Chapter Text
1.
Everyone thought that Evan didn’t care about school, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
He didn’t like school. He didn’t like the mean comments that the other kids would say about him, he didn’t like sitting by himself during recess, and he definitely didn’t like getting into trouble almost every day for not listening properly. He got into enough of that at home.
His stomach would twist and his eyes would burn each and every time a teacher grew agitated with him, or he spelt a word wrong, or attempted a joke that didn’t land well with his classmates.
He didn’t like school because he cared. Too much.
Otherwise, he actually liked learning. He just wasn’t very good at it. He was aware even at the ripe age of eight, that he wasn’t smart. Everyone thought so, the other kids would laugh, and his Mom was exhausted with him, and his teachers frustrated. So, he wasn’t good at school, though that was never from a lack of interest in learning.
He wanted to do well. So well that when his first science fair came up in third grade, he resolved to build the best project in his whole class, to show everyone that he could be good if he tried really hard.
And it was hard. The hardest part was getting his parents to go out and get all of the supplies he needed, the list growing longer as his ideas grew wild with his own excitement, but the rest was difficult too. The remembering, the planning, and staying on track by himself.
He knew from the start that he wanted to either do something related to space, or animals, but after a lesson on biodiversity he inevitably decided that that was what he wanted to focus on.
So for two weeks straight he spent all of his spare time obsessing over different ecosystems and animals, reading books from the library about the rainforests during recess, and scribbling notes down into notebooks with a manic fascination. He stayed up all night alone in his room cutting and glueing and colouring a display of his favourite animals set up in their natural habitats. Using pompoms for fur, and shiny candy wrappers for scales, and threading string for whiskers and spindly legs. He took extra care when writing the little fact cards to spell everything right, and to keep his handwriting legible since the girl who sat next to him in class always said it looked too ugly, and his teacher always had to ask him for clarification on what stuff said.
Needless to say, he was thoroughly exhausted by the morning of the science fair. But excitement had him waking up early to make double sure that it was all perfect, and in doing so he quickly lost track of time. Only his Mom yelling that he better be dressed if he wanted to make the bus was what snapped him into action.
He scrambled for clothes, got toothpaste all down his shirt, and ran downstairs with his prized project clutched tightly in his hands.
His Mom asked where his backpack was when he got to the bottom, and at the reminder he carefully set his project down on the floor to run back up and get it. By the time he was downstairs again, his stomach fluttering with excitement and nerves as he thought about how impressed everyone was going to be with him, his bus had arrived at the end of his street.
He slid his feet into his sneakers, not tying the laces, and took off down the street. Giggling to himself when he made it at the last possible second, cheeks flushed from the rush in the cold winter air, and he slumped down into the first seat he came across.
He stared out of the window at the frosted yards, kicking his feet as he thought about how happy his teacher was going to be with him. How impressed.
Then at the next stop, a boy from the other third grade class got on the bus carrying a big volcano with dinos glued to it, which Evan was sure to smile in appreciation of. He loved dinosaurs! It was only when the boy sat down in the seat in the aisle opposite him, that his stomach lurched with a sudden sick feeling of realisation.
His chest tightened, and his skin went cold, as he looked down at his empty lap in horror. Brain spiralling, as he replayed setting his project down at the bottom of the stairs and not picking it back up, over and over again.
His project. The project he’d spent countless hours on, the project he was so proud of, the project that was supposed to prove that he wasn’t stupid and he could do well if he tried hard enough.
He’d somehow forgotten it, walked right past it in his excitement to get to school to show it to everyone. How?! How could he forget it?!
That was the question that rang in his head through the rest of the day, his eyes burning with tears as he watched everyone else set up their displays in the sports hall that morning, excitedly chatting to one another.
He watched his teacher walk around, vision blurring in and out of focus and ears prickling, as she complimented each work before finally getting to him.
She paused, looking at the empty table he was trying to hide with his body, and her lips pulled into a thin unimpressed line. An expression he was all too used to from her and everyone else in his life.
Evan tried to explain what had happened, his voice wobbling and excuses coming out all jumbled, not really knowing how to explain that he’d just forgotten it at the bottom of his stairs, and hadn’t realised until he was on the bus.
