Chapter Text
Buck pushes the door to Valley’s Baking Supplies, stepping into a quaint little mom-and-pop store with just enough space to fill a few shelves. The bell chimes, immediately followed by the sound of a gun cocking. Great, he thinks, another one. The rustling of money being stuffed into a duffel bag accompanies quiet whimpers as a man in a ski mask points a gun at a cashier.
“Get down on the ground.” The man in a clown mask (wow, tasteful, he thinks) snarls, and Buck presses his lips together in exasperation.
“Alright, alright, don’t shoot,” he replies, feigning a tremble in his voice, as he slowly, slowly bends down, before sweeping the man’s legs out from under him. He topples to the floor, landing with an audible thud, gun skidding across the polished tiles, away from his scrabbling hands. With a flick of his wrist, Buck sends him hurtling into a small rack of magazines, which collapses onto him in a crash.
Ski mask whirls around, barrel of a gun pointed at Buck. The cashier’s hands stop, staring up at Buck with eyes wide open and filled with tears. She’s a small Asian girl, can’t be more than eighteen, and Buck freezes up when the man raises his gun and fires a warning shot.
“Money in the bag!” He turns around to scream at the cashier, who sobs and puts another stack of bills into the bag, but his moment of inattention is all that Buck needs. Vaulting over the counter, he punches ski mask, wrestling the gun from his grip, sending it flying to the other corner of the store. Something must have shattered, because there’s a spray of glass shards hitting his face. Wincing a little, he yanks the mask off the assailant’s face, slamming the man’s face into the hardest part of his knee, making sure he goes down, and stays down.
The cashier’s eyes are wide as bills surround her, staring at Buck’s face. Shit, he thinks, if I’d known I’d be knocking people out tonight, I’d have worn a mask. She seems shaken, and Buck notices a few small cuts where the spray of glass had hit her, but she's otherwise unscathed. Buck dials 911, hanging up before the operator has the chance to ask for his name.
“You’re that hero, right? Uh… Levitate?” The cashier stutters out, eyes never leaving his. He winces, giving a half-hearted smile, turning as nonchalantly as he could to assess the damage to the shop. He might be prepared to fight crime, but he wasn’t an animal, leaving a shop like this in tatters. The magazine stand uprights itself, bags of flour return back to their shelves, and money returns into the register. Grabbing two bags of flour (he’s still gonna get what he came for), he turns back to the girl, fishing out a few dollar bills.
“Don’t tell anyone, yeah? You can keep the change.” He throws a look over at the two assailants, lying unconscious on the ground, before leaving the shop. He feels her eyes burning into the back of his skull. The bell chimes and he runs off, away from the sound of approaching sirens.
-
As much as he enjoys busting into crime scenes and knocking idiots with guns into next week, being a full-time vigilante doesn’t quite pay the bills. Firefighting, he found, was a fun, fulfilling way to sate the urge to help people (it didn’t hurt that he was physically fit enough to play off a few ‘impossible rescues’ as nothing more than strokes of luck), while making enough money to support himself and pay off his apartment. He was lucky, too, to have a team that understood him, that supported him in pulling off seemingly ‘reckless’ acts. Sure, he joined up for the adrenaline of pulling people out of burning buildings, but he’d stayed for the team, the friendships and family that he’d found.
Hen whistles. “You’ve got competition, Buckaroo.” Shoving his bag into the locker before slamming the door shut, Buck chuckles, “no way. No one’s got anything on these guns.” He flexes his arms at Hen, just to prove his point, and she throws a boot at him. He’s about to protest, when she points through the glass door of the locker room, at the gym, and anything Buck was about to say dies in his throat.
Wow, he thinks, that is one attractive man. A shock of brown hair, stylishly pushed away with little strands framing his face. A handsome, chiseled jawline. Tall and lean. His arms flex as he jabs at the punching bag, bouncing back on his toes, and then swiftly spinning into a kick. Wow. Realising he’d been staring for an inappropriately long time, he swallows, trying desperately not to choke.
“Who the hell is that?” He asks, and he’s not quite sure what his face is doing. He’s jealous, definitely, because look at those abs; but he’s also in awe, because look at those abs. He must be doing a pretty poor job of playing it cool because Hen pats him on the shoulder, and gives him a placating look.
“Eddie Diaz, new recruit.” Bobby says, out of nowhere. New recruit? He looked like he'd been training for the job the moment he stepped into his teens. The new guy, Eddie, finishes beating the hell out of his punching bag, pulling a shirt over his head. His arms flex, sweat glistening on biceps, size rivalling Buck’s own. His face must be doing something again. Chimney laughs from behind him. “Try not to feel too threatened, big boy.”
