#It's fixed though
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gothamcity-official · 1 year ago
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My work is doing a joint research project with WE and I’m moving to Gotham for at least 6 months very soon. Any tips for a new soon-to-be resident?
Since you are coming in with Wayne Enterprises, you likely got a kit. Ask if it's a short term or a long term kit to see what you have to get when you arrive.
Keep your gas mask on your person at all times and be aware that, even when most inmates are still in Arkham, small-time villains will also use gas attacks. Here are the most common instructions on how to keep yourself safe during any generalized gas attack.
Most tap water is unsafe, but you will be working with Wayne Enterprises and they can get the management to filter the systems properly. While you are in the WE buildings, the water will be safe. While outside the WE buildings, either boil water and let it cool down, or use a Gotham-certified filter.
Statistically, the least amount of crimes happen in Gotham on Sundays and the most happen on Wednesdays. Not that crimes stop happening or really lessen that much, but that is what the numbers say.
Here is a list of the currently active Bats and Birds. There are part time members of the Colony, but you really only need to remember those who are currently active.
If any major rogue attacks, let the Colony handle it. It is the GPD's and their jobs to handle it.
Good Luck!
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sashayed · 2 months ago
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If you are in your 20s and depressed I want you to know this: As you age, I promise, you will acquire tools and perspective that will open your world in ways you cannot imagine right now. You will find levels of contentment and joy you never thought possible. You will access a deep understanding and forgiveness of yourself that comes just from hanging out long enough in the same body, and that forgiveness will change everything. Also you may have a regressive depression so intense and long-lasting that it feels like a traumatic brain injury. don't freak out it's normal
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canisonicscrewyou · 2 years ago
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egophiliac · 2 months ago
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*shaky thumbs up* I just finished ch5...... y-you were not kidding about it being a heavy one.....
:)
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(how's that going so far, Mal)
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vaguesnail · 3 months ago
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some sketches from this week!
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magicicephoenix · 8 days ago
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soo... how does moon feel about never being able to physically be with sun? just curious <3
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not very good.
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the-final-sif · 2 years ago
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I feel like there's two parts to the no fly list leak that are getting overlooked right now
1) the person in question has the handle "maia arson crimew" meaning media outlets have to cite "crimew" as the person they're quoting, which is amazing.
2) From everything I've read, crimew didn't actually commit a crime (in this case at least). According to crimew, the no-fly list was discovered on a publicly accessible server, totally unsecured. crimew was using Shodan which is a totally legal tool regularly used by a lot of the security community for research. Schools use and provide access to Shodan, it's a normal tool. Nothing crimew was doing was out of the ordinary. Her access and use of the file was most likely legal (or at least next to impossible to prosecute), given that it was publicly accessible.
crimew even notified CommuteAir of the data vulnerability. Which prevented more sensitive data from leaking, and was absolutely a sign of acting in good faith. Her obligation to even do that is a pretty gray area, but she did it anyways.
Now, crimew has gotten charged by the US in the past for other things, however, Swiss citizens cannot be extradited against their will. So the proceedings were suspended. She could only be charged under Swiss law, and given that the data is/was publicly accessible and the exposure was for public good, that's very unlikely to happen.
The people actually getting investigated by congress/the FBI/the TSA are the idiots at CommuteAir that were hosting the no fly list on an unsecured publicly accessible server. They're the ones who actually get in trouble for failing to have followed basic security protocols. They're the ones who had a legal obligation to safe guard that data, and they're the ones who fucked up.
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abisalli · 4 months ago
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Talia Al Ghul plss 💚
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quit your job Bruce (still work shopping that one)
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lilybug-02 · 4 months ago
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In da hat for today.
Bug Fact: There are more than 1,000,000 different kinds (species) of insects known in the world. About 7,000 new species are found each year.
First || Prev // Next
Masterpost
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nicecrumbart · 3 months ago
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ur art is sooo pretty to look at :3 could i mayhaps request a desert of the duo,,, if ud like to,,,
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Idk what scars thinking about here but it doesn't seem very funtimeswithscar 😔
And thank youuu, finally got an excuse to draw desert duo hehe
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nosnexus · 1 year ago
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Case Closed.
