oops sorry anon, I saw this and then immediately forgor. but. I do have a lil pothos | pathos for you
-
“I can drop by, pick it up,” Buck offers before he can really think about it. Eddie eyes him, seems to hesitate. “What?” Buck prods. “What's that face?”
“Just,” Eddie says, and the way he's looking at Buck makes him want to cross his arms across his chest. “Do you think that's a good idea?”
And what the hell is that supposed to mean? “Why wouldn't it be?”
“It's just, you, dropping by Tommy's…”
“We're both grown men," Buck says. "We can have a normal conversation.”
“I know you can, it's just…”
“What?” something hot and restless rises in his chest. “Just say it, Eddie.”
“You've just been kind of intense about him lately.” Eddie says it pointedly, eyebrows raised, and Buck opens his mouth to argue, but he falters. Intense? Everything he's felt about Tommy has been intense, since the very first day he laid eyes on the guy. He isn't exactly different now, is he? But now Eddie's got that guilty look in his eye, like he's trying very hard not to say something. Buck opens his mouth to speak, falters. Finds himself searching Eddie’s face for any sort of hint as to what it is he doesn’t want to say.
“Did— did he say something to you?” he guesses. “About me?”
Eddie looks pained, doesn't make eye contact. “No, Buck. He hasn't. I just think maybe you could use a little space.”
"What, me or him?" Buck snaps back, and Eddie meets his eyes and says nothing, and that hurts, because Eddie isn't the first to say it, but he'd thought, with him being Tommy's friend and all, he'd... understand somehow. Jesus, he'd already been too much for Tommy, and now his feelings about that were too much as well?
He swallows back his anger and disappointment best he can. “I can pick up the sweater. It’s— it's not a big deal. You can be the one to let him know when I'll pick it up, and— and he can leave it on the porch, or something. He, uh. He won’t even have to talk to me,” he says, as evenly as he can. "You know, have his space."
“Buck, c’mon,” Eddie sighs, and his disappointment is palpable. Part of Buck wants to demand what it is Eddie has to be disappointed about. Part of him doesn’t think he could handle the answer.
“Eddie, it’s fine,” he says instead, trying to will every single word to sound exactly as a person who is fine would say them.
Eddie has his lips pressed together, arms crossed across his chest, and he looks at Buck for what feels like a long time. It’s in moments like this that Buck finds it easy to forget that he’s taller than Eddie, that by any rights he should not feel small when Eddie looks at him this way, but he does.
“So, what is it?” Eddie finally says.
Buck blinks. “What is what?”
“I can’t tell if this is you being weird about me leaving, or if it’s you being weird about Tommy.”
It’s probably both.
“How am I being weird?”
“You’re being..." He pauses, purses his lips a little. Finally decides on, "Helpful.”
“Hey. I’m—- that’s not weird,” Buck’s voice does something weird. “I’m a helpful person. You know that.”
“Yeah, you are, but you’re being,” Eddie gestures vaguely, “weird about it.”
Buck huffs. He feels ready to— to— something. To pull at his hair. To shake Eddie until he understands how insane he feels because everyone is acting like everything is fine but it's not, it really isn't. He settles on “Well, do you want my weird help or not?”
Eddie seems ready to make some sort of comment back at him, but then he makes a face like he’s going through a mental checklist, and he deflates a little. “Yeah. Fine. That would be…” He apparently barely resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Helpful.” He sighs. “Thanks, Buck.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, feeling like he's simultaneously won the lottery and being sent off to war. “Any time.”
finally got some non-spoilery process done on pothos so I'm cashing in the tags I acquired during the past week or so from @owlgirl495, @chimneyz, @trombonechurchill, @bidisasterevankinard and @leashybebes. thank you! np tagging you all right back, as well as @rcmclachlan, @epiphainie, @sugarpenchant, @geddyqueer, @screamlet and anyone else who wants to play.
have some pothos | pathos. precedes this.
-
Buck is dubiously eyeing the heap of dough on his counter, appropriately floured and ready to be kneaded into submission, when his phone rings.
