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“You’ll never guess what happened to Tommy and me this weekend,” said Buck, slamming a mid-sized cardboard box down on the kitchen counter in the fire station’s loft.
“What’s in the box?” Ravi asked, reaching for it.
Buck swatted his hand away. “Wait ‘til I’ve finished the story!”
Hen gave him an unimpressed look over the rim of her glasses and okay, Buck kind of deserved that. Probably not the most adult-like behaviour to be exhibiting at work, but if he opened the box now that would give the story away.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Chimney after taking a sip of coffee. “What happened over the weekend?”
Before Buck could answer, the alarm rang, calling them to a structure fire. During the ride over, Bobby coordinated with the incident command and gave them each their instructions so they’d be ready to hit the ground running once they arrived on scene. So, Buck didn’t have a chance to tell the story of his and Tommy’s weekend misadventures.
Buck put the story out of his mind as Buck and Eddie worked with a team from the 133 to clear the building of anyone trapped inside and spraying the unburnt walls and ceilings in an effort to keep the fire from spreading further.
After five hours of gruelling work, the fire was finally contained and they piled back in the rigs to head back to the station, utterly depleted.
“I’m gonna take us offline for a few hours so we can shower, change and do any maintenance and restock,” Bobby said as they stumbled back out of the truck again.
After everyone had hit the showers and changed, they gathered back in the loft to eat some of Bobby’s reheated lasagna, and replenish their caffeine levels before turning to maintenance and inventory.
“You were going to tell us about what you and Tommy did over the weekend, Buck,” Eddie said, sitting down at the table with a plate piled with reheated lasagna.
“Yeah, tell us the story,” said Ravi. “I’m dying to see what’s in that box.” Buck shot him a glare and he added, “just not literally.” And he backed away from the box Buck had left on the counter at the start of shift.
Buck plopped down in his usual spot at the dining table. The same spot, it turned out, where Tommy had sat when he’d been part of the 118, a fact that absolutely did not drive Buck feral. No, it did not. He took a sip of water and began, “Tommy and I were on a date, and we had a run-in with a bear.” He spread his hands wide.
“Oh, yeah?” Hen asked. “What club were you at? Anywhere Karen and I would like?”
Buck didn’t really process what Hen had said or else he might have stopped to clarify before moving on with the next part of his story, “I was riding - ”
“Whoa!” said Chimney plugging his ears. “I do not need to know this much about your bedroom habits and neither does your sister, because if you tell me I’m gonna need to trauma bond with her about it.”
“ – my mountain bike,” Buck finished.
Chim dropped his hands from his ears with an exaggerated look of relief. “Continue.” He made a corresponding gesture with his hands.
“Gee thanks,” said Buck pulling a funny face. “Any way, we took our bikes out to check out some of the trails near Angeles National Forest, which did you know that Angeles National Forest was the first National Forest in California and the second in the country.”
“I did not know that,” said Bobby. Buck couldn’t tell if he was actually interested or just being polite but Buck liked to err on the side of knowledge is power even if said knowledge was a fun fact about the history of a National Forest.
“Yeah, so it was originally the San Gabriel Timberland Reserve. President Harrison signed an executive order in 1892.” Even as Buck started spewing facts, he could see his co-workers’ eyes starting to glaze over, but he couldn’t help himself. At least Tommy had been interested when Buck had pulled up Angeles National Forest and San Gabriel Mountains National Monument Visitor Guide on his phone and started to read the most interesting bits aloud. “It was renamed in 1908 and then Obama designated the San Gabriel Mountains as a National Monument in 2014.” He was about to get into a whole spiel about the differences between a National Forest, a National Monument, and a National Park when Hen spoke up.
“So how does the bear factor into all this?” she asked with a flourish of her fork. “Did you need rescue a heavy-set gay guy on the trail or something?”
It took Buck a moment to figure out what she meant, but once he’d connected the dots he snorted. “Wrong kind of bear,” he said. “So, we were riding along this trail, a lot of tight corners, not the greatest visibility. I round the corner and suddenly there’s this big, fat black bear just sitting in the middle of the trail eating gooseberries. I had to break real suddenly cuz obviously I didn’t want to hit the bear.”
“Obviously,” said Eddie, nodding along.
“Tommy almost ran into me,” Buck continued and chuckled as he recalled the look of wide-eyed “oh-shit-that’s-a-bear” that had come over Tommy.
“So, what did you do?” asked Chim. “Clearly whatever it was worked seeing as you are – as far as I can tell – completely intact and we didn’t get a call that either of you were in the hospital.”
“At first, nothing,” said Buck. “We just stood there staring and the bear and the bear was just sitting there staring at us like it had no idea what to do either.”
“Ah, a The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly moment,” said Chim as though that would mean anything to Buck.
“And then I remembered something about making yourself look real big and threatening to scare off a bear,” Buck continued.
“I thought you were supposed to play dead,” said Hen.
“So, I hopped off my bike, lifted it over my head and yelled, and the bear ran away.” Buck still felt proud of himself for his quick thinking. Tommy had most certainly expressed his appreciation later that night in the shower after they’d gotten home.
