AU where Buck meets Tommy in the time period between the plane water/retardant drop and the truck bombing.
send me an au idea and i'll give you five facts giant fucking bullet points apparently
okay okay i had to look up the episode list to get a grip on the timeline but i think i have it down
the 118 goes out for drinks after eddie's miracle from the sky. chimney comes along despite still being in recovery, and brings tommy along since he was the lynchpin to the rescsue. tommy is a bit reluctant, feeling like he's crashing someone else's party, but he lets chimney talk him into it since he mostly knows everyone, and he can meet the hotheaded probie that replaced him and said no-longer-a-probie's even probie-er new partner. tommy is initially a bit guarded, still haunted by the fresher memories of the old 118 and the old himself, but the tension defuses quickly in the face of bobby and hen's warm welcome, chimney's dramatic retelling of their combined heroics for the day, eddie's willingness to swap army stories, and buck's starry-eyed, enthusiastic interest. buck is immediately intrigued by this cool firefighter pilot with daredevil rescue plans and years of experience on him, and spends half the night peppering him with questions. tommy ends the night swapping numbers with eddie and buck, and promising the 118 to hang out more often.
after the bank heist situation, buck finds himself calling tommy because it's so insane he needs to talk to somebody about it, but everyone else he knows was there (or is dating someone who was there, in maddie's case) so they're not interested in hashing it out with him for the fifth time. tommy is both aghast and amused by the convoluted ploy that they somehow got wrapped up in. he brings up the chicken story. buck counters with the lsd dosing story, and the shark story. this prompts tommy to wonder if the 118 is cursed, somehow. buck is immediately taken with this theory. tommy is both bemused and strangely charmed by how far buck runs with the idea.
buck and ali's relationship still plays out per canon. plus, eddie is too busy with shannon to hang out as much with tommy as in season 7, so there's no inexplicable jealousy to jumpstart buck's bi awakening. this gives tommy and buck's friendship time to grow more slowly as well. they go to trivia. buck learns a bit of muy thai, because the firefighter calendar thing made him realize he does actually want to bulk up a bit, and it's nice to have a workout buddy. buck makes an offhand comment about wanting to see the helicopter that saved his best friend's life, and ends up with a detailed tour of harbour station. tommy somehow ends up telling him about abby, somewhere in the so this is why i left 118 stories. buck tells him about his time with abby, and then somehow ends up telling tommy about maddie and doug, too. it's nice, getting to talk about these things with someone who's close but not too close.
when bobby is benched, buck calls tommy--partly because it felt like someone should let him know, and partly because he kind of wants to talk to someone less directly involved but not . when chimney takes over and becomes a micromanaging captain, buck calls tommy again because complaining with hen and eddie just isn't cutting it anymore, and bobby is being too reasonable about the challenges of leadership to be an effective venting outlet. tommy commiserates about less-than-stellar captains, and unexpectedly finds himself talking about gerrard in an attempt to convince buck to look on the bright side. he calls tommy again after shannon, because watching eddie lose the love of his life rattled him, too, but he obviously can't talk to eddie about it, not when eddie is grieving himself. tommy doesn't have any magic words, but he does offer a listening ear and craft beer and a place to crash after he gets drunk while talking about it, and that turns out to be exactly what he needed.
tommy visits buck in the hospital after the ladder bombing. he keeps visiting through the hospital stay, and the pt afterwards. he tries to help buck think about his life outside of firefighting, about building new hobbies and reinventing yourself when you need to. after ali breaks up with him, buck takes stock of his life and realizes that he's been leaning on tommy more than ali this whole time, anyway. that when something weird or stressful or interesting happened at work--and that's most of his life, work and the people in it--or when he was stressed out about his recovery and being stuck benched, it was tommy he wanted to tell first. not ali, not eddie, not even maddie. he has a crisis about it and ends up on tommy's doorstep, all i think i made you a load-bearing part of my life without meaning to and i really don't know what i'd do without you but i don't know how that happened and i just. you're important to me and i don't know what it means but between shannon and bobby and athena getting married and almost being crushed by a ladder truck i realized it's important to tell people when they matter to you. so. i just wanted you to know that. tommy is tempted to kiss buck about it right then and there, but he holds himself back because he also really likes having buck as a friend and would like to get to keep that, too. he invites buck inside instead, and gets buck to calm down, and then slowly, carefully, painstakingly lays out the truth--because he also had some realizations watching eddie lose shannon and then watching buck almost die. listen. you know i'm gay. i don't know if you know that i'm also interested in you. it doesn't have to mean anything, you've been a friend too and i'm happy to stay that way but. well. you said you didn't know what this means. that's what it means to me. buck ends up kissing tommy about it.
