Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Adriana Diaz isn’t an idiot. 

Far from it, actually—she’s young, yes, and perhaps a little too willing to see the best in people when it comes to most things, but that’s a hard won trait. She’s protected her optimism viciously—refused to let herself be soured or stunted in the ways that life is wont to make anyone. 

It’s something that Eddie used to do for her, back before she knew she had something worth protecting, something that needed to be protected. 

It’s something she knows, now, that he never could afford to do for himself. 

—

The thing is, so much of what Adriana understands about Eddie comes down to the fact that he’s always taken care of her. 

She knows the beginning of their story well: 

It begins with Eddie, just eight years-old, side-swiping the garage in their dad’s truck. He did as much damage to one as he did the other. 

But Eddie, just eight years-old, had been told that his mother needed to go to the hospital. He found the keys to his father’s truck, set his jaw, and done what he figured he had to. It didn’t occur to him to ask someone for help—maybe, it didn’t occur to him that he could.

A hard lesson to have learned by eight years-old. 

Among the things she also knows: It was Eddie who taught her how to drive when she was fifteen, terrified of the concept and the practice, but he’d promised her there was nothing she could do to his already pretty beaten-up car that she wouldn’t be forgiven for, sight unseen. He’d just returned from his second tour, and looked more like the ghost at the end of a war movie than someone who’d made it home. 

He’d needed half a dozen surgeries to pull all the bullets and debris out of his body, and he’d had all but one of them overseas—one in Kandahar, at the Canadian medical unit, one in Bagram, and then three more in Germany. All of that, and the thing that confused Adriana the most was the fact that they’d left one of the bullets behind—buried in his thigh, where it would stay for the foreseeable future. 

She’d overheard their parents, muttering what Adriana has to believe were genuine, if somewhat insensitive and largely unfounded, concerns—PTSD, and we know that war changes people, and what if he snaps? 

The facts are these: she had driven his car into a parking barrier, pretty much directly. He hadn’t so much as raised his voice. 

Didn't flinch, either.

The first and only time he visited her in Austin, he showed up with a change of batteries for her smoke detector—and made her watch while he switched them out. 

Eddie is and always has been good at taking care of other people, and absolutely shit at doing the same for himself. 

So, when their parents explain on their once-a-week-ish call that they’ve got Christopher in El Paso for the foreseeable future, for reasons that they will not explain further, Adriana has her email open before she even hangs up. 

Her program coordinator has always been pretty laid back—she has no problem with Adriana spending a few weeks in LA, as long as she stays on top of her reading, her writing. As long as she’s back by the end of August. 

Jamie is gone until at least mid-June, anyway—back to Michigan to see her family, with her youngest brother’s twenty-first birthday in the middle of it all—and Adriana has already been finding that their apartment feels a little haunted in her absence. 

She calls Jamie only after she’s already most of the way through buying a one way ticket to Los Angeles, watching the checkout timer tick down and chewing her thumbnail. 

“Is this crazy? Am I being crazy?” 

“Nah,” Jamie says. “Besides, if your brother is really going through it, maybe what he needs right now is some of your crazy—it’ll make everything else seem more normal.” 

“Shut up,” Adriana says. 

“Never.” 

— 

Jamie Gray-Robinson. 

Graduate student, biomedical engineering, twenty-six years-old. Bombshell, redhead, nearsighted. Three brothers—two younger and one older—all of them born and raised in Michigan. 

Beautiful, and braver than Adriana—better, maybe, than Adriana deserves. 

—

Adriana doesn’t tell their parents that she’s going to LA. 

She doesn’t tell Eddie, either—or ask, for that matter. 

She does tell Sophia, and she does ask Chris. 

She calls them one after the other. Sophia, in San Francisco, is thrilled. She says she’ll drive down on a weekend—maybe drive down for two and leave Diego and the girls at home for one of them—says something about a Diaz Sibling Reunion, which they’ve… never done. 

"First annual?" Adriana suggests, instead of naming the uglier aspect of it all: that they’ve never done this—haven’t even tried. It earns her a laugh like a bell, bright and true, from her big sister. 

Sophia sounds just as surprised as Adriana feels when her sister realizes in real time that she hasn’t seen Eddie in more than a year. The drive between Sophia and Eddie is something like six hours. Not the most convenient, but not the least convenient, either. 

Christopher thinks it’s a good idea—says as much, on the phone, and doesn’t say much else. 

“Buck will probably be hovering,” is what Chris does volunteer, unprompted, but sullen enough to sound it on the phone. 

“What makes you say that?” 

“He was hovering when I left.” 

Well. 

It still surprises her when the man who opens the door is not Eddie. 

It’s—Captain America, is the thing that actually comes to mind—he’s close to a foot taller than she is, if not more than that, with blond curls and broad shoulders, and he’s got a question in his very blue eyes that’s probably less friendly than the one he actually asks her. 

“Uh,” he says. “Can I help you?” 

“Uh,” she echoes him without meaning to, unprepared as she was to see anyone but Eddie answering the door to his own house, “maybe? I’m Adriana, Eddie’s—”

“—sister? Oh my god,” Captain America says, now grinning and ushering her in, before he asks in something like a stage whisper: “… is this a surprise?”

“… yes?” Adriana says, because, quite frankly, she is surprised. 

“That’s great—and, sorry, I just, I’ve heard lots about you, but I still didn’t expect you to be so…”

“… short?” She tries. 

“Young,” he corrects, emphatically. “I’m Buck, by the way.” He shoulders her duffel bag and gives her another smile, something less polite and more earnest—a smile that gives a new meaning to the concept of beaming. 

It’s like a spotlight. 

Adriana, promptly, gets stage fright.

“You’re Buck!” she exclaims, loud and somewhat nonsensically. She’s still mentally calling him Captain America. She thinks he might be the tallest person she’s ever stood this close to. She’s planning a text to Christopher in her mind, tbf to Buck, it must be hard to do anything but hover when you’re seven fucking feet tall, and—

“What’s going on?” Adriana hears Eddie before she sees him, and she sees him before he sees her. 

He is, first of all, shirtless. 

Which, it’s his house. That’s fine. 

He’s also dishevelled from sleep precisely in the way he’d always been on weekdays during summer vacation—it makes her feel like a kid again, briefly—but he wears his exhaustion plainly. Knuckling his eyes, he looks older than he ever has before, and just… tired. 

And. 

She’s only ever seen the scar that's on his arm from Afghanistan—has always known it to be one of three, but it’s an injury that she remembers as more of a cast than a wound.

A broken wrist, at the end of the day, is a broken wrist. 

It’s something that the passing years have flattened, polished smooth like a river stone.

She sees other scars now—bullet wounds, some more recent than others, some more familiar—and finds herself stuck on a thought, or maybe a riddle without an answer worth giving:

When is a broken wrist not a broken wrist? 

When it’s a bullet wound. When your brother and his only son are signing their names to paper, over and over, shoulder to shoulder, one learning and the other learning again, leaning together, learning together. When the shattered hand cannot remember familiar motions, something so simple as the name of the soldier to whom it belongs. When you forget. 

Her brother also has a moustache, which is. Um. It’s new. 

Less challenging, maybe, than the scars she hadn’t really seen before now, but only just. 

“Breakfast is almost ready—and your sister is here!” Buck says, reminding Adriana that he is also here. 

Eddie’s eyes go from bleary, narrowed against the morning light to… comically wide. Finally finding her. 

“What?” 

“Shirt,” Buck says mildly as he turns and walks into the house—taking her bag with him as he goes, which seems to be as much of a formal invitation to stay as she should expect, maybe. 

In the meantime, Eddie scrambles to pull the well-worn LAFD t-shirt he had been holding in one hand over his head, and closes the distance between them. 

Eddie gives her a hug that feels like coming home—a hug that she feels across each of the twenty-four years of her life, in every bruised knee and scraped palm. She hugs him back and gives over her weight, trying to fold herself into the shape of the child she knows they’re both remembering, right now—even if it’s only just for a moment.

They pull apart, but he doesn’t loosen his grip on her—his hands settle on her shoulders.

“Well, come on,” he says with a squeeze, tilting his head toward the back of the house. “I heard that breakfast is almost ready.” 

Eddie gives her a small but honest smile, both of them a little glassy-eyed, before he turns. 

She sees the name Buckley printed across his shoulders. 

—

It was the second writing instructor she’d ever had who taught Adriana the trick, to make strange, to ask:

When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar. 

A riddle, sure, but:

When is a door not a door?

When it’s a jar. When it’s meant to keep something contained instead of allowing it to leave. When it’s a window, less appropriate than something like a door to step through, but serving that purpose just as well. 

When walking through the door will change everything, when tracking backwards into the room from which you came could not give you back the person you were before you’d passed through it, only a moment or perhaps now a lifetime ago. 

When you see the pencil-scratch signs of life that a young family has left on the doorposts, read their faded and unfamiliar names, and wonder what it means that someone used this place as a record of something that mattered a great deal, knowing always that the door could not come with you, knowing that the record of a life lived on either side of it would remain, always, here. 

—

Breakfast smells really fucking good, and that’s not even just because she’s been eating exclusively non-perishables for the past couple days in an effort to completely empty her fridge in Austin. 

Buck sets a glass of water in front of her as soon as she sits down at the table in the dining room, offering her a grin, a shrug, and then an explanation: 

“I always feel dehydrated after flying.” 

“Wait, are you actually, like, cooking?” Adriana says instead of thank you, like a normal person would. 

She sips the water, because she does feel a little dehydrated, actually. 

“Yep,” Buck says, popping the p at the end of the word. “Don’t tell me you’re as bad in the kitchen as Eddie used to be.” 

“What—”

“—worse, actually,” Eddie interrupts, smirking. 

Adriana sticks her tongue out at him and takes his coffee. Might as well get more dehydrated, while she’s at it—less hydrated, maybe? Re-dehydrated? 

Whatever. 

She drinks some coffee.

Eddie sticks his tongue out at her in return. The expression looks especially funny with the moustache. 

She looks at him for a minute—really looks at him. 

Her big brother, thirty-two years-old, a war veteran and a father and a firefighter, whatever—he’s been her hero for as long as she’s known how to say his name. 

Steady Eddie, Sophia used to call him, almost always insincere and while arguing. 

Steady Eddie, because the two of them were barely a year apart in age and used to fight like street cats, spitting and vicious. 

Steady Eddie, because Eddie has always felt so deeply, deeply enough that it confused him, sometimes, and Sophia had always known better than anyone how to pull those feelings up—get them too close to the skin, too soon, too loud—right to the surface.

It seems like life has left Eddie a little unsteady—that all those feelings are all still there, and all still too close to the surface, only—maybe they've surfaced too late instead of too soon, were too buried, too deep before being dragged out. They've soured, like fermentation gone badly, and Eddie looks spent, exhausted—like something has caught up to him while he’s been failing to catch up on sleep. He looks a little wild in the eyes. A little bit hunted, maybe haunted. Maybe like he’s the one doing the haunting. 

The ghost at the end of a war movie.

“Eddie…”

“Breakfast, first,” he says, insistent. 

“Eddie,” she repeats, equally as insistent. 

“Please.” 

“You don’t have any allergies, do you?” Buck asks, a well-timed interruption coming in the form of a perfectly sensible—maybe defensible—question. 

“Nope,” Adriana answers, and she pops the p like Buck had earlier, which earns her the recognition she wanted. He delivers it to her alongside a fresh cup of coffee for Eddie, replacing the one she had stolen from him earlier. Eddie doesn't say a word, just wraps both hands around the mug and quietly preens. 

“Great,” Buck says, giving her that spotlight-bright smile again. This time, she doesn’t freeze.

“The service here is incredible,” she mutters to Eddie out of the corner of her mouth, loud enough that she knows she’ll be heard by every party in the kitchen. 

Eddie snorts. Sips his new coffee. Preens less noticeably, but still preens. 

It’s like he agrees, and that he’s glad that she’s recognized it: Yes, the service here is incredible. 

Buck shoots them both a withering look, but continues to put food in front of them, so clearly hasn’t taken it too personally. Maybe the opposite, actually, because as he sets down the last of it, he finishes with an unexpectedly dorky flourish.

“Well. Breakfast is served.”

Adriana and Eddie both laugh, and she is struck, again, by the fact that they share their laugh—the sound as they laugh together is complimentary, almost choral. She wonders if Eddie is the reason she learned to laugh, or if this is another of the many inheritances they share. 

While they eat, making idle conversation about school and work and weather and blueberry pancakes, she studies Buck in his contrasts—an old habit, one she practiced through long days in libraries, filling journal after journal with person after person, capturing them in the only way she has ever been capable of, capturing them in words. 

When Buck is smiling, his laugh lines make it harder to see the scars—she can pick out a set of faint lines that cut, parallel with one another, across his face, the most prominent of them starting above his right eyebrow, crossing the bridge of his nose, and ending somewhere close to his left earlobe. 

She can see the shallow, barely-there craters of acne scars on either side of his jaw, the kind you get from the nervous habit of running your fingernails down the side of your face as a teenager—an oddly youthful scar to retain. They compliment the tiny, pock-mark scars on his ears that show they were once pierced. Benign scars, the scars of youth. 

She sees the divot that sits at the hollow of his throat, barely visible above his collar, and she wonders how he choked. 

When he’s smiling, the rise of his shoulders almost reads like good posture. She’s sure that in a firefighter’s uniform, that same marionette-string anxiety that lifts his shoulders toward his ears and has his hands half-raised in front of him like someone expecting to be kicked reads as vigilance. 

When he’s smiling, he seems… more himself, or perhaps less scared, or maybe less scarred, in some way that she doesn’t know him well enough to place. Not quite young, and not quite happy, but something close.

Inevitably, it’s Eddie who asks:

“Why are you here, Adriana?” 

“My roommate ditched me to hang out with her brothers in Michigan,” Adriana spits the word Michigan like a curse—which is to say nothing of the spin she puts on the word roommate. “Got me thinking that LA is much cooler than Ann Arbor—though, still undecided on how the brothers rank—and besides….”

She shrugs, sips her coffee, and bites the bullet.

“Chris and I both thought you could use some company,” she says.

At the mention of Chris, Bucks softens, and Eddie wilts. 

“Company?” Eddie asks. 

Adriana nods. 

“Well... could always use some more,” Eddie says as his eyes travel to Buck, and she watches Buck lift an eyebrow, a question of some kind that Eddie answers with pursed lips and a nod. Buck smiles—and Eddie smiles back, a smaller, more fragile smile, but a smile nonetheless.

Some wordless conversation that she has no resource to translate. 

“Did you know that Michigan once went to war with Ohio?” Buck asks, shoving what she thinks is probably about half of a pancake into his mouth as he does. 

—

After breakfast, Adriana texts Chris.

buck is here.

She’s pleased—maybe thrilled, definitely relieved, almost grateful—to see that Chris texts her back almost immediately.

called it

he made us pancakes?

jealous wtf

—

Buck announces that he was thinking about visiting Bobby today, anyway, and leaves them with the dishes, a lazy salute, and the promise that he’ll be back before Eddie has therapy. 

Adriana doesn’t know if she’s supposed to have a reaction to hearing that Eddie’s in therapy, but if anything shows on her face, she’s sure it’s relief. Eddie’s a firefighter, a medic, a veteran. Eddie’s a single father, became a dad at nineteen, became a widower before thirty. Eddie’s been shot at least four times. 

Therapy seems like the right idea. 

Adriana goes to wash the dishes, Eddie to dry—mostly because he actually knows where things go, Adriana assumes, at least. She gives him about… twelve seconds of peaceful silence before she cracks. 

“So… that’s Buck.”

“That’s Buck,” Eddie replies, voice bland. 

“Seriously, where did you find him, Eddie?” 

“Buck? We met at work,” Eddie says, brow furrowing. Which is—Adriana’s had friends from work before. 

“It cannot be that simple. Why does he look like that, and have fun facts about Michigan, and remember your therapy schedule, and show up to cook you breakfast? I think I experienced an involuntary neurochemical response to his smile, he’s like... a personification of Vyvanse, or something. He was clearly grown in a lab somewhere—” 

Eddie winces at that, hard.

“—okay, weird. That was weird. Why did you just get so weird?” 

“It’s—he has a complicated relationship with… medical genetics.” 

“… is it more or less complicated than the relationship he has with you?” 

“Adriana—”

“—you know, Chris said he’d probably be here. Hovering.” 

“Well,” Eddie swallows. “I’ve given him some reasons to hover, recently.”

“Eddie,” Adriana says, and stops the running tap before she turns to really look at him. “What’s going on? What the fuck happened?” 

She’s expecting to be told that, whatever it was, it’s between Eddie and their parents—or, between Eddie and his son. 

She’s expecting that Eddie might try to downplay things, try to take it on the chin and promise her it’s his burden to carry—the stoicism of a soldier, their father’s only son. 

She doesn’t really know what she’s expecting. 

She’s not expecting Eddie to tell her everything, but that’s what he does. 

It’s a story that starts with the characters that matter most—advice she’d offer a student, advice she’s been offered as a student. 

Interior. Los Angeles, Home. Night. 

Marisol, DIY expert, previous emergency-haver, former nun? A woman that briefly lived in Eddie’s house, a woman that Chris had adored for a somewhat less brief period of time, a woman that Adriana has never even heard the name of before. 

Kim, salesperson and failed actress who looked almost just like Shannon, who started to fall for Eddie because she didn’t know, who had shown up at the station when Eddie wasn’t there. Who wasn’t impressed when Eddie was honest with her, who did return either despite that or because of it. Who gave a harrowing performance that no one had requested, starring as the ghost of Eddie’s dead wife. 

The moment it all fell apart.

By the end of the story, Eddie is looking at the ceiling in his kitchen, keeping a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the sink, clearing his throat to choke the words out, skin flushed with shame. 

“Eddie… ” She starts, baffled. 

“I know, I know, Adri. I just—” 

“Hey, hey,” she says, and she’s moving without thinking, just reaching for him. 

This is her big brother, her hero, the one who used to put a hand on one of her shoulders and pull her in when her words started to fail her. The one who used to soothe her, speak softly, promise that there was always something to be done, and mean it. The one who used to comfort her when she cried—frustrated tears, embarrassed tears, disappointed tears, heartbroken tears. 

For the first time in their lives, she returns the favour. 

—

Adriana is about ten years older than Chris. 

Eddie is almost ten years older than Adriana. 

She remembers turning nineteen, her nineteenth birthday, in fact—getting a little too drunk, getting a little too melancholy, and thinking without meaning to that she was now as old as Eddie had been when Chris was born. 

Adriana was nineteen, and Shannon had been dead for three months, and when Shannon was nineteen, Chris had just been born.

She’s pretty sure that she threw up.

—

Eddie is in the process of offering to skip therapy on Adriana’s behalf when Buck, inevitably, returns. 

He lets himself in—hangs his keys on one of the bare hooks behind the door and kicks his boots into an empty space on the rack at the back of the coat closet. It’s a set of gestures rehearsed to the point of seeming simpler than they are, like street magic. It’s a kind of effortlessness that only comes of habit.

“Don’t skip therapy,” Adriana says to Eddie, followed by: “You clearly need it.” 

“Rude,” Eddie replies. 

“Buck, tell Eddie he needs to go to therapy.”

“Eddie, you’ve gotta go to therapy, man.” 

“Okay, firstly, the two of you met this morning, you are not allowed to gang up on me—and secondly, I was just offering—” Eddie frowns and looks to her. “What are you going to get up to?” 

“Oh, you know... I might check my email. Maybe take a nap. Big plans, as always.”

“I just don’t want you to be stuck here,” Eddie says, which, while considerate, isn’t necessary—and doesn’t need to become an addition to the long list of things he’s beating himself up over. 

“I’m the one who decided to show up uninvited, Eddie—and I’m a big girl. If the urge to get bubble tea or see the Hollywood sign gets too extreme, I can call myself an Uber.”

“I can leave the keys for the jeep, if you want,” Buck says. Adriana blinks. 

“You’d let me take your car?” She asks, genuinely surprised. Buck shrugs. 

“Sure—Eddie taught you how to drive, right? It’s his ass if you crash.”

“What? No, it’s not—” Eddie cuts in, offended. 

“—no, it totally is, that’s what Athena told me when I taught May—”

“—Athena did not tell you it would be your ass—”

“—okay, so, maybe not in those words exactly—”

“—so it’s not what she told you?” Eddie grins. “You admit you’re just speaking recreationally?”

Buck replies with a scoff and an eye roll that Adriana’s confident he had to have picked up from Eddie himself, considering that her brother perfected the expression by the time she was born, as he shoos Eddie from the room. 

“Get your shit together, Eddie, or we’ll be late.” 

“God forbid,” Eddie mutters, excusing himself. 

“Do you two practice that?” Adriana asks lightly.

Buck looks, in a word, caught—then laughs and shrugs. It’s the kind of response that takes as much conviction as a sneeze to deliver and tells her just as little as a sneeze might. 

Adriana’s still stuck on how—or maybe why?—Buck knew that it was Eddie who taught her how to drive.

—

When Eddie reappears just a handful of minutes later, he is wearing jeans and a near identical, though slightly better fitting LAFD t-shirt. 

This one has the name Diaz on the back. 

No one has anything to say about that, Adriana included. 

—

Evening comes, and Adriana goes to set herself up in Chris’s room—which she fully intends to either gloat or complain to him about, come morning. 

She’s breathless, for a second, walking in. The room has so much of Chris in it, even in his absence—it’s so truly, completely his room. She thinks of the near-bare walls of her childhood bedroom, the sheets and curtains that her mother had selected, all the things that Adriana cared enough to keep stowed carefully out of sight. 

She sees books—an encyclopedia about penguins, the history of Superman, and a collection of battered hand-me-down Artemis Fowl paperbacks. 

She sees two framed photos, upright on Chris’s desk. The first is a photo of Shannon, in which she can’t be that much older than Adriana is now, smiling. Alive. Chris in her arms. 

The other photo is clearly from some kind of barbecue, or maybe a family reunion? Her parents have similar photos on the walls at home in El Paso—only, when it comes to Diaz family photos, it’s all pressed clothes, borderline starched, the kind only ever worn to and from churches. There’s a distance to them—the photos—with everyone precisely spaced out, everyone a little different than themselves for the sake of stillness. 

So, maybe not just in the photos—meaning the distance. Meaning that she rarely sees her family outside of photographs.

In this photo, everyone is wrapped up in one another, tangled together, taking on weight as some laugh harder than others at some joke Adriana will never know. Eddie is grinning down at Chris with a hand on his shoulder—Chris, his smile almost completely obscured by the angle of his face, is looking up at his dad. Buck and Eddie each have an arm around the other, shoulder to shoulder as Buck laughs with his whole body, pitched forward. 

There’s an older man next to him, who himself has a hand resting on Buck’s shoulder. Under the older man’s other arm, a woman looks almost directly at the camera, smirking with a single eyebrow raised. Next to her, there are two black women who seem to be sharing the joke with each other more than anyone else, the boy in front of them beaming with his eyes closed. 

Adriana sees a woman who shares Buck’s profile smiling down at the roundest baby Adriana has ever seen, held in the arms of a man who looks at her like she’s a revelation, like he missed the joke and could not care any less. 

They look like a family. 

Adriana catches something like a sob before it can escape her. She clears her throat instead—she will not mourn what she has never had herself, she will not mourn what Eddie and Chris have now. 

She thinks it very deliberately: Have now, not had once. 

Maybe this is Buck’s family, she reasons, seeing Eddie’s sunflower tendency to turn to face his son echoed in the man at Buck’s other side. A step-mother, then, and maybe a pair of aunts? Someone who could be an older sister, and a brother-in-law, a niece and a nephew. Eddie and Chris, a pair of puzzle pieces she’s seen fit into countless other family photos, who seem more at home in this composition.

Chris has been in El Paso for something like three weeks—maybe more—but it’s clear, sitting in his room, sitting in his home, that someone has kept any dust from gathering. 

Have now, because Chris will come back, and there will be more family photos. 

It isn’t until she’s turned off the lights that she sees the stars—a sea of stars, really. Dozens, if not hundreds, of glow in the dark stars pressed to the ceiling and the highest points on the walls, enough to cast a dim glow across the whole room. 

Adriana blinks at them, takes in their irregular placement and size. 

Then she spots the Big Dipper. 

—

how did you convince your dad to let you glue so many stars to your ceiling

I thought this place was a rental

didn’t

buck’s idea 

Christopher sends her a link to a star map: Los Angeles, the second day of May, the year 2019. 

Four days before Shannon died. 

—

In the morning, Adriana wakes up on central time—which is to say, two hours earlier than she wants to start her day. Nonetheless, she groans, rolls out of bed, and tries to shake off the poor sleep that she always gets in unfamiliar rooms. 

She’s still rubbing sleep from her eyes when—for the second time in as many days—she’s surprised to see Buck on the other side of a door. 

She startles, badly, but he’s not facing her—he’s just around the corner, pulling the door at the end of the hall closed behind him. Which is. Eddie’s room. 

Buck is leaving Eddie’s room. 

When he does turn, he startles just as badly as she did. Maybe worse. 

“Oh, hey—um. You’re up early.”

“Yeah,” Adriana says. She can only imagine the facial expression she must be making. She knows it is not neutral, so she hopes that it is kind. 

“I guess, with, um. Time zones,” Buck says, trailing off. “This is—I’m gonna go get coffee started.”

He all but dances past her, fleeing to the kitchen. 

She stays where she is for a minute, blinking around the corner at Eddie’s now-closed door, and then she follows. 

“Cream? Sugar?” Buck asks, deliberately casual—though, perhaps more deliberate than casual, if she’s being honest.

“Just sugar,” she replies. 

“Eddie takes his coffee the same way.”

“I know.”

“So,” Buck says, setting a mug of coffee in front of her. “Grad school, right? You’re a writer?”

“Trying to be,” Adriana says while she nods. Apparently, they were not going to be talking about the sleepover situation—which, fair enough. It’s probably too early for that.

“I mean, you must be good—like, really good. I was doing some research about it, when Eddie first mentioned you got in? I read that less than one percent of fiction writers who apply to your program get accepted.” 

“Impressive,” Adriana says. 

“I think that’s supposed to be my line,” Buck says, eyebrow raised. 

“No, I meant—that you remember that? I was hearing back from grad schools, like, two years ago.” 

Buck just shrugs.  

“I feel like you know so much more about me than I do about you,” she says, frank and honest and not quite as caffeinated as she wants to be. 

“I mean, Eddie’s proud of you—and I’m just usually around to hear him when he brags.”

“Still,” Adriana says, fully aware that her face has gone completely pink. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Buck says, looking far less open to questions than he’s trying to sound. Adriana knows that any questions that don’t regard sleeping arrangements will probably be more welcome than those that do. 

“How did you get the scars on your face?” she asks. “If that’s not too personal.” 

“Oh! It’s a birthmark, actually,” he says, offering her a placid, maybe even grateful, smile—though, he reaches for his eyebrow, thumbing at the birthmark. It’s less of a self-conscious gesture and more like the muscle memory of one, like the afterthought of an anxiety that’s long since lost its teeth. 

“No,” Adriana corrects—gestures across her face with three fingers, raking them from above her right brow down to her left ear. Obvious. “The scars. ”

“Oh,” he says, and the smile falls off his face. Adriana feels bad about that before she feels interested in what Buck’s going to say next, but she does feel both in equal measure. “Uh, that was actually—I don’t really remember? But. It was during the tsunami.” 

“That’s—” Adriana pauses, mortified. “I knew that Eddie was working during that, it must’ve been… intense.” 

“Oh, I—uh, actually, I wasn’t.” 

“What?”

“Working. I was on the pier that afternoon.” 

“Oh my god?”

“Do you…” Buck starts, but seems to think better of it, nervous in the face of continuing. Which is weird, because he didn’t seem too bothered to be talking about a near death experience, not at first, but now he’s looking at her like whatever comes next in this conversation is more frightening. 

“We don’t have to get into it,” Adriana says, unsure of her misstep. “It was probably, um. Traumatic.”

Buck laughs outright at her fumbled sympathy, which. Isn’t unwarranted.

“Sorry, just—yeah, you’re not wrong.”

—

She texts Jamie. Obviously. 

… I think my brother’s best friend might… live here

like, he might LIVE HERE live here

dee. be so srs w me rn 

like. in a fruity way?

DEE

this changes everything

—

Buck, apparently, has a niece—possibly two?—in desperate need of babysitting, so Adriana and Eddie have the day entirely to themselves. Buck departs with a smile, a recommendation for a bookstore in North Hollywood if they get bored, and a lazy salute that she’s starting to recognize as something like a sign-off—something he does instead of saying goodbye. 

Eddie drives them to Hermosa Beach, where they walk, talk—he asks her about school earnestly, asks her about home carefully. They talk about Eddie signing up for a support group at the VA, about visiting Shannon’s grave sometime over the weekend, about how sunflowers are finally back in season. They talk about tourist traps, and which ones are worth it, and which ones Eddie himself hasn’t had the chance to form his own opinion on. Eddie tells her a story about a ransomware—which, Jesus Christ?—attack that resulted in much of the zoo’s population wandering down Hollywood Boulevard. 

They stop for expensive sorbet stuffed into cheap cones, and find a spot to sit on the low wall that separates the pavement from the sand. Close enough to the ocean that the air is a little cooler, here. 

Yesterday, Adriana had asked Eddie what happened. 

“How are you doing?” Adriana asks, today. 

“Me?” Eddie asks in return, like this is a complicated enough question that further clarification is necessary. 

“Yes, you, Eddie,” she says, simply, but trying to give it enough weight to satisfy. 

“It’s… fine. Badly. I don’t know.” 

It’s interesting to watch Eddie as he decides not to lie—decides to choose something more true, at the very least, than whatever he might’ve offered someone else asking the same question, what he might’ve offered on instinct. She waits—because he’s started, and she knows that because she has her own version of this. The moment where she doesn’t know the right thing to say, but she lands on a first thing to say—and if she doesn’t say the first thing, she likely won’t speak at all—but she does need the pause—

“I guess it’s like drowning,” Eddie says, finally. 

“Is it?” Adriana asks. She has never drowned. She has never been drowning—not really. She’s felt like it, maybe, but it's abstract. She does not have the reality of drowning to compare it to.

She gets the distinct impression that when Eddie says it's like he's drowning, he means it differently.

