The Thrill of the Chase - confetti_cupcake (2024)

Abby Clark is a tornado.

At least, that’s what Chimney says one early afternoon during a typical intercept attempt. Buck’s hardly a matured storm chaser—to put it in twister terms, he’s more of a vaguely rotating updraft than a fully-developed funnel cloud, having only been on this job for four months—but he’s been around long enough to know that Chimney has a habit of this: making wisecracks over the radio from the helm of the S.P.I.N. and refusing to elaborate.

Hen sometimes jokes that it’s all he’s good for, since anyone can drive a giant doppler radar on wheels and read some weather maps. It’s awfully convenient, she insists, that he always seems to wait until the butts of his jokes are firmly seated in the T.W.I.S.T.R. to unleash the full extent of his ridicule, so as not to immediately suffer whatever consequences may come his way. But this time even she is stifling a laugh, which echoes audibly over the crackle of the walkie-talkie Bobby holds at his side.

Buck’s gotten used to it by now. And while he’s not convinced Chimney’s taunting isn’t rooted in jealousy over his vehicle’s much cooler name, it’s fair enough, really. He can’t exactly say the mockery of his love life hasn’t been well-earned.

Storm chasing is everything he wanted it to be and more, he thinks to himself as the wall cloud in the distance darkens from a gray charcoal to a rich onyx. Chase Squad 118 giving him the closest thing to family he’s ever felt. The thrill of having a tornado bowl him over with every ounce of power it has. Getting to sit back and enjoy the show from inside the vortex, again and again.

And most of all, the lesser-known, altruistic parts of the job—getting to help the victims of the storms that they chase. When emergency services are tied up after huge tornado hits, storm chasers are often the first on the scene to lend a hand. Helping people is the entire point. The data the 118 and other chase squads in Oklahoma collect go on to help improve the National Weather Service’s tornado forecasting models, which in turn will help scientists finally understand the why and how of tornadogenesis—and perhaps, most importantly, enable development of more advanced warnings, saving lives in the process.

But there was a point early on when Buck almost lost sight of this, in favor of the job’s—er, other benefits.

Storm chasing is sexy. It’s addictively dangerous. It’s the act of throwing caution to the wind in its most literal form and experiencing a force of nature that’s capable of ending your life, but trusting it won’t. It attracts a certain type of person—spontaneous, carefree, brazen adrenaline junkies. Exhibit A: the dozens of chaser-chasers, as Hen and Chim not-so-affectionately call them, who swarm rest stop parkings lots like midges in a bugnado at first glance of the T.W.I.S.T.R., the heavily armored Turbulent Weather Interceptor and Storm Tracking Rover Buck drives. And naturally, those spontaneous, carefree, brazen adrenaline junkies are passionate about a whole host of other risky activities. Like say, heading out for a quickie in a stolen storm chasing vehicle at the tail end of El Niño.

To his credit, he got away with this more times than he should’ve. Until it turned out that certain captains are actually deeply passionate about tracking their fleets’ GPS signals, willing to go so far as to tap on the T.W.I.S.T.R.’s bulletproof polycarbonate windows in the middle of the act.

It turns out being fired is a huge mood-killer. And Buck thought his life was over.

Until a certain red-headed meteorologist's voice had transmitted through the radio he’d been issued on his first day. He hadn’t had the heart to return it, but suddenly, stealing NWS property served a purpose. Coordinates of a brewing megastorm at his fingertips, he managed to chase it down in his Jeep and save the lives of hundreds in the residential area it would later tear through with just one tweet before the sirens even had a chance to go off, complete with a photo of the menacing monster in the sky. His spot behind the wheel of the T.W.I.S.T.R. was his again, all thanks to his NWS guardian angel, now girlfriend.

“You’ll see what I mean,” Chimney continues with a smug air through the radio, and Buck can make out Hen scolding him from the other end. It’s comical, really, that the storm “chaser”—in name only, because he refuses to leave the confines of the S.P.I.N., a.k.a. the Storm Path Identifier and Navigator, for anything once a funnel cloud is in view—who lied to his girlfriend about just how much action he sees in the field, got his proposal rejected, and earned nothing but a rebar through the head to show for it is out here lecturing him on the ways of romance.

Chimney just doesn’t understand all the ways that Abby is different. She’s stable, secure, and no-nonsense, with a grown-up meteorology job and a grown-up apartment. She always knows just what to say to calm the tempest that ravages Buck’s self-esteem, the one that howls that he’s not good enough for love. She makes him feel needed, like his presence helps her be her more actualized self. As if without him, her identity would vanish into a dark, hom*ogenous void of caregiver burnout, with all her memories of who she was before her mom’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis—vibrant, accomplished, charming, a complete and utter bombshell—following suit. Bringing that version of Abby back to herself is his purpose. And Buck likes to have a purpose.

And as such, Buck is different now, too. He’s a serious relationship guy. He goes on dinner dates to restaurants with a dress code and pays the bill. He spends the night without being shooed out the next morning, because he’s practically moved in anyway. And he steps inside Abby’s unpredictable life, offering his utmost support to her and her mother when they need it.

He’s her cheerleader. He’s her shoulder to cry on. He’s her rock. He’s perfected the part of a mature, equal partner in their committed, adult relationship.

And while Chimney’s comment was almost certainly meant to be derogatory, Buck thinks he unknowingly walked himself ass-backwards into a compliment.

Because Abby came twisting into his life out of thin air. She swept him off his feet and absorbed him into her vortex. Having someone to sleep next to at night, to share his life with, to love him unconditionally—it’s what he imagines getting sucked up into a funnel cloud must be like. Every ounce of her affection lifts him up and up and up, with no choice but to give himself over to her completely. She elevates him beyond what he thinks is possible, until he’s on top of the world with only the glistening heavens overhead. He no longer sweats the small stuff, as every problem down below feels more manageable, practically insignificant in its microscopic size. And when he moans her name, tangled up in her bedsheets, enveloped by warm skin and sweat, it’s the closest he’s ever come to seeing God.

And tornadoes are beautiful. Strikingly so. They’re exquisite in their power, like the way Abby pitched in to help find and rescue a little girl after the Stonington tornado joyride he’d taken her on, her hands as unwavering as her resolve. They make you feel like you’re looking at something bigger than yourself, like when Buck stares at her asleep in the early mornings in her bed, marveling at the fact that she chose him. And their presence so strongly invigorates you that you yearn for it in times of boredom, like the way he’s been preoccupied with the thought of the night they’re going to spend together in the lead-up to this interception.

She’s just like the one that’s the goal of this particular mission. If they’ve done everything right, a tornado will spawn from the supercell and cross their path right into their vehicle and its instruments, allowing them to collect data on wind speed, air pressure and temperature at its touchdown point.

And it looks promising. Quarter-sized hail is bouncing off the windshield and the thick, barrel-shaped column in the center of the supercell is clearly pronounced. A slight cone protrudes out from the cloud, but the funnel hasn’t fully formed yet.

“Nice looking mesocyclone,” Buck remarks, trying to make conversation with Bobby. “What do you think?”

“I think you should punch it,” Bobby replies, his eyes fixated on the sky instead of the radar maps that usually hold his attention. “This cell’s going to become tornadic any second now.”

And as if he can tell the future, the small cone twists and elongates, stretching down into a pristine funnel-shaped cloud as seamlessly as if it were knit into the lower atmosphere toward the ground.

Bobby doesn’t even have to say it this time. Buck pushes his foot down on the T.W.I.S.T.R.’s gas pedal, and speeds ahead down the country road until they’re perfectly perpendicular with the tornado’s path.

“Drop down!” Bobby yells as the tornado inches closer and closer, swirling with a fervor that Buck can’t wait to be on the inside of. He brings the vehicle to a prompt stop and begins the anchoring process. He lowers the skirt, covering the bottom to keep the winds from getting underneath and lifting it up. And he drives the eight-inch spikes into the group to keep them securely in place as the tornado passes.

The towering tornado spins and whirls and gets closer and closer, winds beginning to lap at the side of the vehicle and twirl the anemometer like a toy top. Buck’s pulse rate shoots up, his heart hammering at this ribcage as the massive gray monstrosity threatens to engulf them. This is it.

And then—impact.

The funnel barrels through, sending wind and rain every which way. The visibility isn’t the best, despite the vehicle’s windshield wipers being on their fastest setting, but Buck can just make out the flurry of twigs, grass and uprooted shrubs blowing across their field of view. The T.W.I.S.T.R.rocks and shakes, rotational winds buffeting the vehicle with mighty power. The pressure rapidly drops, and Buck’s ears pop. But he can only look ahead, utterly transfixed as he’s pushed back into his seat from the force.

And just like that, it’s over.

The wind hurries through as if it’s running late for another interception on the opposite side of the county and is quickly on its way, taking its swirling cloud of debris with it. Buck lets out a victorious whoop from behind his seatbelt harness. He punches Bobby on the shoulder and offers his hand up for a high-five. Bobby, with an amused smile, just says, “Good job, kid.”

Buck swings open the driver-side door—vertically, as to shield him from any residual hail—and stands and watches. He records a video on his phone as the majestic beast twists away, further and further, and eventually dissipates into the sky.

If his count is correct, this would be his twelfth tornado since he started with Squad 118, and yet it’s still every bit as invigorating and energizing as it's ever been. He’ll never tire of storm chasing. How can he, when he gets to experience the most awe-inspiring force nature has to offer, up close and personal? Buck doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything more beautiful than this. Except—

He attaches the video in a text to Abby that says, “ This beauty just touched down in Canfield. Stay safe. ” He adds a heart for good measure, and Abby reacts with one of her own.

So yes, in that respect, Abby is a tornado. One that he’d be content to chase for the rest of his life.

Buck is spinning out.

But Abby stays impossibly still in her seat on her living room couch. Her unflappability should be reassuring. Calming, even. It usually is.

But every storm chaser knows that if a tornado appears stationary, it’s probably about to hit you head-on. That, or bolt straight in the opposite direction.

“I’m leaving.”

The words part from her lips effortlessly, and they strike Buck like debris. They cut into his stomach and heart and anywhere else he can feel. This is what being thrown and lying in a field, bleeding out, must feel like. Tossed aside by the 150-mph winds, a mere obstacle in his girlfriend’s path to be flung about without a care.

She holds his trembling hands in hers, but he doesn’t feel a thing when she says, “I’m going to help people. Like you do.”

Her life’s been changed, she continues gently. The EF2 at Stonington—the one Buck took her along to chase as a distraction—left an impression, the towering, billowing cumulonimbus captivating her need to have more of something for the first time in decades.

And the powerless inhabitants of the wood frame house they saw it ravage, whom she and Buck instantly pulled over to help, left an even bigger one.

Patricia was a fearless meteorologist, who was always on location whenever she could be. Floods, hurricanes, hailstorms—nothing could keep her away from a site of bad weather. But a good tornado had always eluded her. And despite following in her impassioned footsteps, Abby could never bring herself to stray from the safe, sterilized environment of the NWS office.

Until Buck.

Buck and his contagious enthusiasm for storms. Sharing that moment with him had awakened something deep within her that she hadn’t known existed. The desire to get outside. The urge to live dangerously. But also the compulsion to lend a helping hand to the victims of these storms. It would be the most appropriate way to honor her mother’s memory.

And look, Buck gets it. You never forget your first tornado. He remembers his. An F3 at seven years old in Hershey, so far into the past that the Fujita scale was still in use. He recalls his mother’s desperate screams for him to get away from the windows, partially drowned out by the swell of the tornado siren. But he’d been mesmerized, rooted to the living room floorboards as he stared out the window at the deep gray whirlwind looming outside. The trance was shattered, however, when Maddie took him by the hand and yanked him down the stairs to the basem*nt. It was at that moment that Buck knew he had to get in the middle of one someday.

So he doesn’t blame her. But she doesn’t have to leave to do this. There’s an easy solution. “But you could do that here. W-with us,” he stammers, eyes shifting between her resigned face and the half-full suitcase that rests on her bed. “With me.”

Abby purses her lips, the way she would at his seductive overtures, or pop culture befuddlement which tended to underscore their age gap. But it’s sad this time, almost pitying, as she cups his cheek that he hadn’t even realized was wet.

“I need to do this on my own.”

It’s all it takes to make the roof come off of Buck’s house, kicking everything he knows and has kept him tethered up into the air and swirling atop. The sound of a freight train roars in his ears, and Abby’s plans to go to Kansas, then Mississippi, then maybe even to Bangladesh or India because they have tornadoes there and why not?—are all but drowned out.

He wants to stop her. He wants to throw his arms around her and hold her tightly to his chest. To keep her here, now and always. To bottle up her love and affection, and stay the person he is when he’s with her. Because who is he, really, if there’s no Abby?

But a tornado can’t be harnessed. It can’t be preserved in a jar to cling to forever, or keep him in a perpetual state of awe. It’s here for one magnificent and ephemeral moment, as in all of its fleeting glory it ropes out and disappears into the atmosphere, leaving the most seasoned of chasers with a pit of longing deep inside their soul that can never be replicated. And so they chase it and chase it for the rest of their days.

And as the glass departure doors at Will Rogers Airport slide closed and the best thing that’s ever happened to him vanishes into the dense throng of travelers, Buck finally understands what Chimney meant.

Eddie Diaz is a volcanic eruption.

This is what Buck grumbles to himself as the new recruit slides into the T.W.I.S.T.R.’s passenger seat with the casual familiarity of a veteran storm chaser.

He’s not quite sure why Bobby, now relegated to the back seat of the vehicle, pushed so hard for him to join the squad. They’ve had their roles nailed down since the start. Buck drives and deploys the T.W.I.S.T.R., Hen and Chimney collect data on supercells worth chasing in the S.P.I.N.—the Storm Path Identifier and Navigator—and Bobby leads the charge, disseminating commands and getting everyone into position.

