Hi, I'm leashy. Back in fandom after an almost ten year break. Generally a multi-shipper, although the Buck/Tommy hyperfixation is very real. You can find me on AO3 if you like. I use the tag my writing for stuff I've written on here.
I'm An Old, blog will have 18+ content.
I'm always very happy to talk fic, fandom, whatever, so feel free to send me asks/tag me in stuff, I will giggle and kick my feet embarrassingly.
tagged by @apollabarnes. WELL. i have been frustratingly incapable of writing anything recently so i did a random word generator yesterday and wrote a couple of drabbles just to prove to myself that i could still move words from my brain to a screen. it's not fannish, but it is the last thing i wrote
The water smells of sulphur here. The nights are long, the stars are bright, and I am so far away from home and only getting further. The air is cold enough to burn, cold enough my eyes stream with every blink. Strange animal sounds pour from unfamiliar trees, black rivers cut through the snow in incomprehensible patterns. Wild eddies sing across stones made milky white with time and minerals. The water is so cold it scalds me as I cup my hands in the flow. I drink down the foreign water, taking it into myself and waiting to be changed.
no pressure tags for @exhaustedpirate, @corporatebanana, @setmeatopthepyre, @wee-fuckin-woo and @ambernotember
tagged recently by @nzchance. tagging you back for next time along with no pressure tags for @winter-parrot, @stuckinthemiddle22, @sad-girl-hours23 and @thecarrott
here's some more of lead me to your door, from earlier on than the parts i've shared recently
Sal's place is pretty similar to Tommy's — a single storey with a scrap of yard. He's got an honest-to-god minivan parked in the driveway and Tommy resists the urge to tease because it's honestly kind of sweet. Sal, who liked motorbikes and muscle cars, is a middle aged dad with a minivan and even post-divorce he hasn't reverted to type.
"Welcome to the love shack," Sal says as he throws the door open and gestures Tommy inside.
"You're such a — " Tommy starts, but before he can find an appropriate insult, Sal kicks the door shut behind himself and his hands land on Tommy's jaw to draw him in and then Tommy's kissing the guy who he probably has to class as his oldest friend, even if they haven't seen each other in the better part of a decade.
Sal kisses like he talks — fast, intense, a rush of sensation that has Tommy enthralled in a way he doesn't want to admit. Hands find Tommy's jacket and shove it down from his shoulders to tangle around his elbows before he's able to shrug all the way out of it and let it fall to the floor. Sal tastes of cheap beer and tortilla chips and it's better than it has any right to be. Tommy gets his arms around Sal's waist, hands pressed to the small of his back, and groans at the feel of him, so sturdy, familiar even though the haze of years, even though they've never touched each other like this.
I know that Jack/Tommy isn't exactly like that, because in the future Tommy will get back together with Buck, but I read this post and the first thing I thought of was Jack/Tommy romance:
anon!!!! oh i love this so much, you are so right, this is 100% the vibe. i haven't fully decided on their meet cute yet, but if i didn't know it was going to be time limited i'd absolutely steal this.
as a thank you, here's a little snippet from the night that tommy meets jack's daughter liv for the first time:
"How'd I do?" Tommy asks.
"She likes you," Jack tells him.
"You think?"
Jack rolls away from where he'd curled up against Tommy's side and rolls back with his phone in his hand. It's open to his message thread with Liv and the most recent message, from a couple hours ago says:
I like him!!
Tommy laughs. He guesses there's no way he can argue with that.
"She's really great," he says.
"Yeah," Jack agrees. "You know," he adds, as he settles back against Tommy's side. "I never introduced her to anyone before."
"Really?"
Jack shrugs. "Never felt like anyone was important enough, before."
"You sweet-talker," Tommy says, around the lump in his throat.
immediately after an interaction: i have GOT to get more normal oh god i need to get more normal immediately i have to get more normal or they're going to hunt me down they're going to hunt me down and flay me for sport
during an interaction: and why not put a little spin on it? why not add some conversational zest?
