19 days later, he’s in the middle of making apple-cinnamon pancakes for breakfast for theo and himself when there’s an insistent knock at the front door.

his heart catches in his throat when he’s trying to wash off batter he’d sloshed on his hands and the knocking stops and he hears theo yell, “who are you?”

“theo!” buck calls, wiping his trembling hands on his apron. “what did i say about opening the—”

there, in the doorway, staring bewildered at theo in dinosaur pajamas, is the familiar figure of tommy kinard.

in the year and change since they’ve seen each other, tommy’s gone a little sharp around the edges, as far as buck can tell. his eyes are a little more worn; there’s more silver at his temples. his tan jacket hangs a little more loosely. he looks uncertainly between theo and buck, nervously crumpling the paper in his hands before jamming it and his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

buck feels like this moment is superimposed over the tommy he remembers from the time he toured harbor, or maybe the other way around. similar outfits, similar gestures, but a chasm of everything between them.

tommy clears his throat. “i can—i’d better go,” he says nervously.

“theo, my dude,” buck says calmly, “how about you go get dressed, then we’ll have some breakfast?”

theo fixes him with a mulish expression.

“it’s apple cinnamon pancakes,” buck negotiates. theo stares. buck sighs. “you can have whipped cream from the can.”

theo grins impishly. “deal.” he sticks a—aw, gross—sticky hand out for buck to shake, then runs off to change.

“and please wash your hands,” buck calls after him, cringing when he registers the wheedling note in his voice and remembers his visitor.

he’s angry, he wants, he wants to cry, he wants to slam the door in tommy’s face ‘cause where does he get off showing up here after a year of radio silence, he wants to smooth tommy’s creases and anxious edges under his hands and lean in and see if he still smells the same.

“i’ll, uh, i’m sorry for disrupting your morning routine,” tommy says as he shifts from one foot to the other. “i didn’t—i didn’t know. you didn’t mention it.” he pulls the paper he’d been fretting with back out of his pocket. “i got your letter, but i don’t know…”

“my letter?” buck breathes through a wave of nausea. “tommy, that—that was a year ago, i don’t—”

“MISTER POOP, THE PANCAKES ARE SMOKY!”

“shit!” buck exclaims. “can you—will you come in?”

“MISTER POOP SAID A BAD WORD!”

“how—never mind,” buck groans. “will you get in here?”

tommy hesitates. “evan, i don’t want to get in the way, if you—if you have people over.”

if you’ve moved on, says the tilt of his head and the emotion in his eyes.

“MISTER POOP!”

“i thought he’d gotten over that,” buck mutters. “tommy, it’s good to see you, but are you in or out? i have to—just—”

tommy gulps. “i’m in.”

“BUCK!”

“got it, thee-bee, hold your horses,” buck says as he strides toward the kitchen. to his relief, he hears the front door close, then careful footsteps follow the sound of chaos into the kitchen.

over breakfast, theo makes a fast friend in tommy, who, to buck’s chagrin and delight, is still so cool. he learns that in the past year, tommy has traded his coffee habit for a tea habit, grown a bumper crop of potatoes, and, oh, by the way, been working some out-of-town desk job for the state forestry service, of all things.

“you’re not—you’re not flying?” buck gasps after he manages to reroute a mouthful of pancakes down the correct pipe.

“flying?” theo shrieks, waving his fork in the air. “you can fly? oh! you’re tommy?”

tommy chuckles, keeping it light, but a shadow crosses his still-, always-beautiful face. “yeah, kiddo, that’s me. though i don’t do much flying these days.”

buck’s blood runs cold; he’s lost his appetite.

theo doesn’t drop it. “why not?”

tommy smiles sadly. “it’s complicated.”

theo scowls. “comple-cated.” he pushes a pancake around. “grown-ups is always comple-cated. is there anything not comple-cated when you’re a grown-up?”

tommy hums. “a few things.” he looks at buck then, eyes bright and jaws clenched. “but probably not as much as we’d want.”

“that’s dumb,” theo grumbles.

“theo,” buck warns without any heat.

theo burps. “can, i mean, may i be excused to go make my bed now?”

buck signs fondly. this kid. “wash your hands and face first?”

theo nods soundly. “you got it, dude!” he clambers out of his chair and hops over to tommy. “nice to meet you, poop king!”

“sorry about him,” buck says reflexively. he stands to clear the table. theo usually helps by carrying his own plate to the sink, but—today’s a special occasion, buck reasons.

“no, he’s—” tommy laughs softly. “he’s something else.” a beat passes, then suddenly, he’s beside buck, standing by the kitchen sink. “is he—”

buck ensures the stopper’s in place, then squirts soap into the sink and turns on the faucet. “it’s been a helluva year, tommy.”

tommy lets out a tiny pained noise and slumps against the counter. “a year? i thought—evan, why didn’t you—i don’t know, call, or text?”

buck throws a scrubby wash cloth into the soapy slosh in the sink. “because every time i talked to you, tommy, i hurt you. i couldn’t—i couldn’t trust myself to say the right thing at the right time. so i wrote you a letter. i wrote you a letter a year ago, a few weeks after the—after i saw you last. i wrote you seven letters, and only took the last one to your house because the first six were crap. i don’t—i don’t know why you’re here now, tommy, but i don’t think this is going to work if you’re blaming me for not reaching out the way you wanted me to.”

“i rented out my place,” tommy blurts. he slaps the letter, wrinkled and sweaty, on the counter. “i got in late last night. my mail was forwarded, but…”

“that wasn’t mail,” buck realizes.

tommy smiles ruefully. “after i put clean sheets on my bed last night, i noticed my copy of long dark tea-time of the soul on the nightstand with this marking my tenant’s spot, about 1/3 of the way through.” he shudders through a breath. “i can’t believe—evan, it’s been a year.”

buck’s hands still in the soapy dishwater as he blinks away his own emotions about the past year. his voice is small when he asks, “why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? i would have—i would have wanted to know, tommy. i g-get why you wouldn’t, after e-everything. but i wanted to know.”

“i sent you a text, evan,” tommy says gently, maybe more gently than either of them deserve, or maybe just-right. “but i see now, maybe it was just another thing. too much.”

“not—not too much,” buck contests, shaking his head. his shoulders slump. “just—”

tommy digs the palms and heels of his hands into his eye sockets. buck wonders if his calluses are the same, or if they’ve changed in the past year, like buck has, like they both have.

“yeah,” tommy agrees, muffled behind his wrists.

what a mess, buck laments. what a mess of crossed wires and missed chances and stupid. anger burns behind his breastbone, but it dawns on him that as angry as he is with tommy, and himself, he’s angry most of all about lost time.

the few dishes and utensils he’d dirtied for breakfast rest in the drainer now, and he wipes his hands on his apron. “feel free to say no,” he hedges, “but—would you like to stick around for a while? i’m sure you, uh, you’ve got a lot to do today, now that you’re back in town, but—”

“yeah?” tommy breathes. “yeah, i’d—i’d love that. you’re sure it’s ok, with your, uh, theo?”

buck sighs. in for a penny; in for a pound. “yeah, he, uh, we’re kind of a package deal, now. it’s kind of—”

tommy smiles. “comple-cated?”

buck wonders if tommy’s ever been more attractive. “yeah. comple-cated.”

“i can—well, i want comple-cated,” tommy says earnestly. “with you.”

buck remembers. he remembers it all. but despite everything, he wants tommy more. he always has.

a few hours later, theo’s tired himself out after a rigorous game of—well, buck’s not really sure what, something that was part basketball and part tennis and part being a pirate, and 100% something tommy came up with—and is resting in his room. buck and tommy took the offering of a q-word morning to lay their cards on the table, if not in total, then enough to inform their next steps.

tommy, knowing what it would mean, stayed.

now, buck’s laying out their lunch on the patio table; tommy brings out their drinks.

“it’s funny,” he remarks, wringing his hands once they’re free of cups. “i didn’t think this sort of thing happened in real life.”

he’s nervous. buck wants to hold him. tommy allows it.

“what sort of thing?”

tommy’s laundry detergent is different, but everything else seems to be the same. buck can’t help but sigh deeply, content.

“heh,” tommy squirms. “the letter thing. it sort of reminds me of this one episode of frasier.” before buck can ask, tommy continues, “that’s the one with the pretentious brothers and curmudgeon dad in seattle.”

buck smiles. “and not the show about nothing with the new yorkers.”

“got it in one.”

buck lets the quiet settle for a few moments. “so what happened on frasier?”

tommy sighs. “well, before he moved to seattle, frasier left a letter for his ex-wife, lilith, saying he still loved her. except, the letter fell behind a piece of furniture, and lilith didn’t find it for a year. and in that year, frasier changed. they tried to give it another go—”

buck, recalling the time he and tommy tried to give it another go, says, “they hooked up, didn’t they.”

tommy snorts. “yeah, they hooked up, and lilith says, ‘oh, this is a mistake,’ and frasier runs his mouth about oh, thank goodness, they’re in agreement, it was absolutely a mistake, they’re different people now, they got it out of their system, now they know, that sort of thing. except lilith was talking about the, the eggs or the toast or some mistake with the room service order.”

oh. that’s bad. buck says as much. tommy hums in agreement.

“so? did they ever figure it out? were they endgame?” buck asks, the are we doomed thinly-veiled underneath.

tommy hums non-committally, obviously evading the question. buck huffs with fond annoyance.

“i think we’re more niles and daphne,” tommy murmurs. “i don’t know if you know how much chill i don’t have about you.”

buck does not, in fact, know. “you’ll have to tell me sometime.”

to his surprise, tommy replies, “you might regret that, evan.”

“never,” buck says fiercely, tightening his grip around tommy’s back. “i only regret not having you.”

tommy sags against him in relief.

inside the house, the tell-tale clatter of an awake theo resumes, lively and bright.

it’s not new, what they have, but it’s not what they had before, either.

he rolls over in a panic—and his arms do not stop him.

because he does not have arms.

instead, what he assumes are muscles expand and contract all along his body, which feels like it’s about seven inches long. (because he’s a human man, or at least he used to be, this means he’s now approximately five inches and change.)