But Eddie adds nothing new. He’s the definition of redundant. Storm chasing is a carefully choreographed dance. The last thing they need is somebody barging on stage and stepping on everyone’s toes.

But it’s really the unmerited fanfare that bothers him the most. The romanticization of this guy, who they barely even know. When laymen picture a volcano, they imagine an earthy, picturesque cone projecting up from the ground, gently spurting colorful lava down its sides and begging the observer to take a closer look. Like Hen and Chimney, who spend their time at base camp oohing and aahing at Eddie’s abs and hair and fancy-schmancy seven years of field meteorology experience, like it’s something to behold.

But they would be wrong.

Because lava is dangerous. Sure, Eddie is so hot that Buck’s convinced Bobby could cook an omelet on his midsection when they get back to base camp, but he’s the type of hot that’ll scald someone who isn’t careful. Nobody is that nice, or competent, or helpful. There has to be something ugly, something ominous lurking deep below the surface, until the tension builds and his top blows, releasing a toxic cloud of ash, smoke and acid.

There’s got to be a flaw somewhere. And Buck is determined to find it.

They deploy from the gas station just after lunch, about forty minutes north in Ophelia, where their latest supercell target is developing. Hen and Chim somehow manage to dictate their doppler readings of the storm’s path on the drive up in between all the questions they pepper Eddie with about the disasters he’s seen firsthand. And Buck white-knuckles the steering wheel the entire way.

They come up on the mesocyclone, which has begun its rotative descent to the ground as it spins to the east. The view through the windshield is breathtaking. The funnel cloud stretches down in a lithe, sinuous rope, twisting and turning as the kicked-up dirt cloud dances elegantly around the base. He’s timed it just right. They’ll have just long enough to get ahead of the tornado’s path, drop the anchors and intercept it.

“Great job, Buck,” Bobby says. “We’re right on target.”

Buck preens a bit at the praise, shooting a proud glance in Eddie’s direction. But the man’s eyes are glued to the tornado out the window.

“It’s anticyclonic,” he says softly, observing the unusual clockwise rotation of the twister like he’s in a trance. He pauses, like the gears in his head are turning, the magma just below the surface blistering and vesiculating. He slams his hand on the dashboard. “Wait, pull over!”

“What do you mean, pull over?” Buck demands. “It’s right there. You heard Bobby, we’re lined up perfectly.”

“No. This isn’t the one,” Eddie says. He sticks his hand out for Bobby’s tablet. “Please.”

It’s ballsy as hell. The lava flow shouldn’t have been allowed to come this far, but there’s a berm in place to keep it from going where it doesn’t belong. But to Buck’s shock, Bobby obliterates it completely. “Do what he says, Buck.”

Buck huffs and pulls the T.W.I.S.T.R. over. An antsy feeling passes over him as his tornado begins its crawling jaywalk across the road. “Mind telling us what you ruined our interception for?”

Eddie just thrusts the tablet and its accompanying radar maps across the co*ckpit. An infuriatingly textbook hook echo adorns the screen. “That’s a satellite tornado,” he explains, and the way he says it makes it feel like an insult to the tornado itself. “It’s revolving around another one, but we just can’t see it yet. That one’s going to be stronger, and will make for a better interception.”

Bobby is intrigued, but dubious. “You’re sure about this?”

“One of these leveled my backyard back in Texas a few years ago. Trust me.”

A switch flips. “How do we get there?” Bobby asks.

“We can’t,” Buck insists, gesturing down at the dead-end just beyond the interception point that would've been. “This road doesn’t go any further.”

“We can backtrack,” Eddie cuts in. “This tornado’s going to touch down any second now, but if the radar’s saying what I think it is, it should pass over the east side of Radnor just as we’re driving up. There’s a side road a half mile back that should get us there. But we have to hurry.”

Bobby nods, as if he’s the one taking orders now. “Alright, you heard him, Buck.”

Buck groans, but does as he’s told. He puts the T.W.I.S.T.R. back in drive and makes a sharp U-turn into the opposite-facing lane. It’s at that moment that the second tornado— Eddie’s tornado—makes its graceful entrance from the sky.

“We’ve got twins!” Chimney shouts over the radio with an excitement so maniacal that Buck wonders if it’s really him on the other end. If these tornadoes really are twins, they must be fraternal. Because Eddie’s is a massive, glorious wedge, stretching to at least a mile of width and growing.

And it’s the first time Buck has ever wanted to look away from a tornado.

They get there with more than enough time. Buck brings the vehicle to a stop and reluctantly puts it in interception mode. The tornado plows—no, crashes—into them. It groans and howls ferociously as it passes, sending small trees and fence pickets and buckets of rain flying by. It almost shakes their vehicle out of its spikes, and Buck can’t even enjoy it.

He doesn’t laugh when Eddie finds the anemometer broken clean off the T.W.I.S.T.R. He doesn’t join the huddle when Chimney and Hen drive up and run out, pounding Eddie on the back with praise, like he’s one of them now.

And when the team cracks yet another joke at Buck’s expense as they survey the data from the interception—seriously, he thought this would end when he was no longer the new guy—the image of a supervolcano flashes in his mind’s eye.

They’re the most explosive and destructive of volcanoes, like the one lying dormant in Yellowstone. They’re capable of throwing plumes of ash and sulfur thousands of feet into the stratosphere. A supereruption could bring the world to a stop, blocking the warming rays of the sun, plunging temperatures into volcanic winter, and wiping out the native animals and vegetation.

And if by some miracle you end up lucky enough to be one of the survivors, the fallout can change the entire climate of somewhere you love, leaving it utterly unrecognizable from what it used to be.

And as Bobby beams at Eddie, slapping him on the shoulder and telling him, “Good call”, Buck’s not sure if he likes this new climate.

The volcano is still erupting two shifts later. And Buck has had enough.

Bobby, Hen and Chimney are captivated by the oozing magma and vivid sparks being tossed in the air, but all Buck can do is gag in response to the expanding ash cloud taking over every bit of space that once belonged to him.

Eddie not only fixed, but reinforced, the anemometer. He scrubbed the exterior of the T.W.I.S.T.R. to make it the most spic and span it’s ever been. And worst of all, the primary tornado that served as the center point for Buck’s satellite was estimated to have winds over 155 mph. It’s the strongest tornado the team has ever intercepted, even pre-Buck. His pyroclastic gunk is all over everything, and Buck isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to escape it.

Especially now that Bobby’s given Eddie free reign to track down their next tornado, a privilege rarely extended to Buck or anyone else. And of course, it just had to happen on the day they’re slated to try out the new rockets Buck had petitioned the NWS to invest in.

As valuable as the data they gather from traditional interceptions is, it only tells them about what’s happening at the ground level. The rockets are fitted with a sensor and parachute that when launched, can punch through the vortex into the heart of the tornado and stream live data about everything happening up top straight to Bobby’s tablet as it’s carried away by the storm. They’re the latest in tornado data-collecting technology. But now Eddie’s going to get all the glory.

The storm is growing, an angry gray extending far over the sky. The supercell is in a more populated area than they’re used to chasing in, just on the outskirts of a small town called Morningside. The execution of this mission is a little different. They won’t be positioning themselves in the path of the tornado to intercept it—they’ll be stationing themselves to fire the rocket just outside the tornado before it’s able to hit them.

“We’ll need to get to the inflow notch,” Bobby says, eyes fixated on his radar tablet. “That’s where the wind will be flowing into the tornado, and has the best shot of taking the rocket in.”

Buck can tell they’re close. The wind shear is picking up, and the beginnings of a classic stovepipe have begun to funnel down in the distance, back behind the suburban area the weather maps have led them to.

“Better go another mile or so,” Eddie says, eyes darting between Google Maps and the S.P.I.N.’s doppler readings. “There’s a side road here that’ll put us right in the updraft without getting too close.”

Eddie and his damn side roads. Buck sighs, but obliges. It’s not even worth fighting back anymore. His noxious fumes have spread as far as the eye can see, and there’s no use trying to air them out.

The tornado touches down, launching a thick cloud of debris into the air as it picks up speed. This isn’t unusual in of itself. But what is unusual is the assortment of loose objects floating around the circumference of the vortex like they’re flimsy pieces of paper. They aren’t the usual twigs or shrubs or branches.

They’re shingles, broken glass, and pieces of drywall and metal. From the houses the tornado just passed over.

Eddie squints as he peers out the passenger seat window. “We’ve got a violent one on our hands.”

A tree snaps in half, and a power flash brightens up the sky, the outline of the funnel cloud flashing ominously as it comes near. The back of a nearby Prius gets lifted up in the air and pushed down the street. Buck’s heart pounds in his chest.

“How fast do you think those winds are?” Eddie asks. “170? 180?”

The tornado passes over a semi-trailer, and sends it rolling violently end-over-end across the road, up against a shed.

“sh*t. This is a bad one,” Bobby says. “I wouldn’t blame either of you if you wanted to bail.”

The tornado is fast approaching, and every one of Buck’s storm chasing instincts is telling him to get out of dodge. His heart rate’s jumped up another level, the palms of his hands are moist around the steering wheel, and his legs want to take control and run far, far away from here. It’s what he should do if the goal is self-preservation.

But right now, the goal is showing up Eddie Diaz and launching a rocket into a tornado. And whether his confidence is real or manufactured, he’ll stop at nothing to do both of these things.

“We’re good. Aren’t we, Eddie?”

He expects Eddie to fold like the cheap lawn chair he’s pretty sure is circling around the mouth of the tornado right now. He expects him to shut down, to go dormant, to reveal himself a fraud of epic proportions.

But instead he smirks, nudging Buck’s arm. “I’m not going anywhere if you’re not.”

He’s really doing this, Buck thinks as he shifts the T.W.I.S.T.R. into park. He’s really going to brave an EF3—possibly EF4—tornado, for the benefit of science, without even batting an eye.

It’s enough to dredge up the tiniest morsel of begrudging respect.

Buck slams the door shut behind him, and Eddie exits the vehicle in tandem. The wind is intense now, as the tornado threatens in the distance. It’s hard to walk around, and they’re getting pelted with rain. But now that they’ve committed, they have a job to get done.

Eddie grabs onto the rocket pad, and moves it into launch position. “There’s still time to back out. I’m sure your girlfriend or whoever you’ve got at home would want you back in one piece.”

Buck brushes past the last part, swallowing back the bitter taste it leaves in his mouth. “Not a chance.”

A whisper of a triumphant smile crosses Eddie’s face. “Thought so.”

Buck circles behind the vehicle to the launch controls, the wind whipping his face. “I’m gonna count it down from ten for launch,” he announces, like they’d practiced. “Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six—”

“Buck, now!” Eddie shouts.

Buck looks up, the tornado now dangerously close. It rips through a picket fence and sends it flying into an adjacent building. Glass shatters. Eddie’s right. It’s time to deploy and dash. He flips the switch.

The rocket shoots up, the propulsive blast briefly lighting up the sky. It hovers in the air, and for one alarming moment, it looks as if it’s going to immediately come crashing back to earth. Until the wind suddenly accelerates. The rocket is sucked into the wind gusts and floats away, off to follow its target.

“We’ve gotta go!” Bobby suddenly yells, motioning wildly from his spot in the backseat.

Buck jumps back into the driver’s seat, heart racing, and Eddie is close behind. They’re both dripping with rain, soaking the inside of the vehicle. But right now that’s the least of their worries. He floors the car in reverse and takes the first right he can out of the tornado’s path. They pull into a Wendy’s parking lot, and the moment they come to a stop, Buck and Eddie immediately dissolve into laughter.

“You’re a badass under pressure, brother,” Eddie remarks from the passenger seat. And with that, the fervent heat that emits through his chest every time Eddie does an Eddie thing tapers off into a soft and comfortable warmth that pools in his stomach. He’s always been powerless in the face of a genuine compliment. And he’d probably be more annoyed at that fact if he wasn’t so gosh-darned flattered.

Before he can get too flustered, Bobby’s voice emanates from the backseat. “I was worried you two were going to get us all killed for a minute there, but you did it.”

“It went in?” Buck asks excitedly, peeking around his seat at the tablet.

“It sure did. Look at all this,” Bobby replies, scrolling through the wealth of data at his fingertips. “It rode up the mesocyclone almost 32,000 feet. Amazing work, both of you.” He’s proud, but it feels weirdly disconnected from the rocket launch itself. “Want to try out another one? Conditions are ripe for another if we wait it out.”

Buck’s heartbeat flutters, and his eyes drift to Eddie. He wants to. God, does he want to. He hasn’t felt a rush like that since—well, he wants to say since the Stonington tornado, but even then he hadn’t felt so important, such an essential part of something so truly amazing. He needs to experience a tornado like that again, and judging by the glint dancing in Eddie’s irises, so does he.

Until Hen’s voice crackles over the radio, and it’s solemn and serious. Word came in from the NWS. The tornado they’d just been acquainted with tore through the town of Deerfield after its stopover in Morningside. It’s bad. And the survivors need their help.

Buck comes crashing back to earth. Eddie goes quiet, but Buck starts the T.W.I.S.T.R. back up without a second thought. It’s part of the stormchaser code—people come first, chasing comes second. Round two with the cool toys will have to wait.

They’re a few minutes into the drive when Eddie gives a frustrated huff. His eyebrows are knit together as he taps furiously at his phone screen. And Buck is nothing if not curious.

“Is everything okay?”

Eddie is silent for a moment, then two, then three. Volcanoes are known to rumble, to hiss. To roar like a jet engine, or to build and build into a deafening explosion. And sure, there are some exceptions. Some volcanoes, like those in Hawaii, softly spurt lava in lieu of all that.

But no volcano Buck has ever known has been this type of pensive quiet.

“My son,” he replies finally. “I’m trying to reach my son.”

