A Compelling Plurality of Axes

"Wait, what's — " Buck tries to ask, but for a short guy, Chim still has all the strength of a firefighter, and he drags Buck along with him as he walks away from the bar.

Buck manages a glance back and a helpless shrug at the amused look on Tommy's face.

3) It turns out Buck took Tommy's place at the 118 and on the trivia team. Hen and Chim seem more mad that they lost their MVP ("I hate to admit it," Hen says, "But that man knows sports and movies and 20th century history to a really impressive degree." "Henrietta!" Chim snaps. "Do not speak fondly of the betrayer.") than that they lost their colleague and…maybe friend? Buck's not sure how much of the shit-talking is just for show. He's not going to be a lot of help to them for sports or movies or history, and when Hen asks what his specialty is and Buck says, "I dunno…trivia?" Chim lets his head drop to the table with a groan.

"Okay, listen to me," Chim says firmly, pointing two fingers at his own eyes and then at Buck's. "He wasn't here for the last one and we weren't here for the one before that. This is our first opportunity to show him we don't need his freakish knowledge of basketball stats. Do not fuck this up for us, Buckley."

Buck's starting to think that maybe this isn't going to be quite the chilled bonding experience he was expecting.

4) There's a round on aquatic creatures that Buck absolutely knocks out of the park. Then there's a round on 90s rom-coms, followed by one on sports that has Chim howling with rage and glaring daggers over at Tommy's table where he's squished between two other burly firefighters and scribbling industriously. There's a break after that, and Buck offers to go to the bar when he sees that Tommy's heading up there too. He can feel Chim glaring at him the whole time, so he doesn't do more than offer Tommy a smile. Tommy has no such qualms, beelining over to him once he has his drinks — Buck tries not to look at the way he's holding three bottles of beer in one hand, the necks slotted in between his thick fingers.

"Hey," he says, sounding bright and breathless. "How's it going?"

"You know Chim's going to give me hell for talking to you, right?"

Tommy winks. "Why'd you think I'm here?"

"Oh," Buck says, and tries not to let himself droop, because Tommy's really cool, and Buck doesn't want him to only be talking to Buck to get a rise out of someone else.

"Well," Tommy says, and his free hand rubs at the back of his neck. "I mean. Not just that."

"Buckley!" Chim yells. "Stop fraternizing!"

Tommy laughs. "When he gets really mad, he gets his little vein, right here," he says, tapping his own temple. "See how it goes."

"Yeah," Buck says, feeling giddy.

5) The 118 don't win. Harbor — because Tommy is a pilot, Buck realizes with an inexplicable swooping in his stomach. So. Cool — don't win either. In fact, they come joint third, tied exactly. He thinks Chim's madder about that than if the Harbor team had won outright. So he's a little confused when, once the winners have taken their prize and the quizmaster has wrapped up, Chim and Hen head directly for Tommy's table for an exchange of back slaps and greetings.

"I thought we weren't allowed to fraternize," he says, because he's trailed after them.

"During quiz time," Chim says.

"Quiz time is sacred," Tommy admits.

"You can talk to each other as much as you want outside of quiz time," Hen tells them.

Buck's not sure why, but he looks at Tommy right as she says that, and feels like he's been frozen solid by the color of Tommy's eyes, the laughter lines around them as he smiles.

"Is that a promise?" he asks, his voice low, and Buck feels like they're the only two people left in the bar.

"Yeah," he says, pretending he can't feel himself blushing, can't feel the weight of the stares Hen and Chim are switching back and forth between him and Tommy like spectators at a Tennis match. "Yeah, I'd like that."

They swap phones to trade numbers and Buck feels a zap of electricity when their fingers graze as they pass them back. Tommy's put his details in as 'Tommy (quiz night)'. Buck doesn't think too much as he changes it to 'Tommy (hot pilot)'.

Tommy opens his eyes, although there’s nothing to see but the faint glow of his alarm clock. “Evan? Are you okay?” He keeps his voice low, in case Evan is asleep and simply a little cold.

But Evan goes rigid, like he’s trying to stop the tremors coursing through his body. “No?” 

The word sounds like a question, and Tommy tries to pull him a little closer despite the pain that stretches from his collarbone down to his hip. 

Evan presses his face against Tommy’s shoulder, and another full body shiver runs through him. “No, I’m not okay, Tommy. You crashed.”

“Barely,” Tommy mutters before he can think better of it. 

He witnessed a real helicopter crash during his time in the army, saw the large machine trundle while the pilot tried to keep it in the air, until it finally dropped out of the sky. His own crash was just an unpleasantly hard landing by comparison.

“I am so mad at you,” Evan tells him, enunciating the words like he’s trying to carve them into Tommy’s skin. “You crashed, and you keep pretending it was nothing. For half an hour, nobody could even tell me if you’re alive. Do you have any idea how terrifying that was?”

Tommy hopes he’ll never have to fear for Evan’s life like that, but he also can’t help but point out the obvious: “Evan, I’m right here. I didn’t even break anything.”

“Is that supposed to make it okay?” Evan hisses angrily. “Am I supposed to sleep better because you got lucky?” He trembles again, just once and very briefly. 

Tommy wants to turn on the lights so they can look at each other while they have this conversation, but for some reason he feels like letting go of Evan is the worst thing he can do right now. He knows that Evan’s anger is nothing but fear and love, bubbling over like somebody dropped a pack of Mentos in a bottle of coke, but Tommy has no idea how to stop the process.

“It wasn’t nothing.” Tommy whispers the words into Evan’s hair, hoping that honesty will help. “I got so scared when I realized I didn’t have enough time for a safe landing. And the whole way down, I kept thinking: ‘Please.’ I just wanted to make it home so I could have this.”

Evan makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a hiccup, but he doesn’t shiver again.

“I made it down in one piece,” Tommy continues. “I’m here. I’m okay. Helicopters don’t crash all the time, the same way floors don’t collapse under firefighters every day. There’s always a risk, but I also know what I’m doing. You’ve got to trust in that, Evan.”

Evan is quiet for a long moment before he finally says: “I do. Trusting you isn’t the problem. But I could’ve lost you today. I’m so glad you’re okay. But I’m also angry that it happened, and I’m mad at you for being so…so cool about it. I don’t know what to do with that. Am I just supposed to be okay because it wasn’t worse?”

“I don’t know.” Tommy doesn’t feel particularly cool right now, and he’s definitely not looking forward to the nightmares he’ll probably have. But for him the truly scary part was over once he was out of that helicopter, while Evan seems to be stuck inside that moment of fear. “You don’t have to be okay. But I’m still here? And maybe the rest will be easier to process tomorrow.”

“Yeah, okay.” Evan puts one arm around him, tightly, like he’s afraid Tommy might disappear in the middle of the night if he doesn’t hold on to him. “I’m still mad at you.”