Chapter Text
It was late into Tuesday night, so late that it was actually Wednesday, and Eddie could not sleep. He had tried, for a bit, but he eventually gave it up as a loss and retreated to the station’s loft. Bobby apparently had the same idea, and so did Hen, the latter looking morose about something. It didn’t take much effort, while they sat around the kitchen island, to get her to open up about Denny’s questions from earlier that day. Questions about his birth mother, Eva.
Eddie supposed that telling the kid the blunt and honest truth wasn’t an option at the moment.
“It sounds like you handled it pretty well,” he told her. “You answered his question. When there’s more, you’ll answer those, too.”
“I guess so,” Hen said, not sounding very comforted. Beyond her, Bobby was scowling down at his phone. “I just wish I knew where this was coming from.”
“Karen nearly died,” Eddie pointed out. “It’s natural that it’s got him thinking about things. And maybe it’s better he knows. We’ve seen what happens when secrets like this are left buried for too long.”
If anything positive could be taken from the Great Buckley Fuck-Up of 2021, it was a lesson on how not to handle life-altering family secrets. Especially when it was almost inevitable for them to be uncovered.
“Maybe you’re right,” she agreed, though she didn’t look very happy about it. “But him asking now is unsettling, and this damn wind doesn’t help. Always puts me out of sorts.”
“That’s because we know what these winds can do,” Bobby said, letting out a sigh as he sat down in the stool beside her. “Where there’s wind, there’s fire.”
That wasn’t how the phrase went, but Eddie wasn’t going to bring it up.
“You guys couldn’t sleep either?” Chimney asked, cresting the loft stairs. He was carrying a tablet.
“Starting to feel like it’s contagious,” Eddie said. “Buck still sleeping?”
“Like a baby.” Chimney set the tablet down on the island, before moving for the coffee maker. “In the world’s emptiest bunkroom.”
“Where’s Al?” Hen asked.
“Downstairs, on the phone with Ravi. Apparently he couldn’t sleep either.”
“What’s got you up?” Bobby asked him.
“I was looking into that house Al and I were called to,” Chimney said. “The one Williams thought he saw the ghost.”
“The Murder House?’ Hen asked, and Eddie barely kept from groaning aloud. Jinxes and curses and devil winds, and now a haunted murder house. Delightful.
“I wanted to know more about it.” The paramedic shrugged. “Seemed like it hadn’t been lived in for a while.”
“It is called the Murder House,” Bobby pointed out. “Maybe that’s why you can’t sleep.”
“What kind of murder?” Eddie asked, because he was genuinely curious. And also because Buck would pout if he didn’t get all the details for him.
“Triple homicide in the Sixties,” Chimney answered, scrolling on the tablet. “Dad came home right before Christmas, killed his three daughters and then himself. Mom got away, don’t know where to. House has been vacant ever since.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
And then a car came screeching into the bay.
Buck was used to being gracelessly yanked out of sleep. Especially during an overnight shift at the station. The thing was, he was used to being woken up by the shrill screams of the alarm rousing them for an emergency. He was not used to being woken up by the sound of brakes screeching and someone shouting.
It was an effective wake-up call just the same, though.
He slid on the pair of sandals he kept by the bed and hurried out of the bunkroom, eager to find out just what was going on. He was not expecting to find a car sitting in the middle of the bay, nor to find Bobby and Eddie and the Hans surrounding a naked woman.
“Okay!” he cried, raising a hand to cover his eyes. “This is not a dream I’ve had before.”
Normally, when he had these dreams, he was the one naked in the middle of the station.
“Is she…?” Eddie let the question trail off. He was also covering his eyes, and had his face turned away.
“Yeah, she’s naked,” Albert confirmed, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“And asleep,” Chimney said, and when Buck risked a peek, he saw that he was snapping his fingers in her face. “She is out cold. Maybe she’s sleepwalking.”
“You mean sleep-driving,” Eddie helpfully corrected.
“Uh, what should we do?” Buck asked. He lowered his hand, but couldn’t bring himself to look in the direction of the woman for long. “Isn’t it dangerous to wake up a sleepwalker?”
He seemed to remember hearing that somewhere.
“Probably not as dangerous as driving while sleeping,” Chimney pointed out.
“Here’s what we’ll do. Buck, go get a blanket,” Bobby ordered, and Buck hurried to go find one as the captain kept giving orders. Voices carried very well in the station bay, especially when everyone was silently gawking at something. “Chim, Albert, check her out to be safe. And maybe she left her ID in the car. Eddie, can you check the front seat?”
