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Julie Rosen didn't really know Tommy Kinard all that well. She joined after he had already left, and maybe she heard some of her colleagues mention him in passing once or twice, but if you asked her, he was so insignificant to her that she wouldn't be able to tell you anything about him except that he used to work here before her.
Then, Buckley started dating him, and it didn't take long for the whole station to find out. Julie must admit, she was a bit confused. Ever since that one time Diaz invited Buck to their poker night, she was under the impression that those two had something going on. Especially with Diaz shooting heart-eyed looks at the other man for the majority of the game. And who could blame him? Julie herself couldn't stop staring when Buck so effortlessly swept the floor with the rest of them with what she later found out were his new post-lightning super-math-skills.
But either they broke up or they were never a thing because Evan Buckley started dating Tommy Kinard, and that was that.
Except it wasn't. Because shortly after, Julie started hearing murmurs here and there, about the two of them, about Tommy in particular. Some things he did when he worked here. And it confused her even more, because why would Buckley ever date a douchebag like that? Unless he didn't know. Which seemed entirely possible when she thought about it because she didn't know either, not until that moment.
So she was conflicted for some time. Whether to tell Buck or not. Whether it was actually her place to do so.
Thankfully, she was rid of that particular dilemma when she saw Buck chasing Eddie around the table at the station, trying to get his phone back because apparently he was for some reason adamant on calling his now EX-boyfriend.
So they broke up. Julie had to suppress the little sigh of relief that threatened to escape her. She didn't even know Buck all that much; she shouldn't be this invested in his love life.
But she did feel relief wash over her when the phone call attempt had been thwarted, and it seemed like the Tommy chapter had been closed for good. Thank fuck.
Except, of course, it hadn't. Because Tommy's uncharacteristic similarity to a cockroach didn't apparently end on his looks and personality, but transferred into his constant inability to fuck off, too.
Julie blamed Eddie Diaz for it, just a bit. Because she didn't see or hear of Tommy Kinard at all, not since the break-up, up until Diaz left for El Paso, and suddenly she had to encounter Tommy twice in one month. Two times too many, if you asked her.
First, at the bar, where she spotted Buck and Ravi hanging out. She was about to come up to them to chat for a bit and maybe help Ravi out, who seemed to be stuck with a currently very Eddie-less Buck and was looking properly miserable about it. And who could blame him, even from the outside, this whole BuckandEddie thing sounded exhaustingly insane. So she decided to be a good friend and help Ravi out.
Except, he beat her to it with a far dirtier play. He stood up to buy some drinks, and she was just about to approach him when he looked the other way and started heading for someone else. And when Julie realized who he spotted, she felt her blood turn icy cold. She stopped dead in her tracks as her eyes landed on none other than Tommy fucking Kinard.
She saw Ravi talk to him for a bit and point towards his and Buck's table. Before she could witness the end of that particular interaction, however, she turned around and headed for the exit.
On second thought, she didn't like this bar all that much.
And Julie understood that the situation was so dire that it probably required some dirty solutions. She really did. But even she would not stoop so low to leave Buck to that cockroach’s mercy.
Then, the whole lab thing happened. And if that hadn't been horrible enough, of course Cockroach Kinard had to be there as well. Staying true to his nature, even a lab explosion couldn't keep him away from being a nuisance to everyone around.
Thankfully, though, everybody came out of there alive. Captain Nash gave them a pretty big scare but in the end all turned out well.
Julie didn't even have to hear of the cockroach man again after that – which, thank god – especially when Buck decided to go to El Paso to help Eddie move back to LA. (Julie guessed that having most of your team almost die from a mysterious virus was a good enough reason to come back). And truly, what a relief hearing those news was – Eddie's absence so far having resulted in way too many Tommy Kinard sightings for Julie's liking.
She could only hope that with Eddie back, Tommy would go into hiding again.
The universe seemed to have heard her. It seemed to have more than heard her.
Tommy Kinard was dead.
The station got the news one week into Buck's El Paso visit. They were told that Tommy's helicopter crashed when he tried to make an emergency landing somewhere over Griffith Park. He didn't manage to stick the landing and fell into a mountain. He didn't survive the impact. Or the explosion, for that matter.
Now… Julie wasn't a person to celebrate someone's death, no matter who they were and how she felt about them. But she also won't deny that her first thought upon hearing the news was: “thank god it was Tommy Kinard out of all the people.” Because if somebody had to go, she was glad that it was that man.
But a tragedy was a tragedy, and she was going to stay respectful about it. Like one should.
