Chapter Text
It starts small in the beginning – a broken head from an Iron Man action figure Theo ‘’accidentally’’ jammed in Eddie’s tires so he couldn’t leave Buck’s house one particular weekend which they spent together like a family, having a pool party in the backyard – eating everything in their sight and not thinking about proper sugar consumption for a four year old child.
You know, one of those times when we were still pretending that we weren’t a real family but we were one. Who’s to say what real family is nowadays, right?
Well, back then let’s just say that dad and Buck were particularly weird about each other. Not that now they aren’t weird, but like those were hellscape levels of weirdness.
Anyway.
When Christopher was younger and still in those years where adults would talk in front of him freely without a filter – not that the filter was necessary, they were just those conversations when adults would assume their kids won’t notice the gravity of the theme itself because they were preoccupied with building blocks or stuffing their faces with ice cream.
As Chris was one of those kids that never made any fuss around kids or adults and usually liked spending quiet time at the adult table people talked around him not worrying what he might take out of everything.
And he used that to absorb everything.
And don’t get him wrong, he mostly filtered information by himself. He really didn’t care who brought what to a potluck or whether or not someone was cheating on someone else from the B shift. The thing he paid the most attention at were situations and conversations happening during Sunday lunches with Abuela and Pepa.
Dad was particularly chatty with them. It was like a switch turned on every time Abuelita and Pepa walked over our threshold and it would activate his inner chismosa.
One of those particular moments Chris still remembers to this day was when he was barely nine years old. His head might’ve been deep into his plate slurping and chewing whatever Pepa and Abuela made that day when they suddenly asked about Buck.
Buck was always the one topic Christopher never wanted to miss out on. He wanted to know everything about Buck and after their ‘’little’’ tsunami adventure Chris thought that it was one of the experiences he couldn’t fully share with his dad. Not that he lied about it or anything. It was just that Buck was there for him, he saved him and despite all the odds both of them ended up alive that day.
In school they laughed at Chris when he said that his best friend was twenty something year old firefighter who is also his dad’s … well, whatever he is … because adults don’t consider children their best friends.
Christopher got into a fight that day.
The teachers assumed that somebody bullied him because of his CP.
Eddie was pissed because his kid doesn’t get into fights that easily and believed his son when he said that it was just about not giving a bully his homework to copy.
It was the easiest lie he had come up with because he knew that if he said that he was bullied because of anything else Eddie would storm that school down.
We all remember the unfortunate skateboard incident, right?
And Christopher didn’t want to tell it was about Buck because everything about Buck was his, and his dad’s – but mostly his, because it was his Buck.
So, that Sunday afternoon when Pepa and Abuela asked why Buck hasn’t joined them for lunch as they planned Christopher tried as hard as he could to slow down the slurping and hear what they were talking about.
‘’His parents are in town, and there was … an incident,’’ Eddie says quietly taking a deep breath.
Isabel and Pepa look at each other their eyebrows furrowed. ‘’Is he okay? You know, we are maybe old but strong enough to fight them,’’ Pepa says.
‘’Everything for our Evancito,’’ Isabel adds.
Eddie’s lips lift into a small smile. ‘’Yeah, I know. I’d be the first in line with you guys. They are just,’’ Eddie sighs again and looks at the ceiling.
Christopher knows that look, it’s a look his dad does when he wants to stop the tears from falling.
‘’You know, he always says that they aren’t bad people – they are just bad parents – but I’m not so sure about it.’’
‘’What happened nieto?’’ Pepa says covering Eddie’s hand with her own.
‘’You know how Maddie is pregnant?’’ He asks and both of them nod. ‘’Well, they came over to visit Maddie before the baby comes and they made this theatrical thing at the diner and gifted her a baby box.’’
‘’A baby box?’’ Pepa asks. ‘’You mean like a box with all her things when she was a baby?’’
‘’Yeah, something like that. And, everything was fine. They went through everything in the box remembering the good old days, when…’’ Eddie suddenly chokes and Christopher busies himself with wiping his mouth with a paper towel and reaching for the juice trying to stay in character as ‘not actively listening’ when he’s doing everything in his power to hear what comes next out of his dad’s mouth.
