Chapter Text
The station sounds exactly the same when Buck walks in, and that’s the first thing he notices.
Not quieter. Not heavier. Not obviously different in any way that should explain the uneasy feeling sitting low in his chest. Everything is familiar: the crackle of radios, the metallic slam of lockers, the bursts of laughter drifting out of the kitchen like the rhythm of the station never changed at all.
Like nothing happened between before and now.
That should probably be comforting. Instead, it makes Buck feel strangely out of place.
He pauses just inside the bay doors with his bag hanging from one shoulder, fingers curled too tightly around the strap. For a second he isn’t entirely sure what comes next. Some part of him had expected a reaction to being back. Not anything dramatic—just a glance that lingered a little longer, someone acknowledging that his absence had mattered enough for his return to matter too.
“Buckley.”
Bobby says it without looking up from the clipboard in his hands. His tone isn’t cold, but it isn’t warm either. Just automatic. Procedural. Like checking off another item on a list.
Buck straightens instinctively. “Hey, Cap.”
“Mm.”
The pen keeps moving across the page.
Buck waits anyway, lingering in the silence longer than he should. When nothing follows, he fills the space himself.
“Reporting in.”
Bobby finally glances up, brief and distracted. “Truck bay needs inspection from last shift. You’re on it.”
Not really a request. More like placement.
“Yeah,” Buck answers quickly. “Got it.”
By the time he finishes speaking, Bobby’s attention is already back on the clipboard. Buck turns away before the interaction has time to settle too deeply under his skin.
Around him, the station keeps moving exactly the way it always has: steady, familiar, unchanged.
Like it never adjusted to him being gone.
Like it doesn’t need to adjust now that he’s back.
---
Ravi is near the lockers, and Buck notices him last.
He isn’t really doing anything specific. Just standing there half-leaning against the metal doors, watching the station in that quiet way Ravi always does, like he’s still figuring out how everyone fits together.
Ravi looks up when Buck approaches.
There’s a brief pause between them—not awkward exactly, more like assessment.
“Hey,” Ravi says finally. “You’re back on shift today?”
“Yeah.” Buck adjusts the strap of his bag higher onto his shoulder. “Cleared.”
Ravi nods once. “Good. Cool.”
The conversation could end there. Honestly, it probably should. But Buck finds himself lingering anyway, caught in the strange feeling that he’s supposed to say something else now.
“Yeah,” he says again. “Feels weird, but—”
The words stall out before he can figure out how to finish them. Weird because he was gone too long? Weird because everything feels slightly off now? Weird because nobody seems quite sure what to do with him anymore?
Buck doesn’t know.
Ravi doesn’t push for an explanation. He just gives another small nod.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I bet.”
Then he glances back toward the bay, attention already shifting elsewhere.
Not dismissive. Not cold. Just finished with the conversation in a way that leaves Buck standing there with the uncomfortable sense that he’d expected something more.
After a second, he lets it go and heads for the lockers.
---
Buck hears Eddie before he sees him.
“Buck.”
He turns immediately, fast enough that the movement almost feels automatic. Relief hits first, sudden and instinctive, before he can stop it.
Eddie is standing near the table with half his gear spread out in front of him, adjusting straps with the kind of loose posture that should look relaxed. Somehow it doesn’t anymore.
For one brief second, Buck feels something inside him loosen anyway.
Okay. There you are. Normal. This is normal.
“Hey,” Buck says as he steps closer. “I was thinking maybe after shift we could—”
“Mm.”
Eddie doesn’t look up.
It’s barely even a response. Just a sound tossed into the space between them while he keeps working.
Buck stops mid-sentence.
His mouth stays slightly open for a second before he closes it again, waiting for Eddie to continue. For some sign he actually heard the beginning of the conversation Buck was trying to have.
Nothing comes.
Eddie tightens another strap on his gear, attention still fixed downward like Buck’s unfinished sentence never really settled anywhere important.
“Right,” Buck says after a moment, forcing a quick nod. “Yeah. Cool.”
“Sure,” Eddie replies distractedly, still not looking at him.
Then he keeps going like the interaction is already over.
Buck stays where he is for one second too long before stepping back toward the lockers. Quietly. Carefully.
Like he’s trying to leave without making it obvious that something about the exchange hurt more than it should have.
---
Buck doesn’t mean to fall into it again.
