Archive of Our Own

The first time the thought of suicide crossed Evan’s mind he was ten years old. It wasn’t suicide , per say, but the ideation of simply leaving and becoming someone else. Anyone else. Maddie hadn’t left yet, but she had been celebrating with her friends in the basement the inevitability of getting out and leaving him behind. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, Evan always had an active imagination and he had been prone to daydreams. So while Maddie and her friends wouldn’t have been annoyed at him joining in on the festivities, there were only so many times he could watch Hannah slip her a tiny little glass bottle to pour into her red solo cup before he became culpable to whatever trouble she was bound to get into. He disappeared upstairs, happy for her and yet uneasy in the pit of his stomach. He had sat himself on his bed, shut his door, and stuffed his hands over his ears to block out the noise around him. And he imagined. A world without Evan Buckley. A world where Maddie taking drinks with her friends and getting clumsy from liquid courage didn’t end in Evan slumping up the stairs and hiding alone in his bedroom. A world where he was born someone else, a second chance. Like in a video game - he had gotten to a level he couldn’t beat and he was tired of respawning in the same place. Maybe there was a way to go back to the beginning, make a different choice at his character, make the perfect family in the Sims over and over and over again with cheat codes engaged to make everything easier this time around. 

Only life didn’t restart and Maddie hadn’t emerged for dinner and, somehow, Evan still got in trouble for stealing one of the empty little bottles and hiding it in his underwear drawer to fill with sand at the lake when Margaret found it while snooping. 

He stayed in his fantasy world - restarting the game over and over again until he could build the perfect version of himself. 

Getting people to like you was so hard. 

--

Buck was quiet. 

That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, Eddie had to remind himself. Buck wasn’t inherently a quiet person, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to be quiet if the situation called for it. And, sure, it had been three months since the accident, but his head was still a toss up on whether it spiked with pain or functioned as normal. It was entirely possible that Buck simply was having a bad day, the kind where stepping outside in the sun would stab like an icepick behind his eyes and even sunglasses didn’t do much to help. Those days weren’t unusual, Eddie had memorized when they were going to happen usually before they happened at all. Buck would refuse dessert the night before, citing that he didn’t feel good . He would sleep a little later in the morning, have two sips of his coffee before pushing it away with a pale sheen to his cheeks, and there was this thing he did with his fingers whenever he was suffering a migraine - a one, two, three, tap, tap, tap against his knee when he thought Eddie wasn’t looking. 

Buck hadn’t given any of the signs this time. 

“Hey,” he nudged their feet together, Buck’s old New Balance sneakers (gray and red and without much support on the bottoms because they were meant for lounging around and not exercising - but he would still wear them to the gym, sometimes, and then come back home complaining that his knees hurt) against Eddie’s leather boots (ankle boots, black like the ones he wore to work but a pair he bought with his own money, a splurge when his old ones broke in the heel). The waiting room in the physical therapy office was quiet save for the soft pop station the front desk worker was playing out of her computer speakers and Eddie didn’t have to be there still, only Buck hadn’t gotten behind the wheel of a car for a month, both because he wasn’t cleared to drive yet and he didn’t seem inclined to wanting to (Eddie couldn’t blame him, after the accident he wasn’t even sure if he wanted Buck to be driving anywhere unless he absolutely had no other choice. He trusted him, of course he did, he just frankly didn’t trust his luck .). Eddie hadn’t really seen the point of dropping him off at his appointment, sure he had to go to the store to get groceries and sure it was easier to shop without Buck after an appointment but he hadn’t wanted to really… leave him after almost losing him. Buck glanced up at him, tearing his eyes away from where he had been spacing out staring at a stack of old magazines on the table in front of them and there was something… off about his expression. Like he wasn’t all there. Like he wasn’t completely sitting in the waiting room with his injured knee jumping up and down with anxious energy right beside Eddie and he hadn’t been there for the past ten minutes. His knee stopped only when Eddie squeezed it with his fingers and his wincing smile was an automatic habit Eddie had gotten used to a week after they met. “Where are you right now?” 

Buck breathed out a laugh, harsh through his nostrils and shrugged. “Making our grocery list.” 

“We did that last night,” Eddie reminded him gently. It was, thankfully, happening less and less nowadays - the forgetting thing. Buck’s memory had recemented itself around the second week, but there would probably always be gaps. He couldn’t remember the day of the accident, but Eddie figured it was better that he didn’t than if he did. But he was finding it easier with each passing day to remember the small things that had been so easy to forget before. 

Buck stared at him, his gaze, still a bit vacant, disturbing in a way that Eddie wasn’t used to. When it came to being easy to read, Buck was usually the easiest of the two of them. Eddie kept his things close to his chest, his vulnerabilities hidden behind years and years of being told not to show anyone the softest parts of himself. Buck kept his hidden behind false bravado, easy to see past and get to the root of once you knew where to look. He blinked and the vacancy shifted, a bit of light returning and his lips turning into a small little smirk, his foot nudging back against Eddie’s, a familiar and comforting pressure. “Right,” he conceded. “But did you remember to bring it?” 

Eddie winced. He had every intention of bringing it - it was stuck with a magnet on their refrigerator door, directly in his line of sight. But they had been running late and Eddie almost always managed to walk past it without grabbing it, no matter how many times they went out of their way to write one out. He had argued that it was pointless to even bother making one, but Buck had argued that things were easier to remember if they were written down and, really, who was Eddie to argue with him about something so small? “I meant to,” he grumbled just to get Buck to laugh and he couldn’t help smiling when it worked. 

His doctor had reassured him that off days were normal after the sort of condition Buck had suffered. Grade three concussions had been known to sometimes even completely change a person’s personality. Thankfully, that hadn’t been Buck’s case (thankfully, Buck was healing rapidly and efficiently) but Eddie hadn’t been planning on leaving him even if he changed. Eddie had changed so many times in so few years and Buck had stuck by his side the entire time. He wasn’t going to leave him to fend for himself just because it was easier . But Buck laughed, Eddie smiled, and the physical therapist waved Buck in with a familiar hello, Eddie hanging back like he did for every appointment he took Buck to. 

Maddie tended to go with him, Eddie knew, if not because Buck complained about it but because Maddie had added him on snapchat and tended to send him little snippets of Jee-Yun playing with the two pound weights (Eddie never sent her anything back, he had downloaded Snapchat because Chris had it but he didn’t do anything on it besides respond to whatever puns Buck decided to send him or whenever Sophia bugged him into checking her Story ). But Eddie didn’t go with him, partially because Buck deserved his privacy and partially because he felt weird doing it. Physical therapy appointments weren’t like going to the gym - he wasn’t going to be spotting when Buck squatted and subtly checking out his ass. He would be ordered into a chair to watch as some other guy (the licensed guy, the one that literally had years of student debt in his back pocket to have a degree plastered on the wall) massaged Buck’s knee with practiced fingers. 

He stretched out his legs and slumped down a bit farther in the seat, his back popping ominously as he did. The day before had been a long day at the station, full of busy calls and annoyingly difficult rescues. The fact remained, the team didn’t function the same without Buck. Lucy was great at the tough calls, Ravi was slowly getting better with the more practice he had under his belt, and Eddie wasn’t bad at his job. But no one did the tough rescues like Buck did (no one had his back like Buck did, both when they weren’t together and when they were). It was like… if Chimney was the heart of the team (according to Bobby, not , to be noted, according to Eddie ), then Buck was the soul. They weren’t a family before him, they wouldn’t be a family again without him. He was the part of the team that kept it living and breathing. Eddie hadn’t realized after the bombing just what it was that Buck had brought to the station (well, he had but he hadn’t realized it quite like he was realizing it now). Chim’s jokes all fell a little flat, oddly, without Buck there to ask him to explain whatever obscure reference he was making. Hen spent more time video chatting with Karen than she did playing group video games. Ravi tried to take over tossing our random facts but they all fell a bit stale. Lucy had joined a book club . Eddie didn’t even know they had a book club at the station. 

Things just weren’t the same. Or maybe Eddie just wasn’t the same, too tethered to Buck to really be healthy, but Frank reassured him that it was possible that things were off. You have all gone through a very traumatic time. Multiple traumatic times. Usually as a team. You’re missing part of that team and feeling that gap is normal.  

It was a little weird to miss Buck at work and have him at home. He only had experience of the opposite - whenever Eddie had missed Buck previously, it was in every other aspect of his life. He had had Buck at work but not at home for so long that having that switch flipped felt off putting, like the ground had shifted and taken his comfort with it. And then he’d go home and Buck would be sitting at the couch watching television, or on the back porch reading, or napping on their bed, or, one memorable time, deciding to completely renovate their kitchen including the pipes by hand (only have to call in a plumber when Buck failed to fix what hadn’t been broken until he decided to mess with it). Eddie didn’t know which option he preferred. He liked knowing that Buck was safe and it was awfully nice to not have to ever really worry about Carla getting dismissed on time if a shift ran over. But he knew how much Buck liked his job. He knew how much the job meant to him, how much the people meant to him and Eddie would never put his own comfort over Buck’s wants. 

The doctors still didn’t have an agreed upon time on when he could go back. 

Eddie knew it was eating at him. 

He wondered if Buck had been as bad at hiding it after the bombing as he was now. He wondered what it meant that he hadn’t recognized it then but he recognized it so easily now. There was a difference, though, in how the team was responding this time compared to how they had last. No longer was there Hen coming to the station and asking bluntly who Buck had to push Eddie into doing something with his worry rather than letting it eat at his insides. Hen instead stopped by on her days off on the excuse of a pre-arranged comic book planning meeting for Chris and Denny. More often than not, Maddie spent every third day with them, Jee-Yun on her hip and Chimney attached to her side. Bobby and Athena came together and separately with baked goods and gossip and unprompted encouraging words. Abuela was back and Pepa had started inviting herself over for lunch. Sophia even stopped by, although that was more for dinner with the two of them than alone. 

Eddie would have been suffocated by the attention. Buck thrived with it. Or he hadn’t said anything to push it away, anyway. Not to Eddie. Not, as far as he knew, to Maddie either. Buck didn’t turn down the invitations so much… side-step them sometimes. He’d beg off to the bedroom and shut the door with the excuse of a headache, he’d hide in the bathroom for an hour and say he felt nauseous. Eddie kept a tally on when it happened, small and infrequent as it was, something telling him that he would have to pay attention in case it got worse. 

He was being overprotective. It was his default. 

Maddie was worse. 

Buck had left his phone with Eddie, the screen was still too bright most times even at its lowest setting and most people knew that if Buck didn’t answer in a short amount of time that texting Eddie was their best bet to get an answer. So when his phone vibrated in Eddie’s pocket he didn’t think anything of it, slipping it out of his pocket and glancing at the screen. Appointment with Doctor Copeland; 30 minutes. He frowned. 

Buck’s physical therapy appointments had been carefully picked and scheduled around Eddie’s work schedule, therapy, and Christopher’s after school programs. They had a color coded calendar on their refrigerator and shared Google calendars across all platforms. His therapy appointment wasn’t on Eddie’s calendar, it had to have not been, because otherwise he wouldn’t have picked this slot for physical therapy. It had been three years of therapy for Buck and he had only missed close to two sessions with Doctor Copeland - one the day Eddie was shot and one the first week Buck had been out of the hospital. He meticulously planned them and sometimes he’d book out the entire day if he knew it was going to be a tough session. 

He hadn’t been to therapy since the accident. 

Eddie furrowed his brow and checked the time. There was no way he’d be able to make both appointments. 

It was always possible that Buck had simply forgotten he had set up this one, probably when he had rescheduled after the accident. But Eddie knew Buck’s routine - he had three alarms for his medication throughout the day, he had appointment reminders set up weeks in advance so that he didn’t set things with a conflicting schedule. Setting up therapy at the same time as his physical therapy when he knew they would be going out afterwards wasn’t something Buck would just do . 

But maybe Eddie was overthinking things again. 

He had been doing that a lot lately. 

It had only been ten minutes and Eddie had another forty to kill before Buck’s session would be over. He stood from the chair, pocketed both phones and stepped outside to take a breather, the warm air sliding smoothly down his throat without the humidity to keep it stuck in his esophagus. Everything would work out, it always had a way of doing that for them. Their luck was bound to run out eventually, but Eddie was fairly certain this wasn’t when it was going to catch up to them. Everyone was fine. Everyone was going to continue being fine. They’d pull through together as they had many other moments in the past. 

He tipped his head to the sky and gave himself a moment to breathe. Maybe they’d grab lunch on their way back from the grocery store, or maybe even before. Something to recharge and revitalize. Something to get Buck out of the house more than to his slew of appointments and back into the swing of things. That burger place he liked by his old apartment was open. They hadn’t gone there since Buck had moved in (he claimed that Taylor had won it in the separation but Eddie wasn’t about to let Taylor Kelly win anything - he was also pretty sure that Taylor didn’t even like burgers and she hadn’t actually banned Buck from anything. He had a habit of clean breaks where relationships were concerned. He wouldn’t contact the person unless they contacted him first, would change his entire routine around to avoid any chance of running into them, was likely to increase his commute just to avoid certain streets his partners frequented. It had occurred to Eddie a long time ago that Buck didn’t actually know how to date someone without dedicating all of himself, which meant that when it didn’t work out he had to spend a long time relearning exactly who he was.).

He leaned back against the building, scrolled aimlessly through his phone - the posts Sophia had tagged him in, the screenshot of Adriana’s Facebook about Henry’s baseball fundraiser his mother sent him (she didn’t understand why Eddie had suddenly blocked her. Adriana wasn’t telling and Eddie didn’t feel like explaining the entire situation more than he already had to to Pepa and so he just… didn’t. Adriana’s actions were her own but Eddie would never stop being her big brother even if he wanted to. Telling their parents felt too much like tattling to two people who would just tell him he’s overreacting), the snapchat video Maddie had sent of Jee-Yun chasing Chimney around their apartment with finger paint splattered all down her little hands, the absolute slew of TikToks both Buck and May had sent him. It was mind numbing and, by the time he had reached the end of his notifications he usually let pile up, his eyes were exhausted from the screen, his shoulders were comfortably warm, and Buck was limping out of the physical therapy office with the therapist’s hand hovering just a bit by his elbow in case he lost balance. 

Eddie caught him, in the sneakiest way he could manage, with a hand on his waist, more than happy to take whatever weight Buck deemed necessary. “Hey,” he greeted, noting the flush to his cheeks, the tense line of his shoulders, the way he squinted at the sun. He reached up, nudging a stubborn curl out of the way (he’d start complaining about needing a haircut soon. Eddie was shocked he hadn’t already, but Buck didn’t spend a lot of time looking at himself in the mirror lately and without him on schedule, there wasn’t really much of a need to stay within regulations), and cupped his hand over Buck’s eyes, blocking out as much sun as he could. “How’d the session go?” 

His physical therapist - Gerry. Doctor Gerry Dixon Jr., he had introduced himself as at the first session - dropped his hand against his thigh and smiled. He looked like he was born and raised in California - tanned skin, golden highlights in his hair, a short, stylish beard sported on his chin. He was shorter than Buck, but stockier than the two of them combined, younger by a year but always helpful. Buck had gone to him after the bombing, and again after the tsunami and why he wasn’t happy Buck was back in his office, there was something about going to a physician that had a proven track record. “Good,” Gerry never gave a whole lot of information out, even though Buck had already listed Eddie as someone he was cleared to give information to. It was more than client confidentiality. If something happened that Eddie would have to know about, Gerry would tell him, but he wasn’t about to spill if Buck had almost started crying or had sworn up a storm while doing his exercises. “Got a little dizzy at the end, but movement’s improving every session.” 

Those were the sort of things Buck wouldn’t share unless he was pressed to, Eddie was finding. Any small moment of discomfort was shrugged off, a danger of focusing on the good. Buck was scarily good at forgetting that he was recovering from a severe concussion (he was scarily good at acting like he was recovered, most of the time). Eddie had caught him sitting up slowly or stumbling with a small joke about tripping over nothing. He had watched him ignore a migraine until he was bent over the toilet, pretending to remember something that someone said by grabbing onto context clues and pulling out a meaning like he was bullshiting a college paper. The only people he couldn’t fool were his doctors. Or at least those were the only people he didn’t try to fool. 

He tried not to let it bother him that Buck tried to fool him . Eddie was a safe place, so it was obvious that Buck would try to push his boundaries. He’s used to doing things on his own, isn’t he? Frank had asked just last week. He probably doesn’t know how to deal with you being willing to catch him if he stumbles.  

“You got dizzy?” Eddie asked only once they were back at his truck, leaning against the passenger door as Buck slowly lowered himself into the seat, stretching out his leg with a barely concealed wince. 

He waved off his concern. “It’s fine.” 

“Buck.” 

“ Eddie .” He rolled his eyes, an expression Chris was starting to use more and more on his face. Eddie didn’t know who was picking it up from who but he knew he didn’t appreciate it very much. “I’m fine . I just got up too fast off the bench.” Eddie must have made a face at him because Buck gave him one right back, stubborn and frustrated lines down the sides of his mouth. Eddie rolled his jaw, flicked his eyes down and nodded. Buck wasn’t going to admit to pushing himself too hard, that wasn’t exactly his strong suit. 

“You had an appointment with Doctor Copeland you forgot to reschedule.” He said carefully, choosing his words to not sound accusing, even if all he wanted to do was shove it in Buck’s face and demand an explanation. “Why don’t you call her office, set up one for later this week or something while we drive home?” 

He was fishing, he knew he was fishing, looking for Buck to either admit to having forgotten about it or scheduling the appointments so that they conflicted on purpose. Instead, Buck said nothing at all, merely took the phone when it was offered to him and flipped it upside down on his thigh, leaning his head back with eyes shut and sucking in a slow, carefully steady breath. Eddie could spend forever watching him, but it was whenever his eyes were closed that Eddie noticed the cracks in whatever mask he had decided was necessary to wear. With his eyes open it was easy to miss the way his face looked tired, scrunched in almost a perpetual grimace. His nose still had a thin line at the top from where his steering wheel had cut into skin, his forehead had a scar, now, cutting through his birthmark and ending right before his eyebrow. His collarbone had a scar too, Eddie knew, that Buck kept carefully hidden behind a shirt but peaked out of the collar of t-shirts. That one wouldn’t last, but the ones on his head probably wouldn’t disappear for a few years, if they disappeared at all. 

They were lucky. He knew they were lucky. 

He wondered if Buck knew it too. Or if lucky had a different meaning to him. 

“I thought we were grabbing groceries?” Buck mumbled and opened his eyes into tiny slits of blue, peeking up at Eddie through eyelashes. 

He wanted to refuse. Buck had gotten dizzy during the session, his knee was clearly bothering him more than he wanted to let show, his head was probably well on its way to pounding. But Buck looked sad sometimes, when he thought Eddie wasn’t looking. Like he was one step away from disappearing into something else entirely. “Are you up for that?” He asked instead, leaving the decision up to him, even if his mind told him that he was just signing Buck up for a more miserable night. 

Buck frowned. “Course.” 

“Okay.” Eddie moved to make his way to the driver’s side but Buck stopped him, a hand on his wrist over his watch and tugging him down with sharp, strong efficiency. He kissed him, Eddie’s hand bracing himself on the center console, nose pressed perhaps uncomfortably into Buck’s cheek. He never would have thought he would find the scrape of stubble intoxicating, or the taste of mango and mint enticing, but, well, it was attached to Buck and Buck was Eddie’s own personal Kryptonite. A hand tangled with his hair on the back of his head, dull fingernails scratching at his scalp and it was self control, really (no matter how little self control Eddie actually had) that had him pulling back with a smack of their lips, detaching rather than just climbing in his lap and making out like teenagers in the middle of the physical therapy office’s parking lot. “Okay.” He stayed a moment longer though, tracing the way Buck’s lips pulled up into a self satisfied smirk with his eyes until he got himself under control, arousal stirring low in his gut even as he turned away, softly shutting the door and resisting the urge to fan his cheeks as he made his way to the driver’s side door. 

He slid behind the wheel, twisted the key in the ignition and paused, for a moment, at the way Buck’s shoulders seemed to unconsciously jump. He opened his mouth to ask about it, but Buck bulldozed ahead. “You want to get burgers on the way back?” 

