5 facts about an AU where...BuckTommy are soulmates in a universe where you see color when you meet your soulmate and they meet the night of the cruise ship rescue
(Imagine that somehow this did not affect Tommy becoming a pilot lol)
(we are absolutely breezing RIGHT PAST the pilot of it all, don’t even worry about it)
1. Buck has seen color his whole life—Maddie was his first soulmate, after all, someone who loved and cared for him even when his parents wouldn’t. He saw yellow: saffrons and golds and lemons and ambers and buttery soft blushes of color.
He met Bobby and saw blue. The sky and the ocean, calm and tempestuous both—the color of their uniforms, the color of his own eyes.
Eddie introduced him to brown—rich, earthy soil, the bark on the trees, the color of chocolate, Eddie’s eyes big and bright, the soft dark fall of Maddie’s hair.
He had never had any reason to imagine he was missing anything.
2. Tommy was nearing 40 and his world was still gray. He might not know what color looked like, but he knew exactly what he was missing.
3. “Evan,” the man shaking his hand said. “I’m. Evan Buckley. You can, uh, you can call me Evan.” He was still shaking Tommy’s hand. There was something about it that was… captivating, maybe. Something that felt different. Tommy wasn’t too concerned, though. He’s met pretty guys before. They had a cruise ship to find.
*
Oh my god, Buck thought. He flexed his hand after Tommy released it. The edges of his vision were limned in white.
4. The fake mouth static was. Well. Even in the circumstances, it was kind of charming, wasn’t it? Something about it pinged something in Buck but he couldn’t out his finger on what. Something was different, but… he didn’t know what it was. And it didn’t matter, did it? Not until Athena and Bobby were safe.
They flew through intermittent showers, landed on a capsized cruise ship, and Bobby and Athena were safe. They were okay. Buck felt his whole body unclench in relief.
He and Eddie stood with the pilot—with Tommy. He was the one who made it all possible, thank goodness he was willing to listen to Hen’s hunch, was willing to let Chim cash in a favor. Buck put a hand on his shoulder to thank him. Tommy turned, a little surprised.
But before Buck could say anything—
The world burst to life.
Buck had seen color his whole life, but he had never seen this. Everything had been shadowed, muted like the dregs of paint washed off a brush. Cast over by a specter of gray. It had never been so bright. Vivid. It had never been this.
Buck sucked in a breath and looked around a while new world. And then—Tommy. He wanted to see the man who had brought new life to his world.
5. Tommy could hardly look at him. He was slack-jawed, so shocked it sat on his face like fear. He swallowed a few times and took a halting step back. His mouth opened but he couldn’t speak. Tears ran down his cheeks.
“Hey,” Buck said. “Are you… are you okay?”
“Your eyes,” Tommy said hoarsely. “They’re. Are they… blue?”
Buck nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Yours, too.”
“I, uh…” He laughed wetly and wiped the back of his hand in a rough swipe across his cheek. “I never knew it would be like this. The… All the colors. I’ve never—“
Buck took a step closer, but this time Tommy didn’t step back. “Hey,” he said again, softer. He hoped he made Tommy’s world as bright as Tommy had made his. He put a hand on Tommy’s cheek, and Tommy sucked in a breath through his nose and closed his eyes. “You must have been waiting for a long time. I’m… I’m glad I’m finally here.”
fate is calling, it’s turning burning in my veins // M // 9-1-1 bucktommy // 4273 words // holiday exchange fic for @exhaustedpirate
Summary:
After Buck is struck by lightning, he realizes that the red string linking him to his soulmate is visible.
Excerpt:
When the Lichtenberg scars fade, the red string doesn't.
It starts at his chest. Right over his heart, a fan of thin, barely visible lines that join together and then run like wire up his shoulder and around his arm. The line snakes around his wrist and straight down his palm, along the length of his middle finger. He pushes his thumb into the meat of his palm and rubs hard, but it does nothing. The mark isn't raised and he can't feel it at all, like it was always there, a part of his skin. He wonders if that's true. If maybe it was invisible his whole life, waiting for someone to pull it to the surface.
"Is it… it's my soulmate. Right?" he asks. "It's our… red string."
Buck and Tommy both volunteer on the weekends transporting animals who are up for adoption, either from one shelter to one of its sister shelters or to the person who’s adopting (or fostering), and this is how Buck and Tommy meet—and keep meeting—when Tommy is the one to pass the animals onto Buck after his leg of the journey is done (it works sort of like a relay)
So they don’t have much time to talk or get to know each other, maybe 5-10 minutes at most each time, but over time (and admittedly probably not all that long), they start to fall in love
It starts with a German shepherd.
