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He didn’t want to fight. He really didn’t, but there they were. Fighting.
“You’re acting like I did it on purpose,” Buck said and watched Tommy’s jaw work as he tried to control what was clearly anger even if he wouldn’t admit he was angry. The fire was out. It had been a while since so many firemen had come together to battle one massive flaming monster, but they’d handled it. Property damage but no lives lost. It was a win, but it wouldn’t feel like one until they got this sorted out between them.
The rain had helped. It stopped not long after the fire went out, and now the garden wall glistened where Tommy sat under the streetlights. Firefighters left the area at last, but Buck didn’t move to leave. Bone tired and filthy, his boots held him to his spot, unable to start to move him home while he watched a pissed off Tommy pretend he wasn’t pissed off.
Chimney slowed as he walked past them and looked between the two of them. “Everything good over here?”
“Yes,” Tommy answered at the same time Buck said, “No.”
Chimney paused, but everyone had used the last ounce of their energy to kill that fire. He clearly decided to use whatever he had left to get himself home to his family. He raised his hands in surrender and kept walking. Buck turned back to Tommy who sighed, and Buck wondered how his body could be so exhausted and still hold him there.
“I didn’t say you did it on purpose.”
He didn’t, but that was exactly how it came off since Buck ignored an order, stayed in the building where Tommy searched for someone who turned out not to be inside after all, and they both got trapped inside looking for each other after their radios went out. They almost died trying to find each other and get out. If Buck had left when he was told to go, Tommy could have cleared the building faster from the path he had. Instead, the path got wiped out, the smoke almost took them both out, and they’d had to create a new exit with no time to spare before the whole building went down.
“You didn’t have to.” Buck’s gaze moved from his tight jaw to his lips. Sometimes he could close his eyes and still feel him, still taste his kiss. He tried not to. Every touch was carved into his memory, crystal clear, and he waited every day for Tommy Kinard to fade. Time was supposed to do that for him all on its own, but it didn’t. Buck wished it would. And he hoped like hell it never did.
“I’m not mad,” Tommy said after a while, and his shoulders fell in a way that let Buck believe he’d decided to let the anger go even though he saw it and resented it.
“I would never do anything to hurt you,” Buck said, not without a flicker of anger of his own, but mostly with the hurt he felt down to his bones and hoped Tommy couldn’t see. No such luck.
Tommy met his eyes, and Buck felt his gaze as strongly as he still felt his kiss in his traitorous memory.
“I know that,” Tommy said, and this time there wasn’t anything else in it that left room for doubt.
The tension eased out of Buck’s shoulders. They stared back at each other, and all Buck could do under the weight of Tommy’s gaze and all those memories was give a small nod and look down. It was a simple mistake that almost took an impossibly bad turn. It felt like they tripped over mistakes with each other all the time now, but Buck remembered a time when their path felt clear, when his heart told him he could walk it forever and felt like it stopped when he got pushed off and was forced to find a new path. Alone.
“You’re okay?” Buck asked just to be sure. The medics already checked them both out and cleared them, but Buck needed to know for sure.
Tommy almost smiled, and at least that almost-smile wasn’t upset anymore. “I’m okay.”
Buck nodded and turned to go, but Tommy stopped him.
“Hey,” he called, and Buck stopped but didn’t turn. “Why didn’t you go when everyone got called out?”
Buck’s memory wound around those phantom kisses and traveled deeper, to the dark corners where loss lingered and warned him that he could lose more if he wasn’t careful.
“Because you were still in the building,” he replied honestly and left to go home to an empty house. He felt Tommy watch him go but didn’t look back.
****
Work took a stressful toll lately, so Buck was happy to set off for the set of Hotshots and disappear into the magical world of make-believe for a day or two. Gerrard got hit with the flu, and Buck found himself all too happy for the excuse to mix things up. He didn’t see himself moving into semi-retirement with a job like this long-term later in his career, but it was fun for a while here and there, long enough to keep Gerrard’s cushy seat there warm anyway.
He’d tried to dress a little nicer than usual when Eddie warned him that paparazzi had been taking lots of pictures from around the set lately in preparation for an anticipated episode, but he second-guessed the shirt he pulled on and tried to get a better look at himself in one of the standing mirrors in the wardrobe department where he’d wandered while he waited to get called to consult.
