#i've been treated that way my whole life

[sheepstiel]

also on another another note. people who, for lack of better wording, ""come out"" to you as neurodivergent are still the same people as before. don't treat them any different unless they specifically ask you to. Congrats, you unlocked their backstory because they trust you, not because they suddenly want you to treat them like they're fragile or dumb.

[fitzselfships]

Zooble likes how easy it is to make me laugh. Also they love the way my laugh sounds and have no idea why anyone would ever make me feel bad for it :3

[nillisaie]

Also a bit relevant to my previous post, it kind of bums me out that it seems like a lot of the self ship/yume community here has Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss as a dni?

I completely understand if said person is a minor, good for them for setting that boundary, but I'm pretty sure quite a few of them are just Vivziepop haters which feels pretty misogynistic imo (I don't really know nor care what she has done. Not the point here)

It's just a bummer to me since Alastor has helped me a lot with coping with a bad situation and also making me realize that I am in fact on the aroace spectrum and it's not just from trauma. And sometimes I want to try and interact with a few posts on here and talk about him a little, but I feel like I have to check to make sure I'm even allowed to and even then I don't really mention Alastor by name, referring to him vaguely as my f/o (partially also because I'm 110% non sharing and am trying to be mindful of anyone else like me) but yeah. It's just a bit of a bummer but maybe I just haven't fully interacted with the community yet and it's just a few people. This is just what I've seen so far

[seenthisepisode]

~~~

[that1randomnerd]

Why can't people just let others live without trying to make them change their bodies?

Theres something really insidious about how gastric bypass advocates deny that essential organ mutilation is unhealthy.

"I've lost so much weight I'm so healthy" your stomach is mutilated.

"My doctor is praising my progress" your stomach is mutilated.

"I fit in so many more clothes now"

Because an essential, life sustaining organ in your body was cut up and your digestive system rerouted.

Health isn't the end all be all of value, humanity or importance but I feel like there is a huge lie here when this is "healthy" and it's just ignored.

Sorry to just bring this up out of no where but I was reminded of how little this is really talked about in bypass circles. Like, no matter what, you are now unhealthy. The spector of health continues. The Ouroboros is unbroken. Only this time it's doctor approved.

-mod squirrel

[cesium-sheep]

ah shit that's part of why it's so fuckin hard. not only is the trauma of chronic illness inherently tied to the trauma of military service for me, it's also just. I've been too fucking sick to think about it. not just the past couple years, for a very long time. and I had to tear down into all of that today.

[teaboot]

This is gonna sound rather conceited but I feel like it highlights an issue we have in Art.

I'm good at art. I've never had a hard time making art. I started using crayons before I could walk. Painting, Beadwork, sculpture, sketching, stippling, whatever- once I have a feel for the material, it doesn't take long to start doing what I want with it. It's been a common theme my whole life.

(Y contrast I'm awful at things like dancing, performance, sports, etc- in all things there is balance, right?)

Now, I've taught myself to use so many artistic mediums now that I KNOW how to most efficiently integrate them into the brain database. Once you really *understand* a material, it's much like memorizing the layout of your house, or flexing a muscle, or something in-between- it becomes PART of your brain in a way I cant quite articulate. But to get there involves just fucking around for a bit doing nothing in particular.

And I've found, especially in group settings, that nobody seems to be able to see you make something badly and leave you alone. Even if you say you're fine, you don't want help, you're happy, you're having fun, it's fine, they gotta ride your ass and hover.

I was at a class the other day for something I hadn't done before. The medium was one I've never used, so once the instructor told us the basics I started experimenting with weight, gravity, texture, viscosity, saturation, temperature, etc. The instructor had given enough info to know what was dangerous and what was safe, and beyond that I just wanted to absorb what I could about it.

And no insult to the instructor, but they kept checking in. Which was fine the first few times.

But then, without asking me what I was trying to do, started giving tips. That I told them I was grateful for but didn't really need just yet. If I had a question, I'd ask.

But they kept coming over. And touching my shit. And manipulating my project. And touching my hands. And using my tools. Without fucking asking.

And this happens every time. EVERY TIME. And by now I know the best way to get them to fuck off is to make something way beyond their expectations so they know I'm capable, then go back to doing what I want.

