#you ghost me for TWO FUCKING MONTHS

[lover-of-mine]

[alchemistc]

Part One

The loft is sadly undecorated. He'd tried, is the thing. Gone to the same novelty store they'd found on a random walk after a date, in late September, where Tommy had spent twenty minutes worrying a foam pumpkin in his hands while Buck tried to decide what sort of decor would fit his utilitarian loft.

They'd spent so long lingering over the sculpted white candles, Buck thrilled because Tommy's straight face broke every time Buck pointed out which ones looked like incredibly expensive dildos, that he'd felt bad enough to buy a whole set of them just to appease the girl at the counter who'd been watching them with a half annoyed, half wistful expression while Buck made a comment about dragons that had had Tommy biting his lip so hard he'd actually gone red in the face trying to hold the laughter in.

But every time he'd picked up a glass tree and thought how much fun it'd be to try to make Tommy go full Tik Tok Paramedic on him, every time he'd found something soft or plush enough that Tommy wouldn't have been able to resist running his fingers over it, plucking it up to toss it between his palms - well.

It wasn't like there'd be anyone in his loft long enough to really appreciate his decorations.

"Why'd you kiss me?" he asks, rounding on Tommy as Tommy takes a tentative step towards the kitchen.

"You were being annoying." At Buck's look, he elaborates. "Force of habit."

The finger comes up without any input from Buck, his voice tipping into that same flirty, bickering rapport he'd always pushed as far as he could. "I knew you did it to shut me up."

Tommy expression shutters. He recognizes Buck's tone. A few months ago that tone would start with a round of banter that usually ended with at least one of them with their pants around their ankles.

He looks spooked. He's staring at the island stool closest to the door like he's replaying the last conversation they had here, and Buck feels all his ire rear back up.

"You promised me clarity, Tommy." It's an accusation, and they both know it, because he looks ready to fucking bolt.

Slowly, he steps in. Half a yard closer to Buck, close enough to curl his hand over the island, and Buck is struck again by how goddamn unfair it is that Tommy looks this goddamn good in a suit.

"I did."

Buck's pretty sure he has some muffins he hasn't frozen yet that wouldn't actually damage Tommy, if he threw them at him.

"Can we...?" He gestures, vague as his half a question, and Buck wants to throttle him. Or kiss him again, which is -

"I need a beer. You?"

Tommy sighs. His grip on the corner of the island makes his knuckles go white. "Evan."

"No beer, got it." He swings the door open and doesn't wait for the reaction to either his snippy little rejoinder or the stacks and stacks of baked goods filling up the shelves of his fridge. He pops the cap with his back still turned, let's the fridge door fall closed. "Not like you drove here, but sure. One of us should be sober, I guess."

The switch back to Evan doesn't do anything for him at all.

Buck leans back against the counter and tries not to think about how he'd had this half formed idea of getting a real tree this year, finding some novelty kiosk that made those hokey ornaments for people to mark the years they'd been a family. He'd thought -

Tommy blinks guiltily when Buck catches him eyeing the way he fills out his slacks, a toe to groin drift of his gaze that makes Buck ache for when he could respond to that by dropping to his knees.

"That's a lot of bread," Tommy notes, eyes focused somewhere over Buck's shoulder.

"Why'd you break up with me, Tommy?"

Tommy freezes. Shifts from foot to foot. Sighs, and takes a few steps to the fridge, swings it open to grab a beer of his own. It's still the stuff Tommy likes. Buck's not picky, really, and it'd been habit to grab the six pack he always kept for Tommy.

The last five times he'd restocked.

Tommy takes half a step back to lean against the island, just off center from Buck, so they both have to twist their necks just a little to actually look at each other.

"You terrify me," Tommy murmurs, a few swigs in, when the silence is just starting to make Buck's skin itch. "Evan, I'm not -." He grimaces, frustrated. "I'm not some Super Gay who fights for justice and equality and the ability to make horrible television with Hummel doll sopranists."

"I don't know what that means."

