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renecdote · 1 year

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ren please my love will u write me "wiping their tears when they cry" for buddie mwah

Also for @abcdefuk-off who requested the same prompt. This got so much longer than planned lol but enjoy the Buck angst <3

[Read on AO3]

Those first few days after waking up, and after leaving the hospital, everything hurts. Buck gets used to a baseline of pain: headaches, muscle aches, healing burns on his hands, fractured ribs, bruised lungs, something vague and unrelenting that coils tight in his stomach. It all ebbs and flows, a tide teetering between low and high, easy enough to ignore sometimes, but never fully gone.

It gets better, as days blur into weeks. One and then two and then three, and after four he’s sitting in Dr Salazar’s office and she’s saying, “You can go back to work as early as next week.”

Buck doesn’t know how to explain the flash of panic that seizes him. The way he wishes she could just tell him that something is wrong, that there is some physical explanation for the way he feels. But all his other doctors say the same thing: there’s nothing wrong with him. His lungs have healed enough for him to go back to work. His hands aren’t even going to scar. There are no blood clots in his leg, no reason it should be hurting at all, except for how it will probably always hurt sometimes.

“But it’s worse,” Buck tries. “It hurts more, and more often, doesn’t that—shouldn’t it mean something is wrong?”

“You’ve been through a trauma,” is all the doctor will say, shrugging behind ultrasound and CT results that all say the same thing: he’s fine.

So why doesn’t Buck feel fine?

Why can’t he just feel fine?

****

He gets through the first shift fine. He’s exhausted at the end of it, a headache knocking behind his temples, but it’s fine. He’s fine. He lets Eddie talk him into going home with him, manages to smile through breakfast with Christopher before crashing hard on the couch, and when he wakes up a few hours later, he’s fine.

The second shift, he doesn’t go home with Eddie. Doesn’t leave the station with a headache, either, which is nice, but he’s left with something restless and itching beneath his skin that makes him want to run until he has forgotten how to breathe.

He goes home instead. Deep cleans his apartment. Heats up frozen lasagne for lunch and eats sitting on the balcony, squinting at the grey edge of the sky and wondering if it’s going to rain.

Come over for dinner? 🥺 Chimney texts around four p.m., and Buck spends several minutes frowning at the message before he sends back a question mark. Chimney sends back a block of the same emoji in response and refuses to elaborate.

Fine, Buck replies. But just for the record I’m sick of eating pot roast.

He’s half expecting it anyway; Maddie isn’t a bad cook, but her repertoire is a bit limited, and Chimney’s even more so. When he arrives at six-thirty on the dot, he’s pleasantly surprised, and then a little suspicious, to find them setting out containers of Thai from one of Buck’s favourite takeout places.

“This isn’t another intervention, is it?” he asks, and he tries to make it sound like a joke, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t succeed.

“Should it be?” Maddie asks, eyebrows raised.

“No,” Buck answers, matching her raised eyebrows with his own narrowed eyes. “I thought we agreed you couldn’t fix me.”

Chimney fumbles a grease-stained paper bag and two spring rolls make a bid for freedom, rolling across the counter. He snatches them quickly, muttering hot hot hot under his breath as he drops them onto a plate. He doesn’t say, “ah, so there is something that needs fixing,” but he may as well have. Buck steals a spring roll and bites down on it hard, chewing and swallowing even as his eyes water at the burn of too-hot pastry and filling.

Maddie rolls her eyes. “Sometimes dinner is just dinner, Evan. Why don’t you help Chimney set the table? I’m going to get Jee washed up to eat.”

Just dinner would be sitting in his apartment alone with whatever leftovers he dug out of the freezer, but Buck doesn’t argue. He takes the handful of cutlery Chimney offers him and sets it out on the table, Maddie and Chimney side-by-side, Buck opposite them both, plastic cutlery arranged carefully on Jee’s high chair at the head of the table. It’s hard to feel anything but warm inside when handling toddler cutlery, which was probably Maddie’s goal all along.

