Chapter Text
“9-1-1, what's your emergency?”
“Um, yeah, hi. I'm in Franklin Canyon Park, and I think I’m kinda stuck? I was hiking on the trail, and then the ground just disappeared from under me, and now I'm much closer than six feet from the edge and way more than six feet fucking down, and Creed is a fucking liar, because even if it was six feet, that would still be too fucking far down and —!”
“Okay, sir, we're going to get help to you very soon, just stay calm. Can you tell me your name?”
“Styx.”
Styx thinks he is doing a rather impressive job of waiting for help to arrive. He would like to think that his ability to stay calmly and firmly in place on the cliff edge is due to a spontaneous newfound talent of remaining level-headed in stressful situations. The actual reason he has remained practically frozen in place is that when he shifted to dig out his phone from his pocket to call for help, he swore he felt the ground move beneath him again, and has been paranoid to even breathe too deeply since.
When Styx was getting ready this morning to fulfil his end of a losing bet by 'experiencing the wonders of the great outdoors', he didn’t anticipate being stuck with his fashion choices for the rest of all eternity. It's coming up on laundry day, and he’d rather not spend the afterlife with his ghostly outfit being an old cut-off tank, his c-tier cargo shorts, and mismatched socks, thank you very much.
Before Styx can restart his spiral about how he’s now doomed to meet all his music idols in the afterlife wearing a Newfoundland speed-bump shirt, he's interrupted. Styx feels a wave of relief wash over him as his new best friend, dispatcher Josh, says, “Okay, help should be pulling up now.”
From far above, Styx hears what seems like a large vehicle pull up, and then the sounds of people moving around and hopefully setting up whatever equipment is required to get him back on solid ground. Styx is never hiking again.
A couple of the voices drift closer to the edge, and then one calls out, “Hello, sir, I’m Captain Han with the LAFD, we’re here to help. We’re sending a firefighter down to you, so please stay where you are.”
A second voice calls out, “I’m getting harnessed up to come down to you, so just hang on another minute. You’re doing a great job so far!” and — Huh.
Styx is fairly confident he didn’t hit his head during his tumble down the cliff, but he could have sworn that sounded like — but no, it couldn’t be. Styx may not believe in coincidences, but he does believe in statistical probability, and it would be insane if that voice was him, right? There’s nearly 4 million people that live within LA’s city limits alone! Only one way to find out. Styx takes as deep of a breath as he dares and calls up, “Silver Springs? Is that you?”
Moments later, Styx sees a cheerful, beautiful face pop out to peer over the ledge, followed by an enthusiastic wave. “Hey Styx! I would say it's nice to finally meet you, but I bet you’re wishing it was under different circumstances. Don’t worry, I got your back, I’ll be down to check you out in just a sec.”
All harnessed up, Styx’s saviour begins making his way down the cliffside like an angel descending from on high. Once he’s about halfway down, Styx can make out the large BUCKLEY across the back of his uniform. Styx mumbles out loud to himself, “Huh, so that’s how you get Buck from Evan.”
Or maybe not so much to himself, because Styx hears a faint laugh come from where his phone has been resting on his chest and realizes Josh is still there. “Oh! Shit, sorry, um help is here now, so I can probably hang up?” Wait, you should thank the 911 operator, right? It’s like thanking a bus driver, “Um, thank you?”
“No problem, and don’t worry, you are in very good hands there. Hands attached to a man that I will be following up with about whatever that ‘silver springs’ business is. There is absolutely a story there, and I am deeply offended he hasn’t informed me of it yet. And you can tell him I said that.”
“Got it, uh, I will be sure to inform him.” Styx pauses, letting the silence linger for a moment before crossing his fingers and straining his eyes forward to glace at his phone screen with as minimal head movement as possible. With any luck all he will see is his cracked phone screen with a reflection of the sky shining back at — aaaand nope. The seconds continue to tick by on the active call timer, the large red button taunting him, out of reach from where his hands are still down at his sides. He is starting to immensely regret the decision to toss his phone up onto his chest in an effort to hear the call better instead of just keeping it in his hand. “Hey, so, is there any chance of me winning the ‘no you hang up first’ game?”