(four and a half, if he cuts the bullshit for once in his life.)

his bed is adequate for a human—or two, especially if one is 60% legs and has feet like ice cubes and a birthmark that glows with the sunrise—but it’s an absolute swamp of cotton sateen and skin cells for an earthworm.

it takes him a bright and a dark and another probably half-bright to make it out of the bed and through the house to the utility room door with the shitty, loose sill he’s been meaning to fix.

he loses track of the brights after this.

there are no brights underground.

one evening—and it is evening, his human eyeballs tell him—he finds himself upending a grave-sized pocket of earth with his human body. fortunately, he’s still in his fenced-in backyard, and hasn’t transformed somewhere more hazardous. or obvious, somewhere he’d be ticketed for public indecency in his current state.

the air is warm, warmer than it was the last he remembered in this body. the full moon shines overhead.

he gets to his knees, then his feet, and oh, wow, walking is nothing like peristalsis. he manages to crawl to his back porch, fumble with the flowerpot that hides his spare key, without focusing too much on the probably five blaring alarms competing in his brain.

first task: figure out what the fuck day it is.

his wall calendar is no help. he doesn’t know what yesterday is. he only knows what he remembers last.

his phone, which is probably the most useful, is a nonresponsive glass brick on his kitchen counter.

now that he has walls to lean on, tommy pulls himself back to his feet and careens, phone in hand, down the hallway to his bedroom. once he plugs in his phone, the itch of dirt against his very human skin clamors for attention. it will be easier to deal with whatever his phone tells him when he doesn’t have yard dirt in his ass. he sits on the floor of his shower and scrubs behind his ears, trying not to think too hard about—anything. the worm thing. what day it might be. bobby. evan.

tommy’s fingers prune, so he takes that as his cue to emerge from the shower.

he was right. it’s a lot easier to deal with the fact that he’s apparently spent an entire week underground as an earthworm.

he stares at the red badge informing him that he has 9 new voicemails and 17 new text messages until his stomach growls. he’s both ravenous and flatly unappetized by the idea of eating.

he settles on some mushroom soup from a can and half a frozen burrito, which he eats on the couch because his dining chairs looked threateningly angular to what feels suspiciously like his worm-sense.

as he drifts off to sleep, he spares a thought of gratitude for having managed to move his plate from his lap to the coffee table.

— —

the thing about being an earthworm and waking up on a sofa for humans is that some humans like a leather sofa which is fine when a person’s sitting on it but gets chilly when it’s vacated by the warm heft of a human body.

it’s that chill, along with a more intense bright than he’s seen, that wakes tommy. he moves and stretches in his wakefulness and discovers that he’s back to his worm-self and desperately seeking heat in the sweats his human-self had put on after his shower the night before.

he feels his human sensibilities fading as the morning light registers more as “bright” than “8 am”; he knows the shiny brick thing his human self placed a cushion down on the couch the night before is important, but his worm-self sputters to remember why. it glares in the bright, and tommy knows he looks at it a lot, as a person, but as a worm, there’s not much to see. and besides. the—whatever he’s on right now, that smells like animal and chemicals and more chemicals and butts and feet and death and life, it’s cold, unlike the dirt that warms and cools with the bright and the dark.

this time, it only takes him until the bright grows dim again to make his way back outside, back into the dirt.

— —

he surfaces again in much the same manner, like a cursèd plant breaking through the illusion of lawn, under the clear, melancholy light of a full moon.

it’s june, now, his phone informs him once he charges it and powers it back on.

32 new voicemails. 173 new text messages.

he’s missed his disciplinary hearing. his anticipated return to work date.

(he will likely miss evan’s birthday.)

the microwave buzzes in sync with the ring in his ear; the microwave beeps to signal the readiness of his soup-and-burrito combo as the call connects.

“‘bout time you answer your fuckin’ phone, ya fuckin’ mook,” sal grumbles. never mind that tommy called him. “the fuck is wrong with you? disappearing like that after—you know what. i know you’re in the doghouse and all, but jesus christ, tommy, you don’t call, you don’t write, you don’t show up for your fuckin’ hearing like you don’t want your fuckin’ job back, your house is empty, except all your shit’s still there, what am i—”

“breathe, sal,” tommy exhales, deriving some comfort from the familiar nagging pattern.

“—supposed to think, don’t fuckin’ tell me to breathe, asshole, it ain’t a fuckin’ crime to worry about your stupid ass. i’m surprised that buckley kid ain’t busted down your door lookin’ for you, if this is how you’ve been with him for the past month. kid looked like a fuckin’ zombie at the funeral, babe, the only time there was any light in his eyes at all is when he was lookin’ at you when he thought nobody was lookin’ at him. what the fuck, tommy! you think you can just—”

“sal.”

“—disappear on us, just ‘cause you got in hot water with the feds? when have i never not had your back, huh? you say hey, sal, i like suckin’ dick, i say oh, hey, fine by me, pal, you know, my cousin frankie’s like that, he’s single, he makes a good living in the concrete business, you should give him a call. you say hey, sal, i’m gonna go fly death machines again, nothing makes me happier than flyin’ the death machines, i say, you betcha, take lotsa good pictures of sunsets and shit for me. gina loves that shit. you say hey, sal, you’ll never guess who i rescued out in the middle of the goddamn ocean in the middle of a goddamn hurricane last saturday night, oh, and by the way, i kinda kissed howie’s brother-in-law and want to have his babies, i say, well, gee, those kids are gonna be nine feet tall, better start saving up for their shoes now because you’ll never know peace. you say, hey, sal—”

“hey. sal.” tommy interjects sharply.

it does not work.

“—i fuckin’ threw away the best thing i ever had because the guy i’ve been ass over teapot for since he shook my hand and forgot his own name asked me to—”

“i’m a—a were-worm, sal!”

were-worm? tommy ponders in the precious moments of stunned silence on the call. not exactly, since he’s spent the most of the past month and a half in worm-form, only changing back into his human self during the full moon.

“the fuck do you mean—were-worm? jesus fuck, tommy, i swear to god, if you’re fucking with me—”

there’s the muffled susurrus of a gentle struggle for dominance that crackles over the line.

“hi, tommy,” gina deluca says in a tone that paints, very vividly, the image of that crease between her eyebrows and the wild edges of what some fools might call a smile. “i’d send you the bill for half of sal’s swear jar arrears, but i can tell he’s barely let you get a word in edgewise. you doing ok?”

gina’s not one for bullshit—god knows how she ended up with sal, how they’ve managed to make it work—but, unlike her husband, she doesn’t interrupt while tommy haltingly narrates the strange turn his life has taken. in fact, it’s so silent on the other end that he suspects the intervention of the mute button on the deluca side.

finally, noise from the other end filters back through, before gina speaks. “and you said you’re only human again the night of the full moon?”

tommy nods and clears his throat. “uh, yeah. at least that’s what happened last month. i was a worm from—after the funeral, to the next full moon. which was about a week. this month, i don’t—i remember falling asleep on my couch, as myself, then waking up small and cold, in the bright, and then going back to the dark. then waking up naked in the dirt in my backyard a few hours ago.”

gina hums. sal starts to speak, then stops himself, about eight times.

they might think he’s absolutely crazy. but by the time his yawns intensify, they’ve made plans to come over tomorrow morning and check on tommy.

in theory, at any other time, tommy would feel managed, but tonight, he’s just grateful.

tommy sleeps on an uncomfortable little pile of towels in the middle of his bed. just in case.

— —

the next morning, the bright is very…loud. there’s a high loud, and a low loud. a warm pokes at him, tries to pick him up. he doesn’t like that. the loud gets louder. strange, but familiar smells. not-flowers. not-wood. not-food. he hides in a—fabric-thing. a towel. the towel suddenly goes higher-up than an earth-dwelling worm cares to think about. low-loud laughs. he can feel that there is something funny—ironic—about that, even in his worm form.

he feels the pull to boogie to the dirt outside, the rich dirt that’s being warmed by the bright.

instead, he’s transferred into a container of some sort—one that once held food.

he hopes he is not destined to be food for these louds.

— —

it’s not so bad, tommy thinks, to live in a terrarium at sal and gina’s 95% of the time. it could be worse.

he could have been eaten by a bird, or squashed unknowingly under a foot, or been of interest as a mate to some other earthworm in his yard. blech.

in the afternoon of his full moon days, sal or gina or one of the girls will take him out of the pleasantly-heated terrarium and place him in the guest room, on the bed surrounded by stuffed animals and pool noodles and blankets so he won’t fall before he transforms, and will be comfortable as he changes. there are clothes for him there, and a snack, and a note pad with a few relevant items like the date and the weather and a doodle from one of the girls (or sal).

he has a routine now. he wakes, he orients himself, he bathes, he gets dressed, he goes downstairs to share a meal with the delucas and catch up on all he’s missed.

well. maybe not all he’s missed. he misses evan. but he can’t do much about that. what’s he going to say? “hello, beautiful, i regret walking out on you, i’m almost glad i’m a worm because when i’m myself i can’t stop seeing you collapse in that hallway, i’m sorry i ghosted you after the funeral, i’m a worm now, it was always ever for you, if you ever are in need of someone with worm powers, call sal, he knows where to find me because i live in a terrarium in his den and his daughters are learning responsibility by cleaning up my worm poop before they get to have screentime”?

hard pass.

it’s been eight months, now. almost ten, if you count the ones tommy spent alone.

he doesn’t want to scream much, anymore, when he thinks about this being the rest of his life.

it’s progress.

on his human nights in months three, four, and five, tommy and the delucas sat down with tommy’s cousin hank—the stress hives-prone accountant—and got to work. in month three, they planned. in months four and five, tommy was glad he’d wake up the next day without wrists because he signed enough forms to warrant a repetitive stress injury. there are still some things he has to sign on his human night, after they eat, after the girls go to bed. but the big things—his job, his house, his truck, his phone, his bills—are all taken care of.

the month before last, he’d locked himself in his bathroom on human night with a tub of rocky road and no spoon and screamed at sal and gina through the door to sell his house, sell his truck, why in the hell did they bother getting him a new phone number because who is going to call him anyway, and sobbed into his ice cream before eating it with his hands because he’d looked at his new phone with his new number without a contact for evan but that doesn’t matter because even being a worm 95% of the time can’t erase those ten digits from his mind but he can’t remember a fucking spoon for his fucking menty b ice cream.

last month, he thanked sal and gina for their support, for not selling his house or his truck, and went to bed early.

this month, tommy’s deep-cleaning his terrarium while waiting up for sal.

it’s pushing midnight when sal finally comes through the front door, his face drawn tight and his boots landing on the foyer floor with a tired thump.