It spreads through him while they eat: warmth soaking into aching muscles, loosening the tension in his spine, helping him breathe a little bit easier. They don’t ask him if he’s okay and at some point he stops expecting them to. It’s like the moment after a jump scare in a movie, when all the tension that has been building snaps, the door pushed open to reveal a cat or a squawking bird where you expected to find a killer, adrenaline draining away to leave you loose and giggly. Buck stretches out his legs under the table and he can almost trick himself into believing that the twinge of pain is just in his head.

After dinner is over—plates and cutlery packed into the dishwasher, leftover Thai in the fridge—he helps Maddie give Jee a bath and put her to bed. It’s good. Normal. From the moment the tap turns on until Jee’s bedroom light is turned off, he feels like he can breathe. Like he might be okay.

Which. That was probably Maddie’s goal all along.

“You can stay,” Chimney offers when they’re back out in the kitchen. “The guest room has a proper bed and everything now.”

Buck smiles, appreciating the offer. “Nah, I should get home. Thanks though. For dinner and…”

A gesture, vague and all-encompassing. Chimney shrugs it away.

“Anytime,” he says, and Buck knows he means it. He could show up here at three in the morning and he wouldn’t be turned away. “See you at work tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Buck agrees. “See you at work.”

Maddie follows him to the door and hugs him tightly before he steps outside.

“Drive safe,” she says against his shoulder, words cast like a spell. “Text me when you get home.”

It’s the kind of thing she has said to Buck all his life. He used to roll his eyes good naturedly, grumble through a yeah, okay , and he’d still speed through yellow lights but he’d always feel a little more guilty about it with Maddie’s words in the back of his mind.

Tonight he just squeezes her again and promises, “I will.”

He slows down for every yellow light on the way home.

****

It’s not so bad at first: a dull ache, deep enough in his leg that he can almost ignore it. He’s getting pretty good at that, with the way it feels like the pain is always there these days, lurking, waiting to pounce. Buck avoids looking at it head-on for as long as he can, like it’s a monster in the dark that he can keep away by pulling a blanket over his head.

So it doesn’t sneak up on him, really, but it still takes his breath away when the pain corkscrews through his leg, suddenly sharp and biting. Buck stumbles, catching himself on the engine, choking back a curse that becomes a strangled wheeze. His first thought— fuck, ow ow ow —is followed quickly by a second: thank god everyone else is already in the engine .

“Buck?” Bobby calls, head sticking out through the front window. “You coming?”

Buck gives him a thumbs up, words trapped behind tightly clenched teeth. Climbing into the engine is hell, his leg pulsing with every step up, and he curls his hands into fists to hide the way they’re shaking after this seatbelt has been clipped into place. It was a long call, the kind that leaves everyone tired and not in the mood to talk, and Buck is absurdly grateful for it because it means nobody is paying too much attention to him. Nobody sees the wince he can’t hide when the truck jolts over a pothole, or the way he has to brace himself before jumping out when they’re back at the station.

There’s a bottle of Tylenol that lives in his work bag and he goes straight for it after he gets his turnout gear off. Everyone else has already drifted towards the bunks, but Buck tries not to limp as he walks up the stairs anyway. It feels too much like giving in. Like letting his leg and that bomber kid and the whole fucking universe win.

He tries to pace, tries to shake the cramp out by moving, but every step is like a knife through his ankle, his knee, shooting up through his hip to grip his chest in a vice as well. Buck makes it three limping circuits around the loft before he gives up and collapses on the couch. He folds over, head against his right knee, left leg stretched out while he digs his fingers into the long-healed muscles and wishes the pain would go away.

A stress headache is setting in now too, the kind that feels like his head is in a vice, the pain squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. Buck takes a shaky breath, then another, then another, trying to figure out whether he feels sick, or if it’s just the same coiling tension in his stomach that he’s been dealing with for weeks.

