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"Who is that?" Eddie heard as he pulled on the T-shirt he'd been issued.
"You don't know who Eddie Diaz is?" another man asked.
"No, that's why I asked."
"That's Eddie Diaz; new recruit," said Captain Nash, prompting laughter. "The guys over at station seven were dying to have him, but I convinced him to join us."
Eddie snorted. Station seven covered his own house in Beverly Hills, and they'd been the first to offer Eddie this ride along. But he wanted to be out in the real LA, not going on posed calls to a bunch of his neighbor's estates.
Captain Nash continued, "C'mon, I'll introduce you to him; he likes to be called 8-Pack."
Eddie rolled his eyes. People were never gonna stop quoting that line at him. He generally didn't mind it when fans quoted things at him, but he was actually starting to regret taking that role, as the "8-Pack" references just would not stop.
Captain Nash entered the changing room, which reminded Eddie of the kinds of pretty but impractical logic he saw in some set designs. He still couldn't get over the fact that an actual fire station had glass walls for one of their most private areas. Eddie was introduced to Hen and Chimney, and he recognized both names from the LAFD's briefing on the 118. They both kept the movie references to a minimum, and neither asked him to sign anything, so Eddie thought it was a good start.
Finally, the last person he'd overheard — Buck — came in and said hello. Eddie was intrigued by his looks, of course, but also by the honest lack of recognition in his eyes. Either he was a fantastic actor in his own right, or he really had no clue who Eddie was.
It was actually kind of refreshing.
"Buck, Eddie will be shadowing you; think of him like a probie," Captain Nash said.
"But treat him better," Chimney added with a smirk.
"What does that say about how you treated me when I was a probie?" Buck snarked back.
"That we like him more than you," Hen replied.
o
"So, is this a typical day for you?" Eddie asked as they settled down on the couch with some food.
"What do you mean?" Buck asked. He had warmed up to Eddie over the course of the shift, thankfully, and though Eddie had caught a few appreciative glances, he was still completely clueless about Eddie's entire career.
"I mean, there was the bus crash, the pressure cooker, the air compressor… I guess the sewer thing had a fire, but it was more like a bomb. And you were more focused on the arm. I just thought there would be more fires, water hoses, that sort of thing."
"Oh yeah, that's a common misconception," Buck said easily. "Only 3.8% of our calls are for the kind of fires you're thinking of. The most common is medical, with 64.4%."
Eddie quickly noted that in his phone. "That's interesting. What makes up the other 32%?"
Buck's face lit up. "Well 1.2% is hazardous material spills: chemicals, toxic waste, that kind of thing. Obviously these are nationwide averages, so some stations that are right next door to a chemical manufacturer or something would see a bump, but overall we don't come across that kind of thing all that frequently."
"But it's big news when you do," Eddie agreed, remembering a chemical spill that had happened in El Paso when he was a kid. It had been all that his mother talked about for weeks.
"Yeah. Next is other hazards at 1.9% Things like bombs, live wires, that sort of thing. Rare, but not unheard of. Next is fires, like I said, and then 4.3% of our calls are for mutual aid."
"What's that?" Eddie asked.
"It's sort of a catch-all term for any call that actually came in from a fellow station. Whenever a fire or MVA needs more people, or there's some kind of natural disaster or large-scale incident. Really, mutual aid calls can be broken down themselves to include the other categories save one, with roughly the same percentages. It's enough to bump most of the categories slightly, but not the overall statistical trend."
"Makes sense," Eddie agreed, adding all of this to his role notes. He'd need to talk to the writer and see if they could spice up the calls in the script a little. Not that Eddie wasn't excited about getting to play an action hero with all the fire and explosions, but they could at least add a bit of realism by including some other kinds of emergencies.
"Really the only category that mutual aid doesn't include is the next highest, which is false alarms and crank calls," Buck continued, clearly passionate about the subject. "Year before last, those made up 7.4% of calls."
"Right, because if another station or organization is calling for more help, then it obviously is a real call," Eddie nodded.
"Yeah, exactly. And lastly at 16.9% is basically everything else. That can include weather, wild animals, good intent calls, lockouts… all kinds of things."
"So you could potentially go several shifts in a row without a single stereotypical fire call," Eddie mused.
"Yup." Buck nodded. "Especially since those are all just averages across the nation, but they're affected by a lot of factors that will skew a particular station or department's callouts. Seasonally there are a bunch of changes that shift the kinds of calls we get, not to mention one off incidents like natural disasters and terror attacks."
That made sense to Eddie. "Right, California has earthquakes and fire season, the Midwest has tornadoes, the Gulf and East Coasts have hurricanes… and depending on the season and locations, you've got blizzards, flooding, heat waves…"
"Yeah, like today's incidents were medical, medical, rescue, and a gas hazard, which included a triple threat of toxicity, pressure rupture, and fire. Which is statistically average for a shift like this. But also, with the heat today, there are probably some stations that had just a dozen calls for heatstroke and the like, while others were helping with the electric grid issues. More people are trying to escape the heat in the water, so stations near the beaches will get more EMS calls for riptide victims and such, not because the tides are any worse, but just because there are more people there to be caught in them."
