Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bobby would be the first to admit, he had made a good amount of assumptions about Buck when he had first met him. There was the obvious, that he was a brash, reckless and determined young man. That he thrived off praise, and he suspect had been on his own a little while - even more so considering that he didn’t have an emergency contact until Bobby had added himself.

But there was more to it.

Bobby would be the first to admit that Buck was different. He acted different from most other people Bobby had ever met. He held himself different. He was as well-built as the rest of them, a requirement for the job, but he moved with a nimble-ness at times that made Bobby almost think he’d been a dancer. Though he knew from watching him dance that it really couldn’t be that.

He was also excitable, had difficulty focusing, and Bobby was almost sure he had difficulties reading. None of which were particularly odd in themselves, apart from the fact that Bobby was almost sure he’d seen him struggle with English and yet manage something that had been in what looked like Greek.

There was also the weird affinity to water. He just seemed at ease most in water, or around water. When he was on shift the pumps never blocked, the water always seemed more powerful. He had watched him swim in water at a speed that Bobby was sure put Olympic swimmers to shame, and was seemingly able to hold his breath for upwards of 10 minutes. Though, Bobby was sure he’d just miscounted on the last one, or that the SEAL training really was something else.

All in all, Buck was weirder than Bobby had originally thought.

There was also the matter of his tattoos. One of them was a lot odder than the rest, with a trident symbol, some letters and a few lines. He’d never managed to get close enough to really look at it. Consciously or not, Buck hid that tattoo where he didn’t hide the others.

They were having a slow shift when the next odd thing around Buck happened.

“Cap, you go to church every Sunday, right?” Chimney had asked.

“Yeah, and sometimes during the week,” Bobby replied.

“Do you think the big guy listens?” Chim asks, and they’re so soon after Chimney had the rebar in his head. Bobby knows the question could be better phrased, but he doesn’t mind, really.

“Yeah, I think he does,” Bobby says, and vaguely he hears Buck scoff.

“Buck?” he asks, a little edge in his tone. Bobby knows not everyone believes or has a faith, but he’d expect a little more understanding from a co-worker.

“Sorry, cap, I just don’t think gods have all that much time for us,” Buck replies.

The statement in itself is odd, the use of the plural and the way he says it, as if he knows that God doesn’t have time.

The statement is then left as they get called to a fire.

Odd things keep happening though.

When Buck meets and is introduced to Athena Grant, his eyebrow rises up. He looks at her as if he’s trying to figure something out.

“Like the Greek goddess?” He asks, his words are measured and a little cagey in a way that Bobby doesn’t think is just from Buck and Athena getting off on the wrong foot.

“Yeah, my mother just liked the power of the name,” Athena replies simply, she holds Buck’s gaze, but whatever he’s looking for, he doesn’t find.

“You ever try to talk to her?” He then says, which elicits a bit of a frown from all of them. It’s an odd question to ask someone, even more odd when Bobby remembers his reaction to him talking about his God.

“I’m a baptist Buck, not a pagan,” she replies, and Buck nods.

They share the meal, but Bobby’s gaze lingers on Buck a little more. There are pieces of a puzzle in front of him, but none of them fit together. He knows he’s missing an integral piece, which will help it all make sense.

When he helps Buck get ready for his date with Abby, he notices the scars.

It’s not uncommon for firefighters to end up with scars, but Buck hasn’t been truly injured on the job yet, and his scars…they don’t look normal. He’d seen war scars, ones caused by shrapnel and guns, but the scars Buck has, they look like gashes and slashes, there’s even a faint one on the palm of his left hand, though long since faded.

For a moment he wonders if Buck had been beaten as a child, that these were belt marks, but he knows they aren’t. The marks are just odd. There are also far more of them than Bobby would’ve thought a guy, so young, would have, even if the guy was pretty reckless.

Some of them look old too. Really old.

“Where does this come from?” he asks after a moment, pointing to what looks like a fairly old but nasty scar on his side.

Buck twists around and looks at it. An odd expression crosses his features, and he gives a little smile before looking back at Bobby. The smile immediately fades, morphing into something more fake.

“Oh, fell off my bike,” he says, and Bobby has known Buck long enough to know that it’s a lie.

But he lets it go. He helps him into his suit and then smiles at him. Because the kid looks good in the suit. He wishes him well on the date.

The date goes terribly, as it turns out. The kid almost dies.

He goes to the hospital when they call him, where he meets Abby again. She saved his life.

“You know, there was a moment when I was cutting into him where I’m almost sure his blood looked a little gold, but I must just be tired,” Abby says after they’ve had a coffee.

Bobby just assumes that she’s tired, that the stress of doing what she did was enough to make her see things in certain lights.

He persuades her to head home for a bit, just to check on her mom and that he will sit at Buck’s bedside.

He heads back to the room, and is a little surprised to find a man standing at the bedside. He’s tall, with a stocky build. The room smells of the seaside, of the beach, of the tide. It’s a pleasant smell, though a little odd. He has gruff features, and almost seems other worldly. Despite the fact he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and looks like he came straight from the beach, he’s also wearing a necklace with a trident pendant, the trident similar to that of the tattoo on Buck’s arm.

The man is leaning over Buck, he is holding his hand, and lightly touching his face.

“Excuse me,” Bobby says, and the man glances around. His eyes are the same, the same colour as Bucks, and he knows the look in them, it’s the same one Buck has when he’s feeling particularly passioned about something. This man’s eyes though, by comparison to Buck’s seemed old, like he had seen more than Bobby would ever know.

The man looked like Buck, and he was pretty sure this was the boy’s father. Though it made him wonder who had called him, how he had known because Bobby had had no idea how to get in touch with him.

