Work Text:
Okay, let me start this out by saying that when I left the 118 because of my broken leg I thought Buck and I had a certain, I dunno, vibe. We connected. We even kissed once. It was a little weird, because we’re so similar, but I forgave him for that after a couple of shifts. He was just such a nice, caring guy, you know? I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t taken.
But then I realized he was. Oops! And ya the woman in question is a bit of a bitch, but hey, I kissed her man. Maybe I’m in no position to judge anyone else after a move like that.
I’m kind of impulsive, is the thing.
So when I heard through the grapevine that Buck was single (men are such gossips, amiright?) I kind of expected that he might get in touch with me. For a meaningless hookup, probably. Like it was a vibe, not true love.
But nothing.
Buck did not contact me, ever. So I guess we were just work friends? Or maybe his mean-girl reporter lady was right, and when I was working with him I became way more important to him than I would have been if I hadn’t been working alongside him at the 118. What did she say? The 118 are his family? Although we did kiss. So maybe not the best metaphor unless the family in question is the Targaryens or something.
Anyway.
I came back to the 118 a little weirded out by the complete lack of contact. Hen, Bobby and even Chimney had dropped into my socials now and again to say hey. Hen is pretty no nonsense, and I knew she knew that Buck and I kissed, so I asked her my first day back if he blamed me for him breaking up with Taylor or something.
Hen patted me on the back in a nice motherly way. “We thank you for your sacrifice. If kissing Buck was the way to break those two up I would have planted one on him myself. But it actually wasn’t about that. Don’t worry. Buck was really busy this year.”
Ouch. That Taylor chick was not popular.
If you’re wondering why I couldn’t just ask Buck myself, it’s because he got struck by lightning right before I came back. Like what are the chances? He has the worst luck. Although I dunno maybe Bobby should have thought twice about making one of his team go up a ladder during a freak lightning storm. I mean it’s not like lightning is drawn to the highest point or to metal or anything.
Nevermind. If Buck’s not going to his union rep about that I guess it’s none of my business.
Always remember you have the right to refuse unsafe work!
Anyways, the point is, Buck wasn’t on shift, so I couldn’t ask him. Instead I got to drive around with Bobby, Chimney, Hen, Ravi, and this Eddie guy I heard so much about but never really spent any time with when I was at the 118 before.
First of all, Eddie is like, bizarrely hot. Like it’s just unrealistic. And his hotness would be a little distracting if he wasn’t so quiet. Like if he’d had that level of hotness combined with cockiness I would have been done for, but it was like he didn’t even know he was hot. He wasn’t sullen or anything, he just really only spoke when he was spoken to. He was friendly enough to everyone but me. After he lowkey ignored something I said I sort of looked at Chimney like, what? And Chimney just said Eddie took a while to warm up to people. Give it time.
But we kept on sort of reaching for the same pieces of equipment at the same time and stepping on each other’s toes and stuff, and finally I kind of snapped at him and was like, “You know I’m a fully trained firefighter, right? You don’t have to keep stepping between me and the equipment.”
He literally blushed and it was, honestly, pretty adorable. “Believe me, I know what you can do. Buck used to tell me stories about all the wild stuff you did. Plus, you know, I saw you on the news.”
“Okay, then what is the deal, man?” I asked. “Bobby assigns the jobs. Is your hearing going, or something? Because I’m reaching for what I’m supposed to be reaching for.”
“Sorry. My head’s just not in the game. Buck had a doctor’s appointment about his progress like hours ago and he hasn’t texted me about it. I’ll get it together.”
And he did. It was weird. He kind of just turned his emotions off and became laser-focused on the job and we worked pretty well together after that. But he never really talked much in the shifts I worked with him before Buck came back. I did ask him if he’d ever heard from Buck about his appointment but he just sort of grimaced and said I’d have to ask Buck.
When Buck came back he was a bit subdued in general but friendly enough to me. Coworker friendly. Completely vibe free. Which was kind of what I’d expected, especially since I am actually aware that I could have contacted him if I’d really been pining away for him. I hadn’t missed him enough to make contact, so why would he? (Although, it hadn’t been that, really. It had been awkward to contact him when he had a girlfriend because of the kiss, and then if I had messaged him after they broke up it would have looked a certain way and I just noped out)
Buck was already sitting at the table when I came in and poured myself a coffee. Everyone was pretty happy he was back–light teasing all around–but the funniest thing was when Eddie came in.
