apollabarnes

[apollabarnes]

@beanarie asked ⭐️ please talk about the time loop fic and/or tommy seeing ghosts

inhale 'til your lungs get sore - ghost!bobby

okay so first of all, i wrote this in the two weeks between lab rats and the final alarm; pretty sure i got it out just under the wire? (i just went to go check and the air date for final alarm was may 2nd, and i published this on may 1st! wheee!) which means that i wrote it fast. (and angry. and then i felt a little bad about being mad about it after the last alarm and then!! sadly vindicated at being angry by the last two of the season.)

so you asked about the worldbuilding and the thing is. i find my best worldbuilding is done when i approach it is a conversation — but not just a conversation, a conversation that we're in the middle of. (i don't know if this works for everyone, but it's something you could try out if you wanted, i guess)

case in point: ghost!bobby pops up next to tommy and tommy just starts talking to him. no freak out, no "ghosts don't exist", just "god, this really sucks, bobby". later, at the hospital, tommy talks about him wasting his haunting on tommy (the takeaway here was meant to be 'instead of athena' — aka his family — and i hope it came through).

there's a snippet here which didn't fit with the vibe of the story where bobby is trying to figure out if he's tommy's first ghost and tommy doesn't really give him an answer. spoiler: tommy has seen ghosts before. it's something that he keeps to himself and doesn't talk about because good god man, he's been in the army and knows what would happen if the government found out people could see fucking ghosts.

how many and who are things that i had to know for myself, but they take away from the actual story so i'm hesitant to share? but what i am comfortable sharing is that they don't normally stick around very long, and some ghosts can interact with the real world (bobby and his coffee), but they are ghosts and incorporeal and hauntings the way they're depicted in movies are basically garbage. tommy has never gotten beaten up by a ghost and he never will.

bobby as a ghost isn’t stuck with tommy, but since he is haunting him he does have to hang out pretty frequently. tommy’s kind of like his battery.

i said most ghosts don’t stick around; you can rightly assume this isn’t true for bobby. he’s got athena and buck to take care of and by golly! he’s gonna do it!!

we met rick (and colin, sort of), who’s one of tommy’s exes. i am both a (lazy) writer and fond of the characters i write, so they’ll both be referenced in other stories if and when the exes come up — rick was dating colin before, they broke up (law school is a bitch), he dated tommy, then they ended up getting back together (law school is a bitch) and tommy still hangs out with them in the way you hang out with casual exes.

hmm. hmm! is this it. have i covered all my world building things i wanted to touch on. maybe! there’s a lot tbh.

(deleted scene at the end: buck tries to be a gentleman and offer to sleep in the guest room and tommy tells him it’s haunted. the next morning he jokingly asks tommy if that was just a way to get him in bed and tommy is like “no, it’s haunted” and then buck is the one going “wait are you serious” and tommy just… “billy boils, evan”s him and doesn’t explain further.)

[apollabarnes]

thunk it thursday

as in, what are you thunking??

tagged by @rcmclachlan

"Cape Cod. Isn't this…" Maddie glanced around, pulling her sweater tighter around her. "The Jaws beach?" "Nah, that's Long Island. But it's equally likely that you can run into a great white anywhere on the East Coast," Buck assured her, stretching. "They're mostly down by Florida and the Keys this time of year — they're cold blooded, they don't want to be up here any more than you want to be in the water right now. "You could have lied and said that they aren't up here at all," Maddie grumbled, looking around. "God, beach towns are so predictable. There really is a yoga studio on the other end of the beach." Buck snickered, reaching his hands over his head and then pointing towards the studio. "So you should be heading over there to get your new job," he teased, unzipping his sweater. "Make sure you tell all the ladies in there about the cute boy who gave you directions," he added, fluttering his eyelashes at her. "If they couldn't see us from here, I would absolutely be pushing you into the water," Maddie muttered, shaking her head. "Love you too, go rearrange some chakras," Buck singsonged. "See you around!"

tagging @geddyqueer @leashybebes @beanarie @ambernotember @setmeatopthepyre @a-mel0n @stars-inthe-sky and you!

[apollabarnes]

⭐️ please talk about the time loop fic and/or tommy seeing ghosts

okay here we go! way to get me to go back and reread my stories

if i can live through this - the time loop fic

so when i first wanted to do a time loop, i had to decide very quickly who was getting stuck; tommy made the most sense because he was physically close and emotionally invested in the team but wouldn't negatively impact the rest of the day if he was suddenly missing. (it also became clear that i would have to write in present tense, so i was suffering right along with tommy. my preferred tense is past, but this story didn't work in past tense. damnit!)

i knew i wanted it to be a long time loop; if it was too short neither the emotional or physical resolution would feel like an ending that had been earned.

