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remindmeofthepups) wrote2024-05-27 12:03 am
remindmeofthepups) wrote2024-05-27 12:03 am
9-1-1 7x09 coda: just screeching tires
Tommy almost doesn’t answer his phone.
He doesn’t know what time it is, but anyone who’s calling him late enough to wake him up deserves to be ignored.
. . . on the other hand, he realizes as he wakes more fully, someone is calling him late enough to wake him up. And that someone - he grabs his phone and checks the display - is Evan, who knows better than to mess with a first responder’s sleep cycle unless it’s important.
“Evan? Everything okay?”
The answer, as it so often does with Evan, comes in a jumble of syllables. For the first half dozen of them, Tommy wants to roll his eyes a little - get to the point - but then the point arrives and he sits up in bed, tossing off his covers and fumbling for the light.
“No,” Evan says, “no, everything is not - Bobby and Athena’s house burned down and Bobby had a heart attack and he’s in surgery and Athena’s being treated for smoke inhalation and she doesn’t look so good and, and I keep calling Eddie and he’s not answering and I can’t leave -“
“Evan.” Tommy cuts him off firmly as his voice threatens to veer off into sheer panic. “What do you need from me?”
Fine, maybe a little more sharp than firm, whatever, he’s always a bitch when he first wakes up. It works, though; Evan goes silent for a short moment, then sounds a lot more together when he answers.
“Could, uh - could you go check on Eddie for me?”
Tommy’s up and going, pulling a fresh pair of jeans from his dresser, because the second the words in surgery passed Evan’s lips he knew exactly what he was going to be doing for the next few hours.
And it wasn’t sleeping.
“I can do that,” he says, putting his phone on speaker so he can get dressed. “Are you alone there?”
“No. Um, May’s here, a- and Chimney, but he can’t get hold of Hen and I, I gotta stay here for May -“
“I got you,” Tommy says. This time it’s definitely all firm and no sharp. “I got you. I’ll find Eddie, we’ll be there soon.”
Yeah, he’ll think later: that thing about not making promises you don’t know if you can keep.
*
Physically, Eddie appears to be fine. Upright, conscious and breathing, no visible injury.
He’s also pale and red-eyed, and his hair is a mess, and the way he’s standing with the door half-open is definitely intended to block Tommy’s view inside.
“This isn’t really a good time,” he’s saying when a woman’s voice speaks up from behind him.
“Is that Buck? Eddie - Eddie, let me explain.” Her tone, already gentle, gentles more. “It will make more sense coming from me.”
Eddie looks for a second like he’s going to resist, like he would genuinely rather die than let this woman have her way, but then he gives in, sagging a little against the doorjamb.
Any thoughts Tommy might have had of reaching out to steady him fly out of his head as the door opens and the woman -
He’s years too late to have met Shannon, of course, but Eddie keeps pictures in the house and Tommy has a good memory for faces.
Before he can get it together enough to do much more than just, just, jaw on the floor, she says in quick words,
“My name is Kim. You should come in.”
Her name is Kim.
Sure, yeah, that explains everything.
He follows them in with an automatic, “I’m Tommy, nice to meet you.” He pauses. “Interesting to meet you. Weird as fuck to meet you, actually, what the hell is going on?”
“Oh,” Kim says, face dropping slightly. “I thought you’d be Buck. He’s been calling. Did he - send you?”
“You first.”
So she sits him down and explains what the hell is going on. Which, apparently, is that Eddie went off the fucking deep end and she swan dived right after him.
She trails off to an awkward halt. Tommy finds himself thinking, of all things, how late it is. It’s really late, far too late for - oh.
He stares at Eddie, like he’s been doing for most of her increasingly psychotic monologue. Stares at Eddie’s stupid pretty face, the same stupid pretty face that dragged him down this stupid idiot road.
“Tell me Christopher’s at a friend’s house.”
“I forgot,” Kim says immediately. Eddie, small and miserable and silent on the couch like he’s been this whole time, doesn’t so much as twitch. “I was thinking so much about Eddie’s closure, I didn’t realize -“
“He saw you,” Tommy says, flat.
“It’s not Eddie’s fault -“
“Shut up.”
She shuts up.