He considers ignoring it. Considers jumping straight back into his latest ancient grain rabbit hole, filling his mind with all the proclaimed health benefits of the barley, millet, organic wheat and poppy seeds he’d splurged on at the new health food store that had just opened up and, more importantly, where they didn’t know him yet. The whole reason for all of this was so he didn’t have to think about his phone and the unanswered text messages and the very very enticing call button right by Tommy’s name, but, well. Maybe it’s important. Maybe someone needs him, and. That’s a distraction too, isn’t it?
It’s Maddie, and sure, she needs him, but not right now, so the interruption still kind of sucks. On the other hand, she’s calling to ask if he can watch Jee on Saturday so Maddie and Chimney can go to some dispatcher’s wedding party, and he’ll never say no to some Uncle Buck time.
“Yeah, of course,” he says. “What time do you need me there?”
-
Saturday rolls around and Buck isn’t sure the ancient grain loaf has been doing much for him at all besides being kind of gritty, but at least he gets to feel sort of healthy about it. The downside is he keeps thinking of Tommy’s sarcastic, “Mm-hm, and what sources does this– Foodie Blogger Brenda– have?” whenever he thinks maybe the, uh, barley or whatever is really doing good things for his… brain? Gut health? He isn’t sure anymore.
He does check, eventually. Foodie Blogger Brenda does not cite sources. He does find a paper on the health benefits of barley - something about beta-glucans and antioxidant gamma-tocopherols - which sound really impressive when he skims the abstract and decides that’s enough for now. He’d keep reading, probably, because he knows it’s important to get the bigger picture and also to see if the study seems trustworthy but, well, it’s really long and he has to get going. Maybe he’ll read up later when Jee’s in bed. Maybe he should bring the poppy seeds to bake some muffins he can leave for Maddie, Chimney and Jee-yun to have for breakfast? Wait, can toddlers have poppy seeds? They’re sort of drugs, right?
Shit, can he have poppy seeds or will that cause issues on a surprise LAFD drug test? Has he been going to work with drugs in his system because of ancient gut health grains?
He really has to leave or he’s going to be late. He fumbles for a pen in his kitchen drawer, hastily scribbles a DRU- on the back of his hand before he thinks the better of showing up to babysit his niece with the word DRUGS on his person, knocks the drawer closed with a slightly-too-hard shift of his hips, pats for his phone-wallet-keys, remembers he still has an apron on and hastily unties it, and finally gets himself out the door two minutes later with shoes half-laced.
Whichever deity determines LA traffic – or maybe it’s the power of the ancient grains? – must be in a good mood, because he makes it to Maddie’s only two minutes later than agreed. Chimney is still bouncing Jee on his hip while he precariously balances on one foot, trying to get the other into a dress shoe, when Maddie opens the door for him.
She takes one look at him, at the flour stains on his sweat pants that he hadn’t noticed until he was stopped at a red light, and hits him with a fond sigh-smile combo. He’ll take it over ‘worried’ any day.
“So, we’ll be back at ten,” Chimney says, now hopping sans-Jee to actually properly get his shoes on.
“Eleven,” Maddie corrects him, glancing up at Buck with a pleading look.
“Yeah, of course,” Buck quickly agrees. “Stay as long as you like. I can always crash on the couch.”
“Thanks, Buck,” Chimney, suddenly looking reasonably put-together and on his way out the door, tells him with a pat on his back. “Though I doubt my beautiful wife will stay awake that long.”
“Says the guy who fell asleep reading Jee-yun her bedtime story yesterday,” Maddie says, eyes twinkling. Chimney grins at her, and it’s so fond and Buck is so happy for them and it still hurts in a stupid way.
“Wait–” he remembers when Maddie already has a hand on the car door. “Can Jee have poppy seeds?”
-
“Alright, what are we gonna do with all this freedom, huh, Jee?” Buck says, keeping out a steadying hand as she clambers onto the back of the couch so she can grab onto his shoulders and swing onto his back, shriek-giggling right into his ear. “We could… make cookies?” he suggests, wincing when she bangs into him with the force of her headshake. “Is that a no to cookies, or a no to baking?”