So I did. I wanted to keep having fun and learning, but instead I made something beautiful that I really didn't want to make, and wasted my time, and really didn't learn what I wanted to learn at all. I knew the formula to create a beautiful thing, so I followed that formula the same way I have a hundred times before, and didn't get to try anything spontaneous or ugly or exciting, just so I could be left alone.

And I know when I was a kid, I was aware aware people saw me puttering alone on something ugly assumed I had a special issue and treated me like I was stupid because of that. (I was neurodivergent.) And at at time I knew that I could do a neat trick for them like a trained pony and they'd go, "Oh, surely they aren't defective if they can do something like that!" And piss off.

But what if I hadn't known how to do that?

What if I hadn't been talented, or "special"?

What if I'd been just any other average kid trying to learn, and I couldn't pop something pretty out of my ass to get them off my back?

My problem my whole life has been that I haven't been allowed to make anything ugly in peace. I'm capable of beauty, so I have to make beauty, or get stepped on. And once people see what I can do, they get loud about it. "Look at this! Look what they did! We all know who the best is, don't we?". And that used to feel good, but it's tiring.

And how many people like me just wanted to play? Just wanted to have fun and experiment? Who were having fun with no goal in mind, or just took longer to learn, who gave up because of all the obnoxious helpers breathing down their neck with no way to shake them off?

How many of us are made to feel defective because we aren't doing things beautifully?

I have a lovely piece of art I didn't want to make.

I think I'm gonna frame it.*

(*I think I'm gonna burn it in my yard.)

[lynxalon]

i dream of eggs over easy

[fvckw4d]

Infantilzation is something with real world consequences. As in, people will make decisions for you no matter how harmful, they will decide what will and won't fix your situation, and typically they will decide based on what is easiest for them to deal with. Because it's not just "I know best for you" it's "I think so little of your autonomy you aren't a person to me. You're an object. And an object can't really be harmed by me making selfish choices about what should happen to it, whether or not those are kind, cruel, or indifferent."

You are too stupid and incompetent to be respected as a person, to manage your money or to have money to begin with, to be hired, to have control over your shelter or even have shelter at all, to known when you have health problems or what those health problems are, to be trusted in a court of law, in fact you can't possibly be trusted to know anything or do anything or even be telling the truth about anything. It's deeply humiliating, it cuts you off from being a human that other human beings are capable of sympathizing with or making connections with.

And the worst part is people will downplay this as basically not harm at all, because that's the power of infantialization. Your problems are so small and stupid, just like you, that you can't even be trusted to known if you have them or talk about them.

Infantilzation is also not a problem unique to trans men, or trans mascs, or nonbinary people, or trans people in general, though it's worth noting that it's capable of affecting all trans people, all queer people, and to pretend otherwise is a disservice to everyone. Infantilzation is a big part of ageism, ableism, and misogyny (though this is not an exhaustive list at all). When you deny that infantilizing someone is harmful, that is can even kill them, well try telling that to a disabled person who was denied a job or shelter or medical treatment because someone thought they were too fucking stupid and childish to deserve to be treated like a fucking person.

All of our pain is fucking interconnected, that is the entire point of talking about suffering and opression as a social problem rather than an individual one, and to deny that is to lose the fight before you've even started.

What the hell is this thread that I came across

A classic sentiment ofc but the replies really show how much the community is blind to/ignores VERY COMMON acts of transphobia to transmascs.

“You won’t ever see trans men accused of transitioning to indulge some “sick fetish””

Gay trans men face literally face that all the damn time.

“Trans men don’t get accused of transitioning to access male spaces”

This is a joke right?

This part of the thread is op having no clue of the extremity of infantilization. Terms believing transmascs shouldn’t have their own bodily autonomy is not “empathy”, it’s viewing transmascs as less than and thus incapable of making their own decisions.

“They mourn infertile wombs and removed breast”

yeah whilst ridiculing phalloplasty and top surgery. And even if it was just mourning and no mocking, that is still just as bad. They’re mourning our infertile wombs because to them, we’re not accessible baby factories anymore, and with no breast, we’re not sexually appealing anymore. Again downplaying ensues.