Every time before, the hand off has been quick, one truck to the other. But this little guy is squirmy and quick and very excitable, and somehow the door to his crate got opened, and so the other guy is coming over to help.
“Sorry,” Buck says with a grunt, loading an armful of squirmy puppy back into the crate. “Here’s uh… Spengler, I think, was what Lola called him at the shelter.
The guy—big guy, big big guy, Buck can’t help but notice—snorts. “Where are Venkman and Zeddemore, then?”
“Uh… I-I don’t know what you mean? He had three siblings I think, that came in around the same time, but I don’t know their names.”
The guy’s mouth curls up in a teasing smile. Buck flushes, feeling embarrassed and. Something else. He doesn’t like it much. “Yeah, I guess you weren’t even alive in the 80s, huh?”
No, but that’s none of this guy’s business. Buck pouts. And the guy can’t be more than forty himself, anyway, he might be younger than Maddie. Definitely not older than her. He’s still got shoulders and chest strong with muscle, only the barest bit of gray threaded through his hair. He’s… wow, he’s kind of hot actually, not that Buck is like noticing, but he has eyes after all. And maybe the guy might share his workout routine. Buck also maybe noticed that he had a great ass when he caught a glimpse of it. “I… I’m a millenial,” he says finally, because he was at least alive for most of the 90s.
The guy breaks into a wide, toothy grin, the corners of his eyes crinkling up. His heart feels a little funny in his chest. “You know Howie, right?” He asks.
“Uh, yeah, you mean Chimney? Y-yeah, of course I do.” He managed the shelter’s [something], and he and Maddie were together.
“Tell him you want to watch Ghostbusters with him the next time you see him. Tell him Tommy said it was an important part of your education.
Tommy, Buck thinks. Cool. “O-okay,” he says, because he’s not sure what else to say, and he definitely doesn’t care about some old movie, but he does kind of care that the guy’s—Tommy’s—shirt is so tight Buck can see his nipples.
Tommy shoots finger guns at him and gets back in his truck, ready to take Spengler to the sister shelter to meet his new foster.
(the next time they meet, Tommy asks him about the movie. The time after that Buck gets so excited talking about some of his favorite dogs at the shelter Tommy’s face goes soft and sweet and it makes that weird feeling in Buck’s chest come back tenfold. The time after that the A/C is out in Tommy’s truck and he’s driving shirtless. Buck has the stray thought that he wants to lick his abs and then after a double take it’s ohhhhh so that’s what that feeling meant)
no one tagged me, i'm living on the edge !!! here's my newest wip, which so far does not have a title but which was supposed to be about maddie and motherhood and forgiveness, but the first section is just a big sad backstory dump for tommy before he and buck get back together. neat.
i'm tagging YOU! if you wanna share.
~
His mom's favorite record was Revolver. Or at least it was the one she played the most, the one that sticks in his head, that he hears even years and years later. He remembers laying on the floor with her, the skirt of one of the pastel sundresses she liked to wear fanned out around her. She would sing under her breath and he would stare at the cover, trace the stark line of Paul's profile. A curl hung over his mother's dainty forehead, a soft corkscrew of dirty blond. She kept her hair cut short, a mop of those curls in a halo around her head. Tommy played with her hair sometimes, digging chubby fingers in to grab at one of the curls and pull, then let it go. Pull, then let it go. She still let him do that, even when he got older. He was a lot gentler then.
When he was very little, she'd put on her record and wait until Yellow Submarine came on. Then she would lift him up abover her, balancing his tummy on the soft soles of her feet. She'd hold his arms out and sing in a lilting soprano. We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine…
She doesn't sing so much anymore.
Tommy lays down on the floor with her but she doesn't look at him. Instead she hums along to Eleanor Rigby and Tommy keeps his fists clenched so hard they hurt, pressing them into the old green carpet in their outdated living room. The afternoon sun is bright and cheery, peeking in through the soft cotton curtains. A golden shaft of light falls across his mom, and it lights her up: the pale blue of her dress, the creamy whiteness of her skin. She's beautiful, Tommy thinks, the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
Do you think I'm beautiful, too, he wonders. She said he was a beautiful baby, she had cared about him so much when he was helpless and small. Do you think about me at all.
