Archive of Our Own

    Maddie left home when she was nineteen. 

    Contrary to belief, leaving wasn’t an easy choice. But college was an easy out, the UMASS nursing program was one of the best in the country and it wouldn’t make sense for Maddie to turn down the scholarship they offered just because her baby brother was accident prone. She told herself it would be better, anyway, if she was no longer there to bandage every scrape he got across his elbows and knees. Maybe without her around their parents would have to relearn how to be parents. 

    She left home at nineteen and she never really looked back. 

    Which was probably why parking their rental car, sleek and shining white, against the same curb that Evan had broken his arm against when he was nine felt so jarring. Though Maddie also supposed that could be feeling so jarring because he wasn’t there with her. Every memory Maddie had of the house she was parked in front of had him in it too up until that point. 

    Hershey was a stop on their Great New England Road Trip (as Chimney had lovingly called it regardless of how many times Maddie - or Buck, or Hen, or, hilariously, Christopher Diaz, told him Pennsylvania wasn't part of New England) - smack in the middle of their first family road trip, perfectly timed to when the leaves were changing from green to orange, yellows and reds. Chim was a California boy, born and raised, and while they still experienced a slight chill to the air come November, it always failed to have the same bite to it that Maddie knew so well. She had packed their luggage full of sweaters and beanies and thick, warm sweatpants and Chim had looked at her oddly for doing so until he first stepped foot outside and immediately shivered. 

    She glanced at her watch - nine in the morning. California was three hours behind Pennsylvania. 

    He probably wasn’t even up yet. 

    Still, Maddie sent a quick text to tell him they arrived (complete with a picture of Jee, dark red beanie pulled down over her dark hair and gummy smile spread across her cheeks) and steeled herself. 

    “Look at this ,” Chim’s hands always looked big around Jee’s sides, but she leaned her entire weight happily into his shoulder, a penguin teething ring (where did she get that? Maddie didn’t remember buying that for her) stuffed in her mouth. “Look at all the pretty colors, Jee!” 

    And look she did, her eyes wide as she took in her surroundings. Maddie grabbed her diaper bag, swung it up and over her shoulder and locked the car doors with a beep. They would come out to grab their luggage later; her feet were aching, her back hurt from sitting in the car for so long, and aside from the quick (obligatory, according to Chim) Dunkin Donut’s run for a water coffee they could chew the sugar in, they hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since they left Boston. Margaret had assured them that breakfast would be served, thankfully, and while Maddie was sure it would be bland and lackluster, she would kill to get to bite into a bagel before grabbing a quick nap wherever her parents decided to set them up for the few days they would be spending in Hershey. Take your time , Frank had told her, you don’t always have to do things on some imaginary schedule . 

    “You’re sure you want to stay here?” Maddie asked for what had to be the twentieth time that day. 

    Still, Chim didn’t roll his eyes, only settled Jee more comfortably on his hip, cocked his head and smiled at her. That kind, soft smile that Maddie had only ever seen him give either her or their daughter. The smile that followed her all the way from Los Angeles to Boston and back again. Doug had never looked at her like that - like Maddie was deserving of soft, quiet kindness and easy, challenge-free love. “Can’t be worse than last time.” He reassured optimistically and it struck Maddie, again, that he was right. 

    There were no big family secrets looming over them now. No one that Maddie had to buffer between. It was just her, Chim, Jee-Yun, and her parents meeting their first grandchild. For the first time in a long time, Maddie didn’t have to worry about what her parents would say to set Evan off because Evan had stayed behind in Los Angeles and he had let her go with a look and a promise to look after the plants in her apartment. There hadn’t been a why uttered from his lips, only a swallow of his coffee, a reassuring nod, and a smile that reached the edges of his eyes when he told her to have a good time. 

    She could have a good time. 

    She deserved to have a good time. 

    Besides, the house had just as many good memories as it had bad. Just as many moments of loud, boisterous laughter as it did ghosts hidden in shadows and locked in the attic. 

    Maddie smiled and knocked on the door, right below the wreath made of plastic autumn leaves and pine cones and bounced on her heels. “This is a nice house,” Chim offered after a moment of observation. Maddie wondered what he was seeing, the picket fence, the white of the walls, the stone foundation. Or maybe it was the perfectly manicured lawn, the garden that she used to spend hours pulling roots from with her mother, or big tree in the front, just to the side of the driveway, that Maddie had made a crude swing out of a piece of plywood and rope and taught Evan how to pump his legs to go higher. It wasn’t there anymore, of course, but when Maddie had left years before it had been still hanging on by one side, wood panel brushing against the grass in the wind. “Hard to imagine Buck growing up here.” 

    Maddie wrinkled her nose. “Really? Why’s that?” 

    Chim shrugged but he didn’t expand, catching the penguin teether before Jee could drop it onto the porch just as the door swung open, a gust of warm air brushing Maddie’s cheeks and her father tall as he smiled down at her. 

--

    It was quiet (well, relatively quiet) that morning and autumn in Los Angeles was never quite the same as an Autumn where the leaves changed and the weather danced on the edge of temperamental the majority of the time. But it was quiet in the way that Buck liked quiet in the morning, the low buzz of activity just starting out, a blanket settled over his shoulders and a mug of lukewarm coffee long forgotten sitting on the banister beside him. He sat back in the lounge chair he had talked Eddie into getting months ago, stretched his bad leg out until he could trail the skin of his toes on the wood patio floor, and tilted his head up to feel the sun paint gently across his skin. 

    He used to get freckles in the summer, back in Hershey when summer meant two months of sweltering heat and humidity that made his skin sticky. They used to dot across his entire face, a constellation of small little dots that betrayed his heritage and made his mother’s lips twitch unhappily. It wasn’t like there was anything anyone could do about them, though, aside from layering him with concealer and Buck would never have sat still long enough for that to happen. Besides, wearing concealer to school would have been enough to get Buck bullied for life and he was at least fifty percent sure his parents didn’t hate him enough to wish that upon him. 

    But sunny, sunny LA meant that Buck’s freckles were all but permanent and they were usually impossible to even notice with the near constant tan on his skin unless you really looked . And that wasn’t to say that Buck looked for them so much as he had just gotten used to seeing them whenever he looked in the mirror. He didn’t hate them as much as he once did, but that probably had something to do with a distinct lack of lip twitching that was directed at him whenever someone did notice them. No one Buck spent any amount of time with in Los Angeles had ever known him without the freckles, and Buck had it on good authority (good authority being both Hen and Athena) that the freckles were an asset. 

    All of that was a roundabout way of Buck confronting the real catalyst for his quiet, slightly chilly morning. 

    Maddie was in Hershey and Buck had let her go. 

    Not that he thought he had the ability to let her go anywhere. Maddie was a grown woman with a child , she didn’t need Buck’s permission to do anything. 

    But it was a big step for him - holding his tongue. Hiding his displeasure at Maddie’s I think we’re going to stop by mom and dad’s, stay a few nights in Hershey, let them meet Jee. He didn’t let a thing pass, like a champ and, really, Buck was pretty sure he deserved a pat on the shoulder for that alone. Maddie had a different relationship with Margaret and Philip than Buck did and that was fine . 

    There was no reason for them both to suffer to the extent that he did. 

    That didn’t mean it felt particularly good . 

    The tires on Eddie’s truck crunched over the gravel of his driveway, kicked up little tiny pebbles onto the green, almost yellow of his lawn, and the engine blew hot, sticky air at Buck’s toes. It shut off quickly, though, and the door opened a moment after that, and, really, who could blame him for staring, just a little, at the way the sunlight created almost a halo over Eddie’s head of brown hair as he stood and smiled, the little private smile he always wore at home, his blue uniform creased with the day’s wear. “Good morning.” 

    “Morning,” Buck said back softly, resting more fully against the back of the lounge chair and cradling the chipped, green coffee mug between his fingers just for something to hold between his hands. Eddie’s boots shook the patio, a bit, with each carefully soft step and stopped just in front of the chair, purposely close enough that Buck had to tilt his head back to see his face, sunglasses perched carefully over his slightly crooked nose (from where he had broken it twice, once as a kid playing baseball and then again in basic training). “Chris is still sleeping.” Or he had been, anyway, when Buck had stepped outside, snoring softly and sprawled out on his bed. 

    “It’s a Saturday.” Eddie seemed to have to remind himself of that fact, but Buck figured he’d let it slide since he was coming off a twenty four compared to Buck’s own sixteen. 

    “It’s a Saturday.” Buck confirmed, anyway, and Eddie nodded sagely, his bag brushing against Buck’s knee when he leaned down, hand heavy on his shoulder (his thumb brushing softly over his collarbone) and pressed a kiss to the top of his hairline. Buck’s eyelashes fluttered regardless, no matter how many times it happened (no matter how many kisses they shared), it never failed to set his blood on fire. “Go inside, shower, change.” 

    “I’ll come join you after,” Eddie promised, his lips still pressed to Buck’s skin. He dipped his nose into the brush of curls before pulling back, his fingers trailing over Buck’s shoulder as he left him on the porch, the door softly clicking shut behind him. 

