liminalmemories

“I just… I always feel like I’m not doing a good enough job. I couldn’t give Emily what she deserves. I’m not doing the pro bono work I wanted to do because I’m too busy with the other shit, but I’m also getting passed over for promotions. June thinks it’s because law is a white boys’ club and maybe she’s right. But nothing I’m doing is the right thing. Which fucking sucks. I just wanted something to remind myself that I can do better and that things will change. I have to believe that it’s not always going to be like this, y’know? I can be good enough if I try harder or whatever.”

“Alex.” Henry sounds devastated.

“Sorry to trauma dump on you, man.”

She took a deep breath and opened the door. “I’m fine. Stay there.”

She winced as her feet hit the pavement; her ankles were swollen. Everything about the pregnancy seemed harder this time around. Maybe it was just being five years older, maybe it was already having one kid while gestating another, maybe it was listening to her husband die, maybe it was the entire fucking world.

Buck didn’t stay there, coming down the walk in his sock feet and wincing with every step. “I can grab Jee.” He peered into the back seat. “Uh, Maddie, I don’t want to alarm you, but where is your daughter?”

“The Lees took her.” She kept moving past him. Momentum was key. “They wanted to give Howie and I some time to visit. They’ll drop her off later.” They originally offered to keep Jee overnight, but with Howie in the hospital, Jee was scared and a night away from home would just result in a meltdown.

“Oh, th-that’s good she’s getting some grandparent time,” Buck said, visibly drooping before rallying. He followed her inside, shutting and locking the door and neatly putting away the shoes she kicked off. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” she said, heading for the kitchen. “Thirsty. Vaguely nauseous.”

No sooner was the word out of her mouth than Buck was bustling around the kitchen. She had just gingerly lowered herself into her chair than Buck sat a cup of ginger ale in front of her. “Thank you,” she said, taking a careful sip. Her teeth were sensitive to the cold and at some point when everything had settled down, she needed to make a dentist appointment.

“No problem,” Buck said, and returned to bustling. Buck and their parents had been locked in trench warfare for all of Buck’s teenage years over him doing chores, and they’d probably have twin heart attacks at seeing Buck willingly and enthusiastically loading the dishwasher without a forty-five minute screaming match. “So I did a couple loads of laundry and did a quick wipe down of the bathroom and kitchen, and if you give me like five minutes I’ll grab the vacuum. There’s a bunch of casseroles from the meal train, but I went shopping. You got bread, milk, butter, and plenty of dino nuggets for Jee.”

The urge to put her head on the table was overwhelming. Buck was just trying to be helpful, she reminded herself as the waves of words threatened to drag her under. This was how he loved.

“Thank you,” she said again. “I’ve got an update.”

Buck went very still and very focused, like a pointer dog who spotted a duck. “Is Chim getting discharged?”

“They want to keep him for a few more days, but then he can home.”

Buck nodded, absently patting at his pocket for his phone. He’d been taking notes on everyone’s recovery: Howie, Hen, Bobby. His poor notes app must be on the verge of committing suicide. “I thought they were talking about sending him to a-a skilled nursing facility?”

“He’s doing better so they said he can come straight home.” His half of the antiviral had eradicated the virus, but the damage had already been done. Howie would live, but no one knew what recovery looked like. No one knew if he would return to duty. No one knew if he would need to be on oxygen for the rest of his life.

“Okay, that’s good.” Buck’s head was down as he typed a new note into his phone. “I’ve been thinking about that. Chim coming home, I mean.”

“The Lees are going to stay with us,” Maddie said, ripping that band-aid off. “They’ll be able to take Jee to preschool and Howie to all his appointments. They’ll be here to help when the baby comes.”

“Oh,” Buck said, looking like his heart was breaking. “Right. They’re great. The Lees, I mean.

A scream rose, and Maddie clenched her teeth against it. Her husband almost died, the doctors couldn’t tell her what his health outcome would be, her daughter almost lost both her parents within months of each other, and she still had to worry about hurting her brother’s feelings. And the worst part was that the only reason Howie was alive was because of her brother and her brother’s ex. It was so fucking unfair.

