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Patricia liked to play chess, and she knew that she wouldn't have much longer to enjoy it. The memory loss was getting worse, and soon the skills needed to actually enjoy the game would be gone. She knew this.
And Tommy knew this too.
So while he listened to Abby talk about her day at the dispatch center, he got the chess board out. Abby tilted her head and gave him that soft smile - the one that looked so pure and genuine that something sharp twisted in his gut and made him feel guilty.
He lined up the chessboard pieces, focusing on those instead.
Patricia smiled at him, the lines around her eyes looking more pronounced than when he had first started dating Abby.
"I'm going to go start dinner," Abby announced, wrapping her hand around Tommy's and giving it a brief squeeze. "While you and mom have your game night. Chicken?"
"We always have chicken," Patricia complained.
Well. Not always.
"You love chicken, Mom."
"No, I don't think I've ever liked your chicken." Patricia moved her pawn forward two spaces. "Tommy doesn't like your chicken, either."
"Well, now, that's not true!" Abby exclaimed. "My fiancé loves my chicken. Tell her, Tommy."
Tommy looked up from the chessboard to smile, because that's what a good fiancé did, because he cared about her, and because Abby's chicken was fine. He just never craved it.
"There's nothing wrong with your chicken, Abby," he promised her.
She made a face - as though that was the wrong thing to say. Maybe it was. Tommy frequently had the quiet, persistent feeling that he was the one doing something wrong. But she got up - let go of his hand - and walked into the kitchen.
Patricia looked up at him, her face not actually holding the same judgment as her daughter, but it felt somehow more threatening. Not in a cruel way - Patricia was never cruel. Abby was never cruel either.
Sometimes, Tommy felt out of place around them. Sometimes, Tommy wondered if he didn't still belong at his father's table. Or, god forbid, Gerrard - who had been gone from the 118 for months but still haunted Tommy in the same recesses of his mind that refused to exorcise his father.
"Well, you certainly eat it with enthusiasm," Patricia commented. "But then, people eat things they don't want all the time."
She took his pawn.
"You're very polite, "she continued. "Maybe that's a problem."
"My mother did raise me to be that way," he said, which was true - anything good in him came from her and all the bad - well, at least some of the credit for that had to go to the other parent. "I don't think she'd think it was a problem."
"It is," she said, "If you keep eating the food you don't want."
Tommy frowned down at the board, a glare that supposed that the small wooden pieces might have the answers that he didn't.
They didn't help.
"You remind me of a friend of mine," Patricia said, as she took another pawn. "Eric. Ornery little devil who used to sneak out of church with me on rainy Sundays. We'd go down to the creek and see who could make bigger footprints in the mud. A childish game, but then - we were children."
"Sounds like you were a bit ornery yourself, Mrs. Clark."
"Oh, I was."
"He sounds nice," Abby called from the kitchen. The smell of chicken cooking in the cast iron was pleasant. Always pleasant. Never anything more than that. "You two ever date? Before daddy?"
Patricia snorted. "People thought so. People always think you're going to marry the first person you have any fun with." She shook her head and moved her rook out of the way. "Foolish thought, if you ask me."
She took another pawn. "He ran off to San Francisco with a boy out there. Handsome man. Artists. I can't - " she frowned. "I can't remember their names."
It was a devastating reminder, here in the apartment, about Patricia's disease. Tommy hesitated slightly, and in that hesitation, she asked, "What's are you making for dinner, Abby?"
Later that night, Abby held onto him and cried about her mother's memory getting worse. "Sometimes I worry that this will all be too much for you, and it will chase you away."
"I'd never leave you because of your mother's sickness," he said.
Tommy kept the promise he made in the dark. When the time came, it wasn't Patricia's illness that tore him away.
Instead, it was the quiet realization that he couldn't keep eating from a plate that didn't contain anything he wanted.
He heard about a woman meeting Patricia's description running away on a Friday, midway through his shift.
He couldn't actually do anything until he was off duty, and by then, when he called the familiar number, Abby - a little surprised to hear from him - assured him that her mother was fine, and that she'd been found in a hospital, far from home.
"Buck helped me track her down," Abby explained, more hesitantly than was necessary. "He's … really sweet, Tommy."
"I'm glad. You deserve someone who treats you well," he said.
And he meant it, which is why he spent several hours making enough of her mother's favorite tricolor cookies for Patricia, Abby, and Buck.
Which made him feel all the more like an asshole when he went to visit Patricia the next day, his hands full of the homemade tricolor cookies, and his first thought when the door opened was I wish I would have found Buck first.
The man - couldn't have been much older than 26, but 26 was still a man - stood there in a shirt that didn't need to be that tight, in a color that matched the pink splotch above his eye perfectly. Tommy mentally calculated the man's entire workout game while he stood there, words failing him.