There's a hint of a smothered laugh before Josh speaks again, “It's generally frowned upon for 9-1-1 to hang up on people. Besides you're about to have 200lbs of firefighter land beside you, I think you can risk moving your arm enough to reach your phone.”
Styx grumbles, “Fine, but when this is the movement that causes the total collapse of the cliff and makes us all tumble down below, I'm coming back to haunt you specifically.” As slowly and smoothly as possible Styx moves his arm just enough to catch the edge of his phone and drag it into his sweaty palm. “Hey, Josh? Thanks again, really.”
Josh’s voice takes on an extra level of warmth underneath his professional veneer that hopefully means he's smiling. Styx briefly wonders what it looks like; he bets it's a nice one. “You are very welcome Styx, I hope for your sake we never meet this way again. Get Buck to connect us, we'll all go out to celebrate the rescue, and you two owe me what seems like one hell of a story.”
Styx thinks the sun must really be beating down now, his face feels flushed and his hands seem even sweatier than before. It takes him three tries to get his phone's screen to actually register his touch and finally hang up the phone after agreeing to post rescue drinks, giving all the juicy deets on how Styx and Buck met, and somewhere in there Styx is pretty sure he just got roped into attending a trivia night as their music category ringer.
Buck finally reaches the cliff edge and sets himself down gently near Styx’s feet. “Whew! Okay I’m gonna give you a quick look over first, and then we’re going to get you out of here — whoa!!”
“What!?” Styx can feel his adrenal glands kick back into high gear, now rested, refreshed, and ready to send out boatloads of new chemicals after that brief moment of respite. Oh, god, this is it, this is the end, knew I should have updated my will after that last garage sale haul —
“Dude, you have a mohawk! I didn’t know that!” You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Styx has to close his eyes for a second and remind himself that if he kills his rescuer, they probably won't send another one down to get him out of there. And pushing Buck off the cliff would require moving, which he’s still scared to do, so.
Styx reopens his eyes and gives Buck a once-over now that he can see him up close and personal. Styx fires back, “Yeah, and you’re fucking massive! How come that didn’t come up in any of your fun facts, huh? I feel like I’m in fucking Gulliver’s Travels right now!”
Buck ducks his head and laughs, a faint blush on his cheeks, “Alright, fair enough, fair enough. Okay, so, a quick look over and then we’ll work on getting you out of here, okay? I know you told dispatch that your ankle hurts. Anywhere else? Do you remember if you hit your head at all?”
Buck touching down on the cliffside didn’t immediately make it all crumble away underneath him, but Styx is still paranoid about making sudden movements. He nods as aggressively as he dares to, “Quick sounds fantastic to me. Yeah, just the ankle, really, I’m pretty sure it’s what broke my fall once I hit ground that wasn’t actively disintegrating. Is it fucked? It feels like it’s fucked.”
Buck carefully shuffles closer to where Styx is laying and kneels beside him to do the injury check over. By Buck's judgment, he probably doesn't have a concussion. However, the preliminary assessment of Styx’s ankle, without even fully taking his boot off, is that it is, indeed, fucked.
Buck relays this information to the team back up top. Styx is pretty sure it's the captain’s voice that comes back through the radio again in response, “Alright Buckaroo, we're sending down supplies to get a splint on that ankle, and then we're on to phase two.”
“Copy that, Cap.”
Buck gives Styx an enthusiastic thumbs up, which he weakly returns. A small bundle on another rope appears from over the edge and starts slowly being lowered down. Buck stands from where he'd been kneeling in preparation to grab the supplies once they come into reach.
Everything is going smoothly until the bundle is about two feet from reach, and suddenly, more of the cliffside up above starts to give way. Buck quickly throws himself down and over Styx to shield him from the smattering of tiny rocks and dirt raining down. Styx’s subconscious reflexes evidently didn't get the memo about no sudden movements, as his hands shoot out and latch onto Buck.