“She’s naked,” Eddie retorted, and Buck could easily imagine the sassy way his eyebrows were raised. “You really think she thought to grab her purse on the way out the door?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby said, exasperation coating his words. “Maybe it’s in the cup holder or the glove compartment.”
In the meanwhile, Buck had found and was running back with one of the spare blankets they kept on hand.
“Pops,” he said, holding it out. “Here.”
“Dispatch is sending officers!” Hen came running to them, only to skid to a stop when she saw what was going on. “Oh. Uh, okay.”
“Thank you,” Bobby said, taking the blanket from Buck. He started wrapping it around the woman, who woke up and started screaming the moment he got the blanket on her shoulders. The captain leaped back like he was burned and Hen jumped in to take over.
“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” she said, helping get the blanket to cover the woman better. “You’re in a safe place, okay? My name is Hen, I’m a firefighter.”
“O- Okay.” The woman wasn’t screaming any longer, but she didn’t look any less freaked out.
“We just want to help you,” Hen said, guiding her to the ambulance, where Albert and Chimney were waiting. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Lizzy,” the woman said. “Lizzy Sampson.”
“Well, Lizzy, if it’s alright with you,” Chimney said, directing her to sit down on the back of the ambulance, “we’re going to check you out, make sure you’re okay.”
“Uh, yeah, okay.”
“So, Lizzy,” Bobby started as Chimney did the basic concussion checks. “You got behind the wheel while you were sleeping. You have a history of this kind of thing?”
“Sleepwalking,” Lizzy confirmed. “But this is new.”
“Pupils are equal and reactive,” Chimney reported. “No sign of head trauma or concussion.”
“Pretty lucky,” Eddie told her. “The way you came in here, you could’ve really hurt yourself. Or us.”
“I don’t know if ‘lucky’ is how I would describe how I feel,” Lizzy protested. “Maybe ‘mortified.’”
She burrowed deeper into the blanket, pulling it up to her chin.
“Do you remember anything?” Hen asked her.
“I went to bed around eleven, like always,” Lizzy told them. “And then I woke up here. In a firehouse, oh my god.”
“And do you always sleep in the nude?” Buck asked, and got several judgmental looks in response. “Hey! Don’t look at me like that. She could have-” He lowered his voice to a hissed whisper, though it was probably futile. “Something could have happened.”
There were lots of medically relevant reasons that someone could fall asleep clothed and wake up naked. Most of them awful. It was not a stupid question!
“I like to sleep with the window open,” she confessed. “And feel a… Breeze.”
“Did you take anything to help you sleep?” Albert asked, and then glanced at the others. “People on Ambien drive in their sleep. It’s a thing.”
Buck did not know that. Huh.
“Uh, no.”
“You seem to be fine,” Chimney said, getting the woman’s attention. “But if it’s okay, we’re gonna take you to the hospital. Get you checked out, just to be safe.”
“I guess, sure.”
“Okay, Buck?” Bobby turned to face him. “Go check the locker room, see if there’s any spare clothes?”
“Right, but uh… What about her car?” Buck asked. It was kind of blocking the ambulance's way out of the station, after all.
“My car?” Lizzy seemed confused, but then again, she’d been in a state of confusion ever since she woke up.
“The car you drove here,” Albert said, pointing over in its direction.
“I don’t own a car.” And then it seemed the entire conversation they’d been having finally dawned on her. “Oh my god, I don’t own a car. I stole someone’s car. In my sleep. Naked. Oh my god.”
Buck patted Bobby’s shoulder before leaving him and the others to deal with all of that.
“Murder’s too obvious,” Chimney complained. “There’s no way that’s what it was.”
They had migrated to the station roof, watching the sun begin to peek over the horizon, after Lizzy and the car that wasn’t hers had been taken care of. Or, most of them had. Buck went back to the bunkroom, declaring his intent of getting more sleep in before they were called out again. The rest of them were sitting around in lawn chairs, sipping at the hot chocolate Bobby made for them.
“Then why do they call it Murder House?” Eddie asked, feeling the lack of sleep.
“Please don’t encourage him,” Hen begged. Understandably so, considering the man had been going on about the house for some time now.
“Because Mishap House,” Chimney sniped, “doesn’t have the same ring to it.”
“Is that what you think happened to this family?” Bobby asked him. “A mishap?”
