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Tommy tapped his pen on the counter top as he read the paperwork in front of him. It was one of the many things his husband did to let excess energy seep out of him, and Tommy had picked up the habit over their three years together. He’d always been a mimic, copying those around him, trying to fit in. Though he’d spent the last decade trying to assert his own personality more, it still brought a smile to his face whenever he caught himself mirroring his husband. It was as if being more like Evan made him feel more like himself. More sure of who he was.
Of what he wanted.
The front door slammed shut, announcing Evan’s arrival home. A moment later he appeared in the doorway of the study. “Hey there, handsome.”
It must have been a good shift. Evan’s voice was light, his stance relaxed and his eyes were bright and well-rested. Maybe he’d actually sleep the night shift through for once.
“Hey yourself,” Tommy said, tilting his head back to let his husband kiss him.
Evan smiled down at him fondly, before pulling back to look down at the mess of papers spread out on the counter. He picked up one of the leaflets featuring a dashing looking firefighter leaning out of a helicopter underneath the words ‘Arial management of forest fires’. Evan gave it a once over before putting it down on a pile of similar pamphlets, taking a moment to pull them straight. “What’s all this about?”
Tommy took a breath. “Simpson came by Harbor earlier.”
“As in Chief Simpson?” Evan said, his voice quickly hardening. “Gave you leaflets about a firefighting training course?”
“Yeah.”
Evan reeled back in disgust. “Are you kidding me? You’re goddamn Tommy freaking Kinard. You’ve led aerial support for the last dozen forest fires. Hell, you flew into a hurricane and came back without a scratch. You’re the best goddamn pilot in the whole LAFD, maybe even the whole of the west coast. Why do you need to go on a training course? You should be running the damn course.”
Tommy was having too much fun watching his husband defend his honour to cut Evan off right away, but he thought he should probably step in before he started throwing things. “That’s actually what he asked me. With the rise in forest fires over the last couple of years, he wants to make sure we’ve got plenty of pilots, trained by someone with years of experience. So he asked me if I’d like to run a training course.”
It took Evan a moment to shift gears in his brain, but a moment later he wrapped his husband in a big hug, telling him how proud he was. But Tommy couldn’t let himself fall into his flattery, at least not yet.
“Well, not just a training course. Several,” said Tommy. “He wants me to be an instructor. Full time.”
Evan’s lips paused half-way through a kiss. “Full time? So you’d give up being a firefighter?”
It was no secret how much Evan loved the job – how many people had sued their employer to keep their job? Tommy had come to the conclusion long ago that Evan would have to be dragged into retirement kicking and screaming. It would never occur to him that his husband might not feel the same way.
“I haven’t been a firefighter in over a decade, Evan,” Tommy reminded him. “At least not the bashing down doors, running into burning buildings kind. I’d still work a few shifts to keep my own skills up, and they’ll call me back in the next time there’s an earthquake or a tsunami or a bee-nado or whatever this year’s big disaster ends up being.”
“Please. Do not remind me about those goddamn bees,” said Evan, dropping into the chair beside Tommy. “So you’re thinking of saying yes?”
Tommy tapped his pen on the counter, regarding the leaflet in front of him. A middle aged man in a sports jacket, not too unlike one he owned, stood by the open door of a helicopter, talking through the controls with a young woman sitting in the pilot’s seat.
“I did enjoy it when I took you and Eddie up,” he said. “I know it wasn’t your thing–”
“Well I’d already got in your pants by that point,” said Evan with a smirk.
“But,” said Tommy, refusing to be distracted. “I actually really enjoyed it. You both started off excited but nervous. The longer we stayed up though the more confident you got. It made me feel good to see how much you both grew in just a few hours.”
“You were a great teacher,” Evan said, and Tommy could tell he meant it.
Tommy pulled out a more formal looking document, filled with numbers and legalese. “The pay is good too. Plus the LAFD will pay for my instructor certification, and once I have that I can take on private clients that pay in actual money instead of beer and blowjobs.”
