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Leaving.
It's an action. One that simply refers to exiting, getting away from a place, a person. To leave is to go away, shut the door behind you and just leave.
The issue with a word like ‘leaving’ is that a single worded term doesn’t even begin to cover the feelings of it. Just the action.
To leave often takes a lot from someone, it can be hard to go somewhere else, hard to get away from someone.
Buck can’t really say he knows the feeling of being trapped, or well he believes he doesn’t know it well enough, at least in comparison to people he loves who’ve experienced the bone-chill that you get when there is no other option but to stay.
Buck has left before and everything good that he loves came from it.
Him having a best friend who supports him through the thick and thin of everything they’ve been through, his ‘best friend’s’ kid that he loves, a fire-family, his reconnection with his sister, all happened because he drove away in the Jeep that one day, and never looked back.
Because of the circumstances turning out well, he doesn’t really believe he can understand just what having to leave does to a person. Especially since all he was leaving was a house that although housed 3 out of 5 family members, was remarkably empty.
When he left Hershey, Buck felt as though he was walking away from a place that never really held onto him, a house that never felt homey but like a shelter so he could graduate high school.
As soon as Maddie offered him the Jeep, the decision he made to leave was really a given.
What Buck did understand though, was what being left felt like.
If Buck did find something hard about leaving Hershey it was that the plan Maddie and he made to escape their bad situations was thrown away when Maddie never saw Buck in the hospital, she wasn’t there and she left Buck on his own.
Buck has since learned the true nature of what happened that day and feels guilty about the anger he had towards his sister. He understands why she didn’t leave with him but logic can’t block the pain from seeping through.
He didn’t really ever blame Maddie, it was always Doug’s fault, but he couldn’t express his anger at someone he never saw.
But above all the anger, sadness, loneliness, helplessness.
Being left creates fear.
When it happens once, you get worried it’ll happen again.
And when it happens again and again and again.
Being left sits in the corner of your brain, a constant worry that Buck’s consciousness couldn’t seem to shake.
Because Buck was great at being left.
At every big turn in his life, just as he lets himself believe he wouldn’t be able to live without someone, they leave and the pain comes back in full swing.
Abby left.
Allie left.
Chris left.
Tommy left.
And to top it all off, Eddie was moving to El paso.
Buck wished he could go back to the time when he was with Christopher, and he was still able to reassure him that, “they always come back.”
If Chris asked him now, Buck’s not sure he would be able to give the same naively optimistic answer he spewed before.
If someone were to ask Buck what leaving feels like he’d say that it's as if the person you love cut a hole in your heart. One that is impossible to fill correctly because the hole is unique, oddly shaped, it can’t be completely filled, no matter how many scones and cupcakes you bake.
It’s a feeling of shock, that snowballs into hurt and as he got more experience the snow clumped together and reached an edge, one hit away from having it tumble over and avalanche down.
What Buck didn’t quite understand is why the pain of being left was so different between people.
He couldn’t put it into words but how Buck felt when Allie left had nothing on the heartbreak he got outside of the airport watching Abby walk away from him.
Buck did think he knew why the hurt was different. He thought that as he was left more he was getting used to the feeling.
And then Chris left.
And his theory was thrown out the window when he found himself shaking because he got comfortable. He loved Chris, he never imagined him leaving, he was sure that they were in agreement about being left.
Chris leaving at least gave Buck’s heart’s healing system a sense of security.
It couldn’t get worse.
But then Eddie decided he would move for Chris to El Paso, and leave Buck as well.
Of course Eddie wasn’t leaving Buck but that didn’t mean standing in the rain holding a basket of baked goods, passing them to Eddie and hugging goodbye was any easier.
They held each other for a long moment, it made standing in the rain on a cold winter day feel warm even if just for one extended second.
But their hug was the eye of a storm because the worst part always came next.
Buck was forced to stand alone and watch as a U-Haul drove away to a place that seemed to take everything and everyone that he loved.
——-
The rain poured heavier onto Buck, he had been standing in the cold shower for at least 40 minutes after Eddie’s departure, so long that the moving truck was hard to picture.
Okay, that’s not true, Buck thinks he will probably remember the damned dull white truck and its big blue U-Haul letters, until the day he passes.
His shirt was drenched, the once light-gray coloured fabric had considerably darkened in shade from the downpour.
But the rain eventually left and with it, the clouds cleared and the sun came out.
It shone its golden-hour rays directly on Buck’s face and caused him to snap back to reality.
He picked himself up and climbed back into his jeep and drove away from the most familiar home he had.