“How do I look?” he asked a harried assistant who only flashed him a thumbs up on her way past. She hadn’t even looked at him, so he wasn’t sure how deeply he could internalize that reassurance.
“Terrible,” said a voice he hadn’t expected to hear that day or on a television set of all places. “The worst I’ve seen you.”
Tommy looked around at the bustle of activity. No actors were around, but the crew were worker bees in every direction.
Buck looked down at himself with a frown. “Wait. Really?”
A twitch of Tommy’s lips relieved the spike of worry in Buck and melted it into sudden warmth as Tommy came close, lowered his voice and leaned in to give him a private and more attentive review than the busy assistant had.
“You look hot. You know that.” It was little more than a murmur at his ear, but Buck felt the caress of it down deep like the hot scratch of a match. The light touch of Tommy’s fingertips across his back took the heat of the words and turned the warmth into a low blaze. He could still do that with a two-second touch and a sweet word. Buck hated it and wanted it and didn’t hate it at all.
Tommy moved past him to a rack of costumes and started to sift through them. Whatever the episode was about, it required a lot of odd formal attire.
“Hey, why are you here?” Buck asked.
“Not happy to see me?” Tommy plucked a top hat with a large white feather on the side off its stand and pulled it down on Buck’s head. He smiled as Tommy grinned at him and pulled it off.
“Always.” It should have been a lie, but it wasn’t. Even when it hurt to see him and not have him, there wasn’t a day he saw him that he’d change.
“I’m filling in for Gerrard,” Tommy explained.
“No…” Confusion lowered Buck’s brows. “I’m covering for Gerrard. I called him and volunteered when Chimney told me he was looking for someone to sub for him while he was sick.”
He looked as confused as Buck was. “He left a message asking me to cover for him. It was my day off, so I came over when he didn’t answer my call.”
And it all made sense. “So we’re double-booked.”
Tommy leaned against a vanity and crossed his arms in a mix of amusement and exasperation. “Looks like it.”
Buck hesitated and quickly dodged out of the way of someone that needed something off the rack he blocked. Her eyes were wild enough to make him believe she would have snatched it through him if he didn’t move.
He stepped closer to Tommy, out of her way and asked, “Should one of us leave?”
Tommy shrugged. “You can if you want. I can stay if you want to take off.”
“I don’t,” Buck said, maybe a little too quickly, but he meant it. He’d looked forward to checking out the TV set again, and it didn’t hurt at all that Surprise Tommy came with it.
“So we’re both staying.”
“We’re both staying,” Buck agreed.
“Okay,” Tommy said, and Buck took an unconscious step forward before he made himself stop. It was like that sometimes. A line between them reeled him in closer, even if it wasn’t Tommy that tried to pull him in. Buck’s traitorous heart had a mind of its own.
“Okay.” He looked down and his own quiet thoughts interrupted the noise around them. He didn’t love the way they’d left things last week. That was pretty normal with them. Too often, Buck left Tommy and felt like he’d left a hundred things unsaid. “Hey, about the other day—”
A production assistant popped up between them. Buck could swear that these Hollywood types could teleport with their clipboards without warning when time wasn’t on their side.
“Which one of you is the new Gerrard?” the man asked.
Buck made a face. “Neither.”
Tommy smiled softly at his horror. “Both of us.”
The PA looked happy with that even if none of the hectic energy left him. “BOGO! Great. That’ll make things go faster. Gerrard One, you’re with Adams.” He pointed Buck to an assistant who didn’t look up but grabbed his arm and started to pull him away. “Gerrard Two, you’re with me.”
Buck twisted around as he was dragged off and nearly whined, “Can we get name tags? That don’t say Gerrard?”
He caught the tail end of Tommy’s growing smile as he turned to follow the PA.
****
The day went by in a flash. One of the assistants kept him busy. The cast and crew of Hotshots was gearing up to film the final episode of the season. There were going to be big explosions and powerful character moments. There was an energy on set that revitalized Buck even if he was on the periphery of it all. He corrected things he didn’t think made logical sense with the way a real firehouse worked and enjoyed the stuff that was just cool to watch. His last job of the day was to check a newly built set in the back of the lot where two of the main characters were going to be filmed in the middle of a crisis scene. The studio had to have it cleared for safety before insurance and the management teams of the actors involved would sign off on its use.
