#rima.txt

[rimatsu]

tommy really told buck "i'd never recover from losing you if i let myself believe i can keep you forever" (paraphrasing) and i'm supposed to accept their breakup as a permanent thing. like that's not insanely romantic in the most miserable of ways

[rimanowa]

i miss my wife (long blonde hair woozi)

[rimatsu]

screenshots that make me feel insane

[rimatsu]

*foaming at the mouth like a rabid animal* once again i ask what was the point of this scene if a breakup was always on the near horizon? why distinguish tommy as a love interest who received bobby's stamp of approval if it held no particular significance? why make tommy the perfect partner for buck on paper (attentive, caring, makes buck a priority and indulges his whims, understands the demands and risks of the job, linked to the 118 outside of his relationship with buck, an interesting character in his own right who can open up the door to more aerial emergencies) just to waste that potential?

[rimatsu]

this is the direct precursor to the masks' dynamics bc you can clearly see the inner spoiled brat laying dormant in buck threatening to emerge from his cocoon. but after 2.5 dates, propriety and decorum are still holding him back in his chrysalis. so he just sighs and pouts in disappointment until tommy gives him a Look and a placating hug. awesome stuff

[rimatsu]

they need to tie the knot and adopt a cat, a dog and 2 kids before 9x18 i'm so serious

[rimatsu]

i'd rather the helicopter crash after the reconciliation. but i can see the appeal of buck keeping tommy's heart beating after being told he'll inevitably break it. the poetic irony of cpr <3

[rimatsu]

tommy was waiting in the hospital alongside the 118 for updates on denny! tommy was there for buck but he was also there for hen!! tommy helped set up decorations for christopher's birthday call!!! tommy received bobby's stamp of approval!!!!! tommy never denies chimney a favor!!!!! he was part of the posse, welcomed included integrated!!!! and i'm supposed to be normal about their breakup!!!!!

[rimatsu]

one of my favorite scenes actually. buck is still under the illusion/impression of heterosexuality and threatened friendship but he presses pause on the misdirected & misinterpreted jealousy to beam at tommy. no animosity just pure glee at finally being in his orbit. and then he stares after him in a slight daze because his crush is breathless and sweaty. followed by another smile bc his stupid plan to be included worked. but it's still not clicking. yayyy tommy smiled at me!! :D oh i can sorta see his nipples :o i'm definitely jealous of him and his glistening arms. he's my rival my archenemy my nemesis :DD

[rimatsu]

from tommy's narrow perspective, rejection isn't a deterrent for buck: when he's set on something, he pursues it — doubles down on it, even weighted down by a bruised ego. buck was told he wasn't ready for a public outing, was left abruptly on the sidewalk, and he still asked tommy for that coffee date to plead his case.

i don't think tommy ever expected buck to chase after him that night, but a part of him probably hoped for it anyway, desperate to be proven wrong again, and inaction might as well be confirmation in his eyes: he gave buck time and distance to reexamine their whole relationship and silence was his answer. the guy who fights for what he wants doesn't want to fight for him. ergo buck never truly wanted a future with him, their weeks apart were sobering, and tommy made the right call, can trust his own judgment. vindicated in the worst myopic of ways.

[rimatsu]

alcoholic hallucinosis

bucktommy, m, 2k words. read on ao3 Alcohol has dulled his sense and alertness enough that alarm bells don't immediately go off when the camera tilts back to reveal a wider shot of Buck's wooden headboard. It's only when the video shakes and refocuses on a familiar head of chestnut curls that Eddie begins to regret every life decision that brought him to this particular moment. (In which Eddie receives an unsolicited, accidental sex tape.)

Eddie is 12 hours into a 48 off when his phone pings with a new text notification.

Outside, the blue haze of daylight has lifted to reveal the moon. He's been languishing on the couch with a drink and bad TV as his sole company for longer than initially planned. There's a tiny gulp of amber liquid left at the bottom of his Glencairn glass where grains of charred wood have started to sediment. It's the barrel-proof stuff, casket-aged and bold and explosively flavorful, pricy and usually reserved for special occasions.

