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The first time it happened, Buck had been completely not expecting it.
Buck had been working at the 118 for about a month when Hen brought in a cake that looked like a half eaten soccer ball.
“What’s this?” Buck asked when he saw it on the counter.
“It’s a cake,” Hen said from where she was sitting on the couch. “I got it for Denny’s soccer team’s party last night. Even with twenty hungry elementary schoolers, they only ate half.”
“So is it like… up for grabs?” Buck asked.
Hen turned her head around to look at him. “You want to eat cake at nine a.m.?”
“Who wouldn’t want to eat cake at nine a.m.?” Buck asked.
Hen rolled her eyes. “Normal people,” she said.
Buck shrugged his shoulders as he cut a piece of cake and set it on a plate. “Easy for you to say,” he said. “I’m still getting a probationary salary and living with six roommates. No matter what time of day it is, if I see a good cake I’m eating it.”
Hen chuckled to herself. “Whatever you say.”
It was then that Bobby walked upstairs and found them. “Here you two are,” he said.
“Need us for something Cap?” Buck asked around a forkful of cake in his mouth.
“Have either of you seen a clipboard with a list of deliveries on it?” Bobby asked. “The C-shift Captain said he left it up here earlier.”
Buck thought about it for a second as he took another bite of the cake. “I think I saw Chimney with it downstairs,” he said. “Said he was trying to find everything on the list as I was walking up here.”
Bobby smiled. “Thanks Buck,” he said. And Buck hadn’t expected it, had completely, not, expected it. Hadn’t even considered it. As Bobby walked past Buck to go in the direction he saw Chimney downstairs, he stopped and reached his arms up, wrapping Buck in a hug.
As soon as Buck realized what Bobby was doing, Bobby let go of him and continued walking in the direction of the stairs.
“Did… Did Bobby just hug me?” Buck asked, turning to look at Hen.
Hen simply lifted an eyebrow. “What?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? The man’s a hugger?”
“A hugger?”
“Don’t worry about it Buck,” She said as she stood up from the table and walked past him. “It’s how he shows he likes you. He’s done it to all of us at least once.”
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The second time it happened also happened to be what would become Buck’s first of many hospital visits in Los Angeles. What Buck and Bobby would later dub ‘the bread incident.’
After Buck had been brought out of the minor surgery to repair his throat, the hospital had called Bobby, who Buck had listed as his emergency contact - not knowing who else to put down.
Bobby knocked on the door to Buck’s room before he walked in, and Buck turned his head from Abby to look over her shoulder at Bobby.
“Bobby,” Buck’s voice was hoarse and quiet, not at all surprising from what the doctor had just told Bobby back out in the hallway. “The nurses said they called you-” Buck cut himself off as he winced and brought a hand up to his throat.
“They also said you shouldn’t be talking unless you need to,” Abby said. Then Abby turned around to face Bobby and held out a hand to introduce herself. “I’m sure you’re wondering who I am. I’m Abby, I was the one on the date with him.”
“Bobby,” Bobby said as he shook her hand. Abby was… older than Bobby thought she would be. He remembered Buck said something along the lines of the woman being older than him, but Bobby thought he had meant two… maybe four years older than him.
Buck was discharged the following morning. Bobby came by to pick him up as his Jeep was still parked near the restaurant and Abby had a shift at dispatch.
“Why the long face?” Bobby asked when he met Buck in the waiting room, Buck having already filled out all of the discharge paperwork already. “They’re letting you out of here.”
“They said I couldn’t go back to work for at least two weeks,” Buck said as he stood up, his voice still sounded very rough to Bobby’s ears.
“Buck, even if they said you could go back tomorrow, I’d still make you man behind until you’re sully signed off,” Bobby said as they started walking in the direction of the exit.
Buck turned his face to look at Bobby, fully scandalized.
“Bobby patted Buck on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’ll still be getting paid.”
