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This Hollow Place In Which I Live
“We can’t all and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.” – Eeyore
The thing about Buck is he’s always, for as long as he can remember, been sort of sad. Melancholic. Sure he always talks a big game and, most of the time, when he’s around other people, he just sort of forgets that he’s sad. But it’s always been there. Rooted deep inside and tied to some intrinsic part of him. Leaving him yearning and empty and hollow no matter what he does or what he tries to fill it with, the one basic, unchanging truth about Buck: he’s always been sad. Empty. Less than those around him.
But the other thing about Buck is that—before he came to the 118, before he became a firefighter, before he was crushed by the ladder truck—he’s never had any real reason to be sad.
Buck had two parents and a loving older sister. He was raised in a stable, upper middle-class family home, provided with anything a child would need growing up. And maybe Buck’s parents were never the most emotionally supportive, but they weren’t bad people. They didn’t hit Buck or neglect him. They didn’t belittle him or ignore him. Buck was given everything he could possibly need.
(And maybe he didn’t have everything he wanted, but, really, who does?)
He had a good home, a good education, support for both his academic and athletic endeavors. He had friends, not many, but enough. He went to parties, excelled in school, was a good athlete. He was accepted to every college he applied to, didn’t have to go too far in debt between his parents and his scholarships to get his degree, travelled abroad in the summer. He rarely had to worry about money because he could always fall back on his parents as a safety net if he ever needed to, and those instances were few and far between. He only had to call on his parents twice. Once when a travel mishap resulted in him having to buy a last minute plane ticket and once when Maddie asked him for a small loan and he ended up accidentally shortchanging himself just a bit.
Overwhelmingly, his life has always been fine.
There is no trauma hiding anywhere in his past. No triggering moment or reason for the hollow feeling in his chest. But, still, it is there, has always been there, and Buck spends most of his time trying to fill that hole in his chest with something. Sex, for one. Adrenaline, for another. Both work well in the short term but neither one lasts for long.
Family. The 118. Being a firefighter. That fills the hollow place a little better, a little more, a little longer. Long enough that, sometimes, Buck forgets it's even there.
Before the ladder truck, Buck didn’t have a reason to feel sad.
After the ladder truck, he’s a bit surprised to find he doesn’t feel all that different. Everyone seems to expect the experience to have some sort of lasting impact. And, sure, the hollowness doesn’t recede as much when other people are around, and, sure, sometimes the hollowness feels deeper than before, but it isn’t all that different. Buck feels fine. Status normal. Aside from his crushed and reconstructed leg, of course.
Once he makes it home Ali asks him what he’s going to do next and Buck doesn’t even know how to respond. Because for him there’s no question. No hesitation. He’s a firefighter. Before, now, always. There isn’t a single part of him that thinks it could change. No single part of him that would want it to change. If Ali can’t see that, can’t understand, then Buck is glad she chose to leave now instead of later. Even if it leaves him feeling hollow.
(He’s glad during the day. At night, when the hollowness threatens to consume him, Buck misses the presence of another person. Another living, breathing being to remind him he isn’t alone in this hollow place no matter how he feels. When it's late and he’s being honest with himself, he can admit Ali isn’t the person he’d choose to have beside him.)
Even without Ali, Buck musters through the same way he always has in the past. By pushing forward. By selecting his next goal and making sure he gets there. Because if he doesn’t have a goal, if he doesn’t have a reason, then he’ll never get up in the morning. He knows this.
So he sets the timeline to get back to work and he works to get there. He goes to all his appointments, goes to therapy, pushes himself to just before the breaking point.
He knows the others worry about him, though he isn't sure he understands why. Maddie asks him constantly to go easy on himself. Chimney and Hen come by and are a welcome distraction even if they spend the time sharing glances and making comments about not pushing himself too fast. Eddie makes it a point to stop by, either by himself or with Christopher, to hang out with food and beer while not so covertly assessing and analyzing Buck’s every move. And Bobby makes sure to attend nearly every doctor's appointment and as many PT sessions as possible.
Buck isn’t easy to be around, he knows that. He was difficult and annoying before without adding in his new found trauma that changes very little for himself but a lot for others. Because it’s harder for him to push the hollowness aside now, when it feels like it’s consuming him, so he’s sometimes short and angry or quiet and distant. He can’t be happy or joke or laugh all the time right now, and he knows that’s what people want from him, but he can’t always give it. He tries when he can and learns to let it go when he can’t.
Bobby and Maddie both suggest he try therapy a few times throughout his recovery. Therapy, therapy. Talk therapy. To process his trauma.
Buck considers it, he does, but he also thinks he can only focus on fixing one part of himself at a time, and right now, his physical self is taking priority. Not to mention, Buck doesn’t think he needs to go. It didn’t really help after Devon, and Buck doesn’t feel all that much worse now emotionally speaking.