Tommy's smile is wry. He'd had a running list of movies Buck's never seen on a note on his phone - every time Buck missed a reference, he'd added it to the list. They'd gotten through maybe twenty before -

"I led on a good woman for years because I convinced myself I could live my life ignoring a huge piece of myself. I hurled slurs with my buddies just to make sure no one noticed me. I fed into every toxic stereotype I could just to avoid anyone realizing I wasn't one of them. I'm not - I'm not some Gold Star Gay, paragon of the community. I didn't do shit. And even when I made the decision to let myself just be who I always was, I waited until no one in my life was close enough to me to question that I hadn't always been this way. I -." He winces. Shakes his head. "I run instead of fighting. I hide every time someone tries to see me. I'm not - this comfort you're so convinced I have I took at the cost of other people who were braver and stronger than I could ever be. Do you - is that an admirable quality, to you?"

Buck wishes they'd sat, like Tommy seemed to have been hinting at. He wishes he'd spent the ride over preparing himself for this, instead of stopping himself from crawling into Tommy's lap and getting a horrible rider rating for his trouble. He wishes -

"Do you think I don't already know all those things about you?"

It's - actually, it makes him a little furious, to think that Tommy spent six months thinking he'd successfully hid all those things from Buck. And - sure, he hadn't exactly been forthcoming about more than a few of those things, but like -

It wasn't like Buck didn't actively find ways to pry stories from Howie and Hen, even Bobby on occasion. It wasn't like Buck hadn't noticed the clipped way Tommy spoke of his past, his family, always tucking away more than he revealed. It wasn't like Buck wasn't well aware that Tommy Kinard had the capacity to be a total fucking asshole, if he wanted. Just because he'd kept it cool around Buck, made it just flirty enough for plausible deniability -

"You deserve better than that. Than me."

"Then be better than that, Tommy." It's not the best way to get his point across, but... "I've had multiple serious relationships, Tommy. I'm - I've been in love, before, and I've had my heart broken before, and I've had my trust broken before, and I've made people I love feel like shit. You weren't new and exciting, Tommy, we were - we were boring and domestic and it was the best six months of my life. It was what I -."

And this, of course, is where the words start to crest over, too many at once while his mouth tries to keep up and his throat is too tight to -

He swallows. Stares at his toes until his vision swims. Maybe those are tears, or maybe he's just stared long enough to go cross-eyed. His throat feels like he might be able to scrape a few words out

"I go too fast sometimes. I - I get scared I'm falling behind and so I clear a few hurdles too fast to catch back up and it -." Frustration rises through him as he remembers the way Tommy had levered himself up, spun away, broken things off without even a hint of the careful consideration Buck had grown so used to. "And you just - you tell me you want more than anything to be my last but you can't even give me the closure of a clean break! What the hell was that about?"

"Evan, I -."

"No! Okay, no. It's my turn to - it's my turn to be mad. It's my turn to - do you know how lonely I've been? How - how much I'm in my own head about where I went wrong, and what I could have done differently, and why you won't just fucking text me when you clearly want to? Do you know - do you know what it's like to think you've finally found something worth the humiliation of being known and then have it vanish in a single night? Over - you never talked to me about any of the shit you brought up that night, Tommy! You never - if you were so scared of not being enough to keep me interested, or so sure you weren't a good enough man, or so sure I couldn't possibly know what I wanted out of this, you could have saved us a hell of a lot of time and - and hurt by not being exactly the person I thought I could spend the rest of my life with! If that was all a - a smokescreen, some act, then why did you - are you actually so cruel that you convinced me we were falling in love while you had one foot out the door the whole time?"

Tommy's grip on the bottle looks painful.

"It's your turn to talk," Buck snipes, and he takes a little satisfaction in the way Tommy blanches. Just a little. Just enough to ignore how much he wants to rip Tommy's suit jacket at the straining shoulder seams and bite a bruise into that spot below his collarbone that even Tommy's undershirts hid well enough to keep the team at Harbor from putting him on blast for coming to work covered in hickeys.

"Six months with you was more devastating than two decades of hiding who I was, Evan," Tommy says, and it's a horrible opening that makes Buck feel like he's being drawn and quartered but he'd given Tommy the floor, so -

Tommy's eyes are a little too misty to call them anything but welling, and Buck hates it as much as it satisfies the pieces of himself he's spent weeks trying to pick up and glue back together.

