “Hot chicks and all.”

And, listen, Buck’s an adult— an adult with some questionable things in his past— he can handle a bit of secondhand embarrassment, he’s no stranger to it. It’s fine. Obviously the only dignified solution in this situation is to drain the rest of the champagne in his glass in a single gulp, so that’s exactly what he does. “Yeah, no,” he says after he’s swallowed. “The amnesia can keep that one, I don’t want it.”

He’s been doing so much better at remembering things, at piecing bits of the puzzle of his memory back together in ways that slot together nicely instead of just jamming them in and making them fit but this… this is the first time he’s actively not wanted to remember something. 

“In my defense, I was so nervous. Not because you’re a guy, I mean, it was kind of that, but it was only like half a percent of it. I was nervous because it’s you, and I liked you so bad I didn’t know what to do with it,” Buck babbles. 

Tommy, the utter asshole, just pops another grape in his mouth, content to let him ramble. 

“And then I spent like three whole days agonizing over it. Oh my god I dragged Maddie and Eddie into it and I couldn’t stop looking at our texts and I wanted to talk to you so bad.”

Opposite him, Tommy coughs and swallows audibly once he’s dislodged the grape from his windpipe. “You never told me that. Why didn’t you call?”

“I thought I’d fucked it up! I told my best friend we were about to go and find some hot women to fuck!” he whines, flames crawling up his neck and onto his cheeks. “I think that’s a huge point in the things Buck has fucked up in his life column, don’t you?”

“I suppos—”

“—oh my god did you leave me on the sidewalk?”

Tommy blinks at him, smile gone. 

“Oh my god you did! I remember calling the most pathetic Uber of my life and sitting in silence the whole ride, the driver kept giving me weird looks like he thought I was about to tuck and roll on the freeway!”

“In my defence, I thought I pushed you too far!” his boyfriend insists, desperate and a little bit frantic. “I thought I made you do something you weren’t ready for with that date, I thought I pressured you into it so I just—”

“Ran?” Buck finishes for him.

Tommy nods. “Yeah.”

The mood shifts from something light and easy to something a little more somber and serious and, that’s not at all what he was aiming for, so he grabs one of the grapes on his plate and, because he’s still a mature adult, throws it at Tommy’s forehead. 

“Dork.”

Tommy throws one back at him. “Mr. Hot Chicks guy is calling me a dork?”

Buck reloads his arsenal and grabs another grape, preparing for war. ”And don’t you forget it.”

Tommy catches the grape in his mouth when Buck throws it this time which is equal parts impressive and, weirdly, attractive. 

Huh. 

Maybe it’s a competency thing. 

Still, he’s intrigued by it. “Do you think you could catch one from across the room?”

Tommy shrugs. “Maybe. I’d be more confident if I wasn’t worried one wrong step would send me through the floorboards, though.”

“That’s so hot.” Buck launches a grape towards his own mouth and catches it. “You should come over here and kiss me about it.”

The eyebrow raise he gets in return does nothing to make this whole thing any less attractive. “Really? This is doing it for you?” 

Buck leans back a little, bracing himself on his palms and stretching his long legs out in front of him, a shameless display of preening. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”

Tommy lasts about three seconds after Buck tips his head back to look at the ceiling— which, hey! There's art up there, cool!— and lets his shirt ruck up a little, exposing the soft, toned skin of his stomach, before he’s crawling across the blanket, getting his hand around the back of Buck’s neck and pulling him into a kiss that’s barely a kiss considering how much they’re both smiling against each others mouths.

“T’mmy,” Buck warns, voice muffled by the mouth pressed against his own. “The glasses, fuck, babe, hold on, we gotta… we need to move the glasses before they break—”

“They’re plastic,” Tommy informs him from where he’s kissing his way across Buck’s jaw. “No breakage to worry about.”

“That’s—” he’s cut off by Tommy’s lips again; he sinks into the kiss right away.

“They’re—” a kiss. 

“Really—” another kiss. 

“Good—” and another, “—quality.”

“I was a boy scout,” Tommy breathes into the air between them. “Always prepared.”

“Even for this scenario?”

“Especially for this scenario. Can we make out now?”

Buck answers him by tilting his head a little to the left and surging forward, pressing their lips together in another kiss. It’s so easy to forget about everything else when he kisses Tommy— it’s like the rest of the world and all its problems just kind of slip away from him, like this is where he finds his peace. It’s also easy to forget where they are, though the building seems to have no problem reminding him if the little pile of ash his hand hits is anything to go by. The noise he makes about it isn’t exactly dignified and, when Tommy gets a look at the state of his hand, greyed and flaky with ash, he rolls his eyes fondly. He also takes pity on him and switches their positions so he can coax Buck down onto his back, nestled on the safety of the picnic blanket under him. 

“How’s that?” Tommy asks. 

“Good, so good.” Buck’s eyes drop to his mouth. “Stop talking and kiss me again.”

He does. 

Tommy settles himself in the gap between his thighs and presses his weight down on him and kisses him until they’re both breathless and panting and creeping towards public indecency territory. He latches his mouth onto Buck’s neck when they part to breathe and starts driving him crazy with little nips, scrapes of teeth, gentle bites and purposeful sucking that has him arching up into the solid wall of muscle and man on top of him. He’s bound to have a hickey the size of a grapefruit by the end of this and Buck will wear the damn thing with pride. 

At some point he ends up hitching one of his legs up around Tommy’s waist and, when he tightens his grip, desperate to bridge any space left between them, he’s startled by a brrp against his thigh. 

“Either you’re incredibly happy to see me,” he gasps out, forcing his hands away from the belt he’d started to fumble with. “Or your phone's ringing.”

Tommy groans into his neck. “It’s both. Definitely both. Leave it.”

Buck’s prepared to do exactly that, really, he is, but then the phone goes off again. Clearly someone’s desperate to get Tommy’s attention and the part of his brain that isn’t running on lustwantdesireneed, the unfortunate sensible part of him, relents and drops his leg away from Tommy’s waist and back down to the floor. 

“When did you become the sensible one?” Tommy grumbles against his skin. He licks over the spot he was toying with and blows a stream of cool air against it. “I should have let you drown our phones when I had the chance.”

“The sooner you answer it, the sooner you can get rid of them, and the sooner we can get back to,” he pauses, hand drifting down to Tommy’s crotch to paw at his dick through the jeans it’s confined in— he’s hard under his palm and it makes Buck’s own dick twitch in response. “This.”

Tommy bucks his hips into his hand and grumbles something that gets muffled against the crook of his neck. He makes no move to grab his phone, though, so Buck takes the initiative and shifts his hand away from his crotch so he can grab the phone out of his pocket. 

A kiss gets pressed to his jaw and Tommy hums a low little noise in the back of his throat. “Who’ssit?” 

Buck thumbs open the screen and types in the passcode with ease. When he checks the call log, he stills. “Why’s Athena calling you?”

That seems to shock Tommy enough to have him leaping into action. He pulls himself away and shifts up onto his knees, holding his hand out for his phone. Buck gives it to him and watches the way Tommy swears under his breath when he confirms that it was, in fact, Athena calling him. 

“Just— give me a second, Evan, I have to take this.”

It’s enough to make his heart skip a beat. “Tommy?”

“It’s nothing bad, I promise. I’ll explain after I find out what it’s about, alright?” he promises, dropping a sweet kiss to Buck’s forehead. 

Still, it does nothing to satiate the churning feeling in his stomach. It’s nothing like the romance movie butterflies he felt earlier, no, this feels more like a moth flittering around a lightbulb, landing and then taking off again when it gets burned for touching the thing it had once been so desperate for. Even as he watches Tommy tap the screen once and then shove the phone up to his ear, the feeling doesn’t dissipate. It gets tremendously worse when he bites back a muffled “Athena?” and then disappears into the darkness that the lanterns fail to illuminate. 

Buck settles for straightening their mess up. He rights the empty plastic flutes, clears away leftover pieces of meat and cheese into one of the tupperware containers for later, stacks the boxes neatly, hell, he even tries to brush some of the ash off the picnic blanket. It feels good to be doing something, anything, useful with his hands but it’s not enough. The churning only gets more intense the longer Tommy’s away. Desperate to keep himself occupied, Buck starts on the plastic wrap and loose papers from the food. The paper bag everything had been carried in catches his eye and he reaches for it— his general adage has always been to leave a place cleaner than he found it and it’s not about to change just because said place is one strong gust of wind away from collapsing on itself. 

The bag’s heavy when he grabs it. Tommy must’ve packed extras or something, and he’s just about to open it and fish the container out when he’s interrupted by footsteps returning. 

“Evan, I’m so sorry but we gotta go—” Tommy stops when he sees him holding the bag, eyes blown wide. “What are you doing?”

Buck waves his hand around at the scene in front of him as if that will explain everything. “Straightening up.”

“No time.” 

The bag disappears from his hand, shoved out of sight into the depths of the pocket on Tommy’s hoodie. 

“What’s going on?” he asks, suspicious. They were fine three minutes ago and now Tommy’s moving like somebody’s gone and set the place on fucking fire. He winces when he remembers where they are. Bad choice of metaphor. 

“Evan.”

“Don’t try and pretend nothing's going on. What did Athena say to you?”

Tommy groans and pushes one of his hands through his hair. He looks stressed, frazzled in a way that he’s never been before, not even when they had their big fight a few weeks ago, not even the first time Buck saw him in the hospital. He starts biting at his lip, working it through his teeth until it’s even redder than the kissing had made it. 

“Tommy?” he prompts. 

Tommy relents with a sigh. “Alright, fine. We’re not technically supposed to be here...”

Buck blinks at him. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that I technically didn’t get permission to use this place, and we’re technically not supposed to be here. I called in a favour with Athena. She was keeping an eye on dispatch over the radio whilst out on patrol, she said she’d call if she heard anything—”

“—about us technically breaking and entering?!” 

“Yes, exactly. And she told me dispatch received a report of a suspicious figure lurking around this place, so can we please have this conversation as we leave?” Tommy says, holding his hand out, an offering. 

Buck takes it and uses it to haul himself to his feet. “God, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this. I mean, breaking and entering, Tommy!”

“It wouldn’t have been much of a surprise if I told you, Evan,” he counters, monotone. 

