liminalmemories

(obviously this canon divergence would have dire consequences for Ilya, but I'm more interested in the 'driving Shane insane with apoplectic levels of jealousy' angle.)

I have been rotating this for a full 24 hours uhgggg

Okay so. I want to say that, if Ilya got outed, his own jealousy would not immediately be at the forefront of Shane's mind. It would be the pungeant Doritos nacho seasoning on top of the greater spiral that he would immediately enter into. The name of the initial spiral would be "I Have To Save Ilya" and it would, underneath the panic, be wish fulfillment of the highest order. Shane has always enjoyed fantasizing about saving Ilya. He loves to daydream about the rink catching fire and everyone gets out safely except WAIT where is Ilya Rozanov?? And it's Shane who has to run back into a burning building and use his Superior Knowledge of Ilya to find him and he's trapped under a beam or something (Shane read that article about the mom lifting the car off her kid like six times) and Shane pulls him out and then they limp triumphantly out of the rink together and everyone cheers and now Ilya has a reason to look at him like he personally put the moon and stars in the sky. In public even! Wow!

So Shane would immediately go into crisis management mode. If Ilya was outed, I truly believe that it would trigger a chain of events wherein Yuna Hollander woke up one morning to the news that Ilya Rozanov had been caught going down on some rockin' twink (I do think it needs to be Ilya both for the Shane Jealousy Potential and also because someone with short hair giving Ilya Rozanov head would come with almost too much plausible deniability versus the inalienable truth of Dick In Mouth) (An additional aside to this is that Ilya almost NEVER gives Shane head on his knees and it drives Shane crazy that he did that. He doesn't even want Ilya to do that TO HIM Shane loves their dynamic he's just like. Why?? Why did he do that?? The answer is molly) and by the end of the day Yuna's own son has come out to her and in the same breath told her that he needs her help to safe Ilya Rozanov. Because um. Solidarity.

So then it turns into a Whole Thing where the Hollanders are working behind the scenes welding NDAs like grenades to make sure that Ilya Rozanov does not get disappeared to Russia, never to be seen again. The NHL, of course, cannot weasel out of Ilya's contract (Even if they could, the people of Boston would riot--that's their homo and he won them the Cup) so he's protected by his employment status to an extent but the fact that Ilya Rozanov needs to Defect From Russia becomes immediately and poignantly apparent. So there are lots of closed-door meetings with NHL lawyers and immigration lawyers and the U.S. State Department and fucking?? Yuna Hollander?? And probably Farah since Ilya's agent is Russian and blocked his number.

And you know we're just spitballing here so I genuinely don't know what happens but I do know that at some point Shane and Ilya are standing alone in a hotel room in Los Angeles (I imagine this whole thing is taking place over the summer. I also imagine that they're in LA because Ilya is making a Tour of Bisexual Self-Flagellation where he makes various media appearances to drum up the sympathy of the American people and on this day Ilya has appeared on Ellen (Before she was evil) and he actually had a great time meeting Ellen (she wasn't evil yet) and Yuna Hollander was backstage like Dear God These People Are Not Treated Well (Ellen has been evil the whole time)) and in this Los Angeles hotel room Shane is coming down off of mild hear stroke because it is one million degrees in Los Angeles and he runs hot and he's laying on the bed in the cool and dark and just says from underneath his own arm, "I cannot fucking believe you did this."

Which triggers the anticipated argument. Oh sorry Hollander I know everything is always about you/shut the fuck up asshole you know that's not what I mean/okay so what do you/it was FUCKING IRRESPONSIBLE Rozanov/YOU DON'T THINK I--

Then there's a moment of angry silence and Shane scoffs and says, "And all of this for some fucking--slut--"

And Ilya grabs his jaw and says, "Oh, that's what this is about. Jealous Hollander."

"Shut the fuck up."

"So what, you think you're the only man I should fuck?"

"Maybe!" Shane yells. "I'm the only one who knows how to be fucking careful! Clearly, I'm the only one who cares! The only one who can keep you safe--"

And then Ilya gets on the bed and bullies his way between Shane's legs and says, "You just want me all to yourself. You are jealous," but his eyes are wild because it's been twelve years since anyone cared about keeping him safe. About keeping him.

And Shane says, "You know I am. Fuck, you make me so fucking jealous I can't even--"

--

“I'm sorry to bother you,” Evan said with an earnestness that was going to be his downfall one day, “but I don't know who else to ask.”

