#I have so many things I have to do for 911hiatus

[djdangerlove]

I have so much to do and so little attention span to do it.

[les-pompiers118]

The road home

9-1-1 ficlet | 2x03 coda | 1.3K words | rated Teen

I'm back with my little asphalt truck full of words to fill in the cracks between episodes, for @911hiatus' Week 4 prompt, "refuge." We were truly robbed (robbed!) of seeing the scene when Buck meets Chris for the first time. So here ya go: the first ever Buckley-Diaz Family Moment.

“So, you made it through your first natural disaster,” Buck says to break the silence in the car. The radio’s off, the road is practically empty by L.A. standards, and the power’s still out on a lot of blocks. Staying quiet just makes the night feel that much eerier.

Eddie huffs. “You say that like there’s going to be a lot more of them.”

Buck steers them smoothly around the curve of an offramp. Okay, maybe now isn’t the best time to suggest that disasters are going to be a regular thing, while they’re on their way to pick up Eddie’s son at his school after a big earthquake. Even though he knows Christopher is safe, Eddie’s not going to be alright until he lays eyes on his kid. Buck gets that.

“I just meant that it was an intense day for someone who’s only been on the job for a few weeks. You okay?”

“Not my first rodeo, Buck. Warzones, remember?”

Eddie’s smiling in the dark beside him, Buck can tell, which means he’s not offended. “Yeah, but earthquakes are a different kind of warzone. The only enemy here was, uh—”

“Gravity?” Eddie finishes for him.

“I was gonna say tectonic plates, but yeah, gravity was definitely working against us today.”

“That elevator, man. Crazy.”

“Pfft, yeah,” Buck agrees.

“How many disasters have you worked, exactly? You’ve only been doing this for, what, a year?”

Buck tilts his head in acknowledgement. “This would be my second. There was that plane crash last winter, the one that went down right off the beach by LAX. Not a natural disaster, obviously, but a major incident.”

“Oh, wow. That must have been something.”

“It was… pretty bad.”

Eddie doesn’t say more, and Buck thinks he’s done with this particular subject, but then he asks tentatively, “What did you do afterwards? I mean, after your shift ended? How did you deal with it?”

Buck shivers, remembering the cold water and the smell of jet fuel that clung to them all on the ride back to the station. He remembers Bobby’s uncharacteristic silence and how his own thoughts kept going back to Abby and that call she took from a passenger on the plane. She was the last person that guy talked to, a faceless voice coming through his phone, and there was nothing she could do to help him.

“I, uh, took a long, hot shower and got myself cleaned up,” Buck answers after a long pause. “And then I went home and watched TV for a few hours, I think. Sitcoms, reality shows, dumb stuff like that. Anything but the fucking news.”

“So you just try to put it out of your head as quickly as possible?” Eddie asks, sounding skeptical.

“And sleep. That helps too.” Buck grins over at him in the light of some oncoming headlights. “Isn’t that what you guys did in an actual warzone, when shit went down?”

Eddie chuckles. “Sort of. It was a little bit harder to take off the uniform and drive away from it all at the end of the day, though. And the sleeping part wasn’t always as easy, depending on where we were.”

“I bet. Hey, we’re almost there,” Buck says, bending closer to his phone to look at the GPS map. “Should I park in the lot?”

“No, just pull up to the front doors. They said they’d be waiting for me right inside.”

Buck has barely put the car in park before Eddie’s out and running towards the school. Leaning across the passenger seat, he watches Eddie’s silhouette against the brightly lit hallway beyond the glass doors, his impatient little shuffle while he waits to be buzzed in. And then he’s through and down on his knees to hug a kid who looks impossibly small next to the teacher standing there.

Buck’s throat suddenly gets tight and he blinks hard. He can almost feel the relief in that hug, the fierce love. God.

Eddie talks with the teacher for a minute, then scoops Christopher up and carries him out. Through the open window of the Jeep, Buck can hear Eddie’s voice, reassuring and cheerful, as they approach.

“Where’s your truck?” Christopher asks as his dad opens the back door and sets him into the booster seat.

“Some bricks fell off the back of the firehouse during the earthquake and broke the windshield,” Eddie explains. “I’ll have someone come fix it tomorrow, but tonight we get a chauffeur. This is Buck. He’s a firefighter, too. Buck, meet Christopher.”

Buck twists around to see into the back seat better. Christopher smiles right back at him under the dome light, all baby teeth and brown curls. Something grips the inside of Buck’s chest, both painful and sweet.

“Nice to meet you, Christopher,” he says. “One-way trip to the Diaz residence, coming right up.”

Chris cranes his neck a little to talk to Buck as Eddie gets him buckled in. “You and my dad work together? At the firehouse?”

“Yup.”

“Is he doing a good job so far?”

Eddie bursts out laughing and wraps one hand around Christopher’s head to plant a kiss on top of it. “Are you asking for my report card, kiddo? I don’t think it’s time for me to get one, just yet. And Buck’s not my captain.”

“He’s doing great,” Buck assures Christopher. “He’s taking to it like a duck to water. Just jumped right into the pond with a big splash and started swimming.”

That earns him a giggle from Christopher and a barely-concealed smile from Eddie.

Buck gets their address and they set off again. Thankfully, they don’t have far to go and none of the streets are blocked off. Christopher tells his dad about his extra-long day at school and what they got to do after the earthquake instead of their usual subjects. It sounds like the teachers pulled out all the stops to make sure the kids weren’t scared while they waited to be picked up—movies, games, and music in the gymnasium.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come get you sooner,” Eddie says over his shoulder. “There were a lot of calls coming in today.”

“It’s okay, Dad. You were helping people. And I got to make a volcano with the science teacher!”

“See?” Buck says to Eddie across the front seat. “Another natural disaster already.”

“Two in one day. I’m gonna need a few extra sitcoms tonight, I guess.”

Buck glances into the rearview mirror, where he can just see Christopher’s face in the booster seat, and tells Eddie quietly, “I think you have something better than TV to help you put the day behind you.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Buck can tell he’s smiling again.

It’s almost 9:00 PM when they pull into Eddie’s driveway. Buck expects to reverse right back out again and make his way to Abby’s apartment, but Eddie turns to him after he shuts off the engine.

“I know it’s kind of late, but do you want to come in for a bit? I can make us something to eat after I get Chris to bed. It’s just frozen pizza, but you’d be welcome to it.”

Eddie sounds tentative, Buck thinks, maybe because he’s a little embarrassed about the pizza (which Buck would gladly devour right now), or because they don’t really know each other all that well yet. Until this morning, Buck didn’t even know he had a kid. And now here he is at the end of the same day, parked in front of Eddie’s tiny mission revival house and being offered dinner.

“Come on,” Eddie coaxes. “It’s the least we can do to thank you for the ride.”

“Yeah, come inside,” Christopher chimes in eagerly.

Buck looks out at the house again. This is Eddie’s home and refuge, the center of his life outside the firehouse. He and Christopher are inviting Buck into their little world tonight, if only for frozen pizza. There’s a cricket singing somewhere in the bushes, and the porchlight casts a cozy, golden glow over the lawn, beckoning him.

“All right,” Buck says at last. “I will.”