favors
Tommy's the kind of asshole who checks his phone at the table in the middle of a first date, now.
In his defence, it hasn't been a great first date. And not in any sort of charming way, either.
In his defence, he's been waiting on this text for what feels like longer than it actually has been (four weeks, three days - he feels stupid admitting he's got a rough estimate of the hours too, but the point is he's been waiting. Hoping. Took this invitation to dinner as an attempt to remind himself he was the one who walked out.)
Tommy is absolutely the kind of asshole who glances up from his lap to find his date staring at him with his jaw clenched and doesn't bother to make more of an excuse than "Sorry, family thing, I gotta go."
Tommy's the kind of asshole who drops three twenties on the table and doesn't bother to say goodbye as he winds his way through tables - this place was pretentious as fuck, anyway - and pushes through the rotating door.
He's not even halfway to his truck when his phone displays an incoming call.
The last time he'd seen that name flash across his screen he'd been - well, he'd been a ball of nerves for all of five seconds before a winded voice had asked him to commit some light treason and Tommy had hopped to.
"Evan. Hey."
He remembers Evan had always thought he was so cool, and he sort of wishes Evan could see him now, with sweaty palms and a nervous hitch to his step as he twists around the wire fencing that will lead him to the truck he'd dropped thirty-five bucks to park, in this stupid downtown lot for this stupid date that hadn't distracted him for a minute at the stupid restaurant that only served tapas and hipster whiskey.
His voice is a little tremulous, a little off. "Hi Tommy."
Tommy doesn't waste time. He's done enough of that, and Evan sounds - Jesus he sounds awful. Sad, deep in his bones. Tired. A little out of it. "Everything okay?"
"I did have feelings for you. When I said that. I - It was such a shitty thing to say and I realized I never apologized for it even though I meant to and...and I did. I do, still, really."
It's the kind of opening Tommy couldn't have dreamt up in a million years. It's solid proof that Evan has worked it over in his mind at least half as many times as Tommy, trying to figure out where it all went wrong, how he'd ruined it so quickly when everything he'd been a sad sack about pretending he didn't want had been right there, ready for the taking. When he'd done that devastating bambi-eyed, through the lashes glance up, even though they were the same fucking height, and Tommy had stuck his foot in his mouth so badly he'd knocked out a couple teeth.
"Okay. I -."
Whatever he'd have come up with in that moment escapes his brain a second later when Evan continues.
"Which is why what I wanted to ask you may be, like, super awkward."
Tommy's a little grateful to find his truck is only two spaces from where he is at the moment. Has to bite back the sharp deprecating laugh when he realizes this is another fucking favor, not a goddamn reconciliation. He left a date for this.
A bad one.
But still.
"Okay." Clipped is a good term for the way the word comes out of his mouth. He's already wincing before he's even finished saying it, because if he can tell Evan's hurting from his voice alone, surely Evan can tell from his own tone that he's...annoyed. In pain. Wishing he could rip the memory of Evan Buckley from the spot it's nestled beneath his ribcage, where he can't shake it loose.
Evan's quiet for a long, long moment. They'd been great at getting immediately horny any time there was even a hint of strife. Not so easy to do when they haven't been together now for longer than they ever were. "I was wondering if I could borrow your truck on Tuesday."
And that's - that's a fairly reasonable request, as far as the 118 standard goes. Still makes him want to cry, a little.
"Can I ask why?"
"It's... Uh...?" The pause lasts long enough that Tommy has to check and make sure Evan's still on the line. His next words are quieter, but he can hear the tremble in them. Has to bite down the urge to make himself a shield against whatever it is that has him so emotional. Not his job, anymore. If it ever even had been.
The farther removed he is from all of this, the more he wonders if he really had imagined the connection between them. How the intimate moments felt charged with more than a desire to rip each other's clothes off, how the silly moments had felt like the prologue of a long and happy story.
"It's fine, Evan. I'll, uh - have to check my schedule but I think I can make it work."
He's free Tuesday. He and his truck both are. But maybe... Maybe this has run its course. Maybe Tommy will have to make more of an effort, his next bad first date.
"Eddie's moving back," Evan says, and there's a weird twist to his voice, a quirk around the name Tommy doesn't recognize. He'd always said "Eddie" with the kind of reverence Tommy couldn't fully grasp, a superhero and a confidante all rolled up in the lazy smirk and cow-brown eyes of a man Tommy had no hope of beating out on the Important To Evan Buckley scale. But if Tommy had to put a description to it, Evan kind of spits the name, now. "And until I can figure out a place to stay I need to get a few things in storage quickly. I just thought - it was stupid. Obviously it's short notice, and you shouldn't feel obligated to -."