“It is,” Eddie says, letting his sunglasses bury the better part of whatever expression he would be wearing if—well. If. 

“I had a close call, a few years back—five years back, almost. A well. This kid got stuck down there, and it was pouring rain—when it rains here, if it rains here, it’s barely anything at all, or it comes in sheets. The sky gets pitch dark except for the—” Eddie stumbles, pauses. Clears his throat. Continues. 

“The lightning here gets crazy—but without it, you can’t see your own hands if you put them too far away from your face. It was raining, really raining, and this kid was in trouble—real trouble. The kind of trouble that a good captain will ask for someone on duty to step into, a volunteers-only kind of trouble, and I—I went down after him. I volunteered. I only had thirty minutes. We knew we were gonna lose the radio, but—but I tried to call it in, anyway, and I got him. I had him—or, I almost did, but thirty minutes was up, so I, uh. Cut my line.” 

“Eddie—”

“It worked. I got him out, the kid—Hayden, is his name—we got him out. They sent Chimney—a friend of mine, a paramedic on my shift—down after me. He got Hayden out, and then the lightning just. It knocked out the rig they had in place before they could send another line down for me, too. Shook everything loose, too—I lost some time. 

“All I could think of in that moment was something mom’d said to me, before—before I took Christopher, before we moved to LA. She said… don’t drag him down with you, is what she said. I figured, I guess, I don’t know—that if I drowned, the last thing I’d have ever done was prove her right.” 

“Mom actually fucking said that to you?” Adriana bites out, stunned into the opposite of silence, and Eddie’s responding laugh has no joy in it—it shakes out of him, more like a sob. 

“She did, yeah—word for word,” he nods. Finally gives up on the sunglasses—pulls them off to knuckle at his eyes. 

“What did you do?”

“I stormed out on them—invited Chris to come with me to LA. He—uh, he told me that he missed me all the time. I told him that I missed him all the time, too, and I thought, I guess, that it was fucking embarrassing just how long it took me to realize that was true—but it’s been true. It’s been true the whole time. I—I did miss him all the time. I do. I do, and I told him I was never gonna leave him again, and, maybe to his detriment, I did keep that promise.”

“… and you didn’t drown.”

“… and I didn’t drown there. I didn’t drown then.” 

“Eddie,” she says. “Eddie—Eddie. ”

She hears herself and realizes that she’s calling for him like she used to when she was a child, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. She’s calling out, look at me, look at me—but then, they’ve always been mirrors to each other, more than anything else. 

Stay with me. I’m with you. I have you. I am made of what you are made of, in most of the ways that matter. 

“Sometimes,” Eddie says, voice candid and flat. “I feel like the harder I fight it, the worse things get.”

“It’s like a riptide,” she says.

“Is it?”

“Yeah,” Adriana says, trying to balance speaking, caution, and care, all with the increasingly pressing task of managing her melting lemon sorbet. “If you try to swim against it, you’ll probably drown, and if you let it sweep you away, you’ll probably drown, so you’ve gotta get your eye on the shoreline—swim parallel to the shore. You can wait until it kicks you out, see if nature saves you, but you can’t fight the ocean. If you’re looking to save yourself, it’s not about the water at all—it’s about finding the shore.”

“Good metaphor.”

“It better be a good fucking metaphor—I’m halfway through a second degree in metaphors.” 

Eddie laughs. 

Adriana concedes to licking her hand, now, where melted lemon sorbet trails. Eddie laughs harder. 

Eventually—

“Thanks for coming, Chickadee,” Eddie says, his voice tempered and warm. He sounds like himself again, and he heard it, too—Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. 

He smiles, and she smiles back, and it feels like things are already better than they were the day before. 

Of course, this doesn’t stay true for long.

—

When she was small—too small to have any memories of it that are strictly her own—Adriana’s favourite thing in the world was Eddie. She’d call for him constantly, for more or less any reason: a scraped knee, a finished puzzle, an afternoon snack she wanted to share, a bad dream that lingered, a favourite scene from a straight-to-VHS movie. Anything, and she’d call—often too excited to manage even the entirety of Eddie’s already shortened name, her emphasis would stumble across that second, more manageable syllable. 

Their Abuela was the one who gave her the nickname—after a birdcall, just like a chickadee. 

Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. 

—

The first stories Adriana ever wrote were horror—and she remembers a comment from her first fiction course: often, in our writing, anguish does not feel real because anguish does not feel felt.  

Adriana feels the sound that wakes her up as much as she hears it. 

Shouting—wordless, winded, wounded. Just a shout, really, a single cry for something like help, a cut-off noise that has her sitting up before she understands whether she’s supposed to run to or from the sound.

She knows that the sound came from Eddie’s room, which decides for her. She leaves Christopher’s door ajar, walking on the balls of her feet down the hall. The lava lamp nightlight outside of the bathroom door casts her first in indigo light, and then in acid green—she arrives at her brother’s bedroom door in a halo of fuchsia, and she listens before she does anything else, hears it—

Anguish. Her brother’s. Quieter, but no less felt. 

—

When is a dream not a dream? 

When it’s a broken dam. When it’s a broken mirror. When it’s a broken promise. When it catches you between waking and sleeping and steals the air from your lungs like a sudden fall. When the hand-shadow animals of the years you don’t remember start to follow you into daylight, sleep under your eyes, nip at your heels. When it’s real. When it’s a nightmare. When it’s real. When it’s a memory. When it’s real. 

—

Understandably, at least she thinks, Adriana struggles to fall back to sleep. 

Instead, she stands in the kitchen and waits, arms crossed, jaw set. 

It’s another fifteen, almost twenty minutes before Buck appears. Earlier even than yesterday morning. She guesses that he couldn’t get back to sleep either. 

“Nightmare,” Buck says.

“I’d guessed as much,” Adriana replies, expectant, both eyebrows raised, making her thoughts obvious: That’s not enough information. 

“He’s asleep again, I think.”

“What was it about? ” 

“… I don’t want to tell you anything Eddie wouldn’t tell you himself,” Buck sighs, voice tempered and quiet. 

“Buck,” she says. “I want to help.”

“Yeah, well. You and me both,” Buck mutters. 

“I’m here to help,” Adriana says. “Chris agreed that it was a good idea for me to come.”

“—and I think you and Chris were both right—”

“—then you should give me an idea of what’s going on, at least,” Adriana says, decidedly not pleading, but earnest. “Christopher wouldn’t have told me to come if he didn’t want me to know what was actually happening.” 

This, finally, is when she figures Buck out. 

He cracks.

Buck’s priority is Christopher. He’ll do what he thinks is right for—right by—Christopher. 

“It’s just…” Buck starts, pauses for a deep breath. “It’s hard to go through this shit alone, but it’s also hard not to feel… coddled, or watched when someone tries to sit with you while you're in it, and it’s just as hard to ask for help.” 

“Yeah.”

“Eddie’s never been the best at admitting he needs it—help.” 

“Eddie’s never been the best at admitting he needs anything,” Adriana provides as a counterpoint. 

Buck laughs, humourlessly. 

“You’re probably the expert, but… what Eddie needs—at least right now, I think—is to sleep. If his sleep gets worse, he’ll probably have to stop working, and if he has to stop working,” Buck says, before he takes a shuddering breath. “It didn’t end well, last time.”

Adriana’s limbs go cold. There’s some impossible echo of her parents, all those years ago, siren sharp in her mind: it’s PTSD, and we know that war changes people—what if he snaps?

Adriana has never legitimately considered that Eddie might be a danger to her, and she doesn’t consider it now. 

She has never legitimately considered that he might be a danger to himself. 

“I need you to be more specific,” she says, instead of if I don’t sit down right now I might throw up, which is equally as true. 

She does, however, take a seat. 

In the cool, pre-dawn light, in the wake of knowing this, it feels like she is standing in a different kitchen. 

“It’s—how much do you know about why they gave Eddie a silver star?”

“I know that he got shot three times on another continent when I was fifteen years-old, and that he hates talking about it.” 

“So… not that much,” Buck says. 

“No, that's all of it,” Adriana replies. “That’s all I know about it.”

“Oh. Okay,” Buck nods. “Right—um, a couple of years back, Eddie was… struggling, a bit. He’d… left the 118, our station, kinda abruptly?—and he moved to a role at dispatch, still a firefighter but, like, not… fighting fires anymore. He was in therapy, and he was trying to get better—feel better. Anyway. His therapist told him to reach out to the folks he’d… saved, that day, and…” 

Buck pauses to run a hand over his face roughly before he continues. 

“It went… badly.” 

“How badly? Badly in what way?” 

“They’re—um, Eddie found out that they’re all… gone. One killed in action, one in a car accident, one to an overdose, and one—um. Gunshot wound. Self-inflicted.” 

“Oh my god,” Adriana says, in absence of anything that means more.

Buck just nods, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. Adriana can see clearly, now, that Buck is tired, too—exhausted, even. 

“Eddie had group today—yesterday? It’s—his group at the VA. He told me he mentioned it to you, but they—um, they lost someone over the weekend. Gunshot wound. Self-inflicted.” 

She doesn’t have anything to say after that.

Neither, it seems, does Buck. 

—

The last time she had been in LA was for Shannon’s funeral. 

It’s been five years since then, and by this time next year, Shannon will have been dead for almost as much of Chris’s life as she was alive. 

She’s already been gone for more of it than she was there for. 

This isn’t a cruel thought—it’s just math. It’s just true. 

Adriana never took it personally, but Shannon wasn’t the only person Eddie left behind in Texas. 

Adriana never took it personally, but Eddie and Chris weren’t the only people Shannon left behind in Texas.

She knows: it was never about her.

—

The offer to spend the next few days at Buck’s apartment is made stranger by the fact that it’s Eddie who offers. 

“We’re on shift for Friday and Sunday anyway.” 

Eddie’s explained it before—they start at 8:00 a.m. and work twenty-four hour shifts, in a predictable, repeating cycle: a shift on, then twenty-four hours off, another shift on, then two days off—repeat the pair of shifts with the day long break, then four days off. Repeat the whole cycle. 

Buck explains, now, that it’s standard practice to show up at least an hour ahead of time, to make face-to-face relief by 6:30 a.m.

“Better to start early than stay late,” he says. 

“Unless you want the overtime,” Eddie adds. 

“There’s always overtime if you ask for it,” Buck disagrees, “and some of us like to make plans—” 

“—oh, right, because the documentary you started on Netflix can’t wait another two business days—”

“—Boeing puts sales over safety, Eddie, it’s important—”

“—I’m not saying anything about Boeing, I’m just saying that as far as plans go—”

“—and I’ve literally responded to a plane crash, so. I’m definitely the expert here—”

“—then why do you need to watch a documentary about it in the first place—”

“—you’re probably both right,” Adriana interrupts. “Boeing is pretty evil, but then again, so is Netflix.”

“… you’re not wrong,” Buck says. 

“In which case, we’re all right,” Adriana grins. 

“What exactly is Eddie right about, again?” Buck asks. 

“You should take Buck’s place for the weekend, at least,” Eddie says, which was not the point she was trying to make, actually. “I’ll be at work for more than half of the next four days, anyway—48 on, and sleep is the priority for the other 48.” 

“Besides,” Buck says. “We’ve got Hen as Captain for this set of shifts, and Gerard is out—so she can approve some PTO for you.” 

“I should—” Eddie starts.

“—spend some of the many hours of paid time off you are owed thanks to our wonderful union? Yes, you should,” Buck replies, then:

“I can’t—” Adriana starts. 

“—choose to stay in an apartment that currently houses no one and I will be paying for regardless of your presence? Yes, you can,” Buck replies. 

Adriana and Eddie, speaking at the same time:

“Buck—”

“—oh my god, you two are impossible—Adriana can go the loft so that Eddie can actually function at work and make sure that nobody, especially me, has a tragic accident, and Eddie can take next week off to spend time with Adriana. You’ll both sleep better in the meantime. Face it: it’s mutually beneficial.”

“Not for you,” Eddie points out, almost belligerent. “You won’t sleep better.”

“Yeah, well, I won't sleep worse,” Buck says, “and besides: you have to actually fall asleep to have a nightmare, so I’ll wait to count those birds when I have them in hand.” 

—

She texts Jamie. 

can now confirm that the best friend does actually have his own place.

okay...

that doesnt actually make it any less true that Best Friend was sleeping in ur brothers bed?

you may have a point

—

The first thing Adriana does when they get to the loft is ask how much firefighters in LA actually make, because holy shit. 

Buck laughs, shrugs. 

“It’s the hazard pay,” Buck volunteers, at the same time as Eddie says: 

“It’s the overtime.” 

Adriana doesn’t like either answer as the truth, to be quite honest, but she likes it as something they share—the two of them smile at each other like it’s an inside joke, and she lets it go. 

Instead, she takes in the high ceilings, stacked windows, exposed brick, and furniture that seems to be more comfortable than it is stylish—though, not by a significant margin. 

“I’ve got a few things to grab, but Eddie can show you where the… um, everything? Where everything is,” Buck excuses himself—less than smoothly, Adriana notes—before taking the wide steps up to the second level two at a time. 

“Why are his legs that long?” Adriana asks under her breath. 

“I have no idea,” Eddie mutters back, sounding troubled in a way that does suggest he’s contemplated this question at some length.

Adriana surveys the spotless apartment and can’t help but think that it seems as though no one lives here. 

“Is there laundry?”

“Not in the unit—you can head to mine, though, if you need it.” 

Which reminds her that Buck had gotten keys copied—his and Eddie’s—on her behalf. He’d found a fob for the building in a kitchen drawer, on a keychain that used to belong to someone named Taylor, apparently. Eddie hadn’t quite been able to hide the sour expression that the name brought to his face.

“I feel like I should be offering Buck a gift basket or something, this is… I mean, let’s just say that I did not see anything this nice on Airbnb that was even in the realm of sane pricing.”

“Why would you book an Airbnb?” Eddie asks, blinking at her. 

“I just—didn’t want to assume. Necessarily.” 

“Adriana, you're always welcome—”

“—but I should’ve reached out before I came. I didn’t want to put anyone out, or—or make things worse,” Adriana says, and giving the anxiety that’s been coiling around her sternum a name does not make it easier to swallow past, no—in fact, her eyes start to water—

“Dee, no—you haven’t. You make everything better,” Eddie cuts in, intervenes, the words falling out of him as his hands find her shoulders, squeeze. “You make me better, and—and Chris knows that.”

Adriana ducks in, looping her arms around Eddie’s waist and hiding her face against his shoulder. Apparently, it’s her turn to cry while they hug in a kitchen. 

“I’ve told him a thousand times that you’re all the best parts of me, and a bunch of other stuff that’s so much better,” Eddie says. “I—he knows that you make me better.”

—

Adriana doesn’t examine the loft once she’s alone there, not really… but she does take it in with an essayist’s eye. She looks for the details that could paint a fuller portrait of Buck, even in his absence. 

A framed drawing, signed by Chris, of an anatomically correct heart—a match, she assumes, to the smiling heart framed in the kitchen at her brother’s house. In the middle of his record collection, a shelf hewn out for children’s books—Dr. Seuss, Goodnight Moon. A full set of cherry red enamelled cast iron cookware. In a drawer filled mostly with pens and old receipts, a stack of notes in different hands—Jee loves you, good luck at physio, made your favourite! enjoy, reminded me of you.

There’s a writer’s desk tucked into the farthest corner of the loft, a little cluttered, a little dusty from lack of use. Tucked between two journals, she finds a photo of a young boy—bright blue eyes just visible under the brim of his hat, seated on a silver bicycle with red handles, smiling. Scrawled on the back: Daniel Buckley, 4 August 1988.

She sleeps well, and imagines a world where Eddie does, too. 

—

Adriana calls Sophia first thing in the morning—still on central time, still earlier than she has any excuse to start her day, but Sophia has three kids to look out for, a nine-to-five job, and has always been the closest thing to a morning person out of the three of them, so Adriana tries her luck.

Sophia answers on the fourth ring. 

“Adri?”

“Have you met Buck?”

“I—yes, why?”

“Because I had not met Buck before.”

“Okay,” Sophia says, slowly, like Adriana is an idiot.

“When did you meet Buck?”

“At Abuela’s—New Year’s Eve, I think? Diego and I drove down with the girls, it might’ve been the first time we’d seen Eddie and Chris after that first couple of weeks they lived here.” 

“In 2018?” Adriana balks. “Wait, Abuela knows Buck?” 

“Abuela loves Buck,” Sophia corrects.

“I am going to need so much more information than that,” Adriana says. “I feel like I’m starting in the middle of the movie—like I’ve missed something.”

“You haven’t, really—Buck is just… around? I don’t know, it’s not like Eddie and I have ever really talked about him, not specifically. They’re best friends or whatever—partners at work, and Chris adores him, and they crash on each other’s couches when they get injured trying to be superheroes. I think he might’ve been Eddie’s first friend in LA, and Eddie didn’t seem super interested in making any other ones, after that. You remember what he was like with Shannon when they met at school.” 

“… Sophia, I am begging you to listen to yourself when you speak.” 

“Don’t be rude, it’s stupidly fucking early—what’s the problem, Adriana?”

“I’m just asking—”

“You cannot sleep with Buck, Adriana,” Sophia announces, suddenly grave. “Eddie would have, like, a Chernobyl-scale meltdown.”

“Firstly,” Adriana says, before retching hard enough that it captures her disgust more succinctly than language ever could. 

“Secondly,” she continues, “Eddie is already having a Chernobyl-scale meltdown.”

“Yeah,” Sophia sighs. 

“Yeah,” Adriana parrots. “So, thirdly, I was thinking… we should probably change our plans, just a little—could you leave the girls at home and come down by yourself next weekend?” 

—

When is a child not a child?

When it’s an accident. When it’s a regret. When it’s a promise. When it’s a patient response to a part of life you haven’t quite got around to considering fully. When that’s never what they were meant to be in the first place. When a mother needs a friend, needs someone they can trust. When it was always meant to be the guest room. When the room, once intended for guests, remains so in all the ways that matter. When they’re a memory. When they’re an excuse. When they’re an afterthought. When they never get the chance to be anything else.

When they raise another.

—

Adriana should be less surprised when she arrives at Firehouse 118 to find that they’ve been called to a fire. 

She wanders in to the mostly-empty parking bay, taking it in: the broad, steel stairs and platforms, the glass partitions and full lockers, mats and hoses and perfectly polished concrete floors. A friendly voice calls from the loft above her: 

“Can I help you?” 

She looks up to see a man, probably her age or just older, leaning over the railing. 

“Probably,” she says. “My brother told me I could swing by the station today—Eddie Diaz?” He makes a noise that’s half-recognition, half-surprise. 

“They’re out on a call, but they shouldn’t be too much longer,” he says, waving toward the stairs at the side of the building. “Come on up.”

The firefighter introduces himself as Ravi and offers her a choice between coffee, water, and a juicebox. 

“You offer juiceboxes? Really?”

“Hey—I wouldn’t judge you for taking it, so don’t judge me for offering,” Ravi says, his delivery dry and unselfconscious. “Besides. It’s easy glucose.” 

“Fair enough,” she says, taking a seat at the island. “I will go for a coffee, though—black is fine, but I’ll take some table glucose on the side, if you've got it.” 

The loft area is sort of beautiful—and not really what she expected. The kitchen is stylish and tidy, spacious enough to accommodate more than one cook at a time. There are a handful of cafe-style high tops, but the dining area is dominated by a broad table, large enough to seat at least a dozen. The couches are adorned with decorative cushions that match the season—almost certainly Eddie’s doing—and are pushed together, nearly arm-to-arm. 

“So, Eddie’s sister—”

“—Adriana,” she corrects, accepting the coffee with a nod of thanks. 

“Adriana,” Ravi repeats, seeming happy to stand and lean on the kitchen counter between them. “Engine 118 was packing up, last I heard from them—assuming they don’t get diverted, they should be back in the next ten or fifteen minutes.” 

“Thanks,” she says, then: “As long as it’s not, like, a sensitive issue? Can I ask why you aren’t out there?”

“Man behind,” he says, gesturing to himself, “here in case someone shows up at the station,” he adds as he gestures to her. 

“Makes sense.”

“What brings you to LA?”

“Eddie, mostly. Visiting.” 

They go back and forth like that for a while, chatting idly. It turns out that Ravi is LA, born and raised. He has a handful of recommendations, mostly on what isn’t worth seeing or doing. She asks him how long he’s been a firefighter, and he tells her that he started at the 118 about three years ago, a probie—

“Buck’s probie, kind of,” Ravi says, “he kind of made it his, like, unspoken mission to teach me—which was great, even though he was kind of scary at first.” 

“Do you mean, like, intimidating?”

“I mean, sure,” he says with a shrug. “Although, there was a thing with a chainsaw that was actually just scary.”

—and because the universe hates giving Adriana information when she wants it the most, Engine 118 chooses this moment to return. 

It’s impossible to miss the truck itself, and even then, the voices of the firefighters below carry, wide and bright, all the way to the trussed ceilings. 

Ravi flattens his hands on the countertop, offers her a nod, and heads back over to the railing.

“Diaz,” he calls. “You’ve got company.” 

An unfamiliar voice shouts back: 

“You didn’t pull the wife card again, did you Panikkar?” 

She can hear some sputtering and back-and-forth, not so loud as to be distinct—but picks out Buck’s voice, easily the loudest in the mix. Ravi turns back to face her, and at a volume only she can hear, responds: 

“Trust me, I would never make that mistake again.”

Before she can ask even one follow-up question, the bickering has reached the loft. First Buck, who offers her a wave, followed closely by Eddie, who crosses the room to pull her into a one-armed hug. Another pair follow: she recognizes them from the photo on Chris’s desk. 

“Buck, you want to get dinner started?” The woman with wire-frame glasses and a warm smile calls to Buck, who is already nodding and loping into the kitchen. Adriana stands as they approach, steps forward to shake the woman’s extended hand. “Henrietta Wilson—you can call me Hen.” 

“Or Captain!” the man beside her does not extend a hand, what with both of his fists shoved into his pockets, but he does nod at her and snap his gum, which seems to be his equivalent of pleasantries. “Acting Captain, I guess, but still—and I’m Chimney, Chim is fine.”

“Adriana,” she introduces herself, knowing it’s likely redundant, while shaking Hen’s hand and returning Chim’s nod. “A firefighter named Chimney, huh? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Chim gets visibly excited, launching into the story. 

“Worse—”

“Do not tell her this story,” Eddie calls from where he’s getting himself a coffee. 

“But she’s a grown-up!” Chimney responds, gesturing to Adriana with an open hand. 

“She is,” Eddie concedes, “but she’s also my baby sister—do you really want to do that to me? Do you really want to do that to both of us?” 

“It will change your relationship with your brother irrevocably,” Buck adds, conspicuously—melodramatically—solemn. 

“Well, Buck would be the expert on the ways that a sibling relationship can change when you know about—”

“Ya párale, Chimney,” Eddie interrupts. Chimney moves to bicker with Eddie in closer proximity, which results in Buck trying to shoo them both out of the kitchen with a dish towel. At Adriana’s elbow, Hen laughs. 

“Chimney is married to Buck’s sister, Maddie,” she explains, voice fond. 

“That’s helpful context.” 

“We don’t always get around to providing it, I know,” Hen says. “Ravi took good care of you?” 

“Just because Buck has threatened to kill me, doesn’t mean I missed the fact that Eddie actually could,” Ravi speaks up. 

The consequences are immediate: more squabbling breaks out. Adriana doesn’t fully understand how they’re half-shouting at each other and picking up on another conversation simultaneously, but something about the fact that all of them seem to be doing it has her thinking that it might be a first responder thing. Something to do with divided attention, or vigilance, or simply knowing the people around you well enough to anticipate when they’ll step into and out of conversations. 

“Are you enjoying LA so far?” Hen asks her, taking a seat at the head of the largest table, just far enough away from the squawking in the kitchen that a conversation might be tenable. She lifts a hand to the seat at her right, inviting Adriana to sit, and as she does Adriana is struck by how… regal the gesture is. 

“Definitely,” Adriana says, taking a seat. “It’s been a long time since I was in LA last.” 

“It’s been about five years, right?” Hen asks gently, and Adriana becomes aware of the fact that this woman knows, at least, that it had been for Shannon’s funeral. Adriana wonders if she was there—the accident, the funeral. Still inscrutable, but still soft, Adriana can’t read anything but kindness in Hen’s features. 

“Yeah,” Adriana says, voice a little quieter than she means it to be. 

“Well,” Hen says. “Hopefully you and Eddie have the chance to make the list of things you remember about LA a little bit longer, right?”

“That’s the plan,” she says. 

“He mentioned that you’re a graduate student—my wife, Karen, is a scientist, in aerospace engineering…” Hen begins a story about her rocket scientist wife’s current post-doc accidentally pulling a fire alarm as the direct result of an unfortunate stumble in an arbitrary stairwell, and Adriana… wonders. 

She sits with Hen, chatting, Eddie coming to join them after not too long. It turns out that Eddie and Hen’s rocket scientist wife, Karen, have a semi-regular wine night. It turns out that Hen and Karen have a son, Denny, and a daughter, Mara—Denny just older than Christopher, Mara just younger. It turns out that, on wine nights, Hen and Buck take turns with the kids. 

Eddie is either completely unselfaware about the connotations of this, or his immediate proximity to Hollywood has made him a much better actor than he used to be.

Adriana looks at Hen, who has her lips pursed. 

“So, Adriana,” Hen asks. “How long are you planning to be in LA?”

“Not sure, yet—with summer break, I’ve got an outside limit of about three months.”

“So, maybe you’ll be in town for Pride?” Hen says, guilelessly and without breaking eye contact. “Karen and I were thinking about making bigger plans than usual this year—”

Saved by the bell. 

The alarm blares, startling Adriana badly enough that she knocks over her now-empty coffee mug. Nobody else in the station really flinches, or maybe they’re just used to turning that momentum into action, because Eddie and Hen are both all but gone from the table by the time Adriana has righted her coffee mug. A voice echoes, station 118, rattling off a few acronyms that mean very little to Adriana, but seem to convey a great deal to those around her. 

“Buck?” Hen asks, without really stopping, one of her perfect eyebrows arched.

“Go,” Buck waves at Hen with a wooden spoon. “I can probably do more here than on a BLS call.” 

The other four firefighters are all but gone with Hen’s nod of assent, though Adriana and Buck are left with Chim’s parting comments, mostly directed at Eddie, but loud enough to carry.

“You know, that man slept on my couch for weeks. Weeks. Several sets of weeks, even. How come he’s only ever staying on yours now that Bobby’s turned him into Masterchef Junior—” she hears Chimney say to Eddie on their way down, up until the point that she loses their voices to the alarm. 

She watches the truck pull away from the station, jumping a little as the sirens kick on, unused to the volume. 

The bell stops. 

Adriana turns back to Buck, where he is studiously continuing to make dinner. She returns to her seat at the kitchen island, and props her chin up on one of her own hands. 

“… So.” 

“So?”

“Couch?” she asks. “Not really the situation I’ve been getting a sense of at Eddie’s, if I’m being honest.”

“Believe it or not, I haven’t gotten into it with my brother-in-law about my sleeping arrangements—not,” he pauses and points at her with a wooden spoon for emphasis, “that there is anything… you know, indecent, to be… gotten into.”

Buck pauses in his kitchen ministrations, as though hearing himself speak on a slight delay. 

“… indecent? ” Adriana all but cackles. 

“You know what I mean—” Buck starts to defend himself. 

“—oh, stall your passions, Elizabeth Bennet—”

“—okay, firstly, I’m pretty sure that’s a gross mischaracterization of Lizzy Bennet—”

“—I have a degree in English—”

“—which you are using for evil, right now—”

“—and I’m just saying…” Adriana says. “You’re right. Heaven forbid your brother-in-law discover your lascivious habits.”

“Oh my god—” Buck is laughing. Adriana is also laughing, her eyes watering profusely with it. “—just for that: go wash your hands.”

“Why?” Adriana asks, not moving.

“Because you’re helping.”

“You have to know that Eddie wasn’t kidding when he said that I’m worse than him in the kitchen.”

“Worse than he used to be, maybe, but definitely worse than he is now—he’s living proof that you Diaz’s are learning creatures,” Buck says. “Besides, the noble taxpayers of Los Angeles covered these groceries, so you’ve gotta earn your keep.” 

Buck directs her to a stack of potatoes, and hands her a vegetable peeler, which she looks at, skeptically. 

“If I maim myself with this thing, the consequences are all yours to deal with.”

“It’s your lucky day,” Buck smirks. “I just so happen to be a certified EMT.”

—

In 2021, a sniper shoots a firefighter in the middle of the street. Broad daylight, downtown Los Angeles. The first in a series of targeted attacks against first responders in the city.

Now, there are only a few things that she cannot forgive her parents for. 

Finding out that her brother had been shot from KTLA’s Breaking News section is one of them. 

To this day, they claim they were just doing right by her—protecting her peace through final exams. To this day, they have never apologized. 

—

She, despite her better judgement, googles sniper targeting firefighters los angeles 2021.

Adriana is sitting cross-legged on the—quite frankly, enormous—bed in Buck’s loft, scrolling past the articles and newscasts she’s already seen, that she’s already read. She scrolls until she sees something she hasn’t seen before, until she sees something that isn’t just another bland news piece quoting the bland news pieces that came before it. She scrolls until she sees a post on reddit, about a year old on an obscure subreddit for locals, that has a promising title: LA sniper incident caught on camera. 

She reads:

there’d been a fair share of 911 calls made from my building, but usually we only saw cops (acab)—which was why it was weird to see firetrucks and ambulances show up twice in the same week. first thing was when a lady fell through her balcony, and idk what happened the second time. I was trying to take a snapchat from my balcony to send to my girlfriend to prove that we needed to move (we have now) when one of the firefighters got shot—some sniper that the lapd canned who was targeting first responders (srsly, acab)—and I caught the whole thing on video. crazy shit.

tw obvs because a guy gets straight up shot, but my apartment is on the 8th floor, and I googled it and he didn’t die. 

The video is blurry. 

“Here they are again—I’m starting to think there might be a gas leak or something,” the voice behind the camera narrates, zooms in on the flashing lights of one of the ambulances, brings the street into better focus. The video is low enough quality that she struggles to place Eddie amongst the half-dozen navy uniforms, masks and sunglasses on top of that hiding people’s features. 