“And what was your plan if Athena didn’t overhear dispatch, huh? What if the cops showed up?”

“There’s at least six blocks worth of footage of us walking together whilst you’re blindfolded. I’m pretty sure that’s enough plausible deniability for you.”

And that… that makes Buck stop in his tracks because what the fuck? 

“Evan, we gotta go,” Tommy prompts, tugging on his hand.

“You walked us around the city so I could have deniability if we got caught in here?” Buck asks and— ah. The moths are gone again, overpowered by the butterflies. He should probably be madder about being made an unwitting accomplice in the whole breaking and entering thing, but the thought of Tommy meticulously planning this out, even down to a contingency plan, makes the butterflies move so fast he feels like he could take flight. 

“I mean, you technically had it anyway,” Tommy shrugs, hand curling tighter in Buck’s. “You had no idea what I was doing here, and I really did want it to be a surprise with the whole blindfold thing, this was just hitting two targets at once.”

“Why?” he asks, pulling at the thread that’s been niggling around in the back of his head. “Why now? This place has been here the whole time, why bring me here now? Why not three weeks ago? What’s changed?”

“Are we really doing this right now? Right now?”

Buck lets go of Tommy’s hand and nods, stubborn. 

The groan that comes from his boyfriend is nothing like he’s heard before. It's part frustration, part adrenaline, part annoyance, and another part something can’t quite put his finger on. 

“I thought it might bring something back,” Tommy explains with a small, insecure shrug. “I’ve been trying not to push you harder than I thought you could handle, but you keep telling me to stop thinking for you and that you’ll tell me if I do something to overstep and this just— maybe it was selfish of me to do this much but I drove past this place on a call the other day and it made me think about all the times we’ve been here, all the good and the bad, and I thought if anything could help you remember, maybe it would be this. But I think I pushed too far, it wasn’t my place.”

“It wasn’t—” Buck starts, and watches the way Tommy’s face crumbles a little at that, like he thinks it’s a confirmation of everything he feared rather than the start of a sentence, “—selfish, Tommy. This is— fuck, this is the most selfless thing anybody’s ever done for me. The only thing you’ve ever done for me is be selfless, and you think I’d be mad at you for this?”

“But—”

Buck cuts him off. “No. No buts here. Maybe you think this was selfish because you wanted me to remember and that’s why you did it, but I’m telling you you’re wrong. This was— Tommy this was everything to me, and it worked, didn’t it? I remembered things, maybe not everything, but at least a little. Maybe I should be mad at you for not telling me and inadvertently making me a criminal but you walked me around downtown LA with a blindfold on so I could use it as an excuse to the cops, I mean who does that?” He stops to suck in a breath before launching right back in again. “You’re crazy, you’re completely crazy, and I’m obsessed with it. You did all of this for me, because I’m important to you, and fuck, Tommy, I like you so much its making me a little bit insane.”

It’s not as simple as just like. 

It hasn't been like for a while now, maybe not since the first time they had sex, maybe even sooner if he really lets himself think about it. Bobby’s barbecue might have been the catalyst. He hadn’t recognised it for what it was at the time; for something so much stronger and more intense than just like. 

Something kind of like lo—

Tommy interrupts that thought before it can fully develop. “Evan, there’s something— I was going to ask you something. Something— it was important. I wanted to do it in there,” he cocks his head in the direction they just came from, back where the picnic blanket and tupperware still lie, abandoned. There’s an audible crinkley-crunch sound coming from Tommy’s pocket, from where he’s got his hand curled in there with that paper bag. 

“What, Tommy?” he asks, heart rabbiting so fast in his chest he might as well be tachycardic. 

“I know it’s… I know the timing isn’t right, I know everything’s not perfect but your le—” Tommy stops, nose crinkling in a frustratingly adorable way “—can you smell smoke?”

“No,” Buck answers instantly, not bothering to inhale because he needs to fucking know what Tommy was about to ask him, damn it! 

“No, Evan, I’m serious, I can smell smoke.”

He inhales, if only so they can get this conversation back to the point already, but then the familiar smell of burning— not the old kind, not the kind that’s been clinging to the restaurant for the last hour, this one’s new, current, active— is invading his senses and yeah. That’s smoke alright. 

Tommy takes him by the hand again and pulls him in close. He leads the two of them towards the back exit, presumably where they came in from, but the smoke gets stronger as they go, thicker and hotter and so much more stifling. The room feels sweltering and, sure enough, when Tommy grabs the handle to the kitchens to let them through, he hisses and recoils in pain. 

“It’s hot,” he explains, shaking his hand out a little like that’ll rid him of the pain. “Which means—”

“Fire,” he finishes for him. 

“So no exit that way then.”

Buck coughs a little, the smoke building as it creeps through the cracks and gaps in the structure. “So what do we do?”

Tommy holds his hand a little tighter and starts leading them again. “Front entrance.” 

“Won’t that be boarded up?” he asks, letting himself be guided through the charred remnants nonetheless. 

“No, the fire started in the back last time, the front should just be locked.”

Buck nods and tugs his shirt up over his mouth and nose; it’s not much, hardly even a barrier at all against something as thick and encompassing as smoke, but it’s something and it feels better than nothing. The sting in his eyes, though, there’s nothing he can do about that. Tommy keeps him close, manoeuvring them around upturned tables and broken floorboards. He’s careful to test his weight wherever they step— as firefighters they’ve seen one too many people succumb to unstable foundations. 

The door when they reach it is, thankfully, unboarded, only keeping intruders out with a bolt lock on the top and bottom that they take care of with ease. The doors fling open, barely hanging onto their hinges, and then they’re both stumbling down the steps and out into the street, lungs and eyes burning as they cough out the taste of smoke. 

“We should…” Buck says around a cough. 

Tommy holds his phone up, the callscreen already showing 9-1-1, and relays the situation around his own desperate lungfuls of air. 

Blue and red lights flash against the building as soon as he hangs up, far too soon for any sort of first response to be dispatched which can only mean—

“What the hell are you two playing at?” Athena snaps at them when she gets out of her cruiser,  slamming the door shut behind her. She rounds on Tommy. “I stick my neck on the line, I cover for you, and you burn the damn building down?!” Her gaze softens a little when she sees the state of them, covered in soot and still coughing. “Are either of you hurt?”

“It wasn’t us,” Buck insists, though, he’s not sure how well that’s about to go down. “We got your call and left, we smelled smoke on the way out.”

“As far as I know, you two were the only people in the building,” she says, one hand on her belt, the other gesturing at the restaurant. 

“We were together the whole time, I think we’d know if one of us set a fire, unwittingly or not.” Aside from the minute or so when Tommy disappeared on the phone to Athena, but Buck purposefully omits that, not because of some kind of misplaced guilt, rather because he knows how it’ll look. 

Athena looks between the two of them for a few seconds and seems to decide this isn’t a battle worth fighting with an inferno about to ignite behind them. “Alright, you two just… sit tight. I’ll call for backup.”

“This wasn't our fault, right?” Buck asks, shuffling away from the cruiser a little and turning away from the dashcam. He shivers despite the heat starting to emanate from the restaurant— in the middle of the chaos he’d forgotten his jacket inside, abandoned with the rest of their makeshift date— arms prickling into goosebumps. 

Tommy shrugs his hoodie off and drapes it around his shoulders. “No,” he assures, rubbing his hands up and down the length of Buck’s arms for some kind of warmth. “The fire started in the back, we didn’t have anything there. It could have just been faulty wiring and poor timing.”

Buck nods and takes a small step into Tommy’s space, huddling in like a penguin desperate for warmth from the colony. He slips his arms into the sleeves of the hoodie and lets the cuffs cover half of his palm. Neither of them are small men but Tommy’s broader than him and it makes for an interesting— even comical— dichotomy when it comes to sleeve length. The crinkle of something in his pocket reminds him of their almost-conversation inside, the one right before they were interrupted by fire. Buck desperately needs to know where it was headed, needs to scratch the itch in his brain before his heart beats out of his chest and does an impressive series of Olympic-level worthy gymnastics routines on the sidewalk around them. 

“Tom—”

That’s as far as he gets before they’re interrupted again. He’s never been a violent person before, but if this keeps happening he might just have to make a vow to kick the crap out of the Fates. 

“Officer!” a shrill voice comes from down the sidewalk. 

All three of their heads turn in that direction to see a very distressed, very heavily pregnant woman shuffling towards them with one hand on her stomach, one hand on her back like she’s physically holding herself together. 

Athena catches her before she can get too close to the building. “Officer, thank god,” she wails, and even from here Buck can see how much she’s sweating.

“Take a breath, ma’am,” Athena prompts, both her hands on the woman’s shoulders to keep her steady. She does as she’s told and gets a nod in return. “Good, that’s good. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” 

The two of them shuffle closer to the cruiser, Tommy’s hand a steady weight at the small of Buck’s back. 

“My husband!” she gasps out, taking a few pained breaths and— oh shit, oh fuck. 

She’s in labour. 

“What about him? Is he hurt somewhere?” Athena asks. 

The woman shakes her head and swallows loudly, choking on a lungful of air. “No, no, he’s,” she stops, the hand on her back pointing towards Miceli’s. “I think he’s in there.”

The three of them, Buck, Tommy, and Athena, exchange a shared, bewildered look. 

“Why would he be in there?” Tommy asks, voicing the question they’d all been thinking. 

“Because he’s—” she doubles over and clutches her stomach. It takes a few pained breaths before she’s able to choke some more words out. “Because he’s the owner and he called me and said he was going to fix everything. Our insurance told us they wouldn’t pay out for this place today and now— now this. Please, you have to help him.”

“What makes you think he’s inside?” Buck asks her, wincing at the wailing noise she makes whilst Athena directs her to perch on the cruiser's hood. 

“We have our locations shared,” she says, face getting paler and paler by the second. “His phone says he’s in there.” 

Behind her, Buck can hear Athena talking into her radio, relaying the situation and requesting additional units and an ambulance for a woman in labour. Once she’s called that in, she heads in their direction. 

“How long until they get here?” he asks, motioning for Athena to stand between them so the man’s wife doesn’t have to overhear them talking about the logistics. 

“Dispatch rerouted an ambulance from nearby, the estimate is two minutes,” she relays, saddling herself in the group next to Buck. “Fire rescue, though… we’re looking at closer to ten, maybe fifteen.”

