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Buck hadn’t thought much of it, the first time he noticed — which was the first time he was at Tommy’s house, actually, a little less than a week after the wedding. He remembers, sometimes, the way he felt as he was walking around Tommy’s living room, his kitchen, his hallways, thinking this is the place where he lives. This is the place he calls home.
(It’s stupid, honestly, how often he thinks about it. How often he stares at his ceiling thinking about the sense of oh, of course this is what his house looks like that had washed over him as he’d walked through the rooms, seeing the dark greens and light blues and browns, the soft fabrics everywhere and the plants that Buck genuinely wasn’t sure were fake or real. The way everything felt lived-in.)
(The actual stupid thing, he usually follows up those thoughts with, is the way he asked Tommy to move into the loft. Like Tommy was living in a loft himself. Like Tommy was couch-surfing somewhere and would just be happy to have a real bed, and wouldn’t feel like he was downgrading to somewhere with no actual doors except to the bathroom.)
(No. The genuinely stupid thing was the way Buck saw Tommy’s house and thought there would ever be room for him there.)
Tommy had a whole wall dedicated to media storage: all bookcases, but only about a third of the shelves had actual books on them. The rest were either movies or CDs — mostly movies — arranged in an order that Tommy seemed to believe made perfect sense but that Buck had never understood.
(Never understood? Never tried to understand? He would swear he’d tried, but now he’s not sure.)
From Buck’s point of view, Tommy’s music taste seemed to tend toward “classic hits radio station” — not that Tommy didn’t have thoughts on the fact that some of the music he heard on the radio growing up was considered classic now, but that was a different issue, honestly. But he also had, in their own separate area, what looked like maybe forty or fifty CDs of what turned out, when Buck started investigating, to be something else entirely.
“Trisha Yearwood?” Buck had asked, that first time, when he’d had his head turned so he could read all the names on the CDs. “Who’s she? And also, why do I feel like I’ve heard that name before?”
“She’s a country singer,” Tommy had told him, coming to stand next to Buck in front of the shelves. “Sang the big ballad song from Con Air, that might be where you know her from.”
That kind of felt like it rang a bell for Buck, but not entirely. “That’s that movie where Nicolas Cage was on a plane and had long hair, right?”
When he’d turned to look at Tommy full-on, he’d been met with a look of blank shock; his mouth was even slightly open. “... yes, that’s the movie,” Tommy had said, after a few more seconds, during which Buck had started to get self-conscious. “What are your thoughts on watching that tonight?”
And they hadn’t had any real concrete plans, honestly, but. “Uh. Depends what you mean by watching that tonight?” Because … well.
Buck had let his eyes sweep down Tommy’s body, then back up to his face, just to make sure his meaning was clear. And Tommy had just grinned at him, instead of actually answering, but then he’d grabbed Buck by the hand and started towing him back to the couch, so that was its own answer.
(Not that he’d never watched movies with people he was dating before, or anything. But there was something about the way Tommy enjoyed the things he watched, the way he seemed to have decided he might as well do things unironically and then leaned into it. Even if whatever they were watching was awful, Tommy had fun with it. Buck had ended up enjoying himself more than he expected that night, even if all his clothes stayed on until he got home.)
And after that first night, honestly, he hadn’t paid much attention to that chunk of CDs. Mainly because he was usually looking for something specific — Tommy would say “hey, Evan, can you try and find that DVD while I make us some popcorn?” or “oh I wanted to play that album for you, it’s probably on the third shelf down, spine’s blue” or whatever. So he just … hadn’t really thought about it.
But now, somehow, here he is, back in Tommy’s house, holding a takeout coffee cup and staring at those CDs again. He has an invitation to just sit down, although Tommy had phrased it make yourself comfortable, Evan, I’m going to put on something dry as he’d disappeared into the back of the house, and yet. Instead he’d found himself gravitating back over here. Some of the artists’ names sound familiar, but some of them could be AI for all he knows.
