Ignite | e. buckley

twenty three

Anastasia was back at her house the next morning, needing to give Tatum his breakfast since she wasn't able to rely on Yasmine, her dog sitter, because it wasn't time for her to come over yet.  When she left, Buck was going back to Maddie and Chimney's apartment for something, but he ended up coming through her door less than an hour later.  Again, he left their apartment upset and Anastasia was there to comfort him.  It was still pretty early in the morning and they had an hour to spare before their shift, so she brought over his favorite coffee mug and sat beside him on the couch. 

"So all those bikes, skateboards, and bones you broke were because you had a brother that you didn't even know about?"  Anastasia asked.

Apparently, part of Maddie's baby box included pictures from their childhood, one of them being a boy named Daniel, their brother who had died when Buck was a baby.  "It's why they hated me all this time, I couldn't do what they made me for."

"And that's not your fault.  You were a baby, it wasn't your job to be saving peoples lives."  Anastasia told him as she pulled out cookies to make him feel a little better.  "They can't blame you for something you had no control over, and that shouldn't have been your sole purpose of being born."

"I know, it's just— I thought they hated me because of how reckless I was growing up.  Turns out they hated me way before that."

It took every fiber of her being for Anastasia to try and not tell him that his parents don't hate him, but she didn't want to invalidate his feelings, and after the dinner and meeting them, his parents were a little weird.  "Hey, you still have Maddie who loves you, even if you don't think so now.  They forced her to keep a secret at such a young age, and I know you'll be mad for a little bit, but that wasn't really her choice.  And I think you turned out pretty great."

Finally looking up from his coffee mug, Buck looked at her with what could only be described as heart eyes. "How do you always have the perfect words for everything?"

"I think of it as my superpower. And it kind of was part of my job in the FBI." She told him. Since he just kept staring at her, she leaned in and locked her lips with his, kind of loving the fact that he tasted like chocolate chip cookies and hazelnut coffee. "We still have work, so finish eating."

"Do we have to?"

She had finished her coffee and breakfast, so Anastasia stood up to start cleaning before they had to leave.  "I don't know about you, but living in Los Angeles is really expensive.  I have bills."

× × ×

Their shift was pretty normal, just the general calls to car accidents, cats in trees, you know, the usual.  During their breaks whenever they weren't on a call, which was weirdly pretty frequent that day, Buck was able to fill everyone in on his family issues about his dead older brother.  The breaks also consisted of Anastasia trying to convince Buck that people cared about him because finding out the "real reason" his parents had him really put a dent in his self-esteem.  Later into their shift, they got a call to an industrial complex fire, and it was just their luck that they produced hand sanitizer.  because of the gravity of the situation and the fact that hand sanitizer is very flammable, there were several stations already at the complex when the 118 got there.  In addition to putting the fire out, they were also looking for 12 missing employees.

"Eddie, Valdez and I will be joining the 133, searching on the Charlie side.  Buck, Hen, Chin, you'll be running a team with two firefighters from the 141.  Your entry point is from the alpha side, let's go!"

With Anastasia and Buck being split up from each other, the two sent each other looks as if to say "good luck" before they went their separate ways, starting with Anastasia following Bobby and Eddie.  The three were inside of the building, on the opposite side of the other three, all looking for the unaccounted for employees.  Anastasia, Bobby and Eddie had successfully found four of the employees before there was an explosion in the opposite side of the complex, and everyone had to evacuate.  There was a short walk from where they were to the sort of central center, where another fire captain had a tent set up to communicate with everyone from all of the stations present.