cursed dick energy

“Then act like it.” Before Sal could push harder, a new voice cut across the locker room.

“That’s enough.” Bobby stepped between them. “Shift is over. Go home.”

Sal looked like he wanted to argue, but the captain’s look killed it. He shot Buck one last glare, grabbed his duffel, and stalked off.

Bobby turned to Buck and exhaled, he has kind eyes and tired eyes. “Go home,” he instructs. “Eat. Sleep. And for what it’s worth… you did good today. There was nothing we could've done to save that little girl. Her soul was gone before we arrived on scene. We just need you slow down, son.”

Buck nodded, he showered fast, dressed faster, and slipped out before he had to answer any questions about why he never joined the crew for post shift beers.

The drive home was a long, quiet stretch of road that gave him too much time to think, to replay Sal’s glare and Bobby’s tired eyes. By the time he eased into the driveway, his ribs ached and his pulse had settled back into that slow beat that used to mean he was safe.

He unlocked the door and the house met him with low lights and the faint scent of peppermint oil. Carla always left the diffuser on for Tommy’s headaches.

“Carla?” he called.

“In here, sweetheart.”

He followed her voice to the living room. Tommy was on the recliner with a blanket over his legs, head tipped back, eyes half open like he was fighting sleep and losing. Carla stood beside him with her hands on her hips, giving Buck that look she saved for men who refused to admit they were exhausted.

“He pushed himself too hard today,” she said. “Again.”

Tommy grumbled without opening his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re stubborn.” Carla picked up her bag. “He ate half his dinner. He did his exercises. He didn't listen when I told him to slow down.”

Buck crossed to Tommy and brushed a hand over his hair. “You good?”

Tommy cracked one eye open. “You’re late.”

“Shift ran long.” Buck let his fingers slip down the side of Tommy’s face.

Carla sighed like she’d been holding that breath for an hour. “Your turn to wrangle this amazing jawline.” She patted Tommy’s shoulder fondly. “Call me if you need anything baby. Especially if this stubborn jackass tries something stupid.”

Tommy muttered, “I can hear you.”

“Good,” Carla said, heading for the door.

Buck crouched beside the recliner and started checking Tommy’s vitals. “Did you try to walk on your own again.”

Silence.

“Tommy?”

Another silence. Then a low, guilty grumble. “Maybe.”

Buck huffed a laugh and shook his head. “You can’t rush it.”

A grunt of agreement or disagreement followed.

"You want to try for the bed?" Buck asked, his voice soft anticipating the mood shift.

Carla's hand was still on the door when Tommy's voice cracked through the house. "I'm fine here," Tommy bit out, turning his gaze to the television so as not to look at him.

She looked back. Buck caught her eye and shook his head once, small, a whole conversation compressed into it. Nothing. I've got it. She hesitated a beat longer than she needed to, reading something in his face he wasn't fast enough to hide, then let the door click shut behind her anyway.

"Tommy, come on. You'll sleep better in bed."

"I said I'm fine!" The words were a whip-crack. Tommy finally turned his head, his eyes blazing with a bitterness that had become his default setting. “Stop hovering. Just because you’re my goddamn keeper now doesn’t mean you have to micromanage every breath I take.”

Buck flinched back as if struck. “I’m not trying to…"

“Aren’t you?” Tommy’s laugh was a harsh, ugly sound. “You love this, don’t you? The great Evan Buckley, martyr extraordinaire. Playing nurse. Playing firefighter. Must be a nice, simple little life after the Teams. A walk in the goddamn park.”

His words finding a bruise Sal Deluca had left, each one twisting deeper because they came from the one person whose opinion still atomized him. Buck felt the careful, desperate walls he’d built around his heart begin to splinter.

Something behind his eyes dimmed as his next words came out soft. “You think this is a walk in the park?”

“Compared to what we did? Yeah, Evan, I do. You get to run around playing hero while I’m stuck in this chair. You get to come home late, smelling of smoke and whatever glory, while I can’t even take a piss without a plan.” Tommy’s chest was heaving, his face a mask of rage and pain. “So don’t stand there and pretend this is hard for you.”

Buck stopped breathing.

The room narrowed to the rasp of Tommy’s anger and the soft tick of the clock. Everything else fell away as something inside Buck simply gave.

His shoulders folding inward like paper held too close to flame. A broken sound slipped out of him, half laugh, half sob. His throat bobbled once, twice, like the words were fighting him.“I remember it.”

Tommy stared, his angry tirade dying in his throat. He had seen Evan hurt before, shot, concussed. But he had never seen him break, not like this.

“You don’t. But I do.” Buck’s hands trembled at his sides. “I was thrown from the chopper when we were hit. I had been readying to jump. I pulled my rip cord and slammed right in the middle of the enemies camp. I woke up and the bird was just… gone. A fireball in the dark. And I thought you were dead. I had to believe you were dead, because the alternative was that you were burning alive.” He sucked in a breath and rose to his feet. "It took Randy seventy-two hours to put together retrieval plan and roughly another eighteen hours to pull off."

He took a step closer, his eyes begging Tommy to finally, finally see.

"I saw the fireball and thought you'd crashed. But you got her down. Dogman and Hawk pulled you out... I read the reports after. I spent ninety hours in the dirt cellar."

The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the ragged sound of Buck’s sobbing. Tommy stared, his own rage forgotten, replaced by a dawning, horrifying comprehension.

Tommy’s fingers curled tight against his blanket. “Ninety hours?”

Buck nodded, the movement jerky. “This isn’t a walk in the park, Tommy. No one at the 118 knows who the fuck I am… to them, I'm just another stupid young probie. There are days it's worse than the teams. When I pull little kids from behind walls and hold little girls hands as they take their last breaths because we can't get them out in time or arrive too late." His voice shook as he revealed his worst call.