    Mom made muffins , Maddie’s last message read and Buck’s stomach twisted. He remembered the muffins their mother used to make, blueberry or cranberry even though he hated cranberry anything. She would make them before guests came over, on the slightest edge of burnt and from a box but still the closest to homebaked that Margaret Buckley would ever do. They used to go blueberry picking in the summer, collecting buckets full to bring home and Buck would always get yelled at for eating them before they were properly washed. But he would stain his fingers purple and Maddie would laugh and sneak some with him behind conspiratory hands. 

    Bobby made muffins too, never with cranberries but sometimes with chocolate chips. And Hen liked hers sliced in half and fried with butter on one side. Chris preferred donuts and Eddie wasn’t the biggest fan of anything that wasn’t at least half sugar. 

    Chim would like them, though. 

    Maybe they’d take Jee to the pumpkin patch down the road, or to the apple orchard they used to go to every October. The last time their parents had stopped by LA (and hadn’t that been a disaster) Buck had asked Margaret for her apple pie recipe and she had looked at him like he was crazy. “I never made apple pie,” she told him over dessert. 

    “Your mother,” Philip had said with a loud, boisterous laugh that one of Buck’s ex-girlfriends had compared to his own. “Used to go to the Amish farm up the street, buy one from there, and put it in a pie dish to serve for Thanksgiving dinner. It fooled everyone.” 

    Including him, it would seem. 

    Buck never really liked muffins much, anyway. 

--

    Maddie’s old room was exactly how she had left it at nineteen, complete with the big poster of *Nsync hanging over her bed. “We thought it would be fun,” Margaret said from the doorway, Jee-Yun moving restlessly in her arms, the penguin teether having been lost at some point between breakfast and nap-time. “To put you and Jee-Yun up in your old room.” She would ask where Chim was staying, but that would probably be either the guest room down the hall or Buck’s old room right next door to hers. Buck used to sneak out of it when he was little and crawl into Maddie’s bed when he had a bad dream. When Maddie had sleepovers with her friends she used to have to lock him out of the room in order to get privacy. Somewhere along the way, Buck had learned to knock and then he had learned to leave her alone and Maddie, an angry sixteen year old who barely knew how to handle herself let alone a five year old brother, had found herself missing the invasion. Missing his little body curled up next to hers. Missing the way he looked at her like she hung the moon in the sky and could control when the sun would rise over the horizon. 

    “You didn’t change anything?” Maddie asked even if her eyes could see that they hadn’t. Maddie had left in a whirlwind, really. Packed her bags for college, come home for the holidays, and then decided against coming home at all. It had seemed easier, back then, to stay in Boston. With Doug. With the hospital. Without the shadows in Hershey. 

    Now, though, Maddie smiled at the thought of the younger girl that had collected Goosebumps books and read Are You Scared of the Dark under the sheets to a little boy who hated being scared but loved being read to. There were nicknacks on the bookshelf, her old high school yearbook, a guitar she had begged her mother for one Christmas and then never learned how to use, a jar full of rusted pennies and buttons. “Well we always knew you were going to come home one day.” Margaret’s fingers brushed back Jee’s hair as she said it, gentle, gentle, but wrong looking, somehow. Not the sort of gentle of Mrs. Lee’s hands, or the way Athena brushed a towel over her lips, or the gentle in the way Sue rocked her in the breakroom, singing softly until Jee’s eyes slid shut. Maddie couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother be that gentle, but she couldn’t remember ever really seeing her mother holding a child unless it was Daniel.

    Her words registered and they sounded familiar, sounded like a duck in her brother’s head as he said, “We always had each other.” 

    Maddie smiled over her shoulder. “Do you remember,” she began happily, grabbing the square art project that Evan had done in elementary school - a crude drawing of Maddie and their neighbor’s puppy, the best a six year old could do. Their parents had bought her a mug of the artwork and Evan had presented it to her as a birthday gift in front of all of her friends and Maddie remembered being so embarrassed and yet, also, so touched as she hugged him and promised she would use it every day. It held colored pencils after she had used it once, collecting dust in front of her collection of CDs. She had forgotten it when she had gone away to college. She wondered if he would find it funny, if she brought it home and placed it with her collection of mugs in her cabinet. Chim would certainly tease him about it (but not in a way that hurt, no, in a way to soothe the hurt). “When Buck gave this to me on my birthday?” 

    Margaret squinted at it, her lips downturned for a moment, as she searched her memory for the time. “Your father and I tried to convince him to get you this boyband t-shirt you had told us you wanted but he insisted that his teacher told him that homemade gifts meant more.” She rolled her eyes and laughed. “I’m surprised you kept it,” Margaret tacked on with a bounce of Jee in her arms. 

    Maddie turned it in her hands. “Why?” 

    The thought of getting rid of it had never crossed her mind, if she were to be honest. Sure, she had fought with Buck when they were kids, even with the age difference he was her baby brother and younger siblings always had a way of being annoying. But Maddie had never been annoyed enough with him to get rid of something that he had clearly put so much work into making. “You were so disappointed when you opened it.” Margaret said with a chuckle. “Scrunched up your nose and tried to hide it behind a smile.” 

    “I was a kid,” Maddie shrugged. 

    “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it.” Margaret reassured, even though it made something swirl uncomfortably in Maddie’s stomach. “You were always good with him.” 

    “He wasn’t a hard kid to be good with.” 

    “ You weren’t there for his tantrums.” Margaret laughed brightly and passed Jee into her waiting arms. “I’m going to go see if your father needs any help bringing your luggage inside. I think someone needs a diaper change.” 

    Jee did, indeed, need a diaper change, the smell wafting up from her bum. Maddie shared a stink face with her daughter and laid her on the pink, fresh duvet, bending down to grab the diaper bag and placing the mug on the bedside table. 

    She’d take it home with her, she decided, the sketch of her face cartoonishly disproportionate to that of her body and the dog she held. “You’re supposed to save the stinky diapers for daddy,” Maddie told Jee with a tickle to her belly. Jee laughed, the sound dispelling any uneasiness from the pit of Maddie’s belly and settling something deep inside of her. 

--

    “What do you know about rhinos?” Technically, Ravi had been switched to C shift when he had passed his probationary period and Eddie had returned from dispatch. But with Chim using up his precious vacation time on his East Coast Road Trip Extravaganza, they were down a medic and it had caused some shifting to have to occur. It meant Eddie was in the ambulance with Hen, and Lucy and Ravi were in the bus with Buck, headsets on and shoulders bumping together over the bumps in the road. 

    “Why do you need to know about rhinos?” Ravi asked innocently, watching Lucy from the corner of his eye. 

    She snorted and shrugged. “My niece is super into them, for some reason. She has to get her tonsils out today and I’ve been sending her rhino facts to distract her all day.” Lucy had told him about her niece before, fourteen going on twenty four with her attitude, but otherwise a really good, sweet kid. She had gotten in trouble exactly once and then immediately started crying and spewing apologies. 

    “They’re gray?” Ravi tried unhelpfully. 

    “They can’t all be gray,” Lucy countered. 

    Buck knew what they were doing, with the group of them in the truck there was usually enough banter to go around and fill the empty space between the call and the firehouse. He had been the one to fill that silence more than once, words easily slipping past his lips at a speed that meant that he sometimes didn’t even know what he was saying. But Doctor Copeland and his primary care had started him on a new medication and while it hadn’t changed anything about him all that much, it did help his nervous energy not eat him up inside at all hours of the day. Mellowed him out, Eddie had observed one night, his fingers toying with a curl and Buck slumped down enough on the couch to rest his head on his shoulder, both of their feet kicked up onto the unsturdy coffee table in his living room. 

    He caught Bobby’s eyes over his shoulder and shared a smile before glancing back down at his phone, resting precariously on his knee. Maddie hadn’t texted him yet that day, but that was more than okay seeing as to how it was ten their time (and one in the morning in Pennsylvania). “Did they make it to Hershey, okay?” Bobby asked lightly, Ravi and Lucy’s voices fading into the background. 

    “Yeah, they made it in at, like, six this morning.” He even picked up his phone to show Bobby the picture of Jee that Maddie had sent - in her little beanie Chris had picked out for her in a dark red (Buck’s favorite color) and her eyes squinting at the glint of the sun outside of the car window. 

    “Oh wow,” Bobby said in that way he always got around kids. “She’s gotten so big! Has she started saying anything yet?” 

    Buck shrugged, “I think she almost said banana the last time I watched her? But that might have just been her laughing.” 

    “Her laugh sounds like banana?” 

    Buck almost imitated the laugh but decided against it. Chim would have gotten a kick out of it, but he still wasn’t quite sure where Ravi and Lucy would stand on him teasing his niece’s laugh. “Anyway, I think Maddie’s working to get her to say more than mommy but Chim’s crusading for daddy and I think Eddie’s trying to get her to say something in Spanish just out of spite.” 

    “And what are you crusading for?” Bobby asked sagely, with that tease in his voice that had Buck smiling despite himself. 

    “I would never try to teach my niece naughty words.” 

    “Careful,” Bobby advised around a laugh. “Maddie and Chim will get revenge when you two have a kid.” 

