This is easy, @geddyqueer's A tunnel to crawl through which was the perfect kind of brutal, and real, and heart breaking, but not sad, because it's about coming out the other side.
(and the old school answer is @gyzym's I've Got Nothing To Do Today But Smile (The Only Living Boy in New York) - Inception AU, Arthur is a lawyer and a secret stress baker, Eames enables his caffeine addiction, I still fantasize about that coffee confection Eames creates for him)
ask me to rec fic, I have read so much, let me feel useful about that
7. Recommend a fic with an interesting premise/concept.
Okay, so what I want to say is the ur-fic that totally re-wrote my concept of what you could do with fic (Written by the Victors by @cesperanza - which, side note, is apparently the 15th work ever posted to AO3).
But, I don't think you read SGA, so .... let's got with Heated Rivalry and purpose is but a slave to memory by syllic - which takes the concept of be careful what you wish for, and runs with it to really interesting places.
Put another way, what if Shane fell in love with Ilya on purpose this time.
ask me to rec fic, I have read so much, let me feel useful about that
I re-read fics ALL the time, so you'll need to be more specific. But here's a personal BT fave that I actually just re-read yesterday:
on one april morning by @beefcakekinard.
Rose does an excellent job highlighting the highs and lows of Buck and Tommy's shared life, fitting so much into such a short story. It's a lovely little piece and I come back to it often.
I was tagged by @jazzrose343 so here's the classic film edition because I am that annoying
10 Movies Rules: make a poll with 10 of your favourite movies, they can be just 10 movies you loved seeing or your top 10 movies of all time, then tag people and let them choose.
Bringing Up Baby (1938, Katharine Hepburn/Cary Grant)
Stalag 17 (1953, William Powell, Otto Preminger)
Libeled Lady (1936, Spencer Tracy, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow)
To Have and Have Not (1944, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall)
Ball of Fire (1941, Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper)
a couple weeks after the funeral, buck writes tommy a letter. well. he writes a few. the first draft is stiff. the second isn’t much better. the third is basically his heart bleeding out on paper. the fourth also is not much better. the fifth is angry. the sixth is a blank page that he crumples before even trying to write anything. a few days later, after a long hike and a drive along the coast and a shift that’s just really fucking wrong, he gets it right in draft seven.
or so he thinks.
tommy’s house is dark and his truck isn’t in the driveway when buck stops by and drops the envelope in tommy’s flip-top mailbox beside his front door. just as well, buck thinks. if he had to go off-script because tommy suddenly appeared and said hello, there’s no telling how bad he’d mess things up. this way, he’s said what he means and means what he said, and he can live with that.
except: there’s no word from tommy the next day, or the next, or by the end of the week.
or by the end of the month.
or by buck’s birthday.
or by tommy’s.
or by buck’s birthday again.
a lot can change in a year, he reasons as he tries to smile when maddie and theo carefully carry in a cake with 35 lit candles on it and place it in front of him.
19 days later, he’s in the middle of making apple-cinnamon pancakes for breakfast for theo and himself when there’s an insistent knock at the front door.
his heart catches in his throat when he’s trying to wash off batter he’d sloshed on his hands and the knocking stops and he hears theo yell, “who are you?”
“theo!” buck calls, wiping his trembling hands on his apron. “what did i say about opening the—”
there, in the doorway, staring bewildered at theo in dinosaur pajamas, is the familiar figure of tommy kinard.
in the year and change since they’ve seen each other, tommy’s gone a little sharp around the edges, as far as buck can tell. his eyes are a little more worn; there’s more silver at his temples. his tan jacket hangs a little more loosely. he looks uncertainly between theo and buck, nervously crumpling the paper in his hands before jamming it and his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
buck feels like this moment is superimposed over the tommy he remembers from the time he toured harbor, or maybe the other way around. similar outfits, similar gestures, but a chasm of everything between them.
tommy clears his throat. “i can—i’d better go,” he says nervously.