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daydreamerwonderkid · 5 months ago
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Saw this post and I immediately had to fuck around a bit.
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bet-on-me-13 · 7 months ago
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Wes ruins everything
Wes had finally done it, he had finally realized why nobody ever belived him about Fenton and Phantom! It made so much sense now, he had been looking for an answer for years, thinking he was going crazy because everybody refused to see the Obvious!
He was Cursed!
He literally had an Ancestoral Curse on his Bloodline that made it so that all those born with the gift of Prophecy would be ignored! A Gift of Prophecy that he apparently had.
It was Cassandra's Curse, the one from Greek Myths. Apparently she was his Great×1000 Grandmother and passed down the Gift (and Curse) of Prophecy to him. And he knew how to break it!
All he needed to do was gather the right resources, chant the correct incantations, make sure not to accidentally summon a Demon in the process, and he could just foist the Curse onto some other poor schmuck. Sure it would suck for them, and he would loose his Gift of Prophecy, but Wes had been ignored for Years at this point, he needed validation!
So he did the Ritual, and he didn't mess it up, and he managed to get rid of the Curse.
Now all he had to do was convince everybody that he was right for the first time in his life! This was going to be great!
...
Cass didn't know what was going on.
A while ago, she had started getting these...gut feelings that she couldn't explain.
She would look over the details of a Case her Family was working on, and see a patern that the others were seemingly ignoring. Like when she realized that The Penguin was about to raid the Docks on the East Side, but the others were convinced it was going to be on the West.
But when she had tried to tell them, they had brushed her off. "We've already concluded that he will begin the Raid on the West side, no need to go to the East."
She had gone anyways, and low and behold she had been right. But nobody even acknowledged that she had been right at all, they had just wondered how they had missed the signs, not even questioning how she had known.
It wasn't limited to Cases either. Even small things, like telling her brother's where the TV remote was were brushed off, and hours later they would still be looking, never even having checked where she told them.
It seemed that no matter what, nobody cared about her point of view anymore. They kept brushing her off, telling her she was wrong, actively ignoring her ideas.
And it was getting worse. They were starting to ignore her more and more, forgetting she was in the room, not calling her down for Dinner, even forgetting to check in on her during Patrol.
She knew that there must be something going on, Magical or otherwise, but when she tried bringing it up with her Dad or JLD, they would also Brush her off.
Her Family was forgetting her. And they didn't even realize it.
...
Danny was not okay at the moment.
When he had gone to school a few weeks ago and noticed everybody staring at him, he didn't give it much thought. Maybe Dash or Paulina had spread another Rumor about him again, not too out of the ordinary.
When his name had been called over the Intercom, he hadn't thought much of that either. His grades were falling even more than usual, so he assumed his Guidance Counselor wanted to have another talk with him.
When he walked into the Principals Office to see both of his Parents and some GIW Agents, that's when he realized something big must have happened.
He didn't have much of a chance to react when the Shields went up, but he did react when the first Ecto-Blast scorched the wall behind him. His Parents began to scream at him as they fired their Blasters, something about replacing somebody? He didn't know, he was pretty preoccupied at the moment.
It took more effort than he cared to admit to escape the Room, but a stray shot to the hidden Shield Projector under the Principals Desk proved to be his saving grace. Unfortunately the moment he escaped the Office, he was met with a veritable Army of GIW Agents, all armed to the Teeth with Weapons he had never even seen before.
He managed to get away for a moment, hiding in the Bathroom as the Agents chasing him passed it by. That's when he met Wes.
He obviously hadn't been expecting him, but the moment he saw him Wes put on a smug look. "Oh hi Fenton, trying to get away from the other students?"
Danny had replied with confusion, "What the hell are you talking about?!"
"I finally managed to convince everybody about you, now everyone knows that you're Phantom! I'll bet you're hiding from all of the other Students hounding you for questions right?"
"...it was you?"
"Yeah, so? I finally get to be right!"
"...You absolute MORON-"
That was the last Danny got to say to Wes before an Ecto-Blast launched him through a Wall, seeing his face morph into a look of Shock just before the dust cloud covered it up.
Since that day, Danny had been on the Run. Nowhere was safe anymore now that the GIW knew both his Human and Ghost's faces, but he had to keep running. He crossed state Lines already, and was on his way to the next Ecto-Rich City he could sense, somewhere in New Jersey.
