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1
Chimney is dangling 100 feet above the ground and he is not having a great time.
There’s a lot of factors that went about to get Chimney into this situation, but long story short: there’s a person hurt on the roof of a tall building. Chimney goes to help them. Chimney falls and is caught by his harness. And unfortunately, his harness twists on the way down and the cord tangles around his chest and is slowly crushing him with his own body weight.
So, yeah.
Not having a fun time.
They tried to pull him up, but it only tightens the cord and squeezes the cord around his chest tighter, making it harder and harder to breath.
They also can’t just detach him from top because they have to pull up to pull it out.
So, the only way to get him down is cutting him down.
However, they’re woefully unprepared and somehow don’t have anything to cut it up on top of the building.
Which is understandable! This was supposed to be any easy job. A two person job. A Chimney helps the person, has a harness just for safety, and gets showered with praise and good feeling kind of job.
Not… not this.
They’ve got the safety cushion blowing up and Chimney isn’t sure he’s going to make it down before he is fully suffocated midair by this cord. It’s getting harder and harder to breathe, and he knows he doesn’t have much longer.
“Hey guys! Can you maybe,” wheeze, “speed it up just a little?”
“We’re goin’ as fast as we can, Chim!” Bobby calls up to him. “We’ve already got someone going up to cut you out.”
“I,” wheeze, “I don’t think we’ve got time for that, Cap.”
Silence.
“I can get him down,” Buck says.
“What?” Bobby says.
“I can get him down!” Buck repeats. “Does anyone have a knife?”
“What the hell are you gonna do with a knife?” Hen asks.
“I’ve got this!” Buck says, waving his hands in a placating gesture. “Does anyone have a knife?”
“What’s going on down there?!” Chim calls down, voice trembling and airway tightening.
“Just trust me!” Buck says. “Is the safety cushion ready?”
“It is,” Bobby says.
“Okay,” Buck says. “Does anyone. Have. A. Knife?”
Chimney makes the mistake of looking down and sees Buck weighing the knife in his hand. Then, with one smooth motion, a knife comes flying towards Chimney.
His breath hitches, his mind not fully comprehending what’s going on or why Buck would throw a knife at him at a time like this. He closes his eyes, bracing for the impact of a blade in his gut, but the knife perfectly cuts through the cord and Chimney goes falling to the safety pad, the pressure around his chest finally released.
He hits the pad with a sigh of relief.
Paramedics rush to his side and he lets himself be taken care of.
In the corner of his eye, Chimney sees Buck standing yards away, hand held up to the sky, before perfectly catching the knife by the hilt.
Yeah, maybe that cord must’ve blocked the blood flow to his brain, because this totally couldn’t have happened, right?
Chimney finds out later that it did, indeed, happen, and Buck’s explanation for his knife skills was “he was a bored kid.”
2
Hen is out at the bar, enjoying some time with her team after a hard day’s work.
Buck is nursing a beer, politely declining the plethora of women that are trying to flirt with him, Chimney is making goo-goo eyes at Maddie while she rambles about a bathroom remodeling video she watched, and Bobby is sipping an iced tea while he chats with Hen.
Bobby excuses himself to the restroom, leaving Hen alone at their table, which she doesn’t mind since she does love to people-watch.
She’s so focused on Chim’s lovestruck smile that he’s giving Maddie that she doesn’t notice a man sliding up at their table.
“Uh,” Hen says, “can I help you?”
The man, salt and pepper haired with a bushy goatee and a whiskey neat, smirks at her.
“So, I saw you’re into older men, huh?” he says.
“Excuse me?” Hen says.
“That sad sap who was making a fool of himself making a poor attempt to flirt with you,” he says. He puts a hand over the table and rubs at her arm. “Well, let me tell you. I’m a much better catch.”
Hen scoffs. “Uh, yeah, no thank you.”
“C’mon, sweetheart. Gimme a chance.” He smiles with too much teeth, squeezing her arm.
Hen tries to shake him off but his grip only tightens.
Hen shoves his hand away harshly. “Don’t touch me.”
“Don’t be like that, dollface,” he says. “We were having such a nice conversation.”
“We are having no conversation.” Hen grabs her drink and goes to get up, but the man snags her wrist and holds on tight enough to hurt.
“Well I was being nice,” he says. “I don’t have to be.”
“Hey.”
The voice is gruff and rageful. Hen almost doesn’t recognize it but when she looks up, she sees Buck towering over the man in the booth. If Hen didn’t know Buck, she would be scared of him. He looks dangerous like this, something she doesn’t see in him often.