“Nobody seems to know,” the paramedic said. “I’ve looked up three blogs and a podcast, and got four different things.”
“Didn’t seem like an old murder scene when we were there,” Albert pointed out. “Everything was just dusty and forgotten.”
“What are we talking about?” a groggy sounding Buck asked, shuffling into their circle.
“Couldn’t sleep, either?” Hen asked him.
“Who could sleep when there’s cars driving unannounced into the building?” he asked, dragging one of the empty chairs as close to Eddie as he could manage, before leaning into his space to rest his head on Eddie’s shoulder.
“Would you prefer an announcement?” Eddie asked, leaning down to press a kiss into his curls and ignoring Chimney’s fake gagging.
“I would.”
“Have some hot chocolate,” Bobby said, and Buck perked up when Hen poured him a cup from the thermos.
“Thanks,” he said, taking it from her. “What were you talking about?”
“The Murder House,” Albert answered, sipping at his own hot chocolate.
“Triple homicide in the Sixties,” Chimney explained, when Buck just squinted in confusion. “Dad came home just before Christmas-”
“Oh, that Murder House,” Buck said, nodding. “It’s on Taylor’s list.”
“Taylor’s got a list of Murder Houses?” Eddie asked him.
“No, a list of mysteries in the city,” his husband answered. “The wind’s making my skin itch.”
“It’s the ions in the air,” Hen told him.
“That’s a thing?” Albert asked, though Eddie’s attention was stolen by the way Bobby had gotten up and walked away from them, facing the rising sun.
“It’s a thing,” she confirmed.
“Everything okay, Cap?” Chimney asked, turning in his seat to peer at him.
“Smell that?” the captain asked.
Eddie sniffed at the wind, and knew the others all smelled it as well when the levity left their expressions.
“Fire,” Buck said, the previous grogginess gone.
They all rushed for the trucks, their hot chocolate forgotten.
The biggest danger of the Santa Ana winds wasn’t the excuse they provided for people to be idiots. Nor was it the wind damage, the down tree limbs and power lines. No, the biggest danger was how they blew dry and hot and fast. Low humidity, compressionally heated, and upwards of fifty miles per hour gusts, if not faster.
Perfect for fueling and spreading wildfires.
The fire was located just outside of the city, and by the time they got to it, it had spread across most of a clearing. There were a group of gawkers, probably from the nearby residences, rubbernecking a few yards away. Eddie was just thankful they were smart enough to not be in their way.
They got the hoses hooked up and sprayed it down, drowning the hungry beast before it could stretch out any farther. Afterwards, they went through with shovels and rakes, hunting down and smothering any remaining hot spots.
In the middle of the blackened swath, there was a pile of burnt wood. Eddie couldn’t tell if it was just dead growth that had ended up there on its own, or if it had been piled up. Not until, at least, he lifted part of it up and found the worst of surprises.
“Cap!” he called, getting Bobby’s attention. The captain had been talking to a pair of civilians, but he abandoned them to come jogging over. “Got a victim.”
Bobby let out a groan of dismay and used his shovel to move more of the mound. And then he froze, before dropping to a knee, like his strings had been cut. He let out a distraught,
“Oh, no.”
“Cap?” Eddie asked.
“I need a second.”
“What?” They’d seen dead bodies before, they’d seen burnt bodies before. Why-?
“I need a second!” Bobby snapped, and Eddie recoiled a little.
“Bobby, what is it?” he asked. “Did you know them?”
“It’s Wendall,” the captain told him, fingers hovering over a watch on the victim’s wrist, which had mostly survived the fire. “My sponsor.”
Ah. Fuck.
The ride back to the station was quiet and tense. Clean up of the fire had taken them long past the end of their shift, and everyone was dirty and tired. Bobby was a silent figure through it all, which in turn led to them tiptoeing around, terrified of breaking the silence. Buck thought it was somehow similar, yet different, to the time Harry had been taken. Similar, because someone close to Bobby was hurt and there was nothing he could do but hope.
Different, because any hope was long snuffed out, like the fire.
The atmosphere lingered when they made it into the bay, where Buck took it upon himself to be the one to direct the trucks as they backed inside. Normally it would have been Bobby, but he stayed sitting in the captain’s seat. Like it hadn’t quite registered that they had arrived just yet.
“I’m fine,” was the first thing Bobby said since leaving the scene. It was in response to the way everyone had stopped and stared at him, after they clambered out. “Let’s get washed up and go home. Maybe we can all finally get some sleep.”
