Chapter Text
act i
Flames lick around the edges of the skyline, brushstrokes of orange and gold against the warm bright black of the LA night. It's not cold. It's never cold, here. Never cold enough to need a bonfire. But there's something to be said about the way it gives the night some ambiance. Over the sound of the screams and the sirens, the fire's a beautiful backdrop.
You've always loved the fire. The way the light dances, the way the smoke hangs acrid and sour in the back of your throat. You love the heat. You love the panic. You love the sound it makes.
You've always been a pyro, haven't you?
Athena calls him on a Tuesday.
He's got the day off, which he's spending disinfecting his kitchen in a state of near-mania. It's been eight weeks since the lab and everything still feels like it's fallen apart. Buck hasn't really felt right since November.
He holds his phone with a little trepidation, and then he picks up. "Hey Athena—I mean—hello—hi, Sergeant Grant-Nash—um," he fumbles.
"Hello yourself, Buck," she says, her voice dry as ever. "And it's not Sergeant Anything, anymore."
"Oh," he says. "Did you—what happened?"
"A little career pivot. It's a long story. I've moved to LAFD Central Bureau," she says.
He pulls his phone away from his head and stares at it for a moment before shoving it back up against his ear. "You're kidding," he says.
"Arson investigation unit. They headhunted me. But that's neither here nor there." She clears her throat and he pictures her sitting in a high-backed leather chair downtown, a corner office, windows peering out at the comings and goings of Los Angeles below. "I'm calling because I saw your name on the transfer request spreadsheet."
Shit, shit, shit. He should've pulled it. He should've pulled it weeks ago, but the earthquake, and the building collapse, and he forgot, and he didn't actually forget, he didn't want to but Chimney wanted him to but he wanted to but he couldn't bring himself to. "I'm sorry, Athena," he says, mouth moving before his brain can catch up. "I can pull it, I'll go ahead and pull it right now, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—I didn't want to disrespect Bobby's legacy or anything I just thought maybe things would be different at a different station and I've been having a hard time but I'll do better I can do better I'll—"
"Buck," she cuts in. "I don't care about all that. I'm trying to put together a team. I have a spot, and I want you to fill it. You're the best damn firefighter I know, and I know a lot of them. So I'm asking you: are you interested?"
"Yeah," he says, surprising himself; but then, as he thinks about it a little more, it's not really a surprise. He needs to do something new. He needs to stop choking on the thick cloud that surrounds him every time he turns around at the 118. "Yeah, Athena, I'd love to."
"Good," she says. She tells him when and where to report. She says she'll talk to Chimney. And then she hangs up, and Buck's life changes forever.
Chimney's surprisingly blase about this turn of events. "Some time away'll probably be good for you," he says over FaceTime, his voice tinged with exhaustion. He doesn't mention the grand speech he gave. "And Athena will take good care of you."
"Yeah," Buck says. "Thanks."
He heads down to Central Bureau the next Monday. The gig's a nine-to-five. He's never had one of those, which makes him nervous. So many lives he's lived, so many people he's tried to be, but this has never been one of them. But when he gets out of his Jeep and ambles through the parking garage Athena is there waiting for him, and all the nerves wash away just like that.
"Athena," he says. It's the first time he's seen her since the baby was born. "What's the buzz?"
She rolls her eyes but smiles at him like she's letting him get away with something, the way she always has when he's not pissing her off. He hugs her long and fiercely and she hugs him back, stiff at first and then folding into a gentle, grateful thing.
She's inherited a team that fell apart a while ago, she tells him, as they walk through the lobby. "The team originally had five, and two years ago someone transferred out, and last year someone retired, and they never managed to hire more than a temp to replace either of them. And then a few months ago the head of the unit retired, too, and apparently the other senior member is getting ready to retire at the end of the year, so the unit's in crisis and they didn't have anyone with enough management experience within the department to lead it."
"And that's where you came in," Buck says, jogging to keep up as she marches toward the elevators.
"That's where I came in, yes," she says. "Apparently they liked what I did with the sniper situation, and then—well. After Bobby, I was willing to try a new normal, I guess."
Buck understands. He understands a little too well. "So it's me, and the retiring guy," he says.
"And someone else who's been here for a few years. And—maybe I shouldn't have just sprung this one on you," she says, and Buck pulls himself to a halt, because standing at the bank of elevators, leaning casually against the wall, travel mug of coffee in one hand, phone in the other, looking as devastatingly handsome as always, is Tommy.
"Oh," Buck says.
"Oh," Tommy says, looking up and locking eyes with him.
"He's on loan," Athena remarks. "While he's grounded. Until I can find someone to replace the rest of the team."