Hiii! You're taking more AUs so here's me humbly asking for an AU (should it interest you!) where Tommy keeps delivering flowers to Buck from different women. (Maybe related to the catfishing thing if it went a different way and if it somehow made sense they could? Maybe the app has a ' send a gift' option?)
Theeeenks!🥑
cora! oh my gosh this is so fun. okay do we remember when buck got interviewed in s1? yes? yes! good. it also got very very long so it's going under a cut after a couple bullets! oh! also! an au where tommy doesn't join the fire department
after tommy left the army, he finds out pretty quickly that while helicopter rides are popular with the people of la, there are still a lot of times where he just… doesn't have a customer.
rather than sit around and keep his bird and his long suffering receptionist waiting on the off chance that they get a walk in, tommy shortens his hours to four days a week and spends the other three driving for some local businesses around the air field.
this has the immediate benefit of making his business look more exclusive, and he books up three months in advance and manages to pay molly the same amount of money that he was before.
it also means that he ends up with a lot of free lunches from the restaurants that he does deliveries for. in return, he offers the owners a free flight for birthdays and holidays.
his favourite by far to drive for though is the florist. amelia's kitty corner to the air field and her partner owen is a rather flamboyant man who takes one look at tommy and invites him out to the local bar. tommy gets inducted into the local queer scene with little fanfare and even less ribbing when it takes him a long time to actually do anything more than admit that he likes men.
after he's been flying for a few years, he's able to stop running deliveries for everyone on his off days. except for amelia. there's something about the way that people react when he drops off flowers that make it worth it to give up a day or two of his week. he figures he'll keep driving for her until she says she doesn't need him anymore (molly thinks that he's insane for still driving at all, but she's been calling him that since she showed up for the interview and found out that the tourist operation was him and a mechanic that he paid by the hour when he needed a tune up so it doesn't carry a lot of weight)
one day amelia calls him in a panic because she's just gotten a rush order for twenty deliveries and her normal driver is off writing an exam. tommy's spent eight hours doing loops of the city and he was planning on heading home, but he agrees to do the drop off.
it's not until he's pulling up that he realises the address is for a fire station. it's one that he's relatively familiar with; his old roommate sal used to work there but he hasn't thought about it much since sal moved in with his girlfriend. he's not sure why someone would order twenty flower arrangements to a fire station, but hey. it's not his money.
he muscles four of the arrangements into his arms and kicks the car door closed behind him, walking towards the open garage door. "hello? delivery for uh—"
half a dozen firefighters pop up on the balcony and the oldest one holds up a hand, asking tommy to wait. "chim, buck, maybe we can give the nice man a hand, hmm?"
"great, because i've got another sixteen in the car." tommy grins. "someone have a birthday or something?"
"hen, stevens, roger, and… matthews. looks like it's all hands on deck. welcome to the 118. i'm captain nash."
"tommy," tommy says, handing the first of the arrangements off to the two men scrambling down the stairs. well, the shortest one comes down the stairs and the other comes down the pole and tommy thinks very hard about his first ride in the vomit comet so he doesn't embarrass himself.
"cap, we should make buck get all of these!" the shorter man calls up, brandishing the card tommy had with them. "they're all for him."
"evan buckley?" tommy confirms, and the other firefighter nods, smiling sheepishly and rubbing the back of his neck. "ev- uh, yeah, that's me."
"chim, i think—" an alarm goes off and captain nash frowns. "buck, man behind. tommy, tell me you're not blocking the driveway, or you're about to need a new car."
"nope, in the parking lot." evan — tommy's going to have stop calling him the really cute one in his head, and it's been awhile since tommy had a date and that fact is coming back to bite him right now — pulls tommy to the wall as the fire truck and the ambulance speed out of the way.