“Are you Buck’s father?” Bobby asks, since he can see the family resemblance in him, but is still keen to confirm it.

“That I am. How is he?” The man asks. His voice is deep, gravely, old. It has a lilt of an accent.

“He’s going to be fine,” Bobby assures him.

“Good, good,” The man says, he leans down and Bobby watches the man kiss Buck’s forehead. He hears him whisper something and then leans away.

“Goodbye Captain Nash,” the man says and he leaves. Leaving Bobby confused, like that maybe hadn’t just happened.

He falls asleep next to Buck, and when he wakes, he feels almost certain he dreamt the whole thing. Especially when the man doesn’t re-appear.

“You’re a real strange kid,” he mutters a little after.

–

Chimney is the first of them all to meet Buck’s sister.

It’s a surprise to all of them when Buck announces that his sister was in town. They hadn’t even known he had one. He had never brought it up, until she had turned up. In fact, as far as Chimney can recall, this is the first time they’d ever heard of Buck’s family.

He had easily agreed to help her move, especially after finding out a little about her story. It was the right thing to do, after all, and he could admit he was rather curious about how the female Buckley looked.

After all, Chim was comfortable enough in his own sexuality to be able to admit that Buck was an exceedingly handsome man. Chiselled like the gods, one might say.

But Maddie, is nothing like him. There’s a bit of a resemblance, but it’s clear they take after different parents in looks. But Maddie is still beautiful. She’s beautiful and she smiles at him.

She does still leave him curious about the Buckley parents.

When they’re alone, he decides to ask.

“So what was it like growing up with Buck?” he asks, and she immediately stiffens, her gaze moves away becoming a little vacant.

“Well, he was born quite a bit after me, I was already almost ten when he was born. He was pretty normal, you know, excited about everything, pretty reckless. But we…lost touch… I moved in with Doug when I was barely eighteen, so he was on his own a lot,”

She doesn’t say much more about, quickly moves the conversation along, but he knows there’s more to it. More to the story of the Buckley family.

He gets a few more clues when Buck comes to live with him for a bit. Admittedly, the kid didn’t have a lot of stuff, a couple of bags, and a single box.

The box is interesting for a number of reasons.

One is the yearbooks, there was one for most years of his education, though never the same school twice.

“Geez, Buck, are these all yours?” Chim asks him, holding up one.

“Yeah…I was a bit of a problem child, schools weren’t great at coping with me,” he offers as an excuse, but it doesn’t really make Chim feel good about it.

He wonders what Buck might’ve done to deserve to be tossed out of most schools he’d gone to. But then he gets to some of Buck’s other books. There aren’t a lot of them, but he frowns.

“What language is this?” he asks, flicking through the book.

“Oh, ancient Greek,” The man says casually and then is immediately moving away, interested in something else. Chim looks at the book, turning it over. Most of the other books are also in ancient Greek, there’s a few in Latin too.

He reaches in and pulls out a jumper. It’s an old thing, worn, but it’s not something he’s ever seen Buck in. It says ‘New Rome University’ it has a symbol with some letters, and he realises they’re the same as the ones on Buck’s tattoo. SPQR.

“Is there a new Rome University?” The man asked, holding it up.

Buck comes back into the room and looks at the jumper before he blushes somewhat. He reaches out and places it back into the box.

“Just an old thing” he says and moves the box away.

When they’re on shift later, but Buck is off cleaning the engine, Chim approaches Bobby.

“Hey Bobby, you ever heard of new Rome University?” he asked, trying to appear casual. Bobby shook his head.

“Yeah, I googled it and found nothing…” he replied.

“Why?” Bobby asks.

“I don’t know, I just found a jumper in Buck’s stuff that it that on it. It also had those letters which are on his arm…” Chim says.

“Maybe he was briefly in a cult,” Bobby jokes, but Chim can see in his words the way in which he is absolutely thinking it might just be true.

The conversation peters off after that.

Chim just realizes that for all he knows about Buck, he doesn’t actually know that much. Buck isn’t a closed book, but he is certainly more tight-lipped about things with his history. He does spend more time watching him, and notices little things. Like he has a pen he keeps on him at all times, which is odd because he’s never seen him write with it. He’d noticed that sometimes during a shift he’d notice he’d be gone for a little while, never long, but he certainly never announces it.

But his watching is thrown off after he ends up getting stabbed by Maddie’s angry ex. He’s a little aware that it’s Buck whose pressing down on his stomach.

“Apollo, fuck, please, I need your help, you owe me,” he hears the man vaguely say. There’s a noise and there are more hands on him, while he hears Buck speaking on the phone.

He catches half a glimpse of the man before he passes out.

When he comes to, Bobby is at his side, but no Maddie. He quickly learns that Buck is looking for her, and he has no doubt that he’ll get her back. Though bitterly, Chim assumes that they’ll find her dead. Another person he failed.

The doctor steps in, and Chimney frowns a little. With their jobs and the amount of time he has spent in hospital before, he had got to know a whole variety of doctors. The man who walks in is not someone he is familiar with. The man is beautiful. With a head of golden hair, and a warm smile.

“Mr Han,” the man has a warm voice, almost melodic in how he speaks.

“Howie is fine,” He replies.

“Howie, I’m Doctor Solace, I know I’m not your usual doctor, but Buck asked me to keep an eye on you,” The doctor says.

The doctor asks more questions about how he is and checks his stitching. Bobby stays at his side the whole time, and Howie tries to not be surprised when it actually looks like the injuries weren’t too bad.

“Well, you are healing nicely, very nicely. I’ll need to head off tonight, but give my love to Buck,” the doctor says.

“Where are you heading too?” Bobby asks more quickly than Chim can.

