Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Buck is doing…he’s doing pretty good, you know.

He hasn’t been in any life-threatening situations since the lightning strike a month ago, and his health is as good as he could hope for given his somewhat horrifying history. Yeah, and Maddie is majorly in love with Chim and Jee-Yun, and Hen and Karen are as strong as they’ve ever been. Even Eddie is looking happier these days, like one morning he just woke up and the weight of the world wasn’t on his shoulders anymore. Athena and Bobby and Michael and May and Harry - they’re closer than ever, and thriving.

Buck sees all of this, and it makes him happy. Makes him more than happy. They’ve all been through their fair share of shitty times, and more than once he’d thought that they might not just make it out this time, but hey! Look at them go! Everyone is a-okay, and Buck is doing fine.

He’s doing just fine.

It is three o’clock in the morning and he thinks that the world might be ending.

He doesn’t know what woke him up to begin with, but he knows that he’s sweating and shaking and he can’t seem to breathe all the way in. It’s like something is sitting on his chest, squashing his lungs and breaking his ribcage. He can’t see what it is, and it doesn’t exist for him to touch, but he can feel it.

He can feel it.

Maybe there’s seawater in his lungs again. Or-Or there’s another ladder truck on him. Or hey, maybe he choked on bread in a restaurant in front of a pretty girl and some of it is still stuck. Or - and this is his personal favourite - he got struck by fucking lightning.

He is so very much okay with the fact that he got struck by lightning. He thinks it’s really, totally, awesomely cool that he actually died for like three whole minutes. But really, the whole thing gave him really good math skills, so who got the better end of the deal after all?

Hey, isn’t math supposed to help with panic attacks? He’s pretty sure he read an article about it one day when he was staying at Eddie’s place after Eddie got shot and was really freaking out about the meaning of life. You’re supposed to count the things you hear, and see, and smell. To reorient yourself or make your brain relax or something.

Cool. Awesome. Evan Buckley, stop gasping like a dying fish and name five things in the room, right now.

Great plan, except it’s three o’clock in the morning and none of his lights are on, so the five things he can see are shadow, shadow, big shadow, wonky shadow, and an Eddie-shaped shadow. Three things he can hear would probably have to be his own breathing, the rustle of his sheets as he tosses and turns, and Eddie’s voice calling his name. One thing he can smell is, well, Eddie.

Oh. Yeah, that’s right. Eddie had stayed over tonight.

Crap.

“Damn Eds,” Buck rasps once his throat remembers how vocal cords work, “Must be a real ego boost to know you’re so pretty it literally takes my breath away.”

“Christ, Buck,” says the Eddie-shaped shadow, who apparently doesn’t find the whole thing all that funny and is suitably distressed. “I thought you were dying or something.”

Buck does not say what he wants to say because he is a mature person, and also because Eddie will probably-most-definitely smack the shit out of him if he mentions the whole ‘death by lightning’ thing, so.

Eddie flips on the light switch situated on the far wall, and Buck hisses as the equivalent of the entire fucking sun is suddenly blinding him. Abruptly, the wacky shadows he saw before are once again just his dresser, the top of the stairs, a chair, and the foot of his bed. Oh, and Eddie, but he knew about Eddie before the solar flare erupted and ruined his nice, calm nighttime.

Blinking rapidly to try and adjust to the new light source, he peers up at Eddie, who is standing beside the bed with his arms folded and the absolute worst case of bed-head that Buck has literally ever seen. Oh, and his shirt is inside out - clearly he’d thrown it on in the dark before running upstairs to very heroically burn Buck’s retinas to ash.

“Wow,” Buck says bluntly. “You look like shit.”

Eddie scowls, even as he tugs at his shirt self-consciously. “Shut up. I look hot and you know it.”

“Hot like a dumpster fire maybe,” Buck mutters, and then smiles innocently as Eddie finally realises exactly how haphazard he looks and curses. “I rest my case.”

Eddie flips him off before stripping the shirt off, turning it back the right way, and shrugging it back on again. Then he makes a face and runs a hand through his hair. He still looks frazzled, but if Buck points it out, he’s afraid Eddie might legitimately murder him, so he very wisely decides to say nothing further.

Staying quiet has the added benefit of not having to talk about the panic-attack shaped elephant in the room.

Eddie makes a valiant attempt to outlast him - and Buck salutes him for his patience, because usually it would work and Buck would cave first - but Buck still isn’t breathing quite right and his head hurts, so eventually it’s up to Eddie to just sigh and plop right on down next to Buck in the bed.

He smells really, really good. Which is, like, totally unfair cause he’s also really hot and Buck kinda really likes men who look and smell fantastic. So. You know. Eddie’s the whole package and if Buck were into the whole ‘sleep with your best friend and inevitably ruin every good thing that comes from that friendship and never be able to look him in the eyes again’ thing, he would go there.

But he’s not, so he just rolls on his side so he can stare at the side of Eddie’s face while Eddie gathers his thoughts and strings together words.

“Your breathing is still shit,” Eddie tells him without judgement, even as a muscle feathers in his jaw. Buck tracks the movement and swallows. “Just- Look, I’m gonna count out box breathing for you, okay? Just follow it until everything calms back down. Easy.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, and doesn’t add on the ‘I’m not a child’ that gets stuck in his throat. Because he’s a dick, but he’s not mean, and also his lungs are still being crushed and it’s a little bit scary, and he doesn’t want Eddie to stop before he’s even started.

Eddie nods once, like he hears it anyway, and goes fishing under the covers until he finds Buck’s wrist. His warm, calloused fingers rest solidly against Buck’s pulse point, drawing out his errant heartbeat, and then very quietly Eddie starts to count out Buck’s box breathing. “In-two-three-four, hold-two-three-for, out-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four.”

Buck follows to the best of his ability, frowning as he struggles with the inhales still. It genuinely feels like his lungs are suddenly limp, or-or pinned by something. He can’t get a proper breath. Usually the combination of Eddie and box breathing makes all that tightness go away, but even after two full minutes, Buck still can’t quite breathe.

Eddie makes a tutting noise when Buck’s panic slowly starts to creep back in, tightening his grip on Buck’s wrist until it’s almost painful. “Three things you can see, Buck.”

Buck casts about his room, suddenly and inexplicably grateful for the light. “Lamp,” he croaks miserably. Eddie hums and starts counting the seconds on his watch. “Um. The ugly-ass mirror on the wall. You.”

Eddie snorts. “You’re the one that bought the mirror. Why would you do that if you think it’s ugly?”

“Because I’m a sucker for a bargain, Eddie, we know this.”

