Archive of Our Own

It was a normal day. That’s what he kept telling himself, trying to force normal, deep breaths into his lungs. It was a normal day.

It was a normal day.

He’d been at work, overseeing shit from the mezzanine as the probie worked on mopping the floors. Los Angeles had seen its prerequisite three weeks of rain recently, and in the process the floors were looking god-awful, reflecting dirt and footprints in the debris and dust left behind after the water had evaporated. Plus, the probie was still pretty green around the gills around some of the more tenuous scenes they’d been to since his arrival, and Evan wanted to be sure he was getting a well-rounded education to everything that went into the job, whether it was heavy rescue, or something menial like the dishes.

“Hey cap, you sure you don’t want me to tap Collins out?”

Evan glances up, spotting Ravi nearby with two cups off coffee. Evan chuckles but shakes his head as he takes the cup from the younger man, glancing back down at the main floor.

“Nah, we’ll keep him going for a little bit longer,” he answers. “Kid’s gotta learn.”

“I mean I guess,” Ravi answers, leaning on the railing next to him. There’s an unspoken conversation about the way Evan has mellowed out over the decade or so it’s been since Ravi’s arrival to the 118, silence hovering between them like a comfortable pillow.

They stand in silence for a few minutes more, and Evan retrieves his phone from his pocket, checking for any new incoming messages. It’s late into the night, so he’s not overly surprised when he doesn’t see anything new from his husband, but he still taps out a quick check in, followed by an ‘I love you’, staring at the screen for a bit longer. Their four year old daughter has been fighting off a stomach bug since pre-school started for her a few weeks back, and he’d be surprised if there isn’t a stain Tommy isn’t scrubbing out of the carpet or a load of laundry he’s had to restart because of the demands of parenting a sick child.

“That new,” Ravi asks a moment later. Evan glances over at him and then back down at his phone, where the lock screen has popped back up. 12:19 in the morning.

The background photo is of Tommy and their daughter. He has her swept up in his arms, both of them laughing, noses pressed together. It was one of those in-the-moment, luck-of-the-draw  shots that Evan had captured entirely by chance a few weeks back.

“Yeah. Managed to get it during the three seconds Bennett wasn’t begging me to let him watch Bluey,” he answers in reference to their two-and-a-half year old.

“She looks more and more like him the older she gets,” Ravi comments, a soft smile on his face. Evan’s smile widens as he glances down at the image once more, watches the time tick over to 12:20.

Starting a family had always been a given for them, almost as soon as they decided to get married. Kids were a must-have for Evan from as young as he could remember, and after getting back together and understanding that making that choice also meant they weren’t going to be with other people, the obvious conclusion had been building a future they already saw with one another.

It was funny, and yet still quintessentially them. They were engaged three weeks after getting back together, but knew each other for a year and a half before actually moving in together. They got married less than a month after that, but it took another two years to fully integrate their lives and purge all the doubles they owned between them. They started talking about the options towards bringing a child into their lives before the ink on the marriage license was dry, but they were days away from Emilynn’s birth when Evan finally had his last name legally changed.

Of course, the argument when it came to the kids was a toss-up. Tommy insisted Evan provide their genetic material—“You’ve already done it once and it worked out. Lets not mess with a good thing.”—while Evan yearned to see those expressive eyes of his husband’s in his children. Eventually, they reached an agreement that there would be one of each while also leaving the door open to adopting and fostering in the future. It was important to Tommy, given his own upbringing, and Evan had agreed to it. And so, after ages of arguing over who would go first—Hen ultimately made them decide on the flip of a coin—Evan called in his favor to Connor and Kameron, and they started the process for Emilynn. Two years later, after Connor and Kameron got lucky with their own miracle baby, she agreed to carry for them again, this time with Bennett.

And of course, there were the little jokes they could make about who looked like who. But in some ways, it was only obvious to them. Emilynn was born with a port wine stain around her left eye just like Evan, but it covered a more generous surface between her eyelid and forehead. Bennett was born with light brown hair much like Tommy’s, but the both of them had beautiful curls that neither of them had any interest in taming.

Noise on the first floor of the firehouse draws his attention back to the present some time later when he hears one of their transfers mutter ‘oh shit, the fire chief’. Evan laughs softly to himself and downs his coffee before passing the empty mug off to Ravi, pushing off the railing and heading down the stairs.

“Cap,” Evan calls out cheerfully once he’s downstairs, rounds the ladder truck. Bobby’s gaze trails up to him slowly, like he’s a million miles away, and when their eyes lock he feels a knife twist in his stomach.

He’s seen that look on Bobby’s face before. He’s heard the ‘I’m so sorry’s, the ‘why don’t you sit down’s, the ‘can I get you anything’s. But in that moment, all Evan can hear is the ringing in his own ears as he feels the world falling down around him. His breathing becomes shallower, his vision tunneling, his entire body suddenly running cold like ice just flooded his veins, and his fingers are tingling.

“What- where-…” He presses his lips together, trying to form a word—any other word—than the five w’s. “H-…how?”

“Buck-..”

He flinches away like Bobby’s hands are fire themselves when the older man tries to touch him, the scowl on his face so tight that he looks pissed. The older man pulls his hands back then, lifting them in front of the two of them to make clear that he won’t try to touch him again.

“Where is Tommy,” he growls, his throat tight. He’s trying to hold on to every inch of resolve he has, but it’s crumbling under the surface of every little thing about Bobby’s expression that seems to sink deeper into his psyche.

The paleness of his skin. The way his eyes look like he’s already been crying. The absolute devastation in his expression, even though he hasn't even told Evan what’s happened.

“Where are my fucking kids?”

