Chapter Text
‘Cause I like to keep my issues drawn
But it’s always darkest before the dawn
Shake it out, shake it out
Shake it out, Florence + The Machine
1
TO BE SEEN
The first time Ellie Cohen saw Evan Buckley was, of course, during an emergency. The fire had started on the floor under hers, and the sensation of a hellish heat and the smoke in her lungs woke her up in the middle of the night, certain that she was going to die burned because the fire had slipped to her bedroom and the only thing she could do was cuddle up on a corner of her room to wait for the end. However, she still decided to call 911 because she was afraid of spending her last moments alone.
The 911 dispatcher was a man named Josh who promised that everything was going to be okay, that help was on the way. Despite his kind voice, Ellie didn´t believe him, but at leas she wasn’t going to die alone. After spending all her life alone, she wanted someone to be with her in her final minutes, even if it was through a phone.
“Ellie, listen to me,” Josh said while she was crying and coughing, feeling her head light; maybe she was finally at death's doors. “Ellie, hey, can you hear me? LAFD is there. I need you to move to a safe place. Get as far away from the window as you can, okay? Help is on the way.”
Ellie didn’t respond, feeling how her grip around her phone vanished when she lost strength in her arms once the lightheaded sensation grew and muffled the sound of the window of her bedroom shattering to pieces and then, a male figure hovered over her through fire and smoke, but she couldn’t see his face because it was like her eyelids weighed a ton and she couldn’t keep them open.
“LAFD. My name is Buck. I’m gonna get you out of here, okay?”
Ellie really wanted to answer, but the smoke in her lungs was making breathing feel way harder than it should be and her head was spinning. Ellie assumed that Buck must have had to get her out through the same window he went through, but all she knew was that suddenly she was in an ambulance on her way to the hospital for smoke inhalation.
The second time Ellie Cohen saw Evan Buckley was by chance. A month after the fire that made her lose her apartment and almost die in the process, life had been pretty tough. The new apartment she was living in was smaller, with walls so thin she could hear her next-door neighbor’s constant arguments with his girlfriend, and she didn’t have hot water half of the week, but at least she was alive. That had to mean something, right? Even if nobody visited her in the hospital and all her belongings had burned, being alive had to mean that things will get better. Or maybe they will get worse. What could be worse than a fire? Maybe a tsunami. Ellie had never learned to swim, so yes, a tsunami would definitely be worse.
After a terrible week at the café where she worked, Ellie decided to go for a drink, hoping to distract herself a little. Luckily, the place wasn’t bad; if it had been awful, she surely would’ve cried, and that would’ve been pathetic. If she was going to cry, it’d be behind the closed door of the horrible apartment she’d been living in for a month and hated with all her heart, not at the bar of a place she’d never been before.
“Three beers and a glass of water, please,” said someone by her side, talking to the man behind the bar.
“On the way.”
Ellie turned her head to look at the stranger, taking in his broad shoulders, blond hair and the reddish mark on his left eyebrow. His face wasn’t familiar, but that voice…
“Buck?” she asked before she had time to think.
The guy turned his head to the left to look at her, visibly confused by the fact that a girl he didn’t meet suddenly spoke to him, but his expression softened as soon as he looked at her.
“You’re the girl from that fire in Wilshire. Apartment 513, right? I had to get through the window,” Buck recognized.
For some strange reason, it almost felt good that he remembered. After so long being invisible, to be seen by someone was… nice.
“I’m Ellie. I live in Van Nuys now,” she said. “I wanted to thank you for saving me that night”.
Buck shook his head with a humble smile.
“I was just doing my job.”
“Anyway, thank you. If it weren’t for the 911 dispatcher and you, I’d probably be dead right now.”
“Here you have three beers and a glass of water,” said the guy behind the bar as soon as he returned with the drinks Buck had ordered.
“Thanks, man,” Buck said with a smile and looked at Ellie again once he grabbed the drinks from the bar. “I’m glad to see you’re okay. I asked about you at the hospital the next day, but they told me you had already been discharged.”
“Thanks again.”
