Chapter Text
1. Compliance and Standards
“Wait a second, since when do we do performance reviews?” Buck hissed at Hen and Chimney, a cold feeling of dread washing over him as he watched Bobby saunter away after dropping that particular bombshell.
“Concerned there, Probie?” Chimney asked, smirking at him. He snatched up one of the chocolates from the bowl that Bobby had placed on the table before his terror-inducing announcement and popped it into his mouth, somehow managing to maintain his smugness even as he chewed.
“I didn’t think they were a thing in the LAFD!” Buck insisted, desperately flying through his memories of his training and his orientation to try and remember performance reviews being mentioned. He might not have been the best student, but a performance review was definitely something that would have captured his attention.
Admittedly, there was a good chance that he would have been in this exact same situation either way since the thought of some nebulous far-off consequences probably still wouldn’t have stopped him from the reckless, uh, fun that he’d decided to partake in during his first few months on the job.
But at least he would have been better prepared for the inevitable lambasting over all of his mistakes being aired at once!
“There, there, Buck,” Hen consoled, except that there was clear laughter in her voice which, quite frankly, felt very unfair.
“I’m sure that they didn’t get mentioned in the academy,” Buck said plaintively, slouching into his chair glumly and crossing his arms.
“It’s because they’re not an LAFD thing,” Hen explained, apparently deciding to take pity on him after all.
“Uh, then why do we do them?” Buck asked, confused. He didn’t rise from his sulky slouch because he had a feeling that the lack of officiality didn’t mean he was about to be spared being raked over the coals.
“They are a Captain Nash thing,” Chimney told him airily, obnoxiously chewing another chocolate. “When he took over the station, he told us that he likes to ‘ensure we keep striving to improve as individuals and as a team’.”
“You’ll be fine,” Hen said, taking her own chocolate and waving it dismissively as she spoke. “It’s a form and then it’s a conversation about your ratings and what you’ve done over the last year.”
“Great,” Buck groaned, the image of Bobby standing on the rooftop and telling him ‘you’re done’ in that firm, no-nonsense tone filling his mind. It had ranked up there as one of the worst moments of his life and he had hoped that he would never have to relive anything like it again.
He smacked his forehead against the table and groaned again.
A performance review.
A form and a conversation about all the ways he had failed utterly as a firefighter and disappointed Bobby to boot.
Great. Just great.
(He didn’t see Hen and Chimney exchanging knowing smirks and he was still muffling his groans against the table when they went over to the kitchen to refill their coffee mugs and had a hushed conversation:
“Should we tell him that Bobby also asks for feedback?”
“Nah,” Hen replied mischievously. “I kind of want to hear what he’ll come up with on the spot.”)
Walking into the captain’s office when it was time for his review felt uncomfortably like walking into his parent’s study and having to hand his dad a math test with a lurid red ‘F’ on it.
“Why don’t you ever try, Evan?” he remembered his dad asking with disappointment steeped in his voice, and he hadn’t been able to find the words to say that he had tried and math was just really, really hard and Mrs Owen never slowed down enough to explain things properly.
He wasn’t sure he’d be able to find the words to explain himself to Bobby if he asked a similar question either even though he really, honestly, had been trying to do better since getting his second chance.
“Have a chocolate, Buck,” Bobby said, waving towards another bowl of chocolates set up next to his name plate at the front edge of the desk. He wasn’t looking at Buck yet, too distracted by organising the papers strewn across his desk.
Buck knew that he had just managed to power through seven evaluations thus far in between their calls this shift – the shortest one had taken 12 minutes (Hen, which made sense, she was too amazing to need much feedback) and the longest had been 23 minutes (Mercato, he had a feeling it might have something to do with the fact that he threw a cat they’d been trying to rescue out of a tree last month. It had taken Buck and Hen a solid fifteen minutes to calm the poor creature down and Bobby even longer to placate the infuriated owner.)
He was in no state of mind to be doing math so he hadn’t even bothered to try and work out the average; he had instead decided that he would prepare for the worst and assume his review would be twenty minutes.
