#rob writes

[HOWIE HAN]: 1 New Message

Come on man I just had a baby

[TOMMY KINARD]

I thought your wife had the baby

[HOWIE HAN]: 1 New Message

You're a comedian.

[TOMMY KINARD]

I'd say I'm here all week, but I'm actually on vacation.

[HOWIE HAN]: 1 New Message

Yeah, yeah, I'll take the hint and stop bothering you. Even though you have no sympathy for the fact that my wife is going to be very disappointed with me when she finds out I lost her brother and she's going to look at me in the way that makes me feel very sad and also guilty.

[TOMMY KINARD]

Well, if I see him I'll let you know. Good luck with all of that I guess.

Tommy chuckles again, the face pushed into his stomach bouncing a bit with it. Evan rolls, sleep-bright eyes blinking up at Tommy in confusion.

"Whatsit?" Evan mumbles, a hand coming up to wipe away at what is definitely drool in the corner of his mouth.

Evan had been napping with his head on Tommy's lap, spread out across the couch in the cabin they're borrowing from a friend of Tommy's for a weekend getaway. They'd spent the last three hours hiking (and maybe some of it making out against a tree) and Evan was still in a bit of a sleep deficit from trying to quickly get all of his stuff moved out of Eddie's house two days ago.

"Nothing, sweetheart," Tommy tells him warmly, his torso curling down towards Evan as he runs a hand through slightly sweaty but impossibly soft curls. "Just texting Chimney."

"Mmmok," Evan says, rolling back into Tommy's stomach and kicking a knee out to stretch farther down the couch. It accentuates his long, long legs which are currently wrapped in hiking shorts that are honestly just sinfully short and leggings; and Tommy is also maybe drooling a little. He's going to let Evan sleep for a little longer, knowing if he lets it go on too long Evan's sleep schedule will be ruined.

But also beacuase Tommy is more than happy to pick up where they left off against the tree; this time in the plush bed waiting for them, with enough time and sunlight leftover to then grill the steaks they had bought for dinner.

Tommy shakes himself out of the daydream that's going to end up disturbing the man impersonating sleeping beauty right over something that will give away exactly what's going through his head and looks at the text conversation again. He sighs. He doesn't think that Howie and the rest of the 118 deserve much right now, but he does sympathize with a woman who just had a baby and who has access to another woman who won't hesitate to launch a manhunt for his boyfriend.

He sighs and pulls up Maddie's phone number, but then thinks of something much funnier.

[TOMMY KINARD]

Image

[TOMMY KINARD]

Oh shit man you'll never guess what I found

[HOWIE HAN]:

We long ago gave up on serious predictions about the outcome of Jimmy’s compulsions, but we make a game of seeing who can come up with the most outrageous guesses. We play as a team against reality, and give ourselves points every time we out-weird what actually happens. Two-on-one odds may seem a little unfair, but reality’s been doing this a lot longer than we have, and it has the home field advantage. So far, reality is winning, and I don’t even want to talk about the point spread.

“Diet soda, kiddie pool… Gotta be a connection there,” Jimmy said. “I was thinking maybe a pile of aspartame-addicted carp showing up on my doorstep.”

“Nah, not weird enough. Make ‘em talking carp and I think we’ve got something. I got a better one, though; how about the Apocalypse is nigh, and diet soda will be the only currency of value in the aftermath?”

“Makes sense; only mutants would actually drink the stuff. But what about the pool?”

“Like you said—mutants.”

“What does a kiddie pool have to do with mutants?”

“Oh, so now I’m supposed to be an expert on genetic anomalies? Maybe it’s their religion.”

Jimmy nodded sagely and stroked the three-day growth of beard on his chin. “Hm…” he said. “Plausible. Hope you’re wrong, though; I think I’m allergic to apocalypses.”

We toasted to our brilliant predictions, and Jimmy went upstairs to get dressed so I could chauffeur him around for the day. He’s got this old VW Microbus, and while it runs great, he hates driving (everyone else hates him driving, too), plus he hadn’t really slept in a couple of days, which meant he’d be a danger to life and limb out on the road alone. (Although, knowing Jimmy, if he actually felt compelled to drive, an angel would get its wings and somebody’s dead dog would come back to life.)

I do a lot of things like that for Jimmy, but it’s not a one-sided deal. He doesn’t really benefit much personally from his gift—in fact, it often screws him over—but it does provide him with just enough resources to take care of basic needs so that he can follow his compulsions full-time with no visible means of support. That seems to include whatever I need in order to get by when I take time off whatever crappy day job I’m working at the time to give him a hand and help clean up his messes.

