Tommy doesn't spend much time at the beach.
He knows people picture that, about LA — that everyone there is constantly bronzed and shirtless and surfing, a non-stop Baywatch episode. It’s not been his experience of the city. Tommy's never been the strongest swimmer, because he didn't learn until high school, and he prefers hiking or running on his days off, sticking to the rocky trails and cliffs around Los Angeles instead of the sand. He grew up landlocked behind the Sierra mountains, and his parents weren't the beach-trip sort, so like so many enjoyable things, it always felt a little out of his reach.
But he's training for a half-marathon in his time off at the moment, and the route goes right along the front of the Santa Monica State beach, so he's been taking the opportunity to explore it on his days off. Jogging along the the ocean front walk route, occasionally stopping for a hydration break and sitting by the shore in one of the quieter areas. It’s fun. Tommy likes running, and more than that, likes training for something specific with a tangible end-goal in mind. Tommy has a lot of hobbies, these days — he works on cars, tinkers with engines, goes to Muay Thai, takes all kinds of classes at the gym, he’s renovating his house by himself, he’s re-upping his helicopter pilot’s licence, he watches boxing and goes to monster truck shows, he takes tours of craft breweries by himself. Life is full.
Life is full, and he mostly does it alone. He’s friends with his coworkers — goes out for drinks with Howie and Hen at least once every couple weeks, shoots the sh*t with them on shift, gets along fine with their new captain, Nash, and the new probie Mick too — and he has gym buddies and old army buddies in the area. He has flings from Grindr or gay bars that he never meets up with within a twenty-mile radius of the 118. But Tommy still can’t ever quite shake the feeling of just how alone he is; always has been, and always will be. So maybe he fills up his life a little too much with exciting, challenging hobbies. Maybe it stops him having to think.
Or maybe he just likes marathons. Tommy turns up the volume on his running playlist, focuses on putting one foot in front of the other, and shuts off his brain.
It’s an overcast day with a stiff breeze coming off the sea, but the dry heat is the same as it ever is in L.A. He’s sweating through his tank as he rounds the fourth mile of his run, counting in his head as he checks his smart watch; two more miles til he can turn around, loop back the way he came. He’s making good time, but it could be better. He’s been focusing too much on weights and not enough on cardio lately — the race will be good for that, get him back in balance — and he’ll let himself stop to stretch out his muscles at the halfway mark. He’s got 90s grunge music blasting in his ears and he’s planning his route and all of that, really, should mean he’s not paying attention to anything else around him.
But Tommy has been a firefighter for nearly a decade, and he’s good at it. And he’s on a quieter stretch of the shore, the weather packing off most of the tourists anyways, so there’s nobody else in the immediate vicinity when he notices it — the spluttering, frantic splashing coming from the shallows of the water, and the voice beside them shouting, “Someone, help!”
His brain flips a switch from day-off Tommy to firefighter Tommy in half a second. Suddenly, everything narrows down to that point of emergency, and he veers off the footpath, ditches his careful pace to sprint across the sand. As he gets closer to the water he can see clearer, where a women in a swimsuit is trying to drag a flailing man out of the waves by his armpits, shouting out for help; her voice is that frantic-broken kind of urgent, the way Tommy is so used to hearing people call. He can tell in an instant that she’s not someone used to emergencies, and she doesn’t know what to do.
“What’s happening?” he asks the woman, as he reaches them just as they emerge from the ocean and falls on his knees in the wet sand, the edges of the waves lapping at his bare knees. “I’m a firefighter — a trained EMT, I can help.”
“I — we, we were just swimming and he started—“ She’s shaking, her hands struggling to keep a grip on the man. “I don’t know what happened! I, I didn’t know if he was drowning, I pulled him out but he won’t stop—“
“He’s having a seizure. You did the right thing pulling him out of the water, but we need to make sure he’s not restrained now so he doesn’t injure himself. Take a couple steps back, okay. Does he have a history of seizures?”
She lets go and stumbles back a little in the sand, her breathing fast. Her hands come up to her mouth like she’s trying to hold in her own panic. “I—I—I don’t know, this — this is only our third date! He didn’t say anything. Oh, God, is he okay?”
“How long ago did it start?” Tommy asks, instead of answering her; in ten years of firefighting he’s learned that placating is no use and the truth is usually ‘I don’t know’, which doesn’t make anyone feel better. It’s easier to switch into clinical response mode, run through a checklist in his head as he gently cushions behind the man’s head with his hand.
