AU where Abby is still engaged to Tommy, when she meets Buck. Sparks fly and Abby forgets she's not supposed to do anything about that. Things with Tommy have been… stale, for a long time. Comfortable, but nothing like what she feels when Buck pays her the smallest amount of attention.
Tommy notices. Abby isn't subtle. She mentions Buck, maybe more than a little. Tommy isn't hurt, doesn't ask any of the questions he's supposed to. He's been wanting to end things for a long time, but he fears if he's the one to end it, it will hurt Abby more, than if she was the one to leave.
The more she talks about Buck, the more things begin to crystalise. If Tommy can push her into Buck's arms, maybe things between them can end well. Abby will have a brand new boyfriend and Tommy can… Tommy can figure out what comes next.
Buck shows up at the apartment, unplanned. Maybe Abby sounded sad when they spoke on the phone. Something makes him want to check on her. But Abby is working late, so he meets Tommy. Tommy invites him in, tries to be subtle, but Buck isn't picking up what he's putting down, so he ends up saying it as it is. If Buck has feelings for Abby, he should pursue her. It doesn't go the way Tommy thought it would.
Buck asks what's going on. Are they in an open relationship? Is it a cuck thing? A unicorn thing? Tommy is annoyed that Buck doesn't say sure, Tommy! I'll seduce your fiance, you don't have to tell me twice! No, Buck is inquisitive and wants to know everything. Abby comes home, before Buck can get his answers.
Abby gets flustered and realises what her relationship with Buck might look like. It's a mess of an evening. Buck stays for dinner. Abby spends the whole night trying to convince all three of them that things are decidedly platonic – also after Buck leaves. Tommy says it's OK, even though Abby is clearly frustrated by that. Tommy could at least pretend to be a little bit jealous!
Buck talks to Hen about it. He figures Bobby is a little too traditional to be helpful with whatever is going on. When Hen realises it's Tommy Kinard, she gives Buck his phone number.
Things only get more complicated when the two of them meet up. Tommy tries again. Buck understands Tommy's plan, but he doesn't understand why Tommy doesn't like Abby. Tommy has to patiently explain that he loves Abby, but not in the way she deserves. Buck is little dense, and Tommy sees no other way out, than coming out.
The concept of not liking women at all throws Buck for a momentary loop, but he gets back on track and makes puppy eyes at Tommy, because that sounds really tough. And sad. For everyone involved. Buck agrees to keep seeing Abby and see where things go. He doesn't know her that well yet, so he can't say for certain, but if Tommy promises it's OK, he'd like to spend more time with Abby.
Being with Buck makes Abby light up in ways Tommy has never seen before. Tommy is happy for her. He himself feels lighter.
Until Buck starts checking up on him. Buck's been wanting to kiss Abby for a while now, but he needs to know it's still OK. If Tommy is still OK with it. If Tommy has talked to Abby about it yet. Tommy was hoping he didn't have to, but Buck insists.
It's a difficult conversation, with no clear conclusion. Abby is free to do whatever she wants to do with Buck, but he doesn't label it. Neither one of them do.
It works out, for a while. Abby is happy with Buck, and Tommy is happy for her – for both of them. Unexpectedly, Abby wakes up to the fact that she can do whatever she wants. All these things she figured she was getting too old for. Hearing about all Buck's travels inspires her. Suddenly, Buck and Tommy are single.
They try to make sense of things together. They've been together in this, in a way. They can't exactly explain the situation to anyone else. Buck loves a project, so he asks Tommy if he needs help with the whole coming out of the closet thing. Tommy says no, at first, but after thinking it over, he wouldn't mind the support. Buck thoroughly researches gay bars and finds what he considers is the best one.
A lot of revelations happen in that gay bar. No one is more surprised than Buck. They have fun, at first, but with every guy that approaches Tommy, Buck gets more wound up. He doesn't know Tommy that well, but he knows Tommy can do better – Tommy deserves better. Buck is too busy guarding Tommy, he doesn't notice the attention he's getting himself.
They've hardly had anything to drink, when Tommy herds them back out the door. Buck is ranting about the state of things, making sweeping generalisations about gay people and LA's nightlife, when Tommy asks if he wants to head back to his place. Buck looks at him, with those eyes of his, and says yes.
They share a beer in the kitchen, the air between them too charged to sit down. Months of knowing each other from a distance culminate in a clumsy and curious kiss. They both know all the reasons why Abby liked each of them, but they don't know each other like that, not yet. Buck can't believe how right it feels to kiss another man. How good it feels to be wrapped in Tommy's arms. Tommy is overwhelmed by how uncomplicated it is. He doesn't have to convince himself he likes it.
Tommy has complicated feelings about having sex in the bed he bought with Abby – a bed he knows Buck has shared with her, too – but his feelings for Buck aren't complicated at all.