After what feels like forever, but realistically couldn’t have been more than 45 seconds, the rain of earth stops. Styx hears Buck shift above him from where Buck had used his body as a shield, and then Styx feels a hand gently grab his. Styx manages to peel his eyes open from where he’d squeezed them shut in preparation for what was sure to be their swiftly coming death, and sees Buck propped up above him in essentially a one-armed pushup, face pinched in concern.
“Hey, you okay? No rocks or anything to the face?”
“No, yeah, I’m- I’m good. I would very much like off this ride, please, but no uh, no new injuries, I don’t think.”
That earns Styx another laugh that he adds to the mental scorecard. “You know what? I am starting to agree with you there.”
Another gentle squeeze on his hand is what finally draws Styx’s attention to the reason Buck is still holding himself over Styx. Styx’s hands are knotted tightly in the front of Buck’s uniform from where they had latched on in panic, and rather than breaking the hold, Buck has continued to hold the world’s most awkward plank position. Styx slowly, bit by bit, manages to talk his fingers into loosening their grip, freeing Buck from his literal clutches. Throughout it all, Buck continues to stay right where he is, as if he were in no rush and would happily let Styx take all the time in the world to individually pry each of his fingers away. Buck’s arm effortlessly holds his weight up, never shaking or showing any sign of strain. That bastard.
Buck’s radio crackles again, the captain’s voice coming through once more, “Everything okay down there? Everyone alright?”
Now free from Styx’s grasp, Buck moves upright into a kneeling position and then, in a move equally alarming and charming, leans backwards to peer up the cliff face while speaking into his radio, “Well, we're definitely going to need a shower after that, but we're okay. Ledge down here is still holding stable for now. Any update on the ETA for phase two?”
Styx isn’t so sure he likes the sound of that. He doesn’t want to interrupt where Buck is speaking back and forth with his captain, but — “Please tell me phase two is the ‘getting out of this’ phase and not the beginning of a 12-step plan.” Styx just gets an absentminded pat to the shoulder in response as Buck gets back to his feet to go retrieve the split supplies that are luckily still hanging from the rope, continuing to murmur back and forth through his radio. Styx thunks his head back into the dirt, then freezes once more, still expecting the ground to crumble beneath him, no matter how safe and stable Buck claims their ledge to be.
The radio conversation wraps up, and Buck returns to crouch down by Styx’s ankle and starts laying out some of the retrieved supplies. “Hey, you know what? We gotta go back to the topic of things we don't know about each other, because there’s something I've always wondered, how’s your name spelled? Is it Sticks like wood? Or Stix like Pixy Stix?”
Styx shoots Buck as much of an unimpressed look as he can manage under the circumstances, “I can tell you’re trying to distract me.”
Buck glances up from where he's gently started to undo the rest of Styx’s boot laces, and flashes him a frankly dazzling smile, “Is it working?”
Now look. Styx has gotten enough “inconclusive” results on those Am I Gay? quizzes back in the day to know he was probably some flavour of queer, he just hadn't really cared enough to “look within” and pick one off the menu. As far as he’s concerned, his longest and most serious relationship of the past 15 years has been with his CD binders. But faced with that thousand-watt smile, bright enough to overload solar panels, he may have to move those results to “conclusive”. Despite never having met the man, Styx is struck with the visceral knowledge that Oh. Tommy would have been haunted by this man even without the Nicks-Buckingham special, huh.
Styx clears his throat and tries to find something else to look at, not that there's much else on this godforsaken cliff ledge. “It's neither of those, actually, it's S-T-Y-X.” He gives up on finding anything else interesting and turns his head back towards Buck. “My full name is Styx Jackson Brooks.”
Buck raises an eyebrow that is somehow bitchier in person than all the times Styx could practically hear it through the phone line. “Nuh uh. No way that's what your parents put on your birth certificate, not with a last name like that.” The boot laces now completely undone, Buck lifts his ankle a bit and shifts his grip to the boot’s heel. “Sorry, this is going to hurt for just a second. Keep talking.”
