Chapter Text
"Eddie, I swear to God, if that insufferable, sparkling, flying fucker tries to come and save me right now, I won’t be responsible for my actions!"
Buck is having a great day. A wonderful day. A day that would have been so incredibly perfect, if it weren’t for the tiny little detail that he is currently hanging from a five-story building and has zero ideas on how to bring his own ass back to solid ground.
But he would be fine with the situation – he loves this kind of adrenaline rush, really – if he could be reassured that some cocky idiot would not fly to the rescue any minute, now.
"What the fuck are you talking about, Buck?"
Oh, yeah. Eddie hasn’t had the pleasure to meet the man.
Unlike him. He’s lucky like that.
"You know, the Tin Man, the one that came out of nowhere a few weeks ago to steal our jobs and basically ruin my life?"
Eddie snorts, the traitor.
"You mean Silver Star? The superhero every single TV and news outlet has been talking about for the last two weeks?"
He doesn’t like Eddie’s tone. He doesn’t like it one bit.
"What? You too? Why are you all so fixated on the guy? He’s just a big-headed, pompous, egotist douch—"
"Whoa, man, chill. Maybe we could focus on fixing your little situation first, and then you’re free to badmouth the poor guy, what do you say?"
Buck answers with a grunt.
Eddie’s right. The more he waits, the greater the chance that the silver guy decides to show up and save the day.
Asshole.
"Okay, Mr. Dispatcher. Any ideas?"
It’s only been a handful of days – three weeks, maybe? - since Eddie Diaz joined the 911 dispatch, but Buck has no doubt that he’s a solid guy. During the few calls they’ve worked together – rigorously through the phone – Eddie’s proved to be great under pressure and quick on his feet. Especially on his first day, when he was able to direct Buck in extracting a grenade from some guy’s thigh, effectively saving both of their lives.
Buck decided then and there that Eddie was someone who could have his back .
"Well, luck is on your side today, firefighter Buckley. Chimney should be sending down a sling right… now."
And, as if by magic, there it is.
"Aw, man” Buck whines “I was hoping for something a little more adventurous. Now I can’t use this story to make an impression on my next date."
"Shut up and hang on tight, Buck” Eddie chuckles quietly “and be glad that Silver Star had something more important to do, today."
"Yeah, yeah, very nice. Sorry to interrupt but Buck, move your ass and come up here, we don’t have all day. And say bye bye to Eddie, I’m sure he’s got some real emergency to respond to."
Chimney.
Buck sends him a glare.
He was actually having fun, for once. Talking to Eddie is fun.
Eddie clears his throat, embarrassed.
"You’re right, I’d better go. Talk to you later, guys!"
"You better not! Sorry Diaz, but our shift ends in twenty minutes and for the next forty-eight hours I have no intention of hearing your voice. Not even in my darkest dreams. Now, Buck, on the other hand…"
"Bye Eddie!" yells Buck, flushing from the exertion of climbing up the building and certainly not for the implications of Chimney’s statement.
Eddie says his goodbyes while Buck gets to the roof just in time to see Chimney give Hen a high five.
"You’re not funny" he tells them, walking away.
"Yeah, and you don’t have a crush on our new dispatcher!"
…
Truth is, the last few weeks should have been great for Buck.
His probationary period is finally over, his sister is in L.A. and seems willing to stick around, the 118 is starting to feel like a real family and his bank account doesn’t resemble a dark, bottomless pit anymore.
And then, there’s Eddie.
His voice was a breath of fresh air, something new and exciting that shook Buck’s routine to the core. They’re not friends – he doesn’t even know what the guy looks like, for God’s sake – but, somehow, he’s sure Eddie’s someone he can trust. He feels it in his blood.
He felt it on their first shift together - when he took control during the grenade incident, guiding Buck’s movements with confidence and patience, while sharing some details about his past as an army medic in order to keep him calm - and he has felt it more and more every day since.
So, it should have been a great month.
If it weren’t for that smug, arrogant, conceited—
If it weren’t for Silver Star.
Even his name sounds pretentious. And he knows that the man has no power over whatever moniker the press decided to shackle him with; if Buck hadn’t met him, he would be rational enough not to judge him for it. Unfortunately, Buck has met him and he’s going to judge the hell out of the guy, with no remorse whatsoever.
It’s not just the way he moves, carrying himself with too much confidence and familiarity; it’s also the way he came out of nowhere, one night, and started disrupting the work of the 118 and many other crews in the LA area that were just trying to do their job.
Not to mention his staring problem.
"Are you sure you’re not just jealous because you can’t fly?"
Maddie’s question seems innocent enough, but he knows his sister and he recognizes the sparkle in her eyes. She’s making fun of him, again, but he can’t resent her for it. He’d missed her knowing gaze too much to not want to see it again and again, even if it is at his own expense.
"No, Maddie. I’m not jealous of some guy who flies around in a midnight blue and silver costume that looks like something straight out of a comic book. I just don’t understand how everyone seems so captivated by him; we were doing just fine on our own, what do we need him for?"