The gunshot startles her—

—and just like that, she can pick Eddie out of the crowd. 

He falls, and there’s a pool of blood underneath his shoulder before people have even started to scream. Another firefighter starts to call out commands, telling everyone to get down, as he himself tackles a man in a white shirt out of the way. 

Adriana’s ears are ringing, a bit. Her eyes stay with Eddie, unmoving, in the middle of the street. More gunfire—more screaming. 

A voice, underneath it—

Come on, Eddie. 

A fire ignites on the pavement, gunfire cutting gas lines and casting sparks. 

The man in white rolls under the fire truck that separates her brother from everyone else—more shouting that she can almost make out, muffled and dull but easier to make out as the screaming crowd flees. 

Eddie, I’m going to—I’ve got you—hang on, Eddie.

The man in white grabs her brother by the wrist, drags him under the truck. 

The man in white picks Eddie up, covered in blood, now, both of them—a fireman’s carry, she thinks distantly.

The man in white heaves them both into the firetruck, half-falling on top of Eddie, which saves them both—a bullet shatters the window above them, a shot that must miss the man in white’s spine by mere inches, if it misses at all. She can’t tell. The firetruck is already driving away. 

The video ends with a curse from the person filming it, likely as they realize that their balcony isn’t an especially safe place to be when someone is opening fire on the street below. 

She reads the comments underneath the video.

why didn’t u call 911

↳ 911 was already there, dude

Does anyone know who the man in the white shirt is? 

↳ off-duty firefighter, apparently. 

↳ ↳ firefighter named Evan Buckley, who you might remember from this shitshow a few
years back. insane that he went under that truck. and that he still has his both his legs,
tbh. 

Firefighter Evan Buckley. 

Of course. 

On some level, she feels like she knew—recognized his voice, maybe, when he called out for Eddie. She wonders why she didn’t actually know, wonders why Buck wasn’t a part of the story that their parents told, wonders if he was ever a part of the story that Eddie told their parents.

Wonders why it’s insane for him to have gone under that truck. 

Adriana, despite her (still unaccounted for) better judgement, clicks the second link, too. 

This clip is a news report, five years old—

“If you’re just joining us, witnesses are reporting that this LAFD ladder truck, belonging to Station House 118, was hit by some kind of an explosive as it was making it’s way to a call. Now, you can see there’s a firefighter pinned under that truck…”

Another firefighter appears, hands raised, tries to engage the bomber—Chimney, she recognizes, after a moment. 

“This is unexpected! A civilian now, confronting the young man with that vest. We’ve got no details on this man’s identity…”

A man in a black shirt walks through the barrier, and there’s some back and forth, some negotiations that the aerial shot can’t pick up—then the civilian lunges, grabs the bomber, and—

She sees her brother break into view, sees him run to Buck. 

“That firefighter really appears to have taken the brunt of all of this. That’s an entire ladder truck you can see there. We can only hope for the best at this point.”

They’re trying to lift the truck, failing—Eddie is kneeling, almost prostrate on the ground, with one hand holding Buck’s and another under his arm, ready to pull him out. She can’t hear Buck scream in the video, but she can see it.

Feel it, even. 

“Bystanders… stepping in, they’re gonna help out…” 

—

Other things she finds in the loft: 

A freezer populated by ice packs. In the medicine cabinet, a mostly-empty bottle of Tylenol, alongside a mostly full bottle of codeine, extended release—taken as needed, she assumes.

Then, tucked into a bedside table drawer filled with knick-knacks and photo strips, an unfinished bottle of heparin, a few years out-of-date. Not in the medicine cabinet, so not medicine, not anymore—a reminder, she assumes.

A fireproof safe at the back of one of the kitchen cabinets—just in case, she assumes. 

—

“Hey,” Jamie says, and her voice when she answers the phone is musical and bright. 

“Hey,” Adriana replies—decidedly less musical, but just as fond. She’s got terrible pitch anyway, and a half-finished glass of wine in one hand, and a pit in her stomach.

“Just give me, like, two seconds,” Jamie says. Adriana listens to the sound of movement, a screen door that squeals open and slams closed. Then: “Okay, hey.”

“Well, hey again,” Adriana says. 

“Seems like you’ve had an exciting first few days in LA,” Jamie says. “Give it to me straight, baby—is Hollywood changing you?”

“Believe it or not, struggling to write at a café in the Arts District? Almost distressingly familiar to struggling to write at a café in Red River. Slightly more expensive.”

“Brutal.”

“A little,” Adriana says. “I went to the fire station where my brother works today and his interim captain outright asked me if I was going to be in LA for Pride—and she bookended it with a couple of stories about her wife, who is an actual rocket scientist?”

“Whoa?” 

“I know—I mean, I wasn’t aware that I had lesbian written on my forehead, but.” 

“I mean, to be fair, you basically do,” Jamie contributes, helpful as always.

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” Adriana says. “Speaking of—I still don’t know exactly what Buck’s deal is, but he did mention a recent ex that has decidedly male pronouns today.”

“The plot continues to thicken.”

“—and my sister actually told me on the phone this morning that I’m not allowed to sleep with Buck, specifically because it would make Eddie have a nuclear meltdown.”

“Wow,” Jamie says. “Sounds like a real will-they, why-won’t-they situation.”

“Will-they, why-don’t-they, have-they-already, more like.” 

“Whatever the fuck their deal is, it bodes well, right? The plan is still to tell him?”

“Of course it is.”

“You’re still not worried?”

“I’m really not,” Adriana says. “I mean… it’s Eddie. He’s always been—he’s. I could tell him anything.”

“Aww,” Jamie says. 

“Whatever.”

“It’s not whatever,” Jamie says. “It’s important.”

“I know, it’s good,” Adriana says, and she does know that it’s good. Jamie has been out to her parents since she was a kid, more or less, having announced at her seventh birthday party that she was going to marry Mulan. When her mother had reminded her, gently, that Mulan was a girl, actually, Jamie had answered with a decisive I already know that.

Suffice it to say that they were unsurprised by the time she took another girl to homecoming. 

Meanwhile, Adriana’s mother had made sure to remind her on her twenty-fourth birthday that she’d been pregnant with Sophia by the time she was twenty-four. 

“How’s he doing otherwise?” 

“… definitely less good, I think, but I also think he’s getting better. He’s in so much therapy.” 

“I mean, based on everything you’ve told me about him, ridiculous amounts of therapy sounds like a solid ongoing plan. Maybe the only solid ongoing plan.” 

“That’s the thing, Jamie—I don’t think Eddie’s been telling us everything.” 

“I’d buy that. I mean, for starters, Captain America is running a bed and breakfast for wayward Texans out of his kitchen.” 

“—which is not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Buck.”

Adriana doesn’t have to tell Jamie what happened after Eddie got shot three years ago—Jamie was there when Adriana found out. Jamie was there when Adriana’s parents told her that they’d known for almost twenty-four hours, that Eddie was expected to make a full recovery after a long but successful surgery, that he was awake after a longer-than-expected period coming up from anesthesia. 

Adriana tells Jamie what she knows now: Buck was there. Right there. Buck, wearing a shirt that must’ve needed to be burned in the aftermath, the shock of Eddie’s blood colouring him in a way that could never be washed off—not for her, and maybe not for him either. She can tell as much, now. She can see it on him now, still, and she knows that Buck can see it, too—that he can taste it, maybe, too close, right there. 

All of this to say that Buck wasn’t wearing a firefighter’s uniform, and he didn’t get shot, but Buck crawled—under the fire engine, across broken glass and burning pavement, onto a street sustaining open gunfire—all to pull her brother to safety.

“I hate that I don’t know if Eddie didn’t tell my parents the whole story, or if this is another thing they decided it would be better for me not to know?” 

“Well,” Jamie says, after considering it for a moment. “I think your answer might be hiding in your question—does Eddie know the whole story? And, if he does, why would Eddie decide that it would be better for your parents not to know it?” 

Which… is a good question. The kind of question worth asking. 

Adriana says as much.

“I know,” Jamie says, smug. “That’s why I asked it.” 

“I love you,” Adriana says, and she means it—her hands and heart aching, just a little—and she can’t help but do anything but miss Jamie. Alone in the loft, austere and stunning as it might be, like living in a page from a magazine, she is sitting on the kitchen counter, curled around a glass of wine with little else for comfort, at least in this moment. 

She knows, and she gets it: they’re both where they need to be right now. 

It does help that Jamie replies as she always does, as she always has, an admission that has never gone unanswered—and she makes it sound like it’s the easiest thing in the world to say: 

“I love you, too.”

Chapter Text

Maddie Buckley-Han isn’t an idiot, okay? 

She knows her brother. 

She knows that something is up with him—not wrong, necessarily, but certainly up. 

“Just ambush him,” Josh suggests in the dispatch break room, “he does it to you all the time.”

“He doesn’t ambush me—”

“Yes, he does. He even brings you lunch, sometimes, to lull you into a false sense of security—so, just show up at his place with a bottle of wine, or his gorgeous niece, or both, and boom—ambush.” 

Maddie does her best to look indignant in the moment, on both Buck's behalf and her own, but come Monday, she’s at the door of the loft. 

—

Maddie can hear music, ambient but full even through the door, as she uses her own key to let herself in. Her signature knock-and-walk, as Buck used to call it—a habit she’d gotten into as a nurse in wards where knocking was often more about courtesy than permission.

“Bu—oh?” is the greeting she manages, because there’s a woman sitting cross-legged on the kitchen counter. 

She twists a bit to face the door, setting down her phone and looking as surprised as Maddie feels. She’s young, almost painfully so—a feeling that has been striking Maddie more often, lately, as she refuses to chase the immediate impulse to do the math. 

How much older is she than Jee?

There’s something else, though, some other urge to recognize that doesn’t quite settle. The woman in Buck’s apartment has wide brown eyes, her tan skin currently flushed a pleasant pink, her dark hair just a bit unruly—there’s a piece of it slipping from where it’s tucked behind her ear, falling across her forehead—

Oh, Jesus Christ. 

She looks like Eddie.

She looks like Eddie, and forget ambushing Buck, she is going to stage a fucking intervention—

“Uh… hi? Sorry? Just—judging by the key, and the wine, and the… um, confusion? I’m guessing that Buck did not give you the heads up that I was going to be crashing here.” The woman gestures to the bottle that Maddie’s carrying with a tilt of the, quite frankly, ambitious glass of red wine that she herself already holds.

“He—he did not,” Maddie stumbles to speak and offer her a smile—god, she might be twenty-five?—and extends a hand. “I’m Maddie, Buck’s sister.”

“Oh!” The woman’s eyebrows fly up. “I’m—Adriana? Diaz? If you know Eddie, he’s my brother? I’m just visiting, and Buck offered to let me stay here while they’re, um. Dealing with something at the house.” 

Something close to relief floods Maddie. She can’t help but laugh at the intensity of it. 

“I was so sure I recognized you at first, and now I know why,” Maddie says.

“I think I recognized you, too—um, Chris has a photo on his desk, at Eddie’s,” Adriana says. “You have a beautiful family.”

“Thank you,” Maddie says, and she means it. She doesn’t know which photo Adriana’s referring to, specifically, but makes a logic leap—Bobby arranges them in the backyard maybe once a year, at one of his and Athena’s barbecues, for the closest thing that many of them have to an annual family photo. “—and I’m so sorry to interrupt your evening—you were right, Buck didn't mention that he wasn’t going to be here.” 

Or that anyone else would be here instead, Maddie doesn’t say. 

“No, totally—it’s. It was a fairly recent change of plans—and, um. You aren’t interrupting anything in particular.” 

Adriana pointedly tilts her wine glass.

Maddie laughs.

“A recent change of plans?”

“Eddie and Buck, they’ve got... something—and, work tomorrow, so,” Adriana attempts to dismiss whatever something is with a wave of her hand, shrugs. Maddie laughs again. 

“It is like that with them sometimes—there’s always something. I remember, the last time Buck had to take some time off work, I think he actually fled to Eddie’s rather than endure my—well…” Maddie pauses and thinks about how she wants to put this: “My well organized and thoughtful schedule for ensuring that Buck knew people wanted to support him.”

Now, Adriana laughs. 

“What portion of that schedule did Eddie take up—or was he just here the whole time?”

“None of it, actually. He never sent me his availability.” 

A silence washes, briefly, over them. This isn’t the first conversation she’s had with someone about Buck and Eddie, the BuckandEddie of them, but it is the first time she’s had a conversation about them and not been… cognizant of the difference. As Buck’s sister, there’s a certain reticence that colours the discussion, just a bit—and it’s a reticence that Maddie adores, honestly. It’s Buck’s friends making him a priority, it's the people that are important to him making sure that they're not telling Maddie anything that Buck wouldn't tell her himself, most of the time. It's a good thing. 

Sometimes, though, it makes Maddie feel like a bit of an outsider. 

Although, sometimes she’ll get caught up in a story about her brother’s firehose era and wish their friends and family would be a little more reticent. 

It’s just—it’s a given that Maddie knows Buck better—cares about him more, even. Easily. Maybe just differently.

And she loves her husband, loves him ardently, dearly, deeply, and—and she loves that Chimney knows things about Buck that he won’t—or wouldn’t think to—share with her, on account of Maddie being Buck’s older sister, on account of Buck and Chimney having known each other longer than Maddie has known Chimney, on account of Maddie having played more than her part in raising Buck—

On account of all of them knowing each other differently. 

And Maddie knows that her time in Boston was especially hard on them, on Chimney and Buck both, and that they hadn’t grown closer because of it, at least not when it was hardest on them—in the aftermath, there had been apologies on both sides, and conversations that went further than conversations between them had ever had a reason to go before, and she knows—she knows—that Chimney and Buck are brothers, too. 

It’s just… different.

Chim had never wanted a younger brother, had refused it even, and found one in Buck anyway. Buck hadn’t known that there was a time, however brief it was, that he’d had an older brother, but he’d still found one in Chimney. 

And then there’s the fact that Maddie has had… somewhere between six and ten one-on-one conversations with Eddie, all told. 

So, yeah. It’s different. 

“Yeah,” Adriana says. “Their relationship seems… specific.” 

Maddie laughs, again. She watches Adriana’s face take on a private, pleased quality at the sound—one that she recognizes, more than anything that’s come before, as something of Eddie’s. If Adriana hadn’t said it out loud by this point, it would’ve taken Maddie all of a minute and half to realize that this woman was undeniably related to Eddie Diaz based on the shared tenor of their facial expressions alone. 

Siblings. 

Siblings—and not. 

Siblings the way that people who know Buck and her well say they can’t unsee the similarities between them, but often only after they've seen them speak and laugh together—more like twins than siblings, they’ve heard more than once, in that way. 

Siblings, in the way that Adriana does look like Eddie, more than just the brown eyes, tan skin, that dark curl that falls across her forehead no matter what she tries to do with it. It’s in her dead-giveaway facial expressions, the measured way she speaks when she isn’t just baldly stating exactly what she thinks, they way that her shoulders have followed Maddie’s since she walked in, mirroring her, meeting her, a stance that most women raised with brothers recognize—something close to squared up. 

Siblings in the way that Maddie taught Buck how to drive, left him a jeep he proceeded to call home, sent him away. Siblings in the way that Maddie gave away pieces of herself, her childhood—willingly, lovingly, happily—to try and salvage Buck’s. 

Already, she can see the little careworn pieces of Eddie all over Adriana, a bit like patchwork. 

Maddie is the eldest—not just of her and Buck, forgiving certain digressions, but of her and Buck and Eddie and Adriana. Maddie sees through her, now, and it’s… endearing. 

Specific, she’d said, to describe Eddie and Buck. 

It protects them all. 

Buck and Eddie both, from the absence of acknowledgment. 

Adriana herself, from the absence of understanding, the absence of knowledge. 

Maddie, as well, from any responsibility she might have to explain, and… if nothing else, Maddie understands the urge to protect her brother. 

Maddie makes a decision.

“Well, it may not have been the original plan, but if you’ve already got a bottle open…”

—

By the time Maddie walks back into Buck’s life in LA, he prefers wine to beer, has more than a handful of tattoos that she’d never seen, and hasn’t moved on from his first love. 

She is welcome, and she is wanted. She never doubts that. 

But Maddie had missed him. Maddie had missed him. 

—

A glass and a half of Malbec in—which is Buck’s favourite, Maddie can’t help but know—and Adriana is info-dumping. 

It's a term that Maddie hasn't heard exclusively being used to describe Buck, but still. When it comes to the red wine and the onslaught of extremely particular information, at least, this evening is going exactly how Maddie thought it would.

“It’s actually better to serve most Spanish and Portuguese reds too cold rather than serve them too warm, which is to say at room temperature. At the—at least as far as I’ve read, at the absolute least, they need about a half an hour in the fridge to taste the way they’re supposed to.”

She’s dangerously animated, at least as far as speaking with her hands is concerned—at any given moment, as she rambles with her glass in hand, she is threatening Buck’s uncomfortable couch with irreparable damage. 

A worthy sacrifice, Maddie thinks, of at least the wine—so long as it means that the couch would be sacrificed with it. 

“Where did you learn that?” Maddie asks, curious. 

“I was looking for a way to make red wine less… terrible? They serve it at grad school events constantly, like, all the time, and it feels like people—professors, whatever—take the students who drink red wine more seriously. You know, like... like somehow, red wine is more grown up than white wine.”

Maddie laughs, a small laugh, without malice.

“God—sorry, it’s just… you’re so young,” is what Maddie says. She means it, again, without malice—she just can’t say she’s ever really considered the social valences of different wines. 

“That’s funny,” Adriana says with a grin, “your brother said the same thing when I met him.” 

“God,” Maddie says, suddenly emotional. “He’s so young.”

“He’s kind of not?” Adriana says, scrunching up her nose. “Wait—is he older or younger than Eddie?” 

“Um,” Maddie says. The mustache does make him look a little bit older… among other things, but that’s not the point. Or—that’s not the point right now. “When is Eddie’s birthday?” 

“Eddie was… 1992?” 

“March?” Maddie asks, remembering a deliberately casual afternoon to which she and Chimney had received an invitation—Jee, too. All kids welcome, of course. It wouldn’t be a celebration of anything Eddie cared about without Christopher there, and Buck rarely organized a get-together to which Jee, Christopher, and Denny—now Mara, too—were not invited. 

Old habits, Buck had told her once, from a time when Athena used to call him a kid as often as she called him by his name—had to make sure the other kids knew they were all invited to the party. 

But Maddie is sure Buck remembers the sheer volume of adult-only weddings and celebrations their family had received invitations to when he was growing up—so much younger than even Daniel had been, there were no allowances or exceptions left over by the time he arrived. She's sure he remembers a time where any invitation to an important event just meant another night alone at the house in Hershey. Which—is, yes, among the less significant hurts that Evan endured while Margaret and Phillip were otherwise occupied, sure, but only when you compared it to the large ones. 

It was definitely the kind of thing you remember when you send out invitations of your own. 

“March, yeah,” Adriana confirms, nodding to herself, “the tenth.”

“So Eddie, but he’s only older by… maybe three months?—Buck’s birthday is the twenty-first of June, same year.”

“Oh, a cancer—honestly, that tracks,” Adriana nods sagely. 

Maddie doesn’t know altogether that much about astrology, and it’s not supposed to be funny, but she laughs anyway—just at the absurdity of it. 

—

Maddie wasn’t there when Daniel was born. 

She wasn’t there when he died, either.

Maddie was there when Buck was born. Their father was in a different ward of the hospital, choosing to stay, as he so often did, with Daniel. Maddie was nine years-old, not quite two years older than her sick brother, and she refused to leave her mother’s side, refused to stay behind with her dad and Danny. 

The story that their parents share makes it sound like it has everything to do with her mom. The truth is, Maddie was so excited for Evan to arrive that she didn’t want to miss even a minute. 

She wasn’t going to be alone in this anymore. 

—

Two and a half glasses in, and Adriana is hypothesizing: 

“I don’t know,” Adriana says. “I guess, like, I’d kind of imagined all of the ways that Eddie’s life would be his own here, I never really thought about all the parts of his life that would be, like, other people’s?” 

“Shared,” Maddie nods.

“Right? So—I get in on Tuesday morning, and I totally get that you have to choose between a visit being a surprise and expecting a welcome wagon—but I still expected Eddie to be the one who answered the door to his own house.” 

“Oh, god—Buck?” 

“Buck,” Adriana nods. 

“That’s…” Maddie says. “I remember, once, when we were all over at Eddie’s—I told Buck that it was rude of him as a guest to have not brought anything, and he told me that he wasn’t really a guest, not in Eddie’s house.” 

“He’s definitely not,” Adriana says, simply. “He got me keys copied for both of their places, and he’s glued about two hundred glow-in-the-dark stars to Chris’s ceiling. His sneakers have a specific spot on the shoe rack, and he wants to repaint the bathroom, and that's like... that’s Buck’s kitchen. He runs it like it’s the Navy.” 

“Glad to hear that Eddie brings out that side of him,” Maddie snorts. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I don’t actually—there were a few years before I came to LA, before Buck came to LA, even, where Buck was… trying things out, different jobs, different states. Construction, bartending, community college—I’m pretty sure at one point he was actually a cowboy?” 

“Please tell me you have evidence of that,” Adriana laughs. 

“Buck does, and I can bully him into showing it to you—anyway, I’d actually been living here for more than a year by the time he mentioned that he’d tried to join the Navy.” 

“Really?” Adriana frowns. “He doesn’t seem like the type.”

“I guess he wasn’t,” Maddie shrugs. “He didn’t make it through training—and I never thought I’d be grateful for the fact that he’d been through something called drownproofing, but…”

“The tsunami?” 

“The tsunami,” Maddie confirms. “God, he scared me, that day—it was, he wasn’t supposed to be there. But he wasn’t doing that well—I mean, physically or otherwise.” 

“This was after the ladder truck?” Adriana asks. 

“—and the embolism, which resulted in the blood thinners,” Maddie says, taking a sip of her drink. Adriana was right, it is better chilled. “We probably should’ve trusted him, after that, listened when he said he was ready to go back to the 118, but he’d scared us all so badly, again—scared Eddie, probably, worst of all.” 

“Right.” 

“Still, at the end of the day, he saved all those people—thirteen, they said,” Maddie takes a breath and tries not to let the long-softened tangle of shock and shame that’s still attached to that year—embolism, tsunami, lawsuit, everything that came after—sting. “Fourteen, I guess, if you count Christopher. I know Eddie does.”

Adriana pales. Nods. 

Maddie gets it. She doesn’t like to think about everything that could’ve gone wrong—everything else that could’ve gone wrong—either. 

—

Maddie wasn’t there when the tsunami hit the Santa Monica Pier—she didn’t even know that Buck had been until nearly ten hours after the initial wave. 

By the time she’d found Buck at the field hospital, most of the bleeding had already stopped.

Nearly 90% of severely injured tsunami victims sustain multiple large-scale soft-tissue wounds, predominantly to the lower extremities. Nearly half of these victims also present with serial rib fractures and peripheral bone fractures—head trauma and internal bleeding weren’t uncommon, either. Injuries that would be largely made more severe by the presence of blood thinners—rivaroxaban, in Buck’s case.

Then, after the fact, contamination must be considered—bacterial pneumonia, wound infections, septicaemia. 

Maddie counts the weeks since Buck’s most recent surgery, considers what she knows about the post-operative period that follows the treatment of a fracture with ORIF—open reduction and internal fixation, which is to say, a titanium rod and a handful of screws. 

Infection is always a risk, as with any surgical intervention. 

It is also widely accepted that deep infection cannot be fully addressed in the presence of hardware—but removing the hardware complicates treatment for both the unhealed fracture and the infection. 

Maddie finds herself considering the standard treatment for an acute deep infection after ORIF: to reduce the bacterial load with irrigation and debridement, suppressing the infection until the fracture heals.

Opening the wound. 

Suffice it to say that Maddie did not find the lack of bleeding to be altogether that comforting. 

— 

Howie calls her before she gets the chance to call him, at 9:18pm.

She notes the time, because she wanted to call him before 10:00pm. She was going to need a ride home. 

“I thought you were over at Buck’s tonight?” 

“I am!”

“Then why is Buck at Hen’s?” 

“Is that where he is? We assumed he was at Eddie’s.”

“Maddie, you’re the love of my life. The apple of my eye. My reason to go on. Please, tell me: who is we?”

“Adriana! She said you’d met?” 

“Oh my god,” Chim’s volume drops, and Maddie listens as he takes some decisive strides out of what she assumes must be Hen and Karen’s living room. Maddie puts him on speakerphone. “Why is Eddie’s sister at Buck’s loft?” 

“Because Buck is at Eddie’s,” Adriana supplies. 

Maddie unnecessarily repeats Adriana’s words to Chim—he’s on speakerphone—then adds:  

“I guess Buck is at Hen’s right now—but that doesn’t have anything to do with Adriana.” 

“Oh, I like Hen,” Adriana says, then, incomprehensibly: “She’s the Queen of the fire station.” 

“Oh my god,” Chim repeats. 

“Wait—” Adriana says, sliding across the couch so that she’s tucked against Maddie’s side. She opens her phone’s front-facing camera and grins at Maddie like a maniac. Maddie grins back—and they turn their focus to the camera. Adriana takes a half-dozen photos before she lowers her arm, humming as she selects what must be the best of the bunch. 

She smashes out a text message, but pauses before she hits send, looks to Maddie—who has not stopped grinning, and interrupts her husband’s next line of questioning. 

“Chimney, go tell Buck to check his phone.” 

Maddie laughs harder than she has in recent memory at Buck’s squawk of confused indignation, which would’ve had to have been quite loud to be rendered so clearly over the phone.

—

In the photo, they are far closer than they have any excuse to be—like they’re drunk at a wedding, Maddie thinks somewhat arbitrarily, like people who’ve just become family. Not that she’s ever had an opportunity to be drunk at a wedding. Childhood, then vigilance, then propriety, and then—and then.

Adriana is tucked under one of her arms, small—just a fucking slip of a human being, really, even smaller than Maddie had been at her age—but they’ve tilted until their temples are touching, like they know each other better than they realize. 

Dark eyes, dark hair—but Maddie’s much paler skin betrays them, as do their mismatched dimples, freckles in contrast against moles, but it’s still a photo that undeniably has a lot of love in it. 

Something that could become familiarity. 

It’s just… they’re so close. 

Leaning in like it was the easiest thing in the world, Adriana had fit herself into the space at Maddie’s side. No questions asked, no questions answered, they’d just… fit. More than sixteen years between them, and. 

And.

Maddie would be a fool to do anything but save the photo. 

—

The thing about no longer being twenty-four years-old is that Maddie should not drink like she is twenty-four years-old. Or maybe, she just shouldn’t go drink-for-drink with a twenty-four year-old. 

Maddie is learning this the hard way, meaning that she is, in fact, still slightly hungover when she starts her next shift just over thirty-six hours later. 

Josh, of course, can somehow tell as soon as he sees her.

“What did you do?” he asks, his feigned sympathy for her Wednesday hangover barely disguising his eager interest in how and why, exactly, she has one.

“I went to Buck’s,” she says, primly, denying him any additional information for the time being, because there is a version of these events where it’s all Josh’s fault. It’s probably this version of events actually, Maddie decides, headache thrumming gently. This is Josh’s fault. 

“Wow,” Josh can’t keep the smile off his face. “Must’ve been some conversation.” 

“It was—only, Buck wasn’t there.” 

“… at Buck’s loft?”

“Yes.”

“… he wasn’t there at all?”

“He was not. I got in just after six, and Chimney phoned me about three hours later to ask why, exactly, I was at Buck’s if Buck was at Hen’s.”

“No.”

“Yes—and you’ll never guess who was staying at Buck’s loft for the weekend—or where Buck has been basically living—”

“Sorry,” Josh interrupts her, “has Buck not basically been living at Eddie Diaz’s house for like… six years? I get that when Eddie was here they were in their… fire-person divorce era, or whatever, but that lasted all of, what, seven weeks?” 

“What?”

“It all happened while you were out, I think—that Eddie was here, and god, he was… morose. May—May Grant, she was the only one who really got through to him.”

“Bullshit,” Linda says, eating a salad at a table maybe nine feet away. “You two just didn’t get along. Eddie is lovely, we still share recipes all the time.” 

“So who’s calling the loft home these days?” Josh asks, blandly, ignoring Linda. 

“… Eddie’s younger sister, Adriana”

“Maddie.” Linda says. 

“I know,” Maddie replies.

“Maddie,” Josh says. 

“I know,” Maddie repeats. 

—

Here’s the thing: Maddie knows that there’s a wine night. 

Maddie knows that Karen and Eddie get together for wine night, every once in a while. Hen takes the kids on those nights—specifically, Maddie knows that Hen usually takes the kids to Buck’s, or that they take turns, if they don’t just take the kids somewhere else together. 

She also knows that Hen and Buck trend toward tequila days—though, those are much more scarce and largely predicated on significant life events coming to pass for one or both of them.   

She asks Chimney outright, at one point, whether he feels excluded. 

“Why would I feel excluded?” he replies with a grin. “I’ve got you.”

Maddie still feels a little bit excluded. 

She can’t help it. 

—

Buck, naturally, ambushes her at work. 

“So,” he says. “Did you have fun on Monday?”

He looks—honestly, just a little manic? She’d received a flurry of text messages the night she was with Adriana, and then little else in the day since. Buck, she knows, is many things, but he’s rarely biding his time. Still—

“Too much fun, maybe,” she replies, simply. “I think I borrowed all the fun from yesterday.” 

“Then today is just… interest owed on fun borrowed?”

“I hate you,” Maddie says, still intermittently feeling her heartbeat just to the left of one of her eyes. 

“You don’t,” Buck says, setting a latte down in front of her. 

“This better have at least two shots of espresso in it,” she mumbles.

“Three, even,” he says, and waits until she’s enjoyed the first sip before he launches into his questioning: “So, you met Adriana?”

“I did, Buck—and how was your evening with Eddie?” 

“It was fine. You know. Normal,” Buck says, not sounding altogether that fine or normal—strained, a little. Nervous, a little. Apologetic, a little? 

“Normal because you live with him now?” She asks, keeping her voice light. 

“I don’t—that’s not true.” 