The day seemed to have slipped through Bucks’s fingers because all of a sudden he had gotten a text message from Eddie messaging that he made it to Arizona and would text again in New Mexico.
One text message was already better than his contact with Maddie when they were apart. Better than he and Abby’s long-distance connection.
Eddie is different, and maybe that meant he could be somewhere else but they could still be close, they didn’t have to leave each other in the past, they could move forward and continue.
Maybe their relationship was the one that could withstand the miles.
———
Buck was called the 118’s ‘golden retriever’, a once fitting title for him as he naturally filled the job description: wearing your heart on your sleeve and being friendly and excited and optimistic.
Optimism was the first thing that Buck had dropped after Eddie moved to el paso.
Sure, they did at first message and they even talked when he first arrived but…
Eddie had left 2 weeks ago and their last exchange was the morning of his first day in El paso. Buck did know that he would be busy and all but there had to be some time in the better part of two weeks to message him again about literally anything.
And Buck knows that messaging goes both ways but it just got too hard to message off the bat and now with Eddie not texting either, to message would be a challenging task.
But that was the point of their friendship, thick and thin, easy and hard.
Buck picked up his phone, and as he did all the air stored in Buck’s lungs repelled out in a loud, tension-filled exhale.
He listened carefully, with his phone right by his ear sending the vibrations of Eddie’s ringtone down Buck’s body.
Ring…Ring…Ring
Buck’s anxiety grew with each sound, it was unlike the pair to not respond quickly, Buck and Eddie were Buck and Eddie, for a reason.
They always responded.
2 weeks of no contact couldn’t change that.
Suddenly the ringing stopped and Buck heard Eddie’s voice again: a relieving noise, calming, familiar.
“Hey you’ve reached Eddie please leave a message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Buck’s heart dropped.
Eddie didn’t respond…Of course he didn’t.
That’s just how it goes they promise to keep in touch and that you’ll wait for them, but suddenly you're seeing them again over a year later, when you’re at work and they tell you that they have a fiancée and are getting married and-
No Eddie wasn’t, —isn’t— Abby, but as they walked away from him Buck felt the same type of betrayal, a gut-wrenching feeling that only occurs when you connect with someone and you think that you truly understand them.
Only Buck and Eddie have been best friends for seven years, and Buck and Abby didn’t make it to Christmas.
When Eddie promised he’d always respond to and call Buck, he’d believed it.
He really, really wanted to believe it this time, that seven years with each other, practically attached at the limb, were enough to glue together their rapidly-expanding gap.
So, Buck rang again, and a third time until 5 missed call notifications sat in Eddie’s phone app.
He was about to ring for a sixth time, when Buck decided to give up.
No, they don’t come back
That’s what he should have told Chris because it is the truth and god knows he deserves the truth.
Buck’s brain ran laps to figure out his situation.
A circumstance that only a year ago Buck would call a simulation, because, how could there be a world where he was left by Eddie?
———
For the first time in a long time Buck actively felt dread in going to work.
After the truck bombing and tsunami he’d worked madly, causing a trial of destruction as he tried to get back to work but Buck couldn’t bring himself to be excited for the 24 hour shift in front of him.
Ever since Eddie left, the station hadn’t functioned the same, as unlike last time they didn’t have the frequent updates about him that Bobby reported after interrogating May for information about the ex-firefighter.
Nor was he present, Eddie was in El Paso, 802 miles from LA, so there would be no way for Buck to go over to Eddie’s house nightly— like he did— they couldn’t fix his walls together, discuss mental health and have the conversation be inescapable.
Buck decided that the 118 was like the table they sat at to eat meals as a family, they worked together but with one gone the whole team was down.
Everyone’s morales took a severe hit.
Bobby clearly felt the need to overcompensate and try to push their family together because Buck, the golden retriever who always clinged onto those he loved, let go, but he squeezed suffocatingly tight, and he couldn’t help.
Hen was more quiet than usual, with Eddie she always seemed to have to knock some sense into him to make sure the house had order and Thing 1 and Thing 2 were just, a bit, more collected.
Chim’s lightheartedness suffered with less hearts to keep light, any joke he made seemed to go too far, not in an offensive way just in its landing.
Ravi was back? But his untimely return just acted like a bad reminder that he always stepped in when Eddie left.
And of course without Eddie, Buck’s energy completely shifted. He became a ghost of who he once was.
Buck felt the entire 118 stare at him as he trudged across the station floor.
He didn’t stop to say hi to anyone, he didn’t even look up, he peered down at his shoes and kept moving.