“Hey,” she said, forcing herself to be gentle as she caught Buck’s wrist and urged him to sit. “You need to take care of yourself, too. Are you taking the leave they offered?”

“What? Oh, yeah. I’m on it now.” Buck mustered up a brave smile. “You know I’m here for you, whatever you need.”

“I know,” she said, and buried the unkind thought of throwing him at the Wilsons for awhile. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, and squeezed her fingers.

She took her hand back and drank the ginger ale. Buck turned his phone over in his hands, the corners of his mouth tight and miserable.

“Have you talked to Tommy?” she asked at the risk of ending up with another dozen loafs in her freezer.

Buck’s head jerked up. “You want me to call him now?”

A flash of irritation that she ruthlessly smothered. “I never not wanted you to call him.” A half-lie at most. “Can you let him know I’m grateful for what he did to help us? I’d do it myself, but I don’t have his number.”

“Y-yeah, of course. I’ll do it now.” He gave his phone a sad waggle.

“Maybe not right now.” She levered herself up. “I’m going to sneak in a nap before the Lees get here.”

It took a moment, but then Buck was popping up. “I’ll let you do that. There’s so many options for dinner.” He waved his hand at the fridge. Just the thought of opening it and sorting through the casseroles made her want to lay down and die. Anne and John could handle that. “Call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” she said, and shuffled towards the bedroom.

She waited until she head the door close and lock before she laid down and gave herself permission to rest, just for a little bit, until whatever came next arrived.

2. Hen was, depressingly enough, familiar enough with recovering from a severe injury to know that the irritation and frustration from being forced to rest were signs that her body was healing and that she was on the mend. But if she had to spend one more day in bed or on the couch, she was going to set something on fire just to have the excuse to get out of the house.

“At least wait until the kids are out of house before beginning your budding arson career,” Karen said without pity. “How do you feel about setting up camp in the backyard?”

Hen felt better about it than the couch, and so she settled on the lounge chair Denny had spent the last ten minutes making sure it got the perfect sun to shade ratio and drank the lemonade Karen brought her and listened to the kids mostly friendly bickering as they constructed cardboard cars from a kit that were supposedly powered by the Nintendo Switch remotes. It was a good day, and she had long ago learned not to take them for granted.

It was such a good day that she had nearly dozed off when the chime of Karen’s phone dragged her back to consciousness. Karen held it at arm’s length to read the text because she refused to admit she needed reading glasses. “How do you feel about having a visitor?”

“Depends on the visitor,” Hen said. Eddie was in Texas, and Chim and Bobby were still in the hospital. “Depends on if it’s Buck.”

Karen gave her a pointed and disappointed look. “Do you want to try that again, Henrietta?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Hen said, two inches tall and annoyed about it. Karen was her wife, not her mother. “You know how he can be.”

The disappointed increased, but even Maddie had admitted that Buck could be exhausting. “I know he wants to help,” Maddie had confessed when she had stopped by with Jee for a playdate, “but I’m so tired.”

“He saved your life,” Karen said quietly, like Hen could ever forget. A small, shameful part of her said, We got lucky. How much worse would he be if Bobby had died?

“A short visit,” she said.

Twenty minutes later the doorbell rang. Karen went to let him in and then ten minutes after that—long enough for them to catch up and for Karen to give him the time limit—Buck was bounding into the backyard, waving at the kids and making the appropriate noises over their little cardboard cars. His hair was brushed and his shirt tucked in, and yet Buck looked like a man in the moment right before realizing his legs had been cut out from under him.

“I’m not staying long,” he said with a bright, false cheerfulness. “I’m just dropping off your portion of the meal train. You and Karen won’t have to cook for weeks. And this is for you.” With an exhausted flourish, he produced a tupperware container.