“It’s not?”

“I am living with him right now, I’m not living with him.”

“Right,” Maddie says, crossing her arms, “and when did right now start?”

“… a few days after Chris left.”

“So, a month ago.”

“If it’s been a month, then… yes.”

“Don’t be obtuse, it’s not cute," Maddie says, remembering an afternoon where Buck had admitted to her that Chris had left to stay with his grandparents, stammering like it was somehow his fault.

“I’m always cute," Buck says. 

“Wrong—and you know what else isn’t cute? Sleeping on a couch for a month straight—”

“—I’m fine at Eddie’s, and he needs my help—”

“—you are well past thirty, and need to sleep in a real bed if you want to keep doing your physically demanding job effectively—”

“—I don’t know about well past, and besides that, I’m fine, Maddie, I’m not—”

“—taking this seriously?”

“I am, and—it’s. Eddie needs me, more than—”

“—Evan Isaac Buckley, so help me god, if you say that what you need matters less—”

“—no, I’m not—Maddie, wait—it’s just…” Buck sighs like Maddie is the one testing his patience. “I’m not saying that—but… it kind of does? Not in, like, absolute terms? But right now, Eddie needs more from me than I need from him. It isn’t always like this, and sometimes I need more from him than he needs from me, and that’s fine too, and—and it’s not going to be like this forever, I promise. It’s good.”

“Is it?” Maddie asks, trusting in nothing if not her brother's particular brand of almost tidal honesty. It comes in waves. 

“… and I’m not," he continues. 

“You’re not good?”

“—no, I’m not—I haven’t been sleeping on the couch.”

—

Maddie has kept very few tokens of her time in Boston. 

Her inpatient bracelet. A piece of costume jewelry she bought for herself on a whim at a farmer’s market—if worn, even a second time, it will surely tarnish. A small jar of sea glass that Kira had collected on a beach in Newport, Rhode Island. Box sets and discount bin DVDs, movies that Chimney had mentioned or referenced at one point or another—he’d maintained for as long as she’d known him that you can’t know how you actually feel about a movie until you’ve watched it a second time. By the time she got home, they’d have more movies than ever to watch a second time together. Photos and videos that Howie was precious about taking, moments of Jee-Yun’s life that he hadn’t wanted her to miss—things that she hadn’t wanted to miss, either. 

There’s a single voicemail from Buck that she refuses to delete.

“Hey. It’s Buck, again—sorry, I’m a little…. I had to take some pain meds, today, my leg is just—” 

A pause.

“It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to say, that—um, if you decide that you’re not—that you can’t come back, please, just—just let me know where I can start sending postcards—”

Another pause. 

“Please.” 

Evan Isaac Buckley. Buck, now. Her baby brother. Her first joy. He couldn’t save Daniel, and that could never be his fault, but that hasn’t stopped him from saving her, over and over, always trying. 

He would not beg her to stay, not again. 

He would beg, instead, just to know where it is that she has gone. 

—

Maddie doesn’t have a good idea of when she’ll next see Adriana—if she’ll see Adriana at all, really, before the younger woman returns to Texas. 

It’s a surprise when she calls. 

Maddie answers, obviously. Adriana has saved herself under Dee ✨, but the contact photo that pops up when she calls is the selfie the two of them had sent to Buck—choosing it for Adriana’s contact was Maddie’s own doing. 

“Maddie, are you free tonight?” Adriana says as a greeting—perhaps instead of one. “I’m really sorry about this, I just—I need someone to talk to, like, right now.”

“Is something wrong?” 

“No, just—I just found some stuff out, and my girlfriend is at her brother’s birthday party.” 

Maddie blinks, once, then again. Adriana’s girlfriend had not come up before—quite in fact, Maddie is reasonably sure that Adriana doesn’t even realize she’s said it out loud now. 

“I’m—of course, Adriana,” Maddie sputters a little, trying to sound normal and failing in the way that you are bound to when you try to sound normal. “You’re welcome to come to mine—as long as you don’t mind Jee’s company, too.”

“God, no, not—not at all. As long as that’s—I just. Chris’d said that he misses her. I texted him the other night, he wanted me to tell you that he misses her, and I forgot to tell you.”

Maddie, honest to god, tears up, because Jee misses Christopher, too. Now that Jee was a little bit older, she'd grown accustomed to trips to the zoo, the aquarium, and the museums with her Uncle Buck, and despite his new sullen teenager routine, Chris still rarely passes up on the opportunity to join in. Christopher and Buck had a well-established routine with these places, optimized pathways to make sure they saw everything new and all of their favourites each visit, and last summer, they'd started adding Jee's favourites to the routes.

With Mara, they’ve been adjusting, with Christopher gone, Eddie has been adjusting. They’re all adjusting, and Mara’s being around each day has been helping Jee so much, and Maddie can’t help but think of Denny—and Christopher, and Eddie— 

They’re all doing what they can, and Maddie’s trying not to feel guilty about any of it.

She’s mostly succeeding, too. 

“Well, let’s see if some quality time with Jee can’t make him jealous enough that he decides to come home,” is what Maddie says.  

“Believe it or not, that is my back-up plan.” 

Maddie offers Adriana her address, tells her specifically not to bring wine, and expects her in about a half an hour. 

When she arrives, her eyes are ringed with red, and her slight frame drowning in an LAFD sweatshirt, identical to one that Maddie’s seen on Chimney countless times before—she’s stolen it herself any number of times. 

“I didn’t know,” Adriana says, more or less as soon as she falls onto the couch. “I didn’t know about the tsunami, that Christopher was at the pier.”

“Oh—oh my god,” Maddie says, mortified. 

“—and I didn’t know when Eddie got shot, either, because my parents didn’t tell me. They didn’t want to distract me from my final exams. I thought that maybe they’d done it again, that the shooting wasn’t the first time, I guess, that they’d chosen not to tell me something, but Eddie didn’t tell them.”

“Oh, god—wow.” 

“I think I get it, my parents aren’t—they’ve never really believed that Eddie… maybe in Eddie, I guess,” Adriana looks to Maddie, defeated. “I just don’t get why he wouldn’t tell me.” 

“He’s telling you now,” Maddie says. “I think… Eddie’s always looked out for you, right?—looked after you?”

“Yeah.” 

“Well, Eddie's your big brother, he probably feels like… it's his responsibility, to protect you from the bad parts of it all.”

“I’m an adult.” 

“I know that, and I’m sure Eddie does, too—but it’s not really about that,” Maddie says. “It’s—you can be an adult and still be the kid that Eddie taught how to ride a bike, or drive, a kid who needed a hug after a nightmare, someone he’s packed a lunch for, I don’t know. It’s hard to say certain things to somebody that you’ve taken care of like that, no matter how grown up they get, because certain things hurt to hear no matter what, and it’s still kind of his job, right—to take care of you?” 

Adriana blinks a few times at Maddie, eyes sharpening with something like recognition when she brings up learning to drive, and nightmares. 

“It’s more about Eddie than it is about you, probably—” Maddie laughs, a wet sound. “He’s probably realized that it hurts you either way—telling you or choosing not to.” 

“And that's how you felt about Buck?” Adriana asks, not unkindly. 

“It’s how I still feel, sometimes.” 

It’s still excruciating, sometimes, to talk about Doug, to talk about their parents, and especially to talk about Daniel, but she’s been trying to do it more. There are stories she’s offered to Howie, when he talks about Albert, or Kevin. A long conversation with him and Mrs. Lee, just a couple weeks after they’d taken Mara in, as Maddie’d tried to figure out how it was she should feel about Jee asking if Mara was her sister, now. 

The hardest to tell were not necessarily the stories she told to Buck, but instead, the stories she had to tell about Buck—Evan, really—and Daniel. The year and change where she’d had them both—two brothers. 

“What matters is that he’s telling you now,” Maddie says. Adriana sighs. 

“I know that, I guess—and, I mean, I’d only been in LA for a day when Eddie told me the story of the time that he’d almost drowned in a collapsed well—and I get that it isn’t the safest job in the world, it’s just—”

“It’s different when it’s not… abstract,” Maddie says. “It does hurt to hear.”

“Yeah,” Adriana says, sullen. 

“After the lightning strike,” Maddie says, after she swallows and steadies her voice, “When the knock came at the door, I actually asked the officer they’d sent which one.”

She remembers the way the officer had looked at her like she’d struck him, physically—shocked, just for a second, into real speechlessness. 

It’s—actually pretty similar to how Adriana looks now. 

Shit. Fuck.

“Someone got struck by lightning?”

“Uh,” Maddie says. “Yes. It was—remember when I mentioned that I’d made a schedule for Buck, the last time he was off-duty because of an injury?” 

“Oh my god?” Adriana chuckles, wry and weak. “Well, now I’m starting to think that Buck simply can’t be killed.” 

Three minutes and seventeen seconds—eleven days, unwaking, the waiting when the breathing tube came out. Spontaneous breathing. Maddie laughs for Adriana’s sake, anyway. 

“That’s probably a good thing,” Adriana continues, laughing again without humour and scrubbing her hands over her face. “I mean, at least Chris won’t have to worry about losing anyone else if he ends up with a third parent—Buck, at least, would be the end of the line.” 

“What do you mean?” Maddie asks, unsure—and Adriana’s eyebrows draw together, unsure.

“… Eddie’s will?”

... and just like that, it’s Maddie’s turn to be rendered speechless. 

—

Maddie wasn’t there when Buck left for the first shift he shared with Eddie Diaz. 

She was there when he got home, but some events are better left unspoken. Forever. Permanently. 

They hadn’t seen each other in years, and that came first—that and the stilted, eager question: Buck, asking her to stay. 

Then, dinner. Then, a glass of white wine; then, Abby Clarke. 

A second glass of wine, and then: Eddie Diaz. 

A couple weeks later, she’d heard the name Christopher for the first time.  

And the rest is history.

—

Maddie doesn’t have a better plan, so she tries her first plan a second time: she ambushes Buck.

She asks Buck to bring her a copy of a book that he mentioned during an idle phone call they’d shared while both making dinner in their respective kitchens, a week or two prior. Now, Maddie knows, Buck was likely calling from Eddie’s kitchen, but alas. 

All of that to say that she asks Buck to come to her—for this ambush, she has a tactical advantage.

“Maddie?” Buck calls, letting himself in seconds after a cursory knock. 

“Kitchen!” she calls back, a small mountain of carrots in front of her that will be compost if they don’t get pickled, like, today. 

She listens to the familiar sounds of Buck toeing off his sneakers and placing them on the shoe rack by the door—habitually, rather than naturally, neat. 

She and Buck both took their shoes off inside as a force of habit. Pennsylvania winters, as well as the muddy, middling seasons that lead into and out of it, meant that few pairs of shoes were safe indoors. In LA, it seemed to be a matter of preference rather than necessity. 

Still, it makes Maddie smile—pretty much anything that proves that her and Buck are just about the same makes her smile.

Buck drops an affectionate kiss to the top of her head as he passes behind her—something she used to do to him, when she had been the taller one—and helps himself to a glass of water. 

“I think you’ll really like this book—the author, she’s a pretty regular guest on that podcast I was telling you about. They did an episode on Flight 571? The book isn’t about that—it’s fiction, firstly—but it is about survival—”

Maddie listens as Buck oversells a book she’s already expressed an interest in reading, pausing exclusively to breathe and more or less inhale his water. 

“Anyway—sorry, how was your day?” he finishes, seated now on a bar stool across from where she stands at the kitchen island. 

“Good, good—” 

Maddie talks about Mara and Jee. Maddie talks about dispatch, and Linda’s wretched attempt at carrot muffins using a recipe off the internet. She’d brought the results into the breakroom at dispatch as less of a treat and more as the evidence of a crime committed by a vegan baking blog, swearing at least a dozen times that she’d followed the instructions to the letter. 

Then: ambush. 

“I also had an interesting conversation with Adriana the other night,” Maddie says, mildly, continuing to julienne the carrots in front of her. In response, Buck does a pretty heroic impression of someone who didn’t just choke on their water. 

“Another one?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Maddie says. “She dropped by the night before last, just looking to talk—her and Eddie have been having some hard conversations, I think.”

“That’s—they have. I know,” Buck says. “I’m glad she has you, Maddie, honestly. I’m glad she feels like she can talk to you, too.” 

“Me too,” Maddie says, and she is resolutely not letting Buck’s huge blue eyes and earnest demeanour derail her ambush, this is fucking happening— “I do really pride myself on that, you know.” 

“On what?”

“On being someone that people feel like they can talk to.” 

“That’s—you are. People do. I do.”  

“I’m glad you do,” Maddie says, then: “Does that mean you feel like you can talk to me about Eddie’s will?”

“… what?” Buck asks, more startled than anything else. 

“Buck.”

“Maddie,” Buck says, and something about the way he says her name, the vulnerable scrape in his voice, it makes her—she looks up, remembering—

She couldn’t see him when he’d called her, when the tsunami had happened, but—

Maddie, he’d said, again and again, Maddie, almost like a prayer—like she could fix it, fix everything, if he could just figure out the right way to ask, if he’d deserved it—

“It’s just—it’s for the worst case scenario,” Buck says. 

“How long have you known?” 

“Eddie told me after he got—after the sniper. It was—I said something dumb to him in the hospital, I think I scared him.”

So, almost three years ago.

“Evan,” she says, setting down both the knife and the carrot she’s been holding for the last minute or two, unmoving. 

“I know! I just—it’s not really something we talk about. Me and Eddie, I mean, but—I guess… at all? It’s—it would only be if Eddie—it's his will, Maddie. It’s not the kind of thing that I ever want to come up.” 

“Still,” Maddie says, reaching across the island to put one of her hands on top of Buck’s. He leans forward, meets her halfway—looking for the comfort, she thinks. Quick to reach out, no matter how many times he's been slapped away. “That’s a pretty big deal.”

“I know—I know,” Buck says, his hand tightening underneath hers. “It’s just—it’s never going to matter, okay?—and, it’s not like I didn’t tell you, I just… didn’t tell anyone.”

“You’ve known about this for three years?” 

“I mean, Chim can never accuse me of being a chatterbox again, right?” Buck laughs. “Besides—Eddie didn’t tell me for… god, he’d changed it more than a year before he told me?” 

“... what?”

“After the well, I guess.” 

“Is that… allowed?” Maddie asks, genuinely curious. 

“I mean, I could’ve refused,” Buck says. “He knew I wouldn’t.”

Maddie thinks of the fact that Buck was the one who'd told Christopher—noticeably absent from the hospital for those first couple of days, it was Buck who'd stayed at Eddie’s, had taken Christopher to school, had stayed at Eddie's house so that Christopher could sleep in his own bed. Come to think of it, Maddie can’t remember Eddie’s own parents being there at all—

All of that, before Buck had known about the will.

“No, Buck—you didn’t. You didn’t refuse.” 

“I mean,” he says. “I guess.” 

She squeezes his hand as hard as she can, until she feels his own grip on nothing in particular soften. 

“Can I ask—” Buck says, after a moment passes, voice still a little wobbly. “… why are you mangling those carrots?”

“Excuse you,” Maddie laughs, feeling like that had not been the direction that sentence was headed initially, but looking down at her—admittedly—less than symmetrical matchsticks and letting it pass. “I’m julienning them.” 

“I mean, I’ll excuse myself if you let me takeover.” 

They both laugh, and Maddie does let Buck takeover—takes over his seat at the kitchen island. He gets to work before he speaks again, doesn’t take his eyes off the cutting board, the carrots, the knife moving underneath his hand. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” 

“Don’t be,” Maddie says, and she means it. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” 

She knows, after all. There are certain things that hurt as much to talk about as they hurt to keep to yourself. 

— 

Triage is defined as the process of making decisions at the scene of an emergency where multiple people are injured. 

In triage, first responders must quickly assess all casualties and place them in order of greatest need for first aid and for transportation, in the interest of doing the most good for the greatest number of casualties.

In triage, casualties that are obviously deceased are given lowest priority with one exception—in the event of a lightning strike. 

In triage, even when more than one person is injured due to a lightning strike, the principles of multiple casualty management are reversed—the highest priority is given to unresponsive, non-breathing casualties. It’s an emergency that’s not like other emergencies—a worst case scenario that’s not like other worst case scenarios.

—

“Buck, be sick,” is how Maddie greets Buck when she calls him a handful of days later. 

“What?” Buck replies, which. Understandably.

“I’ve decided I’ve some some errands to run today, and I need someone to watch Jee and Mara—but I need you, specifically, to tell me that you feel sick—sick enough that I should try to find someone else to babysit today,” Maddie says, and she can more or less hear Buck blinking at his phone. Chimney’d told her once that Buck had waved at the phone—critically not a facetime—when he’d mentioned that he was taking a call from Maddie to the rest of the station.

“… what?” Buck asks, again. 

“Buck.”

“Okay! I—I’m sick? It’s. Bad, probably. Definitely bad enough that you should find someone else to babysit. Unless—unless you do need me to babysit, still? Which I can… make work. If that’s what you need. I’m probably—definitely—not that sick. Maybe too sick to babysit, but definitely not too sick to make it work if whatever—something, um. If something’s going on…. is there something going on?”

“… oh my god, Evan.” 

“What, Maddie?” Buck says.

“That was so bad,” Maddie laughs. 

“I—I don’t know what’s going on!?” 

“I was just thinking that… maybe, if you can’t babysit, do you perhaps know any capable and trusted adults who don’t have plans today, but might be willing to cover for you? Perhaps a man who might benefit from some quality time with a couple of the greatest kids in LA?”

“Oh,” Buck says. “Oh, shit—actually, yeah, that’d be… I’ll ask.” 

“Please do—only, just, don’t recreate… whatever that was.”

They decide, instead, that Buck will be busy, rather than sick. Something last minute—but something true.

She’s been thinking for a while that they should get Jee a swingset—and Chimney could probably use some help picking out that kind of thing. Probably. 

The fact that Buck is already doing research into safety grading for play structures by the time they hang up the phone doesn’t bode well, necessarily, but it certainly bodes.

—

Maddie’s wasn’t there when the paramedics were laying out her injuries, after—not in any way that mattered. Which is, of course, to say that after… Doug, she was injured. 

A doctor had explained to her, later, the extent of her injuries.

Fractured orbital bone. Bruised windpipe. Contusions and bruising consistent with defensive injuries, including a spiral fracture of the right wrist. A single stab wound, resulting in moderate but now controlled internal bleeding. 

“As for your boyfriend…” the doctor had said, and Maddie had thought, maybe—maybe he could’ve been, or maybe he could be, maybe just this once. 

She didn’t say any of that, just listened. 

When Doug had tried to kill her, it was… clumsy. Panicked. Scattered and then shattered, like a crystal glass on a concrete patio. 

The doctor talks, and Maddie knows: it wasn’t like that, for Chimney. 

When Doug had tried to kill Chimney, it had been just like surgery.

She knows that Buck is the one who found Howie, bleeding. She remembers hearing Buck scream for her, calling his name back, stumbling into his arms in the snow, and promising that she’d fought. She doesn’t remember the ambulance, not really—but she remembers finding out that Howie was still alive, crying again, or continuing to cry, and—

Well, they’ve never talked about that, either.

—

Howie gets home just in time for breakfast—they’re both coming off of a night of work, with Jee and Mara at the Lee’s. 

Maddie does not tell him about the will, or the sleeping arrangements at Eddie Diaz’s quieter-than-usual bungalow, or Adriana’s as-of-yet undiscussed and likely unintentional reference to a girlfriend. 

Instead, she tells him about her plan to give Eddie some quality time with the girls, to have him join the official ranks of the many and wondrous trusted adults on which they can casually call for last minute childcare, regardless of Christopher's presence, and how she plans to get an invitation to wine night out of it all. 

“Well, now I feel left out,” he says with a lopsided grin.

“What do you mean?”

“You asked me once—if I felt left out.” 

“You remember that?” Maddie blinks at him. 

“Of course I do, Maddie,” Howie says, grabbing one of her elbows in each of his hands. “You told me you felt left out—that matters.” 

“Oh,” Maddie says. 

“Always, Maddie,” he says before he kisses her—peppering one on her cheekbone, one on the bridge of her nose, one on the tip of her nose, and then properly, once, twice, a third time.

It’s not until she’s heading out for a late lunch with Josh, later that same day, that Chimney adds:

“I'm excited to see if you make the cut.” 

“What do you mean?”

“You know—for The Real Housewives of The 118.”

—

Maddie wasn’t there when Buck got struck by lightning. 

Eddie was. 

Maddie remembers, the first thing he said to her when she found him at the hospital was an apology. 

She’d found him, almost cloistered. Sought him out when his could not be found among the thready sympathies of those waiting to know more. 

She found him. He was as far from Buck’s bed in the ICU as the waiting room was—critically, not any closer to Buck than anyone else, only isolated. A punishment, self-imposed. He wasn’t seated in a chair, instead choosing to squat with his back against the wall and his head in his hands. Maddie knew it had been at least forty minutes since the ambulance got to the hospital. 

Maddie knows it must’ve been hell by the time that she found him. 

He hadn’t glanced up until she stopped in front of him, but as soon as she had—as soon as he saw her—the words seemed to tumble out before he could catch them: 

“I’m sorry, Maddie—I’m so sorry.” 

He’d made no move to stand. 

“Three minutes, Maddie, three minutes and seventeen seconds—I, Bobby made me drive. He—I couldn’t—it’s been a while since I noticed.” 

“What?”

“When the sternum separates,” Eddie had said. “You know.” 

Maddie did know. Maddie had been a trauma nurse for the better part of a decade, in what was beginning to feel like another lifetime. But Buck was in good shape, she’d thought, clinically. She remembers hoping that the muscle wall of his chest had been enough to keep the ribs intact, or at least that it had been enough to keep them from making noise when they broke—and yeah. Maddie does know. 

“I think it’s different,” she’d said, joining Eddie, back to the wall. Only—she’s eight or nine years older than him, and not a firefighter, so. She did not opt for whatever this wall-sit of contrition was, instead simply sinking to the floor.

The easiest thing in the world to do, given—everything.

“It’s different when it’s someone you—”

Maddie had started, and stopped.

Eddie had coughed out something between a sob and a laugh at the sudden end to her already obvious statement, and she’d realized then that he had been crying. Silent and still, she thought, he cried like a child who didn’t want to be seen or heard—he cried like he couldn’t help himself. 

“Yeah,” Eddie had said, “it is.” 

An unfinished statement, answered. In the stark, sterile light of the hospital hallway, it doesn’t feel like a confession. She’d squeezed his knee, wordlessly, not really knowing how effective the gesture was through the turnouts he had yet to take off. 

When Eddie’s face found its way back to his hands, she’d left him there, penitent and small. 

She didn't know what to do, either. 

—

Maddie arrives home to the sight of Jee and Mara using Eddie as a jungle gym, to the extent that it makes her wonder if Buck and Chim’s quest for a swingset might be an entirely unnecessary endeavour. Eddie has Jee more or less wrapped around one arm, and Mara clinging to him with her legs around his torso and her arms around his neck, the top of her head just barely visible over his shoulder—a hold that definitely has to be choking him, at least a little. 

“Oh! Maddie,” Eddie exclaims, sounding slightly—and by the looks of it, justifiably—winded. “I was just explaining to these two that little girls who don’t get cleaned up in time for dinner…” 

He crouches down, untangling Maddie’s daughter from his arm and giving Mara a moment to get her feet underneath her. 

“… become dinner!” Eddie roars, beginning to chase them in the general direction of their shared room. The girls squeal and take off, hand-in-hand. Eddie just barely begins to chase them before he turns back to Maddie, disheveled, and heaves a huge sigh. 

“Two is hard,” he says, the beginning of a laugh leaving him with the admission. “Two of them is a lot.” 

“You get used to it,” Maddie says with a smile, setting down her bags. “Josh says hi.” 

“Somehow I doubt that—on both counts, actually—but you can tell Josh, at least, that I hope he’s well.” 

“He’ll love to hear it.” 

“I’m sure he will.” 

“Actually, you know what I’d love to hear?” Maddie asks. Eddie raises a single eyebrow, and gestures with the wave of a hand, as if to say, by all means. “Your side of that story.” 

“Well, I’ve got some time, given the… risks inherent in swingset ownership that I’m sure Buck is illustrating to Chimney in detail as we speak.” 

It’s Maddie’s turn to raise an eyebrow. 

“Buck took my truck—for the swingset,” Eddie shrugs, impressively guileless. “If they settle on one and buy it today.” 

“Fair enough—and, it’s… I was actually going to ask you if you wanted to stay for dinner, anyway,” Maddie stumbles a bit, feeling unusually shy, of all things. “I just think it would be nice for us to spend a bit more time with each other, I feel like…”

“—like for some reason, we can’t have a conversation for more than about thirty seconds without another person joining in?" Eddie offers. Maddie beams at him in response. 

“Yes—or unless someone's in a hospital bed?” Eddie laughs, nods. 

“It’s—like opposite ends of the same circle,” Eddie says, giving her a lopsided grin. “My sister—Sophia—has always had this theory, that in a bigger group, there have to be two people who are the least connected. Maybe because we both got to LA around the same time—or, I guess, I started at the 118 around the same time you got to the city?”

“No, it was literally the same day—you started at the 118 the day that I got to LA, I remember. Buck was furious with you,” Maddie laughs, remembering Buck, fuming. 

“Yeah,” Eddie laughs. “Believe it or not, I could tell.”

“Well, at least that didn’t last very long.”

“Who knows—maybe if it’d lasted longer, if we'd kept up the... competing, we could’ve actually given Chimney a run for his money in the fireman’s calendar,” Eddie grins.

They both laugh, and Eddie looks as pleased to have solicited a laugh as Maddie is pleased to find that Eddie is as likely to be stoic as he is to be silly. The mustache makes the stoicism softer and the silliness… sillier, somehow. 

Although, he doesn’t really look like himself, and Maddie doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. 

Maybe she’s just not used to it yet. 

“I’m liking the mustache, by the way,” Maddie says, mostly meaning it. 

“Really?” Eddie asks, sounding genuinely surprised, running his forefinger and thumb over it. “I’ve had more critics than fans.” 

“As we’ve discussed,” Maddie smirks, leading Eddie toward the kitchen. “The competition can sometimes feel… less than friendly, when it comes to certain… performances of masculinity.” 

“You’re telling me Buck can’t grow a mustache?”

“I was talking about Chimney,” Maddie says, largely lying: Howie can grow a mustache just fine—it just comes in more grey than anything else, which makes him self-conscious. She’s assured him it’s attractive, because it is.

She blinks, guilelessly, at Eddie. She remembers, years ago now, moving into her first apartment in Los Angeles—Buck had recruited Eddie and Chimney to help.

He’s cute, she’d said.

You should see his kid, Buck had replied. 

“Oh,” he replies. 

“Besides—as far as I’ve heard, Buck’s a fan, and trust me. I’ve heard,” Maddie continues, because she has. She has been subjected to at least a baker’s dozen of mustache-related tangents and rants—primarily frustrated, but largely positive. 

“Oh,” Eddie says again, only this time, she can see the easy and obvious flush that colours his face. 

It’s easy enough, from there—conversation. Jee and Mara thunder back in after a handful of moments, only to explain that they’ve got a surprise in store for when Buck and Chimney come home that they absolutely will not be sharing in advance, before they thunder back out. 

Maddie sees for the first time since arriving home that their nails are painted—Mara’s, a pretty lavender, Jee’s an almost abrasive neon yellow. 

“Manicures?” Maddie asks, after they dart back away, giggling. 

“Sorry,” Eddie apologies, inexplicably, before he begins to explain. “My sisters—I grew up painting their nails. It was as good a way as any to keep them both still for a half an hour.” 

“Two of them, huh?”

“Yeah—Adriana, you’ve met,” he waves a hand, and she catches for the first time a flash of lavender. “Sophia, she’s only about a year younger than me.”

“Oh,” Maddie says, thinking of Daniel—about two years younger than she had been, or at least, closer to two years younger than one. 

Eddie hums, and Maddie looks at his hands. He notices, and holds his thumbs out to her for closer inspection—one thumbnail is lavender, the other highlighter yellow. 

Both are painted pretty terribly—children’s work. 

“There’s a CVS a few blocks away—a short walk. I let them choose what colours they wanted, and didn’t realize until we were back here that I had no idea where—or if—you had any nail polish remover kicking around, so. We had to make sure that these were the right colours.”

“They’re good colours.” Maddie says. 

“Well,” Eddie whispers, conspiratorially, “don’t tell them that I told you this, but Jee was pretty torn between the two,” he wiggles his thumbs, lavender and neon yellow, “—and I’m pretty sure Mara would’ve been happy with either, but she sure did wait quite patiently until Jee had picked one out to make a choice of her own.”

It breaks Maddie’s heart a little that after everything, what remains true is that Mara is such a good sister.

“You’re good with them,” she says, instead. 

“I try,” Eddie says, instead of thank you—instead of I’m glad. 

Well. 

That breaks Maddie’s heart a little bit, too. 

“Can I get you something to drink?” Maddie asks, changing the subject before she gets teary-eyed. “We’ve got water, I can make tea, or coffee… wine?” 

“Quite the range of options.” 

“I’m nothing if not a consummate host,” Maddie says, her voice droll and her eyebrow raised. 

“Well, at least now I know that Buck comes by it honestly,” Eddie grins. 

“What’ll it be, Diaz?” Maddie asks, doing her best impression of a bartender in a TV show. 

“Wine, if you’re having a glass—coffee, if you’re not.” 

“Done,” Maddie says, reaching to grab a pair of glasses. “Red or white?”

“Buyer’s choice.” 

“Not a big fan of wine?”

“Starting to be a bigger fan, these days—Karen’s better with it, and Buck.” 

“I did hear something about a wine night,” Maddie says, as casually as she can—impressively guileless, she hopes—setting a glass in front of Eddie, sitting down at the kitchen island with him.

“Oh?” 

“Just—that you and Karen get together sometimes.” 

“Oh, it’s—” Eddie pauses, thinks before he speaks, before he continues. “It’s not really a thing, even, it’s just—Christopher was going for a sleepover at Denny’s, and I hadn’t realized that Hen was working. I mean, half the reason that Christopher was going over to spend that night with Denny was because Buck was busy, I probably could’ve guessed that meant he was working.” 