Do you still have the Please let him be Happy poem up? I want to read the original thing Ive seen bits and pieces of it but i would love to read it fully💕
hello darling! you can find that poem here!
this ask has been a useful lesson in the complete un-searchability of this blog. my more recent works are generally tagged with the title and/or opening line, but that doesn't help for the older pieces. the only tip i have for those is that all my poems are tagged #poetics, and the more popular ones are (admittedly inconsistently) tagged by number of notes.
Bucktommy + he knew he should have stayed home today
send me a sentence+ship and i'll write you 5 more sentences!
thank you for the prompt friend!!! this was so deeply conducive to angst, so obviously i did that, but i also wanted to see if i could make it not-sad, so here's two?
------------
He knew he should have stayed home today. It wasn't even his shift, but Raymond on C-shift was out with a broken leg, and after being suspended for six months Tommy was so pathetically grateful to be back on the job and in the sky that he was willing to take any and every coverage request sent his way. Just this once, though, he should've said no and stayed home -- instead of ending up trapped in the torn-up belly of a downed bird on a bridge in the middle of downtown LA, the jagged edge of some smashed-up metal bar buried in his gut.
The shrill whine of sirens reached his ears, followed by the heavy thud-thud-thud of firefighters leaping out of their engines and into action. Before his syrupy-slow mind could even think to worry about which station might be responding, a familiar voice yelled, “Is that— T-Tommy? Tommy! Tommy!"
"Evan," Tommy tried to say back, only the blood loss was making his tongue clumsy and his mind hazy, and he wasn't sure he got half a syllable out before the world grew dark.
------------
and the not-sad version that started out intending to be fluff and somehow ended up vaguely sexy instead:
He knew he should have stayed home today. But when Tommy looked at him all serious, earnestly requesting a do-over for their new six-month anniversary dinner, Buck just hadn’t been strong enough say no.
Dinner had been fancy and romantic and delicious, but Buck barely remembered any of it, too busy trying not to vibrate with mounting desire as Tommy made indecent noises at his food. Now they were finally, finally on dessert, and Buck watched as Tommy shoved another heaping spoonful of tiramisu into his mouth, smearing cream around the edges of his lips, and the paused mid-bite with a groan of pleasure so deep it had to be exaggerated.
With almost an audible snap of his self-restraint, Buck threw a handful of cash on the table to cover their bill and dragged Tommy outside before he was tempted to get his hands all over Tommy right there in the middle of the restaurant and get them both arrested for public indecency.
Tommy let himself get dragged along, with a smirk that got Buck’s blood hearing even further, and leaned in to whisper low in Buck’s ear, “Took you long enough, baby.”
send me a sentence+ship and i'll write you 5 more sentences!
hiiii chemmy!!!! five sentences is. so hard holy shit. please forgive the contortionist acts some of these sentences are doing in an attempt to fit.
-------------
"May the odds be ever in your favour," Buck said, watching the surprisingly vicious bidding war over Mendoza from 147.
"You do know Hunger Games is about sending kids off to violently kill each other for entertainment, right?" Tommy said, in that dry-as-desert tone Buck had missed so terribly for months and months.
"Lucky for both of us, I'm only going up there to take off my shirt for everyone's entertainment," Buck said, with a growing grin he couldn't have held back if he wanted to--and he really, really didn't want to. Running into Tommy here felt like a sign of from Bobby the universe, like the first hint in a year that he was exactly where he was supposed to be, never mind that he'd skipped merrily out of his place in line just to talk to Tommy.
