Chapter Text
Buck had been back at the 118 for exactly thirty days.
He knew the number not because he was keeping some countdown, a ‘look, I made it back’ kind of tally, but because the days dragged like weights attached to his ankles, each one marked with the subtle ache of silence. Thirty days of walking into the station house and watching conversations collapse like sandcastles at high tide. Thirty days of reaching for conversations and finding nothing but thin air. Thirty days of pretending not to notice the stiffness in Bobby’s posture when their eyes met, the clipped replies from Hen, the distracted nods from Chim, the deliberate absence of Eddie’s gaze.
It was like being back in middle school, only worse. At least back then, Buck had been too young to know the word pariah.
Now he did.
He could feel it in every step, every pause, every time someone brushed past him with that forced politeness that said: we’re tolerating you, not welcoming you. He had thought—naïvely, maybe—that time would smooth it over. That the lawsuit, as ugly as it had been, would fade into the background once he put his helmet back on, once he showed up again on calls, once he reminded them who he was in the field.
But time hadn’t smoothed anything. Time had sharpened it.
The silence was worse than yelling. Worse than a lecture. Worse than Bobby’s disappointment, which used to be the one thing Buck couldn’t stand. At least disappointment meant they still cared enough to be invested. Now there was just absence.
Like he’d come back a ghost.
The first shift had been the most brutal. He’d walked in, uniform crisp, smile bright, trying to make it easy for them, trying to say without words: I know I screwed up, but I’m here, I’m still me, let’s move forward. He apologised, and received nothing in return.
Hen had looked right past him. Chim had muttered something under his breath that he didn’t quite catch, then turned back to his phone. Bobby had handed out assignments like Buck was just another name on the roster—no warmth, no recognition. Eddie—Eddie had glanced at him for half a second, jaw tight, then dropped his gaze and busied himself with checking the rig.
That was the first crack.
By day three, the jokes Buck tried to toss out over breakfast landed in silence. By day five, when Bobby paired people up for drills, no one volunteered to work with him. By day seven, he stopped bothering with jokes. By day ten, he stopped trying to sit at the table, choosing the corner single table instead.
Now, day thirty, the routine was carved into stone.
He came in. He nodded, tried to keep his smile small and unassuming. He found tasks that didn’t need volunteers and did them without being asked—mopping, wiping down the rig, organizing medical bags. He sat at the single corner table. He watched them laugh, talk, live in the warm circle of family he used to belong to, and he pretended the food in his mouth wasn’t tasteless.
The only time he felt like himself anymore was on calls.
Even then, it was tense.
They didn’t trust him. He could see it in how Hen double-checked his knots, how Chim hovered near his patients, how Bobby called him back sooner than necessary. And Eddie—God, Eddie—who used to be his other half out there, didn’t move in sync with him anymore. They used to anticipate each other like breathing: Eddie’s hand reaching exactly when Buck passed the tool, Buck covering Eddie’s blind side without a word. Now there were gaps, hesitations, sharp looks.
The worst was when they left him behind.
Twice, in the chaos of sirens and scrambling bodies, Buck had found himself running a step behind, reaching the scene only to realize the others had already moved in without him. Not forgotten exactly—because how could you forget a six-foot-tall firefighter in turnout gear—but deliberately cut out, as if he was more liability than help.
He told himself he understood. He told himself it was punishment, consequence, a kind of exile he had earned by turning on his own team with that lawsuit. But understanding didn’t make it sting less.
And every night, when he went home to his quiet apartment, he would lay on his couch and replayed the day in fragments: Hen’s cold shoulder, Bobby’s distance, Eddie’s silence. He tried to convince himself tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow they’d see he wasn’t the enemy. Tomorrow someone would laugh at his joke. Tomorrow Eddie would look at him the way he used to—like they shared something no one else knew about.
But tomorrow never came.
The call came just after sunrise on his 30th day back.
Car accident, multi-vehicle pile-up on the freeway.
Buck loved the adrenaline of calls like this—loved the way his body kicked into gear, muscle memory overriding hesitation. But today, the air was different. The freeway was chaos: smoke rising, horns blaring, glass everywhere. Civilians screamed for help, waving them over. Bobby barked orders, splitting them into teams.
“Hen, Chim, triage. Eddie, you’re with me on extraction. Buck—”
Buck straightened, waiting.
Bobby’s eyes slid past him. “Support. Keep the scene clear.”
Support.
It was the firefighter equivalent of being benched. Probie work.
Still, Buck nodded, forcing his voice steady. “Got it.”
He directed panicked drivers and other people away from the wreck, pulled flares from the rig, laid them in a line to redirect traffic. He carried equipment when Bobby barked for it. But when he moved closer, offering tools, Eddie took them from Chim instead. When Buck reached for a victim’s stretcher, Hen’s hand brushed him off with a sharp, “We’ve got it.”
By the end of the call, Buck was sweating under his gear, heart pounding not from exertion but from the slow, crawling realization: they will never want him again. One month back and he now knows without a doubt he will never be wanted here again.
Not really. Not here.
When they loaded up the rig, the others laughed about something Chim said. Buck climbed into his seat in silence, turned his face toward the window. His reflection looked pale, thinner than he remembered.
That afternoon, after the rig was cleaned and the reports filed, Buck signed out early for his doctor’s appointment.
It was supposed to be routine. Just one last scan, one last check before his doctor cleared him from blood thinners. He’d been waiting for this for months—the final hurdle since the leg injury, the thing that destroyed his entire life.
He sat in the sterile exam room, tapping his fingers against his knee. The nurse had smiled kindly, drawn blood, wheeled in the X-ray machine. When the doctor walked in Buck filled the silence. “So, doc, when do I get the all-clear to stop the blood thinners?”
Dr. Nguyen didn’t say anything.
She frowned at the screen, adjusted the machine to scan his leg, and frowned again.
Buck tried to make light of it. “Don’t tell me you found a spare parts in there.”
No smile. Just a quiet: “Let’s order some additional imaging. I want a clearer look at this area.”
Something in her tone made Buck’s stomach drop.
By the time she left to make the arrangements, Buck was staring at the monitor, at the blurry, shadowy shapes clustered like storm clouds across the scan. His throat was dry, his palms damp against his thighs.
When Dr. Nguyen came back, her voice was calm but firm. “We need to run more tests. It’s not what we hoped for.”
Buck blinked, the words echoing in his skull like a siren.
Not what we hoped for. What does she mean by that?
She left again, promising to return with details, and Buck was alone in the exam room. Alone with the hum of the machines, the sterile smell of antiseptic, and the shadowy shapes still burned into his vision.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths.
The silence pressed in.
For the first time in thirty days, Buck wished someone—anyone—was there with him.