"man, i hate being man behind," evan mutters, shifting one of the arrangements to shake tommy's hand. "you better bring them up this way." he leaves tommy with two of the plants and starts back up the stairs, and tommy keeps his eyes firmly focused on the step in front of him and not the way evan's back muscles shift every time he takes a step.
"so, evan buckley, why has the city of los angeles decided to grace you with nearly two dozen floral arrangements?" tommy asks, putting his down on the long table in the middle of the loft.
evan heaves a sigh. "some reporter saw me on a scene and asked me a few questions, and i guess i have some admirers now."
"i wouldn't think that was a bad thing?"
"they're all very grateful when the rescue happens. then the shine…" evan shrugs. "tends to wear off."
"well, until it does, you'll have enough flowers to keep this place looking cheerful."
tommy makes himself stick to asking generic questions while they bring the other arrangements in, fighting the urge to ask as many weird and invasive questions as he can. he's known evan buckley for five minutes and he wants to know everything about him. the tiny owen in his head starts laughing at him. this is bad. tommy's never had a crush like this, and he was in high school during the boy band era. "—what do you think?"
tommy tunes back into the conversation and realises he's lost the plot. "actually, i was thinking that uh. well, it's no flowers, but if you want to see the city from a different angle, i can make that happen," he says, handing evan one of his own business cards.
"kinardcopters? you know a helicopter pilot?"
tommy grins. "something like that. if you ever want to go up, i'll make sure it happens."
"i'll think about it." evan glances around the empty loft. "it's pretty hot out. you want a drink before you go? there are a lot of snacks."
"i—" there's the roar of a loud engine and tommy reflexively glances down to the floor as the engine comes back in. "i should get going, actually. this was my last run of the day." and his first, but no one at the firehouse needs to know that.
"okay." evan wilts for a moment and then perks up. "thanks for dropping all this off. i don't know what i'm going with it, but they're gorgeous."
the rest of the firefighters wave at tommy on the way out and he waits in the parking lot long enough to make sure that the driver has gotten out of the truck before leaving himself; he doesn't want to be a pancake.
he doesn't spend the next week checking his phone every ten minutes to see if evan has called and he missed it, because that would be extremely juvenile and tommy is in his mid-thirties and he is not in junior high and he does not have a crush. really, owen. no he doesn't. his friends are awful. he makes the mistake of mentioning the teasing to sal and the guy laughs him off the phone. this is why they don't hang out much.
the massive amounts of flowers seem to have been a one-off, but tommy gets a call at the end of the week to do a delivery at the firehouse. it's a different shift; no evan to be seen. tommy drops the flowers off and bolts, and tells amelia he'll be happy to keep going on those deliveries. (maybe he has a crush.) the next week there are three arrangements, and still no evan. the third time, the truck is out but evan's in the loft. this time it's an enormous aloe plant, and evan's already smiling sheepishly when tommy pulls in. "you think this is a firefighter pun?" tommy wonders as he heads up the stairs. "since aloe is used for burns?"
"i hadn't even considered that," evan says, beaming down at him. "we should probably leave this one here, then, just in case." he takes it out of tommy's hands and turns away to put it on a windowsill, and tommy shakes his hands out and tries to ignore the tingling. he lets himself accept evan's offer of a glass of water and gets treated to a history of flower arrangements, courtesy of wikipedia and about a dozen botany blogs.
evan's admirers have switched to potted plants. at least they have a chance of staying alive, tommy thinks to himself when he stops by every week. not every plant stays at the firehouse, but any of the ones that have a connection to fire (or are just orange, red, or yellow) stay. the windowsills are getting crowded. "you've got an awfully dedicated admirer," tommy says, handing the latest over to evan. "you two must be pretty serious."
