Chapter Text
It started with a headache.
Or a hug, after the gate slammed down on a rented U-Haul, ready to take his Alpha friend 800 miles away from him. His nose buried in Eddie’s neck, chasing his scent straight from the source before it moved out of reach.
Or maybe it started with a lightning strike, a gunshot, a wave, a bomb, a grenade. An unfamiliar Alpha in the locker room, with a killer smile and an 8-pack.
But Buck first became aware of it as a thumping in his skull as he closed the door to Eddie’s his house.
Eddie had packed up everything that could fit in the back of his truck and the U-Haul: furniture, clothes, his couch. Buck had tried to convince him to leave some things behind, but Eddie was insistent on leaving the house empty for Buck’s stuff.
“I have to commit to leaving, Buck. I have to be fully there for Chris. Besides, it’s not like I can afford to buy all new furniture once I get to El Paso,” Eddie had said. “I know you like my couch, bud, but it’s coming with me.” He had chuckled at Buck’s eye roll.
Now the house was empty, the last box loaded. The only traces of the Diazes are the lingering remnants of Eddie’s scent and the faint traces of Chris below that embedded in the walls and carpet.
Buck drifted into the living room and sat on the floor, in the place where the couch used to be, in the spot that was his. He breathed in and out, trying to relax as his pulse throbbed at his temples. He fell forward until he was curled on his side, nose pressed into the fibers of the carpet, chasing any hint of his boys as tears leaked out.
When he woke up, it took him a minute to remember why he was sleeping on the floor of an empty house. He sat up with a groan, muscles tense and aching from his cramped position. He knew he should get up, go back to his half-packed loft, and pretend like it was any other time he had to leave his Eddie’s home. He needed to finish putting all his things into boxes so they could be moved. He needed to take his suppressants, his new best friends.
Buck had been perfectly happy as a Beta. He might have been disappointed to never present when he was a teen, having read too many romantic stories about Alpha and Omega fated mates and wishing for his own perfect match, but he didn’t need to look any farther then Maddie and Doug’s doomed marriage to know that not all Alpha/Omega relationships were destined to be happy. He had known that he felt things more deeply than those around him, and it had been a relief in the end to not have to deal with pheromones and heats or ruts on top of everything else that was wrong with him.
Then he was struck by lightning and spent a week in a coma as his body relearned how to live. Trauma-induced presentation was the technical term for it. The doctors had a lot of fancy words for what had happened to him, but essentially, being shocked had scrambled his hormones and brought out his latent potential to be an Omega.
Buck couldn’t help but feel he had brought it on himself. He told everyone that he didn’t remember anything from the coma, but that was a lie. His subconscious had taken the opportunity to create a world where he and Eddie were together, a perfect Alpha/Omega match. Chris was his son, Eddie was his Alpha, he had a baby on the way, and he was surrounded by love and safety. Only the real Chris, asking him to come back, had been able to break through the content fog and reach him. In his mind, he’d had to turn his back on his dream, Eddie and Chris, and run into the waves, swimming against the tide until he was able to float and allow himself to be reborn.
When he woke up gasping in that hospital room, his hand drifted to his stomach, looking for his baby, for that reassuring swell of new life below his skin. But his waist was flat and empty. He was empty. He’d cried later, after everyone had taken their well-wishes and left to go home to their families. He’d sobbed, alone in his hospital bed, for the life he would never live and the baby who would never be born.
And then the doctors had told him the changes that had happened to his body while he was checked out. He was an Omega now. He could be mated, could carry a child, could have an Alpha. Just not the Alpha he wanted. It was a dream and a nightmare and just another chapter in the trials and tribulations of Evan Buckley.
He’d left the hospital with a prescription for scent blockers and suppressants that he’d filled and a referral to a therapist specializing in late presentations that he’d thrown in the trash.
If no one knew, nothing had to change. He could continue to be there for his friends and family, could continue to be the backup for everyone in his life, and could be useful.
He wouldn’t go out seeking an Alpha just because he was an Omega now. He knew Eddie was the only Alpha that he would ever want, even if he didn’t want him back. So he kept his scent muted with blockers and patches and took his suppressants religiously to keep his heat at bay.
It was the thought of his prescription sitting in his medicine cabinet at the loft that finally got him off the floor and out of the door of his soon-to-be home. He didn’t remember much of the drive back to the loft.
He swallowed the pills dry and then stumbled up the stairs to collapse face down on his bed. His hand stretched forward to root under his pillow until he found his prize. He tightly clutched the worn LAFD shirt that he’d stolen from Eddie’s bag after his last shift and pressed it against his nose. He fell asleep breathing in the scent of home.
————
The alarm pierced through his aching skull, shattering his dream of Eddie holding him close, stroking his hair and whispering words of love into his curls. He groaned as he flipped onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
He had a shift today, the first shift without Eddie. His body felt like he’d dropped 30 feet and been stopped short. His muscles ached, his bones felt bruised and his eyes were filled with sand. The headache from the night before still raged through his skull and stabbed between his eyes.
He considered calling in, telling Bobby that he was sick, but he knew that would only invite attention from his co-workers. He never called in, not even that time he had a temperature of 102 and Bobby almost made Hen drive him to the hospital in the ambulance.
He showered, swallowed a handful of Tylenols and got dressed. He packed his bag, removing and replacing Eddie’s shirt half a dozen times before finally leaving it on the bed. He had to begin the way he meant to go on, and that meant letting go of Eddie.
Buck didn’t look at his phone until he was in the parking lot at the station. He saw a few texts from Maddie asking how he was doing with Eddie gone and inviting him to dinner after his shift, a reminder for his upcoming appointment at the Omega clinic for a check up, and a text from Eddie letting him know he had made it to Texas. He swiped everything closed without bothering to respond.