“Yes cookies! No baking,” she declares, and Buck can’t help but wonder if he’s accidentally traumatized her into a lifelong dislike for baking. Chim has assured him her interests change every other day, but he’s not so sure. What if his own coping mechanisms screwed her up for life? At least she still likes cookies. She could always draw while he does the baking.
He’s about to suggest that when she shakes her bony little wrist in his periphery and declares she wants to make bracelets, so to the craft box they go.
He’d kind of forgotten about it until he sees it again, the bracelet making set tucked into the side of Jee’s craft box. It’s clearly been used before – the beads in the see-through plastic just a little jumbled up in places – but there’s still a sticky note on top. For princess Jee-yun, in Tommy’s familiar scribble.
“You, uh, want these?” he asks her over his shoulder, holding up the box.
Instead of an answer he hears the tell-tale sound of hundreds of beads of assorted sizes spilling out of a not-quite-securely-closed container, followed closely by a squeak of alarm from Jee that quickly melts into giggles.
“Shit– uh, I mean, uh-oh,” he says, and is rewarded with even more giggles. “Don’t say that first word, okay?”
Jee shakes her head, presses a conspiratorial finger to her lips, and then says, slowly and with emphasis, “Shit.”
He rubs at his eyes, lets himself sink fully onto the floor. “Yeah, that’s… Yeah. Just, don’t tell your parents, okay?” He starts picking up beads, one by one. Considers the logistics for a moment. Gets up to grab a bowl, and dumps the beads he’s gathered up so far into it. “Okay. So– I just thought of a fun little game. You, uh, you like colors, right?”
-
The bad news is, it looks like Chimney and Maddie have an ant problem. The good news is that Buck’s got nearly all of the beads picked off the floor and, with Jee’s help, mostly sorted back into their different colors. Jee got bored of the sorting after a little while and instead opted to sit down next to him to start stringing assorted beads together which suits him just fine, because she grabs beads from the unsorted pile and that means less work for him. Besides, the floor isn’t too uncomfortable and Jee seems happy enough. As far as his evenings go these days, it’s pretty nice.
from pothos | pathos (the artist formerly known as phosphorescence fic), follows thispt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3 | pt 4
-
In Buck’s defense, he’d waited a full hour until after he knew Tommy got off shift before he reminded Chimney of his promise to call him, but if they waited any longer, Tommy would be asleep, or right in the middle of his post-dinner pre-sleep shower. The man has a routine and he sticks with it, and Buck still knows it by heart.
“Chim,” Buck prods, and mimes a phone call with his hand when Chimney turns away from the dishes to glance at him.
Chimney checks his watch. “Isn’t he on the same shift rotation we are? There’s still hours to go.”
“No, he’s been off for an hour already. He had a half shift, mandatory rest hours because they have him picking up Hegney’s flight shifts this week.”
Hen has apparently been listening in, because she puts down her book and fixes Buck with a very pointed look. “And pray tell, how do you know this?”
“He didn’t kick me out of his calendar,” Buck responds without thinking, and sure, maybe he bristles a little when Hen’s eyebrows raise even further. “What? I-if he didn’t want me looking, he would’ve changed the settings.”
“Buck---“ Hen begins, but Buck doesn’t give her time to make him feel bad about any of it.
“Come on, Chim, you promised,” he says, turning back to Chimney instead. “That’s---“ he hesitates, but he can play dirty if he wants to, “That’s what brothers do, right?” If he sneers that last part a little, uncomfortably conscious of how everyone’s turned to look at him, that’s no one’s business but his.
Well, his and everyone who turned to look at him.
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Chimney dries his hands on a tea towel and fishes his phone out of his pocket, punches a few buttons, holds it up to his ear, and that won’t do to reassure Buck at all. He needs to hear Tommy’s voice for himself.
“Speaker, come on, man, put it on speaker.”
Chimney mutters something and Buck pointedly ignores the look he proceeds to share with Hen, but Chim does follow his instructions, punching another button and putting the phone down on the table where it rings once, twice---
“Hello?”
It’s Tommy. That’s Tommy’s voice. It’s stupid how good it feels just to hear his voice.
“Hey Tommy, it’s Chimney.”
A beat of silence.
