the pain will leave you once it's done teaching you

“Hi, I’m Buck, a firefighter with the 136,” for now, the thought crashes through Buck, leaving a sour taste in his mouth. “Uh, you’re both welcome to take a tour with us, if you’d like.” Buck awkwardly scratches at his neck, running a hand through his hair, unsure what else to do, and it spurs the man in front of him to take a large step forward up to Buck’s bed.
“Eddie,” he says, thrusting a hand to him, and Buck reaches over without a second thought. His whole palm feels electric, it smarts and carries the touch of Eddie, Eddie, that Buck feels it completely. He has no idea what’s happening to him. “Edmundo Diaz, but just Eddie though, uh, no one calls me Edmundo. Right. I’m a new nurse here, at Cedars-Senai. Oh –”
***
When Daniel Buckley lives a little longer, Evan Buckley dies a little more. And this is how Eddie Diaz saves him, a little later on.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems?

Little interest or pleasure in doing things?
Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?
Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much?
Feeling tired or having little energy?
Poor appetite or overeating?
Feeling bad about yourself, or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down?
Do you blame yourself?
Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television?
Do you wake up and blame yourself?
Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Or the opposite – being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual?
You should. You should feel guilty every day you live. It’s your fault.
Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself?
“Who is it? Oh, hey Evan. You okay? Come on, come here. It’s alright. It’s alright, it’s going to be okay. I promise. Don’t, hey, it’s all going to be fine, shush. Hey, did you want to know a fun fact? The name for the Pacific Ocean comes from the Latin for ‘peaceful sea.’ Sounds nice, right? We’ll go there, one day. Me, and you, and Maddie. We’ll go to the coast, and have a whole day out on the beach.”
Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself?
Who else is there to blame?
Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself?
“I love you, kid.”

***

Part I. I’m Not Sure I Was Ever Born to Belong in the First Place

He’s pulled his shoulder; he must have. It’s agony when he rolls it. He’s tried it twice, and both times, his body screamed back at him. They’ve been at this factory fire for what feels like hours, and Buck’s done exactly what he wasn’t supposed to do. His Captain yelled at him and told him explicitly to get out over the radio, but Buck didn’t. Of course, he didn’t. But they already knew this about him, back when Buck was new to the team over ten months ago and would bite at anyone who came in too close. Time hasn’t made his teeth any less jagged.

They know it isn’t worth it to hash out the same argument again and again and again because when there’s someone on a call who needs him, Buck will be there. The others must be sick of it: tired, frustrated, exhausted over Evan Buckley yet again being reckless and stupid. He can hear them, see their looks over his shoulder. So Buck rises to the occasion and does what he has to; holds his breath for as long as he can as pulls at the trapped civilian with everything he has left in him. He works to get the man out, stuck under an industrial vat, and it feels as if the line he’s tugging on is burning his hands through his gloves. Buck greets the pain like an old friend.

The sweat is beading on his forehead, and he’s burning up like the walls around him, feeling haunted by something bigger than himself, but the man on the floor isn’t getting up, so neither is Buck. He isn’t leaving. Even when he starts to cough and cry, and it becomes near impossible to breathe, he won’t leave. He won't leave the man to die, not alone.

Buck blinks rapidly, and the tears stinging his eyes as his vision blurs out. He pulls, even though his shoulder hurts beyond belief, and his lungs feel like they’re collapsing inside him. He can’t hear anything else except the slow, dull thud of his heart inside him. He inhales, exhales. Chokes. Closes his eyes.

He has to hold out. There’s a man on the floor who needs to get out first, whose entire life depends on Buck getting him out, and Buck is only going to stop trying when he’s dead.

So Buck pulls. And his shoulder is still killing him. But he keeps pulling and pulling and pulling, and just when he’s close to breaking, the scream trapped in his throat, he feels slack on the line. He can move forward a little bit; the strain lightens up, just a bit. He doesn’t look back, doesn’t do anything except shift his grip to hold on harder, lift further, carrying the weight as far as he can. There’s noise behind him, people talking and coordinating in shouts that go over his head, and Buck does what he knows best. Sends his body to the brink, letting it shatter however it needs to, not caring about the pieces he leaves behind, the pieces he's left behind his whole life.

It could have been minutes or hours, he doesn’t know, until Buck feels the clap on his shoulder. “That’s enough, kid.” Buck turns, letting the line finally slip as he sees firefighters, a Wilson picking up his civilian and a Han, who must be Albert, helping check vitals. Then there’s the man whose hand is still on Buck’s shoulder, tight, shaking him slightly, leveraging his grip for a moment, and then Buck’s being ushered out, a mask shoved on his face as he leaves the burning building behind him.

The man's hand slips from his shoulder as they walk out together, but his gaze doesn’t. Something about him seems familiar, but before Buck can place him, he’s torn away from the man’s grey eyes. Buck's in the back of an empty ambulance, maneuvered there by the man, before someone's yelling, and he has to go. He just about catches the “Captain” etched on his helmet as he leaves, with another look shot back to Buck.

Buck hears noises again as he comes back. The 136 ambulance siren blares, and tires screech as it leaves, and people are calling for one another, but Buck stays sat down in the back of the other station’s ambulance and finally breathes. The inhale comes in easier. The exhale goes out roughly.

Heavy footsteps come closer, and Buck looks up.

He can see the fury in his eyes, the clear lines cut into his face with how much anger Buck’s latest stunt must have caused, though Buck knows better than to dismiss it all as rage.

It’s fear. It’s losing control, never having it in the first place. It’s thinking this person might just die. I might have to watch this person I know die in front of me, and there was nothing I could do about it. Buck thinks fury is a fair response to that thought.

Captain Mehta doesn’t say anything for a moment; he just stares at Buck. They’ve been through this before, the slap on the wrist, the ‘I won’t do it again’ fallacy that cycles between them. Buck’s surprised Mehta lasted so long having Buck with the 136. Just over ten months. That’s the longest any Captain, any station, has dealt with Buck before they ask to transfer him out again. A kinder way of saying he’s been fired. He almost feels bad for Mehta because it’s clear the man has so much faith that Buck will listen next time. Albert pulled Buck aside after too many shifts, eyes worried as he cautioned Buck ever since they were assigned as partners at the 136, telling him to be careful next time.

But it’s always the same song and dance. Buck never learns.

Mehta sighs, and Buck braces for whatever comes next. “You’re being taken to Cedars-Sinai, the 118 will see you out. Shift’s over. Once you’ve got a clear bill, come see me, Buckley.” He turns and takes a half-step away before he pivots back and faces Buck, resigned. “You got the guy out, Buck. You did it.”

Then why does it still taste like defeat in his mouth?

After a few minutes, Buck’s joined by people he assumes are 118. He recognizes Wilson again from inside, now sans her helmet. She’s got a concerned look on her face and a grim purse on her lips as she gets in the back of the ambulance, checking him over. Next to her is the Han that Buck assumed was Albert, but when the guy turns, it’s definitely not the person Buck knows from his own team, though there’s something about them that’s similar, something in their smile, their gaze. The guy closes the doors, and they’re being driven out.

It's quiet, awkwardly so, as if they both know, just like Buck, that he’s getting fired for his little stunt back there, but they ask questions and check Buck over instead. It’s strange how in sync they are. Wilson grabs something, and Han’s already in position and then Wilson needs something else, and Han has it ready, without needing to exchange a word sometimes. Buck watches in fascination. He imagines if he’d ever be so in tune with someone else like that. He makes it difficult for Albert to get close to him purposefully, even though the guy tries his best to be a good partner. It makes Buck feel guilty. Like he’s depriving Albert of something.

Han coughs loudly and gestures to Buck. “So,” he drags it out, obnoxious-like, and Buck raises an eyebrow. “You’re the Buckley we’ve heard about. How’s Albert, he doing alright?” Wilson rolls her eyes, and Han raises his hands at her defensively.

“Uh, he’s fine, I guess.” Buck’s not interested in getting involved in local firefighter gossip. It gets intense between the different stations sometimes, and the further Buck can stay out of it, the better.

Han nods slowly, then rests his chin in his hand. “Does he mention me? Or joining the 118?” Wilson’s batting at Han now, who just yelps in outrage. A rattled “What?” comes out of him.

Smiling, Wilson cuts in. “Ignore him, please, we all try to. Chimney’s just worried Albert’s going to take the open spot on our team, and then the brothers will be divided in Han #1 and Han #2.”

Chimney guffaws, waving his arms around. “Like I’d be worried! I’m older, and I’ve been at the 118 longer. I’d be Han #1, obviously.”

Buck watches them both go back and forth, snorting at something else Chimney says, before they turn their dual gazes over to him. They’re still eerily in sync, like a set of horror movie twins, and Buck feels like he’s in danger. “Uh, yes? Can I help you?”

The ambulance is slowing down, and before Buck can blink, they’re all out the back, Wilson rattling off the details as Buck gets wheeled in. Shoulder trauma, smoke inhalation. Lacerations to the hands. Huh, Buck didn’t realize the rope actually burned through him. Overexertion and dehydration.

As Buck is finally handed over to the nursing staff, he watches as Wilson and Han hang at the door. They both wave him off. For some reason, Buck waves back. With a jolt, Buck realizes that he didn’t want the conversation to stop, he wanted to stay, linger. Wanted to ask why Chimney and Albert both ended up as firefighters and how long Wilson's been with her station. He sees a glint, like a smile, as he turns the corner, and Buck can’t tell if it’s from them or a mirror image he caught of himself.

***

The hospital staff at Cedars-Sinai are usually nice to him, perks of being one of their nurse’s younger brother, he guesses. Hospital staff tends to be polite, even when overworked, more times than not, and for firefighters, they are even nicer than usual. But Buck's different; he knows hospitals, inside and out. He’s been on this side of it so many times he can practically recite the words coming out of their mouths before they say it.

You’ll need bedrest, Firefighter Buckley, and to get plenty of fluids.

“You’ll need bedrest, Firefighter Buckley, and to get plenty of fluids.”

We’ll keep you in overnight, just to be sure.

“We’ll keep you in overnight, just to be sure.”

Just let us know if you need anything else.

“What happened to you?”

Buck had already sunk down deep in his thoughts by the time the questions asked of him, bracing himself for Mehta’s talk and an uncertain future. He was readying himself for Maddie to walk in, her concerned frown, the way she’d open her mouth and hesitate before closing it, not saying what she really wanted to. He knows that Josh saw him for sure on his way in, and if Linda’s on shift, she would have caught his file by now, and before he knows it, Maddie will be here, worried sick at him for risking his life again, and Buck will swallow the taste of disappointment down, thick in his throat. Buck thinks about how he’s been slowly destroying Maddie, how she refuses to give up on him each time he does this. The way she clenches her jaw, cups his cheek, and promises he’s going to be okay. The palms of her hands always felt like a balm, but it’s one he doesn’t really believe he deserves.

But it’s not Maddie at his door, asking what's happened this time. It’s a little boy.

He's got adorable red glasses on, a head full of curly golden hair, and a pair of crutches with stickers all over them. He couldn’t be more than ten years old if Buck had to guess. Something in Buck swoops, low and painful in his gut, as he has a memory flash in his mind. An image clings to him, another boy in a hospital at that age, but he buries it back down viciously, clawing to let it die. It’s helpless; Buck remembers the feeling of a hospital gown on his bare skin, a bed frame made of metal, and meals from a tray. A childhood spent beside a beeping machine.

Blinking rapidly, Buck is tugged from his memories as the boy walks over to him, his head tilted to the side in curiosity.

Buck coughs to clear his throat as best he can, but it still aches a little. “I’m a firefighter. I was trying to help someone stuck in a fire, and now I need some rest to feel better,” his voice is still grave, but the kid nods nonetheless.

The boy hums and takes the empty seat beside Buck’s bed. Buck frowns, wondering why a little kid is wandering around all by himself, but he’s interrupted before he can ask. “Did you hit your forehead? Is it sore, does it hurt?” The kid taps at his own temple slowly, carefully.

It's an instinct buried deep inside that has Buck copying the gesture immediately, and he taps the same spot on his temple, a muscle memory Buck had from when he was a kid himself. “No, it's a birthmark,” Buck responds quietly.

Sometimes, when Buck stares at himself in the mirror, he traces the mark gently. He remembers other hands brushing it, a tap to his temple, a sign of something kind and gentle and sweet that’s dead now.

“Oh,” the kid doesn’t seem interested in that, slumping lightly in his chair, but then he perks up again. “If you’re a firefighter, do you work with Dalmatians? I love dogs, but my dad won’t let me get one. He says I bark enough for him already.”

It’s startling the way the laughter bubbles up from him without his permission. His lungs are still singed, his stomach is knotted from overthinking, but it’s comforting to feel the sting of laughter in his body. His throat is dry, not just from the smoke, as the noise escapes him. Buck couldn’t remember the last time he felt the compulsion to laugh at something innocuous, not in self-deprecating or as a social norm. Just over a silly comment. He thinks maybe the last time he laughed that easily would have been something Maddie had said to him. He isn’t sure. It’s a rusty, neglected sound.

The kid’s eyes wander around as Buck’s laugh fades out into another cough. “Sadly, we don’t work with Dalmatians. Hey,” Buck leans over, closer to the kid, to get his full attention back. He isn’t sure why he needs it so thoroughly. “Did you know why Dalmatians worked in fire stations?” The boy looks over, engaged again, and shakes his head eagerly.

“No, why?”

“It’s because back in the olden days, firefighters used to ride on horse carriages to fight fires, and Dalmatians happened to be really friendly with horses and could clear the streets on their way to calls, so they’d be a lot of help to us.”

The kid’s eyes are brilliant as he peers up at Buck. He exhales and murmurs. “So cool.”

There’s a jolt in Buck’s chest, and he feels part of himself dislodge and wonders if he looked down whether he’d see a bloody piece of his heart in the kid’s hands. It doesn’t feel like he deserves this attention, this innocence. He rubs his eyes and clears his throat again.

“Hey, do you know why firefighters have a pole in their stations?” Head shake. “Well, those same horses used to try to climb up the stairs in a station, looking for food –”

“No way!”

“Oh yeah, and so firefighters made the stairs super small, but that makes it harder to rush out to fight fires –”

“That’s a problem!”

“You bet it is. So, they decided to add a pole to make it easier to get down when there’s an emergency. Pretty neat, right?”

The little boy’s practically vibrating in his seat, shuffling around and squirming. “I want to see it!” He reaches over and puts his hands on the bed frame, so close to Buck, and Buck smiles. It aches slightly around his mouth to make his cheeks hurt, but it’s a little hopeless not to react that way, given the cuteness he’s being faced with.

“Well, you’d need to go find your mom or dad and ask. Where are they?”

The kid dims slightly, his energy slipping. “Dad’s talking to his new boss about his schedule for next week so he can take me to school. My mom isn’t here anymore.” He says it curtly, biting down on the quick of it as if him saying it swiftly would make it hurt less, make it less real. Buck gets that. He gets it instantly, fully. His heart thumps uncomfortably, swelling, bruising.

“My name’s Buck,” and he reaches his hand out, which is then holding a small grasp back.

“I’m Chris.” They shook, and Buck was right. He can see part of his heart in the little boy’s hand when they let go.

“Alright then, Chris, let’s go find dad.” Buck leans up in bed, not caring about the angry machines beeping at him that he knows will cause a nurse to go haywire if he disconnects himself, but it's worth it for Chris to look up at him like he's worth something. Buck pauses when he hears a commotion from down the hall, someone yelling out a now familiar name. Chris yells back as if this were his own home and not a hospital; it draws another smile to Buck’s face.

Careening into the room, a man sprints in hastily, only stopping when his eyes land on Chris, and Buck loses the strength in his arms as he falls back into his pillow.

He’s faced with a man who seems like he’s carved from marble, a sketch from a painter's dream. It makes Buck's heart thump uncomfortably, and the machine next to him chimes in agreement. The man, Chris’ dad, no doubt, has a sculpted jawline littered with light stubble that would make any artist weep. His thick dark hair is in disarray that’s still somehow unfairly attractive like it just so happens to fall that way, Buck bets. He has cheekbones that are sculpted and thick legs coupled with a soft waist that Buck is drawn to instantly. But his eyes?

Damn, his eyes are the perfect shade of brown. They’re deep, soft, and wide, and Buck can feel himself get dragged down into them like a hungry, hungry sea. He has a jacket on that makes his shoulders seem incredibly wide, or maybe they are just like that, and his hands are large and strong looking as they fall to his hips, and Buck’s daydreaming about what they would feel like on his body, running in his hair, tilting his chin down, which makes Buck stop, because Buck doesn't do this. He hasn’t felt this stirring in a long time, a sudden interest in someone sparking up in him like that. Buck is deliberate about it; he doesn't try to pay attention around him because he knows it wouldn't be good for anything. He isn't built to be in a relationship, so he hardly notices people beyond the standard glance. It has Buck so rattled that he's forgotten all about his self-preservation that he contemplates for a brief moment whether this is real and he's actually awake and the man actually exists or if this is all a dream. It’s been so long since Buck’s been with someone, and it's unnerving to get so distracted.

For years now, Buck’s been alone. He had a couple of fleeting moments of interest when he first moved to Los Angeles, most notably Abby, the woman from dispatch he got close to right when he joined the fire academy, but he didn’t think of her in his apartment, in his life, in his arms. Not permanently. Same with Ali, and Taylor and Natalia, and they all ended up leaving him because of it. Buck can't blame them; he didn't give them a fraction of what they wanted, they deserved. He wasn't buying flowers or making dinner or being soft or gentle or attentive. He didn't wait up for them; he could barely stomach thinking about them most days, not like how he instantly thought about this man. Since his last relationship ended, Buck would see people out there, attractive men and women, in a bar or at a coffee shop or a bookstore, and they’d smile and lean into him in interest, but he’d move over, walk out, turn away. None of the feelings there would be enough to get Buck to want to claw out of the pit he’s in. None of them deserved to be dragged down with him.

But this guy? This is the first person that’s made Buck pause for a moment. To look, to think. Buck hasn’t turned away yet; he doesn’t think it’s possible to do so to someone like this guy. Someone who’s a dad and a nurse and stunning and looks like moonlight cast over a sculpture. Buck is very much stuck thinking about this guy, and he’s not sure he likes it.

“Christopher Diaz, what did I say to you?”

Christopher sighs like he’s a long-suffering man caught in old age. “Dad, come on. I was bored. You were talking to Linda in the next room; I knew where you were. I wasn’t gonna go very far.” Buck feels for the dad; he does because he knows that Chris must be able to get away with murder with the way he articulates his argument, especially when coupled with his little puppy eyes.

His dad frowns, hands still on his hips, before he lets out a low sigh and a slow shake of his head. “Chris, you know that’s not okay. Come on,” he turns, his head gesturing towards the door. “We gotta go, uh, sorry – ” and for the first time, the man looks over at Buck.

So brown. Normally, eye contact isn't something that makes Buck feel light-headed, he does it many times a day to many strangers successfully, though Buck feels his body heat up this time, and he wants to shove the annoying machine beside him out the window, because it starts to get louder, quicker. But what’s Buck meant to do when the man in front of him, with his dreamy eyes and pink, pink lips, is looking directly at him? Like sunshine, Buck thinks absently again before he can catch himself. He averts his gaze.

“Dad, this is Buck! He’s a firefighter, but he doesn’t have any Dalmatians, and he’s going to take me to his fire station!” Chris beams, getting his crutches in hand as he walks over to his dad, who looks at Buck, alarmed.

Eyes wide, Buck backtracks. “Woah, no,” his hands are held up placatingly, and he sees Chris turn sharply back to him, eyes narrowed. “Chris, I told you, you had to ask your dad first for permission.” The boy in question pouts and looks up at his dad, but his dad isn’t turned to him.

He’s staring at Buck like he’s never seen a human being before. His mouth is parted slightly, and Buck’s distracted during the ensuing pause. Chris taps at his dad’s legs with a crutch when it’s clear neither adult is going to say anything, and it shakes him, has him swallowing in a way that attractively bobs his Adam’s apple, and makes Buck breathless while he watches.

“Dad, can I please see Buck at the station? Please?” Christ, it must be lethal to be on the receiving end of that look, and Buck waits for the dad to say something.

When the seconds trickle over and into an uncomfortable silence, Buck takes a chance. Because he really, really wants this guy to say yes, because he knows if it’s a no, Buck will never see Christopher or him again, and something about that hurts Buck deep down.

“Hi, I’m Buck, a firefighter with the 136,” for now, the thought crashes through Buck, leaving a sour taste in his mouth. “Uh, you’re both welcome to take a tour with us if you’d like.” Buck awkwardly scratches at his neck, running a hand through his hair, unsure what else to do, and it spurs the man in front of him to take a large step forward up to Buck’s bed.

“Eddie,” he says, thrusting a hand to him, and Buck reaches over without a second thought. His whole palm feels electric, it smarts and carries the touch of Eddie, Eddie, and Buck feels it completely. He has no idea what’s happening to him. “Edmundo Diaz, but just Eddie though, uh, no one calls me Edmundo. Right. I’m a new nurse here at Cedars-Senai. Oh –”

Chris nudges him again, this time from behind, and it causes Eddie to spin to look while he’s still holding Buck’s hand. The act makes a sick, ill part inside Buck leap up because Eddie doesn’t let go of his hand at all, so Buck is pulled along, too, and there’s something intoxicating about being this close to the man. He could get scarily used to it, and the thought terrifies Buck. His shoulder is still tender, too, and he makes a small noise involuntarily that has Eddie turning right back around to him. “Shit –” Eddie curses, and sadly, he lets go to check on his shoulder.

From just behind Eddie’s concerned face, who is now hunched over on the bed to take a closer look at Buck, Buck can see Chris’ mischievous grin, and it makes Buck laugh. He tries desperately not to catch the scent coming from Eddie, from his hair that's practically right in front of him.

“Dad, that’s a bad word,” Christopher sings, and Buck stifles his laugh back down when he catches the glare Eddie shoots him. “I think you should apologize.”

Eddie slouches his shoulders as he draws back, and he rubs the back of his neck. There's a light flush to his cheeks, too, and Buck realizes that Eddie’s feeling chastised, and something about Eddie's expression, how he's taking his child seriously and not shutting Chris down, makes Buck feel a flutter in his chest he doesn’t understand.

“Sorry, Chris,” Eddie apologized.

Chris still has a cheeky grin. “You have to say it to Buck, too.”

Contrite, smiling, Eddie indulges his son. He turns back to Buck, his face a pretty, flushed pink in the apples of his cheeks, and something deep in Buck shifts at the sight of it. He feels light-headed breathless, and when he looks Eddie in his eyes, he can’t help himself from blushing too.

Eddie brushes a hand by Buck's hip by accident as he shuffles back, and it has Buck's skin tingling even between all the layers between them. “Sorry, Buck,” Eddie says, and it sounds so familiar to hear that tone from Eddie, indulgent, and it makes something explode in Buck to see them both involve him seamlessly in their shenanigans.

“And we should go to the fire station!”

“Now wait a minute –”

Christopher’s cackle erupts in the room, and Eddie laughs with him, reaching down to tickle Chris, and Buck feels like a familiar stranger. It's as if he’s interrupting, but weirdly, like he’s allowed to. Like they’re tolerating him, for now, they don’t mind he’s there, lingering in the shadows, haunting their world for a little while, and Buck will take it. His fingers clench around the air because he wants to reach out, to run a hand over Chris’ head and tug at Eddie’s hand, but he’s a nobody to them. They’re going to be leaving his room before he knows it, and it’ll just be Buck again. The way it should be. He doesn’t have to ruin them like he’s ruined Maddie, he can just disappear and leave them to it. He can’t drag them down, too.

He’s the one meant to be drowning.

Buck looks away from the picture the father and son make, his chest hurting slightly when he catches her slipping into the doorway. She must have rushed because she was here way earlier than Buck expected. The pit in his stomach sinks further and further.

“Maddie,” Buck starts preemptively, but she blows in, hair in a tragically lopsided bun, eyes bloodshot as she puts her hands on his arm and squeezes softly. He was right; she was asleep when she got to call because Maddie has a life outside of him, and Buck hates that she has to sacrifice everything for him still. “I’m fine, I promise,” he tilts his head to the side and looks her in the eye as she takes him in.

It’s not fair; he knows that. He’s making Maddie stare at her brother in the hospital over and over and over again. He doesn’t know how she does it, how she bears to be near him. Living with a broken ghost over her shoulder, all these years. He doesn’t get why she came back, why she stayed. Why she tries. To watch this?

“Evan, you’re not allowed to give me a heart attack when I’m watching Planet Earth, that’s our safe space, we agreed.” She tries to make a joke of it, but Buck can see she’s trying to be gentle for his sake. Her hands shake slightly as they rest over his forearm, and he reaches over to hold it tightly.

“My bad, Mad,” Buck aims to get that little laugh out of her, and it works; she shoves at him through a cut-off snort. She’s smiling at least, and Buck feels part of his rotten heart perk up at the sight, the feeling that’s usually tearing its way across his chest, pausing, nodding its head in approval, before it continues destroying everything else in its path.

There’s a shuffle behind them, and Buck watches as Christopher looks between them, a confused frown on his face. He shifts on the spot, and then Buck turns to look at Eddie.

He’s stoic, stood unnaturally still, as if rooted to the spot, watching them both. He’s clenched his jaw, eyes suddenly skittering away when they catch on Buck’s for a moment, and his hands go behind his back. It lasted as long as it could, Buck thinks mournfully, because this is it. They’ll make an excuse, leave, and take something from Buck he never thought about before. And Buck doesn't have a right to grieve it, does he? That isn’t the life he’s allowed to have.

