Tommy glanced down as his phone rang, seeing Howie Han pop up across the screen.
Looked like Howie hadn’t lost his number. Tommy snorted derisively, and watched it ring through to his voicemail.
It rang a second time.
Then a third.
Tommy finally picked up on Howie’s fourth attempt. “What?” He bit out.
Howie sounded taken aback. “Hey, Tommy.”
"What do you want?”
"Uh— I was just going to invite you out for a drink.”
Tommy looked around his cramped office, searching for a reason why Howie would be inviting him out. He didn’t find one. “Why?”
"I realized I’ve been letting a lot of things fall by the wayside,” Howie admitted. “I haven't seen you since…” he trailed off, the funeral hanging in the air, unspoken.
"Well, I’m glad you’re figuring that out,” Tommy managed to say, “but considering you weren’t there when I needed you, I’m not really interested in getting a drink and reminiscing.” He hung up before Howie could say anything else, putting his phone on silent and flipping it face down on his desk. He checked the wall clock. An hour left. Enough time to type up his last report.
Fire Marshal Thomas Kinard, report on 6348 N Sepulveda Blvd, March 29, 2026 …
AU where Tommy gets called to airlift Buck, Eddie, and Ali out of the hotel instead of them climbing down
this got LONG so it's going under a cut after a few bullets. i did. not stop at five.
buck and eddie get ali out of the room and they start evacuating, and when they find herve, the hotel worker that they need to travel on the ironing board and tell bobby that they are going to go down the elevator shaft because they can't go up, bobby tells them to get to any hotel room that's still standing, break the window, and then wait there.
he knows a guy and they're going to use the window as their exit, because he has to track hen down and he doesn't have time for them to go haring off on their own as well.
ali and herve are very stressed out by the fact that the window is their exit. they are very high up and they are not built for this.
buck and eddie are thrilled, because it means that bobby is giving them permission to do something extremely stupid. they're also slightly concerned by the 'find hen' of it all, but they can't do anything about that until they hit the ground. (buck is hoping it's at very high speeds.)
they hear a whomp-whomp-whomp and eddie wonders why the news crews are getting so close, and then the helicopter swoops into view and there's two firefighters in the back waving at them. they lift up high enough that they can drop a basket down for herve, and eddie and buck load him up carefully.
the building starts creaking ominously and ali starts to freak out, though she's been in the building long enough that she freaks out without running around, because she knows where that leads (falling out a window like her boss)
they know herve is strapped in because the helicopter drops lower, so the doors are almost level with the window, and their radios crackle. "please tell me you're all tied to each other," a voice says. buck laughs and assures them that they are. "two firefighters and a civilian, yeah? let's get her in first."
buck and eddie hand ali out the window, and the female firefighter in the back grabs onto her with both hands and doesn't let go until ali is buckled into one of the seats. the rope between the three of them has barely any slack and buck almost suggests that they cut it off ali. the building keeps creaking. buck makes eddie go first, and he's got one foot in the helicopter when a piece of debris sails past the tail from a higher floor. eddie freezes.
"the other door is closed, right?" the pilot asks, and at the confirmation from the two in the back there's a sigh. buck bounces on his toes, sure they're about to say something insane. "all right, firefighters. we need to get the hell out of here. i'm going to lower the helicopter, tilt it just slightly away from the building, and you're going to slide out the window and into it."
eddie is not thrilled by this decision. buck is. "what's the worst that happens?" buck prods him. "we're attached to ali, and she's inside. absolute worst case, we hang outside like mission impossible until we land." buck offers to let eddie go first so that if anyone has to stay outside, it's buck.
the blonde firefighter is laughing at them and eddie makes a face at buck before sliding.
buck laughs as he takes his turn, landing in the seat beside ali and grinning at everyone. "let's do that again!"
"let's not," eddie disagrees.
they're just going straight down to the ground so they don't bother hooking any of them up with headsets, which is a shame because buck can see that they're laughing and he wants to know what the joke is. he wants to talk to the pilot, figure out why that was his go-to decision and where he's done it before and if he goes flying outside of work hours.
when they land, ali waits for them to get untied before throwing her arms around buck's neck and kissing him. buck blinks and goes to say something, but ali turns around and plants one on the blonde firefighter too. "no offense, but unless either one of you wants to get involved in modelling for my ad agency, i hope i never see you again," ali says, handing them both a card and letting the other firefighter walk her to the ambulance with herve.
eddie gestures to himself. "what am i, chopped liver?"
"didn't even kiss the pilot," the pilot agrees, and buck gets his first good look at him and has to swallow the reflexive urge to say that he could help with that.
"don't hate us because we're beautiful," the blonde grins at buck. "lucy." buck introduces himself and then says that they have to go help find their teammate, and when he says hen's name the pilot perks up. "we can help," he offers, and lucy immediately pushes the pilot in buck's direction. "as the only two who enjoyed that, you should stick together. in case you want to be daredevils again."
"you loved it!" the pilot hollers after her, holding out his hand to buck. "tommy. let's go find hen, shall we?"
by the time the four of them get down to the garage they're just hooking everything up to tow it out, and they're mostly extraneous bodies, but they stick around since extra hands are always useful.
hen's eyes get incredibly big when she sees tommy waiting with them, and bobby claps his hand on his shoulder and invites tommy out with them for drinks as a thank you. which leads to buck asking how he knows bobby and tommy admitting that he used to be at the 118 and that "one of you probably took my spot, actually" and buck swallows the "please let it have been me that took your spot" that's bubbling up in the back of his throat because that's an insane thing to say to someone.
tommy's reappearance leads to buck and eddie telling hen and chim what happened up top, and the stories take the rest of the ride back to the station. eddie begs off of drinks because he has to get chris, and buck volunteers to drop them both off because the place they're going is on the way there.
buck crowds into the booth next to tommy and basks in all the 'hey remember when' stories that the three of them have from before bobby took over the station, and then when they start breaking off into their own conversations buck pumps tommy for information about flying and harbor and basically anything he can think of.
hen keeps giving him strange looks and buck ignores her.
by the time they leave, buck has an open invitation to come by harbor for a tour, to go flying with tommy, and an offer to come to his trivia night "because you seem like you're pretty good with facts" and buck is charmed and halfway to offering to give tommy a ride home when his phone chimes and tommy excuses himself to get his uber.
"you would have been less obvious if you'd climbed in his lap," hen says on her way out and buck blinks at her, bewildered.
"what?"
"have fun on your tour, buck. i'm sure you'll learn a lot."
title from oh my days by orville peck; gifting this to the server bc yall are enablers!!
rated G | 3855 words
read it on AO3 [ + chapter 2 ]
"So shake it off, make some more bread."
And it works. And maybe it would work for Theo too — something to focus on, a task, instructions. Small hands kneading dough and making cookies and using the oven for something other than setting magazines on fire.
It works for Buck. If they are so alike, maybe it will work for Theo too.
[ or the one where baking brings tommy and buck back together ]
