AU where Buck meets Tommy shortly after the truck bombing and is weirded out that he feels so little sadness when Ali breaks up with him
hi friend! this went. uh. somewhat off the rails from what you requested. i hope you like it anyway! buck's first day home from the hospital, redux. remix. au! feat. tommy, lucy, sal, chim, hen and maddie.
under a cut because once again i can do nothing quickly.
buck's in recovery and waiting to get the okay to leave the hospital when he sees another guy ducking into the room. "don't tell them i came through this way," the guy says, winking at buck. "hey, i think i saw a white coat coming down the hall. good luck on getting out of here."
"yeah, thanks," buck says, confused. he glances the way the other guy points and sees his surgeon coming, and by the time he looks back to where the guy was, he's gone.
"kinard!" a firefighter comes hurrying through the room, glancing towards buck. "did you see a guy come through here? about yea tall, brown hair, too many crows feet?"
"i wouldn't say there were too many crows feet," buck says, and then slaps a hand over his mouth. whoops.
"which way did he go?"
buck hesitates and then points in the right direction, never looking away from her. she clocks his hesitation and frowns at him, shaking her head. "he always gets the pretty faces," she sighs, spinning on her heels and heading the wrong way. "kinard! get back here! it's just a tetanus booster! don't be a baby!"
kinard pops out from the opposite door and grins sheepishly at buck. "i have a thing about needles," he says, conspiratorially. "tommy."
"evan buckley," buck says. it's a reflex; all the doctors have been calling him evan the entire time he's been in the hospital. he's about to correct tommy when tommy says "nice to meet you, evan," and the sound curls around buck's shoulders and settles on them like the warmest blanket he's ever had.
"how did you know to do that? give lucy the wrong directions?" tommy continues.
"i have a sister who never trusted me," buck tells him, laughing. "what did lucy mean about the pretty faces?"
"that you have one. probably," kinard says, and throws him another wink before ducking out the door and down the hall.
weird. buck's still baffled when his surgeon comes in to see him. he gets the all clear to go home, and then buck asks about the lafd blood drive poster on the wall. "mr. buckley — sorry, buck — i spent a great deal of time trying to keep your blood inside your body. let's hold off on donating until the cast comes off and you're done your rehab, okay?"
ali's waiting to take him home. he's expecting the wheelchair to leave, but he's not expecting how awkward it is to get into the Jeep. he has to crank the passenger seat all the way back to get his leg in, and the crutches are. well. he's glad he spent two of the six weeks the cast has to be on in the hospital.
getting from the car through the parking garage to the elevator and down the hall into his loft is better left unsaid. he's not sure that it would be much easier in abby's apartment — but he already knows how to rearrange that apartment to accommodate medical equipment.
ali gets him settled on the couch and sits down beside him and — yep, there's the other shoe. he's been tatiana'ed. (not that he would ever say that to chim's face. but it sucks to be broken up with because you're injured.)
he can't exactly blame her. he remembers what it felt like to be trapped there and he kind of wants to divorce his own body. he waves her off and tells her to let him know that she landed in new york okay; at least she was never supposed to stay long today, and because she was going back to the east coast he has a little time to figure out how to tell maddie and the others.
buck eyes the loft longingly. he just wants to lie down. and he has to get used to the crutches and the stairs! now's as good a time as any to try it out.
he gets three steps up, almost overbalances, and sits down on the stairs. shit. is he going to have to sleep on the couch for a few months?
"yo, buck! you get settled all right? maddie's coming over after her shift, remember? hey, it's buck! come say hi!" the sounds of the firehouse filter in as chim puts buck on speaker and he smiles, leaning against the bannister. god, he misses them.
"hey chim, yeah, i remember. all settled. i was actually calling for some of that rosetta stone knowledge of yours. you got a number for a firefighter named kinard?"
"tommy, yeah, he helped out at doheny — why?"
"ran into him at the hospital."
"he wasn't hurt, was he?"
"no, no, just visiting."
"ah, blood drive," hen cuts in, laughing.
"tetanus, actually," buck interrupts, and he can hear the wince. they've all needed a booster because of the job before.
"sure, i can text it to you. …wait, why'd you call it the rosetta stone, buck?"