'Keep talking', well, it's a good thing that’s Styx’s specialty. “Yup. Parents decided, 'hey, let's be funny for kid number two!'” Styx sucks in a breath through suddenly gritted teeth because yowza! That hurts indeed! “I have three siblings. You want to know what their names are? Fucking Luke and Stephanie and Kate.”
“Wow, uh, your parents seem like truly fascinating people. You ever go by your middle name?”
“There were four Jacks in my class at school, so I kinda had no choice, but I think I definitely grew into it. Like, who wants to Listen with Jack on the radio? Listenin’ with Styx is way more fun.”
Buck laughs, “There were three other Evans at the fire academy, so I get where you’re coming from. And you’re right by the way,” Buck seems to finish tying off the last of the splint and flashes Styx another one of those smiles, “It suits you.” Okay, yup, definitely conclusive. Or a concussion.
Styx assumes now that his ankle is splinted, Buck is going to hand over the harness that was included in the supply bundle, so they can be hoisted back up the cliff to hopefully solid ground. However, when Styx starts to move, Buck stops him, “Hey, let's just rest for a moment longer, okay? I know getting the splint on can hurt; there's no rush here. You probably got water in your bag, right? Let me grab it for you.”
Styx would like to get off this ledge as fast as possible, but he can't really find issue with Buck’s reasoning. He still shoots him a suspicious glance while Buck digs through Styx’s backpack; he hasn’t forgotten that Buck avoided his questioning on what exactly “phase two” of this rescue operation entailed.
The faint sound of air thumping in the distance that Styx had written off as just the wind blowing around the cliffs seems to get louder. And louder. His stomach starts to sink, ohh, I got a bad feeling about this…
Styx finally sits up, and ignoring Buck's protests, slowly turns and looks behind him, and there it is. He whips back around and fixes Buck with a razor sharp smile, “Buck. That helicopter better just be flying over on their way to do a traffic report, and isn’t that phase two you were talking about, right? Because friends warn each other when they’re trying to coerce the other into getting in a death trap. Right??”
Buck puts his hands out as if he were calming a wild animal, which is fitting because Styx is starting to feel that feral panic kick back into full gear. Buck speaks in what is obviously supposed to be a soothing voice, “It’s not a death trap. Hey, don’t look at it, look at me. It's perfectly safe, I promise. Air travel is one of the safest forms of transportation out there.”
Styx just stares at Buck, blinking rapidly for a solid 20 seconds, “That is airplanes. Airplanes are statistically the safest form of travel.” Styx turns again to point aggressively behind himself at the offending aircraft rapidly approaching their position, “That is a motherfucking helicopter, AKA the horses of air travel! It fucking yearns for its engine to fail, or its rotors to break, or anything else that results in all of us going fucking splat! on the pavement!”
Before Styx can really get going on his 'Forms of Transportation Most Likely To End In Death And/Or Dismemberment' TED Talk, the radio on Buck’s chest crackles to life once more, this time with a new voice coming through. “This is Pilot Kinard to 118, approaching your position now. What’s your status?”
The radio static distorted the voice, but something about it, even just that short sentence, makes Styx’s brain itch. Through the radio, Styx can hear the Captain give the pilot the situation low down, and then Buck chimes in, “Okay, Tommy, we're almost good here, just a few more minutes to get settled, and then we’ll be ready for you.”
Oh no. Styx rapidly reevaluates his stance on coincidences. Maybe just this once? “Please, please tell me that's just a coincidence.” Buck just cocks his head, the ‘please elaborate on whatever thing you just said’ look clear across his face. A look Styx would bet the farm on Buck usually being on the receiving end rather than the giving end. Styx continues, his voice notably raising in pitch each time he says the pilot's name, “Tommy. You said the pilot's name is Tommy. Please fucking tell me that’s not the Tommy!”
“…and if I said it was?”
