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They limped back into LA at dusk. It would have been sooner, but at the last rest stop he and Eddie had leaned against each other like old men, hobbling in slow laps around the car to keep the blood flowing. Buck had thought longingly of his shower and his bed and his body pillow.
“You sure you don’t want to come back with me?” Eddie asked as they turned into his neighborhood. “Chris will be happy to see you.”
Buck snorted, and immediately winced. There was no way to move his face that didn’t hurt. “He’s already going to freak out when he sees you. I don’t want to worry him more.”
Eddie grimaced. “And you’re sure you’re going to be okay alone?”
“Maddie will be by in the morning,” he said, and ignored the obvious side eye Eddie slid his way, the same one Eddie shot him when he returned from the world’s saddest stocked vending machine at the world’s saddest rest stop to find Buck still arguing with his sister. “Honestly, I’m going to take a painkiller and sleep for the next thirteen hours. I’ll be fine.”
Eddie didn’t look happy but kept his thoughts to himself, which Buck took as a win. One more turn and then they were on his street, rolling past the house filled with graduate students who never slept and whose cars spilled over the end of the driveway, past where the construction on the Donaghues in-law suite had entered its fourth month, and carefully navigating around the pot hole Mr. Jeremiah from three doors down had started a letter writing campaign to shame the Bureau of Street Services into filling it; Buck had contributed two letters with a third yet to be mailed. He rolled down the window so he could wave at Michelle, who was coming home from the hospital to her newly moved in girlfriend, and then he kept it down so he could stick his head out and get a little wind on his face, the air still warm but cooler than it had been in New Mexico.
And then there was his house, just as he left it, dark and locked up tight, only now there was someone sitting on his front steps, elbows braced on their knees and head in their hands. Buck squinted; was that—
“Tommy?” he said.
Eddie hit the brakes. The car lurched to a stop. Tommy didn’t look up.
“He hasn’t seen us and he doesn’t know this car,” Eddie said, grip tight on the wheel. “We can keep going. I’ll make up the couch for you.”
Buck's mouth was dry and he gripped his knees to keep his hands from shaking. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d take my ex over your couch any day.”
“I’m sure you would,” Eddie said snidely as he pulled into the driveway. Tommy’s head popped up and, in the weak glow of the headlights, so did his eyebrows. “You need a hand with the bag?”
“I got it.” Buck took a bracing breath and began the agonizing process of unfolding. More or less upright, he leaned against the car for a moment before dragging his bag from the backseat. He patted the roof twice before hobbling towards the front steps where Tommy was awkwardly hovering and looking about as tired as Buck felt.
“Jesus Christ,” Tommy said. Buck’s face had moved on from the ground hamburger stage and genuinely looked worse than it was; the bruising had settled into deep blue and purples, still several days away from yellowing at the edges, and the reduced swelling meant the cuts were made redder and angrier without the camouflage. “What happened?”
“Long story,” Buck said, listing to the side. “Short version is I talked Eddie into road tripping back from Nashville and we were run off the road by a woman who was looking to replace her dead son.” He paused. “Technically he wasn’t dead. He’s been in a persistent vegetative state for fourteen years.”
Back when they were together, Tommy had rolled with the insane shit Buck had spouted off on a regular basis. His eyebrow would rise with each word and he would nod along, mildly condescending, as if he’d heard it all before.
But now Tommy looked at him with an unbearable sadness, in that Buck couldn’t bear up under the weight of it.
“I’m banged up, but I’m okay,” he added, just in case Tommy missed that part.
“Evan,” Tommy said softly, and reached for him. Eddie honked twice. Tommy stepped back. “So we got a chaperone.”
“We do not,” he said firmly, and gave Eddie the finger.
Eddie honked again because he was an asshole, but at least he was an asshole that backed out of the driveway, leaving him and Tommy to stare at each other in the light of the setting sun.
“Do you want to come in?” Buck asked, after waiting for Eddie to turn out of his street.
“Do you want me to come in?” Tommy lobbed back.
Buck was surrounded by assholes. He sighed. “Tommy. I’m tired.”
Tommy shoved his hands into his pockets. “Right. Sorry. I can go.”
“Tommy.”
“I want to come in,” Tommy said, still so fucking sad, but Buck couldn’t tell who that sadness was meant for. He took his hands out of his pockets. “May I?”
Buck surrendered his suitcase and dug his keys out of his own pockets. He missed the lock on the first try and then the second, and before he could go for the charmed third attempt, Tommy gently took the keys and got the door unlocked and open without a single fumble.
“Show off,” Buck muttered, and stepped inside and hit the lights.
Everything was just as he left it: shoes on the rack, mail piled on the small table by the door, the wrought iron hooks he bought to hang his keys on was still bare and unused. Nothing had changed.
“Where do you want this?” Tommy asked quietly.
Buck stared blankly at the suitcase. He was going to have to unpack and do laundry. It was enough to make a man cry.
“Over there is fine,” he said, pointing towards the hall that led to the back of the house and ignoring the pinched line of Tommy’s brow. “Bedroom is down there. Bathroom, too. Living room through there. Kitchen and patio to the left. I’d give you the tour, but, you know.” He gestured towards his face.
Tommy set the suitcase down, and then, slowly and with great deliberation, stepped within touching distance. “May I?” he asked.
“No chaperone around now,” Buck said, nails digging into his own palms to hide how much he wanted.
Tommy touched gentle fingertips to his jaw, tilting his head up and to the right. It must have looked even worse in the light, but Tommy didn’t flinch, just quietly cataloged the damage. Tommy had done the same after his dislocated shoulder, both of them at the base of the loft stairs, Tommy skating a tender palm along the bottom of his shoulder blade as Buck had leaned into him, exhausted.
