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“It’s an omen.”
“It’s not an omen, Chim. Jesus.”
“Look, Eddie, all I’m saying is that it could be an omen.”
“Wait,” Buck interjected, flopping down on the couch beside Eddie, easily tossing his legs up onto Eddie’s lap. “What’s an omen? Did Eddie get an omen? Wait, did you get cursed? Because you all know, I’m very—“
“We know,” Chim started, his eyes rolling back to a degree that would have hurt an average man. “We know, you’re in tune to the ethereal.”
Buck shrugged, chewing on a thumbnail, getting more comfortable on the couch. “I’m just saying. I’d know if Eddie were cursed. What’s up with your omen?”
Eddie winced as he felt Buck’s legs press down a bit on his lap, the stupidity of everything he had experienced weighing down on him. It sounded so stupid to say out loud, but there was no denying what he had seen—especially since Hen had seen the same on their last call. “I mean, I don’t think it’s a curse. I think I’m being… followed. Stalked, maybe?” he started, Buck’s expression quickly going to one of concern. “But, no, nothing bad. It’s honestly helpful. There’s just… a dog. I’ve seen this dog, the same dog, on the past few calls we’ve been on.”
Eddie felt his blood pressure spike as Buck suddenly went still, the expression on his face more serious than Eddie had ever seen before. “Eddie, that’s not good. What does the dog look like?” Eddie took a breath before answering, feeling only half sure that Buck wasn’t fucking with him like the rest of the crew—but the look on his face, well, Eddie thought Buck would have a hard time faking that.
“I don’t know. It’s a big black dog, with some white fur over an eye.” Eddie said, slowly, like he was picking out his words, like he was trying to hide the fact that a sliver of hope had fallen into the pit of his stomach. Maybe, maybe Buck would believe him—would believe that he had seen the same thing, the same animal over and over, call after call… would believe that that was the only reason he had made some of the saves he had made, maybe Buck had even seen it himself—
“That sounds like the Grim.”
Wait, what? Eddie felt his stomach tighten as he leaned in, all attention focused on a wary looking Buck.
“The giants spectral dog that haunts graveyards! Eddie, that’s a sign; the worst sign, the sign of—“
“Buck, I know you’re not quoting Harry Potter right now.” Hen said with a laugh as she shook her head, and like a burst balloon, Eddie felt himself deflate. Sure enough, Buck was beaming, looking pleased as punch that Hen had got his apparent references. “Fine, whatever, fuck off. I know what I saw. It was a big black dog, and that’s what pointed me in the right direction to find that downed car in the river—and I heard barking when I checked that barn fire last month, and Hen heard it too!” Eddie said, eyes trailing over to Buck as Hen threw her hands up. “Look, man, if you think that’s the first time I saw a stray on a call—“
“But you knew it, right? You knew it was the same dog that I told you about.”
“Eddie,” Hen started, her hands extended even as her tone turned placating. “Eddie, it was just a dog. I don’t know what I know about it, but we’ve seen plenty of dogs, and we’ve heard more than a few barking in the general direction of their owners when we’re in the middle of an emergency.”
“Whatever!” Throwing his arms up, Eddie moved to stand, effectively shoving Buck’s legs off of his lap—and okay, maybe he was ignoring the initial look of hurt that Buck shot at him, but that was beside the point he was trying to make. “Look, I may not know what it was, but I know what I’ve been seeing, and if you think I’m dumb enough to ignore it you’re wrong.”
--
The thing was, though, that Eddie really didn’t know what he was seeing. Not definitely, at least. The swish of a tail, the sound of a paw on concrete, it was never long enough for Eddie to get a really good look—and it was always gone as quick as it came. Almost always toward the end of a shift, sometimes during the daytime, and rarely when he was with anyone else from the 118.
A few months ago, it had started with a few barks. A couple of short, staccato sounds that would direct him to the right room where someone had passed out, where the gas main was located, where the danger either was or where he could get around it safely. A few barks, and then Eddie would find the answer he was looking for, regardless of the call he was on.
Frustratingly enough, he never actually saw any dogs, and that made him feel more guilty than anything. He told Buck as much, one morning as they drove in to the station together, the previous night of pizza and beer a bit rowdier than intended. “It sucks, Buck. The family dog is loyal enough to help me save their owners, and I can’t even find it to make sure it gets out safe too.”