Because that’s what being left so many times did to Buck, he decided that despite the constant chronic pain radiating from his heart, he had to keep moving, it was always going to hurt.
Buck eventually found himself in the change rooms, muscle memory had led him to where he needed to be.
“Buck!” Ravi called out, his face was still in his locker so he hadn’t yet seen Buck’s unamused expression by the time he quickly swiveled around and put his hand on Buck's shoulder.
An unenergetic Buck was not one for jokes.
“What probbie,” Buck snapped, causing Ravi to quickly readjust himself and step away from his less-than-enthused friend.
“Oh-uhh nothing.., you just seemed like you-,” Ravi spewed out but stopped himself as he got another bone-chilling glare from Buck.
Buck slammed his open locker door shut and left the room.
Behind him, the Ravi that moments-ago was proud and happy to be back with the A-shift, shrunk, with caved in shoulders and closed body language, he looked as though he had seen a ghost.
In some ways he had.
Buck felt bad that he was being a jerk but his mood felt uncontrollable. Like if every sense he had was heightened, like his body was working hard to function with its pained mental state and he couldn’t stop.
He needed something to do, to take his mind off of the one thing his mind seemed to focus on. So, 20 minutes later, Buck decided to see Bobby and help him with lunch so he could be productive, help out.
Buck arrived at the kitchen and watched as Bobby moved around the space so fluently, he knew where everything was, he owned the area, the entire crew knew better than to mess with Bobby’s kitchen.
Most of them picked it up when they watched Bobby work but Clipboard Buck learnt the hard way when he tried to help, well, tell Bobby what brand he should buy to budget more effectively and-
It was an ill prepared plan and it played out just as bad as one could predict.
“Buck,” Bobby said warmly when away from the stove and he noticed the additional person by his area, “how are you doing?”
Buck ignored the question, Bobby already knew his answer.
“Do you need some help?” Buck asked hopefully.
Bobby noticed Buck’s excitement that had been missing in their most recent interactions and glanced around the counters to see any unfinished projects.
“You can cut up some vegetables,” Bobby offered and pointed to the tray.
“Okay cool, thanks cap.”
Buck immediately got to work and diced, sliced and cubed everything he was given.
“Buck,” Bobby paused, his voice filled with the concern he never got from his birth father, “are you okay?”
No one is, it's not like I’m the only one upset by Eddie leaving? Buck thought to himself, “just fine cap,” Buck deadpanned, his tone contradicting his words.
“Are you sure, I understand why Eddie leaving would hit you especially hard, are you sure you’re ready?” Bobby started but Buck could already tell he didn’t like where Bobby was going.
Bobby continued, “You can take this shift off if you need, he only left a couple of weeks ago, I get it, the pain is still very raw.”
“I have worked 4 shifts since then, as I said, I’m just fine,” Buck protested.
“You sure? It’s hard, people take time off after emotional events all the time.”
“Bobby, I appreciate the concern but I am fine.”
“No Buck, you're not, you never are and it isn’t safe for the field, you snapped at Ravi, the 118 is a team. You can’t do that,” Bobby stated firmly.
“So what? You’re banishing me to the man behind, again?”
The lack of rejection to Buck’s question on Bobby’s face said it all.
Buck slammed his knife down in the cutting board, creating a large slash along its middle. He didn’t know what he was thinking, but everything escalated and due to the spur of the moment, one of Bobby’s favourite cutting boards ended up with a huge splintery scar.
“I’m so sorry!” Buck yelled out when he realised what he had done, Bobby’s mouth was wide open, he also seemed very shocked at Buck.
“It’s alright,” Bobby reassured Buck, “if it was that easy for it to break I was overdue for a new board ages ago.”
“Bobby,” Buck broke, “you can’t do that to me.”
Bobby knew how much being in the field meant to Buck, he saw first hand after the truck-bombing, what being away from it did to him.
“I am not just concerned for the crews’ safety, this is out of your best interest as well, you’re always the most reckless when you’re hurting, it's not safe.”
Bobby wasn’t wrong, in fact he was quite right, after Eddie was shot Buck climbed a skyscraper on a call, and purposely put himself in a very-easily-shootable position, no matter the aim of the perpetrator. He didn’t want to deal with someone else getting hurt so he made sure that if anyone were to get shot when responding to the call it would be him.
But Buck had grown since then and the feeling was completely different, Eddie didn’t choose to leave then, but he had this time.
He actively searched for houses in El paso, away from everyone in LA.
This time Eddie left.
Buck must be a book because without saying anything, Bobby read him, he knew exactly what Buck was thinking.
