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It was a bad habit that was hard to break.
Things were easier when he was a wolf. His thoughts were simpler, more innate, instinct and the impression of emotions without the messy detail that came with the complex thoughts of being a human.
Retreating into his wolf self was an escape away from when his feelings were too big for him to handle alone, and he usually was, alone that is.
But then he found family in the 118, people to trust and help him shoulder the hurt and pain and struggle. And sure, he still regressed sometimes, when he felt particularly alone.
(The lawsuit was one of his biggest regrets and was the first time in a long while that he felt himself close to feral, the pack bonds fractured but not broken, close to tearing but still holding on.)
Things got better though. The pack bond grew stronger, even if his human pack didn’t know of his secret werewolf second life.
But then Chris leaves. And then Eddie leaves. And Bobby…
God. It was excruciating. Feeling the bond snap, listening to Bobby’s heartbeat slow and stop, hearing his rattled last words to Athena.
Buck had experienced loss before but not like this.
And the rest of his team, they had all had big deaths in their lives, Athena with Emmett, Chimney with Kevin, Hen with her father, Eddie with Shannon. They had worked through life-changing, gutwrenching grief before.
But this was Buck’s first.
Bobby was like a father to him. A mentor and leader and a tether.
But now he’s gone.
He’s gone and Buck can’t feel his bond anymore.
He’s gone and Buck will never feel his bond ever again.
And Buck feels like something is missing. Like the ground beneath his feet has disappeared and he’s falling, falling, falling and there’s no way to brace for impact and nothing to cling on to stop the descend.
They don’t understand how much losing Bobby has absolutely wrecked Buck. How he may never recover from a loss like this. It’s chronic, that constant feeling of loss, of emptiness, of wrongness, and he doesn’t know how to claw himself back to the surface.
And the team they start to move on. They make the peace that they can. And they don’t understand why Buck can’t. They don’t understand that Buck can’t. And when he needs them most, when he needs his pack, when he needs someone to ground him, when he needs them to fill the gaping space where Bobby used to be, they only pull away.
And with every day that the grief consumes him, he feels the wolf start to take the forefront of his mind, clouding his thoughts, giving him reprieve but also blinding him to what’s in front of him in the moment.
But it’s… it’s so nice. For it not to hurt. To not feel so broken and wrong and alone.
Buck starts to take wolf form as soon as he gets home and every morning it gets harder to shift back until one day a sort of calm floods him and the wolf wins and the hurt finally goes away.
Buck finds himself in the woods, roaming aimlessly as he does only what he needs to survive when he’s not basking in the emotional silence that has washed over him.
He doesn’t recognize where he is but he doesn’t need to. The woods are the woods. The woods are not the roads that he sometimes has to cross when wanders in the dark. The woods are for the wolf and the wolf likes the woods.
The wolf is napping in a hole of a dead tree trunk when it hears leaves crunching.
Its head snaps up with alarm, eyes darting at the sound.
A young man approaches it and the hairs on the back of the wolf’s neck prickle. Stranger, wolf, stranger wolf. It takes a step back inside of its hole and growls lowly.
The young man takes a step back, holding his hands up in surrender. “It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.” He slowly gets to the ground and sits on the leafy dirt across from the wolf. “You seem a bit lost. Do you need help? Where’s your pack?”
The wolf flinches and whines at the mention of his pack, the bad bad bad emotions poking out from the recesses of his mind in a way they haven’t since… before it…
It shakes its head, burrowing its nose in its paw.
“Oh,” the young man says, sad sorrow pity emanating off his scent. “Well… I know we just met, but I would love for you to meet my pack. We were just about to have lunch, actually. Would you want to join us?”
The wolf perks up. Food food, kind stranger wolf, trust trust trust. The wolf has nothing to lose if something goes wrong. It starts to slowly make its way out of its hole.
“That’s right. You’re okay.” The young man stands and the wolf stills, taking a small step back, assessing, before coming out fully. “Follow me. Everything is going to be okay.”
Worry concern care wafts off the young man and the wolf butts its head against his leg which only makes him chuckle and pet his hand through the wolf’s soft brunette fur.
They approach a large house and the wolf stills, smelling the not so stranger wolf’s pack.
It starts to whine with nervousness, its ears going down.
