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Spring had settled into Los Angeles in a beautiful but cold way.
For May Grant, Spring meant another semester at UCLA, another semester of working weekends at the 9-1-1 call center, another round of missed family dinners. But at the same time, it also meant she was one semester closer to graduating and figuring out exactly what direction she wanted to go with her life, as many options had been presenting themselves to her ever since she really started understanding the life of a first responder.
She enjoyed her time at UCLA, of course. She wasn’t too far away from home if she needed a break from being surrounded by her classmates. She could text any person on her stepfather’s shift at the firehouse if she needed help and they’d drop everything and come to her side, with or without informing her mother. She slowly was discovering herself, not just what everyone wanted her to be.
But May was also smart. She had quietly moved to a different apartment after her first semester at UCLA, enlisting the help of Buck and Eddie one weekend. With the help of her mom, she was able to get a different car. She learned where every exit was in every building she entered regularly. She never went anywhere without her keys and phone.
She had learned the hard way why that was necessary.
During the fall of her first semester, after she finally reported the harassment that she was receiving at the hands of another student, the man stepped it up. Her front windows were egged. Her car was keyed, just out of sight of the cameras near where she parked. She spotted him staring at her a few times after the no contact order was put into place.
Campus security always responded, but never in time. She didn’t blame them. It was a big campus and Brendon seemed to like the whole “Batman disappearing act” thing. So she protected herself. She learned.
Buck and Eddie ended up being the older brothers she desperately needed. They took her to a gym and taught her self defense. Buck made it a point for an entire year to randomly show up after different classes with food from Bobby. Eddie had her become Christopher’s primary babysitter outside of Carla.
After that semester, it was like they chased him away. She had a year free from him. No messages from multiple accounts, her new apartment and car were left untouched, and there weren't any more surprise appearances outside her classes.
Did he finally get the hint? May had thought at the time. Am I free of him?
They kept up the routine throughout the next full year. They’d gotten used to it, it worked well for them. It didn’t bother them.
Over the previous Christmas, only two months before, she had decided that she was done living in fear of this man scaring her. So she decided it was time to move on. She was just going to live her life. Brendon’s appearance in her life was nothing but a blip as it were.
She should have kept worrying.
It was sixty seven steps from the exit of the call center to her car. May still unconsciously counted those steps at the beginning of her shifts, even though she had done her best to stop. She had to get around Maddie’s car and-
What.
There was a moment, a split second, where she froze. She couldn’t help but take in the scene. She could answer phone calls all day and help people through their worst moments, but this? This she couldn’t fathom.
Seven steps from her car, she could make out a dark shape curled up against the ground. A pool of some sort of liquid was already present underneath it. A step back from the shape was a person in one of the shadows in the building, watching and staring, with an object in their hand.
May blinked. What was out of focus was now clear. And all she could feel was adjunct terror.
Oh. Oh God no.
The liquid was blood. The object was a knife. The person was Brendon. And the shape on the ground was Buck.
The details filled in as if she was asking someone for clarification on a phone call. They had let down their guard. She had told Buck and Eddie that it was okay to step back a little, that she was fine. She took some later shifts at the call center on three day weekends to earn some extra cash.
She wasn’t careful enough.
“Buck.” The word could barely leave her lips. The man in question twitched on the ground as if he heard her, but he also was writhing in pain.
May focused on Brendon and the knife. He was just standing there, staring, knife still dripping obscenely like it was a prop in some B-grade slasher film. She moved her hand towards her pocket, towards her keys and phone. He shifted the knife.
“Brendon, let me call for help. He doesn’t deserve-”
“Shut up!” His voice echoed in the parking lot. “He was in my way. He has been in our way. Without him, there’s no more distractions.” The man stepped around Buck and started walking toward her.
In the back of her mind, she celebrated the fact that Brendon’s voice was so loud. If anyone was outside, they would’ve heard it and would probably come running. But she had to get him away from Buck, had to get help for Buck.
“He’s my brother , Brendon!” she snapped, letting a bit of her mother’s legendary temper out. “He just wants me safe!”
Brendon hesitated, pausing just for a moment. It was clear he wasn’t expecting that type of response. “But-”
He cut himself off again, but this time it wasn’t because of her. Flashlights were pointed in his direction from over May’s shoulder. Someone had heard, and someone had come running. And they had brought help.
There was no more hesitation in Brendon. He dropped the knife and took off towards the back end of the parking lot. Two of the call center’s security guards rushed past her and gave chase at a more leisurely pace, as the parking lot was fully walled in. He wasn’t escaping from that direction, even if he really tried.
As soon as they passed Buck, May shot forward, shrugging off her jacket and shoving it against Buck’s abdomen. He let out a litany of cut off curses.
“Stay still Buck,” she said, applying pressure. Looking up, she could see two LAPD squad cars pulling into the lot, escorting an ambulance that she knew very well. “The best team in the LAFD is coming to help.”
It took her mom and Bobby to pull her away, both holding her while Hen, Chim, and Eddie stabilized Buck and got him ready for transport in record time. Eddie hung back just long enough to give them a reassuring nod.
The doors slammed, and May finally let go of her tears.
The following months sucked . And then they got better.
Brendon Stewart had been easily detained not five minutes after the 118’s ambulance pulled away from the call center. He had already agreed to plead guilty for any lesser charges that didn’t include attempted murder. That discussion was being left to the lawyers to argue out.
May ended up taking a leave of absence for the rest of the semester, with the plan to retake her classes over the summer. Her professors were very understanding of what she’d gone through. She’d done the same at the call center for a time, though she’d already started back. It helped that she currently got dropped off by someone so that she didn’t have to walk through the parking lot.
Buck was only hospitalized for a day before being released into his “parents’” care, as Hen sarcastically said when the 118 wheeled him out of the hospital. He spent the first few weeks recuperating at the Grant-Nash home from the two stab wounds he’d received before finally sneaking away during a full family dinner and ended up staying with the Diazes.
As it turned out, Buck just so happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. In the chaos of everything that night, everyone had forgotten. Buck had been in the parking lot to pick up May’s car, as she needed a few things done to it and Buck was happy to do so (and because it meant taking over Eddie’s driveway for a few hours, which also meant dinner at Abuela’s, so a win-win situation all around). Brendon struck under the delusion that Buck was the person keeping him away from her… which honestly wasn’t that far from the truth, though Buck didn’t exactly deserve to have a knife introduced to his gut twice in quick succession.
When May was ready to return to the call center, Buck was there to walk her in for her first shift. Well, limp, as Maddie oh-so-helpfully reminded everyone, but the thought still counted. The only reason she didn’t have her blond shadow on her first day of summer classes was because he was finally back at the 118, on light duty, but working and raising all holy with the dreaded clipboard.
It was weird for May to go back to school as if everything was behind her. It was, but it wasn’t. There still was the worry that Brendon might get released for some bogus reason. Or that he had friends that shared his ideals.
But she kept moving forward. Because that’s what Grant’s do. They don’t stop.