Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Athena

Hen greeted Athena with a glass of wine between their shifts. Despite her friend flipping multiple locks as she shut the door, the mood in the house was somewhat lighter. Even Denny seemed to have picked up on it. He was working on several drawings on printer paper, the little genius was trying to align the edges to make a much larger drawing than just a simple 8x11” piece of printer paper.

“What’s the occasion?” Athena asked. 

“We got the order granted by the judge,” Karen says from the direction of the kitchen. 

“We just need an officer to deliver it to Eva.” Hen says.

Athena huffs a bit of a laugh and joins her friends in their kitchen for the celebration. They dance around the space, and Athena feels the little bit of good news wash over her like a balm to her soul. Then an idea hits her, “Why don’t I deliver it tomorrow?”

Karen and Hen both turn towards her, Hen’s smile a bit wicked while Karen taps on her nose several times before saying, “That would be amazing! Then we’d know she got served for sure.”

“You really want to get involved?” Hen says, bringing her wine glass to her lips but not taking a sip. 

“I sure as hell don’t want this to land on some rookie’s desk and not get done for a month.” Athena says. “I’ll let the captain know at the start of shift and get in touch with her parole officer.”

Hen comes over to her and pulls her into a hug. Karen joins shortly after. 

“Thank you,” Hen says quietly when they all pull apart.

“So,” Karen hums, “What’s new with you lately? Any new mystery men?”

Hen snorts, shaking her head and heading for the wine again, topping up Athena’s glass.

Athena shoots Hen a look. Silently asking what the gossip is, but Hen just shrugs, “Can’t help but speculate, what, after coming over to help with that other guy, and now it’s radio silence on him.”

“We, uh, split up.” Athena says, “Felt too serious.” She feels a bit of guilt in that statement. Because she and Bobby feel more serious than it had been with Aaron. At least when she was ‘hooking up’ with the other man she’d been able to tell Hen about it.

“Too bad,” Hen bumps her shoulder, “Was looking forward to the next emergency call.

Karen snorts a laugh, and Athena knows she knows. She expected it, and the laughter they all end up sharing over it isn’t as bad as it could be. At least Hen’s a bit more discreet about these things. Even if she gossips with Karen, it’s alright, because Karen is like a steel vault when it comes to secrets.  

The next morning Athena ends up at a run down apartment complex that Eva’s parole officer tells her about the next morning. It’s clearly one of the places people come through while they’re on parole. 

She goes to the second floor and finds the room she needs, knocking a few times. A man answers the door glaring at her, “I literally just moved in.”

 “Is there a woman living with you?” Athena asks, eying the man.

He’s only in a tank top and underwear. It’s got a nasty grease stain down the front. 

“I wish,” He huffs out, “Apparently the woman who lived here before me was a piece of work. Got in some sort of fight with a guy and gave her notice.”

Great . Athena nods to the man, double checking the room number after he closes the door. It’s the right place, according to Eva’s parole officer. After a check with the leasing office, Athena calls up Eva’s parole officer when she’s back in her patrol car.

“Officer Byun, This is Athena Grant, I’m trying to find one of your parolees. You gave me Eva Mathis’ address this morning. She moved out a few days ago.” 

“Well shit.” Officer Byun says over the phone, “I’ll see about tracking her down and getting you in touch.”

“It’s time sensitive, Byun.” Athena says, “I was delivering a restraining order for a friend.”

“You want me to deliver it?” Byun asks.

“Would you mind if I tag along with you once you tack her down?” Athena asks.

“Sure. I’ll get back to you before our next meeting.” Byun hangs up before Athena can ask anything else. Over the scanner she caught some noise about a stolen car, just as it seemed to pass in front of her at the apartments. She sighed and turned on her lights to get it to pull over.

It had been a few weeks since Athena and Bobby had first started, well, dating was the only word Athena could use to describe it now. Even if it’d gone from sitting down at a restaurant, or going to the beach together, to curling up on a couch watching TV together. It felt more real than anything had in a long time.

Which was probably why she was pulling up on one of the 118’s accidents, with a runaway husband and pissed off bride in the back of her patrol car, just to get a bit of time with him.

She pulled him down for a kiss between the engines. Deepening it as she pushed him back into one of the engines. She was pretty sure it was the 118’s, but they were responding to a scene with a few other houses.

Bobby was pulling her in closer, laughing a little when they broke apart for just a few seconds.

Then there was Buck.

The slam of a compartment had the two of them springing apart. Athena glanced towards the noise, wiping at her mouth, like that’d hide the fact that she was just making out with the scene commander between the engine and ladder truck. 

“You know, one of these days, it won’t be me who catches you,” Buck says, he’s putting away gear. Bobby reaches over, putting a hand on Athena’s arm for a moment, smiling in that mischievous way. Buck groans, “Gross, and I just pulled a severed arm from a pool.”

Athena snorts, she knows she shouldn’t. Not at a scene where someone just lost an arm. She glances at Bobby, who shares the same exasperated expression Buck tends to get. It’s so easy to be fond of this. Of him. Even with the complicated thing Bobby’s got going on with Buck.

“Did you get it-” Bobby begins a question.

“On ice and in the same ambulance as the guy it should be reattached to.” Buck says, “It went with Mitchell and Jones.”

“Alright,” Bobby says, “Anything else?”

“I should be asking you that,” Buck says, walking backwards, “You’re scene commander.”

Bobby lets out the frustrated noise he makes when he’s crunched for time. Athena shoves him a little, “I’ve got two people in the back of my car that need to go to booking.”

There’s one last discreet peck on the lips, then Athena watches him head back between the vehicles to take charge again. They have time. They just need to be a bit more subtle.

🔥🔥🔥

Eddie

If he’s being honest, the night before his first day at the 118 is a lot like the night before he had to leave for the military after Chris was born. His stomach churned with nervous energy. He knew he should sleep. Hell, the military should’ve trained him out of this. Except this time it wasn’t just a deployment. 

No, a deployment meant Chris was safe at home with Shannon. Tomorrow Chris will go to his Abuela’s. It was still summer vacation. The heat wave hitting the city meant that Chris was probably going to spend the next 24 hours at Abuela’s kitchen table with some of his summer workbooks, or on Abuela’s couch watching cartoons. 

Eddie sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The clock read 5:00 am, and he knew there was no point in trying to sleep anymore. He still couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was keeping him up, just that he was here, awake.

He’d turned the ceiling fan off halfway through the night, favoring the house’s AC system over the spinning blades overhead. He’d switched sides of the bed, trying to figure out if it was the mattress that still didn’t feel right. Nothing helps, so now he walks quietly through the house. Chris needed to do his physical therapy, but it was summer. He didn’t need to be up, when Eddie had to arrive at work at 10 am. 

Five hours.

The coffee machine Pepa had given him - off one of the shelves in her garage - popped and sputtered to life after he filled it up. It was the same kind his parents had when he’d joined the military. They replaced theirs at some point with one that required a lot of unrecyclable plastic pods, all with different names and weird tastes. 

He sits in the quiet kitchen, with his hands wrapped around a warm cup of coffee and just listens. The sound of early morning commuters is already underway. He’s pretty sure his neighbors’ sprinklers are going. The AC unit kicks on. 

Somehow Eddie blinks and it’s brighter. The full mug of coffee in his hands is suddenly cold. The clock on the oven shows a steady 7:45. Chris is calling for him from the bedroom.

It’s easy to get him ready to go to his Abuela’s place. Their morning routine is pretty simple. Wake up, get dressed, stretch out (Chris’s physical therapy was starting to pay off), breakfast, teeth, go.

It didn’t mean there weren’t any hiccups. Like bad milk, or the sudden decision that the cereal they’d been eating for months was no longer something Chris liked. Eddie burned the eggs he made for them. He tried not to swear as he opened the window behind the sink to air out the room so the smoke alarms wouldn’t go off.

His landlord would probably laugh at the irony. A firefighter setting off the smoke alarms. 

His new boss probably wouldn’t like that his reason for being late would’ve been setting off the smoke detectors. 

It doesn’t take long to get Chris into the car. The main issue is buckling him into his car seat. Eddie has to struggle to get Chris to sit still enough to be buckled. Chris can buckle himself in almost all the way, except for the last bit, which requires lining up 3 metal parts to create one buckle. It proves to be a bit much for his son’s dexterity. That’s how Eddie ends up with milk all over his chest on his way to work.

“Hola Abuela,” Chris calls as he heads up the steps.

“Hola,” His Abuela says at the door. She has her electric fan in her hand to help with the heat. Her AC is already steadily running. She smiles down at Chris, kissing him on the head then looks Eddie up and down, “¿Qué pasó?”

“Chris’ milk cup came open when I was getting him in the car,” Eddie says.

“Hey,” Chris says, frowning up at his dad.

“You need a new car seat, nieto,” Isabel shakes her head, putting a hand on Chris’s shoulder as he goes inside. His crutches click as he goes down the hallway.

“I know, I know, but, you know how it is,” Eddie shakes his head, “I just paid all the bills, and haven’t gotten my first paycheck from my new job yet. It’s my first priority.”

Isabel shakes her head, “Si Dios quiere.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie mumbles. He steps back down the stairs before Abuela gives him a look and he comes up to hug her goodbye. “Thank you.”

“He’s easy to watch,” Abuela shrugs, “Not very fast.”

It gets a laugh out of him before he’s back on his way to work. Trying to be early.

Bobby meets him in the parking lot. Not on purpose. He’s walking someone out at the same time Eddie’s getting out of his truck. The milk stain only marginally less noticeable now.

“What happened to you this morning?” Bobby looks him over with a too bright smile for 9 am on a Monday. 

“Milk accident in the car.” Eddie sighs.

“Well, you’re early. Why don’t you rinse off in the showers before changing out? I’ll show you where the uniforms are, we’ll grab your size.” Bobby walks him into the locker room, gesturing to the lockers. He points out an empty one. “Daniels just transferred to the 136, so you’ll take his locker. It’s right next to Buck’s.”

Eddie nods, at least he’ll have one friendly face in the bizarrely glass locker room.

Once he’s shown where the spare uniforms are, Bobby directs him to the entrance to the showers. Eddie goes in without him and is relieved by the sight of stalls. Each one curtained off for actual privacy. 

He takes care to avoid his hair, so he doesn’t have to deal with it dripping in his face if they get a sudden call. Once he’s done he hangs his milk soaked shirt on a hook in his locker to dry off so it won’t smell bad during their 24 hour shift. He gets his pants on before realizing he’s missing his undershirt, so he goes to grab one from the pile of spares Bobby had pointed out. 

Unlike the one’s for the academy this one’s chest emblem has a “118” on it. The back is simple, the same across the entirety of the LAFD. It’s got big bold “Los Angeles Fire Department” on the back.

He can feel eyes on his back when he’s pulling it over his head. 

He glances over and smiles, Bobby is speaking with the two Eddie met briefly at the pier, and Buck. 

He’s getting his dress shirt on- regrettably he brought his long sleeves for his first 24- when Bobby brings in the two unfamiliar firefighters. Hen Wilson, and Chimney Han. 

“Chimney?” Eddie tilts his head, and the man smiles, chewing his gum.

“I’ll make you guess a few times before giving you the story.” He claps him on the shoulder.

Eddie realizes Buck hadn’t followed them to the locker room. 

Even amidst the introductions he can see the man standing in the middle of the engine bay, watching him. His face is blank, a stark difference to the few times Eddie’s ever seen him. He turns, heading toward the loft.

Eddie doesn’t really get a chance to speak with him, either. 

Since their shift started at 10 am, it was well past the breakfast hour. Bobby called an all hands meeting to start shift, reporting on weather conditions, and road closures. Buck was in the mix of people, but tucked in the back. Eddie had hovered near the front waiting for the inevitable introduction, which he got when Bobby announced the morning's chores.

Eddie was paired off with Chimney first to go over some basics at this station that were different from the basics at the academy. 

Namely, they were checking the hoses, and re-rolling them.

Chimney told Eddie about the trick Bobby had taught them a few weeks after he’d become captain, getting them all to learn how to twist a loop to make for a faster carry. Chimney had Eddie re-roll every hose until it was second nature to default to the new loop.

When they finish, Eddie takes a moment to just take it all in. He’s here, a real firefighter, ready to go on a call at a moment's notice. Almost all of the morning chores are done, for the whole crew, except, he guesses, lunch.

Buck had disappeared with Bobby upstairs an hour ago to do the lunch prep. 

“Done already?” Chimney asks, putting his phone away.

“Yeah, I think so,” Eddie heaves the last hose into it’s compartment. He hums for a moment, deciding it’s better to ask now, than later, “Hey, is Buck still a probie or something?”

Chimney snorts, then looks at him, going still when he realizes Eddie is really asking. He looks like he’s trying to decide what to say. He’s saved from answering by firefighter Wilson coming up to them. 

“What’s up?” The woman asks, then extends a hand, “I’m Hen.”

Before Eddie can get a word in, Chimney blurts, “Eddie asked if Buck is still a probie.”

Eddie would be offended by how quickly Chimney answered Hen over him if it weren’t for the woman’s snort and eye roll. 

“He’s a full fledged firefighter.” Hen says simply. She’s got a fond smile.

“Did he have a shield ceremony?” Eddie scrunches up his face. He was sure Buck would’ve invited him.

“Canceled a few days before it was supposed to happen.” Hen says. She looks at Chimney, then back to Eddie, expression turning a bit sad, “Between us, his not-girlfriend fled the country, and he had a falling out with someone else he wanted to invite.”

Eddie hums. Still, if it had only been him and Chris, Buck would’ve had family to invite, right? He’d told Eddie that Bobby wasn’t his father, and that woman from the hospital wasn’t his mother. He must have some family somewhere he could invite. Surely, his parents were proud of him. 

Eddie’s weren’t thrilled that he was becoming a firefighter. They disliked the long hours, they thought it wasn’t right to put Chris through that. They kept asking him to let them take care of Chris, but Eddie knew he could do this and be a good father. 

Surely Buck’s family was kinder than his own.

“Yeah,” Chimney says, “Buck said he didn’t want to waste everyone’s time if he only had one person to invite.”

“Chim,” Hen whacks his arm.

And, oh. It made a bit more sense. Maybe Buck’s family wasn’t able to come out for the ceremony. Or they weren’t local. Eddie’s weren’t either.

“Hey!” Captain Nash calls down from the station’s loft, “Lunch is served, get up here!”

Eddie hesitates, but Hen catches it and turns, “Family meals, Bobby insists, everyone’s invited.”

“I, uh,” Eddie thinks about the frozen microwave meals he’d packed and thrown in the upstairs freezer. 

“There are vegan and vegetarian options,” Chimney bumps his shoulder on his way past, “Buck’s vegan. Barely ate with us until we figured it out three months into his first year. Don’t make us beg, Diaz. Come eat.”

Eddie follows them upstairs.

Their first call of the shift comes just after they’d started on afternoon chores. Bobby apparently liked to do things in shifts. Rushing all the shores first thing to have maximum downtime left room for error, Hen had explained when She’d been in charge of showing Eddie how they stocked the trucks. Ambulance restocking was a different duty, and Buck was apparently doing it on his own. (There was some mumbling about a clipboard, and weapons of mass destruction?)

They gear up for a medical call and arrive at a mechanics shop. Eddie’s familiar enough with this sort of place from past odd jobs to realize just how bad the situation is when they get eyes on the guy.

“Pressure gauge is reading at 100 pounds per square inch.” Buck says.

Eddie has to fight not to make a face. That… that’s really bad. 

“His breathing is shallow,” Hen says, “Let’s get him on the ground.”

Following instructions from Hen and Chim Eddie tries to put a nasal canula on the man while they work, but more air is coming out of the man than they can get in.

“I can’t get a needle in,” Chimney says, “It’s like trying to inject into stone.”

“I can’t get air in,” Eddie looks up at their captain.

“Jugular venous distention, tachycardia, hypotension, diminished breath, we’re looking at tension pneumothorax.” Hen says.

“The air pressure is collapsing his organs, we need to drain the fluid,” Bobby says, “Buck get a 14 gauge angiocath top decompress the-”

“Pleural cavity,” Buck supplies right as Eddie thinks it. He’s already getting the supplies from the bag. 

“Good,” Bobby nods.

“Need help?” Eddie asks. 

“I got it,” Buck bites back. 

Eddie does his best to keep his face neutral. Sitting back a bit until Buck goes to cut into the man’s undershirt.

“Go lower.”

“What?” Buck glares at him, “We’re trained for the second intercostal space.”

“Chest wall’s thinner at the fifth intercostal, anterior axillary line,” Eddie persists, pointing, “Decreased chance of hitting any major organs. It’s how we did it in combat for collapsed lungs.”

Before Buck can object, Bobby cuts in, “Do it.”

“Please?” Eddie offers his hand and Buck gives him the tools.

“Can you help with the shirt?” Eddie asks. He’s not looking at Buck as he cuts down the man’s - Hector’s - shirt. All it takes after it’s gone is one incision, and the tube is in. The hiss of decompression means it’s working. 

Martinez and Jones take the guy to the hospital in the back of the ambulance.

Eddie can see the way Buck’s jaw is working while they pack things away. Eddie frowns, wondering just what’s wrong with the guy. Three weeks ago he’d send Eddie links to making the perfect pancakes, then on to the theory of pancake’s creations, and finally how every culture had a version of flat round breads. And God help him, Eddie had only texted him to complain about how he burned every pancake he ever made.

Now Buck’s barely spoken to him all day.

“Good job Eddie.” Bobby claps him on the shoulder before hopping into the engine.

He can tell Chimney is up to something when he does the same before Jogging around the engine. Especially with the way he looks at Buck as he passes.

Buck slams his last compartment closed before locking it, then pulls a face. His lips go thin and flat a he bites out, “Yeah, good job.”

Eddie watches him get into the engine, long legs disappearing inside. Something’s wrong there.

Eddie arrives for his second shift with the hope that this time he won’t piss off Buck. Again. 

He’d learned from his first shift’s drop off disaster, and had Chris put his morning water in the cup holder before buckling him in. Abuela was having some of her friends over in the afternoon for loteria. Eddie tried floating the idea that maybe Pepa could take Chris for it but Abuela waved him off, “Chris will play, and have lots of fun, it will be good for him to practice his Spanish with us.”

Eddie wasn’t so sure, since the ladies were sharks when it came to the game, but Chris seemed up for it.

The start of their shift was easy enough, one medical transport call took most of the morning. Not because it was difficult, but because it was tedious. The person lived on the fourth floor, with a narrow stairway, and broken elevator. Bobby spent a portion of the call writing a citation for the building.

 Even so they still got their chores done, and after lunch, Buck went down to the gym. Eddie followed soon after, his own chores finished until the late afternoon. He changed into workout clothes he’d packed (the ones Chris deemed the least goofy when Eddie was digging through his drawers last night) and joined not only Buck, but also Chimney for a workout.

Eddie starts with warming up, watching Buck as he floats from station to station, going through his routine. Eddie goes to the punching bag first, dropping his water bottle beside the equipment, just out of the way enough to not risk it getting knocked over.

He’s got his back to Buck, but he can tell that the other man has stopped what he’s doing, momentarily. He can feel eyes on his back, and all he can think is good . He hums happily about it as he does a kick that involves spinning around.

Buck walks behind him as he steadies the bag. Eddie finds himself smiling. 

Buck doesn’t make a comment as he passes, and Eddie lands a few more blows. 

Buck grabs two more plates for his rep before laying down on the bench.

“You want a spotter?” Eddie offers, because there is no one else around. Well there is Chimney, but he’s trying to stay out of the way of whatever’s gotten Buck in a foul mood after that call at the mechanics. Or maybe he’d been in a mood before that. 

Buck makes a derisive noise and sits up, glaring. 

“You need a spotter,” Chimney huffs from the pull up bar nearby. 

“No.” Buck snaps, and seems to realize just how stupid he sounds, “Chim, why don’t you-”

“Oh no,” Chimney shakes his head, focusing on his own set, “I’m all good, Evan .”

“Look man, why don’t you let me spot you for, what, five minutes?” Eddie tries to be calm and collected about this, but the sudden ice Buck is throwing his way, after the few times they had met, was making that hard. Buck’s glare only seemed to get worse as he talked and well. Eddie knew he had always had a bit of a temper, “What’s your problem man?”

Buck looks back up at him for just a moment before his mouth splits into the kind of lethal grin Eddie recognized from glances in the mirror when he mouthed off as a teenager. It was gone as quick as it came, but followed by a nod. “Okay. You.”

Eddie watches as he stands, and oh, he’s taller. Like objectively, Eddie already knew this, but almost chest to chest, it was… enlightening. 

“You’re my problem,” Buck says simply, “Your comfort level. You're-you're not supposed to just walk in here like you've been here for years. It's meant to be a getting-to-know-you period. You're meant to respect your elders.” 

Buck punctuates his points with his hands, getting just slightly closer to Eddie in the process. Eddie bites his lip as he tries to figure out the real issue. Did he feel threatened? Surely the comment Eddie made on scene last shift, in an actual emergency, hadn’t cause the guy to hate him this much.

“You’re not his elder, Buck,” Chimney says, unhelpfully. “Maybe by a month or two.”

Buck glares.

“Look,” Eddie raises his hands in defeat to the point. “I didn’t mean to, uh, be too familiar here. Whatever personal stuff you have going on-”

“What personal stuff do you think I have going on?” Buck crosses his arms, and Eddie glances at the weights he was just about to go after, cause, wow. 

“I don’t know, man,” Eddie says, “Just whatever it is, I’m not trying to overstep, or anything. You don’t have to feel threatened.”

Chimney drops from the machine he’d been working on, staring at the two of them like they’re idiots, before grabbing his water and walking away. 

“Why would I feel threatened?” Buck snaps.

“Exactly,” Eddie shrugs. “You and I do the same things. I’ve just done it while people were shooting at me.”

Buck breaks eye contact first. He huffs and looks away. 

Eddie will take it as a win. 

Maybe. 

He goes back to the punching bag, and Buck grabs one of the other people on the floor to spot him.

Eddie’s not going to regret choosing the 118. At least he hopes not. Buck won’t set him back, even if their friendship had already crumbled.

It just had to be a grenade. They’d stopped the ambulance, and everyone except poor Charlie had left. The guy must be scared out of his mind back there. Anyone would be terrified if they had a live ordnance in their leg. Especially when it wasn’t going to just take the leg if it went off.

They’re outside the ambulance now, Charlie had been given a light sedative before they all unloaded while they waited for the bomb squad. They’d set up with a robot and a camera live feed.

“Yup. There she is,” Jim said. He was the guy in charge of the bomb squad. 

“He's got a live round embedded in his thigh,” Bobby nods to the screen.

Buck shifts on his feet, looking at the live feed beside Bobby, “Uh, I thought this thing already went off.”

“The launch grenade has two components,” Eddie jumps in, explaining for Buck. He’s not the first person Eddie’s had to explain it to, “Gunpowder which makes it travel and an explosive charge that makes it go boom.”

“Okay, so why didn't this one go boom?” Buck looks at Eddie now, giving him his full attention. It’s interesting how easily all the anger has gone out of him. Like having something serious to focus on is enough to make all other worries go away.

“It's fitted with a proximity fuse.” Eddie continues his explanation, watching for any return of Buck’s issues, “It's a little smart sensor that tells the cap it's traveled a safe enough distance from the shooter to explode. From his hand to his leg probably wasn't far enough.”

“Well, we can't bring him inside a hospital full of people,” Bobby glances over to the ambulance, working the problem like the rest of them, “not with that still stuck inside him.”

“We called the military for help.” Jim shrugs.

“The military?” Buck glances towards Eddie once, then back to Jim, “Uh, can't you do it? You're the bomb squad.”

“You can't defuse a grenade. We need to find someone who knows how to pull that thing out of him without setting it off.” Jim seems too calm for this, like the guy in the ambulance isn’t slowly bleeding out every minute they delay, “They're sending someone up from Pendleton. Should be here within the hour.”

Oh. They already knew. 

“He doesn't have an hour,” Buck points out the obvious, running a hand through his hair and letting some of the curls loose.

“I can do it.” He sees Buck and Bobby stare at him in his peripheral, “If he doesn't go to surgery soon, he'll die.”

“Have you done this before?” Bobby asks.

Eddie grits his teeth for a moment before answering, “No one I served with was dumb enough to shoot themselves with a live round but…. I’m familiar with the ordinance.”

“I’ll help,” Buck volunteers easily.

Bobby looks ready to veto it, but instead he gives a nod when Buck finally looks at him. Some sort of wordless communication passes between them.

It takes two minutes for them to get suited up by the bomb squad. 

“This box is padded to help prevent it from rolling around,” Jim shows them the box and hands it off to Buck, “You get it inside here then leave it behind while you evac the bus.”

“Copy that” Eddie nods, defaulting back to his days in service. It’s easier to think of it like that. He walks past Buck as soon as he’s done with the gear. “See you inside.”

Eddie almost misses what Bobby says to Buck, but not to him, “You don't have to do this.”

“You think I'm gonna let Eddie have all the fun?” Eddie can picture his smile while he says it. “Besides, you said you wanted us to bond. We might end up real close.”

Eddie almost laughs. Except, when did their Captain tell Buck that he wanted them to bond? No, it’s not something he’s going to think about now, in the middle of a literal bomb crisis.

“How’re you feeling, Charlie?” Eddie climbs in with Buck, glancing over his shoulder to see if he’s taking Bobby up on his offer or not. It seems he’s not backing down.

“Like a world-class idiot.” Charlie mumbles in that way patients sometimes do after they get a mild sedative to help them keep calm in transport, “My wife, if she was still alive, she'd be here now saying, ‘I told you so.’ Well, maybe she'll be able to tell me in person in about a minute.”

“Well, that conversation's gonna have to wait. Nobody's leaving this life tonight.” Buck soothes, “Ready to get this out of you?”

“Yeah,” Charlie says, not nodding.

“Let’s start the drip,” Buck helps him with the IV, preparing the drugs that’ll have Charlie knocked out in seconds so they can do the real work.

“When did you serve, Charlie?” Eddie watches the drugs go in and mentally starts the countdown, glancing at Buck. The guy is pulling gauze and packing materials, putting them on the stretcher with Charlie.

“I never did,” Charlie grumbles, “I was 4F. Ended up teaching middle schoolers for the last 40 years.”

“We always need more teachers, Charlie,” Eddie says as the man starts to blink.

“Kind of you to say….” He drifts off mid sentence. 

“You ready?” Eddie asks Buck without looking at him.

“Yeah.”

Buck pulls back the cloth they’d put over the opening of the leg. Theres a lot of blood, despite how they packed it. They’d tried their best to get as much padding in before they had to leave, because the thing needed to be stabilized. 

“He's losing a lot of blood.” Buck says, then swears under his breath. 

“Keep pressure on it,” Eddie directs, and when more blood comes, he gently adds, “Not-not too much pressure.”

The grenade is stable, and gold, and right there in the leg, ready to be removed, “There it is.”

“You can pull it out,” Buck says, more like a prayer than confidence in Eddie’s skills.

“I’ve got to... be careful,” Eddie is speaking to himself, trying to calm his own nerves as he keeps the ordinance as still as possible, “The sensor measures the distance traveled based on how many rotations the shell made after the launch. The key is not to turn the shell while we pull it out.”

“Okay, yeah,” Buck says absently, watching, “don't turn it.”

Eddie can feel his teeth grinding together. The task itself doesn’t require a lot of effort or strain, but he still finds himself grunting as the grenade comes out of the leg. He turns towards Buck.

Buck has the lid of the box open, Eddie places the grenade inside, and Buck flips the lid shut before depositing it on the seat. They stuff all the gauze they can into Charlie’s leg, and bring him out.

They won’t risk running him towards safety, not when the parking lot they chose is full of potholes and any wrong move could cause something to start bleeding worse. The 126 had shown up with their own ambulance, and parked just past the safety tape. They took Charlie and got him in their own ambulance.

“Let's get the robot in there.” Jim says over a walkie talkie. 