“theo, my dude,” buck says calmly, “how about you go get dressed, then we’ll have some breakfast?”
theo fixes him with a mulish expression.
“it’s apple cinnamon pancakes,” buck negotiates. theo stares. buck sighs. “you can have whipped cream from the can.”
theo grins impishly. “deal.” he sticks a—aw, gross—sticky hand out for buck to shake, then runs off to change.
“and please wash your hands,” buck calls after him, cringing when he registers the wheedling note in his voice and remembers his visitor.
he’s angry, he wants, he wants to cry, he wants to slam the door in tommy’s face ‘cause where does he get off showing up here after a year of radio silence, he wants to smooth tommy’s creases and anxious edges under his hands and lean in and see if he still smells the same.
“i’ll, uh, i’m sorry for disrupting your morning routine,” tommy says as he shifts from one foot to the other. “i didn’t—i didn’t know. you didn’t mention it.” he pulls the paper he’d been fretting with back out of his pocket. “i got your letter, but i don’t know…”
“my letter?” buck breathes through a wave of nausea. “tommy, that—that was a year ago, i don’t—”
“MISTER POOP, THE PANCAKES ARE SMOKY!”
“shit!” buck exclaims. “can you—will you come in?”
“MISTER POOP SAID A BAD WORD!”
“how—never mind,” buck groans. “will you get in here?”
tommy hesitates. “evan, i don’t want to get in the way, if you—if you have people over.”
if you’ve moved on, says the tilt of his head and the emotion in his eyes.
“MISTER POOP!”
“i thought he’d gotten over that,” buck mutters. “tommy, it’s good to see you, but are you in or out? i have to—just—”
tommy gulps. “i’m in.”
“BUCK!”
“got it, thee-bee, hold your horses,” buck says as he strides toward the kitchen. to his relief, he hears the front door close, then careful footsteps follow the sound of chaos into the kitchen.
over breakfast, theo makes a fast friend in tommy, who, to buck’s chagrin and delight, is still so cool. he learns that in the past year, tommy has traded his coffee habit for a tea habit, grown a bumper crop of potatoes, and, oh, by the way, been working some out-of-town desk job for the state forestry service, of all things.
“you’re not—you’re not flying?” buck gasps after he manages to reroute a mouthful of pancakes down the correct pipe.
“flying?” theo shrieks, waving his fork in the air. “you can fly? oh! you’re tommy?”
tommy chuckles, keeping it light, but a shadow crosses his still-, always-beautiful face. “yeah, kiddo, that’s me. though i don’t do much flying these days.”
buck’s blood runs cold; he’s lost his appetite.
theo doesn’t drop it. “why not?”
tommy smiles sadly. “it’s complicated.”
theo scowls. “comple-cated.” he pushes a pancake around. “grown-ups is always comple-cated. is there anything not comple-cated when you’re a grown-up?”
tommy hums. “a few things.” he looks at buck then, eyes bright and jaws clenched. “but probably not as much as we’d want.”
“that’s dumb,” theo grumbles.
“theo,” buck warns without any heat.
theo burps. “can, i mean, may i be excused to go make my bed now?”
buck signs fondly. this kid. “wash your hands and face first?”
theo nods soundly. “you got it, dude!” he clambers out of his chair and hops over to tommy. “nice to meet you, poop king!”
“sorry about him,” buck says reflexively. he stands to clear the table. theo usually helps by carrying his own plate to the sink, but—today’s a special occasion, buck reasons.
“no, he’s—” tommy laughs softly. “he’s something else.” a beat passes, then suddenly, he’s beside buck, standing by the kitchen sink. “is he—”
buck ensures the stopper’s in place, then squirts soap into the sink and turns on the faucet. “it’s been a helluva year, tommy.”
tommy lets out a tiny pained noise and slumps against the counter. “a year? i thought—evan, why didn’t you—i don’t know, call, or text?”
buck throws a scrubby wash cloth into the soapy slosh in the sink. “because every time i talked to you, tommy, i hurt you. i couldn’t—i couldn’t trust myself to say the right thing at the right time. so i wrote you a letter. i wrote you a letter a year ago, a few weeks after the—after i saw you last. i wrote you seven letters, and only took the last one to your house because the first six were crap. i don’t—i don’t know why you’re here now, tommy, but i don’t think this is going to work if you’re blaming me for not reaching out the way you wanted me to.”
