Work Text:
Tommy wasn’t happy when he landed the helicopter on a patch of grass to pick up another firefighter who was qualified to abseil from the flying helicopter and to also get their patient into the helicopter that way. The day had been crazy so far, with more rescues in nearly inaccessible areas than Tommy had ever experienced in a single day before. It felt like half of LA had gone crazy about some treasure hunt, though Tommy so far only knew the few things he had caught about it from their patients.
Two more hours in the air, and Tommy would be grounded for the rest of the shift because he would have reached the limit on his allowed air time. In the nearly five years he had now been working at the 217 as a pilot, that had only happened twice: once on the day the coast of California had been hit by a devastating tsunami and once a couple of months ago when the Hollywood Reservoir dam had broken, and the flood had caused several mudslides in its wake.
During their previous rescue, Marisol had twisted her wrist when their rescue victim had started to panic mid-air. So now they were picking up another firefighter from the LAPD who had the necessary education and experience to take over Marisol’s role on the helicopter. Tommy hadn’t caught the name earlier, and he just hoped the next two hours would go by fast and without another incident. He had never before wanted his flight time to end as much as he wanted at this moment.
“Welcome on board,” Tarek greeted their new crew member.
The first answer was laughter, and Tommy turned abruptly in his seat, because he knew that laughter. Though it was the first time he didn’t hear it through the speaker of his phone or of his laptop.
“Thanks for having me on this crazy shift. I’m sorry your friend got hurt.”
“Evan?” Tommy asked, surprised.
The other man turned and waved at Tommy and his co-pilot Charlie with a wide grin. “Tommy! Fancy seeing you here.”
“You know each other?” Charlie asked. “I’m Charlie, by the way. And your partner in the back is Tarek.”
“We’ve been chatting,” Evan said. “I went online to find someone to talk to that wasn’t my own crew when the whole lockdown started.”
“Oh, that Evan!” Tarek sent Tommy a knowing look.
Tommy glared at him for a moment. His team had been teasing him about his so-far strictly online friend for months. Tommy had been bored out of his mind during every single downtime at the start of the lockdown. Work had been horrible for months, but everything he usually did to distract himself from work and to relax hadn’t been available anymore.
The LAFD had provided a communication board online for its members for at least a decade now, if not longer, but Tommy had never really used it before the pandemic. He didn’t remember how he had ended up there three weeks into the lockdown, but he had started chatting in several groups and privately with a couple of other firefighters. It was easier to complain about some things online than it was with his crew, mostly because none of them could change anything about the situation, and venting the frustration with his crew had always felt like putting another burden on them.
Evan was the only one Tommy had stayed in contact with for all the months that had passed since then. He wasn’t someone who usually spent a lot of time online, and as soon as he had been able to go back to some of his hobbies, he had done that rather than stay online. At that point, Evan and Tommy had long exchanged numbers and gone from chatting online to texting and the occasional video call. They had been texting so much, in fact, that some of Tommy’s crew had been teasing him about when he’d ask Evan out on a date.
“You talk about me?” Evan asked. Then he added, directed at Charlie and Tarek, “Most people call me Buck.”
Tarek nodded and closed the door of the helicopter. “I’ll remember. Let’s go. Personally, I think those crazy treasure hunters can wait for a couple more minutes, but I don’t think anyone higher up in the food chain than us will agree.”
Tommy laughed loudly as he turned around in his seat. “Agreed, on both terms. I don’t think we’d get away with just ignoring them in favor of people who we think deserve our help more.”
Evan turned out to be a great asset. Tommy had suspected as much because everything he knew about Evan concerning his job had already told him he was very competent at what he did. Before he had known that Evan was the one joining them, Tommy had still been worried about Marisol’s replacement because it was always a gamble to get someone new on a helicopter. The work in a helicopter was different than on the ground; they were all much more dependent on each other up in the air.
Evan worked so well with Tarek that Tarek started not-so-subtly trying to recruit Evan for the 217 one hour into Evan working with them. Evan laughed it off, his tone clearly flattered but mostly uninterested in Tarek’s offers. It was an amusing conversation to listen to whenever they didn’t have a patient on board.
