justapoet

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him.

Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. But they don't know about the dream.

They don't know about that other life.

They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life, and the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real.

Or,

After the lightning strike, the night is screaming at him, and Buck doesn't know in which reality to believe — the one where he was loved, but wasn't himself, or the one where he loves, but isn't sure of who he is.

Lightning never strikes twice, but Eddie will do everything to save Buck as many times as it takes.

🌩 2 CHAPTERS | COMPLETE 🌩 READ IT ON AO3

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him.

Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. But they don't know about the dream.

They don't know about that other life.

They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life, and the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real.

Or,

After the lightning strike, the night is screaming at him, and Buck doesn't know in which reality to believe — the one where he was loved, but wasn't himself, or the one where he loves, but isn't sure of who he is.

Lightning never strikes twice, but Eddie will do everything to save Buck as many times as it takes.

🌩 2 CHAPTERS | COMPLETE 🌩 READ IT ON AO3

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

Living with Eddie is… strange. Not bad. Not bad at all. But strange, like stepping into a life that’s almost his and not quite. Like sliding into a dream he isn’t sure he’s allowed to have — only this one doesn’t vanish when he opens his eyes. It’s here. Real. The smell of coffee every morning. The thump of Christopher’s crutches in the hallway. The way Eddie hums when he’s washing dishes. The sound of the front door creaking when Chris comes home from school and tosses his backpack in the corner like always. It feels like a lie.

read it on Ao3 | Chapter 2 of 2

fear no more the lightning flash

Buck falls asleep like a candle going out — fast, but not without a flicker.

Eddie stays, and he doesn’t move. He lies on his side, one arm tucked under his head, the other resting on the bed between them, fingers barely brushing Buck’s. He watches the rise and fall of Buck’s chest, the slow uncoiling of tension in his limbs, the way sleep smooths out the lines in his forehead.

And still, he stays.

Because the truth is that he’s scared, too.

Scared of the silence that had wrapped itself around Buck like a shroud these last weeks. Months, even. Scared of the weight Buck had tried to carry on his own, scared that this man, who gives so much of himself, who lights up every room he walks into, almost slipped away. 

Almost left him behind. Along with himself.

Eddie’s not sure when it happened — when he changed — but somewhere between fires and emergencies, laughter and pain, late-night beers and breakfasts with Christopher, he stopped thinking of Buck as a friend and started thinking of him as... more. 

As his. 

As something permanent, necessary.

He watches the man sleep now — his lashes casting soft shadows on his cheek, the faint curve of his lips finally relaxed — and lets the truth curl warm and quiet in his chest.

"I love you," Eddie says, so low it’s barely a whisper. And the words sit between them like a promise.

Eventually, his own eyes grow heavy. The night, still and humming, finally lets him rest.

[...]

It’s the birds’ chirping that wakes him. That, and the warmth beside him that hasn't gone away.

Buck’s still there.

Still here.

He’s curled closer in his sleep now, like his body knew it could move toward safety, and Eddie did not deny him such — his arms are draped over Buck’s waist, pulling him just a tad closer, never too much and never enough. Eddie blinks slowly, adjusting to the light, and finds himself smiling before he even realizes it.

For a long minute, he just watches — the way Buck breathes deep and even, the small crease between his brows that never quite fades, the faint shadow of the Lichtenberg scar against his chest. It's faded now, but Eddie knows where it is. 

He’ll never forget it.

Then, Buck stirs. So very slowly, he opens his eyes.

Their gazes meet, and there’s no panic, no confusion or regret or anything that could make any of them get up and bolt away. Their gazes meet and there’s just... tired warmth.

“Hey,” Eddie says softly.

Buck swallows, voice still hoarse from sleep. 

“Hey.”

“You slept,” and it’s the obvious, but it couldn’t be more marvelous.

A small nod.

“Yeah.”

Eddie could say a thousand things, but he doesn’t. He just reaches out, rests a hand over Buck’s — solid, steady, grounding.

“You should move in with me,” he says, voice a bit stronger now. Buck’s eyes, that were just dropping back closed, snapped open and wide with surprise.

“What?” he asks, and it’s a bit more sleepy than he had surely intended it to be. Buck tries to put some more distance in between them, but Eddie doesn’t let him go far.

“I don’t like the thought of you being alone, Buck,” Eddie explains. “Not like this. And not right now. It’s not doing you any good,” he continues, and Buck’s face is immediately of denial. “Don’t fight me on this. Please. You don’t have to stay here,” he says, quiet but firm. “You don’t have to be alone. You can stay with me. With Chris.”

Buck blinks. And opens his mouth to speak words Eddie already knows by heart — the same way he knows Buck’s mind.

“You’re not a burden,” Eddie adds, already seeing the worry forming behind those blue eyes, not giving him the chance to say that himself. “You could never be. You’re family. You’re—”

He stops. Because he wants to say too much, because he wants to say everything — he wants to say that Buck is everything and Eddie would do everything else to have him around, to be close and to be near and to be there and be his and belong. He stops, because that’s not something Buck needs to hear just now.

Buck, who’s staring at Eddie like he’s seeing him for the first time. Wide-eyed and confused and like he’s trying to decipher whatever it is that Eddie intends to mean with whatever he’s saying. Like he’s grown a second, a third head. Like he can’t believe that someone would suggest that at any point.

“Let me be here for you,” Eddie finishes, his voice thick with something he doesn’t name. “Please, Buck.”

Buck exhales shakily. His eyes close for a second.

There’s a lot he could come up with to deny the invitation, to straight up shut down any possibility. Buck knows that if he denies for whatever reason, Eddie wouldn’t insist right then; he’d let it go for just a while, and maybe gather the courage to ask the same thing again in a couple of days when Buck inevitably shuts down again and Eddie comes after him one more time.

Buck could just say that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He can just tell him that he doesn’t want to, and that he doesn’t think that he should be around Christopher when he’s so confused and hurt and unbalanced and out of his mind.

But he doesn’t. He’s with his eyes closed, and he’s so tired.

When they open again, looking at Eddie, there's something softer there. Something more whole.

“…Okay.”

Eddie lets out a breath, and squeezes Buck’s hand.

“We’ll be okay,” he promises.

And this time, Buck nods like he believes him.

[...]

Living with Eddie is… strange.

Not bad. Not bad at all. But strange, like stepping into a life that’s almost his and not quite. Like sliding into a dream he isn’t sure he’s allowed to have — only this one doesn’t vanish when he opens his eyes. It’s here. Real. The smell of coffee every morning. The thump of Christopher’s crutches in the hallway. The way Eddie hums when he’s washing dishes. The sound of the front door creaking when Chris comes home from school and tosses his backpack in the corner like always.

Chris doesn’t say much at first. He offers a smile the night Buck officially moves in — a duffel bag, a box of uniforms and books, and a laundry basket full of confusion and silent grief. They sit down to dinner together, and Chris scoops an extra spoonful of rice onto Buck’s plate, shrugging when Buck thanks him.

“I’m not gonna tell you I missed you,” Chris says, not looking up. “You already know.”

And Buck laughs, breathless, too surprised by the ache in his chest to respond the way he wants to.

He tries to stay out of the way. He insists on doing the dishes, picking up groceries, folding laundry that isn’t his, being quiet in the mornings even when Chris blasts music before school because he does that now. He flinches when a pan clangs too loud. His eyes dart to windows too often. He sleeps with the door cracked open and his phone clutched in his hand. There’s always a small crease between his brows, like he’s waiting for something to fall apart.

Eddie watches him.

He watches the way Buck tiptoes around a house that’s already his in every way that matters and has been for so long. The way Buck never complains about anything but never relaxes either. The way he smiles when Chris says something sarcastic and then goes quiet a beat too long. So Eddie does what he does best — steady and slow and patient.

And when Buck is just a bit too dimmed, Eddie talks to Bobby. Pulls him aside during shift change, because there are things he can’t do for him, things Buck can’t do while working, and things they both need help figuring out.

Eddie knows Bobby worries. He knows the team is worried because Buck is a bit more tired than usual, and Buck’s a good pretender — but Eddie also knows that Bobby sees right through the younger firefighter, because that’s just so much he has seen in life and happening to Buck. They joke, of course, that Bobby is Buck’s father in the 118; but outside it doesn’t stay far from the truth.

And Buck could use fatherly care. He deserved that much, especially considering what he told Eddie, and Eddie knows that Bobby would be more than happy to help with whatever it was that had been troubling Buck’s mind for so long.

“He’s not okay,” Eddie says. “It’s like he’s not back, Bobby.”

Bobby doesn’t respond at first, just looks at him — really looks at him — like he’s measuring the weight behind Eddie’s words. Eddie knows that look. He’s seen it before, in the mirror on nights he checks Christopher’s temperature three times for no reason at all. The same look he wears when he wants to believe everything’s fine, but the worry won’t let him.

Eddie recognizes the look on Bobby’s face as the same he has for Christopher sometimes, when the worry is too big and his body is too small to hold it.

“He smiles at the wrong times. Laughs when he’s not supposed to. Flinches when you say anything about the hospital or lightning or — or life, even. And I get it. I do. But it’s like he’s stuck somewhere. Like part of him is still back there. Wherever there is,” Eddie says, and there’s something like desperation in his voice now, rising like a tide. He runs a hand down his face and shakes his head. 

Bobby exhales slowly, his hands settling on his hips, wedding ring glinting in the low light of the locker room.

Eddie’s voice wavers.

“There’s something else.”

Bobby waits, patient, like a parent who’s long since learned that silence can be a kindness, too. Eddie runs a hand over his mouth, draws a breath like it hurts to take in, and then he speaks.

“He told me about a dream,” Eddie says. “One he had when he was— when he died.”

Bobby doesn’t flinch, but his eyes go soft, full of things he won’t say. His hands close into fists, and Eddie knows it’s a memory as painful for their Captain as it is for Eddie himself.

“He said it was a whole life. A version of the world where he never became Buck, never became a firefighter. Where none of us were in it. But everyone loved him.” Eddie swallows. “His parents, Daniel, who was alive. He said people were proud of him.”

A beat. The air feels heavier now.

“But it didn’t feel right to him. It didn’t matter to him. Because none of us were there. And he said the worst part was that he couldn’t reach out. I was never in L.A, Maddie lived another life, and you were dead.”

Bobby nods slowly, trying to hold all the pieces.

“He’s grieving it,” Eddie says, eyes wet now, voice thick. “Not the dream-life. Us. Like… he came back to the world and it was wrong. He misses us like he left something behind, and now everything here is too loud or too much or not enough.”

Bobby leans back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, brow furrowed with the ache of someone who loves too deeply and still doesn’t always know how to hold it all.

“I’ve seen it,” he murmurs. “The way he throws himself into calls now. The look in his eyes after. It’s not just recklessness.”

Eddie nods, fast. 

“It’s like he doesn’t care. Not about the consequences. Not about—about surviving it.”

The silence is sharp now, edged in fear neither of them names.

“We need to take him off rotation,” Eddie says, voice low but sure. “At least for a while. I know he’s gonna fight it, but he’s not—he’s not here, Bobby. Not fully.”

Bobby breathes in, breathes out, steady like always. But there’s something cracked in him too, some quiet shatter just beneath the surface.

“He’s my kid,” Bobby says finally, voice so gentle Eddie almost misses the break in it. “Maybe not by blood, but—he’s mine. And I can’t lose him again. Not like that.”

They both fall silent again. Not out of avoidance this time, but reverence. Because Buck’s life, his heart, his presence — it’s something sacred now. A miracle that walked back into their lives, a little burned at the edges, a little shaken in the bones.

And maybe it’s not enough to just be back.

“We’ll take care of it,” Bobby says eventually, resolve in every syllable. “We’ll figure it out.”

Eddie nods, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah.”

And for the first time in days, the weight in his chest shifts just slightly — not gone, but shared.

Held.

Bobby’s nod is solemn when he speaks again, as if he’s had another conversation with himself inside his head. 

“We’ll cover for as long as it takes.”

So Buck stays off rotation. Officially. Eddie tells him it’s a joint decision, and Buck tries to argue — but his body’s too tired and his voice is too thin to win. He crumples into the couch that night and says thank you like he’s apologizing for it.

The days are long. Some of them hurt. Some of them are a little easier.

And sometimes, Eddie finds Buck in the kitchen late at night, rubbing at his chest like the pain is still there, etched into his skin. He doesn’t ask questions — not right away. He just walks up, offers a warm glass of milk, a wordless hand on his back, a quiet presence in the noise of Buck’s mind.

They haven’t talked about the dream again. Not yet.

But Eddie sees it — in the way Buck looks at Chris with reverence and horror, like the boy is a ghost he was never supposed to know. In the way Buck grips the doorframe sometimes like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

Eddie sees it, and he stays. He stays anyway.

And that, more than anything, starts to make Buck feel like maybe — just maybe — he hasn’t lost everything.

[..]

The days pass like fog — thick and unsteady and cold at the edges.

Buck lives in the Diaz house like a ghost of himself. He wakes up early most mornings, despite the exhaustion that never seems to ease. Makes too much coffee, though he drinks very little of it. He spends too long staring out the window, as if the world might explain itself if he just watches long enough. He folds laundry with trembling hands. Washes dishes with too much care. Organizes things that don’t need organizing — the spice rack, the mail tray, the first aid kit.

Chris is kind in the way that only a teenager who loves deeply can be: quiet but unwavering. He sets out Buck’s favorite cereal when he goes to get his own, and leaves the TV on Buck’s favorite channel. Invites him to his room with a subtle shoulder nudge when the silences get too loud, even if just to watch him play or to watch a movie with terrible acting and too many action scenes. He doesn’t hover. But Buck can feel him watching sometimes, and it makes his throat tighten.

Eddie is... Eddie. Solid, warm, gentle with a kind of relentless steadiness that Buck both clings to and wants to run from. He doesn’t pry. He doesn’t push. He just exists with Buck — in the soft quiet of evening meals and in the hum of Saturday mornings filled with laundry and slow music. He touches Buck’s shoulder sometimes when he passes. Hands him mugs, coats, plates with the ease of someone who sees him — all of him — even when Buck tries so hard to stay invisible.

Some days, Buck breathes easier.

Some nights, he even sleeps without waking in a sweat.

But then there are the other days.

The bad ones.

The ones where the world tilts again, just slightly, and all the colors seem wrong. The ones where his skin feels tight, like it’s trying to hold in a grief too big to name. The ones where he startles at thunder on a clear day and forgets where he is for just a second — and it’s enough to make his chest cave in.

And this morning—

This morning is screaming at him.

It starts before the sun. A soundless panic. The kind that opens its eyes inside your chest and spreads its limbs until there’s no room to breathe.

Buck stumbles to the bathroom before the world can catch up. He flicks the light on and stares at himself in the mirror.

And there’s nothing there.

No mark. No jagged scar. No Lichtenberg figure carved into his skin.

His chest is smooth. Pale. Ordinary.

It feels like a lie.

He peels off his shirt, panic twisting hot and sharp in his gut. Runs shaking hands over his chest, his arms, his ribs. Nothing. Not even the ghost of it. Not even a hint.

“I was struck by lightning,” he whispers, voice trembling. “I died.”

But the skin is unbroken. The skin is perfect. And the words and the fear and the absolute nightmare of still being alive — it all sounds too much like a lie.

He claws at his chest with both hands, presses hard against the spot where the pain had bloomed like fire, like light, like the end of everything. Nothing. He’s shaking now. Breathing fast. The world tilts again, and he holds onto the sink to keep from collapsing.

He doesn’t see Eddie coming in.

“Buck?”

The voice comes soft, but urgent. And Buck doesn’t answer.

The door’s open, but the light’s off. The silence isn’t silence — it’s something alive, something crawling along the tiles and curling around the porcelain edges of the tub like smoke.

Eddie steps into the bathroom slowly, afraid to startle him, afraid not to.

That’s when he hears it. The whisper of breath coming too fast. The sound of someone breaking apart, quietly, as if by habit.

“Buck?” he calls again.

There’s movement, barely — a shift of air, a tremor.

And then Buck’s voice, raw and wrecked. 

“It isn’t here—”

A sharp inhale. A sob that cuts its way through his throat.

“It isn’t here. If it isn’t here, how—how can I know I’m real?”

Eddie finds him curled in the bathtub, skin flushed and knees pulled to his chest, hands fisted in the air as if trying to hold on to something he can’t name. The scar — the one that’s supposed to be there, the lightning that kissed his chest and stopped his heart and sucked his soul — is gone. There’s nothing. Just skin and confusion and grief.

And Buck can’t take it.

He’s shaking. He’s unraveling.

So Eddie does the only thing he knows how to do. He gets into the bathtub, clothes and all. Socks on tile, jeans scraping porcelain. He steps over the edge, doesn’t think twice, just climbs into the tub and lowers himself down next to Buck.

He’s soaked in seconds, denim clinging to his thighs, sleeves growing heavy, hair dripping. It doesn’t matter.

He reaches out, trembling, and lays his palm over Buck’s heart. Right in the center. Right where the lightning should have left its mark.

“You’re here,” Eddie says, voice thick. “With me, Buck. You’re here. You’re alive.”

Buck shakes his head, violently, like a child lost in the dark.

“I don’t know,” he sobs. “I don’t—what if it’s still a dream? What if I never left? What if I’m stuck there, and I just think I’m here, and none of this—none of you—”

“Buck.” Eddie cuts him off, gentle but firm.

Buck can’t breathe.

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

Living with Eddie is… strange. Not bad. Not bad at all. But strange, like stepping into a life that’s almost his and not quite. Like sliding into a dream he isn’t sure he’s allowed to have — only this one doesn’t vanish when he opens his eyes. It’s here. Real. The smell of coffee every morning. The thump of Christopher’s crutches in the hallway. The way Eddie hums when he’s washing dishes. The sound of the front door creaking when Chris comes home from school and tosses his backpack in the corner like always. It feels like a lie.

read it on Ao3 | Chapter 2 of 2

fear no more the lightning flash

Buck falls asleep like a candle going out — fast, but not without a flicker.

Eddie stays, and he doesn’t move. He lies on his side, one arm tucked under his head, the other resting on the bed between them, fingers barely brushing Buck’s. He watches the rise and fall of Buck’s chest, the slow uncoiling of tension in his limbs, the way sleep smooths out the lines in his forehead.

And still, he stays.

Because the truth is that he’s scared, too.

Scared of the silence that had wrapped itself around Buck like a shroud these last weeks. Months, even. Scared of the weight Buck had tried to carry on his own, scared that this man, who gives so much of himself, who lights up every room he walks into, almost slipped away. 

Almost left him behind. Along with himself.

Eddie’s not sure when it happened — when he changed — but somewhere between fires and emergencies, laughter and pain, late-night beers and breakfasts with Christopher, he stopped thinking of Buck as a friend and started thinking of him as... more. 

As his. 

As something permanent, necessary.

He watches the man sleep now — his lashes casting soft shadows on his cheek, the faint curve of his lips finally relaxed — and lets the truth curl warm and quiet in his chest.

"I love you," Eddie says, so low it’s barely a whisper. And the words sit between them like a promise.

Eventually, his own eyes grow heavy. The night, still and humming, finally lets him rest.

[...]

It’s the birds’ chirping that wakes him. That, and the warmth beside him that hasn't gone away.

Buck’s still there.

Still here.

He’s curled closer in his sleep now, like his body knew it could move toward safety, and Eddie did not deny him such — his arms are draped over Buck’s waist, pulling him just a tad closer, never too much and never enough. Eddie blinks slowly, adjusting to the light, and finds himself smiling before he even realizes it.

For a long minute, he just watches — the way Buck breathes deep and even, the small crease between his brows that never quite fades, the faint shadow of the Lichtenberg scar against his chest. It's faded now, but Eddie knows where it is. 

He’ll never forget it.

Then, Buck stirs. So very slowly, he opens his eyes.

Their gazes meet, and there’s no panic, no confusion or regret or anything that could make any of them get up and bolt away. Their gazes meet and there’s just... tired warmth.

“Hey,” Eddie says softly.

Buck swallows, voice still hoarse from sleep. 

“Hey.”

“You slept,” and it’s the obvious, but it couldn’t be more marvelous.

A small nod.

“Yeah.”

Eddie could say a thousand things, but he doesn’t. He just reaches out, rests a hand over Buck’s — solid, steady, grounding.

“You should move in with me,” he says, voice a bit stronger now. Buck’s eyes, that were just dropping back closed, snapped open and wide with surprise.

“What?” he asks, and it’s a bit more sleepy than he had surely intended it to be. Buck tries to put some more distance in between them, but Eddie doesn’t let him go far.

“I don’t like the thought of you being alone, Buck,” Eddie explains. “Not like this. And not right now. It’s not doing you any good,” he continues, and Buck’s face is immediately of denial. “Don’t fight me on this. Please. You don’t have to stay here,” he says, quiet but firm. “You don’t have to be alone. You can stay with me. With Chris.”

Buck blinks. And opens his mouth to speak words Eddie already knows by heart — the same way he knows Buck’s mind.

“You’re not a burden,” Eddie adds, already seeing the worry forming behind those blue eyes, not giving him the chance to say that himself. “You could never be. You’re family. You’re—”

He stops. Because he wants to say too much, because he wants to say everything — he wants to say that Buck is everything and Eddie would do everything else to have him around, to be close and to be near and to be there and be his and belong. He stops, because that’s not something Buck needs to hear just now.

Buck, who’s staring at Eddie like he’s seeing him for the first time. Wide-eyed and confused and like he’s trying to decipher whatever it is that Eddie intends to mean with whatever he’s saying. Like he’s grown a second, a third head. Like he can’t believe that someone would suggest that at any point.

“Let me be here for you,” Eddie finishes, his voice thick with something he doesn’t name. “Please, Buck.”

Buck exhales shakily. His eyes close for a second.

There’s a lot he could come up with to deny the invitation, to straight up shut down any possibility. Buck knows that if he denies for whatever reason, Eddie wouldn’t insist right then; he’d let it go for just a while, and maybe gather the courage to ask the same thing again in a couple of days when Buck inevitably shuts down again and Eddie comes after him one more time.

Buck could just say that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He can just tell him that he doesn’t want to, and that he doesn’t think that he should be around Christopher when he’s so confused and hurt and unbalanced and out of his mind.

But he doesn’t. He’s with his eyes closed, and he’s so tired.

When they open again, looking at Eddie, there's something softer there. Something more whole.

“…Okay.”

Eddie lets out a breath, and squeezes Buck’s hand.

“We’ll be okay,” he promises.

And this time, Buck nods like he believes him.

[...]

Living with Eddie is… strange.

Not bad. Not bad at all. But strange, like stepping into a life that’s almost his and not quite. Like sliding into a dream he isn’t sure he’s allowed to have — only this one doesn’t vanish when he opens his eyes. It’s here. Real. The smell of coffee every morning. The thump of Christopher’s crutches in the hallway. The way Eddie hums when he’s washing dishes. The sound of the front door creaking when Chris comes home from school and tosses his backpack in the corner like always.

Chris doesn’t say much at first. He offers a smile the night Buck officially moves in — a duffel bag, a box of uniforms and books, and a laundry basket full of confusion and silent grief. They sit down to dinner together, and Chris scoops an extra spoonful of rice onto Buck’s plate, shrugging when Buck thanks him.

“I’m not gonna tell you I missed you,” Chris says, not looking up. “You already know.”

And Buck laughs, breathless, too surprised by the ache in his chest to respond the way he wants to.

He tries to stay out of the way. He insists on doing the dishes, picking up groceries, folding laundry that isn’t his, being quiet in the mornings even when Chris blasts music before school because he does that now. He flinches when a pan clangs too loud. His eyes dart to windows too often. He sleeps with the door cracked open and his phone clutched in his hand. There’s always a small crease between his brows, like he’s waiting for something to fall apart.

Eddie watches him.

He watches the way Buck tiptoes around a house that’s already his in every way that matters and has been for so long. The way Buck never complains about anything but never relaxes either. The way he smiles when Chris says something sarcastic and then goes quiet a beat too long. So Eddie does what he does best — steady and slow and patient.

And when Buck is just a bit too dimmed, Eddie talks to Bobby. Pulls him aside during shift change, because there are things he can’t do for him, things Buck can’t do while working, and things they both need help figuring out.

Eddie knows Bobby worries. He knows the team is worried because Buck is a bit more tired than usual, and Buck’s a good pretender — but Eddie also knows that Bobby sees right through the younger firefighter, because that’s just so much he has seen in life and happening to Buck. They joke, of course, that Bobby is Buck’s father in the 118; but outside it doesn’t stay far from the truth.

And Buck could use fatherly care. He deserved that much, especially considering what he told Eddie, and Eddie knows that Bobby would be more than happy to help with whatever it was that had been troubling Buck’s mind for so long.

“He’s not okay,” Eddie says. “It’s like he’s not back, Bobby.”

Bobby doesn’t respond at first, just looks at him — really looks at him — like he’s measuring the weight behind Eddie’s words. Eddie knows that look. He’s seen it before, in the mirror on nights he checks Christopher’s temperature three times for no reason at all. The same look he wears when he wants to believe everything’s fine, but the worry won’t let him.

Eddie recognizes the look on Bobby’s face as the same he has for Christopher sometimes, when the worry is too big and his body is too small to hold it.

“He smiles at the wrong times. Laughs when he’s not supposed to. Flinches when you say anything about the hospital or lightning or — or life, even. And I get it. I do. But it’s like he’s stuck somewhere. Like part of him is still back there. Wherever there is,” Eddie says, and there’s something like desperation in his voice now, rising like a tide. He runs a hand down his face and shakes his head. 

Bobby exhales slowly, his hands settling on his hips, wedding ring glinting in the low light of the locker room.

Eddie’s voice wavers.

“There’s something else.”

Bobby waits, patient, like a parent who’s long since learned that silence can be a kindness, too. Eddie runs a hand over his mouth, draws a breath like it hurts to take in, and then he speaks.

“He told me about a dream,” Eddie says. “One he had when he was— when he died.”

Bobby doesn’t flinch, but his eyes go soft, full of things he won’t say. His hands close into fists, and Eddie knows it’s a memory as painful for their Captain as it is for Eddie himself.

“He said it was a whole life. A version of the world where he never became Buck, never became a firefighter. Where none of us were in it. But everyone loved him.” Eddie swallows. “His parents, Daniel, who was alive. He said people were proud of him.”

A beat. The air feels heavier now.

“But it didn’t feel right to him. It didn’t matter to him. Because none of us were there. And he said the worst part was that he couldn’t reach out. I was never in L.A, Maddie lived another life, and you were dead.”

Bobby nods slowly, trying to hold all the pieces.

“He’s grieving it,” Eddie says, eyes wet now, voice thick. “Not the dream-life. Us. Like… he came back to the world and it was wrong. He misses us like he left something behind, and now everything here is too loud or too much or not enough.”

Bobby leans back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, brow furrowed with the ache of someone who loves too deeply and still doesn’t always know how to hold it all.

“I’ve seen it,” he murmurs. “The way he throws himself into calls now. The look in his eyes after. It’s not just recklessness.”

Eddie nods, fast. 

“It’s like he doesn’t care. Not about the consequences. Not about—about surviving it.”

The silence is sharp now, edged in fear neither of them names.

“We need to take him off rotation,” Eddie says, voice low but sure. “At least for a while. I know he’s gonna fight it, but he’s not—he’s not here, Bobby. Not fully.”

Bobby breathes in, breathes out, steady like always. But there’s something cracked in him too, some quiet shatter just beneath the surface.

“He’s my kid,” Bobby says finally, voice so gentle Eddie almost misses the break in it. “Maybe not by blood, but—he’s mine. And I can’t lose him again. Not like that.”

They both fall silent again. Not out of avoidance this time, but reverence. Because Buck’s life, his heart, his presence — it’s something sacred now. A miracle that walked back into their lives, a little burned at the edges, a little shaken in the bones.