At first, it’s just supposed to be a search—something small to occupy the part of his brain that won’t stop replaying every interaction from the last few hours. He sits on the edge of the locker room bench with his phone angled low in his hand, more out of instinct than secrecy. Not that anyone is paying much attention to him right now anyway.
He types:
Greek mythology Ares Athena difference
Then hesitates before adding:
why Ares was feared more than respected
The results load almost instantly.
Buck scrolls slowly, eyes skimming line after line. Ares: god of war, but not strategy. Not discipline. Violence. Chaos. Impulse. Feared more than admired.
Then Athena appears beneath him in the search results.
Wisdom. Planning. Strategic warfare. Respect.
Buck lets out a quiet breath through his nose before he realizes he’s doing it. It almost sounds like a laugh, except there’s nothing amused in it.
“Yeah,” he mutters softly. “Of course.”
Because of course there’s a version of war people praise.
And another they only tolerate.
He keeps reading even though he already understands the point his brain is trying to make. Myths shift depending on who tells them. Gods become symbols for whatever people need them to represent. The same figure can be revered in one story and treated like a problem in another.
Different stories. Same names.
Different ways of being seen.
Buck’s thumb stills against the screen for a second too long when he reads that line. Something tightens low in his chest before he can fully name why.
Then he scrolls again, faster this time, like movement alone can stop the thought from settling somewhere permanent.
---
The station is already in motion when Buck steps out of the locker room, not in the loose, familiar way he’s used to, but something more deliberate. Everything feels like it has direction today, like each movement is part of a system he’s slightly out of sync with. He notices it without meaning to, his attention catching on details before he fully settles into the rhythm of the space.
He’s only taken a couple of steps into the bay when Bobby calls his name. “Buck.” It isn’t raised, but it cuts cleanly through the noise anyway, precise enough to stop him mid-step. Buck turns immediately. “Hey, Cap.” Bobby is already looking at him, clipboard lowered slightly, expression measured in a way that isn’t angry but isn’t casual either. It carries the weight of something already known, something that should have been done.
“Did you complete the truck bay inspection from last shift?” Bobby asks. Buck blinks, the answer arriving a fraction too late. “I was going to—” Bobby exhales through his nose, not unkind, but clearly frustrated, and glances back down at the clipboard. “It needed to be finished before shift change. I had to assign someone else to cover it.” That lands heavier than a raised voice would have. Not anger, but correction—clean, procedural, final in a way that leaves no space for negotiation.
Buck straightens slightly without meaning to. “Sorry. I thought I still had time after inventory—” but Bobby cuts him off, steady but firm. “You didn’t. We don’t run on plans, Buck. We run on completed work.” The words sit there for a moment, plain and unsoftened, like they aren’t meant to be interpreted differently. Buck swallows once. “Yeah. Got it.”
Bobby gives a small nod, already moving on. “Finish it today. Properly.” “Yeah,” Buck repeats. “I will.” He doesn’t move right away, waiting for something else to follow—something that would soften the edges or shift it back into normal rhythm—but nothing comes. So he turns and goes, not dismissed, just redirected.
---
Hen and Chimney are already in the middle of an argument when Buck walks through the kitchen, their voices overlapping in that familiar rhythm that usually signals something light, something he could normally slip into without thinking.
“Because that is not what I ordered,” Hen says, pointing at the clipboard in Chimney’s hands.
Chim scoffs, already mid-rebuttal. “No, you said—”
He notices Buck halfway through the sentence and breaks off just slightly. “Oh. Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Buck replies automatically, slowing only a fraction as he passes.
“Good to have you back,” Hen adds, not fully pulling her attention away from the paperwork she’s already reviewing again.
Buck nods once. “Yeah. Thanks.”
For a moment, he lingers near the counter, waiting for the conversation to naturally widen the way it used to, like there would be a gap he could step into without having to ask for it. But it doesn’t open this time.
Chim is already turning back toward Hen. “Anyway, like I was saying—”
“You weren’t saying anything useful,” Hen interrupts immediately, picking the argument back up where it left off.
The conversation resumes around Buck as if it never fully stopped, and he realizes a second later that he’s no longer part of its direction, just someone passing through it.
So he keeps walking.
---
Ravi is near the lockers when Buck walks in.
He notices Buck first this time, which makes Ravi straighten a little like he’s deciding whether to step into the conversation or let it pass. There’s a brief pause before he speaks, not awkward so much as careful, like he’s still learning the rhythm of the station when it involves Buck directly.
“Hey,” Ravi says finally. “You cleared for full shifts now?”