Tommy brushed a thumb along his jaw and then up his cheek and over to his temple where the worst of the bruising lay. Buck winced in anticipation, but Tommy’s touch was so light that Buck didn’t feel a thing.
“What happened here?” Tommy asked, voice as tender as his touch.
“Got hit with the butt of a rifle,” he answered, wrapping a hand around Tommy’s wrist, not to hold him off but just to hold on. “Hey, uh, so who snitched? Or did we make it back onto the LAFD grapevine?”
“Hen called me,” Tommy said.
“From Napa?”
“From the airport, apparently.” Tommy’s gaze moved from the bruising and the four neat stitches courtesy of the first year resident to his empty foyer and then the emptier house. “They let you drive home like this?”
“Doctor cleared us,” Buck said, giving up on marshaling any annoyance at the presumptive offense Tommy was taking on his behalf. “And we took frequent breaks to stretch. It was fine.”
Tommy’s look made it clear that Buck wasn’t fooling him, and asked, “Why is Hen in Napa?”
And not here remained unsaid but not unheard.
“Funny story,” Buck said, holding perfectly still as Tommy’s touch drifted over his birthmark and back to down to the arch of his cheek. “Last year everyone forgot Hen’s birthday. Well, except for Eddie, but he only sent her a Facebook message.”
Tommy snorted. “That doesn’t count.”
“That’s what I said.” He had to pause as Tommy scrubbed a thumb along his scruff. Give him another day and he would be well on his way to growing a beard. “So Chim planned a surprise party to make up for last year. That’s why me and Eddie were driving when the flights out of Nashville got canceled. We wanted to make it in time.”
“So how did Hen end up in Napa?” Tommy carefully dragged his hand along Buck’s throat.
Buck readjusted his grip on Tommy’s wrist and swallowed against the weight of Tommy’s palm. “Karen apparently had the same idea. She booked them a weekend away, but didn’t tell Chim because he can’t keep a secret.”
“And Howie didn’t tell her for the same reason.”
“Turned out we didn’t need to drive after all. We could have hung out in Nashville for another day and flown out in the morning.” He managed a smile; see, it said, funny.
“Everyone stayed for the party and Hen went to Napa.” Tommy’s expression didn’t change, but the temperature dropped; Tommy was furious.
“We were fine.” He squeezed Tommy’s wrist. “Are fine.”
Tommy’s gaze tracked over the empty house again. The temperature dipped into the single digits.
“Maddie wanted to be here,” Buck said because it wasn’t fair to let Tommy keep thinking what he was thinking when it was all Buck’s fault. “She was going to air the place out and meet me when I got home, but I didn’t know how late we were going to be. I didn’t want to make her wait. And I don’t want the kids to see me looking like this.”
Tommy nodded absently, nails scratching along the curve of his scalp. “She wanted to be here but not there.”
Buck opened his mouth in reflexive defense—Maddie was his sister, it was always them against the world, what did Tommy know about that—but underneath all that cold fury was the unbearable sadness. It’s a beautiful thing, having a crew like this behind you, said Tommy, who never had that 118 crew. And in that rural hospital, as he was pumped full of antibiotics and morphine, neither had Buck.
“I’m tired,” he said. “Maddie said that when we got her back. It’s why I wasn’t at the gender reveal party or the Han-Wilson brunches. She was so tired.”
Now Tommy’s expression did change, and his hand slid to the back of Buck’s neck. “Come here,” Tommy said, pulling him in.
Buck went, trusting his weight to Tommy, who had seemed solid and immovable right up until he wasn’t. He turned his face into Tommy’s shoulder, ignoring how the shirt tugged as his cuts and stitches. Tommy’s slipped a hand under his shirt, sweeping a hot palm along his spine. Until Bobby died, he didn’t know it was possible to miss a person this much.
“I’m really tired,” Buck said.
“I know,” Tommy said, and held him close.
The kitchen was the reason Buck had taken the house. It was wide and open with an island that was perfect for meal prep. Once, after a long shift where Chim’s good nature sniping had grown barbs overnight, Buck made a batch of blueberry and white chocolate chip cookies, all the ingredients indulgently laid out in the little glass dishes he definitely paid too much for, no more rationing counter top acreage for him. But then, as he had to take a few steps to the left to get a spatula to fold the blueberries in, Buck found himself alone in all that space, viciously aware of what was missing.
“It’s in the cabinet to your right,” Buck said, trying to be helpful.
The missing piece’s eyebrows rose, as bitchy as ever. “I know where you keep your dishes, Evan,” Tommy said, pissy.
“I’m just trying to help. This is a new kitchen.”
“But your same organizational system.” Tommy set the pot on the front right burner, which had always been his favorite. “The same one you tried to foist on me.”
“Foist,” Buck repeated with just the right amount of sarcastic derision to make Tommy try to hide a smile; Buck caught it anyway. “It doesn’t make sense where you keep the bowls. They were in the back of the cabinet. I was tired of having to, like, excavate them every time I wanted cereal.”
“It makes sense,” Tommy insisted stubbornly. “Drink your juice.”
Buck drank the juice. He kept a bottle tucked in the back of the fridge for Jee, who was at the stage where she refused to drink anything outside of her four pre-approved choices. It would normally be too sweet for him, but Tommy had cut it with some seltzer and had dropped in one of the crazy straws that were also for Jee. The antibiotics and painkillers were set in the exact center of the small table. Tommy had dug them out of the suitcase, holding the bottles at arm’s length to read the instructions. They needed to be taken with food, and so Tommy was making dinner.
