#sloth writes

Finding in comfort in silence had never come easy for Evan. Something about it all always reminded him of life at home with his parents; people living in a house that sprawled wide enough that Margaret could put herself far enough away that she couldn’t hear him. It didn’t matter how much noise he made at what age, unless he was severely injured or deathly ill, little could be done to draw her attention in his direction. The fact that Phillip opted to cater to his wife’s whims only made the silence that much louder. 

It was hard to live through an entire childhood like that. Granted, Maddie was there for the first twelve years—and that helped—but mostly, it was like ambient static trying to pierce through a veil too thick to achieve much. Once he was of cognizant age—maybe four or five—it didn’t do much beyond provide him a modicum of comfort. Sometimes it did a little more than others, but he was never entirely unaware of the lack of care pointed in his direction. 

For so long, he’d been sure there would never be a way to settle into it. He chased down situations in his adolescence and adulthood that brought riffs of noise in some form or another. Football and cheerleaders in high school helped fill gaps in sharp, short bursts. Then there was the failed year of college, where he blew through his student aid trying to be the life of the party and everybody’s best friend. Those spaces were great for making him feel good temporarily, but ultimately, the silence always returned before long. 

And then there were the lost years he spent traveling across the country—and then the world—trying to fit in somewhere else. The problem with those situations was that inevitably, they were even more extreme versions of the blips that college and high school had given him. A dude ranch was fun to learn about and spend time on, but inevitably, the end of the day always came, and it turned out ranchers like their silence at the end of the night. Working construction brought some semblance of noise and camaraderie when he was on the job, but mostly he just ended up feeling even more lonely when he climbed into the jeep at the end of each shift and turned in to the studio apartment he was renting at the time. 

Peru was fun, and the girls were great, but ultimately it was almost the worst of them all. Beyond the tourists he served during the day, not everyone spoke English in the town he lived in, so the only way to fill the silence was to drink with those tourists. And granted, he’d been 24 and single, so he had the energy and tolerance of a young adult to hang, but it never filled the void. 

And then there was his time with the Navy SEALs. 

His deep dives had made him a great fit for recon, but the regimented living, down to the minute, along with the intense silence that was required so much of the time, made it the hardest option of all. Never mind the fact that he didn’t fit into their mold of a Yes Man robot; he couldn’t handle just how much time those guys spent in silence, even if it was for the sake of whatever mission they were on. Evan Buckley was many things—funny, likable, bubbly, engaging—but he definitely wasn’t cut out for a life of silence. 

Joining the FD had made a dent in all of that quiet. Landing at the 118 felt like someone had pierced a needle through the veil that he’d been shrouded in through his entire adult life. He was grateful for it, and slowly, over time, Bobby Nash and his team helped dig through that needle mark until there was a hole. At first, it was only big enough to press his ear up against, and he almost burned that bridge to the ground by acting out recklessly on the job, but ultimately, Bobby’s hand guided him. Like a puppy in obedience school, the sudden burst of noise in an otherwise painfully quiet life had set Evan off. He needed to be guided back down, able to understand that the noise could be embraced. 

He loved the noise after that. He didn’t particularly like when someone joined in—ever the puppy—but with a little guidance, he could be reminded that a new person didn’t necessarily mean bad. So he embraced people like Taylor, Eddie, Lucy. His heart found space for them, equally giving to each over time. Sometimes people left or transferred, but his enduring at the 118 ensured that it was never silent. 

Over time, he learned that there were different levels of noise, and he loved each of them for different reasons. On the job, the noise made him feel useful and like he was doing something that mattered. And then there was the time he spent with Chris and Eddie. Getting to be a part of Chris’ life wasn’t something he ever could’ve fathomed before he’d met Eddie, but getting to share in Chris’ childhood and the way he saw the world taught Evan more than most people could figure out in a lifetime. 

And then there was Jee-Yun, and eventually, Nash. Both brought a love into his life that he’d never expected. He spent his days walking through fire, but when Jee-Yun was born, for the first time he understood why someone would actively walk through fire without turnouts for another human being. 

The thing was, in all the noise and the comfort that it brought after so many years of quiet, he’d never expected to find anyone or thing that would make him appreciate the silence, let alone want it back. 