And maybe it’s not enough to just be back.

“We’ll take care of it,” Bobby says eventually, resolve in every syllable. “We’ll figure it out.”

Eddie nods, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah.”

And for the first time in days, the weight in his chest shifts just slightly — not gone, but shared.

Held.

Bobby’s nod is solemn when he speaks again, as if he’s had another conversation with himself inside his head. 

“We’ll cover for as long as it takes.”

So Buck stays off rotation. Officially. Eddie tells him it’s a joint decision, and Buck tries to argue — but his body’s too tired and his voice is too thin to win. He crumples into the couch that night and says thank you like he’s apologizing for it.

The days are long. Some of them hurt. Some of them are a little easier.

And sometimes, Eddie finds Buck in the kitchen late at night, rubbing at his chest like the pain is still there, etched into his skin. He doesn’t ask questions — not right away. He just walks up, offers a warm glass of milk, a wordless hand on his back, a quiet presence in the noise of Buck’s mind.

They haven’t talked about the dream again. Not yet.

But Eddie sees it — in the way Buck looks at Chris with reverence and horror, like the boy is a ghost he was never supposed to know. In the way Buck grips the doorframe sometimes like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

Eddie sees it, and he stays. He stays anyway.

And that, more than anything, starts to make Buck feel like maybe — just maybe — he hasn’t lost everything.

[..]

The days pass like fog — thick and unsteady and cold at the edges.

Buck lives in the Diaz house like a ghost of himself. He wakes up early most mornings, despite the exhaustion that never seems to ease. Makes too much coffee, though he drinks very little of it. He spends too long staring out the window, as if the world might explain itself if he just watches long enough. He folds laundry with trembling hands. Washes dishes with too much care. Organizes things that don’t need organizing — the spice rack, the mail tray, the first aid kit.

Chris is kind in the way that only a teenager who loves deeply can be: quiet but unwavering. He sets out Buck’s favorite cereal when he goes to get his own, and leaves the TV on Buck’s favorite channel. Invites him to his room with a subtle shoulder nudge when the silences get too loud, even if just to watch him play or to watch a movie with terrible acting and too many action scenes. He doesn’t hover. But Buck can feel him watching sometimes, and it makes his throat tighten.

Eddie is... Eddie. Solid, warm, gentle with a kind of relentless steadiness that Buck both clings to and wants to run from. He doesn’t pry. He doesn’t push. He just exists with Buck — in the soft quiet of evening meals and in the hum of Saturday mornings filled with laundry and slow music. He touches Buck’s shoulder sometimes when he passes. Hands him mugs, coats, plates with the ease of someone who sees him — all of him — even when Buck tries so hard to stay invisible.

Some days, Buck breathes easier.

Some nights, he even sleeps without waking in a sweat.

But then there are the other days.

The bad ones.

The ones where the world tilts again, just slightly, and all the colors seem wrong. The ones where his skin feels tight, like it’s trying to hold in a grief too big to name. The ones where he startles at thunder on a clear day and forgets where he is for just a second — and it’s enough to make his chest cave in.

And this morning—

This morning is screaming at him.

It starts before the sun. A soundless panic. The kind that opens its eyes inside your chest and spreads its limbs until there’s no room to breathe.

Buck stumbles to the bathroom before the world can catch up. He flicks the light on and stares at himself in the mirror.

And there’s nothing there.

No mark. No jagged scar. No Lichtenberg figure carved into his skin.

His chest is smooth. Pale. Ordinary.

It feels like a lie.

He peels off his shirt, panic twisting hot and sharp in his gut. Runs shaking hands over his chest, his arms, his ribs. Nothing. Not even the ghost of it. Not even a hint.

“I was struck by lightning,” he whispers, voice trembling. “I died.”

But the skin is unbroken. The skin is perfect. And the words and the fear and the absolute nightmare of still being alive — it all sounds too much like a lie.

He claws at his chest with both hands, presses hard against the spot where the pain had bloomed like fire, like light, like the end of everything. Nothing. He’s shaking now. Breathing fast. The world tilts again, and he holds onto the sink to keep from collapsing.

He doesn’t see Eddie coming in.

“Buck?”

The voice comes soft, but urgent. And Buck doesn’t answer.

The door’s open, but the light’s off. The silence isn’t silence — it’s something alive, something crawling along the tiles and curling around the porcelain edges of the tub like smoke.

Eddie steps into the bathroom slowly, afraid to startle him, afraid not to.

That’s when he hears it. The whisper of breath coming too fast. The sound of someone breaking apart, quietly, as if by habit.

“Buck?” he calls again.

There’s movement, barely — a shift of air, a tremor.

And then Buck’s voice, raw and wrecked. 

“It isn’t here—”

A sharp inhale. A sob that cuts its way through his throat.

“It isn’t here. If it isn’t here, how—how can I know I’m real?”

Eddie finds him curled in the bathtub, skin flushed and knees pulled to his chest, hands fisted in the air as if trying to hold on to something he can’t name. The scar — the one that’s supposed to be there, the lightning that kissed his chest and stopped his heart and sucked his soul — is gone. There’s nothing. Just skin and confusion and grief.

And Buck can’t take it.

He’s shaking. He’s unraveling.

So Eddie does the only thing he knows how to do. He gets into the bathtub, clothes and all. Socks on tile, jeans scraping porcelain. He steps over the edge, doesn’t think twice, just climbs into the tub and lowers himself down next to Buck.

He’s soaked in seconds, denim clinging to his thighs, sleeves growing heavy, hair dripping. It doesn’t matter.

He reaches out, trembling, and lays his palm over Buck’s heart. Right in the center. Right where the lightning should have left its mark.

“You’re here,” Eddie says, voice thick. “With me, Buck. You’re here. You’re alive.”

Buck shakes his head, violently, like a child lost in the dark.

“I don’t know,” he sobs. “I don’t—what if it’s still a dream? What if I never left? What if I’m stuck there, and I just think I’m here, and none of this—none of you—”

“Buck.” Eddie cuts him off, gentle but firm.

Buck can’t breathe.

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

Living with Eddie is… strange. Not bad. Not bad at all. But strange, like stepping into a life that’s almost his and not quite. Like sliding into a dream he isn’t sure he’s allowed to have — only this one doesn’t vanish when he opens his eyes. It’s here. Real. The smell of coffee every morning. The thump of Christopher’s crutches in the hallway. The way Eddie hums when he’s washing dishes. The sound of the front door creaking when Chris comes home from school and tosses his backpack in the corner like always. It feels like a lie.

read it on Ao3 | Chapter 2 of 2

fear no more the lightning flash

Buck falls asleep like a candle going out — fast, but not without a flicker.

Eddie stays, and he doesn’t move. He lies on his side, one arm tucked under his head, the other resting on the bed between them, fingers barely brushing Buck’s. He watches the rise and fall of Buck’s chest, the slow uncoiling of tension in his limbs, the way sleep smooths out the lines in his forehead.

And still, he stays.

Because the truth is that he’s scared, too.

Scared of the silence that had wrapped itself around Buck like a shroud these last weeks. Months, even. Scared of the weight Buck had tried to carry on his own, scared that this man, who gives so much of himself, who lights up every room he walks into, almost slipped away. 

Almost left him behind. Along with himself.

Eddie’s not sure when it happened — when he changed — but somewhere between fires and emergencies, laughter and pain, late-night beers and breakfasts with Christopher, he stopped thinking of Buck as a friend and started thinking of him as... more. 

As his. 

As something permanent, necessary.

He watches the man sleep now — his lashes casting soft shadows on his cheek, the faint curve of his lips finally relaxed — and lets the truth curl warm and quiet in his chest.

"I love you," Eddie says, so low it’s barely a whisper. And the words sit between them like a promise.

Eventually, his own eyes grow heavy. The night, still and humming, finally lets him rest.

[...]

It’s the birds’ chirping that wakes him. That, and the warmth beside him that hasn't gone away.

Buck’s still there.

Still here.

He’s curled closer in his sleep now, like his body knew it could move toward safety, and Eddie did not deny him such — his arms are draped over Buck’s waist, pulling him just a tad closer, never too much and never enough. Eddie blinks slowly, adjusting to the light, and finds himself smiling before he even realizes it.

For a long minute, he just watches — the way Buck breathes deep and even, the small crease between his brows that never quite fades, the faint shadow of the Lichtenberg scar against his chest. It's faded now, but Eddie knows where it is. 

He’ll never forget it.

Then, Buck stirs. So very slowly, he opens his eyes.

Their gazes meet, and there’s no panic, no confusion or regret or anything that could make any of them get up and bolt away. Their gazes meet and there’s just... tired warmth.

“Hey,” Eddie says softly.

Buck swallows, voice still hoarse from sleep. 

“Hey.”

“You slept,” and it’s the obvious, but it couldn’t be more marvelous.

A small nod.

“Yeah.”

Eddie could say a thousand things, but he doesn’t. He just reaches out, rests a hand over Buck’s — solid, steady, grounding.

“You should move in with me,” he says, voice a bit stronger now. Buck’s eyes, that were just dropping back closed, snapped open and wide with surprise.

“What?” he asks, and it’s a bit more sleepy than he had surely intended it to be. Buck tries to put some more distance in between them, but Eddie doesn’t let him go far.

“I don’t like the thought of you being alone, Buck,” Eddie explains. “Not like this. And not right now. It’s not doing you any good,” he continues, and Buck’s face is immediately of denial. “Don’t fight me on this. Please. You don’t have to stay here,” he says, quiet but firm. “You don’t have to be alone. You can stay with me. With Chris.”

Buck blinks. And opens his mouth to speak words Eddie already knows by heart — the same way he knows Buck’s mind.

“You’re not a burden,” Eddie adds, already seeing the worry forming behind those blue eyes, not giving him the chance to say that himself. “You could never be. You’re family. You’re—”

He stops. Because he wants to say too much, because he wants to say everything — he wants to say that Buck is everything and Eddie would do everything else to have him around, to be close and to be near and to be there and be his and belong. He stops, because that’s not something Buck needs to hear just now.

Buck, who’s staring at Eddie like he’s seeing him for the first time. Wide-eyed and confused and like he’s trying to decipher whatever it is that Eddie intends to mean with whatever he’s saying. Like he’s grown a second, a third head. Like he can’t believe that someone would suggest that at any point.

“Let me be here for you,” Eddie finishes, his voice thick with something he doesn’t name. “Please, Buck.”

Buck exhales shakily. His eyes close for a second.

There’s a lot he could come up with to deny the invitation, to straight up shut down any possibility. Buck knows that if he denies for whatever reason, Eddie wouldn’t insist right then; he’d let it go for just a while, and maybe gather the courage to ask the same thing again in a couple of days when Buck inevitably shuts down again and Eddie comes after him one more time.

Buck could just say that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He can just tell him that he doesn’t want to, and that he doesn’t think that he should be around Christopher when he’s so confused and hurt and unbalanced and out of his mind.

But he doesn’t. He’s with his eyes closed, and he’s so tired.

When they open again, looking at Eddie, there's something softer there. Something more whole.

“…Okay.”

Eddie lets out a breath, and squeezes Buck’s hand.

“We’ll be okay,” he promises.

And this time, Buck nods like he believes him.

[...]

Living with Eddie is… strange.

Not bad. Not bad at all. But strange, like stepping into a life that’s almost his and not quite. Like sliding into a dream he isn’t sure he’s allowed to have — only this one doesn’t vanish when he opens his eyes. It’s here. Real. The smell of coffee every morning. The thump of Christopher’s crutches in the hallway. The way Eddie hums when he’s washing dishes. The sound of the front door creaking when Chris comes home from school and tosses his backpack in the corner like always.

Chris doesn’t say much at first. He offers a smile the night Buck officially moves in — a duffel bag, a box of uniforms and books, and a laundry basket full of confusion and silent grief. They sit down to dinner together, and Chris scoops an extra spoonful of rice onto Buck’s plate, shrugging when Buck thanks him.

“I’m not gonna tell you I missed you,” Chris says, not looking up. “You already know.”

And Buck laughs, breathless, too surprised by the ache in his chest to respond the way he wants to.

He tries to stay out of the way. He insists on doing the dishes, picking up groceries, folding laundry that isn’t his, being quiet in the mornings even when Chris blasts music before school because he does that now. He flinches when a pan clangs too loud. His eyes dart to windows too often. He sleeps with the door cracked open and his phone clutched in his hand. There’s always a small crease between his brows, like he’s waiting for something to fall apart.

Eddie watches him.

He watches the way Buck tiptoes around a house that’s already his in every way that matters and has been for so long. The way Buck never complains about anything but never relaxes either. The way he smiles when Chris says something sarcastic and then goes quiet a beat too long. So Eddie does what he does best — steady and slow and patient.

And when Buck is just a bit too dimmed, Eddie talks to Bobby. Pulls him aside during shift change, because there are things he can’t do for him, things Buck can’t do while working, and things they both need help figuring out.

Eddie knows Bobby worries. He knows the team is worried because Buck is a bit more tired than usual, and Buck’s a good pretender — but Eddie also knows that Bobby sees right through the younger firefighter, because that’s just so much he has seen in life and happening to Buck. They joke, of course, that Bobby is Buck’s father in the 118; but outside it doesn’t stay far from the truth.

And Buck could use fatherly care. He deserved that much, especially considering what he told Eddie, and Eddie knows that Bobby would be more than happy to help with whatever it was that had been troubling Buck’s mind for so long.

“He’s not okay,” Eddie says. “It’s like he’s not back, Bobby.”

Bobby doesn’t respond at first, just looks at him — really looks at him — like he’s measuring the weight behind Eddie’s words. Eddie knows that look. He’s seen it before, in the mirror on nights he checks Christopher’s temperature three times for no reason at all. The same look he wears when he wants to believe everything’s fine, but the worry won’t let him.

Eddie recognizes the look on Bobby’s face as the same he has for Christopher sometimes, when the worry is too big and his body is too small to hold it.

“He smiles at the wrong times. Laughs when he’s not supposed to. Flinches when you say anything about the hospital or lightning or — or life, even. And I get it. I do. But it’s like he’s stuck somewhere. Like part of him is still back there. Wherever there is,” Eddie says, and there’s something like desperation in his voice now, rising like a tide. He runs a hand down his face and shakes his head. 

Bobby exhales slowly, his hands settling on his hips, wedding ring glinting in the low light of the locker room.

Eddie’s voice wavers.

“There’s something else.”

Bobby waits, patient, like a parent who’s long since learned that silence can be a kindness, too. Eddie runs a hand over his mouth, draws a breath like it hurts to take in, and then he speaks.

“He told me about a dream,” Eddie says. “One he had when he was— when he died.”

Bobby doesn’t flinch, but his eyes go soft, full of things he won’t say. His hands close into fists, and Eddie knows it’s a memory as painful for their Captain as it is for Eddie himself.

“He said it was a whole life. A version of the world where he never became Buck, never became a firefighter. Where none of us were in it. But everyone loved him.” Eddie swallows. “His parents, Daniel, who was alive. He said people were proud of him.”

A beat. The air feels heavier now.

“But it didn’t feel right to him. It didn’t matter to him. Because none of us were there. And he said the worst part was that he couldn’t reach out. I was never in L.A, Maddie lived another life, and you were dead.”

Bobby nods slowly, trying to hold all the pieces.

“He’s grieving it,” Eddie says, eyes wet now, voice thick. “Not the dream-life. Us. Like… he came back to the world and it was wrong. He misses us like he left something behind, and now everything here is too loud or too much or not enough.”

Bobby leans back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, brow furrowed with the ache of someone who loves too deeply and still doesn’t always know how to hold it all.

“I’ve seen it,” he murmurs. “The way he throws himself into calls now. The look in his eyes after. It’s not just recklessness.”

Eddie nods, fast. 

“It’s like he doesn’t care. Not about the consequences. Not about—about surviving it.”

The silence is sharp now, edged in fear neither of them names.

“We need to take him off rotation,” Eddie says, voice low but sure. “At least for a while. I know he’s gonna fight it, but he’s not—he’s not here, Bobby. Not fully.”

Bobby breathes in, breathes out, steady like always. But there’s something cracked in him too, some quiet shatter just beneath the surface.

“He’s my kid,” Bobby says finally, voice so gentle Eddie almost misses the break in it. “Maybe not by blood, but—he’s mine. And I can’t lose him again. Not like that.”

They both fall silent again. Not out of avoidance this time, but reverence. Because Buck’s life, his heart, his presence — it’s something sacred now. A miracle that walked back into their lives, a little burned at the edges, a little shaken in the bones.

And maybe it’s not enough to just be back.

“We’ll take care of it,” Bobby says eventually, resolve in every syllable. “We’ll figure it out.”

Eddie nods, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah.”

And for the first time in days, the weight in his chest shifts just slightly — not gone, but shared.

Held.

Bobby’s nod is solemn when he speaks again, as if he’s had another conversation with himself inside his head. 

“We’ll cover for as long as it takes.”

So Buck stays off rotation. Officially. Eddie tells him it’s a joint decision, and Buck tries to argue — but his body’s too tired and his voice is too thin to win. He crumples into the couch that night and says thank you like he’s apologizing for it.

The days are long. Some of them hurt. Some of them are a little easier.

And sometimes, Eddie finds Buck in the kitchen late at night, rubbing at his chest like the pain is still there, etched into his skin. He doesn’t ask questions — not right away. He just walks up, offers a warm glass of milk, a wordless hand on his back, a quiet presence in the noise of Buck’s mind.

They haven’t talked about the dream again. Not yet.

But Eddie sees it — in the way Buck looks at Chris with reverence and horror, like the boy is a ghost he was never supposed to know. In the way Buck grips the doorframe sometimes like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

Eddie sees it, and he stays. He stays anyway.

And that, more than anything, starts to make Buck feel like maybe — just maybe — he hasn’t lost everything.

[..]

The days pass like fog — thick and unsteady and cold at the edges.

Buck lives in the Diaz house like a ghost of himself. He wakes up early most mornings, despite the exhaustion that never seems to ease. Makes too much coffee, though he drinks very little of it. He spends too long staring out the window, as if the world might explain itself if he just watches long enough. He folds laundry with trembling hands. Washes dishes with too much care. Organizes things that don’t need organizing — the spice rack, the mail tray, the first aid kit.

Chris is kind in the way that only a teenager who loves deeply can be: quiet but unwavering. He sets out Buck’s favorite cereal when he goes to get his own, and leaves the TV on Buck’s favorite channel. Invites him to his room with a subtle shoulder nudge when the silences get too loud, even if just to watch him play or to watch a movie with terrible acting and too many action scenes. He doesn’t hover. But Buck can feel him watching sometimes, and it makes his throat tighten.

Eddie is... Eddie. Solid, warm, gentle with a kind of relentless steadiness that Buck both clings to and wants to run from. He doesn’t pry. He doesn’t push. He just exists with Buck — in the soft quiet of evening meals and in the hum of Saturday mornings filled with laundry and slow music. He touches Buck’s shoulder sometimes when he passes. Hands him mugs, coats, plates with the ease of someone who sees him — all of him — even when Buck tries so hard to stay invisible.

Some days, Buck breathes easier.

Some nights, he even sleeps without waking in a sweat.

But then there are the other days.

The bad ones.

The ones where the world tilts again, just slightly, and all the colors seem wrong. The ones where his skin feels tight, like it’s trying to hold in a grief too big to name. The ones where he startles at thunder on a clear day and forgets where he is for just a second — and it’s enough to make his chest cave in.

And this morning—

This morning is screaming at him.

It starts before the sun. A soundless panic. The kind that opens its eyes inside your chest and spreads its limbs until there’s no room to breathe.

Buck stumbles to the bathroom before the world can catch up. He flicks the light on and stares at himself in the mirror.

And there’s nothing there.

No mark. No jagged scar. No Lichtenberg figure carved into his skin.

His chest is smooth. Pale. Ordinary.

It feels like a lie.

He peels off his shirt, panic twisting hot and sharp in his gut. Runs shaking hands over his chest, his arms, his ribs. Nothing. Not even the ghost of it. Not even a hint.

“I was struck by lightning,” he whispers, voice trembling. “I died.”

But the skin is unbroken. The skin is perfect. And the words and the fear and the absolute nightmare of still being alive — it all sounds too much like a lie.

He claws at his chest with both hands, presses hard against the spot where the pain had bloomed like fire, like light, like the end of everything. Nothing. He’s shaking now. Breathing fast. The world tilts again, and he holds onto the sink to keep from collapsing.

He doesn’t see Eddie coming in.

“Buck?”

The voice comes soft, but urgent. And Buck doesn’t answer.

The door’s open, but the light’s off. The silence isn’t silence — it’s something alive, something crawling along the tiles and curling around the porcelain edges of the tub like smoke.

Eddie steps into the bathroom slowly, afraid to startle him, afraid not to.

That’s when he hears it. The whisper of breath coming too fast. The sound of someone breaking apart, quietly, as if by habit.

“Buck?” he calls again.

There’s movement, barely — a shift of air, a tremor.

And then Buck’s voice, raw and wrecked. 

“It isn’t here—”

A sharp inhale. A sob that cuts its way through his throat.

“It isn’t here. If it isn’t here, how—how can I know I’m real?”

Eddie finds him curled in the bathtub, skin flushed and knees pulled to his chest, hands fisted in the air as if trying to hold on to something he can’t name. The scar — the one that’s supposed to be there, the lightning that kissed his chest and stopped his heart and sucked his soul — is gone. There’s nothing. Just skin and confusion and grief.

And Buck can’t take it.

He’s shaking. He’s unraveling.

So Eddie does the only thing he knows how to do. He gets into the bathtub, clothes and all. Socks on tile, jeans scraping porcelain. He steps over the edge, doesn’t think twice, just climbs into the tub and lowers himself down next to Buck.

He’s soaked in seconds, denim clinging to his thighs, sleeves growing heavy, hair dripping. It doesn’t matter.

He reaches out, trembling, and lays his palm over Buck’s heart. Right in the center. Right where the lightning should have left its mark.

“You’re here,” Eddie says, voice thick. “With me, Buck. You’re here. You’re alive.”

Buck shakes his head, violently, like a child lost in the dark.

“I don’t know,” he sobs. “I don’t—what if it’s still a dream? What if I never left? What if I’m stuck there, and I just think I’m here, and none of this—none of you—”

“Buck.” Eddie cuts him off, gentle but firm.

Buck can’t breathe.

[justapoet]

"i don't comment on ao3 because i don't wanna be annoying or weird" skill issue + you greatly underestimate the power dynamic here, writing multi paragraph comments is like feeding a bunch of deeply insane and possibly starved ducks at the park and watch them go completely mad over having received a piece of bread

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

Living with Eddie is… strange. Not bad. Not bad at all. But strange, like stepping into a life that’s almost his and not quite. Like sliding into a dream he isn’t sure he’s allowed to have — only this one doesn’t vanish when he opens his eyes. It’s here. Real. The smell of coffee every morning. The thump of Christopher’s crutches in the hallway. The way Eddie hums when he’s washing dishes. The sound of the front door creaking when Chris comes home from school and tosses his backpack in the corner like always. It feels like a lie.

read it on Ao3 | Chapter 2 of 2

fear no more the lightning flash

Buck falls asleep like a candle going out — fast, but not without a flicker.

Eddie stays, and he doesn’t move. He lies on his side, one arm tucked under his head, the other resting on the bed between them, fingers barely brushing Buck’s. He watches the rise and fall of Buck’s chest, the slow uncoiling of tension in his limbs, the way sleep smooths out the lines in his forehead.

And still, he stays.

Because the truth is that he’s scared, too.

Scared of the silence that had wrapped itself around Buck like a shroud these last weeks. Months, even. Scared of the weight Buck had tried to carry on his own, scared that this man, who gives so much of himself, who lights up every room he walks into, almost slipped away. 

Almost left him behind. Along with himself.

Eddie’s not sure when it happened — when he changed — but somewhere between fires and emergencies, laughter and pain, late-night beers and breakfasts with Christopher, he stopped thinking of Buck as a friend and started thinking of him as... more. 

As his. 

As something permanent, necessary.

He watches the man sleep now — his lashes casting soft shadows on his cheek, the faint curve of his lips finally relaxed — and lets the truth curl warm and quiet in his chest.

"I love you," Eddie says, so low it’s barely a whisper. And the words sit between them like a promise.

Eventually, his own eyes grow heavy. The night, still and humming, finally lets him rest.

[...]

It’s the birds’ chirping that wakes him. That, and the warmth beside him that hasn't gone away.

Buck’s still there.

Still here.

He’s curled closer in his sleep now, like his body knew it could move toward safety, and Eddie did not deny him such — his arms are draped over Buck’s waist, pulling him just a tad closer, never too much and never enough. Eddie blinks slowly, adjusting to the light, and finds himself smiling before he even realizes it.

For a long minute, he just watches — the way Buck breathes deep and even, the small crease between his brows that never quite fades, the faint shadow of the Lichtenberg scar against his chest. It's faded now, but Eddie knows where it is. 

He’ll never forget it.

Then, Buck stirs. So very slowly, he opens his eyes.

Their gazes meet, and there’s no panic, no confusion or regret or anything that could make any of them get up and bolt away. Their gazes meet and there’s just... tired warmth.

“Hey,” Eddie says softly.

Buck swallows, voice still hoarse from sleep. 

“Hey.”

“You slept,” and it’s the obvious, but it couldn’t be more marvelous.

A small nod.

“Yeah.”

Eddie could say a thousand things, but he doesn’t. He just reaches out, rests a hand over Buck’s — solid, steady, grounding.

“You should move in with me,” he says, voice a bit stronger now. Buck’s eyes, that were just dropping back closed, snapped open and wide with surprise.

“What?” he asks, and it’s a bit more sleepy than he had surely intended it to be. Buck tries to put some more distance in between them, but Eddie doesn’t let him go far.

“I don’t like the thought of you being alone, Buck,” Eddie explains. “Not like this. And not right now. It’s not doing you any good,” he continues, and Buck’s face is immediately of denial. “Don’t fight me on this. Please. You don’t have to stay here,” he says, quiet but firm. “You don’t have to be alone. You can stay with me. With Chris.”

Buck blinks. And opens his mouth to speak words Eddie already knows by heart — the same way he knows Buck’s mind.

“You’re not a burden,” Eddie adds, already seeing the worry forming behind those blue eyes, not giving him the chance to say that himself. “You could never be. You’re family. You’re—”

He stops. Because he wants to say too much, because he wants to say everything — he wants to say that Buck is everything and Eddie would do everything else to have him around, to be close and to be near and to be there and be his and belong. He stops, because that’s not something Buck needs to hear just now.

Buck, who’s staring at Eddie like he’s seeing him for the first time. Wide-eyed and confused and like he’s trying to decipher whatever it is that Eddie intends to mean with whatever he’s saying. Like he’s grown a second, a third head. Like he can’t believe that someone would suggest that at any point.

“Let me be here for you,” Eddie finishes, his voice thick with something he doesn’t name. “Please, Buck.”

Buck exhales shakily. His eyes close for a second.

There’s a lot he could come up with to deny the invitation, to straight up shut down any possibility. Buck knows that if he denies for whatever reason, Eddie wouldn’t insist right then; he’d let it go for just a while, and maybe gather the courage to ask the same thing again in a couple of days when Buck inevitably shuts down again and Eddie comes after him one more time.

Buck could just say that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He can just tell him that he doesn’t want to, and that he doesn’t think that he should be around Christopher when he’s so confused and hurt and unbalanced and out of his mind.

But he doesn’t. He’s with his eyes closed, and he’s so tired.

When they open again, looking at Eddie, there's something softer there. Something more whole.

“…Okay.”

Eddie lets out a breath, and squeezes Buck’s hand.

“We’ll be okay,” he promises.

And this time, Buck nods like he believes him.

[...]

Living with Eddie is… strange.