He cursed his Fenton Luck every day. Why had everybody believed Wes this time?! Nobody had ever belived him before, nobody even seemed to acknowledge his existence after a while! What had changed?
Danny just wanted to rest already.
...
Cass had taken to Patrolling alone recently. She had taken to doing a lot of things alone, actually.
After the first month, it seemed that nobody could remember that she was in the room with them, even if she was within their eyeline, she just faded into the background. By the 2 Month Mark they had stopped talking to her entirely, although occasionally she would get a Text or two from her dad. By the 3 month Mark she was completely invisible, and By the 5th she had been forced to get used to it.
She didn't know what was going on, was it a Meta Ability? Magic? Alien Tech? She had no idea.
She had begun to cook for herself after the first time Alfred forgot to set her Plate at the Table. The same with Washing her own Clothes, Cleaning her Room, and Paying her Phone Bills. At the very least the Automated Allowance Payments to her Account had kept up, or she wouldn't have been able to go to her favorite Cafe anymore.
It was bittersweet for her. She used to go to that Cafe every week with Alfred, but he didn't even come on his own anymore. Had he only come for her? Did she really mean that much to them? It hurt, she finally had a family that cared for her and suddenly she didn't exist to them.
She sat alone at a Table, ignored by everyone in the Cafe as usual, when a new face walked in. He looked about her age, a little roughed up, walking with a sort of cautious gaint, as if he was scared of something. His Body Language seemed to agree with her assessment, as his body practically screamed "Worry" in its movements.
Cass stopped watching at that point. Just another Gotham Teen, probably worried over something like getting not having enough money or getting mugged on the way home. It was a Common sight in Gotham.
She attention was pricked again for a moment when she heard a voice speak up. "Uh, can I sit here?"
She ignored it, he wasn't talking to her.
"Um, excuse me? Miss? Could I sit here?" He repeated.
She ignored him again, he wasn't talking to her. Nobody talked to her.
"Hello? Do you have Earbuds in?" He said, and he waved his hand in front of her face.
Her face. He waved his hand. In front of Her Face.
He was talking to her.
She looked up at him sharply, seeming to startle him for a moment before he asked, "So, is that a no?"
"You can see me?" She asked.
He looked a bit bewildered, but replied "Uh, yeah? Why would I not? Are you...a Ghost?". That last part sounded a bit suspicious.
"No. Not a Ghost. But nobody sees me. Ever. Nobody remembers me." She replied. She had never spoken this much to anybody outside of her Family, but in the past few weeks she had been starved for interaction.
He seemed slightly interested, and sat down at her table. He looked her in the eyes, and said "Do you...talk about it?"
She smiled. He could see her.
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egophiliac · 8 months ago
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don't think I'm not still deep in the episode 7 brainrot. because OH BOY AM I
(also one more extremely, obnoxiously self-referential thing, I'm -- I'm so sorry)
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rcmclachlan · 3 days ago
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8x06 fix-it fic: Amnion
Buck doesn't bounce back from Tommy the way he did with all his other breakups for reasons he can't articulate or even look at. He thinks of how long it took him to recover from Abby, but even that felt different, because he'd had hope carrying him through most of it. He doesn't have that now.
The worst part is it's bringing everyone else down. It's starting to affect the job, and he can't take any more of Bobby's pity dinner invites or the kid gloves Eddie handles him with. Then one day, Chimney (in an attempt to lighten the mood) asks Buck if he's pregnant, and it awakens some primordial rage in Buck that he never knew he possessed and damn near rips off Chimney's head about it.
But once the blood levels in his adrenaline start rising and he calms down, he starts thinking about it. Before he knows it he's thinking about it day and night, and now that's starting to affect the job more than his heartbreak had been.
Then one night Maddie invites him over to watch trash TV and eat junk food until they can't feel feelings anymore, but instead of the patented Maddie Hug he's expecting, she hands him a First Response test stick the second he walks in the door.
Five minutes later, he comes out of the bathroom pale-faced and dripping tears because there are two lines in the test result window, and Maddie leads him over to the couch where they curl up and cry together. Just like the old days.
