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buddietomytarlos · 6 months ago

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from the wings

for @nymika-arts <3

Buck tells Maddie that he isn’t in love with Eddie, and she—well, she tries to believe him.

She does. A valiant effort, truly. It’s just that Maddie learned how to read her little brother before he even learned to read the alphabet, and she can tell when he’s not being entirely truthful. To her, or to himself. Like when he was five years old and he’d run inside from the street, bike abandoned on the front lawn, with scraped knees and two holes in his brand new jeans to match, and insist that it wasn’t his fault. “I wasn’t going too fast, Maddie,” he’d say. “My– My bike went over a rock.” Tearful eyes pointed towards the floor. Hands always fidgeting.

Kind of like he’s doing now.

He’s fiddling with the paper napkin his cutlery came rolled in, making tiny rips around the edges. It’s become more and more frayed as their lunch date has progressed, and Buck’s gaze is glued to it as he talks.

“It’s not that I don’t like Ravi,” he says, frowning when he rips a bit too far. “I do. He’s great. I’m just…not used to having to explain what I’m about to do before I do it, y’know?”

Maddie hums. “It’ll take some getting used to.”

“I know,” Buck sighs. “It’s just weird.”

“It’s natural to miss Eddie,” she says. Carefully. Neutrally. “You guys worked side-by-side for a long time.”

“I don’t–” His eyes flick up to meet hers for the first time in five minutes, narrowing—as if they’re playing some kind of game, and he’ll be damned if he’s about to play right into her hand (Maddie’s fairly sure all she did was make a simple comment). “I mean, of course I miss him. He’s my best friend. But it’s not like I’ve never worked with anyone else before.”

“Exactly. You and Ravi will find that wordless communication in no time.”

Eyes back to the napkin. “Right.” Rip. “Anyway, how are you? Still feeling…cooped-up?

Maddie sighs. “Yeah, but…not as bad. I’ve been going on walks. Plus, now that Jee’s home for the break, she’s keeping me busy.”

He grins. “That’s what I like to hear.”

It’s then that his phone, face down on the table, chimes with a notification. When he picks it up, his smile grows impossibly wider, in an involuntary, reflexive sort of way that almost makes Maddie feel like an intruder for looking. “Who is it?” she prompts, and Buck quickly schools his face when he looks at her, like he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to.

“It’s, uh– It’s Eddie.” He flips the phone around to show her, and on it is a picture of Christopher, in front of him a chess board with far fewer black pieces on it than white. “Chris is teaching him how to play, and he keeps losing. Badly.”

Maddie laughs. “Sounds like he needs a better teacher.”

“Eh, Eddie was pretty hopeless to begin with.”

He glances back down at his phone, eyes twinkling as he types out a response, and Maddie can’t help but think that her stubbornly resistant little brother is the hopeless one—navigating his new reality with his eyes closed; carrying a torch behind his back for a man who now lives eight hundred miles away.

She sighs.

Buck puts his phone down and changes the subject.

* * *

He picks up on the fifth ring, voice sounding tinny and a bit far away. “Hey, Mads, sorry—you’re on speakerphone. Need my hands free to chop veggies.” She hears the faint sound of a drawer opening and closing as he talks; the clattering of some utensil against the countertop.

“Ooh,” she says, “Whatcha making?”

“Soup,” Buck says brightly, “with chicken, peppers, zucchini—all kinds of stuff. Eddie sent me the recipe.”

Maddie smiles. Chim, sitting next to her, raises his eyebrows and smiles too. “Oh?” she prompts.

“Yeah–” His knife hits the cutting board, again, again, again. Chop-chop-chop. “–he found it in a drawer at his abuela’s house. One of her secret recipes, apparently. He thought I’d like to try it.”

“Her secret recipe,” Maddie repeats.

“Yep.”

“And he just…sent it to you?”

“Yeah?” And then, like he’s just realized what she’s getting at— “it’s not like she minds. She’s given me all kinds of recipes.”