(this ask, like the loop, has gotten very long, so! more beneath the cut and i will do ghost tommy in a separate post)

in terms of what i wanted to show, because i wanted it to be long there needed to be multiple attempts at a fix that didn't work — tommy's list was my list of things that needed to be considered, and then they also became his timeline/basis for his attempts. they're also some of the things that he ends up bitching about to ghost bobby in my other fic (but they're recurring issues that i had with the plot as a writer, so it's not a crossover nor do i feel bad about it).

the hard line for tommy was anything that put a different firefighter in danger; there was the initial attempt with eddie and then realizing that changing the makeup inside the lab turned everything into a crap shoot. at least when it was everyone who was there originally he could be sure that they would all survive until athena arrived back at the lab. for instance, he knew that breaking bobby's leg would keep him out of trouble; but who would end up standing where bobby was and getting their air hose punctured? he didn't want to be responsible for someone's death — he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he played god.

(there is one reference that i don't think anyone caught where tommy has used his army skills to ah... ask moira questions in a very not nice sort of way. he feels mostly okay about this because he knew that by grabbing moira he wouldn't be able to be in a position to save bobby, so the loop would restart and it's one of those 'no consequences' things. but it's still not something that he's proud of doing.)

he does give up a few times, but. that doesn't stick either. he could go as far away from la as he could manage in twenty four hours, but he couldn't get away from the fact that it hurt everyone.

every attempt needed to have a section that explained and showed what tommy was up to, and what he'd been up to in the interim between the last section.

(he spends. months. telling buck that he loves him after buck asks him to. not because he thinks they're all parallel universes (god, he hopes not!) but as exposure therapy, so that when he finally gets out he can tell buck and not immediately curl up like a potato bug and wish for death, because the first time he told buck that he took an entire week off and drank so much he could have opened his own distillery. the man loves so much and is so unused to telling anyone that he feels that way.)

the nerds became a cornerstone because i wanted to keep the fic as close to canon as possible; there was a lot of staring at the character list and figuring out who was 'available' to help with solving this problem. (poor lucy was initially in a lot more of this fic, but the flow got tricky when he was having to convince multiple people every loop and chopping her made the most sense. at least she has the home reno fic!)

roz and allen were both out of the blast radius before the explosion and had the necessary knowledge and temperament to want to help tommy. i also leaned a little hard on the 'tommy's so cool' vibe that, let's face it, the entire 118 has about tommy to explain the initial fact that roz and allen didn't run away screaming from this big, tall guy asking them to help him do some illegal chemistry.

the numb3rs nerds were just for me (it's been really fun to see who knows them and likes them too!) but i knew that i always wanted to get the physics of time travel in there and who better to do that than a group of nerds that i didn't have to make up on my own ?? (i'd also been watching some numb3rs recently so!)

that the answer boils down to trusting roz and allen to help him is obvious and yet it's something that tommy would never have considered at the beginning of the loop; something about watching the love of your life lose his dad for months on end (by the end of the fic, it has been at least a year of loops, maybe more, tommy does sort of stop keeping track by the end of it) makes you bite that bullet of feeling fundamentally unworthy because if you have to watch it one more time you're going to crack.

when he gets out of the loop, the calsci team does get that email and they have a new grand theorem to work on (probably for the rest of their lives); they, and roz and allen, are the only ones that know that tommy was in a time loop. all five of them promise never to mention it again, but roz and allen also get themselves invited to trivia from now until eternity. (buck is so curious about how that happened, they all say that they bonded while buck and athena were getting everyone out of the lab.)

[apollabarnes]

Tell me more about the witching hour!

ooooooh okay.

i wrote it for the daily drabble hiatus prompts between 8a and 8b (the first prompts that were in this story were day seven and day eight and then i started building out the story from there! not a single prompt is in order, there's a big masterpost here if anyone wants to read it. i started uploading it to ao3 as the drabbles and then got distracted; it's always been a goal to write the missing scenes in between the drabbles. (this is slowly getting worked on in between other projects; when i do get it finished, i'll probably pull the drabbles off ao3 and just have the 'finished' story.)

so day seven and eight were spirit and passenger, so i had tommy getting possessed by dead demon!doug. the entire story is an au set roughly around s4 of 911, although i very indiscriminately steal as many big emergencies as i wanted.

making buck a healer was kind of a no-brainer; he was born to help danny (in this verse it worked!). maddie's always been a runner, so — teleportation. and then, not that i was thinking of this when i gave him the power, but danny, who in canon died and was frozen at one age forever, can freeze time.