Eddie isn't the type to indulge for no reason, but he figures he deserves a treat after dealing with Gerrard's machiavellian schemes at work and withering familial radio-silence courtesy of his son. The text he's sent this morning — three whole paragraphs detailing his week and asking about Christopher's new friends and the robotics club he's joined — had only garnered a thumb-up in response

So it's 9:48pm and Eddie is 2 fingers away from buzzed, and he's watching fictional characters make mistakes more disastrous than his own stupid blunders with a pleasant fog cushioning his thoughts, eyelids heavy and guards down, and naturally that’s when Buck decides to send a cryptic video his way.

Eddie is used to receiving pictures and random factoids and links to obscure forums whenever Buck descends into one of his manic research deep dives, but they usually come with some key context. The newest addition to their chat log is a lone clip, with no caption or introduction or explanatory details. It's about 12 minutes long and the preview thumbnail is mostly indecipherable: brown, blurry with motion and too close to the lens for identification.

Against his better judgement, Eddie shrugs, mutes the TV and taps play on the video file.

Alcohol has dulled his sense and alertness enough that alarm bells don't immediately go off when the camera tilts back to reveal a wider shot of Buck's wooden headboard. It's only when the video shakes and refocuses on a familiar head of chestnut curls that Eddie begins to regret every life decision that brought him to this particular moment. His eyes bug out as he tries to compute what he's seeing unfold in rapid increments, something like dread settling in the pit of his stomach.

On his screen and in his hand and in HD resolution, Buck’s right cheek is smashed into a pillow, face sweaty and so red his birthmark no longer stands out against the backdrop of his skin. His mouth is an open wound gasping for air, and there are thick-knuckled fingers twisted in his hair, keeping him down. His brows are furrowed like he's in agony, except that's not pain twisting his features; it's not the expression that haunts Eddie from a half-dozen near tragedies and hospital visits — no, that's a face crumpled in uncomplicated pleasure.

“Arch up, sweetheart,” comes out of the tiny speakers, and that's Tommy's voice, laced with something unrecognizable, low and warm and whiskey-soaked like the scotch Eddie has been sipping all evening; loud because he’s holding the phone this was filmed on, because that's his hand cradling the back of Buck’s skull, big and proprietary and unrelenting. “Give me something nice to look at.”

Eddie's entire central nervous system shuts down after hearing that request, and he’s left gaping at his screen, stunned stupid, staring unblinkingly and in morbid fascination the way passerbys might gawk at a car crash, awful but ultimately fascinating.

Distantly, Eddie wonders if he’s perhaps experiencing some acute form of alcoholic hallucinosis.

Now, he’s borne witness to his fair share of disturbing sights throughout the years — viscera and gore, absurd accidents and gruesome deaths. With two military tours under his belt, he’s developed quite the steel core; Eddie knows how to push past shock to go through necessary motions. Still, no amount of training and field experience could've prepared him for this, because in the next second the video frame shifts again, pans down Buck’s neck and the broad expense of his back and along the sine wave of his spine—

And yep. That's definitely a POV shot of Eddie’s best friend taking it up the ass.

When his synapses start firing again a heartbeat later, horror cuts through the petrified and intoxicated daze clouding Eddie’s brain like a punch to the sternum, sudden and sobering.

“Oh my God!” he screams, shrill and panicked and undignified, and then does the instinctual thing, which is to toss his phone across the room like it's contaminated by the bubonic plague.

It lands facedown near the TV console with a loud thud. Unfortunately, the distance does nothing to muffle the telltale, slick and rhythmic noises of skin-on-skin or the pornographic grunts of masculine pleasure coming out of the loudspeakers, resonating against the walls of his too quiet house.

Eddie stares at the mobile device like it’s radioactive, the tip of his ears burning hot in embarrassment and delayed indignation.

What kind of sick fucking joke is this?

Badly-lit, homemade, amateur porn. Of the gay variety. Starring Buck and his boyfriend — his two closest companions these days. That's what Buck shared with him tonight for some depraved, incomprehensible reason. Because he's apparently a lunatic with no understanding of the concept of privacy or boundaries or socially acceptable behavior. Either that or Buck is experiencing a stroke, or being hacked, or this is his way of letting Eddie know he’s been kidnapped, or maybe it’s all a huge mistake they’ll maybe laugh at ten years from now when Eddie can remember this moment without wanting to gouge his eyes out of their sockets.

Eddie presses the heels of his palms into his lids until stars replace the afterimage seared onto his retina, and then prays for deliverance from this wretched, godless existence.