This isn’t his life at all, not really.

Waving a hand around, Buck gestures to them all. “Maddie, this is Eddie and Christopher Diaz. Eddie’s a new nurse here with you, and Chris is the coolest kid ever. Guys,” Buck turns to Maddie, her face dripping with unmasked curiosity. “This is Maddie, the best older sister in the world.”

Eddie snaps his head over to Maddie so quickly at her introduction that Buck thinks he feels the air shift around them, and it makes something ugly sprout up inside him. Because it’s obvious, of course it is. Why didn't Buck realize it before? Maddie’s beautiful, and sweet and sharp and funny and real in a way Buck never will be. She breathes life and fights for it, while Buck wants nothing more than to sink away from it all. So, of course, of course, this man who seems like a dream to Buck will choose Maddie. And Buck isn’t even mad. Because it’s obvious. It’s Maddie.

“Oh,” Eddie says to himself. “Sister. Hi,” he reaches his hand out, leaning the other on Christopher’s shoulder and shaking her hand firmly, quickly, before he pulls back and glances over at Buck again. Maddie looks slyly at Buck, who furiously pushes the heat from his face.

“Nice to meet you both, especially,” Maddie leans down, squatting in front of Christopher, at eye level, “the coolest kid ever. That used to be Buck, but it must be the real deal if he’s passing the torch on to you.”

The way Chris’ eyes shine makes Buck’s heart clamber up and into his mouth, getting stuck in his throat with words he wants to say but has absolutely no right to.

It's still for a moment, and Buck is waiting for Eddie to make a move to leave, to grab any of the excuses in front of him to get out, but they’re still here. And that’s a dangerous thing for Buck to think about, to cling to. Because Buck could really get used to looking into those eyes.

There’s a noise nearby, and they turn to look at the door again.

“Know him? That boy’s in here all the time, just through here,” And then there’s Linda at the door, stopping abruptly at the sight of them all. She looks at them, one by one, from Eddie (waving) to Christopher (yawning) to Maddie (smiling) to Buck (coughing). She narrows her eyes at Eddie, then Maddie, and finally at Buck. “Do I want to know what’s going on?”

They shake their heads. Linda sighs.

Turning her head behind her, she calls out as she walks away. “Good luck, Captain.”

Buck feels his stomach drop, and he suddenly wants to get out, unplug the machines, tear the IV out, and rip himself apart so he doesn’t have to show Maddie, and now Eddie and Christopher, this. This big, ugly side of him, being tossed around stations useless, is a hazard to every team he joins. He doesn’t want them to see Mehta fire him. Doesn’t want Chris to hesitate to ask his dad to take him home now, away from Buck, because actually, Chris doesn’t want to see the station that much anymore.

There’s something not unlike panic clawing in his head, and Buck tries to suck in the air and keep himself grounded when the man enters the room.

It’s not Mehta.

He has faded brown hair that’s going grey, close-cropped to his head, with a kind look on his face and eyes Buck recognizes.

The man who pulled Buck out of the factory fire. From the 118, Buck thinks. Wilson and Han's Captain. And then he remembers -

Captain Nash.

As he walks into the hospital room, his eyes home in on Buck. He inhales, exhales, and then waves at everyone as he crosses closer to them all.

“Wasn’t expecting an audience,” He smiles, and it makes Buck feel easy in an instant. He wouldn’t mind if this guy fired him. Or actually, maybe he would; maybe it would be awful because then Captain Nash would be disappointed in him, and that actually sounds fucking terrible. Buck wonders absently what it must be like to be his kid and have to deal with that feeling all the time.

Nash scratches his neck. “Er, sorry, don’t mean to interrupt. Would it be alright if I got a word with you, Evan, just for a moment?”

Buck’s pulse spikes, hearing that name come from anyone not Maddie-shaped, but he swallows it down and nods. Maddie catches his eye and must read whatever it is he’s saying because then she’s turning on the spot and moving to give them some privacy. But then she’s also gesturing for the Diaz boys to leave with her, and part of Buck leaps up and protests, in a frenzy, because this will be it, won’t it? No more Eddie or Chris. He has to be able to at least say goodbye, right?

Captain Nash notices something’s off, and he follows his line of sight. “Oh, uh,” Nash tries to get Maddie’s attention before she can steamroll them all out, and it works because she’s looking over her shoulder at them.

Eddie and Chris are lingering in the same spot as before, having not yet moved, and they look at Buck, too.

“Oh, uh. Just. If you guys wanted to see the station…” Buck pauses, feeling embarrassed and silly and like a little child because he’s practically begging for attention, and it might even be coming across as creepy or weird or dumb, but then it’s alright because Eddie steps forward.

“Yeah! Yeah, Chris would love that. Here,” He drops his phone into Buck’s waiting hands, and Captain Nash smirks, poorly hiding it in a fist as he moves out of the way, but Buck catches it still. “Thanks, Buck.”

His hand only jumps a couple of times in nerves as he enters his number into Eddie’s phone. It doesn’t mean anything. He keeps saying it over and over again, so his sad heart gets the message. He shouldn't even be doing this, why is he doing this? Nothing good will come of it, and Buck feels the heat in full force on his cheeks and hates it. But he doesn’t have it in him to stop the smile spreading on his lips, especially when he catches Christopher grinning at him.

When he reaches over to hand the phone back to Eddie, their hands brush, and Buck thinks he sighs at the shock he feels, but that’s so wildly embarrassing that he prays he didn’t actually do that. Judging from the manic look broadcast on Maddie’s face, he’s done a very poor job of being normal about this.

Thank God for Christopher, who’s none the wiser and just yells to cut through the tension in the room. “Bye, Buck! I’ll see you soon!” He waves enthusiastically before he trots off, and Buck laughs back, waving, too. Eddie stands there for a moment, watching, and smiles. Buck swears he sees a shimmer of gold in Eddie's eyes, starlight in his cheeks that are rosy and sweet.

They both leave a trail of joy following them. “I’ll be outside,” Maddie says, and she’s gone too.

Thumbs twiddling, tangled in the sheets, Buck waits. He doesn’t know why Captain Nash is here, but it’s unlikely to be good. He thinks about Wilson, and Han wonders if there was something to the look they shared in the ambulance over him, the waves they parted with as they left him in the hospital. Did he do something to piss them off? He wracks his brain but can’t come up with anything he did that was so horrifically egregious to warrant getting their boss to come see him right after a call.

“What do you prefer?” Nash asks, and Buck frowns, confused. “Evan or Buck?”

It throws him for a loop instantly because people don't notice things about Buck. He can’t get the words out for a moment; they're tangled in his brain, and it feels like molasses trying to wade through the thoughts. He opens and closes his mouth before clearing his throat. It’s weak, small, juvenile sounding. “Buck.”

Nodding, Nash takes a seat, “Buck it is.” Nash leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. “Buck, what you did today was really risky. And dangerous.” Reprimand. Buck’s being reprimanded, and not even by his own Captain. This is a new low, and he’s really glad everyone left because this is torture to sit through. He clenches his fists. “I was really worried about you. You didn’t seem to be doing so good at the call.”

Buck looks up, his hands unclenching in surprise. Nash seems to be serious about it, and it takes Buck a long moment to even attempt to figure out how to exactly articulate what he wants to say. Eventually, he finds the only words he can think to ask.

“Why do you care? It doesn’t matter.”

It comes out sharply, and Buck regrets it the moment it leaves his lips, but it’s for the best. He already slipped up massively, trying to see Eddie and Chris again, and he’ll have to cut that off soon. He can’t afford to let people in to start to care.

It’s the wrong thing to say, he knows, because Nash grimaces and looks away, his eyes flashing with something forceful before he looks back at Buck. “You’re worth worrying about, Buck,” Nash says, with a hint of a tone like he’s adamant about saying it to get Buck to listen. As if he knows Buck won’t.

You’re worth worrying about.

“It’s alright, it’s going to be okay.”

They don’t know, though. None of them know. Not Nash, or Eddie, or Christopher. Just Maddie knows, and she’s stuck with him. She saw the bitter mess with her own eyes and had to live with it herself, too. She doesn't have a choice, not really.

He can’t do this. Buck doesn’t respond; he just clenches his jaw, staring at the wall in front of him to stop himself from shaking.

Nash sighs, and Buck wanted this, expected this. Expected him to get tired of Buck's attitude, to give up on him, to stop the effort, and call it a closed case. Leave. Leave him. And even if Buck wanted it, it still stings inside him to think of it.

“Listen, I know this is odd. Unorthodox. And Mehta will give me some real shit in the next meeting we’re at for how I’m going about it, but I’m still asking. Offering.” Nash pauses, gauging Buck’s response. Buck isn’t sure there’s anything on his face that’s discernible to give away the pounding of his pulse. “Join the 118.”

Buck remembers a lifetime ago when he was in a hospital room like this when it was late at night. He was scared, and alone, and just a child. He was begging for someone to pay attention to him, to see him. For someone to care about him, to hold him and make sure he was okay.

You’re worth worrying about.

“We have a spot opening up. Kinard is heading to 217, and I think you’d fit in really well with us. Take your time to think about it,” Nash gets up, patting Buck on the leg, and he feels small in a way he’s never felt before. Not bad, not useless. Just small. As if it’s okay to be wanted. “And let me know if you have any questions.” There’s a piece of paper in Buck’s hands now, a business card with Robert Nash and a phone number printed on it, and Buck takes it.

Captain Nash turns to leave, but Buck stops him.

“Wait.”

He waits and raises an eyebrow.

“What do you prefer?”

The man smiles.

“You can call me Bobby.”

***

When Buck gets discharged the next morning, he doesn’t open any curtains in his apartment when he stumbles in, he just goes straight to his bed and collapses, face down. He wants to sleep for a thousand hours if they’ll let him, but he knows he won’t be able to. The darkness in his loft is suffocating; it’s hostile and terrible and makes the notch in his chest crack open into a chasm.

Because when he’s alone, with nothing to do and no one to help, the memories start to cling to him. It happens every time, like clockwork. It’s why he likes to pick up extra shifts, why he throws himself into everything he does. And it’s also why he shouldn’t like the way Eddie’s hair was flopping over his forehead, or the sound of Christopher’s laugh, or want to call Maddie and ask if he can stay at her place instead. Why he’s going to say no to Bobby’s offer.

Buck's so desperate to not be alone, fears it right down to the root and in his bones. He’d do anything other than be by himself, and yet, at the same time, he has to be. He has to push everyone out. It's why no partner lasts at work or in his personal life. He needs to keep them all away, keep the bruises and scars to himself, and suffer in peace. There’s no other way.

Like a dog chasing its’ tail.

Do you blame yourself? Do you wake up and blame yourself? You should. You should feel guilty every day you live. It’s your fault. Who else is there to blame?

The trouble is, Buck knows the answer. He’s known it all along. It’s everyone else that doesn’t.

“I love you, kid.”

He turns, staring at the plain white ceiling from his bed, and lets the tears fall silently down his face. They become hiccups, and then sobs. Tomorrow, he thinks. Tomorrow, I’ll stop caring so much. Tomorrow it’ll be easier. I won’t want this all so badly I bleed from it. Tomorrow.

Buck’s been saying tomorrow for twenty years.

***

Part II. But This Is How It Is.

He walks into the 136 station a few days later, still slightly disoriented from the recent turn of events, and finds Mehta making a cup of coffee. Buck watches as his Captain waves him over, beckoning Buck to his office. There’s a spread of papers and pens lying all over the place, and Mehta closes the door as Buck sits down.

The mug in his hand taps against the table gently as Mehta sets it down. “Buck, I’ve heard that Bobby’s made you an offer.” No nonsense, that’s what Buck likes most about Mehta. He doesn't sugarcoat things, and Buck’s used to that. Appreciates it. Hurts less when things inevitably go to shit.

Buck swallows. “He did.”

Nodding, Mehta takes a sip from his cup. “I just want you to know, you have a choice here. I’m not firing you for what happened at the factory. I would also want you to know that I don’t have patience for that type of behavior, and I expect to have a team that listens to instruction,” Buck looks down, away. Mehta sighs. “But I wouldn’t fire you or ask to transfer you. So it’s your call.”

There’s an awkwardness, naturally so, and Buck wavers. Only because he thinks to himself, darkly, that if Mehta doesn’t fire him now, he can probably buy a few more months here before he does push the Captain too far, and he’s eventually transferred out of there. And with the 118, there's something about it that Buck doesn't think he could stomach being fired from there, something about the way Nash and Wilson and Han all acted, it was too much, too intense. It would be overwhelming there, and he thinks he could easily let himself slip into it. But Buck doesn’t make safety in others.

He doesn’t make safety at all.

The hesitation is clear, and Mehta gets up. “You’ve got time, but Bobby will probably want to get his station fully staffed and soon. Think about it, and let me know your decision.” He claps Buck on the shoulder, the one that doesn't still ache in the mornings, and then Buck’s shuffled out of the office. As quick as that.

By the time Buck makes it to the locker room at the end of their shift, having thought over every angle and determined he's going to have to call Bobby and turn him down, he’s joined by a familiar face. Albert's probably the only person at the 136 who still tries with Buck, who tried the most when Buck first joined, and it’s been hard for Buck to shoot him down each time. No beers after work, no catching a game together, no jokes or teasing. It's hard because Albert's naturally a good guy, Buck can tell. But the problem is, Buck’s not.

“Heard from Howie you got an offer from the 118,” Albert says, eyebrows waggling as he combs his hair down.

Buck tenses, closing his locker door. “Right. And that, it doesn’t bother you?” He can imagine Albert’s frustration, not being offered a place with his brother, watching Buck be reckless and be rewarded for it. Taking it out on Buck. Hating him, wanting him gone for good.

Albert closes his locker, too, and frowns. “Why? Bobby asked you. Besides,” Albert grabs his bag and lingers near Buck. Waiting, he's waiting to walk out with Buck. “I couldn’t bear to spend that much time with Howie. He’d bully me every shift; it’d be a nightmare. God, I hate being the younger sibling.” Albert shudders good-naturedly and starts talking about the Han #1 and Han #2 conspiracy, but Buck’s only partly listening.

He imagines what that must be like for Albert. To joke about it. To laugh it off, to want to spend time away from his brother because he gets to see him whenever he wants already. Buck’s not resentful, not anymore. He just… feels rotten inside. Like he’s drowning.

Rising to his feet, Buck follows Albert out. They cross over and start to part as they get to their respective cars. Right when Buck’s about to wave goodbye, Albert calls to him.

“Hey, you should think about it. I’m serious. I see how you are around here. I can tell.” You’re not happy is what Buck thinks Albert means. Buck shows up, works, gets the job done, and leaves. Albert asks him how he takes his coffee, includes him in pranks against the others, and offers to help him do inventory, but Buck’s terrified. Of being friends with him, of letting Albert in, and having him see Buck. He can’t risk it. Can't do that to Albert. “Howie said it’s a good team over there. I think it might be good for you. One less thing for me to worry about, too. Just think about it before you write it off.”

Albert turns to his car, though Buck takes a step forward. “Wait, what do you mean? What are you worried about?”

Pausing, Albert has one foot in, one foot out. “About you, Buck. You’re my partner here, right? As much as you push yourself away, we’ll still care about you.”

As Albert waves and drives off, Buck’s rooted to the spot. He feels unsteady and hot all at once, and his eyes blur. He sits in his Jeep and doesn’t move.

He gets out and goes to Mehta’s office.

***

Buck remembers when he was a teenager; he would fight tooth and nail with his parents over anything. He’d pull at his hair and want to scream and run and never be found again. He wanted to bolt out the door and find his place in the world, anything to get out of the hell he was living in.

He remembers one evening when he was so close to graduating high school and already making plans hundreds of miles away, the silence in the house was so suffocating. He went downstairs, thinking his parents were still home, but found the place empty. They hadn’t even told him they’d left. Buck made a sandwich, ate it over the sink, and clutched at it, shaking. He watched the water drip from the tap.

Dilute me. Make me easier to love.

When his parents got home a few hours later, neither of them said anything to him as they walked upstairs. Buck wasn’t surprised, not really. He was a ghost in that house for years already.

***

In between the rush of transferring to the 118, between the cake that Wilson (it’s Hen, actually) ordered for his first day, and Han (just Chimney, and definitely not Howie, not to you) walking him through the station on a tour, and Bobby introducing him to everyone with a serene smile the whole time, Buck feels fucking overwhelmed. There’s a guy called Ravi who looks like he’s America’s sweetheart and a woman called Lucy who has lied to him about every single thing that’s come out of her mouth so far, and they haven’t even sat for lunch yet.

This was meant to be his escape. Buck knew that he was getting too comfortable with Mehta and Albert; the last conversations he had with them proved that, but now there are all these new people who seem just as invested, if not more, and it terrifies him. Because all these people seem to care about him in a way he has been crawling to get away from.

They don’t know him. Not the real him. And they shouldn’t. They won’t. It’s better that way, Buck reminds himself, it’s better for everyone.

He’s had four different people ask how his first day has been going so far at the 118; he’s not sure how he’s ever going to be able to edge back to the normal anonymity he clings to at work. He hasn’t lived a day in his life where people ask after him so much, check up on him, pay attention. Only Maddie’s ever done that, and when he goes to her place after his first day’s ended, he’s completely unnerved. Between Chimney’s wave goodbye and Lucy showing him pictures of her dog, he needs to get away.

The drive to Maddie’s is one he knows, like the back of his hand, like the mark on his forehead.

Maddie’s yelling at him to join her in the kitchen, and there’s something in the oven that smells heavenly. He rounds the corner and sees the scattered sugar on the counter, the chocolate chips spilled on the cutting board, and the dishes piled up in the sink. Maddie turns with a little yelp of “Surprise!” and she has his favorite cookies baked, stacks of them, and more waiting in the oven. He feels a swoop go through him, and he pulls her into a tight hug. She jolts, laughing, and hugs him tightly back.

“Happy first day!” Her grin is beyond loving, and Buck grabs three cookies from her as he sits down, his chest warm and soft.

“Since when did my first day at a new station warrant fresh cookies?” Buck bites into it, partly in hunger, partly to stop himself from saying the unsaid. It’s happened a million times already. It's never usually a good thing. Why would anyone care where I go? Why can't I just stay?

Maddie washes her hands, and Buck checks over his shoulder, and yeah, there’s stains all over it from their hug. Clumps of dough and flour and sugar. “This is different, Buck.” She’s not looking at him when she says it, focused on scrubbing her hands.

“How so?” Buck asks, lost. He’s on the second cookie now.

Sighing, Maddie picks up the towel and dries her hands methodically. She leans back against the sink and looks at him. “This Captain hand-picked you; he invited you to his station. And you said yes. This is big, Buck.” Maddie pauses, inhaling. She shuffles things on the counter, her eyes looking everywhere but at him.

“You think I don’t see it, the way you hang back all the time. But you deserve this, Buck,” Maddie says quietly, and Buck flinches. His heart jolts as he hears one phrase repeated in his head over and over again. The truth.

Maddie clears her throat. “Buck, you’re such a great guy, and I’ve always been so proud of you. You work so hard to take care of everyone else; you go above and beyond all the time. Is it crazy of me to want to see something nice happen to you for once?” Her eyes start to get a little damp, and Buck looks away. It's a long-tired argument. Maddie fights for him constantly while Buck disappears in front of her. The phrase in Buck’s head catches again and again, over, and over.

But it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s –

Buck wants to shake her, to ask her why she still tries with him when he’s nothing but a fuck-up, the sad sack who can’t get over anything. Why she keeps trying with him when she deserves so much better. When Buck’s just a ghost.

His voice is coarse when he speaks. “Okay, big sis.” He gets up and hugs her again, and she rubs a hand on his back reassuringly.

She says something to him, but it’s muffled in his chest, and Buck has to lean back to hear her.

“Huh?”

“What the hell is this crap on your back?”

Buck’s laugh echoes in the hallways. But it doesn’t cover up the sound of the voices he hears in his head when he goes to bed that night.

- your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault, it’s your fault.

***

His fingers are itching. He had to sit on his hands for a moment because the constant cycle of picking up his phone, checking the time, putting it down, spinning it, and abandoning it was causing Hen to get a migraine. At least, she said it was. He’s not sure there’s enough science to back up that claim, though.

They’re in the loft at the station, and it’s been frustrating slow all morning. Chimney’s in the gym, Hen is reading a book her wife Karen is meant to be discussing for her book club, and Hen’s scanning it to find talking points while Lucy and Ravi are playing pool. Bobby’s making a pot of coffee, and Buck’s anxious.

Because Eddie and Christopher are visiting today. It’s been over a week since he last, first, saw them, and Buck’s been trying so hard not to let himself spiral into this, but it’s impossible. It’s been going a little like this:

[Buck] Hey, this is Buck, the firefighter who met Chris. If you’d like a tour of a station, just let me know.

[Eddie] Hey, Buck! It’s Eddie and Chris. Yeah, we’d love to visit you at the station. Chris keeps mentioning horses and poles, so it’s safe to say we’re ready to visit whenever. Chris has school during the week, obviously, and my shifts are a little crazy, but we could make Saturday at noon work if that’s good with you?

[Buck] Of course! Saturday’s great. I’m actually starting at a new station, the 118, so I’ll send you the address. Tell Chris he should get ready to convince my Captain to let us adopt a Dalmatian. Tell him to bring his bark.

[Eddie] Haha, okay? Inside jokes with my son already… Why do I feel like I’m being conspired against?

[Buck] Because you clearly are. I’m trying to impress the cooler Diaz here.

[Eddie] I just picked him up from my Abuela’s, and she’d have some tough words with you if she heard you say that.

[Buck] I just meant cooler than you, I’m sure your Abuela’s just as great as Chris.

[Eddie] Great, so it’s just me then, huh?

[Buck] Yeah, just you.

And that’s the start. They’ve already gone to texting about the random parts of their day, and it fills a void in Buck so quickly it's disorienting. Buck will take a picture of something in the ambulance while Hen swats him away and sends it to Eddie, asking, “What’s that do?” and Eddie will respond with, “That’s your water bottle, Buck.”

In return, Eddie takes a picture of Christopher doing literally anything and will caption it: “He’s plotting something…” every time. It makes Buck burst out laughing the first time he saw it.

He remembers when it happened; he was on shift, and they were washing down the trucks after a particularly rough call out in the rain. Bobby was reprimanding Lucy for pushing Ravi over in front of everyone at a call, and Hen was hiding her tears of laughter so Bobby wouldn’t start a lecture on her next. Buck felt his phone vibrate and, wiping his wet hands on his pants grabbed it from his back pocket. He saw the message from Eddie and belly laughed so hard at seeing Christopher eating cereal with that caption that Lucy was able to duck away when Bobby turned to Buck instead, intrigued.

Typing back, Buck was grinning by the time he put his phone away. Chimney was grumbling about a tough spot of dirt he couldn’t get off and went to grab a new towel, and Bobby walked over to Buck.

“Sorry, sorry,” Buck said hastily, grabbing a sponge and getting to work as he put his phone away. Bobby shook his head, grabbing an abandoned rag and cleaning up part of the truck, side by side with Buck. He smiled as they worked.

“Nothing to be sorry for. Just curious, now I know.” Bobby said pensively, and Buck cocked his head to the side.

“Know what?”

“What your laugh sounds like.”

It throws Buck for a loop. Because he’s laughed, surely? He’s not been as deep in his thoughts as he usually is. It’s weird and wrong, but Buck's been different since he joined the 118. He laughed when Hen showed him a picture of her son, Denny, in his superhero costume, which was just Nacho Libre, and he laughed when Chimney spat his gum into the trashcan from ten feet away.

He’s not been miserable here, the opposite. He’s… lighter.

He knows he shouldn’t be saying that like a mantra: don’t get too close, don’t get too comfortable. It’s been just about a week, though, and it’s already proven hard. Because he does want to meet Karen, actually, and he does have opinions about what color Lucy should dye her hair, and he really wants to learn how Bobby makes bread from scratch, but that’s not allowed.

Don’t get too close, don’t get too comfortable.

“I’ve laughed,” Buck argues weakly.

Bobby turns to him, a knowing look in his eyes. “Not like that.”

And now Eddie and Christopher are visiting today. They’re coming by real soon. Buck knows because Eddie messaged him an update, and Buck smiled and read the message over and over again. He told everyone several times over, and they all nodded their heads and exchanged looks with each other when they thought he wasn’t watching.

What he feels is wrong, he knows. Eddie and Christopher are not his to feel this way over. He has to be careful not to get sucked into this. Not to expect this, the way he’s already begun to. He can’t wake up and check his phone for a message from them or pull up the pictures and stare down at them in the truck on the way back from a call. He has to stop.

After this, this last meeting, Buck will have a chance to say goodbye to them, and then that’s it. Buck will stop messaging, and he’ll just be a fun memory in Christopher’s mind. Buck can live with that, he thinks. He’ll say goodbye to them and bide his time at the 118 before he fucks up, and Bobby transfers him, and he’ll be back where he should be. And no one has to see anything, any of the horror he carries inside him.

There’s noise from downstairs, and Buck jumps up instinctively. Bobby turns his head and watches Buck, spooked like a bird before he smiles calmly and heads down. Buck scrambles behind and barely notices the others trickle over to watch from overhead.