Eddie glances towards the bomb squad’s set up and hopes they’re able to save their ambulance. He literally just stocked it with Hen before the call. Whatever, not his problem right now.

Eddie’s not sure why he says what he says next. It kind of just spills out of him, “You're badass under pressure, brother.”

Brother? Brother!? Kill him now. He might as well have climbed back in the ambulance and shaken the grenade box.

“Me?” Buck seems to light up at the compliment, and isn’t that something.

“Hell yeah. You can have my back any day.” Eddie nods, just to keep Buck smiling.

“Yeah. Or, you know, you could… you could have mine.” It comes out a bit stilted, and judging by the laugh that comes from Bobby’s general direction, it’s more from awkwardness than any lingering issues between them.

Eddie snorts a laugh, “Deal.”

“Nice work, guys. I'm glad you both made it out of there.” Bobby says, “Let’s wrap this up and get out of here.”

“The guy's a professional, Cap.” Buck smiles, “I was never really worried.”

I’m going to let this man fuck me . Eddie thinks, and before he can even figure out where the fuck that came from, the ambulance they were just in explodes.

Buck ducks halfway down, but it doesn’t really matter from this distance. Bubby turned around as soon as it happened. Neither of them see the look on Eddie’s face. He’s more affected by his own, very sudden, gay crisis, than the ambulance blowing up. That would’ve been a regular week day in the military.

“Cancel the robot.” Jim says a few feet away.

“You guys hungry?” Eddie asks when the other two finally look back at him.

Bobby has them stop at a 24 hour restaurant on the way back to the station. Apparently they have a longstanding usual order for the place. 

“You survived a bomb together, go survive ordering takeout.” Bobby all but shoves them out of the back of the ladder truck to go get food for the station.

It’s quiet inside, and the host nods along. The place has a lot of vegan options, Eddie notes, as Buck rattles off food items. Then they sit down together on a padded bench to wait.

Buck pulls out his phone, fiddling with it. Eddie wonders if he’s texting someone. Probably Bobby.

Chim wanders in at some point. He makes a joke to Buck before heading toward the back. The bathrooms. 

“Hey,” Buck says, “Sorry I’ve been kind of a dick the last two shifts. It was… It was my brother’s birthday, the day you started.”

The tone… The tone he uses reminds Eddie of people who’ve lost family. Of profound grief.

“Oh shit, when did he die?” Eddie asks.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Buck laughs mirthlessly.

He doesn’t get a chance to elaborate. Their food’s starting to come out. Buck hands him the first few bags of take out boxes. They don’t get another chance to talk for the rest of that shift.

🔥🔥🔥

Daniel

The water is running in his bathroom when he gets home. Daniel is not the kind of man to leave his front door unlocked, and really the only person he thinks would swing by his house to use his shower is 2 hours into a 5 hour surgery back at the hospital. The only other person with a key is 2 floors down, cooking. Daniel knows this because Anil had a package waiting in the mail room and he brought it up for him. 

Daniel quietly opens the door to the coat closet just inside his apartment, reaching up for the gun he keeps on the top shelf. 

His apartment is a mostly flat layout. A long wall of windows on one side that extend all the way to the bedroom. Only one wall separating it from the rest of the apartment. Beyond that is the single bathroom. Daniel makes his way to the door. It’s wide open. 

There's a pile of clothes on the sink counter, and Daniel silently steps towards the curtained shower. 

He pulls the gun up and yanks back the curtain.

Maddie screams.

In his shock at seeing his sister, the gun goes off, a bright orange dart pops out and bounces off the wall behind her head. She snatches the curtain up and covers herself. 

“A nerf gun?” Maddie laughs, “Really?”

“It’s not like I had anything else!” Daniel says, turning away from her. 

Maddie gets out of the shower a few minutes later. Daniel is in the kitchen poking around his fridge for ingredients. He’d become slightly obsessed with pre-made meals during his medical internship (his parents had become obsessed with him eating healthy food, which led him to indulge in instant ramen, and pop tarts the second he was left to his own devices). Now he was teaching himself how to cook some of his favorites from scratch, but it didn’t mean he really had anything here for tonight.

“What are you doing here?” Daniel calls out as she emerges from the bedroom. She seems a bit stiff, going slowly. He clocks it.

“What,” Maddie says, “I’m in town and I can’t come see my little brother?”

Daniel pulls out some frozen pierogies and a bag salad. 

Maddie takes the frozen package from him, looking it over with some interest. 

“Don’t really have enough to make anything more substantial for two.” Daniel says simply, pulling out a skillet and a salad bowl in turn. 

“Hey that’s okay,” Maddie shrugs, “Mom wasn’t exactly teaching any of us how to cook when we were kids.”

“Right,” Daniel sighs, “At least, not us two.”

Maddie looks pretty fine. No bruises, only a little stiff, but not limping or anything. Though, last Daniel saw her, she had a bruise on her face, and was favoring one arm. That was when he was still in grad school, taking a tour before they sent out applications to major medical programs around the country. Before he took a job in LA.

“How did you even get in here?” Daniel asks.

“Your downstairs neighbor gave me the key?” Maddie makes a face, “Says you ask him to water your plants when you’re on a long shift?”

“Anil.” Daniel groans. The older Indian man did have a key. He did come up and water one of Daniel’s harder to care for houseplants whenever Daniel knew he’d have a surgery run long. 

“Yeah,” Maddie nodded firmly, “Nice man.”

“And Doug?” Daniel noted just how bad the flinch was before his sister collected herself.

“Don’t know, don’t care.” She shrugged, pushing the frozen pierogies back to Daniel.

“You left him.” Daniel hummed, pleased. He opened up the package and dropped them into the skillet. He let them start to sizzle, then grabbed the salad spinner his mom had sent him off amazon his first month in the apartment. He gave the bagged salad a quick rinse, then plopped it in the bowl with its toppings, leaving the dressing off until they were actually going to eat it.

Maddie chewed on her lip for a moment, “Sorry I haven’t really been in touch lately.”

“Haven’t heard much outside of when mom calls for a few years now.” Daniel says softly. 

There used to be a time where they’d call each other once a week.

Maddie was still in college then. Before she met Doug and decided to go to nursing school while she supported Doug through med school. Weekly calls turning into monthly calls turned into mostly texting and calling when she had a minute. 

The last real time they had a long conversation was when Buck turned 18, and they were trying to decide if he would even want them to contact him. When they still believed what their mom had said about Buck having been adopted. 

“I know,” Maddie says, “I’m sorry.”

“So you’re finally leaving Doug, and the first thing you did was come visit?” Daniel moves the food in the skillet, making sure it doesn’t burn. 

Maddie does that shakey little nod she does when she’s not being totally honest, “More or less.”

Daniel sets down the tongs he’d been using to push the food around, “Maddie?”

“Listen, I’m not going to be in LA long anyway. Just until you and Evan fix whatever it is that went wrong.” She steps away from the kitchen island, moving towards the living room. 

“Does anyone else know where you are?” Daniel asks incredulously. 

“No,” Maddie snaps, “Please don’t tell mom and dad if they ask.”

“You know I won’t tell a soul,” Daniel sighs, abandoning the food for a moment after setting the heat to the lowest it’ll go, “You’re running, please just tell me that’s what this is.”

Maddie shakes her head, turning towards the windows. 

The sun has mostly set now, and the night lights are poking through the reflection in the glass. Her face is reflecting in the windows and Daniel can see the panic, the fear, the hurt. 

“You don’t have to leave LA. I doubt Doug knows where I live, and the hospital isn’t going to hand out that information if I tell them not to.” Daniel offers. 

“Mom’ll tell him where you live.” Maddie says.

“Why would she?” Daniel says, “Huh? I’m not gonna tell her you’re here.”

“She’ll assume.” Maddie sighs, turning back towards him with a carefully blank face. He leads her back to the island and has her sit at one of the barstools. He pulls out a Gatorade from the fridge for her. The light blue one. 

He turns over the pierogies. 

“You’ll probably be here for a while anyway,” Daniel sighs, “It was… bad. Buck thinks I lied to him because I need a kidney or something, again. I couldn’t even get out that I’ve been in remission for over a decade.”

“What did he tell you, exactly, about himself?” Maddie asks.

Daniel scrubs a hand over his face, “He told me he’d been in foster care, and never got adopted. He just traveled around when he turned 20 until ending up in LA, I guess. Then his roommate showed up, and kind of told him who I was before I had a chance to explain myself.”

“Who did he think you were this whole time?” Maddie frowns.

The pierogies are done, so Daniel takes them out of the oil and puts them onto a plate with paper towels to blot them down a bit. He puts them between him and Maddie at the island, grabbing plates and utensils for them both, then putting the salad beside it. He comes around and sits beside her before they can actually start eating. 

“He thought I was Dr. Daniels, related to a guy who works out of the same fire house as him, who has the last name Daniels.” Daniel slumps down in his seat, “Because he misheard me when I saw him again. I was trying to tell him who I was, but all he knew was that I was a doctor with a brother at his station, and he assumed. I don’t think… I don’t know if he even thinks we’re his family anymore.”

Maddie is silent for a long while. Poking at her food. She’s digesting information, can’t do that while she eats, apparently. She didn’t do that when they were kids either. “So he thinks you were lying to him on purpose the whole time.”

“Yeah,” Daniel sighs, “Pretty stupid for me to let it go on that long.”

“Yeah,” Maddie snorts, “We’ll fix it though.”

Daniel nods. He hopes she’s right. In the meantime he needs to find the best way to make her stick around for longer than just until they fix this. He needs to help her finally get rid of Doug completely, not just run. 

He can do that.

It’s his job as her brother to protect her, after all.

They sit down to watch TV together after they eat. On the screen is footage of an ambulance on fire. With the caption, “ Live grenade removed from man’s leg before it goes off in downtown LA. ”

“I would’ve killed to be in the ER for that surgery.” Daniel mumbles.

“Do not go running towards grenades.” Maddie whacks him with one of the throw pillows. 

🔥🔥🔥

Bobby

Bobby smoothed down the lapel of his jacket. Athena would be there any minute. He was hopeful that she wouldn’t mind the change of plans. Going out instead of ordering in. The Korean Barbecue place he’d picked out had 300 five star reviews on google. It looked like a nice place for a date. Buck had looked at every single picture on its google maps page and told him it looked perfect for a date.

“Relax,” Buck said, sipping a juice box. For some reason he’d decided to buy a bulk pack of them the last time they’d placed a grocery pick up order. His noise canceling headphones were on the charger in his bedroom, but he still looked ready to head out on a run at any minute.

“I just…” Bobby sighs, “Aside from that first date, we haven’t really gone out.”

A snort, “I know,” Buck tosses the empty juice box in the bin, “I’m starting to feel like I could actually do a marathon with how often I’ve been going on runs.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Bobby says, “You know you don’t have to leave.”

“Mmm,” Buck makes a face, “I’d rather not be here when my Captain is getting freaky in the sheets.”

“Buck!” Bobby hisses out.

Buck’s still cackling when Athena knocks. He disappears into his bedroom. Bobby goes to get the door and tries not to let his face fall when Athena comes in with takeout boxes.

“Did you just come in from somewhere?” Athena asks, looking him up and down. 

“I was just going somewhere.” Bobby takes her take out containers and sets them on the counter, trusting Buck will put them away when they leave. He hands Athena the flowers he picked up on the way home, “I was thinking we could stop at your place on the way. I was thinking Korean Barbecue.

“No, no. I just got Thai food.” Athena chuckles, walking past him, into the apartment. She scans briefly for Buck, eyes stopping on the closed door, before she turns back to Bobby.

“I thought I could take you on a proper date,” Bobby says.

He knows something’s up while he watches Athena’s face do a little journey, “If you’d have given me warning I would’ve gotten done up.”

“I've tried. Many times.” He lets out a breath holding back from shaking his head, “You always want to stay in. We’ve only really been out on one date.”

“It’s more romantic, when it’s just us,” She says

“Sure,” Bobby nods, mentally adding And Buck.

Athena pucks the take out containers out of the plastic bag, shoving it aside for Buck’s drawer of plastic bags. SHe takes them to the table, then doubles back for two plates.

“It’s been a month now,” Bobby says, coming over to stand beside her. He’s not one for the small anniversaries. Even Buck had made fun of him for trying to do something special for it, but he wasn’t planning on making a big deal of it, “It’s starting to feel serious, for me. What’s going on?”

There’s a beat of silence before Athena says, “I don't like being pressured.”

“Into going out for dinner? I'm-” Bobby sighs.

“This is not the same for you and me.” Athena starts plating some of the food. 

“Like it's a black-white thing? I don't-” 

“Are you crazy?” Athena snaps.

“All right.” Bobby holds his hands up. That was the wrong thing to say.

Athena doesn’t stop glaring right away, just explains, “For you, this is a sign of you coming back to life after a tragic loss. It's a redemption. For me, it's more complicated than that.”

“How is this not a redemption?” Bobby asks, “It’s proof you can trust again, love again.”

“No one in my family has ever gotten divorced. I am the first failure.” She says, showing one take out container away in favor of the other. Moving for movement’s sake.

“Divorce is not a failure.” Bobby says, and he’s trying to understand how she could even think that.

“What do you know about it, huh? Are you a woman? Are you a black woman who can't keep her man?” She puts down the food now, and Bobby takes a seat beside her, trying to understand. “The stigma of that. Now you want me to go out on the town like a peacock, showing you off like nothing ever happened. How's that gonna make me look?”

“Like a survivor.” Bobby urges.

“Like a tramp.” Athena rolls her eyes

“Come on, Athena, that's crazy. Nobody's gonna think that, and even if they do, who cares?” He knows Athena doesn’t give a damn what people think of her on the job. He wonders where the disconnect is, between work and her personal life. How that doesn’t carry over.

“You have the privilege of not caring,” Athena says, “I’m trying to do this right.”

“How long are we supposed to sneak around like this? Because I'm not gonna be satisfied with stolen kisses and take-out containers.” Bobby lets himself shed some of the anger, because really, he thinks he’s starting to not just like Athena. He knows it’s inching towards something more, “I don't like keeping us a secret. It feels like lying.”

“You kept your secret about your past from everyone else for years.” 

It’s a defense, but also the worst thing she could have said. Bobby knows that keeping his secret was wrong, that he should have talked about it more. Gotten more help. He’s still struggling with it. He’s still working through it. Like that secret though, comically, Buck’s still the only person who knows. Through an accident of proximity and something like divine fate. “Yeah, I did because I was ashamed of myself, and I still am.”

“Well, then, you out of anyone should understand why I want to keep this quiet.”It snaps out of Athena. Both her hands go to the table with a bit of force.

“Are you ashamed of me?” Bobby whispers.

“No!” Is Athena’s first reaction, but then she says, “But yes.”

“Yeah?” Bobby can feel his heart sink.

“Yes! I'm ashamed! I'm ashamed of us - of you - of being happy. I told you, it's complicated.” The last part comes out with a scoff as she wipes at her eyes. Her arms come across her chest.

“Well, I'm sorry it's so complicated,” Bobby looks away from her. He stands going to the kitchen area of the apartment for something to do. “Please leave.”

It takes a few moments. Athena abandons the food in her hurry to leave. There's a moment's hesitation at the door, but in the end, she doesn’t say anything else.

Buck’s door creaks open a full minute after she leaves. 

“A black white thing?” He asks incredulously.

“I know,” Bobby sighs, “That was stupid.”

“Really, really stupid.” Buck says.

Bobby lets the silence fill the space. Buck waits him out.

“How much did you hear?” 

“All of it.”

Bobby groans.

“It’ll be okay.” Buck says softly. 

“How do you know?” Bobby asks.

“She hesitated,” Buck shrugs, “She likes you.”

Bobby laughs.

Kids were going to be stupid. It was a fact of life.

Jessie was coughing, finally getting some air into his lungs after being cemented into a microwave.

“Good job.” Hen soothed, checking his vitals. 

Jessie took some deep breaths, coughing a few more times before seeming to stabilize.

“Hold still, hold still.” Chimney said, checking him over. They still had to take him to the hospital. He needed to be checked over by doctors. 

The problem with kids being stupid these days was that they had cameras. 

“Shay Reed here, fans.” An overly chipper voice came from behind them. Bobby turned to watch the other kid, Shay, hold up his phone trying to get everyone in the shot, “And today's Shay-nanigan is maybe our most intense yet!”

“Are you filming this?” Bobby demands.

“Yeah, bro. If we didn't film it, it didn't happen.” Shay said, like it was as simple as that. No harm no foul.

“You were just crying like two minutes ago.” Buck pointed out, and Bobby was so thankful that was filmed. Even if the kid would probably edit it out.

“Yeah, two minutes ago, he was gonna die. Now he's gonna live and be a legend. Say hello, Shay's Army.” Shay held a thumbs up in front of the camera, and Bobby had had enough.

“Hello, Shay's army.” Bobby grabs the phone from the guy's hand.

“Wait, what the... we’re live man! What are you do-” Shay gasped as Bobby sent the phone into the pool.

“Good-bye, Shays Army!” He smiled to himself as he watched it sink, the screen going dark after a few seconds.

“Dude!” Shay jumped in after it.

Bobby glances back to his crew, They’re getting Jessie on the backboard now, to take him to the ambulance. Hen is giving him a look.

“Feel better?” Buck asks when they’re on the stairs, heading down. He and Eddie are still sopping wet from their dive into the pool minutes before.

“I should probably say no.” Bobby sighs.

“Probably” Chimney snorts ahead of them.

🔥🔥🔥

Athena

Eva’s Parole officer called before Athena could get home from Bobby’s. She went to get back in uniform as quickly as possible and met Allen Byun at his patrol car. 

“You really want to tag along for this? I could do it for you.” He looked her over. She outranked him, and really, most people would just hand this off to a court appointed officer and be done with it, but Hen was family. She would do this for her.

“I made a promise to my friend to make sure this got delivered.” Athena said simply.

“Alright.” Byun nodded, “I’ll drive.”

Athena let him, if only because she was already exhausted from one shift. Going back out after hours wasn’t ideal, but she’d do it for Hen.

“I managed to get her on the phone this afternoon, when I asked about her living situation she updated me. I told her I had to do a home check, but didn’t tell her I was coming over. If we’re lucky she’ll still be cleaning up when we get there.” Byun said.

“How often do you get lucky?” Athena huffs. 

“Honestly it depends.” He sighs, “If she stayed clean in prison, she’ll probably still be clean, but that’s rarely the case. Plus, with what you told me about her ex- the restraining order- I doubt she’s stayed clean since release.”

They chat for most of the car ride. Discussing Byun’s case load, and how often he has to make arrests. What it’s like being a parole officer. The apartments they end up at are quieter than the one’s Eva was supposed to be in. They went up to the second floor and knocked. 

Eva was dumb enough to open the door.

Behind her in the room there are dime bags with drugs. Easily visible.

“Eva,” Byun sighs, “You know that’s a violation of your parole.” 

She’s high, Athena realizes. She’ll probably get a few more years on top of whatever was left on her sentence.

For whatever reason she goes willingly. 

When Athena gets her in the back of the patrol car, while Byun collects the evidence, Eva smiles up at her. 

“It’s over for them,” She says, “They won’t get to keep my Diesel. His father knows about him now. He wants his kid back.”

Athena’s stomach drops, “Well, if he’s anything like you, I doubt that’ll happen any time soon.

Eva laughs as the door closes on her. 

Hen’s not going to be happy when she finds out about this.

“Found it!” Michael says, coming through the front door with one of Harry’s school books.

“I swear, we need to put GPS trackers on everything that boy owns.” Athena shakes her head. 

The transition from single family unit to Michael living on his own hasn’t been the smoothest, but they’re making it work. What’s a missing textbook here or there, as long as the assignments can get done. 

“Oh, you made waffles... for dinner? What's wrong?” He looks around the kitchen and sees the aftermath of her attempt to apologize for working later than usual, on top of the desire to have comfort foods for herself. 

“Is this something you think we can talk about?” She asks absently. “I don’t know how this is supposed to work.”

“Whatever it is can’t be as bad as ‘I’m Gay. I think we should get divorced ’ right?” Michael offers.

Athena snorts out a laugh, shaking her head. She sets the last thing she needed to clean down. “I've been seeing someone for the last few weeks. Well, a month now.”

“Oh?”

“A firefighter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Not even Henrietta knows,” Athena sighs, “We didn't know what it was or how long it was gonna last. So we didn’t tell anyone and now…”

“He wants to tell people, and you don’t?” Of course Michael would understand what was going on. He always did.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“He tried to push the issue,” Athena let her shoulders fall, not proud of admitting this, “I pushed back. Hard.”

 “Ooh. Ouch.” Micheal smiles fondly when she glares at him, “What? I've been on the receiving end of your hard pushes . You care about him right? What's the harm in letting people know?”

“I don't want to be embarrassed.” Michael frowns, not understanding, “I mean, our divorce was enough of a failure. I can't go through that again.”

“Oh, I get it.” He steps closer, putting a hand on her arm, a comfort, “Okay. You don't want to invest 'cause you're afraid of being hurt. Which you might. But what is the other alternative? Being alone?”

“That might be safer.”

Michael scoffs, “You know, fear trapped me in a closet my whole life. Embarrassment kept me from admitting the truth to you every day of our marriage. It was eating me up inside. Until I stopped trying to control it, and stepped out. Until I had faith and let it happen. It was hard and sad, but, ‘Thena, look at us now.”

Athena hummed, it was a nice speech.

“Our divorce wasn't a failure, Athena.” He says, “We're still family. If this thing doesn't work out with your firefighter, you'll move on. In the meantime, if he makes you happy, then be happy? You deserve it.”

She smiles, pulling him in for a hug. This is one thing she forgot in the divorce. They were friends first. Friends who could talk about this stuff.

“I hate when you’re right,” She mumbles into his shoulder.

“I know.” Michael laughs, pulling away, “When you’re ready, I’d like to meet him.”

Athena rolls her eyes, smiling. 

She hopes she can still introduce them. If she hadn’t completely ruined everything.

The next morning, Athena arrives right as Bobby is finishing up morning announcements. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

Bobby meets her halfway. Most of the crew watches, which is what Athena had planned on. When she puts a hand on his cheek he smiles, leaning down to meet her. It’s a soft sweet kiss, nothing that could get either of them in trouble with either department. 

“What!” Chimney shouts, but it’s so ridiculously false Athena and Bobby just smile as they look over.

“Pay up,” Hen says.

Buck and Chim both groan. A couple of the other crew members start digging through their wallets. Must not have been one of the bets Hen put in her betting box. The probie looks hilariously confused. 

“You knew?” Bobby demands.

Athena snorts. 

“I assumed Athena told you,” Buck shrugs, looking at Hen.

“Oh, no, I could just tell.” Hen laughs.

“I didn’t let anything slip by accident, right?” He looks like he’s trying to remember every little thing he’s said the last four weeks. 

“Please,” Hen huffs, “First they were happy at the same time, then they were sad at the same time. I knew they’d hooked up, but Bobby’s too much of a commitment guy for it to be a one time thing.” 

Bobby makes a choking noise beside Athena, and any other firehouse that kind of ribbing of the captain might not be tolerated. Hell, if Hen had been that bold with her first captain Athena’s pretty sure they never would’ve met.

“Well now that you know, you think I can crash on your couch next time Athena spends the night?” Buck bumps his side into her shoulder. 

“Oh no,” Hen laughs, “Imma let you suffer. You chose to live with the Captain.”

“Hen,” Athena cuts in, “You think I could talk to you for a minute?”

Hen follows her up to the loft as everyone else disperses to work on chores. Athena notes the way the Probie follows Buck around, a little starstruck, maybe.

“What’s up?” Hen grabs one of the spare coffee mugs, pouring some for Athena.

“Eva broke parole. She’s going back in.” Athena says simply. 

Hen looks excited for all of two seconds before realizing Athena’s not celebrating with her, “What happened?”

“Apparently she tracked down Denny’s father.” Athena sighs, “Said he wanted his son.”

“Shit.” Hen mumbles, “You get a name?”

“She wouldn’t tell me, or Byun. Decided it would be more fun to keep us guessing.” Athena pulls Hen in for a hug. “It’ll be fine, he’s probably someone she met in rehab or on the streets. No judge would ever take that boy from you.”

Hen hums along with the sentiment, but Athena knows she’s thinking of worst case scenarios. 

🔥🔥🔥

Maddie

Maddie had gone with Daniel to his hospital. She’d hung around in the staff lounge while his brother asked one of the charge nurses about staffing shortages, and what requirements there were to be an ER nurse in LA that might be different from being one in Boston. 

All it took for Maddie to know it was not the right place for her was the entry of two giggling Interns, and Maddie knew they were interns because, well, she’d worked in hospitals for years. 

The noise had her on her feet, backing towards the nearest wall in seconds. Enough of a distraction that both the girls froze wide eyes and stared at her.

Daniel came back in with the Charge nurse around then. 

“This isn’t going to work,” Maddie shakes her head at her brother. “I can’t- not this.”

“Okay,” Daniel nodded, “Okay, so we’ll find something else, like, I don’t know, dermatology?”

“Not in a hospital.” Maddie shook her head, “I just can’t.”

The charge nurse looked unimpressed and left the room, shaking her head at the scene. She was embarrassing her brother. Christ could she do anything right.

“Okay,” Daniel said simply, like it wasn’t a big deal that she couldn’t work in a hospital. “You still want to help people, right?”

“Yeah,” Maddie nodded.

“Buck told me about his…his Ex working at 9-1-1 dispatch. You’d probably be great there. Since you know about medical stuff, you might even be more than qualified. They’re always hiring, why don’t we see what it takes to apply there?”

A few weeks later Maddie is taking a tour of the dispatch center she’ll be working at starting that day. Her on the job training starts immediately after the tour. She’ll be paired up with a dispatcher for call training to start.

The supervisor is walking them through, Sue Blevins, she’s giving a bit of a speech. “Being a dispatcher will be challenging and exhausting and can take an emotional toll. The people who call in are scared, in need, and we are their lifeline. But it can also be rewarding. Calling us is probably the scariest moment of their lives. But if we do our jobs right and help arrives in time and we get a little lucky, then maybe it doesn't have to be the worst moment of their lives.”

“Sounds like a lot of pressure,” The woman beside Maddie says under her breath. She glances over, “I don’t know if I’m up for that, you?”

Maddie shrugs, just as uncertain. They pass a window, and Sue stops them, “Take a moment to feel the sunshine, folks. This’ll be the last you see of it until after you finish your shift.”

Maddie looks out at LA. Her brothers are both out there. They’re saving lives. 

She wonders if it’s a bit like chasing sunshine, staying here in LA. It’ll be hard work, but it's also what she’s always tried to do. 

Help people.

And really, that’s the best anyone can ever do.

Chapter Text

Buck

A text comes in right as Buck parks. Another one from Daniel. Buck’s not entirely sure why he didn’t just block him. It would be easier. 

Daniel: Can we talk?

Daniel: please

Daniel: I know I fucked up

Daniel: I can explain

Those texts were the first ones he sent, weeks ago. The morning after Buck found out who he was. There had been a few more that had shown up. Mostly the same. Buck had ignored them all.

This morning though, he got a new text.

Daniel: Reading these back, I realize maybe I should explain. 

Daniel: I’m in remission. I don’t have cancer. I don’t need anything from you.

Daniel: I just miss you.

Daniel: Missed you?

Daniel: It would be easier to explain in person.

Buck mutes the conversation. If Daniel isn’t on shift today, he’ll have plenty of time to type out the whole story, and Buck doesn’t want to have his phone blowing up while he works.

Bobby is already at work upstairs when Buck walks in. They’d moved the shift start up now that LAUSD’s school year had started. Even so, Eddie was running a bit behind, judging by the way he jogged into the locker room looking frustrated.

“You’re not late,” Buck says. He laces up his work boots glancing up only to be met with Eddie’s ass in his face. Buck won’t lie, it is a nice one. Hen and Chim were both right that Eddie is a very attractive man. Not that Buck’s gonna be weird about it. They’re friends. Honestly, he needs more of those.

“I just,” Eddie sighs, dropping down into the bench beside him, “Chris asked me a question this morning, and I had no idea how to answer it.”