“Hey,” he says. “It’s just my friends. They’re not going to hurt you. I promise.”
The wolf follows reluctantly as he leads him to a smokey kitchen.
“What happened in here?!” Not so stranger wolf asks.
“Someone somehow nearly set the kitchen on the fire because he somehow burnt the pasta,” blonde stranger wolf says, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Ugh. Erica’s exaggerating. It wasn’t the pasta! It was the bay leaf. How was I supposed to know it was going to do that?” brunette stranger wolf says, pouting as she glares.
“Because you’re supposed to put it in the sauce, Malia, not straight in the pot with nothing else in it!”
“I thought that it was like spinach!”
Blonde stranger wolf rolls her eyes. “Derek is picking up something edible for dinner.”
“And Stiles and Isaac are disposing of the crime scene,” ginger stranger… not-wolf says.
Not so stranger wolf sighs.
“Who’s the stray?” blonde stranger wolf asks.
“This is… uhm. I’m not sure what his name is. But I found him near in the woods and I think he lost his pack.”
Sad sorrow empathy pity.
“Oh,” brunette stranger wolf says. “Is he…”
“I don’t think he’s an omega. But I don’t think he’s not… not.”
Brunette stranger wolf flashes her blue eyes at the wolf and its gold eyes flash back instinctually. She relaxes slightly. “Not red.”
“Woah. Scott, a new one already?” A curly haired stranger wolf says entering, and he reminds the wolf of someone - smiles laughter pup.
“A little heads up would be nice,” the brunette stranger not-wolf says.
“Stiles, Isaac,” not so stranger wolf greets, “do you mind showing our new friend around? I’ve got to… do some research.”
brunette stranger not-wolf does a mock salute. “Got it.” He turns to the wolf and smiles brightly. “C’mon. Once you sit in this couch you’ll never want to get back up.”
brunette stranger not-wolf fills the air with chatter and the wolf lets the words drown out the bad hurt wrong that starts to come to the forefront of his mind. The wolf hasn’t been around this many people since… since before…
The door opens and brunette stranger not-wolf lights up. “Food! Finally.”
good trust friend wolf prickles at a nearly forgotten bond, no more than a thread of friendship gained from a summer in New York.
“Evan?” good trust friend wolf gasps.
The wolf’s tail wags as it runs up to good trust friend wolf, knocking its head against his hand.
Sad grief hurt.
The wolf whines at good trust friend wolf’s reaction to seeing it.
“What’s wrong?” good trust friend wolf-wolf sets the bags in his hands down and kneels down to the wolf’s levels. “Can you change back at all?”
The wolf shrinks at the question. It whines, the onslaught of bad hurt wrong bad grief broken hitting him all at once. It doesn’t want to go back to that. It doesn’t want to hurt, to grieve, to be broken anymore.
“What happened to him?” not so stranger wolf asks.
“Something must have happened. Something bad, if he’s stuck in a shift. There’s a mental block somehow that is preventing him from being able to become human again.”
“Like a spell?” brunette stranger not-wolf asks.
“Maybe, but not likely. I knew Evan. And I know that him and his wolf, their relationship was built around a lot of hurt.”
“His relationship with his wolf?” curly haired stranger wolf asks.
“His wolf protected him, not just physically, but mentally. And it’s protecting him from something right now.” Good trust friend wolf sighs. “You know I’m not the best with words, Evan, but… you’re safe now. You’ve got me and you’ve got Scott and his pack. You have to face whatever it is you’re running away from or you’re going to lose yourself for good.”
The wolf doesn’t want the bad hurt wrong bad grief broken. It doesn’t want to think about it. Doesn’t want to feel it. Doesn’t…
Doesn’t want to be alone anymore.
But it’s not alone.
He’s not alone.
And as he succumbs to the bad hurt wrong bad grief broken, the wolf sheds away and leaves Buck, sobbing on the floor and so human it’s painful.
Someone lays a blanket over him and he’s grateful and too much a mess to be embarrassed.
Derek leads him out, gets him clothes to put on, and awkwardly holds him as he continues to break down.
Finally, the tears start to slow, and Buck can piece together a simple, “I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Derek says. “What happened?”
“I… I lost someone in my pack.”
Derek’s heart constricts. “Oh… Evan.”
“It’s Buck now.”
