a poison that never stung
Eddies joins the Texas 201 on a Tuesday. It’s a normal day in Texas - horrifically fucking hot for November, that is, humid and dusty with sand that Eddie knows from experience will be creasing his clothes for the next three years.
After the frankly disastrous start to his move to El Paso, Eddie conceded to his mother’s insistence that they cancel their weekend plans. So instead of taking Chris to the water park, instead of seeing his son and beginning to mend the broken bridges between them, Eddie spends his weekend alternating between running around the block surrounding his rental place, and scrolling mindlessly on his phone as he sprawls across the couch. He wants to call Buck - actually, he does call Buck, about three times, and they spend about eleven hours total on facetime across the weekend. But Eddie wants to call Buck all the time, and he doesn’t, because that’s ridiculous and Buck doesn’t need to put up with Eddie’s neediness. Not when this whole situation is his own fault.
Anyway. All that means that Eddie’s desperate to start work, desperate to have something to do with his time and his body and his hands that isn’t destructive. He shows up at the firehouse half an hour early, drives around the block for a quarter of an hour until he can pretend to show up at a normal time.
The firehouse is small - only room for one engine, one ambulance - and Eddie tries not to let it feel like a competition. Texas would lose any comparison, and he knows it, and he’s trying not to think about it.
He walks in, eyes struggling to adjust to the gloom, and immediately spots the captain of the house sitting at a dingy table in the corner. Eddie recognises the man from photographs in personnel files Bobby had shown him, and from the grainy zoom call they’d had in place of an actual job interview.
Captain Murray is older than Bobby, a portly man with beefy arms and a half-assed moustache that makes Eddie grateful he’s finally shaved his own. He’s playing solitaire with ripped and dirtied playing cards, and chugging a mouthful of zero alcohol beer with gusto despite it being 8am in the morning. From what Eddie’s seen of him, Murray is the kind of gruff that pushes him just to the line of being rude without forcing him to cross it. All he gives Eddie is a nod and a muffled ‘mornin’ before returning to his hand of cards.
Eddie supposes that’s all the introduction he’s going to get, and heads to the lockers to find somewhere to dump his bag. He’s got his own uniform still from the 118, protocol be damned, but he needs to find a spare turncoat, check his own gear, find a place to stash the book and the headphones and the snacks he’s been taking to work through sheer force of habit for the last six years. Buck was always an overpacker, always over prepared for a shift or a trip or a holiday. Eddie supposes some of those habits wore off on him.
“Oi!” An unfamiliar voice yells. “Diaz!”
Eddie feels his spine stiffen; the fact that he doesn’t salute is sheer force of will.
He turns slowly, still struggling to find his way in a garage with no overhead lights on. Two other men are striding towards him - the taller of whom has his shoulders hunched in a way Eddie knows full well signals aggression, signals a fight. “You better watch it,” the new arrival sneers at him.
“Is there a problem?” Eddie asks, toeing the line between politeness and snark. He hopes they don’t notice - normally, Buck’s the only person to notice Eddie’s passive aggressive sass.
The smaller man strides close enough that Eddie can make out a lean frame, blond hair and blue eyes that most people probably find charming. Eddie can’t stop the rather unkind thought that the man looks like a knock off version of Buck. “That’s not your locker,” he says plainly.
Eddie looks back at where he’d dropped his stuff on the floor. He quite deliberately hadn’t touched the lockers yet - had simply put down a bag so he could go find a turncoat. He’s always been anal about checking his gear, and he’s trying to shove down his anxiety at the fact that the person he trusts most with his life isn’t there to check it for him. Well, that and the fact that he isn’t there to check Buck’s gear - he’s not sure which is worse.
“Which one?” Eddie asks, an eyebrow half raised. He can’t decide if the preemptive warning is concerning or funny. He can’t decide if he wants these people to like him or just back the fuck off.
The taller man - built like a brick shithouse, light hair closely cropped and a scowl seemingly permanently etched into his face - gives a probably quite dangerous sneer. “All of ‘em.”