He’s in pain and he’s tired and he’s not at work.
Once all those are fixed, once he’s not in pain and can sleep and go to work, everything else will work itself out, therapist or no therapist. Buck’s managed this hollow thing in his chest his whole life. He knows how to handle it.
(He’s learned over the years that the most important thing in not letting the hollowness win is having a goal. Having an end to reach. Having a concrete reason to exist. Otherwise there’s no point to living at all and the hollowness will become all consuming.)
Getting back to work at the 118 is his goal. It is his only reason for getting up each day, for pushing the hollow feeling in his chest to the side and going through the motions of his life. That’s all he can focus on, that’s all he has the energy to do, and he is determined to make it.
He almost makes it.
He survives multiple surgeries. He runs when the doctors weren’t sure he’d even walk. He does his PT without complaint even when everything in him is screaming to just give up, when his skin is covered in sweat and his hands are shaking and the hollowness in his chest goes so deep he’s not sure he even exists anymore. He moves forward. He gets certified again and sets a new record at the Baby Doll Factory in the process. He jumps through every hoop they ask him to and he almost makes it.
Only to end up right back at the start. Back in the hospital with an IV and a doctor telling him they would have to wait and see. See what the tests say. See how he responds to the medications. See how effective the treatments are. Wait and see.
Buck can do that. He adds pulmonary embolism to the list of things he’s survived and he waits.
(And it’s not really a traumatic experience if he can’t remember it happening, is it? He certainly doesn’t dream about it like he does the ladder truck so it’s okay, really.)
He extends the timeline and modifies his goal a little bit. So he won’t get back to work right now, that’s okay. It won’t be long. He was cleared to work. He passed his recertification. If it’s another week before he actually gets to start again, so what? He can handle that.
He keeps his legs wrapped, doesn’t complain about the itchiness, and walks and walks and walks circles around the unit until he’s so bored he’s about to start climbing walls to escape the hole in his chest. But he’s so close and he knows he can make it, so he tells the hollowness in him to subside and it settles deep into its usual spot, safely contained and controlled.
And then Bobby says he can’t come back to work. Because the blood thinners make him a liability for the department. The blood thinners that the doctors say he will have to take for six weeks to six months or longer. Not forever they assure him, but possibly as long as a year.
Objectively, six weeks would be a blink of an eye. Objectively, six months isn’t that long. Objectively, even a year wouldn’t be forever or the end of the world.
But Buck can’t be objective. Not when he’s being consumed. Not when Buck’s goal, the only reason he gets up and moves forward, is abruptly gone.
(Not gone, he rationally points out to himself, just moved so far back that the honest part inside of himself isn’t sure, anymore, that he can make it to the finish line.)
So he quits. He stops getting up and he stops moving forward. And, hey, his bed is more comfortable than his PT exercises anyway. It’s warm and soft, and it doesn’t judge Buck for curling up in the silence of the empty and hollow place inside himself. So what if he doesn’t shower often or eat more than one meal a day if even that? He doesn’t have to anymore. And if he doesn’t have to, then why would he?
Eddie makes him get out of bed. It doesn’t feel nice, exactly. In fact it doesn’t feel nice at all. Buck is tired and sore and hollow and he doesn’t think he has the energy to be happy or fun for Christopher, but Eddie isn’t giving him a choice. So Buck will do what he has to do. For Christopher if not anyone else, because Eddie’s parting shot about feeling sorry for himself stings somewhere beneath all the emptiness and it’s the first thing he’s really felt in awhile even if it feels terribly far away.
Christopher, Buck thinks as Eddie leaves and Buck stares at the boy on his couch, doesn’t have anything to be sorry about. Not like Buck who has always been a bit of a hollow disaster and only just recently had any real reason for it. Maybe it’s unfair and maybe Buck is wrong, but Buck doesn’t think he and Christopher are the same. He hopes that they aren’t, hopes desperately that Christopher will never feel this bone deep ache of nothingness. Because Christopher deserves so much more from life than feeling what Buck feels.
(Although, if Buck can’t feel sorry for himself after being crushed by a ladder truck, surviving a PE, and subsequently being indefinitely benched from his reason for living, then when could he?
Maybe never. Maybe that was what was wrong with Buck. Maybe while everyone else sucked it up and moved forward when shit happened, Buck was wallowing in his own private pity party. Maybe he had always done that and the hollow ache in his chest was just his perpetual sorrow at his life for being mediocre. Maybe if he sucked it up and stopped feeling sorry, he wouldn’t feel so fucking empty all the time.)
He and Christopher go to the pier. And, it’s not exactly good, but it’s far from bad. He smiles and he laughs, and if it feels almost like something happening to another person, he carefully doesn’t examine it too closely.