Chimney taps the screen to see if the call is still connected. Apparently it is, because he adds, “Uh, Howie. You remember me, right?” with a bit of a chuckle.
“Howie, yes, of course. Sorry, long shift.”
“Well, not that long apparently,” Chimney teases, glancing up at Buck. “I heard---“
And oh no, oh no. Buck desperately shakes his head, makes a cut-off gesture. He definitely doesn’t need Tommy to think he’s spying on his schedule, or--- or stalking him, or whatever. Just because he hasn’t revoked Buck’s access doesn’t mean he needs to be reminded of that fact. Buck doesn’t want to know if he’d just forgotten, or…
“I heard you guys have a pilot out sick, was it?” Chimney pivots, smooth as ever.
“I, uh,” Tommy’s voice crackles a little. “Yeah. That’s… that’s right.” He sounds a little out of it, and Buck raises his eyebrows at Hen, Chim. Gestures and mouths, see?
“You sound tired, man,” Chimney says, rolling his eyes at Buck and mouthing shut up. “Everything alright there?”
Some rustling over the line, then Tommy’s voice again. “Yes, just tired. Rough shift and I have to be back at Harbor in… ten hours.”
Buck pointedly ignores the way Hen rolls her eyes and flourishes her hands at Buck in a told you so sort of way.
“Right, yes, I’ll leave you to catch some z’s,” Chimney says, grinning at their silent mime conversation while at the same time attempting to keep his tone cool for Tommy. “Just wanted to check in, see how you’re doing.”
There’s some more rustling, then quiet. “That's… really nice of you, Howie. Thanks.” Another silence. “Everything OK there?”
“Oh, for sure,” Chimney says seriously.
“OK, good to hear. Hey, you’re a good friend, Howie. Let’s catch up soon.”
Chimney beams. “Yeah, that sounds great, Tommy. Let’s do that.”
After he hangs up, Chimney takes a second to thoughtfully chew his gum, then crosses his arms and tilts his head at Buck. “I don’t know, Buckaroo. He seems fine to me. Post-shift loopy, maybe, but fine.”
tagged by the fantastic @chimneyz and @leashybebes <3
have a little uhhhh
pothos | pathos
-
A brick settles in Buck's stomach. "That– that can't be true." His own voice sounds less confident than he was going for.
"Can't it?"
"No." He tries to inject all his faith into the word. "Tommy is, he's– he's confident. He knows what he wants and– and he knows what he's doing. He's a– a pilot, a really good one, and– he owns a house."
Somewhere along the line his voice has taken on a pleading edge. He hates it.
"Have you considered that perhaps you just don't know him well enough?"
-
no pressure tags for @ambernotember @beanarie @epiphainie @geddyqueer @frogsinflannel @emphasisonthehomo @trombonechurchill @sugarpenchant @apollabarnes @rcmclachlan @screamlet @liminalmemories21 @spicycinnabun @firehose118
Eddie is on his couch, aimlessly swiping through housing listings, vaguely hoping that the next generic wide-angle picture of a soulless sunny living room will suddenly give him all the answers he needs, when the doorbell rings.
He opens the door without looking. He gets as far as “I’m still all out of flour from last time--" when he realizes it’s not Buck on his doorstep at all. It takes a second because he's not used to seeing the captain of the 122 in anything other than a suit or a set of turnouts. “Deluca?” he says, surprised. “I thought poker night was next week.”
“I ain’t here to clear you out this time, Diaz,” Deluca says.
Eddie huffs. As if. The man barely has a filter and that translates fairly directly to the efficacy of his poker face.
“Are you gonna let me in, or what?”
“Sure. If you tell me to what I owe the visit.” Eddie’s already stepping aside, letting him in.
Deluca strides in like he owns the place, crossing his arms as he takes in the living room. “Is it just you?”
“Yes…?” he says slowly, following him in. He snatches his nearly-empty bottle from the table, lifts it and points from the bottle to Deluca in the universally understood gesture for you want one?
“Yeah, sure,” he says.
Deluca doesn’t offer up an explanation for his presence as Eddie cracks open two bottles of beer, hands one off to the man still standing in his living room like he’s trying to decide if he wants to be there at all, and sinks down onto the couch again for lack of anything better to do.