“We’re clearing the building,” a PA told him as he walked past him. “Some kind of security threat.”
Buck’s brow pinched in concern. “Security threat?”
The PA rolled his eyes. “Between you and me, I think it’s another paparazzi trick. Called in a threat so one of them can sneak in and get shots while nobody’s here. The leaks have to be coming from somewhere. It’s probably nothing, but everyone’s been ordered to clear out for the day. Security will probably glance around, and everyone will be back to work tomorrow. If Gerrard’s still out, you’ll be here?”
“I’ll be here,” Buck said and hurried by him at a quicker trot. “I’m just going to check something, and I’ll be right behind you.”
The PA waved but didn’t even look back as he went back to scanning his phone. Buck wanted to check the last thing on his list for the day, so he could report back to Gerrard that he filled his shoes well and make sure he wasn’t the reason shooting got delayed. The last thing he wanted was the heat of an angry fan base blaming him for the Hotshots finale getting pushed back.
The set was at the very back of the lot. Everyone else had cleared out. It was a little eerie all alone in the strange canned silence of the warehouse, so he figured he’d be quick. Buck circled the fake elevator when he got to it. There was a hydraulic rigging of some kind attached to it. Someone with more technical knowledge would have to check that part. He went inside to check for fire hazards. There were lights on inside at least. It looked exactly like any other elevator for all that it wasn’t attached to an actual building and couldn’t drop anyone off anywhere. A noise behind him made him turn.
To his surprise, Tommy walked in.
Buck cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why aren’t you evacuating?”
He was about to answer when the elevator doors slid shut behind him. Buck went over and hit the Open Doors button, but nothing happened. On closer inspection, he wasn’t sure the buttons did anything at all. They were fake set pieces like everything else. So much for the easy way out. He turned and looked at Tommy.
“Oops?” he said.
A smile twitched Buck’s lips, and they spent a couple of minutes pushing at the buttons to let themselves pretend they hadn’t locked themselves in a small space while everyone else had cleared out for the rest of the day. Predictably, nothing happened, and the Plan A they already knew was wishful thinking had to get pushed away for Plan B.
“Give me a hand?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Tommy moved to the other side, and together they tried to yank the doors open manually. Buck had the confidence to know there was an impressive amount of muscle between them, and the humility to realize that those muscles came in at a distant second place to this tank they’d closed themselves up in. They heaved for a while longer anyway. Nothing. After a while of straining themselves with no results, they both stopped and stared at each other.
“Well, that’s not great,” Tommy surmised, and his patient calm opposite Buck’s growing frustration made Buck blink.
“We’re trapped in a… fake elevator.” Buck didn’t try to hide his embarrassed wince. “No one at the 118 can hear about this.”
Tommy grinned, but his eyes lit up as something occurred to him. “Do you have your phone? The clipboard guy made me put mine in a basket.”
Buck groaned. His too. The crew was hyper paranoid about all the leaks from the set lately and had everyone on lockdown until the finale was finished filming.
“We’re trapped in a fake elevator with no phones and no emergency call button because the buttons are fake too. Could this get worse?”
Tommy pointed up at the emergency escape hatch in the ceiling. An unsafely built set beat their muscles, but a hole they could crawl out of beat a button. “No, but it can get better. I’ll boost you?”
Buck nodded and got into position. He’d normally be worried about keeping his balance with one spotter, but he wasn’t tempted to give Tommy even teasing grief about it. He trusted him in a way that didn’t leave room for doubt. Up he went, and the hatch came off easily enough, but it pushed down, not up. It fell to the floor, and Buck came back down almost as quickly. He and Tommy stared up at the spot where a hole should have opened up to give them an easy enough exit. He was reminded again that they were not in an actual elevator but a piece of a television set. There was nothing but solid wall where the fake hatch had been. No exit.
“Yeah, we’re not going through that,” Tommy said.
Buck’s frown deepened. “No, we are not.”
“Do you have snacks?” Tommy asked, and Buck was a little galled when he sat down against the back wall like they were making conversation over lunch somewhere.
