Work Text:
The good news was Bobby would live.
Everything else . . . well. Tommy looked around the crowded waiting room, and could only think of his platoon commander’s weary face and gravel voice. This is FUBAR’d, boys.
Hen had lapsed into a sort of hollow silence, once the emergent crisis of will Cap make it or not had resolved firmly on the side of yes he will. He hadn’t felt comfortable asking, but Howie had muttered, “they lost Mara,” as they went for yet another cup of godawful hospital coffee, and that had been a kick to the ribs. He didn’t know Hen and Karen’s little girl, but he knew Hen some—enough to know how fiercely she loved, and how horrifying having someone she loved snatched from her must feel.
Howie was a blur of motion: updating Maddie on the phone, hounding doctors, talking to Hen and Evan, getting coffee, getting more coffee, only to come to a screeching halt when Chief Simpson arrived and spoke to them all in low, somber tones. Then, Howie was still. Grey-faced and silent. When Tommy sidled up to him, carefully taking the paper cup out of his shaking grip, he turned to Tommy and hissed, “they’re bringing him back.”
Smug face, cruel words, the pointedly limp wrists as he flapped his hands. Heard you finally got your wings. Tommy quickly tossed the cup, lest he drop it from his suddenly numb fingers.
Eddie sat hunched over in one of the uncomfortable chairs, turning a small leather book round and round in his hands. Evan had gone to get him when they got the news, unable to raise Eddie or Marisol or even Christopher on their cell phones. Tommy had met them here and found Evan lock-jawed and white as a sheet, and Eddie looking like he’d been put through a wash cycle and then wrung out too hard. He seemed . . . disjointed. Not all there. He stared a hole into the scuffed linoleum, eyes glassy, and kept fidgeting with that damn book; never opening it, but tracing the faded gold lettering on the front, riffling the edges of the pages. Tommy had no idea what was going on there, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
And Evan--
Tommy sighed heavily.
Evan had made a delicious dinner—four cheese lasagna, a tossed salad with homemade vinaigrette, red wine that he had gotten at Athena’s recommendation. They had chatted in the golden evening, and Evan had been burnished in light. Gleaming. Relaxed in a way that Tommy had only seen in snatches—at the coffee shop where he apologized and asked for another chance; in a hospital waiting room much like this, but for a much more joyous occasion. In moments at Tommy’s house, hiking, or go-karting on the beach, where whatever sun Evan had swallowed would shine through his teeth and Tommy would be knocked momentarily breathless. This guy—this amazing guy—was his?
And then, inevitably, the phone rang. Or a text would come in. Something would interrupt them, and just like that, the sun would be snuffed out. Or, not snuffed out, but turned away from him as Evan dove into helping his family.
They’d only been dating two fucking months, the loss of that brightness should not make Tommy feel this cold. This—sad?
It was too much, too fast. Tommy knew going in that the one-eighteen was tight, was a family in a way that he envied. He wasn’t sure he envied them this, though: the anxiety, the crushing fear, the perpetual storm that pulled Evan in again and again. He wasn’t sure he could do this.
Judging by the way Evan’s gaze, sad and resigned, caught on his and then broke away with a series of furious, tear-clearing blinks, he knew it too. Tommy swallowed the hard lump in his throat and went to get another cup of coffee.
Fucked up beyond all recovery, indeed.
#
Evan didn’t text him the next morning, or the afternoon. Tommy didn’t text him either. He went to town on the heavy bag in his garage, resolutely not glaring at his silent phone, then took a scalding shower. The hot water pounded on his sore muscles like a recrimination, and he scrubbed his face hard when he tasted salt on his lips even after washing off the sweat.
It was stupid to cry. Pointless.
He went into the small kitchen and opened the fridge. Glowered at the red-lidded Tupperware container he had thrown in there sometime around daybreak after finally getting out of the hospital. Evan had pushed it into his hands, silent, then turned on his heel and marched away, grabbing Eddie by the elbow and hauling him in his wake.
There was homemade strawberry shortcake in there, Tommy’s favorite. They had never gotten to dessert before everything went to shit.
Tommy shut the fridge with more force than necessary, and jammed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
It was stupid to cry. Pointless.
He ripped the fridge open again and grabbed the container. Ate the frankly heavenly shortcake in measured bites, and tried not to imagine that sunshine smile, the warmth that went with it. Gave in to sending a picture of the empty container, along with a text: thank you.
