Chapter Text
It was a sad fact that this dinner actually went better than last year’s, or so Maddie thought. The last dinner they’d had with their parents, Buck had left her apartment in tears. This time, he went out into the Grant-Nashes’ backyard with his head held high and an explosion in his wake.
There had been a lot of yelling, following Buck’s revelation. A lot of yelling and a lot of cursing. She hadn’t even been aware that Bobby had known the words that were spewing from his mouth, much less that he was capable of saying them. From the look on everyone else’s face, she wasn’t the only one caught by surprise. And Maddie was fairly certain that Isabel Diaz - sweet little grandmother shaped woman that she was - had made for the knives before Pepa stopped her.
Margaret and Phillip had, initially, tried to defend themselves. Tried, being the keyword. They hadn’t been very successful.
“He’s not your son!” Phillip had shouted, having gotten to his feet sometime after the shouting had started.
“Yes he is!” Bobby had shouted back. “He’s more my son than he ever was yours! I’m more of a father to him than you ever were!”
“Evan is-” her mother had tried, only for the fire captain to cut her off with,
“It’s Buck, you horrid bitch!”
“Holy shit,” Howie had whispered. He was standing beside her, watching the drama with his eyes wide and his jaw hanging open.
“You two are some of the most vile, horrible creatures I have ever had the misfortune of meeting,” Athena said, staring down at them like they were something unclean. “You don’t deserve the right to call yourselves the parents of such wonderful, beautiful human beings like Buck and Maddie.”
“None of you could possibly understand what we went through,” Margaret said. “What it was like, losing a child like that.”
“Oh, you-” May looked like she was about to leap for the woman’s throat, but her step-father’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.
“I do,” Bobby said. “I do understand. But that is no excuse for anything. That’s no excuse for the neglect you heaped upon both your children.”
“We gave them everything they needed!” Phillip snapped.
“Except love,” Athena retorted.
Maddie had remained silent for the most part, after the initial shouting at least. She had been content with watching the Grant-Nashes and the Diazes tear into her parents. But now, after her phone chimed in her hand, she stepped forward to get in both their faces.
“I lied to Buck for years, saying that you loved him,” she said, feeling unnaturally calm considering the circumstances. “Because I had been lying to myself for just as long. I don’t think you ever loved him. I think whatever love you had for anyone but yourselves died the moment Daniel did. Even whatever love you had for him.”
“How could you say that?” Margaret wailed, reeling back like she’d been slapped.
“I stopped by his grave, on my way to Boston,” she told them, and watched with vindictive pleasure the way they both flinched. “There was nothing there to show anyone else had ever visited. Nothing at all. Daniel died and you threw him away like trash, and then you almost threw away Buck!”
“How dare you?”
“How dare you!?” Maddie roared back. Her phone chimed again, and she swallowed down all the words she wanted to throw at her parents. “There’s an Uber out front, waiting for you. It will take you back to your RV. After that, you’re leaving. Forever.”
“What?” Phillip asked, apparently unable to comprehend the words coming out of her mouth.
“You heard me,” she said, glaring at him. “You’re both going to get into your RV and you’re both going to leave, and neither of you are ever coming back.”
“You cannot seriously- We have a right to see our granddaughter!” Margaret said.
“You will never see her again!” Maddie snapped at her. “As far as she will ever know, the Lees are her grandparents, Bobby and Athena are her grandparents. But you? Not you.”
“Maddie-”
“Buck was never yours,” she said, steamrolling over her mother’s words. “Daniel died and you dumped Buck in my lap and expected me to raise him. And I did! I did a damn good job. It was me, and then it was Bobby. None of it was you.”
They looked surprised, for some reason, at the way she was talking to them. Like they hadn’t expected her to stand up to them like this. But Maddie’s time in Boston had forged her spine into steel, and she had support at her back, and she was so tired of letting these awful people trample all over her brother like he didn’t matter.
“You are going to get out of this house, and you are going to get into that Uber, and you are going to leave our lives. Forever. Jee-Yun is never going to remember your names. You are dead to her, and you are dead to me.”
“Maddie, please,” Margaret begged, crocodile tears at the ready.
“Get out!” Maddie shouted.
“You heard her,” Athena said, coming to stand beside her. “You either leave now in that Uber, or you’ll leave when I call my friends from the precinct to have you arrested for trespassing. Either way, you are leaving.”
They wanted to fight, Maddie could tell. She wasn’t sure why they wanted to fight now, when the fight was over, but they did. It all drained out of them, however, the moment the sergeant pulled out her phone and started dialing those three numbers. The realization that there was no bluff, that there really would be police called on them if they stayed, got them moving.
Maddie didn’t relax until Bobby and Athena were slamming the door shut behind them.
“What awful people,” Isabel said, still glaring at the door.
(“They aren’t bad people,” she used to tell anyone and everyone who would listen, desperate to make it true. “Just bad parents.”)
“They really are,” Maddie said. Howie slipped his hand into hers, and squeezed it in comfort. “Where did Buck go?”
