annepi

world 1: tommy couldn't decide what to do after he got out of the army. part of him wanted to carry on flying, but the part of him that was riddled with panic attacks and the shakes and insomnia and a startle reflex off the fucking scale all the other fun ptsd souvenirs made that not a great idea. he goes to college instead. turns out, when he's not focused on Doing Masculinity via sports and having terrible friends and he's not distracted by the dumpster fire of his home life and has a little distance from his dad telling him how fucking stupid he is? tommy's pretty smart.

he never, not in a million years, would have thought dr. tommy kinard was in his future but here he is, eighteen months into his phd program in aerospace engineering, and happier than he ever thought was on the cards for him. he works in the library as one of the approximately seventeen things he does to try to have an income that keeps him afloat. it's there that he meets possibly the hottest guy he's ever seen in real life. he has a bunch of paper clutched in his hand and he's looking at tommy with an intensity that almost makes him wonder if they know each other. except he's sure he'd remember if he'd hooked up with this guy, or even just seen him around.

he introduces himself as buck and says he's looking for some sources, shows tommy a series of neatly written lists. he's weirdly charmed by the way they're written out - all caps, journal names underlined instead of in italics, page references in square brackets. several of them even have the doi written out by hand. they're a baffling mix of theoretical physics, aerospace engineering and fire science. they start well enough, and tommy locates a handful of sources before he hits a brick wall. the dois lead to the wrong source, the journal either flat-out doesn't exist, or was only launched three years after the source is dated.

buck swears up and down that he wrote them out right, and that he didn't get them from a fucking llm, and tommy's inclined to believe him. he looks way more upset about it than tommy thinks is really warranted. he tells himself that's why he offers for buck to leave the list with him and let him do some digging. buck blinks hard a couple of times and maybe it's just the air-con in the library, but he looks like he's holding back tears when he says no thanks.

"see you around," tommy says hopefully.

"yeah, maybe," buck says, his back already turned, his shoulders tight. "that'd be nice."

world 8: tommy didn't expect to end up at the galactic database. he thought he'd be a starpilot until he died. but sometimes the radiation leak doesn't kill you, and sometimes they don't fix you in time and you end up in this weird in-between. totally fine in almost every regard, but your reaction times? juuuust fucked up enough that no one is gonna let you at the console of a ship ever again. the database isn't the worst place he could have ended up, all things considered.

he meets people, checks for contraindications, gets them settled in one of the biochairs, makes sure the headset sits comfortably, hits the download buttons, gives them a glass of juice after, and a free cookie if it's been an especially intense download. it's not the most exciting way to fill his time, but it does fill his time.

and then the most beautiful man he's ever seen arrives at the help desk and asks for the wildest combination of downloads tommy's ever heard of. he finds a few of them - a crazy mix of ancient 21st century myths, advanced shielding technology theory, and chemistry so far out of tommy's area of expertise that he can feel his eyes glazing over just looking at it. but the majority are a mystery. and it's the galactic database, for crying out loud. if tommy can't find it, it doesn't exist. the guy (buck, he says. it does not match the name on his id chip, but tommy's not a cop, he really doesn't care) looks resigned and says, "whatever you have is fine."

he accepts the juice and the cookie with a smile that tommy thinks must break hearts from here to alpha centauri.

world 19: tommy's mother brought him to the citadel when he was twelve and since then he has spent his whole life in the same three rooms. one where he sleeps, one where he eats and exercises, and one where he works. only the second has a window, and he spends an hour each day looking out of it. far, far below at the base of the tower he can see people coming and going, living lives that aren't defined by the shape of the stone walls around them. he sees carts and animals, columns of soldiers, knights on horseback, and very occasionally, a wandering mage. he knows they're here for him. well. they're here for what he can produce.

tommy doesn't have magic, but he can read it and that's even rarer. it's why his rooms are so comfortable. why the food they bring him is so delicious. why the servants who see to his needs are so deferential. why he will be brought anything he requests from the citadel library. and it's why will never be able to leave.