Buck scoffs. Him? Jealous? No way. He’s just some newbie, right? Buck’s got 4-odd years of experience on him, there’s no way some new guy is going to change anything, no matter how absolutely shredded he looks.
-
Except things do change: on his first day, Eddie pulls a live grenade from a man’s leg. Turns out, he’s also a decorated war veteran, a field medic that couldn’t be more suited to his job as a firefighter. Calm under pressure, cool in the face of danger, and collected even when Buck is shaking in his boots.
When he first throws an arm across Buck’s chest, eyes going wide as they catch a glint of gold in this guy’s leg (really, who is so stupid to set off a grenade, and how does it end up in a leg?), Buck heart almost stops.
“This is live,” Eddie says, and the world stops. Being in an ambulance going full speed to a hospital, with a live grenade and a newbie on his first day at work was not how Buck had imagined he’d spend this shift. But before he can fully register what’s actually happening, the new guy is talking to Bobby on the radio, telling him what they’ve got to do; the ambulance is pulling up outside a hospital, and Eddie is strapping on a bomb vest.
He’s not going to let a teammate blow himself up in an ambulance, at least not alone, even if he is just a newbie. This guy seems special, and from what Buck’s seen today, he’s probably going to be a big part of the team. Plus, he figures, if things go south, he could probably manage to fling the grenade far enough without it blowing up (literally) in their faces. It might be a little hard to explain, but nothing a bit of dumb luck can’t make up for.
And so he’s pulling on a vest and following behind Eddie, telling Bobby, “you told us to bond, cap, we might end up real close.” He climbs into the back of the ambulance, eyes fixed on the inconspicuous piece of metal, hyperaware of every movement he makes, every sway of the ambulance and every shaky exhale. By his side, Eddie holds his pair of ‘chunky tweezers’ (Buck doesn’t know what they’re called, why should he?) and is gently, gently pulling a live grenade out of the guy’s leg. He mutters something about not rotating the shell that Buck doesn’t understand, but is ever so grateful for when Eddie places it safely into the lead box, allowing him to gingerly close the box. From then on, it’s a blur of motion as they work side-by-side, Buck setting the box down, Eddie preparing to unload the stretcher, before they pull him out of the ambulance and towards the hospital.
Only when he’s fifty metres from the ambulance, does Buck dare to breathe. His mind is still swimming with thoughts of an explosion, of this new guy, who so calmly pulled an explosive out of a man’s open, bleeding leg, while reassuring him and telling him everything would be fine. That was some metal, he thinks, metal that he’s had to work up over years of experience in all kinds of strange calls. He expects a cursory pat on the back from Bobby, a half-hearted warning to ‘stop trying to give him a heart attack’, but what he doesn’t expect is –
“You’re badass under pressure.” Eddie says, brown eyes full of amusement, yet Buck knows that this isn’t teasing. He wants to scream, tell him that no, he’s the one who’s badass under pressure, but he doesn’t get the chance. Because Eddie’s got a hand resting on his shoulder, and he’s saying, “you can have my back any day.”
The trust in his voice makes him feel so open, so vulnerable, that he can’t help but drop all the posturing that he’d been doing, trying to show off to his team. The trust in his voice is that between seasoned teammates - friends that have been through years of stormy weather together, who’ve known each other forever - even though they’d just met eight-or-so hours ago. Buck can't begin to describe how that makes him feel. The honest fluttering in his chest speeds up, before he chokes out, “or, you could have mine,” in his best attempt at playing it cool. His lips quirk up in what he hopes is a friendly grin, but is probably more of a half-smile.
Behind them, the ambulance explodes into shrapnel, and all three of them wince. Buck’s eyes widen, because that could have been them, being flung out of an exploding ambulance, heat searing into their skin. They probably wouldn’t have survived, he muses. He'd just polished the mirrors of the ambulance earlier today, and it was a real shame that his work had gone to waste.
But Eddie is grinning, asking if they’re hungry, and Buck can’t help but laugh, because wow, he’s found a man after his own heart.
After that stunning first impression, Buck imprints on Eddie like a baby duckling following its mother - after all, it isn't every day that he gets to meet someone quite as interesting. Eddie is rational, yet quick-witted and brave, a perfect complement to Buck's impulsive, spur-of-the-moment spirit, making them a formidable pair in the field and back at the station. They are virtually inseparable on call, working perfectly in tandem, keeping that promise of having each others' backs. Buck finds himself even happier at work, something he'd hardly thought possible.
