Chapter Text
Evan ‘Buck’ Buckley-Nash let the door of the Uber close behind him, more interested in the large brick building in front of him than the beat-up Prius that was already pealing out of the carpark. He hadn’t been back here in almost four years. Not since just after he finished BUD/S and had a week's leave before being sent to the Sandbox for the first time.
It was bittersweet how unchanged it was, a few of the cars were ones he didn’t recognise were the only difference, when he felt so fundamentally different. Shaking the maudlin thoughts away he hiked his duffle higher on his none injured shoulder and stepped forward. The Station was bustling with the controlled, intentional chaos that he remembered. Firefighters and paramedics in their dark blue uniforms were ranged through the building doing their chores or relaxing between calls. He was barely two steps into the apparatus bay before he was clocked.
“EVAN!” Bailey called excitedly. Her grin split her whole face in two, and her pretty brown eyes crinkled almost closed with how happy she was to see him. Her yell caught the attention of the people around her and they called their own greetings which rippled out like he was the centre of the best sort of explosion. The voice he had been waiting for, and missing, echoed from the loft.
His father looked exactly the same.
Dropping his bag he bounded across the large room and up the stairs. Only stopping when he collided with the solid form of his father. Last time they had seen each other in person, Buck had been the same height and still a few inches thinner than the older man. Now he was a few inches taller and definitely broader. The benefit of a final growth spurt and the rigorous training he put in every day to keep in shape for his job.
“Hi son.” Bobby Nash, fire captain of the 118, whispered into his oldest child’s ear. He held on for dear life. It felt like it was the first time in four years he could breathe properly again. Even when they had been looking at each other over a crackling internet connection, he hadn’t been able to rest easy. There were things out there trying to kill his boy. Trying to take him away permanently, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Come on Bobby, let the kid breathe!” A voice called from behind the two men.
“And let someone else hug him!” A second voice added. A smile obvious in both of their voices.
Buck regretfully pulled away from the safety of his father’s arms. “Chim! Hen!” He turned and pulled them both in tight, one in each arm. They both ‘ofph’ed as he pulled them in tight.
Eventually he let them go.
Only to turn around and hug his dad again.
“How long are you here kid?” His Dad asked after they finally parted and wandered into the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“Tea. And about three weeks unless I get called back early.” He shrugged with his good shoulder as if to say ‘what can you do?’.
The last face he expected to see is watching them when he finally turns from the kitchen to take a seat at the dining table.
Tommy Kinard was standing, frozen, at the top of the stairs. He only moved when Thompson bumped into the back of him. Buck watched as instead of saying hello, he mumbled something to the other firefighter and loped back down the stairs.
Something inside of Buck broke softly. It had been cracked for a while, for eighteen months and three days. It had cracked the first time First Lieutenant Thomas Kinard walked away from him. Even if he had understood why. Even if he had absolutely agreed that it was the only choice they could make. It had still cracked his heart in a way that he knew he would never recover from. DADT might have been gone for almost three years, but that didn’t instantly change the institutionalised homophobia.
He must have been staring at the empty stairs for too long, because Hen came to corral him. “Don’t mind Tommy, he isn’t the most socially apt. He will slink in once everyone is distracted.”
“Oh. It’s all good.” He waved her away even as he wanted to curl into his Dad’s arms and cry. “I came to see Dad, and you, I guess.” He finally joined the group at the table. Smiling at them all, he did his best to forget about the unexpected blast from the past. He had never expected to see Tommy again, so really he was exactly where he started the day. Alone and missing something he could never have. And if part of his mind that sounded a little too much like his step-mom was telling him he was a damn fool who was in danger of making a hobby of lying to himself, that was just his imagination and he knew Athena would be much more diplomatic when she said the exact same thing to him.
Arg.
= + =
The EMS gods give them a full 60 minutes before the alarm blares through the station and everyone is streaming out of the lost. His Dad pauses just long enough to dig a set of keys out of his pocket and press them into Buck’s palm. “My truck is outside, Athena can pick me up after shift. Love ya kid.” He drops a kiss just above Buck’s birthmark and then disappears after his team.
Buck watched the fire-fighters and paramedics load into their vehicles from the railing around the loft. It was sights and sounds that threw him right back into childhood. He had spend many an after school hour sitting in this very loft doing his homework and listening to the bustle of people going out to save others.