“Hey.”

He flinches, startled, and Eddie moves closer with a frown.

“Buck? You okay?” he asks, sounding like he’s already halfway convinced that he answer is no . Which it is, but.

Buck swallows. “Yeah, just—my leg. ‘M okay.”

Eddie hums, an I’ll be the judge of that kind of sound, and he perches on the edge of the coffee table, so close that their legs have no choice but to touch. “Can I…?”

There’s a half-hysterical thought in the back of Buck’s head that his leg will fall apart if he lets it go. The pain will tear through flesh and bones and leave nothing but broken, jagged pieces behind. Blood and sinew and useless muscle hanging off splintered pieces of bone. The thought of it makes him sick and he has to swallow hard against the nausea before he can make his fingers loosen their hold. It gets him a smile, quick and gentle, like Eddie knows the mental battle it took.

“Okay,” he says, easy and soft. “Do you want to lie down?”

Buck shakes his head. Even if he’s lying on his back, even if it’s the couch in the station instead of the rough asphalt of the street, his edges are too frayed right now for it to feel like anything other than being back there under the truck. He stretches his leg out in front of him instead, hands curled into tight fists while Eddie does his exam, quick but thorough.

“I don’t see anything concerning,” he judges, and Buck shouldn’t mourn the touch of his hands but he does. “No redness or swelling… is it just the pain?”

“Yeah,” Buck manages, too shaky. He doesn’t need to explain because Eddie knows more than most what it’s like when an injury heals but doesn’t ever fully let you go.

“Alright.” Hand on his knee for a second, two seconds, warmth lingering even after it’s gone. “Heat or ice?”

Buck shakes his head because—he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if anything will help.

“Okay,” Eddie takes his non-answer in stride, “we’ll try heat first, then switch if it isn’t working.”

It doesn’t take long to grab a couple of heating pads from the first aid cupboard, nor to pull the coffee table a bit closer so Buck can put his feet up on it without having to stretch. Hen would smack him if she saw him doing it, but he’s pretty sure Eddie would defend him. His only other option is stretching out on the couch and—no. Not tonight.

“Here, drink this,” holding out a glass until Buck takes it. “It’ll help.”

It’s only half full, which is good because Buck’s hands shake when he holds it. He still feels vaguely sick, but he chokes down a few sips anyway, clinging to the way Eddie smiles at him when he does.

“Better?” he checks, adjusting one of the heating pads that had started to slip off Buck’s knee.

Buck wants to say yes. He wants to say yeah, all good now, thanks for your help but you don’t need to stay . He wants to rewind time and never get in the front seat of the truck. He wants to rewind time and wait just a few minutes before climbing up that ladder so the lightning doesn’t hit him. He wants and wants and wants. He’s spent his whole life wanting—his parents to love him, somewhere to belong, to be useful and good and happy —and even now that he has so much, he still fucking wants.

Buck bites his lip through the sting of frustrated tears, determined not to cry.

“It’s been, um, worse. Lately. Since the lightning strike.”

Eddie frowns. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Buck shrugs, as if he doesn’t know the answer. As if the words aren’t right there on the tip of his tongue: I didn’t want anyone to worry .

“No,” Eddie says, gentle and a little bit—sad, almost, but trying not to be. It’s like he can read the words spinning through Buck’s mind. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

Because Eddie isn’t anyone . He hasn’t been for a long time. Buck rubs a hand over his face, then picks at a loose thread on his knee, avoiding Eddie’s eyes.

“Are you going to tell Bobby?” he asks.

“You don’t want me to,” Eddie says, not a question. Buck shakes his head anyway. “Because you don’t want him to worry? Or because you don’t want to be benched for the rest of shift?”

The simple answer is both . That’s the answer Buck is supposed to give. It’s what Eddie is expecting to hear. But the truth is that Buck died, and nobody will let him forget it, and he still doesn’t know how he really feels about it.