Eddie frowns. It wasn’t like he was expecting to make friends with his new colleagues, let alone have them be any kind of replacement for the family he’s lost…but he also didn’t expect it to go downhill this fast.
He flicks a glance towards Captain Murray - the older man is still sitting on a folding plastic chair, clutching his cards and watching them silently. Eddie gets the sinking feeling that this is some kind of test.
“Okay,” he agrees easily. He doesn’t want to get tied down in whatever game the 201 is playing. He just wants to show up, do his job, go home, and redeem himself in the eyes of his son. Hopefully, he can do that without collapsing under the lopsided weight of his role here, one half of a partnership swinging like a loose rock in a canyon, uncontrollable and misplaced.
“Where do y’all keep your gear?” The Texan accent slips out unprovoked, and Eddie’s as surprised by it as Brick Shithouse and fake-Buck evidently are.
“Is that a joke, California boy?” Brick Shithouse asks, and Eddie has to force himself not to sigh.
Brick Shithouse clearly wouldn’t know a joke if Eddie slapped him with it in the face like a wet fish.
Footsteps sound out behind Eddie; a foreign hand claps him on the shoulder so hard Eddie nearly flinches. “Nah, boys. Didja not know? Our boy ‘ere’s a true Texan, proper red blood an’ all.”
Eddie’s not quite sure the label fits. He knows it certainly didn’t as a kid, when he was too Mexican and too quiet and too…well, too Eddie for the ‘true texan kids’ in school to do anything other than give him relentless shit. Them and his father alike.
But whatever, he’ll take it. If him growing up here makes working with this new team any easier.
He turns to the newcomer - a handsome younger black man with chocolate dark curls that are nearly too long to be regulation, a sharp jawline, and depthless dark eyes. The man smiles, showing white teeth and a cheeky glint to his eyes. “Welcome home, Firefighter Diaz.” He holds out a hand for Eddie to shake; Eddie does so after barely a moment’s hesitation.
“Call me Eddie,” he replies. “Or Diaz, if this house is surname only, I suppose.”
The man smiles again, easy and welcoming. Eddie wonders distantly how many women tend to swoon under a smile like that - the thought makes him think of Buck, and Eddie doesn’t have time to wonder why.
“Perry,” the man replies. His hand is warm around Eddie’s, smoother than Eddie expected for a firefighter. “Jacob Perry, and you can call me by whichever name ya like.”
Eddie smiles back for the first time since he got here. “Pleasure to meet ya.”
Jacob turns back to his coworkers. “Jason Burns,” he adds, nodding to Brick Shithouse, “And Cameron Lowe.”
He turns back to Eddie, still grinning like everything he sees is a fantastic joke. “They’re a bit thick, but good at the heavy liftin’’,” he winks.
“Hey!” Cameron protests, but Burns is chuckling, somehow more entertained by Perry than offended.
“Only so you don’t have to strain that pretty face of yours, Perry,” Burns replies.
He walks past Eddie without another word - and Eddie counts it as a victory.
“Is that the whole team?” He asks Perry, picking up his bag and following as the other man tilts his head to beckon Eddie over. They walk to the far end of the lockers, where Perry unlocks his own locker and then the one beside it for Eddie.
“Nah, just the guys,” Perry replies.
Eddie raises an eyebrow. Somehow, he’d been expecting a firehouse in Texas to be a total boy’s club - he remembers Buck being furious back in 2020, when recent profiling revealed only 9% of firefighters are women, a mere 90,000 firefighters, of which about 72,400 are volunteers. Eddie had been half incensed, half fond as he listened to his best friend - and he remembered thinking it was another thing that had to make LA so different from his hometown.
“There’s women working here?” he asks, without stopping to think how that question sounds. Like he’s the misogynistic asshole everyone tries to avoid.
A snort comes from beside him, and Eddie immediately feels the flush of shame. Why can he never say the right words in the right way?