    It should have thrown him for a loop, really. Him and Eddie were still, relatively, new. Buck had moved in months before they had started but they had only just started sharing a bed; they had their own lives outside of one another. But Bobby implying that there would be a kid aside from Chris in their lives was something that felt like an inevitability. Almost like when they had first kissed, in the kitchen at work when everyone else was asleep or busy, against the cabinets. Inevitable. Like coming home. Like something deep inside of them settled into comfortability and calm. 

    He couldn’t say anything else about it, though, as the truck was pulling up to their call. It was a medical call, as were the majority of the calls they responded to on a good day, in a simple, one story home and they clustered around the front to listen to Bobby’s orders. “Okay, dispatch says we’re responding to a wellness call. We are not to go inside until the police clear us - it was a friend that called it in.” 

    “What are we looking at, Cap?” Hen bumped his shoulder as she stood by his side. 

    “Thirteen year old girl, according to dispatch she said something about committing suicide in an online chat room and her friend got concerned.” His stomach rolled.

    Suicide calls were always hard, especially suicide calls concerning kids. There was something about them that never hesitated to get under his skin, itching at him like he was fifteen and downing in loneliness all over again. Like he was eleven and watching for Maddie’s car to pull into the driveway only to be told over dinner that she wasn’t coming home until Thanksgiving. Like he was nineteen and thrumming with righteous anger enough to do something stupid like drive his motorcycle into another car. He still had a scar on his arm from that accident, and he traced it absentmindedly with his glove-covered fingertips and stared at the flashing blue and red lights against the family’s minivan. 

 Lucy whistled and leaned back against the truck, her badge catching on the streetlight above. “That’s a good friend.” 

“I don’t know if the parents will agree,” Hen scoffed around the tightness in the air. They were all restless, her foot tapping a pattern on the pavement, Ravi’s fingers twisting together, Lucy drumming her hands on her thighs, Eddie’s thumb rubbing circles into his St. Christopher’s medal, and Buck rocking back and forth on his heels. The officer was conversing with a woman at the door in a fluffy bathrobe, open to showing satin pajamas. Buck was pretty sure his mother had pajamas like that too, back when he was a kid. 

“I think I’d rather my kid have a friend that cares than a friend that doesn’t.” Lucy argued lightly. 

Buck hummed an agreement and Eddie’s leg crossed in front of him, stopping his rock forward and making him rock either backwards or into Eddie’s thigh. He had one eye on Buck and one eye on the officer disappearing into the house. “I know a bunch of people that used to say they were going to kill themselves as a joke.” Ravi said with a shrug, hands low in his pockets. “It was a messed up thing to do, but maybe this was just that?” 

“Those jokes don’t come from nowhere.” Buck muttered and Hen’s pinky brushed against his own. 

They all knew it was true - the job gave them a lot of experience with dealing with “joke” calls on suicide. If they left without anyone the first time, the chances of them leaving without anyone the second or third were more and more slim. “Do you ever worry about Chris being on the other end of one of these calls?” Hen asked uneasily. 

“Every time.” Eddie confirmed softly. 

Buck didn’t like the way the thought ate at him inside. How it bit and chewed and spit him back out again. There was already so much that he couldn’t do, so much he couldn’t protect Christopher from, but he would always hope that this would be one of the things Chris would just never understand. The odds were slim, but slim didn’t mean impossible, and Chris had none of his DNA and half of Eddie’s so that had to mean something , right? Eddie had never really thought about it, not among all of his other demons. And Shannon didn’t have a history of mental illness, not that Buck knew of anyway. Chris had been in therapy since before Buck had known him, even, so hopefully things would be better for him. 

He always had people he could talk to if things got hard. 

“Eddie, Hen,” Silence and then they were all moving, Eddie slinging his bag over his shoulder, Hen picking up her own, and Buck spinning around to grab a gurney. 

Statistically speaking, they were all a bit screwed. 

--

    The Whole Foods in Hershey was new, but Maddie’s parents had decided to treat a quick formula run as an entire family affair. Chim was being a good sport through all of it, in the way that only Chim knew how to be, pushing the shopping cart and following her parents like them explaining the layout of Whole Foods was the blueprint for a burning building. The night before had been fine, lackluster if anything, but Philip had asked her if she wanted to stop at the apple orchard after lunch and Maddie had happily agreed. Buck would get a kick out of a picture of Jee with an apple the size of her face and Josh would insist she pick up apple cider donuts (even if they would probably be stale or eaten by the time she got back to LA). Two more days, and then they would be back on the road, two more stops before heading home. “Maddie Buckley?” She startled, Chim crashed the cart into her ankles and Hannah Jennings was standing in front of her, bleach blonde hair and dark, manufactured tan still intact. 

    Or maybe Maddie was just being mean. Hannah had been one of her best friends back in school, but Madde wasn’t the same person she had been when she had lived in Hershey. “Hannah?” She greeted her kindly, anyway, and she wrapped Hannah in a tight, uncomfortable hug. 

    “Oh my god,” Hannah enthused. “You look so good !” 

    “You do too!” And that was really the problem with Hannah - she had always had an effortless beauty about her that had made Maddie cower in jealousy. 

    Hannah used to come over and paint her nails after school, long, skinny legs curled up underneath her and long, straight hair hanging in front of her angular face. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you around here again,” Hannah said later, walking happily beside her to the rental car, her reusable canvas bag brushing noisily against Maddie’s plastic, worse for the environment ones. Maddie hadn’t really invited her to go shopping with them, but Hannah had seen her parents and Margaret and Philip had picked back up like they hadn’t seen her just the week before at church. “Are you still out in Boston?” 

    “Oh,” Maddie blanched. “Oh, no. No, Chim-Howie and I live in LA.” 

    “Oh wow ,” Hannah hummed. “A California girl now. Never thought I’d see that for you.” 

    It was always back-hand compliments from Hannah. I never thought you’d be back here, I never thought you’d have a kid, I never thought you’d make it through nursing school . Maddie rolled her eyes and Chim bumped her shoulder with his own, his arm settling heavy and comfortable over her shoulders. “Well, I’m sure we’ve all changed from how we were in high school.” She smiled, though, as she said it, to hopefully remove some sting that might have transferred over with her words. 

    Hannah waved away her concern. “I bet you have all the stories about Maddie growing up,” Chim bounced to her side, Jee-Yun back on his hip - sucking on a pacifier and squinting in the sun. She had her cheek smooshed against his shoulder, her fingers wrapped tight around the collar of his sweater. “It is like pulling teeth to get Buck to give up anything on her.” 

    “Well, that’s because he’s a good brother.” Maddie teased Chim back lightly. She knew Buck had given him plenty of stories and had plenty of pictures to go along with them. Maddie in her boyband stage, Maddie in her Hot Topic stage, Maddie at her first wedding, Maddie with a big bruise on the side of her face from falling off the swings at the playground. But Maddie had more embarrassing stories about him than he had about her. There was something about hero worship, about him being so young when she went through all of her awkward stages that meant that he didn’t remember Maddie’s embarrassing teenage years, let alone that he wanted to expand on them. “Don’t tell him anything.” She pointed at Hannah and her old friend held up her hands in surrender, although her head was tilted and a sparkle in her eye that reminded Maddie of the time she had snuck White Claw into their senior prom in a water bottle.

    “There was this one time that Maddie had this date with one of the football players, Tyler Carson, do you remember him?” Hannah began and Maddie’s cheeks flooded with heat, only encouraged more by the almost eager smile on Chim’s face. “He was super cute and super into her,” Hannah told him conspiratorially, her hand patting Maddie’s back in fake consolement. “But he did it all, showed up at her house with a boombox, played her favorite song, and threw pebbles at her window.” 

    “And my parents hated him.” 

    “ Hated him.” Hannah confirmed. “But that could have been because Tyler taught your brother that climbing trees was cool and then Evan broke his arm.”

    “I’m pretty sure it had more to do with Tyler calling my dad a ‘stuffy old prick’ when he told him I couldn’t stay over his house one night.” But she had forgotten about Tyler teaching Buck how to climb a tree. Tyler had been Maddie’s first boyfriend, first real boyfriend, and while he had been notably annoyed by the amount of time Maddie spent babysitting, he was almost always willing to include Buck in any of their dates. They went to the movies with him, brought him mini-golfing, Tyler even took him on his own sometimes to museums or the football field. “We dated for six months.” 

    “Why’d you break up?” Chim asked curiously. 

    “School ended.” 

    “Maddie got accepted into UMASS and left without a look over her shoulder at any of us.” Hannah laughed, and picked up her story like she had never drifted off topic. “But anyway, Maddie had this date with Tyler but her parents decided to go on this impromptu trip to Vermont or something.” 

    “It was their anniversary.” 

    “Well yeah, but they didn’t have to leave you in charge of babysitting all the time.” 

    Maddie shrugged and shuffled her weight between her feet. It was a familiar argument that her and Hannah had engaged in, one born of teenage frustration and the want for independence. “It wasn’t a big deal. Evan was a good kid.” 

