Work Text:
Eddie didn’t mean to take the long way. He told himself it was traffic, at first. Los Angeles had a way of making every detour feel inevitable, every wrong turn feel like something the city had decided for you before you even put your blinker on. But by the time he passed the same dry cleaner for the second time and realized he’d circled three blocks just to avoid pulling into the coffee shop parking lot, he had to admit it probably wasn’t traffic.
It was him.
His hands were steady on the wheel. That was something, at least. His breathing was normal, the radio low, the morning bright and ordinary through the windshield. Nothing about the day demanded the kind of caution he felt sitting in his chest. No fire, no sirens, no emergency waiting for him at the end of the drive...
Just coffee.
Just a coffee shop he hadn’t been to in over a year because it sat in that strange invisible borderland between the life he’d left and the life he’d come back to.
Eddie exhaled through his nose and turned into the lot. LA still felt like LA. That had secretly surprised him, when he and Christopher came back. Some part of him had expected the city to feel different after Texas, after everything that had happened, after Bobby’s funeral, after the grief that had rearranged all of them in ways no one knew how to talk about without sounding too careful. But LA had stayed loud. It stayed bright, it stayed impatient. The same streets, the same heat shimmering over asphalt, the same helicopters cutting distant lines through the sky. Eddie hadn't realized just how much he missed it until he returned.
Christopher had settled back faster than Eddie expected. Not perfectly, of course. There were still hard days, still moments where Eddie would catch his son staring at nothing and know he was thinking about the months they had spent apart, about Shannon and Kim, about the fractures they were still learning how to mend. But Chris was home. Really home. His backpack was by the front door again, his laugh was back in the house, his shoes were in the middle of the hallway no matter how many times Eddie reminded him to move them. And that, more than anything, made Eddie feel like he could breathe.
The 118 was different. It had to be, they all were. Bobby’s absence was the kind of thing that didn’t fade so much as become part of the architecture. There were moments Eddie still expected to hear his voice behind him, calm and firm and impossibly steady. Moments when the table felt too big, moments when grief passed between them without anyone naming it.
And then there was Buck. Buck, who had somehow turned his entire life upside down and still acted surprised whenever anyone pointed out that his life was upside down. Theo had changed everything.
Eddie smiled despite himself as he pulled into a parking space. Theo was three, all wide eyes and stubborn opinions and a catastrophic inability to keep his socks on. Eddie still didn’t know every detail of how Buck had ended up with him. Not all the legal pieces, not all the permanent ones, but he'd gotten the gist of it. He knew Buck. Knew the way he had started saying Theo’s name like it had always belonged in his mouth. Knew the look on his face when Theo fell asleep against his chest the first time Eddie saw them together.
Buck was busy in a way Eddie had never seen him busy before. Not work busy, or spiraling busy, or trying to fill the silence busy. Dad busy. Snack cups and daycare forms and tiny sneakers and learning which stuffed animal had to be in bed or the entire night was ruined. It suited him, which Eddie knew it would from the years he'd spent watching Buck with Christopher.
Eddie killed the engine once he pulled into the coffee shop parking lot and sat there a second longer than necessary. His own life felt quieter by comparison. Not empty of course, not anymore now that Christopher was back. Work was work, and Eddie loved being back at the 118 again. That was his happy place. His family was still complicated, but he didn't have to deal with it head on now that he wasn't in Texas. He had come out, eventually, not in one grand declaration but in pieces, conversations that left him shaking afterward, then relieved, then embarrassed by the relief.
Gay.
The word still felt new sometimes. Not wrong, not at all. In fact it felt right, it was just... new in his own mouth. He’d thought, maybe, once he said it out loud, something would happen. A door would open. His life would tilt in some obvious direction. Someone would appear with perfect timing and a patient smile and make all the years of confusion feel worth it.
But instead, nothing had happened. Or rather, life had happened. Christopher’s appointments, shifts, groceries, Buck calling him at ten-thirty at night because Theo had flushed a toy dinosaur down the toilet and Buck needed someone to tell him whether three year olds could be reasoned with. Hen and Karen inviting him over, with Karen asking, gently, if he was seeing anyone yet.
He wasn’t.
He had tried to want to. Downloaded an app once, stared at it for fifteen minutes, then deleted it before creating a profile. Let Buck talk him into going out to a gay bar and spent most of the night thinking about how loud it was, how young everyone seemed, how tired he was of pretending interest could be forced if he just stood in the right room long enough.
He hadn’t found the right person. That was what he told people. It wasn’t a lie, exactly.
Eddie stepped out of the truck before he could think about that too hard. The coffee shop was crowded but not unbearable, the low buzz of conversation mixing with the hiss of the espresso machine and the clink of ceramic mugs. Eddie ordered without thinking much about it, the same drink he always got, then moved aside to wait. His phone buzzed before they called his name with a text from Buck.
Eddie unlocked it and immediately smiled. It was a photo of Theo, slightly blurry, one cheek squished against Buck’s shoulder, curls mussed from what looked like a nap he’d fought and lost. Buck’s sweatshirt was visible at the edge of the frame, along with the corner of a dinosaur blanket Eddie recognized from the living room floor.
Under it, Buck had written: "He says he misses his Eddie."
A second text came in right after. "Okay technically he said “where Eddie go” but I translated."
Eddie huffed a laugh, thumb hovering over the keyboard. He typed back: "Tell him his Eddie misses him too, and tell him not to flush anything today."
Buck’s reply came almost instantly: "No promises. he has a suspicious look in his eye."
Eddie was still smiling when the barista called his name. He stepped forward without really looking as he grabbed his cup, eyes still on the screen as another photo loaded, Theo now holding up a plastic stegosaurus (the new one Buck had bought him after Theo cried for hours when he flushed the last one) like evidence.
And then Eddie collided with someone. Not a hard crash, but enough that his shoulder knocked into a solid chest, enough that hot coffee sloshed dangerously over the lid of the cup in the other man’s hand, enough that Eddie’s phone slipped from his fingers and hit the floor at the same time as another one.
“Shit, sorry.” Eddie said automatically, reaching out as if he could steady the stranger after the fact.
“No, no, that was me.” the other man said, voice low and familiar enough that Eddie’s spine went tight before his brain caught up. “I wasn’t looking.”
Eddie crouched at the same time the other man did, both of them reaching for the two phones lying face down near their shoes. “It’s fine.” Eddie said, grabbing the one closest to him. “I was distracted.”
“Yeah, same.” Their hands almost knocked together. Eddie looked up, and the world did that stupid thing it only ever did in movies and moments he didn’t want to admit were moments. It narrowed, sharpened, dropped everything else into the background.
Tommy Kinard was crouched in front of him with a surprised look on his face and Eddie’s a phone in his hand.
For a second, neither of them moved. Tommy looked the same. That was Eddie’s first useless thought. Still the same aura of confidence about him, still hot without even trying. There were faint lines around his eyes Eddie didn’t remember noticing before, though maybe that was just because he hadn’t let himself look closely back then. He was wearing a dark jacket over a plain shirt, casual in a way Eddie didn’t associate with him, since after his breakup with Buck, Eddie really only knew him anymore in relation to work.
But here, he was just Tommy. In a coffee shop, like a year hadn’t passed without so much as a glimpse of him.
“Eddie.” Tommy said. Eddie’s name in Tommy’s voice landed somewhere it had no right to.
“Hey.” Eddie said, because apparently that was all he had. “Tommy.”
Tommy glanced down at the phone in his hand, then seemed to remember himself. “Here. Sorry.”
“Yeah.” Eddie held out the phone he’d picked up. “This one’s yours.” Their fingers brushed during the exchange. Barely nothing, but Eddie noticed anyway.
They both stood back up and for a moment, the awkwardness was almost physical, wedged between them with the coffee steam and the too-bright morning light coming through the windows. Eddie could feel people moving around them, stepping past, irritated by the sudden obstacle they’d become.
Tommy cleared his throat and shifted closer to the counter, out of the way. Eddie followed because leaving immediately would be weird. Staying was also weird. There didn’t seem to be a version of this that wasn’t weird.
“I didn’t know you were back in LA.” Tommy said.
Eddie swallowed. “Yeah, uh, Chris and I moved back right after Bobby’s funeral. This is our home.”
Tommy’s face changed. Just a flicker, but Eddie saw it. The softness, the grief they all carried in different ways. “I’m sorry, ” Tommy said quietly. “about Bobby. I never really got a chance to tell you that.”
Eddie nodded once. “Yeah, thanks.” They hadn't spoken at the funeral, and after that Eddie never saw Tommy again, until now.
“I wanted to reach out.” Tommy added, then looked like maybe he hadn’t meant to say that. “I mean, I thought about it. Didn’t know if-” He stopped, jaw working briefly. “I didn’t want to make anything harder.”
Eddie didn’t know what to do with that. He hadn’t thought about whether Tommy would reach out. That was the thing, he hadn’t let himself. There had already been too much to hold: Christopher, the team, Athena, Buck barely functioning, his own grief sitting like a stone behind his ribs. He hadn’t had room for Tommy, except in the strange negative space of not seeing him anymore. Now he wondered what it said that Tommy had stayed away for the same reason Eddie hadn’t looked for him.
“You wouldn’t have.” Eddie said, before he could decide whether he should.
Tommy’s eyes met his and Eddie looked away first, not wanting to hold his gaze for too long, because he didn't want to admit anything.
The barista called Tommy’s name from the counter then, interrupting their moment. Not Tommy, actually, “Thomas” which made Eddie glance at him despite himself.
Tommy grimaced faintly. “Coffee order name. You know.”
Eddie almost smiled. “Thomas?”
“Don’t start.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
Eddie’s smile happened then, small and traitorous. For half a second, it felt easy. That was the worst part. The tiny slip into something familiar, something that had no right being familiar because they had never really been that close. Not officially. Not in any way Eddie had been allowed to name at the time.