“There’s an album cover somewhere in there spelled out in beetle wings,” Tommy says, coming over to stand next to him. Close to him, but not touching, and Buck can’t help but be aware of all the space between them. “If I can remember … oh, there it is.”
He pulls a CD down and hands it to Buck, smiling a little as he does, and Buck can feel himself smiling back. The smile gets bigger once he sees the front of the CD: FLY, picked out in wings. “That’s really cool,” he says, and flips it over after a few seconds. There’s no more beetle alphabet on the back, unfortunately, although from looking at the track listing he thinks he’s heard some of these songs before, back on the dude ranch.
“They — the Dixie Chicks — they were my first concert,” Tommy says, soft, and when Buck looks up he kind of looks like he’s in pain. “My mom didn’t have anyone else to go with, and she hated going to concerts alone.” A pause. “My dad was super pissed about it, but he actually gave in on something for once in his life.”
Tommy almost never talked about his mother; all Buck’s sure of is that she died when Tommy was in high school. He wants to ask for more details, but he’s not wholly sure how to do so without breaking the little bubble it feels like they’re in right now. “Was she a big fan?” is what he settles on, and regrets it immediately. What a stupid question. Of course she was a big fan. That’s why she went to the concert.
But Tommy, if he thinks the same, doesn’t point it out; but he wouldn’t, would he. He never did. He just smiles a little, reaches out to gently take the case from Buck’s hands. “Oh, yeah. She loved them,” he says, brushing his thumb back and forth across the spine a few times. “Would’ve loved this album too, actually, if she’d been around to hear it.”
There’s silence between them, for a few seconds, while Buck tries to think of something to say in response; when he can’t, he sets his coffee down on the shelf and grabs another CD at random, just to have something to do with his hands. He still wants to ask for more, wants to soak up every little bit of knowledge about Tommy he can get, but he also just … doesn’t want to hurt Tommy any more than he already has in the past. It’s happened too often.
So he flips the case around to the back, trying to see if he recognizes any song names on this one. He has a little more luck this time, although it looks like it’s a compilation, rather than a regular one. So that would make sense.
“Brooks and Dunn,” he says, just because it’s been quiet for a little too long, still looking down at the track listing.
“We went to see them, too,” says Tommy, huffing out half a laugh through his nose. “Dad was a little less upset about them. I think it was the cowboy hat, honestly — really projects a good ol’ boy image he had trouble finding a problem with.” Buck flips the case back around to see what Tommy means, but there aren’t people on the front, just the band name and a longhorn skull.
Buck’s trying to figure out if he’s seen that skull before — it looks kind of familiar — when he hears Tommy snort just a little. “Kind of funny that he’d decided to actively ignore the genre as a whole by the time it turned into something he would’ve appreciated.” Buck looks up and sees an expression he can’t quite put a name to on Tommy’s face. It’s somewhere between annoyed and amused, with maybe a little bit of exasperation thrown in. “Not that I was around by then anyway. For all I know he could’ve heard the more popular songs on the radio and gone hell yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. But I’d be surprised.”
Tommy’d always been a little more free with information about his father than his mother, so Buck’s heard enough about the man to know that makes sense. The picture Buck had gotten was of a man very set in his ways, very stubborn, and very angry about life in general. Honestly, the way Tommy’s dad is in Buck’s mind’s eye, it’s hard to imagine him listening to music at all, but that feels like a weird thing to say out loud.
So Buck asks a question instead, hoping to maybe steer their conversation back to Tommy’s mom. (Not in a weird way, although it is a little bit in a weird way — he just wants to know more about Tommy, wants to know everything about Tommy — but more in a “maybe stop talking about a person you genuinely dislike” kind of way. Which, he thinks, is allowed.) “So did you keep …”
He trails off when Tommy looks directly at him again, takes a deep breath he hopes goes unnoticed. Takes a moment to rephrase, so the question coming out is what he’s trying to ask. “This section seems kind of small compared to the rest of your music, is what I mean, I guess. Was this all hers?” Wait. “No, hang on, if she never heard that one with the beetle wings it can’t have been, that doesn’t make sense. Shit.”