"Daddy," he hears, rough and saliva-garbled and pleading, and nope.

No.

Absolutely not.

Eddie scrambles for his phone so he can put a stop to the auditory torture. Since his life is a joke, the jump over the coffee table he attempts in his haste proves to be too perilous for his tipsy, uncoordinated limbs. His toes get caught in the folds of his area rug and he ends up a screeching, scandalized heap on the floor.

"Ow!" Eddie yelps, a few feet from his phone that is still taunting him with moans.

Once he finally manages to press the side button, Eddie collapses back on the ground, hands shaking with residual adrenaline. His screen is cracked and his knees are throbbing from the force of his fall, but silence sounds so blissful Eddie can barely find it in himself to be irritated.

He flips on his back and stares at the ceiling, suddenly exhausted.

Maybe Eddie is the problem. Maybe he’s an enabler who invited his own misfortune.

Buck has always been prone to over-sharing, but there had been a time early in his relationship with Tommy when he had acted unusually tight-lipped. In the spirit of unconditional support, Eddie had reiterated that nothing had to change between them — that Buck didn’t need to censor himself just because he was seeing a man.

(“So you want the details?” Buck had asked, eyebrows raised skeptically.

Eddie had made an unimpressed face in answer. “I never want the details, but it’s not like that ever stopped you before.”

“Your funeral,” Buck had said with a grin and a shrug, and then spent the next few minutes recounting the epic tale of his ‘tumultuous journey to rid himself of his gag reflex’. Eddie had listened in a mostly dissociative state, doing his best not to wince at the very descriptive portrait painted before his eyes until he’d realized Buck was messing with him by testing the limits of his tolerance.)

That had been only fair, since Buck is the type to readily lend an ear for ex-nun girlfriend troubles — and with minimal judgment to boot — but now Eddie is starting to regret the gesture. Maybe Buck had heard ‘you don’t have to keep it PG for my sake, I'm totally down with the queers’ and understood ‘if you ever need constructive criticism on the angles of your sextape, I’m your guy!’

Eddie briefly entertains the idea of sending Buck a vindictive voice message demanding he explains himself, maybe even relay the various ways he wants to throttle Buck for his crassness and his exhibitionist tendencies and his wild disregard for the sacred bonds of pseudo-brotherhood, but he still feels off-balance, and in the end Eddie chooses to resort to a less confrontational coping mechanism: drinking the trauma away.

He ignores the abandoned glass sitting on his side table to take long gulps of whiskey straight from the bottle instead. It's not the kind of liquor made to be chugged down, and the alcohol burns his throat all the way down his stomach, but he welcomes the flame, grateful for the physical distraction.

He’s working himself into an inebriated stupor when his phone starts vibrating like a hummingbird's wings, pinging madly with texts after texts.

When he unlocks the mobile with the apprehension of a soldier stepping into a minefield, it’s to find 42 new messages from Buck.

Eddie takes another fortifying swig of booze and opens iMessage.

The first ten text bubbles are strictly comprised of delirious keysmashing, confirming the inadvertent mistake hypothesis. That’s a relief: Buck hasn’t temporarily lost his mind to jealousy again and didn’t try to mark his territory because Tommy had taken Eddie to a WBC championship last week. Thank God for small mercies.

Eddie scrolls past them to read the more coherent ones.

OH FUCKKKKKK

ASFHJBCAVKJVCHK

NONONONONOOO

THIS CANT BE HAPPENING

THIS IS LIKE EVERYONES WORST NIGHTMARE

EDDIE

EDMUNDO MIDDLE NAME DIAZ

DO NOT

I REPEAT DO NOT WATCH THE BIDEO

IT WASNT MEANT GOR YOU

IT WAS A MISTAKE!!!!!!