The last bits of Buck’s facade crumble in a dramatic flourish, blown away in record time by the vulnerability exuding from Eddie right now. Because no grudge, no matter how petty, is a match for his love of kids, and his urge to tell Eddie the extent of that love bubbles out of his mouth before he can gauge whether it would be a weird thing to say.

But if he’s going to befriend this volcano, it’ll need to know that he’s safe with Buck. No tectonic shifts here, no excess magma supply for miles.

To which Eddie takes out a picture of the most adorable seven-year-old Buck has ever seen, and Bobby has to remind Buck to keep his eyes on the road.

“He’s at school today,” Eddie says grimly. “Deerfield Elementary.”

They haven’t gotten word yet whether the elementary school had been in the damage path. While some schools are equipped for tornadoes, any place with as many windows and exterior-facing rooms as a school is liable for destruction if one hits. The only real safe place is in the hallways, and the warnings aren’t always advanced enough to move entire classes of young children there in time.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” is what Buck decides on as a reply, although there’s no real way to know. He wishes he could do more.

Deerfield is a mess when they arrive. Power lines are down and sparking, tree trunks are fractured in half, roofs are missing, and the most unlucky of unlucky buildings have been demolished completely, existing as flattened heaps of wood and insulation where proud structures used to stand.

It’s a difficult shift. Not everyone they pull out is alive. Even in the heart of Oklahoma, some people choose not to abandon their cars and mobile homes, and they more often than not pay the price. Some weren’t warned in time, and couldn’t get to a basem*nt, or were struck with debris while trying to get to one. These losses are the hardest, and are the ones they hope their work will soon prevent.

But the ones they are able to help make it all worth it. A prospective Sooner basketball recruit named Jeff, his leg trapped under heavy debris. A young girl named Kat and a dog, Paisley, buried in a pocket of rubble. And a woman named Ali, stuck on the top floor of a multilevel building on the verge of collapse. All rescued successfully and delivered back safely to their loved ones. Except Paisley, owner deceased, who Hen stows away in the S.P.I.N. under the guise of bringing her to the nearby animal shelter. Buck wonders what Karen’s reaction will be when Hen inevitably brings her through the front door of their home instead.

And to Eddie’s credit, despite the tragedy of the day and uncertainty looming over his head like a dark storm cloud, he doesn’t flinch once. He’s rock solid, unmoving and unwavering in the pursuit of helping the victims. Buck’s impressed. His sister Maddie’s first day at the NWS is today, and despite knowing the office wasn’t in the reported path, he’s still beside himself with worry.

But a fissure forms in his surface when Chimney calls in a favor to the NWS over the radio. Deerfield Elementary suffered a direct hit, and the exterior wall of the gymnasium caved in. But the students have been evacuated to a church a mile down the road.

Bobby allows him to go, no questions asked, but it occurs to Buck—Eddie’s truck is all the way back at base camp. An idea tumbles out of his mouth before he can stop it.

“Let me drive you in the T.W.I.S.T.R. We’ll get there faster.”

They scramble to the truck, Eddie sliding seamlessly into the passenger seat, and for the first time, Buck isn’t hit with the usual twinge of irritation. His presence next to him feels natural, like that spot riding shotgun was always meant to be his.

They pull up to the front of the church, where a woman who Buck assumes must be the principal sits on the doorstep with the boy from the photograph. Without a word and before Buck can even come to a complete stop, Eddie swings the door open and exits the car, breaking into a run. He lifts Christopher off the ground and spins him around, and his shoulders sag with relief.

Buck watches through the open window, entranced. Now he understands. He gets why Bobby, Hen and Chimney must’ve felt the way they did on Eddie’s first day. But Eddie doesn’t capture his attention with a spectacle—a grand show of magma catapulting into the air like fireworks, dark ash clouds billowing from his crater, and fast-moving avalanches which send debris and rock and soil sliding down the hillside.

No. It’s his protectiveness, the way he holds his son close like a lifeline. It’s his kindness, in the way he apologizes profusely to the principal for keeping her late. It’s his gentleness, the attentive way he listens with the softest of smiles as Christopher retells the events of the day. And it’s his sincerity, when he’s dropping them off at Eddie’s home and he looks Buck in the eye and says “Thank you”.

And in reflecting on how Buck can feel the imprint of Eddie’s fingertips on his arm even after he’s disappeared behind his front door, he starts to think that maybe he’s gotten this guy all wrong.

Maybe Eddie Diaz isn’t a volcanic eruption at all.

Ali Martin is a rain shower.

Her phone call had been a pop-up, an unexpected sprinkling that catches one by surprise on a sunny day with an otherwise clear forecast. She hadn’t been on his radar at all.

Okay, he’d be lying if he said she hadn’t crossed his mind once or twice. She’d stood steady in the face of danger, and managed to make him laugh in the midst of tragedy and utter destruction. She hung back to give her own help to the remaining victims, even though she’d just been one herself, and that was ultimately what caught his eye. But the memories of Abby came flooding back in torrent, and he wasn’t sure if he had it in his heart to finally move on.

But maybe it’s Chimney unexpectedly falling into the most tedious will-they/won’t-they with Maddie that kicks him into gear, or the reminder that empty sex just doesn’t sustain him anymore that coaxes him into returning her call, but he decides he’s more than past due to rebuild what Abby took apart. And he’s so glad he does.

They sit at the busy lunch spot Ali chose, talking for hours and hours until his throat is sore and the rest of the patrons have cleared out. The closing shift hovers near the door, shooting them dirty looks against the backdrop of the sky on the other side of the window wall, having long turned to night. But Buck hardly notices. It’s easy to lose track of time when watching the clouds. In fact, they both had, their phones tucked securely out of reach for the duration of the date.

Buck offers to pay the bill, but Ali’s card is already down. She asked him out, after all. They rush out onto the street before the staff can physically shove them out, and they burst into giggles. Buck hasn’t felt this jubilant in a long time. And with arms clutching at each other and torsos pressed together, he takes a risk.

He kisses her. And the way she kisses back—it’s like the refreshing pitter-patter of raindrops on ashy skin during a sun shower. It’s the childlike joy of jumping into puddles, or sliding prone down a slick tarp. It’s skipping rocks and making mud angels and swinging around lamp posts in a Gene Kelly musical number.

The dew of the kiss fizzes on his lips for the rest of the night, his contented heartbeat like the comforting tap-tap-tap of a drizzle on his window pane. And every new thing he learns about her in their text conversations, which quickly morph into hours-long FaceTimes, is like catching raindrops on his tongue.

If Buck could spend every hour of every day with Ali, and feel the cool relief from the suffocating heat of the cruel world they live in, he absolutely would. She’s his source of nourishment, and he hadn’t realized how much his heart had wilted in the time since Abby. Her jokes and intellect and genuine interest quenches his thirst for something serious. Something real.

And look, Buck doesn’t mind having this getting-to-know-you period be more virtual than in-person. They’re both young, career-focused individuals who have all the time in the world. And if he has to wait days, sometimes weeks, to get his fix of the crisp, refreshing rain that invigorates and exhilarates him, so be it. And it’s just as well, as Ali’s travels have given him more opportunities to hang out with Eddie, and get to the bottom of the great mystery of how a man like him is both mysteriously single and somehow not looking to fix that.

But the problem is, these showers are getting fewer and farther between. And Buck is parched.

Shannon Diaz is an earthquake.

And sure, that’s probably not the nicest way to describe the mother of Eddie’s child. And it’s true that he hasn’t known Eddie for very long. But in the couple of months since he’s joined the team, Buck feels like he’s grown close to Eddie, maybe the closest he's ever been to a fellow adult male in his twenties. Certainly close enough to know what he’s like in the field.

Eddie is calm. Composed. He’s sturdy, dependable and reliable. A falling tree trunk narrowly missed the front of the anchored T.W.I.S.T.R. a few days prior, and Eddie hadn’t even winced. Buck’s never seen an emergency that catches him unprepared.

Yet Shannon has a funny way of sending him off-kilter.

Buck hadn’t even known she existed a month ago. She was a flat 2.0 on the Richter scale, not felt or perceived by anybody, except a select few. He would’ve even classified her as a measly 1.0, a score only reserved for the most subtle of microquakes, sensed by nothing other than the most in-tune of seismographs—that is, if she hadn’t clearly been on Eddie’s radar.

“It was innocent,” Eddie says, the high-pitched tone his voice takes on betraying him immediately. He’d only reached out to her to get Christopher into the area’s best private school, a necessity after Deerfield was shut down for the year. It was an interview—nothing more, nothing less. A minor 3.2.

She tremored back into Eddie’s life and caused no damage in doing so, he reasons. Just a small rattling of the picture frames above the fireplace mantle, or the minor shaking of the cookie jar on the kitchen counter. Noticeable, but not enough to shift anything between them in a major way. She had done him a favor for the benefit of their son, and that was all.

Until it wasn’t.

Until he kisses her in the parking lot of Christopher’s new school. Until the magnitude shoots up to a 4.5. The shaking is noticeable. Books fall off shelves. Drawers start to open on their own, not unlike the chamber in his heart still reserved for her, despite his struggles to keep it lurched shut. A small knick-knack is knocked off its shelf and shatters, but it’s okay. They can just glue it back together, and replace the books, and close the drawers. Put it all right back where it belongs, like it never even happened. No harm, no foul.

It’s all well and good until he sleeps with her. Now it’s getting serious. She’s at a 5.8 and climbing, as poorly-constructed buildings and structures not up to code start to fall. But they had a good foundation once upon a time, Eddie insists. They were in love. They were married. This change is nothing. They’re just getting back to where they’d been, once upon a time.

But the thing about fives is that even if the sex happens in private, everyone feels the effects. Whether you’re in your living room, outside in the middle of a cornfield, at the top of a fifty-story building, or say—at the annual NWS Christmas toy drive when Shannon shows up unannounced—it can’t be ignored. The tension and awkwardness reverberate, making the ground sway and palpate, and everything in Buck says he should run for cover. But ever a faithful storm chaser, he can’t take his eyes off the beautiful disaster taking place in front of him.

Bringing her back into Christopher’s life is a 6.4. Sixes do a great deal of damage, particularly when they hit more populated areas. It’s not just Eddie that’s affected if things go wrong now. His son, his grandmother, his aunt, and even his parents are potential collateral damage from this reunion. And while he hates to make things about himself, it hurts Buck, too. Because he’s the one who can do nothing but watch while his best friend teeters on the edge as the ground beneath him tremors, threatening to collapse his entire world in on itself.

Earthquake-resistant structures can usually survive a six just fine. But with the way Eddie, normally measured and wary, has let his guard down, ignoring how the needle on the seismograph jitters in frantic waves—a desperate warning of something stronger to come—Buck isn’t sure if Eddie can withstand it.

And now, in the T.W.I.S.T.R., just the two of them in the wake of Bobby’s suspension, Eddie recounts the latest. Shannon is pregnant. Again.

It’s a 7.1 at least. Eddie and Shannon were on the shakiest of ground to begin with, but to add another living, breathing child to the mix? When they’ve barely worked out how this co-parenting situation is going to work with the one they already have?

Oh. Eddie is planning on proposing to her. Again.

And just as well, Buck thinks. That was his solution the first time she fell pregnant. Why fix what’s clearly not broken?

Sevens cause serious damage. They’re the kind of disruption in the force that’ll send even the steadiest of humans off their feet and careening into the ground. And it’s evident with the way Eddie’s voice quivers as he tells him what Bobby said. That he shouldn’t let this dissuade him from being with her. He’s ready to be a father again, even if he doesn’t feel like it.

Buck’s concerned, and he isn’t wrong to be. Sevens are classified as “major” earthquakes. They come with loss of life—if not now, then later. Not that Eddie’s going to die from this. But you know, metaphorically speaking.

And don’t get him wrong, Shannon seems like a lovely person, at least from his few interactions with her. And he knows she’s not entirely at fault for the dissolution of their relationship. Eddie has made that abundantly clear.

But what’s also abundantly clear is that while they both mean well and that they may grow to be good co-parents someday, Shannon is not the one for Eddie. Not if he wants to get out of this situation fully intact.

And as Eddie runs his proposal plans by Buck, the 7.1 rumbling beneath their tires while haphazard chocolate metaphors spill from his mouth, Buck hopes to God it ends there.

Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

Shannon isn’t pregnant. And she asked for a divorce, Eddie recounts in the T.W.I.S.T.R. He’s desperately trying to hold it together, but the way his lower lip trembles and the way he refuses to make eye contact with Buck says it all. He looks straight ahead at the funnel cloud gathering in the distance.

Buck gets it. He finds that the excitement of storm chasing helps when he’s upset. Sometimes. In any case, if there’s anything to distract Eddie from the fallout of an 8.3 -magnitude quake, it’s this.

“Hey,” Buck says, trying to be helpful. “You’ve been through this with her before. It’s not the end of the world.”

As they get closer, Eddie’s veneer fades completely. “No. This time around, it’s worse.” And while Buck’s heart breaks for him, it checks out. Aftershocks are oftentimes even more destructive than the original earthquake.

It’s a rough day. After hours of driving, they net zero rockets successfully launched and zero tornadoes intercepted, despite the number that were reported to have touched down. Part of it is due to Chim’s sloppy navigation from the S.P.I.N., playing the part of Bobby evidently more difficult than expected. But it’s also because Eddie’s normally razor-sharp instincts have been filed down by the drag of his personal issues. His head’s just not in the game.

As they ride back to base camp in silence, a call comes through the radio.

“Fort Beech Shopping Mall took a direct hit. Absolutely demolished. Need all hands for search and rescue for anyone in the area.”

Buck shivers. He’d just been there a week ago, shopping for Ali’s birthday present. Though her birthday has already passed, the gift is still inside his nightstand drawer, and the realization that those earrings narrowly survived a certain death sends a rash of goosebumps down his arm.

