The Thrill of the Chase | Buck/Eddie | 23k words
My fic debut, and also my submission for Week 7 of @summerofbuddie: Alternate Universes!
“A tornado can’t be harnessed. It can’t be preserved in a jar to cling to forever, to keep him in a perpetual state of awe. It’s here for one magnificent and ephemeral moment, as in all of its fleeting glory it ropes out and disappears into the atmosphere, leaving the most seasoned of chasers with pits of longing deep inside their souls that can never be replicated. And so they chase it and chase it for the rest of their days.” An introspective Buddie storm chaser AU in which Buck, ever the natural disaster enthusiast, analyzes his disastrous love life and learns that maybe what he’s been chasing has been right in front of him all along.
Abby Clark is a tornado.
At least, that’s what Chimney says one early afternoon during a typical intercept attempt. Buck’s hardly a matured storm chaser—to put it in twister terms, he’s more of a vaguely rotating updraft than a fully-developed funnel cloud, having only been on this job for four months—but he’s been around long enough to know that Chimney has a habit of this: making wisecracks over the radio from the helm of the S.P.I.N. and refusing to elaborate.
Hen sometimes jokes that it’s all he’s good for, since anyone can drive a giant doppler radar on wheels and read some weather maps. It’s awfully convenient, she insists, that he always seems to wait until the butt of his jokes are firmly seated in the T.W.I.S.T.R. to unleash the full extent of his ridicule, so as not to immediately suffer whatever consequences may come his way. But this time even she is stifling a laugh, which echoes audibly over the crackle of the walkie-talkie Bobby holds at his side.
Buck’s gotten used to it by now. And while he’s not convinced Chimney’s taunting isn’t rooted in jealousy over his vehicle’s much cooler name, it’s fair enough, really. He can’t exactly say the mockery of his love life hasn’t been well-earned.
Read on AO3