“Yeah,” Buck replies. “Doc signed off.”
Ravi nods once, but doesn’t immediately look away. “Good. That’s… good.”
The extra word hangs there slightly longer than expected, like he meant it to land better than it did.
Buck nods anyway. “Yeah.”
A beat passes where neither of them fully moves on.
Then Buck adds, a little lighter than before, “Feels like I missed a lot.”
Ravi exhales through his nose, half a shrug following. “Yeah. Kinda. It’s been… weird without you in the mix.”
That earns a brief flicker of attention from Buck.
Ravi seems to notice that and immediately reins it back in, clearing his throat. “But, you know. Same place. Same chaos.”
He gestures vaguely toward the station behind them, like he’s resetting the tone on purpose.
Buck accepts it quickly, like he doesn’t want to risk over-interpreting it.
“Right,” Buck says. “Makes sense.”
Ravi gives a small nod, then turns slightly back toward what he was doing—not dismissive, just returning to his own lane.
Buck lets the moment settle, then moves toward the lockers.
---
He tells himself it’s fine, not like a declaration so much as something he repeats quietly in his own head, just enough to keep everything from tipping out of place while he changes out of his turnout jacket.
People are busy. People are distracted. People have their own things to deal with. That’s all it is.
Nothing more than that.
His phone ends up in his hand again without him really deciding to reach for it. The screen lights, and he scrolls without fully focusing at first.
Ares. Athena. War and strategy. Chaos and control.
Different versions of the same idea. Different ways of being understood.
Different ways of being seen.
Buck locks the phone before the thought can settle any deeper.
Before it can turn into something he has to sit with.
---
When Buck walks into the kitchen later, the room is already full. Hen and Chim are at the counter, mid-conversation in that easy, overlapping rhythm that suggests they’ve been talking for a while. Bobby is at the stove, focused on cooking. Eddie sits at the table half-turned toward the others, and Ravi is slightly off to the side, not fully settled into where he fits yet.
Buck exhales once and steps inside anyway. “Hey,” he says. “Okay, so I was reading something earlier—”
Chim glances up briefly. “Mm?” It isn’t dismissive, just not fully anchored. Buck keeps going before the moment can dissolve. “Ares, right? Greek mythology. He’s technically the god of war, but not the strategic kind like Athena. More chaos, impulse, violence. That’s why he wasn’t really worshipped the same way—Athena was planning and control, but Ares was kind of—” He lifts his phone slightly, like it helps keep the thought from slipping away. “—unpredictable. So people didn’t really respect him. More feared than anything else.”
The words land and hang for a moment without finding anywhere to go. Buck waits for something to form out of it—a comment, a reaction, something that turns it into shared conversation. Hen is already drifting back into her conversation with Chim, and Bobby doesn’t look up. Ravi is watching, but still quiet.
Eddie says, after a beat, “Mm… yeah.” Not sharp. Not distant. Just slightly late, like his attention caught the end of something rather than the beginning. Buck stops anyway, not because it’s harsh, but because nothing follows it.
For a second, he waits anyway, then exhales. “Right,” he says after a pause that runs a little too long. “Cool.” A small nod follows, almost automatic.
The kitchen keeps moving. Hen and Chim slide back into their argument, Bobby continues cooking, and Eddie looks down at his phone again like the moment has already passed its useful point. The conversation doesn’t adjust around what Buck said; it simply continues in its own shape.
Buck shifts back slightly without fully deciding to. “Anyway,” he adds quietly, almost like it doesn’t need to be heard anymore. “Just thought it was interesting.” No one responds, not immediately, not afterward.
He nods once anyway, then turns toward the hallway.
---
Ravi sees it, not fully and not clearly, but enough that it lingers. The way Buck leaves without being asked to leave, the way the space doesn’t close behind him because it never really opened for him in the first place, and the way no one looks up long enough to mark the moment as something that changed anything.
Ravi opens his mouth slightly, like he might say something, then hesitates. He doesn’t know yet what he’s stepping into, so he stays quiet. And Buck walks out still believing everything is fine.
---
In the hallway, Buck tells himself it’s just a bad day. That’s all it is, something temporary that makes everything feel slightly off-kilter even when nothing has actually changed. People are busy, people are tired, people are distracted, and it happens sometimes without meaning anything deeper than that.
It will pass, he thinks. It has to pass, because there isn’t really another option that makes sense to sit with for too long. He adjusts the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder and keeps walking, forcing his attention forward instead of letting it linger anywhere behind him.
