Archive of Our Own

Tommy was one dead dog away from his life being a country song. Thursday night and he was a war veteran, alone, at a bar, drinking, with his truck in need of a new transmission and his heart broken in a million pieces in his chest. 

It was his own fault. 

The heartbreak not the transmission. He’d save himself a headache by just turning the damn truck in for a new one but he was pretty sure he could get his hands on the parts he needed to replace it. It just would take time. A lot of time. But what else did he have to do on his four days off? It wasn’t like his phone had been ringing off the hook with invitations to hang out lately. 

Also his own fault. 

Tommy hadn’t been much fun to be around in a while. 

He took another long drag of his beer and stared up at the boxing match playing on the screen mounted on the ancient TV shelf decorated with old fake cobwebs and fraying fishing nets from past lifetimes. It was something he could’ve done at home, drink and be miserable on his own couch, but he was still clinging to the idea that he was fine with desperate fingers that the thought of going out to get a burger and a drink at the dive bar around the corner had seemed like a perfectly reasonable course of action. 

Tommy should’ve stayed at home that night. 

What was it about those country songs? Somewhere around the second or third versus the pathetic man gets visited by the devil? 

Well, Tommy’s devil came in the form of Mason Dutton. 

“Tommy Kinard!” 

Tommy jolted at the sound of his name as a figure slid into the barstool beside him. The familiar hand slapped the space between his shoulder blades and Tommy’s memories flickered to the front of his mind like sun warmed sand across his brow. Desert nights. Bland food flavored by laughter in the mess tent. The anchor of knowing there was someone watching your six even while they flew across minefields. 

Cold air kicked on from somewhere as Tommy’s vision cleared and he sucked in a breath as he took Mason in. 

“Holy shit!” Tommy held out his arm and Mason fell into him for a warm embrace immediately. “Mason, what the hell are you doing here?” 

“I’m in town for work,” Mason said with that coy smile of his as he dipped his chin. “Saw a familiar face from across the bar and had to come say hi.”

“Man!” Tommy shook his head. “How long has it been? Fifteen years?”

Mason looked almost exactly the same as the last time Tommy had seen him. His charming coy smile revealed the same sharp dimple that used to disarm anyone who crossed his path. His icy grey blue eyes were bright and alert with wrinkles around the edges from age and too many days out in the sun. His hair which had washed from dishwater brown into salt and pepper grey hair was coiled into tight knitted curls on his head that he kept cropped military close to his scalp with a hairline that was maybe a little further back than the last time Tommy had seen him but the streak of white hair just past the center had been there since Tommy knew him. Mason used to push his hat over it to keep from revealing the identifiable streak while they were out in the field but he’d had it since he was a kid he said. Something about splitting his head open when he’d been younger and the hair never quite growing the same. 

Mason looked good! His broad shoulders were still sculpted and in shape with a healthy tan on his skin that spoke of a well traveled discharge. 

“How have you been, man?” Mason asked, his eyes wrinkling in the corners as he smiled up at him. 

Tommy’s stomach gave a sharp twist. 

“I’ve… uh…. I’ve been good. Yeah!” Tommy lied but he wasn’t exactly in the mood to rehash the fact that he may have been an idiot and walked away from the love of his life so… “I’m with the fire department. Almost twenty years now.”

God, that made him sound ancient. 

“That’s amazing, man!” Mason knocked his knuckles against Tommy’s. “You still flying?”

Mason had known Tommy when he’d been a stupid nineteen year old with a freshly printed pilot’s license funded by the United States Army. He’d been there when Tommy had found the one thing in his life that truly felt right. He hadn’t known what he wanted to do when he walked into the recruiters the day he turned eighteen. He’d just wanted to get out of his dad’s house and run away from the terrifying realization that he’d spent more time trying not to look at the boys on his football team than the girls on the cheerleading squad. But flying had been Tommy’s home. It’d been the first place where he’d truly felt right and settled in his own skin. 

“Yeah,” Tommy said easily. “Still flying. I’m a rescue pilot actually. What about you?” 

“Eh!” Mason shrugged as he spun his beer between his hands. “I’ve done alright. I’ve been mainly working in the private sector. Gotten to travel the world. See all the bucket list things you know.”

Tommy did know. Mason and the others in their unit used to sit in torn up old lawn chairs at base and talk about all the places they wanted to see and experience once they got out. The world seemed less certain then but so much bigger beneath the desert stars. They’d been promised so much adventure and honor if they just survived. 

Adventure and honor though looked a lot like a broken system and whole heaping of symptoms that somehow disqualified you for the very thing you needed after doing what your country asked of you. 

Tommy didn’t know how he managed to get by with only a few bad memories and a handful of nightmares that crept up every once in a while. He didn’t know much about Eddie’s struggles but that was the thing. You didn’t talk about them if you were okay. It was like a ghost you risked summoning if you mentioned it out loud. 

It was good to see Mason was in the same camp at least. 

“And now your grand world travels brought you to a dive bar in the middle of Sherman Oaks?” Tommy couldn’t help but ask. It wasn’t like his little hidden dive bar was hitting any of the lists online. Hell, he didn’t even think anyone local would’ve recommended it. 

That had been why he’d sought it out in the first place. It was somewhere he could disappear to for a few hours. 

Mason shrugged as he took a long pull of his beer. 

“I like seeing where the locals hydrate.” Mason’s brow furrowed. “Remind me again. Are you from LA? I can’t remember…”

Tommy shook his head. “No. I just… sort of found my footing here. It’s home now.”

It was the home he made it. Evan had said that to him once when they’d been sharing lazy kisses in bed and still floating on the high of getting to know one another. Tommy’s childhood home was probably falling apart around his dad as he drank himself to death on that old lazy boy and he couldn’t find one ounce of himself to feel guilty about that. 

“That’s great, Tommy. I mean it.” Mason smiled, bumping his shoulder. 

“Thanks.” Tommy said before he tried to search through the recesses of his own memory for something to ask about Mason. They hadn’t exactly been in the same unit but Tommy had flown Mason a few times to shoot the shit whenever they were waiting for orders. “What about… you had a fiancée, right? Jessica?” 

“Jennifer!” Mason corrected. 

Tommy winced. “Right! Sorry!” 

“No, you’re fine. I do that too but that’s what happens when you’re three times divorced.” Mason’s dimple made another appearance as he winked at him and Tommy couldn’t help the laugh. 

“Three! Jesus Mason! What’d you do to get three women to run from you?”

“Watch it, Kinard!” Mason’s nose wrinkled as he fought back his own laugh. He shook his head and took another sip of his beer before the joy from before slipped into something a little more somber. “It’s the job, ya know. I’m gone a lot. There’s things I can’t tell them. Women get insecure and jealous. What about you? You got yourself a special lady?”

Tommy froze. Long smothered instincts resurrected in his chest pulling his lungs into a tight bind as he sucked in a breath and held it. 

For the first time in almost eight years, Tommy considered lying. A lifetime of lying about who he was had nearly eaten away at him until he’d been a shell of a person he didn’t like and Tommy had sworn he’d never go back. 

He was finally okay with being who he was and he didn’t care who gave a shit if he was gay or not but…

Mason didn’t know that Tommy. Mason knew the Tommy so deep in the closet that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell wouldn’t have even known to look for him in said closet. 

The back of his neck prickled and he hated that he knew immediately the familiar sense of unease. 

“Uh… no.” Tommy said, reaching back to rub away the tension on his neck. He hadn’t seen Mason in years. People changed. If he had a problem with it then well, that was on him. “Not a lady. I’m gay… actually.” 

Mason’s face dropped in shock. “No shit!” 

As far as reactions went, it wasn’t the worst Tommy had experienced or expected. But the tightness in his chest didn’t let up. 

“Yeah.” 

“That’s awesome, man! Congrats!” Mason tipped his beer for Tommy to cheers and oh… okay. That went better than he expected. 

He tapped his bottle against Mason’s and took a swig, letting the sour hop dry out his tongue. 

“Sorry,” Tommy said even though he wasn’t. It’d taken him a long time to realize he didn’t owe anyone an apology for keeping that part of himself a secret as long as he did. But he found sometimes it helped smooth away any lingering weirdness that settled when he broke the news. Mason knew him when he still had breakouts for Godsake! “I would’ve told you but the whole…”

Mason rolled his eyes as he nodded. He mimed zipping his lips shut and throwing away the key. “I get it.”

The weirdness went away with Mason’s easy acceptance but something else hung in the air between them. Something Tommy couldn’t quite put his finger on. 

“What?” He asked when he caught Mason giving him a look. 

Mason winced and scratched at the back of his ear. “We kind of all… suspected.” 

“Fuck off! No, you didn’t!” Even Tommy didn’t quite know back then. He hadn’t let himself linger on what those feelings he kept deep inside meant. 

“We weren’t going to say anything obviously but we had our suspicions.” 

Tommy didn’t know if it was meant to be as a way to ease his worry but the mark didn’t quite land as well as he thought Mason thought it did. It wasn’t the first time someone had proclaimed that Tommy’s coming out confirmed what they always knew and it never quite came off the way they meant it to. Still, he’d gotten a lot of practice at shrugging off the weird comment since then and didn’t take it personally. 

“Yeah,” Tommy said before changing the subject. “So you said you’re in town for work?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a job in a few days actually.” Mason settled his arms on the bar top and flicked his gaze up to the match on the screen. The southpaw contender was about two hits away from a KO on the champion but Tommy didn’t really feel like watching. “It’s an easy gig. Armed security for one of those tech billionaire pricks. Chet Rose.”

Tommy knew that name. Most people in Los Angeles knew that name after the construction site for his data center nearly used up all the water during the last set of wildfires that almost took out Burbank. 

“Oh yeah?” Tommy asked, shifting out of the way when someone wedged themselves into the barstool beside him. They mumbled a quiet apology and Tommy waved it off before he snuck a glance at how much of his beer he had left. He’d been planning on sticking around for at least one more but with the way his little oasis was filling, he was starting to feel suffocated more than anything. Wallowing on his couch had more appeal, honestly. 

Mason hummed around his beer bottle, the sound muffled by the thick green glass, and nodded. “You know… We need a pilot.”

It wasn’t subtle but Tommy supposed it wasn’t meant to be. Not really. Not for him. 

Mason didn’t look at him first. He focused on rolling his beer bottle between his palms until a line of condensation streaked across the bartop beneath him. But when he did look at Tommy, the heavy, sinking feeling in his gut settled like a weight at the bottom of a pool. 

Serenity came with his clarity and the prickling on the back of his neck returned with a fervor that Tommy knew he wouldn’t be able to rub away even if he tried. 

Mason was watching him. 

“Where the locals drink, huh?” Tommy asked, not expecting an answer. Mason gave him an apologetic shrug anyway. 

“What do you say?” Mason pressed. “It’d be easy money. Just a few days with my crew and then you could go back to your taxpayer funded job like we hadn’t even run into each other at the bar on this very night.”

Tommy wasn’t an idiot and he wasn’t a saint. He paused just long enough to consider how much money Mason was theoretically talking about. There was a reason guys like Mason went into the private sector after they got out. The money was astronomical. Millions of dollars could be made in over a weekend alone. It didn’t require a job interview or a college degree and relied specifically on the people you knew to get you further in the business. It took their skills and made a profit and the only difference was that sometimes the sand beneath their feet was attached to beaches by resorts instead of deserts in the Middle East. 

But Tommy also knew better. 

It was a lawless land where the high of surviving only prolonged until that high turned into a fix that you chased over and over again until you burnt out. Back alley deals and business meetings in the shadows used hired ex-military to try and cover for them when they skirted too far outside of the law. And Chet Rose? Tommy didn’t know him personally but he’d shown enough disregard and contempt for what was right that Tommy had no intention of doing anything to help him further that contempt. 

Plus, he’d heard the stories. The ones where things went wrong and people wound up dead even on what was supposed to be “simple jobs”. 

He wasn’t interested. 

“No thanks,” Tommy said, pushing his beer away from him for the bartender to take. 

“Come on, Tommy!” Mason nudged Tommy’s arm. “I read the news article. You flew into a hurricane and somehow landed on a capsized cruise ship? That’s not just hardcore. That’s fucking skill man. What I need is just a walk in the park for you.”

Tommy needed to go. The light feeling of seeing a familiar face was tainted now with feeling like an idiot and Mason’s attempts at flattery weren’t helping. Still, it wasn’t like he was trying to be a dick so he plastered on a smile and slapped Mason on the arm before he tossed a tip on the bartop. 

Tommy stood. “I appreciate it, Mace, I do. But I had a chance at that life and it was a no then and it’s still a no now. Enjoy LA man.” 

“Tom,” Mason said and his dimple was in full force with his lips curved in his charming smile. But beneath that facade was an icy calm that settled down Tommy’s spine and threatened to freeze his veins. 

Mason stared at him for a moment. One that was too long to be anything but intentional and Tommy was rooted beneath the weight of it. 

Mason blew out a breath and shook his head before he reached into his pocket.

The sound the photograph made when Mason dropped it on the counter top was nearly silent but it erupted like a bomb in Tommy’s chest before he knew what even hit him. 

His heart skipped one beat then another before it kick started into a frenzied rhythm behind his ribcage and threatened to break free by brute force if necessary. Ice festered under his skin, seeping into his joints like poison, until Tommy was stiff all over. 

He stared down at the picture and didn’t move an inch as he tried to process what he was seeing. 

It was of Evan, his pale skin glistening with sweat as he smiled, holding the door open for someone outside of his apartment building. 

Mason put down another picture and then another, making the cold shock in Tommy’s veins turn brittle with each one being presented to him. It was obvious from the photographs that Evan hadn’t known his picture was being taken. It had to have been captured with a long lens of some kind. Evan, at his apartment building. Evan, by his Jeep outside of the grocery store. Evan, in his uniform, taking out the trash at the back of the firehouse, alone and surrounded by shadows. 

“I really wished you had said yes, man.” Mason leaned back and tipped the picture up to stare at him. “Cute kid. Got that birthmark thing? He’s a firefighter too? Calls himself Buck, right?” 

Tommy didn’t consider himself an angry person. The emotion felt too volatile, too explosive to control. Too much like his father. 

But at that moment he was his father's son. 