"i don't even know who they're from," evan says, fishing the card out of the pot and handing it to tommy as he takes the tiny money tree and tries to find some free space on one of the sills.
tommy slides his thumb under the flap and tracks evan across the loft, pushing the card out of the envelope. "i mean, you probably want to know, just in case they're following y…" tommy blinks down at the paper in his hand. "uh. this is."
evan scratches the back of his neck. "i'm not reading this wrong, right? i've caught you staring at my ass like a dozen times."
"ten, max," tommy argues automatically before flushing. "i'm sorry. i didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."
"i'm not uncomfortable. if i was i wouldn't have been ordering plants for the last three months. the — the first few times were legit. but the aloe and everything after were uh—" evan shrugs. "i wanted to see you, but i didn't know how to uh. ask?"
"this is pretty good," tommy admits, tucking the card into his wallet. to tommy, can i take you out to dinner? evan buckley. it's one of the sweetest things he's ever gotten and he's going to tuck it away with the rest of the things that makes his heart skip a beat when he thinks about them. "when's a good day for dinner?"
"uh, oh! i'm off on saturday. well, i get off friday night, but i'll have been on for twenty four and i don't want to fall asleep on you, so saturday. saturday is good."
"i'd hate for you to fall asleep on me," tommy agrees, smiling helplessly. it gets wider when evan blushes at him. tommy pats his pockets and pulls out another business card, scribbling his personal cell phone number on the back, and the address of the airfield underneath it. "meet me here three hours before dinner, okay?"
"wait, you don't even know what time—"
"any time is good," tommy promises, taking a step back as the fire truck comes back in. "you can let me know what time the reservation is."
"how do you even know i have a reservation?"
"because you like planning, evan."
"what's going on?" chim asks, leading the rest of them up into the loft. "tommy, hey. you got another delivery?"
"last one, i think," tommy agrees, smiling over at evan. "talk to you soon."
"ooh, you finally asked him," tommy hears hen crow as he heads down the stairs, and evan's "hen, stop! he can probably hear you!" follows him out of the station.
tommy's got a text from evan by the time he's gotten back to his house, and they spend the rest of the week talking about any little thing that gets their attention. tommy manages not to spill the beans about him being the pilot before evan shows up on saturday, and the surprised and delighted look on his face is worth all the texts he had to back out of in the meantime.
"you're the pilot?"
"if you'd called to set up a flight a few months ago, you probably could have saved yourself a few hundred dollars worth of plants," tommy agrees, leaning back against the door of the helicopter.
"but then i wouldn't have gotten a chance to woo you with all my random facts," evan protests.
"sweetheart, you would have had even more time to woo me," tommy promises, watching the way the flush on evan's face deepens at the endearment. "i had a crush on you the minute we ran into each other."
"aren't you a bit old to have a crush?" evan teases, taking a few steps closer until he's firmly in tommy's personal space.
"i don't know," tommy murmurs, leaning in. his lips brush against evan's with every word. "what do you think?"
I love your writing so much! If you still do the Five Facts AUs, how about Bucktommy as candidates on a dating TV show? Or maybe one is a contestant and the other works behind the scenes?
ooh thanks anon! i don't watch a ton of dating shows so i fully just looked at a list and picked one out. for our purposes, we are on a version of the show the ultimatum: marry or move on which is filmed in la and can be gleaned from the wikipedia page by someone who's never watched the show. under a cut, because this somehow became like 2k words, oops.
buck and taylor have been dating on and off for five years. as is so often the case with reality shows they're not really perfectly in line with the central conceit. they're there for advice and to have a chunk of time out of their busy lives where they can actually focus on their relationship and where it's going. buck's the one giving the ultimatum for the purposes of the show (because taylor gives him an EXTREMELY VALID ten minute lecture on why an ultimatum from a woman is received differently than one from a man and she is NOT going on national tv to look like her highest ambition is getting married).
