god i hope so

"i wouldn't say there were too many crows feet," buck says, and then slaps a hand over his mouth. whoops.

"which way did he go?"

buck hesitates and then points in the right direction, never looking away from her. she clocks his hesitation and frowns at him, shaking her head. "he always gets the pretty faces," she sighs, spinning on her heels and heading the wrong way. "kinard! get back here! it's just a tetanus booster! don't be a baby!"

kinard pops out from the opposite door and grins sheepishly at buck. "i have a thing about needles," he says, conspiratorially. "tommy."

"evan buckley," buck says. it's a reflex; all the doctors have been calling him evan the entire time he's been in the hospital. he's about to correct tommy when tommy says "nice to meet you, evan," and the sound curls around buck's shoulders and settles on them like the warmest blanket he's ever had.

"how did you know to do that? give lucy the wrong directions?" tommy continues.

"i have a sister who never trusted me," buck tells him, laughing. "what did lucy mean about the pretty faces?"

"that you have one. probably," kinard says, and throws him another wink before ducking out the door and down the hall.

weird. buck's still baffled when his surgeon comes in to see him. he gets the all clear to go home, and then buck asks about the lafd blood drive poster on the wall. "mr. buckley — sorry, buck — i spent a great deal of time trying to keep your blood inside your body. let's hold off on donating until the cast comes off and you're done your rehab, okay?"

ali's waiting to take him home. he's expecting the wheelchair to leave, but he's not expecting how awkward it is to get into the Jeep. he has to crank the passenger seat all the way back to get his leg in, and the crutches are. well. he's glad he spent two of the six weeks the cast has to be on in the hospital.

getting from the car through the parking garage to the elevator and down the hall into his loft is better left unsaid. he's not sure that it would be much easier in abby's apartment — but he already knows how to rearrange that apartment to accommodate medical equipment.

ali gets him settled on the couch and sits down beside him and — yep, there's the other shoe. he's been tatiana'ed. (not that he would ever say that to chim's face. but it sucks to be broken up with because you're injured.)

he can't exactly blame her. he remembers what it felt like to be trapped there and he kind of wants to divorce his own body. he waves her off and tells her to let him know that she landed in new york okay; at least she was never supposed to stay long today, and because she was going back to the east coast he has a little time to figure out how to tell maddie and the others.

buck eyes the loft longingly. he just wants to lie down. and he has to get used to the crutches and the stairs! now's as good a time as any to try it out.

he gets three steps up, almost overbalances, and sits down on the stairs. shit. is he going to have to sleep on the couch for a few months?

"yo, buck! you get settled all right? maddie's coming over after her shift, remember? hey, it's buck! come say hi!" the sounds of the firehouse filter in as chim puts buck on speaker and he smiles, leaning against the bannister. god, he misses them.

"hey chim, yeah, i remember. all settled. i was actually calling for some of that rosetta stone knowledge of yours. you got a number for a firefighter named kinard?"

"tommy, yeah, he helped out at doheny — why?"

"ran into him at the hospital."

"he wasn't hurt, was he?"

"no, no, just visiting."

"ah, blood drive," hen cuts in, laughing.

"tetanus, actually," buck interrupts, and he can hear the wince. they've all needed a booster because of the job before.

"sure, i can text it to you. …wait, why'd you call it the rosetta stone, buck?"

"cause you're the oldest firefighter i know, chim, i figure you gotta translate it from the hieroglyphs you wrote it in," buck says, after his phone has chimed with a message. "gotta go, bye!"

"buckley!"

buck debates what he's about to do for about thirty seconds before he taps on the contact number chim had texted him.

"go for kinard."

"did lucy catch you?"

"who — oh, evan? how did you get this number?"

"lafd phone tree," buck says, grinning. "you didn't look like you were on shift earlier."

"funny, i don't remember signing up for that… anyway, what can i do for you?"

"remember how you owe me a favour?"

"lucy did catch me, so i'm not sure how much of a favour you actually did me…" tommy teases.

"hey, don't blame me for the fact that you didn't run fast enough. i'm gonna send you an address, i need you and any other big strong firefighters you know to come over asap and pay up on that favour."

"if this is a bachelorette party, i have to let you know that we actually do need to be paid for that."

buck bursts out laughing and shakes his head even though tommy can't see him. "careful, or i'm telling the phone tree you're moonlighting and they're all going to book you."

"okay, hmm. give me a few minutes to round everyone up and we'll be there in about half an hour."

"wait, for real?"

"yeah, unless you're just yanking my chain."

"no, i — no, i really appreciate it. text when you get here, i'll walk you through the keypad."

tommy's time keeping is accurate. he knocks on buck's door twenty seven minutes later (not that buck has been keeping track) and buck hobbles from his card table to the front door and balances on one crutch as he opens the door. "thanks for coming," he says, hopping backwards to let tommy in. the other firefighter from the hospital (who must be lucy) follows him in and gives buck a seriously judgmental eyebrow, and then another guy a few inches shorter than tommy but with shoulders that wouldn't look out of place on a linebacker trails in after. "who got robbed?" the second guy asks, looking around. "should have called the cops, not the fire department."

lucy swats him upside the head and rolls her eyes. "shut up, sal. what are we doing here, tommy?"

"i don't know, you'd have to ask evan." tommy grins faintly.

"asking the consummate liar, good idea," lucy volleys back.

"i told you where he was, it's not my fault you didn't listen," buck argues. "i need help getting my bed from up there—" he points to the loft "—to down here."

"no wonder you called the fire department," sal snorts, bounding up the stairs. "you signed on this place after you wrecked your leg? did you hit your head too?"

