Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Spare the rod, spoil the child. 

Maddie clenches her fists in the hem of her shirt, stretching out the fabric.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

She stares down at her notebook. The words are blurry. There are drops of water splashed on the page.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

Evan tries so hard to be good. It’s not his fault that he rocks in place when he sits sometimes, that his hands like to move as he talks, that his mouth moves faster than his brain.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

Maddie never misbehaves, but it’s easier for her. She understands the rules better. Mom and Dad trust her more than they do Evan.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

She just has to make it a little longer. Just a little longer, and Evan will run to her, and she can hold him and wipe his tears away, tell him that she knows he’s good and God knows too, and later she can sneak some ice from the kitchen for his bruises.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

But for right now, she twists her hands in her shirt, and stares down at her desk, and listens to her baby brother scream.

Evan hates Doug Kendall.

He isn’t supposed to hate anybody. That’s what love thy neighbor means. Doug isn’t actually their neighbor, he lives a few streets over, but Maddie said that when God says neighbor, he means like if the whole world was a neighborhood. Evan thinks that God should just say that he means to love everybody, then, but one time he said that and Mom and Dad made him pick out a stick from the yard and they hit him until he cried, so he doesn’t say much about God anymore.

He can’t say that he hates Doug, either. Doug is friends with Mr. Brooks, and Evan doesn’t really like Mr. Brooks, but everybody else does. He even gets to give the sermons sometimes instead of Pastor Daniel. Mr. Brooks is nice, and he pays way more attention to him than Mom and Dad do, which Evan likes, and he even gave him a Hot Wheels car once, and sometimes in school he has other little treats just for Evan, but Evan still—he just doesn’t think that Maddie needs a Mr. Brooks, is all.

Anyway, Doug always wants Maddie to do things with him instead of Evan. When there’s a party or a wedding or a service day, he talks to Maddie the whole time. He’s started visiting the house on Saturdays and talking with Maddie in the living room, staying for dinner and talking with their parents all night, and Evan has to sit there and be quiet and be polite and be still and he’s bad at all of those things.

He’s pretty bad at everything, honestly.

Maddie thinks that he’s good, but Evan knows she’s just being nice. Maddie is good. Good people are nice.

Doug is nice, but Evan doesn’t think he’s very good. He buys Maddie flowers, but roses instead of brown-eyed Susans, which are her favorite. Maddie says it’s because brown-eyed Susans are childish, and roses are for grown-ups. Evan doesn't think that being sixteen makes her a grown-up, but he also thinks that maybe he’s just being selfish because he doesn’t want Maddie to leave.

Evan isn’t sure what he’ll do when Maddie leaves. He thinks he might rather not exist at all than exist without Maddie.

After he says his normal prayers every night, after he gets up off his knees and crawls into bed, he adds a secret prayer in his head, just for him and God.

Dear God, please let Maddie stay with me. I’ll do anything.

Maddie’s wedding is on her seventeenth birthday, and it’s one of the happiest days of her life.

It’s also the day she realizes that she has to run away.

Doug looks so handsome in his suit, and Maddie feels beautiful in her dress, and the church is done up with so many flowers, and all of her friends are jealous, because Doug Kendall is in medical school and Maddie will never have to work a day in her life.

Evan looks so precious in his suit. Maddie dances with him third, after Doug and Dad, but dancing with Evan is her favorite, because he’s still a good foot shorter than her and he rests his head on her chest and tells her she looks pretty. Maddie loves him so much, and it hits her all at once that she’ll be leaving him tonight, and they’ll never live together again.

“I love you,” she chokes out, and Evan squeezes her waist.

The song ends, and Doug reclaims her hand, and Maddie focuses on her own happiness for a while. He spins and dips her, kisses her in front of everybody. Maddie feels mature. 

After they dance for a few songs, Doug steps away to speak with Pastor Daniel and some of the other church leaders, and Maddie is starving, so she makes her way to the dessert table, hoping that there are still some chocolate-covered strawberries left.

The last few strawberries are on her friend Katherine’s plate, which she hands over to Maddie immediately.

“I was saving them for you,” Katherine says, “My mom said that the bride never gets time to eat.”

“Thank you,” Maddie beams, and eats carefully. The last thing she wants is to get chocolate on her pretty lace sleeves. She wonders if Evan got any of the strawberries. Mom and Dad don’t let him have sweets very often.

“You look amazing,” Katherine says, “Literally, the prettiest bride in the world.”

Maddie giggles. She feels like the prettiest bride in the world. 

“Honestly,” she says, leaning in close to whisper to Katherine, “I can’t believe I didn’t have a breakout this week.”

She finishes the last bite of her strawberry as Katherine laughs, and sets the plate down on the dessert table. Katherine’s eyes have wandered; Maddie follows her gaze to Mr. Richards, the kindergarten teacher.

“I think you’re gonna be next,” she tells Katherine confidently, “He totally likes you.”

Suddenly, a small hand is in hers. Maddie looks at Evan and finds him pale, his fingers clenching hers so tightly that it almost hurts, and he looks at her pleadingly, mouth firmly closed because she’s an adult now and children are to speak when spoken to, so Maddie smiles at Katherine and says, “Excuse me.”

She lets Evan pull her into the little bible study room near the bathrooms where they used to fold pamphlets together on Friday nights. As soon as the door closes, Evan blurts out, “Please don’t leave.”

“Oh, Evan.”

“I’m—I’m serious, Maddie, you can’t go.”

She kneels, hoping that she won’t ruin her dress, and takes his hands. “Evan, you’ll still see me—”

“Please,” he whimpers. His eyes are wet and his face scrunches up. “Please, Maddie, if you’re not there he’ll—” Evan’s voice hitches, and he sobs, throwing himself into Maddie’s arms and burying his face in her shoulder.

Their parents have always been harder on Evan than on her. They say it’s so he can become a good man, and because he’s badly behaved, but Maddie’s old enough now to know that those are all just excuses to cover for their grief and pain.

“Evan, I will come home as much as—”

“Not home,” Evan sobs, “School. You can’t—if you don’t get me at lunch, he’ll—”

His breaths come fast and erratic, and Maddie thinks, rapid or deep breathing, usually caused by anxiety or panic, and hears Doug’s voice answer, hyperventilation, also known as overbreathing.

Maddie’s stomach rolls. “Who are you talking about? What will he do?”

He shakes his head almost violently, so Maddie rubs his back, “Shh, shh, sweetheart, breathe with me, okay?” She tries to exaggerate the movement of her chest, so that Evan’s head slightly rises and falls with every breath, and slowly, slowly, his breathing returns to normal.

“Evan, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong,” she says as gently as she can. She can’t fathom what he’s so worked up about. Maddie was allowed to graduate early so that she could begin her life as a married woman, and Evan has known that she wouldn’t be going back to school after the wedding ever since Doug proposed.

He sniffles, finally emerging from her chest with a red face and sad, teary eyes. “Um,” Evan says, sniffing again as he wipes the tears from his face. His eyes are firmly on the floor. “I just… Um, so—sometimes if you’re home sick, Mr. Brooks will keep me during lunch to, um, work on my math, and stuff. And I just didn’t… want to do that. So, um.”

Every day since Evan started attending Pineview Christian Academy at age six, Maddie would go and fetch him from his class to have lunch together. Evan had a habit of forgetting his lunch at home or giving half of it away to his friends if he was left to his own devices, so Maddie would bring both of their food in one lunch box and they would sit in the courtyard or in the corner of the lunchroom to eat together and tell each other about their days. Her friends always said they were sorry her parents made her babysit Evan even at school, but Maddie did it all on her own; seeing as her entire grade is only eight people, she often wanted a break from them all.

Maddie can count the number of times she didn’t have lunch with Evan on one hand.

“I’m sure he won’t make you study during lunch every day,” she says, with the distinct feeling that she’s missing something. “He probably just took the opportunity to work with you because those days were rare.”

Evan keeps staring at the floor. “Yeah,” he says, and something about it…

“Evan,” Maddie says carefully, “What’s so bad about studying with Mr. Brooks?”

She watches as his face contorts, eyes flirting up to glance across her face before falling back to the ground, and knows that he is about to lie to her.

“It’s not that bad,” he says, “I was being dramatic.”

“Evan. Are you worried about something besides studying?”

He shrugs, mouth twisting uncertainly. “I don’t… like how he teaches me.”

Maddie never had Mr. Brooks. She went to a secular school when she was Evan’s age. “How does he teach you?”

Evan tells her.

Maddie throws up in a trash can. 

The smell of chocolate and strawberry, now rancid and acidic, fills her nose. 

She tells Evan that he hasn’t done anything wrong. She tells him that she’ll figure something out. She tells him to go play with his friends, and to run and find her if Mr. Brooks tries to talk to him, and she washes her mouth in the bathroom sink, and she endures the raucous laughs and shouts as she pulls Doug away from the party to talk in the garden out behind the church.

“Evan isn’t the most reliable source,” Doug says, and the remaining shreds of happiness in Maddie’s chest shrivel and die. “Richard Brooks is not a homosexual, Maddie. And, I mean, Evan has been better behaved lately, hasn’t he? Maybe Richard is doing something right.” 

Doug laughs. He laughs, and he pulls her in for a kiss, and Maddie tries to pull back and insist that Evan would never lie about something like this, that he never lived in the secular world like they did when they were younger and he wouldn’t know enough to make something like this up even if he wanted to, that he hadn’t even had the words for what happened, that he looked at Maddie like maybe she would hate him for it, that—

She can’t pull away. Doug is holding her tightly, and maybe if she really struggled, she could get out of his hold, but she pushes back and he won’t let her go, and his lips are on hers, and it hits her all at once: nobody will believe them. Not Doug, not their parents, and certainly not Pastor Daniel or any of his inner circle. Pastor Daniel’s wife Rachel is Richard Brooks’ sister. Mr. Brooks is popular and well-respected. His wife Lauren teaches Sunday school. Evan is…

Evan is her baby brother. To the rest of the church, though, Evan is a nuisance. They’ll dismiss anything he says, dismiss Maddie as a gullible fool for believing him.

When Maddie goes through their wedding gifts that week, Doug away at class, she tucks roughly a quarter of the cash from each envelope into a box of tampons and shoves it deep in the bathroom cabinet. She bikes to Pineview at lunchtime every day, and tells Doug that she thinks preparing lunch for and spending time with Evan makes good practice for when they have children of their own. She holds Evan’s hands and looks him in the eye, and tells him that no adult should ever touch him under his clothes except the doctor, that even the doctor has to ask permission first, and that Mr. Brooks is the one who’s wrong, not him, and that he isn’t dirty, and that God still loves him. That she still loves him. 

He asks if she’s sure, and when she gets home she sobs for an hour.

She asks him where he’d like to live one day, in his wildest dreams, and he says that he’d like to live near the ocean, and go swimming every day, and make friends with all the sharks, because people say they’re scary but sharks are one of God’s creatures, too, so Evan thinks they could be friends. Don’t worry, though, he says, even when I make friends with a shark you’ll still be my best friend.

Maddie pulls him close and hides her tears in his hair.

For a year, Maddie thinks about leaving. For a year, she squirrels away any cash that she can. For a year, she dreams about taking Evan to see the ocean. 

She wonders what Doug would do. What Mom and Dad and Pastor Daniel would do.

After a while, she starts to think that maybe they could stay. Now that he’s ten, almost eleven, Evan will only be with Mr. Brooks for one more year, and Maddie never misses a single lunch period, even when she gets the flu and probably shouldn’t be around Evan. She can protect him until he’s not in danger anymore, and then she can stay with Doug, and once he isn’t so stressed and busy with school, they can build a family and live the life she’s always dreamed of.

Then, one Wednesday, she shows up at Pineview and Evan isn’t there.

Mr. Brooks—and, Lord, Maddie doesn’t know how Evan can face him every day, when speaking to the man for just a minute makes her skin hot and her throat tight and her fists clench—says that their mother called him in sick.

As Maddie bikes back to her old house, she knows in her bones that Evan isn’t sick. He was healthy yesterday, but sullen and snappish, and their parents never like it when he gets that way.

Maddie still doesn’t know how long Mr. Brooks has—she just doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to make Evan think about it any more than he has to. He’s been quiet and moody for the past two years or so, but Maddie thought that was because she was getting married, or it was just a part of him growing up. Now she wonders if it’s a sign that she missed. 

When Maddie coasts into the driveway, the car is gone. Dad will be at work, she knows, and on Wednesdays Mom spends most of the day at church. 

She drops her bike on the concrete and runs inside, shouting, “Evan?”

“In your room,” he calls back.

It isn’t the first time that she finds Evan lying in her bed on his stomach, the backs of his thighs red and lazily bleeding, but it will be the last.

“At least I didn’t have to go to school,” he mumbles into the comforter as Maddie puts Neosporin over his broken skin.

“Evan, can you keep a secret for me?”

He lifts his face, then, turning to look at her. “Am I gonna have to lie?”

“...I know God says to honor Mom and Dad,” she says carefully, reaching out to stroke his hair. “But sometimes Mom and Dad are wrong. And it’s okay to do what you have to do to protect yourself.”

“...What’s the secret?”

“We’re leaving,” she says. “As soon as you’re better. We’re getting out of here, just you and me.”

The hope in his face strengthens her resolve. “Doug isn’t coming?”

“No,” she says. “Doug isn’t coming.”

Evan’s eyes light up as he smiles. “Cool. We should go to Texas.”

Maddie can’t help but laugh. “What’s in Texas?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I just think it would be cool. Don’t you think it would be cool?”

Maddie doesn’t think that Texas would be particularly cool, but she nods. “Sure. Maybe you could be a cowboy.”

“I’m not a little kid,” he rolls his eyes. “It’s just, like, warm down there, right? And it would be really different.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Maddie says. 

She gives him a Tylenol and reads to him until he falls asleep. Sometimes Evan still acts like such a little kid—is that because of Mr. Brooks, too? Because he’s been cut off from the secular world? Or is that just how he would be anyway?

As she takes Evan’s Social Security card and birth certificate from their parents’ safe, it occurs to her that she’ll never know. Even if she took him away right now, even if he spent the rest of his life happy and healthy and free, he would still be the Evan that she knows now, the Evan who thinks there’s something wrong with him and sometimes goes away inside his head when she tries to talk to him about Mom and Dad or Mr. Brooks. 

Maybe, though, in another environment, he won’t have to go away so much. Maybe he’ll be loud and excitable again, and maybe he’ll read all of the books that the church won’t allow, and maybe someday he won’t feel dirty. 

On Saturday, Maddie goes to the library.

She chooses some innocuous books to check out in case Doug asks where she’s been—a cookbook, a couple of craft books, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility—before sitting down at a computer. 

Maddie types how to go somewhere else into Google, feels incredibly stupid, and deletes it immediately. She taps her foot. She can do this. She isn’t stupid. She can do research.

johs for high school graduate

jobs for women

running away

running away adult

running away with kid

do you need custody of a child to stay at a shelter

how to get custody of sibling

pennsylvania child abuse law

federal child abuse law

if i adopt a child does my husband get custody too

kidnapping prison sentence

“Excuse me,” she hears, and looks up to find a middle-aged woman with kind brown eyes behind a pair of large glasses. “I’m a librarian here, I just wanted to let you know that I’m here if you have any questions or need help finding anything. If you’re doing research, we have some resources to help with that.” The woman holds out a stack of pamphlets.

“Oh! Uh, thank you.” Maddie takes the pamphlets. The paper feels warm.

The librarian smiles and nods, then moves on to ask the old man three computers down if he needs help with anything.

There are three pamphlets. The first, titled “ONLINE RESEARCH STRATEGIES,” seems promising. The second and third, titled “LEAVING A HIGH-CONTROL GROUP” and “LEAVING AN ABUSIVE PARTNER,” seem… less immediately applicable to her situation, but maybe somebody leaving an abusive husband or a gang or cult or whatever might need similar resources as somebody running away from home with their baby brother.

By the time she heads home, Maddie knows how to get to a reasonably priced motel in Philadelphia. One in Buffalo, two in Cleveland, three in Detroit, one in Baltimore. She’s found open jobs near each motel, and plans to send out applications as soon as she decides on a location. She packed a bag for Evan last month—in case my Mom and Dad need a break, he could sleep in the guest room for a night sometime, right, honey? you know it’s hard for them to look at him sometimes, they’d really appreciate it on the anniversary—but she still isn’t sure how she’s going to do this without getting in trouble for kidnapping. Her best plan is just to hope that Mom and Dad won’t call the police or try to follow her. With most parents, she thinks that would be pretty unlikely, but considering their parents’ relationship with Evan, Maddie thinks she at least has a shot at them deciding it would be better to just let him go with Maddie.

She’s trying not to think about what Doug will do.

Maybe she should have tried harder to convince Doug to let Evan move in with them. He just got this awful look in his eyes when she asked, and he’d taken her to bed immediately, and afterwards said that they couldn’t do that with her little brother in the house, and doesn’t she want to have a child?

Maddie, pressing her face into her pillow to hide the tears in her eyes, had almost said that she already does.

Apparently, getting married did make Maddie a grown-up, because she gets very serious and sad after her wedding. 

She’s still Maddie. She’s still funny. She still listens, which other adults don’t do (Mr. Brooks used to, Evan thinks, but now he’s wondering if maybe he’s remembered that wrong). She still smiles when he picks wildflowers for her, which Mom never did back when he still tried that kind of stuff. 

She just starts talking about all sorts of serious things. She talks about what Evan wants to be when he grows up, and where he wants to live, and if he’s happy with Mom and Dad. Sometimes she cries a little bit for no reason.

It makes him wonder if maybe Maddie misses living with Mom and Dad. Maybe she wants to go different places and do different things than Doug? Marriage is forever, but Evan learned in History that King Henry the Something got an annulment from one of his wives, which is different from a divorce because an annulment means the marriage was unconsummated, and he thinks maybe Maddie and Doug could still do that if she wanted to. 

He hopes so, at least. Evan’s pretty sure that it’s too late for him, that he’s ruined forever, but maybe it’s not too late for Maddie. He can't ask her, but he doesn't think he really wants to anyway. It’s nice to think that it’s not too late, and asking might ruin that.

Maddie talks about Mr. Brooks and his lessons sometimes, but Evan doesn’t really remember what exactly she says. Her words somehow make him feel better and worse at the same time, and it’s much less confusing just to think about something else, like the squeaky floorboard under their pew in church or the smell of Maddie’s shampoo.

The year after Maddie gets married passes slowly, but somehow Evan feels like it all happens in a dream. He can never really tell his parents what he’s learning in school, but his report cards are good, so they mostly leave it alone. Evan doesn’t have a bike, and nobody invites him to play after school, so he reads a lot. The school library is small, and he ends up reading the same books over and over. He likes Maniac Magee and Holes, but after awhile reading them over again gets boring, so he starts reading the books that Maddie left in her room instead.

He reads all of the Narnia books. Next, he reads A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It’s 493 pages, and he doesn’t understand a lot of it, but the siblings remind him of himself and Maddie, and he wonders if she thought the same when she read it. Little Women makes him think of her, too, but Joshua makes fun of him for reading a girly book when he brings it to school, so Evan only reads it inside Maddie’s room, where nobody can see him. He tries reading Speak, but he doesn’t like the beginning, so instead he reads Anne of Green Gables.

Besides his books, all that really sticks in his brain is Maddie. It’s like he only exists when he’s in her room or she’s with him. She has bruises on her arms a lot, and she says that she just isn’t used to her and Doug’s new house, so she keeps bumping into door frames and bookshelves. Evan is pretty sure she’s lying, but he wouldn’t want her to ask him about it if their situations were reversed, so he doesn’t say anything.

When she tells him that they’re leaving, it feels like waking up from the dream.

Waking up from the dream is kinda scary. Evan tries to act normally, but he isn’t completely sure how he’s been acting, so he just does his best to behave and not get into any more trouble. It works; Mom and Dad don’t even notice him taking A Tree Grows In Brooklyn and Little Women and Penelope the teddy bear from Maddie’s room. He stuffs them into Maddie’s old backpack with his favorite pair of socks and his favorite sleep shirt.

He feels crazier and crazier every day. Usually, he doesn’t react to Mr. Brooks, but he finds himself flinching and freaking out whenever his teacher gets close. Or when anyone gets close. Which is a lot, since there’s twelve of them in a pretty small classroom, and Evan isn’t very good at school so Mr. Brooks is always leaning over his desk to show him what he did wrong. He asks to use the bathroom a lot, and when he gets there he just crouches in the corner and breathes until he feels a little closer to normal or he’s been gone for too long. 

Maddie is waiting outside of school on Friday, and for once the fluttering in his chest feels good.

“My bike is at the house,” she says quietly as they walk home, “We’ll grab your stuff, and then we’re going to the bus station.”