They arrive and the devastation is even worse than imagined. Half of the strip mall is flattened and the other half looks like it’s been gutted from the inside. Buck’s heart pangs for all the unsuspecting people who turned off-road looking for shelter, only for everything to cave in on them.

They’re immediately ordered to help find survivors under the rubble and get them loaded into the ambulances on standby. Buck and Eddie work together smoothly, helping a young woman and her toddler out from under a pocket of debris, and a man impaled in the leg with part of a clothing rack.

Not everyone is so lucky. They recover at least two bodies from the devastation. Either way, Eddie seems successfully distracted.

It’s getting later in the day, and the sun is starting to set, casting a disconcerting haze over the scene. They’re almost done—just a few more areas to check.

They move over to the next spot—the bookstore, or what used to be the bookstore, if the number of torn pages and waterlogged dust jackets littering the area are any indication. Buck picks up a leather armchair and sets it aside when he sees nobody underneath it. He’s about to start sorting through the jumbled pile of wooden planks in front of him when he spots it.

A hand, connected to an arm, sticking out limply from under a large bookshelf. Buck and Eddie get into position to move it, unsure of what they’ll find underneath, or if they’re even still alive. Hen and Chimney come over to help. They lift the bookshelf off this person with one big heave, Magic Treehouses and Diary of a Wimpy Kids sliding out into the mess of wood and drywall as it's tossed aside.

Buck sees it before the rest of them do. He tries to hold Eddie back, tries to do him a service because no one deserves to see their wife like this, bleeding and bruised and contorted in ways a human body shouldn’t be. But it’s futile, as once he catches sight of her wavy brown bangs and flowery yellow top, he rushes to her side.

She’s alive, but barely, only able to take shuddering, shallow breaths. She’s almost certainly in shock, and pretty soon, her body won’t be able to keep pumping blood to her organs—at least, the ones that haven’t already been crushed. Her face softens when she sees Eddie, and for a moment she almost looks at peace.

The paramedics march in and get a C-collar on her, but it’s a mere formality at this stage. And Shannon knows it.

“I’m leaving again,” she whimpers, tears pooling in her eyes.

Eddie holds her hand, stone-faced, and she slips away before they’re even able to move her.

The highest echelon of earthquakes cause permanent changes to the ground topography, Buck thinks as he drives later that night, a thrown-together casserole in the passenger seat. They leave their mark years, even centuries, after the rubble has been cleared. A permanent reminder of what once came to pass. He can’t decide if that’s comforting or not.

And on the Diazes’ doorstep, as Eddie’s face, tear-stained and clothes full of sand, crumples and he collapses into his arms at the sight of him, Buck surveys the damage.

9.5. Complete and total destruction. And Buck isn’t sure that Eddie will ever be the same again.

Sirens blare in Buck’s ears.

He’s usually not this close to the urban centers when bad weather strikes. But at the first sight of this massive cylindrical tornado, he knew they would need to get into town and warn people. The rain is whipping at them hard and the winds are a preview of what’s to come, hindering their ability to run down the street. It’ll be here any minute now.

Chimney directs Buck and Eddie to clear everyone off the road, and into the bank or the McDonald’s across the street. Hen’s been assigned to ask if any of the buildings have basem*nts or storm shelters.

Eddie, mercifully back to work, notices the group of teens cowering in their New York-plated car before Buck does. The tornado is fast approaching, and if the projections are to be believed, this one will be able to throw this car around like a tin can in the wind.

Eddie knocks on their window. “This is a serious storm,” he says. “You’re not going to survive if you stay out here. You need to get out of the car and find shelter, right now.” It’s really more of a yell—he has to if he’s to be heard over the screaming winds.

Something seems to get through to the teens, as they unbuckle their seatbelts and wrench open the car doors. But the golden retriever that had been lying at their feet in the backseat chooses this moment to bolt. He darts down the street, and one of the girls screams after him, her anguished wail echoing even above the sound of the wind shear. But Eddie holds her back, pulling her toward the bank. It doesn’t have a basem*nt, but it has a vault, and it’s the best option they have.

Buck watches Eddie and Chim steer the teens and the rest of the people caught on the street safely into the bank before he takes off. He runs down the street after the dog, ignoring Eddie’s sudden panicked calls of his name. The funnel cloud is in view, but it’s not here yet. He has time. He’s not too late.

The road is almost eerily empty, save for the abandoned cars and the trash and leaves tumbling down the asphalt. The golden slows down to a trot, seemingly unsure of his next move, and Buck slows his steps to keep from spooking him. He whistles amiably at the dog, who whips its head around at the noise. Its eyes are wide in confusion and terror as the wind picks up speed and the roar of the inbound storm kicks up a notch, but he stays still. Step-by-step, Buck painstakingly ambles toward the dog, ignoring how the passing gusts feel like a knife’s blade against his cheeks. This is his chance. He slowly reaches out and grabs hold of the collar.

“Gotcha!”

The dog struggles and whines against his grip, and Buck begins to tug him in the direction of the bank. The no pets policy was clearly painted on the front window, but surely they can make an exception in these conditions?

But the wind whips up even stronger. When Buck looks up at the horizon, the sky looks darker than it did ten minutes ago, and suddenly each step feels like he’s fighting against the blast of an industrial-sized fan. Debris flies past him and smashes into the McDonalds’ golden arches, snapping them clean off the top of the pole and throwing them to the ground with an ugly crash.

It startles him enough that the dog slips out of his grasp and runs. sh*t. He half-considers chasing after the dog again, because he refuses to roll up to that poor girl without her best friend. But another stronger burst of wind comes through, prompting him to look— really look—up.

The tornado is here. He’s out of time. It’s too late.

It’s barreling down the street full-speed, throwing shingles off roofs, knocking down power lines with sickening snaps and sending every loose object barreling in his direction. He tries to run, but he gets no traction, and stumbles, collapsing prone in the middle of the street. The chassis of the abandoned cars groan as they begin to lift off the pavement, and Buck thinks he’s going to die.

Will Eddie be able to take two people dying on him? is the question at the forefront of his mind as his life flashes before his eyes. He just got back from mourning Shannon. This is the last thing he needs right now.

He scrambles, trying to get to his feet or find his purchase, but it’s no use. The black sedan parked in the middle of the street raises up and up, hurtling toward Buck. He can only watch helplessly as it makes impact, crushing his leg. It pins him in place as the storm screams overtop, drowning out his own.

The pain is a searing white hot. It’s so bad that the edges of his visual field begin to blur. The advancing wall of storm thunders through and engulfs him, leaving him wet and dirty, trapped and hurting. He slips away, but not before the sound of someone who talks like Bobby directing orders rings in his ear and the ghost of Eddie’s hand nestles in his.

Christopher Diaz is pure sunshine.

He’s bright and warm, and just one of his smiles boosts Buck’s serotonin higher than it’s been in the last six months. It was a valiant effort by Eddie—dropping his son at his doorstep got him out of his apartment and got him letting loose, but not completely out of his head.

The state fair should’ve been the best place for him. Rides, games, funnel cake and cotton candy galore, complete with the childlike joy of winning a stuffed bear for Christopher—all things he hadn’t experienced since he was a kid, if that. But the heaviness in the air, the gray clouds in the distance, the winds that sweep through their hair as they take another go on the Tilt-a-whirl—everything reminds him of the job he’s lost.

The way he lost it was stupid. And the worst part is, he knows it was. Getting his leg pulverized as an EF2 raced over his head, all for a dog that somehow ended up with not a scratch on him, that cuddly bastard. He’s starting to buy into the belief that pets have better instincts during tornadoes than humans do. Yet, Buck still probably would’ve done it a hundred times over.

But storm chasing has become such a big part of his life in such a short amount of time—what will he do if he can never be in the middle of a tornado again? Or feel the rush that comes with it? Or worse—never again getting to go out in the field with his crew. What would he do without Bobby’s guidance? Without Hen’s wisdom? Without Chimney’s jokes (even the ones at his expense)? And Eddie’s partnership. Would they stop being friends if he couldn’t storm chase anymore? Would this be one of the last times he’d get to hang out with Christopher?

He feels like a good-for-nothing loser, with no job and no girlfriend.

When he’d first gotten hurt, it was like the skies had opened up after weeks of no rain. Ali had rushed to the hospital, had taken him home and got him everything he needed. It was the most time they’d spent together in at least two months. Buck thought this was the day things would change. She’d stick by his side as he recovered and it would bring them closer together. His crops would be watered every day.

And change they did. Except, not in the way Buck expected.

She’s not cut out to be a storm chaser’s partner, she said, quiet and resigned in her seat against Buck’s couch. She wasn’t naive, she knew his line of work was dangerous. But it wasn’t until she was forced to sit idly by, not knowing if he’d lose his leg all because of the very thing he chooses to chase after every day, that she realized just how powerless to the situation she was. She can’t feel that way all the time. The rain trailed off into a light drizzle, and then suddenly, nothing. But over Buck’s head it’s still dark, gloomy and gray.

And what hurts the most is that she knew what he needed. This wasn’t a simple matter of miscommunication. He needs to be a storm chaser, needs to feel that rush of being in one, needs to be out there on the front lines helping people. He needs to get another crack at it, once he recovers. But he also needed her support in doing so, just like soil needs water, which is something she just couldn’t give.

And it didn’t matter anyway. Buck’s soil had grown so dry that even a deluge now would just pool on top without being absorbed or accepted, the lack of consistent rain finally catching up with them.

Which is why when they finally did call it quits, Buck felt like he survived a drought.

Despite the full-fledged identity crisis that hits once the storm clouds start to roll in, Buck enjoys himself. It helps that he can bring a smile to Christopher’s face, despite not feeling like smiling much himself. But the momentary joy is just that, because the skies open up once they’re on top of the ferris wheel.

Having forgotten his umbrella, Buck guides Christopher to his Jeep. He holds his jacket up to shield him from the rain, with promises endless rounds of Street Fighter when they return to his apartment. They stop at a nearby diner for milkshakes in hopes to wait out the rain. But the storm only gets stronger and stronger, torrents of rain pouring from the sky, and the pair are forced to begin their drive if they don’t want to get stranded.

It doesn’t stop. The windshield wipers are rocking at their highest speed, and Buck can still barely see out into the growing darkness. He hadn’t thought this much rain had been in the forecast. He wonders if the 118 had known. Had he fallen that far out of the storm loop since getting hurt?

The splashes the tires of his Jeep make as they roll into puddles are far too loud for only an hour of rain. It’s pooling in the streets and rushing down the slightest of declines.

Buck slows down in an effort to get his bearings. He turns right and immediately comes to a stop. The intersection that Google Maps intends to send him through is flooded, with at least two feet of rain having descended down the slight roll downhill—maybe more.

“What do we do?” Christopher asks, panicked from the backseat.

Buck does his best to keep his voice steady. “We turn around and find another way. Easy.” Christopher trusts him, and there’s no use freaking the kid out. He’s not yet sure where to go, but they’ll figure it out.

Christopher points ahead. “What’s that car doing there?”

Buck does a double-take, peering through the windshield into the dark, flooded street. Christopher isn’t seeing things—just under the flickering streetlight is a car submerged in the water. He hopes whoever was in the car was able to get out before the flooding got too bad, but there’s no way to know for sure.

“Great catch, buddy. Wait here.” He exits the Jeep and opens the trunk, pulling a rope and an escape hammer out of his emergency pack. He ties one end to the front of the car, triple-knotting for good measure, and ventures out into the water. He hisses as the water soaks through his clothes, and it’s very quickly deep enough to make wading through difficult. Knowing how quickly flash floods can take lives, he clutches the rope tightly and makes his way carefully toward the car.

He raps on the drivers-side window with his knuckles. Nothing.

He tries again. Nothing. Relief courses through his body. He’s about to start wading back toward the Jeep when he hears a series of loud knocks from the other side of the window.

Buck doesn’t stop to think. He jams the escape hammer into the window, shattering it instantly. The fragments of glass fall away to reveal a terrified woman in the passenger seat and a sheepish man behind the wheel.

“Are you two okay?” Buck asks as he squints into the car.

“I think so,” the woman says, her voice trembling as she does so. “I told Phil not to drive through the water. But what does he do?”

“It’s all right,” Buck assures them. “I’m going to help get you out.”

“Should I open the door?” the man—Phil, evidently—asks.

“No!” Buck jerks his arm out, holding the door closed in case any more of Phil’s intrusive thoughts win out. “All the water out here will rush in if you do that. I can pull you out the window, but we’ll need to move fast.”

The couple is surprisingly cooperative. Buck manages to pull Doreen—Phil’s wife—through the window first, followed by Phil with significantly more difficulty, but they both successfully manage to stay upright and grab hold of the rope.

It’s slow going as they inch up the slope, water continuing to rush toward them. But just when Buck thinks they’re going to get to the Jeep without incident, Doreen slips. She lets go of the rope and falls in with a splash, and the ferocious stream sweeps her away back toward her car and under. Her hands flail out from the rushing waters, but the rope is just out of reach.

Buck abandons the rope as Phil yells after her, and he bounds through the water. He might get swept away too, but as long as he can catch up with her, she stands a chance. He manages to stay mostly upright, only falling into the water to grab onto her ankle in a last-ditch save. He gets purchase on the rope, and pulls her up and out of the water as she coughs and splutters.

He gets her back to the Jeep to the relief of her husband and lends them towels to dry off. “Can I take you guys anywhere?” he asks, once they’re securely buckled in the backseat. “Do you think you could use a hospital trip?”

“We’re fine,” Phil says gruffly, but Doreen shoots him a fiery scowl and he immediately changes his tune. Buck turns the Jeep around and starts driving down the part of the road that’s not yet overrun by rainfall.

A long, low drone echoes out over the angry patter of rain and roll of thunder. It’s vaguely familiar, and it’s not until Buck realizes why that the hair on his arms stand on end.

It’s the tornado siren. Because this isn’t any old thunderstorm. They’re caught in the middle of a TORFF event.

