Prompt for the 5 AUs game for you, BuckTommy different first meetings that involve Buck's Jeep somehow!
Hope you have fun thinking up some š
ohhh these were FUN. putting most of them under a cut cause this is 1600 words altogether š
#1 ā tommy is a mechanic in montana. buck is on his way to his new job at the ranch, having just blown perhaps too much money on some flannels and a new cowboy hat because he's so excited, sure he's found the perfect job, when something blows in his engine. he's still an hour at least away from where he's headed and now he's stuck on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. luckily, the next car that passes by is actually a tow truck, KINARD and a phone number painted on the dirt-covered side. buck manages to wave him down and tommy takes one look at this kid in his too-clean gear, laughs incredulously when he desperately tells him his situation, then shows him how to fix the (luckily minor) problem well enough to get the rest of the way to billings and his new job. he fully expects to never see buck again, but the next weekend, there he is, darkening the door of tommy's garage and shyly asking if he can buy him a beer in thanks.
#2 ā tommy has routines. he loves his routines. and he would never admit it, but he does not love when his routines are interfered with. like this morning, when he pulls up to his favourite coffee shop (approximately fifteen minutes from the station, which gives his drink time to cool down just enough that he can chug it in the time it takes him to get changed) and some douchebag in a jeep has parked in his spot. of course, it's not really his spot, it's a public parking lot, but it's towards the back of the lot and far enough away that most people don't park there. grumbling to himself, he parks next to it, and barely even looks up when he nearly runs into someone on his way in the door, only catching a hurried "sorry!" as the guy runs off with two stacked trays full of drinks. he gets his coffee, treats himself to a muffin because why not, and when he gets back out to his truck, the jeep is gone. but it keeps happening. not every time he goes, but often enough that it's starting to get annoying. it takes a couple weeks before he finally runs into the jeep's driver; one morning, he pulls in right before the jeep does, and makes it to the spot first. the guy behind the wheel hops out cheerfully and waves. "oh, hey, that's funny, that's where i usually park!" he says, pointing at tommy's spot. "i know," tommy says, rolling his eyes. "it's where i usually park, too. you just get here first sometimes." but try as he might, now that he's met the guy, he can't be too annoyed. especially when evan buckley introduces himself with a warm smile and handshake and offers to buy tommy a coffee "to make up for stealing your spot".
#3 ā it's not that buck misses living on the road. just, sometimes, he needs to get out of the city. he lived out of his jeep for a long time and sometimes it's nice to just get out and do that again, visit a state park or something and sleep with the stars outside his car windows. he has a spot about forty-five minutes out of the city that he likes to go to sometimes, tucked away on a cliff with a great view of the ocean, and he's never seen anybody else out there. he's got the back of the jeep open, looking out at the water and picking absently at the snacks he'd packed, when headlights come down the overgrown lane behind him. he freezes. it's not private propertyāhe'd checked, just to be sure; it would be a bad look to be arrested for trespassingābut you never know who you're going to encounter out in the woods. the new vehicle stops behind the jeep, parks, then someone is coming around. buck tenses, but the guy who appears around the corner of the jeep just looks concerned. he asks if everything's okay and buck explains that he just likes to come out here sometimes, for the quiet. they introduce themselves and tommy tells him that his cousin lives across the street from the lane and noticed buck going in but not leaving, and asked tommy to basically do a wellness check since he's a first responder. then they start exchanging stories, buck mentions the 118, they realize they know the same people, and before they know it, they've been talking for an hour and tommy's phone starts ringing because his cousin has now seen two vehicles disappear to the cliff without returning and he's starting to get worried. tommy assures him he's fine, then tries to apologize to buck for intruding and says he'll leave him to it. buck just waggles a dessert container at him and asks him to stay.
#4 ā tommy also has a jeep. they go to the same gym and tommy comes out one day to find a rubber duck sitting on his mirror. he's seen the other jeep around, but doesn't actually know who it belongs to. he puts the duck on his dashboard and the next time he's at the grocery store, he picks up a pack of little multicoloured ducks. the other jeep is there when he goes for his next workout and he returns the favour, putting a green one on the other jeep's mirror. four days later, the next time they're both in the lot at the same time, tommy comes out to find one sitting on his hood, this time with a little note that just has a smiley face drawn on it. this goes on for a while; after a month or two, tommy has ten little ducks in various colours and styles sitting in a row on his dashboard, and a little pile of notes with silly jokes written on them by the stranger clipped onto his sun visor. the other jeep has its own row of ducks. it may have gone on forever, with the gym just busy enough that he was never fully sure who it was, except the next duck the stranger leaves has a little firefighter helmet on, with "118" scribbled on the badge. tommy had just added an lafd bumper sticker to his jeep, so maybe that's why the stranger picked this particular duck, but how would they know tommy used to be at the 118?? he's still staring down at it, wondering if he should be concerned, when the tall guy with the birthmark he's noticed looking at him a few times walks up to him. "do you like him?" he says. "couldn't help getting it for you. he's so cute." tommy nods back. "yeah butāhow did you know about the 118? i haven't worked there in years." buck just blinks back at him. "oh thatāthat's my house. i just thought it would be funny, yknow, giving you a little duck-me." tommy looks closer and, sure enough, the duck also has a little scribbled birthmark above his eye. now that he knows who evan is, they end up getting flirty, and soon enough, tommy has duck-buck on his dashboard and human-evan in his passenger seat.