His classmates snickered as they listened, audibly whispering to one another about how dumb he was, or that he was lying about even doing it, and he wanted to scream. He wanted to hope that one of his parents would come to the fair, like so many other’s parents were, and that they’d bring his project with them so he could prove everyone wrong, but he knew they wouldn’t. They never came to school stuff, only Maddie did if it was after her own classes, but she was gone now. She was gone, and she wasn’t coming, and he was all alone.
“Well that’s disappointing, Evan. I looked forward to finally seeing the project you’ve been telling us so much about,” his teacher said, and a physical pain panged through him at the words. A crushing, gripping agony in his chest as he became overwhelmed by a sense of shame.
Because he was so stupid. And bad, and wrong, and how could he just forget?! No one else had forgotten. He’d had it right there, it was finished, he’d been so excited. What was wrong with him? Was he really as careless as his Mom said?
For the rest of the morning he had to stand by his empty desk as other teachers and everyone else’s parents came in to gush over their work. And Evan was torn between wanting to crawl under one of the tables to sob, and knocking over every other project in the room to get his frustrations out.
In the end he settled on ducking his head down low and trying not to let anyone see or hear his sniffles- because if he was caught crying he’d definitely be laughed at- in between glancing repeatedly as the sports hall doors, a stubborn ember of hope still waiting for his Mom, or Dad, or Maddie, to walk through them.
Of course, that never happened. No one came.
The rest of the school day went by equally as horribly, his brain fogged over with frustration and shame with nowhere to put it. So instead he squirmed, restless, and chewed his nails down to his skin, and rocked back and forth on his chair until he was told off, and flicked pen lids at his classmates, and scribbled all over his worksheets.
It was Friday, and on Fridays his Mom picked him up to take him straight to his babysitter’s house so she and Dad could have their weekly date night. And as soon as Evan climbed into her car, he let everything spill out. Everything that happened that day, what people had said to him, how horrible he felt.
Huffing out a big breath with his arms crossed tight over his chest at the end, eyes stinging again as he was finally allowed to sort through everything that had felt like such an overwhelming mess whilst stuck at school.
His Mom just hummed in response, a noise he knew meant she was only feigning interest in the conversation. “I wondered why you didn’t pick it back up,” she then replied with a breathy laugh, and Evan stilled in the backseat, one hand rubbing tiredly at his stinging eyes.
He blinked at her reflection in the rear view mirror, lips pursuing as he tried to figure out whether it sounded like she’d noticed his mistake before he left.
“Why didn’t… you say?” He dared to ask, lip quivering as he did as tears threatened to burst out from the weight of it all.
She sucked her teeth, looking back at him in the mirror with a cold emptiness in her matching blue eyes, one that he was painfully familiar with. “I shouldn’t have to remind you, Evan, you’re a big boy. If you truly cared about that silly project of yours, you would have remembered it. Instead, you left it on the floor to get tripped over and trod on!”
Oh.
At eight years old, he didn't have anything to say to that. He was too tired. Too hurt. Too cracked open and filled with so much self loathing to even consider trying to defend himself.
Because she was right, she had to be. Everyone else remembered theirs, because it was important. So why hadn't he? What was so wrong with him that he couldn't do anything right, even when he wanted to? Even when he tried to be good?
If he cared enough, he would have remembered it. He would have done better.
2.
When Buck signed up to the academy, he thought the job would be a lot more fighting fires and a lot less… this.
Paperwork. So much damn paperwork. Incident reports of every call they went on. Debriefs of his performance, what he thought went well and what he could improve on. Apparatus checklists. HR paperwork every time he got even the slightest of scratches, no matter how inevitable that was. And, on top of it all, he was still completing his training and certification logs for his probationary year.
It felt impossible to do it all on top of the more active firefighting duties, but he knew that that couldn’t possibly be true because no one else seemed to have a problem with getting their respective paperwork done. In fact, that in itself was largely the problem.