-
As well as work is going, being able to openly use his powers while crime-fighting still made him light up inside. He'd been in LA for almost five years now, and been moonlighting as a vigilante for the better part of the five. A vigilante, he says, because the word 'hero', much less 'superhero', sounds stuck up and snobbish and infallible, and that's just not Buck.
Tonight's a vigilante night, one where he camps out in his truck, snacks on fruit pieces and keeps his phone on. A couple years back, one of the more technologically savvy vigilantes had created a mobile application, one that sent an alert for crime, out to whoever was listening. Perhaps it was less glamorous than in television shows and movies, with superheroes swooping down out of nowhere to rescue damsels in distress, but it was efficient, and by Buck's standards, a job well done. A modern dispatch, he thinks.
The phone beeps, lighting up the darkness of the truck. Perp's still a threat, reads the notification, and he floors it, racing through the sparse streets.
It's a little past midnight, and the directions have led him to a small, poorly lit alleyway tucked between two run-down apartment buildings. Quiet groans resound from a dark figure slumped against the wall, shirt sticky with thick blood. He’s definitely been shot. His face is pale, eyes drooping shut, but his chest rises and falls with each shaking exhale. Glancing around the heaping trash bags, eyes quickly adjusted to the dark, Buck assumes that the shooter is long gone. Too late, again, he muses, hoping that the police can do a better job of catching armed and dangerous criminals than he can.
Buck taps the man’s cheek lightly to get him to open his eyes, and his eyelids flutter open weakly, he coughs, blood spilling from his mouth, choking out a few unintelligible words. Buck swears, pulling out a cloth from his pocket (stashed exactly for this purpose) and presses it against the bullet wound, mindful not to press too hard.
But then there's a rustle, a crash, and then a shadowed figure is darting out from behind a dumpster, sprinting down the alleyway towards the other end of the street. Turns out the shooter wasn’t as gone as he’d thought. Buck curses: he can't let the guy get away, but he can't let this man bleed out either - EMTs are probably still 10 minutes out.
Buck is suddenly taken back to when he’d first started, when he was still new to the whole ‘I Fight Crime’ thing: he’d taken off after the assailant without so much as stopping for the victim, and when he’d returned empty handed, having lost the perp to a sea of people, the victim was pale and sullen, lifeless on the floor. A wholly unpleasant memory, one that still casts doubt on his every move.
Luckily, he's saved the choice when he hears a crackle of electricity. Blue sparks fly, and a figure appears out of nowhere.
"Which way did he go?" He demands, and Buck, shaken and surprised, points dumbly down the alleyway. Blue sparks fly, illuminating the street for a brief moment, and the man appears briefly at the other end of the narrow alley, before disappearing again. Dragging his eyes away from the strange sight, Buck focuses on stemming the slowing flow of blood from the victim’s abdomen, the cloth soaked through and red staining his hands. The victim doesn't look much better, skin turning even paler as seconds tick by.
"Hey, hey, stay awake okay? Help will be here soon, just keep your eyes open," Buck tries to sound as reassuring as possible, putting on his first-responder tone. "What's your name?"
"Adam." He says, voice barely a whisper.
"You got anyone waiting for you at home?" Buck knows that he has to, needs to keep him talking and responsive until paramedics arrive. He can't afford to let him die because he was a shitty conversationalist.
"Just my sister," Adam whispers weakly, and just as Buck is about to ask, he continues, "we're all alone, me and her. She's gonna be so upset."
It then strikes Buck that this kid can’t be more than eighteen years old, a mere child, and his words shake Buck to the core. "Hey, man, you're gonna be okay, she's gonna be so relieved to see you. Just hang on a little longer." In the distance, the sound of sirens pierce through the quiet LA traffic, and Buck silently thanks the heavens. He pushes the cloth into Adam's hands, standing up to leave before he's seen, but Adam grabs on, pleading with him to stay. Shit, he thinks, I really need to go.
The sirens are coming closer, but he’s frozen, staring into Adam’s eyes, and suddenly blue sparks are flying, theres a thud, someone’s grabbing him and zap -
He’s standing on the roof of an apartment building, mystery man clutching his bicep. Before he can let go and presumably disappear in another puff of sparks, Buck’s mouth opens.
"Wait, you can teleport?" It sounds like a dumb question, but Buck's genuinely curious. He's met most of LA's people with 'special talents', usually bumping into each other when out on calls, but he's never met one who could teleport, much less one who's so in control of the ability. Before he gets a reply, he asks again, "what's your name?"