“Breaking news,” a woman drawls, sarcastic and bitter. “Local man discovers women have physical ability beyond childbearing.”
Eddie turns to see a woman nearly as tall as he is, long dark hair braided back into a swinging ponytail, her pointed chin tilted confrontationally in the air.
The woman beside her snickers, freckled face creasing into an uncontrollable grin as she looks at her friend. “You don’t want to even give the new guy a chance, Di?” she asks.
The first woman cocks her head, assessing Eddie. Eddie inhales, trying to think of something to say to defend himself - but it’s too late.
“No,” the first woman says. And then she walks off, just like that. And honestly….Eddie can’t help but think good for her. He wishes he had anything like that backbone and self respect, but he supposes being a female firefighter in this neck of the woods takes the kind of steel Eddie never had.
The second woman stares fondly at her coworker for a moment before turning back to Eddie. “Don’t mind her,” she says ruefully. “Diana doesn’t believe in first chances, but she does believe in second ones.”
Eddie purses his lips, sure there’s a response to that that does make sense… but whatever it is, it’s beyond him.
He holds out his hand instead. “Eddie Diaz,” he introduces himself. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. And I wasn’t-”
“Oh, I know,” the second woman laughs. She brushes her short blonde hair away from her face, revealing eyes of a bright blue - like Buck, Eddie thinks without warning. She looks a lot like Buck, albeit a lot less likely to stop random passersby in their tracks as she passes. “We get a lot of shitty guys around here, and I can tell already you’re not one of them. Besides, you’re from LA, right? You must be used to a lot more than just women. I’m Evie, by the way. Nice to meet you, really.” She’s talking a mile a minute, relaxed and easy in Eddie’s presence despite the mistake he made - and Eddie’s grateful for it, even as he finds it jarring.
He keeps thinking that Buck would find their dynamic funny. He keeps wanting to look over his shoulder to see what Buck’s thinking about this whole thing.
“Just Evie?” Eddie asks, instead of saying any of that.
From the far side of the room, the other woman - Diana - laughs. “Bridgette Evelyn Montgomery,” she answers for Evie.
Without meaning to, Eddie snorts in surprise. “What? That is not your name.”
Evie smiles, a lot more rueful than before. Her bob falls back into her eyes. “Passport and birth certificate say otherwise. Hence I go by Evie.”
Eddie nods. He knows from Buck that sometimes, most times, a chosen nickname means a lot more than a name given by people who never knew you when they picked it. He wants to tell Evie about Buck - tell her he understands, tell her she reminds him of his partner, tell her he’s all for nicknames…but he bites his tongue. These people aren’t his friends, at least not yet, and he should remember that. They don’t care about his life, and he shouldn’t risk giving them ammunition in case they want to give him shit.
“Nice to meet you,” he says, realising as he does that he’s repeating himself and now sounds like an absolute moron. “You and…”
He waits for Evie to fill in the blanks, which she does without hesitation. “Diana Elliot. My partner. We’ll be on the rig with Cameron and Burns - you’ll be with Perry on ambulance. You’re a paramedic, right? Where’d you train?”
“Army,” Eddie replies, knowing he only has a moment before Evie’s talking again, thinking out loud as she unpacks her stuff beside him. She talks the way Buck does, seemingly disconnected streams of thought moving too fast for anyone not used to it to keep up. Eddie’s always loved the way Buck thinks - it’s making him feel fond towards Evie already.
“Army? Cool. Well, not entirely cool given the whole massive trauma and ethical dilemma of the whole thing, but objectively also cool because of the experience it gives you. We’re glad to have you - Perry’s partner, Madison, having her gone was a bit of a nightmare to be honest.”
Perry nods in enthusiastic agreement. “Being without a partner fucking sucks, man.”