Maddie asks if he's going to tell Tommy, but there's no judgment in her voice, like she's behind him no matter what he decides, and Buck tries to make her laugh when he says, "How do you know it's his? I could've been living it up for the last month. New person almost every night. Exploring myself."
She just gives him a Look. Also patented.
Under the weight of her scrutiny, Buck thinks about Tommy's face before he left the loft that night and how ''Buck'' looked and sounded so wrong coming from him. Like the shape of it was so painful he could barely move his mouth around it.
Finally, he shakes his head. His eyes well up with more tears, which feels impossible, because the human body can't possibly produce this much liquid. He's going to drown them both. "I thought... I thought we had a future, Maddie. I really did. I guess I still get one... but only with part of him."
A couple of months pass and Buck's entire world shifts. The 118 have rallied around him in a way that almost feels like they're closing ranks to every other firehouse. Eddie becomes especially protective and devises a 5000-point care plan that makes him twitch if Buck so much as thinks about deviating from it, but he also keeps telling Buck that he needs to tell Tommy about the pregnancy.
"If only to get his family history," Eddie says reasonably, but there's something pleading in his voice every time, like there's so much more under the surface that he's trying to keep under wraps. Like there's more about this that he thinks Tommy should know.
Chimney's in the middle of explaining why he's stealing the cool uncle crown from Buck and sitting pretty on the throne when Buck asks him about it.
"Is there something about Tommy that no one's telling me?"
It trips Chimney up. Literally. He just barely catches himself from going headfirst into the kitchen counter.
Buck's heart starts pounding. "Chim, does he know?"
"No," Chimney says, firm and almost a little offended. "We promised you we wouldn't say anything. But Buck... you should tell him. You should talk to him."
Part of him wants to whip his phone out right then and there and dial Tommy's number. He could do what he did the first time: ask to meet somewhere and laugh about bad coffee and plead his case for a second chance. He could reach across the table for his hand, but this time, he'd stand up and walk over to Tommy and place it on his belly. "I don't care about firsts or lasts," he'd say. "I care about only's. And you're the only one I want."
But the other part of him, still licking its wounds, hormones in flux and forcing organs to shift and bend as it makes room for the thing he and Tommy made together, bares its teeth and snaps, "He made it very clear that he had no interest in hearing what I had to say."
Chimney never brings it up again.
Meanwhile, Hen goes a little overboard with forcing him to undergo random physicals—she pops out of the shadows twice a day to ambush him with the blood pressure machine, and he keeps threatening to avoid rooms that have doors—but he loves it. His body is a complete stranger to him for the first time in a long time, but the changes he's experiencing are interesting and he's having a blast cataloging every new one. He and Hen have a spreadsheet with like fifty tabs, and she helps him navigate every test his actual OBGYN sets him up for.
He's over her house at least once a week, although pregnancy talk at the dinner table is verboten.
"If one of you says the word 'amniocentesis' one more time, I will start a food fight," Karen had said, finally putting her foot down. Across the table, Denny perked up.
As much as he hesitates to even think the Q-word, it's a pretty quiet pregnancy. The cravings are kind of wild, though, and he goes most of his first trimester feeling like he's going to die if he can't eat rice krispie treats with cottage cheese. Every time Bobby sees him cracking open another container of Hood, it looks like he's seriously reconsidering sobriety.
But as incredible as they are about the pregnancy, they're all tiptoeing around the other elephant in the room: when Buck is going to stop working scenes. He and Bobby have a series of discussions that satisfies neither of them and resolves nothing, and it builds to a big blow-out that ends when Bobby tearfully begs Buck to stop risking his own life and the life of Bobby's grandkid.
After that, it's like some stone thing in him dissolves into sand and he finally eases back a bit in his fifth month. He doesn't put up a fight when Bobby orders him to only handle the winch or stick with hose duty, and if he stays a little closer to the engine because he gets winded so easily these days, no one comments on it.
In his sixth month, the inevitable happens: there's a call out at Palos Verdes and it's all hands on deck, which means the 217 is there too. At first he thinks he might make it through without running into Tommy at all, but he turns a corner and—there he is. Smudged with mud and looking like a drowned rat because of the downpours, but in his turnouts he's big and capable and, for a second, he's walking into First Presbyterian and apologizing for missing the ceremony.