Behind him, the station keeps moving the same way it always does, steady and uninterrupted. It doesn’t pause or shift or acknowledge anything out of place, and it doesn’t need to. It just continues, like nothing ever stopped long enough to be noticed in the first place.
---
Buck doesn’t notice he’s stopped moving until his phone starts ringing. Maddie’s name flashes across the screen, bright and immediate in a way that feels too clean compared to everything already crowded in his head. He hesitates for only a second before answering, forcing a bit of brightness into his voice as he says, “Hey. What’s up?”
There’s a brief pause before Maddie responds, softer than him. “Hey. You okay? You sound… busy.” Buck shifts his weight back against the lockers and looks down the hallway without really focusing on anything, like he can find the right answer somewhere in the space in front of him. “I’m good,” he says quickly. “Just at work.” A small, unconvinced hum comes through the line, and then she asks how the station is.
He lets his eyes drift again, as if the answer is something he can describe just by thinking about it clearly enough. “It’s fine,” he says. “Same as always. You know—chaos. Chimney yelling. Hen pretending she’s not judging us.” Maddie laughs softly, and he mirrors it a moment later, a beat too slow and a little too forced. The silence that follows stretches longer than the laugh, and something in his posture shifts without him meaning it.
“You’ve been kind of quiet lately,” Maddie says carefully, and Buck straightens almost instantly. “I haven’t,” he answers too fast, sharper than he intends, and the silence that follows feels heavier than anything either of them has said.
When she speaks again, it’s gentler, but it lands closer than he wants it to. He swallows, insists he’s fine, lets her ask again if something is wrong, and almost says something honest before he stops himself. Instead, he calls it tiredness, says it’s nothing, and lets the conversation end the way it has to, even though he doesn’t move right away after.
He keeps the phone near his ear for a moment longer, like holding it there might soften what just happened. When he finally lowers it, he unlocks the screen again without thinking, because silence suddenly feels worse than anything waiting on the other side of it.
---
The station is already moving when Buck walks back in, and he notices it immediately. Not the noise or the people themselves, but the direction of everything, like the entire place is flowing in patterns that don’t naturally include him anymore. It feels less like chaos now and more like something organized around motion he isn’t quite part of.
Hen is at the counter, Chimney talking over her, Bobby focused on something up at the board. Eddie is there too, and Ravi is near the lockers again, all of them existing in their own lanes of attention. Buck steps in anyway and says, “Hey. You guys need anything?” but no one really responds right away because the conversation doesn’t pause long enough to catch him.
He lingers half a beat before moving closer, catching on something small near the counter. There’s an empty cup by Hen, and without really thinking, he picks it up and tosses it into the sink. “Trash is full,” he adds casually. “I can take it out after—” but Bobby only hums in acknowledgment without looking up, like it’s already been accounted for rather than assigned.
Buck nods once and mutters, “Cool,” then drifts toward the supply closet because it feels like the next obvious step. Inside, he starts restocking without being told, lining up gloves, gauze, and tape with a precision that isn’t necessary but feels grounding. It isn’t until Chimney appears in the doorway that he realizes how long he’s been in there.
“Did we ask you to do inventory?” Chim asks, half-curious, half-distracted. Buck looks up too quickly and shakes his head. “No, just figured it was low,” he says, and Chim hesitates for a second before shrugging and leaving with a simple “Cool, thanks.”
Buck stays there a moment after the door empties again, hands still resting near the shelves he’s been organizing. Then he keeps going anyway, because stopping would make the quiet settle back in too clearly.
---
Later, Eddie passes the doorway, and Buck notices him immediately. He reacts without thinking, like the moment itself decides his words before he does.
“Hey,” he says quickly. “You want me to check the truck tires too? I’m already—” but he doesn’t get to finish before Eddie looks over at him briefly.
“Mm,” Eddie replies, not stopping, not really slowing down. Then, as he keeps walking, he adds, “Sure.”
That’s all it is. No real pause, no shift in attention, just a response that fits into motion rather than conversation.
Not unkind, not sharp—just detached in a way Buck can’t quite catch hold of. Like the moment exists beside him instead of with him.
Buck nods anyway. “Cool,” he says quietly, even though Eddie is already gone down the hall.
---
Ravi sees it. All of it, more clearly than he probably should. The way Buck keeps moving even when no one is asking him to, like stopping would create something he doesn’t know how to handle.