Christopher is like a quiet balm to his soul, gently filling that hollow place in which Buck is existing until he doesn’t feel quite so alone. It feels nice, it feels warm, it feels so much Buck almost feels like crying in a far off distant way that doesn’t even hurt.
Buck doesn’t really process the tsunami at first. He sees it coming and he just reacts. He knows some people who go through natural disasters talk later about how it felt like it was happening to someone else. He knows even for himself that he’d spent the time pinned under the ladder truck feeling numb and distant. He doesn’t feel like that in the tsunami. For the first time in a long while he feels actively present in himself and the moment in every way possible.
He feels acutely the cold of the water, the burn of his lungs begging for air, the saturated fabric of Christopher’s shirt. He feels the driving need to make sure Christopher is safe and protected from the dangers of drowning and the scars of seeing the floating dead. He feels the call to pull the other survivors out of the water, to be the person they all need right now, someone calm and collected. He feels focused and settled. He feels whole.
He feels whole right up until Christopher falls off the truck. And then he feels worse than empty. He feels worse than hollow. He feels nothing and everything. He feels and wishes he didn’t. He feels and wishes he didn’t and hates himself for wishing.
(He feels so much he feels like crying. Not in a far off distant way. In an all consuming painful way, building beneath the surface of his skin. But he can’t cry. He won’t cry. Because this isn’t about him. It’s about Christopher and Eddie and how Buck has destroyed and ruined everything because of that hollow place inside him.)
Buck doesn’t find Christopher. Buck doesn’t find Christopher and he tells Eddie that he lost him. It hurts and the slowly breaking look Eddie gives him as Buck stumbles over his words carves that hollow place inside of him bigger and deeper until Eddie isn’t looking at him anymore. Because Christopher is safe. Buck didn’t find him, but Christopher is alive and he’s with Eddie and Buck still can’t cry but he wants to, he wants so much for this ache inside to stop. Eddie looks over at him, Christopher clutched to his chest, and the tears finally start to fall.
(It’s cathartic. He cries for the people around him. For the ones he pulled from the water and the ones who didn’t need him to. He cries for Christopher. For Eddie. For himself.)
He cries until he can’t. Until he’s empty and hollow. Until Maddie takes him home and they curl up in his bed together. Until Buck, exhausted and numb, is lulled to sleep with the sensation of fingers carding through his hair.
Twenty-four hours later Christopher is sitting on his couch again. Buck is still bearing the marks of the tsunami in more ways than one; the scratches on his skin, the red rims to his eyes, the empty sense in his chest. Eddie is chattering and Buck is somewhere far away, somewhere deep inside that hollow place in which he lives and then Eddie’s hand is on his shoulder, his thumb against Buck’s neck.
And Buck feels.
Together Eddie and Christopher fill that empty place inside with warmth and care and trust and Buck feels fuller if not whole. The smiles and laughs come easier, feel closer, and the weight of the world feels lighter. And for the first time in what feels like a long time, Buck thinks, maybe, he could make it six weeks or six months or even a year.
Bobby thinks he can make it too.
So Buck rallies and with Bobby and Eddie and the others by his side, on his team, he sucks it up and moves forward. Being a fire marshal is not his dream. It doesn’t do anything for that hollow place inside him, but Buck finds he doesn't really need it to, not with the promise of returning to the 118 at the end. Not with Bobby and Chimney and Hen still around. Not with Eddie and Christopher and Maddie.
For a while it works. Buck feels bolstered and he pushes forward. Eventually, and unsurprisingly, he finds himself flagging because it’s hard . But every time he rallies. Again and again. Weeks go by and the finish line remains undefined. Buck pushes himself to keep moving, and if it takes him longer and longer to convince himself to get out of bed in the morning, that’s okay. If he gets tired more easily, feels the stress more acutely, that’s only to be expected. It won’t last forever, and Buck can make it through.
(And if, at night, he finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into that hollow place, that’s okay too, so long as he digs himself out in the morning.)
Buck finds himself over compensating a bit when he’s with the team. He wants, needs, them to believe he’s okay. That he’s all right and ready to come back to work. So he talks loud and teases more. He bounds around and drops by whenever he has even the slightest reason just to see them and feel the calm that comes with being in the firehouse. He does everything anyone asks of him and more.
He follows all the doctors’ orders and therapists’ instructions from diet recommendations to his home exercise programs. He settles for light duty and throws everything he has into being a damn fine fire marshal. He takes it easy when Maddie asks him to and tells her about any small symptom that may point to a larger problem. He makes sure he’s getting out and about, never wallowing too much to worry Eddie or anyone else. He even goes to therapy with a man named Frank where they talk about the truck bombing and the pulmonary embolism and the tsunami ad nauseum. They talk about Buck’s supports and his coping methods. They talk about how Buck is processing and how he’s recovering. They talk, religiously, every other week, until Frank says he can just call if he feels like he needs it.
