Chapter Text
Buck sighed, glancing around the room to make sure he had everything.
It kinda sucked, in theory, going to work on Christmas Day.
In practice, he was honestly pretty glad, and had jumped at the chance to swap with Zach on B-shift and Cohen on C-shift since they were meant to be on over the 25th and the 26th. Zach had three young kids, after all, and his parents in town to visit for the holidays. Cohen also had a family.
What did Buck have?
Not a whole lot, sadly, so if he could give someone else the opportunity to spend the holiday with their loved ones? Well, he certainly wasn't going to refuse (because, contrary to the utter nonsense that some people liked to spout *cough* Eddie *cough* Buck was not actually irredeemably selfish thank you very much, and he did know that – well; he was working on knowing that, quieting the voices in his head that sounded depressingly like the 118 so-called ‘family’ that repeatedly told him otherwise).
So yeah, Buck was getting ready on Christmas Eve to head into work the following day, working a double shift and getting off on the 27th.
He couldn’t say he minded much.
Plus, it gave him a couple shifts free when he didn’t have to work with the A-shift and his so-called family.
And what a sad state of affairs that it had come to this, Buck being glad that he wasn’t going to be seeing or working with them…
He doubted anyone would miss him – well: they may miss him on shift as someone to take their frustrations out on. Plus… well, he was damn good at his job, no matter what Chim was saying as he tried to find his feet as Captain.
Whatever. He had submitted the paperwork with Zach and Cohen as required, and the captains of B and C shifts had signed off on it, being the only permanent captains currently in the station.
Chimney should have got a copy of the paperwork as well, Buck knew he should, but who even knew if he would have bothered to look at it. And it wasn't as if his say so was even necessary, not really – people were pretty much free to swap shifts in certain circumstances as long as they weren’t just… y’know, not working themselves or something, and it had been signed off already…
Buck still hadn’t heard anything about the transfer he had put in for – part of him wanted to chase it up, part of him thought they had probably forgotten about him, and he didn’t want to make a nuisance of himself by bothering HR with it.
He didn’t want to deal with the inevitable comments and judgement either should the 118 get wind of his chasing it up – and they no doubt would. Even if it was just Chimney as captain who did, he was notoriously bad at keeping anything quiet, so no doubt half of L.A. would know within the hour…
Buck had been thinking more and more lately though – did he really want to work under Chimney as a captain?
He had done it before, back before the ladder truck had blown up and almost destroyed his life – it certainly hadn’t been a pleasant experience back then.
And sure, Chim had mellowed out a lot since then – he could probably even be a good captain these days.
Just… not to Buck, as he had already pretty thoroughly proven.
Maybe he should speak with HR… After all, hadn’t they spoken to them before, when Chimney and Maddie had been getting serious? Hell, Buck had certainly been spoken to, back when Chimney’s relationship with Maddie had contributed to Buck being illegally kept off work back when he had filed the lawsuit against Bobby.
Which… yeah, not his greatest moment, but it wasn’t as if he had been wrong. Bobby had been unfairly keeping him off work, and he did treat him differently.
Buck had been in a lot of therapy lately. It was hell, honestly, and he was doing his best to keep it from the firefam – God only knew the types of comments and grief he would be given over it, especially after how they had been when they had first found out back during COVID, and his relationships with them being so much worse currently – but it was… well, fairly good actually.
It had been a very long time since Buck had had his feelings validated, and not just made to feel like he was an idiot child who had no idea what he was feeling or wanted, or even had any right to have any of said thoughts or feelings.
He just… he wished that Chimney had not proven, time and time again, that he was utterly incapable of leaving his personal feelings and family drama at the door.
Did he want his brother in law as his captain? Was that even allowed? Technically, he knew Chimney as a paramedic was not meant to treat him when he was injured, and he had heard something about his not being meant to be in a position of authority over him either – though lord knew everyone generally ignored that.
But… well, if Chimney was to become captain, officially and not just interim as he had been thus far… Hmm. Something to think about, for sure.
Maybe he would ask on his covering shift, see if anyone else at the station had any thoughts on the matter?
He would, quite honestly, value the input of literally anyone other than the firefam, particularly Maddie’s flying monkeys…
Yeah, he wasn’t too thrilled with his sister either currently, therapy dragging up old wounds that he had long since shoved to the side never to be dealt with for the sake of keeping the peace, and her own pulling away yet again (as she always did, and Buck got it, alright, he did, he knew she had a life, but, like the others, it seemed like she was going out of her way to make time for or otherwise see literally everyone except her own damn brother. Not that that was anything new…).