buck pov interstitial: he's losing his mind. this is the worst thing that's ever happened to a person. so many versions of tommy, in so many different worlds, with so many different experiences, and they all have the same fucking smile, the same way of quirking an eyebrow that makes buck feel like he knows them. every few hops he thinks about just staying. he could make a life with the tommy who reads books to children in the tiny small-town library in illinois, or the tommy who's a pirate captain with a jealously guarded chest of scrolls, or the tommy who oversees the direct-to-cortex downloads, or the tommy with ink-stained fingers who spent his whole life making copies of old books of lore and mythology. but he's getting closer. he knows he is. he can go home to his tommy if he just keeps trying.

world 326: tommy wishes he could say he didn't know how he ended up here. but he does. it was a toss of a coin. a different day and some other dumb kid who joined up for lack of other options would have been piloting the chopper when the silver oval appeared from nowhere and matched pace with him for the most nerve-jangling ten minutes of his life. the suits had been waiting for him by the time he landed. the part of him that watched too many movies as a kid thought he was going to get black-bagged and...well. that's not a million miles away from what happened.

he'd expected to get disappeared in the shallow grave kind of way. instead, he'd gotten a crash course: aliens? yep. superheroes? sorta. magic? depends on your definition, private kinard. he'd asked hopefully about the memory wipe device from men in black, but no luck there. so now here he is, a decade later, earning decent money as a glorified receptionist at a black site. except instead of crimes against humanity, he's responsible for overseeing the security of Artefacts. it's always capitalised, in his own mind. Artefacts. it's the indiana jones warehouse, basically. he's not mad about it.

sometimes people show up to add to the collection. sometimes stuff gets removed. agents of various three letter agencies come and go. 10 year old tommy would have expected it to be a lot more exciting than it actually is.

he's working through his latest sudoku book when a guy arrives. it's not typical but it's also not unheard of for suits to show up alone. this one's new - new to the warehouse and unless tommy's much mistaken new to the kind of clearance level that would let him know about the warehouse. he has a hand-written list of the shelf references he's looking for and tommy raises his eyebrows. it's varied, to say the least. half of it is in the extra-terrestrial section, maybe another quarter in the terrestrial but extremely fucking classified section, and the rest just straight up doesn't exist.

tommy edges a little closer to the alarm as he points that out, but the guy just laughs and smiles a disarmingly pretty smile and says, "first trip. you know how they send the new guy out for a drill silencer and a long weight?"

"sure," tommy says, and lets himself return the smile.

the guy's back an hour later with his metal briefcase hanging a little heavier in his hand.

"see you around, agent buckley," tommy says.

"i sure hope so," the agent says.

world 0: buck holds his breath, counts the seconds, watches with aching, tired eyes for the very first wobble of the rotors on the helicopter. as soon as it lands he tosses the orb upwards and prays for the magic and the alien tech and the classified materials and the shielding technology from 2276 to work how he thinks it will.

the orb unfurls into a glimmering, glittering web of light that soars towards the helicopter and envelops it in a net made of buck's hopes and exhaustion and desperation. like a soap bubble, it's only visible from certain angles and like a soap bubble it floats down to the ground, tommy's helicopter held safe and secure within its grasp.

"what..." chim says.

"the hell..." hen adds.

buck is already running.

tommy is wide-eyed and baffled in the cockpit, his hands carefully held away from the cyclic.

"babe," he says. "you have got some explaining to do."

Finally, Butterbur has to kindly remind them that the inn does have to close, and if they wish, they can share a room to chat further, "if Master Dwarf doesn't mind a hobbit sized room, of course, though our hobbit rooms are generously sized for hobbits"

Tommy takes the offer and they do share a room, and they talk long into the night, Buck full of questions and Tommy happy to answer

In the morning they both yawn through a simple breakfast, and Tommy asks Buck what he is planning to do, so Buck answers that he wants to go "eastwards, perhaps? I once overheard Gandalf talking about the Misty Mountains and should like to see it for myself"

And Tommy is like, "you are a young hobbit out of the Shire for the very first time, you don't even have a weapon, and we will be crossing dangerous lands full of foes and wild creatures" and so he says he will go with Buck, and after that, they will come back to Bree, for the lands beyond the Misty Mountains are too dangerous for a dwarf and a hobbit to travel