Hen swallowed her reflexive, unhelpful impulse—aren’t you over Tommy yet?­—and warily cracked the lid. “Oh,” she said, pleasantly surprised at the blondies. “My favorite.”

“You know I can make actual brownies that taste good, right?” he said, dancing away from the swat she aimed his way. “There’s also a bunch of muffin tops for the kids and I made a batch of those peanut butter cookies with the chocolate stars in them for Karen.”

In those first six months post breakup, Buck baked indiscriminately—loaves and cookies, brownies and tarts, pies with intricate lattice work and delicate puffs of meringue, rolls with molten cheese centers and cakes with frosting so precise and exact it was like something out of a TikTok—and they didn’t have a choice on what he pushed on them until Chim declared an embargo that even Bobby had endorsed. But this wasn’t Buck baking to avoid his feelings. Buck had spent time and money making her family’s favorite pastries because Hen had almost died and he loved her. Maybe Karen had a point.

“Sit down,” she said, overwhelmed with fondness for the probie she watched grow up. “It’s been a minute since we talked.”

“Well, it’s not like I get invited to brunch,” Buck said, shockingly snide as he folded down into Karen’t abandoned chair. “Sorry,” he added to her raised eyebrows.

“Are you okay?” She went to lay a hand on his arm.

He shifted away. “I’m good. Hey, did you hear we’re getting an interim captain? Not Gerrard, thank god. I think they finally took the hint there.”

That explained the snideness. Buck loved the 118 too much to just let anyone into the captain’s chair, although he might not have a choice, given the long, slow recovery before Bobby.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Samuels. He used to captain the 93 back in the day,” Buck the infant said.

“I thought he retired.”

Buck shrugged. “Apparently not.”

“He’s a good captain, from what I hear. You’ll like him.” She broke a blondie in two and offered Buck half.

“I made those for you.” He waited until she took a bite before saying, “Are you going to take it when they offer it to you?”

The little shit timed it specifically so she couldn’t brush the question off. She had to sit with it as she chewed and swallowed and washed it all down with a sip of lemonade. He really wasn’t a probie anymore.

“If they offer it,” she said.

“Hen. Come on.”

She sighed and watched as Denny and Mara lined up their little cars for the race. This was the most time she spent with them in months. How much more of their lives would she miss if she was captain? How much more neglect could her marriage take before it collapsed, hollowed out? How much more could she bear?

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Bobby wants it for you. He’s been mentoring you.” Where she expected frustration or anger, there was only a quiet disappointment, like Buck has already worked out the answer before even asking the question.

“The last time I was acting captain,” she said with a forced calm, “I lost my daughter.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, even though he didn’t, he couldn’t.

What did Buck know about watching your child being taken away and knowing it was your fault because you let another mother’s son die? What the fuck did he know about her life?

“I’m getting tired,” she said, and perhaps for the first time in his life Buck took the hint.

“I gotta get going,” he said, standing with a wince, which meant he wasn’t stretching out his bad leg. “You’d be a good captain, Hen.”

“Thank you,” she said, and then, “Have you talked to Tommy?”

Buck startled. Yeah, turnabout was a bitch, wasn’t it?

“I texted him,” he said, not looking at her. “I haven’t heard back. Have, uh, have you talked to him?”

“I also texted and I also haven’t heard back,” she said. The disappointed droop of Buck’s shoulders made her stomach curdle with guilt. “He’s never been great about replying.”

“He was always good about getting back to me.” Buck shook himself and summoned up another terrible, cheerful smile. He waved to the kids and then slipped away.

In the yard, Denny let Mara win, and he smiled as she jumped and whooped. She loved her job but she loved her kids more.

“Everything okay?” Karen asked, slipping into the seat next to her.

“Yeah,” Hen said, snagging her hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it, “everything is great.”

3. When he wasn’t sleeping, Bobby was working his way through the puzzle books Athena and the kids had dropped off. He missed doing the daily Connections—he couldn’t look at a screen without his brain trying to crawl out his nose—but he was becoming an expert at Sudoko. He only bothered with the very hard puzzles now.