That knowledge only made Buck feel marginally better. At least he wouldn’t be behind on rent this month. It had happened a couple of times when he was still in the Academy.
“So then what am I supposed to do for the next two weeks?” Buck asked. “Just sit at home?”
“Rest and recuperate at home,” Bobby corrected.
Buck was lucky he was a step behind Bobby as he rolled his eyes. Like there would be any ‘rest and recuperation’ where he lived right now.
And then, as they stepped out of the hospital doors, Bobby turned around and wrapped his arms around Buck in a hug.
Buck froze.
“Bobby?” Buck eventually said when Bobby didn’t let go. “Umm…”
“Sorry,” Bobby said as he released Buck. “I just… yeah,” and as he said that, Buck noticed there was a look in Bobby’s eyes he couldn’t exactly put a name to. “Let’s just get you home, yeah?” Bobby asked as he resumed walking in the direction of his truck.
“Yeah,” Buck said, still slightly dazed by the whole encounter as he followed after Bobby.
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The third time was a week after Bobby started to teach Buck how to cook.
They had been making omelets, still not having gotten past breakfast foods.
“And then you just fold it over,” Bobby instructed him. Buck moved the spatula carefully under the eggs, and lifted it up - only for it to break apart and splatter.
“Damn it,” Buck cursed as he looked down at the… ruined… omelet.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bobby said from where he stood next to Buck. “We have more eggs you can try with. With that one you can just… make scrambled eggs.”
Buck let out a long breath through his nose, mildly upset with himself. This was the fourth omelet he had messed up this morning. He just wanted to finally make it right. Instead he was just making a slowly growing bowl of scrambled eggs.
“Can I just… see you do it again?” Buck asked, nearly whining, though he would never admit it. He just thought that… maybe if he could see another example of Bobby making one of his near perfect breakfast omelets that he would finally be able to make one without needing to resort to making the pan a plate of scrambled eggs.
Instead of doing that however, Bobby just simply held out the spatula to him. “No come on, we have more than enough eggs for you to get this right.”
Buck sighed, knowing he was probably going to mess the damn things up again. Only this time, as he slowly flipped the eggs over each other, folding them, they didn’t split. The omelet folded merely perfectly. It still wasn’t as good as Bobby made them but… a win was a win.
“I… I did it!” Buck said, a large smile on his face.
Bobby smiled back at him, then reached his arm out, wrapping Buck in a hug. “Told you you could do it,” he murmured in Buck’s ear.
Buck hadn’t expected the hug. He froze for a second, until he began to hear the sound of the pan start to sizzle and Bobby let go. “Hurry now,” he said. “You don’t want the thing to burn now that you got it.”
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After that third time, it was almost another nine months before Bobby hugged Buck again, just long enough for Buck to forget about Bobby’s tendency to display emotional connection through physical touch.
Buck would like to have said the circumstances for receiving it were good, but they were by far not.
The twenty fours hours leading up to it, Buck would have to say had been the most chaotic twenty four hours of his life.
It all started when Buck had gone over to his sister’s place, intending to have dinner with her and Chimney, when he found Chimney with a stab wound lying on the driveway and his sister nowhere to be found.
Then thirteen hours with Athena chasing down Maddie who was kidnapped by her ex-husband, Doug, they were all finally back in LA, in the same hospital Chimney had been taken to. Maddie was taken to one of the rooms to get her injuries taken care of, Athena was finishing up some of the police work with the other cops, and Buck had been left alone in the waiting room, with nothing to accompany him except for the flurry of emotions and memories of the chaotic events of the previous day.
That was where Bobby had found him, sitting on one of the chairs, a leg pulled up against his chest and his arms wrapped around it, just trying to keep himself from starting to pace back and forth around the waiting room. This time of the day, there were too many people waiting in here.
Bobby took a seat in the empty chair next to him, so close that their knees were touching. “Buck,” Bobby started, speaking softly. “How are you doing?”