    It was hard, sometimes, to see the similarities between Evan and Buck. They were the same person, but entirely different entities at the same time. Maddie would always blame time for that, for the parts of her brother she no longer intimately knew. She had once known everything there was to know about him but sometimes she still found herself wondering where he had learned to do something, where he had picked up a quirk from (like the one time, when he had taught her how to dance in her kitchen, all hips and grace. Or when he had gone from Taylor to Eddie like it was as easy as breathing and Maddie hadn’t been given even a chance to adjust her point of view of her brother’s best friend before they were practically moving in together.). But Maddie didn’t have it in her to be angry about the time she had been given with him when they were younger. Not anymore, at least. She could understand the way that it had been unfair, she could sympathize for the teenager in her that hadn’t wanted to be responsible for a child when she hadn’t even been allowed to properly mourn for her first brother, but she wouldn’t hold Evan (or Buck) responsible for that. 

    Their parents did enough of that for the both of them. 

    “Tyler snuck in, though, right?” 

    “He didn’t sneak in.” Maddie scoffed and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “He walked right through the door.” 

    Chim laughed and Jee copied the noise with a small giggle herself. “What did you two get up to?” 

    Maddie opened her mouth to reply, a tease on her lips but Hannah beat her to it, “The problem wasn’t what they got up to. The problem was who walked in .” 

    Maddie’s cheeks flamed, a groan pulling from her lips. She hid her face in her hands. “That’s not what happened.” 

    “That’s what you told me happened.” 

    “Okay, listen, Evan had a problem understanding boundaries and he had had a bad dream -.” 

    “And you and Tyler were getting busy between the sheets!”

    “Oh wow .” Chim chuckled. “Who was more embarrassed?” 

    “Buck was ten years old, he barely knew what sex was.” Maddie rolled her eyes. 

    “How is he?” Hannah asked, then, curiosity seeping into her words. “Evan? I assume you’ve seen him since moving to LA?” 

    Maddie didn’t know why his name coming out of Hannah’s mouth set something alight in her, but it triggered an instinct Maddie was incredibly familiar with. She didn’t want to say, oddly. After all, Buck had left just like Maddie had, only with much less warning. He had grabbed a duffle bag, emptied his bank account, and driven off in her Jeep. As far as Maddie knew, he had never come back. There had to be a reason for that, Maddie figured. Just like there had been when she had left. 

    “He’s actually how we met.” Chim filled in, though. “We work together in LA.” 

    Hannah’s brows shot up. “Oh?” She licked her bottom lip. “You’re a firefighter, right?” 

    Chim’s shoulders rose in pride, just like they always did whenever his profession was mentioned. “Yeah, a paramedic with the LAFD.” 

    “So that means that little troublemaker Evan Buckley is also a firefighter?” She laughed, but her face said something Maddie didn’t quite understand. “Well, I suppose he certainly had the look for that.” 

    Maddie’s stomach churned, and Jee, as if sensing her sudden change in good nature, leaned out of her father’s arms and into Maddie’s, her little nose squishing into Maddie’s neck before she settled. “What does that mean?” 

    “Just that I wouldn’t mind going out to LA to see how he’s looking now, you know?” Hannah winked, apparently forgetting herself, and Maddie flushed, her jaw flexing. 

    “He’s almost ten years younger than you.” 

    “Not to mention,” Chim shifted so that he was behind her, his heat a warm, steady presence against her back. “Not single.” Chim’s hand brushed her waist. “He’s dating one of our other co-workers and Eddie’s a great guy.”

    Hannah waved, “To be a fly on the wall.” She whistled. 

    The thing was, it wasn’t the first time Maddie had been put in this position. Evan was, objectively, attractive. Sure, Maddie would never think of anything beyond that as being fact - her baby brother was attractive, his boyfriend was attractive, the two of them made a very attractive couple. Josh had pointed it out, a few other dispatchers, even May Grant. It didn’t bother her all that much whenever someone commented on it. 

    But for some reason, the words slipping past Hannah’s lips had alarm bells ringing in her head. “Hannah, look, we have to get going.” She jerked her chin towards their rental car, her parents had left fifteen minutes ago, but had told them not to rush towards their next destination. “It was great seeing you again.” 

    “Of course, of course,” Hannah grabbed her in a hug and Maddie resisted the urge to elbow her in the stomach. “I’m going to give you my number, make sure you keep in touch this time!” 

    “Oh, really -.” 

    “Maybe pass it on to your brother, if you know what I mean,” Hannah winked with another laugh and Maddie’s stomach lurched again. 

    “He’s in a very happy relationship, Hannah.” 

    “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to catch up, Maddie.” Hannah clicked her tongue at her. “We got pretty close when you moved out.” 

    “So she definitely slept with Buck, right?” Chim asked once they were in the car, Jee-Yun sleeping peacefully in her carseat, her fingers resting carefully against his own. 

    Maddie chewed on her lip and stared at the numbers Hannah had typed into her phone until they blurred together. “Yeah.” 

    Chim’s gum snapped against the back of his teeth. “How old was he when you moved out, again?” 

    “Eleven.” Maddie swallowed the lump in her throat. “He was eleven.” 

    She blocked Hannah’s number. 

--

    Sunday was family dinner day, a tradition that Maddie had advocated for ever since returning from Boston. It had started as the two of them, and Jee-Yun when she wasn’t with Chimney. Dinner at his loft, or at Maddie’s new apartment, usually consisting of take-out from local restaurants they had always wanted to try. It was all very “nuclear family” of them, in the beginning. An attempt to create something new that both of them had wanted but neither of them knew how to ask for. A memory for Jee to treasure when she was older. 

    Sunday dinners grew, though, as Maddie got back together with Chim and Albert started hanging around more. It grew, again, as Eddie spent the night and Chris wanted to learn how to cook, and their families grew from the two of them into something bigger and more comfortable than either of them had grown to expect. 

    Of course, it wasn’t like they could have Sunday family dinner every Sunday. Not with their jobs and the schedules that each of them had to keep. But the Buckley-Diaz-Han family dinners had become enough of a staple that even if both Buckleys were working, the Diaz and Han families would still meet up, eat food, and probably compare notes on the two missing. Which meant that, even states and states away, they had scheduled a video-chat dinner, complete with Albert calling in from the Lee’s kitchen, and all of them ordering various levels of good Thai food. 

    It was important. 

    Probably not as important to the rest of them as it was to Buck but damn him if he wasn’t thankful they were all willing to play along. He had propped his tablet up on the counter leaning back against the paper towel roll, folded himself strategically placed to the left of Chris and opened his takeout container in full view of the camera. “That looks so much better than ours.” Chim bemoaned, but obligingly showed off his own food. 

    “Do they even have Thai in Hershey?” Buck asked absently, Chris arguing for the sake of arguing with his father in the background about getting a cellphone ( again . Apparently Eddie’s explanation of “I didn’t get a cellphone until I was sixteen” wasn’t good enough for a twelve year old). 

    “We had to get it from Whole Foods.” Chim shuddered at the thought. “Margaret insisted on making it.” 

    In the nineteen years Buck had spent in Hershey, he could count on one hand the number of times his mother made dinner that required more than five steps and thirty minutes to prepare. Buck had always been on dish duty and Maddie was required to make the table up until she left. At Eddie’s, Buck wasn’t allowed to take over the majority of the cooking and the two of them had quickly come to the realization that they could both be adults that knew how to cook if only anyone had taken the time to teach them. Not that either of them were on Bobby’s level, but Buck’s worst dish still ranked somewhere along the same line as Margaret Buckley’s top one. Maybe it was immature, but measuring his own worth in comparison to his mother’s cooking was exactly the kind of person Buck had turned out to be. “It looks appetizing.” He said dryly, just in case Margaret was hiding around a corner somewhere. 

“It looks like shit.” Eddie didn’t care so much if Margaret was listening, it would seem. Or he at least enjoyed the wide-eyed look Buck sent him in warning and the way Chris chortled into his noodles. 

Chim hummed in agreement and looked mournfully down at his food. “Don’t be so dramatic.” Maddie admonished over his shoulder. They were in the basement, Buck recognized the pale blue of the walls, the plush leather couch they were sitting on. Maddie’s phone was most likely balanced on the bartop, maybe resting back against a bottle of wine. He wondered if she had closed the door or left it open. “Oh! Buck, I got you some of that apple pie seasoning from the orchard out here.” 

He swallowed and ignored the sting in the pit of his stomach. Maddie was allowed to go places that she had good memories of, with or without him. “You didn’t have to.” He told her lamely but hastily tacked on, “Thank you.” Maddie’s eyes cleared and she smiled. The shadows weren’t always gone, they would never all be gone, but they had given away to allow his sister to see the sun again. As much as her leaving had hurt, it had done her a lot of good, just as it had when she had left the first time (before Doug, before… everything ). 

“Are mom and dad insisting you sleep in different rooms?” He knew the answer to the question before he asked and Maddie rolled her eyes before nodding. 

“I’m stuck in your old room, man.” Chim whined around a teasing smile. “I didn’t know you were so into Spider-Man.” 

“The original movies suck,” Chris perked up at the part of the conversation he could contribute. Thankfully, and as long as Buck could help it, he had never met Margaret and Philip Buckley. But Chris wasn’t a dumb kid and Buck was sure there were enough clues that Buck’s relationship with his parents rivaled Eddie’s with his on the level of strained. “He’s not even in the Avengers.” 