NOT ON PURPOSE

SERIOUSLY DONT OPEN THE VIDEO

it will hurt your fragile relapsed catholic sensibilities and send you into cardiac arrest

IT WAS MEANT FOR TOMMY AND NOT FOR UR PRUDISH EYES

SERIOUSLY SCROLL PAST

SPARE US BOTH THE HUMILIATION I BEG OF YOU

you were the last contact i texted

my big fat thumb must've slipped

shittt the read receipt

welp it's so over...

ig that's done and over with

sorry

when you're done pouring bleach over your eyes

let me know you're still alive so i can sleep at night with a clear conscience knowing you didn't lobotomize yourself or something

again I'M SORRY

A HONEST MISTAKE that's surely mortifying for the both of us but mostly ME

please tell me i didn't irreparably damage our friendship

just so you know tommy’s been laughing for the past 10 minutes. i’m glad SOMEONE is enjoying this shitshow

You owe me an emergency therapy session with Frank

And a screen repair

did you freak out and break your phone

I threw it at the wall

ok drama queen 😂

No. There's nothing funny or dramatic about it

I'm not gonna be able to look you in the face for the foreseeable future

I'll have to ask Gerrard for a transfer

Ravi says the B-shift is very welcoming

Maybe I'll find a new buddy there. One that doesn't send me his nudes unprompted

Hell maybe I should move back to El Paso

This could be a sign from the universe to take matter into my own hands instead of waiting idly for Christopher's forgiveness

you don't believe in signs

Maybe I do now

Maybe your little fuck up was the catalyst needed for change

c'mon man

play it cool

if you get embarrassed then i'll get embarrassed

and if we're both embarrassed then who's flying the plane

Your apologies suck balls

just like me

What the hell Buck

WAY TOO SOON

sorry

shame is an emotion i refuse to feel so i’m just owning it now

ok can we just agree to forget this ever happened

and maybe delete the vid from your cloud

Yeah ok

Way ahead of you

My phone has already been scrubbed clean

Do me a favor and check twice the next time you send Tommy a dick pic

dw lesson learned

so.......

did you watch the full thing or

be honest

it’s okay if you did you can still be straight

Scratch that

Consider our friendship irreparably damaged NOW

I’m blocking you

EDDIE NO

I WAS JOKING TO DIFFUSE THE TENSION

EDDIE!!!!!

[rimatsu]

we've discussed the maddie-tommy runner tendencies, now let's examine the less popular chimney-tommy fatalistic parallels

[rimatsu]

After apologies and accusations and nippy words and even more apologies comes the time for honesty. They talk for so long Tommy’s voice dissolves at the edges, a pharyngeal crackle seeping into his confessions. Candor feels a lot like being cored. He sits on Evan’s couch split in half like a pomegranate, red viscera exposed — peeled open for examination. For six months, he had only offered tiny morsels of himself, weighed bites meant to appease hunger and not satiate, but Evan has grown gluttonous in their time apart. Tommy is made to dig past the last vestiges of self-preservation and unearth everything he’d kept buried, exhuming skeletons and old hurt from the ground.

It's exhausting to the bone.

"I feel like I got hit by a bus," Tommy says once a hush of silence settles over the loft, rubbing the heel of his palm over a brow.

Evan smiles at him, and it's a touch rueful. "That's what happens when you condense half-a-year's worth of talking into 3 hours," he reasons, although not unkindly.

Silence eats away at the oxygen again until Evan reaches for Tommy's hand, thumb pressing into the blue rivers of his veins. Surely he can feel Tommy's pulse go seismic at the touch.

"We don't have to rush into anything," Evan starts, tentative and placating like he's speaking to a sighted animal. "I— I'll try to rein it in, go slow."

Bless his heart, Tommy thinks, because he sounds like he believes it. Evan isn't capable of slow. He can do undefined, he can even do superficial, but he's not wired for measured steps — his long legs are more suited for a gallop than a trot. Tommy knew that much by the second date. The absence of moderation had charmed and scared him in equal measure, drawn to it like moth to a flame until he realized he'd have to carry indelible burn scars like relics to his grave.

Tommy is under no illusion, but he gives a terse nod anyway, and then he watches as Evan’s lips part around an inhalation. It's that bolstering little intake of breath that precedes the big questions — the same one Evan took before inviting him to his sister's wedding, the same one he took before asking Tommy to move in with him.

He stares at Evan’s expanding diaphragm and braces himself for impact.

"But I can't— I can't do aimless either, Tommy," Evan barrels on, and squeezes at his wrist like he's holding Tommy in place so he can't physically recoil from his words. "I need to know we're walking in the same direction." Evan pauses for a heartbeat, and when he speaks again, conviction has steeled the timbre of his voice: "I want serious down the line. I want a life together, a shared home, a ring on my finger. Kids, the whole shebang," he continues, firm, no stammering in sight, like he's daring Tommy to dispute any of it again.