Derek nods with a gentle smile. “Buck.”
“He was like a father to me and when I lost him it was like… it was like a part of me was missing and I would never be complete again. They didn’t know I was a wolf, so there was no way they could know how much it… how I…”
“How long has it been since you lost him?”
“I don’t know,” Buck says. “I’ve been a wolf for… the days blend together. I don’t remember when I left.”
Derek pulls out his phone and types quickly. He curses under his breath. He turns the phone to Buck and shows him the missing person report for him.
“Two months?” Buck gasps.
“It looks like your pack has been looking for you,” Derek says.
“Shit I… I need to get back,” Buck says.
“Hey, no, not like this. Give yourself a moment.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Buck says. “If they thought I… and they just lost— we just lost—”
“Fine,” Derek says. “But you’re not going alone.”
Which is how Buck finds himself in Derek’s Chevy Camero, working off the stiffness of being back in his human body and the exhaustion of the feeling of feeling.
Derek stops in front of Maddie and Chimney’s place and squeezes Buck’s shoulder. “You’ve got this.”
Buck stumbles to the door, knocking softly, not expecting Eddie to answer the door.
They both freeze, Eddie’s jaw dropping and eyes pooling with tears. “Buck?” he chokes out.
“Eddie?” Buck whispers.
Eddie immediately pulls Buck into a tight hug, clinging onto him as his fingers dig into his shoulder blades. “You’re alive. I knew it. I knew you were alive.”
Buck sinks into Eddie’s embrace, basking in the sound of Eddie’s heartbeat.
“Where have you been?” Eddie asks, eyes searching Buck as though he’ll disappear.
“Eddie?” Maddie calls. “Who is it?”
It’s Maddie’s turn to freeze before she throws herself into Buck’s arms and cries against his chest.
“I’m sorry,” Buck says. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you.”
“When I saw the fur on your bed, I just knew. I knew and I knew I was too late because you were already gone and you could’ve been anywhere and I would’ve looked insane putting up a missing wolf poster when my brother was missing—”
“Maddie, Maddie, Maddie,” Buck says. “Breathe.”
She does, eventually, and Eddie is watching intently.
“I have a lot of explaining to do,” Buck says. “And you… you have to have a bit of suspension of disbelief because… I don’t know what will happen if I actually show you—”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. Eddie—”
“I know you’re a werewolf, Buck.”
Buck stills. “...what?”
“Disregarding the fact that you’re always unavailable on full moons and have such superstition about it in the first place, you turn into a wolf when you sleep at my place.”
“...I what?!”
“I don’t know if it’s a comfort thing or a sleeping thing, though I’m guessing it’s not if you’ve had other people sleep with you, and it didn’t happen until we had really gotten to know each other but one moment you were snoring on my couch and then the next there’s a giant wolf curled up against my pillows.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?!”
“To be honest, I thought I was going crazy. Especially because it’s not like you’re sleeping at my house every night. But then I… I guess I thought there was a reason you hadn’t told me. And that you would tell me one day. And if you didn’t, then maybe I wasn’t supposed to know.”
“I wanted to tell you,” Buck says. “I did. God, Eddie, every day I wanted to tell you.”
“I took a shot in the dark going to Maddie when you went missing and she told me about… about your wolf. And why you would get stuck in a shift.” Eddie cups Buck’s face in his palm. “I’m so sorry, Buck. If I had known…”
“But you didn’t,” Buck says. “It’s—”
“Don’t you dare say it’s okay. Because it isn’t. We’re… we’re you’re pack. And I don’t know what it’s like losing part of your pack but I’m guessing it hurts a hell of a lot worse than just the normal kind.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, the word barely audible.
“Everyone is going to be so relieved that you’re back—”
Buck flinches back.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t… I can’t face them. Not after I—”
“Buck,” Eddie says. “No one is mad at you. We’ve been worried sick trying to find out where you’d gone because we know you and we know that you wouldn’t just leave without reason.”
“But I did!” Buck snaps. “I left because it hurt too much. I was selfish—”
“You were not selfish. You were grieving and we weren’t there for you.”
“You felt alone,” Maddie says sadly. “Like you had no one. And that’s on us.”
And in the embrace of his sister and his best friend, Buck feels that gaping hole start to fill just a little and the bad hurt wrong bad grief broken heal.