After all, he’d never thrown a cat out of a tree, so surely his would have to be shorter than Mercato’s?!
But then again, Mercato had never been fired…
He readjusted his mental preparation towards twenty-five minutes, just in case.
“Um, no–no, I’m fine,” Buck said, taking his seat gingerly, his entire body tense.
“You don’t want a chocolate?” Bobby asked, tearing his gaze away from his desk to blink up at him in surprise. He stared down at the bowl. “Why not?”
“Uh,” Buck said, not really willing to share that his stomach was writhing with nausea and he might very well throw up if he tried to eat anything right now. “Just – just don’t feel like one.”
Bobby frowned down at the bowl before shaking his head and returning to his papers. Buck felt hopelessly discomfited because this wasn’t quite the beginning he had expected.
(“What is it this time, Evan?” his dad would ask him, totally resigned, before he’d even had a chance to even try and say anything.)
“Alright, here we are,” Bobby said, pulling a sheet out of his pile and passing it over to Buck. “Why don’t you have a look at that and then we can discuss it.”
Buck tried to be subtle about the deep breaths he was taking to try and calm his racing heartbeat as he accepted the paper.
He could see the rankings at the top of the page – Outstanding, Good, Meeting Expectations and Needs Improvement.
It would be fine, he told himself firmly. There wasn’t technically a fail rating. Needs Improvement still meant he could be okay and Bobby rarely yelled even when he deserved it so he was sure they could talk through all his numerous ‘Needs Improvement’ scores without it getting too heated.
And Meeting Expectations wasn’t that high of a bar, so hopefully there would be a few of those and maybe there was a chance he could have scraped a ‘good’ or two. That would make him feel better.
He focused on the words on the page in front of him and –
“Wait,” he said, his heart ceasing its racing out of pure surprise. “You – you gave me an Outstanding…”
“In Technical Knowledge and in Learning and Development,” Bobby finished. “You’ve done an excellent job with looking after, maintaining, and re-stocking all of our equipment. I also really appreciate the fact that I’ve been able to rely on you to drive the engine while our apparatus operators deal with their ridiculous spate of bad luck.”
Bobby chuckled, shaking his head, likely remembering the latest in the saga of truly horrendous luck which had befallen their usual drivers over those last few months, and Buck just stared at him, not quite sure what to with the sharp and unexpected turn this conversation had taken.
“And, um –”
“And you’ve really focused on learning as much as you can and on developing your skills,” Bobby continued patiently. “You appreciate how much your co-workers can teach you; I think that will serve you well once you finish your probationary year.”
“Thanks,” Buck managed to say, his eyes glued to those ‘outstandings,’ carefully reading over the description so he could understand what he’d done well at and therefore make sure he kept doing it.
“You also received an ‘outstanding’ in Emergency Medical Care,” Bobby prompted a minute later, slightly bemused. “Because you’ve done an excellent job utilising your training in the field – under our direction, of course, but that’s what we expect at this stage of your career.”
Buck skimmed the rest of the page – there were actually two more ‘outstandings’ further down. The other one was for ‘physical fitness’ and at least that one he understood and agreed with. There were also several ‘good’s scattered through the list; in fact, with those four outstandings, over half the list had the top two ratings.
And the vast majority of the rest were ‘meets expectations’. To his significant surprise, there were actually only a few ‘needs improvement.’
“This is – this is actually pretty good,” Buck said hesitantly, a part of his mind worried that by saying it aloud it would mean that Bobby would realise that he’d been given the wrong review sheet.
“You’ve taken on your second chance with gusto,” Bobby said, steady and matter-of-fact. “And I can see that you’ve taken steps to improve yourself and I wanted to make sure that those efforts were reflected.”
He couldn’t quite think of what to say to that. A strange warm feeling was taking over his body making him feel so completely different than he was used to feeling around an authority figure and the unfamiliarity of it all was robbing him of his voice.
“Thank you,” Buck finally said, addressing his words to the sheet of paper and wishing he could find better words to convey the depth of his gratitude for Bobby’s vote of confidence.