That coil in his stomach tightens, dread clogging his veins. A traitorous, frustrated tear slips out and Buck squeezes his eyes shut. He makes a belated movement to wipe it away, but Eddie’s hand is already there, the curl of his fingers warm under Buck’s chin and his thumb warmer still as it swipes gently across his cheek. It’s that, Buck thinks, more than the pain and the frustration, that makes the next two tears slip out.

“I won’t tell Bobby,” Eddie promises him, the absence of his touch burning like frostbite when he pulls his hands away. “But I’m going on record saying that I think you should.”

“I can still do my job,” Buck mutters, sinking into his corner of the couch. It’s the easiest excuse to hide behind. It’s even mostly true: he can do his job, even if adrenaline and determination are the only things that get him through.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

Buck wilts. He does know. And he doesn’t want to argue with Eddie. It’s always so much easier to be angry, to burn hot and fast and deal with the fallout later, but whenever he reaches for the flames these days, whenever he thinks it’s not fucking fair , all he feels is tired. Bone deep, achingly tired.

You’ve been through a trauma , people keep telling him, but Buck has been through traumas before and they’ve never left him feeling quite like this.

“Fine,” he sighs. “I’ll tell Bobby if it becomes a problem.”

If it comes down to other people’s lives, he would have done it anyway. He’s not stupid; he’s not going to risk anyone else.

Eddie nods, satisfied. He takes the glass of water from Buck’s hands and sets it on the coffee table, out of the way, then settles into the couch at his side. There’s enough space that they don’t need to be touching, but they end up pressed together from thigh to shoulder anyway.

“Do you think you can sleep?” Eddie asks.

Buck shrugs, but he’s pretty sure the answer is no. He’s pretty sure that Eddie knows it too.

“Alright,” he says, reaching for the remote. “But it’s my turn to pick what we watch.”

It’s not, but Buck doesn’t fight him on it. He doesn’t care what they watch, doesn’t think he could focus on it right now anyway. He closes his eyes, letting the sound of some late-night soap rerun fade into background noise, and waits for the pain to fade with it.

****

Buck doesn’t sleep, but he drifts, sinking down to something close enough to sleep that it can almost be called rest. His leg doesn’t hurt as much anymore, the weight of the heating pads over his knee and ankle as much of a relief as the heat itself. He’s not sure what time it is when footsteps on the stairs make him tense, threatening to undo all the hard work that Eddie and the heating pad have done to relax his muscles. The only thing that keeps him still is the hand Eddie puts on his thigh, warm and grounding. He squeezes gently— relax, you’re okay, I’ve got you —then stands up, meeting Bobby in the kitchen with an easy, “Hey, Cap, you want some coffee?”

Buck relaxes, listening to the familiar sound of people moving around the station kitchen: mugs clinking, the coffee machine gurgling, the slightest squeak of boots on the floor as Bobby and Eddie move around each other. It’s so familiar and soothing that he’s almost back in that state of not-quite-resting, drifting through the currents at the edge of the room, when he hears Bobby ask, “He okay?”

It’s right there in his voice: worry worry worry . Buck bites the inside of his cheek hard enough that he tastes blood, sudden and metallic. It stops his heart in his chest for a beat, two beats, and he has to breathe carefully through the swell of memory and nausea until the taste of blood and bile have both been swallowed down.

“Yeah,” Eddie is answering behind him, and that helps too, “just a leg cramp, he’s okay.”

Buck doesn’t get to find out what Bobby’s response to that is—the alarm rings and he’s on his feet before it’s a conscious thought. Before he stops, one hand on the bannister going down the stairs, and wonders whether he should actually stay behind. Whether Bobby will make him stay behind.

He hesitates too long. Long enough that everyone else is already climbing into the truck and Bobby is looking back at him from the app bay, eyebrows raised.

“You coming, kid?”