Oh fuck we’re gonna die here. I need to lie back down. Styx resumes his original position of laying on the cliff edge, this time with his hands up covering his face as if not seeing the damned helicopter hovering above them would save him. He does ensure that his mouth is uncovered so Buck can get the full force of his impassioned speech. “First of all, I'm not getting into the fucking flying tin can of certain doom. Second of all, I'm especially not getting into one piloted by your fucking ex-boyfriend, AKA the man I helped you torture with Stevie fucking Nicks! For fucking months! Months!”
Styx risks a peak from between his fingers to see Buck has the fucking audacity to be smirking at him, “You know, that sounded like a pretty expensive sentence–”
Styx takes a hand off his face to point back in Bucks direction, cutting him off, “The swear jar does not apply in fucking life or death situations! And stop trying to distract me!”
“Look, you saw what happened when they sent the supplies down; the ledge up there just isn’t stable enough to pull us back up that way. I promise Tommy is the best pilot out there; you could not be in safer hands.” Buck puts his hand over the radio and drops his voice to a low murmur, “I can’t say much ‘cause I think we technically signed a bunch of NDAs, but the army needed two helicopters to catch him during our chase through downtown. And that wasn't even his first time stealing a helicopter! The night we met, he flew us through the remnants of a Cat 5 hurricane and landed on the hull of a capsized cruise ship. No NDA’s for that one, we actually all got a medal!”
Oh, okay, so he's insane. Wait, no, this deserves to be an outside thought. “So he’s insane. You’re both fucking insane.”
Buck breezes right on past Styx’s comments, “And as for that second thing, well. Let's just say you don't have to worry about any hard feelings there.”
Styx sits up so fast his head spins, “Nooo. No way! For real?! It actually worked?!”
Buck ducks his head, his cheeks dusting a pretty pink and a lovesick grin stretched across his face.
Any fear about crumbling cliff-sides or the menacing hover of the crime against aviation above is pushed aside after this revelation. Styx leans over and lightly smacks Buck’s shoulder, “Buck! You didn't think to call me to let me know it all worked out?! I've been living in fucking purgatory, wondering what happened and if you actually heard Tommy’s dedication to you for months now!”
Buck’s grin fades a bit, and Styx immediately feels like he just kicked a puppy, “Ah, sorry, things have been a bit all over the place, I didn’t even think of it. You could have called me, though right, if — if it was keeping you up at night? My number’s in the station call logs.”
Styx rears his head back a bit, a touch offended by the concept, “Uh, no, I couldn’t just take your number from the call library, you didn't give me permission to access it, so that would be like super unethical. I have sacred radio station oaths to uphold.” Buck raises that bitchy eyebrow once more, “Okay, they’re not like official radio licensing board oaths, but they’re official to myself, and like, my soul.”
Buck nods, his face serious once more, “You know, I have oaths to myself as well, and the most important one is when I say I got your back, I mean it, alright? I’m going to get us out of here in the safest way available to us.” Buck sticks his hand out between them, “Pinky swear.”
Styx remembers all the way back to one of their very first calls, the solemnity and seriousness with which Buck referenced the concept, as if it were something precious. And somehow it’s that out of everything else so far that’s the tipping point. “… give me the fucking harness.”
And so Buck does. Buck helps Styx pull the harness up his legs and get everything fastened properly. He takes the time to point out each of the safety tie-off points where Styx will be attached to both Buck’s own harness and to the apparatus that will pull them up into the helicopter. Buck is already in a helmet from his initial descent, and he makes Styx put one on as well. Buck slaps it on Styx’s head and gives it a pat. “Safety first!”
Styx accepts the helmet without argument but mutters under his breath, “I really don't see how a helmet is going to save me when we plummet to our doom in that hovering collection of loose parts and impending metal fatigue, but it's the thought that counts, I guess.”
As Styx watches the basket thing suspended at the bottom of a rope supposedly capable of holding their combined weight draw near, a thought occurs to him. Buck is once again kneeling next to Styx and watching the helicopter with a smile that grows exponentially the closer it gets. Styx taps Buck on the shoulder to get his attention and has to raise his voice significantly to be heard over the ever-increasing noise, “Hey! If the ledge wasn’t stable enough to bring us both back up, then why did you come down in the first place? Wouldn’t it have been safer to just have someone come out of the helicopter itself or something?”
