here we have 1k-ish fluff of lonely young Buck saved by firefighter Tommy.
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It's Buck's twenty-sixth birthday and no one seems to care, if they even remember at all.
He's surrounded by people he thought were his friends but he's been realizing more and more lately how they don’t actually spend time together outside of clubbing and gaming and eating, and how alone he’s started to feel in their company. He's just a bunch of labels to them: ‘roommate’, ‘gym bro’, ‘chick magnet’.
They don’t really know him, and don’t really care about him, because if they did they would have wanted to make this day special for him, or at the very least buy him a round of drinks.
The last birthday he had when someone gave a shit about him was his twenty-first; working on a dude ranch out in the mountains and the guys made a fire and roasted marshmallows, swapping stories under the stars and passing around a bottle of one of Ron and Johannah's more potent concoctions.
It was one of his best birthdays, not that there's much competition.
So he'd been hoping to drown his sorrows while his friends got swallowed up by the dancefloor, maybe find a willing warm body to sink into bed with to help fend off the loneliness for a night.
Both those plans are ruined when a fire breaks out in the back room. Just as well; he's pretty sure the beer was skunked and the last three women he'd tried to hit on turned him down – his worst streak in months.
Some birthday.
Everything's a smokey blur from there. One minute he's caught up in the urgent press of the crowd funnelling toward the exits, the next he's being pulled and yanked and then there's a sharp pain at his temple– time cuts away, and then his body is lifted up, cradled and carried, a muffled voice telling him he's going to be alright..
And now he's on his back with a flashlight burning into his retina and a dull throb in his head.
“Ow.” He tries to bring a hand to his head but something stops him. He tries to sit up but that something – a large, gloved hand – presses at his chest, easing him back down.
“Easy there, kid. Let Howie take a look at you.”
Buck hums, eyes already slipping shut and doing what the nice deep voice tells him to. He winces as this Howie person swipes something cool and stinging over his temple and the swirl of his mind finds an anchor in the hand now on his shoulder, and in that velvety deep voice telling him he's going to be alright.
“Can you tell me your name?” Howie asks.
Buck hums in thought. “Buck.”
“Buck? Interesting. Never met a Buck before.”
“What about Bambi?” Velvet voice says.
“A buck is a male deer.”
“Bambi is male.”
A memory of his mother turning off the tv when he was a kid flickers in his mind. There was some deer in the woods, and a hunter with a gun, and she thought it was too violent, too graphic. Buck eventually watched the whole movie and remembers the young deer's friendships with other animal species, like in The Lion King.
“What? No way, man. I call bullshit.”
“Come to trivia one night and we'll see who's bullshitting.”
Howie makes a dismissive noise. “You're on, Kinard. I'm gonna wipe the floor with your cinematic falsehoods.”
Buck watches them trade words above him. From this angle his eyes lock onto the cleft in Kinard's chin, and something in him aches at their friendly banter. They seem like friends, not just workmates.
“Alright, Buckaroo,” Howie says, looking down at him again. “Can you tell me where you are?”
Buck exhales a long breath. “Shitty birthday.”
“Happy birthday,” Kinard says, and just the sound of his voice is enough to smoothe the jagged points of his night into something less painful.
Then Buck realises he’s the first person to wish him a happy birthday and has to fight against the hot prick of tears in his eyes. “Not really.”
“Okay, let's get you up,” says Howie, and Kinard's strong, gloved hands help him into a sitting position. “You got lucky. Small laceration, possible minor concussion. Could've been a lot worse if Tommy hadn't found you and got you out.”
Buck turns to get a glimpse of the man attached to the hand on his back, keeping him propped up. “Tommy?”
Soot is etched in the creases framing Tommy's storm-blue eyes. “That's me.”
“Thanks,” Buck says, taking in the details of his face, getting a good look at the guy who saved his ass; the high crop of sweat-tousled dark hair, the strong line of his nose and jaw, the chiselled cheekbones of a damn model, and broad shoulders filling out his jacket. He looks like he stepped off the page of one of those charity calendars. “You should let you buy me a drink.”
Tommy looks confused even as a smile tugs at his lips. “Is it really a thankyou if I'm the one buying?”
“Tommy saved your life, pal. I'd say that's worth one drink.”