White, hot embers burned in his knuckles as he balled his hands into fists. A hand from behind settled on his shoulder, bruising and firm, and it was only because of the pictures being held in front of him that he didn’t send back an elbow to knock the asshole holding him to the ground. 

Mason stood, his eyes never leaving Tommy’s, and that smile sharpened into something deadly. “Let’s take this somewhere else, huh? You can tell me all about him.” 

Tommy didn’t have much choice except to follow Mason. The hand on his shoulder didn’t push him but it guided him through the bar all the same, keeping him on the same path so that he didn’t stray too far as they made their way towards the exit. No one even looked up. 

Tommy forced himself to breathe as they stepped outside. “Where is he?”

The parking lot was empty except for a single blacked out SUV idling by the door. The engine purred like a beauty as steam from the exhaust bloomed in the air and Tommy’s stomach twisted in a sharp swoop. 

There was one driver already sitting up front but another man stepped from around the SUV and gave Mason a sharp nod that screamed respect and loyalty. 

Tommy dug his heels into the pavement. The grip of the man’s hand on his shoulder tightened just a fraction but Tommy felt the warning all the same. 

“He’s safe and sound,” Mason said, holding a hand to his chest as one of his associates opened the back door for them. “You have my word.” 

What did that mean? 

Everything in Tommy was begging him to scream, to fight, to run away and save himself. Throw an elbow, use his fists, anything but get in that car! 

But they had a picture of Evan. 

They had pictures of Evan! 

Mason knew where Evan worked, where he lived, and where the deepest bruise to push was to get Tommy to cooperate. The ache in Tommy’s chest pulsed with his heartbeat and the urge to pull out his phone and text Evan nearly took him out at the knees. Was Evan on shift? Did they have him? Mason and his men were killers, trained mercenaries for hire, and Evan wasn’t… Evan wasn’t—

Mason spread out his arms and Tommy didn’t buy it for one fucking second. “Come on, Tommy. Get in the car. I just want to talk, man.” 

Tommy couldn’t get in the car. He knew he couldn’t. If he stepped in the car, he was as good as dead. There was no good outcome that came out of willingly stepping into Mason’s world. There was either a bullet or jail. 

But Tommy didn’t know where Evan was which meant there was no choice. 

Not until he knew Evan was safe. 

He clenched his jaw and took a step forward but Mason held up his hand. “Phone first.”

The embers from before flickered beneath his skin with how tightly he grabbed onto his phone. Tommy slapped it against Mason’s chest and felt the momentary satisfaction of seeing him waver on his feet but Mason just smirked at him and said nothing as Tommy got in the backseat. 

They made Tommy sit in the middle seat which he hadn’t done since he was twelve. His legs cramped up the moment they were forced to fold into his chest and he scowled at the back of the front seats as he twisted his fingers into his lap as Mason and his man saddled up on either side of him. The SUV started driving away almost immediately and Tommy dug his nails into his palms, using the pain to calm the way his heart wanted to beat out of his chest with how fast it was racing. 

They drove for what felt like hours. 

Tommy had tried to keep track of where they were going— he had the advantage of knowing the lay of the land— but after a while they just drove in circles. His adrenaline was running too high for too long that his body started to shut down into a numb disassociation just to keep himself from crashing. He had a feeling that was the intention behind their long backway to a small two story in Sun Valley. 

The hand that had been firm but not unkind on his shoulder from before was replaced by a meaner and promising grip around his elbow practically dragging him inside after Mason. 

Tommy didn’t know what he expected. The inside was clean with simple, unassuming furniture that came from places that were rented out with a quick turn around. The walls were egg shell white with long caramel blackout curtains covering every window. The door from the garage opened into a small kitchen that hadn’t been remodeled since at least the 90s and the strong scents of coffee and gun oil nearly smacked Tommy in the face. 

Two more men sat at a small kitchen table, cleaning and tending to the pieces of an automatic rifle, and watched as their boss had a man march inside against his will with an almost bored stare. 

Two more meant six total with Mason. 

Six men. 

Six men so far that Tommy had to be aware of and no Evan in sight. 

Was he even there? 

Tommy tried to tell himself that if he wasn’t, that was a good thing. But if he wasn’t that meant Mason had played Tommy like a fiddle and it still didn’t mean Evan was safe. 

“This way,” Mason said with a flick of his fingers and Tommy hesitated for only a second but it was enough to earn him a shove in between his shoulders. 

Tommy bit down on his cheek hard enough to bleed to keep back the snarl that wanted to fall free from his lips. 

“Have a seat,” Mason said, waving his hand at a depressing looking couch. 

Tommy didn’t move. “Where is he?”

“I told you,” Mason said and Tommy was very aware of at least three bodies coming up behind him. “He’s safe.” 

The for now was unspoken and hung in the air between them like a live charge ready to blow at any moment. But Tommy still didn’t move. Mason needed him. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of seeking him out where there were thousands of pilots in the city who would’ve flown him wherever he asked without even questioning his name. 

He wasn’t moving until he knew where Evan was. 

Tommy had ground and even if it was little, he was going to stand on it until he knew that Evan was okay. 

Mason sighed before he nodded. 

“Alright,” he said, grabbing the remote and turning the TV on. 

The screen whined before colors came into view and all the bile burning at the back of Tommy’s throat threatened to make another appearance again. Relief was dosed with horror and the anger from before was like kerosene sparking a match to burn it all to a crisp. 

Because there was Evan. He was okay. He wasn’t there. He was home. 

And Tommy knew that because he was watching from a live stream in Evan’s apartment. 

There was a camera in Evan’s apartment. They’d been inside Evan’s apartment!

The familiar glow of the industrial lights warmed the otherwise cold interior of the loft. Evan, unaware, was humming to himself as he turned down his comforter and tossed some sweats onto the bed. The soft murmuring of the TV he liked to listen to when he was alone in his apartment for noise filled the air like a lullaby and Tommy could only watch as Evan cracked a yawn as he disappeared into the bathroom. 

“Your boy has some nice digs,” Mason said and Tommy had never wanted to throttle someone more. 

“Leave him out of this,” Tommy said, forcing his voice to stay as even as he could.

Mason held out his hands magnanimously. “I’d love nothing more than to do just that, Tom.”

“He has nothing to do with this.” Tommy hadn’t corrected Mason. He didn’t know if Mason knew that he and Evan weren’t together anymore. Tommy didn’t know if revealing that would hurt or help the situation so he kept his mouth shut. But either way Tommy wasn’t going to let Mason drag Evan into whatever shit storm he was dragging Tommy into. “I don’t even know what this is but I’ll do it. Just leave him alone.”

Mason’s smile turned sharp. “Happy to hear it. Now please sit down.” 

Tommy wanted to scream. 

He sat instead. 

“You want a beer?” Mason asked and the fact that Evan’s bedroom was still illuminated behind him was enough to have Tommy’s stomach turning again. 

“No.” Tommy bit out until he was sure he was going to crack his molars. 

Mason shrugged. “Suit yourself.” 

He handed Tommy a file and jerked his chin in encouragement to open it. Tommy’s fingers were numb as he flipped open the folder and stared down at a sleek Leonardo AW109 trekker. The gun metal grey was almost black in beneath the shine and polish around the body with tan call numbers along the tail. The interior had to be custom with the cream leather seats and the embroidered rose on the headrest. 

Rose Industries. 

Chet Rose’s helicopter. 

“Chet Rose told you to kidnap a civilian to fly him in his fancy helicopter?” Tommy couldn’t help but drawl.

“Chet Rose hired me and my men to provide armored security. He’s developed a software that could put bitcoin out of business and he plans on selling it,” Mason said easily. “People tend to get a little twitchy when it comes to putting others out of business so he hired us to protect him and the product.” 

That wasn’t that uncommon. Private security was a lucrative business filled with ex military and law enforcement. If the elite could afford it, they didn’t mind dropping a few million for the extra man power. 

What didn’t make sense was Tommy’s place in the whole thing. 

Someone like Chet would’ve had his own pilot, hell he would’ve had his own pilot’s license if he was bored enough. They didn’t need Tommy which meant they shouldn’t have needed Evan. Yet, Mason had cornered Tommy in a bar and had been following him long enough to not only identify but target his weak spot. 

Tommy’s stomach twisted with worms that dug into him and threatened to split him in two but he forced himself to swallow it back. He hadn’t spent years playing like he didn’t care for anything. 

Tommy arched a brow. “And he couldn’t hire his own pilot because…” 

“Because his pilot had an unexpected family emergency,” Mason said. 

“How convenient for you.” 

Mason smirked. “I know right. Such a shame.”

“And Chet Rose just trusts your judgement because…” 

“Because he doesn’t know we’re going to rob him.” 

There it was. 

It was so obvious, Tommy was pissed off it’d taken him so long to realize it. 

“How?” Tommy asked, his irritation slipping between his teeth before he could catch it. 

Mason shrugged. “You don’t need to worry about that. In fact, the less you know, the better honestly.”

He said it like he was doing Tommy a favor. Like he was a friend trying to keep Tommy from getting in over his head. Like he was looking out for him the same way he had when Tommy had been an idiot kid just trying to survive a warzone he hadn’t been prepared to deal with when they’d shipped him out and dropped him off in the middle of the fucking desert. 

Evan’s apartment still played on the live stream in full high definition on the TV behind Mason. 

“You expect me to just go with you knowing you’re going to rob someone and then what?” Tommy shot a look at the six men in the room watching him like he was something they’d stepped on. “Fly you all to Mexico with the goods on the guy’s chopper?”

Mason didn’t say anything for a moment and Tommy sucked in a breath, holding it tight in his chest as he forced himself to count to ten. The prickling on his neck was buzzing like a burn that stretched too far across his skin. The instinct to duck and cover was right there, humming in his blood and making his heart thump against his ribcage. 

He was outnumbered by five. 

He was outgunned from zero to at least four he could see. 

He was on a couch with his feet on solid ground but everything in him felt like the world was one wrong twist away from shattering beneath him. It was the adrenaline, he knew. The reality of his situation wasn’t truly setting in yet but his instincts were screaming at him that he was facing a tiger in the trees and he was just the stupid, unaware prey that was two steps behind. 

As much as he wanted to fight, to scream, to throw things, he had to be careful.  

Mason dropped his gaze down to his shoes as his lips twitched, his dimple deepening with his smirk. “You’re upset.”

“Am I supposed to respond another way to be kidnapped and blackmailed?” Tommy snapped. 

Mason laughed. 

Tommy didn’t know what he was expecting but it wasn’t for him to laugh. 

He wasn’t expecting the way his chest expanded at the sound either. It was… familiar. He could remember Mason’s laugh as they sat around the campfire in their fatigues and talked about anything that wasn’t the god awful day they’d had. Mason’s laugh used to be infectious, Tommy remembered too. 

Now, it was just there. 

“No,” Mason said with a shrug. “It’s fair. You’re allowed to be pissed at me. But I need you, Tom.”

“Why?” Tommy pressed.

Mason hugged his arms around himself as he leaned back against the TV stand, propping his hip up on the shelf as he sighed. “You know the LEOs and local towers. They know your voice. They like you. They trust you.” 

Tommy stiffened as each of those landed like a sharp jab to his chest. The unspoken implication fell in his lap, heavy once again even in the hypothetical. Mason wanted him to convince them to look the other way. 

“You’ll be able to tell us ahead of time if anybody catches on with what we have planned,” Mason added. “And step in when we need cover.”

That wasn’t all. Tommy knew that wasn’t all. That was never it when it came to people like Mason. They took and took and took until you had nothing left to give and then took more even then. 

But Mason was trying to pretend like it was simple. Like Tommy had nothing to lose just flying them; like he even had plausible deniability by not knowing fully what they were doing. But there was so much that Tommy was going to lose. His job, his license, the respect he spent years building up. The people in the tower weren’t just voices in a headset to him. He knew their names, their lives, their children! The moment word got out that Tommy was in any way involved would be the end of everything. 

His wings would be clipped for good. 

It wasn’t a death sentence but it was as close to one it could get. 

“You can’t be serious.” Tommy snapped, his control finally fraying into pieces. 

Mason stiffened before he sighed. 

He shook his head as he pulled out a phone and pressed one button before holding his phone up to his ear. 

“Go ahead.” Was all he said before he hung up the phone and stepped aside, clearing the view of the TV.

Lead sunk in Tommy’s gut. 

“What are you doing?” Tommy asked.

“I’m showing you how serious I am,” Mason said before a man dressed in all black appeared on the screen, walking in through Evan’s front door without an ounce of resistance. 

Burning ice shot through Tommy’s veins like a volt as the man climbed up the steps of Evan’s loft. His eyes shot to the bathroom where a stream of steam was wafting through the door.

“Stop…” Tommy barely heard the word pass through his lips as the breath shredded on the glass in his throat. “Stop it!”

From the angle of the camera, Tommy could only just make out the sliver of the bathroom where the door hadn’t closed all the way. Evan never closed the door all the way even though he absorbed the heat and the steam of his shower like a lizard who had never seen the sun before. 

“How else am I supposed to hear the murderers, Tommy?” Evan had asked when Tommy had teased him about it. 

The man on the screen pulled out a pair of zip ties. 

Tommy didn’t even realize that he was up on his feet until he was moving. “You sick son of a bitch!”

Three men grabbed him and tried to slam him back down on the couch but Tommy didn’t stop. He snarled and kicked and swung with all his strength to try and get free. An arm was around his throat while bruising hands yanked him back down. Sharp pain rattled all the way up his shin as his leg smacked into the coffee table. 

“He doesn’t have anything to do with this!”

Mason didn’t flinch. “I don’t want to hurt the kid, Tommy. Really? He seems nice.” 

Tommy couldn’t do anything! He couldn’t do anything but watch as the masked man crept into Evan’s bedroom while Evan was completely unaware of the danger lingering outside his door. Panic flared hot and bright against the back of his eyes as his lungs tightened in his chest. He never knew powerlessness could burn. 

Tommy couldn’t do anything but watch. 

But that wasn’t true. 

“Call him off!” Tommy screamed, the words nearly strangling him as he forced them out of his throat. “Call him off! I’ll do it! Fuck! Just call him off!” 

Mason held up the phone to his ear. “Stand down.” 

