Done Well – 2 – DarkJediQueen

Reading Time:
47 Minutes

Tommy picked up his beer, and he took a sip of it before he headed for the table where Sal was sitting with his cocktail. Sal had been more than willing to get his ass drunk. He stopped in his tracks as he saw Buck sitting alone at a table with a bottle of beer sitting in front of him. It took a few seconds of debating before she went over to him and sat down across from him.

“Buck.”

Buck looked up at him, and the look on his face was one of shock.

“I’m over here with a friend of mine. Are you waiting for someone to join you?”

“Oh, ah, no. I don’t have anyone joining me.”

“Good, good. Why don’t you come and join us?” Tommy looked at the beer that Buck was drinking. It was one of the more shitty ones they had there. “And I’ll get you a new beer that tastes less like cat piss and vinegar.”

“Oh, so you don’t like it either?”

“No, I hate that beer. Go. He’s over there. You’ll know him when you see him.”

Buck stood up, and he went to take his beer with him, but Tommy took the bottle from his hand and gave him back his beer. Buck looked at the glass and then at Tommy with a raised eyebrow.

“Drink it, and you are dead. No one will blame me.”

Buck laughed, and he headed over where Tommy had nodded his head. Tommy headed for the bar again, and he handed over the bottle to the bartender, Lisa. She laughed and dropped it down where they put all of their bottles to be taken care of later.

“Want the same as before?”

“No, I want that fruity one. I think he’ll love it.”

Lisa nodded, and she started to fill up the glass that she had grabbed. Then she looked down at the bar at the couple who had come up and were trying to get her attention. She smiled at them to let them know that she saw them, and then she focused on the beer again. She handed it over. “Your tab?”

“Yes, anything he gets, put it on my tab.”

Tommy headed back to the table and found that Buck had found Sal with ease. The LAFD jacket hanging over the side of the seat had been the sign that Buck needed.

“You two friendly?” Tommy asked as he set down the beer in front of Buck, then he turned to sit beside Sal, who didn’t have any room for him there. Tommy just raised an eyebrow, and Sal grinned back.

Tommy sat down beside Buck in the booth and was glad when Buck moved just a little ways away to make room, but not like he didn’t want Tommy touching him. Tommy was open about himself, but Buck seemed to get lost in his head sometimes, and Tommy wasn’t sure that Buck knew that Tommy was gay, which was fine. Buck didn’t seem like the kind who actually cared about that.

“Evan here was telling me about you two terrorizing the rest of the shift,” Sal said.

“Evan?” Tommy asked.

Buck shrugged. “I don’t hate it as much as I used to, and I think that I like it outside of work. So I’m trying it with Sal here.”

“And me?” Tommy asked.

Buck swallowed, and his gaze drifted from Tommy’s eyes down to his mouth and up again. “You can call me Evan, too.”

Tommy laughed, and he wondered if Evan even realized what he had done with his gaze there. He looked back at Sal, who was grinning at him, then he waggled his eyebrows. Tommy turned serious and shook his head. He wasn’t even going to think about doing anything like that. Evan seemed like the kind of person who liked to flirt, and he wasn’t going to take any of it seriously.

“How are you feeling today?” Tommy asked.

They were on the first full day of their long set off, which was why Tommy and Sal were getting a drink.

“Good. I wasn’t as sore this morning, but I did the stretches you told me about, and they helped a lot yesterday.”

“Stretches?” Sal asked.

“Evan went rolling down a hill when a victim freaked out, and he was crouched on the side of the hill trying to talk to them. He got bruised up, and his body was stiff when he woke up from sleeping yesterday morning. So I showed him some of those stents that I use when I’m in the cockpit too long during wildfires or other massive emergencies. They help me a lot when my body doesn’t like me like that. I hoped that they would help him.”

“And they did. I made a few notes about them to teach probies when we get another at the station. Even though our shift is full at the moment, we will get the privileges from the other shifts sometimes when we need another person, and they want the hours. Eddie did it a few times when Chris was having overnights and other things with cousins. He didn’t do it a lot, but the extra hours are great, and it showed that he was willing to be a team player.”

“I remember when Bobby started that,” Tommy said.

“Nash is a good captain,” Sal said.

Tommy knew that Sal was just saying that to make Evan happy. Tommy wondered if the Evan thing was going to go on to work as well. He would have to try it and see how the other reacted. He knew that Evan’s childhood wasn’t the best. Not really as abusive as Tommy’s, at least in the physical sense, but probably the same on the emotional and mental front.

“So, you guys do this often?” Evan asked.

“Every long stretch off, unless one of my kids has something, then it’s the next day, but always the first full day of being off.”

“How many kids do you have?” Evan asked.

“Three daughters. It’s just me and our dog Bo for the males of the house.”

“I had just my sister, and she was old enough that it felt a lot like being an only child when it started to matter because she spent a lot of time with her friends once she could. Then she was in college and didn’t come around as much as she used to.”

“Older sister here for me as well,” Sal said.

Tommy snorted because he had met Victoria enough times to know that Sal hated her ass, and it had nothing to do with her being older and all with her being a gold digger.

“So, we are not going to be talking about what we came here to talk about. What do you want to talk about?” Sal asked.

Tommy frowned at Sal because he wasn’t against talking about what they had planned to talk about.

“What?” Evan asked as he looked up and looked at the two of them. He frowned, and it seemed like he was trying to figure something out.

“We can talk about me being shot out of the air, Deluca,” Tommy said, emphasizing the last name.