Thankfully, to Tommy’s eyes, the frenetic jerking of the clonic seizure phase is already beginning to slow as the woman replies, “I don’t know, like, a minute, a few minutes? It all happened so fast.”
“That’s good. If it's not over five minutes long, we probably don’t have to worry too much about the seizure itself, just that he was in the water.” The man’s movements get slower and looser and then, finally, stop, his body going still in the sand. Tommy checks his pulse; beating, strong, if elevated. It could have been a lot worse.
“Oh! The lifeguard’s coming! We’re over here!” the woman calls, cupping one of her shaking hands around her mouth to yell louder and waving the other up and down in the air, bouncing on the sand in her frantic attempt to get the lifeguard’s attention.
Tommy looks up.
This is his first mistake. He could have remained living in blissful ignorance if he’d only stayed focused on the patient. But, instead, Tommy is hit with the sudden thought that he understands that Baywatch comparison everyone seems to have about LA a little better now, because one of the hottest guys he’s ever seen in his life is jogging towards him across the sand. It really is like life goes movie-montage slow-motion. Red swim trunks and no shirt, despite the cloudy weather — wind-ruffled curls, his broad chest and huge pecs and giant arms smattered with tattoos, long legs that look like they lead halfway up to the sky from Tommy’s perspective kneeling down on the ground. Tommy knows it is absolutely inappropriate in a life-saving situation to stop and think this at all, but he’d happily be on his knees in front of those legs for another reason —
Tommy’s lonely, and struggling to dip even his toes out of the closet at age thirty-three, and a secret romantic subsiding on one-night-stands, is the problem. It’s way too easy for him to fall instantly for any guy he sees with biceps bigger than the average toddler; Tommy has a bit of a type. He shakes the thoughts away like a bad dream and focuses on the patient beneath his hands.
“Hey, dude, thanks for helping but I need you to move so I can do my job,” the lifeguard says, all tanned muscles and giant hands as he falls to his knees on the sand beside Tommy and the victim; and then, when Tommy doesn’t immediately pull away, “He might need CPR if he’s been in the water, we need to check his pulse, I’m trained to respond to—”
“It’s okay, I’m a firefighter, I know what I’m doing,” Tommy tells him quickly. He knows that LA lifeguards technically work for the LAFD too, though they haven’t gone through the fire academy or quite so much rigorous training; he probably rudely assumes he’s got more expertise than this guy, who looks younger than him to boot. “He had a seizure, I think tonic-clonic. Postictal now, but he’ll need to get to the hospital to check if he inhaled any water. She doesn’t know if he has a history of seizures, but it didn’t last more than a couple of minutes and there are no external signs of injury.”
“Oh.” The lifeguard blinks for a second, like he’s recalibrating his thoughts. For a moment, Tommy’s ready to write him off as some hot dumb jock who doesn’t really know what he’s doing in an emergency, is just in this job to hang out at the beach. But then, in a rare occurence, Tommy’s cynicism gets a smack in the face as the lifeguard leans down to put his cheek near the unconscious man’s mouth, holds there for a few long seconds, and then says, “Okay, his breathing’s normal, so let’s put him in side-lying until the ambulance gets here. I pressed the emergency call button, they’ll be here as soon as they can. Hey, miss? What’s your name?”
As he talks, he’s reaching out to bend the man’s knee and arm and rolling him carefully and quickly into the recovery position. Tommy had been about to do that too, sure, but there was no need for him to help with how smoothly the lifeguard gets it done.
“A-Amanda,” the woman stutters. “Well, everyone calls me Mandy, really. I don’t know why I just said Amanda, I never go by that.”
“Mandy? Hey, I’m Evan, but people call me Buck. You did a real good job pulling your friend out of the water just now.”
“It’s their third date,” Tommy tells him, feeling rather unhelpful now that the initial crisis has passed. Tommy’s always been good in emergencies and bad at everything that comes after. He blames his childhood for making him think life would be one long crisis-scenario.
“Wow, probably not how you envisioned the date ending, huh?” Evan — Buck? — says, looking with a smile up at Mandy. He’s got two fingers on the victim’s pulse point as he asks her, “What’s your date’s name, Mandy?”
“Ángel,” she stammers out, her voice tremulous. “Shouldn’t he be waking up by now?”