“i rented out my place,” tommy blurts. he slaps the letter, wrinkled and sweaty, on the counter. “i got in late last night. my mail was forwarded, but…”
“that wasn’t mail,” buck realizes.
tommy smiles ruefully. “after i put clean sheets on my bed last night, i noticed my copy of long dark tea-time of the soul on the nightstand with this marking my tenant’s spot, about 1/3 of the way through.” he shudders through a breath. “i can’t believe—evan, it’s been a year.”
buck’s hands still in the soapy dishwater as he blinks away his own emotions about the past year. his voice is small when he asks, “why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? i would have—i would have wanted to know, tommy. i g-get why you wouldn’t, after e-everything. but i wanted to know.”
“i sent you a text, evan,” tommy says gently, maybe more gently than either of them deserve, or maybe just-right. “but i see now, maybe it was just another thing. too much.”
“not—not too much,” buck contests, shaking his head. his shoulders slump. “just—”
tommy digs the palms and heels of his hands into his eye sockets. buck wonders if his calluses are the same, or if they’ve changed in the past year, like buck has, like they both have.
“yeah,” tommy agrees, muffled behind his wrists.
what a mess, buck laments. what a mess of crossed wires and missed chances and stupid. anger burns behind his breastbone, but it dawns on him that as angry as he is with tommy, and himself, he’s angry most of all about lost time.
the few dishes and utensils he’d dirtied for breakfast rest in the drainer now, and he wipes his hands on his apron. “feel free to say no,” he hedges, “but—would you like to stick around for a while? i’m sure you, uh, you’ve got a lot to do today, now that you’re back in town, but—”
“yeah?” tommy breathes. “yeah, i’d—i’d love that. you’re sure it’s ok, with your, uh, theo?”
buck sighs. in for a penny; in for a pound. “yeah, he, uh, we’re kind of a package deal, now. it’s kind of—”
tommy smiles. “comple-cated?”
buck wonders if tommy’s ever been more attractive. “yeah. comple-cated.”
“i can—well, i want comple-cated,” tommy says earnestly. “with you.”
buck remembers. he remembers it all. but despite everything, he wants tommy more. he always has.
a few hours later, theo’s tired himself out after a rigorous game of—well, buck’s not really sure what, something that was part basketball and part tennis and part being a pirate, and 100% something tommy came up with—and is resting in his room. buck and tommy took the offering of a q-word morning to lay their cards on the table, if not in total, then enough to inform their next steps.
tommy, knowing what it would mean, stayed.
now, buck’s laying out their lunch on the patio table; tommy brings out their drinks.
“it’s funny,” he remarks, wringing his hands once they’re free of cups. “i didn’t think this sort of thing happened in real life.”
he’s nervous. buck wants to hold him. tommy allows it.
“what sort of thing?”
tommy’s laundry detergent is different, but everything else seems to be the same. buck can’t help but sigh deeply, content.
“heh,” tommy squirms. “the letter thing. it sort of reminds me of this one episode of frasier.” before buck can ask, tommy continues, “that’s the one with the pretentious brothers and curmudgeon dad in seattle.”
buck smiles. “and not the show about nothing with the new yorkers.”
“got it in one.”
buck lets the quiet settle for a few moments. “so what happened on frasier?”
tommy sighs. “well, before he moved to seattle, frasier left a letter for his ex-wife, lilith, saying he still loved her. except, the letter fell behind a piece of furniture, and lilith didn’t find it for a year. and in that year, frasier changed. they tried to give it another go—”
buck, recalling the time he and tommy tried to give it another go, says, “they hooked up, didn’t they.”
tommy snorts. “yeah, they hooked up, and lilith says, ‘oh, this is a mistake,’ and frasier runs his mouth about oh, thank goodness, they’re in agreement, it was absolutely a mistake, they’re different people now, they got it out of their system, now they know, that sort of thing. except lilith was talking about the, the eggs or the toast or some mistake with the room service order.”
oh. that’s bad. buck says as much. tommy hums in agreement.