"I brought cookies," Tommy finally managed to say. "Tricolor cookies. For Patricia. She loves them. Well. Loved. I heard from the radio that she had a bad day yesterday. I thought…"
I thought I could come here and ramble at my ex-fiancee's hot new boytoy, apparently, Tommy thought desperately.
Buck leaned over and looked at the cookies in the tray. "Oh! Those are cute little rainbow cookies. I had some of these once, when Maddie first got her license and drove us to the Shore. They had some of these in a cute little bakery in one of the cities we stopped in along the way. "
His lips were equally pink as the birthmark and the shirt, Tommy thought, which was a wretched thought to have about your ex-fiancée's new sweet boytoy.
I bet he's sweet, Tommy thought.
"You can have one," Tommy said, after a moment of Buck staring at him, expecting him to carry on the conversation. "I mean. If you don't have a problem eating rainbow cookies."
Some men would. Gerrard. His father. Half of the men his father knew.
"Why would I - oh, hey, no. I am an ally," Buck said, and he reached down and picked two cookies off the plate. "Hey, you should come in. Not just stand out there."
Of course he is, Tommy thought. I’m a six, and he’s a zero. That fits my life.
Oh, what a terrible thought to have about your ex-fiancée's boytoy.
"I'm Evan," Buck said as he devoured half of the cookie. "Evan Buckley. But most people call me Buck. Oh, these are good. Are they homemade?"
Before Tommy could reply to him, Buck continued, "Patricia's asleep right now. Abby ran to the store to get some things for dinner tonight. Wait, did you say radio? Are you a cop? Hen's bestie is a cop. Athena didn't used to like me very much, but you know what? I think we're getting better."
Hen? Athena?" Tommy's brain tried to keep up with the rest of the conversation, but it stopped on the possibility that this man in front of him was working at the very same firehouse that Tommy had left, not more than a year ago. "Hen? Hen Wilson? Athena Grant?"
Buck looked up from his second cookie, paused, then swallowed. Tommy watched that Adam's Apple like the bad ex that he was, and was momentarily distracted from - well, life.
"Y-yeah," Buck said. "Do you know them? Are you a cop?"
"Oh, no. I'm a firefighter, actually. The 217 now, but a year ago, I was working at the 118," Tommy said. He held out his hand, awkwardly balancing the tricolor cookies in his other hand. "Tommy Kinard."
Buck blinked. "You're Tommy? Abby's Tommy? Abby's Tommy used to work at the 118?"
A lot of questions. It was endearing, actually. And all Tommy could think to say was, "You have frosting on your lip."
Evan blinked, then wiped the frosting off his lip. A little pink tongue darted out - pink to match the lips, sweater, and birthmark.
Tommy was in hell. Never mind the closet, this untouchable man being in front of him licking his lips? That was hell.
"And yes," Tommy said. "To all of your questions."
"Oh. And you're back now."
The tone, which had been friendly and curious, was now … guarded. A little hostile. Sal at his worst moments kind of hostile, actually, and it took Tommy's brain a minute to catch up.
"Oh. NO. No, no, no." Tommy laughed and waved at the rainbow cookies. Well. No, that wasn't something he needed to share with Buck, he supposed. Hell, he hadn't even fully shared it with Abby. Just a vague "we aren't working out" conversation that, in retrospect, probably made him an asshole.
Maybe she deserved the truth. But he hadn't been ready to deliver it yet. Maybe someday he would stop being a coward.
"No?" Buck crossed his arms. God, those muscles were something. "Seems like you're back."
"No, it seems like I'm dropping off Patricia's favorite cookie because I heard about her yesterday, and I was worried," Tommy said. Maybe he should have been annoyed by this .. peacock posturing.
But god, he was not annoyed. Somewhere in his mind, his father's voice told him male peacocks weren't supposed to want to fuck other male peacocks, and Tommy told that voice very firmly to shut up.
Buck hesitated. "Patricia talks about you. All the time. Abby - Abby mentions you too."
"Abby and I didn't work out for a reason, Buck. Evan?"
"It's Buck," he said, sounding more cross than ever.
"Right," Tommy said. "So I'm going to leave. Give my regards to Patricia and Abby, please. I hope you enjoy your chicken."
And he did leave. He was good at walking out this particular door, after all.
He thought maybe he heard Buck's voice calling after him - but he didn't turn back to check.
Tommy didn't get an invite to Patricia's funeral. He supposed that was fair. Abby's grief didn't need a further complication. He sent flowers when heard through a friend of a friend. White lilies, red carnations, and green poms - White flowers, red flowers, and enough green tucked between them to make the arrangement look almost accidental—unless you knew Patricia had loved tricolor cookies.
Two months later, he was scrubbing a particularly disgusting bit of mud off his favorite bird - no, that wasn't technically his job, but the cleaning crew had missed it - when he heard a familiar voice call out behind him.
"This is all so cool."
Tommy turned around to see proof that apparently, no, Evan Buckley didn't own any shirts that fit - instead choosing ones that were far too tight.