Evan shot him a knowing look. Tommy had been flying choppers so long he’d forgotten how much of an adrenaline rush it was the first time you went up. When they’d gotten back on terra-firma after Evan’s first time behind the controls, they’d barely made it back to the car before he’d ripped Tommy’s clothes off.
“Can’t exactly pay the bills with blowjobs,” said Evan. “At least not without some serious renegotiations of our marriage. But you know we’re not exactly hurting for money.”
The exact opposite, if Tommy was honest. Between their two salaries, a well timed house purchase on his own part and Evan’s impeccable accountancy skills, they had more than enough to live on while still putting aside some cash for a rainy day. Or any expensive endeavours they might want to take in the future.
“It would be regular hours,” Tommy said. “I’ve never actually worked a 9 to 5. Might be nice to know when I’ll be working without having to consult the calendar every five minutes. And no more night shifts.”
“That I can get behind,” Evan agreed. Today might have been an easy shift, but they both knew well enough how bad they could get – trying to deal with back to back fires and road traffic accidents in the dark. The worst was when it rained, the LA rain coming down in torrents making everything slick underfoot, what little dark vision you could muster being ruined by lightning flashes.
Tommy’s eyes fell on Evan’s shoulder, to the place where now faded scars traced out a reflection of the lightning strike that had put them there.
“It’d be safer too,” he whispered.
“Yes,” said Evan, oblivious to where Tommy’s gaze had fallen. “Because nothing says safety like jumping into a flying machine with spinning knives on the top with an inexperienced pilot at the controls.”
If Tommy had picked up Evan’s stimming, then his husband had picked up Tommy’s own dark sense of humour in return.
“I’d still be much more likely to make it home than if I was flying into a hurricane,” Tommy shot back. “Or climbing up a collapsing high rise. Or giving a shark a ride to the sea. Or riding on top of a fire truck to catch someone suspended off the bottom of a plane. Or–”
“But,” Evan said, cutting him off. “If you’re not flying into hurricanes, where will you meet your next husband when I, apparently inevitably, meet my end?”
“I’m sure I can pick up another idiot at the grocery store,” said Tommy. “Anyway, my students wouldn’t be inexperienced. They’d be fire pilots, and you need something like 1,000 flight hours to even get the job. And if you’re not on the top of your game, you get grounded. The LAFD won’t risk sending a sub-par pilot into a fire, it’ll just make things 100 times worse. Chances are I’d have to be taken off active flight duty in a few years anyway. It’s not like I’m getting any younger.”
“No you are not,” said Evan, flirtily running his fingers through the grey hairs at Tommy’s temple. There were more appearing there every day, so it was good that Evan found them such a turn on. Not that Tommy minded getting old – he’d witnessed too many lives cut short to not appreciate what a privilege it was to get to grow old. But that didn’t mean he didn’t notice the wrinkles, or stop him dwelling on the things his advancing years might now deny him.
The brush of Evan’s fingers against his hand brought him back to the present.
“You would be a great instructor,” Evan said. “The best. It would make me feel so much safer on calls if I knew you'd trained everyone in the flying death machines above me. If it’s what you wanna do, then you do it. You don’t have to convince me. But I don’t think it is me you're trying to convince.”
There were times when Evan could be the most oblivious man in the world, like that time he hadn't realised the guy at the farmer’s market was trying to see if they were down for a threesome until Tommy had laughed about it in the car. Then there were times like this – the times when it really mattered – when Evan would cut through all the bullshit and see what was really going on like no one else.
Well. Time to have the real life changing conversation then.
“It just got me thinking. I’m not getting any younger. I’ve hit a lot of the big life milestones already – a job I love, a house that actually feels like a home to and a sexy husband to share it with –”
“A very sexy husband to share it with,” said Evan, arching his back to better emphasise his physique.
“The sexiest,” said Tommy. “But if I did take the new job, then it might help me work towards some… other life goals I haven't passed yet.”
“Like?” Evan encouraged.
