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***
The thing is, Buck tries. He tries really hard to keep everyone together, to help where he can, to support everyone while they all go through the loss, but it never feels like enough. Chimney refuses to meet his eyes. Eddie keeps oscillating between giving him a silent treatment and randomly lashing out. Hen just puts on a brave face and pretends that everything is as good as it can ever be. Every time Buck reaches out, a door gets shut in his face. Every time he tries to check in, he gets a one or two word response. The station kitchen is clean, empty and quiet. The walls of the lounge have not heard laughter in a long time. Chimney tries too, to be the leader, to live up to Bobby’s standard, but everyone knows that he still blames himself. Bobby’s shadow is looming over the entire firehouse, and Buck feels like they’re slowly losing air every time he comes inside. The reminders become suffocating. No family dinners, no friendly bullying, no well-timed and well-worded fatherly advice. The 118 truly has become just a number for him.
Buck tries to give them time. Give them space. He tries to blend in with the background to not be in the way. He stops inviting people to go out, he stops trying to assess their grief, stops cooking for the whole crew. Slowly but surely, he becomes just another ghost haunting the house, and somewhere in there he realizes that he cannot live like this anymore.
Transfer from the 118 doesn’t take nearly as long as Buck has expected it to. Hen and Chimney try their best to talk him out of it, to keep the family together, but when Buck asks what was left of said family, no one has an answer for him. Ravi gives him big, sad cow eyes and later texts him to go out together. Maddie tells him he is making a mistake. Eddie once again implies that he is only thinking about himself. Buck is really tired of everyone around him deciding his life for him. He fills out the paperwork, bakes everyone a goodbye batch of raspberry muffins, and waits.
Despite Chimney’s unwillingness to let him go, he signs the papers and three days later Buck gets a call from 122, asking if he is interested in a full-time position. Buck agrees on the spot, before stopping at the nearest gas station and buying a pack of menthol cigarettes he hasn’t touched since Peru. He mentally apologizes to Bobby for all the wrong decisions he keeps making. He promises to keep Bobby posted on everything that happens in his life.
***
Transition to the new house is quiet. Everyone knows why he is there, and everyone gives him pitying looks, and everyone tells him how many great things they’ve heard about him. No one mentions Bobby by name, and Buck silently accepts that Bobby’s ghost is going to haunt this house too. Captain Deluca is the only one who acts normal around him. He orders Buck around like any other firefighter, and teaches Buck on how this house runs. He not-so-subtly helps Buck find a niche in 122 where he would fit, and Buck is grateful. At the end of his first week in the new firehouse, he writes a letter with everything he has accomplished, writes about every new coworker he has, about the probie that looks like he should still be in high school learning algebra. He writes about the things that are similar. Things that are different. Things that are new and those that are old. It takes him two full pages to say everything he wants to say. He puts the letter in the envelope, seals it, writes Bobby’s address on the back. He goes out for a smoke and burns the letter in his backyard.
He vows to himself to stay busy. The less time he has to think, the better his life is going to be. He picks up every available shift he can, and finds any excuse to leave the house on his days off. Buck bulks up and gains even more muscle because he is in the gym so often. He knows every hiking trail within two hours of his new place. He shows Ravi his favorite bars. He ignores the messages from his sister. He ignores how quiet the 118 group chat has become.
***
When Buck wakes up from his most recent 72-hour run, there is a package on his porch that he didn’t order. It has a sticky note on top, reading “Let me know when you run out” in a familiar, slightly wonky and slanted handwriting. Inside the package is a ziploc bag of slightly misshapen sugar cookies, a couple of bottles of orange Gatorade, a container of pumpkin soup and a DVD of Lilo and Stitch 2. Buck takes a minute to squash the desire to press the box to his chest and never let go. He fixes a blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape before texting Tommy a single yellow heart emoji and opening the cookies.
Tommy is an omnipresent figure in his life. He is there when it matters most, he checks in every other day, he drops off care packages like it’s his full-time job, but he is never actually there. He appears, does something stupidly nice, and disappears again. Buck misses the time when he could hold Tommy’s hand just because he felt like it. He misses the days when his laundry would mix in with Tommy’s after he spent the night. He misses waking up to Tommy’s ice cold feet pressing themselves to his shins trying to get warm. He misses how nice it felt to flirt with Tommy knowing that Tommy is flirting back. He misses the late night calls, the “Be safe” messages, the stupid pilot memes that Tommy collects on his phone like it’s his most prized possession. He misses Tommy, period. He misses his entire person, with all his quirks and insecurities, with his terrible taste in coffee and even worse taste in movies. Every time Tommy does something for him, he wants to beg him to stay. To wait just a minute and let Buck explain himself. To not run away again. But he never does. He is done running after people who do not want to be caught.
When he comes in for his next shift, Captain Deluca calls him into his office to inform him that someone dropped off a box of his favorite peanut butter chocolate energy bars at the station. Captain Deluca doesn’t say who they are from, but Buck already knows. He brings the energy bars to his locker before starting on the morning truck checks, silently smiling to himself.
***
He is at the grocery store, trying to remember if he still has enough dish soap to last him a week when he gets a text from Maddie, checking in on him. He sends “All good.” back and locks his phone. The 118 chat keeps silently judging his every move. He grabs a bottle of his favorite fragrance-free dish soap and a pack of Oreos before heading out.