‘’He asked when he’s going to get his,’’ Eddie says choking on tears again and takes a sip of his water when Pepa and Isabel gasp.
‘’No,’’ they say in unison. Eddie nods.
‘’Yeah, apparently no baby box for Buck.’’
‘’But, how? Why? How are they so horrible?’’ Isabel asks.
‘’I have no clue. And I’m not saying that I’m the perfect father but that’s not just sad, it’s devastating. And…’’
‘’And?’’ Isabel urges him wiping a tear that fell over her nephew’s cheek.
Eddie lowers his voice and glances at Christopher who’s still pretending to eat while looking into the bowl, humming something to himself – succeeding in deceiving his father.
‘’They had another boy before Buck, his name was Daniel. He had juvenile leukaemia and they had Buck just for stem cell transplant. But the boy died and Buck reminded them of Daniel so much, so they…’’ Eddie stops again and takes another sip of his water. ‘’They moved houses, they erased Daniel from everything. They forbid Maddie to ever tell Buck about Daniel…’’
He suddenly stops unable to continue and stands up from the table, tears rolling freely from his face. Isabel and Pepa glance over at Christopher who is still fooling everyone that he’s not paying attention – this time wiping his nose with his sleeve as they join Eddie in the kitchen.
The rest of the conversation Christopher hears in pieces.
… he has nothing …
Not even a favourite plushie or his drawings…
…they didn’t save anything…
…they completely erased him, like he never existed…
I’m his best friend and even I have kept things about our friendship over the years and they are his parents…
… yes, he’s my friend tia…
He loves Christopher like he’s his own and honestly after everything he even might be…
…few months ago he showed me a drawer at his place where he keeps everything Christopher ever gave him, even a dirty piece of napkin from that fancy ice cream place they went once…
I remember that day like it was yesterday, not just the moments where I tried to deceive them that I wasn’t listening but the fact that someone… Actually, scratch that – that his actual parents tried to erase their own son like that was devastating. I never heard the rest of the conversation because I remembered that Denny was waiting for me to jump online for a game but that was the time I decided to make my own Buck box and every time Buck got sad I’d give him something from it.
So, when Theo dropped into our lives unexpectedly with both of his parents dead and no immediate family, I knew what I had to do.
I know Buck was going to make him a baby box but I could do something even better, a bro box.
Is that a thing?
A baby bro box?
Not that Theo was my brother at that point but you know, there was always a sentiment about it.
So yes, it all started small. The torn off Iron Man figurine head at first and the rest of the box was at first as traumatizing as it was funny as hell. Chris used to his advantage the fact that Theo was scared to death by vacuums and that for some reason …
… Well, the reason was that me and Buck wanted to mess with dad one day and bought one of those smart vacuum robots but that’s a story for another time …
So, Chris used the empty vacuum box to store Theo’s trinkets.
Over the years the vacuum box would be transferred between houses.
It survived two floodings, one was Theo’s fault and still to this day it was a complete mystery of how he actually did it – and one was the consequence of very unfortunate events of natural disasters that knew to nail down the city of Los Angeles every once in a while.
It survived the raccoon infestation they had in their new – well, their joint Buckley-Diaz house – and a wrestling match with a very nasty crow that eyed the shiny army figurines Chris had on his nightstand waiting to be put in the box.
Chris and Chimney had a bone to pick with crows, that’s for sure.
But the box lived through everything.
At this point Christopher was sure that the cursed vacuum box was made to live through an eventual apocalypse.
And the contents of it were priceless, not just for Theo but for their entire family. And every time he opened it to add more things into it he couldn’t help but smile at all the memories.
***
It was barely two weeks after Buck got Theo home. At the time he was still thinking about fostering Theo until eventually other family members would reach out for him. He tried not to be attached to the boy as much as he wanted to even though he was failing spectacularly.
It was also the time where the dumbass and the dumbasser didn’t realize that the entire time they were already raising a family. It was a confusing time, not for me – and certainly not for Theo – but for dad and Buck it was a time of discovery.
But we’ll get to that later.
It was a lovely Sunday afternoon and Buck and Eddie decided to bring the boys to one of those summer park performances with giant floating soap bubbles, makeshift bubble parties and kids theatre. Christopher was at sixteen probably a bit too old for those things but he didn’t mind.