“Milk or water?” Tommy asked.
Buck blinked at the can of condensed tomato soup. Tommy gave it an encouraging little waggle.
“Whatever you want,” he said.
Tommy gave him another long look, but he only said, “Milk it is.” The soup went into the pot, Tommy making sure to scrap it all from the can, which he then used to measure out the milk. He gave everything a good stir and left it to warm. “Bread?”
Buck pointed to the breadbox.
“An actual breadbox,” Tommy said in the tone that meant he was charmed. “And actual loaf of bread.”
Buck was too tried to squirm with embarrassment. “It’s just basic white. Jee’s at the age where that’s all she eats. It’s good for sandwiches. I made it just before I left so it should be okay.”
“I didn’t know you baked,” Tommy said, finding the right drawer on the first try and pulling out the bread knife.
Turned out he wasn’t too tired for a single squirm. “I, uh, I took it up after we broke up. I needed something to fill the time.” He drank some juice for courage. “And I needed a way to distract myself from calling you.”
Tommy paused mid-slice. The line of his shoulders tightened. “You wanted to call me?”
“Uh, yeah, all the time. I told you that.”
“No, I told you I wanted to reach out and that I drove by your old place, and then you invited me to your new place.” Tommy finished cutting off one thick slice of bread and then cut free another. “What are the chances of you having American cheese?”
“Zero,” Buck said, distracted. He’d been at the bar, alone and lonely even with Ravi putting up with him, and then there was Tommy, and for the first time in months he’d felt anything close to happy. “I did, you know. I do.”
“Do what?” Tommy set a small frying pan to warm on the front left burner, and dug out the butter and a packet of sliced cheddar, applying the former to the bread.
“Want to call you,” Buck said.
“Good to know,” Tommy said, a little tender and a little sad, dropping the bread into the pan and layering the cheese on top. “It’s the same for me.”
“I know,” Buck said. “You told me before.”
“It hasn’t changed.” Tommy slide him a shy look because he was only unflappable in the air. “It’s still the same for me.”
“Would you—” He broke off, throat gone dry and tight. He drank more juice.
Tommy flipped the sandwich, spatula pressed down to help the cheese melt, and gave the soup a quick stir. “Would I?” he prompted.
“Would you maybe want to try again?” Buck said.
Tommy’s eyebrows jumped and the corners of his mouth went tight before he turned away to grab the bowls from the cabinet. Unlike his shitty system, Buck kept his bowls stack right at the front so there was no need to dig through a bunch of bullshit to reach them.
“I think,” Tommy said, ladling the soup into the bowls, “this isn’t the right time for that conversation.”
“Right,” he said, defeated. “Okay. Let me know when the right time is.”
Tommy sighed very quietly as he clicked off the burner and slid the sandwich onto the cutting board. “Your face looks like someone took a meat tenderizer to it. This can wait. I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. Buck ducked his head to hide a smile.
A bowl of tomato soup and a perfect right triangle of a grilled cheese sandwich was placed in front of him. “Eat this so you can take the pills,” Tommy said, and sat across from him. Under the table their socked feet bumped together.
Buck picked up the spoon and gave the soup a quick stir. The smell hit him. His hand shook. The spoon dropped. I don’t want to hurt you,he said to Bonnie, but he had. He’d wanted to break her wrist and ram that taser into her ribs. He’d wanted her screaming and helpless. He wanted her afraid.
“Evan. Evan. Look at me.” Tommy’s voice took on a worried edge. Buck jerked his gaze up. “There we go. Can you breathe with me?”
Buck could and he did. Under the table, Tommy rubbed their arches together.
“She made this for me,” he said before Tommy could ask. “I told her I was hungry and asked for something to eat, and she made this.”
“Because this is what you make a sick kid,” Tommy muttered to himself, cold fury turned inward. “Goddamnit.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay.” He picked up the spoon to prove it.
“I’ll make you something else,” Tommy said, reaching for the bowl and plate. “Or order something. You cleaned out the fridge before you left.”
He used the spoon to fend Tommy off. “It’s really okay.”
“Evan.”
“Tommy.” He had a spoonful. Tommy must have added something when he wasn’t looking; it tasted much better than he remembered canned tomato soup ever tasting, even when his mom made it after he busted his face open trying to land a kickflip.
“You don’t have anything to prove, not to me. I get it.” Tommy ripped some crust off his grilled cheese triangle. “I can’t eat boxed stuffing. I spent too many holidays on base where that was served. Cardboard had more flavor.”
“Did I know that?” Buck asked.
Tommy shrugged and dipped the crust into the soup. “We broke up before Thanksgiving.”
“What about homemade stuffing? My dad used to make it. He would toast the bread and then soak it in broth. It was really moist. I can get the recipe.”
“I’ll give it a try if you make it.” Tommy hooked their ankles together. “Be honest with me. Are you going to be able to eat that?”
Buck considered the soup and his half of the sandwich. “Why did you choose this?”
“It doesn’t upset the stomach,” Tommy answered. “And it’s something you like. You don’t eat when you’re hurt.”
That was true. The avocado toast had been a desperate swing on Tommy’s part. After the bombing, when he was in the cast, Maddie had taken to plying him with smoothies, which didn’t require chewing. He dropped a lot of weight, and spent months gaining it back while training for his recertification
He followed Tommy’s lead and dipped the corner of the sandwich in the soup. He had one bite and then two. Tommy wasn’t Bonnie. This wasn’t playacting at care. It was care. Tommy made him dinner because Tommy cared for him. His stomach grumbled, and he took a larger bite.