They spent the next two-and-a-half hours in the air nearly all the time. With that, Tommy and Charlie had spent a little longer in the air than they should’ve, but such was life, and no one would complain about it on a crazy day like this. They returned to Harbor just after sunset, and Tommy hoped that the night would keep the treasure hunters at bay for a while.
“Are you off shift now?” Evan asked while he helped Tarek clean the back of the helicopter.
“I wish,” Charlie said with a huff. She was still in her seat with a clipboard in her hands, filling out the required form they had to fill out after every flight. “We’re all air and ground crew. So, if we reach our limit on flight time, we always have to stay as ground crew until the end of the shift.”
“You’re going back to the 118 for the rest of the shift, right?” Tommy asked, and when Evan nodded, he continued, “Want to meet for breakfast? We can catch up with each other on all the crazy calls about treasure hunters we got.”
“I already have plans for the morning,” Tarek said with a wide grin and a wink in Tommy’s direction. “So I have to pass up on that.”
Tommy rolled his eyes. He knew exactly that Tarek had no plans at all and that Tarek knew very well Tommy hadn’t been asking him.
“I have plans, too!” Charlie chimed in with a wink, though for her that was actually true.
“The invitation was for Evan, not for you.”
Evan laughed. “Sounds great. No one at the 118 wanted to talk about the treasure!”
Tommy raised his brows. “I bet Hen and Chimney have already teamed up to look for it together.”
“Probably,” Evan agreed, still amused. “Text me a place where we can meet?”
“Sure,” Tommy promised.
***
“I need this coffee, trust me!” Evan said as he sat down at the table Tommy had already been waiting at for 20 minutes. He was carrying a tray with three cups of coffee and a bagel. “We barely got any rest last night, and not even half of those calls were treasure hunters. I feel the whole city is just exploding with the last lockdown restrictions ending.”
Tommy took a sip of his own coffee and nodded slowly. “We could’ve postponed.”
“No way!” Evan shook his head. “I’ve only been trying to convince you to meet up for ten weeks now.”
Tommy smiled and lowered his gaze, strangely moved by the fact that Evan was keeping track of the time since he had first brought up meeting for a coffee or a meal. Tommy hadn’t been able to explain why he was hesitating about it, but Evan hadn’t pushed too much. He had just brought up the idea regularly ever since.
“And then dispatch put you in my helicopter without consulting either of us.”
Evan ducked his head. “Josh might have consulted with me?”
“Josh?” Tommy asked, only vaguely remembering that there might be a dispatcher by that name. He knew most of the voices from dispatch, but they usually didn’t introduce themselves, so Tommy didn’t know many names to those voices.
Evan nodded. “He is a good friend of my sister and works at dispatch. I was on shift, so I usually wouldn’t have been asked to step in for your injured teammate, right? But with all the restrictions, I haven’t had a chance to take an extra shift with any flight crew for more than a year now. I was in desperate need of some time in the air, so I won’t need to take the course again to keep my qualifications. Josh knew that and called Bobby, then talked to me about it. He mentioned all your names, so I knew you’d be my pilot when I went over to Harbor.”
Tommy chuckled. “And you couldn’t let that chance pass by.”
“I couldn’t,” Evan agreed all too earnestly. “I really needed those hours!”
Tommy grinned and raised his brows.
Evan huffed and rolled his eyes in response. “And yes, maybe I thought it would be a good environment to meet. I’m pretty sure one day we’d have worked together anyway.”
“It was good working with you,” Tommy said. “You clicked pretty well with Tarek. He was completely serious about trying to recruit you.”
“I’m happy at the 118.” Evan smiled and shrugged. “Maybe one day I’ll have to leave when Bobby retires, and Chimney might become my new captain. With him being the father of my niece, and all that. Or maybe that’s already going to happen if he and Maddie ever marry, who knows. But as long as I don’t have to, I want to stay there.”
“It’s good to hear how much the place has changed,” Tommy said. He had experienced a lot of that change himself, but he also knew that him leaving was part of that change. Tommy had needed a fresh start somewhere else because there had been things he hadn’t been able to let go of while he had still been at the 118.
“Considering we’re sitting here and getting breakfast, I take it that it wasn’t a completely horrible idea not to warn you that I was joining your crew for a couple of hours. And by the way, coffee alone is no breakfast, Tommy!”
Tommy laughed. “It wasn’t a horrible idea at all. And I was waiting to order breakfast until you arrived.”
