Chapter Text
Fire blazed around him. Buck grinned, all teeth and adrenaline.
Sweat dripped down his face and collected against the seal of his mask, so warm that he could only tell it was there because of the tickle against his skin. The discomfort, the heat, the glare of the flames, didn’t phase him. It was a rush, reminding him he was solid, alive.
Buck ran. His heavy duty boots thudded against the concrete in counter rhythm to his heart beat.
There had been no fatalities so far, most of the building evacuated already. Though, Buck could feel someone out in the triage tents in front of the building edging towards the Grey, smoke inhalation clogging their lungs. It tugged at his awareness but he focused on the job in front of him.
There was one more segment of the building that hadn’t yet been cleared by his team. Buck pushed his awareness out ahead of himself, searching for life signatures. In a fire like this it was hard to distinguish person from flame, both blazed as far as magic was concerned. But there was something pulling him forward.
His radio crackled. Captain Chapman called for a full evacuation of all personnel, the structure was becoming too unstable. Part of the roof had begun to collapse.
Buck ignored him.
As he thudded towards the northwest corner of the building the suspicion he’d held resolved into a certainty. There was someone there, and they were hurt.
“LAFD call out!” He yelled about the roar of the fire.
There, trapped in the corner. A woman in a worker’s uniform desperately trying to free her ankle from where it had gotten trapped in a broken section of metal grating. Buck got the feeling that hadn’t been OSHA compliant even before the fire.
He ran to her. When she caught sight of him she got that wild look of mingled hope and relief that he loved to see. It meant she knew help had come, she didn’t have to fight to survive alone any more. Her dark hair was already plastered to her head with sweat, she’d been fighting for a while.
“Here!” Ripping off his mask, Buck fitted it over her face. She took a deep breath of the filtered air, watching him with wide eyes.
“What about you?” She asked, only just intelligible through the mask.
Coughing up the ash particulates later would be a pain in the ass but that was a problem for future Buck. So he ignored her question.
“Stay still!” He ordered. With his thick gloves he could get a better grip on the sharp metal grating than she could. It took a couple tries to get the right leverage, but he bent it back enough that she could slip her ankle out.
Gasping with relief, the woman tried to scramble to her feet. But there was no time for that.
“I’m going to carry you!” He just barely waited long enough for her to register that before leaning down and scooping her into his arms.
She yelped, but clutched at him, scrabbling for purchase on his thick turnouts.
They wouldn’t make it all the way back to the main entrance, not if the building was coming down. He glanced around, trying to spot an emergency exit.
“Way out?” He asked.
The woman pointed and Buck followed her direction. When they reached the emergency exit door, she put an arm out to hit the push bar and they slammed out of the building.
The night seemed pitch black after the glare of flame and Buck stumbled, boot catching on the uneven paving slabs. The woman in his arms yelped again, holding on to him with both hands.
“Sorry.” He said with a sheepish smile, though the woman didn’t seem to register it.
When his vision adjusted, he walked them around to the front of the building where triage had been set up. Whoever it was that had been so close to death had evidently been treated or taken to hospital. The Grey hovered over the scene in the way it always did after near death experiences, but it hadn’t claimed anyone that evening.
Aditi, one of the paramedics on his shift, looked up as he approached. “Finally made it out then Buckley?” Luckily she sounded more amused than annoyed. She was better at putting up with him than most of the people he worked with.
Her long dark hair was braided in a thick ponytail down her back to keep it out of her face. She was tiny, at least a foot shorter than Buck, but she could more than hold her own.
“As always.” He said smugly as he lowered the woman he carried to sit on the tarps that had been spread out on the concrete.
“Decided you didn’t need the mask?”
Buck couldn’t quite read her tone so he shrugged. “It was getting hot under there.” He gave Aditi a brilliant grin and she just rolled her eyes. “Speaking of my mask, mind if I have it back?”
The woman awkwardly peeled the mask off and handed it back to him. “Thank you.” She whispered, sounding quiet and awed. “You saved me.”
Buck winked at her. “Just doing my job.”
“I see you have survived another stunt, Buckley.” A cool voice said behind him.
Buck didn’t even have to turn to know it was Astergarde, but when he did he saw the man watching him with something bordering on disdain. Astergarde was the only other mage-firefighter in station 124 and had been Buck’s supervisor for his probationary year. The half hearted attempts to teach Buck anything had lasted all of about a week, since then he mostly just gave Buck disapproving looks. Astergarde wasn’t quite as tall as Buck, and was willowy where Buck was thickly muscled.
Too used to the treatment to take offence, Buck just grinned at him. “Maybe you should try it some time. Might even get some soot on you.” Pointedly, Buck brushed some residue off his sleeve.
“I know where I am most useful.” Astergarde said primly, clearly implying that Buck absolutely did not know the same.