Eddie’s expression eased into a smile, something like relief settling in his spine. “That place down the street from your old place?” 

Buck shrugged, a crooked smile on his own face. “If that’s what you want.” 

--

The first time Evan consciously hurt himself he was in elementary school. He didn’t have an exact age to slap on it, he couldn’t remember the exact cause. He complained every single day for a week about feeling sick to get out of recess, or a test, or reading assignments, and sat with the nurse instead. She stopped calling home after the first week - he wasn’t sick, he didn’t really know what he was, but she would let him sit on the bed with the crinkly paper for ten minutes, drink some water, maybe have a snack, and then dismiss him back to class. Bandaid on and good as new until they cycle got old. Evan was aware that his teacher was catching on, the nurse was growing annoyed (Evan had always been annoying. He had that trait . He talked too much, his fantasy worlds were too much for everyone around him, he did strange little things that drove adults insane). 

In the bathroom, there was a wooden shelf at chest height. Evan couldn’t remember why he had done what he had done, he didn’t have the memory of making the conscious decision, but he banged, and he banged, and he banged his wrist on it until his skin was red and burning and he had a big, fat mosaic of colors and then he went to the nurse and when she asked what had happened he had shrugged, suddenly unsure if it was the correct course of action to have taken. I don’t know , he had said down to the scuffed toes of his shoes. 

Did you leave home like this? She had asked, and grabbed an ice pack from the mini fridge at her feet, the cold seeping into his skin like another ache that he couldn’t scratch. 

Evan shook his head and she had narrowed her eyes, calculating, not judgemental but perhaps worried, now that he was an adult and could look at the situation objectively. Did you do this to yourself? His pulse had skyrocketed, his cheeks grew hot as molten lava and he shook his head even as his eyes welled with embarrassed tears. Where did you do this?  

The bathroom. 

Did you do it on purpose? 

No, I promise. I just hit my wrist. 

She didn’t call him out on it. The wooden block was at chest height, Evan had had to work to slam his wrist into it. She kept him out of class for an hour that day, until the redness on his skin was because of the ice and not the puffy feeling across his bones. 

Evan didn’t go back to the nurse after that. 

He never knew if she told anyone, but whatever impression he made on her wasn’t big enough for her to worry. She never stopped him in the hall, never asked him about home or his big thoughts, and his guidance counselor never pulled him aside like Maddie’s did when she was in middle school. He was put in special classes with all the Special Kids (SPED, but only for reading and math and speech for his stutter) and he tried to be quieter. Less. His mother didn’t understand why his report cards said he was Quiet, Evan certainly was never quiet in the halls of their home. Why can’t you be like this at home, huh? His father asked as a joke, a tease, but with truth in his question too. He tried it at home, after that. The Quiet he had adapted in school. 

It never worked. 

If Evan was quiet at home then the walls would scream . Fingernails would scratch at his door at night and he could hear the ghost in the woods yell at him to run away and Maddie had made him promise never to do that when he was six and told her that he had packed his Spider-Man backpack with fruit roll-ups, his Pikachu stuffed animal she won him at the arcade and a sweater in case he got cold at night. 

He never tried to be quiet again. 

--

Frustration wasn’t a useful emotion and it didn’t feel right as a descriptor for how he was feeling but, damn it all, Buck was frustrated . He was frustrated with everything lately, be it the headaches, the way time felt like a life raft that he just kept losing hold of, Christopher asking him for homework help, Hen appearing three times a week of gossip and video games, Maddie letting herself in his house without texting first, or Eddie hovering . It was irrational, and Buck knew it was irrational and so he was trying his hardest to push it down until it melted away like it always did. 

Only it wasn’t melting away. 

Not totally and completely. It was like most of it would disappear down the drain only for a few dregs to get stuck in the mechanism, piling up a little more every day. Doctor Copeland would probably have something insightful to say about it if he ever got around to asking her, but whenever she asked him how things were going he always found the truth stuck in his throat and a careful side-step away from the information he actually gave her. Physical therapy was going great, his neurologist was confident in his concussion recovery, the union representative had reassured him that so long as his doctors signed off on everything he should be able to take the recertification test and be back in action in under six months. A much quicker recovery time than anyone had anticipated. 

He just needed a moment to himself. A pause to catch his breath. 

Something . 

Which was completely different than what Buck usually wanted . Buck was needy by nature, clingy because of circumstance, and all of those things amplified whenever he was feeling out of sorts. The last time he had been out of commission for long he had wanted nothing more than the team’s attention. Now he had it and he was finding that it tasted a little stale on his tongue. “I was thinking,” Maddie said, grabbing one of his shirts from his pile of laundry and folding it with precise lines and corners. It hurt his eyes to look at - whenever Buck did his own laundry he was lucky it wasn’t just rolled into a ball and stuffed in whatever drawer he felt like. Eddie always folded things in perfect military precision, but he never really cared how Buck would put things away. If the clean clothes weren’t sitting in the laundry bin for a week, Eddie was happy. Maddie, though, Maddie was a doer . Laundry got folded and put away the moment it came out of the dryer, dishes got washed when their intended purpose was done, and she had attacked clean Buck’s house like it was her own. 

It was annoying. 

It was helpful. 

The push and pull between the two made him feel sick. “Why don’t we go to the park? Jee’s been obsessed with the swings ever since Chris showed her how much better than slides they are.” Specifically, Jee-Yun was obsessed with one swing - the big trampoline like one where she could lay her whole body out and sunbathe while the adults pushed her, brushing the breeze through her dark hair. Chris had sat with her on that one the week before, pushing them with his ever growing legs while Jee-Yun squealed in excitement, begging to go again and again and again until Christopher got tired of it and begged Buck to take over. 

“I’m not really feeling up to the park today, Maddie.” He told the sweater he was rolling into a crisp, neat ball. 

Maddie yanked it from his hands and folded it - sleeve over sleeve, sides pinched in several inches until the shoulders met in the middle, up once, twice, three times until it was a perfect little store-ready rectangle. “Is your head bothering you?” Her eyebrows dropped in concern, a tiny V in the middle of her forehead. She glanced at the pile of clothes on the bed, clearly doing the math in her head on how quickly she could fold it all and he could lie down. 

“Yeah.” 

He was lying. 

Buck’s head did bother him, more than he wanted it to still, but it didn’t bother him nearly as often as Maddie seemed to think it did. Buck had just found that it was easier to tell her that he had a headache than tell her that he needed an hour to himself. Or that he could fold his own laundry, wash his own dishes, handle himself. 

Maddie winced in sympathy, her fingers cool against his forearm and he ducked down obligingly for her to brush her fingers through his hair and around to the back of his head, squeezing gently. She looked at him sometimes like he was seven, her expression something familiar that Buck had learned how to read before he had known any real words. He didn’t want her to leave, suddenly. Or, he did. He wanted the Maddie in front of him to leave and to take all thirty years of his life experience with her. He wanted her to walk out of his door and leave only Maddie at fourteen and Evan at four. He wanted her to settle him on her bed with her big, fluffy coral blanket and The Rainbow Fish across her knees while Margaret ordered soup from the diner down the street because Evan had thrown up his breakfast all over the kitchen table. “Why don’t you go take some Tylenol and rest on the couch?” 

Only Buck wasn’t four and Maddie wasn’t fourteen and the want to go back to that time was irrational and impractical. 

He swallowed his words and turned back to his laundry, grabbing a pair of jeans and rolling them into a careful little ball. “Evan,” Maddie clicked her tongue, her hands gentle as she pulled the jeans from his grip and shook out the legs of the denim. “Go relax, I’ve got this.” 

He wasn’t four and Maddie wasn’t fourteen and Buck was only human but Maddie was getting on his nerves . “It’s fine.” He wondered how many times he had to say it until it was true. It was starting to get on his nerves that no one was calling him on it. It’s fine , he said like it was some sort of spell. Like he was Bloody Mary - say it’s fine in the mirror twenty times, with the light off, and Evan Buckley would appear, whole as he was the day he moved into the Diaz household. 

“Buck,” Maddie admonished. “Jee needs her nap anyway.” 

Jee-Yun was happy playing with Eddie’s shoes from where Buck was standing, her little feet in his gym sneakers. She kept falling over every few seconds but she would just laugh and pick herself back up, stumbling over to the mirror and pointing at her reflection. 

“Maddie,” He mocked in the same tone of voice, blue eyes wide in her direction. “It’s fine .” 

The thing about Maddie, though, was that she was just as stubborn as Buck could be. More, even, because one of them always had to give in and Buck hated fighting more than Maddie did. She stared at him as he grabbed a towel and rolled it, placing it back on the bed a moment later. She watched him roll a shirt, his socks, his underwear , and when he grabbed a pair of exercise shorts to do the same thing she made a wounded noise in the back of her throat and snatched them out of his hands again, leaving only air and frustration where fabric used to be. “Seriously, Buck.” Maddie said with her mom-voice . Or, it used to be her Buck you’re doing something stupid voice but it had molded into her mom-voice when Jee-Yun had hit her terrible… one and halves. It was rather reminiscent of Eddie’s Tired-Dad voice that he had memorably broke out earlier that week when Chris had failed to tell him about a project until the morning it was due. “You need to let yourself heal .” 

“I am .” 

“If your head is bothering you, you should rest .” Maddie said it as teasingly as she should, nudging his shoulder with her own. Only it didn’t feel teasing, it felt condescending. 

He rolled his lips, brushing his tongue over the chapped bottom one, snagging it on a crack of skin and grabbed another shirt. Maddie took it out of his hands before he could do more than turn it right side out. “Will you stop !” She froze, he froze, Jee-Yun toppled over onto her back, Eddie’s sneaker flying off and hitting the dresser, a tower of books Buck had carefully arranged just that morning falling to the ground like an avalanche. It was a knife to the head but Jee’s cries felt like someone wrapped a hand around the blade and kept pushing it further and further behind his eyes. 

It wasn’t her fault, Jee-Yun wasn’t even two yet and Buck (and the books) had startled her. Maddie reacted like he knew she would, grabbing Jee-Yun and tugging her into a comforting embrace, her thumbs brushing under her daughter’s eyes even as she rushed out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her. One good thing about recovery, Buck could begrudgingly admit, was having an excuse to lock the door to his bedroom. One bad thing about recovery, he was learning, was how guilty he felt doing it. 

He sat on the edge of the bed, Maddie’s perfectly folded piles falling into impressions of themselves as the mattress dipped under his weight and he pressed his fingers into his eyes hard enough to see stars. His thumb caught on the bump on his forehead, thin and slightly raised from the rest of his skin. It probably wasn’t the actual cause of his injury, Buck knew he had been tossed around pretty badly in the accident, but he pressed the nail into it like it had been, anyway. Not hard enough to break the skin, only hard enough to feel the sting over the throb in his skull and then he stood up, swept the laundry back into the basket and kicked it into the corner. 

He’d deal with it later. 

“I thought you were resting,” Maddie bounced Jee on her hip, moving like a professional around his kitchen, grabbing one of the sippy cups he kept on the lowest counter and filling it with water from the pitcher in the refrigerator. 

“I’m fine .” He didn’t know how many times he had to say it until Maddie accepted it as the truth. He was fine. He had survived through worse. 

“Buck.” 

“ Maddie .” He had to admit, his voice was taking on that tone he used whenever he was in a particularly whiny mood as a teenager. There was just something about it - Maddie wanted to parent and Buck had gotten used to not having her around a long time ago. She had an actual child to take care of, the one sniffling on her hip and rubbing at her nose with red rimmed eyes. So his head hurt - that wasn’t exactly new . And Buck knew his limits, okay? He wasn’t pushing himself past them or ignoring his body telling him to take a break. He didn’t need a break. 

She chewed on her lip. “At least go finish your laundry.” 

“So you can refold it all later?” He was being mean, pushing her away in a way he hadn’t done since he had first found out about Daniel. Maddie knew how to push buttons others didn’t even know were there, her brand of caring bordered on overbearing sometimes. Still, Maddie rolled her eyes, carefully choosing to pack away her annoyance in a neat little box. 

Buck had always been jealous of her ability to compartmentalize. Maddie was always scarily good at picking him apart and analyzing every part of him, whether he showed it to her or not. But Buck got on her nerves in the worst way. Sometimes he wondered if he made it easy for people to leave, dial the worst parts of his personality up to ten and everyone would run away. If he was annoying then she wasn’t trying to figure him out, like there was a countdown over his head suspended in the air, seconds tick, tick, ticking away until he would explode into tiny little Buck shaped pieces and destroy everything he had fought to build. “You’re right.” Maddie said carefully, slowly, like she was choosing her words to ease him into relaxation. “I’m sorry.”

He hated it when she refused to rise to the bait. He shut the refrigerator with perhaps more force than was necessary, the jars on the door clanging softly together as it sealed, the magnets falling an inch down the metal. Eddie’s all capital scrawl mocked him, Remember I love you . The edges of the paper were yellowing from age, curled up and torn. “Whatever.” He muttered, tickling Jee-Yun’s stomach until she smiled at him, waving around the edge of her sippy cup. He mustered a smile for her and wondered why he wasn’t taking the out that Maddie had given him in the first place. Maybe there was a part of him that wanted someone to call him on his irritability, but Maddie and Eddie had been working in tandem together, walking on eggshells and observing . Comparing notes over text and conversations in the living room after Buck had stumbled into bed, pretending like he couldn’t hear them talking about his health like they were a deciding factor in it. How was he today? Emotional regulation was never Buck’s most impressive quality. It’s no wonder he’s acting like this. Has he said anything to you? Do we have to worry? 

His frustration wasn’t fair. 

Life wasn’t fair. 

“I think you should go.” He said to Eddie’s note and Maddie’s gaze snapped to his face. He could feel it, the lasers in her eyes. Observing. Cataloging. Queuing for a fight. 

“Do you…” She cut herself off and whatever she saw in his face had her changing tactics. “I’m sorry, Evan. We… you’re probably tired of people stopping by all the time.” Well she wasn’t wrong . He shrugged. “We don’t have to go anywhere today.” She said softer, like she was unsure whether her suggestion to go to the park had been the issue or not. He didn’t know how to tell her that it was everything, not one small thing. Maddie could take the park off of his plate but she couldn’t take the rest. He heard what she wasn’t saying - sorry for being here all the time but I’m not leaving . We don’t have to go anywhere today but I don’t want you to be alone. “Do you… do you want to watch a movie or something? Chim mentioned this documentary that he thought you’d like that just went up on Netflix.” 

Buck knew about it. Chim had texted him about it the night before. Please , he opened his mouth to beg. Just please . Instead, he shrugged and shook his head. “I’m going to take a bath.” 

He didn’t need to take a bath. He had showered that morning and aside from his physical therapy stretches, Buck hadn’t exactly done anything taxing. But Maddie never followed him into the bathroom and that worried look on her face melted at the suggestion. “I’ll make some lunch for when you get out.” Buck wasn’t hungry, the idea of food made his stomach clench uncomfortably. Still, he nodded again, mumbled a thank you and locked the bathroom door behind him. The porcelain was cold under his hands and he turned on the tap on the tub for a noise that wouldn’t send her looking. 

The thing was… Buck knew he was getting bad again. He knew the signs - irritability, forced isolation, picking fights. It was a form of self mutilation he was used to. It had always worked so well before people knew what to look for. He functioned best when he was around people and he was at his worst when he was alone but isolation was a familiar punishment, a pain he knew how to block out that kept him focused. Tethered to the time he was in. He was needy, attention was addictive, and he was so tired of his own mind but it was at least a prison of his own making. All you have to do is ask for help , Hen had told Bobby once, his weight shared between the two of them, liquor bottles scattered on his old, tiny little apartment. Buck had understood what it took to ask for it, Bobby’s voice breaking and the man falling with it. 

Every time he had asked for help the call had gone unanswered. 

Maybe he wasn’t asking right. Maybe if Buck asked for help in a different language people would answer. Maybe if he knew how to ask then they would ask. 

Maybe he didn’t want help at all. 

He had done it alone before and he would do it alone again, only sometimes when he looked at himself in the mirror he saw his reflection in a cracked windshield staring back at him, an endless green drop below and a thought of this would be an okay place to die drifting to the front of his mind. He blinked and he was back in the bathroom he shared with Eddie and Christopher, fear clogging in his throat with the steam of the water. If he strained his ears he could hear Maddie in the kitchen, singing along softly and slightly out of tune to a playlist on her phone. His heart was pounding a familiar call in his chest. This would be an okay place to die. At least it’s green. It’s pretty. It wouldn’t even hurt. It’s as easy as closing your eyes.

Evan, baby.  

I need you to help us save your lives.  

He shoved the medicine cabinet closed and twisted the knob on the tub hard enough the metal screeched as it turned off. He dropped down to the bathroom floor, quick enough his knee pulled and strained, buried his face in the heels of his hands and tugged at his curls until his scalp burned. 

Help , Bobby had said. 

Help me! His mind screamed but his lips stayed glued shut. 

--

Evan had lied. 

Why did you do it? Maddie had asked, concerned and needing to reassure herself that it wouldn’t happen again in the way that all people who cared needed to. She had asked it and held his hand and he had lied. 

It was one bad day. That was what he always said. It was one bad day. It was always easier to say that than explain the actual truth - it was always more than one bad day. It had been a cumulation of bad days. A mountain of bad days that just got higher and more difficult to climb every few moments. The truth was this: he had been tired. He hadn’t been able to think straight for weeks. Leaving was easier than staying and Evan had always been the type to stay too long and end up being left behind. If he had said it, then Maddie would have been more worried. She would have asked more questions. 

What are the signs?  

Evan had thought about suicide for years by the time he was nineteen. He had contemplated it, dreamt about it, almost done it over and over and over again. He had searched on Google how to do it, had reached out to those suicide prevention hotlines, had thought stay for Maddie , stay for mom, stay for dad, what about your friends? Don’t make any of them find you enough times that the words had lost meaning. 

It was easier to lie but pattern recognition existed regardless. Evan was good at recognizing patterns. He knew when Margaret was itching for a fight, when Philip had had a tough day at the office and Evan asking any question would just make it worse, when something was going on with Maddie and Doug, when his friends were annoyed with him, when his girlfriends (and one memorable boyfriend) were going to end things. Usually he beat them to the punch - if Margaret was itching for a fight, why not give her one? If Philip had had a bad day, maybe he would appreciate it if Evan just avoided being in the same room as him all together. If Maddie showed up with a bruise on her wrist and Doug was being overly nice to him, maybe Evan just needed to turn up the charm, let him know how sorry Maddie was for whatever happened by being the perfect little brother. If his friends were annoyed? It was easier to give them space than to keep pushing them until they broke. If he was going to have his heart broken? Better to break it himself than wait for it to be stomped on. He knew patterns, so he knew what the pattern he tended to follow was: 

He would have a bad few minutes, and then a bad few hours, and then a bad day. The bad day would inevitably end and the next one would be good, the next few months would be some of the best of his life. And then he’d have a bad few minutes, a bad few hours, and a bad few days. But the days would end and he’d proceed to have a good week. But the bad few minutes would creep back in, and they’d bring with them a bad few hours, and then the bad days would last for a month. And then it was a bad life and Evan hadn’t been sleeping all that well and the idea of just… never having a bad day again was too enticing to let up. 

It was just a bad day , he said, though, and Maddie never pushed for more. 

--

“I think we’re getting on his nerves.” Currently, the him of the conversation was asleep on the couch, Jee-Yun cuddled to his chest and his head propped up on a pillow Eddie had slipped under his head to keep him from snoring. Or he had been the last time Eddie had checked on him. Chim offered him another glass of wine but Eddie declined with a quick shake of his head - the wine had been a pairing for dinner and beyond that, he wasn’t really much of a drinker nowadays anyway. Maddie shifted uncomfortably in her seat, her eyes darting down the hall to Christopher’s half closed door before carrying on. “He almost bit my head off when I suggested he take a nap.” 