“I guess that answers my question,” Tommy said, smiling just enough that the bridge of his nose creased. Buck had missed that nose scrunch.
The hunger, kept at bay by the pain and gas station snacks, came galloping back, and there was no room for talking as Buck ate his sandwich and then the half Tommy silently surrendered. He finished off the soup with an obnoxious slurp. Tommy refilled his cup, and Buck took his antibiotics and, at Tommy’s silently raised eyebrow, one of the oxy.
“How do you feel?” Tommy asked, bringing everything to the sink. He let the water run warm and then began to rinse out the pot and the bowls.
“Well,” he said, a little wry, “everything still hurts, but it’s a little better.”
“It’s almost like eating actual food helps,” Tommy said with just the right balance of bitchy judgment.
Buck grinned, ignoring the way it tugged on the cut at the corner of his mouth. “I’m going to let you have this one because the soup was really good. What did you put in it?”
“It’s an old Kinard secret called salt and whatever bullshit spices you have on hand,” Tommy said, fishing out the sponge and the dish soap Buck kept next to the sink.
“I have a dishwasher,” Buck pointed out. “You don’t have to wash it by hand.”
“There’s not that many. It’d be a waste of water to run the washer.” Tommy squeezed out a dollop of soap on the sponge. Buck remembered this from the dinner dates at the loft and the few times he went over to Tommy’s place: Tommy always started with the utensils and worked up to the big dishes, the pots and pans and baking sheets.
Buck sipped his juice and watched the shift of Tommy’s back muscles under his henley. On the hot summer days when not even the air conditioning could keep up, Tommy would cook bare chested, shirt tucked carelessly in his back pocket, entire musculature on display. Buck wished he was shirtless now. Tommy had a beautiful back.
“Do you think,” he asked as Tommy finished up his cup and moved on to the bowls, “that love can go bad?”
“Come dry,” Tommy said without missing a beat as he rinsed the bowl.
Buck obligingly moved to Tommy’s side, snagging a towel from the drawer and trying to find a comfortable position to lean against the counter that didn’t press on one of his approximately three hundred bruises.
Tommy passed him the bowl and said, “Run that by me again.”
He used the excuse of thoroughly drying the bowl to avoid looking at Tommy. “Can love turn bad if you don’t use it?”
“It’s not expired milk,” Tommy said, gentle instead of his usual dry tone. “It doesn’t spoil if you don’t use it quick enough.”
“I know that.” He placed the bowl to the side and began drying the second. He got rid of his dish rack when he moved out of Eddie’s place. He’d need to buy a new one if Tommy was going to be hanging around more. “But what if it doesn’t have anywhere to go? Maybe it starts to rot.”
Tommy was quiet, not out of bewilderment but because he was considering the question and his answer carefully. Not many people took what came out of his mouth seriously, but Tommy did.
“I think we’re really talking about attachment, young Skywalker.” Tommy slid him a sly look. “That’s from—”
“Stars Wars. I’ve seen some movies.” He made a face. “And you’re wrong about the prequels.”
“Young Ewan McGregor,” Tommy argued. “Young Natalie Portman. Young Temuera Morrison.”
“God, fine, it’s full of hot people. Still doesn’t mean it’s good.” He watched Tommy scrub the pan. “Bonnie, the, um, the woman who took me, her son was on a ventilator with a feeding tube. He was in a room down the hall from where she kept me. Even when she was trying to replace him, she couldn’t let him go.”
Tommy gave him the pan to dry. “How did it happen.”
“Motorcycle accident. He was already gone when she got to the hospital.” He ran the towel over it and set the pan beside the bowls. “She never even got to tell him she loved him.”
Tommy turned off the water. “It’s not the same.”
“Isn’t it?” He wound the towel around his left hand. “We don’t talk about Bobby. Every time I try, they all act like I’m just that fuck up kid making a mess they have to clean up again. Even Maddie.”
“I know that’s not true,” Tommy said, setting the pot carelessly on the side of the sink. “She loves you.”
Buck unwound the towel only to twist it right back up again. “Our parents weren’t around growing up. I mean, they were physically there, but not emotionally and, I don’t know, spiritually. It probably would have been better if they had actually left us.”
“It would have made you feel safer, at least,” Tommy said, matter of fact in the way only an unloved kid could be.
“Maddie made me safe. It was always me and her against the world, you know?” he said only for Tommy to shrug. That too was unbearably sad; everyone should have a Maddie. “But she’s got Chim and the kids now. I’m not the only person in her world anymore. She’s got a lot of other people to love and to keep safe. I-I think I’m running out of people.” His hand shook, and so he wrapped the towel tight around it. “No one had checked on Bonnie in a long time.”
“I’m here.” Tommy gently untwisted the towel and tossed it aside. He laced their fingers together. “I see you.”
Buck looked down at their joined hands, their skin red and chaffed from the hot water, and said, “I wasn’t the first one they took. They had a whole system down. Turned their entire house into a prison. And Earl, Derek’s father, he said he didn’t like to be around when she—when she would—” His throat clicked closed and his mouth tasted of dust. “The sheriff said they were going to look for the other bodies.”
“I’m going to need you look at me, Evan,” Tommy said, sharp enough that Buck jerked his head up on reflex. Bobby could do that too, bypass his conscious thought and get his muscles working. “There you are.”
“Here I am,” he agreed.
And here was Tommy, stricken. It would have been kinder if Buck had taken a knife to his gut. When Tommy went to embrace him, Buck caught him by the elbows; he’d never get through this tucked safe and warm into the curve of Tommy’s body.