"i signed the lease three weeks before the cast, actually," buck snips back.

lucy and tommy wince, and lucy heads up after sal. "tommy, move the couch out further so we can dump this mattress over the edge," lucy calls, peering over the railing. "not much here for having lived here almost a month, kid."

buck shrugs. "i was at work."

tommy grins at him as he muscles the couch out from the alcove, eyeing the entertainment system. "give me a sec to move the tv," he calls up, and buck hobbles forward. "i can help."

"absolutely not," all three of them interject, and tommy points back to the table. "sit down, evan. we've got this."

"so how did you—" sal leans over the railing and nods towards buck's leg.

"shark attack," buck jokes, and sal grins at him.

"yeah, that was rude. working on it."

tommy, lucy and sal have obviously been friends for awhile; they have their own shorthand and while buck winces a little when they flip his mattress over the railing, the couch does muffle the sound and there's no yelling from his downstairs neighbour. sal and tommy move the couch into the kitchen beside his table, and then lucy skips down the stairs with his pillows and blanket and one of the side table lamps and claims a seat beside him as tommy and sal muscle the frame down the stairs. sal swears a lot, but buck has a feeling that he's still holding back. he's a little distracted by the way tommy's shirt shifts against the top of his jeans.

"so who gave you tommy's number?"

"chimney."

"chim - who?"

"howie," tommy calls from the living room. "sal, lift the corner, jesus."

"i throw my back out, i'm sending gina after you," sal grumbles as they resettle the mattress.

"to what, sue me?"

"for lost earnings and emotional distress," sal agrees. "donato! bedding!"

"you're not my real captain," lucy calls back, leaving the lamp with buck as she takes the rest over. "and we gotta get that couch upstairs."

"you don't have to do that."

"sure, if you're not getting a real table in here," lucy argues, looking at the kitchen.

"there's going to be an island," buck tells her, bristling a little.

she laughs at him and nods. "so we'll get it out of the way," she promises, ruffling sal and tommy's hair as she passes them. "and you can order some food."

"please, i have a date," sal disagrees. "i'll take a favour to be named later."

"not a sports game, sal," tommy shakes his head, smiling in buck's direction.

"oh, me too," lucy decides, pretending to lift the couch and then shaking her head, leaving it to the boys. "give me a ride home, sal?"

"i'll drop you in the middle of downtown and you'll like it," sal calls from the loft, laughing. the doorbell rings and lucy gets up, retrieving the pizza boxes and bag of drinks before buck can even put a crutch under his arm.

"don't worry, tommy will eat your pizza," she promises, leering playfully at buck.

"oh geez, luce, be nice," tommy says, throwing lucy a glare. "thanks, you two. i owe you. now get outta here."

"you both owe us, shark boy, and i aim to collect," lucy says, pointing at buck. "thanks for the adventure, tommy. see you at work friday."

"adventure, sure," sal snorts, nodding towards buck. "call us when you get that off and need everything back the way it was."

tommy folds himself into one of the chairs and takes a slice of pizza, looking over at buck. "so how do you know howie?"

"he's sort of dating my sister," buck says, because eventually the bombing is going to come out but none of them have looked at him like he's broken today and he likes that. the 118 keeps looking at him like they should have done something to make sure he never got hurt in the first place, and it's not like it was their fault in the first place. plus it has the added benefit of being true, when tommy does find out the truth later. hard to be mad about that.

"handy," tommy laughs, offering him one of the coke bottles. "this was fun."

"really? didn't look fun," buck says, laughing too. "at least not for sal, he sure swore a lot for having fun."

"wait until you watch hockey with the guy," tommy grins.

"lucy seems… like she was teasing us?" buck continues. he hasn't done a lot today, but he's suddenly starving and already reaching for a second slice. tommy nudges the box closer to him.

"she's terminally sarcastic," tommy offers. "you probably picked up on that."

"probably," buck agrees. "so. what do you normally do on your days off when you're not moving around furniture for a guy you hardly know?"

buck finds out that tommy flies, and he starts asking as many questions as he can in between bites of food. he's always thought that there was something romantic about flying (hence the hot air balloon), and the way that tommy talks about it, he's pretty sure he's right. he loses track of time and it's a shock when the front door opens and maddie sticks her head in.

"hey, buck, sorry i'm late — oh! hi. maddie buckley."

"tommy kinard," tommy says, wiping his hand off before offering it to her. "sorry for intruding."

"any friend of buck's is a friend of mine," maddie says. tommy looks over at buck and mouths 'buck?' when maddie's back is turned and buck shrugs. he probably should have clarified by now. "buck, your place got a makeover."

"yeah, turns out trying to do the stairs on a broken leg isn't all that advisable," buck shrugs, preening when it makes both of them laugh. "i called some friends."

"and we'll come back when everything needs to be put back where it belongs," tommy promises, carefully standing up. buck keeps his eyes politely focused on the corner of tommy's chin. definitely not his stomach. or his thighs. "i should get going before i overstay my welcome."

no chance of that happening, buck thinks but doesn't say out loud. "thanks again for your help, tommy."

"yeah, any time." tommy salutes them both, smiling faintly. "give me a call after that gets off, and i'll take you up if you want to go for a spin."

buck waves, ignoring maddie's look when she claims the empty seat and takes a slice of pizza. "take you up?" she questions, once the door is closed behind tommy.

"he's a pilot. firefighter pilot," buck clarifies.