Which—Maddie knows, objectively, that Eddie was at dispatch for some period of months while she was in Boston. Mostly because Josh still complains about it from time to time. 

“It was just… it was a hard year, for everyone, I know I don’t need to tell you that,” Eddie gives her a wry smile and a glance. “Hen was in her first year of med school, at the same time that she and Karen had really gotten the ball rolling as a foster family. Chim had taken his leave from the 118 to find you, and… I’d gone over to dispatch. Quit, really—I'd quit at the 118, and I wasn’t doing… the best, with all that.” 

Eddie shrugs, obviously not wanting to get too much further into it—but Maddie gets his point: it had started while they were both gone, in their own ways. 

“I didn’t always feel like I had someone to talk to, not really—I was in therapy, but therapy is… specific. I was working on it, but it didn’t really change the fact that I felt like I was failing—like I had failed. My son, my team, my—everyone, kind of."

Maddie chews her lip while she thinks—about therapy, about being a parent, about feeling like you’ve failed. 

“You know… Buck told me, once, when I was pregnant with Jee, that I didn’t need to worry about whether or not I’d be a bad parent, because I’d already raised him,” she says. 

Eddie nods, waiting—is liable to wait and hear what someone else will say in the wake of an uncertain silence, Maddie is noticing, rather than speak himself. 

“You know him just about as well as anyone ever has,” Maddie asks, bluntly. “We both know that I didn’t do a perfect job, and we both know that I shouldn’t have had to—but I did my best. It was good enough for Buck—he told me himself. Could something like that be good enough for you?” 

“God—of course, you—yes,” the reply all but spills out of Eddie. 

“Maybe you should talk to Adriana about it,” Maddie says. “I feel like she’d have something to say.”

—

Maddie wasn't there when Eddie chewed out Margaret and Phillip Buckley, but Chim was. 

“It was… pretty intense,” Chim had said. “Quiet, too, just—um. Just loud enough, I guess. I think it was really only Bobby and Hen and me that heard. Maybe Jonesy, too. I don’t know.

“It was—Eddie just kind of laid it out, you know? That children aren’t hard to love, that Buck isn’t hard to love. That he’s sorry they lost Daniel, but the fact that they never recognized the only good to come of that tragedy speaks more to their, uh. Inadequacy. Than anything else.

“He more or less… warned them? That, um—that if they didn’t have anything kind to say, than they should get out of the station before Buck got back from the hospital, because—because Buck had plenty of his actual family waiting for him, and that after a day like today, the last thing any of us needed was for them to waste Evan’s time,” Chim had grimaced, offering the last bit in air quotes.

“… and how did my parents handle that?” 

“There was an insinuation that Eddie should mind his own business, courtesy of Phillip, and Eddie made it pretty clear that Buck is his business, is our family, and I, uh—I think he might’ve threatened to fight your dad?”

"... fair enough."

Maddie had said once that their parents weren't bad people, just bad parents. She'd started to wonder if they weren't both. 

—

“Am I invited to sibling night?” Chim asks. 

“No,” Buck says, decisive. “It’s a Buckley sibling night—if you’d taken the Buckley name, I’d have considered it. But alas.”

“… forgive me, it’s going to be hard enough having two of you on our shift once Eddie gets his shit together,” Chimney mumbles, discreet enough that Maddie is actually pretty sure that Buck doesn’t hear him. 

She digs a finger into his side in retribution anyway. 

“You okay, Chim?” Buck asks, turning around at the startled half-yelp, half-laugh that Chimney lets out. 

“So good, Buckaroo,” Chim replies, clearing his throat. “I am so good.”

“… if you say so.”

“Why do you two need a sibling night?” Chimney asks. “You see each other at least twice a week. Minimum.”

“It’s just Buckley stuff. You wouldn’t understand.” 

“First wine night, now this. I need to see if Bobby wants to start a secret club,” Chimney grumbles. Buck cocks his head in confusion before he asks—

“Wait, who’s having wine night?”

“No one,” Maddie says, at the same time as Chim says:

“Oh, shit.”

—

Karen greets Maddie at the door with literal open arms. 

There’s a bowl of pretzel chips and hummus in the centre of Hen and Karen’s broad dining table, and Karen makes short work of pouring her a glass of wine. Eddie, already seated, smiles up at her as she sits down herself, and asks her how her how things have been at dispatch. She smiles back, answers, asks the same about the 118, about Karen’s lab. The three of them trade a handful of pleasantries, but with Mara at Maddie and Chim’s, she sees the other woman at least twice a week, and considering that the first one-on-one conversation she’s ever had with Eddie that’s lasted more than ten minutes happened last week, there just really aren’t that many pleasantries to attend to. 

Maddie cuts to the chase, swirling her wine around her glass. 

“What are the rules?” Maddie asks, and Eddie snorts. 

“The first rule of wine night…”

“We get it, Tyler Durden, you were in an actual fight club,” Karen says, rolling her eyes. 

“Excuse me?” Eddie asks, and if he hadn’t, Maddie would’ve—

“The first rule of wine night is that there’s no point in denying things we all know are true,” Karen continues.

Eddie glares at her in response, but Karen smiles beatifically back at him. 

“Is there a second rule?” Maddie asks. 

“… well, we usually stick to white or red—” Karen starts. 

“—or weird—” Eddie interrupts. 

“—or weird, and we get a little bit tipsy, and we complain.” 

“… that’s pretty much it.”

“Weird?” Maddie asks.

“Orange wine,” Eddie says with a frown. “It was expensive, and not different in any significant way from white wine.” 

“I mean, it was orange,” Karen offers by way of explanation.

“Vaguely,” Eddie says with a shrug. “It was more of a… dark yellow.”

“Anyway,” Karen says. “We’ve got a couple of bottles that are more standard fare than others.”

“—and what’s standard fare as far as the complaining goes?” Maddie asks. “I’d hate the bring the… orange wine of grievances to the table.” 

Eddie, with a level of melodrama she has never seen and does not expect, looks to the ceiling, expels a harsh sigh, and lets his shoulders fall. 

“Being a parent can be… difficult—” Eddie says, sounding briefly but utterly defeated. 

“—amongst other things, but that was our jumping off point,” Karen says, her brown eyes soft and warm and full of affection that doesn’t change shape altogether that much when she looks from Eddie to Maddie. 

“So, no to orange wine. All grievances welcome, especially when they come to being a parent. Any other rules I should be aware of?”

“Hen said to me once, when we were talking about something else: that if we invite Maddie, Maddie invites Buck, and Buck invites Eddie—” Karen grins, “so, I went straight to the source—”

“—and you can’t invite Buck,” Eddie says, staring at Maddie balefully. “That’s the last rule.” 

“Why?”

“It’d ruin the…” Eddie waves a hand, takes a sip of his wine. He waves that same hand a second time, and does not elucidate his point further. Karen smirks before she speaks—a delighted smirk, though somewhat… devious?

“I mean, Eddie hasn’t been self-aware for all that long, but this has been his primary opportunity to bemoan his massive crush on one Evan Buckley since basically day one—”

“—oh my god, Karen—”

“—what? First rule of wine night! And you said I could tell Maddie—”

“—I did not mean tell her like that,” Eddie says, throwing a single pretzel chip at Karen. 

“You didn’t say there was a right way to tell her!” 

Eddie and Karen devolve into bickering, gaining both volume and momentum. 

Maddie just smiles, pleased. 

Pleased to be here.

—

It’s different when it’s someone you love, she’d almost said, that night at the hospital.

She’d gotten as far as the final word before she stopped herself. 

Now, Maddie knows better—Eddie’d understood her just fine. 

It's hard to say certain things. Easy to say others, no matter how much it hurts. 

Chapter Text

Adriana Diaz is an idiot—or, at least, she feels like one at the moment. 

She probably should’ve phoned anyone but her sister to ask about Buck. 

—

Sophia Diaz arrives in Los Angeles on the last day of May, unapologetically three hours early. 

The thing is, Adriana can’t deny her logic. Her suspicions were almost exactly right—there had been a plan to ensure everything was just so before her arrival, something like a dinner mostly thrown together, drinks on hand, and most of all, Buck elsewhere—but alas. 

This round of Mario Kart, as with all of the rounds of Mario Kart they have played thus far, has become less of a game and more of a no-holds-barred, elbow-throwing contest by the time that the doorbell chimes. Adriana’s the only one across the finish line at this point, so she leaves them both on the couch to see who’s there. 

—and sure, her winning strategy has less to do with winning the races and more to do with letting Buck and Eddie fight—often physically—for 11th and 12th place while she guides Yoshi to a perfectly respectable 3rd, but that’s not the point. 

The point is that Adriana opens the door to Sophia, who is three hours early, and smirking, all while Buck and Eddie are both thoroughly distracted and absolutely all over each other. 

Sophia is only an inch or two shorter than Eddie, but the three of them share most of their essential features otherwise: dark hair, unruly without curling; dark eyes, like amber, they seem brighter than their usual brown in direct light; prominent eye teeth, and a lopsided half-smile that shows off one more than the other. 

It was Sophia alone, however, who inherited their father’s nearsightedness, and their mother’s predisposition toward freckling in the summer. 

She’s sharp and solid in ways that are entirely her own. She’s got all the words in the world at the tip of her tongue—Sophia Diaz has been able to talk her way into or out of most anything for as long as Adriana can remember. When she was young, and still choosing what she wanted to do with her life, people used to tell her that she’d make a great lawyer, and they’d mean it as a compliment. 

Now, Sophia smirks and opens her mouth to deliver whatever quip she’d no doubt workshopped to perfection on the long drive here—before she’s interrupted by Buck’s near-shouting from not quite six feet behind Adriana. 

“—are you a child?—”

“—it’s not childish if it’s working, Buckley—”

“—if you don’t stay in your place, Diaz, I will literally put you there, and I’m not just talking about Rainbow Road—”

“—oh? I’d like to see you try—” is as much as Eddie gets out before his statement turns into a wordless squawk of protest that tries and fails to find the shape of Buck’s name. Adriana listens as someone’s hollow, plastic Wii wheel clatters to the floor, so much louder than it is heavy. 

“—Buck—”

“Oh? But I thought you wanted to see me try?”

“—it’s—you—put me down—”

It’s the combination of breathless laughter and genuine panic in Eddie’s voice that finally causes her to turn and see what the fuck is going on—

What’s going on is that Buck has picked Eddie clean up off the couch, and now has him folded over one shoulder with both of his arms locked in a vice grip around Eddie’s legs. Eddie is smacking Buck with the hand that he doesn’t absolutely need to leave where it is to stabilize himself, but seems to lack the leverage to actually push himself upright. 

Buck is playing dumb, spinning around with a puzzled expression as he turns in the direction of Eddie’s voice—clockwise, then counterclockwise, blithely ignoring Eddie’s protests as he continues to swat at him. Buck sighs, shrugs, and adjusts his hold—a move that heaves Eddie briefly off of his shoulder, promptly knocking all of the air back out of his lungs when he settles.

“This is fun,” Sophia says, still without having crossed the threshold into Eddie’s house, eyebrow arched at an almost jarring angle. “… what is this, exactly?” 

Buck and Eddie both go still. 

“The first ever biblically accurate fireman’s carry?” Adriana asks as much as she offers. 

“We don’t actually use the word fireman anymore,” Buck says, clearly trying not to laugh as he squats and sets Eddie’s feet back on the floor. 

Her brother, honest to god, wobbles. 

Buck reaches out to steady him—a polite gesture that Eddie receives with a murderous expression. 

Shameless is the word Adriana decides on—Buck doesn’t even have the decency to feign exertion, much less contrition. 

“Firefighter, then,” Adriana replies, rolling her eyes. Eddie seems to have temporarily disappeared behind the sofa, in the style of puppet-theatre. Ostensibly, he’s retrieving the fallen remote, Adriana knows. She also knows that he’s probably taking a moment to contemplate whether or not it would be possible to stay there, face hidden against the high-pile carpet, indefinitely. 

“We were just…. uh,” Buck says. “Mario Kart? Roughhousing?”

“You’re early,” Eddie says, finding his feet as well as the fine line between a statement and an accusation, eyes narrowed. There’s no helping the bright flush that colours his skin, a lethal combination of embarrassment and gravity having brought more blood to his face and neck than has possibly ever been there before. 

“Well, I didn’t know that I’d be interrupting…” Sophia’s grin is back, full force. 

“No, you just hoped you’d be interrupting.” 

“I haven’t seen you in like, a year, Soph—” Adriana strategically butts in, spinning to face her sister. “—and if you don’t hug me right now, I’m going to scream.” 

Sophia coos back at her derisively, but nonetheless swallows whatever rebuttal she’d been tying together behind her teeth, and opens her arms. 

“This is why people can always tell that you’re the baby,” Sophia says, folding Adriana into a firm hug. 

“Well, people should assume, given my lack of crow’s feet,” Adriana mumbles. 

“Careful,” Sophia mutters back, gently pressing a few of her sharp acrylic nails into the skin at the back of Adriana’s skull. “At least for tonight, I know where you sleep.” 

Sophia invites herself the rest of the way into the house, leaving Adriana with an open door, half-open arms, and more questions than she has answers to. 

In the meantime, Buck has taken it upon himself to turn the Wii off, silencing the bouncy electronic circuit track that Adriana is just now realizing has underscored the last two minutes of each of their lives. 

Sophia greets Buck next, almost certainly trying to rile up Eddie. She gives Buck a brief hug and a protracted kiss on each cheek—a feat helped by the heeled boots that she did not, in fact, take off at the door, despite the obvious shoe rack. 

Adriana is the only one amongst her siblings that didn’t inherit their height from the Swedish side of the family, but Sophia is the only one who didn’t inherit their probably larger than healthy degree of reticence from… somewhere. Maybe both sides, like their brown eyes. 

When Sophia makes her way, finally, to greet Eddie—who is no longer the human equivalent of a neon sign that reads please kill me, but is still considerably more flushed than usual— Adriana sees that some things never change. 

She watches as Sophia gets a hand on either of Eddie’s shoulders, as he returns the grip on the outside of her arms, their broad hands settling on each other like epaulets. Eddie mutters something that makes Sophia smile, sad and small, as she leans until her forehead meets Eddie’s.

In profile, with distance, Adriana understands again why they were always mistaken for twins. 

In her heels, the two of them are of a height, the slight arch of their noses and severe eyebrows a near-perfect mirror of one another. 

They stand like that for a moment, in their embrace.

It’s not a hug—it’s never been that simple for them. 

It breaks as easily as it began, at the beginning of one breath and the end of another. 

Then, Sophia slips into Spanish like a pair of long-loved jeans, telling Eddie that his mustache is very handsome, distinguished, even. Before she’s even halfway through her comment, Eddie has his hands thrown up, chiding her for lasting about ten seconds before she had to say something derisive. He turns away, leaving the living room behind him. Sophia pursues, easily and immediately, leaving her own bag at the door and still without having taken off her shoes.

Adriana listens as Eddie’s protests are met with Sophia’s louder protests, and then they’re both just badgering each other about the fact that the other has the audacity to badger them. 

Some things never change, indeed. 

She gets more of the essence of their bickering, the intent, than the meaning, to be honest—with Eddie and Sophia both speaking too quickly for her to catch each of the individual words—but this argument is so familiar it might as well be scripted. 

Adriana’s own Spanish is more… academic, structured mostly around a translation project she’d completed in her undergraduate degree. Nonetheless, she stifles a laugh—and notices when Buck does that same. 

She can’t tell whether he’s laughing at their affectations, or whether he’s laughing because he can actually understand what they’re saying. 

She narrows her eyes at him. 

Buck shrugs. 

She files it away as a question for later. 

They have time. 

—

Just because Eddie is her… Eddie… that doesn’t mean that Adriana hasn’t relied on Sophia— 

Sophia taught her how to tie a cherry stem with her tongue, and how to use her library card to open the latch on the main floor bathroom’s window at their parent’s house from the outside. 

When Sophia first left for college, she didn’t always leave Adriana behind—some of her favourite memories were of Friday afternoon lecture halls and Sunday morning coffee shops, weekends that felt strange and exciting and too large for Adriana’s still so small, El Paso life. 

When Adriana was fourteen, Sophia took her to get her hair cut short after their mother told her she wasn’t allowed. 

When Adriana took a few creative liberties regarding her previous work experience while she was trying to get her first real job, she gave Sophia’s number under her references. Her sister gave an understated, yet convincing account of Adriana’s hard work and willingness to learn. 

Mostly, though, what Adriana had needed from Sophia was help with their parents. Sophia knew the difference between the things they wanted to hear and the things that they needed to hear, how to spin what they’d called disrespect from Eddie and ignorance from Adriana into confidence, determination. 

Things that they admired about Sophia: points of pride. 

—and in a lot of ways, Sophia was the first person that Eddie had refused to ask for help. 

—

As Eddie gives Sophia the world’s loudest tour of his house, Adriana watches Buck begin to collect his things. He moves quietly, socked feet near silent on the hardwood—especially in contrast to the volume of Sophia’s heels. 

Adriana trails him at a distance, pausing to watch what he chooses to collect, staying deliberately light on her feet. It reminds her of walking around her parent’s house as a kid—after Sophia had moved out properly for school, after everything had gone near silent except in those moments that it was decidedly not. It had started to feel impossible to get anywhere, do anything, move around, or even breathe—without having to answer a question.

Even trying to grab a glass of water after a certain hour was like crossing a bridge in a fairy tale: she’d have to answer a riddle before she was allowed to pass. 

She watches as Buck collects his book from the coffee table—a battered paperback copy of a Shirley Jackson novel that she hasn’t yet remembered to ask about, curious as to whether Buck had gotten it used, or if the coffee stain on the corner belongs to him and him alone. 

She watches as he grabs a phone charger and his pill organizer from where he keeps them beside the fridge—it was the only way to ensure that he remembered his medication in the morning, Buck had offered when she’d asked, adding that he usually forgot to plug in his phone before he fell asleep. 

She watches as he trails around for a moment, then another—looking for something. 

They both pause in the hallway when the door to the backyard creaks open, Sophia and Eddie still trading barbs, before falling closed.

She hisses Buck’s name to get his attention, smiling like a lunatic—like it’s a game, she thinks, and not a skill they both developed treading in halls where it felt like much more than dignity or privacy was at stake—and points toward Eddie’s bedroom. 

“Now or never,” she whispers. 

Buck’s only response is a wicked grin before he disappears down the hall, still padding along near silently. She retreats to the living room and fishes Buck’s MacBook out of the magazine rack where he’d thoughtlessly stashed it earlier that same morning. 

Why Eddie has a magazine rack in The Year of Our Lord, 2024, she chooses not to dwell on. 

Why Buck had decided to put his laptop there is another question entirely.

They reconvene in the hallway, where she’s treated to the split second of genuine elation that crosses Buck’s features when she arrives with the exact thing he’d been looking for. 

“Keep it up, Adriana—one day soon, you just might take Eddie’s place as my second favourite Diaz,” he says with a wink.  

—

Maddie had told Adriana a story, not about the lightning strike, but about something that came after. 

After the Act of God, after the three minutes and seventeen seconds, after a handful of tense early hours at the hospital, all waiting to learn more, May Grant had asked her for help with something. 

May Grant, Maddie told her, was the first person to interrupt the silence, the waiting—to approach Maddie as though she were made of anything other than spun glass. Specifically, she’d asked Maddie—she needed Maddie’s help with something. 

May took her to the room where Buck’s too-still, too-silent body was still not breathing on its own, and instructed Maddie to take off his hospital gown. 

What? May had said in response to whatever expression she saw on Maddie’s face, taking out her phone. Lichtenberg figures disappear within hours, and almost never last more than a day. Buck will be pissed if he doesn’t get to see them for himself—

—and Maddie had laughed. 

Something about how correct May was, how certain—Buck will be, present-tense—and how right she was to say it, and to say it to Maddie—

When Buck woke up, when he had, in fact, asked if someone had thought to take photos, when May had confirmed that she'd known he would want to see them, he’d declared May his favourite Grant—no contest. 

May, Adriana had remembered. Athena’s daughter. 

Buck had taught her how to drive. 

—

The First Annual Diaz Sibling Reunion starts with something closer to a whimper than a bang. 

Perhaps, Adriana thinks, it begins with the undignified sound that someone might involuntarily expel after they’ve taken an unexpected fall, rather than the sound created by the impact of the fall itself.

“You didn’t have to kick Buck out on my account,” Sophia says, finally kicking off her shoes at the door after Buck had wished them all a good night, and wished Eddie specifically good luck. 

“I didn’t,” Eddie replies. “He’s spending the night with his sister.” 

“Okay, then you didn’t have to force him to spend the night at his sister’s.” 

“I’m not forcing him to do anything—and, no, that’s not—I said that he’s spending the night with his sister. Maybe even at his own apartment.” 

“Doesn’t he live here?” 

“Once again, Sophia—” Eddie says, exasperated “—no, he does not live here.” 

“… do we have any evidence that that’s true?” Sophia asks Adriana directly in a stage whisper. 

“Actually, when I called you a couple of weeks back, I was calling you from Buck’s loft.” 

“Adriana! I thought I told you not to sleep with him!”

“You what?” Eddie asks, a mix of feelings playing out in his expression that Adriana can only categorize as vaguely horrified. 

“I’ll repeat what I told you then,” Adriana says, pausing before she retches hard enough that she almost triggers her actual gag reflex. 

Eddie goes from looking vaguely horrified to vaguely offended. 

“Besides,” she continues, “critically, if that had been some kind of morning after, I’m not sure how much your belated advice would have mattered.”

“… fair enough,” Sophia says, mildly. “I thought we were doing margaritas?”

“I thought you weren’t going to be getting here until 6:00pm!” Eddie responds. Sophia continues to look around his house, features coloured by dissatisfaction (ostensibly, if Adriana had to guess, at the lack of margaritas). 

“Oh, loosen up, Edmundo—you two have been having all the fun without me for weeks. So what if I was eager to join in?” 

“It’s not even 3:15—” 

“—ugh, we get it, Squidward, you’ve never even heard of a happy hour, much less experienced something like fun for more than ten efficient minutes—” 

Adriana sighs.

Sophia and Eddie’s conversations often have the timbre and tempo of a professional tennis match— a sort of stop-and-start, consistent back-and-forth-and-back-again, strained and severe until one of them takes a swing that doesn’t connect with anything. 

In this metaphor, Adriana is the ball boy, setting them up to continue once they’ve gone quiet, offering small comforts as needed, and trying her best not to catch a stray.

—

So, here’s the thing: Adriana hadn’t actually told Eddie yet.

Adriana hadn’t told Eddie yet but she’s pretty sure that he knows. She’s sure that she knows that he knows, too—and she’s pretty sure that he knows that she knows. 

She’d told Jamie as much on the phone. 

“Slow down, baby, before we both get nosebleeds.” 

“I just don’t know, you know?” 

“I do know.”

“—and if he knows, why hasn’t he… said anything to me, or—”

“—well, if you know, why haven’t you said anything to him?

“Because I’m not sure—not absolutely sure, but, like, pretty sure…”

“You haven’t said anything to him because you don’t know—but you are pretty sure, and it seems like you’ve got quite a few reasons to be,” Jamie had said, popping gum between her teeth. “Either way, you’re confident that he cares about you, and that he’s not going to have a fucked up reaction—you know that much.” 

“I know—I know that you’re right, I mean.” 

“You know what I think?” 

“That I shouldn’t have had a second Red Bull today?” 

“That’s—well, yes, that first, actually—but,” Jamie’d said, “I think that you’ve got to stop guessing and tell him what you do know.” 

—

Adriana is sure that Eddie would loath to admit it, but the margaritas do help. 

“I have to say… I actually do like the mustache,” Sophia says, sagely. 

They’re scattered around the living room, Adriana seated on the sofa in what she’s come to think of as Eddie’s spot, Eddie seated beside her in what she’s come to think of a Buck’s spot. Sophia, meanwhile, had colonized the armchair pretty much immediately. She was still sitting in it now, one leg crossed over the other. 

Between the three of them, they’ve demolished a pizza, relocated the bluetooth speaker from the kitchen, argued for almost fifteen full minutes about what music to play on it, and polished off a second round of drinks. 

“I get the feeling you have additional feedback,” Eddie replies. 

“No, genuinely! It took a minute of getting used to, but it really does suit you,” Sophia says.

“… thank you.” 

“On a totally unrelated note, I do have a suggestion for your halloween costume this year—” 

“—fuck off, Sophia.”

“Eddie, music’s coming up—I’ll grab another round?” Adriana jumps in, gathering empty glasses as she goes. 

They’d defaulted to the method they’d used to choose music on road trips as children. Someone picks a CD, it plays from start to finish, then someone else picks a CD. Tonight, they’re adding albums to a Spotify queue, but Adriana’s still pleased with herself for suggesting it. 

Adriana had picked the Chappell Roan album she’s had on repeat for the last three months, wondering if a choice line or two would earn her at least a raised eyebrow. 

It did not, because her siblings would not know subtlety if Adriana wrote the word on a brick and put it through a nearby window. 

Sophia had picked an early Queen album, presumably to set herself up to talk about the mustache. 

Eddie starts to queue up his pick, waving Sophia off as she tries to pester him into choosing something she wants to listen to, as Adriana makes her way to the kitchen. 

She grabs the bag of limes that Buck had insisted they get from the grocery store instead of buying lime juice from concentrate—something about citric acid and overall acidity and balance. He’d also insisted that he would juice the limes himself before he headed out, but Sophia had arrived three hours earlier than anyone expected, so now Adriana is holding a torn open bag that still has about thirty limes in it while she checks her phone. 

There’s a message from Jamie—a photo. She’s with two of her three brothers, Callum and Simon, if Adriana’s not mistaken. 

decided to have a sibling night of our own, her text reads. 

Adriana is entirely focused on Jamie’s wide, easy smile, and how much she misses her, when Sophia charges into the kitchen. 

“I need another cocktail in my hand by the time whatever dad rock Eddie chooses—” she starts, startling Adriana badly enough that the bag slips from her one-handed grasp, spilling no fewer than thirty limes onto the kitchen floor. 

“Sorry!” Adriana says, loudly and inexplicably, shoving her phone back into her pocket. You can take the closeted catholic teen out of her parent’s house, she supposes, but you can’t really take the deeply held fear of being caught out of the former closeted catholic teen. 

“Are you apologizing… to the limes?” Sophia asks, whatever train of thought she entered on having come abruptly to a stop. Adriana drops to the floor and starts gathering them up. 

“Maybe… for the limes? Sorry,” she says. 

“Double apology, wow.” 

“… fuck off, Sophia.” 

“… oh? Sorry, the echo in here is crazy, I could’ve sworn I just heard that—”

“—either grab some limes or get out—”

“—fine, fine,” Sophia surrenders, crouching down to pick up a lime that’s threatening to disappear between the cabinet and the fridge. 

Citrus recovered, Adriana busies herself with the cocktail shaker while Sophia juices a few of the renegade limes, the pair of them working in companionable quiet for a while. 

 “Since when do you know how to shake a cocktail, anyway? The last time I checked, you were twelve,” Sophia says, finally, picking up her own glass and Eddie’s, taking a sip from each of them. 

“It’s literally four ingredients if you’re including the ice in the shaker, Sophia, it’s not exactly mixology—” Adriana starts, before she and Sophia both freeze at the sound of an actual Taylor Swift song starting to play in the living room. 

What the fuck, Sophia mouths at Adriana, otherwise unmoving, with a margarita in either of her hands. 

Adriana just shakes her head, shrugs, and follows an openly incredulous Sophia back to Eddie. 

“… really?” Sophia asks, after she’s set Eddie’s drink in front of him on the coffee table and clambered back into the arm chair. 

“What?” 

“Since when are you a fan of Taylor Swift?” 

“Oh,” Eddie says, leaning forward to pick up his margarita and frowning at the obvious lipstick mark Sophia has left on the rim. “It’s Buck’s favourite.” 

“Album?” Adriana asks, skeptically. 

“His favourite Taylor Swift album,” Eddie specifies, thumbing the smudge off the lip of his glass. 

“Be honest, Eddie,” Sophia says. “How long do you usually last before you’re standing at the window with a hand on the glass, waiting for Buck to come back?” 

“I’m confident I can make it through the night, if that’s what you’re asking,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes. It almost disguises the scarce but very much present note of uncertainty in his voice. 

Sophia, a vulture, senses carrion. 

“Wait, are you confident?” she asks, leaning forward. 

“What do you mean, am I confident—of course I am, I was just—”

“—it kind of doesn’t seem like you’re confident, actually—”

“—I mean, I am, obviously, it’s not like I haven’t done it before—”

“—whoa, implying that you usually aren’t doing it—”

“—that’s—no, I’m not implying anything—”

“—seriously, is there something you need to tell us? Adriana—” Sophia turns to her, smirk just barely concealed beneath a thin veneer of obviously false sincerity “—is there something that Eddie needs to tell us?”

“Sophia—”

“—wait, is this why you called me the other week at like, ass o’clock in the morning to ask about Buck?” 

“Wait—” Eddie starts, turning to Adriana, his eyes wide with something like fear, like he himself is something wounded. The brief question seems to stumble out of Eddie, too quick to catch, terrible and earnest—about as subtle as a brick through a window, Adriana thinks.

“I called you at a normal time, when I knew that you were already going to be awake for work, to ask you if you had ever met Buck, because I had met Buck just a couple days before—it was normal,” Adriana says, speaking with an urgency that renders her words staccato and pointed. Sophia waves a hand at Adriana before she returns her focus to a decidedly less betrayed but still visibly distressed Eddie. 

“…again, implying that there was something not normal to be shared,” Sophia says. 

“It’s… we’re… normal, it’s our normal—” Eddie fumbles. 

Subtlety be damned, Adriana thinks: Brick, thy name is Eddie Diaz.

“—and what does your normal include, Edmundo, because the last time I checked, you don’t have a guest room—”

“—that’s—Sophia,” Eddie says, haltingly. “It’s not… we don’t—”

“—no? I trust you, I do,” Sophia nods, and there’s a brief moment where Adriana believes that she’s actually going to let it go—until she realizes that her sister’s sharp focus has shifted once again from Eddie to her.

Shit. 

“I just need to rescind the warning I gave you about Buck, Adri,” Sophia says, tapping her wedding band with the base of her glass, then gesturing with it toward Adriana. “If Eddie’s not going to fuck him, and I’m certainly not going to fuck him, then the responsibility falls to you.” 