“It's fine,” Tommy said, even though a year's worth of unanswered texts and ignored calls meant it wasn’t. But that was on Tommy, not Evan, who lost someone he had furiously and joyously loved. Tommy didn’t love like that. He spent the first half of his life unaware it was even possible to love the way Evan did. “What do you need?”

Evan picked at the cardboard sleeve on the coffee cup. Despite the fact it was hot and only going to get hotter, Evan had eschewed his usual over complicated frozen monstrosity in favor of just regular hot coffee. “I have a foster son,” Evan said only to them immediately laughed. “Holy shit, Tommy, you gotta control your eyebrows or I’m never getting through this.”

This turned out to be the last year and half of Evan's life, an insane recitation of insane events made impossibly even more insane by Evan's rehearsed tone, like this was a funny slice of life story he was sick of telling.

“And now Theo is living with you,” Tommy said, eyebrows wrestled back into submission.

After six months with Winner's Curse (which I love! and I'm glad we figured out!) @liminalmemories21 and I promised each other: short! sweet! Uncomplicated! And then there were outlines and thoughts and feelings and y'all. Y'ALL. All I want is this:

Everything stops for a moment: time, the air, Tommy’s breathing. His hand is still on the door handle and he looks at it, studies it intently. His skin is dry. His cuticles are red where he was picking at his thumb just a minute or two ago. 

“What?” he asks, finally, because he can’t think of anything else. 

“I said I love you,” Evan says. 

Tommy could’ve sworn he’d said something like “are you breaking up with me?” And yet, when he turns around, Evan’s eyes are full of hope instead of the devastating confusion of earlier. 

“Listen, I know you’re going to start saying something about not being worth it or—or that I’ll find something better, someone better, or that I—that I don’t know what I want, but Tommy, I do know what I want and I’m sorry if—if it’s seemed like I’m only halfway in this because I’m not, I’m all in, I want to be all in with you and I know you have the self esteem of a—a—I don’t know, something with bad self esteem, sorry, I’m not in the right headspace for a simile right now, I just need you to know—no, I want you to know that I do love you and I can see us having a future and I meant what I said six months ago about wanting to see that future with you.”

“I don’t have bad self esteem,” Tommy says, but it comes out as “I love you too.” He takes his hand off the door handle, scrapes it down his face, and takes a step away from the door. “Are you sure?”

Evan meets him where he is, one hand on Tommy’s shoulder, the other making sure the door is still firmly closed. “I’m sure, Tommy,” he says.

wasn't gonna do wip weds bc i recently decided i hate everything about my writing. but then i remembered that im weak for social pressure so thank u internet friends 💖 @sonnywrites @hangmanbradshaw @carlos-in-glasses @actuallylemon @ladyknight1512 @seekstrivefind @stars-of-nixie @decafdino @cha-melodius @theglitteringtrio @shealwaysreads @ozonecologne @exhuastedpigeon @tgmsunmontue @circledwithaheart i promise to circle back to all your posts shortly!!!!

“This is just a ruse to get me naked, isn’t it?” Bradley retorts, but as soon as Jake strips him of his shirt and pushes him under the warm spray, he groans with relief. “Fuck, that feels good.”

“Could have this every day if you move in,” Jake says, crowding against Bradley’s back and hooking his chin over Bradley’s shoulder. He says it like it’s something Bradley isn’t already accustomed to—the shared showers part of their daily routine—but perhaps he’s forgotten in the intervening days.

“Hell of an incentive,” Bradley hums, head tipped back, exposing his throat to Jake’s lips. Then, as if it’s not going to make Jake’s lifeless heart sing, he murmurs, “I missed you, you know.”

“‘Course you did,” Jake mumbles, mouth pressed into Bradshaw’s slick, wet skin. He doesn’t know how to reciprocate the words, but he hopes the passage of his lips and hands can do the talking instead.

Bradley snorts. “Humble as always.”

“I know how to treat you right.”

Bradley reaches for the shampoo, passing it over his shoulder. “Go on, then. Prove it.”

+

As he drives home from Evan's loft for what is apparently the last time, Tommy feels like he's driving from the backseat in a body that isn't his. There's a road in front of him but he doesn't know which one, or why he's taking a left at the stop sign or running through an intersection to beat a yellow light. Everything feels so far away. It's like he's on the moon. Maybe he drove off a bridge and just floated upwards. If he rolls the window down, maybe he'll suffocate.