His eyes reflect the light overhead like glistening jewels. Their magnetic pull is as strong as the magnitude of Tommy's fears, powerful enough that he's considering living in communion with worry. Tommy swallows around the lump in his throat and pushes down the instinctive urge to run for the windows like the building is at flashover.

"There's no guarantee we'll make it far," he warns, because it bears repeating.

"No, there isn't," Evan agrees, like uncertainty isn't frightening or paralyzing. He's terrifying. "But if you're not gonna try anyway, if you're not buying what I'm selling, you might as well walk out now and spare us both the trouble."

Coming back is allowing Evan to become somatically essential the way an aortic valve is vital — it's giving him the power to deal a finishing blow with no warranty certificate. Tommy has flown through warzones, has dismantled and mended himself back into new shapes, has let fire lick at him and smoke suffocate him, but knocking on Evan’s door again might be the bravest thing he's ever done.

He takes a fortifying breath of his own and then surrenders to a mathematical probability.

"Yeah, I can do trying," he says, and it's a meagre offering — certainly not the type of reassurance that would reassure him, but it's everything Tommy has to give, amorphous and fragile but no less true.

Evan is more benevolent than him, anyway.

"Okay," he accepts, mercy shining in the blue of his irises. "That's good enough for now."

[rimatsu]

forever obsessed with the cheeky foreshadowing that precedes the Big Bisexual Reveal of 704. do you believe in love at first flight? // you're thinking of changing things up, aren't you? // i'm just, uh, you know, keeping my options fluid. // watching half-naked men pummel each other. // you meet somebody, and you just click. // he's made an impression in a very short time. i can see that. // christopher wouldn't, or were you pressing him for information? // is it circled with a heart around it? // so i'm your basketball beard. giggling and kicking my feet. they will never top that setup (silly. unhinged. comedic. endearing) which is why bucktommy should be endg-

[rimatsu]

Ok convince me to reject caution and embrace delusion. Why are you so hopeful? 

the safe bet is definitely caution. but regardless of initial intentions, nothing is ever set in stone in the 911 writing room and that’s reason enough to remain hopeful. still, when people say the chances of a reconciliation are non-zero, i think that’s low-balling it. at the very least, we’re at 10% chance, 90% faith.

granted the interviews i (unwillingly) absorbed via osmosis don't exactly inspire confidence but again: 1) tim is fickle as the wind and writers can change their minds at the drop of a hat, 2) nothing that was directly stated by actors or showrunner contradicts the idea of a makeup arc, 3) if the breakup was intentionally designed as a temporary hurdle they’d imply otherwise anyway (oh god i sound like Them don't i.... this is a cry for help)

the reasons why 8x06 could qualify as a temporary split have been extensively discussed so i’ll try to be brief (spoiler: i failed) before tackling what i’d like to see in 8b. buckle up buttercup, i’m a yapper:

1) the breakup wasn’t written as definitive or unfixable. buck and tommy didn’t part because of irreconcilable differences or because passion/attraction fizzled out. if they wanted that door closed, tommy could’ve simply said he was uninterested in pursuing long term commitment with buck, that they’re not compatible in the long run — there: a clean, uncomplicated break. instead, we’re told that tommy desperately wants to be the person buck settles down with, but he’s convinced buck is propelled by the excitement of novelty, that he suspects buck is latching onto him for the wrong reasons, that he can’t allow himself to merge their home life together in fear he’ll never recover once buck wants out. the implications here being tommy is in love with buck already. for his part, buck came to the realization that he wants a future with tommy and immediately decided to pursue it because that's just the type of man he is: never one to do things by half-measures, seeing no value in waiting once his mind is made up. so there’s no conflicting desire there. they want the same thing: permanence with each other. the next two episodes also paint a strange picture if the goal is a definitive separation. buck bakes excessively in an attempt to cope when he never needed a coping mechanism following a breakup before, and we’re told several times that he wants to reach out — in fact buck was about to reach out until he was physically stopped. in total, 3 tommy mentions so far. usually we get the one and then buck moves on to greener pastures (abby notwithstanding, but she's an exception and not the rule, main character privilege and all). we were even deliberately shown that tommy considered contacting buck on his own. that's establishing regret and a desire for reconnection on both sides of the equation. again, that’s a never seen before: tommy is an outlier. completely unnecessary if the breakup is a done deal. whether they follow it through or not, the aftermath was written in such a way that there’s ground for a reconciliation if needs be

2) this is the first buck break up to happen during the first act of the season, something that’s normally reserved for the finale for maximum impact. why this distinction? strange placement for the end of a romantic storyline if you ask me.

