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Tommy is expecting a quiet evening in, minimal excitement, moderate fun (depending on how this episode of the Mormon wives reality show he’s failing to convince his coworkers he’s not slightly obsessed with shapes up), and maximum stewing in his feelings over the hot guy he fumbled spectacularly immediately after realizing he’d fallen stupidly, stupidly in love with him. He has a mediocre Costco wine out and everything, corkscrew in hand. Kirkland Original pinot noir, because if he’s drinking cheap wine he’s committing to the bit. It might have been ten whole dollars for the bottle.
He is not expecting any of the following: his phone to chime, then chime again rapidly twice in a row, the screen lighting up with a new text from Evan (whose name is next to a broken heart emoji, leave him alone), and Evan—Buck, now—to call him before he can even open the text chain, which he knows hasn’t seen a new message since they broke up (because he’s been scrolling through it when he’s really depressed, which is often enough he knows the last timestamp by heart). A picture of Buck stretched out languidly in the passenger seat of a helicopter, talking with his hands and grinning broadly, overtakes the screen with a slider at the bottom prompting him to answer.
If he was a better man he would have waited at least a full second to answer.
“Buck,” he says, because he’s not sure what else to say.
“Hey, Tommy,” Buck says, almost like he hit the wrong contact, but it’s just a little too forced. And Buck is a godawful liar. It’s endearing. Was endearing. He’s losing the plot. “Um. Would you— This is stupid, I’m sorry.”
Tommy catches him midway through the first syllable of a ‘never mind’. “Evan, what’s wrong?”
Buck sighs on the other end of the line, grumbles something that sounds vaguely self-deprecating. The reception wherever he is is terrible. Either his voice breaks or there’s static over his next, “Um. Could you possibly pick me up right now?”
“Where are you?” Tommy asks, keys already in hand, cheap wine forgotten unopened on the counter. He feels like he should be hesitating longer but he has no idea why he would want to do that, so he pushes that feeling down. He’s very good at compartmentalizing. Buck doesn’t sound drunk, or high, which are the usual suspects for calling your ex for a ride at—he checks the time—9:18 p.m. on a Thursday, and this is a weird come-on, so he’s not sure exactly what to make of it.
Buck gives him the address, or rather texts it to him and Tommy puts him on speaker in his car so he can pull up the map. It’s a church, he notes, which is something he didn’t know Buck was into, but it really could mean anything at this hour, so he chooses not to think about it too hard.
“Couldn’t find an Uber?” Tommy can’t help but ask, which is crueler than he means but comes out just the same.
Buck is silent for a long moment, and Tommy internally curses himself. “I, um. I really didn’t want to talk to a stranger right now.”
Which could mean anything. Tommy‘s speeding more than a little. In L.A. traffic after nightfall the address is only fifteen-ish minutes from his place, which he’s pretty sure he can do in ten, since it’s mostly freeway and everyone else driving is either joyriding in their muscle car or trying to get the hell to wherever they’re going.
Eleven minutes of gentle questioning that gets only cryptic and delayed answers later, Tommy pulls up outside of a fairly nondescript church. It’s not a terribly interesting one, not one that tourists flock to in order to admire, just a face in a crowd of matching Methodists.
Buck startles where he’s leaning up against a stone planter when Tommy announces that he’s there and hangs up the call, lost in a reverie. He still looks a little shaky when he gets in the car, and Tommy watches for a moment longer than strictly necessary as he buckles his seatbelt practically on autopilot. The bubbly personality and nonstop talking he’s been moping about missing for months now is conspicuously absent.
Tommy peels away from the curb, rejoins the flow of traffic on the freeway following the speed limit this time. Buck doesn’t offer anything, just sits in an increasingly disturbing silence. Two exits away from his Tommy figures he’s going to have to break the silence eventually.
“Should I be taking you to the hospital right now?”
Buck flinches, which is very much not a ‘no’, but as Tommy glances between the road and the passenger seat he eventually shakes his head.
“I’m fine,” he lies, because he is very much not that, and he’s a terrible fucking liar.
“Back to your apartment?” Tommy tries.