“Home, I’m based in San Francisco,” the doctor says and Chim feels even more confused because why would a doctor travel so far for a few minor stab wounds.

“You travelled for me?” Chim asks, he regrets the question as soon as it leaves his mouth because it’s not how he wanted to ask it.

“Well, yeah, Buck asked me to, said he didn’t trust anyone else with your care.” The doctor says, he gives a few instructions and then heads off.

He looks for a moment like the other man from when Buck had been speaking to 9-1-1. He glances at Bobby and gives a quizzical gaze.

“I have no idea, I’m not even sure when Buck called him, but when you were brought here, he was already here,” Bobby replies.

Chim knows that prior to being a firefighter, Buck had travelled, so it’s not exactly a surprise that he’d have friends in all places. But he couldn’t imagine a friend of his dropping everything to come look after someone else.

“He’s a weird kid,” Chim says with a little laugh that pulls at his stomach. Bobby laughs and nods.

“God, yeah,” Bobby says. “I keep feeling like we’re missing something about him,”

Maddie is returned to them, and Doug is dead, and they all settle a little back into the routine. Though then Bobby is forced to step back from his job, and then there’s a bomb on the fire truck, which crushes Buck’s leg.

Chim knows he won’t forget Buck’s screams for a long while.

At the hospital, he’s not surprised to see the doctor from before. They pass Buck off, and Chim swears down that he sees the man slip something into Buck’s mouth, like a piece of brownie.

They sit around in the waiting room for news on if he’ll make it, or if his leg will make it.

“Maddie, are your parents coming?” Bobby asks at one point as they wait. She frowns and shakes her head.

“Buck and my parents haven’t spoken in nearly 10 years,” She says, and it seems to give Bobby pause. Though Chim isn’t sure why.

When the doctor comes back out, and lets them know he’ll be okay, that healing will take a while but that he will actually heal, relief floods Chim.

They are slowly, in pairs, allowed in to see him. But Chim decides to try to speak to the doctor. When he finds the man, he’s speaking to another man, the man appears to be the same age as the doctor, though they are standing close. Like they were related.

“Doctor Solace,” Chim says to get the attention of the pair.

“Howie, you are looking well,” The doctor greets him. “Howie, this is my brother, Apollo,” he introduces him to the man beside him, and Chim feels like he’s staring at the sun when he looks at this man.

“It is good to see you on your feet, Howie,” the man, Apollo, says.

“I’ll go see Buck before I go,” The man moves away and Howie has to stop himself from watching the man leave.

“Thanks for looking after our Buck, I know him getting back on his feet will mean a great deal with him,” Chimney says, and the man smiles.

“Of course, anything for Buck,” the man says simply.

“Can I ask, how do you and Buck know each other?” He asks.

“We went to summer camp together as kids,” The man says, before his phone rings and he moves away.

Chimney has never heard either Maddie or Buck talk about summer camp.

“Did you or Buck go to summer camp?”

“God, no, our parents would’ve never bothered,” Maddie replies with such surety that it leaves him more confused than before.

Chimney can only think of what Bobby said, that they were missing a piece of the puzzle that was buck.

–

Hen had always found Buck odd. He was a golden retriever, for sure, he was kind and passionate, he was loyal to a fault. He was a good person, but he was odd.

Hen is also fairly sure he should be dead already.

She’s watched him recklessly do things which would’ve possibly killed most others. But always come back easily. She’d noted that he tended to heal more quickly, even a few times when she’d bandaged him up, and then less than a day later she had noticed there wasn’t a mark on him.

When the truck crushes his leg, she knows that most others would take much longer to heal. He doesn’t need as much time and seems overly eager to just get back to work. The celebration at Bobby’s after he passes his recertification is fun until it wasn’t.

There was a lightness and happiness to it. There was a controlled bonfire in the corner, and in one of the moments where she spots Buck alone, she watches him as he closes his eyes and then drops some food into the fire. She watches as his eyes open, looking down at it, and then smiles. She can see him moving his mouth.

“Is he talking to someone?” Hen whispers to her wife, but by the time she looks up, Buck has moved on. “He dropped some food into the fire, that’s weird, right?” Hen says,

“Yeah, that is,” she says.

But then, there was no way to discuss it further as Buck is suddenly vomiting up blood. Hen is pretty sure for the moment it happens that they are about to watch Buck die on Athena’s patio.

But he doesn’t die.

The tsunami is just about the worst emergency she’s ever experienced. They had been working since it hit, and she’d heard the first few reports of the fact that the pier is just completely gone, that of those on the pier, about 90% have either died or are missing.

They know that the later it gets, the more they are looking for bodies. They are not looking for survivors.

She’s helping at the hospital with the rest, triaging the people brought from the apartment block they’d just managed to rescue.

She’s not the first one who seems him, but she spots him.

He looks exhausted, haggard, tired, dirty. His arm is bloodied, his face is bloodied. His eyes are red and bloodshot.

“Buck?” she hears Bobby say, and the boy like the strings had been cut collapses.

They catch him, and he clings to her arm. She rubs his back, soothes him as best she can. He’s silent, and she sees Chris, and can piece together what had happened.

“Buck, we need to take a look at you,” She says, and between her, Chimney and Bobby they manage to get him on to one of the cots in the triage section. Bobby grabs a blanket and wraps it around Buck’s shoulders.

Between her and Chim they are able to look him over. He’s dehydrated and cut up pretty badly, bruised badly, but okay.

She runs an IV and stares at the tattoo on his arm. It’s as familiar to her than the rest, but it is the first time she’s really looked at it up close. It is old. Older than the rest of his tattoos and she knows she shouldn’t be able to discern that, but she can.

Hen looks up at Buck, looking to try to speak to him about it, but he’s asleep.

