I hope you enjoy this, it's my first 9-1-1 fic!
"Diaz, Baker, you two go over to the 118, see if they need any help over there," Eddie heard his Captain call out to them.
Their squad had just arrived on the scene of a multi-car pileup, a large multi-car pileup. In his six months of being a probationary firefighter, Eddie would have to say that this was the worst he had ever seen. Across three lanes of the I-405 Southbound by Long Beach, there had to have been at least nine vehicles that had crashed into each other. They, the 124, were the second station to arrive on scene, right after the 118.
Half of their station looked to be putting out two of the cars that remained in flames. After getting direction from their Captain, Eddie and Baker headed in the direction to help two of the 118's firefighters as they were working on getting an injured driver out of a vehicle with a crushed door.
"Do you need help with anything over here?" Baker asked one of the firefighters that was working on the car. Eddie saw the name 'Buckley' on the back of the man's turncoat.
"Yeah," the man said as he turned around. Even in the dark light of the just set sun, Eddie could tell the man had some intense blue eyes. "Can you guys bring over another backboard? We have three people in here."
"Yeah, sure. Back in one sec," Baker said as he ran back to their truck to grab a back board.
Eddie, meanwhile, joined the man as he was working on opening the door of the car. "So, busy night?" Eddie heard the guy ask.
Eddie looked around at the other crashed vehicles. Busy night was right. This was the largest crash he had seen in his six months on the job so far. He couldn't even recall seeing a site with this much damage in his Army days.
"I think that's an understatement," Eddie said.
He heard the guy let out a chuckle at that. For some reason, Eddie couldn't help but think that he liked the sound of that noise. "I take it you're a new guy?"
Eddie narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean by that?" he asked.
"This might look bad, but you'll see worse," Buck said as Baker came back with the backboard. By now, they had managed to get the door open to the car, and it wasn't hard to get the unconscious driver onto the board and start loading them onto one of the ambulances.
They then split up, the guy from the 118 going to help one of their other guys helping people out of the damaged vehicles, Eddie doing the same with Baker.
Eddie didn't know why, but for some reason, all throughout the rest of the night they were on the scene of the crash, he kept feeling the sensation to check on the guy from the 118, Buckley was his name, keep the man in his sights, make sure he didn't get hurt or anything.
Which was just weird. He had just met the man a little over an hour ago, and didn't even know his first name. He wasn't feeling the need to check in on any of the guys from his station. Well, at least not check in on them like this.
It was only as they finished getting people out of the wrecked vehicles and were sending the last ambulance to the hospital, he found himself standing next to Buckley and another guy from his station. They were exchanging pleasantries, both stations about to leave and to get off shift soon, when he made eye contact with Buckley.
He saw the man's eyes grow wide, probably with the same realization he just made.
Oh, they were bonded.
Fuck.
Xx?xXx?xXx?xX
There were many types of bonds that could be shared by two… or more… people.
Friendship Bonds.
Sibling Bonds.
Mentor Bonds.
Those were by far the most common, and least complicated.
You would feel a connection with the person, feel when they're nearby, feel when they're in danger. If you're close enough to them, you might even feel an imprint of intense emotions, but that was about it.
Then the bonds got a little more complicated.
Parental Bonds.
Romantic Bonds.
Spontaneous Soul Bonds.
The last one was the worst, in Eddie's opinion. Like Romantic bonds, but ten times as strong, determined by God, the fates, whatever you wanted to call it.
The bonds that were seen as the most important, to be protected before all else.
All bond types allowed one to feel connections with another person. Whether it was a vague feeling of their location and proximity to them, echoes of the emotions of the person they shared a bond with, but with the Spontaneous Soul Bonds, they basically shared everything with their bondmate. Emotions, pain, sometimes even thoughts.
There were also other things they did to your biology. The echoes, or extra nudges you might get in a regular bond can become full of physical senses and changes. Distance from the bondmate can cause measured changes in body chemistry, leading to increased anxiety, mood swings, higher blood pressure, and the like.