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Now I'm thinking, what if Abby still follows Buck on IG for whatever reason, but she’s totally forgotten about it because we know how the IG algorithm works... So anyway, she’s scrolling through her feed when suddenly she’s greeted by one of Buck’s posts with Tommy, and that’s how she finds out that her ex-boyfriends have been dating for years and are now married with kids, lmao.
part i part ii part iii part iv part v
mentions of abbytommy/tommy-centric/eventual bucktommy
tw: internalized homophobia/homophobic language
I promise the next bit is going to be more lighthearted!
tag list: @sweaters-and-silly (lmk if you wanna be added too)
______________________________
His chest is tight as fuck. Tommy breathes through it. Head between his knees, feels his pulse uncomfortably loud and present in his neck. Lockers have emptied out mostly. His vision is swimming. He feels like throwing up.
"Kinard? Oh shit, hey."
He can hear fast footsteps, and then a warm, big hand on his shoulder. "You got it," the voice says and Tommy's brain is desperately trying to place it. His hands are shaking. "Inhale.... hold your breath, three, two, one, ....exhale. Good. Again, come on."
By the time Tommy emerges from what feels like the deepest, darkest sea and comes up for air, he's realized that the warm hand and firm voice belong to his new captain. Hen had given him a week tops. But Nash has persevered. Four weeks and counting. Tommy would've rather been found dead before ever letting Gerrard see him like this but Nash has a softness to him. His whole lets have dinner together shtick, his we're a family and we ride together pathos, his unwavering determination to make them act like a team -- Tommy's not sure he quite fits in there. Right now, though, he's glad it's Nash who found him like this and not Howie or Hen. They'd stage an intervention immediately.
Nash hands him a water bottle, sits down next to him. "Better?"
Tommy lets out a shaky breath. “Thanks cap. I, uh, I don’t know what just happened." He rubs his hand across his face. “I don’t usually get… like this.” He forces a smile. "Guess it was a couple of tough calls."
Nash eyes him, somewhat curiously. Several beats. "Everything alright at home?" Tommy shrugs. He should go home. Sleep it off. He meets Nash's steady gaze, but there's a flicker of genuine concern. Tommy can't handle it, Nash's empathy.
"Yeah. Everything's good," he lies and reaches for his bag. Nash stops him. "Not so fast. I uh -- I'd been meaning to talk to you."
Tommy blinks, confused, his hand still hovering near the strap of his bag. He’s not sure where this is going. "Uh oh," he says dryly. His pulse is still racing and only slowly returning to normal. "Am I being fired, too?" Deluca is still pissed at Nash but Tommy knows it was the right call. He's been putting in the work, though. Doing his part. It would be really shitty timing for Nash to let him go as well.
Nash’s gaze sharpens for a moment, like he’s sizing Tommy up, and then he exhales softly. “No, you’re not getting fired.” He pauses, like he’s choosing his words carefully. Tommy's shoulders relax. "But?" he asks.
"But..." Nash continues, "I've been wondering if maybe you're not exactly who you're supposed to be."
"That so?" Tommy asks, aiming for casual. Nash doesn't know, does he? Fuck. He wonders sometimes if it's all over his face. Tommy Kinard thinks about kissing boys. Tommy Kinard is a queer. Don't ask, don't tell. But look at him, he tries so hard to be a big guy but he'd take it lying down, wouldn't he? Fuck. He needs to get his dad's voice out of his head. It's funny, the way he is still such a fuck up. How he tried to make it work so hard and how he still failed. He would've given everything to be happy with Abby.
He juts his chin forward. Nash looks at him with so much kindness it makes Tommy want to crawl out of his skin.
"You're a pilot," his captain says, oblivious to the dark spiral of Tommy's mind. Tommy exhales. Breathe. For fuck's sake. Breathe.
"And you're competent, skilled, you're quick. I'd love to keep you here. But I keep thinking maybe you belong elsewhere. And I hear the Harbor is looking for someone like you."
Tommy must look genuinely surprised because Nash lets out a huffed laugh. Tommy hasn't considered flying in years. "Seriously?"
Nash nods. "You're one of my best. But I saw the way you lit up when we called in air support last week. You loved working with them. So, my guess is, that's where your heart is."
Tommy thinks no one's ever paid attention to him like this before. His stomach unknots slowly. Shoulders uncurl.
"I'll -- I'll think about it."
Nash squeezes his shoulder. "You should. It can feel like suffocating. Denying yourself what you want."
Tommy stares down at his hands.
"Yes, cap," he says, throat working.
"Bobby." Nash points to the jeans he's wearing. "Off shift. I'm just Bobby."
"Bobby." Tommy echoes. His legs still feel like jelly.
He takes a few sips from the water. "I might --" His tongue feels heavy in his mouth.
"I might have to look for a new place soon."
He hasn't talked to Abby yet. But he needs to, has to. He wakes up, shirt soaked through with sweat at least twice a night. The darkest, deepest sea in his mind and his father's voice are so hard to turn off. He can't live like this anymore. He's been googling apartments. Abby doesn't even know yet.