“Having said that, there are a couple of things that I’d like for you to focus on improving,” Bobby said, still steady and calm but his tone now a lot firmer.
“Compliance and Standards,” Buck guessed, his eyes settling on that particular item because it was both rated as ‘needs improvement’ and also had some highlighted dotpoints in the description.
The warm feeling melted away a little as they entered into this more familiar territory although he still felt unusually calm about facing the criticism that he knew was coming.
“That’s the one,” Bobby confirmed. “You’ll see that I highlighted the key ideas for you.”
“Adheres to rules, regulations, policies and protocols,” Buck read. He glanced up at Bobby, trying to gauge his mood. He looked relaxed and calm so Buck decided to take the risk to try and inject some levity. “I’m guessing that means no taking the truck for a joyride?”
“It definitely means no taking the truck for a joyride,” Bobby agreed, rolling his eyes exasperatedly. “It also means not having sex with our victims on rooftops – preferably no flirting with our victims at all, actually.”
“Noted,” Buck said, nodding with a slightly sheepish smile.
“And I believe I highlighted ‘comprehends and follows chain of command’ as well,” Bobby added pointedly.
“I might struggle with that one,” Buck quipped with a hint of teasing.
He was rewarded for it with the ghost of a smile that replaced the stoic ‘Captain Nash’ persona for just a moment.
“Alright, do you have any questions?” Bobby asked, business-like all of a sudden.
Buck surreptitiously checked his watch and was surprised to realise that he’d been in here for almost fifteen minutes already.
“Uh, that’s all you wanna – you didn’t have anything else you wanted to talk to me about?” Buck asked, gesturing at the sheet. There were still a couple more needs improvements, and he would have thought that Bobby would have wanted to go through some of the other lower-ranked items to make sure he knew where he’d been making all of his mistakes.
His dad used to make him go over every single test question that he hadn’t gotten full marks on at least a half dozen times if he came home with a test that was graded at a C or lower.
“If you know where you need to improve then I don’t think we need to belabour the point,” Bobby replied, his brows furrowed slightly, as though he was surprised at the question. “Unless any of my feedback didn’t make sense…?”
“No, I, uh, I think this –” he hesitated, because he’d been about to say that it did make sense except that wasn’t quite true because he couldn’t work out how it made sense that he had gotten any outstandings beyond the one related to his physical prowess. “I know what to work on,” he settled on saying.
“Good,” Bobby said, satisfied. “Now, what feedback do you have for me?”
Buck’s brain had a record-scratching moment.
Bobby was looking at him expectantly but he had absolutely no idea what to say.
“What do you mean?”
“This is an opportunity for sharing feedback, kid,” Bobby explained earnestly. “So you can also tell me what I could be doing better…?” He leaned forward to accentuate the leading question but Buck still had absolutely no idea how to respond.
Surely Bobby didn’t actually want to be told that he wasn’t doing something right?!
Who the hell would ever willingly invite that kind of criticism?
“Buck?” Bobby prompted, still staring at him expectantly.
“Um,” Buck said, glancing down at the paper in the hopes that it would give him an idea. He spotted the ‘outstanding’ again and suddenly realised – Bobby had asked for feedback originally, clearly he also wanted to be told that he was doing a good job.
Now that Buck could understand.
“You know, I really appreciate your willingness to give second chances,” he said. “Not just because it’s personally benefited me! I think it’s – it’s a good trait for a captain to have.”
Bobby still looked like he was expecting more.
“And, um, your cooking!” Buck added, bouncing up from the chair to escape that stare. Surely two things counted as providing feedback? “Your cooking definitely deserves an ‘outstanding’. Oh man, those cookies you brought in the other week? Absolutely incredible. Loved them. I’d give them two ‘outstandings’ if that was a thing.”
He walked out the door, glancing at his watch once he was out of sight – nineteen minutes.
Take that, Mercato.
(“I was going to ask if you wanted a chocolate before you left,” Bobby said to the empty office, frowning.