"cause you're the oldest firefighter i know, chim, i figure you gotta translate it from the hieroglyphs you wrote it in," buck says, after his phone has chimed with a message. "gotta go, bye!"
"buckley!"
buck debates what he's about to do for about thirty seconds before he taps on the contact number chim had texted him.
"go for kinard."
"did lucy catch you?"
"who — oh, evan? how did you get this number?"
"lafd phone tree," buck says, grinning. "you didn't look like you were on shift earlier."
"funny, i don't remember signing up for that… anyway, what can i do for you?"
"remember how you owe me a favour?"
"lucy did catch me, so i'm not sure how much of a favour you actually did me…" tommy teases.
"hey, don't blame me for the fact that you didn't run fast enough. i'm gonna send you an address, i need you and any other big strong firefighters you know to come over asap and pay up on that favour."
"if this is a bachelorette party, i have to let you know that we actually do need to be paid for that."
buck bursts out laughing and shakes his head even though tommy can't see him. "careful, or i'm telling the phone tree you're moonlighting and they're all going to book you."
"okay, hmm. give me a few minutes to round everyone up and we'll be there in about half an hour."
"wait, for real?"
"yeah, unless you're just yanking my chain."
"no, i — no, i really appreciate it. text when you get here, i'll walk you through the keypad."
tommy's time keeping is accurate. he knocks on buck's door twenty seven minutes later (not that buck has been keeping track) and buck hobbles from his card table to the front door and balances on one crutch as he opens the door. "thanks for coming," he says, hopping backwards to let tommy in. the other firefighter from the hospital (who must be lucy) follows him in and gives buck a seriously judgmental eyebrow, and then another guy a few inches shorter than tommy but with shoulders that wouldn't look out of place on a linebacker trails in after. "who got robbed?" the second guy asks, looking around. "should have called the cops, not the fire department."
lucy swats him upside the head and rolls her eyes. "shut up, sal. what are we doing here, tommy?"
"i don't know, you'd have to ask evan." tommy grins faintly.
"asking the consummate liar, good idea," lucy volleys back.
"i told you where he was, it's not my fault you didn't listen," buck argues. "i need help getting my bed from up there—" he points to the loft "—to down here."
"no wonder you called the fire department," sal snorts, bounding up the stairs. "you signed on this place after you wrecked your leg? did you hit your head too?"
"i signed the lease three weeks before the cast, actually," buck snips back.
lucy and tommy wince, and lucy heads up after sal. "tommy, move the couch out further so we can dump this mattress over the edge," lucy calls, peering over the railing. "not much here for having lived here almost a month, kid."
buck shrugs. "i was at work."
tommy grins at him as he muscles the couch out from the alcove, eyeing the entertainment system. "give me a sec to move the tv," he calls up, and buck hobbles forward. "i can help."
"absolutely not," all three of them interject, and tommy points back to the table. "sit down, evan. we've got this."
"so how did you—" sal leans over the railing and nods towards buck's leg.
"shark attack," buck jokes, and sal grins at him.
"yeah, that was rude. working on it."
tommy, lucy and sal have obviously been friends for awhile; they have their own shorthand and while buck winces a little when they flip his mattress over the railing, the couch does muffle the sound and there's no yelling from his downstairs neighbour. sal and tommy move the couch into the kitchen beside his table, and then lucy skips down the stairs with his pillows and blanket and one of the side table lamps and claims a seat beside him as tommy and sal muscle the frame down the stairs. sal swears a lot, but buck has a feeling that he's still holding back. he's a little distracted by the way tommy's shirt shifts against the top of his jeans.
"so who gave you tommy's number?"
"chimney."
"chim - who?"
"howie," tommy calls from the living room. "sal, lift the corner, jesus."
"i throw my back out, i'm sending gina after you," sal grumbles as they resettle the mattress.
"to what, sue me?"
"for lost earnings and emotional distress," sal agrees. "donato! bedding!"
"you're not my real captain," lucy calls back, leaving the lamp with buck as she takes the rest over. "and we gotta get that couch upstairs."
"you don't have to do that."
"sure, if you're not getting a real table in here," lucy argues, looking at the kitchen.