Not bad. Not bad at all. But strange, like stepping into a life that’s almost his and not quite. Like sliding into a dream he isn’t sure he’s allowed to have — only this one doesn’t vanish when he opens his eyes. It’s here. Real. The smell of coffee every morning. The thump of Christopher’s crutches in the hallway. The way Eddie hums when he’s washing dishes. The sound of the front door creaking when Chris comes home from school and tosses his backpack in the corner like always.

Chris doesn’t say much at first. He offers a smile the night Buck officially moves in — a duffel bag, a box of uniforms and books, and a laundry basket full of confusion and silent grief. They sit down to dinner together, and Chris scoops an extra spoonful of rice onto Buck’s plate, shrugging when Buck thanks him.

“I’m not gonna tell you I missed you,” Chris says, not looking up. “You already know.”

And Buck laughs, breathless, too surprised by the ache in his chest to respond the way he wants to.

He tries to stay out of the way. He insists on doing the dishes, picking up groceries, folding laundry that isn’t his, being quiet in the mornings even when Chris blasts music before school because he does that now. He flinches when a pan clangs too loud. His eyes dart to windows too often. He sleeps with the door cracked open and his phone clutched in his hand. There’s always a small crease between his brows, like he’s waiting for something to fall apart.

Eddie watches him.

He watches the way Buck tiptoes around a house that’s already his in every way that matters and has been for so long. The way Buck never complains about anything but never relaxes either. The way he smiles when Chris says something sarcastic and then goes quiet a beat too long. So Eddie does what he does best — steady and slow and patient.

And when Buck is just a bit too dimmed, Eddie talks to Bobby. Pulls him aside during shift change, because there are things he can’t do for him, things Buck can’t do while working, and things they both need help figuring out.

Eddie knows Bobby worries. He knows the team is worried because Buck is a bit more tired than usual, and Buck’s a good pretender — but Eddie also knows that Bobby sees right through the younger firefighter, because that’s just so much he has seen in life and happening to Buck. They joke, of course, that Bobby is Buck’s father in the 118; but outside it doesn’t stay far from the truth.

And Buck could use fatherly care. He deserved that much, especially considering what he told Eddie, and Eddie knows that Bobby would be more than happy to help with whatever it was that had been troubling Buck’s mind for so long.

“He’s not okay,” Eddie says. “It’s like he’s not back, Bobby.”

Bobby doesn’t respond at first, just looks at him — really looks at him — like he’s measuring the weight behind Eddie’s words. Eddie knows that look. He’s seen it before, in the mirror on nights he checks Christopher’s temperature three times for no reason at all. The same look he wears when he wants to believe everything’s fine, but the worry won’t let him.

Eddie recognizes the look on Bobby’s face as the same he has for Christopher sometimes, when the worry is too big and his body is too small to hold it.

“He smiles at the wrong times. Laughs when he’s not supposed to. Flinches when you say anything about the hospital or lightning or — or life, even. And I get it. I do. But it’s like he’s stuck somewhere. Like part of him is still back there. Wherever there is,” Eddie says, and there’s something like desperation in his voice now, rising like a tide. He runs a hand down his face and shakes his head. 

Bobby exhales slowly, his hands settling on his hips, wedding ring glinting in the low light of the locker room.

Eddie’s voice wavers.

“There’s something else.”

Bobby waits, patient, like a parent who’s long since learned that silence can be a kindness, too. Eddie runs a hand over his mouth, draws a breath like it hurts to take in, and then he speaks.

“He told me about a dream,” Eddie says. “One he had when he was— when he died.”

Bobby doesn’t flinch, but his eyes go soft, full of things he won’t say. His hands close into fists, and Eddie knows it’s a memory as painful for their Captain as it is for Eddie himself.

“He said it was a whole life. A version of the world where he never became Buck, never became a firefighter. Where none of us were in it. But everyone loved him.” Eddie swallows. “His parents, Daniel, who was alive. He said people were proud of him.”

A beat. The air feels heavier now.

“But it didn’t feel right to him. It didn’t matter to him. Because none of us were there. And he said the worst part was that he couldn’t reach out. I was never in L.A, Maddie lived another life, and you were dead.”

Bobby nods slowly, trying to hold all the pieces.

“He’s grieving it,” Eddie says, eyes wet now, voice thick. “Not the dream-life. Us. Like… he came back to the world and it was wrong. He misses us like he left something behind, and now everything here is too loud or too much or not enough.”

Bobby leans back against the wall, arms folded across his chest, brow furrowed with the ache of someone who loves too deeply and still doesn’t always know how to hold it all.

“I’ve seen it,” he murmurs. “The way he throws himself into calls now. The look in his eyes after. It’s not just recklessness.”

Eddie nods, fast. 

“It’s like he doesn’t care. Not about the consequences. Not about—about surviving it.”

The silence is sharp now, edged in fear neither of them names.

“We need to take him off rotation,” Eddie says, voice low but sure. “At least for a while. I know he’s gonna fight it, but he’s not—he’s not here, Bobby. Not fully.”

Bobby breathes in, breathes out, steady like always. But there’s something cracked in him too, some quiet shatter just beneath the surface.

“He’s my kid,” Bobby says finally, voice so gentle Eddie almost misses the break in it. “Maybe not by blood, but—he’s mine. And I can’t lose him again. Not like that.”

They both fall silent again. Not out of avoidance this time, but reverence. Because Buck’s life, his heart, his presence — it’s something sacred now. A miracle that walked back into their lives, a little burned at the edges, a little shaken in the bones.

And maybe it’s not enough to just be back.

“We’ll take care of it,” Bobby says eventually, resolve in every syllable. “We’ll figure it out.”

Eddie nods, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah.”

And for the first time in days, the weight in his chest shifts just slightly — not gone, but shared.

Held.

Bobby’s nod is solemn when he speaks again, as if he’s had another conversation with himself inside his head. 

“We’ll cover for as long as it takes.”

So Buck stays off rotation. Officially. Eddie tells him it’s a joint decision, and Buck tries to argue — but his body’s too tired and his voice is too thin to win. He crumples into the couch that night and says thank you like he’s apologizing for it.

The days are long. Some of them hurt. Some of them are a little easier.

And sometimes, Eddie finds Buck in the kitchen late at night, rubbing at his chest like the pain is still there, etched into his skin. He doesn’t ask questions — not right away. He just walks up, offers a warm glass of milk, a wordless hand on his back, a quiet presence in the noise of Buck’s mind.

They haven’t talked about the dream again. Not yet.

But Eddie sees it — in the way Buck looks at Chris with reverence and horror, like the boy is a ghost he was never supposed to know. In the way Buck grips the doorframe sometimes like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

Eddie sees it, and he stays. He stays anyway.

And that, more than anything, starts to make Buck feel like maybe — just maybe — he hasn’t lost everything.

[..]

The days pass like fog — thick and unsteady and cold at the edges.

Buck lives in the Diaz house like a ghost of himself. He wakes up early most mornings, despite the exhaustion that never seems to ease. Makes too much coffee, though he drinks very little of it. He spends too long staring out the window, as if the world might explain itself if he just watches long enough. He folds laundry with trembling hands. Washes dishes with too much care. Organizes things that don’t need organizing — the spice rack, the mail tray, the first aid kit.

Chris is kind in the way that only a teenager who loves deeply can be: quiet but unwavering. He sets out Buck’s favorite cereal when he goes to get his own, and leaves the TV on Buck’s favorite channel. Invites him to his room with a subtle shoulder nudge when the silences get too loud, even if just to watch him play or to watch a movie with terrible acting and too many action scenes. He doesn’t hover. But Buck can feel him watching sometimes, and it makes his throat tighten.

Eddie is... Eddie. Solid, warm, gentle with a kind of relentless steadiness that Buck both clings to and wants to run from. He doesn’t pry. He doesn’t push. He just exists with Buck — in the soft quiet of evening meals and in the hum of Saturday mornings filled with laundry and slow music. He touches Buck’s shoulder sometimes when he passes. Hands him mugs, coats, plates with the ease of someone who sees him — all of him — even when Buck tries so hard to stay invisible.

Some days, Buck breathes easier.

Some nights, he even sleeps without waking in a sweat.

But then there are the other days.

The bad ones.

The ones where the world tilts again, just slightly, and all the colors seem wrong. The ones where his skin feels tight, like it’s trying to hold in a grief too big to name. The ones where he startles at thunder on a clear day and forgets where he is for just a second — and it’s enough to make his chest cave in.

And this morning—

This morning is screaming at him.

It starts before the sun. A soundless panic. The kind that opens its eyes inside your chest and spreads its limbs until there’s no room to breathe.

Buck stumbles to the bathroom before the world can catch up. He flicks the light on and stares at himself in the mirror.

And there’s nothing there.

No mark. No jagged scar. No Lichtenberg figure carved into his skin.

His chest is smooth. Pale. Ordinary.

It feels like a lie.

He peels off his shirt, panic twisting hot and sharp in his gut. Runs shaking hands over his chest, his arms, his ribs. Nothing. Not even the ghost of it. Not even a hint.

“I was struck by lightning,” he whispers, voice trembling. “I died.”

But the skin is unbroken. The skin is perfect. And the words and the fear and the absolute nightmare of still being alive — it all sounds too much like a lie.

He claws at his chest with both hands, presses hard against the spot where the pain had bloomed like fire, like light, like the end of everything. Nothing. He’s shaking now. Breathing fast. The world tilts again, and he holds onto the sink to keep from collapsing.

He doesn’t see Eddie coming in.

“Buck?”

The voice comes soft, but urgent. And Buck doesn’t answer.

The door’s open, but the light’s off. The silence isn’t silence — it’s something alive, something crawling along the tiles and curling around the porcelain edges of the tub like smoke.

Eddie steps into the bathroom slowly, afraid to startle him, afraid not to.

That’s when he hears it. The whisper of breath coming too fast. The sound of someone breaking apart, quietly, as if by habit.

“Buck?” he calls again.

There’s movement, barely — a shift of air, a tremor.

And then Buck’s voice, raw and wrecked. 

“It isn’t here—”

A sharp inhale. A sob that cuts its way through his throat.

“It isn’t here. If it isn’t here, how—how can I know I’m real?”

Eddie finds him curled in the bathtub, skin flushed and knees pulled to his chest, hands fisted in the air as if trying to hold on to something he can’t name. The scar — the one that’s supposed to be there, the lightning that kissed his chest and stopped his heart and sucked his soul — is gone. There’s nothing. Just skin and confusion and grief.

And Buck can’t take it.

He’s shaking. He’s unraveling.

So Eddie does the only thing he knows how to do. He gets into the bathtub, clothes and all. Socks on tile, jeans scraping porcelain. He steps over the edge, doesn’t think twice, just climbs into the tub and lowers himself down next to Buck.

He’s soaked in seconds, denim clinging to his thighs, sleeves growing heavy, hair dripping. It doesn’t matter.

He reaches out, trembling, and lays his palm over Buck’s heart. Right in the center. Right where the lightning should have left its mark.

“You’re here,” Eddie says, voice thick. “With me, Buck. You’re here. You’re alive.”

Buck shakes his head, violently, like a child lost in the dark.

“I don’t know,” he sobs. “I don’t—what if it’s still a dream? What if I never left? What if I’m stuck there, and I just think I’m here, and none of this—none of you—”

“Buck.” Eddie cuts him off, gentle but firm.

Buck can’t breathe.

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him. Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. But they don't know about the dream. About that other life. They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life, and the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real. Or, After the lightning strike, the night is screaming at him, and Buck doesn't know in which reality to believe — the one where he was love, but wasn't himself, or the one where he loves, but isn't sure of who he is. Lightning never strikes twice, but Eddie will do everything to save Buck as many times as it takes.

read it on Ao3 | Chapter 1 of 2

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him. 

There are very few cars racing the semaphores close to the loft, and there aren’t any reckless teenagers or drunk men grumbling their distaste for reality outside his window, but the night is screaming at him. The crickets, a rare occurrence, are loud and laughing; the silence, so damn familiar, is fucking hauling in his ears. 

Truly, Buck knows that the night can’t possibly scream at anyone. He learned it back in middle school that it’s all a big metaphor. Prosopopoeia, or personification, is when someone attributes human feelings or characteristics to something, either an object or a concept, he remembers someone trying to teach. A rather nice thing, really, to know and use and tell others about altogether with the other bunch of useless things he knows, but— 

But the night is screaming at him. And Buck can’t possibly be convinced it isn’t literal. He won’t. 

He’s lying in bed, and shivering. The duvet is under his frame, and he can’t move — he won’t move — to cover himself with it. It’s cold, he thinks, and he should do something to warm himself up; but he can’t. 

He won’t. 

Getting comfortable means he’d most likely — undoubtedly — fall asleep. 

And Buck couldn’t— no; he wouldn’t fall asleep. 

Because the night is screaming at him, and his head is throbbing, and his chest is aching. And falling asleep, at this point in life, in these circumstances, means surrendering. 

Buck’s been a hostage of his own head for too long to choose that, now. 

And it’s disconcerting, as much as everything else inside his head seems to be for weeks. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, and the night is screaming at him.

His fingers twitch against the sheets, seeking something — someone — that isn’t there. His breath catches in his throat like it’s afraid to leave him behind.

He stares at the ceiling, even though he can’t see anything in the dark, even though there wouldn’t be anything to see but plain white if he looked up with the lights on. The room is dark, but not empty. There’s a hum in the walls, low and electric, like the echo of a memory he hasn’t shaken loose, and it feels like every single one of those things take space around him.

Something inside him is waiting. Something inside him is wanting, and he isn’t quite sure what he expects from any of it.

Buck presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until stars bloom behind his eyelids, white and distorted and uncomfortable. He’s not crying, he’s not, but there’s a sharpness under his ribs that begs to be exhaled, and he doesn’t know how to let it go of the grasp around his chest, inside his blood, tied to his soul.

It was just a dream. That’s what he tries to keep telling himself — that it was just a dream, something his barely-alive mind conjured for reasons that even science isn’t so sure of. He was out of it, he was barely back alive, and it was just a dream. A delirium. Just a dream, and nothing more.

But the dream made sense, in a way, or it should have. The real world doesn’t make much sense, anymore, and Buck doesn’t know how to deal with it. With any of it. With nothing at all.

The dream was everything he had ever wanted. Everything he was supposed to want. His family loved him, his sister was safe, his brother was alive — and Buck knew about his existence. His parents were kind and loving, his life followed a non-dangerous path, no one died and he didn’t live to take up the space of a ghost he never knew of.

As the night screams at him, it feels like the dream is clawing its way back in, like maybe he never left it. Like maybe he died on that field after all, and this — this cold, screaming night — is just the in-between. Buck’s not so sure which reality is real anymore; and the worst part is not knowing which one hurts more inside his head, around his heart.

His phone buzzes once on the nightstand. A quiet vibration that jolts him like thunder.

Buck doesn’t look at it. He ignores it completely, because the night is screaming at him and he wants it to stop, and there’s too much noise inside his head and too many thoughts swirling around for him to even try and focus on whoever sent something.

Buck doesn’t want to move, but he doesn’t remember standing.

One moment, he’s a statue beneath the weight of insomnia, clawing his bedsheets and squirming around and trying to make the night stop so he can at least face his demons and his fears in silence. The next, his feet are bare against the cold floor, moving like they’ve made a decision he wasn’t part of, and he doesn’t look at anything remotely important in the dark.

He grabs a hoodie — the one Chim gifted him last Christmas, oversized and worn soft — and shrugs it on like armor. He takes his keys, but nothing else; he doesn’t want to belong in the real world where it’d be wise to take his phone and wallet with him, where it would be safest just in case. So, Buck takes his keys, puts the hood over his head and heads out of his apartment, thoughts loud and not a single thing he’s sure of.

He doesn’t have a plan, or any destination he’s trying to reach as he walks, each second faster and faster. He doesn’t want to think about where it could lead as he takes turns and crosses streets without looking to both sides before, and he trusts completely in motion.

The streets are quiet, oddly so, even if the night screams. Even LA sleeps sometimes, though not for long, he knows. The breeze cuts through him like glass, but Buck welcomes it, because it means that his skin and cells are working. It means he’s real. It means he’s awake.

He walks. Then marches. Then, before he can even understand what he’s doing, Buck runs.

Blocks blur into each other until the sky begins to pale — not quite morning, not quite night. Somewhere in between, like him. Still haunted, still hunting for something to hold, something to grasp, something that will tell him what is real and what he can trust and rest his peace or fear over.

Eventually, Buck finds himself at the gym, the one of a chain that is the furthest from his place. He sees it in the distance and doesn’t think much before heading towards the building, because it’s a way of giving his mind some silence — he has to focus on what he’s doing so he won’t get hurt, and there’s blaring music and other desperate, sleepy, sleep-deprived people that won’t ask questions or look in his direction. His muscles ache before he starts, like they know this isn’t about strength. It’s about control. It’s about pushing until he can’t think anymore.

He loads the weights higher than he should. He doesn’t warm up, he doesn’t stretch, and his muscles do have things to complain about. But Buck can’t find it in himself to care — he ignores the burn, the ache, the common-sense and the logic, and just lifts.

Again.

And again.

And again.

As if the burn in his arms could cauterize the ache in his chest, and as if punishing his body might silence the part of him that keeps screaming Eddie’s name into the silence of his dreams, keeps ringing Daniel’s voice in the echoing of the night, keeps making his parents’ smile ring loud in the back of his memory.

By the time the sun is fully up, sweat clings to him like guilt, and his breath is shallow in a way that reminds him — too much — of the ventilator. Of hospitals and near-deaths and other lives that he surely doesn’t want to think about.

Buck blinks that memory away, hard.

He catches his reflection in the mirror. The shadows under his eyes are warpaint, and his smile — the one he throws at the guy beside him like everything’s chill — feels like glass about to crack.

"Rough night?" the guy asks, nodding toward the weights.

Buck shrugs.

“Nah. Just needed to clear my head.”

He says it like it’s true.

He says it like the truth doesn’t scare him more than the lightning ever could.

[...]

The days scream at him, too.

Not as loudly as the nights, maybe, but just as relentless.

They scream in the way the sun hits too bright, too sharp through the kitchen window. In the way his coffee never tastes like it used to — too bitter, too hot, too wrong. In the weight of silence between calls from the team and texts he doesn’t always answer right away.

They scream in his routine, which he’s stitched together like a lifeline: gym, groceries, station, home. Repeat. No room for wandering thoughts. No space between breaths. Nothing that could give a chance for the paranoia and the fear and the absolute horror that his dreams and memory have become.

He’s functioning. That’s what Buck tells himself.

He’s fine.

No one asks more than once, and that’s both a curse and a relief. Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. Who wouldn’t be shaken after a near-death experience?

After being dead, if he was to talk in literal terms.

But they don’t know about the dream.

They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life. In their life. And the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real. 

He doesn’t know how to mourn people who are alive and standing right next to him. He never learned how to mourn people at all — even the ghosts he wasn’t even aware he stood in the shadow of.

So instead, he scrubs dishes that are already clean, rearranges his bookshelf for the third time this week, exercises until his body aches more than his thoughts and smiles when someone walks into the room. He cracks jokes and prepares lunch and dinner and he talks about movies that he hasn’t really paid attention to.

It’s fine. He’s fine.

And if Buck repeats it long enough, then maybe his brain will convince itself that, yeah; that’s true. That’s what’s going on. That’s exactly how things are. Everything is fine, everyone is fine, and there’s nothing wrong with his head, with his heart, with his soul, with him.

Fine. It’s fine.

Today, he gets to the station early. Too early for his shift, even. The place is quiet except for the hum of the vending machine and the slow drip of the coffee maker, the working team out on a call and barely a soul walking the streets so early in the morning. Buck leans against the lockers, palms flat against the cold metal, and tells himself to breathe — to breathe, for God’s sake, because nothing happened and there’s nothing happening and it’s just another day at work.

Bobby arrives not long after. They exchange a few words and, despite the look on his face telling Buck that he knows something’s off, Bobby doesn’t push. He never does — not with Buck, and half of him is thankful for that, because he doesn’t think he can talk about it with Bobby without having a meltdown. Without wanting to make sure that he’s solid and alive and the Captain of the 118 with a beating, functioning, strong heart inside his chest. But his eyes linger, and Buck feels it. That steady, fatherly worry that sinks in deep.

It’s almost enough to make Buck say something.

Almost.

But then Eddie walks in — laughing at something Christopher texted him, hair still damp from a morning shower — and Buck’s throat closes around the truth like it’s a secret he’ll take to his grave, because Eddie’s there, and Bobby’s there, and Chim will get there soon, as well, probably having taken a ride with Hen (because that’s something they started to do after too many near-deaths).

And it seems stupid, to talk about the dream when he knows that they’re there, alive and well and almost late for work. It feels pathetic, to be so shaken up about something his mind created while he was out of it, and his heart was out of service. It sounds ridiculous even to his ears that his days are falling apart and crumbling down because of his idiotic brain and some traumas none of them have nothing to do with.

Eddie greets Buck with an easy smile and hugs Bobby briefly, because it seems to be a good day for him. Buck smiles back, the most convincing smile he manages to plaster on his face, and Eddie talks to him as if he believes it.

It aches. It burns, because Buck can’t shake the feeling that this is just another delusion created by his head and Eddie is not really there. He can’t shake the feeling that his own feelings are so loud and Eddie will hear them and decide that they aren’t worth managing.

And the thought of losing him now?

It’s too much.

So Buck grins. Tosses a joke and a cheeky comment in Eddie’s way and pretends his chest isn’t caving in, blowing up, falling apart.

The others filter in like clockwork — Hen with coffee, Chim with jokes (and having taken a ride with Hen, as predicted), Bobby already flipping through shift schedules and someone (perhaps Buck himself) asking what are the lunch options they’ll have and it’s not even eight o’clock.

The morning moves like it always does, too fast and too loud. Buck lets it wash over him, lets the noise and familiarity carry him. He sips his coffee, nods along, laughs when he should and smiles when someone makes eye contact. If he doesn’t think too hard, it almost feels normal.

Almost.

Hen and Chim are halfway through some ridiculous debate about something related to birds, pigeons or winged-creatures. It’s pathetic, really — the usual banter that comes and goes in the fire station and barbecues and anywhere they allow Hen and Chimney to have a conversation. It’s silly; a sibling-like discussion and the topic couldn’t be more ridiculous.

“I’m telling you,” Chim says, leaning against the counter with a coffee mug in hand. “Birds absolutely have dialects. There’s research on it.”

“Okay, but who’s out there studying pigeon linguistics?” Hen says, incredulous. “That’s not science, that’s a conspiracy theory with extra steps.”

Chimney scoffs.

“Oh, please. There’s always someone insane enough to study literally anything. Birds have dialects. And they communicate, Hen,” he argues.

Hen laughs.

“Don’t be mad just because the downtown pigeons don’t like you,” she smirks.

Chimney gasps.

“They pooped on me twice in one week. That’s targeted.”

“It’s karma.”

Bobby, who’s just walked in and is already regretting it, raises his hands in surrender. 

“I’m not getting involved, but if you’re right, those birds are running a full-blown revenge opera. And you probably deserved it,” he says, pointing a finger at Chimney. “No one else here is targeted by birds.”

“Eh,” Eddie steps in, making a contorted face. “Buck and I got chased by turkeys. Does that count?”

Hen snorted.

“You better be aware of your surroundings on Christmas, then, if Chimney’s right,” she said. “They might plan an ambush.”

“That is not what I’m saying!” Chimney said, exasperated.

“Sort of is,” Bobby says.

“It is,” Eddie agrees.

“Uh-hm,” Hen laughs.

Chimney, much like a child, gasps again in exasperation.

“You know what this is?” Chim says, waving a hand dramatically. “This whole conversation is chaos. Like… lightning striking a piñata during a birthday party. It makes no sense. You can’t plan for it.”

Hen snorts. 

“That’s not even a real expression.”

“It is now.”

Bobby chuckles, easing down at the edge of the table. 

“The expression is lightning in a bottle, Chimney,” he argues. “Something completely unpredictable. Definitely unstable. Like the two of you.”

Buck freezes.

It’s nothing.

It’s a saying.

It’s not even about him, and he wasn’t even in the conversation — whatever that was to begin with — and it’s just a damn saying.

But the words slam into him, cracking open something he’s spent days shoving down and locking tight.

Like lightning in a bottle.

It feels like the word itself has found a way inside Buck’s mind, heart and the very veins of his body. As if the letters and the phonetics were on a mission to tear apart each cell of his blood, each atom of his being — as if it was all a joke that he was supposed to laugh at because it was ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous, because he was alive. He had survived. It hadn’t killed him.

It shouldn’t matter.

It’s just a word. A joke. A casual throwaway in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

But it does matter.

Because it doesn’t just remind him. It is him. It’s the moment when the sky opened and swallowed him whole. It’s the burn in his chest, the weightless freefall, the feeling of being yanked out of existence. It’s the sound that still lingers in the back of his mind, like a ghost echo, like thunder hiding behind every silence.

It’s the knowledge that for a few long seconds, he wasn’t here.

He wasn’t anywhere. In a world that wasn’t real, where he wasn’t himself and no one else was right.

And now— now he’s sitting at the table, safe and whole and breathing, and someone just made a joke with the word lightning in it like it doesn’t carry the weight of his soul. Because it shouldn’t. Because it’s just a word, just a bunch of letters put together to make some sense and produce a certain sound.

His laugh catches in his throat before it even escapes. He wonders if they notice the crack in his smile, the too-long pause.

The way his hand twitches against the wood grain of the table like it’s reaching for an anchor that isn’t there.

But it is there.

It’s in front of him, in the shape of Eddie’s gaze — suddenly sharper, quieter, knowing.

Buck wants to shake it off. Wants to brush it away, turn it into another joke, another laugh.

But he can feel it now, swelling like a tide inside him: the grief, the fear, the aftershock.

He thought he could bury it. Thought he had. But trauma has a way of seeping through the cracks, of bleeding out when you least expect it. And now it’s humming under his skin again, electric and unbearable.

It’s too much.

Too close.

Too real.

He wants to scream.

Or cry.

Or disappear entirely.

But instead, he just sits there, frozen in the middle of a moment that should’ve been easy. His breath stutters. Just slightly. Just enough that his vision narrows for a heartbeat. Buck blinks fast, swallows even faster, grips the coffee cup so hard his fingers ache.

And when he glances up, Eddie’s still looking at him.

Not looking — seeing.

Buck pastes a grin over the tremor in his chest and throws something back about pigeons and ducks and Chim’s clear paranoia related to anything that could possibly fly. The others laugh. The moment passes.

But Eddie’s gaze lingers for a second longer.

And Buck feels it.

Like Eddie heard the thunder inside him.

And Buck, very wisely, chooses to ignore it completely.

[...]

The days blur.

They stretch and bend, like time itself has forgotten how to move in a straight line. Buck wakes before the alarm most mornings, already wired, already buzzing with the kind of tension that feels like standing too close to a power line — not enough to kill, just enough to keep every hair on one’s body standing on end.

He gets up. He makes coffee. Showers with water that’s either too hot or too cold, never in between. Sometimes he eats breakfast, but mostly he doesn’t. Food feels like an afterthought lately — it’s too much effort, and it scratches his throat whenever he swallows, and Buck is so tired of the copper taste of blood in his tongue.

He goes for runs. Long ones, until his lungs burn and his legs ache and the world narrows down to the slap of his feet against pavement and the blood pounding in his ears. It's the only time his mind goes quiet — or at least quieter, just a buzzing thing in his ears. But the stillness never lasts. By the time he’s walking back to the loft, sweat-soaked and sore, it’s already creeping in again.

The doubt.

The noise.

The memory.

He survived. He’s fine. Everyone says so (the doctors, his friends, the other stations and other first responders who greet him as if he’s a legend of some sorts), and he insists on telling them such, as well. He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.

