Chapter Text
He could have had millions of dollars in the bank right now, but all he’d wanted was his job back. He wanted to return to his family, to his purpose. He’d thought, in the end, they’d see that.
He understood why they’d been angry when he’d approached them at the grocery store. He hadn’t expected it, but he’d spent the whole drive home thinking about why they couldn’t see his side and eventually he’d thought he got it. Eddie had said he only saw his own side; which, he guessed, was true. He’d been so caught up in the injury, then getting dumped, then physical therapy, and then the embolism, and then the tsunami, and then discovering Bobby was the one keeping him off the job…that he never had a chance to really breathe because the hits just kept coming.
Finding out that it had been Bobby, of all people, who was holding him back had felt like the ultimate rejection.
Bobby, who Buck had long thought of as a sort of father. Who he loved, and who he had thought loved him — if not like a son, then at least something close to it.
Or, maybe he loved him exactly like a son. After all, Buck’s own father couldn’t stand him, so it stood to reason that his father figure would eventually tire of him as well.
When he’d gone to Mackey to file the lawsuit, he hadn’t been thinking of Eddie, or of Christopher, or Hen or Chim. Not exactly. He’d been thinking of what it would take to get back to them, but not of how they’d feel caught in the middle of the battle.
And he’d never expected Mackey to go at them the way he did during the arbitration.
Still, Eddie was right. Buck hadn’t been thinking of anything but what he needed. So he’d tried, that whole drive home and for hours after, to think about everything from their sides.
How Eddie had just lost his wife, and nearly lost his son, and then was forced to stop speaking to his best friend.
How Christopher lost his mom and went through a natural disaster and then suddenly couldn’t be around the person who’d gone through it with him. Christopher, who loved him and was too young to understand why Buck had to stay away.
Hen and Chimney and Maddie and Athena, who were all caught in the middle between Buck and Bobby and not wanting to pick sides but still taking friendly fire anyway.
Because that’s what it was. Buck hadn’t meant to hurt any of them — okay, maybe he’d meant to hurt Bobby a little, if he was honest, but definitely not the others. He’d felt like he’d been fighting for his life for months, and this was just the latest, and hopefully last, battle before things went back to how they should be.
He’d never considered that they would see this as him turning his back on them; fighting them.
Even then though, after the disaster that was the confrontation in the grocery store, Buck figured that him choosing them over accepting millions in a settlement would go a little way towards cooling their anger with him.
His first day back to work had proven just how little that meant to them in the scheme of things.
There were no warm greetings, no banners or party the way there had been when Chim came back after the rebar.
Instead, there were only hushed whispers and eyes that wouldn’t quite meet his, and behind it all was Eddie’s anger and Bobby’s stony face.
It was as if the lawsuit had erased everything that came before it. Not just the bomb and the ladder truck, but the friendships that he’d formed and the family that had evolved from them.
Returning home after that first shift back to work, Buck was tired in a way that wasn’t physical, but was soul-deep. Which is why he felt he could be forgiven for not recognizing the woman standing on his doorstep until she’d reintroduced herself.
“Amelia Wallace,” she didn’t seem offended, at least, when Buck asked who she was, “It’s been a few years.”
“Amelia…” Buck’s brows scrunched down as he searched his mind, before it finally clicked, “Right! From Coronado!”
They’d met at a party and hooked up after. Got along well enough that it became a regular thing for a few weeks, though it’d never turned romantic. More a sorta-friends-with-benefits arrangement.
She looked a little older now than she had then, but still had the same long black hair, heart-shaped face, full lips, and long elegant neck that Buck remembered. She was shifting awkwardly from foot to food and gently pulling at her own fingers: nervous.
“That’s me,” she gave a little smile, causing one dimple to appear at the corner of her cheek. “Listen, can we get a coffee? I need to talk to you about something.”
Buck glanced at his door and thought about what lay behind it: a lonely evening on his couch, going endlessly over everything that happened recently and how he could have done better; what he could do tomorrow to make things right.
“Uh, sure,” Buck nodded, “Yeah. There’s, uh—there’s a great little cafe just down the road.”
***
“Say that again?”
Amelia took a breath, and Buck could see that she was struggling — that this was difficult for her. He knew normally that would mean something to him. He should be offering her comfort, or…or something. He didn’t even know.
Right now, he didn’t know anything. His brain was one giant white noise machine: just stuck on static. Nothing was being processed.
“Five years ago, in Coronado. You’d just dropped out of BUD/S. I’d just flunked my first college class. We comforted each other. You left. I found out I was pregnant.”
Her words were more blunt this time around, but that didn’t help them penetrate the static in his mind.
“By the time I found out, I didn’t know how to find you. I thought I could do it alone. I was wrong.”
Her eyes were dry, but Buck could hear the tears in her voice.
“How,” he swallowed, trying to force himself to think , to understand. Nothing made sense. “How did you find me now then?”
She ran a hand through thick hair, brushing it out of her face, “That firetruck bombing was on the news across the whole state. They kept your name out of it, but I recognized you in the footage.”