He didn’t wait to hear a confirmation. He didn’t even look to see if they followed his orders. Mason just simply watched Tommy as Tommy stared back at the screen. 

The man froze before he quickly moved back down the stairs and out of frame, disappearing just as Evan, completely unaware, walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. 

Tommy couldn’t breathe. 

Adrenaline burned like acid at the back of his tongue as his mind raced with a million different scenarios that started at horrifying and skyrocketed to nightmare fuel for the rest of his life. 

Except it wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t a nightmare and Evan was there on the screen getting changed into gym shorts and a hoodie. 

They weren’t together. Not anymore. Tommy and Evan hadn’t even talked in weeks. Tommy was probably the last thing on Evan’s mind and that had been exactly what Tommy wanted for him. To move on with his life and find the person who would make him the happiest and deserved him. But now he was in danger because of Tommy. A masked man had nearly…

Tommy didn’t even want to think of what could’ve happened; what Mason would’ve done to Evan and made Tommy watch until Tommy broke. If Mason knew they weren’t together anymore, that Evan had moved on, maybe then he could leave Evan alone. 

Tommy would do anything if it meant he left Evan alone! 

But the flip side of that was that if Mason thought that Evan wasn’t of any value anymore then he would cut his losses quickly and swiftly. 

Tommy had heard stories. They’d been cautionary tales older and wiser officers had told them whenever men with military haircuts and the promise of a good pay once they got out of the service came around. 

No one would know Evan was even dead until they found his body and that would’ve only been if Mason was generous or sloppy. The cleaner option would’ve been to make it so that Evan disappeared for good. 

Chances were that Mason even knew they weren’t together and saw the one thing Tommy had been desperately trying to hide ever since he’d walked out of Evan’s loft. That while he may have been Evan’s first, Tommy was pretty sure he’d been Tommy’s last. That a piece of his heart he’d been trying so hard to shield had been left behind when he’d left that loft and Tommy had been too much of a coward to go back for it. 

Tommy bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood and said nothing. 

The bruising hands holding him down let up with a swift jerk of Mason’s chin and Tommy’s body lit up with pressure points of pain he knew would be marked on his skin later. 

“Glad you could see it my way,” Mason said before he stood up and tipped his head. “You’re going to need some sleep. Come with me.”

Tommy didn’t have any other choice but to follow him. 

He followed Mason to a windowless bedroom where a bed, TV, and small en-suite bathroom sat empty and untouched. The closet was almost too small for Tommy to even fit in and all the doors were missing including the one to the bedroom itself but otherwise the room was unthreatening as a windowless room in a flip house could be. 

Bile burned at the back of Tommy’s throat as he turned to Mason. 

“Cozy.” He bit out. 

“Look,” Mason said with his same soft devil may care smile that charmed everyone else to get close enough to strike. Tommy didn’t move. “I know this is hard for you. I wouldn’t have asked if there was anybody else, Tom. Plus, I really don’t want to hurt your boy toy.”

Tommy coiled his fists tight as his side. If Mason noticed, he didn’t seem to care. Instead, he reached for the remote and aimed it at the TV.

“A little piece of good will.” Mason said as the screen filled with the feed of Evan climbing under the covers, his own TV playing one of the late night cooking shows he was obsessed with. “Get some rest, Tommy. Tomorrow’s going to be busy.”

Tommy didn’t watch him leave. He couldn’t. Not when his eyes were fixed on the way Evan burrowed in his bed wearing one of Tommy’s hoodies he never got back after they broke up. 

Buck knew that it wasn’t time to get up but he couldn’t remember when he fell asleep either. 

He was just on the brink of being uncomfortably warm with one sock missing that he must have kicked off in his sleep and his head buried in between the pillows. His hair was still damp on one side from his shower which meant his curls were going to be nearly impossible to tame in the morning. The TV was still playing with his show long over and the deadness of the middle of the night made the dark inky sky nearly black outside his windows. 

Buck shoved a fist into the mattress and pushed himself up to look around his bedroom. 

Why was he awake?

He frowned as he smacked around for his phone in the covers. It was too warm out to have his down comforter out on his bed anymore but the extra weight from the blanket was nice. It made the bed feel less… empty. 

How pathetic was that? 

It’d been how many months since he and Tommy broke up and he still was adjusting to sleeping alone? 

Tommy didn’t even bubble him anymore. 

But there he was, sleeping in the middle of the bed and wearing Tommy’s hoodie he never gave back that his friends didn’t know about. They never would either. It’d just make them worry and meddle when all he needed– when all he wanted was to just wallow by himself a little more. Sometimes, if he buried his nose in just the right spot, he could still smell him; smell the sandalwood and amber and vanilla that used to settle Buck’s bones in a way no one else had. 

They kept telling him to move on and he knew it was from a good place. They were right. But he just wasn’t ready. 

Not yet. 

Buck’s hand found the body warmed leather of his phone case and he squinted down at his screen as he checked his messages. 

Nothing. 

Just an ungodly hour that promised a hellish time waking up in the morning and no further explanation why he was awake. 

Had he forgotten something? He had a shift but that didn’t start till nine and his bag was already packed and ready to go. There wasn’t enough laundry to run a load and he had had dinner at Eddie’s that night so there weren’t any dishes or burners left on. Even still, Buck peered down from his lofted bedroom and checked to make sure he didn’t see the little red light on the stove down in the kitchen. 

All that stared back at him was darkness. 

Goosebumps crawled up his spine. 

Had he heard something? 

No. Buck quickly cut off that spiral. He always used to do that when he was a kid, tricking himself into thinking he heard something when all he actually heard was a too quiet house and the silence he’d grown to hate. He spooked himself too many times at Maddie’s own personal enjoyment for him to do it now at… Buck looked at his phone again and groaned as he saw the time. 

If he wanted to get a run in before his shift, he had to go back to bed. 

It was nothing. 

He flung the covers around until he could find the remote and turned off his TV before he reached down and grabbed his charger from the floor. Plugging his phone in, Buck made quick work to check his alarm was set before he turned off the light, and curled himself around the comforter to make the bed feel not as big as it did now that he was alone. 

He drifted off back to sleep in minutes. 

Tommy didn’t sleep a wink. 

The only way he knew it was the morning was by the soft glow of the sun streaming in through Evan’s windows on the live stream. 

The strong scent of coffee wafted in through the kitchen as Mason stepped into his doorway holding two mugs. He held one out to Tommy and everything in Tommy wanted to refuse but the exhaustion was making his eyes burn.

Tommy let the hot caffeine sharpen his senses as he glared up at Mason. 

“Your boy’s an early riser, huh?” Mason asked, watching as Evan quickly made his bed dressed for a run. 

Tommy didn’t answer him. Mason didn’t get to know that Evan was only an early riser because he was afraid of missing out on what the day had to offer. He didn’t get to know that some of Tommy’s favorite memories were the mornings when Evan let himself be lazy and content to sleep in Tommy’s arms as Tommy counted every one of his lashes. 

Mason had people watching Evan but Tommy wasn’t going to give him anything that he could use to further twist the knife he’d dug in his side about him. If Evan was up for a run it meant that he probably had a shift later which meant he would be safer. Not completely safe, Tommy didn’t kid himself. But safer surrounded by people who loved and would protect him if necessary. The problem was that they didn’t know that it was absolutely necessary. 

Mason smirked at Tommy’s non answer and jerked his chin in the direction of the shower. 

“Get a shower. We’ve got bagels out in the kitchen when you’ve freshened up.”

Tommy didn’t move until he watched Evan leave for his run. 

There wasn’t a door for the bathroom but there was a curtain on the shower and clean, unopened toiletries waiting for him on the sink. 

Tommy resisted the urge to take the toothbrush and ram it in Mason’s neck. The idea of stripping and taking a shower made his skin crawl but he knew in the long run, it would do him some good. Unease and exhaustion were sharp on his neck and the adrenaline had left a flop sweat along his spine making his shirt feel tacky and gross. The water pressure was strong and warm beneath his hand. 

Clenching his jaw, Tommy didn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him squirm and he quickly worked off his clothes. He’d figured out the night before that from the living room you could see right into the bedroom and with the amount of surveillance they’d managed to integrate into Evan’s life without him knowing, Tommy planned on operating under the assumption that he was being watched as well. 

Well, if they wanted a show, they could have one. 

The heat of the warm was a sweet temptation that Tommy wanted to curl up under and never leave. He let it seep into his muscles along his back and sooth away the ache in his spine before he ducked his head under and rinsed away the grime of his panic from earlier. 

He couldn’t panic anymore. 

Now, he had to think. 

Evan was being watched. 

Tommy was trapped. 

Mason wanted something. But there was so much more that Tommy didn’t know. Mason may have been playing the thoughtful friend trying to protect Tommy and give him plausible deniability but the less Tommy knew, the less he could use to his advantage to get control of the situation. He was keeping Tommy in the dark intentionally hoping he’d get lost and had to rely on Mason to get him out. 

Except Mason wasn’t going to get him out. 

Best case scenario, Mason was going to leave Tommy as the fallout guy and Tommy would be spending the rest of his days trying to explain what the hell happened under a cloud of suspicion. 

Worst case scenario, Tommy would be disposed of once his use had worn out. 

Where did that leave Evan then? 

Tommy cranked the water from the comforting warmth to icy cold and breathed through the sting of the sudden change. Clarity crashed into his melancholy and forced him to redirect his thoughts. 

Evan was safe for now. As safe as he could be. Even if Mason killed Tommy, as long as Tommy didn’t give Mason any reason to hurt him, Evan would remain completely unaware of the danger he was in. Then once he was at work and surrounded by his team, he at least would have some more people to watch out for him. But the threat would still be there.

Tommy needed more information. There was no getting around it. If he ran or escaped, Mason would just go after Evan and there was no way Tommy would be able to get to him in time. Tommy would have to play along until he could find a way to warn him. 

He stayed in the water for a few heartbeats longer until his skin started to tingle with the cold before Tommy ducked his face under the spray. 

It was his last attempt at trying to wake himself up from his nightmare but it didn’t work. 

He turned off the water and grabbed for the towel that had been hanging on the rung and wrapped it around his hips. The fabric was still stiff from the store and Tommy tried not to think too long about how much Mason had been planning this without Tommy knowing. 

His clothes were gone when he stepped out of the shower and Tommy bit down on his cheek to keep back the monster in his chest that wanted to rage at the violation of having his things messed with while he’d been in the shower. In their place was a pair of neatly folded black cargo pants, a short sleeved button down, and belt. They’d at least had the decency to leave him his own boots. 

Tommy got dressed and brushed his teeth, swishing the mouth wash in his mouth to burn away the stale bitterness from the night before, before he glanced at himself in the mirror. 

He looked horrible. 

Better but still horrible. 

It would have to do. 

Mason and his crew were waiting for him when he stepped out into the living room. 

“Tommy! Thanks for joining us,” Mason said like Tommy had any choice. “Take a seat.”

There was one seat left and it was one of the kitchen chairs dragged into the living room angled just right so that he could see the TV if necessary but had to jump through at least two people to get to either exit. Mason’s men watched him as he sat down before a paper plate with a bagel covered in cream cheese was thrust into his hands. 

“Thanks,” Tommy said even though the word tasted like vinegar in his mouth. 

“This is going to be a simple and easy extraction.” Mason went on as if Tommy hadn’t interrupted. “Mateo, Spencer, you two need to head out to catch the ferry. Once you get there, secure the location and make sure everything is in place.”

Ferry? What ferry?

Mateo and Spencer, supposedly, stood from their spots with a nod to Mason and grabbed their bags. Mason fist bumped one of them as they passed and the two left without another word before Mason continued on with his report.  

“We’re going to accompany the target from his home to the point of sale.” Mason skimmed through a folder in his hands. “We’ll start by car to the hanger then Tommy will fly myself, Wix, and Hunter along with Mr. Rose. Jeremy, you’re going to stay with the vehicle until you get either of my signals.” 

Jeremy, also silent, nodded once before he cut a mean side eye in Tommy’s direction. If Tommy was only fueled by spite and the coffee buzzing caffeine in his veins, he would’ve thrown Jeremy and his stink eye a kiss just for the hell of it. But he wasn’t. Evan was still in danger and Tommy was still trying to figure out where the hell he was flying. 

Jeremy. Wix. Hunter. Mateo. Spencer. Mason. 

Names. He needed to make sure he remembered the names. 

He didn’t linger on the possibility that the only reason Mason was saying them out loud in front of Tommy was because he wasn’t planning on letting Tommy live long enough to tell anyone. He just carved them into his memory with the rest of the pieces. 

Mason handed Tommy a sheet of paper. 

“Your weather report.” 

Tommy took it and prayed for a thunderstorm but all he saw were clear skies and the perfect conditions for a flight to… 

Tommy frowned as he read their destination. 

Catalina Island. 

Well, that explained the ferry. By ferry it was about an hour to get to the island but by helicopter it was only about fifteen minutes. 

It was shoulder season which meant there wouldn’t be as many people out at the beach and resorts as there would be during the summer. The water was too cold and the wind was sharp enough to keep most people covered up a little. It’d be the perfect place to make an off the books deal and an even more off the books robbery. 

But it also meant less of a police presence as well. There was the Avalon Sheriff’s Department but there were maybe ten of them on duty? They were used to drunk tourists and spoiled rich guys. Not armed special ops agents. LAPD would be their back up but their response time would be the same as anyone else: anywhere from fifteen to sixty minutes. 

“From there, you all have your assignments.” Mason continued. “We’ll meet back at—”

“I need to run a flight check,” Tommy said before he truly knew what he was saying. The scrapes of a plan were in tatters in his mind and whirling around too fast for him to catch but everyone in the room was looking at him. Maybe he could tamper with the helicopter or find a way to signal the tower. He didn’t know how but if there was one thing Tommy did know it was an engine. If he could get his hands on one, he could figure it out. “I haven’t flown this bird before. I need to run flight checks, make sure it’s up to standard—”

“Well, that’s awfully noble of you. It’s nice to see you coming around.” Mason laughed but there wasn’t any humor in the sound. It was a chuckle deep in his chest that made Tommy want to shrivel up and protect all his vulnerable parts. But Tommy could work with that. 

He jutted his chin out and held Mason’s gaze. “I’m not taking a aircraft up that I’ve never flown before that some rich asshole brought to stroke his own ego without checking to make sure that it’s at least safe to have in the air and flown around civilians.”

