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Evan is a broken man. It’s written on his face, clear as day, even in pitch dark lit only by streetlights and the flicker of emergency lights on pale skin. He’s sitting on the curb outside of the lab when Tommy finds him after watching him turn inside out with pain on a screen and hearing him scream his grief, even in his place outside the building.
“Here,” Tommy says, one hand landing on Evan’s shoulder and the other handing him a cold bottle of water. There’s a puddle of clear bile on the ground between Evan’s feet and his body wracks with dry heaves.
Evan takes the offered bottle and cracks it open, taking small sips. For a moment, Tommy hesitates, and he’ll kick himself about it later. The thing is he knows Evan, even if they haven’t been on the same page lately, always seeming to find the right buttons to push and fractures to dig their fingers into. He knows how quickly Evan’s mind moves, how he needs to talk to understand, how he leans into affection like plants find the sun.
So it’s scary when he sits next to Evan and the other man doesn’t tilt to rest against his side. Shell-shocked, that’s what he is.
“Can I touch you?” Tommy asks softly, openly.
A mute nod.
He starts broad, slow sweeps of his palm across Evan’s back, over the wings of his scapula to the base of his neck and straight down his spine. It’s not much but at a glacier’s pace, he starts to melt.
As Evan comes back into his body, he gags a couple more times. Tommy reaches for his own half-drunk but still cool water bottle and brings it close to the back of Evan’s neck, letting him feel the nearness of it.
“Okay?”
Evan nods, humming this time, and he sighs a bit when Tommy rests the bottle against his skin. The small vocalizations thaw the icy panic that’s started to squeeze Tommy’s heart. It gives further when Buck starts rocking himself minutely, a movement as familiar as his bouncing leg.
When the water has come to air temperature, Tommy sets it on the ground and resumes his palm’s circuit of Evan’s back. They sit in silence for minutes; Tommy’s been in Evan’s place enough to know that any words he has for the other man right now will ring hollow. It’s closer to peaceful than either of them would expect to find right now.
Of course, it can’t last long, not with the enormity of this crushing moment. The shift from catatonia into panic snowballs, gaining speed exponentially. Tommy picks up on the quickening of Evan's breath, hears the click of his jaw and the grind of his teeth. I’m useless , he thinks.
“Evan…” he starts, no idea where his sentence is going.
“Eddie,” Evan chokes. “Gotta — Eddie, h-he —”
“Eddie doesn’t know yet,” Tommy concludes, and Evan nods frantically.
“Do you want to tell him?” And Tommy immediately regrets asking that when he sees worry and fear and responsibility collide with the utter freeze in Evan’s eyes. “I can call him, if you want. But I’ll need to borrow your phone.”
Evan’s brow wrinkles at that, but he pulls his phone out and hands it to Tommy, who’s unable to shake the echo of the unacknowledged messages he’s sent Eddie paired with the ease with which he remembers Evan’s passcode.
Eddie picks up on the first ring.
“Buck? Are you back home already? I thought they would keep you way longer.”
“Eddie,” Tommy starts. “It’s Tommy.”
A long pause.
“Why are you calling me on Buck’s phone? He said everyone was okay. Is he okay?”
“Evan’s… Evan is okay. Captain Nash —”
“No,” Eddie says. “No, Tommy, Bobby has to be okay. Which hospital is he in? I’m pulling up flights now.”
“He’s not in the hospital. He locked himself in the lab after they got everyone else out, and he, um,” Tommy’s voice breaks. “He was infected. He’s dead, Eddie.”
“No, you don’t understand, Tommy. He can’t be. Buck needs… I need. Tommy.”
Tommy hears a sucking breath next to him and doesn’t hesitate this time, draping his arm around Evan and pulling him in tight.
“You’re right, Eddie. I don’t understand, not completely, but I’m here. For Evan, for you, whatever you need.”
“Whatever I need,” Eddie repeats. “Um, shit, okay. I’ll get the first flight out for Chris and I. Buck?”
“Is not great at the moment,” Tommy finishes. “Evan, do you want to talk to Eddie?”
Evan reaches a hand out for the phone and Tommy passes it over.
“Eddie,” Evan says, and then doesn’t speak another word while Eddie talks.Tommy catches the shape of the words, but can’t make out any of the specifics. Evan makes a few affirming or distressed noises, eyes still dripping tears onto Tommy’s uniform, then hands the phone back.
“Hey,” Tommy says.
“You have to stay with him,” Eddie says. “Don’t let him talk you out of it — I know he’s not saying much right now, but he’ll try to convince you he wants to be alone, or say that he’ll call Maddie. Don’t listen to him. Maddie and Chim will have their hands full and Buck won’t want to bother them, even if it wouldn’t for him to spend the night. Go home with him, take him to yours, whatever, just don’t leave him alone.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You’ll get the flight details once I have them.” Eddie pauses, clearing his throat. “Thank you, Tommy. Take care of yourself, too, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Tommy says. “See you soon.”
“Bye,” Eddie says as he hangs up.
Tommy hands the phone back to Evan, and they sit in the increasingly empty parking lot, just existing and breathing in warm L.A. evening air.
“Evan, we need to go.” He gets only a grunt in response. “Do you want to go home? You can stay at my house if you want.”
Shaking himself into the present, Evan looks around as if for the first time, taking in where and when he’s at.
