Archive of Our Own

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Now

July 2024

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“This is Kinard. Does anyone copy?”

He lets go of the PTT. The ghoulish static on the other end is answer enough.

No one copies. No one’s listening. He tries again, the tenth time or the hundredth—he hasn’t been counting.

“Mayday, mayday. This is Tommy Kinard. Assistance requested. I’m trapped between floors in the northeast elevator, and- c’mon, goddamn it, what the hell’s the point.” His finger releases the tab like the trigger of a semi-automatic and he drops the useless thing to his lap, scrubbing a clammy hand up his face. His skin feels like condensation on chilled glass, his sweaty face somehow cold and humid.

He’s not in good shape. His ankle’s broken, his heart rate’s through the roof. Tommy leans forward, adjusting the boot that he wedged underneath his right foot in his best attempt at keeping it elevated. If he slipped down his sock, Tommy’s sure he’d see a swollen spur, purple and bloated.

They say you can’t actually feel your bones, but he’s not sure that’s true. Tommy pictures them bursting from the inflated welt on his foot, white hot.

There’s the useless walkie-talkie, and the elevator buttons he doesn’t need to drag himself up to know aren’t functional, and his busted ankle, but the situation doesn’t seem totally hopeless until silky swaths of smoke start to seep through the silver sliver of the door.

“Shit.” He shuts his eyes and hopes that when he opens them, he’s back at base. Instead of a sleek hanger and sea air, he’s still right here in the stale dark.

Tommy surveys the space again. It’s about six by ten feet. About eight feet high. There’s a hatch on the ceiling, a handrail he hopes doesn’t snap off if he uses it to boost himself up. Even then, getting up and out doesn’t guarantee anything. The condition of the shaft must be pretty bad—given that it’s creeping in, he supposes that just like him, the smoke’s got nowhere else to go. He doesn’t know where the shaft leads, either, or how well he’ll be able to climb with his ankle shot to hell.

His options are to plan or panic. He gives himself twenty seconds to decide, but either way-

Tommy always knew he’d die in a fucking mall.

—

1 month ago

June 2024

—

The only light in the Buckley-Han living room shines from the white font of the scrolling end credits of the film they just watched and the barely-there flicker of some floral candle on the coffee table. It reminds Tommy of being a kid, of nights spent sitting alone in the dark watching things he shouldn’t have put on in the first place.

Smells better, though.

“Well? Verdict?” says Howie, throwing some popcorn into his mouth. He chews at it with the cheek currently unoccupied by a piece of gum.

Maddie, bless her heart, is knocked out at the end of the couch opposite to where Tommy and Evan are cuddled up. As if to answer her husband’s question, she lets out an impressive snore.

“Don’t let her fool you, I’ve converted your sister into a true believer when it comes to Carpenter. Well? Buck?”

Evan plays with Tommy’s fingers where they’re resting on his stomach. “Uh- Kurt Russell’s beard was super hot. Babe, y’think you can grow a beard like that?”

Tommy chuckles while Howard smacks himself in the face.

“Dunno,” he says. Three days of growth is usually all he can tolerate before the army boy in him caves and scrapes his jawline clean. “I’ve never tried.”

“Ah- don’t encourage him, Tommy. C’mon guys, I’m looking for discourse.” Howie grabs more popcorn, and Tommy vicariously worries about his gum getting caught in it.

“Uh- okay, well- oh!” Evan says in his excitable rasp. “I guess the dog was pretty creepy. So creepy that it totally turned me off from wanting one.”

There’s a pause and some rolled eyes.

“Okay, I’m lying,” says Evan around a goofy smile. “I- I still want a dog.”

Howie shakes his head and angles away from Evan, putting Tommy in his cinephilic hot seat. “In Kinard we trust. Tell me you loved it.”

It’s only been two weeks since Gerrard’s reappointment as captain of the 118. He doesn’t want to rock the boat, spoil the night. It seems like Evan hasn’t been having the easiest time with it, though they tend to skirt around the subject, so he can only imagine how Howard—and Hen for that matter—has been dealing. If he cared less, he’d tell Howie that actually, watching a film where a crew of twelve men trust each other just about as far as they can throw each other hits a little too close to home. But he does care, so he doesn’t.

“Well-” says Tommy, stretching the word in a performative, perfunctory apology.

“Well what!”

“It was too bleak for me,” he says plainly. That’s the truth, too. “Overboard, now that’s Kurt Russell at his finest.”

Evan hums in interest while Howard seems to speed round an existential crisis. “John Carpenter! The Thing!” he says, cradling the DVD box as if it’s holy scripture. There is something remarkably Jesuit about the illuminated figure on the keep case, and seeing as there are so few things Howard idolizes as much as 1980s cinema, it’s all very fitting. “The ultimate in alien terror, guys!”

“Chim,” says Evan, indifferently. “Pass the popcorn.”

He thrusts the snack bowl into Evan’s hands without breaking eye contact with Tommy. “What do you have to say for yourself, man?”

“Don’t we see enough horror on the job?” Evan nods in solidarity, and then his hand whips behind his own shoulder to place a piece of popcorn into Tommy’s mouth. He chews, swallows, sighs. Thinks about licking the salt off of Evan’s generous fingers, then stops thinking that because he’s sharing a couch with Evan’s sister and that’d be impolite. “I’m a rom-com guy, always have been. You know that.”

“Who hurt you?” says Howie, charmingly wry. “Was it Kubrick? Cronenberg?”

It’s been some time since he’s thought about it, but Howard’s spot on. He knows full-well why he’s like this, why he likes what he likes, why he gravitates towards predictable picturesque stories with low-stakes and chivalrous, comely leading men.

“Fine, I’ll bite.”

Evan shifts where he’s pressed against his chest so that he’s able to see his face. He’s got this look on, like the prospect of learning literally anything about Tommy could be the most entertaining thing about movie night.

Tommy dusts off his skeletons, decides to give ‘em a peek at his wound.

“So, when I was a kid—maybe around ten—I found this VHS in my dad’s junk. I probably—hell, definitely—shouldn’t have, but I put it on one night. It’s not like my parents were paying attention.”

Evan makes a sympathetic noise.

“And?” says Howie, head is his hands, apparently riveted by Tommy’s tale of zoetropic trauma. “What was it?”

It’s been a whole lot of years since he felt his throat close around words. He’s toiled not to be that guy anymore—paralyzed with passivity, asphyxiated by honesty—but this wouldn’t be the first time in recent history. Not with the way Gerrard’s recent reemergence has got his tongue like a rat in a pedal trap.

This is so beneath him. The mere memory of a movie he saw one fucking time as a kid shouldn’t be turning his stomach.

He clears his throat. Evan likes his confidence. Evan likes it when Tommy’s the boss. Evan likes to show him how much he likes it. He clears his goddamn throat.

“Dawn of the Dead.”

The candle suddenly smells too sweet, like the misleading way fruit stinks when it rots. He has this notion to shove Evan off of him, lean forward, and snuff it out. He stays put.

Howard looks fucking enamored by his answer. Evan tilts his head. “Romero. Very interesting.”

Tommy shrugs. He doesn’t really know much about it outside of the snapshot of scenes that’ve parasitically stuck with him throughout the decades.

“I, uh- I’m confused,” says Evan. “Isn’t that like, early 2000s?”

“Oh, young Buck,” says Howard, eating up the opportunity to be a know-it-all film buff. “You’re thinking of the inferior yet undeniably decent 2004 remake—meaning us old-timers were in our twenties when that came out-”

Evan looks a little dreamy at Howie’s clarification. It’s a thing with him—they haven’t been together more than a few months, but Evan wears his heart on his bulging sleeve. The first girlfriend Evan ever lived with, he learned, was older then than Tommy is now. Aside from Eddie, Evan doesn’t actually spend much time with people his age. It’s just one more thing that makes the kid so compelling.

“-meaning,” says Howie, and Tommy realizes he’s not sure how much of what was just said went in one ear and right out the other—“Tommy’s referring to the 1978 zombie cult classic.”

“Oh, gotcha,” nods Evan. “I haven’t actually seen either version, so-”

“Well, don’t knock it, it’s got its own key.”

“Huh?”

“Jesus. We’re gonna have to make these movie nights a monthly affair, at least,” chagrins Howie. “The great culturification of Evan Buckley.”

When they head out, Maddie wakes up long enough to hug them both goodbye.

“Thanks so much for having me,” Tommy says to her as they part. “I didn’t get the chance to say it earlier, but you are both doing such a great job with Mara.”

Maddie squeezes his arm.

“She’s an old pro,” says Evan with a bashful smile.

They took Evan’s Jeep, but without needing to discuss it, Tommy gets into the driver’s seat.

The first few minutes of the drive are quiet. It’s late, they’ve both had long weeks littered with long shifts. Evan hasn’t offered up any specifics about working under Gerrard, but Tommy can’t help but assume it’s been a struggle. The quiet is meditative for the first few blocks.

Evan seems to still be learning that silence can be comfortable around the right person—that it’s something Tommy frequently needs. Eventually though, he can tell that Evan’s only remaining silent for his benefit. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees one of Evan’s leg’s jittering, and he can’t figure out what to do with his hands.

“Evan,” he says, stopping at a red. “Something you wanna say?”

“Oh, uh- it’s that obvious, huh?”

“Little bit, baby.”

“I- I was just thinking about what you said to Chimney,” says Evan. “You never really explained what freaked you out about it—Dawn of the Dead. I guess I- I just never pictured you as ever being scared of anything. Was it, like- the zombies?”

The light turns green, they go. Tommy absurdly feels like laughing.

“Uhm, no. The makeup is so bad they’re practically blue and the blood looks like Sherman-Williams.”

“Oh,” says Evan. It’s obvious that he’s not going to press more, but despite not pushing, that ‘oh’ sounds so much like little scratches on a doggy door—Evan just wants to be let in.

Evan’s done a lot of confiding. It comes so organically to him—Evan lays himself bare emotionally just as easily as he does physically. Tommy’s an old dog, though. It takes him more time to get down the stairs, but Evan doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body. He’s been helping him down, and seems happy to.

“For as long as I can remember,” sighs Tommy, “I’ve been obsessed with flying. Becoming a pilot was the only thing I ever wanted to do with my life.” He can tell that Evan’s shifted in his seat, angling towards him. He can imagine Evan wearing that same intrigued expression from earlier, though he doesn’t turn to confirm it.

“So there’s this character—I don’t honestly remember his real name but they call him Flyboy. He’s not the hottest of the crew, can’t aim a gun, doesn’t come up with many worthwhile plans, but he’s the pilot. He flies his friends to safety in a chopper, and they wind up in this mall and they bunker down and make it home base. I thought he was the coolest goddamn guy.”

Evan hums intently.

“I was a pretty lonely kid with a lot of unsupervised time on my hands, so by the time I was ten I knew everything about rotor-crafts. I probably could have flown one given the chance.” He chuckles dryly at the visual of his tiny prepubescent body as the PIC, an H10 slipping right off his ears. He’s gotten so broad that it’s almost comical imagining himself not overflowing from the cockpit. “It wasn’t just an interest to me, it was an obsession. It was my identity,” he says.

“So here’s this badass helicopter pilot flying through a zombie apocalypse. I mean, I’d never seen anything like it. But Flyboy gets overconfident.” They’re only a few minutes out from Evan’s apartment now. “He got too comfortable at the mall—it makes him cocky. He ends up bleeding out in this god-awful department store elevator, and when the elevator door opens, there they are, just fucking waiting for him.”

Evan gasps quietly, like he’s on the edge of the passenger seat.

“There’s this shot. I can’t ever seem to forget it. The elevator dings and the door slides open and there’s Flyboy, and they got him. He’s all blue-green and drenched in blood and dragging his broken foot, and there’s this- this ringing sound that plays, the kind that’s so sharp and high that it’d hurt a dog’s ears.”

Evan finally figures out what to do with his hands. He reaches across the console and puts a palm on Tommy’s thigh. “And you were ten?”

“I was ten. And I remember realizing that even badass helicopter pilots have to die someday.”

He parks, and this sort of silence isn’t the comfortable kind. When he turns off the car, he reclines his head back against the seat, rolling it in Evan’s direction.

“I’m okay. I never really even think about it anymore. Howie unearthed an old memory, that’s all.”

Evan squeezes his thigh. “That’s good. I just wish you didn’t have to see something like that, or, uh- have thoughts like that when you were so little.”

“And you didn’t? See things you shouldn’t have?”

Evan shrugs. “It was sort of the opposite for me. My parents sheltered me. Growing up, I mostly just watched football and cartoons. I- I told you about my brother.”

Tommy nods, hopes the protective ire doesn’t show on his face beyond a rogue twitch in his jaw.

“You are okay though, right?”

Tommy squeezes Evan’s hand where it rests on his thigh. “Right. But next movie night, we’re putting it to a vote.”

On the ride up to the apartment, Tommy’s grateful that Evan’s back to running his mouth. It helps to drown out the phantom tinny frequency he’s suddenly associating with the silver elevator door.

“Ya know, it kinda suits you,” says Evan.

“What does?”

“Uh- that nickname. Flyboy.”

“Except,” says Tommy, pointing a clarificatory finger. “I can aim a gun.”

“Mm, true,” says Evan, his voice bubbly with rasp.

