Work Text:
It had taken them a long time to get to this point.
Months of silence, weeks of waiting between sparse emails, days passing after setting the time. But finally, they were talking again.
That first phone call, while she recovered from her procedure in Boston, had been harrowing. Maddie was a crier, always had been. But to hear Buck sob on the other end of the phone, just knowing that she was alive and okay? It was worth every tear cascading down his face in the middle of his shift.
They kept it very bland at first. Then, once she found out that Chimney was on the road, it was as if the floodgates had opened. They discussed their past, the present, the choices they’d made, how they got to where they were.
Maddie opened up about Oxnard, which almost broke Buck that night. Meanwhile, her brother finally told her about how much it hurt to hold her secrets. A new pact was formed between the two - no more secrets.
By the time Maddie returned from Boston, they were on a more even keel. Not everything was worked out, but they were making progress, good progress, towards healing one another.