Mason’s lips twitched and he pumped his hand in the air. “Settle down, Tommy. I’m only messing with you. Hunter’s going to take you to the hangar in a few minutes. You’ll have two hours to do whatever it is you need to do to make sure the bird is up and ready to go.”

Tommy didn’t bother hiding his frown as he made eye contact with another one of Mason’s men. Hunter was tall and broad with sharp eyes that took in everything in the room like a sniper from his perch. 

So, Tommy had a babysitter. 

He wasn’t stupid enough to think that Hunter was only giving him a ride. He was going to be watched to make sure he didn’t mess with the helicopter before it even got off the ground. 

A lump in Tommy’s throat formed as he nodded once. 

He’d just have to think of something else. 

There’d be an opening somewhere. Even if he had to make it himself. 

There wasn’t much else for Tommy to dissect from Mason’s briefing by design. He and Hunter would go to the hangar to prep the helicopter while Mason and the rest of his men got Chet and walked him right into a trap. Tommy didn't know if the robbery would be happening before or after he flew them to Catalina and he had no idea what the plans were after they got there. Mason made sure of that. 

Then, effortlessly, Mason and his men shifted from a well organized crew into a comfortable group of men sitting around eating breakfast and talking about nothing. The tension thrumming between them eased as they relaxed into their seats and took the last few minutes they had to just be with one another. The comradery was too familiar to be fake, too intimate and congenial to be bothered by the fact that there was an outsider sitting in the room with them. 

It was suffocating. 

Tommy stood up and dropped his uneaten food on the table. He half expected the easiness to shatter but no one except Hunter gave him any attention as he walked out of the room and stormed back into the bedroom where the stream was still playing. 

The sight of Evan loosened the tightness in his chest but twisted his heart behind his ribcage all the same. His curls were damp from a shower as he hummed to himself, sipping his protein shake before he tucked in his shirt. 

He’d lost some weight again. 

Tommy knew it was all part of Evan’s workout regimen and annoyingly fast metabolism that made him fluctuate between bulking and thinning out but the sight still made him worry all the same. 

Tommy forced himself to exhale. 

He missed him. He missed him so much it made his bones ache. 

A knock on the doorframe set his teeth on edge and he cut his gaze to Mason leaning against it. 

“Your ride is leaving,” Mason said with a jerk of his head. 

Tommy ground his molars as he turned his attention back to the screen and watched Evan leave for his shift. 

Good. 

That was… Good. Evan was on his way to a shift. If Tommy did his job right, he wouldn’t even know he was ever in danger. 

Tommy moved to leave but Mason held up a finger before he dug around in his pockets. 

“One more thing,” Mason said before he pulled something out that was thin and shiny between his fingers. He held it up for Tommy to see and Tommy’s heart plummeted down into the treacherous black hole beneath his feet where all his fears followed him like a shadow. 

Buckley 

The engraved letters stared back at Tommy on the LAFD standard name plate. 

Mason handed the pin over to Tommy. 

“Just a reminder for you to keep in case you ever forget what’s at stake here.”

It wasn’t like Buck to be late. 

Bobby frowned as he stared at his crew shoveling breakfast onto their plates and eating with a gusto that only came from a moment of… peace before their shift. 

He may not be superstitious like the others but even he wasn’t willing to tempt fate at eight in the morning by uttering the Q word. 

But it wasn’t like Buck to be late. 

Usually, Bobby was having to chase the kid out of the firehouse. It’d worry him more if he knew there’d ever be a chance that he thought Buck would change but even when he was a probie, the kid was always the first one in and the last one to leave, lingering around to see what everyone else was doing and if there was a space for him to tag along. 

Bobby had thought for a minute there that maybe with Tommy…

But that was over now and he was ashamed to admit he was disappointed. Disappointed and mad. Tommy was a good man, Bobby stood by that, but he’d hurt his kid and Buck still hadn’t quite found his footing since the abrupt end to their surprising relationship. It’d been long enough that most people had stopped asking, long enough that Buck started to get better at pretending, but Bobby saw. He saw the way Buck was still holding the pieces of his heart close to his chest like he was afraid someone would knock them away. 

Bobby’s stomach twisted with worry as he did a silent head count again but the result was the same. 

Buck was missing. 

The seat beside Eddie was stubbornly empty with Eddie’s arm draped over the back as if to hold it for him but there was no sign of Buck. 

“Anyone seen Buck?” Bobby asked and all he got were mumbled negative responses or a shake of heads. 

“I can go—”

But Bobby held up a hand and motioned for Eddie to keep eating. Once the bell rang, they had no idea when their next meal would be and he’d rather Eddie eat than worry about Buck. 

It was probably nothing anyway. 

It just… wasn’t like him was all. 

Bobby didn’t have any problem admitting that spending time meal prepping with Buck was one of his favorite parts of his day. The kid had so many questions and a mind that not enough people gave him credit for. He looked at Bobby like he personally picked out each of the stars in the sky though, which felt unearned. But no amount of trying to prove otherwise worked when it came to Buck. It had felt like a knife to the chest when Bobby had first realized he’d been doing that. Bobby had given him some vegetables to chop just so he’d stop looking at him. 

And thus a tradition was born. 

A tradition that was very rarely broken. 

The apparatus bay was nearly silent as he descended down the stairs, with the soft murmuring voices from the loft sprinkling down like specks of early morning snow in the calm of the morning. The scent of oil and antiseptic and rubber replaced the aromas of the breakfast casseroles and coffee he’d made and the spring morning air whistled in through the bay door they’d left open to air out all the bad vibes of the shift before them while the Santa Ana winds were still tame. 

Bobby peered around for any sign of his lost charge, looking to see if there were a pair of legs hanging out from underneath an engine or dangling from on top of it. Buck didn’t seek out solitude often but when he did, you could usually find him curled up in the truck or engine somewhere; usually in places that were too small for his large frame to fit even though he somehow managed to make it work. 

Bobby didn’t dwell on wondering why Buck was so good at fitting into spaces that were too small for him. If he did, he didn’t think he’d ever know a day of peace again. 

But as he looked, the emptiness of the bay stretched out around him, and his worry only picked up a little more. 

Buck had to be around somewhere. He hadn’t called in sick and the only other time he’d willingly had to call off shift had been for Maddie which would’ve meant Chim would’ve said something as well. 

“Buck?” Bobby called, checking to see if maybe he’d made a run to the dumpsters out back or was getting a workout on the lawn in while he could. 

But he wasn’t there either. 

Eddie was standing on the landing of the loft staring down at him as he chewed before he dropped his fork on his plate and pulled out his phone. He shook his head at what must have been an empty screen and started to head for the roof when—

Bobby spotted him in the locker room. 

Or, more accurately, Bobby spotted everything that had been in his locker and bag on the floor before he found him. Buck was frantically flapping his hoodie and then towel around before he grabbed his bag and turned it upside down to shake as well. 

Bobby shot Eddie a thumbs up before he headed into the locker room.

“Buck,” he said and Buck’s blue eyes snapped up to him. The frustration in them bled away from surprise to embarrassment in a matter of seconds as pink dusted up into his cheeks and Bobby stepped into the room. “Everything okay?”

“Sorry Cap,” Buck said with a grimace. “I’ll clean this up. I just can’t find my name plate.”

Bobby’s eyes locked onto the space on Buck’s chest where the thin metal bar with his name used to sit. Sure enough, the space was empty with two twin holes barely noticeable in the fabric left from where the pin stuck through it. 

More pink colored Buck’s cheeks as he ran his fingers over the open space. 

“Sorry,” he said again. “I don’t know what happened to it. It must have fallen off at a call or something. I’ve—”

Bobby held out a hand. 

“It’s fine, Buck,” he said even though he could tell that according to Buck it was anything but fine. 

Buck had a tendency to spiral out when things were out of sync but a missing name plate was even a little much for him. Bobby took Buck in again and tried to find what he was missing. He was a little thin but he was working on that and it’d been a few weeks since the break up with Tommy. Bobby knew that a broken heart didn’t magically fix itself overnight but he’d thought Buck had been getting a little better. So what then? 

Buck bent down to scoop some of his things off the floor before he unceremoniously shoved them back into his locker with a frustrated sigh. 

“You okay, kid?” Bobby asked even though he knew the answer. 

Buck rubbed at his chest again and nodded. “Yeah, I just didn’t sleep very well last night.”

It was more than that. Bobby knew that. But it was a start. The same way the name tag was just another peak inside where Buck’s head was at. 

Bobby could work with that. 

He squeezed Buck’s shoulder and the tension thrumming beneath the Buck’s skin melted away. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Bobby said. “We’ll get you another one. Come on up for breakfast before we—”

Bobby should’ve known better than to tempt fate. 

The bell rang with a sharp shrill through the station before the pound of boots rattled down from the loft to the stairs towards the engine. 

Chimney tossed Buck a granola bar as they passed. He would’ve preferred something with a little more protein but for now, it would work. 

The morning humidity was starting to dry off with the sun bearing down on the back of Tommy’s neck. Sweat beaded from his hairline and collected along the seam of the collar of his quarterzip, sticking to his skin like a noose softly caressing his throat. There was no shade along the tarmac where Chet Rose’s Leonardo AW109 was. The twin engine helicopter was in pristine condition and something Tommy had flown before a few times. They were known for being fast and easy to navigate with an engine that was practically worth its weight in gold. The Pratt and Whitney engine let the bird fly fast and hot and was why a lot of departments always tried to justify needing one every time budget renewals came up. You could easily get in a stretcher and paramedics without them climbing on top of each other and be in and out in seconds. 

However, Tommy had some serious doubts the LAFD would be willing to spring for the custom Italian leather seats like Chet had. Hell, Tommy didn’t even have cupholders. 

“Is it ready to fly?” Hunter asked. His voice was a smooth gravel that was deep like smoke and the mornings before a thunderstorm. 

A shiver drifted down Tommy’s spine at the sound of it and the electric danger that rippled like a current in the question. It was an innocent enough question. Mason and the others would be arriving any minute. But they were the first words Hunter had spoken to him since they’d split off from the group and they carried the added weight of warning in them. 

Evan’s name plate sat heavy in his pocket. 

“Yeah,” Tommy said, closing the hatch to the engine and swallowing past the knot of regret in his throat. “She’s ready.” 

The sight of two SUVs driving across the tarmac made Tommy’s stomach queasy. 

“Smile flyboy,” Hunter murmured. “Nobody wants a pilot who looks like he’s being held at gunpoint.” 

It took everything in Tommy not to glare at Hunter as he plastered on what little of a smile he could manage as the cars pulled up to the helicopter. 

Mason and one of his men– Tommy couldn’t remember if it was Whix or Jeremy– stepped out first as they scanned the area like it was the middle of a warzone instead of a private flight pad for small aircrafts outside of Malibau. The fact that their level of intensity was all a show when in reality they were planning on throwing someone to the wolves the moment they got what they wanted from him made Tommy even more sick to his stomach. Bile burned at the back of his throat like battery acid and he put every ounce of effort he had to keep from grimacing. 

Mason nodded to Hunter once before he circled back to the car and opened the back seat. 

Chet Rose looked just like the pictures from the tabloids. His finely tailored suit was a grey white plaid with a pressed white shirt that was almost bright enough to glow in the morning light. Sharp gold accessories dripped off his body in accentuated spots, his cufflinks, his watch, his rings, and the very obvious chain at his neck from his exposed collar. His tan skin was stretched and puffy in places where he’d been fighting the natural progression of aging and his receding hairline was hidden by moused up hair that was being ruined by the wind of the runway. 

Chet wasn’t carrying any briefcases or luggage so Tommy didn’t think he had whatever crypto whatever it was that Mason was planning to steal. If that even was what Mason was planning on stealing. He hadn’t exactly specified what exactly it was he was planning on taking from Chet. 

Tommy didn’t particularly care what it was. But what he did care about was when. The moment Mason got what he wanted, Tommy’s usefulness had an end date. He had to figure out a way to keep Evan safe and if possible, himself alive in the process, and he was running in blind. 

“Mr. Rose,” Mason said, holding a hand out to Tommy and Hunter. “If you’d have a seat, my friend, Tommy, will get us to Catalina in no time.”

Chet barely glanced at them before he stepped into the cabin of the helicopter, pressing a button that opened one of the compartments and pouring himself two fingers of Scotch from the decanter. Mason’s eyebrows lifted into his hairline as he shot them both a look before he chuckled, shaking his head. 

“What a prick,” he said so only Tommy and Hunter could hear. 

Hunter sniffed out a laugh before his gaze scanned the area over Mason’s shoulder, watching his back for any threats. It was a seamless shift of the guard as Mason turned his attention to Tommy that almost made his skin prickle. 

“Everything up to standard?” Mason asked like he hadn’t just essentially had Tommy do a flight check with a loaded gun to his back. 

“She’ll fly,” Tommy said, looking away when Mason’s pleased expression lit up his eyes. 

“Good,” Mason said before he smacked Tommy’s shoulder. The gesture was hollow and placating, ricocheting through Tommy until he rocked on his feet with the impact. “Chin up, Tommy. You’ll be back in LA before dinner.” 

“Avalon Tower, Trekker 48, is inboard 10 miles northwest to land.”

The static scratch of the radio filling in over Tommy’s comm was a comforting hum that seeped into his bones. If Chet Rose could sense the tension filling the cab of the helicopter, he didn’t say. He’d been too busy scrolling on his phone with his earbuds in while Tommy flew them towards Catalina Island to notice. 

“Trekker 48, copy. Report five miles south to port four.”

A knot formed in Tommy’s throat as he heard tower’s voice over the comms. He knew that voice. Not by name or even by face but he’d heard it before. Plenty of times in the hours he flew up and down the coast of Los Angeles. 

Tommy swallowed hard. “Report five miles south, port four, Trekker 48.”

Mason let out a low whistle as the coast line of the beach came into view. 

The ports weren’t as filled as they would’ve been had it been during the season but yachts and boats were docked in the water like bobbing white beacons against the blue ocean beneath them. The trees were a vibrant endless green surrounding the small downtown bustle of Avalon with the phantom Catalina Casino watching over its residences from the cliffside. 