"I really uh --" Tommy doesn't know why he keeps talking. "I tried to make a good thing work and it didn't work."
Bobby nods. "And that's causing the panic attacks?" He asks it matter of factly.
Tommy clears his throat. "One panic attack." Lie. But Bobby doesn't have to know or be right about everything. "And I guess --" He hesitates. "Gotta figure out some stuff. Big stuff."
Bobby doesn't say anything for a while. Keeps his gaze steady. Tommy thinks he could probably confide in him. Bobby would see the ugly, dark, twistedness of Tommy's insides and tell him it was okay. That it gets better. And the thing is, Tommy knows. He knows. He saw some kid online the other day on YouTube. They were what, 15? When Tommy was 15 -- well. He's mid thirties now, not any less terrified. It's difficult to explain, out loud. How his head works. How the stuff that goes for others, doesn't apply to him. How he's less deserving of it.
"The big stuff," Bobby says after a while. He looks at Tommy, face open. He says it like a question, gently prompting Tommy to continue.
Tommy's eyes prickle. He should go.
He exhales. "Yeah. Been pretending to be... Someone I'm not."
He's a teenager and his dad caught him with a magazine of naked men and his hand down his pants. He's in the army and Micah is kissing him. He's 34 and engaged to a beautiful woman and he feels nothing when she shakes around him.
His mouth is dry as cotton.
Bobby squeezes his shoulder. "I hear you." A beat. "Don't need to say anything else."
They sit like this for a little while longer. Then, Tommy gathers his things, shoulders his bag. The ground feels a little less shaky. His knees don't buckle. He'll find an apartment. And he'll tell Abby.
"Kinard," Bobby says when Tommy's already at the door. Tommy turns around. "Promise me you'll think about transferring, yeah? Go after what you want?"
Tommy huffs out a laugh. Shakes his head. His chest is lighter. "Aye aye cap." He gives a half hearted mock salute. What he means to say is thank you.
He's pretty sure Bobby hears it anyway.
On the way home, at a red light stop, a jeep comes to a halt next to his car. A guy leans out of the window and asks for directions to the LAFD training academy. He's young. Bright smile, short blond hair. Tommy tells him where to go and the guy thanks him profusely. "Starting a new chapter," he says enthusiastically and adjusts his backwards hat. Out of his stereo Tommy can hear hip hop blaring. Eminem. "Me, too" Tommy shouts back and watches the lights switch to orange. "Good luck then!" the guy shouts over the revving engine and grins. "See you around!"
inspired by listening to the fun home OST and getting myself in my feelings. idk if the timelines work out, and idc that much. wild self indulgence is my watch word.
wips, what wips? 👀 context: pre-canon tommy can't go for drinks with the gang this evening because abby's got tickets for a play. he thinks it's called fun house or something? (spoilers for alison bechdel's fun home in this snippet)
It's cute. At first, it's cute. It opens with three versions of the same character on stage, at different ages. The little girl version plays with her dad, but his attention gets pulled away easily by the house and a delivery. He figures it'll be a family drama with songs, which…not especially his thing, but Abby looks like she's having a good night so far.
The first proper song is cute with an undercurrent of tension, the house being put together, tidied and made perfect. It's catchy. Funny. Well-performed. Tommy recognizes the tension like he'd recognize his own face in the mirror, like he'd recognize the flash of Abby's hair in a crowd.
Then a younger male character comes on stage - yard work or something - and the way the dad's eyes catch on him as the cast sing he wants more makes something snag in Tommy's gut.
Then the older version of the main girl gets hit with a spotlight, the rest of the stage fading into blackness as she says: "Caption. My dad and I grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town. And he was gay. And I was gay. And he killed himself."
The snag in Tommy's gut turns into a fucking cavern.
no pressure tags for @trombonechurchill, @frogsinflannel, @aesthetictarlos and @exhaustedpirate (aka beloved enablers)
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If this show was ready to be a camp legend it would bring back Abby once Buck and Tommy are more well established and then they have a long conversation about their different journeys that ends in a cut to black threesome that’s never brought up again.
I love how Tommy broke Abby's heart and Abby broke Buck's heart, and Tommy saw the narrative parallels and said "not today satan" and then ran away from the best thing that ever happened to him
I love the beenado caused a mid air plane collision show.
What if the news Buck and Maddie learn is that one of their parents has Alzheimer's.
For Buck, it immediately makes him think of Abby, because the most experience he has with Alzheimer's was the times he met Patricia.
And it makes him think of Tommy. Because of all the times Patricia called him Tommy. It hitting him how she was getting him confused with a man that would go on to mean so much to him.
Maybe that thought leads him to call Tommy. At first, it genuinely is to talk about the diagnosis. He's not had contact with Abby in a long time, but Tommy knew Patricia. He wants to hear what it was like when Patricia was starting to show symptoms, what the early days were like because he only saw the end.
And maybe that leads them to getting back together and actually talking to each other. Because life really is too short, and they never know what tomorrow would bring.