“Where’s the bus going?”

“To the train station.”

“You’re not funny, you know. You’re being annoying.”

Maddie smiles at him.

“Ugh,” Evan says, “Where’s the train going?”

Maddie turns around, then, walking backwards in front of him. “Baltimore.”

Baltimore. Evan doesn’t know a lot about Baltimore, but—

“Wait,” he says, “Isn’t the big aquarium there?”

Maddie raises her eyebrows. “Oh, is it? I had no idea.”

Evan can’t help tackling his sister in a hug. Maddie laughs, squeezing him back just as tightly.

“C’mon,” she says, “We’ve gotta make sure we’re out of the house as soon as possible.”

“I put my stuff in your backpack,” Evan tells her proudly, “So we can just grab it and go.”

“You’re so smart,” she says, “Race you?”

Maddie breaks into a run before Evan can even agree.

“Hey!” He shouts, chasing after her, “That’s not fair!”

It’s been a long time since he and Maddie got to have fun like this. She beats him to the house, but Evan doesn’t even care. Maddie’s laughing, doubled over with her hands on her knees, and Evan’s laughing too, and she holds his hand as they go inside.

Maddie rolls up a couple of his shirts, a few pairs of socks, and some underwear, and stuffs them into the backpack with the things Evan already packed. She makes him put it on and then adjusts the straps and even clips the little strap in the front, which is super dorky and embarrassing, but since he’s gonna be balancing on Maddie’s bike it’s important that his backpack isn’t shifting around.

“Alright, buddy,” Maddie says, locking the door to the house behind them, “Get your helmet on.”

“That’s your helmet.”

Maddie rolls her eyes, fastening the clip of her own backpack across her chest. “Yeah, but I’m the grown-up, so you have to wear it.”

Evan thinks he must look very stupid, but he clips on Maddie’s purple helmet and climbs on behind her, exactly how she tells him to.

“You have to hold on really tight, and if I tell you to lean with me, lean with me, okay?”

“Okay.”

And they’re off.

Evan doesn’t look back at the house. Maybe he would, if he were in a car, but he can’t on the bike, and he’s kinda glad. 

Before long, he stops recognizing the buildings. They get taller, and closer together, and start looking more like the places he sometimes sees in movies. There aren’t a ton of people out on the street, but the people he does see look very cool and fashionable.

“Are we still in Pennsylvania?”

“Yeah, bud,” Maddie says, “We’re just a county over.”

“Oh. Sorry, that was dumb.”

“You’re not dumb for asking a question. You haven’t been here before.”

“Have you?”

“Once,” Maddie says, and doesn’t elaborate. 

When they reach the bus station, Maddie leaves her bike on the sidewalk with the helmet hanging off a handlebar.

“Are they gonna put your bike on the bus?”

“Nope,” Maddie says, “Somebody who needs it will find it.”

“Are you getting a new bike in Baltimore?”

“Nope. We’re gonna live in the city, so we can walk or take the bus.”

“Cool.”

Maddie holds his hand on the bus, and pulls him through the street to the train station, and pulls him onto a bench in the train station, and doesn’t let go until they’re settled.

There are a lot of people in the train station. There’s another boy, about Evan’s age, with curly brown hair and dark skin and bright green shoes, standing at the counter with his parents. He looks cool. Instead of a normal shirt, he’s wearing a basketball jersey. Does he play basketball? Evan doesn’t really know a lot about basketball—honestly, it seems kind of boring, and Pastor Daniel says that sports are worldly—but something about the boy wearing a jersey is just… Really cool. Maybe Evan can watch basketball in Baltimore. Maybe he could even play, and meet other boys on the team, and—

“Evan,” Maddie says, “It’s rude to stare.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says, “Sorry.” 

Their train isn’t arriving for two more hours, so Evan gets his book out.

Maddie seems confused. “Is that… You’re reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?”

“Sorry,” Evan says, snapping the book shut. “Uh—”

“No,” Maddie says, “No, don’t—why are you sorry?”

Evan isn’t sure, actually. Maybe he’s sorry for taking it since it’s Maddie’s? Or sorry for reading it because it’s a girly book. Or sorry for wasting space in his backpack with it.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Maddie reaches out and opens the book to the page with his bookmark. “You can read it. I was just surprised. I was a bit older than you when I read it, and I had a hard time getting through since it was so long. Are you liking it so far?”

“Um.” Evan looks down at the book, then back to Maddie.

It’s Maddie.

“I’ve actually read it already,” he says, “This is the third time.”

He can’t tell what she’s thinking. She looks a little bit sad and a little bit happy at the same time.

“I love you,” Maddie says, and tugs him into her side. Evan snuggles under her arm.

“I love you, too,” he says.

He isn’t sure why he likes A Tree Grows in Brooklyn so much. It’s not a very happy book. There’s a lot of things that he just doesn’t understand because the book is set a long time ago and he isn’t sure how horse-drawn cars work or why some kids just didn’t go to school back then. It’s kind of nice in a sad way, though. Francie isn’t her mom’s favorite kid, but she still saves Francie from the guy who tries to hurt her. She still tries to love Francie the way a mom should, and she feels guilty about loving Neeley more, and Evan thinks that’s nice.

Being on the train is awesome.

It’s like a really long car ride, but there aren’t any seat belts constraining his movement, and when he rests his head against the window it feels a little bit like he’s sticking his brain into a blender. It’s a nice feeling. There’s a whole train car that's like a mini restaurant where he and Maddie have sandwiches for dinner before going back to their seats. She takes the aisle, and he gets to watch all of the towns fly by outside of the window. 

Maddie hugs his arm a lot, and he’s pretty sure that she’s terrified. Whenever somebody walks down the aisle past their seats, she watches them the whole way. 

Evan isn’t afraid. Maddie might not trust herself, but he trusts her. 

“Hey,” he says, and Maddie jumps a little bit.

“Yeah? Do you need to use the bathroom?”

“No,” Evan says, “I just, uh, wanted. Uh. I just. Just love you.”

Baltimore is huge, and busy, and louder than Evan thought it would be.

“Are cities always… Always, uh, lou—loud?”

Maddie clutches his hand so tightly that it hurts a little. “We’ll get used to it.”

Evan never quite adjusts to the noise, but they do get used to some parts of Baltimore. 

Maddie gets a job at the mall. She works in a store called Wet Seal, which Evan thinks is a very dumb name, but it’s popular and Maddie gets new clothes for a discount, which is good because they’re extremely poor. 

Evan didn’t realize that living in a motel makes you extremely poor until he started school and the other kids started calling him Hobo.

It’s whatever. Evan doesn’t talk much at school anyway, because he’s started stuttering for some reason and he can barely get through a sentence. He also doesn’t get most of the stuff that the other kids talk about, and sometimes they use profanity that makes him uncomfortable, and that makes the stuttering worse. It’s easier to just act like he doesn’t wanna talk. There are enough people that he can pretend he isn’t even there and they let him get away with it most of the time.

Maddie finds them an apartment. It has one bedroom, and she tries to give it to Evan, but he throws an embarrassing tantrum about it and they decide to flip a coin. Maddie wins the coin flip and it becomes Evan’s bedroom anyway, but at least it feels a little bit more fair.

People stop calling him Hobo after a couple of months, but he never really makes any friends. Evan reads his books, and writes in his notebook, and draws pictures when the teachers aren’t looking.

He likes to draw people. Ben Stewart is really fun to draw because he has big, pretty eyes. Angela Tippin is fun, too, because she has long curly hair and it’s challenging to get it right. Demarcus Jones is really hard to draw for some reason that Evan can’t figure out, so he keeps trying, and eventually he has a whole page full of Demarcuses and he realizes it’s because one of Demarcus’s eyes is a little bit bigger than the other, which is kind of awesome. Evan thinks he’s getting pretty good at drawing. Maddie’s always said that he’s good, but Maddie is too nice to him.

Evan’s finally starting to think she might not be lying. He’s almost proud of his drawings.

And then Evan doesn’t cover up his notebook fast enough when Mr. Perez walks by, and Mr. Perez sees his page full of Demarcuses.

Evan can see it in his face. He’s in trouble.

They’re allowed to quietly read, or write, or draw when they’ve finished their work. Evan’s finished his work. But he knows, he knows that he isn’t allowed to do this. He shouldn’t have drawn Demarcus in the first place. He shouldn’t have drawn Ben, either, or Eric, or Lucas. He—he didn’t mean anything by it. He’s just practicing. But Mr. Perez isn’t going to know that he’s just practicing.

“Evan,” Mr. Perez says at the end of class, “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

Mr. Perez is his last teacher of the day.

Maddie doesn’t walk him home from school anymore.

Maddie is at work.

Evan is supposed to take the bus home.

He can say that. He can tell Mr. Perez that he can’t talk or he’s going to miss the bus.

“Evan?”

He’s still sitting at his desk. Everybody else is gone. Mr. Perez is sitting right in front of him. “You’re not in trouble, Evan. Are you feeling alright?”

Evan opens his mouth, but he can’t say anything. 

“Doris,” he hears Mr. Perez saying, “I think he’s—he doesn’t seem to be hearing me.”

Evan doesn’t know a Doris. He wants Maddie.

“—I don’t think—”

“—parents—”

“—Evan?—”

“—nurse doesn’t—”

“—ambulance?”

“—his sister’s on—”

“Evan? Your—”

“Hey, sweetheart. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Evan’s hands are tingling. They’re warm.

Maddie is holding them.

“Maddie?”

Maddie smiles at him. There are tears in her eyes.

“Hi, Evan,” she says softly, squeezing his hands, “How are you feeling?”

“Um,” he says. He’s sitting on something squishy. “It’s really bright in here.”

Maddie looks off to the side, and then the lights are dimmer.

“Is that better?”

Evan nods.

Maddie’s thumb is rubbing his hand. “What else, bud?”

They’re in the nurse’s office. He can see some adults standing just outside the doorway in the corner of his eye, but he isn’t sure who they are.

“Can I have some water?”

The nurse comes in, then, and opens a cabinet with a little stack of paper cups inside. She fills it at the sink, and passes it to Maddie, who hands it to Evan.

His hands are steady. They seem like they should be shaking.

After taking a sip of his water, Evan asks, “What happened?”

Maddie brushes his hair off of his forehead. “Your teacher said that he was asking if you’d thought about joining the art club, and you just stopped responding.”

“Oh.”

Maddie keeps stroking her fingers through his hair. “Is that what happened?”

“I, um,” Evan says. “I think. Yeah. He, um. He saw my drawings. I guess I… Um, I thought I was in trouble. He said he wanted to—to talk. And I… Um, that’s all I remember.”

Maddie looks him in the eye. “You’re sure? Nothing else?”

Does the nurse know? Does Mr. Perez? Did Maddie tell them?

“Nothing else,” Evan says, looking down at his shoes. They’ve been too tight lately. “I wouldn’t lie.”

“I know, kiddo,” Maddie says, and pulls him into a hug. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispers.

It only makes him feel worse. How much of a loser is he, that just telling his sister the truth is enough to make her proud?

Evan doesn’t join the art club, but he does start going to see the school counselor one day a week during P.E.

She says to call her Miss Sandra, so Evan does. Miss Sandra says he’s an incredible artist. She asks what other things he likes to draw besides his classmates.

So he shows her his drawing of the cockroach that Maddie killed with a shoe in the middle of the night and forgot to clean up in the morning. He also shows her the millipede that was on the front steps of their building last Saturday, and the spider that was on the window in the bus, and the beetle that crawled into his hand at the park.

The beetle makes Miss Sandra smile. “You like bugs, Evan?”

He shrugs. “I guess.”

“Do you know what kind of beetle this is?”

“Um, I’m pretty sure it’s a dogbane beetle. They have two sets of wings, but this one didn’t spread them until it flew away, so I couldn’t draw them. It was really nice, though. Like, for a beetle. It stayed pretty still and hung out in my hand for a long time.”

Miss Sandra smiles again. Evan feels like she’s in on some kind of joke that he doesn’t know about.

But he keeps showing her his drawings. And telling her about his favorite bugs. And then telling her about the new apartment, and about Maddie, and about how he’d rather be in Baltimore with Maddie and no friends than back in Pennsylvania with his parents and no Maddie. Evan draws Miss Sandra, and she hangs the picture up behind her desk.

Next semester, he joins the science club.

“9-1-1, what's your emergency?”

“Hi. My name is Anna Fields, and I’m afraid that I’m going to hurt myself.”

The voice on the phone is soft and strong. “Hi, Anna. I’m Maddie, and I am so glad that you called for help.”

It’s her job to sound this way, but god damn it, Anna believes her. She sounds like she really cares. 

Maddie asks, “Can you tell me where you are right now?”

“I’m at home. Um, my apartment. It’s off campus.”

“UCLA?”

“Yeah,” Anna says.

“That’s very impressive,” Maddie says. “What’s the address of your apartment?”

Anna tells her. Maddie says that a medical unit has been dispatched, and that they can take her to the hospital.

“Maddie?” she asks.

“Yeah?”

“Um. Can you… talk to me? Until they get here?”

“Of course, Anna. What do you want to talk about?”

“Something good. Um, happy.”

“I can do that... My little brother is about to graduate from high school,” Maddie says.

“Oh, that’s sweet.” Anna tries to forget about all of the things she could do before the paramedics show up. “Are you guys close?”

“I raised him,” Maddie says, and Anna can hear the pride in her voice. “I mean, he’s not going to UCLA, so I guess I could have done better, but—”

Anna laughs. She laughs. “It’s not that impressive,” she says, “I’m in the College of Letters and Science, it’s less selective than the others.”

“Well,” Maddie says, “That still sounds very impressive to me.”

“What’s your brother’s name?”

“Evan,” Maddie says. “He had a phase a couple years back where he wanted to be called Ev, but now he thinks Ev sounds too babyish and it’s Evan all the way.”

“My sister’s like that. She thinks Marie sounds too much like an old lady, but she cycles through nicknames, like, monthly.”

“Is she younger than you?”

“She’s twelve,” Anna says.

“I remember that age. It can be a hard time for kids.”

“Yeah,” Anna says, then: “I don’t want to be here. At UCLA.”

“Where do you want to be?”

“Home. Anywhere else,” Anna says. She can hear sirens. “It’s just—everybody’s so intense here. Everyone has these—these insane internships, and jobs, and connections, and I’m just—I’m not smart enough for this. I don’t even want to do it, I just—my parents couldn’t go to college, and they wanted it for me so bad, so I went to the best school I could, and I fucking hate it here. I hate myself. I don’t—I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do with this stupid degree anyway, and I miss my family, and it’s been two years but I still can’t make friends because I’m a stupid fucking freak and I don’t know how to talk to people—”

“Anna,” Maddie says calmly, “Take a deep breath for me, please.”

Anna takes a breath. The sirens are closer. She doesn’t want to die. She doesn’t want to die.

“Can I tell you something else about me and my brother?” Maddie asks.

“Please.”

“We’re kind of each other’s only friend.”

Anna doesn’t quite laugh, but she almost smiles.

“It’s honestly a little embarrassing. Neither of us are great with people. Well, I can do this kind of thing, on the phone and all, but I’m terrible at building lasting relationships. And Evan—he’s, like, the total opposite. He’s all-in the second he likes somebody, but he has no idea how to actually get to know someone, he just wants to skip to the BFF part and he always puts his foot in his mouth. I think a lot of people who meet him think he’s weird, or overly enthusiastic, but I love him. I think he’s perfect, and just because he has a harder time finding his place and his people doesn’t mean they’re not out there. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with him. It takes time, and luck, and Anna, that goes for everyone. Including you.”

Anna sniffles. She doesn’t usually cry when she gets like this. Usually, when she’s on the brink like this, she couldn’t muster a tear if she wanted to.

“You’re good at this big sister stuff,” Anna croaks.

There’s a knock at the door. “Anna Fields?”

“That’s them,” Anna says, and Maddie says, “Can you open the door?”

“Yeah,” Anna says, standing up from the couch. “Thanks, Maddie.”

“Good luck, Anna. I’m proud of you.”

And Anna believes her.

“Is there anything I should know about that may be a problem for you on the job?”

The new probie shakes his head vehemently. “No, sir, not at all. I—I’ve read all the training materials cover to cover, and—”

Bobby can’t help a chuckle. “Sorry, let me clarify,” he says, “We deal with some pretty heavy things in this job, Buck. We’re helping people on what might be the worst day of their lives, and we need to be able to set our own feelings aside to do the job. If we can’t do the job, people die.”

Buck nods solemnly. 

“Setting it aside is easier said than done,” Bobby continues, “So, this is completely voluntary, and I don’t intend to pry, but as your captain, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know about anything that may be particularly difficult for you to set aside, just so I can keep an eye out going forward.”

Buck stares at him. Bobby looks back, as neutrally as he can. 

Frankly, he doesn’t want to know his employees’ tragic backstories. He does, however, want to know whether he can trust this probie not to lose his cool when they respond to a car accident or when he needs to enter a tight space for a rescue.

“So…” Buck says slowly, “Like, uh. Triggers, or whatever?”

“Sure,” Bobby says. 

“Well, I grew up in a cult,” Buck says, and Bobby feels as though his brain has just fallen out of his skull. 

Buck doesn’t even pause, saying, “And my parents would, like, beat me and stuff, so my sister and I ran away and sometimes we’d be kinda homeless for a little while. I don’t know if any of that really comes up when you’re firefighting, but I guess that’s—yeah, that’s about it.”

He nods to himself, like a child proud that he remembered how to count all the way to 100. He drums his fingers on his leg.

“Does that help?”

Bobby can’t remember the last time he was truly at a loss for words. He wonders, briefly, if Buckley is doing a bit. Casually tossing out whatever traumas come to mind to mock what he thinks is oversensitivity on Bobby's part.

“Yes, that’s helpful,” Bobby decides to say, “We’re called to a lot of different scenes, and you never know what’ll come up. Thank you for telling me.”

It occurs to him, a few weeks later, that “raised in a cult” is actually quite a brief way of communicating something incredibly large.

Chapter Text

Sometimes Maddie thinks it’s time that she and Evan get separate apartments.

“Oh, my god!” Abby—from work—exclaims, holding Evan’s discarded shirt up to her bare chest. 

Maddie slaps a hand over her eyes far too late. The image of her topless coworker sitting in her little brother’s lap—on her couch—is seared into her brain.

“Evan Buckley,” she says, and she hears a clatter.

“We were gonna go to my room!”

“I am so embarrassed,” Abby says, “We didn’t—I thought you were working until nine.”

Maddie, inexplicably, wants to punch Abby in the face. She tries not to let it come through in her voice. “Josh wanted a distraction from his breakup so I let him take my shift.” 

Evan says, “We’re decent,” and Maddie peeks through her fingers to find the two of them standing roughly a yard apart, Abby’s face violently red and Evan’s shoulders hunched as he crosses his arms across his chest defensively.

“Maddie, I'm really sorry,” Abby says, “I—I should go.”

“No, you—”

“Yeah,” Maddie interrupts Evan, “I think you should.”

“I’ll, uh. I’ll see you,” Abby says, not directed at either of them in particular, and ducks her head as she speed-walks out the front door.

As soon as it shuts, Evan says, “Maddie, what the hell?”

Maddie hasn’t been this livid in years. “Excuse me?”

“Look, I know we shouldn’t have been in the living room, but you don’t have to treat her like—like we were doing something wrong! I’m not a teenager!”

“I thought you were gonna stop with the hook-ups.” Maddie crosses her arms. “Evan… Buck. You said it wasn’t good for you.”

“Abby isn’t a hookup! We… we’ve been talking,” Evan says, sounding unbearably young.

“Abby is old enough to be your mother.”

“So? Oh, my god,” he says scoffing, “What, you're gonna make this a—a whole thing about how fucked up I am? Like I’m still just a dumb kid?”

Maddie shouldn't have said that. Honestly, she didn't mean to. Her brother is an adult. She's angry because—because she walked in on it, because it's her coworker, not because she thinks Abby is some kind of predator. Buck is an adult.

An adult who asked her if it would be weird to invite his captain to a concert last month. Who did it against her advice, and came back gushing about how Bobby is so cool, and funny, and nice, and surprisingly strong for an old guy, and Maddie should totally meet him.

Maddie’s a bit afraid of what she’ll do if she does meet him. 

“You were not dumb,” she says. 

Buck sighs and looks down. “I’m sorry.”

Maddie echoes his sigh. “No, I’m sorry. You're right. You’re a grown-up. I shouldn't have freaked. How, uh… How long have you guys been… talking?”

“Uh,” Buck says. “Remember your birthday?”

Maddie’s birthday was four months ago. Evan was still in the academy then.

“Josh and I made a groupchat,” Buck says, “You know, for your party. And we just… I don’t know. She reached out after the party and asked if I wanted to get a coffee sometime.”