(this got long so if you want to hear more, send another ask??)

[apollabarnes]

i feel like yapping about my fics. director's commentary time!

leave a ⭐️ in my inbox and a question or a title and i'll ramble about my motivation or wtfever

[apollabarnes]

i love all the italian tommy fics and headcanons but when you're reading my stuff please just be aware he's irish/scottish and can be summoned by potato

[apollabarnes]

tease tidbit tuesday

tagged by @rcmclachlan and @ambernotember

(after this i am gonna be struggling to find things that aren't spoilers! oh well!)

Maddie nodded decisively. "Okay. Two weeks from now is the three month mark. If nothing's happening, we pack up and head somewhere else." "I've never been to the Carolinas," Buck added, watching as Maddie moved onto his hands. "I hear they're nice." "If that's where the dart lands, absolutely," Maddie smiled tightly at him. "I know you like it here." "I like it because it's warm and I can go surfing," Buck reassured her. "Lots of places are warm and have beaches you can surf at." "You're the best little brother. Don't tell Danny," Maddie softened, leaning forward to kiss his forehead. "You shouldn't stay too much longer if you want to get back before traffic starts." "This is LA, when does traffic stop?" Buck teased her.

no pressure tags backatcha, plus @setmeatopthepyre @leashybebes @beanarie @geddyqueer and you! (this is for wednesday, tuesday is almost over haha)

[apollabarnes]

tease tidbit tuesday

Tagged by @firehose118, @devirnis, and @ambernotember. Thanks, y'all 😘

Here's some more from the s3 alternate meeting au I'm working on.

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Buck squints, because, "Wait, don't I know you?"

The guy, who looks like he competes in Steinstossen on the weekends, gives Buck a familiar smile—the same one he gave Buck a few years ago.

A four-alarm grease fire had consumed half an apartment building after someone supposedly tried to put it out by throwing a pot of water on it, and at least four stations showed up to beat it into submission. This guy had been climbing down one of the ladders with what must have been twenty kids on his back, and as he passed the window of the room Buck was in the middle of clearing, he smiled and waved at Buck through the glass like it was just another day at the beach.

"Hey, Buckley! How's the leg treating you, man? We were gonna send you flowers, but your buddy Chimney said you were a real weirdo so we sent that big box of whack-ass candy instead."

Amongst the explosion of flowers and wreathes and cards he'd gotten from people whose names he didn't know, there'd been a big box full of the strangest candy he'd ever seen: lollipops with ants frozen in the center, mints that tasted like roadkill, Carolina Reaper cotton candy, mac and cheese gummies, and chocolates shaped like dicks. He, Chim, Eddie, and Hen had laughed themselves to tears trying all of them one afternoon. Even Bobby couldn't deny the cactus candy was interesting.

Tied to one of the chocolate dicks—"cocklates," Chim cackled—had been a short note.

The bacon and cheddar cricket crunchies will get you back on your feet in no time. Get well soon! — Station 217

Buck bursts out laughing. "'Whack-ass' is right. Hey, Meyers, it's been ages. I-I didn't realize all of you were LAFD."

"Oh shit," one of them—a woman with broad shoulders and the most incredible mop of spiral curls he's ever seen—gasps. "You're the bomb guy! The one the engine fell on! I heard you were caught down the pier when the tsunami hit, too. I can't believe you're even walking around after all that. Don't even tell me you're back to work already."

"Y-Yeah," Buck says, eyes glued to a patch of the table top where the sealant is chipping away. "It's been an, uh, interesting year."

Tommy nudges one of his teammates further down the booth and then steps back so Buck can slide in. It takes every ounce of energy to actually do it, because even though he knows this woman means well, it feels like she's standing before a jury of his peers and listing all the reasons why he shouldn't don his turnouts again.

In all honesty, he should just call Chase and tell him to withdraw the suit wholesale. If a complete stranger thinks Buck shouldn't be back, then Bobby's definitely never going to budge on it. Eddie's never going to return his calls. Hen's never going to look him in the eye again. The days of daring Chimney to try a bacon and cheddar cricket are over. The 118's bay doors will never open to let him in again.

Thankfully, the din of the bar is so loud that no one can hear him sniffle as he glances toward the bar. Maybe they're hiring.