“What did he ask?” Buck nudges Eddie’s shoulder.

It’s Eddie’s turn to tie up his laces, and he hesitated for just a moment, “He asked if dogs know they’re dogs.”

Buck laughs, shaking his head. Oh he’d heard that question, and a thousand similar ones, in various foster homes. He had opinions, but so did a lot of people. “In this case, I think your opinion is more important than the correct answer.”

“What does that mean?” Eddie says, sitting up and frowning at Buck.

Buck scrunches up his face, “We’ll ask around, and then you can tell me what you think people's answers mean about them.”

“We’re going to psychoanalyze the crew?”

“Yep!” Buck says, hopping up. “C’mon, Diaz.”

Eddie groans at the use of his last name, but he follows him upstairs anyway.

They catch the tail end of whatever Chim and Hen were talking to Bobby about when they get to the kitchen counter. Hen and Chim have split an omelet between them.

“It’s a dream, it’s not supposed to be attainable,” Hen scoffs.

“What about you, Buck? What would you do if you weren’t a firefighter?” Chimney asks.

“Uh, I don’t know,” Buck frowns, “I’m not getting fired again, am I?”

Eddie snorts, whispering to him, “Again?”

“Oh, he doesn’t know!” Chimney smiles.

Buck turns to him pointing a finger, “You tell him mine, I tell him yours.”

Chim raises his hands, laughing, “You’d probably be like a bouncer at a nightclub or something.”

“Strip club,” Hen snickers. She and Chim high five.

Buck frowns, plucking a tomato from the bowl of veggie’s Bobby has been cutting up as part of breakfast. He won’t pretend that doesn’t sting a little.

“What about you Eddie?”Chim shifts in his seat, “What would you be doing if you weren’t a firefighter?”

Eddie shrugs, “Uh, I’d probably still be in Afghanistan, I guess?”

Hen lets out a sigh, “Are neither of you creative? Dream jobs, not like what you were actually doing before.”

Eddie thinks for a minute, “Probably a stay at home dad, as long as no one would judge me for it.”

“Every parent wants to stay at home with their kids full time,” Hen says fondly. 

Buck bites into his stolen tomato, and nods at Eddie, a go-ahead for asking his question. 

Eddie smiles briefly at him, turning to ask it.

“So, my kid, Christopher, asked this morning if I thought dogs know they’re dogs. I didn’t know how to answer it, what do you guys think?”

“I need you to explain the question better,” Chim says first.

“Like if they think we’re dogs too, or if they understand that we’re a separate species,”Hen clarifies for him, shrugging, “I’ve got a kid close to his age.”

“Yeah, well, I still don’t know what the right answer is, so I thought, y’know, I’d ask you.”

“I think they know they’re dogs,” Hen says, “And that we’re people. Otherwise they’d be trying to walk on their back legs to be like us.”

Chim seems to chew on the question a little more, “I think so too, unless one meets Buck. Buck’s like a golden retriever of a human being, they might get confused about him.”

Hen snorts again, “Cap?”

“I think it depends on the dog,” He says, passing another omelet to Eddie. He pulls a carton of something from the fridge, and passes it to Buck. It’s a plant based egg substitute, “wanna try this out?”

“Sure,” Buck nods, coming around the counter to help. “Eddie, what have you learned about Hen and Chim from their answers?”

“Oh my god that was a test!” Chip points a finger at him. “You were testing us! Eddie, did your kid even ask the question? Or was it Buck’s idea.”

“Chim’s a bit of a pessimist, Hen’s an optimist?” Eddie tilts his head, “Or at least maybe Chim’s more cynical of things.”

Hen laughs a bit louder this time, “He’s got the unfortunate honesty glitch.” 

Chim frowns, taking a bite of his eggs, and mumbling something under his breath.

“What does that mean?” Eddie glances around for an explanation. 

“Ever since his rebar accident last year, he’s been unable to tell a lie.” Buck explains, chopping some more onions for his own plant based omelet while Bobby grabs a clean pan.

“Rebar incident?” Eddie’s eyes go a bit wide, “I heard about that in the academy. The-” Eddie points to his forehead, at the same approximate location Chimney’s  scar is.

“Yes,” Chimney bites out, “I’m really honest now, I try not to be mean to anyone, but sometimes the impulse just makes me say whatever I’m thinking. I’m working on it.”

“What about me,” Bobby says, looking over at Eddie now that he’s back at the stove, heating the new pan.

Eddie’s eyes go a little wide. He looks like the last thing he wants to do is tell him what he really thinks. 

“You’re a bit more of a realist,” Buck answers for him, “Not all dogs know they’re dogs? That means you see things in a more realistic way. Outcomes could go either way.”

Bobby smiles down at the pan. Buck can tell he likes the answer, but he still looks up at Eddie, “What do you think you’re going to tell Christopher?”

“I like everyone’s answers,” Eddie says, “I think you’re right though, Cap. It depends on the dog.”

“You’re not just saying that because I’m your captain, right?” Bobby passes the pan to Buck as soon as he’s poured the plant eggs in, Buck sprinkles some newly diced vegetables over it, waiting for the egg to set before he starts the folding process.

"Never, sir.” Eddie shakes his head very seriously. 

Buck laughs.

Eddie glares at him.

They finish up breakfast and start getting to work on the chores pretty quickly after that conversation.

🔥🔥🔥

Eddie

Eddie feels the pressure drop suddenly. He thinks he’s more aware of the sensation because of his time in the military. He doesn’t know what the feeling means until the entire world starts shaking. 

He’s on a creeper underneath the fire engine when it starts. He figures under the truck is probably not where he should be if the thing decides to tip over, or worse. He kicks out, and overestimates the strength needed in his panic. He’s flying, spinning across the floor. 

Hen catches up to him, pulling him farther towards the wall right as one of the hoses from the ceiling comes down right where he used to be. She pulls him up, steadier on her feet, and pushes him toward the only open bay door.

“Go, go go!” Buck shouts from somewhere behind him. He was cleaning the windows for the locker room, Eddie thinks. 

The air canister rack falls over, and several canisters start to release their contents, creating a cloud of gas in the middle of the room.

“Anyone else back there?” Bobby calls from beside the engine.

Eddie looks back when they get out the door.

“No, just me,” Buck shouts, “All clear.”

“C’mon!” Bobby shouts over the hissing noise, getting a hand on Buck’s arm and pulling him forward. 

Buck says something else as they both clear the building. It’s not until Bobby pulls his hand away that anyone notices it. He’s got a cut on his arm. Blood slowly leaking out.

The shaking stops.

“Anyone hurt?” Hen calls out once they all get their footing. 

“Sound off,” Bobby shouts a second later, steering Buck towards Hen.

There is a round of sound offs. Once everyone is accounted for, they start getting back to work. 

“Looks shallow,” Hen says to Buck, really he’s the only one who has an injury from the earthquake, “I’ll put some butterflies on it, and a bandage. If it gets worse-”

“I’ll make sure someone knows in case I need stitches,” Buck grumbles, but he’s smiling through it.

“I hate to ask, but is he going to be good to work?” Bobby asks, getting a look at Buck’s arm.

“Oh yeah,” Hen says. 

“Alright, get him patched while we start cleaning, the second we can get on the trucks we’re going mobile command,” Bobby gestures them back in. Already a few folks are getting the canister rack back in order, pulling out the expended canisters to see if they’re salvageable. The overhead hose that came down is being pulled backwards towards the back wall. 

Eddie hesitates for just a moment.

“You good?” Chim asks, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Is Chris okay?

“I’m fine.” Eddie’s hand goes to his pocket. His phone hasn’t rung yet.

“Diaz and Han start sweeping up the locker room so no one’s stepping on glass.” Bobby calls out. “Clarke and Louis make sure everything’s fueled up for the day.”

Tanika jogs up to the loft to check for damage. 

“Ramos, check the gas meter, nothing should be running, but we want to be safe.”

Bobby only stops handing out orders to check in with dispatch. One of the ambulances gets sent out ahead of everyone else. “Alright listen up!” Bobby shouts to the room, “You’ve got 2 minutes to finish what you’re doing and gear up! We’re being sent to a building collapse downtown.”

“Phones are down,” Hen mumbles, checking not for the first time, if she could get through to her wife. 

Eddie has his in his hands too, trying to get an email into his son’s school, a text off to his Abuela, and another off to Pepa. Nothing seems to be working but he keeps tapping the “tap to retry” button. 

“Christopher?” Buck asks softly, bumping his knee into Eddie’s. He’s been doing that a lot. The casual touches. Eddie’s pretty sure that if it were anyone else, he’d hate it. The raging crush that’s come out of nowhere is not helping either. 

Also the absence of his wife, who is in LA but doesn’t know he’s here. That’s not helping the situation either.

“Yeah,” Eddie nods, “I’m trying to get in touch with the school, and my family, see if anyone’s available to make sure he’s okay.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Hen says from the other side of the cabin, “Are you trying to reach his mom?”

Eddie pauses for a moment, not looking at anyone in particular as he thinks. This is the first time any of them have brought up Chris’ mother. He briefly wonders if thinking of her just seconds ago brought this about. If it was just enough of a look on his face for everyone to know he was already a failure when it came to his marriage. 

“She’s, uh, not in the picture anymore.” Eddie ducks his head. It’s just vague enough for them to make assumptions. It’s also just vague enough that if she ever walks into the fire station looking for him, there will be a lot more questions.

When he finally looks up, the faces around him show more sympathy than pity. 

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Buck says. He has all the calm assuredness of someone that believed they were correct. Eddie wants to trust it, but Chris is all he has. He needs to be certain. That will come when they get cell service back up.

Eddie can see Bobby signing the cross over himself as they come to a stop, he can’t see what Bobby sees from where he’s sat in the engine, but it only takes a moment for them to get out of the cabin.

If he’s being honest, the high rises of El Paso have nothing on the ones in LA. Seeing one tilted sideways, ready to crumble, is terrifying. 

"Holy-” Chim mumbled ahead of him. 

“You guys ever do one of these before?” Eddie asks. He’s not expecting an answer. The last time he’d heard of a high rise collapse was… well. There was a reason army recruiters came to his high school every Friday with hats, t-shirts, and key chains to pass out.

“No.” Bobby says quietly.

Nearby a mother is begging to go back in to search for her daughter, the man beside her is trying to push back against two cops. They keep him back though. 

In that moment, Eddie knows he’s going in the building. If it were Chris in there, he’d be doing the same thing. 

Right now he has to trust that Chris’ school is keeping his kid safe, and that if any of the schools in the city had collapsed, they’d have heard about it on the radio by now. He has to believe that.

“Will that even hold it up?” Buck mumbles, looking at some of the structural guys jacking up poles to try and stabilize the building where it’s leaning.

“Let’s find the IC,” Bobby says instead of answering. Even he looks a bit shaken by the way the building leans.

Eddie still doesn’t know much about the guy. There were vague mentions of lost family members, and a structure fire in Minnesota. No one’s told him the full story. Eddie doesn’t catch the conversation between Bobby and Hen. He’s taking in the scene. There are people outside in triage. They pass a group of people who’re sitting with light injuries. Paramedics are scattered in with everyone making sure nothing was missed.

“Captain,” A woman greets them, holding out her hand, “Chief Williams, Incident Commander.”

“Captain Bobby Nash, how can we help?” Bobby gives her one firm handshake and they follow. 

“Manager said they were between check out and check in when the quake hit. Most of the rooms were empty. We’ve made contact with most of them, there are multiple evac operations in progress for the rest. All but 12 of 68 staff are accounted for. It’s pretty chaotic.”

“We overheard that family back there, they’re still looking for their children?” Hen asks.

Eddie waits for a reprimand that doesn’t come. Chief Williams carries on like it’s nothing, “As long as it’s safe to do so we’ll keep looking.”

“What are the engineers saying?” Bobby asks as they come to a stop next to building schematics. 

“Brittle failure in the parking structure caused it to pancake at an angle.” She turns gesturing to the building, and Eddie hadn’t even realized they’d come around to the side. This angle was somehow worse. “The reinforced steel is the only thing keeping it in place. One good aftershock-”

“And the whole thing comes down,” Bobby finishes. 

“I thought high rises were supposed to be safe in earthquakes,” Buck says.

Williams lets out a breath, “Not when you’re built on top of a fault line. Most buildings were supposed to be retrofitted to sustain up to a 7.0 after north ridge. This was a 7.1. It might seem like a small difference but-”

“When you get to 7 and above every point is a massive amount of damage.” Buck says, “And you won’t know if the fix will work until one finally hits.”

“Right.” Williams turns to the group, “We don’t have enough teams inside, and we put in a request for heavy rescue 3, but they’re headed to a freeway collapse.”

“Thanks,” Bobby nods to her when the captain of the 122 shows up next, and the Chief turns to read them in as well.

“Where do you need us,” Buck asks.

“Alright, listen up, here's how we make it to the end of the day,” Bobby starts. The crew around them shift to listen, “You’re not going to worry about the things you can’t do anything about. You focus on one task at a time. I cannot order you guys to go into that building, and no one is going to judge you if you don’t want to.”

Chim looks at Hen and says, “You and Eddie have kids.” 

Eddie feels almost hurt that Chim would think having kids would make them any less ready to go in. 

“Yeah,” Hen huffs, “And if they were trapped inside, I’d hope that if someone whose job it was to save ‘em had the chance, they’d do it.”

Eddie can see just a bit of pride on Bobby’s face as he nods along to what Hen’s saying. 

“Where do you want us?”

Eddie didn’t expect that question to end in him hanging out a window, holding on to a woman 11 stories up. He has to focus on the woman, because the alternative is… the man who just… he can’t think about it. 

One task at a time. 

Buck is holding the rope that has this woman - Ali? She’s tied up to it but if they’re not careful she could still come loose. 

Slowly, slowly, slowly Eddie pulls her up and through the frame. 

She’s swearing by the time they get out of the room and into the hallway. A good sign, Eddie thinks. 

One good aftershock was all the building needed to come down. That’s what the fire chief had said. They had one aftershock, and Eddie didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out if it was the good one.

They’re down one fight of stairs the way they came in when Ali asks, “You think he’ll still be down there when we get out?”

“No,” Buck says softly, in the gentle voice they use for trauma victims, “We’re not going out that side, anyway.”

“Hustle up,” Eddie mumbles, “we don’t want to be here for the next one.”

“The next one?” Ali nearly shouts the words, “What do you mean next one?”

Buck gives him a look over Ali’s shoulder as they descend further and further. 

They reach the sixth floor and come to a section of debris that blocks the rest of the way down.  

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Buck groans. 

“We’re not going out this way,” Eddie sighs, leaning against the wall for just a moment.

“Now what?” Ali stares at the concrete debris beneath them. She’s been barefoot since they got her back through that window and into the building. They’d been helping her avoid most of it by having her walk along the railings higher up on what used to be the walls, but were now at an angle that could be considered a very steep walkway.

“We go back up,” Eddie says. 

Ali groans, leaning into the wall.

“Hey, it’ll be okay,” Buck says to her with a soft smile, “We just have to find a different stairwell, or a lower window to exit from. We’re going to be just fine, Ali. Trust me.”

Eddie watches the way he talks to her, and he won’t ever admit it but he kind of hates her for a second. It’s not flirting, really, and he’s pretty sure Buck has no idea that he’s doing it, but Eddie has been pining after this man for weeks, only to slowly realize that he’s like this with everyone. 

Kind smiles, fond looks, flirty banter.

Eddie’s crush was bad enough that first week, when he thought it was just him. Then Buck flirted with a drag queen after she’d been impaled on one of her own high heels right before a show. He flirted with a woman who’d broken her arm playing something called pickleball. He’d flirted with the barista at the coffee shop up the street from the fire station.

Eddie was not special. 

It hurt, but it didn’t make the want any less than it was the night they’d gotten that grenade out of that man’s leg.

Then the radios crackle to life. 

“Ladder 118 respond, I need a headcount, this is Captain Nash.”

Eddie lifts his radio from his shoulder, “Ladder 118 responding, this is Diaz and Buckley, we’re good cap.”

“Jackson and Castillo responding.”

“Jones and Tanika, responding.”

“Lewis, Marcus, and Riley, responding.”

“Chimney, responding.”

A beat, then two.

“Hen, do you copy?” Bobby calls, “Hen?”

Ali huffs, “Well you’ve been flirting with me ever since the rescue, and now? Your friend could be seriously hurt. Or worse.”

Buck blinks, like he’s been called out and oh. Buck has no idea he’s doing it, huh?

“I- I didn’t mean to do that, I’m sorry,” He lets out a long breath, “I’ve been told that when I’m anxious, or in a stressful situation, or even just really sleep deprived, I flirt with anything. My friend, Chimney, he swears I flirted with the coffee machine at work once.”

Ali makes a face, “Are you sure you don’t just talk to random inanimate objects? Who goes by Chimney?”

“It’s a nickname,” Eddie assures, glancing at Buck. The man looks stressed now more than he did coming down the stairs. Some of the light from before has gone out of him. Even if he’d just been trying to joke with Ali about his not-flirting.

“Up and over,” Buck lets out a ragged breath, “Maybe we can find some complimentary slippers on one of those hospitality carts.”

They get in touch with command while they climb, there’s an exit on the north side of the structure. The opposite side to them now. They have to stop at a section of wall that’s collapsed, but it’s clear that there's room on the other side. They just need to shift the debris around.

Ali drops against the wall, right beside a cart covered with mini bar restocks. She pops open a mini bottle of vodka.

“What?” She asks, “It’s after 5. Not like it’s slowing us down.” 

Buck gives Eddie a look, and Eddie knows that he’s thinking of their captain. It didn’t take much to put two and two together on the man’s sobriety. Especially when Buck was so very cautious about how much he drank the handful of times they’d all gone out (nights that Chris was with his Bisabuela, or with Pepa). 

There's a muffled call from somewhere nearby. 

“Did you guys hear that?” Buck asks to no one, sliding towards the lower door. When they break in they find a man with a severe spinal injury. Batari keeps apologizing for his state, but it’s to be expected now that it’s getting dark out, and this man has been here like this for hours.

Ali gives them the ironing board for them to use as a makeshift backboard. When they get him out of the room they have a moment of worry, “How do we get you down the stairs on this.”

Buck looks through the hole they’d made in the hallway, “Maybe we don’t use the stairs.”

Five minutes later they busted open one of the elevator doors. There's two on this floor. Ali says that they had elevators separated by even and odd floors. The elevator is stuck above them, several floors up. 

“What if it comes loose while we’re-” Ali begins.

“See those rails along the wall?” Buck nods, his helmet light hitting them, “When elevators start descending too fast, there is a manual emergency brake override that will trigger, even when the power is off, that clamps down hard on those rails. They only go a couple feet at most before stopping. That thing’s not going anywhere.” 

Ali doesn’t look so sure. 

“We learned how they work in the fire academy,” Eddie lies, because of course they didn’t go into the nuanced details of how elevators worked. Just how to get them open when they were stuck. “That's why you don’t take an elevator in a fire. If something compromises the cable, you’re trapped.”

“Jesus,” Ali says, “Learning a lot about emergency situations today.”

“We’ll give you a brochure for the fire academy if you’re interested,” Buck jokes.

“No offense, but this is the closest I want to come to an actual emergency ever again.” She groans.

Buck’s right about the elevator brake system. The cable snaps while he and Ali are in the shaft. Another aftershock makes the building shift. Eddie had gotten Batari out somewhere near the third floor. They still had room below them to get all the way down to the parking structure, but that was where the worst of it was. 

The pancaking of the building.

Eddie hears Ali scream, and Buck manages to get them out of the shaft, but there is no crash. The elevator squeaks and goes silent again. Buck, the bastard, looks back up, “Barely moved.”

“I just want out of this building,” Ali says, clearly shaken from the not-so-near-miss.

“We’re almost there,” Buck says. They stand on slightly more level footing. Clearly the lower floors are a lesser angle than the ones they’d just come from. 

“Command, this is Buckley and Diaz, 118, we’re on level three at the elevator bays, any idea on which way to go?”

“Buckley, Diaz, weren’t you two just on 9?” The radio comes back, “Head towards the north side, they cleared most of that floor, a ladder truck will meet you at the windows.”

“Be advised, we picked up a spinal injury on the way, we’re using an ironing board as a makeshift backboard.” 

Eddie laughs a little at the face Buck makes while he gives the update.

“You’re going to be okay, Batari,” Eddie mumbles to the man who is now resting on the floor again.

“Thank you,” He says quietly, “If you hadn’t found me…”

“Aftershocks,” Eddie shrugs, as the command center affirms which direction to send them. “We’ve been doing good so far.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Ali says, standing with them and helping them lift Batari. 

She didn’t need to, but Buck and Eddie knew that giving someone a task would help make the entire situation easier. Right now her task was helping them walk Batari to the windows where a fire truck was already lining up to take them out.

They hear Bobby requesting equipment and extra hands on the radio on the way down. Ali looks up at them from where she’d been told to go first so they could be cautious with Batari. 

She knows.

They know. 

They don’t say anything when they hand off Batari. Ali is walked over to one of the triage tents to be checked out before she’s tagged and sent off for treatment somewhere. Buck walks towards the 118’s truck without batting an eye. He gets equipment, and Eddie helps. 

They make their way back in, and the firefighters on their way out are more than happy to point them in the right direction, patting the two men on the back as they go.

Eddie knows he’ll get reprimanded, but it’s the right thing to do.

🔥🔥🔥

Maddie

Maddie’s first day at dispatch had been, well, going.

She wasn’t supposed to be taking calls by herself. Then a 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook the city. Dispatch went into overdrive. She was playing phone tag, passing the high priority calls up to the more experienced dispatchers.

What haunted her now, as she told another person that they didn’t need to call 9-1-1 about an aftershock, was the newscast she’d watched right before getting her current assignment. She hadn’t been worried about Evan, Buck, Until she saw one of the trucks close a compartment, and the 118 emblazoned on the side of the truck became visible. 

She’d texted Daniel right before Sue Blevins had walked in and ordered them back to the desks.

A muttered “red shirt day” had come from an older woman with white hair on their way out of the break room. 

“9-1-1 what is your emergency?” Maddie asked, glancing towards the break room, where the news was still talking about the collapsing (as in actively falling over) hotel building. 

Maddie hadn’t bothered mentioning that one of her brothers was in the hotel to Josh. She didn’t want to explain the whole mess of her family. If he was a gossip, she didn’t want to test the waters with this one secret.

“Yeah, I just want to let you know that the fire hydrant up my street is broken, It’s like a geyser over here.” A woman says over the phone. 

“Is anyone hurt?” Maddie asks, noting the location as the woman gives it so she can send it off to whichever maintenance crew needed to be notified.

“Not currently, some kids are playing in the spray, I just wanted to know if it was safe? They don’t put weird chemicals in it, right?”

“No, ma’am, the water from the hydrant is the same as the water from your taps.” Maddie says.

“Alright thank you,” The woman hangs up pretty quickly.

Maddie gets tapped out by one of the people walking the floors for a mandated break. She gets coffee from the break room. She checks her phone, determined not to take too long on a break so that she can get back out there and help.

Daniel was right that this was a good place to help. It almost felt like being a nurse. Getting yelled at for not knowing when power would be restored felt a lot like getting yelled at for not knowing when the doctor would discharge a patient. 

“How’re you doing?” Sue asks, entering the room for her next cup of tea. Maddie doesn’t know her well enough to know if she prefers it, or if it’s just late enough in the day that she needed to make the switch.

“I, um, I’m good.” She turns to the screen, and it’s now replaying a woman almost falling from the building but being caught by one of the firefighters and pulled back in. It zooms in, and she can see the numbers on his helmet. 118. “I, uh, I know someone who works at that station.”

“The 118?” Sue asks, looking her over, frowning.

“I haven’t spoken to him in a long time,” She says softly, “I- I just hope he’s okay.”

Her phone buzzes.

Daniel: I’m fine

Daniel: You should tell your boss my hospital just cleared up room for more patients, we’ll be announcing it in 10, but you can start sending now.

Maddie: we’re swamped here, I’ll let em know tho

Maddie: Stay safe

She pockets her phone and sighs.

“Family?” Sue asks gently.

“My brother says his hospital cleared up room for more patients, we can send them soon.” She gives her new boss a thin lipped smile, “I need to go back out there.”

She chooses to ignore the way Sue seems to be looking at her. She doesn’t need to know why there’s concern there. There was an earthquake on her first day.

Two hours later and Maddie can tell Sue has been watching her like a hawk ever since their conversation in the break room. She’s been trying her best to field calls and help where she can. Directing ambulances, and using her nursing training to help when an ambulance will take too long. 

“No no please don’t hang up,” Maddie says to the caller. They were reporting looting and Maddie hadn’t known there were two Wilshire and San Vicente intersections. “I’m transferring you.”

They hung up before she could actually transfer them. 

Josh grabbed his long abandoned mug from beside her right as the call ended. She looked up at him, “I don’t think I can do this. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“What are you talking about? You’re doing great.” He said calmly, “I’ve got my eye on you.”

“People’s lives are at stake here,” She says. It’s a weak excuse, but this is way different from being an ER nurse. At least in the ER she was following doctors orders. 

“Look,” Josh says, his voice betraying the stress of the day, “We’re stretched thin on our best days, and today is definitely not our best. Just get the frivolous calls off the line, help the ones you can, and send the higher priority calls on to more experienced dispatchers. You can do this.”

He doesn’t wait for a response before walking away. 

She takes a few deep breaths before her phone starts ringing again. 

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

“Uh-uh I need an ambulance,” A man says. His voice shakes while he rattles off his address and Maddie quickly types it into the CAD system.

“What is the nature of your emergency?” Maddie asks.

“My wife, she’s just over 32 weeks pregnant, she went into labor about an hour ago.” 

“What’s your name?” Right now this call is more like what Maddie had expected.

“I’m Drew, uh, Drew Hudson. My wife’s name is Ainsley.” 

“Alright Drew, 32 weeks isn’t so early that we’re in the danger zone,” Maddie lets her shoulders relax a bit, “Can you monitor her breathing and time her contractions for me?”

“I need you to send an ambulance,” Drew says, a bit more forcefully.

“I understand that sir, but we’re backed up because of the earthquake,” Maddie begins to explain.

Drew cuts her off, “You’re 9-1-1! What do you mean?”

“I understand sir, but our resources are spread thin all over the city.” She shakes her shoulders, “But I am a trained nurse, I can help you with this situation.”

“You can’t,” Drew’s voice cracks, “She’s unconscious.” Maddie turns in her seat slightly, trying to wave to get Josh’s attention, “We were trying to get to the hospital when the second one hit, she fell. The baby was coming, it-it was coming.”

“Do you know where she’s been hurt?” Maddie asks. She’s seen enough concussions, a daily occurrence in her old department.

“Her head,” Drew says, “It’s bleeding.”

“How much?”

“Not much, just a little bit.”

“Good, is she breathing?” Maddie turns, but Josh is just as deep in a call as she is, when she turns back to her screens she catches Sue’s eye. The woman starts toward her. 

“Barely,” Drew says. It sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “I-I put her on the couch, I thought it was better than the floor.”

“Is she on her back or side?”

“She’s on her back.”

“Alright, can you gently move her onto her left side?” Maddie types out all the information so far while Drew adjusts his wife. 

“Okay,” Drew says.

“We need to keep her head elevated,” Maddie says as Sue finally gets to her desk, “We want to keep her airways open that way Ainsley and the baby get good breaths.”

“Okay,” Drew says, “When can someone be here?”

Sue puts a hand on her shoulder, shaking her head, “Earliest is still going to be an hour with the road closures.”

Maddie glances at the map on her screen, “Drew you said you were getting ready to take Ainsley to the hospital, which one?”

“Montebello Presbyterian,” Drew says, “Should I- Should I try and take her?”

“Traffic lights here and here are out,” Sue says, pointing along the pathway the CAD system is now highlighting when she tries to enter in the directed hospital, “Their way will be jammed.”