3) they're never going to replicate a LI that checks out as many boxes as tommy does, or recapture the romcom magic that was 7x04-7x06. and it's fine if they don't, not all endgame romances need to be the most memorable of the bunch, but it'd be stupid to let the remaining potential go to waste. it's undeniable, the show is nearing its end, i don't imagine they get renewed past s10. if they go the natalia route again and introduce a LI at the last moment, it's going to pale in comparison to the other viable option, one that has pre-established history and connection to buck/the 118. inadvertently or not, they set up an epic love story of intertwined fate. tommy has literally haunted the narrative since the pilot: one of the very first thing abby reveals is that she’s not over tommy breaking off their (retconned) engagement. as such, tommy has played a pivotal role in shaping buck into the man he is today: if tommy hadn’t transferred out to harbor station, buck wouldn’t have found his family and his life purpose. if tommy hadn’t left abby, buck wouldn’t have realized that emotional intimacy and romantic connection is what he seeks. if tommy hadn’t kissed him, a huge part of buck’s identity would’ve remained buried and unexplored. how are they possibly going to top a red string theory dating back 8 seasons? they can’t. i’m sure they’re aware of that.

4) why bring our attention to tommy’s admiration and envy for a tight-knit unit like the 118, on three separate occasions, if the ultimate goal isn’t to reward him and integrate him into the makeshift family?

5) idk what it's worth, if it's worth anything at all, but there’s been a substantial amount of displeasure voiced over their breakup. tommy is buck’s most well-received LI to date. they took a risk with the Big Bisexual Reveal and it paid off with increased engagement and viewership. if they were still debating a reconciliation, surely they've heard that at least some people will eagerly welcome a makeup arc with open arms.

i'm a broken record so i'm probably repeating myself but here goes my ideal timeline for the rest of the season (not a speculation, not wishful thinking, but a secret third thing):

i'm gonna operate under the assumption that the breakup happened solely so buck could be at his lowest for the kidnapping plot line with a minimal/reduced support system (no boyfriend AND no best friend around when his pregnant sister is abducted). in other words, i don't think buck will be in a place to venture back into the dating world by 8x09-8x10 quite yet (i don’t actually buy the buck-dates-the-serial-killer theory). he's handled the breakup fairly well but now with the kidnapping & eddie gone/in the process of moving, i assume that's when he really starts to spiral.

(if we get a fourth tommy mention here, i'd say it's a promising sign. it’d be a purposeful way to keep him in viewers’ radar after the 4-month break)

i think getting maddie back after a few days of fear and uncertainty will be a breakthrough for buck and he’ll make a conscious decision to move on from his funk by the end of 8x10.

ideally “jumping back into the pond” would take place in 8x11 to 8x13, starting with a comedic montage of buck in a string of various failed dates. this is the part of the season where i expect him to utter the word bisexual, probably when the topic of exes comes into play. every other queer identity in the show gets labeled and stated in no uncertain terms, but bisexuality is ever only vaguely implied (nancy in ls) or shown but not explicitly spoken (buck and eva). it’s frustrating. personally i choose to believe buck’s lackluster reaction to maddie’s questionable “how many men did she turn gay?” joke was intentional on the writers’ part. it was the perfect opportunity to reaffirm his sexuality but buck didn’t bc he's not fully in tune with his queerness yet. yeah he speedran through his coming out but recalibrating your entire identity after 3 decades of presumed heterosexuality is a complex process rifled with ups and downs. i hope it gets explored with more care and depth in future episodes.

supposedly we know two things: the fling is another form of coping mechanism, and it's short-lived. chances are it's going to be a woman, and i'd love for it to be a bi girl bc 1) yay bi4bi m/f representation, 2) he's dating someone who can intimately relate to his experience and can maybe offer some additional clarity where clarity is still needed.

my other preferred scenario is that he meets a guy who immediately clocks that buck is still hung up on his ex and not emotionally available for anything more than casual fun. basically give buck a sex friend who can expose him to the LA gay scene. if my memory serves me right, OS said he'd like to see buck in queer spaces. i would like to see it too (we could’ve had that exploration with tommy but i digress….)

