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bucktommysource · 7 hours ago

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#bucktommyhiatusevent week two: quotes or baking. i was trying to make this shorter than before, but i apparently have no self control and it's slightly longer instead.

tommy regrets the things he said, worries about evan, and finds him in a grocery store. | bucktommy | post season 8 | 2.9k

now on ao3 as well!

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The worst thing about opening your mouth and shoving your entire foot into it at Mach 5, in Tommy’s regrettably expert opinion, is that there’s no way to take the words back. They stay out there in the world, immortal in his memory and everyone else’s.

Now that the competition’s out of the way sits right out in the open, like a monument to his ugliest insecurities. A plaque next to it reads Thank you for last night; it was fun. Across from them is a row of older statues commemorating I know how this ends and I’m not your last and You’d end up breaking my heart and See you around, Buck. He’s practically got a whole statuary’s worth of worst lines. Impressive, really.

He debates reaching out to Evan a dozen times, in the days after everything. Picks up his phone ten times a day—ten times an hour, if he’s interested in being honest, at least to himself. But his statuary of idiocy stops his hand every time, has him deleting countless half-written texts and forcefully putting his phone away. At least until his resolve crumbles, and he’s staring down at Evan’s number again.

Partly, he’s grieving Bobby Nash and wants to share in that with someone. Texting once or twice with Hen and Howie just isn’t cutting it. He doesn’t really feel comfortable intruding on their grief more than that, not with the decade and change of distance between them, recent reunions notwithstanding. Besides, their shared memories of the 118 is tainted by the long shadow of the version of Tommy they first met, and inviting a trip down memory lane feels a little bit like inviting that shadow in, too.

But mostly, he worries for Evan. He’s not the person who gets to take care of Evan, he knows that. He’s well aware that he blew up that chance with his own hands—or rather, his own stupid mouth—thank you very much. But that doesn’t stop him from worrying, all the goddamn time.

He likes to think he knows what’s important to Evan. It’s not even about his own perceptiveness as a boyfriend; it would honestly have been harder not to learn over six months spent in each other’s pockets, with the way Evan wears his heart openly, fearlessly, terrifyingly on his sleeve. And Bobby, well, Bobby was easily in the Top 5 most important people. Maybe even Top 2, right up there next to Maddie. They didn’t get much deeper than scratching the surface of each other’s festering wounds and deep-seated fears—another regret to add to the long, long list—but the little he heard about the Buckley parents made it painfully clear that there was little love to be found there. Which only made Bobby doubly, triply important to Evan.

He doesn’t have to imagine what the loss would do to Evan. He was there, watched uselessly over the monitors as Evan crumpled under the weight of it, falling to the ground right there in the hallway. Watched him scream like a wounded animal, at once furious and perversely grateful that the camera feed didn’t come with audio. Then he watched Evan slowly, painfully put himself back together, brick by crumbling brick like a collapsed building, so that he could help Athena walk out of that lab. So that he, the one walking and non-contaminated member of the 118 A-shift, could hold down the fort and take care of everyone despite and through his own grief.

So. Tommy’s worried. Evan seemed okay, or at least holding himself together, the last time they saw each other at Bobby’s funeral—but only if you ignored the heavy shadows under his eyes, and the empty darkness behind them. And Tommy watched him build himself back up in that lab, knows better than to trust that the brick-wall facade won’t fall over in a faint breeze, or when the shaky foundation eventually crumbles. Knows it’s only a matter of time before Evan runs out of steam and collapses like he did in the lab.

But Tommy doesn’t get to be the one who catches him anymore. Besides, Evan’s got his whole team, his whole family right there around him. People who Evan loves and trusts, and who love him in return; people who know him better than Tommy probably ever got to, who saw every day for eight years how important Bobby was to Evan, who can surely see the grief and loss and pain that Evan is trying so hard to hide, and yet still wearing so plainly on his face. They’ll take care of him. And Evan would surely prefer their care over Tommy’s. Especially if the scuttlebutt is true, and Diaz is back at the 118. (And Lucy is never allowed to know that he actually has an ear on the gossip these days, mostly in the faint hope of hearing something, any tiny thing about Evan. She’ll never let him hear the end of it. And most likely tattle to Sal, who’ll also never let him hear the end of it. They’d be helpful, keeping their on ear out, but it’s not worth the price. Not for a few weeks yet, anyway.) Competition or not, Diaz was Evan’s partner and best friend, and one of the most important people in Evan’s life. Having him around can only be good news for Evan, right?