Bobby blinks, swallows, and that action alone feels like someone clawing his chest open as Evan stares at him. But then his former boss is looking past him and he clears his throat.

“Ravi, I need you to take over as acting captain for the rest of shift,” Bobby tells him. “Evan…”

Bobby can’t even finish his sentence, and Evan doesn’t turn around, but he knows that Ravi is likely nodding behind him.

“Sure thing, Cap,” Ravi answers Bobby, his own voice soft, resigned.

Evan's thoughts spiral in Bobby’s department-issued truck. The lights and sirens are loud, both visually and audibly, and it’s almost too much for him to tolerate. Every thought in his head is of where his children are, where his husband is, if they’re okay. But then in the next moment, he knows that they aren’t because he can still see the way Bobby is still so pale next to him, looking as though he’d been sick not that long before he arrived at the firehouse.

And the reality of the fact that Bobby is taking the known the route to First Pres gives Evan little hope for his family.

He opens his mouth more than once, only to close it because he’s afraid of actually asking the questions, of knowing. Knowing means facing a reality he’s not prepared for, and he’s not even sure he can face a speck of the reality Bobby’s demeanor seems to be suggesting.

They arrive at the hospital quicker than Evan normally, and when Bobby turns the truck off, Evan can’t move. His limbs feel locked into place, like he’s been superglued to the leather interior, and the slightest move feels physically painful.

“Buck.”

He looks up at Bobby, still unmoving. There’s a rock in his chest that just keeps sinking, and he knows once he starts moving, that it’s going to snowball into a boulder, an avalanche crashing down on him that’s never going to stop piling. Not now.

The muscles around his mouth move with the urge to say something, but the words don’t actually come. He’s openly aware of the fact that regardless of the fact that he has little idea of what waits for him on the other side of those hospital doors, that something does. It’s the same thing inside of him that knows that if there’s even one person in his life who understands how he feels right now, it’s the man next to him. And he’s not prepared for that.

Bobby nods, leaning back in the seat. He waits. He doesn’t speak or try to reach out for Evan again, and the younger man doesn’t know if he should take that in stride or if he should be concerned. The extra moment of time to process his own feelings is appreciated, but he knows that it’s not something he can stretch out into eternity. At some point, Bobby is going to make him get out of the truck and go into the hospital to find whatever hell awaits him.

It’s not long. Maybe two or three minutes before the man he equates as his father looks back over at him and with a somehow even grimmer expression, he gulps.

“We need to go in,” Bobby tells him. “There’s not much time.”

Evan inhales and exhales quickly, harshly. It burns the entire way down, and suddenly it feels like someone has set ever nerve fiber in his body ablaze.

He can’t do this.

The next minutes are a blur, both mentally and visually. He can’t see straight by the time they cross the entrance of the emergency room. The only thing that keeps him clear on the direction he’s supposed to be headed in is Bobby’s general shape, the black color of his uniform against the lighter colors of the hospital around them.

The problem is, he knows this hospital, and he knows it well.

By the time they make it to the burn unit, he feels empty. He’s positive that every shred of his innards must be on the floor at his feet, waiting to be swept away by janitorial staff. He’s sure if someone followed the evidence from the ER up the three floors and across the building, they’d find a steady trail of pieces of his soul, as scattered as the puzzle pieces his daughter loves to steal at a moments notice and hide when she wants his attention.

In his sock drawer. Underneath one of her pillows. Inside her brother’s diaper genie. In her dad’s toolbox.

His chest feels tight as Bobby leads him through the ward. He’s been in a burn unit before—perks of being a firefighter, and part of the training—but he never expected to find himself in one because of his own family. Still, when they finally make it down to the designated location—a room at the end of a hall, past closed doors with screaming patients, sobbing family members, even a few people bickering in silence—Bobby stops and looks over at him.

Evan can’t look up at the other man. He knows. Knows that one room is too small for all three of them. Knows that, no matter who’s on the other side of the door, it’s not enough of them. Bobby would’ve told him if the kids were safe and with his sister. If things were actually even a little bit okay, Bobby would’ve told him.

But he’s said nothing.

His gaze shifts over to the number on the door. 335. He reaches out and puts his hand on the door, forces another breath down.

Pushes it open.

The rhythmic sound of machines meet his ears almost immediately. He can hear the ECG tracking a heartbeat, the pressure of oxygen coming through a ventilator. The room smells awfully of antiseptic and burn cream, and by the time his eyes fall on his husband, any ounce of his will to keep going lies at his feet like his son’s forgotten security blanket.

Tommy is more wrapped in gauze than he isn’t. His hair is gone, burned away by fire. His skin shines in a way that isn’t healthy. The ventilator pulses in steady movements. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

“Some kids were setting off fireworks,” Bobby states softly. Evan doesn’t look over, but he can only assume the older man is beside him now, with how close his voice is. “Origin seems to have been in the hallway closer to the kids rooms.”

He can picture it; the exact spot in the hallway. There’s a window that peers out into a side street. Their neighborhood is family friendly, with kids of all ages. He’s given more than one speech to the neighborhood teens about fire safety.

Bobby inhales a deep breath.

“He got out,” the older man rasps. “Called 911. Went back in for the kids.”

Evan doesn’t turn his head. He can tell by Bobby’s tone of voice that he other man is not about to tell him that his kids are doing just fine.

“He got Emilynn out first,” Bobby explains. “Went back in for Bennett. They um…” He pauses, takes several breaths as Evan stares at his husband on the other side of the plastic sheeting separating them to keep Tommy isolated, sterile. “He protected Em from the fire, but the smoke. And with Ben…”

“Stop,” Evan rasps, his voice sounding foreign to him. “Just. Stop.”