Buck shakes himself and follows. He can still do his job.

****

The fire burns hot and fast, two townhouses already alight when they join the 122 on scene, a third just starting to go up as well.

“Shit,” Chimney mutters, and Buck feels it in his bones: people are going to die tonight. People are probably already dead, just waiting for someone to pull their bodies out.

“Buck—” Eddie starts, low and close, fingers twisted in his sleeve, and Buck doesn’t know what he’s going to say but—

“Not now,” he says, shaking Eddie off.

Eddie lets him go.

Buck tells himself that he’s grateful for it, even as his leg throbs in protest. He’s fine, he reminds himself. He’s fine, he can still do his job.

And he does. He lets the smoke and the flames numb him, sinking into the routine: check room after room after room, pull out body after body after body. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think.

He’s limping by the time they clear the buildings. The pain isn’t as bad as it was before, but it’s deep and persistent, the kind of always there pain he got used to feeling in the weeks after the ladder truck crushed him. Buck sees a life stretching out before him where it never goes away: he’ll wake up hurting every morning, go to sleep hurting every night, probably have to quit his job because he’s always, always hurting.

He feels sick. Thinks he might actually be sick, stuck on a roller coaster he doesn’t know how to get off, and he leans shakily against the engine, pressing his forehead against the cool metal while he tries to breathe the feeling away.

Bobby finds him there.

Of course Bobby finds him there.

“Here,” he says, and his hand is a steady pressure between Buck’s shoulder blades until he turns his head, blinking past the red of the engine to find a water bottle being held out. Bobby shakes it a little when Buck doesn’t immediately reach to take it. “Come on, Buck, you know the drill.”

Buck wonders which drill that is. The stay hydrated when fighting fires one, or the don’t disobey orders one, or maybe the let people take care of you one. It doesn’t really matter, he supposes, the answer is all the same. He grabs the water bottle from Bobby’s hand. Fumbles it open and takes a few sips.

“Sit,” Bobby suggests, hand still on Buck’s back, gently guiding him the few limping steps until he can sit on the front of the engine. The scene is still bustling around them, firefighters moving like moths around the flames, but Bobby seems content just to stand beside Buck, watching silently.

Buck lasts five minutes before he breaks.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” he asks, exhausted down his marrow.

“About your leg?” Bobby doesn’t pretend not to know what he’s talking about and Buck is grateful for it. “I figured you’d come to me if something needed saying.”

Buck swallows.

Swallows again.

He’s pretty sure they’ve reached the point where something needs saying, but he has no idea where to start. I’m sorry , maybe. I swear the doctor cleared me , probably. The words all feel frothy on his tongue, taking up more room than they should, and he opens his mouth without really knowing which ones he’s going to say and—

“I’m scared.”

It’s a whisper. A confession meant for the dark safety of night, spilled out here in the burning daylight of a new day like oil on the road. The sun glints off it like a beacon: here! look, beware, there is danger here! Buck wants to scoop the words back up, shove them deep inside his chest, lock them up where he’s the only one who might choke on them. He wants to find a smile, or a joke, anything that he can tape over the moment to wipe the look of quiet concern off Bobby’s face. He wants to pretend that he’s fine because maybe if he pretends hard enough it will become true.

“I don’t even know why I’m scared,” he finds himself confessing anyway. “I don’t know why my leg hurts, or how to make it stop, or—”

or if I’ll ever feel normal again

There’s a flash of memory—Eddie crying at the dining table, Eddie’s room destroyed, Eddie’s door locked, Eddie dying in the street—so sudden and visceral that Buck flinches away from it. His breath stutters, and his leg throbs sharply, and it’s all so much that he almost flinches when Bobby puts a hand on his shoulder as well.

“I’m not going to pretend that I have all the answers,” Bobby says, as warm and steady as his hand. His lips twist into something wry for a second as he adds, “Or any of them.” Buck doesn’t smile, even though he thinks he’s supposed to. “But I’m always here if you want to talk, or even if you don’t.”

