Archive of Our Own ^beta

Margaret Buckley died on a Thursday which, to Buck's half asleep, caffiene boggled mind, was weird since nothing happened on Thursdays. His father called him at the tail end of a forty-eight, after Bobby had patted him on the shoulder and told him he was doing a good job at learning how to communicate effectively with Ravi who, yeah, was no Eddie, but was good in his own way. No one was Eddie but Eddie anyway, and Buck wasn't spiralling since he left, he had just never really realized how small his life was until it somehow got smaller.

But his father called him and Buck answered because his father never called him. Texted, sometimes. For some reason had an instagram and sent Buck ads to scams in his email and messages about how the COVID vaccine was the cause of prostate cancer but calling? No, he never did that. He was telling Buck, his father said, because he couldn't tell Maddie and needed Buck to do it instead.

Buck didn't tell Maddie.

He told Hen and, weirdly, May who was there to drop off something Bobby had forgotten at home and just happened to be there. He sat on the bench and stared at his phone until it fell out of his hand and he was torn between wanting to pick it up and throw it or crush it. She had been alive, and then she wasn't, and Buck had never really gotten a hug from his mother - his parents were never affectionate with him - but he wanted one then, like he was ten and scraped his knee on the pavement ouside of their house.

His eyes swam and burned, his ears rang, and his heart pounded like it had just been shocked back to life and Hen said something that was meant to be funny and Buck simply told her the truth with a blink. "My mom died."

May laughed like she thought it was a joke and Buck wanted to laugh with her. The closest he could bring himself was a scoff. Choked and bitter.

Hen dropped her bag. "Buck -."

He swallowed, "I have to tell Maddie."

"No," Hen soothed like he was a child. Buck wasn't a child. He was a thirty-two year old man and he had, maybe, four people in his life that were probably going to stick around to see him live it and Maddie was pregnant, and someone had to tell her. "Buck -."

He left, and when he told Maddie she cried and Buck held her until she stopped shaking. He stayed for a dinner he made, and then well past Jee-Yun's bedtime and Chim had told him, seriously, when he was gathering his things and Maddie had fallen asleep on the couch, to do something that should have been simple. "Call Eddie."

"Sure," Buck said with a half smile and a bubbling in his gut.

He wasn't going to call Eddie. Eddie was busy, and Buck was an adult, and, in the grand scheme of things, his mother dying wasn't anything for anyone to worry about. She was dead, Eddie Diaz could stubbornly restart Buck's heart, but Margaret Buckley was well past the ressusitation point. Eddie was a lot of things (smart, capable, funny, handsome, adorable, so, so, so kind), but he wasn't a necromancer.

Besides, what had sent him back to Texas was much more important than Buck's dead mother.

He didn't call Eddie, but Eddie called him when he was checking in both him and Maddie at the airport, alternating between digging his nail into the skin on the side of his thumb and chewing on the inside of his lip. He was relieved, almost, because Buck was getting a little tired of making decisions and Eddie had always been pragmatic in a way Buck just wasn't. It wasn't fair for him to rely on Eddie to make these decisions, though. Eddie was busy doing something much more important than handling Buck's problems for him.

Buck shoved his phone back in his pocket, smiled kindly at the attendant checking them in and then settled back on the seat with Maddie. Silently, he handed her the ticket with her name on it Maddie Caroline Han. Not Buckley-Han. Just Han. It made him itch in a way he didn't know how to explain. Being the youngest child was weird, Buck had decided a long time ago. His parents were both only children and Buck had no kids of his own (and probably never would at the rate things were going). Maddie and Chim had changed Jee-Yun's name when Maddie changed hers to match. He would be the last Buckley. The name would die with him.

Buck supposed the weird part of that was how much he was okay with that. The name would end with him, some little boy out there would have some of his DNA, if that meant anything to anyone, and he would probably only be a name on a paper buried in some archives somewhere. He'd probably go out in a blaze of glory. Or as a shadow of himself, forgotten and alone.