He doesn’t want to know more. He doesn’t need to know how badly his children suffered, how much his husband clearly did.

“How bad is he,” he asks when he manages to find the ability to speak again. “Is he-…how bad?”

“Some first and second degree burns on chest, arms and legs,” Bobby explains. “Third on his back. Fourth further up between his shoulder blades.”

Evan shakes his head. He knows how that spells out. His husband acted as a human shield for their children, and it still wasn’t enough.

“Down to his lungs,” he states more than he asks. He sees Bobby nod in his periphery. Tears fall down his face of their own accord, and he does nothing to stop them. His eyes trail over his husband again, trying so desperately to not commit the visual to memory, while not being able to stop himself. He blinks a few times and tries to clear his vision to no avail. He forces down another breath.

“Turn off the ventilator.”

Bobby’s head whips in his direction. “Buck-..”

“Turn it off,” he growls against the knot in his throat. He manages to turn his head an inch, glare at Bobby through tears. “Do not put him through another second of this. Let him-…” He huffs, balls his hands into fists to try and gain some hold on his emotions. “Let him go.”

It turns out a request for removing advanced care is not as simple as an outburst. Still, thanks to their line of career and the risks associated with the job, they both hold advanced directives in their files with the hospital, and half an hour later, a social worker comes into the room along with the on-staff physician overseeing Tommy's treatment. They talk Evan through the next steps. He only half-listens to them, half-hears how they tell him that even though he knows what’s coming, he isn’t actually prepared for it.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, he manages to ask if he can hold Tommy’s hand. It’s wrapped in gauze, but the burns aren’t as bad there as they are in other spaces. And then he’s standing at his husband’s side, one hand wrapped impossibly small inside of his husband's larger, unnaturally loose grip while the other hovers over Tommy’s head, not touching. He doesn't want to hurt him more than he knows he probably is. Still, he gets down as close as he can, close enough that Tommy can hear him, if he’s even still consciously aware.

“Hi honey,” he rasps, fighting to get each word out. “You…you did so well. I know you fought, for both the kids, and for yourself. A-and you don’t have to anymore, okay? You can-…” He sniffles, recoils when Bobby’s hand touches his shoulder. “You can go be with them. Be where it won’t hurt you to be here. And know that I love you more than life. I am who I am today because of you.”

He looks up at the nurse as she waits beside the machines, and manages to nod at her before his gaze is back on Tommy.

“You made me so happy. You- you gave me a life I didn’t even know was possible.”

The ventilator whirs down as he speaks, and the beeping on the ECG slows. Tears run down his face onto Tommy’s skin.

“I wish we’d gotten more,” he chokes out. “I love you. Through the universe and across the skies.”

It’s a gut punch to not hear Tommy answer the sentiment, but instead hear the monitors continue to slow. He can’t look up as they do, can only continue to stare down at his husband, hear the rattling in his attempts to breathe and failure to do so. Until the stagnant beeps finally drift into nothing but a rhythmic drone, and he knows.

He’s not sure what happens next. There’s noise around him—the sound of wailing, of doctors moving in and out, being pushed aside. At some point, there’s mention of medication, and what he thinks is the poke of a needle. He doesn’t actually process it all. He just knows that he comes back to his own consciousness in an empty bay, staring at a gray wall trying to figure out how this is what his day turned into. His eyes feel heavy, like he’s cried an ocean’s worth of tears. He feels like there aren’t enough tears in the world to quantify what it feels like to be conscious and aware.

And yet he is.

He's not sure where anyone is. He wasn’t really aware of where Bobby went. He overheard something in mention of his sister, old coworkers. Still, Hen and Chim are on a different shift than he is these days, under a different captain.

They’ll all be fine.

He shoves out of the bed and crosses the room, wonders if they realize he’s alone. He wonders if anyone actually cares. Truth be told, he reconsiders that thought after a moment and logically accepts that they probably do—but he doesn’t.

And then he finds himself standing in front of an open drawer with pieces for a disposable scalpel, and he’s putting them together.

It isn’t even worth half a thought. One second he’s putting the blade together, and the next he has it pressed into the skin of his wrist, digging in as deeply as he can. There’s not a version of his life that he wants to live without his family, and he won’t.

Except-

“Buck-..” “Evan!” Mr. Buckley-..” “No!”

Their voices slam into each other like an untuned brass section of an orchestra, and before he gets the chance to have a word in edgewise or an opinion, there are hands on him. Hands pulling the hand with the scalpel away from his body, while other hands grab at his bleeding arm. His people swim across his vision, but he’s too untethered to hold them in place or take anything he says at face value. Words are said at and over him, and he tries to fight when they get him back down into the bed, restrain his wrists.

There’s more needles.

And then, for the first time since the world came crashing down on him hours earlier, everything is quiet.

And he relishes.

He shuts down in the first day. He has nothing to say to anyone, and knows that talking to them won’t solve anything. But it really only takes those twenty-four hours for him to come to the conclusion that being held in the hospital really isn’t going to serve him, either. He knows physicians will want to medicate him, want to get him back on the closest thing related to an even keel that he can manage—even though he’s not sure that exists.

And so he starts to pretend. He puts on a show. He shows up to the group therapy meetings, attends the required talks with the therapist and psychiatrist. Makes empty promises of a safety plan for when he’s released. How he’s going to go home with his sister and lean on his people, and start intensive therapy—because fuck all that he knows about surviving a life after losing your entire family in one moment. He swears up and down that he’ll do everything right and that the act in the room he’d been left in was an act of temporary insanity.

He lies, and he lies, and he lies some more. He journals about missing his family—the only truth in it all. He agrees to have conversations with his loved ones, and he’s pretty sure he even has people believing him.

Well. At least most of them.