Worse, it was the one type of bond that couldn't be broken.
His entire childhood all Eddie heard his parents talk about bonds were that he and his sisters needed to find their True Bond, like they had. That he would never feel complete, whole, fulfilled until he did so.
Despite the fact that those bonds were extremely rare, and that less than 5% of the world developed them, they were the children of one of those bonds, so it only made sense that they would make one as well.
When Eddie had gotten Shannon pregnant and formed a romantic bond with her, Eddie's parents were… less than pleased. They hadn't liked the idea of him choosing his bondmate for himself. That was something that was to be left up to God, they had said.
Once Christopher was actually born, they had turned their complaints away from bonds, and more towards how they were parenting their son. "You're doing this wrong"... "He's too young for that." It was almost as if they believed they had messed up in raising Eddie, and instead wanted a do-over with Christopher.
If there was one thing that Eddie couldn't blame Shannon for, that was being fed up with his parents.
But then Shannon had left him, and his parents all too quickly turned their grievances back to the topic of bonding. "We told you that you shouldn't've bonded with that girl"... "If this was your True Bond, this would have never had happened"... "What makes you think that just because this wasn't your True Bond, you two could just break up?"
As if it was his fault the bond with Shannon broke anyway. He hadn't wanted to end things. Even with the fights they were getting into after he returned from his last tour. He wanted to work things out with her, at least try.
But then, barely a week after he got out of the hospital after his last deployment, she had come by with that man she had met while he was deployed.
"He's my True Bond, Eddie," She had said while introducing the man. As if that excused her basically cheating while he was off fighting in a war. Because apparently forming a Spontaneous Soul Bond with a man while shopping for groceries authorized that. "I'm sorry," Shannon said, not sounding at all remorseful to Eddie. "But I'm sure you can see how things are heading between us anyway."
Of course he could, he wasn't blind with devotion like some of the guys he served with were. He knew there would be some challenges with her when he got home, even if they had a Romantic Bond.
"Are you leaving me, Shannon?" Eddie asked, dread growing in the pit of his stomach and fear in his voice.
The apologetic look she gave him answered that question for him.
"What about Christopher?" He asked. There was no way she was just going to leave him, leave her kid, right? She wouldn't, it was unthinkable.
If her face could get even more fake regret, he would be surprised. "You'll be getting the paperwork in a couple days," Shannon said. "I'm giving you full custody."
And that was that. Eddie had tried to say something else. Tell her she couldn't just leave them- leave Christopher like that. At least have her explain it to the boy herself. But within minutes, she was gone, getting into the man's new fancy blue pickup truck and pulling out of his driveway. A couple days later a lawyer brought over the custody and divorce paperwork, but Eddie never heard from Shannon again after that.
They were probably just a distant memory to her now of the time before she met her soulmate. Because it was apparently also socially acceptable to just leave your husband and kid when you found your True Bond.
After another year in Texas, another year of working dead-end jobs while struggling to make ends meet, another year of listening to his parents criticize him for breaking his bond with Shannon, he just had to leave Texas.
He was sick of it, sick of his parents, sick being looked down on, and sick of freaking bonds. No more bonds, he decided. If he didn't make any new bonds, then he wouldn't have to go through all of this betrayal, falseness, and abandonment again.
He would keep his parental bond with Chistopher, of course he would. But any others? If he had any say about it, and even if he didn't, he would never form any more bonds with people again.
So this… thing with the firefighter from the 118… he didn't want it. He wanted nothing to do with it. If he could be on the other side of the world from it, he would have gone there yesterday. If they ignored it, stopped whatever activity fed the thing, Eddie was sure it would just go away.
Even if it was one of the spontaneous bonds, the bonds that are said to be stronger than all the others, the bond was only the beginning stage. They still had to build on it if they wanted it to actually become something. Otherwise it would just fizzle out, still exist, but at the most become background noise in the back of his mind.
At least, that's what he was always told.