He looked at his trembling hands. "And I’m so tired. I’m paying Carla, I’m paying the mortgage. I'm fighting insurance companies. I’m fighting with your fucking father to keep him away from you, and I’m trying so hard to keep this house a home because your still in it.” His voice broke completely. “And you won’t even call me your husband.”

Tommy's jaw flexed, old instinct rose up fast and ugly. You want a medal for it. The words were right there, loaded, ready to fire the way they'd fired a hundred times over the past year because it was easier than the alternative.

But his eyes caught Buck's hand instead, shaking, ash and grease in the creases of his knuckles. The words died in his throat.

"I know you want a divorce," he hiccuped, wiped at his eyes, "I'll give it to you, as soon as you can walk out the door. I'll sign and do whatever you want… you're so close to walking again and it terrifies me, but I'll do it, I'll sign the fucking papers and you can be free of the martyr extraordinaire."

He tried to laugh. It came out like a sob.

His knees hit the floor, one moment he was standing, the next he was crumpled beside the recliner, his forehead nearly touching Tommy's knee. His arm came up over his eyes.

“Evan.”

Tommy’s voice was rough, disbelieving. He pushed himself up on one elbow, ignoring the scream of protest from his core muscles, forcing himself to look down at the man beside him. Buck had his arm over his eyes again, a barrier against the world, his throat working as he swallowed convulsively. “Evan, look at me.”

Buck didn’t move. A wet, choked sound escaped him. “It’s okay,” he whispered to the ceiling, the words horrifically calm, the calm of absolute devastation. “I get it. I’m… I’m a reminder. Of everything you lost. Of the crash, the chair, the… the life you can’t have. I’m just another piece of the wreckage you’re stuck with.”

“No.” The word was a command, a denial that tore from Tommy’s chest. He grabbed Buck’s wrist, pulling his arm away from his face. Buck’s eyes were squeezed shut, tears leaking from the corners. “Look at me, damn it!”

Buck’s eyes flew open, wide and wounded and hopeless.

“You think I want out of this?” Tommy’s voice shook, his grip on Buck’s wrist tightening. “You think after everything you just said, ninety hours in a dirt hole thinking I was dead, paying Carla, fighting my asshole father, holding this whole godforsaken world together with your bare hands and you think I could walk away from that? From the man who did all that?”

Buck stared, confusion warring with the deep, ingrained certainty of his own worthlessness. “You said… you said I was your keeper. A martyr. You hate this. You hate me.”

"I hate me!" Tommy roared, the force of it surprising them both. "I hated this body! I hated this chair! I hated the world!"

His fist came down on the armrest, once, hard enough that the recliner shuddered. "And I took it all out on you because you were here and still loving me! I was trying to make you hate me back!" His voice cracked on the last word, the roar losing its edge halfway through the sentence. "Because then it would make sense that I was here, alone, in this hell! But you wouldn't. You just kept loving me. And it was driving me insane!"

The confession hung between them, ugly and true. Buck’s breath hitched. “Tommy…”

“I don’t want a divorce,” Tommy admitted, each word hammered into the space between them. “I never wanted one. I wanted you to stop looking at me like I was still worth loving, because every time you did, I had to look at what I’d become. And I couldn’t stand it.”

Buck’s face crumpled. “So you punished me for it.”

Tommy went still. It wasn’t accusation in Buck’s voice. It was recognition. Quiet and exhausted and far too late. “Yes,” Tommy whispered.

Buck pulled his wrist free.

“I’m sorry” rose into Tommy’s throat, but the words felt pitiful beside ninety hours underground. Beside the mortgage and Carla and insurance appeals. Beside every morning Evan had climbed out of their bed and gone somewhere strangers thought him young and reckless, only to come home and be treated like something worse.

Tommy no longer trusted himself to reach for him.

“Evan.” He forced his hand to loosen around the blanket. “What do you need?”

Buck laughed, small and empty. “I don’t know.”

It was the first honest answer Tommy had gotten from him all night.

“Okay.” Tommy swallowed. “Give me your phone.”

Buck went very still.

Tommy saw the thought cross his face. The lawyer. The papers. All the things Buck had already decided Tommy wanted.

“I’m calling Carla.”

“She just left.”

“Then she can’t be far.”

“I can get you to bed.”

“I know you can.” Tommy’s voice broke. “That’s the problem.”

Buck stared at him.

“You’ve been getting me to bed. Getting me dressed. Getting me to appointments. You’ve been paying for everything and fighting everyone and coming home to this.” Tommy gestured helplessly between them. “You don’t have to get me anywhere tonight.”

For a moment, Buck didn’t move. Then he pulled his phone from his pocket and placed it in Tommy’s hand.

The screen was already open to Carla’s contact.

That hurt worst of all.

Tommy pressed call. She answered before the second ring. “Buck?”

“No. It’s me.”

“Tommy?”

He could hear the warning in her voice. The suspicion. She had seen more at the door than either of them had realized.

“Can you come back?”

“What happened?”

Tommy looked down at Evan, still crumpled on the floor beside him. At the soot caught along his throat. At the wedding ring he still wore despite everything Tommy had done to try and make him want to take it off.

“My husband needs me,” Tommy murmured, his voice shaking. “And I can’t help him from this chair.”

Buck’s breath caught.

“So I need you to help me,” Tommy continued. “So he doesn’t have to.”

Carla’s voice softened. “I’m turning around.”

Neither of them spoke. Tommy set the phone on the armrest and waited, resisting every selfish instinct that told him to ask Evan for comfort, forgiveness, anything.

“You called me your husband.”