But the memory is easily wrestled back into the past the second Tommy's gaze fixes on Buck's belly.
Buck wants to stage a retreat that would make the Allies at Dunkirk stand up and applaud. He wants to throw his arms open so Tommy can get a better look at it, say something cool and mean, like, "Did you know that INNOTEX makes turnouts for carriers these days? Pretty progressive of them, if you ask me."
He wants to be weak and ask if Tommy will spare him a hug. Just one. Nothing greedy. Just—a moment to soak in his warmth, to inhale the smell of his skin. Enough to carry him through the rest of it.
But he does none of that. He inhales through his nose, lifts his chin, and says, "Firefighter Kinard."
At that, Tommy smiles, and it's completely awful. There's no joy in it. Not even amusement. He looks like he wants to be sick, and Buck feels like a monster.
But Tommy swallows and says, earnest as anything, "Congratulations. I-I knew you'd find it. I never doubted for a second that you'd find the person who'd be your last."
Even as he says it, Tommy's face does something indescribable, but it rips through Buck's chest and shatters his ribs, tearing through pericardial layers until it scores the vulnerable muscle of his heart. It's so shocking that it almost knocks the truth right out of Buck's mouth.
Someone comes over the radio and requests all available first responders with flight experience to report to the B-zone, and Tommy straightens up and locks whatever it was away.
With an unsteady hand, he tips an invisible hat to Buck and says wryly, "Firefighter Buckley," before jogging away.
And Buck stands there like an idiot watching him go. It's that night all over again. It's Buck instead of Evan.
"See you around," he whispers, and then runs back to his post in the A-zone.
+
Tommy gets the call when he's halfway through a burrito foisted upon him by Dana, who had taken one look at him and said, "You look like a flood victim. Eat something before I get HR involved."
He'd taken a mutinous bite and couldn't argue with her. Months later and it still felt like he'd watched everything he loved wash away with a tide he couldn't fight. Except he'd sent the tide himself. He had no business feeling like this.
But they send him to the site of a car accident where a pregnant driver had been T-boned by some asshole who ran the red light, and the RA unit called to the scene didn't have the right equipment to assess the fetus. But the victim's belly was hard enough to warrant a med evac.
By the time Dana gets the victim loaded on the backboard and inside, Tommy's already on with both First Presbyterian and LA General to see whose neonatal surgery team is available.
The door on Tommy's side slides open and Tommy turns in his seat to ask what the hell Dana's doing over there, but it's Hen who's pulling herself inside.
His stomach clenches with dread. "Hen?"
"I'm riding with you," she shouts, taking the headset that Dana gives her.
He looks just beyond her and wishes he'd had the presence of mind to listen to the manifest when Dana had read it aloud to him, because Evan Buckley is strapped to the gurney and looks like he's on a completely different planet.
"Hen." Tommy can't hear him say her name, but he sees Evan's mouth shape the word. Evan reaches clumsily out for her with one hand while pressing the other to his belly.
Hen murmurs something to him that the comms can't pick up, and Tommy wonders if they've notified Maddie, if they've notified the father, whoever they are. If they're already at the hospital waiting for them. If Tommy will have to see them, talk to them face to face.
Tommy bites the inside of his cheek until he feels the hot wash of blood over his tongue, then forces everything down to join the burrito from earlier that really wants to make a reappearance. It isn't his right to know any of it. That went out with the tide, too.
He locks it down tight enough that he gets them into the air so easily they might be a feather on the wind, then he heads in the direction of First Presbyterian. The real start of it all.
They're maybe halfway across the city when Evan shouts, desperation and fear carrying his voice over the rotors, the words sliding together, "Hen, check Nora! Y-Y'need to ch—"
"Nora's fine, Buck," Hen says, her voice clear as a bell in Tommy's ear.
Staring at a skyline he can't see, Tommy says, "'Nora'? Was someone else in the car with him?"
When Hen comes over the comm, her voice is as inescapable as a flood. "Nora's what he decided on for the baby. It's her name."
Tommy's hand tightens on the cyclic so the way it starts shaking won't be so obvious. "Nora was my grandmother's name."