Chim sputtered indignantly. “Spider-Man was never with the Avengers ! The new movies are an atrocity -.” 

“You’re arguing with a twelve year old.” Eddie reminded him blandly. 

“Well, he’s wrong .” 

“No,” Chris argued. “ You’re wrong.”

Eddie groaned and dropped his head into his waiting palm, though it wasn’t without a small smile. Chris was arguing a lot more, recently. Not that he was a difficult child, not the way Buck had been, but he was a child all the same and asserting his individuality was a part of any child’s growth. Eddie was made of sterner stuff than the Buckley’s had been. “Didn’t you go with me to see those movies?” Maddie asked around a forkful of rise. 

“Yeah,” Buck cast his mind back. “You and your boyfriend took me.” 

“You had nightmares about the Green Goblin.” 

Buck shrugged. “I was ten and he was scary.” 

“I didn’t think they made a big impact beyond that.” 

“Mom and dad thought I liked them more than I did.” Because it had been his first PG-13 movie, squished between Maddie and her boyfriend at the time. Because Maddie had had a massive crush on Tobey Maguire and Buck had said that Kirsten Dunst was pretty (but he had also said that about Justin Timberlake, but his father was never going to buy him an *Nsync poster like he did Maddie). But the majority of the movie, aside from the fight scenes, had gone over his head. Buck hadn’t ever really liked the movie, but he had loved spending time with Maddie. He would have seen anything with her if it meant more time by her side. 

“Buck agrees with me.” Chris declared with his chin stuck high up in the air. 

“The new ones are pretty good.” And they were. He had a lot of fun with them. Eddie’s lips twisted into a smile. They had brought Chris to see the newest one, squished together with Chris between them, the atmosphere of the theater making them cheer along to each big reveal like they knew enough about it to understand the hype. 

It had also made Buck sob but that was a different story altogether. 

“You haven’t even seen Die Hard.” Chim scoffed. 

“Evan never really had the attention span for movies,” Philip said from somewhere in the background, his legs appearing on the screen for a moment before disappearing once again off screen. 

“Hi dad,” He pushed his food off to the side, Chris’ nose wrinkling, Maddie’s eyes trained apologetically on his. 

“Who’s Evan?” Chris asked simply, innocently. 

Eddie choked on a laugh and pointed at Buck. “It’s Buck, mijo.” 

“His name’s Evan ?” 

“Well, it isn’t Buck Buckley.” 

“Huh.” 

“This is why we don’t like nicknames,” Margaret said from the same corner his father had disappeared into before she was appearing on screen, leaning over Maddie’s shoulder, her tone teasing but Buck’s reaction feeling anything but. “Everyone ends up forgetting the name we gave you.” 

“That’s not true,” Chris argued like any other twelve year old confronted with something he didn’t believe. “My nickname’s Chris but no one forgets my name’s Christopher.” 

“But we do all forget that Eddie’s name is Edmundo .” 

“Shut up, Howard .” 

Eddie offered him a roll and his eyebrows pulled down, a little, at Buck’s small shake of his head. He didn’t push, though. He was good at knowing what needed to be pushed. “Your father used to go to the corner store every Saturday for the newspaper,” Margaret continued as though she had never been interrupted. “And he would pick up the newest edition of Spider-Man every time. Evan looked forward to them.” 

He didn’t. 

Back when Buck was younger reading had been hard, reading with pictures even harder. “Dad never got me comic books.” But that was another part of the story that was incorrect - Philip Buckley had gone to the corner store every Saturday to pick up the newspaper, flowers for his mother, a Hershey’s Cookies and Cream bar for Maddie, and a Hotwheels for Buck if he had been good. 

    Philip hummed, still seated off camera. “No, that was Daniel.” 

    The mention of Daniel Buckley was something that still had Maddie freezing, which was fair, considering that she had gone nearly thirty years without ever hearing his name in their childhood home. Her eyes held Buck’s in the camera, her hand shaking around her fork and anxiety shooting up Buck’s spine like a bolt of electricity. Neither of them blinked. “Oh,” Margaret smiled around the tears that seemingly instantly filled her eyes. “You’re right . Daniel used to read them to you,” she said to the camera. To Buck. “When he was in the hospital.” 

“I brought them down from the attic a week or so before Maddie got here.”

Maddie’s fork shook as she placed it back on her plate, Chimney’s hand squeezing her knee, Eddie’s eyes flitting between him and Chris but not touching (which was good, really. Buck was pretty sure he would shock him if he touched him). “Evan didn’t have the attention span for comic books,” Margaret laughed, not unkindly, even fondly , but something still shot from her mouth and pierced his skin all the way in California. “He always had more fun getting into trouble outside. We used to have to practically lock you in your room without dinner to get you to do your summer reading.” 

“Did you know that one of the early signs of ADHD is trouble focusing for long periods of time? On books or… or movies or….” He twisted his fingers. 

Margaret huffed, indignant despite herself and the awkward look on Chimney’s face (pinched and tense). “Honestly, Evan, you don’t have ADHD.” 

“I used to think that you didn’t know how to read,” Philip remarked good naturedly. “But then you got up on stage at Maddie’s wedding and read that speech and proved us all wrong.” 

He knew that look that danced on Eddie’s face. Somewhere between annoyed, defensive, and ready to fight a computer (although this was Eddie, he was always ready to fight a computer). He said nothing, though, only pursed his lips, pushed his own food away and ran his hand over Chris’ messy curls. For his part, Chris had nothing to say at all, instead taking to glancing nervously between them and the computer. He always was good at picking up on the atmosphere. Always good at reading the two of them better than they were reading themselves. 

Buck could read Eddie like a book, though, and the other man was very clearly taking his cues from Buck himself. Taking his cues didn’t mean he was immune to frustration on his behalf, though. 

“Anyway,” Margaret steamrolled over any response Buck could have formulated to argue on his own behalf, not that he had one. Doctor Copeland had walked him through it - arguing with his mother was exactly what she wanted. Waving his arms and begging to be noticed was something that the child in him was screaming for, but something that wasn’t exactly useful as an adult. Hurting himself had failed to get him attention since he was thirteen, fifteen, nineteen, twenty-six with a ladder truck collapsing on his leg and shattering it to a million little tiny pieces. He swallowed and picked at the corner of a nail. Hen and Karen had a new foster, a kid close to Denny and Chris’ age. Maybe Buck would talk them into having a sleepover, it didn’t matter if they hosted or if he and Eddie did. They could make it a boy’s night, even. Full of pizza, too many video games, and homemade ice cream sundaes. That could be fun for everyone involved. “Maddie, we have a box of things that we found in the attic that used to belong to Daniel. We thought you’d like to take them home with you, perhaps look through them with Jee-Yun as she gets older. Teach her all about her uncle.” 

“She has an uncle,” Eddie muttered indignantly, although apparently not quietly enough for the stricken look that passed between Margaret and Maddie. 

“Three or four of them, actually.” Chrim said with indignation of his own. 

“Right,” Maddie rushed to defuse. 

Buck didn’t know why he wasn’t helping her, it was clear she didn’t know why he wasn’t helping her either. Us against the world , had been their motto for so long. Maddie and Evan Buckley against Margaret and Philip Buckley. A united front. 

Except what good did a united front do when half the united front was in another state? Maddie had left first, but Buck had refused to follow this time. “We don’t have much room in our luggage,” Maddie continued with false brightness. “But we’ll look through and take a few things.” 

It must have been relieving for her, Buck thought, to be able to finally talk about her first little brother. To finally be able to go through his things and take home some keepsakes. To tell stories to her daughter about the uncle she would never get to meet. There would be a time, Buck knew, where Jee-Yun would be older than Daniel ever had the chance of being. He wondered, sometimes, what Daniel would have been like if he had survived, but the last time he had put a voice to that thought and all of the subsequent ones that followed Eddie had gotten this stricken look on his face and his brown eyes had grown wide as he said, in no uncertain terms, that he would rather Buck get the thought of Daniel never getting cancer out of his head. It was a catch 22, in the end. If Daniel never got leukemia, Buck would have never been born. If Daniel had never died, Buck probably wouldn’t be the person that he was today. Would Daniel have let Maddie go off with Doug? If Daniel had lived, would Buck have been a second thought, still? 

“We were thinking of visiting during the holidays.” Margaret was saying, and Buck realized from the way Eddie was watching him, that he had missed a good deal of the conversation. He shrugged helplessly. “We can stay in your guest room, Evan.” 

Everything slammed into a stop. 

It was like speeding down a highway on a familiar drive home, second nature until a previously unnoticed stop. He slammed on the brakes, his seatbelt dug into his chest, and his pulse echoed loud in his ears as he narrowly avoided a life ending accident. “What?” Or maybe he was still on a collision course, only this time, unfortunately, bringing Eddie and Chris with him. 

“Well, Maddie doesn’t have a guest room and hotel prices in Los Angeles are atrocious. ” Margaret explained. 

It echoed. 