Tornado and Flash Flood.

Don’t panic, he tells himself, taking great care not to say it out loud, even though he has every reason to. There’s a tornado on the ground, but it’s blended into the dark, way out of reach of his headlights. It’s impossible to see. There’s a reason nocturnal tornadoes take twice as many lives as daytime tornadoes.

Lightning suddenly strikes down the road, illuminating the night sky in dramatic fashion. It flashes just long enough to reveal a funnel-shaped entity in the distance, and Buck’s heart sinks down, down, down into his stomach.

It’s a massive, ominous wedge. And it’s coming straight for them.

Buck peels off the road and parks the Jeep, his eyes landing on a grocery store on the side of the road. “Run!” is all he says to the couple, and he grabs Christopher out of the car and slings him over his shoulder in his sprint for cover.

The grocery store owner lets them take shelter, but he doesn’t have a basem*nt. Buck peeks outside and sees the imminent tornado in the distance. He tells everyone to get away from the doors and windows, to get down, and to grab ahold of something sturdy.

“I’ve got you,” Buck says to Christopher, whose lower lip is trembling with fear. “As long as you’re with me, you’ll be safe. I promise.”

The tornado hits and it’s deafening. Jars of sauce are thrown onto the floor one-by-one, creating a cacophony of crashes and clatters as shards of glass and deep red splatters cover the ground. Boxes of cereal are knocked off shelves. A massive freezer tips over with a thunderous bang!. He throws his body on top of Christopher’s, in an effort to shield him both physically from the debris and emotionally from the nightmare images of what’s taking place around them.

But it’s no use. The lights go out, plunging them into darkness, and the gradually receding roof is suddenly ripped off like a band-aid. The glass of the front and back doors blow out, and the winds barrel through the openings on either end, creating a makeshift wind tunnel.

It’s unbearably strong. Buck struggles to hold on as Christopher is wrenched little by little from his grip. He goes from clutching his torso, to his arm, to his wrist, until all he has to grasp onto are his fingertips. He has a sickening realization of what’s about to happen before it does.

The wind roars, and circles rapidly inside what remains of the store, pushing it out with one final surge. And with it, Christopher is yanked from his grasp, tumbles across the tiling and is sucked out the shattered door.

Buck screams.

Buck is drowning.

He’s thrashing about, struggling against the impossible current, trying valiantly to keep his head above water. The street he’s on can’t be covered in more than two inches of rain, but the thumping pressure in his chest and nausea brewing in his stomach make him feel as though he’s been thrown back into the torrents and left to fend for himself. Deep down, he sort of hopes he slips under the flash flood and is swept away, never to be seen again.

It’s what he’d deserve after all.

He was supposed to keep Christopher safe. Not sucked up into a violent EF3. And certainly not vanished, missing, gone, possibly dead.

He’d raced outside as soon as he could get to his feet without falling back over, screaming Christopher’s name. He’d scrambled around the mangled perimeter of the store and sifted through every pile of rubble he could get his hands on. But he found nothing. Nothing but Christopher’s glasses resting on the other side of the street, lenses splintered.

The others try to help. And they certainly mean well. But when Doreen says, “Don’t worry, we’ll find your son,” Buck feels like he’s choking on floodwater.

He’s almost relieved that service is down, so he won’t have to lie to Eddie and tell him about how he failed his kid. And it’s his fault—he should’ve stayed home with him, should’ve taken him somewhere with a basem*nt, should’ve held on tighter, should’ve sacrificed himself to the whims of the tornado so that Christopher could be left unharmed.

They say that losing a child is a pain so terrible that there isn’t a word for it. Buck may have made Eddie just that, and that thought sends him gulping for air. Eddie, who just lost his wife in one of the most horrific ways possible, may now be alone in the world because of him.

And that may be the worst part of it all, besides the possibility of an innocent and joyful child’s life lost because the adult in charge of him broke a promise. He and Eddie have grown so close in the last year. He’s Buck’s best friend by a long shot. But after this, Eddie won’t want anything to do with him. He’ll hate him. He’ll surely move shifts, or even states, having to face the very person responsible for his son’s trauma—if not, death—too much to bear. And that’s assuming Eddie can even work and move on with his life after all of this. And once the rest of the crew finds out what he’s done, what he caused, his family will be no more.

His knee is killing him, he’s pretty sure he’s bleeding from his elbow and his forehead, and he’s even more sure he looks insane limping down the street with a crazed expression in his eyes and children’s glasses around his neck. But he can’t give up. All he has to do is follow the path of the tornado. Christopher couldn’t have vanished into thin air. He has to be somewhere.

He finally makes it to a suburban area, and it is brutal. Roofs are torn off, cars are thrown in heaps, and some homes look as if the tornado took its foot and stomped into them on the way through. But police cars and ambulances line the streets. Someone has to have found him by now.

But all the hope that had been fueling this push along the path crumbles when it turns out no one’s seen him. The faces of the people he approaches are a mix of pitying and unsettled, which only stokes the fire of rage inside Buck even more. A child was carried away by a tornado, and is still missing. Don’t they understand how urgent this is?

He contemplates his next move, as best as he can when the back of his throat pricks with bile and the ache in his head—still bleeding—makes it feel as though it's stuffed with cotton balls. Should he follow the path further? Could a tornado realistically have carried him any further than this?

He remembers the creek about a half mile away, right in the path, and his stomach drops. It’s probably overflowing with floodwater right about now. But if looking high and low and everywhere in between is what it’ll take to find him, so be it.

“Buck?”

A flash of cold spreads through Buck’s bloodstream. There was a tornado here, for crying out loud—of course the 118 would show up. He turns around, slowly revealing himself to Eddie, who stares back at him with concerned brown eyes.

“What are you doing here? Are you okay?” he asks, guiding him into a seated position until the obvious dawns on him. “Wait, where’s Christopher?”

“Eddie.” He says his name, and it’s all it takes for the dam to break. All of Buck’s failures and sorrow and disgust with himself rush out in a sweeping deluge. And so do the tears.

He’d taken him to the state fair, he says through shuddering breaths as realization dawns on Eddie’s face. The streets had flooded and they got caught in a TORFF on the way home. He took him inside to keep him safe. But the windows broke and the doors shattered and the roof came off. And he tried so hard, but it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough.

And now Christopher is gone and it’s all his—

“Christopher?”

It’s a goddamn miracle. A woman holds Christopher in her arms, filthy and without his glasses, but alive. The tornado had scooped him up and deposited him in her family’s backyard, shaken but relatively unharmed. Buck has heard of this happening to people before, but always thought it was just an exaggeration or an urban legend. And through it all, Christopher had been looking for him.

And as he finally collapses out of relief and the stress of the day overwhelms him, the last thing he remembers is the charged, indistinguishable way Eddie looks at him.

Over the next couple of days, Buck’s head is flooded with what-ifs and doubts and questions. They roar and thrash like waves and build higher and higher, submerging every inch of his mind.

“Buck, there is nobody in this world I trust with my son more than you.”

But that’s all it takes for the waters to recede and for Buck to feel like he’s back on dry land, finally able to breathe again.

Buck is holding on for dear life.

Figuratively speaking, of course. He has nowhere to hold onto in the pet section of the supermarket three towns over.

But he still doesn’t know what hit him. Because here he was one moment, trying to apologize to the team for suing the National Weather Service and kind-of, sort-of taking the rest of them down with it. And the next moment Eddie is up in his face, calling him exhausting, and Buck feels like he just got slapped by a derecho.

What is a derecho, you ask? It’s a sudden deluge of hurricane-force winds that form along a squall line. They’re highly destructive, sometimes even more destructive than a tornado. In fact, under the right conditions, a derecho can even give birth to a tornado. But Eddie’s his best friend. Sure it might look bad now, but it’ll blow over eventually. Right?

Wrong. Eddie’s pissed. And everything Buck does seems to make him more mad, fueling the feedback loop of anger that seems to get worse every time they talk. His downbursts are full-steam ahead, propelled forward even more so by the jet stream of caginess that intends on blowing Buck straight out of his business.

And unlike a tornado, whose winds twist and circulate and meander, derechos focus their winds in one, singular direction. Derecho is the Spanish word for “straight”, after all. And right now, the lone target of his furious gusts is none other than Buck.

It’s not a situation where he needs to air all his grievances with Buck out to the fullest extent, and then they’re cool. It’s not a tornado that gets in and gets out. Derechos last for hours, sometimes days, and even when Buck is allowed to return to the job, Eddie ices him out. Not only that, but he seems prepared to sustain these breakneck winds for as long as it takes to get his point across.

And because this type of storm is so rare, Buck doesn’t know what to do. He’s never seen this side of Eddie before.

All he can think to do is apologize, sincerely. Apologies normally don’t come easy to Buck, but this one does because he just tells the truth. He was selfish and pigheaded, but he only did what he did because he wanted to be back out there storm chasing again. With the 118, where he belongs. With Eddie at his side. And he truly is sorry.

The straight-line storm stops dead in its tracks.

Taylor Kelly is a hurricane.

The conditions in which she first appeared on Buck’s radar were ripe for a storm. Their paths had been on a collision course, not too long after Eddie had first joined the squad. She was an up-and-coming newscaster, her station having received a visit from the 118 when it suffered damage at the hands of one of the most majestic cone tornadoes Buck had ever seen.

She later caught them by surprise, strolling into their base camp with a rolling camera, NWS clearance, and a headstrong desire to do a story on their storm chasing team as if she owned the place. It would be a puff piece, she reasoned. Great exposure for the team and their mission statement, which could help save some lives in the process. A win-win for everyone involved.

She’d sat in the back of the T.W.I.S.T.R., asking questions, furiously jotting down notes, while her cameraman shoved his camera into every single corner of their workspace.

The rest of the crew found her to be a nuisance, but Buck tried to show her a good time. He gave her a hard hat for the hail. He took her on a full tour of the T.W.I.S.T.R. and all of its various buttons and switches. He even gave her the honors of shooting one of their rockets into an EF1 tornado.

But given free reign to exert destruction, she took it. She took advantage of Bobby letting his guard down, a momentary lapse in which he believed he could be safe with her, and salivated at the thought of leaving him in utter ruin. It wasn’t about saving lives at all for her—it was about having the most sensational, dramatic, attention-grabbing story, no matter the cost. And despite her pinging his radar at first glance, every bit of desire that Buck had to get to know her better promptly went flying out the window. (After one fleeting, misguided hookup in a bar restroom, of course, but that’s not important.)

But the footage never aired—and thus, as hurricanes do, she returns two seasons later, not having done quite enough damage for her name to be officially retired. He runs into her again, covering the damage and search and rescue effort for the tornado that tore through Pritchard just hours prior.

Hurricane Taylor is back.

But this time is different. She’s empathetic, the way her voice shakes as she lists the names of residents who are still missing. She’s compassionate, in how she reassures Buck that his life is nothing but meaningful relationships. And she’s sentimental, in the way she downright coos when Buck tells her the story of how he and Eddie built an adaptive skateboard for Christopher.

She’s an entirely changed person, armed with a new arsenal of positive traits, and Buck suddenly remembers why he’d been so taken with her back then. She’s one of the coolest people he knows. She’s driven and ambitious. She’s smart and scrappy. And most of all, she doesn’t take no for an answer. To his credit, neither does he.

But the thing about hurricanes is that they come with ample warning. They’re unique like that, in that you can anticipate them. From the moment they’re born, they’re tracked diligently up the coastline, and evacuation orders often come at least a day or two in advance. You’re given a chance to salvage what you can of your home, your possessions, your loved ones, yourself. Not everyone is that lucky.

But circ*mstances make people forgetful. It’s almost amnesiac in nature. They survive something once, and they downplay the dangers of the next one. Sure, the cone of uncertainty is pretty wide, but it won’t be too bad this time. I know what I’m getting myself into.

They don’t heed the warnings. They underestimate it all—the battering winds, the destruction to their homes, the feet of storm surge knocking on the door of their waterfront properties. They don’t realize the extent of what they’re in for until landfall is made and it’s too late. And by then, they’re on their own. There’s no one there to save them until the storm completely blows over.

But Buck is single, painfully so. It’s been almost two long years since he’s had someone special in his life. Even Eddie has a girlfriend now, trying his hand at eternal happiness. So why can’t Buck try, too?

And so he looks right into the eye of Taylor’s storm, the way tears fall from her eyes as she gives another update, and decides to take his chances.

Ana Flores is—well.

Ana Flores is a gentle breeze on a warm, clear afternoon. Eddie met her at one of Christopher’s parent-teacher conferences last year, but they didn’t reconnect until he’d run into her on the street after a long, chaotic day of storm chasing.

Buck can see why they’re together. She’s gentle and thoughtful. Pleasant, even. She’s the kind of beautiful that people turn their heads to stop to comment on. She’s the sort of day where you can spend the entire afternoon outdoors after days of thunderstorms and feel rejuvenated, like you’re more in touch with nature. There’s not a drop of rain, no threat of a sunburn and everything is perfect. And with that kind of day, the possibilities are endless.

But somehow it winds up being positively unremarkable.

Eddie might not immediately see it, but Buck does. The way that he keeps the fact he’s seeing her stowed away in secret from the rest of the crew. That Eddie leaves her texts unanswered for hours, which turn to days. That whenever Bobby and Athena host a barbecue at their home, Eddie and Christopher show up alone.

It’s odd. On paper they’re perfect for each other. And in her absence, Christopher can’t stop talking about her. It’s not just him—it sounds like all her students sing her praises. She’s the kind of pristine weather where even in the age of YouTube and video games, kids can’t help but go outside and play. But it’s almost like Eddie would rather stay inside and read a book.