He'd told Buck about the woman who was basically the only family he could stand, who was responsible for not letting him become his piece of shit father, who accepted him when no one else would. She'd meant the world to him. She'd been the world to him. And for Evan to give his kid her name—
Realization hits like a levy breaking, and he turns to look wide-eyed over his shoulder at Hen, because it can't—he couldn't be—
"Patient, male, 33, prenatal course complicated at 8 months gestation," Dispatch had said.
The timeline is right.
Hen stares right back, as good of a confirmation that he could get outside of a DNA test.
Without breaking her gaze, Tommy tells Dana to take over. She gives him an unreadable look but says nothing except, "Copy that," and smoothly resumes their journey while he squeezes into the back. There's hardly any room next to the gurney and his knees are compressing his lungs, but he takes Evan's' hand and stares blankly at the shiner forming around his right eye until Hen breaks the silence.
Why didn't you tell me, he wants to demand, but he knows that if he so much as opens his mouth, he's going to start screaming until someone sedates him.
"For the record," she says, "I hate what you did. I hate what you took from him. But I understand why you did it."
Tommy rolls his lips inward and wants to suffocate himself to death. She understands? Does she? Does she know a life can be obliterated in the span of a minute? Does she know what it is to live a half life, to walk through the world like a five-year old drew a scribble on a blank sheet of paper that was supposed to be a person?
Does she know what Evan looks like when his joy is sucked away? Because Tommy does. She hates what he did? No one hates what he did more than him. No one hates him more than him.
Shakily, he lifts his other hand and touches the tips of his fingers to Evan's birthmark, which used to know the touch of his lips so well that Evan would joke that it was actually in the shape of Tommy's mouth print. Like a brand.
He forces himself to inhale. It seems impossible that Evan's here, carrying their child, their Nora. Evan used to say the lightning strike gave him super powers, made him invincible, and Tommy's ashamed to admit that he almost believed him. It seemed like nothing could ever bring Evan Buckley down, but here he is in Tommy's sky, halfway to Heaven already.
He glances at the LifePAK—where Evan's life has been concentrated into a series of lines and numbers, the reading strong despite everything—and then looks back at Evan, who is still the most beautiful man Tommy has ever seen even now.
"Evan," he chokes out.
There's no answer. At least not from Evan.
Across from him, Hen breathes through her nose and then quietly says, "I'm only going to say this once, Tommy, so I hope you're listening. If you can't trust him to know what his own heart wants, then this flight will never have happened. When he wakes up, you will not have been here. I'll change the manifest myself."
Tommy closes his eyes. Something hot spills down his cheeks.
"I know things haven't been all sunshine and roses for you. Lucy's said you've basically shut down since it ended. I know you're hurting just as much as Buck is... which is why I'm telling you: be sure. He's going to have enough on his plate without worrying about whether or not you're going to swan out of his life again. You need to be sure, Tommy."
Tommy doesn't say anything, but he opens his eyes and holds her gaze without flinching, and he tightens his hold on Evan's hand.
The rest of the flight passes in the kind of silence that feels like a cyst was lanced. Or maybe a boil, as it were.
+
Buck wakes up in stages to find he's in a hospital bed, and when he puts a hand on his belly it's smaller and almost deflated beneath his palm. He is just starting to hyperventilate when suddenly Tommy's there, murmuring to him, "You're okay. Everything's okay, I promise, she's fine. She's fine. Look."
And Buck, heart racing, forces himself to breathe slowly while he follows Tommy's gaze down to the bundle in Tommy's arms. Then he stops breathing altogether.
"She's fine," Tommy says. "A little early, according to the doctor, but absolutely fine."
Buck collapses back to the bed and weeps in relief, because she's fine. She's here and she's fine and she's perfect. Tommy gently places her in Buck's arms before retreating to the chair next to the bed which has a dent in the vinyl in the shape of his ass.
But Buck is enraptured with Nora, who smacks her lips in her sleep, and he marvels aloud, "She has my mouth."
"Thank God for that," Tommy says with a laugh. "It'll help take the focus off my nose. Poor kid."
It hits Buck like lightning that Tommy is here. He's in this room and talking about Nora like—like he knows. And there are things Buck should probably be saying, like apologizing for not telling Tommy about her as soon as he found out, or asking why he's there at all, but the words are crowding in his mouth and he can't figure out which ones should go first.