This proves to be difficult almost exactly one week later. After two weeks, Buck and Eddie are finally back from El Paso. And Julie knows that they're currently living together because she overheard the rest of the Bobby Nash gang talking about it. Which makes her wonder if she was right after all, and there has always been something going on between them. The whole BuckandEddie thing.
She hasn't had a chance to talk to Buck yet, though. So when she runs into him by the trucks, she strikes up a conversation, and Buck seems happy to engage in it.
They talk about different things. He tells her about the weeks he spent in El Paso, helping Eddie sort out his slightly-falling-apart house, seeing Chris again. She tells him about the different shenanigans the 118 got up to during his absence, even though she's fairly sure someone from his circle probably already told him about them. But it's nice catching up with him. Julie makes a mental note to make sure to spend more time with Buck in the future.
It is then, however, that she remembers that one pretty big thing that happened during those past two weeks, too. Feels like maybe she should say something. So she does.
“Oh, by the way, Buck, I'm sorry about Tommy,” she starts, trying to sound at least a tiny bit sorry. “I know you two broke up a while ago, but still, I can imagine that hearing what happened wasn't the easiest. And it sucks.”
Buck stares at her for a couple of seconds. Blinks twice.
“What happened?” he asks, sounding completely lost.
Julie’s mind goes blank. This was probably the last thing she expected him to respond with. ‘What happened?’ Hasn't anyone told him?
“I- uh, you don't know?” is what she manages in the end.
“Know what?”
Well, this is awkward.
“Fuck, well. Shit, okay, didn't expect to be the one breaking the news.” She takes a deep breath. Braces herself for the imminent reaction. Says the next few sentences in one breath. “Tommy passed away last week. It was a helicopter crash; something went wrong during an emergency landing. He didn't survive the impact. I'm sorry.”
Silence follows.
Julie doesn't even look at Buck. She focuses her gaze on his boots and waits for his reaction. She's not the best at dealing with people's feelings, and now she'll have to be there for Buck's inevitably negative ones. And she'll have to pretend to have liked his douchebag ex, because that's what you do. You know, out of respect. And why did she even open her mouth in the first place? Why did she feel the need to bring up a topic like that? Life would be so beautiful if she just learned to shut up.
But then Buck hits her with: “Oh wow… You know, Eddie was in a helicopter crash once.”
She blinks a couple of times. Looks up at him.
He doesn't look too bothered.
“...what?” she finally says.
“Yeah!” He lights up, which is truly a bizarre sight, seeing as Julie just told him that someone close to him died a tragic death. “Back when he was serving in Afghanistan. This is actually how he got his silver star! Did you know he has one? He was flying over the Valley of Death with a few people from his team when their chopper got shot down. Eddie pulled them all to safety. Can you believe that? Saved everyone. He doesn't really like to talk about it, though, and I get it. But he really deserved that silver star.”
At this point, Julie's not even sure if he still remembers that Tommy Kinard is dead. Or if his brain even registered that information.
“Yeah, no, that's… admirable,” she says, because what else is she supposed to say?
“Yeah, it is,” he sighs, almost dreamily, and Julie wonders how they even got to this point in the first place.
She waits for him to maybe come back to the previous topic. To acknowledge the cockroach in the room. But nothing. He doesn't say anything about Tommy's death. Doesn't react to it at all. Perhaps it really hasn't registered in his brain.
Or maybe this whole BuckandEddie thing is even more insane than she already thought it was.
She catches Eddie not long after, restocking the ambulance. She wants to see something.
“Hey, Eddie!”
He stops and looks up at her. “Oh, hi, Julie. It's been a minute, hasn't it?” he asks good-naturedly. “How are you?”
“Same old, same old. How's it being back?”
“Man, I didn't even realize how much I missed LA.”
“Just LA?” she asks, because at this point she's allowed to. She's dealt with enough of their shit AND she's an outsider. Poor Ravi, honestly. She fully gets him now.
Eddie furrows his brows and looks at her, clearly confused. “I mean, of course, I missed you all, too. I think that's a given.”
“No, that's not what I- you know what, never mind.” She really planned to be more subtle about it, but subtlety doesn't appear to have ever worked with these two. “Have you heard about what happened to Tommy Kinard?” She changes the strategy.
Eddie pauses for a second. Then, to Julie's surprise, he says, “I have.”
And, oh my god, is Eddie Diaz trying not to smile right now? Julie stares in bewilderment at the corner of his mouth as it twitches, a barely concealed smirk appearing just for a second, before he hides it by pursing his lips and bobbing his head a little, trying to appear serious.