He looked down at the page to his right, neatly titled ‘Feedback From Crew’. It was split into two columns: ‘Doing Well’ and ‘To improve’. The ‘To improve’ side only had ‘share something personal’ on it even though he was already more than halfway through his reviews (he hadn’t written it down when Chimney had suggested it, but Hen had stared him down until he picked up the pen to record her pointed suggestion). The ‘Good’ column already had cooking on it (above ‘good listener’ and ‘responsive leader’).
Bobby picked out a chocolate and popped it in his mouth, making a face when he realised he’d picked out one with a sickly-sweet raspberry filling.
He must have added that packet to his shopping basket out of habit, although he’d thought that he’d broken that particular habit a long time ago.
Marcy had always loved filled chocolates; she had insisted that if she was going to have a sweet treat then she had to go all the way and have something decadently saccharine.
Bobby had always vehemently disagreed with her and so had Brooke and Robbie Jr once they had gotten old enough to share their opinion.
He’d forgotten about those low-key jovial moments, those quiet and still evenings after a long day and the kids were asleep, when Marcy would teasingly gloat about her untouched stash of treats and he would smugly retaliate by boasting about how they had taken after him with their appreciation of rich and delicious home-baked goods.
He shook his head quickly in an attempt to dispel the memory.
That wasn’t what he should be thinking about; he didn’t have the right to those memories anymore.
He forced his mind to re-focus on his list instead, tapping his pen against the pad as he considered whether there was anything from Buck’s meagre offering of feedback which he could add.
After a moment, he drew an arrow down from ‘cooking’ and scribbled down ‘cookies’ in between the two columns.)
2. Adaptability
“Buck, let’s try and get your review done before we get called out again,” Bobby ordered, taking his empty plate and setting it in the sink.
They had just gotten back from a five-car pile-up that had interrupted them right as Bobby was dishing up lunch after getting his first few reviews of the day done in relative peace, so they had all been desperate to eat once they finally returned.
“Do I have to?” Buck groaned, standing with his own empty plate in hand anyway. He snuck another fingerful of pastas before stepping away from the table, earning an audible tut of disapproval from Hen.
“Grab a cookie and come down,” Bobby directed, walking away without bothering to dignify Buck’s moaning with an actual answer.
“It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting,” Eddie consoled, snagging himself a cookie on his way to the sink. He left the cookie in his mouth while he rolled up his sleeves, clearly preparing to start doing the dishes. Biting off a piece, he continued, “Although I had no idea what to say when he started asking me for feedback… Thanks for the warning, by the way.” A pointed glare accompanied the sarcastic addition.
“Never gets old,” Chimney said, exchanging a smirk with Hen.
“Ugh, I forgot about that bit,” Buck grumbled, making a face at the stairs that would lead him down to the captain’s office. He knew from his experience last year that the review shouldn’t be a terrible experience.
However, he also wasn’t a probie anymore so he couldn’t help but think that the expectations might be higher this time around which meant that Bobby might not be as willing to throw him some bones like he had done last year.
And Bobby had let him off pretty lightly about his behaviour when Eddie had joined their crew a few months ago, but he was sure his captain had been saving the scathing rebuke that Buck was sure he had wanted to unleash for a situation like this where the emotions were a bit removed from the situation.
It was what his mother would do when she couldn’t handle the stress of him being injured because of something he’d done; she would catalogue her feelings and save her censure for another situation where he made her mad and then unleashed it all at once.
And, with the benefit of his friendship with Eddie flourishing over the last few months, he couldn’t even deny that he deserved a scathing rebuke about his poor behaviour so he wouldn’t even be able to bring himself to tune it out like he’d done back when his mother would get started on one of her diatribes.
At least he could always count on his PT scores to deliver him an ‘outstanding’.
“If you forgot about that bit, then why are you stressing?” Eddie asked, confused, his voice a little muffled because he was chewing his cookie. “The rest of it didn’t seem so bad. The reviews in the army were definitely way worse.”
Of course Eddie wouldn’t have had any issues – he was so exceedingly competent at his job that Buck had been surprised when his discussion hadn’t hovered around the record for shortest review. He couldn’t fathom any particular category where Eddie wouldn’t have deserved an ‘outstanding’, even without taking into account the idea that Bobby probably took it a bit easier on his probies.