"My spare room is empty," Tommy says. Tommy lies, more accurately. It's currently storing all the renovation shit he's been accumulating since the breakup turned him into an insane person pretending he knows a damn thing about fixing up a house.
This pause seems to hold a little more weight to it.
"...okay?" And there's - there's something there, in his voice, sun warm and yellow, bacon cooling on a paper towel and eggs still not plated while Evan swallowed and asked the one question Tommy had been hoping he wouldn't ask.
"I just meant - why spend the money on a storage unit, right?"
"Tommy."
"Let me check my schedule. I can get back to you. If Tuesday works, we can just - we can figure it out from there."
"Tommy."
And that's his "you're spiralling" voice. Tommy hadn't heard it often. Too busy trying to be as cool as his shiny new boyfriend thought he was. Too busy choking down the urge to sink a knife into his ribcage and carve out his heart to hand it over.
"I'll let you know by tomorrow morning," Tommy promises, and before he lets his words get away from him he ends the call.
Jesus fuck.
Hell.
What the fuck?
---
Tommy's so frayed with nerves he spends the entire drive slowly wearing a groove into the side of his cheek. By the time he makes it to the quiet street and sees Evan's Jeep parked on the curb, gate open and already stuffed full of boxes Tetris-style, he feels like he might just fucking explode.
It makes the terse, perfunctory head nod from Eddie on his way up the paved path just that much more confusing. That much more frustrating. He's got a set of keys swinging from his fingers, and doesn't even glance behind him as Evan pops the door open with a hip and stacks a box on top of two others already sitting in the porch.
There's clearly more going on here than Tommy is privy to.
"You aren't helping?" It's an innocent question. He doesn't even mean anything by it. Across the yard, Evan goes tense. Halfway down the drive, Eddie goes still, and swivels his gaze to Tommy.
"No one asked me to." By the stoop, Evan tips his gaze down, suddenly incredibly interested in whatever the label on the box he just set down says. He seems small. Not the man who'd guided him backwards up the lawn with so much tongue Tommy hadn't realized where he was until they were already inside. Not the man who'd confidently held a funeral for a long dead cowboy and roped Tommy into it without a care in the world that Tommy didn't believe in ghosts.
"Well, if anyone else was subletting you'd probably have had to give them more than a weeks notice to pack up their shit and leave, so I figured you'd be helping," Tommy says, because whatever the hell is going on with Eddie's face right now has him ready to raise locked wrists to chin height.
Eddie's tongue rolls along the inside of his cheek. "Buck says he's got it."
Knife, meet tension.
Tommy's always been more of a blunt instrument.
"Right."
"Didn't realize 'got it' meant calling in a favor with his ex, but hey, I haven't been around, in a while."
"Do we have a problem, Diaz?"
Eddie levers himself into the driver's seat of a vehicle that very distinctly isn't his truck. "Lot of that going around, at the moment."
That stone-faced look from the funeral is back on Evan's face.
Tommy's fist are clenched. He doesn't have a clue when that happened, or why it takes quite so much effort to shake his fingers loose.
Eddie clocks it. Stares for a long, long moment. Slams the door closed and backs out of the drive a little quicker than advisable, if the glare from the neighbor watering her hydrangeas is anything to go by.
He doesn't quite peel off down the street, but it seems like it takes him some effort to drive like a responsible adult.
Evan doesn't meet his gaze when he lopes across the lawn to meet him at the door.
He's gotta break the silence somehow. "So. Diaz seems pissed at me."
"It's not you."
"Uhuh."
"It's - I said something he -." Evan frowns. Twists a finger up into the slack of the tape along the top of one box. "Same old story. Buck makes it all about himself."
Tommy's missing something.
Tommy absolutely doesn't have the right to pry.
"What the hell does that mean?" Tommy asks, and watches the marble crumble.
---
It takes a day and a half to get everything out of Eddie's. Another half a day to stuff whatever they can into Tommy's bare spare room.
He'd bought a shed and stuffed the contents of his reno-supplies into it indiscriminately two nights earlier, at the ass end of three 24's from hell, and throws up an ironic thanks that Evan hadn't come by nearly often enough to be surprised by the new shed, or the dozen half-finished projects littering the house.
