Chapter Text
The city is quieter up here. Or maybe it just feels that way—like the noise knows better than to follow him.
Buck sits upon the edge of the station roof, arms folded tight in his lap, like if he holds himself together hard enough, nothing else can fall apart.
He hears the door creak open behind him.
“Didn’t think you were the brooding-on-rooftops type.” Eddie says.
Buck doesn’t move. He hardly reacts. Just lets out a deep sigh, almost like he was expecting someone to come looking for him eventually.
“Trying something new.” His voice even. Scarily so.
Eddie steps up beside him, close enough to be there, not close enough to push.
He stands like that for a while. Watching Buck, making sure he doesn’t tip himself over the edge.
“You okay?” Eddie asks, quieter this time.
Buck swallows. There’s a hundred answers he could give. A hundred lies that would be easier.
Instead, he stares out at the city and says, “Sometimes I wish I never met Bobby.”
The words hit the air and just… stay there.
Eddie doesn’t react right away. He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t try to fix it.
Buck lets out a shaky breath.
“Or at least—” he adds, voice thinner now, “not gotten so close. Because then maybe it wouldn’t—”
He cuts himself off.
Wouldn’t hurt. Eddie turns his head, really looking at him now.
“Buck…”
But Buck just shakes his head, turning his body away, already shutting down. Eddie’s hands almost reach out for him, being ready to catch him if he were to fall.
He doesn’t.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Because it doesn’t.
Because it already happened.
Because there’s nothing he can do about it.
—
By the time they get back to the house, it’s late. Christopher’s asleep. The lights are low. The kind of quiet that settles into your bones.
Buck toes off his shoes by the door out of habit, even though no one’s awake to hear it. Eddie flicks on the kitchen light, then winces like it’s too bright for the hour.
“You want anything?” Eddie asks. “Water? Food?”
Buck shakes his head. “I’m good.”
It’s automatic. The answer comes too fast, too easy. Like he’s been living on autopilot for days.
Eddie lingers for a second longer, like he wants to say something else, but then just nods and disappears down the hallway.
Buck doesn’t follow.
He ends up in the kitchen without really meaning to. The bottle is sitting right in the middle of the table. Unopened.
Cheap whiskey—nothing special. Something he picked up earlier without thinking, like muscle memory from a version of himself he thought he left behind.
Buck stares at it.
It stares back.
He reaches out, fingers brushing the neck of the bottle, turning it just slightly so the label faces away from him.
Like that somehow makes it better. Like that makes it less of a choice. The house is too quiet. Too still. Too empty in all the places Bobby used to fill without even trying.
Buck exhales slowly and sinks into one of the chairs, elbows on his knees, hands hanging useless between them. He doesn’t open the bottle. Doesn’t even twist the cap. Just… sits there with it.
The sound of footsteps pulls him out of it.
Eddie pauses in the doorway.
And then Buck sees it—the moment it clicks. Eddie’s eyes drop to the table. To the bottle. Back to him.
Something in his expression shifts. Not panic. Not yet.
But close.
“Buck,” Eddie says carefully, like he’s stepping onto thin ice, “what’s that?”
Buck follows his gaze like he doesn’t already know.
“Oh.” He shrugs, too casual. “Nothing. Just—picked it up earlier.”
Eddie doesn’t move.
“You planning on opening it?”
There’s no accusation in his voice. That somehow makes it worse.
Buck leans back in the chair, dragging a hand down his face. “No.”
A beat.
“I don’t think so.”
Eddie studies him for a long moment, like he’s trying to decide if that answer is enough.
“You sure?” he asks, softer now.
Buck lets out a breath, eyes flicking back to the bottle for just a second.
“I haven’t opened it, have I?”
It’s defensive. He hears it as soon as it leaves his mouth.
Eddie does too.
“I’m not—” Eddie stops, recalibrates. “I just—this is… a lot. And you don’t have to—handle it alone.”
Buck shifts, leaning forward across the table, centimeters away from the bottle and it’s almost like he’s inching closer to the dark side of his mind.
“Don’t I?”
The words are stiff, but unsure. Like he’s wanted to say the words for a while but fear kept them locked away.
Eddie steps further into the room, leaning against the counter, arms crossed—not closed off, just… holding himself there.
“You’re scaring me,” he admits quietly.
That lands.
Buck swallows, throat suddenly tight. “You don’t need to be scared.”
Eddie’s gaze softens, but it doesn’t fully ease.
“Okay.”
Another silence stretches between them. Not empty. Just… heavy.
Buck looks down at his hands.
“Sometimes I just—” he starts, then stops.
Eddie waits him out.
Buck shakes his head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter anyways.”
“It matters to me.”
Buck doesn’t know what compels him to open up. It was selfish really. Eddie was going through a lot too. So was Hen, and Ravi, and especially Chimney. Yet here he was. Crying a river bigger than the amazon.
But he can’t find it in himself to care right now. Maybe tomorrow. But not today. Not yet.
“Sometimes I think it would’ve been easier if I never… let him in that much.” His voice drops, quieter now. “Like if I kept it surface level, you know? Captain, not… Bobby.”
It almost slips out.
Dad.
But Buck couldn’t call him that. He wouldn’t dare. Not now. Maybe not ever. It was painful enough as it was just as captain.
But Eddie’s expression tightens. Like he knows the word he wanted to say.
“That’s not how you work,” he says gently.
“Yeah, well,” Buck mutters, “maybe it should’ve been.”
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt like this.
Eddie pushes off the counter, stepping closer.
“And you think that would’ve made it better?” he asks.
Buck doesn’t answer. Because part of him knows the answer. And part of him doesn’t. Maybe that’s the dark part. He really believes it would have been better to have not met Bobby at all.
Eddie sighs softly, running a hand through his hair.
“You don’t get to rewrite it, Buck,” he says. “As much as you might want to.”
Buck lets out a quiet, bitter laugh.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
But, man does he wish he could.
—
That night, Buck falls asleep staring at the ceiling, the house quiet around him, Eddie just down the hall. The bottle is still sitting on the kitchen table. Unopened.
When he wakes up the next morning, the alarm is wrong.
Too early. Too loud. Too familiar. And when he opens his eyes—
He’s back in a bed he hasn’t slept in for years.