torturing tommy you say? 👀 okay this is a concept I think about A LOT but, tommy having to face the fact that he couldn't be there for buck during ✨all of it✨, that he couldn't be there when he was kidnapped, or for the detox process, or when one of his oldest friendships died in front of him.
– @bisexualbrainrots
You and me both!
Because it's Tommy's fault. Evan was alone because of Tommy. Tommy is the one who broke them up.
If they'd still been together, he would've known about the lab incident earlier in the day and that might have made a difference. Maybe they could have saved Bobby, too. And if they couldn't Tommy would've been with Evan, when he went home. He would've been with him that night, that first night without Bobby. Evan would've been able to lean on him through it all. They would've gotten ready for the funeral together, would've gone home together afterwards.
Tommy wouldn't have gone to Nashville for the games, and even if he did, he wouldn't have been able to prevent the kidnapping. Hell, Tommy could've been in the back of that car and died on impact.
But he could've been there. He could've helped with the search, could've helped with the recovery, could've helped manage his medication. Evan wouldn't have been able to hide it from him, if he took too much. Even if he somehow managed to hide the drug problem, Tommy could've been there when he detoxed. He would've treated him with a lot more trust and dignity than his fucking family, by the sounds of it.
But Tommy wasn't there. Tommy wasn't there for any of it, by his own design. No, Tommy got to skip all that, and be presented with the result.
With the version of Evan that sits infront of him. An Evan who is tired, whose smiles don't come as easy as they used to, whose jokes don't land like they're supposed to.
He doesn't even downplay it, like he used to. He looks Tommy straight in the eye and says, ”It was bad.” He's not talking about the torture, and fuck, that is one hell of sentence. Evan was tortured. Textbook definition tortured. No, the bad part is feeling the fight leave him. Once he knew Eddie was safe, the drive to survive went away.
Not completely, but compared to all the other times he's been in mortal danger, there was a distinct lack of desire to get out alive. He's glad he's alive, but it feels a little hollow to say, which he admits to Tommy.
That is the part that breaks Tommy. He knows what it's like to want to die, but Evan wasn't supposed to know what that feels like. Even now, Tommy can feel how detached Evan is. He's there, he's present, but he's full of loose connections. Things that disappear, under the right circumstances.
Evan might not be aware of it, because you don't feel it, when those connections disappear. It happens slowly and you're too numb to notice. Up until you have too many of them and you stop functioning like a person. He seems close to that point, but Evan is resilient. It might be further away, than Tommy thinks it is.
Tommy doesn't want to cry, this isn't about him, but Evan is the most beautiful human being Tommy has ever seen and the universe won't give him a fucking break. Tommy could've helped, Tommy could've eased his suffering, but he made sure he didn't do that.
He knows the guilt is misplaced, because he wasn't the one who chose to kidnap and torture a person, he wasn't the one who prescribed fucking oxy, but he could have been there. He could have made something easier.
”I'm sorry that happened to you,” he manages to say through the tears. It's not what he wants to say, but it's the only thing that comes out.
Evan smiles a little, because he knows there's nothing you can say to that. You can't listen to the story he just told and come up with an adequate response.
”What have you been up to?”
Tommy scoffs, because what has he been up to? Nothing. He always thought absence makes the heart grow fonder was a ridiculous saying, but every day without Evan has only made him love him more – and he can't say that. Sorry about the torture, I love you.
Okay here is 3 yet-to-be-connected torment nexus tommy kinard backstory pieces of a bigger story 🤗
Tw: murder/violence, implied domestic abuse, homophobia typical of the US Army
Feedback welcome!!!
NOW
It doesn't start when Tommy is sitting across from Maddie Han at a hip brunch place that's more his style than his, trying to appease Evan's desire for the two of them to get to know each other better. It doesn't start here, but something feels like it starts.
It wasn't that Tommy didn't want to go, it's just that he knew eventually they would run out of topics that Evan told him they had in common, and when Tommy is low of topics to talk about and the person in the conversation with him clearly isn't all that interested in coming up with their own, he says dumb shit.
