#triptych fic

well, RC, you're getting a snippet from something i haven't published yet (and won't for quite a while, because it's, like, fifth in line). this is meant to be read in tandem with the (also unpublished) chimtommy fic, but it's bucktommy; these two and a third are all going to take place in the same universe, several years apart from each other. i'm not sure whether i want to keep this in buck's POV or not, so consider this a crowdsourcing appeal:

"They named him after Chimney's sort-of brother," Buck explains. "They grew up together. They actually joined the fire academy together, and Kevin—"

"Yeah, I knew Kevin."

"Wait, what?"

Tommy looks up from dancing a stuffed raccoon in front of Baby Kevin's face. "I knew Kevin. I marched in his funeral."

"Oh," Buck says. He hadn't anticipated that. "Really?"

"That was… '06? '07? They all kinda run together. He was a good dude. Really funny. Absolutely killed at karaoke." Tommy goes back to twirling the raccoon, even though the baby's eyes probably aren't developed enough to track it. "I went to something like 8 funerals that year."

Buck checks behind him; Jee's still enthralled in her coloring book. "That's—a lot. Grandparents and stuff? Or—or other firefighters?"

"Kevin," Tommy says, counting on the fingers that aren't holding the raccoon. "My probie. Three guys I served with. My grandma, my friend Sal's mom, and a guy from the 122."

hi i'm back to these. accountability check: got a deadline reprieve on this article, lol (because they want something else first, and because another client is having an emergency). new accountability goal: send 1 email, and finish the emergency report by the end of march. as a reward for, um, making accountability goals (wow. scraping the bottom of the barrel here), some fic:

Howie reels him in like a fish, holding Tommy tight to his shoulder as the tension seems to leave him in a rush. "Proud of you, man," he says. He feels Tommy blink damply against the collar of his shirt.

"Thanks." Tommy sits back up. "Jesus, that was easier than I thought it was going to be."

"What can I say, I'm an easy guy," Howie jokes. "Guessing I'm the last to know?"

"Try the first," Tommy says. "Other than Abby."

Howie's gobsmacked. "Shit. Wait."

"I wanted it to be you," Tommy says. He's back to fidgeting with the bottle, twirling it between his hands.

"Not Sal? Not—not Hen?"

Tommy shakes his head. "Sal's so fucking mercurial. Like—he wouldn't be homophobic, but—sometimes I feel like I'm rolling down a gravel hill with him. And Hen—I don't know. I think she can see through me." He twirls the bottle, back and forth, back and forth. "Just like Abby did."

"Women," Howie says. "They have all of their senses."

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okay. first of all, accountability check: IT'S GOING BAD. i wrote three paragraphs and then deleted them all. back to square one. anyway, here's some fic:

He's unloading the dishwasher when Tommy quietly lets himself in.

Tommy's not loud about anything except for how much he likes big loud manly things. A casual observer might mistake his interest for something regular, normal, surface-level. Once they get to know Tommy, get hit with the regular one-two punches of his sarcastic wit and his odd little sensitive streak, they might think it's irony. But Howie's seen it for what it really is. Last time they watched a fight together on the TV in the station Howie'd taken a break from the action and turned his head to take in Tommy on the couch next to him. That's when he'd seen it, and that's what clinched it: Tommy wasn't watching the action. No, he was watching the bodies.

Howie's appreciated a good body in his day. Women, mostly, but he's not afraid to check out a man once in a while. He's never touched—but he's not opposed to it. He likes when men shed the pretenses. He likes when men own who they are. The man in his living room seems like he's on the precipice of sloughing off a man he isn't.

"Hey, man, can you stick the DVD in?" he calls. He still has to microwave the popcorn and pull the beers out of the freezer where he stuck them twenty minutes ago.

He hears the tell-tale sound of the Hobbiton theme start up, and he grabs all his things, and he settles down next to Tommy on the couch.

Even starting halfway through this movie is long. It just keeps going, gruesome battle after gruesome battle, ending after ending, one thing after another. It gives Howie time to think, time to lay out his game plan. By the time the hobbits are back in Hobbiton Tommy's finished his beer and his second and picked the labels of both off, piling the shredded paper neatly on the coffee table next to the unpopped popcorn kernels that he never eats.