“She said no,” Buck says, his voice low.
“You’re not her type,” the man says. “So don’t bother putting in the effort.”
“You are going to let her go and stop harassing her, or I’m going to make you regret it.”
The man laughs. “Oh, yeah? What are you gonna do about it?”
“Let her go or find out,” Buck says, his eyes dark.
“C’mon, babygirl. Let’s get out of here.” The man tugs on Hen’s wrist again and in a blur of movement, the man’s hand is off of Hen’s wrist, now twisted behind his back as Buck presses his face harshly into the table.
“She is not your dollface or your sweetheart or your babygirl,” Buck hisses into the man’s ear. “She is your nothing.” He presses his face harder into the table. “Do not touch her again. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand, man. Jesus.”
Buck shoves him harshly before letting him go. The man skitters away, tail between his legs, and disappears into the crowd to sulk.
“Hey, are you alright?” Buck asks, his voice kind and soft the way Hen knows it to be.
She gapes at him, speechlessly. “Yeah, I… I’m alright.” She looks over at the man. “You didn’t have to do that, Buck.”
“I know,” Buck says. “But I hate seeing a lady be mistreated. Even if I know she can whoop his ass herself.”
“You’re a good kid, Buckaroo,” Hen says.
He grins that sunshine grin of his and he’s back to the Buck she knows.
But Hen won’t forget the fire in his eyes. The way that he looked so natural and at ease when he held that man down.
Hen won’t forget that Buck is more dangerous than he will ever let anyone know.
3
Now, listen, Eddie is a fit guy, but even he has his limit.
Eddie is starting to wonder if he needs to focus more on cardio and legs at the gym because they’ve been chasing this arsonist through the streets of LA for almost twelve minutes and Eddie feels like he’s just run a marathon.
Buck is undeterred though. Buck sprints ahead of Eddie as he begins to lag behind, the arsonist just out of reach.
Suddenly, the arsonist takes a sharp turn into an alley and Eddie nearly trips over his own feet trying to keep up.
The arsonist parkours up the side of the building and to Eddie’s surprise, so does Buck.
Buck makes his way flawlessly up the brick wall, maneuvering through fire escapes and ladders and the ledges of windows, catching up with the arsonist.
Eddie just stares in complete flabbergasted awe.
He runs out to the street to see atop the buildings and Buck… Buck is running after the arsonist, jumping between roofs as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.
Eddie’s jaw drops as Buck follows his land between one of the roofs with a front handspring before picking up his pace and tackling the arsonist to the roof.
Buck holds the arsonist down with his full body weight and Athena’s team makes their way up to them to make the arrest.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Eddie asks Buck when they get back into the truck together.
And Buck just shrugs. “I was an active kid.”
4
Bobby is worried about Buck.
Although, then again, when is he not worried about Buck?
But this time he has an actual reason. Buck has been benched for a couple weeks after spraining his ankle on his bad leg on a call, and Bobby knows Buck doesn’t handle being benched well.
So, Bobby is heading over to his apartment with tupperwares full of paella and cookies.
Bobby lets himself in with his key, not wanting to make Buck get up with his injury. He expects to see Buck lying on his couch binging a show on Netflix or scrolling on his phone in his bed.
What he doesn’t expect is Buck blasting heavy metal while moving thumb tacks around a corkboard with red string.
Buck is deep in thought, head bobbing to the rhythm of the music while he stares intently at his corkboard with a dark expression.
He must notice Bobby come in because he turns around, hands raised as if ready for a fight. He relaxes when he sees Bobby.
“Oh, hey Bobby,” Buck says.
“Hey, Buck,” Bobby says. “What’s all this?”
He glances at the corkboard and sees mostly writing which looks like some sort of code and abstract drawings of people and items. But, from what Bobby can gather, it looks like it’s about some sort of drug ring or crime syndicate.
“The season finale of Peningramm’s Manor came out and it left so many questions and so little answers. Reddit is having a field day. No one knows what to expect for season four.”
Bobby chuckles. Classic Buck. “You must be really bored, huh?”
“Oh, so bored,” Buck says. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Buck goes to cover his corkboard, but Bobby takes one final glance, noticing the map of LA before it gets covered.
“I didn’t realize Peningramm’s Manor was set in LA,” Bobby says.
“Hm?” Buck says.
“The map of LA,” Bobby says, pointing at the now covered corkboard.
“Oh, right,” Buck says. “That’s one of my more out there theories. I think I put that up after I took my painkillers.” He chuckles.
“You should get some rest,” Bobby says. “And hey, I’ve got paellas.”