His mom keeps a face in a jar by the door, too. And one in the locked jewelry box in her bedroom. And one in the bottle of wine that's always there on the high shelf above the trash bin. Tommy thinks sometimes that she has a face for everyone but him. He doesn't know if that means he knows her best, or if it means he doesn't know her at all.
Mx. Frogs 💚💚💚 Mythical/folkloric Buck/Tommy AU for the game please! Feline-inspired or associated figure for Buck/canine-inspired or associated figure for Tommy. (I know this is the flip of the more common read but take my hand 🫴)
so two important notes before we begin. one, uh.... well, it's not canine or feline. so. Messed up there. second, I've been mulling this over for a while, and in the meantime a 5 AU facts with a somewhat similar premise was posted, so! anyway, i think this is different enough that it's only even barely two cakes, but i will admit that i was a bit more prosaic and less invested in fancy prose. you will probably not believe that when you read it, but just realize what nonsense that means if i finally write this.
also, this involves maddie's canonically abusive marriage, but nothing is described explicitly and i tried to treat it sensitively
~
1. Evan Buckley loved his sister more than anything. But Maddie Buckley married Doug Kendall when he was too young to know better, and too young to do anything about it. The Kendalls were good people, they went to St. Paul's with the Buckleys, and everyone in town knew them. Doug was going to be a doctor—he was so handsome, had such a bright future ahead of him, wasn't Maddie such a lucky girl?
She seemed happy, which was the only thing Evan cared about, but still. He didn't like Doug. Buck watched them get in the car after the wedding, about to drive off for their honeymoon. And for a moment—just a moment—Doug grabbed her wrist. Maddie didn't pull away. She let him lead her. But his grip was so tight, and the expression on his face—again, just for a moment—was something that left Buck feeling… uneasy. Maddie looked back as they drove off, waving to her parents and her brother. There was something in her eyes that left him feeling haunted.
2. His parents wouldn't listen to him, but they never did. And when Maddie called, she said she was happy. Evan didn't believe her, but whenever he tried to talk to her about it she would change the subject. He didn't care about people said—Doug was a bad man, he was sure. He took his dad's truck one night and started to drive. He'd heard stories about the crossroads—about devils and deals and how no good ever befell anyone out there looking for trouble. But he didn't want riches or fame. He wanted his sister home safe.
"Why have you come boy?" a deep, sibillant voice asks. In the dark, Evan sees the shine of two golden eyes coming from the dip on the side of the road. He stumbles back as the biggest, toughest alligator he's ever seen walks up.
He gasps and falls flat on his ass scrambling to get away. "Wh-what are you?" he asks. "Y-you're not supposed to be talking. You're a… A…"
The gator makes a low, droning noise and Evan feels it strong as a subwoofer in the ground. "You know where you've come and you know why. Tell me. What exactly did you expect to find?"
Evan breathes hard, his hands trembling with his palms pressed to the packed dirt. "Can you… C-can you help my sister? Her name's Maddie, and her husband—"
"That depends." The gator looks at him and Evan feels the smallest he's ever felt in his life. He feels like he's nothing. He feels like prey. It's thick tail flicks once. "Have you come to make a deal?"
3. The gator doesn't take the first deal. Evan clutches the box he'd brought to his chest, where'd collected all the things most precious to him. But the gator hadn't wanted to paltry trinkets of a high schooler. The childish things of a boy, he'd said, slow and derisive. He'd turned and Evan had watched him, slinking down towards the dark water and then disappearing into it and gliding out into the swamp.
He tries something bigger the second time.
Maddie tried to hide the bruises when he visited her, but she was doing worse than he'd feared. He'd begged her to leave with him, to get out, to let him help her, but Doug had come back in and Maddie had swallowed all she'd been about to say and spit it back out into an awful, awful smile.
So Evan brings his motorcycle this time.
"I remember you," the gator says, and the moon above them hangs low and so, so bright in the sky. "Have you come to make a deal?"
Evan pleads. But it isn't enough.
"You ask for too much," the gator says. His eyes gleam and his teeth are yellow and sharp. "You have to pay an appropriate price." He walks slowly away again and Evan watches as he slips down and gets swallowed up by the water.
The third time he's desperate.
"Please," he says, tears streaking his face. "She… she tried to get away but he's got her, and if I don't—"
"Quiet," the gator snaps. Evan sniffles but presses his lips together, his body coiled hot and tight as a spring. "I will ask you again. What are you willing to pay?"