Maddie bites her lips, knowing she needs to have a response for Drew, then she spots it. “Wait-”

Drew makes a noise down the line, and Maddie realizes she never came off mute, but Sue looks surprised by Maddie’s idea, nodding for her to try it. 

“Drew, I’m not sending you to a hospital,” Maddie says.

“What?” Drew spits out.

“I’m sending you to a fire, they’ll have trained medics on scene, they should be able to help.”

“They’ll have an ambulance?” Drew asks. 

“They should have one on standby,” Maddie says, looking at the three vehicles on scene, all from station 125, “They’re halfway between you and the nearest hospital.”

Sue gets on the line with the IC at the fire. Maddie stays on the line, directing Drew around traffic to get him to the fire as fast as possible.

“Great work,” Sue says to her when Drew and Ainsley finally show up on scene.

Josh taps her out for a break an hour later. 

Maddie switches to water instead of Coffee. She has no idea how long it will be before Daniel gets home. He’d already texted updates about emergency overtime approvals. If he’s home at the same time she is, she doesn’t want to keep him up when her own hyper-caffeinated self can’t get to sleep.

She should probably check in the system to see if there's any emergencies at his building. The high rise collapse is still the most attention grabbing part of the story, now the banner reads that there is a missing firefighter, possibly trapped beneath the building after an aftershock caused the building to shift again. There’s footage of the building falling a bit more from one of the surrounding apartment buildings. 

There had been 16 aftershocks by this point, most registering below a 3.0, whatever that meant. Maddie was from Pennsylvania, she didn’t really have a scale for earthquakes in her head yet. The 7.1 was the worst, everything after terrified her, but they were much shorter, and much less intense.

She was more concerned about the building collapsing, and what that would do.

She was 18 on 9/11. She remembers that day vividly, and she’s wondering just how many others in the room are too. 

“Maddie,” Sue says, coming in almost silently, “Glad I caught you.”

“Is something up?” Maddie asks, glancing towards the news again.

Sue is quiet for a moment. Maddie can see the gears turning in her head. She sips her tea and then says, “I just want to make sure that you aren’t going to use department resources to track down the person you know from the 118.”

“Wh-what?” Maddie blinks, a bit concerned. She would never do something like that, and she’s not sure where this is coming from.

“There was an incident a few months ago,” Sue explains, “One of the dispatchers went back through her call logs to get the phone number of a firefighter from the 118. She’s no longer with the department, and the complaint was made out of abundance of caution, since the man it affected wasn’t the one making the complaint. I don’t want Mr. Buckley to receive repeated harassment from our dispatch center and to have the complaint elevated.”

Maddie felt cold. Did her brother have a stalker? Wait, why didn’t Sue know that they were- “Oh no,” Maddie shakes her head, she’d forgotten that she was still technically Maddie Kendall , “I would never, I was a nurse before this, I’ve just assumed the stuff I learn on calls is similar to that? Privacy wise?”

“Very similar,” Sue nods, “It’s your first day, I just thought I would tell you now, unofficially, to avoid any issues in the future.”

“Of course.” Maddie takes a sip of her own tea, glancing back at the floor, “I better get back to the floor.”

Sue nods, but before she lets her go, she adds, “Thanks for letting us know about the hospital your brother works at, it helps.”

Maddie smiles at her before leaving the break room, Josh nods to her before she takes a seat again, and she gets back to the calls. 

Daniel texts her at some point during her shift.

Daniel: I’ll be late, got pulled into a surgery

Daniel: Saw Buck on the news, he’s fine

🔥🔥🔥

Hen

The lower structure of the building was slowly being cleared out by specialized crews they brought in for these sorts of disasters. Hen had spotted the first debris dumpsters being delivered to help with clearing not only the building but the roads. 

They stacked what they could inside to make easy pathways to the most critical points.

That's how she ended up so deep inside with Bobby and Chimney. They’d gone down a level through the floor, and on her walk in she saw the ankles of a woman, wearing sparkling red high heels, with no pulse. She’d stopped for only a moment to attach one of the black tags she carried with her so no one else wasted precious moments that could be spent on others.

The walking wounded made their way out as debris was cleared, but they were here for someone who was pinned by part of the building itself.

Someone with the 126 walked past, directing them farther in. 

They came to a section of collapsed floor with a beam laying sideways across it, wide enough they could all crawl across. Beyond it was a teenage boy, African American, the person they were looking for.

An older white man was kneeling beside the kid, holding his hand. “The paramedics are here now, you’re going to be okay, Jeff. They’re figuring something out.”

Hen dropped her kit beside the boy and got to work, “Hi Jeff, I know you’re really worried about your leg right now, and we’re going to do everything we can for you, do you mind telling me how you’re doing while I put this around your neck.”

“How bad is it?” Jeff asks instead.

“Bones heal,” the older man says, “It’s just a little setback.”

“Starting to think this California school isn’t for me,” Jeff says, he tries to shake his head, but Hen puts her hands to either side of his face to stop the motion.

The man looks up at them, pressing his lips together, “This kid has every Division I school in the country looking at him.”

Hen catches Bobby motioning for Jones, “Sir this firefighter is going to lead you out of here.”

“Nah, fuck that, I’m not leaving,” The man says, “This kid is a son to me.”

“Swear jar,” The kid smiles for half a second before wincing again.

“We need to focus all our attention on Jeff now,” Bobby says, “If something happens we can’t be worrying about your safety too, now go.”

“I’ll be good, coach,” Jeff says, “Heart of a champion.”

“I love you, kid,” The coach says. Hen catches the words, “He’s coming home with us.”

As soon as the coach is out of earshot, Bobby asks, “What’ve we got Hen?”

Hen feels around the boy’s ankle and foot, nodding to Chim who’s already taken out the tools they need to potentially cut the shoe off. The blood flow looks good, but the thing that’s crushing him is holding up a ceiling, “Tibia and Fibula are crushed, But I’m pretty sure the arteries are intact.”

Bobby nods to her, he knows what it means.

“Alright kid, I’m gonna be honest here. You’ve got two options. One guarantees you get out of here, the other is a lot riskier.”

“What’s the guarantee?” Jeff asks.

Bobby swallows, “We call in a trauma surgeon, and we cut you free.”

“Free?” Jeff asks, “From what? Like my leg?”

“Yeah,” Bobby says bluntly. The boy closes his eyes, rolling his head, this time Chimney’s there to help steady him, “They’d put you out, you wouldn’t feel any pain, and you’d wake up in the hospital safe and sound.”

“I’d rather die here than lose my leg, what’s the other option?” Jeff says, a bit more firmly.

“We try and shore up this pocket, once we think it’s all stable, we use an airbag to lift up this beam, and pull you free.” Bobby explains it, gesturing around to the large gap they’re in. They’re working beside a pit, and god only knows when the next aftershock will come. Hen finds herself knocking on the wooden beam beside them holding up some of the debris near them. “I know it sounds simple, but it’s not. This debris is holding up this part of the restaurant, and if it gives way, this whole side of the building could collapse. My team and I can get out of here, but I don’t think you will.”

“I know,” Jeff says, “I meant what I said, I’m keeping my leg.”

“You’ve got parents,” Bobby says, gently, “A girlfriend? Friends? They’re gonna love you whether you play basketball or not.”

“I worked so hard,” Jeff says, “This has been my dream, it’s my whole life. I know I could survive without my leg, I don’t think I could live through losing it.”

Bobby nods, it looks like he understands. Hen wishes that this boy could choose the easy way out, but she understands too. 

That coach thinks of this kid as his son, and this sports scholarship might be his only chance at college. He could be the first in his family, or not, but she understands the pressure he’s under.

It takes some time. Hen gives him morphine for the pain. They’re going to be at it for a while, and he doesn’t need to suffer. Firefighters from multiple stations rotate in and out helping to shore up the building.

When they finally get to a point where they have some confidence they won’t experience a cave in, Bobby calls for all non-essential personnel to evacuate.

“If something goes wrong,” Jeff says, clearer now with some of his pain gone, “Save yourselves. This was my choice.”

“All four of us are getting out of here,” Bobby says.

“With all eight of our legs,” Chim adds, “Now Jeff, Hen gave you some morphine, when we get you out it’s still going to hurt like hell. You ready?”

“I’m ready.” Jeff nods. Then he starts hyping himself up, chanting ‘heart of a champion’. Chim joins in the encouragement while Bobby gets the switch going to inflate the airbag. The first bit of air isn’t enough to release him, but it is enough for Jeff to start feeling it. Bobby releases a second round of air, and the building around them seems to object to their plans. 

It’s not the pull through that frees him, but a slide to the side. Jeff screams in pain, and Hen and Chim work to get him on a backboard. As soon as he’s strapped down they pass him over the fallen support column through the gap. Paramedics on the other side start rushing him from the building.

The building settles again when the airbag deflates, and there is half a second of rest for them, now that Jeff is free.

Then the aftershock hits.

Bobby ushers Chim across first, and Hen shoves him second, since he’s already in front of her. She abandons her bag, and yells at the lone firefighter behind her, from the 221, to follow fast.

Bobby and Chim make it. 

She doesn’t.

Somehow, it’s not dark when she comes to, she’s not dead, which is good, somehow she fell between two cars in the parking structure. 

The parking structure that was partially pancaked. 

Oh good.

She let out a shaky breath, looking around her, “Not in Kansas anymore.” 

She pulled herself out of the cramped area slowly. She pulled her radio down and said into it, “118, this is firefighter Henrietta Wilson, I’m trapped beneath the building but unhurt, copy.”

She was met with silence. 

“118, this is firefighter Hen Wilson, please respond.”

Nothing again. She pulled the radio away from her shoulder and saw the problem. The wire got cut.

Nearby her medical bag sat on the ground. She glanced inside, most of the contents were still in it, unharmed. It looked like some of the tools for Jeff’s rescue had gone missing in the second collapse. She spotted a pair of scissors nearby and reached for them, stopping when she got a hand on them. 

A pink and purple sparkly girls shoe abandoned in the debris. 

She’s about to call out for the girl when she hears a gasping sucking sound.

She grabs the shoe and her bag and heads towards the noise. The second time she hears it, she realizes it’s a man. It’s a relief that it’s not a little girl, but spotting the turnouts doesn’t make it any easier. 

The man is half buried under debris, a halligan bar discarded beside him.

“221, right?” Hen asks, sitting beside him.

He cracks a bloody smile, “Yeah, Russ, Russell Byrd.”

“Hen, 118.” She says in response, “Where’s your radio? Mine’s busted, did yours fall nearby?”

“Never got one,” He says, pain evident in the way he grit his teeth, “They were all issued out, I was off shift.”

“You picked a good day off,” Hen sighs, looking him over again.

“Nothing good on Netflix,” He huffs, “Thought I’d join the party.”

Hen picks up the halligan bar and tries to find a point where the pillar that’s pinning him will give way so they can get him out. The airbag from before is either still with Bobby, or it got buried under something else. “You think there’s a jack in one of these cars?”

“Don’t waste your time, Hen,” Russ says.

“None of that,” Hen says, working on popping the trunk of one of the cars, “We’re both getting out of here.”

He lets out a soft chuckle before making a pained sound, “Not me. No, I’m good at what I do, but… fractured pelvis, flail chest, even I couldn’t save me.”

“You say you’re good, maybe I’m better,” Hen mumbles.

She’s barely got one of the trunks open when he starts gasping for breath, hard.

“I’m not gonna make it 20 minutes,” He gets out when his breathing evens out, “Help’s not coming, not for me, anyway, so please, my kit. Gimmie a bolus of morphine.”

“One,” Hen says, “And we’re not giving up hope.”

Hen grabs the kit on the floor, her own, not that she’ll point it out to the man beside her. She packed more morphine than she normally would, but a collapsing building meant the potential for crush injuries, and she’d rather have extras than run out. She grabbed one of the syringes and ripped it out of its packaging.

“Got a husband, H-Hen?” Russ asked.

“Wife,” She said, restarting the calculations in her head for how much to give him.

“Oh,” He sounds surprised, in a good way, “I had one of those. She got so scared I wouldn’t come home ‘n I just… Stopped. Eventually she left. Maybe she was onto somethin’.”

“My people are close,” Hen whispers into the space. “Believe me when I tell you…”

Russ’ ragged breathing had stopped while she was turned away, focusing on the morphine.

She sighed.

Byrd was gone, and reviving him would only bring more pain. She couldn’t do compressions with multiple broken ribs without risking something worse. She didn’t know when someone would find them.

She put the morphine back in its bottle, the cap good for several punctures, before slumping a little bit against the nearest bumper.

She took out another one of the triage tags, black, again, and wrapped it around his wrist. Black. On the name label, she wrote out “Russell Byrd.”

She has to move on. It’s what she tells herself to get her to keep moving through the maze of air pockets and debris. She keeps the halligan bar with her to help. Her bag is slung over her back. Kat’s shoe is tucked inside. 

She has to laugh a bit when she looks down and sees the floor is painted with yellow at one point, humming along to ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road’ as she goes past it. It’s an arrow, painted on the floor of the parking garage to direct people out, but she doesn’t think that it’s entirely accurate anymore.

It helps a bit to think of this place as Oz. Scarecrow, Lion, Tinman. Coach, Kid, Russell. Hell there had even been some red sparkly shoes earlier in the day.

She makes a call to Karen when she hits a dead end. She doesn’t make a connection, not so deep underground, not with half the city in chaos. She tells her she loves her, and then leaves a message for Denny, just in case.

This morning they’d all had breakfast together and Denny had talked about his new best friend, Alex. How they played astronauts at the top of the jungle gym during lunch.

God what she wouldn’t do to be back in her kitchen this morning, to have a few more minutes with the two of them. 

Would Denny’s biological father use her death to try and get Denny back?

She can’t think like that. 

She doubles back.

Hearing a dog barking only makes her laugh about her Oz metaphor. One more check, she thinks, Toto.

The dog is named Paisley, though, when she finally gets a look at its collar. It came through a section of debris she hadn’t noticed when she had gone towards the dead end. A section small enough for her to fit through. It leads her down a jagged pathway. She slides past the front of one car. Paisley stops just a few feet away, spinning in circles between two parked cars. A piece of the ceiling fell just right over one car to create a sort of shelter that’s big enough for just one small person, a little girl.

“Kat?” Hen asks.

She’s missing a shoe. The shoe Hen found in the fall.

“Hi,” She whispers, “How do you know my name?”

“Your parents are worried sick,” Hen says, “We’ve been looking for you. You hurt anywhere?”

“No,” Kat shakes her head, then extends her foot, “Just a missing shoe.”

“I can fix that,” Hen says, reaching into her kit for the matching one.

She smiles, the light from Hen’s helmet catches on her braces. Pink and Purple bands crisscross her teeth. They must be her favorite colors.

“C’mon,” Hen nods away from the space, “You wanna try and find a way out with me?”

She crawls out and Hen takes her hand, helping her navigate though the area with her.

They’re a ways away from where she first found Kat when she hears it. It's loud, after so long wandering in near silence. There are power tools, and it sounds like maybe a car? Truck?

She starts heading in that direction.

Kat starts to panic, so they stop a safe distance away, in a pocket that looks more stable than the space where she’s sure people are working on the other side. 

“We’re gonna just rest here for a bit, okay, Kat. You, me, and Paisley. When they break through, we’re going to go over there, and get you back to your parents, how’s that sound?”

Kat nods, her eyes still teary from the noise. So quietly, Hen almost misses it, Kat asks, “My parents are really out there?”

Hen gives her a warm smile, crouching down, “Yes, honey, I saw your dad before I came in here. He was yelling at my boss’s boss about coming in here to find you himself.”

“Why didn’t he?” She asks.

“Well,” Hen sighs, looking around at the ruins of the garage, “How hard was it for you to find your way out of here?”

“Impossible,” Kat says more confidently.

“If something happened, and your dad got lost, we would have to rescue him too. Keeping him outside while we looked meant that we could focus on finding you.” Hen gestures around, “Your dad could’ve gotten hurt if he came back in, and we didn’t want that.”

“He really yelled at a firefighter?” Kat asks.

Hen nods, exaggerating a bit for the girl's benefit, “He yelled at the firefighter who is in charge of every single firefighter in this building. That’s like, hundreds of firefighters.”

“Whoa.”

There’s a loud scraping noise. Kat yelps and Paisley sprints off towards out. Dust must’ve been kicked up by whatever they did to get through the wall, but it doesn’t sound like anything’s about to fall. Hen waits a moment, then two, for something to happen.

“Alright Kat, let’s see if they got us out of here.” Hen crouches and turns around so the little girl can get on her back, she has no clue what was just dislodged, but she’s not risking her stepping on glass, nails, or any other debris.

They go towards where there used to be sound, but now there’s silence.

“Hen?” Buck calls out, and of course it would be one of her crew working down here.

She rounds the narrow corner with Kat on her back and sees a lot of headlamps pointed at her. 

“Hey,” She gets out, spotting the battalion chief in the mix, “How y’all doing?”

A cheer goes up, Chim helps Kat out of Hen’s arms. Someone plops the damn dog into her lap when they pause to check her over. She tells them about Russ, where he’s laying, how far back. There’s tunnels that can be shored up all the way back to where she was, and as they walk out of the building, She can see the chief starting to sort out logistics.

“Hey don’t forget your dog,” Hen says, trying to hand off Paisley to the little girl when she’s sat with her parents.

“Oh she’s not mine,” Kat says, petting the dog anyway.

“I’m really allergic,” The mom gets out before sneezing several times, “Sorry.”

That’s how she ends up with a dog in her lap half an hour later when she gets in the truck to ride back to the station with the rest of the crew. She’s cleared from going to the hospital, only because she’s a trained medic, and she’d argued about having a capable wife at home who would take her if she needed it.

“I hope Denny likes dogs,” Chim says, nudging her shoulder.

“Me too,” Hen groans.

Chim taps her knee and nods over to the other side of the cabin, where Buck looks surprised. Eddie is knocked out cold on his shoulder.

“Probies,” Jones laughs into the headset.

🔥🔥🔥

Buck

B-shift was there to relieve them as soon as they got back to the station. It was late and if it had been a normal shift, they would’ve been staying until 8 am. Buck shook Eddie just a bit, them man had been dragging ever since he’d gotten his phone working back at the hotel. It wasn’t a surprise he crashed when he did.

Eddie had explained that his aunt had picked up Chris from school and dropped him off with his Abuela. It had been on Eddie’s mind all day, the phones being down hadn’t helped. Buck had checked his phone for texts while Eddie checked his voicemails.

Daniel: Be safe

He’d sent that right after the earthquake, and Buck had missed it.

A few hours later, he’d added.

Daniel: I swear to god if you show up to my hospital today, I will find a way to haunt you while I’m alive.

Buck snorts at that. A few hours after that, Daniel sent another message.

Daniel: I saw you on the news, glad to know you’re okay. 

Daniel: I know you’re not talking to me, but, please let me know when you’re home?

Buck chucked his phone in his locker before heading off to the showers with the others. Water was already running in the stalls. Buck was thankful that someone had thought single stall showers were a better idea than an open room for them. He slipped into one of the unoccupied ones and almost groaned in relief when the hot water began to wash away all the dirt on him. He was tempted to linger there for longer than necessary. 

In the end he ended up in the locker room a few minutes later, dressing out between Chim and Eddie. The two were already mostly dressed while he threw on his clothes haphazardly. His shirt had unfortunately gotten covered in the protein smoothie he’d set down in the locker, right before the quake struck, so he had on a fresh uniform t-shirt.

“I am going to go home, and nap for 12 hours,” Chim announces, “Might not even make it to the bed. Gonna walk in and just nap on the pile of shoes I keep by the door.”

“Gross,” Eddie chuckles, “I’m just ready to go pick up Chris. My Abuela might make me sleep on her couch tonight if it takes me any longer to get there.”

Outside their little glass bubble, there is a dog barking, and spinning around in circles at Hen’s feet. She has one of the leashes from the lost and found box clipped to its collar. The hotel manager confirmed the dog owner’s name, and then the black tent outside had confirmed her death. 

Buck watched her interact with the dog, Bobby was getting it to do tricks. 

Eddie zipped up his bag while Buck was getting on his boots. He waved goodbye before leaving.

Buck watched him go. If anyone asked, no, he was not checking out the guy’s ass. He was just appreciating Eddie’s choice of pants.

Buck waves to Bobby on his way out the door. He’s sure Bobby is going to go over to Athena’s after this. He doesn’t need to wait around for anything. It’s pretty dark out, compared to the usual brightness of LA at night. A good chunk of the city is still without power.

“God damn it,” Eddie swears, slamming the door of his truck.

“Eddie?” Buck goes over to his friend, “What’s wrong?”

“The battery is dead,” Eddie roots around in the toolbox on the back of his truck, “Shit.”

“What do you need?” Buck asks.

“Jumper cables.” Eddie sighs, “I don’t have mine here.”

Buck frowns, thinking about where he kept his, except, that was the old jeep. He never bought new ones when he got his current model. “Uh,” Buck sighs, “Right, grab what you need from the truck, I’ll drive you.”

“What?” Eddie looks over at him, his face unreadable. 

“I got your back, remember?” Buck jerks his head towards the Jeep, “I’ll drive you to get Chris, and drive you home. Then tomorrow morning I can come grab you and we can pick up some jumper cables from a store and start your truck.”

“I-I’m pretty sure I have some at home, I just forgot to put them back after…” He looks a little sheepish, “My neighbor had to give me a jump start two weeks ago.”

Buck nods, “C’mon, I don’t want your Abuela to make good on her threats to make you sleep on a couch. Especially if she has the kind of couches that are covered in plastic.”

Eddie snorts, finally moving. He gets out Chris’ booster seat, and hooks it into Buck’s back seats, then goes around to hop in the passenger seat.

Buck sets the radio to one of the rock stations. They’re playing Green Day.

The streets of LA are a mess, even now, but there has been progress made. They still have to fight with Buck’s GPS when they come up on road closures. There were too many to properly have them marked on the maps, so it’s just a matter of ignoring the soft “recalculating” coming from his phone. Eddie glares at the screen every time it interrupts their peace. Buck parks behind a small yellow car in Eddie’s Abuela’s driveway. He yawns.

“C’mon,” Eddie nods his head toward the house, “I’m sure my Abuela would love to meet you. Plus she’s been cooking all day since her power went out and she didn’t want things to spoil.”

“I will never say no to free food,” Buck relents. He shuts off his jeep, climbing out with Eddie.

Buck follows Eddie inside the home of his Abuela. The place feels like warmth somehow. Like a place that’s been filled with love. Buck stops just inside the door to wait, but Eddie is on the move the second he comes through the door. 

“Mijo,” He says in a room just off to the right. Buck takes a step forward and sees the boy he met so long ago on the pier curled up on a sofa, “Hora de despertar.”

Buck smiled at them.

“And who might you be?” Buck startled as a woman approached from down the hallway.

“Oh, uh, I’m Buck.” He held out his hand for her to shake, “I work with Eddie.”

She eyed him up and down, taking in the uniform shirt, “And I thought you two just dressed alike.”

“Hey,” Eddie says, coming back to the doorway, “Sorry to just show up, we just got off shift.”

“And I just got power back,” She shrugs, “I was introducing myself to your friend.”

“Right, Abuela this is Buck, Buck this is my Abuela, Isabel.” Eddie gestures between the two of them, “Buck had to drive me, there was an issue with my truck at the station.”

“I’ve been telling you that you need to get if fixed,” Abuela waves her hand, “¿Por qué no lo hiciste cuando trabajabas en el mecánico?”

Buck barely picks up on the question, but he understands enough. 

Eddie sighs, “Iba a hacerlo este fin de semana. Fue inoportuno.”

“At least let me give you boys some food to take home, both of you,” Isabel says, switching back to English while Buck is still translating in his head. 

The two wait in the doorway.

“I can help-” Buck begins, but is interrupted by Eddie.

“Chris is get-” Eddie laughs, rubbing a hand behind his neck.

“Sorry,” Buck gestures for Eddie to go first.

“Chris is getting his things, he’s excited to see you again.” He smiles, turning around to look in on Chris in the living room.

“I can help you figure out your car stuff tomorrow, if you want. I’ll pick you and Chris up, we can grab jumper cables and whatever car part you need.”

“It’s just the battery,” Eddie says, “I was just waiting for my next paycheck before buying one.”

Buck nods in understanding. He’d been anxious those first few days after his original Jeep had been totaled, unsure what he would need to pull from his savings, even though he knew he had enough to cover whatever he needed. He doesn’t know if Eddie would be comfortable with an offer to spot him the cash, so he doesn’t offer. 

“I know a guy,” Buck says instead, “Whatever battery you need, he’s great with getting those discounts so it’ll be like half the price.”

“That- that might help,” Eddie says.

“Buck!” Chris looks excited to see him when he gets to the doorway. Chris comes forward and hugs Buck. “My dad talks about you all the time.”

Eddie’s face goes slightly darker in the low light.

“Does he?” Buck teases.

“I talk about everyone on the crew,” Eddie insists.

Isabel comes back with a few containers of food, “You know you could always stay the night, Eddito.”

“I know,” Eddie smiles at her, “After everything I did today, I’d prefer my own bed to the floor though.”

“Did the earthquake do that much?” Isabel asks, looking between the two of them, “I don’t know if Pepa mentioned I lost power.”

“She did,” Eddie says, “Let's just say I’m going to be wary of tall buildings for a while.

“Oh come on, man,” Buck nudges his shoulder, “It was just the one hotel.”

“What hotel?” Chris asks, frowning.

“Don’t worry about it, mijo,” Eddie leans down and kisses the top of his kid’s head. He shoots Isabel a look, then gestures to the living room, “I’m sure it’s still on the news.”

“Alright, alright,” Isabel looks between the three of them, “Go home and rest, I’ll check the news myself.”

“Thank you,” Buck says when she hands him the food containers.

“There is too much,” Isabel shrugs, patting his arm, “Get them home safe.”

“Of course,” Buck nods to her, “It was a tough shift, I wanted to make sure Eddie got home safe.”

Isabel cuts her gaze from Buck to Eddie. Buck doesn’t know what Eddie’s doing with his face, but he can't wait for the day he knows him well enough to understand it. There are a few more pleasantries before Isabel follows them out the door. She doesn’t come down the steps to follow them to the car, but as soon as Chris is settled, Eddie jogs back over and kisses her on the cheek. 

Buck waves one more time before ducking into the car and looking at Eddie for directions.

“With the roads…” Eddie trails off, “Maybe GPS is better.”

“Alright,” Buck hands Eddie his unlocked phone, “Punch it in.”

4995 South Bedford Street, Buck knows, logically, that it’ll still be on his phone later, but he still commits it to memory.

“Can you read me a story when we get home?” Chris asks from the back.

“Of course, mijo,” Eddie says, turning in his seat to look back at him.

It doesn’t take long to get to Eddie’s place, but Chris is still knocked out halfway through the trip. Eddie carefully carries him inside. Buck follows with the food, fully intending to leave everything for Eddie and Chris.

“Hey,” Eddie says when Buck is trying to slip his shoes on at the door, “You don’t have to leave, you want something to drink before you go?”

“Water would be good,” Buck says, discarding his shoes and following Eddie. 

Eddie’s kitchen is larger than the one at Buck’s apartment, but it’s still not that big. Eddie gestures for buck to sit at the small table in the middle before he pulls out a pitcher for water, and two glasses.

“So,” Buck says, “How’re you feeling after your first big emergency?”

“Exhausted, yet not tired at all?” Eddie glances at him when he sets across the way.

“Yeah,” Buck nods, “I get that, my first big one was intense.”

“Can I ask what it was?” Eddie ducks his head.

“Oh, uh, a plane crashed off the beach. I had to pull Bobby out while it was sinking… wasn’t even the worst part of that week, but I was still pretty shaken up after.”

Eddie blinks at him, confusion evident, “How is something worse than a plane crash?”

“That was the week Chimney had his accident, and… well a lot happened. I try to remember it as the time I helped pull a mother and her son out of a plane instead of the night a lot of people died.”

“So today is the day we saved Batari and Ali from the high rise?” Eddie rotates the water in his hands.

