#also bucktommy adjacent

[littlespoonevan]

If you are looking for prompts.... Eddie and Tommy realising they unintentionally excluded Buck ?

ohohoho this was fun to write but Sad also bc eddie is clearly thinking one thing and tommy is clearly thinking many things and buck is off in his loft thinking many, Many things but i hope you like it, friend 💛

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Eddie hobbles over to his couch with Tommy’s help.

“There you go, man,” Tommy says as he gets Eddie situated on the cushion. “You need anything?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Eddie replies, waving a hand. “There’s beer in the fridge though; help yourself.”

Tommy doesn’t take him up on the offer, instead moving to sit on the coffee table next to where Eddie’s propped up his injured leg.

“So, uh, Buck can get pretty competitive?” He says it like a question, nodding to Eddie’s wrapped ankle as if in proof and it’s, well-

“No, actually,” Eddie says, and he feels…stuck between a long-ingrained need to defend Buck and confusion as to how they ended up here in the first place.

Because this isn’t like Buck. Because Buck usually spends his every waking minute actively trying to keep Eddie out of harm’s way. He sure as hell is never the cause. And Eddie knows he didn’t mean to, is the thing. But just calling it a simple accident doesn’t feel quite right either.

“I don’t-” he starts and then reconsiders what he’d planned to say. “Honestly, Buck’s been a little off this week so I think…”

He trails off. It feels weird talking about Buck with someone who isn’t close to them, who doesn’t just implicitly gets all the intricate mental gymnastics behind Buck’s every action.

Then again, Eddie’s not sure if anyone is actually as adept at figuring out how Buck gets from A to Z as he is.

“Is it because of me?” Tommy asks and he looks genuinely concerned.

Eddie replays every conversation he’s had with Buck this past week – every too bright smile Buck flashed him, every enthusiastic assertion that he thought it was great Eddie had a new friend – and then he, inexplicably, thinks about when he first joined the 118 and some things slot into place.

“I think he was maybe a little worried,” Eddie allows. “That I was replacing him with you.”

Tommy’s eyes do a slow, deliberate sweep of the living room and the multiple photo frames of him, Buck and Christopher on the mantel and the side table before he looks back to Eddie. “Is that even possible?”

Eddie shakes his head, letting out a laugh. “I mean, no. Obviously. But Buck just- sometimes he needs reminding how much he means to people.”

Guilt settles between his ribs then. He’s been too distracted this week, too excited about having someone he had so much in common with around to talk to. If he’d taken half a second to look a little closer he would’ve realised Buck was spiralling.

“I should’ve spoken to him,” he sighs. “Reassured him that we weren’t trying to exclude him.”

Tommy frowns. “You really think that’s how he felt? I thought you said he never wanted to play basketball when you asked?”

“I think it was more than just the basketball,” Eddie says, wincing – the memory of him asking Buck to babysit instead of coming to the bar with them feels particularly bad.

Tommy nods slowly, mind clearly working. He’s quiet for so long Eddie thinks about telling him not to worry about it, that he’ll deal with it, but then-

“Why don’t I go talk to him?” he suggests, confident and sure. “Clear the air? I don’t want him to think I’m trying to get in the middle of you two.”

It takes Eddie by surprise. There’s a strangely defensive part of him that wants to say he and Buck don’t need anyone to mend their fences for them but he shoves the thought aside and reminds himself that’s not what Tommy means. Buck had sought Tommy out too last week and they’d seemed to get along. Maybe Tommy wants to clear the air for his own sake.

So he says, “Yeah,” probably a few seconds too late and makes himself smile. “Normally I’d be the one driving to his house and forcing him to talk. But I guess I’m kind of out of commission right now.”

He nods at his foot and Tommy laughs, pushing himself up off the couch to stand. “Well, hey, I’ll be sure to pass on your regards.”

“Thanks,” Eddie snorts.

Tommy claps him on the shoulder as he rounds the couch. “Don’t forget to take those pain pills, man. I’ll let you know how things go with Evan.”

He calls the rest of his sentence over his shoulder as he heads for the door and Eddie manages a half-hearted, “Will do,” as he hears the click of the latch.

And he feels…how Buck has felt all week, probably. Confused and irritated and a little possessive. Like Tommy’s stealing his job. As if Eddie hadn’t just told him it was fine. As if Eddie could even make it over to Buck’s place right now. At least he managed to hold back the petty, “His name is Buck,” that had immediately rose up in his throat as soon as Tommy had called him Evan.

Shaking his head, he reaches for the paper bag with his prescription that Tommy had left on the coffee table.