But there’s a part of him — deep and buried and howling — that isn’t convinced. That keeps insisting something’s wrong. Something shifted. Something stayed behind when the lightning struck.

Perhaps it was life itself.

But Buck can’t be sure of that, even.

At work, he’s efficient. Focused. Smiling. He throws himself into calls with reckless precision, much life he had always done, even if there’s a bit more desperation when he takes a second too long to respond to things falling in his direction or the fire getting just an inch too close to his gear. Muscle memory guides him, and maybe that’s a blessing — because if he stopped to think, even for a second, he might freeze. He might break.

He might let himself be a victim in need of rescue instead of the called-in rescuer.

At his house, everything is a bit worse. 

The loft echoes now. Everything’s too loud or too quiet, too crowded or too empty and nothing seems to be in the right place, even though he hadn't changed a single thing in months. 

Buck leaves the TV on just to fill the silence, lets the news cycle until the anchors blur into static. He reads half a paragraph of a book and stares at the same sentence for ten minutes, the letters waltzing around the page. He’ll shower again, just to have something to do. Water can’t drown a memory, but it’s still better than the air — which is thin, electric, stretched taut around him like a balloon about to pop.

The dreams are vivid and cruel. And the nights keep screaming at him.

Sometimes Buck wakes up in the middle of the night, hand pressed to his chest like he’s waiting for his heart to stop again.

Sometimes he doesn’t sleep at all.

And then, one morning — somewhere between the station and his third cup of coffee — his phone buzzes.

It’s nothing. A message. A ping. Ordinary.

But when he looks at it, the axis of his world tilts again.

It’s from Carla, and it shouldn’t be so surprising. They often text. Carla tells him news from Chris or a picture or even a recipe she tried and shared with Buck because she knows that he would love something else to cook — but he has been so distant from everything that it feels like a lifetime since he had spoken about anything consistent to anyone.

The text on his phone is just quite short. There’s only one information and a small request within:

Christopher had a nightmare. He asked if Buck was okay. Just thought you should know. Send him a message to prove my words? xx

Buck stares at the screen for a long time.

It’s a small thing. Just a message. Simple words. A simple thing that wasn’t at all uncommon — Buck’s already lost count of how many times he’s had to assure Christopher that he was okay, and how many times Christpher has assured him the same.

But the words still split him open.

Because he’s not okay. And Buck knows he’s not okay. And now there’s proof — undeniable and human — that his unraveling isn’t invisible after all. That someone sees it, even if it’s through the eyes of a kid who still believes he hung the moon for some reason, despite the nonchalant way of a teenager.

His hands tremble. Not from the coffee. Not from the memory. But from the sheer weight of being seen. Of being missed. Of being asked about.

read the rest on Ao3

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him. Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. But they don't know about the dream. About that other life. They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life, and the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real. Or, After the lightning strike, the night is screaming at him, and Buck doesn't know in which reality to believe — the one where he was love, but wasn't himself, or the one where he loves, but isn't sure of who he is. Lightning never strikes twice, but Eddie will do everything to save Buck as many times as it takes.

read it on Ao3 | Chapter 1 of 2

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him. 

There are very few cars racing the semaphores close to the loft, and there aren’t any reckless teenagers or drunk men grumbling their distaste for reality outside his window, but the night is screaming at him. The crickets, a rare occurrence, are loud and laughing; the silence, so damn familiar, is fucking hauling in his ears. 

Truly, Buck knows that the night can’t possibly scream at anyone. He learned it back in middle school that it’s all a big metaphor. Prosopopoeia, or personification, is when someone attributes human feelings or characteristics to something, either an object or a concept, he remembers someone trying to teach. A rather nice thing, really, to know and use and tell others about altogether with the other bunch of useless things he knows, but— 

But the night is screaming at him. And Buck can’t possibly be convinced it isn’t literal. He won’t. 

He’s lying in bed, and shivering. The duvet is under his frame, and he can’t move — he won’t move — to cover himself with it. It’s cold, he thinks, and he should do something to warm himself up; but he can’t. 

He won’t. 

Getting comfortable means he’d most likely — undoubtedly — fall asleep. 

And Buck couldn’t— no; he wouldn’t fall asleep. 

Because the night is screaming at him, and his head is throbbing, and his chest is aching. And falling asleep, at this point in life, in these circumstances, means surrendering. 

Buck’s been a hostage of his own head for too long to choose that, now. 

And it’s disconcerting, as much as everything else inside his head seems to be for weeks. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, and the night is screaming at him.

His fingers twitch against the sheets, seeking something — someone — that isn’t there. His breath catches in his throat like it’s afraid to leave him behind.

He stares at the ceiling, even though he can’t see anything in the dark, even though there wouldn’t be anything to see but plain white if he looked up with the lights on. The room is dark, but not empty. There’s a hum in the walls, low and electric, like the echo of a memory he hasn’t shaken loose, and it feels like every single one of those things take space around him.

Something inside him is waiting. Something inside him is wanting, and he isn’t quite sure what he expects from any of it.

Buck presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until stars bloom behind his eyelids, white and distorted and uncomfortable. He’s not crying, he’s not, but there’s a sharpness under his ribs that begs to be exhaled, and he doesn’t know how to let it go of the grasp around his chest, inside his blood, tied to his soul.

It was just a dream. That’s what he tries to keep telling himself — that it was just a dream, something his barely-alive mind conjured for reasons that even science isn’t so sure of. He was out of it, he was barely back alive, and it was just a dream. A delirium. Just a dream, and nothing more.

But the dream made sense, in a way, or it should have. The real world doesn’t make much sense, anymore, and Buck doesn’t know how to deal with it. With any of it. With nothing at all.

The dream was everything he had ever wanted. Everything he was supposed to want. His family loved him, his sister was safe, his brother was alive — and Buck knew about his existence. His parents were kind and loving, his life followed a non-dangerous path, no one died and he didn’t live to take up the space of a ghost he never knew of.

As the night screams at him, it feels like the dream is clawing its way back in, like maybe he never left it. Like maybe he died on that field after all, and this — this cold, screaming night — is just the in-between. Buck’s not so sure which reality is real anymore; and the worst part is not knowing which one hurts more inside his head, around his heart.

His phone buzzes once on the nightstand. A quiet vibration that jolts him like thunder.

Buck doesn’t look at it. He ignores it completely, because the night is screaming at him and he wants it to stop, and there’s too much noise inside his head and too many thoughts swirling around for him to even try and focus on whoever sent something.

Buck doesn’t want to move, but he doesn’t remember standing.

One moment, he’s a statue beneath the weight of insomnia, clawing his bedsheets and squirming around and trying to make the night stop so he can at least face his demons and his fears in silence. The next, his feet are bare against the cold floor, moving like they’ve made a decision he wasn’t part of, and he doesn’t look at anything remotely important in the dark.

He grabs a hoodie — the one Chim gifted him last Christmas, oversized and worn soft — and shrugs it on like armor. He takes his keys, but nothing else; he doesn’t want to belong in the real world where it’d be wise to take his phone and wallet with him, where it would be safest just in case. So, Buck takes his keys, puts the hood over his head and heads out of his apartment, thoughts loud and not a single thing he’s sure of.

He doesn’t have a plan, or any destination he’s trying to reach as he walks, each second faster and faster. He doesn’t want to think about where it could lead as he takes turns and crosses streets without looking to both sides before, and he trusts completely in motion.

The streets are quiet, oddly so, even if the night screams. Even LA sleeps sometimes, though not for long, he knows. The breeze cuts through him like glass, but Buck welcomes it, because it means that his skin and cells are working. It means he’s real. It means he’s awake.

He walks. Then marches. Then, before he can even understand what he’s doing, Buck runs.

Blocks blur into each other until the sky begins to pale — not quite morning, not quite night. Somewhere in between, like him. Still haunted, still hunting for something to hold, something to grasp, something that will tell him what is real and what he can trust and rest his peace or fear over.

Eventually, Buck finds himself at the gym, the one of a chain that is the furthest from his place. He sees it in the distance and doesn’t think much before heading towards the building, because it’s a way of giving his mind some silence — he has to focus on what he’s doing so he won’t get hurt, and there’s blaring music and other desperate, sleepy, sleep-deprived people that won’t ask questions or look in his direction. His muscles ache before he starts, like they know this isn’t about strength. It’s about control. It’s about pushing until he can’t think anymore.

He loads the weights higher than he should. He doesn’t warm up, he doesn’t stretch, and his muscles do have things to complain about. But Buck can’t find it in himself to care — he ignores the burn, the ache, the common-sense and the logic, and just lifts.

Again.

And again.

And again.

As if the burn in his arms could cauterize the ache in his chest, and as if punishing his body might silence the part of him that keeps screaming Eddie’s name into the silence of his dreams, keeps ringing Daniel’s voice in the echoing of the night, keeps making his parents’ smile ring loud in the back of his memory.

By the time the sun is fully up, sweat clings to him like guilt, and his breath is shallow in a way that reminds him — too much — of the ventilator. Of hospitals and near-deaths and other lives that he surely doesn’t want to think about.

Buck blinks that memory away, hard.

He catches his reflection in the mirror. The shadows under his eyes are warpaint, and his smile — the one he throws at the guy beside him like everything’s chill — feels like glass about to crack.

"Rough night?" the guy asks, nodding toward the weights.

Buck shrugs.

“Nah. Just needed to clear my head.”

He says it like it’s true.

He says it like the truth doesn’t scare him more than the lightning ever could.

[...]

The days scream at him, too.

Not as loudly as the nights, maybe, but just as relentless.

They scream in the way the sun hits too bright, too sharp through the kitchen window. In the way his coffee never tastes like it used to — too bitter, too hot, too wrong. In the weight of silence between calls from the team and texts he doesn’t always answer right away.

They scream in his routine, which he’s stitched together like a lifeline: gym, groceries, station, home. Repeat. No room for wandering thoughts. No space between breaths. Nothing that could give a chance for the paranoia and the fear and the absolute horror that his dreams and memory have become.

He’s functioning. That’s what Buck tells himself.

He’s fine.

No one asks more than once, and that’s both a curse and a relief. Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. Who wouldn’t be shaken after a near-death experience?

After being dead, if he was to talk in literal terms.

But they don’t know about the dream.

They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life. In their life. And the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real. 

He doesn’t know how to mourn people who are alive and standing right next to him. He never learned how to mourn people at all — even the ghosts he wasn’t even aware he stood in the shadow of.

So instead, he scrubs dishes that are already clean, rearranges his bookshelf for the third time this week, exercises until his body aches more than his thoughts and smiles when someone walks into the room. He cracks jokes and prepares lunch and dinner and he talks about movies that he hasn’t really paid attention to.

It’s fine. He’s fine.

And if Buck repeats it long enough, then maybe his brain will convince itself that, yeah; that’s true. That’s what’s going on. That’s exactly how things are. Everything is fine, everyone is fine, and there’s nothing wrong with his head, with his heart, with his soul, with him.

Fine. It’s fine.

Today, he gets to the station early. Too early for his shift, even. The place is quiet except for the hum of the vending machine and the slow drip of the coffee maker, the working team out on a call and barely a soul walking the streets so early in the morning. Buck leans against the lockers, palms flat against the cold metal, and tells himself to breathe — to breathe, for God’s sake, because nothing happened and there’s nothing happening and it’s just another day at work.

Bobby arrives not long after. They exchange a few words and, despite the look on his face telling Buck that he knows something’s off, Bobby doesn’t push. He never does — not with Buck, and half of him is thankful for that, because he doesn’t think he can talk about it with Bobby without having a meltdown. Without wanting to make sure that he’s solid and alive and the Captain of the 118 with a beating, functioning, strong heart inside his chest. But his eyes linger, and Buck feels it. That steady, fatherly worry that sinks in deep.

It’s almost enough to make Buck say something.

Almost.

But then Eddie walks in — laughing at something Christopher texted him, hair still damp from a morning shower — and Buck’s throat closes around the truth like it’s a secret he’ll take to his grave, because Eddie’s there, and Bobby’s there, and Chim will get there soon, as well, probably having taken a ride with Hen (because that’s something they started to do after too many near-deaths).

And it seems stupid, to talk about the dream when he knows that they’re there, alive and well and almost late for work. It feels pathetic, to be so shaken up about something his mind created while he was out of it, and his heart was out of service. It sounds ridiculous even to his ears that his days are falling apart and crumbling down because of his idiotic brain and some traumas none of them have nothing to do with.

Eddie greets Buck with an easy smile and hugs Bobby briefly, because it seems to be a good day for him. Buck smiles back, the most convincing smile he manages to plaster on his face, and Eddie talks to him as if he believes it.

It aches. It burns, because Buck can’t shake the feeling that this is just another delusion created by his head and Eddie is not really there. He can’t shake the feeling that his own feelings are so loud and Eddie will hear them and decide that they aren’t worth managing.

And the thought of losing him now?

It’s too much.

So Buck grins. Tosses a joke and a cheeky comment in Eddie’s way and pretends his chest isn’t caving in, blowing up, falling apart.

The others filter in like clockwork — Hen with coffee, Chim with jokes (and having taken a ride with Hen, as predicted), Bobby already flipping through shift schedules and someone (perhaps Buck himself) asking what are the lunch options they’ll have and it’s not even eight o’clock.

The morning moves like it always does, too fast and too loud. Buck lets it wash over him, lets the noise and familiarity carry him. He sips his coffee, nods along, laughs when he should and smiles when someone makes eye contact. If he doesn’t think too hard, it almost feels normal.

Almost.

Hen and Chim are halfway through some ridiculous debate about something related to birds, pigeons or winged-creatures. It’s pathetic, really — the usual banter that comes and goes in the fire station and barbecues and anywhere they allow Hen and Chimney to have a conversation. It’s silly; a sibling-like discussion and the topic couldn’t be more ridiculous.

“I’m telling you,” Chim says, leaning against the counter with a coffee mug in hand. “Birds absolutely have dialects. There’s research on it.”

“Okay, but who’s out there studying pigeon linguistics?” Hen says, incredulous. “That’s not science, that’s a conspiracy theory with extra steps.”

Chimney scoffs.

“Oh, please. There’s always someone insane enough to study literally anything. Birds have dialects. And they communicate, Hen,” he argues.

Hen laughs.

“Don’t be mad just because the downtown pigeons don’t like you,” she smirks.

Chimney gasps.

“They pooped on me twice in one week. That’s targeted.”

“It’s karma.”

Bobby, who’s just walked in and is already regretting it, raises his hands in surrender. 

“I’m not getting involved, but if you’re right, those birds are running a full-blown revenge opera. And you probably deserved it,” he says, pointing a finger at Chimney. “No one else here is targeted by birds.”

“Eh,” Eddie steps in, making a contorted face. “Buck and I got chased by turkeys. Does that count?”

Hen snorted.

“You better be aware of your surroundings on Christmas, then, if Chimney’s right,” she said. “They might plan an ambush.”

“That is not what I’m saying!” Chimney said, exasperated.

“Sort of is,” Bobby says.

“It is,” Eddie agrees.

“Uh-hm,” Hen laughs.

Chimney, much like a child, gasps again in exasperation.

“You know what this is?” Chim says, waving a hand dramatically. “This whole conversation is chaos. Like… lightning striking a piñata during a birthday party. It makes no sense. You can’t plan for it.”

Hen snorts. 

“That’s not even a real expression.”

“It is now.”

Bobby chuckles, easing down at the edge of the table. 

“The expression is lightning in a bottle, Chimney,” he argues. “Something completely unpredictable. Definitely unstable. Like the two of you.”

Buck freezes.

It’s nothing.

It’s a saying.

It’s not even about him, and he wasn’t even in the conversation — whatever that was to begin with — and it’s just a damn saying.

But the words slam into him, cracking open something he’s spent days shoving down and locking tight.

Like lightning in a bottle.

It feels like the word itself has found a way inside Buck’s mind, heart and the very veins of his body. As if the letters and the phonetics were on a mission to tear apart each cell of his blood, each atom of his being — as if it was all a joke that he was supposed to laugh at because it was ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous, because he was alive. He had survived. It hadn’t killed him.

It shouldn’t matter.

It’s just a word. A joke. A casual throwaway in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

But it does matter.

Because it doesn’t just remind him. It is him. It’s the moment when the sky opened and swallowed him whole. It’s the burn in his chest, the weightless freefall, the feeling of being yanked out of existence. It’s the sound that still lingers in the back of his mind, like a ghost echo, like thunder hiding behind every silence.

It’s the knowledge that for a few long seconds, he wasn’t here.

He wasn’t anywhere. In a world that wasn’t real, where he wasn’t himself and no one else was right.

And now— now he’s sitting at the table, safe and whole and breathing, and someone just made a joke with the word lightning in it like it doesn’t carry the weight of his soul. Because it shouldn’t. Because it’s just a word, just a bunch of letters put together to make some sense and produce a certain sound.

His laugh catches in his throat before it even escapes. He wonders if they notice the crack in his smile, the too-long pause.

The way his hand twitches against the wood grain of the table like it’s reaching for an anchor that isn’t there.

But it is there.

It’s in front of him, in the shape of Eddie’s gaze — suddenly sharper, quieter, knowing.

Buck wants to shake it off. Wants to brush it away, turn it into another joke, another laugh.

But he can feel it now, swelling like a tide inside him: the grief, the fear, the aftershock.

He thought he could bury it. Thought he had. But trauma has a way of seeping through the cracks, of bleeding out when you least expect it. And now it’s humming under his skin again, electric and unbearable.

It’s too much.

Too close.

Too real.

He wants to scream.

Or cry.

Or disappear entirely.

But instead, he just sits there, frozen in the middle of a moment that should’ve been easy. His breath stutters. Just slightly. Just enough that his vision narrows for a heartbeat. Buck blinks fast, swallows even faster, grips the coffee cup so hard his fingers ache.

And when he glances up, Eddie’s still looking at him.

Not looking — seeing.

Buck pastes a grin over the tremor in his chest and throws something back about pigeons and ducks and Chim’s clear paranoia related to anything that could possibly fly. The others laugh. The moment passes.

But Eddie’s gaze lingers for a second longer.

And Buck feels it.

Like Eddie heard the thunder inside him.

And Buck, very wisely, chooses to ignore it completely.

[...]

The days blur.

They stretch and bend, like time itself has forgotten how to move in a straight line. Buck wakes before the alarm most mornings, already wired, already buzzing with the kind of tension that feels like standing too close to a power line — not enough to kill, just enough to keep every hair on one’s body standing on end.

He gets up. He makes coffee. Showers with water that’s either too hot or too cold, never in between. Sometimes he eats breakfast, but mostly he doesn’t. Food feels like an afterthought lately — it’s too much effort, and it scratches his throat whenever he swallows, and Buck is so tired of the copper taste of blood in his tongue.

He goes for runs. Long ones, until his lungs burn and his legs ache and the world narrows down to the slap of his feet against pavement and the blood pounding in his ears. It's the only time his mind goes quiet — or at least quieter, just a buzzing thing in his ears. But the stillness never lasts. By the time he’s walking back to the loft, sweat-soaked and sore, it’s already creeping in again.

The doubt.

The noise.

The memory.

He survived. He’s fine. Everyone says so (the doctors, his friends, the other stations and other first responders who greet him as if he’s a legend of some sorts), and he insists on telling them such, as well. He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.

But there’s a part of him — deep and buried and howling — that isn’t convinced. That keeps insisting something’s wrong. Something shifted. Something stayed behind when the lightning struck.

Perhaps it was life itself.

But Buck can’t be sure of that, even.

At work, he’s efficient. Focused. Smiling. He throws himself into calls with reckless precision, much life he had always done, even if there’s a bit more desperation when he takes a second too long to respond to things falling in his direction or the fire getting just an inch too close to his gear. Muscle memory guides him, and maybe that’s a blessing — because if he stopped to think, even for a second, he might freeze. He might break.

He might let himself be a victim in need of rescue instead of the called-in rescuer.

At his house, everything is a bit worse. 

The loft echoes now. Everything’s too loud or too quiet, too crowded or too empty and nothing seems to be in the right place, even though he hadn't changed a single thing in months. 

Buck leaves the TV on just to fill the silence, lets the news cycle until the anchors blur into static. He reads half a paragraph of a book and stares at the same sentence for ten minutes, the letters waltzing around the page. He’ll shower again, just to have something to do. Water can’t drown a memory, but it’s still better than the air — which is thin, electric, stretched taut around him like a balloon about to pop.

The dreams are vivid and cruel. And the nights keep screaming at him.

Sometimes Buck wakes up in the middle of the night, hand pressed to his chest like he’s waiting for his heart to stop again.

Sometimes he doesn’t sleep at all.

And then, one morning — somewhere between the station and his third cup of coffee — his phone buzzes.

It’s nothing. A message. A ping. Ordinary.

But when he looks at it, the axis of his world tilts again.

It’s from Carla, and it shouldn’t be so surprising. They often text. Carla tells him news from Chris or a picture or even a recipe she tried and shared with Buck because she knows that he would love something else to cook — but he has been so distant from everything that it feels like a lifetime since he had spoken about anything consistent to anyone.

The text on his phone is just quite short. There’s only one information and a small request within:

Christopher had a nightmare. He asked if Buck was okay. Just thought you should know. Send him a message to prove my words? xx

Buck stares at the screen for a long time.

It’s a small thing. Just a message. Simple words. A simple thing that wasn’t at all uncommon — Buck’s already lost count of how many times he’s had to assure Christopher that he was okay, and how many times Christpher has assured him the same.

But the words still split him open.

Because he’s not okay. And Buck knows he’s not okay. And now there’s proof — undeniable and human — that his unraveling isn’t invisible after all. That someone sees it, even if it’s through the eyes of a kid who still believes he hung the moon for some reason, despite the nonchalant way of a teenager.

His hands tremble. Not from the coffee. Not from the memory. But from the sheer weight of being seen. Of being missed. Of being asked about.

read the rest on Ao3

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him. Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. But they don't know about the dream. About that other life. They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life, and the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real. Or, After the lightning strike, the night is screaming at him, and Buck doesn't know in which reality to believe — the one where he was love, but wasn't himself, or the one where he loves, but isn't sure of who he is. Lightning never strikes twice, but Eddie will do everything to save Buck as many times as it takes.

read it on Ao3 | Chapter 1 of 2

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him. 

There are very few cars racing the semaphores close to the loft, and there aren’t any reckless teenagers or drunk men grumbling their distaste for reality outside his window, but the night is screaming at him. The crickets, a rare occurrence, are loud and laughing; the silence, so damn familiar, is fucking hauling in his ears. 

Truly, Buck knows that the night can’t possibly scream at anyone. He learned it back in middle school that it’s all a big metaphor. Prosopopoeia, or personification, is when someone attributes human feelings or characteristics to something, either an object or a concept, he remembers someone trying to teach. A rather nice thing, really, to know and use and tell others about altogether with the other bunch of useless things he knows, but— 

But the night is screaming at him. And Buck can’t possibly be convinced it isn’t literal. He won’t. 

He’s lying in bed, and shivering. The duvet is under his frame, and he can’t move — he won’t move — to cover himself with it. It’s cold, he thinks, and he should do something to warm himself up; but he can’t. 

He won’t. 

Getting comfortable means he’d most likely — undoubtedly — fall asleep. 

And Buck couldn’t— no; he wouldn’t fall asleep. 

Because the night is screaming at him, and his head is throbbing, and his chest is aching. And falling asleep, at this point in life, in these circumstances, means surrendering. 

Buck’s been a hostage of his own head for too long to choose that, now. 

And it’s disconcerting, as much as everything else inside his head seems to be for weeks. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, and the night is screaming at him.

His fingers twitch against the sheets, seeking something — someone — that isn’t there. His breath catches in his throat like it’s afraid to leave him behind.

He stares at the ceiling, even though he can’t see anything in the dark, even though there wouldn’t be anything to see but plain white if he looked up with the lights on. The room is dark, but not empty. There’s a hum in the walls, low and electric, like the echo of a memory he hasn’t shaken loose, and it feels like every single one of those things take space around him.

Something inside him is waiting. Something inside him is wanting, and he isn’t quite sure what he expects from any of it.

Buck presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until stars bloom behind his eyelids, white and distorted and uncomfortable. He’s not crying, he’s not, but there’s a sharpness under his ribs that begs to be exhaled, and he doesn’t know how to let it go of the grasp around his chest, inside his blood, tied to his soul.

It was just a dream. That’s what he tries to keep telling himself — that it was just a dream, something his barely-alive mind conjured for reasons that even science isn’t so sure of. He was out of it, he was barely back alive, and it was just a dream. A delirium. Just a dream, and nothing more.

But the dream made sense, in a way, or it should have. The real world doesn’t make much sense, anymore, and Buck doesn’t know how to deal with it. With any of it. With nothing at all.

The dream was everything he had ever wanted. Everything he was supposed to want. His family loved him, his sister was safe, his brother was alive — and Buck knew about his existence. His parents were kind and loving, his life followed a non-dangerous path, no one died and he didn’t live to take up the space of a ghost he never knew of.

As the night screams at him, it feels like the dream is clawing its way back in, like maybe he never left it. Like maybe he died on that field after all, and this — this cold, screaming night — is just the in-between. Buck’s not so sure which reality is real anymore; and the worst part is not knowing which one hurts more inside his head, around his heart.

His phone buzzes once on the nightstand. A quiet vibration that jolts him like thunder.

Buck doesn’t look at it. He ignores it completely, because the night is screaming at him and he wants it to stop, and there’s too much noise inside his head and too many thoughts swirling around for him to even try and focus on whoever sent something.

Buck doesn’t want to move, but he doesn’t remember standing.

One moment, he’s a statue beneath the weight of insomnia, clawing his bedsheets and squirming around and trying to make the night stop so he can at least face his demons and his fears in silence. The next, his feet are bare against the cold floor, moving like they’ve made a decision he wasn’t part of, and he doesn’t look at anything remotely important in the dark.

He grabs a hoodie — the one Chim gifted him last Christmas, oversized and worn soft — and shrugs it on like armor. He takes his keys, but nothing else; he doesn’t want to belong in the real world where it’d be wise to take his phone and wallet with him, where it would be safest just in case. So, Buck takes his keys, puts the hood over his head and heads out of his apartment, thoughts loud and not a single thing he’s sure of.

He doesn’t have a plan, or any destination he’s trying to reach as he walks, each second faster and faster. He doesn’t want to think about where it could lead as he takes turns and crosses streets without looking to both sides before, and he trusts completely in motion.

The streets are quiet, oddly so, even if the night screams. Even LA sleeps sometimes, though not for long, he knows. The breeze cuts through him like glass, but Buck welcomes it, because it means that his skin and cells are working. It means he’s real. It means he’s awake.

He walks. Then marches. Then, before he can even understand what he’s doing, Buck runs.

Blocks blur into each other until the sky begins to pale — not quite morning, not quite night. Somewhere in between, like him. Still haunted, still hunting for something to hold, something to grasp, something that will tell him what is real and what he can trust and rest his peace or fear over.

Eventually, Buck finds himself at the gym, the one of a chain that is the furthest from his place. He sees it in the distance and doesn’t think much before heading towards the building, because it’s a way of giving his mind some silence — he has to focus on what he’s doing so he won’t get hurt, and there’s blaring music and other desperate, sleepy, sleep-deprived people that won’t ask questions or look in his direction. His muscles ache before he starts, like they know this isn’t about strength. It’s about control. It’s about pushing until he can’t think anymore.

He loads the weights higher than he should. He doesn’t warm up, he doesn’t stretch, and his muscles do have things to complain about. But Buck can’t find it in himself to care — he ignores the burn, the ache, the common-sense and the logic, and just lifts.

Again.

And again.

And again.

As if the burn in his arms could cauterize the ache in his chest, and as if punishing his body might silence the part of him that keeps screaming Eddie’s name into the silence of his dreams, keeps ringing Daniel’s voice in the echoing of the night, keeps making his parents’ smile ring loud in the back of his memory.