He notices how Buck fills every quiet gap with a task, turning silence into motion as if usefulness can keep something else from catching up. There’s also the way he waits for responses that never quite arrive, like he’s still trying to connect to a rhythm that isn’t there anymore.
Ravi opens his mouth once as if he might say something, then closes it again before any words form. He doesn’t know what this is yet, or whether he has any right to step into it.
So he stays quiet and watches instead.
And Buck keeps working like being useful will eventually turn back into being seen.
---
Buck tells them he’s heading out before he actually feels ready to leave, like the decision is automatic rather than intentional. It’s become a habit more than a choice, the same way a lot of things have lately.
He pulls his bag from the locker, checks it twice even though he already knows what’s inside, and slings it over his shoulder. Behind him, the station keeps moving in its usual rhythm—steady, normal, uninterrupted by him leaving.
No one stops him, and no one really looks up in a way that suggests anything needs to change. He says, “Heading out,” casually enough that it passes without question.
A few nods come his way, along with a distracted “yeah” and a half-wave from Chimney that doesn’t break his focus. Buck waits just a moment longer than necessary, as if something else might follow, but it doesn’t.
“See you,” he adds anyway, though it feels like the words don’t quite land where he is anymore. Then he turns and leaves, letting the station continue without him.
---
Outside, the air is colder than he expects, or maybe it only feels that way because everything else has gone quiet. The change hits differently after the station, like the world outside has less to say and more empty space to notice.
The drive home happens on its own, almost without thought. Traffic lights, turns, and familiar routes blur together through muscle memory while his hands stay tighter on the wheel than they need to.
At one point, he finds himself stopped at a red light just watching the reflection of headlights ripple across his windshield. He isn’t thinking about anything specific, just sitting with the awareness of how much space there is around him.
Too much of it, in a way that feels harder to ignore the longer it stretches.
---
His loft is exactly how he left it, and that’s the problem. Nothing has shifted in a way that suggests time passed or that anything meaningful happened in his absence. Buck shuts the door behind him and stands there for a moment, letting the silence meet him properly.
No sound follows. No voices carry from another room, no background life spilling in from anywhere else. Just stillness, too clean and too complete, like the space has been waiting without needing him in it.
He drops his bag by the couch but doesn’t move right away, because moving feels like deciding which part of the silence he has to deal with first. Eventually he kicks off his shoes and drifts into the kitchen, where everything is just as quiet as before.
He opens the fridge and finds nothing he wants, then closes it again, the sound feeling louder than it should. A small exhale leaves him as he stands there, and he says “okay” just to fill the space, even though nothing answers.
Without really planning it, he opens a cabinet and pulls out flour and sugar, something about the motion already making more sense than anything else. Baking is structure—steps, measurements, something that doesn’t leave room for too much thinking. He starts anyway, not carefully, just steadily, letting his hands do what they know how to do.
For a while it works. The bowl fills, the spoon scrapes, and the oven hums as it preheats, giving the room something that almost feels like company. But even that fades as he leans against the counter, and the silence slowly finds its way back in, patient and unchanged.
---
When the oven goes off, he moves quickly to put everything in, but still too carefully. Each motion is deliberate in a way that feels heavier than it should, like getting it wrong would mean more than just ruining the food.
While it bakes, he cleans because he needs something for his hands to do. The counter gets wiped down, the sink rinsed, and the spatula washed even though he knows he’ll use it again soon anyway.
He drifts through the kitchen checking cabinets that don’t need checking, moving from one small task to the next without really deciding on any of them. It feels less like cleaning and more like trying to stay ahead of something that isn’t physically there.
The silence follows him as he moves, not loud or sharp, but steady in a way that’s harder to ignore. It doesn’t press in or demand attention—it just stays there, present in every space he crosses.
---
When the timer goes off, he almost doesn’t hear it at first. He’s in the living room now, wiping down a surface that didn’t really need it, more out of habit than necessity. The sound cuts through the quiet a second time, and he pauses, listening properly before finally turning back.
The food is fine—probably. He doesn’t spend much time deciding whether it actually is, and he doesn’t really taste it when he eats it anyway. It’s more about finishing than enjoying, something to move through rather than experience.
He eats because it’s another step in a sequence that needs to be completed. Another thing checked off, another small action that keeps him from standing still too long. When it’s done, there’s nothing that follows it except the same quiet again.
---
His phone sits on the counter the entire time, untouched but faintly glowing whenever the light shifts across the room. No notifications appear, no calls break through, and no messages change the quiet that has settled around it.