Tommy nods. He looks, Buck thinks, a little bit scared.
He likes the workspace, a lot, and he likes his new teammates well enough. He meets the old guard: Jim Wagner, the one retiring, a cheerful older guy whose desk is covered in loose papers and books and muffin wrappers and coffee cups and pictures of his daughter, Sarah; and Arne, who has a nigh-unpronounceable Russian last name and a severe countenance and who keeps his monitor pointed at the wall. He doesn't have a single piece of personality on his desk.
Their official designations are this: Buck is in charge of records and documentation. Arne does evidence collection. Tommy is volunteered for mapping and technology. Buck isn't quite sure what Jim's whole deal is.
Arne's a piece of work, always glowering at something or huffing at being interrupted, but Jim Wagner truly embodies the spirit of "pleasure to have in the office". Not a single day has passed this week where Jim hasn't brought a box of donuts or crullers in. And Buck always loved working with Athena in the field; this is no different. She looks right at home in her little office. It's different than what Buck pictured, but it suits her.
It's Tommy who's the wild card.
They spend most of the first couple of days awkwardly dancing around each other, until Buck nearly walks into Tommy on his way back from the bathroom and they both have to face the music.
"You look like you're having fun," Buck says, nodding at Tommy's three giant monitors. "With the, uh, the GIS stuff."
Tommy shrugs. "Yeah, I like playing around with it," he says. "I found a toggle for a flight tracker layer."
"I wanted to say sorry," Buck says, words falling out in a rush before he can take them back. "Since you're here because of—us. Me."
Tommy stares at him, then shrugs again. "It was my choice, really. I didn't have to answer the phone."
"No, you didn't," Buck says, but he's glad Tommy did anyways, even if—even if. "How long are you grounded for?"
"My license was suspended for six months," Tommy says, and Buck cringes. "I figured desk duty might be more restful than ground crew. And I'm sure the brass want to keep an eye on me."
"I'm sorry," Buck repeats. "I wish I could've done something."
Tommy's stare turns incredulous. "I invited you to the disciplinary hearing," he says. "I asked everyone at the 118. None of you showed. None of you even answered."
That—that can't be true. There's no way. Buck digs his phone out of his pocket and finds his text thread with Tommy. Sure enough:
Tommy: Just checking in, how are you doing?
Tommy: Hey, Evan, just wanted to see if you need anything. I can always swing by if you do.
Tommy: Wanted to reach out and see how you were doing
Tommy: Hey, I know everything's kind of a mess right now, but I have to go up in front of the LAFD command for the lab incident. I'll have a union rep but they said I can invite people to help plead my case. It's the Tuesday after next, if you're available.
Tommy: Hey Evan sorry I haven't reached out this week I just wanted to ask if you got my last text? Union rep asked if anyone's going to come act as a witness
Tommy: Hey, you doing okay?
Tommy: Just checking in
"Oh," Buck says. The worst part is that he'd clearly read them all at the time and then, for some reason, ignored them. He knows he has read receipts on. He looks back up at Tommy, face flushing with shame. "We had a lot going on."
"I know that," Tommy says. "I did, too."
"God, Tommy, I'm—I'm really sorry. I should've—"
"Evan," Tommy interrupts, a devastating smile on his face. "It's fine. You're forgiven. Let's solve some arson, okay?"
"Okay," Buck says. He watches Tommy's back as he walks away.
"Buck," Athena calls when he gets back to his desk, and he does an about-face and meets her in her office. He wonders if she caught all that, but instead she pushes something forward on her desk.
He looks down.
It's a handgun.
"Uh," he says.
"This is yours," she tells him.
"Uh, no it's not," he says.
She raises one crisp eyebrow. "The arson division is required to carry service weapons in the field," she says. "You'll be provided training, of course. And you'll need to get signed off before you can use it. So yes, this is yours."
He reaches down and very gingerly picks the gun up. It's heavier than he expected. He's held guns before. Shot them, even, when he was working on the ranch and they sent everyone who did fenceline checks out with a twelve gauge. It was only for a couple coyotes who strayed too close and had to get scared off, but still. The buckshot hit the dirt and sprayed up and the coyotes jumped and fled and Buck had felt the thread between life and death tugging ever so gently through his fingers.
This gun, though. He's never had to contemplate aiming one at a person before. It's warming up in his hand. The grip feels secure. He thumbs the safety, then checks to see whether it's loaded—it's not.
"I can take you down to the range," Tommy says from the doorway. Buck catches him leaning against it out of the corner of his eye. Tommy's always leaning. It makes him look so stiff whenever he does stand upright. "Show you around a little, get you started on your training hours."