“And Hen, Kat, and the little dog too.”

Eddie snorts, “Don’t go sounding like the wicked witch of the west, now,”

“Who?” Buck frowns, not getting the reference.

“You’ve never seen the Wizard of Oz?” Eddie asks, “Seriously?”

“Nope,” Buck pops the ‘p’ just to see how Eddie reacts.

“Oh my god, you have to come over for a movie night, we’ll all watch it.”

Doesn’t that sound nice. Buck smiles at him, and agrees.

They keep talking for a while, and eventually Buck is yawning. Eddie makes him take two of the containers home. Apparently his Abuela really had meant for him to take things home. Eddie puts them in a take out bag, and Buck doesn’t comment on the number of them in one drawer.

Bobby is putting his key in the apartment door when Buck gets home. 

“Oh were you out with Athena?” Buck nudges his shoulder just a bit, making his voice go singsong just to tease him.

“It’s 2am, Buck,” Bobby looks him over, “I’m sorry, where were you?”

“Food run,” Buck says, holding up the containers.

“What is even open tonight?” Bobby looks incredulous, holding the door open for Buck to go in first.

“I know a guy,” Buck shrugs. He laughs as Bobby lets out a groan, because Buck always knows a guy. It’s kind’ve always been his thing.

“Gonna put a GPS tracker on you some day. Did you come back here at all after our shift?” A quick scan of the apartment confirms that neither of them had.

One of the bookshelves lost all it’s shelves and the books are scattered on the floor. A lamp is on it’s side, and also on for some reason. The oven clock is blinking, 3 hours off what it normally would be. Buck opens the door to his bedroom and sees that his room is as much a mess as it had been that morning, with a few toppled knickknacks in the mix.

“We’ll clean up tomorrow, yeah?” Bobby asks.

“Yeah,” Buck agrees.

He drops onto his bed, pulling out his phone. He ends up going back to his texts with Daniel.

He’s not ready to talk.

Still.

Buck texts back a single house emoji.

Chapter Text

Eddie

Mornings suck. Well, waking up at 5:45 every morning to start the day sucks. Eddie rolls himself out of bed, shifting gently as he accounts for every ache and pain he’s got this morning. It’s his first shift back since the earthquake today. Chris’s school is still closed for a few more days while the inspectors go through every LAUSD building. 

Almost every single building in LA needs to be checked.

Buck had offered to look around his place and check for structural damage, but Eddie hadn’t agreed to it, if only because he didn’t want to take advantage of Buck’s friendship. Buck was eager to offer help, and every time he did, Eddie could hear his father’s voice in the back of his head, saying ‘Real men should know how to do these things themselves.’

He gets Chris up next, they have to work on his Physical Therapy every day, so Eddie gets him up and into the living room where they can do it together. A tradition from when Eddie had come back from Afghanistan, after Shannon had left. It was a deal he made with Chris while he was still in pain and recovering, they work together to strengthen their bodies. Eddie’s doctors had already cleared him, but he uses it as an excuse to keep in shape either way.

“Doing good, Superman,” Eddie says. Over the summer one of Chris’s doctors had given him a new exercise, one that looked a lot like Superman in flight in some of the old superman movies. Eddie had shown Chris the older movies a while ago, and it had turned into a weekly movie night.

They have their breakfast after, that way whatever Chris spills on himself will get cleaned off in the shower he takes in the mornings. The doctors had recommended they start trying showers for Chris. While Chris still likes baths, they’d gotten a shower stool, and Chris does a pretty good job of taking a shower by himself.

Chris takes the first shower, and Eddie takes the second, that way Chris can dry off and get dressed with more time to himself.

Eddie walks into his room just as he’s getting his socks on. It looks like a struggle for half a second, then Eddie realizes that Chris’s shirt is on backwards.

He waits until Chris is standing and has his crutches to ask, “Fashion statement, or were you trying a new look?”

Chris sighs, ducking his head.

“None of that, mijo,” Eddie says warmly, “We all need a little help from time to time”

Chris does most of the work getting himself sorted out, but Eddie helps him guide the shirt around to the right direction. They brush their teeth together before heading out. 

Abuela comes out to greet them almost immediately. She stands with a coffee in her hands just beyond the door. 

“You’re not going to say goodbye?” Abuela teases as Eddie stands by his idling truck.

He rolls his eyes before jogging over, taking one step up before faltering, “Something wrong with your step?”

“This one and the one in the back,” Abuela sighs, “It started the morning after the earthquake, but no one has returned my calls.”

“Why don’t I stop by the hardware store this weekend, huh? See if I can fix it.” Eddie helps Chris as he takes the two steps up to the porch making sure he doesn’t trip, “You be good for your Bisabuela, yeah?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning?” Abuela says, squeezing his arm gently.

“Thank you again.” Eddie nods, “The school should be back up soon, just… Inspections, you know?”

“Please,” She huffs, “I’ve already gotten a letter from the insurance about damage inspections. Now go, before you’re late,” Despite the sentiment she still pulls him down slightly so she can sign the cross over his chest. Eddie hasn’t exactly been keeping up with his faith, but he allows it without protest, knowing it will make her feel better about him possibly running into burning buildings.

Driving away is always the worst part about leaving Chris with someone else, even if it’s family this time. Still, if he doesn’t want to be late, he has to go.

The streets of LA are marginally better a few days after the quake. Downed trees now sat in carved up piles on the side of the road instead of blocking it. Ruined sidewalks and cracked streets were slowly being repaired. Metal panels had been put down in some places to cover holes. Only a few streets were still closed on Eddie’s way into work.

Buck had come over with a brand new set of jumper cables the morning after the earthquake. One look at Eddie’s battery, though, led them to a small store called “Batteries” where the guy behind the counter eyed Buck unashamedly, before discounting a new battery for Eddie’s truck to the point that Eddie was sure the guy made next to no profit off it. It wasn’t even one of the budget friendly ones, either.

One less thing to worry about. The guy had eyed Eddie just as hungrily when he’d paid, assuring him that if he ever needed anything else, the shop was open from 10 am to 8 pm every day, just ask for Reggie.

The guys from B-shift were back by the time Eddie and Buck had gotten back to the station parking lot. A handful made their way over to watch the two of them replace Eddie’s battery and start his car up, like it was some sort of machismo ritual they were engaging in instead of their regular duties. 

Now though, C-shift was filtering out of the station when Eddie pulled into a parking spot. Someone gave Eddie a wave as he passed them at the bay doors. It’s too much to ask that Buck’s not in the locker room when Eddie gets in.

Buck’s shirtless, and Eddie’s mouth goes a little dry at the sight of him. He’s animatedly speaking with Chimney while Hen hangs out in the doorway, laughing along to whatever Buck’s talking about.

Eddie stops in his tracks between the Engine and ambulance. If god exists, he must be laughing up on a cloud somewhere with a handful of saints.

In the back of his mind he wonders if he ever felt this strongly about Shannon. He’s not entirely sure, since the last time they weren’t fighting was before he’d been in the military. It felt like so long ago now that even if he had, those memories were faded around the edges, more nostalgia than anything else. Isn’t that a trip? 

🔥🔥🔥

Buck

“Help!” A man’s voice calls out above them. “Someone help! Please.”

Buck follows Bobby to the head of the engine, and they all look up to see a man trapped between one building and the next. No windows or openings to make easy access from above or below. They’re going to have to figure out the best angle based on blueprints from the city.

“Better hope he doesn’t suck in that gut,” Chimney mumbles beside Buck.

“Alright, Hen, Eddie, you two head up to the opening above him, drop a rope down, and try to keep him calm.” Bobby points up to the apartment building's roof. The two glance at each other before gearing up.

Buck steps towards the parking structure. It’s old, probably built thick to prevent noise pollution. Bobby’s barking out orders to a few of the others. 

“If we have to go through a wall,” Buck says, looking back at Bobby, “Best guess is the apartments, the parking garage looks like their walls would be at least a foot thick.”

“Blueprints confirm,” Jones says, turning one of their tablets towards them. He’s already got the blueprints of both buildings pulled up. 

Buck gears up, flashing Bobby both the sledge hammer and saws as options to get through the wall. Bobby picks the hammer. 

It reminds Buck of the call they had last year, the pipe baby. Buck wonders for a brief second how that kid is doing. If they’re in foster care, or on the way to adoption, or if that teenager and her father somehow ended up with the child again. He hopes for the first two options as he trails behind Bobby and Chimney onto the floor they need.

“Cap, he can’t safely grab the rope, he slid half a foot when we tried.” Hen radios in. 

“Alright, we’re below him, we think.” Bobby responds, “We’re going to break through the wall down here, see if our estimate is correct.”

“We need to hurry, he says he’s been in there a few hours before sunrise, at least.” Hen calls back.

The apartment they need is a showroom for the leasing office. Bobby barges through in the middle of a showing, and Buck hides his smile in his shoulder as Bobby explains to the leasing agent what they need to do. 

“Drill first,” Bobby says, marking off a portion of the wall. “This should be below him.”

“Oh wow,” One of the people touring the unit says, wide eyed, “Does this happen often?”

“No!” The leasing agent says at the same time Chimney says, “Yes.”

Chimney looks around, “Okay so not at this building, but this isn’t the first time I’ve been on this type of call.”

“Oh my god,” The leasing agent groans, glaring at Chimney.

“We’re through,” Buck says, pulling the drill back so Bobby can run a scope through the hole to check their position.

“Perfect, he’s a few feet above us, right in the middle,” Bobby says. 

Bobby does end up calling down for the saws after Buck hammers through most of the wall and makes contact with rebar. Chimney gets the honors of sawing through it to give Buck a break.

“Why couldn’t you go through the other building?” The leasing agent glares at Bobby while Chimney works. 

“As I explained,” Bobby says, with a hint of amusement that only someone who’s known him for a while can hear, “The other buildings walls are twice as thick and solid concrete. Don’t worry, we’ll give you a form, and the city will help cover any damages.”

“I’m sure,” The woman rolls her eyes, stepping away, “You know, why don’t we go downstairs and I’ll see if there are any empty units we can tour instead.”

“No, we’re good, this is fascinating,” one of the people on the tour says. 

“George is starting to freak out,” Hen says, “How’re we looking?”

“We’re almost there George,” Bobby calls through the hole, “Just clearing a few more pieces of rebar, and then we’re good.”

“That’s good cause I really have to take a leak!” George yells down.

Bobby quickly ducks back inside, eyes wide, “Maybe keep holding it for a few minutes, okay?”

They don’t get a response, but they don’t get ‘rained on’ either. A win is a win. Once Chimney finishes, there’s a moment of silence. Bobby tells George exactly what they’re going to do, and only moments later he’s laying on the floor of the show apartment, panting.

“You think I can use your bathroom?” George asks finally. 

The leasing agent throws up her hands, “Why not?”

Chimney monitors George in the bathroom, while everyone else packs up. The touring couple takes their opportunity to examine the structure of the building’s exterior wall. Noting how they hadn’t been able to hear a thing going on outside.

Buck’s a little bit surprised when they ask the agent about units, but they do at least ask if there’s availability on the other side of the building.

“Never going after taggers again,” George says when they get him on a stretcher, “Might even ask to be put in one of those little toll booths. And I’m never going on a diet again. I don’t care what my wife says.”

Chimney and Hen end up taking George in the ambulance, and Buck is left with Eddie to make sure they’re all packed up to head back to the station. 

“Getting really tired of people falling from buildings,” Eddie says, glancing over at Buck.

Buck shrugs, thinking of the other day, “Just wait,” He says, thinking of all the times he’s done the maneuver, or harnessed someone up who was hanging off a balcony, or helped someone escape a burning apartment fire, “The ones with the rope are more fun.”

Buck watches delightedly while Eddie’s cheeks turn just a shade redder in the sunlight. 

Despite what everyone at the station may think about his storied work history, stripper has never been on that list. He rolls his eyes when Chimney makes a crack, and glances at Eddie, who just looks confused. 

“Don’t worry,” Buck jokes when they’re out of earshot of both their Captain and the rest of the crew, “I’ve never been paid to take off my clothes before.”

They push through the rest of the crowded bar and into the parking lot in the back of the building. They probably would’ve pulled through to the back of the building if they’d know this was where the emergency was. Dispatch had relayed that someone was stuck in a tailpipe with the level of disbelief that Buck would attribute to someone’s inexperience with dispatch itself. Abby had once mentioned they get new dispatchers every 3 months. Must be that time again.

“What’s her name?” Chimney asks, leaning down to check on the girl.

“Betty,” says a dude standing beside the bright orange lifted truck.

“Jennifer,” The girl stuck in the tailpipe says.

Buck squints at the guy while he gets the creeper down on the ground so he can take a look at what’s going on underneath. 

“I thought you meant my truck.” He says lamely.

“This is your truck?” Bobby asks. Buck’s starting to get a feel for his moods now that he’s living with him again. This is the ‘you’re not in trouble, but you’re really stupid’ voice.

“I didn’t back into her or anything,” The guy says, “I don’t even know her that well.”

“You dared her to do this,” A woman says. 

“We were flirting!” The guy nearly yells.

Eddie speaks slowly, but clearly enough that Buck can hear every word from under the truck, “Your idea of flirting is daring a girl to stick her head up your… tailpipe?”

Buck can safely smile at the innuendo under the truck, where not even Jennifer can see his face.

Jennifer and Chim talk, Buck gets handed a measuring tape, and he marks out how far back they’d need to cut with a silver sharpie. 

“This thing is surprisingly long,” Buck says as he rolls out from under the truck.

“TSA230 saw should do the trick.” Bobby says with no segue.

“Oh yeah,” Buck smiles, “Like a hot knife through butter.”

Eddie is smiling now, and Buck knows he is trying to hide his laughter, not well enough, “Gotta work on your poker face,” Buck tells him when Chimney hands over the saw.

Buck has to stand up to let Bobby take a look, since he’ll be the one doing the actual cutting. While he’s up, a woman comes over and says, “Just type your number in my phone.”

Buck shakes his head, “I’m not looking to get into a relationship right now.”

“Who said anything about a relationship?” She says, voice getting lower while she gets closer. 

“I’m flattered,” Buck says, frowning, “But I really have to focus so we don’t hurt your friend down there.”

Eddie is having the same problem as he tries to back up the onlookers. Buck smiles to himself as he listens to Eddie’s weak excuse, “I have a son.”

“Me too,” The intoxicated woman in front of him says, leaning in.

“Alright, move the peanut gallery back, everyone get back,” Chimney shouts over the noise, getting the job done faster than Eddie could.

“We need lube,” Bobby says when they get her in a sitting position. Buck presses his lips together as several people start digging through bags and wallets. At least all these people are prepared. 

Chimney hands over the bottle from their med kit. Unscented, unflavored, the medical kind that won’t risk an allergic reaction, and they’re sure hasn’t gone bad or been contaminated. It doesn’t take long for them to get the tailpipe off. Like usual when a crowd gathers, there’s clapping and hollering. 

“Oh wow, you are hot,” The woman says, staring up at Eddie as she finally gets a good look at the people around her.

“Ma’am would you like us to transport you to the hospital to get checked out?” Hen asks, handing off the remains of what is apparently a very expensive tailpipe to the owner of the truck.

“She just needs another drink!” One of her friends says, waving a hand out in front of her. 

“No,” Bobby says, thin lipped and starting to sound a bit more annoyed than he usually does when being professional, “Ma’am you really should get checked out at the hospital, make sure you’re okay. Your head was stuck in a pipe, and we have no idea what you were breathing in before we got it off.”

She looks around a little dazed, but nods after a moment. Then she leans over and pukes.

The crowd around them makes noises of sympathy. Camera phones are pointed in her direction, but Buck’s pretty sure the wall of firefighters around her is going to keep this from following her online, well, the puking part at least.

“So,” Buck bumps into Eddie’s shoulder as they pack up the equipment, “Is your son really the reason you don’t date.”

“Well,” Eddie looks over at Buck, and for a second, Buck is sure he’s imagining the way Eddie’s eyes look him over, “That and they weren’t my type.”

🔥🔥🔥

Eddie

Buck is making a joke with Bobby when Eddie gets a call. 

“Mr. Diaz?” A voice says on the other end, “I’m Nurse Mayhew, I work at LA General. Your grandmother and son were brought into our hospital.”

“What?” Eddie says into the phone. The cabin of the engine goes quiet at his tone, but he doesn’t look up at any of them. 

“LA General,” the woman says, repeating herself, “Your grandmother and son were brought in together, I’m just trying to get a hold of you.”

“I-“ Eddie glances at the captain, he looks concerned. “I’ll head over there as soon as I can.”

“Oh!” The nurse says, “Alright, I’ll let your family know.”

Eddie hangs up, already fearing the worst. He turns in his seat in the truck, looking to Bobby. He doesn’t know how to ask, but he has to anyway, “My abuela and my son were taken to the hospital, I don’t know what happened yet, and I know we’re not even halfway through shift, but…”

“You and Buck can go when we get back from this call,” Bobby says calmly. Eddie glances at Buck who’s looking at their captain in confusion. Bobby explains simply, “If something is wrong with your son, I don’t want you driving while you’re upset. He’ll take you. When you know what’s going on, we’ll sort it out from there, okay?”

“Yeah,” Eddie nods, thankful for the understanding. He glances at Buck again, who’s still looking at their captain instead of him. 

Buck parks them in an underground structure. They have to take an elevator up to the ground floor of the hospital. Someone presses close to the wall as Eddie rushes past, looking for anyone to tell him what happened.

“Pepa,” Eddie says, walking over to her, “¿Qué pasó? Is Chris okay?”

“You mean Prince Charming over there?” She nods towards the far end of the waiting room where Chris is talking with some of the nurses. Smiling and laughing, and it dawns on Eddie, Chris was not the one to get hurt. His Abuela was. “Isabel is being prepped for surgery, she broke her hip.”

Eddie closes his eyes and groans, “The steps.”

“Mmmm,” Tia Pepa says, “She was calling Chris to come inside, and had a fall. Christopher was the one to call 9-1-1. The response got there fast.” 

Eddie nods, looking back towards Chris. With Abuela out, and Chris’s school shut down, he’s not entirely sure what he’s going to do to make sure Chris has some place to go.

“Ah,” Pepa says, “Your friend is back.”

Eddie glances back at Buck who’s now heard all this. Eddie presses his lips together and wills himself not to blush. He will not let Buck see him embarrassed over this. He should know how to do this himself.

“We work together now,” Eddies explains.

“I didn’t realize there was only one fire station in all of LA,” Pepa turns her attention Back to Eddie, “You can’t keep doing this, Eddie. She’s not up to it anymore.”

“I know,” Eddie says firmly, “I- I’ve been trying to find some permanent help, it’s just, there’s so much to get through, one program cancels out another and it’s just a nightmare. It’s worse than the VA.”

“I can’t believe your gringa ex stuck you with all of this,” Pepa huffs, and Eddie doesn’t miss the glance towards Buck and the near miss with an eye roll. 

“I’m not stuck,” Eddie flails, because what else is there to say.

“Do you have to go back to work?” She says. Eddie knows the answer is written on his face, because she barrels on, “Ah, and you’re not stuck. Listen, I’ll keep him tonight, but you need to get this figured out.”

“Daddy!” Chris calls over before Eddie can say anything else. Full of energy, probably a bit of adrenalin from the 9-1-1 call, and the ride to the hospital. He has no idea what any of this means.

Eddie walks over to him.

“He’s adorable,” One of the nurses says with a smile.

Chris regales him with the story of the ambulance ride here, and sitting with Abuela and not being scared, “I told Abuela that I wasn’t scared because you’re a firefighter, and you go with people to the hospital all the time.”

“You did?” Eddie says, glancing at the nurses, who both look a bit like the women at his last call, only more sober. He looks back at Chris and pretends he’s not aware of their looks. 

Buck tells him they’re taking Chris back to the station when Eddie finally excuses himself from the nurses. Eddie can feel his heart racing. Pepa had to go back to work, apparently, and wouldn’t be available until much later. 

“You’re sure?” Eddie asks.

“Positive,” Buck smiles, “Listen, it happens to the best of us, okay? No one’s going to be upset.”

Eddie hopes he’s right.

He doesn’t see Captain Nash right away when they get back to the station. They take Chris up the stairs and settle him on the couch in the loft. It’s not long before Hen and Chimney find them. 

Chimney is telling Chris a child friendly version of one of the first few calls Eddie had gone on while working at the 118. Between him and Buck getting over their first fight, and the earthquake. They’d gone to a medical call somewhere past 3 am, and the woman just kept asking questions, and Chimney, in his exhaustion, kept answering them all, including the ones about his sex life, but to Chris he just said, “Oh she asked me if I was dating anyone, and I gave her a long back story of every person I’d ever ho- kissed, it took forever for me to shut up, I just kept blabbing.” 

It had been an eventful night, because this woman had been concussed, but with it enough that her rambling questions lead to some very entertaining tangents. 

“I don’t remember asking the chief for reinforcements,” Bobby’s voice cuts through them all.

Eddie’s stomach drops and he stands quickly, shielding Chris from sight by moving to sit on the arm of the couch. 

Bobby’s face does something when Eddie says, “I’m sorry sir, I didn’t know where else to take him.”

“Sure you did,” Bobby says, “Buck let me know in advance, I already cleared it with the Chief.”

Eddie is turning before he can really register the words. Buck had already cleared everything. When? They’d been together almost the entire time from the hospital to the station. Did he call Bobby? Text him? Was Buck’s word good enough with their captain that a simple text could pull this kind of weight.

He didn’t have much time to really think about it. The alarms went off and they all started gearing up for a call, Bobby tugged him along, saying he’d get Chris in the engine.

Chris gets situated between Eddie and Chim, Hen sits across from them, and Buck is in the driver’s seat with Bobby up front. 

“These are great,” Chim taps on the headset he’s got on, “See so we can hear each other. Though sometimes I wish I had a mute button for Buck-”

Buck honks the horn as soon as he says it, it blares over the already loud sounds of the sirens. “Oh I’m sorry were you saying something?”

Chim rolls his eyes at Buck before turning back to face Eddie and Chris. 

“You have a scar on your head,” Chris says, in that way that kids do where they change the subject without really thinking of it.

“Very observant,” Chim says, “I had an accident, I got a big metal rod stuck in my head,  but the doctor took care of it. You ever have surgery?”

“Two times,” Chris says, holding up two fingers.

“Three actually,” Eddie corrects simply.

“Got me beat,” Chim says after a beat of silence, “Now I feel kinda lame.”

“Because you are,” Hen teases, and it gets Chris laughing, “Your dad tell you why we call him Chimney?”

“I don’t even know the story yet,” Eddie looks over at Chim, waiting for the explanation.

Chim shakes his head, but Hen just leans forward, and says to Chris, “I’ll tell you the story later.”

It feels nice to be chatting like this with the team. Buck honks the horn again, this time for someone on the road, and they continue on their way to the scene. Bobby does his best to brief them right before they get there with the information dispatch sends to the engine.  

The car accident they arrive at looks worse than it actually is. Chris hangs back with Bobby at the engine while he directs them. 

Eddie catches some of what Bobby is telling Chris, which is the child friendly version of what they’re doing. He has to run back to the car with the spreader to help extract one last woman from her car. She’s pinned, but not hurt, but her passenger door is up against a pole and her driver's door is crumpled. She’s alert, responsive, and talking to Hen about her kids.

“Who’s kid is that?” She asks as they finally get her out. She’s looking at Chris who’s standing on the bumper of the engine with Cap.

“Mine,” Eddie says, “We had a family emergency this morning.”

“He’s cute,” She smiles at him, “I wish I could take mine to work.”

“Me too,” Hen says, “But sometimes my wife brings my son to the station when we’re not out on a call.”

“That must be nice,” The woman says.

After some back and forth, the woman says she’ll wait for her partner to come pick her up. She’s mostly fine. Hen gives her the list of what signs to look out for in case they missed something in the accident. 

As soon as her partner arrives they’re packing up to go back to the station. 

Chim volunteers to watch Chris as they’re backing into the engine bay. Hen had split off with Jones to take one of the people from the accident to the hospital after they’d thrown up at the scene. 

Eddie rolls hoses with Buck, and watches as Chim grabs one of their freshly rolled hoses and runs it up to the loft after Chris had gone up there. The sounds of the pinball machine soon after made a lot of sense.

“So, who all do you have to help other than your Abuela and Pepa?” Buck asks him as they finish cleaning up. 

“No one,” Eddie says.

Hen makes a noise from nearby, “What do you mean?”

“It’s just us,” Eddie shrugs, “I’ve been applying to various programs, but nothing seems to ever go anywhere.”

“Maybe you can bring Chris over to meet Denny sometime, they’re close in age,” She walks over to them, her after-call chores completed, “If they like each other, maybe they can hang out more often.”

It would be nice, but Eddie doesn’t know if he can accept the offer. At least not while he’s barely starting his probationary year.

Bobby doesn’t pull Buck away for lunch duty, instead Buck gets handed a clipboard, and a collective groan goes around while Buck’s face lights up. “You’ve got a new sous chef today?” 

“Chris is in charge of lunch today,” Bobby says with a conspiratorial smile.

That’s how they all end up exhausted while Bobby passes out grilled cheese, tomato soups, and a mix of other things for the crew. Buck gets handed a plate with a different kind of bread and cheese on it, Eddie squints, trying to figure out why, but he shrugs it off when Chris starts to excitedly tell Eddie about how it’s so nice to have another adult who knows how to cook.

Thanks, kid.

With their chores out of the way, and no calls coming in, they all scramble to find things for Chris to do. Buck puts on an extraordinary bad show with Firefighter Simulator, a video game Eddie has no idea why they’d want to play. Then someone has the idea to get Chris to try his hand at going down the poles. 

Pepa shows up, wandering past the engine while Chris is still giggling. Buck comes down the pole with Chris’s crutches a second later.

“Alright,” Eddie says quietly to Christopher, so Pepa can’t hear, “Fun’s over.”

Chris makes a noise of disappointment, but doesn’t let it show.

A chorus of “Bye Christopher”s sound from the loft above them. Chris turns to wave before slipping his arm into the crutch.

“Did you have fun?” Pepa asks with a smile.

“Yeah,” Chris nods.

“Good job today, kiddo,” Bobby calls from near the locker rooms.

“You too, Cap!” Chris calls back. 

“Alright,” Pepa laughs a bit, giving Eddie a look now that she can see just how tired Chris seems to be, which will make her afternoon just a bit easier, “Vamanos, we’ve got to stop by the store on the way home.”

When Eddie has to turn away from his son’s retreating form he sees Bobby and Buck standing together, watching him. Eddie walks over to his captain and pulls him into a hug, “Thank you.”

Bobby goes from surprised to relaxed in an instant. He pats Eddie's shoulder when he pulls away. “We’re your team, now.”

If only it could be that simple.

🔥🔥🔥

Buck

The grocery store near his apartment wasn’t that busy when he went in. He probably should’ve gotten a list from Bobby about what they needed, but he wasn’t about to hold the guy up over oatmeal and protein shakes when Athena Grant was waiting for him. Even Buck wasn’t that foolish.

So now here he is, in the cereal aisle, deciding between the store brand and name brand of the cereal he usually gets, trying to remember which one tastes better with almond milk. He goes with the name brand, deciding that if it tastes bad, he’ll eat the rest plain, or with the new vegan yogurt he’s trying. Hopefully that’s good too.

He doesn’t expect to bump into Carla in the middle of the cereal aisle. 

“Buckaroo!” She says as soon as she recognizes him, “Oh, how’ve you been?”

“Good,” Buck says, he’s still thinking of Eddie’s problems. An idea hits him, and he has to at least ask, “Actually, are you free anytime soon?”

She gives him a curious look, “Today's my day off, what’s up?”

“There's a coffee shop around the corner, if you’re not too busy after you finish shopping, and you don’t need to rush home, would you mind meeting me there?” He doesn’t know exactly how to explain it between boxes of cheerios and a wall of granola bars. He also doesn’t want to air out Eddie’s business where random strangers might overhear. 

“Sure,” Carla nods, “I’ll meet you there after I finish up, we can talk.”

