In these trying times... let me offer you... my take on Buck leaving the 118...
Love Takes Miles / Rating E / 34k words
Five months after Bobby dies, Buck packs up his life and heads north.
I can't believe this story is finally complete.
Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to interact with the original ficlet and to everyone who tagged me in writing games and left me the best tags + comments to read.
It's been a long ol' journey with a million comfort breaks and I appreciate you all coming along for the ride.
An extra-special ✨THANK YOU✨ to @rcmclachlan for being such an incredible + thoughtful beta reader (and Brit-Picker, too) 🥇💖
When you go to the doctor's office, if you're a woman, they should give you a gun to use on the doctor if they dismiss your problem. Same if you're fat. Fat women get two guns in case the doctor really deserves it
caesar and pompey plot: he will never understand my strategem of saying i am going to one thing and then doing a second thing. no it’s not “lying” it’s a strategem. fuckkkkkk he said he was doing one thing and then did another thing also we are so fucked and they are going to kill my whole family. wait i can outsmart him with this strategem it’s called saying one thing and-
atia of the julii plot: *comes out in new baddies club late roman republic outfit every shot* where are my children i have some human rights violations left i haven’t inflicted on them. who wants to hear my new incredibly successful scheme. it’s not like last episode’s scheme this one will work
mark antony plot: do you know that i like sex. like a lot. i’ve been fucking
octavian plot: war is for proles i want to torture someone to death in the sewer again. this is a good middle school extracurricular
if your animal is lying on the floor, furniture etc, it’s important to take a picture of them. then, if they move or shift in any way, it’s important to take another picture. with this technique, you can take many pictures of your animal
to give some entirely bizarre context, nigel farage (extreme cunt) has stepped down from his position as MP for clacton (due to a scandal where he received £5 million from a crypto billionaire that could have been laundered) only to run again so that he can prove people like him. and the only person running against him is count binface. who has been a staple of british politics for many years. and now the british press is forced to interview him seriously while he sits there with his binface.
bucktommy - 1.9k - 11k total - explicit -alternate universe, sex worker evan buckley, author tommy kinard, TBI aftermath, speech disorder, self-esteem issues, explicit sexual content, edging, car accident, mentioned tommy kinard/OMC, post sex regret, angst with a happy ending.
Evan pounds back the rest of his coffee. "Hey, wanna go back to my place?"
The tip of Evan's tongue trails over his top lip. Tommy fights back a shudder. "It's a-already been nearly a-a-an hour."
"Tommy, please," Evan whines, and Tommy does shudder. "I have no plans but you today."
Tommy has never been a strong man, especially when it comes to saying no to Evan.
you can read chapter 4 of lost for words on ao3 here!
heed the tags!!! - cnc with offscreen negotiation, daddy kink, somnophilia
this is a fill for the bt turn up the heat prompt meme over on ao3, which you should absolutely go check out, there are many delicious prompts waiting for loving homes
About four months into their relationship, Evan's lying with his head on Tommy's shoulder one night and reading a passage from The Absolutely Bonkers and Horrifically Sad Tales of Evan Buckley's Misspent Youth—this one involves some snot-nosed turd who dared Evan to jump off the Rockville Bridge into the Susquehanna, and Evan being so desperate for someone's approval that he did it—when he pauses mid-sentence. He lifts his head and looks at Tommy with the face of someone who just got accidentally beaned in the head by a stray softball.
"W-Wait, I just realized—I don't think I've ever asked you where you're from. I kind of assumed… but you don't strike me as an LA native."
Tommy snorts. "Did the lack of lip fillers and ass injections give it away?"
The grin that breaks across Evan's face is downright filthy. "Oh, I've examined every inch of that ass and would testify in a court of law that it's 100% real."
Evan always makes him laugh, but sometimes he's just plain hilarious when he wants to be. He's got a killer wit that would give even Howie a run for his money if he ever really let it loose.
Rolling his eyes, Tommy gently cups Evan's cheek tenderly and then shoves his head back down, which makes Evan crack up. Tommy's never had so much fun in bed with anyone before. The sex is insane and he loves every minute of it, but if someone put a gun to his head, Tommy would admit that this is his favorite part: when they're tangled up in sheets that smell like the two of them, their skin stuck together with dried sweat and come, content to just exist in each other's space and talk about nothing in particular. He likes this ridiculous man so much.
"No, but seriously," Evan whines, tilting his chin to sink his teeth playfully into Tommy's collarbone. "Where'd you grow up?"