"Dude," one of the others chimes in. "I heard you were suing the department. I didn't know you could even do that. Maybe I can sue Cap for banning Mittens from the station, because that's just cruel and unusual. She gets lonely when I'm on shift."

"You bring your fucking snake to the hangar one more time, Nico, and I'll garrote you with it," the curly-haired woman snaps, then turns interested eyes on Buck. "But, are you? Taking the department to court, I mean."

Before Buck can excuse himself to the bathroom where he can have a good cry and then drown himself in a toilet, Tommy slides into the booth next to him.

"Actually, Jacinda, I can answer that one: none of your damn business," Tommy says sunnily. Without missing a beat, he reaches across the table to smack the guy with the snake upside the head when he opens his mouth. "Besides, I've got a better question: what's the deal with your kid, Benowitz? Did he finally ask what's-her-name to prom or what?"

Benowitz sighs, takes a long-suffering sip of his beer, and begins what sounds like a new chapter in an ongoing saga of his son Steven, who's been working on the world's greatest-slash-worst promposal for the last two months with no end in sight.

Swallowing hard around the burr in his throat, Buck nudges Tommy's foot in gratitude.

Tommy nods at whatever Benowitz is saying, then nudges back.

+

No pressure tags: everyone who tagged me, plus @screamlet, @setmeatopthepyre, @beanarie, @geddyqueer, @freneticfloetry, @apollabarnes, @station18908, and @leashybebes

[apollabarnes]

Loadbearing AU: 4!

"First of all, I'm married. Second of all, you're drunk. Third, I'm a lesbian. So no, I'm not interested in seeing your dorm room."

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section nineteen, as requested by @ambernotember

(Now do 19 😈 — girl! you know there's barely anything here)

"You still want to be in the department, right?"

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section fifteen, as requested by @ambernotember

"Nice guy. Travelled a lot when he was younger; I think you'd call him a drifter."

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section one, as requested by @ithabritican

"I was thinking, you want to see what Wyoming is like this time of year?"

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section six, as requested by @chemistry66

"You make my job sound infinitely cooler than it actually is."

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section seven, as requested by @geddyqueer

"Remember, I told you she reminded me of Lucille Bluth and I was right."

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Section 5? 👀

"Needing to 'make out with your boyfriend or you'll die' is not a valid reason."

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still writing my loadbearing au!! we’re at… 34k?? phew.

i’ve got 19 sections currently — if you wanna send a number from 1-19 i will give you one (1) line of dialogue with no context whatsoever 🤣

add a word and i’ll try to find it but no guarantees!!

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some sentences smonday

tagged by @geddyqueer @rcmclachlan and @ambernotember tagging you back and adding @leashybebes @beanarie @setmeatopthepyre (was gonna tag cecily and lim but you two just posted a whole ass fic!) and you

loving that danny is a hit, so more au!buckley siblings for you

"Hey, Doc. This is Buck and Maddie. Guys, this is Doc Salazar. Doc, tell them I'm fine." She laughed. "Daniel's labs do look good, and all of his vitals are within a normal range. It doesn't appear that the shock did any lasting damage." "Are you sure? Did you run any tests on his brain?" Buck asked, dodging the swipe from Danny.

"I'd like him to come back in a week for another round of tests, but he can go home as long as he promises to take it easy for a few weeks." "Doc, I need to finish my house this week," Danny protested. "Absolutely no climbing around in hot attics with exposed wiring," Doctor Salazar said firmly. "Another shock is not a good idea." "We won't let him do anything strenuous," Maddie promised, squeezing Danny's shoulder. Buck could already see the copious amounts of physical labour in his future. "Yeah Danny, you have enough brain damage already," Buck joked. "We'll get you out at shift change," she promised. "Hang tight, I'll be back as soon possible." Maddie nodded, glancing at her phone. "I'm going to see if I can find any decent coffee here. Please don't kill each other while I'm gone." "No promises," Buck and Danny said in unison. "Okay, well at least we're already in the hospital," Maddie shook her head, smiling ruefully at both of them. "What was that about?" Danny asked, as soon as Maddie had left the room. "You noticed too, huh?" Buck asked. "I think she might have a boyfriend. Probably wants to give him a call." "Oooh," Danny laughed. "Well, that should be interesting. Any idea who it might be?" Buck shook his head. "We're trying not to pry into each other's personal lives. But I did see a few of the apps on her phone, so. Could be anyone." "You're trying to not pry?" Danny raised an eyebrow. "Hey," Buck protested. "I know about personal boundaries." "Yeah, right," Danny grinned at him.