“Just go and get it over and done with,” Hen said, her tone indicating that she was refraining from rolling her eyes at his dramatics.
“Yeah, I still need your help later with working out what to make for Christopher to take to his class party thing,” Eddie said.
Buck nodded absent-mindedly; at least that gave him something to look forward to after he got through the next twenty-ish minutes. He set off down to the office, no longer paying attention to the continuing conversation that was fading into the background noise of the station.
(Eddie eyed the plate of cookies speculatively and asked, “Do you think Cap would hand over the recipe for those?”
“Unlikely,” Chimney replied. “He’d be more likely to make you a batch or give you advice about a recipe you already have, but it’s very difficult to get one of his own recipes out of him.”
“I doubt the school would let you bring them anyway,” Hen added, snagging herself one of the nutella-stuffed cookies. “Too many kids with nut allergies.”)
Buck knocked on the captain’s open office door, uncertain if he should wait a moment when he saw that Bobby was focused on a piece of paper he was holding.
However, Bobby immediately gestured to the seat in front of his desk. “Take a seat, Buck.”
Buck settled into the chair and tried to remind himself that Bobby was always a fair captain, he had objectively been doing pretty well these last few months (especially when compared to his first few months) and so there was no reason for this to go all that badly once the lecture about Eddie’s first few days was done.
“I wanted to preface your scores with some comments,” Bobby started, which ruined most of Buck’s attempts to calm his nervous tension, especially when the captain finally looked up and then immediately frowned at him. “You didn’t take a cookie?”
“Oh,” Buck said, his nervous tension somewhat dissipating again. “No, they have nutella.”
“Do you not like chocolate?” Bobby asked, still frowning, this time with an overlay of confusion in his expression.
Buck snorted. “Cap, I’m from Hershey. Our high school smelled of the stuff. Chocolate is, like, ingrained in me.”
“So what’s wrong with nutella?”
“I’m allergic to hazelnuts,” Buck revealed casually, shrugging.
“You’ve eaten my white-chocolate macadamia cookies,” Bobby said, a little alarmed, his eyes wide. “And I’ve used pine nuts in the pesto and –”
“I’m not allergic to tree nuts,” Buck interrupted, now slightly amused. “It’s literally just hazelnuts. Also, I have been trying to work out what is in that pesto; I am going to try making it now that I know.”
“A google search would have told you it was pine nuts in about five seconds,” Bobby sighed, looking marginally more relaxed now that he knew he hadn’t almost triggered an allergic reaction in one of his subordinates.
“It’s not the same as finding out from you,” Buck claimed, giving him a cheerful grin. He was now leaning back in the chair, the side tangent reminding him just how much his captain cared about his crew which left him more at ease.
Bobby sighed again and shook his head, returning his attention to papers in his hands. “Alright, like I was saying, I wanted to preface your scores by saying that the way you’ve stepped up to help Eddie settle into the station is commendable and is just the latest example of how you contribute to the camaraderie of the team.”
“Okay…” Buck said leadingly, slightly surprised at the positive start but tensing slightly again as he waited for the anticipated criticism.
“However, I think your adaptability and your resilience to change within the team could do with some work,” Bobby continued smoothly, almost sounding gentle as he finally handed over the paper which held his review.
Buck took the paper and saw that Bobby had rated teamwork as ‘good’ but then added an asterisk and drawn an arrow down to the space earmarked for comments and written out ‘Flexibility and adaptability to changing work environments and team dynamics – Needs Improvement’ and ‘Resilience to personal challenge and change – Needs Improvement’.
“That’s fair,” Buck acknowledged, heart in his throat as he waited for Bobby to continue. When he didn’t, Buck flicked his eyes up and saw that Bobby was looking at him with steady empathy. He returned his attention to his review, staring at the paper intently, to avoid having to meet that gaze.