“You’re here now,” Tommy said, eyes gone red at the edges. “You’re okay.”
“Am I?” Buck snuck his fingers under the rolled sleeves of Tommy’s henley. The first time they had sex, Buck had been reluctantly charmed to discover the skin of Tommy’s elbows and knees was dry and scaly. He’d taken advantage of Tommy being fucked out to ambush him with the heavy duty lotion, the kind arctic researchers used for their cracked skin. At the time, he figured Tommy was just indulging him, letting him get the impulse out of his system, but maybe it was an indulgence for Tommy too, that he got to be cared for. “I don’t know who I am now that Bobby is gone.”
“You’re not like Bonnie,” Tommy said, carefully holding his elbows in the cradle of Buck’s palms.
“I could be.” Buck let his grip tighten. “They’re all afraid I’m going wrong. Maybe I am.”
The unbearable sadness returned, and Buck worried that Tommy would collapse under the weight of it. “What she was doing, that wasn’t love. Not anymore.” Tommy caught his gaze; Buck was trapped. “I know you, Evan. I know how you love people. It won’t be like this forever.”
It wasn’t Tommy after all who was in danger of collapsing. His knees went out. Tommy caught him at the first wobble. Buck was held.
“They weren’t there,” he gasped against Tommy’s shoulder. “They didn’t come for me.”
Tommy opened his mouth and Buck braced himself for the argument—I would have come for you,Tommy might say, if they had only called, I would have stolen a plane and called in every favor I was owed, and I would have gotten you out— but Tommy said, “I know. I’m so sorry.”
Buck squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears didn’t come. The fever and the dry, hot air in Derek’s room had sapped the moisture from him. Buck had nothing left.
“Can you stay?” he asked, embarrassed but wanting. Tommy rubbed his back. “I want you to stay.”
“I can stay,” Tommy said, lips pressed to the edge of his brow. “I’ll stay as long as you want, honey.”
Oh. Honey.
“I want,” Buck said, and held Tommy back.
While the water warmed, Tommy fussed with the shower chair, carefully positioning it so it was out of the direct spray. “Are you sure about this?”
“You’ve already seen me naked,” Buck pointed out from his seat on the closed toilet lid as he tried to figure out how to get his shirt off without angering his ribs. “Many times. I even sent you photos.”
“That was in a completely different context.” But Tommy still cut him an amused glance, like he was checking to make sure Buck was in on the joke. “If we’re doing this, let me help.”
Buck stopped struggling with his shirt and let Tommy, slowly and with great care, pull it over his head and down his arms. He shivered despite the steam billowing from the shower. He woken up in Derek’s pajamas; Bonnie must have undressed him at some point.
“Socks now,” Tommy said, and then knelt before Buck raise his leg. He stripped off the right sock and then the left. “How are your feet always cold?”
“How are yours always weirdly hot?” He shivered again, for a different reason. Tommy’s hand was so warm where it cupped his heel.
“Then it’s lucky I got you as a heat sink.” Tommy rocked back on his heels but didn’t stand. “You got new tattoos.”
Buck resisted the urge to cover his chest; Tommy was allowed to see. “I’d been wanting to get some more for awhile.” He booked the first session two weeks after Tommy broke up with him, another one a couple of months later, the third when he couldn’t fit another loaf into his freezer and Chimney had declared an embargo on his.
“I like them.” Tommy set his foot on the floor and pushed himself up, wincing as his knee audibly cracked.
“It’s still giving you problems?”
“It’s giving me all new ones.” Tommy held out a hand, and Buck, with even more care, was hauled to his feet. “I’m going to let you deal with the pants.”
“That’s the first time you’ve ever said that to me,” Buck said, and was awarded with a smirk before Tommy turned to fuss with the shower knobs.
He pushed his sweats down and kicked them in the general direction of the hamper instead of submitting to the agony of bending over. Satisfied with the temperature, Tommy tucked a solicitous hand under his elbow to help him into the shower. Besides the kitchen, the bathroom had been the other big selling points of the house. The last resident had been older, and so the shower was easy to step into with safety railings installed for support. It was nice for the days when his leg acted up.
He settled onto the chair, the water just reaching his calf when he stretched out his leg. “Are you going to help?” Buck asked, curling his toes.
“Give me a moment,” Tommy said.
Buck magnanimously gave him two. Tommy, gloriously naked, stepped into the shower and unhooked the shower head, angling the water up his legs and over his hips and ribs and shoulders, muscles unknotting under the pressure .
“Tip your head back,” Tommy said. “I don’t want to get your stitches wet.”
“It’s been over twenty-four hours. It’s fine.” But he did as he was told, eyes sliding shut at the first sweep of Tommy’s hand along his brow, a dam to keep the water from reaching the stitches.
“How’s that?” Tommy asked quietly.
He made an embarrassing noise. “Really good. It was all I could think about. They let me shower at the hospital but it’s not the same.”
“The only thing worse than a hospital shower is a the communal one in the barracks.” Tommy hooked the shower head over one of the bars. “Let’s get you clean.”
Buck soaped his front and Tommy took care of his back, rinsing him clean in long sweeps of the water. It felt so good and then felt even better when Tommy shampooed his hair, strong fingers massaging his scalp. Buck let out a pathetic little moan when Tommy dug his thumbs into the base of his skull, head falling forward so that Tommy could have his way with him.
“I forgot how much you like this,” Tommy said, sweeping his thumbs behind his ear, over that arc of bone.
