Chapter Text
The bar was loud, filled with rowdy firefighters and paramedics alike. It hadn’t been ‘rented out’ necessarily, but enough station captains had banned together to bribe the owner that they’d agreed to close it down so that their stations could have a bit of fun during the chaotic work season. It was only for a couple of hours, until either the firefighters had to go back home or had to go back to their bunks in the station. Summer was always the most intense for the many fire departments across LA, considering LA was a fireplace waiting for kindling at all times.
Tommy sat at a table somewhere in the middle of it all, bumping shoulders and knocking down drinks with coworkers and close company he had gained over the years. His eyes scanned the room, observing all the different people crowded in the Western-style bar. While scanning over the distinct clothes, haircuts, and postures, one individual caught his attention.
He was leaning against the bar, elbows planted firmly on the wood counter with his ass towards the crowd. He was swaying back and forth on the balls and then heels of his feet like they were hurting him — it puzzled Tommy a bit because right next to the individual was an empty seat. Was he waiting for someone? A partner? Or maybe just a friend? Or maybe he was alone and waiting for a drink… Tommy was hoping for the latter, in a rather cavernous section of his mind.
He had been thinking about it for months now, how while he loved Abby, his love felt… wrong. It was difficult to put into words, difficult to get the knot in his stomach out onto the tip of his tongue and into the world. So instead, Tommy opted to sit at his table with his bunch of friends and simply… admired until he could get the right words out.
He didn’t quite recognize the man, but it felt a little impossible to recognize every station worker across the dozens of different departments the LAFD had under their belt.
But he was handsome. The man had an incredibly nice physique with an amazing stubble, and Tommy greatly appreciated the lowered glare of his brows and eyes, almost like he was a little frustrated to be in the bar in the first place. Maybe he was a disgruntled staff member? Sick of dealing with these teenage-like firefighters?
Tommy’s body felt tense. He didn’t need another drink, and he didn’t want another dent in his wallet, but he needed some excuse to go over there.
His heart would’ve broken at the sight of another man coming over to the lonely one, two drinks in hand, a smile lighting up the room, if he hadn’t been so handsome. He had a friendly face, stubble going across his jaw and down his neck, and a mustache lining the top of his lips. A yellow-ish white color made the underside of his hair glow under the bar lights; a nice little peek-a-boo of individuality.
The guy looked oddly familiar to Tommy, but it was so far down in his memory he could barely graze it with his finger. And, well… Tommy’s brain was focusing hard on the fact that these two hot dudes were barely centimeters away from each other. Jesus, what was going on here? Were they a couple? He hoped to any god listening that they were not, because the idea of those two attractive ass men walking around constantly being attractive together gave the firefighter heart palpitations.
The newcomer cheerfully handed over one of the shots to his associate, who happily received it. It was the first time the guy had smiled, and it should’ve been illegal how bright it was. By this point, Tommy was mindlessly contributing to a conversation that was nothing but droning noise in his head. His entire focus was on those two men… which was very concerning on his part.
As their arms interlocked so they could move even closer to one another, Tommy could see high in the sky a bomb about to fall right down on the bar, and as the lone cowboy threaded his free hand into the other’s hair and the pair downed the shots in one smooth go, the bomb landed right on Tommy.
As the newcomer got a slight tug on his head and he happily patted the other’s cheek, Tommy finally realized who it was.
He nudged Chimney, who was sitting right next to him, enjoying the sourness of a lime after downing another shot which had turned up on the table.
“Yeah, bud?” Chimney tilted his head in his direction.
Tommy vaguely gestured towards the pair, finger slightly hovering on the familiar man. “Is that, uh… that paramedic that worked with us a while back?”
Chimney’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned in. Tommy could practically see the gears turning in his head.
The name was on the tip of his tongue… Stefan? Stan?
“Stevenson!” Chimney gasped, and the pair whipped their heads in the table’s direction.
While his friend (long-shot, unless those two were just close like that) had a fairly neutral expression, maybe the quirk of his lips, Stevenson absolutely lit up.
They immediately rushed over to their table, the other man following in pursuit, but with a 5-second delay.
“Oh my god, Chimney, what’s up, dude! God, it’s been a hot second!”
Chimney and the others were smiling up a storm, but Tommy couldn’t help guilt from bubbling up in his stomach. “I didn’t know if you were gonna show!”
Stevenson shrugged. “Luca basically begged me, and Bevie — ” They nudged the man next to him with his hip “ — thought it’d be nice to go out.”
“Awww,” one of the women at the table cooed. “Stevie and Bevie, you guys are just the cutest.”
