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Each year of Tommy’s life, the walls around his heart grew taller, stronger, caging in the spirit he’d been born with: all the love he had to give.
The first bricks were laid by his father shouting, “make him stop crying!” while his mother cried and rocked him and screamed that she was trying. And the heart spirit learned to conceal Tommy’s pain, to never seek comfort from beyond himself, to hold everything in, push everything down. Be strong. Be a man. Never let them see you cry.
Year-by-year, wound-by-wound, brick-by-brick the heart spirit grew cold, withdrawn, rarely emerging from beyond the walls in Tommy’s heart except for in those moments he shared with his mother when his father was off somewhere exploring the depths of a bottle. Then the spirit would slip beyond Tommy’s body and entwine with his mother’s own heart spirit: a brittle, stretched thing that had thought it had found love only to flee bloodied and broken back to Tommy’s mother’s heart. Tommy’s spirit lent his mother’s some strength, feeding cautious love, enough to sustain her as she tiptoed on eggshells around her husband’s rage.
But Tommy’s love stopped being enough.
He grew older, more independent, his heart spirit wandered, flitting between boys that made his heart flutter, his mouth go dry, and heat build in the core of him. He bled scraps of love, attention never held too long by any one boy, affection never acted on.
“That’s so gay,” an insult readily tossed around the cafeteria and locker room and football field, never directly aimed at Tommy, but a warning nonetheless that sent Tommy’s heart spirit fleeing back over his walls, adding another layer of bricks. His spirit hid from his mother’s not wanting her to see, not wanting her to know, not wanting her love for him to dry up because of who he was and who he’d been built to love.
Tommy hid behind a macho façade. Behind football in the fall and baseball in the spring, and and girlfriends he bragged about doing more with than he was ever comfortable to do. His father’s rage found his mother without Tommy there to present a target.
His mother faded.
She died.
Tommy blamed himself and the walls grew higher. Higher. They sheltered him until he was old enough to enlist, to flee his father’s house. They guarded him against giving too much of himself when he grew to love his fellow soldiers like brothers and war tore them away again, when brothers-at-arms sought comfort in his body in the dead of night and he took comfort in exchange, but never dared to let his heart spirit mingle with theirs. There were those he might have grown to love deeper, had he let himself, had he let down his walls and let his heart spirit spread itself beyond the confines of his chest. But he’d lost too much, and then he lost more. A helicopter crash he’d blame himself for for years to come, leaving him the sole survivor, broken but for the walls around his heart.
And by the time he was discharged, his heart spirit had grown lean and mean, starving for any scrap of attention thrown his way. After the fire academy, Tommy’s spirit scarfed down whatever Gerrard fed him, any fleeting word of approval, any nod. And so, Tommy strived to follow Gerrard, to be the kind of firefighter Gerrard wanted him to be, to be the kind of man that wouldn’t draw Gerrard’s ire, his suspicion, his ridicule.
Tommy grew meaner. He blended in with the old boys, told jokes to make them laugh even if it was at someone else’s expense. He dated the women he thought someone like him should be with, but their heart spirits always bounced off his walls and retreated, leaving him lonelier and lonelier with each breakup, knowing it was his fault he could never give them the love they needed.
But that was better than letting someone in, giving up a part of himself, and losing, breaking, withering to nothing like his mother.
Howard Han tried to break down Tommy’s walls with his offers of friendship, his quips, his earnestness when humour failed. Tommy wanted to let Howie in, but he couldn’t let himself, not after his mother, not after the army and the crash, not after his probationary year when – he couldn’t even bring himself to think the name – had died just as Tommy thought maybe, maybe he could take a few bricks out of the wall.
So, Tommy held firm, driving Howie away with racist jokes and prickliness, emulating Gerrard’s example even when Howie lost the man who was like a brother to him, Tommy held himself back because what if the next roof collapsed and it was Howie who fell, and Tommy broke further?
Tommy held back until Gerrard gave up on him and Howie came for him anyway. The spirit in Tommy’s heart couldn’t sit curled within walls anymore. It battered at the bricks until cracks formed in the foundation and then a hole opened at the base just large enough for his heart spirit to wriggle free and offer friendship: Love, Actually, monster trucks, craft beer.
More than friendship, if Tommy was honest. He left a bit of his spirit wrapped up in Howie: a bond he could never break, a beacon he would answer whenever it was lit.
But Howie was the exception, not the rule. At least, until Sal came along. Sal, who reminded Tommy of those boys he’d tried not to let his gaze linger on too long in high school. Sal who was confident and bold and most definitely straight, but Tommy and his heart had long since been resigned to a life without love so it didn’t matter how one-sided his feelings were.
Tommy followed Sal’s lead, letting himself love from afar, and his heart spirit softened somewhat, not entirely, not enough to let Hen Wilson in when she walked into the firehouse so unapologetically herself that Tommy’s shame sent his heart spirit further into his walls, trying to hide from her and that gaze that saw too much for Tommy’s comfort. He lashed out, raising defences upon his battlements. He could not let her in. He could not let her see.
But she saw him anyway, just like she saw other things that they all missed: solutions, second vehicles, secrets. And Tommy couldn’t fight himself anymore, not if it meant hurting Hen. So, he filed a report, and a layer of brick fell.
Each passing year without Gerrard saw another layer of his walls crumble, saw his heart spirit explore further, beyond the safety of the platonic love that was all he could ever hope for with Sal. He stopped dating women, stopped looking for love he couldn’t reciprocate. His heart spirit grew stronger, softer, more welcoming and open to possibility.
He didn’t know if he could be happy, but maybe he didn’t have to be miserable.
With that in mind, Tommy followed his heart spirit’s whim and transferred stations, seeking out the one thing about the army he’d allowed himself to love: flying.
The walls around his heart crumbled to moss covered ruins. He gave of himself and received friendship in return: a promoter in Vegas, the guys at pick up basketball, his Muy Thai sparring partners.
That wasn’t to say that sometimes his heart spirit didn’t return to him battered on occasion, like when he read too much into a casual fling only to wind up ghosted, or when a man he saw a future with couldn’t be coaxed out of the closet to the point where he got engaged and then married all while keeping Tommy on the side and in the dark until the wife caught them, leaving Tommy feeling betrayed and used and tempted to gather the eroded chunks of brick still scattered around his heart and cobble together a new wall. But he fought the instinct.
He never wanted to be that person again.
So, Tommy carried on. He flew. He did a favour for Howie here and there. He watched his rom coms and worked on his cars, and he hoped that something would come along for him.
And then there came a night.
A storm.
Lit by lightning, booming and Tommy woke in the middle of it clutching his chest, heart spirit burning, screaming, crying out in anguish Tommy couldn’t explain. Three minutes and seventeen seconds of excruciating emptiness before warmth slowly seeped back into Tommy’s heart and his spirit roused itself and he explained it away as just a bad night, a bad memory. Nothing to worry about.
Until.
Another night. Another storm. A hurricane. A phone call.
Howie.
And in Howie’s wake: Evan.
They shook hands and his heart spirit rushed out to meet Evan’s. They twined around each other like cats until Tommy’s heart spirit climbed into Evan’s open heart and nestled in, and Evan’s heart spirt leaped over the rubble around Tommy’s.
It took a few weeks for Tommy and Evan to figure out what their hearts had known instantly. But they got there in the end.