“Eddie took him to Hen’s,” Athena told her as she and her husband came back down the stairs, smirking at her phone. “It looks like they’re going to be there a while, Bobby, so one of us will probably have to get Harry if we want to get him to bed at a decent time.”
“Oh?”
Athena held up her phone so Bobby could see it. The soft expression that took over his face was one Maddie was well familiar with, because it was the same kind Howie would look at Jee-Yun with.
“I think that’s the baby from the other day,” the captain said. “I didn’t realize Hen and Karen were fostering him now.”
Curiosity piqued, Maddie went to peer over Athena’s shoulder, and felt herself melt a little at the picture of her brother holding an infant. It was wrapped in a gray blanket and happily drinking from a bottle he was holding. Buck looked so happy and content, practically glowing as he smiled down at the baby, like the confrontation with their parents had never happened.
Maddie and Howie ended up staying a bit longer, to give Margaret and Phillip time to get to the RV and leave for their hotel. There was, of course, the chance of them lingering in an attempt at an ambush, but she wasn’t worried about it. Poor Howie was tense the entire time, however, now that her parents were no longer there to draw the ire of everyone else. Not that anyone said anything, Bobby and Athena both seeming content to keep the truce going for the rest of the night.
An hour after her parents left, when it was apparent that Buck and Eddie were not coming back anytime soon with Harry, Athena went to Hen’s. Isabel and Pepa had already gone home, and it seemed the natural time for Maddie and Howie to leave for theirs. The RV was gone when they arrived, after stopping to pick up Jee-Yun from Albert and Ravi, and she let out a breath of relief at that.
“I really hope they listen and don’t come back,” Howie said as they entered their apartment. He was carrying their daughter in her car seat, and she was happily dozing. “Because… Wow.”
“Wow,” Maddie echoed, practically falling onto their couch. The shock and anger of the dinner had melted into something else, something… Colder.
“Are you okay?” he asked, placing the car seat on the floor and sitting down next to her. “Never mind. Stupid question. Of course you’re not. I cannot believe your parents thought about giving Buck up, and then told him about it. I mean… Wow.”
“Maybe they should have.”
“What? Maddie!”
She grabbed one of the throw pillows and clutched it to her chest, feeling so much guilt for her words and her thoughts and her feelings. But she had said them aloud, and now she needed to keep speaking.
“He was drowning in Hershey, at the end,” Maddie said, unable to face Howie. “They were drowning him. If I hadn’t given him the keys to the jeep and told him to go, then… Then I think I would have lost him anyway. They didn’t want him. They needed him, but they never really wanted him, and he knew that. He grew up knowing that, even if he didn’t know why. And I just… I just… If they had given him up, maybe he would have ended up with parents like Bobby and Athena sooner, you know? He would have been better off, I think. I know he would have been happier.
“But at the same time, I’m so thankful they didn’t, even after everything, even after how they messed us both up. Because I don’t know what I would have done if I lost both Daniel and Buck. It’s so selfish. I’m so selfish. Because they were awful to him, Howie. But I’m still so thankful he was there with me. How awful of a person, of a sister, am I? That I’m thankful he went through that instead of being somewhere better?”
“It’s not selfish,” Howie said, grabbing her hand. “Or maybe it is, but it still doesn’t make you an awful person, or an awful sister. He’s your brother, of course you wouldn’t have wanted to lose him, too. And you know, you know, he wouldn’t change it, either.”
“Howie…”
“No, Maddie. You know he loves you, you know he wouldn’t give up being your brother for anything. He stole my phone from evidence so that he could go chasing after you himself, when Doug took you. And you should have seen him, the day Dispatch was taken hostage. Nothing short of Athena herself kept him from throwing himself into danger for you, either time.”
“He still would have been better off,” she said. “I still think he would have been happier.”
“Maybe,” Howie said, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her close to him. “But he had you. I have told you, time and time again, that you are a wonderful mother. And I know that it’s true because Buck has told us, has told everyone, how you raised him. Not Margaret or Phillip, you. Maybe he’s a dumbass who can’t do math-”
“Math is hard.”
“And he is definitely a little shit, but he is a good man,” he continued. “And that is because of you. So stop beating yourself up over this, okay? Or at least try.”
Maddie let out a sigh and dropped her head onto his shoulder.
“Okay,” she promised. “I’ll try.”
“So obviously we don’t want a place with stairs,” Buck said as they climbed up the stairs to the loft area of the station. “And we don’t really have to worry about school districts, since he’s going to that fancy pants private school.”
“Would still be better to get a place close to the school,” Eddie replied, coming up behind him. “Because if we have to get him up at five in the morning to get across the city, it’s all on you.”
“What are you two talking about?” Ravi asked, perched at one of the tables beside Albert.
“Houses,” Eddie answered as his husband veered off to get them both coffee. “And what we’re looking for with them.”
“And you’ve decided stairs are an automatic no?”
“With Chris, definitely,” he told them, and they both nodded at that. “And besides, with his luck, Buck could very well end up breaking his leg again the moment we move in.”
