Loved Eddie Being Superstitious Towards Hildy. That Was Fun - Tumblr Posts

FIC: currently untitled, 911

written for @bucktommypositivityweek! i had this idea a while ago but never intended to do anything with it, but today's "kids and pets" prompt said "you have no excuse actually, now write it." so i did

important note given recent and disgusting events in fandom: this fic centers on Tommy and Jee, bc i thought we deserved something wholesome for them, but i'm being cautious about how i post it. i'm only using the one tag for my own organizational purposes, which means that as of posting, you're only seeing it because you follow me (or are an event mod). that in turn means that you know it's the work of a real human you sort of know and vaguely trust!

i also don't intend to post on ao3 until the mods have vetted and reblog. that way i'll have some proof of safety to link to.

with all that out of the way, here you go!

It’s too fucking hot.

Tommy’s lived in LA a little over twenty years, has adjusted to the heat, does not miss snowy winters, but sometimes it’s still just too fucking hot.

Doesn’t change the fact that he has 24 off and his car needs washing, and the only person he trusts to do that is him.

There is at least a decent amount of tree shade at the top of his driveway in the morning, breeze making it more comfortable than his garage, so he goes out there slathered in sunscreen - even under the thin tank top he forces himself to put on with his shorts because Mrs Roberts across the way has never heard of keeping her eyes to herself - and gets to work.

He’s rocking a rhythm, 80s playlist streaming from his phone on Do Not Disturb and Yeti full of ice water next to the soapy water bucket to remind him to drink, when he hears his name.

“Tommy! Tommyyyy, Tommy!”

Tommy turns sharply at the sound of his name in a small, familiar voice. Jee is walking up his driveway - well, staggering a little, he realizes, even as he drops the big sponge on the hood to move closer to her.

“Where -“ he starts to ask, glancing past her for Chimney or Maddie, but he gives that up pretty quick, because Jee is flushed red, shirt crumpled and leggings marked with dirt, eyes looking glassier the closer he gets, and they’d never let her get like this. He says instead,

“Hey, Jee, hi.”

“Tommy..” Her face crumples and she bursts into tears. Or, into sobs, really, her eyelashes catch some small drops but no real tears fall. Tommy, crouched in front of her now, shifts to his knees and pulls her into a hug.

“It’s okay,” he soothes, “it’s okay. How do you feel?” Because she’s hot to the touch, too hot and not sweating as much she should be to compensate.

“I’m so hot,” she sobs into his shoulder, “and my head hurts and I,” she drops to a small whisper, “I threw up.”

“Okay,” Tommy says, “okay, let’s go inside where it’s cooler.” He scoops Jee up into his arms; she sighs a little, burrowing close despite his body heat. Though with as high as hers is, maybe he still feels cooler to her than the air around them.

He left the front door open and its screen door unlocked, so it’s only seconds before he’s inside. “Hildy, dial 911, enable bathroom speakers.”

Was the full suite Hildy system expensive as shit to install? Did he spend countless hours learning how to make it as uninvasive as possible? Did Eddie make the sign of the cross and pass it off as a joke when Tommy asked Hildy to order pizza? Yes to all of the above.

Did he get it expressly in case of an emergency and is that the best decision he’s ever made in his life right now? Absolutely.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

Not Maddie, thank god. Tommy does recognize Josh Russo’s voice, though, from several Buckey-Han+friends rounds of poker.

“Firefighter Tommy Kinard, off duty,” he reports, giving his address as he nudges his bathroom door fully open with a shoulder. “Victim is five years old, female, displaying signs of heatstroke. Perspiration minimal, reports nausea and headache, I haven’t wasted time finding a thermometer but I’d guess 103 minimum.”

“And the victim’s name?” Josh is a professional and he sounds it, but Tommy can pick up on an underlying tension.

“Jee-yun Han,” he says. “Hildy, shower on, water pressure low, temperature just below lukewarm.”

“Firefighter Kinard, the 118 are on their way, eta five minutes.” That’s definitely relief in Josh’s voice; Tommy grins a little as he reaches out to test the water. It’s perfect - cool but not cold so as not to be a shock to her system, spray heavy enough to soak quickly through her clothes and light enough to avoid overwhelming her. Starting the cooling process immediately is important and also easy to overdo.