"there's going to be an island," buck tells her, bristling a little.
she laughs at him and nods. "so we'll get it out of the way," she promises, ruffling sal and tommy's hair as she passes them. "and you can order some food."
"please, i have a date," sal disagrees. "i'll take a favour to be named later."
"not a sports game, sal," tommy shakes his head, smiling in buck's direction.
"oh, me too," lucy decides, pretending to lift the couch and then shaking her head, leaving it to the boys. "give me a ride home, sal?"
"i'll drop you in the middle of downtown and you'll like it," sal calls from the loft, laughing. the doorbell rings and lucy gets up, retrieving the pizza boxes and bag of drinks before buck can even put a crutch under his arm.
"don't worry, tommy will eat your pizza," she promises, leering playfully at buck.
"oh geez, luce, be nice," tommy says, throwing lucy a glare. "thanks, you two. i owe you. now get outta here."
"you both owe us, shark boy, and i aim to collect," lucy says, pointing at buck. "thanks for the adventure, tommy. see you at work friday."
"adventure, sure," sal snorts, nodding towards buck. "call us when you get that off and need everything back the way it was."
tommy folds himself into one of the chairs and takes a slice of pizza, looking over at buck. "so how do you know howie?"
"he's sort of dating my sister," buck says, because eventually the bombing is going to come out but none of them have looked at him like he's broken today and he likes that. the 118 keeps looking at him like they should have done something to make sure he never got hurt in the first place, and it's not like it was their fault in the first place. plus it has the added benefit of being true, when tommy does find out the truth later. hard to be mad about that.
"handy," tommy laughs, offering him one of the coke bottles. "this was fun."
"really? didn't look fun," buck says, laughing too. "at least not for sal, he sure swore a lot for having fun."
"wait until you watch hockey with the guy," tommy grins.
"lucy seems… like she was teasing us?" buck continues. he hasn't done a lot today, but he's suddenly starving and already reaching for a second slice. tommy nudges the box closer to him.
"she's terminally sarcastic," tommy offers. "you probably picked up on that."
"probably," buck agrees. "so. what do you normally do on your days off when you're not moving around furniture for a guy you hardly know?"
buck finds out that tommy flies, and he starts asking as many questions as he can in between bites of food. he's always thought that there was something romantic about flying (hence the hot air balloon), and the way that tommy talks about it, he's pretty sure he's right. he loses track of time and it's a shock when the front door opens and maddie sticks her head in.
"hey, buck, sorry i'm late — oh! hi. maddie buckley."
"tommy kinard," tommy says, wiping his hand off before offering it to her. "sorry for intruding."
"any friend of buck's is a friend of mine," maddie says. tommy looks over at buck and mouths 'buck?' when maddie's back is turned and buck shrugs. he probably should have clarified by now. "buck, your place got a makeover."
"yeah, turns out trying to do the stairs on a broken leg isn't all that advisable," buck shrugs, preening when it makes both of them laugh. "i called some friends."
"and we'll come back when everything needs to be put back where it belongs," tommy promises, carefully standing up. buck keeps his eyes politely focused on the corner of tommy's chin. definitely not his stomach. or his thighs. "i should get going before i overstay my welcome."
no chance of that happening, buck thinks but doesn't say out loud. "thanks again for your help, tommy."
"yeah, any time." tommy salutes them both, smiling faintly. "give me a call after that gets off, and i'll take you up if you want to go for a spin."
buck waves, ignoring maddie's look when she claims the empty seat and takes a slice of pizza. "take you up?" she questions, once the door is closed behind tommy.
"he's a pilot. firefighter pilot," buck clarifies.
"impressive." maddie's eyes sparkle as she grins at him, but she doesn't tease him any more. yet. "glad your first day back went okay."
"yeah," buck agrees, taking another drink of his coke. "yeah, it was pretty good all things considered."
bucktommy - teen - 900 words - alternate first meeting, epistolary, birdwatching, rivals to lovers.