He waited, and waited. Finally, a response: three red hearts. His own thudded hard in response, and he flipped the phone over, the kitchen darker without its light.
Tommy took another hot shower, to try and warm up.
#
He had just thrown a frozen pizza in the oven when there was a sudden, furious, knocking at the front door.
“Coming,” he called, wiping his hands on a dish towel and moving toward it. The knocking continued, getting louder if anything. “Jesus, hold your horses, I’m—Eddie?”
He had not thought it possible for Eddie to look worse than he had last night. He had thought wrong. Where last night he had looked wrung out and gaunt, today he looked . . . well, he looked like a ghost.
A very angry ghost.
“I need to talk to you.” Eddie pushed past him, focused in a way he hadn’t been in the waiting room. Tommy followed him into the kitchen, wary.
“Uh, not that I’m not happy to see you--”
“Shut up.” Eddie blinked, seemed to register the words he’d spoken, and blew out a hard breath. “Please.”
Tommy crossed his arms tight over his chest. Eddie clocked the move and barked a laugh. Even that sounded mad.
“You’re trying to hold yourself together too.”
The instinct to hunch his shoulders, to retreat from a too-knowing look, a too-close-to-the-truth comment, made his hands clench around his elbows. Tommy gritted his teeth.
It was stupid to cry. Pointless.
“You”—Eddie pointed at him—“are a fucking idiot, and I know a thing or two about fucking idiots, because I am one and so is my best friend.”
That . . . wasn’t what Tommy expected to hear.
“I—what?”
“You’re an idiot,” Eddie repeated, slower, and Tommy bristled at the tone. “You showed up last night—you showed up for Buck, and for the rest of us—and now you’re ghosting him.” He jabbed a finger at Tommy again. “Idiot.”
“Hey.” Tommy held up his hands, and he could hear the defensiveness in his own voice. “Phones work two ways. Evan hasn’t reached out either.”
Eddie laughed again, a little hysterically. God, but he hated people laughing at him. Hated feeling like everyone’s joke. Stupid, stoic Tommy, good thing his face is nice because there’s nothing going on between the ears!
Evan didn’t laugh when Tommy said something snide, or poorly thought. Evan smiled like the sun.
It was stupid to cry. Fucking pointless!
Tommy swallowed hard, angry and heartsick. “Forgive me if I’m a little tired of being second or third place in his life. I didn’t realize when I told him I was interested that I would be a part player in the one-eighteen family drama.”
“You didn’t realize?” Eddie scoffed, and for a moment, almost smiled. “You flew us, on Hen’s hunch, into a category five hurricane to look for a cruise ship no one knew was missing because we were worried about our boss and his wife and you didn’t realize that this family was important to him?”
Tommy’s jaw snapped shut, hard.
When Eddie put it that way—
I was super jealous. Of how it’s become a family over there. How you were willing to put everything on the line for each other.
Tommy’s shoulders slumped. He felt about two inches tall.
It was stupid to cry, but he could feel his eyes prickling anyway.
Maybe he really was an idiot.
“I’ve been having an emotional affair with a woman who could be my dead wife’s clone.”
Tommy’s gaze jerked back up. Eddie delivered the words with forced nonchalance, but his rigid posture, his trembling fists on the Formica countertops, told a very different story.
“Yesterday, when Buck showed up? I had just ended things with Kim. But Marisol and Chris showed up as we were saying goodbye.” Another hollow laugh. “You can imagine how my son felt. You can imagine how Buck felt when he walked in on that three-ring circus from hell to tell me about Bobby.
“He hasn’t texted you today because he was saying goodbye to Chris and holding me to-fucking-gether. My parents took him back to Texas this morning.” Eddie’s voice wobbled, and he cleared his throat. Tommy’s arms dropped to his sides, static filling his ears.
“Chris--?”
“He’s staying with his grandparents for a few weeks. When he comes back, he’ll probably stay with Buck, unless a miracle occurs and I’m capable of parenting by mid-July.”
Eddie swallowed and looked down. Tommy, distantly aware he was gaping at his friend, snapped his mouth closed.
“Are you . . . are you okay?” he asked.
“I am not,” Eddie said, weirdly calm. “I am incredibly fucked up and so angry with myself I thought I was going to claw out of my skin last night. This morning, I hurt so much I was very fucking glad I no longer own a service weapon.” He looked up, hollow-eyed, and Tommy flinched.