He loses sight of whatever is happening around him with his colleagues because walking through the front of the station is Christopher and Eddie. Buck feels his chest thump painfully, too small to contain the feelings that erupt in him as Christopher grins at him, calling out his name as he makes a beeline to him. Buck braces for impact, letting out an “oof” as Chris collides into a hug with him. As if possessed, Buck reaches down and clutches Christopher closely, leaning up and sweeping the kid off his feet. The sound of Chris’ giggles echoes in Buck’s bones, and he eventually lets go.

When he looks up into Eddie’s warm eyes, he feels breathless again. His tongue is locked in his mouth, and he knows he should say something, do something, but it’s so hard when faced with all of Eddie Diaz.

Bobby reaches over instead, shaking hands with Eddie as he introduces himself, and Buck takes a moment to knock some sense into his head and clear his throat.

“Bobby Nash, Captain of the 118. It’s good to see you both again, welcome,” Bobby pats a warm hand on Christopher’s shoulder and looks at Buck, mirth written all over his face. Buck wants to scowl but keeps it together enough to wave, embarrassingly, at Eddie.

Which is ridiculous, he knows. He’s been talking to Eddie nonstop for days now; he shouldn’t be so, God, shy about seeing him, it’s humiliating. Eddie smiles brilliantly and then waves back.

“Hi, Buck. Thanks again, for today. We’ve been excited all week,” Chris nods at his dad’s words, and Buck lets out a little laugh.

“Thanks for coming. Uh, I’ve only been here for a little while, so I might be a bit rusty for a proper tour, I asked if we could have someone help –”

Eddie shakes his head, stepping up and behind Christopher. “No, no. We’re good. You’ll be fine.” His tone is final, in a reassuring way, and Buck can see how being a dad sits well with Eddie. Like he was meant to always be a father, it was built into his genes.

“Oh,” Buck offers, and then looks to Bobby. He’d asked his Captain for approval to invite the Diaz’s for a tour and then for support with said tour so he didn’t miss anything that would entertain a kid. Buck wasn’t usually selected to do the presentations to the school kids who came to visit. He gets really nervous when the kids come to the station, too nervous that he would mess up, say the wrong thing, and ruin it. He always felt like he was terrible around kids. Never had a good idea of how adults were actually meant to treat children.

With a clap of his hands, Bobby starts to walk backward. “Well, Buck’s got this handled, then. You’re in great hands. Firefighter Buckley, I expect to see Firefighter Diaz with a helmet on and in the truck before the day is up.” Bobby winks at Chris, and with that, he’s gone.

Buck looks between Eddie and Christopher, their smiles repeated exactly the same on each of their faces, and there’s a twist in Buck’s stomach. He wants, so badly, to see them again and again and again, but he swallows. Just this, and then that’s it.

Don’t get too close, don’t get too comfortable.

He makes the most of it. He shows Chris around, introducing them to Hen and Ravi and Lucy and Chimney. They wander around, staring at it all, and Buck rambles about facts, like when the station was built and the historic bell that's still around for when they’d sound an alarm to the firefighters. He grabs the cake he bought out from the fridge, and Ravi’s getting forks as Lucy grabs a knife and Eddie catches Buck’s eyes. He tilts his head, eyebrows raised, and Buck can hear the unspoken. You didn’t have to do this. Buck tucks his chin down. He knows. He just really, really wanted to.

Chris eats two slices, despite Eddie’s protests, but the others wouldn’t hear it. They take him to slide down the infamous pole, and when Bobby finally comes out for cake, Chris turns on his most charming smile as he asks Bobby about his opinion on adopting dogs for the station, and Buck laughs loudly when Bobby hems and haws.

He feels something collide with his side, and he sees Eddie lean his shoulder on his, tipped into his space. Buck’s breath catches as Eddie slowly blinks a smile at Buck, his face flushed pink, and Buck realizes the feeling that’s tugging under his breastbone.

It’s longing. Yearning. A craving.

With a startling jolt, Buck understands. He wants this so badly, wants this feeling to stay, and not because he’s deprived himself of it for decades. Not because Eddie’s ridiculously sweet or Chris is the best kid he’s ever met. Not because Bobby and Hen and Chimney feel like people he’s known for a lifetime. It’s because he truly wants them, like this, in his life. He wants to have this, and he also wants to be there when Chris crashes from the sugar high and for Eddie to scold Buck for enabling it. He wants Hen to shove him when they play video games and Chimney to ramble to him about some conspiracy theory and Ravi to step on his boot when Buck refuses to share the coffee and Lucy to roll her eyes as he gives her bad dating advice. He wants Bobby to smile at him in the early morning in the firehouse kitchen as they make coffee together. He can almost taste it, can almost see what that would look like in another life. And fuck, Buck’s burning up with how badly he wants it all.

He simmers in the feeling as he watches Bobby scramble away from Chris’s puppy dog eyes to go get a little red plastic helmet for him, and then they’re in the firetruck, and Buck’s showing Chris the countless buttons inside. He watches, helpless, as Chris laughs and Eddie stares down at him lovingly, and Buck swallows the lump in his throat. Chimney hollers for Chris to sound the sirens, and Hen walks Chris through all the water valves on the truck.

Eddie tugs at Buck a little, and they take a small step back as Chris listens attentively to Hen. “Hey, I just wanted to say again, thanks so much for doing all of this. It means a lot to me and Chris, that you went to all this effort,” Eddie’s saying this all with his hand on Buck’s shoulder, staring at him as his thumb rests gently on the side of Buck’s neck, and Buck worries that Eddie will feel the way his heart stutters along inside him, clawing to get close to the contact.

Buck nods, not sure what to say, really. He thinks, "Who wouldn’t do this for you both?" And then he thinks, "I’d do this every day, if I could, to see you both," but he catches himself.

Just this, and then that’s it.

It’s time to call it, Buck knows. They’ve shown them the whole station through and through, so much that they even sat around and played a couple rounds of video games together to the soundtrack of Eddie’s mumbled Spanish curses and Christopher’s gleeful gloating as he wins yet again, and now they’re walking outside. The others milled around but cleared off now, giving them a semblance of privacy after saying goodbye. They stop by Eddie’s truck, and Buck wants to reach out and stop them, bring them back inside, and start again, loop it over so he doesn’t have to be here, letting go.

Chris leans his crutches against the truck before turning and reaching up to Buck. Buck ducks down, letting Christopher’s arms circle his shoulders, and Buck worries that he’s clutching back too hard, but Chris leans his head onto Buck’s. He exhales heavily, feeling like he’s drowning as he prepares himself to pull away and say goodbye to Chris. He doesn’t want to shape the words in his mouth, but he knows he has to.

After a long moment, Chris leans back and smiles. “Thank you for today, Buck.”

“Of course, Chris. I had a lot of fun. Thanks for coming to visit me,” Buck leaves his hand on Christopher’s shoulder as he grabs his crutches, letting it slip off as he steps back.

His stomach is in knots when he finally turns to Eddie. Looking up, their eyes connect. Buck can’t read what he sees in Eddie’s eyes, but it feels like Eddie’s looking for something, the way his eyes dart between Buck’s. Buck’s jaw clenches instinctively, hands flexing, and Eddie hesitates on whatever it is he’s thinking.

Finally, he reaches out, hand on Buck’s arm, reeling in. He wraps one arm around Buck’s shoulder, the other under his waist, and Buck freezes before molding himself around the embrace. One last moment, Buck says to himself. Just this, and then nothing else. Buck smells Eddie’s hair, like coconuts, and feels the material of Eddie’s shirt beneath his fingertips, and can hear Eddie’s exhale on his neck, and it’s all too much and not even close to enough. Buck thinks he could spend hours cataloging this feeling and wouldn’t be able to scratch the surface of what it feels like to be in Eddie’s arms.

He isn’t sure who falls back first or if they both naturally pull apart at the same time, but Buck’s watching as Eddie fiddles with his car keys. The sun’s in their eyes, but Eddie still stares at him steadily.

“Are you free Friday?”

No. That’s the right answer. He’ll say no, and Eddie and Chris will accept it, and then they’ll forget one another over time, and it’ll be like it should be.

“Yes.”

No, Buck meant to say no. What the hell is he doing?

“Great, we have movie nights on Fridays. Next week is Chicken Run; you should come.” Eddie sounds breathless, but Buck isn’t sure why he would be. Buck’s going to open his mouth and make up some excuse. He’s working, he’s seeing Maddie, he has to do his taxes. Anything. But then there's a little voice saying –

“Please, Buck?”

And it’s as simple as that. Chris asks him, Eddie looks at him, and Buck knows his answer.

“Of course.”

***

Buck deliberately doesn’t think about it, about how massively he messed up by agreeing to see Eddie and Chris again, as he walks back into the station. He’s got Eddie’s address, Chris’ request for more cake, Eddie's warning look over his kid’s head, and Buck’s light-headed with it all. He heads over to find Bobby and bumps into Hen.

She smiles at him, patting his back. “You’ve been holding out on us, Buckley,” Hen accuses, and Buck stills. “You’re on the school visit rotations from here on out.” She tells him pleasantly as she grabs her phone and goes to sit down. Buck shakes his head, panicking at the thought.

“No, no. I’m bad at that stuff; you wouldn’t want me doing that.” Buck argues, and Hen pauses, clearly hearing what’s hidden in his tone. Chimney, who’s lying across a chair, half falling off it, looks up at him, too. “I’m no good with kids. You should just keep having Ravi do it.”

Hen frowns and crosses her arms. “Why do you say that? You were great with Chris.”

He waves his hand in front of them. “Chris is different. I just, I’m bad with kids, trust me.” The pit in his stomach returns at the thought.

Buck doesn’t know, that’s the issue. He has no clue what is appropriate to say or do. The last thing he wants is to upset any of them. And he definitely doesn’t want them to ever feel how he did growing up. He imagines he could just do the opposite of what his parents did.

His fingers clench over the back of the chair he’s gripping, and Hen tilts her head as she looks him over. Chimney looks between them both. Hen leans back coolly and nods. “Well, if that’s how you feel.” She trails off, and Buck sighs, relieved, as he nods. “But let me know if you change your mind about that. Karen and I wouldn’t mind some extra help with babysitting if you ever decide you’re not as bad with kids as you claim.” Hen turns back to her phone, and Chimney has a smirk on his face.

Buck only hears white noise as he reels from Hen’s offer because why would she say that? She shouldn’t trust him, not with Denny and Nia, he knows she can’t. Buck’s not safe enough or good enough. He turns and goes to Bobby’s office, knocking and waiting for Bobby’s call, like a child at his parent’s door. He shakes the thought from his head as quickly as it enters and opens the door.

Bobby has a satisfied expression on his face as he leans back in his chair. He motions for Buck to take a seat, but Buck feels on edge and stands. Bobby frowns and then stands up, too.

“You alright, Buck?”

Buck can’t focus, his lungs constricting. Why would Hen trust Buck with something like that? She doesn’t know him.

“Buck?”

He needs to calm down, thank Bobby, and get out of here. He needs to stop fucking up all the time, but Buck’s always had trouble with that. Just another thing to add to the list.

He feels strong hands land gently on his biceps, rubbing up and down slightly, and he sees Bobby’s eyes peer at him, concerned. Like his ears are popping, Buck can hear again.

“What happened?”

Shaking, Buck exhales unevenly. Nothing, nothing. I’m fine, thanks. Thanks for today, I’ll just get out of your hair.

“Was I okay? With Chris, I mean. Do you think,” Buck hesitates and then bites his tongue. Unsure of how to really phrase it, Buck stutters on his words. “D-do you think he was okay today with, with me?”

Bobby’s face shutters as he takes in Buck’s questions. Like he’s holding a spooked animal, Bobby speaks softly. “Yeah, yeah, I do. Chris had a great time. You did really well today.” Buck nods back shakily and lets out the lungful of air he had stuck inside him.

Bobby waits and then steps back once the breathing gets easier. Buck feels exhausted and leans back against the filing cabinet behind him. He watches as Bobby mirrors him, leaning back against his desk. They stare at one another for a moment before Buck closes his eyes.

And before Buck can start to berate himself, Bobby jumps in.

“Listen, Buck. You did a great job today. You were keeping an eye on Chris the whole time, making sure he was safe and had fun. Same as Eddie did.”

Buck wants to protest because that is laughably untrue. They’re so different. Eddie’s leagues ahead of Buck when it comes to this, Buck doesn’t even register on the same wavelength. His hands shake just from the thought of this all. But then Bobby leans forward, and Buck looks at him. He’s serious, stern.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Buck. You did well. How do you feel?”

“Good,” Buck says immediately, and he means it. He loved it, every second, even when he thought he’d never see them again, he wouldn’t change a thing.

Bobby smiles. “Good.” He gets up and pats Buck’s shoulder again. He lingers, hovering. “You know, I felt like that all the time. First was when I found out I was going to be a dad. Hell, I nearly passed out. I was terrified I was going to mess up, say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing. Hurt them.” Buck stills beneath him, but Bobby keeps going. “Love changes that, though. The second I held them in my arms for the first time, something just clicked, you know? I would do anything for them; I love them so much. The fears never went, they just changed.” He has a watery smile, and the lump in Buck’s throat swells. “Kids are funny like that.”

When Buck leaves that night, walking out of the station to the sight of Bobby waving at them all, he ducks his head and drives home fast. He digs out a little cardboard box from the back of his closet. He swipes the top, a fine layer of dust clinging to it. He inhales deeply and lifts the lid. He picks up a piece of paper, reading the words over and over, the same ones he has memorized since he was a child, the sting in his eyes making it harder to read. Every year, he'd read the card again and again, and every year, the same feeling came back to him. He’d read it on his birthday and picked at the old wound until it burst, bleeding bright red all over him. He digs at the feeling, letting it cover him fully, and then he puts the card back, closes up the box, and hides it again.

Buck curls up on the floor, and sobs.

He isn’t sure how long he does that when his phone lights up. He swallows down the clawing cry bubbling up in his throat to check it, fear of what he’d find there waiting for him.

[Eddie] You’ve got my kid info dumping fun facts now, by the way. Did you know there are four different types of fire extinguishers? And apparently, we have the wrong type in our home… You’re gonna have to take a look at that for us on Friday.

Buck blinks. He sets his phone down, letting it fumble between his fingers, and his head falls back to the floor. He searches in the dark for something, but he isn’t sure what. His heart lurches constantly, and he tries to breathe normally again. Inhale, exhale. He practices the breathing techniques Maddie taught him.

He gets up. He washes his face. Stares in the mirror. Watches the reflection, looking back at him. He goes downstairs, turns on the kettle, makes a cup of tea. Waits.

Waits.

Buck picks up his phone. He texts back.

***

It's become a pattern, but not intentionally. It’s just a pattern that Buck’s always been used to, and the 118 have to come to terms with. Because Buck’s always the one who singes his fingers, who cuts his arm on broken glass, who dives in headfirst to the water and gets frozen solid. He’s used to it; he needs to do it, and others have always hated it, but he can’t stop. Even when Bobby frowns, or Hen tuts or Chimney sighs. When Ravi stares or Lucy grimaces, it’s not enough for Buck to refrain the next time. They bandage him up, and they keep going.

But unlike at his other stations, they call him out, especially on the bigger things. Like right now, when his helmet gets knocked off at their call, and he hits his head on a beam so hard he nearly passes out, Buck gets called out by Bobby right away, and then he’s sent over to get checked over. Buck wants to protest, but Bobby’s already starting in on a rant that they all need to buckle their helmets, and Buck’s complaints are completely ignored as he’s carted off to Cedars-Sinai.

Buck’s pouting, but no one cares as he’s dumped out onto a bed he clearly doesn’t need, and he’s waiting for them to discharge him with a simple concussion when he walks in, and Buck gapes, his heart stupidly races to greet him at the door.

“You idiot,” Eddie hisses, his hands reaching up and testing Buck’s eyes with his pen light. “What happened to you?”

He isn’t able to get the words out as he takes in Eddie at work. They’ve texted nearly every day, which is a feat considering they’ve known each other for months now, and Buck’s been over for enough movie nights that it’s turned into a recurring facet of his schedule, so much so it’s a habit he can’t break now, doesn't want to, and he has no clue how it happened.

But he hasn’t ever seen Eddie at work before.

Buck’s been pretty good on calls since he joined the 118, usually getting one of theirs to wrap him up in the back of the ambulance, but today, he got caught up in helping the elderly man get out of his blazing care home that he didn’t care about being extra careful in the process. And now he’s here, and Eddie’s at work, and his scrubs are dark blue and fit perfectly around his biceps in a way that must be incredibly rewarding to patients.

Buck’s staring, he knows, but what a sight. Eddie’s hair is mused up again, his stubble a little more grown out than usual, and he smells like coffee and coconuts. There’s a tugging in Buck’s gut that has him desperately wanting to pivot forward and inhale, nudge right into Eddie’s neck like he belongs there, and Buck must be woozier than he thought because woah, no. Not allowed at all.

There’s a scowl on Eddie’s face, and Buck stares at it.

“Don’t pout at me, Buck,” Eddie sighs and then puts his hands on his hips. “Headache?” Nod. “Nausea?” Shake. “Dizziness?” Nod. Whoops, that makes the dizziness much worse, now he thinks about it.

They go through more tests, Eddie’s expression getting tighter as they go on, and eventually, Buck can't help but reach up, grabbing Eddie’s hand and tugging to get his full attention.

“What’s wrong?”

Eddie blinks. Raises an eyebrow, eyes wide. “What’s wrong?” He echoes and then scoffs. “What’s wrong is that I had to hear from Linda that you were here in the hospital because your helmet got knocked off at a call, and you have a concussion. That’s not something I want to hear, Buck. Do you guys even use the strap to buckle your helmets to your big heads?” Eddie fusses with a chart, and his jaw seems clenched.

“Oh,” Buck says, and he can feel the fog in his brain, which isn’t a good sign, but he can also carry on their conversation and vaguely be alright with the light out in the hallway streaming into his room, which can’t be a bad sign all things considered. But then Eddie's there, looking really upset, and Buck doesn't want that at all.

“Yeah, oh. Dios Mio, give me strength,” Eddie rubs at his temple and then crosses his arms over his chest. “Don’t do that to me, Buckley,” Eddie points a finger at Buck, looking stern. Buck looks at it, catching the smooth skin and light brush of hair on his knuckles.

He’s going to apologize. He is. Because he doesn’t want to drag Eddie into this like he does Maddie. Buck told himself right when they met it was never meant to go this far. Buck will apologize, and he’ll start tomorrow. He’ll back off, won’t crave being in everyone’s lives, and feeling warmth in his chest. He’ll stop. He’ll apologize and stop.

“You have really nice hands.”

Wait, Buck didn’t mean to say that. Fuck. Eddie goes red in his cheeks, and the little furrow in his brow disappears as his mouth drops open slightly.

“I mean, I’m sorry. You don’t have to worry about me, though, Eddie. This is my job.”

Judging from how Eddie softens slightly, Buck wonders if he gets it. Buck winces, his head throbbing, and Eddie dims the lights in the room fully as he mutters something under his breath that Buck can’t quite catch.

“I’ll call Maddie to come pick you up and keep an eye on you,” Eddie explains, his hand resting right beside Buck’s on the bed. Buck looks down at it and feels a tugging in his chest. “You need to be careful, though, Buck. You’re important, I don’t want to see you hurt.” Buck looks up, seeing the crease around Eddie's eyes. He hates it viciously and then hates himself for putting it there. Buck watches, detached, as his hand reaches up and smooths out the lines. Eddie’s chest expands, and he inhales sharply at the touch. Buck lets his hand drop abruptly, and it just so happens it lands on one of Eddie’s.

“I’m sorry.” It’s all his fault.

Pink dusts across Eddie’s face, and he harrumphs as he grabs his phone and pulls up his contact list. As he searches for Maddie’s number, Buck thinks. Berates himself, is furious at himself. Because Eddie cares about him, and he was never supposed to. Buck wasn't meant to bring Eddie down. Selfishly, this is what Buck's dreamt of all along, and he isn’t sure how to make himself stop begging for this when he desperately doesn’t want it to end. But he has to, doesn't he?

Eddie’s hand stays beneath Buck’s. Eddie doesn't leave until Maddie comes, and even then, he's there when Buck finally gets discharged. He leaves with a pat on Buck's shoulder, this thumb lingering on Buck's pulse, and it jumps, trying to reach him.

***

“There they are!” Hen yells, ducking under Chimney’s arms, who is already reaching out in greeting to the crowd walking into the station. Buck looks up, alarmed, before he watches the scene unfold in front of him.

Hen grabs a little baby girl from a woman’s arms, laying kisses all over her face as the woman laughs sweetly, a little boy stands between them. Buck’s heard of them before, of course, he has and takes a step over to watch them. He takes in how Chimney and Lucy give out hugs.

“Isn’t this a treat,” Hen grins and then turns, looking across the bay until she lands on Buck. “Over here!” She says in joy, and Buck doesn't need to be asked twice before he's hurrying right over.

“Here,” Hen maneuvers the little girl, Nia, Buck remembers, in her arms to gesture between them. “Buck, this is my wife, Karen,” Buck smiles as Karen beams at him, and Hen waves to the little boy. “And this is our son, Denny, and this, this is little Nia.” Hen finishes with a tap to the little girl’s nose, and Buck melts. They exchange handshakes and hugs, Bobby and Ravi walking in too.

It’s funny, Buck thinks. He’s been running away from anything that even resembled intimacy at work, in his personal life, everywhere. He tried to keep himself contained and spent so much of his life pretending he was content that way. And then he lands here, of all places, where the people practically live under one roof. Buck’s very aware that Lucy and Ravi go clubbing on a biweekly basis, that Chimney was the best man at Hen and Karen’s wedding, and that Bobby invites them over to his home all the time. Buck doesn't know how to fit in and knows he isn't allowed to.

Karen starts gossiping with Chimney and Lucy immediately, catching up about something that predates Buck, and Hen is showing off Nia to a clearly enamored Bobby and cautious Ravi. Buck looks around and catches sight of Denny, lingering by the trucks and meandering around, clearly bored. He reminds Buck of Christopher, just a little, the way he stares around in quiet wonder.

Buck steps up beside him and points to the top of the truck, where the ladder has collapsed. “Anyone ever let you go up there?” He asks, and Denny turns, surprised, and shakes his head quickly.

They pause, looking at one another. Buck shrugs his shoulders and pockets his hands.

“You want to?”

And that’s how Hen berates Buck for a full twenty minutes that afternoon, with Karen laughing so hard she cries, Bobby stifling a fist into his mouth, and Chimney cackling gleefully. Ravi makes a beeline for the exit, something about shouting women making him nervous, and Buck’s fairly sure Lucy’s gone to make them all popcorn.

But it’s worth it when Hen sighs and cuffs the back of Buck’s head with a slight smile to turn around and see Denny grinning widely at him. Buck instinctively reaches over, his fist held out, and Denny returns it with his own.

“You’re a good time, I bet,” Karen says, wiping her eyes as she walks over to him. She looks so happy, radiating a sense of joy around her that Buck can feel is infectious. He feels like they’re opposites, in a way. She’s a sun, and he’s a moon, she’s light, and he’s dark. Buck almost feels envious of her.

Buck leans back against the truck, hunched over, as everyone starts to move around them again. He hears Bobby mention calling someone to invite them for lunch, and Buck feels the weight in his pocket, Eddie’s number burning a hole in his thigh, waiting for Buck to use it.

He doesn’t pull his phone out. He really, really wants to.

Buck turns back to Karen. “I’m not sure about that.” He tries to smile and shrug off the comment, but Karen sees right through him, staring right at the center of him.

“Well, you should come over sometime. It’s good for Denny to run out some energy, and I get the feeling you’d be happy to oblige.” Karen pats his arm, smiling again, before whisking herself off to Hen, planting a kiss on her cheek.

Bobby is in a great mood and makes a giant pot of pasta with homemade garlic bread and salad for them all, and Buck watches them all pull up seats and plates and napkins. He wavers, not sure where he fits in, and then Bobby nudges his shoulder. “Cutlery, Buckley,” Bobby nods to the drawers, and he wanders over with the pot of pasta as Buck does as he’s asked.

They’ve all nearly sat down when another person joins, and Bobby gets up to kiss her cheek. Buck’s eyebrows raise, and he immediately gets up from his chair while the others watch him. His body’s moving without his permission, but he steps over and holds out his hand.

Because he knows this woman, he's heard all about her from Bobby, and he doesn't want to screw this up.

“Nice to meet you, Athena, I’m Buck,” He offers and watches as she gives him a casual once-over. She’s scarily intimidating, and Buck almost can’t picture the two of them together, Bobby and Athena. But he’s heard the stories and knows how much they’ve gone through together. He can see it in how they gravitate towards one another, how Bobby smiles down at Athena, and his hand rests on her waist. Athena leans back against him. For some reason, Buck really, really wants her to like him.

“Good to meet you too, Buck. I’m Athena; I'm sure this one's told you enough stories already about me.” She shakes his hand before going to pat Bobby’s chest, who smiles down at her and leans in for another kiss. Buck stares for a moment before going to sit back down woodenly.

He flexes his hand and tries to quieten his mind before the idea starts to take root. Because he can see it, can’t he?

One day, he’ll have someone in his arms just like that, he’ll be peering down at them with so much love he can’t contain it anymore, he’ll have to kiss them as they laugh and push him back, embarrassed, flushed in their cheeks. Buck will chase them and watch as their pretty brown eyes close in laughter when Buck grabs and tugs them closer, and their food will get cold because Buck can’t help himself and –

And he needs to stop. He needs to let it go.