The door opened. It wasn’t time for his medications or for the nurses routine check in, less frequent now that the doctors assured him his internal organs weren’t in danger of liquefying, Athena was out at lunch with the kids, Hen was home recovering, and Chimney had only just been discharged. That left only one person.

“Buck,” he said, filling in a seven with a great sense of accomplishment. “I just saw you yesterday. What brings you by?”

Buck sheepishly held up a couple of cooler bags. “More of the meal train. I thought Athena and the kids might like it. Well, mostly Harry.”

“His does eat like he’s got hollow legs.” Bobby set the puzzle book aside. Buck looked the same as he had for the past week: exhausted but forcing himself to be cheerful. “When is the last time you slept?”

“Where’s Athena?” Buck avoided the question by setting the bags out of the way and folding himself into the uncomfortable chair with a wince.

And Bobby was hit with a sense memory of the doing the same when it was Buck in the hospital, his back stiff and aching from being curled over for hours as he prayed the rosary. Even no he could still feel the bump of them over his knuckles.

“Bobby?” Buck said.

“Sorry, I was wool gathering.” He gave Buck a reassuring smile that didn’t reassure enough as he hoped. “Athena is out with the kids right now, but she’ll be back.” The only person more difficult than Buck to chase home to sleep was Athena. He despaired of both their backs. “How’s it going, kid?”

“It’s good,” Buck said, summoning a smile that doesn’t do much beyond twisting his mouth up. Brooke had been the same way, smiling when she felt the worst so she wouldn’t worry them. “Eddie got offered a paramedic job. He’s going to take it. Chris really likes being back in Texas.”

“That’s good for both of them,” Bobby said, watching Buck closely. “Chim is back home.”

“The Lees are helping out. Jee is getting excited about having a baby brother again.” Buck wouldn’t look at him. “I saw Hen the other day. She’s doing well. I told her about Samuels.”

Ah, there it was, the true reason for Buck’s visit, the very thing he had and Athena had talked to death. Well, no time like the present. Time to rip off the band-aid and break Buck’s heart.

“Chief Simpson asked me for some recommendations,” Bobby said, shifting with a wince. Immediately Buck was there to rearrange the pillows. “Samuels is only temporary, but he’s a good man and will take care of you all until the position can be filled permanently.”

“So you’re not coming back,” Buck said dully.

“Too much damage this time,” he said gently. “I might stay on in a more administrative role, but I can’t be in the field again. It won’t be safe, not for me or for team.”

“I don’t know if Hen still wants to be captain,” Buck said, gaze fixed on some far away point. “Not after what happened with Mara.” He paused. “I don’t want Gerrard coming back.”

“He’s not. I won’t let that happen.” Bobby hesitated. “Tommy worked with Gerrard for years.”

That got Buck looking at him, if only to frown in confusion. “Uh, yeah, I know.”

“I never asked if that caused problems between you two,” he said, choosing his words with delicate care. “You never said why you broke up.”

“It wasn’t that.” Buck frowned harder. “Or not just that. We didn’t really talk about important stuff. Or any stuff.”

Looked like he got it wrong; this kid was breaking Bobby’s heart. “You can change that. Give him a call.”

Buck’s mouth twisted into a miserable knot. “I have been calling him and texting him but he won’t—” he broke off with an even more miserable sniff. “He hasn’t even left me on read. I think I used up my last chance with this one, Bobby.”

When they wheeled him out of the lab, oxygen mask over his face and fluids and plasma on standby, Tommy had been at Buck’s side, feet planted deep and immovable. If Tommy wasn’t picking up the phone, it was because he physically wasn’t able to.

“You should go check on him,” Bobby said. “He loves you, kid.”

Buck couldn’t even manage a smile for that. “Not anymore, if he ever did.”

Bobby reached out and gripped Buck’s arm. “You’re going to be okay, Buck. We both are. Captain’s orders.”