“Tell them the front door is open and we’ll be spending that five minutes cooling off in the shower, clothes and all, right, Jee?”

Jee stirs in his arms. “Can’t shower in clothes,” she mumbles. He gives her a gentle little bounce as he steps into the tub.

“Sure we can,” he says, bright and, he hopes, warm and happy. “It’s silly, right? We can be silly.”

Tommy holds Jee against his shoulder first and starts scooping water into her hair. Jee exhales, relaxing more deeply against him.

“Let me guess, dispatch,” he says as he works, “I’ve ended a search I would have known about if I hadn’t had my phone on Do Not Disturb.”

“Buck did warn us you would,” Josh says. “He and Maddie are off today, they’ve been with the searchers. She disappeared from the Rowe school.”

Jee’s hair is thoroughly wet, as are her clothes along the back. Tommy turns her carefully, holding her against him and careful to keep her face up out of the spray. Her eyes are closed; she doesn’t react to the cool water against more sensitive skin.

“Jee,” he murmurs, bouncing her a little, “hey, Jee, open your eyes, look at me - that’s right, you can’t go to sleep in the shower, that’s ridiculous.” When he’s satisfied that she’s still at least conscious, he says,

“Rowe, that’s like three miles away, how’d she end up here?”

“Where are you? - I mean, where did you find her?”

“I didn’t,” Tommy says, “she found me.”

The front door bangs open a moment later, followed rapidly by Eddie and Hen barging in with a gurney at the ready.

“They’re here,” Tommy says, “thanks, Josh, let’s get drinks soon, Hildy, end call, disable bathroom speakers,” all as he hands Jee over to Eddie, who just barely doesn’t make a face at the mention of Hildy. Tommy kills the shower himself, half-listening to Hen and Eddie be paramedics at each other.

“Papa’s waiting for you outside,” Hen assures Jee, “and Mama and Uncle Buck will be with you soon.”

“Get dry and dressed in ninety,” Eddie tells him, “and Bobby says you can hitch a ride in the engine if you want.”

“I’m there.”

*

Tommy’s just barely settled in to wait with Chimney, who is pale and etched with a kind of dread Tommy knows he can’t fully comprehend, when Evan and Maddie come flying down the hallway.

“Howie,” Maddie says, and Tommy watches Chim steady now that he has her to comfort. Something to do other than worry.

“We shouldn’t be in for much of a wait,” he tells her as they embrace, “she wasn’t looking too bad in the ambulance -“

Then Tommy’s arms are full of Evan and his attention shifts.

“Tommy, thank god, how was she, how - ?” He pulls Tommy in close as he talks, burying his face for a moment in the side of Tommy’s neck. Tommy holds him, and lets him.

“Quiet but conscious when they showed up,” he says. “Dehydrated, feverish, about as sunburned as you’d expect - Evan, what the hell happened? How did she get from fucking Rowe all the way to my place?”

Evan leans back just enough for their eyes to meet. “We don’t know yet. They called Maddie - uh, a few hours ago? I guess? And said Jee was missing, and we went to go join the search, there were a lot of people, I don’t even know how she got past the search perimeter in the first place. Athena’s still there looking into it.”

“She’ll figure it out,” Tommy tells him, “and Jee will be fine.” He kisses Evan’s forehead, and Evan sighs a little. His hold on Tommy doesn’t loosen, but Tommy still feels him relax.

“Yeah.”

They hold each other like that, Evan’s gaze switching from Tommy to Maddie to Chimney every now and then. Cataloguing the room, Tommy thinks; checking that the people in it he cares about are still as okay as they were the last time he looked. Chim and Maddie are leaning tightly together, clutching each others’ hands, attention focused on the door to Jee’s room.

It isn’t too long before it opens. “Mr and Mrs Han?”

“Yes,” they say together, and the doctor smiles.

“Your daughter’s a trouper,” she says. “We’d like to keep her overnight, make sure she’s fully hydrated and that fever comes down, but she’s going to be fine, and she’s asking for you.”