It’s like some kind of weird temp job where I get to go on wacky adventures with my best friend and still keep up with rent, and even though it’ll never give me financial security, and even though it’s made having any kind of decent career impossible, and even though no girlfriend I’ve found so far has been willing to put up with our little adventures for more than a few months, I challenge you to come up with a better job at any salary.

Because let me tell you, being friends with Jimmy is never boring.

After several years of this kind of thing, Jimmy was showing the strain. Over the past year, I’d seen him almost in tears a few times trying to choose between three identical boxes of cereal, and there was that time he couldn’t sleep unless he wore his shoes on the wrong feet and listened to yodeling records for three days straight. Don’t even get me started on the truckload of frozen mangoes in cold storage.

It was getting to the point where Jimmy wasn’t sure what was a ‘gift’ compulsion, and what was a random impulse, and fewer and fewer of his compulsions were bearing fruit—no mango-related pun intended—or at least none that we could see. But even if he could resist the occasional impulse, he doesn’t dare, just in case doing so might have a disastrous effect on someone else. He’d even started seeing a psychiatrist, but the only thing the doc was able to do for him was prescribe sleeping and anxiety medications.

Even with the meds, or maybe in part because of them, Jimmy was in even worse shape for driving than usual, so it was a damn good thing he’d called me. Once he was ready, I fired up his microbus, and we drove the forty minutes into Kansas City, where we spent the next few hours, stopping at grocery and convenience stores. At each stop, Jimmy pulled case after case of diet soda off the shelves with increasing degrees of agitation. When he found one that “felt right,” he was able to relax for just a few minutes before he started being drawn to the next case. A few places we had to talk them into letting Jimmy go examine the back stock. You’d think they’d refuse, or at least get a little annoyed, but Jimmy has this—I don’t know—this childlike, innocent vulnerability about him that’s hard to say no to. He lives in kind of a different world than most people do, and sort of expects everybody to be as nice and as helpful as he tries to be. It’s hard to say no to Jimmy without feeling like an asshole.

Sometime around ten o’clock that night, Jimmy guided us onto I-35 North, and we waited for the compulsion to tell us where to stop. We finally found the “right” convenience store about halfway to Des Moines, and I hit the men’s room while Jimmy perused the displays. I finished just in time to see Jimmy explode out of the store waving his arms and screaming, “No! Not that one! I need that one!”

He was charging straight at a grizzly bear in denim and plaid flannel. Okay, not an actual bear, but if a real grizzly ever met this guy it’d pee its fur, scream like a twelve-year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert, and run crying for its mommy. Man-bear had—you guessed it—a case of diet soda under one arm. Jimmy slammed into him at full speed, and cans flew everywhere.

Man-bear’s face went from surprise to ugly(er). He pulled back a fist the size of my head, and before I could get there Jimmy was flying backwards to land on the blacktop. Man-bear dropped the soda and took a step forward.

“Don’t hurt him,” I hollered. Okay, it was a little late for that.

“You want some, too?” Man-bear said, and I froze. I wasn’t just afraid he was going to beat me up; I was afraid he was going to eat me.

Now, I’m not the world’s bravest guy, but I do think pretty fast when the alternative is getting turned into hamburger. “No, he’s my little brother,” I lied, “I-I take care of him.” It was the best I could come up with. Hey, I said I think fast, not that I do it particularly well.

“Doin’ a pretty crappy job of it.”

“I know,” I didn’t have to fake anguish. Imminent death has that effect on me, especially when it’s mine. “ Look at him, though,” I pointed to where Jimmy was crawling around muttering to himself and gathering up the fallen cans while blood dripped from his nose to the blacktop. “You can see he’s not, y’know, quite all there in the head, can’t you? It’s not his fault.”

The trucker scowled at Jimmy, then at me. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s a little, uh... touched, you know? He gets it in his head that something—like one particular case of soda—is important, and he thinks something bad is going to happen if he doesn’t get it.” Well, that much was true.

I spread out my hands in appeal. “Look, I’ll pay for the soda. Hell, I’ll buy you ten cases.” Man-bear was silent. “C’mon, man, do you have a brother?”

Man-bear looked at Jimmy again and nodded slowly. He sniffed, then in a wilted growl said, “Keep your money. Tell him I ain’t gonna hurt him no more.”

While I stood gaping, Man-bear pulled a grocery bag from the cab of his truck, got down on all fours, and started gathering up the cans along with Jimmy. It took me probably half a minute or so to pick up my jaw enough to pitch in myself. Man-bear even got a cold pack from the cooler behind his seat for Jimmy’s face, and before he got back into his rig, shook Jimmy’s and my hands and said that while he wasn’t going to give any details, we’d changed his life.