“It’s the strangest tattoo I’ve ever seen,” She hears Chimney say beside her. She nods in agreement and holds his arm up a little more.

“It’s almost like it’s burnt on…,” she says.

“SPQR is a Roman thing, I googled it,” He says. “Maddie says he’s never been to Rome, though,”

She places his arm back down, and just looks at him.

Chris is asleep in Eddie’s arms, Eddie is holding him tightly. He looks down at the sleeping Buck and then at his teammates.

“They were on the pier,” he says, and Hen blinks.

“He should be dead,” She mutters, “They should be dead.”

Hen knows this likely isn’t the thing to say to a father who did almost lose his child. Whose child could’ve died, but with the amount of destruction there had been, the amount of bodies that had been on the pier, the amount probably lost, they should be dead.

“Chris says Buck saved him,” Eddie replies. “He doesn’t have a scratch on him,”

Hen looks back down at Buck, thinks about the fact that he should be more injured. He should be dead. He should have drowned. They should be mourning him, mourning Chris. They should be telling Maddie the bad news, that they would have funerals to plan, but both have come out of it relatively unscathed with a few new nightmares.

Buck is still kept from returning to work, and then they get sued, she complains to Karen, though Karen understands a little more about it, providing some clarity.

“He loves his work Hen, he just wants back,” and of course her wife is right about it.

“I did some more digging, on the food burning, and it’s an old Greek thing, they’d offer part of the food to the gods in the hopes that the gods would listen,” Karen explains, and it gives Hen more pause.

“Buck does seem to be able to read Greek,” Hen replies, “But he supposedly went to a new Rome university,”

The pieces just don’t add together, because either he’s Greek or Italian, and seemingly Maddie is neither of those things.

She knows Maddie doesn’t read Greek, and has never heard of Buck going to a Rome university.

When Buck is welcomed back to work, the welcome is less than warm, though she does extend an olive branch to him.

Within days of him being back, they have the strangest visitor to the station. Hen had been cleaning one of the trucks when she had spotted him. He was tall, broad shouldered, wild and unruly hair. His hair was similar to that of Buck’s and the man’s eyes were that same brilliant blue of Buck’s. He appeared to be about Buck’s age, but she doesn’t see any of the youthfulness she’d expect from someone that age.

Buck seems to spot him immediately, too.

“Triton,” he says, and Hen watches as the two men hug each other with a familiarity and fierceness.

“Brother, you have us worried,” the man says, he has an accent, his words are formal, and he speaks in a careful manner.

Buck rolls his eyes in response.

“It’s his own fault, rising to uncle like that,” Buck says with an annoyance in his tone.

“He wants you to come home for a bit, so he can apologise and all that,” the other man says, and Buck gives a harsh laugh and shakes his head.

Hen doesn’t understand the rest of the conversation because they switch language, suddenly Buck is speaking in a different language and the other man responds in that same language. Their conversation also moves from being at a normal volume until they are both yelling at each other.

She looks up to the balcony and spots that everyone is watching this ongoing interaction. Buck speaks as fluidly in this language as he does in English. Though, he’s never claimed to be able to speak anything other than English and a few odd words of Spanish.

But both men are getting heated. She understands when Buck says their names, when he says Chris’ name several times and that’s all. She watches as Buck’s hands clench at his side, and then a pipe suddenly bursts in the corner of the room.

It silences both men. Bobby is calling out instructions and moves down to be between the men. Using the burst pipe as an opportunity to stop the escalating fight.

“Right, I don’t know who you are, but if you could please leave,” Bobby says to the man. The man holds Buck’s gaze.

“Go, when he’s ready to apologise, I want him to do it directly, not by sending his messenger,” Buck says.

“Fine, for what it's worth, brother, I am sorry, you weren’t meant to get caught in it,” The man says, and holds his hand out to Buck, which quickly becomes another hug, as if the two men hadn’t been seconds away from throwing punches.

“Thank you,” Buck says as they separate, and the man walks away. She watches him, and is pretty sure he just vanishes after a moment.

She glances round at Buck, but before they can talk about exactly what happened, the bell goes and they have to rush off. Buck is left behind. When they return, the pipe has seemingly been fixed and there’s not a drop of water on the ground.

They get dinner together and Buck doesn’t join them, still feeling unwelcome amongst the others.

“So, a brother, has Maddie ever mentioned a brother?” Eddie asks Chimney, who shakes his head.

“Never mentioned one.” Chimney says. “Maybe it’s just a summer camp thing?”

Bobby nods slightly at this, he puts his fork down and then gives a little clearing of his throat.

“They were speaking ancient Greek,” he says, and they all pause in their eating to look at him. “I opened the Google Translate on my phone, and that’s the language that it detected,”

Hen pauses then, because the books they’d all seen Buck read…they had all assumed they were in Greek, but she’s not sure how different ancient Greek and Greek are.

It feels like they are so close to figuring it out. To knowing exactly what was going on with Buck, what his life had been.

So close and yet, still, it seems impossible to figure out.

–

Eddie had liked Buck from the moment they had worked together with the bomb. The hostility had vanished, and what was left was a man he’d happily go to war for.

It just didn’t escape him that Buck was an odd person. That he was kind, generous, loyal, reckless, but that he was also a little odd. That he was sure there was a whole part of him that he wasn’t being honest about.

After they reconcile following the lawsuit, he tries to avoid watching him too closely, but it’s difficult, given that at all turns he’s asking the man to spend time with him. Asking him to spend time with Chris at his house, which Buck always accepts.

Chris loves Buck. Swears down that Buck saved his life in the tsunami, the how is the part that he’s never been able to get out of him. Though he doesn’t really mind the how, because his son is alive where he knows lots of others hadn’t made it.

