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Buck doesn’t say anything after his parents’ visit and his talk with Maddie because he doesn’t think it matters. As far as everyone knows he’s forgiven Maddie and his parents and started putting the whole damn mess past him, and to be honest he finds it less draining to let everyone believe he’s okay.
Otherwise, he’s put into the position of trying to prove his feelings as valid; his anger and grief and sensation of estrangement to everything and everyone he’s ever known, and the times he’s tried to do so have left him more exhausted than a bad day at work has ever done.
So he doesn’t say anything. It turns out he doesn’t have to.
He and Chim are fine, technically. Buck’s said what he knows Chim needs to hear for things to finally start going back to a somewhat okay place, but there’s still this tension stretching between them when they’re alone.
Not when they’re working, because Buck would like to believe he’s grown enough as a person and a firefighter to not let something personal cloud his judgment to the point of being unprofessional with his team (too much. He’s still working on it, though, and right now that’s gotta count for something).
It’s him as much as Chim, with awkward small talk they never had to suffer through before in their years of friendship, obvious comments about weather or foods or animals or tv shows that Chim makes in hopes will entice Buck into one of those rants that make Buck Buck, but something’s broken between them that even if they get back into safe, friendly grounds might not ever be fixed.
Someone usually had to cut him off when Buck got too into some monologue about what he’s read on a certain topic, and now the station has fallen into an eerie, peaceful quiet that feels all sorts of wrong, isn’t as tranquilizing as it should be because it means one of their own is actually very far from okay.
Hen witnesses one of these many uncomfortable encounters, watches Chim ask Buck about his weekend from the lounging area and her eyes stray from the book she’s reading for class when Buck shrugs out a noncommittal nothing fancy over his shoulder as he cooks. Chim leaves for the gym soon enough and Hen waits until Buck’s eaten his breakfast, packed away the leftovers, and threw himself next to her on the couch with a book of his own to subtly begin her line of questioning.
“Boring day off, yesterday?” she asks as she flips a page, making a show of not focusing all her attention on Buck so he doesn’t feel crowded.
“Mmm?” he hums under his breath. Hen sees him look up to her from where he’d been searching for the page he was reading last from the corner of her eye. He sizes her up before deeming her as harmless. “Yeah. Slept in, missed a workout. Doc said to take it easy.”
“You holding up okay? Usually, it takes four of us to sit you down for a break,” she jokes, tone light to make sure he doesn’t perceive this as an attack or an offense. There have been too many self-deprecating comments coming out of his own mouth after his family secret was out for Hen to want to add more fuel to that fire. “I’m glad you’re taking it slow, though, you seemed out of it after the factory.”
“Yeah, well,” he shrugs again, posture stiffening against Hen’s forearm from where he’s leaning against her as Buck makes an effort to keep his tone light, nonchalant. “It was a long day. I think I’m entitled to a boring day off. ”
“Totally,” Hen risks a quick glance, shifting so they’re huddled closer together and Buck melts a little at the contact, leans into it all touch and affection starved. Hen feels her gut churning restlessly. It doesn’t take a professional therapist to notice how he didn’t answer her question. “How are you feeling about all that, though?”
Buck just blinks at her like he wasn’t expecting the follow-up questionnaire, visibly swallows before clearing his throat. “Um, fine. Yeah, everything- everything’s fine. I talked to Maddie and my parents, they’re… They’re glad it’s all over now.”
“Is it?” she presses, finally dropping her book in her lap to gaze at him with what Karen calls her momma’s here eyes . Buck reddens under them. “I mean, I’m glad you guys set things straight, but you know it’s okay if you feel like you need to keep talking about it, right? Even if it isn’t with them.”
“I already bother my therapist enough with this, Hen,” he jokes, but she can see his eyes wander to where the stairs leading down to the locker rooms are, silently plotting an escape as they speak. “You don’t have to worry about all of…”
He makes a nonsensical noise as if that could summarize all of his family’s baggage, still bothering him, making him squeamish around Chim and hesitant amongst the whole station.
