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Buck drives away without knowing where he wants to go, just knowing he needs to go – leave the suffocating weight of his parents’ disappointment in him behind.
He drives and he drives and he doesn’t see anything, his thoughts are far from him, all is but his aching heart.
Still lost, he shuts off his car’s engine and can’t recall anything of the drive over. His eyes stare unseeingly at the house before him, but he doesn’t move.
Love me anyway.
But this is the heart of the problem, isn’t it? They can never truly love him.
They never have.
“Buckaroo?”
He startles and turns and there stands Athena, worry written all over her face.
“Oh. Hi,” he says lamely. Words are lead on his tongue. Why did he come here? What was he hoping to achieve? “How did you even – ”
“We have a front door camera.”
She says it with a smile that tries to be teasing but she pauses when he can’t bring himself to respond in kind. What a mess he must make. He tries and fails at soothing his face into a semblance of normalcy, but this is his normalcy.
To him, his parents not loving him is normal.
So why does it hurt so much?
“Why don’t you come in?” Athena says in a soothing voice.
Shame, it’s always the shame, and the guilt also. Here he is, intruding, again and forever, upon which could never belong to him.
“No, I’m fine,” he lies. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t even know why I’m here. I’ll go.”
“Buck,” she says, not unkindly. “You’re in no state to be driving. Come inside, just for a bit.”
He hesitates but she stares down at him. Her mind is made and there’s no changing it. Athena has always been unmovable, she who stares down at crumbling mountains and make them slip around her for she never gives any ground.
And yet, for as much as she is a giant, an atlas, she moves, and moves those she touches with ease, with kindness and gentleness.
She smiles when he gets out of the car and ever locks their arms together, leading him. The touch anchors him, it helps him breathe, think clearer.
“I think there’s some pie left.”
“Homemade?” he asks, interested as his stomach reminds him he’s barely eaten at dinner.
She waves it off, “You know Bobby, of course it’s homemade. Where the man finds the time, I’ll never know.”
The man in question must have known Buck was sitting outside because he doesn’t look surprised to see him shuffle in his kitchen this late at night.
“Here,” Bobby hands him a mug of something warm. “Green tea, it’ll help you relax.”
“I’m okay.”
The thought, unbidden, rises with such force he almost stumbles – he shouldn’t be here. This is not his place to be. These are not his parents.
They don’t owe him anything.
He’s burdening them.
“Buck, it’s okay. You don’t have to say anything if you aren’t ready, but you don’t have to pretend for us. We’re here for you.”
Overcome with emotion, Buck can only nod his thanks.
As he sits at the Grant-Nash’s table, a mug of tea in his hands and a slice of apple pie in front of him, he finds that he is exhausted beyond words. The anger he felt at his parents is silenced by his grief.
Tomorrow, it will be back. It always comes back.
For now though, he aches.
It’s a longing, tiring pain he knows all too well and yet it never fails to surprise him by the immensity of it.
The three of them sit in silence for a long time. True to their words, they don’t pressure him into saying anything. Frankly, he doesn’t know if he could say anything at all right now. He has always known that his parents felt different about him than they do Maddie.
Why? Why is he always such a disappointment?
Even as a child, he was never enough.
And true, Buck is no parent but he could never imagine himself not loving his kid.
He looks at Christopher that he loves with all his heart and he could never feel anything but all-encompassing pride and awe.
He looks at the parents in his life, Hen and Karen, Athena and Bobby and Michael, and Eddie, and he knows they love their children without compromise or demands. They just do.
So why is it different for Buck and his own parents?
Bobby and Athena are everything his parents aren’t. They are open and warm and forgiving, and he is grateful for them in ways he can’t bring himself to say in fear they will push him away. That’s what his parents have taught him, his loving pushes people away.
What kind of a person would he be now be if his parents had been just a tiny bit more like Bobby and Athena? Kinder, softer? Better?
There is no point in wondering and yet he can’t stop.
“Why can’t they love me?” he blurts out and his voice cracks, burdened by his pain. “Am I so hard to love?”
“No,” they protest at once.
“You’re not hard to love at all,” Athena adds.
“Quite the contrary in fact,” Bobby continues with a gentle smile.
“But they don’t love me,” Buck says because it’s the simple truth no matter how hard he wants to fight it. “They’re my parents and they don’t love me, not really. They try to act like they do and maybe they even think they do but they don’t.”
He bows his head down to avoid the intensity of their gazes.
His next words are whispered because he can’t bring himself to say them any louder than he has to, “Sometimes I think they hate me.”
A strong arm wraps itself around his shoulders. Without thinking, he presses against his captain. If he were less vulnerable, he would hold back, just a little, because the warmth of such an embrace never fails to leave him colder than he was before.
But he can’t fight the need to be held by someone that loves him, even just so. He needs to be loved, he needs someone to tell him they love him.
He wants his parents to love him. He wants to be better because if he were better surely they would.
They love Maddie so they are capable of loving a child, and if they don’t love him, then it must be him. It’s always him at fault.
Athena grips at his hands and squeezes. It’s almost painful but it doesn’t register. He is miles and miles away, in another world where he has earned the right to be loved.
“Whatever their issue is, it lies with them. It’s not your fault, it has never been and could never be.”
He knows she’s right. He’s doing the work, he’s going to therapy. He is standing up for himself, and yes, he knows he should not have to fight for something that should be freely given.
Yet. It’s hard to hang onto the knowledge when well-traveled roads of thoughts bring him to places he’s called home for so long.
But they are here and they are holding him.
He has the right to feel grief and so he feels it.
Tomorrow, the anger will return. Tomorrow, he will continue to stand up not only for himself but for his sister too.
For now, he allows the tears to fall knowing that he isn’t alone.
Maybe, he never has to be alone again.