“It can take a while to regain consciousness,” Evan assures her. “He’s breathing fine and he doesn’t seem injured, so those are all really good signs, but a seizure can be really hard on your body, you know? The ambulance will be here in less than ten minutes, and there’s no reason to worry if he’s not awake by then.”
“If there’s no reason to worry then why do we need the ambulance?” she asks.
She’s looking at Tommy, for some reason. He clears his throat a little, forcing himself to look back at her rather than at Evan, and says, “If someone seizes in the water, there’s always a chance they could have inhaled some, so he’ll need to get his lungs checked out at the hospital. It can be dangerous for your lungs or your heart. It's more about making sure there are no complications going forwards."
“Oh — I, right, yeah, that makes sense,” she says, voice trailing off weakly.
She’s the only one standing, while Evan and Tommy kneel in the sand. She looks like she’s not quite sure what to do with herself. Tommy gets that — he’s rarely sure what to do with himself if he’s not focusing on something physical. He doesn’t think telling her to take a jog around the block would be useful right now, although that’s what he’s feeling like doing, personally. “Mandy, where did you and Ángel leave your stuff?” he asks, instead. “Clothes, phones? Are they on the beach somewhere?”
“No, uh, they’re up in my car.” She gestures vaguely out towards a stretch of street in a way that could mean she’s parked two minutes or twenty miles away, for all Tommy knows. “We were only gonna have a quick swim, because the beach looked quiet, you know? We were supposed to be going to an improv show after this, uh, I guess I — I guess I have to call my friends and say we’re not gonna make it?”
“If you want to go and get your phones and clothes from your car, we can wait with Ángel,” Evan tells her. “Ángel might have something in his wallet or his phone about his history with seizures, too, so it’d be really useful to check.”
“I — right. Yeah, yes, I can do that,” she says, quickly, latching onto the idea. She seems to perk up a bit for having a task. “I’ll be right back!”
Without stopping to ask anything else, she turns and takes off across the sand at a run.
“She might be in shock,” Tommy says genially as she goes, turning his gaze back to Evan. “I don’t know if it’s actually the best idea for her to go running off on her own.”
“She’ll be fine,” Evan says. “I saw them park, they’re only just up the street. We’ll be able to see her the whole time.”
Tommy shrugs. “If you say so.”
Really, his role here could be done. He’s not on duty, and there’s nothing requiring another pair of hands anymore; the ambulance is on its way, Evan clearly knows what he’s doing. But something — whether it’s the military sense of duty he can’t seem to shake, or the years of firefighting turning into second nature, or just a really pathetic part of him always eager to hang off a hot guy — has Tommy settling into his position in the sand, ready to wait it out until the paramedics have loaded Ángel into an ambulance and closed the doors on Tommy completely.
“Hey, I didn’t catch your name, by the way?” Evan says. Tommy looks at him — he’s got ridiculous blue eyes, bluer than the ocean beside them, one of them framed by a flushed red birthmark which Tommy can’t quite stop looking at.
“Uh, Tommy,” he says. “Tommy Kinard. I’d shake your hand but it feels kind of insensitive to do it over someone’s unconscious body.”
It’s the kind of comment Tommy often makes and then immediately regrets, thinking his attempts at playfulness always come off dark and depressing instead — but by some small blessing, Evan laughs. “You must never get to shake hands, then! You said you’re a firefighter?”
“Yeah. Unit 118. Going on ten years now.”
“That’s so sick, man. Hey, I’m actually starting at the fire academy soon!”
Tommy’s eyebrows raise.
“Really?” He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. Lifeguarding is a junior positon in the LAFD anyway, so Evan’s on the rung somewhat already, and he clearly knows his stuff when it comes to EMT skills at least. Maybe it’s just because Evan looks so at home on the beach. It feels impossible, in the moment, to imagine him all covered up in turnouts instead of shirtless in the sand. But that’s probably just Tommy’s horny-brain talking.
“Yeah. I—I mean, I’ve been enjoying the whole lifeguard thing, you know, but I, I mean I originally only signed up for the job ‘cus I like surfing. And now I’m like, realising the actual best thing about it is when you get to help someone, right? So I figured, why not follow the emergencies! I’m supposed to start the academy in a couple weeks — so, uh, any hot tips, feel free to throw them my way.”