#5 ā in typical 118 shenanigans, after a day of everything going wrong, buck comes out to the parking lot after work to find that his jeep won't start. and it's raining. and it's saturday evening and none of the car repair places he calls are willing to come out right now. he's about ready to just lie down on the ground and sleep in the rain, but chimney comes out and mentions he knows a guy and he thinks he might be off shift. sure enough, an hour later, tommy shows up in his truck. he offers to tow the jeep back to his place (note: i'm not even sure if you can tow a car with another car but we're just gonna pretend ok? ok. tommy knows what he's doing i believe in him), where he's got a lift and he can at least look at it and give buck a place to shower and get into some warm clothes while tommy figures out what's wrong, and they can go from there. they do just that, tommy shows buck to the bathroom and then goes out to the garage. a little while later he goes in to find that buck has showered, ordered in dinner and some fancy craft beer that chimney suggested, shyly offering it up in thanks. they eat together while tommy explains what's wrong with it and says he can fix it, he can go pick up a part tomorrow probably, and buck is welcome to stay the night if he wants, or tommy could bring him home and get him again in the morning, orā but buck agrees to stay. they watch a movie and end up falling asleep together on the couch. they wake up a few hours later around the same time to buck half on top of tommy, dangerously close to accidentally groping him, but they both ignore it in favor of stumbling sleepily down the hall to tommy's bed and going to sleep again. they fall asleep firmly on opposite sides of the bedāneither of them wanted to dig up extra blankets or whatever at two in the morning, so agreed to shareābut wake up in the morning cuddling, and buck admits it was the best sleep he's had in ages.
it's so interesting to me that taylor was the one who had the 'stop making everything about you' conversation with buck that wasn't 'stop being so selfish' but instead 'other people have their own shit going on and you need to stop assuming that you're the cause of every bit of negativity in a room', because like.... that really is the way buck tends to ACTUALLY make it about him. if someone is mad, he assumes they're mad at him. if the vibes in a social situation are weird or awkward, he assumes it's his doing. partly ADHD, partly the way he was raised to get no attention at all unless he was a problem. and taylor got that about him in a way i'm not sure many other people do.
idk. they never would have worked long term, but there's a reason they were drawn to each other, beyond just attraction. in a lot of ways, they have similar damage.
I truly honestly adore the concept of buck being such a caretaker in his life. I think he spent so much of his childhood seeking to be cared for that it ignited this need to give all the love he wasn't given, and i believe it started to burn brighter when maddie came back into his life and she became somebody he could look after now that he was all grown up (!), but of course his job essentially lets him take care of people too, you see this a lot in how he is often asked to be the one to talk to the people to calm them down or distract them. And then there's the elephant in the room. He takes care of eddie (and chris!) like he's getting paid to do so. He cooks for everybody at the station but those real homemade meals he makes for eddie and chris are his specialty, he watches eddie like a hawk for any kind of difference he may notice in his behavior. Eddie looks tired today. Is he sleeping well? I should read up on how to improve your sleeping habits. I should start planning our meals for the week while i'm at it too! He loves taking care of his eddie :)
AU five facts: Tommy finally finds out the specifics of how Abby left Buck and maybe starts to understand a little bit why Evan didnāt chase after him, the way heād half hoped he would
Ohhh honestly this barely needs to be an AU, we could have this! ArthurFist.jpeg but I will AU it.
1. Sometime before the hookup and before Eddie moves, Abby reaches out to ask him if he still talks to an old mutual friend of theirs. Abby's pretty sure she doesn't use Facebook anymore, her phone number changed, and she's been trying to get in touch for months. The only other person who knew her is Tommy, because she was his friend first, so she calls him and it's awkward at first. He does, in fact, still have Mel's number. Well, her new one. She'd changed it after her divorce, Tommy's had the same one since he moved to LA. He asks her if she still talks to Alan and Stacy. "Eh, here and there," she says. "Why?" "Because they were saying some really unkind shit about you and Ev--Buck," he says, having replayed that whole thing in his head so many times. "How do you know Buck?" she asks, and he tells her. She's shocked and more than a little morbidly curious and also apparently only found out he was gay because she Instagram stalked him a few years before after her exes came up in a conversation with a friend.