When Chimney announces that the Buckley parents are coming to town, he’s keen to see them. To figure out everything about Buck that they hadn’t known. That they hadn’t been able to learn yet, though in the same breath, he knows that the Buckley parents, the Buckley family will come with lots of other baggage.

But maybe they’ll just fill in the gaps which exist.

“I’m hoping to meet them,” Eddie says to the group, when Buck has left.

“Me too, I’m almost sure I met his father before, after the choking incident, but I don’t know, part of it didn’t seem real,” Bobby says.

But before Eddie meets them, Buck finds out some family secret, and tells them about it. Part of his tone indicates he’s not that surprised by it. That it filled in the gaps in the story he had. It’s not a great story. That Buck had been born to save a brother who still died.

So, he had had a brother, but that brother was not the man who’d come to the station.

“Of course it didn’t work,” Eddie hears Buck say after Hen has tried to plead that he matters. It’s an odd turn of phrase, because in theory it should’ve worked, he was a match, or was said to be a match.

The bell goes, and they face off against a terrible fire, where Buck ends up trapped. He comes out relatively unscathed, with minor smoke inhalation.

It’s after that Eddie meets Buck’s parents, and he’s surprised, Buck looks nothing like his father. There’s barely a passing resemblance between them. They are not what he expected. They are…not helpful in figuring out anything to do with Buck.

They leave shortly after, and Buck appears no better.

He joins him.

“How you holding up?” Eddie asks him when they’re alone.

“I’ve honestly had better days,” Buck replies. He’s twirling his pen in his hand and seems to be thinking about something.

“It’s not even that surprising, you know, like I always knew something was off,” Buck says with a scoff. He looks in the distance and rolls his eyes.

“You think Cap would mind if I take a few days off,” Buck says, he stops twirling the pen, gripping it tightly.

Eddie nods.

“Got something you need to do?” Eddie says a little in surprise.

“Yeah,” He leaves shortly after, and does take a few days off.

“He’s not at home,” Maddie tells them, it seemed he’d gone somewhere, but hadn’t told anyone. He comes back and though this secret in now in the open, he seems more at ease with it.

It’s clear, wherever he went, it helped. He doesn’t mention where he was.

But it doesn’t really matter, because things settle back into their routine, and then he gets shot.

He doesn’t remember a lot, but Buck seems pretty beat up about it. He finds out after that he’d climbed a ladder without cover, had done countless things that were dangerous.

When he’s resting in the hospital, when he’s lightly sleeping, he hears people walk in and knows at least one of them is Buck.

“Evan, you are worrying over nothing, he’ll be fine, Will did a good job,” the man says, the man has an accent, not unlike the man who’d claimed to be Buck’s brother.

“Apollo, please,” Buck says with desperation in his tone.

“I promise you, Evan, he’s going to be fine,” the man, Apollo, says. It’s an odd name, for sure.

“Just check,” Buck presses and there are hands on him, the touch is light, and then they’re gone.

“He’ll be fine, now, you owe me. There’s a little something I need help with,” The hands vanish.

“Of course, you do,” He hears Buck say.

“Give me a week or two?” he says, there’s no response, but the room gets pretty bright for a moment.

Eddie lets himself pretend to come to, and Buck’s smiling at him.

He tries to bring it up, but Buck’s already telling him about Christopher, and he’s easily distracted with talk of his son. When he tells him about the will, there’s a fierceness in the promise that Buck makes that he will always watch out for Chris.

A week or so after he gets out of the hospital, Buck vanishes for about a week. He comes back and immediately visits, but Eddie can tell that he’s injured. He holds himself a little differently, but it doesn’t matter, because within moments of him being back they ease immediately back into their roles. Though, he finds he has less energy to focus on Buck’s weirdness.

Life is difficult after the shooting, he tries his best, but he can’t…he stands down briefly from active LAFD work, and then he finds out all his old team have died.

He destroys his room, and Buck has to save him. He breaks into the room, and in his distraught state, he’s sure he spots Buck holding a sword.

After, he sits with Buck in his kitchen. Therapy runs him completely ragged. He feels worse every time, but everyone assures him it is working.

Buck is helping out a lot, looking after Chris, helping keep his house in order.

“You know… I suffer from PTSD,” Buck says at one point, it’s late, close to one in the morning, they’ll both regret this come morning. But he hadn’t felt tired enough to sleep.

Eddie has never doubted that Buck would suffer from some amount of PTSD, not after everything he’s had to deal with. But he holds his gaze for a moment, and sees in him, the same thing he’s seen in dozens of soldiers. The hard gaze, the way it seems like his mind plays over the horrors of war. But as far as he knows Buck’s never seen war.

“It gets easier with time, lots of time,” he adds, and there’s a weight to those words. The truck bombing and the tsunami were not that long ago.

“It feels like it won’t, but it does,” he adds, and Eddie just takes a sip of his beer.

“You speak like someone whose been to war,” Eddie just replies, and Buck pauses, visibly pauses, like his brain is catching up to what he’s said.

“I’m not trying to make this about me, just, I know you feel rough, but its gonna be okay,” he assures him, and then busies himself doing something else.

“You are a strange man, Buck,” the words slip out of him, and Buck chuckles lightly.

The man goes to bed, and things do get easier. The dispatcher building he works at goes up in flames, but they all come out of it relatively unscathed.

It’s a taxing day for all of them, and in the chaos after they’ve brought Bobby out, he watches Buck, whose stood to the side. He looks upset, the day surely taxing. He feels like he blinks and suddenly there’s a woman in front of him. Or a girl, she looks young, maybe fourteen or fifteen at best.

She’s touching his cheek gently, she’s so much smaller than him, but he seems to fold in her presence, even from a distance staring at her makes him feel like he should be making s’mores.