"You probably need training hours, too," Buck says, still staring at the gun in his hand. Athena's turned back to her laptop, pecking away at the keys.
"Nope," Tommy says.
Buck looks up at him. "Why not?"
"I was in the Army, Evan," Tommy reminds him.
"Oh, right."
"And I have my concealed carry permit already."
"Oh," Buck says. "What? I didn't know that."
Tommy just laughs. "There's a lot we don't know about each other," he says. "C'mon, it's not like there's anything going on up here."
"I'll call you if I need you," Athena says from her desk. If Buck didn't know better, he'd think she looks a little self-satisfied.
And so Buck finds himself checking in at the municipal employee firing range, with a weight he's not used to settling on his hip and a liability waiver half a mile long on a clipboard in front of him. There's a lot of things he's not allowed to sue for. The woman registering him explains how the range works and then sends him off to where Tommy's standing at a booth checking his gun.
"Wait, yours is different," Buck says.
"Yours is department-issued," Tommy says. "Mine's a Beretta."
"Oh." Buck puts it on the counter and holds up the box of ammo that the front desk gave him. "So now I… load it?"
Tommy gives him a look. "Do you need me to teach you how to shoot it, too?"
"I've shot a gun before," Buck says, throwing him an eye roll. He earns an eye roll right back for that. "In Montana."
"Was that when you were playing cowboy?" Tommy asks. He's still methodically checking his gun. Buck has to wonder if it ever sees enough action to even get dirty.
"I was being paid to be a cowboy, actually," he says. "Anyway, we did target practice a few times. There were cans involved."
"Were you drinking them or shooting them?"
It was a little of both. There wasn't much else to do up there, him and Carter and Kenny, the three summer hands that had washed up from out of state because the job seemed fun. Most of the gig was checking the fences, restringing the poles, making sure the calves weren't getting stuck in the barbed wire. Every now and then they'd get some tourists who wanted a tour and they'd saddle up an extra couple of horses. The tourists always wanted to see the real west. They didn't want to slog through the bogs up in the alpine or swat the mosquitoes or smell the cow pies or Buck's five-day-old shirts. They wanted bears, and sweeping vistas, and maybe a moose or two. The sweeping vistas he could do, but the tourists always left feeling underwhelmed. So did Buck, by the end of his summer there.
Buck raises his gun and stares at the paper target at the other end of the range, and he squeezes the trigger, and he doesn't even tear a hole in the paper.
"Huh," he says. Maybe the gun kicked. He aims again.
The paper flickers a little, like a breeze caught it or something.
Tommy must take pity on him, because he steps closer—too close—and takes Buck's right hand into his own. He lifts it, holds it out straight, positions his hip along the curve of Buck's ass. His face is close enough that Buck can feel Tommy's breath on his jaw, can feel his left eye fluttering closed.
Tommy aims the gun and fires off the clip and Buck stares at the cluster of head shots.
"Not bad," Tommy says, disentangling from him with a wink. "You're a natural."
It's not sexy, Buck desperately thinks. And if he has to keep turning himself to the side for the rest of their hour so that Tommy doesn't see what it's definitely not doing to him—well, that's his own problem.
He takes his time with the next few rounds. Lines up the shot, supports his arm, breathes while he sights; all the little pointers Tommy gives him, he tries. The gun kicks and pulls his hand a little, up and to the right, and he very nearly figures out how to compensate for that before they run out of time. Meanwhile Tommy starts playing a game where he calls out where on the paper target he's going to nail it and then nine times out of ten does so.
"Nice work, boys," Denise at the front desk says as they're checking out. "I've only ever seen one other person at the LAFD manage to shoot like that."
She points behind her at a target hanging front and center, a single hole right through center mass.
"That's five rounds," she says.
Tommy whistles appreciatively. Buck sighs dejectedly. "You'll get there someday," Tommy says.
"Probably not," Buck says.
"Yeah, you're right," Tommy says.
Buck's missed that teasing lilt. "Hey, who's the firefighter who shot that?" he asks, pulling his hoodie back on. The way the holster sits on his waistband throws him off as he pulls his hem down.
"Someone in admin, if you can believe it," Denise says. "If he ever worked out of a house, it was before your time."
Buck squints up at the name on the target sheet, but it's too far away, printed too small, for him to read. It doesn't matter, anyway; Tommy's nudging his shoulder, heading out for the street, and Buck jogs to follow after him, still a little aroused.
It rains Thursday night and it keeps raining into Friday. Unnatural, unusual, and it's all anyone can talk about on their way into the office and on their way to the scene they get called to. Structure fire; it had gone up overnight and then smoldered for a while this morning. The five of them stand together in this burnt-out husk of a former garage turned meth lab, respirators on because it stinks like crazy, all sorts of toxic sludge floating around just waiting to get breathed.