Sophia hummed, took the refilled glass of wine Eddie had turned down and drank half of it in one go, leaning her weight over the back of his chair. “Can’t imagine why.” She muttered dryly and then blanched at the wide eyed look Maddie shot her from the opposite side of the dining room table. Sophia and Albert joining them for their Diaz-Buckley-Han family dinners wasn’t exactly a new, or every week occurrence, but they had been putting in the effort more lately (after the accident, Eddie reminded himself. Everyone had been doing more since the accident). Eddie had never been so acutely aware of the similarities between himself and Maddie as he was when Sophia and Buck were in the same room. “I mean…” Sophia smacked her lips and carefully contemplated her words, her fingers twisting in the silver bangle she wore on her wrist. “You guys are a bit… over bearing .” 

Albert snorted and Chim, wisely, elbowed him with a stern look to keep silent. For the sake of giving his little sister shit, Eddie tried his best to screw his face up to look offended. “Overbearing?” He repeated, accidentally imitating Abuela’s offended accent. 

Sophia smacked at his arm. “Usted es el más sobreprotector… ” She screwed up her face back at him, glaring without any heat behind her eyes and sticking out her tongue when he laughed. 

Maddie watched them with a curious look on her face ( sometimes I think she forgets you’re human , Buck had commented lightly one day, unaware of how the words would stick with Eddie months and months later), the same one she had worn when Buck was in the hospital and Eddie had draped an arm over his shoulders and refused to move until he had to be moved. She was still trying to figure him out and it never failed to set him on edge. Eddie didn’t like being figured out, and Maddie approached him like he was a problem she could fix. No, that was mean. She approached him like he approached every one of Sophia’s problems - with calm, cool, and effective efficiency. She had scoped him out as a threat before him and Buck were even dating and now that they were living together she would always view him as someone with the potential to break her brother’s heart. He didn’t know how to tell her that that wasn’t in his plans. That it was more likely that Buck would break his than it was that Eddie would ever willingly cause him harm (that Maddie should be more afraid of herself than anyone else). “He hasn’t had a moment to really catch his breath, has he?” Albert asked wisely, stirring a spoonful of honey into whatever brown liquid he had found and poured into one of Eddie’s glasses. 

“The last time we let Buck be by himself when he was going through something,” Chim said in good humor. “He ended up suing the department.” He looked at Eddie for a laugh but Eddie couldn’t find one in himself to give. That wasn’t strictly true (and Buck hadn’t been completely out of line with the lawsuit anyway. Should he have gone about it differently? Probably. But the past was the past and Buck had been twenty-seven then and spiraling worse than Eddie had ever seen him.). Buck hadn’t just been alone back then, and smothering him with attention probably wasn’t the way to stop something as catastrophic from happening again. 

Albert rolled his eyes. “He’s not stupid , Howie.” He defended Buck like he was his friend, which Eddie remembered they were . Beyond being somehow smooshed in the same family, Albert had lived with him before he had found his own place. All after the pandemic, after his own accident (before moving in with Maddie and Chimney to help out with Jee-Yun and then moving to the Lees’ extra bedroom when Buck had sold the loft). They had had movie nights and gone out to breweries and Buck had helped him find a job and shown him his favorite, safe places around Los Angeles. When Maddie had left and Chim had run all around the country looking for her, it was Albert that had been breaking Chim’s stupid rules and sending Buck updates (and Hen, who had fussed after his black eye better than Eddie had). “It’s been three months,” Albert carried on. “Maybe it’s time you all back off a little bit.” 

“They don’t get it.” Maddie said after Albert and Sophia had begged off, ducking into the living room to say goodbye to both Buck and Jee-Yun (who had woken up and had resorted to stacking blocks on the coffee table with Chris. Jee-Yun would build them up and then Chris would knock them down to her full body laughter. Mostly, it was the two of them playing, but Buck was supervising, a hand steadying Jee-Yun between the v of his legs, and Chris leaning against his shoulder every now and then if he lost balance). Chimney had disappeared to play with them, idle chatter floating between the adults (and occasionally Chris), Chimney’s own way of checking in without pushing too much. He had asked the basic questions at the beginning of the night, and Buck taking a nap wasn’t exactly unusual nowadays, but Eddie might have let slip that he had been sick after breakfast and Chim was just as overprotective as the rest of them. 

Eddie hummed and Maddie took the plate he had just washed and dried it quickly with the dish towel, placing it on top of the stack she was building on the counter. “Maybe they’re right.” Eddie said instead, distinctly aware of how much that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Maddie was protective, especially where Buck was concerned. He had the special ability of making her forget herself and accidentally disrespecting his boundaries. Eddie wasn’t the same as her, but maybe that was why Buck pushed him more. He knew where the line was when it came to Eddie, and Eddie knew where Buck’s wires crossed and tried not to step on them.

Maddie pursed her lips. “He’s still not okay.” 

And she was right, Buck wasn’t okay. “After an accident like that?” Eddie snorted, the steam from the hot water brushing across his cheeks. “There’s not exactly an okay to return to.” He wasn’t entirely sure what Maddie was expecting, if he were being honest. Buck’s normal had never exactly been the normal of everyone else around them. 

“I know that,” Maddie, if possible, sounded both annoyed and sad, brushing a hand through her hair and tugging at the roots like Buck did when he was frustrated. “There’s just… there’s something wrong,” She said slowly, carefully. “That he’s not telling me.” 

Eddie looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Truthfully, he had been thinking about it too. It was reminiscent of after the tsunami, after Buck had returned to work, only about ten times worse. Or maybe it wasn’t worse , Eddie was just looking for it now. Buck wasn’t nearly as okay as he was pretending to be, but it wasn’t as simple as Eddie throwing the covers off of him and lulling him out of bed by watching Christopher. For one, Buck saw Christopher every single day, now, and Chris didn’t exactly need a babysitter for most things as he got older. Buck had never been a sit down and talk about his feelings type of person, Eddie had always had to trick him into it. The more open Buck was, the better he was feeling mentally. But he had been closed off, irritable, more likely to avoid than confront . “I don’t think pushing him is going to make him more likely to open up.” When that was exactly what it was that Eddie did . Buck clammed up, kept his secrets, and Eddie pushed him until he spilled. But it was a complicated, delicate game and he didn’t exactly have faith that Maddie knew how to play it. 

Hadn’t she freaked out when he had even mentioned going to therapy? Eddie had been at the loft when he had signed up and he had just nodded in acceptance and handed Buck a beer. Maddie had nearly gone to pieces, frantically trying to figure out why . Her reaction had been so out of character that it had even thrown Chimney off. People in their profession needed therapists all the time, and Buck getting therapy was probably one of the smartest decisions he had ever made. 

But what Eddie knew about Maddie he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to know and so he said nothing about her ability to overreact when it came to Buck and instead tried to gently steer her away from the cliff she was standing on. Buck accepted being pushed by very specific people and Maddie hadn’t been one of them since he was ten. “You know Evan,” Maddie implored. “He’s not one to talk about what’s going on until it’s too late.” 

“I’m pretty sure he talks about it when he’s ready.” 

“With you ,” Maddie corrected. “Maybe.” 

Eddie swallowed, unsure of what exactly she wanted him to say. His relationship with her wasn’t anything like Buck’s relationship with Chimney. Him and Maddie didn’t have the same foundation. Their entire relationship was Buck. He was the only thing they had in common until Chimney became a friend and until Jee-Yun bonded with Christopher. Eddie wouldn’t say that they couldn’t be friends, only that they weren’t there yet. Maddie expected him to be with her the same way he was with the others and Eddie didn’t know how to tell her that he didn’t think he could trust her with every part of him yet. 

It was hard to make friends when there wasn’t a life or death situation going on. 

They could have bonded, he thought, if she hadn’t been gone during his stint at Dispatch. If she hadn’t set off every alarm in him when she had left, so similar and yet so different to Shannon. He had told Buck that it wasn’t his fault, Maddie had put him in an incredibly difficult and unfair situation, but Eddie had been sympathetic to Chimney’s feelings on the matter. He hadn’t chased after Shannon and he was grateful he had let her leave, but the pain of being left … it never completely went away. 

He knew what that did to a child. He understood what it did to a sibling. He embodied what it did to a spouse. 

“Our relationship isn’t exactly the same.” Eddie could count on one hand the amount of conversations him and Maddie had had that didn’t involve Buck or their children. Frankly, they didn’t have all that much in common (frankly, Eddie didn’t want to get close to someone who was such a flight risk, mean as that was). 

“No,” Maddie agreed. “But you have to admit… something’s going on with him.” 

“He was in an accident, Maddie.” Eddie repeated. “If something wasn’t going on with him I’d be more concerned.” 

“He’s sleeping more,” she pointed out. “He tried to start a fight with me the other day over laundry .” 

“Maybe Sophia’s right,” Eddie shrugged. “Hen comes over three times a week, you’re here almost every day , Bobby and Athena stop by in the mornings.” He listed off their support team, thankful for them every single day but understanding how frustrating it would have been if it were him they were checking up on. 

“Buck likes having people around.” 

“Would you ?” He pondered. “After the shooting, Buck stayed here, right? He checked up on me, took care of Chris, helped do things around the house. But no one else really… stopped by beyond that first week? Even with just him it could be too much.” 

“Buck’s a hoverer.” 

“And he learned that from you .” He teased as kindly as he could. 

She scoffed, but it was with a small, fond smile. Eddie knew the amount of things he did that Sophia had picked up on through osmosis, but the amount of traits Buck and Maddie shared was astounding sometimes. “Can I say something that you might not like?” 

It hadn’t stopped her before. Still, Eddie rose his brows in her direction and nodded her to go on. 

Maddie paused, clearly thinking of the right words to say for a long moment, before beginning. “I’m just scared.” 

“Why wouldn’t I like that?” Because Eddie understood concern. He was an older brother too, he was constantly worried about Sophia (and Adriana, although that worry just hurt now. He was a father, he didn’t go a day without worrying about Christopher. He was Buck’s partner , no one worried like he did. 

Maddie sent him a mild look, reminiscent of when Buck was saying something without saying it. “What if he does it again?” 

Carefully, Eddie set the glass he had picked up back down, the soapy water leaving his skin tacky. “Does what again?” 

“You don’t…” She rolled her lips. “We didn’t know then ,” Then, being after everything else that had happened to him. Then being the past three years. “What we know now.” Now being after. After Maddie took a trip to Pennsylvania and found a letter ten years too late. 

“I…” Eddie stumbled. “I sort of… did?” He winced, preparing for the knives of Maddie’s admonishment that never came. 

“Say we back off,” she carried on in a rush, like once she had voiced the fear she would never be able to box it back up again until it was all out. “And he gets worse . And… and you come home one day and he’s tried it again .” 

It. Maddie had trouble speaking the word as much as Eddie had trouble thinking about it. It was in the past as much as it would always be in the present. “Maddie, Buck’s not going to try to kill himself again.” He defended, although he wasn’t sure if he was defending because he didn’t believe it himself, or if the implication that he wouldn’t notice the decline was more than he wanted to deal with. 

“I didn’t think he’d try it the first time.” Maddie argued weakly. “How would we know he’s not going to do it now?” 

“Because he told me he wouldn’t .” That was what it came down to, anyway. Buck had reassured without Eddie even asking that it would never actually be something he’d do again. A moment of weakness. A bad day. Whatever it was that Buck felt like describing it as - Buck had told him it wouldn’t happen again and Eddie trusted him to tell him the truth. 

“He’s lied to me before.” 

“You’ve lied to him before.” 

Maddie swallowed, her eyes watering. “You’re right.” She told his hands. “I know you are.” She twisted her fingers together, toyed with a ring on her thumb. “He’s just my baby brother, you know?” She shrugged helplessly. “If it was one of your sisters…” She trailed off, a contemplative, heartbreaking look painted across her face. 

They had a thing for comparisons, the two of them. If it was Maddie, Eddie had offered Buck. If it was one of your sisters , she threw in his face. The circumstances weren’t the same. Their relationships weren’t the same. Maddie would never do what Adriana had done, and Eddie had known it when he had brought the comparison up. Buck had been steadfast in his denial and Eddie hadn’t been able to understand it until right then. It was a certainty. Maddie wouldn’t do that . It wasn’t just a trust that she would never do anything to purposely hurt him the way Adriana had. 

“That’s not exactly…” The same thing. Fair. Whatever it wasn’t, Eddie couldn’t think of a way to explain it. Sophia and Adriana were different people than Buck - Sophia was terrified of dying, Adriana was cruel and probably more than a little sad, but not enough to want to end everything. Different circumstances, different relationships. Eddie didn’t take on the role of father for either of them the way Maddie had stepped into a mothering role. “I’m not saying to not be worried.” Because Eddie got worried, he got where she was coming from, even. Buck wasn’t acting right, and there were only so many times Eddie could lie to himself and say that that was because he had been in an accident before it started to sound like a lie. “Just that… maybe your worry isn’t his .” 

Little feet pounded on the ground, Jee-Yun at the age where she didn’t care to step quietly and made as much noise as she was possibly capable of. Chimney followed after her, slower, sedate, keeping one eye on her and one eye on Maddie, always on the lookout for something to go wrong. “ Someone ,” Chimney said with a pointed look down at his daughter’s dress. “Spilled her juice all over her pretty dress.” 

Maddie blinked back into herself, her worry running off her face and landing in a pile at Eddie’s feet for him to carefully step over. She bent down to tickle Jee’s chin and Eddie left them to it, an awkward air settling over his shoulders until Chimney’s hand slapped at his shoulder. In the living room the television had been switched on, Christopher sitting happily on the couch, searching through Hulu for something to watch. He looked happy, unbothered even as Buck leaned his shoulder slightly against his legs from where he was sitting on the floor, reaching out with his fingers to dig into the skin of his knee. They were talking, conversing about something simple and average, and Eddie had nearly lost this . 

It wasn’t the first time it had hit him and it probably wouldn’t be his last. Still, he sunk into the feeling for a moment, arms crossed over his chest, body leaning against the wooden door frame, clocking the way Christopher laughed with his entire body. His shooting and the events that followed weren’t nearly as long ago as he wanted to pretend they were - his body still tensed at loud noises and it probably always would. He had been in so many near death experiences that he had almost forgotten how to live . “Dad!” Chris called from the couch, either unaware of Eddie’s nostalgia or uncaring for it. “Buck hasn’t seen any of the James Bond movies.” 

“A real crime.” Eddie commented dryly. While the movies weren’t his thing, Christopher had gotten into them with Ramon and Eddie hadn’t had the heart to convince him not to watch them anymore. It wasn’t all that shocking Buck hadn’t seen them, though. His knowledge of pop culture was severely lacking, a consequence of a sister ten years older than him and a rather lonely and quiet upbringing. No real trips to the movies with friends, no theater trips sandwiched between his parents, Margaret and Philip Buckley had been more than willing to forget they had a second son the majority of the time. Eddie crossed over to them, ruffled Christopher’s hair in a way that had his son ducking out of his way with a glare, and sat himself on the other side of his legs. He leaned his back against the couch, tangled his fingers with the ones Buck was digging into his knee and pulled it away from his skin to, instead, press a barely there kiss to the scars on his knuckles. 

There was tension in his forehead, in a way that Eddie had unfortunately gotten used to seeing but it disappeared, a bit, when their eyes met. He looked like he was going to say something, squeezing tight to Eddie’s fingers and slowly lowering them until they rested on his thigh. Eddie was happy to wait him out (he would wait forever if Buck wanted him to. If that was what it took), watching him back. He caught the way his eyes flitted over his face, they tick in his jaw, the drop of his head against the couch cushion, inches away from Chris’ knee. “Are you okay?” He asked as a prompt, as a general question, as a worry and a need to reassure himself even as he waited. 

No , Buck looked like he was going to say. Eddie knew the shape of his no, the way he would always tense before saying it, as though he were afraid that if he said it, whoever he was denying would turn away. “I don’t…”

“What are we watching?” Maddie stepped into the room, bouncing Jee-Yun stumbling in front of her, snacks layered on a plate. 

Buck’s answer disappeared and Eddie tried not to read too much into the way he withdrew into himself, holding onto Eddie’s hand but growing silent as Christopher selected a movie and pressed play. “Oh, I love this one!” Chimney cheered and settled in their armchair. 

Eddie didn’t stop staring. 

Buck didn’t look back. 

--

Evan didn’t consider letting people believe certain things as a lie. He let people believe whatever they wanted about plenty of things. It was easier than arguing with them about misconceptions. 

There were plenty of misconceptions about himself that he even encouraged . It was better for him if his parents believed he was a happy-go-lucky-troublemaker kid. They wouldn’t look too deeply, then, into any number of things he did. It was easier that they thought he was straight, because telling them he was bisexual had ended only in an explanation of how that wasn’t possible. Sexuality was black and white, no gray areas involved, apparently, and it hadn’t been worth the breath to fight them on their opinion. Evan couldn’t like both Sarah Michelle Geller and JC Chavez, he had to pick one. So if they only thought that he had a girlfriend in high school and didn’t know that he had also given a blow job to the male lead of their school musical that was because it was simply easier to let them ignore it. It had been better for them to believe that he didn’t apply himself in school than it was for them to look too hard into how late he was up trying to study. Not applying himself meant that he wasn’t stupid. Not applying himself meant he wasn’t a lost cause, just that he didn’t care. 

Evan let Maddie believe that he liked spending time with Hannah. He didn’t want her to lose a friend, or her boyfriend, or her husband once Doug had come around. He had told her that he was happy, because what really could she do to make the shadows go away when she was in Boston and he was in Pennsylvania? And his mother had a point, it wasn’t fair to Maddie for him to expect her to come and bandage all of his wounds when he was thirteen. Evan had to learn at some time what it was like to take care of himself. Maddie wasn’t always going to be there. It was better for Maddie if she never knew that he broke his wrist on purpose just to get her to stop home and visit, she would get that angry, sad look on her face and she would probably cry and Evan hated seeing her cry. It was better that she never knew what he had tried to do, she would only blame herself if she found out. 

There were a lot of things Evan let people believe - he was impulsive, he was talkative, he was a people person, he slept around because he was young, he was eager, energetic, he never wavered, never second guessed, could support whenever anyone needed but never needed it himself. 

He never lied about it. 

He just let Eddie believe he didn’t remember anything. 

It was easier that way. 

--

Everyone had a different fear response, Buck had learned after years working as a first responder. Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. But even those were just minimal summaries of what exactly a fear response could look like.  He had had guns waved at him (although those certainly weren’t fun ), he had had to hold people back from doing stupid things (a familiar motion), he had watched people joke, laugh, cry, and grow enraged. The majority of them were logical problem solvers. Problem solving was literally their job, they didn’t have the time to be afraid. Fear was a switch Buck intimately knew how to turn off and on at will. 

It was keeping it off that was proving to be a problem. 

He knew, logically, that it probably stemmed from having to halt his medication. His symptoms of depression had skyrocketed after that first week off of them and holding his focus was steadily becoming more and more difficult as time went on. Doctor Copeland asked him to explain it - How are you feeling without your medication? Buck had shrugged, told her it wasn’t that big of a deal, he had done it before and he’d do it again. She hadn’t looked like she didn’t believe him, but she also hadn’t looked like she had believed him either. Perhaps he was fooling himself, but he was pretty sure his… side steps of the truth weren’t things Doctor Copeland kept track of. 

The closest he could get to describing life without his medication, after having it, was… well it was like the tsunami. It was the moment he first broke away from the water, gasping for air. It was pulling himself up on that fire engine and catching his breath and thinking the worst is over . Only to be proved that it wasn’t and willingly jumping back into the water, battered, bruised and exhausted. 

Buck couldn’t think straight. 

The fear stemmed from a few different places - what if he didn’t heal all the way? What if his brain never worked the same again? What if he had messed up his leg more than the doctors thought? What if Eddie got tired of taking care of him? What if he pushed Maddie so far away that she left and didn’t come back this time? What if he woke up and his entire life in LA was just a dream and he was still little Evan, lying in a hospital bed, scrapes and bruises, a broken arm, a hospital assigned therapist and police officer (the same one that had been at that house party he had gone to at sixteen and Hannah was twenty- six and had promise him that she wouldn’t tell his parents what had happened because nothing had gone wrong , per say, aside from Evan being sufficiently shit faced ) standing at his bedside, asking questions he didn’t answer honestly? 

What if he did it again? 