Once Bruce’s rig was out of sight and we were back in the Microbus, Jimmy grinned at me, split lip, bloody nose, and all. “Alex, you were brill—”

And for the second time that day, Jimmy got punched in the face. Some things simply have to be done.

“Ow. What was that for?”

I glared at him, trying to ignore the fact that I felt like a total ass for hitting him. “I felt compelled, okay?” I started the car and pointed us back toward Lawrence. “I’m getting worried about you, man.”

“Yes, I could sense the concern in your loving punch.”

“Sorry about that, but are you nuts? That could have gone a lot worse than a punch in the face.”

“Two punches,” he said.

“Okay, two punches. I said I was sorry. But man, that has got to be the craziest thing you’ve ever done, and I’ve seen you do some crazy shit. Did you see the size of that guy? He’d give Mount Everest a Napoleon complex. We could have ended up in the hospital. Or jail. Or both. Hell, maybe even the morgue. Did you even stop to think we could have just politely offered to buy the soda from him instead of trying to tackle him?”

Jimmy’s face went slack. He stared at me for a few seconds, then hung his head. When he spoke, he sounded even more tired and beaten up than he looked. “I was so caught up in...” He looked back up at me. “You really do take care of me, Alex. And I don’t say thank you enough, but you never complain, and then tonight I almost got you… I’m sorry, Alex. It’s just… This is a bad one.”

I very carefully didn’t look at him. “Just think next time, okay?” I threw in some Ramones to cut short the Hallmark moment, and we cruised along to Blitzkrieg Bop.

About halfway through I Wanna Be Sedated, Jimmy turned off the music. “Hey, Alex? If we changed that guy’s life like he said, this diet soda thing is starting to play out, right?”

“Looks like. I just think it could have been handled differently.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I know, but if it’s starting to play out, my ‘gift’ or whatever should stop poking at me, or at least ease off a little, but it’s getting worse. And there are all those other cases.”

“Jimmy, I—”

“This so-called ‘gift’ pretty much runs my life, Alex, and it’s getting worse, and I can’t control it. I never wanted it to begin with. What if it gets one of us killed someday?”

I didn’t have an answer. When we got back to his place I was going to hang around to make sure he was okay, but he said he’d put me in harm’s way enough for one weekend. There wasn’t much I could do except make him promise to call me if he needed me.

#

My phone woke me a little before three a.m. the next night, which would have been fine if it were a supermodel calling to profess her undying love, but that, I decided, was an unlikely scenario, and stuck my head under the pillow to wait for the ringing to stop.

It didn’t.

“I have a hammer,” I yelled, “and I’m not afraid to use it.” Apparently the phone was unafraid of percussive maintenance. I tracked it to the pile of laundry under which it had made its rebel lair, and flipped it open. “Please state the nature of your emergency.”

“Alex! I’m glad you’re up.” Jimmy sounded like an auctioneer who’d been up all night mainlining double-espressos. “I dialed you like, nine times. Are you busy?”

“No, I was just going through the yellow pages trying to find a re-education camp for wayward cell phones. Look, it’s three AM, and you don’t sound like a buxom supermodel.”

“That has never been my aspiration. You said to call if I needed you. And I do. So I am. It’s the soda thing.”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose and censored myself. I had told him to call. “Okay, what do you need?”

“I know how to make it stop. Gotta get one more case and get to this little spring in the Flint Hills. About a hundred and fifty miles. Don’t trust myself to drive that far.” He giggled and switched to a bad falsetto. “Help us, Obi Wan. You’re our only hope.”

“You can’t play the princess-in-distress card, Jimmy. First, it’s not fair, and second, you know I’m already in.” If he didn’t trust himself to drive, I sure as hell didn’t, especially when he sounded that out of it.

Half an hour later Jimmy lurched in and knocked (in that order) dressed much like “The Dude,” from The Big Liebowski, only Jimmy’s bathrobe was fuchsia. He banged his shin on the coffee table, but barely seemed to notice. His nose and lip were still swollen, and his eyes were spider-webbed with red, but he was practically vibrating with nervous energy.

“You look like crap,” I said. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Can’t sleep. Gotta go. Here.” He dug into the pockets of his robe and handed me a printed-out map along with the keys to his old VW min-bus.

“Okay,” I said, “but shouldn’t you be wearing pants?”

He looked down at himself and frowned. “What’s wrong with swimming trunks?”

“Dude.”

“Okay, okay. But we gotta hurry.” Jimmy’s a little smaller than I am, but I managed to find some clothes that didn’t fit him too badly. (I let the Cthulhu slippers slide. You have to pick your battles.)