"So," he had starts, after a fortifying drink of lemonade he had ordered in a doomed attempt to keep this meet and greet on the rails, and Maddie had looked up exepctedly—kind but not too kind; "Heard you killed your abusive ex-husband to save yourself. I killed my abusive Dad to save my mom. Want to talk about that?"
Maddie's eyes go doe-wide, and she chokes a bit on her spit. Tommy feels bad about it, wants to snatch the words back and shove them back down his throat thoroughly, like choking on them will get him in the back of an ambulance and out of this conversation.
With his luck, it would be the 118 that would respond.
Before he can desperately come up with something to say to try and salvage this, even if it's just to beg her to not tell Evan how badly he ruined it, she grimaces, looks across the road briefly, and finally grabs the drink menu that lives on the table permanently.
"Yeah. You know what, let's talk fucking about that, Tommy. But we need the mimosa bucket."
And it's a terrible time to grin, but Tommy can't help it; it feels sharp and good and he nods his head, reaching a hand up to notify the waitress that they're going to be ordering more than the crab cakes eggs Benedict and matcha waffle.
Maddie watches him sharply, the same way everyone always had when they become aware of lives Tommy has lived. But behind it, there's the definitive twist of the mouth that comes from being a 40-something who's just a little too haunted to be normal.
Tommy doesn't think this is going to be as ruined as he thought.
BEFORE
It doesn't start when Tommy's handed a pamphlet for the army by the county sherrif, or when he's shipped off to the desert to get gunned down or gun someone else down, or even when he reads about his mother's sentencing. It doesn't start there, but something feels like it starts.
Tommy thinks that everyone in his unit has something wrong with them, and then he quickly thinks that unless he wants someone to figure out what's wrong with him, he needs to mind his damn business. It's good though, in some ways, that he doesn't have to always pretend here. It's probably not healthy, but it's good in a way Tommy hasn't had before. He hasn't been called Junior once since he enlisted, and that's enough to stop bile from coming up his throat too often.
Ramirez is running from something in the same way Tommy is, probably, if the way he jumps and looks over his shoulder is anything to go by.
Carlisle is running from something similar to Tommy, but different in a way Tommy knows he could never quite get. She isn't offering any information and Tommy isn't going to start asking.
Adams is a good pilot, but sometimes the advice he gives Tommy sounds a hell of a lot like a death wish and that's probably not too good.
Tommy keeps his head down and doesn't think about the way the Sheriff had said your mother confessed, son; you need to think about what's next for you, while he handed Tommy a glossy tri-fold that listed their local recruiter's office's phone number.
Tommy doesn't laugh too loud or forget his duties and doesn't think about the nieghbors who looked at him like they knew exactly what had really happened.
Tommy pushes his body harder than he's ever pushed it day-in-and-day-out so that he doesn't lay in his bunk every night thinking about the photo of his mother that accompanied the newspaper clipping his mother's public defender sent to him at basic training that told him she'd been sentenced to 25 years for the crime he committed.
Tommy—Tommy fucks up one day. He's been deployed for eighteen months and he's forgotten himself for just too long. His gaze lingers on the long lines of a distinctly male Warrant Officer's legs and before he can shake himself out of it and finish his assigned task, Carlisle is elbowing him hard and hissing cruelly at him.
"You think they're gonna keep a faggot here, Kinard? Keep your fucking eyes down." Her words are sharp and her look is worse, and Tommy feels shame clawing at his insides. He can't formulate a response, and Carlisle doesn't let up. "You do want you need to in order to fucking survive out here. You want to do that shit you keep it out of the fucking army or you ain't gonna make it long."
Tommy wants to deny it, wants to make her shut up, but fear paralyzes him just like it always used to. He hates it and he feels like a kid again.
"Get it fucking together, dumb ass." Carlise finishes, and Tommy just nods and feels it burn down his spine when she walks off without another word.