Tommy’s always found that when he gets really angry, like really serious you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry angry, he doesn’t explode with it. He gets lightheaded, like a head rush without the fun part, and his vision flattens out.
He’s dizzy now, and for a few seconds he can’t see a goddamn thing.
When the world comes more or less back into focus, he says, “You -“ and he stops there, because what the fuck is he even supposed to say, what is anyone gonna - ?
No, fuck it, you know what?
Not his job.
Not his job, not his place, not his family. He’ll leave it as a nice little treat for Evan, since he’s the reason Tommy is in this impossible position to begin with.
He stands abruptly and tells Kim,
“You should leave. I can fill Evan in just fine.” Why is she even still here? How long has she been here? Minutes, hours, with Eddie ignoring Evan’s calls while she’s dressed like that?
Tommy turns on Eddie, dismissing Kim completely. “Where is Christopher?”
“In his room.” Eddie is quiet and hoarse. The red eyes: he’s been crying. Tommy could not give a single shit. “Could - he won’t talk to me, could you check on him? He, they uh -”
In his fucking - with her right here in the - Tommy deserves another medal for not bursting into deranged laughter. “Sure. Sure, yeah, why not, since that’s my fucking purpose tonight, checking on people, I’ll check on Christopher and see how bad you broke your kid.”
He’s not even a little ashamed of the mean sense of satisfaction he gets from the way Eddie flinches.
Kim continues to shut up. Smart lady.
“Oh, and by the way, Diaz? I’m here because Bobby had a heart attack and you scared the shit out of Evan not answering his calls.”
He doesn’t wait for the reaction to that. Just turns on his heel and goes to check on Christopher.
Because, yeah, not his job, but he’s the only sane damn adult in the house right now. Of course he goes to check on Christopher.
(He doesn’t really notice how he shifts his footsteps into a lighter tread as he goes, the one he’d used on potentially compromised staircases back when that was still his job. It used to scare him, the way his own father had stomped around the house when he was pissed off.)
Tommy pauses at Christopher’s door and takes a breath, forcing his anger down and away. He has no idea what he’s going to say to the poor kid, assuming he’s given the chance to say anything at all, but he’s not gonna do it angry. Despite what some might consider an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary, he’s not an asshole. He won’t, he will not, do anything to make this night worse for Christopher than it already is.
Tommy is reminding himself forcefully of that when he hears another woman’s voice behind the door. This one he recognizes.
Funny, how Kim managed to leave out Marisol being here.
Funnier, how Eddie apparently forgot his girlfriend. What exactly is Tommy checking on?
He knocks anyway. “Christopher? It’s Tommy. Can I -“ Are they even at the stage where it’s not weird for Tommy to be in Christopher’s room? Does that matter? No, no, it’s fine. Marisol’s there.
(He’s mostly gotten rid of the voice that for years policed every little thing he did and said and what it must look like to people, the one that sounded a lot like Gerrard, but it still speaks up sometimes. And Tommy knows what it would look like to a lot of people for a gay man to be alone with a young teenage boy in that boy’s room. Even in these circumstances.
But Marisol is there. And anyway those people can fuck off, anyone who matters knows better.)
“Just you?” The wariness in Christopher’s tone yanks Tommy’s focus right back to where it should be.
“Just me.” Jesus. Tommy’s heart squeezes in his chest. He hears Marisol quietly say something that sounds like how about I go talk to him; he doesn’t hear an answer but it must be positive, because she slips out into the hallway a few seconds later.
She and Tommy stare helplessly at each other for a long moment.
“What the fuck! Right?” bursts out of Marisol in an explosive whisper.
“What the fuck,” Tommy whispers back with equal fervor, then asks, “What’s your number,” as the same time as Marisol says,
“Give me your phone.”
A half-second of silent yet borderline hysterical laughter passes between them as they swap devices.
“Thank god someone normal other than Christopher was here to witness this.” Marisol’s whisper is less intense now. “I was starting to feel just as crazy as they are! Like -“ she pulls a dramatically shocked face, raising Tommy’s phone to take a selfie. “You know? - uh, for the picture. In my contact,” she clarifies when Tommy gives her an odd look of his own.