“I moved out,” Buck says absently. He doesn’t specify where. He knows from his other friends in the LAFD that Eddie has been going through it recently, and strongly suspects there’s some history there he doesn’t know about. Which sucks, because they used to be friends, and Eddie was so loyal he even iced him out when he broke up with Buck the first time. Tommy doesn’t even know if Buck can afford a place to live alone, or what.
“My place?” He offers after a beat of silence. “I was gonna get takeout and watch crappy reality T.V., but you’re probably better company.”
Buck is still and quiet for so long Tommy debates pulling over to check his pulse, because he’s pretty sure if he grabs his wrist while he’s driving they’re both going into the center divider, but eventually nods his agreement.
Tommy tries to put on a reassuring smile. He’s pretty sure he misses by a lot.
The drive back isn’t that much longer obeying the laws of the road, and soon enough Tommy is shutting the engine off and debating if nudging Buck’s shoulder would go over well when he finally realizes they’re stopped and gets out of the car himself.
“I forgot I’ve never seen your place,” Buck says quietly, almost like he doesn’t realize he’s saying it, as Tommy opens the door leading in from the garage and turns out the light behind them. They’re cast into darkness for a couple seconds until he flicks on the hallway light, then goes to turn on a few lamps, too. This feels like not the time for bright overhead lights.
“I guess there’s a lot we don’t know about each other,” Tommy says carefully. He walks into the kitchen because he can’t decide what else to do, opens the drawer of takeout menus and leafs through them. “Chinese?”
Buck is standing in the doorway, leaning awkwardly against the frame like he’s trying to look relaxed while he’s really poised to run. He expected some weirdness between them, not that any of this is really expected, but Buck is so overwhelmingly friendly and physically affectionate that the sudden distance feels important. Tommy’s pretty sure the guy’s never been more than six feet away from anyone he’s ever had a conversation with.
Then again, they haven’t seen much of each other since Bobby died, and maybe this is the new normal that Tommy missed while he was busy sabotaging himself and wallowing in it.
“Chinese is fine,” Buck says distantly. He seems to be counting the number of tiles on the kitchen floor. His arms are crossed less like he’s outwardly upset and more like a self-soothing gesture.
Tommy debates calling someone who knows him better, but that list is pretty short, he suddenly realizes. He would have called Bobby. Chimney has a second baby, Hen has her own family to take care of, and he doesn’t think he has Athena’s contact anyway, even if he thought calling her would be appropriate right now. Eddie is a bit of an emotional loose cannon, says the LAFD grapevine, and Tommy can admit he’s not the guy he’d call right now even if he wasn’t.
“Egg drop soup and lo mein?” He asks, because he remembers Buck’s order and his on-and-off relationship with vegetarianism, which makes it feel like the safest choice of the places that deliver right now and won’t take forever.
Buck nods, still not making eye contact. Tommy has never seen him this quiet. He wants to scoop him up and hold him close and inspect him for whatever is wrong, but it’s painfully not his place, so he fishes his phone out of his sweatpants pocket and calls in the order instead.
When he hangs up Buck is still standing there like he’s forgotten that the world is still going on without him, so Tommy slowly, telegraphing his movements, takes two glasses out of the cabinet and goes over to the fridge to fill them with water.
“Care to sit?” Tommy offers.
Buck jumps a little when he speaks. Less than his flinch in the car, not nothing. Tommy doesn’t know what to do and he feels dangerously close to putting his foot in his mouth again and chasing him away for good. He’d tolerate it if it didn’t feel like that’s the last thing Buck needs right now. But he mumbles a quiet agreement, which Tommy takes as a good sign, and only shivers a little when he glances over at the inviting living room before quickly turning to the dining room table.
A gentleman would pull out Buck’s seat for him. It feels like that would be an imposition. Tommy sits across from him and slides over one of the glasses of water, which Buck stares at for a long moment before hesitantly sipping at, which makes Tommy feel like an asshole and also kind of sad.
“I don’t need the whole story before dinner, but I have to ask, are you physically okay?”
