bombero | open post.

Vaguely, Eddie remembers Bobby telling him about some of the leftover in the fridge. He thinks this one's called hotdish? He's not exactly sure what it is but it smells damn good so he's not shy about digging in. And--oh, yeah. That tastes damn good too. Nash should really have put his cooking skills in as part of his recruitment speech.

As he's in the middle of taking another big bite, Buck apologizes. Eddie pauses, mouth obviously full of food and fork heading for more. This is awkward. Not because of the apology. No, that he appreciates. But now he's got to cover his mouth a little with one hand, chew very fast, and swallow before he can say anything back.

"It's alright." All's well that ends well, right? "You seemed pretty surprised I was even here. I take it Bobby didn't tell you he was hiring anyone new?"

That would put anyone on the backfoot.

“Nope. Probably would’ve been a good idea since he apparently was thinking of teaming us up, but - “

To be fair, he probably didn’t think he needed to prep Buck for anything. She’s usually pretty easy to get along with, so it’s not like he could’ve reasonably expected Buck to get all - whatever happened the past couple days. It was stupid and unfair. “I didn’t know til you showed up for your shift.”

"I can see how that would be rough," he says. It's not an excuse but it is an explanation. Makes it easy to say--"Consider it water under the bridge."

Eddie takes another bite of his (very late) dinner and gives Buck a crooked little smile. "I was serious when I said you could watch my back earlier."

She has to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying something stupid like watching your back isn’t exactly a hardship, because she might be a fuck-up but she doesn’t do that at work anymore.

“You, too. What you did was pretty badass.”

Eddie shrugs one shoulder. "It's the job, isn't it?" he says, looking more to the side than at Buck. Praise for this kind of stunt is easier to swallow than it used to be. Different context from the army days. Nobody ended up dead. But Eddie's... still not very good at dealing with it when it's unexpected.

"Besides, I'm not the one who jumped in without any training." He raises an eyebrow at her, but his tone is light. It was a stupid move, but he wouldn't have been able to do it without her.

“No training?” she repeated with a teasing kind of shock. “I’m sorry, does my shirt not say LAFD?” She glances down at it, as if double-checking that it still does. As if pulling a live grenade out of a man’s leg is something that firefighters are regularly trained and expected to do.

“You did all the hard work, anyway. I was basically moral support.”

"Oh, so they stopped doing bomb squad training just before I joined the academy then." He can't help but grin. "Got it."

It feels good to banter with someone. That's--not something he's been able to do much recently. First, he was stuck in El Paso and exhausting himself working three jobs. Then, at the academy, he mostly kept his head down, working himself to the bone to get through and provide for Christopher. This? Getting to relax in a no-longer-tense environment and finding a friend? Feels like it might be close to what he was working towards.

"How about we just say we were both badasses and Hen and Chim missed one hell of a call?"

“Well, yeah, obviously. After I passed with flying colors, they decided they couldn’t possibly need anyone else with that training. All Buckley all the way.”

She takes a couple more bites of her leftovers now that she’s confident they’ve gotten over her whole Thing and started over. “Oh, we’re going to be telling that story a lot of times, I’m pretty sure.”

Laughing quietly around another forkful of casserole, Eddie shakes his head. But it's already something of a fond gesture.

"Does it make the top ten craziest stories you've got from here?" He vaguely remembers something about rebar that sounded like it could be wilder. But a live grenade in the leg has gotta be pretty hard to beat.

"I'll have to update the list." She grins crookedly at him over a bite. "The time Chim got in a crash that had a piece of rebar sticking out of his forehead and didn't even know it is pretty high up there, but that has improbable recovery and patient directly related to the firehouse going for it. There's a point system, you know?"

Wait, what? Eddie pauses mid-bite, staring with wide eyes. "Chim got rebar through his forehead?" That explains that still-pink little scar on his forehead. But, Jesus, how is the man still alive? Other than 'a miracle.'

"It was completely insane." Is it horrible of her to be entertained by his reaction? Maybe, but sometimes the best way to deal with the crazy shit they've survived is telling some innocent bystander and watching their brain break. "When we got to the scene, he had no idea. Couldn't feel it from the shock. He even helped us decide how to transport him without wrecking all the good luck he had even surviving it."

"Holy shit."

There's really not much else that he can say in response to that. It's completely insane on so many levels. And honestly his level of respect for Chimney just went up. Even if he couldn't feel it, helping to triage and transport himself is a serious feat.

"If that's the top of the list, I kinda hope I don't ever have a call that takes its place."

"We wound up taking the entire car to the hospital." It was fully insane, and she's so grateful to be able to look back on it as a wild story and not one of the worst nights of the 118's lives - and thinking about it like that causes an edge of seriousness to seep into her mood. "Best not to jinx it."

He wonders for a moment if she's serious. Buck's demeanor changing a little would seem to indicate so but--that's a joke, right? He's just gonna assume that's a joke and move past it.

"How'd you get the entire car to the hospital?" he asks. "Tow truck?"

She shakes her head. "Put it on the flatbed of a truck. Easier to keep it steady that way."

Not like they wanted Chim getting even more hurt in transport.

"That's pretty ingenious." He is duly impressed. Go Chim or whoever else it was who came up with that idea.

"How totaled was his car?"

"Oh, his car was a goner."

She shakes her head ruefully as she has a sip of some water she'd brought over with her plate. "Ask him about it sometime if you want to see a grown man cry."

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