Tommy's lips twitch in a smile that is awful to look at, like he completely understand Buck's struggle, but his voice is soft and even when he says, "I need you to know that it wasn't about you. Not you personally. It never was."
Buck stops trying to speak and just stares at him, because that is bullshit, and oh, he knows which words should come first, and he opens his mouth to release them into the wild but Tommy holds up a hand.
"I know," he says. "I was a coward and an asshole, and I'm more sorry than I can possibly say. I won't ever be able to make up for what I did. But I need you to know why I did it."
And, in fits and starts before he finally finds the thread, Tommy tells him about Jeremy.
After Tommy ended things with Abby and then finally came out, he dated around for a long time before he met Jeremy, who was brilliant and fun and new. Tommy was the first man Jeremy had ever been with, and Jeremy was the first person Tommy saw a future with. He'd been so sure about Jeremy. He'd believed that Jeremy was it.
Until, almost two years in, Jeremy ended it. He'd sat Tommy down and said kindly, cruelly, "You're amazing, Tom, but you're just the first. You can't be my last." And then he'd left Tommy completely shattered in the rearview.
"That night, when you asked me to move in... it was like I was watching him put on his coat all over again," Tommy says shakily. "But what I felt for you was lightyears beyond anything I felt for him. I'd fallen so hard for you that I knew if I had to watch you walk away I'd never get up again."
Buck stares at Tommy, eyes rimmed red, and says, "So instead you made me watch you walk away."
It must land like a fist because Tommy exhales sharply and hangs his head, bowing around the pain. He sits like that for a moment, absorbing it, before he lifts his head and nods. "Yeah. That's exactly what I did."
There are deep, dark circles under Tommy's eyes that speak of a hundred sleepless nights, and his body is sharper, leaner, trimmed entirely of anything soft. He's made entirely of angles. He's so unfairly hot. He's miserable to look at.
Buck swallows and murmurs, "You look like there's no love in your life, Tommy."
Sucking in a trembling breath, Tommy smiles weakly and sketches a shrug. It looks like the fatigued steel of his edges are starting to crack.
"I left all my love with you that night." His gaze darts down. "Among other things."
Buck looks down at Nora, who's sleeping the sleep of someone already exhausted by existence, or maybe just by her fathers' drama, and thinks that maybe he really has been carrying all his love plus Tommy's around. Because otherwise he has no idea how he's so full of it.
"She's absolutely perfect," Buck says, smiling dopily.
"She's... more than anything I could've ever dreamed of."
He looks up in time to see Tommy drop his gaze to the floor at the same time his shoulders lift and lock like they're bracing for a blow. And in a voice so thin it's barely a sound, Tommy says, "I know I don't have... any right to ask, but is there any... any chance I could be part of her life?"
The tears that have been languishing at the edges of Buck's eyes finally see an opportunity. He doesn't think he could've held them back any longer if he tried.
Mouth trembling, he whispers, "Just hers?"
At that, Tommy looks up, eyes wide, disbelief and hope chasing each other across his face like dogs. He jerks a little in his chair but he doesn't move. He doesn't move.
Buck stares at him, a tsunami pulling everything back from his shoreline, and bites out, "Thomas James Kinard, if you don't get over here and kiss me, I swear to Christ—"
But Tommy's out of the chair and at his bedside, cupping Buck's face and tenderly smearing a kiss over his open mouth, licking the relieved gasp right off Buck's tongue.
Between them, Nora makes a tiny noise, and Tommy startles away just enough that he can press the side of his head to Buck's and gaze down at her with a tremulous smile.
"She really is something, huh? Sorry about the nose, kiddo," he says softly.
Buck knocks their heads together and says, "I happen to love that nose, thanks. And like you said, my lips will help balance it out."
Huffing a laugh, Tommy kisses Buck's lips. And the side of his nose and the bolt of his jaw. Then he leans down and presses a kiss to Nora's little pink and blue hat.
"I'm sure if you are," Tommy murmurs, tilting his chin up so he can flash a brave smile up at Buck, who smiles back.
"I was always sure."
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heartscrypt · 7 months ago
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disney japan let me on your design team i promise i can be so normal
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