“before you say anything,” sal sighs as he shuffles into the kitchen, “let me reiterate that i know you’ll be back to worm-self tomorrow, and i know you have a limited amount of time as your human self, tom.”

tommy knows that sal knows that under normal circumstances, with normal people, tommy hates being called “tom”.

“but i think you need to know this.”

sal doesn’t have all the information. the bones of it is: bobby nash had nominated evan and eddie (who’s apparently back in los angeles?) for the firefighter games in nashville—before. for some reason—sal waves his hands and rolls his eyes, which tommy seamlessly translates to “118 bullshit”—they were driving back, and were in a wreck, and evan was missing, and howie apparently hadn’t been real forthcoming with the details, but they found evan, and the guys were driving back—

“driving?” tommy interrupts incredulously.

“that’s what i said!” sal exclaims, too loud, waving his hands too big. “the fuck is diaz doing driving with a fucking head injury? howie was all, oh, they’re stopping to get out and move around every hour, since he’s got baby longlegs crammed in some tiny peanut car diaz bought for $800 in a diner parking lot, and god knows what kind of—anyway, tommy, you don’t need to hear all that shit—”

tommy growls, he absolutely needs to hear all that shit, it’s evan, but sal steamrolls right over him.

“—what matters is, those two idiots made it to howie’s and maddie’s in one piece, and hen’s taking them in first thing tomorrow to get checked out here. It’s a damn good thing, too. from what I hear, those local yokels damn near arrested diaz for murder, while buckley was out there being kidnapped by some other local yok—oh, shit.”

“ki—kidnapped? sal, what the hell!”

“shit, i wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“like hell! what do you mean, kidnapped? sal, if our friendship’s ever meant anything to you—”

“fuck you, kinard, you know it does, you’re the fuckin’ godfather of my precious darling babies—”

“—do you not have all the information, or did you just decide to not tell me all the information?”

sal’s silence speaks for itself.

shit. evan was kidnapped. tommy’s spent the better part of the past year in worm form, and too preoccupied with his own sad state on his human days to think too much about what evan’s life had been like without him in it. the little moments he allows himself to think about evan are usually summed up with, he has his people, he’s probably going out on dates with—people who aren’t worms. knowing that diaz is back has tommy wondering if evan still lives there, or if he moved yet again, and if he’s managed to unpack, wherever he is, put sheets on his bed for his—dates with people who aren’t worms.

“does he,” tommy croaks, “he’s not alone, is he? he’s got people, right?”

sal stares at him for a moment before crowding next to him on the couch and wrapping his arms around tommy’s shoulders. “he’s got his sister, and howie. and diaz and his $800 blue plate special, i guess. hen, she’s—shit, hen’s had health stuff, after she and athena went to space, but she’s getting back to normal. athena, athena’s kids, they’re around. harry’s at the 118 now. so. i don’t think he’s alone.”

tommy almost chickens out, almost takes the bait for hen having space flu or what the fuck ever, almost wishes he could speed up time until sunrise and retreat to the ignorant bliss of wormhood.

almost.

“i mean. is he. you know. seeing anyone.”

sal snorts. “not unless you count the gaggle of old people who won him at the charity auction. howie says he knits now. with his old people.”

tommy wants to laugh in relief and also scream because what.

“he always did like ‘em old.”

tommy jabs his elbow into sal’s ribs. “you’re older than me, you ass.”

“you’re the one who has a dedicated can of wd-40 in his truck in case his knee gets stuck.”

they devolve into quiet bickering for a while, as the gears in tommy’s very human mind churn.

it’s approaching 3 am when he resolves: “i think it’s time, sal.”

“you’re right. i have to be up in two and a half hours.”

“no, i mean—it’s time to tell them.”

sal sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “now? now is the time to tell them? tell him?”

“i didn’t—it didn’t matter, when it was just me. when i was the one who, you know.”

“quit his job, moved out of his house, disappeared into the wilderness for some mysterious, bogus job after failing to report for his disciplinary hearing with the lafd and at least three federal agencies?”

“he’d get over it, me being gone. i was gone already, you know? but—i almost lost him, permanently, from what you said, and i wouldn’t have known it. i’m scared, sal. i’ve been scared, probably since the day i met him. and maybe now is a really bad time to tell them. but i think it would be worse to wait to tell them until it was too late.”

the sun will rise in less than three hours.

tommy and sal spend the remainder of the time putting the cleaned terrarium enclosure back together & filling it with fresh dirt and detritus as sal films tommy explaining his situation while he works.

and then: it’s out of his hands. the sun rises. a familiar hand picks him up and places him in the inside-dirt as the bright grows.

— —

over the next month, he gets the sense that something is supposed to be happening. during the bright, usually, and into the dark, there are new louds nearby. new, but also—familiar. small, very loud louds who aren’t the usual small louds he’s used to, two who smell more like each other, and another two who smell more like each other, but they all sort of smell the same. a high-loud and a low-loud and two medium-high louds come with them. these louds smell like the smaller louds. two of these larger louds have smoother warms than the other two, but all of them are gentle. the low-loud picks him up and lets him explore the most often. there’s a low-loud who smells like the other low-louds and one of the medium-high louds but also sort of like plastic; this makes more sense when he’s placed into a sort of plastic dish with walls he bumps his front into. two low-louds come once. he’s not too keen on one of them, even though the tinge of motor oil on his warm sends a jolt of bittersweet through tommy’s worm body; like a friend hoped for, then lost. the other, whose low sound cracks sometimes, is all right. the sounds this low-loud makes curve toward the bright at the end.

and then—there’s the low-loud who shakes and trembles, like a warm earthquake, like leaves that quiver and fall and crunch into the dirt, who smells and feels like the bright. this one is familiar, though there’s new layers to the scent and feeling. something powdery—if worms could sneeze, this would do it—that makes him hungry; a bit of something sticky, that smells like the powdery stuff, around the hard, smooth, stubby surfaces on the warms these louds like to touch him with.

this one comes to visit last, but after the first time, barely a bright or dark goes by that this loud is not there, even for a short time. sometimes this loud is salty; sometimes the salt falls and splashes and tommy thinks distantly, gratefully, that he is not a snail. this loud smells hurt, and distressed, but not the sort of wild, distressed hurt of a threat. sometimes this loud brings a texture that leaves litte fibers that stick to tommy; the texture makes little clicking noises, and when this is going on, this loud is actually not loud at all, so the worm doesn’t mind the fibers too much.

one day, the loud leaves, but the texture stays behind. it doesn’t click anymore. it’s just warm, and smells like the bright.

— —

it’s close, today. the change. the big bright in the dark. it ripples not unlike peristalsis through his segments and sections.

he is almost, almost, too big for his body.

his favorite loud, the sweet and shaky low-loud who usually isn’t very loud at all, who smells sad and hurt and scared and beautiful, who brings the textures that click until they don’t, handles him gently in soft, calloused warms. he’s done this enough times now to know that he gets moved somewhere, for this change, and soon he will be back in a clean enclosure with the ghost of memories that are tall and loud and big.

the low-loud shakes and leaks salt as he finds himself in the big space, the weird space with no dirt and strange bright and the smell of not-flowers. one of the low-loud’s warms trails down his back; one of the hard, smooth, stubby plates catches on a segment, not tearing, just—a brief catch.

then the low-loud retreats with footsteps that reverberate through what must be the entire earth—

and then he is alone.

— —

tommy rouses once again, tall and four-limbed and with anticipation he doesn’t usually feel when he shifts buzzing under his very human skin.

there, on his bedside table, in lieu of the usual protein bar and glass of water, is what smells like a banana-walnut muffin, and maybe a vanilla latte.

both are warm.

that’s—curious. unusual. sal and gina and the girls know that tommy prefers something quick and boring now, after his shift, to give him enough energy to get through his shower and making himself presentable before their evening meal, which is the main event.

the muffin’s already unwrapped—that’s thoughtful—and the coffee is…well. it’s perfect. sort of like how—

how evan would order it, once he figured out tommy’s usual.

evan.

and, oh—tommy remembers.

tommy remembers what he told sal during his human night last month. he remembers, and he’s not sure if the dread or the anticipation is winning.

the muffin is divine, it turns out. he makes a mental note to ask gina if there’s a new bakery she’s found to frequent.

he showers, he shaves, he sniffs his armpits before he puts on deodorant, he shakes the wrinkles out of his chosen jeans and henley (maroon, tonight), he makes sure his socks don’t have holes because this isn’t a shoes-in-the-house house but he doesn’t want to risk having his pale, hairy toes out if he has—guests.

the siren call of lasagna drifts up the stairs and into tommy’s olfactory receptors.

he takes a deep breath as he carefully descends the stairs in his socks, promising himself that whatever happens tonight, he’ll be a worm again in 12 hours, so if it goes poorly, it’s on that poor sucker to face the consequences.

howie’s waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.

he doesn’t say anything; he just grabs tommy into a hug, and tommy tucks himself small into howie’s neck the same as the first time 20 years ago. howie’s shaking; he hisses, you asshole, and it buzzes past tommy’s ear and into his spinal cord.

i know is the only thing tommy can manage to whisper in reply.

howie pulls back, looks him squarely in the eye, unblinking, for about 12 seconds, then releases tommy’s arms from his hands. he makes a big, dramatic, vanna white-style gesture in the direction of sal’s living room.

oh, tommy thinks.

he doesn’t quite feel real, as he steps quietly, gingerly, down the dim hallway toward the living room—and that’s saying something, for a guy who spends 95% of his time in the form of a were-worm.

gina’s there, in her favorite chair, and giulia and anna are adjacent, on the couch, next to—

oh, he really is beautiful.

evan’s there, in a cozy brown cardigan over a button-up chambray shirt. his hair’s longer, curls abundant if a little messy. the rational part of tommy’s brain says evan looks like hell. he’s pale, with deep purple circles under his eyes like he hasn’t seen sunlight in weeks or hasn’t been sleeping. there are remnants of scratches and scrapes and bruises on his face, and even here, in the safety of sal and gina’s comfortable home, evan’s practically wearing his shoulder blades as earrings. he flinches when he hears the sound of tommy’s footfall on the hardwood, but he shakes himself, and smiles at the girls, and turns to look over the back of the sofa.

at tommy.

both of them are crying, silently; neither of them make any noise louder than near-silent whispers of each other’s name, like they're both afraid of startling the other, before they crash against the wall beside the hallway in a desperate, weepy embrace.

tommy tightens one hand into the knit of evan’s cardigan and works his other hand under evan’s shirt, above the waistband of evan’s charcoal joggers, not to be fresh, but to assure himself that evan is here and alive. evan buries his face in tommy’s neck and holds him so frantically that tommy’s lungs burn with the effort of inhaling and exhaling. tommy barely registers the soft pat on the back, the urgent, quiet take care of each other that howie whispers as he brushes past them.