Eddie smiles fondly and shakes his head, still watching the seconds tick by with his fingers on Buck’s pulse. “Two things that you can feel.”

Buck considers this for a moment before saying, “My nice new satin sheets. You.”

“Good. One thing you can hear.”

“You, talking.”

“You telling me to shut up?”

Buck tilts his head to the side and purposefully makes himself look a little despondent. “I would never tell you to shut up, Eds. Who do you think I am?”

Eddie, who has the world’s cutest thirteen-year-old kid and is thus immune to such looks, doesn’t even bat an eye. Instead, he squeezes Buck’s wrist once, comfortingly, and then lets go and makes to get back out of bed. Which is fine, cause it’s ass-o’clock in the morning and Buck had probably woken him up from a dead sleep, and they’re both beyond exhausted, and yet-

Buck, seized by a sudden biting coldness, reaches for him.

“Don’t,” he begs, barely above a whisper as his hand finds a fistful of Eddie’s warm, soft shirt. “Don’t go.”

Eddie gives him a searching look, brow furrowed. “You’re okay, Buck.”

Buck is fantastic. Buck is a-okay. Buck is fine.

But he still wants Eddie to stay. Just for a while. Just until he’s fallen back asleep again, where the real world can’t reach him for a while. He wants Eddie to hold his hand, wants Eddie to be a tether in case Buck strays back to that place where Bobby is dead and Daniel is alive and Eddie is gone and Buck is alone.

He can’t go back there. He can’t lose them again.

“Yeah,” he says, and lets go. “Yeah, I know. Nevermind.” He laughs a little bit and flops back down onto the bed, tangling himself up in his sheets. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the look on Eddie’s face. So he doesn’t have to know. So he can continue to be okay.

Eddie lingers, for a bit. “Buck…”

“It's okay, Eds,” Buck tells him earnestly, without opening his eyes. “It’s okay. Go back downstairs.”

Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go-

Eddie goes. Eventually. His feet are whisper-soft against the floor as he flicks the lights off and retreats down the staircase, padding across the living room until he reaches the couch he’s sleeping on. There’s the telltale rustle of the bankets shifting and then a sigh.

Ten minutes later, those familiar gentle snores rumble their way up the stairs like a particularly homely white noise, familiar in that Buck has heard him snore like that every time they’ve ever stayed over at each other’s places. Familiar in that Buck always seems to wait until Eddie goes to sleep first in the bunks at the station until he feels settled enough to drift off himself.

Tonight, though, Buck stares at the ceiling for a long time and thinks about how hard it is to take a deep breath.

Eddie doesn’t say much about it at first.

Well, not to Buck. Or Hen, or Chimney, or even Bobby. He’s not entirely sure they’ve really noticed it themselves yet, and he’s still in the process of getting a proper understanding of how far, exactly, Buck is going to slide until he finally hits rock bottom and shatters into tiny little pieces. ‘Cause it’s coming. Eddie knows it is, because Buck isn’t sleeping and Buck isn’t eating and Buck literally got struck by lightning and fucking died.

Buck also doesn’t say a word about his late-night panic attacks; which honestly has kinda made Eddie a bit mad because he didn’t even know they were a thing until he’d been woken up from a pleasant dream by Buck’s choked-off, heaving gasps that honestly made it sound like he was being fucking strangled.

Eddie had never in his life climbed stairs as fast as he did that night. The sight of Buck writhing on the bed, mouth agape and cheeks damp with tears as he wheezed and whimpered around his strained breaths, was almost worse than the memory of seeing him limp and lifeless in that hospital bed.

And then Eddie had left him there. Alone and sad. Because Buck had just looked at him like that, like Eddie was the only thing he could have faith in these days, and Eddie was nothing more than a weak-kneed coward.

‘Cause he ran away.

Christ.

If there was an award for Emotional Ineptitude, Eddie was the only fucking nominee. Woohoo.

“Get some sleep in while you can,” Bobby advises them all as they pull into the station at ass-o’clock in the morning, tired and grimy and smothered in the phantom feeling of pain and despair. Chimney in particular hasn’t said a word to anyone since sweet 87-year-old Daisy-Bell McKennan had died in his care, greeting death with a smile as she went searching for her lover in the afterlife.

A quick, silent exchange with Hen reassures Eddie that she’s got Chim covered.

Which leaves Eddie with Buck, who has absolutely no outward sign that he’s shaken up, but who hasn’t managed to unclench his fist the entire drive back. Getting him down is going to be a right pain in the ass, but Eddie is kinda well practiced in putting children to bed, so Buck doesn’t really stand a chance.

“You coming to sleep, Cap?” Eddie asks as they filter out of the rig and the others head for the bunks.

Bobby considers him for a moment, which makes Eddie’s skin prickle, and then glances over to where Hen is speaking quietly to Chim, whose shoulders are tucked up around his ears. His expression saddens. “No,” he answers very quietly. “No, I’ll stand guard for now.” He nods once and claps a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “Make sure they get some rest, Diaz, it’s late.”

Eddie nods, once, and then spins on his heel and makes for the bunks, where Buck has forgone changing out of his uniform and is instead curled up facing the wall, tucked away in a bottom bunk.

He is very obviously not sleeping. Eddie fights the urge to roll his eyes.

“Bunch up, Buckley,” he says instead, and unceremoniously swings into the space next to his best friend, until they’re lying side by side. “Bobby’s appointed me your babysitter for the night. Or, until the next call at least.”

Buck, unsurprisingly, doesn’t rise to the bait. “Fuck off, Eds,” he mumbles tiredly, the words almost entirely swallowed up by the pillow he’s buried his face in. “I don’t need a babysitter. I just need to sleep.”

Eddie is going to roll his eyes so hard they’ll start spinning like disco balls, he swears-

“Buck,” he says firmly. “You’re being an idiot-”

“And you’re being mean,” Buck shoots back seriously, louder now, body like solid stone where it’s pressed up against Eddie. Eddie is trying really hard not to be offended, even though it's kind of his second nature these days. “Seriously, Eddie, I really need you to just not right now. I don’t need to be handled with kid gloves or-or hovered over like I’m two seconds away from falling apart, okay? I’m just tired.”

You’re always tired, Eddie wants to say but doesn’t.

I left you alone that night, Eddie wants to say but doesn’t.

I’m really sorry that it has to be like this, Eddie wants to say but doesn’t.

“Okay Buck,” Eddie says, trying really hard to not sound disapproving or disappointed. It’s not Buck’s fault that he grew up without learning it was okay to accept help. It’s not Buck’s fault that his parents washed their hands of him before he could ever comprehend what love even was. It’s not Buck’s fault that Doug whisked Maddie away and Buck was left to roam the world alone, angry and lost and scared.