“I didn’t know I liked it this much until you.” The word slurred together, but he didn’t care. “Your hands are magic. You should go into business giving scalp massages. You’d make so much money.”
“And give up my state pension?” Tommy said, lightly teasing. “I’ve got to think about my golden years.”
“I should have taken that settlement offer. Could have kept you in—oh god, Tommy,” he groaned as Tommy did something that had his entire scalp tingling and his muscles melting; he was surprised he didn’t just slide off the chair to pool on the shower floor.
“Head back,” Tommy said, tucking two fingers under Buck’s jaw to guide him. “Close your eyes.”
Buck did, and instead of the shower spray he expected, Tommy poured palmfuls of water along his hair line in the same way Buck did for Jee and Nash, an an act of love. He opened his eyes.
“It’s like you’re trying to get shampoo in your eyes,” Tommy said even as he laid a hand along Buck’s brow to prevent that from happening.
“I’ll be okay,” he said, and looked up at Tommy, at his belly and his broad chest, the strong line of his neck, the stronger jaw, the cleft, those bitchy eyebrows. Almost a full year since he’d last seen Tommy, and Buck could pick out the changes: more gray at the temples and the skin along his jaw was a little looser, the same way that Maddie’s skin had begun to loosen, the same way his own jaw would soften with age. God, Tommy was such a beautiful man.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Tommy said.
“How am I looking at you?”
“Like you can’t believe I’m here.” Tommy gathered up his hair and gently squeezed the water from it. “Can you reach the taps?”
Buck could, and he turned off the water while Tommy stepped out to grab a towel from the rack. Before he could protest the distance, Tommy tossed the towel over his head and scrubbed it through his hair.
“Now the rest of you,” Tommy said, holding out a hand to help Buck out of the shower and onto the bathmat he’d chose for how nice it felt dig his toes into.
Tommy offered another towel, and by the time Buck had dried off and secured it around his waist, Tommy was digging through his dresser for clothes, stark naked because he couldn’t stand how even the softest towel felt against his skin.
“Lower left drawer,” he said, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. Tommy had already set out a pair of sweatpants and thick socks for him. “There’s some things that will fit you.”
“Thanks,” Tommy said, yanking the drawer open, only to pause. Buck knew what he found: his sleeveless red shirt and his favorite pair of basketball shorts.
“I kept meaning to give those back.” He took a bracing breath and bent over to put the socks on.
And then Tommy was there, once more kneeling before him, propping Buck’s heel on his naked thigh. “You’ve moved twice.”
It wasn’t an accusation, but Buck from a year ago would have heard it as one. No wonder no one wanted to talk to him; even he was exhausted with himself.
“Maybe I wanted to keep them,” he said. “Just in case.”
Tommy’s face did something complicated before smoothing out, as unreadable as a piece of sea glass. Buck hated it.
“Why do you do that?” he asked.
“Do what?” Tommy tugged a sock into place and folded the cuff down.
“That.” He pointed an accusing finger at Tommy’s face. “You never let me know when I’ve—”
“Hurt my feelings?” Tommy idly rubbed a thumb along his arch. “Old habits.”
Taking a risk, Buck tucked two fingers under Tommy’s chin to lift his head. “What does that mean?”
“I served under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and then Gerrard was my captain.” Tommy’s smile cut like a knife. “I couldn’t afford to slip up and give the game away.”
His hand fell away. “You need to do that with me?” The words were small and sour in his mouth.
“Yeah, I do,” Tommy said apologetically as he settled on his heels. “You don’t need to have feelings for everyone you sleep with. What was I supposed to do that?”
The sourness settled in his stomach, threatening to undo all of Tommy’s good work. “I didn’t mean it. You hurt me with what you were saying about Eddie,” he added quickly as Tommy’s eyebrow went up, “and so I, uh, I wanted to hurt you back.”
“Well,” Tommy said dryly, “mission accomplished.”
“It’s not true. Not about you.” He should have brought the juice with him; his mouth was dry and foul. “When I was younger and bouncing around the country, sex was the only way I knew how to try to get people to like me. Sometimes I had feelings for them and sometimes I didn’t. It was always fun, back then.”
Tommy palmed his knee. “Hey, I told you this could wait. We’ll pick it up later.”
“No, I need you to know,” he said, desperate and shaking. “I’ve been dating. Was dating. But I haven’t found anything real.” He smiled an apology. “Not since you.”
Tommy’s face was perfectly still for one beat and then two and then on the third his face crumpled and he swayed forward, head pressed to the same knee he’d been palming. “Jesus, Evan.”
Slowing, taking care not to scare him, Buck touched Tommy’s crown, right where hair was drying in curling tufts. “I do have feelings for you.”
The slightest brush of Tommy’s mouth over his knee. “I have feelings for you, too.”
“The soup was a pretty big hint,” he said, pleased when Tommy huffed out a breath. “And the fact you were camped out on my front steps. How long were you waiting?”
“Not long,” Tommy said, which meant anywhere from five minutes to five hours. He eased back with a rueful smile. “We need to put on pants if we’re doing any more heart to hearts tonight.”
Hand braced on Buck’s knee for balance, Tommy stood with a wince and more knee cracking, and Buck was level with Tommy’s soft cock. His stomach clenched. His mouth dropped open. He wanted.
When he was learning to suck dick, to suck Tommy’s dick, one afternoon, as the light poured slow and thick into the loft, Tommy had cupped his jaw in one large hand, thumb hooked over his bottom teeth, urging his mouth to open wide and then wider as Tommy, with agonizing slowness, fed his cock to him. Buck had gone down on Jade and blown Zane before fucking them, and it had been fun, it was always fun, but it hadn’t been Tommy.