Tommy shakes his head. “That building will be ash by then.”

“Please,” a soft, scared voice says from behind them. “Please, my husband— he’s a good man. It’s not his fault. The fire took everything from us, we had nothing left without it, but we would have been fine with the insurance for our girls.” She pats at her stomach. “Twins. He thinks this will save us, that the insurance will pay out, but there is no life for the three of us without him. Please don’t let him die.”

Out in the distance, the faint wailing of sirens echoes from a few blocks away. In front of them, part of the roof collapses, consumed by the heat and fire. Next to them a shrill scream echoes, it’s more than just a scream of someone in labour, it’s a scream of someone who’s watching their world hang in the balance, who’s been weighed and found wanting. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the building caves in— a matter of time that they don’t have. A feeling of helplessness settles low and heavy in Buck’s gut; he’s a firefighter, for fuck sake, he should be able to do something!

“Dispatch rerouted an engine,” Athena says by Buck’s side. Next to him, Tommy inflates with something like hope. “It’s still eight minutes out.”

He deflates just as fast, like someone’s stuck a pin in a balloon just to watch it pop. “Evan,” he says, stepping out of the little semi-circle they’ve formed and moving to stand in front of him, blocking his view of the building. Tommy ducks his head to catch his eyes, gaze full of something Buck can’t quite decipher. 

“Wha—”

He’s cut off by the press of lips against his own, by gentle hands dropping down to his waist and holding on, by the shaky inhale of breath Tommy takes when he leans back from the kiss, only to lean back in and kiss him again once a second passes. 

Kissing Tommy is good, it’s so good, it’s always good. Buck’s kissed him happy, kissed him sad, kissed him angry, kissed him whilst they were both delirious with lust and desire and the need to bite and scratch and moan into each other's mouths. He’s kissed him scared, kissed him terrified, kissed him as an apology, as an act of reverence, kissed him just because he could, because he wanted to and that was reason enough. Buck’s kissed him hundreds of times by now for hundreds of different reasons but nothing, none of their other kisses, ever felt like this. There’s an undercurrent of desperation that he can taste on Tommy’s lips, can feel in the way the kiss is messier than normal, in the way their noses knock together awkwardly. They’re good at kissing, they fit together perfectly, easily, naturally. But this… something’s off about it. 

It’s a good kiss, don’t get him wrong, just as all kisses with Tommy are, but there’s no finesse to it. It’s raw and hungry, not with lust, but with something else— this feels like Tommy’s trying to kiss him deep enough, to hold on to him tight enough, that he sinks past skin and muscle and bone, right down deep into Buck’s marrow. It feels like he’s been lost at sea for weeks and finally caught a glimpse of land; feels like he’s thrown his anchor off the side of the ship, screamed land ho! and liked what he’d found so much that he’s decided to stay there forever. 

This feels like he’s trying to put down roots in him. 

“Tommy,” he says when they part, breathless and confused with a heart that’s beating like a rabbit at a greyhound track. 

Blue eyes search his face and Buck looks right back at them. There’s an entire building burning down around them, backlighting the night in a fiery orange glow, and dark, acrid smoke rising up into the sky like a black hole, eating light and warmth as it goes— it’s hard to see stars in LA, but if they could, the smoke would be gunning for them too— but Buck doesn’t care. He can’t see any of it. All he sees is him. 

“I love you.” 

Tommy’s hands tighten on his waist for a second like he’s afraid, like he’s scared this tightrope act they’ve developed perfectly together will finally snap because of him, that this will be the thing that breaks them— just three little words falling from his lips, three little words that he thinks are enough to break them. 

Red and white flashing illuminates the sidewalk and when Buck turns his head to look, the paramedics are already rushing over to help the woman. Whilst he’s distracted the hands fall from his hips and Tommy takes a few steps away from him, walking backwards towards the building. 

Buck realises too late what he’s doing. 

Tommy turns and disappears into the building, his mouth and nose buried in the crook of his elbow as if that’s going to be able to keep the smoke and fire from permeating his lungs. 

“No! No, Tommy!” he says— yells, more like— but when he tries to take a step forward to follow him, strong, capable hands grab him and haul him back. He pulls and pushes and twists in the hold, desperate to find a way out of their grip because— because Tommy’s in there, and he loves him— oh god Tommy loves him and Buck hadn’t said it back, Tommy doesn’t— he doesn’t know— why hadn’t he said it back? Oh god, oh god, oh god. 

“Buck!” a strong, steady voice says in his ear. 

Athena. 

It's not the voice he wants, these aren’t the arms he wants holding him so he thrashes again, desperate to get free.

“Come on, kid, don’t make me cuff you.”

“Athena you have to— let me go, he’s in there. I need—”

“You know I can’t, Buck.”

Something rises in his throat, something bitter and caustic like bile, like acid, that has him keeling over and trying to breathe around it. It comes out as a noise that sounds too close to a sob. 

“Please,” he begs, pleads, throwing all his desperation into that single appeal. That’s his world in that building— that building that’s currently on fire and collapsing into flames and heat and smoke, that building that’s cracking and creaking and threatening to collapse under the unstable weight of it all. 

Fire is unforgiving.

It's one of the first lessons they learn on the job. Fire doesn’t care about who you are, if you’re rich or poor, if you’re a good person or a bad person, if you’re a firefighter or a civilian, if the man you love has run into it because his heart is so big it scares you sometimes, knowing that he has the capacity for this. Fire doesn’t compromise. Fire doesn’t care how much you beg or plead or cry, it doesn’t care about Faustian bargains or deals with the devil; it’s relentless and unyielding when it burns, intent on taking everything in its path down with it. 

“Just hold on,” Athena says, trying for a comfort that Buck can’t feel. “He’ll make it out and the others will be here soon, just hold on, Buck.” She's rubbing his arm in a way that’s probably meant to be reassuring, but he can’t feel it. 

He can’t feel anything. 

Not even the hoarseness in his throat from yelling Tommy’s name. Not even the sting of tears in his eyes, nor the way the heat from the fire dries them on his face. It’s all just— numb. Maybe that’s what life without Tommy would be; a perpetual state of numbness, a misery and pain he’s too hollow to feel. 

“I didn’t say it back,” Buck laments, more so to himself and whatever deity up there is hellbent on fucking him over, the same one he’s prepared to pick a fight with to get Tommy back. “I didn’t tell him…”

“He knows, Buck.”

And that’s just—

It’s not fucking good enough. 

Sure, Tommy might know, but he needs to hear it. Buck wants him to hear it. Tommy deserves to hear it. He wants to say it every day for the rest of his life, wants to see the way Tommy’s eyes soften every time he hears it, the disbelieving little inhale of air he’d breathe like he doesn’t quite think he deserves it, or that he’s worthy of it. 

Sixty seconds pass and Buck feels the weight of each and every one of them in a way he never has before— in a way he never wants to again. It sort of feels like someone’s put him in an hourglass and shaken the whole thing up and now he’s being crushed and suffocated by every single piece of sand that piles down on top of him. 

Another minute passes. 

And then another. 

And another. 

And another. 

Athena still hasn’t let go of him. 

Red lights and familiar wailing flood the street. The truck hisses as it comes to a stop a few feet away from them but Buck can’t tear his eyes away from the building. If he blinks for too long or lets his gaze drift the whole thing might come down, or he might miss Tommy, or— he just can’t. 

“Athena?” a familiar voice cuts through the sirens, through the howling of a woman in labour refusing to be taken to the hospital, through the sounds of fire destroying everything. “Buck?”

“Bobby,” she exhales, the relief in her voice evident. Her grip on him doesn’t falter, though, like she knows Buck won’t hesitate to run inside as soon as she gives him a little slack. 

“What’s going o—”

Buck doesn’t let him finish. “Tommy’s in there.”

Bobby shifts to look at the inferno and then turns away, shouting orders to the rest of the team— Buck’s team, his family. He hears Tommy’s name mentioned, hears some faltering, the banging of equipment and then…

And then two figures emerge in the doorway, appearing from the shroud of smoke that was clouding them, and Buck’s pretty sure he does sob this time, relief palpable when it floods through his body. 

Tommy makes it down the stairs, the arm of what he assumes is the husband draped over his shoulder to keep him upright, both of them coughing and spluttering for clean air. The guy looks in bad shape, some of his clothes melted away to reveal red splotches on his skin that Buck knows are burn marks, bad ones, at that. Athena gives him until Tommy manages to hand him off to Hen and Chimney before her hand goes slack around him and then he’s off— he doesn’t stop to think, doesn’t wait, he just lets his feet carry him where they know they should go, pulled into an orbit he never wants to leave. 

Tommy tastes like smoke and ash and soot when he throws himself at him and kisses him. They both stumble a little with the force of it, and two arms wrap tight around Buck’s waist, holding on to him for dear life. The kiss is brief, lasting just a couple of seconds before they have to part so Tommy can cough again. 

“You’re an idiot,” Buck tells him, wiping soot away from Tommy’s mouth, under his eyes, his cheeks, his nose. “You’re so stupid, I can’t believe you did that.”

Tommy opens his mouth to say something, but he’s cut off just as fast. 

“Yeah,” Chimney says from nearby, fixing an oxygen mask over the husband's face. “Couldn’t you have waited like, five minutes for us to get here instead of playing hero?”

He’s teasing, Buck knows he is, but that doesn’t make the urge to bundle Tommy up in his arms and tuck him away from the world, to keep him somewhere safe and warm and fire free, diminish. If anything it intensifies it. 

“You know me,” Tommy says around a cough. “Can’t let you have all the fun.”

Chimney barks out a laugh and turns back to the patient he and Hen are fussing over. 

Red-rimmed blue eyes meet his again, stark in contrast to the dark soot that’s marring his face. “Evan, I’m sorr—”

“Don’t,” Buck cuts him off; if he gets an apology right now he really will break down. “Just… you’re okay?” 

“I’m okay,” he promises. 

Buck lets himself sink into those words, the promise of I’m okay echoing on repeat in his head like a mantra, something to find comfort in.

“Did you mean it?” he asks. “What you said?”

Tommy blinks at him. “Did you doubt it?” 