He couldn’t focus when he had Bobby cooking in the kitchen, Hen and Chimney laughing on the couch, and some of the other guys playing ping pong or working out in the gym. But he never managed to grasp how they all just naturally fit doing their own paperwork into gaps between calls, and down time. Whenever he tried to sit with Hen and Chimney while they did theirs, he struggled to settle down and quit talking to fill the quiet between them, the two paramedics always finishing before he'd even decided what to start with.
It was due to a combination of everything, that had him lying on his stomach (sitting at the table allowed him to see everything, and his attention was too easily stolen) surrounded by sheets and folders, promising himself not to move from that spot until he’d finished it all. The daunting task ahead of him only left him frozen in place, rather than productive.
“Just do it as it comes, don’t keep putting it off until it’s one big pile,” Hen said, as she passed him by. On her way to clock out from their twenty-four hour shift, a shift he certainly wouldn't be finishing any time soon.
Buck felt his face pull into a glower as he stared at the array of papers scattered across the floor. He'd been trying. He'd been trying every shift that month. But every time he managed to complete something, what felt like five more assignments took its place, until it all quickly felt like he was drowning not knowing where to start.
And he’d only been working there for three months damnit, why the hell did he have so much to do?!
Buck let out a long, dramatic sigh. "You know, for someone who's allegedly good in a crisis, I have a truly remarkable talent for being defeated by... stapled pieces of paper."
Hen snorted. "The paperwork isn't defeating you, Buck. You're psyching yourself out before you even pick up a pen.”
His fingers reached out and finally picked one up, at that comment. Clicking it open before giving Hen a smug smile in retaliation.
She then watched him lie there, still not moving, for another few seconds, and he felt his face burn.
"You're making the mistake of looking at all of it. Stop staring at the whole mountain and just do the incident report from today's call."
He'd tried that.
The problem was that the moment he picked one thing up, his eyes caught another sheet underneath it, then remembered he still had apparatus logs to finish, then noticed his probation binder sitting half-open on the coffee table, then remembered the HR form he'd forgotten to hand in yesterday after he scraped his arm open on a busted up car. Then his thoughts drifted to the rest of that call, and that day.
Somehow, before he'd written a single word, his brain had already convinced him there were thirty different places he should be starting instead. And he wanted to scream in frustration.
Instead, he just swallowed and nodded, silently waiting for Hen to leave before he tried again, clicking the pen again and again in the meanwhile.
~~~~~
He didn’t learn, he never did. It took less than a month until he was back where he started, this time with an even bigger pile to get through.
He remembered it as he was lying in one of the station’s bunk beds, exhausted to his core after the number of calls they’d had that day, but unable to close his eyes without thinking about his shift last week, about Devon. Without seeing him let go of his hand, and fall, again and again and again.
Ordinarily he would have groaned and shoved all ideas of completing paperwork into the back of his mind, easily buried and forgotten beneath more interesting things.
This time, he clung onto the welcome distraction and bolted up in bed, swinging his legs to the floor before creeping out of the room so as to not wake anyone up.
He got all of his files out neatly on the table, and went to make a coffee. Then while the water boiled ended up emptying out the coffee cup cupboard and reorganising it. Then as he went to grab milk, he paused to find out when they’d started putting missing kids on the back of the cartons and when they’d stopped, which had consequently led to him leaning back against the kitchen counter as he watched a twenty minute video on the topic, completely frozen as he did. After that he spent another half hour researching missing peoples cases who were actually found, pacing the kitchen as he did, before catching sight of his work and stalling.
He chucked his phone at the couch so it was out of sight, and went to remake his coffee upon finding it cold, keeping a silent mantra of paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, playing in his head to stay on track.
The fresh mug of coffee had barely touched the table when footsteps echoed down the hallway. And Buck froze.
Please don't be—
Of course it was.
Bobby rounded the corner, dressed in sweatpants and a faded LAFD t-shirt, clearly having wandered in with the same idea Buck had. He headed straight for the coffee pot before his eyes landed on Buck, half way to sitting down. Then they moved down on to the paperwork.
Buck's stomach dropped. After their spat earlier, he'd been hoping to avoid being alone with Bobby entirely until their next shift.
Reading Bobby's private book had been stupid. He knew that. He hadn't meant to pry (okay, he had) it'd been sitting open on the captain's desk while Bobby had stepped away. Curiosity had gotten the better of him for all of thirty seconds and he’d just had to go and ask what it was about.