He’d had plans to fly Evan for a weekend getaway to Catalina. He’d thought about renting out a little cottage, surprising him with flowers and a packed bag ready to go. 

Then he’d ruined it all by being a coward. 

Tommy gripped the cyclic stick harder as he circled the bird to come in from the south. 

“Tower, Trekker 48, requesting port 4 for landing.”

“Trekker 48, you’re clear to land.” Was the easy permission granted.

Tommy did a visual check of the helipad before he pressed his comms. 

“Copy tower. Trekker 48, landing.”

Chet let out a heavy sigh as Tommy began his landing and he focused on that task alone just to keep himself from screaming. Gravity pressed down harder and harder as Tommy’s heart hammered against his ribcage. He had full control of the bird. The gears. The controls. They were beneath his fingertips. Yet Tommy had never felt so powerless in all his life. 

The landing gear touched down beneath them with a barely noticeable rock and the cab exhaled as the rotors began to whine to stillness. 

“Welcome to Catalina, Trekker 48.” 

It felt like a death sentence. 

“Thank you, Tower.”

“Good job,” Mason said with a clap of his hand against Tommy’s arm. It took everything in him not to shove him off. 

A blacked out car was sitting waiting for them with Mateo and Spencer standing beside it. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing Tommy would’ve expected them to choose if the goal was to lay low considering most of the vehicles driven on the island were either golf carts or utility vehicles. Even on official capacity when a few of them from harbor station had flown over to help with a stubborn fire out in the reserve, they’d been driven up and down the hills in golf carts. 

Mason got out first, walking across the tarmac to meet with Mateo and Spencer, and Tommy’s stomach flipped. 

He could tell him. He could tell Chet to get out of there and run as fast as he could. 

He could radio Tower and tell them to call for help. 

Hell, Tommy could take off and fly back to Los Angeles before Mason even realized what was going on. There were two guys in the back with guns but unless they wanted to crash into the Pacific, there wasn’t much they could do while Tommy was in the air. Tower would report to the nearest ATC and FAA of a rogue bird. An alert would go out to the authorities that a helicopter had taken off without permission. The pieces were all there for them to put together. Suspicious activity outside of the norm for the off season of a quiet island. A wayward bird heading back to LA like it was being chased. Billionaire Chet Rose sitting still so fucking oblivious in his seat. 

It would gain attention. 

Tommy stuck his hand in his pocket and ran his finger over the name plate. 

He was still fifteen minutes away from LA. That wasn’t enough time to get to Evan and warn him. That wasn’t enough time to get to Evan and… 

Tommy forced his lungs to work. 

Not yet. 

Mason let out a sharp whistle and Hunter and Whix moved. They unlatched the doors and let in the sweet, salt spring air that Tommy inhaled to clear his head. Chet heaved another sigh as he slipped a bill between the seats to Tommy without looking up from his phone. 

“Keep us ready to fly. I’ve got dinner with three of the rejects from the bachelor tonight.”

“You got it,” Tommy said, his voice flat and just on the edge of bitch even to his own ears. If he didn’t know that the guy was literally about to be robbed, he probably would’ve said something that would’ve gotten him in trouble. But Tommy was on a tight leash so he took the hundred dollar bill without rolling his eyes.

He should’ve tried to save him. Tommy knew if it had been anyone else, they would’ve done something. 

But Tommy said nothing and simply watched as Mason and his men walked Chet to the blacked out car where the door to the backseat was waiting for him. 

Better men would’ve tried but Tommy accepted a long time ago that he wasn’t one of those better men. Especially not when it came at the cost of Evan’s life. 

Tommy stepped out of the bird to stretch his legs and ignored the way Hunter watched his every move. Relief ribboned through Tommy as his spine gave a satisfying crack before he walked around the helicopter to make sure nothing had come loose during their flight. 

“You know how long they’re going to be?” Tommy asked and Hunter said nothing. “Good talk.”

It wouldn’t matter too much. He wouldn’t necessarily have to refuel if they were just going back to LA but if Mason was expecting anything beyond that, they’d need more sooner rather than later. Not that Tommy was going to bring that up. No one from the ground team was hurrying to get them out of the way so they must have reserved the spot in advance and besides, it would’ve looked suspicious if he sat in the helicopter for who knew how long. 

He spotted the empty lounge across the tarmac and squinted up at the sunlight beating down on them. The forgiveness of the morning had disappeared into an intense heat that promised sunburns and sweat if they stayed under it too long. 

Tommy looked to Hunter and hooked a thumb over to the lounge. “Think we could wait for them in the AC?”

Hunter said nothing again.

“C’mon,” Tommy said. “There’s no one in there and I need a bathroom break and a coffee before we fly anywhere else.”

Hunter’s cold eyes narrowed before his gaze cut right and then left. 

Tommy held up a hand. “It’s going to look more suspicious to the crew if we hang around here instead of going inside. I promise to behave.”

“You better.” Hunter warned and the unspoken threat made Tommy curl his fists at his sides. But then Hunter jerked his chin in the direction of the lounge and Tommy forced his legs to follow as they walked over to the pilots’ lounge. 

The scent of smoke and ash was sour in her nostrils as Athena pulled up onto the scene. Billowing clouds of dark, nearly black smoke wafted up, up, up into the air and stretched thin as the spring wind took it away. She could feel the heat from the fire even as she stepped out of her cruiser and grimaced at the tacky sweat that slipped over her skin like a film as she walked over to where Williams was talking into his radio. 

The big, bold 118 on the engine greeted her but even as she swept her gaze across the crowd of LAFD gear, she couldn’t spot her husband anywhere. 

“Henrietta!” Athena called out the moment she caught sight of her friend treating an ash covered factory worker with an oxygen mask at the back of the ambulance. 

Hen’s eyes narrowed before widening in recognition and she murmured something comforting to her patient before she stepped away to meet her. “‘Thena! I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“They needed back up for your gawkers.” Athena jerked her chin over where the crowd of spectators were watching the massive inferno with their phones out. 

Hen arched a brow at her. “They’ve got you managing crowd control?”

Athena let out a snort as she shook her head. “I’m here to figure out why they can’t seem to manage it themselves.” 

“Ma’am!” Williams called, running over to where a woman was trying to take a selfie at the truck. “You need to stay back.”

Hen’s nose wrinkled as she fought back a laugh. “He has been trying. He’s maybe been the only one trying but he’s been trying.”

“Noted.” Athena pursed her lips as she spotted a few rookies also taken aback by the state of the fire in front of them. “You know where my husband is?”

“Bobby’s inside with Buck,” Hen said with a knowing look. “He’s been hovering a little close today.”

Athena hummed. “For any particular reason I should know about?”

Hen shrugged. 

“It’s Buck,” she said simply because it was that simple. For her husband when it came to Buck, sometimes that was all it took. 

Athena sighed as she spied another onlooker breaking away from the crowd, trying to inch closer without being detected. “Thanks Hen. Stay safe out there.”

“You too,” Hen said before she hurried back to her ambulance. 

“Sir!” Athena called loud enough for her voice to carry across the pavement and bounce against the building. The man ignored her as he tried to step past one of the many engines sitting open and exposed. It wouldn’t be the first time someone with sticky fingers tried to see what all they could grab to sell online while the LAFD was occupied. 

Athena marched up to the end of the truck to cut him off. 

Her eyes narrowed at the extended out reached hand frozen on the way to grabbing a discarded turnout coat. 

“Unless you want to be escorted out of here in handcuffs,” she said, “I wouldn’t even think about it.” 

The man’s eyes widened at her before he snatched his hand away from the coat. That’s when Athena saw the press badge at his hip. The laminated identification was sticking out of his pocket and caught on the hem of his shirt, exposing part of his hip in the tangle. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” 

The man faltered before he yanked his shirt down. “The people have a right to know what’s going on!”

“How fast a nosy reporter can be burnt alive because he was foolish enough to sneak into the middle of a five alarm fire?” Athena demanded. The reporter paled as if he hadn’t even thought about that before he waved his hand at the building. Athena counted to five before she pointed back towards the barriers. “Go back to the barricades and if I have to find you again, you’ll be marching that direction in handcuffs. Understood?”

The reporter high tailed it back to the crowd and Athena mentally tasked herself to send another reminder to the fire chief about the importance of LAFD being mindful of where they put their things at a scene so that LAPD wasn’t having to clean up after them. 

She snatched the turnout coat up out of reach and climbed up onto the rig before tossing it inside and away from any other wandering hands. 

She spotted him almost by accident. 

He’d been so still, so unintrusive that spotting him was like spotting a leopard in the trees. If you looked too hard, he blurred away where you couldn’t see him. 

But Athena did. 

Her intuition lit up like a lightning rod at the base of her neck. 

She hadn’t gotten where she was through instinct alone but it had helped and if there was anything God had granted her it was two beautiful children, her mother’s tenacity, and an intuition that almost never led her wrong. 

The man was tall with close cropped military style hair and a scar down from behind his ear to almost all the way down his neck. His attire was nondescript. Jeans with brown leather boots and a canvas jacket that seemed almost too heavy for the heat of the day over a plain grey t-shirt. 

It was the jacket that was ringing all the alarm bells in her head. 

The jacket and the fact that the man held a stillness of someone who was used to long periods of it. 

Athena followed the man’s gaze and felt her heart lift as she spotted Bobby and Buck stomp their way out of the building. Bobby patted Buck on the back before he reached up to remove his helmet and mask and the sweat and ash glistening on his face was fresh from the heat and exertion. 

In any other circumstance, she’d stop to admire her man in all his glory. But in that moment she couldn’t shut off the part of her brain that was screaming danger!

The man was beyond the barrier but only just barely and not trying to get any closer which was probably why Williams hadn’t bothered with fighting with him when so many others were pushing the boundaries. 

Athena walked over to the man, taking her time to catalogue anything that could be setting off her senses. She didn’t see a gun but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. 

“Sir,” Athena said, loud enough to pull the man’s attention away from the firefighters to her. Dull, green eyes dragged their gaze over to her but the man didn’t flinch. In fact, his expression barely even flickered beneath the neutral blankness beyond a small, polite smile that did nothing to quell the tingle racing up and down her spine. “You need to stay behind the barricades.”

The man glanced over his shoulder but didn’t move. “Sorry, officer. I was trying to avoid all the shoving.”

Athena nodded her head in the direction of the barricades. “You can avoid that completely by going on with your day. There’s nothing to see here.”

The man laughed. “I’m okay. My afternoon’s completely free.”

A chill raced down her spine as the hair on the back of her neck stood tall. “All the same. You’ll need to stay behind the barricade.”

The man didn’t move and Athena’s muscles coiled tight. He stared down at her and there wasn’t anything in the stare that screamed trouble but she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed to brace. 

But then like a snap, the tension between them shattered to pieces as the man held up his hands in surrender and stepped back towards the barricade. 

All the oxygen in Tommy’s lungs warped into carbon monoxide and slowly poisoned his body as he held his breath staring at the TV. The lounge had been empty with nothing more than the scent of burnt coffee dancing across the AC, freshly cleaned floors, and the TV tucked up in the corner playing a soap opera. Tommy and Hunter had hit the head– separately thankfully– and then settled on the leather couches with their own coffees and a handful of snacks that had been out. Tommy had gone for the trail mix where he’d nervously picked out all the M&Ms and was now just digging around looking for anything that wasn’t a cashew while Hunter had settled for a plain granola bar he was using to scoop peanut butter out of a snack size container. 

It was the most tense truce Tommy had ever sat through and he’d spent his probationary year under Gerrard. 

But then the news break had come through and Tommy stopped breathing because there was Evan. Sweet, beautiful, oblivious Evan covered in soot as he took off his helmet and smiled at Eddie as he handed him a water bottle, the BUCKLEY on the back of his turnout coat equally as dirty. The camera wasn’t focused on him, he was several feet beyond the reporter who was covering the structure fire the 118 and several other crews were fighting. But he was there. Right there like a perpetual boot on the back of Tommy’s neck to bring him to heel. 

The sight of him was enough to fill Tommy’s whole chest with warmth even if his lungs were screaming at him to fucking breathe! 

“Yeah?” 

Tommy jumped at the sound of Hunter’s voice and he let out the breath he’d been holding hostage with a sharp exhale through his lips. His lungs were oddly grateful even though the heat of embarrassment crawled up into his cheeks at being startled so obviously. 

But if Hunter cared, he didn’t show it. Hunter listened to whatever was being said through the phone pressed to his ear. He jiggled his knee once, making the table he had his boot propped up against it creak before he dropped his foot to the ground. 

“You got it,” Hunter said before he hung up the phone and stood. 

Tommy knitted his brows together as his stomach gave a dangerous swoop. Were they done already? His mouth went dry as his adrenaline spiked and he looked back up to the TV again for one last glimpse of Evan before he was dragged away. But Evan was gone and all that was left was the 118 engine.

Where had he gone?

Had something happened? 

Tommy hadn’t done anything! And he’d been surrounded by the others. They wouldn’t have… There was a TV crew there! Someone would’ve seen if—

“Get up.” Hunter said with a flick of his fingers. “Break’s over.”

Tommy didn’t move at first. He was too attached to the screen that had shifted back to the news anchors in their cozy studio acting as if nothing was wrong! 

Where had he gone? 

A fist latched onto his collar and pulled him up and Tommy lashed out before he could stop himself. He shoved Hunter away from him, snarling a curse as he only just stopped himself from lunging. 

He half expected Hunter to attack or throw out another threat but instead he simply lifted up his hands. 

“He’s fine,” Hunter said, impatience hissing the words through his teeth. “Look. I’ll show you.”

He tapped something on his phone and waited maybe thirty seconds before he turned the screen to show Tommy. 

It was a picture clearly taken with a cellphone at the scene that had just been on TV. The reporter was talking to her camera man and the smoke was shifting into a hazy light grey but there was Evan sans his turnout coat climbing into the engine with the others.

It wasn’t a kindness. Tommy made himself remember that even as the relief flooded his body like fresh oxygen as he finally remembered how to breathe. 

“Let’s go.” Hunter pocketed his phone and Tommy followed him back out onto the tarmac with wooden legs. 

“Are they done already?” Tommy asked as the cool ocean breeze caressed his face. 

Hunter didn’t answer. Instead, he went around to the hatch and lifted it open. 

