Chapter Text
If Buck's first day in Los Angeles was a screaming success, his first day of actual employment...doesn’t quite start that way.
Station 118 employs a diverse cast of characters. He witnessed this, going in. It's one of the many attractive things about this House compared to his old ones. And they were definitely Old, with a capital O, with Old architecture and Old superiors with all sorts of Old prejudices. The regulation standards tended to be as thick as his arm and there had been a marked distaste for human and human-adjacent compatriots—that is to say, there had been hardly any. He hasn't fully looked at 118's SOP book yet, but at least it's printed neatly on crisp white paper and not inked onto animal skin and bound in human. He would have opted for an emailed PDF if he could’ve remembered his password, or when he last even logged into it.
In any case, there are a lot of people he hasn't met in the 118, is the thing. Who he does meet right off the bat is an extremely touchy Hag who goes by the surprisingly normal name of Taylor. She feels Old, which is already a marvel because the older ones hardly ever leave the woods, but she takes near immediate offense to–something on his person and nearly eats him before Captain Nash can sort it. One second there’s a mouthful of needle point teeth coming at his face and in half a blink the Captain is already in front of him leading her away. It's…a terrifying display of power that he chooses to be comforted by.
What exactly is a Hag supposed to do in a House anyway? He sets that thought aside because that's dangerously close to, if not outright, the type of attitudes his former teams held about humans. He'll just chalk it down to a hazard of this particular House and move on. It's not the first time a teammate has tried to eat him. It's just that it never happens quite so fast.
Morning mishap aside, he basically hits the ground running.
"We're shorthanded across the board," Captain Nash explains, when he comes back sans Taylor. There's a look in his eye like he's expecting Buck to protest or ask but that he won't like the answer the Captain has to give. Buck keeps his mouth shut. "You've done this before, so you're gonna be on your own a lot. I'll try to keep the violent ones out of your hands till we get you a partner."
Buck stares skeptically at the teetering stack of files on his tiny desk and turns to ask if the Captain is sure. Bobby just sends him another indeterminable look that sends the back of his neck prickling again and asks, "aren't you?" Then the Captain claps him on the shoulder with an entirely too satisfied smile that seems about something else entirely and leaves him to it.
Well, then.
What the hell did his former Captains say about him anyway? They'd parted on less than polite terms, all to a one. And sure, he's good at what he does. He’s confident he can handle most anything that comes his way, but he's unavoidably and unfavorably young in the greater scheme of things, with a much different outlook that sometimes saddles him with adjectives like "rebel" or "hotheaded" or "rash." He's just really not so inclined as some of his old coworkers to walk away from Old entities because "no one's dying" or "owner propriety."
So for Bobby to just send him out willy-nilly without at least a, a minder. He doesn't know. He's not sure what the game is and it makes him inexorably nervous. Station 118 is just so good...and short staffed, apparently. Los Angeles, this entire region, actually, is young when compared to other continents. Could it possibly be that much different? It should be fine, right? At least there won't be any primordial evils hanging around dank basements waiting for human sacrifices. He's only ever met the one anyway. It's not an experience he wants to repeat. Surviving it had been difficult enough and had laid him up long enough for the Captain of that House to find his replacement.
He sits gingerly at his desk, lets the slight satisfaction in his gut settle and sets about reorganizing things to his liking. The files are straightened into something more neat and stable and the few office supplies are put away in the tiny holder, along with a surprisingly sharp ceremonial-looking stiletto/letter opener. The weird hoodoo doll with a noose around its neck and a welcome sign in its arms gets a bemused smile and a place of honor on his lamp. He attempts to pull the drawers open, to tiny degrees of success. The first one is full of what looks to be a combination of more office supplies and...suspiciously stained spiritual items. It jams halfway and, no matter how hard he pulls, stays that way. The second one doesn't even open and the third lets out a bloodcurdling shriek as soon as he cracks it. He slams it shut, staring at it and then around the room, wide-eyed. No one spares him so much as a glance.
What the fuck, he mouths to himself, staring a bit more before deciding to deal with it all later. It's not like he actually needs a desk anyway. Mostly. Probably.
He blows out a breath and sets his shoulders. He's good at this. He can do this. He’s done it. He pulls the top few files and flips through them. His task list for the day--his very first day--already looks daunting.
What’s slightly more daunting is the Los Angeles public transportation system. The rail is fantastic but he takes the wrong bus and travels six city blocks before he notices and has to backtrack on foot. He gets there eventually.
The old lady who greets him on location is as sweet as pie. Her craggy, toothless smile warms something in him and the frail little fingers that light on his arm make him want to just hug her and fix everything that threatens to take it away.
Which he’s going to–fix it, that is.
Her family floats around her in an anxious cloud tinged with hints of frustration and anger. Her eldest son is an especially seething, frothing ball of anger and gets right up in Buck’s face first thing.
“Really?! It’s been four months and they send you?! How old are you?! You look younger than my son! What can you possibly do?!” He gesticulates emphatically and well, Buck has to agree just a little. The grandson looks somewhere in his mid-to-late thirties, a coating of pepper along his beard that makes him look distinguished in a way Buck can never hope to achieve. Unfair.