He still checks it anyway, almost without meaning to, like the motion has become something automatic rather than intentional. Once, then again, each glance happening a little too quickly to feel fully conscious.
The third time, he stops himself before his thumb can move. The pause lingers just long enough for the habit to register before he lets it go.
Because checking again won’t change anything that isn’t already there.
---
At some point, he sits down without really remembering choosing to. The silence is still there with him, steady and unchanged, like it has been waiting in the exact same shape for longer than he has been aware of it.
Buck stares at the empty space across from him, the place where someone should be sitting, where someone usually is. His thumb drags once along the edge of the table, slow and absent, but nothing answers it—no message, no call, no small interruption that would break the quiet.
No “hey, you okay,” no “good job today,” no “see you tomorrow.” Just a collection of absences that don’t form anything specific except the awareness that nothing is coming. He swallows and lets out a quiet, “Right,” like the word is supposed to organize the moment into something understandable.
Then he leans back in his chair and lets the silence stay.
---
He doesn’t remember falling asleep.
One moment he’s there on the couch, lights low, phone resting face down beside him, the room still and unremarkable. The next, he’s somewhere else entirely, and the shift doesn’t feel like sleep so much as dropping through something he didn’t realize he was holding together.
It starts with sound that doesn’t belong to anything specific. Not voices, not alarms, just a distant pressure in his ears, like everything is underwater and too far away to reach properly. Then comes heat—fast, close, pressing in from all sides.
Firelight flickers across metal walls, and the truck is there before he can properly see it, already part of him in a way his mind doesn’t get a chance to question. His chest tightens immediately as the space closes around him, too narrow to fully understand, and when he tries to move, he realizes he already is—crawling, scrambling, trying to push forward through ground that refuses to give him any distance at all.
Voices bleed in above him, blurred and directionless, not belonging to anyone he can place. His name is somewhere in it, or something like it, repeated in a way that never settles into meaning. The truck shifts overhead, metal groaning as if the weight above it is reconsidering its position, and then the sound changes entirely.
The fire is gone. The courtroom replaces it in pieces, white noise turning into overlapping voices that aren’t speaking to him, only about him. Words like responsibility and negligence float through the air without context, stacking on top of each other until they stop feeling like language at all.
Then the light shifts again.
Fluorescent. Harsh. Too clean.
He is sitting in a chair that isn’t secured, wobbling slightly under him as every gaze in the room settles in his direction. Eddie is there. Bobby. Hen. Chim. All of them watching without speaking, not angry, not kind—just present in a way that feels like judgment without motion.
Buck tries to speak, but nothing comes out. His throat refuses to cooperate, and whatever sound tries to form behind his teeth never makes it into the room. Someone laughs, distant and indistinct, and the chair shifts again beneath him.
He’s under the truck again. Then back in the room. Then neither place fully holds him.
Heat returns. The metal bends closer. And when he hears his name again—“Buckley”—it doesn’t come from one person. It comes from all of them at once, flattened into a single voice that doesn’t sound angry, just decided.
Like something already finished speaking about him.
The space collapses inward.
Fire becomes silence. Silence becomes fire. And he can’t tell which one he’s supposed to survive.
When he hits tile again, he wakes.
---
Buck jerks upright on the couch, breath coming too fast, like his body is still trying to escape something it never fully left. His hands are shaking before he can even register it, and the loft around him is dark and still, completely unchanged.
Nothing is burning. Nothing is collapsing. Nothing is speaking.
Just him.
He presses a hand to his chest like he can slow the rhythm there by force, trying to regulate something that won’t settle on command. In and out. In and out. It takes longer than it should, not because anything is getting worse, but because his body hasn’t fully accepted that it’s over.
He looks around the room anyway, as if something might confirm a difference he can trust. It doesn’t. The silence holds steady, complete and unbroken, and for a moment that feels heavier than anything else.
Buck leans back again, eyes open but unfocused, and breathes out a quiet “okay” into the empty space. Not reassurance. Just acknowledgment that he’s here.
After a while, his hands stop shaking, not because anything has improved, but because they eventually run out of energy to keep doing it. He sits forward again, checks his phone—no messages, no calls, nothing waiting for him on the other side of the screen.
Then he sets it down, exhales once, and lies back like sleep is something he can eventually negotiate his way back into.
And somewhere in the quiet, it settles in without urgency or drama: nothing in the room would change if he stopped speaking altogether.