Xx?xXx?xXx?xX
The last place Buck thought he would ever find his soulmate would be on the scene of a car crash.
Well, take that back, he might have entertained the thought a couple times, but his soulmate was always one of the people he was saving during those daydreams, not another firefighter from another house who was helping him.
But then there he found himself, forming a bond spontaneously with a firefighter from the 124th. Buck wasn't all that surprised that it was a man he bonded with. It was by no means an unheard of phenomenon. Rare, sure. Doubly so with how rare spontaneous bonds are to begin with. Some, well a lot of people, question it, but it's not seen as impossible. He also knew he was into both women and men, much to his parent's chagrin.
But he hadn't talked to his parents for at least the last three years, long before he became a firefighter or moved to California.
Of course, after years, he had finally gotten in touch with Maddie again, even though she seemed to be wanting to date his co-worker, and she knew that she wouldn't have a problem with that fact.
Hell, when he told her about this, the fact he was now bonded, he could only imagine the freak out she would have. Both him and his sister had both been big into the ideas of bonds. Despite his sister's past history with her abusive ex, she hadn't given up on the whole idea of bonds. Maybe she wanted to put off forming any new ones for a while, and maybe she was growing to accept the fact she probably wouldn't be finding her True Bond this late in life, but she would still flip out, in a good way, when Buck told her about it.
Call him a sappy, lovey-dovey romantic, but Buck was always fascinated by the idea of soulbonds. Finding his True Bond, falling in love, having a family, and living happily ever after. Just like in all the cheesy 90's rom-coms Maddie made him watch as a kid.
So that left the question, what was he going to do about this?
Once they shared that look, realized they were both bonded to each other, things at the scene of the crash had quickly cleared up. They didn't even have time to say anything else to each other before their respective teams were calling them back to their trucks and heading back to their stations.
Hell, Buck didn't even get the guy's first name.
The following days, Buck still hadn't made any contact with the Diaz guy from the 124th.
He could almost believe that he had dreamed the interaction with the guy up, if it wasn't for the fact he could feel… a buzzing coming from somewhere.
Occasionally the buzzing would change, grow more intense, mellow out, grow cold, expand, but it was still there, had been ever since that night. He did a quick google search of what it could mean, which sent him down a whole nother rabbit hole on the changes people go through when they bond. It all sounded like the symptoms of other bonds, multiplied by a hundred and then adding five more.
Knowing when they were close by.
Feeling when they were in danger.
Sharing intense physical pain with them.
Be able to feel and project their emotions.
That must be what the strange buzzing in the back of his mind was.
He has no clue what the changes in the buzzing mean or what emotions they symbolize, but at least he knew there still was a bond present.
Anyway, he needed to get in contact with the Diaz guy. First he at least had to learn the man's name. Then, there were things people had to do when they bonded, especially when it came to the Spontaneous Soul Bonds.
They were both firefighters in the same city. They had to report these things. Buck was also pretty sure they were supposed to visit some… Bond Specialist or whatever they're called? He wasn't exactly sure, the only bonds he had ever had were the sibling bond with his sister and the severely lacking parental bonds with his parents. After the last year or so in the firehouse, they had some small platonic friendship bonds forming. But Bucks never had a romantic bond with someone, spontaneous or otherwise. He knew they were really rare, but from the couple of people he knew who developed one, he remembered them all saying they had to go to bond specialists afterwards- a special type of medical doctor who could make sure the physical and psychological parts of the bond were developing healthily.
Buck wished they had worked with the 124 earlier than three days ago. If that were the case, then he might know a way of contacting Diaz, or at least know of someone who could.
Of course he could probably ask someone, Bobby for sure knew a way of contacting their station chief, and Chimney had been around long enough he probably knew someone who worked there. But for some reason, he just couldn't ask them. He always found himself pausing as he tried to bring up the topic.
He couldn't say why exactly, but he just felt the need that he had to talk to the guy in person before even mentioning anything about it to someone else.