“Well, no, but I—”

“I meant it, Evan. Every word.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Something blooms in Buck’s chest, like the first crocus after winter blossoming to life after a long, desolate season. It makes him feel warm all over— warm in a way that has nothing to do with the fire raging behind them.

“Evan, I—”

That’s as far as Buck lets him get before he’s leaning in and kissing him again, the taste of ash and soot in his mouth be damned. Tommy still tastes like himself under it all anyway; like a place Buck wants to end up landing for the rest of his life. That and something metallic which— he knows that taste. 

When he leans back, there’s blood in his mouth. Blood that’s dripping from Tommy’s nose. 

“You’re bleeding,” he points out obtusely. 

Tommy’s hand rubs at his nose, smearing the blood across his face and fingers. It isn’t uncommon to get nosebleeds after prolonged exposure to fire but then Tommy starts swaying on his feet and Buck can see how pale he’s looking underneath all that soot and the way his breathing is shallow and short and too damn laboured. None of that is normal. 

“Hen!” he calls, panicked. 

She looks up from the ambulance, takes one look at Tommy, and power walks over to them. 

“I’m fine,” Tommy tries to insist as if he’s not bleeding profusely and struggling to stay on his feet. 

“You don’t look fine.” Hen’s eyes dart around his face, at the blood leaking from his nose and pooling around his mouth, at the way he keeps coughing and drawing in deeper breaths, the way his blinks get longer and longer. “We need to get him on oxygen and— Bobby! Bring me that gurney— Tommy, you should sit. Buck, do you have any idea what was in that fire?” 

Buck shakes his head. “No— no, no idea. We just,” he stops, nodding at the man the others are loading into an ambulance. “His wife said he started it.”

“And she didn’t say how?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“How long was he in there?”

Buck’s heart jackrabbits again. He’s heard her like this before, when she shifts into full medical mode, and what follows is never usually good. “Five or six minutes but—”

“But?” she prompts.

“We were in there before, when the fire started but it wasn’t— we were fine when we came out— there was nothing like this.”

“Guys, I’m fine,” Tommy tries to insist, voice breathless and strained. “I just need to catch my breath.” He takes a step forward, puts one foot in front of the other to shift away from the fire, from them, only he doesn’t make it that far. 

Before he can finish the step, his eyes roll back in his head and his knees buckle and it’s only his instincts and the fact he’s been relentlessly watching Tommy since he stumbled out of that building that has Buck stepping in front of him and catching him before he can hit the ground. Tommy’s still a six foot something jacked firefighter, though, so Buck’s legs end up buckling under the weight of him, sending him to his knees with a limp, unconscious form in his arms. 

Chimney joins their side in a matter of seconds, Bobby at his flank and Buck, he kind of feels like he’s suffocating again. 

Hen listens to his heart, checks the dilation of his eyes, listens to his lungs, and her face shifts. She gives him the look he’s seen her give patients of loved ones in critical condition. “We need to get him to the hospital.” 

Buck looks up at her from the ground. “Why? What’s wrong with him?” 

“I don’t know for sure, Buck, but he inhaled a lot of smoke in there and it's not good. We can't do enough for him here— he needs a hospital.”

Call it small mercies, or an act of grace, or divine intervention, or whatever, but another set of red and white lights flash in their direction. 

It’s only as they're loading him up onto a gurney and into the back of the ambulance, Buck following right behind and clutching at Tommy’s hand, that he realises. 

He never said it back. 

Chapter Text

It’s been thirty-eight hours…

Thirty-eight hours since Tommy told him he loves him, thirty-eight hours since he ran into a burning building, thirty-eight hours since Buck felt the world stop turning under his feet. 

It’s been thirty-eight agonising hours and Tommy’s been unconscious for thirty-seven hours and fifty minutes; he knows because he’s felt every single second of it. Seconds have never passed so slowly before, not even during the driest shifts, not even when he was stuck under that fucking ladder truck being crushed, no brush with death, no terrifying call, nothing, nothing has ever felt like this. There's entire lifetimes in these seconds, ones he’s forced to sit in, to suffer through— if there’s a multiverse out there, he mourns for every version of himself that doesn’t get the privilege of knowing Tommy, of loving him. 

Around hour seven Buck had noticed blood under his nails. Dried flecks of red pooled in all the divots of his skin, clinging to the beds and folds of his fingertips, all of it remnants of proof that a handful of hours ago, Tommy’s heart had still been beating, that he was warm and solid and alive and not… this. By hour eight his nails had been ripped short, the skin around them picked raw and yet, despite it all even now, a whole day later, some of the blood still clings to them. 

He hasn’t moved from this chair next to Tommy’s bed since hour twenty-five. 

“Here,” Maddie says by his side— god, when had she even shown up— brandishing a steaming paper cup out towards him. 

Buck doesn’t reach for it. “I’m not thirsty.”

“I’m not giving you a choice.” She reaches over him and drops the coffee down on the makeshift bedside table he erected when he first settled himself in. One of those triangular sandwich boxes from the canteen drops down next to it a second later. “I haven’t seen you move from this chair in at least eight hours, Buck, and I haven’t seen you eat a thing since you got here.”

He shrugs a little and sinks further down into the chair. He’s still wearing the jacket that Tommy draped over his shoulders after they stumbled out of Miceli’s together; it’s a small comfort, but it’s something. At the very least, it still smells like him, and maybe if he closes his eyes tight enough and pulls it taut across his shoulders, it might feel like the ghost of what he really wants holding him. Either way, Buck hasn’t taken it off since, and he doesn’t plan to. 

“I’m not hungry either.”

Maddie gives him the kind of look she used to throw his way when they were kids and he was refusing to touch the vegetables on his plate. “I’m not leaving until you finish it, so either start chewing or be prepared to get incredibly sick of me.”

As if to prove her point she hooks her ankle around the only other chair in the room— the one he’s been using to form a sad little makeshift bed in the hour or two at a time that he manages to drop off (it leaves much to be desired considering his legs are long and these chairs are small, but still)— and tugs it towards her so she can drop down in it. She’s got her own sandwich-coffee duo and she makes a big show of unwrapping it and taking a bite, groaning around the mouthful like it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted. It’s hospital food, hospital food that he’s eaten dozens of times, too many times, in his handful of years as a firefighter, he knows how shit it really is. 

Still. Despite it all, Buck rolls his eyes at her fondly, something he seems to be doing more and more lately. Every time he does it, he thinks of Tommy, of how it’s such a Tommy move, of how the two of them are picking up on each other's habits and mannerisms; an inevitable consequence of sharing the same space as someone else for so long. He doesn’t hate it either, is the thing. A year or so ago he might have thought it was passive aggressive, hostile, even, but not now it’s been softened by a six-foot-something firefighter with baby blue eyes and a life that Buck wants to spend forever invading. 

He mirrors Maddie and tucks into the sandwich. It tastes like ash and chewing it feels like a chore but he does it anyway, if only for his sister's sake. 

“How’s he doing?” she asks when they’re halfway through their food. 

Buck has to swallow twice around his bite to get it down. “No change. He hasn’t woken up yet.” And that’s not even beginning to touch on the blood pressure, the brain edema, the troubled breathing, the fucking seizure. “They still don’t know what state he’ll be in if—” he pauses, forcing himself to take a breath and swallow down the bile that’s rising in his throat before the sandwich ends up all over the hospital floor “—when he wakes up.”

A hand drops on his arm.

“He’s going to be fine,” Maddie says and it’s so solid, so sure, that Buck almost believes her, almost evacuates the gallows that he’s been haunting for thirty-eight hours. “We’ve seen people come back from worse than this.”

They’ve lost people to less too, but Buck doesn’t think he needs to be the one to voice that, not when they both know the reality of it, not when they’ve lived through it. They’ve seen enough in this field to know that’s not how it works. There’s no fairness in death. It doesn’t care about statistics or equity or feelings, it just carves its hole and it takes indiscriminately. 

“Besides,” Maddie adds when the silence stretches into solemn territory. “This is Tommy we’re talking about here, he’s way too stubborn to leave us all like this.”

Two months ago Tommy had called him the exact same thing in this very hospital. Buck had known him for all of ten minutes total and yet, as soon as he saw him in distress, Tommy had put his hand on his cheek and brushed his thumb over his skin and rushed to reassure him, to tell him that he was way too stubborn to ever accept living in a world where he never remembered an entire year of his life and it worked. The sinking feeling in his stomach had subsided and he hadn’t felt like he was just treading water and waiting for the inevitable whirlpool to suck him down; Tommy had thrown him a life ring and kept him afloat. 

In fact, throughout the last two months whenever he felt like he was on the verge of drowning, Tommy had been there with an offering, a hand to pull him up and, yeah, it wasn’t always easy, sometimes it felt like the hardest fucking thing in the world, but he was still there, he still tried, and now that their roles are reversed, now that Tommy needs him, there’s nothing he can do. He doesn’t have a life raft, he can’t offer his hand to a man that can’t reach out and take it, all he can do is sit by his side and hope and pray.

Bobby had joined him at one point with his prayer book and rosary and Buck had listened to him read from it the whole time. After he left, he even dared to whisper a few pleas of his own. If there is a God somewhere out there, maybe they’ll exchange mercy for prayers from a man who’s never prayed for anything before— he’s never felt drawn to religion, but he’ll try anything as long as it means he gets Tommy back, and he needs him back. There's not a world out there where he’ll accept losing him, not again, not like this. He never even got to tell him, Tommy still doesn’t know, he never said it back…

“You know,” Buck starts, cutting the spiral off before it can start its descent. If he thinks about that too much he really will start bawling. Instead he takes a sip of his coffee and uses it to mask the way he has to choke back the rapidly forming lump in his throat. It’s cold and stale and the grimace he makes does a decent enough job of hiding his almost-descent. 

He’s been sitting on this for almost two days now, replaying the three words over and over in his head like a mantra or his own version of a prayer to keep him going and he needs to get it out. He needs to talk about it before he vibrates out of his skin or his tongue turns to lead in his mouth or something ridiculous. Keeping it bottled up makes him feel like his skin is itching, like there’s a thrumming under it, in his veins. Buck knows himself well enough to know that he doesn’t do repression, not really, not when he wants to talk about something— and he wants to talk about this, he does, more than anything, and there’s nobody he would trust with it more than his big sister. It's an easy choice. 