Sal snorted and picked up his cocktail to drain it. He looked at the two beers. Evan’s was all gone, and Tommy had about half. “I’ll get a new drink for me and you two mooks more beer.”

“Thanks,” Evan said, and he turned in his seat to look at Tommy as Sal got out of the booth. “What’s going on?”

“My therapist doesn’t have much knowledge base when it comes to the military. She’s worked with firefighters and cops for a long time, but she can’t get her head around some concepts where they bleed over from my military time to this. I was shot out of the air several times when I was flying for the Army, but I had never lost everyone but myself before. There were injuries, and sometimes, if it were a medical transport out, I would lose a patient who was already critical. This was the biggest loss of life.”

“And Sal gets it?”

“Not really, but he gets the mindset better than her. I tried to find someone with whom I clicked, but even with the whole therapy side of things, the ones who were military didn’t like the whole gay thing. It’s been a process.”

“They are a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, and they have issues with the gay thing?” Evan asked.

“They seem to, or I think they did, which was just as bad. My current therapist is a lesbian, which is something that I hadn’t gone looking for, but she told me when we had our first session, and I sort of talked around the subject of being gay. I had seen the pride flag, but that didn’t mean that the person was actually queer.”

“My therapist has a flag in her office as well, along with a few others, but none of them are hers. She is just open to being queer-friendly. I can leave if you want to talk to Sal without me. I don’t need to be babysat.”

“Well, as you are trapped and too big to slide out under the table as kids do, I think you are going to have to wait for me to get up to pee before you escape.”

“And peeing will be sooner than you think with his ancient bladder.”

“I am two months older than you, Sal,” Tommy said.

Evan laughed at the two of them, and then he turned to face Sal when he scooted Evan’s beer toward him. “What did you get me?”

“It’s one that they literally just popped,” Sal said.

“Did you get it for me as well?” Tommy asked.

“Yes, and Lisa said if either of you hate it, you’ll have to tell her because you are the first to try it outside of the test group, and it received mixed reviews there.”

Tommy knew that this place had a lot of other breweries that they got from, but Tommy hadn’t found a beer of theirs that wasn’t some bog standard shit found in all sports bars that he hated, other than the shit that Evan had been drinking at the start of the night.

“She thinks it’s all survivor’s guilt, and there is a good bit of that. I had to work through that before I could even think about coming back. I know how to handle that, and I have that, but I just…” Tommy waved his hand, and then he really went into it. How he felt about being the only one who lived in that. How it really felt to have that kind of pressure on him when he got into a cockpit again. It wasn’t like he was going to get shot at like that again. That had been a worst-case scenario that had nothing to do with. It wasn’t like the helicopters were combat-ready. There was no alarm when they were being targeted by anything like other helicopters did. There had been nothing to do.

“It’s the helplessness,” Sal said.

Tommy looked at Sal, and he knew that he was right.

“It’s knowing that you can’t do anything to stop what happened, but you never once thought that it was something that was going to happen to begin with,” Evan said.

Tommy knew that the tone of Evan’s voice made him think that he knew exactly what it was that he felt. The bombing. The ladder truck is being blown up, and Evan is trapped under it. Tommy looked at Sal, and he could see the moment that Sal got it.

“It really sucks because unless someone goes through something like it, they will never feel it. I had issues the day I came back. Then of course, Bobby was sidelining me, worried about the blood thinners I was on, like it couldn’t accidentally get cut when I was alone at the station when they were on calls, and be dead before they got back. Which I never worried about until after I realized it, but by then Bobby was allowing me back on the team the whole way.”

“I sat in the helicopter, and I just froze,” Tommy said.

“I did when I sat in the engine the first time, I wasn’t even in the ladder truck, I was in the engine, but still I thought, what happens if this one is blown up too?”

Tommy was really fucking happy that he had seen Evan sitting by himself and asked him to come over because while Sal was good at bouncing things off, he didn’t have a story like this. There were ones about him being shot at, but Tommy had done that before. Hell, there wasn’t a day when someone didn’t try to shoot them when they were waiting for a scene to be cleared. It wasn’t normal for Tommy now. Still, it was something that was very common on their job. Usually, the guys with guns didn’t shoot at them, but there were times when they didn’t notice that it was LAFD and not LAPD when they arrived and were not in their turnouts.

They kept on talking, finding that they had a lot that they could talk about that helped Tommy feel settled. He knew that Diaz was still a while away from being cleared to go back, and Tommy could go back whenever he felt like he could do it, but maybe he should wait until Diaz was ready to come back to not make Evan have to get used to another float. Tommy missed being in the air, but he could fly on his personal time; he still had that, and maybe doing that for a while would get him through a few other issues that might crop up, go up with his friends who flew as well, as testers. He could work it to where he could be in the sky again before he felt like he could go back to Harbor and fly there.

Sal seemed to read his mind and smirked at him. It had nothing to do with wanting to stay around Evan and just wanting to make sure that Evan and the rest of the 118 weren’t stuck with an asshole to take over Diaz’s position.

Tommy knew he was lying to himself, and he hated that Sal knew it as well without either of them saying a single word.

—

Buck grabbed the rope that they needed, and he took off running. He slid into place beside the tree, and he started to get the rope on the tree and wrapped it the way it needed before he just tossed it over the side.

“INCOMING!” Buck yelled before anyone else could say anything to Tommy. Buck waited for the rope to go super taut to tell him that it had Tommy and the kid’s weight on it. The other rope was attached to the winch, and Buck was glad that he had moved as fast as he had as soon as he had seen the way that it was all going. The rope wasn’t going to be used to get Tommy up, but it was going to be what he held onto while Buck got his gear on and worked to get down there on a different rope after he got the one on the wench changed out. He looked at Bobby, who looked a lot shaken.