He should have listened to Hen, to stay out of it. He’d never seen Bobby so angry before, not even when he fired him, and it made him feel all of five years old again as the man had grabbed him by his shirt.
Since then, it had been tense to say the least. And every reminder from the man to finish his overdue paperwork had felt sharper than it probably was. Every ‘Buck,’ every ‘Have you finished those reports yet?’ Every glance toward the ever growing pile. He was pretty sure Bobby thought he was just slacking off, and he’d already gotten on his nerves enough lately to push his luck again.
So seeing the captain standing there now, at nearly three in the morning, while Buck was surrounded by half finished forms that the man had been asking after all week… It wasn't exactly ideal.
Buck finally sat down and took to staring resolutely at the incident report in front of him, pretending to reread the same sentence for what was probably the tenth time. Maybe if he looked busy–
No such luck. Bobby walked over and Buck's shoulders tensed in preparation of whatever was coming. “What have you got left?” the man asked, leaning over his shoulder to inspect.
Buck just stilled, his hands curling into his lap as Bobby sifted through the stack with practiced efficiency, letting him see just how little he’d done and awaiting judgment.
A few seconds passed before Bobby separated three forms from the rest. “These,” he tapped the small pile. “These are due first. The rest can wait until tomorrow.”
Buck blinked, wondering how he’d been able to decide on that so quickly. How did everyone just know when it came to these things? "...Okay."
Bobby straightened, glancing at his watch with a displeased expression. “How long have you been out here?”
"Not long." One of Bobby's eyebrows lifted and Buck winced inwardly, feeling incredibly childish for being caught out in lying over something as silly as a bedtime. But he knew sleep was a precious commodity when on shift, one they shouldn’t take for granted. "A while."
Bobby let out a quiet sigh. Not annoyed like earlier, just tired. “You don't get extra points for staying up all night.”
Buck ducked his head. "I know." He wasn’t trying to impress him, to worm his way back into his good graces. He just needed this to be done.
“Finish those three, then get to bed. You need to be at your best of we have a call.”
"Okay."
Bobby hesitated for a second longer. His eyes drifted over the untouched coffee, the blank incident report, and finally back to Buck. “Can you do that?”
Buck swallowed, heat burning his face at the (admittedly reasonable) doubt. "I can."
Another pause. Bobby looked like he wasn't entirely convinced, but nodded anyway. “Alright.”
Buck reached for his pen, hoping that would be enough to convince him. But his brain was completely empty as he stared at what he had to do. He was too focused on the sensation of being watched.
"Sorry." The apology slipped out before he could stop it.
Bobby frowned slightly. “For what?”
Buck shrugged. "For... everything?"
For reading his book, then asking him about it. For constantly being an annoying pain since he arrived in this station. For pushing his welcome. For the paperwork not being done. For existing?
Bobby's expression softened for the briefest of moments. “Just get some sleep when you're done.”
"I will,” he nodded, though he wasn’t sure if that would be possible.
“Night, Buck.”
"Night, Cap."
Bobby lingered for just another second like he was expecting Buck to say something else, before giving him a small nod in return and heading back toward his office.
The station fell quiet again, and Buck stared at the three forms Bobby had left in front of him. Three forms, that wasn't so bad. He uncapped his pen. Incident report, easy. He wrote the date, and the call number, then paused over the next line.
Describe sequence of events.
His eyes drifted to the apparatus checklist Bobby had pushed aside. No. Back to the incident report. He wrote half a sentence before remembering he'd forgotten to order replacement trauma shears after yesterday's call. That could wait. Describe the event–
Except that reminded him of the certification log he'd forgotten to update after using the hydraulic spreaders last week. Which reminded him he still needed Bobby to sign off on–
"No." The word slipped out under his breath, as he dragged his attention back to the page. The pen clicked. Click. Click. Click. It was too quiet.
He forced himself to write another sentence. Then he noticed he'd skipped a box further up the page, and went back to fill it in, only to realise he'd written the wrong incident number. He sighed, scribbled it out, and rewrote it neatly, then spent a solid minute trying to make the correction look less obvious. By the time he'd finished he'd completed exactly two lines.