“Right,” Maddie says. She glances to the side at Chimney, and her husband is just sitting there, grinning into his palm and shaking his head in a sort of resigned bewilderment. Tell me about it, his eyes say, as if this kind of familial domesticity has played out in front of him a million times over—because it honestly, probably, has. “I didn’t even know you liked soup,” she continues. Plenty of memories of her brother turning his nose up at it through the years.

“Yeah, well, I’m trying new things–” CHOP. “–in my brand new kitchen.”

Chimney snorts. “Right. Brand new,” he chimes in. “Having trouble finding anything?”

In the split second pause on the other end of the line, Maddie can tell Buck is rolling his eyes. “I’m glaring at you, Chim,” he says. “You can’t see me, but I’m glaring at you.”

Her husband just grins.

“Anyway, what’s up? Did you guys need something?”

“Yes, my wonderful brother-in-law who I have never made fun of, ever in my life—” Chim starts. Maddie’s sure Buck is rolling his eyes again. “Wanna spend tomorrow night with your adorable niece?”

Buck sighs, but he’s smiling. She can hear it. “You know I can never say no to that.”

“Great!” Maddie says. “I’ll drop her off at six. Let us know how that soup turns out.”

“I’ll send pictures. Eddie made me promise to take some so he could show his abuela.”

Chimney shakes his head, grinning. “Of course he did.”

“Goodbye.”

* * *

The firehouse is quiet when Maddie walks through the doors. She’d expected it to be a bit more hectic, really, given the time of morning, but things just seem settled. Comfortable. Yet to be disturbed by LA’s 8am traffic rush.

She hears the people she’s looking for before she sees them, their murmured chatter drifting down from the loft, and as she reaches the top of the stairs, she finds them gathered around the kitchen island, all clutching cups of coffee. She can’t help but smile at the tired, droopy expressions on each of their faces. Clearly the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet.

“Hi,” she calls out, stepping into the space, greeted by turning heads and a few bleary-eyed smiles in return. Her husband’s face brightens immediately—before he’s even noticed the big pink box in her hands. “Thought you guys might be in need of some fuel this morning.”

Chim rises from his seat for a quick kiss on the lips. “Just what the doctor ordered,” he says with a grin, taking the collection of pastries from her hands and setting it down on the counter.

“You’re too good to us, Maddie,” Hen says.

Bobby smiles. “Thank you so much, Maddie. You didn’t have to do this.”

She waves him off. “Believe me, I’m going stir-crazy in the house all on my own. This was just an excuse to get out and do something.”

They all chuckle, and Chimney raises the lid on the box for everyone to take their pick.

Well—almost everyone.

“Where’s Buck?”

Hen makes a noise in response. Swallows a mouthful of croissant, and answers, “Downstairs. Eddie called.”

And when she glances over the balcony towards the floor, she sees him—tucked against one of the trucks in the far corner with his phone in one hand, pressed to his ear, and gesturing wildly with the other, despite the fact that his recipient can’t see him.

What strikes her, though, is his smile. God, it’s blinding. Grinning from ear to ear like he’s won the damn lottery, just because he gets to hear his best friend’s voice on the other end of the line. Radiant, comfortable; so soft around the edges that Maddie worries some part of him will spill over onto the concrete floor—all from a conversation that, if she's overhearing it correctly, seems to be about Christopher’s room-cleaning habits. And when he laughs, it’s a sound so genuine that she gets the sudden urge to jump into her car, drive to El Paso, and bring the Diazes back to Los Angeles herself.

Maddie’s much more used to the restless, ever-anxious version of her little brother. She doesn’t often see him looking so comfortable in his own skin. She finds herself wishing there was something, anything she could do to keep him there.

Some part of that train of thought must show on her face, because when she glances back, Bobby catches her eye and smiles, softly. A little sadly. Like he wishes he had the power to do the same.

Maddie just shakes her head and grabs a croissant from the box. Tries not to notice how familiar Buck seems to be with the tendency his best friend’s son has to leave too many glasses of water on his bedside table.

* * *

Maddie lets herself into Buck’s house three weeks later and is met with an empty living room. It’s impeccably clean; carefully organized. Furniture she recognizes from his loft placed at perfectly opposing angles—a vase of fake flowers placed right in the centre of the coffee table. The late afternoon sun streams in through the front window, but it doesn’t seem to quite reach the edges of the room.