“so? did they ever figure it out? were they endgame?” buck asks, the are we doomed thinly-veiled underneath.
tommy hums non-committally, obviously evading the question. buck huffs with fond annoyance.
“i think we’re more niles and daphne,” tommy murmurs. “i don’t know if you know how much chill i don’t have about you.”
buck does not, in fact, know. “you’ll have to tell me sometime.”
to his surprise, tommy replies, “you might regret that, evan.”
“never,” buck says fiercely, tightening his grip around tommy’s back. “i only regret not having you.”
tommy sags against him in relief.
inside the house, the tell-tale clatter of an awake theo resumes, lively and bright.
it’s not new, what they have, but it’s not what they had before, either.
for the first time in over a year and a half, buck feels like he can really breathe.
the thing about being bullied for being weird as a kid is that even if you've always embraced being weird your brain is still always looking for the line where it's too much. you can be as proudly and intentionally weird as you want and you can love being weird but your mind is still convinced there's a point where you get too weird and people start treating you like a weird looking bug again. also it feels like you reach that point 500 times a day even if everyone you've spoken to today found you pleasant and likable and even if you're completely alone in your house with nobody looking at you at all.
extremely luke warm take - they should never have tried to make Red White & Royal Blue into a 2 hour movie. All the things that give it depth require more time to show, and what they cut to make it a 2 hour movie (June, 90% of the epistolatory romance, 90% of the stakes of the political campaign) just make it a flat paint by numbers rom-com without enough rom or com.
slightly warmer take - in comparison to Heated Rivalry, RWRB movie has aged like milk left out in the sun (what I would not give for Jacob Tierney to make RWRB).
Thanks for the tag @pippinoftheshire!! I am always down for some fic self love.
Rules: list five fics you have written that you are currently very proud of
High Ticket Attractions (RWRB, E, 40k). A deeply personal fic for me, one where I had to balance the science and the romance, the new stuff and a classic movie. Also someone told me they went to the natural history museum because of it and I am very proud of that.
The End of the End (We Live Again) (RWRB, E, 26k). Time loop fics are always tricky, based off a movie, and then I decided to also make it a spy fic... there was a lot going on in this one but I'm proud of how it turned out.
Future Starts Slow (TMFU, E, 26k). This was the biggest tmfu fic I'd tackled in a while, and it was so nice to stretch in this universe again. Not to mention I loved writing the boys older, with everything that comes with it.
It's a Crime (to Fall in Love) (RWRB, E, 52k). Planning a murder mystery is HARD, yo. This fic gave me such a deep respect for people who write these kind of mysteries all the time.
Body and Soul(mate) (RWRB, E, 39k). Been thinking about this fic a lot because I'm going to steal chunks of it for an original novel lol. It took me a while to figure out how this world would work and was so satisfying when I finally did.
I need somewhere to talk about AUs that are never going to be fics honestly because today I'm thinking about Princess Diaries Shane, where Shane's been raised by David his whole life because of pressures from the crown, until Yuna shows up, tells him that he's now an heir to the throne because his uncle died, making Yuna the queen. Shane needs to trained to be next in line because she can't have any more children.
And Ilya is the son of a diplomat and they absolutely cannot fall in love but boy do theyy. I'm imagining like Heated Rivalry, Princess Diaries 1 & 2, and RWRB all in one
I think it's less that they stopped being in love, more that the crown didn't approve of David, and Yuna, seeing what it was doing to David, ended up pushing him away. But crucially, crucially – David didn't want to be pushed away. David would have weathered whatever the crown, the media, the people would have thrown at them. It's not like he didn't have his own dysfunctional family. It was always worth it to love Yuna. So he feels completely betrayed and doesn't know how if he can trust Yuna with his heart again. He's reluctant to trust her with Shane's heart too.