“You’re wasting your time,” Maddie murmurs through tears, her arms crossed. If her brother has looked defeated and finished over the past few days, she doesn’t seem to be far behind him.

“They’ll get him on a regimen,” Hen comments. They’ve just come out of a meeting with the psychiatrist, who is apparently just as suspicious as they are, but can’t actually find any proof in any of Evan’s actions to keep him for another day or so.

“And they can keep him there-..”

Maddie shakes her head, cutting off Athena as she looks over at her friend. “It won’t be enough.” She blinks away tears and doesn’t bother trying to wipe them away as they stand just outside the ward. “All we’re doing is pissing him off by putting off the inevitable. He’s not coming back from this.”

“He’s-..”

Maddie turns her attention back to Hen. “He’s putting on a show for them, for us. I know my brother more than I know myself. Everything he’s doing in there, he learned from me.”

“That seems pretty pessimistic,” Karen observes, although there’s no heat behind her words.

Maddie just continues to shake her head as she looks over at the other woman.

“It’s not-… Evan isn’t just-…it’s his family,” she explains. “Everyone he’s ever lost- every thing he’s ever lost. Those have all been things he could deal with because they weren’t completely his. But don’t you guys remember how he was when he and Tommy broke up? How badly he took that? This…being married, and- and having each other’s kids? They’re his kids; his and Tommy’s kids.” She snuffles, shaking her head as she swallows past a lump in her throat and more tears fall simultaneously. “He won’t come back from this.”

“You really think he’ll do something when he gets out,” Athena asks softly, although her tone of voice gives the impression that she already knows the answer. Maddie looks over at her, finally wiping at some of the wetness on her face.

“ts’a matter of time,” she rasps. “He won’t make it past them putting-…” She pauses again as her bottom lip trembles, her throat tight enough that she has to fight the words out. “Putting his family in the ground.”

Five days feels like an eternity. Every gut-wrenching second feels like someone is pulling individual fibers of his being off of his body, one snap at a time. He doesn’t sleep. He can’t eat. Every time he closes his eyes, he keeps seeing Tommy, Emilynn, Bennett. His husband leaning in for one more kiss goodbye. His daughter begging for one more bedtime story. His toddler son crawling up his leg asking for one more bite of Evan’s ice cream before it gets put away. Both kids asking for one more night between them in their California king bed, and them promising each other it’s just one more night. The doctors medicate him, but there’s the whole thing of medication taking time to titrate up onto, and the issue of funerals to be planned and held, and somehow he manages to play right into their hand of gaining their sympathy to let him do this last thing for his kids, his husband. And yet.

Suddenly Evan wants back every single night they opted to put the kids in their own beds so that they could have time together. But he also wants every single night that they didn’t get one more round in, one more kiss. One more night of him falling asleep to Tommy’s heartbeat.

He’s selfish and he wants it all back.

The release from the hospital is obnoxious, and he can feel the way his sister hovers. He knows that intrinsically, she knows. But he also knows that she doesn’t actually believe that she can stop him, and he’s not remotely sorry about it. Still, he follows her process, lets her think its working as they leave, go to the pharmacy, and swing by the market before heading back to the Han home. He lets her think that he’s doing fine…right up until he finds his husband’s truck sitting in front of the house. He’d driven it to work that day because his own truck was making weird noises, and Tommy had promised to look at it. And now, with the vehicle in his sights, he’s split completely down the middle between wanting to search through it for every item that belongs to Tommy or his kids inside it, and wanting to end everything right there.

He barely makes it into his sister’s house instead.

She tries to talk him into staying out in the family room and talking, but he can’t truly hold it together, and instead dismisses himself into the guest room, even though she tells him to leave the door open. Although it pisses him off to no end, he does, which requires him to temper his emotions and remain quieter as the cracks settle in.

Maddie tries to encourage him to eat, to socialize, to spend time with his niece and nephew. Chimney even strolls in after a while and tries to engage him in conversation. But plan or not, he doesn’t have it within him to hold a conversation with them or pretend that he can put a face on and look at his sisters kids without thinking about his own not being with them.

Eventually, she lets him shut down enough that he has them believing he’s asleep, even as he lays in the bed, staring at the wall. He just needs them to go to bed and let him have this; to let him go. He doubts that Maddie will make it so easy for him, but he doesn’t care. He watches the sun stretch across the sky and then fall into the horizon. He hears his sister settle her kids into their nighttime routine, put them into the bath and then lay them down for the night. It’s past both of their bedtimes by the time Evan leaves the bedroom to get a glass of water.

He’s still standing at the counter when he feels a familiar hand on his shoulder, and when he turns, he sees Maddie standing next to him, a few tear tracks on her face. He turns into her and pulls her tightly into a hug, and she clings back to him just as tightly.

“Please,” she begs him softly. “Please, Evan? Please don’t.”

He doesn’t have a response for her. He can’t tell her yes. He won’t rub a no in her face though, either. Instead, he hugs her tighter, presses a kiss into the top of her head, and scans the room for his keys.

He doesn’t find them.

Eventually, they part, and he heads back for the bedroom, closing the door behind himself this time.

Hours pass. It’s well into the night by the time he opens the door again under the guise of using the bathroom. He slips through the house quietly, peaking in on Jee-Yun and Kevin before he heads back for the kitchen. After some consideration, he comes to the conclusion that Maddie’s likely hidden his keys, and while he could take another vehicle, that’s not…

He needs to be with his family.

It takes a long time—too long, in his opinion—but he eventually finds them stuffed inside of a laundry basket in the living room, buried under some folded towels. After that, it’s only too easy to slip out of the house and across the lawn.