And the thing is, Ana is his best friend’s girlfriend. By that virtue alone, he should be allowed to meet her. Especially if he’s going to be the best man at their wedding one day, a statement which does all sorts of complicated things to Eddie’s expression,

But Buck probes and probes, and Eddie eventually relents. They go out for drinks at their normal spot and Ana looks painfully out of place. When she’s handed the menu of what’s on tap, she squints like she’s trying to read another language. But perfectly delightful, she laughs through her awkwardness and asks Buck questions and keeps the conversation going.

Eddie says nothing. He has nothing to say about Charles Dickens, seasoned crepe pans, or the Common Core. And he visually dissociates when Ana brings up her nephew’s christening that she’ll be taking Eddie and Christopher to. She talks about her sister and her brother-in-law, and what great parents they’ll make and how beautiful their wedding was. And that she can’t wait for her own someday.

Eddie looks like he’s going to be sick.

When Ana excuses herself to the bathroom, all it takes is one look from Buck for Eddie to break.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

Eddie doesn’t answer the question.

“Eddie,” Buck asks, dipping his toe in the water, unsure whether the deep blue is infested with sharks. “Are you happy with her?”

Eddie sighs. “She’s good for me, Buck.” But he says it in a way that someone might say a daily bowl of bran flakes is good for you. Or that stretching for a half hour every morning, or waking up at 5 AM on the weekends is good for you.

“B-But…” Buck stutters, “you’re a storm chaser.”

He quirks an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

It means that this isn’t like you.

That this relationship goes against your very nature.

That this isn’t for you so much as it is for Christopher.

That this can’t possibly sustain you for the rest of your life, and if you try to let it, it will kill every bit of light and joy that exists inside of you. And it will destroy the very essence of who you are.

But saying all that will open a can of worms he’s not sure he has the means to put back. So he says instead, “Nothing. I’m glad you’re happy.”

Even though Eddie never mentioned the idea of happiness at all.

It all happens so fast.

One moment Eddie is standing, directing a young tornado victim to the safety of an ambulance. The next, a piece of shrapnel has ripped through his shoulder, leaving him bleeding out on the floor as a tornado roars above.

And Buck’s entire world stops spinning.

They’d been aiding the cleanup in Reading from an earlier tornado when the sirens went off again. They’d just helped pack a son and his mother into ambulances and sent them off, when they and all the other volunteers, first responders, and survivors of the first one were forced to duck and cover again.

Buck feels like he’s in a landslide.

The ground, the stability he’s taken for granted, having Eddie safe and at his side, gives out. His heart crumbles and the pieces sink down into his stomach, as Eddie lies there gasping and the tornado ravages the structure. A tree crashes through the window, and glass rains down on them.

Buck feels like he’s riding a mountainside down, down, down as he remembers—it’s not the wind that kills you in a tornado. It’s the possibility of being struck by flying debris. Eddie could die from this.

“Eddie, I’m coming! Stay down!” he yells, although he’s sure Eddie can’t hear him over the freight train of the storm passing through. The pool of blood bubbling out from under Eddie’s shoulder expands and Buck tries to get purchase as he figures out what to do. He grabs a nearby rag and begins an army crawl to Eddie as more windows shatter glass onto the floor. He makes his way over to him and presses the rag into his shoulder. The effort’s futile—the color red bleeds through the rag almost instantly. But he keeps it on anyway, and shields him from the glass and splinters of wood dropping from the collapsing house frame.

Eddie’s always been there for him in his time of need. It’s time to repay the favor and stand firm for him, even if the universe feels like it’s collapsing around them.

When the tornado finally blows through and everything feels a bit more stable, like he can finally get some footing on the cliffside, he pulls Eddie into his arms and runs outside toward the nearest ambulance.

Struck by debris. Bleeding out. My partner. Please help him.

The paramedics let him ride in the ambulance, and it occurs to Buck that they probably misinterpreted what he meant by “partner”, but he doesn't care enough to correct them. He just needs to see to it that Eddie is okay.

“I just need you to hang on.”

And he does need it, more than anything. The possibility of one of the most important people in his life ceasing to exist? To have to stand up, dressed in all black and keep composed as his best friend gets lowered into the ground, his son forced to watch it happen? And Christopher—what would he tell Christopher? He was supposed to keep Eddie safe. He was supposed to help deliver him safely back home, no matter what.

Flashbacks of rushing waters and crumbling roofs and ambling through destruction and screaming into the ether haunt him as the ambulance pulls in front of the undamaged hospital. He tries valiantly to hold his tears back as his friend is put on a gurney, Eddie’s face turning an ashy gray. He’s quickly wheeled away.

Buck’s hands shake, as he tries to hold onto something, anything. Taylor’s here now, and though her voice is laced with worry, he hears none of the words that come out of her mouth. Nothing but a vague ringing clangs in his ears.

It’s all his fault. When a Diaz needed him most, he failed him. Again.

And that realization causes Buck’s knees to buckle as the ground below crumbles away, sending him tumbling into the ravine.

Eddie is alive. Halfway, anyway.

He survived his injury, and made it through the surgery with flying colors. He makes one of the fastest recoveries from this kind of wound his doctors have ever seen, and he’s headed home in record time.

It settles Buck, the way “You act like you’re expendable, but you’re wrong” softly flows from his lips. He’d do anything for Christopher, even throw himself in front of a tornado to protect his father, let alone step in and be there for him in the moments that Eddie couldn’t be. But apparently saying it out loud is a step too far because it has Eddie revealing his post-mortem plans. It makes Buck feel special. Like a part of something. Like he’s closer to the inside of what he peered at from the T.W.I.S.T.R. the night he dropped Eddie off at the church. But it’s also a scenario that Buck never wants to think about again.

And Eddie is no longer with Ana, which is just fine as far as Buck is concerned. Because no matter how perfect on paper a day may be, is it really that perfect if it gives you panic attacks at the thought of reliving it every day for the rest of your life?

But the fallout of the break-up feels like the first micro-step in something changing in Eddie. A tiny hairline crack in the dirt, barely noticeable at first.

The crack gets bigger, spidering into interlaced distress lines on the neighboring asphalt when he puts in his resignation as a storm chaser on Christmas Day. He says it’s for Christopher’s sake. With the amount they get hurt, he can’t risk him losing both his parents in the span of a few years. It’s logical and responsible and Buck feels the utmost sympathy for Christopher, but it’s not a decision the Eddie he knows would’ve made on his own accord.

Eddie fronts like he’s fine at their first dinner since starting his new position at the NWS. Buck offers to make Bobby’s lasagna as he always does, but Eddie wants to change it up. He offers to cook for him and Taylor, because that’s a skill a well-adjusted person would have learned in all their newfound downtime. He gushes about his new coworkers, and all the exciting forecasting projects they’re working on, and how safe and danger-free his new role is. He’s moved on and Buck should, too.

Only, Buck can see more and more cracks forming in his facade. It’s in the bags underneath his eyes, in the way his voice gets sharp and unsteady when he talks about the new forecasting models, in the way he’s seemed to lose weight, and the cupcakes with pink frosting that are clearly overcompensation for something.

It’s a depression in Eddie’s ground, the tell-tale sign of a void. It’s subtle, but it’s there, and the circular indentation and fissures become more and more pronounced every time he looks at him.

The problem is, nobody seems to see it but Buck.

So it’s no surprise when the sinkhole eventually opens up in the middle of Eddie’s bedroom, swallowing him up whole with grief, anxiety, and unresolved trauma. It destroys the room, and when Buck arrives, responding to Christopher’s panicked phone call, the hole is gaping and Eddie is further down below than Buck expected. But he sits with him and rides it out with him, and silently resolves to help pull him out, whatever it takes.

The next few weeks are difficult. There’s tears, vulnerability and lots and lots of therapy sessions. But when Buck reports to Eddie’s for babysitting duty one random afternoon, and sees the heart he so erroneously drew pinned to the refrigerator for everyone important to him to see, he knows that his best friend isn’t beyond saving.

Lucy Donato is a lightning strike.

Buck doesn’t see it coming. Well, maybe he does a little bit. When a thunderstorm is on the horizon and the air is charged, Bobby swears you can feel the hair on your arms stand up. That’s how Buck feels watching Lucy storm chase. She’s daring, fearless and is willing to take the biggest risks in the name of getting up close and personal with a tornado. She makes him and Eddie look downright overcautious.

She lights up the sky when she core-punches a rain-wrapped tornado with no fear. It’s something Buck would never dare to do, but the way she slams down on the gas pedal despite all the flying debris is nothing short of madness. She drives down dirt and unpaved roads, with no fear that she’ll get stuck.

She’s flashy and attention-grabbing and something about her makes Buck stare far too long than is acceptable. She makes him nervous—he knows in his heart of hearts that lightning is nothing but bad news. In Greek mythology, it’s seen as a punishment from the king of the gods himself. But Buck can’t help but be fascinated by her, so much so that he’s willing to jeopardize everything to get a closer look.

Their kiss is a flashbulb, right-place, right-time, wouldn’t have happened if just one of a hundred different variables had been different. A good jolt can shock a heart into stopping, and Buck is pretty sure his does when he peeks through his clouded tipsiness and realizes what he’s done.

And the victims—the poor, innocent, unsuspecting people that find themselves affected by this once in a lifetime, unlucky shot—don’t always pass right away. Some are resuscitated first.

Like when Taylor finds out. She’s hurt and scorched earth and burned beyond belief, as she absolutely should be. But they decide to try again, breathing new life into their relationship, jump-starting the love that Buck thinks is there back into rhythm.

But all it does is delay the inevitable.

And as it turns out, Buck thinks Lucy Donato is a lightning strike.

Until he experiences one for real.

Buck blinks awake.

He’s in an unfamiliar room. In an unfamiliar bed. With his mom and dad and Maddie in relieved tears at his bedside.

He remembers nothing.

Well, almost nothing. He remembers shooting a rocket into a minor EF0. He remembers high-fiving Eddie, overjoyed that they’re finally back to chasing storms together. He remembers dragging Chimney out of the S.P.I.N. to marvel at it as it twists away, Eddie and Hen’s laughs cackling in the background, punctuated by Bobby’s words of approval.

Then the sudden feeling of an anvil getting dropped on his head. Then nothing.

It’s funny the way an event that’s no more than a momentary blip to you is experienced so much differently by others. And it shows on their faces as his chosen family amble in. They’re all smiling, joking, relieved. But Buck can see the traces of trauma in every single one of them.

Bobby looks like he’s aged ten years. Chimney’s jokes pack a little less heat than usual. Hen’s smile is softer, finally giving way after having to be the rock for the rest of them.

And Eddie—Eddie looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks. He’s smiling as he pushes Christopher through the crowd of loved ones to the edge of Buck’s bed. But it feels forced, as his eyes are tired and sunken.

They only stay for twenty minutes, so as not to overwhelm him. But Eddie hangs back, and Buck is grateful for it, especially when he makes an offhand comment about really craving a soda, and his best friend is already out of the room in search of the nearest vending machine.

“How are you holding up?” he asks Christopher, who sits dutifully in his spot next to Buck’s bed. “Did I miss anything while I was out?”

Christopher is quiet, pensive. He has a look on his face that Buck knows all too well—he has a secret. One he probably shouldn’t be caught saying out loud. Buck leans in, the universal sign he has for one of the most important people in his life. Your secret is safe with me.

Christopher glances behind him toward the doorway before it comes out in a ghost of a whisper. “Dad cried while you were asleep.”

Buck doesn’t know what to say.

When Eddie got hurt and no one knew if he would make it, Buck sobbed. Openly and unapologetically. Alone and in front of Christopher. And sure, Eddie’s come apart in front of him on multiple occasions.

But he’s never come apart because of him. And that makes Buck feel an unnameable emotion he can’t quite place. But it does make him feel warm, cozy and cared for, like somebody out there loves him. But he’s also sorry for making him feel like that in the first place.

And when Eddie brings Buck back to his apartment and helps get him settled, returning the favor, he does something unexpected. He pulls him into a tight hug with a strange look on his face and says, “I’m really glad you’re still here, Buck.”

And when Buck melts into his touch, he feels the kiss of a spark.

Natalia Dollenmeyer is a wildfire.

Fire has its place. It can spark joy, like birthday candles flickering with light as you’re serenaded by loved ones. It brings people together, like a campfire folks gather and tell stories around. It can show you the way forward, on torches and inside of lanterns that line a gravel path in the dark. And it can provide comfort, as a crackling fireplace does in the cold winter months.

These are all things Buck needed after his brush with death. And who better than an end–of-life doula to be just the person to give him those things?

The 118 saw his ordeal as dark and depressing. But here Natalia is, calling the fact that he died and came back to life “amazing” and “so freakin’ cool”. She wants to know everything about what he saw and how he felt, and she’s practically bursting at the seams to ask him the questions she’s never been able to get answers to. And Buck likes being the guy with the answers, for once.

And it turns out, he’s bursting to talk about it, too. Eddie told him once, shortly after he got home from the hospital and passed out on his couch, that the best thing to do is to let himself feel, no matter the emotion.

And so he feels it all with her while chatting over coffee. Unpacking his emotions about the situation is far easier than he thought it would be, and it sure helps when it’s with someone who sees the beauty in what he’s been through. Especially since everyone else in his life he holds dear simply does not agree. Her enthusiasm in receiving every single minute detail lights a small flame inside his heart that’s nurtured with every bit of zeal she throws his way.

“There’s something different about her,” he finds himself admitting to Eddie as they drive down an open country road. “I feel like she sees me.”

The look of—surprise? alarm? disgust ?—that flashes across Eddie’s face catches him off-guard. He has no comment beyond that, and Buck just doesn’t get it. Here he has a gorgeous woman, who loves the fact that he died. And okay, it doesn’t sound great when you say it out loud like that, but it’s refreshing. He doesn’t have to skirt around the topic, or tiptoe around feelings for the comfort of others. And she still finds reasons to like him, despite the wacky and unpredictable parts of his lie.