Jimmy had a bunch of those big plastic bottles—the kind that go on top of home water coolers— filled with slightly brownish water and strapped together in the kiddie pool in the back of the mini-bus. “What the—”

“No time. I’ll explain on the way.”

By the time I had the mini-bus in gear he was already asleep, slumped against the passenger door. I knew how this worked, though. As soon as I stopped heading toward our destination he’d wake up frantic. Besides, I probably wouldn’t get anything coherent out of him until he’d napped, so I bit down on my curiosity.

He woke up about halfway there. “Take the next exit,” he said. “That’s where the last case is.”

I pulled off the highway. “You wanna fill me in now? And please tell me we’re not going to get our asses handed to us by a human grizzly again?”

He laughed, bouncing up and down on his seat. “No promises on that count, but I don’t think so. As for filling you in... Wait. Turn here.” We pulled into a service station with all its lights out. Jimmy opened his door.

“Dude, they’re closed.”

“Gonna check the hours on the door and see how long we have to wait.”

The station wouldn’t open for three more hours. “All right,” I said, “That’s plenty of time to fill me in, so spill.”

“I’ll warn you, it’s going to sound crazy. I’m going to sound crazy, but hear me out, okay?”

I said I would, and he continued. “You saw how I got earlier. I had to get some sleep before I finished this thing or I was going to fall apart. Or even worse, screw it up. But I couldn’t. I even took a sleeping pill, but all it did was make me spacey. I finally gave in around one and poured the soda into the kiddie pool.”

He paused and stared out the window. “Keep going,” I said, “You poured the soda into the swimming pool, and then what happened?”

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I started pouring, and there was this... face.”

“What, at the window? Somebody was watching you?”

“No, in the pool. A woman’s face, there in the soda.”

Now that topped the weirdometer, even for Jimmy. “Right. You’re sleep-deprived, and like you said, you were on sleeping pills. People see things.”

“Whatever. Anyway, it freaked me out,” he said.

“Understandably.”

He got quieter. “Her lips started moving. She was saying, ‘help me.’”

“Hang on—You know it wasn’t real, right? Unless... Is your ‘gift’ giving you visuals now?”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “What could I do?” he said. “The more I poured, the more of her there was, until there was this… this beautiful woman standing in the middle of the pool. She was real, Alex. She had sort of blue-tinted skin and long green hair, and she reached out of the pool and called me her hero and kissed me, and—Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m starting the engine. And unless I hear something of the not-crazy variety come out of your mouth in the next five seconds I’m turning around.”

“Wait, Alex. Don’t freak out on me.”

“We’re way past that. Look, it’s probably just sleep deprivation combined with Ambien, but we gotta get you looked at.”

Jimmy grabbed my sleeve. Not like he was trying to pull my hand off the steering wheel, but just to emphasize his words. “Alex,” he said. “Please. I’m not crazy.”

“Maybe not, but something’s wrong. What kind of a friend would I be if I—”

“Okay, okay” he said, “Just for argument’s sake, let’s say I was hallucinating, and that it’s from not sleeping because of this compulsion. What’s the fastest way to fix that? The only way to fix it?”

I sighed. “Seeing it through.”

“So see this through with me, give me a day or two to catch up on sleep, and if you still think I’ve lost it, I’ll go to a doctor or whatever you want. I mean, come on, it’s a few hours of driving is all, and then we’re done with it, I promise. Deal?”

I rolled my eyes and climbed into the back to stretch out by the kiddie pool. “Damn it, Jimmy, there’d better be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.”

It only took a few minutes for me to doze off. I couldn’t have been asleep for long, though, when I woke to shrill ringing. Jimmy jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and started the engine. We threw gravel getting back on the road.

“What the—” I looked back at the service station. The front window was broken out. “Jimmy! What did you do?”

“I couldn’t wait. She can’t hold out much longer.”

I climbed toward the front. “That’s it. You’ve lost it, man. Pull over right now. If you pay for the damages they’ll probably let you off with probation.”

Jimmy’s voice was choked and he was blinking back tears. “You don’t understand. She’s dying. There weren’t any security cameras, and I left money on the counter to pay for the window. If I drive fast we won’t get caught.”

“We? I didn’t do anything except ride along with a crazy man!” I reached for the steering wheel, but we were already going fast enough that I’d probably flip us if I grabbed it. I got out my phone. “Pull over now or I’m calling the police.”

I wasn’t really going to. As far gone as he was, he might try to outrun them, and things would only get worse.