When he reaches the truck, he has to stop for a moment, knowing that the onslaught of his family will hit him as soon as he gets inside. He also knows he could be caught at any moment, and so he jumps in quickly and tries not to get too overwhelmed when the myriad of scents he knows as his husband and children hit his nostrils. He starts the truck, flips the lights on, and pulls away.

It’s a long drive, during which he has to stop halfway to get more gas and a few supplies. He swings by a hardware store and then tucks the materials into his vehicle, his heart aching as he opens the backside driver door.

Bennett’s fleece blanket is laying halfway across his carseat.They’d gotten it for him at nine months old after he grew attached to one of Kevin’s that Maddie had used one day while babysitting, and for nearly a year Bennett didn’t sleep without it. As he’d grown into a toddler, though, it became something he only used during travel or at daycare.

One of Emilynn’s stuffies is sitting in hers. It’s a koala that they’d gotten her when she was two after spending her infant and toddler years referring to her as their koala, because she was always attached to her dad or daddy. Like Bennett, though, she’d grown to need it less over time, and eventually it found its way into the car where she would cuddle it before and after daycare, or during naps when they would take long weekends up the coast as a family.

Tommy’s duffel is sitting on the floor beneath their son’s carseat, and it takes Evan all of three seconds to dig out the last hoodie his husband had worn to the gym. It smells of a mix of Tommy’s cologne and sweat, and he’s crying immediately as he crawls back into the driver’s seat with each of the items. He can smell all of them, and it’s the first time in days he doesn’t feel the his entire life is crushing his bones into dust. But it’s not enough. They’re not close enough that he can feel them, hear them, see them.

He forces himself to pull it together, and continues his journey.

An hour later, his chest rises and falls shallowly as he stares out at the ocean from his husband’s truck. Bennett’s blanket rests over his lap and halfway across his stomach while Emilynn’s stuffy is tucked into the extra space inside the hoodie. He has the hood wrapped around his neck enough that he can turn his face into it and smell Tommy. It feels right, like this, like he’s closer to them, somehow.

He would’ve done this somewhere else, but he can’t go home because it’s in ashes now, and he won’t put his loved ones through this. They’ve suffered enough, losing a niece and nephew, grandchildren, a son-in-law or brother-in-law. They don’t need to deal with the aftermath of finding him as well.

He looks down at his phone, ignorant of the tears that haven’t stopped as a slideshow of photos continues to play on his phone—pictures in an album labeled Kinard’s, 2024-. Every image he’s ever taken with Tommy, from their first photo as a couple, to work events, to barbecues, weddings, births, and everything in between. His kids smile back at him from the screen, and the love in his husband’s eyes is never clearer than when it was Evan with the camera.

He can’t live without that for another second.

He won’t.

The slideshow moves along to another image of Tommy—one from their wedding day. It was a candid shot someone had gotten—he can’t remember who now—where he was laughing with Hen and Karen off to the side, almost out of the shot, because Tommy was the primary focus. There was a smile on his face, but his gaze was locked on Evan. It was the kind of image that, if a stranger looked at it, they could easily come to the conclusion ‘that man’s decided on forever’.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Evan mutters, his voice barely above a whisper as he continues to stare at the picture. “‘Know you’d want me t-…to keep…” He stops, shakes his head, looking away from his phone and down at his lap. “I can’t.”

He can hear Tommy’s voice in his head, telling him to find a way. But without him and their kids, there isn’t one.

The slideshow slips along to the next image, and it makes his decision resolute. It’s from a few weeks back when they’d decided to have photos done for their five year anniversary. Granted, they were a few months early, but they’d also missed getting them done for Bennett’s second birthday and decided to roll it all into one together.

They were both in black sweatshirts and blue jeans, while Bennett was in black overalls and a blue t-shirt the color of his father’s flight suit with matching blue shoes. Emilynn was in a denim shirt dress with black knee-high boots. They’d had to promise her two cupcakes to put it on that day instead of her Princess Anna dress that she’d refused to change out of for a week.

The photo had been taken in the grass of their front yard. Bennett was sitting on Tommy’s lap while Emilynn was draped a bit more dramatically over Evan’s, leaning into his arm. They were all smiling because they’d promised the kids ice cream. The next image, which Evan didn’t even need to see to call to mind, had them in the same spots, but Emilynn was throwing leaves in the air and laughing while Bennett was crawling towards Maddie, who had the camera. He was the primary focus of that image, but in the shallow depth-of-field, Evan and Tommy could be made out as leaned in towards one another, sharing a kiss.

That picture had gone up in their bedroom.

He looks around himself in the car as he starts it again. It’s late—or early—and he’s unlikely to be found until it’s too late, which is what he wants. He turns on the generator and rolls the windows up, and then retrieves the x-acto knife from the space he’d left in, in the center console.

He’s quick with it, digging in and making a singular cut near where the stitches are still bright blue on his arm, but it’s more than deep enough…at he thinks so. Does it really matter when he’s ensuring more than one failsafe? He doubts it.

He starts the truck, and reaches for the bottles of pills beside himself. It takes some doing with one hand, but he manages to get them open, and then quickly by the fistful, they’re gone, along with the water bottle he’d brought along.

He has enough time to turn on the playlist—their playlist—and turn the music up before he closes his eyes and starts to feel the effects of it all. Whether it’s the bleeding, the drugs, or the CO leaking into his car, he doesn’t care. His head is starting to hurt, and he can feel his heart starting to beat erratically.

He reaches up for the dial on the console, and bumps another button, kicking it over to the next song as his hand drifts down toward his phone, his screen coming up with their family photo once more.

It’s the last thing he sees.