She seems to vanish just as quickly as she appears, and Buck straightens up.

“Who was that?” Eddie asks gently when they’re all leaving.

“Who?” Buck says too quickly.

Eddie raises an eyebrow, and decides to drop it, let the man just get away with whatever he needs to get away with.

He watches him a lot now, can’t help it. He notices that Buck mutters in his sleep, that his dreams are often plagued with nightmares. That sometimes he’ll wake up less rested than when he seemingly went to sleep.

They get called to a fire not long after the incident at the dispatch centre, the whole house is lost, the mother inside is gone, and there’s a young child outside. Buck takes one look at the child, and tilts his head a little.

He spots Buck with him, sees him talk to him, slip him a card of some kind. It’s odd because though Buck has always taken great care of the children who are at incidents, this one he takes more care of.

“Buck gave him a brownie,” Chimney tells them after, “And the kid seems to perk up immediately after that.”

When they try to check up on the kid afterwards, the social worker says the kid ran off, and hasn’t been found. Buck looks unfazed by it, while the rest are all a little worried.

A day later, the kid is supposedly found, and an old man in a wheelchair appears at the station.

“I’m looking for Evan Buckley,” the man says with a gravitas that startles them all.

“Chiron, sir,” Buck calls out with a wide expression, and he bounces over to the older man, who accepts the greeting.

“Lord Evan,” he says more quietly, but Eddie hears it, and hears Buck’s little noise to quiet him.

“Walk with me,” the man says and Buck glances at Bobby who nods, and he heads off with him.

“Lord Evan?” Hen says, laughing lightly.

“God, I really didn’t think that boy could get any weirder and Chiron…that’s a Greek name…” Hen adds.

“Probably that summer camp,” Bobby says.

“Or a cult,” Chimney adds.

It lingers in his mind, all these things he doesn’t know how to add together for Buck.

–

Bobby had chalked up all of the weirdness that Buck had to just something they would never know. Because despite everything that happened, Buck had never told them anything about it, and to a certain extent Bobby doesn’t think he has to. If there is some deep trauma there, he doesn’t want to be one of the reasons that Buck has to relive it.

Things just continue as they had, with the weirdness in him continuing, with the unexplained moments away from the office, the odd people who’d visit him. He knew that Buck was just real good with water, despite the fact that he’d gone through some traumatic with water.

The dry thunder has them all on edge, but none more than Buck. He can see it in how he carries himself. After they’ve rescued the man from the sand, Buck approaches him.

“Bobby can you give me like two minutes,” he asks, and Bobby nods, watching as Buck moved to the water’s edge, taking off shoes and socks and dips his feet in. He doesn’t seem him do much else, but he just stands there.

When he returns, he acts as if he did nothing odd.

He’s looking out of the window every so often and then back at them. If Buck is worried, then Bobby starts to feel it too.

“You okay Buck?” he asks after Buck barely touches his food. The boy nods, but doesn’t eat.

The weather finally breaks into rain, with some thunder. But the rain is coming down heavily. He steps out of the engine at the fire and overhears Buck speak.

“Dad, now would be a good time to calm uncle down,” for a moment Bobby had thought he was talking to him, but he isn’t. He goes up the ladder, and then the worst thing happens.

The strength of the lightening is intense, and he’s staring directly at Buck when it hits him. The force is immense, but then Buck is just dangling there. He’s limp, Bobby can tell he is. They manage to get him down, but Buck’s heart has stopped. He feels the weight of him. Of his dead body.

It’s too much to bear, and yet he has to. They get Buck on to a gurney and to a hospital, with Chim pressing down on his chest and Eddie driving like a man possessed. The roads are clear for them, and at the hospital, he passes Buck to the nurse and doctors.

Bobby wants to collapse, can’t handle the idea that Buck might die.

The doctor who steps out is familiar, and there’s a man not too far behind him, that also feels familiar.

“Mr Nash,” he greets him, and then gives an update on Buck’s condition. That he’s in critical condition, that it was and remains unstable, but they are doing all they can. They can visit, but only two at a time.

He and others go to the window outside Buck’s room, he looks so still, so still for a boy usually so on the move. They’re all in a state of shock, of disbelief about what’s just happened, of the fact that he might still die.

Buck’s parents arrive, and they stare at him. Bobby notices the way Buck’s mother looks at him. Like she knows something about this. He pulls out his phone, deciding to message Athena and a few others, and reads the notice of high storms on the sea, of water surges, of earthquakes. All of which, having seemingly come out of the blue.

“Dad, you have to get them to stop, he doesn’t want this,” he hears someone say and turns the corner to be faced with Buck’s doctor friend from San Francisco, and a man that doesn’t look old enough to be the boy’s father.

“He knew it was coming, his blood has been slowly going gold for years. This has just…brought it forward a little. This was always the agreement,” The man says.

“Captain Nash,” The doctor spots him and gives a smile before moving away, both him and the other man do.

Bobby sits at Buck’s bedside as often as he can. He prays with his rosary. Speaks with May as Buck makes progress.

He’s alone, they are likely to try getting him to breathe on his own soon. He hopes that it’ll work out, that Buck will wake up.

He smells the sea air, the beach and suddenly there’s another man on Buck’s other side. This is the man from before, the one who said he was his father, not the man who had gone home for a short nap and a shower. This man that has a presence that feels old, and powerful.

Buck looks like this man, more so that he looks like that other one whom everyone believe is his father.

The man knows that Bobby is there, but is unbothered by it.

“Does Buck know you?” Bobby asks, because he’s seen this man twice, and he’s not sure if Buck ever has.