Eddie nods, trying to take it all in. Perry passes him a turncoat, and Eddie focuses on that, on checking the buttons and zips and lining before putting it, folded carefully, into his locker. “What…” he doesn’t know how to ask. Shit, what if she died and now he’s gone and put his foot in it again…
“She’s on maternity leave,” Perry replies. “Working harder than all of us combined, that is.” His tone is so fond, Eddie can’t help but relax. Madison is fine. Hell, Madison is a third woman working in this house, who seems to get nothing but love and respect from her colleagues.
Eddie feels something tight in his chest loosen, even if he knows it’s not something that really affects him. He really, really didn’t want to have to deal with close minded bigots right now. Not when Buck’s not actually there to stop him from getting too protective.
“Well, we’ll see how hard the newbie works,” Cameron calls from further down the garage. He sounds like he’s trying to be threatening, but he’s too green to pull it off.
Eddie snorts a little without meaning to. He’s pretty sure Diana does from across the room as well.
Perry chuckles, the sound warm and inviting. “Probie, don’t even try it. Diaz has a thousand times more experience, and he’s gonna fit in just fine.” The look he sends Eddie - the kind of fond exasperation that brings Eddie in on the joke, rather than putting him outside of it - makes something loosen in Eddie’s chest. He feels his cheeks grow warm at the attention; he focuses on his gear instead.
“We’ll see,” he mutters.
Burns slams his locker door shut, and the rest of the crew turns to look at him. Burns shakes his head - Eddie can’t tell if the glare he fixes on is directed at Eddie specifically, or just the room in general. “Well, one thing’s for sure,” he grunts. “This sure won’t be-”
“Don’t say it!” The entire house yells.
Eddie jolts, turning to Perry and Evie for an explanation. They only stare at Burns, eyes wide.
Burns grins, a truly evil expression overtaking his face. “Boring,” he says, and the entire house groans.
Eddie can’t stop his lips from twitching. Curses change from place to place, but it seems firefighter superstition never changes.
And right on cue, the bell rings.
Eddie springs into action. It’s time for him to prove himself to this new team - and he doesn’t believe in curses, but if this is going to be a mad shift, he’s sure as hell going to make the most of it.
So the bell rings, and rings, and rings, and Eddie runs from crisis to crisis, the worst moments of people’s lives blurred into a single long day in his.
Their 24 hour shift is almost busy enough to take his mind off everything that’s missing - his son waiting for him at home, his partner at his side.
Almost, but not quite.
***
Buck feels like he’s going insane.
All he does is work long shifts, go home and lie awake to the sound of music blasting through his headphones, and track disasters. That doesn’t exactly sound conducive to rational thought processes, does it - no, it sounds conducive to paranoia and anxiety and insanity.
And yet.
Buck’s pretty sure he’s found a fucking pattern.
Buck is one 48 hour shift away from a two day weekend when it starts - for once, that’s a Thursday. 6th December. Christmas is approaching and normally he and Eddie would celebrate having a regular weekend time by taking Chris to the park, or the museum, or…
Anyway. The air is cold enough that his breath mists in front of him as he leaves the fire truck for a high priority call - thirteen people are missing and countless others injured in a building collapse. It's a rough shift, Bobby too short on firefighters to try and keep Buck back from the carnage. They spend five hours combing the fractured tunnels left beneath what used to be building foundations, and Buck feels untethered in the chaos as he struggles to keep track of his new partner for the day, Aidan. None of the ever-rotating Eddie stand-ins give him quite the same security he’s used to, and Buck feels like he’s missing a limb as he struggles through the wreckage.
They save eight people in that emergency. Two people are black tagged upon their arrival at the scene, and another three are DOA.
Buck returns to the station feeling heavy, like cotton wool is stretched over his mouth and nose, like a weight is lodged in his chest. He checks the notebook, logs the call, turns on his music, and goes to sleep. He wants to forget that it ever happened.
But the next day, on the same 48 hour shift, another building collapse is announced as the sun rises. Buck shoves down the dread building in his chest, and runs for the fire truck. Another office building that hasn’t kept to code, and this time six people are inside.
