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Even on the hottest weeks in Los Angeles, Buck always runs cold.
He wears long sleeves in the fall just in case they have a call inside—a hotel, maybe, where the air conditioner is cranked a little too high for Buck not to wind up with a light headache, because his bones need a few more minutes than everyone else’s to unthaw. He’s probably the only one at the 118 who doesn’t mind wearing their turnout gear in the summer; shivers for at least an hour after every water rescue. Bobby makes fun of him for it relentlessly.
How’d you survive Pennsylvania, kid?
Sometimes, Buck will laugh about it, grinning while Eddie complains about how stupid these daredevil YouTube kids are. Other times, he’ll reply, Didn’t really, teeth chattering and a thermal blanket over his shoulders. Bobby’s face usually does something complicated then; he pulls the fiberglass sheet a little tighter over Buck’s shoulder.
The day it happens, the weather is unbearably warm, even for April. It’s early—enough so that the coffee pot at the station is consistently empty, and sluggish enough that no one has the energy to refill it. Bobby will, inevitably, when he comes out of his office and fixes them all with a disappointed glance, always sighing heavily as Eddie finds his way to the kitchen at the next fresh pot.
So it’s all very scheduled, even between the few calls they’ve had. Buck is playing video games with Ravi while Hen studies. Chim and Eddie sit at one of the circular tables and woe about watching their kids grow up or something disgustingly adorable that if Buck listens to one word, he’ll think about Eddie for the rest of shift. Not that he’s not already thinking of...whatever.
Buck and Ravi are on Rainbow Road. He can’t afford to be distracted, but Eddie’s in the room, and this thing between them is only two weeks old, even if it feels much older, so Buck takes an accidental swan dive into the abyss and uses the chance to glance behind him as Lakitu puts his Toad back onto the track.
Eddie’s shoulders are lower than they were a few months ago. It’s the first thing Buck notices—between the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and the way his fingers rest on the table, without that anxious drumming or white carved into the skin of his knuckles. He’s happy now. Here. In the same space that Buck is happy in. Which, half a year ago, felt like an impossibility.
Somedays, it still does. Somedays, when Eddie jumps at a plate falling or Buck just can’t look at the white button downs in his closet, everything feels breakable. But they haven’t in a while, and Buck’s given up on accidentally tempting fate.
“Are you trying to lose?” Ravi breaks in, immediately falling off the road, because for some godforsaken reason he always picks Baby Rosalina and uses a Peach Parasol.
“I’m literally beating you,” Buck retorts, and his desire to be better than Ravi, who’s no longer a probie and therefore can’t be ordered around without Buck looking like an asshole, wins over the chance Eddie might look over and catch his eye. “You had a bullet thing, and you’re still in 8th place.”
“I’m Baby Rosalina,” Ravi answers, falling off again.
“You guys are both awful at this game,” Hen says out loud.
She momentarily glances up from probably the thickest book Buck has ever seen, looking exhausted. She looks like that a lot these days, but it’s a warm tiredness—leaning against Buck’s shoulder in the ladder truck to rest her eyes or laughing at Bobby’s jokes even when they aren’t that funny—she gives him that smile now, shaking her head when Buck sticks his tongue out at her.
“You’re just afraid we’ll beat your high score,” Ravi sasses back and Buck low-fives him as he crosses the finish line. They share a look of boyish amusement as Hen scoffs—Buck’s been here for four years and he’s never gotten close to Hen’s spot on the throne.
“Lunch,” Bobby announces. Chim and Eddie move to set the table while Bobby brings over the Caesar salad. Ravi turns off the game and goes downstairs to gather the rest of A-shift. Hen bookmarks her page and considers him with an unreadable expression on her face.
“What?” Buck demands, brushing a hand over the top of his head self-consciously, landing, as always, with his thumb rubbing at his birthmark. “Why are you looking at me?”
“Nothing.” Hen stands, but she’s still looking, so obviously it’s not nothing. She offers him a small smile, “You just look happy.”
Buck blinks. “Is that like…” He clears his throat, because it’s only midday and Buck as a rule tries not to cry on shift. “Is that like a new development or something?”
“Are you guys coming to eat?” Eddie’s voice carries.
Hen’s eyes soften into something even more fond. She nods her head towards the rest of their friends and shrugs; Buck takes that as her answer. He hears the implication, the reasoning behind it, and opens his mouth to reply, even though she didn’t ask.
But there’s a timing for all these things too. They only get half a chance to make their way over before the alarm rings. Buck takes it in stride. He and Eddie don’t say anything, but they make eye contact. Unofficially, they race to the ladder truck. Officially (in Buck’s opinion) Eddie loses.
“Will you two stop going down the stairs like that?” Bobby asks into the headset. “Yo-”
“If you’re going to be stupid, at least do it where Cap can’t see you,” Chimney chimes in. “Is what he’s trying to say.”
“You’re setting a bad example for Ravi,” Bobby says, and that’s probably directed at Buck. He wants to point out that Ravi’s a lot smarter than him and Chim’s far more likely to dare the pr-not probie to do stupid stuff than Eddie is, but he settles for letting Bobby lecture. He refilled the coffee pot. It’s only fair.
“One day both of you will fall!” Chim mimics their Captain. “And then you’ll see!”
Buck looks across from him to where Eddie’s sitting, managing to look both contrite and unrepentant. He sticks his tongue out at Buck, which won’t help either of them when they inevitably do trip, and Buck returns the gesture.
(Buck doesn’t mention that it’s a little too late for Bobby to warn them about the falling.)
“Won’t happen again, Cap,” Eddie promises. “I’ll keep him in line.”
“You two got into an ambulance with a live round in it on the first day you started working together,” Hen points out. “You’re just as bad as him.”
“I’m a straight-shooter, Hen.”
Chim mumbles, “You’re definitely something,” and Buck snorts, a warm feeling rushing through him. Because they know—his friends, and his sister, and Bobby—they know what it’s like to be so in love with someone that it shows: on your face, your hands, the way you walk and smile. They’re all lucky enough to carry that feeling with them to work, rely on it when they get home and crawl into bed.
They’ve got enough experience with love to last them a lifetime. And they’re looking at Buck, head over heels for his best friend, with all that knowledge, and they’re saying, “ It’s Eddie. And it’s Buck. And I’m in their corner. ”
“It’s a stuck window washer,” Bobby tells them. “Six story building. Too narrow to get the ladder truck into position. Buck, Eddie, are you two good to do the rope rescue?”
“You’re on winch,” Buck says immediately.
“I’m always on winch,” Eddie protests.
“Well we’ve got a good thing going.” Buck motions between them. “Can’t ruin it now.”
When they get back to the station, Maddie’s waiting by the bay doors.
Jee-Yun is in her stroller, gurgling in laughter, but Maddie’s frowning... trembling, really and fear washes over Buck; pinpricks cold down the back of his spine. Eddie asks, “Is that-?” and Chim hits the floor before the truck stops moving. Buck trips over his own two feet trying to catch up.
“Maddie,” Chim broaches carefully, stopping right before he hurdles into both of them. He kneels in front of Jee-Yun first, scooping her up into her arms. “Maddie, what happened?”
“Wh-what’s wrong?” Buck demands with a little less tact. His sister showed up in the middle of shift looking paler than he’s ever seen her. Worry doesn’t even begin to encompass it. “Are you—”
She shakes her head. Tears cover her eyes like a glossy film, but she keeps her voice steady. “Buck.” It’s what sends anxiety into the pit of Buck’s stomach—because Maddie’s brave when she needs to be. When she’s protecting him.
It’s...sometimes, when it comes to his family, Buck’s blood will rush to his ears so fast that it’s dizzying. He’s sure that it’s not just him and Maddie and Jee-Yun and Chim there, but he’s not aware of it. He can’t process anything except for the way Maddie’s looking at him—like he’s 11 years old in his bedroom again, and she’s about to tell him that mom and dad aren’t coming to his baseball game.
“I didn’t want you to hear it over the phone,” she says, running her hands over her arms. “Mom called me. Thirty minutes ago, maybe?”
“Maddie,” he pushes, this deep-seated feeling that something is really wrong coursing through him. Chimney’s there, his fingers reaching out, entangling in hers. Buck wants his—he wants Eddie to be here too. “Spit it out.”
She does. “Dad’s in a coma.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “Medically induced. He was in a car accident on the way home from the store. And now they don’t know-”
She bursts into tears, which at this point Buck was counting on. Chimney allows himself to be shocked for about one millisecond before he’s wrapping her in a hug, carefully maneuvering so that Jee-Yun is between them, for better or for worse before they even get married. And Buck—
Buck doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be feeling right now.
There’s a perpetual stinging noise in the background, like a nest of bees has found home in the station. Obviously, he’s not fine. It’s his dad, so feeling fine at the notion that he might never wake up again isn’t something he wants to feel—thank God he doesn’t. But it’s like...
There’s a sense of familiarity creeping up his spine, deja vu muddling its way through his head. It’s ridiculous. His dad’s never been in a coma before. Except, that’s not really true, is it? Buck spent 19 years in Pennsylvania; he thinks his parents might as well have been comatose for all of it.
“Are we going to Hershey?” He asks, voice steady and not entirely his. “Do you have any idea—” He cuts himself off because that’s a stupid question. Why would anyone know when their father would wake up? “Shift’s 30 minutes from over. I need to tell Cap.”
Chim looks between the Buckleys. “I’m coming with you,” he declares. “For a few days…a few days at least, please. Bobby will find someone to cover.”
Maddie’s eyes widen like she hadn’t considered the specifics. It’ll be good for Chimney to come, so that they have someone who will—someone to book flight tickets and help with the hospital red tape—but he’s only spent all of two dinners with Philip and Margaret Buckley, certainly doesn’t know what they’re like in their home turf. Buck wants to warn him, but the words get stuck in his throat. For Maddie’s sake, honestly a little bit for his own, he lets Chim wade into the fire.
“Do you have the…?” Maddie stutters out. “I thought you used up all your PTO last year.”
Chasing me, her eyes say. They’re not as sad as they used to be, but they’re still a bit haunted. Buck’s happy these days. He means it. But he knows the expression well.
“It resets every calendar year,” Chimney reminds her. “I mean I’d find a way regardless, Maddie.” There’s no place you could go that I wouldn’t follow. “Buck and I are going to go talk to Bobby now, and then we’ll figure out the rest.”
He places Jee-Yun back in her seat, buckling her in and kissing Maddie on the cheek as he stands. Buck’s vision whites out for a second. In his hands—in his hands underneath his fingertips is Christopher’s hair. It’s wild and curly and almost like Buck’s own and Eddie stands beside him. He’s looking at Buck with that expression, the one that says maybe and asks I’m ready, are you? and Buck can feel them both, like the echo of a hug, and Eddie’s only up the stairs but—
“Buck?” Chimney interrupts, voice dripping with concern that’s way too preemptive and doesn’t do anything to fix the hollowness in Buck’s chest, behind his ribcage. “You coming?”
He places a hand on Buck’s back before nodding at Maddie. It’s a far cry from how they were back in December, red scar tissue and jagged edges, and Buck’s never been more thankful for it than he is now. He lets Chim follow behind him all the way up the staircase. They’ve only had minutes to process all of it, but Buck’s thankful that, even for that short amount of time, he wasn’t alone like Maddie was.
It’s eerily quiet when they get upstairs. Bobby’s talking in a low murmur with Hen, back turned from the railing to feign privacy, though the rigid set of both of their shoulders is a dead giveaway. Ravi is leaning against the counter, scrolling through his phone but chewing at his lip, and Buck is hit with a pang of...something morbid, that this isn’t Ravi’s problem. Or at the very least, it shouldn’t be.
Eddie makes no such attempt to hide his intentions. He’s been looking at Buck and Chimney since they appeared in his line of sight, looking like he has a million questions. Buck waits. They linger in each other’s presence for a few heartbeats. Eventually, he settles on. “Are Maddie and Jee-Yun okay?”
As if given permission, all eyes fall on Buck and he wishes they hadn’t. Because Eddie says things like that—like he knows that if Buck answers that question in the affirmative then they can deal with the rest together—and Buck wants to melt into the floorboards. He does a little right then.
It’s just that…he isn’t used to meaning something to someone like he does to Eddie. Where after years of pining and miscommunication, they’re irrevocably sure of their place in each other’s lives. He’s not used to being wanted like this. He’s not used to knowing where he belongs and trusting it. It’s haunting, this promise between them: like Buck’s saying “ I know you’ll miss me ” when he hasn’t even packed his bags.
It doesn’t scare him. That’s the most terrifying part.
Chim nods, calm and level-headed. “Look, Bobby-”
This is Buck’s dad; Buck’s problem, and when you’re 30 years old, there are some things you do yourself. “Cap,” he interrupts, everyone’s anticipatory stare shifting from Chim to Buck. “I’ve got to take some time off. My dad was in a car accident. Maddie and I have to go home.”
Ravi makes a low noise of sympathy, but Bobby just levels his eyes on Buck, waiting for something—a breakdown, maybe? After the last time the Buckley parents were here, the 118 got a lot more tangled up into Buck’s childhood than anyone expected they would. “Was it serious?” he asks gently.
“He’s in a coma, Cap,” Chim says, because apparently they’re finishing each other’s sentences now. Or maybe something about Buck’s demeanor makes Chim feel like he has to. He doesn’t, but that’s neither here nor there. “They’re waiting for him to get better, but...”
And yeah. That’s the point of a medically induced coma. Chim would know. Still, something about the way he says it—a little too familiarly for someone he’s only met once—gets under his skin. Like he understands any of the implications of what’s happening right now. The collar of Buck’s uniform is itchy against his neck. Everything is too warm.
He’s a firefighter who’s in dangerous situations more often than not; he was born to save his dying brother and couldn’t; he’s in love with a man, and he’s going back to Pennsylvania carrying all of it. There’s no way anyone else in the world gets that.
“Buck,” Hen breathes out, a touch too sad, too her, and Buck just scrubs at his face. He heads for the staircase, and leaves Chim to deal with the rest.
Maddie’s still downstairs, pacing a little bit. She’s closer to the locker room now, has Jee-Yun in her arms and is murmuring things softly, her eyes still stained red. It’s all too much, too fast and Buck fights the urge to slam his hand against the metal. He can hear someone coming down after him, worried probably, though they shouldn’t be. Not for…
Buck swallows. He doesn’t think it’s his father that’s giving him trouble.
“Hey.” Eddie appears next to him, still on the bottom step as people mill in and around, shooting Buck strange glances and shooting Maddie even stranger ones. He rests his hand between Buck’s shoulder blades and leads him towards the locker room. “Come on, you gotta change.”
He’s too...It’s all too much for him right now. And that’s not Eddie’s fault but his brain doesn’t know that. He shrugs him off. “I don’t need you to take care of me,” he snaps.
Eddie puts his hands up in surrender, but now that Buck is moving he’s too afraid of what will happen if he stops. He motions at Maddie, going to go change, be right back, and Eddie follows him into the locker room, keeping himself an arm’s length away.
“I know you don’t,” Eddie responds, always kinder than Buck deserves. “It’s just, you’re going away for a while and I...actually, nevermind.”
He’s putting on a brave face, the one Buck knows well because he wore it infallibly for 6 months after he got shot, and Buck sort of regrets everything. “I’m sorry,” he mutters sitting on the bench. “I shouldn’t have snapped.”
“You’re allowed to be mean,” Eddie says cautiously. “You’re grieving.”
“I’m not.”
Eddie’s never been great at hiding his expressions. His eyebrows fly up almost instinctively, like they do whenever Buck says something he disagrees with. “What do you mean?”
Buck shakes his head bitterly, unlacing his boots. “Nothing.”
Okay,” Eddie huffs. He sits beside him, taking Buck’s shoe in his lap and undoing what Buck hasn’t even begun to touch. “We said we weren’t going to do this anymore, Buck.”
Buck jabs the heel of his hand into his eyes and twists until he sees technicolor. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” He shudders, slightly, but the clinical tone of his words mean Eddie doesn’t notice. “My dad’s in a coma. There’s no rule book.”
Eddie feels warm against him, his hands wrapped around Buck’s ankle. They don’t do this at work, not even to spite Chim, who covers his eyes whenever he enters the bunk room whenever Buck and Eddie are on the same shift. Buck moves to unbutton his uniform and Eddie doesn’t stop touching him. He knows his dad is in the hospital, but all he can focus on is him. He thinks, maybe, that’s the whole point.
“Listen, I’ll talk to Bobby-”
Buck lets out a surprised laugh. “You’re not coming with me.”
“Why not?” Eddie demands. “Chris’s spring break is in a few days. I want to come. I want to be with you.”
“Eddie,” Buck starts, because it’s not...how does he put it?
It’s not like he doesn’t want Eddie to come, but there’s an order to these things. Buck can’t just show up to Hershey with his ‘ basically boyfriend even though they’ve been together for 13 days and haven’t put a label on it but who’s counting ’ while his dad’s in the hospital, not when Eddie’s never met his parents without the defenses of this fire station. Not when…
Buck puts a lot of trust in Eddie, but there’s a small part of him that thinks if he knew why people didn’t like him, if he knew the truth about Buck in Pennsylvania—hackles raised and spitting out defenses—he might find a reason to leave. Not now, or in the next three years even, but eventually. Because it’s a common misconception that Buck grew up kind. In a house like that, good things collapse in on themselves.
Buck never stood a chance.
“Eddie,” he tries again. “You have… Christopher has that camp and y-you need to save your time off. What if you need it for Chrisopher later? Or, you know your family down in Texas. You can’t-”
He cuts himself off by biting down on his lip so hard he draws blood. You can’t spend it on me, Buck wants to say. He can’t, because it’s Eddie and he’d halt flights from taking off to get Buck to stop being self-deprecating, but Buck knows where he stands. He’s Eddie’s family, sure. But he doesn’t feel like he can claim it. He’s Eddie’s family, but not the kind you take time off for.
“They need you,” he tries instead. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got Maddie and—” he blows out a breath, gathering his things, shoving his uniform button-down into his locker, cataloging what he needs to grab from where when they stop at his apartment. “It’s not like my dad and I are close anyway. You know that.”
“Yeah, but…” Eddie looks uncomfortable. They both lucked out in the parent department and Eddie usually tries not to be hypocritical about these things, so he doesn’t pretend he knows better.
“Exactly,” Buck says, deciding to just change out of his LAFD t-shirt later. “But nothing.”
He ignores the look Eddie’s giving him—like Buck’s insane for not being a nervous wreck right now—in favor of touching his hand, callused and familiar, like hiking trails and inside jokes. “I’ll be okay,” Buck says, because that’s all he ever is. “Will you be okay?”
“You’re asking me ?”
“Well, I’m getting concerned the answer might be ‘no’,” Buck explains. “Because the last time I was in a different state, with Taylor, you—”
“That’s not funny,” Eddie mutters, the corner of his mouth twitching into what’s about to be a full-blown scowl. “And I didn’t mope then.”
“No,” Buck agrees. “You just quit the 118. Talk about a power move.”
“Jesus Christ, Buck,” Eddie replies. “Just, you know I’m always a phone call away, okay? Call me.” He splays his fingers out and they hover over Buck’s birthmark like he wants to touch but isn’t sure if he’s allowed to.