“Before he ran into that fire, Tommy told me he loved me.” 

Maddie chokes around her own mouthful of coffee and nearly ends up wearing half of it down her blouse. “He did what?”

“Yeah. He kissed me and then he said it.” His hand tightens around something in his pocket— in Tommy’s pocket because he’s still wearing his fucking hoodie— but he grinds down the urge to bring that part up. Not yet, anyway. Not so soon.

“And what did you say?”

Ah. There’s that guilt again. “I didn’t say anything.”

She blinks at him like he’s grown a second head in the span of three seconds. “You didn’t say anything back?” 

“I didn’t have the time!” It feels like a weak excuse even as he says it, even as the guilt sinks into his marrow, but it’s the truth. “After he said it he just— he ran into a burning building, Maddie, and everything went haywire! It caught me off guard and when he came out I was just so relieved that he was alive that I didn’t have the chance to say it back before he passed out.”

Maddie hums a soft, understanding noise in the back of her throat. “And are you?”

“Am I what?”

“In love with him?”

A part of him doesn’t want to answer. A part of him wants the first time he admits it and says it out loud to be for Tommy and Tommy only. But the other part of him, the desperate little kid in him that’s always going to want to run to his big sister when he needs her help, wants to say it. 

“I think I’ve been in love with him for much longer than I realise.”

He thought it would be scarier than this; admitting how stupidly in love with Tommy he is and has been and always will be, but it isn’t. It’s not a forest fire, wild and out of control, it’s more like candle wax melting, slow and inevitable and warm. It’s safe. It’s easy. 

“I don’t know how long exactly,” Buck continues. “Maybe since before we broke up. I don’t think I let myself really think about it at the time, you know? Things were already kind of extreme—” in a bake half of downtown Los Angeles out of flour to try and cope with it all kind of way; suddenly Hen’s skepticism from a few weeks ago about him baking again makes a lot more sense, “—I think if I let myself realise that I was in love with him back then, it would have been worse. A lot worse.” 

“You did send my husband home with no less than three loaves after every shift. Jee went through a phase of insisting the only thing she’d eat for breakfast was your banana loaf so thank you for that,” Maddie says, knocking her foot against his ankle playfully. 

Buck exhales a breathy laugh from between his lips at her teasing. It doesn’t feel chastising, not really, it’s fond and playful and a little bit sympathetic. Coming from Maddie, like most things, it just feels warm. 

“Things with Tommy have just felt so right for so long. I didn’t question it when I looked at him and thought I want to spend the rest of my life like this, it was all just easy. I didn’t— I don’t feel like I have to force it with him,” he explains, coupling it with a tiny shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t know, I can’t really put it into words. When I’m around him I just feel safe and kind of terrified because it’s like…” There’s a brief pause whilst he grapples around for the right words. “It’s like I’ve given my heart to him and now it’s walking around outside my body and it’s this fragile little thing that he carries around everywhere, it’s not mine anymore, I can’t protect it, and it would be so easy to break it but I trust him not to.” 

The smile Maddie gives him is a soft little thing. “Yeah. That sounds like love,” she says and it’s so gratifying to hear coming from her considering the whole life she’s built for herself. “When did you start to feel like that?” 

It’s not something that he’s even sure of himself; Tommy and safety have just always seemed to come hand in hand. He felt safe from the first time they kissed in his loft, from the first press of Tommy’s fingers against his jaw, the first press of lips, and maybe even before that, too. He felt safe enough to lay himself out, to metaphorically bare his neck and expose all the vulnerable parts of him in that conversation before their kiss, he felt safe enough to call and ask for a tour of harbor station even if he couldn’t quite figure out why at the time. These last two months even when he couldn’t remember him, that feeling stayed. He’s always felt safe with Tommy, maybe he always will. 

“He’s always made me feel safe, but the rest of it— if I had to put a timeframe on it, I think maybe when Josh pointed it out to me.” Right before their breakup, ironically enough. “He asked if I could see a future with Tommy and I never really wanted to see it any other way, you know? In every version of my life that I pictured, he was always there.”

The look on his sister's face flickers from soft, to puzzled, to intrigued, to elated when she realises that oh! The only other person who could have told him about that conversation is her (and, potentially Josh, but she’s got best friend privileges and he definitely would have told her if he mentioned it to Buck). She leans forward in her chair, brown eyes wide and her smile threatening to grow even wider. 

“You remember?” 

Buck nods but it feels hollow. He loves his sister, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her, but right now she’s not the person he wants to hear asking that. No, the person he wants to hear it from is currently lying next to him, unconscious and hooked up to more machines than most people see in their lifetime. The only small mercy to all of it is the steady beep beep beep of the ECG machine and the small rise and fall of Tommy’s chest that Buck hasn’t stopped looking at since he parked himself in this chair. 

“Some things,” he confirms. “More and more as time goes on. There’s still some fog, but things are clearer.”

Maddie looks like she kind of wants to vibrate out of her skin with joy. Buck can’t quite share her enthusiasm. “How long have you been remembering things for?”

Fuck, if that isn’t the million dollar question. 

There’s some sick, twisted kind of irony in the fact that he’s only started properly remembering everything when he’s come so close to losing it. He’s been fighting for scraps for weeks, sinking his teeth into any tidbit of information about Tommy, about him and Tommy together, that managed to slip through the cracks, and clutching at it, knuckles white in a vice-grip, like a child that’s terrified their favourite toy’s going to be taken from them. It’s not fair that things have started trickling back now when Tommy’s unconscious and he can’t even smile and kiss him for it the way he knows he would. 

“Almost two days,” Buck answers simply, flatly. If he sits with those thoughts any longer, it really will break him. 

Maddie’s eyes flicker to where Tommy’s laying on the bed, his chest rising and falling with every breath he takes. “Oh…”

“Yeah.”

“Since he…” 

She doesn’t need to finish for Buck to know what she’s getting at. “Yeah.” 

“Fuck.”

That’s almost enough to make him laugh out loud for the first time in near enough two days. 

Almost. 

But not quite. 

“It’s not perfect,” he adds. “There’s still gaps, things missing, half-memories, but it’s getting better.”

There’s more he wants to say, there’s so much more— the pocket of Tommy’s hoodie suddenly feels like it weighs a ton— and if there’s anybody in the entire world he can talk to about this, anybody who might get it, get him, in a way that nobody else ever could, it’s Maddie. 

So he bites the damn bullet between his teeth and goes for it. 

“There’s something he wanted to ask me too, you know, before he ran into that building, and—” 

The door to the room swings open and Buck slams himself shut like a clam that’s just been poked at. 

“Hey,” Chimney says when he walks in, stopping by his wife to drop a comforting hand on her shoulder. He doesn’t seem to notice the way Buck’s just curled in on himself like some Darwinistic form of self-preservation. “Sorry I’m late, traffic’s a nightmare.” 

Maddie puts her hand over his, but Buck can feel the weight of her gaze boring into him. It’s obvious she wants to push, to make him uncurl from around himself and coax him into talking like he’s obviously desperate to, but with the weight of another person in the room it’s not something that she wants to force him into. 

“Hey, would you mind sitting with him for a bit?” she asks her husband, cocking her head in Tommy’s direction. “Buck hasn’t left this room in at least twelve hours.”

Panic grips him, tight and bruising. What if— fuck, what if he steps out and Tommy wakes up and thinks he isn’t here? What if he thinks Buck didn’t want to stay? The thought is enough to make his stomach churn. 

“No, Maddie—” 

“We’ll just go down the hall,” she offers as a compromise. “Chim will come and get us if anything changes, right?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Chimney promises and as much as Buck trusts him, as much as he knows that if Tommy’s breathing so much as stutters in a worrying way, Chimney will call for him in a heartbeat, he’s still reluctant to leave. 

This is Tommy. 

Tommy who’s been with him through everything. Tommy who’s taken him to his appointments, who’s put up with his outbursts, his moodswings, his misery, Tommy who also lost the person that he loves— that he loves, fuck— not quite in the same way (arguably in a worse kind of way) but still never let that get in the way of being there for him. Tommy who put his own feelings aside most of the time so he didn’t add to the weight that was already settled heavy on Buck’s shoulders, Tommy who’s sacrificed and sacrificed and hasn’t stopped sacrificing for two months. 

Buck can’t just leave him like this. 

“Just down the hall,” Maddie says again. She gets up from her chair and holds her hand out to him, fingers waggling in encouragement. “Five minutes.”

He doesn’t want to, he really, really doesn’t. But, on the other hand, he does want to talk about the thing that’s been burning a hole in his pocket for two days. 

Tentatively, Buck holds his hand out and lets Maddie thread their fingers together. 

“Five minutes,” he reiterates, turning towards Chimney when he gets to his feet to add a quick “if anything changes—” 

“—I’ll come and get you, Buck. I promise.” 

The last thing he sees before he lets himself be tugged out of the room is Chimney slipping into the seat he just vacated. 

That’s good, that’s something. 

At least Tommy will have someone next to him who cares, someone who’ll talk to him about movies and pop culture and references that Buck still doesn’t quite understand no matter how many times Tommy tries to teach him. When he was in his coma after the lightning strike he had a carousel of people rotating in and out and if, god forbid, Tommy’s going through anything like that, at least he’ll know people are there, that he’s not alone.

Maddie doesn’t let go of his hand the entire time they’re walking. She leads him down the corridor, past closed doors and nurses who don’t look up from the coffees they’re chugging or the charts they’re flipping through to bother giving them the time of day, and only stops once they’re at the end of the hall. The door to Tommy’s room is still visible from where they’re standing, albeit much smaller than before. 

“You look like you want to tell me something,” she hums, gentle and unhurried. It’s both a blessing and a curse to be so understood by her. 

“I do.” His eyes keep darting over to the door like he expects Chimney’s head to poke out at any second and call him back over. 

“Is it about Tommy?” 

He nods. 

“And about you?” 

He nods again. 

“About the two of you together?” 

He nods once more and feels a little stupid for it; it’s like he’s some kind of bobblehead stuck on a truck driver's dashboard and they’re cruising over a bumpy road. 

“You already told me you’re in love with him, Buck,” Maddie says when she picks up on his hesitancy, all coltish and playful like she’s trying to reassure him that it’s alright, that he can tell her anything. “What else could there be?” 