“Copy that, Cap,” Buck said, and sat with him until Athena returned.

4. Buck didn’t know Sal well enough to guess who he expected at his door on a Tuesday afternoon, but it probably wasn’t him having a nervous breakdown.

“Have you talked to Tommy?” Buck demanded, feeling crazy around the eyes.

“Have I,” Sal said slowly, “spoken with Tommy?”

Buck dug his phone out of his pocket and waved it in Sal’s face. “He hasn’t picked up when I call or answered my texts. He hasn’t even left me on read. Something is wrong.”

“Or, and stay with me on this,” Sal said, unimpressed and obviously losing patience, “he finally smartened up and stopped letting you ruin his life.”

“But when has he ever done the smart thing?” Buck shot back, mouth firmed to keep from miserably wobbling. “And it’s just not me he’s ignoring. He hasn’t texted Chim or Bobby back. He hasn’t responded to Hen. Does that sound like Tommy to you?”

Sal stared him down for a long moment before digging out his phone and scrolling through it. “I talked to him two weeks ago. Fuck.”

“Fuck,” Buck echoed through a mouth gone sour with fear.

“Fuck!” a naked toddler exclaimed with delight right before ramming into Buck’s legs.

“She’s going through a naked phase,” Sal said, expertly scooping up the kid before she could worm past Buck and complete her jailbreak. “You better come in.”

The naked toddler was called Maria, and she wailed dramatically as Sal wrestled her into a shirt with a t-rex on it. “When did you see him last?” Sal asked, ignoring as his daughter went completely limp in a last ditch effort to avoid wearing pants.

“At the lab. He, uh, he texted me and called me after that, but then he just stopped.” The fear curdled into shame. “I, uh, didn’t notice at first. I’ve been busy looking after everyone else.” A terrible smile stretched across his face, and he turned away so he wouldn’t frighten Maria. “Turns out they didn’t need me. Joke’s on me, I guess.”

Sal sighed very quietly. “All right, gremlin, you don’t have to wear socks but the pants and shirt stay on and you have to color quietly while I talk with Buck here. Deal?”

Maria frowned as she seriously considered it, looking so much like a miniature Tommy that Buck had to lock his jaw against an animal scream. “Deal,” she finally said, holding out a tiny hand for Sal to shake.

“Gina is a lawyer,” Sal said, setting Maria up in the living room with a coloring book, an army of plastic dinosaurs, and a literal bucket of crayons. “She loves making deals.”

“Gotta do deal,” Maria agreed, and upended the crayon bucket over her head. “Rain!”

“That’s right, honey, make it rain.” Sal dropped a kiss on the top of her head and then led Buck to the kitchen.

On the fridge, tacked up with a magnet in the shape of a watermelon, was a picture of Maria and Tommy, her tiny face pressed against his, their mouths open in a fearsome growl, hands hooked into tiny claws. Buck collapsed onto a chair. There was one like that of him and Jee on Maddie’s fridge, the two of them pretending to be tigers when Jee was in her big cat phase. Tommy was so loved, even if it wasn’t by him

“Are they t-rexes?” Buck asked.

“She’s obsessed with dinosaurs. If I have to watch one ore documentary about them I am taking a sledgehammer to the fossils at the natural history museum.” Sal leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “Tell me what happened at the lab. Leave nothing out.”

Buck did. Sal’s eyebrows were the bitchy twin to Tommy’s, and by the time he got to the end, they were nearly in his hairline.

“Let me get this straight,” Sal said, stare gone hard and unforgiving, “Tommy pulls a stunt that could have gotten him black bagged and sent to Guantanamo, and you didn’t think to reach out to him until your little friends were too busy to play with you anymore?”

Buck winced. “They didn’t need me. I thought Tommy might.”

“Jesus Christ.” Sal scrubbed a hand over his face. “He’s a person, Buckley. You know that, right? Tommy is a person and not a doll you can take down from the shelf whenever you’re lonely.”