“You’re not staying here.” They couldn’t . He had worked so hard - him and Eddie had worked so hard - to make their home a safe one for the three of them. Between therapy and years of communication, fights in the hallways, locks on the doors, art hung on the refrigerator. It was theirs . It was his . If his parents came and stayed then so would the ghost of Daniel and Evan that always came with them. 

“You have plenty of room.” Philip stated and Chris pushed his baby corn around his plate with a look on his face scarily reminiscent of Buck when someone on a cooking show challenged the judges. 

“You’re not staying here.” 

“Evan Michael, we are your parents.”

“And your name isn’t on the mortgage.” For that matter, neither was Buck’s, but the point remained. At least he paid half the mortgage, less than the rent on his loft used to be, and Eddie had reassured him plenty of times that putting his name on the mortgage wasn’t exactly necessary when the house had originally belonged to his grandmother, anyway. “You can’t just tell someone you’re staying with them without checking with them first.” 

“Your sister -.” 

“Is sitting right here.” Maddie rolled her eyes, ready, as always to step between the three of them when a hurricane of anger would threaten to implode. “Howie and I wouldn’t mind hosting you guys if you really wanted to come visit. But we can always do something after the holidays. Traveling during Christmas is always going to be more expensive.” 

“Hush, Maddie,” Margaret advised. 

“Why are you talking to her like that?” It was the teenager in him that yelled it, just like he always used to yell it whenever his parents would hang up the phone and start complaining about Maddie and Doug and Boston . 

Eddie’s hand was warm on his back, running heat up his spine and curling around the back of his neck. This wasn’t the first time he had seen the frayed and broken edges of Evan mixing in with Buck, but it was probably the first he watched an interaction between his parents and him. Buck wondered if it felt as terrible as it did for him when Eddie was dealing with Helena and Ramon. “Honestly, Evan,” Margaret snapped. “You’re always so sensitive .” 

“Okay -.” Eddie began, his voice tense in a warning that had Chris wincing, pushing closer to Buck’s side. 

“Christmas is meant to be spent with family.” Philip argued, although he was using his peacekeeping voice. The one that used to sit on the edge of Buck’s bed after he had been punished and talk him into admitting that he deserved everything he had been given. Emotional manipulation , Doctor Copeland had helped him identify. You were an easy target. Most kids are.

“No offense, Mister Buckley, but we have a family that doesn’t start and finish with you and your wife.” Later, Buck was sure he would have to examine the tone it was that Eddie used with his parents. Now, though, he just found that he needed to move. That his heart was pounding hard in his chest, his pupils had dilated, and his hands were beginning to shake. His body was gearing for a fight that he couldn’t have any more. 

Buck picked up Eddie’s phone, waved the screen at him like he was getting a message, and walked outside to the small, paved corner of the yard where the grill they had yet to put together was going to go. He contemplated screaming up at the sky, wanted to reach into his own chest and squeeze at his heart until it stopped pumping. Foolishly, he remembered being fifteen, sitting through the world’s most stifling family dinner going over report card grades and wanting nothing more than to run out into traffic just to feel something other than the jagged edges of their words. 

 Instead, he sucked in a deep breath through his nose and then out through his mouth and glared at the fence. Later, with the sun still high in the sky, Eddie’s fingers barely brushed his spine before he was folding himself into him. Solid, strong, unmovable. Eddie caught him, smoothed his hand down his shoulders and held him until he felt all of his pieces settle back into the person he had built himself up into. “I hate your parents.” He muttered into the skin of his neck. 

“I wish I could.”

--

    “You know,” Chimney said conversationally, stretched out against Maddie’s old comforter, Jee-Yun balancing on unsteady feet holding on tight to his hands. “I didn’t think anything could be worse than that first dinner with your parents.” 

    Maddie winced. She could sympathize, really, with what it was he was saying. It was unfair of Maddie to put him in the situations she had with her parents - between her and Buck and them. Trying so hard to juggle being an attentive, protective and kind partner with being one of her baby brother’s closest friends. She knew that Chimney saw Buck as family before Maddie had even arrived in his life, just like she knew that Buck had never really mentioned her to any of his team until she had walked into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment. Maddie had to remind herself that it wasn’t allowed to sting, but it still did. “I’m sorry,” She apologized anyway, thinking of the way Chimney had shifted closer to her when Buck had walked away and Eddie had said a cold goodbye, cutting their planned dinner short without bothering with a polite apology. “You shouldn’t have to keep being pulled into these things.” 

    Chim glanced at her with wide, imploring eyes. “I don’t mind being pulled into anything, as long as it’s with you.” 

    It was an assurance and Maddie found herself relaxing with it. “Evan and them have always had problems.” 

    “I remember,” Chim said with a snort and caught Jee around her middle when her legs lost strength and she giggled, loud and happy. “I’d say this wasn’t as bad as last time, but I’m pretty sure putting your parents and Eddie in a room together will be signing a death warrant for them.” 

    And that was another thing, a small one, one that Maddie would have to get over. But, well… “Okay, hear me out,” Maddie crossed her leg under herself, resting her chin on her balled up fist, her fingers reaching out to tickle along Jee’s back. “But he was unnecessarily rude.” 

    “I don’t think that’s true.” 

    “Listen, I get that he loves my brother,” Maddie was quick to explain. “And I don’t dislike Eddie -.” 

    “Maddie,” Chim’s hand closed over her own and squeezed. “They have every right to tell your parents they can’t stay with them.” 

    “And I know that, I do.” Maddie shook her head, her hair brushing against her chin. “Evan’s holding boundaries and that’s good for him, he’s always had problems with that.” 

    “Eddie was just supporting him.”

    “Except he wasn’t .” 

    Chim groaned, his hand brushing through his hair. “Maddie, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Eddie and Buck have a family that doesn’t include only you and your parents.” 

    “I know,” Maddie moaned, tossing her head back in a dramatic reenactment of one of her younger brothers. “It was how he said it.” 

    “You mean, that Eddie cares enough about your brother to notice when your parents are about to do more damage than good?” 

    “They’re trying ,” Maddie insisted. “It’s a good thing if they want to stay with him.” 

    “Wanting to stay with them doesn’t mean that they get to stay with them, though.” 

    “I’m not saying that they can’t say no.” Maddie rushed to reassure. She could understand why they had said no, even if they did have the extra room (just one, a guest room that they used as storage. Maddie had gone in there exactly once, caught sight of a box labeled Shannon and promptly walked out). She was proud of Buck for holding boundaries and holding them with their parents. “It’s just…” She chewed on her lip before shaking her head. She didn’t know what it was that she was saying. Chim was right, really. Eddie didn’t owe her parents anything. It was his house that they had all but tried to stake a claim to, and Eddie had more than her brother to be protective over. “I shouldn’t have let them stay in the room with us while we had dinner.” 

    Maddie forgot, sometimes, that just because things were fine the majority of the time between her and her parents, Evan didn’t have the same relationship with them. It wasn’t that Maddie forgot that there was a giant chunk of time that had gone by between the time she left for college and Buck had stayed in Hershey - her run in with Hannah was enough to remind her of that. It was just easier to let their parents sit in the same room with them as they partook in the one family tradition Maddie and Buck had worked so hard to keep. “Hen told me something, once.” Chim said wisely. “Well, okay, Karen said it originally , but Hen paraphrased.” 

    “Oh?” 

    He smiled sideways at her, his eyes kind and understanding in a way no one’s had ever been when they looked at her before him. “Every sibling has different parents.” 

    And wasn’t that a thought. 

    Her father interrupted before Maddie could expand on her thoughts, his knock on the closed door sending a spike of unfounded anxiety up her spine. It was something about the room looking the same as it had her entire childhood. Like Maddie had snuck Chimney into her room and broken the big rule of keeping the door open when she had boys over. He opened the door without waiting for an acknowledgement, looking between the three of them with a wide, welcoming smile. He had a box at his feet, labeled in his blocky handwriting - Daniel. “The things your mother mentioned.” 

    “Oh,” Maddie hadn’t really expected it, if she were to be honest. After almost thirty years of never speaking of him, it felt so odd to have heard him mentioned as often as he had been. Clearly, not just for her, if the look on Buck’s face when their parents mentioned him on the video call was anything for her to go off of. It was complicated. On one hand, Maddie felt overjoyed to finally get to share her memories, on another, Maddie found that the forced silence made it more difficult to remember Daniel at all. Her most vivid memories were of a hospital bed, a baby sitting happy in his big brother’s lap, and pale, sickly skin. “We’ll look through it tonight, thanks, dad.” 

    He nodded, stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. Both Maddie and Buck did that too, she realized. Would Daniel have done it as well, if he had lived? The Buckley’s - one long line of people rocking on their heels to let out nervous, uneasy energy. “Your brother’s partner,” Philip began and Chim let out a long, slow breath between pursed lips, his concentration steady on Jee. “Well, your brother has a partner.” 