There are other things to worry about, probably, but Buck moves and Eddie reciprocates, reaching out and brushing Buck’s hair out of his eyes in the middle of the day in the locker room, and it’s just…Buck’s head is so fucked up right now, which is what he’ll tell Bobby if he asks why he kissed Eddie while they were both at work.
Eddie makes a small muffled noise, a fake protest so he has plausible deniability. It’s rough and unsteady and not really the brush of lips that’s appropriate for glass locker room walls but Buck can’t bring himself to. Eddie kisses back for a second before pulling away. He leaves their foreheads pressed against each other.
“We’re in this together,” Eddie murmurs, steady grip on Buck’s forearms. “You and me, Buck.”
He kisses the corner of Buck’s mouth to emphasize it, an Eddie who couldn’t care less about the rules written down in Bobby’s paperwork that explicitly prohibited this kind of thing. Buck inhales shakily and closes his eyes and breathes in Eddie’s sandalwood cologne that Hen bought him last Christmas. Eddie's hands are still pressed to Buck’s skin.
He’s not trying to pretend he’s fine, decidedly anyone who watched him nearly trip down the stairs knows he’s not fine, but he thinks if he allows himself to feel anything, he’s going to feel everything. A very Eddie 1.0 move if he thinks about it. So he tries not to.
“You and me,” Buck repeats. “I’ll call you.”
“Try not to make it sound like a one night stand or anything,” Eddie says dryly, but his eyes are still wary about the whole situation. Now that he’s not touching Buck, Eddie’s hands flutter anxiously at his sides. Chim hollers his name from the Bay. “Be safe.”
“Always am,” Buck replies. “Love you.”
He’s out the door before Eddie responds, because if he doesn’t leave now, he never will and he doesn’t want to stress Maddie out any more than she already is. He puts his hands in his pockets, duffle bag a sinking weight on his shoulder, and makes it out of the firehouse in one piece.
He pretends not to notice the cracks around the edges.
Not to be dramatic, but the Los Angeles Airport feels comparable to the ninth circle of Hell.
Chim’s clearly having an okay time, pointing out shiny machines and naming them for Jee-Yun, who’s currently in the process of relinquishing her stroller at check-in, gurgling and charming hearts. But they’re the only ones. The flight attendant gleefully announces that it’s $35 extra dollars, even though Jee-Yun is a toddler and is therefore incapable of carrying her own luggage, and Maddie’s eye starts twitching as she hands over the credit card.
Buck just follows them and makes faces at his niece in the downtime. He does what he needs to and resists the urge to text Eddie about everything. His phone buzzes a couple of times—his mom asking about the itinerary—and Buck responds in one-worded texts and iMessage reactions.
It isn’t very different from how they usually speak to each other, even though the situation they’ve found themselves in typically precludes any sense of feigned normalcy. Buck can’t help but feel like that’s a warning written in neon lights.
“Are you hungry?” Maddie asks him sharply. “You won’t get anything except peanuts on the flight. There’s a pizza place right around the corner. Or a Starbucks just over there.”
He resists the urge to roll his eyes, say “ I know, Maddie,” and have it not be the start of an argument. Buck and his sister get along famously well under literally any circumstance that doesn’t involve their entire family—moments that he can count on one hand since they’re rarely ever together these days—but when they don’t, it’s usually Buck’s fault.
Or, really, it’s usually their parents’ fault. Buck’s been coming to terms with that concept for years though and it still takes second place to the weight of the world on his shoulders. Ahead of them, Jee-Yun gurgles, and Maddie, in spite of herself and everything else, smiles with her teeth.
“No,” he replies, can’t settle with the buzzing of the airport burrowing its way beneath his skin. “I’ll be okay. But I can hold Jee if you and Chim want to go get something.”
Maddie fixes him with a look that clearly reads, I absolutely don’t believe you. “You have to eat something.”
“Okay, well why phrase it as a question if you were just going to—”
“I was giving you an option, Buck! I thought you were going to do the sensible thing and say yes!”
Right. Except that Buck’s never been sensible and asking him to make good decisions in the LAX airport where he’s currently so fine that he’s clearly not fine feels entirely like a practical joke. His father is in a coma, his mother hasn’t called him yet, and Maddie’s asking him if he wants Starbucks—nothing about it feels real.
He opens his mouth to reply with something that isn’t mean or callous, but wholly unnecessary anyway, when Chim puts a baby in his hands and shoots him a warning look.
“Well, I’m starving,” Chim announces, lacing Maddie’s fingers together with his own. “We’ll pick you up a Frappuccino or something, Buck.” He pauses for the dramatism. “Decaf.”
Maddie exhales shakily but squeezes Chim’s hand and smiles a little as they wander off towards the food court. They’re nowhere near their gate, but they’ve got time to kill until they board. Buck sighs, similar to his sister, and sits on a metal chair, bouncing Jee-Yun in his lap.
“Your mom,” he murmurs, “Is the strongest woman I know. But if you go out of state for college, you might want to be within driving distance.”
Jee-Yun gurgles back and Buck grins at her. A mother across the aisle who can’t be any more than 25 gives him an appreciative glance, which is only startling until he remembers that Eddie’s not here, and Buck doesn’t have ‘This is my boyfriend!’ written all over him. And Eddie’s still on shift or Buck would text him; ask him about Christopher, talk to him about what they’re planning to do over the summer, when Chris doesn’t have school and the cabins up north are ridiculously expensive but incredibly enticing anyway.
The year wasn’t supposed to start like this. Not after the way last May had beaten them all down, battered and bruised, angry and hopeful. It’s like, Maddie and Chim come back, Buck introduces his niece to Christopher for the first time, Eddie kisses him and means it and he’s not waking up in the middle of the night having panic attacks anymore. Buck is happy.
And then, April 2022, his dad is in a coma and Buck’s snapping at his sister in the LAX airport.
His dad is in a coma. What the fuck is he supposed to do with that?
He forces himself to ease out his breathing and unclench the fist he’s holding in his right hand. Buck’s not prone to panic attacks without warning like Eddie was. For him, they’re a slow thing, boiling over like water on a stove, and usually, he knows how to stave them off. Anyway, he’s more worried about Maddie.
“Yes, I know,” a man on the phone walks by them. His suitcase has a squeaky wheel that makes Jee-Yun’s face crumple in discomfort and Buck rushes to cover her ears with his hands and makes silly noises so she doesn’t cry.
“Okay, sweetheart,” the man says again, distinctly dry but loving—a tone that Buck’s familiar with. “Bye. Love you.”
Love you, Buck muses, tussling Jee-Yun’s hair. Can’t wait to say that to Eddie one day.
He sits bolt upright in his seat. Jee-Yun squeals at the sudden movement. “Holy shit,” he says out loud, simultaneously praying that it doesn’t become one of those words his niece repeats until it loses its sparkle. “I told Eddie I loved him.”
Jee-Yun laughs. It feels a little like she’s mocking him. “Dee,” she agrees solemnly, placing a tiny hand on Buck’s cheek.
“Oh my god,” he mutters. “Jesus Christ, Buckley.”
It seems like forever to Buck, this blindingly white feeling in his chest that started the day after the tsunami, when Eddie came over and placed his hand on the crook of Buck’s neck. Just there, thumb brushing over his collarbone, promise on Eddie’s lips, and Christopher bridging the gap.
Except really it’s only two weeks old and Buck should know better except it’s Eddie and when has Buck ever known anything when it comes to him? When has Buck ever been practical when it comes to Eddie? His phone rests on the seat next to him. Buck doesn’t dare look at it.
“Hey,” Maddie murmurs, handing Buck a drink and a sandwich before scooping Jee-Yun into her arms and kissing her forehead. “You okay? You’ve got this look on your face.”
“Like Jee when her diaper needs changing,” Chim comments. He presses the phone that was on his seat into Buck’s hands and Buck scowls at him—whether it’s from the comment or the text messages that are now in front of his eyes, Buck’s unsure.
He groans and rubs his hands over his face, making everything blurry. “I told Eddie I loved him at the station.”
Chim lets out a low whistle and Maddie blinks like she doesn’t see the big deal. “Okay,” she says, with more patience than Buck deserves, even though his world sort of feels like it’s ending. “He very obviously loves you back.”
“Very, very, obviously,” Chimney repeats. “Sickeningly obviously.”
“That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
The problem is that they’d promised to communicate about important things and Eddie has a habit of feeling like things that are spoken about lightly are unimportant and Buck had just gone and told him “ Love you ” without any sort of follow-up like it’s something they do every day. Like Buck was planning on telling Eddie in the station locker room.
Like Eddie doesn’t mean so, so much to Buck.
“I told him in the station locker room,” Buck bites out. “Who does that?”
Maddie and Chim exchange a look that puts Buck more on edge than anything else. “Buck,” Maddie says. “It’s, I mean, I’m sure he doesn’t mind.” She places a hand on his knee, way too soft for the bustle of an airport. “Are you sure you aren’t just—”
“Maddie,” Chim cuts her off in warning, a move so unlike them that warning bells go off in Buck’s head.
“Uh, what was that?” he asks. “What was…what just happened?”
“Nothing,” Maddie says quickly, shaking the leg that Jee-Yun isn’t resting on. “Eat your sandwich.”
It tastes like dust in his mouth, but it’s really just ciabatta. He checks his texts. Eddie’s profile picture lights up his screen, Have a safe flight
They’d promised to communicate about the important things. Funny thing, that.
thanks, Buck texts back. i’ll tell the pilot.
Then, like an idiot, he puts his phone on Airplane mode until they reach Pennsylvania.
It takes about 15 minutes to get from Harrisburg International to their old house in Hershey. It’s 9 in the night and the street lamps seem a little too dull and familiar. Buck stares out the passenger seat window the entire time.
He’s trying to will an emotion into existence—grief, fear, anxiety, something to tide him over about all this—but the only thing he can focus on is Eddie back in California; Christopher asking his dad if they could order a pizza since it’s just the two of them and everyone knows Eddie can’t cook anything past pozole and caesar salad.
They’ve been warming up to it. Buck’s been entrusted with abuela’s enchilada recipe and they make a night out of it—Christopher rolling up the tortillas and Eddie chopping the vegetables and Buck pronouncing everything in his terrible, white Spanish that makes Eddie roll his eyes and correct him with an expression so fond that Buck thinks he could live there forever. He rests his cheek against the glass of the rental car.
The last time he was in Hershey, he was 19 years old and so…so angry. He doesn’t think anyone at the 118 would believe him if he told them about that Buck, the one snapped at his teachers and couldn’t be bothered to understand that some people might have it worse, and he wasn’t proving any sort of point by ending up in the county jail that one weekend after getting into a fistfight with a racist and not using his phone call until the front desk called his parents for him.
“You know,” Chimney says from the backseat. Jee-Yun is sleeping in a car seat beside him, even though her grandmother will wake her up in T-minus 10 minutes. “I thought Hershey would be bigger.”
“Everyone does,” Buck and Maddie say at the same time, and Buck doesn’t have to look to know his sister is gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles are white. The same way he doesn’t have to peer up at the street signs to know they’ve just turned on to 322.
“The home of the Buckleys,” Chim continues. He does this around Maddie a lot, just keeps talking until her shoulders relax, and it always makes Buck a little wistful. Hen once pointed out that Eddie does the same thing around him, and thinking about that in Hershey it makes Buck kind of want to jump out of the car.
He lets Chim ramble and pulls out his phone. It’s got about 10% left and no doubt if he goes to charge it as soon as he gets in the door, his mother will bring it up later. But Eddie responded to his text saying that they’ve landed, so he’ll chance it.
How was the flight?
How’s Hershey?
flight was fine, jee slept like a baby
ha
and hershey’s like
idk it’s hershey
Are you at home yet?
no
how was shift?
Fine
Boring without you
Ravi’s trying to pick up slack of Chim’s jokes
He’s failing
lmaooo i’ll tell chim
hey my phone’s gonna die
Ok
Call me tonight?
You liked ‘Call me tonight?’
Buck’s hands are buzzing—they do every time he texts Eddie—because he knows sure as anything that it’s 6 pm there and shift ended an hour ago, so now Eddie’s balancing his phone on the kitchen counter, prepping dinner and probably using speech to text like an old person. It’s a Wednesday, so Christopher is doing his homework at the dining table. And maybe they have music playing low while the Diaz boys hum along in tandem and it’s—
Buck knows Eddie loves him. He does, as much as he’s known anything else: Christopher’s shoe size, Hen’s favorite ice cream flavor; Eddie loves him, for some reason. But it’s…coming home to Hershey feels like a betrayal. Because Eddie loves Buck, but coming home to Hershey feels like a reminder that he doesn’t deserve it.
“Was that Eddie?” Maddie asks when Buck shoves his phone back into the front pocket of his jeans and blinks away tears that haven’t even pooled in his eyes yet. “What is he saying?”
“He says keep your eyes on the road.”
“You’re being really snappy.”
“I’m being how I always am around mom and dad.”
“Right,” Maddie says decisively, her voice brittle-thin. “And that might be a problem. Considering why we’re here.”
“And that,” Chim stage-whispers to a still asleep Jee-Yun, “Sweetheart, is what we call passive-aggression. We try not to do that in this family.”
They hit a red light. Buck and Maddie glance at each other and all the fight seeps out of their bodies. If there was ever a thing Buck was sure of before Eddie and Chris and the 118, any sense of stability in Hershey and its population of 15,000 people, it was his sister. Who he loves. Who’s in this with him.
“Sorry,” Buck mutters. “I’m just…”
Maddie glances at the pocket he’d just stuck his phone in. “Yeah,” she says. “That’s okay.”
“It’s not, though.”
“Buck,” she taps her finger on the wheel as they wait for the light to change, “It’s going to be hell enough at home. I’d rather not fight with you too.”
“You don’t fight,” Chim mutters from the backseat where he’s actively listening. He’s been part of the family for years now though, might as well get the full package. “It’s unearthly.”
“Bicker then,” Maddie corrects, lightly pushing the accelerator. 5 more minutes. Buck’s had nothing to eat in five hours but he doesn’t think he can blame the nausea on that. They take a left on Hillview Lane; a right onto Briarcrest. Another into the driveway of a giant white house on Beach Ave. Maddie switches off the engine.
And then they just sort of sit there.
“I’ll get Jee,” Maddie says finally. “If you two want to grab the bags.”
Chim opens the door like he’s just been waiting for permission. There’s a tension that threatens to suffocate them like the car is still running and Buck and his sister are breathing in the fumes in a closed garage. Inside, the light to the foyer is on. They can’t stay here forever, and God knows if they wait a second longer, the first question they’ll get asked is why.
“This is kinda ridiculous,” Buck points out.
“Yeah.” Maddie clears her throat and makes an aborted move for the door handle. “I mean, it can’t be that bad, right? Dad is…he’s…”
“I feel like that’s going to make it worse.”
“You keep contradicting yourself.”
“Well that’s what living in this house feels like!”
Chimney knocks on the driver-side window with this expression on his face like he’s considering handling everything himself and sending Buck and Maddie back to Los Angeles where they’ll be more useful. Buck wants to ask him if he really means it.
He sinks down into his seat. No doubt Chim thinks they’re being overdramatic, or at least a little too stilted for a suburban house like this. Buck always thinks the same until he steps foot past the threshold and it all comes rushing back—the tiptoeing, the disappointment, that squeezing feeling in his chest that threatens to send him running for danger just to reclaim his own agency. He’s 30, sure, but the older he gets, it seems, the less punches get pulled.
“United front,” Maddie says, holding her pinky finger out.
“United front,” Buck agrees. “Let’s do this.”
He rings the doorbell and the porch light flickers on immediately, like their mother had just been waiting to greet them. Buck swallows harshly as the door opens. No one says anything for a beat too long.
She looks the same, his mother; styled hair and perfect posture and nothing’s really new except for the swelling under her eyes. “Come in, come in,” she says. And Buck wishes he had another option.
She greets Jee-Yun first and leaves the rest of them to their own devices for several minutes. Buck sneaks his way into the kitchen while Chimney and Maddie answer questions about how big Jee-Yun’s gotten and her first words and her favorite food and TV show, and it feels a bit like they’re all playing pretend in an imaginary tree house but Buck doesn’t push it. He sets the bags down in the living room.
The familiarity of it is eerie: maroon red rug and vase and pictures of Buck no older than 10 up on the mantle alongside Maddie. It’s…strange, especially in comparison to Buck’s apartment in L.A. where there are new pictures of Chris and Jee-Yun seemingly every few weeks. They’re all so entangled in each other's lives there. Here, in Hershey, it feels like he’s just walked into a shrine of the past. The only new additions are a 4-inch flat-screen and a picture of Jee-Yun in a gold portrait like a showpiece. Like guests are supposed to ask about the newest Buckley grandchild, and nothing else.
Buck digs into his backpack for his charger and shoves it into the extension cord. His breath is already shaky and everything about this is so…nightmarish. One of those dreams with locked doors and no key in a hallway that just keeps getting thinner. He looks around, trying to remember details, anything past the surface-level memory of where everything is, and can’t, as if his subconscious is trying to protect him.
He was fine 5 hours ago. At least, he’s pretty sure.
“Evan!” His mother comes into the kitchen and automatically her eyes seem to narrow when she looks at him. The first thing she says is, “Did you wash your hands?”
He sighs. Chim and Maddie are still in the foyer, or maybe they’re already moving things to the bedroom, or maybe they’re obsessively washing their hands in the half-bath in a way that Buck isn’t. He’d like to point out that she already held Jee-Yun, and whatever germs Buck has on him from the plane, Jee-Yun probably does too, but he’ll let the first few offenses slide. He’s magnanimous that way.
“I was just about to,” he replies, and goes over to the sink as he’s speaking so he doesn’t have to look at the firm press of her lips. “Sorry.”
“Mmhm,” she hums. Buck takes that to mean, You should be.
The good part about things in Pennsylvania staying the same is that Buck doesn’t have to try to look for the slight differences. His mom is passive-aggressive. That’s not new. Maddie and Buck will get into a screaming match with her in the near future. In the dim glow of the evening, standing beside the tile underneath the kitchen sink that Maddie stained trying to dye her hair pink, that seems unavoidable. Thankfully, neither of them mention it.
“How was your flight?” She asks as Buck’s phone lights up with the Apple logo. Buck can see her glance at it and frown, standing in wait like she expects him to grab at it and run up to his room to slam the door on her. Like he ever did.
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“I can’t ask about my son’s flight?”
“I mean, we didn’t die or anything—”
“Don’t say things like that, Evan,” his mother interrupts sharply, like this isn’t exactly where she was headed the entire time. “Honestly, I wonder why Maddie even brought you here. If this is how you’re going to be, you might as well go back to California.”
“Right,” Buck agrees, already feeling the muscles in his arm tighten, except if he moves to flex them, then he’ll get called out on that too. “Because I’m nothing if I’m not useful.”
His mother is about Maddie’s height, though she carries herself prouder, wearing jewelry even though they’re at home watching the Sunday game sort of old money that Buck tries not to touch but is the only reason he can afford his loft in Downtown Los Angeles.
She rolls her eyes at him now. “Don’t start with that therapy stuff again,” she says, not refuting the statement at all. “Speaking of, do you think you can pick up dinner? I ordered Chinese from that place you and Maddie like.”