“why are they crying?” tommy hears anna ask gina. “are they sad?”

gina, to her credit, does not reply, because they’re both stupid, even if that’s true. “they just missed each other,” she says simply as she herds the girls toward the kitchen, as if that’s all that needs to be said. and really, it is.

“i did,” evan says wetly against tommy’s neck. “i missed you every day. since the first day.”

speech is presently beyond tommy’s capacity; he just cradles the back of evan’s head in his hand, until his tongue feels free. even then, all he can manage is a litany of i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m so sorry, sweetheart.

“i’m so mad at you,” evan declares as he tightens his hold on tommy. “i’m so mad at you i can’t stand it.”

“tell me,” tommy begs. “tell me everything.”

evan shoves his nose into tommy’s collarbone. “i can’t. it’s too big.”

“that’s okay,” tommy lies. it’s not okay. none of this is okay. it’s the most right and okay he’s ever felt in his life, holding onto evan like neither of them will ever be able to let go.

they somehow make it through dinner, pressed up against each other at the delucas’ back patio table like they’re in one chair that can fit both of them. evan had brought a homemade lasagna—not just homemade, but homemade down to the noodles and the sauce—and it’s a nice enough evening out that sal grilled some chicken and vegetables to go with it. the kids do most of the talking at the dinner table, but while there’s an underlying current of things we need to talk about, the tension is low and the sense of relief is high among the adults.

evan also, apparently, brought homemade spumoni for dessert.

“you remembered!” tommy asks, unable to keep the astonishment from bleeding into his voice.

“h-how could i f-forget, tommy,” evan replies as tears cloud his eyes. “th-there’s a lot i can’t f-forget. this is one of the g-good things.”

shit. “i’m, evan, i’m so sor—”

evan picks up tommy’s hand and kisses the back of it firmly, not meeting his eyes. “i don’t need your pity.”

tommy has the impulse to argue, but evan puts his hand back down on the table just as firmly as he’d kissed it, which shutters any discussion.

instead, he takes a bite of the pistachio segment—oh, wow, this is phenomenal—and tells evan just that; it smooths away the tension around evan’s mouth and eyes, and tommy’s rewarded with a hint of a smile.

“flatterer,” evan says, bumping his knee against tommy’s under the table. a pleased dash of pink flits across his cheekbones and over the tops of his ears.

after dinner, after they’ve all cleared their plates and done the dishes and put away the leftovers, evan pulls tommy aside.

“sal and gina said it was okay with them, i-if you wanted me to stay over,” he states while staring at the floor to the left of tommy’s feet. “sleep is—bad, for me, since…well. since.”

tommy nods, even though he doesn’t know the full extent of the since.

evan continues flatly. “i don’t know if i can sleep here. it’s—a whole thing. strange places. but. i miss you. a-and i’m tired of losing time with you. so if you want. i can stay, an-and—wait out the sunrise. with you.”

tommy feels tears stab at the backs of his eyes. “i’d—i’d like that. love that, actually.”

evan nods and finally looks up at him. “okay.” he shakes himself minutely. “you’re sure.”

“please.”

evan nods again, and exhales. “i’ll go get my bag.”

they end up on the couch. evan had quietly but solidly protested the pull-out sleeper part of the sleeper sofa, so they’ve taken the form of a many-limbed blob in sweatpants and t-shirts across the cushions.

(when tommy had offered his bathroom so that evan could change into his pajamas, evan had shaken his head near-violently and demanded quietly, don’t say that word.)

(that’s…new.)

before they settle, evan tunes the television to a quiet aquarium channel tommy didn’t know existed and pulls out an ugly, uneven, small knitted blanket that he spritzes with something that smells like an herb garden. as tommy curls up against evan’s side, evan rubs at his own wrists, muttering something low that tommy can’t make out. then, evan wraps his arms around tommy and presses his palms against tommy’s back and arms and neck, and weaves an ankle and leg between tommy’s calves.

“this okay?” tommy asks, uncertain in light of this new bedtime routine.

evan exhales shakily, a cool cloud of peppermint. “i think so. just don’t try to hold me down.”

tommy tucks his face into evan’s armpit, and if evan can feel tears soaking into his t-shirt, into his skin, he graciously doesn’t mention it.

“i had a good day today,” tommy whispers.

“me too,” evan replies, scrunching himself in closer. “the best. i missed you, tommy. so much. ‘i missed you’ doesn’t begin to cover it.”

“i know,” tommy says. “it’s the same for me.”

they lie there in silence for a moment before evan speaks. “what should i expect in the morning?”

tommy relays as much information as he can: that he usually is in his other form by the time it’s bright, though he doesn’t know what time it will happen; if he wears clothes to sleep in, they become his little earthworm nest in the morning. then, he’s a worm until the next full moon. he doesn’t know why. he only usually gets an evening and night as a human each month. yes, it’s weird; no, as much as it breaks his heart to admit it, he doesn’t expect evan to stick around for it.

evan sighs. “do you trust me? can you trust me?”

no, tommy thinks, but trusting evan is also the one thing he wishes most in the world that he was able to do. then, now, even more urgently than he wishes he weren’t a were-worm. he tells evan so.

“i can work with that,” evan yawns, and reaches up to play with tommy’s hair.

— —

the bright stabs at tommy’s eyelids, which are crusted together with sleepgunk. his head rests on a warm surface that bubbles and groans in time with the dulcet tones of evan’s buzzsaw snoring.

“b’by, you sh’ld see a doc’r ‘bout that,” he mumbles into the warmth against his face.

a chilly hand slaps gently against his nose. “stoppit,” it gripes. “tickles.”

“mkay,” tommy mutters as he kisses the palm of the hand. at least the snoring has decrescendoed to a manageable dull roar.

the clink of a plate nearby and the sweet aroma of syrup prods at his consciousness. he cracks one eye open—or, at least he tries to, and wipes the gunk away to complete the task—and sees sal standing over him, next to the coffee table, with his arms crossed and a smug expression on his face.

“whaddy’you want,” tommy grumbles and turns his head away.

“you’re right, sally,” gina chimes from the other side of the sofa. “they’re adorable.”

“they’d be more adorable if they weren’t 450 pounds of lump on my couch. what is this on my tv? fish porn?”

“sal,” gina hisses. “let’s just be glad that tommy isn’t a w-o-r-m.”

“guys, i can spell worm,” tommy huffs, before the last dredges of sleep are ripped away. “i’m—what do you mean, i’m not a worm!”

“quiddit,” evan orders. he smooshes tommy’s face into his chest. “no quacking. baby’s napping.”

gina smooths the hair away from tommy’s face. “we can figure it out later, baby,” she whispers, leaning over the back of the sofa. “but you didn’t change back this morning. maybe you had a good luck charm.”

tommy knows he did. evan is here. “mmhmm,” he agrees, doing cricket legs against evan’s ankles. he’s drowsy, with evan warm and solid against him.

“quacking,” evan mutters again petulantly before rolling over and squashing tommy against the back of the couch. “like to hear your heart. can’t hear with the quacking.”

there’s a brief clatter, then the sweet cloud of syrup-scent drifts away, followed by sal’s surprisingly quiet, harmless kvetching. “this is the thanks i get for making you french toast. i see how it is. two decades of friendship and saving your ass, and you toss me aside the moment you find some sweet thing.”

tommy’s right arm is free now to loop around evan’s waist. “got all the sweet i need right here.”

“liar,” evan whispers, sleepy and amused. “you have the worst sweet tooth i’ve ever met. insatiable.”

“agree to agree,” tommy replies as he sinks into the warmth and the bright and lets it carry them a little way further into this new day.

my kingdom for the chief walking in & telling eddie to cut that shit out and give firefighter buckley back his phone, this isn't fifth grade and the fire station is not a playground, stop acting like a child and start acting like the professional grown human being he is.

while hen still tells buck she doesn't think it's a good idea, i think back to the discussion they had in season 6 about whether or not buck would become a sperm donor, and how ultimately, she didn't tell him what to do, she treated him like an adult—which he is. so maybe while she maintains it's not a good idea, she also affirms his agency and says that she's there for him, regardless of what he decides.

when tommy bubbles buck, it's 3 (presumably in the afternoon) according to the clock on buck's phone. maybe his shift ran long; maybe it was A Bad Shift; maybe he's dead on his feet & more than half-asleep and he's just so used to texting evan home safe after a shift like this that he does it and almost presses send before he jerks fully awake & realizes: evan isn't his to confirm his safe return to anymore, and that's all tommy's fault. so he deletes the message and maybe pinches himself and drags himself to the shower so at least he'll be clean when he finally conks out.

maybe everyone at the station rolls their eyes when buck takes his plate of late lunch to the roof, but it's really none of their damn business, is it?

tommy gets out of the shower & is about to flop into his bed half-wet and buck-ass nude when he notices that he has a missed call and voicemail notification. from evan. he's probably too tired to deal with whatever this is right now, to face the consequences of running out on evan with no real good explanation, but he also knows, that as tired as he is, he won't be able to drift away into the ether until he deals with it. h-hey, tommy, evan's hesitant voice crackles through the speaker next to tommy's ear. tommy did that, shook evan's cheerful confidence. he hates himself. i—you may not want to hear from me, a-and that's fair. but i saw you typing, and then it went away, a-and i just wanted to, um, you know, make sure you were ok. i know that's—i don't get to do that anymore, but i couldn't live with myself if you were in trouble and i didn't say anything. anyway. i'm probably, it's probably nothing. i-i miss—bye, tommy.

everything catches up with tommy: how badly he wanted to be evan's last, and how he'll never get to have that, especially not now; how lonely he is; how much he misses evan; how willing evan was to comfort tommy when he had a bad call, and how fiercely tommy wanted to curl around evan and make everything better when their roles were reversed; how today's call had him feeling like his heart was being ripped out of his chest, if he had a heart to rip out of his chest after he ripped his heart of his chest a few weeks ago when he broke up with evan— he doesn't let himself do this often, but today he can't help but cry himself to sleep. he wakes up feeling like his skin and nerves and eyeballs have been replaced by cardboard.

