Chapter Text
Buck knew this was a bad idea. He knew it.
But after being catfished for the third time this year—one of them using his own photos, which was still some kind of psychological warfare—he decided he needed a little protection. A little anonymity. So he made a new profile.
Different name. Jesse B.
Different picture. One from his early twenties, taken at the beach right after he moved to LA. Maddie had snapped it on her old iPhone. He was clean-shaven, grinning with his whole face, and had that baby-faced glow of someone who hadn’t yet run into five-alarm fires and life-altering trauma.
The lighting and angle masked his birthmark entirely. No firehouse shirt, no hint of who he actually was. Just a harmless-looking guy with sun in his hair and a fake name.
It wasn’t lying, really. Just a temporary shield. Something to protect himself from the vultures.
He always told the truth before the first date. Always.
Except now, Buck was staring at the one notification he never expected.
“You’ve got a new match!”
Eddie D.
‘Just a dad, firefighter, and lover of good tacos. Swipe right if you can handle dad jokes and emergency drills.’
“No. No no no no no.” Buck backed away from the screen like it had physically burned him. “No, absolutely not. This is not happening.”
He was on his feet before he realized it, pacing the length of the loft like he could outrun the mortifying disaster currently unfolding.
Of course he matched with Eddie. Because of course the dating app he barely trusted had to go and do that. He should’ve deleted it weeks ago, right after the yoga instructor who turned out to be married and looking for “spiritual thirds.”
His phone buzzed again.
New Message from Eddie D.:
“Hey, you seem cool. I don’t usually do this app stuff but… tacos sometime?”
Buck shrieked. Full-on, hands-in-his-hair, internal combustion shrieked.
Eddie messaged him. Eddie messaged Jesse B. about tacos.
“TACOS?!?” Buck shouted at no one, voice cracking. “Since when does he use dating apps? Since when does he date guys?! Since when does he swipe right on me?!”
He grabbed a pillow off the couch and screamed into it.
This was a nuclear-level crisis.
Because Eddie didn’t know it was him. Eddie had no idea that Jesse B. was actually Evan Buckley, his best friend of years. The guy who had his kid’s artwork on his fridge and had fixed the Diaz garbage disposal twice. The guy who had stayed overnight when Eddie was recovering from shoulder surgery and definitely did not have the energy to go on casual dates with strangers.
It was Eddie. He was straight. Right? He was very straight.
Buck’s phone buzzed again.
Eddie D.:
“You look familiar. Do I know you?”
“Oh my God,” Buck whispered, horrified. “Oh my God. He knows. He knows.”
He flung himself onto the couch and covered his face with his hands. Maybe if he lay still long enough, the floor would open up and swallow him whole. Please.
Another buzz.
Eddie D.:
“Are you JeepKiss89?”
“What the hell is going on?!”
He was spiraling. Heart racing, palms sweating, brain short-circuiting in a hundred different directions.
He reached for his phone to unmatch—just click the three dots, hit “remove match,” and pretend this never happened—but his thumb hovered and… didn’t move.
Because what if Eddie liked this version of him?
What if the Jesse B. version—the confident, filtered, laid-back version—was what Eddie wanted?
And what did that say about Buck?
What did that do to him?
He sat up, phone clutched in one hand, and stared into space. “I’m gonna have to quit the firehouse,” he muttered. “I’m gonna have to fake my own death and move to Wyoming and become a lumberjack. That’s it. That’s my only option.”
Of course, that’s when the door opened.
Hen and Chimney stepped into the loft, holding iced coffees and mid-laugh—until they saw Buck.
Buck, hair wild, face pale, eyes wide, cradling his phone like a bomb and whispering about lumberjacks.
“…Do we even want to know?” Hen asked, slowly pulling out her phone.
“I’m just gonna film this,” Chim said under his breath. “For science.”
Buck didn’t even flinch. He just looked up at them like he’d seen God and said, “I matched with Eddie.”
There was a long beat of silence.
And then Hen blinked. “…Like. Our Eddie?”
Chim’s eyes lit up. “On a dating app?!”
“I didn’t mean to!” Buck wailed. “I used a fake name! And a photo from, like, ten years ago! It doesn’t even show my birthmark! He doesn’t know it’s me and he messaged me first and he thinks I’m someone else and I’m gonna die.”
Hen looked way too calm about this. “So. You catfished your best friend.”
Buck pointed at her, wild-eyed. “I didn’t mean to!”
Chim took a sip of his drink. “Honestly, I’ve seen worse starts to love stories.”
Buck screamed into the pillow again.
Hen’s phone dinged. She looked at it. Smirked.
“Well, this just got better,” she said. “Eddie just texted me: ‘Is Buck seeing anyone?’”
Buck fainted. (Almost.)