Evan looked down at his bagel. “Oh.”
“I’ll get something to eat in a little bit,” Tommy promised. “I suspect you’ll have more than that one bagel eventually.”
Evan nodded slowly. “I’m starving. The night was horrible, and I should’ve stayed with your crew to eat as your captain suggested before going back to the 118. I had no time to eat at all once I was back. And it wasn’t even a full moon night!”
“Full moon night?” Tommy asked, amused.
Evan glared at him. “It’s not superstition! I once pulled a tapeworm out of a guy’s ass and then was stuck with Bobby in a yoga class for pregnant women when three of them went into labor at the same time! Full moons are cursed!”
Tommy grinned. “Okay.”
“Anyway,” Evan muttered around a bit of his bagel. “Did you have any more treasure hunt calls?”
“A couple. Though thankfully, our on-call pilot barely had to get into the air, and not for any treasure hunters. It seems they do have a little common sense, at least, and know to keep their adventures to a time when they have light to search.”
“Have you looked at the riddle?” Evan asked, eyes gleaming.
“Don’t tell me you want to look for the treasure yourself!”
“Would it be that crazy?” Evan asked. “Five million is a lot. If it’s real.”
“I’ve looked at the riddle,” Tommy admitted. “It kind of sounds stupid. I think it’s an advertising campaign. Something to make people talk about his books. I looked up the author. It’s been a couple of years since his last book. And there were several announcements about a new book coming soon, but it never happened. I’m half convinced he isn’t really dead.”
Evan grinned. “Really? You think the guy faked his own death? Wouldn’t his fans be angry about something like that?”
“Some might be,” Tommy nodded. “But I think there are many more who’d just be relieved it was a false alarm. Especially if he eventually makes it seem it was all a mistake. You know, he was on a well-deserved vacation to finish his still non-existing next book and didn’t realize whoever released the information about his death made that mistake because he didn’t have access to the internet in his Canadian shack. Or on his tropical island.”
Evan laughed so hard he nearly spilled his coffee—already the second of his three cups. “And, oh, how convenient that at the same time he had just hidden this treasure. Or maybe that video was released by accident, too! You know, maybe that’s something Taylor should be looking into!”
“I saw her on the news interviewing some treasure hunters,” Tommy said.
“I missed a couple of calls from her yesterday,” Evan said. “I guess she hoped I’d have some information about a couple of treasure hunters.”
“She might be looking for a partner to help her hunt for the treasure herself.”
Evan shook his head. “I don’t think I’d want to look for it with Taylor. I don’t need to be the focus of another news story.”
Tommy hummed.
Evan grinned and winked at Tommy. “I have much better things to do than hang out with Taylor. Or search for the treasure with her. Would you like to look for the treasure, though?”
Tommy cocked his head and watched Evan thoughtfully. Somehow, with Evan, he was never sure if he was really flirting with him or not. Evan had never mentioned dating men, and there had been a lot of opportunities for it during some of their video calls. Tommy had shared some details about failed dates in the past, and about his experiences of the year-long struggle with being gay. There had also been that time when Chimney—who had at the time lived in Evan’s apartment with him so he wouldn’t risk his pregnant girlfriend’s health—had teased Evan about his online girlfriend with every video call Evan had taken with either Tommy or his therapist. For a couple of weeks, Evan had jokingly and regularly called Tommy his online girlfriend.
Evan sighed, disappointed. “So, you don’t want to look for the treasure, huh?”
“You said yourself it’s probably not even real,” Tommy pointed out. “Who in their right mind hides five million dollars and leaves a riddle for anyone to find it?”
“Someone looking for an idea for a new book,” Evan said. “You know what? I’m going to text Taylor so she can look into this theory. If she is the one to break the news if the guy isn’t dead, she’ll be really happy about that.”
“Still trying to apologize for leading her on about that double date with Albert and your neighbor?” Tommy asked with a grin, though maybe his prodding had a little deeper meaning. While he often thought but wasn’t sure Evan was flirting with him, Tommy sometimes also wondered if Evan was trying to date Taylor.
But Evan shook his head, laughing loudly. “No. Looking back, I see why Taylor thought it might be a date. I was an idiot there, only thinking about the fact that I didn’t want to show up to that thing alone. But I also didn’t want to chicken out. Really, I think Taylor can be a good friend, but I have no interest in dating her.”