Sophia’s looking at her, eyebrow arched in derision, but Adriana is looking at Eddie.

Eddie, who is looking at Sophia, his frown and furrowed brow heavy with exaggerated indignation, his eyes heavy with a not insignificant amount of real sorrow. 

Adriana is looking at Eddie, and she can’t let this be a joke at his expense—or hers, for that matter—not when she’s seen how much it matters, how much Buck matters to him—

“I’m gay, actually,” Adriana says, keeping her tone placid. She keeps looking directly at Eddie, voice and focus unwavering—calling to him, in all the ways that matter, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

Look, she thinks, look at me. It’s you and me again. I know you. We’ve always known that we were made the same. I knew that we were made the same before I could say either of our names, Eddie. 

Eddie. 

Eddie.

Eddie looks at her.

Adriana can see the smile coming—she knows where to look for it, can see it start in his eyes. 

“So am I, actually,” Eddie says, plain as anything. “Gay, I mean.”

Adriana holds her half-full glass out to him. 

Eddie meets her halfway. 

They knock their glasses together. 

Cheers.

“… actually?” Sophia finally says, looking from Adriana to Eddie and back again, sounding more flabbergasted than opinionated for maybe the first time in her adult life. 

“Actually, Soph, yeah,” Eddie says with a laugh—and his laugh, small and involuntary as it is, catches Adriana so off-guard that she laughs, and—

Sophia bursts into tears. 

“Sorry—Jesus Christ—I am so sorry, I’m just,” Sophia says, her voice uneven. “I’m really glad you told me, both of you, I mean, and—and happy for you, too, oh my god—”

Adriana is genuinely speechless. 

Eddie, on the other hand, starts cackling. 

“Get over here, you fucking lunatic,” he waves to Sophia, leaning forward to set his glass down on the table and leaving his arms open. “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know,” Sophia half-laughs, half-sobs as she flops onto the couch between Eddie and Adriana. 

They’ve never done this, but they do, now: Eddie wrapping an arm around Sophia, reaching across to take both of Adriana’s hands in one of his own; Adriana tucking herself into her sister’s side, holding Eddie’s hand, letting her head fall onto Sophia’s shoulder; Sophia trusting Eddie with her weight, but resting her head on top of Adriana’s own, tucked against her side. 

It makes Adriana think of matryoshka—nesting dolls. 

Oldest to youngest. 

Tallest to smallest. 

It doesn’t take especially long for Sophia to settle—and then, as she often does, break the silence:

“Have you told Mom and Dad?” 

“God, no,” Adriana laughs. “Sophia, we hadn’t even told each other.” 

“Oh,” Sophia says, seeming genuinely taken aback. She blinks once, then twice, and then starts to sob again. 

“Oh?” Eddie says, starting his ministrations back up with renewed concern, but Adriana thinks she’s got it figured out. 

Sophia’s told her before that there are always people on the outside—not excluded, necessarily, but at the edges. Whether it’s a family, a friend group, a workplace, a community—there’s always going to be someone closest to the edge. Someone least included. 

Adriana hadn’t realized that Sophia felt that way about them. 

“Well, if our parents land anywhere south of neutral-supportive, I vote we kill them both and sell their house for profit.” 

“Sophia,” Eddie admonishes while Adriana cackles. 

“What? It would be the opposite of a hate crime,” Sophia says, her face as guileless as it is splotchy.

—

When is a secret not a secret?

When it’s meant to be told. When it’s better to know. When it’s deeply held—almost tangled, almost snarled. When it’s gnarled, snarling, and almost violent. 

When it’s tucked away, as though into a book—that book, tucked onto a shelf, all but forgotten but forever held there, like a flower pressed between the pages, known only to the world between its covers. When it’s only ever held, when it’s only ever kept. When the urge is preservation rather than restriction—of what, we cannot know. We can never know. 

—

She tells them about Jamie. 

“Adriana,” Sophia gasps. “Your roommate?”

“I mean, we are technically also roommates,” Adriana says, making an earnest attempt to waggle her eyebrows suggestively. 

Given the twinned expressions of displeasure on Eddie and Sophia’s faces, she’s either too successful or not successful at all. 

Whatever. 

“How’d that happen?” Sophia asks. 

“I’m pretty sure that she mistook my social ineptitude and tendency to panic for, like… an air of mystery,” Adriana answers. Sophia nods sagely, her head lolling toward Eddie when she asks: 

“Is that what you did to Buck?”  

Eddie laughs harder than she expects him to—hard enough that Adriana feels it, sitting as they still are, all three of them shoulder-to-shoulder on the couch. 

“Kind of, yeah,” he admits, eventually. “It probably helps that Buck is, like… maybe constitutionally incapable of being mysterious.” 

—

That night, they talk. 

Eddie talks, and Adriana talks—but Sophia talks, too. 

She tells them about meeting Diego, about something like love at first sight—feeling like she had come unglued, feeling like a fool. She was Sophia, the pragmatist, the most clever, the most cutthroat, and falling in love was for people with less ambition—less common sense. 

She tells them that falling in love was like rolling her ankle—clumsy, and quick, and impossible to play off as cool. 

She tells them how terrified she was to meet the girls. She’d never necessarily been certain that she wanted to have kids of her own, not really. She tells them about meeting Nell and Zoe, that first time, terrified that these four year-olds were going to hate her for reasons she’d never know. 

She tells them about feeling certain. She tells them about being scared shitless, anyway. 

She tells them that she’d already known she was pregnant with Olivia at Shannon’s funeral. 

You should’ve announced it there, Eddie’d said, eventually. Shannon would’ve loved that as a way to celebrate her life—an awkwardly timed pregnancy announcement. 

—

It’s morning, and Adriana intends to give Sophia and Eddie a couple of hours to themselves. 

They’ll almost certainly be arguing by the time she gets back to the house, but she’s cautiously optimistic that they might actually talk before then. 

She goes to visit Shannon’s grave—picks up a dozen or so sunflowers at a shop near Eddie’s place before she calls herself a car, chats with the uber driver on the way. She says she’s going to see one of her sisters, and they both bravely ignore the GPS when it announces they’ve arrived at the cemetery a handful of moments later.  

“Brought you something,” Adriana says, sitting cross-legged on the grass across from the headstone, resting the sunflowers on the ground between them. “Although, I started to wonder if you’re getting sick of sunflowers.”

Shannon Diaz, the headstone reads. 

Always missed.

Adriana had missed her. Adriana missed her, still. 

She and Eddie had brought sunflowers when they’d made their way to Shannon almost exactly a week ago, on Mother’s Day. Christopher had called Eddie—he was doing that more often, these days, thank god—and they’d traded soft-voiced stories for a while. 

Adriana had mostly listened, and hoped, and once or twice, offered a detail or an embellishment to add some colour, some context. 

She’d had been trying her best to support Eddie and Christopher in whatever way she could without crossing any lines—but there was a single line that Adriana herself had drawn. 

It was around Kim, and the circumstances that led to the night it all blew up. 

She’d told Christopher outright what she learned from listening to Eddie’s account of that night—that his dad hadn’t told the woman who looked like his mom to show up at their house, that he certainly hadn’t asked her for that. Eddie had asked her to please, stop—but she’d insisted, forced the point. 

“Oh my god,” Christopher had said.

“I know,” she had replied. 

“That’s so fucked up,” Christopher had said—and, yeah, Adriana had let him have that one. 

“I know,” she’d replied once more, with feeling. 

All of this while acknowledging, of course, that yes, his dad had absolutely fucked up in other ways—just… not that specific, monumental way. 

Her interference paid off: it helped. 

She hoped. 

“I never really thanked you for letting me be your maid of honour when I was eleven. I was having the time of my life, and I was completely oblivious to it all—but, I know, now. Eddie told me that you’d snuck into the house the morning of. He told me that you spent an hour or two together, while everyone else was still asleep—he told me that you both cried,” Adriana tells Shannon, pinching a blade of grass between her thumb and index finger, pulling it up without pulling it from the ground, like she’s untangling the lawn. 

“He told me that you wanted a divorce, too, before… I mean—I just mean to say that he does that, now. Or tries to—talk about it, talk about you, talk about the things that are… hard. Sad.

“He’s in enough therapy that it’s basically a part-time job. Which. He almost definitely needs,” Adriana says. “The therapy, I mean, not the part-time job.” 

Adriana smooths the grass back down. She wonders why the headstone says Diaz and not Elliot. She’d been Shannon Elliot for most of her life, after all, and they’d given Elliot to Christopher, too—his middle name. 

Adriana’s glad it says Diaz, but wonders why it doesn’t say Elliot, too—wonders who made that decision. 

“I wish you could’ve gotten divorced. I still remember when you were Eddie’s best friend, and everything was just… better.  I wonder if you still would’ve called me your sister. I wonder if you and Eddie could’ve been friends again, eventually. I wonder if you actually could’ve asked your best friend to be your maid of honour the next time you got married—you know, instead of settling for his baby sister.

“I wish you could have met my girlfriend, Jamie—I think you’d really like her. It takes her about ten minutes to burn in direct sunlight, and she’s a better engineer than my dad ever was, and… well. You know. She’s a she.” 

Adriana breathes carefully, hearing the way her voice cracks toward the end of her sentence. 

“I’ve heard how my mom and dad talked about you—or, some of it, at least, and I’ve always known that it wasn’t fair, and… and I think that listening to them talk about you is the reason I’m so convinced they’re going to hate her. They shouldn’t have talked about you like that. I wouldn’t let them talk about anyone I love like that, Shan. I wouldn’t let them talk about you like that now, not if I ever heard them talk like that again. I need you to know that.

“I wish you were here. I wish you were here to tell me it didn’t matter—I know you would’ve turned it into a bit—a competition, kind of, or something more funny than it was frustrating: which one of you they hated more.

“Anyway. I still miss you—always have, always will—but I think I’m done missing Eddie. I don’t think I ever want to show up at his house again and realize that he’s built a life without me. I think you must’ve felt the same way. I just… wish we’d had the chance to talk about that—I guess we do now, but this conversation is starting to feel awfully one-sided,” Adriana sobs—finally. 

She doesn’t stop for a while. 

—

She texts Christopher. 

I visited your mom today. 

Christopher doesn’t text Adriana back. 

He calls her, instead.

—

“So,” Chris says, painfully thirteen. “How’s LA?” 

“You called to ask me how LA is?” 

“Maybe.” 

“Alright,” Adriana huffs. “LA is pretty great, honestly. Your Tía Sophia drove down from San Francisco yesterday.” 

“Oh.” 

“Oh?”

“That sounds nice,” Christopher says, and Adriana can tell that he’s seething. “Fun.” 

“Listen,” Adriana says. “I do think we should talk, but I need to know something first.”

“… okay?”

“Do you want me to treat you like a kid or a grown up?” 

“Well, I’m not a kid, so.” 

“Okay, then,” Adriana breathes in through her nose, then out through her mouth. “It sucks that you’re not here, Chris, but you did choose to leave.” 

She bravely ignores Chris’s sharp inhale. She has a point to make, here. 

“Your dad didn’t send you away—and he gets it, he gets that he fucked up, like, super badly—and he knows that’s why he’s missing out on your life right now. He understands that. He’s trying to fix it—fix his own shit, I mean, and he misses you.”

“… I miss him too,” Chris concedes, voice smaller than it had been a moment ago—which, Adriana does feel kind of bad about. It doesn’t change the fact that what Christopher wants—needs, maybe—is for someone to talk to him like he’s not too young or too sensitive to get it. 

Maybe that’s what this is. 

Does Adriana think she’s the right person to do it? 

Absolutely fucking not. 

Has anyone more qualified or better prepared stepped up?

Also no. 

Which—she supposes—does make her the right person to do this. 

So, she continues: 

“I know. I know you do, but that’s not what matters, Chris—I just. I don’t think you get it,” Adriana says, voice less even than she’d like it to be, more quiet when she asks: 

“Do you realize that you’re missing out on your own life?” 

“What does that even mean?” 

“Christopher, I grew up in the house you’re living in now, and you’ve gotta trust me. I don’t care how pissed off you are at your dad, you’ve got it better here, and you’re missing it.”

“At some point, your grandparents will—they’re going to realize eventually that it’s just you and them, and all that shit about your decisions being your decisions, and you knowing what’s best for you is going to fucking fall apart the second you actually disagree with them for the first time.”

“How would you know?” Chris asks, understandably belligerent. 

She gets it. 

Fuck, does she ever get it. 

She is dizzy with getting it. 

“Because they did it to me, Christopher,” Adriana says, and she hears her voice crack—continues anyway. “You know, your Tía Sophia did her first year of college part-time, but then she was gone, and Eddie—your dad—he was already gone, he’d been gone for years, and Shannon had done everything she could for me, but she was your mom, and she was doing everything she could for you—and, it’s, she didn’t need to do anything for me, it was just—it’s okay. I just… I need you to know that this happy family, perfect kid routine of theirs doesn’t hold any fucking water, because they already tried it with me, and—” 

It feels like something or someone has stolen her breath—and she cannot have a fucking panic attack on the phone with her nephew—

“Tía?” Christopher asks, obviously concerned.

“Yeah buddy?” 

“… are you okay?”

“I’m trying to be, just got—a little worked up.”

“Okay.” 

“Just,” Adriana pauses, holds her breath for a handful of seconds, lets it go. “I hope you know that you’ve got people here that love you even if you’re pissed off. Even if you’re so pissed off, or sneaking out, or skipping school, or sleeping around, or—or whatever. Any of it. I need you to tell me that you realize that, that you know your dad is… that you live in a house where you’re allowed to superglue shit to the ceiling.”

“… you don’t sound okay.” 

“Sorry,” Adriana says, feeling as unstable as she probably sounds. “I miss your mom.” 

“Me too.” 

“You should come home,” Adriana says, feeling as small and as sure as she has all day, all at once. “We can start a club.”

“… I’ll think about it,” he says, eventually. Democratically. 

“Please, Chris, just—think about it.”

—

Adriana met Chris the day after he was born, at Providence Memorial in El Paso, Texas. 

Christopher Elliot Diaz. Six pounds, three ounces.

Even smaller than you were, Chickadee, Eddie had told her. 

What came later: a diagnosis, the surgeries, Eddie leaving, three gunshot wounds, more surgeries, Shannon leaving. 

That day, though—the first day, the only thing that mattered: Christopher Elliot Diaz, six pounds, three ounces.

—

Between rambling at Shannon’s grave, and then crying, and then calling Chris, and then crying again, and then calling Jamie, and then crying some more, Adriana is pretty hoarse by the time she makes it back to Eddie’s house. 

The good news is that she won’t be the only one: she can hear Sophia and Eddie shouting at each other through the front door. 

It’s just as she expected, only… in the moments it takes her to pull the door closed behind her, she realizes that the shouting is friendly. She keeps her steps light, approaching the kitchen with an almost anthropological fascination. 

The acerbic, urgent rhythm is absent. When she hears laughter, she hears them laughing together. 

This, more than anything else, puts Adriana in danger of beginning to cry again. 

“—no, Buck and Diego can never meet—” Eddie has started, before Sophia interjects. 

“—they’ve met like four times, dumbass—”

“—okay, then Buck and Diego can never actually meet. I’ll be usurped as Buck’s best friend,” Eddie says. 

“Seems like Buck is due for a promotion, anyway,” Sophia half-mumbles to Adriana, already grinning at her own joke. Adriana swats her thigh and refuses to laugh. Sophia cackles. 

“What time did you say you needed to leave by?” Eddie asks, pointedly checking his watch and seeming altogether too fond for the action to have any real impact. 

“I’m going, I’m going,” Sophia replies, hooking an arm through Adriana’s at the elbow. Eddie chases Sophia down and catches her from the other side—it’s all very Wizard of Oz, briefly, none of them Dorothy, but instead: the renegade, reckless scarecrow; the world-weary and wary lion; the austere, withdrawn tin man. Each of them, as clumsy as the others, stepping across each other’s legs, interrupting each other as they all try to walk in the same direction, uncoordinated and stumbling and still walking, somehow, together. 

It isn’t until Sophia is already all of the way out the door that she stops—stumbles, really, in the only way that matters. 

Standing—stopping, really—in Eddie’s driveway, she turns all of the way around to face them, but looks at the sky when she speaks:

“I don’t say this enough,” Sophia says, “but I love you guys, and I—I miss you, like, all the time. I was going to leave without saying anything, and I don’t know why.” 

“I mean, oldest daughter, middle child? Come on…” Eddie says, his voice light—he’s reaching for Sophia when he says, it, too, inviting her in. 

“Oh? What was that, only son, oldest child? I couldn’t hear you over the burden of expectation—” Adriana interjects, pondering.

“—when did you get so mean?” Eddie asks, feigning affront, hugging Sophia fully. 

“You raised me,” Adriana says, feeling invincible. “I’ve been mean the whole time.” 

Sophia snorts, and Eddie gasps in mock outrage—lifting an arm to invite Adriana in, too. 

“Try not to cry again,” Eddie tells Sophia. 

“Shut up,” Sophia replies. “I hate you, actually.” 

“I love you too, Soph,” Eddie says. 

“Well, I love you both,” Adriana says.

“We love you too, Chickadee,” Eddie rests his chin on the top of her head, and Sophia sniffles, once, before adding: 

“Seriously, though, shit like that is why people always know that you’re the baby.”

—

Sophia told her a story, once. 

Their mother, who had only just returned to working, arriving home to find the blinds in the house closed. Eddie had been almost fourteen, at the time—Sophia, twelve. Adriana herself had just turned five, which is why she needed to be told the story, even though she’d ostensibly been there when it happened. 

Their mother, returning home, had found the blinds closed—and for reasons that eluded Sophia still, this infuriated her. 

Their mother, infuriated, exhausted at the end of a day of work, now beholden to three children, one of whom had to have closed the blinds, asked: who did this?

It was the angriest I’d ever seen her, Sophia’d said, and we didn’t understand why. 

Neither Sophia nor Eddie would admit to having closed the blinds—truly, because neither of them could remember who had. It was Texas, and August, and Eddie had been told to watch them both—man of the house—while their father was working, for weeks at a time. With the sun beating through the windows, it was a decision that existed somewhere between logic and thoughtlessness. 

It’s getting hotter in the house, someone had thought, we should close the blinds. 

But truly, neither could remember who had done it—and neither understood why it mattered. So, in a rare moment of solidarity, they’d refused to sell the other out. 

This, more than anything, is what made their mother snap, and Eddie—

Eddie, calm as anything—steady—had told Sophia to take Adriana upstairs, and then—that was that. 

That was that—the end of the story, at least the way Eddie told it. 

Except, Sophia only went partway up the stairs, at least for a minute or two, and—

Adriana doesn’t know exactly what happened next.  

They both insist that their parents had never gone too far—had never hit them, thrown them around, anything like that—but. 

Sophia still won’t tell her the rest of the story. 

—

Buck returns with a tray of coffees from a cafe downtown and an expletive. 

“Shit,” he says, stopping to scour the front hallway, presumably for evidence of Sophia’s continued presence. “Did I miss Sophia?” 

“Yeah,” Adriana says, making grabby hands at the iced latte that Buck is holding hostage in the entryway. She’s sitting with her back against the armrest of the couch, feet tucked mostly underneath her. “She’ll be back soon, though, maybe a couple of weeks from now—and she’s going to bring the girls.” 

“Diego, too?” Buck asks, perking up. 

“Maybe,” Eddie says, doing the more effective version of grabby hands—which is to say, walking directly into Buck’s personal space and wordlessly claiming the coffee obviously intended for his consumption.

“Okay, rude—firstly, good morning, secondly, you’re welcome,” Buck says, toeing off his shoes, following a retreating Eddie, and delivering Adriana’s iced latte to her impatiently waiting hands. 

“How was your night with Maddie?” Adriana asks. 

Buck gestures to Adriana with an open hand, as if to point out what a polite greeting looks like to an under-caffeinated and over-familiar Eddie, who is not paying attention. 

“My night was great,” Buck says, joining Adriana on the sofa and ditching the leftover iced coffee—that he’d presumably picked up with Sophia in mind—on the coffee table. “How’d you guys do? I realized way too late that I’d left you guys with like… several pounds of un-juiced limes.” 

“We persevered,” Eddie calls from the kitchen. 

“We did,” Adriana confirms—corroborates, really, given Buck’s poorly-disguised scrutiny. “We listened to Queen for like, forty-five minutes, just so that Sophia could make an Eddie Mercury joke. I dropped every single lime on the kitchen floor, and I told them that I’m gay.” 

“Yeah?” Buck asks, offering her a sunny smile. Adriana nods, returning the grin. “Sounds like a great night, then.” 

“It was,” Eddie says, sitting heavily in between them on the couch. “Even though Dee kind of stole my thunder.” 

Adriana digs her toes into Eddie’s side in retribution. He yelps and squirms away from her, ending up half-sprawled over Buck, whose only real reaction is to lift his coffee out of harm’s way. 

“Well, you snooze, you lose,” Buck says, looking down at Eddie with an unbearably fond expression. 

“Is that so?” Eddie asks, going boneless in a way that Adriana is entirely unfamiliar with, letting his weight fall the rest of the way onto Buck. Buck, who lets one of his perfunctorily raised arms fall across Eddie, perfectly at home in more than just the gesture. 

—

Maddie told her—well, less of a story, more of a something. 

A pinky promise. 

What it means. 

That in all of the moments before it had felt almost too late, all of the times that Buck’s hands had been smaller than Maddie’s and all of the times after Maddie had realized they weren’t, anymore—every time that Maddie realized that something had changed. In all of the moments that it all felt like it mattered less, every time it felt like it was the most important thing in the world—

—it was the two of them, the Buckley kids, for better or otherwise. 

They’d always pinky promised, when it mattered most. 

It always mattered. 

Adriana and Maddie had made one themselves, before the night was through. 

—

Adriana follows her nose to the kitchen like a Looney Tunes character, all but floating on the spice and citrus that clings to the air in Eddie’s house, calling out before she even rounds the corner: 

“I don’t know what you’re making, Buck, but it smells so fucking good. I can’t believe Eddie hasn’t—”

“—introduced to you Bobby and Athena?” Buck cuts her off, voice louder and brighter than usual. 

They’ve got company.

Whoops.

“Ah,” Adriana says, intelligently. “Nope—Eddie has… he has not.” 

Buck is standing at the stove with a man that Adriana has never met, but recognizes. Bobby—his wife, Athena, she knows, is the woman seated at the table, a wry twist to her mouth that indicates she fully recognizes the direction that Adriana’s sentence had been heading originally. 

“Easy does it, Buckaroo,” Athena says, raising an eyebrow as she glances toward Buck. 

“Adriana Diaz, ma’am,” Adriana says, holding out a hand that Athena takes—her grip somehow a firm and a fine touch at the same time. 

“Please—just Athena,” she corrects gently, waiting for Adriana to nod before she releases Adriana’s hand. 

“Bobby Nash—I’d offer to shake your hand, but…” Bobby waves at her with two oven mitts, before deciding on a gesture that has more in common with a bow than anything else, earning a small chorus of stifled laughter. 

“—and where’s Eddie?” she asks, once introductions have been made.  

“Emergency grocery run,” Buck says, holding up one of the extremely sad, thumb-sized lemons from the tree that has been meandering toward death in the backyard ever since Eddie had moved into the house seven years ago. “I’m pretty sure these are about eighty percent peel.” 

“I mean, it could make for an interesting rhetorical device?” Adriana says, taking a seat at the table with Athena. “A citrus that’s all skin.”

“As much as I enjoy a good metaphor… the directions do, unfortunately, call for lemon juice,” Bobby says, earning a quiet laugh from Buck. Judging by the way that Bobby waits for the sound of it to smile at his own joke, that was the point of telling it. 

“Right—Eddie has mentioned before that you’re a writer,” Athena says, turning a fond smile of her own on Adriana. 

“Well… trying to be,” Adriana answers. 

“Pretty sure that getting stories published means you’re a writer already—” Buck says mildly, halving the miserable homegrown lemon and revealing a centre that is, in fact, almost entirely pith, “—but, given your position in a competitive, fully-funded graduate degree on the subject, I guess you are the expert.” 

“Alright—thanks, Dad,” Adriana scoffs, decidedly not thinking about the fact that her actual father still tells people that she’s doing an English degree, and almost certainly blushing despite herself. Buck and Bobby both huff, a breath of laughter that matches in cadence and character. 

Athena, meanwhile, is treating Adriana like a picture window: looking at her and seeing right through. 

“Well, I’m not sure I’d know—but something I am certain of is that Eddie’s quite proud of you,” she says, her barely-there accent softening the already gentle words.

“When Eddie gets back, you can always see for yourself,” Buck says. “I know he’s got a stack of  all the magazines that have Adriana’s stuff in ‘em stashed away somewhere.” 

“Most publications use the term journal, actually…” Adriana mumbles, a little flustered by the attention and the sentiment, but not so much so that she will sacrifice the opportunity to be pedantic. 

“—see?” Buck says, smug. “You’re the expert.” 

“—and I’m going to need a little bit of your expertise redirected toward the dessert that you suggested we make, Buck.” 

“On it,” Buck says, refocusing with an almost martial immediacy. Adriana remembers Maddie talking about Buck’s attempt to sign up for the SEALs, remembers saying that she didn’t think Buck was the type. She’s since revised her estimation, slightly: Buck is actually excellent at following orders and a man of decisive action.

He also, however, has almost never left a question unasked.

Both of these things can be true at once. 

“What are we making, anyway?” she asks, and Buck raises an eyebrow at her—admittedly, generous—use of we, before he answers. 

“A lemon cream tart—May’s home for her birthday next weekend, and she’s not really a cake person—”

—

When is a recipe not a recipe?

When it’s a list of demands. When it’s a peace offering. When it’s a contract. When it’s incomplete. When it’s missing a step, stumbling forward. When there’s nothing to have missed for having read the recipe itself. When it’s not your fault. When it’s castigation—a reprimand. 

When it calls for a cast iron pan, well-seasoned—when you’re absent of a history that sees your kitchen well-equipped, when you’re absent of heirlooms and old family tricks. When both instruction and patience are tried and found endless. When the recipe is labyrinthian, leading nowhere: when it was always a trap, when it was only ever the maze. 

When it rhymes like simple poetry, bounding forward—when’s it’s bound to move always forward, relentless and leporine, leading to nothing. When it sprints into the night, fighting for warmth. 

—

Another Thursday, and Eddie’s gone to group at the VA. 

Buck is reading on the sofa, his outstretched leg adorned with an ice pack wrapped in a tea towel, twenty minutes on, forty minutes off. 

Adriana is sitting, cross-legged on the armchair, waiting for the silent alarm that Buck has set on his phone to interrupt the peace. When it does, she stands before Buck can stop the vibrations on his phone, hand outstretched for the ice pack—genuinely considerate, but not without an ulterior motive. 

“Thanks,” he says, genuinely grateful, but not without suspicion. 

“Can I ask you something?” Adriana calls from the kitchen, tucking the ice pack into the freezer, folding the tea towel over the back of one of the chairs, and helping herself to a beer. 

“Shoot.” 

“Your leg,” she asks, returning to the armchair. “Was that the worst of it?” 

“How do you mean?” Buck asks, setting his book down on the top of the couch. 

“You’re sort of a danger magnet, dude,” Adriana says evenly: she cannot be the first person to have indicated this to Buck. She counts them out on her fingers: “You’ve got a crush injury from an IED that went off in downtown LA, you were on the Santa Monica Pier when the biggest tsunami in this city’s recorded history hit, you were standing three feet away from my brother when a sniper started targeting firefighters, you got struck by lightning…” 

Buck frowns and shrugs, a gesture that Adriana more or less reads as saying: and?

“I mean, you’ll have to let me know if I missed any incidents of targeted violence or acts of god,” she says, and Buck snorts. 

“No, I think you’ve covered all of my personal greatest hits.” 

“So?” Adriana asks, pushing her question post-clarification. She gestures to Buck’s still outstretched leg. She’s noticed that he rarely wears shorts outside of the house—the scarring there intersects, most of it smooth and shiny from age and care, but some spots are still puckered or purpled, the unavoidable outcome of an injury that could have cost him much more than it had. “Was your leg the worst of it?”

Adriana follows the line of the scar that swells with the shape of his calf, subtle in all but the spot where you can still see that the skin tore unevenly. Then, there’s the surgical scar that runs from his ankle to his knee, red and obvious in ways that the other scarring is not, zippered by the teeth of the staples that had once held it closed on either side. It’s a deeper scar—the impression of a wound that had been opened and closed more than once—topographical, almost, written onto him differently. It’s the scar of something digging in instead of squeezing out. 

Most of all, though, the crosshatched discolouration just underneath his kneecap catches her attention. She has the same scars, from a childhood of perpetually scraped knees. 

Buck seems to be tracing the scars with his eyes as well, considering them as though, this time, their path might lead to something Buck hasn’t seen before. 

Adriana likes that about Buck—he’ll offer an answer to the question just as soon as he has one. In most cases, it means that his response will stumble out of him, following immediately after the question asked, eager and earnest and immediate—but Adriana has managed to give him real pause a handful of times over the last couple of weeks. 

“Not exactly,” he says, after a moment. 

“Not exactly?” 

“Not exactly,” he repeats, decisively. “I guess it depends on how you define worst. I don’t know if I’d call it the worst of it, but it definitely had… um, consequences. I think that everything that happened afterward… it’s kind of made the explosion itself, seem kind of… inconsequential, maybe? 

“I mean, I was only half-conscious by the time that they got the truck off me, that Eddie pulled me out—I remember in the ambulance, asking him and Hen if I was gonna lose my leg. I remember trying to focus on it, on how much it hurt, because even if it was painful, I was scared that it was the last time I was actually going to be able to feel it at all.”

“What did they say?” 

“Hen’s a professional—and we’re not in the business of making promises we can’t keep. She told me that the ER knew I was coming, that they were ready to do everything they could.” 

“… and Eddie?” 

Buck runs a hand over his closed eyes and into his hair. 

“I don’t really remember, to be honest. I remember it made me feel better—so, not a platitude, nothing vague. Something true.” 

“You’ve never asked him?” 

“No,” Buck shrugs. “I’m not even sure he’d remember, at this point, and then we’d both be wondering.” 