"Evan, I lived with Abby for years and I don't think I saw her as much as I saw you. You -." He swipes a hand through his hair, and rustles one of his Superman curls loose to drape tauntingly over his forehead. Buck wants to bite him. He wants it to hurt. "You burrowed in and you just kept digging and I didn't take a second to question it until it was too late."

"Too late for what?"

"For me to take the cowards way out and leave before it hurt."

"Maybe I should have dug further," Buck snaps, and Tommy's gaze flits to his. Holds, for the first time all night. He's breathtaking in the best and worst way possible. He's spent weeks now trying to imagine anyone else ever making him feel the way prolonged eye contact with this man makes him feel.

"You did," Tommy admits, a confession that sounds like it's been gut punched right out of him. "You still -." Another grimace, Tommy pulling back, pulling away, hiding, running, and Buck can't -

"So what is this, Tommy? Is this - are you -?" He shakes his head to clear the cobwebs. Rears up, pushes off the counter, and Tommy's eyes widen like he's just now realized he doesn't have an easy exit. Buck just stands there, though. "If this is it, let this be it. If you don't want - if you're not willing to fight for this with me, tell me now. I know I'm - I know I'm a lot. I know I push for more when I'm scared. I know I'm overwhelming, and I sometimes can't stop talking to save my life, and I know I'm jealous and petty and - I know I'm not perfect."

Tommy sets his bottle on the counter beside him. Worries his lip between his teeth and rolls his jaw.

"You snore. You're a bitch sometimes and every once in a while it's not even charming. You hog all the covers and then you complain that it's too hot. You're vague about every single thing in your past that you think makes you seem like a bad person. You always think food needs more garlic and sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes when I spiral you just give me that stupid indulgent smile of yours and I know you stopped listening two reddit threads ago. When you're grumpy sometimes it takes everything in me not to pick a fight because you're such an asshole. You get cagey every time I pick at a thread you don't want to unravel and I - I hate it. I wanted a life with you and you couldn't stick around long enough to tell me why you were too afraid to go for it. So if - if you think I'm seeing you with rose colored glasses, or whatever. If you think I'm not - if you think being the first guy makes you too special for this to be real then just..." He sucks in a breath. Blows it out through his nose and feels the ache in his chest that's half remnants of his earlier panic attack and half fear that Tommy will actually turn and walk out at the end of this. "If you don't wanna fight for this I'll fill in the hole I dug as best I can and I'll leave you alone, okay?"

The look on Tommy's face is one he's never seen before. They've done this dance, or parts of it, at least. Tommy'd left him outside Micelli's, breathless and confused and aching, before he ever knew what it was like to hold his hand, to press his nose into the join of his neck and shoulder, to curl a hand in his hair or be filled by him - with attention, with affection, with the weight of his body and the stretch of his cock. Even then, this had felt different. Real, in a way the misty edges of his time with Abby, or the way Buck's puzzle pieces had never quite fit with Taylor's had never been. Even then, he'd just wanted so desperately to know and be known by Tommy that he'd taken his second chance and run with it.

"I don't snore," Tommy says, when the silence gets too heavy, and Buck - god, Buck has missed that tone, the snappy little tilt of his head, the blatant lie that passes over Tommy's lips so smoothly it's hard to tell sometimes that he's not being serious.

"I have audio proof," Buck says, and then doesn't immediately admit that he'd played it on a loop two nights into the breakup when he'd wrapped his entire body around the spare pillows on his bed and still hadn't been able to sleep alone in his bed.

"It bugs me that you spent days following scraps of information about a dead outlaw you convinced yourself cursed you, but you didn't even know what a Kinsey scale was."

This is - progress. This is... not Tommy bolting.

"I'm a two. If that's - is that, like, gay enough for you, or...?"

"You go too fast for me, Buckley," he says, and Buck knows that's a fucking reference to something he doesn't have context for just as well as he knows he's willing to spend the next decade waiting for the reference to pop up on Tommy's list. It's a terrifying, exhilarating thought and it's probably exactly what Tommy means.