She toes off her shoes in the entryway and heads down the hall in search of her brother. Nowhere to be found in the kitchen (a noticeably bigger space without the table that once inhabited it), but instead, found leaning in the doorway of the empty second bedroom, as if he’d been standing there staring at it for god knows how long before she got here.

There’s nothing in the room. Nothing really to look at, other than the small window on the opposite wall with the curtains drawn.

“What do you think you’re gonna do with it?” she asks, now at his elbow, and he doesn’t startle. So he heard her come in after all.

“I dunno,” he says. “Might just leave it like this.”

“Empty?”

Buck shrugs, plastering on a smile. “Don’t know what else I’d do with it. It’s not like I need an office.” He huffs out a breath, like he can’t quite commit to a real laugh, and Maddie just looks at him—really looks, at the tightness in his shoulders; the way that smile doesn’t reach his eyes, and the bags that seem to live beneath them instead. For a split second, she wants to haul him out of here and back to her house where he can sleep until his world is right side up again.

Instead, she suggests, “You could make it into a guest bedroom.”

Buck wrinkles his nose. Takes a breath and cracks another smile, but his energy for excuses seems to run out before the words have even left his mouth, and he deflates. “I don’t think I want anyone else sleeping in here.”

It’s the first bit of true honesty that she’s gotten from him in weeks, but it doesn’t exactly make her feel better.

“I just…I didn’t think it would be this–” He chews the inside of his cheek, looking down at his hands, and Maddie expects him to say weird, but instead, he says, “hard. Living here. Without them.”

Maddie sighs, wrapping her arms around one of his. “I know. But you know, filling the space might make it feel a bit smaller.”

Buck nods, still staring at the lone window. “Yeah. But I— I think I’ll leave it like this. For now.”

And Maddie contemplates shaking some sense into him; going on a shopping spree at IKEA and forcing this place into something a little less haunting herself. But they’d still be standing here, in Eddie’s house, cooking dinner in Eddie’s kitchen, eating it in Eddie’s dining room. Buck will still go to sleep in Eddie’s bedroom tonight—and she decides that rebuilding his own life is something Buck will have to take on himself.

So she simply says, “Okay,” and lets Buck pull the bedroom door shut. Allows him to move into the living room, and change the subject to whether they should have chicken or pasta for dinner.

* * *

Maddie pulls into her own driveway three days later and finds her brother on the front stoop—shoulders hunched, eyes glued to his feet. She slams the car door shut and plants herself in front of him, waiting for his eyes to meet hers.

“You okay?” she asks, when they finally do.

He looks at her, face open and honest and pleading for answers—an expression she’s seen countless times, since before he knew how to tie his shoes—and says, “I think I’m an idiot.”

And Maddie knows, immediately, what he means, because she’s been watching him inch towards realization since he came to her the first time, mixed up and messy and appalled at the mere thought of the truth.

“Yeah, I think you have been, a little. But you know, it’s never too late to be honest.”

Buck laughs; dry, humourless. “He lives halfway across the country, Mads.”

“I don’t mean with him,” she stresses. “I mean with yourself.”

Buck swallows. “Right. I’m not sure that’ll make me feel any better.”

“Maybe not,” Maddie says, lowering herself down to sit next to him on the concrete stoop, “but it’s probably better than pretending it’s not there.”

He sighs, and she smiles, laying her head gently on his shoulder. He’s quiet, contemplative for a moment, before he settles on, “Probably.”

Maddie just takes his hand and squeezes.

* * *

Buck is wearing a sweater that Maddie has never seen before. Knitted, dark blue yarn, a little tight around the shoulders. It pulls up above his wrist when he moves his arm, reaching forward to gesture at Chimney across the dinner table in the midst of a heated debate that Maddie has purposefully not been paying much attention to.

“The second one was way better!” Buck is insisting, while Chim gapes at him, appalled.

“I’m sorry, you’re telling me Top Gun: Maverick is better than the original?”