Deluca doesn’t sit, but he does take a long swig of his beer and narrow his eyes at Eddie. Finally he asks, “You seen Tommy?”
Eddie nods. “Couple of days ago. Why?”
“Any clue what the hell is wrong with him?”
What, this guy, too? Eddie rubs at his eyes. “How about you tell me why you’re asking?”
Deluca glares at him some more, seems to come to some decision, and sinks down on the other side of the couch with a huff. “He skipped out on my little girl’s birthday.”
Eddie blinks. He isn't sure what he’d been expecting, maybe something more akin to Buck’s vague hunches, but not… this.
He does vaguely recall the subject of Deluca’s kids coming up at poker night, though. Racks his brain for a second. “You’ve got three kids, right?”
Deluca eyes him for a second, but it’s less of a glare this time. “Yeah. Two girls and a boy. Oldest just turned ten, youngest is three.”
“Huh,” is all Eddie finds himself saying. Thinks for a moment, again, of Christopher, of the birthday party Eddie only got glimpses of over a video call. He really needs to stop procrastinating and just pick a damn house. Maybe he should just go to El Paso and see from there.
But this isn’t about him.
“And… Tommy usually goes to your kids’ birthday parties?”
“Goddamn right he does. He’s their favorite uncle.”
Uncle? “Hold on, you guys are…?”
“Jesus H. Christ, Diaz,” Deluca says with a roll of his eyes. “Do you want a copy of my family tree? No, we ain’t related, but we might as well be.”
Eddie raises a hand in surrender. The guy’s clearly passionate about this.
“The important thing is,” Deluca continues, eyes intense and jabbing a finger in Eddie’s direction, “The man has showed up to every single goddamn birthday and big event, and now he skips Sophie’s big ten? Something’s goin’ on.”
There’s a simple solution to that, if you ask Eddie. “Did you ask him about it?”
“Who the hell do you think I am? Of course I did. You know what he did?” Eddie gets the feeling he’s not actually expected to answer and Deluca proves him right. “He goddamn apologized.”
He frowns. “I don’t know man, that seems… reasonable?”
Deluca gets to his feet with a grunt of frustration, starts pacing. “Don’t be an idiot, Diaz. You have any clue what Tommy does when he knows he’s fucked up?” It’s another rhetorical question. “One of three things,” Deluca says, raises one finger. “Either he gets defensive and turns into the world’s most sarcastic asshole--” A second finger goes up. “He turns into a pathetic pile of misery and then moves heaven and earth to make things right--" Third finger. “Or he shuts down completely. What he doesn’t do is fuckin' apologize and then pleasantly ask me if Sophie had a nice day. So you better tell me now, what the hell did Buckley do to him?”
“Now hold on,” Eddie sets his bottle down, gets to his feet as well. “Buckley--- Buck didn’t do anything.”
“Yeah? Then why the hell does Tommy tell me they’ve broken up and then turn into a fucking pod person?”
Eddie sighs. He’s pretty sure he’s getting a migraine or something. “You better ask him, because he broke up with Buck, not the other way around.”
Deluca falters, mouth snapping shut from where he’d looked about ready to yell at him some more. “What?”
Waking up to find you're doing Make Me Write is how I'd like to wake up EVERY DAY
🦋🦋🦋
waking up to kind messages from you is how I wanna wake up every day!! thank you you wonderful person
-
🦋 - pothos | pathos
The Santa Ana winds blow in with a vengeance, hot and dry, promising to bring restless nights, busy shifts and wildfires and upset to the status quo. Not that Buck’s status has been feeling very quo, lately.
He doesn’t know enough Latin to know if that’s right. He should probably check.
The alarm going off puts the breaks on that little research spiral.
(He gets a moment, in the engine, to look it up. It translates to the state in which. The state in which what? It sounds unmoored, unfinished. Maybe that is what he’s feeling. Or it could be derived from status quo ante, the way things were before? Buck doesn’t have time to check, is pocketing his phone and leaping down from the engine to deal with an electrical fire, but if the status quo is the way things were before, he knows it's something he can never go back to.)