So he heaps a pile of food onto his plate and doesn’t watch Bobby pull out Athena’s chair or look at Hen play with Karen’s hair idly, and he ignores the weight of his phone in his pocket. He stabs at a lettuce leaf as Lucy explains her best friend’s latest dating disaster, Chimney comparing it to some TV show he’s watching. He needs to get a grip, he thinks, and stop with the daydreaming. The pretending he fits in here, the –

“Buck?”

Neck snapping up, he looks over and finds Bobby’s gaze boring into him; concern etched in place. Buck’s fork remains hovering in the same place, the same piece of lettuce dangling from it, and he sets it down.

“Sorry, what was that?” Buck feels himself flush lightly, tugging at his collar as everyone looks at him.

“Chimney was asking you if you’d seen that show or not,” Bobby clarifies, and Buck turns to look down at the other end of the table.

“Oh, sorry, man, no. But I think my sister watches it? When she’s not on shift, she’s usually watching some trashy reality dating show or a documentary. She says the balance helps keep her brain from rotting.” Buck looks down, hoping the moment will pass him by.

“Well, next time you see her, ask her if she thinks Ryan should have left with Olivia or not. I think it was totally scripted, the way that Crystal stole him as if Louis would be fine with that, please.” Chim explains with a flourish of his garlic bread, and Buck looks at him like he’s having a nosebleed.

“None of that made any sense. Just, next time we’re at Cedars, I’ll grab her so you can ask her yourself.”

“Sister?” Karen asks, leaning in. “I didn’t know you had a sister; she works at the hospital?”

Bobby looks over at him, and Buck isn’t sure why. “Yeah, she’s a nurse.”

Hen grabs the salad tongs, asking distractedly. “Just you and her?”

Buck freezes.

He can’t get his mouth to work, and he wouldn’t know what to say even if he could. He pictures it, saying yes, just us two, but then what about the way he cried himself to sleep the other night, clutching a polar bear toy to his chest? The way he sobbed as he read the notes tucked in the back of his closet on his birthday?

He can’t get the words to escape his throat, and even when Hen looks up expectantly and Athena stops filling up her glass of water, he can’t make himself say anything at all. Because even if it is just him and Maddie now, it didn’t always used to be that way. He still carries the love inside him; it just hasn’t got anywhere to go now.

Chimney cuts in, and Buck must look like a wild animal because he can see the way Chimney is more solemn, more reserved as he talks. “You know, there’s enough newbies around we could probably do with a get-together?” Buck appreciates the diversion and sinks in his seat. He catches the way Chimney clenches his jaw, his gaze far away.

There’s a clatter of conversation all around them, Athena offering up their home for a barbeque and Karen planning what drinks to bring as Bobby smiles and starts to gather plates. Buck springs up, joining, eager for the distraction, and they clear up in the kitchen.

The sink gets flooded with enough dishes that Buck takes over, rinsing and handing them to Bobby, who loads the dishwasher as the others clear the table. “You should invite some people too, Buck.” Silently, Buck scrubs at a stubborn spot. He won’t go, he knows that. “You can bring Maddie, and Eddie and Chris. I’m sure they’d have a good time. And you can meet my kids, too.” Buck’s heart clenches, and he wants to say yes, badly, to see inside this home filled with the love of his Captain and get to cherish the moments he's invited in.

He has a ‘no’ just about to fall from his lips when Bobby lays a gentle hand on his forearm when Buck next goes to hand over a plate. “We’d really like you to be there.” Buck pauses, not sure what to say, as Bobby releases his hand to take the dish. “Besides,” he continues, “I can teach you my barbeque ribs recipe, Ravi’s been dying to try them for months now.” He pats Buck’s shoulder, and they let Athena and Hen plan the details in the background as Buck stews it over.

He really, really wants to go.

Buck calls Maddie when he dries his hands, and she cuts him off after barely three sentences to say yes. She's gone again before he can blink. He hesitates, looking down at his phone and turning it over before he pulls up another contact and hits the call button.

It rings twice before connecting. “Hello?”

It curls around Buck, the warmth he feels when he hears the voice. “Hey, it’s me.”

Eddie lets out a soft chuckle. “Hey Buck, you alright?”

“Yeah, sorry, is now a good time?” Buck wanders over to the locker room, getting distracted on his way as Karen reaches over to hug him goodbye, kids in tow.

“Now’s great, but is it a good time for you?” Eddie laughs as he hears the voices on Buck's end, with Denny saying his goodbyes with a grin and Buck reaching out one more time to run a finger over Nia’s cheeks as they leave.

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, saying bye to some of my coworker’s family.”

“Oh?” Eddie sounds curious but doesn’t ask anything else.

“Yeah. Uh, I won’t keep you long, just had a quick question. Are you free next weekend? On Sunday?”

There’s a long pause, enough for Buck to check if the call dropped. No, it's still connected. He raises the phone back up to his ear, his stomach wrapped in knots. Was that too much? Probably, and now Eddie's uncomfortable and thinking of ways to say no.

“Eddie?”

“Yes! Yeah, sorry, uh, something… just came up here, but I’m good. Yes, for sure, I’m free next Sunday, totally. All free. Why, what’s up?”

“Oh. Great, uh, I wanted to invite you and Christopher to my Captain’s place for a barbeque. The station is going to be there, and since you met them all already, I figured you might not mind tagging along if you want?” Buck winces, hoping it doesn’t come across as creepy, weird, or desperate. He knows they do movie nights now, they text, they call, but maybe Eddie likes it quiet, private. Separate. Maybe he has enough Buck in his life the way it is. Buck was half-tempted to throw the words back in his mouth and chew on them when he finally got a response.

“We’d love to join you, Buck, of course. We’ll be there, count us in.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“Great,” It comes out so breathless, and Buck hits his head against a door in embarrassment. He coughs loudly. “Great! Nice, uh, they’ll also be some other kids there, Bobby and Hen have sons around Christopher’s age, so uh, he doesn’t have to worry, in case that comes up. And if Chris doesn’t want to go, I totally understand, no pressure from me at all. I can see him at movie night or –”

“Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“We’ll be there.”

They talk a little longer, starting to creep into conversations about anything and everything in between. Somehow, they end up talking about Eddie’s sock choices when Lucy finally knocks on the door of the locker room and peers her head in. “Cap’s looking for you. We got work to do, pretty boy,” Lucy winks as she leaves, and Buck pulls the phone back to his ear.

“Sorry, work calls,” Buck smiles ruefully, realizing belatedly how long they spent talking, and a warmth in his chest spreads all over his body at the thought.

“Pretty boy?” Eddie parrots, and Buck groans.

“Lucy thinks she’s funny.”

“I bet she does.”

“She does it to make fun of me.”

“I’m sure that’s why.”

“I’ll speak to you soon, Eddie.”

“Be safe, Buck.”

***

Buck’s tracing a groove in his kitchen’s tiles just a few days later. It’s his day off, mid-week, and he has nothing left to do. He spent the majority of the day running errands alone, cleaning up, and trying to keep calm to no success, and now the sun’s setting, and he’s itching at himself. He’s so tempted to call Eddie, but he doesn’t want to bug him. He’s so scared to push Eddie too much. He’ll see him at the barbeque; he needs to pace it. Even though Buck really wants to see if Chris is finished with his English assignment on To Kill a Mockingbird because Buck loves that novel. He hopes Chris liked it, too. Maybe they could watch that at movie night? No, it's Eddie's turn, and he wants to watch that lame new action movie.

In between paces, Buck weighs up his options of what to do to abate the nerves in his pulse when suddenly, the phone in his hand lights up with a call.

Eddie Diaz.

He hushes his dumb heart that starts kicking in a staccato rhythm at the name and picks up. “Hey,” he says, resuming his pacing, now restless at the sudden attention.

It’s hushed, just a quick greeting from Eddie, and Buck’s intrigued, especially when it sounds like he’s walking away from some noise, the click of a door sounding across the call.

“What’s up?” Buck asks as he plays with the takeout menu in front of him, weighing up what he wants to eat for dinner as he attempts to be calm, collected. He doesn’t think about Eddie being around other people and tries his hardest not to picture Eddie and his friends and how Buck’s not there, too.

“Nothing, nothing. Just saying hi.” It sounds squeaky, something Buck's very not used to hearing come from Eddie, and then there’s a thump like a knock on a door, and Buck squints as he hears a voice come through. A voice he recognizes instantly.

“Is that… Is that Maddie?” Buck questions incredulously, and he hates it, the crawling in his stomach that makes him ache at the idea that Eddie and Maddie spend time together, just them, and that it’s serious enough that they have to keep it quiet from Buck. How long has it been going on? Did they agree not to tell Buck to spare his feelings? His hands tear at the menu in front of him, and he glances at his bathroom, wondering if he'll have to make a break for the toilet to dry heave.

It’s muffled, as if Eddie put his phone against his chest, but Buck can clearly hear the “Knock it off!” There's suddenly another voice, closer and more masculine, that comes through next, mumbled but familiar.

Buck processes slowly. “Is that Josh?”

It’s clearer now, Eddie finally putting the receiver back to his ear. “Sorry, yeah. And Linda’s here, too. There’s some dumb group chat they added me to –”

“Lord Have MRSA?”

“How do you – never mind. And they have –”

“Wine nights?”

“Yeah. I guess you do know about it, then. Well, now I’m trapped here, and they keep asking me things, and I need you to tell me how to get out of here.”

Buck’s laughing now, the tension in his chest easing, the menu in his hands torn but no longer crinkling in his fist. “Why me?”

“It’s your sister! Come on, what do I do here, what's my plan?”

“You do realize you have a son, right? Instant excuse, just say he needs you for something and go,” Buck smiles, a gentle thing, as he hears Eddie panicking. Feels a tingle in his palms because Eddie calls him, and he thinks that Buck can help him.

“I can’t do that! They’ll see right through me,” Eddie sighs lowly, and there’s another knock on the door as Eddie calls back with an exasperated tone. “Occupied!”

Buck’s shaking his head, biting at a grin, and then his phone buzzes again.

Maddie Buckley.

He grins.

“Sorry, Eddie, I’ve got Maddie on the other line, isn't that crazy timing? Give me a minute -” Buck transfers his call out to the sounds of Eddie going, “No, wait, don’t –”

“Sister?”

“Brother.”

“How can I help you this evening?”

Maddie’s evil, Buck's known this. He's watched her tear down bodybuilders in the hospital who refuse to listen to her. She would tackle kids twice her height in the playground if they made fun of her or Buck, and she's smart with it, too. She’s got a smirk in her tone Buck can hear from here. “Oh, well. Let me paint you a picture. Here I am, hosting a little get-together for my coworkers, and I think to myself, ‘Oh, what about Eddie? He’s new and maybe looking to make friends with people in the area.’ And out of the goodness of my own heart -” Here, Josh snorts audibly. “I invite him over to our wine night. And alright, maybe I tell him my little brother’s going to be here too…”

Buck blinks, confused. Maddie hadn’t mentioned anything to him about joining tonight, he's sure. He hasn’t been to a wine night since Josh scoffed at his lack of pop culture knowledge and told him to come back once he knew who Ariana Grande was. Maddie continues. “So then Eddie turns up here after work, dressed very nicely, mind you.” Someone in the background says, “He’s wearing cologne!” Which starts Maddie on that train of thought. “Oh yeah, he’s got on cologne. And what a silly mistake, I tell him, I forgot to invite Buck after all! But it’s alright, we can still do wine, just us four, come on in, Eddie.”

Buck ignores the way his heart is galloping in his chest, his breathing picking up, because he can see the signs Maddie’s putting in front of him, but he knows that can’t be it. It can’t. Buck doesn't even want to think of it, it's ludicrous. “Maddie, what’s going on?”

“I’m just saying, isn't it a little funny how Eddie was excited all shift for tonight, but right now it seems like someone kicked his puppy. Almost like he can’t wait to get out of here, huh?” Maddie’s glee is apparent through the line, and Buck’s heart keeps beating out of rhythm, and he’s nervous and giddy and his cheeks are burning but Maddie’s wrong, she does this, she gets excited and everything seems wonderful through her eyes and so simple but it’s not. It's never like that.

He can hear Eddie once more but it’s distant, Buck thinks he can make it out but then Maddie yelps and he hears Eddie much more clearly now. “What were they saying? Buck?”

There’s a pause. No one says anything, and Buck thinks he can hear a whine on the other end, but he's not sure.

Buck reassures him over the sound of the other’s cackling. “Nothing, Eddie. Maddie gets real mean when she’s a glass of wine deep, just ignore her.” There’s a gasp somewhere on the other side, and he can hear Maddie complain, but she sounds further away now. “She’s a liar, too, so don’t worry about it.”

There’s more silence before Eddie’s murmuring, close and quiet into the phone. “I think she’s just trying to embarrass me. Sorry you got involved.” Buck frowns.

“Don’t apologize at all, it’s just what it’s like to have a sister.”

“Right, yeah. I mean, I have two younger sisters, and it’s the same. Any excuse to make me look like an idiot, I guess.”

“Oh yeah?” Buck asks, curiosity brimming at this new Eddie lore. He feels like Eddie keeps his cards so close to his chest that when things spill out, Buck hoards it greedily, coveted in his hands and cherished.

“Yeah, Sophia and Adriana. They’re a riot, you’ll see.”

You’ll see.

Buck feels like he’s on fire.

It’s impossible to avoid the truth. How he feels this electricity when he’s by Eddie, how his hearts leaps to his throat and how he desperately wants to see Chris at any moment of the day, wants to become part of a system he’s been watching for months now. How Chris will hug him without hesitation and Buck feels part of himself snap back into place, in a way he never thought was real.

But it never will be. This can’t last, Buck reminds himself. And now he's too far gone, he can’t bear the idea of losing either of them but it'll happen, so Buck will stay right where he is, on the periphery, and it’ll be fine again one day. It has to be. Time will heal the wound.

(It won't.)

Buck's lost in the moment, and doesn’t notice that Maddie’s taken her phone back until she’s saying his name. “Buck. Buck. We’re going to have another round of wine and gossip about you some more so we’re hanging up now, if you have anything juicy for us to talk about tell us now.”

Buck pauses. “I have a new tattoo?”

“Boring,” Josh and Maddie say, synchronized.

Hmm. “You can't really see it on me?”

Josh boos. “That tells us nothing.”

Hmmm. “You can't really see it on me even if I’m wearing just my underwear?”

There’s a disgusted groan from Maddie, something like “My eyes!” and Buck laughs. His thigh tattoo will definitely be one of his more private pieces, but he likes the way the flowers creep around him, the way the Chrysanthemums and Marigolds look together in full bloom. His sibling’s birth flowers.

He hears someone else yelp and the sound of choking, coughing, and Buck scratches his neck. Was that too much?

“Perfect, Buckley. Perfect,” Linda cackles, and Maddie gags again. He can hear the eye-roll she gives as she says goodbye.

“Have fun, guys,” Buck says, and before he can hang up, he hears Eddie one last time.

“Bye, Buck. See you for movie night.” The call cuts out.

Everything is too much.

Buck rests his head on his forearms and takes a deep breath. He stands back up and stares straight ahead, then goes to the fridge. He gets out some food, turns on a burner and gets out a pan. He needs a distraction. Bobby’s omelet should do the trick.

His heart doesn’t return to a normal pattern for twenty-seven minutes.

***

It doesn’t get better at the next movie night. It gets so much worse. Eddie will pass a bowl of popcorn over Christopher’s head, and his fingers will linger against Buck’s, and he’ll feel a spark in his hand when he pulls away. There will be a stupid explosion on screen, and Chris will bark out a peal of laughter, and Eddie will turn from his son to smile at Buck so sweetly, and Buck will swallow harshly against the pit that’s stuck in his throat. Buck will say goodnight to Chris, tucking his hair from his face and hugging him, and Eddie will rest a gentle hand on Buck’s waist as he passes by in the hallway, and Buck will stand in the bathroom for five minutes, practicing his breathing as he clutches the sink.

It's getting really bad.

It definitely doesn’t stop at Bobby and Athena’s barbeque because Buck volunteers to pick up Maddie, and then Eddie and Christopher, and they all say yes. But Maddie’s running late, so Buck grabs Eddie and Chris first, and it makes sense that Eddie sits shotgun, except when Maddie walks out from her apartment complex, she immediately sits in the backseat and starts asking Chris about school. And then Eddie just stays where he is, and Buck is smarting in his seat because he wants to reach over so badly to grab Eddie’s hand, but he can’t. It’s the most difficult drive Buck remembers making in a long time.

By the time they make it to Bobby's, Buck swings the Jeep up close to the curb and climbs out in an instant, opening up Christopher’s seat and avoiding eye contact with the others. Buck’s sweating profusely as they get to the front door, trying not to overthink, keep his sanity in check. He isn’t sure how he’ll survive an entire afternoon feeling like this.

There’s a chorus of greetings as they make it through the home, with Bobby leading them in. He brings Buck into a hug, which takes him by surprise, before he shakes hands with the others in tow. Music plays and food's cooking, but Buck feels on edge.

He’s waiting for the other shoe to fall.

They walk into the backyard and catch Karen’s attention first, who grins at them and walks over, Nia in arm.

“You made it!” She says, smiling widely. Buck feels Maddie buzz next to him, at the sight of Nia no doubt, while Eddie glances between them both. Chris wanders a few feet over, checking out the food and drinks all laid out in platters and jugs by the grill.

Buck makes quick introductions, and Maddie’s already got Nia in her arms cooing at her before Eddie’s finished saying hello to Karen. Hen joins, and Buck tries to make more introductions for his sister’s sake, but Maddie’s been whisked away with them to get a glass of wine together before he can make a real start.

Turning, Buck has a smile on his lips when he catches Eddie staring at him.

“What?” Buck asks, running a hand over his hair. “Something on me?”

Shaking his head, Eddie turns away, a squint in his eyes as he grins, wide and boyish. “No, no. You’re all good.”

Tilting his head, Buck scrutinizes Eddie before he hears a yelp from next to them. They watch as Christopher catches a fallen stack of napkins from the table, and then there’s a sheepish Denny scurrying across to pick up a football he definitely threw across the garden.

“Sorry, sorry, thanks for getting that for me, my moms would have killed me,” Denny says to Chris with a small, contrite grin, and Chris smiles broadly back.

“It’s okay, my dad’s worse.”

Buck throws a hand over Eddie’s chest, who had startled immediately at the slander and had already opened his mouth to no doubt rebuke the statement. Without looking, Buck shakes his head and pushes them both back, giving the kids some space.

“Wanna come play with us? Harry’s over there, it’s his ball. We could do something else, though. May said she’d hang with us, too.” And like that, Chris is gone to the wind.

Eddie watches, and rolls his head to Buck. “My reputation is in shambles now, thanks to you.”

“Thanks to your son,” Buck corrects gleefully, and feels lighter than air. Especially as Bobby comes back around to them, Chimney close behind as he dumps a bunch of buns in Buck’s arms and directs him to plating.

It ends up with Bobby grilling burgers and hot dogs and vegetables, Buck putting whatever food is passed to him on plates that Eddie carefully coordinates and hands him, and Chimney getting everyone drinks.

“So, Eddie, how’s the hospital been?” Bobby asks, flipping a hotdog just before it chars. Eddie looks up, clearly not expecting the question, and he breaks out in an easy smile.

“Good, it’s been good. Maddie and Josh have been equal parts helpful, equal parts terrible.”

“I know the feeling, I work with Ravi and Lucy,” Buck snorts, and then there’s a sharp clap to his shoulder and he’s being man-handled into a hug without another word. He goes with it, Eddie grabbing the platter last second before the food falls off it. Buck recognizes the man on the other end instantly.

“Evan Buckley, you’re a sight for sore eyes! You join another team and completely forget about us, huh?” Albert’s grin is full, covering his entire face and Buck thinks he can hear Chimney sigh from the other side of the yard.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Han #2,” Buck offers, and Albert gasps. His melodramatic “Et tu, Brutus” is interrupted by Athena grabbing Bobby, who leaves his tongs in Eddie's possession, who seems, once again, completely thrown by the series of events.

Eddie looks like a puppy, lost and turning on the spot, and Buck feels warm all over. There’s an ease to Eddie as he takes it all in stride in a way Buck would once have been jealous of, but now he just admires. He loves how Eddie can rise to every occasion, how he fits in and tries and pushes constantly for what he needs, what Chris needs. How he doesn't back down, how secure he is, in himself, especially in Chris. He’s one of the best people Buck knows, just so thoroughly a good man.

Albert huffs, trying to hook an arm over Buck’s shoulder and pull him down, but Buck fights back. It turns into an all-out scuffle, and he can feel Albert laugh against his forearm as Buck bites back a bark of laughter of his own.

“Okay, anyone want to tell me why my brother has managed to get into a physical fight?” He hears Maddie ask loudly, while Hen cheers. Buck manages to look up and sees Eddie hiding his face behind his hand while Maddie watches, confused. Chimney comes up behind her, right as Albert sticks a wet finger in Buck’s ear.

“Are you kidding me?” Buck screeches, and Albert cackles as Chimney exhales, very loudly.

“Oh, I can answer that. It's because my brother is incapable of resisting childish forms of affection, it seems,” Chim responds, and Buck just about catches as Maddie turns to him, startled, before she laughs. Albert’s head is locked under Buck’s armpit and he’s clearly struggling, but Buck’s watching the way Chim stares at Maddie, a soft look in his expression. Has Chim ever had that expression before? Buck can't remember, and he drops Albert, who shrieks as he falls, and he steps over him before there’s a hand on his wrist stopping him.

He feels the breath on his neck, and freezes. “Hold on a second,” Eddie murmurs, and Buck looks over at him, waiting. Eddie’s deliberately not looking Buck’s way, and Buck roams his eyes over Eddie’s face, from the curve of his cheek to the cut of his jaw. The way his eyes look in the sunlight. The way his hair is fluffy and not styled at all, so soft looking. His little smile as he watches Maddie and Chimney. Buck finally turns, and sees it.

Maddie looks… young. In a way Buck doesn’t remember. Truly, he doesn’t. Maybe when he was a little kid, when Maddie would sneak him extra ice cream, maybe. But this... She’s staring at Chimney with a smile that could light up Los Angeles. And Chimney… Oh. He looks like he’s won a jackpot, his eyes wide and grin shining. Buck’s at a loss for a moment, not able to put the pieces together in his head. It’s like a math equation he can’t work out, because Chimney plus Maddie equals, what? Romance? Kissing?

“Oh wow, looks like we’re gonna be brothers-in-law,” Albert says as Eddie jolts back, his hand releasing from Buck’s wrist. “Welcome to the family, bro,” Albert pats Buck’s shoulder, and Buck grabs him in a chokehold again. This time, Eddie sighs next to him, and he hears Christopher over his shoulder, his little “Get him!” the only encouragement Buck needs.

Once Lucy breaks them up, claiming Albert’s attention for herself, they settle down and finally eat. And then they eat again, and again, because Bobby makes a mean stack of ribs and Athena's cornbread is worthy of awards, and Hen's drinks are disgustingly sweet but they all down the lemonade anyway. Buck meets May and Harry, who look up at Bobby in a way that makes Buck's chest tear because he was right. All those months ago when Buck first met Bobby, he was right. He can tell just how good a dad Bobby is.

And finally, after they've eaten enough food to hurt and drank good wine and ran across the yard countless times, Buck pauses and looks to Chris, laying down and probably starting to flag after a whole day in the sun. He turns to watch Maddie, still in the corner with Chimney like she's been for over an hour now, and he shakes his head. Hen’s got Eddie over to the side with Athena, and they’re all nodding, phones in hand. Buck catches the tail end of their conversation as he walks over.

“Let me know when works best with your schedules, sounds like a lovely time for the boys,” Athena says, patting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder before pocketing her phone. She sees Buck lingering at the edges, and beckons him over. She points a finger at him. “Buck, if you teach Harry what you did with Albert earlier, I’ll never forgive you,” Buck opens his mouth to protest, before Athena finishes. “Or give you Bobby’s recipe for shakshuka.” Buck closes his mouth. “Thought so,” Athena smirks, patting Buck’s arm softly as she leaves.

There’s a cry from Nia, and so Hen goes off, and Buck’s left with Eddie again. It’s almost natural, the way things sway back, time and again, to just them. Buck hums beside Eddie, as they people watch.

The sun’s slowly starting to set. “Chris looks ready,” Buck notes. He feels Eddie shift beside him, and turns to look. He catches Eddie’s gaze. Eddie’s eyes dart all over his face, and Buck wants to do something ridiculous, like rub Eddie’s nose or kiss his cheek.

Nodding, Eddie bumps a shoulder to Buck’s. “Yeah, he does.”

Without another word, they meander over to Chris, laid out on a blanket with the others, idle smile stuck on his face. They make their goodbyes, starting a chorus of partings from the others too, and Buck beelines to Maddie as Eddie helps a sleepy Chris.

He observes how Maddie and Chim step back a little as he approaches. Buck feels a look try to crawl up his face, but he controls it. “Hey Mads, you ready?”

Her hangdog expression says it all. “Well, actually…”

Buck holds up a hand. “Actually, don’t tell me.” Maddie nods quickly, and then Buck turns a pointed hand at Chim, “She’s my sister, you know better.” Buck’s immediately scolded for his one and only attempt at shovel talk, Maddie slapping his shoulder with an exasperated “Buck!” thrown in there, but Buck takes it. He never had the chance to do that last time, and even though he knows Chimney, he needs it to be said. No one’s good enough for Maddie. And Chim won't be let off lightly if he hurts his sister, in any way.