Yuna meanwhile didn't ever want David to go. Pushing him away was the hardest thing she's ever done, especially because she knew that it was right for him to take their son away. They were never going to accept him. It was a quiet and elegant solution. But now she's queen – she was never supposed to be queen – and she's so lonely and terrified and she knows she can't give her country the heir it wants, but maybe she can give it the heir it deserves, an heir who knows what it is to live as a commoner.
And then she sees David again, and she wonders why she ever thought sending him away was the solution. Her heart doesn't register a single day of all the years that have passed since they said goodbye. But she can't begin to hope for him to love her again, not after all she's done to him and Shane, what she will still have to put them through for the sake of the crown... can she?
What do y'all know about Mr David Hollander, world's #1 Wife Guy??
I think David started noticing Yuna when she routinely started showing up to McGill's hockey practices - and of course he noticed her, she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. And I'm certain he showed off a lil every time he spotted her, doing showy trick shots that weren't actually practical during a real game but looked cool during practice. Eventually he worked up the nerve to skate over and talk to her in the stands, trying for nonchalant like "sOoo you like hockey? What do you think of my skating?" And then Yuna proceeded to make shredded wheat out of David's play style, I mean truly crushingly specific critiques. The guys on David's team who overheard Yunas monologue were wincing in sympathy on the sidelines, but their pity was unnecessary: from then on, David was down BAAAD. Little hearts were circling around his head at all times. David's college team would pantomime whipping noises every time he'd skate over to her in the stands but he didn't care cause he was in LOoOve~💕✨💕✨💕✨
(Meanwhile, Yuna thought their first three dates were just David asking her for skating advice over coffee)
For this I with sort of a hs au/childhood friend au. And in the grand tradition of the 911 timeline making no sense, this timeline will also not make sense. In the wise works of the MST3K theme song, repeat to yourself it's just a story and you should really just relax.
Also I went insane and it got Long.
The Kinard family moves to Hershey when Tommy is 15 and Buck is 13. Tommy lives three houses down and Buck is immediately obsessed with him because Tommy is older and has lived so many places (he's an army brat) and Buck has been stuck in this town forever and also Tommy is fixing up this old shitty car to drive when he gets his license. Meanwhile Tommy is baffled by this kid who thinks he's the coolest and tells him like eighty fun facts a day and talks about his sister in Boston and is probably just as lonely as him.
(Buck tries to show off by doing a kick flip and totally beefs it and busts open his face. Tommy cleans him up and bandages the cut and doesn't find it weird at all that Buck doesn't want to call his parents and still asks Buck to teach him to skateboard.)
They hang out a lot, even if Buck is two years younger, and Tommy practically moves in over the summer. The Buckleys like Tommy. They think he's a good influence (a new experience for him). Since he's arrived Buck hasn't pulled a single dumb stunt that gets him hurt ( he was doing it for attention and now he has all of Tommy's attention) and he is very polite and insists on helping clean up whenever he stays over for dinner and then when he spends the night. And the Buckleys are teachers, and so they know the signs of an unhappy homelife. (Kinard Sr is a late in life father who resents his family.)
When school starts, Buck is afraid Tommy will pretend not to know him (it's uncool for a junior to hang out with a freshman) but nothing changes. One day Buck hears Tommy's friend ask him why he's hanging out with a kid, and Tommy just says that "Evan is cool." That is the moment that Buck, already ride or die, would die on a battlefield for Tommy.
Tommy gets his license and he and Buck go on long car rides, just an excuse for both of them to get out of their respective homes. They talk about Tommy's favorite places he's ever lived, about the places Buck wants to go when he leaves Hershey, all the dumb and impractical plans teenagers make when they're desperate to escape. It's the best summer of their lives.