Tommy smirks. Evan may as well be batting his eyelashes.

“Anyway, Evan,” he says, meeting him where he’s at. “I don’t think we need any other nicknames. Aren’t you still getting used to calling me something else?”

—

He gets like this, Tommy’s noticed, after a hangout or an event or any time well spent with Evan’s family, biological or chosen. He gets extra touch starved and needy, like Tommy’s ability to have a good time with the people in Evan’s life is some feat worth worshiping him over.

It happened after Maddie and Howie’s emergency room wedding, and again after the medal ceremony. Hell, after Captain Nash got out of the hospital and the Wilsons had the 118 and co. over for dinner, they were barely through Tommy’s front door before Evan was undoing their pants and they were panting into each other’s mouths and jerking off onto each other’s stomachs.

“Bedroom’s literally right behind you,” he’d said, taking stock of their mess.

“Heh. Didn’t wanna wait.”

He’s learned that Evan’s former flames didn’t necessarily make an effort to get to know his sister or the crew. On one occasion, an ex, who also happens to be a local celebrity, actually put Evan’s friends in harm’s way.

“How’d you meet her again?” Tommy had asked, hoping he wasn’t coming across as too judgmental. Poor Hen and Han. It hadn’t been the easiest ordeal for Evan to recount. “Was she the one-”

“Yeah, she was the, uh- the helicopter-”

Evan cut himself off at the sight of Tommy’s brows.

“Okay, I swear that’s only happened twice.”

Tonight’s activities affirm Tommy’s hypothesis—Evan is thankful that Tommy fits into his life. Actually, he knew the rest of the gang before he got to know the Buckleys, but there’s still a degree of effort on his part that Evan doesn’t seem accustomed to. Either way, Evan feels big things about it, and he’s currently trying to express those big things by rhythmically choking himself on Tommy’s cock.

On any other night, this would be the epitome of perfection. Evan’s come a long way since his first blowjob, where all he could manage was his pretty, plush lips around the cockhead and a fist for the rest. It’d been good in the sense that Evan was so fucking into it he’d literally shot off in his shorts, but the technique had needed work and they both knew it.

A lot of practice has gone into getting Evan to this level of confidence. As soon as Evan got him naked, he’d made Tommy sit up against the headboard of Evan’s bed and he’d laid his head down onto Tommy’s thigh. He nuzzled so endearingly and affectionately into Tommy’s skin before using his mouth to lure life and blood to Tommy’s cock, fattening him up right against his lips.

Now, given how much Tommy fills out when he’s all the way on, Evan’s got his head raised enough to be yanked up and pushed down by Tommy’s hand, keeping his throat all lax and pliant while he fucks inside. Together, over the last few months, they’ve trained his throat open.

It’s not that it isn’t blindingly sexy. Tommy can see how red and veiny and wet Evan’s cock is, can see the blush freckled all over Evan’s body advertising how much he likes having a dick forced into his mouth. He always looks so good when he’s getting fucked into. His lips are so pretty and puffy. He’s this tight, wet, perfect thing right now. It’s just-

He’s making these involuntary noises that Tommy’s usually so into, sticky clicking sounds from the spasm of his throat, but tonight they sort of don’t sound human. And sometimes, Evan chokes and gags and has to blink away drops and drops of tears, and he pulls off and lets a wad of creamy spit drip out from his esophagus, wetting Tommy from tip to taint, and-

And- god, this is all Howard’s fault. He hasn’t thought about that hellish movie in twenty years, but now his boyfriend is gagging on his dick and all he can think about is his father, barging through the door of his childhood apartment and looking grey and green and so ill.

He’d been halfway through Dawn of the Dead, sitting close to the boxy television set just in case he needed to quickly push his thumb into the power button, when his dad got home. He hadn’t needed to turn off the tape. His dad was so wasted that he barely managed to avoid falling over Tommy’s tiny body as he stumbled to the bathroom. He tried to focus on the tv, but try as he might, his old man was loud when he threw up. Eventually, the gagging noises lined up with the groaning sounds of the onscreen living dead, yielding a horrific harmonization.

Later, long after his dad had tripped his way into bed, the elevator had slid open to reveal Flyboy, empty-headed and inhuman, and Tommy thought about dying, but he also thought about how the sickly zombie on the tv may as well have been his father, rotting right beneath the surface of his skin.

It’s not Evan’s fault, but the blowjob isn’t working tonight.

“Stop, baby,” he says, and as much as it pains him that Evan might feel any split second of rejection, it’d be worse to allow this to disingenuously continue while he’s in this headspace.

Evan pulls off, looking up with glistening eyes. “Uh- was that not okay?” he asks slowly, predictably. Kid took eight fat inches down but doesn’t think he’s any good unless he’s explicitly told so. He follows that up with a consoling touch to Tommy’s scrunched-up abs.

Then, he says something sort of unexpected. “Wait, are you okay? Do you wanna stop for the night?”

Huh. Maybe he’s got a tell. Intentionally, he’s not always the easiest guy to read—he’s confidence wrapped in stoicism wrapped in sarcasm. But Evan’s been chipping away at that, helping him down the stairs and whatnot. Maybe Evan’s seeing more than he thought he was letting on.

“I don’t want to stop,” he says, and he means it. He wants Evan, he always wants Evan, he just needs something different—something he can disappear into. Evan nods, but it’s clear he needs more before he hops back to it. “Lemme fuck you,” says Tommy, thumbing reassurance into Evan’s jaw.

Abruptly, Evan’s eyes go wide and starry. He nods, begs, pleads, “please, please,” like it was his idea in the first place and Tommy needs convincing.

This he knows he can get lost in because the thing about Evan is that he takes dick up his ass like Tommy’s doing him a favor. Evan has this quality he rarely sees in men of their stature, let alone men period. He’s never seen someone chase validation and praise so unabashedly. It makes Tommy’s mouth fucking water, makes his chest ache for how often Evan’s felt like a burden to the undeserving recipients of his worry. Like now, after Evan’s prepped and spread and stretched, slick and gaping, he slinks down onto Tommy’s lap, rocking his hips with the natural hinge of his joints, and he pouts, “s’that better? That feel good? This what you need?”

“Exactly what I need,” Tommy grunts.

Evan’s mouth opens and closes around words he’s obviously not sure he should say.

The Daddy thing is new—between them and beyond, it’s something Tommy never gave much thought to. It’s been really good the few times they’ve pulled it out. Cathartic, even. Tommy can see Evan biting his tongue to keep from saying it now. On any other night he’d coax it out of him, on literally any other night—but not now.

Tommy lets him get comfortable, helping to hold Evan up with bent knees against his back. He wraps his thick arms around Evan’s shoulders, practically cradling him in his limbs. He imagines them as a spiral seashell, this beautiful, perfectly formed golden ratio. He feels the life in Evan, his temporal, brachial, and femoral pulse, his heartbeat pounding inside of his chest and squeezing at Tommy’s erection. He sees it too—the healthy pink flush pooled in Evan’s darling cheeks, the strength and fragility that thrive within him, but are never at odds.

He wants to keep him here, wants Evan’s blood and bone and muscle pinning him down, wants to hold him, hide him from the things that might dare to drain the rosy life from his face.

They fuck dirty and so, so slow, grinding back and forth, refusing to let go of each other, grateful for each other for reasons they’ve both left unsaid tonight. When they come, into and onto each other, gasping in hot air from each other’s mouths as if that’ll actually help to fill their parched lungs, he can’t help but feel saturated with life. Evan’s life is soaking into his stomach, his life is dripping from the rim of Evan’s asshole.

But he fears its fleetingness. There’s something right around the corner, something he doesn’t want to peek his head out to see, but Tommy can smell it and it smells like rot, and he can hear it and it sounds like the chime of an elevator.

—

In seven years, Tommy’s stepped back into the 118 firehouse once. Living authentically has often meant leaving his past in its place, purposefully or otherwise, and he’s mostly abided by that. Being awarded a medal of valor seemed a decent reason to break that precedent, but before that, he hadn’t physically been inside since the day that Hen companionably slammed his face into a congratulatory cake, and he hasn’t been there since sharing a slice with her and Karen a few weeks ago.

When he picks up or drops off Evan, he stays in the car. This morning, however, Evan’s shift wrapped fifteen minutes ago and he apparently doesn’t feel like answering his phone.

He’s got this whole long weekend planned for them. He gave Evan pretty comprehensive packing instructions—some athletic wear, one or two formal looks, those tiny salmon swim shorts that barely fit over his thighs—but otherwise the details of their getaway are a total surprise. From here, they’re headed to a hanger at LAX, a traffic-infested drive he usually fucking dreads like death but knows will be tolerable with Evan as his passenger. Then, he’s whisking him off in a pretty little Bell 505 and flying them to Napa, where he intends to spend the weekend treating Evan to as much wine and as many orgasms as he can handle.

This trip probably would’ve cost him an arm and a leg, but he’s paying about half that thanks to a handful of connections. He’d pay any price to treat Evan the way he deserves, but this seemed as decent a reason as any to cash in some owed favors.

It’s their first time going away together, and Tommy’s got grand gestures to make, but he’s also got their travel schedule booked to the minute and he needed Evan in the car at least five minutes ago.

He types out another text to add to the several other unread messages, but thinks better of it and deletes it, throwing his phone into his lap in defeat. He scrubs a hand up his face.

If Evan had gotten injured, he’d know by now. Tommy supposes a call could’ve run long, but the firehouse doors are slid open and all engines seem accounted for.

He doesn’t have a good reason for not wanting to go in, but there’s a reason nonetheless. He knows what lies beyond the threshold of the station—or, rather, who.

What if Gerrard fucked with the schedule? Concern sinks his stomach like a stone. Maybe he’s reaming into him, giving Evan shit for having four consecutive days off. He remembers the endless guilt-trips about vacation time and call outs and tardiness—even fifteen years without Gerrard as his captain, he can still feel the impression of his guilt, like a spectral hand upon his shoulder.

“Eh, fuck it,” Tommy says to himself, bolting out of his car and into the station.

He sees Evan almost immediately through the glass of the locker room wall, gathering his belongings while he chats with Ravi. From across the station, their eyes catch through the glass, and Evan gives him this toothy smile that’s just gorgeous enough to excuse all the waiting around Tommy’s had to do, followed by a finger indicating he needs another minute or so.

It’s strange seeing Evan in the station where Tommy’s career began. He dedicated over a decade of his life to protecting Los Angeles with the numbers 118 stitched into his gear. Evan’s turning thirty-three this year—the age Tommy had been when he transferred out—but he possesses an emotional maturity that Tommy was ages away from at that point in his life.

It’s funny, the way life happens in loops.

He’s keeping an eye on Evan when a shadow pops into his periphery, as if manifested from smoke.

“Kinard. Come to pick your boy up from school?”

Vincent Gerrard’s voice sounds the way bile smells. It’s the kind of voice that’s so mucus-deep that you can practically feel it, like congestion in your chest. Tommy casually shifts his weight, lowering feigned indifference in his direction. “‘Scuse me?”

“You the reason my crew’s about to be down its biggest fireman on the hottest goddamn weekend of the year?”

There’s this old familiar feeling that circulates through him as he stands beside Gerrard. He’s sucker-punched with the instinct to defend, survive. It’s like he’s a kid or a new recruit or a probie again, caught in some lie about himself and digging a deeper grave with every question asked and answered.

He’s twenty-something, and the crew wants to know why his non-existent girlfriend’s always canceling. He’s twenty-something, and Captain Gerrard is gesturing him over with a finger. “Tommy, c’mere.”

“What’s up, Captain?”

“Who was that guy you met in the parking lot last night?”

“Oh, uh, that was.” He begged him not to get out of the car. He fucking begged him. “An old army buddy. He’s in town for a few days. We went to that strip club on Alameda.”

“Looked bent to me,” he hoots, so easily amused at himself. Tommy joins in not a moment too late. “What business does he have in a titty bar?”

No business, really—either of them. Actually, Tommy took him back to his place for some good old-fashioned American sodomy. God bless the USA.

He’s not twenty-something. He’s waiting for his boyfriend to head out with him, there’s nothing to be discreet about, no one to perform for. He’s forty, for god’s sake. And Gerrard-

Truthfully, he didn’t get a good look at him at the ceremony beyond the slapstick limp wrist routine. God, talk about a bit bombing. Up close like this, though—Christ. They both got old, but Gerrard looks ancient.

Tommy can’t think of a better word for it. The man looks utterly decrepit. Besides the unavoidable forces of gravity and time and LA sun poisoning, it just doesn’t look like he takes very good care of himself.

It makes Tommy think of the last time he’d visited his mother. Everything in her apartment—the very same one he’d grown up in and lived in right up until day one of basic—was shabby or broken or well on its way, the wood of the kitchen cabinets water-stained and rotted, the old-school shag carpeting rampant with runs, but she’d gotten so frail, so bone-tired, and so she didn’t give a shit about the condition of her home, let alone of her body. She’d still had that old-school television set, too. The picture had turned warped and pink from decades of use, but it still turned on, so she still watched it. She refused Tommy’s half-hearted offer to help, content to decay alongside her shoebox.

Tommy can see it all so clearly now. Gerrard’s decomposing beneath the uniform, too stubborn to listen to the screaming of his own sunken eyes and arthritis. The fight is all he’s got, it’s all he’s ever had.

