Chapter Text
It was a risk he’d accepted when he took the job. Buck knows that, just like he knows that firefighting puts him at a higher lifetime risk of certain cancers or developing cardiovascular disease or losing his life and/or limbs in any number of accidents that might occur when you’re paid to run towards dangerous situations on a regular basis. Life is unpredictable and life as a first responder? Even moreso. And, considering the number of times he’s ended up in this very hospital after something happened to him at work, he knows this better than most.
Still, of the long, long list of hazards he knew to watch out for, this hadn’t really been on his radar.
He’s met shifters before, both on and off the job, and mostly, they were just regular people. Outside of a few rare circ*mstances, they didn’t get many calls involving them. Because they were able to heal injuries so quickly on their own, they were less likely to need to call 9-1-1 generally, and as a result, were usually the lowest priority for triage if they were involved in an accident.
The LAFD has special response teams for calls regarding “rogue” or “feral” shifters, both highly politicized terms for shifters who’d either abandoned their human form or attacked someone while shifted. They have specialized equipment and training to deal with those situations, and usually at least half of the crew for those teams are shifters themselves. It cut down on the risks of non-shifter personnel being bitten considerably.
But just because something is rare, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
–
Rule number one when dealing with impalement injuries in the field: don’t try to pull it out.
Stabilize the wound, get pressure dressings on it to control bleeding, and transport the patient with the foreign body in place if at all possible. Let the trained surgeons deal with removing it in an environment where they have the proper equipment and extra blood bags on hand. Occasionally, like with Chimney’s accident, or the woman in the bowling alley, this requires some creative thinking on their parts to make safe transport possible, but a lot of the time, their biggest obstacle to following this one simple rule is the patient themselves.
People react to pain differently and often unpredictably. A chatty patient can suddenly go unresponsive, or become combative. And enough pain tends to make most people behave irrationally. That’s what Buck thought he was dealing with at first.
The 118 had been called to the scene of a particularly chaotic accident involving the 110 to 10 interchange, and Buck was currently trying to extricate a young man who told him his name was Jeremy from the crumpled remains of a blue Ford Fiesta. His smaller car had been caught between two enormous SUVs in the collision and basically accordioned around him.
Jeremy was the only passenger in the vehicle, fortunately, and was responsive enough to answer Buck’s questions when he got to him, but his answers were noticeably delayed and confused. The car’s crumple zones, seatbelt, and airbags probably saved the kid’s life, but the force of the crash had also shoved a hockey stick that had been in the back seat of his car straight through the driver’s seat and into Jeremy’s right shoulder, pinning him in place like a bug in a display case.
“Hang in there for me, Jeremy,” Buck says, as he positions the Jaws between the badly twisted door frame and the car’s B pillar. “We’ll have you out of here real soon, just sit tight and try not to move, okay?”
“Okay,” Jeremy mumbles.
Ravi joins him with the saw he’d sent him to fetch and together they crack the door open to get a better look at their patient. The steering column is crunched in as well, and normally, Buck would simply drop the seat back to pull him out, but the hockey stick is complicating matters.
“We’re going to have to take out this pillar,” he says to Ravi, grabbing it, “and the rear door, so we can get in behind him and cut this thing.”
Ravi nods and gets to work with that, while Buck carefully slips a c-collar on Jeremy. It’s a tight fit, getting it into place without jostling his shoulder.
“How are you doing, Jeremy? You still with me?”
“Yeah. It hurts though.” Jeremy sucks in a shallow breath between his teeth. “You gotta get this thing out of me.”
He tries to reach for the protruding hockey stick with his uninjured left hand. Buck swats it away gently. “No can do, bud, that’s gotta stay in place until we get you to a hospital.”
Jeremy groans and Buck turns to check on Ravi’s progress. He’s nearly gotten enough of the car opened up to get access to the backseat.
“If we cut it there,” he points, “we should be able to lay the seat back down slowly and tape him up once the rest of the stick’s free of the cushion. Then we can move him onto a backboard on his side.”
“Yeah. You hold him steady. I think I can get in there to cut it now,” Ravi agrees.
“Okay, Jeremy. This next part is probably going to hurt a little, but I promise you it’ll be quick and then we should have you out of here in no time.”
Buck leans over to grab a couple trauma dressings and tape from the medical bag he left sitting next to the car. He has to reach over the mangled steering wheel to wrap one of the dressings around the base of the hockey stick, using it and the tape to try to keep it from moving. Keeping one hand there, putting pressure against the wound, he reaches with his free arm to snake around Jeremy’s good shoulder to hold him in place while Ravi works.
Jeremy whimpers and squirms in Buck’s arms. “Hold real still for me, Jeremy. It’s important that you don’t move,” he tells him.
Ravi’s quick with the saw, but Jeremy still yelps and flinches towards Buck, who holds him tighter. “Almost there, almost there,” he assures him. “Ravi, I’ve got him, can you get the seat released?”
“Yeah. Got it.” Ravi hits the lever and slowly, carefully, they slide Jeremy and the remaining stick fragment free of the seatback. Jeremy’s breath is hot against Buck’s neck, coming in rapid, shallow pants.