“I’m just saying!” Buck implores as Maddie shoves him again, and Chimney laughs brightly. Maddie promises to call him if she needs a lift, while Chimney whistles innocently beside them, causing Maddie to roll her eyes around a grin.

They make their goodbyes and walk to the front door, Eddie ahead with Chris in his arms as Buck lingers behind. He stops with Bobby at the entrance.

“Hey, Bobby,” Buck starts, before taking a deep breath in. “I just wanted to say thank you. I couldn’t image a better afternoon.” He watches as Bobby’s face softens into something he can’t name, and the lines around his face disappear before coming back around his smile. He pulls Buck in for a hug, and it’s warm, and loving, and big and real and Buck gets a little teary-eyed.

When he pulls back, he sees the sheen in Bobby’s eyes, too.

“Of course, Buck. Anytime. You’re welcome here anytime.”

And with that, Bobby waves them off, and Buck jogs down the driveway to get behind the driver’s seat.

He feels sun kissed in every sense, warmed to the bone and exhausted in the best way. Eddie turns on the radio, quietly as Chris snores in the backseat. The windows are down, and Buck just wants to drive. Drive and drive and just keep driving. Keep going, make it to the east coast, show Chris lobsters in Maine and how the cherry blossom trees bloom in D.C. and the crazy wind at Niagara Falls. He wants to stay in this moment, as Eddie sings along nonsensically to his own made-up lyrics for a pop song, his hair a tangled mess and his eyes falling gently closed.

It's dangerous for Buck to want like this. It’s scary, because he feels like he can almost reach out and touch it.

As they turn onto Eddie’s street, there’s a car already parked in his drive, and Buck looks over, confused. Eddie just winks back at him, hopping out the Jeep.

“Grab Christopher?” As if Eddie has to ask.

Carefully, Buck opens the car door, slipping open the buckles and pulling Chris into his arms. He holds steady for a moment, savoring the weight, letting Chris’ hair tickle his nose and his heart swells. Slowly, Buck closes the car door, measuring his strides as he makes his way up Eddie’s drive and into his home. As he walks in the open door, he hears dulcet words in Spanish, a voice dripping with love, and as Buck gently closes the front door with Chris in his arms, they all turn the corner into the living.

Eddie’s stood behind two women that Buck’s heard enough about to immediately place, if not from the pictures of them Eddie keeps all over the walls.

“Buck,” Eddie gestures, “this is my Abuela and my Tía, Pepa.” Eddie’s Abuela has a hand clasped in Eddie’s and she swings it lightly as he mentions her. Pepa nods her head, a smirk on her face, and Eddie smiles so widely.

“Tía, Abuela,” Eddie says, looking right at Buck, “ this is – Buck.” He catches himself on the introduction, but Buck doesn’t care, because Abuela walks right up to him and cups his shoulder. She’s so small she has to reach up nearly her whole arm to reach him, but she's so sweet, Buck can feel the love radiate off her. Her hand naturally turns to card through Christopher’s hair.

“Buck, how lovely to meet you, finally,” Abuela says, the same smile as Eddie’s on her face, and Buck immediately feels welcome.

“It’s my pleasure, I’ve heard so much about you, especially your famous Sopes recipe,” Buck smiles, and Abuela laughs.

“Be careful, she’ll adopt you,” Pepa says wryly, and Eddie glares at her. It makes Buck falter, and he goes a little colder.

Feeling put off by that reaction, Buck shifts on the spot. He can suddenly see it; can see how he’s overstepping, encroaching on everything Eddie has. He was just meant to drop them off and now he’s here when Eddie’s actual family is there, getting in the way. He has to get out, before Eddie’s had enough. He can’t afford to screw it all up now, especially not after today. Buck wants just one good thing, one happy memory.

Nodding his head down the hall to Christopher's room, Buck makes a move. He immediately misses Abuela’s hand on him as he takes a step to the side. “I’ll put Chris down to bed, and then I’ll get out of your hair,” Buck swallows and makes a swift escape, heading down to Chris’ bedroom.

There’s a shuffle behind him, and he hears Eddie’s sharp whispers but can’t make out the words exactly. He’s laid out Chris in bed, bringing up blankets to tuck under his chin, and stepping back swiftly as Eddie walks in.

Without waiting, Buck explains in a quiet murmur. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.” He itches his leg, wipes a sweaty palm on his thigh, and moves to the door. Eddie's already circled around to drop a kiss to Chris’ forehead, and then he’s closing Christopher’s door a fraction to follow Buck out, hot on his heels. It’s just them two, in the dim hallway, and Eddie grabs onto Buck’s bicep to stop him from walking further out.

Eddie’s frown makes Buck want to smooth it away. It seems to be a recurring impulse he’s forced to shove down each time he’s faced by it. It’s getting harder.

“What? Why are you sorry?” Eddie forces eye contact as Buck keeps looking away, and eventually Eddie forces a hand onto Buck’s shoulder, holding him in place. “I wanted you guys to meet, sorry it ended up being an ambush, I was only, like, seventy percent sure they’d be able to come over tonight.”

Buck’s slightly struggling to follow, with the way Eddie’s thumb absently rubs across his neck. He feels light-headed, and he wants to nestle into the feeling for an eternity.

“Oh,” Buck gives back in response, and Eddie’s hand tightens.

“Can you stay? Abuela made dessert, and Pepa always brings the good kind of beer,” Eddie asks, his head tilted in earnest, and Buck doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand why he feels so wanted, why he feels part of something, and, for the first time in his life, why he doesn’t feel like a burden. Eddie just makes him feel that way.

Buck stays. Of course he does.

***

“Over to the left a little,” Eddie says, squinting slightly as Buck huffs, shuffling over obligingly.

The TV in his arms was only making his biceps a little sore, but that’s what he got for offering his services to the Diaz’s for an afternoon before movie night. Eddie and Christopher leapt at the opportunity, and now Chris has a new bookshelf in his room while Eddie’s getting his new TV finally mounted to the wall like he always wanted. Buck may also have been convinced to help them make chocolate chip cookies for movie night, which just means Chris will pass Buck ingredients and Eddie will discretely eat the cookie dough while scolding Christopher for asking to do the exact same thing.

“Here?” Buck asks again, turning his neck to alleviate the crick in it.

“Hmm,” Eddie hesitates, and Buck shifts his grip slightly, hefting the TV higher in his arms so it doesn’t slip down. “Well then...” Eddie drifts off, and Buck laughs breathily.

“Any time this decade would be appreciated, you know,” Buck says snidely, and Eddie snorts.

“This isn’t something to rush, Buck. I want to enjoy the view.”

Buck can feel his brow knit as he snarks back. “How much of a difference will two inches make?”

Eddie doesn’t say anything, so Buck tries to crane his neck around to look at him.

“Eddie?”

“Uh, yeah, fine, fine. There’s good, just, uh, yeah.”

Buck finally lowers the TV, and gets to work with his tools. Eddie comes around to sit close to him, just watching. As Buck gets the drill out and starts working, he casts a sideway glance to Eddie, who’s leaning back in his seat on the coffee table, an absent smile on his face as the sun catches him through the window. He looks like he's lit from the inside out.

“Want to help, sunshine?” Buck offers, already focused on the task at hand.

“I’m all good, thanks,” Eddie chirps back, and Buck can see it, so clearly, how father and son are one in the same, right down to the bone. Buck swears he heard Christopher say the same thing to him the other day when he was picking him up from school.

They sit in silence for a little while, Buck muttering to himself as he looks for the pieces he needs while Eddie’s head is merrily tilted to the side, eyes scanning all over the scene in front of him. Eventually, Buck finally gets it all set up for them, and stands up to grab the remote to test his work. He reaches down, stretching over the side of the couch where he threw everything earlier, when he hears Eddie hiss.

“Fuck,” Eddie mutters under his breath, and Buck turns around immediately.

He doesn’t notice anything especially wrong, just Eddie, a little pink in the face and lips looking bitten raw.

“Are you okay?” Buck watches as Eddie drops his head and runs a hand through his head, shaking it off before getting up. His face has now gone bright red, and he won’t make eye contact.

“As I’ll ever be,” Eddie says weakly around a cough, his eyes jumping all over the place as he jerks his thumb to the kitchen. “Water?”

Nodding, Buck turns back to the TV and agrees. “That’d be great, thanks. I’m crazy thirsty.”

Eddie stomps over to the kitchen, muttering something that’s too low for Buck to catch, but Buck just smiles. In the blink of an eye Eddie’s back, water in hand and he gently places it into Buck’s waiting hand, their fingers brushing. Buck takes a large gulp, and Eddie makes a noise as he shuffles back into the kitchen.

“Pre-heat the oven, will you?” Buck calls, and hears Eddie yell back. Buck lets out a laugh. Ah, that's where Chris gets it from. Turning his head to his task, Buck smiles.

It’s just so nice, it feels so good inside, being like this, needed, wanted, that Buck finds himself ignoring the voice in his head that warns him. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, you’ll go back to how it should be. Tomorrow, you’ll stop all of this.

Even Buck knows that’s a far cry from what he’ll do. He's going to wait for the other shoe to drop for as long as he can, before everything comes crashing down around him.

Buck messes around and figures out the sign-in settings, connecting Christopher’s gaming consoles and Eddie’s cable TV stations so they can keep up with their ridiculous telenovela soap operas. Right as Buck looks down to tackle the tangle of wires in front of him, he hears a familiar set of thumps come closer into the living room.

Christopher heaves himself over and crashes onto the couch behind Buck, who spins on his spot on the floor obligingly.

“Looks awesome, Buck.” Chris offers, tilting his head to the side to judge the angle of the screen. Like father, like son, Buck thinks tenderly.

“We’re nearly done, then it’s cookies and movie night. Sound good?” Buck asks.

“Sounds great.” Chris sinks further into the couch, and they sit in the quiet for a moment. In the kitchen, Buck can hear Eddie talking to someone on the phone, likely Abuela or Pepa from the sounds of it, and Buck starts to plug in some wires.

Right when he’s nearly wrapped up, Buck hears a shuffle beside him. Christopher’s floppy head of hair swoops next to his, watching as he attaches the cables together.

“So this is for the TV?” Chris gestures with a wave, and Buck nods.

“Yep, and this is for the console, and then we have the stereo speakers your dad picked out, too,” Buck shows Chris everything, answering his questions and pointing out other things that Buck thinks Chris will find interesting. Making a show of it, Buck hands the remote to Chris, who manages to successfully pull up a show. He cheers, and Buck laughs.

“You’re the best, Buck,” Chris says, and Buck smiles widely, his heart fondly swelling at the words. He leans back and watches Chris poke around on the channels. After a moment, Chris turns to him.

“Hey, Buck?”

“Yeah, buddy?”

“I’m really glad you’re here.”

Buck feels his heart leap into this throat, and he tries to gently clear it, desperately keep his traitorous eyes from watering. It’s nothing, he tries to tell himself. Those words don’t mean everything to hear, he forces himself to say.

With a frog in his throat, Buck coughs and responds. “Me too, I’m glad I’m here with you guys.”

Chris turns more fully to face him. “I mean it. I’m really glad we saw you in the hospital. And I loved the day we spent at the station, and when we went to Captain Bobby’s barbeque, and when you picked me up from school with dad, and when you come over for movie nights. Even when you make me brush my teeth, or we have to do our stretches. I like it when you’re around.”

He can’t help it. Buck leans over to squeeze a hand over Christopher’s shoulder, aching to pull him in for a hug, but something ugly and scared holds him back.

“I want you around all the time, but I get scared.” Chris carries on, and Buck wants Eddie to come back any second now, badly, because Buck's terrified he'll screw this up, and hurt Chris. Won't be enough to make Chris feel safe. He might rip apart at the seams and never be normal again if Chris keeps saying things like this to him and he fucks up.

Voice cracked, Buck asks, “What are you scared off?”

Chris looks away, but his voice is cracking, too. “We left Abuelo, and Grandma and Tia Sophia and Adriana. Mom left us.” There’s a heartbreaking twist of pain to Christopher’s expression, and Buck stops breathing for a moment.

He’s known about what happened to Christopher's mom, Shannon. It was late at night, they'd gotten back from a baseball game with Chris and Chimney and Maddie and something about that day made Eddie quiet. Buck didn't want to poke, but he was worried, and finally Eddie cracked. It was the anniversary of the day she died, and the stiff way Eddie revealed it, how Shannon left them and tried to come back before she passed, it was clear it wasn't a healed wound. They never brought it up again between them. Buck wondered what she was like, if Eddie fell in love with the way she laughed, if she’s missing Chris as badly as Buck imagines she would be from where she is now, how she managed those years without Chris and Eddie.

And Buck knows, within a heartbeat, that this conversation is the most important one he's ever had with Christopher, and there's no room to fuck it up. He sits up straight, clenching his jaw tight. He lets Chris come to him, and places a hand on his knee for support.

“I get scared sometimes that I’ll lose everyone else too, like dad. And Bisabuela and Tia and my new friends at school. And you.”

Buck feels his heart crack open, and it’s just Christopher, Christopher, Christopher that fills in the void.

“I miss everyone,” Chris whispers, and Buck leans in, hugging him so closely that he can feel the shaky way Chris inhales against his ribs. They hold one another, and Buck rubs his back slowly, feeling Chris eventually release the tension in his body, limb by limb. Chris mutters something, small and fragile, and Buck ducks his head down to hear him.

“What was that, bud?”

“Will you stay, Buck?”

Buck knows the right answer to say. Something gentle, ambiguous. Enough to placate Chris, but not too much. He should tread lightly here. He has to. He needs to be sensible, serious. Real. He can't promise Chris something just to take it back later.

“Always,” Buck hears himself swear, like a coward. Like a child. “Always.”

Liar.

Buck tastes bile in his mouth, because he frantically doesn’t want to lie to Chris, but he can’t think of anything else to say that would be right. This feels right, but Buck knows that one day, he won’t be able to keep the promise. And he’ll be partly responsible for Chris’ fears that everyone leaves, and Buck wants to gut himself open over it.

Christopher doesn’t seem to notice the pain bolting through Buck, and instead he head butts into Buck’s chest. Buck digs his nose into Chris’ hair and inhales. They spend a moment there before something catches Buck’s attention from behind Christopher's head. Looking up, he sees Eddie stood in the doorway, eyes glossy and arms crossed over his chest, holding himself. Buck makes to shift, but Eddie shakes his head slowly, taking a step forward. There’s a watery smile that looks so sad on Eddie’s face and Buck wants to pull him in too, but he knows he shouldn't. Eddie stares at him, not wavering, and Buck has to look away.

Without thinking, he strokes a hand through Christopher’s hair, it's the color of spun straw, isn't it? He sees the tremor in his hand. He clenches it into a fist, then releases, shaking it out. Chris draws back, squinting at him, and Buck quirks his chin at him.

“Can we make cookies?” Buck lets out a small smile.

“Oven’s already on, buddy,” Eddie calls to them, walking over and grabbing Chris around his waist, making the kid laugh and protest. Eddie turns back to face Buck, Chris hanging like a limp noodle in his arms, and beckons him over with a nod of his head. “You coming?”

Buck’s legs carry him into the kitchen as they bake; onto the sofa as they watch the movie; into Christopher’s room as they hug; by the front door as Eddie pulls him in for a goodbye; over to his car as he backs out the driveway. His legs carry him up flights of stairs, into a cold apartment, onto a colder bed.

He falls on his back into a pile of pillows, and allows himself to finally acknowledge it.

He’s in love.

It’s stuck in his teeth, and he has the urge to bite down on this feeling to rip it to shreds, to get it out of himself before it ruins everything, but it's too late. He’s terrified that if he looks down at his hand, he’ll open it up and read Eddie’s name in his palm, carved into his skin as if he was born with it there, right next to Christopher’s. He knows it's already there. And if he looks into his chest, pulls it open at the seams and peers down to see where his heart went, it’ll be on South Bedford Street, in the house with half-dead sunflowers at the front door and a ceramic frog in the kitchen window and wind chimes fluttering in the night air. Buck’s hands shake.

They don’t belong to him. They wouldn’t want to belong to him. If Buck stays, everything precious will die.

He flinches.

Buck has to let this go.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow. The end will come tomorrow.

***

There was a night, not too long ago, where Buck was mindlessly flicking through posts online. It was too late in the evening, so much so that it was basically coming into the morning, when it does no good to still be awake, but Buck couldn’t sleep. His brain was whirring, running, and he felt jittery. He couldn’t think straight. His pulse rabbited and jumped inside him. He didn’t want to go make tea, or meditate, or do any of the things that Maddie encourages when he feels this way. He wanted to fester in this, let himself just drain away into nothingness.

There was a picture of Chimney and Albert playing basketball, in between selfies of Maddie with Josh, and random pictures from nature photography accounts Buck followed. Then he stumbled upon an article from an actor, the famous one from Inception and 50/50, and there’s a screenshot of a conversation he had that forces Buck to scroll back up, slowly, to read the full quote he caught.

“I am a second child - my brother, Dan, was six and a half years older than I was. That meant that he was always better at everything. That was really hard for me, 'cause I was competitive.

I always had him as an example. When I was young, just doing basic things, like learning how to talk. Well, he's my example. Learning how to - piss standing up. Or - shave. My mom told him he had to do it. She was like, show your brother how to shave. [Laughs]."

Buck gets to the next part, and he blinked his eyes furiously.

"Yeah. He also... he also died first. So, I... have that, as an example, in a way.

And - and frankly it makes it less scary. In a way, too. Knowing that he's - done it. 'Cause all the big things that I ever had to do, he did 'em first. So, that's what it's like being second."

Buck read it again, a third time, he read it until his eyes hurt to stare at the screen, he had to keep tapping the screen to stop it from going dim.

Eventually, Buck put down his phone. It died; the battery blinked at him before the screen went black.

He curled up in bed, and felt the emptiness all around him for hours.

***

Buck finally gets to tomorrow.

He knows it, feels it as he gets dressed for the day, as he starts his car and drives to work, as he shuffles around in the morning in silence, waiting for a call to distract him.

Today, it begins. He retreats, takes the step back he’s been meaning to. Because it’s felt so good, having inside jokes with Chimney, helping Ravi pick out an outfit for his weekend plans, singing off key with Lucy in the truck, quizzing Hen on her medical vocabulary, cooking dinners with Bobby. It felt right to drive over to Eddie’s at the end of a long shift and spend a moment in his life, with Christopher yelling about some drama from school. It felt like coming home when he saw Maddie smile so widely at him, the worry lining her face smoothing over like water.

But this wasn’t ever for him to keep. He knew that from the start, he said it. He just got greedy.

So he smiles tensely at Chimney and doesn’t laugh at his jokes. He makes a small noise when Ravi comes over to him with his phone out, asking for his opinion. He’s quiet when he’s in the truck. He side-steps Hen on the couch, and volunteers to do inventory instead of slicing onions at Bobby’s side.

He ignores the texts from Eddie. That hurts the worst.

It’s been barely half of one shift, and Buck has no idea how he's going to last like this for however long he gets to stay at the 118. He’s getting restless already, the voice inside him begging to go over and be back with his team, but he knows he can’t.

It’s tomorrow. He has to accept that. He can't afford to pretend anymore.

By the time they try to catch some shut eye for the night, most of them are in the bunks and Buck’s able to pretend he’s already asleep to avoid any probing questions or pointed glances sent his way. After half an hour of silence, he cracks an eye open and confirms his hunch. They’re all asleep, or at least not facing him. Buck slips out silently, making his way to the kitchen, turning on the kettle and sinking to the floor right there by the sink. His head hangs forward, and he closes his eyes.

This is tomorrow. This is going to be the rest of his life. And he’s suffocating.

The water boils above him, and Buck rubs a rough hand over his face, catching on the stubble he didn’t shave clean this morning. He wants to rip it off, suddenly furious. Why does he have to do this over and over and over again? Why couldn’t he be the one to be gone, why is he trapped moving on, day after day? He hates these reminders, of him aging, of him living, every day.

Letting his head fall back, it thuds nastily into the cupboard behind him and Buck briefly feels the dull throb in his skull before it slowly ebbs away. He hears the click of the kettle, the water bubbling aggressively, and he gets up. He doesn’t expect to find an audience waiting for him there.

Jumping in his skin, Buck makes guilty eye contact with Bobby for a brief moment before looking away. Bobby's sat at the kitchen breakfast bar, not a hair out of place despite the late hour.

“Rough day?”

Buck sighs, grabbing a mug before pausing. He wants to offer Bobby a drink too, wants to make him something, give Bobby back anything, but it’s tomorrow. And tomorrow means pulling away, not getting too close. Buck mechanically picks up just the one mug, pours in hot water before staring down at the cup. He looks at it, and ends up pouring it down the drain. He isn’t in the mood for tea after all.

“I’m fine,” Buck answers.

“Sure you are,” Bobby replies smoothly, and Buck looks up. “You’re damn fine at being stubborn, kid. You want to talk about it?” Immediately, Buck shakes his head, like a child, and he feels himself flush in embarrassment for his petulant behavior.

Crossing his arms, Buck defends himself. “I’m fine, Cap. Seriously, you can just drop it.”

Raising his hands placatingly, Bobby offers a metaphorical white flag. “Alright, alright. You win. You at least want some dinner? Plate’s wrapped up for you in the fridge. Noticed you weren't around when we were making it.” Buck wants so badly to turn around and go back to the bunks, say ‘No, thank you’ and leave, but his stomach answers for him. It makes an angry noise that has Bobby chuckling, and the older man gets up.

Buck watches Bobby pull open the fridge door, grab the plate and put it in the microwave for Buck, as if he were a child. As if he deserves any of the attention, the care.

“Thanks,” Buck murmurs, and they stand across one another as the seconds go on.

By the time the buzzing stops, Bobby’s got a plate out and they’ve swapped places, with Buck sat down and Bobby stood, watching him. “Eat up,” he says, and Buck follows orders.

It’s a herb roasted chicken with creamy mashed potato, and it has Buck’s mouth quickly watering. He grabs a fork to take a big bite. He misses the smile ghosting itself onto Bobby’s face.

After a few minutes, Bobby clears his throat as he grabs two mugs for them. “You know, when I have rough nights, it’s usually because I’m thinking about my kids,” Bobby says, and he puts new water in the kettle to boil. “I think about the night they died,” Bobby says softly, roughly, and he's getting tea bags out while Buck feels the food in his mouth turn to ash.

Died. Died? Buck feels a rush of panic numb his body, and he thinks of Harry and May, how Bobby can just say that when Buck only saw them the other week, when he was helping Bobby out with the garage, and Buck feels sick as his mind races over what could have happened to them –

“My kids from my first marriage,” Bobby clarifies quickly, probably at the look of sheer fear on Buck’s face, and then Bobby’s face drops in surprise. “Oh. You don’t know. I forget, sometimes.” Bobby says it more to himself, than to Buck. Buck feels his heartbeat start to slow down, but his pulse rattles inside him. He starts to breathe again.

“Forget what?”

“That you don’t know everything about us already.”

Buck feels something kick in his chest, uneven and unsettled. Bobby gets a look in his eyes, hardened and a million miles away.

“My first marriage, oh Buck, I had a beautiful wife and two perfect kids. I didn’t know it back then that I was living on borrowed time with them. That I would one day have to live every day after without them.” Bobby pauses, and Buck looks up. There’s a look on Bobby's face, it’s twisted and anguished and Buck wants so desperately to pull it away, to make Bobby smile instead, but Buck realizes with a horrified start that he’s seeing exactly what stares back at him in the mirror each morning.

Softly, Bobby stirs in water and honey into the mugs for them. Buck's favorite type of green tea is already steeping in them. “There was a fire, at our home. They were gone.”

There’s a silence then that haunts the station, and Buck has no idea what to say. It doesn’t feel right to say he’s sorry to something that’s the worst moment of Bobby's life. He can’t comprehend how to help Bobby through something like that. What can make up for losing everything?

“And it was my fault,” Bobby finishes gravely, the tea bags peeking out in the mugs he carries over to Buck. Bobby moves one across the table and keeps the other in his hand.

Do you wake up and blame yourself? You should. You should feel guilty every day you live. It’s your fault.

Buck can’t breathe.

“On rough nights, I think of them. I feel it all, inside myself. I find myself wishing I had told them, just one more time, how much I love them. And even on the good nights, they’re there with me too. We carry all the parts of us we don’t love, Buck. The good and the bad, and all the feelings in between. But you don’t have to carry it all alone. I learnt that lesson, when I came here, met the team, met Athena, and May and Harry. I met you too, Buck." Bobby pauses, runs a hand over his mouth and eyes and exhales slowly. "I promised myself when I lost them that I’d be alone forever. That would be my penance. But then, life doesn’t work like that. You get to start again, learn from it, live with it.” Bobby looks down, into the mug in front of him before setting it aside. He looks up at Buck. “I worry about you, Buck.”

Buck still can’t breathe. He feels like there’s no air in the world that could enter his lungs. His eyes burn and his vision swims.

“I see you. I do. I see me in you, and it terrifies me. I need you to know, you aren’t alone. People care about you. I care about you.”

Why? Why do you care? No one cares, no one should care. No one cared in the hospital late that night when Buck was a terrified little child. No one cared that he was born to be carved into pieces and he was crying in a cold bed in the moonlight.

That’s not true though, Buck knows that. There was one person there that night. That has to count, right?

But he's not here anymore.