Yea trans women are accused of erasing women, but here’s a shocker, SO ARE TRANS MEN, CONSTANTLY. Every time we ask to be included, we’re told to shut up. To me op is just living in their own world and refuses to step out of their echo chamber or something because this is one of the most ridiculous threads I’ve come of cross.

Viewing the oppression of trans men and trans women in this binary mindset is ridiculous. “Trans men ONLY get infantilized and trans women ONLY get demonized”

“Trans men ONLY get “empathy”, and trans women ONLY get mocked”.

The lack of nuance kills me

[genderqueerdykes]

the reason intersex people need to be visible and at the forefront of every queer's activism is because we are completely devoid of autonomy when it comes to identifying ourselves. no matter how hard we try to speak up on how we are treated, how we are dehumanized, how we are refused our right to say who we are, it falls through the cracks because of how many people continue to diminish our issues, and espouse intersexist beliefs.

when i speak up about being transfemme, and a trans girl, it's not because i'm trying to step on people's toes or speak about something i don't understand. i speak up about it because this is the life i've lived. it doesn't matter if strangers see me this way or not, this is how i've been my entire life. whether or not someone knows i was technically born AMAB and then had my gender "corrected" shouldn't matter.

trans people do not only come in binary sexes- just like gender, physical sex is also not a binary. i am an intersex trans girl , even if my agab didn't stay AMAB forever. I would be an intersex trans girl regardless of whether or not they assigned me male at birth, because my experience with womanhood and femininity is that they've always been held away from me, way farther than it would ever be possible for me to reach.

i've had to take estrogen & progesterone HRT in the past in order to "correct" my masculine features in order to look like and be a girl "correctly". the subject of my body and my gender has never been something i've been able to control. my whole live i've just been told that i'm a girl wrong, and that i need to "Fix" it.

boyhood or manhood weren't options either, that was held away from me with a 10 foot pole as well. i've had to transition into gender, itself, because i was forbidden to be a boy or a girl. i was always too sensitive or soft to be a real boy. gender as a concept has been a source of control and degredation for me. i had to transition into both manhood and womanhood in order to have control over how i identify. even now when i talk about manhood and being a man, people tell me that i'm not a trans man because of how i look. i'm routinely denied manhood, I "have" to be a trans woman only to some.

due to my intersex condition, i'm a trans man and a trans woman, transfemme and transmasc, but people struggle to accept this. there's no reason for people to give me hell about these parts of myself, and yet people still do. intersex awareness matters because we fight to be seen as the people we are. we struggle to have our identities be addressed correctly. we are in the same fight as trans individuals, and we owe it to intersex trans men, women, and people to help people understand that trans folks come in all different types of bodies, and that biological sex is not a binary, either.

we have to fight for each other's autonomy. for all of us. together we are stronger, louder, and braver.

[postikortti]

i’m gonna go no contact w my sister. if that’s currently even possible. 

[6ftslug]

cool so if you guys are going to blatantly ignore my art can you at least tell me what sucks so hard about it. instead of completely wasting my time.

why are you even here?

[go-fornicate-yourself]

Every day I am in the trenches fighting for my life defending this poor man. He was going through so much and people online demonize him and say he's as bad as his abuser

(I've got a lot of thoughts about this so I'll make sure to separate things to make it easier to look at lol)

Curly is a victim of abuse. Jimmy is his abuser. This is something that I feel a lot of people tend to brush over or don't acknowledge it often.

And I'm not just talking about post-crash. Jimmy's abuse of Curly is there pre-crash too. The party scene where the crew learns about the company going under is a huge example of this. Jimmy verbally abuses him, he gaslights him, he blames him for their (his) misfortune. Jimmy accuses Curly of thinking he's better than everyone (better than him), that he doesn't care about them (about him). That he's going leave them (leave him). Which is not true. Curly tries to explain himself but Jimmy shuts him down and he just takes it.