By the time the sun is fully up, sweat clings to him like guilt, and his breath is shallow in a way that reminds him — too much — of the ventilator. Of hospitals and near-deaths and other lives that he surely doesn’t want to think about.

Buck blinks that memory away, hard.

He catches his reflection in the mirror. The shadows under his eyes are warpaint, and his smile — the one he throws at the guy beside him like everything’s chill — feels like glass about to crack.

"Rough night?" the guy asks, nodding toward the weights.

Buck shrugs.

“Nah. Just needed to clear my head.”

He says it like it’s true.

He says it like the truth doesn’t scare him more than the lightning ever could.

[...]

The days scream at him, too.

Not as loudly as the nights, maybe, but just as relentless.

They scream in the way the sun hits too bright, too sharp through the kitchen window. In the way his coffee never tastes like it used to — too bitter, too hot, too wrong. In the weight of silence between calls from the team and texts he doesn’t always answer right away.

They scream in his routine, which he’s stitched together like a lifeline: gym, groceries, station, home. Repeat. No room for wandering thoughts. No space between breaths. Nothing that could give a chance for the paranoia and the fear and the absolute horror that his dreams and memory have become.

He’s functioning. That’s what Buck tells himself.

He’s fine.

No one asks more than once, and that’s both a curse and a relief. Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. Who wouldn’t be shaken after a near-death experience?

After being dead, if he was to talk in literal terms.

But they don’t know about the dream.

They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life. In their life. And the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real. 

He doesn’t know how to mourn people who are alive and standing right next to him. He never learned how to mourn people at all — even the ghosts he wasn’t even aware he stood in the shadow of.

So instead, he scrubs dishes that are already clean, rearranges his bookshelf for the third time this week, exercises until his body aches more than his thoughts and smiles when someone walks into the room. He cracks jokes and prepares lunch and dinner and he talks about movies that he hasn’t really paid attention to.

It’s fine. He’s fine.

And if Buck repeats it long enough, then maybe his brain will convince itself that, yeah; that’s true. That’s what’s going on. That’s exactly how things are. Everything is fine, everyone is fine, and there’s nothing wrong with his head, with his heart, with his soul, with him.

Fine. It’s fine.

Today, he gets to the station early. Too early for his shift, even. The place is quiet except for the hum of the vending machine and the slow drip of the coffee maker, the working team out on a call and barely a soul walking the streets so early in the morning. Buck leans against the lockers, palms flat against the cold metal, and tells himself to breathe — to breathe, for God’s sake, because nothing happened and there’s nothing happening and it’s just another day at work.

Bobby arrives not long after. They exchange a few words and, despite the look on his face telling Buck that he knows something’s off, Bobby doesn’t push. He never does — not with Buck, and half of him is thankful for that, because he doesn’t think he can talk about it with Bobby without having a meltdown. Without wanting to make sure that he’s solid and alive and the Captain of the 118 with a beating, functioning, strong heart inside his chest. But his eyes linger, and Buck feels it. That steady, fatherly worry that sinks in deep.

It’s almost enough to make Buck say something.

Almost.

But then Eddie walks in — laughing at something Christopher texted him, hair still damp from a morning shower — and Buck’s throat closes around the truth like it’s a secret he’ll take to his grave, because Eddie’s there, and Bobby’s there, and Chim will get there soon, as well, probably having taken a ride with Hen (because that’s something they started to do after too many near-deaths).

And it seems stupid, to talk about the dream when he knows that they’re there, alive and well and almost late for work. It feels pathetic, to be so shaken up about something his mind created while he was out of it, and his heart was out of service. It sounds ridiculous even to his ears that his days are falling apart and crumbling down because of his idiotic brain and some traumas none of them have nothing to do with.

Eddie greets Buck with an easy smile and hugs Bobby briefly, because it seems to be a good day for him. Buck smiles back, the most convincing smile he manages to plaster on his face, and Eddie talks to him as if he believes it.

It aches. It burns, because Buck can’t shake the feeling that this is just another delusion created by his head and Eddie is not really there. He can’t shake the feeling that his own feelings are so loud and Eddie will hear them and decide that they aren’t worth managing.

And the thought of losing him now?

It’s too much.

So Buck grins. Tosses a joke and a cheeky comment in Eddie’s way and pretends his chest isn’t caving in, blowing up, falling apart.

The others filter in like clockwork — Hen with coffee, Chim with jokes (and having taken a ride with Hen, as predicted), Bobby already flipping through shift schedules and someone (perhaps Buck himself) asking what are the lunch options they’ll have and it’s not even eight o’clock.

The morning moves like it always does, too fast and too loud. Buck lets it wash over him, lets the noise and familiarity carry him. He sips his coffee, nods along, laughs when he should and smiles when someone makes eye contact. If he doesn’t think too hard, it almost feels normal.

Almost.

Hen and Chim are halfway through some ridiculous debate about something related to birds, pigeons or winged-creatures. It’s pathetic, really — the usual banter that comes and goes in the fire station and barbecues and anywhere they allow Hen and Chimney to have a conversation. It’s silly; a sibling-like discussion and the topic couldn’t be more ridiculous.

“I’m telling you,” Chim says, leaning against the counter with a coffee mug in hand. “Birds absolutely have dialects. There’s research on it.”

“Okay, but who’s out there studying pigeon linguistics?” Hen says, incredulous. “That’s not science, that’s a conspiracy theory with extra steps.”

Chimney scoffs.

“Oh, please. There’s always someone insane enough to study literally anything. Birds have dialects. And they communicate, Hen,” he argues.

Hen laughs.

“Don’t be mad just because the downtown pigeons don’t like you,” she smirks.

Chimney gasps.

“They pooped on me twice in one week. That’s targeted.”

“It’s karma.”

Bobby, who’s just walked in and is already regretting it, raises his hands in surrender. 

“I’m not getting involved, but if you’re right, those birds are running a full-blown revenge opera. And you probably deserved it,” he says, pointing a finger at Chimney. “No one else here is targeted by birds.”

“Eh,” Eddie steps in, making a contorted face. “Buck and I got chased by turkeys. Does that count?”

Hen snorted.

“You better be aware of your surroundings on Christmas, then, if Chimney’s right,” she said. “They might plan an ambush.”

“That is not what I’m saying!” Chimney said, exasperated.

“Sort of is,” Bobby says.

“It is,” Eddie agrees.

“Uh-hm,” Hen laughs.

Chimney, much like a child, gasps again in exasperation.

“You know what this is?” Chim says, waving a hand dramatically. “This whole conversation is chaos. Like… lightning striking a piñata during a birthday party. It makes no sense. You can’t plan for it.”

Hen snorts. 

“That’s not even a real expression.”

“It is now.”

Bobby chuckles, easing down at the edge of the table. 

“The expression is lightning in a bottle, Chimney,” he argues. “Something completely unpredictable. Definitely unstable. Like the two of you.”

Buck freezes.

It’s nothing.

It’s a saying.

It’s not even about him, and he wasn’t even in the conversation — whatever that was to begin with — and it’s just a damn saying.

But the words slam into him, cracking open something he’s spent days shoving down and locking tight.

Like lightning in a bottle.

It feels like the word itself has found a way inside Buck’s mind, heart and the very veins of his body. As if the letters and the phonetics were on a mission to tear apart each cell of his blood, each atom of his being — as if it was all a joke that he was supposed to laugh at because it was ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous, because he was alive. He had survived. It hadn’t killed him.

It shouldn’t matter.

It’s just a word. A joke. A casual throwaway in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

But it does matter.

Because it doesn’t just remind him. It is him. It’s the moment when the sky opened and swallowed him whole. It’s the burn in his chest, the weightless freefall, the feeling of being yanked out of existence. It’s the sound that still lingers in the back of his mind, like a ghost echo, like thunder hiding behind every silence.

It’s the knowledge that for a few long seconds, he wasn’t here.

He wasn’t anywhere. In a world that wasn’t real, where he wasn’t himself and no one else was right.

And now— now he’s sitting at the table, safe and whole and breathing, and someone just made a joke with the word lightning in it like it doesn’t carry the weight of his soul. Because it shouldn’t. Because it’s just a word, just a bunch of letters put together to make some sense and produce a certain sound.

His laugh catches in his throat before it even escapes. He wonders if they notice the crack in his smile, the too-long pause.

The way his hand twitches against the wood grain of the table like it’s reaching for an anchor that isn’t there.

But it is there.

It’s in front of him, in the shape of Eddie’s gaze — suddenly sharper, quieter, knowing.

Buck wants to shake it off. Wants to brush it away, turn it into another joke, another laugh.

But he can feel it now, swelling like a tide inside him: the grief, the fear, the aftershock.

He thought he could bury it. Thought he had. But trauma has a way of seeping through the cracks, of bleeding out when you least expect it. And now it’s humming under his skin again, electric and unbearable.

It’s too much.

Too close.

Too real.

He wants to scream.

Or cry.

Or disappear entirely.

But instead, he just sits there, frozen in the middle of a moment that should’ve been easy. His breath stutters. Just slightly. Just enough that his vision narrows for a heartbeat. Buck blinks fast, swallows even faster, grips the coffee cup so hard his fingers ache.

And when he glances up, Eddie’s still looking at him.

Not looking — seeing.

Buck pastes a grin over the tremor in his chest and throws something back about pigeons and ducks and Chim’s clear paranoia related to anything that could possibly fly. The others laugh. The moment passes.

But Eddie’s gaze lingers for a second longer.

And Buck feels it.

Like Eddie heard the thunder inside him.

And Buck, very wisely, chooses to ignore it completely.

[...]

The days blur.

They stretch and bend, like time itself has forgotten how to move in a straight line. Buck wakes before the alarm most mornings, already wired, already buzzing with the kind of tension that feels like standing too close to a power line — not enough to kill, just enough to keep every hair on one’s body standing on end.

He gets up. He makes coffee. Showers with water that’s either too hot or too cold, never in between. Sometimes he eats breakfast, but mostly he doesn’t. Food feels like an afterthought lately — it’s too much effort, and it scratches his throat whenever he swallows, and Buck is so tired of the copper taste of blood in his tongue.

He goes for runs. Long ones, until his lungs burn and his legs ache and the world narrows down to the slap of his feet against pavement and the blood pounding in his ears. It's the only time his mind goes quiet — or at least quieter, just a buzzing thing in his ears. But the stillness never lasts. By the time he’s walking back to the loft, sweat-soaked and sore, it’s already creeping in again.

The doubt.

The noise.

The memory.

He survived. He’s fine. Everyone says so (the doctors, his friends, the other stations and other first responders who greet him as if he’s a legend of some sorts), and he insists on telling them such, as well. He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.

But there’s a part of him — deep and buried and howling — that isn’t convinced. That keeps insisting something’s wrong. Something shifted. Something stayed behind when the lightning struck.

Perhaps it was life itself.

But Buck can’t be sure of that, even.

At work, he’s efficient. Focused. Smiling. He throws himself into calls with reckless precision, much life he had always done, even if there’s a bit more desperation when he takes a second too long to respond to things falling in his direction or the fire getting just an inch too close to his gear. Muscle memory guides him, and maybe that’s a blessing — because if he stopped to think, even for a second, he might freeze. He might break.

He might let himself be a victim in need of rescue instead of the called-in rescuer.

At his house, everything is a bit worse. 

The loft echoes now. Everything’s too loud or too quiet, too crowded or too empty and nothing seems to be in the right place, even though he hadn't changed a single thing in months. 

Buck leaves the TV on just to fill the silence, lets the news cycle until the anchors blur into static. He reads half a paragraph of a book and stares at the same sentence for ten minutes, the letters waltzing around the page. He’ll shower again, just to have something to do. Water can’t drown a memory, but it’s still better than the air — which is thin, electric, stretched taut around him like a balloon about to pop.

The dreams are vivid and cruel. And the nights keep screaming at him.

Sometimes Buck wakes up in the middle of the night, hand pressed to his chest like he’s waiting for his heart to stop again.

Sometimes he doesn’t sleep at all.

And then, one morning — somewhere between the station and his third cup of coffee — his phone buzzes.

It’s nothing. A message. A ping. Ordinary.

But when he looks at it, the axis of his world tilts again.

It’s from Carla, and it shouldn’t be so surprising. They often text. Carla tells him news from Chris or a picture or even a recipe she tried and shared with Buck because she knows that he would love something else to cook — but he has been so distant from everything that it feels like a lifetime since he had spoken about anything consistent to anyone.

The text on his phone is just quite short. There’s only one information and a small request within:

Christopher had a nightmare. He asked if Buck was okay. Just thought you should know. Send him a message to prove my words? xx

Buck stares at the screen for a long time.

It’s a small thing. Just a message. Simple words. A simple thing that wasn’t at all uncommon — Buck’s already lost count of how many times he’s had to assure Christopher that he was okay, and how many times Christpher has assured him the same.

But the words still split him open.

Because he’s not okay. And Buck knows he’s not okay. And now there’s proof — undeniable and human — that his unraveling isn’t invisible after all. That someone sees it, even if it’s through the eyes of a kid who still believes he hung the moon for some reason, despite the nonchalant way of a teenager.

His hands tremble. Not from the coffee. Not from the memory. But from the sheer weight of being seen. Of being missed. Of being asked about.

read the rest on Ao3

[justapoet]

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him. He’s functioning. That’s what Buck tells himself. He’s fine. No one asks more than once. Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. But they don’t know about the dream. They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life. In their life. And the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real. Or, After the lightning strike, the night is screaming at him, and Buck doesn't know in which reality to believe — the one where he was love, but wasn't himself, or the one where he loves, but isn't sure of who he is. Lightning never strikes twice, but Eddie will save him as many times it takes to have Buck by his side, safe and sound and loved.

read it on Ao3

fear no more the lightning flash

The night is screaming at him. 

There are very few cars racing the semaphores close to the loft, and there aren’t any reckless teenagers or drunk men grumbling their distaste for reality outside his window, but the night is screaming at him. The crickets, a rare occurrence, are loud and laughing; the silence, so damn familiar, is fucking hauling in his ears. 

Truly, Buck knows that the night can’t possibly scream at anyone. He learned it back in middle school that it’s all a big metaphor. Prosopopoeia, or personification, is when someone attributes human feelings or characteristics to something, either an object or a concept, he remembers someone trying to teach. A rather nice thing, really, to know and use and tell others about altogether with the other bunch of useless things he knows, but— 

But the night is screaming at him. And Buck can’t possibly be convinced it isn’t literal. He won’t. 

He’s lying in bed, and shivering. The duvet is under his frame, and he can’t move — he won’t move — to cover himself with it. It’s cold, he thinks, and he should do something to warm himself up; but he can’t. 

He won’t. 

Getting comfortable means he’d most likely — undoubtedly — fall asleep. 

And Buck couldn’t— no; he wouldn’t fall asleep. 

Because the night is screaming at him, and his head is throbbing, and his chest is aching. And falling asleep, at this point in life, in these circumstances, means surrendering. 

Buck’s been a hostage of his own head for too long to choose that, now. 

And it’s disconcerting, as much as everything else inside his head seems to be for weeks. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, and the night is screaming at him.

His fingers twitch against the sheets, seeking something — someone — that isn’t there. His breath catches in his throat like it’s afraid to leave him behind.

He stares at the ceiling, even though he can’t see anything in the dark, even though there wouldn’t be anything to see but plain white if he looked up with the lights on. The room is dark, but not empty. There’s a hum in the walls, low and electric, like the echo of a memory he hasn’t shaken loose, and it feels like every single one of those things take space around him.

Something inside him is waiting. Something inside him is wanting, and he isn’t quite sure what he expects from any of it.

Buck presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until stars bloom behind his eyelids, white and distorted and uncomfortable. He’s not crying, he’s not, but there’s a sharpness under his ribs that begs to be exhaled, and he doesn’t know how to let it go of the grasp around his chest, inside his blood, tied to his soul.

It was just a dream. That’s what he tries to keep telling himself — that it was just a dream, something his barely-alive mind conjured for reasons that even science isn’t so sure of. He was out of it, he was barely back alive, and it was just a dream. A delirium. Just a dream, and nothing more.

But the dream made sense, in a way, or it should have. The real world doesn’t make much sense, anymore, and Buck doesn’t know how to deal with it. With any of it. With nothing at all.

The dream was everything he had ever wanted. Everything he was supposed to want. His family loved him, his sister was safe, his brother was alive — and Buck knew about his existence. His parents were kind and loving, his life followed a non-dangerous path, no one died and he didn’t live to take up the space of a ghost he never knew of.

As the night screams at him, it feels like the dream is clawing its way back in, like maybe he never left it. Like maybe he died on that field after all, and this — this cold, screaming night — is just the in-between. Buck’s not so sure which reality is real anymore; and the worst part is not knowing which one hurts more inside his head, around his heart.

His phone buzzes once on the nightstand. A quiet vibration that jolts him like thunder.

Buck doesn’t look at it. He ignores it completely, because the night is screaming at him and he wants it to stop, and there’s too much noise inside his head and too many thoughts swirling around for him to even try and focus on whoever sent something.

Buck doesn’t want to move, but he doesn’t remember standing.

One moment, he’s a statue beneath the weight of insomnia, clawing his bedsheets and squirming around and trying to make the night stop so he can at least face his demons and his fears in silence. The next, his feet are bare against the cold floor, moving like they’ve made a decision he wasn’t part of, and he doesn’t look at anything remotely important in the dark.

He grabs a hoodie — the one Chim gifted him last Christmas, oversized and worn soft — and shrugs it on like armor. He takes his keys, but nothing else; he doesn’t want to belong in the real world where it’d be wise to take his phone and wallet with him, where it would be safest just in case. So, Buck takes his keys, puts the hood over his head and heads out of his apartment, thoughts loud and not a single thing he’s sure of.

He doesn’t have a plan, or any destination he’s trying to reach as he walks, each second faster and faster. He doesn’t want to think about where it could lead as he takes turns and crosses streets without looking to both sides before, and he trusts completely in motion.

The streets are quiet, oddly so, even if the night screams. Even LA sleeps sometimes, though not for long, he knows. The breeze cuts through him like glass, but Buck welcomes it, because it means that his skin and cells are working. It means he’s real. It means he’s awake.

He walks. Then marches. Then, before he can even understand what he’s doing, Buck runs.

Blocks blur into each other until the sky begins to pale — not quite morning, not quite night. Somewhere in between, like him. Still haunted, still hunting for something to hold, something to grasp, something that will tell him what is real and what he can trust and rest his peace or fear over.

Eventually, Buck finds himself at the gym, the one of a chain that is the furthest from his place. He sees it in the distance and doesn’t think much before heading towards the building, because it’s a way of giving his mind some silence — he has to focus on what he’s doing so he won’t get hurt, and there’s blaring music and other desperate, sleepy, sleep-deprived people that won’t ask questions or look in his direction. His muscles ache before he starts, like they know this isn’t about strength. It’s about control. It’s about pushing until he can’t think anymore.

He loads the weights higher than he should. He doesn’t warm up, he doesn’t stretch, and his muscles do have things to complain about. But Buck can’t find it in himself to care — he ignores the burn, the ache, the common-sense and the logic, and just lifts.

Again.

And again.

And again.

As if the burn in his arms could cauterize the ache in his chest, and as if punishing his body might silence the part of him that keeps screaming Eddie’s name into the silence of his dreams, keeps ringing Daniel’s voice in the echoing of the night, keeps making his parents’ smile ring loud in the back of his memory.

By the time the sun is fully up, sweat clings to him like guilt, and his breath is shallow in a way that reminds him — too much — of the ventilator. Of hospitals and near-deaths and other lives that he surely doesn’t want to think about.

Buck blinks that memory away, hard.

He catches his reflection in the mirror. The shadows under his eyes are warpaint, and his smile — the one he throws at the guy beside him like everything’s chill — feels like glass about to crack.

"Rough night?" the guy asks, nodding toward the weights.

Buck shrugs.

“Nah. Just needed to clear my head.”

He says it like it’s true.

He says it like the truth doesn’t scare him more than the lightning ever could.

[...]

The days scream at him, too.

Not as loudly as the nights, maybe, but just as relentless.

They scream in the way the sun hits too bright, too sharp through the kitchen window. In the way his coffee never tastes like it used to — too bitter, too hot, too wrong. In the weight of silence between calls from the team and texts he doesn’t always answer right away.

They scream in his routine, which he’s stitched together like a lifeline: gym, groceries, station, home. Repeat. No room for wandering thoughts. No space between breaths. Nothing that could give a chance for the paranoia and the fear and the absolute horror that his dreams and memory have become.

He’s functioning. That’s what Buck tells himself.

He’s fine.

No one asks more than once, and that’s both a curse and a relief. Buck's always been good at being loud enough to distract, bright enough to deflect, and if they notice the tired smile or the stiffness in his voice, they chalk it up to recovery. Who wouldn’t be shaken after a near-death experience?

After being dead, if he was to talk in literal terms.

But they don’t know about the dream.

They don’t know that every time Buck closes his eyes, he’s back in a world where Bobby was gone and Eddie never even existed in his life. In their life. And the 118 isn’t home, or family, or real. 

He doesn’t know how to mourn people who are alive and standing right next to him. He never learned how to mourn people at all — even the ghosts he wasn’t even aware he stood in the shadow of.

So instead, he scrubs dishes that are already clean, rearranges his bookshelf for the third time this week, exercises until his body aches more than his thoughts and smiles when someone walks into the room. He cracks jokes and prepares lunch and dinner and he talks about movies that he hasn’t really paid attention to.

It’s fine. He’s fine.

And if Buck repeats it long enough, then maybe his brain will convince itself that, yeah; that’s true. That’s what’s going on. That’s exactly how things are. Everything is fine, everyone is fine, and there’s nothing wrong with his head, with his heart, with his soul, with him.

Fine. It’s fine.

Today, he gets to the station early. Too early for his shift, even. The place is quiet except for the hum of the vending machine and the slow drip of the coffee maker, the working team out on a call and barely a soul walking the streets so early in the morning. Buck leans against the lockers, palms flat against the cold metal, and tells himself to breathe — to breathe, for God’s sake, because nothing happened and there’s nothing happening and it’s just another day at work.

Bobby arrives not long after. They exchange a few words and, despite the look on his face telling Buck that he knows something’s off, Bobby doesn’t push. He never does — not with Buck, and half of him is thankful for that, because he doesn’t think he can talk about it with Bobby without having a meltdown. Without wanting to make sure that he’s solid and alive and the Captain of the 118 with a beating, functioning, strong heart inside his chest. But his eyes linger, and Buck feels it. That steady, fatherly worry that sinks in deep.

It’s almost enough to make Buck say something.

Almost.

But then Eddie walks in — laughing at something Christopher texted him, hair still damp from a morning shower — and Buck’s throat closes around the truth like it’s a secret he’ll take to his grave, because Eddie’s there, and Bobby’s there, and Chim will get there soon, as well, probably having taken a ride with Hen (because that’s something they started to do after too many near-deaths).

And it seems stupid, to talk about the dream when he knows that they’re there, alive and well and almost late for work. It feels pathetic, to be so shaken up about something his mind created while he was out of it, and his heart was out of service. It sounds ridiculous even to his ears that his days are falling apart and crumbling down because of his idiotic brain and some traumas none of them have nothing to do with.

Eddie greets Buck with an easy smile and hugs Bobby briefly, because it seems to be a good day for him. Buck smiles back, the most convincing smile he manages to plaster on his face, and Eddie talks to him as if he believes it.

It aches. It burns, because Buck can’t shake the feeling that this is just another delusion created by his head and Eddie is not really there. He can’t shake the feeling that his own feelings are so loud and Eddie will hear them and decide that they aren’t worth managing.

And the thought of losing him now?

It’s too much.

So Buck grins. Tosses a joke and a cheeky comment in Eddie’s way and pretends his chest isn’t caving in, blowing up, falling apart.

The others filter in like clockwork — Hen with coffee, Chim with jokes (and having taken a ride with Hen, as predicted), Bobby already flipping through shift schedules and someone (perhaps Buck himself) asking what are the lunch options they’ll have and it’s not even eight o’clock.

The morning moves like it always does, too fast and too loud. Buck lets it wash over him, lets the noise and familiarity carry him. He sips his coffee, nods along, laughs when he should and smiles when someone makes eye contact. If he doesn’t think too hard, it almost feels normal.

Almost.

Hen and Chim are halfway through some ridiculous debate about something related to birds, pigeons or winged-creatures. It’s pathetic, really — the usual banter that comes and goes in the fire station and barbecues and anywhere they allow Hen and Chimney to have a conversation. It’s silly; a sibling-like discussion and the topic couldn’t be more ridiculous.

“I’m telling you,” Chim says, leaning against the counter with a coffee mug in hand. “Birds absolutely have dialects. There’s research on it.”

“Okay, but who’s out there studying pigeon linguistics?” Hen says, incredulous. “That’s not science, that’s a conspiracy theory with extra steps.”

Chimney scoffs.

“Oh, please. There’s always someone insane enough to study literally anything. Birds have dialects. And they communicate, Hen,” he argues.

Hen laughs.

“Don’t be mad just because the downtown pigeons don’t like you,” she smirks.

Chimney gasps.

“They pooped on me twice in one week. That’s targeted.”

“It’s karma.”

Bobby, who’s just walked in and is already regretting it, raises his hands in surrender. 

“I’m not getting involved, but if you’re right, those birds are running a full-blown revenge opera. And you probably deserved it,” he says, pointing a finger at Chimney. “No one else here is targeted by birds.”

“Eh,” Eddie steps in, making a contorted face. “Buck and I got chased by turkeys. Does that count?”

Hen snorted.

“You better be aware of your surroundings on Christmas, then, if Chimney’s right,” she said. “They might plan an ambush.”

“That is not what I’m saying!” Chimney said, exasperated.

“Sort of is,” Bobby says.

“It is,” Eddie agrees.

“Uh-hm,” Hen laughs.

Chimney, much like a child, gasps again in exasperation.

“You know what this is?” Chim says, waving a hand dramatically. “This whole conversation is chaos. Like… lightning striking a piñata during a birthday party. It makes no sense. You can’t plan for it.”

Hen snorts. 

“That’s not even a real expression.”

“It is now.”

Bobby chuckles, easing down at the edge of the table. 

“The expression is lightning in a bottle, Chimney,” he argues. “Something completely unpredictable. Definitely unstable. Like the two of you.”

Buck freezes.

It’s nothing.

It’s a saying.

It’s not even about him, and he wasn’t even in the conversation — whatever that was to begin with — and it’s just a damn saying.

But the words slam into him, cracking open something he’s spent days shoving down and locking tight.

Like lightning in a bottle.

It feels like the word itself has found a way inside Buck’s mind, heart and the very veins of his body. As if the letters and the phonetics were on a mission to tear apart each cell of his blood, each atom of his being — as if it was all a joke that he was supposed to laugh at because it was ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous, because he was alive. He had survived. It hadn’t killed him.

It shouldn’t matter.

It’s just a word. A joke. A casual throwaway in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

But it does matter.

Because it doesn’t just remind him. It is him. It’s the moment when the sky opened and swallowed him whole. It’s the burn in his chest, the weightless freefall, the feeling of being yanked out of existence. It’s the sound that still lingers in the back of his mind, like a ghost echo, like thunder hiding behind every silence.

It’s the knowledge that for a few long seconds, he wasn’t here.

He wasn’t anywhere. In a world that wasn’t real, where he wasn’t himself and no one else was right.

And now— now he’s sitting at the table, safe and whole and breathing, and someone just made a joke with the word lightning in it like it doesn’t carry the weight of his soul. Because it shouldn’t. Because it’s just a word, just a bunch of letters put together to make some sense and produce a certain sound.

His laugh catches in his throat before it even escapes. He wonders if they notice the crack in his smile, the too-long pause.

The way his hand twitches against the wood grain of the table like it’s reaching for an anchor that isn’t there.

But it is there.