The shame sat like a stone in his stomach. “That’s fair,” he said quietly.

“You’re right that’s goddamn fair,” Sal snapped. “Do you have any idea what he lets you get away with? You are so careless with him.”

Buck flinched. It’d been almost ten year since he joined the LAFD, and he thought he’d grown up since then. Joke was on him again. He was still the careless twenty-six year old who couldn’t be trusted with anything important. All he did was break things.

“I know,” Buck said, forcing himself to meet Sal’s gaze. “But that doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong. I, uh, I went to bring him some of the meal train. He wasn’t home. His truck was in the driveway.”

Tommy’s truck was his baby, in that he doted on it more than some people did with their actual babies. If he absolutely had to let it sit out on his driveway, he always threw the custom made tarp over it. When the Jeep was up on the lift, Buck had watch Tommy spend ten minutes fussing with the drape over the tarp, worried about the weather, like SoCal was in danger of getting a freak hailstorm. Buck had found the whole thing charming and endearing.

“Oh hell,” Sal said and dug out his phone.

The first call rang through to Tommy’s voicemail, as did the second and then the third. Sal texted something quickly. The phone chimed. Sal’s frown changed from furious to worried.

“He’s not picking up for Gina either,” Sal said. “And he’s ignoring our 911 texts.”

The shame stone crumbled back into fear. “He’s in trouble, isn’t he?” Buck said.

“Yeah, kid, I think he is.” Sal blew out a long breath. “I gotta make some calls. Go make sure my kid has her clothes on and isn’t making another run for it.”

Buck stood but paused at the kitchen door. “Do you really think I ruined his life?”

Sal didn’t glance up for his phone. “Tommy is fully capable of ruining his own life, but you certainly helped.”

In the living room, Maria glanced up and said, “Wanna color?”

“I’d love to,” Buck said, and took a careful seat next to her.

Over the next hour, Sal made his calls. There were many of them, his voice rising and falling, although he only got loud exactly once.

“You left them in there to fucking die,” Sal snapped to what Buck futilely hoped wasn’t Chief Simpson. “You think the last contract negotiations were bad, wait until we put this to a fucking vote.”

It was quiet after that, and when Sal finally left the kitchen, it was with a solemnity that nearly made Buck snap a crayon in half.

“Hey, gremlin,” Sal said with a gentleness that every parent but his own had. “Can you go play in your room? I gotta talk to Buck.”

“Is Tommy okay?” she asked, shoulders hunching around her ears as she picked up on her dad’s mood.

“Tommy will be,” Sal said. “I’ll come play dinosaur graveyard with you after this. Deal?”

She stuck our her tiny hand for a shake. “Deal.” And then with a wild cackle, she sprinted towards her room. “Deal not with clothes!” Her shirt was the first to go.

“That’s on me,” Sal said. “I didn’t include clothes.”

Buck began cleaning up on reflex: coloring books neatly stacked on the coffee table, crayons back in the bucket, army of dinosaurs back into their own plastic container. It was the same thing he did after Jee was done playing. It was one less thing for Maddie to have to clean. He could do the same for Sal.

“Is Tommy okay?” he asked, digging a stray ankylosaur from under the couch.

Sal waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, he’s fine. He’s just been arrested.”

Black bagged, Buck thought, Guantanamo. His chest went tight. His lungs couldn’t expand. He stopped breathing.

“None of that shit, Buckley.” A hand on the back of his neck forced him head between his knees. “Tommy is fine. And if my wife gets her way, which she always does, he’ll be out before end of business today. So stop hyperventilating. You’re not helping.”

The edges of his vision cleared. He sucked in a lungful of air and then another. Tommy was under arrest but he was going to be okay. Buck would make sure he was. “I’m good,” he croaked, and Sal gentled his grip to help him to sit up. “Why did they only arrest him?”

“Probably because the army doesn’t want it to get out that they left some of LAFD’s bravest to die of super Ebola. Tommy is the easier target, and he embarrassed them by needing three choppers to take him down.”