The Hans and the Wilsons were having Christmas together this year, because of course they were – couples night, it was usually couched as; or a gathering of adults with children, ‘you wouldn’t understand/fit in Buck, we wouldn’t want to bore you when you can’t relate…’. Really, whatever they could think of to exclude Buck, so it felt like.
He knew it wasn’t personal – well, he tried to be rational and tell himself it wasn’t personal. He… didn’t quite manage to succeed. (It felt pretty personal, more often than not…)
Anyway: Buck hadn’t been invited, or consulted in any way. Surprisingly, not even to be voluntold he was babysitting so they could have some time to themselves. He was kinda shocked at that, actually, it was something of a habit of his sister and Eddie in particular – then again, there was plenty of time left over the holiday season for them to drop their children on him without a care to his own thoughts or schedule…
Idly, Buck wondered if he should just resign himself to not being part of his niblings’ lives. He couldn’t see Chimney – or Maddie, who was perfectly happy having her husband be her spy for what Buck was doing, as she had proven repeatedly since she had shown up in L.A. out of the blue all those years ago now – being too happy if he did query his transfer request, or asked about the potentially grey area that was serving under his brother in law. And Chimney had threatened to cut off contact before, had followed through on that before, so Buck could easily see it happening again.
And Maddie had never really had much of an issue cutting out her brother, particularly when a man was involved.
Why exactly was Buck still fighting to be a part of these people’s lives?
Maybe he should just… take a bigger step back? See if any of them came to him, rather than it feeling like it was always the other way around?
Hmm…
You know, it would be pretty nice to stop feeling like he was constantly running after them, begging for even a small scrap of acknowledgement…
Well, he had already pretty much given up on Eddie, and Chris unfortunately, since the man came back to L.A. with little to no warning, kicking Buck out of the house.
Buck was nice, he hadn’t gone for any legal action, despite what Ravi and Buck’s – well, back to Eddie’s now – landlord had been telling him.
He wasn’t about to make more trouble for the Diazes, Eddie had already reminded him several times that he had been causing them more than enough hassle.
Some time away from the situation told Buck that… well, what hassle had he actually been causing them?
He had gone out of his way to help Eddie with his ill thought out, impulsive plan to move to El Paso instead of just talking to his son (hello, Eddie was the parent, Chris was a teenager, not that that ever seemed to register with the man…); he had helped Eddie find that absolute dump that was all he could afford on such short notice – why the man didn’t just rent or go for a visit first instead of upending his entire life Buck didn’t know, but he had not been at all receptive to either idea when Buck had brought it up back then. Buck hadn’t brought it up again after his reaction… Maybe he should have? Well, hindsight and all that he supposed.
And really, Eddie had been renting for years at this point in L.A. – why was he so against renting in El Paso? Surely it would have been much less of a hassle than outright buying a place… Maybe it was so he would have a more permanent reason not to chicken out of moving back down there…?
Whatever, what did Buck know.
Anyway, not only had Buck helped him with everything relating to that and actually moving, he had taken over Eddie’s lease, giving up his own home for the man to have the security of knowing who he was renting to.
And yeah, sure, some of that had been Buck’s guilt at sabotaging his other house showings, and his immediate instinctive reaction of wanting to fix things, to sooth that beast when Eddie had blown up at him, but even so – Buck had still given up his own safe place, had moved into a house full of ghosts that he had… honestly, kind of hated, just to help Eddie out.
And then just when he had been getting comfortable there…
Yeah, Eddie was back.
Because Chim made some big speech, and apparently that was enough to get both Eddie and Chris to come running back.
No, Buck was not bitter – not at all.
OK, maybe he was a bit.
Buck had been there, available to talk to Eddie every day while he was in El Paso, trying to mend things with his son.
Had Eddie even once asked how Buck was doing, how his own life (also in shambles at that time when Eddie had been leaving) was going in all that time?
Buck couldn’t remember – surely he had to have, though, right? Buck felt like he was looking back through a very negative lens, and was trying hard to convince himself that it had not been a one sided friendship for quite so long as he half feared it had been.
Then other things would occur to him, and… Yeah, he and Eddie had had their ups and downs since the day they had met. Had that been Buck's fault? He had shown his insecurities early, after all, right back to that first day – had Eddie known, all along? He sure had proven a great many times over the last years that he knew exactly where to hit to make it hurt…
Maybe some distance would make it all better? If Buck did move to a different station… And it wasn’t even as if they were even partners at the 118 anymore either, spending all their working time together!