“I don’t worry because I have to, Buck,” Hen feels the urge to run a hand through his hair like she does to comfort her children when they think they did something wrong by just acting completely rational. She settles for a warm smile instead. “I worry because I care, because I love you. You’re my friend and I hate that you…”
“What?” he snaps, frowning warily at what might come next out of Hen’s mouth and she wonders what it is he’s expecting. Act weird around Chim and make the rest of us uncomfortable, refuse to deal with your shit, and then put the team in danger because you’re distracted on a call, make working with you so much harder than it already is. “That I what?”
“You hold it all in,” she admits, expression pensive while trying to figure out how to phrase it. She shifts so her body’s completely facing him without breaking physical contact, veering further but not pulling away. “Like you’d rather hurt until you burst than ask any of us for help.”
Buck doesn’t answer, stares down at his closed book, and holds it in barely trembling hands as if he’s pulling himself together as quickly as possible before it might be an inconvenience for Hen.
She takes the plunge, reaches directly for one of his white-knuckled hands, and unfurls it so she’s holding it between her own.
“Because you can. Ask,” she tells him and feels like she was kicked in the stomach when he looks up with bloodshot, wet eyes. Her grip tightens. “You can, Buck. We care so much about you and it kills us to see you hurting, to think that you don’t trust us enough to-”
“I do!” he exclaims before she’s even done, features suddenly desperate and a considerable change from how collected he was trying to appear a moment before. He moves so they’re both facing each other completely. “I do, Hen, I trust you all with my life-”
“That’s not what TK told me.”
Buck stills, anxious tremors and all.
“You…” he stutters. “You know about…”
“He thought I should,” she thinks about the young man pulling her away from the rest of the crews to thank her for what she did for her father while out in the field, and it came up like an afterthought. Like Buck believing his team, his friends wouldn’t bother trying to save his life was barely something worth mentioning.
“It was just something I said,” irrelevant , he seems to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from admitting. “You did come for me back at the factory, you showed up-”
“Were you expecting us to?” she asks softly. “When you decided to pull that tank off of Saleh all by yourself, did you know we were a few seconds behind you? Did you know we were coming to get you?”
“The sprinklers had already come online-”
“So you didn’t,” her lips tighten into a straight line. “You thought you’d save him yourself or die trying because you didn’t think we’d be there for you.”
“I trust you,” he says firmly, defensively, like protecting himself from an accusation Hen wasn’t trying to pin on him. “I trust you. I know you guys would be there for me if I asked, I just- I don’t. Some things I don’t mean for you guys to carry for me.”
“Not for you, Buck. With you,” she wants to hold him by the shoulders and shake him loose until everything that’s bothering him comes out if not to solve it then just so he can say it. Just so he can have someone listen and take him seriously without him thinking it’s too much to ask. “You can barely spend two minutes in a room with Chim because you think you can’t talk about what’s weighing you down. I get you don’t feel comfortable talking to him about it but I’m here-”
“You’ve been friends with him for longer.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she cuts him off before he can go down that train of thought. She’s holding his hand so tightly and he doesn’t even flinch, takes in all the affection he can get before the next bell goes off. It’s a wonder how no one’s come in to interrupt them, the common area mirroring a ghost town. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve known him longer or that you might think I care about him more- which I don’t.”
Buck’s jaw is tight, clenching with the effort it takes to not burst into a sob. Tears are falling and Hen thinks he’s too distressed to notice.
“This isn’t about Chim being uncomfortable, Maddie and your parents being sad, it’s about you,” she goes to grip his knee, and Buck’s never been more focused on anything since she’s known him. “It’s your brother, your family, your feelings about it all. You’re allowed to come to us and ask for what you need. God, you shouldn’t even need to ask.”
He pushes himself away from her like he’s been burned, only to hide his face in his hands as his facade crumbles and he’s left crying against Hen, both her arms finally around him as she holds him to her and rakes her fingers through his hair. There are tears in her eyes, too, but she doesn’t cry. It’s not what he needs of her right now.
“Hen,” he says, voice broken and raw and small, smaller than Evan Buckley should ever force himself to be. “I’m so angry. ”
Hen listens.