Oh, and he definitely didn’t mean to say that last shit out loud. Shit. Luckily Tommy looks amused, though, and after a moment or two he seems to take pity on Buck. “A decent amount of it was, yeah,” he says, still smiling a little, even as he turns back to the CDs. “Took me a while before I could really bear to listen to any of it again, though. I grabbed all of the ones that were hers when my dad was out making her funeral arrangements, put ‘em in a box in my closet, and then just … didn’t take them back out for a decade.”
Oh.
After Buck moved into his new place — he didn’t have a housewarming, but he did tell a few people — Athena had shown up and given him two boxes of index cards. (When he’d tried to protest, she’d just given him a look, and eventually he’d given up.) They’re sitting in his kitchen, now, one stacked on top of the other.
It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s inside — he’d seen them in Bobby and Athena’s kitchen more times than he could count. And one or the other had even made it to the 118’s kitchen a few times, usually because someone had made an idle request for something and Bobby had said you know, I think I’ve got a recipe for that somewhere.
But he hasn’t been able to open either of them yet.
And it’s not like he’d been in the middle of a sentence and then trailed off, or anything, but Buck’s guessing maybe he inhaled loudly or something? Because Tommy’s turning from the CDs to look at him again, and Buck can’t meet his eyes but he can feel the worry. “Evan. Are you okay?”
Buck nods a few times, pauses, shakes his head once. Takes a deep breath, slow, rubs his thumbs back and forth along the textured edges of the CD he’d forgotten he was holding. Takes another deep breath.
It’s not like he hasn’t been eating or anything; he hasn’t even been living solely on takeout. But when he cooks he’s been making simple things. Easy ones.
(New recipes he’s never tried before and doesn’t think he’ll enjoy too much, because if he really liked something he always shared it with Bobby, and now —)
Tommy’s not badgering him for an answer, not asking his question repeatedly, but after a few more seconds he does reach out and settle a hand on one of Buck’s shoulders. It doesn’t feel heavy there; honestly it feels almost like Tommy’s trying not to let it exert too much pressure, in case he wants to take his hand back quick. But it calms the rising tide inside Buck, something that might be panic and might just be —
Well. Grief. A word Buck has been trying to avoid.
“You said —” Buck pauses, takes another deep breath. “I know it took. A decade. But that — that means it gets, it gets easier eventually? Right?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” is all Tommy says in return, and for half a moment Buck is almost disappointed. But then he realizes Tommy’s stepping closer, feels Tommy pull the CD out of his hands and hears it hit one of the shelves a second later, and then a moment after that Tommy’s arms are around him, squeezing just a little bit. “Yeah, Evan,” says Tommy, after another few moments pass, after Buck finally lets himself hug Tommy back. “It’s gonna suck for a long time, and it’s never gonna be easy, but it does get easier. Eventually.”
“Eventually,” Buck echoes softly. There’s a hitch in his voice, and it’s honestly probably too much to hope that Tommy didn’t hear that too. Especially considering the way Tommy starts stroking his hair and the back of his neck, slow and gentle with just enough pressure that it calms something in Buck.
Probably he should step back, now that Tommy’s answered his question and Buck’s acknowledged his answer, but all Buck can do is just — squeeze his arms around Tommy a little tighter, take another deep breath, let it out slow and smooth.
Smooth-ish. It comes out shakier than he wanted it to. The next one isn’t much better. He’s definitely on the edge of bursting into tears, and he really, really doesn’t want to do that, not now. Doesn’t want to do that to Tommy. He doesn’t deserve to have to deal with that, not on top of everything else. Not on top of what he’s already dealing with.
“Easy, honey,” he hears Tommy say, just as he realizes he’s also teetering on the edge of hyperventilating. A second later he feels Tommy pulling back from him just a bit, and he’s about to try not to get upset about that, too, but then Tommy’s got a hand gently resting on either side of his neck, leaning forward just a little, making serious eye contact. “Look at me, okay? Breathe with me.”