The urge was there. It had always been there. Buck was just very good at ignoring it, at pushing it away on his bad days until it didn’t poke at him anymore. It’s normal , Doctor Copeland had reassured him after his first session. To have bad days. To want those bad days to end any way that they can. You’ve done a lot of work to get yourself not to think about a way out the way that you had, and recognizing when the thought arises and reaching out for help is a big, important step.  

Buck had recognized it, that was for sure. The itch had buried itself under his skin a long time ago and it had laid dormant until he was staring out a cracked windshield with blood dripping onto his steering wheel. And what was he supposed to say to get help? He had asked for it before, begged for it only to fall of deaf ears. Experience had taught him that no one would be there to catch him when he fell, so Buck had to catch himself. 

Which he knew wasn’t right . He knew it . He had people. He had a support system. He had a family . He could go up to any one of them and tell them what was going on and they’d help him however they could. Except they’d ask how and Buck… didn’t even know how to help himself, let alone help anyone help him . 

I need you to help me save your lives. Athena had said, appealing to the part of Buck that never wanted to drag anyone else down with him. She hadn’t been begging, but it was the most desperation he had ever heard from her. Something in the way she looked at him, like he was a case she knew the answer to but didn’t have the evidence to prove, told him that she had seen it. The part of him that had welcomed Death like it was a friend he hadn’t seen in a long time. 

The kids had needed help, Eddie’s brother-in-law had needed help ( Buck needed help). So he had helped. Buck had done what Buck did best - buried Evan down in a fresh layer of dirt and switched off the switch that told him to panic and waved Death away until he was looking at the hospital white popcorn ceiling and Death had reached forward and brushed away his tears with a careful, loving hand. Something’s wrong , Buck had told Chimney, gripping his shirt and wishing it was Eddie’s, and Death had walked away, pushed back by doctors and nurses and… fate for all Buck knew. And Death wasn’t there anymore, but Buck still felt the echo of their touch, just like he had since he was born and traded his life for Daniel’s. 

He wasn’t even supposed to be alive . 

He didn’t know why no one else hated him. 

“ Buck ,” Christopher tugged sharply on his sleeve, his tone of voice an exasperation he knew all too well from Eddie, hazel eyes rolling so hard in his head that Buck was shocked he didn’t give himself a headache. “It’s our turn.” 

It was, indeed, their turn. He stepped forward, placed the order for their lunch with a sheepish smile at the barista and directed Christopher to where Carla had set down her purse, the pile of books they had picked out in neat, paper bags beside it. “Sorry,” He apologized and carefully counted out the bills needed to cover the meal. 

“Don’t worry about it.” The barista, Jessica, the nametag read with little frog stickers framing her name, waved off his apology. “It happens all the time.” 

He twitched his lips into a smile, shame still settling deep in the pit of his stomach. He handed her two twenties and left the rest for a tip. Christopher had already wandered off, settling his crutches against the low wall, narrowly missing clipping an older gentleman in the head with them as he did so and scowling at the look Carla shot at him. 

He had been in a… mood all day. “He’s being a normal teenager,” Carla had said with a tiny scoff just earlier that day, when Christopher had nearly thrown a full blown tantrum over Buck asking him about a school project he had due that week. “You know how Eddie gets when he’s being moody.” She had meant it to be a tease, and it had landed as one, but Buck still couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was the problem. 

At least partially. 

Chris didn’t act like this around Eddie. This being moody, confrontational, irritable. If Chris snapped, all Eddie had to do was send him a look and Chris would apologize (be it mumbled or insincere) or go to his room to cool off. For all of Buck’s good relationship with Chris, they seemed to be narrowly avoiding an argument every few minutes. It was unfair to expect him to be patient, Buck had told himself. Chris had already displayed the patience of a saint when it came to Buck’s slow healing, he was only acting like the thirteen year old he would become in another month. 

He hadn’t told Eddie what was going on. Chris had bad days sometimes, Buck had bad days most times, and if they were going to do this then Buck had to learn how to manage better than he managed his own. Turning to Eddie to get Chris to snap out of it wouldn’t exactly solve anything or give him the skills he needed to… survive joining the Diaz family. 

Still, he hadn’t felt as lost over how to handle Christopher since the first time Eddie had let him watch him (to talk to Shannon, back in the beginning. He had dropped Chris off at Buck’s loft, something about wanting to keep his two lives separate had floated in Buck’s mind but he hadn’t known Eddie well enough back then to say it). He drummed his fingers on the counter, shifted so that his weight wasn’t entirely on his bad leg, and watched as Carla handled making Chris apologize with the ease that a parent was supposed to have. 

What did he think he was doing ? Buck wasn’t made to be a parent. He wasn’t prepared to parent a teenager . He didn’t have what it would take. He would, inevitably, do something to mess Christopher up. Chris wouldn’t look back on his life and thank Buck for being there as much as he was, hell Buck didn’t even like himself , how could expect a sentient being that spent every single day with him to look at him as someone that deserved respect? Get out of your head, a voice in his mind that sounded suspiciously like Hen whispered. You’re not telling yourself the truth . 

What was the truth anyway? 

“Do you want help carrying these to the table?” The friendly barista said calmly from the pick-up station. 

Four plates total, when they should have only had three. Carla’s soup, Christopher’s sandwich, Buck’s salad, and a cupcake Chris had been staring at but Buck had denied because Chris had used his special thing pass to get a movie. He frowned. “We didn’t order this?” He phrased it as a question because Buck didn’t trust his own memory when his brain still felt like swiss cheese sometimes. 

Jessica tilted her head with a smile. “He ordered it,” she nodded towards Christopher with something like humor in her eyes. “Before you ordered the rest.” 

It was funny, how much fear felt a lot like frustration. How much frustration felt like fear. Buck carefully managed his expression (it wasn’t her fault that Chris had tried to pull one over on him) and pushed it back across the counter towards her. “Keep it,” He said with a kindness he hoped she recognized. He probably would have bought Chris the cupcake anyway, if he hadn’t asked again during lunch. Margaret would have marched her way back to the check out, produced her receipt and the things they had just bought and returned it all. If you can’t respect our things you don’t get anything . “Split it with your coworkers.” 

Jessica beamed, if she knew Christopher had done something he wasn’t supposed to she didn’t let it show. She rounded the counter and grabbed two of the plates with practiced ease. “You and your partner are firefighters, right?” She asked kindly. 

Buck wasn’t particularly shocked that she remembered them, the bookstore was the perfect atmosphere to let Buck wander for hours in. Eddie had a habit of bringing him, picking out a book himself, ordering a coffee, finding an empty corner lounge chair and happily waiting for Buck to get bored and ramble at him for a few hours. They didn’t do it very often, just often enough for a few of the baristas to know them by name and the manager of the book portion of the store to ask Buck about whatever his current hyperfixation was. Karen was there more frequently, anyway. They had her coffee made and ready to go before she arrived every morning. “Right.” 

“Don’t you two usually work the same shift?” She didn’t say it in any way to be considered rude, and still Buck’s spine prickled at the unavoidable implied question. Why aren’t you working too?  

He swallowed his defenses. “I’m recovering from an accident right now.” 

Jessica winced. “Oh man,” the plates scraped across the table as she placed them, delicately in front of Carla and the empty place that was meant for Buck. “Well, I’m glad to see you’re doing okay now!” She beamed again. “Thanks again, for the cupcake, Buck. It’s Maryann’s birthday and she’s been having a rough day.” 

Chris sat up a bit straighter at her words, his mouth already pulled in an angry line across his face. Offended by the gall, maybe. He didn’t look like Eddie when he was angry. Buck swallowed again and carefully placed Christopher’s sandwich to the left of his elbow and refused to meet his gaze. Chris didn’t look like Eddie when he was angry but he certainly acted like him. Buck would be getting the cold shoulder for the rest of the night, ignored until he couldn’t be ignored anymore. Christopher would explode like a volcano, his words lava that would set Buck’s skin on fire until it melted completely off his frame, leaving only a polished skeleton in its place. And then he would apologize. Or he wouldn’t. It was really up in the air lately. “No problem. Hope her day gets better.” Jessica flounced away, Carla raised both of her brows at him and Buck shrugged, sitting down slowly, careful not to move too quickly and pull another muscle in his knee. 

The cold shoulder began.

The cold shoulder continued all through lunch, conversation between Carla and Buck something stilted that he couldn’t even remember when Carla pulled the car back into the driveway. The doorframe shook when Chris slammed it closed rather than leave it open for Buck and Carla on the stairs. 

He faltered. 

“It’s normal,” Carla reminded him, her voice gentle, her hand warm on his elbow. “You reacted better than Eddie would have.” 

Buck didn’t have anything to say to that. Chris wouldn’t do that to Eddie. Or maybe he would, maybe he had , relationships were all about testing boundaries and, while Chris was used to Buck most of the time, Buck was still the new presence in their lives. It had been Chris and Eddie for so long, just by themselves, that of course Christopher wouldn’t want Buck stepping into his life as often as he was. “Christopher,” Carla called as Buck toed off his sneakers, lined up neatly beside Eddie’s boots. “You know your father’s sleeping and he doesn’t need that attitude of yours.” 

Right, because the night before Eddie had worked a twenty-four before his forty-eight off. Because Buck and Carla had taken Chris out of the house so that he wouldn’t spend all day playing video games and going stir crazy. Because usually it would have just been the two of them - Buck and Chris - eating lunch, making bad jokes, buying books and seeing how long they could go until Eddie realized just how many they had bought. “I don’t have an attitude.” Chris said in the world’s snippiest tone. 

Buck wondered if he ever sounded like that when he was a kid. The tone had a very specific way of wedging itself against his nerves, tugging at them until they thrummed a warning in his blood. Eddie was better at controlling his anger, Buck had years of mastering annoyance. Carla was literally paid to deal with all aspects of Christopher’s life - good, bad, in between. She placed her hands on her hips, similar to when Eddie took the same position before lecturing, and gave Chris a look that had him bristling. “Young man, now I know you didn’t just use that tone with me.” 

Chris dropped his gaze, cowed in a way he never would be with Buck. “Sorry, Carla.” 

She nodded and dropped her hands, hanging up her purse on the hook by the door. “I think you owe Buck an apology too.” 

Buck didn’t really care for one, if he were to be honest. He didn’t really care for the entire day. It was a shit day, he had decided, and he wanted nothing more than to toss it in the trash and try again tomorrow. He blinked and Chris scowled. “He owes me an apology.” 

“Christopher.” Carla cautioned. 

“It’s fine.” Buck waved off with a hollow swallow. He didn’t want to do this. 

His fear of confrontation was strangling, threatening to wrap itself around his esophagus and squeezing tight. “Buck,” Carla cautioned in the same voice. 

“That was my cupcake.” Christopher glared at the floor as he spoke. 

“And I already told you no to getting it, bud.” Buck said slowly, resisting the urge to rub at his eyes even as the telltale signs of a headache started to prickle at his temples. 

“You took advantage of a situation,” Carla told Christopher, in that tone Maddie had used on Buck too many times when he was younger and had purposely done something wrong. “You know Buck said no.” 

“It’s not my fault that Buck didn’t ask for a receipt.” 

“Christopher, you did something you knew you shouldn’t have done.” 

“I would have paid him back!” 

“And you will pay him back.” 

“No!” Chris stomped. Actually stomped. His foot against the floor was like a sledgehammer against his brain. “I didn’t even get it ! He gave it away!” 

Buck squeezed fingers into his nose with half lidded eyes. “Chris, don’t yell at Carla, please.” Don’t yell at all, please . It set his blood on fire. 

“I’m not yelling !” Except he was. Chris was having a perfectly normal reaction for a thirteen year old and yelling at his age was normal . He didn’t like doing it, but Buck was pretty sure there would be some epic screaming matches between Chris and Eddie as Chris grew older. “It was mine and you gave it away.” 

“Technically,” Buck muttered. “ I bought it.” 

Chris fumed, his lips thinned. 

He looked at Buck like Adriana looked at him. Like he was a stain on the Diaz family household. Like he did something wrong by existing in the same space as them. It hurt, but it was at least a hurt Buck was familiar with. “Listen, why don’t you go to your room. Cool off. We’ll talk about it later.” He didn’t want Chris to feel like he was banishing him, but honest to God, Buck was about five minutes away from locking himself in the bathroom and losing up his mildly okay salad in the toilet. 

“And then you’ll apologize ?” Chris demanded, with all the righteousness in his little body. 

“And then we’ll talk about it.” 

“I don’t want to talk about it if you’re not going to apologize!” 

“Christopher,” Carla warned again, her eyes clocking Buck’s hand on the bridge of his nose. “Buck told you to do something.”

“He’s not my dad !” 

“No,” Buck snapped. “I’m not because you would never use that tone with your dad.” 

Chris blanched, his cheeks red in either embarrassment or frustration. Maybe a bit of both. “It’s not my fault that you’re too dumb to notice what’s happening in front of you!” 

“Christopher!” Carla sounded shocked but that wasn’t what had Buck withdrawing. Honestly, Christopher’s words weren’t even something he hadn’t expected. Buck had been called a lot of things in his life - dumb, stupid, slow, arrogant, obnoxious, and those were only the ones that applied to his intelligence. Christopher’s words were expected, insults were easier to accept as truth than compliments somedays and Buck had learned to live with them a long time ago. It wasn’t even the way that Chris sounded like Eddie when he said it, accusatory and hurt and projecting unfairly. He knew where to strike to cause the most pain, but unlike his father Christopher would apologize the moment he realized what it was he said. 

“Go to your room,” No, that was what had Buck withdrawing, tensing from his toes to his neck. Carla misread the situation, rubbed a hand between Buck’s shoulderblades even as Eddie stepped fully from the bedroom, eyes blurry, hair a mess, but his voice coiled in the perfect authoritative dad tone that had Christopher’s eyes welling up in angry tears. 

“ Dad -.” 

“Christopher, I wasn’t asking.” 

He stomped away, head down at Eddie’s pointer finger, the door to his bedroom slamming with all of his force tossed behind it. Carla’s hand felt too heavy against his back but Buck didn’t feel comfortable facing the force of Eddie’s stare, the heat behind it. He hadn’t had to step in between Buck and Chris in months . Usually, they were pretty good at working things out between them without his interference. Buck didn’t really know what the difference was this time around had been, except that maybe Christopher had been itching for a fight all day long and Buck had always been a convenient and easy target. 

Buck wanted to run away too. But that was Maddie’s motive more than it was his, Buck wasn’t a flight risk, no, he was more likely to settle himself into one spot on the ground and wait for everyone to leave him behind to find his own way out. 

He knew how it would go, how it always went. If it came down to it, Christopher would win every single time, just as Buck thought that he should. Eddie would leave, Carla would follow because Buck had given her to them, and Buck would be left behind. But it would be fine, it would be quiet and he had plenty of experience pulling himself into some version of himself. Granted, it would be more difficult this time. Buck had never laid down roots the way he had with Eddie. He hadn’t even grown comfortable the way he was. Had never allowed himself to believe that it was real the way that he was. 

Only that was doing Eddie a disservice. Eddie Diaz wasn’t the type of person to say I love you and not mean it. 

But he had told Shannon the same time and love like his had an expiration date. 

“Hey,” He didn’t know when Carla had stopped touching him, but when Eddie did Buck found himself flinching back, fast enough to send his head spinning and teeth gritting at the pull in his knee. Eddie caught him, a hand around his wrist and his eyes doing that thing they did where they roamed endlessly until Buck finally met them. He was pretty sure he knew that Buck was looking at his collar more than he was looking at him , the silver chain of his medal glinting in the lowlight of the hallway. “He didn’t mean it.” 

“He didn’t ,” Carla implored, her voice authoritative. 

Buck knew Christopher didn’t mean it. He was twelve, he saw an opening to hurt as much as he was hurting and so he had taken it. Chris didn’t think he was dumb, he didn’t dislike him. 

But Buck was annoying. He was frustrating even to himself. He couldn’t blame Chris for seeing behind the curtain. 

He rubbed at his forehead. “I need a moment.”

He tried to side step but Eddie stepped with him, his hand still curved over his wrist, fingers layered carefully over Buck’s pulse point. “No, hey.” He squeezed and annoyance squeezed with him. “He’ll cool off. We’ll talk to him.” 

“I know .” Buck gritted his teeth. “I need a minute .” 

He wanted him to let go, and something in his expression must have shown that because Eddie did, slowly and cautiously and with something calculating in his gaze. He shared a look Buck didn’t bother to read with Carla and when Buck stumbled to the bathroom Eddie followed, his steps soft but his presence familiar and grating. 

He didn’t step into the bathroom with him, which Buck was thankful for, just settled against the wall beside the door with arms crossed over his chest and waited. Buck could feel it, the ticking time bomb of his terror. His hands shook as he opened the Tylenol, eyes catching on the little orange bottle that held his ADHD medication (side effects: depression, tiredness, dry mouth, dizziness, death in extreme circumstances) and the glass on the medicine cabinet shook when he closed the door with perhaps more force than was necessary. He wasn’t going to do anything, he wasn’t ! 

He wasn’t.  

“What happened?” Eddie said after a moment, the bathroom door opened between them but he was making a conscious effort to respect whatever boundary Buck had placed by stepping in and asking for a second to himself. 

Buck knew exactly where the bottle was, he knew exactly how many pills were in it - 23 , he hadn’t gotten a refill since before the accident. It would take exactly ten to go into an overdose. They’d have to pump his stomach. 

He wrenched open the door and stared at it again. 

“Chris took advantage of the situation,” Carla said cooly, calmly from the other side of the wall. She couldn’t see into the bathroom, but Buck could see her shadow behind the door. They had their voices pitched soft, as to not irritate Christopher into coming out and arguing again. Eddie was a trained medic, he would know exactly what to do if Buck tore off the cap and downed the pills right there. It would be easy, though, to close the door, lock it, take all twenty three and stash the bottle. He could say he was taking a shower and go to sleep. 

“Buck?” Eddie said slowly, cautiously. 

He was holding the bottle, orange and small between his fingers. 

When he was nineteen it had been peaceful, like now that he had a plan, Buck could finally rest and allow it to happen. He had been excited. 

He was just plain scared now. 

Buck swallowed. 

“Evan?” It was a whisper in the air. 

His hand was steady when he shoved the bottle from his into Eddie’s. He fumbled with it, but he grabbed it all the same. “Please.” Help me , Buck mouthed, the words caught in his throat and something farther from concern, closer to the hardened soldier Eddie was, brushed across his expression. 

Eddie’s throat worked as he swallowed, his tongue darting out across his lips, and he resolutely passed the orange bottle behind the door. “Carla,” he cut her off mid-sentence.

Buck didn’t have to see Carla to know she had it under control, or at least was willing to take the bottle and pull it out of sight. He couldn’t see much of anything aside from Eddie’s eyes, the colors of them swirling together into a blurry mosaic. “I don’t…” Want to . 

Depression was like a slice of chocolate cake. It sat, tantalizing on the counter, starting with small slices that vindicated, tasted of sugar and childhood dreams. One slice would turn into two, would turn into twenty, and suddenly the effects would kick in. Sickness from all the sugar would swim in the gut, the rush from having the entire thing for yourself would disappear. Have enough of a good thing and you’d be sick. And maybe you would be sick, folded over the toilet as you puked it all up. 

But you’d be back because the chocolate cake was too good to forget and the taste of it was enough to tempt. 

“Okay.” Eddie’s arms were sure around his shoulders, one strong against his neck, reeling him down and in close, another firm over his waist, keeping him in place. 

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Buck said with a mouthful of cotton and eyes that burned like he had been crying. 

Eddie’s breath hitched somewhere in his chest, but when he breathed out it was measured and even. He didn’t say anything in response, he probably didn’t have anything to say in response. It was terribly unfair of Buck to throw this all on him and expect him to still love the pieces as they pulled blood from his skin. But Buck was selfish, and Eddie had caught every piece of him and held them in hands that seemed capable of helping put him back together again. Buck was so tired of doing it alone. 

Eddie’s lips pressed hard to the side of his head, and they stayed there until Buck buried his head in his shoulder, breathing in the scent of his skin and laundry detergent, a little orange bottle a nightmare behind closed eyes. 