Tommy grabbed his drink, then looked back at Eddie. “So you and Christopher are back for good?”
“For good.” Eddie said. “Yeah. He’s… good. Better. We’re good.”
“I’m glad.” Tommy said, and Eddie believed him. There was a awkward pause. Eddie should ask something, that was how conversations worked, he knew that, but the obvious questions felt too loaded.
How have you been?
Did you ever think about calling?
Did you know I figured myself out after you were already gone?
Did you know I thought about you before I understood why?
Instead he said, “You still with the 217?”
Tommy nodded. “Yeah, still there. Same as always.”
Eddie hated himself a little for how aware he was of Tommy’s hands around the coffee cup. How aware he was of the year between them, suddenly not distant at all but pressed right up against his ribs. He had spent months teaching himself that whatever he’d felt around Tommy back then had been confusion. Projection. Curiosity attaching itself to the nearest safe shape.
Except Tommy was standing in front of him now, and Eddie felt the same pull.
Not safe or simple, but real enough that ignoring it took effort.
He'd already ignored it for a year, so what's a little more? That night in Vegas where Tommy's hand never once left the small of his back, leading into them landing the helicopter back in LA where Eddie let himself give in to his impulses for once and threw himself across the console and into Tommy's lap, smashing their mouths together before riding him to an inch of his life right there in the helicopter. It was the only time he'd ever allowed himself to be truthful, to have what he wanted. He had a girlfriend at the time which made him feel like shit after getting fucked by Tommy, but there wasn't much he could do. So since then, he'd buried it down. Pretended like kissing a man and getting split open on his cock wasn't some realization as to what he'd been missing his whole life. It was nothing. Merely a moment that had passed, and he'd shoved himself back in the closet right after, until now.
Tommy glanced down at the phone in his hand, turning it over like he was double checking it belonged to him. “Sorry again, about the coffee.” he said.
“No worries.” Eddie said, doing the same without really looking. “My fault.”
Tommy huffed a quiet laugh. “Mutual, I think. I'm glad you're doing well though. Seems like I missed a lot.” Tommy said.
The words could have been nothing, or hey could have been everything. Eddie looked at him then. Really looked. “Yeah.” he said. “You did.”
Tommy’s expression went unreadable for a second. Eddie regretted it immediately, or maybe he didn’t, maybe he was tired of every honest thing arriving too late. Tommy took a small step back, like he was giving Eddie room or taking it for himself. “I should let you go.”
“Yeah.” Eddie said, even though neither of them had said where they were going. “I should- yeah.”
“Good seeing you again, Eddie.”
“You too.”
They stood there for one more beat, both holding coffee, both holding phones, both pretending the conversation had ended cleanly. Then Tommy gave him a small nod and moved toward the door.
Eddie watched him go. He told himself not to. He did it anyway, eyes following the line of Tommy’s shoulders, the way he paused to let someone else enter before slipping outside into the sunlight. Then he was gone, swallowed by the glare off the windows and the movement of the street beyond.
Eddie's pulse was still too fast. He should get in his truck, he should go on with his day like running into Tommy in a coffee shop after more than a year hadn’t knocked something loose in him.
Instead, he locked the phone, slid it into his pocket, picked up his coffee, and walked out. He didn’t realize until twenty minutes later, halfway across town, when the phone buzzed against his thigh and he pulled it out without thinking, that the case felt wrong in his hand.
Smooth at the corner where his was slightly cracked, and not familiar beneath his thumb. The screen lit up with a missed call from a name he didn’t recognize, and beneath it, a lock screen that wasn’t Christopher and Theo like Eddie's was, wasn’t his life at all. Just a photo of the sky taken from above the city, clouds cut gold by the sun, Los Angeles small and distant underneath.
Eddie stopped breathing. “Oh.” he said into the quiet of his truck. “Oh, shit.”
- - -
Tommy made it all the way home before he admitted to himself that he had been driving on autopilot. Not dangerously or enough to miss lights or drift lanes or do anything that would get him killed in a city where half the drivers seemed personally offended by the concept of turn signals. His hands had done what they were supposed to do, his foot had eased on and off the brake, his eyes had tracked traffic, pedestrians, the quick flash of a cyclist cutting too close along the passenger side.
But his mind had stayed behind in the coffee shop.
Eddie.
The shape of his name had been sitting behind Tommy’s teeth since the moment he’d said it out loud.
Eddie had looked slightly different, somehow. Not like features wise, he still looked as beautiful as Tommy remembered him. Just… settled. There was something in his face that hadn’t been there before, or maybe something missing that had used to be. The old tightness around his mouth had softened, his shoulders still held the same careful tension, the kind Tommy had clocked a long time ago because he knew it from his own body, but Eddie had looked more present than Tommy remembered. Likely because Christopher was back with him now, and they were home.
He just seemed more himself. That was dangerous. Tommy had spent over a year convincing himself that Eddie was a bad idea he’d survived. Not bad because Eddie was bad, though that would have been easier. Bad because Tommy had wanted him before he had any right to. Before Eddie knew enough about himself to give Tommy anything back, before Tommy had been able to admit that the thing drawing him toward the 118 had not been curiosity about Evan’s nervous, earnest flirting. Evan had been interested, he'd had been brave enough to reach for something.
Eddie had not. Tommy kissed him first and fucked him harder than he had anyone else when they were in that helicopter... and that was it. Eddie never spoke of it again, never gave Tommy any indication it was something he'd worked out or wanted to go further, so Tommy had reached back toward the person who was actually reaching. It hadn’t been fake, really. That was the part he hated most. Evan was good. Sweet, funny, intense in a way that made Tommy feel both warmed and overwhelmed. Evan had looked at him like Tommy was a door opening, and Tommy had wanted to be good enough to be that for him.
But some part of him had kept turning his head, kept noticing whether Eddie was in the room, kept measuring Eddie’s silences, kept wondering if Eddie’s eyes lingered too long or if Tommy was just desperate enough to invent evidence. By the time he’d ended things with Evan, he had used kinder words than the truth, not wanting to hurt him worse later. All of it true enough to stand on, but none of it the whole truth.
The whole truth was Eddie had been sitting like a stone in Tommy’s chest, and Tommy had known that if he stayed with Evan while wanting his best friend, he would become someone he didn’t respect.
So he left Evan, then Eddie left LA, then Bobby died, then a year moved around the hole like it was supposed to know what shape to take. He'd hooked up again with Evan once while Eddie was gone, just wanting to feel something. But the second he realized Evan had brought him to Eddie's house, all ideas had gone out the window. He fucked Evan that night while imagining it was Eddie beneath him the entire time, and it made him feel guilty. Evan deserved better than that, so Tommy impulsively suggested they get back together the next morning, mumbling something about a competition, when really he saw Evan as his true competition for Eddie. Evan had shut it down, and Tommy was secretly grateful for that. Even though he liked Evan, he could never give him what he wanted while Eddie was still in this world.
And now Eddie had returned to Los Angeles so...
Tommy pulled into his driveway and sat there after shutting off the engine, one hand still resting on the wheel. His house waited in front of him, quiet and squared-off and perfectly fine. It was not empty in any obvious tragic way. There were dishes in the sink because he’d left them there that morning, shoes by the door, a jacket slung over the back of a chair. Evidence of a life, technically, but it had never learned how to feel lived in.
Tommy got out, locked his truck, and went inside. He tossed his keys into the bowl by the door and missed. They hit the table with a flat, ugly clatter that sounded too loud in the room. He left them where they fell, not caring enough to bother.
For a while, he moved through the familiar motions of getting home. Coffee on the counter, jacket off, shoes toed away. He stood in front of the fridge for no reason, closed it without taking anything out, then ended up on the couch with the kind of exhaustion that had nothing to do with his shift and everything to do with seeing a ghost who was not a ghost at all.
He reached into his pocket for his phone. Mindless scrolling, that was the plan. News he didn’t care about, a weather app he checked too often for a pilot and not enough for a normal person, maybe a video he would watch without sound until his brain stopped trying to rebuild Eddie’s face from memory.
The phone felt wrong before he looked at it. Tommy frowned, turning it over in his hand. The case was black, which was not helpful. Half the phones in LA wore some variation of black, cracked, or pretentious leather. But this case had a worn place near the edge where someone’s thumb must have rested over and over. Tommy’s didn’t.
His stomach tightened as he tapped the screen. The lock screen lit up and Christopher Diaz smiled back at him.
Not alone. Chris was older than the last time Tommy had seen him, taller in the face, his grin stretched wide and bright. With him was a little boy, maybe three, perched on Chris' lap with one hand blurred mid-wave and a dinosaur clutched in the other. Evan was half in frame on the other side, mouth open like he was laughing or protesting or trying to get both kids to look at the camera.
Tommy stared and for one stupid second, he let himself ignore where his brain really was going.
Did Evan get together with Eddie? Did they have another kid together now?
Then his thumb moved, because apparently shock didn’t shut down muscle memory so much as reroute it toward bad decisions.The phone asked for a passcode and Tommy should have stopped. He knew that. Knew it clearly enough that the knowledge stood in the room with him like another person. This was Eddie’s phone, Eddie’s privacy, Eddie’s life. The correct thing to do was put it down, find a way to contact him, return it, and pretend he had seen nothing beyond the lock screen he couldn’t have helped seeing.
Tommy’s thumb hovered. He thought of Eddie in the coffee shop. Eddie saying that yeah, Tommy had missed a lot.
He typed in three numbers before he let himself think too hard. 118. Just a guess, because he at least wanted to try.
The phone unlocked. “Of course.” Tommy muttered, low and humorless with a small laugh.
For a moment he just sat there with Eddie’s open phone in his hand, guilt crawling hot up the back of his neck. He could still stop, lock it, put it aside, and be better than this.
But he didn't, because he was weak when it came to Eddie, so he opened up the photos app.