"I can slow down," Buck says, and he tries to mean it. Nothing about how he feels about Tommy is slow.

"I don't want you to," Tommy admits, and then lets the silence stretch. They're two and a half feet away from each other and the distance feels like the farthest he's ever been from Tommy and the closest he may ever be again. "Living together, making a life together..." He swallows. "Marriage." That stops him short just long enough to recall how he'd blazed right past the I love you and straight into how he could keep Tommy. "You scare the shit out of me every goddamn minute of every goddamn day and I've never missed being terrified as much as I have since I walked out that door."

"I'm in love with you," Buck tells him, and Tommy blinks back tears. Takes a shaky breath and nods.

"That's what scares me. It's never - it's never been enough, before."

He'd sort of expected this to end with either the echo of his KitchenAid or a frantic rush up the stairs, but when Tommy meets him halfway all he does is sink his nose into the curls behind Buck's ear and breathe.

His arms drag Buck closer, his feet shuffle beneath them, his chin hooks over Buck's shoulder and he breathes, and breathes, and breathes.

---

"Your morning breath is rancid," Tommy tells him, palm centered on Buck's nose when he leans in for a kiss, pads of his fingers curled just slightly so that his hand is nearly encasing Buck's entire face. He wants to be annoyed but it's mind numbingly hot and Buck has missed it. Missed the snark, and the comfortable way Tommy will shoot him down when his head is in the clouds, and exactly how fucking large Tommy is.

"I'm so tired of avocado toast," Buck bats back, and Tommy is distracted enough by his need to make a face at that for Buck to swoop in and press a kiss to his cheek. He makes sure to make it a little wet just to watch Tommy's face crinkle in mock disgust.

He's in one of Buck's hoodies, is wearing the pair of his own sweats Buck had buried in the back of his closet in a fit of pique three days post breakup. He still looks properly debauched and Buck wants to drag him right back to bed.

Except -

"You don't have to go," Buck repeats, for the fifth time since he brought it up somewhere between peeling Tommy out of his suit pants and rolling out of bed to warm a hand towel under the sink so that Tommy could clean the cum off his abs. "But I need to shower and leave in like - twenty-seven minutes."

Tommy catches him by the waist and drags him in. "I won't be able to stay. You baked and I took as much holiday overtime as I could, but if you seriously want me there -."

"I seriously want you everywhere."

Tommy raises a brow.

"I mean that in a horny way and a codependent way."

Tommy snorts. "Good to know we're approaching this in a healthy manner."

"You told me not to slow down," Buck reminds him, and he gets a smack to his ass for his trouble.

"When Maddie pulls me aside, do you think she'll just slip me a poisoned glass of wine, or is she gonna get up on a step stool and make me stand there while she strangles me to death?"

"She won't do that." Buck leans in again, rolls a loose curl between two fingers. "She'll just stab you in the middle of the kitchen and warn my parents not to step in the blood."

"That's comforting."

Tommy takes a utilitarian shower in the downstairs bathroom and doesn't let Buck join him, and then rifles through Buck's closet until he finds all three of his button downs Buck had tucked away.

He has to borrow a pair of Buck's slacks and Buck absolutely does not mind that his ass is definitely gonna stretch them out.

With about seventy seconds to spare, Tommy presses Buck to his front door and kisses him just long enough to screw up Buck's meticulous timing - by the time he pulls back and gives Buck enough room to glance at the time on his stove, Buck knows they're gonna hit just enough red lights to make them late.

"I love you too, by the way," Tommy murmurs, and just this once, Buck decides not to be a brat about being five minutes late.

