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"Sorry, 'thena."
Athena settles herself into the never-quite-comfortable chair by the hospital bed, arranging herself into something like ease with quiet, practiced motions.
"What are you apologizing for?" she asks, not gentle, not unkind.
Buck furrows his brows a little at her, like he knows she's asking a trick question and is pouting at her for making him figure it out himself. It makes Athena want to smile, just a little, the way that Buck tends to do.
"...you're here," he says, testing the waters.
Athena raises an eyebrow. "was I not supposed to come, when the hospital called?"
A little wince, and Athena quietly, methodically registers and files that twist of his lips as sheepish, not pained. "Yeah-- well, no-- I mean--" Buck flounders, looks at her pleadingly. Athena just sits back, waits for him to tie his own lifeline. Eventually, he sighs. "Sorry that they called, I guess."
"I was a little surprised," Athena admits. She remembers hearing who the phone call was from, the little fission of fear. She had thought, for a moment, of Harry, of May. It had not occurred to her, until they said his name, that she should've also been worried about Buck. "I would've thought that phone call would've gone to Maddie," the barest sliver of an amused silence. "or Eddie."
A groan that is all teenager. Athena shakes her head a little, and shifts forward in her seat to move closer to Buck. It's rare, that he's quiet for this long. It's rarer that she is the one that he chooses to be quiet with. The last time was back when he was going through withdrawals. the time before that--
Well. She doesn't enjoy thinking about the time before that.
Still, with these precedents in mind, it is perhaps not as much of a surprise as it otherwise might've been when Buck eventually says: "I never bothered to change it, after Bobby." Athena stays silent, waits. He continues: "It was Bobby first, you know? And then you, because-- well, if Bobby wasn't picking up, you could probably tell him first. Then Mads, then Eddie, because he complained about not being on the list at all." A little chuckle. "Like he wouldn't be on the scene already, nine times out of ten."
His words run together a little, loose with the well-worn exhaustion of waking up in a hospital room, the familiar heaviness of anesthetic. Athena listens to the tenor of his words and hears nervousness at the edges, the little tilts of a Pennsylvanian accent and, more subtle, the softened edges at the end of his words that reminds her a little of Bobby. It's the kind of comparison that makes it hard to talk to him, sometimes. The only thing harder would be never talking to him at all.
"And you didn't change it, afterwards." She says, gently tugging their conversation back into place.
Buck bites his lip. His eyes flicker to her, flicker back. "I didn't want to," he says, simple. And it is, in many ways.
(Bobby's number is still first in her speed-dial. a pointless sentiment. She fights the urge to call every so often, nevertheless.)
So Athena does not tell him to stop, because to say that she is never a hypocrite is a lie but there is something to Buck that makes it difficult for her to justify the differences between them in quite the same way. Not after she held his hand. Not after he wrapped his arms around her in a sterile hallway.
Instead: "Is it okay, then, that it's me next? If the reason for that..." is not here anymore?
A few months ago, the silence between them would've been stricken. Now, there is a kind of quietude in it. A meditativeness that she would not have anticipated becoming integral to their relationship. Still, it is. And Buck looks at the ceiling, stained and tiled and familiar to them both, before slowly turning his eyes to her.
"Yeah," Buck says, simply. "I trust you, Athena."
And it is not many words but there's a lot to it, nevertheless. It is not a small thing, Athena knows, to be trusted by Buck.
He asks: "But are-- are you okay with it? I know you're not-- it's not--"
She knows what he means. rushing to Buck's bedside is not rushing to Harry's bedside, or May's. It is neither the same as rushing to someone like Hen. There is a quality to it all it's own, not visceral terror but the kind of careful steadiness that expects to be holding somebody else up. A still gentleness that is not quite in balance when there is an empty space between them.
He is not here anymore, and so there is no longer a reason for her to put a hand on Buck's shoulder and inform him of who he needs to come back for.
Still. Still.
She holds out a hand, and his smile is miles away and exactly like the young man who she had been infuriated by and then startled into respecting all those years ago. He puts his hand in her's. If there is nobody between them to balance the weight, then they will just have to learn how to balance each other, instead.
"I'll be here, Buckaroo," she says, the same way she did for conspiratorial surprise parties and weekend dinners and every time he has called, just for him. "If you need me, I'll be here."
In that startling, disarming, canny way of his, Buck smiles at her: "I think we'll always need each other, 'thena."
And the truth of it sits gently between them, somewhere between the first number of her speed-dial and the first line of his emergency contacts.