    Evan hadn’t exactly come out so much as introduced Maddie to his boyfriend when he was high school when she came home for a birthday before leaving again. She had forgotten about it, honestly, save for a few teasing comments until he had told her about Eddie (in a quiet, private moment, sitting out on his balcony, long legs stretched out in front of him, his foot nudging against her own and saying it was a long time coming, huh as though Maddie’s kind teasing had meant that she had even noticed her brother had a crush ). She had never asked if he had ever come out to their parents, but they had known his high school boyfriend and this was, well, this was the first time either of them had brought up the Eddie of the situation. “I thought you'd met Eddie before.” She settled on, even if electricity spiked up her spine, warning of something she couldn’t see. 

    “We have,” Philip agreed. “But we didn’t know they were a… they were partners back then.” 

    Oh, well that was easy. Maddie was more than certain that they hadn’t been more than friends back when their parents had visited the first time. Evan hadn’t been seeing anyone, then and after that it had been Taylor. Her parents would have liked Taylor, actually. A compliment to Buck in all the wrong ways. “They weren’t.”

“We just… your mother and I…” Philip struggled for the words and Maddie cocked her head even as Chim glared at Justin Timberlake on her wall like he knew exactly what it was that Philip was saying without saying. “We didn’t know.”

“You didn’t know he’s dating Eddie?” Not unheard of, even if it was odd. They had been together for long enough now for it to have come up in conversation between her parents and Evan. But, well, Buck hadn’t told her whether they had been talking or not. In fact, the last Maddie had heard of the three of them talking for longer than ten minutes was during their first scheduled therapy session. He had looked exhausted after, collapsed on her couch, a furrow in his brow that was as familiar as breathing. Maddie had been worried but he had shrugged and waved off her concern. It was what it was, he had said, it’s not like I expected anything different . 

“That he’s gay.” Philip expanded. 

Maddie blanched. “He’s not gay.” 

“He’s dating that man.” 

“He’s bisexual.” She corrected, sharing a look with Chim that was wide eyes and her heart beating just a little bit faster in her chest.

Philip scoffed around a laugh, like they were sharing a clever joke between the three of them. “You and I both know that bisexual is a term people use when they don’t want to make up their minds.” He chortled afterwards and a stone, heavy and jagged, settled in the pit of Maddie’s stomach. 

“That’s not even remotely true.” Chim stammered, and then seemed to catch himself, his jaw clicking shut but his eyes ablaze with anger. The entire firehouse, Maddie knew, had gone to LA Pride the year before, Chim and Captain Nash proudly wearing t-shirts saying Free Fire-Dad Hugs . It was a show of support for Hen, Buck and Eddie. For the others that weren’t ready yet to say what they were. For the people they worked to protect every single day. 

Evan had never come out. Not to her. But, then again, Maddie had always made sure that he knew that she loved him regardless of who he was. “You never told him that, right?” Maddie knew the answer before Philip frowned. “ Dad . You didn’t tell him that.” 

He waved her concern off. “I don’t know if I like his choice of partner.” 

“Eddie’s a great guy.” That was Chim, ever protective of his family. “He’s a fantastic father, and he’s great with Jee-Yun.” 

“And he loves Buck a lot.” Maddie knew that, she had seen it even before they were officially dating. “But that’s not what we’re talking about - you know bisexuality is real , right, dad?” 

“He shouldn’t have spoken to your mother that way.” Philip shook his head. “I’m sure things will smooth over when we’re there for the holidays.” 

Maddie didn’t know what to focus on, she was still so flabbergasted at the blase comment he had dropped moments before that she almost missed the implication of his tone before he was walking out, the box of Daniel’s things sitting in the doorway. “Dad, you’re going to have to get a hotel if you’re coming for the holidays.” She reminded him, even if it made her queasy to do so. “Or you can stay with me and Howie.” 

Philip cleared his throat, his eyes stuck on a picture hanging on the hallway wall - her and Evan, in stuffy suits at twelve and five, forced smiles on their faces. When Maddie had been little she had told herself that the space that the photographer had put between them had been reserved for Daniel, and then as she got older she hadn’t been able to spend much time looking at the picture. Buck had looked too much like Daniel, only healthier with a big smile across his face. “We’ll talk about it closer to the date.” 

Chim groaned and rubbed at his forehead. “If they show up at Buck’s place I think Eddie might actually call Athena for trespassing.” 

“It’s not that bad.” Except it probably was that bad. Maddie had spent only the required amount of time around Eddie Diaz even since him and Evan had gotten together. She knew him tangentially - through Buck and Chim and the firehouse. She knew Chris better, but that was probably because Buck talked about him so much. Eddie was an enigma - he was quiet and surly at times, but soft and silly with both his son and her brother. But Maddie didn’t have to be friends with Eddie Diaz to have noticed the threat in his expression when he had hung up their video call earlier that night. Getting Athena involved would probably be nicer than whatever it was that he might actually do if their parents just arrived on their doorstep. 

    Still, it was a problem for the future. Maddie picked up the box of Daniel’s things and deposited it on the bed, Jee-Yun reaching immediately for an old teddy bear with a bright purple ribbon tied around its neck. She remembered that bear. Daniel had had that bear since he was born, a present from their grandmother. He had played with Evan with it in the hospital bed, even gifting it to him when Evan had been plagued with a fit of tears after the bone marrow transfusion. Here, Ev, Daniel had said, he’ll keep you safe. “Bear!” Jee proclaimed in her little, sweet voice. 

    Maddie smiled around her the tears that the memory had produced. “That’s right, Jee, it used to belong to your uncles.” 

    Chim curled a hand over the edge of the box, peering into it curiously. “To both of them?” 

    “Daniel gave it to Buck,” Maddie explained. “I don’t know why it was in here.” 

    Except she did know. Maddie did know. Because Evan had cried and cried and cried when they took it away during the move. Maddie had sat on the other end of his crib and cried herself, his own screams loud enough to hide her own mourning. Their mother had banned Maddie from comforting him when he was throwing a fit. He has to learn , Margaret had said, her eyes blazing at Maddie and her hand pulling the door shut even as Evan screamed for either of them , no one comes when you cry. Maddie thought of Jee just the night before, refusing to be put down without tears and whimpers. Maddie had curled around her on the bed, Chim on the other side of her, their hands linked over her belly as she exhausted herself, her tears replaced with restless movements. Her throat suddenly dry, Maddie grabbed a sip of water from her water bottle and curled back against her pillows, Chim’s hand comforting and steady on her knee. “We don’t have to look through this right now.” He reassured. 

    “If we don’t do it now then I’ll never do it.” Maddie settled back farther against the pillows, wiggled her toes in her socks and pulled the box closer. Jee scooted forward too, her tiny hands struggling to hold onto the corner of the box and the teddy bear at the same time. 

    Inside were a slew of items, of memories, that Maddie had suppressed since she was eight. Report cards from kindergarten, drawings, coloring books, valentines. Daniel’s favorite t-shirt, his race cars, the football he used to toss around with their father in the backyard. Evan had played football, back in middle school and high school. Maddie was sure Philip had been reminded of Daniel while teaching him how to throw. “This has your name on it,” Chim said suddenly, digging further into the box to pull out a thick, yellowed envelope. “Pretty neat handwriting for a seven year old.” 

    Maddie . 

    “That’s not Daniel’s handwriting.” Maddie would know, she had dozens of postcards with her name written exactly like that on them. Buck’s handwriting had changed over the years, but not enough for Maddie not to recognize it on sight. 

    Chim furrowed his brows. “Buck wrote you a letter he never sent?” 

    It didn’t have her address on it, so Maddie was pretty sure he had never intended on sending it. She frowned and took it from his hand. There had always been a novelty for Buck when it came to writing and receiving letters. It was why he had chosen postcards (well, aside from Doug). Maddie had practically been his pen-pal all through college. “Apparently.” It opened easily, though, and Maddie slid the paper out with curious fingers. 

    Maddie,  

    I’m sorry. 

    There was more to it. Maddie wasn’t entirely sure if she was even reading it correctly until she started over again. It had to be a joke. A cruel, mean , joke. Her eyes darted back to the top.

    Maddie, 

    I’m sorry . 

    Her stomach fell out beneath her, she looked back down at the bottom. 

    Love, 

    Evan

    Her hands shook. Jee’s hand grabbed onto the corner of the paper, wrinkling it loudly. Maddie jerked it from her grip, but it only tore off the corner with a rip. 

    Maddie, 

    I’m sorry. 

    “Maddie?” Chim’s grip should have been grounding, but Maddie had tunnel vision, her breath coming in quick, tiny gasps. “Hey, are you okay?” His fingers worked under hers, easing her grip enough that the paper fell from her hand, fluttering onto the bed. Too elegant for the words she had seen there, written in clear, easy, familiar handwriting. “Maddie? Honey?” His face was in front of her, close, too close. 

    Maddie grabbed the pages and stumbled to her feet, Jee-Yun overbalancing into Chim’s lap. “Maddie!” 

    Maddie, 

    I’m sorry.

    Her parents were in their bedroom, television playing Seinfeld softly, the laugh track echoing in her ears, mixing with the sound of her heartbeat. It poisoned her, it made her jerk back as though they were laughing at the situation she had found herself in. A cruel reminder of reality to the sand filling her throat. Margaret jumped, their door slamming against the wall hard enough to leave a dent from the doorknob’s lock. “Maddie!” She yelped, her hand hovering over her heart, her blue eyes (Evan’s eyes, Daniel and Maddie both had their father’s eyes) wide in fear before settling into something more familiar. Disdain, frustration. Maybe even worry. “Is everything okay?” 