"impressive." maddie's eyes sparkle as she grins at him, but she doesn't tease him any more. yet. "glad your first day back went okay."

buck and taylor sit down with tommy once they've been accepted onto the show to give him the lowdown on their relationship, both as a couple and individually. they're both easy to talk to and tommy gets some great soundbites in spite of the fact that he and evan (that's what's on the paperwork, and buck does his wide-eyed "no, that's fine, you can totally call me evan" thing while taylor side-eyes him to the moon and back) go down a whole housing estate's worth of cul de sacs when they realise they have the lafd, and even some specific people in common.

tommy is man enough to admit he has a WILD crush on this guy, but he's professional enough not to let it get in the way of doing his job. anyway, he really likes taylor too — she's funny and ambitious and a little mean which are all characteristics tommy really likes in a friend. while evan is sweet and enthusiastic and full of sunshine, which are all things tommy likes in a guy. not that it matters, he reminds himself, because taylor's not going to be his friend, and evan's absolutely not going to be his man. normally, he can guess within a few minutes of meeting a couple whether they're going to stay together, but he really can't tell with these two. the vibe he gets is good friends with a lot ot sexual chemistry.

the show goes on — tasks, activities, honesty challenges, whatever they do on this show, again, i apologise, i have not watched it oops — and tommy continues to spend a lot of time with both of them. he and evan hit it off immediately, even beyond the things they have in common. a couple times tommy thinks there's something more to it — evan's almost too interested in what he has to say, finds too many excuses to hang out with him and talk to him about things other than his relationship with taylor.

the day before the show do their "new relationship" twist, where each half of a couple gets assigned a new person to live with for three weeks, to see whether the grass is really greener, evan and taylor have a huge fight, and neither of them will tell tommy what it was about. oh, they give him reasons ("he doesn't respect my work and his 'family' hates me" vs. "sometimes i don't think she even wants to be with me at all, she doesn't take me seriously"), but he can tell they're both holding out on him.

evan gets matched with a vet tech named elena who is sweet and funny and has none of taylor's sharp edges. taylor gets matched with an entrepreneur named alan who is hot as breakfast, but takes himself extremely seriously and has none of evan's sweetness or enthusiasm (unless you count his enthusiasm for perfectly calibrating his pre-workout stacks).

tommy thinks it's going to make them both realise how much they like each other, maybe they'll make it after all. and then he gets a text from a runner who works on the show saying buck needs to talk to him urgently. once the moment of "who the hell is buck?" has passed, tommy hurries over to the apartment evan is currently sharing with elena and finds him pacing up and down the corridor. the first thing out of his mouth is "i think i have to quit the show".

tommy's not as cutthroat as some of the producers who will do anything it takes to keep a contestant on the show, but he does need to know more, and he doesn't want evan to sacrifice his fee if he walks. "okay," he says. "why don't we go get a drink and we can talk it through?" evan nods, looking pitifully grateful. tommy takes him to a nearby coffee shop, because he doesn't drink with contestants on the show. evan looks around with big, wide, worried eyes like he's expecting the place to be full of other producers who are there specifically to listen in on their conversation. tommy fights against a deeply unhelpful wave of affection and buys their coffees.

it's worse than he imagined. "taylor's writing an article," evan says in a hushed voice. "about the ethics of reality tv." tommy thinks, shiiiiiiiit, and starts flicking through a mental rolodex of every interaction he's had with either of them. crush aside, he doesn't think he's crossed any lines. but there's a really messy couple that one of the other producers has been handling, and there are always, always people on these shows that need therapy more than they need to air out their relationship woes on national tv for entertainment. and then evan says, "but we signed stuff. i don't want her to get in trouble." and if tommy wasn't already falling for him, he thinks that would have done it. "if i quit," he goes on, "if i say they can't use my footage, will that help?"

they go back and forth on it for the length of time it takes them to drink two coffees each. at one point tommy says, "it's sweet, that you're concerned for her. you're a good boyfriend." evan's mouth twists unhappily and he says, "don't give me too much credit. i'm so…i'm so embarrassed, tommy. we came on this stupid show — sorry, i know it's your job, but if i have to do one more ridiculous fake date or honesty exercise i'm going to lose my mind — and i don't think she ever even wanted to figure out if we should stay together or not. i think it was just a way in for her." ambitious, that was the first thing tommy noticed about taylor, the first thing he liked about taylor. now, looking at the way evan's drooping like a sad puppy sitting outside in the rain, it doesn't seem so endearing. "i'll talk to her," tommy offers. "don't do anything yet, okay?" evan nods, sniffs, thanks tommy for the coffees.

on their way back to the apartment complex where the contestants are staying, evan stops on the sidewalk and says, "um. thank you. i'm—i'm really glad it's you." tommy doesn't know what to do with that, so he reaches out, intending to put his arm over evan's shoulders and give him a jostling, bro-y half hug. instead, evan reaches out in return and the gentle way he puts his arms around tommy, the careful way his hands spread wide on tommy's shoulder blades like he wants to feel as much as possible has his heart racing with stupid, stupid feelings. he closes his eyes and lets evan hug him for way longer than he should.

tommy doesn't get to speak to taylor until the next day — she's filming a yoga date with alan, which tommy's fellow producer describes as 'a total shit show'. when they sit down together the next morning, he doesn't waste any time, just tells her he knows about the article, and waits to see what she says. what she says, with a smile is, "i'm a reporter, tommy. i'm always working on articles. you'll have to be more specific." tommy frowns and tells her that evan is worried about her from a legal perspective. she scoffs and says, "he always does this. i'm a professional. i spoke with my editor, we spoke with our legal department. i'm not stupid. i thought about it before i did this." tommy can't help himself, bursts out, "did you think about him? he's heartbroken, taylor." "oh, he is not," she shoots back. "believe it or not, in spite of all your little late night chats, i know buck better than you do. he's embarrassed and he doesn't want to hear his family say 'i told you so' for the fifth time." tommy can tell that taylor's used to that tone taking her a long way, so he pushes down the spike of anxiety about late night chats and just raises his eyebrows. "god," she mutters. "fine. give me your phone, i'll talk to him." tommy's busting through a bunch of rules here in the interests of damage control, telling himself it's damage control for the show rather than for evan's heart. he puts his phone into taylor's outstretched hand and she dials, holding it up to her ear as she says, "a little privacy?"