“Next time C-shift uses ropes, and I’m not given time to check them over before we get called out for a rope rescue, I’m protesting officially, Bobby.”

“Understood. I’ll…handle this. Hen, help Buck get ready to head down and take possession of the boy from Tommy, and I want that rope kept apart. Bag it and tag it, Chim.”

No one questioned anything; they moved to do what they needed to do. Buck looked down to see that his pants were torn from the way he had slid on the rocky ground, and he checked that there were not too many horrible cuts before he decided that he was fine. He grabbed the harness that had been ready for him to head down if Tommy needed it, and he started to get geared up.

“I didn’t even notice the rope doing that, and I was watching it,” Chim said.

“Not until Buck took off running and freaked us all out,” Hen said.

Buck said nothing. He didn’t care what they were saying. He had seen it, knew what was happening, and the seconds he would have taken to say something could have been Tommy and the kid’s life.

Whatever else they said was quiet, and Buck couldn’t hear it, but he worked as fast as he could because he knew that Tommy was free hanging because there was no chance of him having time to get his things moved over to the other rope. It was pulled from the winch and left to the side. One of the others was standing on it so that it didn’t go sliding off the cliff on them.

Buck looked over at Tommy as he got ready to head down. With Tommy’s rope skills that he had from Harbor and dealing with jumping out of a helicopter, they were getting a lot more rope rescue calls than they normally did, which was just fine with Buck. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when Tommy was gone, and he was back to the normal stuff. It would be an adjustment, but he was looking forward to having Eddie back, and maybe he could talk Eddie into doing the classes with him so that they could get more of these rescues.

“Evan,” Tommy said when Buck was finally level with him there. The kid was freaked out and was clinging to Tommy so tightly that the kid’s arms were shaking.

“Tommy. And who is this?” Buck asked.

“This is Marly. He’s a little freaked out, but I told him that I could hold onto him for as long as I needed to. I was able to work on getting secured to the new rope. Where did you tie it?”

“The tree. We will have to look at it when we get it up. Bobby’s going to handle the shitty way that rope was treated.”

“I felt the first issue about ten seconds before you tossed the rope over. I hadn’t gotten a chance to do much but get the secondary ready to go.”

Buck got Marly’s secondary clear of where it was and hooked to him. Then a second line for Tommy was coming over the side of the cliff, and it flopped just behind Tommy.

“Marly, this is Evan, and he’s really good at this. He’s better than me, and he’s not going to let you fall. You need to let go of me so I can get myself hooked up to the new line that I can use to go up.”

“Can I go back to you when you are secure?” Marly asked.

“If you really want to. Evan won’t be offended.”

Buck wasn’t going to be. The kid had to be freaked out.

Tommy grabbed the rope, and he eyed it before getting a hand free to click the radio. “Who is the last to have checked this rope and when?”

“We pulled it today, and the last to do it was Buck,” Bobby said.

“I usually check all of them over, but the swap wasn’t done today, and I told Bobby I wanted to take time to get the ropes swapped. He didn’t agree, and just the additional ones we have been putting on for our lots of rope rescues were the ones that were added.”

Tommy nodded, and he worked on getting himself swapped over to the new rope. The first rope was pulled up as soon as Tommy radioed that he was off it. Then it was just like it was supposed to be. They got up, and everything was good. Buck dropped to the ground, and he felt the adrenaline rushing through his body. He knew that he was going to have to take a few minutes because that kind of rush had been good to get him to do what he needed to do; he also knew that he needed to get settled down because he was still working.

“Hen, check them both over,” Bobby called out.

Buck figured that Chim had the kid, which was good because Chim was good with kids like that. Buck knew that Hen was also that way, but at this moment, Buck didn’t really want Chim around him. Chim would be too worked up, while Hen would be calmer.

“Tommy first,” Buck said.

The rest of the team was working on getting things cleaned up. The rope that had nearly killed Tommy and the kid was protected because it would need to be documented.

Buck didn’t even want to think about what all of the reports were going to do because he wasn’t going to let it fall to the wayside. This was going to go to where someone did something about it. If the ropes were on the engines, they should be rusted. The other shifts should not just leave them there when they needed to be checked out, and they did not check them out. The list of who had that one last and what was wrong it would hopefully be in the records. Buck wanted to throw a fit, but his body wasn’t going to let him.

“He’s good, Buckaroo, wanna sit up for me?” Hen asked.

Buck sat up, and he made sure his legs were not crossed. He let Hen take his blood pressure, and she checked a few other things.

“He’s good. Still a little pissed off, so his blood pressure is up, but not an alarming amount.”

“When we get back to the station, we are going offline, Buck and Tommy, you two check everything and pick who you want to help you, and the rest of us will work on our reports of this and then we will swap and you guys will work on your reports and make sure that it’s all ready to be filed by the end of their shift.”

Buck didn’t like going offline, but he wasn’t going to trust a single thing on the engines to do what they needed. He needed to have something figured out before they did anything else. It was going to be a red-letter day when their reports hit the system, and the aftermath would start to come down.

—

Tommy headed for the kitchen because everyone else was already in bed, but he figured that there would be someone in the kitchen. He stopped at the top of the stairs when he realized that there were more people awake than he thought.

“They are going to kill us,” Hen said.

Howie snorted and shook his head. Only Bobby was sitting where he could see Tommy, but he wasn’t looking up at all.

“It’s your fault, Bobby,” Hen said.

“What is my fault?”