He called my bluff. “Go ahead. If you’re still my friend, though, wait until it’s over.”

There wasn’t much of an alternative. About an hour later Jimmy turned onto a dirt road. When we got to the end of it and bounced to a stop I grabbed the keys from the ignition.

“Help me with the bottles,” Jimmy said, “The spring is just a little ways off.” He unbuckled himself and moved toward the back. I grabbed his arm, and he looked me square in the face. I have never seen him so determined. “What are you going to do, Alex? Hit me again?”

Ouch. I let go, and Jimmy’s expression softened. “I know you think I’m crazy, but I can prove I’m not.”

He started pulling stoppers out of the water bottles. “I hope she’s up to this. She’s in pretty bad shape, or I’d have tried it earlier.”

I had to clench my jaw to keep from responding. Jimmy un-stoppered the last bottle and leaned over it murmuring. “I know,” he said, “But we have to prove to my friend that you’re real before he’ll help us get you home.” He turned to me. “She wants you to know that not all of this is her. Some of it’s just regular water and soda.”

“Great,” I said, “Tell her those bottles don’t make her butt look big. Honest.”

Jimmy scowled at me, and I was about to say something more when the water moved. Trickles from each bottle snaked up and joined to form a translucent face like in, what was that movie... The Abyss or something. It—correction, she—stuck out her tongue at me before turning to Jimmy with an expression of such adoration that it broke my heart. The sun was rising, and it glinted off of her in reds and golds. Jimmy touched her lips with his fingers and she kissed them, then lost cohesion and flowed back into her bottles.

All I could do was stare.

“Well,” Jimmy said, “Am I crazy?”

Either she was real, or Jimmy’s insanity was contagious. I preferred to believe the former. I had to work my mouth a bit before anything came out. There isn’t much to say when you witness the impossible. “What are we waiting for,” I growled, “Let’s get her home.”

We used the deflated kiddie pool as a sled where we could, and carried the bottles one by one over the rough spots until we reached the spring.

Jimmy finished filling me in on the way. The woman’s name was D’lahna, and she was a naiad, a water nymph. She’d been exploring “Overhill,” as she called it, when she somehow got stuck in a soda bottling plant. She wouldn’t have lasted much longer if not for Jimmy and his gift.

We poured first the bottles, then the final case of soda, into the spring, and D’lahna rose up out of it more beautiful than you can imagine. And very, very naked. I stood staring until Jimmy punched me in the arm. “Hey. Mine.”

“Sorry.” I averted my eyes. Kind of. Hey, she might have been my best friend’s girl, but she was gorgeous. I tried not to gape at her, and searched desperately for a way to cover the awkwardness. How do you make small talk with a mythological creature?

“So, uh...” I said, “Sorry about the whole thinking you were imaginary thing. Nice place you’ve got here. Love what you’ve done with it. Seems like a quiet neighborhood.”

D’lahna laughed. If you’ve never heard a nymph’s voice, I can’t really describe it to you except to say it sort of... sparkles. “Your friend is funny,” she said to Jimmy, then looked at me. “This isn’t where I live, Alex, but it will get us there.”

It took me a moment to process that. “Us?”

I turned to Jimmy, who had just stripped naked. (Now there’s a sight I hope to never see again.) He grinned at me. “I’m going with her,” he said.

“But you... She... You can’t...”

“It’s okay,” Jimmy put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be in touch.”

They offered to take me with them, but instead I watched as Jimmy took D’lahna’s hand and waded into the middle of the spring with her. They turned translucent and flowed into the water.

It was a long drive home, and I thought about the two of them all the way.

Two weeks later I turned on the kitchen faucet, and out came an invitation to Jimmy and D’lahna’s engagement party. They’ve already set me up with a date—a wood nymph friend of D’lahna’s who, Jimmy thinks, just might break my losing streak. He mentioned a possible job offer, too.

"You," Evan starts, and takes a deep hiccuping breath, "you said once that you thought maybe my friends weren't always the nicest they could be to me--"

Tommy does remember saying that. Evan had blown it off then, excusing behavior from some of the 118 as he told stories of things they had been through.

"--I didn't want to hear it, then." Evan finishes. He runs his hand through his hair, looks around like someone is watching them. His eyes track back to Tommy's. "I think I'm ready to hear it, now."

Tommy feels shell shocked for a moment, not knowing quite what to say when your ex-boyfriend shows up following what's gotta be the worst few weeks of his life and suddenly wants to hear about how his friends frankly are kind of jerks sometimes.

Evan fidgets in the silence, nervous. He begins talking.