“He knows me, we opted to not tell anyone else, his half sister and his stepfather do not know of me.” The man says. “Evan will need his friends for the next little while, he is not going to be happy when he wakes,”

The man says it with such certainty, he places a hand lovingly on Buck’s cheek, presses a kiss to Buck’s forehead. This man expects Buck to live, fully believes that he will without question.

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to be alive…,” Bobby trails off a little, the man gives a warm smile.

The man doesn’t speak again, he leans away and sits down at Buck’s bedside, and Bobby has so many questions to ask this man, but he can’t think of one of them.

“What’s your name?” he settles on.

“Poseidon,” the man says, and for a moment, Bobby is sure the man is joking.

“You should meet my wife, her name is Athena,” Bobby says, because this man will surely understand the pain of being named after something like a Greek god.

“Past history has taught me to be wary of Athena’s,” The man says, and he turns his attention back to Buck. He takes the boy’s hand and mutters a few words in what Bobby knows is ancient Greek and then he moves away.

“Bobby, thank you, for watching my son, watching out for him when I couldn’t. You mean a great deal to him, and I am in your debt for that,” The man says. “Trust me, though, have faith, he will be fine,”

Bobby nods in return and then feels a great weight of the words. To have faith. He has it.

Buck breaths on his own, and then he wakes up. But when they’re all brought in to his room, he knows something is different. Buck is smiling and hugging them, but something in the room is different. It feels like power and Buck is holding himself different, seemingly, small blemishes are gone. He no longer has any of the visible damage that the lightening bolt caused.

He’s looking at them different, holding their gaze and taking them in.

When they’re finally alone, just him and Buck, he tells him about the man’s father.

“Dad was here?” he says without surprise and with more fondness than he knows the boy has for his stepfather.

“Look, I’ll tell everyone when we’re back at work…,” Buck tells him. “There’s something I’ll need to do first,”

Bobby raises an eyebrow in question.

“I have to go to New York, and then San Francisco, but, it’ll only take a bit of time,” Buck replies.

Buck gets released from the hospital, he’s signed off for a minimum of two weeks and then returns to work, seemingly after having spent time in the places he needed to go.

Though Buck had promised to tell them, he doesn’t immediately. They get called to many a fire and rescue, and the change in Buck is immediate. He carries himself differently, people act differently around him, and Bobby immediately notices that despite being no less reckless than before, he doesn’t get a scratch on him.

Sometimes it almost feels like he’s in two places at once. Sometimes it feels like he controls the fires they get to, that he controls the water, that he just knows things about the situations that he shouldn’t, that he no longer eats or sleeps as much. That he adds something to what he eats every time.

Before they find out, and Bobby is sure this is what causes Buck to remember to tell them, a girl walks into the station. She has spiky black hair, she’s likely about fifteen, and greets Buck like an old friend.

“Lord Evan,” she greets, and they all watch as he blushes something terrible.

“Thalia, please,” he says imploringly.

“What, that’s your title,” she retorts with a roll of her eyes. “Father’s very sorry, by the way, he actually didn’t mean to kill you,”

Buck laughed lightly. Though they all feel confused by the statement.

“Yeah, he said as much when I spoke to him,” Buck says.

“Artemis has us on a hunt nearby, I’ll hit you up before we leave, we can catch up, I hear Nico’s in town too,” the girl says, they hug again and she steps away.

Buck looks round to them, and sighs a little.

“Chim, can you call Maddie ask her to come by, Bobby you with Athena?” He says.

Bobby knows this is a big thing he’s about to do.

“Actually, how about everyone comes to our tomorrow morning for some breakfast, and then you can tell us?” Bobby says, and Buck gives him a grateful smile.

The rest of the team seem a little frustrated by that, but they all agree, and all turn up to breakfast the next day. Eddie brings Chris, Hen brings Karen. May is there, they all are. Buck doesn’t grab a plate when he gets there, just watches as they eat.

He clears his throat eventually.

“So, I ehh, Maddie, don’t be mad at our mom,” Bobby knows where this was going, what he is starting with.

Though it immediately isn’t how he thought this conversation would go. As Bobby watches as he takes his pen, the familiar, out of his pocket, flicks something on it, and suddenly they are staring at a sword, which looks to be natural in Buck’s hand.

“I was a match with Daniel, but… I’m not our father’s son,” he says, holding her gaze. “Your father couldn’t… mom was desperate, and she went to the seaside, and…met my father,”

The group is hanging on every word. Maddie is crying a little already.

“My father is Poseidon, the eh…the Greek god,” he says quickly, and they all laugh for a moment, and then suddenly, it's like the needle drops, and they all take the point and suddenly believe it.

“Oh, of course,” Bobby ends up say, speaking first, because of course this is the case, of course Buck is the son of a god. It explains his affinity for water, the ancient greek, the odd people who visited. There’s not one of them, who doesn’t immediately believe him.

“So, you’re what, a demi-god?” Chim asks, frowning deeply.

“I…I was a greek demi-god,” He stutters over the phrase.

“I was sent to a camp, for demi-gods, when I was twelve…. I saved the world a couple of times…and for doing that, my uncle… Zeus…he eh…offered me godhood,” Buck says, he’s speaking quickly, stumbling over the phrases and the words brush over him. Godhood, saving the world. The fact when he says uncle he means the king of the Greek gods.

“I wanted a normal life…you know, love, kids that kind of thing, so they agreed to hold off and that when I die, then I would ascend,” Buck says and then the room falls silent.

“Buck, you died recently, right? You were dead for three minutes and seventeen seconds,” It’s Eddie who speaks, but they were all thinking it. Buck had died for a whole three minutes, though Bobby hadn’t been aware that Eddie had known down to the second.