When Buck shook his head again with the same smile as before, Ellie thought that it was it: he was going back to his table and she was going to stay and finish the rest of her beer before going back to her apartment, and tomorrow morning, she was going to get up, take a shower, and go back to her new normal. However, Buck put the drinks back at the bar and handed her his phone.
“Do you think you could give me your number? If you ever need anything, you can call me.”
Buck sent her the first message while they were still standing in front of each other and then returned to his table, leaving Ellie with her heart racing and a smile on her face because he was charming.
The third time Ellie Cohen saw Evan Buckley was by design. After a couple weeks exchanging texts almost daily about the things they did during the day—the rescues he did and the most annoying clients she had dealt with during her shift—they decided to go out for a drink and he told her about Abby, his girlfriend who had left after her mom passed away and at whose house he was living while waiting for her to come back to Los Angeles. Ellie listened quietly, thinking of course he is in a relationship. He is a great guy. Not just as a firefighter, but as Buck, and that’s why she decided it was better this way—being friends was better than letting her feelings develop into something more and end up heartbroken.
Little by little, they reached an understanding that didn’t need words, a connection that arose from recognizing themselves in the other—the same need for validation from others and the loneliness of someone who grew up feeling nobody was on their side. But Buck at least had Maddie, his older sister, about whom he told her a little. On the other hand, Ellie didn’t have much to say because she had no family, friends, nor no one, really.
Confessing that she was six years old when her parents abandoned her in a city she didn’t know wasn’t part of her plan, but she couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of her mouth, and suddenly, she was telling him that she grew up in a series of foster homes, but none of them were ever truly her home because sooner or later, she’d be taken to another family for a few months, and then she had to move to another city again. By the time she finished, Buck was looking at her with the saddest expression Ellie had ever seen on anyone.
“I don´t even think about it often anymore, but after the fire… when I woke up in the hospital, a nurse told me they couldn’t reach my family to let them know I was okay. I told them I don’t have anyone,” she murmured, taking another swig of her beer, hoping it would help ease the lump that had settled in her throat mid-conversation.
“You have me now,” Buck promised, smiling at her.
The fourth time Ellie Cohen saw Evan Buckley, as they walked through the supermarket aisles together because they both needed to restock their fridges and Buck suggested they go together, Ellie knew Buck was going to be in her life for a long time. Preferable forever.
💛
“Is that everything?” Buck questioned, placing the last box on the floor.
“Yeah, that was the last one,” Ellie nodded and then smiled at him apologetically. “Thank you for helping me, sorry for bothering you on your day off.”
Buck shook his head.
“It’s okay, I didn’t have anything better to do today. Besides, helping you to move out of your old apartment after you finally quit that horrible job is right where I want to be,” he said with an easy smile on his lips and then looked at the mess of boxes and a few pieces of furniture around the place. “Where do we start?”
They decided to start with the bedroom, where Buck helped her to put the mattress in the middle of the room because she wanted a clear path from the window in case another fire occurred and LAFD needed to get to her from outside.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m just being practical,” Ellie defended herself when she felt Buck’s eyes on her. “But actually, I’m not really worried. Wanna know why?”
“Why?” Buck asked with curiosity.
“Because I know that if something like that happens again, you’ll get me out of it again,” she said with a smile.
Buck tried to hide his smile, but he failed completely and ended up smiling widely and brightly, making Ellie smile too because Buck was always stunning, but when he smiled, it was like the whole world lit up.
“Yeah, I’ll do it,” he promised.
After they finished the bedroom, Buck offered to cook something for them to eat, so they went to the nearest supermarket and bought groceries. Once they were back at Ellie's new apartment, she arranged the couch in front of the TV and chose a random show for them to listen to while Buck cooked and Ellie sat on the counter and watched him work, praising how good he had become lately. Once Buck finished, they sat up at the dinner table they just accommodated and ate while talking about Buck’s last 24 hours shift at the firehouse and Ellie’s last horrible shift at that horrible café where both swore to never go again.
