How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dying?
I am having feelings about that episode, so please enjoy 3k words of fic about it. I told myself yesterday I wasn't going to write anything about it because I didn't think I had much to say, and then this hit me like a truck at like midnight. Exceptional timing, brain, no notes.
Title is from You're Losing Me by Taylor Swift. (The other line I considered was "I know my pain is such an imposition," for obvious reasons, but I made a different call. Hopefully this one is pointed enough. 😂)
Tommy thinks about reaching out. Tommy thinks about reaching out a lot, but he doesn’t do it. The footage from the cameras in the tunnel plays on a loop in his mind, but Evan had been red-eyed but composed by the time he and Athena came out of there, and the last thing Tommy was going to do was blurt it out in front of everyone. That he’d seen something no one else had. That he knew, and the knowledge was lodged in his chest like a knife.
Evan kept it together that night, but Tommy can’t imagine that persisted for long. He was subdued at the funeral—and Tommy was focused on doing his own part as respectfully as possible—but there were times when Evan had seemed…lost. Unmoored somehow. It was understandable given where they were, but it had made Tommy wonder, a little bit, who Evan was leaning on to get through this. He had banished the thought as soon as it had surfaced. The 118 was Evan’s family; of course they were seeing what was going on with him, probably more clearly than Tommy could. No doubt they had it under control. They would never let Evan suffer through a loss like this alone.
So Tommy doesn’t call after the funeral.
He doesn’t call, and he doesn’t call, and he doesn’t call, and he falls asleep almost every night to a vivid memory of the way Evan’s legs had just given out under him. He doesn’t call and the impulse to hold Evan—just briefly, just because he couldn’t then—is almost overwhelming. But that’s not what they are anymore. He’s not sure if they're anything, honestly, and he’s not going to ask. Evan has more important things to worry about right now, and Tommy’s not going to barge in demanding anything at all.
And then a building goes down, of course with half the 118 inside, and Tommy’s still on ground ops until Melton forgives him. Evan and Ravi are finally pulled out—dusty and scraped up, but whole—and Tommy sees them making their slow way toward the 118 engine and Gerrard.
Evan brightens a little and waves when he looks up and sees Tommy, and Tommy really hopes he’s got a handle on his expression, because Evan looks awful. His smile is brittle and the hollowness in his eyes is concerning. Tommy almost looks around for the rest of the 118 because what the fuck are they thinking? They wouldn’t let Evan walk around like this, looking like an open wound. Right? They would do something about it.
For the first time, Tommy considers the possibility that he’s made a few too many assumptions about what the 118 would and wouldn’t do.
He jogs over to where Evan and Ravi have stopped. Ravi is chatting with a firefighter from the 133, but Evan is just…standing. His eyes are blank and unfocused, and Tommy is starting to get a little pissed at all the people who are supposed to have Evan’s back because what are they doing?
“Hey,” he says quietly, but Evan startles anyway.
“Oh! Uh, hey Tommy.” He dredges up a smile that goes nowhere near his eyes. “Ground ops, huh?”
“Yeah, Melton’s still pissed, so…”
Evan frowns. “I’m so—Tommy I’m so sorry.”
Tommy frowns back at him. “For what?”
“I shouldn’t have asked…I didn’t think,” Evan says, his shoulders slumping, and Tommy doesn’t like that reaction at all.
“Sure you did. You thought ‘The team is in trouble; I wonder if Tommy can help,’ and the answer was yes.”
Evan gives him a wan smile. “But you love flying.”
“I do,” Tommy says slowly, “and I’ll be doing it again in no time. It’s really not a big deal.” He catches Evan’s eye and says firmly, “Hey, I’m a grown-up. I have a mortgage and everything—I can absolutely deal with the consequences of my own actions.”
Evan stares for a second and then starts blinking faster. His hand starts to come up, like he’s going to wipe his eyes, but stops halfway. He looks around at the clusters of firefighters around them.
“I have to—” he says, and gestures vaguely in a direction, and then he’s gone. Tommy frowns after him, wondering where exactly he went wrong.
He thinks maybe he should call this time.
He doesn’t get the chance.
The day after the building collapse, Tommy drives home from his 48—which was a bitch and a half, and not just because a building came down—and finds a very familiar jeep parked in his driveway. He stares at it for a while, failing to make sense of its presence, and then realizes he’s been sitting there for too long. He gets out of his truck and lets himself into his house. He can hear water running in the kitchen, and the house smells like red sauce, similar to the one his mom used to simmer on the stove on Sunday afternoons. It smells like home, and he buries that thought as soon as it surfaces.
Tommy drifts into the kitchen, uncertain what he’ll find there. Evan has his back to the door, rinsing a cutting board in the sink. He looks over his shoulder as Tommy comes in.