With Ravi’s help, Buck gets the other dressing taped around the opposite end of the stick where it’s protruding out of the patient’s back. “Okay, see? I told you that’d be fast,” Buck says.
“It hurts so much,” Jeremy moans. “I need… I need…”
“What do you need?” Buck asks, trying to keep him distracted while Ravi goes to get the backboard off the gurney.
“Need to get this thing out of me,” Jeremy pants, and thrashes against Buck’s hold.
Buck tightens his grip on him. “I told you. They’re going to take it out at the hospital; you need to trust me, okay? We’re going to make sure you’re taken care of.”
“No, you don’t understand!” Jeremy thrashes again; he’s stronger than Buck thought, and knocks his helmet off his head. “It’s gonna, it’s gonna heal wrong if–if you don’t hurry.”
“Hey, hey! No, just hang tight, if we try to pull it out now, you’re just going to lose a lot of blood, okay? That’s bad, we don’t want that,” Buck says, moving to try to keep Jeremy’s left arm pinned at his side.
“No!” Jeremy snarls in his ear, and his voice has gotten rougher, almost a growl. Buck’s not going to be able to hold him much longer on his own unless he calms down and stops fighting.
“A little help here! Ravi! Eddie! Hen!” Buck shouts. His hands are too full to key his radio and he’s losing the battle to keep a hold on his patient.
What happens next happens so fast that Buck won’t remember it clearly later.
Jeremy makes a low sound in his throat that Buck will swear makes all of the hairs on his body stand on end and then, before he can react, he feels the bright, sharp pain of teeth at his throat.
Buck yelps and jerks back, falling out of the car and onto the street, hand flying to the torn flesh on his neck. His hand is wet, he’s bleeding, people are yelling his name, and all Buck can see is the clear blue sky above.
–
Maddie’s there when he wakes up later, in the hospital’s shifter isolation ward.
The room feels cold and strangely empty, and way brighter than it ought to, considering how few actual lights it appears to contain.
It takes Buck a few groggy moments to realize that the strange sound that woke him from a sound sleep is his sister’s heartbeat; it picks up when she notices he’s awake. He can’t help recoiling when she says his name and it feels like she’s shouting at him, even though logically, he knows it must be his ears, not her.
“Sorry,” she says, lowering her voice. “I forgot. They warned me that your hearing would be a little sensitive at first.”
Buck nods, and finds his own voice. “Hey, Maddie.”
It sounds a little rough, but in a familiar way; rough like first thing in the morning, not like he’s had his larynx chomped on. He raises a hand to his throat and finds whole, undamaged skin there. At most, it feels like he’s overdue for a shave. “How long–”
“It’s been three days,” Maddie tells him. She looks tired.
There’s a slightly sour note in the air, just beneath the tang of his own stale body odor, the residual stink of industrial disinfectants, and a third scent that reminds him of when he was a little kid and he used to sneak into Maddie’s room when he couldn’t sleep, and she’d wrap him up in her blankets to read him a bedtime story.
“Oh.” He doesn’t know what else to say. Between the symptoms he’s noticed so far and what he remembers from before he passed out, he’s pretty sure he knows what she’s going to tell him next, and he’s not sure how he feels about it yet.
“Do you remember what happened?” she asks carefully.
“Yeah,” he admits. “Patient bit me while we were trying to get him out of his car.” He rubs at his healed throat; the grown-out stubble is soft against his fingers. “Is he okay? I don’t–it was an accident. I’m pretty sure he panicked and I was–I didn’t know he was a shifter.”
There. He’s said the word. Maddie doesn’t quite flinch when he says it, but there’s a concerned look in her eyes.
“So you know why you’re here.” Her eyes flick over to the distinctive symbol stenciled on the door.
The shape has always vaguely reminded Buck of hazard symbols painted on sharps disposal bins or chemical storage canisters, even though he’s seen it used on pride flags as well. It feels more than a little insulting to be assigned a warning label, like he’s some kind of biohazard simply for existing, but he’s not sure how to argue that he isn’t one, considering how he ended up in this bed.
“Yeah, Maddie. I know.” He sighs.
She rubs her hands up and down her thighs, leaving faint marks on the denim with her nails. “I think he’s okay. Physically at least. I haven’t heard anything else yet. The police are going to want to talk to you now that you’re awake. And Bobby gave me the number for someone with the LAFD that you’re supposed to call as soon as you can.”
“Okay.”
–
After a physical exam and a lengthy verbal questionnaire intended to evaluate his cognitive functioning, they send him home later that day with a thick packet of information related to his diagnosis: lycanthropy.
It’s incurable, but most people who acquire lycanthropy as adults go on to lead perfectly normal lives, with only a few minor modifications to their lifestyle to accommodate their new condition, he’s told.
The social worker who stops in to talk for a few minutes before his discharge leaves him her card, along with a printout listing a handful of local support groups and instructions for accessing an online directory of county social services. He’s pretty sure it’s the same website they recommend to people on calls if they ask.
His teammates are all on shift until the morning, so he won’t be seeing any of them until then, even though they’ve been blowing up his phone with texts since he dropped a “proof of life” selfie into the group chat.