“Gone away are the golden days
That dust of paint in my diary
So here I am, a utopian citizen
I’m still convinced there’s no such thing as idealism

Oh memories, they’re following me like a shadow now, and I’m dreaming
Cause I’ve already suffered the fever of disbelief, hey

But I’ve seen your act, and I know all the facts
I’m still in love with you, I wish you were, yeah
And it ain’t hard to see who you are underneath
But i’m still in love with you, I wish you were
I wish you were here…”

“They found him,” Athena says softly as she rubs a hand up and down Maddie’s bicep, keeping her close. It’s barely six AM, but she’d woken up around four with a sinking in the pit of her stomach and called the other woman first thing. She knows by Athena’s tone of voice that it’s not a statement made in relief, but rather defeat.

Maddie nods, wiping at the tears on her face.

“Where?” She asks.

“Malibu beach,” Athena answers. “Down by-..”

“Cypress Cove,” Maddie murmurs, not needing more information. Of course he’d go where he and Tommy had gotten engaged and married. They’d celebrated birthdays there for the kids as well. It was rife with everything Evan would’ve wanted to get back to.

“You were right,” Athena tells her, although it doesn’t come across as the judgment that maybe it should. Like Maddie had known all along but hadn’t stopped it. Not that she really could anyway. “He had failsafes.”

Maddie shakes her head, more tears falling down her face as they make it into the kitchen where Howie already has new cups of coffee settled on the counter. She hadn't wanted to be right. She wanted to believe that asking her brother to choose to survive for his loved ones was enough, that he wouldn’t run headlong into suicide with such determination that he ensured it success through multiple avenues.She hadn’t wanted any of that…but she knew of its inevitability.

Howie reaches out for Maddie’s hand, squeezing it, and accepting Athena’s hug when she offers it, ducking his head to the side as he wipes a few of his own tears.

“I’m pissed at him,” she admits. But after a moment she starts shaking her head again, her face crumpling as fresh tears come. “And I’m also so fucking grateful he completed it on the first try because I know…”

“He was never going to be okay without them,” Howie finishes for her. She looks up at him, shaking her head more fervently as she steps forward and he hugs her tightly, clinging to one another.

None of them need to say out loud that Evan would’ve kept trying until he achieved he intended result. They all know it. It’s not a matter of untreated mental illness, or of abandonment issues. It was and would always remain to be, the utter devastation left in the wake of losing the only people he’d ever given his entire heart to. It was the mere prospect of having to survive days, months, years, decades, without all of them.

Maddie forces herself to pull it together a few moments later, wiping at her face and taking a deep breath.

“I need to make some calls,” she states. The change in attitude is almost surprising to Athena and Howie, but she shakes her head at them.

“I’m not okay at all. But we’re not scattering their ashes without him,” she states, her voice trembling on the second half of her statement. “They all go together. That’s what he wanted. And I need to make sure that doesn’t happen until-..”

“Until,” Athena finishes for her. She reaches out and squeezes Howie’s shoulder as well before reaching for her own phone. “I need to call Bobby anyway, and see what I can do about getting  this done quickly.”

Maddie gives her a grateful look, even as more tears brim over and run down her face. She then, her hand already lifting with her phone, and as she slips into the bedroom, she can be heard on the line.

“Dad? It’s Evan.”

Seeing Bobby at the hospital had been a struggle.

Seeing him sitting at her kitchen table, looking as though the entire world has left him alone for a second time is even worse.

Maddie knows she doesn’t know the full story of her brother’s relationship to the older man, not entirely. She knows that the bond between them is just as tight as it was between herself and Evan, if not tighter. She knows that Bobby has put in the kind of time Evan had only wished their parents would have over the course of his entire life. And maybe the Buckley’s had finally started making changes in the aftermath of Evan finding out about Daniel, but it still wasn’t perfect. Moreover, too much time had been lost, and where Phillip or Margaret may have picked up the phone from time to time to check in, fly across the country a few times a year to visit, it still wasn’t enough.

Bobby was a phone call away. He was at Evan’s door the second he needed something. He was the PT partner after the truck bombing, and the card partner after the lightning strike. He’d pulled Evan off the ledge years ago when, after he and Tommy had gotten back together and a number of other factors had pushed Evan to his limits. Maddie hadn’t been their first call after that; Bobby had. He’d helped Evan get into intensive trauma therapy, given him the time off to do it, and spent plenty of mornings sitting over coffee with the younger man while he processed his own addictive behaviors. Because sure, you could go to AA for alcohol, and NA for pills, but there wasn't a support group for those who used their own bodies to harm themselves the way Evan did. He couldn’t meet in a church basement and talk about things like having unsafe sex when he desperately needed connection, or dealing with suicidal urges when it felt like the world might be better off without him and how much he ‘needed’, especially when he would risk his life at work in unneeded ways.

Photos shuffle around the table from everyone’s private collections, pulling for the intended slideshows and peg boards that will go up at the singular funeral being held privately for the four of them. The turnout is still expected to be sizable. Between the reach of Evan and Tommy’s time in the LAFD, to her brother’s early adulthood travels and Tommy’s time in the army, more than a hundred people have reached out across their barely used social media, to their phones, and even through snail mail. Maddie had questioned making any kind of post initially after the fire—it wasn’t like Evan or Tommy used Facebook to do anything beyond the occasional networking for LAFD events—but she knew purely by the fact that it had once been mentioned that the contact Tommy had with some of his army buddies was only through social media.

Someone shoves away from the table—clearly emotional at the present moment, and she glances up from a 4x6 of the family photo that hung in her brother’s bedroom to see Sal walking out of the room in a huff. Her husband glances over at her apologetically before going after him, and a few seconds after that, Hen clears out as well, both going after their former coworker.

