Chapter Text
Tommy had been staring at his phone, typing out a message, an apology, anything. He always ends up deleting it. Over and over, so when it actually rings in his hand he almost drops it. The news hits him like a train, pushes everything else to the background.
His sister is dead. Her and her husband, car accident, didn’t stand a chance.
The flight is bad, the funeral worse and then someone from social services shows up with a baby he met once when she was newborn and only really recognises from pictures. The woman hands him a 6 month old child and explains that this is what they wanted. The will stipulated that he would be their guardian in such a circumstance.
He stares at her tiny face. She stares back.
He shuts the door and wonders how anyone could think this was the right choice.
——-
He has to tell his Captain. He chooses to tell Lucy. He distinctly chooses not to tell anyone else.
——-
Babies are hard, as it turns out. There’s no room for grief with an insistent baby taking up every waking second. No rest from being relentlessly needed. No telling her she’d be better off without him.
He thinks about calling.
While he watches her crawl down his hallway after a woodlouse, pointing insistently, letting out an excited little “ah!” as the bug in question scuttles under the shoe rack. She follows it carefully, watching with an intense curiosity that makes something churn deep inside Tommy’s chest.
He thinks about calling.
The first time she gets a fever and won’t settle unless she’s upright on his chest. It’s not the first time Tommy has gone 24 hours without sleep but it feels worse. His nerves scraped raw from her distress. His hand on her back counting her breaths over and over. He thinks about calling.
But what could he possibly say?
——-
The secrecy works until it doesn’t. Until the morning that Chimney is stood in the local doctor’s car park watching Tommy, darker eyed and more scruffy, strap an 8 month old into a seat in the back of his truck. Tommy doesn’t see him, or hear Jee whisper
“Is that Uncle Tommy daddy? Is that his baby?”
——-
It’s how Chimney ends up stood outside of Tommy’s door one lunchtime. He isn’t home but Chimney knows he needs to wait. He knows what trying to handle a baby that age by yourself is like.
When Tommy gets home and sees who is waiting for him Chimney has to give him credit for actually pulling into the driveway rather than continuing in the opposite direction.
Tommy gets out of the car, Chimney doesn’t miss the moment he takes to collect himself before looking up to him.
“What are you doing here Howie?” He sounds ragged.
“Just checking in, two months is too long, I’m sure someone owes someone a beer.”
He goes for light hearted, trying to ease out some of the tension that has appeared in Tommy’s stance. He is hovering by the back door of his truck, fingers tucked into the door handle, endlessly thankful that she closed her eyes and fell asleep on the drive home. Something hovers in the air between them until Chimney takes a step forward.
“I saw you at the doctor’s last week.” Tommy’s brows crease slightly, then pull back as he realises what Chimney is actually telling him.
“Are you going to hide her from me forever?” Tommy looks relieved somehow, less trapped. He shakes his head and carefully takes her out of the car. Settling her into the crook of his arm and pulling her diaper bag over his shoulder.
“I don’t really drink beer too much anymore.”
“A coffee then?”
“Yeah.” He swallows nervously, tries not to let the implications of this meeting, and the conversation he knows is coming, get to him. “I could do with a coffee.”