“Hey,” Tommy said, tugging at his hair, “that can also wait.”
His mouth was still open, and Buck touched his tongue to his bottom lip just to see the way Tommy tracked the movement. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, not quite a question.
“I’m here as long as you want,” Tommy said, and tossed the sweatpants at his head.
They got dressed—Tommy in the sleeveless shirt and shorts and him in his sweatpants and hoodie—and Buck found himself staring down at the bed. Behind him, the dark house yawned.
“Did I lock the front door?” he asked.
“You did,” Tommy said, glancing up from where he was turning down the comforter, the same bit of domesticity he’d performed for six months.
“W-what about the back door? The windows?” He curled and uncurled his cold fingers to get the blood flowing again. “There’s the side door out to the garage. I-I always forget about that one.” The words came out too fast, tripping and tangling together; he sounded like a scared kid.
“Let’s go check,” Tommy said, like it was that easy, and took his hand.
The front door was locked as was the big front facing window. The back door was securely latched, and Tommy gave an approving nod at his backyard gym.
“I was helping Harry train for the academy,” he said, his hand still in Tommy’s hand. “I liked the set up and added on to it.”
“You’ll have to show me in the morning.” Tommy gave their joined hands a little tug. “Where’s the side door?”
It was off the kitchen, and Tommy checked that the lock was thrown and then tested it, jiggling the handle to make sure it wouldn’t open.
His shoulders, which Buck hadn’t even realized had crept up, relaxed. Every entry was locked up tight. No one could get in. No one could get easily out either, but why would he want to? This was his home. Tommy was here.
“Come on,” Tommy said as they returned to the bedroom, “you need to get some sleep.” He stepped towards the right side of the bed, the one closest to the window, the same side he slept on for six months because Buck always took the side closest to the loft stairs, pausing when he realized Buck wasn’t following. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, um, it’s fine,” he said, doing the math in his head. Taking his usual side would mean he had a clear path to the door, and from there it was only another thirty seconds to the front door, an extra ten to the back. He could get out in under a minute, if he had to.
But it meant someone could get to him in under a minute. The bedroom door had a lock on it, but it was flimsy—he kicked in more than his fair share on the job—and it wouldn’t hold against someone determined to get in. They’d have a straight shot at him.
“Evan,” Tommy said.
Buck blinked. Tommy was close enough to touch, but he was not touching. “I’m fine,” he said automatically. “Sorry.”
Tommy glanced at the bed and then the door and then to him. Buck watched as he did his own math and almost wished he taken up Eddie’s offer of his couch.
“I’ll take this side,” Tommy said briskly, equation solved. “It gives you a clear sight line.”
And, Tommy was diplomatically not saying, he would be between Buck and the door. No one was getting past Tommy without a fight. Buck’s back muscles unlocked. He took a full breath.
“Okay,” he said, and went to that side of the bed Tommy had turned down. Tommy had done the same at the loft, straightening out the mess of the sheets and then folding them back, making the bed inviting. It’d been such a small thing to miss out of all the bigger things, but he missed it anyway.
“Okay,” Tommy echoed, and waited for Buck to slide under the covers before doing the same.
They settled a respectable distance apart. There was a time when Buck would have wriggled across that distance and right up into Tommy’s personal space. There was a time that Tommy would have bodily pulled him over if he took too long.
Tommy glanced over his shoulder. “I forgot to ask. Door open or closed?”
It was currently open to the dark house. He flexed his fingers. “Open.”
Tommy reached for the light. “Open it is.”
“Wait,” Buck said, but it was too late. Tommy turned off the lamp.
His breath came faster. His chest hurt. With the curtains closed, there wasn’t even enough ambient light to see Tommy. Buck was alone in the dark.
The light came back, and Tommy said, “It’s okay, Evan. I should have asked. It’s all right.”
Buck squirmed forward and tucked his head under Tommy’s chin. Tommy touched careful fingers to the back of his head. He felt himself begin to shake. It was humiliating.
“Sorry,” he croaked. “I d-didn’t th-think—”
“It’s okay,” Tommy repeated, stroking fingers through his hair. “You’re okay.”
The shakes subsided to trembles. “If it’s d-dark, I-I can’t see them coming.”
That first night in the hospital, he kept waking up, thinking the nurses were Bonnie. He almost swung at one, only stopping when he made out Eddie in the next bed over.
“Do you want the hall light on?” Tommy asked. “Or we can, I don’t know, MacGyver our phones into a nightlight.”
When Jee turned three, she became afraid of the dark practically overnight, like her fear dial had flipped from the bathtub drain to darkness. She needed the hall light on and then, later, the Grover nightlights Buck had picked up by the dozen so that there were spares at every place she slept: at home, at the Lees, at the loft. Super Grover was her favorite Sesame Street Character and the one she trusted to keep her safe.
Forget humiliation. Using a nightlight like his five year old niece was enough to make him wish he had died in that fucking desert.
“Hold that thought,” Tommy said, and carefully eased out of the bed. Buck made a confused grab for him. “The guest room is across the hall, right?”
“The spare room, yeah,” Buck said because he hadn’t decided if he wanted to turn it into his office or keep it set up for the kids.
Tommy padded towards it. Buck forgot how quiet he was for such a big guy. Even in the loft where it should have been physically impossible to sneak up on him, Tommy had still managed it.
The light in the spare room came on, and Tommy fussed with that door, nudging it closed and then pulling it back open, until he apparently finally achieved the exact ratio of closed to open that made him happy.