And then he’d walked into a hangar late one Tuesday night and shook Tommy Kinard’s hand. 

. . . 

That first handshake had been indescribable for him, for so long. Most people talk about a shock, or a spark, or something like all of that when they meet their person. For Evan, it was none of that. Instead, it was an intense hush that fell over him. People were still talking, sure, but the world had gone quiet for him, all except for Tommy. And while the pilot was still grinning at him mid-introduction, something had shifted for Evan. He hadn’t been sure what it was—wouldn’t figure it out for another two and a half weeks—but the world had turned on its proverbial axis. 

Once he’d figured it out though, understood what it was about Tommy that had shaken him at his core, he found that he liked it. Suddenly, instead of being in constant need of the the noise that his team and loved ones brought with their company, he longed for the quiet. It was like he was a tide and Tommy was a full moon, pulling him in closer with each arrival. 

This silence didn’t hurt, he’d told Dr. Copeland about four months into their relationship. While the noise of his life helped silence the anxious and lonely voices inside his head after so many years of solitude, when he’d arrived in LA, the quiet that Tommy brought along with him was even better than that. He didn’t just quiet the anxiety and the loneliness. He pulled Evan in like he was piecing him together via telekinesis. Piece by piece, he became whole under Tommy’s gaze. He understood himself better because he was safe to take in the thoughts that came in the silence Tommy brought him. He didn’t always think nice things about himself, but there was something about the way Tommy looked at him that quieted those voices. Maybe Evan Buckley didn’t always love Evan Buckley, but Evan Buckley definitely liked the way Tommy Kinard loved Evan Buckley. 

And then Tommy had left, and while some of the quiet remained, it no longer silenced those thoughts. He did his best to quiet them through other endeavors—baking, attempting to dip a toe back into dating—but never really worked out well. There had been that one, brief, blissful until it was painful one-night-stand, and that had brought silence for a few precious second again. But then, just like he had been already once before, Tommy was gone, taking the safety of his silence with him. 

. . . 

Bobby’s death had been like an off-key elementary school orchestra’s first practice, suddenly bursting into that silence, except none of the metaphorical kids were trained to play those instruments, and so mostly it just hurt and sent him reeling. It was like a someone had kicked Evan square in the chest. 

The funeral had been the worst. Tommy had been there, and along with him came his ability to quiet the noise in Evan’s head, but the problem was that at that point, the only noise Evan could hear were all the things Bobby had ever told him. His death had still been so fresh at that point that the firefighter desperately wanted to lock those pieces of his former captain away inside his chest and keep Bobby Nash there. He could keep Bobby alive that way, if he just kept those memories on a loop and didn’t let them go.

In the months afterward, he thought about how he should’ve called Tommy back, but he feared that silence for so long—feared that it would quiet the pieces of Bobby he was struggling to cling to as days turned into weeks, and then into months. 

There was a day he’d seen Tommy at a scene, some five months after the lab incident. They were working a three-alarm and Tommy was on ground crew. Chim had been pushing this whole thing at the firehouse that Bobby was always staunch about, and it felt like nails on a chalkboard. Chim hadn’t figured out his own rhythm quite yet, and Evan didn’t want to lose Bobby’s way because Chim was using it to model his own leadership. 

When he’d seen Tommy at that scene, it had been like their first meeting, if only for a few seconds. Across the scene some hundred or so yards away, Tommy was standing with his back to Evan, drinking water and shaking out his curls before he put his helmet back on. The world was quiet for mere seconds. But in those seconds, he also forgot the way Bobby’s voice sounded as he talked about proper storage for Halligans, and that realization had gutted him. 

He’d sobbed about it later, in the safety of his own bed. 

. . . 

If Bobby’s death was like a bad orchestra practice, the weeks after New Mexico were the equivalent of that orchestra putting on a concert. In the near-year since Bobby’s death, he’d found a way to cope somehow. Even though he was slowly and surely losing pieces of Bobby, he also retained others. From old videos recorded on phones and video cameras, to shared stories among the LAFD and beyond, to Evan’s own memories, they indeed found ways to keep Bobby alive. Evan found a way to settle into the noise and embrace silence again.

Zane and Jade had been a brief foray into what that could feel like again, although the silence they brought wasn’t nearly as good as Tommy’s. 