Buck learns about birdwatching leaderboards during a lonely Thanksgiving on the road. He goes all in, of course, and decides to try and list the highest number of birds spotted in a calendar year. It would be great if this Tommy guy would stop saying his spottings aren't valid, though.
you can read 'the big year' on ao3 here!
for the @au-roulette prompt: sport/athletics (competitive birdwatching is a sport. to me.)
images/html are used, but with the work skin off, it will show everything as plain text/images with alt descriptions, so this should be screen reader friendly. if for any reason it isn't, please let me know in a comment or through my tumblr!
also, this was absolutely inspired by listers! i know very little about birding outside of having watched this once so my apologies for any silly mistakes re: what i thought were rare birds worth travelling to see.
gah - this one has had me absolutely getting sidetracked into just reading my WIPs because there are so many uses of the word soft lol.
To counteract the softness with suffering😅, here's a snippet from Buck 3.0 - i.e. the one where Buck is homeless after Eddie takes his house back, leaving him struggling after the events of S8 and trying to figure out how to reinvent himself one more time.
---
"Oh," Maddie says as she answers the door, blinking at him in surprise. Her brows knit as she says, "Oh no did we make plans and I forgot?"
"No - no," he says quickly. "I - sorry, I should have texted. I just had some free time so I thought maybe you could use a hand. Chim's been doing a lot at work and you've just had the baby… I thought maybe you'd like to send the kids off with me to the park for a few hours. Or you two could go out while I babysit - have a date night."
"That's really sweet," she says, pouting fondly at him as she pokes his side. Her face tilts a little then, though, and she adds with a soft scrunch of nose, "But we were sort-of just having a little quiet family time…"
And he knows she doesn't mean it any kind of way, knows she's totally reasonable thinking first about her nuclear family now - especially now - but it still stings to be reminded that he is now firmly one step removed. It's not like she hadn't warned him. She'd told him he needed to learn to be alone again. To stop trying to make other people care about him the way he wanted them to. To stop expecting people to hold space for him in their lives. It's not like she hadn't given him part of her own literal childhood taking care of him. He's got absolutely nothing to complain about now.
"Chimney's getting in a baby snuggle, I think he's already worried about the time passing too fast while he's at work," she says with a little wry twist of her mouth that's so softly fond. "I feel it and I'm not even missing any of it yet while I'm home on leave."
He nods. He can definitely relate to wanting to hold on to what's precious. So much has slipped right through his fingers that he would give anything to have back again.
"Jee's still napping, but her nap will be over in about an hour and she'll be fully charged and ready to wreak havoc I'm sure. Maybe she would like some Uncle Time then?" Maddie offers tentatively when he's still just standing there.
"Yeah? That'd be great. And - you know, I've been doing laundry all day. I could do some more for you while you guys chill…" He pauses at the slight tightness around the wide smile on her face and then says, "Or I could go grab a cup of coffee or something. You could text me if it turns out she's in the mood to hang out later. I could take her to the park, maybe."
"That would be perfect," she says, the tension leaking back out of her posture again at his offer to not intrude further on her space.
He's getting the message loud and clear this time.
---
Send me a word and I'll post a snippet of a WIP with that word, or write you 3 new sentences if it's not in there :3
I love your writing so much! If you still do the Five Facts AUs, how about Bucktommy as candidates on a dating TV show? Or maybe one is a contestant and the other works behind the scenes?
ooh thanks anon! i don't watch a ton of dating shows so i fully just looked at a list and picked one out. for our purposes, we are on the version of the show the ultimatum: marry or move on which is filmed in la and can be gleaned from the wikipedia page by someone who's never watched the show. under a cut, because this somehow became like 2k words, oops.
buck and taylor have been dating on and off for five years. as is so often the case with reality shows they're not really perfectly in line with the central conceit. they're there for advice and to have a chunk of time out of their busy lives where they can actually focus on their relationship and where it's going. buck's the one giving the ultimatum for the purposes of the show (because taylor gives him an EXTREMELY VALID ten minute lecture on why an ultimatum from a woman is received differently than one from a man and she is NOT going on national tv to look like her highest ambition is getting married).
tommy has largely the same backstory as canon except he was injured worse in the gas explosion in chimney begins and has to retire early on medical grounds. his first boyfriend when he comes out (a little earlier than canon because his big point of reassessing his life comes there instead of with his transfer to harbor) works in the tv business and gets him a job working on a reality show. the boyfriend doesn't last, but the job does. he doesn't love all the shows he works on, and they maybe give him some weird and cynical thoughts about love (that's our guy!!!) but he does like that he gets to meet a variety of people. by the time our story starts, he's working as a producer on ultimatum, serving as a go-between between the contestants and the big bosses on the show.