maybe tommy slips further into his self-loathing. maybe this is when he starts driving by evan's apartment. maybe evan texts him a photo of baked ziti. and baked alaska. and baked brie, with the confounding caption "last one of these for a few months, im gonna miss it".

maybe buck's falling into old patterns, pushing and pushing at the limits and waiting for them to crumble violently and bury him under a pile of rubble. why be apart when we can be together. he still doesn't think that was an insane thing to say to tommy. he doesn't think that what was broken can't be fixed. maybe he's wrong. but maybe he's right. so he texts tommy, after the time he called and left a voicemail. the text goes through. the read receipts are still on. the read receipts stay on. he texts tommy photos of the stuff he bakes, that one squirrel that always threw acorns at tommy in the park when they'd go for runs, an artful shot of a banana peel on a sidewalk about three feet away from a garbage can, just waiting for someone to slip on it. (he knows that if tommy were here, he would quietly smile that little upside-down smile he has and bend down and pick up the banana peel and put it in the trash without missing a beat, even though his fingers would give him the creeps until he got to wash his hands.) sometimes tommy bubbles him. that's ok, probably. one day, he sends tommy a photo of himself with jee, the both of them absolutely covered in flour and pumpkin guts, the result of an afternoon of trying out a pumpkin bread recipe while both of them were tired and prone to fits of giggles. buck drops his phone into his cake batter when he sees that tommy's given it the heart reaction. he fishes his phone out of the mess, and as he's wiping it down and scraping the batter out of the bowl so he can start over with it, he thinks about how tommy hasn't blocked him yet, and how tommy's birthday present is still sitting unclaimed in buck's closet, and how tommy has a sweet tooth and would probably devour a late birthday cake—

if he pushes at the walls that tommy's built and they bury him, then that's what he gets for challenging the limits, but at least then, he'll know.

tommy answers the door and as soon as he sees it's buck standing there, he gets that look he had on his face the night they broke up, that buck realizes is something akin to oh, you pitiful man, you're too bright and good to fall for a schmuck like me. buck is not too good to fall for a schmuck like tommy, and if he has his way, he's going to spend the rest of his life making sure tommy understands that.

he’s a bit early for his shift, so he takes the cd back out to his truck.

the familiar crush of basket case scrapes his eardrums.

yeah, he deserves that too.

he skips to the next track.

basket case.

and the next.

basket case again.

and again, and again, and again, until it’s back to track 1, basket case.

seventeen tracks, all skips, because it’s all fucking basket case.

tommy’s phone vibrates in his pocket.

it’s a text from howie: did you get it yet.

tommy snorts.

before he can reply, another text comes in.

CALL HIM FOR FUCKS SAKE

and another, mimicking the barrage of basket case: our freezers are FULL it’s YOUR TURN

freezers? tommy manages to sneak in before howie continues:

the baking. THE BAKING!!! and the—EVERYTHING

and: i know youre an ASSHOLE tommy but could you at least give the guy some closure hes not haunting your apartment this time he is haunting MY COUCH and MY KITCHEN PLEASE FIX IT

tommy’s consciousness swirls back to a sun-dappled gravesite and our people are what make life worth living and—

he’s a better man than i, howie writes. he didn’t put any SURPRISES in the goods. tho he thought he was making them for my precious daughter, not an ASSHOLE

there’s a story there, tommy thinks, and all of a sudden he yearns for evan.

howie sends him the shia leboeuf DO IT gif.

before his brain catches up with the rest of him, tommy fires off, in a different thread: can we talk?

within seconds, evan replies: tomorrow after shift, the place with the pistachio scones?

and, seconds after that, from howie: YOU HAVE TAKEN FIVE YEARS OFF MY LIFE

add it to my tab 🥰, tommy replies.

i will, you absolute fucker, howie zings. btw you should try the cherry chocolate chunk muffins. he cried about you into the batter

tommy startles when there’s a knock on his window.

“you good?” donato asks, concern creasing her forehead. distantly, tommy registers that basket case fm is still playing loudly from his speakers. repeatedly. all basket case, all the time.

tommy’s feeling a lot, actually. a lot of big things, not the least of which is a boatload of shame as he pictures evan crying over a mixing bowl because of tommy.

but: evan readily, quickly, agreed to meet, almost like he wants to see tommy, even after—after.

and tommy’s very curious about the bounty of sneak-laxative-free baked goods waiting for him in the station.

he nods and turns off the radio and opens the door of his truck. “i will be,” he says, quietly but sure as he stands tall and rolls his shoulders.

“fuck yeah,” donato says as she punches him lightly in the bicep. “there he is.”

buck realizes, when he’s pulling up to the curb outside athena’s place to drop off maddie and chim and eddie, that maybe he shouldn’t have been driving—if these are even his hands on the steering wheel.

when he tells them all good night, it sounds like someone else is speaking. he can feel the vibrations of his voice in his chest, his throat, his mouth, and he must say the right thing because no one looks at him weird, but he can’t help but wonder if, instead of a man, he’s an inanimate speaker, and always has been, and everyone’s just been too polite to say anything to him about it.

this isn’t the first time he’s felt like this, like he should know that he’s real, but it feels like he’s watching his life happen to someone else, like his life is a movie, like he’s a robot trapped on the inside of a bag of meat, like if he tries hard enough he’ll wake up and realize none of this really happened, and the realness can finally begin.

the thing is, he used to be able to text bobby when it happened, for a dose of reality, and now he can’t, and that’s the problem.

if he says anything about it, it’ll be, oh, buck’s making everything about himself again, or, buck’s having a mental break and should be fired from his job (and lose his health insurance) without a second thought. because that’s what chim said tonight, wasn’t it? if buck had a problem that affected his work, no questions asked, fired. or—would it be because he didn’t speak up about it the first time it happened, because anything past that would be lying?

nobody asked me, hen had asserted. nobody checked in after bobby died, because everyone was in their own bubbles, and she didn’t want to add to anyone’s grief. but—buck is pretty sure that wasn’t true. he remembers checking in with everyone, trying to get a read on what they might need.

because bobby had said they were going to need buck.

but—what if he hadn’t, actually? what if he’d just thought he had? what if he’d dreamed it? he’s pretty sure it was real, but what if it wasn’t? her words could have been his words. was she wrong, or has he totally misremembered the past year?

he probably shouldn’t drive the rest of the way home like this. he should probably leave his truck here and get an uber. but that would only lead to more questions, that might result in him being fired, and he can’t—

he can’t text bobby, so he does the next best thing, which is to put on the greatest hits of springsteen, and roll his windows down to let in some fresh—as fresh as it can get in LA—air, and head toward a drive-thru for a root beer and some fries.

— —

he makes it home. he showers and brushes his teeth and tries not to think about how uncomfortable it is to look himself in the face in the mirror. who is this man. he locks up the house for the night and burrows into his sweatshirt and finally feels like he’s not going to shake apart by looking for answers.

he takes in a deep breath, then lets it out.

his text chain with ravi is probably the safest to start. ravi wasn’t there tonight, he’s on vacation, so it feels like a more neutral place to start. buck scrolls back, back, back some more until—there.

ravi hadn’t really taken buck up on his repeated offers to talk about it, but just as buck remembered doing, there it is, in print: asking how ravi’s doing, how he’s feeling, if he needs anything, offering support. buck doesn’t really get why ravi wouldn’t talk to him about it—after all, why not talk to someone who was there, who understands?—but the guy’s work/life boundaries are pretty ironclad, so maybe that’s just part of it.

chim, athena, maddie, may, harry, even karen: it’s the same story. for the most part, he didn’t get much in the way of nibbles on the line, but he tried. at least he got bachelor mondays with may and harry out of it.

he sees the letters and words on the screen and they all make sense. they look real. and that wouldn’t be true if this was a dream, right? if this wasn’t real?

he feels a surge of trepidation as he stares down the threads he has with eddie and hen, the two people who have made him doubt his perception of reality about this. eddie was mad, back in the spring, that buck didn’t specifically ask how it felt to get the phone call about bobby—but if that was bothering eddie, how that felt, then why didn’t he just mention it when buck asked how he was doing, if he wanted to talk about anything?

and hen, who buck had trusted countless times over the years for her honesty and understanding, had obviously lost patience every time she saw buck coming to ask her how she was doing, every time she replied to one of his texts. how does she get away with telling him, buck, you need to stop, then being angry that he took her at her word and stopped? was he supposed to violate the boundary she set? and—how is he supposed to know, if someone is telling him the opposite of what they want?

how is he supposed to know what’s real and what isn’t, if the information he has to process isn’t true? if everything is the opposite of what it appears? people care, but will take away your job without a second thought? people get mad at you for asking how they’re doing, then say that you never asked in the first place? people say they’re your best friend, your family, but don’t seem to actually like anything about you?

buck burrows further into his blankets and crams his pillow around his ears and wishes, truly, that this is just another coma dream.

but: he can’t deny that it’s night, right now.

mr. poop is nice, theo decides, sometime between pizza and a theo-sized bowl of ice cream while they watch lilo and stitch. not the lilo and stitch theo’s seen before, but an older one, a cartoon, with a lilo that seems like she feels like theo does sometimes, snarling in a way that’s familiar and a stitch that’s weirder and uglier that makes him, it? whatever. this cartoon stitch is more interesting.

“ohana means family,” mr. poop says, next to theo on the couch, in time with the movie. “family means nobody gets left behind, or forgotten.”

but theo’s seen this movie before. lilo gets left behind. nani goes off to college. he knows how this one ends.

so: mr. poop is full of—well, poop.

it makes theo—angry.

theo has a flash of a thought, that dumping mr. poop’s bigger, grown-up-sized, half-finished bowl of mint chocolate chip onto his own head might cool his brain down. from the angry. and doing so will probably have the added benefit of making mr. poop angry. because grown-ups usually get angry at theo for these flashes of thoughts. if mr. poop is angry at theo, then theo won’t be alone in his anger.

so that’s exactly what he does.

the bowl is heavier than he expects, though, so he ends up clocking himself in the face with it more than wearing it like an upside-down ice cream hat like he’d imagined. it hurts, his head hurts, his nose hurts, and it didn’t go like he expected it to, and the frustration of it all balls up hot and tangled in his chest and he just has to SCREAM! about it.

and. stupid mr. poop! he doesn’t DO what he is SUPPOSED TO when theo Acts Out. he doesn’t look a theo all pinched and unhappy, he doesn’t snap his words like scissors, he doesn’t throw up his hands or walk away. he just keeps repeating, soft and kind like a trap, hey, h-hey, buddy, what’s wrong, why, let’s see, you’re ok, you’re ok, you’re—

“liar!” theo yells, because he is not ok, because none of this is ok.

