Chapter Text
“You’re going to need to tell your sister and Howie,” Tommy said as they sat at a table in a cafe a couple blocks away from the hospital. “Whatever the results of the biopsy come back as. Howie’s your Captain, he’ll need to know. And you’re probably going to need a major surgery.”
“I know,” Buck said around a mouthful of his sandwich. “But I can wait… at least another hour or two until the biopsy comes back.”
Buck was dreading telling them. They’ll both be mad at him for waiting so long to get seen, and it will only stress Chimney out on needing to find someone to fill his spot for however long he would be out for.
From what Dr. Morgan made it sound like, the top of his bone had been eaten a lot by the tumor. Between surgery and bone grafts and any resulting physical therapy, he was looking at being out until at least Christmas.
This was going to be worse than when he was recovering from the fire truck explosion.
Another hour had gone by, they were still sitting in the cafe, when the sound of Buck’s ringtone went off. He quickly brought his phone out of his pocket and answered the call. It was the hospital, telling him he could come back in now to get the results.
As Buck hung up from the call, he looked over at Tommy, his hands fidgeted with the phone. “They wouldn’t tell me the results over the phone, that’s a bad thing, right?” he asked.
Tommy shrugged he honestly didn’t know. “It could mean anything,” he said. “Could simply mean they don’t say over the phone because of patient privacy stuff.”
Buck nodded, his nerves were still going haywire. But he repeated to himself what Tommy said, it could mean anything.
It could mean anything.
Buck kept that thought up as they headed back to the hospital, quietly repeating it over and over again in his head.
It could mean anything.
But as he was back sitting in the same chair as that morning, looking at Dr. Morgan’s stony face, Buck knew… he knew that his day was going to get even worse.
“Mr. Buckley,” he began as he walked into the office and took a seat at his desk opposite Buck.
“You can call me Buck,” Buck said. “From your expression, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of each other soon.”
Dr. Morgan took a breath, holding it for a second before letting it out. “I’m sorry about that, but you may be correct.”
Buck knew that that didn’t bode anything good for him.
“I regret to tell you this, Buck. But the biopsy did come back as cancerous - osteosarcoma.”
Buck sat there for a moment, silently letting the words flow through him, having them settle into his mind.
It came back cancerous - osteosarcoma.
“What does this mean now?” Buck asked, his mind still in shock. It had been in shock ever since his doctor showed him the x-rays yesterday. Almost like he was imagining this happening to someone else, and for some reason he was just being given a first person point of view of the whole experience.
Why did he wait so long to do anything about the leg pain?
Maybe if Buck had gone to the doctor when his leg had first started hurting, maybe it wouldn’t have gotten so advanced. Maybe there would have been a simple fix and Buck wouldn’t be looking at months of chemotherapy, and following surgery.
He was so stupid.
And now he was paying the price, it seemed.
Buck swore he was never going to brush off a health problem again after this, no matter how much it annoyed his doctors.
“We’ll get a PET scan and MRI to see if the tumors have metastasized anywhere else,” Dr. Morgan began. “We should be able to get you in by the end of this week. Based on when you say the symptoms of pain first presented and what the tumor looks like now, I’d estimate you’re at either stage 2 or 3, after you scans I will be able to confirm for sure. Then, starting next week, I would like to start you on your first round of chemotherapy.”
“That quickly?” Buck asked, feeling as if suddenly, everything was going very quickly. He had only found out about the tumor barely twenty four hours ago.
“Yes,” Dr. Morgan nodded. “We want to start treatment for this as soon as possible if we want to produce the best possible results.”
The best possible results…
That brought a question to his mind that Buck had been dreading, and was too scared to google himself.
“When you say it like that… what would you say my chances of survival are?” Buck asked.
Dr. Morgan sighed before answering. “For a stage 2 or 3 osteosarcoma, your survival chances are looking at between 60 to 70 percent.”
60 to 70 percent…
That was… honestly better than Buck had been expecting.
With the way his luck had been going the entire day, bad news on top of bad news on top of bad news, Buck had been expecting to hear something like 20 percent or lower.
At least he got some good news today. While 60 to 70 percent survival certainly wasn’t great, it meant that at least half of everyone diagnosed with this level of progression wound up surviving and beating it.
Buck hoped that with him being in mostly good health spelt better odds for him.
As Buck stepped out of the office and began walking down the hallway to the reception desk, he took his phone out of his pocket, seeing a text from Tommy two minutes ago.
Tommy: Hey, tell me when you get out. I need to call my Captain real quick.
Well, at least Tommy wasn’t totally putting his life on pause for Buck’s sake. Buck gave Tommy’s message a thumbs up as he walked up to the reception desk. They were able to book him in for the PET scan and MRI the day after tomorrow, and also to start chemotherapy treatments next Monday morning.
It still felt weird to Buck, hearing all of these words.
He wasn't a stranger to the medical world by any means. Working as a firefighter with the occasional shift or call in a paramedic’s role, Buck knew a lot of medical related things. He knew even more about the inner workings of a hospital from the times he and the others were in the hospital.
That never prepared him to become a cancer patient of all things though.
As if the ladder truck falling on top of him and getting struck by lightning wasn’t enough for his body, now it had to fight off cancer as well.