“That was a lie,” Buck muttered after the captain marched away, not looking back at any of them.
“Who was it you found?” Albert asked as they headed for the lockers to shower and change.
“Bobby’s sponsor,” Eddie answered. “Wendall.”
“I never met him,” Buck said. “I’ll call Ma first, let her know.”
As they were entering the locker room, he heard Hen’s phone ring. She stopped and stayed back, answering with a tired,
“Hey, Diedra. I wasn’t expecting…”
The last day of November was much like the days immediately before it: blustery and restless. The mood had not gotten any better after they showered and headed home, with Bobby barely speaking to anyone and Hen rushing out of the station. And with the way Chimney was still going on about that house, it seemed to Buck as if the devil winds had finally started to get at those around him.
Buck and Eddie hadn’t felt like going home quite yet. Especially since they’d already missed seeing Chris to school. Instead, they invited Albert - who also hadn’t been in a hurry to get to his empty apartment - out for brunch. They didn’t talk much at first when they got there, the three of them stuck in that awful limbo state of being dog-tired but also still wired. They were probably - hopefully - going to crash the moment they got home.
“I just realized,” Buck blurted out between bites of waffle, “I never asked how Thanksgiving went.”
Albert had spent it with Ravi, he knew, even though they had both been invited to spend it at Bobby’s. Thanksgiving had never seemed much of a holiday to Buck, especially growing up. And now, it seemed more of an excuse to have a really big dinner than anything else. He was fairly certain that Ravi’s family didn’t really celebrate it, but he’d taken it as an excuse to visit them and drag Albert along for the ride.
“It was fine,” Albert said. “His parents were nice, no one threatened me with an ax.”
“That sounds like a lame family dinner,” Eddie commented mildly.
“It was a nice dinner,” the other man said. “His parents dote on him.”
Aw, that was sweet, Buck thought. It was nice that at least one of them was going through life having unproblematic relationships with their biological parents. Bobby might have, but considering Buck didn’t know anything about the captain’s parents, he wasn’t going to count him just yet.
“But what did they think about you?” Buck asked him, leaning forward a bit. “How badly did you embarrass yourself in front of them?”
“I didn’t,” Albert told him, sniffing haughtily. “And they loved me. His dad and I watched football.”
“You don’t even like football,” Eddie pointed out. Albert much preferred baseball, just as Eddie did.
“I don’t think he did, either,” Albert replied with a shrug. “It was just what was on.”
Buck’s phone buzzed where it sat on the table, at the same time as Albert and Eddie’s. When he looked at it, he saw it was a text from Chimney. A link to an article, specifically.
“I guess he’s home,” he said, setting his phone back down without following the link. “And going on about that house again. Do you think I should tell him that I know what actually happened there?”
The other two stared at him.
“Explain, mi sol,” Eddie said.
“See, if you were nicer to Taylor-” He stopped mid sentence at his husband’s unamused glare. “I told you, it was on Taylor’s mysteries list or whatever. She hunted down the wife’s nephew, got the story from him. Dad apparently crashed just before Christmas with his daughters in the car. The mom moved out and never came back. No murder, just tragedy.”
“That’s sad,” Albert said. “And you haven’t told him, yet?”
“I’m a bad friend,” Buck joked with a shrug. “I just remember listening to Taylor complain about it because apparently a car accident isn’t as interesting as a decades old murders-suicide.”
“And you wonder why I’m not nice to her,” Eddie said.
“No, that has never been a mystery, babe.”
December
Buck wasn’t quite sure what the emergency was, or if it really was an emergency.
The night before, while he and Eddie were arguing about what to put in their scrapbook - well, less arguing and more Buck spending half an hour trying to decide if they should include any of the pictures with Gavin, or if it would be weird having putting in pictures of a baby that wasn’t theirs - Hen had called. She had sounded odd, somehow. Odd enough to pique Buck’s concern.
She said she was fine, when he pressed. She said she was fine, but that she really thought he and Eddie should come by the next day.
“What do you think this could be about?” Buck asked, while he and Eddie walked up to the Wilsons’ front door. The last time he’d been there, Buck had been showing up to yell at people. He hoped that wouldn’t be the case today.
The Santa Anas had finally let off, but the unease lingered.
“I have no idea,” Eddie told him, raising his fist and knocking at the door.
