Number thirty for a micro Bucktommy if it sparks joy!
30. Harsh whisper + Bucktommy
Tommy knew how to swallow down his emotions. You didn't survive the closeted jock to military pipeline of the early aughts without being able to shove down all the feelings that could give you away and expose you to the world. Tommy had muscled down more emotions in his entire life time than he would care to admit and because of that, he'd been left with ulcers of numbness in his soul. They were like small black holes where too big emotions, too big hurts, too big hopes were sucked away before they could over come him and show the truth.
First it had been with his father and the house that always seemed to be ringing from the drunken fits of rage. Then it was the military where he was trained to be a blank slate, nothing more than a number to be replaced if he died. Then it was with Gerrard where one wrong move could get a target on your back. Then it was with Abby where Tommy had hoped it would fix him if he just let himself be whatever it was she wanted. Then... Tommy couldn't pretend anymore.
He'd spent half his life numb to anything too loud, too unrestrained, that the thought of swallowing one more emotion made him sick.
Well, he tried to at least.
It was a habit that was hard to break.
The anger simmered into a harsh scratch against every one of his numb spots and boiled them away and Tommy let it. Rage tasted like copper on his tongue. Disgust like battery acid on the back of his throat. Insurmountable, disbelieving shock burned like smoke in his wind pipe under his clavicles. But the protectiveness, the sheer feeling he didn't have a name for other than the fact that it accompanied the knowledge that in no way shape or form what he just saw was ever going to happen again as long as he had something to say about it, burst like supernovas in his chest cavity.
And he didn't have a say about it. Not really.
But he also wasn't going to stand by while he watched some man grab Evan's arm hard enough to make him wince to yank him to the corner.
The man spat out a harsh whisper that Tommy couldn't hear over the crowd in the bar but he saw Evan flinch, wilting under the words like they were pressing him down to his knees. Blue eyes searched for an escape before dropping to the ground and Tommy moved before he could even register the thought in his head.
"Let go," Evan said, tugging his arm without any real strength behind it, like he was trying not to cause a scene. He should've been able to knock the guy flat on his ass. But instead it was like...
Tommy didn't know. But he didn't like it. Not one bit.
"Answer me, Buck! Because I didn't take time out of my day to sit here and watch you embarrass yourself by being a sl—"
Tommy's vision went black around the edges as he shoved the man away and stepped in the path of that word that always made Evan shrink in on himself.
The man stumbled back at the same time Evan stuttered.
Another feeling filled Tommy's chest at the sound of Evan saying his name. But he couldn't bathe in that feeling yet. Not when the burning numb spots in his soul were blazing at the sight of the man in front of him. The man that had grabbed Evan. The man that had made him flinch; made him small.
"You better think real carefully before you finish that sentence because you and me?" Tommy said, stepping into the man's space before he could even right himself. "We're already have a problem."
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