It’s in front of him, in the shape of Eddie’s gaze — suddenly sharper, quieter, knowing.

Buck wants to shake it off. Wants to brush it away, turn it into another joke, another laugh.

But he can feel it now, swelling like a tide inside him: the grief, the fear, the aftershock.

He thought he could bury it. Thought he had. But trauma has a way of seeping through the cracks, of bleeding out when you least expect it. And now it’s humming under his skin again, electric and unbearable.

It’s too much.

Too close.

Too real.

He wants to scream.

Or cry.

Or disappear entirely.

But instead, he just sits there, frozen in the middle of a moment that should’ve been easy. His breath stutters. Just slightly. Just enough that his vision narrows for a heartbeat. Buck blinks fast, swallows even faster, grips the coffee cup so hard his fingers ache.

And when he glances up, Eddie’s still looking at him.

Not looking — seeing.

Buck pastes a grin over the tremor in his chest and throws something back about pigeons and ducks and Chim’s clear paranoia related to anything that could possibly fly. The others laugh. The moment passes.

But Eddie’s gaze lingers for a second longer.

And Buck feels it.

Like Eddie heard the thunder inside him.

And Buck, very wisely, chooses to ignore it completely.

[...]

The days blur.

They stretch and bend, like time itself has forgotten how to move in a straight line. Buck wakes before the alarm most mornings, already wired, already buzzing with the kind of tension that feels like standing too close to a power line — not enough to kill, just enough to keep every hair on one’s body standing on end.

He gets up. He makes coffee. Showers with water that’s either too hot or too cold, never in between. Sometimes he eats breakfast, but mostly he doesn’t. Food feels like an afterthought lately — it’s too much effort, and it scratches his throat whenever he swallows, and Buck is so tired of the copper taste of blood in his tongue.

He goes for runs. Long ones, until his lungs burn and his legs ache and the world narrows down to the slap of his feet against pavement and the blood pounding in his ears. It's the only time his mind goes quiet — or at least quieter, just a buzzing thing in his ears. But the stillness never lasts. By the time he’s walking back to the loft, sweat-soaked and sore, it’s already creeping in again.

The doubt.

The noise.

The memory.

He survived. He’s fine. Everyone says so (the doctors, his friends, the other stations and other first responders who greet him as if he’s a legend of some sorts), and he insists on telling them such, as well. He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.

But there’s a part of him — deep and buried and howling — that isn’t convinced. That keeps insisting something’s wrong. Something shifted. Something stayed behind when the lightning struck.

Perhaps it was life itself.

But Buck can’t be sure of that, even.

At work, he’s efficient. Focused. Smiling. He throws himself into calls with reckless precision, much life he had always done, even if there’s a bit more desperation when he takes a second too long to respond to things falling in his direction or the fire getting just an inch too close to his gear. Muscle memory guides him, and maybe that’s a blessing — because if he stopped to think, even for a second, he might freeze. He might break.

He might let himself be a victim in need of rescue instead of the called-in rescuer.

At his house, everything is a bit worse. 

The loft echoes now. Everything’s too loud or too quiet, too crowded or too empty and nothing seems to be in the right place, even though he hadn't changed a single thing in months. 

Buck leaves the TV on just to fill the silence, lets the news cycle until the anchors blur into static. He reads half a paragraph of a book and stares at the same sentence for ten minutes, the letters waltzing around the page. He’ll shower again, just to have something to do. Water can’t drown a memory, but it’s still better than the air — which is thin, electric, stretched taut around him like a balloon about to pop.

The dreams are vivid and cruel. And the nights keep screaming at him.

Sometimes Buck wakes up in the middle of the night, hand pressed to his chest like he’s waiting for his heart to stop again.

Sometimes he doesn’t sleep at all.

And then, one morning — somewhere between the station and his third cup of coffee — his phone buzzes.

It’s nothing. A message. A ping. Ordinary.

But when he looks at it, the axis of his world tilts again.

It’s from Carla, and it shouldn’t be so surprising. They often text. Carla tells him news from Chris or a picture or even a recipe she tried and shared with Buck because she knows that he would love something else to cook — but he has been so distant from everything that it feels like a lifetime since he had spoken about anything consistent to anyone.

The text on his phone is just quite short. There’s only one information and a small request within:

Christopher had a nightmare. He asked if Buck was okay. Just thought you should know. Send him a message to prove my words? xx

Buck stares at the screen for a long time.

It’s a small thing. Just a message. Simple words. A simple thing that wasn’t at all uncommon — Buck’s already lost count of how many times he’s had to assure Christopher that he was okay, and how many times Christpher has assured him the same.

But the words still split him open.

Because he’s not okay. And Buck knows he’s not okay. And now there’s proof — undeniable and human — that his unraveling isn’t invisible after all. That someone sees it, even if it’s through the eyes of a kid who still believes he hung the moon for some reason, despite the nonchalant way of a teenager.

His hands tremble. Not from the coffee. Not from the memory. But from the sheer weight of being seen. Of being missed. Of being asked about.

Christopher asked if Buck was okay, and that was something so familiar that it didn’t make much sense the way it stung. It has been like that ever since the tsunami, some sporadic nightmares requiring a bit more of reassurance that things were alright and things were just fine. It would happen not so often anymore, and it would sometimes vary between him and Eddie — with the only difference that Eddie was a door within reach, and Buck was a call away.

Most days, at least. Not much lately.

He presses his phone to his chest and closes his eyes, like he can hold the question inside him a little longer — like it might steady his shaking foundation.

The day moves forward around him. Voices rise and fall, calls come and go. The world doesn’t stop.

But Buck does.

Just for a breath.

Even if the day still screams at him from outside his windows.

[...]

read the rest on Ao3

[justapoet]

i know where you belong (it's with me)

The thing is that Eddie is dating. Guys, now. Kissing them, too, probably in dimly lit corners of bars that used to be just for beers and wing nights with the team. Maybe that’s why he keeps coming home smelling like other people. And that — all of it — is a new development that came out of nowhere to slap Buck in the face and make it so ridiculously obvious to his heart that he had feelings he wasn’t really paying much attention to. Which is fine. Buck gets it, really. It’s not like he expects anything. But sometimes he lets himself imagine what it would be like if Eddie just… looked at him. Really looked, in the way Buck knew he could, and saw what was right in front of him. Or, Eddie starts dating guys, and Buck is not one of them. Eddie's going out on dates, Buck's going through the motions, and they'll get somewhere. Eventually.

read it on Ao3

The door creaks open sometime after midnight, and Buck pretends he’s still half-asleep, sprawled out on the couch with a hoodie pulled over his eyes and the TV humming low in the background. He hears the sound before he sees anything — the soft shuffle of boots being toed off, the creak of floorboards under careful steps and the grunt of nearly falling due to some lack of balance while taking off his socks.

Buck doesn’t really expect the faint, unfamiliar scent of perfume to come after, once Eddie steps further inside the house and closer to the couch Buck’s lying at like a starfish, long breaths so it doesn’t seem like he’s pretending to be asleep. It’s not Eddie’s usual cologne, the one that clings to him like sunshine and gunpowder and too much laundry detergent that he insists he puts only enough of and they have to buy new gallons way too quickly. 

This scent is sharper, colder. And it hits Buck like a punch to the gut, the unfamiliarity of it all, because he knows where it comes from.

Of course, he doesn’t say anything.

He just breathes through it, and hates the smell that comes through his nose when he does it.

Eddie’s quiet when he moves through the living room, like maybe he’s trying not to wake him. Like maybe he doesn't know Buck’s already wide awake and has been for hours, waiting. Not that he’d admit it. Not when he’s like this — skin hot with jealousy and chest tight with the kind of ache that settles under one’s ribs and doesn’t let go.

Eddie pauses. Buck can feel it, that moment where Eddie stops in front of the couch, probably looking at him, probably thinking something that Buck will never get to know and would inevitably die to because he’d pay a lot to be inside Eddie’s mind and have some answers.

“You fell asleep with the TV on again,” Eddie murmurs, voice warm, almost fond. Buck doesn’t ask how he knew that he was not asleep like he seemed to be, and he sincerely doesn’t want to know — he knows it’d get some hopes up that should really stay buried deep within the Earth and Buck’s own heart.

Buck shrugs under the hoodie. 

“It was quiet without you.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything to that mumbling, and just stands there for a second longer, then disappears down the hall to his room, shutting the door behind him with a soft click that still manages to sound like an ending, somehow.

Buck pulls the hoodie off his face and stares up at the ceiling like it might give him some kind of answer.

It doesn’t. It never does.

The thing is that Eddie is dating. Guys, now. Kissing them, too, probably in dimly lit corners of bars that used to be just for beers and wing nights with the team. Maybe that’s why he keeps coming home smelling like other people. And that — all of it — is a new development that came out of nowhere to slap Buck in the face and make it so ridiculously obvious to his heart that he had feelings he wasn’t really paying much attention to.

Buck told himself it didn’t matter when it happened the first time. Or the second. Or the fifth that Eddie went out with a guy because he was ready to explore that side of himself more, now that it wasn’t a weight over his shoulders and Christopher knew about it and was fine with his dad trying to find someone to spend his life with. Buck told himself he was being a good friend, a supportive friend, the kind of friend Eddie deserves after eight months in Texas trying to untangle the pieces of himself he finally came back ready to live with.

And maybe Buck is. Maybe he is a good friend. But none of that stops the way his heart twists every time Eddie walks in wearing the proof that he’s kissing someone else — someone who isn’t Buck.

Maybe he is a good friend, but it doesn’t necessarily make him a good person. Not that he ever claimed to be one.

The worst part is that Eddie knows. Buck told him he’s bisexual months and months ago, in that casual, shoulder-bump way that probably wasn’t subtle at all. And since Eddie’s back, Buck’s done nothing but show up, stay close, take care of everything so he can be sure and convince his mind and Eddie and Christpher are back, and they won’t be fleeing the state so soon again (or ever, if Buck gets a say in it). 

But if Eddie hasn’t said anything — if he’s going on dates and laughing at someone else’s jokes and walking into this house with someone else’s perfume on his skin — it has to mean something, right?

It has to mean he’s not interested. In Buck.

Which is fine. Buck gets it, really. It’s not like he expects anything.

But sometimes he lets himself imagine what it would be like if Eddie just… looked at him. Really looked, in the way Buck knew he could, and saw what was right in front of him.

Because Buck’s been here, hasn’t he? Through the panic and the silence and the weight of grief. Through the world ending, the quarantine, the near-deaths and the almost lives they were trying on. Through Texas and after. Through it all.

And he’d be here, forever, if only Eddie let him.

But Eddie’s door stays closed.

And Buck falls asleep with the TV on again.

[...]

Buck sees the flowers through the window before he hears the door open.

They’re white — maybe lilies or roses or something fancier than the sunflowers he used to get for Maddie when she had bad days and gets for Jee-Yun at least once a week. Delicate, arranged in crisp brown paper with a little silver ribbon that flutters in the breeze when Eddie walks up the driveway, grinning at whoever stepped out of the car to give him the bouquet like he’s just made Eddie’s day with the gesture.

Buck watches from the kitchen, heart sinking like a stone in cold water.

He turns away before Eddie can spot him. Pretends he didn’t see. Pretends he doesn’t care. Pretends he’s not picturing pressing a kiss to Eddie’s cheek while slipping those same flowers into his hand, like it’s nothing, like it’s everything, like it could be the beginning of something that isn’t always just almost.

Instead, he leans on the counter and stares out at the backyard, where Christopher’s (Danny’s, but it never left the Diazes’ house after one barbecue) soccer ball is half-deflated under the patio table and Buck’s hoodie — the one Eddie always steals — is crumpled on the grass, forgotten.

The ache in his chest is familiar now. Reliable. A dull, steady pulse that says the obvious: Buck loves him. And he’s not allowed to show it.

It had been raining the night Eddie came out to him. Quietly, like it didn’t want to disturb the peace.

They were on the porch. Eddie had just gotten back from Texas — just a week before — and they were passing a beer back and forth, the kind of silence between them that had always felt like home, making Buck’s overjoyed heart to flutter a bit too much inside his chest.

“I think I’m gay,” Eddie had said, not looking at him.

And Buck stopped with the beer halfway to his mouth, and thanked God that he wasn’t drinking at the moment or he would’ve choked on it. Buck hadn’t said anything for a second, trying to figure out if his ears were fooling him for the sake of his love and soul — because of everything he had expected to come back from Texas with that, that wasn’t on the list. 

So, Buck just blinked, then nodded, then swallowed everything that rose up too fast in his throat.

“Yeah?” he said, like it hadn’t just thrown too much hope in his heart and mind and dreams. Like it didn’t land somewhere right beneath his ribs and crack open something he’d been afraid to name.

Eddie looked at him then, unsure. 

“You okay?”

Buck smiled. It hurt. 

“Yeah, man. Yeah. Thanks for telling me.”

That was it. There wasn’t anything more, nothing that would make its way into Buck’s dreams and daydreams whenever he thought about his own feelings and what the future could be. There was no confession, no half-step closer. Just Buck sitting in the rain-damp air, thinking about how he’d spent the last eight months missing Eddie like a phantom limb, only to get him back with a whole new ache attached to his name.

Now, in the present, the front door opens and shuts again.

“Got plans tonight?” Eddie asks, breezing past the kitchen, flowers already in a glass of water, already filling the space with that same unfamiliar perfume that now made Buck’s stomach churn and twist in something acid and ugly.

Buck shakes his head without looking up. 

“Nah. Just gonna catch up on laundry.”

Eddie hums. 

“I’ll be out late,” he warns. “Just came to make sure these will survive,” he laughs, looking at the flowers, unaware of Buck’s deadly grip on the sponge in his hand.

“Okay.”

The door clicks shut behind him a minute later. And Buck lets out a breath he wouldn’t have liked to be holding for so long.

He wonders what it would be like to get flowers from Eddie. To hear him say these reminded me of you with that soft voice he uses when it’s just the two of them. He wonders what it would be like to get flowers for Eddie, to watch as his face splits in a smile, to see as he cradles them as something scared, to tell him that I saw these and they reminded me of you. He wonders what it’s like to be chosen.

But he doesn’t ask. He just waits for the ache to settle.

The flowers, unexpectedly, die within the next day. 

Buck doesn’t say a word about it.

[...]

It’s one of those in-between shifts. Post-call, pre-dinner when the kitchen smells like garlic and onions, and Chim’s halfway into a debate with Bobby about the ethics of pineapple on pizza and mango on meals after Bobby took one mango from the pantry. 

Buck’s not really listening, though there is a smile on his face from the familiarity of it all and the way Chimney seems way too bothered about Bobby’s arguments.

“Fruit doesn’t belong on a plate unless it’s dessert,” Chimney says, arms crossed after Bobby slapped his hand away from whatever it is that he is cooking. As if he wasn’t a grown, married man with a daughter and another baby on the way, Chimney pouts and groans like a child himself.

Bobby, to be fair to Chimney, is holding a mango like it’s sacred, and he looks personally offended at the other man’s words.

“That’s ridiculous. Mango salsa? Mango chicken? Mango anything—”

Hen, from the corner, flips a page of her book.

“If this ends in another mango-gate, I’m leaving the station early.”

“I didn’t hear you complain last week when I made mango-glazed ribs,” Bobby replies, a little louder than needed, and Buck snorts.

“Because I was starving and your food is annoyingly good,” she mutters.

There’s laughter, quiet, familiar. The stove clicks and hisses, dishes clink. Buck’s sitting at the table, spinning a spoon between his fingers, tuned out but content in the background noise of people he loves and a shift what is, so far, blissfully qu— peaceful.

Then Eddie slides into the seat across from Hen with that easy, worn-in grace that Buck’s brain still registers as home. He’s got damp hair from a post-call shower and a fresh navy-blue hoodie tugged over his shoulders — not Buck’s, not anymore. Buck looks up without meaning to. 

He looks away even faster.

Hen leaves the book on the table when she sees Eddie walk in, and joins them on the opposite side of the dinner table. She leans back in her chair with a lazy sort of grin, eyes flicking from Eddie to the quiet profile of Buck beside him, and back again.

“So,” she says, dragging the word out. “How’ve the dates been going, Mr. Back-from-Texas-and-finally-living-his-truth?”

Eddie gives her a look, but his smile is sheepish. 

“You make it sound so dramatic.”

Hen shrugs. 

“You kissed, like, four dudes in one week after coming out. That’s kind of dramatic.”

“I did not kiss four dudes in one week.”

“Okay, sorry — three in one week and one the next,” she says, holding up fingers. “I’m just saying, you’re out here like you’re in your rom-com era.”

Eddie chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“It’s… weird, honestly. I mean, it’s good. People are nice. The dates are fine.”

“Fine,” Hen repeats, unimpressed. “You’re going to need a little more than fine if you’re trying to settle down.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, but Buck, sitting stiffly beside him, doesn’t breathe.

“I’m not trying to settle down,” Eddie says, though the words don’t have much bite. “Not yet.”

“Not yet,” Hen echoes, her voice softening just slightly. “But you want to. Eventually?”

Eddie shrugs. 

“Yeah. Eventually. I think so. I mean, I’m not out here looking for flings. Not anymore. I’m just… trying to figure it out. What feels right.”

Hen watches him carefully, then glances toward Buck, who hasn’t said a word. His jaw’s tense, shoulders hunched like he’s trying to make himself smaller, as if the conversation doesn’t sting the way it does.

Hen softens even more.

“And what would feel right, Eddie?” she asks gently.

Eddie looks thoughtful for a moment, eyes distant. Then, casually, he answers — unaware of how close his words will land.

“I don’t know. I think, for me to actually date someone? Like really date someone? They’d have to be…” Eddie pauses, thoughtful. “Stable. Kind. Someone I could see myself building something with, you know?”

Buck’s heart lurches in his chest like it’s trying to escape.

Chim laughs. 

“You’re sounding real serious for a guy who kissed someone behind a food truck last week.”

Eddie shrugs, grinning. 

“Trying things out. Doesn’t mean I don’t know what I want.”

And Buck—

Buck can’t breathe.

Hen makes a quiet, considering sound, and shushes Chimney quiet by throwing something at him, who gasps and tries to throw something — a sliced mango, Buck thinks — back, though Bobby catches his wrist before he could. Hen snorts, hearing Chimney complain, and looks back at Eddie.

“Sounds like you know exactly what you want.”

Eddie nods, just a little.

Next to him, Buck presses his lips together, forces a smile so it doesn’t crack his face open.

Stable. Kind. The kind of person you build a life with.

The words echo like they were meant to hurt — even if they weren’t.

Hen looks between them — one open, the other clenched shut — and resists the urge to knock their heads together.

Instead, she just leans forward, resting her arms on the table. 

“You know,” she says lightly, “sometimes what feels right is closer than you think.”

Eddie frowns, puzzled. 

“What do you mean?”

She shrugs with a nonchalance she doesn’t quite feel. 

“Just that… some people don’t need to be figured out. You already know how they make you feel.”

Buck excuses himself quietly, mumbling something about checking inventory.

Because he’s not stable. He’s not the guy you build a life with. He’s chaos wrapped in smiles, second guesses, and late-night calls that sound too much like can you come over, I can’t be alone right now. He’s the safe place people run to, not the person they stay for.

He pushes back from the table, too fast. “Gonna grab something from the truck,” he mutters.

He’s out the kitchen before anyone can ask.

He doesn’t make it to the truck.

Stops in the locker room instead, leans both hands on the edge of the sink and lets his head drop low like the weight in his chest might spill out if he’s not careful.

It’s stupid. It’s so stupid. He should be happy for Eddie. He is happy for Eddie. Eight months ago Eddie was still too scared to look in the mirror, and now he’s here, laughing about kissing men, talking about a future.

But Buck wanted to be that future. And apparently, he’s not even close.

He drags a hand across his face.

And then he hears it — the soft creak of the door opening, followed by footsteps he knows by heart.

Hen doesn’t say anything. Just comes up beside him, like she’s done a hundred times before. Like she already knows.

“He’s not trying to hurt you,” she says, voice quiet, but firm.

Buck swallows hard. 

“I know.”

Hen waits, and she doesn’t push. She just stands there, calm and steady like a lighthouse in a storm; like she’s known heartbreak quite like that, and she can recognize it so easily in Buck’s expression and mannerisms.

“I thought—” Buck starts, then stops. His jaw clenches, eyes burning, and it takes everything not to break apart right there. “I thought maybe… maybe he’d come back and see me. Really see me. But he didn’t.”

Hen’s hand settles on his back, grounding.

“I see you,” she says gently. “And you’re enough, Buck. You’ve always been enough.”

And that’s what does it.

Not Eddie’s words, not only, and not the implication that Buck doesn’t measure up. But Hen, kind and unwavering and without a hint of teasing that is so common in their friendship, saying exactly what he needs and maybe not just because he needs to hear it — perhaps because she does believe them to be true.

A tear slips down his cheek, and Buck doesn’t bother to wipe it away.

Hen doesn’t look at him when he cries, and somehow, that makes it easier. She just lets him stand there in silence, hand steady on his back, until his breath stops shaking and the air gets a little deeper inside his lungs.

When he finally speaks again, it’s barely a whisper. 

“I don’t know how to stop loving him.”

Hen exhales softly. 

“You don’t have to stop loving him, Buck,” she said. “It’s not wasted love, and you know that. You just— you just don’t forget to love yourself too.”

Buck sniffles once, quiet and a little embarrassed, and mutters.

“God, I’m such a mess.”

Hen gives his back a light pat, then bumps his shoulder with hers. 

“Nah. I’ve seen your place after taco night. That’s a mess. This?” She gestures vaguely to his red-rimmed eyes and the tight grip he still has on the sink edge. “This is heartbreak. It’s practically a rite of passage.”

He huffs a laugh, shaky but real. 

“So what, I get a badge now? A t-shirt?”

Hen grins. 

“Oh, absolutely. Welcome to the Sad and Gay and Pining Club™. We cry in locker rooms and pretend we don’t write poetry in our Notes app.”

“I don’t write poetry—”

She raises an eyebrow. 

“You tried to rhyme ‘loft’ with ‘Microsoft’ once, Buck, don’t think I forgot.”

Buck lets out an actual laugh this time, small and sheepish. 

“Okay, maybe once I tried poetry.”

They sink down onto the bench, side by side, and Hen nudges his foot with hers.

“You want my opinion?” she says.

Buck sighs.

“I could probably use one, yeah.”

“He’s not not seeing you, Buck. He’s just not seeing clearly yet. You’re so close to him, you’ve been part of his heart for years—he’s gotta stop mistaking that comfort for coincidence.”

Buck looks at the floor. 

“But what if I’m just… the safe space. The guy he trusts but doesn’t want.”

Hen tilts her head. 

“I don’t think Eddie Diaz does anything without wanting it first.”

He doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t have to. It sits between them — the what-ifs, the aching timing of it all, how sometimes love feels like screaming through glass, quite visible but unheard.

Hen bumps him again. 

“C’mon. Your face is still pretty when you cry, but I’m not gonna let you mope forever. You need food, bad TV, and maybe some gentle bullying.”

Buck snorts. 

“Can I get all that without Chim being involved?”

“I make no promises.”

He laughs again, then lets his head drop against her shoulder for a second. Just a second. Long enough to breathe without pressure.

“Thanks, Hen.”

“Anytime, babe.”

[...]

It starts with silence.

Buck’s been quiet the whole shift — which, of course, is not unusual for most people, but for Buck? Silence is suspicious. He answers in clipped words, avoids eye contact, and practically bolts the moment a call is over. Everyone notices, and no one says a thing. Half of Buck believes that Hen was the one to step in tell Bobby and Chim that she knows what’s going on and there’s nothing they can do about it, and Buck could never be more thankful to her.

But it’s Eddie who corners him.

It’s late, the firehouse is winding down, and Buck’s washing up alone at the sink after sand got inside his gloves after the latest call that involved skinny dipping and surfing — and it didn’t end well, of course, if they were there to see it. His shoulders tense the second Eddie enters the room, like he feels him before he hears him.

“You’re mad at me,” Eddie says, no preamble.

Buck stiffens. 

“I’m not.”

“You are.” Eddie steps closer, arms folded. “You’ve been weird since the other night. Since—what, since you saw me with Luis?”

Buck shuts the water off. He keeps his back turned, because it’s not really something he wants to face, both Eddie and that exact conversation they were about to have. It’s time to go home, the other shift already getting ready to take over, and Buck could really, really use another night of sleep without having to talk about what’s going on.

“Forget it,” he says, a little too tired.

Eddie scoffs.

“No, I’m not gonna forget it. You’ve been avoiding me, acting like I did something wrong—”

And, really, he didn’t want to have that conversation. Maybe it’s best if it’s over sooner rather than later, so he can get in his own car — because he also avoids carpooling with Eddie lately — and drive around and pretend that he won’t go back home to be reminded of what he so desperately wants.

His mouth gets to the same conclusion before his rationality does.

“Maybe you did!” Buck snaps, turning so fast the words fall out before he can catch them. His eyes are bright, wounded. “Or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you didn’t do anything except exist, and that’s the problem.”

Eddie blinks. And  frowns. And Buck is honestly offended at just how pretty that man looks even when Eddie’s breaking his heart.

“Buck—”

“You came back and you were different. You were you, but freer, lighter. And you told me you were trying things out, and I was so damn happy for you, Eddie. I am. But I thought—” Buck’s voice breaks, then steadies like he’s forcing it into shape. “I thought maybe it meant something. That maybe, for once, the timing would finally work out.”

Eddie looks stunned. He tilts his head.

“Work out for what?”

“For us!”

read the rest on Ao3!

[justapoet]

not asking too much (just wanna be loved by you)

“Well, to be honest... after Tommy, I think I’m gonna stay away from first responders for a while.” The room stilled for a fraction of a second too long. Eddie didn’t know how to react to the new information. Because, it turns out, Eddie was a first responder. But, oh. There were a lot of other careers he could try that far in life. Or, Buck makes an innocent comment about not dating first responders so no one will suspect of his newfound feelings for Eddie, and unknowingly breaks Eddie's heart in the process. And because Eddie is a grown-up, logical and perfectly mentally-balanced adult, he does not start thinking about switching careers only so he can ask Buck out on a date. (He does. And, hey; ballroom dancing is not that bad a career path).

read on Ao3

The quiet hum of the station filled the space between calls. 

Buck sat on the worn couch in the common area, flipping through a dog-eared magazine he wasn’t actually reading. The laughter of a recent call still lingered in the air—Bobby had made some dad joke, Hen had rolled her eyes, and Eddie, back from Texas and slotting seamlessly into place again, had smiled in that way that made Buck forget how to breathe for half a second.

It had been three months since Eddie and Christopher returned to LA. 

Three months since Buck had stopped waking up to silence and started waking up to the smell of coffee, to the sound of two sets of footsteps instead of only his own, to the weight of belonging he hadn’t realized he’d missed until it came flooding back.

When Eddie first offered him the guest room again, Buck had hesitated—out of politeness, out of fear, out of not wanting to overstay the welcome he’d never wanted to leave in the first place. But Eddie had looked at him like he was speaking a different language, like Buck not staying wasn’t even on the list of possibilities, and said simply, “You’re not going anywhere, Buck.”

So he didn’t.

Three months of shared breakfasts that turned into banter and grins and a habit of pouring each other’s mugs without asking. Three months of laundry rotations where Buck found himself folding Christopher’s T-shirts with practiced hands, not because he had to, but because it felt like second nature now. Three months of movie nights on the couch, where they cycled through Marvel films out of ritual more than excitement, Christopher curled up with a blanket and Buck wedged between them, pretending he didn’t catch Eddie watching him instead of the screen.

Christopher had grown taller—his voice deeper, his laugh fuller, and his questions sharper in that teenage way that made Buck simultaneously proud and slightly terrified. And Buck had missed so much. His eyes would sometimes catch on Chris mid-conversation, and something would squeeze in his chest at the reminder: there had been a gap. A space where he hadn’t been there. A stretch of time where he should’ve been.

