Chapter Text
With the wind in his face, flying feels like falling so fast that death can’t catch up. Buck will never tire of the feeling, nor will he ever bore of the exhilarating sensation of lightning shooting from his fingertips. Especially not when he’s putting it to such good use. Saving people never gets old. Fixing problems never gets old. It’s still hard for Buck to believe this is his life.
Out here, he becomes Lightning Buck. A superhero. He knows it’s kind of a lazy name, a pun mashup of “lightning bug” and the nickname he’s had for half of his life, but it’s kind of fitting since the lightning that shoots from his body often looks like antlers protruding from his head. Besides, the name just feels like him .
Buck is swinging through the air around a trailer in a trailer park with the Chimney, a member of Buck’s superhero team, floating in nearby. Their team is called the 118th Legion, and though Buck’s only been a member for about a year, it has already started to feel like being part of a family. He’s never been more grateful that he got struck by lightning. Where would he be if he wasn’t?
After Chimney touches down softer than Buck ever has, Buck carves a massive web of lightning around an ever-growing mass that emerges from the trailer, trying to keep it from expanding. He certainly had not expected this to come out of investigating someone masquerading as him on social media.
Chimney stands off to the side with his fingers resting on the center of his forehead and his expression focused. After Chimney was in a freak accident that sent a rod of rebar through his skull, his brain grew back differently. He was left with the power to read and influence minds, as well as x-ray vision and levitation. Learning how superheroes he’s looked up to got their powers is one of Buck’s favorite job perks.
“I’m having trouble accessing his mind,” Chimney shouts, expression unwavering.
“Well, try harder!” Buck yells back. “I need you to calm him down!”
This is all Buck’s fault really. That wall of flesh engrossing his vision was once a man, a shapeshifter who used Buck’s reputation to catfish girls on the internet and then sleep with them while pretending to be Lightning Buck. Buck had been a different man only a year ago, hooking up with anyone he could just cause he could. They would flock to him just because he was a superhero, and a particularly good-looking one at that. But he is a different man now, largely in thanks to his girlfriend, Abby.
Buck picks up an elderly couple nearby and flies them away from the approaching blob. He shoots lightning at the wall of flesh, but it gets harder and harder to push it back every second.
“Buck. I think he’s dead.” Buck can barely hear Chimney from afar.
“What?”
“I can’t read his mind because it’s gone. I think his shapeshifting powers went out of control when he died.”
“Turning him into this,” Buck realizes.
“Exactly.”
Despite the awfulness the man literally reeked of, inside and out, Buck almost feels a twang of pity. That man had been too scared to go outside in his own skin. But the version of Buck the man had been pretending to be had shape-shifted too. New Buck was going to give him a death with dignity. Instead of calling in helicopters or government suits to haul him away, Buck called in his teammate, codename Hemomancer. Her nickname apparently used to be “Hem” before that quickly morphed into “Hen.” After Buck punches a hole in the blob of a man to drain him of the fluid building up in his body, Hemomancer uses her healing powers to return his body to its natural state while Chim calls a coroner.
After it’s over, Chim smiles at Buck. Things didn’t start out great between the two of them, but they were getting better. Buck’s life was getting better. Buck was getting better. He has the perfect job with the perfect team and the perfect girlfriend. What could possibly get in the way?
“That is a beautiful man.”
“Where's the lie? And I like girls.”
Buck turns around to see a half-naked yet masked man dressing himself in a silver superhero suit. Buck briefly meets his deep brown eyes. “Who the hell is that?”
“Our new recruit. Was at the top of the nationwide evaluations just this week. He’s from Texas. Guys over at the Lone Star League were dying to have him, but I convinced him to join us.”
Buck doesn’t know why the sight of the gorgeous, shirtless, muscled man makes him so angry. Maybe he’s just hungry. Or he’s in a bad mood because today is the three-month anniversary of the day Abby left. Maybe it’s because Buck now has competition for the Superheroes of North America calendar, which only one hero from each team gets picked for. But it’s probably that it really feels like Buck is being replaced.
“What do we need him for?” Buck asks. Everybody laughs.
“He served multiple tours in Afghanistan as an Army medic,” Bobby, the team’s leader, continues. “And then they gave him a dose of super-soldier serum. The guy's got a Silver Star. It's not like he's wet behind the ears. Come on, I'll introduce you to him. His working codename is Silver Soldier but he likes to be called Eight Pack.”
Buck is not calling him that.
In the team’s jet, Buck can’t stop staring, or rather glaring , at Silver Soldier.
“So, do people ever call you ‘Silver?’”
“No?”
“What about ‘Sil?’”
“Not if they want me to respond.”
Buck sighs. Not telling each other their personal names has never been this difficult. It was weird to work alongside people he didn’t know the names of at first, and even weirder after he and Hemomancer learned Cap’s real name: Bobby Nash. But why did this guy’s codename have to be something so annoying like “Silver Soldier?” Nothing was this difficult until he showed up.
“Something's got to give. We got... we got Cap, Hen, Chimney, Buck. ‘Eight Pack’ is out of the question and we can't just call you ‘Silver Soldier.’”
“Can't tell if he's being serious or not,” Silver Soldier says, not looking at Buck.
Chimney chuckles. “I like to always operate under the assumption that nothing he says is serious.”
Buck rolls his eyes so hard it shakes the jet. He looks back at the silver-clad man and looks him up and down over and over for a bizarrely long time. Eventually, he smiles.
“You know what? I’ve got it. I’ll call you Texas. Or Tex!”
“You are not calling me that.”
By the next shift, Tex has already proven himself to be annoyingly useful. He’s an incredible medic even without superpowers and his super strength is like nothing Buck has ever seen. It unsettles Buck in a way he doesn’t understand, opting to do a workout to shake it out.