“I didn’t think to pack any because I wasn’t planning on getting trapped somewhere today,” he answered and figured his sarcasm was okay because something needed to balance out Tommy’s total cool over the situation they found themselves in.
Tommy gave him an exaggerated look of disappointment. “That’s why you should always plan ahead.”
He pulled a vending machine snack out of his jacket pocket. It was something sweet. The corner of Buck’s lips lifted, and he went over and lowered himself to sit down beside him. He didn’t even have to muster puppy eyes for Tommy to give him half.
“Why are you so calm about this?” he asked through a sugary bite. “We’re stuck.”
Tommy shrugged. “I’ve been stuck in worse places. With worse company.”
Something in Buck’s chest twisted as Tommy smiled at him. This was exactly the kind of reaction he’d been trying for weeks to stop. Tommy couldn’t help being handsome and capable and attractive enough to make Buck’s heart go numb and stupid every time he smiled, but sooner or later he needed to get himself to stop reacting so strongly to every look, every shared grin, every casual touch. Sooner or later, he had to stop reacting to Tommy being Tommy by wanting him. Unfortunately, he seemed to make backwards progress every time he saw him again. The more time stretched since the last time he could call him his, the stronger all that wanting got.
“Anyone expecting you?” Tommy asked as they sat and ate quietly.
Buck tried to think about who might notice he wasn’t home when he was supposed to be, but he couldn’t even count on Maddie noticing something was off until at least the next day. There were any number of reasons he might not answer a text or call from her right away, and she probably wouldn’t worry until the morning or tomorrow afternoon. He wasn’t scheduled to work that weekend either. He shook his head, and Tommy nodded.
“You either?” Buck asked.
“I’m free as a bird.” It came out as some neutral thing, but it didn’t feel that way to Buck. It hit him wrong that he could get trapped in a stupid television set and no one would even notice he was in trouble. He wondered if they should start doing calculations on the oxygen situation in there, but Tommy sat there chewing his vending machine snack like all was well in the world. Buck frowned.
“If we were still together, I would have noticed if you didn’t come home,” he said before he could talk himself out of saying it. It was how his brain-to-mouth situation tended to work around him sometimes. Speak first, dig a hole he wasn’t sure he could climb out of, then worry about the consequences.
Tommy looked like he had to suppress a laugh. “But you’re in here too. So being together wouldn’t really have changed this situation either way. We’d just be together and in here.”
Buck nodded. He took the rest of the treat Tommy offered him and decided to dig that hole he’d dug deeper.
“Why aren’t we together?” he asked.
Tommy’s eyebrows shot up, and he nearly choked on the laugh that bubbled up. “What?”
Buck shrugged. “What else do we have to talk about?”
Tommy’s eyes only widened as he searched their temporary prison and pulled topics out of the air. “How about sports or what’s new at the 118 or the weather?”
All safe options, but they were already locked in a six-by-five block with limited oxygen. Safe felt like something he was restricted to outside the stuck doors.
“I would love to talk to you about the weather, Tommy,” he agreed, “after you answer my first question.”
Tommy gave him a long dry look before he crumpled the wrapper, shoved it in his pocket, and got to his feet. He went to the jammed doors and gave them another useless tug. “Okay, now I’m starting to get more annoyed that we’re stuck.”
Buck smiled up at him from the floor as an inexplicable feeling of victory or something close to it bubbled up in him. “And I’m starting to like it. Answer the question. It’s not a hard one. Or it shouldn’t be.”
Tommy turned to him, and Buck didn’t look away. After a while, he sobered a bit and answered him seriously, “We’ve been over this.”
He searched their history but couldn’t find enough truth in that to agree. They avoided, they deflected, they gave up, they walked away. They didn’t sit down and talk things through the way they should have from the start.
“But we haven’t, though. Not really.”
Tommy crossed his arms and set him under a harder stare than he had up to that point. The walls of the fake elevator inched closer as the tension rose. “I have a question if we’re doing a Q and A. What did you tell your captain when they asked you why you ignored an order last week and stayed in the building and almost died?”
Buck exhaled heavily and got to his feet. With a swipe of his pants, he felt the lack of a real escape hatch claw through his body with the anxious need to get out. Chimney might have been right on that first helicopter flight up with Tommy that the 118’s motto was ‘Who cares?’ But his own motto with Tommy was ‘That’s a cool diversion; let’s focus on that.’