Point is, Evan has a damn good support system, one he actually wants, one that didn’t walk out on him—one that does not include Tommy. He doesn’t want to be an unwelcome intruder among them, barreling clumsily over their shared grief over the loss of their captain with all the grace and welcome of a particularly clumsy bull in a china shop. Doesn’t want to inflict his unwanted presence on any of them, on Hen or Howie or Eddie, but especially on Evan. He knows better than to be the clingy ex-boyfriend, lingering on like a stubborn leech and unable to take a hint. And he is so, so afraid of adding on to Evan’s pain, of becoming one more problem to deal with when Evan’s life has been torn to shreds by Bobby’s death.

But none of that stops him from worrying. Pathetically, helplessly, obsessively worrying. So much that sometimes, when the worry and the longing become nearly unbearable, he starts haunting Evan’s neighborhood out of the vain hope of catching some distant glimpse of Evan going about his life. Just to reassure himself that Evan really was fine and taken care of and doesn’t need Tommy. It’s admittedly a little masochistic, because it will inevitably sting to see the proof of his own superfluity, but at least that’s better than the third sleepless night in a row staring at his phone.

It takes a week and two neighborhood wanderings before it occurs to him that this might not be Evan’s neighborhood anymore. Might be Eddie’s neighbourhood again, and Evan’s moved somewhere else, and Tommy simply would never know. Just like he didn’t know when Evan moved into Eddie’s house in the first place. He has a bit of a crisis over it, and then takes to haunting the 118’s neighbourhood as well as Evan’s. Just in case.

Which is why he’s currently wandering through a grocery store a few blocks from the 118 at the wrong side of sunrise. It’s a ridiculous hour to be in a grocery store, but he’s got a 48 starting in a few hours. He couldn’t sleep anyway, feeling that ever-present tug to be near Evan—or barring that, near somewhere Evan might be.

Or maybe his gut was onto something, this time.

Evan’s here. Evan is here, right in front of Tommy, standing in the produce section, staring at the pile of potatoes with the kind of lost and fragile expression usually reserved for little kids on calls who just watched their parents die.

Tommy’s first instinct is to pull Evan into a hug. His second instinct, after he remembers for the thousandth time that he doesn’t get to be the person comforting Evan anymore, is to look around for someone who does. They’re literally three blocks away from the station house, so surely someone is here with Evan. For all of Evan’s attempts to appear strong, it’s kind of obvious that he needs support; not because he’s weak, but because his very foundation was shaken like the aftermath of an earthquake, and it’ll take time to firm up the ground again. He needs scaffolding, in the meantime. Evan loves so loudly and deeply, after all; it shouldn’t be suprising that he lost loudly and deeply, too. If Tommy could see all that over a few shared hours at the funeral, always a few paces behind Evan, then the Evan’s family must see it all the more clearly. Any second now, someone was going to walk up to him and gently nudge him out of his stricken reverie.

He backsteps, trying poorly melt into the background of the cereal aisle. The brightly-coloured boxes look down at him and his oversized bulk with pity, but luckily Evan isn’t looking this way. He’s not looking much of any way at all, not even right in front of him at the potatoes. (Yukon Gold, supplies to memory of Evan flourishing in his kitchen. Great for creamy mashed potatoes.) Tommy holds his breath and waits and watches, just masochistic enough to want to see Evan taken care of before he takes his own leave.

He waits. He watches.

Tommy is so, so sure of the inevitability of a rescue, that it does not occur to him to step in. Not until a middle-aged woman awkwardly reaches past Evan to snag a few potatoes for herself. Her motion, or maybe her proximity, startles Evan out of his trance. The plastic basket in his hand drops with a clatter as he backs away on obviously unsteady legs.

Then, and only then, it finally occurs to Tommy: no one is coming to find Evan. No one is here with Evan. Three blocks away from the 118 station house, not three weeks after losing the only parent he’d ever actually known, Evan is standing alone in a grocery store. Shopping, presumably, for said station, but with nobody to stand at his side.

Tommy’s body is faster on the uptake than his mind. By the time he finishes processing the thought, he’s already standing two feet away from Evan—the closest they’ve been since sharing the cockpit of a rogue helicopter—with the plastic basket rescued in his hands.

“T-tommy,” Evan says, with wide watery blue eyes. The stutter’s back in full force, whether from surprise or grief or the sheer displeasure of Tommy’s presence. “H-hey. I, uh, I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

Which is fair. And there’s no explanation he can give that will not make him sound pathetic, or creepy, or both. His body is, perhaps predictably, less good at just talking to Evan; though, given the unfortunate things he’s said before, it’s probably better than his mouth doesn’t run away from him. Even if it does leave him with the rather pressing problem of thinking of something to say. “Are you…” he begins, and then swallows the end of that question. There is no world in which Evan is okay, right now, and asking feels stupid. He tries again. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” Evan says, too fast and rote.