"Alright," Athena says. Buck wonders if she's nervous. It's her first scene in this gig, too. "Let's spread out."
Junk, smashed bottles, burnt-up remnants of buckets of rags. Pots and pans and containers. A can that was probably once an ashtray. A melted gram scale, an even more melted microgram scale. Some residue that would probably get him high if he touched it. On the other side of the building Arne is taking pictures of the way the east wall is starting to cave in. Jim's near the door, squatting to stare at the hinges. Nobody was here when the fire broke out, but the firehouse that responded didn't know that, and they smashed the door in with the battering ram when they got here just in case.
It doesn't take long for Buck to notice something. He follows a line out of the building and away from the crumbling wall. It's straighter than it should be, this line of scorch marks. Athena joins him to crouch down next to it.
"Accelerant," he says, putting on a pair of gloves and giving the charred ground a poke.
"Diesel," Tommy says from behind him. Buck looks up. "Would have to be, to catch in this weather."
"Huh," Athena says. Buck lifts his fingers to his nose, shifts his mask aside so he can sniff them.
"Doesn't seem like it needed much help once it got going, though," Tommy says.
"No, I don't think it did," Athena says. "And I think whoever dropped the match knew that would be the case."
Arne comes over to snap some photos, and Athena starts dictating notes into her phone, and Buck steps back from the action to look at the scene like a forest instead of a group of trees. Why would someone burn this garage down? Getting rid of evidence is the likely and obvious answer, but from the way the whole place stinks he can tell there was still a lot of meth in there when it went up. If it really was a line of diesel out the back door, then there has to be a reason, he knows.
"Good catch on that," Tommy says as he joins him at the chain-link fence along the alley. "I wouldn't have seen it if you didn't point it out."
"Yeah you would've," Buck says. Tommy's observant. He would've caught his boot on the edge of the line of scorch marks and looked down and noticed the whole plot. He's probably already figured out a motive, too. "Good call yourself, you know. With the whole diesel thing."
Tommy shrugs. "Spend enough time around fires and you start to catch on to the tricks," he says.
"Seems like more of a rural Pennsylvania trick than a southern California trick," Buck says.
With a huff of a laugh Tommy pushes off the fence. "What makes you think I picked that up around here?" he asks, and then he makes his way back to where the cars are parked.
He spends an hour or so back at the office typing up everything he remembers from the scene: the smell, the way the wall was leaning, the almost-greasy feeling of the sediment he rolled between his fingers. He thinks about it and then adds what Tommy had to say about the diesel; then he saves it and emails it to Athena. When he finally stands up to crack his back the office is mostly empty. Jim had said he was leaving early to go up to San Luis Obispo and see his daughter. Athena must have slipped out, because her office door is closed and the lights are off. Arne's desk is dark, too. Only Tommy is left, posted up in his corner, headphones on, watching something on his triple monitors. Buck shuts his laptop and packs up his backpack and then knocks his knuckles against Tommy's desk.
"Hey," he says, as Tommy hits pause and looks up. "Everyone went home."
"Oh, shit," Tommy says, looking around the office. Whatever he was watching must have been enthralling. "What time is it?"
"Almost seven. Want me to wait for you?"
Tommy scrambles to his feet. "I'll just take a minute," he says, powering down his computer.
Buck's had a hard time adjusting to the schedule. He comes in in the morning and goes home in the evening and the day is over, just like that. No group meals, no bunk-room, no locker room, no on-premise gym. He's never the first one here, and this is the first time he's been the last one to leave. His whole social circle used to be built around the 118's A-shift. He's felt a little adrift with all the change, and as he watches Tommy haphazardly throw his things into his backpack, he thinks Tommy probably has, too.
"What were you watching?" he asks as Tommy finishes.
"I bought a drone last week," Tommy says. He hits the lights; Buck pulls the door shut behind them. "Spent three days memorizing all the rules for flight zones and then flew it around until the battery died. Got some good footage."
"Oh."
"Yeah. It's fun. It's not flying, you know, but, it's fun."
"Right," Buck says, his mouth suddenly going sour.
They're at the end of the hallway, now, back at the elevators, and Tommy rocks from one foot to the other, looking like he has something to say. Buck hits the down button and waits, and sure enough Tommy takes a breath and slides his hands into his back pockets. "You busy tonight?"
"No," Buck says. The elevator door opens and he lets Tommy step in first. "Got something in mind?"
"I think you still owe me a beer or five," Tommy says.
"Yeah," Buck says. "Yeah, I think I do."