“Good to know.” The next moment, Tommy wanted to smack himself on the back of his head. He knew he could be much smoother, but something about Evan just made him behave like an idiot all too often.
Evan grinned and leaned forward, meeting Tommy’s gaze head-on. “I was kind of hoping this was a date, you know?”
Tommy swallowed. “It can be. I mean, I’d like this to be a date. I just wasn’t sure … I’ve been getting very mixed signals from you.”
Evan bit his lip and lowered his gaze. “I haven’t dated any men before. But I’ve been reliably informed by Albert and the internet that appreciating and fantasizing about men isn’t actually something straight dudes do.”
Tommy laughed. “Fantasizing?”
Evan grinned widely. “Not sharing that on a first date. Or in public.”
“At what date should I bring up that question again, then?” Tommy asked.
Evan winked at him. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Tommy nodded. “I will. And I’m looking forward to the answer. But first, let’s get something to eat.”
Twenty minutes later, they were back at their table with something proper to eat instead of just a bagel with cream cheese that Evan had had earlier. Evan had opted for a tea instead of a fourth cup of coffee, and for a while, they talked about the crazy calls of their last shift that hadn’t been related to the treasure hunt.
When their plates were empty, Tommy asked, “Do you really want to look for that treasure?”
Evan shrugged. “Why not? I wouldn’t do any of the stupid things we’ve seen others doing, but it can’t hurt to poke at that riddle a little bit, right?”
“Okay, let’s look at the riddle,” Tommy agreed.
Evan beamed and pulled out his phone. He had to have it saved on the phone, because it didn’t take him long before he started to read:
“Walked along the river’s edge to hide my secret treasure
A heron soared, a gray bridge roared, a bullfrog croaked, good measure
I stopped beneath a willow tree in the narrow place
And then I saw the light beam fall upon my treasured place.”
“Still sounds utterly stupid,” Tommy said. “You’d think someone who made a lot of money with writing books would be better at creating a poem, right?”
“I don’t know. I always got good grades in school if I had to write a story. But poems? I knew that would be a bad grade before I even started, no matter how much I tried,” Evan said.
Tommy chuckled. “I don’t even remember that I ever had to write a poem in school.”
“You were clearly very lucky with your teachers.” Evan made a face. “I had that one English teacher for three years in high school. She made us write a short story and a poem each term. She was great otherwise, but I couldn’t convince her to let me skip the poem part of the term.”
“I don’t get why he’d put a bridge between the heron and the bullfrog,” Tommy said. “How can a bridge roar anyway?”
“He said in the video that it’s hidden in LA, right?” Evan stared at his phone with a frown. “There are a lot of bridges in LA.”
Tommy nodded thoughtfully. “Most treasure hunters we had to rescue were in the rural areas between Griffith Park and Topanga Park, right? Not many bridges to be found there.”
“I think most people haven’t thought much about the bridge,” Evan said. “The first guy we found was focused on the willow trees. And that girl we picked up together yesterday, who broke her leg, was only talking about the heron.” He grinned. “You know, maybe starting with the bridge is a good idea! The roaring could be cars going over that bridge. So, it would have to be a bridge with a lot of traffic.”
“Because we have so few of those in LA,” Tommy deadpanned.
Evan chuckled. “Fair. But it’s still a starting point. And we also have to look for willow trees and bullfrogs and herons. That all means water, doesn’t it?”
“Most bridges tend to go over some body of water,” Tommy said. “Even around here.”
He laughed when Evan kicked him under the table and then stretched out his own leg to rub his foot against Evan’s calf. It made Evan blush adorably, and Tommy answered Evan’s exasperated look with a grin.
“Do you know where that guy lived?” Tommy asked. “He might have chosen a place not far from home. Who wants to carry around five million dollars into some remote area an hour’s drive away from home? You know, I don’t even remember his name! I don’t think I ever read any of his books.”
“I tried once,” Evan murmured while typing on his phone. “Couldn’t get into it. And I figured out pretty soon where he was going with the story. Some people really celebrate him, and he made a lot of money with those books. But it didn’t feel like anything special.” He hummed. “So, there isn’t a specific address given anywhere. But you remember that interview Taylor had with Harcourt’s assistant? There is a moment of a little wider shot, and I think they have to be on the north side of Griffith Park.”