“ok, ok,” mr. poop keeps repeating as his hands tremble in front of theo’s face and smooth his hair away from his forehead. “it’s ok, you’re ok, ok? i’m a professional. i can handle this.”

mr. poop’s big blue eyes are wide and shiny and theo is quite sure he’s lying. he tells mr. poop so, repeatedly and at volume. but theo is very small, and he can only yell and struggle and run and hide so much before his batteries are drained.

mr. poop, on the other hand, is very tall, and very good at finding, apparently, and not afraid of or disgusted by the worst theo can throw at him. which is weird. he just—waits theo out. then, he wipes theo’s face off with a baby wipe, even though theo isn’t a baby, thank you, then picks him up and carries him down the hall to the bathroom.

ugh. bath time.

theo expects mr. poop to lose his cool any minute now. doesn’t he know the bathroom is theo’s favorite place to get into things? there are SO many things to get into. toilet paper. dirty underwear—which, if it wasn’t supposed to be worn like a hat, then it shouldn’t be that shape. SHOWER GEL. so many bubbles. theo looks around for something to do, when—

mr. poop plunks a bucket full of toys in front of him, and folds his long legs to sit on the floor across from theo. he picks up a toy helicopter from the bucket and spins the spinny-thing on the top of it.

“i know these aren’t—i keep these here for my niece and nephew,” mr. poop explains. “i thought you might like them too, while we get you cleaned up.”

on one hand, getting cleaned up means losing the battle of wits to mr. poop. on the other hand, a bucket of bath toys usually means The Works: bubble bath, at least 50% more splashing in the tub allowed, making a cool mohawk while his hair gets shampooed. theo peers into the bucket of toys. there’s a fire truck, an assortment of boy rubber ducks and girl rubber ducks and other rubber ducks that he can’t tell are boys or girls (including one that has a big tire painted on its back, for some reason), a funny fat little tugboat like the one he saw on his daycare’s trip to the harbor.

a tugboat, for the tub.

tubboat.

“deal,” theo nods definitively.

“de—really?” mr. poop asks. his eyebrows scrunch toward his hair, taking the splotches by his eye with them. theo has splotches like that, too, though his are further up. he wonders if mr. poop got kissed by the same angel he did, when he was born an impossible number of years ago. probably 50, theo reasons. maybe even 55.

“i thought you were going to fight me on—y’know what? never mind,” mr. poop continues, ruffling theo’s hair despite the clumps of ice cream in it. he stands, slowly, and it sounds like allllllll of his bones go pop, pop, pop, like he’s full of rice krispies. he might be even older than 55, theo thinks. he wonders if mr. poop is older than cars.

theo knows it’s not nice to throw toys at people, but it’s a little bit funny to throw a rubber duck at mr. poop as the old man shakes out his legs. mr. poop catches it before it hits the ground, and to theo’s surprise, he has a big, real smile on his face as he turns around and goes to toss it back to theo, underhand and soft and patient in a way that makes theo want to GROWL.

mr. poop is not good at playing by the rules.

theo winds up, really puts his arm behind his next throw—

“damn it,” mr. poop cusses into the bathroom cabinet as he rummages around.

“bad word!” theo yells gleefully. mr. poop is very bad at this. everybody knows you're not supposed to cuss.

“shi—shoot,” mr. poop yelps, then smacks the back of his head on the underside of the shelf.

“you’re so bad at this,” theo tells mr. poop, whose face has gone bright red, helpfully.

“yeah,” mr. poop sighs. “i’m out of the baby shampoo—”

“i’m not a baby!”

mr. poop sits down in front of theo again. “you’re right, big guy. not a baby. i just meant—the no-tears gentle stuff, huh? i forgot to get more of that and bubble bath after the last time jee and nash were here.”

“who’s that?”

mr. poop smiles brightly. “my niece and nephew. my sister’s kids. jee’s a little older than you, and nash is a little younger than you.”

theo nods as he feels a sort of burning feeling in his chest. it feels weird, for some reason, to know there are other kids in mr. poop’s life.

maybe it’s because he’s only ever been an only. everybody always tells him he’s bad at sharing. that’s just one of the things that’s wrong with him.

he hopes mr. poop doesn’t notice.

it takes some convincing, but theo agrees to a bath once mr. poop finds a body wash to put in the water to make a few bubbles. theo didn’t like the first few mr. poop offered. most of them smelled too—serious, probably. for old people like mr. poop. one of them smelled exactly like mr. poop. definitely no. one smelled like cotton candy, which was fun, but it made theo sneeze over and over again, which was NOT fun.

mr. poop went back to the cabinet one more time and brought back a bright green one that smelled like the beach.

“i, uh,” mr. poop said, turning red again as he opened the cap and handed it over. he had a look on his face that theo thought looked sad, but also like mr. poop had done something he shouldn’t have. “this is the last one to try, i’m afraid.”

theo breathed in the scent. it was fun, like sunscreen and funnel cakes and limeade, and didn’t make him sneeze. it kind of reminded him of the old movie they were watching, before he—oh, he really messed up, didn’t he, dumping mr. poop’s ice cream on his head?

“i’m sorry, mr. poop,” theo says, the words leaping out of his mouth like they do sometimes. but at least this time, they’re nice, and he finds that he means it. “i’m sorry i made a mess, and i’m sorry i was mean.”

“aw, bud, it’s—well, it’s not ok, i guess,” mr. poop says, shifting to lean against the side of the tub. theo gets a grumbly feeling in his tummy until mr. poop talks again. “but today’s been a lot, hasn’t it? new place, new people? i get it.” mr. poop picks at his hands. “i, uh, i get overwhelmed like that too, sometimes.”

“overwhelmed?”

mr. poop smiles and nods. “yeah. like, things are too much?” he puts his hands by his head and makes an explosion noise as he flings them out.

“but—you’re so big! you get the, the too-much too?”

mr. poop nods again. “i think everybody does, at some point. some people are better at it than others, though. me, i’m—i might be big and strong, but i’m not so good at it. seems to happen more for me than it does—everyone else.”

theo eyes him suspiciously. “i don’t b’lieve you.”

“yeah, that’s fair,” mr. poop sighs and leans his head back against the wall with a soft thud. “sometimes i say things the wrong way, without meaning to. sometimes i say mean things because they’re mean. and sometimes i don’t say anything when i should, or when i want to.”

theo goes still, on the outside and the inside, for the first time in—a while, he thinks. then he nods.

“yeah, i figured you’d get it,” mr. poop says, heaving himself forward. instead of grabbing the bottle of body wash out of theo’s hands, he just points at it. “you ready to make some bubbles?”

the body wash that smells like the beach makes…okay bubbles. but it smells good. mr. poop looks a little sad, but also a little happy, and he doesn’t sound or act like he’s upset with theo, so that’s fine.

theo’s pretty sure he hasn’t done anything wrong when mr. poop frowns suddenly while he’s trying to work the ice cream out of theo’s hair, but grown-ups have frowned at him like this before, then told him what he did, so theo feels himself shrink a little as he waits to hear what he messed up this time.

“h-hey, where’d you go?” mr. poop asks, booping theo on the nose.

that’s a good sign, a nose-boop.

“you made a face,” theo informs mr. poop helpfully.

“i—oh,” mr. poop replies. “it’s just, i think this body wash is drying your hair out, and i don’t have any other shampoo.”

theo looks at mr. poop’s hair, which is kind of curly, and has some grey parts in it. he decides his earlier guesses at mr. poop’s age were too low. mr. poop HAS to be at least 100 years old.

“do old people like you not use shampoo? or, is it shampoo for old people, like there’s shampoo for babies?” theo says the last word with distate, because he is not a baby.

mr. poop’s face crunches and he barks out a loud laugh. “oh, my god,” mr. poop wheezes, burying his face in his elbow. “karma is such a bitch.”

“you said another bad word,” theo says gleefully.

“we’re gonna have to make a swear jar,” mr. poop howls. “oh, my god.”

theo doesn’t know what god has to do with it, but he really wants to do the shampoo mohawk thing. especially since the bubbles in this bath are getting sadder by the minute.

mr. poop recovers, then leans over the tub to grab a jar sitting in one of the corners. he unscrews the lid and says, very seriously, "now, i don't know if you'll like the smell of this. it doesn't smell like beach. but it's either this, or having hair like straw. like the scarecrow, with straw coming out of your noggin." he gives the hair behind theo's ear a gentle tug, and theo can't help but laugh.

this shampoo isn't like the shampoo that theo is used to, that comes in a bottle and smells kind of powdery. it's some sort of goop in a tub, and it smells like strong mint. he wrinkles his nose, because it is strong, but he takes another whiff, and decides it's not too bad. it sort of smells like mr. poop, but not like the body wash from before.

theo nods in approval and grabs for the jar.

"uh-uh," mr. poop says, quickly lifting the jar out of theo's reach. "we gotta be careful, or this will make a big splat! in the tub, ok?"

theo pouts, because this sounds like the usual grown-ups-not-letting-theo-do-things thing.

but then, mr. poop surprises him. "you know how i know that?"

theo shakes his head. no, he doesn't know that, mr. poop. he just got here.

"the last jar of this i had," mr. poop says, like he's telling theo a secret, "i picked it up when i was showering after work, when i was really, really tired. and it slipped, and it went splat! all over the tub!"

theo looks at mr. poop's hands, at his reddened, bony fingers and his short, worried-on nails and the rough spots on the sides.

"i mean it!" mr. poop continues. "it went everywhere! just last week, i found a glob of it waaaay up there!" he points to the ceiling above the tub. "i don't know why they don't use a pump for this jar. they do for the other one, and after the formula changed on this one, it's so runny, a pump just makes sense." mr. poop catches himself as he rambles, like theo does sometimes. "anyway. you probably don't want to know all of that. it's just, even old people, with their old people shampoo, need help sometimes, too."

theo doesn't think this is true. being a grown-up looks so fun, mainly because grown-ups don't need help, like little kids do, like all of the grown-ups he knows all the time tell him he needs.