He has that same look on his face as he used to get when he talked about making a new friend at school. Bashful and surprised, like he can’t quite believe that somebody is choosing to spend time with him.

“That’s nice,” Maddie says.

Neither of them seem to know what to say next.

“Well,” Buck says, “Uh, since you’re home, wanna order something for dinner? We could catch up on The Bold Type.”

They eat pizza and catch up on The Bold Type. Maddie thinks that Sutton needs to ditch Richard. Buck thinks they’re cute together. It’s fun to argue over something meaningless.

The little bedroom in their first apartment was the first thing they fought over after running away, and Maddie didn’t even really win that one. She just tricked him into agreeing to a coin flip without specifying what would happen if she won (she would, of course, as the victor, get to dictate that the bedroom belonged to Evan, and of course if Evan won, that meant the room was his, too). 

Maddie loses most of their arguments. She won when she first suggested taking him to a therapist, but Evan won when he refused to go back after two sessions. Evan also won when he decided that he wasn’t even going to try applying for college. Maddie managed to win the firefighting argument for a few years, but eventually Evan won that one, too.

Now that she thinks about it, they don’t argue very much. 

Maddie isn't sure how to behave when she goes back to work. Abby is only two desks over. They catch each other’s eyes a few times, and each time Maddie immediately looks back to her computer. 

She manages to avoid Abby for most of her shift, but she has to take a break at some point. 

As Maddie stands in the kitchenette waiting for her tea to steep, she watches Abby take off her headset and stand. She locks eyes with Maddie and smiles as she approaches.

Smiles. Maddie can smile.

“Hey,” Abby says, “Could you hand me that mug?”

“Here.” Maddie hands her the mug—it seems handmade, with a beautiful sea green glaze. Abby picks out a packet of chamomile and Maddie decides that she can be an adult.

“So,” Maddie says, smiling at Abby as best as she can. “I, uh, wanted to apologize for the other day. I know I was super rude, and it’s not that I have a problem with you, I was just caught off-guard.”

“Oh, no,” Abby says, lifting the kettle and pouring water over her tea bag. “That was entirely on us. I just… you know I don’t have a lot of free time, with my mom and all. I guess we just weren’t thinking.”

Abby was trying to fuck her brother as quickly as possible. Right. That’s… fine. That’s fine.

“Happens to the best of us,” Maddie says brightly. “Buck said you’ve been… talking for awhile?”

Abby ducks her head, a small smile on her face. “Yeah. It’s been really nice. Buck’s a great friend.”

“Right,” Maddie says. “He—he’s always been a sweet kid.”

The timer on her phone goes off, and Maddie jumps. She takes her teabag out and drops it in the trash.

“Hey, Maddie,” Abby says, as Maddie is turning to leave. “Your brother is a great guy. I know how close you two are. I wouldn't have started something serious with him behind your back.”

Evan is an adult. He can make his own choices. But the thought of him with someone older, the idea of him as—as a hot young thing, as somebody else’s stress relief or emotional support hookup, makes her feel sick. 

It’s Maddie’s job to look after him. She’s failed so many times. 

“You know, I raised him,” she says. To her horror, her voice wavers. 

Abby looks alarmed. “Maddie, I—”

“He really likes you,” Maddie says. “I’m sorry, this—it’s none of my business. Um, sorry.”

Maddie dumps her tea in the sink and power-walks back to her desk, leaving Abby behind without a second glance.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

She’s always thought that Buck’s promiscuity might be related to… everything. He was fifteen the first time she caught him with a girl, and he confessed that it wasn’t the first time he’d slept with somebody, but Maddie hadn’t learned much beyond that. She stumbled her way through a talk about protection and told him to be careful, but she hadn’t talked to him about anything else. Fifteen had seemed awfully young to her for him to be having sex, but then, Maddie got married at seventeen, so she hadn’t thought that Evan would really listen to her if she tried saying anything about it.

Maddie’s only walked in on him twice—that first time, and yesterday with Abby—but she knows that he has a problem. Ever since he turned eighteen, he’s gone out a lot, and he even got himself fired for hooking up on the clock at his last job before the fire academy, which sounds so ridiculous that Maddie sometimes can’t believe he would really do it. It seems dangerous. She thinks he might be hurting himself.

But Maddie hasn’t been with anyone since Doug.

Most people would probably think that’s weirder than Evan having a lot of hook-ups. So it’s hard to know when she’s reasonably concerned, and when she’s overreacting.

Her divorce has been finalized for years now. She’s a free woman. She just… never saw the need to date. 

At first, it felt wrong. She heard that Doug got remarried as soon as Pastor Daniel gave him permission—to Maddie’s old friend Katherine, which she tries not to think about—but Maddie had planned for her and Doug to be forever. She knew she’d destroyed that when she chose to leave, but part of her still felt like she belonged to him.

By the time Evan was dating, she’d gotten over that. Pastor Daniel was just some guy, not the voice of God. Maddie made her choice, Doug moved on, and their marriage was over. But Maddie still had a kid to think about. All she needed in her life was Evan.

Now Evan’s grown up. He has a new name, and a real job, and he doesn’t need his big sister hovering over his shoulder with every step he takes.

What if he wants to move out? What if he and Abby do get serious? What if he moves in with her?

Maddie wishes she hadn’t poured out her tea. It always settles her stomach.

They get a call at a small private school, St. Daniel’s, around midday.

“I never did like the idea of religious schooling,” Hen says in the truck, “Feels like pretty intentional indoctrination.”

“Yeah, it is,” Buck says, and then, because Chim and Hen are looking at him with interest: “You know, it’s actually a pretty common tactic among cults, isolating the children to teach them your worldview and cut them off from other perspectives. There’s this whole documentary about it.”

His eyes dart to Bobby in the front. “Not that Catholicism  is a cult,” Buck says, and Chim and Hen stifle identical snorts of laughter.

“Behave,” Bobby says, as they pull up outside of the school. 

They file through the front entrance, toolbags and medical kits in hand, and Chimney whistles.

“Jesus Christ,” he says. Right inside the entrance is a giant wall mural depicting the crucifixion.

“Eugh,” Buck says, eyeing the ten-foot-tall body of Christ. “You know, I think that’s verging on idolatry.”

“Ooh, SAT word,” Hen teases, and Buck looks away from the gruesome mural to grin at her. Hen is much nicer to look at than Jesus, he thinks.

His next thought, I’m going to hell, is instinctive and easily ignored.

“Be respectful,” Bobby says chidingly.

“We’re extremely respectful,” Buck says, and Chimney nods.

“Besides,” Hen says quietly to Buck, “Catholics love idols. It’s kinda their whole thing.”

“I thought their whole thing was candles,” Buck says, and Chimney says, “See, I thought it was about the wine.”

Bobby sighs. “Are you all itching to walk back to the station?”

“No, sir,” Buck immediately says, and keeps his mouth shut as Hen and Chimney roll their eyes.

The principal—can nuns be principals? Or is there a different word for it?—meets them at the office. Buck lets himself look around the hallway as she and Bobby chat, leading them to the classroom where a kid has apparently gotten himself into some trouble trying to sneak out of class. 

It doesn’t look the way he’d always thought that Catholic schools might look. There’s no plush red carpet, and the walls aren’t covered in ornate wood paneling. It looks kind of like his first school, actually.

After he and Maddie left Pennsylvania, they lived in a few different cities, and Buck always went to large public schools, where he got used to cinder block walls and grungy laminate floors. Back in Pennsylvania, though, school looked a lot like this. Old hardwood floors, not in the best shape. Drywall with bulletin boards outside of each classroom. They come to a stop sooner than he’d anticipated—it really isn’t a very large school—and Buck notes that this bulletin board is decorated with small handmade posters about various saints.

He enters the classroom with sweat on the back of his neck.

“This is Mr. Franklin,” the nun says, and a surprisingly young man in a button-up shirt holds a hand out for Bobby to shake. “And that,” she says, gesturing toward the window where the lower half of a twelve-year-old is wiggling, “Is Jordan.”

“He apparently thought that climbing out of the window was preferable to a tutoring session,” Mr. Franklin sighs. “Honestly, Jordan.”

“I was gonna come back!” the kid protests, and Buck exchanges grins with Chim and Hen.

“Buck,” Bobby says, and he’s already got the drill out.

“Hi, there, Jordan,” Chim says, “I’m Chimney, this is Buck and Hen. Buck’s gonna get you out of that window, and we’ll check up on you to make sure you’re alright.”

“I hope it kills me,” Jordan moans, “Everybody saw!”

“Eh, somebody else will embarrass themselves soon enough,” Buck says, and finishes unscrewing the frame. He hands the drill off to Bobby, and on the wall behind him—

1. I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD: YOU SHALL NOT HAVE STRANGE GODS BEFORE ME.
2. YOU SHALL NOT TAKE THE NAME OF THE LORD YOUR GOD IN VAIN.
3. REMEMBER TO KEEP HOLY THE LORD’S DAY.
4. HONOR YOUR FATHER AND YOUR MOTHER.

Bobby takes the drill. Buck takes the window out of the frame; the kid out of the window; the mind out of the body.

5. YOU SHALL NOT KILL.
6. YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.

He asked Maddie once if he’d committed adultery. She said no, but she hadn’t seemed sure.

Mr. Brooks gets closer. Evan isn’t needed here. Hen and Chimney have him. Buck can take his tools out to the truck.

Buck is in the hallway. He’s waiting for Maddie. She’s supposed to pick him up. She needs to pick him up.

“Buck, are you with me?”

Buck doesn’t think he is. Where’s Maddie?

“Alright,” Bobby says, “Alright, can you stay here for me? I’ll get Hen or Chimney and they can help you back to the truck while I finish up with Jordan.”

“Jordan,” Buck repeats. “Is… Is Jordan alright?”

“Jordan’s just fine. I’m gonna grab Hen or Chim for you, okay?”

Hen and Chim can have lunch with him. Right? They can take him back to the station. 

“Hey, Buck,” Chimney’s saying, and he isn’t sure whether that’s the first time Chim’s spoken or not. He becomes suddenly aware of the fact that he’s standing in the middle of the hallway, his hands hanging limply by his sides. 

“Hi,” Buck says, and Chimney says, “Can you walk with me, bud?” and Buck says, “Yes,” and walks with him. 

“Are… Hen and Bobby still in there?”

“Yeah, but they’ll be out soon,” Chim says, and something spikes in Buck’s chest.

“No. No, they—they should stay, they shouldn’t leave him.”

“We didn’t leave him,” Chim says gently, “We got him out, Buck.”

“No,” Buck says, “Not the window. With Mr. Brooks.”

“With—who?”

“With Mr. Brooks,” Buck says.

“You mean Mr. Franklin?”

“No,” Buck says. Why doesn't Chim get it? “Mr. Brooks. He’s a bad teacher, Chim. He shouldn’t be…” Buck gags.

“Oh, shit,” Chim hisses, and shoves him through a set of doors, and Buck is throwing up into a row of bushes.

“Alright, big guy,” Chim says, and pats his back. “Let it out. Uh, maybe to the left a little bit.”

“I’m sorry,” Buck says as soon as he’s in control of his own mouth again. “Oh, my god, I’m sorry.”

“You know how you can make it up to me? Come sit down, man, let me check your temperature.”

Buck sits down. He lets Chimney check his temperature. He lets Chimney shine a penlight into his eyes, and take his pulse, and every time his gloved hands touch Buck’s skin, he feels a little more human.

“Have you ever had a panic attack before? Or experienced spells of dissociation?”

“Not since I was a kid,” Buck admits, looking down at Chimney’s shoes. They’re shiny. “I, um. Maddie—my sister—she says I used to kinda… check out, sometimes. From when I was, like, ten, until maybe fifteen or sixteen?”

“Would you usually be sick on those occasions?”

“No. That’s, um. That part was new.”

Chimney hands him a water bottle. Buck takes a mouthful, swishes it around, then leans out of the truck to spit on the ground. They exist in silence, Buck hoping and praying that Bobby and Hen will come out, but they never do.

“So,” Chim says. “Brooks?”

“My old teacher,” Buck says. “Had the same poster as, uh…”

“Franklin.”

“Yeah.”

Chimney nods. “Catholic school?”

“Protestant,” Buck says. Why doesn’t Chimney just ask what he wants to ask? “They said we were, like, Brethren, but we definitely weren’t. It was just, like, weirdo fundamentalism.”

“Hm,” Chim responds, and Buck loses it.

“Aren’t you gonna ask why I freaked out?”

Chimney looks him dead in the eye. “Do you want me to?”

No is on the tip of his tongue, but Buck doesn’t say a word. He’s never actually told anyone besides Maddie before. He’s been thinking about maybe telling Abby, but he doesn’t think he’s going to, because he doesn’t want her to look at him any differently, or think that he’s fishing for sympathy or something.

He hasn’t known Chimney for very long, but something about him reminds Buck of Maddie. Maybe it’s in the eyes. Warmth, intelligence—no judgment.

“Well,” Buck says, “You know the stereotypes about religious leaders and little boys.”

Chim looks at him, eyes just as calculating as his sister’s, and then turns away to dig through the contents of his first aid kit. He resurfaces with a Snickers in his hand and holds it out, like, Does this make it better?

Buck can’t help but burst into laughter.

“Hey, man,” Chim protests, “I’m trying!”

Buck cackles, leaning back in the truck with one hand to his chest. “Oh my god,” he wheezes, “I can’t breathe.”

Chimney throws the Snickers at his head. “See if I’m nice to you again, probie.”

He smiles, and Chimney smiles back. The silence gives him room to breathe. Chimney wordlessly closes up his first aid bag and tucks it into its proper spot, and then he climbs up and sits across from Buck in his usual spot, like nothing’s changed.

Finally, two bites into his Snickers, Hen and Bobby emerge from the school, Bobby carrying the tool bag that Buck suddenly realizes he completely forgot.

“I, um,” Buck says. “I—I didn’t—”

“Buck,” Bobby says firmly, “We’ll talk about it later.”

“I can—I can do the job.”

“Buck, things happen. Nobody thinks you can’t do the job,” Hen says kindly. 

He looks at Chim, who miraculously looks like he agrees with her.

“It was, uh,” Buck says, keeping his eyes on Chim, “Kind of a specific set of circumstances. I, um. I really don’t think it’ll happen again.”

“It’s not a set of circumstances we see often,” Chim says. Like he’s backing him up.

“Let’s head back,” Bobby says brusquely, not making eye contact. “We can talk about it at the station.”

The ride back is quiet. Chimney’s eyes keep flitting between Buck and Bobby, like he’s dying to say something.

“Um, Cap already knows this,” Buck says, “When I was a kid, my parents were in this really cult-y church. Well, I mean, they’re still in it. But, uh, Maddie and I were in it.”

“Maddie’s your sister,” Hen confirms, and he nods.

“Yeah. We, uh, we left when I was… eleven, I think? She just took me and ran, basically. She’s, like… a superhero.” It’s embarrassing, maybe, but Buck still thinks that Maddie is the strongest person alive. He never feels as safe as when he’s with her. “But, um, anyway. Maddie got me out, but not before we both went through some shit.”

Hen prompts, “So being in a religious environment…”

“Yeah. But that isn’t…”

He looks over to Chimney, who doesn’t quite smile, but his face softens, and as long as he keeps his eyes on Chimney, Buck is able to say, “I had this teacher. He, uh. Shouldn’t have been left alone with kids. With me. That’s why… That’s why we left. I told Maddie, and she knew that nobody would believe us. And if they did, they’d call me a sinner. So…”

When he manages to look over at Hen, she doesn’t look pitying, or disgusted. She looks a little sad, but she’s still looking at him like he’s Buck.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she says.

“Yeah, well,” Buck says, “I never tried going out the window. Maybe I should’ve given that a shot.”

“Well, it didn’t work for Jordan,” Chim says, “Though I guess failing and just having to do math is a bit lower stakes than your situation.”

Buck thinks he might love Chimney. “Just a bit worse than algebra, yeah. Then again, it might be preferable to calculus.”

Chim snorts, and Hen says, “Buck!” and Buck says, “What?! I’m allowed! I mean, Chim is definitely a bad person for laughing—”

“Hey!”

Hen cackles.

“—But I think I have the right to make whatever jokes I want.”

“Please just don’t make whatever jokes you want in front of anybody else,” Bobby says, “Please.”

Buck beams. “Sure thing, Cap!”

Nothing really changes at work besides the fact that Buck makes jokes sometimes. Hen usually groans, Bobby usually sighs, and Chim’s about 50/50 on laughing or groaning, but nobody ever tells him to stop, and it feels good. He’s never just talked about it like this, like it’s just another thing that happened in his life. 

There were a couple of times in high school and the following years where Buck kinda wanted to talk about it. When he first went out with Melinda Rivers and realized that he couldn’t really remember what they did in her car. When he got curious and Googled Richard Brooks and found a mugshot and a registry. When they spent half a day in the academy learning the warning signs that might warrant a report to social services. 

The only person he could have talked about it with was Maddie, though, and he’d sooner die than hurt her by bringing it up. 

Maybe there was a time when he would have.

If that time existed, it would have been before she told him about Daniel. Before Buck knew that his failure to save their brother drove their parents straight into Pastor Daniel’s arms, and before he knew that he’d ruined Maddie’s life twice over. 

He starts thinking that maybe he could talk to Abby.

It’s just hard to talk about himself without feeling like a jackass. Abby is going through a lot, and Buck’s thing happened so long ago that it barely matters anymore. 

She’s nice, though. She looks at him like he matters, and she’s smart, and when she teases him it doesn’t make him feel bad. When they hook up, she tells him what he's doing right and it feels real. 

Then they get a call about a malfunctioning roller coaster.

Then Buck fails to save Devon.

Then he gets calls from Abby and Maddie at the same time, and instead of answering either, he wonders if something like Heaven is real.

“Hey, Chim?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you tell me if I’m overreacting about something?”

Buck settles in the lounge chair across from the sofa, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

Chimney doesn’t pause his game. “Yeah, man. What’s up?”

“So, I went and saw that therapist like Bobby said,” Buck launches in, as though Chimney had already known that Bobby recommended Buck to a therapist. 

“Sure,” Chim says. If you try to stop Buck and ask him to explain things, he’ll find five new tangents to go on; it’s much easier to let him keep going and only stop him when you’re truly baffled.

“And we had sex,” Buck says, and Chimney drives Yoshi straight off the race track. “So we didn’t really get to, like, talk during the session, you know? Dude, you suck at this. Anyway, I feel like that was kinda… Like, obviously we weren’t supposed to do that, but I’ve been wondering if it’s just, like, ‘frowned upon’ we shouldn’t have done that, or if it’s, like, ‘I’m supposed to report her’ we shouldn’t have done that.”

Part of Chimney instinctively wants to ask if she was hot. He beats this part of himself to death with a hammer, and sets down the controller.

Buck doesn’t seem very distressed. 

“Huh,” Chimney says. “Give me a second.”

Buck nods and snatches up the controller. “Take your time.” He exits to the menu and starts a new race, playing as Toadette. 

That call where Buck dissociated was one of the more frightening of Chimney’s career, excluding the… obvious. He hadn’t processed the extent of Buck’s perpetual fidgeting until it stopped entirely. Buck had stood in the hallway like a zombie, arms hanging limply at his sides and eyes unfocused. For a second, he’d thought Buck was having a stroke or something. His face, which was normally so expressive as to be mildly comical, had been completely blank, and it took a few repetitions for him to process anything he heard.

“Well, first of all,” Chimney says, “I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure she broke the law.”

Buck hisses, squinting at the screen and just barely dodging a banana peel. “That’s not great.”

“In terms of laws and regulations, you’re definitely supposed to report her.”

“Yeah, but what do you think?”

It occurs to Chimney that Buck knows the employee regulations better than anyone else in the 118. He regularly goes down various research rabbit holes, and once spent an entire shift telling them all about which things are and are not protected free speech under the law.

Buck knows what he’s supposed to do. He’s asking Chim what he’s supposed to feel.

“...Buck,” Chimney says. “Did you want to have sex with her?”

“Uh,” Buck says. “I don’t know. I mean, yeah. I guess.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“I mean, it was sex,” Buck shrugs.

“...That’s not an answer, bud.”

Buck finishes the race in third. He sets the controller down on the coffee table and crosses his arms over his chest, looking down at the floor.

“I think.” Buck clears his throat. “I, uh, I read something about… Uh, it said that just because your body, um, responds to stimuli, doesn’t mean you, like, wanted it.”

“Yeah,” Chimney acknowledges.

“I don’t…” Buck winces. “Okay, so I definitely finished, but I don’t really, like, remember it? I, uh. I kinda walked out and just… realized what had happened. Like, I’m not totally sure how it started, so I don’t… I mean, is there even any point in reporting that?”