“Come here, I want to show you the reason why I chose this place,” Ellie said after they finished eating dinner, grabbing one of Buck’s hands and pulling him across the living room to the balcony through the sliding glass doors. “It is a great view, isn’t it?” she asked with a smile, looking at all of the lights in LA at night.
“Yeah, it is,” Buck nodded, just as impressed as her with the wonderful view. “You know, I might come to your home every night to have a look at it,” he joked and turned his head to the left to see Ellie.
Ellie smiled and then made a promise, “You’re always welcome, Buck.”
Buck felt his heart make something weird inside his chest at the honesty in her words and the fond look on Ellie’s face, but he just smiled and then looked at LA again.
💛
“So, Eddie is for Eduardo?” Ellie asked, sitting in the passenger seat in Buck’s car. He had picked her up from work and was driving to her apartment. Ellie insisted that it wasn’t necessary, but Buck is always so stubborn and sometimes—most of the time—she just lets him win.
“He said no,” Buck answered, all sulky. “I just don’t get what everybody sees in him. I mean, he is good, but…”
“You’re just jealous,” Ellie said.
Buck huffed.
“Yeah, sure. Jealous.”
“I mean it. He is handsome and has an eight pack and a silver star. You’re jealous of him.”
“How do you know he’s handsome? You haven’t even seen him,” Buck accused.
“He sounds handsome,” Ellie justified. “Hen sent me a message in the morning and she said he’s tall, has a great body, and big, brown eyes. I bet he’s really hot.”
“I’m gonna stop the car right here and let you walk home,” Buck threatened.
Ellie laughed, amused by bothering him, especially because she was sure this Eddie guy must be really attractive if Buck was feeling this threatened by him, even if he would say he doesn’t have why to feel threatened. But after almost half a year being friends, Ellie could easily tell when Buck was upset by something, and it was always funny to make him more and more upset.
Once they were in front of her building, the one where she had been living for the past two months, Ellie got down of the car, but she leaned towards the open window to look at Buck while a wide smile.
“You think I can meet Eddie one of these days?” she joked.
“Good night, Ellie,” Buck said flatly.
Ellie laughed, delighted, and then went inside the building.
💛
When Buck went to pick her up from work the next night, Ellie was expecting the large list of complaints about Eddie Diaz just like the day before, but at some point during his shift, Buck apparently had decided that Eddie Diaz was actually a great guy and they were friends now. Ellie was impressed, but she didn’t have time to think about it too deeply when Buck suddenly told her that his sister was in Los Angeles for a few days and he wanted to introduce them. For a moment, Ellie tried to think of a bad excuse for not having to do it because she had never been good at getting along with people, but Buck had smiled brightly and she ended up saying yes and walking by his side to the place he was still living in—Abby’s home.
Ellie had only been there once, a month ago or so; Buck invited her over to watch a bad TV show that was new and kind of popular, and it was easy for Ellie to recognize the ghost he had been living with for months. Everything in that house was Abby’s, even Buck, whose mind drifted to a very far place, a place where she walks by that door with her luggage and his heart stops hurting after almost half a year, but the night ended without Abby’s appearance and Ellie decided that she didn’t want to be in a haunted house even if the place was lovely, and hoped Buck would decide to let go of the invisible ghosts and live again soon.
The look in Maddie’s eyes when she looked at Ellie was surprised, but turned soft when Buck introduced them to each other.
“So you’re the famous Ellie,” Maddie said with a beautiful smile. “Buck has told me a lot about you.”
“Really?” Ellie asked immediately, surprised.
Maddie nodded with the smile still in her lips and a fond expression.
“Okay, so, what if we go somewhere and eat something? I’m hungry. You’re not hungry?” Buck asked quickly.
“Aww, he looks so cute when he gets all shy,” Maddie said with a delighted smile and pinched one of her brother’s cheeks. “You better take us to a nice place. I am hungry too,” she said and linked her right arm with Ellie’s left, walking together out of the house. “So, Ellie, tell me about you.”