"And, and I know, Tommy, that I don't have the right to come here after what I said. But I think you might be the first person in a long time that has--has thought about me. Really thought about me and how I feel, and I got in this fight with Eddie and he said I make everything about myself, and then he brought Chris from El Paso and they're in my house now and I had to get out before I--"

"Evan," Tommy interrupts gently. He holds out a hand across the threshold, "Do you want to come in?"

Evan stops, blinking back new dampness in his eyes. He nods quickly before agreeing verbally.

"Th-thank you, Tommy," Evan whispers, grabbing on to Tommy's hand and letting himself be pulled inside.

He stumbles a bit and Tommy catches him; and maybe it's the exhaustion that's been dogging him since the night at the lab, but Tommy affords himself the comfort of gathering Evan up into his arms, tucking him into Tommy's body as much as one could with someone of Evan's physique.

Evan seemed to go boneless, choking back an unmistakable sob and burying his face into Tommy's shoulder.

"Eddie came at me," Buck says shakily, mumbled and nearly inaudible, "it was the first time that...I thought he might actually hit me."

"I'll kill him," Tommy says simply and without thought, knowing he meant it.

Evan snorts unattractively at that, pulling out of Tommy's shoulder and looking him in the eyes.

"I know you would." Evan says simply.

"I don't know if you've noticed, but I've already committed two crimes for you, Evan Buckley. What's a little manslaughter?"

Evan laughs outright at that, wet and still a little miserable but a grin comes with it. It falls a bit though, and his eyes skitter around before speaking again.

"Can we...can we talk? Please?" Evan asks, biting at his lip.

Tommy knows how this is going to go. He knew it when he answered Evan's call three weeks ago, he knew it when he watched Evan break down on those monitors, he knew it when he saw the detached stoicism Evan maintained with a white knuckle grip at the funeral.

"How about..." Tommy says, pulling away but keeping their hands together, "I make you a sandwhich and you drink a glass of water, and then we get into bed and then, if you're still awake, we can talk?"

Evan breathes out, and hesitant smile lighting up his face.

"Yes--yes, please," he says in a rush, nodding again, "I would--I would love that, Tommy."

Tommy takes a chance then, he pulls Evan in to his side and presses his lips to Evan's birthmark. He feels something within himself settle, and he hears Evan sigh and feels his shoulders relax.

"Fuck, Evan, please," Tommy bites out, not even a sentence. Buck has been moving torturously slow, feeling the burn in his thighs as he moves up, holds, down, holds, grinds, and does it all again.

Tommy probably doesn't deserve it, but Buck feels something harsh and powerful rise up in him when he sees how he's got Tommy begging for Buck's body--feels something click into place when he realizes that for the first time in weeks he's in control here, totally and absolutely.

Buck bites at his lip hard, closes his eyes and lets his head hang back for a moment. He sits up, Tommy's cock just barely popping through his rim. His eyes open when he hears the groan Tommy lets out, quickly followed by a hiss when he realizes that Buck isn't moving.

"Evan," Tommy says, trying sweet. It gets him nowhere, Buck just tilting his head and looking down at him. Tommy huffs, narrows his eyes and tries again.

"Evan, move." It's forceful this time, and it's closer to what Buck wants, but it just isn't enough. He holds his position and when Tommy moves to shoot a hand up and grab Buck's hips, Buck's hands grab at his wrists and pin them to the bed.

Tommy thrashes, and Buck knows the grin that takes over his mouth isn't exactly a nice one. He knows that Tommy can overpower him, that he's got a stronger core and a better eye for grappling, but he also knows that he can't fully get out from under Buck's hold without risking hurting himself or Buck.

"Evan, fucking move or I'll--"

"You'll what, Daddy?" Buck says, forcing his tone to go bored and unaffected. His thighs are starting to shake, but he's going to hold this until he goads Tommy into what he wants.

This was always the problem with you two, a voice in Buck's head says, never just saying what you want.

Buck's too far gone, too deep into feeling like he has a say in what happens to him right now, he feels drunk on it. Buck presses Tommy's wrists tighter and watches his eyes flare open wider.

"That's how this is going to be?" Tommy says lowly, dangerous in a way that excites Buck.

Nothing like feeling afraid of Eddie in kitchen that was only his for a month and a half.

Buck makes deliberate eye contact with Tommy, stares him down and slowly loosens his grip, trailing his fingers down Tommy's arms, skating his blunt nails down Tommy's chest, catching on his nipples. Tommy never looks away, and he doesn't move his arms from where they still lay where Buck pinned them.

"That's how this is going to be." Buck says, clearly and without hesitation, feeling like his whole body is shaking now.