“Tommy and Buck. They are going to kill us with their competence,” Howie said.

Tommy settled into standing there and listening to them. They were not being quiet, thinking that they were the only ones awake in the station at the moment. Tommy had issues sleeping sometimes; he would usually at least rest, but he was full of restless energy, and that meant moving too much in the bunkroom.

“They are fine,” Bobby said. He still wasn’t looking up from whatever he was doing on the laptop.

“They are not fine. They are driving us crazy. We are just lucky that they have not gotten into a whole competition about working out. Going until one of them drops to crown a winner.” Howie huffed. “My money’s on Tommy.”

“Mine’s on Buck.”

Tommy shook his head, and he decided that he had heard enough. He was careful as he moved across the room, not wanting to make a single sound. He got right behind Hen. “I see you have no faith in me.”

Hen jumped, and she turned around and slapped Tommy’s arm so hard that it was red when Tommy got out of the range, so that she didn’t hit him again. He sat down across from Howie so that he was out of range of her feet as well.

“It’s not that I have no faith in you; I just know how competitive Buck can get. He’ll end up going until he’s going to hurt himself if he’s left to do things with you.”

“I was thinking of asking him to a pick-up basketball game, I guess that I should not do that?” Tommy asked.

“He’ll not go because he doesn’t mind watching basketball, but he doesn’t like to play it. He played football in high school. He’s not big on playing a lot of sports, though. He says he gets too into it, and seeing how he is with you here and how he was with Eddie back when Eddie joined, I’m starting to see why he doesn’t play sports too much.”

Tommy knew that he and Evan had been going at it. Never anything that was going to hurt themselves or a victim. They knew when to stop to make sure that they were not going over the line. Tommy hadn’t had a lot of fun working in a while, beyond the fun he had when he took a helicopter up.

“I guess that I’ll have to figure out what to do about that then.”

“Eddie likes basketball,” Bobby said.

“He does?”

“Yeah, he’s tried to get Buck to go with him a few times, but Buck just begs off. You might be able to get him to go if you meet him.”

Tommy thought about it. He knew that he would meet Diaz at some point. The guy was in Evan’s life, and things seemed like Evan was rocking up to asking Tommy out, with a lot of peacocking first. Tommy hadn’t done anything overt, but he had made it known that he was gay to Evan. He wasn’t against dating someone with whom he worked as long as they were at different stations, though it might be a while before they were at different stations. Still, Bobby would help to make sure that things were very even. It was only up to each captain to decide if a relationship was allowed or not. There were a few couples who worked between the air and ground crew at his station.

“I’m shocked that Buck even made a quick friend of you as he did, given how bristly he usually is if Eddie’s got a day off,” Hen said.

“I think that Eddie and Bobby being open with him and knowing that it’s just temporary is helping, of course, me being here just a short while would also be helpful as well. Knowing that things are happening helps to stop a lot of stress. Yes, it’s not on you to manage his reactions, but doing things that you know will set him off once you know it makes you look like an asshole. Isn’t that what you told me years ago, Hen?” Tommy asked.

“It is what I told you. I guess that I forgot about it a little bit. Just like when we have patients who are different from us, we try to respect them.”

“Maybe you being here was good. I think we all needed a kick in the ass,” Howie said.

“Maybe. I needed the space away to want to fly again, and you all needed a reminder that the past wasn’t all bad.”

Hen smiled, and she nodded her head. She picked up her cup of cocoa and then took a sip of it.

“What are we talking about?” Evan asked.

Tommy turned to look at him. Evan looked sleep-ruffled and like he had woken up from a nap. Evan had been asleep for longer than the rest of them after a rescue had made him tired, from having to hold someone up to help to make sure that they didn’t get hurt more from the glass that had impaled them. It had been a good rescue and something that made Tommy think that maybe he needed to do a few rounds on the ground crew when he hit close to his hours on flight time. He could do that to help keep him really fresh on the things to do like that. He would have to talk to his captain to make sure that he was rotated there; it would give some of the ones who didn’t want to fly all the time more chances to fly.

“How we are trying to kill them by being too good at our jobs,” Tommy said, ratting out Hen and Howie.

“Hey!” Hen said, but she laughed as she tried to reach over and smack Tommy’s hand on the table.

Tommy laughed and jerked his hand away from where it was on the table. hen just slapped her hand down on an empty table.

“We are not trying to kill you,” Evan said.

Howie just laughed before he yawned.

“Yeah, I’m beat. Bed, Chim?” Hen asked.

“Sure. Bobby, you coming?”

“I’m almost done with this report,” Bobby said. He still really hadn’t looked up from the computer.

“What report?” Evan asked.

“Another kick back about the rope. They are trying to make it hard on us, but the number of reports and the state of a few other things you found that day make it hard to push that anyone from that shift is looking at all of the equipment. I want to have you look it over, Buck.”

“In the morning, I’ll do it. I do not have the brain for it. I realized that you guys were all missing when I went to pee.” Evan yawned, and he seemed just to deflate.

“Let’s go,” Tommy said as he dropped his arm around Evan’s shoulders and helped to get him up when Evan started to stand up.

Evan leaned into him hard as they made their way to the bunk room. It was very hard not to want to do something else with Evan right now, but Evan had been slightly more flirtatious, but there wasn’t a lot of it there that Tommy could take as a real want to date him, or at least kiss him.

It wasn’t his place to do that right now, and he wasn’t going to be the one to make a move in the station like that.

Evan almost pulled Tommy down into the bed with him. He knew that there were times when other guys at his station lay with him at night, sometimes because he needed it and sometimes because they needed it. It was sometimes just best to have someone else with you in bed because it reminded you that you were not alone.