Her gaze drifts back to the image in her hand as she overhears Athena and Karen mention getting something together for lunch, and suddenly the table is empty aside from her and Bobby. Eddie is supposed to be flying in, but he’s had trouble getting things covered at work, and her parents are supposed to be around sometime in the afternoon, but she hasn’t heard from them.

The table jerks again, and she looks up to see Bobby moving away as well, a photo tossed headlong halfway across the table.  Maddie's gaze falls on it as it comes to a stop, sliding over dozens of others. It was one of the captain and her brother. Neither of them are looking at the camera, having been caught in a candid moment by Hen, if she remembers the story correctly. They had been at a charity event to help clean up the city after a wildfire on the edge of Griffith Park, so her brother was wearing a gray sweatshirt and athleisure while Bobby was still in his LAFD shirt and a pair of jeans. In the image, they were hugging, Evan looking genuinely happy while Bobby looked to be laughing. The first time she’d ever seen it, she’d made an off-handed comment of how much the two looked like father and son, and she’d seen how misty it made Evan. Even though it wasn’t something they ever talked about, she knew there was something to that statement, and how Bobby had filled something left in the wake of Evan’s abandonment trauma by their parents.

Maddie stands, deciding that if everyone else needs a break, she should probably take one, too. She spots her husband out in the back along with Hen and Sal, both of them close by the older man and clearly comforting him. Athena and Karen pass through and she hears the sergeant tell her husband that they’re going to get food for everyone, and then the front door opens and closes.

And then it’s just Maddie and Bobby, and she finds him standing by the front door, staring out the window. Tommy’s truck is parked back in the front of the house, having been released by the city. Athena had sent it out to be detailed and have the blood removed, but Maddie has no idea what to do with the vehicle, and yet she can’t imagine getting rid of it.

“Feels like every moment is like walking through sludge,” she says softly as she stands next to Bobby.

“I imagine it does,” he answers, his tone clipped. Maddie looks up at him, her expression mildly confused.

“I’m…not sure what you’re getting at,” she says to him after a moment.

Bobby lets out the smallest derisive laugh. “He wasn’t out of the hospital twelve hours.”

Maddie gulps, suddenly understanding the implication. “So it’s my fault? My brother, who has total autonomy, who lost his entire family in one night and couldn’t deal with the ramifications of that, takes his own life and it’s on me to make sure it didn’t happen? What was I supposed to do Bobby?”

The fireman looks down at her, his expression seeming to let on that he wants to give some level of a response, and yet after a minute passes in silence, his shoulders rise and settle with a heavy breath and he looks back outside, shaking his head.

“He was never coming off that ledge,” Maddie states, although her voice shakes.

“Why not,” Bobby counters, although his voice is soft, strained. “I did.”

“After how long,” she asks him. “And how many people did you have to pull you back from the ledge? Because Evan didn’t have anything he felt like he had to do penance for like you did. There wasn’t an opportunity for him to find something or someone new, that might help just little by little. And truthfully? If we’re being entirely honest with ourselves, there’s not someone after Tommy; not with Em and Ben gone.”

Bobby’s jaw clenches and she sees the emergence of tears on his face as he continues to stare through the window. He sniffs harshly.

“He was never coming back,” he comments quietly, like he’s confirming it to himself.

Maddie wraps a hand around his arm and leans against it. They’re both quiet as they stare out the window. Across the street, kids run in the yard, ignorant of the hell raining down just feet away.

“I made peace with losing my family,” Bobby states softly after a time. “Told myself that it was alright to just be the guy on the side, that I wasn’t a parent to May or Harry. And then-…then Buck comes walking into the firehouse, all lost and that of a puppy looking for a good home, and-..”

“And you took him under your wing,” Maddie comments. “Became the person he needed in a parent.”

“I’m not-..”

“You are,” she says, cutting him off. She leans back so that she can look up at him. “You’ve been more to him than my parents ever thought of being. It’s why you were in his and Tommy’s wedding. It’s why he asked you to officiate. Fuck, it’s why he asked for your blessing before he took the captain’s exam.”

“So then you’d think he’d understand how selfish I would find this decision,” Bobby tells her, although there isn’t much heat behind the statement. “I said ages ago that I didn’t think I could survive losing another child.”

Maddie nods. “You lost your family, what? Three years before you moved out here?”

“Give or take,” Bobby answers quietly.

“So, knowing my brother would never turn to alcohol because he knows what it did to you, and his penchant for acting on self-harm…did you want him to spend the next thousand days actively seeking out ways to hurt himself,” Maddie asks, her voice tight. “Covering his body in scars and repeatedly acting out attempts on his own life? Because I think that’s exactly what he would’ve done. I don’t think there would’ve been a real life after all of this. It would’ve been a cycle of attempts, hospitalizations, and completely shutting down.” She pauses for a moment, still watching the kids play across the street. “Evan…there wouldn’t have been a return date to work, unless it was to walk directly into the line of fire. And he wouldn’t have even entertained dating. And, not that I think this has to be pointed out, but just seeing my kids after, hurt him. As much as he loves them, I know they were a reminder.”

Neither of them has to repeat the statement again, even as the words hang in the air between them.

“For what it's worth, I asked him not to,” Maddie adds. “But…it feels like if he were still here today, had failed again? Asking again would’ve been malicious. Asking him to keep pushing every single day in the face of…” She shakes her head as she swipes at tears on her own face. “I couldn’t if I lost Howie and the kids. I know that seems unfair and hypocritical because you’re still here after everything that happened to you and your family. But truth be told, without you in my brother’s life, who knows if he would’ve still been around this long.”

The four of them stand together, flanked by Hen, Karen, Eddie, and Sal as they unseal the lids and turn into the wind. Maddie inhales a deep breath before tilting her box first, letting the ashes start to flow out as her own tears start again.