--

Eddie wouldn’t say he ambushed Bobby first thing in the morning but, well, he sort of did. He hadn’t slept much the night before, his mind too busy tossing and turning even as he stayed stuck in the same position. Buck had slept, Eddie tried not to think about why it was so easy for him to do so. Christopher had stumbled out of his room about an hour after being banished to it and Eddie would have to talk to him - he knew he would, Christopher wasn’t the type of kid to toss around disrespect and he had been wearing that face that told Eddie that he knew that what he had done wasn’t the right thing to do but he was going to have to work to get him to admit it - but he hadn’t had the mental energy to do much more than order pizza for dinner and let Chris handle himself for the night. He had asked where Buck was an hour before bedtime but he hadn’t done anything more than frown when Eddie said he was sleeping. Carla had stayed over, curled herself around Buck when Eddie couldn’t, watched him with sad, sad eyes. She was his friend, before she was a part of Eddie’s family. She would be his friend even if Eddie wasn’t around. But Carla had a life outside of them, she had a husband to go home to, a house of her own, and she had looked at Eddie like she wanted him to beg her to stay just earlier that morning. “Go see your husband,” Eddie had told her, as soft and considerate as he could allow himself to be in the moment. 

Carla had stroked his cheek, the same way she stroked Christopher’s when he had a bad day. “ You get some sleep, Eddie.” She nodded towards the bedroom door, shut tight with Buck behind it. “You can’t help him if you don’t take care of yourself.” 

Which was why Eddie had called Sophia, even if it had felt like a betrayal. Christopher could be left alone for a few hours in the morning, he would probably give himself a bowl of cereal and watch television in the living room. 

He wasn’t worried about Christopher. 

Sophia had shown up, blurry eyed and with her dark hair a mess of waves around her head, pulled up precariously to spill down her face. She had worn her glasses, something she kept teasing Eddie that he’d probably need soon whenever he squinted and held a paper farther from his face to see it clearly. Sophia, in all of her expertise of spending years around him, frowned at whatever she saw on his face. “¿Qué pasa, Eddito?” She pitched her voice far quieter than she normally kept it, placed her to-go paper cup of coffee on his kitchen counter and circled as far as she could on his forearm with her fingers. Her grip was strong, the pink of her nails covering the ink of a tattoo. 

“Rough night.” Eddie settled with as an explanation, already dressed for whatever it was he was going to do. 

He didn’t know what to do. 

 Sophia hadn’t bothered to change out of her pajamas, just thrown on a pair of thin sweatpants over what he knew were probably sleep shorts to match the bright colored button down she was sporting. “I’m not here for Chris, am I?” Sophia picked up on too much, or maybe she picked up on enough and maybe Eddie had been fooling himself with the whole Buck’s fine agenda he was living by just a day ago. A few hours ago? 

Eddie wanted to tell her because it would make why he called her there easier. But this wasn’t like an engagement ring stashed away by Abuela and carefully made plans that didn’t feel right over the kitchen table. This wasn’t his problems with Adriana or Christopher’s latest temper tantrum. This was Buck . This was something Eddie knew that he missed the signs for. This was something he wouldn’t have noticed until he was coming home from work or a night out with the team or dinner with Sophia or the gym and found Buck dead. There wasn’t an easy solution. Telling her felt like stomping on Buck’s trust until it became dust under his shoe. He shook his head, nodded, shrugged, leaned forward to kiss her cheek and grabbed his keys out of the bowl by the door. “I won’t be long, okay?” 

Sophia swallowed and ran her tongue over her teeth. “Eddie, what am I looking at?” She squeezed his forearm again. “What do I have to be… prepared for?” 

“I don’t know.” He admitted, the words like a punch to his gut. Eddie didn’t know . He didn’t feel like he knew anything anymore. 

Be prepared for it to show up again , Frank had warned him when Eddie had mentioned Buck’s self-sacrificial behavior years ago. Eddie had thought he was prepared. He had researched signs, he had asked Buck about it even. Things they could do to prevent it. Wrestled a promise out of him that he would trust someone if it ever got bad again. 

But then Buck had said Please and I don’t want to do this anymore and handed him a little orange pill bottle that Eddie still didn’t know where Carla had stashed away and he hadn’t known what to do at all. This wasn’t a patient. This wasn’t a 911 call where he was the responding medic. This was his partner, begging for help and Eddie didn’t know where to go from the bathroom floor. “Listen, he’s…” He stopped himself, rubbed at his tired eyes and sighed. “Don’t crowd him, okay? You’re not here to babysit or anything. Just…” 

Sophia searched his face before sending him a short, clipped nod. “Keep an eye on things. Entiendo.” 

“Thank you, Phi.” 

She shook her head, her arms tight around his waist as she held him to her chest. She used to be so much smaller than him, but she still fit like she was meant to be held by him. Eddie allowed himself a moment to sink into her, to allow Sophia to take a part of the burden while she was still offering to hold it. And then he pulled back, brushed his thumbs under dry eyes and forced a smile. “Te amo.” 

“Te amo.” 

Eddie hadn’t planned on driving to Bobby’s. He hadn’t really known what he was going to do. Go pick up breakfast? Drive to the station? Hen and Karen lived ten minutes down the road, Maddie and Chimney another fifteen. Objectively, Bobby’s house was the farthest away and Eddie hadn’t known he was driving there until he was parking his truck on the curb outside of it. 

Seven in the morning was too early for whatever it was Eddie was going to drop on the captain. 

But he didn’t know what to do and maybe it was instinct that pulled him to Bobby’s door. Incident Command, Captain. Bobby was the person Eddie was trained to go to when he needed help in a crisis. He would probably dial his number on muscle memory before calling 911 (he was shocked Buck hadn’t). But maybe that was another thing - they wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t acknowledge it in fear of what it had done the last time they stumbled close to it. Buck and Bobby had a… unique relationship on the team. He trusted Bobby with things he trusted no one else with and Bobby wasn’t one to play favorites, but it was obvious who his favorite was. He was grooming him for a higher position on the team, everyone could see that. But it was more. Buck was the piece of the team that made it a family, Bobby was the first person to look at him and decide he was worth every chance he got. 

Eddie was thinking in circles, even as he stepped out of the truck, shut the door softly behind him and stumbled to the staircase. 

He hadn’t meant to ambush Bobby, honest. But he did it anyway. “Eddie,” May must have been home for the weekend, coming out as Eddie was going in, her bag slung over her shoulder and her phone mid-typed out message in her hand. She blinked, smiled prettily and leaned forward to give him a quick hug. “What are you doing here?” 

He wanted to shout it anyone that would listen, if he were being honest. Take the load of it and throw it at everyone else. Look! I don’t know how to carry this alone! Look!  

May didn’t deserve that. “Is Bobby up?” He didn’t ask if he was home, Bobby’s car was in the driveway, his firefighter plates proudly on display. Athena’s car was in front of it. A full family for the Grant-Nash household, apparently. 

“Yeah,” May pointed over her shoulder, although her tone was suspicious. She sounded like her mom when she did that, looked like her when she narrowed her gaze too, sweeping down to take in Eddie’s jeans, t-shirt, and unshaven face. “He’s in the kitchen cleaning up breakfast with my mom.” 

Bless, Bobby Nash for waking up with the birds. 

May stepped aside and Eddie slipped through the open door. “Bobby,” She called through after him. “You have a guest.” 

The staircase was familiar, the house was familiar. There had been many team dinners spent at the Grant-Nash family home, a few smaller, more private ones. He knew the pictures lining the walls, although there was a new one from Hen and Karen’s vow renewal framed. All of them were in suits and dresses, Athena looked lovely in the gown she wore, but Eddie was stuck on light blue next to Chim, a smile that he was just now realizing he hadn’t seen the full force of in three months (maybe longer. Had it been getting shorter and shorter between moments for that long? Or was it that Eddie hadn’t slept the night before and could no longer grasp time the right way?). “Eddie!” Bobby exclaimed and Eddie’s shoulders jumped, his eyes dropping to his shoes (and there was orange paint on the toe, a left over from Jee-Yun’s finger painting extravaganza that last time they watched her) before drifting up to him. Bobby grinned, the same welcoming grin he always gave him whenever Eddie caught him off guard. He had a dish towel draped over his shoulder, pajama pants and an old t-shirt. “What a surprise.” 

If it had come from anyone else it would have felt accusatory, but Bobby just said it like the statement it was. What a surprise. It wasn’t an unwelcome one, but Eddie wasn’t the type of person to drop by unannounced unless something had happened. Bobby knew that, Eddie knew he knew that. Athena peaked her head out of the dining room and waved in greeting. “What brings you by so early in the morning?” That was the question Eddie had been expecting, but he found he didn’t really have an answer when she asked it. 

This could have waited. Hell, this could have been a phone call . He should be at home, making sure Buck didn’t do anything with his own eyes, not pushing his partner and kid on his baby sister of all people. He should have called Maddie , not Sophia (except Maddie reacted badly to things concerning Buck. Neither of them thought straight when the other was in danger. Telling Maddie when he knew how she had reacted to finding out about his attempt at nineteen didn’t feel like it was Eddie’s right to do). He opened his mouth but found himself at a loss for words. Bobby and Athena shared a look, a familiar one that Eddie’s own parents had shared from time to time. One that he knew he had shared with Buck over Christopher’s head more than once. It was the recognition that something was worse than it seemed on the surface. “Why don’t you two settle in the living room?” Athena waved him farther into the threshold, her hand flitting briefly over his shoulder before disappearing back to her side. “I’ll go grab us all some coffee.” 

He hadn’t come to Bobby’s to talk to her , but this was her house and Eddie was their guest. While it felt like he was doing possibly the worst thing ever by telling Bobby , there was nothing to say that he wouldn’t tell Athena too. Or that she didn’t already know. He watched her walk away, hips swaying with each step, her bathrobe hanging loosely over her shoulders. Bobby was waiting him out, silent in the face of Eddie’s racing thoughts. 

Was it a betrayal? Buck had asked for help, but he hadn’t specified the kind of help he needed. The day before it had been rest, it had been Carla hiding a pill bottle. 

And this morning Eddie was at Bobby’s house instead of being whatever it was Buck needed when he woke up. 

“Buck’s suicidal.” 

Bobby dropped heavily into his sofa and Athena, somewhere in the kitchen, dropped something metal on the counter. There was a picture from their wedding on the wall, Athena and Bobby laughing, May and Harry in their Sunday’s best on each side of them. It was a familiar picture. Eddie didn’t have many from his wedding with Shannon, just a single frame on Chris’ nightstand - Shannon in a hastily purchased white dress and Eddie in a rented suit. They had been smiling but it had felt forced even in the midst of their family’s joy. “Eddie what…” Bobby started and then stopped and the silence rang, even as Athena walked out of the kitchen, pot of coffee balanced on a breakfast tray in her hands. She placed everything on the table and perched, delicately, beside Bobby on the couch. 

“What happened?” She took charge, as Eddie sort of knew she would, her tone careful and calm even as her hands shook when she poured coffee into three matching mugs. 

Eddie didn’t take one but then again she didn’t offer it, simply left it sitting on the coffee table, steam rising in the air. “I don’t…” He groaned, brushed a hand over his face and back around to his neck. 

“When did this happen?” Bobby asked in a gentler voice, watching Eddie with careful eyes, the same way he had when Eddie had put in his notice at the station. 

“Yesterday.” 

“Where’s Buck now?” Athena questioned, stirring a spoonful of sugar carefully in her mug. 

The spoon tapped against the ceramic, tap, tap, tap . It echoed with the beat of Eddie’s heart. “At home.” 

Bobby nodded, sipped his coffee and sat back. “Is he alone?” 

“No,” Eddie shook his head. “Sophia… Sophia and Chris are there.” 

Not Maddie? Eddie knew they wanted to ask it, he could see it on the tip of their tongues. Only they didn’t ask it, they didn’t do anything but relax as a unit, shoulders dropping and mugs resting lightly on their knees. Athena bowed her head and Bobby gripped at a cross Eddie knew he wore around his neck. “Eddie, sit down.” Bobby didn’t command it, but it felt like one anyway so Eddie sat, knees hitting the back of an arm chair he knew had once belonged to Michael and draping a hand tiredly over his eyes. “Do you think you can tell us what happened?” Bobby asked after a moment, his voice still that soft, comforting rumble down his spine. 

Eddie knew that voice, it wasn’t one Bobby broke out at scenes but one he broke out at the station kitchen, comforting, gentle, prodding but unintrusive. If Eddie couldn’t talk about it, then Bobby wouldn’t keep pushing. “He gave me his pill bottle.” He shrugged, hid his eyes from view, and hated the way his words were rough in his throat. 

“Which pills?” Athena, though, Athena was ever the cop. She commanded an answer in her voice, even when she was being comforting. He wondered how she ever dealt with Harry or May lying to her - did they ever keep secrets like Chris liked to do? Or did she use that voice on them and compel them to answer? 

“Quillivant XR.” Eddie swallowed. “Twenty milligrams.” 

Bobby hummed and nodded, it was information he already knew from when Buck’s doctors had settled on it. “Did anything else happen?” He asked softly. “Did you find him in a situation where he had consumed any?” Ever the first responder. 

“No,” Eddie shook his head. “I wouldn’t be here if I caught him overdosing .” It was a ridiculous implication to be insulted over. After all, Eddie didn’t even know why he was there in the first place. 

Athena sent him a look but Bobby just held up a placating hand. “I know you wouldn’t be.” He reassured but it didn’t feel very reassuring to the rush of Eddie’s ears. “Buck didn’t take anything, he gave you the bottle instead…” He trailed off and sent Eddie a wincing smile. “I know it seems hard to see any good in the situation but it is good, Eddie.” 

Hollow horror settled in Eddie’s stomach. “How can you say that?” 

“Eddie,” Athena shifted, the couch creasing under her weight, her body leaning forward to grab at his wrist. He un-subtly moved it out of her direction. “You’re thinking with your heart right now.” She trailed off like she wanted to add in a phrase of comfort they didn’t have. A term of endearment. She said them so casually with everyone else, May, Harry, Hen, Chim… Buck. But Eddie halted her. He didn’t want her soft voice calling him baby or sweetheart or anything of the sort. He wanted his Abuela calling him Eddito , or his father calling him mijo or his mother, even, brushing back his hair and pulling him into her chest. 

“This is what we do , Eddie.” Bobby leaned forward too, but Eddie didn’t shy away from his touch like he did Athena’s. “We shoulder these burdens together.” 

“Buck’s not a burden.” 

“He’s been there to catch all of us when we’re down,” Bobby carried on, soft and comforting. “It’s time we returned the favor.” 

Except it wasn’t the same, not really, not in the way that counted. Not in a way Eddie’s head could make sense of. “Can I tell you something I tried to get through to Buck once?” Bobby asked lightly, still measuring his words and tone in case Eddie bolted or snapped again. 

He waved him on. 

“It’s happening to you too.” Bobby laughed after a moment, ducking his chin into his chest. “He had that same look on his face when I told him that.” 

Eddie ran his tongue over his lips and grabbed for the mug of hot coffee for something to hold between his hands. He sipped it black, even though he didn’t like it black, and the bitterness on his tongue was a shot of reality to his chest. “When… when did you tell him that?” 

“When you were shot.” Bobby said it simply, like the words didn’t carry a weight of their own. Sometimes Eddie forgot that, for the most part, Buck had dealt with that all on his own. He had picked Eddie up when he had fallen and helped glue him back together and he had never stopped to waver himself. Eddie hadn’t been waiting for it, but apparently Bobby had. He had enough to try and forestall it before it happened, giving Buck words of comfort and gentle prodding. “And again when he… broke down your bedroom door.” Bobby scoffed, shook his head and smiled, a small bitter, fond thing. “Maybe it’s my fault. I told him once to step into the chaos with the people you love and… he took that to heart.” 

“With Abby.” Eddie said hollowly. “I know.” 

Bobby smiled again, a private twist of his lips. “When I say that it’s a good thing that he told you, I don’t mean it to sound like I’m saying it’s a good thing that he’s thinking like that at all.” 

“I know you’re not.” Eddie admitted, his breathing labored somewhere in his chest. “I just don’t…” His voice caught and his eyes watered and Eddie wasn’t the crier of the two of them but damn him for not wanting to cry all the tears Buck hadn’t in the past right then and there. 

“Asking for help,” Bobby said slowly, confidently. “Is only the first step in all of this.” 

“I don’t know what to do.” It was an admission that felt an awful lot like guilt. Eddie was trained, Eddie had been trusted with Buck’s back, heart and soul and he didn’t know what to do with it. “Bobby, I…” 

“We do this as a team.” Bobby’s hand squeezed on his forearm, strong and steady. “Let us take some of this burden.” 

“He’s not…” 

“A burden.” Athena finished with a laugh, comforting in her own way. “We know that, honey.” 

They were silent then, finishing their coffee and then the breakfast Bobby forced on him. He hugged him at the door, stronger than Bobby had ever hugged him before (longer too, but Eddie wasn’t complaining. He hadn’t realized how much he needed a more… parental touch until he had it, although it opened up a yearning deep in his chest.). “Why did you come here?” Bobby asked softly. “I would have thought… Hen would be your first choice. Chimney, even.” 

Not Maddie, Eddie filed it away for examination later. Whatever it was about Eddie, Bobby had noticed the distance between him and Maddie. And he hadn’t chosen to ask about it until then. “You know why,” Eddie said softly. Eddie needed help, he needed an incident command, he needed… a father . Buck needed…. “You’re the closest he’s got.” 

--

Evan had this teddy bear, white with a bright red satin tie around its neck. The fur was patchy, dirty in some places and clean in others. Maddie had told him it was older than he was, and that he had been given it by a very special angel. His mother had taken it away when he was little, too small to understand why she pulled it out of his crib. But Philip had given it back, snuck it into his bed with him and told him it was their secret just a few nights later. Evan had kept the teddy bear, lovely named Danny (although a two year old Evan didn’t know why . Didn’t understand the name except it was pretty and comfortable and the bear seemed to smile at the title.), hidden in his bed sheets even from Maddie. 

He stared at it, then, at its little beady black eyes and lopsided bow and stitching on the foot that had 1986 weaved on the soft padding. 

Danny the bear had gotten him through a lot, had caught his tears and his muffled laughter when he was supposed to be asleep. When Maddie had moved out Evan had set Danny on his desk, and then on a bookshelf. The bear always ended up back in his bed with him, though. Cuddled to his chest, like if he hugged the bear close enough the bear would hug back. 

Danny the bear sat on his bed sheets, folded perfectly over the edge of his mattress. His room was the cleanest he had ever made it, he had even taken out the trash and done all of his laundry. He had folded it perfectly and put it away, just the way Margaret always yelled at him to do. 

On the pillow, next to Danny the bear, were two letters - Maddie, Mom and Dad . 

It would have been easy to leave nothing, but Evan figured his parents were right about some things: he did owe them for what they had given him. They had put a roof over his head, kept him fed and healthy. It was Evan that was the problem. Where he was going, secrets like Danny the bear wouldn’t matter anymore. 

Evan reached out, flicked a finger slowly down Danny the bear’s nose. “Bye, Danny.” 

He left the door open when he left, the motorcycle’s key the only thing in his pocket. 

--

Eddie had left a note when he left, a small, simple thing sitting on his bedside table under a glass full of crystal clear water that caught the light that flowed in through the bedroom window and painted a mosaic of rainbows on the walls. Going for a drive , it said in his neat, even scrawl. Eddie wrote in all capitals, the size of his letters determining the tone he meant for the words to be taken. Buck’s handwriting was messy, a mix of cursive and print and he always had to tilt the paper to get it in a straight line. Sophia’s over. Call me if you need anything. Hovering without hovering. I love you.  

Buck hated how reassuring it all was. 

He felt like he should be angry that Eddie had called for back-up but he supposed Sophia was better than Maddie. He supposed it was Eddie’s right, so to speak. Evan - Buck was hard to deal with on a good day, nevermind a day such as the one Eddie was sure to be having. At least Eddie had closed the door, allowing whatever privacy Buck was still allowed to receive with ease. 