It's Friday night, so every bar is packed, but they manage to snag a booth at a place that does small plates. Buck gets a tray of jicama fries. Tommy orders an open-faced flatbread sandwich.
"Great," Tommy says as the waiter leaves. His sandwich has come with a pile of jicama fries, too.
"Don't worry," Buck says. He scoops the fries off Tommy's plate and sets them on his own. They gave him three different sauces, and he knows Tommy's not going to eat the aioli that came with his sandwich, either. It's basically a full meal.
He ducks away from Tommy's gaze as he arranges his fry pile. It's too much, probably, too intimate and too close, and if he looks up Tommy's going to be staring at him like he's trying to scrub frost off a window. Buck doesn't want to be seen like that right now. He just wants to eat these jicama fries.
"So how was your first week?" he asks, once he's finished polishing off Tommy's aioli.
Tommy hums. "A lot more spreadsheets than I anticipated, honestly."
"Yeah, same," Buck says. "And the, uh, the databases. Arne said I should probably learn, um—some coding thing—SQL? If I want to be successful. But I'll be honest it's all going in one ear and right out the other. I did like going out into the field today, though. That was—that was something else."
"You were good out there. You have a good eye for it," Tommy says.
"Thanks," Buck says, watching Tommy dissect his sandwich. He wants to tell Tommy that he was good out there, too, that he has a sharp eye and a sharper nose, that he was glad Tommy was there with him for his first foray into a new field; but instead what comes out is, "You're good at identifying fuels."
"Spent a lot of time sniffing them," Tommy says. Buck feels like an idiot until Tommy smiles. "So. It's been a while since we last hung out. What else is going on in the world of Evan Buckley?"
It's nice to just talk. It's nice to sit close to him, to be able to talk and laugh and wave one of his fries around to accentuate a point, and it's nice to make Tommy smile the way he always did when Buck says something goofy. They haven't just talked in a long time. They haven't had the time, of course, not in months and months. And maybe they never really talked about anything even when they were together. But that's not true, Buck thinks, as Tommy kicks off a story about a guy who they picked up unconscious who woke up halfway between Topanga and the hospital they were taking him to and who, disoriented and more than a little high on mushrooms, tried to make his way into Tommy's lap while he was flying the helicopter. They did talk. They talked all the time. Just not about the right things, in the right order.
"Hey, Tommy," Buck says when Tommy finishes. "I'm sorry again."
"What?" Tommy asks, the grin falling off his face.
"For getting your license suspended."
"It wasn't—Evan, it wasn't your fault," Tommy says.
"I'm still sorry," Buck says with a shrug.
Tommy looks at him, tilts his head. "Water under the bridge, okay?"
"Okay," Buck says, sopping up the last of his sauce with a too-crisp fry. Tommy looks sad, now, and that—that won't do, Buck thinks. It's stressing him out. He doesn't want Tommy to walk away from this dinner feeling sad. "What's the longest you ever went without flying?"
"The first nineteen years of my life," Tommy says, dry as ever.
"I mean, you know, after you started," Buck says, even though he knows Tommy was yanking his chain.
Tommy rolls his mostly-empty beer glass back and forth between his hands. His sandwich is long gone and the glass is just dregs at this point. Buck waits, and waits, and just when he thinks maybe he shouldn't have asked in the first place Tommy finally answers. "I never told you why I got discharged, did I?"
"No," Buck says. Everyone else in this little small-plates bar has faded away. There's no more silverware clinking in the background, no more laughter from the four-top behind them. It's just him and Tommy and the way Tommy's holding himself like he's liable to crumble apart if he doesn't tell this story right and Buck's never-ending pile of jicama fries. "Do you want to tell me?"
Tommy shrugs, a full-bodied thing, as if he's been holding this in for too long. Buck knows that feeling. It's the pressure release valve on his instant pot. Before tonight the most he'd ever been able to get out of Tommy about his time in the army was, "It sucked."
"In Iraq," Tommy starts, "they had me flying with a recon unit."
His voice trails off at the end of the sentence and he spins his glass again. He's always laconic when he talks about his past. Buck leans forward, pushing his fries out of the way of his elbows, and tries to catch Tommy's eye, but he ducks away. No matter, Buck thinks. "When?" he asks.
"2003. Early days."
Buck nods. He was still in middle school, then, working on his kick flips and eating shit on the ramps at the skate park and wondering why his parents ignored him, why his sister cried so often.
"We were doing a night flight. There was a lot going on, it was—" Tommy cuts himself off, suddenly, and laughs. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. Most of this story's classified."
"Oh, shit, really?" Buck asks. "Wait, are you—are you gonna get in trouble?"