"just—can i help you with this?" mr. poop asks.

that's new.

theo nods, yes, just for the novelty of being asked.

mr. poop grins and scoops out some of the goop with his fingers before plopping it on theo's head. "you want to help me with this part?"

this, theo knows how to do.

it's a weird sort of shampoo. it doesn't make foam, which makes him sad about the shampoo mohawk he'd hoped for, but somehow mr. poop gets it to make one anyway. he grabs a hand mirror for theo to see. the mohawk is flopped over at the top, a bit like the swoop of a hershey's kiss, he thinks, and it's not foamy, but it is, without a doubt, a mohawk, and theo hoots and splashes in the tub in joy. the countless rubber ducks in the tub with him bob in the ripples.

mr. poop has strong fingers, theo thinks, as he gets some of the best shampoo scritches he's ever gotten in his life.

they leave the shampoo stuff in while mr. poop scrubs at theo's face gently with a cloth to make sure all the sticky ice cream is gone. theo had managed to even get some up his nose, a fact that he is proud of, even though it was gross to get back out. mr. poop makes soft clicking noises as he inspects where the bowl came into clumsy contact with theo's cheek and nose and brow, and informs him, softly and kindly, "you might end up with a bruise or two, kiddo." he looks kind of sad about it, but not mad or upset with theo. the spots on his face are tender, but it's nice when mr. poop runs over them lightly with his thumb, like he cares.

mr. poop smiles when he rinses theo's hair of the shampoo stuff and grazes his fingers over the birthmark at theo's hairline. "we match," theo says, pointing to the edge of his left eye, where mr. poop has a similar spot.

uh-oh. mr. poop looks like he's about to cry. theo wasn't even trying to say the wrong thing, that time. he feels a buzzing well up in his chest and arms and face, but then, mr. poop says, "yeah, we do," and smiles, even though the crying part is still there. he sniffles. "that means we're special."

"angel kiss," theo informs mr. poop seriously.

mr. poop smiles like the sun coming out after the rain. "yeah, bud. angel kiss."

the hair stuff melted the rest of the bubbles. theo wonders if mr. poop knows why that happens, if he'd tell theo about it if he asked. he thinks probably so.

this is usually theo's cue to bounce out of the tub and run down the hall with no clothes on and enjoy the feeling of the cool air wooshing past his skin, but this time, he—does not want to do that? it's weird. he doesn't want to put on clothes, as usual, and he tells mr. poop this very seriously, but something in him is content to wait for mr. poop to pull out a hooded towel that looks like a shark for theo to put on, as a—

"compromise," mr. poop says slowly.

"com-pro-my-eyes," theo repeats.

"eh, close enough," mr. poop says as he smiles. mr. poop smiles a lot. it's nice. because he's so old, theo can see the lines on his face that don't snap back as quickly because of his smiles. they're deeper than the ones between his eyes. the ones that mean a grown-up is cross. theo's noticed some people have one, and others have two there. he doesn't know why that is. maybe mr. poop knows, and wouldn't be too grumpy if theo asked him.

mr. poop doesn't tell theo to help clean up after the bath, but theo ends up—well, sort of helping anyway. he rounds up the rubber ducks and other toys from the tub and lays them out in a special drainer thing to dry. while they work, mr. poop explains what each one's name is, if they have one, and where the name came from, and where the toy came from, and before theo knows it, they've cleaned up the tub and wiped down the water on the floor from theo's splashing and put away the hair stuff and all that's left is mr. poop staring at the small amount of body wash that's left in the bottle that theo used, that smelled like beach.

"it's ok, mr. poop, don't be sad," theo says, patting at mr. poop's knee. he knows he's not good at making people feel better, most of the time, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to try. grown-ups always say, practice makes perfect, so maybe theo will get better at making people feel better with more practice. (if practice makes perfect, he doesn't really get why grown-ups won't let him practice this, but he doesn't really get why grown-ups do a lot of things.)

mr. poop sniffles, then puts the bottle back in the cabinet, and turns around with a smile on his face that even theo can see through. he grabs theo's clean clothes from the counter and lets theo put them on himself, using mr. poop's arm and leg for balance.

stupid mr. poop won't let theo keep his shark towel on over his pajamas. "it's wet," he says, like that matters at all. it's a shark towel. sharks are wet. they live in the ocean. but then, mr. poop pulls a dry dragon towel off the same shelf as the shark one, and theo realizes that mr. poop might be onto something with this whole com-pro-my-eyes thing, even if he's still not sure what eyes have to do with it. dragons are awesome. they can fly, and breathe fire, and—

actually, com-pro-my-eyes rocks, theo decides, as he talks mr. poop into resuming the movie, even though it's definitely past his bedtime. mr. poop said they can watch it until theo falls asleep. silly mr. poop. theo's gonna stay up forev—

— —

it's weirdly bright, theo realizes as he shuffles awake the next morning, and he's—not in his bed, or any sort of bed at all. he's on a sofa, in a bright white room. it smells like coffee, which is gross, and also pancakes, which is awesome. he hears a voice in another room, and realizes—

oh! this is mr. poop's couch, in mr. poop's living room. mr. poop's blanket keeping him warm, mr. poop's terrible pillow under his head. mr. poop's dragon towel wrapped around him still, keeping him company.

mr. poop is making him pancakes.

before he can think or feel too much about anything, mr. poop comes around the corner, carrying a tray with plates of pancakes and a few cups of juice, milk, and water. there's a mug of coffee, which had better be for mr. poop, because it smells even worse up close; the cups of juice, milk, and water all have lids, which means mr. poop brought them for theo.

it's a good thing the cups have lids, because mr. poop jumps when he sees theo sitting on his couch, and the liquids all slosh a little bit. including the coffee. ew.

"oh!" mr. poop says, like he wasn't expecting theo to be there. but that doesn't make any sense, because he brought breakfast for theo. "i didn't—how—oh, wow." he sets the tray down on the side table with a clunk that rattles the silverware next to the plates.

"are you ok, mr. poop?" theo asks, really, really, really hoping that he didn't manage to do something bad in his sleep.

"y-yeah, buddy, i'm great," mr. poop laughs, even though he looks like he's about to cry again. "did you—did you know you have curly hair?"

theo knows his hair is a mess, just like the rest of him. it's thick, and what grown-ups call wavy, it gets tangled and poofy, and he hates getting it cut, because who thinks it's a great idea to have loud things around their ears on purpose? he's difficult, his hair is difficult. it makes sense. but, no, people don't usually call it curly.

"do you want to see?" mr. poop asks as he sits next to theo on the sofa, like he's unsure, like theo is a stray cat he's trying not to scare.

"yeah!" theo yells, because sometimes cats hiss back. he throws in a hiss and some cat claws for good measure.

mr. poop seems to relax, and he leans against the back of the couch after pulling his phone out of the pocket of his jeans. "ok, thundercat, let's see here." mr. poop opens the camera on his phone, and flips it to show the both of them on the screen.

"whoa," theo breathes, leaning in to look closer at his hair, which is doing something he's never seen it do before. it's messy, and half-covered in dragon towel hood, but there are a few spirals to it that are new. he looks at mr. poop, whose cheeks have gone pink.

"i, uh, i feel like i should have seen that coming," mr. poop says softly, sort of like he's talking to himself. he blinks then clears his throat. "the co-wash, the, uh, the hair stuff we used last night. my curls got more, uh, defined, when t—when i started using it."

theo thinks for a moment. "it's...magic shampoo?"

mr. poop snorts a laugh. "not magic. just, there's this whole thing about hair types, and not everybody has the same type of hair, and curly hair can get dry, and it needs...different stuff to be happy, than other types of hair."

theo peers at himself on the screen again. "my hair is happy?"

"does it feel happy?" mr. poop asks.

theo flips the dragon hood back and messes with his hair a little. it...does, actually, feel happy. or maybe he feels happy. he nods his head, big nods back and forth, so mr. poop definitely understands. yes, happy. theo feels his hair flop to and fro as he moves.

"we, uh, we match," mr. poop says, pointing to his own hair. it looks like he puts stuff in it, to make it a little crunchy, but yes, it has curls too. the one in front has a lot of white in it.

"yeah, but, you have old man hair, because you're old," theo informs him.

mr. poop leans over and makes a fart noise into theo's hair, which is funny, and feels funny, and theo squeals in delight, and kicks his leg out against the side table.

"ok, rockstar, how about we get started on breakfast?" mr. poop offers.

they end up sitting at the big table in mr. poop's dining room. theo is on a big chair with a booster seat, which mr. poop said was usually for his niece. mr. poop is old, maybe older than santa claus, and kind of goofy, but theo knows it's nice of him to let theo borrow the seat, and the bath toys last night, so he thanks mr. poop for that and for the breakfast as sincerely as he can. sometimes grown-ups think theo isn't telling the truth when he says thank you, probably because he's so bad the rest of the time, but mr. poop just looks at him with his bright blue eyes and smiles and tells theo that he's "most welcome."

after breakfast, after theo trails behind mr. poop into the kitchen and helps to load the plates in the dishwasher, it's time to get dressed for the day. instead of one of theo's usual shirts, mr. poop offers theo a soft dark blue t-shirt with a firefighting dinosaur on it. it has letters on it, and theo's been learning his letters, so he concentrates on getting them right.

"l...a...p...d!" theo says slowly, crescendoing to shout the last letter confidently.

mr. poop grabs his chest dramatically, like theo's seen people do on tv. "oh, so close, bud!"

"l-a-p-d!" theo repeats, because he tried hard to get it right, and mr. poop is acting like theo got it wrong. in a nice way, but still.

"did you know," mr. poop says, "what the l and the a stand for?"

theo doesn't, so he shakes his head no.

"it means los angeles, like where we live!"

"i thought we live in california?" theo asks, confused. "or—glendale?"

mr. poop smiles. "those are both right. but the city, the area, is los angeles."

theo squints at him doubtfully.

mr. poop waves, like it doesn't matter. "we can do geography another day. anyway. los angeles has a police department, and a fire department!"

theo nods. "you're the fire department!"

"yeah," mr. poop laughs. "i'm in the fire department." like that's a different thing. "the l-a-p-d is the police department. los angeles police department. we're l-a-f-d. los angeles fire department."

theo looks at the shirt again, and it clicks. the firefighting dinosaur. "oh! this letter isn't a p. it's a f!"