(He had desperately wanted to ask if Eddie had even done the qualifications to be a paramedic before he returned, because he knew he hadn’t done them before leaving for El Paso. And he also knew that being an army medic did not qualify him to work as a paramedic, despite his having covered the position in the past. He wasn’t about to ask though – he didn’t trust Eddie’s attitude towards him recently, and didn’t want to be on the receiving end of his explosive temper and cruel, biting words yet again. Plus, he wasn't going to ask Chimney or anyone else – he'd just be accused of being jealous or making everything about himself again, or something. Because that felt like it was all anyone in that damn station ‘family’ ever said to him these days…)
(Hazard of knowing someone for years, he supposed – they knew your weak spots; knew just where to hit to make it hurt.
Buck kinda hated himself a little for ever letting Eddie get that kind of ammunition against him.
How was he supposed to know at the time though?)
Anyway – what had he been thinking about?
Oh right – yep, he had everything packed and ready for his shift, starting bright and early tomorrow.
He’d even had dinner already, so now the only thing he really wanted to do was fall into bed, and maybe fall down a research rabbit hole for a bit.
Or maybe watch some cute baby animal videos… he could do with a pick me up. He'd recently fallen into those YouTube short videos narrating reddit posts (though many were definitely AI, which was a shame…) – it was nice to know there were groups out there more dysfunctional than his own, that his life and family situations could be a lot worse… (Some stories hit a little too close to home, felt too familiar to his own… He swiped out of those fast most days, though occasionally he would listen to the end and wonder…)
The 12 days of Christmas… the damn song was playing on repeat in his head, why he didn’t know he hadn’t even heard it today, and he couldn’t get it to shut off even as he brushed his teeth and climbed into bed.
Huh, maybe he should look that up, could be a diverting rabbit hole…
Oh, he had always kind of assumed it was the 12 days leading up to Christmas – it wasn’t? Hmm… What was the Epiphany? Oh, huh…
He wondered where the word had come from, and idly wondered if he had ever had an epiphany of any kind – though naturally, of course, not anything like the religious one… What was he thinking about? Oh yeah – maybe when he had realised Bobby was the one who was holding him back? Had that been an epiphany? Although hm, Bobby had had to tell him that before he realised… did that count? Probably not.
Well, Buck could sure use some ‘moment of great realisation’ right about now – maybe it would help him decide what to do about… well, so many things.
Did his family really care for him so little?
Would it be a good idea for him to get some space from them – for them all to get some space from him?
He had heard the saying that absence made the heart grow fonder, or whatever it was, but he wasn’t entirely sure he believed it – he had certainly never really seen any evidence that his absence made people fonder of him, in any case. At least, he didn’t think so…
Mostly, they seemed annoyed he was around again… His parents certainly weren’t any fonder of him after a literal decade of absence, and it wasn’t like the 118 had shown any fondness after absence either, he didn’t think… Case in point, and why did he keep coming back to this: the lawsuit of so many years ago now.
Did everything really circle back to that? Somehow, in his mind, it seemed to.
Was that when everyone’s views of him had changed?
But no – no, they had all always kinda treated him like the idiotic little brother, hadn’t they?
Sighing, Buck rolled over in his bed, trying to get comfortable as he resolutely put his phone away and tried to put all these stressful, negative thoughts out of his mind.
What would come would come, and he wasn’t sure there was really anything he could do about it – he had tried keeping the family together in the wake of their loss of Bobby, but it had been made abundantly clear to him that his efforts were neither wanted nor needed.
No, it seemed like everyone had a fine time pulling together between them – just, with Buck on the outside looking in.
No. Tomorrow, he would get up early and head in for a double shift where he didn't have to work with any of them – maybe it would be awful, but even so, it would still be a refreshing change of pace, he felt.
And hopefully, he would be able to get a second – or third, or fourth, potentially! – opinion on what he should do. Not that he thought he should probably go into much detail…
But…
Well. He had been considering on and off for quite a while now that staying in one place, never being allowed to spread his wings or anything, carefully kept within the mould the others had made for him… Well. It probably wasn’t helpful for his potential career advancement?
Hell, Buck had been here… what, a decade ish by now?! Maybe he should look into working somewhere else, even just temporarily – get some broader experience.
Not to mention, he really wanted the opinion of someone who was not entangled with them on the whole situation of him working under his brother in law as a captain – because others were bound to have seen the personal messes brought into the station over the years, none of them had ever exactly been subtle about any of it. (Buck knew that he himself was definitely guilty of that too – he was trying to be better.)
And Buck would really like it if his personal life would stop affecting his professional, he really would…
Maybe, by the time those infamous twelve days of Christmas had come and gone, Buck himself would have had an epiphany to help tell him what the hell he should do about his life currently.
Well, he could only dream…