“Thank you,” Buck says with a smile, he only has a few more things to grab, but he makes a point to do it quickly, so he can order Carla something before she gets to the coffee shop.

It’s a much quieter place to have this discussion. The hole in the wall coffee shop is set up with booths that have actual walls between them for people on laptops, and the tables are spaced far enough apart they won't have to worry about eavesdroppers.

Carla takes a bit longer to show up, which leaves Buck with a lot of time to overthink. He tears one of the napkins he’d grabbed into strips just to have something to do with his hands. 

“What’s got you so nervous?” Carla asks softly when she finds him.

“Hi,” Buck says, standing to give her another hug. She squeezes him now that they both have their hands free.

“Missed you, Buck,” She slides into the seat across from him, and he hands her the drink he ordered, hoping he remembered what she liked, “Abby hasn’t mentioned you for a bit, I was beginning to wonder.”

He lets the comment wash over him, “We haven’t really had time to talk much, last I heard she was in Italy.”

“Greece now,” Carla sighs wistfully, “She knows how to travel.”

Buck takes a sip of his own drink, humming in agreement. 

They’re quiet for a moment before Carla get’s that knowing look in her eye, “So spill, I know there’s a reason you wanted to stop and talk, how can I help?”

Buck swallows, frowns, looks down at his coffee, and suddenly worries he’s making a mistake. At least if he tells Carla what’s going on, he knows she’s not likely to gossip about it, but still. He’d barely just become friends with Eddie.

Carla’s hand on his wrist steadies him, and he looks up at her warm smile and kind eyes.

“I have this friend,” He starts, and pauses again, he rotates the cup in his hands, then says, “He has an amazing son who has CP - cerebral palsy - and he is having trouble finding childcare. He’s a single father, and his abuela just broke her hip, so he can’t ask her.”

Carla nods along to what he’s saying, she doesn’t interrupt, but her frown deepens slightly as he goes along, “What programs has he applied to?”

“That’s the thing, he’s been trying to figure out which ones he qualifies for. There’s just so many, and some cancel the others out, so he’s not making any progress,” Buck blurts it all out quickly. He doesn’t know what programs are out there either, but he remembers how Carla helped Abby navigate all the funeral arrangements for her mother. Carla seemed to have a sense for how to deal with this stuff, maybe because she worked within it. 

It was almost like his old social worker, who’d gotten him set up with so many programs after he’d turned 18. He hadn’t realized how much she’d helped until he was in California, and it seemed next to impossible to find anything similar.

Not that he needed to in the end.

“He needs help navigating the system?” Carla says, “Getting the right amount of care?”

“Yes! Exactly,” Buck says it a bit too loud, if the way other people actually look over is any indication, “A-and I know everyone at work wants to help, but I don’t think he really wants to let us.”

“You think you can get me a face-to-face with your mystery man?” Carla asks.

“Maybe,” Buck says, “Probably not willingly.”

She smirks, “How could he possibly say no to a pretty face like yours offering to help him out?”

Buck can feel his face start to heat up, he shakes his head, “I don’t even- It’s not, no. We haven’t talked about that.”

Carla laughs, shaking her head at him, “Just to be clear, you’re not asking this just because you have a crush on this hot, single father?”

“No!” Buck sputters, “No, of course not. His kid is super cool, and I just don’t want him to miss out on anything because his dad is bad at paperwork.”

“Sure,” Carla snorts, giving him another one of those knowing looks, “Alright, let’s start making a plan. You still have my number right?”

🔥🔥🔥

Chimney

Chim’s doctors won’t shut up about him being a medical miracle. He’s gotten better about not voicing his displeasure, which his doctors noted in his chart a few months ago, now. It’s been half a year, and he’s feeling almost completely fine. 

Except for when they show him the x-ray and he has to look at the rebar on the film.

He hadn’t been able to lie to his doctors about not remembering that night. He remembered in vivid detail the looks of horror on everyone’s faces. The paramedics who were first on scene, the captain of the 126, the look of fear in Bobby’s eyes. The stupid joke Buck had made about his totaled car.

“It’s remarkable really,” his doctor says, “No memory loss, no motor function issues, not even a noticeable amount of difference in your scans from what a normal brain should look like.”

“Nothing except the honesty thing,” Chim mumbles.

“Even that seems to be petering off,” His doctor says, “Have you tried to lie again, since everything?”

Chim shrugs, “What’s the point, really?”

His doctor nods, “Well, let us know when and if it becomes an option again, it’ll help measure where you’re at. Really, it’s the only difference from before and after your accident.”

Chim shrugs, stopping himself from blurting the thought, well you’re just trying to use it for research now . 

“Like I said before,” His doctor continues, “Your progress is amazing, and the fact that you’re at the same level of function you were at before the accident is unprecedented.”

It twists something in Chim’s gut, to be told that he’s in the same place he was before the accident. Before he was lying to himself, and to his team, and to his girlfriend. He’d basically been told he wasn’t worth marrying. Chimney had been feeling almost redundant, like how it had been back when Gerrard was captain and he spent entire shifts stuck in the station. He didn’t want to be that guy anymore, but here he was, being told that was where he was at.

“We discussed this before?” Chim jokes to lighten the mood. His doctor looks slightly alarmed before Chim cracks a smile and claps his shoulder. “I’m messing with you.”

His doctor laughs a bit, then tilts his head slightly, “Can you be a bit dishonest when you think of them as jokes?”

“Well, joking was the only way I could stop myself from blurting the truth before,” Chim shrugs. He watches as his doctor pulls out his chart and makes a note. “Why? Do you think that’s progress?”

“I do,” He says, “it could be part of the mindset of it all, but I’d like you to keep track of it, if you can.”

He nods, and then goes through the standard amount of paperwork he has to do, for his insurance and for the department, before he’s on his way out. Then he spots a familiar face at the nurses station near the elevators.

“Dr. Daniels!” Chimney calls out.

The man flinches, and for a second Chimney remembers that Buck hasn’t mentioned the man in, well, weeks. Chimney looks him over, and spots his name tag. ‘Dr. Buckley’ is in bold.

“It’s, uh, Buckley, actually. Daniel Buckley.”

Oh.

Chimney kind of remembers what he thought was a dream from those first few days in the hospital. The version of Buck wandering around in a white coat. Now that he’s looking at him, and thinking about it, yeah, it makes sense.

He doesn’t know why it didn’t occur to him sooner, like the time he showed up to help track down Buck’s catfisher. They were standing right next to each other and he hadn’t connected the dots. Maybe he should mention that to his doctors. 

Then again, he’d been under the impression that Buck’s brother was dead.

Wow, Buck’s bad mood the past few weeks was starting to make sense.

“Huh,” Chimney finally says.

He glances towards the elevators, his only escape. He catches sight of a pregnant redhead getting on, then looks back at Doctor Daniel Buckley when the man says, “Buck won’t return my calls.”

In all the time Chimney’s known Buck, he has never held a grudge. Hell, he was forgiving of the guy who used his face to scam almost a dozen women online.

“I know that you know him better than I do. Do you think there’s any way you’d be willing to talk to him for me?” Daniel pushes on.

“Uh,” Chimney blinks, refocusing on Daniel in front of him. He’s frowning, and it really is a mirror to Buck whenever a joke hits too close to home. He wonders how Buck could possibly hold a grudge this long against his own brother . Then again, he was left in foster care on his own, and Daniel didn’t exactly seem like he was doing so bad. Considering Buck thought Daniel was dead, being a doctor in LA was a much better alternative.

Daniel Buckley looks nervous about even asking, and Chimney can see so many differences in his nerves to Buck’s. Where Buck always pulls away when his anxiety spikes, Daniel seems steady. Where Buck avoids eye contact, Daniel seems to only fidget with his hands. He stands just as tall as he normally would, with some sort of surety he’s never had to lose. 

There’s more to this story. Chim can almost feel it. Not just being ripped apart by the foster system, and distance, but something else. 

“Maybe you and I can meet up for coffee?” Chim offers. He knows he might regret it, but still, he has to try. “I know some of his side, maybe we can compare notes.”

🔥🔥🔥

Buck

They get a call to a mall for a man trapped in an escalator around the middle of the day. Buck is trying to go over in his head if he’d ever watched one of those videos about the inside of an escalator before. He’d always assumed there wasn’t an inside to them. Just a solid metal structure that the stairs collapsed and wrapped around.

He doesn’t have to actually worry about disassembly when they get to it, though. The top has fallen inside, and the man who’d been at the top when it happened had gotten pulled back and under the metal gears inside.

“His name is Daniel,” Buck hears, and his entire body freezes as he tries to stop this woman from getting any closer. He hasn’t seen the man’s face. He doesn’t know who exactly is down there. His own steps falter as he turns, ever so slightly to get a look. He’s hit with another wave of chill when the woman continues, “He’s my fiancée.”

Knowing Daniel was alive, and knowing Daniel were two entirely different things. He’d barely scratched the surface with the man he’d referred to as ‘Daniels’ for so long. The other man had almost always steered their conversations towards Buck when things became personal.

He steps forward again. He has to look. He has to be sure. This cannot be his Daniel, because this is not how he wants to learn that his brother has a fiancée. This is not how he wants to see his brother for the last time.

He glances back to the woman, mostly to delay the inevitable, and is reminded of Maddie for the briefest moment. But she’s younger than Buck is, and much younger than Maddie would be now. The sister he hasn’t seen in almost 2 decades now. He doesn’t even know what he’d say to her, if he saw her, and it was really his Daniel down there.

But it’s not.

It’s not Daniel Buckley, and that fills him with so much relief he feels bad for the man trapped in the escalator

They get the man out, and his girlfriend starts nodding emphatically, saying Yes, over and over again. It’s nice.

It seems like they’re about to get their happy ending.

Then Daniel dies right there in the middle of relief, and joy, and a proposal.

Buck takes a shuddering breath, and has to look away.

It’s hitting too close to home. 

He starts gathering up their tools. They’re not putting the escalator back together. That’s not his job now. He leans in and looks for any abandoned equipment. Chim is already out, hanging off gear. He sighs, dropping his forehead to Buck’s shoulder for a moment where they both sit on the edge of the opening.

Hen and Eddie do what they can for Daniel, but it becomes clear that the blood loss was too much. 

They still take him out to the ambulance. He has to go to the hospital, just a different department than before. The fiancee follows, looking hollowed out. Buck can relate.

After a cop comes by and tapes off the area, they head back out to the truck. Buck sits across from Chimney in the drop seats. Bobby is relatively quiet in the front. He glances back at Buck, his face contemplative. 

Hen and Eddie are already back from the hospital when they pull into the engine bay. It’s one of those calls where they have to dig into the spare uniforms. Too much blood had spread between them, dried on their hands and soaked into their clothes.

Chimney got the worst of it. He’s covered in blood. Bobby sits with him when he doesn’t move for too long.

“Hey,” Hen bumps his shoulder as he gets to the loft. He goes for the kitchen. No one wants to eat after that kind of call, but he can still start prepping for their dinner. “You looked a bit shaken at the last call, everything alright?”

Buck frowns down at the table counter. He hadn’t told anyone but Bobby about Daniel. Athena being there had been… less than ideal, but he’d assumed she would’ve mentioned something to Hen, and Hen would’ve said something to Chimney, and they’d have known by now. But neither of them had ever asked.

“Mmmm, something’s up,” Hen says, “You tell the boy wonder, or is this something you’re keeping to yourself?”

“Boy wonder?” Buck snorts, “Bobby’s been called a lot of things but-”

“I meant Eddie, your new BFF,” Hen shakes her head, she comes round the counter and starts up the coffee machine, “But you’ve talked to Bobby about this, then?”

“Yeah,” Buck nods, “And Athena, mostly because she was with Bobby at the time.”

Hen hums to herself, looking at him over her glasses, “Is it something you want to talk about now? You seemed pretty spooked at that call.”

Buck worries at his lip a bit. He makes himself busy by pulling out ingredients for a salad from the fridge. It settles in him, the idea of sharing this with more people. At least he can get an idea of how fucked up things were, or are, if he talks about it.

“You remember last year, when we found Bobby, and I told you guys about my family- my brother?” Buck starts chopping, he can’t look over to the side and gauge how Hen’s reacting if he’s got to keep himself from cutting off a finger. 

“Yes,” Hen says, curious. The coffee machine gurgles to life, cutting the silence of the fire station.

 It also means that there will be people wandering over soon to get cups of coffee, and he’s not sure he wants to have this conversation with the whole crew, “Turns out Daniel is alive, and that doctor guy I was friends with… well, he’s my brother.”

“Oh shit,” Hen’s voice carries all the surprise he expected, and some softness. “Did he tell you, or did you just find out?”

Buck sets down the knife, he looks at her dead on now, “One of my old roommates came up to us at the bar and told me his real name. I don’t think Daniel expected it. I kind of went off on him. Haven’t really spoken to him since.”

“Has he reached out?” Hen asks.

Buck pulls out his phone, unlocking it and handing it over to Hen so she can read through the unanswered texts.

She’s still reading when Chim comes back up. He looks a little more like himself, and a lot less bloody. He pulls two mugs and pours one for himself and Hen. He goes for a third mug for Buck when Hen hands him back his phone.

“What’s going on up here?” He asks. 

“My brother is alive,” Buck says with a shrug. 

Chimney doesn’t look surprised.

“How’d you know?” Buck asks, he’s sure his face is doing something because Chimney laughs, “I thought you can’t keep secrets right now.”

“I may have run into him at my last doctor's appointment, and he told me his real name,” He shrugs, “It’s not a secret, since you know, so I didn’t have to tell you.”

That’s fair. Buck finishes chopping up the last few vegetables before putting everything in a container for later and stuffing it back in the fridge. He shakes his head when Chim offers him coffee again, “Couches?”

“Yeah,” Hen nods, “I feel like we should be away from sharp objects and sitting down for this.” 

They all walk over to the empty seats. Hen still looks like she’s thinking of what to say. “So he said in his texts he’s in remission?”

“Yeah,” Buck nods, “Which, I know means he’s healthy, but considering the last time I saw any of my family, they were demanding I hand over a couple organs, it’s hard to trust.”

“Jesus,” Chimney sputters out, “Like, I know you thought he was dead, but I didn’t even think of that.”

“What all did you say to Daniel?” Buck shifts to look at Chimney now. 

“I didn’t say anything, he asked me to talk to you,” Chim shrugs, “I don’t know how you, of all people, can hold a grudge.”

Buck frowns, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were ready to desecrate a corpse so a dead guy wouldn’t be gawked at,” Chim says, “The guy had spent months lying to people online using your face and you still tried to defend him.”

“Abby decided she didn’t want to date you because you’re vegan and you stayed friends.” Hen points out, “If I had a girlfriend break up with me over what I ate, it wouldn’t be that civil.”

Buck lifts his hands in a mock defense. He knows he’s always been more forgiving than most, but that’s not a bad thing. “So it’s bad that I’m still upset that he lied to me for months?”

“No!” Hen says, “No, I mean, yes, you’re completely valid in being upset about it, but, from the texts,” she gestures to all of him, “It seems like maybe he was just nervous about how you’d react to seeing him again.”

“I haven't read his texts since the earthquake,” Buck says.

“Okay, so,” Hen sighs, “Maybe go talk to him, see what he has to say, what his side is.”

“I’m just…” Buck slumps back on the couch, his head falling back. Eddie is in the kitchen area. The man is unphased by most of their calls, so it figures he’s trying to make himself a snack. Buck looks back to Chimney and Hen, “I’m worried that even if he says he’s fine now, in a few weeks, he’ll bring something up, like, ‘Surprise, I actually need your entire left leg now’- and I know that’s ridiculous, but I… I used to have nightmares about the doctors taking all my organs while I was awake on the table and just… Leaving me there.”

“Jesus,” Chim says.

“I know,” Buck runs his hand through his hair, “I still get organ harvesting nightmares. It’s why I’m not actually an organ donor.”

“I don’t blame you,” Hen reaches over and squeezes his arm.

The distinct smell of something burning in one of Bobby’s nice pans gets Buck’s attention, he glances over at a very distracted looking Eddie. He’s frowning down at his phone. He waves off the rest of the conversation and hops up to stop Eddie from whatever he’s doing.

“Low heat,” Buck says, turning down the burner and moving the - toast? - off the heat. He flips the pan on to a waiting plate, two slices of bread fall on, blackened.

Eddie squeezes his lips together before saying, “Sorry, I was trying to be fast.” 

“A high temperature doesn’t mean a faster cooking speed,” He examines the pan, “Did you even let this heat up first?”

“Why?” Eddie looks down at the stainless steel pan.

“Oh my god,” Buck deadpans, setting the pan back down on the burner. He restarts it and sets it at a lower temperature, “Alright, I can’t save everyone on calls, but I can at least save you from starving. And from Bobby’s wrath if he ever finds out you almost destroyed one of his pans.”

“I can cook,” Eddie protests.

“What were you even trying to make?” Buck gives him a look.

“Grilled cheese?” Eddie has the decency to look a bit sheepish. He slumps against the counter, watching Buck work.

“Sit,” Buck huffs. He grabs the ingredients he’d use out of the fridge, then hesitates about the cheese but ends up grabbing some of his vegan slices, “I’ll make you one, and it’ll be better than whatever you’ve ever fed yourself, or god forbid, Christopher.”

🔥🔥🔥

Chimney

With Buck doing whatever it is he’s doing with Eddie, that left Chim alone with Hen. Which was the perfect time to snoop a bit.

“So,” Chim said, “Buck’s brother? I know he told you more than he did me.”

Hen gives him a look over her glasses, “You’re not subtle.”

“So I’ve been told by many people, mostly my doctors.” He huffs, shifting in his seat. He knows he’s not got the best tact for this conversation. “I just want to know how bad it is. I had a point. This is probably the longest he’s ever held a grudge.”

Hen hums, tapping on her coffee mug. She gives one look over her shoulder, towards the two idiots (he’s being affectionate of course) in the kitchen. “Alright, Chim, what do you want to know?”

“Everything,” He says. “I only… He only told me that his brother died while he was in foster care.”

Hen slumps a bit, “How much do you know about the foster care system?”

“Not much,” Chimney says, “I went to stay with the Lee’s after my mom died, but my dad never died, so… I was never at risk the same way.”

“You know Buck never got in touch with his siblings after he was taken into the system? Pennsylvania doesn’t have siblings’ rights.”

“What are siblings’ rights?” Chim frowns, trying to think of a possible explanation.

“If siblings are separated by the system, siblings right means that they have the right to visitation with their siblings,” Hen lowers her voice as she speaks, “I was wondering why Buck never even got to call them. Turns out it’s up to the parents' discretion.”

“So he and Daniel?” Chim glances back again, this time Buck is flicking something at Eddie.

“They haven’t spoken to each other since the last time Buck saw him,” Hen confirms, “When his parents gave up custody of him, he assumed Daniel was dead. Buck had already run away to Minnesota by then, and even though Minnesota has siblings rights, they couldn’t really intervene to get his sister visitation. From what Buck’s told me, she would’ve been 18 at the time.”

It hurts a bit more to get this kind of detail. He wonders if Buck’s even aware of how much Hen’s put together. Buck was lost in a system for years, without anyone he’d ever known. “How’d he get to Minnesota?”

“Bobby told me he hopped on a greyhound and just kept quiet near the back until he got hungry. Wandered off and got picked up by cops for shoplifting. Once the St Paul children’s services got the rundown from the Pennsylvania CPS, they decided it would be better to place him in foster care there until the situation could be resolved.”

They both look at Buck again, he must feel their eyes on him because he looks over and gives them a funny look. Eddie distracts him though, and soon enough he’s back on whatever tangent he was going in for the other man.

“How did I not know any of this?” Chim whispers into his mug.

“He doesn’t give it away easily,” Hen says softly. She’s quiet for a minute before shifting back to face Chim fully, “Now, know all that, I want you to imagine Buck at 13, learning his parents signed away their rights to him. What would you assume happened to your brother with cancer?”

It’s not hard to picture it. A swelling of grief, knowing that your brother was likely dead. Maybe he assumed Daniel had been gone a while by the time they’d thought to sign the papers. He hadn’t been called, hadn’t been invited to  a funeral. He hadn’t been able to see his sister, or his parents again.

“Knowing Buck he probably blamed himself,” Chimney mutters.

“Yeah,” Hen doesn’t argue, “He’s been carrying that for well over a decade now. On his own for almost 2.”

A shiver runs up Chim’s spine. It’s cold.

He remembers how he felt after Kevin died. How he blamed himself. How he hadn’t been able to really speak with Mr. And Mrs. Lee for a while after. He’d moved out of their home and into an apartment as soon as he could.

He can relate to Buck’s loss, but at the same time, he can’t imagine how painful it would’ve been if he’d been younger. If he hadn’t had anywhere to run away to.

Buck had been stuck in Minnesota, alone, and in the care of strangers.

He’d never been adopted.

God. He feels for the guy.

Hen gets up for more coffee, and Chimney stews on what he knows now. He understands the grudge now.

He pulls out his phone. The text from Daniel is still recent. It’s a coffee shop, and a suggested time and date. Chimney’s thumb hovers over the screen for a moment before he finally sends a thumbs up back, agreeing to the meet.

His next day off he winds up at the coffee shop 20 minutes earlier than he’s supposed to. It’s relatively close to his apartment, without telling Daniel Buckley where he lives. He’s been there several times.

He’s also seen the beautiful woman at the pick up counter several times as well. She’s only a little bit shorter than he is, with longer brown hair, and a beautiful smile. He hasn’t had a reason to speak to her before today. Now though, she’s wearing one of those maroon polos the people at dispatch have to wear.

“You work at the 9-1-1 call center?” He asks when he goes to stand beside her, waiting for their drinks together.

She startles a bit, looking him over warily before noticing the LAFD hoodie he’s sporting and visibly relaxing some, “Y-yeah, yes, hello.”

“I’m Howard,” Chim reaches out his hand to let her shake it, “You’re one of the people behind the scenes making sure I keep busy all day.”

She smiles, and it’s nice to be the one making her smile, because it really is a nice smile, “I’m Maddie, I just started working at dispatch… well on the day of the earthquake.”

“Oh wow,” Chim laughs, “I worked that day, I can’t imagine how busy you must have been.”

“Very,” Maddie laughs, “Though, mostly I was telling people not to call 9-1-1.”

“The ‘did you feel that’ calls?” He smiles, knowing exactly how people get after that kind of emergency. He remembers working one of the last big wildfires, and people would stop their cars to ask him if he was heading for the fire, holding up the entire evacuation line.

“And a handful of ‘This is the end of days, Jesus is returning’ calls.” She laughs, shaking her head.

Chimney snaps his fingers and points, “Knew I was forgetting one.”

“Order for Maddie!” A barista calls out.

“That’s me,” Maddie says, stepping away, “It was nice to meet you Howard.”

“Hope to see you again soon, Maddie,” He says, “Heading to work?”

“Yeah,” she nods.

“Well, I hope it’s uneventful ,” He will not jinx her shift, but he doesn’t know if dispatch has the same rules as the fire station.

“It’s a Tuesday,” Maddie shrugs, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I dare you to say that to your boss and find out,” Chim deadpans.

She snorts out a laugh, and it has no business being adorable. But she waves him off, smiling, and heads out the door. 

A few minutes later Chim has his own drink, and a very tired looking Daniel Buckley stumbles into the coffee shop. He doesn’t order a coffee, instead grabbing a juice out of the fridge near the register. He slumps into the seat across from Chimney a few seconds after he makes it through the line.

“What’s dried in your hair?” Chim asks.

“Probably vomit.” Daniel answers. He reaches up, but stops himself. Chim can almost see the gears turning in his head telling him not to touch. “Someone said it was quiet tonight. An entire high school soccer team came in with food poisoning.”

“Been there,” Chimney huffs a laugh, remembering Buck’s mishap. Bobby had been so sure someone had tampered with the fire suppression system in the locker room, but in the end, maintenance had found a busted release valve that had caused the system to trigger.

“So,” Daniel says, cracking open his juice bottle, “What, uh, what did you find out?”

“I want to hear your side first,” Chim counters, “Specifically what you knew before seeing Buck again.”

It makes Daniel stop. He runs a hand down his face then grimaces. “How far back do you want to go?”

“The beginning,” Chimney says.

He nods once, and then Daniel sits back, “My sister and I didn’t get a chance to actually say goodbye to him the day he was taken away. We were at the hospital, and I was supposed to be getting prepped for surgery, and then I was being told that everything was getting canceled. We weren’t even told that Buck had been taken by CPS until the next day, because we were packing up from the hospital, and Buck wasn’t coming with us. It was a few months before our parents went from ‘Evan will come back to us soon’ to ‘he’s an ungrateful child’. 

“My sister and I asked our parents if we could see him several times, but they said we weren’t allowed, or that he didn’t want to see us. When we found out he was in another state we were so confused. Eventually I did get a kidney transplant. Never got a liver transplant, despite my mom telling me I’d die without it. When I went into remission our parents moved us to another town. Maddie was in college at the time, and I was excited to get Evan back, because I knew he didn’t have to worry about surgeries anymore. Then my mom said that he’d been adopted by a family in Minnesota, and he didn’t want to see us again.”

Daniel pauses to take a sip of his juice, frowning a bit as he thinks, “I had to hide some of Buck’s things when my parents wanted to throw them all away. I still have them.”

“Really?” Chim tries to imagine what a tiny Buck could have left behind. Everything, really, if he got picked up from a hospital and not his own home. 

“Mostly, it’s a stuffed animal, a toy robot, and a blanket. I know he had more, but… My mother was thorough.” He sighs, shaking his head. “Until very recently, like, a few months ago recently, I was under the assumption that Buck had been adopted. That him being in LA was a coincidence. When he told me about what actually happened, I knew I had to tell him the truth. Then we were… interrupted by his roommate.”

“So when were you going to tell him?” Chim asks, taking a sip of his half gone coffee.

“The night he found out.” Daniel slumps further into his seat, “God, I’m such an idiot.”

“Well,” Chim reaches over and taps the table for lack of any part of him he can touch, “Not a total idiot, you got through med school.”

Daniel glares, “Gee, man, thanks.”

Chim snorts, “Okay, so, anything else?”

“No,” Daniel sighs, “No I tried explaining through text, but I’m pretty sure he’s not reading them on purpose.” 

Chim thinks for a minute, trying to sort out how they could go about getting the two brothers to reconcile. He’s not entirely certain they can intervene without making it worse. “I can talk to some friends,” He says finally, “brainstorm while Buck’s distracted or something.”

They’re silent for a minute before Daniel squints at him, “I just realized you’re rebar guy.”

Chimney laughs, “Oh, didn’t recognize me without something sticking out of my forehead, huh?”

“No- I, no!” His face turns slightly pink, “Last time I saw you I thought it was just because you do hand off at the hospital from time to time, but the scar. How’re you doing after all that?”

It’s easy to talk about something that isn’t Buck, now that they’ve gotten everything out of the way. Chimney hums to himself, thinking of just how much he wants to share. Daniel Buckley isn’t his doctor, and he’s more an ex-friend of a friend, but he could still have some medical opinions about what’s going on with him.

“I haven’t been able to lie since the accident.” He says.

Daniel’s eyes go wide, “Wait really? How does that even work?”

“I just haven’t, I used to be a lot worse, just blurting out everything I was thinking, but I’ve gotten better about holding my tongue.” He looks around the room, trying to figure out how to really go about saying it, “I just… What if part of my problem is that I don’t even want to lie anymore. I used to lie to everyone, all the time, my friends, my family, my girlfriend- now ex. I was full of lies to the point where I don’t even remember what I lied about anymore.”

Daniel tilts his head when Chimney looks back, “Can I talk out of my ass with everything I learned in my 6 week rotation in psychology?”

It’s enough to put him at ease, a joke, and Chimney chuckles, “Sure, man.”

“Maybe you don’t want to lie anymore because they’ve seen the truth for months, and no one’s left you.” It’s got all the bluntness of a Buckley, he’ll give him that, “Maybe before you lied to everyone to protect yourself, and now you’re seeing that you didn’t have to, so what’s the point? You can trust them with the truth.”