Tommy takes a deep breath in — slightly exaggerated — and holds it for a few seconds, then lets it out slowly. Buck joins him on the next cycle, mimicking the way Tommy breathes in slow and even, holds the breath in his lungs for a few seconds before letting it out just as even. At the same time, he wants to protest that he knows how to calm himself down, but apparently he doesn’t, if he’s doing badly enough Tommy feels the need to do this.
“There you go,” Tommy says, after … a few minutes, maybe, who knows. All Buck knows is that he’s breathing a little more evenly now. “Feeling any better?”
And what Buck wants to say is yes, thanks. That’s an honest answer to Tommy’s question, and he deserves an honest answer. What actually comes out of his mouth, though, is “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Making sure you’re not hyperventilating yourself into passing out is basic human decency, Evan,” Tommy says, and he’s not actually raising an eyebrow right now but Buck very much gets the impression he wants to. “I wouldn’t say it qualifies as nice.”
Tommy still has a hand on either side of Buck’s neck, and god all he wants to do is rest one of his own on the outside of one of Tommy’s wrists. But he can’t, he can’t. He can’t. But he’s pretty sure if he stands here for much longer he’s going to, no matter how bad an idea he knows it is, so instead he just — pulls back, until Tommy’s hands fall down to his sides again. Takes a few steps back, actually, because he just. He can’t handle Tommy being that close to him, soft and caring and worried, and —
“I was terrible to you,” Buck says, from where he stops a few feet away. He doesn’t know what to do with his own hands now, so he shoves them into his pockets. “God, Tommy, I was so mean to you for no reason, and then I didn’t call you until I needed something from you, and then you kept trying to reach out and I just left you on read.” He takes a moment to breathe, because he feels oddly winded all of a sudden, but then Tommy opens his mouth like he’s about to respond and Buck can’t let him.
“I let you think I didn’t miss you like you missed me,” he says, and Tommy closes his mouth again. “I let you think I wasn’t losing it so bad that they started playing keep-away with my phone at the station because I wanted to text you.”
“Wait, what?” Tommy says, looking both confused and alarmed, but Buck’s not done yet.
“I told Maddie and Josh that I was surprised you could be dishonest, and cruel, and then I felt so bad about saying it that I overcompensated so hard I scared you away, and —”
“Evan,” Tommy says, and suddenly he’s crossed the distance between the two of them, and Buck feels a hand on both of his shoulders. “Take a breath, okay? You just managed to get away from hyperventilating, it’d be rude to land yourself right back there less than five minutes later.”
“Rude, my ass,” Buck mutters, looking down, and hears a noise he’s certain is Tommy suppressing a snort. But at least, for the moment, the unexpected word vomit has stopped, which is a good thing.
Tommy squeezes his shoulders gently. “I didn’t ask you over so you could take responsibility for everything that’s gone wrong between us in the last few months, you know.”
“Okay but what about today,” says Buck, because as happy as he was that Tommy stopped him a few seconds ago, this feels like Tommy’s letting him off easy. “You were talking about your mom. You never talk about your mom. And I just — I made it all about me again. Like I always do.”
“We’re gonna … come back to that, okay,” says Tommy. "But first. Evan. What if I brought my mom up because of you?” Buck can feel himself frowning, looks up so he can meet Tommy’s eyes again. All he can see in his eyes is sincerity.
(And fondness. Buck is trying to ignore that.)
“I thought it might make you feel better to know that I can remember her, now, without — well.” Tommy shrugs one shoulder, huffs out something that isn’t quite a laugh. “Without wanting to cry every time. Or feeling like I’m being stabbed in the heart.”
“Oh,” Buck says softly. That hadn’t occurred to him. “It did, for the record.”
“Good,” Tommy says, and squeezes his shoulders gently again. “That was the goal.”