"I mean, I knew that you said you worked the 217, and the 217 is Air Ops, but I didn't realize how cool it was," Buck continued.
"It is pretty cool," Tommy agreed. "The only reason I could think of to leave Captain Nash's tightly-ran ship."
"B-Bobby's great," Buck admitted. "I don't remember if you remember me, but - "
"Evan Buckley. But you go by Buck," Tommy answered, instead of the more truthful, People forget you? How?
"You can call me Evan," Buck said. "I-I like the way you say it."
"Are you sure?" Tommy asked. "Because you were pretty adamant last time."
Buck rubbed his neck and his face flushed a light pink out of - what, embarrassment? That hadn't been Tommy's goal, but he was going to be thinking about that blush for a long time.
He was a really bad ex.
"About last time - listen, I was kind of a dick," Buck said. "Well, more than kind of. I wanted to apologize. Y-you seem like a nice guy, and - well. You didn't deserve that."
God, Abby is lucky. I hope she knows how much, Tommy thought.
"It's okay. My parting shot was kind of bitchy, so we're even," Tommy answered.
Buck titled his head and wrinkled his nose. "The thing about the chicken? I have to say, I don't know what that was about. But it did sound bitchy, so congratulations on being able to insult me in a way so classy I have no idea what you actually meant."
"It's my specialty," Tommy replied easily, watching as Buck looked from the bird back to Tommy.
"Oh yeah? I-I kind of thought flying was."
"That too," Tommy answered. "A guy can't have more than one specialty?"
Buck shrugged. "I guess. Though I think too many specializations makes them … not really specializations." He paused. Took a deep breath. "Anyway, I was standing there, watching them throw dirt on Patricia's casket, and I kept looking at your rainbow flowers, and well, I thought about how much they matched your cookies. And how much of a jerk I was. So I'm sorry."
"It's okay, Evan."
Buck grinned, slow and easy, like he didn't know how devastating the action was to anyone within a 20 mile radius who was sexually attracted to men.
"Th-that's good," Buck said. "Because the thing is - I couldn't stop thinking about you. About how kind you had to be, to bring cookies to the mother of your ex, just because you heard she had a bad day. And I thought, wow, I bet that guy is a good friend."
He's a zero, Tommy reminded himself. An ally. He said so himself.
"And it felt weird with Abby here to try to be friends with her ex, but - " Buck's face fell for a moment, but quickly bounced back, and the smile was there again. "I don't know if you heard, but Abby left LA. She's gone to Europe to find herself again."
He tried to sound upbeat about it, Tommy realized. But well - when people left, it tended to be devastating for those left behind.
"I hadn't heard," Tommy said. "Is she coming back?"
A hesitation. "Oh, for sure," Buck said. "I"m just watching her apartment for a few weeks until she gets back."
That hesitation said everything, and most of was that Buck already knew Abby wasn't coming back.
But Tommy didn't push it. He knew - better than anyone - that you had to come to some realizations on your own.
"Still, it must be lonely, in that big … very green apartment all by yourself."
Buck laughed then, and it felt like going up into the air for the first time - terrifying, dangerous, and something Tommy wanted to experience again and again.
"Anyway, I was thinking - since s-she is gone off to Europe, there's no reason we couldn't be friends," Buck said. "Maybe you could come make that very green apartment less lonely."
An ally, Tommy reminded himself.
"Sure," Tommy said. "Maybe we could leave the apartment. Maybe even get you up in one of these." He patted the bird. The nice, uncomplicated bird that wasn't giving him confusing signals.
"No way. Really?" Buck asked. "I hate flying commercial, but these? Seem so much cooler."
"Sometimes you just need the right pilot," Tommy retorted. "Makes all the difference in the … handling."
No, he was not flirting with his ex's probable ex, thank you very much. He was a better ex than that. Really.
Buck gave a full on smirk at that, and Tommy's knees thought about not working for a full ten seconds. "Handling, huh? Y-you know what they say about flying, right?"
Tommy blinked at him. Once. Twice.
That… had been a sex joke.
About flying.
Directed at him.
Tommy felt his brain stall out somewhere between Freud was a dumbass and Buck said he was straight.
"Well," he said eventually. "They both do require good handling."
Buck let out a startled choke that turned into a laugh. "Yeah, we're going to be great friends," he said. "So I'm on A-shift. You should come over some time when you're not working. We'll grab a beer or something and discuss our flight plans."
Discuss … our… flight… plans?
Straight, Tommy reminded himself. Straight. Definitely.
"Yeah," Tommy said. "Can't wait to discuss our flight plans, Evan."
"That's great!" Buck said, reaching forward and squeezing Tommy's arm. "Hopefully there will be less turbulence this time."
Oh, no. If Tommy was sure of anything, it was that there was definitely going to be some turbulence.
As Buck walked away, Tommy admitted, reluctantly, that it felt like they'd already hit some.