“Well fuck, man.” Chimney has to rub at one of his eyes, that’s stinging suspiciously, “Now I have to pay for a therapist to unpack that. I’m sending you the bill.”

Daniel smiles, it’s a brittle thing, “Anytime, dude.”

“Well at least I know why Buck was your friend before all this happened.” Chim smiled back. 

It was a shame Daniel and Buck were fighting, because the second they got their shit together they’d probably be insufferable. Still, Chimney knew they had a lot to work through, and the horrible truth of what each of them believed was the biggest hurdle. He mulled it over.

“You know he thought you were dead, right?” Chim asks.

“What?” Daniel’s eyes go wide.

Oh. It seems Daniel didn’t know that his family's absence had spelled a completely different picture for his brother. 

🔥🔥🔥

Eddie

“Eddie, I fucked up.” Not the thing Eddie wants to hear from Buck right after he drops off Chris for school. He will admit he was expecting something simpler like, ‘Did you see if I put my wallet in my bag when we were leaving?’ or ‘Can I come hang out with you on our day off?’  

“What happened?” Eddie asks. He pulls off the street into a pharmacy parking lot so he can mess with his phone if Buck needs him.

“I broke something of Bobby’s. I think he’s gonna kill me if I can’t fix it.” He sounds genuinely terrified of their captain, or at least his reaction to whatever he’d done.

“Shoot me the address, I’ll grab my tools and head over,” Eddie says. It’s just another thing to add to his lists of to-do’s today. He’d been looking forward to getting in a nap after dropping off Chris, but… Buck was calling him for help. Which felt pretty significant in their friendship, and it wasn’t like Eddie was about to say no to the guy.

“Don’t worry about tools,” Buck says quickly, “I have everything you need, I just need some help with the, uh, assembly.”

“Okay,” Eddie lets out a sigh, “Okay, it’s one less stop, where am I heading?” 

Buck relays an address and Eddie follows it to an apartment complex. It’s nice, it’s got a playground at one end, and a pool. Eddie has to park in the visitor section, all the way at the back of the parking lot. It takes a minute to find the section of the building that matches the address. Buck seems to pocket his phone right when Eddie gets there.

The inside of the apartment is tidy. Well lived in, sure, but neat enough that it looks like some thought went into straightening things out. Eddie scans the living room kitchen space for whatever Buck broke. 

“I thought you needed help fixing something of Bobby’s?” Eddie said, turning around slowly.

“I may have been exaggerating,” Buck shrugs, a sheepish grin stretches across his face, “I did ask you here to fix something, just… well, it’s better if I have someone else here to explain.”

Eddie eyes Buck wearily. He really isn’t ready for someone else to come out. He half expects it to be Bobby.

“What’s going on, Buck?” He asks, stepping backwards, towards the kitchen counters.

“I asked you here because there’s someone I want you to meet.” Buck pulls both hands towards his center, smiling at Eddie.

Oh fuck no. Buck knows he’s not interested in dating already, “Please, tell me you didn’t set me up with someone.”

“No, no, not like that. Just trust me for a minute, okay, this woman… is exactly what you need.”

Someone knocks on the door just behind Buck. He turns, his entire body lighting up with excitement in a way Eddie has become fond of in any situation other than this one. Buck half looks his way as he puts his hand on the doorknob, “She’s here.” 

Eddie has only a moment to school his features and try to plan out whatever he can say to let this woman down gently, but the woman on the other side of the door is so completely unexpected, that his brain has to take a second to catch up.

“Buckaroo,” The woman says, pulling Buck down into a hug.

“Carla,” Buck smiles into the hug.

“I can’t believe how much I missed your face,” Carla says when she pulls back, tapping him on the cheek playfully.

“I missed you too,” He ushers her in and turns to Eddie. Eddie who is just so confused about what exactly is going on. “Eddie, uh, this is my friend Carla.”

Eddie reaches out instinctively to shake her hand, years and years of manners instilled in him by his mother not fading for a moment. Like he’s shaking a judges hand before a competition, “I’m Eddie, Eddie Diaz.”

“Very nice to meet you, Eddie,” Carla says, and despite the fact that she is wearing a wedding ring, it still sounds a bit flirty as she leans in to him.

“Carla is LA’s finest home health aide.”

All the tension goes out of Eddie at once. Not a date, not even a potential set up to one. 

Buck continues on as if Eddie hadn’t visibly deflated at the mention of a job title, “She’s got years of experience navigating giant bureaucracies. I thought she could help you figure out how to get Christopher exactly what he needs.”

If Eddie wasn’t already in a very complicated, probably failed, marriage, he’s pretty sure he’d drop to one knee right now. Instead, he follows Carla over to the couch while she says, “I’m red tape’s worst nightmare.”

Buck produces a laptop for them to use, and shows Carla which printer is the one for the apartment. 

He’s finishing up printing off the last of the forms he needs to fill out, and Carla is sorting through the stacks with sticky notes, when one more person comes into the apartment. 

Their captain.

He glances at Eddie and Carla, and then, when he steps further into the room, towards Buck who’s been making himself busy in the kitchen area. 

“Hope you don’t mind that we invaded your space,” Eddie says, standing to shake the man's hand. 

Bobby waves him off, “I’m just stopping in for a minute to grab some things.”

“You going to Athena’s again tonight?” Buck shoots the question over his shoulder from the stove.

“Maybe,” Bobby smiles.

Carla makes a soft noise of encouragement, but she doesn't comment, too busy marking things up.

Mostly to Eddie he says, “How’re things going with you?”

Did Buck tell Bobby his plan? Did their captain know this entire last shift that he’d be here, working with Carla, getting everything sorted for his son? Did he approve of the whole situation?

“A lot better,” Eddie says, and really, it is, knowing that in a matter of weeks things will be approved, and ready to go, and in the meantime, Carla’s willing to watch Chris for the one shift he’ll have no coverage for his son at a very discounted rate.

“Buck’s good at that, isn’t he?” Bobby asks, quietly, “Finding people exactly what they need.”

Eddie can’t help but agree. It’s possible that Buck could’ve gone behind his back and just fixed the problem for him. Instead Buck’s letting him talk through it with the exact person who knows how to fix it without making a big deal of things. It’s like someone has just handed him a key to the answers. 

Eddie looks at Buck and he hopes his captain can’t see how fond he is.

Chapter Text

Daniel

The dial back tone somehow manages to make him itch. He has barely spoken with his parents since Buck stopped talking to him, so calling them to ask questions is, well, probably suspicious. 

“Daniel,” His mother picks up on the fifth ring, “It’s been a while, how are you? Been keeping busy?”

“Hi, mom,” Daniel tries to sound normal, “Yeah, I’ve been busy, we just got out of a heatwave, so I’ve been dealing with a rush of heat related emergencies. Sorry I haven’t called.”

“You know, it’s a lot cooler here in Hershey, we need doctors too.” Her tone would sound casual to anyone else, but Daniel knows she wants him close to home. He’s not going to even consider moving hospitals until he’s finished his residence here. He’d much rather work in LA than Pennsylvania anyway.

“I like where I’m at, Mom,” He huffs, “Besides, that’s not why I was calling.”

“Oh?” Margaret says, interest piqued, “Why are you calling?”

He thinks for a minute, trying to figure out exactly how to ask without raising suspicions. After his talk with Chimney he’d had a lot to think about, namely, why the hell it had been over a year after Buck had been taken away that he’d gotten his kidney transplant. His mother had been insistent that the need was urgent. It just added a lot of questions about it all. 

“I need my medical records, from when I was a kid, do you have them?” He’s hoping she’ll just say ‘yes’.

It’s never that simple.

“Why do you need them?” Margaret asks.

“I had a check up with the doctor recently, they didn’t realize I had a kidney transplant,” The lie is easy, practiced. He’d written it down, “If you don’t have them, maybe I can get the info for the hospital, or the names of the doctors I saw. My doctor will contact them instead.”

“I think they’re around here somewhere,” Margaret says, “Give me some time to find them. You’re not sick are you?”

“No,” Daniel says quickly, “I’m perfectly fine, just a check up. Routine.”

Margaret hums. He has no idea what she’s thinking, “Alright, I’ll look around. Your father’s still at work, otherwise I’d ask if you want to speak with him.”

“That’s fine,” Daniel says, “I’ll call again soon.”

“Love you, Daniel,” Margaret says.

“You too,” Daniel says, even if it feels like his voice is sand paper as he says it.

I know you lied. He wants to scream, but instead the line goes dead.

It’s a few hours after, when Maddie is getting home with coffee from somewhere nearby, that he realizes his mother hadn’t even asked about her. Did they even know she had left Doug?

Neither of his parents had asked in the few months she’d been here.

Daniel stares at the computer screen in front of him. He’d just pulled up medical records for one of his patients and it gave him an idea. He hums to himself, skimming the digital chart and sets his plan aside for after his shift. 

“Stop humming,” Sydney says on his left. She’s entering her notes into her patient’s chart. The hypochondriac was a frequent flier, but he has the money to afford his insurance and the ridiculous copay. So they’d run the tests, see if anything was seriously wrong, and send him on his way with a referral to talk to his primary care doctor. “It’s really hard to input his treatment plan when you’re distracting me.”

“What is Mr. Peter’s treatment plan?” Daniel asks. If only to sate his curiosity of his current issue.

“Came in with bowel pain on the lower right side, thinks it’s appendicitis,” She sighs, and turns to Daniel, “He had it removed when he was 12, though.”

Daniel snorts, “Imaging for a bowel obstruction?”

“Among other things that are great for billing,” Dr. Sydney Chu looks back at him, “What have you got?”

“My Patient is surgical,” He says, “Knife through his hand during a bar fight. He said he was allergic to a painkiller, but wasn’t sober enough to remember which one.”

It was Naproxen. A pang of sadness hits him. He remembers when his parents had freaked out in the hospital after the initial bone marrow harvesting surgery. It was one of the few times it felt like someone else in the family had it worse than he did. He swallowed the memory, and tries not to think about it now that Buck isn’t speaking to him, again.

Daniel logs off the chart and goes back to his patient’s room, informing him of what he was allergic to. He smiled and tried to point at Daniel to acknowledge it, but the intern who’d been tasked with monitoring him forced his hand back to a safe position so that the knife wouldn’t move more than it already had.

Daniel isn’t looking forward to the surgery, for once. 

Pulling up his own chart should have been easy. Instead he got a pop up warning, and one of the attendings popped over to ask him why he was trying to look at his own chart. In theory, he should have full access to it whenever; it was his own information, but the hospital they worked for always wanted to know why.

“Dr. Buckley,” Dr. Bhardwaj said softly, “Is there any particular reason you’re looking at your own medical records at - 3 am on your shift?”

Dr. Bhardwaj is the kind of doctor everyone wants. Soothing voice, kind words, and the air of caring that some of her colleagues seemed to be lacking. She’s a bit older, with streaks of gray starting to dot her curly black hair, it doesn’t make her look old, instead, it just gives her an extra air of authority.

“Uh,” Daniel stares at the screen, “I wanted to look into some records from when I was a child, and forgot I needed to make the request through an attending.”

“I see,” She sighs, taking one of the rolling chairs for herself, there’s a moment where she has to adjust it, and the two of them are sitting in awkward silence together. “Would you be willing to sit down with me and review it together after our shift is over? I know you’re a few years into your residency now, but we like to avoid people looking at their own files and finding something where there is nothing .”

“I don’t mind,” Daniel says, closing the request window, “I just… it’s been a while, and I don’t even remember everything from back then.”

“Well,” Dr. Bhardwaj says, smiling warmly, “No one would expect you to, so we’ll go through it together in the morning. We’ll grab coffee from the food truck that usually parks outside, it’s better than the cafeteria.”

It startles a laugh out of him.

She sends him off to get some rest before they get the early morning emergencies coming in. 

He just has another 5 hours on his shift.

Dr. Bhardwaj takes her coffee with an ungodly amount of sugar. Daniel stares at her cup. Dark with a hidden sweetness, because she’s lactose intolerant and hates milk alternatives. Daniel’s preference is whatever’s seasonal. Today, that’s an iced apple chai. 

“That’s not real chai,” Bhardwaj says as he sits down next to her in one of the conference rooms. She’s got a tablet out to go over his charts. 

“If I wanted real chai I wouldn’t be getting it from a food truck,” Daniel sips his drink accordingly, but Bhardwaj snorts out a laugh.

“You ready?” She asks.

Daniel can feel the anxious roll of his stomach, but he knows it’ll be better this way. Having one of his mentors go over this with him. He’d considered it when he was an intern, but decided against it since he’s already seen someone self diagnose into a panic attack. 

He doesn’t want to be right about this.

Dr. Bhardwaj opens the file, and scrolls back to the very beginning. 

“Aw, Dr. Daniel Buckley, you were a very healthy 6 pound 8 ounce baby. You went to all the usual check ups for that time, got all your vaccines.” She smiles up at him, “Lets see, there's not much out of the ordinary aside from, oh.”

“Cancer,” Daniel supplies, “I was diagnosed at 5.”

“I can see… that.” It’s the pause that makes Daniel curious. She looks up at him, then back down at the files in front of her, frowning, “Lots of tests and numbers. You understand all these?”

Daniel looks them over, and it’s, well, a lot of information. He tries to understand it, but the numbers, for a while, keep getting worse, and then, right around Christmas the year he’s 7, there’s a surgery.

“Amazing you got a bone marrow donor after all that time.” Dr. Bhardwaj says, humming to herself. 

“My parents had another kid,” Daniel admits softly, “Evan- Buck- he was made to be a perfect match.”

Dr. Bhardwaj shifts in her seat and looks at him. She narrows her eyes, “You’ve never mentioned your brother before, is he…”

“Estranged,” Daniel says. It’s an oversimplification, but it gets the point across, “He was… removed from the family when I was 14.”

Dr. Bhardwaj’s eyes widened. She looks at the chart, pulling away from Daniel as she reads on. Her frown deepens as she goes. Daniel sips at his coffee and waits for the sad eyes to turn on him. Like most people have been doing all his life. 

The Tragic Decade of Fighting Childhood Cancer; a memoir in medical charting.

“Have you ever looked at this, since you’ve been a doctor?” Dr. Bhardwaj asks. Her eyes are filled with concern, the kind Daniel remembers from when Buck was still around as a kid. He takes a look at what she’s looking at, and the numbers from his various tests and scans don’t make sense. 

It may be because he’s used to emergency medicine, but they look a lot less concerning than he expects to see. From what he remembers of his childhood in and out of the hospital, the numbers on the chart should be a lot worse.

“No,” Daniel frowns, looking at some of the early numbers before the first bone marrow donation from Buck. It doesn’t make sense, and part of him looks to his mentor to tell him he’s wrong, and what he’s thinking is wrong, “In the 90’s would this have been…”

“No,” Dr. Bhardwaj shakes her head at him, “The only two procedures any of our doctors would have done in this hospital are the bone marrow transplant, and that last kidney transplant. Even then, it says in the chart there was a canceled direct donation, and that one would’ve been far too risky for the donor who was… it was your younger brother, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Daniel wraps his arms around himself, thinking of that last day with Buck. The doctors and nurses giving Buck sympathetic looks. “He was seven.”

“You would’ve been 14, that’s too much of an age difference for most doctors.” She sighs, “I assume that's why he’s ‘estranged’.”

“I reconnected with him recently, and I understand why he did what he did, but I just wanted to understand what was necessary.”

“I’m not sure of the statute of limitations where these operations were done, but…” Dr. Bhardwaj looks him in the eyes, setting down her coffee and going very serious, “Daniel, you should talk to a lawyer. You should get your brother to talk to a lawyer with you. If this was happening in our hospital today, someone would be getting fired.”

Daniel swallows, setting down the tablet and running his hands down his face. 

“You didn’t know,” Bhardwaj says softly, “you were just a kid. That doesn’t mean you can't get justice for what’s been done to you both.”

Justice, he knows, will never make up for what they’ve lost.

🔥🔥🔥

Maddie

Somehow Maddie managed to get a shift where every single call she’d had turned into someone wasting her time, or cursing her out. She’d sought refuge in the break room more than once. She’d met one of the older women who’d been working dispatch far longer than she had, and she’d gotten some decent advice. 

Still, she comes home to Daniel’s apartment feeling like shit. 

Daniel didn’t look much better. He was watching some reality TV show on Netflix that looked more like it was meant to turn off his brain than anything. 

Maddie dropped her bag and keys on the little table by the entryway and stepped around the corner into the kitchen. Daniel’s spice cabinet had teas tucked in behind everything else, so Maddie took her time finding something to heat up water with. His kettle was stuffed back behind most of his pans in the lower cabinets. She dragged it out, rinsed it, and filled it, waiting for it to be ready.

Once upon a time, Maddie used to do this for both her brothers. They’d spend time in the hospital, and then they’d all go home; Evan a little worse, Daniel a little better. Evan hated the tea their mother bought in bulk. She’d heard from another mother at the hospital that it was good for cancer patients, and she’d made sure it was all Daniel drank for months. Meanwhile Maddie had snuck hot cocoa into the grocery cart just so Evan wouldn’t throw a fit. She’d made it for both her brothers, and they’d spend a few hours curled up together in Daniel’s room.

Today they don’t have to suffer the ‘cancer tea’. Daniel has a nice selection. Maddie picks out a nice chocolate rooibos for them both. Once it’s ready she hands Daniel a warm mug before sitting down next to him on the couch. 

Her laptop is still on the coffee table from last night. She’s been poking at apartment listings, despite Daniel’s insistence that she could stay as long as she wanted.

“Been a while since we had Hot Drink Time.” Daniel teased.

“Well it looked like you needed it.” Maddie leaned her head on his shoulder. It was hard to believe she was only two years older than he was. Being a doctor was a good look on him, made him more mature. Today though, he looks small.

He twisted the mug in his hands before pausing the TV. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I thought we were talking about you,” Maddie deflects, pushing her knee into his.

“I don’t…” Daniel looks away, frowning at the wall of windows, “I’ve been looking into some things, and I’m not ready to talk about it yet.” 

They sit in silence for several minutes before Maddie caves, “I got called a ‘bitch’ on a call today. Three times.”

“What?” Daniel turns towards her, looking furious. 

“It happens,” Maddie shrugs, “Part of the job, but it just kept happening today. Josh came over and listened in on a few of my calls when I told him, and he said I was doing everything right. Something about a full moon, and how I should be glad I’m off tonight.”

Daniel snorted, shaking his head, “I mean, I get that. Wait, is it a full moon?”

It was almost funny how easily he was distracted, pulling out his phone to check the phases of the moon and swearing under his breath. 

“The full moon is not making people assholes,” Maddie deadpans, putting her hand over Daniel’s phone and pushing it away, “It’s just… It sucks not being there, y’know. I have to hear all about the emergency, but I rarely ever know what happens. And on top of that, today people were just, I don’t know, awful.”

“You know, there’s a thing they had us do when we were interns at my hospital,” Daniel says, “Maybe you can try it.”

“I worked at a hospital too, Daniel,” she gives him a look, “I know every nurse trick in the book.”

“Well, did you ever do a ride-a-long?” Daniel sets down his mug on the coffee table, and pulls out his phone. “I actually might have a recommendation on who you could request.”

“Please don’t say our brother, I don’t want to freak him out.” Maddie groans, running a hand down her face. Evan doesn’t know she’s here yet, and that's mostly because Daniel is the only one with his contact information, and Maddie is pretty sure that her messaging Evan would just make him shut them down further.

“I met a cop, a while back,” He says carefully, “I won’t go into detail, but her kid got hurt, and when the CPS agent arrived, instead of, like, throwing her badge around and making threats, she just let them do their job.”

Maddie looks at him. Maddie inherited a moderate distrust of cops after Evan had been taken away. Their mother coached them on all the right things to say to make sure they weren’t removed either. Then she’d eloped with Doug. At first things were fine, but he stoked that fear, to the point that even a friendly cop, offering her a way out, seemed like a threat.

“She also may be friends with Buck’s boss,” Daniel admits.

“Oh!” Maddie elbows him playfully, “You just want to orchestrate me and Buck meeting. That way we get it over with, don’t you?”

“Maddie!” Daniel squawks, “Stop! No!”

They’re laughing, and it feels a lot better than when she walked in, so she counts it as a win.

It takes a few days to set things up. Maddie talks to Sue about it. Turns out it’s a legitimate program with the dispatch center. When Maddie mentions the name she was given, Sue seems delighted. 

Standing in front of the police station, Maddie has to force her hands steady. The officer working the check in desk is already expecting her and hands over a visitors badge. She is directed back to a series of desks, and finds the woman she’s looking for soon after.

“Athena Grant?”

“The one and only,” She says, not looking up from the paperwork on her desk.

“Hi, I’m-” Maddie begins to say.

“Maddie Kendal, dispatcher here for your ride-a-long?”

“Yeah,” Maddie says, and hesitates for just a moment before confirming, “That’s me.” She decides there's no reason to go into specific detail. Especially right now, when it might get back to Buck.

“Not every day someone requests me,” Athena says, eying her, “Any specific reason?”

“Uh,” Maddie flounders a moment, “My brother had a good experience with you, which is saying something.”

Athena snorts, “Now I really am wondering who recommended me. Not every day someone I interact with calls it a good experience.” Maddie winces at the statement and Athena softens a bit, “Usually, by the time they call me, a Field Sergeant, something has gone wrong already. Or someone’s being especially obstinate. By the time I get there everyone’s already stressed out.”

“Ah,” Maddie nods, “Well, either way, I look forward to riding along with you.”

“Alright then, let’s get going.” Athena jerks her head away from the desk. 

They go through the building stopping at a certain area where Athena grabs a series of items, checking them out under her badge number. She doesn’t let Maddie handle them when she offers. “This is the kit we have to take with us on every ride. It goes in the trunk, we have to check it out every time we leave.”

“Is there any reason it can’t just stay in the cars?”

Athena snorts, “It’s got a lot of supplies in it, things they have to make sure stay in inventory. I have to account for everything that I use to make sure nothing goes missing,” Athena shakes her head, dropping it into the trunk. Then she circles the car, checking things over. “It’s part of budget transparency.”

Maddie waits for Athena to actually open a door before she follows, getting into the car with her. They’re on the road shortly, Athena explains that as a patrol Field Sergeant she is in more of a supervisory role. Her job mostly involves responding when someone requests a senior officer. Otherwise she’s free to respond to calls like anyone else.

“So, how long have you been working at the dispatch center?” Athena asks.

“Not long,” Maddie says, “I started the same day as the earthquake.”

“That must’ve been a rude awakening.” Athena snorts, “7.1 on your first day?”

“Well,” Maddie shrugs, “I think all the senior dispatchers were just relieved we could pitch in that day.”

Athena hums in agreement, looking over for just a second before refocusing on the road. A call comes in about a protest at a funeral, and Maddie frowns at the radio. Surely no one would actually protest a funeral. Especially not somewhere like LA.

“This is 727-L-30 responding,” Athena says. She taps a few times on the screen in the car and then turns on her lights and sirens.

“People don’t actually protest funerals here, do they?” Maddie asks.

“You seem surprised,” Athena huffs as they finally make it out of traffic and start moving with some urgency, “I take it you’re not from here?”

“Pennsylvania,” Maddie supplies.

“Just wait until LA Comic con, or Pride.” Athena shakes her head, “And these days people don’t even want cops at pride.”

“Well,” Maddie says but holds her tongue, because present company might not appreciate a mention of the historical impact of policing on gay communities.

“Oh I’ve heard it all from my ex-husband,” Athena snorts, “His boyfriend was all too happy to recommend some ‘light’ reading on the subject. I get the history, I just want to focus on building trust back up again.”

They’re pulling into a parking lot of a military cemetery, and Maddie feels that much worse about the situation unfolding. Athena offers her the choice to stay in the car while she deals with the situation, but Maddie wants to see the action, so she hops out of the car and follows Athena to the gate. They go through, latching it behind them.

Athena explains to a very distraught man that, unfortunately, people had the First Amendment right to protest anything they want, but it only extended to the sidewalk, and not onto cemetery grounds. 

Which meant the inevitable happens, and a protester on a motorized scooter is the first to lead the charge onto cemetery grounds. He shouts at them about his god given right to be wherever he wants to be before he clutches at his throat. He collapses off his seat and onto the ground, having trouble breathing or even speaking.

Maddie doesn’t notice which house responds right away. She stands back with Athena, with a handful of funeral goers now. She has to stifle a laugh when one of them mumbles, “Diarrhea of the mouth? It’s like the spirits of the cemetery heard him fucking around and wanted to be funny.”

Maddie herself doesn’t believe in ghosts, spirits, or curses. She heard a dispatcher once claim that if they say the ‘q-word’ on the dispatch floor the phones would never stop ringing. She’d rolled her eyes. Daniel believed in that sort of stuff though. He’d spent too many nights in hospitals, with strange things happening, for him to not believe in something.

She wonders if Buck believes in spirits and ghosts when she sees something out of the corner of her eye. Big block lettering on the back of a coat. “BUCKLEY”

Mesmerized, she steps towards it, only to be stopped halfway toward him by the short Asian man she’d met only once before.

“Hi there,” Howard says, “Athena said you’re doing a ride-a-long. How’re you liking this so far?”

“Oh, uh,” Maddie blinks, focusing on him. He’d just worked on the man who had collapsed, despite him requesting an ‘all white’ paramedic team. “It’s been good, I just wanted to see what things were like on this side of the calls, y’know?”

“Surprised you didn’t request a ride-a-long with me and my station, we get all the cool calls,” He smiles at her, and Maddie has to wonder if he’s flirting.

“I would’ve probably liked that,” Maddie says, glancing behind him again, the man she thought might be her brother was nowhere to be seen, but there was an older man looking their way.

“Chimney!” The fire captain calls over, “We’re about to head out.”

“Ah,” Howard says, looking a bit disappointed, “Well, if you’re ever near Station 118 you should stop by sometime, I’ll give you a tour.”

Maddie smiles at him, “I will,” She nods, even if she’s not sure she’d even be wanted there, “Maybe you can tell me why they call you Chimney?”

“Oh,” He smiles, “No, that’s a date night story, and I don’t want to presume, but if you really want to know.”

It hurts, but it doesn’t. She shrugs, “We’ll see, then.”

“You ready to head out?” Athena cuts in.

“Yeah,” Maddie nods. “Bye, Chimney.”

They walk to her patrol car, and Athena says, without any sort of segue, “Lunch?”

“You can eat after that?” Maddie looks at her with suspicion. 

“Please,” Athena shrugs, “It’s lunchtime, if I don’t eat now, I might not have the energy to keep up.”

Maddie just has to shake her head. It wasn’t too long ago that she’d be dealing with something similar in the ER, and sure she’d take off her gloves, give her hands a good scrub, and go to lunch like it was no big deal, but the hospital used industrial cleaners. Out here all they really had to rely on was the hand sanitizer Athena had in her patrol vehicle.

“Pennsylvania, huh?” Athena says when they’re on the road again.

“Yeah,” Maddie says, “I, uh, was an ER nurse before. Didn’t feel safe doing that out here after…”

“Work or personal?” Athena asks. 

“I left my husband. He’s a cardiothoracic surgeon. I can’t… I needed to know there wasn’t a chance he’d show up at my job.”

“So a bit of both,” Athena says softly, she pulls into a strip mall parking lot and stops in an available space. They get out and Athena locks up, “So Kendall’s your maiden name?”

“Married name, actually,” Maddie says, swallowing. She stops behind Athena at the door watching as her hand goes to her belt. “I’m originally Maddie Buckley.”

Athena gives her a long look. She’s about to say something at the door but stops herself. Athena tells her to stay outside. Maddie looks in and sees abandoned tables filled with food, and realizes something very bad happened here. 

Surely someone must have called 9-1-1 when they ran out of here. But then again… Maybe they couldn’t yet.

Athena comes out before she could think too hard about it and ushered her inside. All the way in the back was a man, a chef it looked like, collapsed on the floor. He’d been shot, a few feet away was a phone making the shrieking noise of a call that was disconnected.