It’s not Buck’s fault that he hasn’t stopped running since the day he ran from Hershey and never went back.

It’s not Buck’s fault that the only way Eddie knows how to handle the overwhelming-ness of his stupidly loving heart is to treat Buck like he treats Christopher - as someone to provide for, to look after, to dote on.

It’s not Buck’s fault that the lightning hit him, and it’s not his fault that he died for three minutes and seventeen seconds, and it’s not his fault that when he first wakes up, he looks at Eddie like Eddie is a fucking ghost and Buck will never be able to touch him again.

Which he doesn’t, anyway. Touch him, that is. Not like he used to.

Eddie wants to say that he doesn’t miss it, but sometimes when he reaches for Buck and Buck isn’t there, he kind of wants to pack himself down into something that’s so small, it doesn't even exist anymore, so…

Which is a bit fucking dramatic, really, but hey. People do stupid, dramatic shit when they’re in love.

Which is a bit too much to think about when you’re trying to sleep in the middle of a shift, so Eddie clambers into the bunk directly above Buck and lays down, forcefully smoothing out his breathing like he always does when Buck’s in the room with him. He’s not dumb. He knows that Buck waits for him to fall asleep first.

He knows that Buck has no idea Eddie tries to outlast him, tries to trick him into it so that he can make sure the knucklehead is actually sleeping.

Tonight, though, Eddie kind of tricks himself. Like an idiot. Too focused on keeping his breathing calm, and slow, and even, he doesn’t even realise he’s sleeping until he’s already gone, and then he’s dreaming of things that are warm and bright and blue and gold.

He does not stir this time when Buck awakens from a dream, clutching at his chest like he’s trying to tear the beating heart right out of himself.

Buck tries not to be a crier, right. Operative word in that sentence is tries, ‘cause he’s real shit at controlling his emotions and he’s never been one for a dry kind of anger.

Not that he’s angry, okay! He is actual perfection itself right now. Literally never been better in his whole entire life. Like there is nothing wrong. He is alive and healthy, and so is everyone in his makeshift little family, and there are no imminent disasters happening right now, so he’s got literally nothing to be upset about. Like, the shift today is quiet.

It’s too quiet.

It’s one of those weird days where Eddie and Hen aren’t rostered on, so Buck and Chim have to make do with Colin and Jonsey - both of whom are quite pleasant to deal with, but who prefer to keep to themselves during down time. Chimney is quite absorbed in some kind of one-player card game that he comes back to in between calls, and Bobby has sequestered himself away in his office citing paperwork, and Buck is so fucking bored.

After fifteen minutes of sitting and jittering his leg about uselessly, summoning not one but two glares from Chim, he yanks his phone out and pulls up the text thread between him and Eddie.

‘U got dinner plans tonight?’ he texts, thumbs flying across the screen. ‘Cause I’ve been dying to make this new tuna mornay that I stole from a mommy&me blog, and I reckon Chris is gonna LUV IT.’

It takes less than a minute for Eddie to respond. ‘He says if you’re making dinner, you are legally obligated to stop and pick up cinnamon scrolls for dessert from the bakery on Fifth Ave.’

Buck beams. ‘I’m sure it was CHRIS that asked for them and not u, Eds.’

‘Your lack of faith disturbs me,’ Eddie says.

Buck buries his laugh behind a cough so that he doesn’t disturb Chimney and have something thrown at his head. Which is actually something that Chim likes to do when Hen isn’t around for Buck to go crying to.

(Chim says he does it ‘cause it’s a brotherly thing, but Buck isn’t really sure about that. He’s never thrown anything at Maddie’s head, after all.)

‘Is that Star Trek?’ Buck texts.

Eddie dignifies that with a sad face.

It’s all that needs to be said between them - Eddie won’t be expecting anything else - but Buck’s fingers still itch and tingle with the desire to keep the conversation alive, to type out anything and everything he thinks about so that the distance doesn’t have stop Eddie from knowing everything there is to know about Buck.

Is that codependent? Probably, actually. But Buck doesn’t know how else to live his life now that he’s latched onto Eddie like a limpet. The time in his life that he has happily dubbed ‘B.E.’ or ‘Before-Eddie’ had been lonely and sad and full of anger. He’d lost his sister, left his parents in their Hershey house with their ghosts, and he’d come to the 118 and run his reputation into the ground.

And then Eddie, and Buck had managed to hate the guy for about 12 hours before grabbing on and never letting go.

Even after the lawsuit. And the ring-fighting. And everything that had gone wrong between them.

Buck’s fault. All of it. That wasn’t up for debate. He’d made too many mistakes, and everyone else had paid the price.

Shaking just slightly, he taps out another message. ‘Thx for being my friend.’

It takes Eddie longer to respond this time, and Buck sort of puts his phone down on the table so he can bounce his knees and chew on his nails nervously. Chimney shifts from where he’s playing his card game, but he doesn’t throw anything. He doesn’t even look up. Giving the illusion of privacy. Buck is pathetically grateful.

Eventually, Eddie responds. ‘I’m pretty sure we’re considered conjoined twins at this point, Buckley. Couldn’t get rid of me if you tried. Chris says he wants you to make garlic bread with tuna marnae dinner.’

‘tuna MORNAY eddie’

‘Tomato tomato’

‘That joke doesn’t work over txt’. But Buck is smiling anyway, and he feels like his body is a little bit more under his control again.

Eddie says back, ‘YOU don’t work over text’ and it’s so nonsensical and stupid that Buck barks a laugh, loud and sudden enough that Chim flinches and drops the card in his hand.

After that, Buck finds that it’s a lot easier to breathe for the rest of the shift.

Eddie grows up thinking that he knows who - what - God is. His family feeds it to him line by line, in between the fighting and the loving and the hating, in the sweltering homeliness of El Paso, Texas. His sisters lead grace at the dinner table but only Sophia prays at night like she’s supposed to. Adriana disavows the cross as soon as she’s eighteen and their dad gets so angry that he sends her away and she doesn’t come back, no matter how much their mother cries.

Eddie reads the bible to impress a cute girl who goes to their church every Sunday, and then one day he sees her kissing another girl behind some bushes and when her mother finds out, Eddie doesn’t see her again.

God’s will, his father calls it with a barely perceptible sneer.

Eddie doesn't know why people think God would get off on persecution of innocents, but he’s only twelve years old and his voice doesn’t matter yet.

Eddie thinks he knows God, and then Eddie goes to war.