Insanity, she thinks. Both of them are insane.
“Okay, well, I talked to your boyfriend, and he apparently hasn't.”
Eddie sputters at the word boyfriend. “Buck's not my boyfriend.”
“I didn't even say his name.”
She can see Eddie's cheeks getting redder. He opens his mouth, then closes it, then opens it again, but no sound ever leaves him.
She decides to have some mercy on him and starts speaking first. “You know, I find it kind of weird. That you knew what happened, and he didn't. Weren't you two together when it happened? And wasn't he closer with Tommy anyway? I thought he would be the first one to know.”
“Yeah, well, he was out with Christopher when I got the news… I must've forgotten to tell him.” It would be a somewhat decent excuse if Eddie didn't look so guilty about it.
“Hell of a thing to forget about, don't you think?”
He just shrugs, and Julie wants to laugh.
Eddie hesitates for a second, then asks, “So how did he take it?”
“Oh, I don't think it even fully registered in his head. All he did was talk about you and how cool you are with your silver star and your helicopter crash.”
“He did?” he asks, eyes widening, and Julie wants to groan at that slightly lovesick, hopeful tint to his voice. Jesus Christ, just date already.
“Yeah, and I don't know about you, but I've never heard him talk this adoringly about Tommy, so…” She throws her arms out and shrugs. “I don't wanna meddle, but I think you two should talk.”
With that, she starts to walk away, leaving Eddie behind. She sees him staring into empty space, cheeks still tinted red and can almost feel the cogs turning in his brain.
She decides to spice it up just a bit and throws out one last, “And don't act like you're not happy that that man is out of the picture now. I saw that smirk, Diaz!”
Then she hurries off before the insanity can contaminate her, too.
A few days later, Julie learns that there's a BuckandEddie bet going on at the station. One that has been going on for quite a while now, apparently.
She learns it, however, in the most bizarre of ways. From Buck and Eddie themselves.
They don't just tell her, no.
She catches them making out in the supply closet.
She opens the door and first thing she sees are Buck's hands gripping Eddie's ass like his life depends on it. Then, her brain registers the rest of the picture, and she realizes that Eddie has Buck backed up into the shelves, hands tangled in his hair as he kisses him, quiet moans escaping both of them.
Neither of them notices her. She clears her throat.
“Damn, Buckley, you don't have to grip that thing so hard, no one’s taking it from you,” she says and watches the two of them frantically spring apart.
“Julie. Hi,” Buck stutters out, looking at her over Eddie's shoulder.
He clearly doesn't know what to do with his hands now that he's been called out, so he flaps them around for two seconds before deciding on pretending to smooth out his shirt. Eddie, on the other hand, doesn't even turn around to look at her, but Julie can see that the tips of his ears have gotten redder.
Well, that didn't take them long. She's glad, but she also would've preferred not to have walked in on them like that.
“Congrats on finally figuring it out, you two. Now, if you excuse me, I'm gonna go bleach my eyes.”
She turns to leave but gets stopped by Buck's voice. “Hey, Julie, um-” She turns back around to look at him. “Can you not tell anyone, please?” He rubs the back of his head with his hand. “We're kind of keeping it secret for now.”
“You know everyone will be supportive, right?” she asks.
“Oh, we know. It's just that… there's a bet going on.”
Julie raises her eyebrows at that. “A bet?”
“Yup,” he pops the p. “A bet. About when we're gonna get together.”
She starts to smile. “Oh, this is brilliant.”
Eddie finally turns around at that, side-eyeing her just a bit and sounding almost bitchy when he says, “Yeah, so can you not tell anyone?”
“It’s just that,” Buck quickly chimes in, “this is all pretty recent. We want to enjoy it for ourselves first.”
“And we might be a bit mad that they knew before us, so we're not telling them,” Eddie adds.
“I mean, it was pretty obvious,” Julie says after a bit, shrugging.
Eddie glares at her.
“Oh, don't you look at me like that, Diaz. I wasn't the one smiling ear to ear when I heard that Tommy Kinard died. You're not subtle at all.” She chooses not to mention that she wasn't particularly sad about it either. “Whatever, sure, keep your secrets. Just, please, don't make out in the supply closet anymore.”
Buck nods enthusiastically. “Will do. Or well, won't. Thanks, Julie!”
She sighs, turns around, and closes the door behind her.
Now she just needs to figure out everything there is to figure out about this bet and what she gets from it for being the one to finally get those two together.