I made a friend today!

WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS MY FAVORITE TELEVISION SERIES OF ALL TIME (it's not out yet)

AU where Buck goes to save the kid on the electrical tower but it's not Theo. It's somehow a de-aged Tommy.

Idea 1 - Maybe Tommy is actually 4 and doesn't know who he is but Buck figures it out as the day goes by with clues Tommy gives him and Tommy slowly remembers who he is.

I'll make a new post and link to this prompt when it's done, but here's a peek of the progress:

“Don't want to go down.” He looks back up again and without returning his gaze to Buck says, “You don't have to stay.”

“Uh, yeah. I really do, Thomas. I can't leave you up here alone. There's a lot of people worried about you and we're not leaving without making sure you're safe.”

“Worried?” Thomas asks and Buck's relieved when he looks at him again, certain the kid is going to fall if he keeps staring up at the sky.

“Yeah. Like I'm really worried about you right now. I really wish you'd come ride down with me so we could talk somewhere safer.”

The boy's mouth flattens and the expression sends goosebumps down Buck's arms despite the heat and his layers of gear. Before Buck can chase down the reason for the feeling, he realizes what that expression means.

The kid is baffled by the concept of someone worrying over him.

“Why did you climb up here?” Buck asks. He knows everyone on the ground is watching and if he doesn't make some progress…

The boy looks at him again, wariness cracking through that blankness. Somehow it makes him look even less like a child.

Instead of answering, the boy looks down. Buck flinches forward as if he could even catch him right now if he fell.

“If I go back down… what happens?”

“What would you like to have happen?” Buck asks, sensing that the real answers to the boy’s question will not inspire the kid to leave his perch.

The boy looks up at Buck and all the blank indifference is wiped away. Worse than the blankness, worse than the disconnected tears, there's hurt and even fear in his eyes.

It's a punch in the gut meeting that gaze because Buck knows those eyes.

“Don't make me go home,” the boy whispers.

Thomas whispers.

Thomas. Tommy. It makes no sense and Buck should be wondering if Tommy's got a kid he maybe doesn't know about but that thought doesn't even occur to Buck because it's not like looking at Tommy, he's looking at Tommy.

1. Tommy's maxed on flight time for the week, but the train derailment is an all hands. He gets onto a ground crew and they book it to the crash site. He's there for all of four minutes before he hears a woman in near hysterics, upset about someone in the upper car. When Tommy looks around, he sees his ex-fiance and runs toward her. "Abby?" he calls, realizing she must've been on the train. He knows she's not at dispatch anymore, but he doesn't know what the hell she was doing on a train. "Tommy," she says, barely able to speak around her panicked breaths. "It's Sam, he--he's--" Tommy doesn't know who Sam is, but he reassures her that he'll look for him and sees the photo. Then he turns to the almost dazed firefighter who she'd been talking to. "C'mon," he says, nodding toward the car. As they start to walk toward it, a third firefighter in tow, Tommy says, "Sorry to step in like that. She's actually my ex." And the third firefighter says, "Oh, you two should start a club." Tommy's about to ask him to clarify, but then he sees Bobby Nash.

2. In the train car, Tommy has the idea to use a helicopter to lift part of the beam or car away, but no one's nearby. There's medevac on the way for critical patients, but there's no one coming for utility. "Anyone have one I can borrow?" Tommy asks, only kind of joking. There's a tension between Bobby and Buckley, the guy Abby had been talking to, and Tommy's instinct is to break it even as he tries to work through the problem. He helps Buckley with Sam while he's trying to comfort/help him, and they keep Sam talking. Buckley is so earnest and concerned that Tommy feels like he should be comforting him, too. But the last thing Tommy wants is for Abby to hurt again, so he pulls Buckley aside and says, "We have to do something. They're not going to pick him to save." And Buckley thinks for a moment and comes up with an idea to cut into the car from the outside, since the material is thinner. Tommy calls Harbor and tells them to get a chopper out ASAP. "I'll be able to get you up there, I can pull you away if it gets dangerous, but I need you to tell me if you hear it starting to go. If that car pulls that line, it's not just you that goes down, my chopper could crash and kill me, my copilot, and a lot of people on the ground, do you understand?" he says firmly, and Buckley nods with huge eyes. "Okay. I'm trusting you to keep us all safe." "I-I will," Buckley says, nodding. "I promise." And Tommy smiles. "What's your name, kid?" he asks. "Uh, Evan. Buckley. Buck." "I'm Tommy," he says, and Evan smiles like he's been waiting to hear it all night.