“Hey!” Buck cried from the kitchen area. “I mean, you’re right. But still.”
“How are you doing today, Buck?” Bobby asked, leaning against the kitchen island with his own cup of coffee. “After last night’s… Excitement.”
“Nothing about last night was new to me, pops,” he told him. “I’ve had over a year to come to terms with all of that.”
“All of what?” Albert asked. The question had Bobby and Eddie sharing an uncomfortable look, but Buck shrugged without concern.
“My parents debated giving me up after my brother died. They told me about it at our one and only attempt at a therapy session together, last year.”
“They… And they actually told you that?” Ravi looked utterly appalled.
“Yup.” Buck popped the p as he brought his husband a coffee of his own. “So what happened after we left? I haven’t spoken to Maddie except to check in and make sure she was okay. She said something about our parents going home, though?”
“She ran them right out of the house and then out of town,” Bobby said, pride evident in his tone. “Also I’m fairly certain Isabel was going to stab them at some point.”
“Mierda,” Eddie muttered into his drink.
“Abuela? Not Pepa?” Buck had been certain it would have been Eddie’s aunt who’d go for blood, not the woman who was the epitome of a grandmother.
“According to Chimney,” Hen chimed in from where she was sitting at the island. “The phrase ‘you horrid bitch’ got tossed out. Or so he told me when I talked to him on the way in this morning.”
“Really?” Buck hummed in appreciation. “Hopefully ma didn’t wash May’s mouth out for it.”
“It wasn’t May who said it.”
“What? Who then?” He turned to look at Bobby, who was suddenly looking very sheepish. “Pops!”
“You can cuss?” There was an understandable amount of surprise in Ravi’s question.
“Of course I can,” the captain said, rolling his eyes at the question. “I just choose not to.”
“Hey, Buck.” Albert’s voice drew him away from the surprise of Bobby’s vocabulary. “I have a possibly offensive question.”
“If you still haven’t figured it out after all the hickies you keep leaving on each other, we can’t help you,” Eddie told him, coming over to lean against his husband.
“What? O- Oh, no, I’ve figured that out,” the younger man said, both him and his boyfriend blushing furiously as Hen cackled and Bobby shook his head. “Uh, no, uh… Everyone keeps saying your parents are awful.”
“They are,” Eddie and Bobby confirmed together.
“Right. So, uh, would you, uh… Would you have preferred if they…”
“If they…?” Buck was confused for a moment before realization struck him. “Oh! I mean, I’d probably need less therapy. But I got to grow up with Maddie, so it all evens out, I think.”
“You would have been proud of her last night, I think,” Bobby said. “The way she stood up to those awful people.”
“I’m always proud of her,” Buck told him.
The day passed with the usual chaos, the group of them bouncing in and out of the trucks as they responded to a fender bender, and then a small house fire, and then a child stuck on a roof. It was a good day, in that the worst injuries were a minor concussion, a case of whiplash, and some smoke inhalation. There were even large enough breaks between calls for Buck and Bobby to prepare lunch uninterrupted, for Buck and Eddie to spot each other at the gym, and for Buck to call Maddie.
“They should hopefully be somewhere in Colorado by now,” she told him. “Mom tried calling me this morning, but I ignored it. And then deleted the voicemail she left me without listening to it.”
“So you’re really just cutting all ties with them?”
“Without regret,” she confirmed. “Our children deserve better grandparents than them. They have better grandparents than them.”
“Yeah, they really do.” Buck looked up towards the loft, where Bobby was shaking his head at something Ravi and Albert were telling him. “Hey, so… Did pops really call mom a bitch?”
There were very few sounds more beautiful, in his opinion, than his sister’s laughter.
After the shift, which had gone by relatively quickly for how calm it had been, Buck and Eddie climbed into the jeep, completely ready to get home and see their kid. And then, maybe, possibly, swing by the Wilsons to see Gavin. If there was time.
There was something bothering his husband though, Buck could tell. Or not bothering, but the man clearly had a thought that he was chewing on.
“Spit it out,” he said as he started the engine. “Whatever it is that you want to say or ask.”
“What do you think it would have been like, if you had been raised by different people?” Eddie asked, shifting in his seat to look at him.
“Warmer, probably,” he said.
“Do you think…” His husband trailed off, but he knew him well enough to know the rest of the sentence.
“Babe, I’m pretty sure we were inevitable,” he assured him, reaching over to the center console to take his hand. “We would have ended up together whether or not I had a healthy childhood.”
“You are such a sap, mi sol,” Eddie said, rolling his eyes even as he smiled. “But you can’t know that.”
“The universe told me.”
“The universe, huh?”
“Yup.” He squeezed the other man’s hand before letting go so he could get them out of the parking lot and through Los Angeles traffic. “There is no doubt in my mind that I’d end up home with you and Chris, no matter what.”
“Such a sap,” the other man repeated.
“Your sap,” he said, and then, “There’s a house I was looking at earlier. It looks decent, but…”
Fin.