Buck makes grabby hands at the paellas with a smile. “Those look so good.”
“C’mon,” Bobby says. “Go sit down and I’ll warm you up a plate.”
Later, Athena tells Bobby about a drug ring they took down in LA and for a moment Bobby’s mind goes back to that corkboard in Buck’s apartment. He shakes away the thought, though. He chuckles at just the thought. Buck involved with busting a drug ring? Yeah right.
5
It was supposed to be a simple check in.
It was just a noise complaint. A married couple fighting. Loud footsteps. What seemed to be a simple domestic dispute.
Instead, Athena is being held captive by a madman obsessed with women who look like his deceased wife.
And, unfortunately for Athena, she fits the bill perfectly.
There’s a corpse of a woman who looks nearly identical to her rotting on the ground beside where she’s chained up. She’s gagged and blindfolded in a corner, left on edge as she waits for her captor to return.
Athena knows, logically, that someone is going to come looking for her. They can trace back the 911 call and the location of her car here and find her. She knows this.
But she also knows that her captor is going to come back soon and he takes apart his victims slowly and torturously.
Her blindfold is soaked with tears, sticking uncomfortably to her eyelids. She can’t help it. She’s scared.
There’s risks to the job, of course there is, but this wasn’t something she had ever thought would happen on a call like this.
There’s a pounding at the door before she hears it swing open and slam against the wall. Heavy footsteps approach and her body trembles with fear.
Hands touch her temples and she flinches away.
“Hey, just me,” she hears a familiar voice say.
Buck?
Gentle hands pull away her blindfold and gag and she sees Buck there.
“Buck, baby, what are you doing here?” Athena says.
“Uh,” Buck says, hand bashfully rubbing against the back of his neck. “I may have heard you were missing and they weren’t doing anything about it fast enough so I kinda… came to save you on my own?”
Athena sighs. “You know you’re gonna be in big trouble, right?”
“Yeah,” Buck says with a lopsided grin. “But you’re worth it.”
He goes to her chains and starts to cut through them with cutters that he somehow knew to bring when there are sudden footsteps approaching.
“Stay here,” Buck murmurs. “You’re gonna be alright.”
Her captor, the man she barely got a glance at before he knocked her out, comes in, gun in hand and pointed at Buck.
Without warning, her captor shoots. Buck ducks out of the way and charges towards him, knocking the gun to the ground, another fire resounding in the small apartment loudly.
Buck tackles the man to the ground, twisting and maneuvering so fast that Athena can barely keep up.
The man stabs Buck in the gut, catching him off guard, and he momentarily slips enough for the man to escape his hold.
He runs to Athena and grabs her from behind, holding the knife to her throat.
“You stay right there!” her captor shouts at Buck. “Or she gets it.”
Buck starts to back up, scooting away from them while holding a hand to his bleeding gut.
Before Athena can realize what he’s doing, Buck grabs the discarded gun and shoots her captor between the eyes. He slumps on top of Athena.
Buck clicks the safety on the gun and rushes to her side.
“Are you alright? Did he hurt you?” Buck asks.
“You killed him,” Athena says blankly.
“I know,” Buck says. “I had to. I had to protect you.”
Athena is frozen in shock by the time paramedics come to check on her. She collapses into Bobby’s arms, letting herself fall apart in his embrace.
She doesn’t let herself be this vulnerable often but she’s had a long day.
Athena talks to Buck later about everything that happened.
She expects Buck to be eating himself up with guilt but he just seems… resigned. Almost comfortable with and proud of what he had done.
“I couldn’t let him hurt you,” Buck says with such raw force in his voice that Athena can’t help but believe him.
She knew that Buck would do anything to protect those he loved, but now she sees that the lines he will cross for them are far more severe than she could have ever imagined.
And she is grateful that she is one of those people.
1
Buck is out of town visiting his adoptive family, the family that took him in when the Buckley’s gave him up when he got Daniel into remission, and the firehouse is a little q-word-er without him.
They’re all watching a mindless sitcom that they somehow agreed on while they enjoy their dinner as they take a break during their 24 hour shift when they see it
A livestream pops up on the TV, in a way that defies the way TVs work. Buck is lying on the floor of a dark warehouse, his hands and ankles bound. A man in a purple suit with bright green hair and clown makeup stands over him, tapping a crowbar in his palm. He grins at the screen.
“Hello there, 118,” the clown says. “I see that my little birdie has gotten himself a new team. Still saving lives like the good little samaritan he is, just without the traffic light panties, hm? Well, he’s not been truthful, no not at all.” The clown pulls Buck up by the hair. “Why don’t you tell them?”