Then it's back to school and Tommy is a senior. He gets a girlfriend who he takes to homecoming, and Buck is insane with jealousy, but Tommy is like she's just a girl who happens to be my friend, which is even worse because Beth is smart and funny and she can quote whole movies with Tommy so what does Tommy need him for? But Buck hangs out with them and he (begrudgingly) likes Beth, who gets all of Tommy's shithead friends off his back about how he doesn't date.
(Tommy is driving them home one day when he says, shoulders up to his ears, "What if I don't like girls?" And Buck is suddenly aware that he's just a shithead teenager who has laughed at gay jokes, has made gay jokes, but this is Tommy and he can't afford to fuck this up by saying a shithead teenager thing. "That would be cool," he says, and Tommy's shoulders inch down.)
Tommy graduates. He does a semester of community college, but things at home are Bad (he is now taller and bigger than his father, which should have made things better but oh god it's so much worse), and so he enlists in the army. The last time Buck was this mad was when Maddie left for Boston and they fight about it (they made plans! If Tommy waits a year then they can enlist together!) but at the end Tommy leaves and Buck promises to write him a letter every day ("This isn't 1942, Evan," Tommy says, dry but so fond. "We have technology."). Buck is the one to see him off and they hug so tight and for so long and Buck says quietly, like he almost doesn't want Tommy to hear, "I'm going to miss you so much." Tommy hopes that's true; no one's ever missed him before.
This is the epistolary section where it's just the emails they send back and forth. Buck leaves Hershey sooner in this (Maddie moves back just as Tommy leaves--it's funny how the two most important people in his life don't meet), and he sends Maddie postcards and sends long rambling emails to Tommy. He's more honest with Tommy about the hardships he's facing, and at some point Tommy is like I am sending you some money so you can buy food and also make rent so you don't sleep in the car it's not like I'm using it anyway. Tommy emails back as often as he can--he's in basic and then he goes to pilot training and then, of course, he does a tour in Afghanistan.
("My boyfriend is also in the army," his fellow bartender Kelsey says.
"Oh, he's just my best friend," Buck says, and Kelsey is like sure Jan because Buck talks about Tommy like he's a war bride.)
Somewhere between Virginia Beach and Peru, Buck figures out he's bi. He's out dancing at a gay friendly club and there's a guy with dark hair and a cleft chin who absolutely does not look like Tommy not even a little bit and Buck goes home with him and it's fun and very informative and he leaves before morning, alight with a new understanding of himself. The problem is that he doesn't know how to tell Tommy. Or, well, how to tell Tommy that doesn't get him in trouble as this is the waning days of Don't Ask Don't. He can't just say he's also into dudes. So instead Buck sends a very confusing email about how's open to all options now life is a buffet and he's loading up a plate and Tommy is like okay he's back in his stoned surfer phase.
And then, of course, the helicopter crashes/gets shot down, Tommy is injured, and is looking at a medical discharge and a long recovery. (Buck is beneficiary of course because Tommy is going to take care of him even if all he can do is leave him a little bit of money.) He's in the hospital in Germany when he gets to talk to Buck, who has so many questions about his injury and what medical care he needs and what kind of follow up care and also he's gone on reddit and he knows dealing with the VA can be a nightmare but he's been talking to a bunch of vets and he's putting together a cheat sheet to make it easier and does Tommy know when he'll be flying back? It takes Tommy almost an hour to work up the courage to ask where Buck is and if maybe Tommy can stay with him, just for a bit, just until he figures out what he wants to do.
"I'm sharing a house with like six other dudes," Buck says, "but I've already starting looking for an apartment for us. Don't worry, I know it's gotta be on the first floor or have an elevator. I am not making you climb stairs."
"You're looking for an apartment in Peru?"
"Oh, I'm in LA now," Buck says. "California was your favorite place you've lived, right?"
It was and it is, and when Tommy finally makes it through arrivals at LAX, Buck is there, grabbing and holding him so tightly before he seems to remember that Tommy had nearly died, then he was jerking back mumbling sorry-sorry-sorry. "You're fine, you're fine, get back here," Tommy says and hugs him so tight and so long.