(They don’t talk about the hollow place. Frank doesn’t ask. Buck never thinks to mention it.)
There’s a fire drill and the 118, minus Buck, pass with dull and muddy colors. Buck drops his report off in person, smiles as he is surrounded by his team, his family, and it feels good. Buck feels good. He feels ready.
Only Bobby says the department still isn’t ready. And Eddie is being called Diaz by his new partner and there’s a piece of tape over Buck’s name on his locker and that hollow place expands exponentially until Buck takes a deep breath and repeats Bobby’s words to himself like a mantra.
His place will still be there when he gets back, however long that takes.
(It’s starting, Buck thinks in the empty hours of the early morning, to feel like it's taking too long. Buck is starting to feel frayed and stretched thin. He doesn’t know how much longer he can take it, but each morning he convinces himself he can do it at least one more day.)
The lawyer from the fire drill calls him a disgruntled employee and Buck laughs in his face. Buck isn’t disgruntled. He’s hollow and he’s lost sometimes, but that’s on him, not on the 118. He can see, objectively, where the department is coming from. Understands, logically, their concern about the blood thinners Buck is still required to take. It doesn’t make the hollow feeling in his chest easier to bear, but he knows the 118, his family, have his back. That he can feel is true, even in his bones, even in that hollow place. And, for now, it’s enough.
(Sometimes, late at night or early in the morning, when the world is still mostly quiet and dark, Buck wonders what will happen when it’s not enough. He thinks, sometimes, that he might lose himself in that hollow place if he didn’t have the 118 or his job. He doesn’t let himself contemplate too much what losing himself in that hollow place would mean. It doesn’t matter, because, for now, it is enough.)
Buck didn’t lie to the lawyer, and he believed every word he said, but the idea of a class action lawsuit gives Buck an idea of his own. There is strength in numbers. People who are alone, people who don’t have anyone in their corner, will always lose, will never be able to rise above. Buck is not alone. He has people in his corner. It’s difficult, sometimes, for him to remember that, but his team has told him, shown him, they’re on his side. So Buck resolves to reach out; to rally one more time. Share, maybe, how much he needs to be back and ask them to be firmly and loudly in his corner.
Athena invites him to dinner with her and Bobby. Buck jumps at the chance. He still sees the team, but it’s not as often and he doesn’t usually have a chance to eat with them. He misses the family meals, misses Bobby’s home cooked food, misses the sense of belonging that filled his chest whenever they sat together.
Buck tells Bobby and Athena about the lawyer, about the accusation that he was a disgruntled employee, how Buck is the farthest thing from but it did get him thinking. About how, maybe, the department would let him back if the team spoke on his behalf. If the team showed that they didn’t think he was a liability.
And Bobby tells Buck that he’s the reason Buck can’t go back. Bobby tells Buck that he, not the department, doesn’t think Buck is ready. Because of the blood thinners, because apparently Buck thinks he’s invincible after surviving the tsunami, because Buck isn’t at one hundred percent.
Except Buck is at one hundred percent, he hasn’t felt this good in a long time. He is doing and has done everything anyone asked of him to get through this, but the rules keep changing and the finish line keeps moving and Buck is angry, but more than that he is tired.
(He’s not at one hundred percent, he knows, because that hollow place is still inside him and it might be deeper and bigger, but Bobby doesn’t know that. No one but him knows that it’s there, and it’s always been there anyway so it doesn’t matter. Buck is fine, he’s at his own one hundred percent.)
When Buck tells Chase he’s alone in his fight it feels like the truth and it hurts more than Buck imagined it would. He wonders if the others know Bobby is the reason he’s not back, that the department let the decision up to Bobby and Bobby said Buck wasn’t good enough. He thinks about asking Chimney and Eddie and Hen if they know, is too terrified of the answer to go through with it. Schrodinger's confirmation. The team is at once on his side and against him. Buck doesn’t ask, and when Chase tells him not to talk to the team it’s somehow the easiest and hardest thing Buck’s ever done.
Somehow assuming the team is against him hurts less than asking them. Because this way Buck gets to both deal with the fallout that comes from knowing they are against him and keep the possibility that they aren’t at the same time.
(He doesn’t think about what the lawsuit means for Eddie, Chimney, and Hen. Doesn’t think about the impact of his actions beyond himself. Because Buck is living in that hollow place and in the hollow place there is no one but him.)
The time in which Buck is not talking to his team is both hard and easy.
Hard because Buck does miss his team and Buck does feel guilty for putting everyone through his bullshit.
Easy because he’s alone again and when he’s alone he doesn’t have to put in the effort to do things or pretend he doesn’t feel like his world is slowly crumbling around him.