tommy doesn't know what they talk about, but taylor looks a little subdued when she brings his phone out to him, and they make it through the rest of the show without incident. tommy tries to ask evan about it, but all he'll say is "we talked. we made some decisions. thank you for helping." tommy feels like he's going to vibrate out of his skin for the rest of the recording, and his heart is in his mouth when he watches their final filming. "we've decided to separate," taylor says. "we have different priorities," evan says. "we love each other, but we're not a good match anymore," taylor says. "there are other things we want to explore," evan says, and they have to reset and reshoot because taylor lets out an incredibly unladylike snort of laughter and evan gets the giggles. tommy doesn't think he understands these two at all.

two weeks after filming wraps, taylor's article drops. it actually could have been a lot worse, and tommy's never been so grateful that he's in a position to pick his jobs and to no longer have to work on things that make him feel as uncomfortable as some of the early roles he took on.

a day after that, he gets a message on his work phone from evan. can we meet? it says. i'd love to buy you a coffee. it's such a terrible idea, tommy knows that. he says yes anyway.

when they film the reunion episode a couple months later, taylor doesn't attend. (tommy knows for a fact that she was very deliberately not invited, because the higher ups are mad as hell about the article because even if it doesn't make allegations of misconduct, it does absolutely skewer the show as a whole, and what it says about the reality tv industry.) evan does attend, and tommy has to look away and bite his lip hard so he doesn't give the game away when evan says, "i'm good. i'm really good. i'm actually seeing someone new. i know it's fast, but i really like them. like, a lot. i can see it going the distance."

Buck opened said big fat mouth but Sal beat him to the punch. "I planned this little social visit all on my lonesome."

Chim was too tired to even begin to detangle the Raso-Deluca-Kinard-Buckley codependency web to figure out if Buck had gone crying to his union daddy about whatever had his panties in a bunch now. With Buck, it could be anything.

"If this is union business then get in line." He held out for an entire ten seconds before giving in and snatching up the cup. "I already got the deputy chief after my head about the late evaluations. You know how long it takes to write up an entire station's evals when half your shift is spent putting out literal fires?"

"I'm familiar," Sal said dryly.

Chim downed half the coffee, which was a mistake; his pulse rabbited. "What the hell is in this?"

"Four shots of espresso, a fuck ton of syrup, and I think she poured in a packet of instant coffee."

He stared in horror at the cup. "Why?"

"She fears neither god nor death." Sal stood and slid his phone into his shirt pocket. Chim would bet good money if those cell phone belt clips were still around, Sal would be a proud owner. He was such a dad. "Let's take this to your office."

His vagus nerve went wild and his pulse kicked up another notch that had nothing to do with the espresso. "You've already made yourself comfortable. We can do it here."

Sal made a point of looking around the open concept loft at where all of Chim's firefighters were doing a great job at pretending not to listen in on their conversation. He was particularly impressed by Eddie's intense pantomime of searching the fridge for the quart of milk two inches from his face.

"This is a conversation better suited to an office that has a door, Captain Han," Sal said.

Ravi, who was heading towards the coffee machine, turned on his heel and beelined straight for the stairs. Coward.

Chim forced a smile. "If you would follow me, Steward Deluca."

"I know the way, asshole," Sal said, and didn't even wait for Chim to take the lead.

"Now who's the asshole?" he muttered and hurried to catch up with Sal. He was surrounded by assholes with long legs. This was why Hen was his favorite.

They made it all the way to the office before Sal paused, hand on the doorknob. Like the bay doors, Bobby had liked to keep his office open. "It sends the wrong message if it's closed," Bobby had said once. "We're here to help. People need to know they're welcome."

Before Sal could get off a quip or, even worse, be understanding, Chim pushed past and inside. At some point between the lab and all of them returning to work, someone had packed up all of Bobby's personal effects and cleaned the place out. The pictures and the #2 Dad mug that May and Harry had gotten Bobby as a gag gift on Father's Day went to Athena. The little figurine of an old fire wagon was in the Buckley-Kinard household. He'd caught a glimpse of it when they went over for dinner, which was a whole ordeal as they had to pack up the kids and both Jee and Nash hated being in their car seats. He had been irritated when he saw it, not because he wanted the figurine—that would have been one more thing for the kids to break—but because it hadn't even been a choice. Of course it went to Buck, just like Bobby's recipe cards, written by various Nash generations, had gone to Buck. Just like Bobby's final orders had gone to Buck.

The only attempt Chim had made at personalizing the office was to put up the obligatory framed photos of the wife and kids. He hadn't seen the point of anything else given how little time he was in there since the LAFD was all in on going paperless, which meant his laptop's new home was on the kitchen table. The air was stale. A tin layer of dust covered everything. Sal sneezed.

"So," Chim said, absolutely not hesitating as he took a seat behind the desk and laced his fingers over his stomach, "why are you here, Sal?"

Sal sat across him, mimicking his posture with his own hands folded over his stomach. "I'm just curious about why Firefighter Buckley has not taken the full family leave he's entitled to as a new parent."

The effort it took not to roll his eyes hurt. "Christ, I can't believe he went whining to you about this. Actually, you know what? I can believe he went whining to you. Isn't this a conflict of interest?"

"Buckley is only married to my best friend," Sal said, deeply unimpressed. "It's not like he's my brother-in-law and I'm his direct supervisor. Now that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen."

Chim took a deep, calming breath. "Buck took a couple of weeks when Theo moved in. I can't force him to take every minute available to him." That was polite and professional and more of an explanation than Sal was owed, and yet something about Sal's face, the set of his mouth or the fact he apparently stole Tommy's bitchy eyebrows, goaded him into adding, "It's just a foster placement. It's not like he's got a new baby. Besides, Buck is the donor, not the dad."