tommy has largely the same backstory as canon except he was injured worse in the gas explosion in chimney begins and has to retire early on medical grounds. his first boyfriend when he comes out (a little earlier than canon because his big point of reassessing his life comes there instead of with his transfer to harbor) works in the tv business and gets him a job working on a reality show. the boyfriend doesn't last, but the job does. he doesn't love all the shows he works on, and they maybe give him some weird and cynical thoughts about love (that's our guy!!!) but he does like that he gets to meet a variety of people. by the time our story starts, he's working as a producer on ultimatum, serving as a go-between between the contestants and the big bosses on the show.
buck and taylor sit down with tommy once they've been accepted onto the show to give him the lowdown on their relationship, both as a couple and individually. they're both easy to talk to and tommy gets some great soundbites in spite of the fact that he and evan (that's what's on the paperwork, and buck does his wide-eyed "no, that's fine, you can totally call me evan" thing while taylor side-eyes him to the moon and back) go down a whole housing estate's worth of cul de sacs when they realise they have the lafd, and even some specific people in common.
tommy is man enough to admit he has a WILD crush on this guy, but he's professional enough not to let it get in the way of doing his job. anyway, he really likes taylor too — she's funny and ambitious and a little mean which are all characteristics tommy really likes in a friend. while evan is sweet and enthusiastic and full of sunshine, which are all things tommy likes in a guy. not that it matters, he reminds himself, because taylor's not going to be his friend, and evan's absolutely not going to be his man. normally, he can guess within a few minutes of meeting a couple whether they're going to stay together, but he really can't tell with these two. the vibe he gets is good friends with a lot ot sexual chemistry.
the show goes on — tasks, activities, honesty challenges, whatever they do on this show, again, i apologise, i have not watched it oops — and tommy continues to spend a lot of time with both of them. he and evan hit it off immediately, even beyond the things they have in common. a couple times tommy thinks there's something more to it — evan's almost too interested in what he has to say, finds too many excuses to hang out with him and talk to him about things other than his relationship with taylor.
the day before the show do their "new relationship" twist, where each half of a couple gets assigned a new person to live with for three weeks, to see whether the grass is really greener, evan and taylor have a huge fight, and neither of them will tell tommy what it was about. oh, they give him reasons ("he doesn't respect my work and his 'family' hates me" vs. "sometimes i don't think she even wants to be with me at all, she doesn't take me seriously"), but he can tell they're both holding out on him.
evan gets matched with a vet tech named elena who is sweet and funny and has none of taylor's sharp edges. taylor gets matched with an entrepreneur named alan who is hot as breakfast, but takes himself extremely seriously and has none of evan's sweetness or enthusiasm (unless you count his enthusiasm for perfectly calibrating his pre-workout stacks).
tommy thinks it's going to make them both realise how much they like each other, maybe they'll make it after all. and then he gets a text from a runner who works on the show saying buck needs to talk to him urgently. once the moment of "who the hell is buck?" has passed, tommy hurries over to the apartment evan is currently sharing with elena and finds him pacing up and down the corridor. the first thing out of his mouth is "i think i have to quit the show".
tommy's not as cutthroat as some of the producers who will do anything it takes to keep a contestant on the show, but he does need to know more, and he doesn't want evan to sacrifice his fee if he walks. "okay," he says. "why don't we go get a drink and we can talk it through?" evan nods, looking pitifully grateful. tommy takes him to a nearby coffee shop, because he doesn't drink with contestants on the show. evan looks around with big, wide, worried eyes like he's expecting the place to be full of other producers who are there specifically to listen in on their conversation. tommy fights against a deeply unhelpful wave of affection and buys their coffees.
it's worse than he imagined. "taylor's writing an article," evan says in a hushed voice. "about the ethics of reality tv." tommy thinks, shiiiiiiiit, and starts flicking through a mental rolodex of every interaction he's had with either of them. crush aside, he doesn't think he's crossed any lines. but there's a really messy couple that one of the other producers has been handling, and there are always, always people on these shows that need therapy more than they need to air out their relationship woes on national tv for entertainment. and then evan says, "but we signed stuff. i don't want her to get in trouble." and if tommy wasn't already falling for him, he thinks that would have done it. "if i quit," he goes on, "if i say they can't use my footage, will that help?"