“What-” Buck’s eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“After everything that you were involved in today,” Bobby asked. “I know your sister is getting looked over now, CHimney’s awake and should make a full recovery. But how are you doing?”
Buck was silent for a moment, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times but not saying anything.
“I-” Buck started but his words became choked in his throat. “I-”
When Bobby could see the tears start forming in Buck’s eyes, about to spill over, he wrapped his arms around Buck in a hug. And while it wasn’t exactly a surprise to Buck, it had been a while since Bobby had hugged him. Buck hadn’t expected it. His shoulders tensed for a split second before he brought his arms up to Bobby’s back and tucked his head into Bobby’s shoulders. He finally let go of the emotions and stress he had been bottling up the entire day.
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If Buck thought his year couldn’t get any worse after his sister getting kidnapped and having a fire truck dropped on his leg (he also couldn’t forget about the pulmonary embolism), a freaking tsunami hit Los Angeles.
A freaking tsunami hit just before noon, and Buck was left scrambling to keep track of his best friend’s son and make sure the boy stayed safe and unharmed.
And buck had tried. He really, really tried to keep Christopher safe. But all it took was one split second of inattention, reaching down to help someone in need get to safety, and then Christopher was gone.
Buck had spent the rest of the afternoon, losing track of how many hours it took, stopping just long enough for food and water so that he didn’t pass out, keeping an eye out for any sign of where Christopher could be.
Buck eventually ended up standing in front of what he knew to be a hospital. Although now, there were a bunch of tents in the front parking lot. Relief tents, medical tents, and…
Christopher had to be here, Buck just knew it. If not because it was where everyone in the area seemed to have ended up, then it was one of the last places (filled with people) Buck hadn’t looked.
He went to the medical tent first.
Christopher wasn’t there. He went to the next, the boy wasn’t there either, or in the third, or the fourth. Eddie found him in the fourth.
And Buck hadn’t wanted to think about this. Think about how he was going to tell Eddie he had lost his son.
But then Christopher had shown up, and Buck… all of the panicked energy Buck had been feeling that day, it came bleeding and oozing out of him.
He could feel himself collapsing, then, right before he fell to the ground, Bobby’s arms wrapped around him.
It had been a while since Bobby had given Buck a hug. Maybe it was due to the fact that, with Buck being out of work for so long he and Bobby had been spending less time together, maybe it was just coincidence, but it surprised Buck.
It surprised Buck, but instead of all the other times where Buck froze for a second, Buck quickly wrapped his arms back around Bobby, holding onto him tightly.
Seconds later, Buck felt Chrisptopher’s small arms wrap around his waist, followed by Eddie’s.
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In the hours after Eddie got shot, Buck couldn’t remember any conscious thought, he was just going through the motions. He could vividly remember watching Eddie go down, pulling him under the firetruck, hearing his screams of pain, getting Eddie to the hospital. Then everything seemed to just… blur together.
Buck knew that, at some point, Taylor was there. He remembered talking to her for a little bit, but he didn't remember what exactly he said, or what they were even talking about. Then she was gone, and instead of standing outside next to the ER doors, he was sitting in the waiting room, across from a mother with a screaming baby and a teenager holding up a large ice pack to their forehead.
Then they were both gone, and the next thing Buck realized, Bobby was walking up to him, calling out his name.
“Bobby,” Buck said as he stood up from the hospital chair, still somewhat dazed.
“Buck,” Bobby said as he walked up to Buck, putting his hands on Buck’s shoulders as his eyes quickly scanned Buck’s body for any signs of injury. “Are you- Did you get hurt?” Bobby asked.
Buck shook his head. “No,” he said, as his breath quickly dissolved into a sob, everything quickly catching up with him.
It didn’t surprise him this time. Buck had completely expected it. Just like how Bobby gave Eddie a hug when they brought Shannon here. That day was over two years ago now.