Buck doesn’t meet her eyes. 

He’s not scared of this, not exactly, but once he’s told somebody else, it’s no longer just this thing between him and Tommy. It’ll be out. The ship will have sailed and there’ll be no turning back to port, the bell can’t be unrung once he’s rung it. 

“Hey,” she says, dropping a hand on his arm and squeezing it. “Tell me.” 

Her voice is soft and light, much like the way it used to be when they were kids and he managed to land himself in some kind of trouble again and she was the only one in his corner, the only one who would take his side. Maybe that’s what makes him cave. Or maybe it’s the way he doesn’t feel like he’s going to shake out of his skin at the prospect of telling her. Hell, maybe it’s because it feels like there’s a hole burning in the pocket of Tommy’s hoodie right through to his skin. 

Either way, he caves. 

Buck curls his hand around the solid box, the same box he’s been holding onto like a lifeline since he first felt it in Tommy’s pocket, and brings it out. It’s a sleek little thing, kind of rough around the edges but smooth enough that he’s yet to get a splinter or any kind of nick from it and he’s been holding onto it a lot, if there were any chance of a splinter, it would have happened by now. It’s exactly what makes him think that Tommy took the time to carve it out himself, to give it that extra hint of meaning, and Buck knows how much of a romantic he is at heart— he’s got the hours of romcom’s they’ve sat through together and his very own specially crafted criminal sub-plot involving breaking and entering just so Tommy could take him to the same spot they had their first date, to prove it.

“Is that…?” Maddie trails off, wide, disbelieving eyes flickering between the box in Buck’s hand and his face.

“I don’t know,” he admits with a small shrug of his shoulders. “I haven’t opened it.” 

“Holy shit.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Holy shit, Buck!” she whisper-hisses, tugging him a little further down the hall when a nurse at a nearby station shoots them a pointed look. “Where did you find that?” 

“He had it on our date,” Buck recalls. 

It’s a nice memory, a good one, until he remembers the smell of smoke and the heat of fire. 

“He said there was something he wanted to ask me, something important, and he wanted it to be perfect but the fire broke out before he could ask and then well,” he pauses and waves his hand, gesturing around them, “all this happened. He put his jacket on me when we were outside and I was shivering, I think he forgot it was in there.” 

“And you think it’s…?”

“I don’t know, Maddie.”

To her credit, Maddie doesn’t push again. Maybe it’s something to do with the cocktail of bewilderment and confusion and disbelief that’s probably written all over his face, maybe it’s because she knows him better than he knows himself some days, either way, she gives him the time he needs to settle his thoughts. 

“I mean, why now?” he settles on. It’s the question that’s been rattling around in his head for days. “If it is that, why now? What’s different? What— what changed to make him want to ask me that?”

They don’t even live together, not officially. These last two months… they never would have happened, he wouldn’t be sharing Tommy’s bed, his space, his home, if he wasn’t a fucking amnesiac. The leap just feels— jarring. He can’t make himself understand it. 

“Why does something have to have changed?”

“It doesn’t— I mean— not really— I just—”

Buck makes himself stop when he starts stumbling over his words. This isn’t a stumbling kind of conversation, he wants to say things right, and Maddie gives him the space and time to get his head on right. 

“It’s confusing. You know, a few weeks ago we had an argument because he thought this was his fault?” he tells her around a laugh that has no humor in it. “My amnesia.” 

Maddie cocks an eyebrow at the change in conversation. “Why would he think that?” 

“Because we had a fight just before the shift I got hurt on. I couldn’t remember it before, but I do now.” 

It had been so fucking trivial too, god. 

The day of Bobby’s barbecue, Tommy had made it seem like it was earth-shattering, like their entire relationship was weighed in the balance and found wanting all over one stupid fight. Even calling it a fight feels generous, it was more like a spat, and it didn’t even last an entire day, yet Tommy spent weeks wrapped up in his own guilt until he was drowning under the weight of it. 

“I mentioned my lease was closing soon, and I know that’s the reason we broke up last time, because I moved too fast and pushed for things that he wasn’t ready for and he got spooked,” Buck tells her. The box in his palm feels heavier than it had before. “I wasn’t trying to pressure him into anything, I just wanted to know where we stood, you know? If we were headed in a good direction. But he got kind of closed off and said we’d talk about it later and I think I just… I don’t know, boiled over. I told him it’s always later with him and that we have to talk about these things and we argued back and forth until I left for my shift and—”

“—and then you got hurt at work and he thought it was because of the fight?” she finishes for him. “Like you were still thinking about it and it distracted you?”

“Yeah, exactly.” 

Maddie’s brows furrow like she’s thinking about something, like she’s turning everything he told her over in her head a few times. “I think I get it,” she finally acquiesces. “I’d feel the same as him if something happened to Chim on shift after we had a fight. That’s just love, you know?” 

Tommy and love seem to go together so easily now that he’s said it out loud, now that the dam’s broken and it’s out and he’s allowed to say it. It’s like a fact, like a fundamental principle of the universe; the sun rises, the sun sets, he’s in love with Tommy. 

“I get that,” he says, thumb brushing over the box like it’s his one source of comfort. “But to jump to this from that fight we had? That feels… it feels huge, Maddie, and I’m not saying it is that, maybe I’m just reading too much into a stupid box, but… I don’t know, I just don’t know. I can’t make sense of it.”

His sister looks at him with the ghost of a smile on her face and a look in her eyes that he can’t quite decipher. There's something brewing in her; excitement, maybe? Or giddiness. It’s like she’s happy for him, but trying to temper those feelings down for his sake. “Maybe he realised that he couldn’t live without you, that he didn’t want to live without you. Maybe that’s why he chose now.”

The thought has his stomach fluttering again— there has to be enough butterflies in him to fill the fucking pavilion in downtown LA by now— in the same way he’s gotten so used to it doing around Tommy. 

“And what if it is?” Maddie asks without hesitation. God, she looks like she’s about to start bouncing on her feet in excitement on his behalf. “You know, that? Would you say yes?”

It’s everything he’s ever wanted, and not just that, it’s everything he’s ever wanted with Tommy, the person he’s wanted it with. It’s the kind of life he’s had a taste of these last two months, the kind of life he’s, honestly, a little addicted to now. 

He wants to wake up to a stifling, heavy arm slung over his waist every morning, wants to be given kisses that are slightly gross because they’re both yet to brush their teeth, he wants Tommy’s grumbled little ‘g’morning, Evan’ whispered against his neck after he huddles back down for five more minutes of sleep because if there’s one thing Tommy isn’t, it’s a morning person. He even wants the gross mornings, the ones where he complains about their breath and Tommy rolls on top of him half-asleep, all grumbly and heavy and then, when he’s least expecting it, exhales the nastiest, most disgusting puff of morning breath right into his face that he can’t escape from. He wants the laughter that follows it, the faux pouting he adorns until Tommy kisses him sweetly in apology and gets up to make them both breakfast. 

It’s the life he’s had and the life he wants to keep. 

“Okay,” she continues when he doesn’t answer, ripping him away from the fantasy of that being his forever life. “You don’t need to answer that right now but just… tell me this. If you woke up tomorrow and, god forbid, you were set back two months and you had to go through all of this again— the amnesia, the concussion, all the worst parts of it— would you do it? If you had a choice between doing it again, or walking away, would you put yourself through all of this a second time?”

“Yeah,” Buck says simply, easily. It’s the easiest fucking question of his life, there’s no Hell he wouldn’t crawl through as long as Tommy was waiting for him on the other side. “I mean, I got to know how it feels to fall in love with him all over again, if that’s not some kind of proof of something then I don’t know what is. Who else can say that? That they fell in love with the same man twice?”

“I think you’ve found your answer,” Maddie says.

Before he can even begin to ponder what that might mean for him, they’re interrupted. Story of his fucking life, apparently. 

“Buck!” a gruff voice calls from down the hall. Every nurse in the corridor turns to glower in its direction, displeasure obvious on their faces, but Chimney isn’t deterred even as he calls for him again. “Buck! He’s awake!” 

Buck doesn’t think he’s ever moved so fast in his damn life. He fumbles the box back into his pocket and starts moving, his feet carrying him on autopilot before his brain has the chance to catch up and, even when it does, the only thing he can hear is he’s awake he’s awake he’s awake on repeat like a stereo looping the most relieving news of his fucking life. 

There can’t be more than half a dozen doors between him and Tommy but it feels like a marathon, like it’s never going to end no matter how fast or far his feet carry him. But it does, of course it does, and then he’s standing in the doorway to Tommy’s room and— and he’s awake. Near enough forty hours of what Buck can only liken to Hell, and now he’s awake, now he’s sitting up with a soft little smile on his face, baby blue eyes finding him in the light of the room.

“Hey, Evan,” Tommy says when he sees him. His voice is scratchy from disuse and a little breathy, like he’s audibly sighing in relief at the sight of him walking through that door— as if Buck would be anywhere else in the goddamn universe. 

Buck doesn’t let him get any further, he doesn’t even let him so much as think another thought before he’s barrelling right over to the bed. He moves so fast that his shins hit the metal frame with a dull, audible thud but he doesn’t care, there’s nothing else he could possibly care about right now, the only thing he can think is he’s awake! and kisshimkisshimkisshim!

So he does. 

There are at least four other people in the room— he doesn’t care enough to stop and ponder when they all got here— including his sister but it’s not enough to stop him; there could be a congregation of a thousand, an audience gathered to watch their every move, and he wouldn’t spare them a second thought. 

When they kiss, Buck feels himself lighten. It’s like the weight he’s been carrying around on his shoulders for the last two days is lifted off, like Tommy’s mitigated it and grabbed the burden he’s been bearing so they can shoulder it together and ease it down. Under him, Tommy’s warm and solid and kissing him back but most of all, above everything else, he’s alive. 

Beyond the kiss Buck can hear a throat or two clearing, and the steady stream of beeps emanating from the ECG machine speeding up into a rapid set of beepbeepbeepbeepbeep’s that make him feel a little bit giddy. He’s felt Tommy’s heart rabbiting against him before when they’ve kissed, when they’ve had sex, when they were just spooning and talking about nothing with their hands linked together and no space between them, but it’s different to hear it like this, so clear and irrefutable. 