“Sir, I can assure you—“
“Oh, let the child work, mijo. He’s a good one,” the lady says, patting her son’s arm while staring at Buck fondly.
“Mami—!” The son protests, turning to argue with his mother. The lady leads her son further away, shooting another sweet smile Buck’s way.
Buck really sort of loves her.
He sends another reassuring smile to the rest of her uncertain family and turns to the task. He blows a breath and steps up to the task, rolling his shoulders, cracking his neck and looking up at the house in determination.
Her house is as old as dirt and it shows in the cracked windows and faded walls and crumbling stonework. What's lovely are the years and decades and generations of love and devotion and family that are soaked into the very foundations. Which is why despite the doubt and sort of hostility still directed his way, he doesn’t feel upset at all.
The lady’s family love her, and each other, and it shows.
What’s actually upsetting is the thing that's been festering beneath her floorboards. It stands out all the more beneath the good vibes. It's not as bad as the one on his house hunt, which reminds him he still needs to call that in, but it's definitely foul, like raw sewage and rotten fruit. A sickly, sweet miasma that seeps through the woodwork and sticks to everything.
It's not without consequence, despite the natural Family Feels repellent, because it's already taken her husband and nearly permanently driven away all her children and grandchildren, but she's managed to resist that sort of ill will for months and he's really, really sort of amazed by her.
It still takes him hours to purify everything, one wall at a time, and even then, some of the foundation will still have to be replaced, warped beyond recovery. It’s regrettable, and it does make him a little angry. The family is justified in their anger. From the gist of all that he’d gotten, they’d been haranguing the City, unsuccessfully, into sending someone to come look at their grandmother's house all this time. Maybe her husband would have lived, if someone had been out sooner. Maybe the family wouldn’t be fractured, pushed out of their home and leaving a lone, little old lady to (stubbornly) fend for herself.
But that’s neither here nor there anymore. Los Angeles is an astoundingly dense city, and the Houses are short-handed. He’s here now and he’s fixing it.
He tracks the curse down to a neighboring house, leaving behind the hugging, sobbing family—all of whom can already feel the difference in the air. He circles the house once, eyebrow raised at the stale quality of it. He gets his answer when he peeks through the window. The neighbor, of course, is already dead, corpse a shriveled husk in a circle of blood in the middle of his living room. His heart skips a beat at the sight of it. Rituals gone wrong are not quite his wheelhouse though. He can’t even recognize some of the sigils used–isn’t even sure they’re actual sigils. He considers, but decides not to call in NecDep and instead calls in Investigations and Cleaners, briefs them when they arrive, and dusts his hands of that.
The old woman, “Carmen, young man,” sends him away with a hug and kisses on his cheek and enough good will to last him the rest of the day.
The next two are much in the same vein, albeit less of blood rituals gone wrong and more garden variety accumulations of Bad Feelings. The third owner is so twitchy with anxiety that Buck gently leads him outside and calls Social Services to take him in and maybe get him started on a long-term Aurapy regiment while Buck takes care of his house. A cup of tea definitely isn't going to fix that over night.
The Pixie infestation is harder, and just--it has to be a some sort of hazing ritual, right? Because nobody likes dealing with Pixies and isn't this what Pest Control is for? They're not actually the same level of sentience as the other Fae, but the shortness of their lives and their minimal level of intelligence are made up by their tetchy, entitled drama queen personalities–not even mentioning a bite like a shark and constitution like a honey badger. They also breed like roaches and are just as sneaky, which is why it took so long for the owner to even notice.
Buck hasn't had the unpleasantness of actually dealing with pixies until now and really, he could have gone his entire life without the experience. Negotiation is so, so far from his usual schtick that this just absolutely has to be some sort of hazing. Not only that, negotiating with Pixies is like coaxing a pack of exceptionally smart, aquaphobic rats to take a bath. He tries to inject as much Calm into his Aura as he can, but it takes him almost the entire rest of his day to get the Pixies to even reveal themselves in the home they'd invaded.
"Mr. Feldman--Mr.--Mr. Feldman, please. You're not helping the situation."
Mr. Isaiah Feldman is a tired man in his late forties, slightly pudgy around the middle and going gray at his temples. He checks his watch every six or so minutes and his tapping foot has grown increasingly exaggerated in the past twenty. The red that's been rising in his face is almost to tomato level and his eyebrows are nearly connected with how furrowed they are and–it's just really not helping Buck's stress levels.
"I'm not helping? I'm not helping?! This is my house!"
The Pixie hive queen chimes its disagreement, hovering imperiously and without care in front of creatures a hundred times her size. Her soldiers are arrayed behind her in obvious attack formation, which...he vaguely recalls from his studies, isn’t quite cause for alarm just yet, but definitely not a good sign. Well, Pixies are never a good sign anyway. Gods above, he has a headache.
