can i request an au of an au. bc now i'm thinking like firestarter au where buck is the hero and tommy is the villain??
hot damn getting asked to write an au of my own au!! hell yeah, let's go
buck is plucked out of relative obscurity when he uses his powers to create a backdraft in montana that stops a wildfire from spreading. he goes from being a ranch hand to being one of the most recognisable superheroes on the west coast (it feels too egotistical to say the whole world, but probably the whole world)
he uses this new clout to get doug arrested and put in jail before he can hurt maddie again. maddie moves out to los angeles with him — that's where the team is based, and they give them an apartment, so it's not so bad all things considered.
he's got a partner, lucy, who can create force fields and they find out one day that if he sets himself on fire, and she uses a force field around him, the second she drops it an oxygen rushes back in he kind of… flashes over. it's their last line of defence, because it's always hard to control.
tommy wanted to be a hero, really he did. only the first person to notice his powers (outside of sal and gina) was gerrard. that's how he introduced himself, anyway. tommy declined the opportunity to work with him, and that's when he approached sal and gina's daughter.
it should be illegal to make a child sign a contract. but stella agrees that tommy and her parents will work with the nice gentleman that came by her house for two years, all for the low low price of a pony.
gerrard does come through with the pony. and a barn for it to live in. but he's got the three of them over a barrel and he knows it. he may not call in stella's contract, but he could, and the threat of what he could make her do, what he could do to stella, is enough to make them toe the line.
buck and lucy have a… handler. her name's athena grant and she has a wicked sense of humour (when she forgets and lets herself express a real human emotion) and she's absolutely terrifying. buck would do anything for her. and her husband, who as far as he can tell is a totally normal, non-super adjacent fire captain.
they've also got archnemeses. buck supposes that's standard when you're a superhero, but the terrible trio is… odd. by all rights they should absolutely crush buck and lucy into tiny dust mites every time they fight, but they huff and they puff and they blow some property down and then they take off. it's kind of like a game.
then kestrel kidnaps athena and it's not a game anymore.
considering how hard it is to find kestrel on a good day, it's surprisingly easy to find athena. that fact niggles at buck for the next few weeks while he tears the city apart to try and find them.
kestrel barely puts up a fight when buck rescues athena, and there's something suspicious about that too. kestrel wants something — from athena, or firestarter, or maybe even buck himself — he really should have tried harder to have a separation between his identities, but when there were only five people on the ranch at the time of the fire, it had been a little tricky for them to pretend he'd just been 'in the neighbourhood'.
athena shows up one day with a kid in tow, and tells buck and lucy privately that kestrel's boss (daggertooth, the stupidest name known to man) had tried to kidnap her to get her parents to do a job for him.
lucy stays behind to protect the kid and buck goes out looking for some villains.
he's flying over hollywood when they get news that the terrible trio are out by the pier and that daggertooth is dead. it's their first and only confirmed kill, and then they disappear.
no one seems terribly interested in tracking them down, at least not with any regards to taking down daggertooth. buck is pretty sure if the city could throw them a parade they would.
athena keeps telling buck to drop it, which makes him think she knows more than she's telling him. which drives him even crazier. he goes to the fire station to try and track down bobby — maybe he can shed some light on it for buck — and runs into one of his firefighters instead. literally. tommy is so big that buck actually bounces right off him, and tommy has to grab him to keep him upright.
tommy's hands are on his wrists and buck has totally forgotten why he came by. he stares for a full minute, long enough for tommy to get concerned, before blurting out an offer to take him to coffee.
buck leaves with a date and no information on what athena is up to.
buck takes a chance, steps closer to tommy when they're leaving the coffee shop, and tommy leans in and kisses him softly. it takes the flight home for buck's heart to start beating normally again.
the less said about his heart rate the first time they sleep together, the better
they've been dating almost six months when one of their dates gets interrupted by a call from tommy's best friend. his mother in law fell and they need to go check on her, can tommy take his niece for the night? obviously. buck loves kids.
buck recognises stella instantly. but firestarter's never been called the brightest bulb in the socket, and buck flunked out of college, so he says hello for the first time even as he shakes sal and gina's hands and puts together just why exactly tommy has zero trouble lifting buck up like he weighs five pounds.
he keeps his mouth shut for another six months, until athena tells buck and lucy they've found some new recruits for the team, and then proceeds to razz them all for weeks.
omg sylvie how did i miss this one?? here we go, from the loadbearing au. (i have used the word fire 82 times, mostly as part of 'firefighter'. i am shocked this happened in a 911 fic. shocked i tell ya!)
The thing about dating firefighters was that sometimes, you got together for a lunch double date because they had a shift that started at two in the afternoon. But then you were stranded with said firefighter's partner's wife, and you offered to do the dishes.
"Thank you so much, Evan," Karen said, sitting down at her kitchen island with a sigh of relief. "You really don't have to, you're a guest."
"I get the feeling that's not the way firefighters operate," Buck said, loading the serving plates into the dishwasher. "And I do want to get invited back. I feel like the best way for that to happen is to make myself the type of guest you want to have back."
"Hey, if you want to do the dishes, I'm not complaining," Karen laughed. "Listen, I did notice that Tommy drove you and then he drove Hen to work. If I can drop you off anywhere…"
Buck hummed, placing their mugs in the drying rack. "The closest public library? I have some research to do for class. I can grab a bus after, don't worry," he added quickly.
"I think Denny and I can pull that off." Karen winked at him.
💖 Which of your fics is your pride and joy? 🍎What's something you learned while researching for a fic? ⏳If you could go back in time and tell your younger writer self something, what would it be?
emoji ask game
💖 Which of your fics is your pride and joy?
i know most people don't go here, but dark side of the morning, an old marvel exchange fic that's a bit of a rewrite of ca:tws imagining that maria was director of shield when the movie happened! come over to the maria/steve side of the mcu with me.
this was posted almost ten years ago and there's some stuff i would edit or tighten up or expand these days, but! i still love the premise and what i did with it.
🍎What's something you learned while researching for a fic?
i've learned a couple things but! the most recent thing i 'learned' was that i spent about ten minutes yesterday listening to the first fifteen seconds of money by pink floyd to try and decide the best way to onomatopoeia my way through the opening cash register sounds.
⏳If you could go back in time and tell your younger writer self something, what would it be?
you're gonna find typos the second you post things. people are always gonna dislike it, and if you're lucky they'll simply move on. delete the messages/comments and don't try to alter anything to please someone who already doesn't like it - you're not going to change their minds! everything you post is gonna have at least one person (that isn't you) who loves it, even if it takes them a few years to find it.
for gods sake, add a fic to ao3's anonymous collection if you're embarrassed by it or just want to remove it from your visible works instead of orphaning it - you never know if someone is going to leave a comment that is so nice it makes you cry and you want to respond and you can't. (also, these days you never know if you're gonna need to prove that it's yours at some point)