When Chim first met Evan Buckley, he hadn’t thought that the kid would someday have the ability to completely break his heart.

“Buck, I don’t want to tell you your own business, or tell you how you should feel about it, but if you were so checked out that you don’t even remember what happened…”

“I, uh. I probably couldn’t have really consented even if I wanted to. Right?”

“...Yeah.”

“Cool,” Buck says, face dropping into his hands. Muffled, he whispers, “Fuck.”

God, he can’t imagine how Buck is feeling right now. 

“...You want a hug?”

“Please,” Buck says, still muffled.

“Then get over here, unless you want me sitting in your lap.”

When Buck’s face emerges from his hands, he’s smiling.  

“Well,” Buck says, standing and throwing himself onto the couch next to Chim, “If you did sit in my lap, I’d probably dissociate and forget it, so.” 

Chimney huffs and holds his arms open. Buck curls up like he’s trying to make himself smaller, hugging Chim around the waist so Chimney’s arms have to go over, hugging Buck around the shoulders. He isn’t sure if they could hug this way if they were both standing up.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and Buck seems to settle into the hug, letting his weight settle against Chimney. 

“...What am I doing wrong?” Buck mumbles, “Why am I so…”

Chimney waits, but Buck doesn’t finish the sentence.

Suddenly, he remembers the last time he had to see a psychologist. The paperwork they made him fill out. It had all these little boxes to check for preexisting conditions like at the normal doctor, but they had additional boxes for things like experiencing domestic violence and sexual assault.

He already wants this lady to get fired and maybe arrested, but if Buck filled out that form honestly, then Chim might need to straight-up murder a therapist. 

“You aren’t doing anything wrong,” Chimney says, “I promise, you aren’t.”

Buck scoffs. For lack of anything profound to say, Chimney flicks his ear.

Chim isn't sure when he became Buck’s go-to guy, or why he's been granted the honor, but he stands at Buck’s side in Bobby’s office with an odd mix of pain and pride in his chest. His hand rests on Buck’s shoulder. Bobby keeps looking at him, and Chim keeps tilting his head toward Buck—he and Bobby can debrief later, but right now Buck doesn’t need to feel like he’s being talked about or condescended to. 

The debrief comes sooner than Chimney was expecting.

Bobby has seemingly already ordered for him when he arrives at the diner, and he gets to take exactly one sip of coffee before his friend launches in.

“Do you think we should be doing more for him?”

 “For who,” Chimney says nonchalantly, cutting into his waffle.

“I thought I was doing him a favor, letting him talk about it however he wants, but—”

“Wait,” Chimney interrupts. “You think if we told Buck to knock it off with the bad jokes, she wouldn't have done that? What’s the causality there?”

Bobby sighs. “No, I—I just mean, he’s clearly still struggling with this, and now it’s… I mean, surely it’ll be worse.”

Chimney’s never seen Bobby at such a loss. It’s a bit unnerving.

“Bobby,” he says, “Eat your breakfast and listen to me.”

Bobby frowns at him. Chimney gestures to the omelet in front of him. Bobby’s eyebrows knit together.

Chimney looks pointedly at the omelet.

Bobby sighs and picks up his fork.

“Buck isn’t a kid,” Chimney says as Bobby cuts off a piece of omelet. “I know it feels like he is sometimes because we’re old and he’s hyperactive and Buck, but he’s not. Our job isn’t to try and fix him. Just help him out when he asks for it.”

Bobby seems displeased with his omelet. “That doesn’t feel good enough.”

“Well, yeah,” Chimney says. “It’s not good enough. But we can’t reverse time, so that’s about all we got.” 

Bobby clenches his jaw. “...Do you know why he went to you first?”

Chim takes another bite of waffle to buy himself some time, because he’s been asking himself that same exact question. 

“Maybe because I helped him out at the school,” Chim says, but he doesn’t really buy it, honestly. “If I were him, I’d probably go to Hen or you before I went to me, so I don’t know. That’s the only thing I can think of.”

“You know,” Bobby says, “Buck told me once that you’re a lot like his sister.”

“Really?” Buck hasn’t told Chimney anything like that.

Oh, he’s talked about his sister plenty. Maddie is eight years older than Buck, and she’s been a 9-1-1 dispatcher since he was in high school. She likes to sing, and her hair clogs up the shower drain, and she’s incredibly dorky according to her little brother. Chim’s never gotten much of an impression that Buck saw any similarity between them.

“Really. Said you two had a similar sense of humor.”

“Huh.”

They eat. Chimney has a piece of bacon, and finishes off his coffee. 

Halfway into his omelet, Bobby sighs, and says, “What exactly did he ask you? When he told you about it?”

Chim hesitates. Was that conversation meant to be in confidence? Buck initiated it in the common area at work, which would indicate no, but he still feels a bit guilty as he says, “He told me they had sex, then asked if that was… He said something like, is it just frowned upon or the type of thing he should report.”

“Hm.”

“I think he knew it was illegal. He just wasn’t sure if he was…” Chim searches for the words, and can’t find them.

But Bobby can. “A victim?”

“...Yeah. I guess so.”

Chimney doesn’t get to meet Maddie until he’s a victim himself. First of a broken heart, and then of a broken skull.

Sometimes when he wakes up in the hospital, he’s alone. Usually, though, Bobby is there, often accompanied by Hen or Buck. They’ll play cards or tell him work stories, and he’ll fall asleep intermittently, and they’ll kindly pretend that he isn’t passing out on them mid-sentence like an old man.

This time, he doesn’t wake up alone, but Bobby’s nowhere to be seen.

Instead, there’s a woman standing by the sink, fixing her hair in the mirror. Chimney doesn’t recognize her, but she’s gorgeous. Her hair falls in dark brown waves, and he isn’t even sure what she’s fixing, because it looks great. Her face is scrunched in displeasure. Her eyes—big, brown, beautiful—are focused on her own reflection. Finally, she gives up on her hair and turns around.

“Oh!” the woman says, jumping and grasping at her chest with one hand like she’s had the fright of her life, “Hi! Sorry, you just missed Ev—uh, Buck. He had to go to work.”

Does he know this woman? He’s felt remarkably normal the past few days for a guy who got Phineas Gage’d, but would he even know if he’d lost some memories? 

“Sorry, it’s probably weird that I’m in here,” she says, “Buck wanted you to have some company, but I’m a total stranger, I just had the day off and he asked if I wouldn’t mind hanging out so that you wouldn’t wake up alone. I can totally leave if you want me to.”

“You’re Maddie,” Chimney says, “The superhero.”

She beams. Her hair and eyes may be darker than her brother’s, and Chimney’s mildly astonished by how much shorter she is than Buck, but there’s something reminiscent of him in her smile; or, he realizes, something reminiscent of Maddie in Buck’s.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Maddie says, “Between the two of us, only one is seemingly indestructible.”

“Hey, you’ve never had rebar go through your brain before,” Chimney says, “Who knows, maybe you’d shake it off too.”

Maddie laughs. “I’m gonna hold off on testing that, if you don’t mind.”

Chim shrugs. “You’re missing out.” 

“So,” Maddie says, crossing the room to settle in the chair by his bed. “I noticed you had Bravo on the TV. I didn't even know they had that in hospitals.”

“Listen, I’m not gonna miss Below Deck just because I’m a medical marvel.”

“You watch Below Deck?” Her eyes sparkle with excitement. “I’ve been trying to get Buck to watch with me for years!”

“And he won’t? The hell is wrong with him?”

Maddie shakes her head, grinning. “I don’t know where I went wrong.”

“Hey, look, it’s nature vs. nurture for a reason. Some things just can’t be taught, and taste is one of them.”

Maddie leans in, arm resting on the side of the hospital bed. “Did you see the finale?”

“You mean did I see the Nico-Brianna breakup?”

“Okay, I didn’t want to spoil it, but woah!”

By the time Maddie Buckley leaves, Chimney’s face hurts from smiling, and he thinks that maybe everything will be okay.

Chimney has a lot of free time while he’s waiting to get cleared for work.

That, Maddie tells herself, is why they’ve been hanging out so much. He’s bored, and his girlfriend broke up with him, and Maddie’s never had much of a social life and is thus usually free, so it just… makes sense.

Taking Chimney with her to get her nose pierced just makes sense.

“Do you think I should get an ear pierced?” he asks, holding the door open for her. “I always thought it’d look cool.”

“Just one?”

Chimney shrugs. “One is edgier.”

Maddie would not describe Chimney as edgy, but she does think he would look good with an earring.

It’s the sort of thing she’s grown more open to over the years. Men with earrings. Herself with a nose ring. She’s been thinking about it forever, and at their last Buffriday, Chimney said that she should just go for it. 

So she is.

As the piercer swipes Maddie’s nose with alcohol, Chimney says, “Wait, which one is the gay ear?”

“The what?”

The piercer says, “I don’t think that’s real.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s real,” Chimney says. “I mean, I don’t mind piercing the gay ear, I just feel like if I do, I should know about it. Know what vibes I’m giving off.”

Maddie barely feels the needle go through. She’s just… She’s just really happy that Chimney’s here. She’s happy that he and Buck are such good friends. She’s happy that he doesn’t mind piercing the gay ear, because she’s always wondered if her little brother might still be keeping a few secrets from her, and maybe Chimney is someone he could go to when he won’t talk to Maddie.

Mostly, though, she’s just happy that Chimney is here to hold her hand.

“You should do both,” Maddie says. “Switch your earring depending on the day.”

Chimney’s smile is infectious. “I like it,” he says. “Your new stud and the both ears idea. Hey, we could buy two pairs of earrings and swap so we’re wearing one of each.”

“Like friendship earrings!”

He claps his hands. “Exactly!”

Maddie and Chimney leave the shop with three new piercings and their fingers intertwined between the two of them. Chimney’s new earrings, small silver studs, twinkle in the sunlight, but they’re nothing compared to his smile.

Buck breaks up with Abby over smoothies.

He isn’t even sure if it counts as a breakup. They were never really dating to begin with. It just seemed wrong to let things peter out without explanation. At the very least, he owes her that.

“I don’t understand,” Abby says, “Are you just not okay with it being casual anymore?”

“Uh.” Buck takes a sip of his Malibu Mango smoothie, avoiding eye contact. “No. Well, yeah. It’s, um.”

He makes himself look at her as he takes a deep breath and says, “I don’t want to have sex.”

She blinks. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Abby nods silently, processing something in her head. Buck can’t imagine what she’s thinking. Probably that he’s lying to cover up for something, or that it’s rich for him to say he doesn’t want sex.

“I thought we were having fun,” Abby says.

“No, we were! Uh, it’s actually maybe the only time I’ve ever had fun.”

Abby raises her eyebrows.

“That’s kind of the problem. Um. You know I… used to sleep around a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, recently I, uh. I hooked up with somebody but I didn’t… want to. Um, I guess it wasn’t really hooking up, it was…”

Abby’s eyebrows crease in concern. “Oh, Buck.”

He does his best to smile. “I’m alright. Uh, I just… it just made me realize, how often I’ve had sex when I didn’t really want to. And, uh, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I can’t really… tell, whether I want to.” He shrugs. “So, until I can…”

Abby takes his hand.

Has he been resting his hands on the table all this time hoping that she would?

“I’m proud of you,” she says, “That’s… that sounds really healthy, Buck, and I’m so sorry if I’ve done anything—”

“No!” He squeezes her hand. “No, Abby, really, you’ve been great. This is all me. Um, I just… I hope that we can still be friends.”

Abby looks at him like he’s crazy. “Buck, in what world would I stop being your friend over this?”

Buck laughs, and Abby smiles at him. “That’s… that’s good to hear,” he says. “I’m really glad I met you, Abby.”

She squeezes his hand. “And I’m glad I met you.”

Abby can’t finish her smoothie, so Buck finishes off the dregs for her, and makes fun of her for always getting strawberry banana. They hug before they part, and there’s something new about it, something different that Buck can’t put his finger on.

Whatever it is, he thinks it’s good.

Chapter Text

Eddie has known Evan Buckley for roughly two hours when the guy says, “Hey, I’ve been irresistible since I was nine.”

Hen facepalms. Chimney winces. Eddie isn’t sure why they’re reacting so strongly, but Buck’s been reacting strongly to Eddie’s presence since he got here, so maybe there’s something in the air.

Eddie tilts his head. “Does getting your crush to hold your hand on the playground somehow translate to calendar photography?”

“Uh,” Buck says, looking at Chimney expectantly.

Chimney sighs heavily, looking upwards as if begging God for relief.

“Don’t pay attention to anything Buck says,” he tells Eddie, “I try not to.”

Eddie isn’t the most socially adept person in the world, but he can tell that something is going on that’s beyond his understanding right now. Hen, Buck, and Chimney all keep ping-ponging Significant Looks between each other.

Buck turns to Eddie. “Okay, so—”

“Buck,” Hen says, “Think before you speak.”

“Guys, come on,” Buck says, turning back to address Hen and Chimney. “The opening was just, like, right there. What was I supposed to do, not mention my extensive qualifications?”

“I hate you,” Chimney tells him plainly, “And you need psychiatric help.”

Buck clicks his tongue. “Yeah, see, tried that—”

“Oh my god!” Chimney groans.

“Buck,” Hen says, “Come help me stock the ambulance.”

It’s an obvious redirection, but Buck allows it. 

Chimney sighs as they walk away.

“So,” Eddie says. “Should I ask what that was about?”

“Please don’t,” Chimney says, eyes wide. “I’m a terrible liar, and if I tell you what that was about I’m pretty sure I’ll actually go to hell.”

Eddie blinks. “Alright, then.”

Bumpy start with Buck aside, Eddie thinks that he’s in the right place. Bobby seems like a good boss. Hen and Chimney are funny and welcoming. He feels like he’s doing something meaningful. Something good, something that Christopher can be proud of. He doesn’t need all of his coworkers to love him, he just needs to do his job and come home at the end of the day.

Then Buck helps him extract a live grenade from a man’s leg, and Eddie knows that he’s in the right place.

When they get back to the station, their shift has ended, and Eddie is itching to see his son. He changes in a rush. Right as he sits down on the bench, bending down to tie his shoes, he hears somebody enter the locker room.

“Hey,” Buck says, “I just wanted to, uh… Uh, can we talk?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, finishing off a double knot and sitting up. “But I hope you don’t think you need to keep apologizing.”

“No! No, uh,” Buck smiles. “Well, I am sort of apologizing, but not… I’m apologizing for a different thing.”

Buck seems nervous. Eddie wonders if Buck set up some sort of prank on him earlier that hasn’t sprung yet.

“I’m all ears.”

Buck fully enters the locker room, then, leaning against the lockers to face Eddie. His legs are so long that his feet end up under the bench, and he’s not even leaning at a particularly deep angle.

“So,” Buck starts, and tugs at the hem of his hoodie. “Uh, do you remember that thing I said earlier about the calendar?”

“May the best man win?”

“The other thing.”

“You said a lot of things.”

Buck ducks his head, laughing. “Alright, fair. Uh, the thing about being irresistible.”

Eddie snaps his fingers. “Ah, right. I forgot I’m talking with the smoothest nine-year-old on the block.”

Buck’s smile dims. “Yeah,” he says, “About that. Uh… I have this habit of making jokes that aren’t, uh, really funny to anyone but me.”

Eddie knows that his face is probably doing something unattractive and scrunch-y, but he can’t help it. “You’re… you’re apologizing because your joke wasn’t funny enough?”

He watches as Buck crosses his arms, almost hugging himself. “Not exactly,” Buck says. “I kinda… Well, it wasn’t holding hands on the playground. It was at school, though!”

It feels like Buck is speaking another language. “So… sorry, what?”

“It was my teacher,” Buck says, and Eddie’s stomach drops through the floor. “I, uh… I make jokes about it now, and Bobby usually lets me get away with it when it’s just us, but Hen kinda beat my ass in the ambulance for doing it in front of you earlier, and she was right. It’s not fair of me to make you uncomfortable by saying dumb shit.”

Eddie should say something supportive. Something comforting. Instead, he asks, “It doesn’t make you uncomfortable?” 

Buck frowns. “What do you mean?”

“The jokes. Reminding people. Telling me. It doesn’t… you’re just cool with it?”

“Oh.” Buck looks oddly cute when he’s surprised. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I wouldn’t tell just anybody. Actually, it’s only you guys and my sister.”

Before Eddie can fully process that, Buck adds, “And it kinda helps, actually. Hen thinks I should take it more seriously, but it’s kinda nice to… just stop pretending, you know? Like, you go so long pretending like something never happened, it’s kinda nice to acknowledge it, even if it’s weird or uncomfortable.”

Buck, Eddie thinks, is a really smart guy.

“You really are a badass.” The naked admiration in Eddie’s voice is a bit embarrassing, but he can't help it.

Buck smiles, looking down at his feet. His eyelashes flutter, and his cheeks seem pinker than they were just a few seconds ago. Eddie suddenly feels a wild urge to reach out and do something. He isn’t sure what. It’s almost a violent urge—he wants to dig his fingers into something soft, or bite the reddest part of Buck’s flushed cheek.

Oh, that is not a normal thought to have.

That is actually a very gay thought to have.

“Well, I’ll let you go,” Buck says, “I just, uh… Yeah. Yeah, that was it.”

“Cool,” Eddie says, and briefly wishes he were dead. “Uh, thank you. For telling me.”

Buck exits with a shy smile and a dorky wave. He leaves behind the scent of pine and citrus, and Eddie breathes deeply before realizing what he’s doing.

Jesus Christ. What the fuck.

Eddie drives home in a daze. He then realizes that he was supposed to pick up Chris from Abuela’s, and drives to her house paying deliberate attention to the road. He keeps his hands at ten and two, checks his mirrors religiously, and when they’re both home, he throws himself into Christopher’s bedtime routine with everything he has. Then Christopher is asleep.

Then Eddie is sitting on the sofa.

Then Eddie is thinking about Evan Buckley.

 Then Eddie pulls out his phone and Googles, “How to know if you’re gay.” He scrolls. Clicks on links to Quora, Reddit, WikiHow, and an LGBT youth outreach organization.

“Okay,” he says out loud, “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

He’s never looked at Shannon and felt the kind of crazed hunger that he just felt toward Buck. Their sex life was good—maybe the only thing that was ever good—but Eddie didn’t miss it when the sex ended. He didn’t really think about it while he was overseas. He would just focus on the feeling, the physical sensation over anything else, and maybe—maybe that should have been a sign, because other guys would look at magazines or watch porn, and Eddie’s only ever closed his eyes and cleared his mind and focused on the feeling.

He can’t—he shouldn’t think about Buck like that. Not only because of what Buck told him today, but because he’s Eddie’s coworker, he’s going to have to look him in the eye every single day, so—

Eddie closes his eyes. He breathes. He pictures Shannon, young and beautiful, sitting across from him in a rowboat and talking about the one and only time she went fishing. He had liked listening to her talk, but he felt a little bit terrified the whole time, and when he thought about kissing her his stomach had turned, and he’d thought to himself, I guess there are those butterflies that people always talk about. 

He had felt those butterflies all the time with Shannon. Their first, second, and third kisses, their first time, when he proposed, when she walked down the aisle.

In retrospect, he wonders if people really mean nausea when they say “butterflies,” or if he just assumed that was what they meant because it was how he felt.

For the next few weeks, Eddie plays it cool. He plays it cool when Buck drives him to pick up Christopher, and when Buck accompanies him to the hospital, and when Buck introduces him to a woman that helps him get Christopher everything he needs. Eddie might be gay, and Buck might be attractive, but Eddie’s being cool about it. They’re getting to be friends, and Buck’s kind of already the best friend Eddie’s ever had. He has to be cool.

His “cool” runs out at a medical call on a random Wednesday.

“Oh!” he hears Buck exclaim. “Eddie, come over here!”

He turns to find Buck peering at a tree in the patient’s yard, a broad smile on his face. Hen and Chimney seem to have the patient well in hand, so Eddie joins him.

“Look,” Buck murmurs, and gently lifts a leaf. Eddie realizes that there’s a small green caterpillar on the leaf. Its tiny head is yellow, and Eddie can’t imagine how Buck managed to spot it among the leaves.

“Oh,” he says.

“I think it’s a masked birch caterpillar,” Buck says, sliding his finger in front of the caterpillar. “Isn’t it adorable?”

After a bit of what looks like sniffing around, the caterpillar crawls onto his finger, and Buck’s head snaps up to meet Eddie’s eyes. He’s beaming.

“I watched this documentary about winged insects last weekend,” Buck says, “Sometimes Maddie can’t sleep when it’s too quiet and she falls asleep watching TV on the couch, so I just kept finding new nature documentaries to play for her while she slept. I was gonna go to bed, but they were actually super interesting, so I ended up falling asleep in the chair.”