“Not cuddling with you,” Tommy said.

“Spoil sport.” Evan pouted, but it was a mock pout. Tommy got up off the bed, and he went to his own, which was Eddie’s, since the shift was full and there were no extra beds that were long enough to fit him. There were two other beds, but Tommy was too tall for them. Evan hadn’t been too upset about the bed, even though it was Tommy in Diaz’s bed, in Diaz’s spot on the team.

Tommy settled into the bed, and he smiled to himself as Evan got the covers up to where he was warm in there. He was adorable, and Tommy knew that he was at risk for his heart. He knew it, and he just nodded to stay away from Evan until it passed or Evan made a move. The thing was that Tommy couldn’t. Evan was too magnetic, and Tommy was weak.

—

Buck dropped onto the exercise bike. He wanted to have something different for a workout that day, mostly because he didn’t need to do anything to build muscles. He just needed to burn calories because that breakfast that he had eaten at the diner down the street had been too much, but it had been so damned good.

One breakfast a week like that, a place where Buck could be settled down and be himself. Something that was just for him. A meal where he didn’t care about anything but eating something that made him really happy. He didn’t cook it for himself. He didn’t do a lot of things that would make the meal stressful. It was still new, and his current therapist wanted him to keep it; unless someone was dying, there was no reason not to go. He didn’t have to do it the same day each week, since his shifts didn’t allow that, but he did have to do it once a calendar week. He picked whether it was a week that started on a Sunday or a Monday, but once he picked it, it was stuck. The only time that he was allowed to break it was if he was injured or sick. If he was sore and didn’t want to eat out, he could get something delivered to his place.

The breakfast had been good, but there had been a lot of calories. He got his headphones in his ears, and he started up the program on the bike. He kept the pace slow and then ramped it up as he got his legs warmed up. He had stretched and gotten his body going before he got on the bike. He picked up his phone and tried to find a podcast to listen to that would sound good for him. He looked up to see Tommy sitting down on the bike across from him.

Buck wasn’t sure what was going to happen there, but he decided that maybe a podcast wasn’t the way to go. He tapped the app for his music, and he found one of his playlists that had pulse-pounding songs on it that would allow him to really get going. He got his arms on the rests that were there to allow him to lean over, and he started to push up his legs. He could feel his pulse start to pound. He glanced up at Tommy to see him grinning at him.

Tommy hit a few buttons on his bike, and up his speed went. Buck leaned up to get his hands on the button pad, and he pushed his up as well. He waited until he matched Tommy’s speed, and then he hit it to go up one more.

There was just a small grin on Tommy’s face then, but he didn’t push his up just yet. He waited until his body had adjusted to what it was doing, and then he did it. Buck’s body was singing as he kept on matching what Tommy was doing, sometimes being the one to push things up first. Tommy was still grinning, and Buck wanted to wipe that grin off his face. He got himself ready to push things further than he had with his leg in a while. They were off for a few hours because they had gone from the moment they had gotten themselves settled. They had eaten lunch in the cab of the engines and had been rushed when finishing because their area of LA had gone freaking insane.

Buck ramped up the speed again and looked down at the machine to see what his calorie burn was and how long he had been going. He was covered in sweat and knew that he needed a shower. He was just going to get worse. Tommy was just as sweaty. Buck wasn’t sure he had ever seen someone look like that. He wanted to win, to be the last one to give up, and to show Tommy that he could keep up with him. Tommy glanced at him, and Buck made sure that Tommy knew that Buck was looking at him, too. It was something that Buck hadn’t thought much about. The friendship that they had, and how much Buck was craving being around him. When Tommy gave others attention, Buck wanted to do something about it. He didn’t because he didn’t want to be like that. Tommy was his friend. They hung out together outside of work; it didn’t matter if Tommy was with others while they were working. Tommy was friends with a lot of the people there, too. There was no reason to be like that about it.

They kept on going, sweating more, and Buck knew that Hen knew something was going on because she came over and opened her mouth. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, but she just shook her head and walked away without saying anything, which had made Tommy smirk. Buck wanted to wipe that smirk off his face, so he pushed things up. Got the machine going at the edge of what was sane. Or maybe sanity had been passed a long time before. Tommy was fit, and even though he had a few years on Buck, he was keeping up with him. Tommy hadn’t ever skipped leg day, and it was noticeable. Buck wondered why he kept his body like that if he was flying. Then he thought about wildfires. Tommy had talked about a few he had worked on, never things that became massive. Still, they were something that Tommy had to do, and that meant if his body was a machine, he could last long, and the longer he lasted, the faster the fire went out.

Buck was done. He reached out for the buttons and hit the end program button. He looked up to see that Tommy did the same. At the same time. Buck just smiled at him, and he moved off the bike, feeling like his body was jelly, not just his legs, but everything else. He dropped to the ground in the corner where the fan was that moved air around the working out area, and he was grateful when it hit his skin.

Tommy grabbed Buck’s water, which he had left behind because he forgot about it and his own, and he dropped down to be across from Buck. They said nothing and just sat there, breathing as if they had just done something stupid, like working out like that, and just drank their water.

Bobby called for Tommy ten minutes later, which got Tommy up and into the shower. Buck stayed where he was because his body was trembling and he wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t felt so energized in a long time, but it wasn’t like he was going to get up and run around. No, it was a different kind of energy. He didn’t know where it came from, but he wanted to figure out what the energy wanted from him.