[gncbozo]

They're so bestie material <3

[hana-bobo-finch]

a strange trend in my favorite characters I realize is that I tend to heavily gravitate toward somewhat obscure, antagonistic forces

[syrenki]

Does pretending to be fine on the outside bring you at least some sort of satisfaction? That they won’t see how bad it gets

yesss and it's so selfish and embarrassing, i keep hoping someday they'll all see right through the bullshit and then they'll say "oh my, it was so very bad all along and you never said anything? you withstood it all and never brought any attention to yourself? that's so selfless, i could never, i would have broken earlier, you are so strong. we will help you now, you deserve it now because you never asked for anything!!!" but it never happens and it never will happen and the worse it gets for me the more i put on the cheerful and selfless and carefree demeanor, i get so desperate to keep it all up because if i ever drop the act and start Acting Depressed, start wearing my arms out or stop smiling at everybody all the time, i would be acting selfish, i would be attention-seeking, i would be undeserving of any help at all since i'm simply craving attention. you see what i mean? it's all twisted but i swear there is a logic there - the more desperately i need something to change, the kinder i will act, the milder, gentler, more selfless, quieter, i have to handle it with humility because not complaining and just taking it quietly is what would make me deserving of some care, and sometimes i need it so badly that i'd do anything to deserve it. i keep thinking if i deserved it i would have already received it, only that's not how people function, people go to psychologists or tell their friends 'i'm depreseed' and that's how they get help, not through martyrdom and humility. but i do it the quiet way and the worse things get the quieter and more mellow i become and it will probably go on this way until i kill myself and then people will say "holy shit, she was always so cute and kind and pastel, nobody could have expected this, who could have had any idea?"

[abluescarfonwaston]

Hey... What do you think Mia called her Dad? Papa? Father? Daddy?

Because she must have been at least 9 or 10 when he died if not a little older. Like. She remembers him. Even if he was always outside the village for work she remembers him. Remembers Misty losing him. Had to explain to Maya, or maybe worse- never had to at all - why he wasn't there. How she got his sense of humor and his laugh and neither of them can be held tight by him anymore but she can hold Maya tight and maybe then he doesn't feel so far gone.

What did she call him? Did she love him? Did Maya ever get that chance?

[cod-sins]

𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐄

I have had multiple different blogs who have reblogged or made rape fics (aka noncon/dubcon) and I am telling y'all right fucking now DO NOT INTERACT WITH MY BLOG IF YOU DO THAT SHIT. The ones who are doing it are grown-ass adults. If yall know what it's like to have "minors DNI" plastered all over your blog and then have underage people still interact with you then you should know what that feels like for me to see assholes constantly break my DNI.

I'm doing this as a way to protect y'all and me. I have the ability to slightly go off the rails and I don't wanna do that because this isn't a discourse blog, it's my writing blog.

Now I don't care what your excuse is, I'm not tryna hear you justify it or debate with me. I just want you to not read or interact with my blog(s) as a whole. Ain't no writing in the world that's good enough to break someone's DNI and make them uncomfortable.

Thank you and goodnight.

[trans-yllz]

since this october will have both tarot cards And the annual wei wuxian birthday comic

[juniperhillpatient]

wish I was a character in a story so the random shitty things that happen to me could serve narrative purpose

[seventh-district]

several days and 15 thousand words later, i am relieved to report that the suffocating urge to Write Something has been sated and no longer has me in a chokehold

[backpackingspace]

Okay but can we appreciate Lan zhan looking at what is clearly a demon possessing his boyfriend going:

Something is wrong he murdered these people (read tortured to death)

Jiang cheng: who hates outsiders judging his brother: so what's the problem we were planning on murdering these people. Wei wuxian is fine. He's always been like that.

[oflgtfol]

shaking my fucking cage my grad school app is due friday and the only thing preventing me from submitting it is that everyone i ask for a letter of rec is taking their sweet fucking time

[vanyafresita]

actually, you know what ? im glad my ex gf ghosted me, i dodged a bullet it seems

[alteredsilicone]

story time

years ago a former classmate approached me to draw some sketches so she could forward them to a graphic designer to create informational signs; she never paid me but I didn't really pursue it and just cut my losses

but

today I read a news article about this very same classmate's business

turns out two employees quit over missing wages - an accountant and a social media manger, and they went so far as to get the local news involved in an attempt to get the pay they're owed

Anyways

I guess it's some kind of cosmic karma for not paying me THREE YEARS AGO

[apathyfairy]

someone who is good at reading too much into nothing pls analyze my dream

[kradnie]

killing mhselff