“Eddie didn’t leave us Buck,” Bobby explained earnestly, “he left to fix his relationship with his son.”
“I know that,” Buck said because he did know it, all too well. Maddie left because she had no choice, Abby left to explore herself outside of other people’s emergencies, Chris left because he was traumatised at seeing Kim, who was a spitting image of his dead mother.
They never left directly because of Buck, but what’s the difference when you love someone and they go, whether they have to or not.
Blame? The fact that you don’t feel as though it’s someone else’s fault, that you can’t be angry that they left, because they had to?
Is it that there are expectations about how someone should feel when their loved one leaves, that they should be automatically happy or empathetic and not affected at all? Who could manage something like that?
People capable of letting go of a person they loved, that easily, mustn’t have truly loved them.
What’s different?
No matter why they leave they’re still gone. And there’s no way to convince them to come back. To convince them you’ll help them, and that they’ll be safe. To convince them that you can give them what they crave.
No, no matter what they're still gone and you're still left behind.
“Buck, please, let yourself process, I didn’t ever let myself truly process what my family’s deaths did to me, I just kept on going with a new, especially self-destructive agenda. Take the rest of the shift, C-shift haven’t all left yet, one of them will cover you, multiple of them have expressed interest in taking on an extra shift.”
Buck eased up, and stopped fighting, Bobby wasn’t going to change his mind.
In other departments, businesses, occupations there are many bosses that don’t regard their employees' mental health. Bobby has made it clear that the mental— and physical but mental health is overlooked more often— of the 118 members are his top concerns. He knew what it was like, Bobby had wisdom over the subject of wellbeing and he used it to guide his employees.
So Bobby knew he was right and Buck knew Bobby was right. There was no argument.
He packed up the few things he left out in his locker and strolled out of the station acting as antisocial as did when he entered.
When Buck reached the parking lot he searched for his car, not being able to find it amongst the many tall family vans owned by most at the 118. It didn’t used to be difficult, Eddie’s car was easy to find, for starters it had texas plates because it was what he drove away from Texas in. The silhouette black pickup truck had driven Buck to many places, the zoo, aquarium, museums, the family trips that Buck came along on.
Buck loved his Jeep but he never would turn down a ride in Eddie’s truck.
The pickup truck was gone now, so the parking lot felt unbalanced, as the spot sat, empty.
Buck climbed into his Jeep, and drove away, as did the 118 fire truck as they went in the opposite direction to him in order to respond to a call.
———
In his loft, Buck sat around, waiting, usually he would call or text Eddie when he wasn’t on shift but his and Eddie’s friendship ‘break-up’—or really Eddie ghosting him—was why he got the break.
What Buck didn’t anticipate was just how useless taking the time off would prove to be.
Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t able to book an extra session with Dr Copeland until after the 72 hour period he was not scheduled for anything was over. It made sense, she had other patients who had their own appointments.
As baking wasn’t proving to be enough to patch the cracks in his heart —well, being— anymore he just waited, and waited for time to pass by.
A little part of Buck hoped that maybe enough time would pass that he wouldn’t have to worry about his present anymore, that he would be gone and there would be no consequences to deal with.
Buck didn’t know where his afternoon went, maybe his wishes about the passage of time had worked but suddenly, One o’clock turned to Three, and Three to Five and then it was 6:29 in the evening and he had to have been doing…something for over five hours.
The next time he looked at a clock it was 6:42, Buck’s phone lit up, a stark contrast to the once sunlit room that had dimmed as evening came.
Maddie texted him.
14 times, sporadically from 4:27 to 6:42, including three do-not-disturb-mode caused blocked calls.
Buck had well and truly zoned out.
He pressed on the notification and read Maddie’s string of texts.
She expressed concern for Buck because Chimney had told her he took the day off —a very improbable action for Buck— and as each text message came her emotions grew stronger.
Her last message read, ‘If you won’t respond to me, I’m coming over,’ Buck could understand how being ghosted by someone with nothing keeping them from messaging for over two hours was worrying, especially with his track record.
He tried to call Maddie back to explain to her that he was fine and she didn’t need to come over. That he was doing something when he missed her texts and calls, but he didn’t really know what he’d say. He had no idea what he had done.
When he heard the familiar rhythmic knock of his sister hitting his door, Buck dreaded their conversation to-come.
“Why haven’t you answered any of my messages?” Maddie said interrogatively, at Buck who just stood idly beside his door.
“I didn’t see them.”
“I messaged you several times within the span of 2 hours, you had plenty of time to see them.”
“Well I was busy,” was he?
“Yeah? Doing what, what could be so important that you ignore your sister for over 2 hours,” Maddie questioned.
