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Tommy can’t help it, he has to see Buck. He feels lost, as if nothing is ever going to be okay again, and he needs someone he knows he can count on. Someone he can trust. Which is how he finds himself outside the 118, grimacing at his old firehouse. He can’t deny that he misses it, but he also can’t deny that he never did belong here.
Eddie spots him from inside and makes his way over with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. “Hey, man! What are you doing here?”
Tommy tries to smile but it falls short. “Just finished work. Needed to see if… if he’s okay.”
There’s a shift, then, and Eddie just knows . Knows that something must have happened. Something must have set him off. “Yeah. Yeah, man, he said something about getting a shower just a few minutes ago. Got a bit dirty on the last call, which… seems like you did too.”
Tommy shrugs. He knows he looks like hell. Dirt sticks to his eyebrows and dried blood lines the straight-edge of his jawline and god knows what else is there. He couldn’t look at himself in the mirror long enough to clear it off. Not after the shift he had. Not after the civilian he lost.
Moving swiftly to the shower room, giving forced smiles to anyone who looks his way, he finds Buck stepping out the shower with a towel around his waist. If it were any other day, Tommy wouldn’t be able to look away from the water clinging to his toned muscles and the short hairs trailing below the towel. But now, in this moment, he can’t look away from his face, from the way his eyebrows are furrowed and his lips are slightly parted and his birthmark seems pinker than usual, almost crimson. And then he gets to watch how his face completely changes when he spots him. How he brightens immediately. As if just seeing him makes him the happiest man alive.
It hits him square in the chest. He’s not sure how someone like Buck can look at someone like him and have that type of reaction. He’s not used to it. Sometimes he still wonders if this is the universe playing some sort of sick and twisted game with him and that one day he’ll wake up to find this all gone. Ripped away. Just like everything and everyone else he’s ever known.
But seeing that Buck is okay–seeing him there and happy and alive –brings up all these emotions Tommy can’t quite figure out right now. There’s relief, that’s for sure, and there’s happiness, but there’s also a stronger feeling than the usual flutter in his stomach and the tightness in his chest and that should scare him but it doesn’t. Buck opens his mouth to talk but all he gets out is a hmmph as Tommy takes two large steps toward him and they collide in a tight embrace. He doesn’t care that Buck is soaking wet from the shower and drenching his clothes, he just needs to feel close.
Buck seems to understand though because he says nothing. Instead, he pulls Tommy in closer and gently scratches at the short hairs at the base of his neck. It calms him down enough to pull back and look at Buck properly, taking him in and memorising that look on his face. Just in case.
“Hey,” he whispers, voice hoarse.
Buck’s eyes soften. “Hey, yourself. Bad shift?”
“You have no idea.”
Buck cups his face and runs the pad of his thumb over his cheek. Tommy doesn’t remember a time he’s ever been touched so gently before. “I think I have some idea,” he says, sliding his hand down Tommy’s jaw and furrowing his eyebrows at the blood. “Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?”
“You should get dressed first,” Tommy mutters. He’s suddenly struck with the feeling that he’s being a burden. That he’s invading Buck’s space. His time. “Incase you need to run out.”
Buck seems like he’s about to protest when he realises that Tommy’s right. “I’ll be back in a second, I swear,” he sighs before ducking out of the room and leaving Tommy alone.
It’s not until this moment he realises just how tired he really is. All he wants to do is go home and crawl into bed but he feels stuck. Like he can’t move. Risking a glance at the mirror, he’s grateful to find that he can’t see himself through the steam. He’s not quite ready to face himself yet.
But before he can dwell on it, or think about how it felt to watch someone die right in front of him (not for the first time, but certainly not for the last time either, and that makes his stomach twist uncomfortably), Buck is running back into the room and taking Tommy’s face in his hands. He tilts his head to one side and then the other before tutting and reaching out to turn on the tap, keeping one hand on Tommy at all times. Once he’s satisfied with the temperature of the water, he runs a cloth underneath it and rings it out before slowly reaching up to dab it over Tommy’s jawline.
“Is this your blood?”
Tommy shrugs. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
Buck pauses for a moment before moving to wipe at the dirt coating his eyebrow. “Do you wanna talk about what happened?”
Tommy shakes his head.
“Okay,” Buck says after a while, scrubbing away the last of the dirt. His touch is so gentle and so caring that Tommy fears he might cry. “Do you want to come eat with us? Bobby’s making his famous lasagne.” He pulls away the cloth and drops it in the sink, running some water over it for a moment before switching off the tap and putting all his attention back on Tommy. Both of his hands drop to Tommy’s shoulders and he smooths his palms across the broad expanse, offering a sweet smile. “You’ll love it.”
“I don’t know,” Tommy sighs, shaking his head. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“You wouldn’t be, I promise. Bobby will love to have you; we all will.”
And that’s how Tommy finds himself sitting where he used to sit all those years ago, only this time he knows that he doesn’t have to hide who he is. So when Chimney brings up something Tommy did once on a call so long ago it feels like a past life, something shifts inside of him, and when Bobby claps him over the shoulder with a proud smile, that something becomes a little lighter. Hen smiles at him and Eddie bumps his arm against his and Ravi listens intently as he retells the story from his point of view. And when Buck laughs at a joke he makes, his head tilting back to let out the loveliest sound Tommy’s ever heard, and then he looks at him to see if he’s laughing too, Tommy can’t help the genuine smile that graces his face. And he realises he feels like he finally belongs. And that maybe, just maybe, things will be okay after all.