Tommy rolls his eyes. "What else are they going to do to me? Basically there was a friendly fire incident and I had to put the bird down without a functioning tail rotor and it was a big fucking to-do."
"Oh my god. Were you hurt?"
"A little," Tommy says, very significantly not looking at Buck. "One of my friends—yeah. But, um, I got out, and they gave me an honorable, and—"
"Wait. Friendly fire," Buck says. "Did they shoot at you? Our side?"
"That's the classified part," Tommy says. He pushes his glass away, finally. "Anyway. I got discharged and I really thought I would never fly again because it was such a clusterfuck. And then after rehab—"
"You were hurt bad enough to go to rehab? Tommy," Buck says.
"—everyone goes to rehab after they crash-land their helicopter, Evan, I'm not special."
"Tommy," Buck repeats.
"You are relentless," Tommy says, but he's smiling now. "I swear I'm fine. And I was fine back then. And when the LAFD recruiter came to bother us at the VA and showed off Air Ops like it was something I had a chance to work towards… I don't know. I signed up for the academy and then I got stuck at the old 118 and it was like being stuck in another box that I wasn't sure I was ever going to get out of."
"Yeah," Buck says. "I, uh, I get it."
"But then Bobby came along, and he pushed open some doors I thought were closed, and I went and got recertified and here I am," Tommy says, wry smile tugging at his lips. "Grounded again."
"So that was—what, a decade?"
"Almost fourteen years. But it was like riding a bike. Just had to get back on."
"You'll get back on again. It'll be over before you know it, I'm sure."
"Twenty more weeks," Tommy says. He fishes a cold jicama fry out of Buck's basket. "But who's counting?"
"Don't eat that—yeah," Buck says, as Tommy gags. "Those aren't potatoes."
Tommy takes the napkin Buck passes him. "I knew that. I don't know why I ate it."
"Showing off how cool and not-picky you are," Buck says. He looks around, looks down at his watch. The bar's emptied out and it's almost ten somehow. "Wow."
"Shit," Tommy says. "It's past my bedtime."
They dance around each other as they slide out of the booth, and it's awkward but not as awkward as it could be, and finally they're squeezing past a party of four at the front and spilling out onto the sidewalk and Tommy's running his hand across the back of the neck like he always does when he's nervous.
"This was really good, Tommy," Buck says. "Maybe—maybe we could do it again sometime."
"I'd love that," Tommy says. He nudges Buck's arm with his elbow. "Get home safe, okay? I'll see you Monday."
Buck watches him walk away down the sidewalk, and he feels lighter than he has in a while.
It started out as a fascination. Lots of kids like to stare into the candles on birthday cakes, like to watch the flames of the burners of the gas stove work in the kitchen.
Your mom caught on pretty quickly that whatever it was that was holding your imagination was different, though.
Maybe that's why she left.
It graduated to throwing firecrackers in the street with the other kids, to lighting matches and letting them burn out one by one as you dropped them in the dirt behind the shed. You had a hard time making friends. You were never very popular. Just another kid from a broken home. But the fire was always there for you.
It takes all weekend to coordinate a call with Maddie and Chim. Their schedules don't line up anymore, not with her leave and his new job and Chim's new responsibilities and a newborn and a little kid and everything else. But eventually she texts him a little thumbs up and he hits call and she does answer, and he can hear the bone-deep tiredness in her voice. He doesn't keep her too long, just coos at the baby and then chats with Jee long enough to get Chimney on the phone.
"Hey, Buck," Chim says. "How's the new gig treating you? You regretting letting Athena steal you away, yet?"
Buck wonders what Chim's internal monologue is doing right now. Does he think Buck left because Athena asked him to? Does he know Buck's transfer request had been hanging out on the spreadsheet for two months? Does he know Athena stopped blaming him weeks and weeks ago? Did he think Buck blamed him, too? Buck never did. Maybe for a minute, when he first realized what was happening, but that was so immediately washed away by the tsunami of grief and pain and fear that overtook him. He wonders if Chimney will ever stop blaming himself.
He contemplates telling Chimney that the new job is perfect, that it's everything he wanted. Instead he clears his throat. "Yeah, it's good," he says. "Scenes are a lot different when you're going to them after the fire's out. And, uh, working with Athena is a lot of fun."
"That's great, man," Chimney says, already moving on. He seems exhausted too.
Buck doesn't tell him about Tommy. He remembers the look on Tommy's face when he said nobody had reached out. He doesn't want to put any fuel on any fires. He talks to Chim and then to Maddie until their oven timer goes off, and then he eats the leftovers in his fridge, and he curls up on his leather couch and reads the book about the history of arson that Jim lent him until he's almost asleep.