"Well, first of all, I seem to recall that on your very first encounter he managed to save the woman you’d forgotten to recover from a burning building. And second—"
"Whoa, whoa, stop right there. " Buck will not have any of this nonsense. "I had not forgotten that woman anywhere. In fact, I was starting to go back inside, and I would have saved her in no time if Mr. Superasshole hadn’t decided to make his grand entrance while some of us were actually trying to save the day. There were fifteen people inside, Maddie. Fifteen! And we had already saved them all. I mean, almost. And what does everybody talk about? The man in the spandex suit and the sparkling mask. Unbelievable."
He can’t believe he had been a fan of superheroes, once.
When he was too young to understand that those people are just jerks who love attention and can’t wait to show off. Oh, are we describing ourselves right now? Asks a voice that sounds a little too much like Chimney for his taste.
"Could we please rewind just a little bit? What are you talking about?"
This is Carla, his friend from the building next door who’s just come back from the kitchen with a bottle of wine and… a Scrabble set?
Nice.
"Evan was re-telling me about his first night with Silver Star . What was that you said last time? Oh, yeah he’s just lucky he’s handsome, or nobody would have even noticed he was there."
Carla’s still standing in front of them, bottle in hand and puzzled look on her face.
"Okay. Seriously. Start from the beginning. I feel like I want to hear this."
"Come on, Carla, I'd rather tell Maddie about our first meeting."
Buck's dialing up his charm, hoping to get away with it, but he should have known better.
"Maddie, we met because your brother's building doesn't have a shared laundry area. That's why he likes to sneak into mine and wash his clothes for free. I like to know everything that happens in my condo. The first thing I did, when I busted him, was threaten to call the cops. The second was ask him how the hell did his whites stay so white. Half an hour later we were at a cafe, and he was buying me a bagel and a coffee. End of story. Now let's get to the juicy meet cute, please."
Carla's stance is intimidating, shaking the Scrabble set like that. That's why Buck decides to oblige her.
It’s not that interesting of a story, really.
And surely not a meet cute.
It had been one of those shifts, the ones where everything seems to be a little too chaotic and Buck starts to feel a little too much .
First the five-year-old who had been stuck in a trash-can at kindergarten, whose parents had not seemed to care enough about; then the young man who had fallen in the gorilla enclosure while trying to propose to his girlfriend, and finally the old woman who’d shown up at the station claiming to be lost.
They still had not found her family.
Around midnight, a 9-1-1 dispatcher – not Eddie, unfortunately – had called the 118 about a fire inside a co-working space, five minutes from their location. A pretty standard fire, if you asked Buck, and they had been able to pull out fourteen people, all-the-while starting to put out the fire and secure the building.
It had been one of the last girls he had helped, that had shaken up his certainty of a job well done.
"Sarah. My friend—" she’d gripped his arm with so much strength "She’s- she’s still inside. She had a call with some clients in Scotland, so she was in one of the cubicles. I couldn’t find her and she’s not here, please, she’s still in there, and there’s so much smoke, you need to save her."
Cubicles.
He knew where to find them, he’d seen them on the plan of the building. Second floor, sector B. He could make it. He could go inside and get back out in less than three minutes. If she was where her friend thought she would be.
"Cap! We got another one, she’s still inside. I’m going in!"
He had no time to waste, every second lost was one second less he had left to pull the girl out.
Right at that moment, there had been a second explosion. Fuck.
"Buck! Stop where you are. The building’s not stable enough! Don’t go inside, it’s an order!"
Bobby was watching him with hawk eyes and the frown of someone who knew he would not be obeyed. Buck had spared just a moment – he did not have time for more – to think about how deeply his Captain had started to know him. Bobby knew. He knew he would not listen.
He had started to run towards the building, ready to risk his life for the girl, when something completely unexpected had happened.
Another crash.
A grunt.
And then… then something- someone was coming out of the building. Just… not from the main entrance. Not even from a window on the ground floor. No. He was soaring down from the damned third floor, sector B.
Buck had stopped in his tracks, unable to comprehend what was happening. Even Bobby had shifted his gaze from him to the newcomer, confused but relieved at the same time: he knew Buck would not be going inside anytime soon. There was no need. Because the man – it was a man alright, no doubt about it – had just touched his feet to the ground in front of them, with a woman – Sarah? - in his arms and a serious expression on his face.
"Who the hell is that?" Buck had wondered out loud. He knew it was a stupid question. He knew what he was seeing, but he had never met one of them in person. He’d known there were people like him in this world. He’d seen them on TV, saving New York City from an alien invasion; he’d even read one or two biographies of the most famous ones and several articles about the possible origins of their powers. He was curious like that.
But a superperson, in the flash, in front of him? Not something you see every day.
He had been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn’t heard Bobby coming towards him, or the superguy heading for the ambulance, Sarah still in his arms.
"Buck! Help him, get the girl!"
Buck was not sure the guy needed his help, but after the stunt he had been trying to pull, he was not particularly inclined to contradict his captain’s orders.
His hands were already full and now had to deal with this superguy, something he suspected would not be an easy task.