“You’re right,” he all but griped as he turned his back on him to achieve some semblance of distance. It wasn’t very effective. “Let’s talk about the weather.”
“You started this.”
“I didn’t start anything, but you know what?” He turned back around to face him and took a step closer as his discomfort took a hard shift toward frustration. “I think I’ll answer my own question. Why aren’t we together?”
“Evan.”
“First it was because I wasn’t ready. And you were right. Sort of. But I got there pretty quick.” It was more of a false start than a real end. “Then it was because you thought I was so into you because you were my first guy. It was new, and I was caught up in the rush of things. Then it was because you were jealous of a friendship you didn’t need to be jealous of, but the kicker is still that second one for me. You want to know why?”
Tommy pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes as he shook his head. “What is the point of this?”
Buck pushed on. They might end up trapped in there all night, and he was suddenly over the old motto. No more diversions. He wanted to get this out, and if there was one perk to getting stuck in there, it was the walls that prevented them from running from some scary honesty. “Because I wasn’t caught up in anything when I thought I saw a future with you, when things were going well, when I wanted more. It was a rush, yeah, but the only thing I was caught up in was how hard I was falling for you.”
Buck’s pulse began to pick up as Tommy abruptly met his eyes. The walls held firm. There was nowhere to run.
“Do you still have feelings for me?” Buck asked again, and he tried not to care that his voice wavered on the question. He held his emotion in check and thought on all the times someone mentioned Tommy or Buck saw him and the air went tighter than in this close space because his body physically reacted to every glimpse, every reminder, every barely-there, too-brief touch. He swallowed thickly. “I’m not trying to pressure you or trap you while we’re literally trapped. I’m just saying, I’m not there. Not past it all and looking back on our relationship like a nice thing I’m over. It’s not over for me. That’s clear every time I see you and my heart starts racing like it did on our first date.”
Tommy watched him for a long moment. Buck felt exposed in a way that made him feel jumpy and unsure, but he refused to walk it back.
“You saying I still make you nervous?” Tommy asked quietly, and the gentle teasing in it was lessened by the softness in his gaze.
Buck mustered what little courage he had left and told the truth while the walls that caged them kept him on track. “I’m saying I asked you if you still have feelings for me, and it would help if you said no. I think.”
Tommy could do what time still hadn’t and force Buck to face the end of something he hadn’t yet gotten himself to let go, but Tommy looked up from the floor and gave him a small frown of regret. “Then I’m sorry because I can’t help you.”
Buck’s already racing heart squeezed tightly in his chest. “You won’t say you don’t have feelings for me anymore?”
Tommy’s eyes were painfully gentle on him when he found Buck’s answering gaze and allowed himself to lock in with him. “You know that I can’t.”
Fear surged up at that response, but something stronger forced the fear out of his way. Tentative excitement took its place. For the first time in a long time, it felt like he and Tommy were in the same place and willing to acknowledge what that place was.
“I’m just trying to do the math on us, you know?” Buck gestured between them with a flicker of a smile. “Figure out the solution. You and me equals…? Or, I guess it’s more like me minus you. I already know what that equals. I’m just hoping you’ll tell me the answer, so I can stop doing the math in my head over and over again.”
Though, maybe the better metaphor was banging his head on the wall to work it out. Or his heart.
Tommy turned his back on him and wandered to the control panel again. He pushed the useless Open Doors button a couple more times, more as a distraction or a stall than with any real effort to escape him and the conversation. His thumb ran over the red call button. In Emergency Push. He dropped his hand back to his side but didn’t turn back around.
“The answer, the reason we’re not together… is because you scare the hell out of me,” Tommy said with a quiet laugh.
Buck wasn’t sure what he expected, but it wasn’t that.
“What?” Buck asked, but he could only see Tommy’s eyes go soft over a small frown as he went to his side. He touched his arm. “Hey, why?”
There was resignation in his voice as he turned to him, but Buck didn’t let go of him. Tommy lifted a shoulder. “When I have you, you’re the most I’ve ever had to lose.”
“You’re not losing me,” Buck insisted.
Tommy leaned back against the jammed doors, and the hurt on his face twisted something in Buck. “I lost you twice.”