"Jesus, Kinard. Whad'ya do to get raked over the coals by the dyke?" Adams says a few moments later, and the word burns him even more. Tommy thinks he's lucky he learned to stop flinching a long time ago.
"What?" Is all Tommy manages, and Adams rolls his eyes.
"Carlisle. Looked like she was on your case."
"No, it's fine. It's nothing. I just said some dumb shit—"
"Fuckin' lesbos gettin' offended all the fuckin' time. Don't fuckin' worry about it."
"What?" Tommy says stupidly again, "She' a—"
Adams laughs, ugly, and claps Tommy on the shoulder.
"Christ, probably. 'Course they'll never admit it, 'cause they know what happens to gays out here."
"Right," Tommy grits out, but the laugh comes easier. "Whatever, it's fine. Chow time?"
Later, Tommy thinks about the way that Adams folded him into the table for their meal with some guys from another unit while Carlisle sat with only Rodriguez, neither of them talking.
THE BEGINNING
It starts here: Junior's dad is an abusive piece of shit. He hates that everyone calls him Junior, and he knew that when he got out of this town he was going to go by Tommy instead, because Senior hates the name Tommy.
Everyone in the town knows that Thomas Kinard Senior beats his family, they just can't prove it because Mary Ann Kinard won't say a word against him and he never leaves marks that can be seen peaking out beyond Thomas Kinard Junior's basketball uniform.
On the night before he turns 18, freshly graduated and planning to hit the coast down to L.A., Junior comes home and thinks that his father has finally killed his mother--she's slumped over the armchair in the living room, body twisted at and angle that looks unnatural. Junior doesn't think, doesn't check, just slowly walks into the kitchen, reaches over to the knife block, and knows from the smoke drifting through the screen door that his killer is waiting for him on the back porch. He knows, in his mind, that unless he ends this now, he'll end tonight.
Senior could have never seen it coming, too busy juggling a lit cigarette and a Coors, grunting about his bitch of a wife and useless son. He goes down fast, overcome with blinding pain and confusion.
I don't think I'm a Junior anymore, Tommy thinks, and then he throws up over the railing of the porch.
"What did you do?" A voice suddenly cracks from behind him, and Tommy sees that his mother is alive. He wants to go to her and comfort her, but they've just never been that family. He has only ever shown her love in the way that he could draw his father's rage upon himself for just a night.
"I-he-I thought he killed you, Mom." Tommy says, mouth still stinging with acid a feeling raw.
"I'm not dead," she said, her eyes focused on his father's lifeless body. "You killed him, Junior."
Tommy flinches at the name, feeling it pluck at the uncomfortable truth that he's just killed a man he'll be connected to forever.
"You killed—my husband. How dare you?" She speaks in a whisper as she pushes out of the door, and Tommy can't believe what he's hearing as she drops to her knees on the wooden porch and puts her hand straight on the knife. She pulls it out of him slowly, and the pulse of blood that seeps from the wound makes Tommy's stomach roll again.
"I-mom, what? He was going to kill us. I didn't have a choice." Tommy tells her, suddenly angry in a way he hasn't felt in a long time. He wants to argue, wants to pull her away and make her admit that he's taken care of something she was always too much of a coward to—
"My husband. My problem. You get in the kitchen a call the police." She won't look at Tommy, and he wants to scream.
"He's a fucking monster, and he's dead. I'm going to tell them that he attacked me, that, that it was self-defense. Everyone in this god damn town knows—"
"My husband, my problem. My life—over. Call them, Junior."
Later, Tommy will realize that she never looked at him again. Not when he came back and told her that the police were on the way, not when the paramedics looked her over, not when the police accepted her confession despite the holy hell Tommy was raising from the back of a cop car parked haphazardly on their lawn. He won't remember how many times he screamed out that it was him, how many times the cops had to tell him to calm down, and how long it took for them to handcuff his mom to her gurney and close the ambulance doors on her.
But he'll remember that she never looked at him once.
I have friends with all sorts of hobbies and every single one of them says they have an expensive hobby. So maybe your hobby is just normal cost . I think buying stuff just tends to cost money
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