It’s loud, and hot, and grimy, and he watches so many people die that he stops remembering their names. There’s a jar that they keep in the medics tent that gets emptied every few days by the commanding officers; Eddie fills it with necklaces that contain dog tags and tiny little pendants of the cross, dulled with dried blood and tarnished with the sin of death. Sometimes there are rings on the chain as well with the other charms, and those always seem to be extra loud when they hit the glass of the jar on the way in.

The Saint Christopher medallion that Eddie has slung around his own neck, nestled in amongst his dog tags, had been a gift from Shannon before he’d left. Every day, Eddie reaches up and brushes a thumb against it and thinks about his wife and the charming little boy he’d left behind to come back here.

Somehow, he can’t bring himself to regret the choice to go.

There is no room for God out here. There is no divinity to be found in the bullets that tear through their stupid, breakable bodies. There is no kind mercy to be found as they throw themselves forward again and again and again, and Eddie just keep feeling the life seep out between his fingers in disgusting rivers of red.

And then their chopper goes down. And Eddie gets his team out. Eddie keeps them alive and gets them to cover and protects their wounded. Eddie takes the bullets and the agony, and he holds fast and prays desperately that they’re going to make it.

He takes ahold of that medallion, he digs out the photo of his son, and he waits for the end.

Salvation comes, but it is not almighty. There is no great boom of thunder, and no lightning strikes to take down their foes. There is no plague of locusts, and while the ground does tremble, it is only because there are great big missiles falling upon it and erupting.

It is a human squadron that approaches them, and it is a very mortal man who lets Eddie sob into his shoulder on the trip back to camp. There are no words said because every person there knows that they should be thanking God, but all they can bear to do is thank each other.

Because it’s them fighting this war, dying in the sand, trying with everything they have to get as many people home as they can. Not God. There is no God out here.

Eddie keeps the medallion for his son, but he does not reach for it the same way ever again.

They give him a Silver Star for getting his squadron out, even though Greggs dies. They say it’s because there’s dignity in Greggs’ body going home to his family, that there is some kind of comfort in his casket being full. They tell him that he was brave and gallant and intrepid.

Eddie doesn’t know where in the Bible it says that bravery in the face of death means anything when ‘bravery’ really just means being scared fucking shitless and caving to the innate human instinct to survive.

Three months later he gets to go home, where his family embraces his heroism and congratulates him for doing his part. His mother praises the Lord for sending him home safely. Eddie wonders where that Lord was when he was lying in that medical tent with a dislocated shoulder, with broken bones, with bullet wounds and a dead teammate.

He smiles, though, when she leads them in prayer, and he does not take off that Saint Christopher medallion.

Even when Shannon leaves and his family tries to take his son away. Even when he moves to Los Angeles and becomes a firefighter. Even when he meets Evan Buckley and spends one whole day wondering why the guy is so threatened by him and then the rest of his life understanding that while he may not have much faith left in God, there is truth to the saying that you can find Jesus in L.A.

Buck has spent his entire life running.

Maybe he takes after Maddie too much, learns all her bad habits and never learns to shake them, or maybe it’s just part of his genetics; he’ll never be able to outrun those. Maybe he just wakes up one morning, thinks ‘I can’t do this anymore’, and leaves without looking back. Maybe he’s always had one foot out the door and it has taken him over twenty years to figure out how to take that first step over the threshold.

The point to all of this, of course, is that his childhood bleeds to death right there in front of him, and he starts running, and then he simply…doesn’t stop. He has the Jeep, now, and enough anger at his sister that he stops trying to catch up to her and swerves a different direction entirely. He doesn’t think about his parents for about a year, and then he thinks about them every day for two months, and then he goes through a phase where he’s high for nearly six weeks straight and doesn’t really think at all.

He breaks his arm while learning to skateboard, but when he goes to the hospital, it’s not Maddie that wraps the limb in a cast and that’s rattling in a way that he didn’t expect. He leaves town about four days later, and pretends that it’s not pathetic that he calls Maddie’s cell about ten times at night just to listen to her voicemail while he cries.

Sex is as meaningless to him as literally everything else, but he’d stopped smoking weed a while back and the women give him a nice outlet. The men do, too, but sex with them is so inherently different to sex with women that Buck ends up only using Grindr on the days that he thinks about Hershey and needs to be taken out of his head and put somewhere else entirely.

He leaves a string of broken hearts everywhere he goes, spanning almost the entire coastline, and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care.

(He’d grown up thinking that he was supposed to be more than this, but he’s long since figured out that the world doesn’t have space for him and there’s nobody left to care about him, no matter how loudly he stands there and screams.)

So Eddie knows that this entire situation is starting to get wildly out of hand, but like, there’s only so much he can do on his own without single-handedly destroying his relationship with Buck.

But then Buck messages him about something called tuna mornyae or something, and Chris lights up like the actual fucking sun when Eddie asks if he wants to see Buck tonight, and then before Eddie knows it, Buck is sending a ‘thanks for being my friend’ message.

Nobody sends a ‘thanks for being my friend’ message unless they’re borderline suicidal or they’re just really, really drunk.

He doesn’t take too long to reply, and when he does he keeps it light, but he thinks about that message for a long, long time afterwards and something heavy and ice-cold settles in his stomach as he ponders just how bad this is going to get.

Buck fought the coma to come back to them, everyone knows it. He fought through the blood clots and complications after the fire truck. He literally survived a goddamned tsunami just to protect Chris. He survived the emergency tracheotomy that Abby did on him in the middle of a restaurant.

Buck has survived literally everything the universe has thrown at him, and so far it hasn’t done much more than leave him some gnarly scars.

But Eddie is starting to think that maybe that one thing that Buck won’t be able to survive is actually himself.

“Buck.”

Buck hums in acknowledgment but doesn’t turn away from where he’s dumping the layer of crumbs on top of the tuna mornay, taking care to keep everything contained in the oven-safe dish. The garlic bread will be next, because it doesn’t take as long to cook, see, and Buck has to time it all very perfectly otherwise everything will be ruined.

He doesn’t want to ruin this. Not today.

Whatever this is, anyway.

Mmm, he’s doing just fine.

“Buck,” Eddie says again from behind him, insistent. “Hey.”

Buck puts the dish in the oven and shuts the door perhaps harder than he meant to. “Yes, Eddie?” He says tiredly, turning to face his friend and wiping his hands on his jeans to clear them of the nervous sweat that had seemingly built up out of nowhere.