It opened quickly, an anxious looking Hen standing on the other side.
“Come in, come in,” the paramedic said, stepping aside and practically pulling Buck inside. “I’m- I’m really glad you guys came. I didn’t feel comfortable not telling you, but…”
“Not telling us what?” Eddie asked her. “Is everyone okay? Is this about Denny?”
“Everyone’s- It’s fine,” Hen said, waving her hands. “This has nothing to do with Denny’s questions. Uh, no. Uh… You know Deidra called yesterday, right? Just before we went home?”
Buck nodded, but felt so very lost.
“Why did Deidra call you?” he asked, having been wondering. “Was it… It wasn’t about us, right? I didn’t think we’d been assigned a social worker yet, or that they’d started calling our references.”
“No, it wasn’t about you guys,” she told him, shaking her head. “She wanted to know if we’d be okay with an emergency placement.”
“An emergency placement?” Eddie repeated. “I thought Karen took you off the foster parents list before the lab explosion. Did you guys get back on it?”
“No, but they didn’t have anyone else to take them on such short notice,” Hen explained, leading them to her dining table. Eddie sat; Buck and Hen both stayed standing. “And it was someone we had before.”
“It isn’t Nia, is it?” Buck asked, looking around. He half expected the little girl to pop out somewhere.
“No, Nia’s fine,” Hen assured him. “It’s… I think it would be easier to show you. But you have to stay calm, okay?” She walked to the doorway leading into the rest of the house, where the bedrooms wore, and raised her voice. “Karen?”
“What’s going on, Hen?” Buck asked. “What’s…”
He trailed off as Karen came into the room. She held in her arms an infant wrapped in a gray blanket, his blue eyes blinking at them from beneath a head of dark hair. A very familiar gray blanket.
“Hen,” Eddie said as Buck let himself be drawn to the baby. To Gavin. “I thought he was adopted?”
“He was,” Karen said. “There was… Something happened.”
“What happened?” Buck asked, eyes fixed on the baby. Gavin pulled an arm out of the folds of the blanket, reaching out with a chubby hand and babbling nonsense.
He felt his breath catch.
There were bruises wrapped around that tiny, tiny arm. Hideous blues and purples, in the perfect shape of fingers and a thumb and a palm.
“What happened!?” Buck demanded again, his voice raising as he turned on Hen. “He was supposed to be-” He cut himself off at Gavin’s whine, and when he looked back, the boy was burying his face into Karen’s shoulder.
Trying to hide from him.
“Oh, no, no, little guy, hey. I’m not mad at you, okay?” Buck said, taking the boy from Karen’s arms and bouncing him slightly and rubbing at his back, until he calmed down. “I’m sorry for yelling. I won’t do it again. Promise.”
“What happened?” Eddie asked, his voice much calmer than Buck felt.
“I don’t know,” Hen finally answered. “I’m not allowed to know. Deidra called, and… I couldn’t say no.”
“I promised his mother,” Buck said, gaze focused on the baby he was holding. “I told her he was safe.”
He had promised her, and apparently he had lied.
(First responders weren’t supposed to make promises like that.)
“He was supposed to be,” Karen said, and wasn’t that the worst part? He was supposed to be safe. Because the state put everyone that wanted to adopt a kid under a microscope, went through everything with a fine-toothed comb, to make sure this didn’t happen.
“So what happens now?” Eddie asked, getting up and coming to stand by Buck’s side. He reached down to poke at Gavin’s nose, making the boy go cross-eyed. “How long are you keeping him?”
“We don’t know,” Hen said. “This was an emergency placement, so until they find somewhere more long term.”
“Did they… What did they name him?” Buck asked, because despite what he’d been calling him for the past year, he knew it probably changed with the adoption.
“Apparently the social worker put Gavin on his paperwork, and the family liked it,” Hen said. “Enough that they didn’t change it.”
“That’s good,” he said, bouncing Gavin some more until he let out a bubbly giggle. “That’s… That’s good.”
He had promised Amy that her son was safe, and apparently he’d been lying the entire time. He’d had a duty of care, and he’d been failing it without knowing.
Buck looked up, met Eddie’s eyes.
“Okay, mi sol,” his husband said, leaning in to press their foreheads together. Because Eddie knew exactly what he was thinking, what he was asking. “Okay.”
“Hen?” Buck said, looking back at her and Karen. “Call Deidra.”
Guess they were putting Gavin in the scrapbook, after all.
Fin.