It’s not the restaurant Maddie likes. It’s the one that mom and their dad order for them on the weekends, after a night out with their friends while Maddie and Buck stayed at home because she felt bad leaving Buck at home alone and Buck just wanted to play video games. And that’s just…it’s all so fucking familiar, all Buck can do is nod. “Sure,” he says. It comes out more strangled than he’d like.
He runs into Maddie in the hallway. Upstairs, Buck can hear Chim in the bathroom with Jee-Yun, completely unaware of everything that’d just gone down. Maddie, lugging the last duffle bag up into the guest bedroom, probably doesn’t know what’s got Buck charging out the front door either, but she makes a questioning motion with her hands, looks at the kitchen like she can recite the conversation from memory.
“Keys,” Buck demands monotonically.
Maddie looks like she wants to come with him, but she’s got Chim to lean on, Jee-Yun to hide behind if it really comes down to it. Buck’s got his phone charging on the kitchen counter and he’s too proud to storm back in and get it. That seems to be the difference. This time, Maddie has someone.
She hands him the keys. He’s out the front door before she can say anything.
Just his luck, Buck runs into an old classmate on his way out of Lin’s Garden.
Buck didn’t make many friends in high school. He was popular enough; played on the football team well enough that people would stop him in the hallways to congratulate him for it. Took a girl, Sophie, to prom and remembers getting drunk because she dumped him at the afterparty.
He deleted his Facebook account on the dude ranch in Montana. Something about a fresh start.
“Evan Buckley?” A stranger asks just as Buck clicks the unlock button on his rental keys. He’s the very picture of one of those granola guys from hiking magazines—the man-bun, flannel; beanie hat even though it’s April and out of style since 2012. “Is that you for real, man?”
Buck thinks his name is Dylan or Derek or something; he can’t recall whether he knows him from the football team or English class or what. “Yeah, man.” He plasters on the trademark grin. “How are you? Still in Hershey?”
“Got everything right here, dude,” Duncan answers. “Why would I ever need to leave?” His eyes narrow, not maliciously but digging for something that Buck’s too tired to parse out. “What about you? Last I heard, you were tied up on some beach in Virginia.”
Buck scratches the back of his neck. The take-out bag in his left hand is getting heavy. Honestly, he’d like for this conversation to be over with as soon as possible, before Devin starts asking whether he has a wife and kids to get home to and Buck rolls his eyes so hard he ends up on the headline of the local newspaper.
“Yeah, I’m uh, only in town for a few days,” Buck replies, neither confirming nor denying. “Hopefully.”
Granola guy laughs. “Hate Pennsylvania that much, huh?”
“No, it’s…” Great, he’s backed himself into the exact type of corner he was trying to avoid. But it’s a small enough town, if his mom has told anyone chances are the people who want to know will. “My dad’s in the hospital. So my sister and I are in town to help my mom out.”
Granola’s face falls just as a family exits the restaurant, chiming the little bell above the door as they laugh at something the teenage son said and head for their SUV. “Man, that sucks,” he says, very competently. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
It’s not even a stupid statement, but Buck’s so done with being back home that he resists the urge to go, “ Yeah, thanks ” and climb into the car, leaving this relic of the past standing in the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant that Buck doesn’t even like.
Somehow though, he exchanges goodbyes, ends the conversation, drives to the nearest empty parking lot and takes a moment to rest his forehead on the steering wheel. It’s shit. His chest has steadily been crawling into his throat ever since they drove to LAX and every time he sees Maddie and Chim together he longs for in a way he hasn’t since last December, but it’s still…
Thank God Eddie isn’t here to see how angry he is.
Buck leaves it at that.
Dinner is a tragic affair. Buck says this melodramatically to Maddie after it’s over—false politeness and pointed comments that make it feel more like an interrogation than a visit home—and she rolls her eyes at him, pointing him to the backyard and telling him to call Eddie. Like he needs to be told. Like he isn’t always thinking about Eddie. Like the only reason he hasn’t called him yet is because once they start talking, Buck doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop.
And also, there’s the whole, ‘ Love you ’ thing.
The backyard is peaceful. Buck’s parents never cared much for tending to living things, so there’s no garden, but the grass gets mowed at least once every two weeks, more than that in the summer probably. There are rose bushes in the corners, by the white picket fence. It’s everything Buck wants except—
Christopher wants a garden. He’s got a green-thumb, and Eddie probably does too, but he’s convinced he kills everything he touches and Buck knows it’s not his place to push it. Instead, he helps Chris plant the seeds in March, tells Eddie when to water them and by how much, and they’ve got a strawberry plant growing alongside some marigolds. When Buck kisses Eddie, he can taste the juice on his lips like a vindication.
And that’s probably a little too much to read into strawberry plants, but Buck thinks about it often, how good Eddie is in comparison to…all this. This empty, haunting backyard with its rose bushes and neatly trimmed turf, not a dandelion in sight versus his home with Eddie and Chris: a soccer ball strewn in one section and handheld bubble makers and nerf guns in the other, hose laying flat on the concrete of the deck, just to the side so no one trips on it.
Buck aches so badly it’s a wonder he’s still standing, cell phone one twitchy finger from slipping out of his grasp entirely and breaking on the concrete floor. He feels like he’s just taken his own hands and pressed the heel of them to his eyes, digging until he sees white and his head hearts. His heart has been in his throat since he got here and there’s absolutely no reason for it.
His mom and dad gave him a house to live in, they provided for him enough. Even if they were out of reach for most of it, it’s Buck’s job to help them. It’s not like…this is one of those times where he’s supposed to be useful.
He just doesn’t understand why they make it so fucking hard.
Buck taps at his phone, shaking. Eddie picks up on the first ring.
“Hey,” he says, voice sticky like honey and Buck wants to hug him, just be touched by his best friend so bad he might melt with it. He settles for sinking onto the deck floor. “I miss you.”
Buck doesn’t trust himself to speak. He clears his throat, makes a sort of huffing noise and blinks back the tears that are stinging at the corner of his eyes.
Eddie makes a sympathetic sound. “Baby—”
“No, I’m fine. Just,” Buck swallows. There’s no point crying when there’s nothing Eddie can do about it. Buck knows it’ll just make him feel worse than he already does. It’s an obvious deflection, but he changes the subject. Self-preservation. “Is Christopher in bed?”
“Just got him there,” Eddie replies. “He understands it enough, why you had to go, by the way. I mean, he hates it. Like father, like son on that one. But don’t…don’t worry that he’s mad at you or anything. He’s not.”
And Buck’s wading into dangerous territory, but he’s on enemy ground already anyway. What’s a few more punches? “This is going to sound so bad, but I wasn’t…you know, I wasn’t thinking of Chris like that. I know he wouldn’t be mad. He’s the greatest kid in the world.”
“Right,” Eddie says. There’s a shuffling noise. Buck envisions him moving around the kitchen with that furrow in between his eyebrows. “Or did you just not think he was going to miss you? Again.”
“Eddie—”
“I didn’t think you were going to call,” he admits, like Buck’s just drawn a confession out of him. “I wasn’t sure whether I could call you either.”
There’s something about a therapized Eddie that, while Buck adores, he can’t wrap his head around just yet. He can’t even call it an imbalance because clearly they weren’t before—December happened and Buck was none the wiser until Eddie was gathering them all up at the Christmas party to announce his resignation—but it’s a bit like…Buck’s open about literally everything, and he’s spoken to Eddie about his family issues before, but his mom being…well, his mom, seems so trivial in comparison to getting shot, watching your best friend get shot, that he’s on uneven footing. He doesn’t know what Eddie wants him to say.
“You can always call me,” Buck says, though it comes out sounding more like a question. “Why wouldn’t you be able to call me?”
“I feel like you’re upset with me. And—”
“Why on earth would I be upset with you?”
“Well, you just snapped at me,” Eddie says with much more patience than Buck deserves. “And I was trying to say that, and I’m not trying to Dr. Copeland you, but you’re allowed to be upset, even if…even if you think you’re not supposed to be.”
“I’m fine.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I am, and besides that’s not the reason—” Buck cuts himself off, except it’s Eddie so he’s already seen right through it. He’s probably been leading Buck to it the entire time anyway.
“I told you I loved you at the station,” he admits. “And I’ve been thinking about it since LAX. And I’m sorry.”
Eddie doesn’t say anything for a moment and Buck closes his eyes to try and stave off the headache he can feel building, jittery with nerves like he’s just come down from an adrenaline high. Every muscle in him feels taut, ready to snap if someone tugs on one.
“Okay,” Eddie says finally. “Did you not mean it then? The um, the sentiment, or whatever. I guess.”
“Of course I meant it,” Buck replies, louder and angrier than he intends to. He sighs again “Look, I’m, Eddie I don’t know if, you don’t deserve to have to listen to this. Me being mean and stupid. I mean, come on, it's so irrational. I’m just going to—”
“I want to know,” Eddie interrupts. “I want everything with you, Buck. Everything that you want to give me, I’ll take. Always. At least tell me you know that.”
And…And something settles in Buck’s chest then. Just a little bit, enough to be noticeable, one of the many missing puzzle pieces sinking into place. Two weeks isn’t long enough for every one of Buck’s insecurities to disappear—nor every one of Eddie’s—but they’re working on it. Together. Buck would do well to remember that.
“If I tell you this, do you promise not to mention it again?”
“Yes,” Eddie says immediately. “Though I think it might be a bit complicated trying to keep secrets from future us. Especially if that guy cares even half as much about you as I do now.”
Buck snorts, but doesn’t comment. If he loses his nerve now, he’s not sure he’ll ever get it back. “I hate that I told you at the station,” he starts, one of those rambles he’s not going to be able to come back from. Though it’s Eddie he’s saying it to, so Buck doesn’t really care.
“I hate that I started out this relationship between us by telling you I love you at the station where we work after I found out my dad was in a coma instead of a romantic, candle-lit dinner, or something else, like putting away the dishes after Christopher’s gone to bed, between whispers so we don’t wake him up. I hate that Maddie and Chim think me being upset about it is some sort of allegory for my issues with my parents. I hate that I told you I love you in the locker room like you’re some kind of afterthought and I—”
I hate that you’re in Los Angeles and not with me, is the end of that sentence but Buck doesn’t dare say it out loud, like he’s not already causing Eddie enough grief with this phone call. “Anyway,” he says in a small voice. “That’s the gist of it.”
“Buck,” Eddie says softly. “Buck, that’s… Buck.”
“‘s my name,” Buck replies wearily. “Don’t wear it out.”
“Buck,” Eddie repeats, a little desperate, like Buck isn’t listening. It’s a bit amusing, or maybe just enticing, to hear Eddie, normally so eloquent, saying Buck’s name like it’s the only one he remembers. Either way, Buck’s starting to think he should’ve booked an emergency session with Dr. Copeland.
“I know you love me,” Eddie struggles out finally. “I think I knew you loved me since—since the tsunami, in whatever way—”
“I just did what anyone else would have.”
“Maybe,” Eddie concedes. “But you loved me enough to want to tell me to my face. And you loved me through December, and every month before that. You love everyone, Buck. Even the people who don’t deserve it. I’ve known that about you since the day after we met, I think. It’s why I—
“Don’t,” Buck interrupts. “Please. Don’t tell me you love me now when I…”
“When you what, Buck?”
“When I,” Buck swallows, “When I’m here, in Pennsylvania. Don’t tell me now when I’m not sure I’ll be able to believe it.”
Eddie tells him about Chris’s day instead, a metaphorical bear hug that shoots warmth straight into Buck’s chest, and by the time they hang up, it’s already 10:30. Except the kitchen light is still on, and so Buck feels like he’s just slept through his alarm and is late for shift, even though it’s just his mother, in the kitchen. His mother who hates being in the kitchen if she can help it, and who would never just leave the light on for Buck out of courtesy.
Buck knows exactly what he’s walking into. He’s putting on a coat of armor. He thinks inside, his mother is drawing weapons in retaliation.
“Would it kill you to go to bed earlier?” She shoots at him as soon as he walks in, mug of something hot and steaming in her hands. Chamomile tea. The stuff that Bobby swears by on late-night shifts when everyone’s having trouble sleeping.
Buck rubs at his face and wonders if it would be too forward to make himself a cup, if his mother would frown at him and say, “ I would’ve made you some if you’d just asked. ” even though she could’ve come out to the backyard just as easily, like Buck offered to when they were visiting Los Angeles. He’s 30. It’s not his mother’s job to take care of him still, he knows that. But the familiarity of this space between them makes Buck wonder if she ever did.
“It’s only 10:30,” he points out.
“We’re going to the hospital early tomorrow morning,” she replies, in a tone that’s somehow both clipped and shaky. “Maddie and I decided. You know how you are in the mornings. And you know that I hate it when you’re out late and I’m sleeping through it.”
“I was literally in the backyard.”
“Are you really going to behave like this now? While your father’s in the hospital?” Her voice trembles. If she’s about to cry, Buck doesn’t know how he’s going to begin to handle it—maybe he’ll race upstairs and see if Maddie’s already asleep before anyone notices. “Can’t you help me out for one week, Evan? Just one week, that’s all I’m asking, for God’s sake.”
It’s late. And this isn’t a battle worth picking—they never are, in Buck’s head, especially not with—“Okay, I’m sorry,” he relinquishes. “Let’s not wake up Jee.”
They exist in silence for a few minutes, a rigid kind, sort of like the line of Buck’s shoulders as he walks around the kitchen knowing fully well that his mother’s eyes are watching his every move, trying to find something else to pick up on, Jee-Yun’s sleep be damned. Carefully, he puts the water boiler on and extracts the tea from the pantry, the same place it was 11 years ago, when Buck wasn’t in the business of drinking tea but Monster energy drinks instead.
“I ran into an old classmate at the Chinese place,” he says carefully. “Derek or…or something? He’s got a man-bun now. It looks awful.”
She accepts the peace offering for what it is, sniffing distastefully. “Wasn’t his mother on the school board?” She asks, and Buck doesn’t know but he figures it’s a rhetorical question anyway. “What did you talk about?”
“Nothing really,” he shrugs. “He asked why I was in town. I told him. He said something profound like ‘That sucks, man’ and I left.”
Over the counter, Buck can see his mom nod slowly. “You didn’t tell him where you are now?” She asks, almost in a confirmatory tone. “About…your life in Los Angeles?”
And with two sentences, she’s effectively broken Buck’s composure again. “You mean did I tell him about Eddie?” He gets out. “Which, I’m assuming you saw on Maddie’s Facebook, since I didn’t get a phone call, or you know, an email about it. Or are you talking about the firefighting? How reckless I am, how disappointing it is that your son isn’t working in an office making six figures like his dad? Come on, mom!”
“Come on, what? I just want my child to be safe!” She says, a little too loud to be a whisper, a little too soft to be a cry. “You always do this. I don’t—” she cuts herself off. “What about Eddie?” she demands. “Are you two actually…”
“He’s my boyfriend,” Buck states, leaving no room for argument. “Try and remember how upper-class liberal you are before you keep talking.”
“I’m not homophobic!” his mother exclaims, and Buck’s not sure if he’s glad that they skimmed over the firefighting debate again or not. “I think it’s perfectly nice.”
Eddie or the concept? Buck has to wonder. “I think that’s bullshit.”
“We’ve always been supportive, Evan!”
“Yeah sure,” Buck replies, as supportive as you are of anything else, I suppose. “You also thought it was a phase when you found out.”
She bites at her lip—one of the only habits Buck picked up from her that he hasn’t managed to get rid of—and he thinks she might want to ask if this, Eddie, he means, might just be a phase as well. If there isn’t some girl in his life that he never quite managed to get over.
He takes his tea in his hand, balancing the cup on his palm to take up to the guest bedroom where he’s sleeping. “I’m tired,” he says. “What time do I need to be up tomorrow?”
“Visiting hours start at 9.”
He nods, tries to imagine his dad comatose on a hospital bed and finds that he can’t. Not in the way his mom probably is, and he feels overwhelmingly guilty about it, everything. “I’ll come down at 8:30 then,” he says, keeping his voice softer than it’s been all evening. “Goodnight.”
Buck thinks about telling her he’s going to marry Eddie one day, but he doesn’t think she’ll believe him. Resting his head on his pillow, for entirely different reasons, Buck’s not sure he can believe it either.
Buck’s childhood bedroom still has his childhood bed and a bookshelf with a worn-out copy of The Lightning Thief resting beside an untouched version of the Great Gatsby that clearly indicates that he stopped doing his homework the same week he entered high school.
It’s an old house, but still well-maintained—refinished wood floors every 10 or so years, soot cleaned out of the fireplace every spring. The guest bedroom that Buck awakes in is unfamiliar but it’s pristine and smells a bit like lavender even though his mother switched to spiced candles ages ago—keeping up with the trends or something.
He doesn’t hear Jee-Yun wake up throughout the night, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t. Buck takes a shower and meets Maddie in the hallway, still pinning her hair into place with a dry smile that tells Buck the unfamiliarity of the bassinet got to his niece a little more than her parents would like. “You okay?” She asks.
“Kinda wish people would stop asking me that,” he replies. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
She looks herself over, and Buck guesses the question is kind of rude, even if it’s honest. “Not really,” she says, messing with her hair. “Chim will be out with her in a minute. I thought it’d probably be best to air out our morning ritual without Jee in the room.”
She pauses; glances at herself again. “You don’t think mom will say anything though, will you?”
“We’re visiting a hospital, not going to the Met Gala.”
“Okay,” Maddie draws out. They’re still both hovering at the top of the staircase. Buck can see the blue paint of his childhood bedroom peeling behind the headboard. “Remember when she wouldn’t let me wear leggings to school during finals week? Because they looked too skimpy.”
“Not really,” Buck says, because he was ten and convinced everything was about him. “But no one’s used the word ‘skimpy’ in at least 10 years so I believe you.”
Maddie grins at him. Buck shoots her a smile in return. Neither of them have a particularly dry sense of humor, and they also both know that about each other, but something about these four walls…They brave the staircase together. Downstairs, Buck can hear the coffee machine brewing.
“Good morning,” their mother greets as they enter the kitchen. She doesn’t give the slightest indication that the tense arguing from last night was anything but a fever dream. “What are you having for breakfast?”
“I’ll just have coffee,” Maddie says, reaching for the buttons of the Keurig machine that makes their station Hildy look like an original Game Boy in a store full of Nintendo Switches. Buck heads for the pantry, unless they only have Raisin Bran, in which case he’ll make a left to the fridge.
“Maddie,” their mother warns—a tone that’s only too familiar from school mornings, tying his shoelaces while his mom and his sister fight World War III over the dining table. “You have to eat something for breakfast. You can’t just have coffee. That would be bad parenting.”
Maddie’s face morphs into something like premeditated annoyance, like she’s about to pick an argument just for the hell of it. Their mom looks the same, stance shifting into something a bit more predatory. It’s never been Buck’s place before, but it is now, and he (a bit hypocritically) intervenes before anyone can start an argument.
“I don’t think we should do this now,” he says before Maddie can speak, which makes him feel incredibly out of place, because they’re usually on the same side in L.A. and they’ve never lived underneath the same roof in Pennsylvania long enough to fight. “I mean, Jee might come down any second.”