“You had my back from the moment I called in to your station with an insane request; no way was I going to leave you down here alone.” Buck’s serious expression morphs into a sheepish smile, “I also wasn't sure if you'd be willing to get into the helicopter without some persuasion, and we figured I'd have the best chance of convincing you.”
“Yeah, no for sure, good call on that one.” Styx eyes the end of the rope where it has come to a stop in front of them warily, “I probably would have just chosen to stay here and succumb to the elements instead of dying in the inevitable crash that awaits us in that thing.”
Buck gets to his feet, “Okay, enough taunting the idea of helicopter crashes, alright? Let's not give the universe any fun ideas to throw our way. C’mon up up up! Lean your weight on me, there we go, I gotcha. Just grab on to me, and, uh, maybe close your eyes.”
Styx must pass out or perhaps just the sheer terror of feeling his feet leave the not-so-solid ground blacks out his memory. The next time he opens his eyes, it's to a stranger helping him and Buck inside the helicopter. He’s guided to a bench and then handed a headset. Once Styx swaps his headgear around, Buck’s voice comes through surprisingly clear, given the amount of noise the spinning death blades above make. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Here I’ll make the introductions.” Buck starts to turn towards where the other crew member is stowing the winch and abruptly turns back, “Just so you know, these headsets are on an open channel.”
Styx files that info away to tease the inevitable story that goes along with how Buck learned that particular lesson out of the man at a later date.
“Okay, this is firefighter aeromedic Duke,” Duke gives them both fist bumps as he passes in front of them before settling in the seat next to Buck, “and up in the cockpit are LAFD's finest firefighter pilots, Lucy and Tommy.”
Styx hears a snort come through the headset, presumably from Lucy, and then she gives Styx heart palpitations by raising her hand from the controls to give a wave and a quick “Hey.”
Styx may have only had the single call with him, but given how often he’d replayed their conversation in his head since then, it's not surprising Tommy’s voice is almost as familiar to him as Buck’s was when he’s the next to speak up, “Nice to finally meet you, Styx. I’d offer to shake your hand but–”
Styx grips the edge of the seat beneath him tighter as if that could keep all the pilots' hands where they’re supposed to be, “I would greatly prefer you keep both hands on the wheel. Joystick. Controller. Whatever that fucking thing is.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Styx sees Buck start to open his mouth, and releases one hand’s death grip on the seat to point as aggressively as he can, “Until I am back on solid ground, this is still a fucking life or death situation; the swear jar remains null and fucking void.”
Buck raises his hands in acquiescence, but the look on his face, accompanied by yet another good-natured eye-roll, says he’s clearly just humouring Styx. “It’s like I told you, with Tommy on the cyclic, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Buck throws a preening look Tommy’s way over knowing the correct terminology, despite the other man not having any way to actually see it.
Tommy must be able to tell regardless of sight because his response to that is just a simple “Evan”. That one word is full of such fondness that even without an eye line to his face, Styx knows Tommy has a sickeningly love-struck expression on it to match the starry-eyed look that’s been on Buck’s face since they sat down.
Styx looks back and forth between the two men. Ohhh, so that’s why. Yeah, I get it now. Even if he’d had zero prior knowledge of their history, just experiencing how much raw emotion is encapsulated in their short interactions he’s witnessed today, it's clear as day that there is just something between the two of them that could never be easily erased.
Buck starts up a quiet conversation with the crew member in the back with them, something about coffin flies that Styx promptly tunes out, and Styx is surprised to find himself actually relaxing slightly. Maybe they will make it out of this unscathed after all.
That minor relaxation lasts for approximately a minute until Styx notes a faint humming coming through the headset. Styx slowly turns to face the cockpit once more, “Is that — is that fucking Renegade? Are you humming fucking Renegade right now?”
There’s a snicker followed by an obviously fake cough in an attempt to disguise it, as if that ever actually works, and then “What? You can dish it out, but you can't take it?”