The rest of it was actually pretty decent and probably wasn’t too dissimilar to what he’d received last year. His ‘compliance and standards’ rating had jumped up to ‘Good’ and Bobby had added a small note saying ‘excellent improvement!! ☺️’ which was potentially the dorkiest thing he’d ever done and if Buck wasn’t feeling sheepishly self-conscious and off kilter about the distinct lack of sharpness in the critique of his behaviour then it would have made him snort in amusement.
As expected, he’d gotten his ‘outstanding’ in Physical Fitness and maintained that same rating for Technical Knowledge and Learning and Development as well. He had obsessively memorised the description under those headings last time and he could see that the standard for it was slightly higher now that he was a fully-fledged firefighter so the fact that he had still maintained the same rating was probably something he could be proud of.
He had a ‘meets expectations’ in communication which he was fairly certain had been ‘good’ last time, so he read the notes scribbled under that heading: ‘Note mild interference from Athena, who requested that I ask you to work on sharing pertinent information rather than trying to manage a dangerous situation on your own.’
Which, alright, considering he could probably have been arrested for tainting evidence and interfering in an active investigation when he’d taken Chimney’s phone when Maddie had been taken by Doug, it was probably a fair comment from Athena.
“Would you like to talk it through?” Bobby prodded, hands folded.
Buck stayed focused on the paper and went with the tactic of steering the conversation away from the obvious.
“Oh, uh, you only ranked my reports as ‘meets expectations’, what should I be focusing on there?”
“We can go through that the next time you have to submit a report,” Bobby replied patiently. “I meant about the adaptability and resilience – do you think that there is something you need from me to help with that?”
Buck’s surprise finally caused him to make eye contact; Bobby was looking at him, one eyebrow raised expectantly.
He had been expecting their discussion about that to involve a rehash of his actions and why they had been wrong – his mother’s preferred tactic to get across how much she didn’t like his behaviour – but it seemed like Bobby had decided to skip right by that.
And he had asked what he could do to help Buck improve?
He stayed silent for a moment, debating how much he should actually share since he knew that if he opened his mouth now it would veer into something decidedly personal.
But he and Bobby had had a few conversations that broached the professional/personal barrier when he’d been struggling with his relationship with Abby and its confusing ending, so perhaps it would be okay to enter that personal space again.
“I’ve – I’ve experienced a lot of change, considering how much I’ve moved around,” he explained haltingly, averting his eyes again, taking a deep breath as he considered how to continue.
“Your resume gave me that idea. You seem to be pretty well experienced in jumping from job to job and you’ve also never had an issue with the unpredictability of our work,” Bobby said, seemingly noticing that Buck needed a moment to gather his thoughts.
“No, I, um, I enjoy the fact that we do something different everyday,” Buck agreed. “But, um, when I was a kid, change was… hard, you know?”
He hesitated and glanced over to see that Bobby looked earnestly patient, like there was nowhere else he needed to be or needed to be doing except listening to Buck talk.
(“Does it have to be right now, Evan?” his mom would ask impatiently when he careened into her classroom after school to tell her about something from his day. “I have so much marking I need to finish before tomorrow.”
“I guess I can tell you later,” Evan would usually say, even after he came to the realisation that the right time hardly ever came. “Can I go to Bradley’s house?”
The name would generally change – Evan might not have a best friend but he had plenty of good friends – but his mom’s distracted “sure” would always be the same, as would her question of “do you need money for anything?”
He would say yes even though most of his friend’s parents made after school snacks because, well, it wasn’t like his parents ever asked him what he spent it on so what was the point of turning down free money?)
“Did you know that I hadn’t talked to Maddie in three years before she appeared in LA?”
“No, I didn’t,” Bobby answered carefully, his rapid blinking the only hint which gave away his surprise. “That does explain why we never heard about her during your first year here.”
Buck nodded, giving Bobby a tight smile in an attempt to obfuscate how badly that period of no contact still haunted him. “I was still pretty young when she left for college – she went to Boston and it really sucked that she wasn’t around anymore, you know? Like, we spoke on the phone, but it wasn’t the same and I missed having my big sister around.”
“It must have been hard with such a large age gap,” Bobby said, still careful and empathetic.