"God, you--" Tommy says, cutting himself off with a harsh breath out. For a moment Buck thinks that he's read this wrong, that he's finally asked for too much, that he's gone and fucked up the last thing that could have made him feel okay, even for one afternoon.

And then he's flipped so fast that he doesn't even realize it's happening until his back hits the mattress. His breath rushes out of him, and he thinks he tries to say something, but any words he could have gotten out are stolen when Tommy grips his thighs harshly and yanks them up over Tommy's, cock sliding in with no resistance.

Buck lets out a long whine, keening and involuntary, and it takes him a moment to realize that Tommy is fucking into him with short and pounding thrusts that jumble Buck's brain and slam against his prostate repeatedly.

"Fucking hell, you come here and tell me you're fucking leaving and then this is how you act? By being a fucking brat?"

Despite how mean the words should be, Buck feels them settle over him like a blanket, like a lap bar on a roller-coaster keeping him in his seat, like the only thing that's tethering him to his body right now.

His orgasm hits him like a freight train, ripping a near-scream out of his throat, Tommy never stopping through it all. Buck thinks he whites out a bit, thinks he might be somewhere else for a moment before Tommy's biting down more gently than he deserves where Buck's shoulder meets his neck and letting out a vibrating moan that Buck feels in the walls of his heart.

"God damn you make me fucking crazy," Tommy is telling him before he's grabbed by the back of the neck and hauled into a kiss that barely qualifies as one, Buck unable to get his lips to do anything but form a perfect 'O' around the sounds Tommy is forcing out of him, "you can't just leave, Evan, how are you gonna get fucked this well somewhere else, huh? How are you gonna get this needy fucking hole filled hours away from me? Didn't even let me put a condom on and you think you can just leave after this?"

Buck thinks his mouth is trying to say something but only moans fall out of it, going breathy every time Tommy buries himself to the hilt. He feels wild with it, like he's just crash landed back into his ribcage and is ricocheting around in it.

Buck's floating for a long time after that, or maybe it was a few seconds, he's not sure. He feels good, so good in a way that he hasn't in months. Nothing bad can touch him there, only Tommy's hands, softer than before; gently easing Buck's legs off of his hips, rubbing down Buck's bad leg, reaching up to card through his too-long hair.

"--Evan?" Tommy's voice breaks through and Buck realizes he's probably been trying to get his attention for a while.

"I, uh, sorry," is all Buck can say, looking up at Tommy and swallowing thickly. His throat feels raw and his eyes burn.

"Yeah, that's what you've been saying. Why are you sorry, Evan?" Tommy's face is concerned, his eyebrows drawn together and mouth twisted.

"I said I'm sorry already?" Buck asks, trying to remember but coming up short.

"That's all you've been saying for about five minutes."

"Oh, so--"

"Don't say you're sorry. Tell me what's wrong."

Buck looks away from him then, feeling raw. He blinks a few times and feels mortification settle in for a moment when he realizes that he's been crying.

"I don't-don't--" Buck says, trying to come up with anything that will salvage this one last moment with Tommy, "I don't know. Nothing. Everything."

Tommy's hand comes up to cup Buck's jaw and turn his head, and Buck doesn't fight it even when it brings his eyes right back to Tommy's.

"I'm sorry, Evan. I shouldn't have asked you questions like that when you're coming out of a drop. I'm going to hold you now, and then I'm going to feed you, and then we can talk, and I won't be mad no matter what you tell me."

Buck waits for a flare of annoyance to bubble up in him just like it has towards everyone else who has tried to handle him lately, but it never comes. It's so different, it's to him and not about him, it's reassurance instead of patronization.

"O-okay," Buck manages, wobbly but there all the same.

"I told you I was there, I told you I was sorry."

Evan nods, eyes wide. He's standing just a half step away from Tommy, breathing just a little labored.

"What else?"

"I said, uh, 'you did everything you could'."

Evan nods, and his gloved hand reaches out for Tommy. Tommy lets him, still confused and trying to keep up.

"Bobby made me leave. He made me leave him to die, and I don't know if I could have gotten off that floor if you didn't come for me."

"Evan--"

"No, please, I need to...I need to say this. I was devastated, and I'm still devastated. And you picked me up, you told me you were there for me. You told me that I did everything I could to save him."

"Of course I did." Tommy says, simply and without exaggeration. "Because you did."

Buck nods seriously, and his expression darkens for a moment.

"I have spent every minute since you put me in an ambulance that night trying to be there for everyone else, like Bobby wanted me to be. I've tried to be okay. And you know what my bes-" Evan's voice cracks, he purses his lips a moment in frustration and grief, "you know what my best friend said? That I was making Bobby's death all about myself. That everyone felt like they don't know how to 'handle' me."