(The soft look that Buck shot him was definitely, definitely noted.)
The first time Eddie had actually seen what he was hearing, he almost dropped the hose he was holding. There was a bark, and then a whine, then a shaggy black head pointing—well, as much as a dog could point with its nose—to a second story window. A window that Eddie would have overlooked, if he wasn’t looking twice as hard, that had a hand nearly disguised in the soot on the glass.
A quick radio to the team inside, and three more survivors were found, and just like that Eddie considered himself up an ally. He never got a proper look at the animal that was… assisting him—all he could see was a big black head, blue eyes, and on one particularly tough call that almost wound up with Chim falling three floors through a burnt out piece of ceiling, white fur around an eye.
It was still never a regular occurrence—just a quick yip and suddenly things would be right again. The barks grew into sighting, the sightings grew more frequent, and then it all boiled down to Hen making fun of him for an omen.
It wasn’t until the tsunami hit that Eddie realized just how right Hen might have been after all, because it wasn’t a dog that had been following him on his calls, it wasn’t a dog that had been helping him save lives.
It was a fucking wolf.
It was a wolf that had been barking at him, nipping at his heels, pushing him further whenever it showed up in his life.
“Chris?”
And now, it was a fucking wolf that was swimming toward him, as the sun started to set—with one eye all but swollen closed, breathing heavily though its nose as its head nearly dipped beneath the water, doing an absolute abomination of the doggy paddle—huge enough that Chris couldn’t even reach around his fucking neck as he clung to the wolf.
Embarrassingly enough, his first thought was that wolves shouldn’t even be in this part of California.
Shortly after, he felt his mind start to burn into overdrive, synapses firing so quickly that he was sure smoke was coming out of his ears, because as far as he knew… as far as he knew, Chris had been spending the day with Buck, but here he undeniably was. He was moving on his own accord, legs nearly giving out from beneath him as he sloshed through waist high water, abandoning the pile of debris that the rest of the 118 had been sifting through as he heard Chris start to sputter.
“Chris?!”
“Buck?”
Chris’ glasses were gone—probably long gone from the flood, face splashed with saltwater, and Eddie had just gotten within arms reach of his son when the wolf had all but dove away from him, leaving a trail of murky ripples in its wake, but for once Eddie couldn’t be concerned with his four legged guest.
“Buck—he saved me, Dad, he saved me, and—and I lost him, Dad, I lost Buck!”
“Eddie, where are—Eddie? Oh god, is that Chris?!”
Eddie whirled around in the water as he heard Bobby’s voice from behind him, keeping Chris close to his chest, his eyes wide in panic as Chris sputtered and coughed. Bobby moved quickly, immediately relieving Eddie of his duties, sending them both to the nearest first aid station. Eddie felt like he was in shock himself, and he wasn’t even the one that had been treading water for God only knew how long, but even then—Chris was still talking, still going on about Buck.
Buck had saved him. Buck had kept him above the waves. Buck had saved him.
The words kept ringing in his ears, brain a foggy mess. Buck had saved his kid, of that Eddie had no doubt—even if Chris hadn’t been repeating it over and over, Eddie knew Buck would sooner flick himself into a tsunami than allow Chris to get hurt—but where the hell was Buck? All that Eddie could picture was the hulking black animal with his tiny, tiny son clinging to it for dear life.
When they found Buck, though, an hour later, with Chris’ glasses around his neck, physically exhausted and nearly unconscious due to blood loss (thanks to a pretty serious gash over his eye and cuts along his arms and legs), Eddie resolved to be a little more observant.
He may have been going crazy, but… even crazy people needed to be on guard.
--
The first thing that Eddie noticed was that he never, ever saw the wolf (which he had semi-affectionately [although un-creatively] dubbed ‘Wolfie’, at Chris’ insistence) while Buck was on shift with him. It was like he had thought before—he had seen it once in a while around others, and thanks to the tsunami, only once around Chris, but never, ever around Buck.
The second thing that he realized, which probably should have been the first thing now that he thought about it, was the fact that it never, ever, interacted with anyone else on the squad. What started out as a coincidence in Eddie’s book soon turned into causation; there had to be a reason that he was being singled out for this kind of help, and he had no idea what that reason could be.