"you came alone through those lands" Buck points out

"yes, and I have the scars to prove my point" Tommy replies, "and I should feel a lot better if we have some connexion with rangers that they know we are headed that way, and can come to our aid"

He doesn't like rangers that much — too similar to elves by far — but he understands them and their isolation, and Strider despite being a dour sort is also an honorable man who does tell Tommy to go ahead, there are rangers on the same trail "though they will not be your companions, for they have their own errands and purposes" so Tommy knows there is backup

Tommy makes sure his axes are sharp and they get a couple of good, sturdy ponies to carry food and gear, while Buck checks that he has his good pot and the seasonings he had wheedled out of Buckland's best cook, along with the stout iron tipped walking stick Bobby had given him

Anyway the hobbit and the dwarf do make it from Bree to Weathertop to Hollin to the Misty Mountains, and when Buck finally stands at the foot of the Redhorn, he stares up up up into its lofty, snow-clad peaks, and sighs.

"I am content" he tells Tommy, "as content as I have never been, and I believe I will never forget this moment, not to the end of my days, and all of it because you have been with me" and by then Tommy is certain he loves this strange young hobbit and he lets Buck know of his love, and Buck returns his affection as well

They are on the way back to Bree when Strider himself meets them on the road and tells them that Erebor has been retaken. "That dreadful worm is dead?" Tommy cannot believe the fools have indeed won the day

"Yea, but war gathers on the gates of the Lonely Mountain," Strider tells Tommy. "Have you the ear of Thorin or Dain? For they must see that strife between elves and men and dwarves will only please their enemies"

"Dwarves will protect what is theirs by right, and no longer will elves lay claim to the works crafted by dwarven hands," Tommy declares, and Strider is displeased but says no more. Only in the quiet of their own camp does Buck ask why dwarves and elves hate each other, so Tommy relays the story of the petty-dwarves hunted to near extinction in the first age, the Silmaril and Thingol who denied them their craft-price, the many hurts between, and Buck holds his tongue all through the long telling, but in the morning he says, "but why add to the pain when it can be slowly mended? Surely there can be something that helps both dwarves and elves to become friends"

"perhaps, but I do not see it" says Tommy

They return to Bree and build themselves a small cottage on the outskirts of the village, and Tommy sets up as a smith while Buck begins working as a baker. It is a good few months before they hear of the triumphant return of Bilbo and Gandalf

Bilbo is delighted to see Buck so far from the Shire, declaring him "a brave young hobbit indeed! And you missed the worst of the adventures, particularly the spiders and the barrel ride down the river and the wolves", and Tommy talks alone with the wizard about the fools who went to challenge Smaug. When Tommy returns, he sits alone by his forge and weeps for Thorin and Fili and Kili, the latter two of whom he knew when they were children

And it is another few months before Tommy thinks the roads are safe enough to travel to Erebor now, with some company. But to his dismay, he gets the elves Elrohir and Elladan, but thankfully they are akin to Strider in temperament, and they all get to visit Rivendell (Buck thinks it is all very pleasant, but he does prefer the solidity and hardiness of dwarves to the elegance and grace of elves, all things considered, even if a jealous Tommy keeps Buck close lest the hobbit is lured away by things like elvish singing) before they make it to Laketown where the twins bid them farewell, going instead to Mirkwood to visit Thranduil

Tommy shows Buck Laketown, and the people of Laketown asks after Bilbo's health; Dain and his people are more than happy to offer Tommy and Buck a place to live, but Tommy knows Buck is still very much a homebody and will miss being close enough to visit his kin within a couple days' journeying. But he does take Buck to the places he played and lived in as a child, and, alone together under the stars, they pledged their lives to each other, and Tommy gives Buck his dwarvish name ("Evan") and carves it into his family annals, before they ask for a senior dwarf to wed them according to dwarfish customs

LIAR I ACTUALLY SPENT 27 HOURS ON IT AND I FULLY TRACKED IT