He only ever looked at Gerrard and felt inclined to impress him, or follow, or cower. He’s played father to him, and now he’s playing mother, too. For the first time, Tommy looks into the eyes of his former leader, and a pall of pity blooms within him.

“Well?” croaks Gerrard, like a toad gasping for air, desperate for a fly.

“Guess so,” he replies, barely remembering what he was asked in the first place.

“Buckley, your old man’s here to pick you up,” calls Gerrard, but Tommy doesn’t think his voice even carries to the locker room. Evan doesn’t turn to acknowledge it, so definitely not. It’s like he’s trying to bark, but all he can do is wheeze. It’s pathetic.

“Don’t forget to sign him out at the front desk,” he says to Tommy, clearly wanting so, so desperately to needle under his skin. He hadn’t ever expected a confrontation between them to play out like this. He’s thought about Gerrard so many times, about what he might say to his face if he had the chance.

Now, it just feels like doing that would be like kicking a dog when it’s down.

Evan catches up with him, and Tommy barely spares a glance in Gerrard’s direction. “Take care of yourself, sir,” he hears himself say. He means it, too.

—

19 years ago

2005

—

Dying happens faster than he thought it would. It’s not at all like people say it is—there’s no life that flashes right before his eyes, no regrets or fond memories or chemical euphoria that hits him in his last moments of consciousness. One minute he’s running into the Encino Fashion Outpost, weighed down by his gear but light on his feet, the next he’s choking on his own throat, brain pounding as if it’s expanding inside his skull, and he’s being dragged down to hell.

Hell, as it happens, is cool-to-the-touch mall tile against his cheek. He does have one fleeting thought before he fades, but he doesn’t make sense of it until later. Tommy thinks of being a lonely little boy, watching a man he admires die in a mall. Somehow, he always knew it’d happen to him too.

Then he’s dead to the world.

Tommy spends a few nights recovering at Presbyterian, and in that time, he gets one visitor. He’s surprised by it, mostly because he wasn’t expecting to get any at all.

Captain Gerrard doesn’t come by, and he doesn’t call, and Tommy doesn’t like how much it bugs him.

Years later, when the 118 starts to take new shape under less oppressive leadership, Howie mentions in passing that he’d went with Eli, but never made it past the waiting room. Tommy thanks him belatedly. Apologizes belatedly, too.

“Never too late,” says Howard, a hand flying up to reach Tommy’s shoulder.

“For what?”

Howie shrugs, his omnipresent smirk the most charming goddamn thing Tommy’s maybe ever seen. “Pretty much anything.”

So Eli visits him.

“Kinard. Back from the dead,” says Eli, his warmth a welcome contagion when he struts into the hospital room.

“Cobb! Hey, man. No thanks to you, I’m sure.”

“So no one told you, eh?” Eli says, taking a seat at his bedside. It feels strange to have a visitor. He feels weak and exposed, like no one was supposed to know he’s not invincible. In retrospect, he’s immensely grateful that his captain wouldn’t dream of dropping in. He can hear it now. Ditch the dress and get back to work, pussy.

“Told me what?”

“Howard was the one who carried you out, man.”

“The probie?”

Eli gives him a look, like his derogatory malice is as flimsy as his polyester gown and they both know it. The new kid went in for him—braved leaking methane and structural collapse and hazard all to help a hazer. Tommy thinks about Howard’s first day on the job. Howard walked in so green—all he wanted was to introduce himself and Tommy made a vile fucking joke just to get Gerrard to sneer approval in his direction.

Tommy clears his throat. Eli’s one of them, but he’s kinder, settled. He never needs to make a joke at someone’s expense to get a room to laugh. He makes Tommy want to spill his guts, and that’s a slippery slope.

There are dangerous things a good guy like Eli could get him to admit.

“Howard went in for me?”

“Sure did. Defied direct orders to do it, too.”

Nausea burns like acid through his digestive tract, and he suspects it’s got nothing to do with the fume inhalation. “Why?” he asks, and Eli’s face softens. He’s probably never heard Tommy be this sincere.

“Because, Tommy. He’s a good firefighter and he’s a great guy.”

His stomach turns, and not for the first time since his honorable discharge but perhaps the most intensely, Tommy wishes he was 10,400 feet from the ground. Even dropping hundreds of feet in elevation in a matter of minutes never had his gut in knots like this. If the only reason he isn’t rotting in the ruins of a department store in Encino is because of the sense of duty of a rookie he’s tormented from the moment they met, then he shouldn’t be here right now.

Statistically, karmically, cosmically, like he’s always known in the back of his mind, Tommy was never supposed to make it out of that mall. An insignificant man dying in an insignificant place—his fate finally unfurled. Any other American man burned and buried in the belly of any other American strip mall, the two of them indiscernible archetypes of their kind.

“I want to talk to him,” he says to Eli.

“You will,” he says, patting Tommy’s thigh companionably through the layers of blanket and sheet and hospital gown. It feels so good, and Tommy tries to keep his eye from twitching to give that away.

“I don’t think you’re like him, man,” Eli says, getting up to leave. Tommy doesn’t need to ask for context—Gerrard unceasingly looms over them, even beyond the boundaries of the firehouse and the field. “Do better. Deserve what Howie did for you.”

—

19 years later

June 2024

—

Loving Evan is like a romantic comedy. The time they spend together leaves Tommy the lightest he’s ever felt in his life, and as a man that flies for a living, that’s saying something. Evan’s adorable and adoring and doting and he’s unintentionally got the greatest comedic timing of anyone Tommy’s ever met. He talks with his hands, and Tommy loves to listen. He knows everything about nothing, he’s an ambitious home cook, he’s a loving uncle. He’s got a dirty mouth and a dirtier mind, a body like you wouldn’t believe, and the drama, when there is drama, is shallow, the darkness never much deeper than the surface. Loving him is a comfort, like his favorite formulaic film genre, or like a flight pattern he’s followed hundreds of times.

When they pull up to the hanger, Evan’s joy is as uncontainable and obvious as he’s ever seen it. Tommy knows he’s been wanting this, been waiting for this, and indulging Evan is what this weekend’s all about.

“You finally taking me out for a spin, Flyboy?”

“Really?” Tommy deadpans, loading their luggage into the cargo pod. “Let’s not make that name a habit.”

He slams the squirrel cheek shut and then Evan’s wrapping his arms around Tommy from behind. “Fine.” His face falls forward to rest on Tommy’s shoulder, pretty lips close and quiet to his ear. “Taking me for a spin, Daddy?”

It’s a joke and a tease as much as it isn’t. It’s a taste of water to sate the thirst till later, and Tommy positively laps at it.

“Easy, boy,” he says, hardly meaning it. “I’ve still gotta get us there in one piece.”

“So no road-head?” Evan jokes squeakily.

“Mm, I don’t think it’s called that in a chopper.”

Evan’s enthusiasm over the bird reminds him of the day he walked him around Harbor. He’d been so eager, so interested. He knows now that Evan didn’t quite know what to make of their chemistry that early on, he just knew that he abstractly, theoretically wanted something. Tommy’s admittedly contemplated how things might’ve played out if he’d been free to get a beer with Evan that afternoon. Would they have spent all night getting to know each other in the intimate corner of some badge and ladder bar, gravitating closer and closer in the booth, much like the way they ate the distance in Evan’s kitchen, giving into their waning inhibitions?

There’s really no rhyme or reason to sit and speculate. Whatever way they happened, they did, and he’s got Evan on his left, the perpetual passenger to Tommy’s pilot, the place where he always belongs, and he’s looking completely winsome and wonderstruck and maybe even a little bit in love, too.

“Wilco. Clear for take-off, departing from runway seven-eight,” Tommy confirms to tower dispatch through his headset, opening the throttle to get the rotors going. That doesn’t usually prompt a follow-up unless there’s a sudden air traffic conflict or a questionable weather system pinging the radar, but on this occasion, he hears an unmistakable gasp through the channel. It didn’t come from any control tower—Tommy would know, he’s heard that very gasp dozens of times against the cradle of his ear.

“Evan?” Tommy says, sparing a quick look his way. “You okay, baby?”

“Oh, sorry, I- uh. It’s- it’s just that your voice through the audio system, it sounded just like that the night we met.” Evan sounds like his head’s in the clouds, though the skids haven’t even left the tarmac. “I could listen to that voice all day.”

The first time they’d been in a cockpit together, when sunlight and stillness had settled over the Pacific, the tempest having finally spun itself weak, Tommy had barely known the kid outside of stories from Han and Donato and rumors from the fire and rescue gossip chain. His reputation had preceded him, but even then, Evan had slid into the front seat with an inherent genuineness that told Tommy that there was more to him than people seemed to realize. Today, Tommy knows that the tales of his misadventures and stunts and scandals only depict the most superficial version of Evan Buckley. Today, here’s hoping, he’s well on his way to knowing Evan better than anyone in the LAFD.

They kiss, short and wet and overcome, and then they’re off, transitioning seamlessly into forward flight.

They pass over Los Padres and Fresno and Mount Diablo and, despite Evan’s romantic musing about his radio voice, they don’t say much for quite a while. Evan’s leg isn’t jumping and his hands are still, except when he’s snapping pictures of Tommy and the view—he’s blissfully distracted by the greens and browns of the terrain blurring beneath them and by the way the environment evolves as they travel north, aridity mutating into abundant forests of pine. It’s an ample feast for Evan’s chronic curiosity.

When they’re coming up on about an hour of travel and nearing the end of the flight, they pass over the bay, earth tones temporarily sinking below serene blue.

“You ever been?”

“Huh?” replies Evan. “Oh, to San Francisco? Uh, nope. I haven’t.”

“It’s a lot of fun,” Tommy says, a little wistful at the thought of taking Evan somewhere fundamentally, historically queer that isn’t WeHo. “You’d like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” confirms Tommy. “We’ll go sometime.”

Only a few minutes after that, Tommy drops the collective and starts to take them down, suddenly surrounded by a sprawling sea of evergreen grapevines. Evan connects the dots, his elation immediately as potent as vineyard air.

“Oh, we’re gonna get so wasted this weekend, babe. Like, sloppy, messy drunk.”

“Hell yeah we are,” he says in fond solidarity, proud that he only thinks about his father in a fleeting way when Evan says that.

When Evan left his parents’ home, he’d been an odd-job nomad, traveling in constant search of a place to land. As Evan tells it, Los Angeles became home fast, his job became his life, and in the seven years he’s been with the 118, he hasn’t really left. No destination trips, barely any vacations, and his only substantial time off has been department-mandated. Tommy’s flattered that he’s the one who could tempt Evan with a good time, although he suspects it’s also got something to do with Evan not minding missing a few days while the house is under new management. Point is, he’s thrilled that his boyfriend agreed to shutting off for an extended weekend, but Evan loves what he does, so Tommy’s not surprised when he brings up fire.

“This is where the wildfires happened in 2020, right? The- the Glass Fire?”

“Right,” Tommy confirms, taking them lower. “You were reading about it recently?”

“Uh, not recently,” he says, like the encyclopedia he is. Evan really seems to be appreciating the hilly Napa countryside. The land here is so uneven, and more often than not, Tommy’s passengers get dizzy from the optical illusions posed by this kind of descent. Evan stares out, unfazed and fascinated in typical fashion. “That must’ve been a sight.”

“It was,” says Tommy.

“Oh, no way—the 217 flew out here to help?”

“Sure did. Sonoma County needed all hands on deck. That fire burned for three weeks straight.”

“What- what was that like?” asks Evan.

“God. Exhausting,” he says, remembering. “The vineyards usually have this dewy, earthy scent. The air is wet and sweet—you’ll see when we tour it tomorrow. Wildfires are always hell, but there was something, I don’t know, apocalyptic about it. Seeing such beautiful land destroyed, the way it caught and spread so quickly. Wasn’t all that sweet for a while after that.”

“Wow,” Evan hums, contemplatively.

“Be honest. Did you really want to know or did you just want to hear my dulcet tones through the headset?”

“Babe, you know it’s both.”

Tommy chuckles, and he feels the brightness of Evan’s eyes settle on him, and he considers himself lucky that it doesn’t set him aflame.

“I read about this thing that happened to some of the wine that year,” says Evan. “The- the phenols from the burning brush, like, bonded with the sugar of the grapes and screwed with the taste of the wine. It’s called smoke taint.”

“Well that’s a name.”

“I remember wondering if I’d even notice something off if I tasted it, all the smoke I’ve been exposed to,” he says. “Maybe it’d just taste normal to me.”

“Maybe,” nods Tommy, and down they go, with beautiful, impermanent things on his mind.

—

They’ve got a full itinerary for the weekend, and the planner in Evan offers Tommy his very enthusiastic thanks. Tomorrow, they’ll start off with an early morning hike at Archer Taylor Preserve, followed by a tour of the vineyard and winery they’re staying at. Sunday, the plan is to take Evan for a joyride in the Bell at daybreak, up the Sonoma coast to Anchor Bay and back. They’re booked for a couple’s massage and a multi-course tasting menu, as well. As far as romantic weekends go, Evan deserves the goddamn works and Tommy’s ready to deliver.

For today, though, Tommy figured it’d be best to keep things uncomplicated considering the travel, so after checking into their suite and catching a quick nap, they head out for some local shopping and dinner and drinks, which turns into more drinks and some light groping in the back of an Uber.