Buck finds the HQ gym refitted with a bunch of new equipment, if you could even call it that. Huge train cars fill the space, leaving it much more cramped. They’re connected to heavily bolted-down complicated machinery and large chains. Buck frowns. Even for someone with super-strength, how is this practical? They bought all this new stuff in a day and overcrowded the gym just to accommodate the newbie?
Buck squeezes his way through the room to the regular weights, almost bringing a massive piece of sheet metal down on his head along the way. He spots Tex, who is using an oversized punching bag with concrete blocks and heavy pieces of metal attached to the bottom. And he is punching it and sending it flying back like it weighs two pounds. It’s so frustratingly cool , so annoyingly breathtaking , that Buck can’t stop staring. He could never do something like that so easily. He could never beat that or even be as good as that. Or look that good.
Buck’s staring is interrupted by Chimney, who’s seemingly asking Tex for advice. Buck assumes its going to be about the calendar—Silver Soldier’s shirtless promotional pics were very good—but instead, Chimney’s asking Tex to teach him the unique punch combination he did. Buck’s ears ring as Tex shows Chimney how to hold his hands and where to direct the movements, all while Chimney listens to his advice like Tex is the experienced hero, not the newbie. When Chimney finally moves the punches from the air to the punching bag, the bag only moves a fraction of how much Tex’s super-powered punches rocked it.
“Close,” Tex comments. “You’ll get better.”
“You know, you really shouldn't get his hopes up like that,” Buck tells Tex. “No offense, Chim.”
Chimney laughs. “None taken.”
“What's your problem, man?” Tex asks.
“Okay. You. You're my problem,” Buck rants. “Your comfort level. You're-you're not supposed to just walk in here like you've been here for years. It's meant to be a getting-to-know-you period. You're meant to respect your elders.”
“You're not his elder, Buck,” Chimney scolds.
“You come in here with your fancy equipment, acting like you own the place,” Buck continues. “You’re training Chimney even though you’re still a newbie hero. You once being a soldier doesn’t change that. May not be the same kind of pressure you have in a war zone, but...this is not stress-free.”
Tex sighs. “Look, I in no way meant to, uh, be too familiar or step on anybody's toes. I know you're going through some personal stuff right now.”
“What personal stuff?”
“I know your girlfriend recently broke up with you and you're coming to terms with that.”
“No, I'm not,” Buck insists. “And she didn't break up with me. Who told you that?”
He told the team about his girlfriend in confidence. They’re not supposed to know so much about each other’s real lives, yet someone had already spilled that.
“I'm just saying I hear you're a good guy, and... I'm sorry you're going through pain, but... you don't need to take it out on me or be threatened by me. We're on the same team.”
“Why would I be threatened by you?”
“Exactly. There's no need to be,” Tex assures. “We do the same thing. I've just had more training. And more people shooting at me. That’s all.”
“We're not broken up.”
Tex chuckles. “That’s not what I hear.”
He and Abby are not broken up. Right? Buck looks at Tex, his muscles rippling as he goes back to hitting the punching bag. He’s so confident he’s making Buck question it too.
Buck turns to the small ‘shooting’ range he and Bobby use to hone their powers, hoping to let off some steam. He spots the remnants of burn marks from Bobby hurling fireballs earlier. Buck launches bolts of lightning right into the bullseyes, one after another. He imagines that some of the targets are Tex’s face to motivate him. And even if he wouldn’t admit it, he imagines some of them are Abby’s face too. He feels a flash of guilt, but keeps going. His aim is getting better.
By the time Buck gets home that day, the sight of the apartment doesn’t make Buck feel much better, considering it’s not actually his. It’s Abby’s. Buck moved in right before she left, expecting the two of them to have a whole life together. But now she’s gone, and his performance in the field has been slipping ever since. Maybe that’s why they called in the new guy.
Her absence becomes more vast as each day passes. Buck misses her so much that when he hears the shower running he lets himself feel hopeful that Abby is back, only to come face to face with his sister.
“Maddie!?”
“Damn it, Evan! Don't you knock?”
This is a surprise. As much as Buck is happy to see his sister, she left his life three years ago. He doesn’t need more change at the moment. After they both calm down, she explains how she got in the apartment—he should talk to his landlord about believing strangers so easily—and the two catch up. Buck makes dinner, as Maddie explains that she’s separating herself from her husband Doug, who she finally left.
Eventually, Buck blurts out: “I’m a superhero.”
“What?”
“I’m Lightning Buck.”
“Who?”
Buck sighs. He thought he was becoming more recognized. “You know, I fly and can create lightning?”
“Buck, I’m from Pennsylvania, I don’t know the L.A. superheroes. Is this a joke?”
“No, I’m serious, Maddie. Look.”
Buck creates two bolts of lightning that stick out of his head like antlers. Maddie stares.
“What!? How did this happen?”
“I was struck by lightning.”
“You were struck by lightning!?”
“It was a freak accident, during my Navy Seal training that I wrote to you about. When I woke up, I was different.”
“So is that why you didn’t become a Seal? You wanted to be a superhero?”
“No. The Seals wanted someone emotionless. A robot who only followed orders. I’m not that. I wanted to help people. I thought about being a firefighter, but when my powers manifested, this felt like destiny.”
“Well. Even though it makes me a little concerned, I’m glad you found something you like so much. Plus, it makes me feel extra safe.”
Buck almost asks, “safe from what?” but decides to hold his tongue. Something does feel off, though. Buck brushes it off, blaming it on his poor mood. For once he’s sitting in this apartment not wallowing about Abby, and he couldn’t be happier about that.
“Listen, even if you are just here for a few days, uh, welcome to L.A.,” he says. “It was getting pretty lonely around here.”