Eddie frowns at him, crossing his arms across the front of his rumpled sleep shirt. He looks…messy. Like he doesn’t know how, when, or why he woke up from his late afternoon nap or why he’s standing in the kitchen, or what he’s doing in his own house. His hair is sticking up. Buck wants to smooth it back down.

“Are you alright?” Eddie asks slowly, tilting his head just slightly to the side like that will help him see Buck better, like that will help him understand what’s going on here.

Newsflash, Eddie, Buck doesn’t know what the fuck is going on either. “It was a rough shift,” he says. “I’m just tired.”

“You’re always tired these days.”

“Look who’s talking, Eds. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

Eddie doesn’t laugh. His expression doesn’t change at all from that annoyingly earnest kind of concern. It makes Buck’s skin crawl. “I’ve been letting it go,” Eddie tells him quietly, taking two steps closer. Buck’s entire throat convulses like he’s going to throw up. He swallows instead. “I’ve been letting you pretend that you’re all good, and that nothing’s going on, but Buck, I don’t know how much longer I can keep not saying anything. You’re-”

“I’m okay,” Buck snaps, cornered. “I’m brilliant, actually. I’m literally making you dinner, Eddie, why the fuck are you trying to start a fight right now?”

“I’m not trying to start a fight, dumbass, I-”

“I’ve gotta do the garlic bread,” Buck says, and then very pointedly turns his back on his friend.

He doesn’t know why he feels like this, because Eddie quite literally has done nothing wrong, but embarrassment makes the back of his neck hot and prickly, and Buck wants to go lay down and not get back up for a while. He hadn’t lied before - the shift had been long and gruelling, even after his little exchange with Eddie, and he’s tired.

He’s…

He’s been tired for a real long time.

But that’s not something he’s ready to admit to yet, especially not to Eddie, who’s been calling him on his bullshit since the day they met. Which is actually apparently the hallmarks of a legendary friendship, and ever gossip blog he’s ever read says that people like that who are tasteful in telling you that you’re life is falling apart are actually the best kind of people to have in your life because they’re the people who will stop you from killing yourself.

Not that Buck has thought about that or would do anything like that, of course. Not after fighting so hard to come back after the lightning strike.

It’s like this: if God can’t kill him, Buck sure as hell isn’t going to be able to, you know?

Fucking flawless logic, in his opinion.

Eddie slips almost silently onto one of the stools at the bench, and pulls out his phone like it’s actually any other normal night and they aren’t in that weird stasis of not wanting to talk about it. It feels, for a frightening heartbeat, like that house back in Hershey after Maddie left, where the walls would absorb the yelling and hold onto it tightly so they could pretend it never happened afterwards.

Buck starts cutting into the bread roll so that he can hide the fact his hands have started shaking again. Eddie doesn’t need to know that. Eddie doesn’t need to know all the ugly parts of him that Buck tried so fucking hard to leave in that place.

Anyways, he has to focus on making the best garlic bread that Eddie and Chris have ever tasted in their entire goddamn lives. That’ll shut them up about anything else for a while.

And actually, while he’s on that topic, bless Bobby for parting ways with this recipe. Buck’s gonna buy him coffee for a week or something to say thank you.

“You didn’t have to make it from scratch,” Eddie says fondly when he finally realises that Buck is mixing the garlic butter himself in a bowl.

Buck swivels around to grin at him as he works the butter mix into a tasty blend with a spoon. It’s a solid work out, to be totally honest. He’s gonna get tennis elbow or something. “Bobby ‘fessed up,” he admits cheekily, scattering the proverbial dark clouds over his head with a fake broom so that he can focus on how totally super awesome he’s feeling right now.

Eddie hums with pleasant surprise, and even though Buck can see the thread of cunning concern still gleaming in those dark eyes, they’ve reached an unspoken agreement that they’re firmly Not Going To Talk About It, so instead of pressing, he just pulls up the latest instalment in a YouTube true crime series they’ve been watching together.

So Buck finishes making dinner in the throes of conversation about serial killers, and when they clean up and call Chris in to eat, Buck sits at the table with them and feels enough love for his boys that he forgets, for a while, that the lightning had let the cold in and it’s starting to eat him alive.

Eddie says nothing when Buck asks to say grace before they start. Just presses his lips together and closes his eyes and bows his head with the stiffness of someone who has not done this in a very long time.

Guess they’re both pretty fucked up, in the grand scheme of things.

Twinning, he thinks to himself with a huff, and when Eddie asks him what’s so funny, all Buck can do is shake his head and take another bite of dinner. He’s pretty sure Eddie wouldn’t find the whole ‘matching trauma’ shtick that funny.

I mean, really. Who wants matching tattoos when you can both just be emotionally scarred and struggling in life?

It’s not actually funny, and Buck knows that, but it’s been a long day and Chris is halfway through a story about the class slug, and this moment is so good that Buck pretends he doesn’t understand how fucked up everything is and just smiles and smiles and smiles.

Eddie doesn’t forget about those days - weeks - after Buck gets out of the hospital. He doesn’t forget how fragile he suddenly seems, how quick people are to reach for him when he gets tired, how small Buck makes himself look when his muscles twitch and contract at random moments and pain flares up behind those pretty blue eyes.

Eddie doesn’t forget about those days spent in the hospital with Christopher at Buck’s bedside, staring at the tubes and the wires and Buck’s lax face and praying for the first time in a very long time. Praying like he had during the war. Praying like he used to beside the bed in his childhood room. Praying like he never had since Shannon died. Praying like he never thought he ever would again.

Buck had come hurtling out of that coma looking fifty shades of fucked up. Which is probably to be expected of someone who was actually struck by lightning, and Eddie might be a prick for saying it - but it’s not the way Buck looks, it's the way he looks, you know?

The way his attention darts rapidly around the room the first time that he gets visitors, picking out each person and scanning them head to toe. Almost as though he needs to make sure that they’re really there. That they’re really themselves.

The first night he spends in the hospital after waking up, he holds Maddie’s hand and refuses to let go until the sun comes up and another day starts.

Nobody really mentions it, because they’re awkward and also they’re just so grateful that Buck’s alive that nobody really wants to broach the topic of whether Buck is actually okay. That will come later, when he’s out of the hospital and on his own again, and Maddie is panicking because the last time she was around to worry this much about Buck, they were both teenagers with nobody else to turn to.

Eddie does not forget about Buck falling asleep on his couch. Eddie does not forget about Buck asking about the shooting. Eddie does not forget the way that Buck seems to stew over Eddie’s answer about the cold and the dark and the nothing.

Eddie does not forget that Buck never, ever talks about what he saw while he was in that coma.

Eddie does not forget about the nightmares that come after.