Remember, this is this extremely business-like, quiet guy who hasn’t said boo to anyone since I started back.
He walked in like normal, but when he walked past Buck’s chair he leaned down and hugged him from behind, and then kissed him on the cheek like four times.
This was apparently not normal behavior because everyone stopped and watched him go get his coffee with their jaws on the floor.
Some probie from another shift looked at Buck and asked, “Is that your boyfriend?”
Buck laughed and said they were just friends, and then Hen tilted her head all skeptical and was like, “The ‘just’ in that sentence is doing a lot of work. You two might not be dating, but you’re not ‘just’ anything.”
Eddie finally noticed everyone looking at him and he got this confused look on his face and was just like, “What? I’m Latino. I kiss people. And I’m happy my best friend is back at work. I missed you, Buck.”
Buck took this as well as he usually took compliments, which was happily if a little awkwardly, but he said, “How could you miss me? I saw you yesterday.”
“Yeah, but not at work,” Eddie said.
“He’s got you there,” Chimney said. “He’s right. It is good to have you back. I said we should have had a cake with lightning striking a tiny little you, but Eddie wouldn’t let me. Apparently an injury cake is only funny when it’s me.”
“I wouldn’t have thought it was funny when it was you, either. I wasn’t here back then,” Eddie said.
“It’s funny I always have to remind myself of that,” Hen said. “I always think that you and Buck started at the same time for some reason.”
I can see why Hen thought that. Because now that Buck was back at work, Eddie just lit up. Not like he was suddenly a social butterfly or anything, but Buck constantly drew him into conversations if he ever seemed like he’d been quiet for too long. And I’m pretty outgoing, too, so I’d considered poking at him before, but I’d been sure Eddie would have been annoyed at someone constantly talking to him. But I was wrong, he was actually really friendly and kind of funny in a mean-funny way that was actually pretty awesome. I guess I understood what everyone saw in Eddie when Buck was there to bring him out of his shell. I started to think maybe I’d mesh okay with the team after all.
And then my friend Meredith called while we were getting ready for supper. I took the call and then sat down with a sigh.
“Bad phone call?” Bobby asked.
“No, not really. Just kind of annoying when your friends with kids are always trying to get you to babysit them. Like if I’d wanted a rugrat I would have had one,” I said.
Buck frowned. “I thought you liked kids.”
“I do! It’s just so annoying when you think your friend is calling to catch up and they just want to talk to you because the nanny’s sick.”
“But that’s kind of great though, because it means your friends trust you with the most important thing in their life,” Buck said.
Eddie quirked a smile. “That reminds me, Buck. I have an early appointment tomorrow and I don’t think I’ll be able to take Christopher to school on time. You think you can swing by?”
(I want it noted that I think I misinterpreted what Eddie was going for with this comment. He meant it like a self-deprecating comment about admitting to being a parent who was shamelessly taking advantage of his overly generous friend, and I thought it was directed at me. Just keep that in mind)
“If I come a little earlier I can try out that new pancake recipe on you and Christopher,” Buck said, completely missing the subtext.
Eddie rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to make us breakfast.” He paused for a second and then smiled. “I mean I’m not going to say no.”
Buck smiled brightly.
I was still a little mad about Eddie’s comment. Like I thought he was trying to tell everyone what a horrible friend I was because Buck was not only taking care of his kid, but offering to make breakfast, too, so I snapped at him. “You really think it’s fair to ask the guy who’s doing you a favor to make you breakfast?”
“He didn’t ask me to,” Buck said. “I offered.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to make him breakfast as a thank you?” I persisted.
“People don’t usually thank me when I cook for them,” Eddie said warily.
I rolled my eyes. “Weaponized incompetence.”
Chimney held up a hand. “Whoa there. Eddie’s got faults, but he’s not purposely bad at cooking. He tries, like, a lot.”
“Not in my kitchen, he doesn’t,” Bobby muttered.
“I thought everyone takes a turn being your sous chef?” I asked.
“I take Eddie’s turn,” Buck said. “It wasn’t Eddie’s choice. We all decided he could help out in other ways.”
“But who cooks for your kid?”
Eddie grinned. “He’s a kid. He doesn’t have a refined palate. He asks for buttered pasta and vegetables a lot. Or, you know, hotdogs. And Carla–his homecare aid–she cooks meals and leaves them for us. My aunt does that, too, and my Abuela used to when she still lived here. Plus Buck cooks us a casserole now and again. And despite what they say there are a few things I can pull off.”