Buck spits in his face.
“Oh, well, if that’s how you’re going to be.” And without any warning, the clown slaps Buck across the face with the crowbar. His head hits the floor with a thud.
“Bobby,” Hen says, her hand gripping the arm of the couch.
“Calling Athena now,” Bobby says.
“Now,” the clown says, “I don’t really care about whatever secrets he’s been keeping. It really means nothing to me. But since the little Robin just couldn’t stay dead, I’ve decided to finish what I had started with good company.” He smiles into the camera. “Enjoy the show!”
What happens next is horrific. The clown uses the crowbar to break Buck’s bones with sickening crunches. He’s merciless as he continues to beat him.
But then, Buck’s eyes fly open, glowing a bright green, and he breaks through his restraints and jumps on the clown. His fists wail into the clown’s face, punching over and over again as he sobs. The clown just laughs.
Buck grabs the crowbar and stabs through the clown’s face with the edge and he just swings over and over and over again, crying loudly and harshly as he does so.
Suddenly, Batman comes on screen and he pulls Buck away from the clown, wrapping his arms around him from behind and pulling him to the ground. Buck is almost sitting in his lap as he continues to sob and scream, sat between Batman’s legs as his one arm wraps around Buck and the other cards through his hair. Batman rocks Buck as he shushes him and murmurs reassurances.
A vigilante they don’t recognize in red, black, and yellow approaches the camera, gives an apologetic look into it, before turning it off.
They stare at the TV in horrified silence.
“I need to call Maddie,” Chimney says, getting up.
Bobby breaks his silence to tell Athena what just happened.
Hen grips Eddie’s hand and Eddie turns to the side to throw up.
Buck is back in LA the next day.
The team rushes to his apartment, hearts pounding, all terrified of what they’ll see when they arrive.
To all of their surprise, a posh old man in a suit and gloves answers the door.
“May I help you?” he asks, his voice British.
“Is Buck here?” Eddie asks.
“Ah, yes,” he says. “Follow me. He’s expecting you.”
Buck is lying in his bed in bandages and casts, playing Uno with a blonde woman who lies beside him, an asian woman who lies on top of her, a pale man with dark circles who nurses a mug of coffee, a tan man in a hideous neon shirt next to a scowling teen on the floor, and a dark skinned man in a yellow hoodie sitting upside down on the corner loveseat.
“Hey guys!” Buck says.
“Buck!” Eddie says. “You’re—”
“Devastatingly handsome?”
“Alive,” Eddie whispers.
Buck softens. “I’m okay. Well, not okay. But I’m here. And I’m healing.”
“What—” Chimney starts, but he stops himself.
“I…” Buck trails off. He looks at the people around him with a lost look.
“Hi,” the man in the neon shirt says, holding out his hand. “We haven’t met yet. I’m Dick. Buck’s adoptive brother.”
Realizing that they can’t jump into the very fresh trauma, the team shares introductions with Buck’s other family.
“He’s called the Joker,” Buck says, breaking the tense silence.
“Buck,” Tim says. “You don’t have to—”
“I do,” Buck says. “Joker… he kidnapped me when I was a teenager. He beat me with a crowbar and left me in an exploded warehouse. It… it took a lot to recover from it all and I thought I’d never… but he somehow got me. And he wanted to end what he started.” His lips twist bitterly. “It sucks, what happened, but… he can’t hurt me anymore. He can’t hurt a lot of people anymore. And it sucks that it had to be me that was the one to do it but maybe it had to be.”
Bobby sits at Buck’s bedside and takes his hand. “No matter what, we are going to be here for you. Whatever you need. Whatever happens next, we will be by your side.”
“And it looks like you’ve got a lot of people on your side,” Hen says, looking at his family.
“I do,” Buck says. He chuckles softly. “God, I never thought you guys’d ever meet. I figured it would happen eventually but…”
“Well, I can’t wait to get to know you all,” Chimney says. “I’m sure you have plenty of embarrassing stories about Buck.”
“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe,” the blonde says. “As long as you have some for us. There was this one time where Buck almost beat up a little kid because they folded the corners of their book and—”
“Aye, Blondie,” Buck says. “Heads. In a duffel bag. You continue that story, you will be the next one.”
And they laugh and trade stories, Buck turning bright red from embarrassment. And they don’t talk about what they had seen, not yet. Not for a while. They know that Buck needs time.
But they have time. And they have each other. And when the time comes, they will be ready to listen.