By early evening, they’re wine-buzzed and back at the hotel, Tommy watching on from a sun-lounger as Evan bobs around the pool. The salmon swim trunks were a solid fucking call. Evan obviously looks delectable, so it doesn’t come as any shock that he’s not the only one taking notice.

Just as a group of older women approach Evan in the pool, an expensively manicured hand taps his shoulder. “Mind if I sit down next to you, doll?”

“Please,” answers Tommy, sipping at his flute of sparkling wine. His eyes stay fixed on Evan for now, who’s laughing at something one of the ladies just said to him.

“What’s the deal with your friend?”

“Well you don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” she answers, and Tommy turns to look at her. She could be Evan’s type—she has been Evan’s type.

“What makes you think he’s my friend?” he says, a touch coyer than he might be if he was sober.

“The gals and I saw you come in. Two big handsome guys like you, come on. You must always make an impression when you walk into a room, let alone together. So,” she says, and she’s harmless so he smiles. “What’s his story?”

“Well,” says Tommy. “He’s a firefighter. Loves to cook. Loves kids.” She practically clutches her pearls.

“Do you happen to know if he’d enjoy the company of someone older?”

“Oh, I’d say he prefers it.”

“My god, he’s perfect,” she says. Before Tommy can reply, Evan calls out to him from the pool. “Hey babe, come gimme a sip of your champagne!”

He gets up as she groans in unison with her friends. “Oh, he is,” winks Tommy, the cat that got the cream. 

Back in the suite, Tommy stands out on the bedroom balcony as Evan rinses off from his swim. He responds to some texts, looks through the pictures Evan airdropped him. It’s nearing midnight so the sun’s long gone, but the moon is nearly full and it illuminates the tidy rows of green grapevines that stretch for as far as Tommy can see. The fruit is unready for harvest in June, their ripeness still metastasizing in the early summer air, but the earth smells lush and lively anyway.

The wind’s picked up considerably. Brushfire would spread like a rash on a night like this one.

Evan eventually comes out to join him, pleasantly damp from his shower and dressed in an undershirt and shorts, and he grabs Tommy’s arm and tucks himself under, angling his face to kiss salutations into Tommy’s neck. “Hey,” Evan says, and there’s a tipsy edge to his voice, like he’s had enough to drink to filter himself less but still have his bearings.

“Hey, baby,” he says, squeezing Evan firmly against him.

“No one’s ever done anything like this for me,” Evan says so softly into his stubbly neck.

Fuck them all. Crass as it is, the urge to say it is strong. Evan’s so fucking good, so deserving. He can’t imagine a world where someone sees that face, that body, and doesn’t swell with want and worship. “I find that hard to believe,” he settles on, plopping a kiss to the top of Evan’s head.

“I mean, there was this one time where Abby and I were gonna do this hot air balloon ride but- she had to leave, it was a whole thing, not her fault,” he says. It’s so like Evan to feel the need to defend an ex from nearly a decade ago. He’s pretty well adjusted, but he does have a tendency to invalidate his own disappointment. It makes Tommy want to shield him, to tuck him deeper and safer in his hold. “But I was the one to plan it, so I guess it doesn’t really compare-”

“Don’t tell me that, Evan,” he says, sounding steadier than hearing that’s made him feel. He’s not an angry guy, but imagining Evan’s affectionate efforts being rejected, no matter the reason, sends a pulse of protective rage through his ribcage.

Evan shifts around, still curled protectively under Tommy’s arm but facing him full-on, the grid of picturesque grapevines at his back. Napa’s a singular beauty, a geographical marvel, but it fades from his focus with laughable ease when Evan requests his regard.

“You- you make me feel important. You know that, Tommy?”

“You are,” he says simply.

“For a long time, being a firefighter was the only thing that made me feel like I was worth something. I’m not saying that- like, you’re the only reason I think I’m important, that’s not what I mean, I just,” he says, rambling charmingly. “You- you remind me that I am, and I love that about you. I- I love you.”

Once he realizes what he's said, Evan’s eyes widen and his mouth goes a little slack. “Oh, shit. We haven’t said that yet.”

“We haven’t,” Tommy says, cool and collected, his eyes crinkling and creasing with pointed fondness.

“I- I, uh,” stutters Evan. “I hope you don’t think- I didn’t just say it because you took me on this awesome trip, or cause I had some wine, Tommy. I- I really mean it.” Evan seems to calm a bit, looking down shyly and letting a smile stretch as his nerves dissolve. “I love you,” he repeats.

Tommy lets go in order to cradle Evan’s face in his hands, holding him like he’s precious and worthy and strong and fragile at once, because he is. “I’m so in love with you, Evan.”

Evan lets his tension out on an exhale, leaning in close to press a kiss to Tommy’s cheek, right in the groove of his smile line. “You take such good care of me,” Evan says when he pulls back his lips.

They look into each other’s eyes, the dark indigo of the night air, the pale glow of the moon, the buoyant life of the vineyard atmosphere and of their actualized mutual devotion, and Tommy lets Evan know with a look that it’s okay. Go on. You can say it.

Like The Princess Bride cutting from Buttercup and Westley to the kid, this is the part of the rom-com where the picture fades to black, ushering the audience out of a private moment shared between lovers.

“So good to me, Daddy.”

Loving Evan is like a romantic comedy, but sometimes they can get a little red-band.

Evan lets himself be frantically spun around and kissed backwards into the suite, relinquishing control and trusting Tommy to pilot the pace. He kisses him wet and lewd, obscene and noisy, guiding him with hands looped around his wrists until they reach the bed, and then Evan allows himself to be stripped, his long limbs more than willingly slipped free from his clothes. When he’s down to just a pair of tight briefs, Tommy directs him onto the bed with an encouraging smack on the ass.

The balcony doors stay open, sending moonlight and fragrant country air into their room. Evan’s bathed in it, a first course waiting to be devoured, ripe and ready in casual contrast to the vegetation just beyond their window. Even in the dimness of the room, Tommy can see Evan’s cock fattening up inside his underwear and his hand alluringly tucked just beneath the waistband. “Come on. Need you,” he says, and Tommy rabidly undresses down to his boxers, rushing to oblige—and to sate his own monstrous appetite.

He slinks down low on the bed, rubbing at Evan’s crotch with his face, sniffing and kissing at him through his briefs. He feels like he’s been hungry for this since he saw Evan across the station this morning, like he’s finally breaking a fast. As Evan’s dick fills with blood, Tommy’s mouth mimics him by filling with viscous saliva. Like any other force of nature, their want is biological, organic, involuntary. He can’t stop the wetness of his mouth any more than Evan can stop his cock from growing, or the wind can keep from picking up, or the grapes outside can keep from swelling with juice.

Tommy relaxes his jaw, dripping spit all over Evan’s briefs, smearing it with his lips and tongue. Evan gasps and groans, twitching reactively against Tommy’s mouth. He sucks at Evan’s tip through the cloth, appreciating the briny taste of his pre-come and the prominent ridge of the head.

“What do you think?” Tommy asks, enjoying the tease too much to let up yet. “Should I keep going?” He licks along the shaft of Evan’s cock, then back to the fat head. Evan’s a soaking wet mess, his cock trapped beneath a puddle of their dual making, and Tommy’s barely even gotten going. “Should I make you come in these? Get ‘em even stickier?”

Evan sucks in a breath. “Do whatever you want to me,” he says in earnest.

He hasn’t always had the most active sex life—certainly not compared to Evan’s—but starting around his mid-thirties, Tommy’s made a valiant effort to make up for the orgasms missed in his youth. Like Napa’s primary export, Tommy’s sex life has aged into something dynamic—with maturity comes sophisticated wine and deliberate sex. Since coming out, he’s had some really mediocre sex, some really stellar sex, but nothing, he’s realized in the last few months, has held a candle to the intense connection that he experiences when he gets to be intimate with Evan.

With that in mind, he takes mercy on the kid and starts to pull off his briefs, chuckling when Evan’s limbs flail and he scrambles to participate in helping to slide them off.

“Alright, I’ll be nice,” he winks, admiring Evan’s twitching cock once it’s been unconstrained. Another invisible, unstoppable force sends Evan’s cock bobbing on its own accord, and Tommy just watches for a moment as it seeks touch, pulsing to the tempo of his rushing blood, aching to fuck into something but only meeting the empty caress of the air around them. Just like the rest of him, Evan’s cock is huge and beautiful and so sweet with how much it blatantly needs. Tommy leans back down to make good on his words, and takes half of Evan down in one smooth swallow.

“Oh fuck, oh my god,” Evan wetly whimpers, like his throat is just as slogged with spit as Tommy’s is. He gets him sloppy, taking him right to the balls, then pops off to slobber all over him and ease right back down again.

“You’re, ah- you’re- you’re spoiling me all weekend,” Evan says after Tommy’s been sucking on him for a couple of minutes. “You don’t have to- ah, fuck. You should let me treat you.”

“Evan,” Tommy says, pulling off but getting distracted by the way he and Evan’s fluids have consolidated together into something new and thick and biologically theirs. The compound slick slowly crawls down to pool at his ass cheeks, and Tommy follows it with an insistent gaze. “Do you really think this isn’t a treat for me?” He continues, looking up at Evan. The expression on his face is so vulgarly tender, and a little bit insecure. Come hell or high water, Tommy’s gonna teach him how to accept things, but for right now, Evan just needs reassurance.

That’s another thing about sexual intimacy with Evan. As hot as their sex gets—and they know heat—it’s also often about taking care of each other. They uplift each other in ways they’ve historically been deprived. In bed, they can be whoever they need to be for each other. This trip clearly has Evan in his feelings about things—about deserving romance and commitment and whatever else— and so all Tommy wants to do is to see to his needs.

“You’re so thoughtful, baby. You just want Daddy to feel as good as you do, don’t you.”

Evan’s eyes pool dark at that, and he nibbles at his bottom lip, nods. “I- yeah. Please let me.”

“Of course I’ll let you. You wanna know what I really want? You wanna know what you can do for me?” asks Tommy, practically rhetorically.

Evan nods, but there’s not a world where he wouldn’t.

“Bring your knees up,” he says, and Evan does, his long, hairy, scarred, gorgeous legs bending and complying immediately. “That’s good, honey. Now bring your hands down to your ass, Evan, yeah, just like that, and spread yourself for me.”

He does as he’s told, and they both gasp as spit and pearly pre-come congregate at Evan’s exposed rim, shiny and debauched. One of Evan’s fingers flexes out from where he’s pulling himself open, and he prods at himself, swiping Tommy’s spit and the drool from his own cock over his hole.

It’s an insane sight, truly something that usually only exists in the erotic depths of his subconscious mind. The shamelessness Evan’s got about his body is so goddamn sexy. He’s so lucky. He’s so in love. He goes down to do something dirty about it.

At the first lick of Tommy’s tongue over his asshole, Evan lets out this attractive, raspy sob. He’s only done this for Evan once, a super quick thing mid-head mostly just to test if he’d be into it.

Tonight, though, Evan’s getting wined, dined, and eaten the fuck out like he deserves.

Tommy’s hands find Evan’s and replace them at pulling him apart, leaving Evan’s hands free to paw at the buzzed nape of his neck. He kisses and sucks at the soft, hairy skin surrounding Evan’s hole, wishing so desperately that he could just shove his cock inside of him and, in practical vicarious fashion, he sticks his tongue inside instead. Spit materializes on his palette like a starving dog that smells its dinner, and he spills it into him, offering it to Evan the same way he intends to give him anything he’s physically able to for as long as Evan will take it.

He’s starting to loosen up nicely, so Tommy leans back for a second to take a look at the fruits of his labor. Evan’s hole is pink and glossy and contracting, viscerally insistent on being given more. He can’t get it out of his head how severely he wants to throw off his boxers, slap his cock against it and thrust himself inside, even if only the tip would fit inside of Evan at this point, but he opts for rutting his cock down into the duvet, though not too aggressively because he’s only got one load in him and he isn’t quite ready to call it a night. He gets back to it, nosing in near and fucking a finger into Evan beside his tongue.

The moment Evan feels a finger being worked in, his whole body shudders, his legs subtly quivering. One of his hands lets go of Tommy’s head and relocates to his forearm.

It’s this thing that Evan does whenever he gets fucked in missionary—Tommy’s not even sure he’s noticed, but it’s so genuine and innocent that he’s tempted to pull his mouth away to remind his boyfriend just how adorable he is. In this position, Evan always briefly reaches out to touch whatever’s fucking him—Tommy’s arm if he’s being fingered, or his cock, or Evan's toy the few times they’ve used it together. It’s like Evan can’t believe that there’s actually something entering him, and he needs to feel it with his hands just to remember it’s real.

He’s stroking at Tommy’s forearm, tracing up and down a particularly prominent vein when all of a sudden he starts to noisily pant. Tommy retreats, though he keeps his finger plunged in as far as it’ll go.

“You good, baby?”

“I’m just- I’m, holy shit, I didn’t expect it so soon but I’m, uh, I’m about to come, and- oh my god,” he says, screwing himself onto Tommy’s finger and clutching frantically at his arm, “there’s so much spit on your face and- oh god, in your cleft, that’s so fucking hot.”

Tommy gives him another finger just for the compliment, and Evan starts to jerk himself off.