"So with this heat, you're probably grateful not to have to put on your full gear and run into a fire," Eddie concluded.
Buck laughed. "It's definitely less fun than usual on days like this," he agreed.
"So was it a shock to you to learn all that, or did you know beforehand what the calls would be like?" Eddie asked. "Like did they explain it at the Academy, or…"
"Well, I actually wanted to become a firefighter after watching Backdraft," Buck said with a self-deprecating grin. "So yeah, I was a little disappointed at first at the amount of time I spent standing around watching our paramedics work and feeling useless, but the Academy did actually prepare us pretty well for that. In fact, some people dropped out early on because of that. The instructors made it very clear that if you were only in it for the fires themselves, then this wouldn't be the job for you. Some of the cadets were clearly adrenaline junkies, or obsessed with looking heroic in front of a burning building, and the instructors were pretty good about prodding them out the door."
"So if we really want to show what being a firefighter is like, our movie should be less Backdraft and more like the DMV but with halligans?"
"Some days!" Buck laughed brightly. Before he could continue, the alarm went off. As they hurried down to the truck, Buck said, "When we get back, remind me to tell you about the call at the DMV in my first month!"
o
Eddie was exhausted by the time their shift ended, and he'd barely done anything himself. Buck had been the one doing all the work, while Eddie had bobbed along behind like a duckling, asking questions and trying not to get into the way. He'd been able to play around with some of the tools like the halligan while Buck restocked the truck during their break, but still, that shouldn't have been enough exertion to explain his current state.
Eddie knew he was fit — he'd been working to get from romcom lead physique to action star physique in preparation for this role, and he'd had some grueling days on set before, — but that was nothing on the kind of strength and endurance that actual firefighters clearly possessed. Buck had put in more than double the effort as Eddie, and yet he still had the energy to cheerfully bicker with Chimney as they all changed back into their civilian clothes.
Buck was... Eddie was very comfortable with his bisexuality, but he was a little surprised at how hard he was crushing on Buck. It wasn't just his strength, or his sweetness — though Eddie was by no means the only one who had been swept off his feet by those qualities, given the reactions of both the little girl he'd rescued from a claw machine earlier and the older sister who was supposed to have been watching her. Buck was also intelligent and funny, and his love of information reminded Eddie strongly of his son Chris. Buck was clearly good with kids, and unlike his last few dates, Eddie could actually see himself introducing Buck to Chris — they'd probably get along like a house on fire.
Not that Eddie had seen one of those today, he thought, amused.
And it wasn't just the lack of the arrogant Hollywood attitude that had turned Eddie off of more than one co-star. Or the lack of obsessive gushing that tended to come from his fans. Buck had admitted earlier that he hadn't watched a lot of movies as a kid or teen, so he'd managed to miss Eddie's teenage heartthrob years. And he wasn't into romcoms, so he'd not seen any of his more recent movies. He'd actually had a break at one point and scrolled through Eddie's IMDB page, just to check, before confirming that he hadn't seen a single thing on it. He'd never even heard of Eddie before today, and honestly, Eddie hadn't realized exactly how attractive that actually was.
He hadn't been this instantly smitten with someone since Shannon, and his sisters would never let Eddie live it down if they found out.
True, he was gearing up to head to Vancouver for a few months for shooting, but after that he'd be back in LA. It wasn't a totally crazy idea to ask Buck out on a date. Right?
"Need help getting to your car?" Buck's voice interrupted Eddie's thoughts, and he realized that they were alone in the ridiculous glass-walled changing room.
"Oh, I didn't realize—"
"Don't worry about it," Buck smiled reassuringly. "I was that way for at least my first month on the job. It takes a while for you to get used to the pace. Are you ok to drive?"
Eddie quickly gathered his wits and his bag. "Yeah, I'm good. Just processing. You gave me a lot more to think about than I was expecting."
Buck wilted slightly. "Oh yeah, I forget that not everyone likes all that information — sorry to dump it all on you."
"No, not like that," Eddie quickly reassured him as they headed out towards the parking lot. "My son Christopher does the exact same thing, so I'm used to it. And I found the information really helpful, hence the processing. I actually want to talk to the director about making a few changes so it'll be more realistic."
"Oh!" Buck brightened. "That's cool, then."
That smile did things to Eddie's heart, and he decided to go for it. "So I was hoping that I could get your number, actually."
"Oh, in case you had more questions about the job? Sure!" Buck said eagerly.
"Well, yes," Eddie chuckled. "But also maybe we could get dinner or something sometime?"
Buck blushed. "Y— You mean like a date?"
"Yeah, like a date," Eddie agreed.
"I'd like that," Buck admitted.
"Me too," Eddie said. It would take a little effort to work around both his and Buck's unusual schedules, but he was willing to put in the effort. He had a feeling that Buck would be worth it.