It would be a lie to say that Tommy’s never seen Chimney move quite that fast, but it does come pretty close.

“Thank god,” Evan sighs as the doctor follows them into Jee’s room. “Thank you, if you hadn’t seen her, who knows -“

“She saw me,” Tommy says. “If she hadn’t, if she’d just walked past -“ if he’d decided to put off washing his car . . . he takes a deep, shaky breath. Crisis over, commence adrenaline crash. Always worse when you know the victim. His friend’s daughter, his partner’s niece -

Christ, Jee could have died. Rowe leans right up against a residential area, most of those residents at work during the day and therefore not home to see a little girl wandering by herself . . . change one thing, and she could have died.

The belated fear, the kind Evan’s been living with the past few hours, must be showing on his face, because Evan says gently,

“Hey. Hey, Tommy, she didn’t. She saw you and she’s fine just like you said she’d be.”

Right. Right. Still. It might be Tommy’s turn to tuck his face against Evan’s neck and just breathe for a minute.

“We should call Bobby,” he mutters, eventually.

“Maybe when you look less like you might puke.”

“I’m fine now,” he says, straightening up to look at Evan and prove it. Evan gives him a soft little smile.

“Good. Everyone’s fine.” He kisses the corner of Tommy’s mouth, light, then steps back to pull out his phone.

Bobby answers almost immediately. “Buck? Any news?” he asks, slightly staticky on speakerphone.

“Jee’s gonna be fine,” Buck reports, beaming now. There’s a chorus of relieved exclamations on the other end. Tommy makes out Eddie saying thank god and a wordless sound from Hen, and a little cheer from - Ravi, he thinks?

Bobby is silent for a long moment before he speaks. “That’s very good to hear,” he says, voice heavy with relief and other things mixed in that Tommy doesn’t know him well enough to decipher. “I heard from Athena a few minutes ago - guess now we know why Chimney and Maddie weren’t answering her calls.”

“You did?” Evan asks. “What happened?”

“There’s footage from security cameras showing an older student, a girl, leading Jee off the campus approximately forty-five minutes before anyone noticed she’d gone missing. The girl came back by herself about twenty minutes later. She told Athena that it was a game the students play and everyone always comes back just fine.”

Tommy snorts disbelief.

“Yeah, that sums up Athena’s thoughts on the matter, too,” Bobby says, dry.

“Forty-five minutes?” Evan asks. “So she must have been outside the search perimeter from the start.”

“And somehow found her way to my house from there,” Tommy says. “Pretty damn impressive, I think she’s been there maybe twice.”

“She’s really smart,” Evan says matter-of-factly, like that solves the issue for him.

As they wind up the call, the doctor exits Jee’s room and heads off down the hall. Chimney appears in the doorway a moment later.

“Jee’s asleep,” he says, “conked out pretty much as soon as she was sure her mom and I weren’t going anywhere, but we thought you two might at least like to stick your heads in for proof of life before you go.”

Tommy lets Evan go in first, of course, only a little because Chimney stops him with a fierce hug.

“We’re even, all right?” he says, voice thick. “I saved you, you saved my little girl, you don’t owe me a damn thing anymore. If anything, I’m in your debt.”

“I am just really glad I was there,” Tommy says. That he was there, and that Jee saw him.

“Me too, man.” Chimney claps his shoulder briskly. “C’mon, Maddie wants to cry on you too. And we’re having you over for dinner once Jee’s feeling better. I think we’re gonna rope Buck into helping plan the menu.”

“At your own peril.” Tommy has long since learned the risks and rewards of letting Evan plan - much of anything, really.

“Maddie thinks the big sister card will keep him in line,” Chimney says. “We’ll see.”

He turns and heads back into the room. Tommy follows behind, pausing in the doorway himself for a few seconds to just look: Jee’s sunburned, peaceful face, her little hand in Maddie’s; Maddie gazing down at her, radiating joy and gratitude; Chim taking his place on the other side of Jee’s bed while Evan stands at the foot of it, also watching them all.

Luck seems to be the theme of the day, and right now Tommy’s feeling pretty lucky himself.