“I’m fine,” Buck says again. It still sounds false, but he doesn’t seem to be lying outright about any injury that Tommy can see. It looks like whatever’s going on isn’t leaving a mark on his skin.
The doorbell rings, because the Chinese place is literally three blocks away. Buck flinches.
Tommy steels himself, and gets up to get the food and pay the delivery guy, watching him pull back out of the driveway for a long moment before he closes the door and turns back to the kitchen. He puts the containers on plates, mindful of the grease on the bottom, and gets a pair of forks and a pair of chopsticks, and a spoon for the soup. When he returns to the dining room table Buck has at least had another few sips of his water, and is holding the glass like a lifeline, barely reactive to him coming in and setting the plates down.
They eat in relative silence, only punctuated by Buck thanking him for getting food, and the occasional back-and-forth for napkins and fortune cookies. Buck reads his and huffs out a sharp breath that Tommy can’t read as humor or offense or something else before it’s gone and he crumples the little strip of paper up. Clearly he didn’t need his lucky numbers to guide him.
“I’m sorry,” Buck says, already getting to his feet, before Tommy can get a word in edgewise. “Look, this was a mistake, I should have called someone else. I’ll just take an Uber—”
“I thought you were over running away from your problems,” Tommy offers as Buck’s hand reaches the doorknob. It’s mean, meaner than he wants to be. He’s not sure he wants to be mean at all right now and he really should figure this out or shut up. Or both.
Buck turns, a little sheepish. It’s better than the look on his face all night like he’s seen a ghost.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. You can just crash on the couch or something,” Tommy tries next, which clearly fails because Buck’s shoulders do that minute tensing thing again that they’ve been doing whenever he does something wrong. He wishes he had the manual for this, but he’s pretty sure no one’s figured out how to repair your relationship with your much younger ex-boyfriend who might have been the love of your life.
“Guest bedroom?”
He at least gets a grim smile out of that.
“I don’t— I should talk about it. I need to talk about it.”
“Don’t you have a therapist?” Tommy asks, because this is L.A., and everyone and their dog has a therapist.
Buck makes a face he can’t decipher, and reluctantly returns to the table. The chair squeaks horrendously against the linoleum floor when he pulls it out and he sits delicately on the edge of it instead of sliding it forward.
“I was, um.” He pauses, takes a deep breath, and chews on his bottom lip like he does when he’s thinking about something serious. Tommy used to be able to reach out and stop him from doing that. “I was at a support group.”
Tommy barely manages to not say the dumbest thing possible (Support group for what?) and waits out the rest of the story.
“It’s actually something Bobby recommended. Before, you know. And the church is right next door to the laundromat I use and I was thinking about him anyway, and I saw this sign inside for a support group in the basement. He, um.” Buck pauses and looks down and makes the kind of expression you do when you’re trying to recover from your grief but you’re not there yet. “He went to AA. Like, for years. Carried his sobriety chip around with him all the time. It seemed to work for him, and I figured I could just sit in the back and not talk to anyone, right? See if it was for me? Um, but it was kind of like a circle arrangement and I came in late so I couldn’t do that, obviously.”
Buck cracks his knuckles uncomfortably and makes prolonged eye contact with the wood grain of Tommy’s dining table.
“It was, like, six people. So. Hard to not talk to anyone. Um, I said hi, my name’s Buck, and— I don’t know. I guess it didn’t hit me until right then. Uh, I mentioned that someone important to me, someone I saw as a father, just died. And he kinda suggested a support group for—” He paused, chewed on the inside of his lip again, and seemed to steel himself before continuing. “Anyway, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever told that story. I haven’t told my therapist. That feels— inappropriate somehow, right? I didn’t really plan on spilling my guts to a bunch of strangers but, you know.”
Tommy seriously debates asking, about what?
“I don’t think I was really expecting anyone to believe me. I don’t know. I mean, big buff guy, a room full of women. But they were all so nice about it. It almost felt worse that way. Like I was lying to them and getting away with it.”
Tommy bites the bullet. “Believe you about what?”
Buck looks at him, then quickly looks somewhere over his shoulder. “Uh, I had sex with my therapist.”