Sal went very still and very quiet and very dangerous. "Then I guess you think Hen shouldn't have taken her family leave when she and Karen took in Mara."

Through the horrific churning of his stomach, Chim said, "That's different. Hen and Karen were adopting Mara. And Hen didn't take the full leave either. Hell, I only took a couple of weeks when my son was born. Buck isn't being singled out."

"Yeah, let's talk about PTO." Sal deliberately unlaced his fingers. If this were a nature program, this would be the point where Buck would explain to Jee and Nash what a threat display was. "I've been doing some digging. Unofficially, of course."

"Of course," Chim agreed, annoyed.

"The 118 has a lot of unused PTO sitting on the books, which I find concerning."

"Oh, do you?" The annoyance was reaching the flashover point. "Tell me more about how to do my job."

Sal's expression didn't change; he used to be easier to rile. "It's not a good sign when your people aren't using the time they're due and that they've earned. Now I don't know if it's because they're all workaholics, in which case you got yourself a culture problem, Captain Han, or because they don't think they're allowed to take it. And if they don't think they're allowed then that's where I come in."

The flashover ignited. "You know, Sal," Chim said with forced geniality, "it's a shame that you never made captain. I remember you keeping us going through all those shitty captains after Gerrard. You were good at it."

"I sense a 'but' coming," Sal said, clearly amused, which only made the Chim's anger burn hotter by sucking up all the oxygen in the room.

"But you are not a captain and you are definitely not the captain of the 118." He jabbed a finger into the desk. "You do not get to come into my house and lecture me about my job and tell me how to look after my people. And if Firefighter Buckley has an issue with the way I'm running this place then he can put on his big boy pants and come talk to me instead of running to the nearest dad shaped figure to fight his battles for him. We all miss Bobby but some of us have to be the actual grown up in the room!"

Now Sal's expression changed, but instead of the self-righteous fury he remembered Sal being so good at it, Sal just seemed sad. "Howie, do you even want to be captain?"

That shocked him out of his fury. "What kind of question is that?"

"An overdue one, I'm guessing." Sal looked around the office, taking in the blank walls and the few framed photos and, more irritatingly, the ill fitting way Chim sat behind the desk. "I was surprised when I heard Hen declined the captaincy. I had her marked down for climbing the ranks ever since that night she found the car we all missed. You remember that?"

He snorted. Did he remember the night he and Hen became partners? Like he could forget how Hen metaphorically kicked their asses into being brave enough to dump Gerrard.

"I faintly recall it," he said at his most snide.

That got Sal to smile. "That's when I knew that someday I'd be calling her chief." The smile dropped away. "But then I hear she turned Simpson down. She didn't want it anymore."

"Bobby was mentoring her. She stepped up as interim captain when he was away. She was the one making the hard decisions. That's how she got on Ortiz's shit list." He scrubbed a hand down his face. "She doesn't want it like this."

"Nobody wants it like this." Sal heaved an old man sigh. "Do you know why I became a union steward?"

"Well, Sal, if I had to guess, I'm going with the fact you got an anti-authority streak a mile wide and love to fight with the brass."

"Well, you're not wrong," Sal said, a flash of wry humor. "But I was here for Gerrard. I saw what he did to Tommy. It was worse for you and Hen, I know," Sal added before Chim could rightfully protest. "He ground us down and turned us into the worse version of ourselves."

"Us?"

"Me." Sal leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. "I hate who I was under Gerrard. I hate how I treated you. I hate that my own best friend didn't feel safe to come out to me for years. I hate that it took me so long to do the right thing. I won't let another firefighter go through what we did. I will not let the brass protect more Gerrards."

"Is this your superhero origin story?" Chim said, knowing he'd crossed the line from good natured shit talking to mean bastard, but he couldn't stop. "It doesn't have the same flair as Spider-Man's origin, but, hey, at least you get the power without the responsibility."

Sal leaned back and donned a wide smile. "I'm going to do you a favor, Howie, since you're an old friend and we were in the trenches together."

"Lucky me," he said dryly. "That favor better be getting Buck to cool it on the snickerdoodle front. If I have to so much as see another cookie I'm transferring him to Alaska. I don't care how much Theo likes him."

"I'll do you one better. I'm going to tell you the same thing I told Bobby back when Firefighter Diaz almost killed a guy." Sal's smile became that of a great white shark. "I shut down the 138. I made sure there was an investigation into the culture the captain fostered and the harassment he encouraged. Every single firefighter who participated in the systematic sexual harassment was fired and denied all benefits. I oversaw the transfer of those affected firefighters to good houses with good captains. I dug and documented and uncovered every terrible, horrific thing they did, and I burned it all down and put heads on pikes and I salted the fucking earth. There will never be another Gerrard. I will not allow it, not even if it's the 118 and not even if it's your head."

"You self-righteous asshole," Chim said quietly, so furious he couldn't take a full breath. "You think you scare me? I've been dealing with people like you my entire life. I survived Gerrard. So if you want my head, Deluca, you're gonna have to fight for it."

"Howie," Sal said, not gentle because the only people Sal were gentle with was his daughter and Tommy, but kind, "do you want to be captain?"

Chim threw up his hands because the only other option was throwing a punch. "What fucking difference does it make? Hen doesn't want it. Eddie and Buck aren't anywhere near being ready to take command."

"You're not the only senior firefighter here," Sal said.

"But I am the only who fucking cares."

That was, Chim realized too late to do any good, a horrifying thing to say about the 118. It was the same thing Gerrard said every shift, the little phrase that allowed him to turn people into things: Gerrard was the only who cared about the job.