buck and taylor sit down with tommy once they've been accepted onto the show to give him the lowdown on their relationship, both as a couple and individually. they're both easy to talk to and tommy gets some great soundbites in spite of the fact that he and evan (that's what's on the paperwork, and buck does his wide-eyed "no, that's fine, you can totally call me evan" thing while taylor side-eyes him to the moon and back) go down a whole housing estate's worth of cul de sacs when they realise they have the lafd, and even some specific people in common.
tommy is man enough to admit he has a WILD crush on this guy, but he's professional enough not to let it get in the way of doing his job. anyway, he really likes taylor too — she's funny and ambitious and a little mean which are all characteristics tommy really likes in a friend. while evan is sweet and enthusiastic and full of sunshine, which are all things tommy likes in a guy. not that it matters, he reminds himself, because taylor's not going to be his friend, and evan's absolutely not going to be his man. normally, he can guess within a few minutes of meeting a couple whether they're going to stay together, but he really can't tell with these two. the vibe he gets is good friends with a lot ot sexual chemistry.
the show goes on — tasks, activities, honesty challenges, whatever they do on this show, again, i apologise, i have not watched it oops — and tommy continues to spend a lot of time with both of them. he and evan hit it off immediately, even beyond the things they have in common. a couple times tommy thinks there's something more to it — evan's almost too interested in what he has to say, finds too many excuses to hang out with him and talk to him about things other than his relationship with taylor.
the day before the show do their "new relationship" twist, where each half of a couple gets assigned a new person to live with for three weeks, to see whether the grass is really greener, evan and taylor have a huge fight, and neither of them will tell tommy what it was about. oh, they give him reasons ("he doesn't respect my work and his 'family' hates me" vs. "sometimes i don't think she even wants to be with me at all, she doesn't take me seriously"), but he can tell they're both holding out on him.
evan gets matched with a vet tech named elena who is sweet and funny and has none of taylor's sharp edges. taylor gets matched with an entrepreneur named alan who is hot as breakfast, but takes himself extremely seriously and has none of evan's sweetness or enthusiasm (unless you count his enthusiasm for perfectly calibrating his pre-workout stacks).
tommy thinks it's going to make them both realise how much they like each other, maybe they'll make it after all. and then he gets a text from a runner who works on the show saying buck needs to talk to him urgently. once the moment of "who the hell is buck?" has passed, tommy hurries over to the apartment evan is currently sharing with elena and finds him pacing up and down the corridor. the first thing out of his mouth is "i think i have to quit the show".
tommy's not as cutthroat as some of the producers who will do anything it takes to keep a contestant on the show, but he does need to know more, and he doesn't want evan to sacrifice his fee if he walks. "okay," he says. "why don't we go get a drink and we can talk it through?" evan nods, looking pitifully grateful. tommy takes him to a nearby coffee shop, because he doesn't drink with contestants on the show. evan looks around with big, wide, worried eyes like he's expecting the place to be full of other producers who are there specifically to listen in on their conversation. tommy fights against a deeply unhelpful wave of affection and buys their coffees.
it's worse than he imagined. "taylor's writing an article," evan says in a hushed voice. "about the ethics of reality tv." tommy thinks, shiiiiiiiit, and starts flicking through a mental rolodex of every interaction he's had with either of them. crush aside, he doesn't think he's crossed any lines. but there's a really messy couple that one of the other producers has been handling, and there are always, always people on these shows that need therapy more than they need to air out their relationship woes on national tv for entertainment. and then evan says, "but we signed stuff. i don't want her to get in trouble." and if tommy wasn't already falling for him, he thinks that would have done it. "if i quit," he goes on, "if i say they can't use my footage, will that help?"