He lets himself dwell as he's brushing his teeth. He hasn't gone this long without talking to any of his—his friends, he thinks, even as he chases this line of thought—since the lawsuit. And it hasn't been for lack of trying. It's just that Chimney's so busy, that Maddie's so exhausted. Hen's got—well, she withdrew a while ago, he thinks. In a different world, she would have been the one taking over the Bobby-shaped hole in the 118, but after she backed off in May it was like she slowly disconnected from everything else that had Bobby's firm handprint stuck on it. Ravi had never really wanted to be close anyway, at least before, and Bobby dying had hit him like a truck and rattled him hard. The one time Buck managed to drag him out for drinks before he left Ravi had looked haunted, had stared into his glass like he didn't know who had put it there. And Eddie—
Buck wonders when his relationship with Eddie truly changed. Even before everything happened—before the kitchen, before the funeral, before the lab—he'd been turning it over and over in his head.
There were things he'd noticed, of course. Over the years. But it wasn't until Tommy gave him that bullshit in his—well, Eddie's—kitchen that he really started to put it all together.
Competition, he scoffs, spitting his toothpaste into the sink. Maybe in some perverse way Tommy was right, just because—well, because—
Because every time Eddie needed something from him, Buck was there. He tries to count the number of times the opposite has been true. He doesn't get very far.
And speaking of Tommy, he's also thinking, as he washes his face and scrubs hard at his eyelids and his jaw and his temples, about how disappointed he is that nobody responded to Tommy when he needed them. Chimney was always saying, before they started dating, "Oh, that Tommy's so cool," but apparently he wasn't cool enough to repay after saving Chimney's life. Buck wonders if Chimney even thanked him after the fact. He's not sure he wants to know.
He crawls into bed. He's more annoyed than he thought he would be. And he's noticing now how empty his bed is, how quiet his place is, how few unread texts he has on his phone.
His sleep is troubled.
He gets to the office early on Monday, but apparently not early enough. Athena's already there and staring at a giant corkboard which must have been dropped off over the weekend. Pinned to it are a bunch of printouts. Buck is surprised there's not a web of red string to go with them all.
"There's something here," she says, as he puts down his backpack and tugs his laptop free of its case.
"Like, a connection?" he asks, joining her in front of the board.
She nods and traces her finger along a few of the pages. He realizes, as he gets a closer look, that there's an outline of Los Angeles County drawn on the cork behind them. "Same M.O., same general vicinity. There's sort of a pattern to the timing."
Buck squints. "You're thinking a serial?" He feels a presence take up residence behind him.
"Hm," Tommy says. He must have been right behind Buck in the parking garage. He reaches in between them and taps a finger on one of the pages. "This is from 2005."
"Sure is," Athena says. "But there's no real method to the madness. And I can't figure out a motive at all."
"Girls just want to have fun?" Tommy suggests.
The door swings open, and Jim backs through it, carrying a massive box of donuts. "Maple bars were half off," he says. "Oh! What's this?"
"Athena's got a hunch," Buck says.
Jim stuffs a maple bar in his mouth as he puts the box down on top of his desk. It teeters, just slightly, but stays put. He meanders over to the board and takes a closer look at it. "Huh," he eventually says, maple icing stuck on his mustache accentuating the point. "A serial arsonist. You know, Arne's been talking about us tracking a serial for a while now, but I wasn't convinced until you laid it all out like that."
Athena leans in, peering at the board, and Buck follows her lead. Behind her he can see Tommy taking a step back and helping himself to a maple bar. As soon as Jim came in he was back to his usual reticent self. Or, not usual, Buck thinks; he was quiet, before, but never this quiet. This is the kind of quiet that Chimney used to talk about, back in the before-Bobby years. Maybe it's just a reflection of the weirdness of the situation. It sure is weird for Buck, at least.
So that's the way the weeks pass: when they're in the office they're circling the corkboard, adding things that might be related bit by bit. When they go out to scenes they prod through the evidence, gathering what they can, poring over it later to decide whether it fits the pattern. They go out to drinks sometimes, after work, as a group; Arne never joins, but Jim usually does, and often Athena, and always Tommy and Buck. When Athena's there it seems like she's only ever half present, her gaze unfocused, trained on the back door, like she's waiting for someone to come back from the bathroom. Buck doesn't push it. He's just glad she's getting out.
The gun feels strange on his hip, still, but he's starting to get used to the way it weighs on him. His hand never moves to touch it, his finger never feels itchy. The only time he even pulls it out of the holster is when he's getting his hours in at the range, or when he's locking it up in his desk safe at the end of the day. It's there, and it's heavy, but it's starting to fade into the background.