Had Margaret died alone?

No, he was pretty sure Philip had been there.

You don't know how hard it is to see someone you love die.

His phone vibrated again in his pocket.

"Thank you." Maddie swipped deftly at her eyes and shuffled just a bit closer once Buck at down beside her. "Hey," she said after a moment. "How are you feeling?"

Buck shrugged, "I'm okay."

Maddie always saw too much, but maybe he had managed to convince her awhile ago that she didn't need to go looking anymore. "Yeah," she rested a hand on her baby bump. "Me too." It was weird to want to be seen, but to be so used to being invisible.

"It's weird," he started and then stopped. Maddie… Maddie saw so much, sometimes, that Buck thought she saw through him. That she had, too, associated him with a ghsot Buck felt but didn't see.

"What is?"Maddie asked lightly. Forced. "I haven't been back home since I left Doug."

Buck hummed.

What did it mean that Maddie could talk about Doug so easily and Buck could still barely even say his name without being all tied up around feelings? He hated him for what he did to her, but he remembered the Doug that had listened to him cry over their parents and given him a hug. He wanted to kill him again but he treasured the memory of Doug telling him that he could be anything he wanted to be. The wounds weren't his. It happened to you too. It hadn't, not really. Buck had gotten off easy, comparitively.

"Me neither."He said instead of all that.

Maddie's eyes bore into him, "Really?" He shrugged. "Not once?"

"Mhm."

"Buck, it's been ten years." She laughed a little as she said it.

"Twelve." He corrected. "Twelve years."

"That's…"Maddie shook her head. "Why not?"

"Didn't really want to." He told the floor. "Never really saw much of a point."

Maddie frowned with her whole body. "That's -."

His phone vibrated again and Buck groaned, tearing it out of his pocket, unreasonably annoyed that Eddie cared so much.

He knew how the conversation would go. Eddie would ask him about things, Buck would tell him, Eddie would listen, probably give some sage, bullshit advice, he'd probably say something like, "You can call me anytime" and mean it. They'd both know Buck wouldn't call him at all but would text him every now and then so that he wouldn't unnecessarily worry. And then his mother would need him for something, or Isabel would be coming over for lunch, or Chris would, Buck didn't know, say somehting and Eddie would go and Buck would both feel better and hollowed out completely. Like Eddie had taken and burried the parts of Buck he had given him to keep safe instead of holding them close to his chest. And that wasn't fair and Buck knew it wasn't fair and….

It wasn't Eddie again. Although he had texted, call me.

Buck stood up as he answered, "Hey, Cap."

"Hey, kid." Bobby echoed. "Just checking in."

It fizzled in his stomach. Joy, maybe. Apprehension. Abject misery. Yearning, even. For what, he didn't know. Sometimes Buck was pretty sure he was going to spend his whole life yearning. Sometimes he was pretty sure that was all he was put on Earth to do. Yearn for a life he was never meant to have. How different would things have been if Daniel had lived, if his parents had grieved differently, if Maddie had gone with him, if Bobby had been his father, if Abby, Taylor, Natalia, Tommy, Eddie…. "I'm fine, Bobby." He tugged roughly at the corner of his mouth as if to force his reflexive smile down. His mother was dead. There wasn't a whole lot to smile about when he was just about the board a plane to help their father arrange a funeral.

"You know you don't have to fine, right?" Bobby tried, like he had been trying since Buck had told him. "I know things were difficult…" Buck snorted in an illtimed laugh. Difficult. No, it wasn't all that difficult. It hadn't been difficult since he found out about Daniel. Everything was painfully simple after that. It was okay, really. Buck had always felt unwanted, the only difference was that now he understood why. And the why was needed, wasn't it, it order to actually move forward. Bobby laughed too, Buck could imagine that way he'd shake his head as he did it. "But she's… it's your mom, Buck. You're allowed to process that."

"It's cool." Buck shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Really, Bobby, I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine, kid."

"Would I sound fine if I was in the middle of a breakdown?"