Two days later, the Santa Anas blow in more than just hot dry air, wildfires and unrest. They also blow in Tommy.
Or, more accurately, they blow Buck towards Tommy. Quite literally.
He’s rappelling down the side of a high rise, getting into position to perform The Maneuver. The bright sun’s beating down on him and he knows he’d be sweating if the wind wasn’t so hot and dry. Knows he probably is sweating but just doesn’t notice it, knows he should make sure to hydrate when he gets back down. But right now, that isn’t important. Right now, he has a life to save.
Their victim -patient?- is six-five-four floors down, awkwardly twisted in the wide open window, speaking to someone inside. There’s another team at the scene. They’re the ones who called in for back-up, and that’s Buck. Buck’s the guy who gets to swoop in and save the day. That would’ve probably made him feel real good about himself at one point, but it doesn’t really, right now. He has full faith in his harness, in the ropes securing him, in Eddie working the winch above, but he’d be lying if he didn’t feel a little lost, a little untethered. In the non-physical sense.
He just hopes the woman in the window has someone to lean on when they get her down.
He kind of wishes he did. Which isn’t fair, because he does, it just… doesn’t really feel like that, sometimes.
Most times, recently.
But Buck’s close now, has to be quiet so as not to alert the woman to what they’re up to, to spook her into a decision she can’t come back from, but then the wind snags at him, lifts him away from the structure, sways him off course and he has a second to hope she won’t hear, and then a second to lament the bruises he’s going to have when he involuntarily collides with the high-rise again, except…
A strong hand grips at one bicep, then the other. Braces him, keeps him from smacking into the glass like a bird who doesn’t understand the strange human concept of windows.
He blinks at the familiar face in the open window. Opens his mouth. Tommy shakes his head, presses his lips together to mime quiet, inclines his head towards the woman below, two stories down, and Buck snaps his mouth shut again. Tommy’s lips twitch into a smile and through the shock of seeing him, of those wide warm hands gripping his arms still, Buck can’t help but notice that Tommy looks good. He looks handsome and strong and sure and well-rested and not at all heart-broken and that should hurt, probably, but there’s recognition, too, this time, and that makes up for so much, almost makes up for everything.
Tommy’s eyes are blue and bright and sharp and interested and Buck’s mouth feels dry with more than just the looming threat of dehydration.
-
[make me write]
+ tag list for those who requested tags for this fic under the cut ↓
tidbit tuesday
tagged by two people currently working on fics that are making me go insane, aka @rcmclachlan and @leashybebes
from pothos | pathos
(back towards an earlier part of the story again, so not skipped as far ahead as what I shared sunday)
[previously shared: pt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3 | pt 4 | pt 5 | pt 6 | pt 7 | pt 8 | pt 9]
-
Jee-yun holds up another string of beads for him, one end tucked in each tiny fist.
“Is that one finished too?” Buck asks, gingerly taking the carefully arranged creation from her and holding it up to examine it. When she nods enthusiastically, he asks, “Is this one for you? It might be a little big.”
“No!” she says in that tone that suggests he’s the world’s biggest idiot for asking.
“Alright,” he laughs. “For who then? Mommy?”
“No-ho!” she says again, flailing her hands a little.
He hums, tapping his chin in thought, really hamming it up for her. “Hm, how many guesses do I get?”
Apparently the answer is zero. “For mister Tommy,” she says, exasperated, and Buck’s heart does a pathetic little flip, partially because Jee’s new-found tendency to call every grown man she meets who isn’t her dad or her uncle mister firstname - thanks to her pre-K teacher Mister Matt - is adorable, and partially because apparently just hearing Tommy’s name still does ridiculous things to Buck’s insides.
“Oh, well, I’m sure mister Tommy will love it,” he says and decides to dedicate his entire focus and attention to tying the two ends of the string together to form a bracelet, and definitely not think too hard about the intended recipient. When he attempts to hand the bracelet back to Jee, she shoves at his hands. “Do, uh. Do you want me to give it to him?” he asks, very much in spite of the fact that the thought of handing Tommy a friendship bracelet that matches his own makes him both want to crawl into a hole to die as well as run straight to his ex’s house right at that very moment.