The fact that he just allows this to happen makes it seem like he's used to this... That this kind of behavior is a recurring thing with Jimmy. And the fact that nobody else tries to defend him or stands up to Jimmy just normalizes it for him. When Anya tells Curly what Jimmy did it catches him off guard. Bc he genuinely didn't think that his friend was capable of that. It wasn't something that was obvious to him. There were absolutely many red flags in the past but they were subtle enough for him to not see them bc he cares for Jimmy, he trusts him. Jimmy's the only one he feels he can open up to, who he can let his guard down with. Jimmy's his home. That's how close they are.

Because of this deep love for his friend and the subtlety of Jimmy's cruelty, he doesn't see the constant verbal and emotional abuse as what it is: abuse. Which is why he finds Jimmy's abuse towards Anya so shocking and jarring.

He isn't a man covering for his rapist friend bc of the 'bro code'. It does look like that from a certain angle and it's understandable why people see it that way but that's not what his character is really about as much as it makes sense otherwise.

He's essentially a battered housewife who's still in love with her husband but is realizing for the first time that the man she loves is a monster. That the man she loves and devoted her life to has been hurting her this whole time and she didn't even realize it. That the man she loves and spent so much of her life caring for has gone and hurt someone else. That he's most likely hurt others before and she's been utterly unaware of it the entire time she defended him and made excuses for him when he wasn't the best or the fairest or the most responsible or when he screwed up yet again solely bc of how much she loved and cared for him.

And Curly barely had any time to process ANY of that before Jimmy decided to try and kill them all to avoid the consequences of his actions. It was ultimately a selfish act even if he thought he wasn't just doing it for himself. Jimmy is selfish and needs to be in control or he loses it. He cares for Curly. He loves him. Curly's done so much for him. Curly's the only one who understands him, who doesn't hate him. Curly's his home. He resents how 'successful' he is but that's only bc he thinks so highly of him. He constantly puts himself down and put Curly on a pedestal and worships him while simultaneously mistreating him.

He treats his best friend like shit, he's awful to him. But he's not aware that this is the case or maybe he's in denial about it. He can't or just refuses to see how he's doing all of what he does for himself in the end. He justifies his attempt to kill them all (to himself and to Curly) by claiming he's doing this for them both. That if they were to get back to earth it would all be Curly's fault, that it'll ruin his life and career... despite the fact he had basically nothing to do with Anya's abuse. Jimmy's shifting the blame on him while acting like he cares for him. Well, he does genuinely care for him but clearly not nearly enough to not mistreat him or use him as a scapegoat for his own guilt.

Jimmy is the rapist, Jimmy is the one who does all of these horrible things. And yet it's highly likely that Curly would just blame all of it on himself bc that's exactly what Jimmy did to him. He's in so deep he can't see the facts of the situation.

It takes abuse victims so long to come to terms with their abuse. It takes time and reflection to see things with an unbiased and healthy perspective. Abuse (especially years of it) isn't just something you can just escape. It consumes you and can twist your reality. Curly had about a week or less to process all of it and then take action in a way that protected his crew and abided by Pony Express' guidelines. Dealing with something this serious in a setting that makes resolving it extremely difficult in a practical sense is already hard.

There were no locks on any of the doors except for medical and the cockpit. They couldn't just kill him. There was nowhere they could detain Jimmy that wouldn't involve corporate potentially penalizing the entire group. They could have used the cryopods but then there'd only be three available for any actual emergency and there were already five crew members and four pods in total. Also, I doubt corporate would be 'okay' with them using the cryopods for anything other than their intended purpose. Hell, even if they were able to make it back to earth without any incidents there's a good chance that corporate would consider the situation 'poor team synergy' and collectively punish the entire crew for Jimmy's actions.

So on top of having to deal with an already difficult situation, Curly has to grapple with the realization that Jimmy a: abused Anya, b: has been abusing him as well (for a very long time too), and c: has probably abused others before Anya and he had no idea about it. He needed to act but he didn't and it doomed all of them.

But it's so unrealistic (maybe even cruel) to put that much pressure on someone, force them through an utterly earth-shattering realization, and then expect them to do the correct/right/responsible thing in that moment. It's a little ironic how people vilify him for that when other characters do the same thing that nobody blames for it.