Hard because not talking to the team means he isn’t talking to anyone tangentially related either, which means he’s talking to no one. Not Maddie, or Athena, or Christopher. And without the team, Maddie, Athena, or Christopher, Buck has no one and it’s never been more obvious.
Easy because, right now, not talking is easier than putting words to the feelings in his chest.
What isn’t easy is sitting in a conference room while Chase eviscerates every single one of his team members by dragging past mistakes and trauma into the light. And Buck didn’t tell Chase all these things for him to fling it in Bobby’s or Chimney’s or Hen’s or Eddie’s face. He told Chase those things so Chase would have the context in which to review Buck’s case.
Buck can barely look at the others during the hearing, keeps his chair turned slightly away and steals glances while he pretends the looks of betrayal and contempt don’t make him want to crawl under the floor. The sound of Chase’s voice is so grating he almost physically aches. Buck has to concentrate on his breathing to keep it steady and even; he knows that if he loses his breathing, everything else will follow close behind.
The arbitration hearing is the first time Buck realizes that what Chase thinks Buck wants and what Buck actually wants might be two very different things.
And as the elevator doors slide close between Buck and his team, Buck thinks for the first time that this whole thing might not be worth it.
(But, as he goes home to his empty apartment and sits on his couch in the silence of that hollow place, he knows it has to be worth it. Because if it isn’t then Buck doesn’t have a reason to exist anymore. And if Buck doesn’t have a reason to exist anymore then he won’t. It’s simple, really.)
The city wants to settle, and Chase is thrilled. The city offers Buck money. Like money is what Buck cares about, like money is why Buck did what he did. Like money was going to fill the hollow place in his chest.
Buck wants his job back. He wants to be himself again. That’s it.
Buck doesn’t want millions of dollars. He wants his job, his team, his purpose and reason for life and living. He wants the hollow place in which he lives to be a little less hollow and the only way he gets that is by being a firefighter.
Chase says the 118 probably won’t welcome him back, and Buck thinks he’s probably not wrong. Chase says they won, but Buck has never felt like he lost more. Chase asks him what he wants to do, and Buck lets it go.
Worth it or not, staying away from the team isn’t an option anymore. And Buck is not blind or stupid, whatever the others sometimes claim. Buck knows how to read expressions and what he did to them in that conference room wasn’t fair or kind or okay. They weren’t supposed to be hurt as collateral damage in Buck’s fight. So, Buck has to apologize. He knows that. He’s made more than his fair share of mistakes in his life; he knows when an apology is due.
The question is how to give it. Individually? Together? At the firehouse? On neutral ground?
Somehow the answer he lands on is this: at a supermarket in the middle of the day while they’re all on shift.
(Buck doesn’t always think things through. It’s just one of his many, many faults. He knows and accepts this.)
So he apologizes in a supermarket while holding cat laxatives. Not his finest moment, but Buck’s always lacked a decent level of dignity so who cares? Not him.
Another one of his faults is sticking up for himself when he shouldn’t. Apparently. Because when Eddie airs his grievances—when Eddie calls him exhausting (which is true) and tells him to suck it up (Buck is trying) and accuses him of leaving Christopher (also true)—Buck tries to bargain instead of taking the criticism without comment like he should. And when Eddie shuts him down, what comes out of his mouth isn’t pleas for forgiveness. It’s, “Why can’t you see my side of this?”
And when Eddie replies that he can’t because that’s all Buck can see, Buck doesn’t argue.
(Can’t argue. Because it’s true, isn’t it? Buck didn’t consider their side at the start. Maybe he never really did, never really has, never really can. Because Buck is, at his core, selfish. He knows this too, he just has trouble accepting it.)
They don’t get to finish their conversation in the supermarket. Buck doesn’t get to finish apologizing. Eddie doesn’t get to lay into Buck the way he clearly wants to. Bobby doesn’t get to say much of anything. Chimney doesn’t get to defend Buck more than the little bit he did, if he’d even want to, and Hen doesn’t get to say more than Buck’s name in complete and utter surprise because there are two morons playing bumper cars in the parking lot.
The 118 do their jobs and Buck eventually goes home alone where he lets himself sink into the hollow place for the night. In the morning he doesn’t know if he should bother climbing his way out. Thinks he maybe won’t. Wonders how long, if ever, it would take someone to come drag him out of bed the way Eddie did the day of the tsunami.
He wouldn’t blame them if the answers are no one or never. Really. He has no one to blame but himself for being in this situation. As usual, Buck’s life is a disaster entirely of his own making. He learned that lesson a while ago. It doesn’t matter now if he has actual trauma to point to and say, “This is why I did what I did and do what I do.” Because the truck and the embolism and the tsunami are not why Buck is the way he is. He’s always been this way. Always hollow. That’s on him. And the things he does and has done because of that hollowness--the casual sex, the adreneline chasing, the incessant clingingness that drives people away--are entirely his own fault.