Tommy learns a lot of things that make him want to scream, over the course of the four-day span they squeeze that moving timeframe into.
It takes everything in him not to shoulder-check Eddie on the way out, once the final box is loaded into the bed of Tommy's truck.
He'd given them some privacy, before they left. Hopeful that Eddie would back down from this escalating argument of theirs, hopeful that he'd remember that his best fucking friend had sacrificed a hell of a lot, to allow him to move to El Paso. That he'd lost more since.
Evan hadn't spoken, the entire drive back to Tommy's.
He asks Evan out to coffee a moment before he offers to let him sleep on the couch until he finds something more permanent.
He should be less surprised than he is when they end up naked and sweaty and panting in his bed an hour later.
"We have to stop doing this."
Evan bites a nipple, and Tommy hisses.
"I'm serious, Evan. I can't do casual with you."
That gives him Evan's full attention. "What does that mean?"
"It means when I sleep with you I'm definitely having feelings for you."
He regrets the comment. Evan blows a raspberry into his sternum, and rolls onto his side to take in Tommy's expression. It's gotta be - well, it's gotta be a fucking mess. Just an absolute shit show of terror at having revealed too much. "I deserved that one."
Tommy smooths a hand over his shoulder. "You didn't, actually." After what he's been hearing about his friends and family, lately, Tommy's suddenly very aware of the words coming out of his mouth. "What I was trying to dance around is telling you I want to try again, and I don't want to fuck it up by falling into bed without actually...talking about it."
Evan snorts. Hitches his leg a little higher across Tommy's thigh. Yeah. Too late for that.
"I baked, to stop thinking about you. I baked cookies, and brownies, and three kinds of bread, and a Baked Alaska, and twelve different banana bread recipes, and - and it didn't change the fact that all I wanted to do was talk to you. See your face when you pull that stupidly bitchy look every time I don't know one of your references. Hold your hand and - and just be somewhere with you. Didn't matter where, I just...wanted. And I couldn't have it. So I baked."
"You made a Baked Alaska?"
"Tommy," Evan chides, but there are tears springing to the corner of Tommy's eyes and -
God he'd fucked this up so royally.
"Move in with me," Tommy says, the hysteria bubbling up in his throat, and he swallows it down, and down, and down again, because as the words settle under his skin, he realizes they feel right. What Evan had wanted, all those months ago, he'd wanted it too. He'd just been so fucking sure it would destroy him, in the end.
He's so goddamn tired of denying that what he really wants is for the rest of his life to be storied by memories of the man at his side, right here in this moment.
It's terrible timing. The worst idea. They're both rung out emotionally, grief and anger and insecurities bubbling just under the surface, ready to rise and make their lives miserable the moment they leave this bubble.
They haven't talked about any of it, not really.
"I'm serious. Why be apart, and all that?"
"Tommy."
The way his name curls out of Evan Buckley's mouth is like a favorite song. He never gets tired of hearing it.
Even when it's exasperated and confused. "I'm in love with you," Tommy murmurs, because his streak of insanity clearly hasn't passed. Evan's breath hitches. The worst part is that it's true. In a way he doesn't know how to quantify. He'd do a hell of a lot more than steal government property, for this man. He'd stay, for this man, at the risk of destroying his entire soul.
"Don't ask me because you feel sorry I'm technically homeless." It's an out. Teed up and ready for Tommy to swing. Tommy goes for the bunt.
"Pretty sure that was more of a demand than a question. You can say no."
Evan peeks through his lashes, chin tipped against Tommy's chest. "What if you change your mind?"
Well. That's a sore subject. Should have expected that.
Tommy slips a hand down his side. Gathers up his hand to slide their fingers together. "I won't. Believe me, at this point I've tried."
There's a quirk to Evans smile he hasn't seen in a long time. He's missed it. God, he's missed it.
This doesn't fix anything. Not a damn thing.
But Tommy doesn't want him to spend a single night going forward wondering whether or not he's worth all the trouble the rest of his family seems to have made him feel he is.
They'd been there, before. Right on the edge of something serious. Something permanent.
They can get it back.
"You're being serious," Evan comments, like he needs the confirmation just to make sure he's not hallucinating. Tommy hooks one of his legs, rolls until Evan is half under him.
"Baked Alaska serious," he intones, just to see Evan laugh.
"Where am I gonna put my bike rack?" he asks, after a serious, weighty pause, and Tommy presses in to suck Evans lower lip between his teeth in retaliation.