“Yeah… I did, and the gods are never ones to be defied,” Buck says. He takes his sword and runs the blade along his palm, showing them all where it should be red from blood, his blood runs gold.

“He is a god now,” a new voice speaks, and they stand, Bobby knows this is Buck’s father.

“Dad, I was managing,” he says with a roll of his eyes.

“This is Prince Evan Buckley, saviour of Olympus, God of Heroes, son of Poseidon, King of Atlantis, earth shaker,” It’s such a formal title, and they all take it in. Him being greeted as Lord Evan suddenly makes way more sense.

“You’re a prince?” May says.

“Yeah, but when your father is an eternal god, it’s not like I’ll ever be king,” he says quickly, almost shyly.

Part of Bobby feels like his world is shattering a little. That the gods, those old gods were real and amongst them, that of all people, supposedly Buck is now a god.

But looking at him, and he knows that’s what’s been going on. Because in being in the presence of his father, he gets the same feeling he’s seen people get when Buck is in front of him.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me? After everything with Daniel…,” Maddie’s tone is annoyed, and Bobby knows she has every right to be.

“Did you know about Daniel then?” she asks, and he shook his head.

“I didn’t even know about dad until I was 12, and found out about everything, but you know I was always strange, seeing things that weren’t there, and I didn’t look like dad at all,” Buck says, and holds Maddie’s gaze.

“I wanted to tell you when I found out, but, you were in Boston with Doug, and it was dangerous really for people to know, and mom didn’t want you to know,” He says.

“Dad, I’ll come to Olympus once I’m done here,” Buck says to his father, and the man nods. He puts a hand on his shoulder, and then looks at them.

“Close your eyes,” the man says, and they do, the room brightens and then goes back to normal. Buck rejoins them at the table.

“You got kicked out of community college?” Maddie says, clearly trying to piece together all the pieces of his history.

“Yeah, look, being a demi-god is awful. It seems fun, but most of us don’t make it to adulthood. I have seen…so many of my friends die. There was a prophecy around my birth, that everyone believed meant that I wouldn’t make it to 16,” Buck speaks with a heaviness in his tone.

Bobby can see them all watching him, this new god, as he talks of the things which they had all seen below the surface.

“There was a war, which we won, and then I lost 8 months of life because Hera put me in a coma, and then took my memories, and then Gaia. I spent time in literal hell, and then I graduated from high school. I was meant to go to University in New Rome, and I did, but…the PTSD was kinda crazy and I accidentally almost caused mount st. Helens to go off again, and I did destroy my dorm room. I came back to mom, and tried something normal. But It was hard to be normal, and I got kicked out then you sent me away, and I travelled about, and landed here eventually,” He looks between them as he finishes and gives a little smile. It fills in so many gaps in their knowledge of Buck.

It fills in everything they knew of him, everything they had ever known about him. Bobby isn’t that surprised now that Buck flushed out of the SEALs. He’s almost glad that the kid hadn’t ended up seeing another war zone.

“In fairness, I hadn’t really expected it to stick, you know, but it felt good, helping people, and it was what I knew to do,” Buck said.

“I also knew it was a dangerous job and the likelihood of dying was there which would bring forward my, ascension but, I didn’t have anything else. I didn’t expect to end up with people in my life that I would miss,” He says, and the gravity suddenly settles on Bobby, the words.

That Buck, who so desperately wanted affection and hated being left behind, would be left behind, constantly. Would be the one to live beyond them. Beyond all of them. He can see the understanding in everyone’s face.

“Who was that girl who came by the other week?” Hen asks.

“Thalia, she’s a daughter of Zeus, and a hunter with Artemis, she’s immortal,” he answers.

“And the doctor, Solace?” Chim asks.

“Will Solace, son of Apollo, he’s a good friend. Apollo too,” Buck replies and Bobby shares a glance with Chim, in realising that Buck really supposed was just casually friends with gods.

“The god, Apollo, saved my life, the stab wounds,” Chim asks and Buck nods.

“He owed me one,” Buck says.

“When I got shot, you had him check me, and he made you do something?”

Buck laughs lightly.

“I just had to go to Alaska to retrieve something for him,” Buck replies.

“The tsunami, you weren’t meant to be caught in it?” Hen says.

“Oh no, I wasn’t, dad and Zeus were having some fight and Zeus threatened to injure my half brother, and dad kinda just lost it, caused the earth to shake in Alaska and put some real power behind the wave, they knew immediately when it was hit that I was in it, but it was too late to stop it,” Buck says.

“I was just about able to use some of my powers to keep an air pocket on Chris, and keep him safe, but it was….honestly, it was terrible, I used a lot of my powers to try to help people, and keep them safe, it’s why I was so exhausted after” he replies.

“You’re actually a god,” Eddie says, and Buck holds his gaze and nods.

Bobby feels like he’s having the same internal conversation.

“Your father said, god of heroes,” Eddie adds.

“Yeah, I didn’t pick it, it just, happened that way. I realise that it technically makes me your god,” Buck says.

“If we prayed to you, would you hear it?” Bobby asks.

“Yeah, I would, most of my prayers will come from demi-gods, but anyone can pray to me, if you burn food I’ll hear it better. I'll always listen if you guys pray, I'll always have time for you guys,” Buck says.

“You’re a god,” Bobby says with the shake of his head.

“I’m not praying to you,” Chim says, and the room breaks out into laughter.

Bobby knows things will be different, and though he still has his god, he knows that he’ll maybe send the odd prayer to Buck, that he’ll maybe encourage others to do the same. Things will be different now, but they’ll be fine.

“This explains so much about you, though,” Hen then adds, and they laugh together once more.

“I thought I was managing to hide it pretty well,” Buck says.

“We just thought you were in a cult,”