Climbing out of his truck, his jaw clenched as the shock of his feet meeting the pavement jolted up his spine. Thank god he only had a 24-hour shift to get through. He straightened up and grabbed his bag before pasting a smile on his face and jogging inside. He was used to working through pain and laughing through sadness. He could do this.
His resolve faltered as soon as Hen saw him come in and gave him a sympathetic grimace.
“How are you doing, Buckaroo?” she asked softly as she watched him walk towards the locker room.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Eddie texted that he made it to Texas.” Hen’s nose wrinkled as Buck continued, “I’m happy for him, really, for him and Chris. They belong together.”
He threw his bag into his locker and turned to see Hen looking at him speculatively, her eyes roaming over him and her nostrils flaring. He watched as her eyebrows raised and a look of surprise crossed her face.
“You’re an Omega?” she hissed.
Buck stared back at her, the shock of her words freezing him as he processed. “What, no. Why would you say that?” he said, panic clear in his voice.
“I can smell it, Buck. You smell like distressed Omega.”
He groaned and let his head thump back against the lockers. “Shit. I forgot my blockers this morning.” He turned to rummage through his bag to find the bottle of lotion that masked his natural scent and started applying a generous dose to his pulse points and scent glands.
Scent hidden, he looked at Hen with wide puppy dog eyes. “Hen, you can’t tell anyone. No one knows, and I want to keep it that way. I just want to keep living as a Beta.”
“But how?” she spluttered. “There’s no way you’ve been an Omega all this time and we never even suspected.”
“It's new,” Buck said. “After the lightning strike, freaky math powers weren’t the only thing I woke up with. Apparently, it’s a thing, not common, but not impossible—trauma-induced presentation. But really, Hen, you can’t say anything,” he pleaded. “I’m dealing with it.”
“Does Maddie know?” Hen asked. “Does Eddie?”
“No, no one. I don’t want to be treated differently, and it doesn’t change a thing,” Buck said. “So please, forget you know. Just let me be.”
“Buck, you can’t ignore this. There are health consequences to being an Omega, things that need to be managed,” Hen pleaded.
“And I’m managing them,” Buck gritted out. “I have a specialist, I’m taking suppressants, I’m fine.” His impassioned declaration was undercut when the tones sounded and the loud noise stabbed through his skull, making him wince in pain.
Hen stared at him in concern. “This isn’t over, Buckley,” she promised as she turned to run for the ambulance. He watched her go before shuddering and heading for his own seat on the truck.
———
Hen’s eyes kept drifting to Buck throughout the thankfully minor medical call. She had already been concerned about how he would deal with Eddie’s departure before the Omega bombshell.
The pair had been close for a long time, filling a void in each other’s lives. She thought back to that first year Buck was on the team, the way he seemed so eager to prove his usefulness, trying to be whatever the person in front of him wanted, even when what they wanted wasn’t in his own best interests.
He’d settled after Eddie joined the team, finding an outlet for his overflowing care. He’d built his life around taking care of Eddie and Christopher, even if everyone in that situation refused to acknowledge it.
It had been infuriating to watch the way they circled each other, to watch Eddie take and take, Buck give and give. She liked Eddie, really she did. She just wanted to knock him upside the head 90% of the time to see if that would knock some sense into him. This latest stunt of moving to El Paso and leaving Buck behind with barely a look back had her itching to throw hands.
She can remember a Buck without Eddie, and that was a reckless Buck. A Buck who didn’t have anyone to come home to, who didn’t value his own health and safety. A Buck who would die for a stranger, let alone sacrifice himself for anyone on his team.
And now Buck was an Omega, and Eddie’s obliviousness could literally kill him. Rejection Sickness was no joke. An omega who didn’t take the proper precautions around unmated Alphas risked forming a one-sided bond that would hurt them just as much as the severing of a formal bonding.
She doubted Buck even knew that he needed to protect himself if he’d only been an Omega for 2 years. The bond had probably snapped in place before he even had a chance to prevent it, and he wouldn’t even know any different. He would have chalked up his increased need to be around Eddie to residual trauma from the lightning strike and never questioned it.
Eddie wouldn’t have known that he needed to protect Buck. He wouldn’t have masked his scent at home, wouldn’t have refrained from touching him, or letting him make a space in his home. And now Buck was going to be living in that home, without his Alpha and pup, and Hen doubted he knew how to safeguard himself from harm.
She remembered the supplements and stash of scented items Karen needed anytime they were going to be apart for more than a few days. When she had traveled to Texas to help with the wildfires, she’d needed to send worn t-shirts back every other day to help her wife weather the separation. They had managed it, but it took effort. The modern world liked to pretend that designations didn’t matter, but biology couldn’t be side-stepped.
The more she watched Buck, wincing and sighing as he propped up the engine, the more she was convinced he was trying to raw dog a bond severing. He might not know what was happening to his body, but it was clear he was in pain. Without medical intervention or the return of his Alpha, Buck could slip into another coma, his body shutting down in the absence of his mate.
Her hand drifted towards her phone, wanting to text Eddie to ask him to send some scented items to help gain Buck some more time, but she couldn’t think of a way to ask that wouldn’t expose Buck’s status. Her kids liked Eddie well enough, but he wouldn’t buy that they needed his scent in their nests.
She could send out a general call for scented items and hope that Eddie didn’t probe too hard about who they were for. It had been done before, for firefighters from their house in distress. She looked over to Buck, and all thoughts about calling Eddie flew out of her head as she saw his eyes roll back as he slid down the side of the fire engine and collapsed in a heap on the ground.