It was worse than snooping, somehow, because it was beautiful.
Eddie’s life unfolded in thumbnails. Not staged, not curated, not the version anyone posted when they wanted strangers to understand them but pieces of who he was. Christopher at the kitchen table with homework spread out around him, a blurry shot of Evan holding the little boy from the lock screen upside down while the kid shrieked with laughter, Hen and Karen in someone’s backyard, Chimney asleep on a couch with a paper crown slipping off his head, Bobby in an older photo that made Tommy’s throat close before he could prepare for it.
Eddie had kept everything.
Tommy scrolled slowly, telling himself he was only looking enough to understand what he had missed. That was a lie, of course.
There was a photo of Eddie and Christopher in what looked like Texas, the sun low behind them, both of them squinting into the camera. Eddie’s smile was tired but real. Another of Christopher’s hand in Eddie’s, taken downward, maybe by accident, maybe not. A video thumbnail of Evan covered in flour while the little boy stood on a stool beside him wearing a tiny apron.
Then Eddie. Just Eddie. A mirror selfie, probably accidental or taken to send someone an outfit check. He was standing in his bedroom in dark jeans and a fitted gray shirt, one hand holding the phone, the other tugging at the hem like he wasn’t sure about it. The shirt caught at his shoulders and chest in a way Tommy had no business noticing and absolutely noticed anyway.
Tommy stopped scrolling for a second and stared as his mouth went dry.
“Jesus.” he whispered, then immediately hated himself. Eddie just got to stand there looking like that and Tommy couldn't do a thing about it.
He moved on quickly to the next photo, which somehow made it worse. This one was from few weeks later. Eddie in workout clothes, sweat darkening the collar of his shirt, hair damp, expression annoyed at whoever had taken the picture. Evan, probably.
He stared at this one for even longer. Eddie looked good. Not just attractive, though he was that in a way Tommy had spent years pretending was an objective observation and not a personal problem, but he looked alive. Flushed, irritated, solid. Like someone who had fought hard to come back into himself.
Tommy backed out of the photos app before he could cross any more lines he couldn’t uncross, as if the line wasn’t already somewhere behind him.
Messages were worse. They had names, context, proof. That was step way too far into someone else's privacy. But he opened it anyway.
Evan's contact was at the top, figures. The most recent messages were from that morning.
Buck: He says he misses his Eddie.
Buck: Okay technically he said “where Eddie go” but I translated.
Eddie: Tell him his Eddie misses him too, and not to flush anything today.
Buck: No promises. he has a suspicious look in his eye
Buck: Also Theo says you have to come over soon because apparently you live here now.
Tommy stared at the last one as his jaw dropped.
Theo.
So he and Eddie weren't together, but Evan had a kid now. It couldn't have just been someone he was babysitting, there was too much ease in the messages for that, too much exhausted familiarity. Evan had a child in his life now in a way that made Eddie part of the daily vocabulary. 'His Eddie'. 'Come over soon'. 'You live here now'.
Tommy felt something twist in him that he lied to himself was not jealousy, though it had teeth. He had missed a lot. Eddie wasn't joking about that. He backed out before he could keep reading Evan’s thread. That felt too close to trespassing on two people at once.
Hen’s thread caught his eye next. He told himself he didn’t mean to open it, though that was becoming a theme. The messages were from three weeks ago.
Hen: So, how did it go?
Eddie: You ask like I went to war.
Hen: Emotionally? You might have.
Eddie: It was fine.
Hen: “Fine” from you means anything between “I had coffee” and “I dismantled my entire identity in a parking lot.”
Eddie: It was a bar, not a parking lot.
Hen: Eddie.
Eddie: I left after 40 minutes.
Hen: Because?
Eddie: Because everyone was 22 and wearing pants I don’t understand.
Hen: That is not a sexuality problem, that is a you problem.
Eddie: I know I’m gay, Hen. I don’t know how to be single and gay in public. Apparently those are different things.
Hen: They are, but you don’t have to figure it out all at once.
Eddie: I thought finally saying it out loud, or at least admitting it to myself, would make the rest easier.
Hen: Did it?
Eddie: Some of it. Not this.
Tommy stopped breathing somewhere around I know I’m gay, Hen.
He read it again.
Then again.
The words did not change.
Eddie was gay.
Not a maybe or questioning, not circling the edge of something he wouldn’t touch. Gay. Written plainly in Eddie’s own text bubble like it belonged there.
Tommy set the phone down on the couch cushion beside him and stood. He didn’t go anywhere, just stood in the middle of his living room with one hand pressed to his mouth, staring at Eddie’s phone like it had detonated quietly in his house.
Eddie is gay. A year ago, that sentence would have cracked Tommy’s life open. A year ago, it would have meant something different. Or maybe that was the cruel part, maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe Eddie had needed the year. Needed Texas, needed grief, needed Christopher back, needed whatever long, brutal road had taken him from tightly held denial to texting Hen about gay bars and pants he didn’t understand.
Tommy sat back down slowly. He knew Eddie repressing himself in someway. If he wasn't then he wouldn't have sunk down onto Tommy's hard cock that night in the helicopter. But this was... different. Eddie had finally figured it out himself. He was letting himself be open about it.
His chest hurt and he picked up the phone again.
There were other threads. Chimney, Karen, Maddie, Christopher. Tommy opened one with Evan again despite what he told himself earlier, scrolling back not far, just enough to find the shape of the story. He stopped on a conversation from a month ago.
Buck: Okay so daycare forms are worse than tax forms.
Eddie: You say that like you’ve ever done your taxes without calling me.
Buck: Rude and accurate.
Buck: Do you know Chris' pediatrician’s fax number?
Eddie: Of course. Why do you need that?
Buck: I think he and Theo should have the same one.
Eddie: I'll send it to you. You seemed stressed about this.
Buck: I thought dads just got assigned a database.
Eddie: Welcome to fatherhood. It’s mostly paperwork and someone else’s bodily fluids.
Buck: He actually called me Daddy this morning, instead of Buck. I cried in the pantry.
Eddie: I know. You called me from the pantry.
Buck: I’m good at this, right?
Eddie: You’re great at it.
Buck: Don’t just say that.
Eddie: I’m not. You’re scared because it matters. That’s usually how you know you’re doing it right.
Evan as a father should have been harder to picture, but it wasn’t. It was painfully easy. Evan with a little boy, scared and devoted and calling Eddie from the pantry because of course he would call Eddie.
Tommy wondered, briefly and unfairly, whether Evan knew. Not about Eddie being gay, clearly the whole fire family knew, or enough of them at least. But about Tommy. About the shape of things before he'd kissed Evan him and about the way Tommy had looked past him first and hated himself for it.
Probably not. Evan really deserved better than that even in hindsight.
Tommy backed out again and told himself it was finally time to stop. Instead, though, he tapped the search bar. His own name felt obscene under his thumb as he typed it in. Because he just... he had to know.
The results populated too quickly. The first was another thread with Evan, dated over a year ago. Tommy hesitated before opening it.
Buck: I told Tommy I wanted to move in together, that's when it happened. I would have told you that when I was over but I finished the six pack too quickly.
Buck: He said no, then he said a lot of other things that basically meant no forever.
Eddie: Buck, I’m sorry.
Buck: I feel stupid.
Eddie: You’re not stupid.
Buck: I guess I thought he wanted me.
Eddie: I'm sure he did.
Buck: Not enough, clearly.
Eddie: Maybe not in the way you needed, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t care.
Buck: Why are you defending him?
Eddie: I’m not.
Buck: Sounds like you are.
Eddie: No, you know I'm on your side here. I'm just saying you shouldn't hate him only because he hurt you. Things happen.
Buck: Well I’m not there yet.
Eddie: You don’t have to be.
Tommy closed his eyes. That was the breakup, still sharp enough in the messages to cut. And Eddie, even then, careful. Not defending Tommy, not exactly, but refusing to flatten him into the villain because it would have been easier. It warmed something in his chest.
The next result was Hen, sent two months later.
Hen: You ever hear from Tommy?
Eddie: No.
Hen: Do you want to?
Eddie: Why would I?
Hen: That is an answer wearing a fake mustache.
Eddie: If you're asking me to grow back a mustache again, the answer is no.
Eddie: But anyways, he was Buck’s ex.
Hen: That is a fact, not an answer.
Eddie: No, I don’t hear from him.
Hen: Eddie.
Eddie: Sometimes I wonder how he is. That’s it.
Hen: That’s allowed.
Eddie: It shouldn’t be.
Hen: Why?
Eddie: Buck was hurt, and it’s complicated. And because I don’t know what it means that I noticed he was gone.
Tommy read the last line until the screen dimmed. He tapped it awake and read it again. I don’t know what it means that I noticed he was gone.
His vision blurred slightly. He blinked hard, annoyed at himself, at Eddie, at the year, at the timing of every damn thing.
There were more. A thread with Maddie, six months ago.
Maddie: Buck said you came out to him.
Eddie: He told you?
Maddie: Not details. Just that you did, and that he was proud of you. I am too, for what it’s worth.
Eddie: Thanks.
Maddie: How do you feel?
Eddie: Like I’m late to my own life.
Maddie: You’re not late. You’re here.
Eddie: I keep thinking about things that make sense now.
Maddie: Like?
Eddie: People. Moments. Stuff I explained away.
Maddie: Anyone specific?
Eddie: That’s not fair.
Maddie: I didn’t say a name.
Eddie: No.
Maddie: Eddie, you can tell me.
Eddie: Fine. Tommy, maybe.
Maddie: As in Buck’s Tommy...?
Eddie: He was never Buck’s Tommy to me.
Tommy made a sound he didn’t recognize. He pressed his thumb over the screen, not hard enough to turn it off, just enough to cover the words for a second. He was never Buck’s Tommy to me. What the hell was he supposed to do with that?
Another message thread, this one with Evan again, more recent. Two months ago.