He is doing the laundry, and putting extra care into folding one of the hoodies that Tommy left behind. He doesn’t think about how long it has been since Tommy stepped foot into his place. He doesn’t think about how long it’s been since anyone visited him. He hasn’t heard from the 118 in a while, and he tells himself that he is okay with it.
***
The shift started five hours ago and they still haven’t gotten any calls, which Buck knows means they will pay for it later. He makes himself another cup of coffee, cleans the kitchen counters, mops the floors in the locker room and starts a load of laundry with the sheets from the bunks. The probie comes up to him with questions about flashovers, and he spends fifteen minutes walking the kid through the suppression process. He is completely ready to crawl up the walls and wail when the bells finally go off.
It’s a car accident on an intersection of the county highway and a rural street. Someone forgot to stop at the stop sign and rear-ended the car in front of them at a highway speed. Thankfully, no one needs extrication, but they do call air support for the driver of the stopped car because she has severe back pain and can’t feel her legs. Buck lets the team deal with the driver while he crouches down to talk to the driver’s granddaughter who was sitting in the front seat. He makes sure she doesn’t have any physical injuries. He gives her a stuffed snow leopard they keep in the ambulance just for this. He patiently answers all her questions, and does his best not to flinch when she looks up at him with wet, terrified eyes, when she tries to turn her head towards him as much as she can with a c-collar, and asks him if ambulances ever crash. He doesn’t have the heart to lie to her.
When the helicopter lands just down the street from them and the rotor stops, Buck looks up to see Tommy behind the controls. He holds eye contact with him for what feels like forever, before the driver is loaded and the report is given and they’re back on their way up.
When he gets back to the station, there is an unread message from Tommy waiting for him. “The grandma will make a full recovery. She said thanks for taking care of the kid. How are you?’
Buck leaves it on Read.
***
The days slowly blend in together. Go to work, come home, pass out. Go to work again. Ignore the concerned messages that finally start coming in. Tell Maddie that he is doing great. Tell Ravi that he doesn’t feel like going out tonight. The hole in his chest keeps growing. The first few days after the funeral, he felt constant, unrelenting pain in his ribs, for a minute he was sure he broke something without realizing. Then it slowly subsided, turning into an endless, chilling void where his heartbeat used to be.
Every morning starts with a text to Bobby, wishing him a good day and telling him that Buck is doing well. When two weeks later the texts stop coming through, Buck cries until he throws up his breakfast. Bobby’s name is still pinned to the top of his chats. He doesn’t have it in him to remove it.
***
About a month later, LA gets hit with a rainstorm so strong it feels like the sky is shattering over his head. Buck is on mandatory 48-off after all the overtime he pulled. Captain Deluca, ever the stoic and authoritative figure, keeps giving him concerned looks. Buck has seen him step away to send long, seemingly expressive texts to someone after Buck himself pulled something stupid on scene again. Buck knows who those texts go to, but doesn’t feel like confronting his captain about it.
He sits in his new house in silence. He hasn’t cooked anything in over two weeks now. His kitchen is so psychotically clean someone could perform a surgery on his island counter. All the art and posters that he keeps moving with him are still in the box somewhere in the garage, and the walls remain empty. He hasn’t talked to Eddie in over a month. He tells himself that it’s fine. He doesn’t think of the years he spent so sure that he finally found a friend who will stay. Who will not leave because Buck is annoying, or irrational, or too loud. He doesn’t think of the silent chat he has with Christopher that hasn’t been open in a very long time. He doesn’t think of the tsunami, how he was ready to admit to his best friend that he killed his son. How that same best friend accused him of not saving their captain later. He just doesn’t think.
In the tranquility and stillness of the silence, it takes him a second to recognize a knock on his door. The knocking pattern is familiar, and it blends in nicely with the sound of rainfall outside. Behind the door, wet and miserable but oh so real, is Tommy. He is holding a thermos and a big reusable bag from the chain store. His hair is sticking to his face, his lashes are all clumped together from the rain, and he, like the self-sacrificing idiot that he is, is not wearing a jacket. His hoodie is soaked, and when he steps from one foot to the other his boots make a disgusting squelching sound. Buck steps back to let him in.
“I have some of your bad day tea, a blanket, and about six or seven absolutely horrid comedies with me.” Tommy extends the thermos, which Buck knows contains strong black tea with a teaspoon of sugar and a ton of milk, and a bag in front of himself like a peace offering. “I don’t have to stay here for any of it, but I thought it would be good for you to have something nice while the weather is kicking all of our asses.”
Buck looks at him for a second. Takes in his wet hair, and a soaked hoodie, and the dark circles under his eyes. The uncertainty in his gaze. How he stands in his doorway, cold and soaked, and doesn’t run away. How he meets Buck’s eyes. How he is finally, finally here.
“You can leave all that in the living room. Give me a sec, I’ll find you a new shirt. Do you want a shower?”
Tommy’s mouth curves in a tiny, hesitant smile.
“Thanks. It would be nice to feel warm again.”
Buck stares at him some more. It would be nice to feel warm, indeed.