"I…" He wipes his nose on his sleeve. He didn't bring anything this time. "Anything," he says finally. "I'll pay anything."
The alligator, huge and ancient and terrible, looks at him and smiles.
4. Maddie's safe. Bloodied and aching, maybe, her shithead husband dead, but she's in his arms. She's safe.
"Evan," she says, taking a deep breath, holding on to him tight. "I--"
"Hey, it's okay, Maddie," he says. "It's okay. I-I promise. You're gonna be okay. We'll... we'll get out of here, and you can forget about what happened, and about Doug, and... and about everything, okay? We'll start fresh."
She nods, and wipes her face, and tries to take a breath. Doug's blood is still on her hands. There's that haunted look still in her eyes, but worse now. Deep, and aching. He knew what he was willing to pay, but that demon never said anything about Maddie.
This, Evan thinks, is not what he was promised.
~
He's been there enough times now. He knows where to go. He's seen where the alligator slinks off to, where the water parts around him as he slides through the swamp. He waits until the sun comes up. Then he sneaks off into the alligator's den.
The massive creature--demon? Evan doesn't know what he is really--is even bigger so close up. Bigger than any alligator he's ever seen. He sleeps like he's made of some dark, immovable stone. Carefully Evan sneaks up to him--closer, and then closer, and then he pulls out a knife.
He leaves the swamp and swears he'll never step foot in the crossroads again. An eye for an eye, as they say. Or an eye for a soul--they had a deal after all.
(My eye, Evan hears. Every night for three days. My eye, my eye, my eye. Bring me back my eye.
He can't sleep. He hears it all the time. Maddie, he tells her. I think we have to leave.)
5. The Buckley siblings make it to LA. Evan becomes Buck, becomes a firefighter. And, at some point... he meets a man.
His name is Tommy, and before him Buck had no idea that he was into men at all. He's tall, and cool, and he has a cleft, and he smiles like he has a secret.
Sometimes, when they lay together at night, Tommy touches the scar on his chest--the mark of that deal he made for Maddie. "What's this?" he asks, pressing a kiss to the skin behind Buck's ear.
"I promise I made once," he says. "Or uh.. something I owe to someone."
Tommy's arm tightens around him. "Hmm. And do you think it's ever going to come due?"
Buck laughs. "One day," he says. "Somebody... did something for me. For my sister. But it hurt Maddie as much as it helped her, and uh..." He swallows and he feels Tommy's fingers dig in. "I did something wrong, too. So yeah. I do. I think one day it's going to come due."
They're together for six months. They're some of the best six months of Buck's life. But it's only at the end that he realizes how little he ever knew about Tommy.
"Are you breaking up with me?" he asks.
Tommy, normally so impassive, his face an easy-going mask, looks more devastated than Buck's ever seen him. "I... I guess so," he says.
"No," Buck says. "N-no, but... Why be apart when we can be together?"
"I can't," he says. "Evan... I'm sorry."
And then he's gone.
It takes longer than it should for Buck to realize the eye is gone too.
~
"S-so it was..." He sniffs angry, his hands balled into fists at his side. "It was nothing. It meant nothing."
Tommy taps his orbital bone. "Evan. I'm sorry. But you had something that didn't belong to you."
He turns red, his eyes burning and his chest collapsing in on itself with shame and heartache. "Well... Well fuck you, Tommy, because--"
"Ahh." He holds up a hand and Buck snaps his mouth shut, furious. Tommy takes one tentative step forward. "You have something else that belongs to me, too." Before Buck can speak, though, he continues. "But. I think I have something of yours, too. I remember the terms, of course. Pretty standard. Whatever you wished, whatever you wanted most, just for the price of your soul. But the terms are a little... unfair now."
"Why?" Buck asks.
"Well. The scales are a little more even now. You owe me your soul, but." He puts his hand flat against his chest. His body is big and strong and it's real, it must be real Buck thinks, but there's a grace in his movements that seems a little... off. He gives Buck a smile that he wants so, so badly to believe is real. (It must be real.) "I have something that belongs to you." He mouth twitches up, almost playful. "My heart."
Buck rears back. "Wh-what? I--"
"So I was thinking we could renegotiate." He reaches out a hand, and without thinking Buck takes it in his. "My heart," he says. "For yours."
leaving my homeland, playing a lone hand (my life begins today) // T // 9-1-1 bucktommy // ~7400 words // exchange pinch-hit for thepinkcrayon
Summary:
To foster an alliance with the neighboring kingdom, Margaret and Phillip Buckley arrange a marriage contract for their son Evan.