Anya is the ship's nurse. Curly is the ship's captain. They both have duties and responsibilities on board the Tulpar. She has to keep the crew healthy and safe and is the only one with enough medical knowledge to do so. He has to make sure that everything goes well and goes according to procedure. He's responsible for the crew, the cargo, and even the ship itself. Both positions are integral and require a lot of responsibility to do properly

They're both put through distressing and traumatic situations where due to them being human people with emotions and fears that make them essentially avoid their responsibility/doing what's required of them.

Curly has a freeze response and doesn't act when he should have when it was crucial to have done so. Anya has a fawn response and essentially puts her patient in danger and harm's way. She knew full well what Jimmy was capable of. She experienced it herself and she witnessed it happening to Curly as well. And yet she allows Jimmy to be alone with Curly while being fully aware of how dangerous he is. Which she shouldn't have, that wasn't the 'right' thing to do. Keeping him safe was her responsibility.

But Anya's human. She's going through a lot at the moment. She's terrified of Jimmy and she's trying to appease him so he doesn't hurt her again. It's a natural very understandable thing to do even if it's not the 'right' or 'responsible' thing. They failed each other when they needed each other most and I think that's the most tragic part of it. If anything, all of them failed each other in some way, shape, or form.

So it's incredibly frustrating to see people give Anya so much sympathy and grace for doing something so human yet still 'wrong' but then turn around and give Curly none of that for doing essentially the same thing she does.

I don't know for sure if it's actually because Curly is a man or if it's only part of it or maybe some people just lack that sense of awareness but it's depressing and frustrating as fuck as a male victim of sexual violence and abuse to see this kind of behavior and this much victim blaming towards a character who is undeniably a victim of abuse like I am.

[sprintingowl]

Deadball

Deadball Second Edition is a platinum bestseller on DrivethruRPG. This means it's in the top 2% of all products on the site. Its back cover has an endorsement from Sports Illustrated Kids.

It's also not an rpg I'd heard about until I discovered all of these facts one after another.

I was raised in a profoundly anti-sports household. My father would say stuff like "sports is for people who can't think" and "there's no point in exercising, everything in your body goes away eventually." So I didn't learn really any of the rules of the more popular American sports until I was in my mid twenties, and I've been to two ballgames in my life. I appreciate the enthusiasm that people have for sports, but it's in the same way that I appreciate anyone talking about their specific fandom.

One of the things that struck me reading Deadball was its sense of reverence for the sport. Its language isn't flowery. It's plain and technical and smart. But its love for baseball radiates off of the pages. Not like a blind adoration. But like when a dog sits with you on the porch.

For folks familiar with indie rpgs, there's a tone throughout the book that feels OSR. Deadball doesn't claim to be a precise simulation or a baseball wargame or anything like that---instead it lays out a bunch of rules and then encourages you to treat them like a recipe, adjusting to your taste. And it does this *while* being a detailed simulation that skirts the line of wargaming, which is an extremely OSR thing to do.

For folks not familiar with baseball, Deadball starts off assuming you know nothing and it explains the core rules of the sport before trying to pin dice and mechanics onto anything. It also explains baseball notation (which I was not able to decipher) and it uses this notation to track a play-by-play report of each game. Following this is an example of play and---in a move I think more rpgs should steal from---it has you play out a few rounds of this example of play. Again, this is all before it's really had a section explaining its rules.

In terms of characters and stats, Deadball is a detailed game. You can play modern or early 1900s baseball, and players can be of any gender on the same team, so there's a sort of alt history flavor to the whole experience, but there's also an intricate dice roll for every at bat and a full list of complex baseball feats that any character can have alongside their normal baseball stats. Plus there's a full table for oddities (things not normally covered by the rules of baseball, such as a raccoon straying onto the field and attacking a pitcher,) and a whole fatigue system for pitchers that contributes a strong sense of momentum to the game.

Deadball is also as much about franchises as it is about individual games, and you can also scout players, trade players, track injuries, track aging, appoint managers of different temperaments, rest pitchers in between games, etc.

For fans of specific athletes, Deadball includes rules for creating players, for playing in different eras, for adapting historical greats into one massively achronological superteam, and for playing through two different campaigns---one in a 2020s that wasn't and one in the 1910s.

There's also thankfully a simplified single roll you can use to abstract an entire game, allowing you to speed through seasons and potentially take a franchise far into the future. Finances and concession sales and things like that aren't tracked, but Deadball has already had a few expansions and a second edition, so this might be its next frontier.