Well, now Tommy thought he was going to curl up in a hole and die. Of course these two were together, but now Tommy was just upset because neither of them were single. Not that he could’ve done anything if they were single… Well, he could’ve done something anyway, but he was not a bad person.
Then again, Tommy had probably fucked up any chance to be friendly with Stevie years ago.
Maybe friendly wasn’t really the word he should use.
“Wait,” someone else at the table spoke up. “Stevie, I knew you got married — ” Married!? Tommy needed to run far away. “ — but I didn’t know it was to such a hunk, okay!”
Hen at the other end of the table gasped. “Oh my god, wait, you don’t know Bev?”
The man next to Stevie, ‘Bev,’ shrugged. “Stevie likes keeping me in a cage, so I don’t get much sunlight.”
Stevenson rolled his eyes, playfully slapping his husband before muttering, “You’re so ridiculous.”
A couple of people started introducing themselves as the couple squeezed their bodies around Hen’s side of the table. As the people closer and closer to Tommy introduced themselves, he felt his heart quicken, both because of how unfairly handsome these two men were, and because he was almost 100% sure Stevenson had wiped him from his memory. Not that he could blame him. Unfortunately, a young and stupid Thomas Kinard had been a mega douche in his 20s.
Finally, Bev’s eyes landed on him, and the couple let their gazes settle on the man right across from them; Tommy’s mouth felt dry. Bev’s glare was so intimidating, and Tommy wasn’t even sure the man intended for it to be so demeaning… or maybe he had. The firefighter wasn’t exactly sure what Stevie had told people about their first and few interactions.
“Kinard,” he choked out, feeling like an idiot: an idiot with a face full of flames. “I worked with Steve when he was assigned to the 118, the first time.” If Tommy weren’t a stronger man, he would’ve smacked his face right into the palm of his hand. Steve? Really? God, who calls him Steve!?
“That’s when I met Chimney at the same time, remember?” Stevie nudged his husband, who was nodding slowly, eyes never leaving the firefighter.
“No, yeah,” Bev responded. “Yeah, Tommy, I remember.”
Shit.
The rest of the night went fairly smooth. The couple stayed at the table even when more and more people left and it got deeper and deeper into the night. There seemed to be no intense animosity between the pair and Tommy, but he did notice shared glances or small nudges after every other thing the firefighter said.
So maybe there was a bit of bad blood, but Tommy ignored it because every time the two laughed, it felt like an angel grew wings.
God, was this the nail in the coffin?
A yawn falling from Stevie’s lips got Bev to grab his husband’s shoulders with such an intense fervor that the man shook like he was jelly. “I think that's our cue.”
Some of the others at the table whined and cried at the loss of their friend; Tommy just kept his head down and played with the rim of his glass. His body was tense, and his heart was pounding against his chest. It was a little ridiculous how much he was reacting to these two — and more than that, it was highly embarrassing.
The pair stood up, and Bev rubbed Stevie’s shoulders to get him to wake up so he wouldn’t collapse on the walk to the car. “Hopefully we can do this again… sometime soon.” Stevie pouted. “Worst thing about this travel gig is I feel like a foster kid hopping family to family.”
Tommy stopped himself from snorting at the joke, rubbing his ticklish nose and avoiding all eye contact with the surrounding people.
“It was great meeting all of you,” Bev spoke up. “Hopefully now that Mr. Reece knows I play nice, he'll let me out of the attic.” The man’s eyes flickered over to Tommy, perhaps a sparkle of something more in those pupils of his.
“Pshh,” Stevenson forced out. “Now that you told people about the attic, you’re definitely not getting out, Mr. Reece.” The table laughed and Stevie, not just his husband, let his eyes flicker over to the firefighter whom they were just across from a minute earlier. Tommy sunk further into his seat. There was something there, right behind his eyes, yelling to hell at Tommy.
He remembered everything perfectly clear. The first time he had even worked with the guy, he had practically shoved him to the ground; every other time he’d acted like they didn’t exist or fallen on Gerrard’s side when the captain made snide or nasty comments. After the station found out that Stevenson Reynolds (not yet Reece) had a father with a criminal record, and their family didn’t come from the greatest of the places, Gerrard began treating him like he was lesser than everyone else at the station. It didn’t help that the other guys were pissed that the paramedic was replacing one of their favorite guys after he had gotten fired from an altercation with another captain at a different station. Tommy knew the preconceived biases of Gerrard weren’t the best to run with, and he knew perhaps he should’ve extended some kind of olive branch considering how sweet and kind Stevie had been no matter how many times Gerrard made him the workhorse of the station, but unfortunately for him, that younger version of Thomas Kinard was much more of a follower than a leader.