He’s all smiley and golden-retriever energy as he flops his way through his sentences, grinning across at Tommy, but it’s that last sentence that really gets Tommy. It sounds, just for a second, a little too real. Evan’s nervous, he thinks. Trying to cover it up, but clearly genuinely a bit worried about whatever might be in store for him at the academy.
Tommy, with a really not-too-subtle glance up and down Evan’s body, says, “You’ll be fine. You clearly know your stuff in an emergency, and you certainly don’t look like you’ll struggle with the physical side of things.”
Not with those arms, he wants to say. Not with those pecs that look like I could take a bite out of them—
Tommy bites his own tongue and leans back on his heels. Not the time, not the place, not the person. He’s trying so hard not to hate himself for being himself anymore, but it’s still hard, sometimes, to fight off the flush of shame that comes when he finds himself getting stupid over a hot guy. It reminds him that he’s lonely and a little pathetic. Having some sort of delayed adolescence because he wasted his actual adolescence jerking off closeted football teammates in the locker rooms and calling it no hom*o so hard that he couldn’t even say the word gay until the end of his twenties, let alone tell anyone he was.
Evan doesn’t look bothered by Tommy’s little thirst crisis. He actually preens a bit, straightening up and rolling his shoulders back, clearly flexing in a way that reminds Tommy of a peaco*ck. Tommy reigns in a snort of laughter. “You think?” Evan asks. “I mean — that’s a hell of a compliment, coming from someone who looks like you.”
Tommy abruptly remembers what he's wearing. His tank top with the low-cut arms, his tight running shorts. Tommy’s not one to care much about his own appearance in subjective terms, but he does work hard on his body. He knows he looks good if you’re someone who’s into muscles, fitness. Evan might not be into muscles, or might not be into guys like that at all, but he’s giving Tommy a look just a little too eager, and Tommy’s self-irritation gives way, in that moment, to a hot, sharp zing in his stomach instead.
Their eyes meet, and they both hold the eye contact for a few seconds longer than feels casual. Tommy’s heartrate picks up. Heat swims through his body, lapping at him.
He almost says something — another flirty comment, maybe, an offer to help Evan with his fitness — when they’re interrupted by Mandy racing back across the sand, a dress pulled over her swimsuit backwards and her arms full. “I found Ángel’s wallet! There’s — there’s an Epilepsy ID card in there, does that help — oh! Look, that’s the ambulance!”
And then she’s leaping up and down in the sand again to wave down the paramedics as an ambulance backs as close as it can to the edge of the beach. As the paramedics hop out, Tommy suddenly finds himself clamming up. He stands up from the sand, takes a couple steps back. Clears his throat. It’s hardly like he knows every first responder in LA, and yet he can’t quite fight the wave of panic that comes from the collision of queer life and work life, even if that collision is something as miniscule as starting to tentatively flirt with a man in the presence of a paramedic he’s never even met.
“Hey, over here!” Evan doesn’t seem to notice Tommy retreating into himself. He leaps up too, glances at Tommy and says, “I’m gonna go help them grab the backboard, can you make sure he doesn’t come out of recovery position?”
Tommy nods, even though it’ll take Evan less than a minute to jog across the sand. He likes that Evan’s being cautious. Good instincts — he’ll be a good firefighter, preparing for the worst that way. Plus, it gives Tommy something to do.
When the paramedics arrive shortly afterwards with Evan leading the way, Tommy explains to them in quick, clipped terms exactly what had happened. There’s not a ton to say beyond the rough length of the seizure and the fact he was in the water when it happened — Mandy’s eager to brandish the ID card from Ángel’s wallet, which will tell them more than Tommy can, and they make quick work of taking him into the ambulance as he slowly begins to regain a foggy sort of consciousness.
But before she follows, Mandy spares a moment to turn to Tommy and Evan and says, “Thank you guys so much. That was so scary and you were both just so calm and you totally knew what you were doing even though I was freaking out!” She's talking a mile a minute — her panic has clearly given way to adrenaline now that she feels like the situation's in hand.
“Hey, you did great,” Evan tells her kindly. “You got him out of the ocean, that was the best thing you could have done. He’s in really good hands now, so I’m sure he’ll be okay.”
“Just maybe stick to landlocked activities on your next date,” Tommy advises her, a little less empathetically. Mandy blinks at him. She looks unsure if he’s joking or not. Evan stifles a laugh, badly.