The one thing they don’t do is talk about it. Which… honestly, a year ago he’d have thought he would have more luck winning the lottery, cause the lord knows Buck likes to talk, but-

Well, it’s taken Eddie a shamefully long time, but he’s figured out by now that Buck doesn’t actually talk as much as he just says things. Like yeah, he’s probably the most emotionally open out of everyone at the 118, but wearing your heart on your sleeve doesn’t mean that you don’t paint over the chips and cracks sometimes to keep away the questions.

Buck chews on the things that bother him for a long time before he spits them out in casual conversation, when they’re worn down enough that they don’t hurt as much anymore.

Eddie sometimes really fucking hates him for it.

And then promptly hates himself for the hypocrisy of the entire situation, but honestly between his parents, the army, Shannon, and Church, he’s so emotionally stunted that it might trigger some kind of mid-life crisis to try and fix it now.

Doesn’t mean he can’t try and fix Buck, though.

Gotta love a good loophole.

The point of this all, of course, is that Eddie doesn’t forget a single moment of the gradual spiral, so when Buck inevitably hits rock bottom, he’s the only one who saw it coming with enough time to try and put Buck together again before he disappears forever right in front of their eyes.

Because if there’s a record for how hard you can hit rock bottom, Buck takes first place by a fucking landslide.

It’s fine.

Buck is fine.

And then The Thing happens.

Eddie is not quick enough to stop The Thing happening. He tries, he reaches for Buck, he screams.

The Thing happens, and it happens quick, and when the dust settles, there is only Buck, staring despairingly at the spot where that girl had been only a heartbeat ago, blood soaking into his skin like ghoulish face paint.

So…. yeah. The Thing happens and it ruins everything.

Buck curls into a ball on the top bunk of the bed in the station and stares vacantly at the wall. Time passes. Someone says his name once, twice, three times, before giving up and leaving him alone again.

For hours, he does not move. He does not speak. He does not dare close his eyes.

Rock, meet bottom.

“Eddie. Hey, Eddie!”

Eddie stops, sighs, pulls his shoulders in close before turning around and facing Bobby. Their captain looks exhausted, fatigue pulling at his eyes and concern tugging at his mouth. This thing with Buck has aged him in a way that Eddie can only explain with reference to Christopher. It’s a dad thing.

“What’s up?” He asks tiredly, knowing exactly what Bobby is about to say but humouring him anyway.

Bobby eyes him critically, the way he’s been doing to everyone since The Thing happened and Buck had gone unresponsive in the bunk room. Eddie isn’t totally sure what Bobby sees in his face, but it makes him go slack and sad.

Bobby jerks his chin at the bunk room that Eddie’s just vacated. “How is he?”

Eddie reaches up to rub at his eyes with one hand, feeling suddenly ready to drop into a dead sleep. “He’s…. Fucking hell, Bobby, I don’t even know. He still won’t speak. I don’t even think he knows I’m there.”

“I didn’t know that he was like this, that it was this bad-”

“He’s been bad for a while, Bobby.” Eddie doesn’t mean to sound accusing. But there’s a second part to that sentence that they both hear even though Eddie doesn’t say it.

‘I saw,’ is what Eddie swallows back down. ‘I knew he was bad. You didn’t, but I did.’

It’s a hollow victory now, cause it does fuck all to help them figure out what the hell they’re supposed to do now.

Bobby nods anyway, defeated, and Eddie only feels a little bit vindicated. “I’m taking A-shift off the roster,” Bobby says. “That last call was…. Well. It’s not just Buck that needs to recover from that. We’re all finishing up in forty-five minutes anyway. Just…do what you can for him, and do what you can for yourself. I’ve gotta go brief the Chief about this one - no doubt it’ll make the news.”

Eddie kinda waves him off, head spinning and heart aching, and then turns on his heel and goes right back into that bunk room.

He tells himself it's because Buck needs him, that he can’t help the others because Hen and Chim have already claimed the locker room for their little heart-to-heart.

The truth, he realises as he clambers into bed next to Buck and curls up right there beside him, tears already escaping down his cheek - the truth is that maybe Eddie is the one who needs Buck more, right now.

The Big, Awful, Terrible Thing is this:

There is a girl, and she’s fifteen years old, and later he will find out that her name is Amanda. Her sister, Lisia, is barely over eight, and they’re barefoot and filthy and shaking in the middle of the street, clutching each other and staring with matching wide eyes at the family sedan that’s tipped on its side by the curb. It’s currently on fire.

Good thing Evan Buckley is a firefighter, then, hey?

“Chim, Hen,” Bobby barks as soon as they’ve taken in the scene, his face drawn and pale. He nods at the two prone figures flung onto the sidewalk. “You both take the parents. Eddie, you’re with me to put out the car and check for anyone else. Buck, you get those girls out of there and to the truck. We don’t need them any worse than they are now.”

Buck almost protests, because he usually doesn’t get babysitting duty, but then he takes another look at the two kids and suddenly he see Chris and Jee and baby May and little Harry and-

He forces his throat to work. “Copy,” he rasps and then he’s moving.

For a couple of minutes, Amanda won’t let him near her.

She’s tense, her grip on her baby sister bruising. Her eyes, wild and panicked and so shockingly blue, can’t seem to stay focused on his face long enough to recognise him as someone who’s here to help. Buck just stays calm, makes himself as small as he can, drops into a crouch so he’s on her level.

They’re both so fucking small.

“Hey, hey,” he soothes, soft and caring and safe. “Hey sweetheart. My name’s Buck and I’m a firefighter, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you. I promise. Can you tell me your name?”

Amanda drops into a fighter’s stance, baring her teeth. She’s shaking all over. There are bruises plastered across her collarbone. They’re too old to be from the crash.

Buck starts to realise a few things.

“My name’s Buck,” he says again with the smile he usually gives Chris. “I know you’re scared, and I know you’re hurting. I’m here to help you.”

Amanda shakes her head slightly, lip still curled. She looks feral. She looks terrified. She looks… Well. Buck might have used to look like her once, in a suffocating house in Hershey with parents who didn’t deserve him.

“Help Lisia,” Amanda croaks - the first words she’s said to him in the six minutes he’s been here with her. Eddie and Bobby have almost got the fire out. Hen and Chimney are still fussing over the prone figures on the ground. Amanda tries to keep her eyes on Buck. “Please. Please, I didn’t mean to hurt her. Please, make sure she’s okay.”

Buck takes that in stride, tucks it away next to the sickening suspicions he’s starting to have about exactly what might have led to this entire situation. He doesn’t want to scare them with his righteous anger. The others will piece it together eventually and handle the parents. Bobby has tasked him with the kids.