“And it got worse after she got married, because Doug was such an asshole,” Buck said, his voice scathing when he spoke of his former brother-in-law – may the bastard suffer in hell. “He always monopolised her time so even though she was back in Hershey I still hardly ever got to see her, which was almost worse than before. And then, um, I – I left Hershey and that – that was it. We stopped talking.”
“It sounds very difficult.” Bobby was giving him a knowing look, like he knew there was more to that story, but Buck was grateful that he didn’t push.
He didn’t feel ready to talk about that cold night on an empty street where he’d thought he was finally getting his big sister back only for his entire body to feel empty the next day when he realised that she was reneging on their promise – on their pinky promise, which had made it feel even worse because if he couldn’t trust their pinky promise then what was there in the world that he could trust?
“Yeah,” was all Buck said, giving Bobby another tight smile. “And, uh, I guess we’ve spoken about the whole Abby thing…”
Bobby nodded in acknowledgement without saying anything which also made him grateful. This conversation was already uncomfortable enough and he really didn’t want to revisit that whole debacle again, especially since he was trying to move past it so he could have a proper go at developing a relationship with Ali.
“So it sounds like changes that are related to people is what you struggle with,” Bobby mused. “Does that sound accurate?”
“I guess,” Buck mumbled, taking a surreptitious peek at his watch in the hope that this was almost over because this conversation was leaving him feeling particularly raw. They were already at eighteen minutes.
“Would it help if I tried to give you more of a heads-up about changes within the team, then?” Bobby suggested, mouth pursed contemplatively.
“Uh, I guess – yeah, that would probably help,” Buck agreed hesitantly, part of him wondering whether knowing that a perfect probationary firefighter was joining their team right after he finished his less than illustrious year would have actually helped. But he couldn’t deny that part of his discomfort had been because he’d felt totally blindsided and unsure about Bobby’s motivations for hiring Eddie, so maybe the extra heads-up in future would help him.
“Okay – and maybe you can work on reaching out to me or to Hen or anyone else on the team to talk your feelings through before you start hissing like a furious cat,” Bobby teased lightly, giving him a softly mischievous smirk.
Buck huffed a laugh, letting the discomfort slowly start to seep out of him. “Hey, I was not hissing like a furious cat!”
“A little bit,” Bobby said with a wink. “Alright, with that done – what’s your feedback for me?”
“Oh, right,” Buck said, scrambling his thoughts together. “Uh – you know, you’re a great teacher. With job stuff and with cooking – Maddie is always super impressed whenever I make her breakfast.”
“Thanks, kid – but what can I impr –”
“Actually, on that,” Buck interrupted, his mind now preoccupied with the planning he and Eddie had to do. “Any chance that you have a good muffin recipe that would be easy enough for me to use?”
Bobby sighed and fixed him with a slightly exasperated look.
“Please?” Buck tried, putting on his most innocent face.
“I’ll show you one this afternoon if we don’t get a call-out,” Bobby relented with another sigh.
(Bobby surveyed his own list of feedback once Buck had cheerfully bounced out of the room. His ‘Doing Well’ column already had quite a few entries on it, including ‘strong leadership’. He supposed coaching was a little bit different, so he added that to his list and then moved his pen over to the ‘To improve’ column which was frustratingly empty.
Remembering the beginning of their discussion, he wrote down ‘ ALLERGIES’ in large block letters, adding a smaller note underneath ‘google relationship b/w hazelnut/tree nut allergies??’ since something that had the potential to seriously harm one of his crew members was something he should probably be across.
Athena had recently told him the story of how they’d discovered Harry’s allergy to to some antibiotic he’d been prescribed and how terrified she and Michael had been when they couldn’t work out what was causing the reaction and he also remembered how panic had surged through him when they’d discovered Brooke’s banana allergy.
It wasn’t an experience he cared to replicate in the station.
The conversation he’d had with Buck at the end about giving him more warning when there were big changes in the team was something specific to him and not generally related to his leadership over the station as a whole so he decided not to write that down on his list.
He was sure he would remember it when it became necessary.)
(It was an oversight that would come to haunt him.)