“I’m curious—” Adriana says. 

“—I’ve noticed.” Buck interrupts, grinning. 

“Shut up,” Adriana responds immediately, no bite in it. “What would you call the worst of it?”

“It really does depend on the criteria,” Buck starts. 

“The ladder truck was the worst in the sense that it almost cost me—I mean… everything? A limb, and then my life, and then my actual life—like, my job, my family. Anyway. The tsunami was the worst in the sense that it was the hardest I’ve ever pushed, the most scared I’ve ever been, and it was hours of that. The embolism was the worst because it was probably the closest something has ever come to killing me without actually killing me, and the lightning was the worst because it did kill me—at least for a minute, 

“The thing is, though… I barely remember the lightning strike itself. I remember just before, and then waking up in the hospital—so that’s far from the worst that I’ve been through. Same thing with the embolism—I mean, it was happening to me, I guess, but… Chimney and Hen are the ones who had to try and secure my airway while I was choking on my own blood, Maddie had to call 9-1-1 and describe it to someone she’d probably met at the dispatch Christmas party. Bobby is the one that had to try and wash the blood off their grass. Eddie and Athena and Karen are the ones who had to comfort their terrified kids.” 

“Buck,” Adriana asks seriously. “Are you in therapy?” 

“Yeah, of course—why?”

“Just checking,” Adriana says, exaggerating the way that her eyes had gone wide without her permission in an effort to make it seem more like she’s being dramatic intentionally. It must be at least a little convincing, because it gets a small laugh out of Buck. They fall into a silence that has no urgency, no weight.

“I mean, to actually answer your question,” Bucks says, after a moment has passed. “I think maybe trying to find Maddie at Big Bear? Or Eddie, with the sniper. Both times, it was—it kind of felt like I was just there to watch, like there was nothing that I could do that—I mean, with Maddie, I remember sprinting and searching in the snow, I remember exactly how many times I almost fucking slipped, I remember hearing her before I could see her…”

Adriana feels slightly wrong-footed, but makes a handful of logic leaps: whatever happened to Maddie at Big Bear was at least as serious as Eddie getting shot—at the very least, as severe and sharp in Buck’s memory, because he buries it underneath the words he chooses. 

Not Eddie getting shot, but: Eddie, with the sniper. Not whatever it was that had, in fact, happened to Maddie, but where it had happened. Obfuscating the painful thing, articulating the details. 

“At least, with Maddie, it felt like I could do something. I could try, at least. So, it might’ve been worse with Eddie, just because… I just had this close up view, and I remember that I couldn’t… by the time I could make myself do anything at all, it was already too late—”

“—that’s not true,” Adriana says, the refusal urgent and not altogether intentional—something she feels as much as she thinks, and thinks as easily as she speaks. 

Something Adriana knows like gravity, with certainty. 

She repeats herself: 

“That’s not true.” 

“It’s—”

“No, I know that’s not true, Buck,” she says, voice sharper than even she expects it to be. “What were you going to do, catch the bullet? Besides, some fucking comic book villain targeting firefighters isn’t going to shoot the only guy in the street who isn’t wearing a uniform.”

“…how’d you know that I wasn’t in uniform?” 

“From the video—it’s blurry as hell, but you can still see what’s going on, Buck. Yeah, I saw you standing there in your fucking button-up, getting tackled out of the line of fire, but I also saw you go back into it—I saw you crawl under the fire truck while the actual road was catching on fire, and pull Eddie to safety. That’s not nothing, Buck, that’s everything.”

“There’s a video?” 

“—there is, and even if there wasn’t, you know what Eddie told me? He told me that he thinks he was reaching for you before he even realized he was falling—that he tried to reach for you before he fell, because he thought you were bleeding, that he wasn’t really sure that you hadn’t been shot, too, not until after he’d asked. He told me that he could hear you calling his name, that he knew you were coming for him, that you had his back, and he was right.” 

Buck seems stunned into silence: a phenomenon she’s never witnessed before. 

The recollection of the shooting that Eddie’d offered her had picked up where the video had left off—and it’d been scattered, but solid. 

“I don’t know, Buck. Just—it might be worth asking Eddie what he said to you, that day in the ambulance, after he pulled you out? Chances are, he does remember—I know that he remembers everything that you said to him after you pulled him out.” 

Breathless, Adriana returns her focus to a still-silent Buck, wondering what the hell she could add if he’s not convinced after that, and finds that Buck looks…

Mortified. 

“… he does?” 

Adriana nods.

Buck clears his throat and looks down at his own hands. When he looks back up at her, it’s with an expression that Adriana probably would’ve mistaken for a smile, a couple of weeks ago. 

“Thank you, Adriana—for telling me that,” he says, finally, as he stands, leaving his book behind him on the couch. “I—genuinely. It means a lot to me that you feel that way—see it all that way, really.” 

“Buck?” Adriana calls after him, standing up from the armchair quickly enough that it tips over her open, but as of yet untouched, beer. She scrambles to right it before it soaks everything on the coffee table, and by the time she has, Buck already has his shoes on and his keys in hand. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean—”

“No, Adriana, you didn’t do anything wrong, I promise,” he reassures her. 

“Buck, what—”

“When Eddie gets back, can you tell him that I needed a minute?—I’ll,” Buck opens the front door, breathes, and offers her a placating, joyless smile. Still, he sounds slightly more grounded when he continues: “You can tell him that I’ll be back—I promise I will—I just… I need a minute.”

Then he pulls the door closed behind him, and he’s gone. 

—

Eddie’s recollections—scattered, but solid—had gone something like this: 

A shattered window, glass scattered, like a memory—the door behind Buck screaming as it tore off, the side of the engine scraping against a burning vehicle, fire spitting into the open cab, Buck’s back between Eddie and the flames. 

Here—we’ve got you, we’ve got you. 

A dressing he’d torn open with his teeth, pressure on the wound, packing it down. 

I’ve got you, okay?

Buck, wild-eyed, supporting himself over Eddie, and—

Eddie, you just stay with me, okay? 

—begging him to stay. Buck had blood on his teeth, in his eyes, everywhere, and Eddie had asked him if he was hurt—

No, no, no, I’m good, Eddie—you just hang on. 

—then shouting, more pressure, what felt like all of Buck’s weight on the hand he had over the wound, his other hand finding the side of Eddie’s neck and Eddie could tell that they were both shaking—

Hey, just three minutes away, you’re so close. 

We’re so close, Eddie, I just need you to hang on. 

I just need you to hang on. 

Nothing.

—

Eddie gets home. 

Adriana has already wiped down the coffee table, finished what had survived of her beer, and taken stock. 

Buck will be coming back, that much she knows—she’s tucked a makeshift bookmark in the form of a takeout menu into his book, found the duffel that he takes to and from work still tossed into the front hall closet, double-checked that he still has laundry in the dryer. His medication is still beside the fridge—his phone charger, too. His computer is still on the table, thankfully touched by the spilled beer. 

When Eddie gets home, she’s returned to her place on the armchair, feeling, for lack of a better term, shell-shocked. 

He takes off his shoes, hangs up his keys, looks to where she sits, and frowns. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks. 

“Um,” Adriana says, fighting the urge to pick at her fingernails. “Buck left.” 

“Oh? Where’d he go?” 

“I’m not really sure?”

“He didn’t say? He usually…” Eddie checks his phone. Frowns. “Wait, did something happen? Did he get—did someone call?” 

“No! Nothing like that, not, like… not really. We were just talking, I think, but… I think I upset him? I didn’t mean to—” Adriana gets to her feet without really thinking about it, halving the distance between her and Eddie, suddenly needing Eddie to believe her, that she hadn’t done anything wrong—that she didn’t want Buck to leave, that she wouldn’t have said anything if she’d known—

Eddie raises both of his arms, brow furrowed, not quite following, but ready for her anyway. 

She takes his invitation for what it is and walks directly into Eddie’s space. She wraps her arms around him and hides there, just for a moment. 

“Hey, Buck’s a big boy,” Eddie says, voice certain and low. She feels it as much as she hears it, with her ear to his chest. “If you said something that upset him, he should’ve let you know.”

“No, it’s—he promised me that I didn’t do anything wrong,” Adriana tells him. 

“Then you didn’t do anything wrong, Chickadee,” Eddie says. She loosens her grip around him and leans back, enough to find his eyes. “He probably just needed a minute.” 

She laughs—a sound that catches somewhere in her sinuses and leaves her body flattened, humourless.  

“That’s what he said to tell you, that—that he needed a minute, that he’d be back—he promised he’d back,” Adriana says, pulling back, setting her jaw, and sniffling once. “He better be, because he left all of his shit here.” 

“He left in a hurry, then?” Eddie really doesn’t seem worried—like, at all—which is a good thing, but does make Adriana feel even more self-conscious about the tide of anxiety that had just threatened to swallow her. 

She nods. 

He reaches out to give one of her shoulders a squeeze as he moves past her, towards the kitchen. She can hear him wash his hands, listens to the sound of plates being stacked as he starts to put away the dishes they’d left to dry on the rack.

Eventually, she follows, collecting the now empty beer bottle along the way. 

She grabs another from the fridge and sets the empty in the sink as she jumps to sit on the counter. Eddie lifts a clean fork and raises an eyebrow at her, as if to ask, any help? 

Adriana just raises an eyebrow back, taking a long swig of her beer and refusing to break eye contact. She feels herself going a bit cross-eyed. 

Eddie huffs a laugh, shaking his head. 

“It’s probably too late to ask, but… is there anything that I should try to avoid bringing up with Buck?” she asks. 

“Not really,” Eddie says, grabbing a mug, frowning, and then reaching for a tea towel to dry it off properly. “If he doesn’t want to talk about something, he’ll change the subject—it’s usually not subtle.” 

“… not subtle as in you can tell, or not subtle as in anyone could tell?” 

Eddie snaps the tea towel at her. 

“I’m just saying! It really didn’t seem like he was bothered until he was basically halfway out the door.” 

“Maybe it didn’t bother him until it did?” 

“That’s what I’m asking—what bothers him, usually?” 

—and yeah, I don’t want to bother him is hardly buried underneath the disguise of that question, but Adriana would stoop so low as to say it outright, even if it made her sound extremely adolescent—just as long as it meant that she’d never put that look on Evan Buckley’s face again. 

“His parents, and his brother, Daniel—he passed away when Buck was really young, and it was… complicated.” 

Adriana remembers the photo, tucked away in Buck’s loft: Daniel Buckley, 4 August 1988.

“Doug, probably—Maddie’s ex-husband. He was a real piece of shit, it—it was bad for her, for a long time, and it got worse before it was over.” 

“… was that what happened at Big Bear?” Adriana asks, wondering if this was another piece, or another puzzle. 

“Maddie told you about that?”

“Buck did, actually. Kind of.” 

“Huh,” Eddie says, wearing an expression of genuine surprise. 

“I mean, to be fair, I asked.”

“About Big Bear?” 

“No,” Adriana says, “…I asked him about the worst thing that had ever happened to him.”

“Jesus Christ, Adri.” 

“Not in a weird way! It’s—we were just talking. I asked him if I could ask, even—it wasn’t weird.” 

“No mames, it’s both of you, with the questions—okay,” Eddie sighs, repeats: “Okay, what happened?” 

“We were talking, and it was fine—intense, sure, but fine—until. I don’t know, Buck said something, that… that the worst of it all was the shooting, maybe, or Big Bear, and that by the time he did anything, it was already too late, and I just—that’s not true, you know? So, I told him that he was wrong, that he didn’t just stand there—that he saved you.” 

“Oh,” Eddie says—turning, abruptly, to grab another mug from the drying rack. “Well, he did.” 

“I know—but I don’t think he realizes how much you remember, Eddie,” Adriana pauses, tries to remember when the conversation had changed, stumbled, become something different than what it had been before. She remembers: 

“He got quiet, I guess, after… it was after I’d told him that you’d thought he was bleeding, too—that you didn’t actually know whether or not you’d both been shot until after you’d asked.” 

Eddie drops the mug that he’s been drying vigorously for the last minute or so. 

It doesn’t even have the decency to shatter, but the handle snaps clean off. 

—

When is an accident not an accident?

When it’s negligence. When it’s ignorance. When fault cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt. When it’s carelessness. When it’s the most careful you’ve ever been, and it happens anyway. When it’s inevitable. When it’s even worse than you expected. When it lingers in the corner of your vision, a shadow at the edge of your sight. When you see it coming, when you’ve seen it coming. When it’s been stumbling toward you for as long as you can remember. When it’s been eating you alive. 

When it’s patient. When it’s waiting. When it’s waiting, patient—when it’s patient and left wanting.  

When it’s the punchline to a joke that you never meant to tell. 

—

Buck is gone. 

It wasn’t even that Eddie and Buck had never talked about it—Eddie told Buck that he didn’t remember. 

Searing pain, like getting hit by a bus. Standing, then falling, then… nothing, thinking that it was the last moment of my life. Then I woke up in the hospital. That was it.

“Jesus Christ Eddie,” Adriana says, appalled. She’s pacing like a German Shepherd in front of the sofa, back and forth, as Eddie sits slumped on the couch, and watches her wear an ugly stripe into his freshly vacuumed rug. 

“I know.” 

“Not even just a lie, Eddie—you told him a boring lie.” 

“I know, I just—I didn’t know what he needed to hear—” 

“—probably the actual answer to the question he asked you, dumbass—” Adriana says, hearing Sophia loud and clear in her own blatantly withering tone. 

“—it was right after he got out of a coma—”

“—a fact that I’m sure he’ll be very understanding of, once he’s finished being justifiably pissed off at you.” 

“… yeah,” Eddie says, roughly rubbing his face with both of his hands, leaning forward until his elbows are braced on his knees. “I know.” 

She all but falls onto the couch beside him, something that could’ve been a sigh getting punched out of her with the force of it. 

“You have got to start telling people the shit that matters, Eddie,” Adriana says. “If it’s not going to be me that you talk to, it should definitely be Buck.” 

“Well, I am in love with him, so…”

“… which you have to know is appallingly obvious.” 

“Oh my god—”

“—I’m not done! It’s—Maddie said something, a couple of weeks ago, she said that sometimes, it’s the telling that matters, and she’s right. Sometimes, shit is just hard to tell people, or maybe just hard to hear, even if you’re the one saying it. The only thing we can know for sure is that telling someone something that sucks can never suck as badly as having kept it from them, deliberately, and then having to tell them you kept it from them, deliberately, before you have to tell them anyway.” 

“… Maddie’s pretty smart.” 

“She looked like she was going to throw up the whole time we were talking, so I can only imagine she was speaking from experience.” 

“Trust me, she was.” 

“I also told her about your will, so.” 

“Adriana.”

“One of the many things you need to start telling me is whether or not you’re telling me a secret. If you don’t tell me, how am I supposed know?” 

“… fine, fine.” 

“If it makes you feel better, Buck almost certainly called Maddie about… everything.” 

“I mean, it does in a… general sense, sure, but how do you mean?” 

“You didn’t tell Buck about the will for a year after you changed it,” Adriana says. “It’s been three years since you told Buck, and he still hasn’t technically told Maddie at all.” 

—

After Eddie falls asleep on the couch, Adriana texts Buck. 

you’re going to give him a chance?

ofc I am

you’ll keep an eye on him tonight?

duh

—

Adriana wakes up to the sound of the front door opening. 

In sleep, she and Eddie had come to rest against one another like a pair of spades, balanced together at the beginning of a house of cards, holding each other mostly upright. 

She’s not sure if the door woke Eddie as well, or if her waking up had done the trick—or, even, if he’d already been awake, politely letting her create a small tacky spot of drool on his shoulder for god knows how many hours, but that’s neither here nor there. 

There are only two things that matter: Buck is here—home—and if Eddie had a nightmare last night, it didn’t wake Adriana. 

“Wild night?” Buck asks, hands in his pockets, eyebrow cocked. 

“Kind of the opposite,” Eddie replies, stretching, his left hand going to his right shoulder, massaging the stiff knot of scar tissue there—a gesture that’s typically less loaded. 

Forgive him, Adriana begs Buck silently, he hasn’t had any coffee. 

Whatever expression the thought summons to to her face makes Buck laugh. She’ll take it as a win. 

Buck carries onward to the kitchen and starts the coffee maker—it sings the obnoxious, wordless jingle that Adriana has come to associate with climate change and commercial surveillance, but does also technically herald coffee. 

Adriana stands to follow him, walking all the way up to Buck and wrapping her arms around him before she can second guess her welcome. He’s hugging her back almost immediately. She’s struck, not for the first time, by how quickly Buck has become familiar to her—easy to spend time with, easy to reach for. For seven years, he has been her family’s family, someone from whom she had only a single degree of separation. 

Buck made it an easy gap to close. 

“Sorry,” she offers him again, the apology less stuttered and frantic than the one she’d offered the night before. 

“Already told you, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Buck says, voice low. She sighs, briefly sinking into the reassurance. Buck just hugs her a little more closely for a second, then another, before she steps back. 

“Give me your keys,” she says. 

“I mean, if you’re mugging me, I’ll actually take the apology,” Buck laughs.

“Need anything from the loft?” she asks: a declaration of intent. Buck reorganizes himself in front of the coffee maker for a moment before he responds, turning to hand her a travel mug and the keys to the Jeep. 

“Nah,” Buck says, his expression softening. “I realized last night that almost all the stuff that matters is here.”

Adriana nods. She collects her phone charger and her computer, and shoves a fistful of clean clothing into a tote bag. She gives Eddie a squeeze on his good shoulder as she passes behind the couch, and she slips on her shoes. 

She doesn’t look back as she steps outside, but their voices follow her anyway. 

“I really don’t know how you managed on the couch for all these years.”

“I think you do know, Eddie.” 

The beginning of something. 

Adriana pulls the door closed behind her, and leaves them to it. 

—

When is the inevitable not inevitable?

When it’s pursued. What it’s sought. When it’s urgent. When it’s necessary. When it’s a conversation that you meant to start many years ago. When’s it’s a conversation you started many years ago and never quite managed to finish. When it’s a conversation that you’ve rehearsed, that you’ve seen coming for longer than the course of a conversation could ever last, when the rehearsals have cost you something more than time. When it’s a king-sized mattress, almost too comfortable to really rest on. When you’re left, restless, wondering what it is that’s convinced you that there are places in this world too soft to sleep. 

The loft is bare and cool: the artifice is breaking. 

It seems as though no one lives here.

— 

When she returns to Eddie’s house the next morning, she doesn’t knock—she lets herself in with the key she’s been given, the key that was made for her to use. Her key. 

When she returns, she toes off her sneakers and sets them on the shoe rack in the spot that has become hers over the course of the last few weeks, and she sees herself in. 

When she returns, she sees herself in Eddie’s house: signs of life she’s left behind her without meaning to, a coffee ring on the table, her clutter and clothing tucked into the corners. 

It’s only rained once she arrived in LA—a rare enough occurrence that in as many days—now weeks—that have passed since she arrived in LA, she hadn’t expected to see any rain at all. 

But she has, and it was those sheets of rain, the ones Eddie had mentioned when he told her about how it felt to drown. They’d had an absolute blitz of rain and it had lasted maybe all of forty minutes. 

Adriana had run outside to stand in the downpour, unafraid—had dragged Eddie with her, too. 

Since then, the only jacket she’d thought to bring with her had been hung on a hook near the front door—at first to dry, but it hasn’t been moved since. She imagines, now, more than a week later, that the salt in the air and the general lack of motion will have rendered it stiff and still—that she could try and move it, but it would always hold the shape of the hook on which it hung. 

She knows the way that Eddie remembers drowning, and she remembers the way he’d laughed in the rain—not thoughtless, but unremembering. She knows the way that her jacket remembers the hook—for as long as possible, before yielding. 

Not everything is meant to be a metaphor. Some things just are.

When she returns, she runs a hand along the back of the sofa as she moves through the living room, seeing the barely-there stain of the coffee she’d spilled a few mornings ago. 

When she returns, Buck is making breakfast. 

When she returns, the timbre of their chatter is familiar—consistent and warm.

When she returns, she can tell: they’ve figured it out—all the parts that matter, at least. 

Adriana can’t help but smile: her brother may have built a life here while she was looking the other direction, but this morning, she knows that she will almost certainly have the privilege of being the first person that Eddie and Buck tell. 

—

Shannon had told her something once, voice precious and low like candlelight, that Adriana has never forgotten: hardly a story, but the hard-won wisdom at the end of one, maybe. 

If you want something you’ve never had, you probably have to do something you’ve never done.

Sometimes, it is that simple. 

Adriana does wish that they’d had time for the story—but sometimes, you’ve got to take the lesson or take nothing at all. 

—

It’s nearly mid-afternoon Monday, and they’re arguing about what movie to put on. 

Buck and Eddie had come off shift that morning, got home, promptly crashed, and had stayed asleep until about an hour ago—so suffice it to say that neither of them had felt especially ambitious about their plans for the day when Adriana’d asked. 

Buck votes for the animated Atlantis movie. Again. 

Adriana votes for Knives Out. 

Eddie votes for Risky Business. 

“… is that, like… porn?” Buck asks, his voice getting quieter toward the end of the question. Eddie blinks once, then a second time, then laughs—laughs hard enough that it changes his posture. 

“Christ, Buck—no, it is not porn, is that—how have you never heard of Risky Business?” 

Buck bumps a shoulder into Eddie’s, laughing along with him, utterly guileless—until he snags the remote from Eddie’s unsuspecting hand. 

“I did sleep on Chimney’s couch for somewhere between three weeks and five months,” he says, navigating through the menus swiftly. “I did not escape that experience unscathed—and Risky Business might’ve been the least of it.”

Adriana’s leaning in, about to protest Buck’s coup, when she realizes that he’s navigating toward her choice of movie. 

Then, the doorbell rings. 

Whatever protest had also been dying on Eddie’s lips disappears completely—replaced by a small, private smile as he snipes the remote back from Buck.

“Why don’t you grab that?” he nods to Buck before dropping the remote into Adriana’s completely unprepared hands. “I’ll get popcorn started.” 

Adriana raises an eyebrow at Buck after Eddie’s walked the opposite direction of the front door. Buck shrugs and stands. 

She’s trying to get the Apple TV remote to co-operate and allow her to turn on subtitles when she hears it: 

“Holy shit, you are Captain America.” 

A familiar voice.

“I’m… what?” Buck asks. 

“You’re Buck.”

“I… yes, I am.” 

“Wow—sorry, it’s just, I’ve just heard so much about you, I kind of feel like I’m meeting a celebrity? I’m sure you get it, what with… the LA of it all.” 

It’s the most familiar voice. 

“—I’m sorry, do I… know you?”

Adriana overcomes the certainty that what she’s hearing can’t be happening, because it is absolutely fucking happening, and proceeds to pretty much vault the back of the couch to reach the front door as swiftly as possible—an act of athletic prowess that she is confident she would not be able to reproduce. 

It gets the job done. 

Buck steps back from the door, likely even more confused than he already had been, inadvertently opening up the conversation to a suddenly very present Adriana. He’s staring at her, now, but keeps whatever observation he has to make about her sudden display of agility on the back-burner, at least for now, and—

There she is: her red hair pulled into a haphazard knot at the base of her skull, wire-framed glasses perpetually sliding down her nose, pale as milk or moonlight, her skin close to shining in the midday LA sun, the scatter of her many tattoos in high contrast. She’s wearing bike shorts, almost comically battered sneakers, and a threadbare My Chemical Romance sweatshirt that Adriana knows she stole from her older brother at least a decade ago. 

Adriana’s favourite person in the world is standing at the door. 

“How’s it going, baby?” Jamie asks, looking incredibly pleased with herself. 

“What do you mean?” Adriana balks, still too astonished to really be capable of processing a second emotion. That doesn’t stop her from closing the distance and throwing her arms around Jamie’s shoulders. 

“You’re here?” she asks, too overwhelmed to feel even mildly embarrassed by the obvious wobble in her voice. 

“Of course I am—you’re here,” Jamie says, her dimpled, joyful smile showing off the tooth she’d chipped on a lip piercing that Adriana had only ever seen in photos, gone before her time—

—and it’s not often that language fails Adriana, but there really isn’t a better response to that than to kiss her girlfriend. The sort of take-no-prisoners kiss that she’d assumed were meant for other people—at least, before. Maybe it’s less about the failure of language and more about the necessity of action—Jamie is here, where Adriana can feel her—

“Alright—let’s keep it PG in the front hallway,” Eddie calls, returning to the living room with a bowl of popcorn and a smug expression. 

“Which… implies that there are areas in your house that abide by different content ratings?” Buck says. “If they take it to the living room, can they go for PG-13?” 

“You’re an idiot,” Eddie says. Adriana turns around just in time to see Buck stick his tongue out at Eddie in response. Eddie just offers him some popcorn. Jamie takes one of Adrianna’s hands in her own, and waves with the other.

“Hey Eddie,” Jamie says. Adriana blinks at her. 

“Hey Jamie,” Eddie replies, easy and familiar, tossing a piece of popcorn into his own mouth. Adriana blinks again, this time, looking between them. He asks: “How was your flight?” 

“Predictably tedious,” Jamie replies. “It got the job done.”

“You knew about this?” Adriana asks Eddie.

“I did—” Eddie starts, before Jamie chimes in: 

“It was his idea.”

—

Later, Jamie will show her the message that Eddie had sent her on instagram. It’s dated a little over a week ago—just after Sophia had left, Adriana will realize. 

Hi Jamie! This is Eddie Diaz, Adriana’s brother. Sorry if this is a little bit weird, but I had an idea earlier and I couldn’t help but send this message. 

You know that she surprised me when she came to LA, and having her here has meant the world to me. After hearing so much about you, I’ve gotten the impression that it might mean the world to her if you surprised her here, too.

No pressure if a last-minute trip to LA isn’t in the cards for you, but I’d be happy to help cover as much or as little of a plane ticket as you’re comfortable with. Let me know either way! Sorry again if this is weird. 

—

Jamie excuses herself to take what she promises will be the world’s quickest shower. 

“Just to rinse off the plane… and, like, the lingering midwest.”

Buck offers to give her a grand tour of the house that specifically includes the closet where Eddie keeps the towels—and likely, Adriana knows, to give her and Eddie a moment to themselves. 

“Eddie.” 

“Popcorn?” 

“Eddie,” she repeats—and Eddie just grins at her, hair falling across his forehead, eyes shining. He sets the bowl down on a nearby table, anticipating, she assumes, what’s coming next. 

“Yeah?” 

She reaches for him, wordless and without thinking, and he draws her into a bracing hug—a hug that’s always felt like a place where she belongs—

“I mean… it’s. It probably never should’ve been your job to take care of me,” Adriana says, “but you’re pretty fucking good at it.” Eddie makes a small, wounded sound that she feels as much as she hears, before he steps just far enough back that he can look her in the eye. 

“First job I ever loved,” Eddie says, a thumb on her eyebrow. “And you know what they say—something about never working a day in your life?” 

She’s laughs so that she doesn’t start crying in earnest, a sort of wet scoff leaving her before she responds: 

“God, you’re such a dad.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says with a shrug. 

“First job you ever loved?” Adriana says, eyebrow raised—it has the intended affect, Eddie blushing and letting out a scoff of his own, squeezing her shoulder before he lets her go. 

—

Later, it will hit Adriana fully: 

Jamie is here.  

Jamie is here, in LA: they’ll take the loft, they’ll take their time, and they’ll find their way back to Texas together in due course. 

Jamie is here, and now that Adriana isn’t missing her, she will realize just how little she wants to leave. 

—

“You’ve been keeping secrets,” Buck accuses when he does rejoin them, a glass of water in hand and an eyebrow raised in Eddie’s direction.

“No, I’ve been planning a surprise.” 

“A surprise for Adriana,” Buck protests. 

“I didn’t want to steal Jamie’s thunder,” Eddie offers with a shrugs “We only talked on the phone for a few minutes when we were figuring out her flight, but I could already tell it’d be more fun to let her make a first impression. She’s quite the firecracker—”

“—yeah, she is,” Buck says, holding up a congratulatory hand to Adriana. 

Adriana lets out a surprised laugh, and gives him a high-five.

It’s not like he’s wrong. 

“Okay, watch it,” Eddie warns Buck, no venom in it. 

“I mean, that felt decidedly PG—” Buck says. 

“—and, I mean…” Jamie interrupts, reappearing from the bathroom to stand beside Eddie, her timing too auspicious to be anything but intentional. She looks at for a moment at Eddie, then pointedly turns her focus to Buck, before glancing back to Eddie again. 

Jamie offers a congratulatory hand to Eddie—a gesture that Eddie answers with a long-suffering sigh… and a high-five. 

Buck is obviously delighted. 

—

Eddie told her a story, just a few days ago: a story that took place just a few days after Shannon had died—it was a few days before the ladder truck. A stretch of time that Adriana now understands to be nine, maybe ten days, total. 

It had been more than five years since. Still, Eddie needed to stop and clear his throat, once, then twice. 

Still, Adriana remembered. Once Eddie was telling the story, she remembered:

There’d been breakfast, the day they’d gotten in to LA—lopsided blueberry pancakes and unusually thick bacon, all kept warm in the oven set as low as possible, cut-up fruit in the fridge. 

Simple, but good. 

She remembers Sophia asking when, exactly, Eddie had managed to fit cooking lessons into a schedule that left him too busy to call. She remembers their mother smacking Sophia’s arm, hissing something unintelligible, something that had Sophia quiet and sharp to the touch for the rest of the day. She remembers the already somber mood souring, just a little. 

Eddie hadn’t answered, but Eddie wasn’t really answering more than a third of the questions directed toward him before the funeral—missing them, mostly, too lost in thought, or maybe just ignoring them outright. He only ever seemed awake if Christopher was in the room. Adriana hadn’t thought about any of it a second time, until now.

Buck had made her breakfast once before. 

Eddie tells her that the night before, Buck had shown up uninvited with a laptop, about a hundred and fifty dollars worth of glow-in-the-dark stars, what seemed like a completely unnecessary amount of glue, and an apology. 

Sorry if this is too much, or like… I can go, really—I just. I lost a friend, once—she was kind of my best friend, really, the only best friend I’d ever had, when I lived in Peru, and the days in between finding out and the funeral were… it was just. I don’t know, I was looking at the sky a lot, and wondering if the constellations were leaving for good this time around, if I’d never see them again—

I thought that Chris might want to keep the constellations. Just for now. 