Still, it wasn’t Sophia that he found when he left the bedroom. The hallway from their bedroom was a straight view into the kitchen and they didn’t have curtains on the window over the sink. It was a nice day out, sunny and bright. It felt wrong to see the sky so blue with Eddie sitting at the table, laptop open in front of him, skimming something that Buck couldn’t see and a glass of water at his elbow. 

Eddie glanced up at him when the floor creaked and Buck wished, more than anything, that he had never learned to read him. 

He hadn’t slept, or, if he had, he hadn’t slept well . He was in an outfit but it was hastily put together. His hair was messier than he liked to wear it, his brown eyes reddened just a bit in the white. Eddie smiled, but it looked pained, and Buck hid in the bathroom, unsure of what else he was meant to be doing. 

They worked around each other, easy like it always had been. Eddie heated up breakfast he had brought from Bobby’s, a soft radio station was piping through the speakers of his computer, when Buck offered him a coffee he declined but thanked him anyway. He leaned up when Buck leaned down for a kiss, said good morning like he always did, though he lingered too long, perhaps, with a hand over Buck’s wrist. 

It could have been a normal morning. 

The tension made his breakfast taste like ash. 

Buck dragged his teeth over his bottom lip, over the flesh he had already torn into the day before and then soothed it with his tongue when it stung. 

Eddie waited until he was finished to start talking, he refilled his own water glass and placed another one solidly next to Buck’s elbow before taking a deep, careful breath. “Buck -.” 

“Where’s Chris?” His voice sounded normal to him, like nothing had happened the night before at all. He would rather they pretend nothing happened than make a big deal out of it, anyway. He’d call Doctor Copeland, talk about next steps. 

Eddie didn’t have to do this.  

“Sophia took him to Pepa’s.” Eddie supplied after a moment of silent staring. 

“He was supposed to go to Hen’s today.” 

“He hasn’t apologized for his behavior yesterday yet.” Eddie said with a shrug, like Christopher had anything to apologize for at all. “He’s not getting a reward for bad behavior.” 

“Come on, Eddie,” Buck said with a nervous laugh, twisting a strand of thread on the bottom of his t-shirt around his fingers until it bit into the skin and he could feel his own pulse pounding in the skin. “It wasn’t… it was just a cupcake.” 

“It was more than a cupcake, Buck.” Eddie spoke to him, sometimes, although rarely, like Buck had trouble grasping certain things. And he wasn’t wrong, Buck had trouble grasping a lot, but it felt a little condescending. “I’ll talk to him tonight. Find out what’s going on.” 

“You don’t have to…” Buck cut himself off. He wasn’t the right person to challenge Eddie’s parenting choices. Chris was his child, he could do whatever he wanted with him. His eyes drifted to his hands, to the scars on his knuckles. 

Eddie sighed and when Buck snuck a glance at him it was to catch the way his eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, the way his hand dragged over the back of his neck. “Buck, we have to talk about this.” 

Fear clogged at his throat. “You didn’t sleep last night.” 

“Buck…” 

“You should… You had a long shift the other day.” 

“Baby, please -.” 

“You should get some sleep.”

“ Evan .” His jaw clicked shut, his teeth immediately grasping onto the meat of his lip to dig in and Buck shifted his gaze, dropping his eyes back onto his hands. Eddie’s fingers grabbed onto them, his skin naturally so tan against the red of Buck’s - Evan’s - Buck’s fingers. “Evan, please ,” Eddie squeezed. “I’m not… I’m not going anywhere. I’m not mad .” He sounded a little mad. “I’m just…” 

“I’m sorry.” Buck mumbled. 

“ Why? ” It was barely a whisper, almost pleading in the way it fell almost soundlessly from Eddie’s lips. 

He was almost crying, Buck realized when he looked at him. His brown eyes were wide and watery, and his knees must have been killing him from where they were pressing into the table leg and months ago Maddie had sat in that chair and told him she was happy he was alive right after his mother had told him that she wished he had died. And there, in front of the sink, Buck had told Eddie the same thing and he had meant it then. 

He didn’t know when it had stopped being true. 

Truthfully, though, Buck didn’t know what he was apologizing for. He knew it in the abstract, although he was pretty sure explaining it would only cause Eddie more pain which… was the opposite of what he wanted for him. He had already been through so much in such a short period of time. Adriana… god, it was Buck’s fault she had even left wasn’t it? She would be homophobic regardless but Buck specifically was the reason her and Eddie had even fought in the first place. Maybe they could have talked about it instead of screamed if he hadn’t been in the hospital. If he had just… done what Eddie had wanted him to do. Said no to that stupid car ride. Stayed home. Gone to dinner with Eddie like he had asked. 

He was sorry he told Eddie in the first place. Sorry he put it on him. Sorry for… for a lot of things that he couldn’t take back. Time didn’t work like that. He wasn’t a character in a game. If he died he wouldn’t be coming back to start over again. There wasn’t a reset button or a switch he could turn on or off. These were the consequences of his own actions. This was the pain he had caused. “Buck… why do you keep apologizing?” Eddie asked after Buck had spent too long trying to come up with an answer. 

“I don’t know.” It was a murmur, a lie just like it had been in the hospital. 

He knew why he was apologizing. He had always known. 

Eddie’s hands shook his. “The truth, Buck. Please, just… tell me the truth, okay?” 

“I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“Buck, I don’t care if it’s going to hurt.” 

“ I do.” 

“ Why are you apologizing?” Eddie set his jaw and asked again. 

Buck doubled down. “I don’t know.” 

Eddie rubbed at his eyes like Buck’s stubbornness was tearing him apart. “Buck, come on ,” he groaned. “I don’t want this to be a fight.” 

Buck didn’t want it to be a fight either. He didn’t want anything to be a fight. He was so tired of fighting. He didn’t know what to say, though, to curb it. The words were blockaded in his throat, stung behind his eyes, caught at his breath and stole it away in his lungs. 

“You said you don’t want to hurt me.” Eddie said slowly, his hand on Buck’s an anchor that burned and yet he couldn’t pull away. “Buck… Allowing yourself to be in pain, because you don’t want anyone else to hurt… that is what hurts me.” 

And he knew that. Buck knew that. He knew whatever it was that he was feeling, Eddie would want to feel it with him. They were partners, that was part of the deal . 

Still, he didn’t want to add to it. He couldn’t add to it. “I’m -.” 

“If you say you’re sorry, I swear to god .” 

Buck swallowed his words. 

“You…” Eddie seemed to be struggling with his too, like he knew what he wanted to say but didn’t know how to get them out. “What did you mean?” He asked instead. Always asking for answers that Buck didn’t know how to give. “Yesterday.” He elaborated. “When you said that you… don’t want to do… this … anymore.” 

Buck didn’t want to tell him. He had never had to explain himself to anyone before, not the way Eddie was asking him to. Not in a home that was partially his own, with someone holding onto his hand and promising not to leave (not by anyone that, when they said it, it felt like the only true thing in the world). “Eddie, I don’t…” 

“ Please .” It was an echo of what Buck had asked of him. Please , he had said and shoved a pill bottle at his chest. Soft, begging, pleading . Eddie didn’t understand because Eddie didn’t think like he did. 

“I…” He waited him out. Buck waited himself out, Eddie’s thumb rubbing a circle at his knuckles, his eyes on Buck while Buck stared at the table cloth. 

“You didn’t…” Eddie groaned and rolled his neck. “You didn’t mean us , right?” 

It was a bit of a realization, perhaps, that Buck wasn’t the only one that was prone to insecurity. Sure, Eddie’s layers showed up in different ways - he was hypercompetent where Buck was just plain hyper . He masked his insecurities in the things that he could do well - he didn’t feel secure with the team at first, and so Eddie had turned to the only thing he knew how to do - be good at his job, be someone they could rely on. But the realization only sent him scrambling. Buck sat up straighter from where he had slumped over in his seat, widened his eyes and clawed at Eddie’s hands until he was given both over to him across the wood of the kitchen table. “ No ,” He said as emphatically as he could. “Eddie, no . Never. Never, okay?” 

Eddie’s lips twitched, a shadow of a smile. “Okay.” 

“I wouldn’t… Eddie, I wouldn’t .” 

“I know,” He had a way of saying it, a surety that Buck felt whenever he said I love you . It was a fact - Buck wouldn’t leave, Eddie wasn’t expecting him to. Eddie’s thumbs mirrored each other, smoothing over Buck’s in a comforting, hard gesture. “Okay, let’s…” He shook their hands a little. “Let’s try this again, okay? Complete honesty, can we do that?” 

Complete honesty. Buck had never done that with anyone before. 

No one had ever asked for it before. 

“Okay.” 

“Okay.” Eddie stuck his tongue in his cheek. “I’m more than a little freaked out here, Buck, okay? I don’t… I don’t know what to do. What you need .” 

“I don’t… I don’t need anything -.” 

“Evan, you’re suicidal.” He said it the same way he had said everything else, but somewhere on the word his breath hitched deep in his chest and got stuck on the way out. Or maybe it was just the word itself that sucked the air from the kitchen, from the house, from Buck’s own lungs. 

“I’m not…” His ears were ringing, a loud pitch that pulled a line across his brain. “I don’t want to die.” 

“But you were thinking about it.” 

“I don’t want to die.”

“Okay,” Eddie reassured, his voice still pitched soft but crystal clear even against the assault of noise against Buck’s skull. “Then what is it?” Buck’s mouth opened, the I don’t know dancing on the tip of his tongue. “I’m not going anywhere, okay? No matter what the answer is.” 

Honesty. Truth. Little white lies and purposeful silence. 

When the words came out they weren’t Buck’s. “I don’t want to die.” 

“I know that.”

“But I wanted to then.” 

Eddie’s hand jerked but he didn’t look away, even from the image Evan was laying bare on the table in front of him. “When? Last… yesterday?” 

“After the accident.” 

Eddie’s brow furrowed. “When you were nineteen?” Evan shook his head. “You told me you didn’t remember the car accident.” 

“I didn’t tell you anything like that.” 

“You said - .” 

“You assumed.” It wasn’t horror, but a dread that was crossing Eddie’s face then. He was having his own realization, probably counting back the moments in his memory. How many times, Evan knew he wanted to ask, how many times had he been assuming something about a situation and how many more did Evan - Buck not bother to correct him? “Don’t feel bad,” he rushed to say, but it was too late, Eddie’s face was already finding its carefully crafted mask of blankness. It was the same one he wore when Chris told him about Shannon, when Sophia told a story that he didn’t remember the same way. “I let you assume.” 

“Why?”

“It’s…” He shrugged. “Easier?” 

“To go through this by yourself?” Eddie scoffed. “Buck, come on.” 

“It’s just…” Buck cut himself off, rolled his lips and scowled at the scuff on the table from when he had missed the cutting board when chopping zucchini just after moving in. 

“Okay so,” Eddie tried after another moment, scrubbing a hand over his hair again so that it stuck up in stick straight lines. “So you let me assume that you didn’t… remember the car accident in April. And I never asked for… clarification. That’s on me.” 

“It’s not on you.” Buck rolled his eyes. 

“No,” Eddie corrected with a finger pointed at the ceiling. “It is. I know you, I know how you work. I should have explicitly asked.” 

“You’re not to blame for this.” 

“And you are?” Eddie laughed, a short, hollow thing. 

“ No one is.” Buck was parroting, perhaps, Doctor Copeland’s words. You didn’t ask for depression, Buck. You’re not to blame for wanting it all to stop for a moment. “I’m just… I’m fucked up, okay?” 

“You’re not fucked up .” 

“Eddie,” Buck laughed, the mirth catching him off guard even as he shrugged, dislodging their hands from where they were linked in the middle. He held on by the fingertips. “I’m a little fucked up.” 

“Fine,” Eddie shrugged. “We’re all a little fucked up.” 

“That’s not the point.” 

“I’m not going to join in your own head when it comes to beating you up.” Eddie all but growled. “I’m not Taylor.” 

“Oh come on .” 

“Or Abby.” 

“I don’t throw your ex’s back in your face.” 

Eddie’s lips teased at a smile, and Buck found himself echoing it, unconsciously thankful for the lighthearted moment. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Eddie asked again, softer now that the edge seemed to be gone from the high emotions. “I know I should have asked, but something stopped you from correcting my assumption.” 

“You were already dealing with enough.” 

“You’re not -.” 

“I don’t want to add to your plate.” 

“You’re my partner ,” Eddie stressed. “You’re not a weight I can’t carry.” 

“I am when it’s my fault you’re dealing with it in the first place.” 

“That’s…” Eddie blinked, sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. Without his hand Buck felt a chill in the air, he rubbed at his forearms and pulled them close, his hands splayed open across his knees. “That’s not true. What happened between me and Adriana has nothing to do with you.” 

“It has a lot to do with me.” 

“No,” Eddie insisted. “It really doesn’t.” 

“Eddie, don’t pretend that this wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t with me.” 

“Adriana is her own person, Buck. My relationship with my sister isn’t something that’s about you.” 

It was a mixture of things, really. Maybe it was because he was exhausted, maybe Buck had really been itching for a fight for the past three months (or longer, probably longer, probably ever since he was born or at least ever since his mother said with the most caring touch that she had ever given him sometimes I wish you succeeded ). Maybe Eddie was just an easy and willing target, sitting back in their kitchen chair claiming that he wasn’t going anywhere, begging Buck to show him every piece of him that was broken and frayed and insisting that he’d love him anyway. Despite. Regardless. Because of . 

Fear felt a lot like anger. “Well when will it ?!” It came out as a roar, tore like love me anyway from his throat. Evan had been honest exactly three times in his life, totally and completely laid bare. It wasn’t a feeling he liked. “When will it be about me ?” 

It was years and years and years of pent up frustration, pent up agony pouring out in one simple moment. Eddie dropped his arms and sat up from where he had slumped moments before, brown eyes wide and watchful. “That’s not what I -.” 

“Cuz the… the bombing wasn’t about me either, right? It was about Bobby. And Athena. I was just the guy crushed under the truck.” He was shaking, tearing up. Buck was the guy that always accepted what he was given with a smile and a thank you. “And Abby leaving? That had nothing to do with me and everything to do with her. She lost her mom, she lost herself, how I felt didn’t matter.” 

“Who told you that?”

“And who cares, right? I… I choked on my own blood in my boss’s backyard and it was in front of so many people but that wasn’t about me either. That was about making sure Maddie and Bobby were doing okay. That they had some control over the situation.” 

“Buck…” 

“And I got lost in a tsunami but so did Christopher and I am so happy , Eddie I promise you that I am so happy , that he made it out okay but I’m fine , because Christopher’s fine and that’s all that matters in the end, right?” 

“No, Buck that’s… that’s not…” 

“Maddie almost died . Chim got stabbed by her ex and I found him but I wasn’t the one bleeding out, I was just the guy that knew she was getting abused and did nothing to stop it!” 

“You were a kid .” 

“And you got shot ,” Eddie flinched, shut his eyes for a brief moment and then opened them again, reaching forward only for Buck to pull back. “And I had to crawl back under that truck when I swore I would never end up under one again.” 

“Okay.” 

“And I can’t… my own suicide attempt, eleven years ago, is more about Maddie than it is about me! I have to make sure that she’s okay with it. That she’s handling it well because she might fucking run back into the ocean and never come back out again!” 

Eddie’s hand was shaking as he ran the pads of his fingers over his lips. “Okay.” He said again, softer, like a whisper in response to Buck’s rage. 

“My mom wishes I died , Eddie.” And that was what did it, not anything else. His voice broke on the word mom and a tear, lone and unbidden, tumbled down his cheek, curled over his chin, splashed onto his wrist. “She hates me so much that she wishes I died .” 

“Evan.” 

“I got into that car accident and all I thought was finally .” They both flinched with the word. “ Finally , I can do something to make her proud.” 

“God.” 

The thing about Buck was, though, once he got started he wouldn’t stop until he ran out of everything. Eddie was breaking, whatever Buck was saying was either what he expected and hoped never to hear, or something he didn’t expect at all. “I’m so tired ,” he told him. “I am so tired of fighting every single day. I just want it to stop.” 

“I get it.” 

“I’m not like you, Eddie. I don’t even know what normal is.” He swiped at the skin under his eyes. “I don’t want to die, okay? But I did .” 

“Okay,” Eddie nodded, sucked in a deep, sniffling breath and this time, when he reached, Buck reached back. “I know I… Thank you.” 

“What?” 

He swallowed again, past the lump Buck knew was forming in his throat and held on tight. “I know it’s been… thank you for letting me carry this too, okay?” 

“I don’t…” 

“I know, okay? I know you don’t want me to hurt but, Buck…” Eddie’s eyes searched for his, a finger reaching out to catch his chin when Buck refused to look. “Evan, you’ve been doing this alone for so long , okay? You don’t… you don’t have to do this alone anymore.” 

“I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“It’s going to hurt.” Buck flinched but Eddie held fast. “Baby, it’s going to hurt. It hurts because I love you. And you’ve helped me so much, Evan but I need you to hear me, okay?” 

“Eddie.” 

“You need help. I’m not sending you away, I’m not running away either. But you need help.” 

“I know .” 

“Tomorrow we’re going to call Doctor Copeland, we’re going to… we’re going to figure this out. I don’t… I don’t care if you tell Maddie or anyone else.” Oh god, telling Maddie. That was something he had wanted to do so badly when he was younger but something that filled his gut with fear at the thought now. “We take this one day at a time, okay? Just like…” Eddie’s thumb brushed his jawline, gentle over stubble. “Just like you did with me.” 

And he loved him. How much he loved him . It wasn’t enough to make the bad days disappear completely, wasn’t enough to make the way the past ate at him go away. But it was enough to cushion the landing. “I love you.” 

“Can I hug you now?” Eddie asked around a wet laugh that Buck found himself echoing, even in the face of his splintered heart. 

They stood at the same time and met somewhere in the middle and Buck ducked his head to kiss the skin of Eddie’s collarbone, wrapping his shirt in a balled fist at the small of his back. “I love you too,” Eddie whispered and Buck was pretty sure they were both crying, sobbing even, broken in different ways. 

He thought that, if they put the pieces together they could make the most beautiful picture. 

--

When Evan left Maddie’s emergency room it was with a Jeep key in his pocket, a broken arm that he stupidly kept out of his sling, and an empty hole where his heart was. 

He had never thought about what would happen if he failed . 

There wasn’t a plan for after . 

He supposed it was freeing, in a way, as the days went by and he spent night after night after night aimlessly driving with no goal of where he’d end up. There were no expectations out on the road. “What’s your name?” A guy asked when he pulled over to help him change his tire on the highway leading into Ohio. 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

Evan was left on the pavement in Pennsylvania. In an ER begging Maddie to come with him. 

--

Eddie was getting groceries when his father called, or, rather, he was loading groceries into the truck when Ramon’s name flashed across his caller ID. It wasn’t that unusual to get a phone call from his parents, oddly placed as they tended to be. While his mother stuck to texting or video chatting Christopher with Eddie in the background, his father was making do on his promise to try and be better by calling every week or so. It had just been… well it had been a long few days (a long year , if Eddie were to be honest) and he had forgotten that it was that time of day that Ramon usually called (after school drop-off, before Eddie’s afternoon appointments with Frank or the doctor, usually timed to hit somewhere between the commute and the middle of a shift). He hip checked the door closed and slid behind the steering wheel, answering even as he contemplated letting the call go to voicemail. 

“Hola, papi.” Eddie glanced at his watch - Buck still had another hour left in his emergency session with Doctor Copeland that Carla had dropped him off at half an hour ago and while Eddie was all for getting everywhere early, arriving in the parking lot that was ten minutes away an hour before he was needed was a bit of a practice in overkill. He glanced at the bags behind him, driving home wouldn’t make sense with the way traffic was turning out to be. Eddie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and sat back, spreading his knees and tipping his head against the leather headrest. 

“Buenos días, mijo!” Ramon greeted, his excitement enthusiastic. He always sounded like that nowadays when Eddie picked up the phone - happy to hear from him. It was a nice change in pace. Something that had him smiling, the muscles pulling up even though they felt like they were pulling through tar. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” 

“No, no,” Eddie waved his hand to brush away the question, even though Ramon couldn’t see it through the phone. “I just got done getting groceries and I have… fifty seven minutes until I’m grabbing Buck from the doctor’s.” 