    Maddie, 

    I’m sorry . 

    “Did you know?” She waved the papers at them. 

    Philip stood, his hands held out placatingly in front of him, like Maddie was acting irrationally. “Did we know what?” 

    Maddie, 

    I’m sorry.

    He had arrived at the hospital she worked at, and insisted on seeing her. Motorcycle accident. He had begged her to go with him. She had known something was wrong. She had even joked about it, once, with him a year ago. I think, if you stayed, you wouldn’t have made it to twenty . 

    Maddie, 

    I’m sorry.

    “That Evan tried to kill himself.” 

--

    It’s not that no one knew. 

    In fact, Buck knew for a fact that a lot of people knew. The doctors who treated him at the hospital after the accident knew, the nurse that had helped him with the discharge paperwork had stressed how much she didn’t think it was a good idea that he left to be on his own until he promised to go to Maddie. It had come up in his psych evaluation - Mister Buckley, do you feel any suicidal impulses now - and it was a note in his file for Bobby to look out for. He had told Eddie over beers after Shannon died, almost like it was a prize for him to get when Eddie had been truthful about how much it hurt that she was gone ( again, and isn’t that fucked up? She died and I’m pissed that she left us again . ). He was pretty sure Hen knew, too, if the way she watched him after every suicide call they got told him anything. And if Hen knew then Chim had to at least suspect . And if Bobby knew then Athena definitely knew. So everyone knew, and Buck had just assumed that Maddie had known too and was just choosing not to bring it up because it was too hard. 

    Which was fine, Buck didn’t bring up Doug and Maddie didn’t bring up the fact that he wasn’t ever supposed to survive the motorcycle crash that had landed him in her emergency room. Maddie didn’t bring up Daniel and Buck didn’t bring up Hannah and if there was one thing the Buckleys were good at, it was repressing the hard stuff. Besides, it was fine, Buck had Doctor Copeland and Eddie and Bobby if he really needed to talk about it. But he hadn’t felt that hopeless since the moment he had decided to try, and he had immediately felt all of the shame and guilt when he woke up in the back of an ambulance and realized that it hadn’t worked. 

    After all, Buck had danced around suicidal ideation since he was five and realized getting hurt got him attention. He had been firmly in the “I’m not going to do it, I’m just going to think about it a lot” category until he wasn’t. It had been one bad day, one bad day out of hundreds, and he had been a kid who couldn’t see any other way out until Maddie had thrown him her keys and told him to leave. 

    So if Maddie didn’t want to talk about it then they didn’t have to talk about it. Except it was two in the morning (which meant it was five in the morning in Pennsylvania) and his phone was ringing, loud enough to make Buck want to cry and Eddie to hide his face under his pillow with copious swearing in both English and Spanish. “Maddie?” He answered as he rubbed at his nose, squeezing the bridge between his fingers. 

    She made a noise on the other end of the line, a choked breath, and Buck was awake, suddenly, wide and wide awake. It was like the day he had found Chimney bleeding out on her walk-way and Josh had asked after her. The realization that something was much more wrong than Chim dying under his hands. He sat up, dislodging Eddie’s arm from its comfortable position resting across his chest. “Maddie? Are you okay? Did you get in an accident? Is Jee okay?” 

    She made that noise again, but then there was a wet laugh. “Jee’s okay,” she reassured. “Are you okay?” 

    His heart sped up and he shared a look with Eddie, the other’s eyes squinting at him against his pillow, brow furrowed in concern. Everything okay? He mouthed. Buck shrugged uselessly. “I’m okay?” 

    “Are you?” For some reason, his answer made her cry harder, and if there was anything that Buck had always hated, it was hearing Maddie cry. There was something fundamentally wrong about it, especially when she was so far away. It also always had the unique ability of making him cry too and Buck found his eyes burning despite himself. 

    “We’re all fine here, Maddie.” He reassured and swung his legs out of the bed, planting his feet firmly on the carpet. “What’s going on?” 

    “You left a letter.” She cried. “And I didn’t know.” 

    “Maddie, I don’t understand.” 

    “I didn’t know .” Maddie stressed. 

    “You’re going to have to use more words, Mads, it’s two in the morning and we just got off a long shift.” 

    “Oh my god,” she hiccuped. “I woke you up. I’m so sorry, I’ll… I’ll call back later.” 

    “No, it’s fine.” Buck rushed to reassure. “Maddie, what’s going on ?” 

    “Your bike accident.” 

    He was nineteen when it happened. Honestly, Buck couldn’t even remember much of the event. Doctor Copeland told him it was probably his brain’s way of protecting himself from everything that surrounded the event. It was normal, even if it was frustrating. Everyone wanted to know why . That was the big thing, right? Everyone always wanted to know why . Eddie had asked him why, even though it was years after he had found out and after Chris had thrown a big fit, declaring that he would rather be dead than dealing with his disability for the rest of his life. Eddie’s question had come from a place of concern, a worry of a father and not of a partner who even thought that Buck was capable of that sort of thing anymore. But Buck had been nineteen. 

    He knew the facts of the event. He had purposely crashed his motorcycle. 

    He knew the feelings of the event. It had hurt. It had been the most painful thing he had ever felt at the time, but it was a peaceful sort of pain. The pain was the worst part about it, but the pain was a fraction of time compared to the numbness as he had laid against the pavement, floating in and out of life. 

    He knew what had been meant to happen, just like he knew what actually had happened. 

    He hadn’t meant to survive. 

    The paramedics had arrived within ten minutes. 

    “ Maddie .” It came out of him in a rush and he stood quickly, fast enough that Eddie jumped and stared at him, wide eyed and awake despite the hour. “That was years ago.” 

    “I didn’t know .” She repeated. “I didn’t know but they knew and they… they never told me.” 

    “I…” He had left their parents a letter, folded neatly on the kitchen table. He had left Maddie’s on her bed, propped up nice and neat on her pillow. His hands had shook when he placed it against the fabric, but not when he had pulled the door shut. Maddie had been gone, married to Doug, and Buck had been alone. “They threw it out.” He finished lamely. 

    Margaret and Philip had confirmed as much during their first, and only, therapy session. After everything we went through after losing one child, Margaret had said through her tears, and you wanted us to lose another? “I yelled at them.” Maddie shakingly said. “I yelled at them so loud that Mister Baker from next door came over to see if there was a problem.” 

    Buck smiled, a ghost of a smile, and rubbed his hands over his thighs and then through his curls. “Yeah? I bet they loved that.” 

    “They yelled back,” Maddie laughed, although it sounded twisted, wrong, an echo of the real her. It was like when she had first had Jee all over again, tense and uncomfortable. “Chimney and I decided to leave early.” 

    “But you had another day.” 

    “They knew ,” Maddie spit the words out like it was poison on her tongue. “They knew and they didn’t tell me. They knew and they… they let you leave .” 

    There was a part of him, a selfish part of Buck that he tried not to indulge too much, that was happy that Maddie was finally seeing it his way. That she had finally been shown a picture of their parents that she couldn’t forgive as easily as they wanted her to. “It wasn’t… you want to make things better with them.” But Buck was only human, and Maddie deserved all of the happiness in the world. She wanted a relationship with their parents. She looked at them and still had happy memories with them. Buck didn’t want to be the one responsible for ruining that for her. He had already taken so much, he refused to take this too. “It was hard on them. I… I was hard on them.” 

    “You were nineteen .” Maddie snapped. “You were nineteen and…” Her breath stuttered and with it went the anger in her voice. “You were only nineteen.” 

    “And I’m twenty nine now,” his eyes caught Eddie’s. “And I’m safe, at home, with my boyfriend and our… and Chris.” 

    “But you almost weren’t.” She sobbed, muffled as it was. Buck knew the position she was probably in, knees pulled up to her chest, nose buried in her elbow. “You were so alone.” 

    Buck had cried many tears over who he was at nineteen. Now, though, a tear slipped down his cheek in remembrance of Maddie at twenty-six. Too young to deal with burying one brother, let alone two. Too young to be dealing with Doug Kendall, and still throwing him her keys and telling him to leave. 

    She had saved his life, back then. 

    But Buck had done the rest of it himself. He knew enough to give himself that credit. “Do you think we could… we could talk?” Maddie asked around her tears. “When I get home?” 

    “Of… of course, Maddie.” He swallowed around who he was years ago. “Of course.” 

    She was quiet, then, in a way that she so rarely was. Buck wondered where she had learned how to cry silently. He knew he had known how to ever since he realized that crying only brought attention he didn't want. Had Maddie learned it the same way? Or was it a scar from mourning Daniel softly, so softly that her baby brother would never pick up on it? Or a wound from Doug, never to be fully healed? He swiped at the tear as it curled over his chin and brushed another before it could fall from his lashes. "You're okay, right?" Maddie finally asked. "Now?" 

           "Yeah, Maddie. I'm okay." 

"Promise?" 

"Pinky promise."