Not that it was any excuse, and he was still making amends to Hen and Chimney…Hell, even to Bobby with the way he had acted, but… maybe if he outstretched his hand now… maybe Stevie (and surely his husband) would understand that he had changed, and he was willing to change even more.
The door swung open as the couple departed, and Tommy quickly excused himself, leaving his wallet on the table as collateral. His feet hit the ground heavy as he picked up the pace, hoping that he’d be able to catch the Reeces in time.
“Stevenson!” Tommy called out, digging his heels into the gravel road as the couple, shrouded in darkness and just reaching their car, whipped their heads around.
“Tommy?” Stevie called back, squinting his eyes at the sight of him. “Hey, man, what’s up?”
The two met in the middle, with Bev slowly following behind his husband, keeping a far enough distance to maintain a watchful eye on his lover while also giving them a bit of privacy.
Tommy’s heart was beating too fast for the rest of his body to catch up. The tingling nerves in his hands made him feel like this was a fight-or-flight situation — but luckily for Tommy, he’d never run away from a fire.
“I know I was a jerk to you when we first met.”
Stevie’s eyes went wide at the straightforward confession of wrongdoing.
“And I understand if you never want to see or mess with me again,” Tommy continued. “But I just wanted you, and, y’know — your husband — to know that I apologize.”
Stevie crossed his arms and stared intensely, his eyes digging straight into Tommy, trying to determine if he was genuine. “That’s… that’s sweet of you, Kinard.”
Tommy offered him a small smile as a result of the softness growing in the other’s voice. “I know it doesn’t make it better, but Gerrard loved making that a private boy’s club. If you were in it, you had to stay in it… hell hath no fury like a scorned Gerrard."
Stevie snorted, rocking back and forth and looking off somewhere in the distance. “You don’t gotta tell me twice about a scorned Gerrard.”
Tommy found himself smiling again, eyes darting over to the man behind them whose eyes read a simple message ‘Hurry up, and I hope you’re not making him upset.’ There was a peculiar curling sensation in his abdomen, a tight and tense contraction of his muscles as his eyes flickered between both men. This seemed like a now or never moment, to show up and do his due diligence on this long road of amendments. “Me and a couple of the guys were going to get coffee on Wednesday?” That grabbed Stevie’s attention, and his husband's. “If you’re free, it’d be great for you to tag along — and you too, Bev.”
The dispatcher, Tommy had found out during the night, pointed at himself with wide eyes.
“Hell yeah, dude. Everyone totally loved you back there.”
Stevie rolled his eyes. “Everyone always loves him.” He looked behind him. “He’s too damn charming.”
Bev rolled his eyes. “Aright, asshole.” He unstuck his feet from the gravel and clicked their car unlocked, sauntering over to the driver’s side.
The pair, left alone under the light of the moon, laughed at the man’s reaction. It was normal, and it felt nice. It carried the same warm and cozy energy that enveloped Tommy back in the bar… the whole ‘angels growing their wings’ analogy.
It made him feel even more guilty that so many years had passed before this finally happened.
“I’m sorry, again,” Tommy repeated once the laughter shared between them fizzled out. “We’ve worked together before, and it just… I’m sorry I’m finally saying this now.”
Stevenson shrugged, letting his hands fall gracefully to his hips as a smile took over his mouth. “It’s whatever, not like you can really sit down and chat in the middle of a fire.”
Tommy’s cheeks hurt from the grin stretching across his face. “Yeah, I guess you're right.”
There were crickets out, and the buzz of fireflies danced across their ears. It was a nice night — an incredibly nice night — to do this.
“So, Wednesday?” Stevie spoke up again.
Should a man feel this way towards a married man? Well… towards a married man and his husband? Whether it was necessarily ‘right,’ Tommy couldn’t help the feeling of his heart soaring right out of his chest. “Yeah, Wednesday.”
Stevie nodded, his feet traveling backward while he nodded. “Great, see you then, Kinard. You still have my number from all the way back then?”
It would be embarrassing if Tommy admitted in full truth that he could probably 100% still find the man’s number somewhere in the depths of his phone, but still, he waved away Stevenson’s concerns. “I can ask Chimney.”
Stevie’s smile lasted even as he slunk into the passenger side of his car, gracing Tommy with one last crinkled-eye glance before shutting the door.
Whatever was wrong with himself, he could figure it out later. Now he had to muster up the courage to actually text Stevie the details of the coffee meetup on Wednesday that he would hopefully bring his husband to.