"I didn't mean that," Chim said into the asphyxiating silence.

"How did you mean it?" Sal said with what certainly sounded like genuine curiosity.

He forced himself to take a breath and then another. He brought his shoulders down a notch. "If I didn't take the badge," he said slowly, carefully feeling his way through the sentence, "then we would be stuck with whoever Simpson assigned here. We wouldn't get another Gerrard. I know you won't let that happen." He wasn't even annoyed with the way Sal tipped his head in faux modesty. "But we had a lot of captains between Gerrard and Bobby. You remember what they were like, right? They weren't bad captains but they—”

"Didn't give a shit," Sal said. "I remember."

The exhaustion ate away the last of the anger. "I don't want to get some guy who doesn't care about this place or about family dinner or about us." God, he was so tired. "We're Bobby's legacy and that matters."

Sal nodded thoughtfully and said, "I gotta ask one more time. Howie, do you want to be captain?"

"You're killing me, Smalls," Chim groaned. "Why do you keep asking that? Are you actually gunning for my job?"

"I'm asking because what it sounds like to me is that you took this job because no one else would and you were afraid the station would get saddled with a--"

"Mook?" he suggested.

Sal flashed a smile. "Yeah, with another fucking mook." The smile faded. "But you didn’t want this job, not like how Hen did and how Buckley does. And I think you resent the hell out of everyone for not stepping up and forcing you to do it, and I think that’s eating away at you.”

"I don't," he protested. "I'm not saying I would have chosen this if it weren't for everything, but I don't resent them for it. I'm doing this for them and for Bobby. We're a family."

Sal looked at him like Chim was an unstable building and Sal was trying to figure out the safest way to evacuate everyone inside. And then, with devastating precision, he asked, "And when was the last time you had family dinner?"

"Last shift," he said automatically, and then: "Wait, we had that call and Buck didn't get a chance to cook when we got back. So the shift before that. Or on Sunday. One of those days."

“You don’t seem sure about that.”

Chim opened his mouth to tell Sal to stop harassing him in his own station, but Sal had the audacity to be right: he wasn’t sure the last time they all sat down to dinner together. Buck had taken over cooking duties, but dinner was served buffet style with everything laid out so the rest of them could come and eat when they wanted to. It wasn’t like they were all retreating to their separate corners—people tended to cluster around the tv, on the couch, at the table, or leaning against counters because they were all raised in a barn—but they weren’t eating together, not like they before. Chim closed his mouth.

“Yeah,” Sal said, almost sympathetic. “This is your house now and you’re not handling it well.”

“So,” Chim said cheerfully, “this is the part where I tell you to get the hell out of my house.”

“This is what I’ve observed in the time I’ve been here,” Sal said, terrifyingly serious. “You have accused Firefighter Buckley of going behind your back by bringing me in, stated that he is not entitled to his full family leave per California law because he is only fostering Theo and implied that Firefighter Buckley is a child. You admitted to setting the precedence for not using PTO that the people under your command are entitled to and are resentful that Firefighter Buckley any family leave at all. You then proceeded to make several unprofessional and disparaging remarks about a firefighter under your command to another member of the LAFD. Is this you handling it well, Captain Han?”

“Let me tell you what I’ve observed,” Chim shot back, forcing his hands to lay flat against the desk. “Everything you just said exclusively pertains to how I’m treating Buck, which isn’t helping your case that he doesn’t immediately go running to you when another kid is being mean to him on the playground. My actual four year old daughter doesn’t complain as much.”

“That is a hell of a thing to say about your brother-in-law,” Sal said, “and an actionable offense as his captain.”

“Jesus Christ.” He dragged his hands down his face. “I know he’s your brother-husband, but this is still Buck we’re talking about. I’ve known him longer than you. Hell, I’m the reason you two even met.”

“You thought he was being unfairly treated and brought in an union rep to help him,” Sal said, tone heavy with meaning.

“Worst mistake of my life. Now I’m stuck dealing with both of you until one of us dies.” That was, Chim once again realized too late, too mean and too honest. “Bad joke.”

“That wasn’t a joke,” Sal said.

He gritted his teeth, and said, “I admit that was out of line. My son wouldn’t go down last night. I’m operating on about an hour of sleep.”

“The thing is, Howie, I don’t fucking care.” And there was the Sal that he knew and barely tolerated. “And those people out there, your people, don’t care either. You’re the captain. You don’t get to be tired or cranky or a goddamn asshole just because you missed some sleep. You don’t get to take out your frustration and resentment on Buckley because he’s your brother-in-law and you think that makes him a safe target. As you so aptly put it, Captain Han, you have to be the grown up in the room but all I’m seeing is a child throwing a tantrum. And my actual child knows how to behave better.”

“Tell me how you really feel, Sal,” he said, too exhausted to work up more anger. A tension headache throbbed behind his right eye. All he wanted was five goddamn minutes of quiet where someone wasn’t crying or grieving or expecting him to fix the unfixable. All he wanted was to be left alone so he could remember how to be a person again. “I’m serious. Dig deep. Lay it on me.”

“No one wakes up and makes the decision to be a hateful asshole, not even Gerrard.” Sal sounded as tired as Chim felt. “We give ourself little permissions every day. Your kid kept you up last night so that gives you permission to disparage Buckley in front of his coworkers. You didn’t take your full family leave so no one else should either. You care more about this job than anyone else, which means you can treat them however you want.”

Chim winced. “I get it, okay? I’m being a real asshole.”

“You don’t actually get it,” Sal said, and Chim had never seen him look so sad, not when Tommy was in the hospital and not even when he got himself fired. “I told you I’m here as a courtesy since we’re old friends. What’s happening here, all these little permissions and excuses you give yourself, this is how you get a Vincent Gerrard.”

