Love all writing! Can we get a snippet from any of your WIPs?
Thank you! I have this from a 'bleeding through the bandages' prompt I've been working on
He should have taken the medevac shift.
Sanchez had offered it to him but Tommy has been hogging all the flight time for weeks now, it’s only fair to let someone else go up. He’s not the only pilot at harbour and he doesn’t have a monopoly over the birds, as much as we wishes he did. When he’s flying it’s the only time his thoughts aren’t completely occupied with Evan. They can’t be, not when he’s at the controls and someone else’s life is literally in his hands.
Besides, Sanchez is a good pilot and a good man. A devoted husband, a loving father, a loyal son who calls his parents at least three times a week. Sanchez matters to a lot of people. It’s right that they swapped.
It’s right that he’s not here and Tommy is, buried under a mound of rubble and impaled on a length of rebar.
Sanchez would be missed. Who’s going to miss Tommy?
Sure, Lucy might miss having someone to snark at, and Mrs. Gregson next door might miss having someone to help her with the odd jobs her late husband used to do. But there’s no one else. Tommy has burned every bridge he had left.
Which is fine he concludes, watching as his blood continues to stream from the torn flesh around where the rebar has, for lack of a better word, skewered him. He’s fine with it. Really.
He doesn’t know how long he’s already been there, trapped in his concrete tomb. He was unconscious for a while he thinks, judging by the pool of blood that had managed to puddle beneath him.
It should have been a textbook evacuation. There had hardly been anyone left in the building but Tommy and two others had gone in to clear the last of them out. All he can do is hope that everyone else made it out safely. There’s an irony that it would be a methane leak. The same thing that had nearly killed him all those years ago, before Howie had saved his life and Tommy had gotten himself together.
Karma, he supposes. For the shitty things he’s said and done. For the shitty existence he’s led for forty-one years.
At least he’s not claustrophobic. Although, with the way the ceiling has only partially collapsed it’s not that smallest of a spaces. The pocket he’s in is maybe five foot long but only a few feet wide, enough room for a rescue team to be able to manoeuvre around him. If the structure continues to hold he won’t be crushed to death by the debris, it’ll be the blood loss that gets him.
He’s already feeling cold.
“Might want to do something about that.”
Tommy starts, the jerking of his body tugging at the wound around the rebar and ripping a pained cry from his throat.
“Wh…hello?” Fuck. There was someone else trapped with him. “Jimmy? That you?” Tommy hisses, squinting into the dusty, dimness of his surroundings. His helmet lies just out of reach, the broken remains of office furniture scattered all around him, but the flashlight is miraculously still on meaning he isn’t bleeding out in total darkness.
“Didn’t think you’d have forgotten my voice that quickly,” A figure shifts in the shadows, the reflective tape of his turnouts catching in the beam of the flashlight. “It’s only been six weeks.”
“Six…” Tommy’s brain is moving too slow. Not a good sign. Concussion, probably given that he lost his helmet in the explosion, but also blood loss. But he does know that voice, he just…he can’t…
“Although, I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised that you moved on before I did. You’re looking for your last, right?”
The figure clambers gracefully over a splintered desk and squats down next to him, shards of glass crunching under the heavy fire boots as the flashlight finally reveals his face.
“Evan?” Tommy’s breathes. God, he’s still as handsome as the last time Tommy saw him, although his features are hard and cold.
“Oh, so it’s Evan now. I thought it was Buck?” Evan scoffs, eyes dark as he glares at Tommy. “I mean, that’s what you called me before you walked out after breaking my heart.”
“I’m s—” A creak and rumble above them cuts his apology off, not that it would have been anywhere near enough for what Tommy had done to him. “Evan, you have to—you have to go. Get out—while you still can.”
It hurts to talk, every movement of muscle pulling and burning and he’s still bleeding heavily. There’s no hope for Tommy, but Even, he can still save himself. He shouldn’t be risking his life for the man that destroyed everything.
Evan seems to be in no hurry, he just shrugs and casts his eyes over where the rebar protrudes from Tommy’s abdomen, as though he’s trying to work out which organs it might have taken out on its way through. “I’m good.”
“What…no, go. Please, you—you need to go. I can’t—I can’t be the reason you get—hurt, too,” Tommy releases one hand from where he has them both pressed around the wound, shoving weakly at Evan’s arm in an attempt to get him to move.
Buck stays firm, doesn’t even shift under the feeble push. “You should do something about that,” He repeats, jerking his chin at the rebar.
“Like—like what?” There’s nothing. Tommy has nothing on him. All he has in his turnout pockets is some webbing, his gloves, a multitool, a tourniquet, and a granola bar which is probably long since out of date. No medical supplies, no bandages. The tourniquet is useless unless we wants to cut off the circulation to his entire lower body, even if it would fit around his torso. Tommy’s going to die down here. But that doesn’t mean Evan has to.
Tommy’s about the plead with him, beg him to leave and save himself, but he gives himself a second to take in Evan’s profile one last time. The face he fell in love with, the one he still dreams of.
God, he’s so handsome, fair skin and stubble that Tommy wishes he could touch. But his hands are covered in blood and Evan is clean and tidy and—
“You’re not hurt,” Tommy rasps, confusion tugging at him. His body feels like one big bruise, and he knows there’s a decent sized gash on his temple, can feel the dried blood on the side of his face. But Evan doesn’t have a scratch on him. “How did you—you weren’t in here. When the—the explosion hap—happened. How’d you get in?”
Evan turns to him finally, face still cold in a way Tommy never would have imagined would be directed at him, never would have even dreamed he was capable of.
“I didn’t. You’ll find something in there,” Evan points to what remains of a cabinet by Tommy’s left shoulder, office storage of some sort. The rolldown shutter is dented in places, enough so that the lock has been busted, and there’s a gap at the bottom with enough room to get a hand in to prise it open. “I’d help but…”
Evan doesn’t finish the sentence, just stands and heads for the furthest wall, running his hands over it and inspecting the beams that are still standing. Tommy assumes he’s looking for a potential exit, a way to get out should help not come. Evan isn’t a small man, but if he sheds his turnouts he should be able to squeeze through a gap in the rubble.
It stings that he’d rather inspect their surroundings than help Tommy rummage the cabinet for anything to stem the bleeding, but it’s no less than Tommy deserves. Besides, if it means that Evan does get out unharmed then that’s all that matters.