Bobby breakfasts . It’s not a secret at the firehouse, but it’s always talked about in low tones, the same way you’d whisper about something sacred. They’ve all had one at some point: a quiet invitation at the end of a hard shift, “we don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” then the comforting bustle of a café with good coffee and eggs cooked any way you want them. Buck remembers sitting in that café three days after Eddie got shot, the taste of blood still in his mouth and his stomach too messed up to even think about eating, sipping camomile tea while Bobby ate a bagel and did the crossword in an honest to god newspaper beside him.

He remembers wondering where the newspaper even came from. Remembers the flash of fear at the realisation that he’d lost time somewhere between the firehouse and the café. Remembers his hands shaking around his teacup, china rattling as he set it back in the saucer, and Bobby’s knees bumping against his even though the table was big enough that they shouldn’t have.

He remembers that it helped, even if he didn’t really know it at the time.

“Captain Nash!” someone calls, and it’s like a bucket of ice water over Buck’s head.

Bobby glances behind him, towards the IC who called his name, then back at Buck, his reluctance clear on his face.

“Go,” Buck tells him, hugging himself. “I’m okay.”

Bobby still hesitates, long enough that the IC calls his name again, and Buck tries for a smile that is probably more like a grimace by the time it reaches his lips. It gets Bobby moving though. Gets him to nod, once, and squeeze Buck’s shoulder again before he turns with a parting, “I’ll send Eddie over.”

Buck opens his mouth, halfway to a protest, but Bobby is already striding away. He should be annoyed, he thinks; he doesn’t need a babysitter. But instead he’s just kind of grateful as he sinks back against the engine, knowing he won’t be alone for long.

****

The shift is over by the time they get back to the station, but Buck still finds Bobby in his office. The door is open, but he knocks anyway, leaning heavily against the doorframe because he thinks his leg might collapse under him if he has to take one more step.

“I can’t,” he says, when Bobby looks up at him. “Talk about it. Not yet.”

Not with Bobby, at least. Not until he can find a way to say I’m not okay without also saying you died, you know? in my coma dream, you died because I wasn’t there to help save you, and I don’t know what to do with that because sometimes I feel like I can save everyone except myself .

“Okay,” Bobby says easily. “Would you like to have breakfast anyway? We don’t have to talk.”

Buck smiles, tired but real. “I appreciate the offer, Cap, but—maybe a rain check?”

Bobby’s face is a silent ah . “You’re going home with Eddie.”

It’s not a question. Buck nods anyway. If he turned his head just slightly, he’d be able to see Eddie hovering by the engine, both their bags slung over his shoulder, waiting for Buck to be ready to go. Waiting to jump in if he’s needed too, knowing Eddie.

“Good,” Bobby smiles, and Buck knows it means he’ll take care of you . “If you need anything, let me know.”

“I will.”

Bobby nods, satisfied, then looks back down at his paperwork. “I’ll see you next shift, Buck.”

Buck bites the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t do something embarrassing like burst into tears. He has to breathe through the sudden lump in his throat a couple of times before he can say, “Thanks, Cap. See you next shift.”

He turns carefully, weight balanced on his good leg, and limps out towards the parking lot. It only takes a few seconds for Eddie to fall into step beside him, their shoulders bumping gently.

“Okay?” he checks, brown eyes warm and serious on Buck’s face.

Buck smiles; still tired, still pained, but still real.

“Yeah,” he answers. “All good.”

And it’s not really. Not fully. But—

“It will be,” Eddie agrees, smiling back.

It will be .

Yeah.

Yeah, Buck thinks, he’s gonna be okay. His family will make sure of it.

#Evan Buckley #Eddie Diaz #Maddie Buckley #Chimney Han #Bobby Nash #911 Fox #fic #post lightning buck is something that can be so personal

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