They didn’t have the best record. He’d be the first to admit that. God knew he’d thought about it enough, dissected each moment they’d had together and tried to reassemble it in a way that made the picture clearer for him so he could understand how it all fell apart when the picture as a whole was his favorite damn thing to look back on. The hesitation in Tommy’s eyes woke an equal and opposite reaction in Buck. Yeah, they’d tried and fallen apart twice.
“Good,” he said with a certainty that built up fast and strong in his heart.
Tommy cocked an eyebrow at him. “Good?”
Buck’s lips twitched up in a smile as he stepped in closer. “Yeah, good.” The hand he had on his arm slid slowly down until he found Tommy’s hand and clasped it. “You know what they say about third times.” His smile grew infinitely brighter as Tommy squeezed his hand back. “They’re the charm.”
“Speaking of charm,” Tommy said and rolled his eyes at him, but his gaze softened as he pulled him closer. “Come here.”
Buck surrendered to the gravitational pull the second Tommy’s fingers slid into his hair and drew him in. His lips found his like the first breath of fresh air after fighting his way through smoke. His heart lit up, and the heat of the kiss radiated out until his whole body simmered with a quiet fire at Tommy’s touch. The elevator walls and their time apart fell away like dying sparks. There was Tommy’s hand hot on his side, his lips on his jaw, and his fingers shoving his jacket off his shoulder, and Buck’s world narrowed to each point of contact with a readiness that made his head go light.
His own hand began to press hard against Tommy’s chest in a tantalizing trail downward when—
“Whoa.”
Buck and Tommy broke apart panting as the elevator doors finished sliding open and came to a stop. The PA he’d run into earlier stood outside with his clipboard in hand.
“I guess you guys are okay.” He smirked, and he and Tommy made a face at each other before quickly stepping out before they could get trapped inside again.
“Thanks for getting us out,” Tommy said as he fixed his shirt where Buck had rumpled it.
“Yeah, how’d you know we were in there?” Buck asked while his hands and mouth and sides tingled where Tommy had touched and wanted and claimed him. He couldn’t stop looking at him or the little hint of a smile on his face that made Buck feel heroic for staying upright as his knees went unsteady.
The PA lifted the basket he had in his other hand and waggled it. Both of their phones were inside from when they surrendered them earlier.
“You two were the only ones unaccounted for.”
“Right,” Buck said, and they each got their phones out and pocketed them. “Well, thanks. I thought we’d be stuck in there all night.”
The PA scoffed. “What kind of production do you think we’re running here?”
Considering the fact that they just spent the last half hour trapped in a fake elevator that they were supposed to check for safety concerns before someone noticed, Buck opted not to answer that.
“Oh, uh,” Buck started as he turned and walked backward a few steps as they headed out, “we’re not clearing that thing for safety.”
Tommy made a face and shook his head. “No.”
He’d ask Eddie to get his priest to bless it for the miracle it performed inside, but that thing was not getting his signature at the bottom of its safety form.
The PA pouted, and Buck grinned as he turned around and kept walking. Tommy’s hand found his lower back as they left the set. Across the way, a scraggly man with a camera that hung from his neck was getting dragged out by security. Buck nodded to them as they left the warehouse and stepped out into the sunshine of the day.
“Think they found their security threat.” Paparazzi was to blame after all. Too late to resume work. Everyone else had already been evacuated. Buck touched Tommy’s arm as they walked toward their cars. “Why didn’t you leave, you never told me? The lot, I mean. After everyone headed out. You didn’t.”
Tommy stopped walking, and Buck turned to him, brow furrowed. Tommy closed the space between them and brought a hand up to cup his cheek. His gaze made a soft, fond lap around his face.
“Because you were still in the building,” he murmured, and the gentleness in the confession reflected something in Buck’s heart that he understood. The truth was, the building could have crashed around him on the close call the other day, and he still couldn’t have left without getting to Tommy first, without knowing he was okay. It was like Tommy said. When Buck had Tommy, he’d never had more to lose. Broken up at the time of the call or not, Buck’s heart didn’t know the difference and didn’t slow for technicalities. It only knew how to compel him to protect what he loved.
Tommy’s smile spoke for his own heart’s claim on him. It was sweet enough to kiss. So, heart fuller than it had been in weeks, Buck did.