“I’m going to turn the light off,” Tommy said once he returned, one knee on the bed. “We’ll see if this works, okay?”
Buck hesitated and then was angry about hesitating. He was a grown man. “Okay,” he said.
Tommy turned off the lamp. Light from the spare room seeped into the hall and then into bedroom. Limned in a soft glow, Tommy settled back in the same position as before: on his side facing Buck, knees pulled up slightly, sheets tucked around his shoulders. Buck used to lock their bodies together, legs and arms and ribs, so that they wouldn’t drift apart during the night and get lost. Now they politely stayed on their respective sides of the mattress, an empty no man’s land between them. Buck ached.
“How’s that?” Tommy asked.
Buck could make out the line of Tommy’s nose and the cut of his cheeks and his cleft. “Good,” he said. “It’s not too bright.”
“It’s a trick I picked up after Afghanistan,” Tommy said, trying so hard to be casual about it. He’d never talked about his time in the army, nothing beyond mentioning a few buddies he was still in contact with and the occasional commiserating story with Eddie.
Once, on a rare lazy afternoon, his feet kicked up on Tommy’s lap while Eddie lounged in the recliner, Eddie had said, “There was this one guy in my squad. His boy used to send these care packages. He made the best lemon bars I’ve ever tasted.”
“Boy?” Tommy had asked, pausing where he was digging his thumb into the ball of Buck’s foot.
“Boyfriend,” Eddie said, and then: “Oh shit, you served under—”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, curt.
“Did you ever,” Eddie had said hesitantly, only to wince at the sharp look Tommy shot him. “Yeah, right. Hey, the game is on.”
It was only later Buck realized they were talking about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and by then it was too late to ask Tommy anything.
“It’s a good trick.” Buck inched his fingers across no man’s land. “You never talk about your time in the army.”
Tommy shifted so he was more on his belly than his side. “It’s not my favorite topic.” Beyond his shoulder, the door stood open and empty.
“You can tell me, if you want.” Tommy’s hand was so close. “I want you to.”
“Evan,” Tommy said, right on the edge of an exasperated laugh, “this is not the time to start.”
“Later, then. We got time, right?”
“Yeah, we got time.” Tommy took mercy on him and twined their fingers together. “You think you can sleep?”
“Maybe.” He glanced back at the door. Bonnie wasn’t there but Tommy was. He hoped someone had taken charge of Derek’s care. Maybe they could let him go where his parents couldn’t.
“If you’re having trouble sleeping in here, we’ll try the couch. Different room might work.”
“Did you sleep on the couch?” He inched a foot out.
“You know that cliché about vets finding the beds too soft? It’s a cliché for a reason. It was hell on my back before I gave in and got a new mattress.” Tommy hesitated. The light was just strong enough that Buck saw the exact moment he came to a decision. “It was too quiet. I was used to sharing space with half a dozen guys. Couldn’t sleep without Saunder’s chainsaw snoring.”
“So you were serious about liking my snoring,” Buck said.
“Puts me right out,” Tommy said, and caught Buck’s questing foot between his own. “Gerrard was an asshole, but I was getting the best sleep I’d had in years in that bunk room. It’s better now, but it can still be hard to sleep on my own.”
“I get that,” he said, thinking of all those lonely nights in the Jeep, pulled over in some empty lot and hoping not to get hassled by a bored cop with a quota to fill.
Tommy squeezed his hand. “You can tell me things, too.”
“I will,” he said. “Later.”
“Later,” Tommy agreed, and touched his free thumb to Buck’s birthmark, drawing a tender line down his cheek and then to his mouth. “You gotta get some rest.”
“I, um, I might wake up confused,” he said quietly, lips brushing along the pad of Tommy’s thumb. “I almost took a swing at Eddie when he woke me up at a rest stop.” Eddie had been far enough away and he’d been in too much pain to do any damage even if he managed to connect.
“I can take a punch,” Tommy said, and then, at Buck’s sharp inhale: “Shit, that was a bad joke. You won’t hurt me.”
That was a lie—Buck could and he had and would again—but for now he let himself take Tommy at his word. Tommy would be careful and Buck would try to pull his punches.
“Oh, before I forget,” he said as a yawn cracked Tommy’s jaw. “Maddie is coming over in the morning.”
He waited for Tommy to ask what time so he could be gone before then, but Tommy just yawned again and said, “Does she like French toast? I was going to use up the rest of the loaf before it gets too stale. Fry up the bacon you got in there.”
Buck swallowed. “You’re making breakfast?”
“Dinner is your specialty, but breakfast is where I shine,” Tommy said, but Buck knew what he really meant; Tommy was staying.
“I’ve missed your frittatas.” Fondness washed over him as Tommy yawned again. “You’re tired.”
Tommy gently dragged knuckles down his arm, his skin pimpling in the wake, and Buck thought, with perfect clarity, I was giving you up. When he promised to be Derek in exchange for Eddie getting to live, he knew exactly what he was losing—seeing his niece and nephew grow up, watching Maddie be happy in the life she made, getting to grow old with his family—but he was giving this up too: Tommy and the chance to build a whole life with him. He’d make that deal again in a fucking heartbeat, but god, he was so grateful that he hadn’t, that he got to be here in this bed, two points of contact holding him and Tommy together.
“You think you can try to sleep, sweetheart?” Tommy asked, soft and tender.
Buck watched as Tommy’s blinks grew longer, his breaths slower, those bitchy eyebrows and sharp mouth softening as sleep stole over him. The light was on. The doorway was empty. Tommy was there. He was safe.
“I’ll try,” he said, and thought maybe. Maybe.