You're in shock, a little voice whispers in the back of his mind.

He's been in shock before, but every time feels like the first time. He's read that some people get used to it, that it makes a home in their bodies, but he's never figured out how. His autonomic nervous system just kicks in and takes over. It's easy to let it.

That's probably why he doesn't register the hulking creature that darts into the road until it's practically splayed over his hood.

My first thought was that this would be a fic about Tommy and his relationship to his parents, specifically his father.

But then my second, better thought was let's make this a Buckley reconciliation fic told from Margaret's pov. 911 did the typical thing of sweeping away the Buck Begins arc with the throwaway line that Buck and his parents are doing some family therapy sessions and therefore everything is fixed now. Now I don't actually want the show to explore this because you know (gestures at all of s9), but I am so interested in what reconciliation would look like for the Buckleys. Even taking the secret dead brother out of the equation, the Buckleys emotionally abandoned both their children, parentified their daughter, and their son has some pretty serious CPTSD. How do you come back from that? Can you come back from that?

So let's set this fic post the Madney episode. Margaret and Philip are back in Pennsylvania and Margret is struggling with Buck dating a man, not because she's being homo- or biphobic, but because she can't remember if Buck ever came out to her and Philip? There is a giant pit where Buck's childhood should be. There were so many times in those handful of sessions where Buck would bring up some incident from his childhood and Margaret didn't recall it. Was this another part of his life Buck shared that she just didn't care enough to pay attention to?

post! breakup! paintballing!

(pretend this is something written in the immediate aftermath of the breakup airing so we don't yet know how the firefam are going to react.)

harbor vs. 118 paintballing has been in the diary for a couple months and buck's like "no, absolutely not, i am NOT going" but eddie cajoles him into it because "c'mon, man, it was your idea, i bet he doesn't even show up anyway."

except, of course, he does. cue buck speedrunning his very own six stages of breakup madness (sadness, wistfulness, longing, anxiety, hope, misery) before landing squarely in so! mad! he cannot! see! straight!!!! he pulls the 118 into a huddle to lay out a brutal plan of war that has them all doing this face 😬

meanwhile, tommy to lucy: "i told you this was a bad idea he's trying to set me on fire with his brain." lucy: "better than you trying to drown yourself in your own misery. maybe you should, idk, try saying words to him?" except every time tommy glances over buck's staring daggers at him.

"I wished to move the mountains for you" any pair that comes to mind

A title like this gives me post-kidnapping detox feelings. If I were to write a fic like this:

It would start with Chimney being there to sit with Buck and something happens, maybe one of the kids has an appointment they forgot about or maybe the chief requests a meeting, and he needs to leave. He obviously doesn't want to leave Buck alone, but everyone else is already busy and he needs to find someone who keep what Buck's going through quiet until the final decision comes down. So he calls Tommy.

Of course Tommy shows up and Chimney fills in the blanks the LAFD grapevine left out of the kidnapping story and the barest details of why he needs someone to stay there with Buck while he's gone. Tommy is speechless, staring at him in wide-eyed shock, and Chimney slaps him on the shoulder, assuring him that Buck will probably be asleep the whole time he's gone, he hasn't been doing much else since he started going through the withdrawals.

Buck does wake up though, and it obviously leads to a very awkward moment when he finds Tommy in his living room instead of his brother-in-law. He's tired and sick and he's been through hell, and now his ex that he's still in love with is here looking so sad for him. He can't handle it, so he lashes out. He tells Tommy he doesn't need a babysitter, he can just leave like he always does, he doesn't even need to lie about having a shift this time. Tommy doesn't take the bait and tries to calm him down but that only makes Buck more angry, so he keeps yelling, trying to find anything that will make Tommy crack. The thing that finally gets to him is something along the lines of:

"I really thought it was going to be different with you, but you were just another person who decided I wasn't worth the effort."

Tommy starts yelling back that Evan knows that's not true, Tommy showed more than once he was more than willing follow him into whatever kind of mess he got into. They go back and forth for a while, tossing out accusations and blame and it culminates in Tommy saying:

"And ever after all of that, I still love you anyway!"

ooh I love this so much.

I'm going to riff on my idea for cupid! Tommy a bit and make Buck and Tommy some fairy-tale realm matchmakers. It's not Buck's dream job, but he's quit/been fired from all his previous positions for various reasons and matchmaking is his last chance at keeping his place in society/avoiding being exiled and in order to keep his job, he needs to meet a certain quota of true love matches.