Overall, my takeaway from Deadball is that it's a heck of a game. It's a remarkably detailed single or multiplayer simulation that I think might work really well for play-by-post (you could get a few friends to form a league and have a whole discord about it,) and it could certainly be used to generate some Blaseball if you start tweaking the rules as you play and never stop.

It's also an interesting read from a purely rpg design perspective. Deadball recognizes that its rules have the potential to be a little overbearing and so it puts in lots of little checks against that. It also keeps its more complex systems from sprawling out of control by trying to pack as much information as possible into a single dice roll.

For someone like me who has zero background in baseball, I don't think I'd properly play Deadball unless I had a bunch of friends who were into it and I could ride along with that enthusiasm. However as a designer I like the book a lot, and I'm putting it on my shelf of rpgs that have been formative for me, alongside Into The Odd, Monsterhearts, Mausritter, and Transit.

[neil-gaiman]

Hello, Neil.

Hope you are in good health. There's something I wanted to tell you since I first watched Good Omens s1. Please bear with me for this (unnecessarily) long message.

I've been a fan of Terry Pratchett for half of my life. His books are the reason why I even started reading at all and (probably) partially the reason I got into writing too. More than ten years ago Good Omens became my favorite book. And it still is. It's been with me for the hardest time of my life. Terry had been with me, too, through his books.

In march of 2015 my mother called me. Just to tell me: "Pratchett died yesterday". And I cried my eyes out. It was like losing a part of my childhood and almost, almost like losing a friend.

Time heals, but what healed me better was the way the tv show was made. Aziraphale on screen said "it feels loved" and this single line describes it's all.

It feels so loved.

In every frame, in every score, in every line of dialogues, in every second of acting of every single person on stage. I remember feeling so incredibly happy, bathing in this love. Knowing that it directed not just towards the book, or its characters, but towards Terry himself.

Knowing that Terry would like this show to the moon and back.

And so, I wanted to say: thank you. Thank you for becoming a showrunner of Good Omens in the first place. Thank you for filling it with such love. Thank you for treating it with care and so obviously with Terry himself in mind for the whole time.

Thank you for being Terry's friend.

That means the world to me. It's why I did it and why I've kept on with it.

[loulovingho]

The Fight

Tommy calmed himself before he walked into the station. Closed his eyes and did the breathing technique he'd learned in therapy years ago.

They needed to talk about this. He couldn't handle it if something happened during Buck's shift and the last words they had spoken to each other were in anger.

He spotted Buck fairly quickly. He was in the middle of a workout, sitting on a bench and lifting weights. Although it looked like he was mostly talking to Eddie.

Eddie, who was standing in front of him, nodding his head as Buck spoke.

Eddie eyed Tommy first. “Buck,” he said in the middle of Buck's rant.

“-and I- I don't think that's fair, Eddie. It's not fair of him to- to treat me like I'm a child-”

“Buck,” Eddie repeated, louder this time.

Buck groaned. “What?”

Eddie pointed behind him. “Tommy.”

Buck froze, then slowly turned to see Tommy standing behind him, staring at him. After a brief glance, Buck cast his eyes downward.

“Hey, man,” Eddie greeted. Buck rolled his eyes.

“Hey, Eddie,” Tommy replied. “Mind if I talk to Evan for a second?”

“Nope. I'll be upstairs.”

Tommy watched as Eddie headed upstairs, waiting until he was out of earshot to turn back to Buck. “What are you doing here, Evan?” he asked.

Buck placed the weights he had resting on his thighs down on the ground. “Working.”

“Your shift doesn't even start for another twelve hours.”

Buck got up and began placing weight plates on the barbell. “I asked Bobby if I could do a twenty-four instead. He said yes.”

“You literally told me two days ago that they weren't allowing overtime right now.”

“Did you really come all the way here to keep fighting with me?”

“First of all, I'm not the one who started the fight,” Tommy said, stepping closer, “and I'm not the one who can't look their boyfriend in the eyes.”

Buck stopped messing with the barbell and glared up at Tommy. His eyes were red, although Tommy couldn't tell if it was from crying or rage. “Better?” he asked bitingly.