Tommy doesn’t exactly mean to, but his eyebrows rise with skepticism. He understands shoving down your emotions and putting up a veneer of calm, he really does. But he watched Evan zone out in front of the Yukon Gold potatoes. The jig was up already, belying Evan’s words before he ever spoke them.

Evan colours and drops his gaze, but not in a good way. This isn’t shyness, or playing coy. This is shame, weighing down Evan’s head. Someone or something made fierce, fearless, beating-heart-on-his-sleeve Evan Buckley ashamed of his own grief.

Tommy wrestles down the swell of anger. Partly out of habit—he refuses to become anything like his father—but mostly because it isn’t going to help Evan, right now. Says instead, as gentle as he can, “Hey. I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry. I did mean the question, though.”

Evan doesn’t look up. “Yeah, b-but you don’t… you don’t need to hear about all that. I’m, um, I’m, you know, still here, so. H-how are you holding up?”

“Evan, I’m serious,” Tommy says, fighting against the rising certainty that something is deeply wrong. Even more wrong than he’d expected; and he’d expected pretty fucking bad, given the circumstances. “I asked. I’m inviting you to tell me.” A thought occurs to him, painful but true, and he takes a sharp, fortifying breath before adding, “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to—God knows I probably wouldn’t want to talk to me, either. But don’t hold back for my sake. So. How are you holding up, really?”

Evan swallows. Swallows again. Chokes out, “N-not great.”

It’s like watching a puppet collapse, when the puppeteer dropts it at the end of a show. All the air rushes out of Evan at once, and he lists dangerously forward. It isn’t a choice or even a habit so much as a deep, animal instinct that has Tommy reaching out, catching Evan’s not-insignificant bulk against his own.

That’s alright. The firefighter muscles aren’t just for show. He built them to carry people out of burning buildings; he’s happy to use them now to carry Evan, both literally and figuratively, in the middle of a grocery store.

Evan clings to Tommy like a lifeline. Like he’s the one solid thing still standing in a building that’s crumbling to pieces around Evan. Like Tommy can be a steady thing, a sure thing, when everything else is falling apart.

Tommy holds Evan tight. Lets him bury his head against Tommy’s chest, and pretends not to notice the dampness spreading across his shirt. Evan’s babbling something about missing family dinners and making breakfast and Bobby, Bobby, Bobby. Most of the words are too muffled and too broken up by shaking breaths on the edge of sobbing to be comprehensible.

That’s alright, too. There will be time, later, to let Evan say them properly, so he can listen to them properly. Tommy decides, right then and there, that he will make sure there’s time later.

He forgot, for a while, that it wasn’t only the ugly words sitting between them. No, that’s not quite true; he has plenty of sweeter, kinder words to hold on to. The most transformative of my life and they can be the same thing and even from way back at the beginning, that guy is so cool are still nestled in between Tommy’s ribs, tucked in there for safekeeping. A candleflame of memory to tide him over on the coldest, loneliest nights.

He just hadn’t thought the sentiment went both ways. He’d been so sure that all the stupid, terrible things he couldn’t take back had destroyed anything good he might have built. But maybe And for you sits there still, in the tiny glimmer of light in Evan’s eyes when he first saw Tommy. Not without feeding you is in the clutching grip of Evan’s hands against his body.

And somewhere behind them both, like a sturdy wall to lean against, is You want to try again?

It hadn’t been enough, then, to stop him from spewing out his worst, most unsiecure thoughts all over that sunlit room. It hadn’t been enough to soothe the hurt in Evan’s eyes, or to stay Tommy’s feet when the instinct to cut his losses and run kicked in.

It’s enough, now, to bolster his strength and keep him standing there, holding Evan. He’s going to make it enough to stay, and stay, and stay, until and unless Evan actually tells him to get lost. He’ll weld his fucking shoes to the ground if he has to, so he can’t run. So he doesn’t abandon Evan alone in a grocery store, like everyone else apparently did.

After all, as Evan once said: why be apart when we can be together? When Evan needs him, and maybe even wants him—and Tommy needs him and wants him, too. Maybe that can be enough.

#evan buckley #tommy kinard #buck x tommy #fanfiction #bucktommyhiatusevent

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