Then again, it turned out the best silence of all wash that which came from the use of opioids. Suddenly, he found himself chasing that silence down with the determination of a cheetah on the prowl with a prey in its sights. He longed for the quiet that the opioids prescribed to him with a vengeance, because they quieted everything. 

They quieted the loss of Bobby, and his soon-to-arrive death anniversary. They quieted the pain of the car accident, and the inability to be Derek, let alone to survive, not having the kind of parents who so loved their child that they tried to replace him. 

They quieted the thoughts in his head that he’d never been able to stop after lab, where he wondered if Tommy had ever seen a future for them. And if not, what had been the point? 

. . . 

He’s been sober four and a half months the first time he wakes up in bed with someone else again. 

Sun is streaming across his face. It had been hot the night before, and so Tommy had opened the window before they’d slipped back beneath the sheets and fallen asleep, naked and curled against each other. 

He’d been three weeks sober the first time he called Tommy. During his first few days after withdrawal that he’d been cognizant again, he had filled his schedule in every way possible. He went to meetings—so many meetings—just to keep himself on the straight and narrow. He talked a little bit, but he’d listened even more. He journaled a lot, and talked even more in therapy. He talked to Frank, and he talked to Dr. Copeland. He made a few friends at meetings and, even though it was early, he found a sponsor. The guy was a former SEAL of all things, and they bonded over that. He told Evan about how he could see the determination to cling to the need for sobriety because of the job, but that he had to have more than that to hold onto. 

They talked about the noise, and the silence. And eventually he asked Evan when he’d found a way to be most comfortable—outside of using opioids—in the balance of it all. 

“You never know what could happen. Maybe he has moved on. Maybe he hasn’t. But you have the tools to get through one side of that, and you know what lies on the other side of the other.” 

He did. He had people he could call, and people he could turn to. 

And he knew that Tommy had an enduring love for the people he cared about. He knew that unless the other man had decided to go scorched earth about Evan, that he’d likely answer his call. That they could probably meet for coffee, and that Tommy might even be open to being friends while Evan worked through his sobriety. 

It still took him a few weeks to actually pick up the phone. 

And just like his sponsor had promised, Tommy had picked up the phone. He listened, and they talked. He told Evan about his own struggles, and they found a common ground in one another. They weren’t afraid of each other anymore, and there was something to seeing one another tarnished. Neither was so shiny anymore. 

If anything, it ensured the love that Evan had been so afraid to admit a year and a half earlier that much easier to admit and embrace. 

And so they started slow—slower than they had the first time around. There were dates that ended in a kiss good night on each other’s porches. There were phone calls that extended into the wee hours, and I love you’s that were exchanged long before they hit second base for the first time again. It was four months before they finally gave in and had sex again for the first time, and another two weeks after that before Tommy finally spent the night. 

Tommy is staring down at him when Evan tilts his chin up. He’s got that look on his face—the one he only gives Evan—and it warms the younger man’s chest. It’s quiet. He wants to sleep more in the safety of this cocoon. He wants to do this all the time, but they aren’t there yet. 

“We haven’t even had an overnight yet,” Tommy had said the night before when Evan had tried to approach the subject. 

“Only because I don’t think I’ll tolerate your going home very well,” Evan had countered. 

The conversation after that had been complicated. Lots of grimaces and pushing back in his chair by Tommy while Evan threw a lot of information at him. It wasn’t very much unlike their first discussion about living together, except this time Evan wasn’t excited. This time, he was pragmatic, telling Tommy all the reasons that he was sure that it was the right move for them. 

“I’m not saying tomorrow,” he’d said at the end of his long-winded speech. “But sometime sooner than later. I know I said once to you ‘why be apart when we can be together’, and all I’m saying is, we found out why. We suck at it.” 

Tommy had laughed at that comment, but he’d admitted that Evan wasn’t wrong. They’d been miserable apart, and even when they went months without talking, neither was far from the other’s mind. They still fit into each other’s life like two sides of the same coin. 

“Let’s just see how things go for now,” Tommy had said hours later, when Evan was strewn across his chest, sated and limp in the post-sex afterglow. “Not call it a yes or no, slap a label on who or where. Just…give it time, sharing space.” 