Buck looks back at the caterpillar, but Eddie can’t look away from Buck. Buck’s hair, usually brown, glows nearly blond in the sunlight. His bright blue eyes are fixed on the caterpillar. Buck watches it like he’s witnessing the second coming of Christ. He slowly rotates his hand as the caterpillar crawls across it, careful not to let it fall.

There’s a tattoo of a beetle on Buck’s forearm. It’s small; Eddie hasn’t noticed it before among the patchwork of ink covering Buck’s body. Is there a story behind it? Does it symbolize something, or does Buck just love insects so much that he wanted to keep one with him forever?

Eddie’s never known somebody so enthusiastic and so gentle at the same time, except for maybe Christopher. Eddie doesn’t really care about caterpillars, but he can almost feel his heart skip a beat, and he remembers how Adriana and Sophia had a little butterfly hotel when they were young, a pop-up mesh container that they would stick a caterpillar inside with some sticks and leaves and wait. Maybe he and Christopher should do that.

Buck’s excitement is just so infectious. His joy is beautiful, and Eddie feels an inexplicable urge to giggle. He holds it in, but he can’t hold back his grin. It’s like there’s something light and bright and glowing inside of him, itching to escape.

Huh, Eddie realizes. Butterflies.

“It becomes a moth, actually,” Buck says.

“Hm?”

“It’s not a butterfly. It’s a moth. The Arched Hooktip Moth, if I remember right. You know, you can find them from here all the way to North Carolina?”

“Oh,” Eddie says. “Right.”

He leans down, eye level with the caterpillar, and looks up at Buck with a smile. “...What other bug facts you got?”

Buck stops making his little jokes after Eddie gets hired.

Chim thinks it might have to do with the fact that Eddie has a kid, but so does Hen, so that doesn’t totally check out. He would assume that it’s because he isn’t as comfortable with Eddie as he is with the rest of them, what with Eddie being a newcomer and all, but Buck pretty much appoints himself as Eddie’s Best Friend after their first day working together.

If it weren’t kind of adorable, Chimney might feel a bit slighted.

Still, he thinks about Buck a lot more than he probably should. It’s Maddie’s fault; she asks how he’s doing at work all the time, whether Bobby likes him and how much Bobby likes him and Chim’s pretty sure he knows what she’s afraid of, but she hasn’t told him, and he isn’t sure if Buck wants her to know that Chimney knows, so he tries playing dumb while assuaging her anxiety at the same time.

It’s stressful, but Maddie’s worth it.

When she isn’t pressing him for details about her baby brother, she’s more fun to be around than anyone he’s ever met. He thinks they might be sort-of dating—they hold hands a frankly ludicrous amount for platonic pals—but he’s aware that Maddie grew up in that same strict religious environment as Buck, and for all he knows, she has her own scars from that time. It hurts his heart, the idea of Maddie suffering, but it also makes him admire her even more.

“You know,” Buck says one day in the truck, “Maddie’s never gonna ask you out. You’re gonna have to make the first move.”

“I don’t—What are you talking about?”

Bobby, Hen, and Eddie all laugh into their headsets.

Buck rolls his eyes. “Dude, seriously. She’s convinced you only like her as a friend.”

“I do like her as a friend!”

“Ooh,” Hen says, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

“You should invite her to Hen’s Christmas party,” Buck says.

“Aren’t you already bringing her to that?”

Buck shrugs. “Well, yeah, I was, but she could go with you instead. Then you could go be dorks in the corner together or whatever it is you guys do when I’m not home.”

“I think it’s a good idea,” Bobby chimes in. “Low stakes, not necessarily romantic but a step in the right direction.”

Hen grins vindictively. “I’ll be sure to hang some mistletoe.”

“Hey,” Eddie says, turning to Buck, “Wouldn’t that make Chimney sorta like your stepdad?”

Buck genuinely goes pale as the entire truck erupts into laughter.

“I lied,” Buck says, “She thinks you’re repulsive and she’d never date you in a million years.”

Chimney pouts. “Aw, come on, sport! Don’t be like that.”

As Buck says, “I hate you,” Hen wheezes, slapping her knee.

Everybody drops it after that, but Maddie stays in Chimney’s mind all day.

Buck wouldn’t set him up for failure like that. Maybe he’s wrong, but he at least genuinely believes that Maddie would say yes. Honestly, Chimney thinks that Maddie would say yes. He isn’t sure why he’s so afraid to just ask.

Tatiana, a voice in his head says.

Shut up, Chimney replies.

He’s going to ask Maddie out, he decides. He will. He will not wimp out.

For the next two weeks, Chimney consistently wimps out.

First, he and Maddie are grabbing boba together, and he knows it would be a great time to ask, but then he makes a Boba Fett joke and Maddie has no idea what he’s talking about, so instead he plans a movie night and forgets all about the party until after they’ve parted ways.

Movie night may have been an opportunity to ask, but Buck has never seen a single Star Wars movie, either, and since the Buckleys’ cultural ignorance is a Cult Thing it feels vaguely scummy of Chimney to invite Maddie and not Buck, so he hosts both Buckley siblings and jabs his elbow into Buck’s ribs whenever he makes a stupid little comment or waggles his eyebrows.

It’s a nice night, honestly, because they’re both childishly delighted by the movies and genuinely shocked that Vader is Luke’s father, but when Chimney hugs Maddie goodbye, Buck gives him a pitying look over her shoulder, which is just rude.

He’s working on it, alright? He’s getting there. 

“It was so bad,” Buck tells Hen at work the next day. “The sad puppy dog looks have gotten, like, a million times worse.”

“I do not make sad—”

Hen interrupts him. “Who said we were talking about you?”

Buck’s face doesn’t give anything away. He and Hen are on opposite sides of the couch, each leaning against an arm and scrolling on their phones while they talk. They’ve paused to look at him.

“Uh…”

They break, laughing hysterically.

“Alright, I get it,” Chimney says, snatching Buck’s phone out of his hand.

“Wha—”

“Eddie! Catch.”

Eddie, ever-constant, looks up from his Sudoku and catches Buck’s phone effortlessly. “Are we snooping?”

“We’re playing keep-away.”

Eddie nods. “Alright.”

Buck stands, throwing his arms out. “Dude! Are you twelve?”

Chimney tilts his head, stepping up to Buck. Their height difference is always a bit ridiculous, but it’s never actually irritated him before now. “Are you?”

Buck rolls his eyes. “Eddie.”

Eddie tosses Buck’s phone back to him.

Chimney’s jaw drops. “Aw, come on, man!”

Eddie shrugs.

“Chim,” Hen says. “Come stock the ambo with me.”

“We just—”

She stands and gives him a withering look. “Chimney.”

Chimney and Hen go to stock the ambulance.

“There’s literally nothing to do,” he complains as Hen shoves him inside.

“Sit down.”

He sits down. Hen follows, closing the ambulance doors behind her, and settles into her seat.

For a few seconds, she just looks at him.

“What?”

Hen tilts her head, gaze unnerving. “Am I gonna have to fake Maddie’s death for you to get your ass in gear, or is there a reason why you won’t just ask the woman out?”

Chimney slumps in his seat. “Why can’t you guys just let me figure this out on my own time?”

“Because,” Hen says, “I’ve never seen my best friend this happy before, and I know he could be even happier. Because Buck knows that his sister likes you. Because it’s been nearly three months of this. So I’m asking, are you just being a coward, or are you holding off for a reason?”

Chimney might, he thinks, be a coward.

“...I really like her, Hen,” he says. “If I… If it doesn’t work out, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

She sighs, nudging their knees together. “You’ll be embarrassed and heartbroken for a little bit. Then you’ll both get over it and keep on being friends.”

“But what if we can’t? What if we aren’t as compatible as I think we are? What if she starts dating me and realizes…”

Hen raises an eyebrow. “...That you’re not some badass hero firefighter?”

Chimney doesn’t answer.

“Howard Han,” Hen says, and he makes a face. “What about this woman makes you think that she expects you to be anything other than yourself?”

“She doesn’t,” he says. “I… I know she doesn’t. I mean, her brother works with us, she knows better than Tatiana, and she isn’t—she wouldn’t be like that.”

Hen smiles. “So ask her out.”

He takes a deep breath. He thinks of Maddie’s beautiful, expressive eyes. Her smile, her laugh, her kindness and humor and resilience.

“I’m gonna ask her out.”

Hen claps him on the shoulder. “Attaboy. Now let’s get out of here, it’s stuffy.”

Chim doesn’t apologize to Buck for the phone theft, but he does ruffle the kid’s hair, and after Buck scowls and flicks him away, they share a smile. 

“Hey,” he says, “Do you know if Maddie’s working tomorrow night?”

Buck grins. “She is not.”

“Perfect. I’ll drop by.” Buck raises a fist, and Chim bumps it.  

It feels a lot like having a brother.

The next night, Chimney arrives at the Buckley apartment with Indian takeout and a plastic Aldi bag of DVDs. He and Maddie have been playing Movie Roulette recently, and she always wiggles a little with excitement whenever she reaches blindly into the bag to choose a movie. It’s maybe the cutest thing he’s ever seen, and he’s looking forward to seeing it a million more times.

When he rings the doorbell, the door almost immediately flings open.

“Chim!” Buck exclaims grandly. “Wow, what crazy timing! I was just on my way out!”

“You what?” he hears Maddie say from inside. “I thought—”

“Eddie called,” Buck says, “Super big school project emergency, I’ve gotta get Chris some poster board, stat.”

Buck snags his keys and wallet from the table by the door before Maddie can even say anything. His performance is slightly manic, but it’s better than most times that Chim’s witnessed Buck attempting to lie to Maddie.

“Well,” Maddie says, and appears in the doorway. “This is a surprise.”

She’s wearing her favorite cardigan. It’s so soft that she’s confessed to sleeping in it often, and whenever she wears it, Chimney has to fight the urge to wrap her in a hug and never let go.

He lifts up the Aldi bag and takeout. “Up for a night in?”

Maddie grins. “Always.”

Buck slips past Chimney, bumping their shoulders together in the process. “See you crazy kids later. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

They watch him take off down the hallway like a bat out of hell. Maddie hums.

“Is it just me, or have he and Eddie been spending a lot of time together?” she asks. “Like, do they not get to spend enough time together at work?”

“If anything, they spend too much time together at work. They keep trying to convince Cap that taking the trash out is a two-man job.” Chimney looks at Maddie, and their eyes meet. “Honestly, they make each other dumber, so a one-Buck or one-Eddie job is essentially the same as a Buck-and-Eddie job.”

She doesn’t quite laugh, but her eyes shine, and that’s just as nice.

Maddie takes the food from him and leads him inside. “So what’d you get? Goodness, this is heavy.”

“Bit of everything,” Chimney says. Maddie smiles at him before setting the bag of food down on the counter and beginning to unload it.

It hits him that he’s never had this before. He just showed up uninvited, and Maddie is thrilled to see him, trusting that she’ll like whatever food he brought and letting him into her home, and—and he can’t fathom what he was so afraid of.

“Would you want to go with me to Hen and Karen’s Christmas party?”

Maddie continues unpacking the food.  “Oh, like carpooling?”

“Like a date.”

She freezes, setting their container of rice down and resting her hands on the countertop.

“Howie,” Maddie says, something pitying in her tone, and Chimney says, “You know what? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”

“No!” Maddie turns to face him, and her eyes are wide. “No, oh my goodness, I want to! I really want to. But I just… I have to tell you something first.”

“Oh,” Chimney says, and can’t help but smile. “Yeah. Yeah, Maddie, anything.”

She tugs at the hem of her cardigan. “I, uh. I’ve been married before. I’m divorced.”

Maddie looks at him as if she’s just dropped some sort of irredeemable bomb. Like she’s confessed to an I Know What You Did Last Summer-style vehicular manslaughter, or that she’d actually just stolen Buck from some random couple at the mall and raised him as her own.

“...Okay?”

She blinks. “You’re not… That’s fine?”

“Uh, yeah,” Chim says, attempting to do mental math. “I’m just trying to figure out when you had time to get married. Buck’s never mentioned anyone else being around when he was growing up.”

“Well, it was before,” Maddie says.

“...But Buck said you guys left home when you were eighteen.”

Maddie smiles awkwardly. “Yep!”

“...So you got married,” he says slowly, “Then left in the same year.”

“Uh, no.” Maddie scrunches her mouth to one side. “Well, it was… I mean, I left, like, right after our first anniversary, which was also my eighteenth birthday.”

“You,” Chimney says, and cannot find any words.

“Yeah,” Maddie says.

“...You know,” Chimney says, “I don’t think I like your parents very much.”

Maddie huffs a weak laugh. “Join the club.”

“Well. Do you want to drive us to Hen’s, or should I?”

Maddie looks at him, and for a moment he thinks that she might start to cry.

Instead, she laughs. Her hand comes up to cover her mouth as her giggles turn to cackles, and she’s laughing so hard that she’s wheezing with it, and Chim can’t help but laugh too.

“Get over here,” she says. “You better take what you want of the naan right now, because I’m gonna eat everything you don’t claim.”

Chimney takes half of the naan, and ends up putting most of it on Maddie’s plate anyway. It’s the best meal he’s ever had.

Buck is sitting on the edge of a fountain and wondering how cold it must be back in Pennsylvania when Eddie says, “Shannon and I are getting divorced.”

“Oh, shit,” Buck says instinctively. He cringes. There are so many little kids here to see Santa.

Quickly, he says, “I’m so sorry. Did she just drop that on you at the school meeting?”

“Well, I actually. Um. I asked her,” Eddie says.

Usually, Eddie is unflappable. Buck can tell that he’s nervous now.

“Oh,” Buck says lamely. “Well, that’s—Good for you, man. That’s awesome.”

“Ask me why,” Eddie says.

Buck looks away from the Santa line to examine Eddie’s profile. His jaw looks tense.

“...Why’d you ask Shannon for a divorce?” 

Eddie looks determinedly forward, and his mouth is twisting uncomfortably. His eyes look a little red.

“I’m gay.”

“Oh, buddy,” Buck says, and yanks him into a hug.

Eddie lets out a breathless laugh. “I’m not dying.” He squeezes Buck back, though.

He wants to say that he’s proud of Eddie, but he thinks that might be weird. This is the first time they’ve ever hugged, which… is maybe also weird, but Buck couldn’t help himself. Eddie seemed so afraid. He couldn’t bear to look at Eddie like that without trying to make it better.

Buck pulls back, smiling at Eddie, and thank God, Eddie is smiling too. There’s a relief, a joy in his face that Buck has never seen before. 

Eddie looks radiant. Buck’s almost jealous.

“Well,” Buck says, “In that case, congratulations on the impending divorce.”

Eddie smiles, and looks back to the Santa line. Christopher is still a few kids back.

“I just don’t know how I’m gonna explain it to him,” Eddie sighs. “You know, his mother’s been gone for almost two years now. So it isn’t like the typical ‘Mommy and Daddy are gonna have two different houses’ thing, since Mommy already left Daddy a long time ago.”

Eddie shakes his head. “And we’re gonna need a formal custody agreement, and I… I’m so afraid, Buck. I don’t know what Shannon wants, and what I have the right to ask for, and I—I’m terrified that I won’t get full custody, and I know I shouldn’t want to keep him away from his mother, but—”

“Hey,” Buck interrupts. “There’s no use in spiraling about it before you even ask her. And as far as having the right…”

Buck looks at Christopher. His toothy grin and sandy curls. He’s the sweetest thing Buck’s ever seen.

“...I don’t see his mother here,” Buck says. “I… I don't know Shannon, and I’m sure she loves him, but she dropped off the map, man. I’m pretty sure you could ask for full custody and get it without much of a problem.”

“But I wasn’t there for so long. I was overseas, and Shannon was doing it alone. I left first. But I… I got to pretend like I was doing it for a noble cause. Serving my country.”

“Eddie,” Buck says. “Even if you feel like you were running, too, it was different. Shannon was doing it with a paycheck from the army. You were working three jobs because she left you and never sent a penny.”

Eddie clicks his tongue. “It doesn’t matter—”

“ Yes, it does, I promise you that it does.” Buck sighs, and shifts on the edge of the fountain so he can face Eddie fully.

“Look, man, you know that Maddie raised me.”

“Yeah.”

“She took me from my parents,” Buck says, and Eddie’s head snaps over, looking at him incredulously.

“Wait, like…”

“Like we ran. I didn’t, uh… I didn’t know until a while later, but she actually got permission first. She asked them to give her permission, to… sign something, saying she could take me across state lines and stuff, and they did.”

Eddie asks, “How old were you?”

“Ten. And they gave me up. And I don’t… I’m glad that they did, Eddie, and they had their reasons, but the fact is that they let me and Maddie go. She was eighteen.”

Buck’s never actually laid it out like this before. It hits him, suddenly, just how young she was, taking care of a kid all by herself. He might ask Eddie if they can stop and find some flowers or sour gummy worms for her on their way out.

“We lived in a motel at first, and then a one-bedroom apartment until Maddie decided to start at dispatch in Boston and I was old enough for a part-time job. Sometimes I barely got to see her because she was working so hard to provide for us. But she did it. She… she did everything she could, for me. And that means something, Eddie. That support matters. And I don’t hold it against my parents that they let us go, but I sure as hell hold it against them that they let Maddie struggle like that.”

Eddie is making that face he gets when they arrive at a call too late to help. “...I thought your parents were dead.”

Buck can’t stand to look at him, so he looks at Christopher instead.

Chris is being lifted by an elf into Santa’s lap. For a split second, Buck’s chest seizes, and he wants nothing more than to snatch Christopher away from the strange man and hand him back to Eddie, but the seizing feeling abates just as quickly as it appeared, and he breathes through it. Santa leans down for Chris to whisper in his ear. Buck might need to eat something; he’s getting that vague sort of nausea that sets in when he forgets about food for a while.

“Nope,” Buck says. “Just assholes. And I think…” He takes a deep breath. “If you feel like full custody is what’s best for you and Christopher, you more than have the right to ask for it.”

Eddie looks like maybe he’s about to say something, but then Christopher is being led away from Santa, and his mouth snaps shut.

The elf accompanies Christopher toward them, and Buck and Eddie stand, meeting the two halfway.

Eddie’s voice is gentle and enthusiastic. “How’d it go, pal?”

“It went great.”

Eddie leans down, beaming. “So what’d you ask for?”

“Can’t tell,” Chris says, and Buck almost laughs out loud. Nice try, Eddie.

When Eddie takes Chris in his arms and lifts him up, Buck realizes that the tension in his chest hadn’t, actually, fully dissipated earlier. It does now. 

Buck is stuck in place, watching them walk away. Thank… Well, not God. Eddie. Thank Eddie that Eddie is such a good father. There’s something almost surreal about watching the two of them. Like the Andy Griffith Show reruns Buck used to watch late at night when Maddie first started working overnights at the dispatch center. They belong in a better, gentler world.

The elf says, “You two have an adorable son.”

Buck swears his heart stops beating.

She’s smiling. She's expecting him to reply.

She thinks that Chris is his. That Eddie is his.

Buck could never deserve them. He could never be… But Eddie could. Eddie just told him that he could, and Buck had hugged him, and did that… Does that mean something? Up until today, Buck had thought that he and Eddie were on the same wavelength. And when Eddie told him, that hadn’t changed, but now—

“Thank you,” Buck tells her. 

He catches up with the Diaz boys. Christopher asks if Buck will buy him hot chocolate, and Buck says only if he can have one, too, and Christopher giggles and Eddie shakes his head, smiling like nothing is wrong in the world.

Buck tries not to walk too close to Eddie on their way out.

“Does he go all Interim Captain Han at home?”

Maddie raises her eyebrows at Hen, and turns to Chimney. “Interim Captain Han?”

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” he says, “Have you met Bobby? Let me introduce you to Bobby.”

“You know I met Bobby at Christmas,” Maddie says, “We swapped Buck stories and everything,” but she lets Chimney lead her away. They talk to Bobby and Athena, and eat burgers, and enjoy the night. Buck goes home with Eddie and Christopher, so Chim comes home with her.

They haven’t done anything more than kiss. Chimney is the perfect gentleman, following her lead, never letting his hands wander.

Sometimes she wishes that he would.

“So,” Maddie says as he scrolls through Netflix, leaning into his side. “Interim Captain Han?”

“Honestly, I can’t believe that Buck hasn’t complained about me,” Chimney says, glancing at her with a wry grin. “I guess some might say that I’ve been a bit of a hardass.”

She almost laughs. “You? Really?

She expects him to bite back, to make a joke, but instead he sighs.

“I’m just not… I don’t know if I’m cut out for leadership,” he says.

“Howie.”