Tommy obediently walked over and stared down at the engine. 

“Do your pre-flight checks,” Hunter said low enough for only Tommy to hear. “And then get rid of the trackers for this thing.”

Tommy looked up to the tower before he could stop himself. It was a small airport but with the amount of air traffic the island got, they were looking at a two maybe three man crew. One of them would notice if Tommy wasn’t showing up on the radar when he requested permission to take off. 

Right?

“Easy,” Hunter said, his voice dropping down to a deadly calm. “Or James is going to make sure the next fire your boy toy walks into, he doesn’t come out.”

Tommy ground his molars hard enough that he was surprised they didn’t turn into dust and ash in his mouth as he shoved between Hunter and the helicopter. 

The rotors on air ambulance 2 were whipping wind on the top level of the parking garage at an almost dizzying speed. Chimney held up a hand to shield his eyes as he and Buck hovered over the patient. Lucy Donato jumped out of the helicopter with an easy bounce and a smile on her face as she met them halfway. 

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said over the roar of the helicopter, her blonde hair skating across her eyes. 

“Let’s hope it’s without the emergency surgery afterwards!” Chimney quipped back. Lucy wrinkled her nose as she nodded before her attention dropped down the patient. “Possible spinal injury and TBI. This idiot was doing tricks on his motorcycle without a helmet.”

They didn’t call motorcycles donorcycles for nothing. Thankfully, their patient, though unconscious, would live. After the morning they’d had, Chimney didn’t think he could handle losing someone so young no matter how stupid they were. 

Lucy rolled her eyes and nodded. “Nice. On my count.”

She counted to three before they transferred the patient to Lucy’s gurney and helped load it into the air ambulance. 

“Hey Buckley,” Lucy shouted over the helicopter as the engine whined. “You haven’t heard from Tommy have you?”

Buck froze and honestly, it was good the kid didn’t play poker anymore. His poker face was all but nonexistent. His emotions flickered like a kaleidoscope across his expression from shock to longing to hurt to something shut down and wounded and as much as Chimney liked Lucy, he really would’ve preferred if she didn’t make his brother-in-law look like a kicked puppy. 

“Uh… no?” Buck shook his head. “Why?”

And Chimney tried to pretend like he didn’t hear the way there was just a sliver of hope in Buck’s voice at that. 

He liked Tommy. He still considered him a friend even after everything. But Chimney knew Tommy was complicated. He kept people at arms length and had walls a mile high to protect his own heart on a good day. Chimney understood. Really, he did. After Kevin, Tommy and Eli had been the two people that kept Chimney upright most days. But while Eli had helped Chimney move forward, Tommy had been quick to give him space like he expected everyone to have the same walls he did, not quite understanding that those walls weren’t universal. 

So, Chimney understood. But Tommy had also hurt Buck in the process and they’d only just started to see a decrease in the obsessive baking. If Lucy—

“He hasn’t been answering his phone. We tried to call him to see if he could cover a shift. Figured you might have heard from him.”

And… Oh. That wasn’t ever good. 

Worry twisted in Chimney’s gut and from the looks of Buck, he felt it too. But Lucy just shrugged at them and climbed into the helicopter. 

“Let me know if you do!” She said before closing the door. 

They stumbled back by sheer instinct and the gust of the take off, watching the helicopter lift up and disappear, before they turned to each other. 

“That was weird.” Chimney admitted. 

Buck’s eyes went big as his teeth dug into his lip before he let out a breath and pulled out his phone. “Should I call him?”

And there were some days that the sheer power of just how good Evan Buckley was could knock Chimney over. The kid drove him crazy and annoyed the hell out of him but he was also kind— kinder than the world deserved sometimes— and Chimney didn’t know what to do with that. 

“I mean what if he’s hurt? Or sick? It’s not like him not to answer.” 

“What if I called him?” Chimney asked, doing the only thing he could think to protect Buck from getting hurt again. He couldn’t do much to shield him from the worst of the world but he could do this. “He might’ve just slept through his alarm or something.”

Buck arched a brow at him. “It’s two in the afternoon.”

Chimney flapped his hand at Buck and started gathering their stuff as he pulled his phone to his ear. 

The phone rang for what felt like an eternity before Tommy’s voicemail picked up. 

“Hi. You’ve reached Tommy. Leave a message.”

“Hey Tommy! It’s Howie! Just calling to check on you,” Chimney said, fully aware of Buck’s gaze burning two holes at his back. “Lucy said you missed her call. Figured I’d check in. Call me back. Bye.”

“That it?” Hunter asked, his voice just bordering on the edge of sharp as he pocketed his phone and walked back over to Tommy. 

Tommy’s hands ached from how tightly he was holding the screwdriver, forcing the last of the screws attaching the ELT in the small compartment of the helicopter cab to give beneath his handling. The small, tiny yellow box that should’ve been able to withstand a crash fell into his outstretched palm without wailing an alarm and all he needed to do was to detach the cables. One easily popped free while another needed thinner, smaller fingers with more dexterity than Tommy had. 

“Give me your knife,” Tommy said, holding out his hand. When Hunter didn’t move, Tommy let out a frustrated growl as he shot a glare over his shoulder. “I can’t reach this and you sound like you’re in a hurry. Give me your knife.”

Hunter’s lip curled back before he reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife, slapping it into Tommy’s palm and confirming something without saying a word. 

So, they were in a hurry. 

It was the first time he’d seen anything but calm control from his babysitter and Tommy knew he had to pry his fingers in the crack and tear the rest down until he could find his out. 

Tommy flicked the blade out and ignored the way Hunter stiffened to cut the remaining cable and free the emergency locator transmitter. He slapped the yellow plastic tracker down into Hunter’s hand before closing the knife and giving it back to him. 

“There,” Tommy bit out. “That’s it.”

Hunter’s gaze cut over Tommy’s shoulder before he nodded once. 

“Good. Get ready to fly this bird.”

Tommy peered through the windows and saw the black car climbing back up the hill and passing through the gate with ease. His gut tightened back into the base of his spine and he climbed out of the cab to stand up straight before he hunched over and curled into a ball. 

The sight of Mason in the front seat only brought exhaustion like a weight on the back of Tommy’s neck. 

It was almost over and Tommy was running out of time. 

“Hurry up,” Hunter said before he stepped away to greet the car. 

Tommy numbly watched as he closed the hatch and got up into his seat, firing on the engine and checking in with the tower. 

“Tower, Trekker 48, port 4 preparing to depart northbound for Los Angles.”

Mason and his crew piled out of the car as if they didn’t have a care in the world to chase after them. 

“Trekker 48, you head back to LA already?”

Icy dread seized Tommy’s veins when Chet Rose didn’t get out of the car with Mason in the others. 

Was he dead? 

Had he just carried a man to his death?

The open comm was a temptation against his lips that churned the nausea in the pit of Tommy’s stomach. No one was with him. His babysitter was gone. Mason was too far away. No one would be able to stop him. 

Now was his chance. 

Tommy curled his fist around Evan’s name plate and the nausea only burned like battery acid at the back of his throat as he said. “We are, Tower. This was just a quick in and out trip down by the beach. Hope to stick around longer next time.”

“Sure thing Trekker 48. You’ve got clear skies for now. Let us know when you’re ready to head out.”

Disappointment sank into the marrow of Tommy’s bones. “Copy that Tower.”

The helicopter jostled as Mason yanked open the passenger door with almost too much force. “Who are you talking to in here, Tom?”

Tommy’s fist tightened around Evan’s name plate hard enough to make his palm ache.

“Clearing our take off with the tower,” Tommy said, jerking his chin in the back where Hunter and the others were climbing in. “My assistant told me you didn’t want to linger.”

An almost manic glint flashed over his steel grey eyes, dark and dangerous, as Mason’s dimple caved into his cheek. His smirk twitched once then twice before he hoisted himself up into the helicopter. 

The sounds of buckles clicking into place filled the cab as Tommy took a headcount. 

Mason. Hunter. Whix. Spencer. Mateo. 

Four in the back. One up front. One, possibly more on the ground in close proximity to Evan. No Chet Rose. 

Tommy pressed his lips to his fist before he shoved Evan’s nameplate back into his pocket and buckled himself into the pilot’s seat. Tommy reached up and checked his fuel pressure. The monitor on the dash lit up and Tommy checked to make sure the throttle was center and closed again before he pushed the starter and the idle release. The whine of the engine started with a hum as the rotors began to spin and Tommy slowly cranked the throttle. 

“Tower, Trekker 48, port 4 ready for northbound departure.”

“Copy Trekker 48. Standby.” 

Tommy forced himself to exhale. He flipped the generator on and checked the hydraulics even as his ears began to ring. The silence from tower couldn’t have been more than a few seconds but it felt like hours stretching out the tension until there was almost no oxygen left in the cab. The helicopter began to shake as Tommy held the bird steady while he waited… waited… waited… 

“Trekker 48, pad 4, cleared for take off.”

Tommy settled into his seat. “Cleared for take off pad 4 Trekker 48.”

Tommy’s heart stayed in his throat as he lifted the helicopter into a hover and than proceeded with his take off. The island turned into ocean and Catalina grew further and further away as Tommy flew the helicopter back to LA.

“Trekker 48 contact KLAX. Thanks for visiting.” Avalon tower instructed when Tommy flew out of their airspace. 

“Contact KLAX, Trekker 48, copy.”

“Nicely done,” Mason murmured into his comms, his low rumbling voice buzzing in Tommy’s ear. “You’re in the home stretch. Hunter.”

Tommy flinched as the sudden gust of air filled the cabin, sending the air pressure out of control and alarms blaring across his console. His ears popped and Tommy bit out a curse as he tried to maintain control of his aircraft as Hunter did who knew what in the back. 

Then as quick as it started, it all stopped. 

The door snapped shut with a click and Tommy only just barely saw the yellow box of the ELT before it smacked into the ocean water below and sank into the deep. 

With that lifeline gone and Tommy caught in the gray area between Catalina and Los Angeles, they were officially off the grid. 

Tommy was flying a ghost. 

“So now what?” Tommy worked his jaw. The air left in the cabin was sharp and brittle against his skin. “You kill me and run off into the sunset with your money and a fancy new helicopter?”

Mason shot Tommy an incredulous look. “I’m not going to kill you, Tom.”

“Why?” Tommy drawled. “Because you still need me to fly you over the border?”

“Well,” Mason shrugged as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “None of us know how to fly a helicopter. Just keep heading towards the desert and your boy, Evan, can stay in his truck with his friends.”

That was it. Just pure, unbothered confidence that Tommy would do what he said, when he said it for however long it took. 

The coast line came into view as they crossed over into LAX airspace and Tommy knew it would only be a matter of time before an unidentified aircraft showed up on their radar. How he was supposed to explain that, he didn’t know, but Mason seemed unbothered as he enjoyed the view of the ocean turning into metro LA. 

“Oof!” One of the guys from the back let out as they approached the 405. Even from above, swarms of red and blue lights dazzled across the interstate. 

“Jesus Christ!” One of the others said as they pressed to look out the window.

There, like a tangle in a rope, was a massive pile up on the interstate. Fifteen, twenty, maybe even thirty cars were warped and twisted around each other with an overturned semi blocking all lanes. At least three fire engines were parked as close to the mess as they could get while police cruisers were acting like shields from the steaming furious face of miles and miles of stand still traffic heading north bound. 

Tommy’s chest went tight as the instinct to fly down and provide support lit up his spine like a firecracker. Adrenaline crackled beneath his skin and the need to do something tugged whatever helplessness he’d allowed himself to wallow in and threw it away. 

Clarity crashed into his head and swept away any doubts that had been lingering too long in his mind. 

Now. You have to do it now. 

Evan was in the engine. That was what Mason said. They were too far up for Tommy to see the numbers clearly but Evan was in the engine because someone was watching him and the last update they had given Mason was that he was in a moving engine and out of reach. 

He may not be able to see the numbers but he could see the reflective lines of the turnouts, the easy way the firefighters below were moving. There wasn’t a sense of urgency as first responders swarmed the area. There were no ambulances waiting to take critical patients. 

The pile up was a ghost town of trauma and was just waiting to be cleaned up which meant that Tommy wouldn’t be pulling anyone away from someone who needed help. 

Because it was Tommy who needed help. 

And he needed help fast. 

Everyone was looking below. 

Tommy flicked a switch and an alarm on the console started screaming. 

“Holy shit!” Mason jumped as he turned to look at the controls. 

“That’s not good,” Tommy said before he let up on his controls and felt the helicopter dip at the release. 

“What the fuck!” Someone in the back yelped. 

Tommy flicked his comms on. “Mayday mayday mayday Trekker 48!” 

“What are you doing, Tommy!” Mason demanded. 

Tommy didn’t answer him as the helicopter jolted beneath them again. “Mayday mayday mayday Trekker 48! We’re losing altitude. Mayday mayday mayday!”

Tommy’s stomach flipped all the way up into his throat as he fought against his instincts and let the helicopter rock beneath his control. 

“What the fuck are you doing!” Mason screamed. 

“We must have nicked something when we were taking apart the transmitter,” Tommy said as he jostled the bird. “Hold on to something!”

“Copy Trekker 48!” A voice from the LAX tower came over the comms. “We can’t find you on the radar. What’s your location?”

“Tommy!”

Tommy ignored Mason. He ignored everything except focusing on not actually getting them killed while making a flashy enough landing to bring all of the LAPD racing down the 405 toward them. 

The helicopter rocked hard to the right and then the left as Mason and his crew yelled. The stick rattled in his grip as the bird fought against what Tommy was doing and physics. 

“Trekker 48 do you copy?”

“We’re over the 405 about five miles from the northbound pile up. We’re going down.”

Tommy let the nose dip forward and his blood went cold as he stared at the cold pavement below. 

“Copy Trekker 48. Do you know where you’re going to land?”

Five bruising fingers wrapped around his wrist hard enough to make the bones creak. Mason was seething as he leaned as far as he could against the seat harness. 

“You do this and he’s dead! You hear me? I’ll–” 

Tommy ripped his arm away and the helicopter rocked into an almost 90 degree turn. Another alarm wailed as the helicopter’s anti crash instruments automatically kicked on. His passengers screamed as Tommy tried to correct his course before he lost complete control but the damage was already down. They went into a spin that pointed the nose down and made the rotors groan into a dull roar as they started to plummet. 