“Yeah, actually, it is. It's a great improvement from you walking out on me this morning.”

Buck crossed his arms defensively. “There wasn't anything left to say.”

“I strongly disagree. We've both talked about this before, Evan. How you don't like the feeling of people walking out on you. How it scares you, makes you worry. Did you forget I told you the same thing? How it reminds me of what my dad did to my mom and me over and over again?”

Tommy swore he could see a twinge of guilt flash through Buck's eyes, but it was quickly replaced with more anger.

He moved closer to Tommy. “I wasn't going to sit at your place and be berated for however long you decided to yell at me-”

“I was not yelling.”

“-for doing my job.”

Now it was Tommy's turn to fill with a new wave of rage. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it back, pursing his lips as he thought over his words. “You were not doing your job, Evan,” Tommy spoke slowly, carefully. “You made a bad decision that could have gotten you killed.”

Buck scoffed. “Danger is part of the job, Tommy. I thought you of all people would understand that.”

Tommy felt like pulling his hair out. They'd had this whole argument a few hours earlier. No matter what he said, he couldn't seem to get through to Buck. “You ran into a burning building without your gear, Evan! There were other firefighters there, but you just ran in! You could have died!”

“But I didn't! God, Tommy, you're acting like I'm a baby! I've been doing this for years; I know what I'm capable of!”

Tommy brought a hand to his forehead, pressing against his temple. This was pointless. “I don't even know why I came here,” he said with a shrug. He gave Buck one last glance before turning to leave.

“Still don't know why you're angry at me for saving someone's life!” Buck called out to him as he headed for the door.

The words made Tommy turn on his heels. “You really don't know why I'm angry with you?!” he asked. The question came out harsher than he intended.

Buck stood his ground. “No, I don't!”

“Unbelievable!” Tommy let out a humorless laugh. “Because I love you, Evan!” he exclaimed. “I love you so damn much! So, yeah, it makes me a little angry when I see that you aren't in this as much as I am. That you don't love yourself enough to care if you come back home!”

Buck felt like his heart was beating out of his chest. It took him a second to find his voice again. “You... You love me?”

“Of course I do, Evan.” Tommy spoke as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Have for quite a while now.”

Buck moved closer to him. “You don't think I- I'm in it as much as you?”

Tommy let out a deep breath. “I didn't mean it like that,” he said, his voice calmer now. “I just meant... I always try my damndest to make it back to you, every shift. Every call I go on, you're in the front of my mind. Be safe for Evan, stay focused for Evan, make it home because Evan will be there waiting. And I don't expect you to love me back or anything like that, but it would be nice to know that you try to make it home to me too.”

“I do,” Buck replied earnestly. “I do try, Tommy. I- I, when I was on that call, I ran back in because of you.”

Any anger left in Tommy's body was replaced with confusion. “What?”

“The guy I went in for, his- his boyfriend was yelling for him. He was panicked, like he- he would go insane if something had happened to him. All I could think about was you. How I'd go crazy if you were in a burning building and I- I couldn't get to you. I couldn't think of doing this life without you, Tommy. So, I ran in. And, I mean, you can ask Bobby, I'm not careless like that anymore, not like I used to be. And I do love you, Tommy. I love you so much it scares me. I promise I'm in this with yo-”

Before Buck could even process it, Tommy had cleared the space between them. He brought his hands to Buck's face pulled him in for a kiss.

Buck couldn't help the surprised moan that escaped him as Tommy pressed himself even closer. Buck grabbed onto Tommy's shirt, tugging on it like he was desperate for more.

It wasn't until tongues got involved that there was the sound of a throat being cleared behind them.

They stopped, both breathing heavily, then turned back to see the rest of the team watching them from upstairs.

“I knew you two lovebirds would work it out," Eddie said with a smirk on his face.

Chimney sniffed, earning him looks from the others. “I'm a sucker for romance,” he explained.

“I tried to get them to back off,” Hen defended. “I mean, not very hard, but I did try.”

Bobby simply smiled down at them. “Buck, your shift doesn't start until tonight. Go home.”

And well, they weren't gonna argue with that.