But he was here now. And every time Christopher called out “Buck, come look at this!” from the kitchen or dragged him into a board game on the weekend, it anchored something in him. Rooted him deeper in this house, in this life.

It should’ve felt like routine by now. Like any other comfortable arrangement between friends.

But it didn’t.

It felt like home.

And that terrified Buck more than he could admit.

Because every moment stretched the edges of what he could pretend he didn’t want. Every moment made it harder to keep calling it “Eddie’s house” instead of “theirs.” Every laugh, every shared look, every little domestic nothing felt like a promise he couldn’t ask for out loud.

Because what if Eddie didn’t see it the same way?

What if Buck had already missed his chance?

Because they were back, and it had been three months since Buck decided that he wouldn’t let a single thing possibly drive them away from his life again — even if figuratively. Three months of shared breakfasts, laundry schedules, and late-night Marvel rewatches on the couch that should’ve felt like routine—but didn’t. It felt like home. Which terrified Buck more than he could admit.

“Hey,” Hen said, breaking his train of thought as she dropped onto the couch beside him, nudging his knee with hers. “I’ve got someone you should meet.”

Buck blinked. 

“Huh?”

“A guy,” she said, clearly pleased with herself. “Station 147. Transferred in last week. Cute, smart, decent, which is a good start for you—”

“Hen,” Buck laughed nervously, a blush crawling up his neck. “Wow, okay.”

Across the room, Eddie, who’d been half-listening while pretending to check the rig’s inventory clipboard, went perfectly still. His grip tightened on the edge of the cabinet door.

Hen didn’t notice. And Buck, while noticing Eddie’s gaze snapping in his direction, didn’t notice the tensing of his shoulders or how he held his breath.

“I’m just saying. You’ve been single for a while, and this guy’s got that ‘please ruin my life in a good way’ energy you seem to go for.”

He gasped, and playfully slapped her arm. Hen laughed, and raised her hands as if in surrender.

It was only a second until Buck’s smile faded and he scratched the back of his neck, a nervous tick he couldn’t quite let go of. He swallowed hard. Behind him, Buck could feel Eddie watching him now, like a heat source—steady and silent. 

His brain blanked. Then scrambled. Then—panicked.

And he didn’t even know what came over him when he spoke again.

“Well, to be honest... after Tommy, I think I’m gonna stay away from first responders for a while.”

The room stilled for a fraction of a second too long. 

“Huh,” Hen said. “Okay? Well, my suggestion stands anyway,” she shrugged and leaned back, a little surprised but not pushing. 

Buck looked down, fiddling with the magazine edge like it held answers.

Eddie didn’t say anything. He just nodded slowly to himself and turned away, back to the inventory he wasn’t checking anymore. But Buck caught the way his shoulders dropped, just slightly—like someone had knocked the wind out of him without a sound.

And Buck hated it. Hated that he had to say it to throw Hen off the scent, to keep the ache in his chest safely locked away where no one could see. Especially not Eddie.

Especially not now that Buck was so sure—so goddamn sure—he was in love with him.

[...]

Eddie didn’t know how to react to the new information.

He’d been standing there, clipboard in hand, mentally rehearsing how he might ask Buck out—something casual, maybe, but honest. A walk on their next shared day off. Coffee after school drop-off. Something real.

And then Buck said it, just because the Universe was so fucking funny and, oh, Eddie was, of course, the punchline.

I think I’m gonna stay away from first responders for a while.

It had landed like a bucket of ice over his head, sharp and breath-stealing.

Because, it turns out, Eddie was a first responder.

Just lovely.

Now, hours later, Eddie sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like it might rearrange itself into an answer. The house was quiet. Christopher was asleep. Buck was still up, probably doing dishes or reading something he wouldn’t finish because he’d fall asleep on the couch halfway through it.

Everything looked the same, but something had shifted under his skin.

Eddie ran a hand through his hair, exhaled through his nose.

He wasn’t mad. Not really. Buck had a right to feel how he felt—had been through enough heartbreak for ten lifetimes. And Tommy had been... not nothing. Eddie knew that, as much as he would love to just erase that man’s memory from existence in Buck’s mind. He’d been there through the aftermath, the crash of it. Picked up the pieces in small, invisible ways.

But he also thought—maybe foolishly, maybe selfishly—that things had been different since he came back. Like settling back into old rhythms. Like putting on a pair of boots so well-worn they mold to your shape again without complaint.

But it didn’t.

It felt like balancing on the edge of a confession. Every day, every moment shared under the same roof with Buck, felt like holding his breath and waiting for something to give.

Eddie had lived with Buck before, had spent years watching him light up rooms and hold people together and fall in love—not with him, of course. But this time was different. This time, Buck hadn’t just moved in because it was convenient or necessary. This time, he stayed because Eddie had asked him to. Because Christopher still lit up when Buck walked into a room. Because the house felt less like four walls and more like a home when Buck was in it.

And Eddie... Eddie was drowning in it. 

Quietly. Willingly.

He hadn’t meant to fall in love with Buck, not really. It had happened somewhere between movie nights and morning coffees and Christopher’s teasing remarks about how Buck always remembered to buy the cereal Eddie forgot. Somewhere in the shared silences and overlapping routines, Eddie had looked up and realized that he didn’t just want Buck in his life—he wanted a life with Buck.

 They’d fallen into something soft and unspoken. He caught Buck looking sometimes, the same way he looked at Buck. They moved around each other like gravity had shifted, subtle but sure.

And Eddie had started to believe, really believe, that maybe he wasn’t imagining it.

“Guess I was wrong,” he muttered to himself, voice low and bitter around the edges.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and leaned back against the headboard, staring up at the ceiling now, like the answer might live there instead.

He didn’t want to leave the job—not again. But there was something about hearing Buck say those words, not even to him, that made him wonder if he should. If it’d be easier, less complicated. If Buck needed distance to heal and Eddie was too much of a reminder.

He closed his eyes, heart clenching with the quiet ache of it all.

“I was gonna ask you out,” he whispered to no one. “I was finally gonna ask.”

But the words had stayed locked behind his teeth. 

And now they might never make it out.

[...]

There were a lot of careers Eddie could try, this far in life.

Not that he was planning to switch careers. Not really. But, hypothetically speaking—if he were to leave the firehouse, if he were to step away from the only job that had ever made him feel like he was part of something—well, it would be for a very good reason.

A noble cause.

A worthy, blue-eyed, ridiculously golden-hearted cause.

And perhaps he was considering it a bit too much, too hard and too seriously for it to be hypothetical.

Eddie stood at the kitchen counter, staring blankly at the toaster like it had answers, sipping coffee that tasted vaguely like betrayal. Buck was still asleep down the hall—probably wrapped around all the blankets again like a sleepy, gorgeous starfish—and Eddie was standing here, mentally drafting his résumé.

He was good with his hands. Building things. Fixing them. He’d taken apart Christopher’s old bed frame last week just to see if he could reinforce it better—he could. He could probably go into carpentry. Construction. There were options. 

At least, that’s what he told himself.

…No, Buck had literally never once dated a guy in construction. Probably too close to first responders. The whole “high risk, high adrenaline” vibe. And considering Eddie’s luck so far in life, well— Not ideal.

Okay. New idea.

read the rest on Ao3

[justapoet]

not asking too much (just wanna be loved by you)

“Well, to be honest... after Tommy, I think I’m gonna stay away from first responders for a while.” The room stilled for a fraction of a second too long. Eddie didn’t know how to react to the new information. Because, it turns out, Eddie was a first responder. But, oh. There were a lot of other careers he could try that far in life. Or, Buck makes an innocent comment about not dating first responders so no one will suspect of his newfound feelings for Eddie, and unknowingly breaks Eddie's heart in the process. And because Eddie is a grown-up, logical and perfectly mentally-balanced adult, he does not start thinking about switching careers only so he can ask Buck out on a date. (He does. And, hey; ballroom dancing is not that bad a career path).

read on Ao3

The quiet hum of the station filled the space between calls. 

Buck sat on the worn couch in the common area, flipping through a dog-eared magazine he wasn’t actually reading. The laughter of a recent call still lingered in the air—Bobby had made some dad joke, Hen had rolled her eyes, and Eddie, back from Texas and slotting seamlessly into place again, had smiled in that way that made Buck forget how to breathe for half a second.

It had been three months since Eddie and Christopher returned to LA. 

Three months since Buck had stopped waking up to silence and started waking up to the smell of coffee, to the sound of two sets of footsteps instead of only his own, to the weight of belonging he hadn’t realized he’d missed until it came flooding back.

When Eddie first offered him the guest room again, Buck had hesitated—out of politeness, out of fear, out of not wanting to overstay the welcome he’d never wanted to leave in the first place. But Eddie had looked at him like he was speaking a different language, like Buck not staying wasn’t even on the list of possibilities, and said simply, “You’re not going anywhere, Buck.”

So he didn’t.

Three months of shared breakfasts that turned into banter and grins and a habit of pouring each other’s mugs without asking. Three months of laundry rotations where Buck found himself folding Christopher’s T-shirts with practiced hands, not because he had to, but because it felt like second nature now. Three months of movie nights on the couch, where they cycled through Marvel films out of ritual more than excitement, Christopher curled up with a blanket and Buck wedged between them, pretending he didn’t catch Eddie watching him instead of the screen.

Christopher had grown taller—his voice deeper, his laugh fuller, and his questions sharper in that teenage way that made Buck simultaneously proud and slightly terrified. And Buck had missed so much. His eyes would sometimes catch on Chris mid-conversation, and something would squeeze in his chest at the reminder: there had been a gap. A space where he hadn’t been there. A stretch of time where he should’ve been.

But he was here now. And every time Christopher called out “Buck, come look at this!” from the kitchen or dragged him into a board game on the weekend, it anchored something in him. Rooted him deeper in this house, in this life.

It should’ve felt like routine by now. Like any other comfortable arrangement between friends.

But it didn’t.

It felt like home.

And that terrified Buck more than he could admit.

Because every moment stretched the edges of what he could pretend he didn’t want. Every moment made it harder to keep calling it “Eddie’s house” instead of “theirs.” Every laugh, every shared look, every little domestic nothing felt like a promise he couldn’t ask for out loud.

Because what if Eddie didn’t see it the same way?

What if Buck had already missed his chance?

Because they were back, and it had been three months since Buck decided that he wouldn’t let a single thing possibly drive them away from his life again — even if figuratively. Three months of shared breakfasts, laundry schedules, and late-night Marvel rewatches on the couch that should’ve felt like routine—but didn’t. It felt like home. Which terrified Buck more than he could admit.

“Hey,” Hen said, breaking his train of thought as she dropped onto the couch beside him, nudging his knee with hers. “I’ve got someone you should meet.”

Buck blinked. 

“Huh?”

“A guy,” she said, clearly pleased with herself. “Station 147. Transferred in last week. Cute, smart, decent, which is a good start for you—”

“Hen,” Buck laughed nervously, a blush crawling up his neck. “Wow, okay.”

Across the room, Eddie, who’d been half-listening while pretending to check the rig’s inventory clipboard, went perfectly still. His grip tightened on the edge of the cabinet door.

Hen didn’t notice. And Buck, while noticing Eddie’s gaze snapping in his direction, didn’t notice the tensing of his shoulders or how he held his breath.

“I’m just saying. You’ve been single for a while, and this guy’s got that ‘please ruin my life in a good way’ energy you seem to go for.”

He gasped, and playfully slapped her arm. Hen laughed, and raised her hands as if in surrender.

It was only a second until Buck’s smile faded and he scratched the back of his neck, a nervous tick he couldn’t quite let go of. He swallowed hard. Behind him, Buck could feel Eddie watching him now, like a heat source—steady and silent. 

His brain blanked. Then scrambled. Then—panicked.

And he didn’t even know what came over him when he spoke again.

“Well, to be honest... after Tommy, I think I’m gonna stay away from first responders for a while.”

The room stilled for a fraction of a second too long. 

“Huh,” Hen said. “Okay? Well, my suggestion stands anyway,” she shrugged and leaned back, a little surprised but not pushing. 

Buck looked down, fiddling with the magazine edge like it held answers.

Eddie didn’t say anything. He just nodded slowly to himself and turned away, back to the inventory he wasn’t checking anymore. But Buck caught the way his shoulders dropped, just slightly—like someone had knocked the wind out of him without a sound.

And Buck hated it. Hated that he had to say it to throw Hen off the scent, to keep the ache in his chest safely locked away where no one could see. Especially not Eddie.

Especially not now that Buck was so sure—so goddamn sure—he was in love with him.

[...]

Eddie didn’t know how to react to the new information.

He’d been standing there, clipboard in hand, mentally rehearsing how he might ask Buck out—something casual, maybe, but honest. A walk on their next shared day off. Coffee after school drop-off. Something real.

And then Buck said it, just because the Universe was so fucking funny and, oh, Eddie was, of course, the punchline.

I think I’m gonna stay away from first responders for a while.

It had landed like a bucket of ice over his head, sharp and breath-stealing.

Because, it turns out, Eddie was a first responder.

Just lovely.

Now, hours later, Eddie sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like it might rearrange itself into an answer. The house was quiet. Christopher was asleep. Buck was still up, probably doing dishes or reading something he wouldn’t finish because he’d fall asleep on the couch halfway through it.

Everything looked the same, but something had shifted under his skin.

Eddie ran a hand through his hair, exhaled through his nose.

He wasn’t mad. Not really. Buck had a right to feel how he felt—had been through enough heartbreak for ten lifetimes. And Tommy had been... not nothing. Eddie knew that, as much as he would love to just erase that man’s memory from existence in Buck’s mind. He’d been there through the aftermath, the crash of it. Picked up the pieces in small, invisible ways.

But he also thought—maybe foolishly, maybe selfishly—that things had been different since he came back. Like settling back into old rhythms. Like putting on a pair of boots so well-worn they mold to your shape again without complaint.

But it didn’t.

It felt like balancing on the edge of a confession. Every day, every moment shared under the same roof with Buck, felt like holding his breath and waiting for something to give.

Eddie had lived with Buck before, had spent years watching him light up rooms and hold people together and fall in love—not with him, of course. But this time was different. This time, Buck hadn’t just moved in because it was convenient or necessary. This time, he stayed because Eddie had asked him to. Because Christopher still lit up when Buck walked into a room. Because the house felt less like four walls and more like a home when Buck was in it.

And Eddie... Eddie was drowning in it. 

Quietly. Willingly.

He hadn’t meant to fall in love with Buck, not really. It had happened somewhere between movie nights and morning coffees and Christopher’s teasing remarks about how Buck always remembered to buy the cereal Eddie forgot. Somewhere in the shared silences and overlapping routines, Eddie had looked up and realized that he didn’t just want Buck in his life—he wanted a life with Buck.

 They’d fallen into something soft and unspoken. He caught Buck looking sometimes, the same way he looked at Buck. They moved around each other like gravity had shifted, subtle but sure.

And Eddie had started to believe, really believe, that maybe he wasn’t imagining it.

“Guess I was wrong,” he muttered to himself, voice low and bitter around the edges.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and leaned back against the headboard, staring up at the ceiling now, like the answer might live there instead.

He didn’t want to leave the job—not again. But there was something about hearing Buck say those words, not even to him, that made him wonder if he should. If it’d be easier, less complicated. If Buck needed distance to heal and Eddie was too much of a reminder.

He closed his eyes, heart clenching with the quiet ache of it all.

“I was gonna ask you out,” he whispered to no one. “I was finally gonna ask.”

But the words had stayed locked behind his teeth. 

And now they might never make it out.

[...]

There were a lot of careers Eddie could try, this far in life.

Not that he was planning to switch careers. Not really. But, hypothetically speaking—if he were to leave the firehouse, if he were to step away from the only job that had ever made him feel like he was part of something—well, it would be for a very good reason.

A noble cause.

A worthy, blue-eyed, ridiculously golden-hearted cause.

And perhaps he was considering it a bit too much, too hard and too seriously for it to be hypothetical.

Eddie stood at the kitchen counter, staring blankly at the toaster like it had answers, sipping coffee that tasted vaguely like betrayal. Buck was still asleep down the hall—probably wrapped around all the blankets again like a sleepy, gorgeous starfish—and Eddie was standing here, mentally drafting his résumé.

He was good with his hands. Building things. Fixing them. He’d taken apart Christopher’s old bed frame last week just to see if he could reinforce it better—he could. He could probably go into carpentry. Construction. There were options. 

At least, that’s what he told himself.

…No, Buck had literally never once dated a guy in construction. Probably too close to first responders. The whole “high risk, high adrenaline” vibe. And considering Eddie’s luck so far in life, well— Not ideal.

Okay. New idea.

read the rest on Ao3

[justapoet]

not asking too much (just wanna be loved by you)

“Well, to be honest... after Tommy, I think I’m gonna stay away from first responders for a while.” The room stilled for a fraction of a second too long. Eddie didn’t know how to react to the new information. Because, it turns out, Eddie was a first responder. But, oh. There were a lot of other careers he could try that far in life. Or, Buck makes an innocent comment about not dating first responders so no one will suspect of his newfound feelings for Eddie, and unknowingly breaks Eddie's heart in the process. And because Eddie is a grown-up, logical and perfectly mentally-balanced adult, he does not start thinking about switching careers only so he can ask Buck out on a date. (He does. And, hey; ballroom dancing is not that bad a career path).

read on Ao3

The quiet hum of the station filled the space between calls. 

Buck sat on the worn couch in the common area, flipping through a dog-eared magazine he wasn’t actually reading. The laughter of a recent call still lingered in the air—Bobby had made some dad joke, Hen had rolled her eyes, and Eddie, back from Texas and slotting seamlessly into place again, had smiled in that way that made Buck forget how to breathe for half a second.

It had been three months since Eddie and Christopher returned to LA. 

Three months since Buck had stopped waking up to silence and started waking up to the smell of coffee, to the sound of two sets of footsteps instead of only his own, to the weight of belonging he hadn’t realized he’d missed until it came flooding back.

When Eddie first offered him the guest room again, Buck had hesitated—out of politeness, out of fear, out of not wanting to overstay the welcome he’d never wanted to leave in the first place. But Eddie had looked at him like he was speaking a different language, like Buck not staying wasn’t even on the list of possibilities, and said simply, “You’re not going anywhere, Buck.”

So he didn’t.

Three months of shared breakfasts that turned into banter and grins and a habit of pouring each other’s mugs without asking. Three months of laundry rotations where Buck found himself folding Christopher’s T-shirts with practiced hands, not because he had to, but because it felt like second nature now. Three months of movie nights on the couch, where they cycled through Marvel films out of ritual more than excitement, Christopher curled up with a blanket and Buck wedged between them, pretending he didn’t catch Eddie watching him instead of the screen.

Christopher had grown taller—his voice deeper, his laugh fuller, and his questions sharper in that teenage way that made Buck simultaneously proud and slightly terrified. And Buck had missed so much. His eyes would sometimes catch on Chris mid-conversation, and something would squeeze in his chest at the reminder: there had been a gap. A space where he hadn’t been there. A stretch of time where he should’ve been.

But he was here now. And every time Christopher called out “Buck, come look at this!” from the kitchen or dragged him into a board game on the weekend, it anchored something in him. Rooted him deeper in this house, in this life.

It should’ve felt like routine by now. Like any other comfortable arrangement between friends.

But it didn’t.

It felt like home.

And that terrified Buck more than he could admit.

Because every moment stretched the edges of what he could pretend he didn’t want. Every moment made it harder to keep calling it “Eddie’s house” instead of “theirs.” Every laugh, every shared look, every little domestic nothing felt like a promise he couldn’t ask for out loud.

Because what if Eddie didn’t see it the same way?

What if Buck had already missed his chance?

Because they were back, and it had been three months since Buck decided that he wouldn’t let a single thing possibly drive them away from his life again — even if figuratively. Three months of shared breakfasts, laundry schedules, and late-night Marvel rewatches on the couch that should’ve felt like routine—but didn’t. It felt like home. Which terrified Buck more than he could admit.

“Hey,” Hen said, breaking his train of thought as she dropped onto the couch beside him, nudging his knee with hers. “I’ve got someone you should meet.”

Buck blinked. 

“Huh?”

“A guy,” she said, clearly pleased with herself. “Station 147. Transferred in last week. Cute, smart, decent, which is a good start for you—”

“Hen,” Buck laughed nervously, a blush crawling up his neck. “Wow, okay.”

Across the room, Eddie, who’d been half-listening while pretending to check the rig’s inventory clipboard, went perfectly still. His grip tightened on the edge of the cabinet door.

Hen didn’t notice. And Buck, while noticing Eddie’s gaze snapping in his direction, didn’t notice the tensing of his shoulders or how he held his breath.

“I’m just saying. You’ve been single for a while, and this guy’s got that ‘please ruin my life in a good way’ energy you seem to go for.”

He gasped, and playfully slapped her arm. Hen laughed, and raised her hands as if in surrender.

It was only a second until Buck’s smile faded and he scratched the back of his neck, a nervous tick he couldn’t quite let go of. He swallowed hard. Behind him, Buck could feel Eddie watching him now, like a heat source—steady and silent. 

His brain blanked. Then scrambled. Then—panicked.

And he didn’t even know what came over him when he spoke again.

“Well, to be honest... after Tommy, I think I’m gonna stay away from first responders for a while.”

The room stilled for a fraction of a second too long. 

“Huh,” Hen said. “Okay? Well, my suggestion stands anyway,” she shrugged and leaned back, a little surprised but not pushing. 

Buck looked down, fiddling with the magazine edge like it held answers.

Eddie didn’t say anything. He just nodded slowly to himself and turned away, back to the inventory he wasn’t checking anymore. But Buck caught the way his shoulders dropped, just slightly—like someone had knocked the wind out of him without a sound.

And Buck hated it. Hated that he had to say it to throw Hen off the scent, to keep the ache in his chest safely locked away where no one could see. Especially not Eddie.

Especially not now that Buck was so sure—so goddamn sure—he was in love with him.

[...]

Eddie didn’t know how to react to the new information.

He’d been standing there, clipboard in hand, mentally rehearsing how he might ask Buck out—something casual, maybe, but honest. A walk on their next shared day off. Coffee after school drop-off. Something real.

And then Buck said it, just because the Universe was so fucking funny and, oh, Eddie was, of course, the punchline.

I think I’m gonna stay away from first responders for a while.

It had landed like a bucket of ice over his head, sharp and breath-stealing.

Because, it turns out, Eddie was a first responder.

Just lovely.

Now, hours later, Eddie sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor like it might rearrange itself into an answer. The house was quiet. Christopher was asleep. Buck was still up, probably doing dishes or reading something he wouldn’t finish because he’d fall asleep on the couch halfway through it.

Everything looked the same, but something had shifted under his skin.

Eddie ran a hand through his hair, exhaled through his nose.

He wasn’t mad. Not really. Buck had a right to feel how he felt—had been through enough heartbreak for ten lifetimes. And Tommy had been... not nothing. Eddie knew that, as much as he would love to just erase that man’s memory from existence in Buck’s mind. He’d been there through the aftermath, the crash of it. Picked up the pieces in small, invisible ways.

But he also thought—maybe foolishly, maybe selfishly—that things had been different since he came back. Like settling back into old rhythms. Like putting on a pair of boots so well-worn they mold to your shape again without complaint.

But it didn’t.

It felt like balancing on the edge of a confession. Every day, every moment shared under the same roof with Buck, felt like holding his breath and waiting for something to give.

Eddie had lived with Buck before, had spent years watching him light up rooms and hold people together and fall in love—not with him, of course. But this time was different. This time, Buck hadn’t just moved in because it was convenient or necessary. This time, he stayed because Eddie had asked him to. Because Christopher still lit up when Buck walked into a room. Because the house felt less like four walls and more like a home when Buck was in it.

And Eddie... Eddie was drowning in it. 

Quietly. Willingly.

He hadn’t meant to fall in love with Buck, not really. It had happened somewhere between movie nights and morning coffees and Christopher’s teasing remarks about how Buck always remembered to buy the cereal Eddie forgot. Somewhere in the shared silences and overlapping routines, Eddie had looked up and realized that he didn’t just want Buck in his life—he wanted a life with Buck.

 They’d fallen into something soft and unspoken. He caught Buck looking sometimes, the same way he looked at Buck. They moved around each other like gravity had shifted, subtle but sure.

And Eddie had started to believe, really believe, that maybe he wasn’t imagining it.

“Guess I was wrong,” he muttered to himself, voice low and bitter around the edges.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and leaned back against the headboard, staring up at the ceiling now, like the answer might live there instead.

He didn’t want to leave the job—not again. But there was something about hearing Buck say those words, not even to him, that made him wonder if he should. If it’d be easier, less complicated. If Buck needed distance to heal and Eddie was too much of a reminder.

He closed his eyes, heart clenching with the quiet ache of it all.

“I was gonna ask you out,” he whispered to no one. “I was finally gonna ask.”

But the words had stayed locked behind his teeth. 

And now they might never make it out.

[...]

There were a lot of careers Eddie could try, this far in life.

Not that he was planning to switch careers. Not really. But, hypothetically speaking—if he were to leave the firehouse, if he were to step away from the only job that had ever made him feel like he was part of something—well, it would be for a very good reason.

A noble cause.

A worthy, blue-eyed, ridiculously golden-hearted cause.

And perhaps he was considering it a bit too much, too hard and too seriously for it to be hypothetical.

Eddie stood at the kitchen counter, staring blankly at the toaster like it had answers, sipping coffee that tasted vaguely like betrayal. Buck was still asleep down the hall—probably wrapped around all the blankets again like a sleepy, gorgeous starfish—and Eddie was standing here, mentally drafting his résumé.

He was good with his hands. Building things. Fixing them. He’d taken apart Christopher’s old bed frame last week just to see if he could reinforce it better—he could. He could probably go into carpentry. Construction. There were options. 

At least, that’s what he told himself.

…No, Buck had literally never once dated a guy in construction. Probably too close to first responders. The whole “high risk, high adrenaline” vibe. And considering Eddie’s luck so far in life, well— Not ideal.

Okay. New idea.

read the rest on Ao3

[justapoet]

it's a long way back (take me home)

He tried to keep busy— throw himself into work, to drown out the silence that seemed to settle deeper into the house with each passing day. But even then, it wasn’t enough. The firehouse was full of noise and people, but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same. The way they worked together, anticipating each other’s moves, understanding the rhythm of the job without needing to speak—that was gone. Buck couldn’t stop himself from checking his phone every few hours, hoping for a text, a sign, or anything that might bridge the growing distance between him and Eddie. But the messages were sparse, polite even, as if they were strangers trying to be friends again. The conversation didn’t last long. And that was it. It had been weeks, and the silence between them was only getting louder. Or, Eddie leaves, and Buck struggles. Eddie comes back, and Buck is struggling - physically. He's taken care of. And nothing is left unspoken.

read it on Ao3

Many times in life Buck thought about booking an appointment with a cardiologist, just for the hopes that it would show something that could be clinically cured and restored to its original, healthy state of existence.

In all of those he knew that exams would show nothing, because there was nothing to be shown by machines and blood tests.

Heartaches, he had learned soon enough in life, were more metaphorical than any other pain one could feel or take to a hospital as a complaint.

It had never hurt so much that he couldn’t make a muscle in his body obey his orders, though. It had never hurt so much that the pain made him incapable of making himself a useful, fully-grown human being.

There was some sort of grief in being surrounded by things and walls that held so much history and so much life that wasn’t there anymore. There was some sort of grief in being completely aware that hearts were still beating, but so far away that he would have to have faith to believe it completely and unquestionably. There was some sort of grief in knowing life didn’t end.

But it might as well have, the life that he knew.