"It's a good thing we're not allowed to bid on each other, or I might be tempted to remortage my house just to win you," Tommy said with all the cadence of a joke, but there was a look in his eyes that Buck recognized from that sun-drenched morning in the kitchen-that-was-Eddie's-again.
The look made Buck brave enough to lean in and whisper, "For you, I'd go on a date for free."
Then, he took mercy on both Tommy's emotional repression and the increasingly frantic users, and strutted off for his turn on the runway with his steps bolstered by the sudden confidence that they could--would--have time later.
Buck's getting a new bodyguard today, and he has every intention of disliking him. Or her. Or them. He's not going to be sexist or homophobic or whatever about it. He's a modern, equal-opportunity hater. And really quite experienced at it, if he says so himself.
And who can blame him, honestly? Bobby was the first bodyguard who has ever actually cared about Evan Buckley. The first person, period, since Maddie married Doug and his parents stopped speaking to her, or letting her speak to him.
Everyone else only ever seemed to care about using him to somehow impressing Senator Phillip Buckley from Pennsylvania. Or avoiding a new embarassing tabloid story, in his mother and her people's case. Bobby's the entire reason Buck feels like a person at all, some days, instead of an insubstantial ghost that only becomes visible when he's the problematic wild child.
And now Dad wants to replace him with some ex-Army vet. Buck's met the type before. Quite a lot of them, in fact.
The thing about bodyguards is that they sound so nice, in theory. Someone who's literal job description is to be with you at all times and never abandon you, who's contractually obligated to care about your life. Except, it turns out, caring about his life and caring about him can be two completely separate things. Especially when his father's the one holding their contracts and signing their paychecks. It was almost funny if he didn’t think about it too hard, the way their faces folded into the exact same pinched look his dad likes to give him, like they took lessons from him in their spare time. That look was how he could always tell whose side the bodyguard was on.
Before Bobby, he used to make a game out of how quickly he could push them into quitting. He’s a little rusty, after two whole blissful years with Bobby, but Buck gleefully plans to dust off those tricks again for the new guy. His previous record was six weeks, and he's rather determined--childishly so, his father would say--to beating it this time. He's pretty sure he can cut it down by half, if he really puts his heart into it.
And then the bodyguard walks through the door of Dad’s stuffy office, and every scrap of his resolve dissolves like wet paper.
how about an au where tommy is a photographer and buck is a model
send me an au idea and i'll give you five facts a lot of words
beans this gave me so many ideas i had to sort through them to pick one!!! this is round 2 electric boogalo i'm not writing in the tumblr askbox this time so god hellsite willing i will not lose it like 4 points and almost a thousand words in. fair warning i know very little about the realities of photography or modelling, this is all ~vibes~
1) tommy gets his start as an aerial landscape photographer, during that dark aimless time after being discharged from the army. he wasn’t a soldier anymore, and good riddance really, but “not a soldier” doesn’t exactly tell him what he should be, instead. or how to be a functioning civilian in normal society. flying is the only time he still feels halfway human, like he fits in his skin and knows what he’s doing and the world makes sense again. he takes pictures in an attempt to carry that sliver of peace back down to the ground with him. it doesn’t really work, only a tiny bit, but a tiny bit is better than nothing so he keeps doing it. there’s something nice about capturing the way the world looks from all the way up there, even if it’s nowhere near the feeling he gets from actually being up in the sky.
2) emma, the owner of the helicopter rental company, notices him taking a camera up and one day asks if he has any shots she could use for promotional material. tommy’s initially reluctant, so much that it surprises him. partly it’s that he’s not a professional and doesn’t feel qualified to do that kind of photography; but emma’s not asking for a whole photoshoot and an ad campaign, just a few nice photos to use on their website and maybe as the header photo on a pamphlet. mostly it’s that being asked to share his photos feels roughly like being asked to take off his clothes and stand stark naked to be stared at—or maybe more like being asked to take his shriveled and trembling heart out of his own chest and hand it over on a silver platter, bloody and still beating. his photos are in some way a part of him, of the world through his eyes, and he’s both deeply precious about them and deeply terrified that it’ll look ugly through someone else’s eyes. emma offers a pretty irresistible discount on his rentals, though, and he’s not exactly swimming in cash as an army vet without a steady job, so in the end he gives in and lets her use them.