“Yes! The stunts were so much cooler.”

“It was never about the stunts, Buck–”

Their attention is drawn from the (clearly earth-shattering) dilemma at hand when a pair of headlights sweeps over the dimly-lit room through the front windows—a car pulling into the driveway. Maddie frowns.

“Are you expecting someone else?” she asks, and Buck shakes his head, brows knitted.

“Uh– no. No, just you guys,” he says. He stands, then, moving away from the table—still littered with dishes from their dinner and dessert—and into the dark living room to get a look at their mystery guest. When he reaches the window, his whole body freezes, like some frigid ocean wave has just crashed over him, swallowing the room and its perfectly placed contents whole.

“Buck?” Maddie prompts, though she has a feeling, as she watches his wide eyes track whatever scene is unfolding on his driveway, that she knows exactly who it is. That someone has just come home.

In lieu of an answer, Buck rushes to the door, throwing it open, and behind it is—Christopher. A bit taller than when she last saw him; his hair a bit shorter, but still, unmistakably, Christopher Diaz. Even simply from how Buck’s face lights up in a way that Maddie hasn’t seen since he left.

“Hey, Buck,” he says, grinning. Then, a beat later, “Is that my Dad’s sweater?”

And Buck just laughs, smiling ear-to-ear, and lets out a breath that Maddie suspects he’s been holding in for months.

* * *

Three weeks later, the house is warm. Comfortable. The air smells like home-cooked food and the scent of whatever candle Buck had lit when the sun went down and the overhead lights felt too intrusive. Scattered all over the coffee table are plates holding the remnants of the cake that had, before it was sliced into, read: ‘Welcome back pardners, yeehaw!’, along with half-finished glasses of water and wine.

By far the most eye-catching thing in the room, though—at least to Maddie—is her brother. Radiantly happy, shining like a disco ball as he laughs at something Hen just said, leaning back in the chair that he’s tucked in close next to Eddie’s. He looks…settled, finally. Even as he keeps sneaking glances at his best friend like he can’t quite believe he’s actually here.

It’s a relief, to see him like this, Maddie can admit. To be reminded—after months of confusion, denial, indecision—that sometimes, her brother is simply content. Loved, and aware that he is loved. That his life isn’t simply a timeline of difficult moments with a few smiles thrown in in between.

She smiles. Tries to commit the image to memory.

At some point, after getting caught up in conversation with Athena about the latest novel she’s been reading (something about beach houses and family scandals), she looks back to find that people have scattered—her husband at the dining table, sneaking another slice of cake to their daughter; Christopher, Denny, and Mara huddled over a Nintendo Switch in the corner; Bobby and Hen laughing about something over by the window.

Buck, nowhere to be found.

She excuses herself, following to where she expects him to be—likely already trying to load dishes into the dishwasher despite the fact that the party is only half-over—but pauses in the doorway when she hears his voice already in conversation with someone else.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” Eddie says, quietly. Fondly.

“All what?”

“This. The party, the cake. I was only gone for a couple of months, you know.”

“Well, I can’t take credit for the cake. That was all Hen,” Buck says. “But…we missed you.” Then, more earnestly, “I missed you.”

Eddie hums. Pauses, then says, “I missed you too.”

They fall quiet, and Maddie is about to step into the room to make herself known—the guilt of eavesdropping creeping in—but when she puts one foot forward, she catches a glimpse around the corner; the two of them wrapped up in each other, Eddie leaning in to press a kiss to Buck’s lips. Easily, like he’s done it before.

“I love you,” he says. Soft. Meant only for Buck.

Buck grins—that same blinding, lottery-winning smile Maddie caught him wearing weeks ago—and says, simply, “I love you too.”

And as Maddie backs out of the room, finding a seat at the dining table beside her husband and daughter, she can tell she’s grinning too. If only because of the way Chimney looks at her, eyebrows raised, and asks, “What? Something funny?”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says, “Just glad everyone is back where they belong.”

#9-1-1 #Buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #the way i screamed #the way I cried #this is fantastic #buck and buddie from Maddie’s outsider pov #truly going feral over this

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