AU prompt where Buck said “I love you” and/or “I want to move in with you/together” during the breakup scene
Everything stops for a moment: time, the air, Tommy’s breathing. His hand is still on the door handle and he looks at it, studies it intently. His skin is dry. His cuticles are red where he was picking at his thumb just a minute or two ago.
“What?” he asks, finally, because he can’t think of anything else.
“I said I love you,” Evan says.
Tommy could’ve sworn he’d said something like “are you breaking up with me?” And yet, when he turns around, Evan’s eyes are full of hope instead of the devastating confusion of earlier.
“Listen, I know you’re going to start saying something about not being worth it or—or that I’ll find something better, someone better, or that I—that I don’t know what I want, but Tommy, I do know what I want and I’m sorry if—if it’s seemed like I’m only halfway in this because I’m not, I’m all in, I want to be all in with you and I know you have the self esteem of a—a—I don’t know, something with bad self esteem, sorry, I’m not in the right headspace for a simile right now, I just need you to know—no, I want you to know that I do love you and I can see us having a future and I meant what I said six months ago about wanting to see that future with you.”
“I don’t have bad self esteem,” Tommy says, but it comes out as “I love you too.” He takes his hand off the door handle, scrapes it down his face, and takes a step away from the door. “Are you sure?”
Evan meets him where he is, one hand on Tommy’s shoulder, the other making sure the door is still firmly closed. “I’m sure, Tommy,” he says.
“Okay,” Tommy says. “Let’s figure this out, then.”