Buck scrubbed a hand over his face, his brain hurting. Come on. Just write.
He knew what had happened on the call. It was just a simple fender bender, the only real problem that had arisen was the guy who’d caused it getting defensively angry at them. So why was getting it onto paper so impossible?
He picked up another form, intending to come back to the first one later, but immediately put it back down. Incident report first. He was supposed to do those while it was still fresh, right? "God, I hate paperwork."
It was too quiet in a bad way, he could hear the fridge whirring, and a car passing outside, and his own breaths were too loud. Maybe he should play music, that’d help– but wait where was his phone?! What had he done with it?
Buck’s hands fumbled at his empty pockets as he stood up, eyes scanning the table and the kitchen counters for the device. The digital clock on the microwave blinked at him reading 03:41, and the coffee machine next to it still contained half a brewed pot.
His fingers wrapped around his own forgotten mug, to find that the coffee had gone cold. He didn't remember drinking the first cup, did he even have it? Coffee never really woke him up like it did for others, but it did help him settle down and focus. He could only have a little bit though, otherwise he'd get jittery and anxious. He didn't think he'd had one?
He went to make another, and this time managed not to reorganise any cupboards. Progress. Then he sat back down, and actually started writing, the words finally coming to him in one big jumble.
He got it done, and, on a role, he went through the next one, and by that point figured he could get the third out of the way and then maybe even a couple of the stuff Bobby had pushed away. He knew if he packed up and went to sleep like Bobby had told him to, getting himself to sit down and actually do this again would be a nightmare.
First he reached for his drink, satisfied with himself as he looked at the slightly smaller pile and certain he could probably even get it all done if they had no calls in the next couple of hours. He took a sip, and realised he hadn’t put any milk in, then as he stood to do so he recalled the missing kids, and the video, and where he’d thrown his phone! It was on the couch, maybe he could put music on.
No, wait! He’d been halfway through a podcast the other night, he should listen to that to keep from getting bored.
Buck made a point of getting up, retrieving his phone, then straight away returning to the table without allowing room for any diversions. He opened his phone, went straight to the podcast to press play, then shoved it back out of reach.
He pulled another form towards him, and listened to the soothing voice playing on his phone’s speaker. It didn’t take long to become absorbed by it, and it didn’t take much longer than that for his eyes to drift closed as he listened.
~~~~~
The next thing Buck knew, his neck ached and something warm was resting over his shoulders.
He jerked awake with a snort, disorientated as morning sunlight streamed through the windows, brighter than he was used to in the musky room he was sleeping in at his house share.
For one blissfully ignorant second, he couldn't work out where he was, his brain automatically anticipating a hookup of some kind, then he looked down.
Paperwork. His cheek had left a faint blue imprint on one of the incident reports he’d fallen asleep on while writing. "Crap."
His eyes darted around the kitchen, thoughts all muddled and confused. Someone had gathered the scattered paperwork into neat piles. His cold coffee had disappeared, and his phone had been turned off.
A fresh mug sat beside his elbow, steam still curling from the top, and there was a blanket draped over his shoulders. Buck's stomach dropped as he realised what had happened.
"Went cold again."
He looked up sharply at the voice, feeling embarrassment seep into him as he bit down a groan upon seeing who it was. Of course. He just kept messing up in front of this guy. Bobby stood leaning against the kitchen counter, mug in one hand, looking far more awake than Buck felt.
Heat flooded his face. "You, uh--"
"I figured you deserved a hot one."
Buck stared at the untouched mug. "Thanks."
The silence stretched awkwardly. Buck couldn't bring himself to look Bobby in the eye. "I'm sorry." The words slipped out before he could stop them. Again.
Bobby pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. "For?"
Buck gave a helpless shrug. A dozen reasons crowded his head all at once, just like they had in the conversation last night.
For making everything harder than it needed to be.
"This." He gestured vaguely at the paperwork. "I shouldn't still be struggling with something this stupid."
Bobby was quiet for a moment, then he reached over and pulled one of the reports towards himself. He looked at the first page, then the second and the third.