Not to mention, Mr. Feldman’s house is a tad creepy. It’s not that it gives off any vibes, one way or another, but Mr. Feldman seems to be…extremely into taxidermy. The black eyed stares from the varied animal heads mounted on the wall are eerie and probably what attracted the Pixies in the first place. They love weird shit like that. Like finding a wasp nest in a doll.
The argument goes round and round and round and then ends rather abruptly.
Not because he convinces any of them to resolve it in any way peacefully, but because whatever Mr. Feldman is, well, he finally gets fed up and…explodes, rather literally, torching half of the troupe--but thankfully, not the queen--the house, and blowing out his neighbors’ fences and windows.
The hive flees, after that.
Buck considers himself lucky to escape with just singed eyebrows, even if a number of his defensive charms are toast. Heh. Everything amounts to just...a ton of paperwork. The Fair Alliance gets involved and files multiple complaints against him on his first day, which results in a visit from his Union Rep and, oddly enough, a round of applause from his co-workers as he does what amounts to a walk of shame to the lockers to change into clothes that aren't still singed and smoking.
He smiles and laughs as he accepts the slaps on the back and good-natured ribbing and feels warm in a way that has nothing to do with the disaster of a call he’d just been on.
Captain Nash watches him from the second floor with something like, like approval, even if there's an extremely amused set to his mouth and only a smidgen of concern. Something in Buck eases, just a bit. He knew it was a freaking hazing ritual. His Captain doesn't even look phased by the paperwork that's probably currently generating on his desk.
The sun is well beyond set by the time he reaches what he's decided will be the last address for the day. His feet hurt and he still feels a little winded and his hair still smells like burnt pixie and foam insulation. He's now missed both lunch and is likely going to miss dinner and his stomach is angrily letting him know.
The house looks like normal suburbia, but for the first time all day he actually feels uneasy. He squints at it, trying to read anything off of it, but doesn't get much. The energies are dormant, tranquil in the way only sleepy suburbia can manage. With a sigh, he reaches into his poor, singed messenger bag--he just got it, too, dammit!--to pull out the correct file and thumbs through it again.
It's a thin file. A thin history of ownership. Humans all to a one. A police report concerning vandalism from six years ago. Humans again. Two separate witness accounts regarding mysterious lights and possibly a scream from what's supposed to be an empty house just within the past month. Human and human.
He squints back up at the house. It seems rather mundane, like simple trespassing by possibly a vagrant that regular PD can handle. He's not sure why he's assigned here, but well, when in Rome.
He reaches over to open the chain link gate and lets himself into the yard. There's no discernible change in the air when he crosses the boundary. The grass is overgrown where it's not dead, encroaching onto the cracked sidewalk and up onto the porch. He circles the house once, peering into dark windows and straining to get a read on anything.
Unknown indeed, even if the unease is still simmering in his gut.
When he makes it back to the front, he contemplates the door. It's a cheery, innocuous robin's egg blue, a bit weathered, but still solid.
Experience, and protocol, says he shouldn't go in without backup.
He purses his lips. It looks harmless. He doesn't Feel anything. There's not a single twinge from any of his protection charms.
Bobby had said they're short-staffed. He'd also said he wouldn't drop anything dangerous into Buck's inbox.
He's capable of a lot of things, he feels, and his work contract clears him for many more, but it only takes one incident to set him back in the eyes of his employers before he's on the outs and moving on to the next House. He doesn't wanna move on just yet. It's his first goddamn day.
Still, this is the assignment. Investigate, and report. He can't exactly pass it off to Special Investigations with just a feeling. He's already met the Sergeant there earlier and she's exactly the no nonsense sort of woman that would probably give him shit for turning in a file on pure feeling when everyone in Special Investigations had looked even more stressed and harried than him.
So, he investigates. Blowing air in a huff, he decides to just take a quick look. He won't even cross the threshold, just in case. Gripping the file against his chest as though it will shield him, he reaches out and touches the door.
He blinks, startled.
What was he doing?
Where is he?
He's in the middle of the street, at night, in a neighborhood he doesn't recognize. He flexes his fingers, his hand feeling oddly empty. Unnerved, he checks the ground to see if he dropped anything, but nothing is there.
His heart is pounding in his chest and his stomach growls with hunger and there's a throb starting just behind one eye.
What happened?
He was working. The Pixies. He was at the station. Is he going home? He's hungry. Maybe he’s going home. How did he end up here? Where is here?
His phone buzzes in his pocket.
Gonna be home for dinner? We got extra pizza.
Uneasiness abates, just a little, at Eddie's text.
Another long pause where he takes in his surroundings again, surveying the dark houses and empty cars parked along the street. The neighborhood seems quiet, almost entirely human. There's a faint whisper of Other at the end of the block, but it seems dim, soft, like its owner is unconscious...or sleeping. There's no reason for him to be here.
His lips press into a thin, stressed line. This has never happened to him. Maybe he ran afoul of someone or something? He does a self check, but his defensive charms are all intact and he's entirely uninjured.
His stomach growls again and he exhales.
He tentatively puts a marker on his current location, both the magical variety and in his phone maps, and, with a slight burst of warmth at the very thought, goes home.