“Maybe in time,” he says, “But right now, I think it’s just turning me into an asshole.”

Maddie thinks that it’s probably the conditions of his leadership making things difficult—she knows that he loves Bobby, that he’s struggling to fill those shoes more so than struggling to lead at all—but she’s tucked under his arm, and she can feel the definition of his muscles through their clothes, and, well—

Maddie is only a woman.

“Maybe,” Maddie says hesitantly, “You need somebody to put you in your place.”

Chimney freezes. There’s a question in his eyes, and Maddie thinks that she might love him for it.

She nods, just once, and he grins.

“Maybe I do.”

He sets the remote down on the coffee table, and leans in—instead, Maddie pushes his back against the sofa, and climbs into his lap.

“Oh!” His eyes are wide, and his mouth drops open, just a little bit. Maddie wants to put her tongue in it.

So she does.

Straddling Chimney feels good. Something electric runs up her spine. Maddie feels beautiful, and powerful, and when she pulls back from their kiss Chim looks up at her like he’s in awe.

“Touch me,” she commands like a woman possessed. 

She watches Chimney’s throat bob as he swallows. His hands are scorching on her hips.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Eddie doesn’t take Buck up on his offer to attend the funeral.

It makes sense. Buck had only met Shannon once, and only in passing, only because he happened to be at Eddie’s one day when she brought Christopher home after a trip to the arcade. They had waved awkwardly at one another as Christopher enthusiastically introduced them. Buck learned that Shannon’s favorite mammal is—was—a mountain lion. He told her that his favorite is probably a whale or dolphin. And that was that. 

So not going to the funeral makes sense. Buck is, however, allowed to come over after the wake.

Eddie had nearly begged him to, actually. Christopher is understandably distraught, and Eddie’s grief has transformed into pure anxiety in the whirlwind of funeral planning and family visiting. Eddie’s terrified that his own emotions will keep him from being able to be there for Christopher, and thus Buck has been enlisted to watch movies or play Legos with Chris tonight for emotional support. Buck can’t imagine a world where Eddie is anything less than the best dad he can be, but he is desperate to support both Diazes however he can.

His support, ultimately, ends up being quite literal; roughly five minutes into Ratatouille, Christopher climbs into Buck’s lap and falls asleep on him.

Sometimes Buck wonders how Eddie trusts him so much.

Eddie is only in the kitchen playing fridge Jenga with all the sympathy food, so Buck isn’t really alone with Christopher, and he loves Christopher. He’d never do anything to hurt him, he’s do anything to make him happy, he’d kill and die for the kid if it came to it, but—

Statistically. Statistically, Buck knows that he is more dangerous than most people.

Buck’s always liked learning. Knowledge is power, and all. He’s learned a lot about himself. About people like him. People who have experienced what he experienced. He knows—

“He’s not a bomb, you know,” Eddie says softly, dropping onto the couch beside Buck.

If Buck hadn’t been dedicating all of his physical energy to keeping perfectly still, he would have jumped.

“Wh—What?”

“Kid’s exhausted,” Eddie says, “He won’t wake up if you have to move around a little to get comfortable.”

“I’m comfortable,” Buck says.

Eddie squints at him. Buck tries to look like a guy who isn’t sitting at a perfect 90 degree angle. “Sure.”

He stands, then, and lifts Chris from Buck’s lap. His hand brushes Buck’s thigh.

“I’m gonna put him to bed.”

Chris doesn’t stir as Eddie lifts him, or as he carries him down the hall. Buck is such an asshole. If only he could be normal, Eddie wouldn’t have had to stand back up immediately after sitting down, wouldn’t need to deal with his neurotic friend in the immediate aftermath of his wife’s funeral.

He pauses Ratatouille. It feels wrong to watch it alone, somehow.

When Eddie comes back into the living room, he collapses next to Buck with a heavy sigh.

“How are you doing, man?”

Eddie glances at him. “Honestly?

“Honestly.”

“...I don’t know,” he says. “If this happened a month from now, she might not have been my wife anymore. I don’t… I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.”

“You’re supposed to let yourself feel however you feel,” Buck says, and Eddie groans.

“Well, what if I don’t know what I feel?” There’s a tinge of genuine irritation in his voice. People have probably been prodding at Eddie about his feelings all day.

“...Then you watch a kid’s movie about rats with your friend,” Buck says, and unpauses Ratatouille.

“I think there’s just the one rat,” Eddie says, but he almost smiles.

Half an hour into the movie, Eddie says, “She agreed.”

“What?”

“Shannon. She agreed. To full custody.”

Buck considers pausing the movie. He lets it play.

“I don’t… I don’t know what to do with it,” Eddie says, “It’s… I’m angry at her, somehow, for agreeing even though it’s what I wanted. Because…” Eddie trails off.

“...Because she wasn’t willing to fight for him,” Buck finishes.

Eddie sniffs, and rubs at his nose. “Yeah. That… yeah. She was leaving him anyway, and I hadn't… I hadn't even had time to figure out how to explain that, and then…”

And then she died.

Buck doesn’t have much experience with grief—at least, not first-hand. He knows what grief can do to a person, how it can consume you. According to Maddie, their parents were completely different people before Daniel died. They only went to church on Easter, and only prayed before dinner on Thanksgiving, and believed wholly in modern science and loving their children equally and all the other sorts of things that normal people believe in.

“I think… things are going to be messy for a while,” Buck says. “I don’t think there’s one way to handle this, or one way to grieve, or one way to feel. I wish I could say something that could just fix everything.”

Eddie’s eyes are shiny when he looks at Buck. “You’re doing so much,” he says. “Just being here. I don’t… I don’t know what I would do.”

Without you, he doesn’t say, but Buck hears it anyway.

In the days after Shannon’s funeral, when he babysits Christopher and has drinks with Eddie and does his best to hold them both up, Buck finds himself thinking about Thomas and Mitchell. 

They had the kind of love that Buck dreams about, and they were both men. They fell in love so long ago—in a time when everybody told them they were wrong, not just their parents’ weirdo cult—and they chose to love each other anyway.

Buck starts to think that he can be brave.

And then he’s pinned to the asphalt—crushed—hot—dying?—burning—burningburningburning—he can’t move. It’s nothing—he doesn't—nobody is here, where is everybody, where is Maddie—Dad is talking to him, but he can’t remember picking out the switch—Bobby, he swears, Bobby is coming—Chimney? Eddie? He’s burning. He’s dying. Oh, God, he’s dying. Is this Hell?

Hands. There are hands, and pain so overwhelming that Buck’s vision goes black. They yank him like Hen yanking away the controller, and the skin is going to tear away from his leg, they’re going to kill him, and they stop, thank God they stop, but the hands don’t leave.

There’s a hand in his. He’s probably squeezing it too tight. Or is he? Does he still have the strength to squeeze too tight? He can’t remember if he’s dying. If he’s dead.

He’s pretty sure he’s dead.

“It isn’t fair,” Hen whispers.

Chim is holding her hand. “It never is.”

“He’s… It’s Buck.”

She isn’t sure where Bobby and Eddie got to. She should be looking out for them. God knows if she’s having a hard time, they must be losing it completely.

“What’s that saying,” Chim says. “It’s like ‘only the good die young,’ but not about dying?”

“I don’t know,” Hen says. “Don’t—don’t say—”

“He’s a fighter,” Chimney interrupts, squeezing her hand. “Hey, look at me.”

When she looks, there are tears in his eyes, but his voice doesn’t waver. “He’s a fighter. That kid’s made it this far, he’s not giving in yet.”

Eddie held his hand.

He shouldn’t be so fixated on that. He should be… talking with doctors, or calling Maddie, or getting everyone coffee. He should be doing something helpful instead of standing by a window and staring out at the parking garage.

But he held Buck’s hand.

Eddie’s treated wounded soldiers before. Men dying, men screaming, men crying and gasping and collapsing from pain. You learn to work through it. If you can’t work through it, people die. 

Treating Buck never even crossed his mind.

Hen and Chimney were there. Eddie isn’t a paramedic. But—but some sort of combat training should have kicked in, he should have been focused on what Buck needed to make it out from underneath the truck and survive the trip to the hospital. He should have prioritized treating Buck.

But Eddie didn’t do anything to save Buck’s life. Eddie held his hand.

He hasn’t prayed once since he set foot back on American soil. He isn’t entirely sure if he believes in God or not, but he bows his head anyway, closes his eyes, presses his forehead against the window and thinks, Please, God, don’t take him. People say that you’re good, but I’m not convinced. Prove me wrong. A loving God wouldn’t do this. A loving God wouldn’t have let half the shit that happens on Earth go on. Don’t make me kick your ass. Don’t make me bring my son to another funeral. Please, God, don’t do this. Don’t do this to us.

Amen.

Hospitals are boring.

Yeah, he’s in pain, and terrified for his future, and everyone who visits looks at him with so much pity it makes him feel sick, but most of all, he just can’t stand the boredom .

He tries playing Solitaire with the deck of cards that Bobby left, but that gets old after two rounds. He tries watching TV, and realizes that broadcast TV sucks now. He tries listening to an audiobook, but he keeps falling asleep.

Right as he’s about to cave and redownload Candy Crush, Buck’s phone vibrates. At the top of the screen, there’s a text from Eddie; when he clicks, he finds a blurry photo of a moth resting on what looks to be Eddie’s front porch light, accompanied by a single question mark. He clicks on the photo and zooms in.

He texts Eddie back, Pacific green sphinx moth?

Eddie replies with the pink-cheeked smiley emoji, and nothing else. 

Huh.

That emoji does always remind Buck of Eddie. He goes into his contacts and adds it on the end of Eddie’s name. 

Even after he’s discharged into Maddie’s care, he sees the smiley emoji a lot. Eddie sends him a picture of Christopher eating cereal; impressive graffiti art on a brick wall; Chimney and Hen fighting over a controller; a small tanish spider (Buck texts back, IDK much about spiders and they can be hard to identify, but that one definitely isn’t dangerous. Please put him outside!, and Eddie responds, Too late. Got near the kitchen cabinets and Cap went full Terminator.); a Maserati with the vanity plate MSRHTIE.

Buck doesn’t have much to send in return, but he’s always sure to respond to Eddie’s pictures, even if it’s just via emoji. Eddie doesn’t seem to be sending them looking for a reaction; it seems like he’s sending them just because.

Because he saw something and thought that Buck should see it too. Because he saw something and thought of Buck. Because it was funny, or cute, or pretty, or because it was insect-related and Eddie seems to think that Buck is some kind of amateur entomologist.

The fact that Buck almost always knows which insect he’s looking at off the top of his head does not , in his opinion, constitute any sort of actual expertise. He maintains that Eddie’s just ignorant.

Maddie is a bit suffocating as he recovers. He ends up begging Chim to take her out just so he can get a break from that worried crease in her forehead that always makes him feel guilty. Chim claims that he’s tried telling her to let up, but Buck suspects that he might be a double agent.

When he decides to have the elective surgery to recover faster, they have their worst argument since the bedroom fight back in that shoebox apartment; Buck calls Eddie to take him to his place for the night, and he and Christopher build a blanket fort with a CRUTCH USERS ONLY (NO EDDIES ALLOWED) sign on the outside.

It’s a long road, but in a weird way, it makes Buck appreciate his life. Bobby and Maddie coordinate a schedule for taking him to physical therapy, and Maddie finally loses that judgmental tone she always used to get when he’d talk about Bobby. Eddie and Christopher will joke about his leg with him when they’re in a good mood, and when they’re not—well, being moody together is better than being moody alone. Hen and Chimney both will text him about calls and each claim that the other totally embarrassed themselves earlier, leaving Buck to ask Eddie or Bobby for the truth.

He has a community now. A real one, a supportive one, not like the one he grew up with. 

Maybe he could be gay. Maybe he could… Maybe he could be brave. At his welcome-back party, as he watches Maddie and Chimney laughing across the yard, he thinks, I should tell her .

Then there’s a tickle in his chest.

Then there’s something in his throat.

Then he wakes up in the hospital, learns that he coughed blood all over Bobby and Athena’s yard, that he could have died. That he almost did.

God, he thinks, has been warning him for a long time now. Maybe it’s about time that he listens.

Chapter Text

Buck has never wanted to go home so badly in his life.

Christopher is okay, and Buck can’t do anything to help anybody right now, and he’s coated in a salty grime and every part of his body aches and his mouth kinda tastes like blood but he isn’t sure why. The cot he’s sitting on is thin and rickety, and every time he shifts he’s afraid it’ll collapse.

“Ah!”

Right. Hen is patting him down. Painfully.

“I’m gonna lift your shirt,” she says, as if Buck cares.

“Oh, I do not like those bruises,” Chimney says.

“Blood thinners,” Buck mumbles.

Bobby sighs. “Trust me, we know.” 

“I don’t think I need three people checking me out,” Buck says, and only Chimney looks mildly abashed. “Bobby, you’re not even a paramedic. Isn’t Athena around here somewhere?”

Bobby seems like he’s about to argue, but Hen says, “He’s got a point. Other people need help too.” She turns back to Buck. “Me or Chim?”

Chim, he thinks, and shrugs.

Hen and Chimney look at each other, nod, and Hen pats Buck on the shoulder.

“I’ll come check in on you when I can,” she says. “Bobby.”

Bobby lingers. His eyes trace Buck from head to toe, lingering on the bandage wrapped around his forearm.

“...Alright,” Bobby says. “Buck, if Chim tells you to do something, do it.”

Buck rolls his eyes. “Sir, yes sir.”

When it’s only him and Chimney, Buck lets himself slouch forward, his forehead landing on Chim’s shoulder.

“I still have to look at your ribs, man.”

Buck groans. “Can’t I just rest for a second?”

It’s so loud. There are flashing lights nearby, and people rushing past, and Buck just… needs a break.

“Oh, shit,” Chimney says, “I have to call your sister.”

“I did,” Buck says, “I borrowed a phone. I, uh, had to hang up really quick, though, so she’d probably still want you to call.”

Chim scoffs, “Probably,” like Buck has said something unfathomably stupid. He can’t muster the energy to be offended.

Chimney continues patting him down where Hen left off. He probably isn’t supposed to let Buck stay slouched over for this, but he does, and Buck loves him for it.

“Hey, Chim,” Buck says.

“Yeah? Does it hurt here?”

“No,” Buck says, then, “Well, yeah, but about the same as everywhere. Uh, no, just… You’re a really good guy. You’re good for Maddie.”

Chimney’s hands still, falling away from Buck’s torso. “She’s good for me,” he says softly. “She told me, uh. She said she got married when she was seventeen? But she hasn’t said much else.”

“Doug,” Buck says. Maybe… Maybe Maddie hasn’t told him all of this yet, but knowing Maddie, she might never tell him the truth. Buck isn’t even sure if Maddie’s accepted the truth. “He was older. Like, twenty-five, or something. I’m pretty sure he hit her. But I was young, so I don’t know. Maybe I was just projecting, or whatever, but I never liked him.”

“I’d think not,” Chimney says, “Twenty-five?”

Buck sighs, and lifts his head. Blackness threatens to encroach; he has to grip the cot to steady himself and blink a few times for his vision to clear. 

“He and Brooks were friends,” Buck says. “I guess they had a lot in common.”

Chimney, for lack of anything to say, takes a stethoscope from around his neck and presses it to Buck’s chest. “Breathe as deeply as you can.”

Buck does. It hurts, and his breath catches in his throat, causing a coughing fit. After he recovers, as Chim’s moving the stethoscope, he says, “I don’t… I’m not trying to go behind her back, telling you this. I just… It means a lot. That she trusts you. That we trust you.”

“Breathe for me again.”

Buck does. It hurts, but he doesn’t cough.

“I know,” Chimney says after he exhales, leaning back and putting the stethoscope around his neck. His eyes are shiny as they meet Buck’s. “Trust me, man. I know. I don’t take being a Buckley Insider lightly.”

“So,” Buck says, clearing his throat. God, it’s dry. “What’s the verdict?”

Chim pushes lightly on his shoulder. “Lay down.”

Buck lays down, hoping that the cot won’t collapse. It doesn’t.

“I think I’m gonna have to cut your jeans to take a look at your leg,” Chim says, and Buck nods. They don’t talk as Chimney hacks through the salt-stiff denim with a pair of surgical scissors. He stops mid-thigh, and peels the fabric back.

“Hm.” Chimney prods methodically—palpates, Buck does have some medical training—up, down, and around his leg. Objectively, it’s warm out, but the exposed skin of his leg feels cold. His entire leg hurts, but in a distant way, like when he's on painkillers. Buck isn't sure how that’s possible. Maybe just adrenaline or something.

“Any sharp pain?”

“Not since I sat down.”

“Well, you're gonna want to make an appointment with your doctor ASAP, but I don't think anything is wrong. Let me get another look at that bruising.”

Buck sighs. “Knock yourself out.”

Chimney lifts his shirt up, and surveys the dark bruising across Buck’s chest, stomach, and sides. There’s probably some on his back, too, but the pain isn’t too bad to lay down, so it’s probably fine.

“If you weren’t on the blood thinners, I’d say worst case scenario, you have a cracked rib or two. But now I’m worried about internal bleeding, so I’m gonna try and get a real doctor to come look at you.”

Chim pulls his shirt back down. “God, this thing’s nasty.”

“My jeans feel like cardboard,” Buck says, “And I think I have trench foot.” 

Chimney laughs. “Get some rest while I find you a doctor.”

“Can you see if… If Chris…”

Chimney nods. “I was going to anyway. I’m sure he and Eddie are worried about you, too.” Chimney pats his shoulder, says, “Rest,” and sets off into the bustle of the field hospital, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he goes.

There’s no way he’s going to be able to sleep with everything going on around him, with anxiety itching at him, but Buck closes his eyes anyway. He might as well; they ache just as badly as the rest of him. 

Did that woman who found Christopher carry him all day? Her back and arms must be destroyed. It should have been him; he should have held on to Chris, should have been with him. Did she keep him from seeing the bodies? Was he afraid? He must have been afraid. He’s the bravest kid in the world, but everybody gets scared, and Buck had never been so terrified in his life.

When Buck wakes up, he almost can’t believe that he’d fallen asleep.

“Buck!”

He shoots up, back aching and cot rattling dangerously. “Christopher?”

The blackness hasn’t totally cleared from Buck’s eyes when he suddenly has a lapful of child.

“Buck,” Christopher repeats, winding his little arms around Buck’s neck and squeezing. Buck squeezes him back, gently, and meets Eddie’s eyes through the rapidly retreating darkness.

Eddie looks tired, but content. His cheeks are red, and his eyes are crinkled as he smiles. Buck rubs Christopher’s back, and Chris melts into his hold, going almost completely limp.

“He’s got a clean bill of health,” Eddie says, sitting on the cot next to Buck and ruffling Chris’ hair. “Couple of scrapes and bruises, but all he really needs is a Pedialyte and a good night’s sleep.” He looks into Buck’s eyes, then. “And to make sure his Buck is okay.”

Christopher’s voice is quieter than Buck’s ever heard, as he mumbles into his chest, “Are you okay? Why are your pants cut open?”

“Oh, I’m fine, buddy. Chimney just wanted to check and make sure I didn’t hurt my leg again, and this way I didn’t have to take my pants off in the middle of the tent.”

Buck can’t help pressing a kiss to the top of Christopher’s head, pulling him more securely into his hold. Chris sits sideways in his lap, his feet in Eddie’s, and lets go of Buck’s neck to settle in. 

“Good,” Christopher yawns, snuggling into Buck’s chest.

“We ran into Chim,” Eddie says, resting his hands on top of Chris’ shins. “I think he’s still on the phone with your sister.”

Buck tucks Chris’ head under his chin, rubbing his arm. His weight, the warmth of him, the rising and falling of his lungs and the beat of his heart—Buck’s never felt anything better. Chris yawns again, and Eddie says, “You can sleep if you want, bud. I think we’re gonna be here for a minute.”

“I can’t fall asleep in just one minute,” Chris mumbles. His eyes are already closed.

“Just rest your eyes,” Buck says, and grins at Eddie. 

Within thirty seconds, Chris is dead to the world. Buck stops paying attention to anything that isn’t Chris. The whole world is right here, small and warm and reeking of the ocean in his arms. Buck thinks he might fall asleep for a few seconds, eyes fluttering before he snaps himself out of it.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can tell that Eddie is watching them.

“What?”

Eddie seems strangely happy for a guy sitting in a field hospital. “Nothing,” he says.

“Come on, there's something.”

Buck squints. Eddie looks marginally less exhausted than Buck feels. He’s a hell of a lot less bloody, at least. He tilts his head, stares at Buck like he’s deciding on something. His eyes flick down to Christopher, and then back up.