Except Buck doesn't want to get married, especially not to someone he's never met. As soon as he gets to the castle, he has a plan to make a run for it. And luckily, he meets a handsome stranger who agrees to help him--a stranger who just might be doing some running of his own.
Excerpt:
"You have to help me!" Buck blurts out. He steps forward and notes distantly that the man's as tall as he is, with a handsome face, too. "Please, I…I throw myself upon your mercy. I need your help. Surely y-you love your kingdom, right? You want the best for it."
The man gives him a wry smile, something in his eye that Buck can't read. "I'd say I'm invested in its well-being, yes."
"Well…well, good. Because there's something great you can do for it now. You have to smuggle me out of it."
"I'm sorry, what? Does that mean you want the worst for it, then? Why do I—"
"No!" Buck's voice comes out loud, and sharper than he intended. He takes a deep breath. "Ahh. Okay, I-I think I might have skipped a few details."
"Very keen on interrupting, though, aren't you?"
Buck rolls his eyes and says "Sorry." The man presses his lips together to force back a grin. "Can I…can I talk? Can I explain what's going on?"
He nods. "By all means. Since you're the one begging me for help, after all."
"This is going great," Buck mumbles to himself. He nods and then takes a deep breath, trying to center himself. Gain some steadiness. "Your princess is supposed to get married, right? To a prince from another kingdom. And, yes, it might be beneficial in the short term and you might think that it's a good idea, but really what do you even know about this guy? Surely she deserves to pick her own spouse, right?"
"Okay." The man blinks and holds a hand up to stop the torrent of words. Buck bites his lip and rocks a little on his heels. "So. Hmm. First of all, I think you…may be a little confused."
"Oh?" Buck scowls. "A-about what?"
"Well." The man sucks his teeth and then says, almost reluctantly, "We don't have a princess."
"What do you mean? Who's betrothed to—"
"We don't have a princess," he repeats, and Buck's starting to see what he meant about the interrupting. "But. We do have a prince."
Can I give you a cracky AU? Where Buck is a herpetologist (I had to look that up 😶🌫️ lol) and Tommy was turned into a frog 😁 (this is so vague but I hope it sparks joy & that you can make the dots connect) 🐸
1. This is a curse. Tommy cannot believe it’s a curse. Tommy has never believed in curses and he never thought he’d start believing in curses—BUT. Here he is. And he is a frog.
2. Except he’s only a frog some of the time, it’s a swan princess/ladyhawke situation where he turns back into a human form at night. He can break the curse—he assumes it has something to do with true love/kissing frogs, but he has no idea what he needs to do to break the curse.
3. Buck is back from an expedition where he was working with some researchers he knew in Peru (“back” as in back to America, but it wasn’t a choice so much as funding was cut), and staying with his buddy Eddie in LA for awhile. (Shannon is one of Buck’s colleagues in this fic, she and Eddie are divorced but co-parenting Chris. Eddie is… still a firefighter? Question mark? Let’s go with it) While out on a hike, Buck finds a frog he’s never seen before who’s acting really really strangely. He’s so enthusiastic and kind that the frog—Tommy—is absolutely enamored. He hops a ride in Buck’s bag. When Buck gets back to Eddie, he finds the stowaway and freaks out a little. He puts the tomphibian in as best and safe an enclosure as he can and he has to run out and asks Eddie to just let him keep the frog there for awhile.
4. Eddie, who is not a frog guy, or a snake guy (Shannon’s field of expertise), says sure and shrugs it off. Until the sun sets, and Eddie hears some strange sounds coming from his kitchen. He walks in and sees this huge, naked man rustling through his fridge.
Eddie: 👀👀👀
Tommy: 👀👀👀
…
Tommy: 🫳🍔🍽️
Eddie: WHAT THE F—
5. Somehow Tommy keeps Eddie from calling the police until Buck gets back. Obviously they don’t really believe him but then the sun rises and whoops, there’s a frog! Buck obsesses over it, trying to figure out how the transformation works, spending his nights with Tommy, talking to him during the day. It turns out Buck talks a lot during the day, not really thinking about Tommy being able to hear him, and Tommy gets to know him as they work together, and slowly falls in love with him.
It takes awhile but they figure out how to break the curse. Buck can never, never let anyone else at the lab know he actually tried kissing one of his frogs.