“One sec,” he says, and Tommy nods. He takes the time to go set his bag down in his bedroom, kicking off his shoes and changing into sweatpants. When he makes it back to the kitchen, the board is in the drying rack and Evan is standing at the kitchen island, staring down at his hands on the countertop.
“Hi,” Tommy says as he comes back in. He skirts carefully around Evan to grab a beer from the fridge and opens it, and then he goes back to the other side of the island. Whatever Evan is doing here, Tommy has no desire to spook him. His kitchen is Evan’s kitchen. Hell, if he’s being really honest with himself, his everything is Evan’s everything, to a probably concerning degree.
Whatever. Not the point right now.
“Hey,” Evan says, and takes a swig from the bottle of water in front of him. “Your spare key is still in the same spot.”
“Sure is,” Tommy agrees. There’s a brief silence. “What are you making?” Tommy asks.
“Meat sauce,” Evan says. “I was going to make fresh pasta, but I wasn’t sure when you’d be home and I didn’t know if I’d have time.”
Tommy nods. “It smells great,” he says.
Evan glances at him, and then away. “Sorry for invading your kitchen,” he says, but it sounds likes something he thinks he should say rather than something he really means. Tommy can work with that.
“Don’t be,” Tommy says. “You’re always welcome here.” His tone is warm and probably too fond, but there’s not much he can do about it. He’s just really happy Evan is in his kitchen, looking tentative, but maybe a little less hollow than he looked yesterday.
Evan looks up at that, faint surprise and…something else flitting over his face before he smiles. “Yeah?” he asks, like that’s a real question.
“Of course,” Tommy says, and he’s probably giving himself all the way away, but he’s finding it hard to care. He’s tired. Tired of pretending he didn’t see what he saw, tired of pretending he doesn’t desperately want to hug Evan, just to do it. Because he couldn’t then, but maybe he can now.
As soon as he has the thought, the words come out without him ever deciding to say them. “Could I—do you mind if I hug you?”
Evan glances over his shoulder at the sauce, and then the kitchen timer. There’s a lot of time left on it, and Tommy briefly wonders what it means that Evan came over and let himself into his house to make a dish that has to simmer for hours.
Evan turns back to Tommy, his expression a little rueful. He’s twisting his hands together in front of him. “I think, uh. There—there’s a solid chance I’m going to cry all over you if that happens,” he says, eyes downcast.
“I can live with that,” Tommy says immediately.
Evan’s head comes up, eyes huge in his face, and he drinks in Tommy’s expression. Tommy doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he seems to find it. He moves, and then Tommy moves, and they crash into each other halfway around the island. Tommy clings because Jesus Christ, he’s been desperate to ever since he watched Evan sink to the ground, face twisted in anguish. He’s so focused on Evan, solid and real in his arms, that it takes a second for him to realize that Evan is clinging just as tightly, his face buried in Tommy’s shoulder. And—yep, there are the tears.
Tommy feels himself tearing up too, for Bobby, for Evan, for Athena--for all of them. For this awful, overwhelming loss, and the horror of how it happened.
Evan’s breaths start to hitch, and he slumps further into Tommy’s hold. Suddenly he’s choking out deep, gasping sobs, sorrow pulled up from so deep it sound like it it’s physically painful. Tommy just tightens his grip, trying to ignore the part of his brain that is loudly demanding to know why, exactly, Evan seems to need this so badly. He can pull on that thread later. For now, he can do this. He can stand here and be as solid as possible so Evan has something to hang onto while he falls apart.
Later, they end up on the couch. They each have a glass of that stupid passion-orange-guava juice Tommy just keeps adding to his cart at the grocery store, even though Evan hasn’t been around to drink it for a while now. Tommy keeps nudging the plate of cookies toward Evan.
“Eddie’s crashing at my—at his—on the couch at the house,” Evan says, and his tone is all wrong. It’s stilted and a little wobbly, and Evan’s eyes stay fixed on his hands. He sighs. “He’s probably wondering where I am.”
Tommy tries to keep the surprise off his face, but something must get through.
Evan grimaces. “We had a disagreement the other night. I know he’s trying to make up for it, in his own way, but…I. I just wanted to be somewhere else for a while.”
Tommy’s not sure what to say to that. “Well,” he finally gets out, “like I said, you’re always welcome here.”
Evan nods a little, but it’s clear his mind is elsewhere. “Do you—” he starts, and then stops. Tommy cocks an encouraging eyebrow. “Do you think…that is…”
Tommy waits. Evan will decide how he wants to say whatever it is—or decide not to—in his own time.
Evan looks back down at his hands. “We did everything we could to save Bobby,” he says. It’s a statement, kind of. He looks up at Tommy. “Right?” he asks, eyebrows furrowed, and his expression is full of such naked vulnerability that Tommy is tempted to look away. He doesn’t, because Evan Buckley deserves all the courage Tommy can muster, even if he’s never had quite enough.