Buck: I saw someone today who looked like Tommy and it was weird.
Eddie: Weird how?
Buck: Just weird. Like remembering a room you used to live in.
Eddie: You okay?
Buck: Yeah, I think so. Are you?
Eddie: Why wouldn’t I be?
Buck: Because you do that thing where you ask questions instead of answering them.
Eddie: I’m fine.
Buck: Well I can tell when you're not.
Eddie: Sometimes I think I owe him an apology.
Buck: Tommy?
Eddie: Yeah.
Buck: For what? You didn't do anything wrong.
Eddie: I don’t know. For not knowing myself sooner, I guess. Which is insane because that isn’t his problem.
Buck: It’s not insane.
Eddie: It feels unfair.
Buck: To who?
Eddie: Everyone. You. Him. Me.
Buck: For the record, if this is you asking permission to have complicated feelings about my ex, you don’t need it.
Eddie: I wasn’t asking that.
Buck: Sure.
Eddie: I’m serious.
Buck: So am I.
There was no anger in Evan’s messages. Maybe sadness, once. Maybe a kind of weary understanding Tommy wasn’t sure he deserved. But not anger, or ownership. Not the thing Tommy had been using, maybe, as one more excuse not to wonder what might have happened if Eddie had looked at him in that coffee shop a year ago and known himself.
He searched again. Just to make sure he had hurt himself thoroughly, apparently. One final result, an unsent draft in Eddie’s own thread to Tommy. It appeared because his name was still in the contact list, still saved.
There were no recent sent messages. Their thread was almost empty, old logistics from some group-adjacent thing long before Evan, long before everything had become impossible.
But in the text box, gray and waiting, was a draft.
Eddie: I saw a helicopter flying over the Westside today. It made me think of you. I don’t know why I’m telling you that. I guess I’m not.
Tommy’s hand went slack and the phone almost slipped from his fingers.
He sat there in the silence of his house, Eddie’s life glowing in his palm, and felt the year between them collapse into something much smaller and much more unbearable.
Eddie had thought about him.
Eddie had noticed he was gone.
Eddie is gay.
Tommy locked the phone because he couldn’t look at it anymore. The screen went dark, and Christopher and Theo disappeared with it. His own reflection stared back faintly from the glass now. For a while, Tommy didn’t move. He just sat in a house that felt lonelier than it had that morning, holding the wrong phone like it was the only honest thing anyone had handed him in a year.
- - -
Eddie made it home with Tommy’s phone in his pocket and the strange, irrational feeling that it had gotten heavier during the drive. He knew it hadn’t. It was just a phone. Black case, slight scuff near one corner, a little warmer than it should have been from being pressed against his thigh. Still, by the time he pulled into the driveway, it felt less like an object and more like a problem he had carried across half the city.
Tommy had his phone. That was the part Eddie kept circling back to, because every time his mind wandered too close to what had happened in the coffee shop - Tommy’s face, Tommy saying his name, Tommy standing there like a year hadn’t passed and somehow had passed all at once - his brain latched onto the practical issue instead.
If Tommy had his phone, that meant he had access to Buck’s texts, Christopher’s photos, Theo’s sticky-handed little smile on his lock screen, the group chat that never shut up, grocery lists and calendar reminders and drafts Eddie had no business leaving unfinished where anyone could stumble across them.
Well, not anyone. Tommy.
Eddie shut off the engine and sat there with both hands still on the wheel. He should fix it. Immediately. He should call Tommy from the house phone, if he could remember where the hell the house phone was, or he could just use Siri and ask her to call Eddie, so Tommy would pick up his own phone. He should do anything other than sit in his driveway imagining Tommy holding Eddie’s life in his hands.
Except, Eddie also had Tommy’s. He pulled the phone from his pocket and tapped the screen. The lock screen lit up again with the photo of the sky from above Los Angeles. Clouds cut gold by sunlight, the city flattened into distance below. No people or context, no hint of where Tommy had been going or who, if anyone, had been sitting beside him. Just the sky. Eddie stared until the screen dimmed before he went inside.
“Dad?” Christopher called from the living room before Eddie had even fully closed the front door.
“Yeah?”
“You’re home early.”
“Little bit.”
Chris was on the couch, tablet balanced against one knee, school notebook open beside him in a way that suggested homework had been considered and then emotionally postponed. He looked up, and Eddie saw the exact moment his son clocked the expression on his face.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
Christopher gave him a look.
Eddie sighed. “I ran into someone.”
“Someone bad?”
“No.” Eddie hesitated. “Tommy.”
Chris' face shifted with recognition. “Tommy... Buck’s old boyfriend?”
Eddie winced before he could stop himself. “Yeah, him.”
Chris absorbed that, then tilted his head. “Was it weird?”
“A little.” Eddie amended.
“Did you make it weird?”
“Why does everyone assume I make things weird?”
“Because you do.”
Eddie pointed at the notebook. “Homework.”
Chris rolled his eyes, pleased with himself, and picked up his pencil. “Fine.”
Eddie started down the hall, then stopped. “You need anything?”
“I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“Dad.”
“Right.” Eddie nodded once, like this was normal, and like he was not about to go hide in his room with another man’s phone. “I’m gonna go lie down for a while.”
“Okay.” Christopher said without looking up.
Eddie shut his bedroom door behind him and leaned back against it. For one second he let himself close his eyes, then he opened them because Tommy’s phone was still in his hand.
The right thing to do was obvious. He knew that. He wasn’t confused about the ethics of this. There was no gray area, no technicality that made unlocking someone else’s phone acceptable just because Eddie had feelings he had spent too long pretending were something else.
He should put it down. He should let Tommy be the one to reach out, because Tommy probably had Eddie’s phone unlocked already and... no, no, no, that thought made something hot and panicked flare behind Eddie’s ribs.
He tapped the screen until the passcode screen came up. Eddie stared at the circles and hated that he already knew. It came to him immediately. He knew Tommy, and he knew himself. It's just how firefighters were. That was their everything.
He typed in 217 and the phone unlocked. Eddie let out a breath that was half laugh, half curse. “Of course.” For a moment, he just sat there on the edge of his bed, staring at the home screen. It was almost aggressively plain. The default layout, no clutter, no random apps crowding every page, no unread badges screaming for attention. Eddie’s phone always looked like a small digital emergency was unfolding. Tommy’s looked like someone who used it because modern life required him to and otherwise forgot it existed.
That should have been enough of an answer, but it wasn’t. Not enough for Eddie. He opened the photos app first and the guilt was immediate. It crawled up the back of his neck and settled under his skin, hot and prickling. He told himself he was only checking for something useful. Anything that would help him return the phone. That lie barely lasted three seconds.
Tommy’s photo library was sparse. Like whole weeks passed without anything worth saving. The first dozen photos were work-adjacent. A helicopter at sunrise, rotors still. A coffee cup balanced on a dashboard. A cracked piece of equipment Tommy had probably photographed to report. The sky again, again, and again. Clouds from above, downtown in the distance, the coast, the slow smear of sunset over traffic.
Eddie kept scrolling. A meal, only one plate present, taken from above. Then a shelf in a grocery store, maybe to remember the brand of something. Next was parking meter, clearly to remind himself when the time would be up. Then a screenshot of a weather alert, followed by more sky photos. The emptiness of it wasn’t dramatic at first, it just kept repeating until Eddie realized what he was looking for and not finding.
There were no people. No birthday dinners, nobody laughing with their mouth open, no accidental blurry shot of a friend leaning into frame, or kid’s hand reaching for the camera. There were group photos, or anyone from the 217 present at all.
Eddie’s thumb slowed. He knew Tommy wasn’t close with the 118. Not anymore really since the breakup with Buck. The last time Tommy had seen them had been Bobby’s funeral, and that day had been a blur of black clothes and wet eyes and grief so thick Eddie could barely remember whole stretches of it. He remembered seeing Tommy there though, very briefly across the crowd. Briefly. There had been a short look, but not one that held long enough to become a conversation. After that, nothing. No texts or calls. No overlap whatsoever.
Eddie had told himself that meant Tommy had gone back to his own life, but looking at the phone now, he wasn’t sure what life he had pictured.
Finally, he found a photo of Tommy. A mirror picture, probably taken in a gym locker room. Not posed on purpose, but more like a check-in. He wore a sleeveless black shirt, hair damp, expression neutral and a little tired, one arm raised slightly as he held the phone. His shoulders filled the frame in a way Eddie’s brain absolutely noticed before his conscience could slap the thought away.
Tommy was gorgeous in a way that annoyed Eddie because it wasn’t new, it had always been there. The broadness of him, the mouth that looked like it didn’t give much away until it did. Eddie had noticed before he had words for noticing. He had just filed it under admiration, comparison, whatever category kept him from having to look directly at desire.
There was another photo a few months later. Tommy in a button-down shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, standing in front of what looked like his bathroom mirror. He looked good. Too good. Dressed for dinner, maybe, or some required event. But again, alone. There was no one beside him, no second toothbrush visible on the sink or jacket thrown over a chair in the background. No sign of another person waiting impatiently off-camera saying, “Are you done yet?” It was just Tommy, making sure he looked presentable for somewhere he had apparently gone by himself.
Eddie backed out of the photos app because it was getting too painful, before scrolling over to his messages. At this point he'd just resigned himself to snooping. However, the messages app was worse because it was somehow even emptier.
There were no rows and rows of active conversations or pinned group chat like the 118 had. No constant stream of people needing something from him or telling him something or sending photos of toddlers committing household crimes. It was entirely the opposite of Eddie's phone.
Lucy was there, but the last message was from almost two weeks ago.
Lucy: Can you cover half my shift Friday?
Tommy: Which half?
Lucy: Morning. 6 to noon.
Tommy: Fine.
Lucy: I owe you.
Tommy: You owe me two now.
The conversation ended there, and before that the next one was three weeks before.
Lucy: Equipment signoff got moved to 1400.