“Hey,” Chimney calls, and Buck turns to find him approaching with a tall woman at his heels. Buck brings his hand up to cover Christopher’s ear. Maybe he can get away with using the sleeping kid as an excuse to get out of further examination.

“Hey,” Buck says once they draw closer. “Did you get to talk to Maddie?”

“Yes, and she’s having a heart attack, but she’s fine,” Chim says. “This is Dr. Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds, this is Buck, Eddie, and Christopher.” 

Reynolds looks a bit scary. She’s blonde and lean, with features sharp enough to be a supermodel, and Buck feels the urge to apologize to her just for existing.

“Can you hand Christopher over for me?” She smiles tersely, and Buck is helping Eddie transfer Chris into his own lap before he even really processes the question.

Damn it. He didn’t even get to try the sleeping kid excuse.

“Paramedic Han tells me you’re on blood thinners,” she says, “I’m going to take a look at your bruising.”

Her gloved hands reach toward him, and Buck—flinches back, for some reason, which is just humiliating—

“I’ll help,” Chim and Eddie both say at once. 

As Chim and Eddie peel his ruined t-shirt off entirely (and holy shit do his muscles ache as he lifts his arms), Buck feels a lot like he did at thirteen, when Maddie dragged him to the mall for back-to-school shopping and made him try on every single thing he even briefly looked at. It’s an embarrassing feeling, but a nice one nevertheless; like he’s a Barbie doll, yeah, but a very dear, beloved Barbie doll. 

Dr. Reynolds’ fake customer service smile looks a bit more real when the shirt comes off his head.

“Alright,” she says, “Now I’ll take a look at that bruising.”

As she palpates his torso and asks how he feels, makes him rate the pain 1-10, and leans in to look at his mottled flesh close-up, Buck notices that there’s something warm behind his back. He leans, just a little bit—

And Eddie’s palm presses into his bare back, right over his spine. 

Buck can’t recall, later, exactly what Dr. Reynolds said, but it didn’t result in his admission to an actual hospital, so he’s not too worried about it. He remembers riding back to the 118 with everybody, showering in the stall next to Eddie and Christopher, who yawned and loudly proclaimed his desire to go home the entire time. He doesn’t remember the drive home, but he does remember Maddie pulling up outside the station, hugging him so tightly that he gasped in pain and weeping into his chest, cradling his face in her hands and saying she was proud of him.

Maddie sits him down at the kitchen table and makes him eat a grilled cheese and drink a glass of water. His eyes are drooping as he chews; she watches him like she’s afraid he’ll drop dead if she blinks. He can’t finish the last few bites without his stomach churning, so she does, and Buck loves her so much sometimes that he doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t know what he did right to deserve Maddie. He doesn’t know what Maddie did wrong to deserve him.

They share his bed, curled up like little kids again, and Maddie says, “I love you,” and Buck says, “I love you more,” and Maddie laughs and says, “I love you most,” and Buck pulls her in for a hug.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” she says, snuggling into his arms.

“You know,” Buck says, “You could go see Chimney if you wanted. I’m about to pass out, and he—he would probably appreciate the company, after today.”

“Are you crazy?”

They pull back from the hug, returning to their sleepover parentheses formation.

“I already have to leave you for work tomorrow,” Maddie whispers into the dark, “You’re not kicking me out a minute sooner, Mister.”

“I’d never kick you out. I’m just saying you can go if you want to.” 

“Well, I don’t want to.”

“Okay,” Buck whispers. 

Maddie sighs. “...Are we weird? For siblings.”

“Oh, yeah,” Buck says. “But, I mean, I think it’s fine. Right?”

“I guess. Just… Whenever you haven’t just survived a natural disaster, when things are more normal, promise me you’ll let me know if I’m smothering you? I don’t want to be… overbearing.”

Buck’s chest aches.

“I’m, uh, probably gonna regret saying this,” Buck says, “But you’ve kinda had to be overbearing our whole lives. That’s, like, your job. I don’t mind, Maddie. I know it’s because you love me. I just…”

For a moment, all he hears is his and Maddie’s breathing.

“...Just what?”

“...Just don’t want to be a burden on you anymore,” Buck chokes, and is surprised to find that he’s hydrated enough to cry.

“Buck,” Maddie says, sounding heartbroken.

“I’m sorry,” he sniffs, “I… I stole your whole life, Maddie, I—”

“Evan, no—”

“I love you, I’m so sorry—”

“Evan Buckley,” Maddie snaps, in a tone that he hasn’t heard since he was nineteen years old. It’s enough to shock his tears into brief submission.

“Sweetheart,” she says, and she hasn’t—he can’t even remember the last time she called him that, but he must have still been shorter than her. Maddie’s hand lands on his cheek. “You have not taken anything from me. Anything. Okay?”

“Maddie—”

“I’m serious, Buck. If anything, you gave me the kick in the ass I needed to get out of there, and I will always be so grateful for that. It was… hard, yes, but I couldn't have done it without you.” Maddie takes a ragged breath. “Buck, I wouldn’t have a life of my own without you.”

“Stop it, you would,” Buck says, “You would, Maddie, I know you would. Maybe… maybe it would be different, maybe you wouldn’t have left so soon, but you would.”

“Well, luckily for me I’ll never know,” Maddie says, “Because I had you.”

“God, I’m so tired,” Buck laughs through his tears. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t… I don’t know how I’m even still awake.”

“Rest,” Maddie says, and tries to press a kiss to his birthmark.

The lights are off, so she ends up basically bashing her face into his eye, and they laugh, and Maddie says, “God, I’m exhausted, too.”

“...Tell me about your day?”

Buck closes his eyes, settles into his pillow, and listens to the sound of Maddie’s voice.

“Well, I don’t know if Chim told you, but I’m actually the one who thought about setting up the old VA hospital to help survivors.”

“You’re so smart,” Buck mumbles. “Probably saved my life.”

“God, don’t say that,” Maddie says, “I was just finally getting over my freakout.”

“What else?”

“There was this girl, with a drone. She was… Honestly, she’s a little hero, Buck.”

Maddie tells him about the little girl, and her friend, and says that she’s thinking about contacting the girl’s parents to let them know that their daughter saved countless lives.

When he finally wakes up, he thinks maybe Maddie said something about an entire building of people asleep on the floor, but that was… probably a dream?

There’s a sticky note on his face.

At work. If you need anything, just dial 9-1-1! :)

Growing up, Maddie always used to tell him he was lucky to have a cool older sister instead of embarrassing old parents. He never quite managed to convince her that she was plenty embarrassing on her own.

Buck isn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He’s so hungry that he feels sick with it, but he really doesn’t feel like standing at the stove, and the thought of eating cereal or something makes him feel even sicker. Is DoorDash still delivering? His and Maddie’s apartment is far enough from the ocean that there isn’t any visible damage when he looks out the window.

He can probably get DoorDash.

As he’s scrolling through restaurants, there’s a knock at the door, and he thinks, How’d they get here before I ordered?, and then he realizes that he is deeply stupid.

When he opens the door, he barely has time to process Eddie before Chris is latched onto him, and Buck can’t not hug him back. He’s reeling, confused, anxious, and Eddie—

Eddie says, “You know, you being laid up is really working out for me.”

Eddie says, “There is no one in this world that I trust with my son more than you.”

Eddie says, “Maybe somewhere inland this time.”

Eddie leaves.

Christopher sits in Buck’s lap as they scroll through restaurants on DoorDash. Buck holds him there securely, ducking his head to press his face against Christopher’s curls every so often. He bounces his legs, and Christopher giggles. 

Buck realizes that he isn’t afraid.

He isn’t sure if it was Eddie’s words. If it was the tsunami. If he’s finally turned some corner in his own mind, finally let go of some of the rhetoric that was forced down his throat from birth until Maddie saved him. Whatever it is, when he holds Christopher, he isn’t afraid. He’s just happy. Content. Honored.

“Actually,” Buck says, “You feel up to going out, bud?”

They get crepes at a trendy brunch place where the waitress brings Chris a glass of chocolate milk with whipped cream on top to match Buck’s iced latte. They take Eddie’s phone out of Chris’ backpack and text a selfie to Chimney, who replies, Eddie says have fun with the sugar rush. I say rev that kid up and let him loose to see what happens.

Buck does let him loose at the zoo. He plans to follow a step behind, let Chris go where he pleases, but instead, Christopher asks if Buck can give him a piggyback ride. So Buck carries him through the zoo, going where Christopher points and bending down sometimes so he can read the plaques.

Then he is rudely reminded of that cracked rib, and starts just reading the plaques out loud. 

By the end of the day, his whole body aches, but Christopher is all smiles, and they collapse on the couch to nap together while they wait for Eddie to get home.

“I love you, Buck,” Christopher mumbles into Buck’s shirt. He’s using Buck’s whole body as a bed.

“I… I love you too,” Buck says, and Chris hums happily.

Buck wakes up to fingers running gently through his hair.

“Hi,” Eddie says. “Chris is entertaining your sister.”

“Oh,” Buck mumbles, “That’s nice.” The fingers are just so nice. He doesn’t want to wake up.

“At least get in bed, man,” Eddie chuckles, “You’ve got a busted rib.”

“It’s fine,” Buck grunts, sitting up. His chest aches.

Eddie puts an arm around his waist. “Sure it is.”

The next morning, Buck swears he remembers Eddie tucking him in and a kiss on his forehead. He thinks he remembers Christopher in his room, saying something. He thinks he remembers little fingers in his hair.

But that was probably just a dream.

Bobby Nash knows that he’s a selfish man.

Of all his indulgences, though, he thinks that God might understand this one.

Then again, as Buck storms away from the house after a dinner done horribly wrong, it occurs to him that God isn’t exactly an overprotective Father. Free Will, and all.

The mood in the house is tense after Buck storms out of dinner. Athena is displeased with him, he knows. He’s displeased with himself.

“So,” Athena says as they lay in bed, not looking up from her book. “We gonna talk about it?”

Athena doesn’t know anything about the Buckley siblings’ history, as far as Bobby knows. She likes them both, respects the hell out of Maddie and gets more of a kick out of Buck than she’d ever admit, but they haven’t spent much time together outside of large group events.

“You remember the embolism,” Bobby says, “You know how…”

“Yes, I know,” Athena concedes, “It was terrifying, but Bobby, you can’t protect him from living his life.”

“I know that. It isn’t…”

Would Bobby be so protective of Buck, if he didn’t know? Is this some… some odd infantilization of a grown man because of Bobby’s own unconscious prejudices? He can’t help it. The knowledge of what Buck’s been through in his young life is always in the back of Bobby’s mind.

That time that Bobby shoved Buck against the wall, back when he kept a notebook full of names, is tucked right there next to it.

He knows that it’s—it’s just torturing himself, to dwell on it now, two years later. Buck may well have forgotten about it entirely. He never seemed uncomfortable around Bobby afterward, never seemed to trust or respect or like him any less. Of course, that makes Bobby feel even worse.

It’s impossible to forget that the boy who nearly took Buck’s life and leg was trying to hurt Bobby. Bobby doesn’t exactly blame himself for the boy’s actions, but it’s been hard, watching Buck relearn basic movements in physical therapy, to forget that in a way, it all traces right back to him. 

“I’ll let him calm down,” Bobby says, “And when he’s ready, we’ll talk about it.”

“If he calms down,” Athena says. “If he doesn’t, you might need to be the one to reach out.”

The next morning, Bobby’s wondering how long he ought to wait. Would it be too soon, just to send a text, apologizing and asking to speak?

Then the doorbell rings.

When Bobby opens the door, Buck stands with his eyes big and shoulders hunched, remarkably akin to a stray cat begging to be let in from the rain.

“Maddie said I should let you explain yourself,” Buck says flatly, “And Eddie agreed, and he and Chimney both think you’re an asshole, but Chim agreed about the talking thing, too, so.”

Bobby has to hold back a smile. 

“Come in,” he says.

Athena is at work, which is probably for the best. If Bobby messes this up, at least he won’t have a witness.

Buck falls into the sofa, crossing his arms petulantly.

Bobby sits in the armchair, and waits.

Eventually, Buck caves, and says, “Well?”

Bobby raises an eyebrow. “Well, what?”

“Why would you do that to me?”

“Buck, I never intended to hurt you,” Bobby says, and Buck scoffs, rolling his eyes.

“That’s not an answer.”

“...No, it isn’t,” he admits.

Buck’s eyes look tired. His fingers are clenched in the fabric of his shirt.

Bobby clears his throat. “I… was worried about you. Not,” he stresses, “because I don’t think you’re capable. But because you’ve been through a lot in a very short amount of time, and…” Bobby takes a deep breath. “I guess I… was afraid.”

Buck’s face scrunches in confusion. “Afraid?”

“Yes. Buck, you… You didn’t see yourself under that truck. You didn’t see yourself coughing up blood. You didn’t see how… you didn’t see how you looked, after the tsunami.” The creases in Buck’s forehead slowly relax as Bobby speaks. “Buck, you’re one of my best guys. I have faith in you, and your abilities, but some things are out of both of our control. And I…” Bobby has to pause, let the hitch in his throat pass. “...I just kept seeing you like that, whenever I thought about letting you come back.”

“...But I wasn’t even working during the tsunami,” Buck says.

“I know,” Bobby says, “I know, Buck. I’m not… In retrospect, I wasn’t behaving rationally. I guess it… it was less about you than it was me. About my inability to… see you like that.”

Buck hasn’t called him “Pops” in a long time. If Buck were once open to having that kind of relationship, Bobby’s pretty sure that ship sailed long before he was ready to reciprocate. He has no right, he knows, to feel this way. 

“...Did you know,” Buck says, “You’re nothing like my dad?” He looks contemplative.

Bobby’s throat is tight as he says, “Oh.”

“He was… Guess he still is, actually, I don’t—I’m pretty sure they’re still alive.” Buck shrugs. “But, uh, he was always distant. The only time he ever really paid attention to me was when I was hurt or in trouble. And I… I know, if I hadn’t always been in trouble… I probably would have hurt myself, just for that attention.”

“Always in trouble?” Bobby asks, because he isn’t sure what else he could say, “You? No.”

Buck laughs. “Look, trouble when I was growing up could mean I actually messed up, or maybe I just said my prayers wrong, or I played with one of Maddie’s girly toys, or I spoke to an adult before they spoke to me.”

For all that Buck used to joke about the worst of it, Bobby actually knows very little about his and Maddie’s day-to-day before they ran away. Part of him wants to know every detail. Part of him can’t bear to hear any more.

“And Maddie is… Maddie is amazing, and I love her, but she's my sister, you know? It’s not… Like, she shouldn't have had to be my parent, too. And she was still young when we left. We figured a lot of things out together.”

Buck looks like he’s working up to something, wringing his hands and fidgeting in his seat. Bobby just nods, tries not to let too much heartbreak show on his face.

“I… my point,” Buck says, “Is that I know… I know you care. You’re here when I’m hurt, but not only when I’m hurt. You talk to me when I fuck up, and when I do something right, and when I just feel like talking, and…” Buck sniffs, rubbing at his nose. “I don’t know, Bobby. I’ve never had that. Um. Like, a… something like a dad.”

 Bobby’s breath catches in his throat.  

“But, Bobby, you can't just keep me from doing my job. I’m fit for duty.”

Buck’s eyes are red. He’s pleading.

Bobby moves from the armchair to the couch, angling towards Buck so that their knees touch.

“I don’t doubt that you’re capable. But an injury that you’d barely notice before the blood thinners could kill you right now if you aren’t careful. If we're going to do our jobs, we can't be worried about you as well as our patients.” Buck seems doubtful, so Bobby continues, “And we are. Worried about you.”

Buck sighs, looking down.

“...That’s fair, I guess,” he says. “God, I hate this.”

Bobby rests a hand on his shoulder. “I promise, as soon as you’re off the blood thinners, you’ll be back with us. But until then, why don’t you think of the marshal position as an opportunity? You're seeing another side of the job. If you ever want a leadership role in the future, it’ll give you a leg up.”

Buck looks up, then, meeting Bobby’s eyes dubiously, “Leadership? You think… you think I could do that?”

“Why couldn’t you?”

Buck stares for a moment, then all but tackles him into a hug.

“Thank you,” he says.

“What for?”

“For being you. For not… being my dad,” Buck laughs, and Bobby hugs him tightly. He takes a deep breath, pushing down his emotions.

“...Any time, kid.” Bobby sniffs, blinking away tears. “Any time.”

The day after Thanksgiving, Buck floats the idea of moving out for the new year.

“I just think it’s past time, you know? We can both afford to have our own spaces now. And I honestly wouldn’t mind seeing you and Chim together a little less. I get enough of him at work.”

Maddie laughs, even as her stomach drops.

“You’re sure? You know I don’t mind having a roommate.”

“Yeah,” Buck says, with that bashful ducked-head look that’s made her weak since he was a toddler. “I’m kinda excited, actually. Like, I can get all of my own stuff, and figure out what I like, you know? Not that your stuff isn’t nice,” he says, “But I just… I think it’ll be nice.”

“It will be,” she assures him, then squeals. “Ah, I’m so excited for you! Have you been looking already?”

He beams. “Yeah! Yeah, Eddie’s been helping me look. I’m focusing on first-floor places so it’s easier for Chris…”

Buck opens his phone and starts emailing her links. He’s really excited about one place that has a fancy gym that’s free for residents and a Trader Joe’s within walking distance. She tells him that she’ll gladly be his cosigner if he needs her. 

Maddie throws up twenty minutes later. She’s pretty sure it’s unrelated.

Eddie is the worst widower in the world.

He can’t decide if he’s supposed to call Shannon his late wife, or ex-wife, or late ex-wife. He asked them to use Shannon Diaz on the headstone without thinking, panicked and asked if it could be changed to her maiden name, panicked at the quoted price, and ultimately left the stone as-is.

Would Shannon resent that he didn’t give her what freedom he could? Or would using her maiden name have felt to her like erasing their history, separating her from Christopher? He hadn't even thought to ask about her name in the divorce proceedings. 

Athena kept Michael’s name even though they divorced. Athena and Michael, however, had a much happier marriage than he and Shannon. 

Of course, it’s useless to wonder. Shannon isn't actually around to be upset with him either way. He needs to focus on the present. It's just a little hard when the present is what’s making him feel guilty.

Buck, because he hates Eddie and wants him dead, has chosen to wear a sleeveless shirt to move. Even though it’s January. So Eddie is hauling furniture and boxes and trying to behave like a normal man while Buck flexes his muscles and grunts every time he lifts something.

He doesn’t feel guilty for wanting Buck. He isn’t entirely sure, but he thinks that Buck may want him, too. Shannon  was okay with the divorce, and Eddie is under no illusions that she would have seen this as some sort of infidelity. But he is still mourning the loss of a person he loved, of the mother of his child (who’s been having nightmares about her drowning), and it kinda seems like maybe his libido should be taking some time off?

If not until Christopher’s nightmares have stopped, then at the very least until Buck’s sister isn’t around.

Maddie has taken it upon herself to direct the entire operation, and Eddie just can't figure out what to make of her. 

Eddie doesn’t usually need to try so hard to get people to like him. He’s a social guy. He makes friends easily, remembers details about people’s lives, and he can’t recall many people in his life who truly disliked him. Even Buck came around within a day. 

But, God, he’s pretty sure that Maddie Buckley hates his guts.

It’s completely at odds with the Maddie that he knows through Buck and Chimney and brief interactions at big group events. She isn’t rude. She doesn’t snap at him, or make judgmental comments like his mother sometimes does, but he can feel her eyes on him whenever they’re in the same room. She only speaks to him to direct his movements, telling him where each item goes with the efficiency of a drill sergeant. She jokes around with Buck and Chimney, but any time Eddie tries to chat with her, she finds some task or other that requires her to be in another room. Maybe, he thinks optimistically, it’s just the stress of moving. Maybe Maddie just isn’t a social person.

After they’ve moved everything inside, when they’re sitting on the couch eating pizza and Eddie wipes a bit of grease off Buck’s face with his own napkin and Maddie narrows her eyes, he finally realizes what it is.

When he was young, back when his parents took him to church every Sunday and sometimes Wednesday, there was this old lady, Mrs. O’Connell, who always thought that Eddie was up to no good. She’d watch him whenever he got too close to something heavy or fragile or expensive, like he was a firecracker about to go off. No matter how careful he was, she never stopped expecting him to break something. It wasn’t about Eddie; it was about his being a little boy (a little Mexican boy, if he feels like being cynical as to Mrs. O’Connell’s reasoning). Maybe if he’d kept going to church once he got older, he would have eventually won her over. But he stopped going to church, stopped seeing Mrs. O’Connell, and all she ever saw when she looked at him was the potential for catastrophe.

