five facts about an au where buck and tommy meet on vacation. is it a road trip? a tour? neighbouring cottages on the lake? who almost runs who over in the boat?
tommy breaks off his relationship, comes out, transfers to harbor, and then his accountant cousin calls him one day. their great-uncle rusty is terminally ill, at his home in... oh, fuck, in stehekin. he needs live-in care and they're having a lot of trouble finding someone who's willing to move to what is basically a fly-in community. does tommy know anyone? tommy thinks about it for a couple minutes. tommy's parents always hated rusty. rusty was always nice to him. rusty never married. rusty had a friend named bob who lived with him for forty years. oh, shit. rusty is - "i do know someone," he says, and he packs up his stuff and breaks his lease and asks forgiveness from the captain at the 217 who is like oh my god of course tommy we love you already but go be with your gay great-uncle. so tommy moves up to stehekin. he never thought he'd move back to central washington but here he is, back on the shores of lake chelan, firing up the engine of a float plane to go take care of a man he hasn't seen since he was sixteen.
howie calls one day. "hey, tommy, are you still with the 217?" he asks, and tommy says no. he's got howie on speakerphone while he flips the laundry. rusty's house is a sweet two-bedroom cabin on the western shore of the lake. there's a rickety dock that keeps threatening to fall into the water and there's a hand-painted sign that says "rusty & bob's place", and rusty had taken it off the nails one day shortly before he passed and in a trembling hand had painted "& tommy too" at the bottom, and it's so quiet, the only sounds the float planes and the boats and the occasional intrepid pilots that land on the runway north of town, and it's lovely up here even without rusty and the ghost of bob hanging out with him. there's a lot of stuff to haul out, but one day he'll get this place cleaned up enough to rent out to vacationers. anyway he says "nope, sorry, why do you ask?" and howie says "shit, our probie's stuck in a house on a leaking gas line and it's about to blow," and tommy says "address? give me a sec," and he calls one of the other pilots at harbor and rattles the address off and doheny park is saved.
buck takes the payout. he takes the money and he drops the lawsuit and with his face hot and his jaw set he starts packing his things. he doesn't know where he's going to go. all he knows is LA isn't for him anymore. LA chewed him up and spit him out and he's leaving. all he wanted to do was to help people. all he wanted to do was to get back to the home he made. whatever. he's tossing one last bag into the back of the jeep when he hears a shout behind him. he knows it's chimney. he slams the trunk shut and heads for the driver's side door but chimney stops him. he has this friend, he explains. moved wayyyyy up north a few years ago. has a lake house. call this number, he says, shoving a piece of paper into buck's hand. buck rolls his eyes and gets in the jeep. he sits for a couple minutes, then he gets out of the jeep and hugs chimney goodbye. "go on," chimney says, looking suspiciously teary. "have a good adventure. you'll always be welcome here." buck doesn't know about that. he leaves.
he doesn't call the number until he's north of sacramento on the 5. he's not sure what "wayyyyy up north" meant. the guy who answers sounds like he just woke up. "chimney said to call you," buck says. "who the fuck is chimney?" the guy asks. buck frowns at the phone, which is on his dashboard on speaker. "uh. howie? han? you are tommy, right?" "oh! yeah. yes. you must be the kid. are you coming up? i can pick you up in chelan." "where's chelan? is that north of sacramento?" "uh, yeah, a fair bit," tommy says. buck pulls off the highway at the next exit and taps it into his maps app. "okay," he says, when tommy picks up again. "i'll be there in fourteen hours."
seventeen hours later--buck stopped for gas six times, food three times, and a nap once--he rolls up into the parking lot that he and tommy had agreed on. they'd talked logistics for a while, then tommy had called him back while he'd been passing shasta and they'd shot the shit for an hour, then buck had called him back between medford and eugene, then tommy had called him to walk him through the order he wanted buck to pick up at some warehouse in portland, then buck had called to ask whether tommy knew a physical therapist up in stehekin, and tommy had said there wasn't really one but he knew his way around exercise equipment, and then tommy just sat on the phone with him while he got on 90 and managed the mountain passes and then turned north and puttered into chelan. he really was going to need an oil change, he thinks, putting the jeep in park. there's a plane sitting on the lake, and a guy sitting on a bench in front of him. the guy looks like he could be a model. buck's sure he wasn't lying about knowing his way around exercise equipment. he drops to the ground and winces; his leg's locked up pretty bad from all that driving. "you must be evan," the guy says, and his voice is music to buck's ears.
it's a tight squeeze in the float plane with buck's bags and the floorboards that he'd picked up for tommy but they make it work. they fly low over the lake, between the mountains, and buck could cry at how beautiful it is.
it's so quiet here. it's almost too quiet, at first, but tommy's always around, puttering in the little kitchen, refinishing the floors, rebuilding the place. he's not gutting it. it's not a gut job, he's very adamant about that. he's restoring it. "rusty and bob made this place a home," he says one morning out on the porch overlooking the dock. "they were together for forty-two years. i didn't find that out until bob was dead and rusty was dying." buck looks over at him; tommy looks really sad. "there was this couple who died, almost at the same time," buck says. "it was tragic but it was also so beautiful. they gave me their scrapbook. i brought it with me. thomas and mitchell." tommy's mouth quirks a little at the name. buck shows him the book later, over breakfast. he and tommy deconstruct and rebuild the dock. buck cleans up the flowerbeds. they strip off the wallpaper in the hallway and the landing and buck does some online shopping and gets some really nice new wallpaper to replace it. buck installs a new sink. he can't stop looking at tommy, and he can't stop catching tommy looking at him.
tommy accidentally drills a hole through his finger and buck gets to fly the float plane to chelan while tommy holds a towel firmly around his bleeding hand and keeps it raised to the roof while calmly instructing buck how to take off and how to land. several stitches, a wound debridement, and a splint later, they get a room in one of the lakeside motels; buck never wants to fly the plane again and tommy's hand is in no state to steer. of course the only room available only has one bed. they take turns in the bathroom and then lay down next to each other, the space in between them almost as wide as the lake.
"hey, tommy," buck finally says into the dark room. "i'm really glad chim told me to call you." he feels the bed shift next to him as tommy rolls over to face him. "yeah?" "yeah," he says. "you didn't have to drill a hole in your hand to get me to share a bed with you, though." he can barely see tommy's face but the way it breaks into a smile seems like it could light up the whole room, the whole town. "well, chalk that up to another one of my famous mistakes," tommy says, before he leans in.
they fly home the next morning with matching grins and hickeys and a stupid huge bill from the chelan emergency room. buck's payout is enough to afford to live here without renting the place out, and after the will finishes up its trip through probate, it turns out rusty left the entire property to tommy, including the plane. "we're on permanent vacation now," buck says when he calls chimney later. he moves into tommy's bedroom. they install a sex swing. it's great. rusty and bob and thomas and mitchell are all smiling down on them in gay heaven.