“I don’t really do those.” Tommy finishes entering his number, does not take a selfie, and hands her phone back.
“No fun. I forgive you.” Marisol types through whatever it is has to happen to set a contacts photo. As she’s handing over Tommy’s phone, the sound of the front door opening and closing drifts through the house. Marisol freezes. “Was she still here?” This time she’s barely audible - Tommy sees the words on her lips more than he hears them.
“Yeah,” he says, hushing his own whisper only a little. “How long - ? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” He glances past her at Christopher’s door. Her expression turns somber.
“He’s not really talking.” She’s not whispering now, just keeping her tone pitched low instead. “All I’ve really gotten out of him is that he doesn’t want anything to do with Eddie right now. I can’t say I blame him.”
Neither can Tommy.
She sighs. “Maybe he’ll talk to you.”
Tommy shakes his head. “If he’s gonna talk to anyone, it’ll be Evan. I’m gonna call him.”
This would all be so much easier if he could just call Evan and leave Christopher in Marisol’s hands, but he can already hear himself saying I don’t know how he is, Evan, I haven’t bothered to say hi and he’d much rather avoid that conversation than this one.
“Okay, uh, could -“ Marisol starts and stops, dropping back into a whisper. “I hate myself for even asking, but, could you stay with Christopher until Buck gets here? I’m so sorry, I’m know I’m being so selfish, but I can’t stand to be in this house any longer.”
Tommy sighs now. He’d really wanted to just take off after he talks to Evan, but Marisol is starting to look a little crazy around the edges.
. . . which is fair, he remembers, because she did walk in on her hopefully-now-ex-boyfriend and his dead wife.
“Not gonna stand by your man?” he asks dryly.
“I think tonight made it pretty clear that he was never mine.”
So he stays, and lurks awkwardly in the hallway as Marisol says an emotional-sounding and largely one-sided goodbye to Christopher. When she comes back out, she’s wiping away tears. She offers Tommy a shaky smile.
“Brunch sometime?”
“Name the place,” he says. She hugs him, which catches him off guard, and pulls back before he can rally.
“Thank you,” she says, and she goes, and Tommy is alone with that goddamn bedroom door.
(It’s fine.)
“Still just me,” he says, back to normal volume, and carefully eases it open.
He doesn’t know what time it is, but anyone who’s calling him late enough to wake him up deserves to be ignored.
. . . on the other hand, he realizes as he wakes more fully, someone is calling him late enough to wake him up. And that someone - he grabs his phone and checks the display - is Evan, who knows better than to mess with a first responder’s sleep cycle unless it’s important.
“Evan? Everything okay?”
The answer, as it so often does with Evan, comes in a jumble of syllables. For the first half dozen of them, Tommy wants to roll his eyes a little - get to the point - but then the point arrives and he sits up in bed, tossing off his covers and fumbling for the light.
“No,” Evan says, “no, everything is not - Bobby and Athena’s house burned down and Bobby had a heart attack and he’s in surgery and Athena’s being treated for smoke inhalation and she doesn’t look so good and, and I keep calling Eddie and he’s not answering and I can’t leave -“
“Evan.” Tommy cuts him off firmly as his voice threatens to veer off into sheer panic. “What do you need from me?”
Fine, maybe a little more sharp than firm, whatever, he’s always a bitch when he first wakes up. It works, though; Evan goes silent for a short moment, then sounds a lot more together when he answers.
“Could, uh - could you go check on Eddie for me?”
Tommy’s up and going, pulling a fresh pair of jeans from his dresser, because the second the words in surgery passed Evan’s lips he knew exactly what he was going to be doing for the next few hours.
And it wasn’t sleeping.
“I can do that,” he says, putting his phone on speaker so he can get dressed. “Are you alone there?”
“No. Um, May’s here, a- and Chimney, but he can’t get hold of Hen and I, I gotta stay here for May -“
“I got you,” Tommy says. This time it’s definitely all firm and no sharp. “I got you. I’ll find Eddie, we’ll be there soon.”
Yeah, he’ll think later: that thing about not making promises you don’t know if you can keep.
*
Physically, Eddie appears to be fine. Upright, conscious and breathing, no visible injury.