Once in the car, Buck drove to a nice place of Korean food where they spent a couple of hours listening to Buck tell a lot of incredible stories about his job, including the day he saved Ellie, and then both of them told Maddie a few things they had done in the last months since they became friends, like how Buck had taken Ellie to family dinners at the station once or twice so she could taste Cap’s food and then be a judge on his culinary skills still in develop, or how they drove around LA for hours to celebrate when Ellie finally quit that horrible job and then moved from that horrible apartment to a new and way prettier. Maddie smiled and laughed the whole time, but Ellie was able to notice the way she kept looking around almost every forty-five seconds, as if she were afraid of someone appearing out of nowhere. At the end of the night, Buck and Maddie drove her home and then went back to Buck’s—Abby’s—place again.
At the end of the night, Ellie decided not to tell Buck about what she had noticed in his sister because if she was hiding something, it wasn’t Ellie’s secret to tell, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Yeah, she just met Maddie, but she didn’t need to be a genius to notice the way she was behaving. The next day, the morning passed slowly and by lunchtime, Ellie ended up at the police station instead of at the pizza place near work that she loved and had been looking forward to the whole week.
“Ellie, hey, what happened?” Buck asked once he arrived at the police station because of course he is her emergency contact and the person she would call to get her out of jail. He was wearing his LAFD clothes, which immediately made her feel bad for getting in the way to his job.
“Sorry for making you come,” Ellie apologized.
Buck shook his head.
“It’s okay. Cap gets it,” he promised. “What happened?” he asked again.
“When I was on my lunchbreak, there was this guy. A total creep. He was taking pictures of me thinking I didn’t have idea, and when I asked him to stop, he tried to touch me, so I punched him in the face and then this stupid cop who was nearby approached to me and said I was arrested for aggression and took me here,” Ellie explained with a pout on her face, sad for not having pizza to eat.
“You punched him? In the face?” Buck repeated, trying to hide his smile.
Ellie nodded.
“Yeah, like you taught me how to do it without breaking my hand.”
Okay, Buck was definitely smiling now, proud of her. When Ellie told him about the time two years ago when she got into a fight and broke her hand, Buck made it his personal mission to teach her how to defend herself without getting hurt during the process, so it was nice to see it had worked.
“Buck.”
Both of them turned their heads to a side of the station when they heard a female voice calling Buck, recognizing her quickly.
“Athena,” Buck said when she got close to them.
“Your girl can leave. We checked that guy’s phone and we found not only pictures of her, but at least another 10 women and 3 teenagers. He’s gonna spend a long time behind the bars,” Athena nodded and looked at Ellie. “Sorry about the cop who arrested you, honey. You were just defending yourself. And you did it great, his nose got swollen,” she told her with a smile on her face and something like congratulation on her tone.
“Thanks, Sargent Grant,” Ellie thanked.
Athena shook her head.
“Call me Athena. We’re all family,” she said with a smile. “Now get out of here. This young man here needs to go back to work.”
Both nodded and Buck insisted on driving her back to her job even if Ellie insisted it was not necessary and the 118 needed him more, but Buck assured he still had enough time to go back to the station.
“So, I was thinking…” Buck said once they were a couple of blocks away.
“Should I be worried?” Ellie interrupted him.
“Haha, very funny,” Buck said, flatly. Ellie laughed. “So, I was thinking I could introduce you to Eddie, if that’s what you really want,” he completed. “He is a nice guy. I like him.”
“You know I was just being mean to you, right?” Ellie looked at him, but Buck kept his eyes on the road. “I mean, yeah, I’m pretty sure he is really hot with his eight pack and those eyes, but I was just messing with you. You don’t need to do it.”
“But I want to,” Buck said. “At least to being friends. I swear you’re gonna love him. He is amazing.”
Ellie really had to learn to say no to Buck sometimes, but that was something she would have to learn at a later date because today, when Buck said goodbye to her and drove back to the firehouse after getting her back to work, she had already agreed to meet Eddie Diaz one of these days.
💛
jenna coleman as eloise "ellie" cohen
oliver stark as evan "buck" buckley
ryan guzman as edmundo "eddie" diaz
911 cast as themselves
💛
BUCK
ELLIE
EDDIE
THE BEST FRIENDS