The last time Tommy saw him was when Buck was twenty-one and Buck had taken a detour to visit him when he was stationed at a base down south. Tommy had gotten a weekend pass and they went out to celebrate Buck's birthday, two months late but hey what could you do, drinking and hanging off each other and laughing more that night than Tommy had in years, since he'd been in Hershey, and the next morning Tommy had hugged Buck goodbye and didn't want to let him go.
Buck is a few years older, still with a bit of babyface, but Tommy can see the man he'll grow into.
(Tommy looks so different than when they were shithead teenagers, sharp where he isn't haggard, holding himself so still and careful, but he still hugs with his whole body and he still holds Buck so tight and god Buck loves him, loves him, loves him.)
The apartment is the kind of place you get when you're young and broke: small, cramped, but clean enough and blessedly free of bugs. When Buck said he would handle getting the apartment set up, he meant it; there were beds with sheets and comforters, bathmat in the bathroom and towels in the closet, dishes clearly picked up at some thrift store in the cupboard, a couch that probably spent most of its life in some frat house but at least it was comfortable and didn't smell. All Tommy could contribute was rent money and a couple of paintings for the bare walls.
They figure out how to live together, but pressure starts to build. Buck is doing temp office work and bartending for money and Tommy has savings he call fall back on as he figures out what he wants to do (Buck offering to hook him up with his temp service is not helpful), but Tommy is having trouble sleeping and feels he's mooching off Buck. It doesn't help when he finds Buck's collection of pamphlets about vet support groups and PTSD and programs designed to help vets get jobs, all these little signs that Buck gives cares so much while Tommy is bringing nothing to this.
It builds and builds until it finally breaks one day and then he and Buck are screaming at each other over the frat couch about the pamphlets and Buck's extra shifts to make sure they have a cushion for rent and that this isn't any different than when Tommy would send him money every month or pass along leads for job because his army buddies knew a guy who was looking to hire a ranch hand so why is this different?
"I was trying to take care of you," Tommy shouts.
"And I'm trying to take care of you," Buck lobs right back.
Tommy throws up his hands. "Why would you want to?"
"Because I love you, asshole!" Buck screams right into his face.
"Well, I love you!" Tommy screams back.
And then they stare silently at each other before hysterically laughing at the absurdity. They end up collapsed together on the frat couch and Tommy says, "So I guess we're making this work." And Buck is like yes obviously you idiot and takes Tommy's hand in his own.
(Three days later, while pretending to watch a movie, Tommy says, "So when you said you loved me did you mean like--" and he made a truly incomprehensible hand gesture meant to convey the distilled concept of no homo and also bros sitting five feet apart in a hot tub because they're not gay.
"Oh my god," Buck says and just clambers into his lap. "Remember when I tried to do a kickflip and ate shit and bled all over you? I've been in love with you since then."
"It was later for me," Tommy says. "When I left and you said you were going to miss me. No one ever missed me before."
"I missed you so much," Buck says. "Can we please have sex now?"
Tommy laughs and kisses him and, well, it's very enlightening.
Later, after they cleaned up and eat something, Tommy says, "I miss flying. I think I want to do that again, but to help people now instead of, you know."
"I have an idea." Buck clambered over his lap to root through the side table drawer where all the pamphlets lived. "Little help."
Tommy hauls him back, feeling a bit like the claw in a claw machine, and Buck emerges with a pamphlet clasped in a triumphant fist.
"So I've been thinking about joining the LAFD," Buck says shyly. "There's an Air Ops division that does suppressant, high rise response, search and rescue. They need pilots. So, uh, what do you say? Want to join the LAFD with me?"
Tommy takes the pamphlet and smooths it out. There's a lot of smiling men and women on there and, yes, a helicopter or two. He can fly and he can help people. "Okay," he says.
Buck doesn't smile so much as beam. "Okay?"
"Yeah," Tommy says, laughing. "Let's do it."
A year later the 118's newest probie arrives wearing a bright smile and a wedding ring.
"Oh good," Chimney said dryly, "they sent us a child bride."
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