3) he gets into photographing people mostly by accident, and a little friendly coercion again. emma’s best friend’s cousin’s roommate’s baby brother is getting married, only their wedding photographer got terrible food poisoning the night before and can’t make it anymore. somehow this information reaches emma, and somehow tommy gets voluntold into being their emergency wedding photographer despite his very reasonable protests that he is absolutely not that kind of photographer. emma says any kind of photographer is better than no photographer, and it’s unfortunately hard to argue against that logic. he takes their wedding photos, and it turns out he really has an eye for that kind of thing. all that time he spent watching people, being on guard, trying to learn them so he’d be safe—turns out all that translates surprisingly well to capturing the exact right moment in a camera. the flicker of a smile, the softening of a gaze, the tenderness of a lingering touch. emma’s best friend’s cousin’s roommate’s baby brother and his wife love them, and somehow tommy is booked for three other weddings that summer just by word of mouth. and then one of his clients (clients!!!!) has a friend desperately in need of new headshots for an audition, and then that headshot client’s agent’s friend with a tiny niche magazine needs an emergency photographer, and well. it’s la, there’s never a shortage of struggling actors who need headshots or magazines in need of photos, and within six months tommy’s working a pretty steady job as a freelance photographer. of course he still flies, and still takes his aerial photography, but it’s the portraiture that’s actually bringing home a paycheck.
4) buck gets introduced to modelling after he moves to la with connor and his friends. at first it’s a good way to earn some spending money while he continues on his wild twenties find-himself adventure. buck’s been ogled and called hot enough times to know what he looks like, and he’s not exactly body-shy, so when one of connor’s friends drags him along to a modelling audition he’s happy enough to play along. turns out those long long legs are catnip to a lot of fashion brands, and the birthmark gives him just enough of a je ne sais quoi effect to stand out in a sea of pretty boys with perfectly sculpted faces and literal supermodel physiques. what starts as a fun way to make rent turns into a real career when he meets bobby nash, a creative director who kicks buck out in the middle of a photo shoot and tells him buck’s got talent, but he has no interest in working with buck if he’s not gonna take the job seriously. he tells buck about how everyone there is doing their utmost to make him look good, so that he can make the clothes look good; about how the designers and the seamstresses and the tailors put months and months of blood and sweat and tears into the clothes he’s modeling, how their hearts and souls and lives are in the fabric, buck’s doing them all a dishonour with his flagrant disregard for the sum total of their efforts. buck is all puffed-chest i know what i’m doing and i’m working hard too! as he huffs away, but once he’s alone he feels genuinely chastised because well. he really hadn’t actually thought about it that hard before. he goes back at the end of the day to apologize and beg bobby for another chance, and bobby’s surprise enough by this kid coming back that he takes him under his wing. buck flourishes under bobby’s tutelage, and actually starts treating modeling as a serious career.
5) when buck and tommy meet, it’s a shoot for a magazine that bobby’s wife athena edits for. buck thrives under tommy’s lens, in tommy’s eyes. he’s felt hot and sexy and handsome and even pretty before, but something about tommy’s photos makes him feel cared for, adored, maybe even cherished. the attention is intoxicating. tommy, meanwhile, is thoroughly charmed by this kid who looks at the camera like he’s staring straight through the lens at the viewer’s soul, who’s got enough legs to make almost anything look good. plus, he’s so eager and curious and takes direction so well that it’s genuinely a pleasure working with him, not just a job. they end that photoshoot with a round of drinks with bobby and athena, and also with each other’s phone numbers. six weeks later, when the issue is printed and the photos go live, they go from a small talented fish in a giant pond teeming with talented fish to overnight viral sensations, la’s hottest new up-and-coming photographer and model. the sudden attention is overwhelming, the fame a little scary, and they grow even closer fighting to navigate it together.