When Tommy was done, and Buck’s skin had cooled down to make him want to get his sweaty clothes off, he headed for the shower. He grabbed his basket of stuff, and he checked himself out in the mirror. He looked like he had done what he had just done, been an idiot, and worked out too much. He turned the water on and made it cooler than he normally took it to help him cool down the rest of the way without overheating. He grabbed a rag because he felt like he needed it for the sweat that he had on him. He settled his stuff down in the shower and worked to clean himself up.

When he was nearly done with the shower, Buck realized that he was hard. That was the energy through him, never allowing him to get hard when he was out there. He knew better than that, and it seemed his subconscious had been the same. Buck stared at his cock as it had betrayed him. He wasn’t sure what the hell to do about this. If he turned the water down, he was going to get cold, and that meant that he would be cold the rest of the shift until he got under covers. He hated that. But jerking off at work seemed like a horrible idea. He tried to will it away, but it didn’t leave him. When he was done cleaning himself up, the rest of the way, even taking time to make sure that he was clean in areas that were already clean, his cock was still just standing there, jutting out, proud of being hard.

Buck had a memory from years ago that used to get him off fast. He grabbed some of his consideration and turned to where it wasn’t going to get washed off, and he started to stroke. He made sure his back was toward the area where someone could see him if they came into the bathroom. The stalls were taller than the ones at the academy, and there was an area with curtains on the other side, which was where women showered if they wanted. Sometimes Buck went over there if he wanted privacy, but there was no moving over there without it drawing attention if someone else came in there.

The woman had been fucking good. She had taught him all about fucking her in the ass because it had been a while since she had met someone who she felt could give her good sex, and that’s what she wanted when she was fuckedin teh ass. He thought about how she had shuddered when he pressed his cock into her. How much she had writhed on his cock as he started to fuck her. It had been hard, and it had been fast once he was sure that he wasn’t going to hurt her. The condom had stayed on the whole time and only came off when she wanted him to move to her pussy. Buck had been upset to have to pull out of her, but what she wanted, she got. He remembered how tight her ass had been, though, the way that he could watch it slide in and out of her. The way that it was the best sex of his life, not just that night but the two nights that followed before she left town, part of a band that had been in town to play a few places before moving on to the next city.

Buck felt himself getting close as he thought about her ass, the way she had moaned at being fucked like that. The way that she had been utterly pliant when he had rolled her over and fucked into her pussy with a new condom on his cock. He hadn’t been upset at all when she had come so quickly, but still wanted him to fuck her until he came, which had been after a second orgasm for her, because Buck was one thing, it was good at sex. He came with a soft cry, biting onto his arm, bracing on the wall as he did so. He made sure that no sounds were happening around him before he turned around to clean off his hand and cock. He used the cup that was standing up on the wall to rinse off the evidence from the corner. It was used for soap that got up high sometimes to make it easier for the crew to clean the showers when it popped up on their list of things to do.

“What the hell was that?” Buck asked himself as he made sure he was rinsed off.

When Buck was sure that he was cleaned up, he headed for the area where he could get a little bit dressed and be able to get the rest of his clothes on once he was sure that he was dry and lotioned up. Just as he stepped out those doors, he stopped and looked back, as if looking at the stall he had been in would tell him what was going on.

—

Tommy laughed as Evan dropped the hose that he had been rolling back on the rack. They had been busy but not too much, so they had been able to keep up with making sure that things were stocked.

Bobby came over to Evan and said something. Evan nodded, and then he headed over to where there was someone whom Tommy had not noticed at all.

“Interviewers are here about the rope. I know that you need to give a statement because they want to make sure that you are still just as pissed as you were the day you nearly died because someone decided that looking over a rope could wait, but didn’t pull it off the engine.”

Bobby was pissed, and Tommy understood. Their job could already end their life, and finding out that another firefighter was nearly the cause of two deaths made it really hard to grasp. Tommy didn’t like it. He didn’t want to have to do this, but he would. There were only so many things that he could do to get out of it, and they would only end in the guy getting off or making it look like Tommy didn’t care. Tommy fucking cared.

“Sal called me to make sure that you and Buck have all that you need for this. He’s pissed as hell.”

“He hates shit like that. He might have been slacking in some ways when we were under Gerrard, but never that shit. Just the shit that didn’t affect anyone but Gerrard. We made sure that we were all as safe as we could be. He challenged orders from Gerrard when it was time, and we all did shit the safest way, even if Gerrard wanted us to do something different. We rarely got called to the mat for it because he was always outside of the area and never had eyes on. It would have looked bad if he were making his firefighter do something unsafe like that.” Tommy remembered the fine line they all walked until they realized that they could not just take it anymore. It had been long. The reports that had been filed were never good-looking when looked at all. Gerrard’s leadership had been failing for a while, and it was only their own will to live that kept the station working as it did. Hen’s arrival showed them that they could get rid of him with a few filings. So they did. Then he had been looked at, and everything was changed. Of course, none of them saw the years of short-term captains who went there to retire until Bobby had come to the LAFD.

“I remember looking at the files from over the years before I came in. I might not have known you all very well, but I made sure that I knew what kind of things you had been through. It was a lot, and it sucked that you had no captain who really stepped up. I know why Sal did what he did, and he knew exactly why I did what I did. There was no reason to debate that too much. When Buck’s done, he’ll come and get you. The rest of the shift will follow after you guys. If we are called out, the interview will move out into the main room, and whoever is getting interviewed will be the one staying behind.”

“Sounds good. I’m sure that we will figure out something to keep ourselves entertained if we are stuck behind.”

“It’s not like there are any mundane tasks left.”