And he realises, that if he could teleport and fought crime for fun and some random dude asked for his name, he'd probably teleport away. But mystery man doesn’t move away, instead stepping closer to the edge of a building, looking down at the paramedics loading Adam into a stretcher, and a police officer pushing the gunman into the back of her car. Buck peers over the edge with him.
"You can call me Flip, I guess. And yes, I can teleport." Mystery man, Flip, settles down on the ledge, eyes flitting between Buck and the alley.
"I'm telekinetic,” Buck admits, not knowing what else to say, eyes still wide in shock. He expects Flip to scoff, or outright laugh at him, so he wiggles a finger and the door to the access stairwell slams open, making both of them jump. He sits down next to Flip and sizes him up. He’s probably an inch or two shorter than Buck, but between the baseball cap, the mask and the hood, Buck can’t tell much else about him.
“So, do you usually hang around alleyways, waiting for people to get shot?” Flip asks, amusement lacing his tone. Deciding that a man who teleports around catching bad guys probably lives the same kind of life as him, Buck laughs, asking, "do you usually run after shooters?"
This draws a chuckle from Flip, who says, "I'd assume you're the same as me, you got a name?"
Buck winces. He doesn't really like his name - Maddie had helped him come up with it, that time when he'd come home after defusing an armed robbery and someone had asked for his name, and he'd just stared blankly at them. After a long, stilted pause, he replies under his breath, "it's Levitate."
"Cool name," Flip says, "better than Flip, anyway." He glances at his watch, cursing, "it's getting late. I've gotta get home." Down below, the ambulance is leaving, sirens blaring into the distance. Adam will be fine, thanks to them. It's barely one in the morning, and the night's just beginning, but who is he to judge? Everyone he's met has had a side gig. Flip probably has work tomorrow.
"See you around, then?"
"See you," Flip says, before sparks fly and he disappears into the night. Buck's left standing on the rooftop alone. The night's still young.
-
An earthquake hits LA a few weeks later, and the 118 is immediately mobilised, throwing them into the chaos and disaster that follows. Their first call is to a small, suburban house - a roof caved, trapping a little boy under the debris. Buck hates these calls, where a child's life is at stake and the pressure on their shoulders is even heavier than usual - they're even worse when there's nothing that they can do and they have to let go, have to suffer the ride back to the station with the darkest clouds hanging over them.
The house is devastated, barely even a house anymore, and the boy's parents are running up to the truck as they approach, pleading and begging Bobby to please save their son. One more thing he hates about these calls: watching parents distraught as they think about the one person in the world that they care about the most, trapped under layers and layers of rubble. Looking at his team, everyone bears the same grim expression, tense shoulders, but his eyes are drawn to Eddie. His lips are pressed together in a grim line, expression more panicked than Buck had seen before.
But work has to go on: they grab jackhammers and power saws and get to work on lifting, cutting, breaking through the slabs of concrete. Progress is slow, painstaking even, and Buck’s muscles groan in protest as he lifts yet another chunk of ceiling, but the boy’s cries are getting closer now. Then Eddie drags a block off the dusty pile and a little boy crawls out, sobbing with all his might. His face is blackened with dust, and there's a nasty gash on his cheek, but he seems otherwise unscathed. His parents rush over, pulling him into their arms, hugging him, peppering his dirty face with kisses and gratitude to the powers that be.
Hen manages to patch him up, covering his cheek with a thick wad of gauze and a joke that turns cries into watery giggles. Eddie breaks out into a smile, but there's untold sadness in his eyes. Buck's been doing that a lot, just looking at his friend, trying to figure out what he's thinking. A few days ago, he'd been telling Eddie all about the dinner he had with Maddie while the two of them polished the truck, Eddie nodding along, seemingly lost in thought, when Buck had realised that he didn't know all that much about the man. He never seemed to say anything back, never seemed to reveal anything about himself, and Buck took personal offence to that. He would call himself a trustworthy person, and likes the honour of feeling someone's trust in him, but maybe Eddie just needs a little longer to feel comfortable enough to let down his guard and open up more. Buck also considers himself an open book, someone who wears his heart on his sleeve, every vivid emotion playing on his face. Eddie was quite the opposite, never letting anything shake his cool demeanour.
However, on the rarest of occasions, he would catch a ghost of something else on his partner's face, and looking at him now, Eddie probably has the same soft spot for children, running a mile deep.
As they bundle back into the truck, responding to a major building collapse that requires the attention of four stations' worth of firefighters, Eddie's pulling out his phone and cursing the lack of cell service.