He’s also pale and red-eyed, and his hair is a mess, and the way he’s standing with the door half-open is definitely intended to block Tommy’s view inside.
“This isn’t really a good time,” he’s saying when a woman’s voice speaks up from behind him.
“Is that Buck? Eddie - Eddie, let me explain.” Her tone, already gentle, gentles more. “It will make more sense coming from me.”
Eddie looks for a second like he’s going to resist, like he would genuinely rather die than let this woman have her way, but then he gives in, sagging a little against the doorjamb.
Any thoughts Tommy might have had of reaching out to steady him fly out of his head as the door opens and the woman -
He’s years too late to have met Shannon, of course, but Eddie keeps pictures in the house and Tommy has a good memory for faces.
Before he can get it together enough to do much more than just, just, jaw on the floor, she says in quick words,
“My name is Kim. You should come in.”
Her name is Kim.
Sure, yeah, that explains everything.
He follows them in with an automatic, “I’m Tommy, nice to meet you.” He pauses. “Interesting to meet you. Weird as fuck to meet you, actually, what the hell is going on?”
“Oh,” Kim says, face dropping slightly. “I thought you’d be Buck. He’s been calling. Did he - send you?”
“You first.”
So she sits him down and explains what the hell is going on. Which, apparently, is that Eddie went off the fucking deep end and she swan dived right after him.
She trails off to an awkward halt. Tommy finds himself thinking, of all things, how late it is. It’s really late, far too late for - oh.
He stares at Eddie, like he’s been doing for most of her increasingly psychotic monologue. Stares at Eddie’s stupid pretty face, the same stupid pretty face that dragged him down this stupid idiot road.
“Tell me Christopher’s at a friend’s house.”
“I forgot,” Kim says immediately. Eddie, small and miserable and silent on the couch like he’s been this whole time, doesn’t so much as twitch. “I was thinking so much about Eddie’s closure, I didn’t realize -“
“He saw you,” Tommy says, flat.
“It’s not Eddie’s fault -“
“Shut up.”
She shuts up.
Tommy’s always found that when he gets really angry, like really serious you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry angry, he doesn’t explode with it. He gets lightheaded, like a head rush without the fun part, and his vision flattens out.
He’s dizzy now, and for a few seconds he can’t see a goddamn thing.
When the world comes more or less back into focus, he says, “You -“ and he stops there, because what the fuck is he even supposed to say, what is anyone gonna - ?
No, fuck it, you know what?
Not his job.
Not his job, not his place, not his family. He’ll leave it as a nice little treat for Evan, since he’s the reason Tommy is in this impossible position to begin with.
He stands abruptly and tells Kim,
“You should leave. I can fill Evan in just fine.” Why is she even still here? How long has she been here? Minutes, hours, with Eddie ignoring Evan’s calls while she’s dressed like that?
Tommy turns on Eddie, dismissing Kim completely. “Where is Christopher?”
“In his room.” Eddie is quiet and hoarse. The red eyes: he’s been crying. Tommy could not give a single shit. “Could - he won’t talk to me, could you check on him? He, they uh -”
In his fucking - with her right here in the - Tommy deserves another medal for not bursting into deranged laughter. “Sure. Sure, yeah, why not, since that’s my fucking purpose tonight, checking on people, I’ll check on Christopher and see how bad you broke your kid.”
He’s not even a little ashamed of the mean sense of satisfaction he gets from the way Eddie flinches.
Kim continues to shut up. Smart lady.
“Oh, and by the way, Diaz? I’m here because Bobby had a heart attack and you scared the shit out of Evan not answering his calls.”
He doesn’t wait for the reaction to that. Just turns on his heel and goes to check on Christopher.
Because, yeah, not his job, but he’s the only sane damn adult in the house right now. Of course he goes to check on Christopher.
(He doesn’t really notice how he shifts his footsteps into a lighter tread as he goes, the one he’d used on potentially compromised staircases back when that was still his job. It used to scare him, the way his own father had stomped around the house when he was pissed off.)
Tommy pauses at Christopher’s door and takes a breath, forcing his anger down and away. He has no idea what he’s going to say to the poor kid, assuming he’s given the chance to say anything at all, but he’s not gonna do it angry. Despite what some might consider an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary, he’s not an asshole. He won’t, he will not, do anything to make this night worse for Christopher than it already is.