“That’s quite a story,” said Chim. “Almost too good to be true.”
“Ah,” said Buck, holding up one finger while digging in his pocket for his phone with his other hand. “Tommy had his Go-Pro going and he caught the whole thing on video.” He pulled up the file and his team passed his phone around.
“That’s crazy, brother,” said Eddie with a shake of his head.
“So, what about playing dead?” Hen asked. “Because I’m pretty sure I’ve heard something about that.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that, so I looked it up,” said Buck, accepting his phone back from Bobby. “It turns out that it depends on what type of bear and whether it’s attacked you or not and whether the attack is predatory or defensive. This was a black bear, so if it had attacked us, playing dead would have been the wrong thing to do because when they attack it tends to be more predatory than defensive. Not that they attack very often. Apparently there hasn’t been a fatal bear attack in California since the 1980s. But the playing dead thing works with grizzlies though. I actually found this really interesting podcasts about animal attacks called Tooth and Claw. One of the hosts is a wildlife biologist who specializes in bears, so it’s really factual and interesting and they really try to make it so you have a healthy appreciation of animals rather than creating fear.”
“So, do we get to know what’s in the box now,” Ravi asked.
“How about we save what’s in the box until we’ve completed our maintenance and inventory checks,” said Bobby, gathering everyone’s dirty dishes.
Buck had been so preoccupied with telling his story that he’d forgotten to eat, so he proceeded to shovel his lasagna into his mouth in three massive forkfuls before heading off to find where Hen had hidden his clipboard.
After a couple hours spent on maintenance and inventory, Bobby put the station back online and within minutes of doing so, they were hit with the first in a series of low stress calls: an old man who’d fallen in the bathroom because he’d refused to get safety bars installed (luckily he’d been able to crawl to his phone otherwise Buck shuddered to think when he might have gotten help); a kid stuck on a bill board whose ladder had fallen while he was spray painting a tag (they’d gotten to see Athena for that one); a few medical calls; a small kitchen fire. Nothing too crazy or too time consuming, but the calls ate away at the rest of the shift so that by the time they got back from the scene of a minor car accident, the shift was over.
They had all changed back into their civvies and were getting ready to head home when Ravi suddenly exclaimed. “The box!”
“Oh yeah,” said Chim. “You never explained what’s in the box.” And with that, the entirety of A-shift followed Buck back up to the loft. “So, one of the things I learned from listening to Tooth and Claw is that if you’re going to be out in bear country, you should always carry bear spray. So, Tommy and I got everyone bear spray.” With that he proceeded to hand Hen three canisters. “One for Karen, one for Denny, and one for you.”
“Cuz we do so much hiking,” said Hen with a forced smile.
“Hey, there were over 300 bear sightings in the city in last year,” said Buck. “LA is bear country.”
“So, your whole weekend bear scaring date was cool and all,” said Eddie, “but I didn’t know you liked to mountain bike.”
Everyone on the team who’d ever been to Buck’s loft turned and fixed Eddie with a look.
“What?” he asked.
“You’ve been to my apartment how many times?” Buck asked, cocking one eyebrow.
Eddie shrugged. “I don’t keep track of that.”
“What’s hanging on the wall by my door?” Buck asked.
Eddie frowned and then his eyes widened at the realization. “A bike?”
“Yeah, a mountain bike,” said Buck. “Did you think it was for decoration or something?” And he proceeded to throw a can of bear spray at his best friend.
Which was exactly when Tommy topped the stairs to the loft and Buck’s eyes locked on to him and his brain stopped processing anything besides “Tommy!Tommy!Tommy!Tommy!” He must have said one of those out loud because Chim rolled his eyes.
But Buck didn’t care because Tommy was there and they had another date planned for that night. “Hey, Evan, what’s the hold up?”
“Oh, thank god,” said Eddie who proceeded to run and hide behind Tommy. “Save me from your boyfriend please.”
“What’s going on?” Tommy asked as he gently pushed Eddie off him and crossed the loft towards Buck and gave him a hug.
Buck leaned into Tommy’s embrace pressing his nose into Tommy’s shoulder and inhaling his natural musk. Even though Buck hadn’t felt particularly worked up, he immediately felt more relaxed as soon as Tommy’s scent hit him. “I was telling them about the bear we saw over the weekend,” said Buck.
“Oh, yeah?” Tommy broke off the hug, but still kept his arm around Buck’s waist. “That was a pretty cool glitter beard.”
“Not that bear,” said Buck, passing out the last of the bear spray. “The other one.”
“Oh yeah,” said Tommy.
“Hold up,” said Hen. “There was a glitter beard involved?”
Buck opened his mouth to tell the team about the rest of their weekend, but Tommy – after checking his watch – spoke first. “Hey, Evan, we need to leave right now if we’re going to make our dinner reservation.”
“Oh yeah,” said Buck. “We’re checking out this new Vietnamese place tonight. I’ll tell you all about the glitter beard next shift.” And with that, he walked out of the station hand-in-hand with his boyfriend.