Tommy blushed a little bit about that because the thing between him and Evan had been ramping up. All because Evan wanted to beat Tommy and be the undeclared winner of whatever weird kind of competition/flirting thing they were doing. There had been something that changed a week before, when they had both stopped on the exercise bikes at the same time. It had been a little weird, but Tommy had rolled with it.

Evan came out to get him a short time later, and when Tommy was done giving his testimony about everything, there was not a lot to really do but wait for the tones to go off, which they did when Tommy went to get himself a snack. He shoved that snack into his pocket, and he grabbed the drink he had planned on downing. He shoved them into the seat he was taking up in the ladder truck before he got into his gear. They all got into their turnouts, even if they were probably going to end up taking them off when they got there, especially the coats. The whole thing was pretty much a kind of joke about what the hell they were doing. The one again and off again when things were needed felt like a chore sometimes.

The wreck wasn’t too bad, but they had someone who couldn’t get out because their car had been shoved into a building, and for some reason, the glass on the windshield did not break, and the car that had them pinned was hard to get out of if going out the driver’s door window. There was no getting into the back of the car either, and so the person needed to get out. The glass was easy to break because it was cracked a lot, but it hadn’t shattered.

They worked hand in hand without saying a single word. Tommy knew what Evan needed, and Evan was right where Tommy needed him to get the woman out once they had her covered up with a blanket to make sure that no glass got on her. It was like a whole thing that made Tommy feel like he was going a little insane. He had never connected with someone so quickly, even though he and Sal took a while to connect. They had never been like this, but Tommy knew that he was to go back to Harbor, and he wanted to. He would have to work to make sure that he and his partner were like this now. The synergy between him and Evan was enough that he wanted to have it repeated.

“How do you feel?” Evan asked the lady when he helped her out of the car. She had been in the seat, and she had no danger signs of a head, neck, or spinal injury when Hen had cleared her before getting her out. The cars were a tangled mess that would take a while to get apart, and with the gasoline all over from the ruptured tank, it was easier to get her out before they started. There was grit everywhere from where it had been put down to soak up the gas to hopefully help with making sure they didn’t set them on fire when they got the cars apart.

“Good. I’m still going to get checked out, though.”

Tommy looked at Evan to see that he was looking at him strangely. There was something there, and Tommy didn’t know what it was. He wasn’t even sure that Evan knew what it was. Hen and Tommy had talked about him once, just recently, and Hen wasn’t sure if Evan was anything other than straight because she was good at gaydar. Still, he just tripped it weird, and she had never heard him talking about guys, but then again, they had never heard about his sister until she was there. He also never talked about his family at all beyond a few small things, never anything in depth.

Which had made Hen realize that he had never really talked deeply about himself outside of Abby. That was a red flag to Tommy, but he saw it for what it was. Evan didn’t like to talk about hitting, and that meant that he knew what he was doing when it came to things. There were not a lot of things for Tommy to do at the moment, so he smiled at Evan before heading back to the ladder truck to put up things they had been using.

The whole thing was strange, and Tommy wasn’t sure what to do about it. He wanted to kiss the hell out of Evan; hell, he wanted to do a lot more than that, but he didn’t want to freak the man out if he was straight. Tommy couldn’t really get a read on him either. He had seen the guy flirt with guys on call, but it was usual to call them down, and he did it with women as well.

Evan was an enigma when it came to things like that, and Tommy wanted to figure him out.

—

Buck slipped his hands into his pants as he looked at the house. He looked to the side to see the couple who were looking at him through their window. Tommy’s new neighbors, who had happened to be his Harbor partner and her husband, were kind of funny as hell. Buck waved at them, and they didn’t even look a single bit ashamed about starting him, which was fine. Buck was the one who was acting weird. Tommy had his curtains pulled, and Buck could see him moving around the living room, then he would disappear, only to appear at one end again. Tommy was moving around, and that was a good thing; Buck didn’t have to worry about waking him up. Tommy should not be asleep this early with a shift to tomorrow, but then again, they had been fucking exhausted, and it was easy to mess up a sleep schedule when there needed to be sleep had before doing anything.

Finally, Buck pushed off his Jeep, and he headed up toward the porch. He was raising his hand to knock when the door opened, and Tommy was grinning at him.

“They spoil it?” Buck asked.

“Nah, I have a camera that turns on and alerts me when someone walks up my sidewalk. You walked halfway up and then went back to the Jeep. So I waited.”

Buck huffed, and he waited for Tommy to step back to let him in.

“Then Miriam texted me. She knew you from work, so she knew that you weren’t some weirdo with aims to hurt me.”

“Just a normal weirdo?” Buck asked.

Tommy turned and looked at him. Buck felt a little ashamed. He knew that Tommy didn’t like it when he called himself things like that with the aim of pushing himself down. It was weird, but not something that Buck was going to look at too much. Tommy already had him questioning everything about this life. He just had no idea what it meant. He didn’t need to know what it meant, but he wanted to. He needed to figure this out, or he was going to go crazy. It was like something that he felt was going to change his life, and he wanted to know.

“Sorry,” Buck said.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Tommy said. He waved for Buck to come further into the house, and Buck took him up on it.

“You doing okay?” Buck asked.

“I am. You?”

“Frustrated,” Buck said.

“At me?”

“No, at myself. I needed someone to talk to, bounce things off, but that just made me even more frustrated. I need…” Buck moved to face Tommy, and Tommy was standing so close. It was like Buck’s skin was vibrating, and he didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand what was going on with him. He had felt like this before, a little bit when it came to Ali. It hadn’t been weird then, but it felt weird now.