Tommy actually has an answer for this. He came up with it during the red phase of his basic training—after he made the mistake of telling some kid (who ended up washing out three weeks later) the truth and had to put up with the idiot's incessant questions about whether or not Tommy had ever seen them in action—and has been practicing it ever since.
He opens his mouth to say, "Porterville, up in Tulare County; I was a solid-B student at Strathmore High where there were 104 people in my graduating class; ask me about the town's smog problem or the Tule River War of 1856," because he's padded out the lie with enough research to make any Porterville native believe he's the real deal, but what slides out is, "Angel Grove."
He regrets it immediately when Evan goes stock-still against him and then fights against the push of Tommy's hand to lift his head again. Howie once made a joke about that Studio Ghibli was going to sue the Buckley siblings for copyright infringement when it came to their sad eyes. Tommy hadn't really understood what he meant by that until now.
"Jesus, you could kill someone with those," he mutters, looking away.
"Tommy," Evan says, quietly devastated. "Y-You were there?"
He stares at the thousands of little mountains jutting out from Evan's popcorn ceiling and wishes he could throw himself off of one, but instead he bites out, "Yup."
"I-I was in the third grade, which means you would've been in high school," Evan says, because while the difference between their ages isn't a big deal he's contractually obligated to bring it up in the worst possible ways. "But my friends and I—we watched the news coverage for weeks. We wanted to see footage of them, you know? Hell, w-we wanted to be them. We pretended to be. Scotty Anderson assigned one to each of us and Jamal Bello's mom made us costumes."
That gets Tommy to look back at him. It's not the first time he's heard of kids claiming their colors and mock fighting at recess, but it's definitely the first time he actually cares to hear more. "Yeah? Which one were you?"
"Blue."
"Good choice," Tommy says.
That ought to be that. The next steps for the night should be for Tommy to kiss Evan, lose a layer of skin peeling his body away, and then go hide in the shower for ten minutes before getting out and Door Dashing something from his favorite Haitian place in WeHo. He's been craving fried plantains for a week.
But Evan's always read from a different script, because he follows that up with, "Yeah, I guess, but that's who Jamie picked for me. I wanted to be gree—"
"No, you didn't."
It explodes between them like the crack of a whip, and Evan startles back from the sheer vehemence of it.
Tommy's a little taken aback, too. He's never let his voice rise above a certain volume unless he's trying to be heard over wind and rotor blades. He's never yelled at a significant other. It drove Abby insane that he wouldn't shout during their fights. She thought it meant he didn't care. He didn't know how to explain that he used to shout so much that he had a constant sore throat for the entirety of his junior year and didn't want to feel that particular pain ever again.
"I—Christ, I'm sorry." Tommy clears his throat, swollen with a phantom rawness. "Sorry, Evan. I-I didn't mean to yell. I just meant… blue really was a good choice. Suits you, honestly. I always liked that one."
A tentative smile tugs at Evan's mouth and Tommy hates that he's the reason there's even a little uncertainty in Evan's expression, but one of the many things he admires about Evan is his ability to rally.
"So… you really were there," Evan says again. "That day."
Exhaling through his nose, Tommy thinks fondly of the shower he's not currently taking. "I was."
"D-Do you mind me asking… what it was like? I know it must've been scary, but… it must've been so cool, too. I mean, getting to see them fight. Was it cool?"
He doesn't remember the actual fight, but he does remember how his helmet cut into his cheek because the visor had shattered. He remembers Zach's gasping breaths and the sound of Kimberly sobbing and Billy's frantic mumbling about probabilities and timelines, and how Jason screamed that none of it would have happened if Tommy had just been strong enough to withstand Rita. He remembers wondering why victory felt so much like defeat. He remembers how heavy Trini's body was in his arms as he carried it to the riverbank on the edge of town and how she was swallowed up by the small bed of daisies he laid her on. He remembers the grinding pain of his broken ankle and ribs with every step he took toward home. He remembers the way gold stuck like treacle to every surface in the city center and how it smelled like absence. He remembers the massive burial they held for everyone who died. He remembers sneaking his dad's revolver out of its safe and sitting in the yard with the barrel in his mouth, waiting to see the sun one last time. He remembers how hard his dad's fist hit his healing cheekbone when his dad found him with it. He remembers the name of the recruiter he talked to the next day—Mark Machado. He remembers the pen he used to fill out the forms was a Uni-ball Vision with blue ink; Mark let him keep it after welcoming him to the Army. He remembers trying to salute, but being unable to because of his ribs. He remembers throwing his power coin at Kim when she found him at the bus stop and begged him to stay.
"Yeah," Tommy rasps. "It was cool."
A smug smile splits Evan's face as settles back down, snuggling as close as possible. "I knew it."