“You can, Evan. Go ahead,” he says, and Evan writhes, and touches Tommy’s veiny arm, and jacks off his cock with his other hand, and pants so slutty. His dick looks so perfect popping in and out of the hole of his tight fist. “You’re just gonna beg for more in twenty minutes anyway,” he says, adding just the right amount of demeaning to make Evan lose it, “so go ahead.”

Evan’s voice cracks around a whine and his ass closes dramatically around Tommy’s fingers, and he looks up just in time to see string after blissful string of cloudy come shoot up Evan’s heaving chest. There’s so much of it, thick, white, excessive—it’s the kind of load that Tommy suspects would take, and has, but it’s all for Evan, and it’s all for him, and suddenly he’s feeling really greedy about it.

Tommy rushes to shallowly slip Evan’s cockhead into his mouth, vindication filling him in parallel with the final few spurts, fresh from the source.

Despite the setting, Tommy knows Evan’ll be the best thing he tastes all weekend.

There are things he wants to do. He wants to shuffle up the bed until he’s hovering over Evan’s pretty face, he wants to feed himself inch by inch into that mouth and then blow his load all over his lips. He wants to flip Evan onto his stomach, push his weight down onto his back and mount him.

But Evan needs to be cared for first, so his cock remains a neglected bulge beneath his boxers.

He leaves Evan behind to catch his breath, lit by moonlight and the equally radiant opalescence of his own release. In the bathroom, he brushes his teeth, cleans off his face, and dampens a washcloth. He heads back to bed with it, as well as a few waters and a bottle of lube retrieved from his luggage. He packed some condoms by force of habit, but they haven’t used them the last few fucks so he doesn’t bother.

Evan drains half a bottle of water as Tommy attentively cleans his stomach and his half-soft cock for him. His body’s so limp, but it’s juxtaposed by the rapid rising of his chest as Evan’s breathing attempts to steady.

“How’re we doing?” he asks. Shower water and sweat have accentuated Evan’s curls, and Tommy pets his fingers through them.

Evan’s eyes are closed while he continues his comedown, but his lips widen into an acknowledging grin. “We are doing very good. Gosh, I needed that so bad.”

“Oh yeah?” he says, resting the soiled washcloth on the bedside table. He joins Evan, sitting beside him against the luxurious hotel pillows.

“Yeah,” he says, finally opening his eyes and regarding Tommy through heavy lids. “I thought about making a move in the car, but you said we were on a strict schedule and I happen to take those very seriously.” Tommy smirks, detecting Evan’s flirtatious tone and gearing up to throw off his boxers and finally get some action, but then Evan lets out an unsettling sigh.

That one single sound manages to suck most of the life from the room. “Last shift was rough.”

Work has never been all they talk about, but it has always been common ground for them. Lately, though, the only thing they share about work are their respective schedules, and Tommy doesn’t need to put much thought into pinpointing why that is and when it started.

Gerrard took back his house, and Evan probably doesn’t want to talk about it, but Tommy hasn’t asked, so he doesn’t know for sure.

But here he is, belatedly but inevitably laying himself bare in more ways than one, as is his way—he’s letting Tommy in, and hoping for some reciprocity. So Tommy tries.

“Is there any update on Bobby’s reinstatement?”

Evan squints his eyes in thought, but shakes his head. “Not- no not really. I mean, I know he’s trying, he’s fighting for it, but you know how these things go. It’s gonna take time but- Bobby won’t rest until he knows his team is in good hands.”

“And is his team- not in good hands?” he says.

“It’s-” Evan starts to respond, but he cuts himself off, his face paling. “I- I am completely giving you blue balls right now, aren’t I. I will totally shut up- look at you,” he says, laying a hand down demonstratively. “You’ve been waiting.”

Tommy peaks down at his frankly undignified erection and brushes it off with a flippant wave. “What, that? Ignore that, that’s not important.” It’ll probably go down soon, but to help the cause he consciously avoids looking at the skin where Evan’s long leg meets his hip—the place where Evan’s cock is currently sitting pretty.

“So,” he says, not sure if he’s ready to hear it but letting Evan take this in whatever direction he needs to, “tell me why you had a rough shift.”

“I’m gonna be honest, Tommy—I’ve struggled over whether or not I should come to you about this.” Tommy screws his lips together tightly. “I know Gerrard is a touchy subject, and I- okay, lemme go back. We- we have a great time together, right? Like, take today for example. I have never been romanced this hard in my goddamn life.”

“We do,” he says, taking Evan’s hand. “We do have a great time.”

“Yeah. Life’s not always this great though. We- I think we’ve both learned that the hard way. But we don’t usually, or at least not for more than a minute at a time- we don’t talk about those not-so-great things. We leave those things at the door and we give each other our best selves. But- I love you, this is really real to me-”

“It’s real to me, too,” Tommy raises their conjoined fingers to his lips, speaking it like a psalm into the tendons of Evan’s hand.

“And you gave me this glimpse into it, and it felt good to be trusted with that. So I want to tell you about the not-so-great things, because I need somewhere to put them and I- I know you’ll be there to take care of me. And I want you to trust that I will always do the same for you, Tommy.” The darkness is never much deeper than the surface, but Tommy is starting to realize that maybe that’s been by design. Evan has been a source of light and positivity ever since he barreled into his life, but whether or not it’s been unintentional, he’s been selfishly dismissive of Evan’s emotional dimensionality.

“I never wanted to burden you with it.”

“With what? I’m not- what do you mean?” asks Evan.

The Earth’s shifted, the moon’s shifted, they’ve all been repositioned and reset as the night’s fully found its footing. It happened without his notice, but moonlight no longer spills as freely into the room, and Tommy can only see an impression of Evan at this point, nothing completely discernible. The wind is a loud creak into the maw of the night, and Tommy’s unsettled, but according to Evan, he’s equip to handle that.

“Sometimes I feel like my life is one long horror movie,” he confesses. This is more than a peek at a wound—this feels like the beginnings of an introspective autopsy. “You’re- you don’t fit with that, Evan, and I don’t want to make you. You’re good. You really don’t need all my unprocessed bullshit dragging you down.”

Evan’s quiet, but then he laughs, and it doesn’t sound bitter—it sounds like disbelief.

“What?” asks Tommy.

“I feel that way literally all the time,” says Evan, and Tommy tilts his head.

“You know,” Evan says admittedly, “after I found out about my older brother, about Daniel- about- about what I was made for, for a while I thought of myself as like, Frankenstein’s monster, or something.”

“Evan,” he says, his heart breaking for younger versions of his boyfriend. Evan as a lost little kid, wondering why his family felt so incomplete, Evan as a young adult, his sister rewriting history over an old faded photograph he was never meant to find.

“Yeah, I- I- I felt like this big uncomfortable body that never asked to be created, just this thing made up of parts and scraps. Tommy, really. You’re not gonna scare me off.”

Sat in the dark, hearing the summer wind, clutching each other’s hands and taking care of each other, they exchange their horrors. Evan tells him about finding his sister in the snow, beaten half to death, her face plum purple, all dressed up in her and her husband’s blood. She’d stabbed him something like ten times. Evan tells him about the rod in his leg, about the bones that had to be crushed to get it, and of his curdled, clotted blood.

Evan tells him about the way he’d had to turn Christopher’s body around so he didn’t see the river of corpses caught in the Santa Monica tsunami. They’d been so close to being casualties themselves that sometimes, Evan admits, he wonders if they ever really left the pier at all.

Evan’s seen his best friend sniped in the middle of downtown LA. He’s been hit by lightning. Death’s been chasing Evan since the moment he was born to prevent one.

Tommy lets him in, in equal measure. He tells him about deployment. About the near-catatonic state his mother’s been stuck in his entire life. He tells him about the countless times he’d come home from school to his father passed out in a puddle of his own vomit and filth, nearly choked to death on his own rotting liver.

“Found Bobby like that once,” Evan admits, and it’s the most haunted he’s sounded all night, so he pulls him in a little closer.

Eventually, as he always seems to, they arrive at the mall. He tells Evan about Encino, about suffocating on methane, about the department store that nearly doubled as his gravesite.

It’s funny, in retrospect, how Howard Han’s brought him back from the dead more than once now. He won't be surprised if he goes for gold and does it again.

“I think what bothers me the most about it, though, is that even after I found out Gerrard was cool with leaving me behind as collateral, I still fell in line with him. He made a shitty call, he didn’t trust Howie for a hundred different reasons, and I still didn’t have the nerve to defy him for another four years.”

Evan soothes a hand against his jaw, like he needs to be reassured that Tommy’s really here with him. His thumb dips into his chin, a favorite spot of Evan’s.

“You know how I mentioned that I had a rough shift?”

Tommy nods. “About twenty topics ago, sure.”

“I think, when this started, I was expecting him to really terrorize us. Don’t get me wrong, he says some of the most out of pocket shit I’ve ever heard in my life, but mostly what gets to us is his shitty leadership. He doesn’t like that he’s not affecting us the way he wants to at the station, and I- he sort of takes it out on us in the field. He makes some really questionable decisions, he doesn’t trust anyone. It’s like- any day now, a call is gonna go south and one of the team’ll be put in harm’s way because he sucks at his job.”

Tommy hums, nods, knowing what that looks like all too well. “What finally got you to stand up to him?” continues Evan.

“I wouldn’t really say I stood up to him. I filed an anonymous complaint against him—he never even knew.”

“Anonymous or not,” says Evan, soothing his skin supportively, “you did it.”

“I guess. Anyway, it was only because of Hen.”

“Oh, that makes so much sense. Hen just has this way.”

“She sure does,” agrees Tommy, vaguely forlorn. “God, I loved working alongside her. After Gerrard was gone, there were so many times that I thought about talking to her. Telling her about- well. I never did, but honestly, leaving was the best thing I could've done.”

“Tell me about that,” Evan says softly. “Gerrard was gone for years before you transferred. I- I can’t imagine wanting to leave with Bobby in charge.”

“Evan,” he says, and he sees veneration in his eyes, but it’s not exclusively for him on this occasion. “I worked with Bobby before he met you.”

“Right, I know that, that’s- isn’t that what I just said?”

“You know, you talk a lot about how Bobby changed you, but I’m not sure you realize what you did for him.” Evan looks taken aback. “You both left each other in better shape than you found each other.”

While Evan chews on that, he circles back to the question posed.

“The 118 evolved, but no matter how far it got from where it started, I’d still walk into a shift sometimes expecting Gerrard to size me up, or Eli to see right through me, or Sal to call me a faggot.”

Evan winces at the word, the sweetheart.

“The place was full of ghosts. As soon as I knew Harbor had a vacancy, I went for it. Piloting helped me escape a bad situation as a kid—seemed like the right move then, too.”

Evan leans in to kiss him, consoling and kind. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“I’m not,” he retorts. “I was just keeping the seat warm for you, baby.”

They’re drawn back together, sucking languidly at lips and swapping spit like stories when Tommy starts to notice a glowing warmth tinting the edges of Evan’s skin. Like a sniffer dog on the hunt, Tommy’s trained instincts initially infer that it’s fire, but as he chances a look, his eyes get caught on the sky on the other side of the window.

“Hey, what time is it?” he asks.

Evan retracts himself to reach for his watch on the bedside table. “Oh, uhm, it’s- it’s almost six. Whoa, did we really talk all night?”

He’s seen Napa lush and green, he’s seen Napa dying in exhaustive oranges and blacks, but never has Tommy seen it pink, like an immodest blush, or like his boyfriend’s precious birthmarks. Like peaches or roses or flesh, there’s pink life in this dawn.

Together on the bed, they watch as the world wakes. “Guess so. Looks like hiking’s out.”

“Screw hiking,” says Evan, and Tommy feels his lips wobble into a smirk. “We can hike in LA. We do hike in LA. What I wanna do is- I wanna sit here with my man and watch the sun come up, and then I wanna sleep until the tour.”

“I’m so wired,” says Tommy, dropping a hint that he hopes Evan clocks. “Don’t know how easy it’ll be for me to fall asleep.”

“Well,” says Evan, pink all over but especially in his cheeks, “good thing I know a foolproof way to knock you out.”

“Oh, do you now?”

“Mhm,” he says, biting his lip, nude save for the hues of morning he’s draped in. “Plus, you’ve gotta finish what you started.”

Tommy leans into his space, loving the way Evan’s eyes are in a holding pattern, unable to locate a place to land. They fly from his eyes to his lips, down his chest to his hairy thighs.

“What? You want more, baby?”

Evan’s hands join in on the indecisive leering, caressing down his shoulders and arms, then hopping over to trace at the elastic of Tommy’s boxers.

“I was ready for more after twenty minutes,” says Evan, cute and coy and always so easy for it, “remember?”

Tommy can’t take much more of that, so he crashes them together with Evan’s hand still gripping his waistband, sucking at his lips in noisy, wet pulls, his palms cupping at Evan’s ass. Evan moans and groans and exhales, retaliating by pushing him down against the mattress.

“I’m so happy people can’t read my mind,” Evan says sorta randomly, tugging Tommy’s boxers off with, at this point, a practiced hand.

“Mm. Why’s that?” His cock slaps against his stomach, interested but still under-stimulated. In comical dissonance, Evan’s practically filled out all the way again already just from making out and flirting. Youth’s not wasted on Evan.