“Would it kill you to use her full name?” his mother mutters, and Buck groans out loud.
“He can say whatever he wants,” Maddie says snippily, not reaching for the cereal. “Since he’s her uncle and actually spends more than two days a year with her.”
And now Buck remembers why he doesn’t play the mediator, since Maddie’s usually right, or at the very least, their mother is incredibly wrong. “That’s true,” he says. “And also, it’s just a name.”
“Right.” The kitchen feels like a war zone. Slowly, Buck pours his coffee, keeping one eye behind him for the tossing of live grenades. “Any other grievances you want to air out with me before I step into a hospital for the first time in years?”
It’s incredibly petty and dramatic and Buck and Maddie are good people, really, but there’s something about the tone. They share a glance and resist the urge to roll their eyes in blatant view.
“Morning Buckleys!” Chim…doesn’t cheer but it’s a near thing, even though he still looks half-asleep. Jee-Yun makes a happily gurgling sound and Maddie’s expression goes from murderous to something so incredibly fond.
“You’ll be fine on your own?” Maddie asks softly, an easy, practiced transition of taking her daughter from Chim’s arms. “What do you plan on doing today?”
“Jee-Yun and I are going grocery shopping,” Chim replies brightly. It’s a voice Buck never hears from him except around Maddie. “And then we are going to attempt lunch.”
“Lunch,” Jee-Yun agrees, and then bursts into giggles.
It’s 5 in the morning in Los Angeles. Buck checked his phone in the morning to a late goodnight text from Eddie, a text from Bobby hoping everything is going well, or at least half-decent, and a text from Hen echoing the sentiment.
Now, he looks at his lockscreen. Christopher and Eddie at one of the Grant-Nash barbeques, both grinning. Christopher is wearing Buck’s sunglasses over his regular ones and Eddie has his own on to match, tongue sticking through his teeth in a way that Buck can tell how happy he is, even with the shades covering his eyes.
Eddie had texted ‘ call me when you wake up ’, no doubt with his ringer off vibrate where it usually resides and phone at full volume. Buck isn’t actually going to do that, but he appreciates the sentiment. His phone buzzes, startling him, but it’s just Ravi sending him a TikTok with the caption ‘ manifesting this for you ’. Buck doesn’t watch it, but tells him to go to sleep with all the gratitude he can muster through a cell phone.
An anxiety’s been building in his stomach since he woke up. He gets why Maddie doesn’t want breakfast; he thinks if it wasn’t habitual at this point he wouldn’t be able to choke anything down either, but the goodness of the people on his side, even if most of them are back home, makes the pressure ease. He’s back in Pennsylvania, carrying the same weight as he was when he was 19, but now he has a safety net. Somehow, that makes all the difference.
Maddie looks at their mother, and then back at her daughter. “There’s a McDonalds…”
“I could use a hash brown,” Buck agrees quickly.
Chimney looks like he’s trying not to smack his gum awkwardly. Buck’s mother rolls her eyes. “Fine,” she says, turning the other direction. “Good morning, Jee-Yun!”
She scoops up Jee-Yun without asking, which makes Maddie’s mouth twice disapprovingly. But it’s easier to just let it go and take Jee’s diaper bag from Chim, pulling it over her shoulder while he messes with the stroller to get it to fold so that it’ll fit in the car. “You don’t even like hash browns,” Maddie points out.
“I know,” Buck agrees solemnly. “It’s called being a great little brother. Remember this the next time you and Chim ditch me at the bar to go sing karaoke.”
“Just bring Eddie,” Chimney says, clapping Buck on the shoulder. “According to him, you do a mean rendition of Dancing Queen in the shower.”
Buck groans, but Maddie and Chim laugh at him and head towards the front door behind Buck’s mother. He grabs keys to the family car even though he would much prefer the unfamiliar rental and figures, well, there have been worse mornings.
He doesn’t think there have been worse mornings applies when your father is in the hospital, but Buck only remembers where they’re going once he gets there.
Hershey Medical Center is a familiar sight to him—he’s ended up here more times than he can count—broken bones and head injuries and even the flu one year when it got so bad that his fever burned up any medicine they tried to put in him. It’s a strange building, with half of the structure looking like a picture from the early 1900’s and the other half clearly newly renovated with glass walls and contemporary art projects lining the sidewalk, but it’s familiar.
The parking isn’t. He’s never really had to drive here to visit someone else; besides, he didn’t have a car until Maddie gave him her Jeep, and Buck doesn’t think the nurses would appreciate him revving a motorcycle outside while they tended to their patients. He drives around looking for a space, squinting his eyes.
“Be careful,” his mother warns him, in a tone of voice that just grates against Buck’s skin like nails on a chalkboard. “It’s a small area. Don’t hit anything.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Buck mutters back, turning the wheel as slowly and exaggerated as possible. A pedestrian gives him a look like, really? and Buck just pretends it’s meant for his mom in a spiteful sort of way.
“Evan,” his mother says, like maybe he hadn’t actually been listening the first time. She’s been speaking to him like this ever since he turned 13, like he was sort of inevitably doomed to be a fuck up; that it was in his nature to be. “Don’t bring this attitude into the hospital.”
And it is a reminder, in some misguided way. Buck’s almost 31 now, not the 19-year-old who talked back to his parents because he was a zoo animal trapped in a cage, and offense was the only sort of defense there, whether that meant hurting them or himself.
He nods, trying to make it seem genuine. “I won’t,” he promises, and Maddie shoots them both a nervous look anyway. Buck ignores it. “I promise. Let’s just go.”
Maddie pulls him back as they head towards the main doors. They’re just out of earshot, far enough away that their mother won’t pick up on anything they say. “She’s riling to pick a fight.”
“You think?” Buck replies sarcastically.
“She always is,” Maddie murmurs. She lets go of his arm. “Just…I don’t know. I’m getting tired of always fighting with her. It’s the same thing every time.”
“I know, Maddie,” he says. “She doesn’t deserve me bringing up shit while dad’s in the hospital. I know.”
Maddie’s always been the less emotional one. She speaks and they listen and maybe it has something to do with her being the oldest; her taking care of Buck when they were too busy mourning Daniel for 18 years to take care of their other children, but they listen to her when she tells them to lay off Buck. She got with Doug out of spite, and then stayed with him because she’d always been the practical one. She wasn’t allowed to let anything get to her.
Buck doesn’t have that in him. He’s smart because he made himself that way. He’s good because he made himself good, in spite of it all. And maybe his parents know that—that he’s not a natural at anything like Maddie is—because they never listen to what he has to say. His mother snaps at him and Buck shouts back and then she dissolves into tears and they ignore each other until Buck can find another tree branch to throw himself off of, but he can’t do that anymore. Not in Pennsylvania like he could in LA, with a support system.
If he’s being honest, he’s gotten so tired of fighting these last few years, he doesn’t really want to anymore.
“Buck,” Maddie reminds him. “We don’t deserve that either.”
“Will you two please hurry up?” their mother asks, because she knows they’re talking about her and she hates it, never mind that she and the other Pennsylvania socialites make disparaging comments about everyone around them all the time.
“Coming,” Buck replies.
He doesn’t look up from the tile floor as they enter, like maybe everyone in the waiting room knows that Buck’s heart really isn’t in the visit and is watching him trudge across to the elevators judgmentally. In his peripheral, he can see Maddie twisting the bracelet around her wrist anxiously—the one Chimney bought her for their two-year anniversary. Buck’s first glance up is to the clock resting on the wall in front of them. Eddie’s shift starts in five minutes.
Buck thinks he’s been a bad boyfriend this trip. Or no, he’s pretty sure he is actually. Usually, after shift, the first thing Buck will do is call Eddie and connect him to the Bluetooth, which is totally unsafe driving but it’s only 10 minutes from the station to his apartment downtown, only 15 if Buck’s following Eddie back to the Diaz house, and they’ll be on the phone for hours afterwards like a cheesy high school couple from a romcom.
It’s not about Eddie taking care of him, or the I love you s, or anything like that. If they were back home, maybe the locker room after a shit call with a child or the ladder truck after being so bogged down with work that they barely had time to eat, they would find comfort in each other without the bravery or pretense. Buck has no problem letting Eddie take care of him when he needs it, but—
How do you confess to your best friend that you think you might be an awful person and have them accept it?
He thinks he could say, I think I care more about being left alone with my mother than my father dying and mean it. It’s not that he doesn’t care. He does. If anything…if anything happens it’ll be an ache in his chest whenever he sees a man with glasses holding up a newspaper, sipping a cup of coffee, or when he clicks on the TV to a tennis match instead of morning cartoons.
But that’s all it will be. An ache, not a gaping wound like Eddie 40 feet underground or Maddie in a car with Doug somewhere miles away from California. His parents put a roof over their heads; made sure they always had food to eat. Buck should feel something.
He doesn’t though, and he’s not sure even Eddie can absolve him of that guilt.
“What’s the room number?” Maddie asks as they walk up to the elevators. It’s not very crowded at this time of day. Buck knows that most people visit family members in the afternoon. He figures that’s why their mother insisted they come now—to minimize their chance of running into someone she knows and having to make small talk, as people in Hershey are prone to do.
“516.”
Buck jams the button with a bit too much force once they get inside. His mother side-eyes him, but she’s also biting her lip so hard, he thinks she might rip right through it. So neither of them point it out.
“Maddie,” she requests, voice shaky. “Would you—”
“Yeah, I’ll talk to them,” Maddie says. “It’ll just be easier.”
Because I’m a former nurse, is what she means. Because I’m the oldest and used to this, handling everything. Because I’m here, and everything will be fine.
Maybe it’s the proximity, or Pennsylvania or the circumstances, but for the first time in his life, Maddie’s comfort makes something twist in his stomach. And maybe Buck’s just projecting, but he thinks Maddie had just grouped him with their mother—shoved them in a corner labeled: too emotional, won’t ask the right things because they don’t know how —and it feels like something he already knew coming home to rest. However fitfully. Like everyone’s been making this joke for ages and Buck was just too slow on the intake.
If he said this to anyone, they’d say he’s overreacting; being dramatic or anxious or making a mountain out of a molehill. He’s said the same thing about his own mother for the last 15 years though, and he thinks that just proves his point.
“What are we walking into?” Buck asks, suddenly aware that they haven’t talked about the details as the Buckley family tends to. “How bad is it, mom?”
“Evan, just, just don’t right now, okay?”
“Don’t what?” he counters. “I was just—”
“He was in a car accident,” Maddie points out in a much calmer tone. She’s been doing that more often as Buck grows older, defending him by answering what his mother won’t. “I think it’s fair to assume it’ll be pretty bad.”
“That’s all I was asking!” If Maddie can tell that he completely misses the answer, she doesn’t say anything. The elevator dings and lets them out. Their mother marches in front of them haughtily. “She’s being so—”
“I know,” Maddie replies. “It sucks.”
“I feel like she never does this with you,” he whines, like he’s 14 again and Maddie came home to visit for the weekend. “Not that I want her to, but it’s—”
“Buck,” Maddie interrupts, and Buck feels another wave of guilt. She’s got a daughter to take care of now; she really doesn’t need her younger brother to add to the load. “You can’t expect her to pay attention to you and be kind to you at the same time.”
“She’s never kind.”
“Good then,” she corrects. “You can’t expect her to pay attention to you and be good to you at the same time.”
Unless I injure myself, Buck thinks, and then he shuts that line of thought down immediately.
Except…isn’t that exactly what he’s doing? He’s too old to be throwing himself off tree branches and skateboarding in the middle of the road but he’s picking fights with his mother that he knows will leave scars anyway, leaving his phone on kitchen counters and dodging Eddie’s texts because he’s not supposed to feel safe in Pennsylvania. He can’t. It would tear him apart and break him down and everything would just be so…
Real.
And his father is lying on a hospital bed. Buck has a boyfriend who he’s in love with and a kid that’s practically his and he was finally supposed to be happy in the same space Eddie is happy in. But his dad is lying on a hospital bed and Buck thinks if he thinks about that as a part of his own reality, he won’t be able to take it.
They stop in front of room 516. There’s a window facing the hallway but the shutters are drawn. Nurses are walking back and forth, brushing past them. Maddie stops one and asks if the doctor for this patient could stop by to give them an update any time soon.
Buck opens the door first. Out of both Maddie and their mother, he thinks he has the smallest relationship with their father. The most inconsequential. He steadies himself, and looks into the room.
“Oh, jeez,” he mutters; takes a moment, and crosses the room to open the blinds and let some light in.
“Oh my god,” Maddie echoes. “Mom, you didn’t say it was…”
“I don’t know, Maddie,” she replies, voice shaking so bad the words are hardly discernible. “I just, I don’t know.” And she sits down in the chair closest to the bedside and takes their father’s hand.
He’s motionless on the hospital bed, one arm in a cast on top of his chest and the other resting by his side, parallel to his body. He looks pale, even in the sunlight, hair stark straight but scattered on his forehead, dangling into his eyes. Bruises dot almost every inch of his skin that Buck can see; there’s a bump around his stomach where the nurses must have bandaged a gash on his abdomen. The heart monitor has a good read on him. His eyes are closed. Maddie takes his other hand. It’s still larger than hers.
All that, Buck had expected walking in. What he hadn’t expected was the way his father looked so…
That’s Buck’s father lying on the hospital bed. His dad, who took him to get ice cream and bought Maddie a new Jeep for her 16th birthday, the same one she gave to him later. Buck remembers the missed therapy sessions and the yelling and the absence, and he knows logically that he’s not at a funeral giving his eulogy, but his head is buzzing with remorse anyway.
“Oh, look at him,” their mother wavers. “Even if he does wake up, it’ll be miserable.”
Buck looks up sharply. “Well, what’s the alternative?” he asks. “Why are you acting like death would be better than being alive?”
“He’ll be miserable, Evan!” Their mother’s tone is increasingly dissolving into a whispered-shriek. They’ve been here less than two minutes. “He won’t be able to do anything! It's what he wants!”
He’ll be useless, Buck registers. And if he’s going to be useless, he might as well be dead.
No doubt that’s what his father wants. If Buck knows the man even half as well as he thinks he does, his pride always wins out in the end. He’s a decent guy—donates to charities, doesn’t make snide comments underneath his breath about people who have one arm or can’t see; the bare minimum, but he clears that bar at least. Unless it’s about himself.
It’s callous if anything. Buck knows his mother loves her husband, definitely more than she loves her children. But maybe it hits a little too close to home, a little too close to being under a firetruck, on a cold night, four years ago. A little too close to climbing a train car to save someone but also just for the hell of it, because if it was going to be anyone, it might as well have been Buck.
“Can’t you be a little thoughtful?” his mother asks. There are tears in her eyes. Buck has to keep from rolling his own. “Do you always have to pick an argument?”
Buck opens his mouth to reply; point out that she’s the one yelling and also the one who’s suggesting death might be more merciful than a motorized wheelchair, but the door opens and a doctor wearing a white coat and a neutral expression walks in and tense silence falls over them. It’s probably incredibly obvious that they were just yelling at each other, but thankfully, the doctor’s face doesn’t change.
“Mrs. Buckley,” the doctor greets, obviously familiar with Buck’s mother. “And these must be your children?”
Her eyes are still rimmed red, but Buck figures that’s not uncommon here. He wonders if the doctor heard them yelling in the hall; notices that Buck’s shaky on his feet. He’s thinking of Christopher, his kid, who’d once sat with him on top of a firetruck in the middle of a tsunami, saying, “ I tried complaining once. It didn’t work.”
What’s the alternative?
“Yes,” she replies. “Maddie, my oldest, and Evan.”
“It’s good to meet you,” she says. Buck glances down at her name tag: Dr. Jacobs. “I wish the circumstances were better.”
It sounds well-practiced, just kind enough for it to seem authentic and Buck reaches out his hand to shake hers; watches as she moves on to greet Maddie. But for a moment, she’d looked at Buck, and Buck specifically, with something like pity, glancing over to his mother in the next beat with that same neutral expression. He might just be seeing things, but he feels like there’s something he’s missing. It’s making him restless, among other things. He taps his fingers on his jeans.
“Better,” Maddie repeats, “Is there—has there been a deterioration?”
“Not particularly,” Dr. Jacobs answers. Her brown hair is tied back in a bun and she looks like an alternate version of Maddie if she stayed in Pennsylvania, a little defeated behind the eyes. Buck noticeably towers over her, but she doesn’t seem intimidated in the slightest. “In fact, most of his vitals are showing improvement.”
“Except?” Maddie prompts. Their mother holds her breath, eyes drilling into her husband’s hand like she can will it to move.
Dr. Jacobs sighs. “Look,” she says. “I’ll be candid.” She looks at Buck and presses her lips together, like she’s the one who’s uncomfortable. “You might want to sit down.”
Buck’s eyes sting, not with tears really, but another emotion entirely—one he doesn’t have a name for but feels substantially worse. Fury, maybe. Something overwhelming. “He’s going to die, isn’t he?” Buck asks. “That’s what you’re going to say.”
“Evan,” his mother gasps out, like she hasn’t guessed the same. Maddie too, with the way she closes her eyes and forcefully inhales. “Why would you—?”
The doctor doesn’t seem unnerved, but she does relax her shoulders and show some sympathy for the first time during the entire visit. “It’s extremely likely,” she says. “From the moment he exited surgery, it was extremely likely that he wouldn’t wake up. He’s got a chance, but I won’t lie to you and say it’s not a minuscule one.”
Buck exhales shakily and tries to swallow the words as soon as they leave Dr. Jacobs’s mouth, except it gets caught in his throat and stays there, building like a rainstorm and tasting like dust. He coughs around it; the feeling doesn’t leave.
Maddie’s silent, but she’s crying, wrapping her hands around their mother’s, who looks like her worst fears have just come true, except she’s staring directly at Buck and there’s something that’s just—
“But he’s in a coma,” Buck says. “What happens if he stays there? I-I mean what are our options?”
“He dies eventually,” Dr. Jacobs says. “There’s no way to predict when. And, I’m not trying to sway your decision, Mr. Buckley, but the chances of your father waking up really are very minimal. He can stay incubated, but making the decision to take him off rather than simply letting it happen will at least let you say goodbye.”
“'Your decision?” Buck repeats, that coiling feeling in his stomach only rearing up like a snake hissing and spitting. “What—what are you…? My mom,” he gestures over to her without looking. “ She’s the medical proxy.”
Dr. Jacobs frowns, rifling through the pages on her clipboard. “It says right here.” She points out, tilting it so that he can see. “Evan Buckley, medical proxy of Philip Buckley.”
Buck shakes his head violently. No, no, no. Not this reality. “That can’t be right.”
“Evan,” his mother says quietly.
He whirls around to face her. Maddie lets go of her hand. She’s looking at their mother with a hurt expression and Buck can’t fucking stand that either. “That can’t be right!” He insists. “Why—why the hell would he do that?”
Her face shutters and Buck is…he doesn’t know how he’s still standing. Why would he do that? Buck asks himself bitterly. Because his mother’s never shown up to a hospital when it mattered anyway, and they cut off Maddie as soon as she left with Doug. Because his dad has taken him to the hospital more than anyone else, and that’s all he knows Buck is good for. Ending up here.
“I…” Maddie says, voice timid like he’s never heard it. “Mom, you can’t be serious.” She looks at Dr. Jacobs and shakes herself out of whatever she’s sinking into. “What happens if he refuses?”