As soon as Bobby had called Buck’s name, the superguy's head had shot in his direction, as if stricken by lightning, and now he was staring at him with a questioning tilt. Weird. Maybe he had never met someone with this nickname before?
Well, whatever the reason, he was being rude.
Deciding to be as professional as possible, Buck had run towards him, and, with no preamble, had started to assess the situation.
"Hey, Sarah, are you alright? Here man, let me help" he had said, and the superguy had finally decided to cooperate, putting her down and gripping one of her arms. Buck had done the same on the other side and together they had guided her towards the ambo.
"Wha…m…wh…ma…"
She was trying to say something, though Buck couldn’t understand a word. She was probably still in shock. Poor woman.
"Sarah! Oh my God! Thank you, thank you so much!" Her friend was suddenly there, hugging her, while thanking profusely the superguy for his rescue. "I don’t know what we would have done if you weren’t here! Thank you, you’re a true hero!"
Yeah, yeah, woman, I know what you’re doing.
A true hero with a great ass.
Buck knew exactly what she was thinking, watching the superguy with those big doe eyes, as if he had been the only one to risk his life to save people that night. To be fair, Buck wasn’t even shure if he had actually risked his life, technically speaking. Superheroes are immortal , right? They can’t really be threatened by a little fire, can they? Their skin is indestructible or something like that. He would have to check. The internet surely had an answer. Whatever. The girl surely wanted to give that skin a much closer look, of that Buck was certain.
They’d finally gotten to the ambulance, where Hen had been waiting for them, and the superguy still hadn’t said a word.
What an ass.
"Here, baby. Let me help."
Hen was trying to have the girl sit in the ambo and check her vitals, but she hadn’t seemed inclined to let the superguy go. She had started to laugh – yes, definitely in shock – and she was… humming something?
"What? What do you need?"
Hen was a saint.
"What a… what a man… what a… man… what a mighty—" the girl had started coughing then, and Hen had finally been able to free the superguy from her grip. Had she been singing the Salt-N-Pepa song?
What the fuck?
With Hen patching up Sarah and her friend, and the others busy containing the fire, Buck had been left alone with the superguy.
The silence was deafening. Buck had -spent the last thirty seconds subtly studying the man and he couldn’t come up with anything to say. His outfit was questionable at best. Something that resembled a patched-up midnight blue spandex onesie that fit the man like a second skin, boots that looked anything but comfortable, a mask covering his eyes and- was that a star on his chest?
Whatever, Buck wasn’t exactly an expert in superhero fashion.
What was he an expert in, though? Beautiful men.
And that was a very beautiful man, though he couldn’t discern that many details, in the darkness of the night. Great build, great ass – yes, Buck had already documented evidence of the fact, since the superguy seemed to love his spandex – and a striking facial structure. No, not average at all. And Buck did not like him one bit. What he liked even less was the fact that the man had not stopped staring at him.
"So, what do we call you, superguy?"
Sue him.
Buck had to call him in some way, since the superguy didn’t seem to want to leave.
The guy had hesitated for a moment, before opening his mouth to say something – hopefully his name – but he had been interrupted by a flash. And then another. And then many more.
Buck and the man had turned around, only to find countless photographers and cameras and reporters that seemed to be very interested in the new superhero in town.
Awesome.
Hey man! What’s your name?
Who are you?
Did you just save all these people?
What’s your name?
What’s that on the costume? A Star? Is it Silver?
The guy had seemed spooked by the attention. He had shifted his gaze back to Buck – again, man, you want a picture? – and then he had just- taken off.
Flown away.
He had left him there, alone with the wolves who had then proceeded to bombard him with questions about the superguy, as if Buck could give them anything more than a shrug.
"So, did he save you too, man?"
What the fuck?
What the fuck.
Yes. The guy was trouble. Buck was sure of it.
The next day, everybody seemed to be talking about him.
Silver Star, they had started to call him.
A new hero in town – had titled the L.A. Times – What a man, indeed.
Even his colleagues seemed to be intrigued by the mysterious figure and Bobby had answered some of the questions reporters kept asking.
Yes, he had been essential in saving the woman.
No, he could not be certain his firefighters would have been able to save her.
No, he had no idea about who could be behind the mask and, even if he knew, he would not tell them.
Thank God, Eddie had been on shift the next day and Buck had been able to vent about the superasshole.
"Superwhat?" Eddie kept laughing.
"Yeah, man, laugh all you want. But you were not there, you did not see how he was watching me. I think he’s a serial killer."
"A serial killer?" Eddie had sounded perplexed "Why? How was he watching you?"
"Like he wanted to eat me."
"Yeah, I bet he wanted to eat you alright." Eddie had commented, a weird shift in his tone.
And what had he meant by that?
"So, you agree? We can’t trust this guy, right?" He’d known Eddie would understand.
"I mean, you’re the one who’s met him. If you say so, I believe you."
There had been amusement in his voice, even though his answer had sounded like a cop-out.
"You haven’t even met me yet." Buck had replied, challenging. "How can you be sure I’m to be trusted?"
Eddie hadn’t answered for a moment, pondering on his next words.
"I don’t know Buck. I just am."