“Okay,” he says easily, and turns his attention to the younger girl, who is pressed tightly into her older sister’s side. “Hey Lisia, I’m Buck. Are you hurt?”

She is. He can see it. There’s blood staining her tattered jeans from scrapes on her legs. Her left arm looks like it might be broken. She’s in shock. She doesn’t answer his question.

Okay, this is clearly not working.

They should really make a manual on dealing with traumatised kids or something - fuck knows Buck talks to enough of them these days.

He looks back at the older sister. “I can fix you both up a bit over at the truck,” he says as gently as he can, gesturing. “It’s safe over there, I promise. Nobody will come near you unless you want them to.”

Amanda’s eyes flash, and for a moment, Buck is scared she’s going to run.

“You’ll be safe,” he says again, a little firmer, but infinitely earnest. Please. He just needs to get them to the truck. He just needs to get them away from here, away from the father who Hen has just managed to wake up. “Come on.”

Amanda has noticed the man too.

She explodes into action.

Buck almost topples over as the force of two terrified children crashes against his chest, but he recovers quick enough to wrap them up in a fierce hug, taking a moment to centre himself before pushing to his feet and herding them as quickly as he can to the side of the truck. They go with him quietly, quickly. They hold onto his uniform shirt and they do not let go.

Buck just keeps murmuring to them - a mix of soothing platitudes and random facts - and eventually Lisia lets him lift her up onto the step so he can kneel and clean up her injured leg. Her older sister lingers behind him, close enough that he can hear her breathing.

He doesn’t say anything about it though. He understands it all well enough.

“Just a scrape,” he tells Lisia happily as he finishes clearing the wound. It’s just a long gash, shallow and claggy with blood and grime. He reaches for the bandages so he can cover it. “Won’t even need stitches, sweetheart.”

“What about her arm?” Amanda pushes desperately. “I didn’t mean to break it. I didn’t mean to hurt her!” She sounds close to hysterics.

Buck prods the injury as lightly as he can, immediately cooing his apologies as fat teardrops spill down Lisia’s cheeks. Definitely broken. Maybe even in multiple places. Damn. This is gonna be beyond his child-healing skills.

He leaves the injury for the moment and finishes wrapping the little girl’s leg, and then gives her a once over. “You’re okay,” he promises, drawing her close to his chest in another hug as she continues crying. “Aw, sweetheart, you’re alright. It hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Make it stop hurting,” Amanda demands tearfully. “Fix her arm!”

Buck twists so he can look at her while holding onto Lisia. “Hey,” he says, tilting his head in invitation. “Why don’t you come sit? You look like you’re ready to fall over.”

The girl sways on the spot, staring at him, before creeping forward and perching beside her sister. Buck lets out a breath.

“My name is Amanda,” Amanda says without prompting, and very pointedly doesn’t look at him.

“Amanda,” Buck repeats with a smile. “Nice to meet you, Amanda. Can you tell me if you have any big injuries while I put your sister's arm in a splint?”

Amanda hesitates, those blue, blue eyes darting between Buck and Lisia, who has since quietened down again and is sitting nice and still while Buck gathers what he needs for the splint. Finally, she nods slowly.

“My ankle,” she confesses in a whisper, reluctantly, shoulders hunching. “I twisted it when I got us out of the car and away-” She cuts off.

Buck knows the rest of that confession. He knows what she wants to say but can’t.

If those parents survive, he’s going to make them wish they hadn’t.

“Okay,” he tells her. “That’s okay. We can take a look at that together, then, okay? Once I’ve got your sister patched up. How about that?”

And just as she’s nodding and he’s getting ready to finish up and switch his attention to her, there’s a shift in the air. Like the entire world stops for a second, all at once, and then erupts. There’s a shout, and then a shot, and then Amanda is on her feet and rocketing back towards the car before Buck has even registered the fact that there’s a fucking gun at the scene.

“AMANDA!” He hollers, taking just enough time to gently deposit Lisia back onto the step of the truck and then tearing off after the other girl, who seems to be making ground despite her apparently injured ankle.

He sees the car first - smoking but extinguished, crumpled up and useless on its side. A complete write off. And then he sees Eddie, standing next to Bobby and Chimney as they crouch next to the woman who hasn’t moved the whole time. Their faces are too far away to see properly, but their body language is tense, frightened, angry.

Buck looks for Hen, strains to see her, wonders why she’s got her hands up like that, why she’s backing away, why the man is pointing at her like that.

Amanda sees the gun before Buck does, and she wails, and the man swings his arm her way, and Buck is reaching for her with a guttural scream already building in his throat.

And then there’s another bang.

And then everything just stops.

And there is blood.

And Buck can hear the man howling, can hear him thrashing as someone pries the gun from his grip and unloads it. He hears someone get wrestled to the ground. He hears Eddie call his name. Bobby is shouting something over the top of the din.

There is so much blood. Amanda isn’t standing in front of him anymore.

“It was her fault!” The man hollers from where he’s being crushed into the ground by the combined weight of Bobby and Chim. His arms are wrenched behind his back. Bobby’s grip will leave bruises. It will not be enough penance. “She did this! She made us crash! She grabbed the wheel right out of my hands and sent us straight off the road! She killed my wife! Stupid, ungrateful bitch! Her and her sister are nothing but useless whores that I should’ve gotten rid of years ago-”

There’s a punch thrown.

Buck gags, and then he tastes the blood on his lips, and then he’s crashing to his knees and he can see her. She’s lying there. She’s fifteen years old and her name is Amanda and she has a younger sister and she’s just fucking lying there.

There is so much fucking blood. Oh god, oh god, oh god oh god oh god-

Ohgodohgodohgodohgod-

There’s so much blood, there’s so much blood, there’s so much fucking blood-

This is the Big, Awful, Terrible Thing.

Buck reaches for Amanda, scrabbles for her amongst the blood on the road, and cannot fucking breathe.

So yeah.

That pretty much just ruins the good vibes.

Buck might as well be indestructible and immortal, but sometimes he forgets that nobody else is.

Pretty fucked up, if you ask him.

Athena tells him, later, that Lisia is being placed in the custody of her aunt and uncle. They live out of state. They had no idea the girls were living in that kind of environment. They’re kind, apparently, and well off enough that they can get Lisia all the help she’ll need. She’ll want for nothing.

Well.

Nothing except her sister.

Buck does not let Eddie take him home.

Buck does not return to the loft.

Buck does not answer Maddie’s calls, or Bobby’s calls, or Chris’s calls.