Tommy is reminding himself forcefully of that when he hears another woman’s voice behind the door. This one he recognizes.
Funny, how Kim managed to leave out Marisol being here.
Funnier, how Eddie apparently forgot his girlfriend. What exactly is Tommy checking on?
He knocks anyway. “Christopher? It’s Tommy. Can I -“ Are they even at the stage where it’s not weird for Tommy to be in Christopher’s room? Does that matter? No, no, it’s fine. Marisol’s there.
(He’s mostly gotten rid of the voice that for years policed every little thing he did and said and what it must look like to people, the one that sounded a lot like Gerrard, but it still speaks up sometimes. And Tommy knows what it would look like to a lot of people for a gay man to be alone with a young teenage boy in that boy’s room. Even in these circumstances.
But Marisol is there. And anyway those people can fuck off, anyone who matters knows better.)
“Just you?” The wariness in Christopher’s tone yanks Tommy’s focus right back to where it should be.
“Just me.” Jesus. Tommy’s heart squeezes in his chest. He hears Marisol quietly say something that sounds like how about I go talk to him; he doesn’t hear an answer but it must be positive, because she slips out into the hallway a few seconds later.
She and Tommy stare helplessly at each other for a long moment.
“What the fuck! Right?” bursts out of Marisol in an explosive whisper.
“What the fuck,” Tommy whispers back with equal fervor, then asks, “What’s your number,” as the same time as Marisol says,
“Give me your phone.”
A half-second of silent yet borderline hysterical laughter passes between them as they swap devices.
“Thank god someone normal other than Christopher was here to witness this.” Marisol’s whisper is less intense now. “I was starting to feel just as crazy as they are! Like -“ she pulls a dramatically shocked face, raising Tommy’s phone to take a selfie. “You know? - uh, for the picture. In my contact,” she clarifies when Tommy gives her an odd look of his own.
“I don’t really do those.” Tommy finishes entering his number, does not take a selfie, and hands her phone back.
“No fun. I forgive you.” Marisol types through whatever it is has to happen to set a contacts photo. As she’s handing over Tommy’s phone, the sound of the front door opening and closing drifts through the house. Marisol freezes. “Was she still here?” This time she’s barely audible - Tommy sees the words on her lips more than he hears them.
“Yeah,” he says, hushing his own whisper only a little. “How long - ? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” He glances past her at Christopher’s door. Her expression turns somber.
“He’s not really talking.” She’s not whispering now, just keeping her tone pitched low instead. “All I’ve really gotten out of him is that he doesn’t want anything to do with Eddie right now. I can’t say I blame him.”
Neither can Tommy.
She sighs. “Maybe he’ll talk to you.”
Tommy shakes his head. “If he’s gonna talk to anyone, it’ll be Evan. I’m gonna call him.”
This would all be so much easier if he could just call Evan and leave Christopher in Marisol’s hands, but he can already hear himself saying I don’t know how he is, Evan, I haven’t bothered to say hi and he’d much rather avoid that conversation than this one.
“Okay, uh, could -“ Marisol starts and stops, dropping back into a whisper. “I hate myself for even asking, but, could you stay with Christopher until Buck gets here? I’m so sorry, I’m know I’m being so selfish, but I can’t stand to be in this house any longer.”
Tommy sighs now. He’d really wanted to just take off after he talks to Evan, but Marisol is starting to look a little crazy around the edges.
. . . which is fair, he remembers, because she did walk in on her hopefully-now-ex-boyfriend and his dead wife.
“Not gonna stand by your man?” he asks dryly.
“I think tonight made it pretty clear that he was never mine.”
So he stays, and lurks awkwardly in the hallway as Marisol says an emotional-sounding and largely one-sided goodbye to Christopher. When she comes back out, she’s wiping away tears. She offers Tommy a shaky smile.
“Brunch sometime?”
“Name the place,” he says. She hugs him, which catches him off guard, and pulls back before he can rally.
“Thank you,” she says, and she goes, and Tommy is alone with that goddamn bedroom door.
(It’s fine.)
“Still just me,” he says, back to normal volume, and carefully eases it open.