long story short, he eventually meets someone he has chemistry with, but it's still not as easy or companionable or butterfly-inducing as it was with tommy. buck gets back home from the seemingly successful date and he just... starts baking — wordlessly communicating to the audience that he’s still plagued by Tommy Thoughts.

now if i put on my clown shoes, i’d say the bts pictures of the 217 engines suggest an upcoming bucktommy reunion on a call (surely they were made for a reason. right. RIGHT????), ideally in 8x14. i’ve babbled about it here, but the sparknotes version is:

- there's a 5 alarm high-rise fire requiring ground and aerial ops. tommy is tasked with delivering firefighters to the roof, including the 118. the chopper ride to destination is understandably awkward but professional enough

- tommy joins ground ops once he’s completed his maximum hours of flight. he ends up trapped in a pocket of rubbles with buck after a partial structural collapse. that’s when they hash it out. it’s not pretty: they’re on edge and exhausted and full of adrenaline and words aren’t sugarcoated or minced. but they’re honest, and afterward they understand each other’s perspective.

it has been said before, but i don't think buck registered the underlying message of the breakup. we know he doesn't handle rejection well, and it's likely he was so hyperfocused on being told no that he didn’t compute the “no matter how much i want to be (your last)” part. that’d explain the 118’s strange response to the split. if i was told “my boyfriend broke up with me because he thinks i'll eventually break his heart once i figure out he's not who i truly want” i’d strongly advise communication before calling it quit prematurely. but if my friend told me “my boyfriend broke up with me when i asked him to move in bc he doesn't think we'll last bc i don’t know what i want” i would trust that they relayed the correct story and i too would discourage contact.

anyway buck has stated that he doesn’t want to chase after someone who doesn’t want him before, but now he knows that wanting was never the issue with tommy, that the breakup was fueled by insecurities and fears and trauma rather than disinterest. at first, it’s presented as reaching a necessary closure: once the fire is contained, buck and tommy part way with another “see you around, buck. i truly hope you find what you’re looking for” and a bittersweet smile. except now buck has had another breakthrough, he’s full of renewed resolved and clarity, and he’s ready to fight for this relationship, so he shows up at tommy’s doorstep the next night and pleads his case.

in 8x15-8x16, we see them readjust to being a couple except this time, it's with the knowledge that they both want serious in the long run. maybe they discover facets of each other previously kept under wraps for the sake of 'keeping it light and breezy'. also they fuck/fade to black on screen (this is imperative)

the last two episodes are focused on the closing disaster, whatever that might be. in this hypothetical timeline, we get a few more glimpses of domesticity. maybe even establish the setup for a move-in next season when bucktommy discuss buck’s lease.

you can have the helicopter crash as a treat for s9. once they're truly settled with each other and it's bound to be more devastating.

voilà <3 apologies and congratulations for your perseverance if you made it this far. the answer was never supposed to be this lengthy or tangencial oops can you tell i’m obsessed. terminally ill even

[rimatsu]

obsessed with baby queer buck and the hang-ups he probably doesn't even realize he has, let alone acknowledge.. newly realized bisexual evan buckley who didn't stop once to consider long-term commitment to a man he dated for 6 months as a viable option until josh spelled it out for him. and we've seen buck navigate romantic relationships before. he didn't do things by half-measure or shy away from grandiose declarations with abby or taylor. he knew he loved them without the need for an outsider's perspective. i don't think the cautiousness displayed in 806 was linked to tommy as an individual/lover so much as it was about building a life with a man — still a foreign concept, still a bit alien. not something buck could really envision for himself and by himself, unprompted (just like he remained unaware of his attraction to men until he was made to confront it with a kiss). that moment of hesitation wasn't because he was unattached to tommy or their relationship, quite the opposite according to the follow-up questions: if buck wasn't in love already, he was at least willing to be. yeah, he needed a little nudge from josh to reassess his feelings, to jump over that last barrier, but the very moment things clicked in his mind, buck was ready to cement their relationship, ready to wholeheartedly pursue a future with tommy, serious enough that he brought up the possibility of marriage someday (another first! not just first potential husband, but first potential spouse ever!!) — because buck doesn't see much value in waiting once he figures out what he wants.