He liked Theo, and he loved spending time with Buck, Eddie and Theo.
But adults can be complete idiots most of the time so Chris took upon himself to take Theo for a popsicle while Buck and Eddie were arguing with someone over a disabled parking spot because they didn’t see Christopher using his walker.
Christopher was used to it at this point, and he knew that Buck and Eddie had everything under control – what he didn’t want was Theo to either make a scene because they took too long before the park activities begun or to bite that guy’s ankle.
So, he steered Theo at the nearby popsicle stand and bought them one strawberry and one lemon.
The funny thing is, I think that was the first pocket money I actually earned. You know, not the allowance my dad gave me but real money earned by helping Pepa scan all Abuelita’s old recipes. The recipe book was so frail that she couldn’t read it because it was all messed up from stains.
So, I scanned it – did a little magic with whitening the right places and Abuelita’s manuscript was revealed. I never asked her for that money; she playfully hit me on the head and told me that this kind of skill should be paid properly.
So, hence the first earned pocket money.
And the popsicle.
And the memory around it.
But, most importantly – those freshly transcribed Abuelita’s recipes were Buck’s greatest possession which Pepa gave him as a wedding gift.
But, on to the memory itself…
In his periphery Christopher could see Buck standing between Eddie and the man still arguing so he steered Theo to a nearby picnic table. Theo enjoyed his strawberry popsicle eyes glued to the thing like he was trying to melt it with his eyes.
‘’Good?’’ Chris asks nudging Theo with his knee.
Theo looks at him with wide eyes and strawberry concoction around his mouth – there was even a bit on his forehead – and asks nonchalantly with his small legs dangling over the edge of the bench.
‘’Chris, are you my brother now?’’
And Chris felt his heart lurch into his belly. He never talked with Buck or Eddie how he should handle Theo’s questions about his family and what happened to them, but this one question in particular he never expected.
He was expecting bonding over dead parents talk, sure, but not this.
The day Eddie told Christopher that Buck would be fostering his biological son Christopher wanted to drive himself over to finally meet his little Buck. He didn’t know how to drive at the time but there was nothing that could stop him from it.
Because he didn’t have just his Buck now, he had a Buck in miniature. A buckling, if you will.
So, when Theo asked about the brother thing it caught Chris by surprise.
He cleared his throat.
‘’Do you want me to be?’’ He asked carefully. Theo was already nodding vigorously, a bit of sticky strawberry juice dripping from his chin.
Chris used a free napkin to wipe it off and Theo giggled. Chris tried not to cry in front of a toddler so instead he stood up and took a stray stick from the top of the picnic table and placed it on both of Theo’s small shoulders like he was crowning a knight.
‘’Here ye! Here ye,’’ Chris declares while Theo giggles. ‘’I now pronounce you my baby brother. May your future hold a lot of boogers and crashes in Mario Kart.’’
Theo licks the rest of his popsicle and puts the wrapper of the popsicle in a small plastic bag Chris always had in his pocket because he hated to leave trash around. Both Buck and Eddie would forget about it and then would hold everything in their hands and bicker until they eventually find a trash can.
Somehow, not even fully two weeks with them Theo knew what it was for and why Chris kept it.
Chris wanted to cry when Theo carefully folded the bag then took the stick out of Chris’s hand. Chris knew where he was going with this so he bowed his head and let Theo knight him with brotherly wishes for the years to come.
Both the popsicle wrapper and the stick found their way into Theo’s baby box.
***
In the years to come Chris would bet his right hand that the only thing that calmed Theo down in the mornings enough for him to actually eat a proper meal and not send Buck and Eddie into a complete spiral before 6am were sticky notes.
Buck would say that Chris just had magic touch or spiritual connection with Theo and that’s why Theo always behaved himself but Chris knew better – hey, he was a kid not that long ago.
So, sticky notes. The fluorescent ones in particular and those black shimmery markers – give it to the boy and make him draw at least five things he dreamt last night and Theo would eat with his left hand and draw with the other one.
God bless being ambidextrous with ADHD.