Tommy: Copy that.
Eddie stared at the thread, waiting for more personality to reveal itself if he looked long enough, but it didn’t.
He backed out and moved to a contact labeled Dana - Air Ops. The last message was a month ago.
Dana: Updated flight logs are in your inbox, and I'll need your signature before the end of the day.
Tommy: Got it.
That was all from Dana, so he looked at another thread labeled Marco 217.
Marco: Meeting got pushed to 9. You want coffee?
Tommy: I'm good, thanks.
Marco: You sure?
Tommy: Wouldn't have said I'm good if I wasn't.
Then, a month before that:
Marco: You left your charger in the briefing room.
Tommy: I’ll grab it tomorrow.
Eddie felt something in his chest sink. It was not that no one ever texted Tommy, but it was the bare minimum required to keep a life operational. All work related. There was no warmth threaded through it or anyone talking about things outside of their job. Eddie thought about his own phone in Tommy’s hand and felt suddenly exposed in a way he hadn’t before. His phone was loud with proof that he was loved, Tommy’s was quiet with proof that he was useful.
Eddie opened one more thread, an unsaved number with a 818 area code. The messages were old, nearly eight months back.
Unknown: Hey, this is Aaron from Mike’s thing. Good meeting you.
Tommy: You too.
Aaron: I had a good time talking. Maybe drinks sometime?
Tommy: I'm not interested, sorry.
Aaron: No worries. Worth a shot.
Nothing after that. Tommy had said no, that he wasn’t interested. Maybe because the guy was weird or maybe because Tommy said no to things as a reflex until the possibility went away. Eddie had done that himself before, and he hated that he recognized it.
He hovered over the search bar before giving into his impulses and typing his own name into it. Only two results came up, the first being with Lucy.
Dated a little over a year ago, not long after Buck and Tommy had ended things. Eddie tensed before he opened it.
Lucy: Heard things ended with Buckley.
Tommy: Yeah, I broke up with him.
Lucy: You okay?
Tommy: Fine.
Lucy: That convincing, huh?
Tommy: It was the right thing to do.
Lucy: Right doesn’t always mean you feel fine. Was it because of Diaz?
Tommy: Don’t start.
Lucy: Oh, come on.
Tommy: He was never available.
Lucy: That’s not a no.
Tommy: Well, it's a no now. I'm telling you no.
Lucy: No it wasn’t because of him, or no he wasn’t available?
Tommy: It doesn't matter anymore.
Lucy: Did Buck know?
Tommy: No, and he won’t.
Lucy: You liked Buck, though.
Tommy: I did. He's a good person.
Lucy: But you wanted Eddie first.
Tommy: Yeah.
Eddie’s fingers went numb around the phone. Tommy wanted him first. A single word sitting in Tommy’s messages like it had cost him everything and nothing to type. Yeah. Eddie felt the room tilt slightly, though nothing moved.
He thought of Tommy looking at him in the coffee shop. The careful surprise on his face, his voice had going quiet around Eddie’s name. how he had asked about Christopher and then stepped back before the conversation could ask anything of them. He thought of all the times he had rewritten the past to make it less dangerous.
Tommy had been Buck’s boyfriend.
Tommy had been Buck’s first queer relationship.
Tommy had been a complication Eddie had no right to touch.
Except... before any of that, Tommy had wanted him. Eddie pressed his free hand against his mouth, before continuing. The second result was from a contact labeled Rachel. Tommy's cousin, Eddie remembered. They weren't super close, just checked in every once in a while. The messages were from a year ago, shortly after Bobby's funeral.
Rachel: You said you would see him there. Did you?
Tommy: Briefly.
Rachel: And?
Tommy: It was a funeral. There wasn’t an “and.”
Rachel: You know what I mean.
Tommy: He looked tired.
Rachel: Everyone looks tired at funerals.
Tommy: He looked like he was trying to hold everyone else up.
Rachel: That sounds like him.
Tommy: You don’t know him.
Rachel: I know you when you talk to me about him. Did you talk to him there at all.
Tommy: No.
Rachel: Why not?
Tommy: Because Evan was there and it was Bobby’s funeral. Eddie has enough grief in his hands without me adding history that barely even happened.
Rachel: It happened to you.
Tommy: That doesn’t mean it happened to him.
That doesn’t mean it happened to him. Eddie read that line until the screen blurred. Something about it hit harder than the confession to Lucy. Maybe because it wasn’t about wanting, it was about erasing. Tommy had taken whatever existed between them, glances, jokes, a basketball court, a friendship that almost became something more before Eddie knew enough to name it, and decided it belonged only to him. Decided Eddie hadn’t felt it because Eddie hadn’t known how.
And God, maybe he was right. That was possibly the worst part.
Eddie had spent months after coming out going back through his life like a crime scene. Picking up pieces, holding old memories to new light, realizing how much of himself he had mislabeled and denied himself because the truth would have demanded too much too soon. His time with Tommy was in so many of those memories. Eddie had noticed, but he wasn't ready to face what noticing that meant.
His eyes dropped to the next messages.
Rachel: You ever think about reaching out?
Tommy: No.
Rachel: You know I can tell when you're lying.
Tommy: Every time I think about it, I remember he has a whole life. He's got a kid and people he wants to be around.
Rachel: And you?
Tommy: I have work. I’m not asking him to make room for something he never wanted.
Rachel: What if he did?
Tommy: Then he knows where to find me.
There were no messages after that for weeks, so Eddie lowered the phone to his lap. He had thought Tommy’s life would be full somewhere else. That was what people did when they left your orbit. They went back to their own, and filled the space you weren’t allowed to look into with new friends, dinners, stories, people who knew how they took their coffee and whether they answered texts too quickly or not at all.
But Tommy’s phone didn’t show a full life. It showed work, the sky, and two people who had tried, lightly or from a distance, to ask him about Eddie and been met with walls so clean they almost looked like manners.
Eddie thought about the text on his own phone from Buck that morning. He says he misses his Eddie. The difference was suddenly unbearable. Eddie had people claiming him out loud. A son down the hall, a best friend who sent him toddler updates like dispatches from war, a family that had rearranged itself around grief and still kept reaching for one another.
Tommy had nothing but a phone full of empty space.
Eddie locked the screen and sat in the quiet. For a long moment, he could hear only the low hum of the house. The distant sound of Christopher’s tablet, and a car passing outside. His thumb rested against the edge of Tommy’s phone, as he realized he should not have seen any of this. That thought came late, but it came hard. He had taken something Tommy had not offered, had opened doors that were closed for a reason, looked at the shape of Tommy’s loneliness and the private places where Eddie’s name still lived, and now there was no way to unknow it.
He couldn't just hand the phone back and pretend like Tommy was nothing more than Buck's ex. There was no way to pretend the ache in Eddie’s chest was surprise. He knew better now, and maybe he had known before. Eddie bowed his head, elbows braced on his knees, the phone held loosely between both hands.
“Tommy.” he whispered. It sounded less like a name and more like an apology. He never realized.
Down the hall, Christopher laughed at something, bright and familiar, and Eddie closed his eyes against the sudden sting behind them. He needed to return the phone and tell Tommy he was sorry. Then he could decide how much truth could fit inside an apology before it became something else entirely.
- - -
"Fuck, Eddie." Tommy moaned as he tightened his grip on Eddie's hips. "You're taking it so well."
The sight of Eddie seated on his cock, head tilted back and eyes closed, was ethereal.
"M-more." Eddie whined as he picked up his pace, bouncing on Tommy's cock as if it were a lifeline. "Tommy, please."
Tommy practically growled, and picked up his pace, meeting Eddie with a hard thrust up. He had one hand braced behind Eddie so he wouldn't the console, while the other one held firm on his waist.
Eddie leaned down to connect their lips again, swallowing a moan coming out of Tommy. Tommy hadn't even fully gotten his flight suit off before Eddie jumped in his lap and devoured him, only ripping it open enough to free his cock. The soft fabric created a cushion for Eddie's thighs each time he sunk down again, while his own pants sat around his ankles.
"Inside me, please." Eddie said once they broke apart. "Please, baby."
The 'baby' sent Tommy right over the edge, spilling into Eddie harder than he'd ever in his life. Eddie reached his own climax right after, thick ropes of cum splattering across Tommy's flight suit. Tommy guided him into another kiss, as he slowly slid out, cum already leaking out of Eddie's hole. He tucked Eddie's head into the crook of his neck, whispering soft reassurances as Eddie came down from his high.
They hadn't used a condom, and Eddie wasn't single. Eddie assured him he was clean, but the guilt was still there. Tommy had never even met the person Eddie was dating, but it was clear this was Eddie's first time with a man.
He'd helped Eddie cheat, and he'd have to live with that now. But oddly... it didn't feel weird. Instead of even thinking about whoever this person was, Tommy just thought of Eddie. How much he wanted him, how much he needed this to happen again.
Before he could voice that, Eddie slid off Tommy's lap, pulling up his own pants. He looked at Tommy with wide, terrified eyes, so devastating it made Tommy's heart ache. Eddie wasn't able to be free. He couldn't be himself yet, and Tommy knew exactly what that was like.
Eddie cleared his throat after a few moments, and glanced over Tommy one last time. "Thanks for the trip, Tommy."
"Wait-" Tommy reached out a hand towards him, but Eddie had already gotten out of the helicopter.
Tommy eyes fly open as he wakes up with Eddie’s name already on his mouth.
He doesn’t say it out loud, doesn’t quite get that far, but it’s there, caught somewhere behind his teeth, threaded through the sharp inhale that drags him out of sleep.
For a while, he doesn’t move at all. The room is still dark, too quiet compared to the noise still echoing in his head.
Because it hadn’t just been a dream, and that’s what makes it worse. Tommy has had dreams about Eddie before. Blurred ones, half-formed, built out of memory and want and whatever his brain decided to fill in the gaps with. Easy enough to shake off once he was awake.