“And then decide the rest later?” Evan had murmured, fighting off sleep to ensure they were on the same pace. 

“Yeah,” Tommy had said, nodding while he fussed with Evan’s curls. It was serving to make Evan even more tired. But for that moment, it had been enough. 

He didn’t know what the future held; neither of them did. But he knew that wherever Tommy was, was where he wanted to be. He wanted to fall asleep next to, and wake up beside, the pilot every day. If they didn’t want to put a permanent address on that yet, that was fine. Inevitably, it was always only about this. 

He yanks at his wrists, whining again as the cuffs bite. It doesn’t take much for him to feel wetness and know they’re bleeding.

The wind shutters outside, making the shed door slap against the lock keeping it closed. He flinches and jumps, stilling himself and half-expecting to hear the familiar noise of the door being unlocked. When it doesn’t come, he forces himself to breathe through the way his heart is still racing. He closes his eyes and thinks of baking cookies with Jee, of nap time with baby Nash. He thinks about the last time he and Christopher had a game night. If he has to go out here in the middle of nowhere, he’d like it to be this way.

When his heart rate has returned to normal, his eyes open again, drifting around the room. There’s scratching outside the shed that he’s gotten used to. He thinks it’s wild rabbits, but he can’t be sure. All he knows is that he’s pretty sure it’s not rats. He’d spent the first few nights terrified that that’s what he heard scratching at the walls, and that they were going to get inside and turn him into their meal.

There’s a window up high, off toward one of the corners. He can’t see much. There’s a tree of some kind blocking most of his eye-line, though he can tell if the sun is up or down based on how much light gets through.

He knows it’s getting darker. That means his captor will probably be back soon, one more time before sleeping for the night.

Evan doesn’t want to be awake for that.

He tries tugging on his wrists again, wincing at the way the metal and his blood have stuck together. There’s nothing that he can really gain from trying to get free in this position, but survival instinct keeps him from being able to stop.

As he’s tugging, he hears the familiar sound of a chopper outside, and his heart sinks.

It’s the third time he can recall hearing one since this all started.

The first time he’d heard it, he’d been so sure that Tommy was coming for him. He’s not entirely sure why, other than the fact that the pilot had come when Chimney called to save Bobby and Athena, and then he’d been just as quick to get into a bird and come to Chim’s rescue again when everything happened at the lab. All Evan had had to say was that he needed help, and Tommy was already on his way.

He hates knowing so much time has passed since the last time they talked. He hates knowing that he never called Tommy to resolve things, and to tell him he was sorry.

He hates that he never called him when things started to stop feeling so heavy after Bobby’s death.

Tommy is a good person, and he deserves so much better than how Evan has treated him. It’s that alone that serves the point of why Evan can understand the pilot wouldn’t—and shouldn’t—come looking for him.

He closes his eyes as he listens to the whipping of the blades, and he can remember happy moments. Tommy making fake mouth static in the LAFD chopper. The one singular flying lesson he’d given Evan before deciding that the younger man’s ADHD was too out of pocket to let him man a flying object before making him practice in a simulator a few times.

They never did make it to the simulator, though.

There were better moments than that. The first time Tommy kissed him, and the first time they were intimate together. The way Tommy both encouraged Evan’s determination to learn everything at a speed run, but always reminded him that there was no rush.

There was this look Tommy had gotten in his eyes after a while, anytime Evan did something specific. He wasn’t entirely sure what invoked it, but every now and then he’d catch Tommy looking at him that way. It usually ended in a kiss that made Evan the closest to whole as he ever had.

Tears slip out the sides of his eyes, and he changes his mind. If he has to die out here, that is the last thing he wants to remember. That look in Tommy’s eyes.

Eventually, the sound of the chopper drifts away, and several more tears run down his face.

The house is quiet when Tommy comes in. He’s not surprised—Evan doesn’t want noise or light when he’s like this—but it still feels out-of-sorts. 

He goes through his after-work ritual, tossing dirty clothes into a hamper, slipping out of the jeans and ‘nicer’ shirt he wore to work yesterday, into his sweats and a loose hoodie. He might go work on Evan’s truck in the garage in a while if he feels up to it, but mostly he just wants to check in on his boyfriend. 