Buck braced himself. For him to laugh, or tell him he was doing it wrong, or something.
Instead, Bobby looked back up. "You did all this?"
Buck frowned. "Yeah."
"Last night?"
"Yeah."
Bobby looked down at the remaining pile, then back at the completed reports. "You've been out here for, what, six hours?"
Buck rubbed the back of his neck, eyes flickering to the time again. It had just turned eight. "I guess."
"And this is all you managed?"
Buck felt shame crawl up his spine. "Yes.” Then he laughed quietly, without any humour, falling back into the routine he'd always played into in high school, that he was dumb but also just too cool to do his work properly. Definitely not as good an idea to do it in the workplace, but it felt safer than admitting this was all he'd done when he really had been trying. "I know, I know, I'm-"
"No."
Buck blinked, his lips pursing as he was interrupted.
Bobby leaned back in his chair. "I don't think you do."
He frowned, and felt his stomach tighten into a knot.
"I watched you yesterday. You weren't just messing around." Another pause. "You were trying."
The simple acknowledgement hit Buck harder than he expected. His throat felt dry, and he had to clear it, because, well… No one had ever realised that this was him trying before. And he didn't know how to feel about having that pitiful fact acknowledged.
"I just..." He looked down at his hands. "I don't know what happens." Bobby didn't interrupt, and Buck rubbed a hand tiredly over his face as he felt his frustrations with himself bubble up. "I sit down," he gestured helplessly at the paperwork. "I look at all of it. And everything feels like it needs doing first."
His fingers absently traced the edge of one of the folders. "So I spend ages trying to figure out where to start, and it's like I'm frozen, then I finally pick something, and get myself to start, and halfway through I remember something else."
His face burned, aware that this all sounded so silly. Everyone must struggle with that. But no one else treated it like a problem, they just got on with it.
"Then another thing. And another. By the time I actually start writing..." Buck looked at the completed report. "I've forgotten what I was trying to write in the first place."
The kitchen fell quiet, and Buck risked looking up. Expecting the cold expression that always graced his parents faces when he tried to make excuses for his own behaviour.
Bobby wasn't looking frustrated, and he wasn't disappointed. He looked... thoughtful? Like he was trying to solve a puzzle.
"Alright." He reached for the pile. "So let's stop treating it like one job."
Buck frowned as Bobby began separating the forms into smaller stacks.
"What if we colour code them by priority?"
Buck watched the much smaller piles appear one by one. The mountain he'd spent weeks dreading suddenly looked more manageable, if he tried hard to avoid looking at them all at once.
"Maybe," his voice came out small, not wanting to acknowledge if it really had been just that easy all this time. "But how do I know what's most important?"
Bobby nodded, as if that was a perfectly reasonable question. He picked up a red highlighter. "HR paperwork first. Always. If those aren't done, they become everyone else's headache." A red mark appeared on the corner of each HR form. Then he reached for a blue pen. "Incident reports next. Those are easiest to do while the call's still fresh.”
Blue, simple. Buck found himself nodding along.
Bobby slid the thick certification binder almost completely off the table, away from Buck. "And these aren't due for another two weeks, you can do them whenever you have nothing else to do."
Buck stared at it. "I can leave those?"
"For now."
The only problem with that was it was now or never with him. He was going to have this exact same problem in two weeks because, as his mother so often complained, he just never learned.
"They're important. They're just not urgent."
Something inside Buck eased anyway. He hadn't realised how much of the panic came from believing every single piece of paper was screaming at him equally loudly.
Bobby pulled one of the reports back across the table. "Now,” his finger landed halfway down the page, tapping. "These boxes? They matter. The rest?" He waved a hand dismissively. "Don't overthink them."
Buck leaned forward, following every movement. No one had ever taken the time to explain something like this to him before, they'd just hand him the forms and expect him to know like everyone else did.
Bobby glanced back over at what he'd managed to do last night. "You don't have to write a novel."
Despite himself, Buck smiled. "I kinda thought I did."
"I noticed." A tiny smile tugged at Bobby's mouth in return. And for the first time since joining the 118, paperwork didn't seem quite so impossible.