That was months ago. A whole lifetime ago in so many ways.
Buck stared at Amelia, unable to form more words. Not sure what needed to be asked or discussed.
She continued speaking, filling the silence with more information that he wasn’t processing. “I knew you’d been hurt badly. I tried to wait, to let you heal before I approached you. But I just…I couldn’t wait any more.”
“So you, uh,” he licked his lips, “you tracked me down after five years to tell me I have a kid?”
God. He was a dad.
“I tracked you down to give you a choice. I couldn’t give it to you five years ago, but I’m giving it to you now. You can take her, or you can sign away your parental rights.”
Buck blinked, gobsmacked.
“What?”
Amelia took a moment to gather herself, fiddling with the coffee on the table in front of her. Around them, other patrons of the cafe were talking, laughing. Noises were coming from the kitchen. A car alarm was going off on the street.
Nothing in the world made sense.
Buck was a dad.
“You’re on the birth certificate. I wasn’t sure how to find you, or if I even wanted to. Not back then. But I figured, someday, maybe Sabrina would want to track you down, and I wanted to make that as easy for her as I could.”
Sabrina. A girl’s name.
A daughter.
Amelia looked away, her gaze going far off, “I thought things would be different. I thought I’d be there when that day came, and I’d tell her what I remembered about you and I’d help her look. I had this whole idea of it in my head, of how she’d be upset but understanding. How we’d talk about it, because I imagined we’d talk about everything. I thought I’d be a good mom and we’d be connected. I thought I’d love her.”
The words had turned into a whisper at the end, but Buck heard that, and it snapped his mind into focus.
“You thought you’d love her? As in—” He couldn’t even say it.
Amelia turned back to Buck, and something about her had shifted. She’d started the conversation so matter-of-fact. Bossy, almost, in that way Buck remembered finding charming back when he knew her. Now the confident demeanor was slipping and a vulnerability was visible that was begging Buck to understand.
“No, I love her. I do. I just…” the tears Buck had heard in her voice before finally made it to her eyes, but they didn’t fall, “I didn’t expect it to be like this. She was such a good baby. She was happy and outgoing. I was happy, for a while. I thought, I can do this. Then she started walking and everything just…got so much harder. She never stops. She never seems to sleep. She is always talking; even in a room by herself. She doesn’t listen, never does what she’s told. She’s four years old and still wets herself. She’d follow a complete stranger home if they caught her interest for half a second. I can barely get her to eat. I have to watch her constantly or she’ll get into everything. I just…I’m exhausted. She’s exhausting.”
Buck’s mind stuttered at hearing that word again, this time directed at his child. Exhausting. Apparently, that was an Evan Buckley curse, passed down from father to daughter.
“I can’t do it anymore. I just can’t. So you can take her, if you want her. But you have to be sure, because I don’t want you to take her just to give her up too. I don’t want to do that to her. I do want the best for her. I really do. So if you can’t do it, it’s fine. My mom has already agreed that she’ll take her. She won’t go into foster care or anything. So, really, it’s your choice.”
Amelia had been speaking faster and faster, as if the words had been building for a long time and had finally come bursting out of her.
It was his choice.
His choice if he wanted to take custody of the daughter that he never knew about. A child being abandoned by her mother for being too difficult . Too hyper, too unruly, too unwilling to listen.
Buck had heard all those things before, from another mother who found herself unable to love her child.
It was really no choice at all.
“I-I’ll take her. I want her,” Buck said it fiercely, and Amelia flinched and looked away, shame on her face.
“I’d understand if you want to wait and get a paternity test-”
“No,” Buck cut her off. He knew he probably should. He should be doing research on this, at the least, but right now, after all that Amelia had just said, Buck didn’t care. Something inside him, something that felt an awful lot like a lonely little boy just wanting to be loved, was screaming for him to find this child and wrap his arms around her and never let go. “No, I-uh, I’m on the birth certificate, right? That’s enough.”
Amelia nodded, hesitant, then reached for her phone and scrolled through it for a moment before turning it to face Buck. “This is Sabrina.”
The phone had an image pulled up of a little girl in a bright pink shirt with a tiny tiara on her head. She had dark brown shoulder-length hair in a riot of curls, a face full of freckles, and brown eyes so dark that they were almost black. Her shoulders were hunched up around her ears and her chin tucked against her chest as she giggled, deep dimples evident on both cheeks.
His daughter.
***
Walking into the fire house the next morning felt surreal. He felt simultaneously too light, and too heavy. Disconnected from his body in a way he didn’t think he’d ever been before.
Which is exactly how he ended up walking right into the doorframe outside the locker room.
A snort came from inside, and Buck looked up expecting a fond eye-roll and joke.
He got the eye-roll, but it was decidedly less fond than it would have been a few months ago.
“Morning,” Buck tried, correcting his steps and moving toward his locker to change.
Eddie gave a cold nod, then turned and exited the room; still buttoning his shirt as he went.