He sips a glass of water in the kitchen as he peers through the pulled curtains over the sink. The sun is glaring for late morning, and Storm Shadow mewls from the floor as she pads over to her food bowl. Tommy sets his glass down and reaches for her along with the bowl. She meows at him and then clambers up his shoulder as he sets the bowl on the counter. She’s patient as he fills the bowl with a mix of wet and dry food, only jumping back down when he finishes. He lets her eat on the counter, which Evan likes to tell him is uncivilized, but he figures they aren’t required to eat on the floor, why should their cat? 

He finishes his water as she eats, petting her occasionally. She purrs, and when she’s finished, she leans up against his torso as she rubs her body against him. He picks her back up and sets her inside the pouch the hoodie’s chest before setting the dirty dishes aside to deal with later. 

“Gotta be quiet,” he tells her as they cross the house. She mews at him before shifting in the pouch, getting comfortable. 

When he reaches the bedroom, he slides the door open slowly. It’s even darker in there with the blackout curtains, and hardly any noise save for the white noise machine running quietly on his side of the bed. He’d turned it off when he left the day before, but sometimes Evan turns it on just to drown out the general street noise. 

He slides the blankets back and feels around the bed, just to make sure he won’t be sitting on Evan’s arm, before sliding in. Evan groans softly at the movement, but as soon as Tommy is settled into space, the younger firefighter moves toward him and Storm Shadow hops out of the pouch to move down the bed. She settles between their legs. 

“Hi sweetheart,” Tommy whispers as softly as he can. “How are you?” 

Evan grumbles a sound, of which the general tone seems to be still not good. Tommy frowns, but refrains from touching him. He doesn’t want to do anything to make Evan feel worse. 

“Can I get you anything?” He asks. 

There’s patting in his direction, and then Evan pulls one of Tommy’s arms across his torso. Tommy smiles, stifles his own laugh, and nods, muttering an ‘okay’ silently to himself. He shifts on the bed and curls up around Evan, spooning him in. Storm Shadow leaps over Evan’s legs and walks up the bed, curling back up in the space his curved body leaves behind. 

- - - 

Tommy wakes up to groaning. He blinks wearily, turning his wrist to where his smart watch is still on. It’s barely been three hours. 

The bed dips, and Evan slides back into the blankets, curling toward him quickly. Tommy wraps his arms around the younger man, kisses his forehead gently. Evan only whimpers in response. 

“Can I do anything?” Tommy asks him. 

“Take me out back with a hunting rifle,” Evan murmurs, his words slightly slurred. 

Tommy frowns. “Maybe something a little less permanent?” 

Evan just stays quiet, curled into him. 

Somewhere around ten minutes later, Evan rolls onto his back. Tommy opens his eyes and looks over at him. Evan sniffles, and Tommy reaches out for him, brushing a thumb across his cheek. His fingers come away wet. 

“Sweetheart-..” 

“I hate this,” Evan states. “And I don’t want to do it anymore. And I know it’s just a flare, and it’ll end eventually, but sometimes…” He gestures into the nothingness of the bedroom, and Tommy nods. They’ve had these conversations before. It’s nothing new, and it’s also a consistently ever-present issue. 

“Being chronically ill isn’t fair,” Tommy tells him. “And you’re not wrong for being upset about that.” 

Evan looks over at him as tears roll down his face. “If you’d told me a year ago that this is where I’d be-..” 

“I know,” Tommy answers. “And my hope is that maybe a year from now, you’ll be on the other side of this stretch, and the flares won’t be as bad, or we’ll find a way to combat them better.” 

“I feel like my own body is trying to give up on me,” Evan says. “And I’m so tired of being sick and tired.” 

Tommy nods. He leans over and kisses Evan’s temple, curling up next to him again. Evan lets out a sigh of frustration before eventually settling again. He grips Tommy’s wrist gently where it’s resting against his hip, and the pilot takes that as acknowledgement to move closer. He pulls the blankets closer around them while Storm Shadow crawls across the pillows before settling behind Tommy. 

“I love you,” Evan mutters when he’s settled again. He’s pouty, and for as miserable as he is, Tommy won’t tell him how cute he’s also being.

“I love you too,” he answers back. “And there will be better days.”