they go back and forth on it for the length of time it takes them to drink two coffees each. at one point tommy says, "it's sweet, that you're concerned for her. you're a good boyfriend." evan's mouth twists unhappily and he says, "don't give me too much credit. i'm so…i'm so embarrassed, tommy. we came on this stupid show — sorry, i know it's your job, but if i have to do one more ridiculous fake date or honesty exercise i'm going to lose my mind — and i don't think she ever even wanted to figure out if we should stay together or not. i think it was just a way in for her." ambitious, that was the first thing tommy noticed about taylor, the first thing he liked about taylor. now, looking at the way evan's drooping like a sad puppy sitting outside in the rain, it doesn't seem so endearing. "i'll talk to her," tommy offers. "don't do anything yet, okay?" evan nods, sniffs, thanks tommy for the coffees.
on their way back to the apartment complex where the contestants are staying, evan stops on the sidewalk and says, "um. thank you. i'm—i'm really glad it's you." tommy doesn't know what to do with that, so he reaches out, intending to put his arm over evan's shoulders and give him a jostling, bro-y half hug. instead, evan reaches out in return and the gentle way he puts his arms around tommy, the careful way his hands spread wide on tommy's shoulder blades like he wants to feel as much as possible has his heart racing with stupid, stupid feelings. he closes his eyes and lets evan hug him for way longer than he should.
tommy doesn't get to speak to taylor until the next day — she's filming a yoga date with alan, which tommy's fellow producer describes as 'a total shit show'. when they sit down together the next morning, he doesn't waste any time, just tells her he knows about the article, and waits to see what she says. what she says, with a smile is, "i'm a reporter, tommy. i'm always working on articles. you'll have to be more specific." tommy frowns and tells her that evan is worried about her from a legal perspective. she scoffs and says, "he always does this. i'm a professional. i spoke with my editor, we spoke with our legal department. i'm not stupid. i thought about it before i did this." tommy can't help himself, bursts out, "did you think about him? he's heartbroken, taylor." "oh, he is not," she shoots back. "believe it or not, in spite of all your little late night chats, i know buck better than you do. he's embarrassed and he doesn't want to hear his family say 'i told you so' for the fifth time." tommy can tell that taylor's used to that tone taking her a long way, so he pushes down the spike of anxiety about late night chats and just raises his eyebrows. "god," she mutters. "fine. give me your phone, i'll talk to him." tommy's busting through a bunch of rules here in the interests of damage control, telling himself it's damage control for the show rather than for evan's heart. he puts his phone into taylor's outstretched hand and she dials, holding it up to her ear as she says, "a little privacy?"
tommy doesn't know what they talk about, but taylor looks a little subdued when she brings his phone out to him, and they make it through the rest of the show without incident. tommy tries to ask evan about it, but all he'll say is "we talked. we made some decisions. thank you for helping." tommy feels like he's going to vibrate out of his skin for the rest of the recording, and his heart is in his mouth when he watches their final filming. "we've decided to separate," taylor says. "we have different priorities," evan says. "we love each other, but we're not a good match anymore," taylor says. "there are other things we want to explore," evan says, and they have to reset and reshoot because taylor lets out an incredibly unladylike snort of laughter and evan gets the giggles. tommy doesn't think he understands these two at all.
two weeks after filming wraps, taylor's article drops. it actually could have been a lot worse, and tommy's never been so grateful that he's in a position to pick his jobs and to no longer have to work on things that make him feel as uncomfortable as some of the early roles he took on.
a day after that, he gets a message on his work phone from evan. can we meet? it says. i'd love to buy you a coffee. it's such a terrible idea, tommy knows that. he says yes anyway.