Buck changes into his civvies, packs up his bag, and disappears in the Jeep without ever saying a word to anyone.

The news gets passed around in murmurs and whispers, conversations held in dark corners with furtive glances. That the Buckley kid from the 118 actually asked the Chief for time off, not his own captain. That apparently the Chief approved it indefinitely. That apparently something happened, something bad, and that sweet kid who’d fought so hard to have a place in his team and who always took shifts for people who needed to spend time with their families and who’d never done a goddamned thing wrong was…gone.

Someone says to someone else that maybe they should ask Diaz about it - because aren’t he and Buckley attached at the hip? - but someone else says that nah, actually, Diaz doesn’t know where Buckley went either, and nobody from the 118 actually knows when the kid’s coming back.

The news coverage, when it comes out, is shared in private group chats, but never, ever mentioned out loud.

The Chief pulls Ravi in to fill the spot at the 118. Within a week, he’s left those very same chats and muted everyone outside his immediate contacts.

“That team’s nothing but a death sentence,” someone says one day, shaking their head and sighing. “Getting sent there means you gotta prepare for everything you love to be taken away.”

“Shame about that Buckley kid,” someone else says two weeks later, when there’s still no sign of him. “He was really something special.”

Someone makes the mistake of speaking in the 118 firehouse where Diaz can hear them. “Sucks that he got through the fire truck, the lawsuit, the tsunami and getting actually hit by lightning, and still having to go through this shit. Like, has God got it out for the kid or something? Was he Hitler in his past life? Like fuck me, if I was Buckley, I would probably end up killing myself just to get it over with, you know?”

Eddie does not yell, but the words he wields are sharp and brutal, and he tears strips off their backs and leaves them mute and miserable. They do not bother bringing it up with the captain, because it’s the most well-known secret that Evan Buckley is the captain’s kid in everything but name, and it still wasn’t enough for Buckly to tell Bobby where he was going.

So nobody mentions when Bobby’s rosary beads make an appearance in his office. Nobody says anything when they hear him reciting the Lord’s prayer before they leave for a call and then doing it again when they return.

Ravi’s nametag never, ever changes from being a piece of tape over the top of the name that everybody knows but nobody actually says anymore.

‘Hey Buck, it’s Christopher. Dad says you’ve gone on a trip. Where are you going? I’m supposed to be going on a trip for class, but they might cancel it. I don’t want them to cancel it. Can you send me photos of cool things? I’m trying to convince Dad that we should go on a road trip, but he doesn’t want to because he’s worried about you. You can come with us! I love you. Please come home soon.’

Frank’s office is quiet. Cool. It’s just a shade too beige for Eddie’s taste, but he appreciates the little figurines scattered about the place. They look well-worn and cherished, almost at odds with the minimalism that Frank seems to favour for the rest of his decor.

There’s an apt metaphor in there somewhere, but Eddie really can’t be bothered figuring it out.

Buck was always the poetic one out of the two of them.

It still stings, even though it’s been a month. It still stings, but Eddie grits his teeth and sanitises the wound with his anger, takes a swig from the bottle to keep him warm, and then puts it back away in the shelves of his ribcage. He’s past the point of worry, past the point of pity, past the point of wearing holes in his carpet every night as he dials and redials the same fucking phone number.

How could Buck do this to them? How could Buck do this to him? To Chris? The poor kid’s already got a list of issues a mile long with everything that happened with Shannon, and Buck knows that. Has heard Eddie’s fears about it more than once. Had promised that he wouldn’t leave, that he would love Chris, that he would stick around for whatever they needed, until the inevitable day they didn’t need him anymore.

Eddie had told him, “I’ve watched Nanny McPhee too, moron. You’re not going anywhere, ever.”

Buck had laughed. He’d laughed.

And guess what, world - he fucking left.

Frank has been watching him quietly, waiting for Eddie to gather himself enough for them to start the session. Eddie feels bad for wasting his time, but all he can think about is Buck in the kitchen making tuna mornay, and he wonders if he could’ve said anything that might’ve made him stay. Wonders if Buck might’ve changed his mind if Eddie had dropped to his knees for him that night and begged.

Wonders if Buck already had one foot out the door and was just waiting for the right moment to break his heart.

“Are you ready to start, Eddie?” Frank asks calmly.

Eddie bares his teeth. “I hope he never comes back.”

(But he will go home that night, and he will stare at the roof and wait for Christopher to make his way into the darkness of the room, and he will let his son clamber into bed with him, and he will make soft noises when Christopher starts to cry.

He will not turn the light on, because he does not want Christoper to know that he is also crying. He hides his misery in the pocket of darkness they’re in, and he will begin a silent litany of prayers to a God he once believed was capable of love.

He says that he does not want Buck back, but the truth is that Eddie cannot breathe without him.)

Frank catches the lie because he is a smart man and Eddie is as transparent as glass, but like an angel, he does not call it out. He simply sits, and looks, and says, “Tell me about that.”

Eddie uncorks that bottle of anger for another drink, and then opens his mouth again, and begins.

“Is this what it was like for you?” Maddie asks over the phone one night, voice raspy and hoarse from tears as she curls into herself under the covers of her bed. She hasn’t been on-shift yet this week, which is probably Josh’s doing. “Was this how he felt when I ran away from Chim and Jee? Because it’s fucking awful and I’m so sorry.”

“Maddie,” Bobby says, with a gentle patience that she clings to. It’s not just Buck that got cheated out of having decent parents, after all. “You can’t keep blaming yourself for that.”

“But is it?” She presses. “Because I just keep thinking about what kind of pain he must be in right now, and I know that it’s my fault he ran away, and-”

“How would it be your fault?”

Because she raised him. Because she taught him everything she knew about how to survive, and she gave him the keys to the Jeep. Because she showed him how. Because she kept the post cards and the letters and the pictures, and she let him run and run and run and run and it wasn’t until he stopped that she dared to let herself catch back up again.

Because their parents all but chased him out of that house, and he never stopped looking over his shoulder for them.

She exhales slowly, blinking her watery eyes in an attempt to stop crying. “I just wish I knew where he was,” she whispers. “I just wish I knew he was safe.”

Bobby sounds aged beyond his years when he says, “He’ll come home eventually. He always does.”

On the cusp of the seventh week, there is a knock at Bobby’s door.

The message from Bobby appears in the groupchat they’d made after Buck’s disappearance.

‘He’s back. He showed up at mine about an hour ago. Athena is insisting he stays with us for a few days. Will keep you guys updated.’

Eddie reads it twice, reaches for that glistening bottle of anger, and chugs the whole fucking thing.