Why can’t Eddie just be happy for him?

He passes it off as he’s just uncomfortable. He’s been under Tia Pepa’s gun, having to deal with the parade of single daughters and nieces of her friends that she tries and fails to set him up with. It can’t be easy for him to watch his best friend move on in his love life, when he can’t seem to find somebody he clicks with. If you ask Buck, it wouldn’t kill Eddie to sincerely put himself back out there.

But as Buck comes to realize, when unchecked, fire burns. It destroys. It starts small, no more than a series of embers that could easily be stamped out if somebody wanted to. Her fangirling is cute and makes him feel like something worth marveling at, so he doesn’t. Sure, it gets a bit repetitive sometimes, but it’s harmless. Death is her greatest passion, the very thing that inspired her career. Who would he be to snuff out the thing that lights her up?

But the fire grows, eating up fuel every chance it gets. It thrives on the environment in which its born being in a vulnerable, dry state, until suddenly, it’s fanned out across the landscape. You can’t just stomp it out now, you need a hose, or fire extinguisher, or heavy duty equipment, because it just keeps growing. Give it an inch, it takes a mile, and before Buck can even blink, death is dominating their dinner conversations.

The fire’s now widespread, burning through the once picturesque meadow that Buck used to think of when their relationship came to mind. His efforts to change the subject fizzle out, as it’s clear he’s not getting through to her. The fire’s breached containment.

It eats away at tree bark, swallows bushes and flowers whole, leaving everything it touches scorched and barren. And it jumps the freeway and burns houses to the ground when he takes her to a 118 get-together and she puts her foot in her mouth one too many times.

Buck starts a slow fade but even from a safe distance, he feels the effects. Ash and dust clouds fill the air and choke him out. Even just stepping outside makes it hard to breathe. When everything is about death, death, and more death, he finds himself canceling plans and shrugging off her texts. He dreads spending time with her, seeing her face, looking out and seeing where the fire’s spread to this time.

Not unlike the smell of death, the smell of smoke stains and lingers. You can’t forget it. And while from miles away, a wildfire can fool bystanders with its pretty bright orange glow, Buck can’t help but survey the conflagration with a fearful awe that just one lightning strike in the middle of nowhere ignited all of this.

It’s not fair to her. At her core, Natalia is well-intentioned. She has an important job, and the comfort she provides to those close to the end are often just what they need. But Buck isn’t even close to that point. He’s tired of dwelling on his death. He would much rather focus on the joy of life, while he’s around to appreciate it. He isn’t sure he can be the guy she wants him to be anymore.

“You don’t have to be anything for anybody.”

Eddie’s soft words of wisdom echo in his ear. Suddenly, he’s doused with cold water, and he knows exactly what he needs to do.

Marisol is a heavy fog.

This is best exemplified by the fact that Buck doesn’t even know her last name. And to tell the truth, he’s not so sure Eddie does either.

He and Natalia are done, the fire long since extinguished, but Eddie and Marisol are still hanging on by a thread. Why? Buck couldn’t tell you. They first became acquainted with her and her brother when their crew came through to build back the homes taken out by the McClane tornado, and some of the local storm chasers were asked to consult. A noble effort, of course.

But Eddie hadn’t given her a second look then. And now he seems to have it in his head that because he happened to run into her in the hardware store glue aisle and this woman has the god-given talent of being able to read a label, she’s suddenly uniquely qualified to be the love of his life.

Buck wants to shake him by the shoulders and tell him this isn’t how any of this works. True love is made, not found, especially not in a Home Depot. And honestly, Buck isn’t sure why it’s so distressing. He just doesn’t want his best friend rushing full-steam into something when he doesn’t even know what lies ahead.

But Eddie is intent on doing so anyway. After a grand total of four months of casual dates, he suddenly thinks moving Marisol in is a great idea. But it becomes readily apparent that he doesn’t know her at all. It’s apparent in the way Buck asks how she got into contracting, and Eddie doesn’t know the answer. It’s obvious when she joins them at Buck’s apartment for dinner one night, and the awkward admission that she's allergic to tomatoes when Buck puts a full plate of lasagna in front of her shocks Eddie to his core. The warning signs are flashing when Eddie confides in Buck after, asking if he caught whether Marisol’s brother is her only sibling.

Which then sends him into a crisis of epic proportions when he learns she used to be a nun.

The point is, fog obstructs. It makes it difficult to judge hazards and see the obstacles in your path, even though they should be in plain sight. It’s infamous for making drivers bad at judging distances—thinking you’re further along the road than you are. When you can’t see, there’s no such thing as a safe place.

And it makes it almost impossible to react to changing conditions.

Tommy Kinard is a bomb cyclone.

He’s also a serious storm chaser. He pilots a chopper outfitted with cameras and meteorological instruments to track tornadoes from above, and though Buck thinks he might secretly have a death wish, it is positively badass.

But he’s a good guy, too. When Bobby and Athena go missing when their date night movie theater collapses in on itself from a twister, Tommy flew them around the downed power lines and fallen trees blocking the roads and helped locate them in the wreckage, no questions asked.

And Buck is beyond grateful. So much so that he wants to fall to his knees and kiss his feet. Anyone who saves his family is a friend of his.

The problem, however, is that Tommy doesn’t seem to recognize that. In fact, it’s apparent that he’d rather be Eddie’s friend. Which is fine, of course. They’ve gone to a fight together, sparred together, worked on his Chevelle together, and even took an unauthorized tornado-watching joyride in Tommy’s chopper on Eddie’s day off. But it’s not until Tommy is all Christopher can talk about that a line’s been crossed.

Buck has never felt this out of control of his emotions. He wants to be asked to trivia night and go to sold-out fights and be invited to basketball. He just—wants to be chosen. So badly that he drops twenty bucks on a ball. So badly that he willingly shows up to the court and plays a sport that he hates. And so badly that he knocks into Eddie in a rash of jealousy, crunching his ankle as he sprawls out on the pavement.

He doesn’t know why he did it, and regret pools in his stomach. But it’s not until Tommy’s lips are on his in the dim glow of his kitchen that things start to crystallize, and solidify into a flurry of snowflakes that lightly blanket the earth. Snow represents purity and innocence, and once it touches the ground, it absolves Buck of all his guilt.

He must’ve been looking for Tommy’s attention all along. That’s why he was acting so out of character. He just didn’t understand his feelings. But he sure does now! It’s the only logical explanation.

And the beginning is exciting. Who isn’t excited when snow starts to fall? Especially if you live in a hot, arid climate 365 days a year. It’s new and different and there’s excitement in the novelty of dating a man for the first time, much like the excitement for a snow day.

The way Tommy kisses him is smooth like rich hot chocolate, the kind with marshmallows and sweet whipped cream. Cuddling on the couch envelops him in the warmth of a heavy scarf, and the exhilaration of things going further is the most invigorating sled ride of all time. It’s much too fast, with more than a few bumps in the road, but they’re soon both lying supine next to each other on the bank of snow, laughing and laughing.

Buck hasn’t had a white Christmas in years, but somehow being with Tommy feels like waking up on Christmas morning. Everything is unexpected, and each new way that Tommy touches him feels like a present he’s eager to rip the wrapping paper off. And after the sweltering heat of Natalia, it’s nice to settle down with something cool.

But it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Sometimes it snows and snows and snows, and there’s no end in sight. Suddenly, everything is cold and frigid, it’s icy and slippery, and Buck’s in a bad mood more often than not because he hasn’t known warmth or sunlight in a week.

Because Tommy is fluent in sarcasm, as the most corny of dating app profiles Buck used to see while single tend to say. But with him, it’s true. So much so that it’s his default setting. And the dial to change it is frozen solid in place, unable to be budged. It feels like a chore for him to dredge up excitement or interest in anything.

Buck shows him a video of a firenado that struck Southern California? “That’s nice, Evan.”

Buck tells him about the new tech he and Eddie are trying out this week? “Yeah, we’ve been using that for a few months now. Your turn to get as bored of it as the rest of us.”

He invites him to Chimney’s bachelor party, excited to see what on-theme '80s costume he shows up in to one-up Crockett and Tubbs? “They had Henleys in the ‘80s.”

When they’re awarded the storm chasing medal of honor for their help with the movie theater victims? “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Each comment is like a tiny nip of frostbite. Each one on its own is as insignificant as a snowflake, but built up over time, even the most sturdy structures can collapse under its weight. And Buck fears the day it eventually gives way.

And it’s not that Tommy’s a bad person. Buck doesn’t even think he realizes he’s doing it half the time. It’s just so ingrained into who he is.

And look, he gets it to an extent. The world is a cold, cruel place, and they witness it first hand every time a tornado ravages their community. But Buck’s learned that to get by, you have to find the positive whenever you can, no matter how small, and Tommy just isn’t interested.

He’s at the point where he’s out on his porch, bundled up in mittens, a hat and two winter coats, begging the snow, the very thing that brought him immeasurable joy, to melt away, just to feel that kiss of heat again. All he wants is for the fun-loving, mouth static-faking Tommy he saw in that chopper the day of the movie theater rescue back.

But instead he’s left wondering if that Tommy ever really existed, or if it was just a figment of Buck’s infatuated imagination. This Tommy instead opts to bury Buck inside his home.

And it’s up to him to dig himself out.

If Ana was a gentle breeze, Marisol was a heavy fog and Shannon was an earthquake, then Kim is the goddamn apocalypse.

The ground shakes so hard it opens up, sending a deep fissure halfway to California. One hundred-foot tall tsunamis break through the coastlines, and cause rushing floods that are biblical in nature. Overpasses collapse, skyscrapers break clean in half, and suspension bridges crumble and slide into the sea.

And everyone who survives the initial event runs for their lives.

Including Christopher.

And it chips away at his heart, the pain in Eddie’s voice as he begs—pleads—for Buck to help. Eddie’s parents are talking like letting Christopher live with them is the same as putting him on the final spot of the ark, a noble but necessary sacrifice that will give him a shot at a new life. A chance to thrive without the devastation outside weighing him down. Any good parent would sacrifice themselves so that their child can live.

But Eddie shouldn’t have to.

Buck spends as much time with Eddie as he can, not wanting him to be alone too much. He knows he’s not fragile, and he’s not a danger to himself. But he can’t stand to see his best friend upset. He wants to do everything he can to bring a smile to his face.

And eventually, after a boatload of therapy, regular attendance at a grief support group and a couple months of regular hang-outs, Eddie does start to smile. The fires burn out, the sky returns to blue, the waters recede and the earth’s crust re-stabilizes. And although it’s not completely back to normal, Eddie feels lighter. Something has changed.

The only problem is, it comes at the expense of Buck and Tommy’s relationship. He doesn’t even realize it at first, how quickly his default turns to fitting Tommy in around his time with Eddie instead of fitting Eddie around his time with Tommy.

And in the middle of preparing Bobby’s lasagna for him for the first time, Tommy calls him out.

“You’re hanging out with Eddie. On Saturday.” It’s more of a statement than a question.

“Yeah,” Buck replies casually without looking up from setting the table. “What of it?”

“That’s the fourth time this week.”

Buck grimaces. “It was okay when you did it, though?” It comes out pettier than he means it to be, but he’s been feeling Tommy’s chill for weeks now. It’s about time somebody else turned down the temperature.

Tommy sighs. “Evan, Eddie’s in a good place now,” he says, without a flicker of recognition that he’s only happy again because Buck’s been pushing him to leave the house. “Don’t you think it’s time to pump the brakes a little?”

Buck takes out the tray of lasagna, heavy-handed with the way he sets it down on the counter with a bit too much force. “Doesn’t mean he’s still not having a hard time.”

“I’m his friend, too, you know,” he says, but Buck has a doubt. They haven’t hung out a single time since Christopher left—you know, the time when Eddie was probably most in need of his friends. Actually, he doesn’t think he’s hung out with him alone since he and Buck got together.

There’s a beat of silence. “Evan,” Tommy says with a chuckle that he used to find cute but now just feels condescending. “Do you even want this? Because it feels like you’re more in a relationship with him than me.”

Buck just looks at Tommy, both offended by the question and not sure how to answer it. Again, he gets it. They’re in a relationship. Tommy’s not wrong to want to spend time with the person he’s in that relationship with. But Buck was snowed in a long time ago. He’s been digging, digging, digging himself out ever since with a tiny hand shovel, but he can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And it’s ultimately his uncertainty that makes him a different type of certain.

“Tommy, I don’t think this is working out.”

Tommy scoffs and asks if he’s serious, but he doesn’t fight too hard to salvage it. In fact, he doesn’t even look that surprised. He wishes Buck the best of luck, but he probably doesn’t need it—it seems like Buck has already found what he’s looking for. Buck doesn’t understand what he means, but that’s not important right now. Tommy blows out the door, taking his snowstorm with him.

Buck sees the sun and almost cries with relief.

He packages the food up and brings it over to Eddie’s. Eddie merely opens the door and smiles. He doesn’t question his arrival, happy to be in his company and to have a meal he doesn’t have to make. They break out some beers, a twelve-pack that Eddie bought the day after Christopher left, hoping to drink himself into a stupor—but it’s luckily remained untouched until now. They fall into an easy chat, talking about everything and everything—the Dodgers’ season (of the Oklahoma City variety), the rumored NWS budget cuts and the potential of Ravi, the 118’s newest recruit, while they munch on the lasagna and salad. Christopher still hasn’t asked to come home yet, but Eddie’s prepared. He has a plate of cinnamon rolls he’s been practicing for whenever that day comes.

Buck expects them to kick back on the couch and watch the game like they usually do. But after cleaning up, Eddie suggests something different. He asks if he’d like to go outside and look at the sky.

They wind up parked to the side of one of the country roads they use for storm chasing, in the flatbed of Eddie’s truck, sipping on more beer as they stare in awe at the thousands of glittering stars dotting the sky. They drink in silence for a bit before Buck breaks it.

