Chapter Text
"He's gone, Tommy."
Tommy doesn't even know why he picked up his phone. It's been months, and the pipe dream of The 118, of Evan, is dead. His heart skips a beat hearing the words, but he knows better.
"Nice try, Howie. I was there when you pulled that on Hen and Karen."
He hangs up the phone. Howie texts him.
I'm not lying, Tommy. Turn on the fucking news.
***
"You're a fucking idiot," Eddie told him. Tommy had only texted him to cancel their plans for the weekend, when Buck had agreed to babysit Jee and Tommy found himself at loose ends. Now … even if he'd been friends with Eddie first, those two weeks paled in comparison to six months.
Six months of setting himself up, letting himself go with the flow, following Buck's lead. Waiting for him to get tired of the experiment.
"Why are you even talking to me? You're his best friend." Tommy almost hung up the phone.
"Which is why it's my right to call you a fucking idiot. You really didn't know him at all, did you?"
Tommy ignored the jab. "I know this story, and it doesn't end well for me."
"Look, you have two choices here, Kinard: you give up, or you fight."
He hung up.
***
"A second explosion has rocked downtown LA tonight just one hour after an explosion in Club Nokia. First responders are still on scene, and we can confirm that there are multiple casualties and serious injuries. Rescuers have had to pull back to secure what's left of the structure, and not all customers or first responders are fully accounted for."
Tommy's heart stops, all of his breath evacuates his lungs. The footage is clearly from a news chopper, but he can see the LAFD birds, his bird in the background, too. Multiple ladders, multiple companies.
The 118.
And Evan is on shift tonight. Still with the A shift.
Tommy had gone to his captain and practically begged to be put on B or C so they wouldn’t overlap.
Howie -
Howie called him.
They're missing first responders, and the structure is too unstable to go in.
The flames are rising higher every second, and with the combination of flashing red lights, multiple spotlights and the too-familiar flickering of the fire, it looks like a fucking nightmare down there.
And Buck -- Evan is a bleeding heart. Evan is impulsive. Too fucking impulsive, and too fucking caring. There's a reason he stayed behind, Tommy fucking knows. There is someone in that building that Evan was trying to save.
It sends a chill down his spine.
He calls Howie back.
"He's in there."
It’s not a question.
"He's in there. We can't get a response on the radio and infrared is useless. His last position was directly under the collapse."
It's factual. Howie is reciting the situation like he would to an IC, to a dispatcher.
Like he is shutting out all of his emotions. Which he probably is, because Buck is actually his family. He hopes Maddie isn't working dispatch tonight. Or maybe that she is, so that she doesn't have to experience this the way he is right now.
***
Saying those words surprised him.
He knew it was coming, because it always did. Two months, six months, three years.
Tommy never felt like he could see it coming, always blindsided and getting left behind.
Six months was respectable, it was fine, it was fun. He liked spending time with Evan, liked caring for him, making him feel loved. Evan had basked in it, pulled Tommy into his orbit, the joy he radiated had blocked out the fucking sun for a while.
But as much as Tommy loved romcoms, he was a realist. People always fucking left. People always left him.
Over the years he'd gotten better at picking himself up again, dusting himself off and throwing himself back into the fray to find some reprieve from the crushing loneliness.
And that was good enough, it had to be. Because romcom love wasn't real. There was no happily ever after. No one ever picked him.
***
Tommy watches the live coverage for hours, watches as the rescue crews get the the all-clear to go back in. Watches as the flame dies down and the smoke thickens so much that he can taste it in his living room, far away from the actual scene. He's certainly choked on enough smoke in his lifetime that he knows exactly what's happening there
His phone doesn't ring.
The casualty list isn't public.
He can't call. They're all busy anyway.
He falls asleep on his couch and wakes up with a sore neck and gritty eyes and an ache in his chest like he had breathed in too much smoke. But somehow deeper.
There's no more live coverage, and he's afraid to check his phone, but when he finally does, there's no more messages.
Nothing from Howie, or Eddie or even Bobby.
***
"I think you made a mistake," Bobby told him.
"Why are you here?"
Tommy went through the motions automatically, changing out of his flight suit, shift over. He had to do laundry today; maybe one more load with the new detergent would finally kill off the last of Evan -- Buck's cologne on his pillows.
If it doesn't he's going to have to toss them. He can't keep waking up with Evan's scent and an empty bed.
"I told you, I think you made a mistake."
Bobby's voice is gentle, and it just made Tommy more angry.
"I get that you want to defend him --"
"I don't think you give yourself enough credit," Bobby said, voice still gentle. Like he was talking to a fucking child.
Tommy stopped short, because that was not what he expected to hear. He stayed silent, though.
"Buck told us what you said. That you don't think he'll stick around for you."
"No one does," Tommy replied. "It's just easier this way."
"Easier for who?" Bobby asked.
***
He waits at least three minutes past shift change before he texts Donato.
Tell me you've seen the list, he says.
His phone rings. Why does everyone want to call him right now. He's not sure he can speak.
"He's not on it," she says, voice clipped. "I'm not sure if that house is cursed or blessed most days."
"Where is he?"
"The usual," Donato says. "It's close, Tommy. Last I heard he's still here but it's fucking close. Closer than the lightning."
He'd died for over three minutes that night.
He hangs up again. Grabs his keys and doesn't question it.
By the time he gets to the hospital he can see the full contingent of the 118 and extended family taking up the bulk of the waiting room.
