five facts about an au where tommy ends up in minnesota after his tour in afghanistan, not LA, and ends up working for the st. paul fire department with bobby before the famous 148 person fire?
alex you’re never going to believe who is also in minnesota. you won’t guess. (it’s abby.)
tommy lands in minnesota after his deployment because his aunt is sick. he’s the only kid in the family and his dad isn’t about to go out and see her so tommy shows up with his duffel and asks if he can stay with her. they both pretend it has nothing to do with her being sick.
tommy really was going to just live on the couch and ferry her around to her appointments, but that lasts for all of four months before the two of them are just always underfoot, and aunt francine suggests that he find something to do with his time. he’s wandering by a community centre when the fire department is running one of their hiring fairs and… well.
he meets abby at the hospital when he’s taking francine for her appointments and abby is taking patricia in for hers. (i seem to remember her brother being somewhere out that way so we’re just going to say it is minnesota and that they moved out there to be all together.) francine turns the corner about tommy’s been there for a year, and tommy feels pretty good about leaving the academy and starting to work full time because francine doesn’t need him around the house all the time any more. francine does help him find an apartment near hers at that point (same building, a few floors down.)
bobby is his captain and it’s very early days 118 vibes. he knows something is up with bobby and bobby knows something is up with tommy (a liar knows a liar, they’re just lying about different things!) and bobby sits him down about a year into dating abby and asks if tommy wants to talk about anything.
tommy cracks immediately and tells bobby that he needs to break up with abby but he doesn’t know how to do it because he would have to tell her that he was gay and he’s not sure he can say that out loud. bobby asks if tommy can live with himself if they’re both unhappy all the time and that’s what gets him to tell abby the truth.
about a week after that is the fire, and tommy recognizes the look in bobby’s eyes. he’s seen it on some of the guys that he served with, and it never ended well — he drags bobby to his apartment and he can’t really keep the guy from drinking, not in the early days, but he can keep him alive. and he gets bobby to go to aa meetings and he invites bobby’s sponsor over to the apartment and he keeps his fucking mouth shut at work because it’s none of their business what’s going on with bobby.
bobby gets the la offer and says that he’ll take it if they also let him bring tommy — francine catches him worrying about leaving her on her own and suggests that if he likes la she can always come out there later and that way he won’t worry about her.
tommy joins the 118 with bobby and hen and chim and immediately imprints on sal, which is hilarious later because of the fact that the house keeps calling him “bobby’s tommy” (cause he’s not his kid and he’s not his brother but he is family-adjacent) and bobby fires sal but they manage to keep the friendship going.
tommy finds out about harbor and flying and bobby pulls some strings to get him an interview but says that he has to get the job on his own (which he does, of course!)
francine moves out to la when tommy transfers to the 217
buck takes tommy’s spot and immediately imprints on bobby and feels himself get insanely jealous whenever “bobby’s tommy” gets mentioned because who is this guy and why does his captain like him so much??? and why is buck so jealous???
then tommy comes to one of the family dinners and buck gets it