He recognized that hollowness. He got rid of his own service weapon years ago, when that same emptiness threatened to swallow him whole.
Eddie drew a rattling breath. “I needed Buck, and he showed up.” He looked at Tommy, and the anger was back. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Tommy shook his head. Eddie pushed away from the counter.
“I blew up my life, and I needed someone, and Buck was there. That’s who he is—if he loves you, if you’re one of his people, and you need him? He is there. Before I even knew him, he had this girlfriend—she was awful, don’t ask—but before he even met her face-to-face, he found out her mom had gone missing. Dementia or Alzheimer’s or something. He went to help find her. He was with Taylor fucking Kelly—who as far as I can tell doesn’t have a heart, but what do I know—and even with me getting shot and then spinning out with the PTSD, he showed up for Chris and I and Taylor when things went to shit with her father.
“He helped Bobby dig out of his alcoholism. He chased Maddie’s fucking monster of an ex across California to get her back. He spent hours in tsunami wreckage on blood thinners to find my son--” Eddie broke off with a strangled, grieving sound, hand clapped over his mouth. A shudder wracked him, and Tommy crossed the kitchen in one giant step to brace a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. To offer support. To hold him up.
Eddie closed his eyes. Tears clung to his lashes, clumping them together. He breathed out slowly, leaning into Tommy’s hand. For a moment, they just stood there, hurting and holding on.
“You are one of his people now, whether you guys stay together or don’t,” Eddie said, almost gentle now. “If you ever need him, he will be there for you, because that’s who he is. You’re his.”
Tommy’s throat ached. He wanted. “He’s like the sun.”
Eddie chuckled. This time, it actually sounded like Eddie.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice a rasp. “And the sun shines on everyone at different times.” You idiot, went unsaid.
Tommy looked up at the ceiling to hide the burning in his eyes. There was a faint crack in the plaster. He’d have to patch that. “It felt too fast. It—I shouldn’t want this much this soon.”
Eddie grunted. “You guys found each other at a . . . stressful time, between the cruise ship and Chim and Maddie’s wedding and my . . . everything.” The anger was back for a blink, a veneer of self-loathing that Tommy wanted to rip away like a curtain. “But that’s not the issue here.” He fixed Tommy with a gimlet look. “You said he was like the sun. How do you think he’s been looking at you the last few weeks?”
Tommy blinked. Thought of those snatches of time, those brilliant smiles turned on him, filling him with warmth.
Oh. Oh, he was an idiot after all.
“Yeah,” Eddie drawled. “So, here’s the thing. I am extremely unwell, and have a history of poor anger management when under extreme stress. My original plan was to come here and beat the snot out of you for making my best friend—my person--cry in the bathroom. But I’m also an overall healthier person than I was before, present clusterfuck notwithstanding..” He raked a hand through his hair. “So, here’s what’s going to happen instead.”
He prodded Tommy’s chest. “You’re going to decide if you’re in this for real or not. If this was something fun, but not serious, you’re going to tell him and not ghost him, so help me god. If you’re in this, you’re going to go over there and tell him—do you see the pattern here—and please give him a hug or something, because—because—” His eyes shimmered, and suddenly Eddie was crying. “—because the last forty-eight hours have absolutely fucking sucked.”
Tommy only hesitated a moment. He pulled Eddie in by the shoulder and hugged him as tight as he could. Eddie’s whole form shook with the force of his sobs, and he clutched Tommy’s shirt so hard, Tommy heard a few stitches pop. Whatever, he could get a new shirt.
They stood there for a few minutes, just breathing.
“Damn it.” Eddie pulled back and scrubbed his face. Blinked owlishly at Tommy, and wrinkled his nose. “He wasn’t kidding; you give insanely good hugs.”
And despite the tears, despite the heartache, Tommy laughed.
#
The second time Tommy showed up at Evan’s loft, Evan had showed him where a spare key was hidden, held by a magnet to the inside of the decorative light that stood outside his door. Evan said it was his regular spare, but the key was shiny, fresh-cut. Tommy had wanted to ask if he could put it on his key ring.
He had chickened out.
The door opened quietly, and he left the key on the counter. Quiet permeated the loft, dust motes twirling in the lights from the balcony outside. He peeked into the living space under the stairs, where it seemed everything had been cleared out, the couch and armchair pushed almost into the dining space, and the tv on the floor by the stairs. Tape lined the floor against the wall where a couch might go. It was roughly the size of a twin-sized bed.