“I’m not a lawyer,” Dr. Jacobs replies, too calm, too pitying, looking like she’d known Buck wasn’t right for the job as soon as she saw the name on paper, without even knowing him. “But it’s a long, drawn-out process. You’d have to go to the courts and appeal.”
She nods at Buck, like she’s trying to help him. “He probably figured you wouldn’t refuse.”
“That’s not fair—”
“No,” Buck agrees, interrupting Maddie. “I wouldn’t.”
He shuts his eyes; counts to three to try and stave off whatever’s been building in his chest for a little while longer. He’s not going to have a panic attack in front of his mother. He refuses to.
“How long do I have?” he asks finally. “To make a decision, one—one way or the other?”
Dr. Jacobs hesitates. “As much time as you need,” she settles on. “Like I said, Mr. Buckley, we can’t make the decision for you. Either you choose to take him off the ventilator now, or he passes eventually—a few months time give or take.”
“Evan,” his mother says sharply. “You’re not seriously considering—”
“I don’t know,” he snaps. “I just got this information. You’ve clearly been sitting on it ever since I got to Pennsylvania. So could you give me a little bit of space, mom?”
There’s an irony there—he hasn’t been able to take a fucking breath since they drove to Los Angeles airport; since Eddie looked him over in the locker room and asked Buck to call him every evening. Because one of these days—one of these moments when he’s just being told things as if they’re inconsequential—Buck’s going to shatter like glass, and Eddie won’t be in town to help pick up the pieces.
Maddie stands and puts a hand on Buck’s forearm. The touch is probably meant to be relaxing but it feels more like he’s just come into contact with livewire and it’s mean of him, judging by the way Maddie’s face falls, but he snatches his arm away. Everything feels too loud; too warm too much. None of the feelings that thrum through his blood leave room for Maddie to comfort him.
“I’ll ask one of the nurses to give you my phone number in case you have any questions,” Dr. Jacobs says to Maddie. “And I’m here from 10 to 7 every day.”
Buck clenches his fingers so hard, he thinks that they’ll snap. His mother looks like she wants to leave it at that. Maddie stands, hovering, just like she was when she broke the news to Buck at the station.
They sit in silence for twenty minutes waiting for some sort of sign. Just like Buck knew it wouldn’t, it never comes.
“I can’t believe you,” Maddie snaps as soon as they’re in the car, windows rolled up and anyone they might know far, far out of earshot. “What the hell were you thinking? Making Buck dad’s medical proxy?”
“I had nothing to do with it!” Their mother shrieks back. “I told him to make you the person in charge, Maddie, but he refused to—”
“And you didn’t tell us?” Maddie demands. “You didn’t tell Buck, at the very least? Just kept it buried just like you did with Daniel, because you were scared of his reaction?”
“Don’t talk about that. Maddie, you just, ugh!”
“You’re so hypocritical with this shit. God. You want nothing to do with us except to fly out to Pennsylvania for your needs and your problems—”
“If we don’t have you two, then who do we have?”
“Funny,” Maddie says dryly. “I was going to say the same thing about—Buck?”
“Yeah?” he replies, opening his eyes to see her staring at him through the rearview.
“You—the keys, they’re digging into your hand.”
His arm is resting on the door, the thin line where window glass and plastic meet, and Maddie’s sitting in the passenger seat, so she doesn’t know how she can make out the flexing motion Buck’s making—tightening his hands into a fist and releasing—but he’s glad she pointed it out. By now, the metal’s made tiny indents into his palm, too dull to draw any blood but still stinging and sharp, like a raw wound.
“Oh,” he says, in a voice that’s so abnormally tiny he wants to take himself by the shoulders and rattle his body back and forth. This isn’t him at all—definitely not the version of Buck his mother knows, sitting with pursed lips and a careful gaze in the passenger seat—but he’s not exactly sure how to fix it. It feels like too much effort against the rising headache. “Thanks.”
Maddie shares a look with their mother, jostling the center console with her elbow. “Let me drive.”
“I can drive, Maddie.”
“Buck,” she says gently. “Take a minute.”
“No,” he protests, and now he can hear the anger coming to play; his mother’s shoulders relax at the sound of it and he wants to be sick. He’s so done being angry.
He must sound hysterical, or nearly there at any rate, but there’s a gaping hole in the center of her chest, working its way up to his throat, and there, just beneath his chin, his grief is fighting with his anger and creating…well it’s creating nothing at all. Because he doesn’t know what he’s grieving and he doesn’t know what he’s angry at, and it feels too selfish to make his father’s coma about himself.
“I can drive,” he says again, and starts the engine to prove it. Maddie bites her lip but doesn’t argue, and their mother has a thing about men in the family being better drivers. Besides, she’s still red in the face after yelling at Maddie.
It only takes 5 minutes to get from the hospital back to their house and they could sit in silence but Buck thinks if somebody doesn’t say something he might accidentally drive them all off the road. “Why do you think they didn’t call us?”
His mother takes a minute before responding. “What do you mean?”
“Like,” he turns right into the neighborhood. “They didn’t call you to give you any updates on dad’s condition?”
His mother takes in a shuddering breath and turns away from him, looking out the window with those tears in her eyes again. They don’t fall, like they’ve run all out, or like maybe she’s saving them for something else. Either way, she doesn’t answer, and Buck didn’t mean to be callous with the question, but there's no room for guilt in his stomach anyway.
“We got there early,” Maddie reasons. “If mom had just visited last night and they ran the tests this morning, well…it makes sense.”
Buck glances back at her when they stop at a stop sign. “He should’ve made you the proxy.”
“Buck—”
“No, I mean it. Forget not telling us, what was going through dad’s head when he made me the medical proxy in the first place?”
Maddie’s shoulders slump. “I don’t know,” she confesses. “You’re more well-read than I am.”
“You went to nursing school.”
“But with current events and stuff. You’re kinder than I am.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Well, I don’t know, Evan.” Buck doesn’t miss the use of his first name, but he’s too exhausted to try and figure out the implications. He pulls into the driveway. “I think none of us know what he was thinking except for maybe mom.”
Beside him, their mother sighs; wrings her hands. They both look at her a bit expectantly, like they did when they were children and she told them not to shower during a thunderstorm and they wanted to know why. “He changed it after that incident with the firetruck,” she says finally.
“Two years ago?” Maddie asks in surprise. “I thought—he did it that recently?”
“He said—” Their mother blinks back tears, like they’re already talking about a dead man. She looks at Buck and runs a hand through his hair like he’s a little kid and sobs. “He said he knew you would never give up on him.”
Briefly, Buck considers what it means that they didn’t travel across the country when he got crushed by the ladder truck versus his own presence in Pennsylvania now. He knows that love isn’t supposed to be about reciprocation, but the only thing you’re sure of when you’re born is that you need your parents—that feeling never quite goes away.
He feels like he could choke on the next breath he takes, sitting there, asphyxiating on nothing in his mom’s car—the one he almost never saw the inside of because they never went anywhere together, him and his mother, not without something exploding and leaving shrapnel for him to pick out years later. For the first time, the scream building in his chest isn’t made out of hatred, but seemingly, it feels like it’s made out of nothing at all. 19 years in Pennsylvania that he’s expected to somehow remember.
He doesn’t think his mother is lying, is the thing. He has no doubt that his parents saw the ladder truck explosion on the news, got all the non-descriptive details about his recovery from Maddie, and praised Buck behind closed doors. So really, in some twisted way, he thinks the reason he’s not angry at being in the dark about his father’s will is because, for one moment, they saw the good in him instead of the bad.
“I don’t know, mom” he says finally, answering the unspoken question in the room. He shuts off the engine and opens the door, half-way out the car before anyone else reacts. “I just, I really don’t know.”
Chimney asks him how the visit went as soon as he enters the kitchen, his mom and Maddie bickering behind him. Buck gives him a non-committal answer and makes his way up to his room in a sort of daze. Somehow, he falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.
Chimney wakes him up by shaking his arm and muttering, “Hey, Buck.”
“Mmph?” He mumbles, feeling worse than when he went to sleep, like maybe the nightmare he had about being slowly melted into a vat of milk chocolate was actually real and now he’s a melty chocolate person whose arms ache because they’ve become gelatinous. He blinks one eye open and shuts it just as fast.
“Eddie’s in the hospital.”
“What?” Buck bolts upright, adrenaline pumping through his veins so fast his mind isn’t even awake to remember what the feeling’s called. He narrowly misses careening into Chim’s forehead. “He’s—?”
“Not like that, oh my God,” Chimney yelps, standing beside the bed wide-eyed and arms waving in the air to emphasize his point. As if Buck currently can hear anything except Eddie’s in the hospital. “He’s just getting stitches on his arm. He cut it on a call.”
Buck ignores him, grabbing his phone off the nightstand. I’m fine period. Siri send no siri what the hell and a second text that reads fucking hate technology.
None of this is reassuring. Buck goes to his favorites and presses the call icon before his boyfriend can do something like attempt to disable his phone entirely in an effort to get rid of Siri who he thinks is really Hildy in disguise. It takes three rings before Eddie picks up, and Buck is clamping down on his bottom lip the entire time.
“I’m fine, ” Eddie says before Buck has the chance to ask. “I just cut my arm on a scrap of metal on a sewer rescue. It was disgusting. You’re lucky you weren’t there.”
“I should’ve been.”
“Buck,” Eddie laughs, but the sound doesn’t diffuse the worry in Buck’s chest like it normally does. “It was a stupid mistake. You couldn’t have done anything.”
Buck pauses. Chimney shoots him a worried glance and Buck wants to snap at him to leave but he’s pretty sure that would open up a box of emotions he won’t be able to come back from. It’s clear by the way they’re looking at each other that Chimney knows about the will, and he knows that Eddie doesn’t know, and he’s waiting for Buck to tell him.
If that’s the case, he’ll be waiting here a while.
“When was your last tetanus shot?” Buck asks. “If you cut yourself on something dirty, it’ll have to be at least 5 years ago. Or you need to get another one.”
Eddie’s a medic and the father of a 12-year-old; obviously, he already knows all of this, but he lets Buck ramble anyway. “I got my booster three years ago,” he confirms. “They’re getting my discharge paperwork ready now. I promise you, I’m okay. ”
He opens his mouth to reply but Chim is still lurking in the corner, hesitant expression on his face. Buck tilts his head and gestures to his phone: What are you still doing here?
“Glad to hear you’re okay, man,” Chim says, as if Buck’s given him some sort of permission. He didn’t mean to, but if it makes him leave faster then he can give Eddie his condolences. “Buck, don’t come downstairs, okay? I think your mom’s waiting to talk to you about the uh…the thing.”
Motherfucker.
“What thing?” Eddie asks, but Chimney’s already shutting the door softly behind him. “What’s going on?”
“I’m fine,” Buck repeats Eddie’s words from earlier, but they sound dull and lifeless and not at all convincing which makes Buck wince. There Eddie is in the hospital and the only thing Buck can find the energy to do is worry over him, except now Eddie’s going to interrogate Buck and wheedle the answers out of him and Buck will have failed at protecting Eddie for the second time that day. “It’s nothing.”
“Uh huh,” Eddie replies sarcastically. “You—oh thanks. No, I’m familiar with the…hmm? Oh, yeah, he’s out of town. I’m actually on the phone with him now. Yeah, my boyfriend. Okay, thank you. I would say see you around but uh…”
He laughs at something the nurse says but it sounds a little forced. They do one more round of pleasantries and the background chatter of the hospital dies down as Eddie makes his way outside. “Okay, I’m back now.”
“Should you even be driving?”
“They’re stitches, Buck,” Eddie replies. “I didn’t have open heart surgery.” And that’s the end of it, except, “Cap’s taking me home,” he finishes, as if any of the 118 would let him go to the hospital by himself. “I’ll get the truck from the station later.”
“Where did you get cut?” Buck presses.
“My forearm,” Eddie says. “And don’t think I can’t tell you’re deflecting. I can.”
Buck hears the car door shut and Bobby’s quiet murmur of, “ What’s it looking like?” and, “ Is that Buck?” The familiarity washes over him, Saturday barbeques and fatherly affection that never deserved, but never had to ask for. He closes his eyes and lets out a shaky exhale.
There’s some part of him that still feels like a burden, even now, after Eddie’s back with the 118 and countless therapy sessions with Dr. Copeland. Even after Bobby brought him aside after that one late-night shift where no one could sleep and told him how proud he is of the man Buck’s become.
He scrubs at his face and forces himself to his feet so that he can turn the lights off and pull the blinds open. They’d gotten back from the hospital at around 11:30. The digital clock on his nightstand says it’s nearly 3:00. Buck should feel well-rested, but now that the adrenaline’s worn off, all he feels is nauseous. A little bit cold. He shivers, squinting against the low afternoon sun.
“Buck!” Eddie calls from the speakerphone. “Where did you go?”
Buck means to walk around, phone in hand, get at least some exercise in what’s otherwise been a very unproductive day, but that idea makes it to the foot of his bed. He flops back down on top of the blanket and puts the phone by his head. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Just got distracted for a second.”
“Are you okay?”
He laughs bitterly in response and his head throbs for his trouble. His arms and legs feel like anchors where they dig into the sheets. Every breath he takes feels like he’s fighting against molasses. But telling two of the people that he’s pretty sure will always be there for him can’t make him any worse. “They don’t think my dad’s going to wake up.”
“ Buck.” Eddie sounds so…mournful as he says his name, like—like that’s what Buck should be grieving. And Buck doesn’t know because he’s always taken all of his cues from Eddie, but that isn’t, it doesn’t fit like it’s supposed, in the logic puzzle of his brain.
“I’m really sorry, kid,” Bobby says sincerely. “Did the doctor give you any more information?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “She told me that my dad made me his medical proxy, so that was fun.”
For a second, it’s silent except for the hum of the engine and surrounding traffic. Then Eddie mutters, “ Jesus fucking Christ ” and Buck knows it’s bad because Bobby doesn’t even make that hum of disapproval he does whenever someone puts those particular words in that particular order.
“What are you saying, Buck?” Bobby asks. “I mean, he can’t possibly have—”
“Oh no, he did.” Buck stares up at the light fixture on his ceiling, wondering how long he has before his mother barges in without knocking. Small, in the grand scheme of things, but still frustrating. “Said it was because I’d never give up on him.”
“That’s not fair,” Bobby states, unequivocally, like it’s true. Like maybe this isn’t some sort of fucked up version of karma that only Buck could attract. “It shouldn’t be on you, Buck. You’re just a kid.”
“Well, it is.” The sound of other cars fades as Bobby turns onto Bedford street. Buck knows it like the back of his hand; he makes that same turn several times a week. “And I don’t know what to do, Bobby.”
It’s times like these where he thinks he’s testing the boundaries. He never quite means to make Bobby responsible for him—he’s got two children already, doesn’t need Buck to add to that—but he can’t help it, not when Bobby gives his affection out so freely, remembering Buck’s favorite foods and buying extra Kleenex boxes for the station around hay fever season.
The car shuts off. He’d forgotten that reaching Eddie’s house meant that Bobby had to go back to work. It’s nearly 12 o’clock there. Christopher will be coming home from school any minute, early-release on the two days before break, probably wanting Eddie’s full attention to talk about the logistics of his Spring camp. He takes it very seriously. When Buck was over last week he’d spotted a checklist in Christopher’s bedroom. Eddie had ruffled his hair and fondly remarked, “ Like father, like son, ” and Buck hadn’t known how to respond.
Buck sighs; cuts off whatever Bobby’s saying. “You should go,” he says. “You have work and Eds, you should rest. You guys can just call me later. Whenever—”
“Not a chance,” Eddie announces. “You’re going to tell me more about the will and you’re going to say hi to Christopher.”
“I’ll call you later,” Bobby promises. “As soon as I’m off shift. You’ve got people in your corner, Buck. Me, Eddie. Chim, Hen, Ravi, your sister. You’re not going to go through this alone.”
You’re on the other side of the country, Buck thinks sullenly, letting Eddie and Bobby say their goodbyes to each other. Even if they were here—Bobby or Hen or Ravi (for some strange reason)—Buck’s not so sure how he’d react. He thinks the only people he really wants here have either just come back from the hospital, or are headed to sleep-away camp in a couple of days. And as guilty as he feels, Bobby’s words against that gaping wound where his boys should be, don’t help even a little bit.
Eddie hits the FaceTime button as soon as he shuts the front door. The ring startles Buck so much that he doesn’t remember to make some excuse to decline it, laying on his side with his hand underneath the pillow and phone propped up on the wall like he’s recovering from the flu.
“Hi,” Eddie says, grinning seemingly in spite of himself. The freckle under his left eye stands out under the bright lighting. All Buck knows for sure right then is that he wants to kiss it.
When he remembers that he can’t, a sob tears its way up his throat. A complete overreaction but fair when Eddie in California feels like the end of the world. Eddie’s expression flickers on the other end. Buck hates putting that look there, the crease between his eyebrows, the worry in his eyes—wide and doe-like—he thinks he’ll never stop hating that look directed at him. Like he’s worth it.
“I miss you,” Buck murmurs.
“Yeah,” Eddie clears his throat, and the act of it, the emotions he knows are stirring in Eddie’s chest—guilt and want and just, so much love—are enough to make Buck want to do something drastic, like immediately book his return flight. “I miss you.”
He’s so sure of himself these days. Eddie. Knows what he’s feeling and sort of has an idea of what to do about it and Buck is usually only too happy to follow his lead. He thinks though, if Eddie tries to talk about this, any of it, Buck won’t know how to jump in after him.
He thought he was getting better—no longer his own self-saboteur. Except he comes back to Pennsylvania and suddenly he’s 15 again, too many emotions in his stomach to pick out one that isn’t anger; too self-righteous to feel grief for anyone but himself. Maybe he’s older now; knows that the anger isn’t justified. But he’s so scared that if he tries to talk about it with Eddie, that part won’t show.
“You look exhausted,” Eddie comments, and Buck tries to rub the sleep out from his eyes like he can make the shadows disappear along with it.
“I’m f—”
“Would you just—” Eddie waves his hand out in front of him. He’s in his room now, still bare and plain, though Buck’s working on it. “You’re allowed not to be fine, Buck. Weren’t you the one who said that to me?”
“Yeah, but…”
“What, you didn’t think it applied to you too?”
“I know it did, does, whatever.” He clenches his teeth together as a shiver runs through him. “But, can I tell you something that seriously isn’t a big deal?”
“Okay,” Eddie replies slowly. “Sure.”
“It’s like…okay, you remember everything that happened after Abby?”
Eddie wrinkles his nose in distaste and Buck huffs out a laugh. “It’s hard to forget,” he says dryly.
“See?” Buck shuffles his feet under the comforter even though the temperature inside has to be at least 75 degrees. “No one liked her after she left, and they kept trying to tell me how to feel about it. Like, ‘Buck you deserve better’ and ‘Maybe it’s time you move on’ and I was…I just…”
“You weren’t ready,” Eddie finishes, tugging on his lower lip with his teeth like he does when he’s trying to parse Buck out. He’s been doing it since Buck offered to drive to Christopher’s school after the earthquake.