"wow, theo!" mr. poop says excitedly, loud with a wiggle in his whole body. "you're sharp! that's right! l-a-f-d!"

now, theo feels the need to wiggle too. he's not sure what mr. poop means by "sharp", because theo is a boy, not a pair of scissors he's not supposed to run with, but he's pretty sure mr. poop is happy that theo got this right. theo's proud of himself. sometimes he gets the letters mixed up, like he did this time. but it was nice of mr. poop to give him some space to figure it out.

theo gets the rest of his clothes for the day put on, a pair of jean shorts to go with the t-shirt and a pair of white socks with red stripes on them. he likes red. red is fast, and loud, just like him.

before he can ask mr. poop what his favorite color is, he crouches down in front of theo with a serious look on his face.

oh.

well.

it usually doesn't last.

maybe someday theo will get better at not being as disappointed.

"hey," mr. poop says, like he's concerned. "i was thinking—well, i had an idea of something fun we could do. but maybe—do you have any ideas of what we can do today?"

usually, when grown-ups ask theo what he wants to do, they end up doing what the grown-ups want to do. what theo really wants to do is ask mr. poop the questions he's thought of, and maybe watch another movie, and maybe go out to the backyard and run around in circles until he feels sick, and maybe after that, after he falls out flat from the zoomies, he can look at clouds, and see if he sees any that look like sharks or dragons or cake or aliens or poop, and point the poop ones out to mr. poop, to see how many he can get away with.

he wants to watch another movie. maybe the frog one. but usually, if he gets to watch a movie, it's just the one. and he wants to finish the one they started last night. the old lilo and stitch, with the lilo who feels like he feels a lot of the time, with the wilder-looking stitch. if that's different about this movie, then maybe—

"i wanna finish lilo and stitch," theo blurts out, instantly regretting it, because he's gotta be smart about these things. think things through, like grown-ups always tell him. blurting things out isn't thinking things through.

"that sounds like a great idea, theo," mr. poop exclaims. "i was going to suggest that, but i didn't want to—i wanted you to say what you wanted first."

mr. poop also wants to finish the movie? awesome. this is going to be the best day ever, theo decides.

— —

about an hour later, as they watch the end credits of the movie, theo thinks: definitely the best day ever.

ohana means family. family means nobody gets left behind, or forgotten.

mr. poop, the oldest man in the world, with his curly old man hair and secret happy-sad beach body wash and too many rubber ducks and really good pancakes, is warm, where theo is curled up next to him.

theo knows his name is buck, even though he's been calling him mr. poop. he wanted to see how long he could get away with it, before mr. poop got angry about it, because grown-ups usually get mad when theo calls them silly names. it's dis-res-peck-full, they say. but when theo calls him mr. poop, buck just smiles, like he likes it. like nobody but theo's ever called him mr. poop before, and something about that tickles him.

theo, because he ruins things, decides to ruin it.

"do you want me to call you buck?" he asks quietly, wanting very badly to bury his face into mr. poop's side, like it's the most normal thing in the world to hide there.

there's a hum, deep in mr. poop's chest. "do you want to call me buck?" he asks, in a way that sounds like he's tiptoeing around this as much as theo is.

he's not demanding respeck from theo, which makes the impulse to call him by the very dis-res-peck-full mr. poop even stronger.

"not really," theo says, feeling like there's no right answer to this problem.

"well, that's ok, then," mr. poop says, and ruffles his hand through theo's hair. "'mr. poop' is kinda growing on me. like a fungus." he laughs. "which makes sense. we're fun guys."

mr. poop wiggles his eyebrows at theo, so theo thinks there's a joke here he's missing, but it doesn't feel bad that he's missing it, unlike usual. this is another question he can ask mr. poop, he decides, but later, when mr. poop isn't laughing, and when theo's own laughter isn't bubbling up in his belly like popcorn.

fun guys, theo thinks. he didn't think much of mr. poop at first. he doesn't think much of anyone who bosses him around because he's a kid and they're a grown-up. but mr. poop is different. theo thinks he might be a similar kind of different.

a similar kind of fun guy.

just—not as old.

which reminds him.

the symbiote is just immediately [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] up against [redacted] [redacted] and [redacted] about the guy. this is not unusual, for them, for buck to be so distracted by his randy symbiote when he first meets someone that he makes a mess of it. but tommy just laughs, and smiles, and is just so damn sweet about it that he figures it’s ok. wow. how is that guy so cool? and nice? and smiley? and cool? buck has a symbiote, for crying out loud, which is objectively cool, but they’ve got nothin’ on this guy.

(the symbiote just purrs.)

so they land, with bobby in tow, safe and sound, and buck can’t tell if it’s his hand or the impulse of his passenger that has his hand reaching up to clap tommy on the shoulder. it felt like it was just himself, but the symbiote feels so satisfied when he does it...

strange.

so they do the tour of harbor station, and both buck and his symbiote are seething when tommy flies off with eddie at the end. buck drives them home, and the symbiote proceeds to do its best to drive all thoughts from buck’s mind in their bed. buck wakes the next morning with a familiar ache in his body, but somewhere deep inside himself, there’s a new ache, a hunger, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with that.

he thinks he’s getting invited to trivia night. the heartache grows deeper.

he discovers the pick-up basketball game on the calendar on eddie’s fridge. the heartache is unbearable.

and through it all, his symbiote is driving him up the wall. it’s insatiable. it’s waking him up in the middle of the night with its writhing and wanting and prodding and creeping; taking a shower on shift at the station is out of the question except in the direst of circumstances, because he’d for real get fired this time if he got caught getting his dick sucked and his hole played with by an alien slime goo monster on the clock.

buck is getting left out, pushed out, and the worst part of it is, his symbiote is absolutely cuckoo batshit bananas for tommy. the usual filth gets so much, desperately, worse. all day, all night, any spare moment, it’s all, i bet that guy’s packing a monster, something i could really choke on—if i could choke, that is. i just know he’s big, thicker than you are, really claims a place for himself when he fucks in. i bet he could go for hours, between his cock and his fingers and that mouth. i wonder what his neck tastes like. i’d bury my face in his pits, if i had a face. you think he’s into getting his tits fucked, you think he’d blow just from having his nipples played with? i wonder if he’d let me pin his arms and legs down like you do, so i could fuck his hole, see if i could make his belly bulge. i wonder if he’s a moaner, a shouter, a grunter, a whimperer. he’s got a nice voice. you think he’d let us wreck it, hmmm?

buck buys enough steak and eggs to feed an army as well as every single chocolate bar he can find at the grocery store he usually stops at when he’s driving home from the station.

as he waits in the driveway to pick chim up before the game, he checks his mouth in the vanity mirror one more time to make sure he doesn’t have chocolate smeared on his face. that’s the last thing he needs.

his proprioception’s changed some since he’s been sharing himself with the symbiote. for the most part, it’s better, but sometimes he forgets that while he’s a strong guy on his own merit, the symbiote is stronger. he’s not sure which one of them put their whole ass into sending eddie flying; it was probably both of them, the way buck’s emotions have been going haywire lately. he just—it’s too much, it’s been too much, and now tommy is driving eddie to urgent care.

the drive home, the cleaning up, the grabbing dinner to take to maddie at dispatch, all of it is accompanied by the soundtrack of buck castigating himself. how could he let himself get this out of control. how could he let the symbiote take the lead like that. the symbiote, for what it’s worth, has curled itself around the heartache in buck’s core, emanating a flow of misery and regret that doesn’t really help matters any.

two fuckups in one body.

what a fucking mess.

when there’s a knock at his apartment door, buck himself feels creeping dread—he’s not expecting anyone; did tommy convince eddie to press charges for assault? is bobby going to fire him for injuring a coworker? have the authorities finally caught up with him for the symbiote’s extracurricular activities?—but the symbiote instantly burns warm, deep in his gut, urging buck to open the door quickly, quickly now.

it’s tommy, of all people, which would explain the symbiote’s behavior. buck only hopes it won’t take over and ravish the man in his kitchen.

(i wouldn’t, the symbiote seethes. i would never! consent is important!

yeah, well, tell that to eddie’s ankle, buck grumbles as tommy looks around buck’s apartment, wide-eyed.)

the symbiote goes oddly quiet as buck and tommy talk. it’s not the symbiote’s warmth that flares in his chest as tommy builds a bridge that connects himself to buck’s unhinged behavior, then crosses it to stand there with him in shared jealousy and wistfulness. it’s buck’s own desire for someone to join him in his ugly places, to understand what makes him rotten and to love him anyway. it’s the spark of interest when tommy invites buck into his own activities, as if tommy sees buck as not a nuisance but as someone who has something worthwhile to offer. like buck as a person is worthwhile.

he draws closer, like a moth to a flame, and stumbles over himself and his words, and—

oh.

oh.

something, something that’s all him, human and finite and flawed and real, clicks into place. he can feel the hum of the symbiote’s satisfaction when tommy’s fingers scratch across the light stubble of his chin, when he’s not sure if the breath he feels is his or tommy’s, when there’s just a hint of something deep and rich as tommy claims his mouth, but it’s not just the symbiote who’s into this. who wants.

tommy breaks the kiss, but he pauses for a moment, with his eyes closed. buck sees him as his own eyes flutter open in disbelief, and doesn’t know what to make of it. is it regret? was it a joke? did tommy see how desperate buck was to—

“like that?” tommy says softly.

like that - like that - like—the symbiote prods at buck’s mind, gets him back on track. oh, right. better ways to get someone’s attention.

“that works,” buck breathes.

he can feel the symbiote ripple under his skin as tommy smooths down the front of his shirt, like the chaste kiss they’d just shared had instead been a full-on, mess-each-other-up exploration of each other’s uvulas.

“so that was okay?” tommy asks again, this time a little stronger.

see? consent is important, the symbiote preens, as if buck is the one who needs that reminder.

they make plans for saturday, and it’s so new it hardly feels real, but at the same time, it might be the most real thing buck’s ever felt in his life.

after tommy leaves, buck’s still feeling effervescent around the edges, like when he was a kid and would run up and touch the tv screen on the days there was a substitute in homeroom & therefore a movie in lieu of instruction.

was that you? he asks the symbiote, because he has to know. it doesn’t feel like it’s his companion’s desire. it feels like himself, real, the want he feels for tommy.

nope, that’s all you, bud, the symbiote replies as it shifts lower and makes its way to the outside of buck’s body. always has been, since you met him. since before then. you’re into him.

but—

yeah, i’m into him too, the symbiote hisses as it predictably makes its way into buck’s underwear and warms itself along the inside of buck’s thighs. have you seen him?