Buck closed his eyes and made himself count to ten. He could do this. They were upset and he understood. Hen had told him during shift yesterday that everyone just needed time and Buck had been determined that he would give them that.
But that was before Buck had found out that he had a daughter. A little girl who he’d be taking custody of sometime in the next few weeks — as soon as they could work out the legalities and Buck could find a new place to live since a one bedroom loft wasn’t going to cut it.
He wanted to give his little girl everything. Wanted to surround her with family and laughter, with people who’d accept and love her no matter what.
Determination settled into his shoulders and Buck quickly changed into his uniform before heading upstairs.
The rest of the 118 was just sitting down to their start-of-shift breakfast, joking and smiling. Clearly in a great mood.
Right up until Buck slid into his seat and the laughter fizzled out.
Nothing for it, but to push forward.
“Bobby, I–uh–” Buck started, but he wasn’t sure exactly how to say it. ‘ I just learned that I’m a father and I’m hoping that you guys will be there to support me.’ Or maybe, ‘There was a woman on my doorstep last night who just informed me that I’m a dad and I could really use some advice.’ Whatever he was going to say, he didn't have the chance before Bobby cut in.
“You’re man behind again today, end of discussion.”
His tone was professional. Polite, even. The kind of tone you’d use with a waiter at a restaurant or a stranger who asked you to grab something off a high shelf for them.
Buck’s courage left him and he glanced down at his plate, shoulders dropping. “Okay. Right.”
Breakfast was mostly quiet after that, with variations of “please pass the bacon,” and “thank you” dropped here and there. Perfectly polite. Perfectly professional.
Cold.
The way family meals growing up had been coldly polite; full of people who lived together and ate together, but didn’t share a life. Didn’t share affection.
The bell ringing was a relief, even though his heart ached to see the team run downstairs to gear up without him.
Two hours later, breakfast had been packed away, the dishes done and the station cleaned, but the crew still wasn’t back.
There wasn’t much to do this early in a shift, since B-shift had left things pretty much in order. Buck started a load of laundry and then moved to the couch and pulled out his phone, opening up the spreadsheet he had started the night before of everything he needed to get done before officially taking custody of his daughter.
He needed to contact the realtor that Ali had introduced him to when they found him the loft. Hopefully, she’d be able to help him find a new place, with two bedrooms, that was close to work and in a good school district.
Which also meant that he’d have to start researching preschools in the area. Amelia said Sabrina hadn’t started yet, but she was four and Buck thought that was the age most kids started. He didn’t want his daughter to be behind or left out.
He’d also need a nanny who could look after Sabrina when he was on shift. Someone who could stay with her overnights. Carla was his first thought, but she was overqualified and Buck wasn’t sure Eddie would want her watching Buck’s daughter and Christopher at the same time anyway. Not now, when he still hadn’t forgiven Buck. Which meant he’d need to research nanny agencies.
He needed to get boxes and start packing up his own stuff. Which also meant deciding what to keep and what needed to go. His current furniture was nice, but it didn’t really scream of a loving, welcoming home for a little girl to come into. He wanted his house to be warm, in the way his own childhood home had never been. The kind of place where it was okay if a child got into everything, or made a mess, or accidentally broke something, because nothing was so important as to be kept away from little hands.
Eddie’s house — with its organized clutter and comfortable plush seating and photos on every surface — flashed in Buck’s mind and he smiled.
Eddie was exactly the kind of dad that Buck hoped to be: patient and warm and loving with his kid. Always willing to listen to Christopher and talk through anything that came up. Always going out of his way to make sure Christopher knew exactly how much he was loved.
Buck frowned at his phone as Eddie’s words from the grocery store echoed through his mind again. Buck was exhausting.
He’d always known that. The fact that he was hard to love was the first lesson he had ever learned. He was too much, all the time. He felt too much, his reactions were too big.
Even now, when the whole team had made it clear that they needed time and space from Buck, all Buck was thinking about was himself. How much he wanted to tell them about his daughter and get their help and support. Have Bobby and Eddie and Hen share the wisdom of their experience with parenthood. Have Chimney give him a list of movies or jokes he could use to connect with a little girl that he’d unknowingly abandoned.
I’m exhausted. She’s exhausting.
The same words, in another voice, gave Buck pause.
Eddie hadn’t even known him for two years and he was already overwhelmed with just how MUCH Buck was, all the time. Bobby had lasted a little longer, making it nearly three years before he started pushing Buck away. Hen and Chim hadn’t quite gotten there yet, but Buck had seen the frustration on their faces too.
He understood it. He knew what he was.
Logically, Buck knew that they’d never feel that way about a child. They would never take their irritation with Buck out on his daughter.
But was it even fair to drop this on them now, when he’d already been making everything about himself for months and he’d hurt them all so badly? Was it fair to Sabrina? She already had one person who was overwhelmed by her. What would really happen if he dropped her in the middle of a group who were already so frustrated by her dad? What if she could sense that from them and believed it was directed at her?
Buck couldn’t do it, to any of them.
Which meant he needed to suck it up, deal with his insecurities, and figure everything out on his own.