Ramon hummed. “The doctors? Is everything okay?” Wasn’t that a loaded question. No, everything wasn’t okay. Yet Eddie had never felt more confident that everything would be in the long run. Eddie wasn’t running, Buck hadn’t actually wanted to harm himself but had made the call to tell Eddie before he could change his mind. They had discussed things, cleared the air more than Buck had probably ever cleared the air before and, most importantly, they were getting him help. Real, concrete help. Not Buck’s go-to form of helping himself by ignoring the problem in the first place. “There aren’t any complications from the car accident, are there?” 

“No,” Eddie reassured, realizing that he hadn’t answered Ramon’s original question. “No, it’s… his therapist. I’m getting him from his therapist later.” 

Helena was still having trouble, Eddie knew, wrapping her head around the concept of Eddie being with a man. He wasn’t sure if it was the same problem Adriana turned out to have, or if it was his mother having to rework the life she had imagined for him again . He was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, if only because she seemed to be actively trying to care. She at least asked after Buck, now. Made sure to check in on his recovery while checking in on everything else. “His therapist,” Ramon chortled. “Is it the same guy you see?” 

“No, papi.” Eddie laughed softly himself. “There’s more than one therapist in LA. It’s a big city.” 

“Bah,” Ramon scoffed. “Is it for work?” 

“She’s not with the department, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Eddie had met Doctor Copeland a total of four times, usually when he was picking Buck up for appointments. One time, though, Frank hadn’t been available for an emergency session and Doctor Copeland had been willing to fit him in. He liked her, he could understand why Buck liked her, more importantly, but he didn’t know if her way of carefully guiding him into a conclusion would work for him specifically. But she wasn’t his therapist and he didn’t need it to work for him . 

Frank liked her anyway. He said she was hilarious at parties. “Ah.” Ramon hummed and maybe he was going to say something else but Eddie found himself saying, 

“He’s been having a tough time, actually.” Without stopping to think about whether he should at all. 

Ramon was silent long enough for Eddie to circle around to thinking that this wasn’t the smartest thing to talk to him about. He shifted in his seat and chewed on the inside of his cheek, glancing upwards at the picture he kept on his visor. He had switched it, after Adriana, to an updated one - Christopher and Buck at the zoo, Jee-Yun’s hands suspended between the two of them. In the background, he knew the blurry figures of Maddie and Chimney were just ahead, but he hadn’t been focused on them at the time. “I see.” Ramon said after a moment, voice soft and contemplative. “After the accident? Or before? I remember you said that you were worried during Christmas. Something about his parents.” 

Eddie snorted. “Yeah they… his mom said some pretty fucked… messed up things.” 

“Eddie,” Ramon laughed. “You’re an adult. You can swear.” 

“You see, I still feel like you’re going to lecture me if you catch a bad word coming out of my mouth.” 

“Sophia used to swear at church,” Ramon reminded him. “You, not so much.” 

“It’s been going on for a while,” Eddie redirected back to his original topic. “Longer than I think… anyone knew. He just…” 

Ramon grunted, a soft contemplative noise. “Do you want to talk about it?” 

Did he want to talk about it? In retrospect, no. Eddie didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t really want to tell his father about how Buck had pleaded with him to understand and Eddie had had to yell at himself to be quiet in order to simply listen for once. He didn’t want to tell Ramon about Pennsylvania and about a motorcycle accident that was done on purpose, or about little truths and Adriana and a stupid orange pill bottle that he still didn’t know where Carla had hidden it. He didn’t want to talk about it. No to Ramon, not to anyone. 

“Si.” He said anyway and he needed to get his emotions under control because the way his voice cracked on the phone to his father was a bit pathetic, wasn’t it? 

No, Eddie told himself. No it wasn’t. Because he didn’t care how old Christopher was, if he was having a bad day he better call Eddie and tell him all about it. Eddie wanted to know about every part of his son’s life, good, bad, in between. He wanted to be there for him even if he was states away, listening and comforting and being the shoulder Christopher hopefully knew he was always going to be. 

Eddie squeezed at his nose and tipped his head farther back. “Buck… when he was nineteen he… fuck, he tried to kill himself when he was younger. And…” 

“Oh.” Ramon’s breath hissed inwards. “Nineteen?”

“Nineteen.” 

“That’s so young.” It was so young. “You had just found out about Christopher at nineteen.” He had told them a week before turning twenty and his parents had looked at him with such shock on their faces that he had been convinced they were going to kick him out. Ramon had been the first to get up and give him a hug, a tighter one than he had given him since he was ten (he hugged him tighter now, every time he saw him, like he needed to remind Eddie that he was real and solid however he could). “You were so scared.” 

He was scared now . In a very real way, Eddie was so scared that if he left Buck alone for five minutes he would find him dead. If he went to work the next day he would come back home as a widower again (only this time not actually having been married. He needed to get on that, although it would wait until Buck was better. When they were better. When he was sure that Buck would be accepting because he actually wanted to and not just because he was afraid that if he didn’t Eddie would leave.). “His parents are…” Eddie hated them. Sometimes he blamed them specifically for everything Buck put himself through. Self confidence issues? Margaret and Philip Buckley were to blame. Depression? Their fault. Suicidal ideation? He was pointing the finger at them. Scary ability to get himself into bad situations? Absolutely because of those two.

“Not very nice?” 

“Son gente horrible.” Eddie clarified. “They… did I ever tell you that he had a brother?” 

“No?” 

“Yeah, he was two when Daniel died. Childhood leukemia. His parents made Maddie promise to never tell him.” 

“Dios mio.” 

“And they never told him either.” It was funny, one of Eddie’s favorite topics to rant on was how much he hated the Buckley parents. Him and Chimney had had more than one late night conversation about their shared dislike. Everything new Eddie learned just made him hate them more. “He only found out because they came here when Maddie was pregnant and stupidly gave her a picture of him.” 

“That sounds horrible, mijo.” 

“And he just,” Eddie grunted. “He has this idea of his own self worth because of it. And it’s fucked with his head so much that he… they showed back up, okay? For Christmas? They weren’t invited, they just… showed up. And do you want to know what his mother said?” Eddie scoffed out a laugh. “I wish it worked. Something like that, anyway. Talking about his suicide attempt .” 

“Ay.” 

“And that has been in his mind for months . And then Adriana came here and…” Eddie stopped himself, dragging a hand down his face and stuffing his thumbs in the corner of his eyes. “And the car accident happened.” 

“That sounds like a lot.” 

“He asked me to take away his pills, papi. Just… hide them. So that he didn’t do anything stupid.” Eddie caught his eyes in the mirror, how red they were from his constant crying over the situation. Eddie had never been a crier before. Feel your emotions , Frank had advised. Intellectualizing them can come after. “And we had this talk yesterday about everything and I…” His breath hitched. “I missed so much. I… I didn’t see it and…” 

“Oh, Eddito.” Ramon sighed, a big, heartbreaking sigh. “Mijo. This must be…” 

“I don’t know what to do , Papi.” 

“You love him a lot.” 

“Of course .” 

“You are doing everything you can.” Ramon said softly, soothingly, like Eddie was five years old again and crawling into his lap because he had a bad dream and Ramon was the only one still up. Suddenly Eddie wanted a hug from him. He wanted to feel his father holding him to his chest, singing softly in his out of tune baritone melodies from Mexico, rocking him on their front porch swing. “Todo va a estar bien, mijo, todo va a estar bien.”

--

“So,” Hen said, leaning forward on her elbows, the long sleeves of her uniform bunching up at the wrist over her waterproof watch. She had been watching him for the majority of the shift, her gaze narrowed and scrutinizing. Chimney had been too, only he was arguably worse at hiding it. Bobby hadn’t said anything on the matter of what had occurred that had earned Eddie a few extra sick days, or if he said anything it wasn’t enough to give the team anything to really work with in terms of gossip (or worry. Eddie had to know they were worried. About him, about Christopher, about Buck .). It wasn’t often that Eddie used sick time, it was even less often that he came in afterwards without bemoaning the horrors of childhood sickness. If Christopher had just been sick Bobby would have told them. If there had been medical complications for Buck, Bobby would have passed on the basic information. The fact that no one was saying anything was… telling. Worrying. Stressful. 

Whatever. 

Hen shared a glance with Chimney who merely raised his eyebrows in response. “So…” Eddie parroted back in his patented Dry Response. Hen had been on the receiving end of that before, even on the receiving end of that suspicious look over the rim of his coffee mug ( Buck’s coffee mug. It even had his name written in sharpie at the bottom. He had brought it in after two weeks on the job, a transplant from his life as a vagabond, Great View Ranch in golden lettering across the ceramic. Chimney had used it once and Buck had nearly chewed his head off. Now none of them touched it, but Hen was well aware of the fact that, even before they were dating, Eddie could get away with things that the rest of them couldn’t.). 

She was aware that there was a reason Chimney was trusting her to be the one that asked what was going on. Chim didn’t have the tact needed to deal with a defensive Eddie Diaz, but, arguably, he was probably the closest to him (aside from Buck). Sometimes Hen felt like an outsider looking in at their little family unit. She knew it wasn’t true, all of those boys were like her annoying little brothers and they loved her the same. But she didn’t have the same… connection as them. Eddie and Chim had a thread in common that she only had a small grip on. She hadn’t been at the Christmas Confrontation. She hadn’t read the Letter (Chim had told her that he had only read the first few sentences and then crumbled it in his fist and threw it back in the box of Maddie’s things. He had wanted to set it on fire, throw it in the trash, but Maddie had started screaming and Jee-Yun had started crying and he had just started packing their things back up for the inevitable drive home). 

But Hen did know things Chim didn’t. She knew Eddie used to sing Christopher to sleep up until he was nine and stopped asking for it. She knew Buck took her and Karen out dancing every now and then, more than happy to be a body between them and the rest of the world. She knew Eddie actually hated wine but he always kept his house stocked with it because his Grandmother loved it. She knew Buck still wondered, sometimes, what his life would have been like if Abby had stayed. She knew Eddie was scared of ants because he had fallen on a fire ant hill when he was six and she knew Buck had been so scared of stepping into a parental role for Christopher that he stayed up for four nights straight reading parenting books, blogs, and youtube spirals. “Why weren’t you in the last few days?” In total, unless one of them were out on medical leave, both Eddie and Buck had only taken about ten personal days in the years they had been employed at the LAFD. Ten total . Between the two of them. Eddie was responsible for eight of those. 

“Family stuff.” Eddie said dismissively. 

“ We’re family.” Chim countered slowly, palms firm on the table. 

Bobby glanced at them, expression scrutinizing and unreadable. Hen hated it when he had that look on his face. It meant he knew something the rest of them didn’t. “Is Buck okay?” Hen prompted when Eddie didn’t bother filling in the rest of the information. 

Bobby looked away. 

She must have hit it right on the head. Eddie shrugged. “He’s alive.” 

“Are you purposely being vague?” Chim asked with narrowed eyes. 

Hen elbowed him. Of course he was purposely being vague. If it was up to Eddie Diaz, Hen was pretty sure they wouldn’t even know that he and Buck were together even though it was over a year after they had gotten together. It wasn’t because he didn’t care , Hen reminded herself, but because Eddie was the sort of person to keep everything important to him close to his chest (and, arguably, Buck was one of the most important things in his life). Where Buck was fairly easy to read the majority of the time, Eddie had practice in being unreadable, in keeping secrets, even. And if it concerned Buck and didn’t particularly concern them , he wouldn’t be spilling without explicit permission. “Should we have been worried that he wasn’t?” Hen had phrased it like a joke, complete with her lips tipped upwards and everything. But she knew it wasn’t that far from a possibility. 

Chimney had told her about Maddie’s little… trip into the ocean. Maddie had all but confirmed about Buck’s past over Christmas. Hen had been the first person to suggest it as being a possibility back in Buck’s probationary year. Do you think he’s suicidal? She had asked Bobby and he had paused with a spoonful of tomato soup halfway to his mouth and a look in his eye that told her that there was probably a note on a personnel file somewhere that she wasn’t cleared to see. 

Eddie’s hand was steady as he placed his - Buck’s - mug back down on the counter. “Not anymore.” 

When Hen had been with Eva she had become acutely aware of what exactly caused addiction. In an emotional way, as opposed to in a chemical way. Eva had been sad a lot of the time, unless she was high. Buck medicated with adrenaline, with sex for a while, with human interaction. Truthfully, Hen was convinced more than half the time that he was the healthiest one of all of them. He signed himself up for therapy, he got himself on medication, she had watched him work and work and work to make himself into the person Eddie had fallen in love with. When she had first met him, she hadn’t thought it was possible. Now she wanted to go back in time and tell the her of several years ago that that boy that she thought was so annoying was going to be one of the best people in her life. To keep an eye on him. To make sure he knew that there were better things waiting for him if he just held on a little bit longer. 

Chim broke eye contact first, looked down at his hands on the counter and licked his lips, likely thinking of Maddie at dispatch, or of his baby girl with her grandparents, or maybe even of Buck, probably at home, or maybe somewhere else. Would he tell her, Hen wondered. Would Chimney be able to give Buck the time to decide for himself whether he wanted Maddie to know or not? She hoped so, even if she knew that Buck of all people would never hold him responsible if he didn’t. “And you?” Hen asked after a moment. “Are you doing okay?” 

Eddie smiled, one of those small private smiles she used to only see him give Buck. She remembered the first time she realized the two of them could be something - it wasn’t even anything magnificent or spectacular, just a small moment at Christopher’s birthday party. It was how Eddie looked at him. Like Buck was the answer to things he didn’t even know were questions. She shouldn’t have been shocked when they told her, but Hen had still been floored. She had noticed it, but she hadn’t expected it to grow into anything more than what it was on the surface. “We’re going to be fine, I think.” 

We. 

Hen smiled back, reached over and patted the back of his hand with her own. “Good.” 

--

It took them four days after the fact, they waited until Friday after school, to finally sit Christopher down to talk. Buck couldn’t say whether it was a conscious decision or not, not on his end anyway. Maybe it had been for Eddie, a way to make sure they all made it through the week before adding more emotional work to their already mounting pile. Or maybe they had attempted it earlier and Buck was too emotionally wrung out to remember much of it. Either way, Christopher had noticed the almost tragic energy around the two of them, whether they wanted him to or not. He was a smart kid, incredibly emotionally aware and attune to his father in a way that Buck had wished for when he was a kid (only in a different way, in a way to avoid arguments and comments he couldn’t trace the origin of). He had been waiting for it, and Buck would remember to feel awful for allowing him to stew in his anxiety later, when he wasn’t spending more time crying to his therapist than breathing. 

“Chris, don’t run off.” Eddie said the moment he stepped through the door, kicking off his shoes as Christopher did the same, his toes covered in yellow and green mismatched socks that clashed with the reds on his crutches. 

Buck wanted to slump in his chair the way Christopher slumped over the armchair, carefully not looking in Buck’s direction. He told himself it didn’t hurt - Chris thought he was in trouble and Buck was primarily the reason why (no, he told himself sternly, he wasn’t . Christopher had done something he knew would get him in trouble and then, instead of owning up to it, had thrown around purposely hurtful words. He was almost thirteen, he was smart , Christopher wasn’t a five year old repeating what he heard someone else say.). Eddie stopped in the kitchen, washed his hands in the sink (a force of habit, something they both had done during the pandemic and then decided to just stick with), and stopped at the back of the couch, hands firm on Buck’s shoulders, squeezing in hello. “Okay.” He started and then stopped, looking carefully between the two of them. 

“I have homework.” Chris mumbled and sunk farther down into the cushion of the chair. 

“It’s Friday,” Eddie dismissed. “Listen, bud, I know you don’t want to talk about this, okay? But talking is what we do in this house.” 

Chris made a face and Buck had to purse his lips to avoid laughing at it. He scowled and he looked like Sophia when Eddie told her to wash her dishes rather than leave them sitting in his sink for him to do when she came over and cooked. “Can’t we be one of those families that never communicates?” Chris mumbled petulantly, fingers picking dully at the fabric of his jeans. 

Eddie snorted. “No can do, mijo.” 

“Damn.” Chris whispered and then looked up, eyes wide at the escaped swear. 

Buck choked on a laugh and Eddie, Eddie looked at him like he hadn’t seen him in a long time. He ducked his head, a smile tugging at his lips, and leaned forward more, an arm looping loosely across Buck’s shoulders and lips pressing a quick, hard kiss to the crown of his head upside down. “Okay,” Eddie said again, eyes finally drifting from Buck and back to his son. “You remember a few days ago? When you, Buck and Carla went out to lunch at the cafe?” 

“Yeah.” Chris mumbled. 

“From what I got out of the situation, Buck told you that you couldn’t have something and then you ordered it without him knowing anyway.” Buck would always be amazed by the way Eddie parented. He was calm the majority of the time, opened up communication even if it was uncomfortable with Christopher in a way that didn’t make him feel like he was put under a microscope. “Do you want to tell me your version of events?” 

Chris shrugged but said nothing to refute what Eddie had summarized. 

“And then you came home,” Eddie continued after a moment. “And you were told to apologize by Carla, right?” 

“Yeah, but…” Chris trailed off. 

“But?” Eddie prompted, his arm still a comfortable weight looped around Buck’s neck from behind. 

Chris looked at them, looked at him , his big eyes wide and watery. “Everything’s different .” He admitted, lowly, softly. “I’m sorry I called you dumb.” 

Buck blinked. He wasn’t really expecting to be addressed, if he were to be honest. Eddie had seemed more than willing to handle the bulk of the conversation. “Oh,” Buck blanched. “Uhm, it’s…  it’s okay. I’ve…” Eddie’s brows rose at him and Buck flushed. Right. “How’s… do you mean it’s different since I’ve been dating your dad or…? Or something else?” 

Christopher scowled. “Since the accident .” His cheeks flushed. “I don’t care that you’re dating dad.” 

Well, that was a relief. Buck had almost convinced himself that Christopher had changed his mind of giving them his blessing in the beginning. And it was possible. Chris could say no more and Buck would back off so quickly Eddie wouldn’t know what had happened. “Can you tell us what you mean by that?” Eddie asked softly when it seemed Buck wasn’t going to. 

Chris shrugged. “We don’t…” He chewed on his lip. “We used to do all this stuff together.” He shrugged again. “Now we don’t.” 

Buck must have forgotten, while he was dealing with his own mess of a mind, that there was someone that relied on him to be normal. His stomach dropped - was this pit how Eddie had felt when Christopher had told him that he was scared that he was going to die at work? If it was, Buck was pretty sure he understood, now, why Eddie had decided leaving was the best choice. “What do you mean, bud?” Eddie asked. 

“I’m sorry,” Buck blurted before Christopher could answer, sitting up fast enough that he dislodged Eddie’s arms from their resting place. Chris blinked at him, his big eyes watering besides himself. “I know… I know things… I have been different. It’s… I’m trying to get better. And… I… I’m sorry we haven’t been doing things like we usually do.” 

“Back up,” Eddie held out his hands in front of him, gesturing between the two of them. “I feel like I’m missing something.” 

“Because you are , dad.” Chris said with an eyeroll. “This is between me and Buck.” 

Buck felt himself smile, even if it was shaky on his lips. “Yeah, Eddie.” 

“Tell me anyway?” Eddie offered and sunk down onto the seat beside Buck, the couch dipping under his weight. “So I can help you guys figure it out.” 

Chris scoffed. “I know you can’t drive anymore,” Buck didn’t even have a car anymore. “But we used to always do stuff alone and now it’s always with… with Carla or dad or Maddie .” Chris shrugged. “I just… if it was just us we would have split the cupcake.” 

“Okay but…” Buck cut himself off, biting at his top lip. 

“Buck was in an accident, Chris, he can’t…” Eddie stopped, eyes drifting down as he tried to formulate a good enough response. 

“The problem wasn’t the cupcake, Chris.” Buck settled on. “The problem was … I told you no and you decided that that meant yes.” 

“But we would have split it before.”

“Not if I had already said no, and you know that.” Eddie blinked and sat back, seemingly more than happy to let Buck take the reins, but willing to step in if he were needed. “Listen, I know things have been… difficult lately. I… I haven’t been the same. But you… took advantage of a situation and did something that you knew you were going to get in trouble for.” 