“Name one thing,” Hen said.
“Those tamales you made for Taylor and I were amazing,” Buck said.
Hen shook her head. “Oh you sweet summer child, Buck. You really think those weren’t his Abuela’s?”
Buck gasped. “Is this true, Eddie?”
“If you thought I could cook tamales like that, why wouldn’t you ask me to make them for you?” Eddie asked.
“I thought it was just something you did for special occasions,” Buck said.
“If your grandma can cook amazing tamales, why don’t you get her to teach you?” I asked.
“One, she moved back to Texas. Two, she banned me from the kitchen.”
Everyone laughed, and Bobby started clearing plates. “See, I’m not heartless. If Eddie’s Abuela can’t teach him, no one can.”
The only thing that really changed from the last time that I’d worked there was that Eddie and Buck were just automatically paired off in everything. At first I thought that would mean I wouldn’t get to do anything fun, but I got to do my regular shenanigans paired off with Ravi and even sometimes Bobby, so I wasn’t complaining.
One time I was standing looking up at a Buck doing a ladder rescue spotted by Eddie, and I looked over at Cap. “Those two sure work well together,” I said.
Cap laughed. “I know I should vary the teams a bit more often, but they’re kind of a dream team. I’ve never seen them argue about how a rescue should go. They just get on like a–” he paused.
“House on fire?” I finished.
“Yeah. Not the best expression to use about firefighters, though.”
We both had a little chuckle.
Next shift, Bobby had an announcement. “Eddie, after this shift you’re going to be working with another fire hall for a couple of weeks.”
“What? Why?” Unsurprisingly, the angry exclamation was from Buck, not Eddie.
“The 104 lost 3 people in that big apartment fire. They’re struggling, and they need experienced firefighters to take some shifts while they get back on their feet. I let their captain look at our personnel files, and he thought Eddie would be the best fit, and I agree,” Bobby said.
Buck groaned and shoved Eddie playfully. “Why do you have to be so annoyingly competent?”
“Don’t you think Buck would be better with new people than me? He’s a lot friendlier. Well, apparently. He wasn’t all that friendly to me when I showed up.”
“I think if anyone has the compassion and emotional intelligence to help these people who just lost people they worked with for years, it’s you,” Bobby said.
Buck groaned again. “Ugh, you’re so right. Eddie, go back to being repressed and ragey so we don’t have to share you.”
I glanced at Eddie to see if this offended him, but he just gave Buck that same fond smile he always directed Buck’s way. “Let’s just enjoy our last shift together for a while, Evan,” he said.
Buck didn’t even seem to notice Eddie used his first name because he’d had another worrying thought. “Wait, what if they like Eddie and want to keep him.”
“He’s not a puppy, Buck,” Hen said.
“But he’s ours!” Buck said.
“Okay, meeting over. Let’s get to some of those maintenance tasks we need to do,” Bobby said.
“But Bobby! It’s only temporary, right?”
Bobby walked away.
Eddie walked past Buck and rested a hand on Buck’s shoulder briefly as he went by. “You’ll be fine, Buck.”
“Yeah but what if you cut your line?”
“He’ll just get himself out of it on his own, the same way he did with us,” Chimney said.
Buck kept muttering about Eddie’s competence like it was a bad thing, and then they went about their day. When they were all in the locker room changing at the end of shift, Buck came back to worrying about Eddie leaving.
“But we’re finally back on shift together again,” he complained.
“You can come over whenever you want,” Eddie said. “Christopher would love it if you were over more.”
“Is it possible for Buck to be over more?” Chimney asked. “I thought you two were practically living together.”
Buck rolled his eyes at Chimney and otherwise ignored him. “I don’t like this.”
Eddie laughed at him and looked around at the rest of the locker room. “Don’t let Buck do anything stupid, okay?”
“I once saw you climb the drainpipe of a burning house,” Buck said. “And you cut your safety line.”
“Feel free to tell my new coworkers not to let me do anything stupid if you see any of them,” Eddie said, and he ducked out the door.
“New coworkers! New coworkers!” Buck called after him. “I think my heart actually broke a little.” He ran after Eddie.
I looked at Hen and Chimney. “Do they know how they sound?”
Hen shrugged. “They don’t care. They just really love each other. It’s cute.”
“Did Buck really not like Eddie at first?”
