#fire fire

9:27 PM EDT April 4, 2025:

Motörhead - "Fire, Fire" From the album Ace of Spades (October 27, 1980)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

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@bibuckanniversarybingo

Prompts - Cooking & First Kiss.

Buck decides he needs to make new friends and ends up finding more than that in a cooking class.

Ao3

***

When Buck met Alex, it was at a cooking class.  Neither of them needed a cooking class – Buck had Bobby and Alex had his dad – but Buck had decided he needed somewhere other than a bar to make a new friend after Eddie’s move, and as it turns out Alex just loved food enough to use a cooking class as a way to make friends in LA, too. 

Alex’s move to LA had been sudden after he got a job at non-profit law office where he could make a difference, and he wanted a friend he could see all the time because despite being friends with Liam, Henry, and Nora (all of his best friends have seen him naked, which Buck finds hilarious), and his sister, June, none of them live in California and he really wanted a friend that lives near him to hang out with. 

So, they both ended up partner-less in a cooking class and paired up together. 

The moment of connection was an easy one as the two of them had a lot in common.  Buck loved learning all about the law, the history, the politics that Alex was aware of as First Son of the United States (which Buck didn’t realize was a famous thing) and Alex loved learning all about Buck’s adventures and firefighting.  They both quickly realized that they’re bi and bonded over their self-discoveries, teasing each other about realizing that there were clues that should’ve been obvious.

They both wanted to spend time outside of class together and soon started going to Buck’s loft to cook together (and other things – watching movies, debating various topics, enjoying one another’s company), but it always started off with cooking.

“You know Bobby always says that cooking is a great bonding experience,” Buck says, one day long after their class sessions ended and months after they first met and became friends.  “I think maybe he was onto something.”

“I think so, too.  It was like the one thing I had with my dad besides the lake house that I actually felt like he cared to do with me until I was able to legally drink and have those Los Bastardos nights with him and Raf.”  Alex laughs.  “Although now that I know that they’re together, I can’t help wondering if I was crashing their date nights.”

Buck laughs.  “You’d think they would have better dates that drinks at a bar.  That’s like an intro date – you know, the kind you have when you’re not sure you’d want to commit to a whole evening.”

“I’ve never really thought of that, there are levels to dating?”

He hums.  “Yup, according to my first serious girlfriend – who being sixteen years older had quite the experience I didn’t (at least actually going on dates wise) – there’s a coffee date that’s first.  It’s usually used as like a fifteen-minute interlude (often in the middle of the day) to see if you’d want to commit to drinks.  Drinks are more serious.  They’re at night, and there’s the option to have more than one if things are going well, but you aren’t forced to stay through a whole meal if things go haywire at the appetizer.”

“Haywire?”

“I had one date that I absolutely should have followed the date hierarchy – if I had, I would have realized at coffee that it was not going to go well… it didn’t help when my sort-of roommate (he was crashing with me but not exactly paying rent, it was meant to be short-term) started dating her after that.  It was short-lived but terrible.”

Alex chuckles.  “Go on.  What’s next, then?”

“Dinner – out in public.  Somewhere that is nice but not too intimate.  Then, dinner and a movie.  Still out in public.  Then, once things have actually begin to seem serious – dates at home.  Things you can do at home together – Cooking together, watching movies and tv, just relaxing together.”

“So that means that we’re at the home dates and you haven’t even asked me out, yet.  Subtle, Buck, subtle.”

His words cause Buck to stop stirring the stew to look Alex in his warm chocolate eyes.  “I – uh, - you … you want to date me?”

Buck can honestly say that he had definitely found Alex attractive – how could he not?  The man was like an Adonis – a runner’s body with warm eyes, and dark curls (if a little short) – but he committed himself to not being interested in his friends.  No matter how flirty Alex is or how easy it would be slip into bed with him.

Alex flushes.  “Well, I – I tried to just be normal about you, but apparently, I have problems finding hot men with blondish hair that are taller than me not attractive and ever since you mentioned being bi I haven’t been able to stop thinking about kissing you …” he shakes his a little, “but if you just want to be friends –”

Buck cuts him off with turning his face towards him and kissing him with all the built-up passion that he’d been trying to deny. 

The kiss is so nice.  Alex’s lips taste like the stew that they’d be taste testing and that strawberry chapstick he always has. 