Eddie wipes the grease from Buck’s cheek. Buck grins at him. Chimney recounts the misery of his last dentist’s appointment through a mouthful of pizza. They all laugh. Buck and Chim fight over the last slice of pizza, Eddie chokes on his soda, and Chim decides to hook up the TV so they can watch a movie.

And through it all, Maddie watches him. 

On her third day of living alone, Maddie comes to the conclusion that she is probably clinically insane.

She has texted Buck eight times without getting a response in the past hour, starting with a funny picture she found on Pinterest and ending with a threat to call 9-1-1. She has picked up her keys and put them down three times. She has called Chimney and hung up after the first ring twice.

Her phone vibrates, and her heart clenches. 

It’s a text from Buck, thank God.

LOL that cat is adorable!!

I’m not dead in a ditch I was napping sorry

Love you!!! 💞💞💞

He was napping. He was napping, and it was only an hour, and Maddie is a crazy person.

Love you too, she types, Sorry for texting so much. I watched this true crime documentary earlier and I think I freaked myself out LOL! 

Maddie did not watch a true crime documentary earlier. Maddie is just deranged, apparently. 

“Well, you're an empty nester,” Josh says simply at work the next day.

“Buck is almost thirty,” Maddie says, crunching on a pretzel. “It’s not like he’s some kid living in a dorm.”

“Exactly,” Josh says, “He’s almost thirty. You’ve had him on the apron strings for, like, a decade longer than most parents. It’s gonna be hard to cut them.”

Maddie’s never really known whether she has the right to call herself a parent.

When Buck was growing up, whenever she’d sign her name next to “Parent or Guardian,” she had idly wondered which category she fit within. Guardian, obviously. She’s his sister, not his mother.

But, then, “guardian” sounds so detached. Like it’s a job or a court-appointed position instead of her brother. Even before they left Pennsylvania, it was Maddie who soothed him when he cried, Maddie who played games with him in the summer, Maddie who marked his height on the wall inside her closet where Mom and Dad couldn't see. 

“Sister” is the truth. She loves that she’s his sister. It doesn’t encompass all that they are, though. She had to give Buck The Talk (well, numerous Talks), and ground him sometimes, and buy him sneakers and jeans and coats just as fast as he outgrew them. She did the work of raising him, all by herself, and she had all the same feelings and struggles and responsibilities as any parent.

But now Buck is twenty-seven. He has a sizeable savings account from living with a roommate his entire adult life, and he has a steady, well-paying job, and he found a nice apartment in a safe area, and he has friends, real friends, people he can talk to when he needs help. He doesn’t need raising anymore.

She still worries. What if he redownloads those hookup apps? What if he starts bringing strangers home, now that he doesn’t have to worry about Maddie? He says that he’s sworn off the hook-ups, that he knows they were hurting him more than helping, but Buck—Buck’s always had a tendency to hurt himself. Not—not in the super intentional way, not in the calling-a-hotline way, but Maddie knows he isn’t as dumb as he may seem sometimes. He knew what would happen when he tried to jump his bike from one friend’s porch to the other in high school, and he’s always known what a bad idea it is to meet up with random strangers for sex.

One time. One time, when he was freshly twenty-one and Maddie spent every Friday and Saturday night terrified out of her mind, he came home earlier than usual and showered immediately. He’d still been skinny enough then to squeeze into Maddie’s most oversized hoodie, which he did before collapsing next to her on the sofa and resting his head in her lap. He’d cried, and wouldn’t tell her anything. He never spoke a word, and he went right back out the next weekend, and kept on like that for years.

So. Buck might have admitted that it’s bad for him, but will he really stay away, left to his own devices?

Maddie tries to get used to it. She really, truly does. She tries teaching herself to knit, and she tries going to karaoke more often, and she tries hitting the bars with Josh some nights. She still finds herself obsessively checking her phone, opening Buck’s contact and hovering over the phone button with her heart pounding at random times. 

And then Albert Han arrives at Chimney’s apartment. Eighteen, eager, and naive. He’s the same age that she was when she took Buck and ran, but Maddie’s heart nearly stops in her chest at the thought of eighteen-year-old Buck in a foreign country by himself. Eighteen is just… so young.

He was planning to stay with Howie, who doesn’t seem happy about the idea, and before he can even open his mouth, Maddie says, “I have a spare room!”

Chimney shoots her a look as if she’s betrayed him, but Albert beams. “Thank you, Maddie!” He hugs her, and it’s not quite like hugging Buck, but Maddie thinks she could get used to it.

While he’s in the bathroom, Chimney hisses, “Are you serious? He’s a stranger—”

“He’s your brother!”

Maddie didn’t mean to be admonishing, but Chimney looks vaguely guilty at her words anyway.

“Fine,” he says, sighing, “It’s your funeral.”

Living alone doesn’t actually end up involving a lot of being alone.

Buck has a guest bedroom—it’s only big enough for a queen-size bed and a single side table, but that’s enough for Eddie and Christopher to sleep over sometimes. More often, Buck stays over at theirs. Somehow, spending time with them feels easier without Maddie around. He doesn’t feel like he needs a reason to go over anymore; he can just be bored, or lonely, or anything, really, and head over to Eddie’s without justifying himself. 

For the first time in what might be his whole life, Buck’s really proud of his choices. Maddie and Chim have been spending more time together, too, and he likes to think that it’s because of his decision to move out, at least a little bit. Maddie tells him about their anniversary dinner that went off the rails and scored them a free night in a fancy hotel room; then, when Maddie survives a hostage situation, Chimney takes her home and stays the night. Things that Maddie may have hesitated to do, back when she was mother-henning Buck 24/7. In another world, he can see them having a Buckley sibling sleepover after Dispatch was held hostage, and it would have been nice, but being with Chim is better for Maddie. She can finally move on and live life for herself.

Chim’s brother is staying in Buck’s old room, which is weird, but as Buck gets to know Albert he realizes that he goes out a lot anyway, so Maddie still gets more alone time. As weeks turn to months, Christopher hits a growth spurt, Eddie places a few pictures of Shannon around the house and her name comes out with more ease each time he says it, and Buck starts wondering if Maddie would ever want to get remarried. He likes the idea of her and Chim being together forever. 

It’s what they both deserve.

Of all things, their first big fight is over Chimney’s little brother.

“Howie, he was just really upset—”

“He’s eighteen! He goes on a shitty date every week!”

Ditching her boyfriend in the middle of dinner to comfort his brother was, Maddie knows, probably the wrong choice. At the time, Albert’s She threw a drink in my face and called me a man whore :( text felt incredibly urgent. Maddie’s just trying to be nice; can’t Chimney see that?”

“Look,” she says, trying not to yell, “I’m sorry that I’m nicer to your brother than you are, but—”

“Oh, my god, you still don’t get it,” Chimney scoffs.

Their dinner lies half-eaten on his dining table, cooling as they stalk their way across the apartment with each volley. Somehow, Maddie has ended up by the coffee table; Chimney leans against the back of the sofa, looking at her incredulously.

Maddie isn’t stupid. “Get what?”

Chim’s fingers dig into the cusion of the sofa. When she meets his eyes, they’re almost sympathetic as he snaps, “He is an adult, Maddie! He’s not Buck, and you’re not his mother!”

Whatever Maddie would have said next, it turns to ice in her chest.

“I know it isn’t my place to tell you how to live your life,” Chimney says, letting go of the sofa and crossing his arms, “But this isn’t healthy for either of you, and considering that it’s my brother, I think I get a say here in whether or not you use him as—as some kind of brother crutch.”

Maddie wouldn’t—she hasn’t been trying to replace Buck. Right? Albert is his own person. He’s just young, and Maddie wanted to be kind, and they’re friends now, but—but her eyes are filling with tears anyway. There’s only one person that Maddie would—should—ditch Chimney for, and as much as she might care for him, that person isn’t Albert Han.

“You’re right,” Maddie sniffs. “I’m sorry. God, Howie, I’m really sorry.”

Chim sighs. “No,” he says, rounding the sofa to gather her in his arms. “No, Maddie, you don’t have to be sorry.”

“Don’t tell me if I should be sorry or not,” Maddie gripes, leaning into his embrace and squeezing him back.

Chimney huffs out a tired laugh. “Alright, then I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost it, and I… I didn’t mean to be so harsh.”

Maddie sniffles, tucking her face into his neck.

He says, “I’m not mad about you leaving last week, I’m just worried about you, Maddie.”

“I know,” she whispers. “I just…” Maddie’s throat aches. Her eyes burn. “I’ve been taking care of Buck ever since I can remember. And I don’t… I don’t know who I am, now. Now that I’m not protecting him.”

Chim pulls back, holding her by her upper arms. “Are you kidding me?”

Maddie sniffles. “...No?”

He scoffs, eyes sparking with humor. “You are Maddie Buckley. You are smart, and strong, and hilarious, and the best karaoke partner on Earth—”

Maddie laughs. Chimney smiles, and God, she loves him.

“—and you save lives every single day. You make me smile every single day. You raised a guy who helps people just like his big sister, and you take in annoying little half-brothers you barely know, and you take down art thieves, and you inspire me to be the best man I can be, just so I might be worthy of you.”

“Howie,” Maddie croaks, shaking her head.

“That’s who you are, Maddie. You’re the greatest person I know.”

“And the craziest,” Maddie says.

He shrugs. “Eh, who wants somebody without neuroses? That would just be boring.”

Maddie isn’t sure what to say, so she kisses him. She tries to tell him that way—tell him that she loves him, that he’s the greatest person she knows (tied with the one she raised), that she wouldn’t want any other partner than him, in karaoke or in craziness or in life.

When they break apart, she looks into his eyes, and somehow she knows. He understood.

“...How’d we get so far away from the food?” Maddie asks, and they both burst into laughter.

Buck’s throat is sore.

Maybe he’s getting sick, from standing out in the rain so long. Maybe it’s seasonal allergies.

Maybe it’s not because he screamed Eddie’s name to the ground and the sky so hard that he tore something.

Maybe. Probably not.

He occupied Christopher for the first half of his bedtime routine so that Eddie could wash all of the mud off properly—he rushed through his shower at the station, desperate to get home, and Buck can’t blame him for that—and now he’s sitting on the couch as Eddie tucks Christopher in. 

Buck could go home, but he has no intention of it. If he left, he knows that he’d have trouble believing that Eddie wasn’t still buried forty feet underground. He's planning to stay until Eddie kicks him out or he dies. Whichever comes first.

When Eddie leaves Chris’s bedroom, he looks exhausted, and Buck finds himself standing at the end of the hall before he even knows what he’s planning to do.

Eddie just gives him a small smile. He doesn’t step past Buck. He comes to a stop, toe to toe, and looks into Buck’s eyes like they’ve got all the time in the world.

There are dark shadows underneath his eyes. His skin still has an unnaturally pale cast to it, and his hair still isn’t completely dry. It’s from the shower, not the rain, but Buck still hates the sight. Does Eddie have a hair dryer in his bathroom? He must, right?

“I think,” Buck says.

“Uh-oh,” Eddie replies.

“I want to tell you something. And I’m afraid of it.”

The easy grin falls off of Eddie’s face, but the kindness never leaves his eyes. Eddie’s probably the kindest man alive. The best man alive.

“It’s me,” he says.

And that’s enough.

“I’ve been… You know about. What happened when I was young.”

Eddie says, “I do.”

“I always,” Buck tries, and his breath hitches. He can do this. The shadows in Eddie’s hallway are a comfort, blanketing him in darkness. He can see Eddie’s face pretty well, but he’d like to think that Eddie can’t see him as clearly.

“Um,” Buck continues. “Sometimes I feel things. And I used to think… I used to be afraid that those feelings were. Because of that. Because of what happened to me.”

Eddie reaches out and gently holds the outside of Buck’s upper arm. His hand is light and his grip loose—Buck could shake him off with a tiny shrug. He lifts his other hand to rest over Eddie’s, holding him in place.

“I was afraid that… That I was broken, and dirty, and wrong. That I was going to hell. That he… That it happened because of how I am.”

Somehow, the shadows under Eddie’s eyes look darker.

“But I’m not afraid anymore. I… I know, I’ve always known that isn’t how it works, that it’s—that if it’s there, it’s just a part of me. But I was so scared. And until now I never—I never had a reason to push past that fear. A reason for my brain to finally… understand that it’s not something to be afraid of. That it’s something good.”

Eddie inches impossibly closer. “You have a reason now?”

His eyes are steady. In the dim light, Buck can barely make out the barrier between pupil and iris.

“I love you,” Buck says.“I really, really love you, and it’s… It’s the best thing I’ve ever felt, and losing you—thinking that I lost you, tonight, I—I couldn’t live with myself, Eddie, if I didn’t tell you. If you didn’t know that you and Christopher are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Buck,” Eddie breathes. For the first time since Buck can remember, Eddie looks surprised, genuinely caught off-guard.

Now that he’s let himself open his mouth, the words just keep spilling out. “You were down there, and everybody thought that you were a goner. And I just couldn’t believe it. I—I thought, once I could—once I calmed down enough to even have thoughts,” Buck chuckles ruefully, “I thought, he can’t be gone. He can’t be. He’s too… You’re too good, Eddie. And I’d know. I—I would know, if you were gone, I’d feel it somehow, I’d know.”

Eddie’s free hand comes up to cup the back of Buck’s neck, impossibly warm and large and comforting. The feeling is so secure, so unexpected, that Buck’s hand drops away from Eddie’s, and it doesn’t leave. Eddie is holding his neck, and holding his arm, and Buck doesn’t need to hold on at all.

“...You know,” Eddie says, “I realized on the day we met.”

Buck blinks. “What?”

Eddie’s smile is soft. Tentative, a word that Buck has never thought to apply to Eddie before. 

“That I’m gay. I realized on the day we met.”

Whatever Buck’s face is doing, it seems to instill Eddie with confidence.

“It wasn’t the first time I’d ever been attracted to a man,” he continues, “Looking back on it, I had a lot of crushes growing up. There were plenty of guys I’d look at and feel something, my whole life. But you…” The hand on his arm squeezes. “You were the first time I wasn’t afraid of that feeling.”

Buck doesn’t know what to do with what Eddie’s giving him. “Me?”

Eddie’s eyes crinkle as his smile grows , soft and beautiful. “Yeah, you.”

“Wh—why? Why?”

“Buck,” he says, “You’re… My best friend. You’re the best person I know.” He sighs. “I don’t know, that first day. Why I suddenly understood what I was feeling. I don’t know what it was that made me feel like it would be okay, to… want you. To love you. But I know that you’ve proven that feeling right every single day since.”

“...You love me?”

The hand on Buck’s arm slides up, Eddie’s fingers lacing together behind his neck. Buck, without even thinking about it, rests his hands on Eddie’s hips. Almost like they’re dancing.

“I love you,” Eddie says. Plainly. Purposefully. 

His voice is a bit huskier than usual. Scratchy. Has been since the tunnel collapse. Buck wonders if he screamed, when he realized he was trapped down there, and his own throat itches.

Yeah, he decides. Eddie probably screamed.

“I love you,” Buck tells him, “And I love Christopher, and I love being your partner, and I… I love you, Eddie. I love you in… In a way I never thought I’d have.”

“You have me any way you want,” Eddie says, and Buck doesn't think that he's imagining the innuendo in Eddie’s words. 

“You, um… you know I’m still, like, working on sex,” Buck says, and Eddie kisses him gently, letting one hand slide down from behind Buck’s neck to hold his shoulder, thumb settling in the hollow above Buck’s collarbone.

Eddie kisses like it’s his job. Buck feels… overwhelmed, almost, almost, by the pure focus of it, by the way that he knows Eddie is right here, with him, thinking about nothing else but him. His lips aren’t quite warm yet.

Buck does his best to change that. He draws Eddie close, and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him. Eddie pulls back, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling, and kisses the tip of Buck’s nose.

“I know,” he says, “What’s your point?”

Buck tries to communicate don’t be an asshole right now solely via his eyes.

Eddie sighs. “You know, my hands do work,” he says, “Somehow I think I’ll survive.”

Buck knows that he doesn’t owe Eddie anything. Not like that, anyway. He still feels vaguely guilty. He isn’t afraid of having sex with a man—it’s literally Eddie, Buck’s felt Eddie’s body against his own in a hundred different ways and hasn’t disliked a single one of them—but he is afraid of messing things up. Of messing them up.

“I mean, I trust you,” he says, “So, I mean, maybe…”

Eddie squeezes his shoulder, brown eyes looking deeply into Buck’s. “Buck. Literally nothing is less appealing to me than the idea of doing something with you that you aren’t excited about.”

“I know. I know, I’m not… I wouldn’t do that. I just wish my stupid brain would work right.”

“If your brain worked right, you wouldn’t be Buck.”

Objectively, it’s an insulting statement, but Eddie says it like just being Buck is something beautiful. 

“You know,” he says, trying to hold back a smile, “One day, when Chris is old enough to know about it, I’m gonna tell him that his father referred to my childhood sexual trauma as my brain not working right.”

“Actually, I’m referring to your everything.”

Buck laughs. Eddie’s hands land on his waist and pull him in close, and Eddie tilts his head forward so their foreheads are resting against one another.

“I want to…” Eddie starts, then trails off, looking into Buck’s eyes. His lips quirk into a gentle smile. “...I want to do everything with you, you know? But it’s like… basketball. You’re always invited, and I’d love for you to be there, but I don’t want you to go if you’re not gonna have fun.”

“Sex is like basketball?”

Eddie shrugs. “Sure. Why not?”

“Are your basketball friends gonna be there when we have sex, too?”

Eddie pinches him and Buck yelps, slapping his hands away as Eddie giggles.

Buck draws Eddie into a kiss, then, cradling his face and trying to funnel everything he feels into his lips. It’s been so long since he touched someone like this, and it feels better than he remembers. Maybe because it’s been so long. Maybe because he knows that Eddie isn’t expecting anything. Maybe just because it’s Eddie. Whatever it is, he feels like he could kiss Eddie forever, or stop right now and pick it back up in a day or a year, like kissing Eddie exists separately from everything else in the world. Like it’s entirely within his control.

Eddie’s arms come up and loop around his neck. They’re huddled so closely together that Buck can feel every part of Eddie’s body, brushing against him with every breath. Buck strokes Eddie’s cheek with his thumb, feels the warmth of it, and can’t help but let out a satisfied sigh. 

Suddenly, Eddie angles his hips away from Buck, and Buck really doesn’t want that to happen. So Buck grabs them, sliding his thigh between Eddie’s legs and pressing him against the wall. He doesn’t feel anxious or intimidated, or like he’s about to perform. He just feels excited.

“Buck,” Eddie says, and Buck says, “Trust me.”

Eddie’s eyes are so beautiful. Big and brown and expressive, framed by those gorgeous lashes. Concern, giving way to arousal. Slowly, experimentally, Eddie rolls his hips. Buck watches his eyelids flutter. He presses his leg forward gently, tugging Eddie closer to his body.

Eddie sighs, tucking his face into Buck’s neck.

“There you go,” Buck murmurs, encouraging Eddie to keep moving. “I’ve got you.”

He keeps his hands on Eddie’s hips and his voice in Eddie’s ear, whispering to him and peppering kisses on his neck until his quiet gasps freeze and his hips jerk, fingers digging into Buck’s shoulders.

“Oh, Buck,” Eddie wheezes, lifting his head from Buck’s neck. His face is beautifully flushed, his hair a little bit sweaty, eyes dilated like he's just left the optometrist, and he surges forward and they’re kissing before Buck can process anything else.

Eddie breaks the kiss off, following it with a few brief pecks, before asking, “What do you want?”

“Just this,” Buck says, and kisses him again. “Maybe next time. I just… This was good.”

Buck can’t stop smiling. He thinks he must be blushing. Eddie smiles back, then shifts uncomfortably.

“I’m, uh,” he says, “I have to go change.”

They both burst into laughter. “Sorry,” Buck says.

“You know,” Eddie says consideringly, “You could make it up to me by doing some laundry.”

Buck clicks his tongue. “I think I have to get home, actually. Plants to water, and all.”

“You’re gonna make me sleep alone after that?”

It’s a joke, but the thought is so terrible that Buck instinctively replies, “God, no.” Eddie looks terribly smug, so he adds, “Someone has to make sure you don’t go hypothermic.”

Eddie chuckles, raising an eyebrow. “You gonna keep me warm?”

“Yeah,” Buck says. “For as long as you want me.”

“That’s a long time,” Eddie says, and kisses him.

“Seriously, though,” Buck says between kisses, grabbing Eddie’s hands to cup them between his own. They’re a little bigger than his, which, woah. “I’m, like, so worried about your fingers and toes right now.”

When Buck sleeps that night, he has Eddie’s feet tucked against his calves and Eddie’s fingers splayed against his chest and, by the morning, Eddie’s hair in his mouth. 

He’s never slept better.