“I love you, Evan,” she rasps. Slowly she sees three more lines of debris start to blow along, somehow finding a way to intermingle a few feet away from them, in a way that only feels right. They were  together in life, so it makes sense that they’d do so as well in death. “Tommy. Emmy. Benben. I love you all so much.”

They remain in their spots long after the last ash has fallen away, the last of the joined stream pulled along by the wind. Even though it feels a little ridiculous to suggest, she swears she can feel her brothers and her niece and nephew standing with them.

“Gonna miss this family,” Eddie comments, perched near the ground as he lays a handful of daisies on the sand. He sniffles, but quickly wipes at his eyes as he stands up.

“I didn’t know two better people,” Bobby adds as he places his flowers on the ground near Eddie’s. Athena squeezes his shoulder as she places hers next to his.

“Nobody would’ve given more,” she murmurs.

“I never really felt fully deserving of their friendship,” Eddie adds with a laugh as a tear falls, though he’s quick to swipe it away. “It was luck to have Buck. And then to meet Tommy and…”

“They loved because they knew what it was to be unloved,” Maddie states, her throat still tight, but firm in her statement. “And they didn’t love anyone more than those babies.”

Howie rests a hand on Maddie’s back as he leans down and adds more flowers to the group with Hen following after.

“Eddie’s not wrong,” Hen adds. “It was hard sometimes to feel deserving of two people who would give that much. Even in the face of their faults. Neither of them ever said no when we called for a favor.”

Maddie nods at her words, and the moment results in a group hug that then splits off to individual hugs shared among one another, shared words and promises to keep talking in the aftermath of Evan’s suicide. Maddie gets a particularly tight hug and look of determination from Bobby, although neither of them says anything. Still, she nods at him when they part.

And then someone mentions getting lunch as a group before Eddie gets a flight back to El Paso, and the consensus seems to be clear. They start heading back up the beach, Howie turning back when he realizes Maddie is still standing in the same spot.

“Do you not want to go,” he asks, walking back toward her.

She shakes her head quickly. “No. No, we should go. I just…I need a minute before we go get the kids.”

He nods, stepping forward to kiss her forehead. He squeezes her hand lightly and then steps away, following their friends back up the beach and giving Maddie one more moment. She glances over at Sal, who’s also still standing there on the beach wordlessly. He leans down after a moment and rests his own flowers in the sand next to everyone else’s, lets out a sniffle. There’s so much Maddie wants to ask him, wants to know more about Tommy now that she can’t ask the pilot himself anymore.

Sal looks over at her as he stands back up, and he nods before heading back up the beach. She hopes he’ll join the rest of them for lunch; hopes that they can all find a way to help heal each other.

She looks down at the flowers on the ground where the waves have ebbed closer, starting to lap at he petals each time the tide rolls up.

She perches down, finally rests her own daisies on the sand.

“I know we didn’t deserve you,” she says as though Evan and Tommy can hear her. “But I hope maybe we earned what we got. Luck doesn’t begin to cover being loved by either of you. Tommy, I’m so glad I got to know you during the time I did, and I wish I’d gotten more. And Evan…there will never have been enough time with any of you. Emmy, Ben… The only thing that makes any of this bearable is knowing you’re all together again.”

He wakes up to warmth, the sound of a voice so familiar that for a moment, he thinks it didn’t work.

But as his eyes drift open, he finds himself bathed in the early morning sunlight drifting though the curtains of his bedroom, his husband’s head resting on his hand where it’s stretched across the pillow opposite from him. Their kids are curled up between them, Bennet sprawled across Tommy’s chest while Emilynn’s head is on Evan’s bicep while she holds his large palm against her torso with both of her small arms.

As he drifts into complete wakefulness, his husband’s eyes open, such deep blue looking back at him. He stares back at Evan for a few moments with an unreadable expression before he speaks.

“I didn’t want you here yet.”

Evan inhales a deep breath. It comes so easily. He finds that nothing hurts and files that away for later.

“I know. But…” He shakes his head after a second. “I couldn’t.”

Tommy stares at him for a time more. Eventually, he reaches up for Evan’s wrist, running his thumb along the inside of it. His other arm around Bennett, he turns them, facing the younger man.

“We would’ve been okay waiting for you.”

Evan nods. “I know. But I wouldn’t have. I wasn’t. Without you, with- without them?”

Tommy blinks, looking up at Evan with understanding eyes.

“Our people are what make life worth living,” he murmurs. Evan nods. Tommy is quiet again for a bit, but eventually, he lets out a breath and his expression lets on to that adoring smile he has only for his husband. “So what now?”

Evan shrugs as he stares back at the pilot. “Lay here until the kids wake up. Figure it out from there.”

Tommy nods at his response. Evan’s thumb moves against his temple as he stares into his husband’s eyes, like he’s trying to commit them to whatever memory comes in the afterlife. Tommy leans over and kisses him, and it calms something inside of him as the pilot moves closer, until there’s virtually no space between the four of them.

Evan doesn’t know what this is, but truth be told, he doesn’t care. The afterlife? Great. A dream? Cool. A mirage created by his thoughts in the final minutes of his life? He’ll accept that too. So long as its the four of them.

Tommy hovers over him briefly, his ocean blue eyes boring holes into Evan, only to easily refill them and makes him whole again.

“Until the end of time,” Tommy murmurs to him when he finally shifts down onto his own pillow, tangles his legs into Evan’s. “Apparently, even longer than that.”

Evan lets on a smile, snuggling Emilynn closer when she curls tighter against his arm.

“Come what may,” he answers. “Until kingdom come.”