He knows he should lean back sooner rather than later, but he doesn’t want their first kiss to end, especially as they melt together.  Sliding together like two puzzle pieces, fitting perfectly.

When they finally break apart, Buck says, “I’ve been trying to be just friends with you because I didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship, but, uh, I – would you want to go out to dinner?  Some other night – a date … planned.  Not subtle at all.”

Alex grins.  “No need for the coffee or drink dates?”

“Nah, I already know I want this for the long haul,” Buck assures him.

“Good, then I’m in.”

The Fractured Equilibrium

The valley of Veridion had always been a place of quiet wonder, where mist curled over emerald hills and rivers murmured secrets only the trees could understand. But beneath its beauty lay a truth as delicate as spun glass—reality here was not fixed, but a careful balance of light and shadow. Few noticed the fragility of their world. Fewer still understood it.

That changed when the Cult of Maelthara arrived.

Led by the enigmatic Oracle Lysandra, they preached liberation from the “tyranny of truth.” To them, reality was a malleable thing, a canvas for those daring enough to reshape it. With each ritual they performed, the valley unraveled—rivers reversed their flow, time splintered into discordant threads, and lies solidified into unbreakable stone. The people of Veridion, their memories shifting like candle flames in the wind, found themselves trapped in a waking dream where nothing was certain.

The Seer and the Glass

Amara, the town’s apothecary, had long been a keeper of quiet truths. She spoke little, worked diligently, and held in her possession a single relic of power—a silver-rimmed glass, filled with water from the Spring of Clarity. For generations, her ancestors had guarded it, for its surface reflected not illusion, but the world as it truly was.

The night the first star fell from Veridion’s sky, Amara knew something had gone terribly wrong. The glass, once still and pure, trembled in its frame. Whispers curled at the edges of her vision, shadows stretching where no light should cast them. Then, a frantic knock at her door.

A farmer stumbled inside, his breath ragged. "The fields… they're unraveling." His voice cracked, his hands clutching his skull as though his thoughts were slipping away. Amara lifted the glass.

The water had turned opaque, writhing with black tendrils.

Reality was breaking.

The Cult’s Deception

The Cult of Maelthara did not conquer with force; they seduced with visions. Their sigils, etched into stone and soil, bled power into the land, reshaping it at their whim. Children forgot the faces of their own parents. Names became smoke in the wind. Those who resisted found their reflections shifting, becoming strangers in their own skins.

And at the center of it all was Lysandra. She was a woman of impossible beauty, her voice a melody of promises. Yet when Amara studied her through the glass, she saw the cracks—her form flickering, her skin stretched thin, as though held together only by the weight of her own deceptions.

The Shattering

Guided by the trembling glass, Amara descended into the sanctum beneath the hollowed mountain, where the Cult’s power was woven most deeply. There, Lysandra stood before a mirror of liquid mercury, her fingers weaving illusions into the air.

"You fight for a world of cages," she murmured, turning to Amara. "Why not let it be reborn?"

Amara said nothing. She lifted the glass.

The moment the water caught the sanctum’s light, it erupted. A blinding geyser of clarity tore through the chamber, slamming into the mercury mirror. The surface shattered, shards of falsehood slicing through the air. The sigils burned, then crumbled, their power unraveling like frayed thread.

Lysandra screamed. The illusions she had spun recoiled upon her, revealing the truth beneath—the radiant oracle was gone. In her place stood a withered husk, a woman hollowed by her own sorcery. As reality righted itself, her body disintegrated into dust, her final whisper an anguished cry:

"This… isn’t fair."

The Mending

By dawn, the valley of Veridion lay bruised but whole. The rivers flowed true once more, and the sky, though scarred, no longer wept false stars.

Amara knelt among the ruins of the sanctum, the silver-rimmed glass shattered at her feet. Yet as sunlight struck the broken shards, something stirred. Piece by piece, the fragments drifted together, reforging into a single, unbroken vessel. The water within gleamed—clear once more, the world’s balance restored.

Karma, Amara realized, was not a force of wrath, but of correction. A thread snapping into place. A lie meeting its glass.

Epilogue: The Vigil

The glass sits on Amara’s windowsill now, catching the morning light. Villagers come to her, speaking of fleeting shadows, of whispers just beyond hearing. She listens. She watches.

And sometimes, when the valley is quiet, the glass quivers—just slightly.

A reminder that reality is both delicate and resilient. That truth, once broken, can always be mended.