The third thing—which wouldn’t even be a thing if Eddie wasn’t already hyper aware of anything whenever his four legged friend showed up—was that the day after, after every time that Eddie wound up finding the wolf on a call (or more accurately, the wolf found him), Buck would be ten times as present as he usually was.
If he was relaxing in the loft, Buck… well, he hovered. There was no way else to put it. He would be looking through his phone, or reading a book, or doing something else completely independent, but he would never more than a foot away from Eddie, never out of reach. If Eddie was lifting weights, Buck wasn’t just spotting him—he was practically levitating over Eddie, making sure he was okay, like Eddie was trying to lift a ladder truck instead of a couple hundred pounds on a barbell. If Eddie had to get up for anything, Buck was right there with him, which led to a few awkward moments when Eddie had to stare him down outside of a bathroom stall until Buck seemed to get the hint.
It came to a point whenever they were on calls. Buck was… attached to his side, less than a step behind him whenever Eddie was in his turnout gear, wound tighter than a spring when Bobby threw a single command toward Eddie’s direction. If Eddie didn’t know better—and unfortunately, he was starting to think that he knew better—he could have sworn that Buck even growled once or twice.
It got to the point where, as foolish as it felt to play into his suspicions, it felt just as foolish as ignoring them.
So Eddie started testing things. They would be in the loft, on opposite ends of the floor, with the noise and bustle of the station wafting up between them. Eddie would clear his throat and say Buck’s name—something as simple as a “hey, Buck, check this out”—but he would do so in a low voice, keeping his voice soft. His tone was perfectly regular, sure, but his volume should have absolutely been lost through the noise of the station. Undoubtedly, Buck would always perk up from whatever he was doing and he would trot over easily, tilting his head to get a better look at whatever meme Eddie was looking at on his phone, or pose for a selfie for Chris, or taste whatever Eddie had brought for lunch.
Okay, so Buck had really good hearing.
And he had good eyes, that was common knowledge—Buck was always the first one to spot the cat in the tree whenever they got calls like that, even if he griped the entire time when he had to be the one to retrieve it.
As far as his mannerisms went, well, Chim might have been on to something when he referred to Buck as an overgrown golden retriever. Eddie wasn’t really a touchy feely person usually, but Buck, well, he was the exception to the rule. Eddie couldn’t sit down without Buck tossing his feet into Eddie’s lap, couldn’t walk side by side without Buck bumping shoulders with him, couldn’t be seated next to one another in the truck, on the way to a call, without Buck pressing himself along Eddie’s side, a warm line of heat that Eddie rather… enjoyed. He cocked his head when he was confused, he lit up when he was happy, and when he was upset, there was absolutely no way anyone would have guessed otherwise; the look on his face could bring a supervillain to tears.
It was cute, really cute. And it was something that should have just been cute.
Fuck, why couldn’t it just have been something cute? Eddie felt like he was losing his mind.
--
He had… well, Eddie didn’t know if he had a plan. Could a half baked set of ideas that hit him like a sack of potatoes while he was reading Chris’ bedtime story count as a plan?
He had the inkling of a plan. Maybe, like, a quarter of a plan. Mostly, he was running on blind faith, trust, and a confidence that if he was wrong, he would be the only person who knew how crazy he was.
Three months after the tsunami, Eddie’s curiosity finally piqued, and he finally set his plan into motion, waiting for everything lined up, when he and Buck had a full moon off. Eddie had invited Buck over for beer and a movie, and predictably, Buck had declined—and that was all that Eddie had needed to set things into motion.
When you took each individual aspect of his plan, Eddie sounded like a crazy person. He had set up Chris for a sleepover at Hen’s, crashing with Denny and Nia. He drove out toward Buck’s, detouring into the nearest thicket, a barely-wooded area, as close as he would get to a forest in Los Angeles. He had loaded the back of his truck with blankets, pillows, a hodge-podge nest of sorts to keep himself comfortable, because the next part of his grand, stupid, master plan was waiting.
He brought a book, for fucks sake. A book and a plate of his abuela’s apple empanadas. One, to pass the time, and the other, because he… might get hungry. Certainly not because he knew Buck loved them.
…okay. He was losing it.