They part, but Buck refuses to go far. He nudges his nose against Tommy’s and rests their foreheads together like it’s the only thing anchoring him in the most violent of storms. 

“I missed you too,” Tommy hums at him in his usual blithe tone as if he isn’t hooked up to more machines than he can count on one hand. 

“Don’t,” Buck exhales, breath warm in the small space that they’re sharing. “I’m so mad at you, I’m gonna yell at you so bad later.”

“I can’t wait.” 

Tommy tilts his head a little, just enough to slot their lips together again and Buck whimpers into it, a tiny little choked off sound that gets cut off in the back of his throat. It’s a sound that has Tommy reaching out to grapple around the bed for his hand and clutching at it for dear life when he finds it. 

A throat clears from behind them again, and then another, and another, and Buck only dislodges himself from their embrace for fear of their poor wind pipes. He doesn’t make it far at all, though, because Tommy won’t let go of his hand and the one time he does try to move, his grip goes tight and Buck abandons that idea pretty much immediately. 

“Oh, hey guys,” Tommy quips when he comes back to himself and remembers that they’re not alone. 

There’s a bout of laughter that rings through the room and that’s seemingly all it takes for the dam to break, for their friends to bridge the awkward little silence that had descended and scurry on up to Tommy’s bedside with playful jabs and well wishes of relief. Tommy answers each of them with a witty retort of his own and it’s just— it’s so much like the Tommy he knew in the first few months of their relationship; the Tommy that had acted all cool and confident, that had walked around with an air of bravado and invincibility. It’s so much of the version of Tommy that he thinks the world expects him to be, and seeing him retreat into that performance makes Buck want to curl up around him and hiss at everybody who gets too close like some sort of feral cat that’s imprinted on him. 

Throughout it all, though, Tommy doesn’t let go of his hand. Their fingers stay laced together like an anchor point, like Buck is the one thing keeping him going, like if he lets go of him then he’ll float away or start drowning. 

Buck’s spent so long thinking about how Tommy was the thing that kept him afloat, kept him from drowning in his own stormclouds, from free-floating down the Styx, that he never really stopped and let himself think that maybe, all along, he’s been the same thing for him, like maybe that’s just what love is; keeping each other afloat. Because right here, with Tommy’s hand gripping his like he’s afraid he’s about to slip away, there isn’t a damn thing Buck wouldn’t do to keep him up, to stop him from slipping into himself and getting lost there. 

It takes about half an hour of conversation— throughout it all, it’s not lost on him how there’s so much life in a room that just an hour ago felt like it was a ghost town— and several checkups from nurses and doctors before Buck reaches his limit; he can tell Tommy’s about to start flagging and they still have to talk, damn it. Desperately, he catches Maddie’s gaze when it drifts to him and shoots her a pleading look. She picks it up perfectly— he’s going to bake her so many loaves. She’s never going to want for loaf again. 

“We should probably let you get some rest, Tommy,” she says. She puts a hand on his calf and gives it a simple squeeze before she starts shuffling towards the door.

Chimney follows in her wake with his own departing wave and the others start filing out too until they’re finally, finally alone. Buck doesn’t miss the way Tommy’s shoulders slump now that he doesn’t have to carry the weight of his performance, nor the way he eases himself back against the pillows like the strings he’s been holding himself up by have finally frayed and snapped now that they’re alone. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks, thumb rubbing across Tommy’s knuckles where the two of them are still holding hands. 

“I’m fin—”

Buck cuts him off before he can think about getting that far. “Before you answer that, remember that it’s me you’re talking to.” 

“I’ve been better,” Tommy finally concedes with a wave of his hand. “But I’ve also been worse, so, at least there’s that.” He takes a second to look at Buck, to really look at him, at the inevitable dark circles under his eyes, the way his curls are all mussed and defying gravity with the way they’re sticking up. He looks like shit, but Tommy’s too polite and sweet to say that out loud so it’s not a shock when he chooses to settle on, “how long was I out?” 

“Almost two days,” Buck answers. He should know, he’s counted every second of them. 

“Shit.” 

“Yeah.” 

“What happened?”

It’s enough to give Buck pause and, for a brief second, he’s confronted with the possibility that Tommy doesn’t remember. Wouldn’t that just be their luck; Buck starts remembering, and Tommy forgets, like a fucking ourobours of suffering. 

His face must be going through at least four of the seven stages of grief because when Tommy sees it, he stumbles over himself in an attempt to reassure him. “No, no I didn’t mean it like that,” he says, desperate. “I mean— I remember the fire. I still can’t figure out why that would’ve knocked me on my ass for two whole days, though.” 

“Hydrogen cyanide poisoning," Buck tells him matter-of-factly. It’s one of the more common hazards of the job, even more so when someone runs into a blaze without their standard breathing gear, but he gets the sense that the last thing Tommy needs right now is a lecture. “And that idiot used just about anything he could get his hands on to try and burn the place down. You’re lucky you weren’t in there any longer.” 

“And his wife?” Tommy asks because he’s a selfless, selfless idiot who does stupid things like run into burning buildings just so two kids don’t have to grow up without a father and Buck loves him. He loves him in spite of it, for it, because of it.

“Stable, last I heard, same with the kids. Bobby said she tried to come by when you were out of it, probably to try and thank you or something,” he explains. “He didn’t think it was a good idea to let her in here with me.” 

Tommy perks up, but there’s still something haunting his eyes. It’s like he can’t quite believe he’s important enough to anybody to have them stick around for him. “You were here the whole time?” 

Buck gives him a look. “Where else would I be?” 

They lapse into a short silence after that. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s a world away from the easiness of silences they’ve fallen into in the past. There’s so much unspoken hanging between them, so much that could easily remain unspoken, the two of them just dancing around what they both know and what they’re desperate to talk about. It would be easy; Tommy could claim plausible deniability around the whole thing and Buck would never have to bring it up— they could just fall back into the perfect, impossible thing that they are. 

But that’s not what he wants. He doesn’t want easy, not anymore, not with Tommy. 

“We should talk,” Buck settles on.

Tommy gives him a half-cocked smile. It's the same smile he uses when he’s trying to hide around an air of bravado, much like the one he put up earlier. “Is this the part where you yell at me?” 

“Oh, trust me. I’m banking that for later.” 

The smile he gets in return is softer and more genuine and Buck has to swallow around the lump that’s rapidly forming in his throat when it hits him just how close he could have come to never seeing it again, to losing it forever. That would have been the thing that undone him completely, it would have destroyed him.  

“Since you were admitted I’ve been remembering things,” he tells him, short and sweet and straight to the point. “About us, and, I mean, it’s not perfect, there’s still gaps, but things keep coming back to me.” 

The way Tommy’s smile stretches so wide across his face could rival the fucking sun. It’s so bright and warm and all his, he doesn’t even have to risk the flight or face the fall for this sun— Icarus eat your damn heart out. 

“Yeah?” Tommy beams, dimples and all. 

And Buck is powerless to do anything but beam right back at him. “Yeah.” 

“The good parts, I hope.” 

He gives him a little shrug. “Good and bad. More good than bad, but it’s always good with you so that makes it easier.” It feels so sappy and mushy to say but Tommy loves him, sap and all, so he’s allowed to be. 

“You know,” Tommy hums, sardonic. “If I knew all I had to do was almost die for you to get your memories back, I’d have saved us both some time and done it weeks ago.”

It’s a joke, a desperate attempt at finding some sort of levity in everything they’ve been through, but it’s also teetering the line between hyperbole and seriousness. Buck knows him well enough to know that he’s leaning much more in the direction of seriousness and it makes him feel sick. 

“Too soon, Tommy.” 

“I’m serious, Evan!” he insists. “Maybe they’d put me on one of those weird ads…”

“Tommy—”

“—you know the ones that are plastered all over sketchy websites like ‘this man cured amnesia with one simple trick! Doctors hate him!’”

It would be normally be amusing, it’s the kind of quip from him that would typically make Buck laugh, but he’s been a bundle of nerves for two days and now Tommy’s here, he’s awake and in front of him and Buck feels like he might start bursting at the seams with how much he wants to say everything to him. 

Later, he’ll chalk that up as the reason why he ends up blurting out what he says before his brain can catch up with him.

“Can you be serious for a minute and let me finish telling you that I’m in love with you?”  

Up on the wall, the clock ticks over. There’s a rush of footsteps scurrying past outside the door. The heart monitor beeps and beeps and beeps, each one speeding up and coming more rapidly than the last. 

It’s all proof that there’s still life outside of their room and yet, inside it, the whole world may as well have just stopped turning. It’s quiet, too quiet, and just as Buck’s about to start kicking himself for being so careless and reckles with his words, for not fucking thinking before he speaks for once in his life, the silence is broken.   

“You’re what?” Tommy exhales like he can’t quite believe what he just heard. 

Buck never wants to hear him sound like that again, not about this. “I’m in love with you.” 

The heart monitor Tommy’s hooked up to kicks up again. “You are?” 

“I am.” 

“You don’t have to say it just because I said it, you know?” There’s a pause, two heartbeats of silence before Tommy barrels onwards. “I mean, I know I said it. I remember saying it, and I meant it, I mean it. But you don’t have to— I mean, you don’t— you’re not obligated to say it back just because I did. I love you, Evan, I do, but you don’t—” 

“—Tommy, breathe.” 

Buck cuts him off before he can start to spiral any deeper. He’s struck with the urge to hunt down anybody who’s ever made Tommy feel like he’s less than he is, who’s ever made him believe that he deserves less, and made him content enough to settle for it. He deserves to be loved loudly— Buck wants to love him loudly. 

“I’m not just saying it. I wouldn’t do that to you.” 

“I know that, Evan, trust me, I do. That’s not who you are. It’s just…”

“Just what?” 

The sigh Tommy heaves is bone-deep. “I don’t deserve you,” he says and god, Buck wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he gets it; but that’s probably not a solid idea to do to someone who’s been unconscious for almost forty-eight hours. “I don’t know what I did to get this. Maybe I was really good in a past life but, I mean you’re so— you’re so funny and kind and sweet and so hot. I don’t know how I ended up getting this lucky and sometimes I look at you and think you could do so much better than me, and one day you’ll wake up and realise that and I’ll lose you and I don’t know if I can do that again.” 