“And you won’t let that happen again,” Chim said through a mouth gone sick and sour with shame.

“I never liked Nash, but I liked what he did for his place and what he did for you. I don’t want to have to salt the 118’s earth, but I will if I have to.” Sal stood. He wasn’t the biggest guy Chim knew—that honor went to his brothers-in-law—but had a talent for for filling the room, and right now there was no space left for him. “You saved Tommy’s life, and I am forever grateful for that, but I won’t protect you if you keep going down this road. The next time I com here, it will be in an official capacity.”

“Good talk, Sal,” Chim said, unable to summon up even the thinnest sarcasm. “My favorite part was the explicit threat at the end.”

Sal flashed that shark smile. “Don’t be dramatic. You’ll know when I’m threatening you.” The smile softened into something approaching genuine affection. “If you going to do this, Howie, you gotta do it right. And you don’t have to do it at all if you don’t want to. You can step down.”

“That will be all, Firefighter Deluca,” Chim said.

“Good to see you, Captain Han.” Sal nodded at him and then finally got the hell out of Chim’s house.

Chim got a full four minutes of quiet before the bell went off and then another minute before Hen shouted, “We gotta go, Cap!”

Buckaroo. Christ. Buckley was twenty-eight, not twelve.

Buck shrugged. “They have us over for dinner.”

“Us?” said Howie.

Sal remembered what that tone of voice meant, but either Buck hadn’t learned or he was distracted by bouncing Maria to get her to laugh because he said, “Tommy and me.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sal muttered because Hen’s eyebrows were practically on the ceiling and Howie looked like the Grinch who had successfully stolen Christmas. Whatever Tommy was doing with the kid, and Sal really preferred not to speculate, was not these chucklefucks’ business, and the last thing he wanted was to witness Buck’s unintentional coming out. He cleared his throat. “Is Nash in?”

“He’s running late,” Howie volunteered. “His stepson missed the bus. He should be here soon.”

Diaz was still in the locker room engaged in the world’s slowest and most precise shoelace tying operation. “Let Nash know I’m waiting for him in his office,” Sal said, and strode off.

“Wait,” Howie shouted after him. “Why are you even here?”

Sal ignored him and let himself inside. This office has seen its fair share of captains, from Gerrard’s disgraceful occupation to the rotating cast of incompetent bastards’ brief stints to Nash’s tenure. It’d been repainted at some point in the last two years, the institutional white replaced with a pale blue. What looked to be a potted begonia was on the windowsill and a couple ailing succulents on the desk alongside pictures of what Nash’s wife and presumably step kids. He moved the succulents next to the begonia and took a seat.

The problem, Sal reflected as he began the Sisyphean task of clearing out the inbox, was that the 118 was like that house from the Grudge; you never really escaped it. The admittedly more pressing problem was the fact that Firefighter Edmundo Diaz had nearly killed a man.

What would Grandma Deluca have to say about this case? Well, first she would suck out another year of his life so she could keep living, but then she would use a gratuitous amount of profanity to remind him that Diaz was a dues paying member and his job was to keep have his union brothers’ backs.

But he heard the call. He read the paramedics’ report.

“What do you do with a problem like Maria?” he sang, and started skimming through the file Debrowski sent over.

By the time Nash came in, it’d become very clear that the captain of the 96 had fostered a classic case of hostile work environment, and Sal sent the procedure he’d developed for just that occasion.

“Deluca,” Nash said, still in his civvies, which meant he didn’t like that Sal left alone in the inner sanctum. “To what do we owe the pleasure? I haven’t had anything union related hit my desk.”

Sal kept his smile genial. “This is an unofficial visit. I wanted to see how Buckley was settling in.”

Nash gave him a long look that had probably set people who had not been raised by Grandma Deluca into Catholic guilt sweats. Sal just let a little more shark seep into the smile. “I’m already running behind,” Nash said, “So why don’t we cut to the chase and you tell me why you’re really here?”

Well, he was also behind schedule, and drag queen story time at the library filled up fast, and so Sal said, “Diaz is still on shift.”

Nash took a seat and folded his hands together. “Lena Bosco spoke to you.”

“I’m guessing about five minutes after she spoke to you.” He leaned back and set his right foot on his left knee.

Sal waited with interest to Nash’s rebuttal. He had money on Nash choosing to go on the offense—see his own dismissal—but Sal had put on him on the back foot, and so a defensive crouch wasn’t out of the question. But instead Nash leaned back, matching his posture to Sal’s, and said, “Out of all the union stewards, why did she go to you with her concerns?”

His first instinct was to shoot off his mouth, push back at Nash’s condescension, but as Gina liked to remind him, outside of a call and the union, his first instincts could be shit. And if this clusterfuck went bad, and it could go very bad, he needed Nash on his side.

“The brass closed down the 138 two years ago,” Sal said, matching his tone to Nash’s.

“I remember. Budget cuts, I believe.”

“Gotta love budget cuts. It’s such a useful cover for a litany of sins.” Sal watched that land. “Their captain was another Vincent Gerrard, but this guy was dug in deep. It wasn’t enough to remove him. He was in the walls. The whole place had to be burned down.”

“That was her old house,” Nash said.

“She got it the worst,” Sal said. “All those old horror stories you think don’t happen anymore. The slurs, the harassment. Some enterprising little fuck left pubic hair in her locker. Like I said,” he said to Nash’s grimace, “it all had to go. It was my first real case with the union, and I made sure that she got transferred to a good house with a good captain. And then I salted the earth and staked the 132’s head on a pike.” This time he let his smile go full Jaws. “That’s why Bosco came to me.”

“Oh, trust me, I don’t want to be across a table from you again,” Nash said, amused.