“Oh, yeah. I’ll just go home, I don’t want to make you deal with me right now,” he gives a self-deprecating laugh.
“Nice try,” Tommy says. “I’m going with you.”
“No, Tommy, you don’t need to do that.”
“I am doing that. I’ll sleep on the couch, but, please, Evan. Let me stay with you.” Tommy tries to turn his earnest eyes up to 11.
Evan gives easily. “Okay, you can take me back to my house if you really want to.”
“I do.” Tommy stands slowly, offering a hand down to help Evan up and steering them toward his car.
“Wait, how did your car get here?” Evan asks.
“I asked Lucy to bring it by when her shift ended. She owed me one, anyway.” That’s not true, but Tommy doesn’t want to risk Evan feeling any more like a burden than tends to come pre-programmed with him.
Tommy has never experienced a silent car ride home with Evan before; he’s always chatting about his day, asking Tommy about his, talking about whatever’s on his mind. The radio stays off, the quiet hum of the engine and the tires on the street not filling the cabin enough. The pit of worry hardens in Tommy’s gut.
They arrive at Evan’s house, and before Tommy can even begin to overthink about whether he should open the passenger door for him, he’s up the front steps and unlocking the door. Tommy follows him inside, puttering around the kitchen while the shower runs a couple rooms away. The noises of Evan getting ready for bed echo through the house, bouncing off the odd box or two he hasn’t bothered to unpack yet. When he hears the sound of sheets whispering together, the soft creaking of Evan climbing into bed, he fills a glass with water and makes his way to the bedroom.
Evan is burrowed into the sheets, reduced to a heaving lump under the comforter. Seeing the demolition of Evan’s heart has certainly wrung Tommy’s own, but now it breaks right along with his; Tommy faintly feels the relief that he’s here, that he’s managed to insinuate himself into this grief along with Evan, incredibly dull against the sharp points of broken edges.
He sets the glass of water on the nightstand, slowly sitting next to Evan on the bed, trying to give him every opportunity to kick Tommy out. The other man doesn’t move, though, doesn’t even acknowledge him as he shakes through sobs.
Deciding to stick with the familiar, Tommy again strokes his hand across Evan’s back in a slow circuit over the covers. It takes longer, but Evan settles into hiccuping breaths.
When Tommy draws back, a question about what Evan wants right now on the tip of his tongue, a hand darts out from the pile of blankets and wraps around his wrist.
“Stay,” Evan says wetly. “Please.”
“Of course,” Tommy says. “Should I — I don’t have clothes.”
Evan waves him toward the dresser. “Bottom drawer. Should fit.”
When he opens the drawer, he’s met with a couple of shirts and a pair of shorts he must’ve left at Evan’s loft, and his heart, ragged as it is, does an ill-timed flip. He pulls on the shorts, debates in his head about wearing a shirt since he never wears one to sleep, and decides to err on the side of caution and put one on.
Tugging back a corner of the comforter and sheets, he slides into bed behind Evan, and freezes, painfully unsure. There’s a beat of heavy nothing, then Evan turns over and plasters himself against Tommy’s chest. His fingers fist in Tommy’s shirt and his mouth tightens, brow furrowing.
“You want this off?” Tommy asks, tugging at his collar and noticing now that Evan is bare-chested.
Evan shrugs, blushes, saying,”I’m sorry, it’s weird,” before trailing off in a way that makes it clear that he needs the aliveness of skin under his hands.
"It's okay."
Tommy sits up halfway, stripping off the shirt before laying back down and opening his arms. They situate themselves, Evan’s nose tucked into Tommy’s neck, Tommy’s arms around Evan’s waist, their hips a respectable distance apart. In another moment, Tommy would have ample opportunity to spiral about what it all means for them, but it’s not even a shadow of a thought right now.
Instead, he’s noticing that Evan’s breath isn’t sinking into sleep, that he’s fidgeting and restless. It’s instinct to back off, nudge Evan to roll onto his back and follow him to press the bulk of Tommy’s torso onto his, rest his weight over his chest and remind him where the ground is. Evan never did buy himself that weighted blanket, but Tommy is glad to be his right now.
A surprised exhale leaves Evan’s chest as Tommy settles, but his limbs go lax almost instantaneously, and sleep isn’t far from him after that. He breathes even, occasional murmurs leaving his lips or tightness making its way onto his face before he relaxes into a deeper sleep.
And that gives Tommy time to think.
In the coming days, he knows the 118 will band together, will grieve and bargain and rail at the sky for taking Bobby before anyone was ready for his absence. They’ll remember together, share stories of the Bobby that each of them knew, even the ones he wouldn’t want them to talk about; the recounting of relapses and spin-outs will be just as treasured as the memories of meals shared and advice given and love shared — grief will always be as complicated as the people grieved and the ones doing the grieving, after all.
Right now, Tommy doesn’t know what his place will be in those moments, if he’ll hover around the periphery the way he always has, or whether he’ll be right there, in it with them: arms around Evan and Chim and Eddie, quietly tucking tissues into the hands of Athena and Maddie, sharing small, sad smiles with Hen and Karen, serving as a distraction for the children so the adults can have a few minutes to sort out the details of funeral arrangements without being overheard. He doesn’t know, but he does make a promise to himself, hoping Bobby can hear him: he will be there. He’ll be a soft place to land for anyone spinning out from such a devastating loss. He’ll be the man Bobby would be, and he’ll hope he’s enough.