“Uh, well, I better go,” she says. “I’m gonna meet them at the hospital with his clothes and stuff. Thanks again!”
When she’s gone, there’s nothing but the two of them and the tracks in the sand to show anything has happened at all. All things considered, Tommy thinks this is an emergency with a fairly happy ending. Someone was still unconscious in an ambulance, sure, but his bar is low.
It feels like everything's over, as they watch the ambulance pull away. But before Tommy can make his excuses and take his pessimism elsewhere, Evan turns to him, co*cking his head and doing a half-squinty smile, his body swaying towards Tommy a little.
“It was definitely a good thing you were here," Evan says, conspiratorily. "Don’t tell Mandy I said this, but she probably would have dislocated Ángel’s arm or something the way she was trying to hold him down. Think it was a sign from the universe you were running past at just the right moment?”
Tommy doesn’t know whether to blame Evan’s flirty posture or the adrenaline of the emergency or the fact he’s just so, so sick of his own life lately, but Tommy, in a move so uncharacteristic he briefly feels like he's been possessed, says, "Hey, you should give me your number. We could meet up sometime."
Evan opens his mouth and then closes it. Squints his eyes at Tommy like he's puzzling him out, a way that makes Tommy feel startlingly naked through his sweaty tank and running shorts. Tommy's about to take it back in an awkward tangle of words when Evan co*cks his head a bit more and asks, “A-as in, like, you wanna mentor me for my fire academy training, or, uh, like a date?"
The way he asks is so earnestly confused that Tommy can't help snorting, the tension of his nerves snapping and releasing in the same breath. "I mean, I guess it could be both, depending on how good you are at multitasking."
"Not that good," Evan tells him openly, honestly, with a huge smile as he sways a bit closer to Tommy. "Thank f*ck you were actually flirting, that could've been embarrassing! Okay, full disclosure, I only kissed my first guy like a month ago at a party and it was like -" He makes explosion motions around his head with his hands, mind blown, while Tommy's eyebrows raise. "So I'm still kinda figuring out the whole liking dudes thing - I-I mean, I'm totally into it, don't get me wrong! I'm just, uh, I'm just kind of bad at picking up signals yet—“
"We don't have to go out, if you’re not ready,” Tommy tells him, a little too quick. “Trust me, I get that. We only just met, there's no hard feelings.”
“No, no, I do want to! Uh, I mean, I mean if you want to.”
“I’m the one who asked, Evan,” Tommy reminds him, suddenly feeling more amused than nervous.
“Oh,” says Evan, with a sheepish little laugh. “Uh, right. Duh. Well, then, yes. It’d be cool to go out sometime. A huge hot competent firefighter walks into my path, who’s gonna turn that down?”
Tommy resists the urge to tell him — lots of people. To say he’s actually a traumatised vet who’s done lots of things he isn’t proud of, who still isn’t out to most people in his life, who really never goes around flirting with cute lifeguards on the beach. He’s sure Evan will run the other way when he figures all that out, regardless, but Tommy still wants the date; one, maybe two if he can swing it, a chance to make Evan laugh a few more times and then get on his knees in front of those long legs before Evan moves onto greener pastures. Tommy’s fine with being training wheels.
Instead of saying all that, he fishes his phone out of his shorts and opens up a new contact, then passes it to Evan.
“Number, kid,” he says. Evan’s cheeks go a little pink as he takes it. Tommy thinks, noted.
As he types in his digits, Evan says, “It’s not, like, bad luck to meet on someone else’s ruined date, is it? Just, you know — just hoping we haven’t cursed our first date to end in an ambulance too.”
“Hey, don’t tempt fate,” Tommy warns him, faux-stern. “First lesson about firefighters, we’re a superstitious bunch.”
“I’ll, uh, bear that in mind,” Evan says, giving Tommy an adorable squinty smile that makes Tommy feel a little weak at the knees, honestly slightly queasy with how bad he wants. “Uh, I should probably get back to my station, but — you’ll text me?”
“I’ll text you,” Tommy tells him, and watches Evan’s ass in his red swim trunks and the broad expanse of his shoulders as he jogs back across the beach to the lifeguard station.
If he was being strict, Tommy knows he should write all this off as a blip in his day and carry on with the rest of his run. Instead, he turns back towards home. He’s not feeling quite so much like he needs to distract himself from his own life as he was this morning.