This wasn’t that. This was an exact memory. The way Eddie had looked that night, present in a way Tommy hadn’t expected. How his hands had hesitated first, then not at all. When he’d said Tommy’s name like it was something he was still figuring out how to hold. When he'd called him baby.
Tommy remembers the heat of it. How it had felt like stepping into something real and unstable at the same time, like if either of them moved wrong it would collapse under them, which it had. Eddie hadn’t been ready. Tommy had known that even then, even with Eddie still in his lap, windows of the helicopter fogging up. He had seen it in the way Eddie’s expression shifted afterward. The confusion creeping back in, the careful distance reassembling itself piece by piece.
So Tommy had let him go. Not because he hadn’t wanted him to stay, but because he had. Too much. More than he was allowed to. Tommy drags a hand down his face and sits up, the sheets falling away, the cool air of the room grounding him just enough to remember where he is. He lets out a slow breath, but it doesn’t settle anything. If anything, it makes the absence of Eddie clearer. The quiet presses in harder, like the dream carved out space that reality doesn’t know how to fill.
He looks down and sees his a wet patch on his sleep shorts, soaked through with precum. “Yeah.” he mutters to himself, voice rough. “Great timing.”
And it's not all just about the fact he had a wet dream like a teenager. Its about Eddie being back, Eddie knowing he's gay now, Eddie somewhere in the city with Tommy’s phone in his hand, probably finding the same empty spaces Tommy had found in his.
Tommy swings his legs over the side of the bed and reaches for Eddie's phone on his nightstand. It still feels wrong. Still feels like something he should have fixed immediately instead of… this. Instead of unlocking it like it belongs to him.
He doesn’t go to Eddie's messages this time. The dream is still too close, still sitting under his skin in a way that makes everything else feel secondary. Instead his thumb moves, almost instinctively, to the notes app.
He tells himself it’s because it felt less invasive before, but that’s not why. It’s because it felt honest. These are parts of Eddie he doesn't want anyone else to see. Maybe that's violating his privacy too far now, but Tommy needs just a taste.
The app opens, and for a second it’s exactly what he expects. Lists, reminders, pieces of a life that runs on structure because it has to. He scrolls until he finds something that different, and this one has a title.
Therapy Homework
Tommy’s stomach shifts. Eddie is going to therapy, which is great. He's been through a lot with Bobby dying, and everything with Chris. He clicks on the note and there are multiple entries, dated weeks apart. Not paragraphs, but more jotting down thoughts. He starts reading the latest one.
Write it down even if it doesn’t make sense. That’s what she said.
I think I confuse “safe” with “right.”
I’ve always picked what felt safe.I don’t know how to tell the difference yet.
Tommy exhales slowly. That tracks so much it almost hurts. He scrolls to another entry:
I keep circling back to the same memory.
It wasn’t nothing. I know it wasn’t nothing.
I just didn’t have the words for it at the time, so I treated it like it was.
Tommy’s fingers tighten around the phone. The dream flashes again, sharper this time. Not just the physical memory, but everything around it. The way Eddie had looked at him like he was trying to understand something in real time and falling behind.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “You did.” But there’s no anger in it, not anymore. Something is there, but it's closer to grief than resentment.
The next entry was longer:
She asked me if I ever think about him.
I said no.
That was a lie.
I think about him when something reminds me of that version of myself.
The one who didn’t know what he was doing but did it anyway.I think about how easy it felt for a second.
And how fast I shut it down after.
I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t.
I don’t know if that’s something I regret or something I needed.
Probably both.
Tommy lets out a quiet breath that almost turns into a laugh and doesn’t quite make it. “Yeah.” he says again, softer this time. “Both.”
He scrolls one last time. The final entry in the note is far more recent than he'd expected.
I don’t think I ever stopped wanting him.
I just got better at not thinking about it.
Tommy stares at that one long enough that the screen dims, then goes dark, then he taps it awake again just to make sure it’s still there.
I don’t think I ever stopped wanting him.
The room feels smaller suddenly, or maybe it’s just that the distance he’s been relying on for the past year, physical, emotional, all of it, has collapsed into something that fits in the palm of his hand. Tommy leans back against the headboard, phone resting against his chest now instead of held out in front of him like something to analyze.
The memory of that night in the helicopter is still there, but it has context now. A line that didn’t break when Tommy thought it did, it had just gone quiet.
He thinks about how easy it would have been to stay if Eddie had just… met him there. Then he thinks about the year after. About choosing Evan because Evan was there, and he didn’t look at Tommy like he was trying to solve a problem he didn’t understand yet. He thinks about ending it anyway. About going home to this, quiet, controlled, empty in all the ways that don’t show up on the surface.
Tommy opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. He knows what he told himself, that it was better this way. Leaving things alone was the right call. Not reaching out, not pushing, not asking Eddie to figure himself out faster than he could, that was respect. That was the version of Tommy he could live with.
But lying here now, with Eddie’s words sitting in his chest and that night still fresh in his body, it doesn’t feel like care. It feels like absence, like he stepped back and then never stepped forward again. He let something real sit untouched until it became easier to pretend it hadn’t been real at all.
Tommy exhales, long and slow. He presses the heel of his hand against his sternum, like he can physically steady whatever’s shifting under there. “I miss you.” he says quietly, and this time, he does say it out loud.
The words hang in the room, unanswered. Of course they do, but they don’t feel hypothetical anymore. Tommy looks down at the phone again, at the life he’s been holding at a distance even when it was right in front of him, the version of Eddie who didn’t understand, and the version now who does.
His grip tightens slightly on the case. He doesn’t know what happens next, doesn’t know if Eddie wants the same thing, not really, not outside of notes written for a therapist and words that were never meant for him to see.
But for the first time in a long time, that uncertainty doesn’t feel like a reason to stay still, so Tommy locks the phone and lets his head fall back again onto the pillow. The room is still quiet, still empty, but it doesn’t feel as settled as it did before. As if something has shifted just enough that staying here, staying like this, isn’t going to work much longer.
- - -
Eddie lasts about ten minutes after that last message before he breaks. He tells himself he’s putting the phone down, that he’s done. That he’s already crossed enough lines for one day, he doesn’t need to keep digging through Tommy’s life like there’s something in there that will finally make all of this settle.
But it doesn’t settle, and that’s the problem. It keeps building.
The texts, the photos, the quiet emptiness of Tommy’s phone. The way Eddie’s name shows up anyway, threaded through everything like something Tommy never fully let go of.
And the worst part, is that Eddie didn’t let go either. He just didn’t know what he was holding.
Eddie sits on the edge of his bed, Tommy’s phone still in his hand, thumb resting against the screen without moving. He shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t. But the thought is already there, already forming, already pulling him back toward the one place he hasn’t let himself look too closely yet.
Tommy's photos weren’t empty necessarily, they were just… selective. Eddie exhales slowly, then opens the phone again. He goes back to the photos app and it doesn't take long to find what he's looking for. The same video thumbnail he’d skimmed past earlier without really thinking about it.
A thumbnail of Tommy, in the gym. Eddie hesitates for a few moments, before he presses play. It’s a short video, less than a minute. Probably meant for no one but Tommy himself.
Tommy’s in the middle of a set, something with weights, Eddie doesn’t even process what, not really. His brain catches on other things first. The movement of his hips, the tension in his shoulders, the way his body works through it like it’s second nature, like it’s the only place he lets himself be fully present.
There’s no music playing, just the faint background noise of the gym, the quiet clink of equipment and soft grunts coming from Tommy as he lifts. Tommy doesn’t look at the camera and that somehow makes it worse.
Eddie watches it once, then again. His breath shifts somewhere along the way. He shouldn’t be doing this, but this doesn’t feel like curiosity anymore. It feels like recognition. Something clicking into place that had been just out of reach for too long.
“Jesus.” he mutters. His cock twitches in his sleep shorts, and Eddie watches it grow the more he keeps rewinding the video. The more he focuses on Tommy's arm movements, or his thick thighs.
This is... this is not subtle anymore. He can't keep pretending this is abstract or hypothetical or just part of figuring himself out.
It's Tommy. It's always been Tommy. And Eddie... he wants him. Still. Maybe always. The realization lands heavy and immediate, leaving no room to dodge it this time.
He rewinds the video once again, lets his hand travel down and slips it beneath the waistband. He throws his head back against the pillow in a moan as he wraps his fingers around himself, trying his best to keep it somewhat quiet while Chris is in the house, as flashbacks of Vegas come flooding back.
Eddie remembers Tommy's lap, he remembers Tommy's hands on his waist, he remembers the way Tommy's cock felt inside him. He opens his eyes and uses his free hand to settle the phone on his side, replaying the video over and over as he tries to bring himself to release.
He swipes his thumb along the head of his cock, smearing a bead of precum that had already arrived, and imagines he's in that video with Tommy. Maybe Eddie would settle on his lap again, maybe he'd suck his cock while Tommy completed his reps, then ride him again once he finished.
Eddie pistons his hips as he fucks into his fist, speeding up the timing of his strokes as he imagines licking the sweat off of Tommy's neck. He swipes his thumb across the head one more time before he reaches his climax, burying his face into the pillow to muffle his shouts as he stains his shorts.
The fabric of the shorts clings to his skin now as Eddie lies back against the bed, one arm thrown over his eyes, breathing still uneven in a way that has nothing to do with exertion anymore and everything to do with what just happened. Not just what he did, but what it meant. The phone sits beside him, screen dark now, like it’s already done enough damage for one night.
Eddie lets out a shaky breath. “Yeah.” he says softly, to no one. “Okay.”
Because there’s no going back from that. Not after everything he’s already seen. The video, the texts, realizing that what he felt back then wasn’t confusion or curiosity or a one-time mistake.