Buck really, really wants to hug him again. Instead he takes yet another deep breath, lets it out slow. “Wait,” he says, because it’s been a few seconds and he’s just processed what Tommy had said. “You asked me over because one of the Little League kids wasn’t paying attention and managed to spill your iced coffee all down your shirt, and we were in the middle of a conversation.”
“A conversation I was working up to asking you if you wanted to continue here, actually.” Which — well. That sincerity is still there in Tommy’s eyes. But that’s not at all the impression Buck had gotten when they were still in the coffee shop. “I wanted to apologize to you, and I didn’t want to do it in the middle of an entire team of preteens who just won their first tournament. And all their assorted adults.”
“… that makes sense,” Buck says, and lets out a heavy sigh that feels like it’s come out of nowhere. “But what do you have to apologize for?”
For a second Tommy just looks at him. “Evan,” he says. “A lot.”
“Oh,” Buck says, and — fair enough, he guesses. And then he sniffles once, and when he blinks he can feel a few tears trickling down his face. It was probably inevitable that he started crying eventually, honestly. Really it was more of a surprise that it had taken this long. “Okay. Well. Did you — did you want to have that conversation now, then?”
Gently, so gently it makes Buck want to genuinely start crying, Tommy reaches up with one hand and wipes the tear-tracks off Buck’s cheeks. “Well I don’t think you’re in a great place for that right now,” he says, and sighs once. “And honestly I’m not sure I am either. Maybe later? Or in the morning?”
It feels a little like he’s being trusted with something precious, that Tommy is willing to tell him that. Buck can see the strain in the corners of his eyes, now he’s not trying so hard just to reassure Buck. So. He gets it. “Okay, sure,” Buck says. “What time should I come back over?”
“Or,” Tommy says, smiling a little again, “you could stay over tonight and we can just pick up the conversation when we wake back up.” A pause. “If you wanted, anyway. You don’t have to.”
“When you say stay over,” Buck says. “Stay over like …”
“Like I have a guest room,” Tommy says. “If you want it. Like I said, you don’t have to.”
Fuck does Buck want to. “The last time we did the morning conversation thing it didn’t go great,” Buck says, though, because he really has to say something.
“Last time I think we were both also talking around a few things,” says Tommy, and wrinkles his nose just a little. “Maybe this time we don’t do that.”
“Did you, uh.” Not that Buck really wants to admit that his plan for dinner had been the pastry he’d just bought when he ran into Tommy, and then in a few hours make himself some eggs or something, but. “Have any plans for dinner?”
“I didn’t earlier.” Tommy’s full-on smiling now, the corners of his eyes starting to crinkle. One more entry on the list of things Buck has missed. “But now I was thinking maybe we could get pizza and watch that three-part documentary about meerkats that just came out on Netflix?”
That sounds … perfect, actually. In so many ways. “That sounds good to me.”
Tommy nods, once, and steps back, grabbing his phone from a pocket. “If you wanna go get it pulled up, I can order the food.” A pause. “Also, if you want to change into something you’ll be more comfortable sitting around in, feel free.”
There’s no way Tommy still has any of Buck’s clothes — he’d been a good person and given back all the things Tommy had left at the loft, even the hoodies he’d desperately wanted to keep so he could sleep with his face shoved into them. And Tommy had done the same, although at the time it hadn’t occurred to Buck that it might’ve been just as difficult for Tommy as it had for him. Which means — well. Maybe. “So I can … borrow some of your clothes?” Buck asks, just to be sure.
Tommy looks up from his phone, and he smiles at Buck again. “Of course,” he says.
Of course.
Buck can’t help smiling back at Tommy, although he turns away before he can start to tear up. There’s no way he’s gonna let himself start crying now.
And anyway. Buck’s got some sweatpants to change into. And a hoodie with his name on it.
(Well. It’s Tommy’s name on the hoodie, technically. But he knows what Tommy would say if Buck asked if he could wear that hoodie, specifically, right now.)
(Of course.)