“I don’t know.”
They both stayed silent. Buck finally moved from his tensed, army-like postured stance, and moved towards Maddie.
He hugged her. She hugged him.
There was a warmness to Maddie’s arms that felt calming. It reminded him of his childhood, after their parents gave Buck physical and material support for his injuries, when their parents left Buck alone again. When he was in the healing process and the issue had mended enough to ignore him.
Maddie hugged him then the same way as she hugged him now, a warm embrace that took away the pain of being left.
“This has to be about more than whatever Ravi did to annoy you.”
“Its Eddie-”
Bucked stopped as Maddie’s laugh interrupted, “it always is,” she explained dismissively.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Buck asked, in a genuine tone, causing Maddie to simply raise her eyebrow and smile.
“We’ve been here before, I come over to check on you, something happened with Eddie,” His sister pointed out in a shallow-chuckle, “it’s always with Eddie, ever since I moved to LA you were obsessed with him-”
“That’s besides the point and you were obsessed with Chim, you turned to talk to me about him, calling him cute, while we helped set up your old house,” Buck interrupted.
“I did do that,” Maddie chuckled again, as if they were all in high school, and when all this happened she wasn’t ending her most traumatic experience —which as they work as first responders, could easily be seven dozen other things that happened because of the job— and as if everything ended happily in that house. “But as I recall you thought I was talking about Eddie.”
So everything was always about Eddie, at least when it was something also about Buck. They were Joint-at-the-hip in every way for seven years until one of them moved to Texas and just a week later they stopped contacting each other.
“Well he was cute,” Buck explained, frustratedly.
“Yeah well there’s only one I married,” Maddie declared, “and only one that Baby-trapped you.”
“Yeah, so much for that I haven’t seen Chris in six months, and Eddie left to join him. In Texas.”
“He’ll come back, he’s living near his parents, he’ll fix things with Chris and then come back,” Maddie reassured Buck with the same words he’s been repeating in his head over and over since Eddie left.
“Will he? We haven't messaged for two weeks.”
“Chimney and I survived a lot longer than that,” Maddie told Buck, “you will too.”
“But you and Chimney had Jee and you had been together for a long time and-” Buck stopped himself.
“Oh.”
“I think we just made this comparison?” His sister rhetorically questioned, “Seven years means more than you’re letting yourself believe.”
“Huh.”
Maddie looked down to check her watch, “I have to go, I’ve left Karen in charge of three children, but talk to him, he’s not the only one who can start a conversation.”
Buck wanted to explain that he had tried but all he could manage to get out was, “See you Mads,” in practically a whisper.
“Bye Buck,” Maddie said as she closed the door behind her.
Although his loft wasn’t any better lit than before, his place seemed to glow with Buck’s realisation. As if a long-time coming thought arriving suddenly could make his room brighter.
———
Buck debated what he should say to Eddie. Whether he should say anything, he tried to contact him before, it’d just hurt to know he failed again.
Whether he should say something, anything, about what Maddie had enlightened him to think about.
The thing that was all he could think about.
After spending a stupid amount of time deciding to text him and then what to say to Eddie, his best-friend, who he’d never had trouble speaking to for 7 years. He spent so long in fact that he had to wait until the next day because he didn’t want to message at midnight. The next day Buck texted Eddie:
Hi Eddie
Today, 7:43 AM
He chickened out of saying his pre-planned script, mostly on account of it being written at 12:30 in the night and his brain not being awake enough to write anything to text to his friend about something important. In his document of drafts for the text, Buck found a lot of paragraphs about fun facts, and some about less-fun facts.
Hey Buck
Today, 7:46 AM
Been a while?
Today, 7:47 AM
Sorry I’ve been busy, I’ve made progress with Chris
Today, 7:49 AM
He’s talking to me again
Today, 7:49 AM
That’s great!
Today, 7:50 AM
It was great, Eddie had been achieving his goal. He had been thriving in what he moved to Texas for.
Reconnecting with Chris.
His phone buzzed in his hands, Eddie called, so Buck answered.
“Hey,” Eddie’s voice said, “how are you?”
“Good,” Buck replied, “what about you, how are you going?”
“I’m fine, better than I have been recently,” Eddie explained, sounding relieved.
They continued to chat and every word Eddie spoke seemed to echo across the loft.
“Got a lot to catch up on, huh?” Buck told Eddie as he lay down on his bed and looked up at the ceiling.
“Yeah, weird to be away from you for so long after all this time.”
“Mhm,” agreed Buck, “I’ve got a lot to tell you.”