At Tommy’s raised eyebrows, he adds: “Not my current therapist. This was like, seven years ago. I was pretty new to the LAFD and we had this call—I was begging this guy to take my hand and he just didn’t. He fell. He died. I’d been on welfare checks for dead people before, and I’d been on scenes where you know they’re never gonna make it out of the hospital, but it was the first time a patient died in front of me. I was… different back then. Inexperienced. Usually stupid. I didn’t take it well, and the department made me see a therapist. Well, also because Bobby caught me hooking up with people on the clock because I was kind of a sex addict back then too, and he really wanted to fire me but for some reason he decided not to. So. Therapy.”
Buck clears his throat. “Uh, it was, like, normal therapy I guess. We talked about work and stress and stuff. And, um, I kind of forgot that I’d matched with her on a dating app like the week before that and we’d been talking a little, like, typical Tinder conversation, and then, I don’t know, we had sex and we agreed we shouldn’t see each other again. I’m not that kind of person anymore, seriously. I was twenty-four and stupid and horny enough to screw my therapist during a session.”
Tommy blinks a few times. And wishes the pinot noir wasn’t on the living room table, because he could use some right now.
“Evan, you do know that therapists having sex with their patients is rape, right?”
Buck flinches again, and looks down at his hands. Then he scrubs them over his face a few times and buries his head in them for a minute before he comes back up. He’s still not making eye contact.
“I think I’m supposed to know that, but I haven’t figured out how. It’s— I thought it was just something I did when I was young and dumb, because I slept with pretty much everyone interested, and I kind of brushed it off for years and then I guess something reminded me last night and I told random strangers at a sexual assault survivor support group even though it felt like I was lying about what it really was.”
“Evan—”
“Please don’t say you’re sorry that happened to me because I don’t think I can take that right now,” Buck says, rushed and dangerously close to his voice cracking at the end.
Tommy pauses and rephrases. The next best thing he wants to say is I love you but that would go over like the Hindenburg right now. “You weren’t lying.”
Buck bites the other side of his lip, which is what he does when he’s trying not to cry. After a moment he releases it. “I felt like I was. I felt like it was my fault and I was getting upset about something I wanted.”
“Did you want to have sex with your therapist, or did you want to feel some kind of connection after witnessing a traumatic event with the person specifically trained to help you process it?”
“You know the answer to that already.” Buck rubs at his face again.
“We both do. I think it would help you if you said it out loud.”
They sit in silence for a long while after that.
“So, guest bedroom?” Tommy tries, once the remnants of Chinese food have fully stuck to his plates and silverware and he’s going to have to actually scrub them clean in the morning before he can put them in the dishwasher. “Uber is crazy expensive this time of night anyway.”
Buck offers a small smile that feels like a truce. “Sure.”
Tommy leaves the dishes in the sink with a truly pathetic rinse of water and rescues the bottle of pinot with a reusable rubber cork, while Buck refrigerates the leftovers and throws away the now-sticky chopsticks. It’s weird watching him from the doorway to the living room, looking so at home in his kitchen even though he’s never been there before. It’s weirder leading him down the hall and not taking him to bed with him.
They say a tense but well-intentioned goodnight and Tommy stands in the middle of his room for a good few minutes considering his life. Then he checks his watch, realizes it’s almost midnight, and decides he might as well do it well-rested.
——————
Breakfast the next morning is a little awkward, considering Buck was planning to sneak out early and catch an Uber home but Tommy was already awake and well into his morning routine by the time he emerged from the guest bedroom, dressed in the same clothes he’d been wearing last night even though the temptation to borrow a t-shirt stalled him for a good five minutes. He’d gone for a run, clearly, and showered, his hair was still a little damp, and then whipped up egg white omelets and green superfood drinks and set the table for two.
Buck is an impulsive person at heart and very possibly an idiot, because he kisses Tommy by the front door just as he’s about to make the right decision and go.
Tommy catches him, and holds him, hands loosely on his waist like he doesn’t want to stop him if he wants to leave, when they separate.
“How many times do you think we can start over?” Buck asks tentatively.
Tommy shrugs. “I’m down with at least one more.”