Bobby calls to invite him to the rage room and Buck claws himself out of the hollow place to go. It’s not an option to not go. So he gets out of bed, gets presentable, and he goes. He meets Bobby and he apologizes again because that isn’t optional either.
And Bobby tells him he’s going to get another call. That he’s being reinstated, that he can finally come home, and Buck is soaring. It doesn’t matter if Bobby implies Buck’s only back at the 118 on behalf of Bobby’s forgiving goodwill. Because Buck will prove to Bobby, somehow, that Buck is worth it. Bobby won’t regret it, and if Buck does, it won’t matter.
For the first time in a long time Buck feels something like hope.
(Because Buck is at the finish line. He’s a firefighter again. He has his reason and his purpose and that hollow place will finally be quiet and full.)
Buck doesn’t know what he expected his return to work to be like exactly, but what he gets isn’t exactly it. Chase’s cautionary words about the team not welcoming him back echo in his ears as Buck stares up at the conspicuously missing banner and takes a deep breath. He can’t be mad. And he isn’t. He’s hurt, but that’s not the same thing, no matter how Eddie sometimes confuses the feelings.
So Buck pushes it away like he’s always done and gets to work. He at least has that.
Only, it becomes abundantly clear in a short amount of time that he actually doesn’t. He might be back at the firehall but he’s not, in every sense of the word, back to being a firefighter. He’s the man behind on calls. He eats his meals alone. He does as he’s told and at the end of the day he goes home alone.
Buck doesn’t know where he got it wrong. Where he misstepped or misunderstood. Because getting back to the firehouse, being a firefighter again, was supposed to be the finish line. He’s supposed to be okay now, supposed to feel okay, down to his bones, down in that hollow place. But instead he feels like he’s drowning more than ever with every sorrowful glance Chimney or Hen send his way, with every curt order Bobby snaps at him, with every ignored look or touch or comment from Eddie.
Somehow, bizarrely, it feels worse than when he was pretending to be a fire marshal. He feels scraped raw and out of place. Like he’s a step to the left of reality. Like he isn’t Buck anymore. Like Buck doesn’t exist. Like, maybe, Buck shouldn’t exist. Like, maybe, the world would be better and the team happier if Buck didn’t exist.
Hen welcomes him back, gives him a cupcake, pats him on the arm, talks to him when the others don’t. She marches to the beat of her own drum, and Buck admires her for that.
(She tells Buck he should do the same, but he doesn’t think he has a beat of his own. He isn’t even sure he has a drum. He’s always felt like he moves according to the beats of other people, for the beats of other people, and his troubles always came from trying to move with too many different beats at once. Coming to the 118 had been the first time he’d really felt like he belonged somewhere, somewhere where all the beats were in harmony if not unison. Now he feels like he’s set apart. Like he can’t even feel the beat anymore.)
Chimney gives him advice. Shares how he waited months for someone to take pity on him before he made it out of the firehouse on a call when he first joined the LAFD. Tells Buck how he used to clean obsessively, learned every inch of the building and equipment, set personal records in his own private races. He tells Buck to be patient and listen.
(Privately, Buck wonders how long it takes to be patient. First it was five months, then eight, then ten. Now it’s been almost a year. Buck’s so close he burns with frustration and the advice has never once changed. Be patient. Suck it up.)
So Buck sucks it up and does his best to be patient even as Bobby does his best to make Buck regret his life choices more than he already does, which is truly a feat in and of itself, and Eddie continues to ignore Buck’s existence. That stings maybe more than it should, but Buck carefully doesn’t examine it.
It’s Halloween and Buck is handing out candy to children. He doesn’t go out on calls, and he doesn’t get overly sensitive at cutting remarks from a ten year old no matter what anyone says. Shift goes on and with it a frustrating feeling like Buck has done everything wrong builds in his chest until he feels like he can’t quite breathe.
When Eddie walks by without a word for what feels like the hundredth time, Buck caves to the internal pressure.
“So that’s how it’s gonna be now?” he asks. “You’re just gonna keep on ghosting me. ‘Cause Halloween is over, just so you know.”
Eddie turns back slowly. Looks at Buck like it’s the last thing he wants to do. “I don’t know what you want from me, Buck,” he says. “Forgive, forget, make you feel better about what you did?”
Buck doesn’t know what he wants from Eddie either. Doesn’t know what he wants, really, from anyone or anything. Except, maybe, for Eddie to make that hollow place inside him feel a little less hollow.
“I just want you to talk to me,” Buck says. “Even if it’s just to say that you’re still mad.”