It took six months, but he gotten pretty good at reading Tommy, but Sal was an unknown. They had only met once and only for about an hour over drinks. Buck had liked Gina more than her husband, and he spent most of that hour talking about the struggle of rolling back old, outdated laws. He didn’t know what it meant when Sal looked at him like that.

“I don’t know what goes in your fucked up little codependent polycule,” Sal said slowly, unblinking, “but Tommy needs you for this. And he won’t ever admit it because his parents fucked up him up good, but he needs you for the rest of it, too. Are you going to be there for him?”

“Yes,” Buck said.

Sal was unimpressed. “There are no half measures here. If you’re in it then you have to be all in and not just there when the rest of your family is too busy for a play date. If you can’t do that then you walk away right now and you stay gone. Tommy doesn’t need more help in ruining his life.”

Everyone he loved had someone—Maddie and Chim, Hen and Karen, even Eddie had his son—and Buck had been scrapping by for years now., useful but not permanent. Careless. But he wasn’t twenty-six anymore; he was capable of care.

“I’m here, for however long he wants me,” Buck said firmly.

Sal nodded, once. “Be at the courthouse in forty-five minutes. You need to give testimony.”

Buck scrambled up. He was unshaven and his shirt was at least one day past needing to be washed. His work duffel was still in the Jeep. There was a clean shirt in there and spare deodorant and even some pomade. It wasn’t great, but it was all he got.

“Go get our boy,” Sal said, clapping him on the shoulder.

Buck went.

5. Tommy had been in worse places than spending a week in county lockup. There was those long weeks he spent in a medical tent in the middle of the Afghan desert, waiting to be med evaced to Germany, infection creeping into the staples holding his guts in. There were the long nights at the 118, all of them exhausted from a five alarm fire where an entire family had died, and Gerrard had called them all weeping pussies for the crime of having a single feeling about it. There had been the morning in Eddie’s kitchen where Evan had confirmed his greatest fear, that he was only good for a fuck and nothing more. So yeah, on the whole, it could have been worse. It could always be worse.

Tommy signed the forms and was given back his personal belongings: wallet, aviator sunglasses, shitty movie receipt because movie theaters no longer gave out tickets, his phone with approximately three hundred missed calls and unanswered texts. Evan’s name was at the top.

He shoved everything into his pockets and stepped out a free man to where Evan Buckley was waiting for him. His eyebrows jumped up.

“Hi,” Evan said, hand raised in an abortive waive. His hair was slicked back like it was when the first started dating, before Tommy had unashamedly begged Evan to free his curls, and he was sporting at least three days worth of stubble. His face was gaunt. He hadn’t been sleeping. He was beautiful. “Sal and Gina are here if you want to—oh!”

Tommy crossed in three strides and grabbed Evan, holding on tight. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Evan said, long arms wrapped around him, hands fisted in the back of Tommy’s shirt. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He tucked his face into Evan’s neck. He shook. “Is everyone okay? Bobby isn’t—”

Evan made a low noise. “They’re fine. Are you okay? You were in jail!”

He laughed to hide the shakes. “County jail. Doesn’t count.” Evan made that noise again. Tommy cupped the back of his head. “I’m okay. I promise. You sprung me.”

“Okay,” Evan said, sniffling even as he drew back. His eyes were wet and red rimmed. “So full disclosure, Sal and Gina did the springing. I just gave some testimony.” He touched Tommy’s cheek, his jaw, his mouth. “They’re giving us a day and then we have to over for dinner.”

“Not until tomorrow, right? We have the rest of the day?” he asked hopefully. His old sergeant said that it was the hope that killed you, but Tommy hoped anyway.

“Yeah, the whole day,” Evan said on a happy sigh. “I’m going to be so careful with you. I’m not going to let us ruin it this time. I promise.”

Tommy kissed the corner of his mouth. “Well, in that case, honey, you should take me home.”