Chapter Text
Buck was annoyed that Cap had brought in a new probie. As far as he was concerned, their team was all set, thank you very much. Chimney was back from his medical leave, Hen was fucking awesome as always, and Buck was ready and willing to execute on any and all heavy rescue work. They were a well-oiled machine. You don't add extra - cogs or springs or whatever - when a machine is running as smoothly as the 118.
He watched through the locker room glass as the new man pulled on his shirt. "He likes to be called 'eight-pack,'" Bobby said before walking over to greet the probie. Buck scowled. He wasn't sure if Bobby was joking or not. Like, the guy looked fit enough, but who came in on day one with that kind of an ego? Buck himself was solid, strong, but you didn't see him going on about it.
(Well. Okay, sure, but the dexascan was a vital part of his self-improvement plan, and it could be useful for the others to get theirs done too, to optimize team fitness and preparedness. He was helping.)
Heck, Buck could have an eight pack too, if he kept up his current workout routine and maybe cut down on the beers at team pub trivia night. And, like, sure, the new guy had visible abs, but, but, did he even know the job? The job was what was important, not some collection of vanity muscles. Buck had been doing this for over a year now. He didn't need some punk straight out of the academy to, like, disrupt the team's dynamic.
Buck could totally take the guy. How dare he come into Buck's home, with his... hair... and his... face. Acting like he had any right to be there. He didn't even actually have an eight pack. Buck thought of that glimpse of smooth skin he'd seen before the new guy's shirt was on. He had a six pack. At best.
Not that he'd been counting all the... packs.
The new guy tilted his head up, then, toward where Buck was standing with the others. And he looked - well.
That was weird.
The new guy looked startled, like, legitimately taken aback by what he was seeing. His eyes widened and his expression was one of -- Buck wasn't entirely sure. Horror? Disgust? Buck glanced to his left and his right, at Hen and Chimney, trying to suss out who or what the new guy was more upset to be seeing.
Fuuuuuck, Buck hoped the new guy wasn't a racist or sexist or a homophobe, because, like, it was the twenty-first century. Surely they had Korean-Americans and Black lesbians wherever the hell he was from. This team was Buck's family, and no one was going to come in off the street to be shitty toward Buck's family. So he'd better check himself real quick.
"Is everything alright?" Bobby asked New Guy in concern. "You look pale." Hen and Chimney exchanged a look, while Buck frowned. They had all seen the... something... on New Guy's face, before he managed to school his expression to something more neutral.
"Uhm. Yeah, sorry. Stomach cramp. I was too nervous for breakfast. First day jitters. Uh, I'm Eddie Diaz. Pleased to meet you all." The probie made eye contact with Buck briefly, then he looked away. His eyes darted around the room, finally just coming to a rest on Cap's shoes.
"Right, then," Bobby drawled, obviously as confused as the rest of them. "Eddie Diaz, these are Henrietta Wilson, Evan Buckley, and Howard Han. They prefer to go by Hen, Buck and Chimney."
Eddie's eyes flicked back up and fixed on Chim's face, studiously avoiding looking at the others. "Chimney?"
"Long story," Chim drawled.
"Which is not appropriate for the workplace," Bobby said. "Line up for roll call, then we'll give you the tour. And if you're lucky, some breakfast."
~~~~~
There was a scar on the back of New Guy's neck.
Buck noticed it for the first time when Edmundo was kneeling over the well-inflated mechanic, preparing to vent his pleural cavity. The scar was old and fully healed, a horizontal pale line of slightly thicker skin precisely one and a half inches long, just below the hairline and right over the gap between the C4 and C5 vertebrae. Buck had seen scars like this one before. Though still somewhat rare, everyone knew they were characteristic of stack implantation surgery on an adult.
Buck absent-mindedly rubbed the back of his own neck with one hand. He didn't have a scar, himself; he must have had his own stack implanted when he was an infant, or so he figured, and such surgeries generally healed without leaving much of a trace. Anyway, Buck had a stack but didn't remember having had the procedure done, and that kind of thing would be hard to forget.
Buck didn't personally know very many other people who were stacked, or at least not that he knew about. It was considered a bit gauche to discuss in polite company, when so few people could afford the operation, or were willing to take on the risks involved in what was effectively an experimental elective neurosurgery. The numbers were quite a bit higher in Los Angeles, of course -- all that Hollywood money sloshing around, and all the beautiful people desperate to stay young, fabulous and rich for as long as humanly possible. Forever, if they could. UCLA had some of the top neurosurgeons in the world pumping out four or five procedures a day each, he'd heard. They'd built an entirely new hospital, just for that.
The new guy didn't seem like the type, though. He was good looking enough, Buck supposed, but he didn't have the air of someone who came from old money or new. Buck had seen the truck he was driving in to the station; it was a piece of crap. Unless he'd mortgaged himself to the hilt to get the stack implant. Some people did. There was a bill stalled in Congress to provide grants and low interest rate loans for high risk personnel - like first responders - to have the operation, now that the success rate was improving so much, month by month, and as more specialist surgeons were trained up. But the price seemed unlikely to drop for the general public any time soon, and most insurance plans didn't cover it.
Maybe he'd gotten the stack through the military.
Buck wondered if the new guy had ever been spun up in a different body. He could imagine the scenario - hotshot army medic, valuable skill set. Transmit his consciousness out to the front lines into a loaner sleeve as needed to treat the wounded, then return him safely to a base somewhere more secure. Buck had read about the new quantum tunnel remote transfer systems, how they were going to empower intercontinental business meetings and even, eventually, long distance space travel. Hell, he'd even participated in a demonstration of the tech himself, a few years back -- as a temporary sleeve, though, not as the traveler. He'd made a lot of money for those two weeks in Texas, enough to repair his broken-down Jeep and to get him all the way to Peru and back, and he had barely even noticed the time skip. Just a little blip, at a point in his life when he had had nothing much going on anyway.
Buck tried not to be annoyed with the new guy as he placed the needle and tube in the guy's fifth intercostal, not the third, but, like, regardless of whatever sorts of feelings Buck had about the new probie, at the end of the day the most important thing was the patient. It didn't matter that he'd just showed Buck up in front of Bobby and the others with his special silver star super army medic knowledge.
Buck knew he'd be up all night reviewing his training manuals, though. The new guy's technique seemed to have worked, and their patient was doing better already.