Eddie blows out a long breath, gaze skating away from meeting Buck’s eyes. “I’m not mad,” he says, which has to be a lie, “I’m...when you decided to sue the department, to make Cap the bad guy, did you ever stop for a minute to think what that could do to us?”
Buck wonders how he’s supposed to answer that. Thinks about telling Eddie everything he thought in the time leading up to the lawsuit and during. How he thought he could trust Bobby and was proven wrong. How he thought the team had his back and he found out they didn’t. How he thought it was easier to pretend for sure they had all known about Bobby’s decision rather than just ask them about it. How he thought the team would be in his corner always and then realized that is only true under very specific circumstances. How he thought and thought and thought and still came to the conclusion that the lawsuit was the only solution.
“Look,” he says at length. “I just needed my job back.”
The expression on Eddie’s face is pained, because he’s heard that before. Buck has been saying it for what feels like forever, but no one has ever really listened to why and Buck rushes to explain.
“I missed being here,” he says even as the word fails to adequately describe the longing that had been, still is, a constant ache in his chest. “Being part of the team. I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”
Eddie sighes, looking heavenward for a moment. “Lotta I’s in there,” he remarks, and Buck’s heart aches but he doesn’t know what else to say. All he knows for sure is how he feels, how he felt, but that’s the crux of all his problems, isn’t it? That he’s selfish. “Your actions,” Eddie continues, “your choices, they impact the rest of us. That’s what it means to be part of a team.”
“You’re right,” Buck says, mouth dry. “I didn’t think about what could happen. I was mad at Bobby for not letting me back. I was mad at you guys for moving on without me. I was mad that there was nothing I could do about it. And I just wanted to—”
“Punch someone?” Eddie suggests.
Buck feels his eyes fall shut. Punch someone. Like Bobby, Eddie, Bosko. Freddie. Himself, mostly. Maybe more than punch. “Yeah, a little,” he admits then rallies by clearing his throat. “But I get it. And I really am sorry. Whatever it takes for you to forgive me.”
“I forgive you,” Eddie says, easy. Like he’s not making Buck’s world rock on its axis. Eddie looks pleasantly surprised at Buck’s shock, offering a warm smile. “Also what it means to be part of a team. Just don’t do it again.”
Buck nods and Eddie reaches out for a hug and for the first time the smile on Buck’s face feels real and genuine. Eddie pulls away too soon in Buck’s opinion, but he can’t be greedy. He has to tread lightly, as lightly as he can manage, with the team and get back in their good graces as much as possible. Being forgiven doesn’t mean that things will go back to normal, it doesn’t mean they’ll trust him again or treat him the same. It doesn’t mean they love him. It just means they don’t hate him, and that in-between indifference is almost worse than hatred.
So Buck lets Eddie pull away. Plasters a smile on his face and turns to meet Bobby as the man approaches. “Candy detail’s all wrapped up. And I gave away all the smoke detectors,” he says with a smile, because he can do this. He can.
“Listen, Buck, I’ve been thinking,” Bobby starts, and Buck concentrates on keeping his expression open and smile pleasant even as his heart pounds. His palms feel clammy, and Buck swipes them on his uniform pants. Whatever Bobby is about to say, everything will be fine. Buck can do this. Bobby pulls in a short breath and says, “Why don’t you go home?”
Buck blinks, feeling like a wave of ice is washing over him. “Home?” he hears himself echo, but it feels very far away. He swallows, forces his focus back to the present moment. “I still have a couple hours left on my shift.”
Bobby nods. “I don’t want to overtax you on your first week back,” he says like Buck has been taxed at all this week. Like Buck has been allowed to do much of anything this week, let alone anything taxing .
“I stood behind a table and got bullied by children,” Buck spits out before he can stifle the words down in his throat. He breathes deep. He can do this.
Bobby doesn’t respond to the bite in his tone. Just says Buck’s earned some time off like it’s something Buck should want. More time off. Fuck that.
“Good work today.”
And then Bobby is walking away and Buck is again left standing alone in the station. He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to go home to his empty apartment. He doesn’t want to be alone. He’s sick and tired of being alone and feeling lonely and what he wants is to be a part of something again.
(But this isn’t about what he wants. What he wants is too many I’s. It’s too exhausting. It’s too self-centered and selfish. Buck has to do better, has to be better.)
He goes home.
He changes out of his uniform, packs his duffle, and walks out of the station alone. He gets in his car alone and starts to drive home where he’ll eat an early breakfast alone. Maybe watch some television alone. And then he’ll go to bed alone where he’ll dream alone and wake up alone to do it all over again. Alone.
But, first, he has to get something to be an early breakfast because he’d planned to eat at the station.