It was this. It was always this, and he had walked away from it. He thinks about that text, 'That doesn’t mean it happened to him.' “It did.” he says, quiet and certain. “It did happen.” He just didn’t understand it at the time, and Tommy had taken that as an answer. Eddie exhales slowly, the weight of it settling in a way that feels almost like guilt. Not just for tonight, but for everything. For not knowing, not asking, letting Tommy believe it had been one-sided when it hadn’t been. Not even close.
Eddie rolls onto his side, staring at the phone again. “I missed you.” he admits under his breath. The words come easier than he expects, like they’ve been waiting. He closes his eyes and for the first time since the coffee shop, the feeling isn’t just confusion or shock or the frantic need to figure out what to do next. It’s clarity. He needs Tommy.
It's as simple as that, or maybe not simple at all, but he needs him.
Morning comes too fast. Eddie doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have, because when he opens his eyes the light is different, softer, early, filtering in through the blinds in a way that makes everything feel quieter than it did the night before.
For a second, he forgets and reaches out to his side like there would be a body lying next to him, Tommy's body. It fades away, as all things do, so he sits up. He pulls back the sheets, changes out of his shorts that are still defiled from last night, his skin slightly uncomfortable from letting the cum dry, grabs Tommy’s phone from the nightstand, and heads out into the hallway.
Christopher is already in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a bowl of cereal, scrolling on his tablet. “You’re up early.” Eddie says.
“You’re up weird.” Chris glances up.
“Wow.” Eddie says. “Good morning to you too.”
Chris smirks faintly, then gestures with his spoon. “You still look like something happened.”
Eddie hesitates, but he realized that he has to be honest. If nothing, at least so Chris knows what to do in an emergency. “Hey,” he says, shifting slightly. “I, uh… I accidentally swapped phones with Tommy yesterday.”
Chris blinks. “Like, literally?”
“Yeah. Literally.”
“How?”
“We got distracted at the coffee shop. Just didn't notice.”
Chris considers that, then nods slowly.
Eddie exhales, relieved it’s not turning into an interrogation. “Do you still have his number?”
Chris shrugs. “I think so. Why?”
“Because he has my phone.” Eddie says. “So if you need anything, just… message his number for now, until I get it back.”
Chris' expression shifts, just slightly. “Okay.” he says after a second. He eyes Eddie, like he knows something has shifted.
They lapse into silence after that, but underneath it, Eddie can feel it, the way Chris knows. He has to fix this. Not just the phones, but all of it, because nobody deserves to be lonely like that.
- - -
Tommy almost doesn’t answer the ring. It’s late, later than he expects anything good to come from, and he’s already halfway through ignoring it when he glances down and sees the name on the screen.
Christopher
His stomach drops and he answers immediately. “Hey... Chris? Everything okay?”
There’s a pause. Not long, but long enough that Tommy straightens without thinking, already reaching for his keys. “Tommy?”
“Yeah.” he says, softer now, moving through the house with a kind of quiet urgency. “It’s me. I know about the phones, your dad told you, right? We’ve just been trying to line it up, it’s been-” He cuts himself off. “What’s going on?”
“I need you to come get me.” Chris says.
Tommy doesn’t hesitate. “Okay. Where are you?”
Chris gives him the address, voice lower, like he’s stepped somewhere quieter to say it. “It’s just a party.” he adds quickly. “I’m fine, I just... I can’t call my dad.”
Tommy slips on his shoes, grabs his jacket. “Why not?”
“I don’t want him to be mad,” Chris admits, and there’s something small in it. He's embarrassed, Tommy can tell.
Tommy exhales through his nose. “He’s not going to be mad at you for needing a ride.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But I do know him,” Tommy says, already out the door. “and I know he’d rather you call someone than try to figure it out on your own.”
There’s a quiet shift on the other end. “and Buck’s busy with Theo, so I just...” Christopher adds, like that part matters too.
“Okay.” Tommy says. “Then you called the right person. Stay where you are, I’ll be there soon.”
The house is loud in a way that feels careless, when Tommy arrives ten minutes later. Music, voices, laughter spilling out every time the front door opens. Too many people, not enough attention being paid to anything that actually matters.
Tommy parks down the street, not pulling up directly in front, because he was a teenager once too and he knows how it would feel to have an adult come inside and pick you up.
He sends a text letting Chris know he's there, and a few minutes later the front door opens and he steps out, closing it behind him with more care than the rest of the house seems to be operating under. Tommy gets out of the truck before he reaches the curb.
“Hey.” Tommy says, keeping his voice even.
Chris looks… okay. But not entirely. There’s a flush to his face, a slight delay in how he focuses, the kind of careful control people use when they’re trying not to look like they’re off-balance.
“Hey.” Chris slurs back.
Tommy studies him for a second. “You feeling alright, or do you feel like things are starting to spin a little?”
Chris huffs a small breath, like he’s been waiting for the question. “I’m okay.” He hesitates, then admits, quieter, “I had a couple beers. That's all.”
Tommy nods slowly, like that’s information, not a problem. “Alright, and when you say a couple do you mean actually a couple, or do you mean a couple in the way people say it when they don’t want to say the real number?”
Chris winces slightly. “Like three. I promise.”
“Okay.” Tommy says, calm, measured. “That’s not nothing, but it’s also not the end of the world. You feel like you’re going to be sick, or just a little off?”
“Just a little off.”
Tommy just opens the passenger door and helping Chris with his crutches. “We’ll get you home.”
“You’re not mad?” Chris asks, lingering for half a second before moving.
Tommy shakes his head. “No. I’m not mad.”
Chris studies him like he doesn’t quite believe that, then gets in anyway.
The drive is quiet at first. Chris sits a little straighter than he needs to, like he’s trying to prove something just by being upright. His hands are folded in his lap, fingers picking at each other in small, repetitive movements.
Tommy lets the silence sit for a minute. Then, gently, “You did the right thing, calling someone instead of trying to get yourself home another way, even if it didn’t feel like it in the moment.”
Chris keeps his eyes on the windshield. “I didn’t call my dad.”
“No,” Tommy says. “You didn’t. But you still called someone and that's what matters.”
“That’s not the same.”
“It kind of is.” Tommy replies. “You recognized you needed help, and you didn’t ignore that just because it was inconvenient or uncomfortable.”
Chris exhales slowly, shoulders dropping just a fraction. “He’s still gonna be disappointed.”
Tommy shakes his head. “He might be concerned yeah, he's your dad and that’s his default setting when it comes to you, but disappointed? I don’t think so. You didn’t lie, you didn’t drive, you didn’t stay somewhere you weren’t comfortable just to avoid a conversation later.”
Chris finally glances at him. “It was stupid.”
“Sure.” Tommy says easily. “It probably wasn’t your best decision. That doesn’t mean it defines you as a person or that it’s something you’re going to get in trouble for forever.”
Chris huffs out a quiet, humorless laugh. “That sounds like something my dad would say.”
Tommy smiles slightly. “That’s because I’ve heard him say versions of it before.”
Chris nods, looking back out the window. “I just didn’t want to deal with it tonight.”
“I get it.” Tommy says. “Sometimes the right thing and the easy thing don’t line up, and you went with the one that felt manageable in the moment. You still corrected course.”
“I guess.”
Tommy glances over briefly. “You trust me, right?”
Chris shrugs a little. “Yeah.”
“Then trust me when I say he’s going to be glad you’re home safe more than anything else.”
Chris doesn’t answer, but the tension in his shoulders eases just enough to notice.
They pull up to the house minutes later and Eddie opens the door before they even make it up the walkway. “Chris?” he says immediately, stepping forward, eyes scanning, hands already reaching.
“I’m fine,” Chris says quickly, almost overlapping him.
Eddie’s hands land on his shoulders anyway, kneeling down to his height. “Are you okay? Did something happen at the party?”
Chris hesitates and Tommy sees it. The embarrassment, the calculation, the instinct to downplay or redirect or avoid.
“Brandon brought a bunch of beers...” Chris says finally. “And I-” He falters, glancing down.
Eddie goes still. Not angry, not at all, but processing.
Chris rushes to fill the silence. “I didn’t feel good after, so I called Tommy because I know Buck can't get me with Theo and I didn't want you to-”
“Hey.” Eddie cuts in, softer than expected. “Hey. It’s okay.”
Chris looks up, surprised.
Eddie exhales, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck before settling again on Chris' shoulder. “You’re alright, that’s what matters. We can talk about the rest later, okay?”
Chris nods, relief flickering across his face even as the embarrassment lingers.
“Go inside.” Eddie says gently. “Get some water and sit down for a bit. I'll be right in.”
Chris moves past them, the door stays open and now it's just Eddie and Tommy. The first time since the phones.
The quiet stretches between them, thicker than it should be for something as simple as a ride home. “Thank you.” Eddie says after a second, voice low, sincere in a way that lands heavier than the words themselves.
Tommy nods. “He called. I wasn’t going to leave him there.”
“I know.” Eddie says. “I just...” He exhales, shaking his head slightly. “I’m glad it was you. I love that he trusts you like that.”
That lands hard, and neither of them acknowledges how much.
Tommy shifts his weight, hands sliding into his pockets more for something to do than anything else. “He’s okay. Just a little embarrassed about it, I think.”
Eddie huffs a small breath. “Yeah. I've been there.”
Neither of them mentions the phones, but it’s there anyway. In the way Eddie’s gaze flickers briefly to Tommy’s hand, then away. In the way Tommy is very aware of the weight of Eddie’s phone still in his pocket.
“I was going to call you.” Eddie says after a moment, like the words have been sitting there for a while. “About… all of it. The phones, I mean. I just kept putting it off.”
Tommy nods slowly. “Yeah. Me too.”
There’s a faint, almost disbelieving curve to Eddie’s mouth at that. “That makes me feel slightly better and worse at the same time.”
The air shifts into something more honest. Eddie glances back into the house, then back at Tommy, like he’s balancing two different priorities and not entirely sure how to handle either of them at once. “I should go check on him.” he says, though he doesn’t move yet.