Five years ago that would have made him bristle, but Sal was a dad now, and his first thought when he held his daughter, after noting that she looked like an alien Winston Churchill, was that he had to get his shit together. He wasn’t going to be his father, who terrorized his wife and kids to make himself feel bigger and then died of a heart attacked at fifty-three instead of doing the right thing of dropping dead twenty years earlier.

So now he said, polite and mild, “Then Firefighter Diaz should be on leave until he at the very least completes an anger management course.”

Nash’s jaw clenched. “Eddie has been an exemplary member of the—”

“Oh, I know exactly what he is,” said Sal. “Graduated at the top of his class. Half the captains are still pissed you poached him, by the way. Did two tours in Afghanistan and earned a silver star on the second one, hasn’t gotten a single write-up or citation in his file, and has spent the last several weeks going to a underground fight club where he earned enough money to buy a really ugly truck to advertise the fact he is insecure in masculinity. What else?” He snapped his fingers as he pretended to rifle through his memory. “Oh, that’s right. He nearly beat a man to death.”

Nash was quiet for a long moment, and then he said, “I killed 148 people.”

“That is not the winning argument you think it is.” Sal cocked his head to the side. “They still have you on the weekly drug tests? I figure by the end of the year they’ll bump you down to monthly, provided you keep going to meetings.”

“My point,” Nash said, refusing to take the bait, “is that if I still have a career after that then so should Eddie.”

“And my point is that there was an investigation that ultimately cleared you, and you still have to prove you’re sober and fit to serve. How has Diaz proven his fitness?” At Nash’s silence, he added, “You listen to the 911 call yet?”

Sal had listened to it three times. Diaz had done his best to remain anonymous, but his cadence had given him away as a first responder. Diaz had been calm and professional right up until the end when his breathing had gone short and fast, and he said, “I didn’t mean to.”

Nash sighed. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Get off your high fucking horse. You think I want to be here in my free time instead of letting some drag queens read my daughter Goodnight Moon?” He took a deep breath. “For a guy who let his own fear block Buckley’s return, you sure are being cavalier about Diaz’s well established anger issues. I know about the incident with Buckley at the store,” he said when Nash opened his mouth. “And the fight club is an escalation.”

“What do you want me to do?” Nash asked, quiet.

“I want you to take this seriously,” he snapped, swinging his leg back to the floor. “I don’t know what they teach you in Minnesota, but the first thing we learn at the academy is that we don’t get to choose who we save. I save a kid from burning to death in a fire his father set to get the insurance money and that kid turns into a bomber who almost killed Buckley. Should I have left him to die?”

“Eddie has never been anything but professional,” Nash said. “There are people who would have died if not for him.”

“What happens when his loses his temper on a scene?” he asked. “What happens when you get a bad call and he decides he gets to pick who deserves to be saved and who deserves to die?”

Nash was quiet for a long moment. “I know my firefighters and I know what they’re capable of. I won’t let it get to that point.”

“You know,” Sal said, sanding, “I’ve never liked you, but the one thing you had going for you was the fact you weren’t Gerrard. Diaz beat a man so badly that shards of bone from his broken nose were lodged in his throat. It’s only pure luck that Diaz is not currently standing trial for murder.” He braced a hand on the desk and leaned in close. “So answer me this, Captain Nash, how long do you think itwill be until I’m salting the 118’s earth?”

Nash met his gaze, unflinching. “I appreciate you taking the time to bring me your concerns, Firefighter Deluca, but this is my house and I will handle this as I see fit.”

“Don’t make me regret sending Buckley back here.” He tapped his fist twice on the desk. “Thank you for your time, Captain.”

He was at the door when Nash said, “We all want to choose sometimes.”

“But we don’t. Diaz needs help and you’re his captain.” He checked the time. “You should get ready for shift. You’re due a call soon.”

Sal shut the door quietly behind and went to get his baby back. Buck was running inventory on the engine and keeping up a running commentary for Maria.

“And these are the jaws of life,” Buck said as Maria stared up at him with wide eyes. “We use these when a victim is trapped. I once had to pry someone out of a—”

“You know she has no idea what you’re saying,” Sal said, pleased when Maria made a happy noise and reached for him. “Save the stories for when she can appreciate them.”

Buck rolled his eyes, but wrangled a squirming Maria free from the sling. “We both gotta get in there before Tommy. He flies a helicopter. You know she’s gonna think that’s cooler.”

“I’m well aware,” he said dryly, and then blew a raspberry on Maria’s belly, savoring the happy baby shrieks. He’ll give Nash this much, if Maria died, he would never go back to being a firefighter because he would have put a bullet in his brain. “Hey, kid. Buck. You know you can always come to me if anything is wrong here.”

“I'm already sold on the union,” Buck said, pausing from untangling the sling to turn giant cartoon deer eyes on him. “Wait. Why were you in with Cap? Is somethingwrong?”

“Just doing a spot check,” he said as Maria, cradled against his shoulder, mouthed at his shirt. “Now if you excuse me, those drag queens wait for no one.” He made it three steps before turning back. “Oh, Gina wants you and Tommy over by seven on Tuesday. She’s got depositions that morning and really wants to blow off some steam.”

“I already have everything to make cocktails,” Buck said. “I really think she’s gonna like Sex On The Beach.”

“Low hanging fruit, kid,” he said because Buck was clearing waiting for a reaction. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”

The sun was out in full force, and Maria grumbled and pressed her face into the damp patch she made. Sal crossed himself and then her, just in case the 118’s bullshit tried to stick to them. Either Nash would deal with Diaz or it would fall to him, but right now it wasn’t his problem.

“All right, gremlin,” he said, hoisting her up higher, “let’s go make your Uncle Tommy jealous by getting cooed over by drag queens.”