2. He remembers what Evan said about Abby's relationship with him being transformative, which contradicts the shitshow he'd heard about. So he asks her what exactly happened. He knew her well enough back then to read between the lines of what she says now, and she's apparently done some therapy and realized some things weren't okay, like stringing this young guy along after she'd left the country. She kept giving him hope, and she knew it. He kept messaging her, taking her calls, calling her, and it all ended up the way it did. After she openly told him everything going on in her head for months. She opened up, strung him along, and then that was it. "Goddammit," he sighs. "What?" she asks. "Nothing," he says, even though he wants to ask her some pointed questions. "I gotta go."
3. Tommy builds a bench for an outdoor table he's building, and he sands and tries to think back on things Evan had said about past relationships. There's not a ton. They hadn't really talked about that. But he knows about the traveling, the fact that Maddie was supposed to join him and then basically stood him up because of her ex. Tommy knows what he's been wanting out of this situation, which is to have Evan show that he actually understands their relationship, that he cares enough about Tommy as a person rather than an idea. But maybe he got scared off from chasing after people. He remembers how Evan had asked if he was breaking up with him, when that hadn't been Tommy's plan. Tommy had thought it was what he wanted, but maybe it's just what he expected. He turns off the sander and goes inside to shower.
4. He drives to the loft. Evan's car is in its spot, and Tommy has to circle the block four times before he can find somewhere to park. He goes up and knocks on the door, and Evan opens it. He's in an apron, there's flour all down the front of it, and the place smells kind of like Christmas. He looks tired and surprised and so, so beautiful. "T-Tommy," he says, like he can't believe Tommy's there. "Hey, is this a bad time?" Tommy asks, and Evan steps aside. His hands itch to reach out, to hold his waist so he can kiss him, quick and easy and automatic. "It smells good, whatever that is," Tommy says. "Uh, it's a spice cake," Evan says, and Tommy sees a few cooling racks with cupcakes or muffins. Also cookies. "Did you forget something here? I checked, but--" "Yeah," Tommy says, turning to look at him. "You." And Evan blinks a couple of times and then smiles a little, and Tommy can't help but return it.
5. Tommy tells him what was going through his head, why he felt like he needed to walk away from the situation, how he unfairly thought Evan would try to stop him if he cared. "But I know that hasn't worked out for you in the past," Tommy says, and Evan looks away. "We don't know enough about each other yet to move in together. Clearly. But maybe we could figure out how to get there? Except not...here. I'm sorry, but there's no garage space and nowhere to woodwork and--" He can't even complain about the parking, because Evan is reaching across and kissing him. Tommy's fingers twist in the apron, and he's got flour on him, too, when they pull away, but he doesn't care. "I missed you so much," he confesses. "Y-yeah, I--" Evan looks over his shoulder at the cooling racks and chokes out a laugh, looking back at Tommy with tears in his eyes. "I bake when I want to text you." The chair creaks under Tommy when he pulls Evan nearly onto his lap for another kiss, and he can't believe he ever walked away from this.
What if, instead of the loft, Ali and Buck found him a nice house in Tommy's neighborhood?
Thank you š„¹
1. Tommy comes back from his vacation in Yosemite, the one he was supposed to take with Chuck until Chuck decided they were "not heading somewhere real." He sees that the tenant at the house on the corner is finally moved in. There had been some kind of delay, and he'd been expecting to wander over and greet them--a couple, he's pretty sure, he saw a few coming through to see the house--before he left. The house had stayed empty, but now there's a Jeep in the driveway. He puts his stuff away, shoves everything else in the washing machine, and starts making a welcome baked ziti. When he walks it over later, there's a delay on the door getting answered, and it's because the guy who opens it is on crutches. "Hey, I'm your neighbor down at the purple-ish house," Tommy says, smiling. "You're...Evan, right?" He'd heard the guy's girlfriend call for him after the viewing. "Uh, y-yeah," he replies, smiling. "Nice to meet you, uh--" "Tommy," he says, holding up the tray of food. "I hope you like pasta and cheese." "Love it," Evan says. Tommy offers to bring it in, because he's not about to make him juggle the tray on crutches. The house is pretty sparse, even though it seems to be unpacked, and there's no sign of the girlfriend. Tommy scribbles down reheating instructions on a grocery list pad and sets it on the tray before putting it in the fridge with other covered dishes. "Meal train," Evan explains. "I got hurt at work."