No Evan.
Tommy stepped toward the door to the balcony, and finally spotted him. Hunched over on one of his deck chairs, head in his hands, fingers knotted in his hair. He was wearing a blue shirt, tan pants, rumpled and creased.
He’d spent the last twenty-four hours holding his entire family together. It was a wonder he was still upright at all.
And where were you? Familiar voice, new recriminations.
Not where I needed to be, but I’m here now. Tommy absently knuckled his sternum, where his heart was making a valiant effort to bust through the cage of his ribs to get out onto that balcony. He tapped lightly on the glass, then opened the door.
Evan’s head jerked up, startled. In the gathering twilight, he looked like a deer, red-rimmed eyes wide and body stiff, the moment before the bolt. Tommy stopped across from him, leaned against the railing. Los Angeles fanned out below him, lights aglow.
He’d thought a lot about what he was going to say as he drove over. How he was going to start, how he was going to explain. Evan stared at him with dark, exhausted eyes, and all that came out of Tommy’s mouth was,
“I’m sorry.”
Evan’s brow furrowed. “What for?”
“Leaving you today.” Tommy scrubbed a hand over his face. “I—I panicked a bit, last night. About how much I—how much I wanted. You. How much I wanted you.” He grimaced at his clumsy wording. “I’m explaining this wrong. I told Eddie you were like the sun. You make me warm. I wanted to be your person, and then I fucked it up because I didn’t know how to be your person when you’re being other people’s person. Christ, I am not making sense.” He buried his face in his hands.
Evan chuckled, a tired huff of sound.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Tommy. It’s been a lot. I’m a lot.” Tommy dropped his hands in time to see Evan shrug. It was a defeated motion, shoulders slumped. “I’m not—I’m not easy, or fun, after a few dates. My, uh, my last girlfriend was scared off because I’ve lived a lot of life.” He cracked a smile, but it didn’t look happy. “And it seems like the shit hit several fans for everyone else in my life, and I can’t—I can’t leave them with no one in their corner.
“But yeah, it’s not easy. I’m not easy.” He straightened a little, certain even thought it hurt. “I’m not going to apologize for that. But I will tell you . . . it’s okay, you know? If you’re done. I understand. This isn’t what you signed up for.”
And finally—finally—Tommy knew what to say.
He crouched in front of Evan, wrapped both hands around his wrists, and pulled every bit of hard-earned warmth into his voice. Laced his fingers through Evan’s and said, “I didn’t sign up for easy, Evan. I signed up for you.”
Evan stared at him, eyes glittering in the lights of the building next door. Tommy gave his hands a squeeze.
“I panicked. I’m sorry. I’m not used to standing in the sunlight for so long. That’s a me problem. I want to be here, though. I know you’re going to be helping Hen and Bobby and Eddie--”
“You spoke to Eddie?”
“I did, which was an improvement on his original plan, apparently. He told me”—he tripped over the words, suddenly unsure—“he told me I’m yours.”
Tommy’s heart pounded.
Evan cracked a smile. It looked crooked on his face, dear and tired and full of warmth, the sun shining through his teeth. “You are.”
“Well, you’re mine.” Tommy pulled their joined hands over his chest, his thrashing heart. “If you still want me.”
Evan reached out, slow, and hooked a hand around Tommy’s neck, thumb stroking across his cheek. Tommy leaned into it, relishing the warmth.
“’If I still want you’,” Evan murmured, a smile in his voice. “Where’ve you been the last two months, man?”
Tommy laughed breathlessly, leaned in until their foreheads were pressed together. “With this really wonderful guy. Has my head completely scrambled.” He nudged his nose against Evan’s, pressed back tears as Evan’s mouth brushed across his. He tasted like salt, and Tommy lifted his head to press a second kiss into Evan’s hairline. “I saw the tape on the floor.”
Evan stiffened against him. “Did Eddie tell you?”
“Yeah.” He kissed Evan again, let one hand drift up to rub his shoulder, then his back. It really had been an awful forty-eight hours.
“Have you looked at an accordion wall?” At Evan’s confused look, he pulled out his phone, search engine already queued. “It’s a temporary solution, but it’d give Chris his own space. You could put it against the stairs to the wall. I can help you?”
Evan stared at the search results for a moment, then grabbed Tommy’s chin, thumb a caress, and kissed him.
He tasted like sunlight.