“I can’t force you to talk to me if you don’t want to. But I can be worried about you. You can take a day or two if you need it, but you’re not going anywhere, Buck. And I’ll be right here when you’re ready to talk, okay?”

Buck doesn’t know what to say. His head hurts, his eyes are stinging. He knows Bobby won’t leave until Buck acknowledges him, so Buck nods sharply once, twice.

“Alright then. Well, you finish up here, okay? Think about it.” He grabs his mug again and walks over. Bobby hesitates, lingering near Buck’s shoulder. “We love you, kid,” Bobby finishes gently, absentmindedly knocking a knuckle over Buck’s brow, right where his birthmark is, and Buck freezes because he hears it. Feels it, all of it. Goes right back to where it all started.

I love you, kid.

He goes right back in time, to a hospital that he knew better than his home. He goes right back to being a terrified little child, desperately hoping everything will be okay but knowing it won’t, from the way his mother withered away right in front of him to the way his dad began drinking all the time.

There’s a clawing feeling in his soul that never left, not really, it was just waiting until the perfect time to strike, and it’s here now. Buck wants so badly not to do it here, in front of Bobby of all people, but it’s already wreaking havoc on him, from the inside out. It has its claws in him, the panic, and Buck can’t breathe anymore, his lungs are torn apart and he feels ragged from it. He can’t figure out where he is anymore, because he can see Bobby stood in front of him but then he hears the heart monitor beeping and the nurses shuffling around him and he’s scared and panicking and needs to leave before it gets worse but he can’t breathe.

A dull, throbbing sensation floods Buck, and it might be pain, he thinks, but he isn’t sure. He can’t see Bobby anymore, but he can see the floor of the kitchen at the station now, and his knees and palms are aching from where he's dropped down from his seat.

“Buck?”

He shouldn’t be here, he knows that. He’s on borrowed time, stolen time. Stolen, and he’s made everyone believe that it’s okay, that he deserves to be here. That he’s Buck, a friendly guy, a good firefighter, but he’s not. He’s a failure, useless. He had one job, and he couldn't even do that.

He doesn’t want to do this anymore. He wants to stop feeling like this all the time. He’s tired, and he can’t remember a day where he didn’t go home fully exhausted. He feels fragments of his life, jagged and ugly, all of it horrifying and painful. He can’t sleep. He’s let everyone down.

He’d be better off dead.

“Buck? Look at me, please.”

He’s sunken on the floor, his nails dragging across the tile as his shoulders hunch, and he can’t get a breath in. It’s all his fault.

We’ll go there, one day.

He’s got everyone believing this version of himself that isn’t really true. Liar, he’s a liar. He lied to Christopher’s face. These people all think they know him, but they don’t. Just the version of himself that isn’t a disappointment. A mistake. But he knows.

Me, and you, and Maddie.

Buck suddenly has the screaming demand that he just wants to go home. He doesn’t know where that is anymore, but he wants to go. He wants to feel safe. Did he ever have a home? He wants to go to a home that doesn’t exist, that’s never existed. Why can’t he have a home? Why can’t he be happy and safe and loved and wanted and okay?

We’ll go to the coast, and have a whole day out on the beach.

“Buck, I need you to breathe with me, please son, breathe with me.”

I love you, kid.

There’s a sob trapped in his lungs that breaks free, and he lets out an unholy noise, it’s so horrifying that Bobby just watches for a second. He sees Bobby hover a hand by his shoulder, but Buck can’t imagine that right now. He doesn’t deserve Bobby’s comfort; Bobby would be disgusted if he knew. Buck shakes, wrenching himself backward, away, away, away –

“Buck. Listen to my voice, focus on me. Breathe.”

But why wasn’t Buck enough? Why wasn’t his body enough? Why did Daniel still leave him all alone in the dark?

He doesn’t understand it at first, but then he feels it, the way his fist pulses, radiating heat and numb and Buck looks ahead of himself and can feel it now, can see how his fist collided with the kitchen island from where he’s sat, can hear the sound reverberate in the loft through his ears. Buck stills for a moment, trying to move his throbbing hand, and when it stings he clenches again and reaches forward to punch the cabinets a second time when he’s swiftly pulled back mid-movement, jarred out of the motion before he can follow through again. Buck just wants to feel something that isn’t the gnawing pain in his chest eating him alive.

He’s wrapped up in Bobby’s arms, he’s being shushed like he’s a baby.

“Come here, Buck, hey. I’m here, you’re okay. Breathe with me.”

Buck can’t catch his next breath, but sat here, on the cold floor of the station’s kitchen, pressed again his Captain’s chest as he sobs, Buck's forced to feel Bobby’s careful, measured breathing, and he tries. Inhale, exhale. Buck tries to catch onto Bobby’s rhythm, slowing himself down. Inhale, exhale.

I love you, kid.

Inhale, exhale.

The arms tighten around him, and Buck wants to fall apart. He stills, and then, over the sound of the voices in his head, he hears just one voice call out, right to him. He remembers the words, tasted them in his mouth after they were said, months ago in a hospital room, so different to the ones he grew up hearing.

"You need to be careful though, Buck.

You’re important.

I don’t want to see you hurt."

Eddie.

Fear grips Buck. Eddie will see this, the ugliness leaking out of Buck like an infestation, and Eddie will be gone. Christopher, fuck, Christopher will be gone, and Buck doesn’t know what to do with that. He sees it all so quickly; that day in the hospital, the tour of the station, Eddie’s texts, Chris in a plastic helmet. Barbeques, ER visits, late night movies, early morning school runs, fixing Abuela’s porch and drinking iced tea. A million moments, all connected.

Eddie. His eyes always watching Buck, never far away. His steady hand on Buck’s waist, the way he blinks slowly waking up from a nap, how he loves the way rain smells but hates being out in it. The shoes at the front door needing to be neat and the bed should be made each morning, but his fridge is a disaster inside, and his scrubs have little yellow ducks on them sometimes and he gets matching socks with his son. He gets embarrassed asking anyone for help in a grocery store and he waves to every single little kid he passes by.

Eddie.

Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Eddie Eddie Eddie -

“I’m calling Maddie, okay? Just hold on, it’s all going to be alright, son. Hang on.”

He’s shaking when he finally realizes it. He can’t lose them, not now. Not now that he knows. Now that he’s lived this life with them in it, all of them. Eddie, Chris. Bobby and Hen and Chimney. Ravi, Albert, Lucy. There’s Karen and Athena and Abuela and Denny and Pepa and and and –

Buck doesn’t want to lose them all. He wants so badly to stay.

Bobby runs a hand through Buck's hair, and holds him steady. The phone rings. He hears Bobby say something but he can’t make out the exact words, there’s an exchange and then both arms return to holding Buck.

Buck doesn’t know how long they sit there, but they do it together. His bones are aching, his body is sore as he comes back, slowly. He feels the air in his lungs for the first time, as well as the pain in his hand, the thump of his heart sluggish in his chest.

I love you, kid.

He hears the words in his head, the words he’s carried inside himself like a secret, like shame, that have been tainted with guilt and grief. Buck murmurs something, quiet, to himself, a memory from a long time ago, as he feels himself slipping into darkness.

“What was that, Buck?”

Something he remembers from a long time ago.

“Brothers don’t let each other wander in the dark alone.”

***

“I sit down for dinner with my dead brother again.
This is the last dream I ever want to have.”

***

Part III. Because You Are Full of Grief.

It wasn’t a secret why Buck was born. When Daniel started getting sick, his parents did everything they thought was right. They tested themselves, Maddie, anyone who would pick up the phone, but it all came back wrong.

So they forced it. They forced Buck to be right.

And when Daniel was diagnosed with leukemia, they were ready. They’d already made the decision, talked through anything they needed to, and they agreed, there was no other option.

They had Buck, cut him open, right down the middle, and harvested whatever they needed. Blood, cells, organs, Buck was right there. He was the solution.

But for a while, he got to be Evan. He was Evan; Daniel and Maddie’s baby brother, who had his umbilical cord used for Daniel’s treatment. But he was also the Evan who was held in Daniel’s arms reverently when he was a screaming baby. Evan, who was taught how to ride a bike by Maddie when their parents refused to let Buck do anything they found to be an “unnecessary danger.” Evan, who’s tiny little face Daniel blew air onto so he would blink and giggle as a baby. Evan, who grew up and would play with Daniel’s toys even when his father would take them out of his grasp, walk him to his room, to sit and be quiet and wait for when they would need him again. Evan, who was taught how to read by Daniel, who in turn would have to listen to Evan ready every single book he could get his hands on.

And even when Evan didn’t understand quite fully why his mom and dad were so upset all the time, why Maddie put on a big smile despite her nose being red and eyes wet, he still had Daniel. Daniel, in his hospital room, who’d keep a stack of reading books by his bedside table and pull open the exact page where they left off. Daniel, who teased Maddie about the boy pulling her pigtails in class and would tell her to throw sand in his eyes the next time she saw him. Daniel, who would hold his mom’s shoulder when she’d curl up around him and cry, who would take his dad's hand and pat it gently.

Daniel, the best older brother anyone could ask for. Evan remembers how Daniel would ask how his and Maddie’s days were at school, listening to them with careful nods and smiles stretched on his face. An unsettled, wriggling feeling wormed across Evan’s stomach each time he saw Daniel wince, or his eyes slip closed, and so he forced himself to step in, push at Daniel until his eyes fluttered back open, his smile returned. Only then could Evan feel like he could breathe.

Evan remembers when he sullenly told Daniel he wasn’t going back to school one day, picking at his shoes, because the kids made fun of his face, for his birthmark, and Daniel leaned over, brushing his brow softly. “This mark?” Daniel asked, and Buck nodded miserably. Daniel huffed, and leaned back. “They don’t know?” Buck frowned, shaking his head. “It’s because I kissed you right there, when you were born. Left a mark behind.”

Buck stared flatly, because he didn’t believe his older brother, and Daniel laughed. “It’s true!” He chuckled, and it devolved into a cough. Buck panicked, grabbing water and sloshing part of it on the bed before it reached Daniel’s hands. When Daniel finally got his breath back, he turned back to Buck, shaking slightly, but determined. “It’s true, Evan. When I look at this,” Daniel tapped at his own forehead, in the same spot where Buck’s mark was, “I think of how much I love you.” Buck leaned over and hugged his brother, tight and furious.

So Evan went back to school. And the kids were mean and normal and nothing special, and after a while, Evan stopped paying attention to the looks he got. He went to school, and took his classes, and ate his lunch, and ran around a field and watched assemblies and sat in detention. He was forced to go to career day, and there was a policewoman, a nurse, a veterinarian, a chef, a firefighter, a scientist. They all talked, answered questions, handed out papers and trinkets and smiled for pictures, but Evan didn’t pay them any attention. He remembers staring out the window, looking at the clock, pressing his hand to his side and poking at his stomach, where the stitch in his side had healed into a faint scar.

His teacher, an older man with grey hair and a kind expression in his eyes that made Evan feel sick, kneeled beside him as the visitors left for the day and asked Evan, quietly, if he was feeling alright. Evan wanted to laugh, bark, spit it back out at him. “Are you feeling alright?” What kind of question was that? Being carted back and forth from school to home to the hospital, watching monitors beep and being wheeled to exam rooms. Saying “ouch” when he’s prodded, crying when he’s alone at night, none of it screamed that Evan has ever been alright. But he nodded, and his teacher cleared his throat. Asked Evan what he wanted to be when he was older, in a way one would approach a spooked animal. Evan stared at him.

He wasn’t thinking about what he wanted to be in the future.

His brother had died.

Evan didn't want to imagine a future where he would ever get older, because each day in front of his was another day without Daniel. But it happened. As cruel as it was, time kept going on in his life, whether he wanted it to or not. And he had to do it all without Daniel Buckley.

And on Evan’s sixteenth birthday, having gone through years now without his older brother by his side and wondering how the hell he’s going to keep this up, Evan locks himself in the bathroom and ignores his parents, who knock and tell him that he needs to get out the house for school. He vomits his breakfast up, flushes, cleans his teeth. He stares at his reflection, tracing his birthmark, the faint scars on his body, and then goes to school. He sits alone at the lunch table; he doesn’t speak a word all day. He shuffles to his room, slides onto the floor. His parents are at work. Maddie’s states away, now at school. She called him, so many times on the house phone, and Evan finally picks up. She tries so hard to get him to say anything, but Evan’s too numb to respond much. She promises to visit him real soon, once her finals are over. He tells her he loves her. Hangs up.

He opens the box underneath his bed, and lets the tears finally roll down his cheeks. They catch on his hands, which shakily unwrap notes and birthday cards and pictures he’s kept over the years. He looks down at his past, one that he won’t ever be able to get back. He’s dizzied, nauseous, and the whispers circle his head like vultures.

You’re useless, what’s the point of you?

Do you feel guilty?

It’s your fault.

Because Evan’s sixteen. And that’s an age Daniel Buckley will never be. Evan somehow grew older than his older brother. It was never meant to be like this. It’s all stolen time, now.

And so it goes. Life went on like that, every year, another year he’s taken that belonged to Daniel first. Evan was only ever supposed to live as a condition, as a part of Daniel's story. He doesn’t know what to do without him.

A few years after he moved to California, when he left Evan behind and settled on Buck instead, he remembers reading a story in the newspaper about a case where a child was conceived for parts, just like him, huh, and the kid sued their parents for rights to their body. Savior sibling, that was the term they called the kid. Buck wasn’t a savior, though. He didn’t save anyone.

What did that make him, then?

***

Maddie remembers it all. She remembers the start, when her older brother started getting sick, randomly at first, then all the time. She remembers moments in the middle, where Evan would be scared, and Daniel would be livid at their parents for what they put them through, and she was in the middle of both feelings all the time. She remembers the end.

Of course, she remembers the end.

Everything changed, it had to. There was an obvious before and after in the Buckley world, there was before Daniel and after Daniel and Maddie was so devastated there existed a place after Daniel, she sometimes couldn’t bear to open her eyes in the morning if she thought about it too much. Her friends at school said they understood, offered hugs and sympathy, but how could they? They didn’t get it.

Evan didn’t get it, not at first. He was so broken during the early weeks of the after-Daniel world they were forced into. He would wake up in the middle of the night crying, always for Daniel, and Maddie would hold him and rock them to sleep. They’d both be bleary-eyed in the morning; their parents deliberately turned away from them.

So Maddie did it all by herself instead. She took all the love she had and gave it to her younger brother, gave the love Daniel had for him too, and she made sure Evan went to school, had food in his stomach, asked him if he was okay and let him watch TV if they ever got the chance and listened to his stories and made him cookies and let him cry on her shoulder. She carried his heart inside hers. Daniel told her to, right before the end. He told Maddie it was her responsibility now, as the oldest sibling, to protect Evan and Maddie excused herself to the bathroom down the hall as she sobbed like a child. Daniel tucked her hand in his when she got back, and apologized to her over and over again as he slipped back into sleep.

And when she was eighteen and told her parents she was going to medical school to be a nurse, because she lived her childhood depending on them and thanking them and watching them do everything they could to save her brother, they said no. They told her there was no use in it, she’d get into debt, probably drop out before she finished. No chance they’d pay her way, they said, she’d have to figure it out on her own.

So Maddie did. She told them she didn’t need them, she accepted her scholarship and started packing. Her parents iced her out for months that summer, but it was Evan that nearly broke her down. Because he was terrified, Maddie could see it; he would watch her every day that summer before she left as she did the smallest things, as if he was watching her for the very last time. And every day, she told him that she would come back and get him. The guilt in her stomach made her sick, because her scholarship took her to a school states away and she was terrified to leave him. She’d already checked, there was a train and bus line she could take to get to Evan, right from campus to their neighborhood, and she’d do it. Even if she was sick as a dog, she’d come back for him whenever he called.

She never realized he’d be the one to leave her, too. Because Evan at eighteen didn’t want to join her in New Jersey. Not even when she had it all planned. No, he turned the other way, went miles across the country, and was lost to California in a heartbeat. Even when she begged him, told him she’d find space for him with her, he just turned to her, his miserable eyes telling her all she needed to know.

He had to get out.

And Maddie felt like she was losing a brother all over again. She cried so hard when Evan left every night for weeks until Doug told her to cut it out, and then she was terrified for a different reason.

But afterward, she was relieved, desperately thankful that Evan went all that way in the other direction because Doug couldn’t touch him from here. Evan’s safe, even if Maddie’s covering bruises and scars of her own, it’s alright because her little brother’s safe. And it becomes a part of her life, the crushing loneliness, the dreams of running away, the hope to be free. She kept her promise to Daniel. She kept Evan safe.

So Maddie did what she always did. She planned, counted the days, hours, minutes. And every second of it, she was afraid. Afraid that she’d never be far away enough from Doug, that he’d find her, keep her locked away, he’d kill her, and trap her in the life he’d forced on them. He tried everything he could to suffocate Maddie Buckley, desperate to make her Maddie Kendall by the end, but he failed.

Because Maddie did what she needed to do, she always did.

She got her degree, she got a job, and she was careful, so careful, and gritted through pain and fought tooth and nail out of that hell Doug and her parents wanted her in, and she pushed and pushed and pushed and she found a light at the end of the tunnel. She filed paperwork, documented evidence, got a restraining order, Doug was arrested, and Maddie knew it might not be over, but she got out. She plugged in the directions, and went out west. Because she was stronger than they thought.

Because she had to find her little brother.

***

When Eddie Diaz stared at the stick in front of him, the positive test staring right back at him, a thousand thoughts went through his mind in rapid succession. He can’t go to college and study; he needs money, he needs a job. He wouldn’t be able to use his baseball scholarship, and he’s angry for a second because he worked so hard to get it. Mom and Dad are going to be so mad he isn’t sure they’ll ever forgive him. What will Sophia and Adriana say? And Shannon –

He looked up at Shannon, how she was so serious and collected in a way Eddie couldn’t fathom right now. He sees his best friend, her brown eyes piercing, hair pulled back from a face Eddie’s known like the back of his hand.

“I’m keeping it, Eddie.”

And it shook Eddie, for a moment, because in all his panic and fear, it didn’t once occur to him that he wouldn’t want this. Wouldn’t want whoever was going to grow legs and hands and a. heart and one day become his kid. He knew, staring at that stick, terrified and barely an adult, that he would love that kid more than life itself and would fight for them with everything he had.

It was a small ceremony with a tense audience, but Eddie remembers how Shannon smiled at him, and he felt so calm as he slipped the ring on her finger. No butterflies, no nerves. Just staring at his best friend’s face. Maybe because they jumped a few steps ahead, did some things out of order, maybe it was normal to think, hey, where did the spark go? He remembered at one point, he felt it, right? In high school, he was thrilled to be around Shannon, but was it the same as how he was with any of his other friends, sneaking around to have fun? Just with Shannon, they happened to also kiss and have sex, but it was fine; it was fun, and it was what everyone did. So they would be fine once all the chaos settled. It would grow into more; it would be love. It is love. Right?

It wasn’t fine. Eddie would figure that out years down the line.

There were miles and miles of desert in Afghanistan to get through first. Of phone calls to Shannon and his parents and his sisters and asking for updates about the baby. He’d help people while on tour, became really good at being an army medic, would try to heal people and save them, and felt a purpose in his life. Felt like he was doing something his child could maybe even be proud of one day. Felt like it was worth it, blood and tears miles from home, and terrified out of his mind if it meant he could build something for his kid one day. Could provide something better, could build a home and a future for his family.

And nothing else mattered afterward. After he held his son in his arms, him screaming and crying and bloodied and perfect. It didn’t matter that calling Shannon his wife felt like a lie, it didn’t matter that the Afghanistan sun was burning him away, it didn’t matter that he got back from tour, and nothing felt right.

Because he had Christopher. And that’s where it all began and ended, with a little angel in his arms that held his heart in his tiny hands, with his perfect smile, patron saint of the traveler. Eddie would go to any lengths if it meant going home to his son.

And even when Shannon left, with her own pain and guilt and fear following her in a way Eddie couldn’t touch, he still didn’t mind because he got to hold Chris in his arms and kiss the top of his head and feel safe again.

His parents weren’t thrilled and made it known to Eddie how they felt, and Eddie felt himself losing time in that place. The suffocating feeling of being locked in, being treated like an idiot, like a problem, was slowly eating him alive, and he was scared of how his son would grow up suffocated with that same feeling, too. Eddie second guessed everything; he’d get in his head about it, he’d feel broken because he watched his friends die in his arms, and the mother of his child left them, and his sisters had gone off to do great things, and he’s alone in a childhood home that never really cared about the children growing up inside it. Eddie could feel the fury from Shannon from miles away and the even closer disdain from his parents.

And then there was one night, one night when he was too scared to pick up Christopher and hold him because all he could see was the blood on his hands staining him, and he was horrified that he would stain Chris in the same way. He didn’t sleep at all, and by the morning, he had made his decision.

Barely a few days later, he packed up enough to make it through the drive and bundles up a bleary-eyed Christopher in the back of his truck, blanket tucked carefully over his lap as he makes his parents say goodbye to his son, and he finds Abuela and Tia Pepa in Los Angeles. They open the door with arms stretched wide, smiles on their faces that remind Eddie of a home he hasn’t felt in a long time, and the way he collapses into them fills him with peace.

It's huge and dizzying in the city, and Eddie isn’t good around all the noise at first. When he’s with Pepa, and they’re looking for a home he can move into; he has to take deep breaths in the backyard to stop himself from freaking out when he hears the LA helicopters circling the city for high-speed chases.

There’s still time for him, though. There’s time, something he didn’t imagine he could ever have, and so he goes to nursing school. He studies really fucking hard because he wants to be better, do better, and show Christopher he can do anything if he puts his mind to it. He finds himself still shaking as he reaches for Chris to pick him up at night. He works long hours and studies in between and tries to make sure Chris knows how he’s the most loved person in Eddie's life, and he keeps pushing.

He gets his degree.

He gets his degree, and the same day, in a cruel twist of fate, he sees Shannon again for the first time in years. It’s funny, in an ironic sense, that she comes back into his life the day he feels ready to take the final step out of his past, but she still shows up, her shoulders tense and ready for a fight.

Eddie’s done with fighting.

There’s arguing, and tears, and Eddie doesn’t resent her, but he won’t ever trust her again. And even though there are no butterflies, she’s still Shannon, the first girl he ever dated, the first person he ever kissed. And above all, she’s the mother of their child. So she apologizes, and Eddie understands even though he doesn’t. Because he understands that she wants to do anything she can to see Christopher again.

He just can’t understand her leaving their son in the first place.

“You left first,” Shannon throws at him like she’s been hanging onto that one for a long time.

And Eddie did. And he tells himself at night it’s because they needed the money, they needed it for Chris, to set him up well, but that’s not the full truth. Eddie did it because he was a scared kid himself, a screw-up who needed to get out, and he couldn’t be around Shannon and keep up the pretense anymore. Shannon would figure it out; she was smarter than him, and she would see through the facade.

He would never feel those butterflies for her again. He can’t remember if he ever did.

It takes a lot more time, and Eddie knows he’s being unfair with it, but he just about lets Shannon back into Christopher’s life before she’s gone again. And when Eddie gets a call and he’s told his wife was in a car accident, the whole time he’s saying to himself, no, don’t do this to Chris, not to him, no –

And this time, the feeling crushes him in a wholly different way. He grieves for Chris, for himself, for Shannon’s family, and their potential to raise Chris together. To give Chris a set of parents the way he deserves, to feel these people love so intensely, to know he's wanted so much, to be overwhelmed by it. He grieves for Shannon, and they bury her in a plot in the cemetery by their home. And they get a little bench by her gravestone, and she's under a tree to protect her for the rest of her time. It’s where he and Chris go when they want to talk to her, want to update her on what’s going on, what’s new for them. It keeps her alive.

“I’ve met someone,” Eddie says to her one day. He’s thinking of clear blue eyes and curly blonde hair that matches their son and a birthmark like a strawberry on a brow. Chris is at school, and Eddie’s shift has just ended. He’s sat at the bench looking at Shannon’s engraved name and says something he only just became brave enough to say out loud.

“I’ve met someone, and I think you’d like him,” Eddie murmurs, his voice carrying in the wind. He’s certain Shannon will hear him.

Eddie talks about Buck for hours until his voice is hoarse, and he checks his phone and sooner than later, he’ll have to pick up Chris and get ready for movie night, and they’ll get to see Buck again, with his gleaming smile and his too pink lips and the way his legs go on for miles and his shoulders that look so strong. He’ll feel his stomach knot, a fluttering in his chest, and will look for excuses to brush his fingers against Buck’s hand while they pass something between them. It’s in his pulse, most days, the urgent beat of his heart echoing Buck, Buck, Buck in a way that makes him breathless.

When Eddie thinks of Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, he remembers the story behind it, of the man who carried a child on his back across a river. Who carried the world. When Eddie watches Buck carry Chris to his bed, half asleep in the low light of his home, he feels put together in a way he’s never felt before.

He stares at Shannon’s headstone and wishes he didn’t have to tell her all this through a grave.

“I have to go, but we’ll be back, Shannon.”

With the wind at his feet, Eddie walks out over the familiar path in the grass and wonders what Buck will say to Shannon when they finally meet.

***

Bobby knows. He gets it. He sees the way Buck looked coming out of that factory fire, and he understands it as clear as day.

Buck’s waiting to die.

With the others, like Athena and Hen and Chim and Karen, they’re living, clutching at life and pulling it towards them. Buck pushes it away.

Bobby knows. He was the exact same way.

