tommy & shannon sad bonding over their husbands fucking each other? and no one leaves each other because they're all insane and self hating
lollll well okay anon I had fun with this. content warnings for: adultery (not the fun kind), discussion of politics (don't kill me,) and STDs. it's a bad time all around! but again, I had fun, so thank you for the prompt!
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"Are you sure you don't want to fuck me," Shannon asks after they kill the second bottle of red and crack open the third. She has no idea where her phone is, but she knows it's on silent. That was the first thing she did, after refining her Do Not Disturb to make sure Chris could still get through, and Eddie couldn't. "That would be, like. Poetic justice."
Tommy shakes his head bleakly. It's possible he's responsible for a much greater percentage of the first two bottles than Shannon was. He's built like a dump truck! She's 122 pounds on a good day. She thought it would even out in the wash, but clearly he's had wayyy too much. Good thing Shannon still feels fine. "Still gay."
"Damn." Shannon pats his shoulder. "Maybe you could fuck his brother in law. That'd teach him. And I could..." She struggles to remember the point. "I can't fuck his sisters, they're Republicans."
"I'm a Republican."
"Oh my god," Shannon says, and hits him with the thing nearest to hand, which is a millennial pink velvet throw pillow. A millennial pink velvet throw pillow she fucking helped Buck pick out, that day they all went to Ikea. He'd bought his niece a Blahaj, and he'd offered to buy Chris one, even though Chris was way too old for stuffies. "No you are not."
"Hey," Tommy says, holding up an arm in front of his face while she tries to hit him again. "Hey, hey, we said no violence!"
"Who did you vote for," Shannon demands, almost completely distracted from the fact that her ex-husband and current boyfriend—the father of her child, the man she's been miserably tangled up in since she was seventeen years old—has been cheating on her with a gay Republican's fiancé. Jesus. Did she really leave Texas for this shit? "Who did you fucking vote for?"
"Harris! Jesus!"
"Swear."
"I believe in small government, not MAGA."
"What about 2016?"
"Look, I'm a middle of the road kind of guy. I go blue nationally and red locally."
Shannon puts the pillow down. "This is not the end of this conversation," she says darkly.
"Yikes."
"I'm gonna give you a podcast to listen to. I'm gonna—" she makes grabby hands until Tommy gives her his phone, and then she starts adding things to his Spotify queue. There are a lot of missed calls and unread text messages from Buck. A new one comes in as she's typing, please just let me know you're okay. She swipes the notifications away like gnats, and goes back to trying to spell "Pod Save America" when her fingers are trembling a little bit.
"Anyway," Tommy says, and pours them both fresh glasses of—she thinks this bottle's a merlot, maybe. He pours it like they're beers, red liquid all the way up to the rim of each glass. When Chris was little and loved cranberry juice, he used to beg her to fill his glass 'all the way up to the sky.' Shannon accepts it gratefully, and immediately spills merlot on the yellow couch. Tommy doesn't seem to notice. She decides that Tommy deserves it for probably voting for Romney and that Buck deserves it for sucking her husband's dick, and doesn't try to clean it up. "Anyway," Tommy repeats. "I don't want to sleep with Chimney."
"Well," Shannon says, taking a big glug of her remaining merlot. "What are you gonna do, Tommy? Because we need to do something."
"Uh huh," Tommy says, and then nothing else. They both drink more wine.
"I'm so fucking mad at them," she says.
"Yeah."
"And I'm mad at you."
"What'd I do?"
"I don't know," she admits. "You missed it. I missed it."
"You really didn't see it coming?"
"No," she says, stomach throbbing with hurt. It's so weird—people call it a gut-punch, and that's really what it feels like, ever since she walked through the door and saw them there. Like Eddie punched her in the gut. "I really didn't." She blinks into the dark puddle of her merlot. "Wait, you did?"
Tommy sighs. His wine is already gone, wow. "Honestly? I think I knew from the beginning."
"That's messed up," she says, blinking back angry tears. "That's so messed up, Tommy."
"I mean," he says. "I'll be honest, I thought he'd tell me when it was over. I didn't think he'd..." He pauses, like he's trying to find the words. No need. Shannon already has the words.