Buck doesn’t think anything of it save for a faint relief that it’s slightly less disastrous than the day before - they save everyone, this time, and Buck tries not to let it feel like a do-over.
He showers again, failing to wash away the feeling of grittiness that clings to his skin whenever he can’t sleep. He tries not to look over his shoulder and panic when he finds no one there, nothing there but absence because his partner is gone gone gone. Buck goes back to his apartment without saying another word to his coworkers.
There, he collapses into bed, phone on silent, ignoring the texts from his sister and his friends. He doesn’t sleep so much as slip from dream to dream, all of them coloured by that strange lucidity of conscious thoughts that never quite switch off.
When Buck wakes on the weekend, the first thing he does is log the calls from the last shift in his notebook. Then breakfast, then tidying the whole apartment, then staring blankly at his phone as it buzzes with messages Buck doesn’t want to read, let alone respond to. It isn’t Eddie or Chris - they have separate ringtones - so Buck ignores it.
He checks the 9-1-1 call logs, and the B-shift radio.
There’s nothing out of the ordinary for the next five days. Buck works a shift he would’ve called the q-word if he were Eddie and too cynical to believe in curses, and then he listens to more loud music because he’s really doing a terrible job not thinking about his best friend being so far away (1,290.1 km away by car, 1,128 km away as the crow flies and a whole 1 hour away in time).
(Fun fact: if you travel fast enough, you can theoretically experience time differently, slowing aging and returning to earth years in the past of everyone you left behind. Extra fun fact: Buck is somehow managing to experience that exact sensation all while standing still, because his whole world has moved on without him.)
Buck starts another 48 hour shift midday on the next Wednesday, the twelfth of December. It’s a normal shift at first - a few cats, a few fallen trees, a non-fatal hit and run and a small scale electrical fire. They're too busy for Buck to stop and log the calls, and almost (but not quite, never quite) busy enough for him to stop his mind from thinking about all the things Eddie would have done better and all the jokes his best friend would have made.
Then they get a five alarm fire, and it’s awful, with the casualties hitting the tens and then the fifties, and every single rescue feels like sand slipping through their fingers. Buck moves like a ghost, not tangible enough to save the screaming people just metres away, blocked by smoke he can’t smell and fire that doesn’t burn him, never him, only everybody else. Buck’s partner - Jonathan, he’s pretty sure, although it’s getting hard to remember - keeps misunderstanding Buck’s hand signals. Buck has to take off his mask to talk to him, and his mouth tastes like ash and blood for hours and hours afterwards.
When it’s finally over they’re all so shattered Bobby sends them home. And Buck…Buck should sleep. He tries, but all he can do is lie on his hard mattress in his cold apartment that feels more like four walls than a place to live, and his mouth tastes like ash and his skin is covered in grime even though he’s showered three times since the fire.
He needs someone to tell him he’s being stupid. He needs someone to look at him, into him, not through him so he knows he’s not some phantom, haunting a building he hasn’t stepped foot in decades.
Buck gets up, and he logs in to Maddie’s call logs, and he turns up the radio tuned to the B-shift’s channel. He colours in tiny squares until his wrist aches, until the sun comes up outside the curtains he never bothered to shut.
That morning- it’s a Thursday now, he’s pretty sure - there's another building collapse, and Buck thinks, that’s weird.
It feels like this keeps happening - but then again, he wouldn’t have known about this if he was only paying attention to his own shifts. Maybe the rate of disaster has always been this high in LA, and he just never noticed before.
Besides, no one dies, so he counts the victory and tries to move on (something he’s never been very good at, but practice makes progress and all that shit Eddie used to say after therapy sessions with Frank.)
Thanks to being sent home early with the rest of the A-shift, Buck doesn’t have another shift for another two days. Apparently there are ‘ethical codes’ and ‘OSHA violations’ that Bobby needs to think about. (Fun fact: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was founded on 28th April 1971, and it’s been making it harder for people to work themselves to death ever since.)