Tommy’s gaze darted down to where Buck licked his lips, getting ready to say something, but it died in his throat, then Tommy closed the distance between them. There were two fingers under his chin, and then there were lips pressing to his. It was like a switch was flipped in his brain. It was a fucking crush that Buck had on Tommy. It was exactly the same, only it was a guy, and he explained why he had been getting so worked up and had been jerking off more over the last few weeks than he had in the time before Tommy entered his life. He grabbed the back of Tommy’s head to keep him right there when Buck was sure that he was pulling away from him.

Buck didn’t want the kiss to end. He was tentative as he licked at Tommy’s mouth and was greeted with Tommy’s own tongue. The kiss went from chaste to something else in quick order. They moved, and Buck grunted when he was pushed into the wall, and there was something so fucking erotic about it. He had never done something like this with a woman; he had pushed a woman into a wall, but never had one do it to him.

Tommy’s hands dropped down to grab his hips, and then they were pressed together. Buck could feel his erection from just this kiss, and he felt himself starting to get hard in return.

Buck was the one who broke the kiss, and he dropped his head to Tommy’s shoulder and just breathed. He had no idea what he wanted to do about this, but this was so good.

“Should we talk?” Tommy asked when his own breathing was under control. He peppered a few kisses on what he could reach of Buck’s head.

“Yes, fuck, we should. I don’t want to, but we should. Like, good adults.”

“Well, since we work together, I thought that talking was better than not talking. We can still go as far as you want, but before that, we need to talk.”

“Why wouldn’t I want to go all the way?” Buck lifted his head and looked up at Tommy. He wasn’t sure what was on his face. He knew that things were a little strange with them working together, but Buck didn’t think that he would want to have sex. “I’ve had anal sex before.”

“You have?” Tommy asked.

“Yes, I’ve given, and there was a lady who loved strap-ons. It was only the one time, and I loved it, but I thought it was more her than the act. I guess that I need to figure that out.”

Tommy groaned, and he dropped his head to Buck’s shoulder and just stayed like that, their bodies still pressed together. Tommy’s hands were still on Buck’s hips, and he loved how he felt small in Tommy’s grip. They were the same height, but Tommy seemed to have a slight more muscle on him, and his body was just broader, bigger built. Still, Buck was sure that he could lift him if he wanted to. Maybe that was what he needed to work toward, fucking Tommy against a wall.

“Bisexual?” Tommy asked.

“Um, not sure about that. I mean…yes, probably. Cause I like women and I like you.”

“You don’t know?”

“You are the first guy I’ve ever kissed, well outside of drunken kisses on New Year’s Eve when everyone in the party kind of kisses everyone when the ball drops, but I don’t count that because even lesbians were kissing guys and the very gay guys were kissing women.”

Tommy stepped back, and he looked at Buck. “So this wasn’t you just finally allowing the flirting to go past this. I’m the honest-to-goodness first guy you have wanted to kiss?”

“Yes. That. I…it’s fine. I’m not going to freak out. I promise that I’m not going to,” Buck said. He would do that at home after this, but for right now, the curiosity was more than he could handle, and if he and Tommy didn’t do something that was sexual, he might explode.

“I don’t want to pressure you.”

“You are not. I promise you. I just…I don’t like that I didn’t know this about myself. I’ve always been an ally. I do all kinds of pride things as a supportive ally all of my life, ever since I came across my first pride parade when I was traveling away from home after I gave up on college and wanted to find myself.”

Tommy cupped Buck’s cheeks and made Buck look up at him. Buck hadn’t realized that he had started to look down. He swallowed, and he could see the happiness in Tommy’s face, but also, there was so much pride there. “There is no perfect time to find it out. Yes, there are those who grow up knowing it. There are those who need a different push. I’m not sure how your parents were when it came to that kind of thing, but there are many who just internalize a lot of things, and there is no idea that they like men as anything other than a friend. I’m sure that there will be people in your past who think that you were hitting on them, or you will think about them and realize that there was something else there that you never picked up on.”

“You accepted it not too long ago?”

“Yeah, it’s been… I had a lot of things to unpack. I’ve been having fun figuring myself out and am still doing that. I don’t mind helping you.”

“But together, right? Like…” Buck tried to duck his head down, but Tommy kept his grip tight on his face to keep him looking at Tommy. It made Buck feel like he was open in a way that he hadn’t been in a while.

“Together. I don’t have to fuck around with people to work on myself, and you don’t have to either, unless you want to explore before settling down.”

“I’ve explored with women, and I know that I want something serious. I know that being with a man is different, but I know what I want, and that’s my person. I want someone who will be with me no matter what, who has no real push to put someone else above me.” Buck knew that he was being more open with Tommy than he probably should be, but he also had been working on himself and being more open, especially when it came to other things. He needed to be open. He needed to be happy. No one could read his mind and know what he wanted unless he said it.

“Okay, then we can start this exclusive, and there will be no hard feelings if this is just some lust-fueled thing that ends after we have sex.”

“Not tonight, right?” Buck asked.

“No, not tonight. Tonight will be about talking and maybe some making out. You can touch, and you can kiss, but hands stay above the clothing because while I would love to take you to bed and rock your world, I don’t want that for myself tonight. I’ve been working on keeping to myself for a while, and it’s going to take me a little while to get my head straight on this.”

Buck nodded, and he was happy that Tommy was saying what he wanted and what he didn’t. Buck wouldn’t mind going for broke when it came to sex, but he also understood where Tommy was coming from. It was going to be about them, not about what Buck wanted to the detriment of what Tommy wanted. Together. Their wants.

---