"Suck my husband's dick on the living room floor," Shannon says promptly. "In the house where my son lives." Her mouth twists. "While we were planning him a fucking surprise party." It was Eddie's thirty-fifth birthday. Buck even knew about the surprise party—the whole idea was that tonight he would keep Eddie busy while Shannon borrowed his living room to cut out luminarias while catching up with Tommy. It was fucking domestic. It was cute. If she hadn't forgotten her wallet at Eddie's house, and Tommy hadn't given her a ride back, she'd probably still think it was cute.
Tommy salutes her with his wine glass, which is full again. Her head hurts along with her stomach.
"Hey," she says, something occurring to her. "They weren't using a condom."
"Nobody uses a condom for blowjobs."
"Yeah," she says, sore stomach clenching, "but that wasn't the first time." It hadn't looked like the first time. They'd looked easy, comfortable with each other. Plus there was Buck's little slip of the tongue, when she and Tommy came in—we didn't mean to, it just keeps happening.
"Oh," Tommy says, then pauses. A little coldly, he says "I'm clean, if that's what you're worried about."
"Fuck you," she says. "I have HPV."
"...I'll get tested."
"I hate this," she says, and hurls the millennial pink pillow at the wall. It knocks something off the coffee table. An unlit candle. Whatever. "I fucking hate this."
Tommy swivels around on the couch to look at her, his face dead serious. Thank god. She's sick of his little sarcastic expression of misery. "Are you going to leave him?"
Stomach pain, stomach pain, stomach pain. She remembers promising Eddie she wasn't going to leave again. She promised Chris she wasn't going to leave again. They were doing so much better! They finally figured it out, it was going so well. She reaches for a pillow, but she already threw the pillow away, so instead she grabs Tommy's hand, brings it to cover her mouth, and screams into it.
Tommy's staring at her, hand still pressed to her mouth while she sucks in a ragged breath, the air humid and stifling between his skin and her skin. She screams again, the sound ripping out of her throat and then muffling against his palm.
"Yeah," Tommy says, and for the first time all night, his eyes are shiny, like he's going to cry. "Yeah, me too."
Being a parent is never easy. You want the world for your children but you’re only human and mistakes are far too easy to make. All you can do is try your best and hope that’s enough.
Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. For Helena Diaz as her son grew older, what she thought was right for him wasn’t always. Her mistakes scarred both Eddie and herself and nearly cost them their relationship more than once.
She loves him enough to never stop hoping she can make things right, though. And when his son calls her for help, she does all she can to help him – and to help Eddie, too.
[Dedicated to all the single parents for Father's Day whether you’re a father or a mother. Being a parent is tough and being a single parent is even tougher. You’re doing great.]
Length: 5.4k words
Rating: Teen
Warnings: No archive warnings, s7x10 spoilers
Read on AO3 here
Summary: While Chris is in Texas, he starts writing letters to his dad, which Eddie of course answers. Epistolary-style story following their summer.
Snippet:
Dear Dad,
Buck suggested I write you a letter so I don't bottle up my feelings. He said that's what you do and that's why you're so messed up. He didn't use those words.
Buck also said that you know we've been talking, so you won't get mad at him for going behind your back. Not that you could without being a hypocrite.
Grandma put me in a summer camp and it's kind of boring and kind of fun. And also I signed up to do this summer reading challenge at the library. But otherwise it's kind of boring here. I miss my friends. And I miss everyone at the 118. And I miss Buck so much.
And I miss you. Even though I’m so mad at you Dad. Buck still won't explain everything. He said that I need to talk to you and you'll explain, but I don't see what you could say that won't sound batshit crazy. Buck said I'm allowed to curse about this. He said I don't have free reign for cursing, but for this it's ok.
Look, I know you always say that cheating is bad, and Buck swears that you weren't cheating on Marisol with Mom's doppelganger (that's what Buck called her!), but… Dad I just don't get it. Did you love Marisol? Did you love Ana? I don't need a replacement Mom, so if that's all you're looking for, you can just stop.
Anyway, I want to drop this off at the mailbox on the way to church, so I guess I'm done for now.