Parking his truck a little ways off of the road, Eddie cut the engine and the lights, pulling himself into the bed of his truck easily. Leaving the empanadas on the tool box in the truck bed, he situated himself against a stack of pillows and blankets, settling in. Reading by the light of the full moon wasn’t exactly hard; hell, there was enough light pollution in LA that he could probably read by the lights of the fucking gas stations across the road if he wanted to. Not that he was reading, anyway… an absent flip of the page or two every few moments, sure, but not really reading.
Less than half an hour later, Eddie felt the familiar sensation of being watched, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. He didn’t even bother to look up from his book, doubting he would have seen anything more than a pair of eyes, if even that. “Come on, weirdo. The food’s getting cold.”
Eddie felt, more than anything, when the first paw hit the bed of his truck—the creak of his suspension was louder than anything, and Eddie felt himself smile as three other paws joined the first, still determinedly looking at his book. Apparently, Buck wasn’t one to be ignored—there was a snout beneath his book in short order, a paw batting at his shoulder, and within a few moments Eddie had forgotten about whatever book he was reading, his arms suddenly full of a large, pitch black wolf, a white splotch above his left eye.
Tossing his book aside easily, Eddie sighed, victory singing through his veins as he wrapped his arms around the canine, absently petting at the fur beneath his fingertips,
It took less than five minutes for the fur beneath his hands to give way to warm flesh, the snout that was against his neck melting into a human face, digits sprouting from thick paws as claws gave way to fingernails. Like that, just like that, Eddie found himself with an arm full of Buck—naked Buck, for sure, but that was why he brought so many blankets, one of them slung over Buck’s hips with the flick of his wrist. He felt his eyes start to slip closed, finding comfort in his victory, his breathing evening out as he felt Buck’s heart beat against his palm.
“You… you’re not mad?”
Eddie smiled, the nerves and fear melting out of his body as he felt skin beneath his fingertips, eyes closed as he felt Buck, breathing against his neck. “Buck, you’ve been protecting me, helping me since day one. You saved Chris—who loves that… part of you, by the way. He calls you Wolfie.” Eddie said, encouraged when he felt a half laugh pass over Buck’s lips. “How could I be mad?”
“Because I made fun of you, for seeing me. I hid this from you, Eddie, I—I lied to you.” Buck said, his voice muffled as he pushed his head into the crook of Eddie’s neck, melting into the steady pressure of Eddie’s fingers at his back. Eddie actually felt himself laugh as he felt Buck’s hair against his nose, shaking his head. “Buck, look, I know we probably have a lot to talk about… and I can’t want to hear at least a few stories about you.” Eddie started, and Buck huffed out a laugh against his collarbone.
“But more than anything, its… I mean, I’m really honored that you can trust me like this. And I want you to know your secret is safe with me.”
Buck hummed in his arms, rearranging himself until he was nearly nose to nose with Eddie, his eyes half closed and his smile small. “Well, it’s like you said. There’s no one that I trust with this secret more than you.” Buck started, eyes flickering as he remembered the tsunami, or more precisely, the aftermath. “Well, paraphrased from what you said, anyway, but I don’t have a kid, just a—mmph!”
Eddie easily cut him off with a kiss, his lips pressed tightly to Bucks, feeling a warm pair of arms snake around him as Buck eased back into his grip. Their kisses were slow, languid, lazy, like it was the tenth time they had done this, like they had been together for years—it was their first kiss, but Eddie knew it would never be enough, knew he would never tire of this. Buck pulled back, and Eddie let out a moan as Buck’s lips trailed across his jaw, burying himself in the crook of his shoulder, and just like that Eddie knew he was long, long gone.
“…can I have an empanada now?” Buck asked later on, voice muffled against Eddie’s skin, and Eddie couldn’t help but laugh.
(“So, is that full moon bullshit true? Because you don’t exactly look like a bloodthirsty beast. More like a cuddly puppy.” Eddie asked after an hour or so, trying not to laugh as Buck choked on an apple slice.
“Eddie, what—no—“
“What about the silver bullet things? Not that I have any bullets, but…”
“Oh my god, you have got to stop watching so many horror movies.”
“Wait, does this make you a furry? Oh god, am I a furry for liking you?” Eddie finally asked, warmth blooming in his chest as Buck shook in his arms, his laughter echoing in the trees around him.
It was one of the most beautiful sounds that Eddie had ever heard.)