Tommy’s mouth suddenly felt very dry. He and Evan always made a point of being honest with each other, laying all the cards on the table so they could work out the best play together. That didn’t stop it being terrifying, especially when you weren't even certain if you were playing the same game.
“Like being a Dad,” he said.
The silence after the words echoed round the room, broken only by the soft sound of Evan breathing “oh.”
Tommy looked away, stopping himself from reading every minute expression on his husband’s face.
“I know we talked about it – kids – when we first started dating and the verdict was maybe, someday. But we didn't really talk about it again, and then we got married in such a rush… But I have been thinking about it. A lot.”
Tommy looked down at his hands. They'd always felt too big for him. They had stretched out too far from his hand-me-down high school clothes, and he always struggled to fit them into the nooks and crannies of an engine. It was only when he’d seen them wrapped around the joystick of a helicopter, or the nozzle of a firehose – when he realised he could use his size to protect people – that he’d started to like the body he lived in.
Lately though, whenever he looked at his hands, he just imagined a tiny hand held in his, safe and secure.
“For so much of my life, it just seemed set in stone that kids could never even be an option for someone like me, so I convinced myself I didn’t really want them. But then the law changed, and then I changed, and then you walked into my life and everything changed and… Look, if you don’t feel the same way, if you don’t want kids, If you want it to be just us, then that’s fine. I’ve spent 20 years suppressing these feelings, I can suppress them for another 20. But I think- no, I know this is something that I want.”
Tommy finally let himself look up at Evan. He was covering his mouth with his hand, staring intently at Tommy with an unreadable expression.
“Can you say something?” Tommy said eventually. “Please?”
For a moment, Tommy thought Evan was on the verge of tears, until he dropped his hand to reveal his lips,twisted into a smile.
“Wait here,” Evan said, before dashing out of the room, leaving Tommy to stew in turmoil for a few moments longer before returning with a huge red binder.
Tommy opened the cover to find a neatly written contents page - Adoption; Fostering; Surrogacy; Egg donation; Medical stuff; Legal stuff. Each was colour coded, matched with a corresponding tab sticking out from between the pages and pages and pages of notes, print outs and leaflets. Tommy flicked to a random section, finding it was streaked with pink highlighter and adorned with Evan’s hand written notes in every margin.
“Did you do all this?” Tommy said, in awe.
“Ah, no,” said Evan. “Remember that call I told you about last week? Where I was literally left holding the baby for an hour. Apparently I looked ‘broodier than a coop full of chickens’, to quote Hen. She gave me this the next day. Her and Karen put it together when they were looking at expanding their own family and she thought we might need it sometime soon. I might have to spent the last few days printing out any updated information, highlighting things we might need to discuss, creating an itemised 23 point plan.”
Tommy looked down at the book in front of him. “Of course you did,” he said softly.
He turned to the final pages of the binder, where the title ‘BABY BUCKLEY-KINARD’ was written in crisp block capitals.
Step 1 - Talk to Tommy. See if he’s on board with having kid(s).
Tommy grabbed a pen and put an emphatic tick in the adjacent box.
He turned to his husband, a giddy joy blossoming from behind his sternum. “Guess we should work through the other 22 steps then.”
Evan’s face broke into a huge smile before he launched himself at Tommy, hauling him in close for the most bear crushing hug they’d shared since they’d both almost been washed away in a flash flood last fall.
“So we’re doing this?” Evan asked.
“Yeah,” said Tommy. “I think we are.”
“We’re making a baby?”
“We’re making a baby!”
Tommy crashed his lips against his husband’s, grabbing the back of his head. It wasn’t enough. He needed to be closer to Evan, to feel skin against skin as they wrapped themselves up in one another. He pulled at Evan’s shirt, whipping it off over his head in a single, very well practised motion.
Evan laughed. “I know this is the old fashioned method, but I don’t think sex is going to work in our case.”
Tommy grabbed him by the belt buckle, pulling his husband towards the bedroom. “Can’t hurt to try.”