He’ll talk to Buck tomorrow and everything will be fine.

#my fics #7x04 #911 related #eddie diaz #tommy kinard #buddie #or like buddie adjacent #also bucktommy adjacent #asks #anon

[try-set-me-on-fire]

brick BRICK please I AM ON MY KNEES i just saw the bucktommy MCD fic aldhslhdkalkabsk i know i KNOW you said you don’t have the time or purview to write it, but if you would find it within your heart to further read us into shreds in any way, shape, or form, i’d be eternally grateful

(only if you would like to, of course, and quite honestly, i’m not sure i’d be able to survive another drabble, let alone a fully fledged fic)

Alright okay I’m thinking about it too here’s a tiny thing mwah mwah

“It’s his birthday,” Buck says eventually, when the mug has stopped steaming entirely. It almost startles Eddie, the sudden sound in a quiet that felt so final. He turns off the sink, sets down the last of the dishes, joins Buck at the table. Buck’s thumb caresses up and down the side of the mug. When Eddie picks up his own, it's skin-warm. “I liked to… plan things, I like to be… organized.” A rueful smile that stops miles short of his eyes. “You’ve probably noticed at work. I’ve been told I can be a monster with a clipboard in hand.” His voice is steady enough that Eddie is pretty sure Tommy isn’t the one who ever did the telling. “And he was going to be 45 and feeling some kind of way about that so… So I, uh, had it planned already. Before- uh- b-before.”

Tommy Kinard has been dead for seven months. Eddie’s not sure he’s ever put that much forethought into anything. He enlisted after an afternoon chatting at a recruitment booth. He applied to the fire academy on impulse after he saw an ad online. “What were you…”

Buck sighs. “Camping. Up north. Rented one of those, you know, cute vintage RVs. We were going to stop a few places. Had the vacation time cleared and ready to go.” He grimaces, shrugs, his eyes wet again. “I never… canceled any of it. I probably could have got some refunds, but I just… it was too- I- I just couldn’t.” He coughs something adjacent to a laugh. “The… I picked mint green, like the toaster he- got it from his aunt, I think. Uh. For the RV. It’s probably sitting in a lot somewhere right now waiting for us.”

“Buck, I…” Eddie wants to reach out so bad his hand moves on its own accord, clumsy, catching on his mug and clattering the ceramic against the wood of the table. “If you wanted company you could have told me why, but also you- you didn’t have to come here. I-I’m sorry. I know how hard it can be to… to be around people, to talk to anybody when you’re feeling like… and special occasions just make it worse.”

Buck- laughs. A few soft snorts, through his nose, smile hitting a little closer to clear blue. “That’s the thing, Eddie. That’s the… I miss him like this every day. I wake up and- and there’s a moment before I roll over where I think- hope- what if when I turn he’ll be there smiling at me? I-I-I miss his smile so bad, I- I have pictures, t-there’s even video- our wedding- b-but- but it’s not the same-” He gasps, and his shoulders turn in again, all of him crumpling towards a center line as he covers his face with one hand, the other white knuckled around his mug. “Sorry. S-sorry.”

“No, it’s… it’s okay, Buck.” Eddie’s hand is still hovering over the table, he’d never done anything with it after his failed reach. Close the gap. Just close the gap. He doesn’t.

Buck wipes his eyes, clears his throat, straightens up again. “Sorry. It’s… it’s just a day. They’re all- they’re all going to be like this. He’s not going to be in any of them. So I just have to- I’m just going to keep going.” Another smile, still wet and wretched but genuine anyways. “Besides, I told Chris I’d be here to help. Not a promise I’m interested in breaking.”

Eddie nods, biting his tongue against the sting in his own eyes that he’s not even entirely sure the cause of. “Well, thank god. I flunked freshman bio.”

Tea sloshes over Buck’s hand with how hard his laugh rattles through him. Eddie jumps up to get a towel, and when he goes to hand it over he gets caught frozen for a moment by Buck’s amused eye contact. “Eddie.”

“Yeah?”

“I had a C+ average.”

Eddie’s not sure how they manage not to spill the rest of the mug in the outburst that follows, but it stays stubbornly upright as their laughter bounces around the kitchen cabinets, mixing together, filling the room. When Buck smiles up at him again it looks just a little easier, and Eddie thinks- he thinks he’d do a lot to make Buck’s life easy. He shakes out the towel and cleans up the tea.

#mcd #major character death #buck x tommy #my writing #buddie #the seconds ticking killed us all a million years before the fall