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“Damn, Buck. What does the other guy look like?”
Buck winced at the loud comment from McCall and tried to keep his head down. Hen was faster as always, carefully taking hold of his face and looking closely at his bruised lip.
“What happened, Buck?” she asked, letting go of him and making her way into the kitchen. “You don’t normally get into fights…” Her voice trailed off as she opened the freezer, digging through the bags of frozen vegetables for one of the many ice packs they kept around.
“Not a fight,” he grumbled, letting himself collapse onto the couch. His words were a bit slurred due to him trying not to tug on his mouth.
She handed over one of the ice packs (that had been hidden behind Chim’s frostbitten ice cream from a few months ago, they really needed to throw that out) and settled down beside him. As she did, she gave McCall a look that flat out told him to make tracks and go find Bobby.
He carefully set the ice pack on his lip, wincing at the cold immediately numbing his skin. “Remember a few years when that guy catfished all those women using my name and picture?” Buck kept his eyes on his feet, not wanting to even think about that horrible few weeks.
“I remember,” Hen said. “The one that died alone and you kept getting assaulted by different women because you ‘ghosted’ them.” The air quotes could have been heard from space. Hen remembered the whole thing, especially the fact that she completely misjudged the situation. Once Athena had set her straight, she’d spent a few weeks quietly making it up to Buck, inviting him over to dinner once Abby left and firmly planting him as a part of her family.
There had been hopes that once the truth had come out, when he and Chim had found the catfisher and turned the case over to the LAPD, that Buck would be able to move on from the situation pretty quickly. Unfortunately, he was continually harassed while working for the next several months, to the point that he started staying behind at the station more often than not just to avoid getting things thrown at him by the friends of the victims. It still occasionally happened four years later, but at just a lesser degree that none of them brought it up anymore, just gently redirected the angry citizen away from Buck and in the direction of whichever LAPD personnel was at the scene.
“Well, turns out that one of the women has an older brother who somehow never got the memo. He decked me just as I was leaving lunch with May and Athena. She had him pinned to my jeep before I could even get back on my feet. Detective Ransone was very happy to arrest him once he arrived.”
Hen winced at the thought. “Let me check you out. If he hit you that hard…” She stopped at the shake of his head.
“Athena dragged me to Urgent Care,” Buck said. He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. “Got cleared to work. No fractures, no breaks, just a fat lip for breaking a woman’s heart.” The last part was filled with enough sarcasm to fill the entire room.
“And that explains why you were twenty minutes late.” Both looked over to the stairs. Bobby had just walked up them and was leaning against one of the railings. “Don’t worry, I got your text, and Athena called me when you left Urgent Care. You’ll be man behind today just in case.”
Buck carefully nodded. “Probably a good idea. No need to scare any kids.”
How Hen kept her grimace off of her face, she’d never know. Ever since Eddie had transferred to the call center as the LAFD liaison, Buck had become more sarcastic and self deprecative. In fact, Eddie had texted her about it just the night before, after the man had heard it himself. He was concerned at the very least. “Buck…”
“It’s fine Hen. Where do you want me to start, Bobby?” Buck shoved himself off of the couch, handing over the medical paperwork as he did so. He was bounding down the stairs before Bobby could even finish giving him his assignments.
“Professional opinion?” The captain asked, not looking at Hen, but instead watching as Buck ducked into the locker room to finally change into his uniform.
“He’ll be fine, if he stops getting head wounds. Third time this year,” she said. “But we really need to do something to stop this self deprecation loop he’s caught himself in.”
Bobby nodded. “We can figure something out. I hope.”