Jee-yun fixes him with another one of her are you kidding me?-looks that she could’ve picked up from either of her parents, then giggles and tells him “Yes!”
And Buck has never been able to tell his niece no, so he obediently pockets the bracelet. Then, remembering his tendency to forget to check his jeans when he puts them in the wash, thinks better of it and slips the bracelet onto his wrist instead. It slides into place next to his own, his wrist a colorful cacophony of unconditional Jee-yun love.
The sight causes something bittersweet to catch and burn in his chest and in an attempt to do something with all that feeling, he scoops Jee up into a hug, burrows his face into her hair, makes her giggle and squirm as he showers her with as much affection as he can express.
Later, when he’s back home, alone in his apartment and considering if he’ll ask Eddie to give Tommy the bracelet or if he should hold off until he runs into Tommy on a call, Buck remembers the sticky note. He wonders if Jee-yun remembers that it was Tommy who gave her the bracelet-making set in the first place, wonders if that’s why she wanted him to have one. He wonders if Tommy knows Jee still thinks of him, still refers to him as Mister Tommy, if Chimney tells him any of that.
He should, Buck decides. Tommy should know how much he was a part of their family, even if-- even if he decided it wasn’t worth it, in the end.
It’s important that he knows.
Buck pulls up their text thread on his phone. Scrolls back, as always, to the last few messages they’d exchanged. Looks at the unanswered texts he’d sent after that first call since the breakup, back when he thought - no, knew - he’d seen some of his own heartbreak reflected on Tommy’s face. Back when he’d had hope.
He’d been so convinced, and now…
He tries to put it out of his mind, scrolls back down. Types, Jee-yun made something for you and I promised to make sure you got it. Sends the message before he can chicken out. Thinks about adding, I still have some of your stuff. Decides against it. Instead, types out, I can give it to Eddie? Then, unless you want me to drop it off myself. Hesitates. Types, I don’t mind. Sends that, too.
Tommy never replies.
-
no pressure tagging @ambernotember @sugarpenchant @trombonechurchill @queermccoy @agentpeggycartering @emphasisonthehomo
+ tag list for those who requested tags for this fic under the cut ↓
tagged by the effervescent @rcmclachlan, thank you friend!
here's a little snippet of pothos | pathos
pt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3 | pt 4 | pt 5 | pt 6
-
Eddie swallows. “I can’t be away from my kid, Tommy.” He rubs a hand over his face. “Even if I don’t-- I don’t even know if he wants me there." It's a hard thing to say out loud. "And it means leaving everyone, my friends, my life here, behind. It’s… I just, it’s not my life if he’s not in it.” He glances over at his friend, sitting on a chair across from him, leaning in with a concerned look. “Sorry, it’s not like you, or Buck, or the 118 don’t mean anything to me, but…”
Tommy hums. “Storge.”
Eddie frowns, glances up. “What?”
Tommy gives a half-shrug as he straightens. “The ancient Greeks had different words for different types of love. There’s philia, the love between friends, but what you’re describing is storge, the natural love a parent feels for their child. It's something different. You can’t compare them.”
“Huh. Did you get that from Buck? That sounds like a Buck fact.”
Tommy huffs a laugh, tilts his head. “Probably.”
“Alright, smart guy. Educate me,” he says, grateful for the distraction. “Are there any other kinds?”
“Sure,” Tommy says, looking up in thought for a second or two. “Eros, of course--" Eddie drily echoes his of course, Tommy ignores him, "--That's the intimate kind, desire. The love for the beauty within a person." Then, as an afterthought, "Also the name of a god.”
“A god of love, huh?”
“One of them.”
“Sounds nice.”
“If it's requited, sure.” Tommy says, and Eddie glances over at him. He's staring down at the bottle between his palms.
“Any other kinds?” Eddie prompts, hoping to nudge him out of his mind a little.
“A few. Philautia, self-love.”
“Like…?” Eddie makes a jerk-off gesture, trying to keep a straight face, which pays off when Tommy laughs.
“Sure," he says. "I guess that would count.”
-
tag list for those who requested tags for this fic under the cut ↓