“Yeah,” Buck agrees, kind of amazed that Eddie had put it into words. “And I’m…I’m not sure I’m ready to forgive my dad now.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I have to decide whether he lives or dies, Eds,” Buck replies wearily. “So I kinda do.”
“You—”
“Can we just,” Buck presses the heel of his palm to his forehead. “Talk about something else? Please?”
Eddie doesn’t look like he likes it; fair enough, Buck doesn’t like it much either, but he acquiesces. “Sure,” he says, placing his phone on the nightstand as he works around the room, rummaging through his drawers for a clean set of clothes. “Bobby had Ravi on kitchen duty last night.”
“He’s replacing me,” Buck says immediately. “Fucking knew it.”
“I wouldn’t worry so much about that,” Eddie snorts. “He made the noodles so spicy that Hen made him go out to buy a gallon of milk. I heard him on the phone with his boyfriend saying he thinks he’s getting fired. Food was pretty good though.”
Buck’s smiling harder than he has all day. The story itself is funny at best, but something about hearing Eddie tell it to him, like they’re in the same room, about to get ready to go pick up Christopher and ask him about his day and it’s not a Friday, but Wednesdays are pretty tough too, so why don’t we swing by the ice cream store a few blocks away? settles the anxiety in his chest. Eddie takes off his shirt just in view of the camera and Buck isn’t staring except he’s allowed to now, so yes he is.
Eddie catches his eye in the camera and raises his brow amusedly. “Something you’d like to share with the class, Buckley?”
Buck groans and does not imagine what Eddie’s mouth tastes like right now because he’d never recover and they’re not doing this over the phone when Christopher could walk in any minute. “My boyfriend is hot,” he replies, not as grudgingly as he meant to. “Sue me.”
“You already did that.”
“Too soon, Eddie. Too soon.”
They look at each other for a couple more seconds. Eddie’s shirt is riding up along the curve of his hip. There’s a dip just below his stomach that Buck can practically feel under his hands; knows that if he worked his way up, Eddie would flinch at the cold touch and Buck would laugh and suggest they warm up somehow. And Eddie’s eyes would darken until Buck finally gets him in bed with his pupils blown wide and—
The front door bangs open. “Dad!” Christopher calls, and both Buck and Eddie startle like they’re probationary firefighters who’ve just been caught making out in the supply closet.
“That was—” Buck starts and Eddie cuts him off with a bashful shushing noise like Buck didn’t just give him a blow job in that same room three nights ago.
“Christopher!” Eddie announces in a similar tone, walking out into the hallway to greet him and Carla. He holds Buck in his right hand, but loosely, so all Buck sees for a few seconds is blurry outlines of the two. “How was your day?”
“We learned about biomes in Science,” Christopher reports dutifully. “Buck taught me about them once when we went to the zoo, about the climates and why the snakes have to be under the hot lamps and stuff. So I already knew a little bit.”
He pauses; waits for a second like he’s giving Eddie a chance to ask about the rest of his classes, but shortens the appropriate timing by half. “Have you talked to him today?”
“Hi, Christopher,” Buck says.
He’s muffled by Eddie’s hand so he doesn’t know what Christopher hears, but the shape of him lights up with glee. Buck pushes himself to a sitting position, even though his head spins a little as he does it, but seeing Christopher seems to take care of the worst of it. His headache fades to an undercurrent, dissolving under the force of Chris’s grin.
“Buck!” Christopher says, in the same tone of voice that he said ‘Dad!’ in only moments prior. Carla chuckles and Eddie sets up the phone against the kitchen counter so that they can all fit into the screen. Buck’s chest aches at the sight of them.
“Hey, buddy,” he murmurs, trying to ignore the sympathetic look Carla sends him. “So, biomes?”
He launches into a long rant as Carla maneuvers around the kitchen to fix Christopher an early lunch since Eddie’s arm clearly aches from the way he winces as he reaches out to pour himself a glass of water. Buck listens intently; decides that he’s going to start his late-night Wikipedia spiral on the Marine Biome page, since that’s what Christopher is clearly the most interested in. Eddie shoots him an amused glance from behind Christopher like he knows what he’s thinking. Since he’s been on the other side of the bed from the Wikipedia searches for the last two weeks, he probably does.
Eventually, Carla lures both the Diaz boys to the dining table, Eddie with the promise of coffee and Christopher with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She picks up the phone to inspect him in the kitchen while they sit down, Christopher asking if she could, “Bring Buck over to eat with us please?”
God, this kid.
“You look tired,” she comments, just like Eddie had, but she keeps pursing her lips as she looks him over. “And cold. Are you sure you’re not sick?”
“I just woke up from a nap,” Buck says, even though it’s been at least 45 minutes and he doesn’t feel any more lucid. “I’m a little stuffy.”
She looks like she doesn’t believe him for a second and is about to make a trip to the nearest CVS, even though there’s nothing she can do from Los Angeles. Either way, when Carla hands the phone back to Eddie, Buck’s pretty sure she’s texting Maddie to come upstairs and check on him.
“What are you doing there?” Christopher asks. “In Pennsylvania?”
Eddie splays his hands out like, I don’t know, but there’s also something suspicious to him. He keeps peering up at Carla; having a silent conversation where Buck can’t see.
“Like today?” Buck asks, watching as the sun turns to shades of orange in the sky outside “Or in general why am I here?”
“Today,” Christopher replies, somewhat triumphantly. “Or tomorrow. For the rest of the time there. So I know when I can call you.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I need your help with the level in my new video game. Dad keeps trying but he can’t get it right.”
“That’s because your dad is old,” Buck says promptly.
“Heard that,” Eddie comments. “And I’ll remind you of it next time I kick your butt at Mario Kart.”
“Okayyy,” Buck draws out. “Why are you saying that as if we don’t all know I let you win?”
“You’re bad at the game, Buck. Even Ravi beats you.”
“I let him win too. I’m magnanimous that way.”
“Yeah, magnanimous. Among other things.”
“What, are you going to start listing all the negative qualities of your perfect boyfriend?”
“I don’t know, are you going to keep playing as Toad on Rainbow Road?”
“He’s adorable. Take me for who I am, Eddie.”
Eddie scoffs but his fondness is poorly-concealed behind his eyes. Buck ducks his head to hide his grin. Christopher looks between the two less than impressed. “Are you two done flirting?” he asks.
Buck can hear Carla’s laugh from the kitchen. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. “Um, I’m free after dinner today. But I don’t have a Playstation here, kid. Or the game.”
Christopher’s mouth twitches. “I can just FaceTime you again,” he says, but it’s, not to repeat himself, suspicious—just like Eddie is being. “After dinner.”
“Okay,” Buck agrees, because if he works himself up over nothing—maybe Christopher and Eddie are just sharing that look because they have the same facial expressions and it has to do with Christopher’s Spring Break camp or something else that Buck isn’t currently a part of because he’s in Pennsylvania and they’re in L.A. “But you can’t stay up too late. It’s a school night.”
“Okay,” Christopher says, rolling his eyes because he’s nearly a teenager. “You’re such a Dad, Buck.”
Buck’s heart gives that same thud again. It’s not the first time he’s called Buck that—not even one of the more emotional ones: introducing Buck to his teachers or drawing him alongside Eddie when they have to make their family tree at school—but after everything that’s happened in the last 24 hours, it’s nearly too much for Buck to cope with. He never felt worthy of the title, not compared to Eddie, and a part of him knows he never will.
But God does he want to. He wants to take Christopher out to the zoo and nod along when the old lady sitting on the bench asks Buck how old his son is. He wants Hen and Chim to comment on how much of Buck they see in Christopher, just the tiniest bit, mixed together with Eddie and Shannon.
He wants to be someone who Christopher is proud of, sure. But mostly, he wants to be someone who Christopher can trust to be there for him unequivocally. Whether or not he’s on the other side of the country. Whether or not Buck will have to wade through his own trauma to get there. He wants to be a sure thing, even if he comes from a family of flight risks.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Buck jokes, but it comes out choked. Eddie sends him an alarmed look but Buck’s played this game with a lot more people for longer than Eddie’s known him. He turns his head to the door like someone’s calling his name. “Hey, I have to go.”
“Oh,” Eddie says, surprised. “I’ll call you later?”
“Sure,” he replies, even though he can’t think of anything worse. How is he supposed to keep his composure if Eddie keeps worrying about him? Like Buck isn’t handling it. “Love you.”
He hangs up before Eddie responds. He thinks, that might be part of the problem.
For her part, when Buck’s mother asks him to help out in the kitchen with dinner, she’s almost perfectly civil the entire time.
Buck’s spent his entire life like this, teetering between his mother hating him and pretending that they’ve always got along famously well. She asks him to pass her a jar of Alfredo sauce, because she doesn’t trust him to make it from scratch without turning the whole kitchen into a mess, and Buck does without looking at her.
It’s strange, this—the way they’re maneuvering around the space, in a silence that isn’t practiced so they keep bumping into each other and muttering small, fake apologies, as if they’re not both the same shade of vindictive.
Buck grips his knife as he cuts the tomatoes. His mother watches him instead of prepping the garlic bread. “The knife is sharp,” she warns him. “Don’t cut yourself.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay,” she says dubiously. “But just make sure you don’t, because last time—”
Buck wants to say, “Fucking newsflash mother, I’m not 19 years old anymore.” Or maybe just toss the knife onto the cutting board so hard that it breaks in two and throw a temper tantrum about it. Ever since he woke up, he’s been on edge. He can take the small talk and the requests to get this or that from the pantry, but he can’t handle being…he can’t handle his mother bringing up who he used to be, remembering him as anything except the Buck standing in front of them.
There’s nothing he can do about it, obviously. And then again maybe his mother feels the same way, except she’s being just as irritating as she always has been so it’s hard to tell. He thinks they both can’t exist together without grating against each other, fist against bone. They’re both used to it, but it doesn’t stop the squeezing feeling in his chest anyway, like he’s breathing in the same air he’s breathing out.
“Evan, I know we’re all going through a hard time but you don’t have to give me that face,” his mother comments sourly, going back to shake the plastic box of garlic with a little more force than necessary; the sound of it makes Buck wince.
“I’m sorry,” he replies monotonously, hands trembling where he rests them on the counter. “Can I just—I’m going to go wash my face or something.”
She lets him go. He misses the downstairs bathroom by a mile and heads upstairs to his own, trying to squeeze some rationality back into him on the way up the stairs. It doesn’t really work, but he hears Maddie and Chim giggling at something Jee-Yun’s doing—they’re giving her a bath—and that helps a little.
Buck splashes some water on his face, turning the tap as cold as it’ll go, and goes to sit on his bed for a moment. Realistically, he knows he has a support system; he knows Bobby had already called him thirty minutes ago, and it would be all too easy to call him back instead of dodging it with a text about making dinner, like it takes all hands on deck to make fucking pasta and garlic bread.
He knows he could call Hen, Athena even. He knows without a doubt that Eddie would drop anything he was doing to answer, always moving even when he should be resting, what a pair the two of them make. Hell, Maddie and Chim are right down the hall; if he’s so pathetic that he needs someone to take care of him that badly, his older sister’s been doing it for years.
But his mother’s right about one thing. His father’s death can’t be about him, not when he barely had a relationship with the man. He’s so…he’s not as sad as he should be about his father laying on a hospital bed, but he’s afraid for the aftermath anyway, in some inexplicable way. He’s not grieving his father, but the stillness. The Buckley dynamic, however flawed, worked for them. Now, Buck’s not so sure.
He shakes himself out of it and heads back into the game room before his mother can call for him, wondering what’s taking so long as if the look on his face doesn’t make everything self-explanatory. His bedroom is closer to the stairs, but he hears Jee-Yun’s blabbering getting louder behind him, so he waits, and sure enough Chimney and Maddie appear together.
Always together.
They give Buck identical frowns when they see him. “You still look a bit pale,” Maddie comments and Buck heads down the stairs before she can go back to her room and grab a thermometer or something. “Wha—Buck come back here!”
“I’m fine!” He replies.
“You’re—” She corners him in the kitchen where their mother watches in faint disapproval. Eyes narrowed and standing on her tiptoes, Maddie presses a hand to his forehead. Buck sighs heavily, twisting away. He already knows what’s coming.
“You’re warm,” she decides. “I’m getting you an Ibuprofen.”
Chimney, who’s holding Jee, backs away from him. “Should you be cooking our dinner?”
“What, like you’re going to?”
“You’re sick!”
“I’m—he’s not sick,” Buck, Maddie, and his mother say at the same time. His mother waves around her butter knife like she wasn’t just lecturing him about kitchen safety a few minutes ago. “He gets like this sometimes,” she says. “When he’s stressed.”
Chim raises an eyebrow. “Psychogenic?” he wonders out loud. “Don’t—Isn’t that usually found in teenage girls?”
“Obviously not,” Buck mutters sullenly, rubbing at his eyes. “I haven’t gotten one in years though.”
What he means to say is, I haven’t gotten one since I left Pennsylvania 11 years ago. Maddie pauses in her step and gives him a significant glance, like she knows what he’s thinking, and then continues digging through the junk drawer before their mother can comment on it.
“A stress fever,” Chimney muses. “Makes sense.”
“Thank you, Chim,” Buck says dryly, taking the glass of water his mother offers him with a disapproving purse of her lips, like Buck did this on purpose.
“You just have to make everything about you, huh?” she asks, simultaneously putting her own hand to his head to check for herself.
Chimney winces and gives Buck the most commiserating look he’s ever received from him. Maddie doesn’t stay that quiet. She turns her head so sharply Buck doesn’t know how she doesn’t get whiplash. “Are you kidding me?” she demands. “You really think he did this to himself?”
“Maddie,” Buck interrupts, playing with the strings of his hoodie. “I’m 30. I can fight my own battles.”
His mother ignores the peace offering. “He’s always been like this, Maddie” she replies; even-tempered, like Buck isn’t even in the room. “He has a habit of being reckless.”
“Oh, like you would know!”
“Let’s not do this,” Buck pleads. “I can’t—look, I don’t want to get into a fight right now.” Neither of them back down. He tries again. “I’ve already got a headache, and,” he gestures, “Jee-Yun is right here.”
Maddie grits her teeth and closes the drawer with fire still blazing in her eyes. “You only have Tylenol,” she announces. “I’m going to the store.”
“What’s wrong with Tylenol?”
“It doesn’t work as well on me,” Buck says, deciding not to point out that it hasn’t worked well on him since he was in middle school. “ I’ll go to the store.”
“You’re going to rest,” his mother replies sharply, as if Buck’s knocking on death’s door. “Maddie can go to the store after we eat dinner.”
She goes back to stirring the pasta. Distantly, Buck can hear the echo of a teenage Maddie whispering in his ear, furious—” I could kill her”— back when they didn’t have any experience with the phrase. Now, Chimney wraps his arm around her shoulder and squeezes comfortingly.
Buck sits down at the breakfast bar and puts his head in his hands. He can’t help but feel like they were all just thirty seconds out from an explosion.
Somewhere, he can still hear a bomb making a ticking noise.
Chimney goes to the grocery store with Maddie and Buck lays on the couch with Jee-Yun sitting on his ribcage.
She has two stuffed animals in her hands—an elephant and a lion—and she’s telling them this story where they’re best friends…or he thinks that’s the gist of it anyway. In Buck’s unbiased opinion, his niece is practically a two-year-old genius.
She has trouble with the 3-word sentences though.
“Play,” she says insistently, making the lion and elephant hug each other. “Friends.”
“They’re friends?” Buck asks, worn but content and more than a little wistful. “They love each other?”
Jee-Yun nods fiercely. “Friends,” she announces. “Like Chris.” Her voice wavers. “Where Chris?”
It comes out sounding like Chwis because she hasn’t really gotten her Rs yet, but Buck understands her perfectly fine, even if he pauses for a second, trying to think of an answer that won’t make Jee-Yun start wailing.
His mother is watching them from the sofa. When she notices the lapse in conversation, she waves her bracelet in Jee-Yun’s direction. “Hi, Jee,” she says in that babyish tone. “Do you want to come to grandma?”
This, I can handle, he thinks as his mother comes over to scoop up Jee and run a cool hand through Buck’s curls, soothing his headache for a moment. He’s too tired to remember her exact words in the kitchen, too achy to care even if he’d told Maddie he could pick his own battles. Some aren’t worth fighting, though. That’s the part Maddie doesn’t get.
“You’re good with kids,” she comments. “You spend a lot of time with Eddie’s son, right? Christopher?”
“Well, yeah,” Buck replies, draping an arm over his eyes to block out the faint light of the kitchen. His phone is on the coffee table waiting for Chris’s call. “I’m there every day. I love hanging out with him.”
She’s silent for a moment, but Buck’s too exhausted to move his head and check. Finally, she asks, “Do you think your father and I were bad parents?”
It’s not the first time she’s asked the question—probably won’t be the last—but it’s frustrating all the same. The logical answer is no: they put a roof over his head, gave him everything he needed, made sure he never went without, never left him at home for weeks at a time to take a vacation up to the Hamptons like some other parents do.
But then, a different part of him, the one that’s older and more settled; the one who’s dating Eddie Diaz, who constantly shows Christopher the type of love Buck would’ve loved to have as a kid, thinks yes. Thinks that these aren’t bad people, but in the same way the mailman isn’t, or his elderly neighbor in the apartment two doors down isn’t.
So really, he figures, the answer isn’t yes or no. Because Buck doesn’t know his parents the way they want him to. He doesn’t know how to talk about his father’s childhood at a party or admit that there are family recipes his mother is dying to teach him. They’re strangers to him—now at 30—and they were strangers to him when he was 15 too.
The key to the front door turns before he can answer. Buck doesn’t move from his seat. Maddie and Chimney are so loud coming through the door that Buck’s tempted to cover his head with a throw pillow, but he’s too sore and settles for screwing his eyes shut, trying to block out the sound.
Then he hears a small giggle and bolts upright, so fast he gets dizzy with it. He would know that voice anywhere; not nearly feverish enough to be dreaming. “Christopher?”
“Chris!” Jee-Yun echoes, clapping her hands and making happy noises. “Play!”
Buck somehow puts two feet in front of each other and makes his way to the front door, distantly aware of his mother staying seated on the couch, but smiling to herself, gratified. Maddie’s waiting in the hallway—she looks a little teary when she sees him—and has one hand on Christopher’s shoulder. Buck scoops him up for a hug before he’s finished processing.
“Buck,” Christopher laughs, wrapping his own arms around Buck’s neck. He smells like children’s shampoo and faint traces of California and Buck chokes out his own greeting but it’s wet and hardly audible. “Are you okay?”
Buck buries his face in Christopher’s hair, curly, just like his own. Familiar. Finally puts him down when he starts swinging his legs. “I will be,” he replies, as convincingly as he can muster, even though it’s not far from the truth anyway. “Now that you’re here.”
Christopher beams back at him, lightning-quick, and then he’s off to see Jee-Yun. Outside, he can hear Chim arguing about carrying something. Christopher showing up here is surprise enough, but Buck’s holding his breath for one more miracle.
When Eddie walks through the doorway, Buck thinks he breathes for the first time since he arrived in Pennsylvania. Tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, he takes two steps before he’s burying himself in Eddie’s shoulder, sinking into the hand gripping the back of his head.