Theo’s dreams were a jungle full of most amazing things Christopher ever heard of. He was so amazed by one of Theo’s ideas that he considered selling it to an author or Hollywood executive to make it into a children’s show.
Dad, in fact did not like that. HA! But it was funny as hell. Also, I still think several of those ideas would do better than anything that was on TV these days.
And even as uncoordinated as a four-year-old Theo’s scribbles were they always meant something more under the surface level.
A dragon wearing a 118-helmet helping freighters in a volcano.
Buck earned second degree burns on his forearm when rescue went bad.
A group of cats at school where one of them was a dog in disguise. The cats adopted him because his dog class didn’t want him because he had spots all over his body – looking completely different than the rest of them.
Okay, that was sad as hell from this perspective.
A cake of a life size alligator with a giant pink bow and fireworks coming out from his mouth.
Buck made a mistake of commenting that he could make that. Which made dad look at him in disbelief why would he say something like that in front of a four-year-old. Then he spent another six months googling how to actually make the cake.
Theo did eventually get his alligator cake, but it was neither life size nor had fireworks. It was Theo sized – which in Theo’s eyes was life size and had sparklers jammed into its mouth.
So, a bunch of said scribbles were laid like a confetti in the baby box. All of Theo’s dreams – both the good and the bad were used as a nest for other trinkets.
There were bad dreams too and Chris knew that sometimes it was easier to draw something until you’re ready to talk about it. It was the first thing he learnt after Shannon died and the whole thing with the tsunami. So, he used his trauma toddler experience with Theo in the mornings.
It would take a while for Buck and Eddie to catch what Chris was actually doing. When they finally figured it out they spent an embarrassingly long time in a group hug in front of his high school friends on his seventeenth birthday party.
***
Christopher had a phone like all the other kids from a very young age. It was both a blessing and a curse for him to have one growing up in the midst of a smart phone revolution but what Chris loved more than anything were those little Polaroid cameras which he got for his fourteenth birthday.
He was in El Paso at the time and Buck shipped it to him with so many extra polaroid sheets so he could capture everything he laid his eyes on.
And at first he did that, but then slowly – while still in Texas – he started to capture small moments in which he missed Buck and Eddie so much that he wanted to shake Eddie to get over whatever emotional constipation was holding him from coming to get him out of Texas.
Moments and things he knew Buck and Eddie would appreciate.
A rare lilac with five petals instead of four.
A funny looking salamander.
The shimmer of the lake which for some reason reminded him of Shannon too.
After he went back to LA and his little family was back to normal Chris started taking photos of the most hilarious things the three of them had gotten into.
Well, after a while the four of them.
A photo of Theo standing on Buck’s kitchen counter with his hands high up in the air and a spatula with dripping pancake batter – Buck freezed with his hands in the air trying to get to Theo.
A picture of sleeping Eddie on the couch with drawn moustache under his nose.
A picture of Theo sleeping in Chris’s bed, starfished while firmly holding his old hug-a-world plushie.
A picture of Chris holding a gold medal Theo gave him after Chris was accepted into all science internships a year before going off to college.
A picture of daisies and forget me nots in a vase which Buck bought Eddie for their first date.
Chris even took some of the stems and pressed them so he could eventually make something with them for their wedding gift.
A picture of Chris and Hen smiling into the polaroid camera, a little off centre because they were laughing with their whole bodies. Buck just found out that he was fully adopting Theo and everyone was emotional.
A picture of Buck, eyes red rimmed and hands shaking while signing the adoption papers with Eddie standing behind him and a firm hand on his shoulder.
But also, a ton of pictures of Theo holding frogs and trying to kiss them.
Theo chasing chickens in their neighbour’s garden.
Theo all muddy because he decided to jump up and down after the greatest rainfall LA had experienced in the past decade and made a mud pool in their backyard.
Theo in a plastic tub mostly naked surrounded with tons of cheese puffs, laughing hysterically with Denny, Jee and Mara while Harry was on the sides horrified expression on his face.
That was a good memory. It was the first and the last time Harry trusted all other 118 adults that he could take care of the demon spawns by himself. He’s still traumatized by it, we torture him with it at least once a year.