3. Bobby is wholly against it, and there's a really weird argument about it. Tommy steps in and points to the air right as they start to hear two choppers, one medevac and his. "He won't be attached to the train. He'll be attached to me." And Bobby looks at him for a long moment and asks, "Are you as good a pilot as you made it sound?" And Tommy, yanking off his turnout coat, smiles and says, "C'mon, Bobby, you know how modest I used to be. I'm better." He jogs out to an empty stretch of land and signals the chopper to him. When he hops in, he sits in the copilot seat and tells Art, "I'm taking over." And Art, who's been working with Tommy long enough to know better, hands over control and heads to the back to be the one to drop the line, since Buckley doesn't know how to drop from a chopper, though he'd been willing to find out. Tommy likes the kid's enthusiasm, but he has zero sense of self-preservation. He's adorable, though. But he gets Evan hooked and lifts him up to the point where he needs to cut through, and Tommy has an eye on him the whole time, ready to yank him away if the car starts falling. When he sees Sam getting brought down in the basket, Tommy dangles Evan from the line and sets him carefully on the ground, hovering until Evan unclips himself and waves wildly to signal that he's clear.

4. On the ground, Tommy runs up to Abby and Sam, and Sam looks at him and Buckley and says, "So you're Buck and Tommy." And Tommy looks over at Evan and then back to Abby, and she chuckles nervously. "So this is, uh, kind of awkward," she says to Tommy. "But this was who I was seeing after...you." And Tommy very kindly doesn't point out that Evan looks young now and they broke up four years ago. But they wave them off into the ambulance, and Evan looks at Tommy like he's personally betrayed him. "Wait, you're the ex that left her when Patricia got sick?" he demands. "Uh, no, I'm the ex that left her because he realized couldn't pretend to be a straight guy for the rest of his life, and my timing sucked," Tommy corrects, and Evan blinks uncomprehendingly. "I'm gay. She's a woman. So..." "Oh!" Evan says, understanding. "Oh. That's, uh, not what she said happened." "It was kind of implied more than outright said," Tommy admits. "I wasn't out out yet." And Evan trips through this thing about being an ally, and Tommy thinks it's kind of adorable but ridiculous. But Evan closes his rambling out by saying: "Also, you're such a good pilot. That was...amazing. I've never done anything like that before." And Tommy hesitates before offering to take him up for real, inside an actual chopper instead of dangling outside. "I could even teach you. My fees are competitive," he teases, and Evan flushes and nods and gets Tommy's phone number.

5. He doesn't know what happened, but Abby calls him (he's had the same cell number since 2012) and asks him if he really is gay. "Last I checked," he says, putting the phone on speaker so he can keep putting away groceries. "Sorry I didn't tell you." "It would've been nice," she says, and he side-eyes his phone at her tone. He hated bickering with her, it always got ugly. "Sorry, I was kind of going through a lot," he says, rolling his eyes. "So was I," she says. "I'm not saying you weren't, obviously you were, but it was separate from what I was going through. I'd been trying to deal with being gay since I was thirteen, and you know what my dad was like," he says, because she was the last partner he'd had that met his father before he cut off contact. "Imagine being raised by that at the time that I was growing up. I'm sorry that you were the person I was with when I was still in denial, but you can't act like I just left you for no reason or even owed you an explanation that I wasn't personally ready to give. I was honest when I told you I couldn't keep doing it and that there was stuff I was figuring out. I gave you a clean break, I didn't let you keep thinking there was a chance." "Wow, fuck you. That's so low," she says. "Did you and Buck talk?" He's now crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at the phone. "No, why? Did he do that to you?" he asks, even though he doesn't give a shit. "No, I...I did it to him," she admits, and he throws his hands up in frustration. "So why the fuck am I the only asshole here when you apparently let some guy think there was a chance when you weren't interested?" he asks. "Look, I need to go. I'm about to be late for a training session. Glad Sam's okay, have a good wedding." And he hangs up and scrubs his hand over his face, more than ready to go punch and kick something for a while.