Tommy takes a slow breath in, and lets it out, and reminds himself that giving in to the rage igniting in his chest would be neither helpful nor productive. But what the fuck, Eddie?
“Evan,” he says firmly, “of course you did. You all did.”
Evan looks up at that. “We did,”he corrects, and shoots Tommy a tentative little smile.
“Of course we did,” Tommy agrees, unwilling to quibble about his own minor role when there are much more important things he needs to say. “It was an impossible situation, and everyone did their absolute best.” He starts to reach out for Evan’s hand, and then stops himself, and then Evan reaches out and takes his hand anyway. “Unless there was a secret second vial we didn’t account for—which there wasn’t—there was nothing more anyone could have done.” He pauses and thinks about how he wants to say this. “It was horrible, and tragic, and I know that every single person there would have done absolutely anything to prevent it. Which is how I know no one could have.” He smiles, but it’s small and sad. “If the folks who were there that day couldn’t find a way, then there just wasn’t a way to find,” he finishes.
Evan slumps a little in his seat. “Yeah, that’s—” he stops and swallows. “That’s what I thought too, but then Eddie said—” He cuts himself off and shakes his head. His shoulders are curled in, making him look small. Tommy hates it.
“Hey,” Tommy says, squeezing Evan’s hand, and Evan looks up at him. “I know everyone is hurting”—he was going to be diplomatic about this if it killed him—“but that is some Grade A bullshit.” Evan blinks at him. “That’s a fucked up thing to say, sweetheart, and I’m so sorry someone said it to you.” The endearment just slips out, and he doesn’t overthink it. He kept himself from saying What the fuck is wrong with your best friend? and I don’t think grief is a good enough explanation for that level of cruelty, so he gives himself a little mental high-five for his restraint.
Evan blinks a little faster and lets go of Tommy’s hand to wipe at his eyes. He laughs a little. “God, I don’t know why I can’t stop crying.”
Tommy’s got a few hunches, but he doesn’t voice any of them. He shrugs. “Grief is a bitch like that.” He smiles at Evan and gestures at the box of Kleenex on the end table. “I buy tissues at Costco, so, you know—cry as much as you need to.”
Evan laughs again, and relaxes back into the couch. Tears continue to slip down his face, and he periodically wipes them away. They sit there for a while, and the silence is comfortable. Tommy doesn’t take his hand back, and Evan makes no move to let it go.
After a while, Tommy gets up to take a real shower, and Evan gets up to stir the sauce. He’s asleep on the couch when Tommy comes back, and Tommy pulls the afghan down from the back of the couch and carefully pulls it over him. He checks on the sauce and then settles into the armchair with his book. The house is quiet, and it smells amazing, and something in Tommy’s chest is settled for the first time in weeks.
Evan wakes up when the kitchen timer goes off. He blinks a few times, and smiles a little when he sees Tommy in the armchair. Tommy smiles back.
They eat pasta—the meat sauce is fantastic—and then Tommy serves them bowls of ice cream drizzled with caramel sauce. They eat it on the couch while while they watch some nature documentary, and Tommy follows almost none of it because he keeps glancing over at Evan’s profile. He looks soft and relaxed, and that terrible brittleness seems to be gone. He’s still marked by sorrow—he always will be, to some extent—but he doesn’t look empty anymore.
Eventually the ice cream is gone, and the documentary is over. Evan shifts on the couch and glances at the clock in the kitchen.
“I should get back,” he says, with visible reluctance, and Tommy doesn’t hesitate.
“You could stay,” he says.
“You mean for the night?” Evan asks, tentative again the way he was when Tommy first walked in to find him in his kitchen.
“Sure,” Tommy says, “that.” He does not sell it, at all, and a slow smile starts to spread on Evan’s face.
“Yeah?” he asks, and they both know what he’s asking.
“Of course,” Tommy says, soft and sincere. He straightens a little. “I have a guest room,” he says, and Evan’s smile dims. “Not like that,” he says quickly. “Just—you’ve been through a lot, and if you just need a safe place to be for a while…”
Evan’s nodding as he talks, and he shifts closer to Tommy on the couch, meeting Tommy’s eyes. “I do need that,” he says. “I do need a safe place to be right now. And that’s you, Tommy.”
It sits there for a second because Tommy doesn’t know what to say, and Evan’s smile falters. Tommy reaches out for his hand.
“Oh,” he says, and it’s soft and a little awed. “I didn’t”—he clears his throat—“I didn’t know that.”
Evan nods gravely. “I’ll do better this time. At making sure you know.”
Tommy grips his hand tighter. “I—me too. I’ll do better.”
Evan smiles at him, sweet and pleased. “We both will. We’ll do it right this time.”
Tommy can’t argue with that. God knows they have a laundry list of stuff to talk about, to figure out, but…
“We will,” he agrees, and for the first time, he lets himself truly believe it.