"Who are you trying to reach?" Buck probes gently. Eddie hesitates. Buck's about to back off, not wanting to make him uncomfortable, but then he replies.
"My son, Christopher. He's seven."
Whoa, Buck thinks. Eddie didn't look old enough to have a seven-year-old, nor had he ever mentioned anything about a family or a wife (or husband, Buck won't judge), so this was a definite surprise.
Eddie passes his phone over, a picture of his son as his wallpaper. And Buck melts. Truthfully, Christopher doesn't look anything like his dad, but he is one adorable child, and Buck tells Eddie as much.
"I love kids," he says.
"I love this one," Eddie replies, brown eyes full of emotion, "his mom's not in the picture." Instantly, Buck's admiration for the guy goes up a notch. Raising a child alone, while juggling a job as a firefighter, a job that pushes him to the physical and mental limits? Not something that Buck thinks he's capable of.
"He's at school today." The I hope he's okay goes unsaid, but Buck gets the memo. For now, all he can really do is give Eddie the reassurance he needs.
"He'll be okay. A school is the safest place for him to be, right now." Eddie looks like he almost believes it.
They pile out of the truck, pulling on extra gear and unloading harnesses and ropes from the sides, before Bobby is saying, "Buckley, Diaz, clear the top floors." What formerly was a hotel, standing tall and proud, is fractured in the middle, the top few floors perched at an irregular angle. Furniture is clearly pressed up against the windows, glass probably creaking under the weight.
On a regular day, Buck loves rope rescues, loves the adrenaline of hanging high above the city, but knowing that someone's at the other end of the line and he's always safe. Today, though, he can't help but think about Eddie's kid. Sure, Eddie's just as capable as he is of pulling off dangerous feats, but at the end of the day, Eddie is the one with someone to go home to. Eddie's the one who has someone relying on him. If Buck decides that if anything happens while they're dangling at the top of the shaky, broken building, Buck will be the one to let go first? That's no one's business but his own.
Hours fly by as they pull person after person out of precarious positions, rescuing a witty girl named Ali that steals a shot of whiskey from a room service cart, while trying hard not to fall to their deaths. They strap a man to a makeshift backboard, lowering him down twenty-odd floors to the medics on the ground. They really do make a good team, Buck figures, Eddie with the medical training to fix almost any problem on the fly, and Buck with the quick thinking and muscles to help him wherever he can. They've cleared the building after a gruelling sixteen hours, and he feels sore and sooty all over, dirt and dust clinging to his gear, his face and his hair.
Their feet hit the solid ground, and Buck heaves a sigh of relief. He's so close, so close to going home. Ali's giving him her number, asking him to call her for a coffee date, and he's honestly flattered, and startled that she still has the presence of mind to ask. He switches on his phone, suddenly ringing out with a slew of messages from Maddie.
"Eddie! There's cell service!" Eddie's face lights up, and he's immediately dialling a number, holding his phone up to his hear, anxiety evident in the hard line of his shoulders. A moment passes, before he relaxes, a broad smile making its way onto his face. Buck's been a little distracted from Maddie's texts, but the palpable relief radiating from his friend puts him at ease, too.
-
He meets Christopher for the first time, having offered to drive Eddie to pick him up from school. Eddie's bolting out of his truck, sprinting into the school and wrapping Chris up in such a warm hug, that Buck can almost feel it. He bundles Christopher, crutches and schoolbag and all, into the backseat. Christopher's wearing a thousand-watt smile that immediately earns him a place in Buck's heart, alongside Maddie and the 118.
"Hi! I'm Buck, your dad's friend from work."
"Hi Buck, I'm Christopher. You can call me Chris, though!" He dissolves into giggles, like only a seven-year-old can.
"How was school today?" Eddie asks, hoping that Chris doesn't know about the earthquake.
"There was an earthquake today," well, Buck thinks, before Chris continues. "Did you save lots of people?"
"Yeah, Chris, your dad was a real pro out there. He saved so many people today, I can't even count!" Has Buck mentioned that he loves kids?
"My dad's a hero," Chris announces, with all the gusto and pride that he can muster.
"He sure is." Buck winks at Eddie, who looks away, cheeks turning a faint pink.
As they pull up into Eddie's driveway, to a small bungalow painted sunshine yellow, Chris says, "thank you, Buck. For making sure dad's safe."
Eddie ushers Chris indoors, with a small smile, a wave, and a "see you tomorrow". Buck's heart threatens to explode.