“Hi, baby,” Eddie murmurs, soft and so, so familiar Buck thinks he could drown in it.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, twisting his hand in Eddie’s t-shirt like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to reality. It might be. “I thought—your arm—”
“Chimney asked me to come,” Eddie replies, brushing over Buck’s birthmark with his fingertips. “After I called him about the stitches, he said I should come to Pennsylvania.” His eyes soften into something…just something unconditional; something Buck hasn’t felt in days. “Said that you might need me.”
“Of course I do,” Buck says, less than eloquent but with more feeling than he knows what to do with. “I’ll always need you.”
He lets go of Eddie to peer around his shoulder at Chim, who’s twisting his hands with a hopeful expression. Buck feels a rush of affection for his brother-in-law. “I—God, Chim. Thank you.”
Chimney grins; shares a look with Maddie and nods. “United front,” he says. “But not like, in a sappy way.”
“Of course not.”
“I mean,” Chimney corrects as Maddie swats his arm. “I was getting worried. More so when I found out you burst into stress fevers—”
“Ah, you don’t have to worry about me anymore.”
“You’re like my little brother, man,” Chimney says, rubbing the back of his neck. “I can’t help it.”
Maddie swats his arm and Buck smiles so hard it hurts because it’s Chim and Maddie, but it’s Buck and Eddie now too. He feels heady with it, almost rushing like he could topple over. His mother pokes her head out from the living room, Jee-Yun in hand and Christopher in tow and Chimney takes his daughter so that Buck’s mother can see what’s going on for herself.
“It’s good to see you again, Eddie,” she says, with a simple nod. Buck tries to search her face for any flickers of doubt. He’s not sure whether it’s the adrenaline or the late night hour, but he finds none.
“You too, Mrs. Buckley,” Eddie replies, though Buck can’t help but notice it’s a little stiff. His mother says nothing. They’re perfectly cordial, but Buck feels like the room has just iced over. “I wish it was under better circumstances.”
He takes Buck’s hand in his as he says it and whatever’s been building in Buck’s chest since he arrived threatens to explode. Near the kitchen, Christopher yawns. It’s only 7 pm Pacific time, but traveling must have worn him out.
“He can sleep in Buck’s old bedroom,” his mother says to Eddie, like Christopher isn’t right there. “If that works for you.”
Eddie raises his eyebrows at Christopher in question and gets a sleepy nod in return. Buck runs his hand over Eddie’s forearm, the arm without the stitches, and tries not to pick a fight in Chris’s defense at 10 in the evening. Judging by the vaguely amused look he’s giving Buck, something tells him the kid wouldn’t appreciate it.
“And Eddie…”
“Can sleep with me,” Buck interrupts, not caring how it sounds. “In the guest bedroom.”
“Right,” his mother says. “I was just thinking, because of his arm—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Buck says, trying to keep his composure as Eddie squeezes his hand. They have a silent staring contest that Buck makes sure he wins. “I’ll bring the luggage. Maddie, could you…?”
“Of course,” she replies tersely. Christopher is a smart kid, Buck knows he’ll pick up on the tension in the room and ask either Buck or Eddie about it, but hopefully, he’ll do it when Buck has an answer for him.
Eddie looks between Buck and Chimney, who’s beckoning him upstairs, cautiously, like he’s treading through a field of landmines. Right, Buck thinks, in Eddie’s family they just say what they mean. None of this passive-aggressive business. He’s not sure whether that’s good or bad or perhaps just a different side of the same shitty coin, but Buck’s mother is not Eddie’s to deal with. Buck nods, and Eddie and Chris follow Maddie up the staircase, Chimney not far behind.
Buck’s mother grabs his arm as he goes to pick up the luggage. “I’m not homophobic,” she says fiercely. “I just—”
“No, I get it,” he replies. “It’s just disappointing to you. Thought you would’ve been used to it by now.”
Her lip curls. “Is this what they brought your boyfriend here for?” she demands. “So you could find it in you to talk back to me?”
“No,” Buck says, that familiar feeling building and waning with every breath like the tide of the ocean. He hates his mother. Hates her. “You did that as soon as you talked over Christopher.”
“I’m not good with children!”
“You’re not even trying!”
“Buck,” Eddie calls from the top of the stairs. “Do you mind bringing the bag up so Christopher can change into his pajamas?”
He watches as his mother blinks; lowers her hackles—like she was just so overcome with grief it translated into being rude to Buck’s boyfriend, his kid. “Goodnight,” she says. “We’ll go to the hospital tomorrow, okay?”
And Buck, Buck just can’t do this anymore, walking the fine line this conversation and the next, wanting for his mother and despising her. No one means to fall into insanity, but he feels like that’s what this is: doing the same thing and expecting different results, until eventually, he’s worn down to nothing.
His mother turns away before Buck says anything. They seem to have a little more in common than Buck would like. He blinks and carries the duffle bags up the stairs.
Christopher’s already asleep when he gets there. “Sorry,” Buck mumbles. “I should’ve—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie says, running a hand through his own hair. “He had a change of clothes in his backpack. I just—”
“Have my back?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says in a hushed voice. “Always.”
Buck peers into the room again. Christopher sleeping in Buck’s childhood bedroom twists something in his chest. It feels like he doesn’t belong there; here. “His Spring Break—”
“Jeez, he wanted to come, Buck.” Eddie shuts the bedroom door softly and turns to him with an adamant light in his eyes. “He’s been asking if we could come to Pennsylvania since the day you left.”
He looks soft in the light of the night lamp, mussed hair from the plane and wearing a brown t-shirt and jeans. He offers Buck a small smile, crinkled around the edges and Buck exhales and takes his hand and pulls him towards the guest bedroom, duffle bag hitting the side of his legs. He loves Eddie, more than he knows what to do with, and he’s not going to have the moment ruined by his parents.
“Just,” Buck interrupts when Eddie opens his mouth to say something. He closes the door to their room. Eddie considers him with so much unfettered affection in his eyes that Buck thinks he could close his eyes and live in it. “Just, give me a moment.”
Eddie nods but doesn’t agree. He presses the back of his hand to Buck’s neck and then a kiss to his forehead, just above his birthmark. “You’re warm,” he murmurs. “What was Chim saying about stress fevers?”
“They’re psychogenic,” Buck replies, shivering and glancing over to where Maddie had left a bottle of Ibuprofen on the nightstand. “I’ve had them since I was a kid. But they stopped after I…after I left Pennsylvania.” He traces Eddie’s stomach over his t-shirt; they’re so close he can feel Eddie’s breath on his cheek. “How’s your arm?”
Eddie ignores the deflection entirely. “I didn’t know that.” He stays still as Buck puts his hands on him. He can’t quite believe that Eddie’s real. “Are you hurting?”
“How’s your arm?” Buck repeats, sort of insistently, more than a little numb.
With a softness that travels all the way down, filling in the cavities behind his ribcage, Eddie puts a hand on Buck’s shoulder. “Hey.”
And Buck crumbles.
A sob wrenches its way from his chest—the same one that’s been building for days, growing and growing so that Buck feels like he’s going to choke on it on the way up. His entire body aches like he’s run a marathon; been beaten down by the march of his own feet.
Even with Eddie here, he feels miserable. He’s cold and running a fever and has to choose whether he wants to take his dad off of a ventilator in the next 48 hours because he’s got a life in L.A. to return to. And now Eddie and Christopher are here to take care of him, like he’s not entirely unfixable anyway, and his mother—
He thinks he could be sick; folds his arms around himself even though his hands are trembling. Eddie has his fingers running up and down the back of his neck; he’s murmuring assurances like, “It’ll be okay” and “I’ve got you now” but Buck can’t bring himself to swallow them. He feels like he’s too far gone in Pennsylvania for Los Angeles to recover him—already 10 miles past doomed.
“Buck, sweetheart,” Eddie says, implores, and his voice sounds so sad it sets Buck off again into another round of tears and shaky gasps. “Come on, you have to breathe.”
And the funny thing? A part of him doesn’t want to. A part of him wants to march down to his mother’s bedroom and wake his father up from his coma as this, a blubbering mess, screaming, “Look at me! Look at me! I’m your son! And this is what you made me? So full of anguish that I would hate myself if I let you die but hate myself just as much if I took your place?”
When Buck was 7 years old, a family of American kestrels made a nest on their front porch. He would visit them every morning except for a period of time in February, when a snowstorm blew across the northeast relentlessly for one week, and he and Maddie stayed inside reading books and playing card games.
The first moment he was allowed back outside, bundled in one too many jackets and two layers of socks, he found that same nest—still stuck to the brick wall in spite of everything, baby birds buried underneath sticks and a light dusting of ice. A few steps out into the yard, and he found their mother, frozen, underneath a rose bush, facing home.
He’d cried about it then; run inside blotchy-faced and wailing as Maddie tried to comfort him. Had explained the situation to his parents who’d barely lowered the volume on the TV. The only thing his father said in reply was, “Well, it’s not a bad thing, Evan. Finding something to die for.”
So, he learned that to be good was to be useful, but only tangentially. Right after he learned that to be good was to be willing to die for something.
That’s the part he weeps for, now, in Eddie’s arms—that boy who grew up too fast. When you grow up in a house made of eggshells, you either learn to walk on them or use the jagged edges as a weapon. Buck’s spent 15 years being angry at his parents. It only devastates him to know that he has more hatred left in him.
He doesn’t take Eddie’s advice, not quite, but eventually, his sobs fade to sniffles and he’s all run out, even more sore than he was before, Eddie’s t-shirt stained with tears. “Sorry,” he says instinctively.
“Don’t say that,” Eddie says sharply. “Don’t ever say that. Not to me.”
Buck nods; tugs at Eddie’s shirt and doesn’t answer, gesturing to the bed. His head feels empty and stuffed with cotton all at once. His voice comes out shredded and croaky and he winces as it scrapes against thin air. “Can we…?”
Eddie pushes Buck onto the bed lightly so that he’s hovering above him. The bandage on his left arm catches under the overhead light and Buck takes it in his own hands, tracing the outline of the white plaster lightly. “What happened?”
For a moment, Eddie doesn’t say anything. Then, after biting his lip and appraising Buck up and down—he doesn’t need to look in a mirror to know that his eyes are bloodshot and swollen—he nods decisively and grabs a water bottle from his bag along with a few Ibuprofen. “Take these.”
“Are you going to answer the question?” Buck asks. “We can’t have both of us deflecting at the same time.”
“I’m not deflecting.”
“What would you call it then?”
“I’m—” Eddie stops his nonsensical movement to inhale, almost exasperatedly. “It’s not even a big deal? But if I tell you, you’re just going to blame yourself, aren’t you?”
“It already happened,” Buck points out. “And I can’t turn back time, so how does it matter—”
“Let me take care of you, Buck,” Eddie interrupts, punctuating every word with a ferocity Buck hasn’t heard since January, when everything was torn at the edges. “If you think you’re a burden, I don’t care—”
“It’s shitty.”
“I don’t care!” Eddie repeats, almost pleadingly. “Burden me, Buck. I don’t care.”
There’s a silence. Buck swallows the two pills dry but they don’t ache more than the sting behind his eyes. He thought he was all cried out. Didn’t account for… “Do you practice these speeches beforehand?”
Eddie goes soft again, reaches out to tilt Buck’s chin up. “Maybe,” he says. “I made Christopher put his headphones on but the flight attendants were giving me some weird looks.”
Buck hums and drinks him in, the freckle under his left eye, the flecks of gold against dark brown. “They didn’t give you extra pretzels then?”
“Not even peanuts,” Eddie replies mournfully, and Buck can’t stand it anymore.
He leans up and ghosts his lips over the curve of Eddie’s eyelids, running a hand through his hair—just as soft and thick as Buck remembered—like he hasn’t been able to do this for months.
Eddie kisses between Buck’s brows; laughs when he goes a bit cross-eyed. He kisses the right side of his nose, the curve above his lips, rests his thumb in the gap between them and wipes at it, like he’s clearing a canvass, branding him in the faintest way. His hands are warm where they find purchase under Buck’s shirt, and he takes it off in one slow but swift motion.
“Hmm?” Buck mumbles. Eyes half-closed against anything that isn’t the outline of his boyfriend.
“We have to go to bed,” Eddie murmurs, kissing the palm of Buck’s hand. He doesn’t know how Eddie does it—there one moment and back the next—but he’s raising Buck’s arms and sliding a sleep shirt on him.
“I’m not a child,” Buck says, but he makes no move to help as Eddie undoes the zipper on his jeans.
“You’re sweet like this,” Eddie replies simply. “Did you nap in these?”
Buck closes his eyes and makes a noncommittal sound in response. Huffs a little and stands so that he can get his sweatpants on, but buries himself under the comforter just as fast. Eddie lets out a little puff of laughter that sounds like liquid gold, and puts their phones on the nightstand to charge, changing his own clothes and climbing in next to him.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Buck says finally, blinking at Eddie owlishly. They’re facing each other, usually are on the bad days before they shuffle around in their sleep and Buck sprawls out on the bed like a starfish. “I know I’ve been…I don’t know, but I am glad you’re here.”
“Yeah?” They don’t hold hands—Eddie’s laying on his left arm and holding it firmly in place and Buck’s too scared to accidentally jostle him—but their legs are tangled together under the sheets. “You’re usually more open about these types of things.”
“It’s Pennsylvania,” Buck says, out loud for the first time, and it loosens something in his chest, even if Eddie had already guessed. “Hey, can I tell you a secret?”
“Anything.”
“Even if it’s a little sad?”
Eddie’s close enough to kiss; close enough to never leave him. “You can tell me anything, Buck.”
Still, Buck closes his eyes. He doesn’t think he can talk about his childhood otherwise. “When I was 19 I thought I was going to become an alcoholic,” he starts. “There’s no…I don’t have a genetic predisposition for it or whatever, but sometimes I’d go to house parties and get wasted. Or when I was going from country to country, I’d get a bit buzzed at the…at the end of the day. And I always wonder about it when I come back here—if that means my parents were right about me.”
Eddie draws in a shuddering breath beside him. Buck can feel it in his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That I wasn’t there for you.”
“There’s no way you could’ve been.”
“I know,” Eddie murmurs, tracing Buck’s cheek with his right hand and pressing a kiss to his lips. It’s so familiar that Buck could draw it from memory—the feeling. “I’m sorry anyway.”
They trade kisses and touches and the feeling of home for a while before Eddie goes to sleep. Buck thinks about the will one more time before he does, his father’s intent. Buck never knows how to quit, that’s probably true, but what his father didn’t account for was the people around him who made him that way.
He makes a mental note to call Bobby and Hen in the morning, and shuffles closer to Eddie before he drifts off to sleep.
As soon as Buck descends into the kitchen, he knows today is going to be the day it all goes to hell.
His mother greets him with pursed lips and annoyance pooling beneath every movement she makes, from sipping her coffee to pointing at the pantry where the cereal is. “You’re up late.”
“I overslept,” he mumbles, glancing outside where literally everyone else is eating breakfast on the patio table. “And then I was on the phone with Bobby.”
She raises her eyebrows judgmentally. “Your fire captain?” she asks. “Isn’t it…7 in the morning there?”
“They’re on shift,” he protests, pouring himself coffee and lamenting using his mom’s almond milk instead of his usual soy. “And it’s—I mean it’s Bobby, it’s not like he cares what time it is when—”
Buck cuts himself off, unsure of what he means to say. Still, his mother picks up on it where she’s sitting by the breakfast bar. He has no idea why she’s sitting alone except to start an argument with him. The sooner he can grab his breakfast and join them outside, the better.
“He’s not your dad, Evan,” his mother reminds him, and Buck tries to keep a neutral face. More my dad than my real father ever was “Stop bothering him.”
“I’m not—”
“Hey, Buck!” Christopher says, barreling through the door, Eddie not far behind with a sly gleam in his eyes; two bowls in his hand. “How are you feeling today?”
Buck schools his expression into something a little less hostile, crouching down to accept Christopher’s hug with an exaggerated, “ Oof! ” and poking at his stomach lightly to make him giggle. It’s not often they get to do this anymore—what with Christopher slowly but surely developing into a teenager—but Chris always seems more enthusiastic after 48 hour shifts—two days in Pennsylvania probably isn’t much different.
“Much better,” he declares, because he does. For now. “I think you’re magic.”
Christopher grins back, self-assured and the kindest kid in the entire world. “I know,” he chirps. “Dad says we can go get ice cream after lunch, by the way.”
“Dad said maybe,” Eddie corrects. “If Buck isn’t busy.”
Maddie and Chimney wander in to join the gathering looking vaguely amused, as they usually are around Buck and Eddie. Jee-Yun must have already had her breakfast; she’s probably sleeping upstairs or Buck figures Christopher would choose playing with her over badgering his dad.
Chris fixes Buck with a stern look that’s so much like Eddie, Buck nearly laughs in surprise. “Are you busy?”
“I’m—” his mother raps her fingernails on the counter. Everyone turns to look at her, but she doesn’t look deterred, instead jutting out her head and making it very clear that yes, Buck will be busy after lunch, and yes, they’re going to talk about the damn will.
“I don’t know, bud,” he says finally. “If I am then maybe you guys can bring back some for me. Mint Chocolate Chip.”
Christopher wrinkles his nose. “Gross, Buck,” he complains, since he’s 12 and his favorite ice cream flavor is neon pink Bubblegum. “Do you want to see this new book I got about rainforests?”
That’s how the rest of the morning passes. For the most part, Buck’s mother leaves them alone as the five of them (six when Jee-Yun wakes up) spend time in the living room, people drifting in and out to shower or grab something.
Eddie’s hand never really leaves Buck though, and he can’t tell whether it’s to spite his mother, who clearly has to refrain from rolling her eyes every time she spots them, or because Eddie, like Buck, needs the reminder that neither of them are alone, but it’s nice. Buck settles back against Eddie’s legs as Christopher tells them about the various rainforests across the world, and Eddie runs a hand through his hair as he and Chimney talk about some movie Buck’s never watched.
Still, Buck knows what’s going to happen after lunch. It feels almost inevitable, at this point. Buck and his mother haven’t screamed at each other since Los Angeles a year ago, so you could make the argument that they’re overdue.
“Buck,” Maddie says, when it’s nearing 1 and they can’t make excuses to put off lunch anymore. “Come on, help me get out the cold cuts.”
“Okay,” Buck agrees easily enough, squeezing Eddie’s hand as he stands. He follows Maddie into the kitchen, leaning against the wall as she digs through the refrigerator, tight expression, obviously waiting to ask him something that she knows he won’t like. “Spit it out, Maddie.”
She doesn’t need much prompting, but she bites her lip and doesn’t look at him anyway. “Have you made a decision yet?”
“No.”
“Buck—”
“Maddie, what would you do?” he demands. “I’m—I’ve had this information for a day, Mom’s stressing me the fuck out, Eddie and Chris just got here. Can I have some time to—”
“No!” Maddie says sharply, tossing the packets of cheese and ham haphazardly on the kitchen counter. “You can’t, Buck. Because Mom is going to send everyone out of the house after lunch and corner you until you give her the answer she wants and I—” Her voice breaks. “I’m tired, Evan. I just want to go home.”