they go back and forth on it for the length of time it takes them to drink two coffees each. at one point tommy says, "it's sweet, that you're concerned for her. you're a good boyfriend." evan's mouth twists unhappily and he says, "don't give me too much credit. i'm so…i'm so embarrassed, tommy. we came on this stupid show — sorry, i know it's your job, but if i have to do one more ridiculous fake date or honesty exercise i'm going to lose my mind — and i don't think she ever even wanted to figure out if we should stay together or not. i think it was just a way in for her." ambitious, that was the first thing tommy noticed about taylor, the first thing he liked about taylor. now, looking at the way evan's drooping like a sad puppy sitting outside in the rain, it doesn't seem so endearing. "i'll talk to her," tommy offers. "don't do anything yet, okay?" evan nods, sniffs, thanks tommy for the coffees.
on their way back to the apartment complex where the contestants are staying, evan stops on the sidewalk and says, "um. thank you. i'm—i'm really glad it's you." tommy doesn't know what to do with that, so he reaches out, intending to put his arm over evan's shoulders and give him a jostling, bro-y half hug. instead, evan reaches out in return and the gentle way he puts his arms around tommy, the careful way his hands spread wide on tommy's shoulder blades like he wants to feel as much as possible has his heart racing with stupid, stupid feelings. he closes his eyes and lets evan hug him for way longer than he should.
tommy doesn't get to speak to taylor until the next day — she's filming a yoga date with alan, which tommy's fellow producer describes as 'a total shit show'. when they sit down together the next morning, he doesn't waste any time, just tells her he knows about the article, and waits to see what she says. what she says, with a smile is, "i'm a reporter, tommy. i'm always working on articles. you'll have to be more specific." tommy frowns and tells her that evan is worried about her from a legal perspective. she scoffs and says, "he always does this. i'm a professional. i spoke with my editor, we spoke with our legal department. i'm not stupid. i thought about it before i did this." tommy can't help himself, bursts out, "did you think about him? he's heartbroken, taylor." "oh, he is not," she shoots back. "believe it or not, in spite of all your little late night chats, i know buck better than you do. he's embarrassed and he doesn't want to hear his family say 'i told you so' for the fifth time." tommy can tell that taylor's used to that tone taking her a long way, so he pushes down the spike of anxiety about late night chats and just raises his eyebrows. "god," she mutters. "fine. give me your phone, i'll talk to him." tommy's busting through a bunch of rules here in the interests of damage control, telling himself it's damage control for the show rather than for evan's heart. he puts his phone into taylor's outstretched hand and she dials, holding it up to her ear as she says, "a little privacy?"
tommy doesn't know what they talk about, but taylor looks a little subdued when she brings his phone out to him, and they make it through the rest of the show without incident. tommy tries to ask evan about it, but all he'll say is "we talked. we made some decisions. thank you for helping." tommy feels like he's going to vibrate out of his skin for the rest of the recording, and his heart is in his mouth when he watches their final filming. "we've decided to separate," taylor says. "we have different priorities," evan says. "we love each other, but we're not a good match anymore," taylor says. "there are other things we want to explore," evan says, and they have to reset and reshoot because taylor lets out an incredibly unladylike snort of laughter and evan gets the giggles. tommy doesn't think he understands these two at all.
two weeks after filming wraps, taylor's article drops. it actually could have been a lot worse, and tommy's never been so grateful that he's in a position to pick his jobs and to no longer have to work on things that make him feel as uncomfortable as some of the early roles he took on.
a day after that, he gets a message on his work phone from evan. can we meet? it says. i'd love to buy you a coffee. it's such a terrible idea, tommy knows that. he says yes anyway.
when they film the reunion episode a couple months later, taylor doesn't attend. (tommy knows for a fact that she was very deliberately not invited, because the higher ups are mad as hell about the article because even if it doesn't make allegations of misconduct, it does absolutely skewer the show as a whole, and what it says about the reality tv industry.) evan does attend, and tommy has to look away and bite his lip hard so he doesn't give the game away when evan says, "i'm good. i'm really good. i'm actually seeing someone new. i know it's fast, but i really like them. like, a lot. i can see it going the distance."
bonus fact: tommy does not like the host, nick lachey, because he read the jessica simpson autobiography once in an air b&b and got rancid vibes. he deals with this by mostly just avoiding him and keeping his head down and mentally singing nkotb songs every time their paths cross.