“The stuff I thought about on my twenty-four—so not safe for work. I had no idea where you were bringing me but- yeah, I couldn’t wait to get my hands all over you for planning something special.” As Evan situates himself atop Tommy’s thighs, Tommy wraps a fist around himself, encouraging his cock with a few showy strokes.

“This what you were thinking about, baby?”

Evan nods, vacant and starved and rendered speechless, like he’s hollow without it. Tommy squeezes himself, smacks his dick against his naval a couple times just to see the way Evan stares, his mouth unthinkingly drooping open. It’s maybe not the healthiest of thoughts, but in moments like these, he sometimes wonders how Evan didn’t put two and two together about himself a hell of a lot sooner. This is a step beyond eager and horny—Evan’s fixated, dick-whipped, delirious. He’s locked in on Tommy’s junk like if he looks away for even a second, it’ll disappear. Tommy lies back and watches as Evan sucks on a few of his own fingers, getting them slick and wet and never tearing his eyes away from what he’s after. He brings his wet hand to the tip and starts to play.

“You look unbelievable,” Evan says hazily, circling his cockhead with damp fingers, rubbing gently at the slit to collect a drop of leaking discharge. Evan brings the finger to his tongue to have a taste, then right back down to trace at Tommy’s balls.

“Jesus, Evan. You do. Look so fucking cute.”

Evan absorbs the praise like grapes in the Cali sun, swelling bigger and wetter from it, basking in the rays. His cock’s a heavy weight jutting from his pelvis, bobbing from gravity, but the watery pre-come that froths out in steady strings is all Tommy’s doing. He watches as it pours down into Tommy’s trim public hair, god there’s always so fucking much of it. He imagines it absorbing into him like sun beams or tender praise, too.

The room may be rose-tinted, but there’s nothing fantastical or idealized about any of it. They made this, they’ve worked for it to feel this easy. They exist in multitudes but always in reality, romantic and horror-prone.

Once Evan grabs the lube from the beside table, he means business. He works Tommy over just how he knows he likes it, really putting that beefy bicep into it. He fists him with a lax grip that gets firmer on the upstroke and his pecs bounce subtly with every jerk. God, he’s a sight. Tommy wonders if Evan would be into getting his tits fucked.

Stupid thought—it’s Evan. Course he would. Tommy doesn’t think there’s a variety of fucking that Evan doesn’t like.

“I- I feel so close to you,” admits Evan, raw and raspy. His hand keeps pumping away, getting Tommy’s erection attentive, pink, and pulsing. “God, I’d do anything for this cock. Want it in me so- so fucking bad, Daddy.”

“Evan,” Tommy hisses. “Fuck yes, baby, c’mon.”

“‘Kay, yeah,” he says, a little breathless. “How do you- how do you want me?”

Tommy sits up, helping Evan off his thighs and guiding him into a reclined position. He lets his body be shown where to move, always so pliant and willing to follow the leader. He naturally goes to lie on his back, but Tommy gently repositions him onto his side so that they both face the window. Tommy curls against him, spooning him from behind.

“This way,” he explains, “we can still watch the sunrise like you wanted,” provoking a shudder and a request for a kiss over Evan’s shoulder.

He takes two fingers practically immediately, still the slightest bit loose from a few hours ago, and eventually he takes three like it’s easy. It is for him, though—in all ways, Evan’s so good at being open, especially with Tommy, especially for Tommy. Evan hikes his left knee up as far as it’ll go, allowing Tommy’s fingers to knock deeper inside of him. Someday soon, maybe he’ll ask to take everything, to take Tommy’s whole fist.

Curled against him like this, Evan looks and feels like miles of body, a stretched-out runway of skin, soft and firm in synchronicity. “You’re so beautiful,” he drops into Evan’s ear, rubbing himself all over the muscly dip of his lower back. “Your ass looks fucking perfect. Need you, Evan,” he whimpers, an anagram of intentional double-meaning.

Evan tilts forward to pull himself off of Tommy’s fingers, and pushes back once he’s free, presenting himself for the taking. “Have me,” he says, begging for more in physicality alone, his hips and waist and gorgeous ass luring Tommy forward with a casual sway.

He lubes up and lines up, entering Evan raw and cursing into the back of his neck, pushing in just about halfway. Evan’s boiling and tight, and he starts to whine, impatient, always so obsessive about having as much of anything as he can. He’d said it earlier—he yearns for all of Tommy, no matter the context. Every scar, every mood, and in this setting, every fat inch of him.

“Want more?” he asks, already knowing but craving Evan’s audible appeal, and Evan nods, “yeah, yeah- yes,” bending an arm awkwardly back to clutch Tommy’s side.

“Push back on it, baby, c’mon. You want it so bad then push yourself back on my cock.”

He gasps through it, complying, wiggling back until they’re flat and flush, and that’s how it goes for a while, Evan taking orders, Tommy paying him back in praise and kind touches and love you, baby whispered into his ear as he slides his open hole up and down on Tommy.

They rock together and Tommy watches through glass as the aurora burns hot pink. It’ll only be like this for a few minutes more, the sky will inevitably turn its unintimidating baby blue, and eventually this will only be a moment, then a memory. They’ll go back to LA, he’ll go back to Harbor, Evan’ll go back to Gerrard, and they’ll look back and remember how vulnerable and newly in love they were that weekend in Napa when they stayed up all night and confessed so many horrific things that they turned darkness into dawn.

They make the most of the few minutes left between night and day, time and space in limbo as they find their second wind and their fucking turns frantic. He clutches Evan, wrapping his arms around his mid-rift and pounding forward with every one of his well-oiled muscles. Evan’s keeping up with it, fucking himself back but also jacking at himself with his fist, and the sounds they’re making are noisy and wet and explosively alive. It’s everything burning at once before it gets blown out, it’s the horror and the truth and it’s expensive women wanting Evan, it’s Tommy’s past come back from the dead to haunt them, it’s memories of wildfire, it’s the fact that somehow, despite every fucking thing that’s been chasing after them for so long, they’ve lived for long enough to be able to love each other.

“Fucking- ah, yeah, fuck yeah- c’mon, give it to me,” cries Evan, grinding back madly, manically. “Fucking breed me, come on.”

Things won’t always be like this—new and edgy and kinetic. Tommy’s in this for the long-haul. He truly hopes that someday, it’ll really take a lot for Evan to surprise him. Maybe one day, he’ll know Evan well enough that anticipating his actions, his thoughts, his words will be second nature. But things are still relatively new, so Evan says breed me and a deprived shock spews down the spiral staircase of his spine and his thrusts slip brutal from the unpredictability of it. Where he even picked up that word is beyond Tommy—maybe a deep dive into gay porn once he started to figure things out which is actually a pretty blindingly fucking hot possibility—but Evan says it, and he can feel as his dick attempts to impossibly expand against the resistance of Evan’s insides.

“Jesus fuck, here it comes baby, gonna make a mess in you,” Tommy says into Evan’s ear, and Evan nods around sobs and throws his ass back just over the promise of it.

Tommy drenches him, fucking as far inside as he can get and twitching himself empty just so that Evan can be full. Evan soaks himself too, shooting off into his fist and onto his stomach and Tommy’s arms still wrapped tight around his waist, always so good about following. He fucks into Evan even after they’re messy and exhausted and Evan makes these little pleased noises, and Tommy never wants this feeling in his gut to end. But the world spins on, rotating indifferently and perpetually, and it doesn’t matter what Tommy wants because it never has, and the sky turns its expected blue, and they can’t hide out from LA forever.

Something’s waiting for him.

—

Now

1 Month Later

July 2024

—

There are a few ways that fires can start in nature. The sun can ignite dry earth if the conditions allow, causing wildfire—so can lightning. Volcanic eruptions. As long as the holy trinity of fuel, heat, and oxygen is present, combustion can occur seemingly spontaneously. Autoignition. Nature’s callous, but it isn’t methodically cruel, and it isn’t vengeful. It isn’t full of spite or malice. Nature has laws and when the recipe’s just right, it’s gonna do its thing and burn.

What Tommy’s learned after twenty years on the job, though, is that most fires are started by men.

Most fire isn’t arbitrarily chaotic. After Napa, Tommy remembers reading some report that cited something like eighty percent of wildfires in America today are the products of human activity. People are negligent. Campfires, cigarettes, goddamn gender reveal parties. Nobody wanted to point fingers in Napa, tax brackets and local politics fucked that whole investigation right up, but anyone following that story, and fighting that monstrous fire, knew what it was—wine country’s dry lands and sweeping winds helped it along, but it was man-made electrical equipment that started the Glass Fire, and 70,000 acres burned at its mercy.

There are tons of ways that people accidentally start fires. Kids playing with matches, unkempt bonfires, batteries. Home fires usually start in the kitchen, or because a house is badly maintained. Poor circuiting, flammable insulation. Unattended space heaters.

And then there are the selfish fires. The non-accidents. The intentional fires—arson.

When he pulls up in a hover high above the Montebello Mall, Donato on his left, it’s a late afternoon in mid-July and that’s exactly what they’re saying this is. Guess it’s easy to call it what it is when there’s a Motel 6 across the street and a Walmart down the road.

It’s probably on his mind because of the frankly ridiculously premature nostalgia he has about his trip with Evan, but right from the jump, there are elements about this emergency that have Tommy thinking about the Glass Fire. From this altitude, smoke is indiscriminate—plumes look the same along a state highway as they do rising from a countryside. Given the scale, FD and PD units from all over the city have been dispatched, so that’s familiar, too.

Moreso, though, what makes Tommy think of the Glass Fire is what a juxtaposition the shopping center makes to the fertile hills of Napa. There was a spirit of tragedy in the thick, red air as they released drop after helibucket drop onto the flaming earth, as they plunged their pulaskis into the nutritious soil. It’d been called a shame and a pity and a disaster, all that gorgeous greenery reduced to a gutted wasteland, and all during the harvest season, too.

This- well, this isn’t that. Not by a mile. What’s caught in the fire isn’t any delicate bounty. The Montebello Mall is on fire, and with it, it’s taking expensive shit made for cheap, shipped to Los Angeles from the other side of the planet. Things, meaningless fucking things that people fill their lives to the brim with in the hopes that empty purchases will at least make their closets and houses and existences feel less empty.

Fuck it, Tommy thinks. Get the people out safely and soundly, yeah, but let the place cave in for all he cares. Let it burn.

Maybe there’s no real difference between here and there, now and then. Wine country, when you pull back the red tannin curtain, is just as exploitative. Not like the millionaire heirs to the vino empire are the ones tending to, harvesting, de-stemming the crops, burning and boiling their skin under the UV, crushing, fermenting, macerating. Who’s to say one is less worthy of ruin? Let it all burn. At least it keeps him employed.

What ever happened to his sense of duty? Not too long ago, Tommy’d catch himself having thoughts like these and think that he was much too young to be this cynical. These days, with a pretty young thing on his cock a few times a week, he’s never felt more like his actual age. It’s really easy to feel old when your boyfriend regularly begs for another orgasm barely half an hour after his last one. Maybe now’s the perfect time to admit he’s plenty old enough to be bitter.

Anyway. The 217 is assigned to rooftop evacuation, so Tommy and Lucy start their descent.

“Come on down, our prices are on fire!” Tommy hears the voice of an old friend through the emergency response channel. Sounds like the 118 is among the many companies that have been called to the scene. “Flash sale,” says Howie, his goofy grin palpable even through the radio waves, “everything must go!”

Maybe it’s Howie’s refreshingly M*A*S*H-y brand of humor, maybe there’s relief in knowing his very competent friends are here beside him to battle the blaze from below, but for a moment, it doesn’t seem like this is actually going to be a shitshow.

But then he hears someone else through the radio.

“You think that’s funny, Han? Keep this line open for serious matters and get your ass back to work.” Vincent Gerrard’s voice is a frail yip through the channel, truly nothing to be intimidated by, and yet there’s still this dread that drips through him, languid and lethargic. The last time he and Gerrard and Howie were called to an emergency at a mall, Tommy nearly never left. Hell’s own perpetual window shopper.

And that’s only the half of it. Tommy drops and drops in altitude, and once he manages to get a decent view of the roof, it’s clear that this isn’t about to be an in and out rescue operation.

The west side of the mall is a lost cause—the fire is concentrated there, and the boots on the ground seem to be just as focused on containing it to one side of the structure as they are on snuffing it out. Tommy’s got to put her down on the other side, but what the east roof lacks in fire, it makes up for in hysteria.

He’s barely able to land—the crowd swarms about the roof like a swath of frantic bugs. There’s so many people, and the first responders are doing their best to keep the peace but they’re no match for the survival instincts of a hundred-something spiraling bodies. They scream and they push and they claw at each other to be first to the getaway choppers, a cluster of impatient, indignant cells that’ve taken the concept fight or flight far too literally. They can only take a few folks per trip, and each round back the horde gets more and more ravenous.

Lucy keeps having to tell the passengers to leave their shopping bags behind. More than once, people seem more concerned about getting a seat for their purchases than their own children. “You’re going to have to leave them ma’am, we can only carry so much weight, let’s go,” says Lucy, and when she gets ignored, Tommy gruffs, “leave ‘em,” and doesn’t need to turn his head to know they’ve abided. Not in his bird, they don’t.