When the fire took his family, his wife and children, and everyone else in that building, the gaping splinter in Bobby swallowed him whole. He heard the screams every night, the whispers in his head that he was responsible for this all, what right did he have to live?

He didn’t. He found absolution in the bottom of a bottle and hoped that he could die, too. He'd remember the way his dad would drink, bottle after bottle, and Bobby finds absolution in the empty glasses littered around him. The drinking got so bad that Bobby would be in the haze endlessly, scratching at the itch the second he rose to the surface and could feel the pain again. It was all-consuming in his body, every limb of his felt like it was on fire if he thought about what happened. What he lost. What he burnt. What he did.

He couldn’t cry, the tears couldn’t come out of him anymore. The only relief he felt was knowing that, eventually, it would all be over. Bobby was a ghost walking around with the rest of them, and eventually, it would all be over. One foot in front of the other. Time will catch up to him sooner or later.

Bobby got off shift one day, stuck behind a desk where he couldn’t hurt anyone except himself, and he walked out of the station, past his car, down the street. Kept walking until it was dark, and the moon was out, and he was staring at the blurry reflection of himself in the deep water below, way up above on the bridge. One foot in front of the other.

Bobby looked down and saw with certainty that it would happen, he’d fall into the water and finally smother the fire inside him that was killing him. It would be kinder than having to live life every day like this.

But that wasn’t right. As Bobby stood there, looking down at the reflection of a man he didn’t recognize, a man he despised, he knew he wasn't allowed the kind way out. No, he would have to do the opposite. Atone. Painfully and gradually, and feel every second of it. Make each day matter again. It isn’t meant to be kind. He owes them all. He steps back, and he begins again.

There’s a rehab facility that he stays in, and when that works well enough, he decides to move out, get away, think clearly without the phantom touch of his past tracing over his every step, and he’s transferred to a station with a bad reputation states away, assigned to a new team that doesn’t trust him.

And yet, despite that, he works. He fights for the people around him, fights for the people he has the chance to save, and he knows it’ll never be enough, but it’s a start. He’ll make sure he stays away from the rest of the world so he never risks hurting anyone again. Never has to feel that way again, that grief inside himself. He writes down names in a book and saves as many as he can until he’s atoned.

But first, there’s Chimney and Hen, and Bobby tries to keep them at bay, far from him, and it works for a while, but they still creep in. Slowly, like the tide beneath his feet, he can’t help but care about them and start to pay attention again. The team shifts, and they all start to work together in a way that unsettles Bobby and puts him on edge. Because with this can only come pain. He reminds himself every day that he owes all those lives before he ever owes himself anything. It doesn't matter that Lucy calls her dog Robert Nash and claims it's in honor of the Texan actor and obviously not her Captain. He shouldn't care that Ravi only ever wanted to join the 118 because he wanted Bobby to be his Captain. But it means something, it gets under Bobby's skin, and he can't help it.

And then, one day, it happens. They're wrapping up at a call on a normal day of work, and Bobby's thinking about the stack of paper that’s piling up at his desk, about how he wants to go to another AA meeting soon, about what's in the fridge that he can cook when they get back to the station or if they need to stop at a grocery store first when he sees her. She’s stood, face calm and posture confident as she helps mediate a tense situation at the call, and all Bobby can think of is that she’s beautiful. It’s a fleeting thought, one he stubs out immediately because nothing can come of it. He buries it, ignores it, and gets back to the truck. His hands are clenched. It doesn’t matter; he just has to get through the day. He’ll go back to his cold, empty apartment and clutch onto the kitchen counter to stop himself from falling apart. One foot in front of the other.

And then he meets her properly. Athena. Hen introduces them, and Bobby can see it, the tragedy of it, of falling for her, of wanting to step into her world, to see Harry and May and Michael and David, and want more than anything to be part of it. He knows he can’t, not in this lifetime, but it doesn’t stop the desire from brewing in him so intensely. When she sits down with him after a call he can’t claw himself out of, when she offers to go to church with him, and when he asks her on a date, it all makes him petrified. But something changes in him, and he starts to want again, starts to let himself. Starts to let the guilt slip off his shoulders and starts to look forward to the days. Stops counting them down and starts living for them. One foot in front of the other. There are burnt dinners and close calls and crying kids, and Bobby takes a deep breath one morning in the home he shares with his wife and kids. He feels the deep, dark haunting inside him, but it isn’t like it once was. It isn’t there to destroy him any more. It’s there to remind him of who he is.

The slow climb from the pit took a lot of time. Bobby knows. And he can see Buck still trapped at the bottom.

He reaches down and offers a hand.

***

"Grief is a giant neon sign, protruding through everything, pointing everywhere, broadcast loudly, 'Love was here.'

In the finer print, quietly, 'Love still is.'"

***

There are parts of Buck that were in Daniel, that became a part of him, that died right there inside of him. Parts of Buck are buried miles away, in the soil beneath a tombstone that has his brother’s name on it.

It’s all the wrong parts of Buck that exist now, all the wrong genetics that fell through the cracks, and it cost him his brother's life. Because if Buck just did as he was meant to – if he could be good enough, his brother might still be alive today.

And now he’s on his knees in a fire station, his Captain holding him down as his sister drives over to him in the middle of the night, panicking about him hurting himself.

He’s been hurting all this time. It’s always been his fault. He couldn’t be the right parts.

Buck isn’t good enough for the life he wants. He knows he doesn’t deserve it. But he craves it, so badly, he wants to hold onto it now he’s had a taste, and he doesn’t know how to stop the pain from rising in him like an almighty sea.

There’s a tombstone in Pennsylvania with his brother’s name on it. Buck had been there only once, on the day of the funeral. After that, he must have walked past the cemetery a hundred times, driven right by it, dreamt of it from miles away.

He never went back. He can’t bear the idea of seeing his brother there, forever, while he’s still here. That was never the plan. He knows that. There was never meant to be Evan without Daniel.

He feels another set of hands on his shoulders and can smell her perfume. Maddie sits down, her hands coming up to his cheeks as she holds him, and the tears fall from her face. She says something, but he can’t hear anything over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. Her arms fold him into her, and he leans forward, his nose in her hair, and he remembers how much Daniel liked the color of it.

He’s in a hospital, and Bobby and Maddie are waiting for him somewhere close by. His throat is raw, he feels like he sobbed out every liquid inside his body, and his eyes itch and burn. He sits and flexes his hand. It doesn’t look good. There's a nasty red line and bruising, and Buck wants to poke at it.

There’s a flash in his mind, and he remembers Daniel in a hospital bed, deathly white, as he stared at Buck after surgery, and he looked so disappointed at him that Buck felt the guilt and pain sweep through him. It’s after another failed transplant, and Buck wants to open his mouth, croak out a thousand apologies that will never be enough, but he remembers how Daniel would always tap his forehead, and Buck wants to cry. How can Daniel still look at him and love him?

He's shaking. He’s about to fall at the seams. He doesn't know how to keep going.

And then he runs into the room, eyes wild and mouth open, hair a bird’s nest. His scrubs have a little heart on the pocket. And he’s exactly where Buck wished he would be. Ever since he first stepped foot in Buck’s hospital room all those months ago, he’s exactly what Buck needed most.

Eddie. It was always Eddie.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie Eddie Eddie –

Buck’s breath finally catches, and then he’s in Eddie’s arms as he sobs.

He closes his eyes. It’s on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t say it yet.

***

"I thought I would hide my grief carefully, tucked in the folds of my skin. I would keep it safe, keep it quiet, and let it be saturated into my body until it slowly takes over me. But grief doesn’t hide; it stained my fingertips and split my lip and made my eyes water with it, until everyone could see. I thought I could hide my grief and let the great world spin, but it didn’t. People stopped for me. They looked me in the eye, gave me food for my sunken bones, and smiled at me when my voice stopped working. They took me in and brushed the dead leaves from my grave.

Grief is a living, haunting thing, and love is its shadow."

***

Part IV. Be Gone, Be Faraway

Panic attack.

That much Buck got. Panic attack, because he was reminded of his brother, who’s been dead for over a decade. He’d laugh if there was any real humor to it. He gets checked over, with Bobby and Maddie and Eddie waiting in the lobby down the hall at 3 am. When Buck’s cleared to leave and shaking like a leaf, Maddie takes him back home, and Bobby follows them. Eddie’s torn; he still has a shift to work, and then he has to go pick up Chris from Pepa’s to take him to school, and Maddie speaks for Buck to tell Eddie to visit them later. Buck walks away and feels Eddie’s gaze follow him. He should tell him; he knows he should.

There’s a softness to Maddie as she sits him down once they’re back in his loft, pulling a blanket over him and tracing her hands over his face and hair. Bobby stands a little further back, arms crossed, and watches him carefully as Maddie goes to make some tea. Buck’s hand is splintered, ice on top, and it’s just a fracture, but it’s a memory of Buck falling apart in front of Bobby, and Buck hates it. He’s staring at it, poking at the sensation of pain flooding him again when Bobby steps in. His hand wraps around Buck’s forearm, lifts the probing fingers away, and then he sits down beside Buck.

It's quiet. Buck doesn’t make a move, and Bobby seems perfectly fine to entertain him this way. They hear Maddie move around and open cupboards, the run of the sink, a kettle flipping on. He listens and closes his eyes and wishes he wasn’t such a fuck up.

“Hey,” Bobby whispers, tapping Buck’s thigh. Buck traces the impact with his eyes, guilt burying itself deep into his bones. Bobby’s here, he should be at the station. Buck isn’t sure Bobby’s even allowed to be here, but he is. And it’s dangerous because he shouldn’t be. Bobby has a family and a career and a life, and Buck fears that he’s going to waste it here with him. Just like Maddie. Eddie. Christopher. Just like how he wasted Daniel.

“Hey, Buck,” Bobby repeats, and this time, something in his voice makes Buck look up. It’s the same grey storm he remembers seeing all those months ago at the factory fire. “I don’t know everything, but I do know this for certain. It’s not your fault.” Buck swallows, feeling weightless. "It's not your fault, Buck. It's not your fault." Bobby repeats it, over and over and over again, murmuring the words to Buck so he’s left with nothing else to think about except that phrase. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. “It’s okay,” Bobby says, hushing the ache in Buck as his arms come to wrap over Buck's shoulders. The sob wants to climb up so badly, and Buck tries to push against the tide, but Bobby’s holding him, and maybe it’s okay to cry, just this one last time.

He sees Maddie come over, a mug in her hands that she places on the table before kneeling down in front of Buck. Her hands settle gently over his knee, and she tilts her head up at him, catching his eye.

“It’s not your fault, Evan. It never was.” She echoes, her eyes wet.

It makes Buck break in two. Tears instantly flood his eyes again, and he collapses his face into his hands. The sob is ripped from him, and Bobby’s arm pulls him tight as Maddie clings to him in front while Buck weeps.

It’s everything Buck’s ever wanted to hear. It’s everything Buck doesn’t know how to accept.

***

He’s sat in an armchair that’s mostly comfortable, in an office that doesn’t feel as sterile as how he imagined it would be, in front of a woman who smiles politely at him. It’s the first session Buck’s been to, at the request slash demand of Bobby, and he doesn’t know what to expect. There was some small icebreaker talk about weather and traffic and the price of gas, and then Dr. Copeland asked Buck why he was there.

"My Captain’s making me" is too gross an over-simplification.

"I had a panic attack over my dead brother" isn’t something he’s quite yet ready to say.

"I've been waiting to die my whole life" seems a little heavy to start off with.

“I’m not registered as an organ donor,” Buck blurts out instead, unsure where that came from. Judging from Dr. Copeland’s eyebrow raise, she isn’t either.

“Well, you don’t have to be, do you?” She asks, her pen resting in her hands over a blank pad of paper. Buck stares at it, then looks away.

“I feel guilty about it,” is all Buck offers, and Dr. Copeland nods.

“Why is that?”

“Because…” Buck isn’t sure how to finish that sentence. He tries again, but the words don’t come out a second time. He winces, wondering if Dr. Copeland will start tapping her pen or shaking her foot, how he remembers his mother would act when Buck tried to talk to her when he was a little kid, but nothing changes in her demeanor. He takes a breath and tries again.

“My brother needed me for his surgeries when we were younger. He was sick a lot. And they needed me for my blood, or bone marrow, or a transplant, whatever it was at the time, so he could get better. But then…” He died. The words can’t come out yet. “I didn’t want to be an organ donor after that.”

“That makes a lot of sense, Buck. Ultimately, it’s your body, so it’s your choice, isn’t it?” Dr. Copeland asks, not unkindly, and Buck plays with his fingers, the fracture on his hand slowly beginning to heal. Christopher had asked him why he didn’t get a cool cast so he could sign it, and Eddie had sighed very deeply behind his son.

Buck thinks about the question. Is it his choice? Has anything been his choice? He thinks back, and he knows. He wouldn’t have done anything different. He was always going to give every part of himself to Daniel, for as long as he could.

“What did your brother say?”

It jars him a little. He isn’t used to people bringing up Daniel as if it’s a normal thing to ask about. “What did he say about what?”

“About you giving him parts of yourself?”

Buck thinks about it. He remembers Daniel in his hospital bed, frowning at the doctors as they spoke to their parents, his eyes darting back and forth before landing on Buck, sitting in a chair in the corner. He’d tap his forehead.

“He didn’t say much.”

Didn’t he? That's not true. Daniel said a lot, but it was always to ask Buck something. He’d ask about school, who his teachers were and his favorite book and what color he liked the most. He’d make up stories for Buck, and he’d offer him his dessert from the hospital tray and talk about going to the beach with him and Maddie.

“What happened to your brother, Buck?”

At the end of their first session, Dr. Copeland hands over a patient health questionnaire to Buck and politely asks him to complete it. She reassures him that only she will review it, and they can use this to help with his treatment. Buck bristles at the term but does as he’s asked. He reads the questions. His chest hurts, but he fills it.

Buck puts down the pencil when he’s finished and feels like he’s finally treading water for the first time in his life.

***

Over the last two weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems?

Little interest or pleasure in doing things?
Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?
Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much?
Feeling tired or having little energy?
Poor appetite or overeating?
Feeling bad about yourself, or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down?
Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television?
Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed. Or the opposite- being so fidgety or restless that you have been moving around a lot more than usual?
Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself?

***

And so it goes. Buck left the office that day and ended up with a regularly scheduled weekly meeting with Dr. Copeland on his calendar, where he would sit in a comfy armchair across from a woman who didn’t make him feel like an idiot whenever he opens his mouth to say things about himself, his feelings, his childhood. Unpacking the years of memories he buried under his bed, tucked away, deep in himself. He can almost feel the little Evan who clutched at Maddie’s hand as he walked into the hospital peer back at him, curiosity in his eyes. What are you doing?

There’s a lot of work to be done. But there’s still time to do it.

Buck had worried, at first, about Maddie and Bobby and Eddie and his job, but it seemed as though they were all willing to be as accommodating as he needed while Buck picked up the pieces from that night. Eddie hugged Buck tight as he left the hospital, one of countless hugs Eddie gave that night, and he trailed behind so he could stare at them as they left. Bobby grabbed Buck in his arms and held him before he left to go back to the station, not without telling Buck he was grounded from coming to work a shift until they could check in together. Maddie stayed the night and brushed Buck’s hair as he finally got some rest. Buck can’t help the guilt that rises in him like an overwhelming tide.

When the next morning came, Buck had slept for longer than he could remember ever doing before, and there were messages on his phone waiting for him.

[Bobby] Just checking in, how are you doing? Call me anytime, please.

[Maddie] Running to my place to grab some things and then doing a grocery shop. When I get back, we can watch Blue Planet together. Call if you need anything before I get back. Love you.

[Eddie] Can we come over today?

Buck’s stomach dropped as he read the last text. Eddie wanted to come over? With Chris? Why? If Eddie was going to cut Buck out, surely the kind thing to do would be to do it over text, not in person. Not in Buck’s loft, not in touching distance.

Not in front of Christopher.

Shaking, Buck pulls up the messages.

[Buck] Thanks, Bobby. I will.

[Buck] Love you too, Mads. Roger that.

[Buck] Of course, when are you free?

Eddie’s response comes in within minutes.

[Eddie] Now?

He exhales. Do or die.

[Buck] Now.

Buck spent the time waiting for them to come over, chipping away at his nails between his teeth, pacing because… Eddie. Eddie stormed into his hospital room and held him for what felt like hours as he fell apart. His navy scrubs were stained by the time he had to let go of Buck for his X-rays. There was a flush on his face, and he was rubbing his eyes, waiting with Bobby and Maddie in between checking on his patients. He stood abruptly, shuffling on his feet as Maddie listened to the doctor and Bobby watched on, face lined with worry. Linda was pulling strings to let all of them stay there; she must have been, and Buck was grateful and gutted. He didn’t want Eddie to see this all, let the terrors coat the outside of him too, but he saw it, every last bit of it. He doesn’t know how much Maddie or Bobby told him, but Buck could tell, looking into Eddie’s eyes, he knew. He knew enough. And now he’s coming over to… what?

There’s a knock at the door all too soon, and Buck lurches over to pull the handle, unable to stop his feet from finding their way over. And when he opens the door, he’s faced with them.

Christopher steps in and all but falls into Buck, leaning his arms up and around Buck's waist and holding tightly. Buck stops, frozen to the spot, and his eyes land on Eddie. He looks so soft in the morning light, his eyes raking over them both, and Buck reaches down as if he can’t help it as he envelopes Chris into him. Maybe there’s a part of Buck that will never let go.

After a few moments, Chris leans back and inspects Buck’s hand, bandaged up. “Dad told me you got hurt. Are you feeling better now?” And his eyes are so wide, his voice so wobbly, and Buck has no choice as he ducks down and hugs Chris again.

“I’m gonna be okay, bud,” Buck whispers to Chris, who leans into Buck’s chest. Eddie’s hand comes to rest on Christopher’s back, where Buck’s forearm already is, and Buck closes his eyes as he feels Eddie shift closer.

“We’re here for you, Buck,” Eddie says, and Buck is surprised to find that he knows. He thinks maybe he’s known for a while.

They step inside the loft.

***

He finally goes back to work a few weeks after his first therapy session, his hand fully healed, and Buck accepts the touch to his shoulder as Bobby draws him, no longer flinching at the contact. It feels reassuring and makes Buck feel present. Wanted. He wonders if Bobby realizes that. The others must not know because they carry on as if nothing’s changed, as if Buck just missed a few shifts at work. They’ve spent time together while he was gone, went to bars or barbeques, or held school visits at the station, but when he’s back, it just feels seamless. Though there’s something, something in the way Hen watches him at the station, or how Chimney hovers nearby him, or the way Ravi triple-checks all his gear before he lowers him down on a rope call, or how even Lucy’s jokes don’t have any bite to them anymore.

“They care about you, Evan,” Maddie explains, and she’s sat beside him on his couch with a pint of ice cream melting in her hands as a documentary plays silently in the background. She’s over at his place four times a week since the panic attack, and Buck doesn’t mind. There’s something about having Maddie around that makes the pain both flare and dull, makes Buck feel it all, and he's learning to be okay with it.

He swallows, eating another bite from his own tub of ice cream. Vanilla. Daniel's favorite was strawberry. “I know,” he replies, unable to unglue his throat anymore to elaborate.

Maddie rests her hand on his forearm and smiles. “They love you, like, a lot. Chim talks about you guys all the time, and the way he talks about it, it’s beautiful. You're a family. He complains about you guys too, don’t get me wrong,” Maddie pulls back, laughing. “But you all really care about one another. I’m so glad you have them, Evan.”

They sit there on the couch and think about how far they’ve made it. One foot in front of the other.

***

“I miss him,” Buck says, picking at the thread on his sweater as Dr. Copeland takes a sip of her water. They’ve been talking in today’s session about Christopher, of all people, about how Buck was really nervous showing him the station. Dr. Copeland wrote a lot down in her notepad as Buck explained Chris and Eddie to her. She was professional; Buck would have to give her that because she didn’t raise her eyebrows as Buck went on for ten minutes straight about the trip to Griffith Park the three of them took. Buck got Chris on his shoulders and could feel the happiness radiate out of the boy.

Dr. Copeland put down her glass of water, swallowing the sip. “Who do you miss?”

Buck hesitates.

“Daniel.”

It’s funny, Buck’s spent so long avoiding the ghost in his life that mentioning him now, Buck almost expected the rug to be pulled out, the curtain shoved back, and whatever was festering inside him to be revealed, surgically removed, and shown to the world for what it is. But it wasn’t that; it was just Dr. Copeland looking at him, a careful expression on her face.

Buck misses his brother. He misses him every single day, and just saying it, it’s like a flood comes out. He starts talking and remembering, and he starts crying and Dr. Copeland hands him a tissue box, and he sees a crack in her, but she tucks it away as Buck keeps going. Daniel once snorted so hard yogurt came out of his nose. He taught Buck how to curse in sign language, and he had a terrible singing voice. When the nurses asked Daniel what cuddly toy he'd like to have, as part of their efforts to make him feel more comfortable at the hospital, Daniel asked for the polar bear he saw in their cart. He handed it over to Buck immediately when he next came to visit, who clutched it close in his small arms and loved it more than anything else he'd been given in his whole life. Buck sobbed the first time he heard the song "Daniel" by Elton John and listened to it fifty times on repeat.

By the time Buck goes home, he’s rubbed raw, feeling on edge and skittish. He knows better, knows he shouldn’t do this right now, but Dr. Copeland reminded him the only way out is through. This pain is staying until he’s done with it. So he grabs the box from the back of his closet slowly, holding it in his lap as he sits on the floor and looks down. Buck travels through time as he looks through the handful of pictures and memories he has managed to keep over the years. There are birthday cards, photographs with Daniel he holds carefully, trinkets and, a cuddly toy and a terrible love stored inside. For decades, Buck saw his love as guilt, his pain as penance for living when Daniel died. All because he couldn’t save him. As Buck looks down at it all now, it’s different.

It's just love.

It's because he misses his brother so badly that sometimes he can’t breathe. He holds the box in his hands, close to his chest. Carefully, Buck pushes it underneath his bed, and it doesn’t feel dirty or wrong or terrible this time. It feels like he’s saying bye to an old friend.

Getting up on old knees, Buck checks the time. 12:45 pm. He’s gotta get going, he’s got somewhere to be.

Eddie pulls up outside his building, getting out as Buck walks up. He throws his keys over, and Buck catches them mid-air, swapping over as Buck opens the driver’s side door.

“Hi, Buck!” Chris waves from the backseat, and Buck turns to grin. Eddie’s made it into the passenger’s side, belt buckled in.

“Hey, Chris! How are you doing?” Buck asks, checking everyone is secured before he rolls out of the lot.

Chris hums, looking out the window. “I’m good. Thanks for spending the day with us.”

Buck grins and looks at Eddie. Eddie taps his fingers on his thigh, looking everywhere but at Buck, a small smile on his lips, his eyes crinkled in joy.

“Of course, couldn’t miss a day at the zoo with my favorite guys,” Buck says and sees out the corner of his eye Eddie snaps over to look at him. His eyes follow Buck as he drives on Sunset, as he parks the car, as he gets them tickets, as he laughs with Chris at the penguins, as they eat hotdogs and cotton candy, as they stretch their legs, and sit down for a moment. The whole time, Eddie’s watching and Buck feels his heart thump loudly inside his chest.

When they get back to Eddie’s, Chris is tired and eventually in bed while they both linger in the kitchen, Eddie reaches out. Eyelash, he says softly, his hand resting on Buck’s face as Buck inhales sharply, stuck in place as he lets Eddie drag careful fingers over his cheek. His hand slips away, and Buck misses it immensely. Wants to demand he put it back.

And if he lies in bed that night and traces the path on his face that Eddie made, that’s Buck’s burden to bear.

***

“Are you sure?” Maddie must have asked fifteen times now, and Buck’s honestly getting tired.

“If you ask one more time, I’m showing Chimney your French bob pictures.” Maddie gasps.

“I’ll have you know it was very fashionable at the time, Evan.”

“So was the Roaring Twenties.”

“You’re not funny.”

“No, but I am sure about this.”

Maddie adjusts the tray beside her and sighs. “Okay, okay, you’re right. Okay, here we go,” she says, and finally, Buck feels the pinch as the needle goes in, and then it’s happening.

His blood travels out of him, and Buck wonders who will get it next.

Eddie scuttles in a little while later, a small smile on his face as he goes to sit down beside Buck, but he’s interrupted from saying anything when Josh follows hot on his heels, pointing at Maddie.

Panting, he barely gets it out. “You, now, patient in 216, affair.”

Maddie turns around and has questions immediately. “With the professor or the student?” She’s still got one hand trained on Buck, but she’s also turned fully towards Josh. Buck fiddles with the stress ball in his hand, and Eddie lightly leans in closer, his shoulder a gentle pressure against Buck's.

Josh tilts his head down. Quirks an eyebrow with a smirk. “Both.”

It’s as if Christmas came early, evidently, and Maddie turns back to Buck as if he should be excited, too, but he’s got no idea what’s going on. It reminds him of how Chimney will talk about a movie as if Buck knows what happened in the storyline. Before Buck knows it, Eddie’s taking over as Maddie and Josh scurry down the hall. Maddie calls out that she’ll be back soon, but if Buck knows his sister, she won’t be finished until she knows the whole story. She’s the worst gossip, kind of like Chimney, huh.

Buck hears chuckling and sees Eddie with a grin stretched wide on his face.

“Do I want to know?” Buck asks, squeezing the ball harder as Eddie’s brown eyes look him over.