“Well-” Buck’s voice caught as he choked on ash. Coughing, he turned to the side and spat a disgusting black glob onto the pavement. After so many years he no longer found it unnerving to feel his own magic crawling around inside him fixing injuries and expelling foreign matter. But the actual expulsion of it was still unpleasant. He grimaced at the taste, wondering if he could find some water.
“You’re-” The woman he’d rescued was staring at him still, awe turned to fear. “You’re a-”
“Yeah.” Buck said flatly. Well, the hero worship had been nice while it lasted. He really needed to get better about not letting his eyes turn black when his magic flared up unexpectedly. “You’re welcome. I’m gonna get some water.” He spat another horrible glob onto the floor, then walked away. Aditi and Astergarde would make sure the woman was well taken care of. Though Astergarde was a bit of an asshole, he was a professional when it came to the public.
When he’d snagged himself a water, Buck leaned against the ladder truck and tipped his head back to look at the sky. He’d saved her. It didn’t matter what she thought of him. All that mattered was that he had saved a life.
-
By the time they made it back to the firehouse, they were an hour overtime and the next shift was already there. So they could hit the showers without having to rush. Buck ended up spending several minutes hunched over coughing up ash, but eventually it was all out. He hadn’t even had his mask off that long, it didn’t seem like it should be possible to breathe in so much crap so quickly.
By the time Buck was dry and dressed he was looking forward to getting back to his place and collapsing face first into his mattress, but a voice stopped him.
“Buckley!” Todd called from the doorway to the changing room. “Cap wants to see you in his office. From the asshole grin Todd had on his face, it couldn’t mean anything good.
Sighing, Buck tried to think of what he could have done wrong recently. There was usually something, but most of the time he just got yelled at in the moment to cut the shit. When the captain actually called Buck into his office it was usually for a discussion he’d rather not have.
So Buck headed past the gym, deeper into the firehouse. The door to the Captain’s office was open but Buck knocked on it anyway.
“Firefighter Buckley.” Chapman said with a wide smile that made Buck want to roll his eyes like a petulant teenager. “Come in, take a seat.”
Taking the offered seat, Buck shifted uncomfortably. “What can I do for you captain?”
“Actually, this is about what I can do for you. I have your transfer order here.”
Buck blinked at him. “My… transfer order?”
Leaning forward, Chapman slid the papers across his desk. “You will be working with the 118 from now on.”
“But- I only just finished my probation. I haven’t even had my shield ceremony yet.” Buck hadn’t exactly been excited about his shield ceremony, he had no one to invite. No family, and he was new to LA so no friends. Buck had been half tempted to ask if they could just have a cake or something during shift and get it over with. But still, he wasn’t expecting to be told to just move on.
“Exactly, you’re no longer a probie. You’re a fully fledged mage-firefighter, qualified to work unsupervised by another mage. Mages are spread thin so the brass wants you out there in the wild. It’s time to spread your wings kiddo.”
Buck hated the way Chapman said ‘kiddo’. It was so patronizing, like he really was a wayward five year old that Chapman had the misfortune of working with. Though, him seeing Buck as a kid had never stopped him from letting Buck run into a burning building or do a dangerous maneuver.
Frowning at the paper, Buck asked, “I don’t even get to choose which station I work at?”
Chapman leaned back in his chair and gave an expansive shrug. “Don’t like it, you can take it up with the brass. Submit a request- complaint- whatever. But next shift you’re at the 118 so you’re no longer my problem. Shut the door on your way out.”
Buck wasn’t even sure where in LA the 118 was but Chapman was clearly not about to be answering any of his questions. Taking his transfer orders, Buck turned and shut the door on his way out.
Most firefighters couldn’t really be ordered around like this, but Chapman had been telling the truth about the shortage of mages in LA. The brass wanted to spread them out as much as possible, to cover a wider area. The dedicated mage response teams could only do so much. Like Chapman had said, he could technically fight the assignment if he really wanted to, but he wasn’t sure what good it would do.
He looked around at the station he’d spent the last year working in. There were a few of his coworkers he was vaguely friendly with, none that he was close to. Not for lack of trying. But most people were just about tolerant of what he was, as long as they didn’t have to see it much. Tolerance didn’t generally extend into friendship, in his experience. In fact, it usually wore out.
Perhaps a transfer was for the best. His time at the 124 was always going to be limited, why drag things out? No one would thank him for it, that much he was sure of.
Going to his locker, Buck cleared out the few things he’d stored there. A spare change of clothes, an extra phone charger, a packet of mints he’d forgotten about. He’d never personalized his locker the way most of his colleagues did so it didn’t take long.
As he walked out of the station, Buck looked up the 118. A fresh start.
He hoped it would go well, but worried it wouldn’t.