It takes three different helicopters, but the air evacuation is a success, and the roof is clear within the hour. Ground evac, containment, and suppression are still going strong, so most of the firefighters of the 217 get reallocated to lend a heavenly hand down on Earth. Usually, he’d jump on the offer to fly his craft back to Harbor and call it a day—a perk of his seniority. Today, though, he lets Lucy go instead.

He feels like he has unfinished business here.

Tommy’s in his flight suit, no proper gear, so he heads to the east side of the mall to assist in the ongoing evacuation and crowd control. He’s escorting people to the appropriate places—exits and officers and medics depending on their need—when he hears yet another familiar voice. This time, it’s not through the comms.

“Hey, uh- aren’t you a little far from the sun?” Evan grabs the blue of his elbow and his heart swells at the restorative sight of him, all decked out in black and fluorescent green. “What’re you doing down here with us earthlings?”

“I’m multi-talented,” answers Tommy, shooting him the quickest wink. “I just go where I’m needed.”

“Oh—s’that mean you’re coming over tonight?” says Evan, tilting his head, irresistibly biting his bottom lip, squinting in the way he does when he can’t contain his smile. God, he’s so fucking adorable, Tommy wants to back him against the nearest wall and-

“Whoa boys, save some heat for the fire,” says Howard, popping up from behind Evan and pantomiming fanning himself. Evan playfully swats at Howie’s arm.

“Anyway,” says Tommy, snapping his concentration back into place like a dislocated bone. “What’re you doing on evac duty, Evan? Figured you’d be where the action’s at,” he says, pointing back at the blaze, still burning bright on the opposite end of the mall.

Evan rolls his eyes. “I’m, uh- I’m on time-out,” he says with air quotes.

“Let’s just say Buck here hasn’t been the most obedient of pups,” says Howard. Tommy sort of wants to say speak for yourself, but Howard’s already heard enough—too much, really. He bites his tongue, sparing him, and nods.

Tommy was rarely on the receiving end of Captain Gerrard’s spiteful punishments, but he witnessed them plenty, and feared them enough to consciously prevent poking the bear. If Evan’s managed to rock the boat, he ought to wear his dissent as proudly as he wears his shiny new medal of valor. “Good on you, kid,” he says, returning the touch and grabbing Evan’s jacketed elbow.

They spend a solid few minutes directing folks, deescalating panic, keeping the order, sending scraped skin and headaches over to Howard and the other paramedics for a patch-up. Despite the scale, everything appears to be operating smoothly, and for a while, Tommy’s able to swallow the dread and keep it down just fine.

Dread and puke and fear, though, as much as you try to stop it, will always find a fucking way out. It’ll spew from sealed lips if it needs to.

An ugly cry rings out to the left of him, and Tommy whips his head in its direction. Crouched on the gravel of the parking lot, a disheveled woman sobs buckets into her knees, and beside her, Hen rubs at her shoulder. Tommy catches Evan’s eye, and then Howie’s, and they nod at one another, jogging over to the scene.

“Hey, what’s going on?” asks Howie. “She hurt?” Howie and Evan naturally kneel down to get on Hen’s level, and the evidence of their unity as a team is enviable, and significantly impressive.

Tommy watches on, feeling a bit like he’s reliving some formerly unrealized glory days.

“I- I don’t know- I don’t think so,” says Hen, continuing to soothe her. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

Evan puts a hand on Hen’s, and with a quick but pointed look, she pulls back, and Howie follows her, and Evan gets one of his big arms around her, taking control of the consolation. Tommy knows from experience how far those arms can go to make you feel better.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, I know it’s scary. We’re here to help you, but- but we can only do that if you talk to us.” His voice is gentle, but nowhere near condescending. It’s charming and raspy and trustworthy. Tommy melts under the heat of the blaze and the July sun and his affection for Evan.

“Uh, guys,” he says, looking up from the ground with eyes as soft as his voice, “can someone get me a tissue?” Howie handily procures one from his med kit, passing it into Evan’s free hand. He uncurls one of the woman’s fists, placing it with as much grace as a flower being left on the dirt of a grave.

Tommy watches as Evan cares life back into a broken spirit. Amongst the department, Evan’s reputation has always been in relation to his heroics, his stunts, his unrelenting physical strength. What most people don’t realize is that he’s just as good at this part of the job—the quiet moments, the tip-toeing. In retrospect, it really doesn’t surprise him that Evan met three of his exes on calls—the kindness and security he’s exuding sort of have him falling in love all over again.

“They wouldn’t let me- they won’t let me back inside the mall,” says the woman, sniffling into her tissue.

“Why- why would you want to go back in?” asks Evan.

The rooftop evac flashes through Tommy’s skull, people clinging desperately to their shopping bags like their purchases mattered more than the safety of the next guy. He braces himself for some ludicrous justification.

The woman sucks in a filmy breath in order to choke up her answer. “My son is still inside.”

“Uh, ma’am,” says Howie, with some trepidation. “They gave the all-clear a little while ago,” says Howie. “Are you sure your son didn’t just get separated from you? Does he have a cell phone? He could be with a police officer, it happens all the time in-”

“He doesn’t have a phone, please, please- just let me explain,” she says, and they nod at her, Evan petting her shoulder encouragingly. “When the commotion started, we didn’t realize it was a fire. My son, Stephen, he’s ten- and, and- at school they practice these shelter in place drills for- for shootings.”

Tommy’s heart just about drops through his feet. At ten, he basically felt unsafe every day of his life. Guess it doesn’t matter what decade you’re ten in—there’s always, always something hanging and hovering over a child’s head, in every era.

“That’s what we thought was going on. He started running to find a place to hide, and I was following him but- but he’s so little and I- I got pulled into the crowd and pushed right out the department store to the parking lot.” She takes a breath, and though she’s mostly evened out, her eyes are frantic. They’re the eyes of a protector, the eyes of someone who’d brave fear and fire to get her kid back. Tommy looks from her eyes to Howie’s and doesn’t see much of a difference.

“No one believes me, they said they swept the place but I know my boy- I know he’s still inside. He’s tiny, he’s a good hider and, and- he’s not gonna leave until he knows he’s able to. Please tell me you believe me.”

Hen leans down to grip her hand. “I have a son, too—he’s a little bit older than Stephen is.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do. Your son sounds like a responsible kid. Smart,” says Hen. “We’re gonna bring him back to you.”

Tommy feels him coming before he hears or sees him. Despite the summer heat and the fire and the sun, a cold chill hits him square in the back. Beneath the flight suit, his skin prickles with precarious goosebumps. He turns around.

“And who’s authorizing that?” croaks Captain Gerrard. “What makes you think I’m gonna send two medics and an insubordinate brat into an unstable structure based off the word of a hysterical female?” The blood red insignia of his captain’s helmet may as well be on his hands.

“Oh, we weren’t waiting for authorization,” says Hen, unaffected in every way. “But thanks for checking. Let’s go, boys.” Evan follows, as does Howie after he tips his helmet to Gerrard like it’s a vaudevillian top hat.

Tommy means to follow right after them, but he gets stuck watching Gerrard, dejected, dismissed, castrated in a way he’s never witnessed. He seems to feel the stare, and he shifts, locking baggy eyes with Tommy.

“I can understand leaving me behind, but really? A kid?” He doesn’t mean to be so pregnable about it, but there are parallels here that beg to be drawn.

“What’re you talking about?” bleats Gerrard. He doesn’t remember Encino—why would he?

“Kinard,” he says. “You ever feel like you’re getting too goddamn old for this job?”

“All the time,” says Tommy. “In your case, though, I think you’re probably onto something.”

—

On the night that Evan bottomed for the first time, he told Tommy about his dead older brother and the coma he was in last year. Since that had been pre-Napa, they’d changed subjects pretty quickly and then got distracted by round two, anyway—“What? I just wanna see if it’s as good as I remember it being.” “You mean thirty minutes ago?” “Exactly.”—but there was something Evan said that night that he hasn’t stopped thinking about. It’s resonating with him now especially, all these months later, as the four of them step inside the barren east wing of the Montebello Mall.

When Evan was in a coma, he dreamt about living a different life. When he first woke up, he remembered it super vividly, as if he’d really lived it. He remembered it well the next day, too. But the more days he lived and the further he got from the coma, the more distant that alternate reality became. As time went on, as he tells it, it became less evocative, more like an impression of images and feelings, and while he’s conscious of the truth, that his body was hooked to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine and that his brain was processing a traumatic injury by shuffling through his subconscious like a junk drawer, he’s still sometimes slapped by a stray surreal memory, unable to immediately discern if he’d lived it or fabricated it.

Tommy steps into the mall, and really, it could be 2005, he could be moments away from choking on an invisible toxin and being nearly blown to bits. It could be 1994, he could be watching the grainy visage of a zombie-infested mall on an ungainly television set. Both memories, as formative as they’d been in their own right, have lied dormant and repressed for so long that Tommy’s mind struggles with their sincerity. This could be a dream, it could be a prophecy. It feels so real, and yet part of him screams that it can’t be.

“Hey,” says Evan, grabbing his arm as they wander in. It catches him off-guard, but he tries not to show it too blatantly. “I’m gonna be honest- I don’t feel great about the fact that you don’t have gear besides your walkie.”

“Evan, we’re just doing a sweep, I’ll be fine,” he replies. “The fire’s contained, and it’s on the opposite end of the building. We’ll be in and out—I’ll be okay.”

“Alright,” Evan relents. “Either way, I’ve uh, I’ve got your six—I’ve got your everything.”

“I know.”

Malls aren’t built to be roamed in solitude. They’re intended to be filled to the brim with things and people and noise and transactions of every variety. The empty department store is rapt with liminal wrongness and uncanny eeriness, but what’s truly disturbing is that for Tommy, it’s troublingly familiar.

He always knew he’d wind up back.

“I know this story. A ragtag team of four enter a mall, only two make it out alive,” says Howard. “When there’s no more room in hell-”

“Boy, what are you talking about?” says Hen. “Alright, we have a kid to find, Chimney and I will take the south side of the store, Buck and Tommy, you guys go that way,” she says, pointing, “and-”

“‘Scuse me,” says Howie, chomping on gum and folding his arms. “We’re splitting up? When is it ever a good idea to split up?”

“Chim, despite whatever movie you’re in inside your own damn head, this isn’t some 80s slasher flick.” Howie looks skeptical. “We need to split up to cover more ground. We all good?”

“Yeah, Cap,” nods Evan, and Tommy doesn’t miss the pleased little smile that tugs at her face. Someday, Hen’ll have the gig full-time. He wonders if Gerrard will be alive to see her do it, then wonders if he hopes for it or not. Sort of a win-win.

Tommy and Howard both nod, too, following Hen’s trusty lead.

They part ways, and he and Evan start by checking some of the more obvious spots—a fitting room, a break room, the space beneath registers. They alternate calling his name as they sift through racks and racks of clothing in search of Stephen.

“Maybe- maybe he’s too scared to come out,” says Evan.

“Or maybe,” Tommy says, carefully, candidly, “nobody’s in here. Evan, we can’t do this all night—the longer we’re in here, the more unstable the building becomes. You know that.”

He also knows it’s not what Evan wants to hear—he wants to find the kid, reunite the family, save the day. He wants to be their hero.

“I’ll, uh- how about we try the infrared camera?” says Evan. Tommy shrugs, tilts his head. Could be worth a spin.

Evan is pulling it out when a faint chime catches Tommy’s ear. It’s the kind of high frequency sound he very likely wouldn’t normally hear in this huge of a store, but it’s desolate to the point that a pin drop would reverberate, and so the tinny, little beep echoes triumphantly.

“Hey, stop a sec,” he says, grabbing Evan’s arm. Tommy whips his head around in survey. “Did you hear that?”

His eyebrow quirks, he shakes his head. Tommy puts up a single finger, requesting that the silence be allowed to fester. Evan follows his physical cue, even going so far as to hold his breath. Obedient pup, thinks Tommy.

When it rings again, he knows what it is cause he’s been waiting for it.

“Come on,” he says, clutching Evan by the arm and dragging him to the back corner of the store, following the phantom trail of the sound like a ping on a radar.

When they reach their destination, Tommy points a finger and watches it reflect back at him in mirrored accusation. Tommy can hear the elevator trudging through the shaft. “Evan. Why is the elevator running if the store’s empty?”

Evan lights up, realization smacking into him as he does the same dully into Tommy’s chest. Evan leans forward to jam his thumb into the button and it glows with life as the elevator is summoned down to them.

There’s an anticipation coiling down his body, almost like beads of sweat on a back, as they await the arrival of the cab. For a fraction of a second, Tommy’s not sure what sight they’ll be greeted with when the door chirps open. He stares at the rectangular chrome of the archway, thinks of wood paneling and something formerly human. His father, stumbling, stinking. The wait is dragged out like dead weight by his worry.

But it stops, and the door groans a ring as it opens, and what appears is a relief, though also horrific in its own right.

“Hey, buddy. Are- are you Stephen?” asks Evan.

In the corner, a little boy is curled up like a tumbleweed, his eyes wide and barely peeking out from above his knees, which are pulled tight to his tiny torso. Clearly, his mother’s intuition had been right—violence has trained him to disappear into the void. What a world.

“You don’t have a gun, do you?” says the kid.