when they film the reunion episode a couple months later, taylor doesn't attend. (tommy knows for a fact that she was very deliberately not invited, because the higher ups are mad as hell about the article because even if it doesn't make allegations of misconduct, it does absolutely skewer the show as a whole, and what it says about the reality tv industry.) evan does attend, and tommy has to look away and bite his lip hard so he doesn't give the game away when evan says, "i'm good. i'm really good. i'm actually seeing someone new. i know it's fast, but i really like them. like, a lot. i can see it going the distance."
bonus fact: tommy does not like the host, nick lachey, because he read the jessica simpson autobiography once in an air b&b and got rancid vibes. he deals with this by mostly just avoiding him and keeping his head down and mentally singing nkotb songs every time their paths cross.
I loved the last WIP you shared. You're one of my favorite fic writers and one who I feel writes Tommy's point of view so well! I like the idea that he found someone he allowed himself to love completely and without second thoughts. He deserved to have that kind of romance once.
And I loved what I've seen of Jack so far. :)
oh gosh, anon, you are so kind, thank you so much! you've absolutely made my day 💛💛💛 for you, a teeny tiny snippet more - this is tommy's first trip up to washington after their week falling for each other in la.
Jack meets him at the airport and Tommy never got the experience of having someone waiting to meet him when he returned from deployment, always kinda hated those videos as a result, but he thinks he gets it now. It's not like his life is a warzone, but stumbling into Jack's arms sure does feel like setting his feet on familiar soil for the first time in years.
"Hey," Jack whispers. "Oh, hey. I'm so happy you're here."
Tommy nods, fists tightening in the back of Jack's shirt. The busy hum of the arrivals hall fades into nothing while they cling to each other.
tagged by @letsdosciencetoit and @sierranovembr, thanks pals. as per usual with this one, i'm making it an open tag because i have no idea who if anyone has any interest.
the only thing i've been capable of writing recently is my tommy/omc fic which will eventually come back to b/t but! i love my guy, give him the fairytale whirlwind romance i beg of you. at some point, tommy will tell buck that he needs to chill out about his ex husband because "i wouldn't be the guy who's capable of making it work for you if he and i hadn't loved each other". ANYWAY. have some whirlwind romance. context: tommy is moving up to washington to be with his man.
They're watching the sun set over Lake Shasta and handing a bottle of beer back and forth when Jack clears his throat.
"I want to ask you something crazy," he says.
Crazy's their stock in trade, so Tommy just hands the bottle back and waits.
"When we get home, there's a couple days after Liv gets back and before I have to go back to work."
"Yeah?" Tommy prompts. He doesn't think he's ever seen Jack nervous like this before. Even so, it comes as a surprise.
"Wanna get hitched?"
"What?"
"Married. Tie the knot. Put a ring on it."
Tommy laughs. "You're—you're actually serious, aren't you?"
"Yep. I spoke to Liv about it before she left for New York. If we get home before 3p.m. Monday, we'll have time to go get a license. Three day waiting period, so we could all go to the courthouse on Friday. Now her birthday's passed, she could even be our witness."
Tommy looks at Jack, at the bottle hanging from his fingertips, at the salt and pepper beard that's been coming in for the whole drive and thinks, my husband.
Jack misinterprets his silence and says, "Or we could do something less crazy. A license lasts sixty days. Or even less crazy and we can just —"
wow, i had to really go hunting for this one! here's a little something from the tommy sequel and final part of merbuck(leys)
Chim gives him the coordinates and Tommy heads that way. It's nowhere near where he used to meet with Evan, heading down the coast a ways instead before heading out to sea. When there's a little curve of rocks just in sight, jutting from the waves, they come to a stop at Chim's specified location, the hot midday sun beating down on them.
"Howie, what are we doing here?" Tommy finally demands. He's been just going along with it — he feels like all he's been doing since Evan disappeared into that icy river after his sister has been going along with it. Going to work, going to the gym, taking The Finland out and hoping against hope.