So Buck logs more calls in his notebook, counts the colours, and cleans his apartment again. He spends nearly an hour rearranging his couch in different places around his living room, incapable of making it fit with his apartment. He checks the time after giving up on the sofa at last: 4:00pm. He goes for a run, and he listens to a true crime podcast, and he thinks about his notebook. Maybe there’s a place online he can publish the statistics he’s found. Maybe, at the very least, he can make his boredom useful. Maybe Buck can be useful.
His shifts keep on blurring together. Time bleeds like tar underneath his work boots, like mud in the muggy Hershey summer, like the billow of blood when it hits a body of water. Christmas is coming, and Maddie keeps trying to drag him into event planning.
Normally Buck loves that sort of thing …But he doesn’t remember the last time he celebrated without Chris, without Eddie, and it’s making it fucking impossible for him to do something as simple as Christmas shopping without wanting to cry. He can’t do that in front of Maddie, so he doesn’t do it at all.
By his shift on the twentieth December, Buck has started arriving at the station twenty minutes early.
“You’re…early,” Bobby stated the first time, bewildered. Ok, so maybe Buck isn’t known for his punctuality. Normally, he has errands to run before work - dropping off Chris or getting coffee and donuts for him and Eddie or…
“Yup,” Buck replied at the time, and went to dump his stuff in his locker.
Now, Bobby just nods in silent acknowledgement - either that, or Buck beats even his captain to the firehouse.
That day, his shift is eerily…not busy. It makes Buck feel like he’s climbing the walls; he listens to ten episodes of true crime, texts Eddie a maximum of ten messages across two different apps (he maybe has a table counting the total messages he can send per day without being weird, and he’s maybe starting to go over the limit) and finally forces himself to participate in a house game of cards.
He can’t win without Eddie as his partner - he doesn’t know how to play 500 without someone he can communicate with silently, using nothing more than a few glances. And he can’t bear the way everyone else glances at him, like he’s pitiable, like he’s sad. Buck’s not sad. He’s fine.
When the alarm goes off, Buck feels a sick, selfish sense of relief.
That is, until they arrive. “What is it, Cap?” Hen askes brusquely as she jumps down from the ambulance with Chimney.
“Building collapsed,” Bobby says, and it feels like deja vu.
Maybe Buck’s just living the same day, over and over again. Maybe he’s in a time loop. Maybe he’ll never get to move forward, and that means maybe he’ll never get to see..
“Um, are you… Uh, really, Cap? Again?” Buck stutters.
“Yeah, I suppose we have had a few lately,” Bobby muses, but he’s too distracted by the building before them to think much on it.
The apartment complex has collapsed from the corner of the ground floor, sticky plaster mingling with bricks in a pathetic heap across half the street. The upper three floors appear mostly intact, but they’re bent and buckled and look like they’ll give way in the slight breeze blowing in from the east.
“What’s the damage?” Chimney asks.
Bobby looks the scene over, eyes focused and calm. “Damage is mostly over on the west side - they think a structural pillar gave way. Six victims inside, also last seen on the West side…”
Bobby’s still talking, but Buck has stopped listening. He has to be imagining things, right?
“Hey Bobby?” he asks, but no one is paying attention to him. They’re all gearing up, grabbing ropes, doing their job.
Buck needs to join them, but he also needs to be sure he isn’t going fucking mental. “Hey, Cap!”
Bobby turns to him. “Buck, you good?”
Buck nods, knowing his next question isn’t going to make him particularly convincing. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, Cap. Just a quick question…”
Bobby frowns at him, impatience lurking behind his eyes. Hen walks over, torn between confusion and concern.
“What’s the delay?” she asks.
Buck shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Just - what day is it today, Cap?”
Bobby frowns deeper, clearly thrown.
Hen snorts impatiently. “You hit your head, or something, Buckaroo?”
Buck shakes his head. “Just…answer the question.”