“Definitely not,” Eddie snorts, and then he lightly taps on Buck’s shoulder. “You Buckley’s sure like gossip, huh?” Buck drops his mouth, mock offended, and Eddie laughs. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” They share a smile together, and Buck loses track of the world around them. Eddie’s eyes are a shade of brown Buck knows he could find his way back to.

Eddie clears his throat, looking back over at the machine. “Anyway, why didn’t you tell me you were donating today? I could have helped.”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” Buck starts, but then he’s swiftly interrupted.

“You’re never a bother, Buck. Never.” There’s a tone to Eddie’s voice that Buck can’t pick out, but he feels it, and it makes him shiver. “Next time, just call me.”

Buck scoffs. “I can’t call you for everything, Eddie.” He’s been leaning on Eddie and Chris, hell, even Maddie and Bobby, way too much. He has to be careful.

In a low voice, Eddie disagrees with him. “Yes, yes you can.” He stares at Buck, who feels a little lightheaded, though funnily enough, not because of the pints of blood leaving his body.

“Okay,” Buck murmurs, and Eddie seems satisfied with that. Eddie starts tracing small patterns over Buck’s bicep and shoulder, and Buck’s mouth goes dry. He stares at Eddie, knows so many parts of the man in front of him that he’s been lucky enough to witness, and Buck loves him so cleanly down to the bone he can’t imagine anyone else in this life he’d want by his side. It makes Buck feel whole, solid, and needed, wanted, just for who he is. It makes Buck want to try, makes him want to flourish and take up space and ask for things.

It makes him Evan Buckley. And nothing can take that away now.

“Hey, what do I need to do to sign up to be an organ donor?”

***

“It was mustard, Cap, I know it was,” Chimney exclaims to the group, waving the slice of bread in his hands like a sword. Hen guffaws beside him, and Ravi rolls his eyes. The rain outside is the cacophony Chim needs to be truly as dramatic as he wants to be. Hen starts humming The Phantom of the Opera under her breath as she gets herself a glass of water.

“I’d never have mustard on my food, Chimney, so it wasn’t me,” Ravi says, crossing his arms over his chest with a raised eyebrow. Chimney sneers back.

“If it wasn’t you, then who was it? No one else was in the kitchen, Panikkar, just confess!” There’s pointing, accusations, and a tussle as Hen grabs food from their now abandoned plates to add to hers, and Bobby sighs loudly.

“Children,” he starts, but the alarm goes off, and then they’re all rushing out.

The argument doesn’t get fully resolved by the time they’re at the call because Ravi knocks shoulders with Chimney as he gets out of the truck, and Chim mutters under his breath as he opens up the back of the ambulance. Buck helps out Hen as a man stumbles out of the blaze from the five-alarm fire they’re looking at. It’s an entire building up in flames, and it’s bad. Really bad. Even with the rain, it’s an angry-looking beast, and Buck can feel the heat from where they’re standing.

They look to Bobby.

“Alright, I want Hen and Chimney checking in with any patients currently out of the building, try to relive the other stations where we can. Ravi and Buck, you’re on the ladder, I want you to do any damage control possible. Looks like we're grounded from going in, so no one goes anywhere without my say so.” Bobby looks around, sees other crews, and nods towards the 173’s Captain. “Where’s air support when you need them?”

They split up, and then Buck’s in a harness that Ravi double checks, and he’s walking up the ladder, aiming the hose up and at the fire. It’s a factory, from the looks of it, a completely destroyed one. Buck remembers something a lot like this months ago, nearly a year ago. He remembers a different life then.

There’s yelling below. Buck can hear Bobby’s voice, and he tries to keep the angle of the hose on the flames, but it’s tough. He can barely see, the rain coming down like sheets, and then he hears Bobby’s voice more clearly.

“Come down!”

Looking down, Buck can’t make out what’s going on, but he pauses as he looks back up, and then he’s falling in a flash of bright white. His stomach rolls, turns, and his chest tightens while his head throbs. He can’t place anything aside from the pain. Just darkness, and pain.

He’s all by himself again, and he’s scared, and he’s lost. And he just sees darkness.

He thinks he hears a voice, someone calling his name.

"Evan? What are you doing here?"

Daniel's face is frozen in terror as he looks at Buck.

Buck's heart roars inside his chest, and he jumps, eyes wide open as he comes to. He’s moving, he's alive, he's going to throw up in the back of an ambulance, and he feels like his whole heart is bursting out of his chest. Hen’s by his side, scrambling around him, and Buck is barely able to keep focus. There’s pressure on his chest, and he vaguely sees Chimney on top of him doing compressions, but it’s only coming to him in flashes. Chim freezes when he looks down at him.

“Buck? Buck, can you hear me?”

Buck tries to talk, but nothing comes out properly from his mouth, and it hurts so badly he feels the need to pass out. It aches to make anything work, to think. He makes another attempt but can’t make himself move his mouth at all this time. His eyes slip closed. He tries to remember what Daniel looked like. The sound of his voice.

“No! No, Buck, stay with me, you hear? Come on, you have to stay awake, please,” Hen sounds frantic, and Buck feels bad, but it’s hard to keep himself awake when the lull of sleep is hypnotizing, and he just wants to let himself finally rest when he hears another voice, ringing in his head.

“You need to be careful, though, Buck. You’re important, I don’t want to see you hurt.”

Oh. Eddie.

Eddie will be upset, won’t he?

Buck’s eyes flash open, stressed but wide awake, and he hears Hen mutter something under her breath that sounds like a prayer as she lets out a wet exhale. There’s a feeling inside him that burns, but he stays awake the whole time in the ambulance. Chim hovers over him, waiting for something, anything, but Buck just stares at them. They look like they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it reminds Buck of all those months ago when they first carted him off to the hospital, the way they looked at him as he was wheeled away.

They get to Cedars-Sinai, and Buck can’t see if Maddie or Eddie are on shift, but they have Linda there calling it in, and Buck’s being whisked off and away by a handful of doctors. He wants to tell them all, though. He wants to find Bobby and let him know, make him proud.

He came back. He chose to come back.

Buck realizes, belatedly, that it means he doesn’t want to die. It’s the first time he can remember thinking that.

Buck isn’t aware of when he loses consciousness again after that, but when he next wakes up, it’s pitch black outside, and there is a low hum in his room. He feels disorientated, his head full of loose marbles all rolling around and thumping inside him, leaving bruises in their path. He blinks his eyes dreamily, all scrunched together before finally parting open, and then he sees him.

Eddie. His head is on the bed, face down.

Buck wants to curl a hand over him, but he feels weighted down in bed, exhausted. He sluggishly lobs his head to the side to study Eddie closer, and it's enough to get Eddie's attention.

Shooting upright, Eddie looks over at him, and Buck feels it hit him all at once. Eddie’s eyes are bloodshot, his nose a shiny pink at the tip, and tear tracks are running down his face. He has creases all over his cheeks and forehead, and his hair is falling everywhere except the way it normally should.

He looks terrified.

There’s a split second where Eddie looks at him, and then he collapses, like a puppet without string. He gently rests his forehead against Buck’s chest, right in the center, and braces his arms over him, too, covering Buck from the waist up. He exhales, and Buck can literally feel it on him. And even though he’s barely awake and in the hospital, it still makes his heart jolt inside.

Clumsily, Buck reaches up and brushes his hands on Eddie’s arms, his hands, waist, whatever he can reach, and that has Eddie braced backward, disconnecting them. His eyes are shiny and wet, and Buck clears his throat hoarsely.

“Eddie?”

Eddie leans over, grabbing a cup of water and a straw, directing it Buck’s way. As Buck drinks, Eddie swallows, too.

“How do you feel?” Eddie asks, and Buck finishes the cup, leaning back down. As he starts to look around, he begins to feel more human, more awake, aware of the pain in his body as he stares at Eddie.

He’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Buck reaches out slightly, and Eddie wraps his hands over Buck’s. “I’m okay,” Buck says softly, rubbing his thumb jarringly over Eddie.

“Do you remember anything?” Eddie asks, his voice gravelly. Buck shakes his head as much as he can. “There was a storm, Evan.” Eddie’s voice cracks, and then his hands shake, and Buck tries to squeeze it as much as he can. Eddie lowers his head and tenses. “You were up on a ladder in a lightning storm, and you got hit.”

He does remember. It’s bits and pieces, but he remembers Bobby yelling, Hen worried in the back of the ambulance. He remembers Linda and the doctors, remembers the noise and the lights blaring in his eyes.

Remembers his brother's voice calling out to him in the dark.

“They got you down, but you had already gone into cardiac arrest. Three –” Eddie falters and slowly breathes in and out. It’s stuttering in his chest. He tries again. “Three minutes and seventeen seconds,” Eddie explains, wiping his nose. “That’s how long it took to get you down, Hen said. They counted, because CPR is vital in the first two minutes after cardiac arrest, Buck. If not, fuck, if not, you could end up in a coma. But… But you still woke up. You woke up in the ambulance, and your heart kept beating. You’re okay, Buck.”

If it's wonder or grief that coats Eddie’s voice, Buck isn’t sure. He’s only sure of one thing.

“I had to, you told me.”

Eddie’s entire face crumbles and his eyebrows dip in a way that reminds him of Maddie.

“What?”

“You said I had to be careful. You don’t want to see me get hurt,” Buck explains. And he feels like his heart has been rubbed raw inside himself, and his palms are itching, but he looks Eddie in the eyes as he says it. “I have to live now.”

The tears finally fall from Eddie’s eyes, and his lips quiver a little as he leans over Buck on his bed because Buck fought against everything in the universe to come back. To Eddie. To Maddie, to Chris. To Bobby, the 118.

Buck fought to live.

When Eddie leans down, it’s instinct that Buck leans up and into him. And as Eddie places a kiss on Buck’s birthmark, it sounds a whole lot like what Buck wanted to say to Eddie the last time he was in a hospital bed at night like this.

“I love you.”

***

A few weeks later, after Buck’s out of the hospital and he’s tucked Chris in bed and spent an extra half an hour kissing Eddie on his doorstep goodbye, a novelty that will never get old, Buck drives over to Maddie’s. He stood outside her door for a few minutes before he finally used his key to let himself inside. She’s on her couch, glass of red wine in hand, as she reads a book. Her head turns as she hears the noise, and she grins. It’s a far cry from the worry etched into her face he’s seen too many times.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” She doesn’t mind, he can tell, her eyes gleaming as she rounds the corner to pull him into a hug. He tucks his nose into her hair, smells her shampoo. Closes his eyes.

“Why did you follow me to California, Mads?” It’s a question he’s always been too terrified to ask. He knows about Doug and knows what Maddie went through. So why did she come here when she could have finally been free? When she deserved more than anyone else to be free? How can she bear to be around Buck, who’s nothing but shackled to a life she fought to get out of?

He’s so scared that it's because she feels a duty to suffer with him, and he’ll know he has every right to hate himself if that’s true.

Maddie finally pulls back to look Buck in the eye. She raises her hands to hold his face in her palms. It brushes against his birthmark. She has a smile on her face that’s watery, and it’s as if she’s been waiting to say this the whole time, Buck just needed to ask.

“Because I would never let you wander in the dark alone, Evan.”

She brings him back to her, and Buck clutches on.

It doesn’t feel like duty, the way she says it. It feels like love.

***

It gets easier and harder from there. It gets easier, because he has Eddie, who kisses him anytime they’re around each other, who borrows Buck’s socks and sweaters and demands Buck help him and Chris make dinners and keeps his favorite juice in the fridge. It gets easier, because Buck can lean in and hug Maddie and not feel guilty for dragging her through the life she has here. It gets easier, because Bobby teaches him how to use starter to make bread and shares some of his own that he’s had for years. It gets easier, because Christopher still wants to watch movies with him, but now he can wake up and make breakfast for him, too, and Eddie wears a smile that’s bleary in the morning but no less beautiful.

It gets harder, because Buck realizes how much he has to lose. And now he’s terrified of life, just like everyone else.

It gets easier and harder, Bobby promised him. But it’s alright. Just one foot in front of the other, Buck.

***

“Dad hasn’t taken me here yet,” Christopher explains as they walk across the beach together. They’ve got on swimming shorts and are braving it barefoot in the bright sunshine. Chris has been buzzing in excitement all day on the way over. Eddie watched them leave, a little grin on his lips as he brushed both their hair from their faces and stood by the door as they drove off.

Buck’s heart is in his throat, and he aches to touch the water.

The stop a little bit away from where the tide pulls in, and Buck watches, mesmerized. He remembers how he felt guilty. Felt rotten, the first time he came here.

Chris touches his arm. He feels whole. He feels important.

“How many times have you been here?”

Buck thinks. “Probably over a hundred.”

Beside him, Chris’ eyes go wide. “Wow, you must really like it here,” he says, staring at the ocean in front of them. “When did you first come here?”

Buck can’t help but run a hand over Chris’ head, even as he swipes at his hand half-heartedly.

Buck thinks again. “Must have been when I was eighteen.” Right when he left that house, that town, his whole world. This was the first place he went to. He didn’t have an apartment or a job. Just the money he was meant to use for college that he spent on a secondhand car and a destination. Buck came here, and stood in the ocean for what must have been hours. He stared at the water ahead of him, and never looked back.

His parents never called him again after that.

“I like it here,” Chris says, squinting around to see everything. Ice cream trucks. People playing volleyball. Sandcastles. Venice Beach.

Shrugging the bag off his back and throwing down their chairs and cooler, Buck turns to Chris and nods his head to the water. “Want to get in?” He shucks off his shirt and grabs the sunscreen bottle.

At Christopher’s enthusiastic nod, Buck makes sure he’s covered in sunscreen, and they walk in, the water cold and crisp and perfect. Chris gasps and laughs and splashes Buck, who feigns outrage and throws water over his head.

They’re out there for a while, letting the water lap around them before Buck calls for a break, and they lay out on the beach. Chris is drinking some water and digging around for a granola bar, and Buck wonders what makes him say it.

In the end, it makes perfect sense.

“Did you know the name for the Pacific Ocean comes from the Latin for ‘peaceful sea?’” Buck traces fingers in the sand beneath him, letting it fall from his hand over and over again. It will always slip from his fingers.

“Peaceful sea? Sounds nice,” Chris takes a bite, food lodged in his mouth as he talks. Eddie and Abuela would have a field day if they saw it. “Is that why you wanted to come here? Because it’s peaceful?” Buck turns to look out at the ocean, and Chris copies him.

“Yeah. I just wanted to have a whole day out on the beach.”

They sit there.

“Hey, Chris?"

“Yeah?

“I love you, kid.”

“I love you too, Buck.”

***

He’s early to his shift. Way too early. So early that Bobby does a double-take when he sees him.

“Buck? What’s going on, your shift doesn’t start until –” He breaks away to check his watch, but Buck waves him off.

“I know I’m early, but actually, I wanted to talk to you about something, if you have a minute?” He fidgets and feels nervous and lightheaded and like his legs are numb, but he has to do this. The moment he woke up in the dead of the night, the words on his lips, he knew he wouldn’t be able to let this go. He had to say them, and it had to be with Bobby.

Bobby doesn’t let it show if he’s worried, he just calmly leads them to his office and waits for Buck to sit down before shutting the door.

Shuffling some papers around, Bobby sits down opposite him, behind his desk, and clasps his hands in front of him, friendly as can be. “Alright then, how can I help you, Buck?” He smiles, and Buck feels just like that day in the hospital over a year ago when they first met. He remembers the feeling of being small. Buck knows what to call it now.

Safe.

“Yeah. I just, I guess. Well, tomorrow’s never a given, right? Especially not in our line of work, and I don’t want to regret anything. Regret not doing or saying the things I should have. And for a long time, longer than I realized, I wasn’t saying something to you that I should have, and I want to. Now, not when it’s too late.” He’s breathing fast, his nerves running out quickly, but there’s no going back now. He thinks of his blood on his hands and a tombstone with his name on it as everyone moves on and leaves him behind.

Frowning, concerned, Bobby leans in across the table, a hand outstretched as if reaching out to Buck. “What is it, son?”

Son.

What did Bobby say when they first met? You’re worth worrying about, Buck.

“I haven’t spoken to my parents since I was eighteen.” Bobby’s face recoils in surprise, as if the idea of a parent not speaking to their child for that length of time was ludicrous. It makes the inside of Buck’s chest warm. He doesn’t feel the pain he once would have made over that statement. “It’s been over a decade. I don’t really feel anything for them. I never understood anything about what a good parent should be like. I thought it was just a movie trope, some commercialized idea, a lie.” Buck inhales deeply and looks into Bobby’s eyes. “Until I met you.”

The room is silent, Bobby frozen in place. His hand is still reaching out.

“You look out for us, for me. You rant about our helmets never being buckled properly; you make sure I know how to feed myself, you worried about me before you even knew my real name. You make me want to do better. Be better. I feel worthy of being here in a way I never have before. Because you helped me feel that way, feel wanted. Loved. And I know that’s a lot to hear, but you don’t have to do or say anything. I just needed you to know. Bobby, you mean a lot to me. You –” Buck gets a little choked up and has to clear his throat. Bobby blinks at him rapidly. “You helped save me. And I love you.”

It's sudden, the way Bobby stands up. He seems a little disjointed and stiff, and Buck feels a pit in his stomach form. He doesn’t want this to make Bobby feel uncomfortable, though Buck isn’t able to quite spiral about it because then he’s being swept up.

Oh. Oh.

Bobby’s clutching him tight, his arms wrapped around him and pressing them close, rocking on the spot slightly, and Buck hugs back. His eyes close, and he feels safe. He feels like he’s meant to be right here, that it’s okay to take space, to be in the room.

When Buck thinks he’s probably held on long enough and tries to pull away reluctantly, Bobby just shakes his head and holds on. Buck clings back.

It takes a few more moments before Bobby slowly leans back, still close, and Buck can see the sheen in his eyes and feels dazed by it. He opens and closes his mouth, unsure what to say. Bobby beats him to it.

“Buck, you don’t earn love, it’s given. And I’ll give you my love every time. In every life.” Buck closes his eyes for a moment.

He knows what’s coming.

“I love you, kid.”

They smile wetly at one another for a moment, and Bobby roughly pulls Buck back into another hug.

Buck ends up being late for his shift.

***

Evan’s tired, hungry, and scared beyond belief of what they’re doing tomorrow, even though the doctors explained it all today. He wants to be in his bed at home, not here, he wants his polar bear cuddly toy and Maddie to be there making him hot chocolate and to hear Daniel joke with him. He feels his bottom lip wobble as the huge emptiness takes over his small body, and he hiccups.

His feet find the floor, and he walks away. Slip, slip, slip. He reaches the door and pushes it open.

The moonlight is strong since the curtains aren’t pulled back fully, and it casts a sickly glow over his brother’s head. His eyes move slowly.

“Who is it?” Daniel asks hoarsely, woozily, but when he sees Evan, the lethargic expression on his face disappears. “Oh, hey Evan.” A smile tries to break through the clouds, but Evan knows better, he can see the tear tracks on his older brother’s cheeks, and it makes his heart break in half, cleanly and thunderously. It feels like every single piece inside of him is rotting, and then he panics because that’s all he’s good for. They need him for what’s inside of him. If he rots, if the parts of him they need so desperately go bad, what happens to Daniel? He can’t bear to think of the idea that he can’t help his big brother.

“You okay?” Evan’s shaking his head, and the sobs come up, loud, wailing, and Daniel shifts around as he lifts both arms up and beckons Evan over. “Come on, come here,” like a baby, Evan’s swaddled into Daniel’s arms and blankets, tucked in close, as tight as they dared to be with Daniel’s condition. “It’s alright. It’s alright, it’s going to be okay,” Daniel hushes him, but Evan can’t get the air into his lungs quickly enough before the next sob leaves him. There’s a hand on his back, rubbing gently, and another in his hair, and Daniel hums. “I promise. Don’t, hey, it’s all going to be fine, shush.”

Nothing works. Evan still sobs. Daniel must realize this because he changes tactics. “Hey, did you want to know a fun fact?” Evan blinks at him, listening, even as tears track down his face in a steady stream. “The name for the Pacific Ocean comes from the Latin for ‘peaceful sea.’ Sounds nice, right?” Daniel pauses and murmurs softly as he runs a hand through Evan’s hair. “We’ll go there, one day. Me, and you, and Maddie. We’ll go to the coast, and have a whole day out on the beach.”

Evan shakes, but he stops crying so hard, and he stays curled up around his brother for a little while longer. Eventually, the moon outside is high and full, and Daniel watches as Evan’s eyes flutter shut. He pulls up the blanket around them tightly and shakes his head when Evan tries to get out of bed.

“It’s okay, you can stay here.”

Sniffle. Weakly, half-asleep already. “The doctors will worry. Mom and Dad will be mad.”

Daniel moves over and gives Evan his pillow.

“Brothers don’t let each other wander in the dark alone, Evan.”

***

Daniel Buckley had hair the color of spun straw. He was lovely and shining and wonderful. He was charming and used his wits in a conversation easily, and could keep a room full of people on the edge of their seats. He’d smile and laugh and wink. He loved the color orange and wanted to study astronomy and hated the taste of carrots and couldn’t whistle. He thought Maddie’s hair was the prettiest shade he’d ever seen before, and Evan had the most perfect smile on the planet. He hated himself for what he put his family through.

Daniel Buckley was lying down in a bed as he watched his younger brother leave his hospital room for the last time. He tapped his temple, right where there was a strawberry birthmark on his brother’s forehead. Evan smiled and copied him immediately. Their little code. Right before Evan walked out, Daniel called out to him. “I love you, kid.” Daniel was pretty happy those happened to be the last words he ever said to his brother.

Daniel Buckley died the next morning, too early for the birds to be up yet. It had been months since his last surgery, and he knew it wasn’t going to help him anymore. Could feel it in his dying bones. The sky was gleaming gold, and his brother and sister were at home, asleep. They wouldn’t realize what had happened to him for another peaceful twenty-seven minutes.

Daniel Buckley remembered thinking how lucky he was to have met them both.

***

There’s a tombstone in Pennsylvania with his brother’s name on it. Buck had been there only once, the day of the funeral.

Up until now.

Now, he’s stood by his brother’s grave, tracing the letters on his tombstone with his finger carefully, slowly. Daniel Buckley. 1985-2000. Loved son and brother. He traces the words again.

Daniel. Brother.

Maddie loops her arm through his when he steps back, resting her head on his shoulder. Her other hand absentmindedly rests on her stomach, the small swell of it peeking out. Buck looks at her and kisses the top of her head as she smiles down. Over her shoulder, Buck can see Chimney with Jee-Yun swung up onto his shoulders, her hands tugging in his hair as if to steer him. Buck looks back down with a smile, too.

Daniel. Brother.

He feels Maddie move away, and then there’s a bump against his side, and he sees curly hair gleaming tall in the bright sun. Christopher follows his gaze and mouths the words.

“This is your brother, Buck?”

Buck nods and reaches out to clasp his hand over Christopher’s shoulder, nearly parallel to his own. Chris instinctively leans against him, and it keeps Buck from slipping, falling, hurtling into something dark he’s always hidden behind.

“This is my brother. Daniel, this is Chris. Chris, this is Daniel.”

Chris smiles, something melancholy to it that’s wise beyond his years. He’s grown up so much since that little boy in the hospital room all those years ago, asking about Dalmatians and Buck’s birthmark. He’s as tall as Eddie now, and that caused an entire day of panicking in the Diaz household about the passage of time. Buck remembers laughing so hard his stomach ached, and Eddie pouted so much that Buck had to kiss him more than thirty times to get him to crack a smile. Their hands tangled, and the rings on their fingers glinted in the sunlight filtering into the kitchen as Chris mocked throwing up.

There’s a hand brushing Buck’s now, linking fingers and holding tight, soft, and fitting perfectly in his. Buck turns into it. “I’m glad you guys could meet him.”

Eddie puts the flowers down softly, the ones that are bright red and burnt orange that Chris picked out, and he brushes the gravestone, too.

“We’re really glad, too.”

It’s cold out, with biting wind but blinding sunshine, and after a while, when stomachs rumble, and hands are frozen over, they make their way to leave. Eddie and Chris and Chimney walk a few yards ahead, and then Maddie says her goodbyes, eyes filling up and face scrunched before she takes a deep inhale and grabs Jee-Yun in her arms, breathing her in. Buck lingers back and rests a hand on Daniel’s headstone.

“I love you, kid.”

Christopher yells something from the gates, and Eddie turns around frantically, saying something to him that Buck can’t hear, but judging from his arm gestures, it must be a reprimand for Chris to be respectful. Buck laughs and laughs and laughs, and he walks over to them, the light sparkling in front of him. They have a cake to cut; Buck has candles to blow out. He’s another year older.

He doesn’t feel pain thinking about it anymore.

He hears the wind chime behind him as he walks away, and it sounds like laughter joining him.

***

“Happy Birthday, Buck. I hope you get to have a perfect day. Thanks for always coming to visit me. It’s the best part of my day, getting to see you. You’re the best little brother anyone could ask for. Maddie will sneak some extra cake to you after dinner tonight, we promise.

Remember, I’ve loved you since the first time I laid eyes on you and held you in the palm of my hand. This will continue until the end of time. Love, Daniel.”

Notes:

don't listen to Sandy by Alex G while reading this unless you want to cry even more :)
credit to heidi priebe, who wrote the quote "grief is a giant neon sign," etc., it was the backbone to this entire story.
say hi on tumblr at fruitsdontknow! and i'm now on twt!

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