“I don’t know,” Eddie had told her. “I… it kind of felt like the opposite of drowning—only, just as certain.”

Eddie had changed his will a year before he told Buck. A year before the well, Eddie had offered Buck a house key, at the end of a long night spent gluing plastic stars to the ceiling and walls of Christopher’s bedroom—a Christopher who’d cried that night, desperately sad, but had laughed, too, for the first time in days. 

In the morning, Buck had left breakfast and a note, and the night before had become the last time he’d needed to knock. 

—

Adriana doesn’t really know what Buck was expecting. 

He’d texted Maddie to ask for recommendations for a karaoke bar on a weeknight, and, for some reason, hadn’t anticipated that she would willfully receive that message as an invitation to join. 

Her and Chimney already have a booth by the time they arrive. 

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me—” Buck mumbles when Maddie stands up to wave. Beside her, one arm still draped across the back of the booth, Chimney offers a much more reserved wave with his free hand, and a smirk.

“Buck!” Maddie calls as Buck comes to a full stop about three steps into the bar. Eddie stops for long enough to pat Buck on the back sympathetically—while also openly laughing at the predicament Buck has created for himself—before he walks right past Buck, pulling Maddie into a warm hug. 

“Genuinely no offence, Dee, but it is truly wild to have gone from being introduced to your parents exactly one time, as your roommate, to being ambushed at a karaoke bar by your extended family.” 

Adriana isn’t surprised that Buck is already looking to her by the time her eyes find him in the dim light. She smiles, shrugs. 

“Well, you’ll love Maddie,” she says. “I know I already do.” 

“She’s right—Maddie’s the best,” Buck confirms, offering Adriana a smile so small and sincere that she’s nearly bowled over by the brief but intense urge to protect Evan Buckley. 

Then, he offers an arm to each of them—the gesture so abrupt and old-fashioned that Adriana barks out a laugh. 

“… and so long as we don’t give your brother-in-law the impression that anything indecent is going on…” she drawls, playing up the ounce of Texas that lingers in the shape of her voice before she accepts his elbow, theatrically demure. 

Jamie cackles as she takes Buck’s other arm. 

“Well, well, well,” Chimney says, as they approach. “I didn’t know Buck 1.0 would be making an appearance!” 

Eddie and Maddie, who now sit shoulder-to-shoulder in the U-shaped booth, react with near-identical revulsion. 

And Buck… shrinks, just a little bit, even as he laughs, affably. Adriana’s not sure she would’ve noticed, if she didn’t have her hand at the crook of his elbow. She squeezes his arm, once, twice—reassuring and certain. When she lets go, she does so with express and dual purposes: to shove Buck in Eddie’s general direction, proximity making whatever bluetooth they use to communicate more effective, and to selfishly ensure that she’s not trapped at the very back of a U-shaped booth. 

“I’ll have you know that Buck has been a perfect gentleman!” Adriana crows, sliding in after Buck before she turns her focus directly to Maddie and commits to saying the quiet part at full volume: “You raised him well.” 

Maddie’s eyes get wet and bright, and she beams—Adriana’s started to think of it as The Buckley Smile, bright as a spotlight. Buck and Maddie never look more alike than when they’re both beaming. 

“I’m Jamie,” Jamie says, pulling focus as she slides into the booth after Adriana. “Adriana’s girlfriend.” 

“Oh!” Chim says, offering a warm and welcoming smile once the single, brief note of surprise has passed. “Yeah, I’m Chimney—Howard, but please call me Chimney—Buck’s brother-in-law and one of the lucky paramedics who gets to hang out with him and Eddie for 50-something hours a week.” 

The comment is wry, but Adriana can hear the earnest note underneath it—that he’s one of the lucky ones, that he’s saying it because he means it, even if he’s letting the tone of the comment gesture away from genuine. She’s struck by the fact that Chimney might just be the rare kind of person that only says what they mean, and allows interpretation do the obfuscation for them. 

Smart, but careful with their sincerity. Protective of it, maybe.  

“We heard you two are the local experts when it comes to karaoke,” Adriana says. 

From there, momentum takes them. 

Adriana catches a fleeting moment, Jamie whispering something to Buck, shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the booth. Jamie telling Buck to promise—Buck extending a pinky in her direction. 

In a moment of brief privacy that comes later, as Buck and Eddie grabbed a round of drinks, while Chimney and Maddie pretty much nailed a song from Dirty Dancing that has the meagre crowd cheering, Adriana asks: Jamie shrugs. 

“I took an educated guess as to who Buck 1.0 had been—just wanted to make sure he knew he had nothing to apologize for.” 

Maddie and Chimney return to the booth, to a Buck that is threatening Eddie with increasingly bizarre cocktails to try and request from what Adriana would describe as this karaoke joint’s serviceable bar, as Jamie finishes folding a napkin into a slouching crane. They humbly accept their round of—earned, in Adriana’s opinion—applause, before Jamie moves to stand. 

She’s up next for a Panic! at the Disco song that Adriana is confident no one at their table will recognize. Only, she’s immediately waylaid by Chimney. 

More specifically, she’s waylaid by Chimney’s stature—and before anyone else really understands what’s going on, she’s insisting that they’re the same height. 

Which… honestly, the difference is negligible. 

“She’s wearing boots! That’s an unfair advantage—” Chimney protests. 

“—I can—” Jamie starts.

“—Howie, you’re also wearing boots—” Maddie offers, gently. 

“—please, god, neither of you take off your shoes while we’re in public—” Eddie begs. 

“—I mean, the average height of female firefighters in the LAFD is five-foot-six,” Buck adds. 

“… wait, am I tall enough to be a firefighter?” Jamie asks with, quite frankly, an alarming amount of excitement. 

“I mean, if I were you, I’d probably finish your doctorate…” Adriana answers, dryly.

“Your what?” Chimney asks. 

Unfortunately, Jamie is called to sing the entirety of Nine in the Afternoon before she can answer that question. The good news is that she crushes it—returning to a U-shaped booth full of praise for her performance, explaining that she’d played Fantine in her high school’s production of Les Mis. 

“How does a high school do Les Mis?” Eddie asks, affronted. 

“Badly,” Jamie answers, sagely, before she returns to Chimney’s earlier question: PhD candidate, Biomedical Engineering. Michigan-born and raised, MIT for her undergraduate degree, Austin for graduate studies. 

Adriana gets her own round of questions—thankfully, none of them include the classic: what can you even do with an MFA in Creative Writing?

Maddie asks Jamie about Boston. 

Eddie asks Chim about Jee and Mara. 

Chim tells the story of how he introduced Hen and Karen. 

Buck and Maddie have a conversation in the twenty to thirty seconds between being waved over by the karaoke host and being called up for their song. 

It’s a brief exchange, while they’re standing in the shadow to the side of the karaoke bar’s meagre stage—like the opposite of being in a spotlight—that ends with Buck nodding and Maddie giving him one of the quickest but absolutely, undeniably heartfelt hugs she’s ever seen. 

Then, their duet of California Dreaming starts. Maddie is pretty good, and Buck is absolutely awful—though, he does seem to be more focused on trying to make Maddie laugh hard enough that she can’t keep singing than he is focused on any of the actual singing he’s supposed to be doing himself. He is extremely successful in that undertaking, at least.  

Adriana is fighting for her life against something like stage fright when she finds herself called onto the stage, having inexplicably agree to give Pink Pony Club her best shot, and is genuinely considering taking advantage of the unprecedented levels of cortisol in her body to run further and faster than she ever has before, when Chimney arrives beside her on the stage with a pair of shots and a grin. 

“What?” he asks with a wink: “I love this song—couldn’t let you do it alone.” 

Finally, it’s Eddie—who had somehow made his way over to the evening’s host completely unnoticed—who ends their night.

He gives a rendition of Killer Queen that vacillates wildly between abjectly hilarious and surprisingly solid. 

Adriana takes a video to send to Sophia: it’s only about three seconds long—too short to weaponize, but long enough to see exactly what’s going on.  

—

Much later that same night: folded together underneath clean linen sheets, the ruddy brick and polished windowglass of the loft warmer with company, Jamie asks: 

“Would you stay, if you could?” 

“I mean, I can’t.”

“But… if you could…”

“… only if you stayed with me,” Adriana answers honestly. 

Jamie hums, first—a sound Adriana knows well. It’s a sign that Jamie is thinking carefully before she speaks—she told Adriana, once, that she thinks better when she’s already making sound. It had made Adriana laugh, at the time—their second date, a terrible brewery that had opened and closed within a year, that had an inexplicably french menu—but Adriana knows now that she was being honest, knows that hum like the back of her own hand, knows it now, pressed to the notch of her spine— 

“You know, UCLA and USC both have bioengineering opportunities: post-docs, projects,” Jamie says when she does speak. “The kind of work that I might even need to head up to San Fransisco a couple times a year for—just to touch base with colleagues who’re working in industry.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah—and my brothers, you know what? They were so jealous when I told them Eddie’d invited me to LA,” Jamie says with a grin that Adriana can feel on the back of her neck. “Pretty sure I could convince them to make their way here, at least every once in a while. Plus, you know my folks—they love a vaguely mediterranean climate.” 

“You’d… really?” 

“Yeah, baby,” Jamie answers. “I really would.” 

Adriana settles, for the first time in her memory, into the idea that she could have it all. 

—

Adriana is sitting at the kitchen table, typing idly and offering occasional contributions to Buck and Jamie’s conversation. 

Jamie, having listened to Adriana wax poetic about Buck’s culinary efforts while she was eating meals that she’d since described as predictably underseasoned in Michigan, has taken to following Buck around while he cooks—even if she couldn’t help, she claimed, she’d be learning by osmosis. 

While Jamie’s certainly better in kitchen than Adriana herself, as a general rule, she does fight against an almost pathological degree of impatience that has historically rendered many dishes undercooked.

Buck currently has her “helping” with lunch by reading the clues for the crossword out loud while he actually cooks. 

“Victim of hot wings: six letters,” Jamie calls out. Buck laughs. 

“Icarus.” 

“Sense of orientation: six letters, starts with a G.” 

“… go west?” Buck says—and it’s Adriana’s turn to laugh. 

“Gaydar,” she corrects him, barely looking up from her work. 

“I have been told before that mine is broken,” Buck admits, pouting. 

“Did you know that when you put a compass on top of a magnet, it’ll just spin?” Jamie asks, blithe and innocent. 

Adriana cackles. 

“Mean,” Buck says, pelting Jamie with a cube of feta cheese. She squawks, indignant, and scrambles for something with which to return fire. 

“No food fights allowed,” Eddie says from the doorway. There’s something in his voice that makes Adriana look up—something thrumming. Something different. 

He’d excused himself about a half an hour before, taking an unplanned call from Christopher. When she looks up now, she can tell that he’s been crying—the flush of it inconsistent but obvious, still, to those who know where to look. The same thing happens to Adriana—her eyes left lined red and bright with as-of-yet unshed tears. 

Eddie doesn’t look distraught, though. He doesn’t look defeated. He crosses his arms over his chest and grins at the floor. 

“I can’t believe you’ve committed an act of bisexual-on-bisexual violence in this, my own kitchen,” Buck stays, still glaring at Jamie with about as much genuine venom as a border collie might be capable of summoning. 

“Pretty sure it’s my kitchen,” Eddie says. 

“Legally, sure. But spiritually?” Buck says, gesticulating toward what Adriana can only assume is the spirit of the kitchen with the knife he’s holding before returning it—and the better part of his focus—to the work on his cutting board. “How’s Chris?” 

“Good, he’s good,” Eddie says. “He was curious, though—have you got plans on Sunday?” 

“Not that I can think of,” Buck says: then, clearly having picked up on that same… something that Adriana’s noticed, he asks a careful question: “What’s up?” 

“Well, Chris was hoping we could pick him up,” Eddie says. “He’s ready to come home.” 

The almost metronymic rhythm of Buck’s knife on the cutting board stutters to a stop. Adriana finishes typing out the word peristeronic—relating to, resembling, or suggestive of pigeons—her fingers finding the keys purely by continuing motion. Jamie discreetly eats the cube of feta that Buck had weaponized against her a moment ago. 

“Really?” Buck asks, his voice stunned, hopeful, small. He sounds younger than Adriana’s used to. 

“Yeah,” Eddie replies, speaking through a breathless laugh. 

Buck crosses the kitchen with a few purposeful strides, an already modest distance made shorter by some combination of physiology and haste. Eddie has to brace against the momentum, but Buck’s arms close around his waist as easily as Eddie’s hands fall onto his shoulders. 

Adriana is struck, briefly and again, by the fact that Buck makes Eddie look small. 

Eddie, who has been, too often, her Ozymandius—vast, a shadow-casting thing in the desert of the years they’d spent apart. 

Eddie, who’d had at least twice as large a part to play in raising her than he should have—too young, a father at nineteen. This was the opinion of those who hadn’t fully considered the fact that he’d been doing as much as he could on Adriana’s behalf since the day before she was born—that he’d been only eight years-old at the time, and already so much himself. Brave, she thinks, the bravest man I’ve ever known. 

Eight years-old at the time, she thinks. 

Eddie, the man she can't help but think of when she wonders whether or not she’d make a good parent—not a perfect parent, but a good one, the best, maybe, that she’d known. Eddie, who is not dwarfed by Buck, but covered by him, certainly. Still, it’s Buck who does the hiding—his face falls onto Eddie’s shoulder, stays buried, briefly. 

They cover each other. 

It’s the least that Eddie deserves, she thinks, indulging briefly in a well that she’s never found the bottom of: love, for her brother. 

“Told you so,” Buck says. 

“You did, didn’t you,” Eddie confirms, any exaggeration of ego briefly dismissed, simply pleased. 

When it happens, it’s brief—not blink-and-you’d-miss-it, but hardly the kind of thing Adriana would describe as indulgent.

A kiss: the first that Adriana has seen them share.

A privilege: Adriana gets to see the moment that Eddie gets it, for the first time—the idea that he could have it all. 

—

When is a broken wrist not a broken wrist?

When it’s a question that does not so much beg to be answered so much as it waits. When it waits, as one might in a doorway, patient and quiet. When it’s the entrance into a way of imagining the world a little differently than you did before. When it’s a barely remembered thing, a vestige of a world that’s lost to waking, the fringe of a dream you barely recall and cannot forget. 

When it could’ve been different. 

When it’s a child’s wrist, and they are standing for the first time after a fall—a scream building beneath their vocal cords. When it’s a child, and they have only ever known themselves whole. When it’s a crack in the dam. When you realize that some things can never be whole again. 

When it’s summer’s settling in that’s ruined your love of leaving the windows open, the outside air too humid, now, to tolerate. When there’s two crows to the west of your yard, tangling a nest into nearby power lines, and you ache. 

When it was never about the wrist. When it’s about the moldering oranges, moved from the basket to the bin—when it’s all gone to pulp beneath unbroken peel. When it’s lethargy alone that has you bootlegging sympathy, wishing for more, and begging, too. When it’s all for a cause that was never lost—only strayed. When you let it get away from you. When your grief becomes a house-pet, asleep at the foot of your bed.

When your living room becomes a carapace—when you learn that a turtle is not in a shell, the turtle is the shell. When a ribcage is far to supple a place to call a home, really. When you try, despite it all. When it’s a pace you call worthy, when you’re keeping up with more than just appearances—and you breathe it in, and breathe in it, and struggle. When it’s all you have: this ribcage, a home. If you can’t get through the sternum, you’ll still score the bone. 

When it’s neither the beginning, nor the end, but instead, the undignified middle—a bridge, absent of architecture and grace. When it’s the quiet between two choruses. 

When it will never be the same.

When you sprint, and remember that your ankles, too, are all sprain—tendons loose as old shoelaces. When your muscles are lucid with bruising, when each cramp is as bright as the breach of a new day. 

When there is nothing else to be done. 

When it’s an accident. 

When it’s a promise. When you didn’t mean it: when you swear you didn’t mean it. When you didn’t mean to: when you swear you didn’t mean to. When you didn’t mean this: when you swear you didn’t mean for it to go this way.

When it’s a wrist, unbroken—which is to say, healed.

When it’s over. 

—

May Grant’s birthday arrives, and the four of them arrive together at the Grant-Nash house, bearing a perfectly executed lemon cream tart and a bottle of champagne. 

Buck has pre-emptively foisted the tart and the bottle off to Adriana and Jamie, respectively, which she appreciates. Handling the tart on one side and her girlfriend’s clammy palm on the other, she doesn’t have to guess what to do with her hands. 

The first thing she understands about May Grant is that she shouldn’t have been worried: May greets Adriana like an old friend. 

—but first, she hugs Buck like she’d thought that they’d never see each other again—an energy he matches completely, lifting her clean off the ground. 

—then, she hugs Eddie: the kind of firm, confident hug shared by old friends who’ve gone without seeing each other for longer than they’d have liked to. 

It’s after she’s released Eddie that her attention lands on Adriana—and also on Jamie, by virtue of the fact that Jamie stands just a few inches behind her, their hands tangled together. 

May Grant is, in a word, lovely. Doe-eyed and delicate, she takes after her mother in more ways than one—there’s something especially deft in her gestures, in her posture, in the way her gaze move across a room. Incisive, almost. 

Whatever she sees in Adriana—and Adriana does feel confident she’s managed to see something—it has her deciding to open her arms. Buck has both the lemon tart and the champagne out of the way a second later—in an agile move that he executes too quickly for Adriana to find impressive, really—and then she’s being brought into a brief, confident hug. 

Just a friendly embrace, but one in a matched set—the first extended to Adriana, and the other to Jamie.

More greetings, more gracious commentary, all of it coming easily: it really is a beautiful home. 

Like, incredibly beautiful. 

So much so that Jamie turns wide-eyes to Adriana when they finally round the corner into the kitchen, and the only thing Adriana has to offer in return is what she assumes are her equally-as-wide-eyes and a shrug that she hopes goes unnoticed by anyone else. 

Buck moves through the house like it’s somewhere he’d lived once, and now misses dearly—equal parts familiar and reverent, careful and comfortable. He’s quick to hug Bobby, who truly seems to have achieved the perfectly balanced state of being both hard at work and hardly working. 

Before anything resembling a conversation can really begin, Buck’s gone—ducking into the yard through the open sliding door, he leaves Jamie and Adriana behind.

“Hello again, Adriana,” Bobby says, voice warm, smile welcoming.

“Thanks for having us, Captain Nash,” she replies. 

“Please—and especially here—call me Bobby,” he says, “—and you must be Jamie?” 

“I am—and you have a beautiful home.”

“Always better for having shared it—I’d offer to shake your hand, but…” Bobby waves at her with hands soaked in oil and spices, making exactly the same joke he had in Eddie’s kitchen, before— “besides that, how are you enjoying LA? Buck’s told me that you’re quite the sous chef.”

“He did?” Jamie says, laughing as she visibly brightens.

“He absolutely did,” Bobby repeats. “Actually—why don’t you come give me a hand in the kitchen for a minute? I could use some help throwing together a few of the sides.” 

Jamie all but bounds behind the kitchen island once given permission, remembering Buck’s critical first lesson: to wash her hands thoroughly before she even thought about touching the food. Adriana carries on—bound, she knows, to find someone she’s already been introduced to, at the very least. 

She hears Eddie laughing before she sees him, only just outside of the door to the expansive backyard. He’s engaged in a conversation that Adriana can only describe as borderline aggressive based on her first impression. 

“—and I did hear that you’ve been having a bit of a rough time,” the unfamiliar voice says, once she’s close enough to make out the discussion—it’s a voice that’s neither sympathetic, nor goading, but a secret third thing. 

“Better, now—and you’ll be pleased to know that I haven’t heard anything about you at all,” Eddie returns, precise and blunt in a way that doesn’t necessarily seem more reassuring than it is insulting—or vice versa. 

Adriana’s expecting to see a very different scene by the time that she gets her eyes on whatever the hell this is—but finds herself greeted by a man who looks like he should be playing the personification of an insurance policy in a commercial. He’s offering Eddie one of the sharpest smiles she’s ever seen on anyone that wasn’t—ohh. 

Adriana categorizes the man as New Sophia, offers him a smile as mild as his is caustic, and walks right past them both. 

Maddie and Chimney are talking to Ravi and another man—younger, she can see that he regards Chimney with nothing short of veneration. It’s the kind of hero-worship that’s conditioned by proximity, by knowing—the kind of veneration that’s given texture when you do know your heroes in all of the ways that matter. 

Athena and a teen boy are doing their utmost to entertain Jee and Mara—she can see the boy taking one of Jee’s newly invented rules in stride and assumes that this must be Denny. Hen and another woman—almost certainly Hen’s wife, Karen—look on, fond. 

Buck appears beside her and bumps one of his shoulders off of her own. He has to work for a second to find the right angle—one that doesn’t necessitate him squatting down to meet her. 

Truly, no amount of settling into each other’s company is going to change their—now confirmed—thirteen-and-a-half inch height difference. 

Eddie appears at her left side, his hand falling across her shoulders, making the already slim space between her right shoulder and Buck’s left arm non-existent—connecting them, with a loose grip on her, his knuckles brushing against the outside of Buck’s arm. 

“Can I grab you two anything?” Buck asks. 

“—playing host already, Buck?” May says, arriving at Buck’s other side. 

“—you know me, Miss Mayflower: whenever and wherever I can.” 

“—within reason,” Eddie interjects. Buck shrugs. 

“We’re trying that out.” 

“Mayflower?” Adriana asks, wondering if that’s something she’s missed—a full name, a chosen name. 

“It’s my name, I mean, kind of—May, and my middle name, Iris. May Iris.”

“Hence: Mayflower,” Buck says. 

“Mine’s Chickadee,” Adriana says, speaking directly to May—a moment of commiseration, a moment of confirmation. “Our Abuela was the one who started it, I think, but it was all Eddie’s fault. Turns out, if you repeat the word Eddie too quickly, over and over…” 

May laughs—a pealing laugh, bright and clear. 

“It’s your party, May—can I get you anything?” Buck leans in, bringing the conversation back to its start. He continues in a whisper, faux-conspiratorial and more than loud enough for both Adriana and Eddie to clearly hear: “Don’t tell them… but I can probably do better than a beer—”

“Oh my—exclusive access to Bartender Buck?” 

“At your service, birthday girl,” Buck offers. 

“Well, in that case… I’ll grab an Old Fashioned,” May says. 

“Classic,” Buck judges, before raising an eyebrow at Adriana.  

“Genuinely, would just love a beer.” 

“Boring,” Buck says, before turning his gaze to Eddie, who shrugs. 

“Surprise me.” 

“I always try my best,” Buck replies with a wink that hides very little and elicits something that might’ve been the beginning of an actual gasp from May. 

Eddie does nothing to school his pretty openly besotted expression.

“If you keep looking at him like that, someone’s going to catch on,” May says to Eddie, once Buck is out of sight, crossing her arms. 

“Good,” Eddie shrugs, before he grins at May, almost rakish. “It took Buck long enough to figure it out—the quicker everyone else realizes, the better.” 

May actually does gasp.

“Are you—” she starts, but Eddie interrupts. 

“Happy Birthday, May,” he offers, placidly, before leaving her with a wink and an unanswered question. 

“… really?” May turns to Adriana, who can’t help but laugh—laugh, and nod, entertained by the notion that Eddie had offered someone first dibs on gossip as an actual birthday present. 

“Wait, actually,” Adriana starts, “any chance that you know Buck’s middle name?” 

It can’t be Buck, Adriana thinks. Eddie was the inheritor of a legacy twice over—Edmundo Ramon Diaz. Sophia carried with her their Abuela’s name—Isabel. Sophia Isabel Diaz. 

Adriana—well. 

In this aspect, Adriana—standing at all of five-feet-and-almost-two-inches in stature—was the most Swedish among them. 

She’d inherited the name: Adriana Esther Diaz. 

May, conspicuously, clears her throat before she answers Adriana’s question: 

“Buck’s name? It’s, um—Evan. Evan Isaac Buckley.” May tells her with a certainty that doesn’t stop her from adding: “I think.” 

“Oh, brutal,” Adriana replies, before she can stop herself, because oh my god—

May just cringes and nods. 

Adriana had truly been expecting—hoping, really—to hear a name like… Derek, or maybe Tyler. 

Something meaninglessly Mid-Atlantic, or meaninglessly mid-nineties, something easy to ignore, something that didn’t seem like part of the story—

“Don’t look now,” May says, after a moment, “but I do think your girlfriend is about sixty seconds away from getting herself adopted.”

Adriana does look: Hen and Karen are standing opposite Jamie, both looking equally enchanted. 

“I better—but, hey. It’s—happy birthday, honestly,” Adriana says. “Eddie and Buck and Maddie—kind of… everyone, really? They all love you a whole lot. I was really hoping I’d actually get the chance to meet you myself.” 

May reaches out, squeezes her hand once, and replies: 

“Thank you—and you, too,” May says, and Adriana must be wearing her confusion plainly, because she elaborates: “Eddie, and Buck, and Maddie, and… kind of everyone? I’d heard about you from them, too.” 

“Oh,” is as far as Adriana makes it into a coherent response. May seems to understand anyway, giving her hand a second squeeze, offering another smile, before she steps away. 

Adriana takes exactly seven seconds to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth before she finds her way to Jamie. 

“—I mean, if USC won’t take you on the work you’ve done with tissue engineering alone…” Karen is saying as she makes her approach. 

“Which—and I know, I know—I’m just not sure I want to stay in the engineering part of it, though. Honestly, I’m much more interested in the tissue aspect of the equation. A mentor of mine has made some progress with polyurethane bone, but tissue remains largely unaddressed—or at least, so widely debated that a lack of consensus has rendered it unaddressed—” Jamie continues, ecstatic in the face of genuine interest. 

“—and I feel like I don’t need to tell you that we, of all people, appreciate the exceptionality of operating in a needs-must environment,” Hen finishes. 

Adriana doesn’t have to find a way into the conversation, because someone else does—the man who’d been with Chim and Maddie earlier. 

“I’m Albert,” he says, before telling Jamie specifically: “I like your tattoos very much.” 

“Oh!” she says, a hand flying up to her throat, landing across the symmetrical wings that run parallel to her throat, ending just below her ears—an extension of the cranes braced across her shoulders—before she responds: “Well, thank you very much!” 

The day carries on in much that fashion—conversations growing larger, growing louder, as the afternoon continues. Dinner is phenomenal—at least as good as Adriana finds that she anticipates. Bobby gives Jamie far too much credit for her assistance in the kitchen, and everyone gives Buck exactly as much credit as he’s due for the lemon cream tart.

It’s later still, the sun just beginning to sink, when she hears Eddie’s voice cut through the din. At least a little, it’s coincidence—a subtle lull in the many conversations that nobody could’ve planned—but Adriana hears the theatre of it before she can make out a word. 

Her brother doesn’t speak this loudly unless he wants to be heard. 

Whatever Bobby had been saying to Eddie—or vice-versa—will forever remain a mystery. In the moment, it leaves the sudden influx of eager listeners in a position to guess what it was that lead to this point. 

“Actually—it’s…” Eddie starts, stalls—until he seems to fortify, reaching a hand to brace himself on Bobby’s shoulder. Bobby, obviously concerned—and probably the least inclined among the 118 to realize that Eddie is absolutely fucking baiting them—reaches for Eddie in return. A gesture of confidence; a gesture of confidence, one that does not see the way their conversation has outgrown the notion of privacy.  

Eddie, bravely, continues: “I don’t—I didn’t really want to make an announcement out of it, necessarily, but it kind of feels like everyone that needs to know—that should know—is here…”

He looks directly to Buck, whose poker face is almost certainly helped by the fact that he clearly also didn’t catch the first part of what Eddie was saying. Buck seems more confused than anything else—and confused about what, precisely, is the point. 

There’s a stark moment of silence that Eddie lets linger before he continues. 

“We’re going to pick up Christopher tomorrow,” he says. “He’s ready to come home.” 

A second moment of stark silence—this one, interrupted first by Karen, who lets out a sound that Adriana registers as furious, but most people seem in read as deeply sympathetic. Eddie wears his shit-eating grin as though his only source of joy in this moment is his son coming home. New Sophia, who Adriana has still not learned the name of, clearly knows that something is up—so does Athena, but neither of them say a word to anybody else. 

“Really?” Denny finally asks. 

“Yeah, bud,” Buck says—by virtue, she thinks, of being closest to Denny when he speaks. He drops a hand onto Denny’s shoulder, holds him for a moment, and smiles his thousand-watt smile. “I mean, we’ll be back in just a couple of days—and I already know you’re going to be the first on the list of people he’s excited to see.” 

Denny beams back at Buck, flattered and full of joy, and Adriana realizes that The Buckley Smile can be learned. 

—

It hits the golden hour, and Bobby starts rounding folks up.

Adriana is starting to excuse herself before May grabs her hand—a vice grip, and it’s her party, and who is Adriana to refuse her, really—and by the time she’s really realized what’s happening, Eddie already has a hand on Jamie’s back, coaxing her toward him and Buck. Buck, who pulls May and Adriana both in front of him—Bobby, who lands at Buck’s side, eyes full of warmth and wonder. 

Adriana doesn’t have to force a smile: she knows. 

It’s a family photo. 

—

The picture isn’t perfect: 

Buck and Eddie are caught, for one, with Eddie’s grip on Buck’s hip entirely visible, Buck turned away from the camera to smile at Eddie. Adriana can hear the conversation that will come later before it happens:

We should have known. 

We did know, we just didn’t think that Buck and Eddie knew. 

Adriana can’t be certain, but she’s pretty sure that Buck and Eddie have known the whole time, at least in their own way. 

Hen’s mouth is more open than smiling, she’s clearly either starting to say something or ending a thought. 

Ravi is just… blurry. Somehow. 

Jee, Mara, and Denny are all cheesing—eyes fully closed, teeth fully bared—

—and Christopher is absent, but not for much longer. 

—

In the morning, they’ll pack everything they need into a rented hatchback. 

In the morning, they’ll start the drive to El Paso—spending something between twelve and thirteen hours on the road. If they leave before sunrise, they’ll make it there before sundown. 

In the morning, it will be tomorrow; by the end of the day tomorrow, everything will be different.