He misses running into fire. He misses the sound of the bell, the sprint to get his turnouts on. He misses Bobby, and the way the 118 used to be. But it, too, is starting to fade into the background, along with everything else.
The board eventually gets overrun with evidence. They spend one morning hauling a projector up from Materials down on the first floor and shining a map of the county on the big empty wall, and then they take turns taping pages up around the birds-eye view of the city. Buck finds himself laying on the floor to mark some spots in Long Beach that probably aren't related but have a certain stench to them.
"What year are those?" Athena asks, squinting down at his additions.
"2017," he says. The year Bobby came to Los Angeles. He's hit with a pang of longing: what if he'd made up his mind on life earlier, had joined the academy earlier, had met Bobby earlier?
"That year's pretty light," Athena says. She scribbles something on her legal pad.
Behind him Tommy's frowning into his travel mug. "Does this coffee taste weird to anyone else?"
"Maybe you're getting COVID," Jim says, blithely chewing on his Sharpie. He takes a step forward and pulls a page off the wall. "I don't think this one fits. Too far out of the usual zone."
"Leave it in the maybe pile," Athena tells him.
Sure enough, Tommy calls in sick the next day, and the day after that. Buck texts him, just to make sure he's still alive, and Tommy swears he's fine, just nauseous and running a fever. Buck offers to drop off food but Tommy declines. Doesn't want Buck to catch whatever this is. Which is his prerogative, Buck thinks, but there was a time when he would have gone over anyway, shouldered his way through the door to make him soup and make sure he wasn't falling over on his way to the bathroom. He doesn't have that license now, though.
Tommy misses a big scene while he's out. A derelict motel goes up, fights three stations for hours, all night long. When the arson team rolls up the next morning it's still smoking, the stench acrid even through the N-95.
It doesn't take long to find the trail of diesel. When they get back to the office it goes right on the map.
Tommy comes back. Jim takes off for a long weekend; his daughter's pregnant, so he's going up to San Luis Obispo to help her with stuff around the house. "My retirement's set for right after she finishes her maternity leave," he says on the day he heads out. "Gonna be the world's best grandpa, I'll tell you what." Buck doesn't doubt it.
One thing is strange, and that's how unenthused Arne seems to be about them adopting what was apparently his idea in the first place. Maybe he no longer believes the evidence. He still does his job, goes out to scenes and takes his pictures and prints them off and tacks them up where Athena suggests. But he spends the rest of his days typing angrily on his laptop, and staring at Athena like he's willing her head to explode.
Buck does his SQL homework, and he goes to his webinars, and he works on this database he's building. Eventually the whole serial arsonist wall is digitized, even searchable to a degree. He puts in a request for another monitor and someone from IT comes up to the office to install it before work one morning, and when he looks at his database on the new monitor he feels a deep sense of pride. He thinks maybe Bobby would be proud of him, if he could see him now. He thinks Maddie would be proud of him, if she cared about this kind of thing. He thinks even his parents would look at it and say it's a nice piece of programming, if they ever asked.
He shows it to Arne, who gives him a nod. He shows it to Jim, who almost sloshes his coffee right into Buck's keyboard and tells him it's spectacular. He shows it to Athena, who pats his shoulder and then gives it a squeeze before walking back to her office.
And then he shows it to Tommy, who squats down until he's at eye-level with the monitor, and Tommy reaches across him to scroll down, and he leans in a little so he can read the smaller text, and he's nodding as he takes it all in, and then he turns his head and looks Buck right in the eyes and says "Evan, this is really fucking good."
"Yeah?" Buck asks, his mouth going dry. "You think so?"
Tommy nods. The office has mostly cleared out; Jim left early, and Arne went home at 5 sharp, but Athena's still at her desk typing away at something. "You want to grab a drink?" he asks, standing back up, and as he does so his shirt rides up a little bit and Buck catches sight of a little strip of skin just above his waistband.
"Yeah, yeah, sure," Buck says, trying not to sound too distracted.
They meet back up at the small-plate spot that's become their usual, grabbing seats at the bar because all the booths are taken. They get an appetizer sampler to share, and Buck separates the pickles by shape. They talk about work. They talk about life. They stare at each other over their beers and their apps and the moment charges, and charges, and charges.
"Evan," Tommy says.
"Tommy," Buck breathes.
When their mouths finally meet it's like magnets pulling together across the negative space between them: no other destination was ever going to grab them. It's inevitable, Buck knows. It's a mistake, perhaps. It feels like something has finally righted itself inside him.
"Do you want to get out of here?" Tommy asks into Buck's mouth.
Buck nods. He wants nothing more.