There were also a lot of closeups of Chris’s face – either an eye or a nose, whether he was sleeping or not – which most definitely Theo took while Chris was not paying attention.
Some of them were duplicates so Chris saved most of them for himself too.
He really loved his little brother.
Even when he was a complete menace.
Especially when he IS a complete menace. That didn’t change after all these years.
***
One of the most treasured possessions Chris had in his Theo box was a drawing that Chris was convinced was the reason why the dumbass and the dumbasser finally got together.
It was a little over a year after Buck brought in Theo and a few days after Theo’s actual birthday with the alligator cake when Theo returned from school with his art assignment.
They were tasked to draw what they were grateful for in their lives and what they would like to do in the future.
They really do ask children anything at that age, damn? They couldn’t ask for a dragon drawing or something? Not that I’m not grateful – because, you know Buck and dad got together – but it’s still really weird.
Anyway, that was the first time Theo brought in the drawing into the house – because apparently, he’d been drawing the exact same thing for the better part of the past year – he just never brought it home.
The drawing had a four-year-old stick figures of Buck, Eddie, Chris and Theo next to a house with a pool and an orange tree. There were four stars in the sky with faces on them – and even for four-year-old ‘s art skills it was astounding how the stars and the sun actually represented the people in them.
Or, they were meant to.
One of them was clearly Connor, the other one Kameron.
The third one clenched Chris’s heart so much that he wanted to scream – not from anger, but from uncontained joy.
Because the star had blue eyes – like his – and wavy hair. It was supposed to represent Shannon. Chris once showed Theo Shannon’s picture and every time Theo couldn’t sleep, he’d snuggle next to Chris with framed pictures of Connor, Kameron and Shannon until they drifted off.
The fourth one had Abuela’s face on it and Theo really nailed her little crows’ feet around the eyes and her soft smile. Abuela would’ve loved Theo with all her heart.
The face gracing the shape of the sun was the thing that undid Buck – it was Bobby’s face, or at least resembling Bobby because it had a firefighter helmet on top of the round shape with the letter C on it.
Captain.
Underneath their stick figures in a horrible four-year-old uncoordinated, handwriting wrote – dad (Buck, blue eyes and heart shaped birthmark on the round head), dad (brown eyes with a moustache and a beauty mark underneath the eye), brother (Chris, with his red crutches, curly hair and glasses) and Theo – the smallest stick figure of them all, holding hands with Christopher and surrounded by bright yellow crayon.
We all cried that afternoon that Theo thought he did something wrong so he started crying with us and kissed our cheeks to make us feel better.
We started laughing like idiots after a while. We were a complete mess. Also, Buck and dad kinda kissed each other that night but they can never know that I walked in on them in the kitchen.
I needed to burn my retinas after seeing – that – but thankfully they never noticed me because they were – preoccupied.
Three days later they went on their first date, which – huh? They were raising a kid for almost a decade at that point and another one for a year. But you know, never argue with the dumbass and the dumbasser.
They still deny that the drawing was the thing that got them together. Me and Theo know better.
***
The last thing from those early years in the box were a pair of socks – Chris had one pair in his memory box too.
But the socks were mismatched, not just in design but in size too.
One was teenage sized with a Superman logo on them and one toddler sized with Spiderman logo. Buck bought them mostly as a joke very early on so the boys could match while having sleepovers but Theo had a better idea.
He always has better ideas.
He decided that they should exchange one of their socks, so Theo could wear Superman one and Spiderman one at the same time – Chris the same. Which was fairly easy for Theo to do because he was tiny, but it was not an easy task for Christopher to wear a toddler sized sock.
So, Theo got another solution to the problem.
Because, of course he did.
They went to build-a-bear one day and Theo decided he wanted to make a joint bear with Christoper – with firefighter turnouts and everything. He made Eddie sew in the moustache on the teddy, a heart shaped birthmark and undereye beauty mark so the teddy could look as close to Buck and Eddie as possible.
The bear would always sleep with them during sleepovers and the small Spiderman sock which Chris could never get on lived permanently on teddy’s foot.
Over the years both the bear and the socks worn out so much that they needed to go – Theo also grew up and gradually forgot about them but Chris kept them safe in both of their memory boxes.