“Fuck!” Mason spat out, scrambling to hold onto anything. 

Tommy braced his legs and pulled up with all his might, trying to control their crash to either the empty part of the 405 or the hills just beyond the interstate. The feeling of falling was a bone deep ache that stretched Tommy out like he was taffy and he could only hope that it was enough. That he’d done enough. That he’d caught the attention of the first responders at the pile up. That he’d gambled right and Evan was safe. That if he was going to be taken out by a crash landing he’d caused, he’d at least take out Mason and the others with him. 

“Grab the kid!” Tommy snapped his head to the side and found Mason screaming into his phone. “Can you hear me? I said grab—”

Tommy swatted the phone away and the bird jolted like a spooked horse beneath his reins. Mason threw a wild punch and Tommy dodged before the bird shuddered violently again as the engines sputtered. 

He was in the engine. Evan was shielded by people and the engine. That was what Tommy told himself as he shoved Mason away again and wrestled the helicopter back into submission.

The nose dipped down and then Tommy felt the helicopter give into his control as the engines failed. The airflow reversed as gravity pulled the bird down and the speed they were flying at snapped like a rubber band. 

Tommy dropped the lever and turned the bird into one of the spins before yanking to pull the nose up again. The helicopter spun in a sharp 180 before they went down down down—

Tommy woke with glass piercing his skin and smoke filling his lungs. 

His body operated on the base line of instincts, inhaling before he could catch himself, and sending his chest into a seizing frenzy of rejection. He gasped out a cough that snapped pain somewhere deep in his bones and turned his vision from the hazy grey into pure, blinding white. 

Alarms wailed in throbbing pulses, cutting through the ringing in his ears as Tommy’s limbs fumbled around him. 

Helicopter. 

He’d been in the air. 

He’d been—

Evan!

Tommy had done enough bailouts in training that his moves were muscle memory. He fumbled blindly for the buckle on his harness and felt tension give way just as pain flared to life like a hot brand against his ribs. Tommy cried out as the wallop of his broken rib stole what little breath he had in his lungs and gritted his teeth as he blinked through the sweat or maybe it was blood, clouding his vision. 

They’d managed to land on the interstate it looked like but then rolled into the grassy hill beside it. His door was pinned slightly by the aircraft and the grass and while Tommy didn’t think he’d hit anything on his crash landing, he knew better than to try and roll the helicopter. He curled his hand into a fist and punched at the shattered window, flinching as more glass rained down on him. He punched once, twice, three times before the panel folded and fresh air filled the cockpit. 

Evan. 

Tommy had to get to Evan. 

Mason had been making a phone call and Tommy didn’t know if it had gone through but he had to get to him. He had to make sure he was safe. 

Tommy’s groan slid out from between his teeth as he pulled himself through the window. The too warm trickle of something slid down his cheek like a mocking caress and all the pinpoints of wrong in Tommy’s body screamed at him as he stretched too far. Bones shifted. Glass dug into him. Bruises bloomed. Blood pearled above the surface of his skin. He felt every micro touch like they were nails digging into him and trying to pin him to the ground like a butterfly on display. 

Tommy fought the concrete weight of gravity on his back and pushed down on the ground as he dragged himself further out of the cockpit. Dried grass replaced the hard warped steel and unforgiving glass beneath his knees and Tommy dug his fingers and toes into the dirt as he tried to push himself up onto his feet. 

The world shifted into a dangerous tilt as bile burned at the back of his throat and Tommy crashed back down onto his side with an ugly retch but he didn’t stop moving. He couldn’t. He had to get help. He had to get to Evan. He had—

“You son of a bitch!”

The weight of a body crashing on top of him made Tommy silently scream as his vision went black. One fist smashed into his cheek and then another before a knee dug into his gut and stayed there. Unnatural warmth filled his belly as Tommy brought up his arms to block the next hit and then with a yell that seemed to stretch through sandpaper in his throat, Tommy was throwing himself at Hunter. 

They rolled in a volley of fists and kicks, screaming and cursing as they tried to get the upper hand. A nasty gash streaked the entire right side of Hunter’s face with blood, staining his teeth and coating down into his shirt. But the fury in his eyes blazed down at Tommy as he brought his knee up and tossed Tommy off him. Tommy flailed for something, anything, to defend himself but only found fistfuls of dirt for his trouble. His nails scratched at the earth as he took as much as he could and flung it back at Hunter. 

Hunter screamed, an angry, animalistic wail of a sound, as his hands flew up to his eyes and Tommy ran. Scrambling up onto his feet lasted only a second before he crashed back down onto his knees but he didn’t give up. He couldn’t! There were sirens in the distance and he had to warn them. He had to—

Tommy’s chin clipped the ground as Hunter tackled him and Tommy only just barely managed to roll onto his back before he saw the flash of Hunter’s knife sweeping down towards his throat. 

His heart hammered against his bruised and broken ribs as Tommy grabbed onto Hunter’s arm and it was like crashing into a brick wall. Brute force smashed into the need for survival and neither of them were willing to give up. Bloody spit fell from Hunter’s lips as a vein throbbed across his forehead and the tip of the blade was so close that Tommy couldn’t see it. It was too close, too sharp, and all it would take was one last push before Hunter killed him. 

But Evan was still out there. 

Evan still didn’t know! 

Hunter’s elbows buckled and Tommy swept the knife over, letting Hunter collapse beside him as the knife sank into the dirt. Tommy wrapped his arms and legs around Hunter and rolled them both. He pinned Hunter’s hips and shifted all his weight down, and dodged the hand reaching up to claw at his face. Tommy faked out a hit and grabbed onto Hunter’s arm he raised to block before Tommy slammed his elbow down hard. Something snapped and Tommy didn’t know if it was bone or cartilage but he didn’t care. He hit Hunter again and again as blood exploded from his nose and mouth and a hand punched up weakly under his chin. 

He couldn’t stop! He couldn’t—

“That’s enough!” 

Hands. Too many hands. 

Too many hands ripped Tommy up and away, dragging him off Hunter as more LAPD officers bent over him as if to shield him. Red and blue lights rained down on them as more and more police cruisers descended on the scene and Tommy watched as the confusion settled in on the first responders’ faces as they took in the scene. They jumped between Tommy and then Hunter before falling to the wreckage of the helicopter. 

Tommy saw one slumped figure in the back seat. 

But Mason was gone. 

Metal cuffs slapped around Tommy’s wrists as his arms were wretched behind him and Tommy’s world plummeted from beneath his knees. 

No. 

No!

“S-Stop!” Tommy cried out as his hands were cuffed behind him. “Let me go! You have to let me go!”

“Just calm down,” the officer pushing him onto his stomach said. “We’re going to get you help but—”’

“No! Fuck!” Tommy bucked up underneath him. “Get off me! I have to get to him! Get off!”

“I need some help over here!” 

“Give me your radio!” Tommy screamed even as his cheek was shoved down into the dirt. Paramedics descended over Hunter as if he was a victim and they were wrong! They were wrong! “Call the 118! Get your radio! You have to w-warn him! You have to—”

“Tommy?” 

Tommy stopped at the sound of his name. 

He knew that voice. 

Not well. Not enough to earn immediate loyalty. But he knew it. 

He knew her! 

Tommy had to blink through the frustrated tears as he sought her out and there! Standing above them with authority bathed around her like a cloak, was Athena Grant. 

“Se-Sergeant Grant!” Tommy begged, his voice choking on the words as a sob fell from his lips. “You have to help him! Please you have to help him!”

Athena’s lips were pressed into a serious line as she swung her gaze across the scene. 

“He’s getting help, Tommy. Paramedics are seeing him now. What’s—”

The sound Tommy let out didn’t even sound human. Not to his own ears and judging by the way Athena’s eyes widened not to hers either. 

“No!” His adrenaline was crashing too hard, too fast for him to get the words out. But he had to get the words out! It was the only way! “My p-pocket! It’s in my pocket!”

Athena’s brows knitted together as she came closer. “What—”

“Check my pocket!” Tommy screeched as the words brought nothing but the taste of copper on his tongue. 

“Get him up!” Athena snapped and Tommy could only groan as the world tilted again as he was hoisted up onto his knees. Athena bent down and dug her hand into Tommy’s pocket. Tommy shook and he didn’t know if it was from the pain, the adrenaline, or both but it felt like every second he had to wait, he was going to split at the seams. “Please! Please you have to—”

Athena pulled out the name plate and stared down at the name engraved on the metal. 

Shock, confusion, then horror all drifted in like the tide as her mouth dropped with a sharp exhale and Tommy couldn’t stop shaking! 

“They’re going to kill him!” 

“Alright,” Bobby said as they climbed out of the engine. “Cyclists versus unmanned vehicle. Hen, Chimney, Eddie check in with our victims. Buck set up a perimeter in case our ghost car decides to come alive again.”

Chimney’s gum popped with a decisive snap at the back of his molars. “Copy!” 

“Man, I hate these robot cars.” Eddie grumbled as he reached back into the truck for the extra medkit. He practically felt Buck silently making fun of him and Eddie shot him a glare over his shoulder before his friend could laugh. “Don’t even.” 

Buck was barely holding back his snickers as he grabbed the cones. 

“I wasn’t saying anything!”

“How many calls do we get because these stupid things go rogue?” Eddie demanded, pointing his finger at the unassuming yet very threatening Prius. “The people who developed these things could’ve invested in public transportation or… green energy. But no! They just—”

“Made Optimus Prime instead?” 

Eddie shot Buck a look, once again regretting ever showing him Transformers. “The bad guy was Megatron.” 

“Sssh!” Buck said as he wiggled his eyebrows at him. “He might hear you!”

Then he ran away before Eddie could snap a latex glove at him. 

Eddie refused to entertain the possibility that his healthy hesitancy towards certain technology was off base. 

What happened to driving? Regular, old, driven by an actual alive person driving! 

Look at what they were literally responding to! An unmanned car saw a group of bikers, overcorrected, and now was wrapped around a pole with a pissed off passenger swearing at a customer service line while a handful of people were staring at the pieces of their bicycles crushed underneath it. 

Thankfully, the worst of the injuries seemed to be a broken collarbone and a handful of brutal road rash. Everyone had been wearing their helmets but it could’ve been so much worse. 

Which was what Bobby was relaying to the supervisor on said phone of the passenger and judging by the tightness of his voice, he wasn’t getting much headway either. 

Eddie had been checking his second patient for a concussion when he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He was a professional which meant he didn’t tend to scroll on his phone even when they were between calls outside of the firehouse but Eddie was a father first and foremost so he stripped himself of his glove and pulled out of his phone to check that it wasn’t Christopher. 

It wasn’t. 

Athena’s name lit up across his screen like a beacon flashing in the middle of the night. Eddie’s chest expanded, suddenly filled with too much air, as he looked over at Bobby. He answered the call, figuring that if there was anyone beyond his son that Bobby would give him a little leeway for, it would be his own wife. 

“Hey… uh Athena,” Eddie said and the others perked up at her name. Bobby swung around to stare at him, pulling his phone at an angle where the tinny voice drifted through the speaker onto deaf ears. He frowned at Eddie. “Bobby’s dealing with—”

Athena's voice cut Eddie off in a hurried rush of words and sentences Eddie didn’t understand. Athena was never frantic but she was curt and to the point when the stress of the situation settled around them like thick ozone that made it hard to breathe. She didn’t give him a chance to interject. She didn’t give him a chance to speak. The sound of sirens were wailing in the background and Eddie felt time slow into syrup around him as he processed what she was saying. 

His eyes snapped up to Buck. 

“Buck!”

Buck dropped a cone as he waved on a car before he turned at the sound of his name.

Then Eddie saw it. 

Eddie saw the van speeding down the street, cutting across the lanes, and turning sharply towards him. 

But Buck didn’t see it. His back was to the street and Eddie couldn’t get the words out. 

“Buck!” Eddie barked out like his best friend’s name was punched out of him. He broke out into a run even though he knew, he knew, he wouldn’t make it in time. 

Buck looked at him, his lips puckering into a confused frown, and he didn’t see! He didn’t see!

The van’s brakes squealed as it turned and the side door opened to a black hole that seemed endless before an arm swung out into the sunlight and grabbed Buck around the waist. 

Buck yelped as the force took him off his feet. 

“Hey!” Chimney shouted as the others caught up with Eddie. 

Buck’s hand stretched out as shock jolted across his expression and Eddie reached out, trying to grab onto fingertips if only so he could stop what was happening. 

But it was too late. 

Buck disappeared into the black hole and the truck drove away as the door slammed shut. 

Buck crashed into metal and carpet in a tangle of limbs. His stomach lurched up into his throat with the feeling of a van speeding away beneath him, making his knees buckle almost immediately. But too hot hands were grabbing onto his too cold skin and panic flared sharp and bright behind his eyes as he punched out. His knuckles grazed air but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop! Adrenaline and shock at being grabbed from a scene and driven away had stolen his vision and the last thing Buck had seen was his team racing towards him. 

He punched out again, kicked, clawed, grabbed whatever he could before a leg swept out his legs from beneath him and Buck slammed down hard on his side. He yelped as the pain jolted through him like a shock before a body landed on top of him. 

Then the panic turned all consuming. 

Buck writhed and flailed, trying to knock whoever was pinning him down off him, but that only seemed to make everything worse. Tight fists grabbed his turnout coat and used Buck’s own movements to flip him onto his stomach and then the panic froze into pure, unfiltered terror. It spread up his spine like poison and robbed whatever air was left in his lungs. Buck kicked down and pushed with all his might but the person on top of him settled all their weight on his hips and rode the motion with him. 

“Give me that.” A voice said and it was so calm, so detached Buck almost thought he’d been hallucinating it through the haze of panic and fear. But then strong hands yanked at his wrists and pulled them behind his back before thick black zip ties cinched them together. Buck’s foot found the back of a seat and he pushed with all the leverage he had to try and break free but it didn’t work. All he managed to do was drag himself across the thin carpet beneath him. “How much longer?” 

Longer for what? What was happening? Where were they going? Buck didn’t know what was going on except that he was tied up in a van and they were taking his radio away like it was a chore. 

“ETA ninety-eight seconds.” 