Hen thinks for a moment; shift work makes the days blur together like nothing else. “Thursday, twentieth December.” Hen’s expression shifts to teasing, her eyes alight as she confidently states, “You forgot some Christmas shopping, didn’t you?”
“Worry about that another time, Buck,” Bobby chides gently.
Buck nods, shoving down the sinking feeling in his chest. That, at least, he’s practiced enough to make progress in. “Yeah, yeah, of course,” he mutters.
There’s a hot press of shame in his cheeks, the back of his neck. He needs to focus, needs to silence the humming under his skin. “Sorry, Cap.” He forces himself back on task - he’s got people to save.
Buck listens to Bobby’s orders, and it’s like hearing from underwater; there’s a deafening buzzing in his skull. He runs into the rubble, refusing to let himself look over his shoulder because he knows Eddie isn’t there. He shoves down his frustration when the day’s partner, Robbie, isn’t where Buck needs him without Buck having to ask. And he follows orders, and he’s barely even reckless as they carry out two unconscious but stable victims, and help three others run from the collapse.
Five survivors.
One code before transport.
Buck tries not to let that feel like it’s his fault.
In the truck on the way back to the station, Buck clears his throat. “Um…Cap?”
“Yeah, Buck?”
Is Bobby’s tone shorter than usual, or is Buck imagining things? Is Cap angry? Is it Buck’s fault? Maybe it’s Buck’s fault that someone is dead.
“Um…do you think it’s weird? That there have been so many collapses recently?”
Bobby heaves a sigh, his eyes going distant, and Buck feels a pang of guilt for asking. He knows Bobby has suffered enough over ignored building codes; it isn't fair to him to bring it up.
But Buck has to be sure.
“I don’t know, Buck. It’s certainly a cause for concern. I might mention it in my report - we need to do something about all these code violations.”
“But Cap…” Buck trails off. How did one phrase this without sounding…insane?
“Cap, did you notice the dates of all of these calls?”
“What is this?” Hen cut in. “A puzzle game?”
In his head, Buck can hear what Eddie would say. Hell, Eddie’s voice is so vivid Buck can let himself believe it’s real - so long as he doesn’t look towards Eddie’s seat in the truck.
Another curse?
Buck would shrug, petulant. Maybe.
And Eddie would grin, his eyes lit up with teasing humour - Is the universe ‘saying something’ only you can hear? Buck can see his fingers bent in air quotes.
Buck would insist, I don’t believe in coincidences.
Bobby clears his throat, and Buck looks up, startled. “Spit it out, Buck,” Bobby says, not unkindly.
“It’s always a Thursday,” Buck points out. “All of these building collapses - they happen every Thursday.”
“Hang on,” Hen protests. “There wasn’t one last Thursday, was there?”
“We weren’t even on last week,” Chimney agrees. “We got sent home.”
Buck feels his face flush. Here comes the insanity. “The B-shift had one. Last week.”
“And they… told you about it?” Hen asks, an eyebrow raised.
“Uh…” Buck hesitates. He doesn’t want to lie, but maybe he can…
“Why would they mention one specific call? Especially when we were supposed to be having time off from that five-alarm?” Chimney adds, eyes intent.
Buck sighs - he knows what Hen and Chim are like. There's no way they’re going to buy a lie, or a bent truth.
“I checked the radio,” Buck admits. “Last week. I was, uh…I was…bored.”
Silence fills the truck. “You were bored,” Hen repeats, disbelief written across her face. “So bored that you checked the radio for a shift you weren’t working?”
“That’s not important,” Buck says hastily. “What is important is that there’s a pattern!”
“I don’t know, Buck,” Bobby sighs. “It's weird, but coincidences happen. Plus, what else could this be but a series of accidents? Days of the week have no correlations to calls. No one deliberately makes buildings collapse. What would this pattern even prove?”
Buck falls silent. That’s the question.
He knows there’s a pattern, he knows it. He just needs to know what that pattern means…
It’s a question he intends to find out the answer to, whether his team believes him or not.