“I mean, it’s Buck. He doesn’t have enough malice inside him to keep up unfriendliness for long. But yeah, he was annoyed because Eddie started as a probie and no one treated him like a probie.”
“Why not?”
“He was a medic with two tours in Afghanistan under his belt. He was just calm and competent from the start. Plus he had a Silver Star. Hard to push a war hero around and call him probie.”
“The people who trained me would have found a way,” Chimney said. “Especially since Eddie is part Mexican.”
I’ve always heard stories about how awful some firehouses were to women or anyone who was not your basic white heterosexual male, and I kind of wanted to say something to Hen and Chimney for being trailblazers and making things easier for people like me, but I don’t know how to say that stuff, so I offered to buy them a beer. They were too busy to go out, but I made the offer, I guess.
I like Eddie, and he’s clearly a beautiful man who’s easy to work with, but I can’t pretend there wasn’t a part of me that was relieved he was gone. You know, so it would be like it was before I’d broken my leg. And maybe I was hoping to catch a few more of Buck’s open grins for myself. Maybe hang out a bit after work. Just as friends. But I was happy when Eddie finally came back, because seeing how happy Buck was made it so worth the different dynamic. No wonder Cap let them work together more than protocol dictated. They were so freaking cute.
One night when we were catching a quick bite before bunking down, Ravi brought up a friend from high school who he was going to marry if they were still single at forty.
“See, I don’t get that,” Buck said. “If you like someone enough to marry them, why wait until you’re forty?”
“The point is that it’s someone you get along with so much as friends, but you’re not in love with them,” Ravi said.
“But then why get married?”
“Because they don’t want to die alone, maybe?” Eddie suggested.
Ravi spoke up. “No, it’s someone who you know would be a good spouse to someone but not necessarily you. Or the timing has never been right but you know you could get along if you made it work.”
“You ever have anyone like that?” Chimney asked the group at large.
Hen nodded. “Yeah, but it was a guy, so I never would have gone through with it.”
“I married my high school sweetheart,” Eddie said, shrugging. “Never even thought about ending up alone.”
The whole team kind of cringed at that. No wonder. Someone told me they took the call when his wife was killed.
“Dean Lockland,” I said. The rest of the team toasted him with their hot chocolate.
Chimney shrugged. “Never had many girls as friends when I was young. If a girl liked me enough to joke about marrying me as a kid I would probably be waiting for her to this day.”
Buck gestured his agreement. “That’s what I’m saying! If someone I really loved wanted to marry me later and I liked them enough to agree I’d just wait around.”
“That’s because you take loyalty too far. I remember when I first met you and you wouldn’t date even though your girlfriend literally moved to another continent and was dating other guys,” Eddie said.
“There’s no such thing as being too loyal,” Buck muttered.
“Don’t worry, Buck, if Dean Lockland isn’t single when I’m forty you can marry me,” I said generously.
“No, Buck’s spoken for,” Eddie said. “We’re already married.”
It’s a testament to how close those two are that most of us thought they were actually secretly married, so we all started asking how they kept it secret for so long.
“No, he didn’t mean that literally,” Buck said. “He just meant that like, he took pity on me and let me be in his family.”
“No, Buck, that’s not what I meant,” Eddie said, glaring at him. “If anyone else said the kind of stuff you say about yourself I’d punch them out.”
“What’d you mean then?” Hen asked.
“I meant we’re basically married, and if Buck ever gives up on finding someone he likes better I get to keep him,” Eddie said.
Buck laughed. “You shouldn’t joke about that. You might just find me outside your house with a moving truck one day.”
Eddie laughed and someone changed the subject, but I noticed Buck glancing at him a lot after that. When everyone else went to bed, Buck was still up.
“I think he’d be up for it, if you shoot your shot,” I said to Buck.
“He was kidding,” Buck said. “He’s always teasing me. But don’t worry, I’m not in love with Eddie.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.”
“I just find it like. He said he’d get to keep me, like I was some prize. Like if he was really good and patient he’d get me.”
“Yeah. What bothers you about that?”
“Like–he could have anyone. Why doesn’t he just get someone better?”
“I think he actually wants you, Buck.”
Buck just laughed and looked at his hands. Eventually Eddie came in and gave me a dirty look. Yep. Eddie knew we’d kissed and he was not into the idea that we might do it again. Or maybe he was worried me dating Buck would mess up their big happy family. Whatever it was, I got out of there fast before he could give me a dad lecture about it.
I got enough of those from Bobby.