Eddie had left two days before, and Christopher had left so long ago that Buck doubted his memory of the boy’s face and laughter. The video calls didn’t do it any justice when he had grown so accustomed to having it around him, around them for so many years, for so much time.

He hadn’t called Eddie. Hadn’t messaged him either, and neither had Eddie sent anything or tried to call Buck.

And he could understand, really — settling in and trying to make things right was probably taking all of his time, and Buck didn’t want to be a bother, another problem Eddie somehow had to deal with. It wasn’t about him, and he had known it forever; it was about Chris, and about Eddie, and about righting some wrongs that shouldn’t have been anything in the first place.

It wasn’t about him, but his heart ached in a way that it might as well have been about it all the while.

It was a day off he would usually spend cleaning the loft of hanging out with the Diazes, were things the same they had been for more than half a decade. A day off he would take Jee-yun to the park or to visit Chim in the firehouse, had things not changed so much within such a short time. A day off he would spend running errands and buying cereal he thought tasted like perfume because Christopher had somehow convinced Jee-yun, Danny and Maddie that it was the best thing they could have for breakfast, had things been the blissful beauty Buck had loved so much from their very beginning.

But it was a day off in which Buck couldn’t find the strength within him to get out of bed. Eddie’s bed, because he hadn’t had the strength to move anything around or change any mobilia at all.

His heart ached, and there wasn’t a thing he could possibly do about it. No medicine or tea or medical appointment that would tell him that the solution had two milligrams and regular intervals.

Buck probably wouldn’t have gotten out of bed if it wasn’t for Bobby calling him and asking him to cover up for Hen, who was at the hospital with a very food-poisoned Danny and wouldn’t be able to work that day.

His heart ached, but he plastered a smile on his face anyway and went into the station.

“You good, kid?” Bobby had asked him.

His heart ached, and he nodded enthusiastically as Chimney handed him a videogame controller and Ravi sulked on the couch, defeated for what probably hadn’t been the first time.

Buck plastered a grin as he took the controller from Chimney, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He was good at this—at pretending, at making it seem like everything was fine, even when it wasn’t. But he couldn’t fool himself, not anymore.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Buck said, his voice almost too bright, and even Ravi shot him a sideways glance. Ravi didn’t say anything, but the silent skepticism in his gaze spoke volumes. Buck knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. He wasn’t even fooling himself. The ache in his chest, the tightness in his throat—none of it was going away. Not with time, not with distractions, not with this stupid video game.

He sank into the couch beside Ravi, turning the controller over in his hands as if the buttons could somehow give him the answers he needed. They didn’t. The game flickered on the screen, but his mind was elsewhere—on the conversations he hadn’t had, on the silence that had stretched between him and Eddie since he’d left.

There was a whole other life waiting for Eddie in Texas, a life that didn’t include Buck. He had to accept that, right? It was never about him, he knew that. Eddie needed space, needed time to heal, to fix things with Christopher. But somehow, the thought that Eddie wasn’t missing him, wasn’t feeling the same pang of loss, hurt more than anything.

“Buck…” Chimney started, his voice soft, but Buck was already shaking his head before he could finish.

“I’m fine, Chim. Really,” he lied, his voice tight, but the mask was on, and that was all that mattered. He wasn’t about to let them see how badly it hurt.

But Ravi, as much as he was sulking, seemed to understand something was off. He glanced at Buck again, his frown deepening, but he said nothing.

“Let’s just play,” Buck said, and tried to focus on the screen, to lose himself in the game, in the noise, in the company of people who were too busy with their own lives to notice how hollow he felt. But the ache, the emptiness, was still there, like a dull throb behind his ribs.

For a moment, it felt almost like normal—like before, when it was just him, Eddie, and their crew. The world had seemed so full then. But now, with Eddie gone, with everything out of place, Buck realized how fragile the good times had been. How easily it all could slip away.

He should’ve known better than to take it for granted.

Ravi’s voice broke through the silence, and Buck was almost startled by how low it sounded.

“You know,” Ravi said, his eyes meeting Buck’s for the first time, “we’re all here, man. We’re not going anywhere. But if you ever need to talk, about… well, anything, you know where to find us.”

Buck swallowed hard, trying to push the lump back down. He didn’t trust himself to speak. The words were stuck somewhere between his chest and his mouth, and if he let them out, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop them. But Ravi’s eyes—there was understanding there. And maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have to pretend with them.

“Thanks,” Buck managed, his voice hoarse, before he quickly turned his attention back to the game, grateful for the distraction, even if it didn’t bring any real comfort.

It wasn’t all about Eddie, not really. It was about the way everything had changed, how the world felt smaller now, quieter. And it was about the realization that no matter how much he tried to deny it, Eddie wasn’t coming back—not in the way Buck had hoped. Not in the way that might fix the aching hole inside of him.

The days blurred together after that, slipping past Buck like water through his fingers, each one indistinguishable from the next. He still found himself waking up in Eddie’s bed most mornings, the sheets cool and the pillow smelling faintly of cologne. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about buying  a new bed and a new soap and new sheets—he had. He just couldn’t find it in himself to do it.

The house was still the same. Nothing had changed. The same pictures hung on the walls, the same cluttered countertops, the same worn-out couch where they’d spent hours talking about everything and nothing and watching anything and losing on games to Chris. Buck had told himself it would get easier, that the memories wouldn’t sting as much with time, but the truth was they only seemed to get sharper, more vivid, more inescapable.

Every corner of the house felt like a piece of Eddie’s and Christopher’s absence, like a puzzle that couldn’t quite come together. There were nights when Buck lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering when he would finally feel okay, when he would stop wishing for the sound of Eddie’s laugh or the sight of Chris walking through the door with that slight frown of concentration on his face.

He tried to keep busy—tried to throw himself into work, to drown out the silence that seemed to settle deeper into the house with each passing day. But even then, it wasn’t enough. The firehouse was full of noise and people, but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same. Ravi was a good partner, but he wasn’t Eddie, and nothing could ever take that much out of Buck’s mouth. The way they worked together, anticipating each other’s moves, understanding the rhythm of the job without needing to speak—that was gone. And no amount of pretending could fill that void.

Buck couldn’t stop himself from checking his phone every few hours, hoping for a text, a sign, or anything that might bridge the growing distance between him and Eddie. But the messages were sparse, polite even, as if they were strangers trying to be friends again. “How’s Texas?” Buck had asked once, and Eddie had answered quickly, his response a little too eager. "Same old. You know how it is."

The conversation didn’t last long. And that was it.

It had been weeks, and the silence between them was only getting louder.

On days like today, when the rain fell in sheets outside and the world felt like it was shrinking, Buck couldn’t even bring himself to leave the house. He lay there, staring out the window, feeling the cold creeping in through the glass. There were things he should be doing—work he needed to catch up on, errands he needed to run—but none of it seemed worth the effort. Their absence weighed on him like a thick fog, making it hard to breathe, hard to focus. Even the thought of facing the world outside felt like too much.

He pulled the covers tighter around himself, trying to escape the gnawing ache in his chest, the one that wouldn’t go away no matter how hard he tried to push it down.

It was easier that way.

Eventually, his phone buzzed. It was a message from Bobby. 

You coming in today?

Buck stared at the screen for a long moment, the question lingering in the air, unanswered.

He couldn’t lie. Not to Bobby. Not to himself. He didn’t have it in him.

He texted back: I’ll be there soon.

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. He would get up. He would go to work. He’d put on his uniform, show up for his crew, for his friends. But it was getting harder to pretend. Every step felt like it took more effort than the last. And the harder he fought against it, the more it consumed him.

“Hey, you good?” Hen’s voice broke through his thoughts later that day, warm and concerned, as he sat beside Buck on the couch in the firehouse. The noise from the TV buzzed softly in the background, but Buck barely noticed it.

“Yeah,” Buck said, his voice rougher than he intended. “Just tired.”

Hen didn’t press, but Buck could see the way she looked at him, as if he knew there was more to it. There always was. Buck had gotten good at hiding it. But Hen, despite being the quickest to catch up, wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Bobby had caught him a few days ago, standing by the window with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring out at the city, lost in thought. 

"Buck," Bobby had said, his tone careful, like he was treading on fragile ground. "I know it’s hard, but you can’t keep burying yourself in work. It’s not going to fix this. You need to talk to Eddie. He’s still your friend. He still cares about you."

Buck had nodded then, but the words felt hollow, like something he had to say to get out of the conversation. He hadn’t reached out to Eddie. Not once. And somehow, that hurt even more than the silence.

He didn’t know what he was waiting for anymore. Maybe a sign, maybe the courage to finally tell Eddie how he felt. Or maybe he was waiting for the moment when it would finally all make sense again. But each day that passed without that moment made it harder to believe that would ever happen.

And so, he carried on. The mask stayed in place, his smile still perfectly practiced, but inside, Buck wasn’t sure if he was falling apart or holding himself together. Either way, the pain lingered. The ache didn’t go away.

[...]

Buck hadn’t even realized he’d ended up at Maddie’s place until he was standing at her front door, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring at the wood as if it held all the answers he was looking for.

It didn’t.

But maybe Maddie did have something, or anything at all, to offer him. A listening ear, a strong shoulder, just that look on her face that seems to read into one’s soul and make them confess every single one of their sins and fears and desperations.

The door opened before he could knock, his sister standing there with a knowing look in her eyes. He knew that she was probably only waiting to hear his car parking in front of the building — he knew that she wouldn’t leave the window until she saw him from the moment she had asked him to come over.

“Hey,” she said softly, stepping aside to let him in.

“Hey,” he muttered back, stepping over the threshold.

She didn’t ask why he was there, really, because they both knew the answer to it. Didn’t press. She called, he came, and the reason would hang over their heads for a while — until they were settled in silence for a bit. 

Maddie led him to the kitchen, where she poured him a glass of water and set it on the counter in front of him. He wasn’t sure when the last time he’d eaten was, but his stomach felt too knotted up to consider food.

Maddie leaned against the counter, studying him the way only she could.

“Chim said you were doing pretty good considering everything,” Maddie said.

Buck shrugged.

“Yeah, I’m doing good,” he told her. “It’s weird, but it’s fine.”

“I know you better than that, Buck,” she argued.

“I just—” he tried. “I feel like I lost them?”

“How come?”

“I don’t— I don’t know. It’s like…” he stuttered. “I— uh. I want to compare it to grief, but it seems unfair.”

“Unfair?”

“They’re not dead, Maddie. They just aren’t here anymore.”

She hummed.

“Curious to know what you think being dead means to the living, then,” she joked. “It’s not unfair, Buck. If it’s how you feel, then it’s how you feel,” Maddie assured him. “But I am curious as to why you think it’s just as permanent.”

“Eddie moved to Texas, Maddie,” Buck said, and his heart ached a bit more at the remembering. As if he had forgotten for even a second. “Chris has a new life there. It’s just a matter of time.”

A beat of silence.

“It was just a matter of time until he left, too,” Buck confessed, his voice so small that he felt like a kid again.

“Buck,” her voice was concerned. “Too?”

He shook his head.

“Everybody leaves. At some point,” he said. “Abby left. Then Ali. Then Taylor. Then Natalia. Then Tommy. Even you left,” Buck told her. “Nobody ever stays.”

Maddie could’ve taken offense to it, honestly, and Buck half-expected her to — half, because he knew that she wouldn’t quite play down his feelings and sort of agreed with him. And his tone wasn’t accusing, nor was it aiming to lay guilt over her shoulders; it was simply something that happened and, against everyone’s wishes, left scars on the both of them for completely different and oddly similar reasons.

Instead, Maddie tilted her head softly to the side, her gaze worried about him and the sadness in his voice. She placed down the glass of juice over the counter, and crossed her arms over her chest, shaking her head.

“And every one of those situations was completely different. This one is, too,” she said. “It involved you, but it doesn’t mean it is on you.”

Buck scoffed.

“Well, clearly I’m the problem,” he laughed bitterly. “Nobody ever wants to stay. And I know — I know,” Buck shook his head. “That it’s not about me and Eddie left to be with Christopher, which I of course understand and I would never discourage him to do, but—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. And even if Maddie didn’t really understand what it was that he wanted to say, she didn’t press it — she knew better than that. He was distressed, and in pain, and trying to make sense of it was definitely a challenge she wouldn’t force him to go through. Not with her, at least. And not right then.

“Well, I came back. Twice,” Maddie said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because nothing keeps him here. No ties,” Buck said, the words still bitter on his tongue and sharp against his throat. “Nothing’s here in L.A for him.”

Maddie frowned.

“You are.”

“Oh, of course. Such a big deal,” he rolled his eyes, sarcasm clear in his voice. 

“Have you talked to Eddie at all, Buck?” she asked. “Since he moved?”

“No.”

“You should,” she said. “Because you’re feeling bad, and he’s the only one who can possibly help you with those feelings. And before—” she lifted a finger. “—you say he isn’t, we both know it’s true. Because this is about the both of you.”

“Not about me.”

“I’m pretty sure your feelings are about you, Buck,” she arched an eyebrow. Maddie sighed. “Look, I know you don’t want to trouble him. But I don’t think you’re saving him any trouble by putting distance — emotional distance — between you two.”

But when he didn’t speak for a long moment, she sighed and nudged the container of food closer to him. 

“You’re overthinking.”

read the rest on Ao3

[justapoet]

it's a long way back (take me home)

He tried to keep busy— throw himself into work, to drown out the silence that seemed to settle deeper into the house with each passing day. But even then, it wasn’t enough. The firehouse was full of noise and people, but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same. The way they worked together, anticipating each other’s moves, understanding the rhythm of the job without needing to speak—that was gone. Buck couldn’t stop himself from checking his phone every few hours, hoping for a text, a sign, or anything that might bridge the growing distance between him and Eddie. But the messages were sparse, polite even, as if they were strangers trying to be friends again. The conversation didn’t last long. And that was it. It had been weeks, and the silence between them was only getting louder. Or, Eddie leaves, and Buck struggles. Eddie comes back, and Buck is struggling - physically. He's taken care of. And nothing is left unspoken.

read it on Ao3

Many times in life Buck thought about booking an appointment with a cardiologist, just for the hopes that it would show something that could be clinically cured and restored to its original, healthy state of existence.

In all of those he knew that exams would show nothing, because there was nothing to be shown by machines and blood tests.

Heartaches, he had learned soon enough in life, were more metaphorical than any other pain one could feel or take to a hospital as a complaint.

It had never hurt so much that he couldn’t make a muscle in his body obey his orders, though. It had never hurt so much that the pain made him incapable of making himself a useful, fully-grown human being.

There was some sort of grief in being surrounded by things and walls that held so much history and so much life that wasn’t there anymore. There was some sort of grief in being completely aware that hearts were still beating, but so far away that he would have to have faith to believe it completely and unquestionably. There was some sort of grief in knowing life didn’t end.

But it might as well have, the life that he knew.

Eddie had left two days before, and Christopher had left so long ago that Buck doubted his memory of the boy’s face and laughter. The video calls didn’t do it any justice when he had grown so accustomed to having it around him, around them for so many years, for so much time.

He hadn’t called Eddie. Hadn’t messaged him either, and neither had Eddie sent anything or tried to call Buck.

And he could understand, really — settling in and trying to make things right was probably taking all of his time, and Buck didn’t want to be a bother, another problem Eddie somehow had to deal with. It wasn’t about him, and he had known it forever; it was about Chris, and about Eddie, and about righting some wrongs that shouldn’t have been anything in the first place.

It wasn’t about him, but his heart ached in a way that it might as well have been about it all the while.

It was a day off he would usually spend cleaning the loft of hanging out with the Diazes, were things the same they had been for more than half a decade. A day off he would take Jee-yun to the park or to visit Chim in the firehouse, had things not changed so much within such a short time. A day off he would spend running errands and buying cereal he thought tasted like perfume because Christopher had somehow convinced Jee-yun, Danny and Maddie that it was the best thing they could have for breakfast, had things been the blissful beauty Buck had loved so much from their very beginning.

But it was a day off in which Buck couldn’t find the strength within him to get out of bed. Eddie’s bed, because he hadn’t had the strength to move anything around or change any mobilia at all.

His heart ached, and there wasn’t a thing he could possibly do about it. No medicine or tea or medical appointment that would tell him that the solution had two milligrams and regular intervals.

Buck probably wouldn’t have gotten out of bed if it wasn’t for Bobby calling him and asking him to cover up for Hen, who was at the hospital with a very food-poisoned Danny and wouldn’t be able to work that day.

His heart ached, but he plastered a smile on his face anyway and went into the station.

“You good, kid?” Bobby had asked him.

His heart ached, and he nodded enthusiastically as Chimney handed him a videogame controller and Ravi sulked on the couch, defeated for what probably hadn’t been the first time.

Buck plastered a grin as he took the controller from Chimney, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He was good at this—at pretending, at making it seem like everything was fine, even when it wasn’t. But he couldn’t fool himself, not anymore.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Buck said, his voice almost too bright, and even Ravi shot him a sideways glance. Ravi didn’t say anything, but the silent skepticism in his gaze spoke volumes. Buck knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. He wasn’t even fooling himself. The ache in his chest, the tightness in his throat—none of it was going away. Not with time, not with distractions, not with this stupid video game.

He sank into the couch beside Ravi, turning the controller over in his hands as if the buttons could somehow give him the answers he needed. They didn’t. The game flickered on the screen, but his mind was elsewhere—on the conversations he hadn’t had, on the silence that had stretched between him and Eddie since he’d left.

There was a whole other life waiting for Eddie in Texas, a life that didn’t include Buck. He had to accept that, right? It was never about him, he knew that. Eddie needed space, needed time to heal, to fix things with Christopher. But somehow, the thought that Eddie wasn’t missing him, wasn’t feeling the same pang of loss, hurt more than anything.

“Buck…” Chimney started, his voice soft, but Buck was already shaking his head before he could finish.

“I’m fine, Chim. Really,” he lied, his voice tight, but the mask was on, and that was all that mattered. He wasn’t about to let them see how badly it hurt.

But Ravi, as much as he was sulking, seemed to understand something was off. He glanced at Buck again, his frown deepening, but he said nothing.

“Let’s just play,” Buck said, and tried to focus on the screen, to lose himself in the game, in the noise, in the company of people who were too busy with their own lives to notice how hollow he felt. But the ache, the emptiness, was still there, like a dull throb behind his ribs.

For a moment, it felt almost like normal—like before, when it was just him, Eddie, and their crew. The world had seemed so full then. But now, with Eddie gone, with everything out of place, Buck realized how fragile the good times had been. How easily it all could slip away.

He should’ve known better than to take it for granted.

Ravi’s voice broke through the silence, and Buck was almost startled by how low it sounded.

“You know,” Ravi said, his eyes meeting Buck’s for the first time, “we’re all here, man. We’re not going anywhere. But if you ever need to talk, about… well, anything, you know where to find us.”

Buck swallowed hard, trying to push the lump back down. He didn’t trust himself to speak. The words were stuck somewhere between his chest and his mouth, and if he let them out, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop them. But Ravi’s eyes—there was understanding there. And maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have to pretend with them.

“Thanks,” Buck managed, his voice hoarse, before he quickly turned his attention back to the game, grateful for the distraction, even if it didn’t bring any real comfort.

It wasn’t all about Eddie, not really. It was about the way everything had changed, how the world felt smaller now, quieter. And it was about the realization that no matter how much he tried to deny it, Eddie wasn’t coming back—not in the way Buck had hoped. Not in the way that might fix the aching hole inside of him.

The days blurred together after that, slipping past Buck like water through his fingers, each one indistinguishable from the next. He still found himself waking up in Eddie’s bed most mornings, the sheets cool and the pillow smelling faintly of cologne. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about buying  a new bed and a new soap and new sheets—he had. He just couldn’t find it in himself to do it.

The house was still the same. Nothing had changed. The same pictures hung on the walls, the same cluttered countertops, the same worn-out couch where they’d spent hours talking about everything and nothing and watching anything and losing on games to Chris. Buck had told himself it would get easier, that the memories wouldn’t sting as much with time, but the truth was they only seemed to get sharper, more vivid, more inescapable.

Every corner of the house felt like a piece of Eddie’s and Christopher’s absence, like a puzzle that couldn’t quite come together. There were nights when Buck lay awake, staring at the ceiling, wondering when he would finally feel okay, when he would stop wishing for the sound of Eddie’s laugh or the sight of Chris walking through the door with that slight frown of concentration on his face.

He tried to keep busy—tried to throw himself into work, to drown out the silence that seemed to settle deeper into the house with each passing day. But even then, it wasn’t enough. The firehouse was full of noise and people, but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same. Ravi was a good partner, but he wasn’t Eddie, and nothing could ever take that much out of Buck’s mouth. The way they worked together, anticipating each other’s moves, understanding the rhythm of the job without needing to speak—that was gone. And no amount of pretending could fill that void.

Buck couldn’t stop himself from checking his phone every few hours, hoping for a text, a sign, or anything that might bridge the growing distance between him and Eddie. But the messages were sparse, polite even, as if they were strangers trying to be friends again. “How’s Texas?” Buck had asked once, and Eddie had answered quickly, his response a little too eager. "Same old. You know how it is."

The conversation didn’t last long. And that was it.

It had been weeks, and the silence between them was only getting louder.

On days like today, when the rain fell in sheets outside and the world felt like it was shrinking, Buck couldn’t even bring himself to leave the house. He lay there, staring out the window, feeling the cold creeping in through the glass. There were things he should be doing—work he needed to catch up on, errands he needed to run—but none of it seemed worth the effort. Their absence weighed on him like a thick fog, making it hard to breathe, hard to focus. Even the thought of facing the world outside felt like too much.

He pulled the covers tighter around himself, trying to escape the gnawing ache in his chest, the one that wouldn’t go away no matter how hard he tried to push it down.

It was easier that way.

Eventually, his phone buzzed. It was a message from Bobby. 

You coming in today?

Buck stared at the screen for a long moment, the question lingering in the air, unanswered.

He couldn’t lie. Not to Bobby. Not to himself. He didn’t have it in him.

He texted back: I’ll be there soon.

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. He would get up. He would go to work. He’d put on his uniform, show up for his crew, for his friends. But it was getting harder to pretend. Every step felt like it took more effort than the last. And the harder he fought against it, the more it consumed him.

“Hey, you good?” Hen’s voice broke through his thoughts later that day, warm and concerned, as he sat beside Buck on the couch in the firehouse. The noise from the TV buzzed softly in the background, but Buck barely noticed it.

“Yeah,” Buck said, his voice rougher than he intended. “Just tired.”

Hen didn’t press, but Buck could see the way she looked at him, as if he knew there was more to it. There always was. Buck had gotten good at hiding it. But Hen, despite being the quickest to catch up, wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Bobby had caught him a few days ago, standing by the window with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring out at the city, lost in thought. 

"Buck," Bobby had said, his tone careful, like he was treading on fragile ground. "I know it’s hard, but you can’t keep burying yourself in work. It’s not going to fix this. You need to talk to Eddie. He’s still your friend. He still cares about you."

Buck had nodded then, but the words felt hollow, like something he had to say to get out of the conversation. He hadn’t reached out to Eddie. Not once. And somehow, that hurt even more than the silence.

He didn’t know what he was waiting for anymore. Maybe a sign, maybe the courage to finally tell Eddie how he felt. Or maybe he was waiting for the moment when it would finally all make sense again. But each day that passed without that moment made it harder to believe that would ever happen.

And so, he carried on. The mask stayed in place, his smile still perfectly practiced, but inside, Buck wasn’t sure if he was falling apart or holding himself together. Either way, the pain lingered. The ache didn’t go away.

[...]

Buck hadn’t even realized he’d ended up at Maddie’s place until he was standing at her front door, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring at the wood as if it held all the answers he was looking for.

It didn’t.

But maybe Maddie did have something, or anything at all, to offer him. A listening ear, a strong shoulder, just that look on her face that seems to read into one’s soul and make them confess every single one of their sins and fears and desperations.

The door opened before he could knock, his sister standing there with a knowing look in her eyes. He knew that she was probably only waiting to hear his car parking in front of the building — he knew that she wouldn’t leave the window until she saw him from the moment she had asked him to come over.

“Hey,” she said softly, stepping aside to let him in.

“Hey,” he muttered back, stepping over the threshold.

She didn’t ask why he was there, really, because they both knew the answer to it. Didn’t press. She called, he came, and the reason would hang over their heads for a while — until they were settled in silence for a bit. 

Maddie led him to the kitchen, where she poured him a glass of water and set it on the counter in front of him. He wasn’t sure when the last time he’d eaten was, but his stomach felt too knotted up to consider food.

Maddie leaned against the counter, studying him the way only she could.

“Chim said you were doing pretty good considering everything,” Maddie said.

Buck shrugged.

“Yeah, I’m doing good,” he told her. “It’s weird, but it’s fine.”

“I know you better than that, Buck,” she argued.

“I just—” he tried. “I feel like I lost them?”

“How come?”

“I don’t— I don’t know. It’s like…” he stuttered. “I— uh. I want to compare it to grief, but it seems unfair.”

“Unfair?”

“They’re not dead, Maddie. They just aren’t here anymore.”

She hummed.

“Curious to know what you think being dead means to the living, then,” she joked. “It’s not unfair, Buck. If it’s how you feel, then it’s how you feel,” Maddie assured him. “But I am curious as to why you think it’s just as permanent.”

“Eddie moved to Texas, Maddie,” Buck said, and his heart ached a bit more at the remembering. As if he had forgotten for even a second. “Chris has a new life there. It’s just a matter of time.”

A beat of silence.

“It was just a matter of time until he left, too,” Buck confessed, his voice so small that he felt like a kid again.

“Buck,” her voice was concerned. “Too?”

He shook his head.

“Everybody leaves. At some point,” he said. “Abby left. Then Ali. Then Taylor. Then Natalia. Then Tommy. Even you left,” Buck told her. “Nobody ever stays.”

Maddie could’ve taken offense to it, honestly, and Buck half-expected her to — half, because he knew that she wouldn’t quite play down his feelings and sort of agreed with him. And his tone wasn’t accusing, nor was it aiming to lay guilt over her shoulders; it was simply something that happened and, against everyone’s wishes, left scars on the both of them for completely different and oddly similar reasons.

Instead, Maddie tilted her head softly to the side, her gaze worried about him and the sadness in his voice. She placed down the glass of juice over the counter, and crossed her arms over her chest, shaking her head.

“And every one of those situations was completely different. This one is, too,” she said. “It involved you, but it doesn’t mean it is on you.”

Buck scoffed.

“Well, clearly I’m the problem,” he laughed bitterly. “Nobody ever wants to stay. And I know — I know,” Buck shook his head. “That it’s not about me and Eddie left to be with Christopher, which I of course understand and I would never discourage him to do, but—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. And even if Maddie didn’t really understand what it was that he wanted to say, she didn’t press it — she knew better than that. He was distressed, and in pain, and trying to make sense of it was definitely a challenge she wouldn’t force him to go through. Not with her, at least. And not right then.

“Well, I came back. Twice,” Maddie said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because nothing keeps him here. No ties,” Buck said, the words still bitter on his tongue and sharp against his throat. “Nothing’s here in L.A for him.”

Maddie frowned.

“You are.”

“Oh, of course. Such a big deal,” he rolled his eyes, sarcasm clear in his voice. 

“Have you talked to Eddie at all, Buck?” she asked. “Since he moved?”

“No.”

“You should,” she said. “Because you’re feeling bad, and he’s the only one who can possibly help you with those feelings. And before—” she lifted a finger. “—you say he isn’t, we both know it’s true. Because this is about the both of you.”

“Not about me.”

“I’m pretty sure your feelings are about you, Buck,” she arched an eyebrow. Maddie sighed. “Look, I know you don’t want to trouble him. But I don’t think you’re saving him any trouble by putting distance — emotional distance — between you two.”

But when he didn’t speak for a long moment, she sighed and nudged the container of food closer to him. 

“You’re overthinking.”

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