Chris sunk so far into the cushion that it looked like he was trying to become one with the chair. “It was just a stupid cupcake.” 

“It was a stupid cupcake.” Buck agreed because it had been. Ultimately, the entire thing had been ridiculous. “But, hell, when I was thirteen I did worse stuff than order a cupcake behind my parents’ back.” Eddie snorted with a roll of his eyes. “Your dad used to sneak out of his window.” Chris’s lips twitched and Eddie’s cheeks colored. “We all do stupid stuff because it’s… hard to talk about what’s actually going on in our heads, okay? But… ordering something behind my back because you want some one-on-one time isn’t the way to do it, bud. You could have just asked.” 

Chris looked up at him through his lashes, his lips pulled down into a frown. “I’ll pay you back.” He said after a moment, fingers twisting in his lap. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Buck waved off. “It was that waitress’s birthday anyway. I think we made her day.” 

Chris brightened and then soured again, his eyes searching Buck’s face for something that he didn’t know how to show. “Buck…” He glanced at Eddie, something in his voice apprehensive and nervous. “Is this like when dad was shot? Nothing… nothing was normal than either.” 

Eddie winced and Buck wanted to throw himself out of a window. How did he describe depression to a kid? “Chris,” Eddie sat up, reached for his son’s forearms and Chris handed them over easily, leaning forward to mirror his father’s position. “Do you remember when your therapist and I talked to you about my time in the army?” 

Christopher’s brow furrowed. “Yeah.” He glanced back at Buck before turning back to Eddie. “You have PTSD. It means your body sometimes forgets that you’re not there anymore.” 

“Right.” Eddie nodded. “And you remember that we talked you through what to do if I ever forget around you again, right? Because you did everything right the first time it happened.” 

“I call Buck.” 

“You call Buck.” Eddie smiled with a nod. “Or you can call who else?” 

“Frank. Or… Abuela.” Chris tilted his head. “Could I call Tia Phi now? Since she lives so close?” 

“Yeah, you could call Phi.” 

“Cool.” Chris smiled with him and then frowned again. “What does that have to do with Buck then?” 

“Well…” Eddie glanced at him and Buck shrugged. He certainly didn’t know how to do this. Maybe they should have waited until Chris’s next therapy session, but that was a month out and Chris, seemingly, needed the information now . “It’s not exactly the same.” 

“Do you know what C-PTSD is?” Buck asked after a moment of Eddie silently floundering. Chris shook his head. “It’s… Doctor Copeland just used it for the first time the other day,” he supplied towards Eddie’s questioning glance. “It’s like what your dad has… only more…” He paused. He didn’t want to explain to Chris what his parents had done to him growing up, what the ghosts of that house had taunted him into doing. “Sometimes I have really really bad days and it feels like I’m lost in the tsunami again.” Chris looked at him, eyes wide and searching, but understanding was floating somewhere in his gaze too. “And I don’t have you this time to tell me what to do.” 

“Just keep swimming.” Chris mumbled. 

“Just keep swimming.” Buck echoed. 

Eddie ducked his head. “Are you going to be okay?” Chris asked softly, earnest even as he squeezed Eddie’s hands comfortingly. 

“Yeah,” Buck reassured. Promised. Hoped. “I… I found a way out.” 

“How?” 

“Well… I have more people around now than I did when I was younger.” Buck admitted. “And I have some… plans set up just in case I get lost again. I just… had to try really hard to remember them.” 

“And you couldn’t remember anything for like a month .” 

He said it so dramatically that it set the group of them into laughter, Eddie first at the gall and Buck and Christopher quickly following suit. Buck couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed, if he were being honest. The last time he had felt like the string pulled tight around his heart had loosened enough for it to pump a little more normally. “Listen,” he sobered after a moment. “I’m working on getting better. But it’s going to probably take a bit more time, okay?” 

“You don’t have to rush.” Chris reassured. “I just…” He shrugged. 

“You can kick me out of the house sometime,” Eddie offered with a shrug. 

“We’ll get dad to drop us off at the Zoo and he can do something boring with Sophia.” 

Chris smiled, a shy, happy one that had him surging forward and wrapping the two of them in a tight hug. Eddie caught the two of them, his arm brushing over Buck’s around Christopher’s back, and his other rubbing a circle in Buck’s shoulder. “Why do I have to do something boring ?” He mumbled. 

“Because you’re boring , dad.” 

“Yeah,” Buck said with a snort. “You’re boring , Eddie.” 

--

August

“So,” Chimney reached up, up, up , to try, and fail, to place an arm around Buck’s shoulders. He chose to lean into him instead, mindful of the little daggers Eddie sent towards him when he leaned a little too much into his side, causing Buck to stumble, a little, on his bad leg. “A little birdie let it slip that you’re cleared to come into work next week.” 

Buck snorted, Maddie caught his forearm and steadied him with all of the practice of a mother with a toddler at home, and he quickly turned back to assembling his cupcake tower in what would prove to be record time. “Would a little birdie be named Eddie ?” He punctuated the question with raised brows in Eddie’s direction, an expression Eddie was quick to mirror mockingly. 

“A little birdie ,” Eddie countered. “Is named Bobby .” Who conveniently had not arrived yet. He was bringing specifically only hamburger buns - Eddie had told him twenty times over the last week to please not bring anything else. He had too much food already. Between Maddie insisting on bringing an entire salad spread, Sophia deciding she was manning the grill with Abuela, and Pepa deciding to cater the majority of the dessert spread, they were going to have leftovers until Halloween . Eddie had wanted a simple party, a small gathering, simple no-fuss food, easy clean up, everyone would be in and out in two hours. It’s not every day a boy turns thirteen , Abuela had scolded with that troublemaking sparkle in her eye and then her and Sophia had kicked him out of their kitchen as they started making plans . 

It wasn’t just that, though. Eddie knew it wasn’t. Four months and some change after the accident, and after extensive therapy for the group of them, Christopher’s birthday party was going to be the first real event their family had been able to go to since Christmas. Things weren’t easy, they weren’t perfect, but they were better . The air was easier to breathe. Eddie hadn’t realized how sticky it had gotten until Buck had pulled the plug… so to speak. “You should draw a controller on that one.” Maddie advised unhelpfully from over Buck’s shoulder. 

Buck scowled and gently knocked her hand away. “It’s piping , not drawing .” He corrected. “And we don’t have time to do that.” 

They barely had time to make the cupcakes. Between Buck’s follow up with his neurologist, therapy sessions for all three of them, Christopher’s after school activities since getting elected to the school’s government, and Eddie’s work schedule they barely had time to decorate and clean the house. They had forgotten about cake at all until Pepa asked him about it through Carla and Eddie had panicked for all of a minute before Christopher admitted to having already asked Buck to make a very specific flavor combination of cupcakes for the party. They had finished baking an hour before Maddie, Chim and Jee-Yun had arrived, and Eddie had been banned from decorating help after he had put his entire elbow in two when trying to decorate one. Buck had done basic decorations only, but the way they were decorated didn’t seem at all important compared to how they tasted. “I could do a few?” Maddie tried to reach under his arm to grab one of the already frosted cupcakes and frowned in a rather familiar manner when Buck lowered his arms enough to make it needlessly difficult. “I’m just trying to help.” She mumbled. 

“Go sit down,” Buck ordered, but it was harmless and all of the sting was removed by the very quick kiss he pressed to her cheek. Maddie lingered, her eyes searching his face for something Eddie hoped she saw before she dutifully conceded, not going to sit down but stuffing her hands under her armpits to keep from trying to help too much. Eddie didn’t think Buck had told her, not explicitly, just how bad he had gotten but he was pretty sure Maddie had caught onto things quicker than he had. Even if he hadn’t, Maddie certainly recognized the difference in him as time went on. It wasn’t that he was lighter, it wasn’t that he was cured of bad days in the least or that he didn’t stare off into space like he was contemplating something miserable. It was in the small things. The Buck they remembered was coming back and he was tugging an Evan she had thought she had lost along with him. “I’ll be coming back for light duty on Tuesday, after one more check up with my neurologist.” 

Chimney bounced on his feet. “That’s great, man! Eddie’ll be happy to have you back on the team.” 

Eddie didn’t bother refuting it. They would all be happy to have him back with them. While things had fallen into a lull of comfortability Eddie hadn’t previously expected without Buck things would only go back to normal with him there. He would feel more settled, anyway. “Where’s the birthday boy?” Maddie asked lightly, or rather she asked him lightly, as Chim prodded Buck on specifics on his limitations once he would be back (asking as both a paramedic and a friend, a brother and a coworker). 

“Uh…” Eddie cast his eyes around for him and nodded over at the stone patch under and beside the grill. Christopher had found some old sidewalk chalk and had been kind enough to share it with Jee-Yun while he waited on his friends to arrive and then, as more and more got dropped off by parents that lingered but decided not to stay (and the few that had decided to stay huddled in a corner with cold drinks in their hands), the group of them had stayed congregated together, a loud pitch of prepubescent voices in the easy afternoon. “Introducing Jee to all of his friends.” 

Christopher had been excited, in a way Eddie hadn’t expected, at the realization that, with spending more time with Buck, meant spending more time with Jee-Yun. He had missed having cousins around, missed having a kid look up to him for a change, and while he certainly didn’t want to spend every second with her, he seemed more than happy to indulge her habit of trailing after him like a lost dog. Maddie followed his gaze and her eyes softened, her mouth melting into an easy smile. “Oh, that’s adorable.” She was referring to Jee-Yun, settled firmly on Denny’s shoulders as he went a round on whatever hopscotch game they had concocted. “They’re not in the way of the grill, right?” 

“Phi will yell at them if they get in the way.” Eddie reassured, even as he eyeballed Sophia to verify that he was, in fact, correct. If she didn’t then Abuela certainly would. She had already whacked one kid for getting too close with the soft side of a plastic spoon, soft enough that it had sent the boy away laughing even as she scolded him in rapid Spanish. “Hand me that bowl?” He gestured to the empty yellow one by her elbow and Maddie seemed more than happy to finally have something she was allowed to do. 

It was easy, Christopher flitted between guests like the social butterfly he had always been, stopping at each new face to accept celebratory congratulations and asking after people that couldn’t make it. He hadn’t asked about his grandparents, but Ramon and Helena had both called the night before and sang an off key Happy Birthday at the dinner table. He had expressed only sadness that Liana and Henry couldn’t be there, but had reassured Eddie that he understood and supported the why of the entire Adriana situation. If Christopher spent a little bit more time pressed against his side than Eddie wasn’t going to complain. If he watched Christopher bother Buck as he was finishing up decorating the cupcakes and end up with a giant dollop of frosting on his cheek as the two of them laughed in each other’s faces and teared up then that was between Eddie and Maddie, who had also been tearing up. 

It was ridiculous, the amount of things Eddie hadn’t realized had been missing until they had slowly started showing back up. Buck took Christopher to the Zoo, the aquarium, the park, the cafe. They kicked Eddie out of the house, but more often than not worked on including him on at least half of their outings. Things would be different, again, as they readjusted to Buck’s work schedule, but Eddie was sure they’d all bounce back quicker this time around. 

Hen arrived with Bobby, hamburger buns and a platter of cheese and crackers and a pitcher of iced tea gifted between them (and Eddie only scowled a little because if that was Athena’s iced tea then he didn’t want to piss Bobby enough to have him ban him from having any). “Buckaroo!” Hen squealed and nearly clipped Eddie’s head off with the hamburger buns when she launched them in his direction before flouncing forward to cut Buck off mid-sentence with a hard, welcome embrace. It was fine, Buck caught her easily and hugged her back just as enthusiastically without stumbling. It was only Karen that she had interrupted, but Eddie still watched carefully, if only to see the way Buck’s smile stretched over his cheeks and made the blues of his eyes sparkle. 

He was a lovesick fool. 

Bobby patted his shoulder as he passed, stopping to say hello to both Buck and Christopher before joining Sophia and Abuela at the grill. He was probably planning on offering his expertise, but Abuela glared him into submission and Eddie watched as he, instead, happily held the plate full of uncooked meat and listened to a story Eddie was sure he would regret letting her and Sophia tell later. “Evan mentioned something about a promotion?” Maddie asked from his elbow, shifting platters on the plastic folding table Pepa had found in her storage unit to make room for the cheese and crackers. 

“Yeah,” Eddie moved the plastic cutlery to make room for the hamburger buns at the end of the table. “Bobby wants him to go for Lieutenant.” It was a pay bump, a step closer to Captain, something that Buck seemed both excited and incredibly nervous over. “It’s a few years out, but…” He shrugged. 

“But a goal.” Maddie filled in. “Buck’s very goal oriented.” Buck was goal motivated . Same difference. Close enough. Him and Maddie knew different Buck’s but that didn’t mean that either of them were wrong in their assessments of him. “Any promotions for you planned?” 

Eddie snorted. “God, no.” He shook his head. “Bobby wants me to get officially fire paramedic certified, but he’s not going to take me off the rescues. More as a backup than anything else, really.”

“Chim will like that,” Maddie said with a wink. “He’s tired of getting paired up with people he doesn’t like when Hen’s on vacation.” 

Eddie laughed and Maddie echoed it. He didn’t know in the past month when the two of them had managed to find some sort of comfortable between them, but they had secreted their way into it. Eddie would even go as far as to call her a friend , and he didn’t give that title out easily. They still weren’t as close as, say, Buck and Sophia, but they were closer than they had ever been before. Maybe it had been happening all along, between coordinating Buck’s care and their schedules and getting a peak at each other’s lives, but something about the past month made Maddie look at him less like she was trying to figure him out and more like she trusted him to know what was best. He couldn’t help feeling like he had passed some sort of test. 

Eddie checked his watch, Bobby walked over the first plate of cooked food, and things settled into the familiar chaotic buzz of a child’s birthday party. 

He didn’t know how many more of these he would be permitted to have. Christopher was officially a teenager. Eddie had stopped having birthday parties when he was seventeen, choosing to go out to dinner and a movie with friends instead, and having cake with his parents, cousins and sisters on the actual day. Buck, well, Evan hadn’t had a birthday party since he was ten and Maddie hadn’t been around to force their parents into it. Christopher was getting older, sooner or later he wouldn’t want a big family party. Sooner or later it would be dinner and a movie with friends and cake at the dining room table. They had visited Shannon’s grave just that morning, the two of them with blueberry waffles. They had sat against her headstone, poured her a cup of Eddie’s thermos coffee, and ate their breakfast telling her about the last year of Christopher’s life. 

One day he wouldn’t want to do that anymore. One day he’d maybe want to do it without Eddie. 

One day he might be doing it at Eddie’s grave. 

“You’re looking mauldin.” Buck’s arm settled around his waist, strong and warm and Eddie let him lean his weight against him, his forehead ducking to hide against the back of his neck, eyelashes fluttering against his skin. 

“He’s thirteen.” Eddie had been warring with his emotions over that for the better part of a year. His little boy wasn’t so little anymore, blushing at a girl from his class as she brushed a leaf from his hair.

“Want another?” Buck’s chin settled on his shoulder, cheek warm against Eddie’s stubble. His eyes danced with mirth, but there was something else there, something sincere in his gaze when Eddie looked at him. 

He wove their fingers together as they rested at his stomach. “A dozen.” 

“Two dozen.” 

“A whole orphanage.” Buck laughed, a soft, almost breathless thing and when Eddie leaned forward he did too, the kiss between them kept short out of respect for the noisy thirteen year old they now had. They broke away but neither of them moved far, this close up Eddie could see the scar on Buck’s nose, the other striking through his birthmark, a fainter, older one over his lip and another under his eye. It had taken the black eyes a month to heal, and the entire birthday party wouldn’t have been happening in their backyard if Buck hadn’t healed enough that the sun didn’t give him an instant migraine. There was a time where he had thought he had lost this, the casual intimacy, the familiar press of lips, the jump in his pulse whenever Buck looked at him like that , the way they were both planning towards a future. Another kid, possibly more, a wedding, promotions. Buck would be Captain one day, preferably Captain Diaz . He glanced at Sophia, deep in conversation with Albert at the snack table. 

No.

He wouldn’t do it here. 

It wasn’t right yet. 

“Enough of that,” Carla slapped both of their arms lightly, but making no move to separate either of them. “You are both still at a kid’s party.” 

Eddie flushed. “He’s thirteen .” Buck corrected with a wicked little smirk. 

“That somehow makes it worse, baby.” Carla cooed with a pat to his cheek. “You two are being awfully boring hosts.” 

“It’s all PTA moms and people we work with.” Eddie scoffed with an eye-roll. “Gayle keeps trying to make me her… gay b-f-f or something.” 

“It wouldn’t harm you to make friends, Eddie Diaz.” 

“I have friends.” He argued. 

“Besides,” Buck interjected. “We can’t make friends with Gayle.” 

“Why can’t you make friends with Gayle?” 

“Her daughter’s flirting with Chris.” Eddie admitted with a scowl towards the girl in question. 

Carla barked a laugh. “She is not !” Buck straightened up eagerly, peering around the two of them to focus on the teenagers, piled on the benches of the picnic table. “Oh my god, she is -.” 

Eddie grabbed his sleeve as he made to move towards them. “Evan, no .” 

“Oh come on ,” Buck groaned with a laugh. “I could just -.” 

“If he knows we know, he’s never going to talk to us again.” 

“He threatens to do that, like, every tuesday. The threat just doesn’t hold the same… levity as it did before.” 

“Levity.” 

“Yeah.” 

“ Levity .” Carla echoed with a merciless laugh. 

“What?” Buck blanched. “I read .” 

Later, after the cake had been served and the majority of the guests had left, only family sticking around to help clean up and mingle as the day turned into night, Eddie found him in the kitchen, slumped over the sink and rubbing at his eyes with a concentrated frown. Buck’s shoulders were warm under Eddie’s palm but he only leaned back into his touch. “You okay?” Eddie pitched his voice softly, fingers tapping out a soft beat until they found the meat of his neck, massaging against the base of his skull. 

Buck breathed out, long and slow and deep, shoulders slumping. “Just a headache.”

Eddie hummed. 

Those probably weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Be it stress, lingering from the concussion or just how Buck’s body responded now, the headaches were less than they had been months ago but they still hovered around the edges. They popped up after busy days, sometimes he just woke up with one. A normal normal, his neurologist had said. A side effect of so many head traumas in thirty years. 

Outside, Sophia had tossed on her favorite music to wind down and Christopher, last Eddie had checked, was laying on his stomach in the grass with Denny, heads bent together over his new drawing tablet. Jee-Yun had fallen asleep an hour ago and been placed on their bed to doze until Maddie and Chim decided it was time to leave. Conversation, quiet and warm, floated through the open windows, a soft background hum to their solitude. 

Always the kitchen, Eddie thought. Things were made from nothing in the kitchen. 

“Are we dancing ?” Buck asked with a small snort, quiet and teasing, as though he were scared that any louder would interrupt and ruin the moment. 

And maybe they were. Maybe at some point of their quiet Eddie had subconsciously started to sway to the music he could only hear the beat and instrumentals of. Maybe, if Sophia or Chim or Hen walked in they would never let him live it down, but maybe he didn’t care. “Maybe.” Yes. Yes they were. He settled more firmly and Buck turned to look at him in the circle of his arms. 

It was stupidly romantic, really. The sort of thing that, if his life were a movie, would have the audience looking away from the screen with a smile. Too sweet to handle. Too romantic to be real life. 

Eddie was pretty sure they had earned a bit of romance. 

“I love you.” He whispered into the delicate sway of their bodies, no real beat or rhythm to it. Christopher wouldn’t let them live it down if he saw them (Eddie would drag him into it, stuff Christopher in between them and kiss Buck over his head just to hear him exclaim in disgust). Now, though, he melted into the feeling of Buck’s body against his own, warm and whole, solid and real and alive.  

“I love you too.” Buck ducked his head, brushed their noses together and then stayed. His breath coiled softly around Eddie’s, mingled in the middle between them and then was sucked back in. “Thank you.” Buck said softly, like a secret. “For… loving me.” 

Eddie couldn’t wait to love him for the rest of his life. Which would, hopefully, be very long. “Easiest thing in the world.”