“So, Taylor knows the address?”
Evan sent Tommy a look. “If I asked her for the address, she’d want to know why. And she’d rightfully assume we’re looking for the treasure. I don’t want to share with her if we find it!”
“Fair. If there is a treasure and we find it, it would be a horrible first date if we included a third person,” Tommy agreed.
Evan nodded. “That’s exactly what I said.”
Tommy grinned and regretted a little that there was a whole table separating them. Sitting in front of Evan and knowing for sure now that he was flirting with him made Tommy want to kiss him desperately. He’d had his share of his own fantasies about Evan, and a lot of those were about kissing him.
“North of Griffith Park,” Tommy murmured. “And a narrow place.”
Evan cocked his head. “Does that sound at all familiar?”
“There is a stretch of the LA river that’s called Glendale Narrows,” Tommy said. “There is a path right at the river for pedestrians and bikes. And there are a couple of bridges crossing the LA river right at Glendale Narrows.”
Evan grinned widely. “Want to take a little walk at the LA river?”
“Only if you promise we won’t have to call 9-1-1 in the end,” Tommy said. “We’d never hear the end of it!”
***
“There are the herons,” Evan said and pointed at the gate that was adorned by two herons made out of wrought iron. He really didn’t need to point out the bridge; the roaring from the traffic was loud enough and nearly drowned out the croaking of the bullfrogs.
“But where is the right willow tree?” Tommy asked and turned around. “Best place to hide anything would be on one of these islands on the riverbank.”
Evan stepped beside him, so near that their shoulders were pressing together. “Good thing he hid gold and jewels and not a check, then. Would be ruined the first time the water rose too high.”
Tommy chuckled. “Except that carrying five million in gold and diamonds will be a challenge.”
“If Harcourt could carry that, the two of us won’t have a problem with it,” Evan said, chin raised. “It’s the middle of the day. We won’t have any light beams shining on the treasured place.”
“If it is on one of those islands, it has to be near the bridge to have any light fall on it. That’s narrowing it down to three or four islands. Let’s go check them out.”
Evan laughed and grabbed Tommy’s hand as they made their way down to the riverbank. The water was deep enough that they took off their shoes so they wouldn’t get any water in them. Five minutes later, they stood under a willow tree, and Tommy stared in disbelief at the big H laid out with rocks.
“H marks the spot,” Evan said gleefully. “Good thing I took the shovel from the car, isn’t it?”
Tommy might have mocked Evan a little bit for taking the foldable shovel. Clearly, this might be something Evan would never let him live down.
They didn’t have to dig deep before they discovered the chest that looked exactly like the one Harcourt had shown in his video. By mutual decision, they didn’t bother to open it on the island and instead carried it out of the riverbank and to Evan’s car as fast as they could. Suddenly, they had five million dollars between them, in the middle of a whole city that had gone crazy for over twenty-four hours now about that treasure.
“I really didn’t think it was real,” Evan said awestruck as they sat in his jeep with the chest hidden under some blankets and a bag with an LAFD label in the back of the car.
“I can’t believe we’re sitting on five million in gold and gems that half this town is trying to find,” Tommy said.
His heart was thundering in his chest, and that had nothing to do with the extortion of carrying the chest to the car. They had taken a quick look into the chest once it had been in the car, and that had made Tommy feel even more uneasy about the reality of being in possession of that treasure now.
“What are we going to do now?” Evan asked.
“I know a guy.” Tommy exhaled slowly. “He is a lawyer and into finances. I don’t think it’s a good idea to just show up anywhere with this.”
“Yeah,” Evan whispered. “Can you imagine how crazy the news would get if we just declared we found the treasure?”
Tommy stared out the front window in silence for a moment. “I don’t think I want anyone to know.”
“Right,” Evan agreed quietly. “We’d never have peace again. So, where is that guy you know? And will he keep quiet about it?”
“He will,” Tommy promised and gave Evan the address of his friend’s law firm. Then he texted Lucas that he needed to meet him there as soon as possible about an emergency that couldn’t wait. A minute later, he got back a string of questions followed by a confirmation that Lucas was at the office and would be waiting for Tommy’s arrival.