He also enjoyed the quiet after they had all rushed out. The hush that echoed in the cavernous building. The only sounds was the ticking of the building settling and the quiet shuffle of whoever was left as man-behind.
“Hey Evan.” Tommy’s quiet voice pushed all of that comfort out of his body.
“Kinard.” Buck looked at the other man for a single second. Drinking the sight of him in. “Can you tell my dad I’ll see him at home? Thanks.” He didn’t give Tommy a chancee to say anything, just walked away.
“Evan, wait!” The stairs rattled behind him but he refused to turn and look. He refused to wait for Tommy Kinard again. “Please.” The single word was whispered in the otherwise silent cavernous space of the fire station. The desperation clear.
Fuck.
Buck stopped walking but refused to turn around.
“Thank you. I am sorry. I panicked.” Tommy tried to explain. “No one here knows. I haven’t…I’m not…”
Buck turned to look at the older man. His dark blue eyes were shimmering with barely held back tears. “Out.” Buck finished for him. They had had this conversation before. Almost word for word in fact. He knew what his response should be, ‘It’s fine. I understand. It is okay that you are breaking my heart again.’ But he couldn’t force the words out between his clenched teeth. Because as much as he knew he couldn’t force the other man to come out of the closet. As much as he would never want to. His heart was still breaking because he had fallen for Tommy within the twenty-four hours of meeting the fearless Army pilot. And in three years he hadn’t managed to get over him. All he managed to force out was a quiet I understand before turning and walking away before his own tears started to fall.
= + =
Dad was quiet when he got home the next morning. Buck could feel worried eyes tracking him through the kitchen. If it was just his Dad he would be able to withstand the silent observation. He as a trained Navy SEAL for god’s sake. But when his step-mom was thrown into the mix, there was no way to keep his mouth shut. In the eight years his Dad and Athena had been married, he had never figured out why the LAPD didn’t just throw her in interrogation with every criminal they brought in and let her stare them into confessing everything back to stealing their little sister’s, or brother’s, tooth fairy money.
He broke in under three minutes. It wasn’t his finest moment.
“I ran into an ex today, and it hurt.” He gave them a kernel of truth even if he knew it wasn’t really anywhere close to the full story.
“Were they cruel to you baby” Athena asked. Her dark eyes were sharp, telling a War and Peace length novel of the ends she would go to to get justice for him if needed.
“No. He wasn’t out when we were together, and I wasn’t either, not to the Team at least, so we both knew it wouldn’t work...”
“But that doesn’t mean you didn’t love him.” She finished in understanding.
“Don’t. That I don’t love him.” He corrected. “I never got over him.” His whole face screwed up in bitterness and hurt. “But that’s not his fault, or his problem.”
Neither of his parents said anything, they just quickly crossed the room and wrapped him up in a warm, tight hug.
It was later, after dinner, when he was sitting with his dad on the back porch each with a pot of chamomile tea on the little table between them that his dad brought it up again.
“You may never get over him.” Bobby said softly to the heavens. “I never got over Marcy. I still love her. But I also love Athena and that is okay.”
“That’s different.” Buck argued without any heat in his words. Only soft, well worn pain. “Mom didn’t walk away. She didn’t pretend you were a stranger.” He had loved his father’s first wife, she had been a beautiful person inside and out and her loss still hurt each of them every single day, and she had never treated him any differently from his younger siblings even though his birth mother had dumped a toddler they hadn’t known on their doorstep a month before their first child had been born.
Bobby hummed in agreement. “Maybe.” He lapsed back into thought. “He pretended he didn’t know you?” His voice had gained a disapproving edge.
Buck sighed. He hadn’t meant to tell his dad that. As much as Tommy had hurt him, he would never out the other man to anyone, least of all Tommy’s boss. “He’s still not out.” Buck waved a hand through the air as if waving off the heavy atmosphere that had settled between them. “Anyway! I am only home for a week, and I do not want to spend it talking about my ex! Are the kiddo’s excited to be going back to school?” Three of his four siblings had taken a trip to San Diego to the zoo with Michael, Athena’s ex and the father of two of the siblings, Buck never differentiated between their exact relationships. His forth sibling, Robbie Jr, had left for New York two days before Buck’s leave had started, wanting to get settled into Colombia’s dorms before his Senior year started.
Bobby graciously took the out and started gushing about everything their four terrors had gotten up to over the summer.