+1 six years later, when they get married, tommy is absolutely insufferable about how their wedding photos are taken. the only reason he doesn’t do them himself is because he can’t both be behind the camera and in front of it at the same time; that, and bobby himself is behind the camera this time, along with a small army of his best photographers. he’d never trust evan’s big day to anyone else. buck takes the least airbrushed, posed, staged, directed photos he’s ever taken in about a decade. he smiles too wide to be photogenic, scrunches up his face enough to be all wrinkly, and is too busy staring at tommy to look at the camera. it’s his favourite photoshoot ever by a million miles, no contest.
Okay so I hope I can post this Henren and BuckTommy AU/(insert number of facts that does not have to equal 5) prompt clearly lol
So, to start, preliminary details:
Tommy did not work at the 118 (and thus does not really know Hen)
Hen and Karen are not together yet.
Karen and Tommy are friends.
Hen and Buck work together
Now for the actual prompt:
Hen and Karen meet (somehow) and are going to have their first date but are both nervous. Karen suggests a double date: she brings her friend Tommy and Hen brings a guy for him. Hen invites Buck, who is most definitely bisexual...only he doesn't know it yet.
Chaos (probably) ensues
send me an au idea and i’ll give you five facts so many fucking words
I keep. not learning my lesson. and have lost a half-complete version of this answer twice already. third time's the charm???? sorry i took so long it is literally a new calendar year. hopefully the length make sup for it. this ended up being almost entirely bucktommy and not much henren but like. it's already 1.5k long. so.
imagine a better world where being a lesbian didn't stop karen from becoming an astronaut. she still loves space with all her passion, still gets her phd in aerospace engineering, and then goes the civilian expert route to nasa astronaut corps. tommy, meanwhile, first admires the stars as a child searching for somewhere to escape to. he still ends up going to the army and becoming a pilot; an injury gets him out of there with an honorable discharge, but also dashes any hopes of ever becoming an astronaut. but he's a good pilot, goddammit, and not afraid of doing insane maneuvers, so he ends up working for the space program as a pilot instead.
they meet during karen’s zero-g flight training, and they become friends pretty easily bc karen refuses to be intimidated by this any man, even this giant burly man with his dry sarcastic humour, and tommy respects her and her refusal to take any bullshit. their friendship gets fast-tracked even more when tommy learns that karen is a lesbian; she ends up being the first person he ever comes out to, stuttering and scared but honest, for maybe the first time in his whole life. he's still not out-out, especially not at work, because he’s nowhere near ready for that even if nasa is better™, but it feels like progress just having said the words, out loud, to someone.
chimney can still be karen's neighbour and hen's wingman. but instead tricking hen a blind date, he just tells her he’s setting her up. when karen learns that hen is hesitant about a blind date, she suggests bringing a friend each to make it more low-key. that way, if the date doesn’t go well and they hate each other, they can just split up, and they’ll still get to have a decent night out with their own friends. hen agrees, already knowing who she’s bringing along.
it’s buck, obviously. partly it’s a gentle kind of hazing for still-a-new-probie buck; partly it’s a way to get to know him outside of work, just in general; partly it’s because through the cockiness and the attitude buck does have that golden retriever puppy energy, and even if the date is a disaster she’s sure buck will be able to salvage her night. and partly, though she’ll never admit this to buck or chimney, it’s because she’s noticed the way he flirts with men on calls, sometimes. she’s pretty sure he’s oblivious to his own flirting, and it might be habit because sometimes it feels like buck flirts with anything that breathes, but hen’s gaydar has never been wrong before. on the off chance that she is wrong this time, well, they did agree to “bring a friend.” the double gay date was very strongly implied, but she has enough plausible deniability. she has no interest in being his gay guide or whatever, but a kick in the right direction she can provide.
tommy, meanwhile, is absolutely not the kind of person who goes a blind date or a double date, never mind a blind double date. definitely not the kind of person who goes on a gay blind double date. but 1) he owe karen a favour or ten, and 2) karen tempts him with the opportunity to check out a local queer bar with the i’m just here for her excuse readily on hand. not that he should need an excuse for being at a queer bar, or that he’s likely to be “caught” by anyone from work—but tommy’s still paranoid, with the shadow of dadt still looming over his mind, never mind the long long shadow of his own childhood.