Maddie drives him home and insists on walking him up to his apartment, fussing about the amount of food in his kitchen–he’d planned on going to the grocery store after his last shift, but that got postponed, for obvious reasons–and generally trying to mother him even though he's thirty-two years old and perfectly capable of looking after himself right now.
In some ways it’s worse than it was after he got struck by lightning, at least then he’d been genuinely exhausted at first, so having everyone take care of him had been kind of nice… for about 48 hours, until he started to get his strength back and the attention began to feel like smothering.
This time, he’s fine. He feels great, actually, if he ignores the fact that all of his senses are at least ten times as sensitive as they used to be. It’s distracting, and kind of overwhelming, but he’s fine. Really.
He even calls his old therapist’s office to schedule an appointment with her to prove just how fine he is.
Maddie finally leaves him alone when she has to go pick up Jee from daycare.
–
After the police–no Athena this time–come by to collect his statement about the incident, and he tells them that he’s not interested in pursuing criminal charges against Jeremy, Natalia is the first to drop in for a visit. She leans in to kiss him when he answers the door, same as she always does, but he can hear how nervous she is from her racing heartbeat.
“I’m okay, Nat, really,” he assures her, moving to start making her a cup of the fancy herbal tea she likes.
“Doesn’t it feel different?” she asks, following him into the kitchen. “I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have your whole body change like that.”
He shrugs. He’s had less than twelve hours to get used to the idea, he doesn’t really know what to say. They’re currently still more than two weeks away from the next full moon. “I haven’t really changed yet, you know. I don’t know what that’s going to feel like. Right now it’s just… loud and bright, and I can smell that I really should've taken out the kitchen trash before I went to work three days ago.”
“Right, of course. Sorry babe, I shouldn’t be asking you a bunch of questions while you’re still processing.”
She hugs him when he sets her tea mug in front of her, but she doesn’t spend the night because she has to be up early for a living funeral in Pasadena in the morning.
–
Eddie hugs him when he comes over after his shift.
It feels like it’s been forever since they last hugged, but it’s good. Eddie smells nice, like Maddie did; something about it is comforting to him in a way that sort of dims the overwhelming input from all his other senses. Christopher’s scent is even more so, when he barrels into Buck’s chest like a hug-seeking missile.
“This doesn’t change a thing between us,” Eddie assures him quietly under his breath, which is good, because Buck wasn’t thinking it would, but it’s always nice to hear.
“You’ve got real, actual super powers now, Buck!” Chris tells him, sounding suitably impressed until he follows it with, “definitely much cooler than the math powers.”
“Hey now!” Buck says, laughing. “Keep up that attitude and maybe I won’t help you out with your homework anymore.”
“That’s okay. If I can’t finish it on my own, I can always just tell the teacher my Buck ate it,” Chris replies, cackling.
“I’ve had lycanthropy for four whole days, and you’re already making fun of me! I see how it is,” Buck huffs dramatically and crosses his arms, shaking his head at Chris.
Eddie’s laughing too hard, the traitor, to back Buck up on this.
–
Bobby hugs him too, which shouldn’t make Buck feel like he wants to cry, but it’s been fewer than eight months since the last time he nearly died on the job, right in front of Bobby, so he’s letting himself have this. And anyway, Bobby’s eyes are also suspiciously wet when he finally releases him with a final hearty thump on the back.
“You scared me for a minute there, kid,” Bobby says.
“I know. Sorry, Bobby. I’d say it won’t happen again, but we both know that’s probably not true.”
Bobby laughs, shaking his head.
“But hey,” Buck offers, “on the plus side, I should be slightly more indestructible now?”
“I’m not sure it works like that.” Bobby frowns.
“Sure it does.” Buck grins at him. “I’m coming back better than ever.”
“How about you focus on taking care of yourself so you can pass your recertification for now? I can’t put you back on the schedule for anything other than light duty until you’ve been cleared by a psychologist and passed the Enhanced Sensory Calibration Course for Shifters. I sent all the forms you should need for those to your department email. Just let me know if you have any questions or need help with scheduling it, okay?” He squeezes Buck’s shoulder.
“We want you back out there with us as soon as you’re ready and not a moment sooner. It’s okay if you need to take more time to adjust to everything. I trust you to be honest with me about how you’re feeling. I’ve got your back, Buck. Your job isn’t going anywhere.”
“Thanks, Bobby.” Buck hugs him again, because he can. Bobby smells safe too.
–
Hen doesn’t subject him to any medical examinations this time, just hands him a tupperware dish filled with short ribs and tells him that he needs to make sure he’s eating plenty of protein and calcium-rich foods, because shapeshifting is metabolically expensive.
The ribs are delicious.
–
Weirdly, Chimney ends up being the most immediately helpful, of any of them.
“I talked to a buddy of mine, he used to work at the 118 before you joined us, actually,” Chim tells him. “He said I could pass along his number, if you want somebody to talk to who understands what you’re going through. Similar thing happened to him on the job, about ten years back. Tommy’s good people.”
Which is how Buck ends up arranging to meet Tommy Kinard for coffee about a week before his first full moon.