For what? What was going on? 

“Copy.” The man got up off of Buck and Buck kicked out before he could get far. Bruising hands grabbed onto his ankle and yanked and Buck let out a sound he didn’t even recognize to his own ears as he was dragged and lifted up onto his shoulders. “Kid has more fight in him than I expected.”

What did that mean?

Buck wanted to scream! But his throat was filled with sand, dry and swollen and unable to get his tongue to speak as he tried to find his balance again. 

The van shifted into a sharp turn before screeching to a halt that sent Buck almost somersaulting in the back. His shoulders screamed in protest and before Buck could find the right side up, the back doors were swinging open and blinding him with sunlight. 

“Let’s go! Get him out!” 

Buck didn’t know that voice! He didn’t know what was happening! All he knew was that hands were grabbing and pulling and dragging him out until his hips met air and his legs fell into a heap beneath him. 

The back alley they were in was abandoned on all fronts. It wasn’t easy to find a place so devoid of life in Los Angeles but somehow they managed. The silence was so loud it rang in Buck’s ears as he tried to process everything. 

Another car was waiting for them with two men bloody and bruised like they’d gotten into a fight with a truck and lost. Anger didn’t even begin to describe the emotion rippling off one of the men that Buck couldn’t help flinch away. 

“Wha-What’s—”

“Hold him still.” One of the men said before he pulled out a syringe.

Buck reared back with a weak kick of his leg but it didn’t matter. Two sets of hands hoisted him up before slamming him face first into the side of the van. White hot pain rocketed from his cheek to the back of his skull as a beefy palm pinned him against the metal by his face. The pressure of the the thumb beneath his eye was enough to make his head nearly explode. 

Buck tried to scream. But it got trapped in his throat and fell out in a reedy whine of a noise as he tried to push free. 

“Relax kid.” Someone said and Buck didn’t think it was meant to be soothing. He squirmed beneath the hand against the van and tried to find his footing as his turnout coat was yanked down to expose his throat. “This is just to make you a little more comfortable for the ride.”

Buck saw the glint of the syringe in the sunlight and bucked hard. 

It was the first bit of traction he’d gotten and Buck’s lungs released as if he finally remembered how to breathe. 

“Hold him!” 

But Buck kicked back and felt the crunch of bone and cartilage give as someone’s knee buckled beneath them. A wild, agonized scream shrieked through the air like a siren and Buck bodied back into the other person holding him as hard as he could. Hands slipped from his skin with a wild scrap of fingertips and the moment he was free, Buck ran. 

“Get him!” 

Buck didn’t stop. He didn’t know where he was but he couldn’t have been far from a street or a store or somewhere he could call for help. The thundering of footsteps pounding after him only made Buck run faster even as his center of balance abandoned him at almost every step. His turncoat fell off over one shoulder and pooled down his arm, dragging against the ground, but Buck didn’t stop. He kept running and tried to think! 

Just think Buck! 

They hadn’t been driving for long which meant he couldn’t have been too far from the scene. That had been in the arts district which meant he was surrounded by warehouses, abandoned and refurbished into something new and trendy. The buildings were old and historic which meant he probably was in the belly of a network of warehouses. Rusty catwalks criss crossed above and every alcove Buck found was a dead end. One wrong turn could mean that he’d either find a street or he could head further into a maze of connective alleyways. 

He didn’t know which one was which. He didn’t have time to stop and consider the options of either direction. Buck just ran and ran as fast as he could. He turned left and then right, getting further lost without a single person in sight but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop! Not till he found somewhere safe. Survival was burning hot at the back of his neck and spreading into his lungs and Buck couldn’t stop! Cobblestones mixed with pavement and potholes threatened to trip him up and Buck’s turnout coat kept slipping from his fingers as he tried to keep it from dragging or catching. He couldn’t hear the men chasing him anymore but he knew better than to stop and look. He didn’t know if they were after his turnouts or if they wanted maybe an EMT for some reason. He didn’t know! 

All he knew was that he had to keep running! 

He had to—

The man from before, the angry one, stepped around the corner and tackled Buck to the ground. He fell in a heap of limbs and curses. Buck cried out as their combined weight fell on his hands before he rolled trying to get free. Sweat stung his eyes as the burn from his throat climbed into a building pressure into his head of raw desperation and Buck fought. He fought as much as he could, trying to break free from the man trying to get the upper hand. 

“I didn’t have to fucking be like this, kid!” The man snarled, his mouth tightening so much that his cheek dimpled. His steel grey eyes pierced down at Buck as he locked his forearm over Buck’s windpipe and Buck lurched wildly as he tried to breathe. 

He couldn’t breathe! 

He choked and writhed and sank even more in the unknown why of it all as stars flared across his vision before bruising into black inky spots. 

The man looked up and around them before he snarled back down at Buck and shoved him free. Buck gasped as the burn of air flooded his throat. He tried to scramble away but the moment his head went too high, he tipped in a tilt that was too sharp to stop. He crashed into the wall behind him, slumping against the brick as he tried to find his balance again. 

“Screw this.” The man snapped before he pulled out his gun and aimed it at Buck’s chest. Buck’s whole body went ice cold. “You’re both more trouble than you’re worth.”

He cocked the safety off and Buck barely heard the click before he pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession. 

Buck braced for the pain. 

It never came. 

Instead, a chest wrapped around him that smelled like sweat and smoke and sandalwood and amber, cocooning him from everything, and then they were falling. 

A punched out pained noise filled his ear before pieces of brick rained down on them like an explosion and Buck could only flinch as they landed on the ground with Tommy covering him with his chest like a human shield. 

“Let me see your hands!” 

                “On your knees!” 

   “Don’t you move!” 

             “LAPD! Hands now!”

Athena. 

Buck latched onto Athena’s voice as what felt like hundreds of LAPD officers descended the alleyway and surrounded them. Cruisers screeched through to the too small alleyways and skidded to a stop as reinforcements came in like a rushing calvary. Buck couldn’t see what was happening! Tommy’s arms were around his head and they hadn’t moved but he could see through the small space between Tommy’s shoulder and the ground that the angry man was dropping to his knees with his hands on his head and his eyes murderously glaring at Tommy’s back. 

“You’re okay!” Tommy said into Buck’s ear so only he could hear. “I got you. You’re okay. You’re okay!” 

The exhale that fell out of Buck was a shock of a sob when they dragged the man away in handcuffs. 

“You remember me, Tom.” The man snarled and Tommy squeezed Buck even closer. “Don’t forget my face kid. I’ll be back.”

“Wh-What?” Buck huffed out as his adrenaline crashed through his system like a thousand plates shattering to pieces. He couldn’t stop shaking even as he stayed frozen in the shock of the last handful of minutes. “T-Tommy? What’s happening? What’s going on? Wha–”

“You’re okay,” Tommy said again and his body went heavier over Buck like all his strings had been cut. 

The weight of him was too much too soon and Buck squirmed up out from under him as he tried to see if something would finally explain what had been happening. He’d been kidnapped from a scene! They were going to drug him! He’d almost been shot! What—

Tommy didn’t move. 

Buck looked down at Tommy curled in his lap and waited for him to get up, pull away, run away, smile as if everything was okay. But he didn’t. He didn’t move. 

The pained noise in his ear. 

“Tommy?” Buck tugged at his cuffs. Tommy didn’t move. Buck’s heart slammed into his chest. “Tommy!”

It was hard to see against the black fabric of his clothes but when he did Buck couldn’t look away. The blood and the torn hole in his back gaped up at Buck like a twisted little surprise. Buck’s stomach dropped out from beneath his knees. 

“Tommy!” Buck fought against his cuffs, bruising the skin until his finger tips were numb but he didn’t care because Tommy wasn’t moving. Tommy was bleeding and he wasn’t moving and Buck couldn’t stop the bleeding without his hands. He needed his hands! “Help! Athena! Someone cut me loose! Cut me loose now! Help! Tommy!”

Everyone moved too slow and Buck was trapped in a nightmare of watching Tommy bleed out in front of him. 

Tommy woke feeling like he was floating. 

Though, he supposed that was probably the morphine. There was a tingling fuzziness beneath his skin he knew all too well that came from an IV drip and painkillers that easily could’ve sent him swaying back into sleep if he wanted. But there were also the pillows. Too many of them and too stiff for his liking propping him half up on his side even though he was trying to roll onto his back. How he could be floating and also wedged into place was beyond him. Especially when all he wanted to do was roll onto his back and fall back asleep. 

But the stupid pillows. 

Gentle fingers swept back his hair and caressed his brow before the too thin blankets were pulled up further to tuck him in. 

He didn’t even realize how cold he was until then. 

ICU then. 

Must’ve been bad if he was getting—

Everything came back to Tommy in stunning clarity. The bar. The sleepless night watching Evan sleep. The flight. The crash. The sight of Mason pointing a gun at Evan. 

Evan. 

Tommy’s eyes snapped open with a gasp that felt like every one of his ribs were brittle and ready to break with a snap of his fingers. The light from the hospital room was off and too bright even through the window and he groaned as his too dry eyes burned. Something was beeping, rapid and too fast, and there was a wholloping whooping alarm somewhere over his head. The oxygen beneath his nose hissed too cold air into his nostrils and touched his paper thin skin and he wanted it off. He wanted it off and he wanted on his back but he needed to see—

“Hey.” That voice. That voice that Tommy would’ve moved mountains for if given the chance. Dry, warm fingers curled around his hand and tucked it back down onto the pillow he was rolled onto before the sweet, calloused palm cupped his cheek as Evan leaned down into his eyeline. “Leave that there, Tommy. You’re okay.”

A thumb swept over the soft skin under his eye, dashing away a tear Tommy didn’t realize had fallen free from his lashes. 

Fuck he hated morphine so much. 

“You’re here?” Tommy asked, his voice sounding like he’d run into a house fire and sucked all the smoke into his lungs. 

Evan nodded. “Yeah.”

“You’re okay?” Tommy asked after because he couldn’t see anything and he could remember running his hand up and down Evan’s back searching for a bullet hole before passing out but he needed to know for sure. 

Evan’s eyes went glassy as he sucked in a breath before he nodded again. “Yeah Tommy. I’m okay. A little freaked out about the cameras in my apartment that I didn’t even know about but I’m okay.”

Tommy had so much to tell him and yet nothing could come to his tongue. Nothing except, “I’m sorry.”

He was sorry for everything. Sorry for what he did. Sorry for putting Evan in this position in the first place. Sorry about everything. 

Evan didn’t say anything at first. The only words were the unspoken kind in the sweep of his thumb across Tommy’s skin, caressing back and forth and back and forth, like a hypnotist pulling him under. Tommy would’ve gladly fallen into whatever alternate reality existed where he could fix everything he’d done. 

“Why’d you do it, Tommy?” Evan asked eventually. Tommy hummed because Evan’s caress was sending him back to sleep and he needed more help than usual to interpret the language of Evan Buckley’s internal thoughts. Evan worked his jaw but kept his eyes locked on Tommy as he sucked in a shuddering breath. “You jumped in front of a bullet for me. Why would you do that?”

“You know why.” 

Evan had to have known. 

Tommy felt like Evan could look at him and see right through all his walls and straight to the very heart of him where all the good, the bad, and the ugly existed. It was what sent him running the first time. 

Evan sucked in a breath and held it, tears brimming in his eyes. It was too dark to see but Tommy was almost certain the tip of his nose was turning pink the way it always did when Evan cried. Evan said he hated it. But Tommy loved it. 

Tommy loved all of it. 

He didn’t need Mason to point that out to him.

“They were going to hurt you and I was never, ever going to let that happen.” Tommy said with as much conviction as he could muster so Evan heard him. Really, truly heard him. 

It was exhilarating being so honest. 

It was terrifying too. 

“I’m so sorry, Evan.” Tommy’s voice cracked and Evan brushed back his hair again with a gentle scratch of his nails. 

“Say it.” Evan said with another shaky breath. “Please.” 

Tommy’s heart skipped in his chest. 

But Evan continued. “You got shot and you wouldn’t answer me and I thought… I thought I’d never—”

"I love you,” Tommy said quickly and probably not nearly as romantic as Evan deserved because Evan deserved the world. 

But the thought that Evan was so heartbroken thinking that Tommy would’ve died never telling him was too much to bear. 

Evan sniffed and he looked at Tommy, really truly looked at him, with an expression that was so open and hesitant like he didn’t want to get heartbroken again. 

“I love you and that terrifies me,” Tommy said. 

Evan’s chin trembled once before he sniffed again. “Promise me you won’t ever do that again. Don’t ever take a bullet for me or whatever. I can’t—”

“No.” Tommy said and he watched as the waterfall of emotions trickled across Evan’s expression. 

“No?”

“No,” Tommy said again. “I won’t make that promise. Because if loving you means giving you my last breath then I’m sorry Evan, I’m taking the bullet everytime.” 

And maybe it was the morphine but the words weren’t as hard to say as he thought they would be. Because there was Evan looking at him like he hung the moon and Tommy didn’t feel worthy of any of it, but still he was speaking the truth. 

Evan leaned forward and kissed him. It was soft and gentle and too fucking careful like he was afraid one wrong push would shatter Tommy to pieces but it was a kiss all the same. A sweet, tender thing that felt right and like being at home. 

Tommy sighed into it. 

“I’ve missed you.” Evan confessed, pressing his forehead against Tommy’s. 

“I know.” Tommy said, still haunted by the image of Evan sleeping in his hoodie on the TV screen. “I’m so sorry.”

Evan shushed him as he leaned back into his chair. “Just sleep now, Tommy. We can talk later.”

Sleep sounded nice. Tommy was exhausted and despite the morphine, he was starting to ache. But he wanted to roll on his back. 

“I told them you’d hate it,” Evan said with a soft smile as if reading his mind. “Can I get you anything? Warm blanket or—”

Tommy huffed as he settled before he let the morphine steal his inhibitions one more time.

“Stay?” 

And Evan’s smile was like sunshine on his skin. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Tommy sighed and let the last of the tension melt away. 

“Tommy?” Evan asked and Tommy opened his eyes to look back at him. Evan’s smile bloomed into something even more beautiful than Tommy could’ve ever imagined. “I love you too.”

And maybe, just maybe, guys like Tommy got a happy ending too.