Evan looks gutted at his own words, biting his lip but still looking right at Tommy.

"Eddie was never your competition, Tommy. He never will be. Because he's telling me that I didn't do enough to save Bobby, that I make everything into the tragedy of Evan Buckley."

Tommy feels rage well up within him, hot and volatile. He connects his back roughly with the truck behind him to ground himself and lets Evan finish.

"But you--" Evan says, voice cut down to a whisper, eyes blinking rapidly as they water, "you came and got me. Before that, you came when I called. And I have a hell of a lot to apologize for, but Tommy I have never felt anything like what I feel for you before. If you'll let me, I swear to you that every day I will show you how much you mean to me. How much I love you. I will make sure you never think you have competition again."

Tommy swallows thickly, struck by the speech. Evan patiently waits for him to answer, his cheeks getting more red by the second.

"I'm gonna kick Diaz's ass," Tommy says, squeezing Buck's hand, "and I'm going to kiss the hell out of you."

A smile breaks across Evan's face, and it's beautiful in the dying sunlight around them.

"Not necessarily in that order." Tommy says, and grabs Evan by the turnouts, smashing their lips together in a kiss that's definitely going to get him another talking to if they're caught. He tries to keep it brief enough to avoid that, but Evan makes a disappointed sound that stops him from pulling away completely.

"I love you too," Tommy mumbles against his lips, "of course I do. How could I not?"

Their moment is soundly popped then by Gerrard yelling out "Buckley!", and Tommy sighs before reaching out to straighten Evan's turnouts and get a good look at him. They can't help but smile at each other.

"So," Evan tells him, head tilting and mouth smirking in the way he knows always got exactly what he wanted from Tommy, "what are you doing Saturday?"

Tommy scoffs theatrically but it doesn't get rid of the smile on his face.

"Buckley, Evan. Thirty-four, been at the 118 since finishing the academy, a bit of a hot head, danger magnet..." Captain DeLuca trails off then, observing Buck. Buck tries not to let the dread in his stomach physically pull him down in his seat. So much for making a good impression--"and coming to the 122 with glowing reviews from three of the best damn firefighters I know."

That gets Buck to look up from where his gaze was slowly dropping to the desk, meeting DeLuca's eyes in surprise.

"I-what?" Buck says intelligently, cringing in his mind at his own inability to come across even a bit confident.

"Anyone ever tell you that I started at the 118? Chim says you've got the most heart he's ever seen, and that the only reason he's letting you go is because he can't stand to see it keep bleeding everywhere. Hen tells me that you're gonna be a hell of a Captain someday--leaving us all in the dust."

Buck feels his eyes stinging, not quite knowing what to do with all of this, feeling just as overwhelmed as he did when he walked out of the 118 five days ago with a voice horse from arguing with the very people who seemed to have talked so positively about him to his new captain.

"A-and the third?" Buck asks, not sure who else would have known both Captain DeLuca and Buck well enough to supply another glowing reccomendation. Lucy, maybe?

Captian DeLuca smirks and looks up at the wall to the left of his desk. Buck follows his line of sight and feels a throb of complicated emotion pulse through him. There's a picture there, of Captain DeLuca--much younger but still clearly him, with an arm around a hauntingly familiar man.

"The third is, in my personal opinion, an idiot on many fronts. But I believe him when he says you're all courage, integrity, and helping people through and through."

"I don't--"

"Yeah, he didn't actually want me to tell you that he gushed about how 'amazingly competent' you are for seventeen minutes straight. And you know, how could I break my best friend's trust like that? Even when I think he made a hell of a mistake and just needs to stop being a damn chicken and talk to this supposedly fantastic firefighter who had put in for a transfer and that I needed to fist fight Mehta for?"

Buck is stunned, eyes still catching on Tommy's younger face in the picture, they way his smile looks genuine under his gelled down curls.

"You didn't actually fist fight Captain Mehta did you?" Is all Buck can say, stupidly, "I mean--no I didn't mean that. Um. I mean, thank you. For this opportunity, Captain DeLuca."

"I metaphorically fought Mehta, but don't you worry about that. Let's get you introduced to the crew first, and after shift's over we can hit the sandwhich shop across the street and plan out how we'll corner Tommy."

Captain DeLuca gets up then, a whirlwind of words and motion that Buck is hopelessly trying to comprehend. He walks out the door at a brisk pace and Buck's eyes travel back to that picture.

"Buckley! Let's go!"

Buck scrambles to follow, heart beating fast and grin cracking across his lips.

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