karen and hen’s date actually goes well, score one for chimney! buck and tommy literally have no idea, though, because they get caught up in each other almost immediately. tommy goes to pick up their drinks from the bar counter, buck goes to help him, and then they pretty much forget to ever come back. buck is immediately, unspeakably drawn into this man who’s bigger than him, who maybe has an even cooler job than him, who has the driest sense of humour he’s ever heard. and also has a cleft! tommy’s just charmed by this golden retriever of a kid who wears his heart on his sleeve like he’s never been hurt before, and chases a nebulous feeling across the continent with a kind of courage tommy’s only ever dreamed of. they barely have more than a beer each because they’re too busy just talking to each other. at some point buck asks tommy about his workout, because damn he wants to bulk up more and maybe he should train for the firefighter calendar that’s coming up in a few months; tommy takes this as an excuse to exchange numbers and extract a promise to see buck again.
they become gym buddies, and they do actually get a lot of good training done. tommy teaches buck some muy thai. buck, in return, teaches tommy some of the fun firefighter drills they run at the academy, or as close to it as you can get with a normal gym’s equipment. there is, of course, also a lot of ogling and flirting going on. buck is absolutely not conscious of it; tommy is painfully, anxiously conscious of every second of it. of every move he’s making that buck is reciprocating; of every heavy glance that darts away before it can become charged eye-contact; of every touch and flirty comment and appreciative admiration of each other’s bodies. he’s too fucking scared and too fucking closeted to actually ask buck out, though. not for a few months, at least, until buck makes it in the firefighter calendar and runs to tommy with a copy of it. as a gift. all flushed and excited and proud, holding out a picture of himself shirtless and half-dressed and hot as sin. tommy, for once in his goddamn life, decides to be brave and kiss buck.
buck bluescreens.
tommy panics, speedruns a very steep downward spiral of oh fuck i misread everything and he’s going to hate me now, and almost literally runs away. not that he can go very far, because they were at tommy’s own fucking front porch, but he slams the door and runs to his bedroom and tries very, very hard not to have a breakdown about it.
buck stares at the closed door and speedruns his sexuality crisis. he calls bobby first, because bobby fills the trusted wise Adult that knows how to Life and gives me advice about love space in his head. he gets out exactly one sentence: “tommy kissed me and i think i’m into it” before he realizes that he’s calling the wrong person. “oh fuck i think maybe i’m gay? i need to talk to hen, don’t i, sorry bobby, gotta call her now.” hen very kindly doesn’t laugh at him but talks him down from his what the fuck adrenaline rush, teaches him about the word bisexual. “do you think tommy’s bisexual? or is he gay? or i guess it doesn’t matter, i mean he did just kiss me so he’s into me at least, right?” and that’s how hen finds out that they’ve had this entire conversation while buck is still standing in tommy’s front yard, and tommy is definitely still having a crisis of his own. she tells buck that he doesn’t have to figure everything out right now, but he does need to decide what he wants to do about tommy bc it would be cruel to lead him on, and also he should probably, like, leave tommy’s property.
“nah, okay, i got this,” buck says, absolutely not at all reassuringly, before he hangs up on hen. tommy forgot to lock his front door in his panic, so buck knocks and then loudly announces his presence before inviting himself in. he finds tommy in his room, halfway through the transition from panic to anger, from flight to fight—especially since buck has come into his house and he’s got nowhere escape to. tommy’s about to bite out a comment that’s going to be meaner than it should be, when buck cuts him off. “so. hen says i’m bisexual. i don’t really know what that means yet, i did just find out about fifteen minutes ago when you kissed me, but that was really nice so maybe would you want to do it again?”
tommy bluescreens.
buck laughs, just a little, but it’s not a mean sound. he’s laughing at himself, and at the mess they’ve made of their situation. an actual explanation is given. tommy properly comes out to buck as gay. they kiss about it.
they kiss about it a lot. that night, and the day after, and the day after. all the way through to getting married. maybe after the ladder truck+embolism+tsunami combo? that would probably kick tommy’s ass into “oh we maybe don’t actually have forever and i should put a ring on that while i can.” buck is insufferably, incandescently happy about it. there is no lawsuit ever and they live happily ever after the end.