Buck found Tommy in the hallway right outside the oncology ward, Tommy just getting off the phone as he looked over and saw Buck.
Buck saw a smile on Tommy’s face as he started walking over to him, only for it to fall off as Tommy saw the expression on his face.
“Is it cancer?” Tommy asked.
Buck nodded, not saying anything.
🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥
As Tommy drove them back to his house, Tommy tried to distract Buck from all of the bombshells he had been given in the last forty eight hours. “So you know that one old guy, Marco, who lives across the street from me?” Tommy started.
“Hm? Oh… I think I remember him,” Buck said. “He was the one who always complained about your yard, right?”
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Now he’s saying that I have to fix the steps leading up to my front door.”
“What’s wrong with the steps?”
“I have no idea, I only need to ‘fix them’.”
“You know what Eddie forgot to mention when I moved into his place? How there was a whole team on the HOA dedicated walking around and finding yard violations,” Buck said. “I don’t know how Eddie dealt with them, but there was someone stopping and pointing stuff out to me every time I walked outside.”
“Yeah, that was pretty shitty. Speaking of which, how’s the rest of the house been treating you?” Tommy asked, glancing over at Buck for a second when he took a while to answer.
“I’ve been staying with Ravi for a little bit,” Buck said, eventually.
“Oh? You’re living with Ravi now?” Tommy asked. “What happened to subletting Diaz’s place?”
Buck was silent for a long moment, and Tommy looked over at him as they approached a stop light.
“Well, you know how he came back to LA,” Buck said. And yeah, Tommy had heard a couple of rumors about that, but that didn’t explain where Buck was living currently. “So you know… I let them move back in.”
Tommy wanted to say that he didn’t ‘know’ but he supposed Eddie had made it up to Buck some way, having him move his entire house twice in two months, or he hoped Eddie had made it up to Buck anyway.
“Okay… So you’re living with Ravi now then?” Tommy asked. He hadn’t expected Buck to get a roommate after living alone for so long, but then again… Tommy hadn’t had to play a hand in the LA real estate market in at least ten years, and from hearing about it from other people, it sounded like an absolute nightmare right now.
“Um… I was for a little bit,” Buck said, still not giving Tommy an exact answer. “I don’t exactly… have a place now.”
Tommy had been about to ask what Buck meant by that, but held himself back. He was pretty sure that he knew exactly what Buck meant.
And well… that certainly threw another giant complication into everything.
Tommy had meant to ask where Buck was living months ago when he first heard that Eddie had come back to LA. But he hadn’t, thinking it was too personal of a question for their current relationship of friends who occasionally texted.
It turned out Tommy was wrong. He should have asked.
Then Tommy got to thinking. There was no way Buck was going to be able to go through all of what was ahead of him without a permanent home, couch surfing like he apparently had been the past month was out of the question. And Tommy knew that ideally, Buck shouldn’t be living alone either.
Tommy would offer his place to Buck to stay in, for as long as the man wanted or needed, whether he wanted to stay in Tommy’s bed or use Tommy’s guest room. But as he thought about it, out of the last four times he and Buck had met since they broke up, two were for one night stands, one was for a funeral, and one was Buck asking Tommy to steal a helicopter. Not exactly the ideal ‘Hey move in with me,’ status.
Tommy would hold back on asking Buck… for now.
Buck was meeting with Maddie and Chimney that evening, and Tommy had already offered for Buck to come back over after that dinner, Tommy would ask him then.
“I can go over with you if you want,” Tommy offered when they got back to his house. “To Maddie and Chimney’s.”
“You- you don’t have to,” Buck said. “You’ve already done so much for me these past two days.”
“I’ll be with you as long as you need me to,” Tommy said.
Buck ducked his head at hearing that. It made no sense to him.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why?” Tommy repeated. “What do you mean?”
Buck was silent for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip.
“You- You were the one who walked away from me both times. And before you say anything, hear me out,” Buck said when it looked like Tommy was about to rebut with something. “I know some of it was my fault and I said some dumb things that I regret, but… we’ve been broken up longer than we’ve been together, and I get that you still care about me as a person, but that doesn’t mean you need to put your entire life on pause to take care of me while I go through… all of this.”
Tommy was silent for a moment, not really knowing how to follow that up, at least not with words. He stepped up to Buck and set his hands on Buck’s shoulders gently.
“Evan,” he started, and Buck would never know why hearing Tommy use his given name gave his stomach a very happy flutter, but it did. “I know our relationship has been rocky, to put it gently. And as much as you have a tendency to put your foot in your mouth, I can admit that I like to bail out of things that start to grow hard or uncomfortable. So all that being said, I still care about you. I still want to help you in whatever way I can.”
Whatever way I can…
“So… what are you saying?” Buck asked.
Tommy was about to say, ‘If you need a place to stay, move in with me,’ but he stopped himself.
“If you need any help with anything, don’t be afraid to ask,” Tommy said.
Buck stood there, feeling caught off guard but at the same time.. Warm, seen, cared for, more than he had been in months.
Buck nodded. “Thanks,” he told Tommy. “I’ll remember that. But really, at least for tonight, you don’t have to join us for dinner.”