Styx leans forward in his seat as much as he can to try and see Tommy’s face, and yup. He can see the edge of his mouth curled up and the telltale crinkles at the corners of his eyes. A glance at the other pilot, Lucy, shows she’s flipped her headset mic up, and her shoulders are shaking with repressed laughter.
“Unbelievable,” Styx mutters and slumps back in his seat with a huff. “Can you at least do Come Sail Away next? I figure you probably don’t have an aux cord and you’ve already set yourself up as our in-flight musical entertainment.” That earns Styx a full hearty laugh from the cockpit, and he covers his mouth with his hand to hide his smile. Can’t give the game away too early.
“If that’s what it’ll take for Kinard-Donato Air to earn a five-star Uber rating, how could I possibly say no. You know, if we’d had a bit more notice we would have come in the starship instead of the AW139.” Tommy says, his voice light with laughter, and then to Styx’s surprise and delight, actually hums a few notes of the chorus.
Despite feeling himself being quickly charmed once more by the other half of the Silver Springs duo, Styx is still very much aware of their current location. “You came in a fucking crime against aerodynamics is what it is. Bees have got nothing on this thing for defying laws of aviation.” Styx mutters, but is careful to do so directly into the headset mic to ensure everyone can still hear him, “And surely it should be a Lyft rating, right? And ‘Kinard-Donato Air,’ really? As much as it pains me to bring that fucking band up, you got a Lucy in the Sky pun right in front of you.”
Lucy flicks her headset mic back down, “I like you, Styx. Any chance we could keep you?” Lucy jerks her thumb over in Tommy’s direction, and Styx has to bite down on the instinctive shriek seeing her hand away from the controls for this long invokes, “I could use another hand keeping this one in line.”
Styx has to take a moment to swallow the wave of nausea the thought of getting into a helicopter every day induces before continuing, “I am quite happy in my very stationary and attached to the ground radio booth, but you are certainly welcome to call in anytime you need back up. Anyways, despite helicopters being a crime against aerodynamics themselves, your Lyft rating for Donato-Kinard Air is definitely higher than the fucking Yelp review for where you grabbed us from. 0.5 out of 5 stars for places to get unwillingly stuck in.”
Tommy's voice crackles over the headset, heavy with innuendo, “That half a star was for the view, right?”
Styx feels his ears burning, and suddenly, any lingering guilt from creating a musical torment nexus for the man every time he went into his garage vanishes into the aether.
Buck chimes in, seemingly oblivious to what his ex-ex-boyfriend was implying, “Yeah, you were on a really cool hiking trail! That one's actually been on our list to check out, so I guess we know now to keep far from the edges.” Styx just nods and hopes that the lighting is dim enough in the cabin Buck won’t be able to see what's sure to be a furious blush that Styx can feel blooming across his face.
A glance back to the cockpit shows that this time, both Lucy and Tommy have pushed their mics up in an attempt to conceal their laughter. Styx just sighs and slumps further down in his seat, resigned to his fate now being equal chances of dying from embarrassment as dying from the hunk of aluminum they’re encased in finally achieving its lifelong goal of smashing upon the rocks and shattering itself and everyone within it into a million pieces.
Buck settles back in the seat beside him, his buggy conversation seemingly finished for now, and nudges Styx’s shoulder with his own. “Hey, so I have another question for you while we have you here. I know a radio announcer is different from an event DJ, but I have to ask. Do you do weddings?”
The helicopter is suddenly full of noise, from Lucy yelling loud enough to be heard over the sound of the rotors with her mic still up, to the radio on Buck’s chest exploding in overlapping voices, adding to the cacophony. Based on the words he can pick out, Styx would hazard a guess that the hint of impending nuptials is breaking news to everyone.
Styx turns to look at Buck, who has buried his face in his hands as if that will save him from the very insistent voices coming from the radio on his chest, and can’t contain the shit-eating grin he knows is stretching across his face. “What was that you said again about this being an open channel?”