Buck watches Tommy roll his eyes at Howie and Howie laughs as he fixes a bandage over Buck's temple. Buck can't stop himself from pouting, huffing out annoyance at this whole night. “It's my birthday and no one even bought me a drink.”
Tommy's face softens. “I'm sorry about that. And you're cute and all, but I don't date guys I meet on calls.”
Date? That's not what he meant. “Just coffee?” It would be nice to share a drink with someone somewhere they can actually hear each other talk. “I don't know any firefighters, and I think I need some new friends.” He needs people in his life who see him, like Tommy saw him tonight.
Tommy's face goes through a series of emotions in quick succession as Howie quietly packs away his medkit.
“Platonic coffee?” Tommy hedges.
Buck nods.
Tommy glances at Howie but he's pushing to his feet. “No strenuous activity for 24 hours,” he says to Buck but raises his eyebrows at Tommy earning him an unimpressed glare. “Try to avoid screens, take paracetamol for any pain, and if the headache gets worse you go see a doctor. Okay?”
“Okay. Um, thankyou, Howie.”
“Don't mention it. And call me Chimney.”
The bandage on his temple tugs as his face screws up at Howie's retreating back. What kind of a nickname is 'Chimney'? Probably a normal one for a firefighter.
Turning back to Tommy, whose hand is still resting on his back, less for support now and more for comfort since Buck is holding himself upright, he makes a choice. “You can call me Evan.”
Tommy regards him for a moment, then his eyes light up. “Okay, Evan.”
And yeah, that was the right choice. His name sounds good in Tommy's mouth, safe. He can be himself with Tommy, he feels it already.
“Where does ‘Buck’ come from?”
Buck lifts one shoulder in a shrug, cataloguing his body and realizing how exhausted he is, his whole body is sore. “My surname.” He catches Tommy's nod as he looks up and thinks to check: “What about you?”
“What about me, what?”
“Do you want me to call you ‘Tommy’?”
Tommy's lips quirk up. “Please. I was never a ‘Thomas’.”
Buck chuckles. Despite the circumstances, he thinks meeting Tommy has saved this crappy excuse for a birthday. He pulls out his phone, only to frown at the broken screen. “Oh.”
Tommy is quick: reaching into his soot-streaked yellow overcoat and pulling out his own phone. “Here. Put your number in.” As Buck does, Tommy tells him to wait right there, and he feels bereft when Tommy's hand leaves his back.
He's only gone twenty seconds but Buck already misses his presence, the sturdy warmth of his touch, the grounding soft bass of his voice.
Tommy returns and takes a knee in front of Buck, handing him a scrap of paper with a phone number on it. “I'm going to order you a ride, make sure you get home safe. In a few days, when you're feeling better, you can decide if you still want me to buy you that drink.”
“I'll want it,” he says adamantly.
Tommy doesn't say anything, just uses his phone to sort a car to take Buck home and waits with him until it arrives. He doesn't know what happened to his friends but Tommy tells him there were no other injuries besides a bartender with smoke inhalation so he's not worried about them. He's the one who was almost got trampled to death and left inside a burning building and they're not rushing to check if he's okay.
“Hey,” Tommy bumps his shoulder against Buck's. “You'll have better birthdays.”
Everything before he met Tommy tonight fades to the background in the face of his assurance and that gentle smile. “This one wasn't so bad, in the end.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” They stand together on the sidewalk away from the club and the remaining first responders. “You don't have to wait with me, you know.”
.
“I know.”
Tommy doesn't leave. He stays with Buck, holding the door open for him when his ride arrives. “I'll see you soon,” Buck says when he's situated.
“I hope so,” Tommy says quietly, and closes the door, sending Buck off into the night with an open-palm double tap on the roof of the car and a small wave.
I'm gonna buy him drink, Buck thinks, as the car pulls away from the curb and he wonders what Tommy's alcohol of choice is, and how he takes his coffee.
... No tengo nada que decir. No se me ocurrió nada xd. Supongo que un niño dejó la pizza en el muñeco de nieve :|. Anyway, espero que sea de su agrado xd.
The main character must collect a flower that’s only poisonous on the full moon. Upon reaching the field, they find that someone else is collecting the flowers too. They can’t let that happen.