“Yeah.” Tommy replies.
Neither of them steps away. It’s subtle, but it’s there—that pull. That moment where leaving feels like something more than just ending a conversation. He doesn’t reach for his pocket, and Eddie doesn’t either. The silence stretches just long enough to make it clear. This isn’t an accident anymore.
Then Tommy steps back, giving the moment somewhere to go. “Get him settled.” he says.
Eddie nods. “I will. Thanks again.”
Tommy nods before turning, heading back toward his truck. He can feel Eddie watching him again, the same way he had in the coffee shop, but heavier now. More aware.
When he gets in, he sits there for a second before starting the engine. His hand brushes against the phone in his pocket. Eddie’s phone, they both knew, even said something about it, but neither of them exchanged again.
Tommy exhales slowly, leaning back against the seat. How much longer can he let this go on for?
- - -
Eddie almost turns around twice before he actually knocks. Tommy’s house looks the same as he remembered it. Quiet, contained, like nothing inside it has shifted even though Eddie knows better now. Knows what lives in that quiet. Knows what’s missing from it.
Knows how much of that missing space has his name in it.
Eddie exhales, and knocks. Tommy looks surprised when he opens the door, but not confused. Like he’s been expecting this, just not tonight.
“Hey.” Tommy says.
“Hey.” Eddie replies, forcing a small breath of something like humor. “I figured I should probably come get my phone back before Buck files a missing persons report.”
Tommy huffs quietly. “Yeah. I was wondering how long we were going to keep pretending that wasn’t something we needed to deal with.” Tommy steps back then. “Come in.”
Eddie nods, stepping inside. The house feels exactly like it did in his head. He hadn't thought of it this way before, but after everything that he saw on the phones, he can't look at it the same way right now.
Tommy closes the door behind him. “You want anything? Water, beer, something stronger depending on how this goes?”
Eddie lets out a quiet breath. “I think I’m good for now.”
“Yeah.” Tommy says. “Probably safer.”
They let the silence settle before Eddie reaches into his pocket, pulling out Tommy’s phone. “Here.”
Tommy looks at it, then pulls Eddie’s from his own pocket. For a second, they just stand there, holding everything they’ve seen. Everything they weren’t supposed to know. Then, they finally trade, fingertips brushing as their phones return to the rightful owner.
Eddie clears his throat, stepping back slightly. “Chris is with Buck and Theo tonight.” He shrugs. “Figured it was a good time to… handle this.”
Tommy nods. “Yeah. That makes sense.”
Eddie exhales, dragging a hand through his hair. “We need to talk about it.”
Tommy doesn’t hesitate this time. “Yeah. We do.”
They don’t sit. Neither of them trusts themselves to. Eddie says it first, because he has to. “I went into your phone.”
Tommy’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t look away. “I figured. I went into yours too.”
Eddie nods once. “I shouldn’t have. I know that. I didn’t mean to... to go that far, but once I realized, I just-” He exhales. “I didn’t stop.”
Tommy huffs a quiet breath. “Me neither. I told myself I was just checking for a way to contact you, and then suddenly I knew things I wasn’t supposed to know, and it was already too late to pretend I didn’t.”
Eddie lets out a small, humorless laugh. “That sounds about right.” The silence stretches, before Eddie adds, “I didn’t think you were like that.”
Tommy frowns slightly. “Like what?”
“Alone.” Eddie says, more firmly now. “I didn’t think you were that lonely.”
Tommy goes still, so Eddie continues, quieter but more certain. “Your phone was just work, a few pictures of the sky, nothing else. No one else. I kept waiting to find something that looked like a life and it just... it wasn’t there.”
Tommy exhales slowly and gestures towards his pocket. “That is my life.”
“No.” Eddie says immediately. “That’s not a life. That’s surviving.”
Tommy’s shoulders tighten. “You don’t get to decide that based on a few days with my phone.”
“I get to say it because I know what it looks like when someone’s keeping everything contained so they don’t have to feel how empty it is.” Eddie shoots back, voice sharper now. “I did that for years.”
Tommy looks at him, something cracking under the surface. “Yeah, well, you had people. Even when you were doing that, you had people.”
“I didn’t let them in.” Eddie says.
“No, but you still had them.” Tommy replies. “I didn’t.”
Tommy exhales, looking away now. “I didn’t think there was a place for me in your life, Eddie. Not like that. Not when you had Christopher, when you had Buck and the 118, not when you had all of that already built and I was just...” He cuts himself off, jaw tightening. “Something that happened once and then got quietly buried.”
Eddie steps closer. “That’s not what it was.”
“That’s what it felt like.” Tommy says.
Eddie swallows. “I know.”
Tommy looks back at him. “Do you?”
“Yeah.” Eddie says, softer now. “Because I saw it. I saw what you said about me.”
Tommy’s breath catches slightly.
“What you said to Lucy,” Eddie continues. “and to Rachel.”
Tommy shakes his head. “You weren’t supposed to read that.”
“I know,” Eddie says. “but I did. And you don’t get to pretend that didn’t matter just because I didn’t understand it at the time.”
Tommy’s eyes flash. “It didn’t matter if you didn’t understand it. That’s the whole point.”
“It mattered to me.” Eddie says.
“You didn’t even know what you were feeling.”
“I do now.”
The words land like a crack of something breaking open. “Are you sure?” he asks, quieter.
Eddie nods. “Yes.”
Tommy exhales slowly. “I saw the notes... on your phone. The therapy work. I saw you writing about that night like it actually meant something, not like it was just something you were trying to forget.”
Eddie looks at him. “I never forgot it.”
Tommy laughs once, sharp and disbelieving. “You walked away from it.”
“I didn’t understand it.” Eddie says, frustration creeping back in. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It kind of is.” Tommy says. “From my side, it didn’t make a difference.”
Eddie steps closer again, closing the space between them almost without realizing it. “Well, it does now.”
Tommy’s breath is uneven now. “Why?”
“Because I saw how you’ve been living, and I can't let that continue.” Eddie says, voice lower, rougher. “And I saw how I’ve been thinking about you this whole time and pretending it was something else. I realized I didn’t just miss the moment, I missed you.”
Eddie gulps nervously before repeating it. “I missed you.”
Tommy looks at him with pleading eyes, then barely above a whisper, “I never stopped wanting you.”
Eddie’s breath hitches.
“I tried.” Tommy continues, voice steadier now but no less intense. “I told myself it was a bad idea, that you weren’t ready, that it wasn’t fair to expect you to be. I tried to move on. I tried to build something else.” His jaw tightens. “It didn’t work. I just... I need you with me.”
Eddie steps closer to him “I need you with me too.”
And that’s the breaking point.
Tommy hands settle on his waist as he pulls him in, lips connecting for the first time in over a year.
Eddie’s back hits the wall as Tommy guides him, with a soft thud. They press closer, hands grabbing, anchoring, like they need to prove this is real and not something they’re going to wake up from. Tommy’s hands grip tighter and Eddie’s loop around Tommy's neck, dragging him in like he’s been holding himself back for too long and doesn’t know how to do it anymore.
“Eddie-” Tommy breathes against his mouth.
“Don’t stop.” Eddie says, voice rough, urgent. “Please don’t stop.”
So he doesn’t. The kiss deepens, turns sharper, messier, everything they didn’t allow themselves before crashing into each other all at once, tongues colliding in the middle as they kiss for god knows how long.
They eventually move without really deciding to down the hallway, stopping only to discard clothes, before Tommy shuts the door behind them.
And when it finally happens, when Tommy presses inside him once again, Eddie lets himself feel it fully this time without shutting down or second-guessing. Lets himself realize just how much he's missed this over the past year, and how he can't let it drift away again, as he encourages Tommy to speed up his thrusts.
After, they don’t pull apart. Not even a little. Tommy had reached to grab the tissue box and clean Eddie up as best he could, cum leaking out of Eddie's ass, but Eddie eventually told him to stop. He needed to just be here with him, now.
Eddie is pressed close against him, chest to chest, legs tangled, Tommy’s arms wrapped tight around him like letting go isn’t an option he’s considering and Eddie does the same. One arm around Tommy’s shoulders, the other pressed flat against his back, holding him there as Eddie tucks his head into the crook of Tommy's neck and breathes him in.
Tommy falls asleep like that, faster than he ever has in his life. Like his body just... finally lets go. Let's itself know that for once, he's safe, and he's wanted. Eddie doesn’t fall asleep though. He stays awake watching him, really taking him in.
The way his face softens in sleep, the way his breathing evens out, the way his grip on Eddie doesn’t loosen, even while unconscious. Like he's keeping something precious close to him.
He's beautiful, and Eddie’s chest aches with it. Overwhelming in a way that doesn’t feel like something he needs to run from. He shifts slightly, brushing his fingers along Tommy’s shoulder. “Tommy.” he murmurs.
No response, so Eddie nudges him gently, voice softer now. “Hey… baby.”
Tommy stirs, brow furrowing slightly before his eyes blink open, still heavy, and adjusting to the darkness only illuminating by the moonlight filtering in through the window. He lets out a sleepy groan before his eyes settle on Eddie. “Are you okay, sweetheart?” he asks, tightening his hold even more.
Eddie freezes. That hits him deeper than anything else tonight. Tommy’s first instinct, half-asleep, is to check on him. No one’s ever done that for him. Not like this, without even thinking.
He kisses him softly and Tommy blinks more awake against it, confused but still kissing him back as best he can.
When Eddie pulls slightly away, still keeping them as close as possible, Tommy looks at him, voice rough with sleep. “What was that for?”
Eddie lets out a relieved sigh. “It’s a promise.” he says quietly. “I'm promising you.”
Tommy frowns slightly. “Promising what?”
Eddie leans in and kisses him again, pressing their foreheads together once their lips pull apart.
“I promise you’ll never be alone again.”