Evan’s hands shook a little as he started the car, and Tommy was glad Evan didn’t suggest Tommy should drive in his own car. He could come back later to pick it up, once Evan wasn’t driving around alone with a stupid amount of gold and gems in the back of his car. They had already seen the lengths some people would go to in their attempts to get their hands on this chest. Driving this thing around alone seemed to be an idea even more stupid than driving it around at all. He really hadn’t thought they’d find anything.
“Rich people are crazy,” Evan murmured five minutes into their drive when they were securely in the middle of LA traffic.
Tommy chuckled mirthlessly. “Yeah, agreed. Makes me not want to keep that money, lest we get infected with that stupidity and craziness.”
Evan hummed. “Not all of it, at least. Some of it might be a good support for our retirement plan.”
“Probably,” Tommy agreed. “What amount wouldn’t make us crazy, though?”
Evan laughed. “Who knows. Does a million for each of us sound reasonable? I mean, if we stay with the LAFD until retirement, we’ve already got a pretty good retirement plan through them. An extra million should be enough to give us a cozy time, right?”
“It does sound reasonable,” Tommy agreed, feeling a little bit that at least some of the weight of the damn chest in the back of their car was being lifted from his chest.
“And the rest?” Evan asked quietly. “That still leaves three million we don’t want but somehow have now.”
“We should’ve left the chest where we found it,” Tommy muttered. “Why did we take it?”
“I don’t know,” Evan said and exhaled slowly as he had to stop at a traffic light. “But we did take it, so now we need to figure out what to do. And put it in a vault in a bank asap or something. Does your friend work for a bank?”
Tommy shook his head. “No. But we’ll figure it out.”
He reached out and put a hand on Evan’s thigh to calm him down a little. That did earn him a brilliant smile, but Evan’s fingers kept drumming against the steering wheel nervously.
“You know, there are a lot of places that can probably really need some donations, especially after this past year,” Evan said after a moment. “Youth centers, shelters, food banks. That kind of thing.”
“Giving one place three million dollars would very much overwhelm them,” Tommy said.”
Evan nodded. “Giving 60 places 50k each or something like that could do a lot of good.”
Tommy nodded slowly. “That’s a plan then. We put this damn chest somewhere where we won’t attract any robbers to kill us to get their hands on it, and then we’re figuring out 60 places in LA we’d like to support.”
***
“Eddie suggested yesterday that he and I could go searching for the treasure together,” Evan said with a mischievous grin as he sat down at the same table where their first date had started two days ago.
That first date had ended very nervewreckingly and with too many lawyers involved. A lot of lawyers had shown up at one point who were working for Harcourt, but thankfully, they had traded the cursed chest against a check, and now Tommy and Evan had those five million sitting in a bank account under both their names that could only be accessed by both of them together. It had been much easier to breathe once the damn gold and gems hadn’t been their responsibility anymore.
“He pointed out that everyone else always seemed to be looking alone,” Evan continued, still grinning. “Which isn’t really true. We had that call where a treasure hunter had fallen into a septic tank, who was there with her partner. Also, turned out that guy was married, and she was his adventure on the side. While she was convinced he’d ask her to marry him any minute now.”
Tommy laughed. “Wow.”
“Right?” Evan made a face. “And I was the one who had to get her out of that tank. I didn’t get rid of the smell for hours! Anyway, before that, Eddie asked about teaming up. And I had a really hard time convincing him that I had no interest anymore in looking for it.”
Tommy shuddered. “I’m sorry you drew the short straw on that call.”
“I survived,” Evan said. “Barely.”
Tommy laughed. “I’d have hated for you to succumb to the stench of a broken septic tank before I could get my second date. You still have to come through on that promise to share your fantasies you hinted at.”
“After the way our first date went, the second date might actually be the magical number to share at least some of it,” Evan said with a wink. “I was a little bumped that the first date didn’t end with a kiss.”
“All those lawyers just ruined the mood,” Tommy pointed out, and Evan nodded with a deep sigh.
It had been a little struggle to convince Harcourt’s lawyers that they didn’t want to have their names published anywhere. Thankfully, even in the somehow pretty extensive paperwork about the treasure that those lawyers had provided, it had nowhere been stated that the lucky finders would need to make their names public once they found the treasure. And Lucas had been a champ, providing them with the needed paperwork to ensure the agreement about their names being kept secret would be legally binding.