It’s at the convenience store that he sees the man in the windshield. The woman doesn’t seem to notice. Just gets her gas and slides in her car like her Halloween decoration is not slowly moving and moaning. She doesn’t react to Buck shouting at her, and Buck’s stomach twists at the thought of not helping someone in need. So he follows her, calling 911 while he’s at it, and eventually cutting her off to check on both her and the windshield guy.
He doesn’t question his actions in the moment. Doesn’t second guess himself or worry that he’s not doing the right thing. He triages and deescalates like he’s been trained to do and by the time the paramedics arrive, both the man, Ben, and the woman, Stella, are as calm as possible. Buck feels whole again and it isn’t until the one paramedic points out his arm is bleeding that Buck feels a wave of apprehension. But the paramedics are calm, cleaning and sealing the shallow cuts, and in a few minutes Buck is good as new.
He still rides with them to the hospital, the paramedics suggesting he just have the cuts looked over by a physician, and when the nurse asks if he has a ride home he hesitates only a moment before asking her to call Bobby when he realizes he left his phone in his car.
Buck’s been officially cleared and discharged by the time Bobby strides into the emergency department waiting room, making a beeline for the registration desk and asking for Buck as a patient. It occurs to Buck then that it may have been better for him to call Bobby himself.
“Bobby?” he calls and the relief on his captain’s face strikes a deep chord somewhere in Buck’s chest.
“Hey,” Bobby says. “They said you were injured. That you cut yourself?”
Buck gestures at his arm with its pristine white bandages. “Yeah. I just got some shallow cuts from the broken windshield glass. I told the paramedics I was on blood thinners and they sealed the wounds.”
“But they brought you here,” Bobby says, gaze searching in a way that makes Buck shift uncomfortably. “To the ER?”
“Right, no. They just thought I should get checked up,” he says, clearing his throat and waving a vague hand behind himself. “I just finished giving the police my statement.”
Bobby’s gaze flicks behind Buck to where the officers are still standing. “What happened?”
Buck shakes his head, blowing out a slow breath as he processes once again the absurdity of reality. “It was crazy. This lady hit this guy two days ago. She must have hit her head pretty bad, ‘cause they found a brain bleed. Probably why she was so confused.”
Bobby nods with an expression that says he’s listening more than understanding, but he asks all the same, “And what about the guy on the windshield?”
“In surgery, docs say he’s got a fair chance,” Buck says, tucking his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders like that will save him from the inevitable lecture he can sense coming.
Bobby tilts his head. “It’s ‘cause you jumped in there and saved him,” he says and Buck can’t quite read his tone. Disappointed? Vindicated? Exasperated? Some combination of all the above? “Probably didn’t even occur to you to worry about yourself.”
Buck feels himself flush, but a deeper part of him flares in anger. He refuses to feel guilty about doing the right thing, about saving someone’s life, even if he puts himself in harm’s way in the process. That’s what he’s good at, what he’s meant to do. Without it, he’s nothing.
“Yeah, I know, I know. I didn’t think. I just rushed in like I always do.” He pauses, considers leaving the next piece in the silence of his own mind, but he doesn’t. Finds himself trying, once more, to explain. “I guess it’s like the uniform is my costume. You know, I put it on and suddenly I’m brave and I’m strong. I make a difference. Feels like without it I’m not much of anything.”
There’s a pause where Buck thinks Bobby is going to brush his words aside, the same way all of Buck’s previous attempts to explain have been brushed aside, but Bobby’s next words surprise him.
“Buck, you saved two lives without the uniform. It’s not a costume. It’s who you are.”
Buck drags his gaze up from the floor to find Bobby staring at him steadily. “Does this mean that you’re ready to let me back for real?” he asks, a terrible feeling of hope blooming in his chest.
“Doesn’t matter if I’m ready,” Bobby says. “You are. It’s time for me to get out of your way.”
(For a moment, just a moment, something horribly deep inside Buck feels like it breaks and he wonders why it took them so long to get to this point. Why Bobby couldn’t have trusted him before and saved both Buck and the team all the pain and heartache. Wonders if it’s because Bobby didn’t think he was capable or dedicated or worth the risk. Thinks maybe Bobby doesn’t even think that now, has just learned that Buck is stubborn and won’t take no for an answer.)
Buck is ready though. Has been ready. Will always be ready. Because this is who and what he is: a firefighter with the 118.
“Hey, Bobby, are you hungry? Maybe I could buy you breakfast,” he offers with a tentative grin. “Be nice to catch up.”
“Yeah,” Bobby answers with a smile and a warm hand on Buck’s shoulder. “It would.”
The hollow place is still there. Buck can feel it even as he smiles and eats his pancakes while Bobby talks about May and Harry and Athena. It’s still there and it’s still hollow, but today, right now, it’s a little less lonely.
“One can’t complain. I have my friends. Someone spoke to me only yesterday.” - Eeyore