“No, no,” says Tommy, subtly placing a hand on the sensor to keep the door from sliding shut.

“We’re firefighters. That’s Tommy, and- and I’m Buck,” says Evan. “We’re here to help you. Your mom’s real worried about you, bud.”

Stephen looks between them a few times, sizing them up. His eyes land on Tommy. “You,” he says, pointing his finger. “You don’t look like a firefighter,” he announces. "You’re wearing blue.”

“Well, that’s because I’m a firefighter pilot. This is my flight suit.”

“Oh,” says the kid. “That’s sick.”

“I know, right,” says Evan, stepping in while Tommy keeps it open. He leans down and extends his hand in offer. “Listen, Stephen, there's a big fire in the mall, so we gotta go now. Okay?”

Stephen nods and scrambles to get up, accepting Evan’s hand and succinctly shattering Tommy’s heart into a scattered mess of pieces. Evan with kids always makes a precious sight. Jee and Denny, and even Mara now, flock to Evan—Christopher too, before he left. In this context though, it’s overwhelming, and just like overcoming the temptation to stare directly at the sun, Tommy has to force himself to turn away.

“Alright,” says Tommy, his back to them, his eyes fixed on the department store exit. Not much further to go now. Maybe he’ll actually make it out of here unscathed, future, past, and gut feelings be damned. “Let’s get out of here.”

The three of them start towards the exit.

While Evan’s busy radioing Howie and Hen, giving them an update and agreeing to rendezvous back at the parking lot, Tommy gets to thinking. He can’t help it, can’t shake it. There’s this sinking feeling all the way deep down in his intestines that something about this rescue was too painless.

There’s a catch somewhere—he just can’t see it yet.

They’re about halfway to the exit when Tommy realizes that he doesn’t need to see it for there to be a catch. Apparently, he just needs to smell it.

“Evan,” he says, angling his head over to where he’s speed-walking hand in hand with Stephen, the kid desperately trying to keep up with Evan’s long-legged gait. “You getting that?”

“I, uh- I guess containment’s not going so well anymore,” says Evan.

“Is- is everything okay?” pipes up Stephen, looking jumpy and freaked out between them.

The suggestion of smoke dusts at Tommy’s nostrils, and though there’s no physical sign of fire in their vicinity, it’s here, it’s hiding. Unlike the methane, though, Tommy can sense it, he’s ahead of it. They can outrun it. He tells himself he can outrun it.

“We’re fine, we’re fine,” says Tommy. He tries to snuff out the panic in his voice. “Let’s just pick up the pace, come on.”

Evan nods, barely stopping as he squats low to haul the kid up over his shoulder. They pick up momentum in their stride. They run. They’re so close, the revolving doors so much like a glitchy oasis mirage.

They’re so, so close.

And then the ceiling caves in and Tommy’s dragged down to hell.

—

Run.

Go, Evan, get the hell out of here, get the kid out. Evan. Run.  

When the cacophony calms and the cloud of ivory plaster begins to settle, Tommy coughs his throat clear, he blinks his eyes clean. Then, he makes some observations.

He’s been knocked onto his ass. Physically, he feels alright aside from maybe his right foot, which is pinned underneath some debris. He should be able to wedge himself out, the pain in his ankle is loud but the debris seems more abundant than heavy, and if he can spare to, he’d rather wait another few seconds for the visibility to improve at least slightly.

Tommy doesn’t think that Evan’s still inside. He tries calling out to him a few times, but when there’s no reply, he opts to not panic. Evan is young and spry and really fucking good at his job. He had to have made it out with Stephen. Tommy tells himself they did.

So Evan and the kid aren’t here, but that doesn’t mean he’s alone. Fire’s here—fire’s what sent parts of the second floor raining down around him. The department store is a disaster of plaster and dust and smoke and fire, and with most of the sprinklers plucked like flowers from their place, and with the clothes and the shoes and the bags and the bullshit as its kindling, the fire’s about to spread as fast as an LAFD rumor.

Tommy’s final observation is this—he’s not afraid. His dread must’ve went with the ceiling. He wants to lay back and laugh and seep through the floor because instead- instead what he feels, of all things, is comfort. Fire eats its way through cotton and silk and leather and polyester and nylon and wool and Tommy is a halcyon bystander, passive, tranquil, knowing. There’s an all-encompassing comfort in watching the thing you’ve always dreaded, at ten, at twenty-one, at forty, playing out right before your eyes. He always knew the world wasn’t through with him. He didn’t get to watch it fall apart last time—Encino wouldn’t have been right. This, now, these are the correct circumstances, and there’s an unexpected peace in knowing that at least the waiting’s over.

Not only that—there's a decent chance Gerrard's going to be out of a job. Whatever happens to him, at least there's that.

All that established, there’s still a survival instinct apparently functioning within him, because Tommy starts to plot a course of action. Debris has boxed him in, the exit completely obstructed, so he’ll have to find another way out. Next, he radios in a mayday, fast and perfunctory. Tommy doesn’t waste any time waiting for a response before he moves onto the next phase in his likely unavailing attempt to escape the Montebello hellmouth, which involves freeing his foot.

He doesn’t consider himself lucky that concrete or steel or a heavy metal vent didn’t crush him in the collapse—that would’ve just prevented this from being a slow crawl to death. He sits up in a crunch, using the floor as leverage to slide himself back and out from under whatever junk fell onto his legs. Next, he’s gotta get up and get the fuck out of here.

Up proves to be an issue. As soon as he shuffles himself off the ground and puts his weight on both of his feet, Tommy nearly topples over from a barking pain beneath his right boot. Quickly, Tommy shifts off of it to relieve the pressure, biting his lip and screwing his eyes shut tight as his aching ankle sends nasty, burning, blistering signals to his brain. In the commotion, he must have fallen on it oddly, and the shower of plaster and whatever else couldn’t have helped. For a moment, he feels woozy from the pain—he feels his face pale and his stomach clench with nausea—but he smacks himself in the face a little bit, forcing it to pass. He’ll fucking hop, he’ll drag it limply, he’ll do whatever he needs to do to not pass out while he’s still got at least a fraction of a chance to see the sky again.

After he sort of figures out getting up, the getting out proves to be just as much of a headache. Alongside the obstacle course created by the collapsed ceiling, fire licks at the edge of each wall, and together they block the main exit, emergency doors, and alternate routes of every variety. Without any proper gear, he’s running out of time and options as quickly as the sweat materializes from the pores of his face.

He realizes his only choice seconds before the fire essentially spells it out for him. If he was going to be brought back, forced to face the inevitability of a mall crumbling all around him, there’s one final obligation required in fulfilling that fate fully. Tommy can’t tell if it’s a light at the end of a tunnel or a death march, but the inferno practically glows a perfect path towards the elevator at the back of the store. The only path forward is back. It could be a chrome coffin, or it could lift him up and away to liberation in the same fashion as a helicopter always has, but either way, he knows the elevator is where he needs to go, and so he flocks to it like a moth.

As quickly as he can possibly move, Tommy heads to the back of the department store wasteland, taking another stab at a radio mayday and dragging his fallow foot behind him. When he arrives, he jams his thumb into the button, but he hesitates to let go even when the door slides open. Evan’s thumb had just been pressed in the very same spot not even ten minutes ago—in the interest of time, he relents, but he presses a kiss to the tip of his thumb as he enters the elevator.

The plan’s simple enough. As soon as he’s inside, Tommy hits the button for the top floor. Hopefully, there’s still a top floor at least partially in tact. From there, he’ll make his way to the roof, where hopefully there’s still a chopper whirling around. If there isn’t, he’ll still be able to flag someone down. It doesn’t matter, he just needs to get there.

The elevator groans quietly and mechanically as it pulls itself up, and it chirps the announcement of the second floor. Just one more to go, a few more seconds and he’ll slip back into survival mode. For these next few moments, he’ll enjoy leaning into the wall and keeping the weight off his pounding foot and knowing what it is he’s actually dealing with. That’ll all go away as soon as the door opens—anything could be waiting for him on the other side. Quietly it pulls, it climbs, it-

It stops. The cab halts its procession with a jolt, the overhead lights flicker and die like blown-out candles, the glowing controllers and buttons on the wall fade to black. He did try—they can’t say he didn’t try. Down he slides, down into a puddle on the floor, down like a ten year old boy, resolve and defeat vying for dominance within him.

Whether the power and the back-up autonomously went or the team finally got everything shut off, the timing of it is honestly holy. Even the random is intentional when it comes to inevitability. Tommy was always meant to be here, trapped, hobbled, chump for the undead to pick at. On the wall across from him, the call button with the little firefighter insignia is like the inscription on a tombstone.

With nothing else to do but undo the boot on his agonizing ankle and periodically preach maydays to deaf ears, Tommy’s mind wanders to the night of the cruise ship rescue—or rather, the dawn that followed. Captain Nash, bundled in a blanket in the back, had said something so frank and somber. It was probably only intended for Evan and Eddie’s ears, but unbiasedly it traveled through the channel for all to hear, and Tommy finds himself thinking about it now.

“She was nervous about sailing,” he’d said, reflective and haunted as they made their way to the maritime rescue fleet. “Athena- she, she- I didn’t even know. She was terrified. It was almost like she knew.”

Fuck, maybe part of her did know. Maybe the truth about fears—the deepest ones, the darkest ones, the ones so repressed it takes an old buddy’s razzing to jog the memory of them—is that people manifest them. Obsess them into reality. Could Athena’s obsession have willed the sea air to squall or the Uno into capsizing? Could obsession have forced Bobby into watching his home burn down around his family twice? Without obsession, would Evan have ever discovered he was just as unwanted by his folks as he’d always feared he’d was?

Then there’s his darkness, the chill that’s followed him around for decades. Tommy’s spent so much of his life concerned about relapsing into terror that it’s been able to sneak up on him in bursts. He chases anything that challenges it, anything pure of heart—vapid feel-good movies and silly trivia nights at breweries and golden-hearted boys like Evan Buckley.

Evan. God, he’s probably so fucking worried. If he made it out.

Fuck. Frantically, Tommy tries the walkie. Nothing. He tosses it away, looks around the elevator, see-saws between sulking and strategizing. Watches as the smoke finds him, seeping in, salt in a wound. Part of him doesn’t want to go. There’d be no more waiting, no more distractions—the horror is here, and he’s as ready for it as he’ll ever be.

And yet, there’s this boyish rasp in his ear, the pink light of dawn in his eyes. For him, for what they’re building together, he has to keep trying. Till Tommy’s got nothing left to give, and even then, he’d try for Evan.

Tommy puts his boot back on, sucks in a lungful while there’s still some breathable air, and pushes himself upright, wincing through the pain. He can’t quite unlatch the hatch at the top of the cab, so he’ll have to get some leverage by hoisting himself up with the handrail. Gripping the grooves in the wall until his knuckles go pale and numb from the tension, he’s able to get his good foot positioned, tears pooling at his crow’s feet for the few seconds his body weight is balanced mostly on his shattered bone. The elevator sways shakily as he finds his footing on the rail, but he fights through the parabolic seasickness with a gulp.

“Here goes nothing,” he grumbles, reaching for the hatch.

But it opens before he even touches it. A hand, two hands, reaching out for him, they found him, they-

They’re the hands of his past, the hands of his future.

“Found you, Flyboy,” says Evan, and he reaches out to fix an oxygen mask to Tommy’s gasping face.

“Wait, was that actually a film reference out of your mouth, Buck?” says Howard, and Tommy would burst at the seams with happy laughter if he wasn’t concerned about the smoke inhalation. God, he could laugh until he cries seeing their beautiful faces. Maybe he will later, all over Evan’s shoulder. Maybe he’ll never stop.

“Yeah,” rasps Evan. “Maybe.”

Tommy pops the mask off long enough to say, “Howie, you should just be grateful that’s the nickname he went with.”

“Oh, god, stop, stop- I don’t wanna know,” says Howard.

“Later,” winks Evan, a goddamn dream, even crouched in the shaft of an elevator, even through the square of a hatch. Especially, maybe.

Howie and Evan pull him up and out, and he’s a little worried about their weight destabilizing the elevator, but mostly he’s grateful that he’s not alone anymore. The two of them just keep making sure of that, going on twenty years now.

“Later might have to wait,” he says, popping off the mask. “My ankle’s a little broken.”

“Later can be a hospital bed,” says Evan, taking Tommy’s arm over his shoulder to help with his balance.

“Don’t I know it,” adds Howie.

As it turns out, there’s an air duct that leads to a maintenance room that opens to the roof—they don’t have long to go. “I have a million questions, but- how did you even know about this route?”

“I saw it on a map,” says Evan, plainly. Goddamn genius. “I’ll, uh- I’ll explain later.”

“And- Evan, how’d you know where to look?” Tommy asks.

“I listened.”

Tommy thinks in tropes, he exists in motifs, but life is so much more complex—it’s light and dark and love and horror always all at once. It’s not like the movies. It’s a team of four stepping into an existential dreamscape and all making it out alive. It’s being left for dead in an elevator and getting the guy in the end. There’ll be no dying for the narrative tonight, or any night. There’ll be a hospital room with visitors, and a sweet man at his bedside who’s battled horrors of his own since the moment he was sewn together. Maybe Evan will stay with him through the night, and maybe they won’t sleep, and maybe they’ll only know it’s morning when the room glows pink.