“There’s a halo around the moon tonight,” he points out. “We could be busy tomorrow.”

“Why is that?” Eddie asks with a curious expression.

“Mean’s rain’s coming soon.”

Eddie settles against the wall of the flatbed. “Is that real, or just an old-wives tale?”

“Mostly an old-wives tale,” Buck says. “But the halo happens when the light from the moon reflects off ice crystals from cirrus clouds. And cirrus clouds are the first sign of a warm front. So not too far off from the truth.”

Eddie smiles at him, then looks back at the moon. “Ah. It’s pretty.”

The silence is comfortable, but something about what went down in his kitchen today nags at Buck. “Do you ever feel like we’re chasing after something that doesn’t exist?”

Eddie looks at him, amused. “Tornadoes are pretty real, last time I checked.” He sets his beer aside and crosses his arms, suddenly serious. “I don’t know. What do you mean by that?”

Buck sighs. “I broke up with Tommy tonight.”

“Why, what happened?” Eddie looks at him quizzically.

“When we got together, I thought he was it. I thought, here he is, after all of your failed relationships, here’s the person I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with. I thought I finally figured it out this time. But he wasn’t the one. And I’m starting to think nobody is.”

Eddie frowns at him, the way he does whenever Buck engages in negative self-talk. “Why do you think that?”

Buck shakes his head. “Well, because—”

Eddie looks back at him with a familiar expression of wonder, and it doesn’t take long for Buck to realize that it’s the same one that radiated across his face when he’d admired the night sky just minutes before. It hits him then.

It’s Eddie. It’s always been Eddie.

Eddie is the one who listens to his ramblings with a smile on his face. Eddie is the one who always knows what to say to brighten his day when the storm clouds roll in, and who can pull him out of sinkholes of his own. It’s Eddie who puts him at ease, the stable ground Buck walks on without a concern in the world. Being with him is the closest thing he feels to being at home, even above being at his actual apartment.

“Because—” Buck starts, and drifts off again. Because how can he put into words everything that’s hit him just now like a meteor strike? How complete he makes him feel, how he makes him feel heard and cared for, and in the moments where he feels most alone in this world, he can always look to the right and find Eddie by his side?

So he doesn’t. He lets a kiss do the talking instead.

He hurtles toward Eddie, and a massive jolt ripples through his entire being as their lips collide. Kissing him feels instinctual. The way they slot together, the way his cheek cups perfectly in his hand, the way contentment flutters through his heart and his soul and all of his extremities—it’s like he was born to do this. His only regret is that he hadn’t figured this out sooner.

After several moments of astronomical exhilaration, Buck comes up for air.

And then the shockwaves set in.

Eddie recoils, a deer in headlights. “Buck—” he says, and Buck’s heart sinks.

It’s over. He just f*cked this whole thing up, blowing deep, expansive craters into the body of their relationship. He’s upheaved everything they’ve built in one fluid motion. He knows what Eddie’s going to say—some version of “What the hell was that?” or “I’m not gay, Buck” or “I love you, man, but not like that.”

But Eddie instead just looks back at him with misty eyes and says, broken and sad, “You don’t want this. I’m a mess.”

“You’re not a mess.”

“I am, though.”

“Okay, you’re a mess then,” Buck says. “But so am I. We can be messes together.” It unfortunately sounded more romantic in his head.

“You don’t understand,” Eddie says, shaking his head. “I’m a goddamn tornado, Buck. I swoop in and destroy everything I touch. Shannon, Ana, Marisol. Even my own son.” He looks at him, tears threatening to fall. “I don’t want to do that to you.”

Buck is rendered speechless. How can Eddie be the destroyer of worlds when he’s put Buck back together, time and time again? How can Eddie see himself as this ominous, dark figure when he shines a light on Buck’s entire world? How can Buck do any better, when he hasn’t, because it’s been him he’s been looking for all along?

They sit in silence in the back of Eddie’s flatbed, but Buck refuses to leave.

The next morning, Buck heads into base camp and he’s immediately pulled aside by Eddie, eyes soft and better-rested, but his body language is guarded. He asks if they can talk privately after their shift.

Dread pools in Buck’s stomach, and every ugly possibility cycles through his mind. Is he switching crews? Is he quitting storm chasing for good again? Is he going to ask for space? Is he calling off their friendship altogether?

He doesn’t say anything more, but before Buck can ask for details, Hen and Chimney come running.

There’s a supercell that just formed twenty minutes down the road that might become tornadic. There’s still time to intercept if they hurry.

They pile into their vehicles. It’s extra awkward, as Buck remembers that Bobby’s been opting for his own vehicle nowadays, as he trains Ravi up. He’s entrusted Buck and Eddie to operate the T.W.I.S.T.R. on their own, and so they set out for the growing wall cloud, a formidable silence stretching between them.

“Hey,” Buck says to Eddie, making sure to mute the radio. “I’m sorry for last night.”

Eddie scoffs. “It’s okay, Buck.”

“No, it’s not. The last thing I wanted to do was make you uncomfortable. I’m really sorry. And I’m happy to pretend it never happened if that’s what you want.”

Eddie squints at him, co*cking his head to the side in an affronted look. He opens his mouth to say something, until his eye catches the inlet of the forming tornado emerging from the cloud base. “We’ve got something!” Eddie yells into the radio.

Buck dutifully slams on the gas, and they’re off. The supercell is bearing slightly northeast, and if they get ahead of it enough, the north-running road they’re on will intercept it perfectly.

The funnel cloud spawns and extends, and it's a wispy little rope that barely touches the ground. Buck sighs. They’d rushed out in a hurry for that ?

Until another wisp twists down to the right, and another to the left, intertwining and twirling into each other like they’re being woven into a braid. Buck has barely a second to process what’s happening before the multiple vortices coalesce into one giant monster. And it’s another second until it’s more wide than it is tall and it’s not until Bobby’s voice comes over the radio that they’re broken out of their trance.

“Violent tornado! That’s an extremely violent tornado! Get out of there, now!”

Buck yanks the gear shift back into drive, heart racing. Just a minute ago the goal was to get in front of the tornado’s path—now that’s the very last place he wants to be. They still have some distance on the twister, but even then, the winds are whipping around with a fury that Buck’s never seen before at this far away. Debris crosses their paths, making it hard to see, but the T.W.I.S.T.R. is pretty sturdy. If Buck can just floor this thing down the road, maybe they can get—

A huge gust of wind rips through, uprooting an electrical pole that lines the street from the ground. It tosses it in the direction of the vehicle, wires and all. There’s a bright power flash, and the pole slams into the front of the T.W.I.S.T.R., sending sparks raining down on them. Buck tries to push the gas pedal down again, but the pole is blocking the way, and the wires wrapped around them keep them from moving.

“f*ck.” Eddie snaps a quick photo out the window on his phone and gets on the radio. “Hen, we’re stuck. We’re not going to make it back,” he says, sending a nasty chill down Buck’s spine. “I’m sending you a picture. Blast this out to everyone. If this thing keeps going, it’s going to hit Clover and those people need to know what’s coming.”

“Copy,” Hen answers, but they can both hear the emotion in her voice. “Godspeed.”

Buck looks at Eddie, an unsettling realization dawning on him. “The spikes can only withstand wind speeds of 200 mph. I don’t know if it’s going to hold.”

“Then we get out and run.”

“Are you crazy? We can’t outrun a tornado, Eddie. Not like that one.”

“It’s our only shot,” he says gravely. “We’re dead if we don’t try. At least this gives us a fighting chance.” His hand is already on the door handle, ready to go. “You coming with?”

Despite the wreckage outside, there’s nowhere Eddie could go that Buck wouldn’t follow. They swing the doors open and up, taking care to dodge the sparking wires, and they run. The wind whips their faces, and debris flies in all directions. The grass and wheat stalks in the adjacent field are completely flattened. Every step feels like they’re running in an ocean of molasses, on the verge of getting sucked into the vortex, but they keep on going. Buck looks behind him just in time as the T.W.I.S.T.R. tumbles away, live wire sparking, until it finally gets lifted up into the tornado and swirls around.

“The barn! Quick!”

They run inside a flimsy, wooden barn that they soon realize is abandoned, apart from a few tools lying on the ground. They shut the door behind them, knowing the act is rather futile.

“Come on, come on,” Eddie mutters to himself as he searches the structure for something to protect them. “There’s gotta be something.”

Buck scans the floor, his eyes landing on a door partially covered in hay. It’s locked shut. He picks up the large wrench resting against the far wall and brings it down on the lock with everything he has, the will to live fueling him to break it open. It only takes three hard strikes before the lock comes straight off.

He tosses the door open and shoves Eddie in front of him into the opening, descending down the stairs. It’s empty, but shallow, and Buck doubts this was an actual storm cellar and not just somewhere to store wine or something of that nature. There’s nothing to grab onto other than a few metal rails that were likely the skeletons of some shelving on the east wall. But as they pull down the door, they realize an even more horrifying fact. There’s no way to keep the door closed, other than a flimsy handle, the door already undulating up-and-down, up-and-down, threatening to shake off its hinges.

Resigned, they take their spots under the lowermost rail, clinging onto it with everything they have.

“Buck,” Eddie suddenly says, his eyes straight ahead at the violently flapping door. “I love you.”

Buck’s heart, which had been running a mile a minute up until this point, stops dead in its tracks. “What?”

“I love you, Buck. It’s what I was going to tell you after work today. But I don’t know if we’re going to get that chance.”

“Eddie, you’re not—”

“This has all the makings of an EF5. We both know what that means. If we don’t make it, or I don’t make it… I just needed you to know that.”

The awareness of his mortality rushes to consume him. This may be the last moment he gets to spend with Eddie, ever. And how evil of the universe to let them finally realize their mutual love when they’re about to get railroaded by the strongest tornado of the last ten years. But life’s never been known to be fair.

Buck lets go of the bar just long enough to kiss him, to memorize the contour of his lips, to feel his heartbeat, strong and alive, pulse against his. Just in case this is the last time.

“I love you, too,” he says, struggling to hold back tears.

They’re suddenly jolted as the tornado plows into the barn. The door to the cellar swings wide open, knocking into the floorboards with a violent bang. The wind whirls down the cellar, and Buck holds on for dear life as the wind threatens to pull him out. He can just make the destruction out through the opening, as the door rips off, exposing them fully to the violent winds. First, the roof is immediately torn off in a flurry of shingles. The opposite wall is knocked down and is immediately swept away. And it’s at that point that he stops being able to see because the encroaching tornado casts a sinister darkness over the opening. Buck’s sure if he could see he’d be horrified, so he hides his face in his arms, crossed tightly over the metal bar.

But he’s soon horrified for a different reason when he hears Eddie call his name. He looks up. Eddie’s slipping. His hands are sliding off from around the rail as the wind blows him in, his hand losing more and more of his grasp. Until he’s holding on by only one hand.

Buck grabs him by the wrist just as he loses his grip completely. Eddie is almost perfectly horizontal as the tornado wreaks its havoc. But the act of holding Eddie is making him lose his grip as the rail shudders against its bolting job. He loses one hand and he realizes he can’t hold on like this. He wraps one leg around the bar in a last-ditch effort, taking hold of Eddie’s wrists in both his hands.

It’s flimsy. But it’s their only hope. If the railing snaps or becomes unmoored, they’ll almost certainly be swallowed up into the tornado. It occurs to Buck that if they go, they’ll go together, but that thought isn’t good enough for him.

And so Buck holds on.

He holds on for adaptive skateboards and lasagna dinners. For movie nights and Street Fighter battles. For beers in Eddie’s flatbed and heartfelt speeches. For Crockett and Tubbs and moon halos. For volcanic eruptions and derechos and sinkholes and tornadoes and every version of Eddie in between.

For their past. For their present. And for their promises of tomorrow, and for the lifetime of love that awaits them. If they can just hang on.

And as quickly as it began, it’s over. The last of the winds sweep through with a dying whistle, and not a single part of the barn is visible through the mouth of the cellar. Eddie falls back down to the ground as the tornado motors on. They’re both out of breath from the effort.

Buck finally breaks the silence. “Thank god for leg day, huh?”

Eddie stares at him for a bewildered beat, and for a minute, Buck thinks he might get a lashing for his terrible joke. But he just wraps him in a hug, nosing the crook of his neck. They’re battered, wet and covered in mud, but they’re alive.

After what feels like hours in the embrace, they finally get to their feet and stagger up the stairs, up into the clearing where the barn once stood.

Hand-in-hand, they look to the northeast, and watch as the tornado twists and twists toward Clover. They brace themselves for what they’re about to witness. But something strange happens. The tornado suddenly slims down right on the outskirts of the town, layers and layers of wind pulling off the funnel until the whole thing dissipates into the air, its unsustainable power finally running out.

And as they walk into town to reunite with the others, Buck realizes something.

Eddie Diaz is the moment after the tornado. When the clouds part and the sky brightens and the sun peeks through, draining the atmosphere of any traces of gray.

He’s the first song of the birds and the emergence of squirrels and rabbits from their hiding places, showing that life perseveres.

He’s the relieved hugs between loved ones—particularly the ones with Bobby, Hen, Chim and Ravi upon reuniting—that remind him that any disaster is survivable as long as you have your family.

He’s the dazzling, beautiful, glorious rainbow that arches across the sky, giving hope to all who see it.

And when they’re close enough to civilization, and Eddie digs into his pocket to find his phone, his signal back, and opens up a text message from Christopher saying that he’s ready to come home—well, he’s the promise that after the trauma and beat-downs that the storm of life brings, you can always start anew.

And as they stand in Eddie’s parents’ living room down in El Paso the next day, and Christopher opens up the hug to let Buck in, and Buck takes in the moment, holding his two favorite people so tight that no tornado can ever snatch them away, he realizes that this—

This is what he’d been chasing all along.