2. It's a few days later when Tommy realizes he never sees the girlfriend, so maybe she didn't move in? But he's outside and checking his mail when he hears a familiar voice shout something. He looks up and sees Howie, of all people. Tommy drops his mail back in the box and crosses the street. Evan's balancing on his crutches, and Howie and a shorter woman are out front. "Who the hell let you in my neighborhood?" Tommy asks, and they both whip around, and Evan looks alarmed for a moment. But then Howie grins and laughs and all but tackles him in a hug, which still sends a little thrill through Tommy even if he'd squashed that crush years ago. "What the fuck, man?" Howie says, laughing. "How do you guys know each other?" Evan asks. "Tommy used to be one of ours, then he left us for the wild blue yonder," Howie explains. "You actually replaced him." And that's how Tommy finds out Evan is a firefighter. Within a couple of minutes, it's how he also connects the dots that Evan is the firefighter who was nearly killed by a bomb in a ladder truck.
3. Tommy sees a revolving door of people he used to work with, and it's surreal. They'd been so removed from his life for the last few years, and then they're suddenly just there. There's a day when Evan can't get to physical therapy because Bobby got called in, so Tommy takes him. And then takes him again. He also goes on quick walks with him, gets on Evan for trying to run too soon. "I just want to get back to work," Evan says, looking like he's about to cry. "You will," Tommy reassures him. "But you can't hurt yourself and set yourself back." And he fucks up for a second and squeezes the back of Evan's neck, but Evan doesn't freeze or flinch, he just nods and sniffs and they get back on their feet from the bench they'd stopped at. When Evan is trying to catch his breath and says his chest feels tight, Tommy asks if his leg is hurting more than it was a couple days before. "It's just sore," Evan argues, but Tommy hauls him into his truck and drives him to the ER. The pulmonary embolism isn't a huge clot, but it's there. Tommy squeezes his hand and calls Maddie, and they bring Evan back to run a catheter through his lung to get a clot busting drug straight into it.
4. Evan is staring up at the ceiling in the hospital and not speaking. He's awake, he can speak, but he's been quiet. Tommy's on his third logic puzzle in the book he'd bought in the gift shop. "You don't have to be here," Evan says finally. "I don't have to be most places," Tommy says, putting a dot in one of the boxes. "It's a matter of choice, and I'm choosing to be here. Unless you don't want me here." There's no response, and Tommy stays until Bobby shows up. Then he goes into the waiting room, and then Bobby drops into the chair next to him an hour later. "How bad was it?" Bobby asks. "Could've been worse," Tommy says. "You saved his life," Bobby points out. "I don't know what I'd do if this killed him." "It didn't, though," Tommy says. "He's going to be fine, he can even get back on the job soon if he wants." Bobby's mouth twists unhappily. "He'll want to. If you won't take him, I'll tell Sal to pick him up." "God, anything but that," Bobby says with a harsh laugh. "Kid's been through enough as it is." Tommy smiles and flips the page to a crossword. "Yeah, well, don't put him through more," he says, and Bobby hums.
5. The day of the tsunami, Tommy's checking in on the radio as much as he can. He's trying to use his phone, too, but the lines are down or jammed. All he can think of is Evan telling him he was going to take Chris to the pier, because he's still a little ways out from being duty ready again. Tommy flies over, sees that it's basically fucking gone, and he radios Bobby. No word, nothing. He's flying all day and into the evening, and there's a radio call for him and Evan's at an emergency triage center. Tommy finds the nearest clear spot to touch down at, and Evan's on a cot. Hen and Howie are nearby with patients, Bobby is talking to another firefighter, but Tommy runs straight to Evan. "Chris?" he asks. "He's okay, Eddie's taking him home," Evan says, shoving himself up to sit. "I th-thought--he was gone, I thought he was--" And Tommy hugs him and feels the way Evan clutches at his flight suit. "I thought you were gone," he admits around the lump in his throat. "I flew over the pier, and--god, I thought I lost you." When he pulls back, he presses a hand to Evan's cheek and they look between each other's eyes, and there's a long moment when Tommy isn't sure and then they're both leaning in. He kisses Evan, feeling the desperation from both of them. He's thought about kissing Evan a lot these last few months, but he'd imagined tenderness or hunger, not clinging to damp clothing and grimy skin after a natural disaster. It's still everything he wanted, Evan's still everything he's wanted. When the kiss breaks, he presses his forehead to Evan's. "Yeah?" he asks softly, and Evan nods. "Yeah," Evan confirms.
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