“Did I not just have that chance?” Buck poses, desperate. “Two months ago I woke up in a world where I had no idea who you were. Don’t you think if that day was ever going to come, it would have been then?” He can see the cogs shifting in Tommy’s head, the way he’s turning that thought over. “But it didn’t. Instead I just— Tommy, I fell in love with you again.”

“It’s just hard to believe that it’s me, you know?” Tommy says, voice soft and vulnerable in the way it only ever seems to get when it’s just the two of them. “You have so many people who love you, so many people who you love, you’re so full of it, you’ve got so much to give, and I— Evan, I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve it. It's hard to believe that it’s me, you know? That I’m the one you chose.” 

“Of course it’s you, there’s not a world where it wouldn’t be— it was always, inevitably, you. You’re the surest decision I’ve ever had to make.”

“I just… don’t want to be something you regret five or ten years down the line.”

“Tommy, I love you,” Buck says, watching the way his boyfriend's face twists into an expression he’s never seen him wear before. “Loving you isn’t a chore, it’s a choice, one I want to keep making for the rest of my life. I fell in love with you twice and I’d do it a third time if I had to.”

Tommy snorts out a pretty undignified laugh, his face softening a little. “Let’s not make a habit out of this.” 

Buck holds a hand over his heart in faux indignation. “You mean you don’t want me to go and get amnesia again just so I can prove that I’ll still fall in love with you every single time?” 

A soft dusting of pink creeps its way onto Tommy’s cheeks and he ducks his head like he’s trying to hide his smile, like it makes him shy. Tommy doesn’t get bashful much, he’s so content to keep his bravado up around everybody else, to project an aura of the cool, confident man he wants people to think he is and at first, Buck had fallen for it too. He’s so good at it, at projecting, until someone starts to poke at a crack and then all that bravado falls away, crumbling like it was just waiting for someone to pull on it and test its limits. But if this is the reaction he’s going to get every time he tells Tommy he loves him… he could get used to it. 

“No, I don’t think we need to go that far,” Tommy hums, looking up at Buck through his lashes. “And I love you too.” 

The sound of it still makes his heart race in his chest like he’s just run a marathon or jumped out of a plane in the best kind of way. Still, though, the box in his pocket weighs heavy. He must move or shift or inadvertently hug the hoodie a little tighter around himself or something because Tommy’s eyes drop to it and light up in recognition. 

“Is that my hoodie?” he asks.

“Oh!” Buck doesn’t quite yelp, but it’s a pretty close thing. It’s so, so close to the box in his pocket, the thing he’s craving an answer for, that his heart starts jackrabbiting. “Yeah. I’ve been wearing it since,” he waves a hand at Tommy, gesturing absently at him, “this. It was comforting, I guess? It doesn’t really smell like you anymore, though.” 

Tommy looks at him like he’s the most precious thing in the world, like he wants to keep him forever. “I’d give you my hospital gown, but I don’t think you’ll want it.” 

“You don’t think I can pull it off?”

“That’s not what I said!”

It’s so easy for them to slip into their typical back-and-forth despite the fact that they’re in the hospital again. It always has been. Everything about the two of them seems to come so effortlessly, so inevitably, like the first leaf falling at the end of summer. It’s a slow descent into something warm.

It’s the push he needs to finally bring it up. 

“Can I ask you something?” It’s less of a question and more of a revelation, admittedly, but the sentiment’s the same. 

“Is it for my hospital gown? Because you definitely have the legs for it, but I think the hospital might have a policy on patient nudity—”

“Tommy,” Buck says, voice low and serious and purposeful. 

His face shifts when he realises that Buck’s being serious, that they’ve stepped away from the teasing, from the flirting and the banter into something more. “Yeah, of course you can,” he tells him, coupling it with a nod. “Anything, Evan.”

Tommy looks at him and Tommy loves him and Buck already knows his answer. No matter what shit may come their way; amnesia, pointless fights, the terrifying feeling of his heart walking around outside of his body, it’s all worth it. He has his answer. 

“When you put your jacket on me…” he trails off, heart racing; he’s so fucking glad he’s not the one hooked up to the heart monitor, it would undoubtedly be going crazy by now. He sucks in a breath or two before he pulls the box out of his pocket, presenting it for the second time in less than an hour. “I think you forgot this was in there.” 

All the color drains from Tommy’s face. He goes so pale so fast that Buck’s kind of glad they’re already sitting in the hospital together. On his left, the heart monitor picks up. 

“Evan—” 

Buck shakes his head. “I haven’t opened it. I didn’t want to take whatever it is you wanted to ask me away from you.”

“Evan—” 

“If you even have something to ask me, I mean, I’m not assuming, or anything.”

“Evan—”

“You know, I just thought—”

“Evan!” Tommy finally insists, cutting him off mid-spiral. He ducks his head a little like he’s trying to find his eyes and well, Buck’s not cruel, so he lifts them, blue eyes finding bluer ones. “It’s not what you think.” 

“I don’t care. I want a life with you, Tommy. I want this life with you. So whatever’s in here,” Buck glances down at the box in his hand, “the answer’s yes. How could it not be?”

“Evan,” he says again. He sounds about as choked up as Buck feels. “Open it.” 

There’s a part of him, however small it may be, that doesn’t want to open it, a part of him that’s screaming at him that this is Pandora’s box and once it’s open, they can’t go back to how they were, that opening it comes with an irreversible change that they won’t be able to step back from. But the other part of him, the part of him that’s desperate to build a life with Tommy is bigger, louder, and smothers that niggling feeling of doubt right out of his head. 

He thumbs the top of the box open with shaking hands and— oh! 

That’s not what he was expecting. 

There’s no ring in there, no little band of silver or gold like he thought, no, instead there’s a key and it makes so much sense and no sense at all that Buck kind of thinks he might start crying about it. 

“In my defense,” Tommy pipes up from where he’s leaning back against an exorbitant amount of shitty hospital pillows, kind of like he thinks if he sinks into them deep enough, they’ll swallow him whole. “I had this planned before the whole amnesia thing.” 

Which means— fucking hell, that means he’s had it planned since before their fight. 

“But you said…” 

“I remember what I said, Evan, trust me. There isn’t a day in the last two months where I haven’t thought about what I said.” He sounds despondent, regretful, and the whole thing about Tommy beating himself up over their fight makes more sense now that he knows that, in the end, it was meaningless. “When you brought up your lease I panicked. I wanted the whole thing to be some kind of perfect surprise, you know? Because you deserve that, I wanted to give you that, especially after the last time.” 

It’s not shocking that Tommy still shoulders some guilt from their first breakup; Buck’s in love with a walking, talking marble statue of a man carved from guilt and diffidence. 

“So I just… overcompensated, I guess.” Tommy shrugs and picks an imaginary piece of lint off of his hospital gown. He flicks it to the floor and watches nothing fall. “I thought the whole thing was going to be ruined so I just tried to shut the conversation down and hope for the best, and somehow, we ended up here. I don’t expect you to say yes. Especially not after the last two months, but I just…” He stops and gathers himself; the breath he sucks in is deep, like he’s trying to ground himself. “You deserve to know that this is on the table, that I want this, no matter what. And that there’s no pressure—” 

Buck cuts him off with the urge he’s been fighting since he thumbed open the damn box and kisses him. It’s a little awkward considering Tommy was mid-sentence and not expecting it; their teeth clash together in the worst kind of way and their lips almost miss but it only takes a second for them to melt into it, to readjust, to fall into the easiness that comes with their kissing, with them. 

“You’re an idiot,” he says when they break apart. “Of course it’s a yes.” 

“Are you sure?” Tommy breathes into the space between them. “I want you to be sure, I want you to do it because you want to, not because I asked.” 

“I want a life with you.” Buck leans away a little more so he can meet Tommy’s gaze and hold it. “I want this life with you.”

This messy, imperfect thing they’ve built together. It’s the life he’s been fighting for for so long and he doesn’t have to fight for it anymore. It’s his. He gets this. 

“I love you, Tommy, and you love me and I think that’s enough. There doesn’t have to be a reason for any of this, we don’t have to deserve it. It's ours, there’s no conditions to it— it just is.”

“So it’s a yes?” Tommy asks. He sounds tentatively eager, like he’s holding himself back. “We’re doing this, finally?” 

“We’re doing this, finally,” Buck echoes. 

The box gets abandoned on the bed, lost between the two of them and the scratchy hospital sheets when they meet halfway for a kiss that’s less of a kiss and more just a messy press of lips considering how much they’re smiling into it. It’s perfectly imperfect. 

“Did you really think it was a ring?” Tommy asks when they part, both of them still smiling stupidly into the space between them. 

Buck gives him a pointed look. “You put a key in a ring box, Tommy, of course I thought it was a ring.” 

“And you were still going to say yes?” 

“I’d marry you now if you asked.” 

Tommy hums a soft, content little noise. “If you can get me to the roof I can get us a helicopter and we can head to Vegas. I know a guy who owes me a favor.” 

The roll of his eyes is so, so fond. Tommy is unpredictably impossible and Buck loves him. “Of course you do. You really want a Vegas wedding?”

“Sweetheart, I’d marry you anywhere. Even with a knock-off Elvis reading us our vows.” 

“We could have our first dance to Hound Dog.”

“Is that the only Elvis song you know?” 

“I saw it in a movie once.” 

“You saw it in a movie?” 

“For the sake of our future marriage, I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.” 

The box, they key, the imminence of the start of their life together— it’s still a proposal of sorts, not the one he expected, sure, but it is. It’s just a slower one. It’s a promise. 

“Are you gonna let me bring my couch?” Buck hums, soft and playful and so, so eager for the life they’re going to build. 

Tommy bumps their noses together affectionately even as he quips back with a soft, “Evan, that couch isn’t coming through the front door.” 

“It’s an important couch, Tommy.” 

“You never did get the stains out of it. You know, from where a woman gave birth on it.” 

“It’s proof of the miracle of life!” 

“A miracle is close to what you’ll need to get it through my door.”

“Our door.”

“You’re cute, but it’s still not coming in.”

“Tommy,” Buck breathes. They’re so close together, so fucking close that it feels like a tease. “Shut up and kiss me.” 

When Tommy does, it tastes like the start of their forever.