Tommy is a maybe not-so-secret romantic and he loves his job and is good at his job. He's already met his quota for the year and he knows that Buck is struggling so he offers to help him because he'd hate to see him lose his job and be banished from the kingdom(?) and not at all because he'd sorely miss having Buck around the office; with his long legs and smile made of pure sunshine, asking Tommy a million questions and offering a million and one facts in return.

And there's nothing in the rulebook that says he can't help Buck--he read the whole thing twice--Buck just needs to do the majority of the matching and all of the paperwork himself.

So Tommy offers and Buck gratefully agrees and they come up with a plan.

[Maybe there is a subplot where some shady business happening that has made it so the clients who hired the matchmaking agency aren't being distributed evenly amongst the matchmakers like they should. Of course, clients can always request a certain matchmaker, but the client bookings lately have been curiously skewed, even though Buck hasn't been able to prove it]

Something happens and Buck needs a baby sitter for Theo only every other trusted adult in his life is suddenly busy so in a panic he scrolls down his contact list and calls Tommy. Who, of course, agrees even though his eye brows do that thing. Buck can't see them but he knows they are.

Tommy is sort of like. Wtf do I even do with a kid but when he tells Theo he's a pilot Theo wants to make a helicopter to fly and Tommy looks around and is like. Best I can do is a paper airplane kid. So they spend all day making more and more elaborate paper airplanes ans Tommy even begrudgingly looks on YouTube for suggestions and they through them out of the attic window much to Theo's delight.

Theo of course is enchanted with Tommy and the paper airplanes and then regular toy airplanes and then real life airplanes and as he gets a little older Tommy buys him his first model airplane. He and Theo spend hours in the garage together building it and it's some of the most quiet and focused Buck has ever seen Theo. Tommy and Theo keep building model planes together and one day they build one and when they show it to Buck it has "Evan, will you marry me?" painted along the side and Buck cries so hard he nearly breaks the model.

Theo talks them into an airplane themed wedding and Tommy bemoans how much harder a paper helicopter is to make and how their kid imprinted on the wring kind of air craft and then Buck kisses him and they don't come up for air for a very long time. One day Theo folds up the adoption paperwork into one of the fancy paper planes he and Tommy learned how to make and sails it across the room and when Tommy opens it he cries so hard they have to reprint the paperwork.

(Lyrics from eyes don’t lie by Kingfishr)

- @ambernotember xo

take my hand for some angst 🫴

Tommy's (terrible shithead asshole) father is dying. Something halfway between lingering filial duty and a morbid desire to check it actually happens has him travelling back to his hometown for the first time in more than a decade to Be There. Evan offers to go with him but a) they've only been back together for a month at this point and b) Evan has Theo to think about now and c) Tommy doesn't want Evan within a hundred miles of his father, even if the old bigot is on the way out. He's been halfway to passed out and still managed to say things that have eviscerated Tommy and left wounds that bled sluggishly for years after. There's just no way. But Tommy promises to call him.

The first night, Tommy sits out in the back yard and has Evan tell him about his day. It's a lifeline. Thirty minutes later, he feels like he can walk back into the house without losing his mind.

The second night, Tommy tells Evan about running into a woman he went to high school with when he went into town for groceries. Fucking weird, is his overall conclusion.

The third night, Tommy sits silently, listening to Evan breathe. It doesn't occur to him that Evan can do the same until he says, "Tommy, are you smoking?" It's insane. His dad is inside dying slowly of metastatic lung cancer, and Tommy's smoking a cigarette in the back yard. "Yeah," he says, stubbing out his Camel. "Sorry. I fucking hate it here. I've always hated it here."

I think one of the worst things that could happen to Tommy Kinard would be out living Buck.

The second worst thing would be forgetting him.

Imagine that Tommy and teenage Jee-Yun had a strong bond, and since Buck and Tommy never had kids she is one of the most frequent visitors to his nursing home. Some days he remembers her and some days he doesn't, but she still plays the recordings of his husband's voice for him no matter what.

Buck knew that Tommy would be a wreck after he died, and so when he knew the prognosis wasn't good, he started to record as much as possible for Tommy to listen to after he was gone. And now that the dementia means Tommy has more bad days than good, they are even more valuable.