Tommy takes a chair around the corner where he's out of sight. He's not one of them, not now, not ever, really.
He just sits, and listens. And waits for any scrap of a conversation, a change in tone, a sigh of relief to tell him that Evan is okay, that he can pick himself up and leave this hospital. Go back to his life after. Because that's what it's always going to be.
Tommy doesn't pray, but sitting here with his hands clasped and his eyes closed, elbows on his knees and his forehead on his hands it probably looks like it. He loses track of time, head swimming and heart pounding.
A gentle hand lands on his shoulder, and someone small sits down next to him.
"You can't do this to him," Maddie says.
Tommy doesn't open his eyes. "I just need to know."
"Why?"
Her voice is kind, quiet, gentle. And Tommy opens his mouth to speak but chokes on the words, on the air. Tears spring to his eyes and pour down his face and he still can't speak.
Maddie doesn't say anything while he cries his eyes out. Months of missing Evan, trying to move on, trying to go on dates with new men, bringing them home and fucking them in the bed he'd shared with Evan, but kicking them out before even cleaning himself off.
Eventually, the tears dry, leaving him wrung out, exhausted and feeling smaller than he has since before he hit his first growth spurt.
"I can't lose him."
The words feel too small for this gaping hole in his chest, the one he's been plastering over for months.
"You did, though. You left him. He was happier than I've ever seen him and you decided it wasn't good enough. He wasn't good enough."
He slumps further down in his chair, but Maddie's hand never leaves his shoulder.
"He scares me."
Maddie's fingers drum on his shoulders, he can feel the tips of her nails scraping just enough to make him itch, but he doesn't shake it off, afraid of losing this little bit of touch, too.
"Yeah, he does that," Maddie agrees. "But you can't do this."
This shakes Tommy out of his trance, and he looks up at her, wincing at the bright hospital lights. "Be concerned?"
"I can't control your feelings, but you need to either leave or join us. You can't lurk in the corners of his life." She stands up, and Tommy misses the warmth of her fingers. But then her hand is out in front of him, waving in his face.
"In or out, Tommy. Pick one."
He must look pathetic right now, eyes rimmed in red, t-shirt wet from sobbing his eyes out over a man he dumped four months ago. But when he looks up, he sees the same hurt and anger and worry all over her face, reflected back in the red rimmed eyes and snotty nose and wet stains on her shirt sleeve.
She must see something because she smiles at him, soft and small. "Join us when you're ready."
Tommy goes home.
***
Hen didn't call him, but she did wind up in the back of his chopper with a patient about a month later.
"Don't say anything," Tommy begged, once they'd dropped off their patient. "I've heard it before."
Hen had watched him for a long second before she spoke again.
"I just never thought you were that much of an asshole, and I knew you back when you were one."
Hen stayed silent after that, with the exception of the flight checks they needed to make.
***
His house is somehow even emptier that it's been since that night.
He'd cleaned shop right away, dropping off a few bags of things at the firehouse when C-shift was on so he wouldn't have to risk actually running into Evan so quickly.
But his presence still lurks in the corners. In the nicer set of knives he'd bought for Tommy so he could cook at his place. In the way they'd re-organized Tommy's living room one night when they'd accidentally knocked the couch out of place and then realized it really opened up the room if they kept it at an off-angle. In the way Evan had re-organized his bookshelf so that he could actually find the references he needed.
Tommy skims his fingers over a set of mechanics diagrams and collapses onto the floor. He thought he'd got this out at the hospital, but apparently there's more.
It scares him that there is.
He'd left so he wouldn't get hurt.
He's never felt so scared and alone in his life.
***
"So tell me all about you," the man across the table said. "I feel like I've told you my whole life story already."
Tommy sipped his beer and really looked at his date. He had jet black hair, curly but kept short and neat. Dark eyes, olive skin. Glasses. He was skinny but toned, Tommy could see that much under the skin-tight jeans and low, v-neck t-shirt.
"I'm not really looking for anything serious," he said. He didn't want to talk about himself.
"Well that's fine," Jaxson said. "I can do some fun."
Later, they'd come back to Tommy's place and fucked, and then fucked again. Tommy had buried his face in the pillows and let Jaxson help him forget for a while. Not that it was easy because the damn pillows still smelled like Evan.
"So who was he?"
The question startled Tommy, and he looked up from his phone to see Jaxson in the door to the bathroom, towel on his waist, leaning against the door frame.
"What?"
"The extra toothbrush. He must have done a number on you, huh?"
Tommy looked away. "It was only six months, and I ended it." Jaxson was still watching him. "I was his first boyfriend. It wouldn't have worked."
"But you still kept the toothbrush."
***
Tommy doesn't go back to the hospital for three days. He combs through article after article about the fire. Googles Evan's name for an obituary or announcement. Reaches out to every last firefighter he's ever worked with who might have a connection to the 118.
Everyone except the ones who will actually give him the answer. After what he did, he doesn't deserve to know.
On the third day, he can't stand it anymore.
The waiting room crew is smaller this time. They might be family, but the LAFD can't spare every single member of a shift to sit vigil. There's just not enough bodies to spare.
But there's still two of them. Eddie's reading something on his phone and Hen's reading a book. And Maddie. She catches sight of him first, her gaze challenging.
In or out, Kinard.
He takes the seat next to her and squeezes her hand, tight.