Tommy wasn’t sure why no one had made it public yet that the treasure had been found. But that was definitely not their problem outside of work, so he wouldn’t ask about it. He and Evan had other problems to deal with.
“Nevertheless, I think that was a first date that is impossible to beat,” Evan said. “Which makes me think we should make sure it’s the last first date we’ll ever have.”
Tommy bit his lip and stared at Evan until that look alone made Evan blush. “Deal.”
He couldn’t remember ever being so giddy about starting to date someone as he was with Evan, and he knew it had nothing to do with the rush of finding a five-million-dollar treasure during their first date.
“I’ve made a list,” Evan said and ducked his head as if he was expecting a negative reaction to that.
Tommy pulled out his own list, old-school on paper. “I did, too. So, let’s compare.”
Evan’s smile was breathtaking, and Tommy hurriedly concentrated on their two lists of places they each thought could use the donations they were planning to distribute. There were a lot of places in LA that could use that kind of money, but they had both agreed to take their time so they could research every place they wanted to donate to. They wanted to make sure that the money would really help the community in the end and not end up in some shady people’s private pockets.
They were two hours into their discussions when a commotion from the front of the café interrupted them. It took them a moment until they followed everyone else’s gaze to the TV mounted on the wall, where the local news was running silently. They didn’t need to hear what Taylor Kelly was saying on the screen, the caption beneath her said everything.
“I guess your tip about Harcourt worked out well for her,” Tommy said amused.
“And she didn’t warn me at all!” Evan complained. “She could’ve let me know before running the story, right?”
Tommy shook his head. “I don’t think that’s how life works for any reporter. Giving the information away so freely might ruin an exclusive story.”
Evan huffed and stabbed his thumbs maybe a little too hard against the screen on his phone as he typed out a message.
“And you aren’t telling her everything either,” Tommy continued with his brows raised.
“She doesn’t know that,” Evan said. “And she won’t ever know it. She would publish our names and pictures before we even knew what was happening.”
Tommy nodded. “So, the whole thing truly was a hoax by this guy.”
“Apparently, because he didn’t know how to end his latest book,” Evan said, still staring at his phone. “So he created the whole treasure hunt as one big experiment to get an end for his story.”
Tommy lowered his gaze. “I think we need to call Lucas so he can make sure that asshole not only does not use our names for his book, but also won’t make the heroes of his story firefighters.”
Evan nodded slowly. “We’ll probably be the villains besting the heroes in the last minute, anyway. I mean, we did ruin part of his plan, right? If I heard this story without knowing what we know, I’d be convinced the treasure was a lie just as much as his death. He really doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’ll just give away five million dollars.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along!” Tommy said loudly. “The damn treasure was never real!”
Evan laughed as that caused a whole loud argument in the café. After a couple of minutes, they decided to pack their things and go somewhere a little quieter, probably either Tommy’s house or Evan’s apartment. They hadn’t made a decision about that yet when they reached Evan’s car, where they would have to part ways at least for a little while.
“Hey,” Tommy said with a soft smile when Evan turned to him. He hesitated just for a moment before he tipped Evan’s chin up with two fingers and kissed him, soft and short, just lips pressing against lips.
Evan sighed and leaned towards Tommy when he pulled back.
“That okay?” Tommy asked quietly.
“Yeah.” Evan cleared his throat. “Very okay.” After a moment, the mischievous grin returned to his face. “And even better than anything I imagined.”
“Good,” Tommy whispered. “I’ll make it a goal to achieve that same judgment with everything else your mind has come up with so far.”
Evan laughed and grabbed the front of Tommy’s shirt to pull him in for another short and sweet kiss. “Your place?”
Tommy nodded. “Sounds great. You already have the address. So, I’ll see you there in thirty.”
“Drive safe,” Evan murmured, and after a third kiss, he turned around and got into his car.
Tommy only managed to move once Evan’s car was out of sight. He felt a little crazy over the thought, but some part of him that wouldn’t be quietened by any of the bad experiences of the past was convinced that this was the start of his future, that Evan was the person who would make him feel whole and complete.
Tommy turned to walk to his own car and decided to trust that voice, and to embrace whatever was to come with Evan.