It’s not that Buck hasn’t considered how Pennsylvania is weighing down on his sister, but he feels a stab of guilt now at the way her eyes glisten with unshed tears. A part of him expected, even after everything last year, that Maddie fighting back meant that she was okay, like that’s ever been true for Buck.
“We’re not going home without having this argument, Mads,” he says wearily. “You and I both know that.”
“I know,” she replies shakily. “I wish I could protect you from it though.”
“I’m not 19 years old anymore.” Buck’s tone has a hard-edge to it that he desperately wants to get rid of, but doesn’t know how to. “It’s my name on the will. I can take care of myself.”
Things are beginning to fit into place sinkingly now—an anchor making its way down Buck’s throat and settling in the pit of his stomach. He can’t make excuses for Pennsylvania anymore; can’t pretend that home brings out this side of him when really this anger has just been laying dormant all these years.
He’s not a hostile person. Usually. But when you’re born into anger it will always be a part of you. He thinks about Plato’s concept of essentialism: that all objects have a set of attributes necessary to their identity. This feels a little like that.
Eddie walks in in tandem with their mother and Buck feels a rush of love for his boyfriend, who’s clearly made it his mission not to leave Buck alone with her if he can help it. He trails his hand over Buck’s waist obnoxiously. “Where are the plates, babe?”
Buck bites back a grin. “Top left cabinet.”
Eddie kisses his cheek. “Thank you,” he murmurs beneath his breath as they pass each other. Buck smiles so wide his cheeks hurt. He doesn’t look at his mother.
Chimney herds Jee and Christopher into the kitchen as the four adults work around the kitchen simultaneously as Buck’s mother watches, leaning against the half-wall and not entertaining either Jee or Chris, who’s looking at her with a suspicious glance that goes straight to Buck’s heart. It’s clear how familiar they are in each other’s space; almost feels like they’re just setting up for Buffridays and a movie after a long shift.
Then Buck will catch his mother’s eye and remember where he is. It feels like glass shattering every time.
“Buck,” Christopher asks as he carefully assembles his sandwich, stacking one layer of cheese in between two layers of meat. “Where are the water cups?”
Almost overeagerly, Buck’s mother abandons her own plate to fetch a cup, one of the kid-like ones they reserve for Jee-Yun. Before she can even set it on the counter, Buck stops her.
“Christopher uses normal glasses,” he says, reaching over her for one of the plastic Ikea ones. “Thanks though.”
Chimney inhales sharply next to him as his mother glares. Buck has this vague feeling that if Eddie wasn’t there, she would pinch his hand in order to reprimand him, or maybe just start screaming about propriety. Buck can’t bring himself to care though. Maddie gives their mother a pointed glance that could mean anything but is enough to settle the peace for now.
Needless to say, their mother doesn’t really participate in the conversation over the lunch table.
It’s not a complete 180 from how she was yesterday, but it’s still several degrees off-kilter. Buck doesn’t think she’s behaving like this because Eddie is here, it seemed like she knew about it yesterday, but he’s pushing her limits. There’s only so much benevolence she can fake before she reverts into making everything about what she wants. A decision, mainly, like Maddie had said. But also her version of it. His mother’s way or the highway.
Buck wonders why she hadn’t taken his father’s living will from the bank locker and edited it herself.
“Buck,” Christopher says immediately after lunch, just like Buck knew he would. “Can we get ice cream now?”
This conversation is a family conversation. Not the family that Buck’s created for himself back in L.A. but him and Maddie, going punch for punch at everything their mother throws at them. Christopher is a smart kid—Buck knows he’s picked up on the tension in the room—but he can’t witness this. Buck refuses to let him think that the Buckley family problems are anything more than a few short phrases and monotonous answers.
He can’t stand anyone seeing him like this that hasn’t already. This fury that comes up out of nowhere when he looks at his mother, his own flesh and blood, who Buck’s always been more similar to than not, and bubbles up and out of him of its own accord. It’s not like Eddie wouldn’t accept every part of Buck without question, but this is…this is different. It’ll be too practiced for Eddie not to wonder, just a little bit, if this is who Buck really is, shedding his grievances and burying them here in the dirt underneath the foundation. And Buck really just—
He can’t have that.
“Chris,” Buck says, kneeling down in front of him. Nearly everyone is out of earshot; Buck can hear Eddie joking around with Maddie as they clean the dishes together while Chimney awkwardly fields a conversation between their mother and Jee-Yun.
“Chris,” he starts again. “You know how my dad is…he’s really sick right now?”
Christopher nods sharply, too familiar with this scenario for someone his age. He twists his fingers together. “Is he going to be okay?”
“I don’t think so, bud,” Buck confesses, because historically he knows Chris would prefer the truth over fake platitudes. “So me and Maddie and my mom have to do some adult work—talk about things like hospital papers and what happens…what happens after my dad passes away and—”
“I don’t need to get ice cream,” Christopher interrupts firmly. “I’m going to stay here with you.”
Buck lets out a watery laugh. God, this kid. “I appreciate the thought, really,” he adds when Chris’s face scrunches up in protest, “I do. But what would help me a lot is if you could spend time with Jee-Yun and uncle Chim and your dad so that me and my sister can sort things out with my mom. And the sooner we do, the sooner we can get back to California.” He musses with Christopher’s hair. “And I don’t know about you but I really want to go back home.”
Christopher considers this. “Are you sure Dad can’t help you?” he asks finally. “He’s really good at helping you.”
“I know, kid.” Oh, doesn’t he. “But I think this is one of those things I have to do by myself.” He holds out his pinky finger for Christopher to take. “We’ll get ice cream our first day back in L.A.”
Christopher looks at Buck suspiciously. “Even if it’s before dinner?” he asks curiously, taking Buck’s outstretched pinky anyway.
“Maybe,” Buck concedes. “Depending on whether we can slip out under your dad’s nose.”
“He’ll know.”
“He always does,” Buck sighs dramatically, and they dissolve into laughter as Eddie walks up to them with a curious expression.
“Are we going out?” Eddie asks, rolling down the sleeves of his white shirt. “Or are you…?”
“Staying,” he confirms. “I think I have to.”
“You don’t have to do any—”
“I’m going to,” Buck interrupts, because Eddie’s trying his best but the only person who gets what’s going on is Maddie, who’s definitely having this same conversation with Chimney a few paces over. “You can be there for the fallout.”
“I will be,” Eddie promises, though he still looks testy and like he’s about to drag Chim off to the nearest ice cream parlor just so that he can rant about how much he hates Buck’s mother. Christopher scoffs at the soft look in Buck’s eyes and wanders off to wear his shoes. “If anything happens, call me.”
“I can’t promise that this time,” Buck murmurs, pressing a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth and then a real one. “These fights get pretty bad.”
“Buck.”
“You’ll know where I am,” he says instead. “If I leave the house, I’ll text you.”
Eddie throws his hands up in the air. “Fine.”
“You’re so dramatic,” Buck replies, but his heart isn’t in it. “Bye, Eds.”
He kisses Buck one last time before he heads for the door, hands tangled in his air and the faint brush of teeth against Buck’s lip. Then he’s gone, and Buck is standing there staring mournfully after him. And then, after a while, he joins Maddie on the couch, and they wait in silence.
“Why are you both being so quiet?” their mother asks, walking out of the bathroom with her arms crossed like everything about today is ordinary, and Buck can’t explain it but his heart is in his throat just like he’s 15 again and not scared but sort of terrified of the tint to his mother’s eyes, like she’s the predator and he’s the prey.
“We were waiting,” Maddie answers, because she’s braver than Buck will ever be. “For you. To talk about Dad.”
His mother purses her lips and crosses the room. Even before she can sit, the expression twists something inside of him. “Why are you acting like you didn’t make it obvious earlier that you wanted to have this conversation?” Buck demands.
It isn’t the right thing to say, but Buck can’t help but feel like there is no right thing to say, and if his mother is going to tear him to shreds regardless, he might as well get a few hits in. Maddie tenses next to him, prepared to pick up the next line. That part isn’t familiar—since Maddie left when he was a teenager and Buck was too young to fight before that—but it makes Buck feel steadier on his feet anyway.
“You kept pushing it,” their mother snaps. “I’ve been trying to talk to you about this damn will ever since yesterday and you keep making me look like the bad guy in front of Howie and Eddie—”
“You don’t need my help.”
“Don’t you dare,” she snarls. “You parade around your boyfriend while your father’s in the hospital and you think—”
“Parade?” Maddie asks. “If Eddie hadn’t shown up, I think Buck would’ve come down with stress influenza or something. Just because you don’t like that your son is dating a man —”
“Oh, would you stop?”
“—I don’t get it, mom. How can you say you can’t watch your kids get hurt and then not show up when we’re in the hospital? How can you say that and then be the one to hurt us?”
“You and your memory,” their mother sneers at Maddie. “Always using it against me.”
“That’s what you said!” Buck scoffs back in frustration. “You literally said those exact words the last time you visited us in L.A.!”
“God Evan, you can’t expect us to show up across the country every time you land yourself in the hospital!”
“You showed up none of the times, mom! Not when I had my leg crushed by the firetruck, not when I had the pulmonary embolism. Hell, you left town before Maddie even went into labor because you couldn’t deal with us!” He won’t cry. He won’t. “And if that’s too hard for you, maybe you shouldn’t have fucking had kids at all!”
“Don’t swear.”
“Is that really what you got out of that?” Buck laughs bitterly. “Do you even want to talk about dad? Or was that a ploy to—I don’t know—to tell me how much of a disappointment I am? Again. Because I get it, mom. You hate me so much we can’t even be in the same house for more than 4 days without arguing.”
“I don’t—”
“Yes, you do!” Buck snaps. “Because the only time you ever paid attention to me was when I was in pain. You yelled at me so much for doing reckless shit, but you know what? You never, ever tried to stop me before I jumped.”
Maddie sniffs next to him. She’s upset about it, probably, because Buck’s never told her this and he loves her enough not to hint at it, but she’s glaring at their mother instead of looking at Buck. And he hates to be the one to cut the cord, but he thinks he just accidentally severed whatever relationship Maddie and their mother had with each other forever.
“You’re a terrible mother,” she says tearfully, a little choked with her small hand wrapped around Buck’s wrist. Always protecting him. “You—I’m still trying to unlearn what you taught me, you know that? Thirty-eight years later. And I just…”
She exhales shakily. Stands. “I can’t stand by and watch you hurt me and Buck over and over again,” she breathes out with a sort of finality that isn’t…it just isn’t processing. “So I’m going upstairs, and I’m going to pack. And as soon as Buck makes his decision, I’m going back to Los Angeles. I don’t think we have much to say to each other after that.”
“Maddie,” their mother snaps as Maddie squeezes Buck’s hand once and heads up the stairs. “Maddie, come back down, now.” There’s no response except the careful shutting of the door upstairs.
Their mother is crying too now, shaking with tears and something else…sadness, but more likely than not anger. “She doesn’t mean that,” she says, speaking to no one in particular.
Buck doesn’t know what to do. He shrugs, feeling defiant but so, so young; torn between wanting his mom to apologize to him and wanting to follow in his sister’s footsteps. He thinks he’s meant to forever stay here, in this fine line between forgiveness and hatred. He wonders if this is the person his father had in mind when he drafted the will.
As if just remembering Buck’s presence, she slowly looks up at him, knits her eyebrows together like she’s trying to parse him out. Buck doesn’t know what the hell she’s looking for, but he won’t let her find it.
“Are you going to let him die then?” she asks. “Your own father?”
“He’s already dead, mom.”
“You don’t have faith in him?”
Buck exhales heavily. “I’m not sure I ever did.”
His mother nods, like she’d expected this, and doesn’t try and convince him otherwise; doesn’t try and claim that Buck’s father loves them, ever did. But Buck thinks she’s just projecting. “Leave then,” she says, tears streaming down her face even faster than before. “Just like you did when you were 19.”
He doesn’t…he thinks he should feel sympathy but he doesn’t. And he already knew he was a bad person walking in. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You never liked me.”
“You’re my mother,” Buck says, through the lump in his throat. “You were supposed to like me first.”
Buck sits on a park bench until Eddie finds him.
“Hey,” he says, sitting beside Buck, body facing the opposite direction so Buck doesn't have to look at him if he doesn’t want to. But it’s Eddie, so he does. “A bit far from home, huh?”
“It’s just a 5 minute drive,” Buck replies. “Maddie and I caught an Uber. She dropped me off a half-hour ago.”
“I was talking about Los Angeles,” Eddie comments dryly, and Buck huffs out a laugh. “Chimney’s taking Jee and Christopher to the hotel now.”
“Hmm,” he says, glancing at Eddie finally. He doesn’t know what he was expecting—judgment maybe, a little pity—but he looks almost…he looks almost proud of Buck, which he can’t really wrap his head around right now. “Sorry for dragging Christopher into this mess.”
“He’ll be okay,” Eddie replies, tracing shapes onto Buck’s shoulder above his t-shirt. “I think he’s more worried about you. And the fact that the nearest ice cream place only carried 5 flavors.”
“Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, coffee, and mint chocolate chip,” Buck remembers, the words pouring out of him like a confession. An admittance that he lived here, once; dealt with his parents for a lot longer than three days before he ran away. “I told my mother she shouldn’t have had kids.”
“I see your point.” Eddie twists around to fold his legs neatly beneath the tabletop. Buck gazes at him where he’s resting his cheek on the wood. “But I’m really glad you’re here.”
“You would’ve found someone else.”
“Nah,” Eddie says, with so much conviction it almost feels definite. Buck doesn’t think he’s one in a million, but it’s clear Eddie does. “Not like this.”
He’s gorgeous like this, in the afternoon sun, smiling softly down at Buck like he’s the only thing for miles worth looking at. He’s just fought with his mother for what might be the last time in his entire life; he has to decide his father’s fate in less than 24 hours, but here, with Eddie, none of that seems to sink in.
It’s a weird feeling to override the rest: safety, but Buck always feels it with his best friend. He’s never had one of those before Eddie came along, his first and last. And he just knows, just like he knew Eddie would show up at the park, that when he falls, Eddie will always be there to catch him.
He’ll never get used to that feeling.
“Come on, Eddie, if the birthmark really does it for you I know of a hundred places you can buy a Sharpie—”
“A Sharpie? You want me to draw on my imaginary lover with toxic ink?”
“Well, I have to do something to defend my place in this alternate reality!”
“Doesn’t exist,” Eddie says, with a laugh that shows his teeth. Buck wants to kiss him stupid. “You’re stuck with me for every single dimension.”
“Oh, well,” Buck laments dramatically, sticking his tongue out. “It’s not really that much of a hardship.”
Calm silence washes over them. Buck watches the tree branches sway in the spring breeze. “When I was a kid,” he says, “A lot more people would come to this park.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmm. The swing set would always make this creaking noise. My friends were convinced that it was going to break if you went faster than 5 miles per hour. But—”
“Let me guess, you always went faster than that anyway.”
“Yeah,” Buck confirms. “It never broke. Obviously. But I did skin my knee once. It wasn’t so bad, but my mom wouldn’t let me go on the swing set after that, which was very embarrassing when I was 7, so I did it anyway.” He sighs. “The second time I fell, I skinned my elbow. I was eight. Just went home and patched up myself like I’d watched Maddie do.”
He folds his left leg up to his chest, tracing over one of the names carved into the wood: Jenna Y. He doesn’t know it. “I don’t think I’m a bad person,” he says.
“You’re not.”
“I don’t think I’m a bad person.” He shoots Eddie a small smile; eases his fingers where they’re making fists on the table. “But sometimes it feels like I could be. I think I’m upset about my dad because I’m supposed to be, but I’m not…there’s more to it than that.”
“You’re allowed to be upset,” Eddie says firmly. “Even if it’s not rational.”
“No, I…” He struggles to find the words. “I think about my dad, and the bad outweighs the good. And I know that. That’s rational to me. But my mom says one word to me and it’s like…well my dad wasn’t nearly as bad as she was. And at the same time, I’m more upset about leaving her than I am taking my dad off the ventilator.” He shakes his head. “Isn’t that fucked up?”
“And like,” he continues, “I know you’re not Dr. Copeland, and sometimes I think I’m beyond help anyway but—” He looks up. Eddie’s watching him with those same eyes; the ones that say I’ve got you. I’m here and I’ve got you. And Buck takes it and runs with it. “But sometimes I think I’m more like my mother than I ever was my dad.”
Eddie blinks. “No.” He bites his lip, but he’s staring at Buck resolute and unwavering. “You’re good. Unequivocally good. You’re a fantastic father to Christopher and an amazing uncle to Jee-Yun in a way that your mother would never be. She taught you to be expendable. That you only exist in relation to everyone else.” He pauses. “That’s not true.”
Buck lets out a breath. “Eddie, I’m not sure what is anymore.”
“You’re Buck,” he replies. “And you always have been. That’s true. I know it.”
And…that’s the first time anyone’s ever said that to him. In those words. And Buck thinks, as Eddie doesn’t meet his eyes, it’s the only thing he’s ever needed to hear.
“So what are you grieving for, Buck?” he asks softly. “What you lost? Or what you’ll be left with?”
Buck’s not so sure he knows the answer.
They leave for Los Angeles the day after the funeral.
Jee-Yun only cries once at the gate and Christopher pouts like a teenager for 30 minutes before Buck and Eddie get some food in him and he wordlessly pulls out his book and ignores them until it’s time to board. Maddie takes a nap on Chimney’s shoulder while he plays Candy Crush or texts Hen for most of it, and Buck and Eddie…
They kind of just exist with each other. Buck books a session with Dr. Copeland and rubs the sleep out from under his eyes as Eddie distracts him with mindless chatter. The airport is too loud for him to rest, but there’s no headache building, so at least there’s that.
Buck isn’t going to pretend that either he or Maddie have suddenly healed in the last day. His heart pangs for Jee-Yun, who won’t grow up to know either of her grandmothers, but then Eddie reminds him that she has the best mother in the world, and Buck has to admit his niece got the better side of the deal.
Christopher doesn’t seem too upset about it either—the stupid comments Buck’s mother made or missing his spring camp—but he hasn’t asked Buck about it yet. Instead, he just shoots Buck a comforting smile whenever he can and leaves him to Eddie to deal with.
(Eddie wants to deal with Buck. That part always feels a little insane.)
“Bobby says you’re back on rotation tomorrow afternoon if you’re up to it,” Eddie calls down the hallway, once they’re back in L.A. and Buck knows he’s really home because he just took a shower in the Diaz bathroom with really shitty water pressure. “I’m still out for three more days.”
“I should be,” Buck replies, toweling his hair.
He feels exhausted, but he’s pretty sure if he stays home tomorrow, all he’s going to do is mope on the couch under a pile of blankets. He’s booked the session with Dr. Copeland, but a part of him needs to go out and help people anyway. The essentialism of it.
“Hey,” Eddie hip-checks him and leans against the wall to take him in. “You good?”
“Hmm? Yeah, fine.”
“Alright then,” Eddie says, wrapping his arms around Buck’s neck and pulling him closer. And…you know Buck’s just a man, how is he to resist? “Can I tell you a secret?”
Buck raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Sure,” he says, still sticky with humidity.
“You are good,” Eddie states. “And you are loving. And you are my favorite person and Christopher’s favorite person. And I will trust you with our lives over and over and over if you’ll let me.”
It sounds a lot like “I love you too.”