They work fast, elevating his legs and making a temporary seal for his chest. The bullet is still in there. They don’t have to worry about his back. He regains consciousness long enough to tell them that he’d called 9-1-1 but the operator had hung up on him. 

After he gets loaded into an ambulance they stick around long enough to make sure someone gets posted outside the restaurant. A couple of patrol officers are already canvasing the area.

“We need to go to the dispatch center and check the call logs,” Maddie says, taking down the number of the restaurant.

Athena hums an agreement. 

They’re silent for the drive. The dispatch center wasn’t even very far from where the restaurant was. Athena follows her inside the building and up to the dispatch floor. Josh meets her by the elevators after she sends him a brief text saying she’s headed up.

“Hey, I thought you were on your ride-a-long today,” He leads Maddie and Athena over towards the offices. 

“I was,” Maddie says, “We just responded to something that wasn’t called in, or… the guy said he called 9-1-1, but the dispatcher hung up on him. He was bleeding out, Josh.”

“Calls get dropped all the time, are you sure he didn’t just have bad cell service?” Josh says quietly.

“It was from a land line,” Athena says over Maddie’s shoulder, “We got the number, you think Sue will let us listen in to the recording?”

Sue must have a sixth sense for people talking about her. She comes over quietly, and asks what the issue is. 

Josh still looks skeptical when they all pile into Sue’s office. Maddie gives her the number their victim called from. The call log has it, and they pull it up to listen.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” an all too familiar voice says on the recording. Maddie sees the look that goes between Josh and Sue. She has to stop herself from looking through the glass, directly at Gloria, who’s still taking calls.

The man’s accent is as thick as it was at the scene, but Maddie can understand clearly, “Help, a robber, he shot me.”

“What?” Gloria’s voice says, sounding annoyed, “What did you say?”

“Ma Xun restaurant on Wilshire,” The man says, “Please, need help, send help.”

“I don’t understand you,” Gloria says. “Speak louder or I’m hanging up.”

Maddie brings a hand to her mouth, because they’re not allowed to hang up like this. Even if Gloria hadn’t been able to clearly hear what this man was saying, there’s call tracing. She could have sent an officer or paramedics.

“Shot,” The man says, “Bleeding. Help.”

“Yelling at me won’t stop the bleeding, okay?” Gloria says. It’s clear she’s understood him, what she says next sends chills down Maddie’s spine, “I’m not the one who shot you.”

The man speaks in a language Maddie doesn’t understand, clearly very frustrated, defeated.

“Seriously?” Gloria goes on, “You’re going to another language now?” 

There’s a clear click, and the recording ends.

“I’m going to need a copy of this,” Athena says. Her phone buzzes, and she looks down. A small smile creeps over her face, gone in an instant, “Excuse me a minute, I have to take this.”

“Of course,” Sue nods, “I’ll have it emailed over to you.”

“What are you guys going to do?” Maddie asks. 

Josh looks at her, then to Sue. Sue shakes her head slightly. 

“We’re going to send you back out there with Athena,” Sue says, gesturing for Maddie to go.

“What? But I want to stay. What if she's doing this to other people?”

“Josh is going to be monitoring her calls until she takes a break,” Sue says. 

Josh nods along with her, already tapping on the tablet he has, “I’ll make sure she’s following procedure until she’s off the line.”

“We don’t want her to make a scene, but we’ll need to go through her log. That takes time.” Sue explains, “You’re new - newish. If you stay here when we pull her, she might start throwing accusations around, and I’d rather not have people get the wrong idea.”

Maddie shifts, looking through the window again, Gloria is on the phone now, speaking to someone. She’s smiling. Maddie feels furious. But she knows they can’t just remove her. Gloria’s been here for over a decade. As far as anyone knows, this is her first hang up.

“Go finish your ride-a-long, Maddie,” Sue says, “We’ll take it from here.”

Maddie wants to protest again. It feels like a dismissal. She wants to be here when they stop Gloria. She wants to see what happens, but she can’t. They’re right. It’s going to take time to get a case together on Gloria. She can’t be part of that.

She leaves the office, heading for the elevators. Athena is there, on the phone.  

“-Don’t know what to tell him, Bobby.” Athena is saying. She catches sight of Maddie then adds, “I’ve got to go.”

“Bobby?” Maddie asks, hoping for more friendly than anything else.

“My boyfriend,” She says simply, “Captain of the 118 firehouse.”

“Oh,” Maddie blinks. She knew it was possible that Athena might’ve known Buck. She hadn’t expected her to be so close to him, is all. She wondered if the woman knew about her. “That must be nice, dating someone who understands.”

“It is,” Athena says with a thin smile, “Ready to head back out there?”

“Yeah,” Maddie smiles right back. She grips the strap of her bag tightly as she follows Athena back out onto the streets.

🔥🔥🔥

Hen

Hen thought it might be weird to meet up with Michael after he and Athena divorced. Maybe that first time they’d all hung out without Athena it had been, but they were now, unofficially, the “Gay Parent Squad” of their friend group. Athena had been very clear that she didn’t care, and that she was happy Michael had people to talk to. 

Karen had just been happy that they had another queer parent to bitch about things with. The PTA at Denny’s school was as heteronormative as the disney channel shows Denny watched, which made it hard to actually have other queer parent friends. When Michael had reached out the first time after coming out, they’d been hesitant, but it all turned out fine.

 “You guys are so lucky you were out when you got Denny,” Michael says into his hands. “On top of the divorce questions, the questions about my sexuality have been way too much.”

“Believe me,” Karen says, “That doesn’t go away.”

“Athena isn’t even around to help clear things up when I have to deal with the PTA,” Michael groans.

Hen snorts into her half drunk coffee, “Yeah, she mentioned you got the PTA in the divorce.”

Karen laughs, shaking her head, “That was petty.”

“Eh,” Michael wavers his hand, “I deserved it, I did blow up our lives. Even Susan brings up that I had terrible timing. Insensitive bi-”

“Momma! Can we take Paisley over to the dog run?” Denny runs up to them, Harry in tow, “I bet she wants to run around too.”

“I don’t know, little man,” Hen says, “She’s not the best on the leash, and we’re still training her, you think you can keep her under control in there?”

“Yeah!” Denny nods enthusiastically, “It’ll be easy, all we have to do is get her into the run, then she can meet some other dogs.”

Hen and Karen exchange a look. They both know it won’t be that simple. Still, when the boys have permission, they walk over with her. 

“How does Denny like having a dog?” Michael asks. 

“It’s nice,” Hen says, eyes trained on the kids, “It’s been a much needed distraction, especially after everything with Eva.”

They almost get her into the dog run without incident. They’re opening the gate when a large dog comes sprinting out, its owner not far behind. The boys somehow drop Paisley’s leash in surprise, and the small dog goes sprinting off, leash dragging behind her. 

Hen’s sure that the others at the park are laughing at them. Hen and Karen sprinting after a dog with two boys chasing behind. The dog is fast for something so small. Hen would’ve thought that her short legs would’ve meant they’d gain on her, but she had a head start.

A man scoops up Paisley before she can get onto the street. Hen and Karen come to a stop in front of him. Karen’s panting a bit from the sprint. 

“She get loose?” The man asks, smiling at them. 

“Yeah,” Hen says, taking the dog’s leash. He offers over Paisley as soon as Hen has a solid grip, “We’re still training her.”

“Rescue?” The man asks.

“Kind of,” Karen says, finally catching her breath, “We got her in the earthquake.”

“Momma said she found her when she got trapped,” Denny says. She hadn’t noticed the two boys catching up. Harry is just behind Denny in the grass.

“Trapped?” The man’s eyes go wide, “During the earthquake?”

“Uh, yeah,” Hen says, she looks at the dog, her little Toto, then back up at the man, “I’m a firefighter, I went to that building collapse downtown, got trapped for a bit, that’s when she found me. Helped me find a way out.” She’s leaving out most of what she saw under the building, no one but her therapist needs to know about that. She runs a hand down Paisley’s back, “Her owner didn’t make it.”

“Oh,” the man frowns. He looks sympathetic, “I’m so sorry.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence before the man says, “My name’s Nate, um, Nathaniel Greene.”

Hen knows the name from somewhere. She’s not sure where, but she remembers hearing it more than once. She just can't remember from where. 

Karen finally stands up straighter, offering a hand, since hers are free, “I’m Karen, and this is my wife, Hen.”

“Hen?” The man smiles, “I’m guessing that’s a nickname.”

“Henrietta,” Hen says, “But my friends all call me Hen.”

“Well it’s nice to meet you both,” He smiles and turns to the boys, “You two have wonderful parents.”

Harry cracks up a bit, shaking his head.

“Why don’t you two head back to Michael, huh?” Hen says, handing off the leash, “And don’t let go this time.”

“I take it I got something wrong,” Nate says.

“Only one is ours,” Karen says, “We’re here with a family friend.”

Michael waves from the other side of the park when Karen points over to him. Their table still has everything laid out. Snacks and drinks scattered around with their bags and toys.

“I’m here with some of the kids I mentor,” Nate says, gesturing a little ways away to a group of kids that are practicing catch with baseball mitts.

“Baseball,” Karen hums appreciatively, “I was more of a softball woman, myself.”

“Yeah,” Nate says, “I started volunteering with a program that helps out struggling kids. Gets ‘em out of their homes. The kids are trying out for a team and wanted to get some more practice in.”

It sounds nice. It is nice. Hen shouldn’t think anything bad about him, but she just can’t place that name. Maybe he was a patient. Maybe she’d met him once before and they just forgot each other. It was important though, and she wanted to remember.

“Well it was nice meeting you,” Karen says, tugging on Hen’s arm.

“Yeah,” Hen adds, still caught on his name.

“See you guys around,” He says with a smile before rejoining his own little group.

Hen watches for a moment, frowning to herself. 

“What’re you thinking?” Karen asks, nudging her shoulder.

“I know him from somewhere,” Hen tells her. She takes her wife’s hand as they cross the park, back to where Denny and Harry are now sitting with Michael. The boys are eating lunch together, seemingly oblivious to Paisley. Michael’s got it though, he’s holding the leash.

“Maybe you met him on a call,” Karen asks, squeezing her hand.

“Maybe,” Hen huffs, “Usually when I mention being a firefighter, people bring up their stories of going in ambulances, though.”

“Maybe his time wasn’t a stranger story,” Karen pulls Hen a little closer as they get to the table. They let go of each other’s hands to sit on opposite sides.

Hen tries to focus on lunch with her family, and her friends, but she keeps looking back over at the man. Nathaniel Greene. He doesn’t seem to pay them any more attention. He’s supervising the kids he’s in charge of. They’re older than both Denny and Harry so there's not really a chance of interacting any more than they already have.

It’s not until she’s home, unpacking from their trip, when her eyes catch on a baby photo of Denny, that she realizes who he is.

“He’s Denny’s father,” Hen says to Karen in bed that night.

“What?” Karen drops her book in her lap, “Who?”

“That’s where I remembered the name from,” Hen says, “Eva.”

Fury flashes across Karen’s face, “Do you think…. No. No, I'm being paranoid.”

“What?”

“Do you think he knew that Denny was his son?” Karen asks, “Do you think that’s why he chose that park?”

Hen has to think about that. The meeting truly seemed random. It’s not like he orchestrated the dog running away, or the boys losing the leash. He hadn’t even been anywhere near them, “I don’t know.”

“‘Thena did say that Eva thought she still had something on us, you think she tracked him down and told him about Denny?”

“I could be wrong about him being the father,” Hen says. She’s sure she’s not though. She remembers Eva mentioning hanging out with a man. Nathaniel Greene must have been the Nate she’d spent time with. Hen had been too overwhelmed with her probationary year to notice Eva’s addiction, let alone pay attention to her friends. Eva hadn’t had the money for drugs back then. She’d admitted to sleeping with men for drugs. He could’ve been one of them.

“It’s too much of a coincidence though, isn’t it?” Karen asks. She marks her page and sets her book aside, “God damn it, just when I thought we were getting back to normal.”

Hen thumps her head against the headboard. Nothing is ever simple in this life, and somehow Eva keeps complicating things. 

🔥🔥🔥

Maddie

The elevator is quiet when Maddie takes it up to the dispatch floor. She hadn’t heard back from either Josh or Sue in regards to Gloria’s hang up. Maddie still felt outraged at the incident. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but she ignored it. She was running early for once and was ready to jump right into work. 

It’s front and center when she gets to the dispatch floor. Gloria, in the conference room, sobbing into her hands. There's a cop in with them.

“Hey,” Josh steps over to her, blocking her from the view of all the people in the room. Those who aren’t on calls are glancing nervously over at Gloria in the conference room. “Now’s not a good time, why don’t you go grab a coffee, maybe breakfast?”

“I already have- Are they reprimanding her for that hang up?” Maddie asks, peaking around Josh.

“Hang ups,” Josh corrects, softly, steering her away, “Plural. She’s getting fired.”

“Plural?” Maddie blinks, turning slightly towards the dispatch floor. The conference room is out of sight now, but she can still picture the distress on Gloria’s face. Maddie feels almost happy that she caught her. 

She shoves that down, though. Gloria is an outlier among dispatchers. 

“Hundreds,” Josh says, “Maybe thousands. Going back 8 months. I knew she went a little squirrelly after the divorce.”

“I thought her husband was dead,” Maddie frowns.

“She wishes,” Josh scoffs, “You know, she’s probably facing criminal charges.”

“Really?” Maddie asks.

“They’ll have to do a full review, but if anyone died because she hung up, she could go to prison. A dispatcher in Austin got 18 months for interfering with emergency calls.” Josh sighs, turning back towards the main dispatch area in thought.

There’s a commotion as Gloria storms through. She freezes as she rounds the corner, and points her finger, “You!”

“Gotta go,” Josh says. He takes several steps away from Maddie. So much for trying to keep her out of it. 

“It was you, wasn’t it!” Gloria points a finger at Maddie. 

“Gloria, enough,” Sue says from behind.

There’s no stopping the train wreck though. Gloria continues her rant, “I can see it in your eyes. You did this to me. I helped you! I was kind to you! I showed you where the good coffee was. Now they want to put me in jail because of something you said!”

“You hung up on people,” Maddie says, squaring up with the angry woman.

“Awful people.” Gloria says, “Awful people who just take and take and take! They yell and scream and cry and expect you to do something! They don’t even say thank you! They never ask about you!”

“That’s enough,” Sue tries to cut in. “Officer Blakely.”

Maddie didn’t notice the cop standing there before, but now she sees the woman, standing behind Sue, looking awkwardly between them. “Ma’am, you’re going to have to come with me.”

“What?” Gloria says, “No I- I have to get my things.”

“You’re making a scene,” the officer says, coming to stand between Maddie and Gloria, “Someone will bring your things down for you, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to escort you out.”

“I-I just need. My purse. My phone.”

Sue holds Maddie back as Gloria is escorted away. The cop tries to make sure she can’t spew any more hate at Maddie. She does anyway. She shouts about her outstanding dispatcher awards, and how she’s taken more calls than anyone. Sue squeezes Maddie’s arm at that. 

“This isn’t over Maddie!” Gloria says at the elevators, “Snitches get stitches.”

“That threat probably won’t help her case,” Josh mutters, reappearing at her side. 

“That was dramatic,” Maddie says.

“Most of her calls were under 45 seconds,” Sue sighs, turning to Maddie. Sue looks like she’s taking stock, they weren’t far from the main dispatch floor, so it’s entirely possible everyone who wasn’t on a call just heard that outburst. Even with the officer dragging Gloria out as quickly as possible.

So much for being early.

“You know,” Sue says, “I would understand if you needed the day after that outburst.”

Maddie shakes her head, “I came here to work, so that’s what I plan on doing. Gloria isn’t going to stop me.”

Sue smiles at her, “Alright then, and if anyone gives you trouble for what Gloria said, send them to me.”

Maddie nods. Walking around the corner, she’s met with a lot of looks. Senior dispatchers who are sizing her up. The group of dispatchers from her own class, the ones that are left, give her looks of sympathy.

Like it or not, Gloria was well respected around here. She’s accused Maddie of tanking her career, and until people know what actually happened, they’re going to make assumptions.

Maddie takes her seat at her usual station and gets to work.

The first call came in while Maddie was on the line. She was walking a woman through CPR so she missed it. On the other end, she could hear paramedics coming in, and the caller quickly hung up. Maddie glanced at her phone. She didn’t recognize the number.

The transcription from her phone shows some very angry words, and when she gets a chance to listen to it, it’s Gloria, choosing to berate her some more. It’s not long after Maddie gets the voicemail that she starts getting the texts. More calls roll in while she’s working and she flags down Josh to review some of the choice words coming in.

“Wow,” Josh says, looking at one of the more descriptive ways Gloria has detailed what she wants to do to Maddie, “And you’re not freaked out?”

Maddie almost laughs. In any other universe, she might’ve been, but this is the universe where Doug was still her husband. She’d already had to get a new number. Daniel had come home one night, and she’d been sitting on the floor, her smashed phone on the ground beside her. He’d pulled her into a hug and driven her to his cell provider to get a new phone.

Linda peers over Josh’s shoulder, “Didn’t this woman just get fired?”

“This has got to be harassment,” Josh hands Maddie back her phone, “Hold on, I’m going to call Sue over.”

“Oh, no- Josh,” Maddie tries to stop him, but he’s already off. 

She lets out a breath and turns back to her own work. Another call comes in.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” Maddie asks.

“Not going to be so easy to avoid me now,” Gloria says, “This call is being recorded.”

Maddie frowns, turning to signal Josh. He’s already on his way with help.

“You know, I think I might be having an emergency,” Gloria continues. Maddie can hear a soft noise in the background, it sounds like she’s in a car, which is going to make it difficult to trace the call.

“Ma’am, it’s a crime to misuse emergency services, I’m afraid I’m going to have to report this,” Maddie starts the process of collecting information for a fraudulent call.

“Well it’s not so hard to get you on the line,” Gloria says. Maddie’s surprised when she drops into a softer voice, calmer even, and says, “This is officer Donnelly, 513-Mary-12, responding to a 207, I’ve got an 11-58 and need to say off the airway, can you connect me to my dispatcher.”

“Who is officer Donnelly?” Maddie says, as she adds ‘impersonating an officer’ to the call notes.

“I just made her up,” Gloria laughs, “Because I know the system, Maddie. I am the system. At least I was, until you took that from me.”

“You are unbelievable,” Maddie says. Sue’s tapped into her line now, listening in. Josh is standing behind them both. Maddie can tell that those who aren’t on phones right now are watching as another situation unfolds involving her. Great.

“Your whole generation is unbelievable,” Gloria says, “Nothing but a bunch of lazy ingrates. You all have no clue what it’s like!”

Whatever Gloria would’ve said next is cut off by the sound of a crash. 

“Gloria?” Maddie sits a bit straighter. The trace she’d done is finally starting to catch up, not that she’s stationary. 

Gloria makes several pained noises, whatever happened, it sounds bad. 

Maddie calls her name another two times before Sue puts a hand on her shoulder, “If the airbags went off she might not be able to hear you.”

“Maddie?” She sounds like she’s whispering, “Are you still there? I think I was in an accident.”

“I’m here,” Maddie says, “Where are you?”

There’s a few thumping noises, and then Gloria says, “I can’t get out- I- I can’t. Oh. I can’t hear you. Why can’t I hear you. I- I hope you didn’t hang up.”

“I didn’t,” Maddie says, more to herself, now that Gloria’s rambling. 

“That’s definitely what I would’ve done,” Gloria gets out, followed by some hysterical laughter. 

“I have the general area,” Maddie says, “but no reports of a crash.” She switches over to air support and makes a request to try and get a visual for Gloria’s car. 

“I won’t blame you if you hung up,” Gloria says, still unaware that they’re trying to get help to her, “It’s what I would’ve done. I don’t know why.” A pause, then she amends, “That’s a lie. I know why.”

Maddie looks at Sue. Sue’s face is full of concern. Air support is circling the area looking for Gloria’s car, and Maddie’s getting a live feed. She’s trying hard to figure out where Gloria is. 

“Dead end calls,” Gloria says, “Have you had one of those yet? I’ve had dozens. They’re the ones where you can hear everything that’s happening on the other end of the line. The ones where you know there’s nothing you can do. Except sit there and listen to someone die.”

“Oh, Gloria,” Sue whispers. 

“That’s not what’s happening today,” Maddie says. She's not sure if she’s saying it to herself, or to Gloria, who still can’t hear her. 

Sue points to something on the screen, and Maddie sees it, the wreck. A bright red car pressed up against a series of cars with stripped paint, near a junk yard. She flags the location for the nearest units. 

“A few months ago, it happened to me. My husband served me with papers that morning, and I got a call from this girl. She was hiding under a desk because a client came in with a gun. I could hear the shots. One, then another. They kept getting closer. I knew what was coming, so I- I hung up.” Gloria lets out a choked noise, like she’s crying. “She wasn’t my problem anymore. After that nothing was my problem.”

“You’re going to be okay, Gloria,” Maddie says again. She can see the nearest ambulance is about to pull up. They’re exiting the highway now. 

“Since I’m making my peace, I should probably forgive you-” A honking noise sounds as Gloria speaks, it takes a few more before she seems to notice, “You- you didn’t hang up. You didn’t hang up, Maddie.”

She says it over and over again, and it’s not until the firefighters yell into the car that they’ve got her, that Sue closes out the call.

“Come on,” Sue says to Maddie.

“What?” Maddie looks up at her.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Sue smiles down at her, “But that was an intense call. Let’s take a break.”

It’s hard to trust this break, but Maddie goes. She knows Sue already gave her a warning about misusing dispatch resources, but certainly she hasn’t done anything wrong today. She got Gloria the help she needed. 

“I want to start off by saying you did everything right,” Sue tells her, “Between reporting the initial hang up, and this last call, from what I’ve seen you did everything right. I’m sorry you had to go through it, though. No one should have to hear anything that Gloria said to you.”

“I-” Maddie wants to say she’s heard worse, but she stops herself. She doesn’t want to get into it now. She doesn’t want to give Sue a reason to keep tabs on her. “I’m okay, really.”

“Still,” Sue gestures for her to sit before taking the seat next to her in front of the desk,  “I’m going to send you home for the day. It’s not a punishment,” She adds quickly, raising her hands to assure Maddie it’s not a bad thing, “If anyone else had a day like you have, I’d send them home too, but before you go, I’d like to get copies of what Gloria sent you, just to cover our bases.”

“Right,” Maddie nods, looking away, back through the window to the dispatch floor. No one’s looking her way anymore. It’s pretty apparent what happened on that call. “How does that happen? How does she get away with it for so long?”

Sue hums, tilting her head to the side while she decides what to say, “She got divorced, 8 months ago. We all thought she was handling it well. We’ve got councilors here, and ones we contract out to. You can speak to them about anything, but most people assume they’re just here for things related to the job.”

Maddie nods, she got the run down about councilors when she started. She knows that at some point she might need to speak to them. 

“Maybe things would’ve been different if she’d gone to them for her divorce, but she didn’t,” Sue reaches over and puts a hand on Maddie’s arm, “I’m not sending you to one today, I’m just sending you home to decompress. But I want to remind you they’re here for anything, and they’re never going to tell me what goes on in your sessions. Not unless there’s a chance it affects your work. If you don’t want to see a department councilor, our insurance also covers some really good therapists.”

“Thank you,” Maddie says. She knows she probably won’t be seeing anyone any time soon, despite the offer. She doesn’t want to spill her guts to a stranger. She knows exactly what they’ll all say. The ‘why didn’t you leave sooner’ will only hurt more from a therapist.

In her car, she doesn’t know what to do. She was planning on going home, back to Daniel’s place. She was planning on taking a long hot shower and curling up on his couch.  She wants to forget today. She wants to forget Gloria.

She puts an address in her GPS and drives.

It doesn’t take long to get to Station 118. She drives around the block 3 times before finally parking in their guest lot. It takes 10 minutes before she gets out of her car. The engines had just returned from a call. It was just past noon. She could hear that everyone was busy. There was a flurry of activity as she entered the station, looking around, a bit surprised by everything here.

It only hit her when she noticed all the unfamiliar faces, that Evan- Buck - might not even be on shift today. 

“Maddie?” A familiar voice said from her left. The ambulance had the side door open, and a man was sitting inside. A man she’d seen several times now, but only spoken to twice. At the coffee shop near Daniel’s apartment, and at that call where she’d seen Buck for the first time. Howard. 

“Hi,” She says, swallowing her fear, “Um, I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.”

“Well, I kind of work here,” He says softly, smiling as he hops out of the ambulance. He’s still got that pink scar on his forehead, it’s more noticeable now, with exertion, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for Evan, actually. Buckley?” 

His face falls, and Maddie is confused about what she’d said to get that reaction.

“Right,” He nods, looking away, “Okay, yeah, I get it. Let me take you to him.”

He doesn’t get a chance to take her anywhere. A voice calls down from above, so similar to Daniel’s but so different. Something off, maybe the accent of it. The gruffness of it. “Maddie?”

Maddie looks up. There's a lofted area with glass railings. Buck was standing beside one. He was so tall. 

“Hey, baby brother,” She manages to get out.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Howard mutters beside her. Maddie almost laughs at the absurdness of it.

“Maddie?” Another voice says, looking over the banister. An older man, almost as tall as Buck. Even from down here it’s hard to tell. 

The attention gets Buck moving, he comes down the stairs, walking over to her slowly. Like he can’t actually believe it’s her. She almost thinks he’s going to send her away, but he pulls her into a hug. An awkward one, since neither of them are used to each other anymore. It feels nice though. Maddie wonders if it feels like coming home to him too.

He pulls away abruptly, looking at her again, alarm flashing over his features, “Did… Did Daniel send you to talk to me?”

“No,” Maddie shakes her head, “He doesn’t even know I’m here, I didn’t tell him.”

Howard steps away, joining the older man who’d come down after Buck. He looked like he was ready to intervene. Howard asks him, “You knew about this?”

“Only a little,” The man says, wiggling his hand.

It’s not much, but it paints a picture. Buck hadn’t talked to many people about his family from before he was in foster care.

“Oh,” Buck says, turning slightly, looking a bit defensive.

“I was afraid Daniel would  talk me out of it,” Maddie says.

Buck scowls now, looking angry.

“No! No, nothing like that,” Maddie says, putting her hand on his arm, hoping he doesn’t pull away. He takes one step back but doesn’t break the contact. “I thought that, maybe if I told him I was coming here, he’d talk me out of it. He doesn’t want you to think he’s sent me here. He hasn’t. I’m not here to talk you into seeing him, or doing anything, I swear. I just… I needed to see you myself.”

He looks her in the eyes. Maddie hopes she’s making sense.

“I have missed you every day since you… I don’t know if ‘left’ is the right word, but I’ve missed you ever since you’ve been gone.” She lets go of his arm, stepping closer, “I understand it, I do.”

Buck nods, “I guess we, uh, we’ve got a lot to talk about, huh?”

“Yeah,” Maddie says. “It doesn’t, um, it doesn’t have to be today. I’m not going anywhere, not for now. You’re on shift, and I just- I dropped in out of nowhere.”

“You want to stick around for lunch?” Buck offers, “I just pulled everything out of the oven right before you got here.”

He cooks. Maddie looks over at the older man, and Howard, they’ve been joined by a Black woman who’s looking at them both curiously. 

“I’d like that,” Maddie says, “If it’s okay with your boss.”

Buck looks back at the older man, “You good with that, Cap?”

“We’ve got room at the table,” He nods, “You two come on up when you’re ready.”

Buck smiles fondly at the man, turning back to Maddie. Maddie watches the man - was it Bobby - drag the other two away, back up the stairs. 

There’s so much to talk about. So much they’ve missed. Maddie has no idea what to think. Her brother is standing here in front of her. A foot taller than her, looking healthy, almost happy. She spies another person in the bay. He hesitates for a moment before going up the stairs too. He’s only got eyes for Buck. Maddie returns her focus to her brother.

“Where do you want to start?”