"Maybe," Bobby said like it was somsething he was actually considering. Bobby saw too much too, only it wasn't like Maddie. He didn't see through Buck, he just saw him, every signle part Buck wanted and didn't want him to see. Buck crossed his arms like Bobby was watching him, then, and not two hours away. "Have you called Eddie yet?"

Buck kicked a piece of trash and scowled.

"Why not?" Bobby asked his silence. "He'd want to know, Buck."

"Why?" Buck asked like a child. "He can't… do anything about it."

"He's your friend." Bobby said slowly. "Do you think he wouldn't care?"

"I know he'd care." Buck rolled his eyes, insulted on Eddie's behalf. "But it's not going to change anything." Because Eddie would still be inTexas, and Buck would never ask him to choose between him and Christopher. Even Buck wouldn't put himself first. Even he wouldn't be so selfish. "Besides, what he's doing right now is more important."

"I don't think you can make that decision for him."

"I don't think it's fair to him to put him in a place where he has to decide at all."

Bobby was quiet, probably mkaing that face he did when Buck was being particularily self-sacrificing and stubborn. Like he was a miserable specimen Bobby just wanted to fix. Buck wished he could do it, fix whatever was wrong with him, but he was pretty sure this was the best version of himself that he was ever going to be able to get. Bobby clicked his tongue, "Okay," he said. Buck knew the discussion was far form over, but it was enough for now, that it had stalled. "When does your flight board?"

"Like an hour."

"How's Maddie?"

Wordless, Buck shrugged and then remembered that Bobby couldn't see him. "She seems okay. Sad, but," But what else could he expect her to be? As confused and jumbled as he was? No. That wouldn't be fair. "It's her mom, you know? I'd be more worried if she wasn't sad."

Carefully, Bobby didn't point the obvious out. "Of course." he paused, probably contemplating calling him out on it. "Did you pack a jacket?"

Buck rolled his eyes with a familiar annoyance, blowing a puff of air up to catch at the ends of his curls. Maddie had liked that he was growing his hair out again, his mother had been impassive about it like she was about most parts of Buck's life. Tommy had liked them, and Eddie had snapped at him not to do anything drastic like shave them all off after he broke things off. Do you like them? He had asked. If you like them, who cares what the guy who dumped you thinks?

Besides, he had expanded like it was just a normal thing to say and tugged one down so that it bounced, they're cute.

Buck hadn't blushed, but he hadn't not blushed either.

God, he missed him.

Sometimes it was like being struck by lightning again. A bolt of grief so strong it would knock him off his feet. Maybe that was what he was meant to be feeling over his mother's death, not over his best friend moving back to Texas.

He rubbed absently at his chest. "Yes," he answered petulantly.

His mother was dead.

Buck knew what it meant that it hurt more when he remembered Eddie wasn't going to be waiting for him to come back home.

—

Maddie's mom died.

Linda texted him it. Linda. Mid-complaint about having to cover more shifts that Eddie usually loved to read. Like she was talking about the weather.

Eddie stared at his phone until it turned black and then he stood up, cutting his father off mid-sentence. "Excuse me." He muttered hastily, and pressed the one on his speed dial.

It rang, and rang, and his mother was watching him like she wasn't surprised but was mildly worried, and it went to a voicemail that Buck had never fully set up. None too softly, Eddie swore. Sharply, Sophia's head shot around the doorframe. She slowly raised her brows in his direction.

He dialed again.

It went to voicemail quicker this time.

Eddie scowled down at his phone. Buck didn't even ignore his calls when he was in the bathroom and probably should. Helena grunted, "Eddie -."

The door slammed shut behind him.

Call me, he sent in a text, barely resisting the urge to add a please at the end. Buck neveer did well with pressure, and so long as he even answered a text Eddie would be happy.

Christopher sent him a sideways glance from where he was sitting on the porch swing, lazily scrolling through his phone.

Eddie….

Called Chim.

"Eddie!" Chimney answered loudly, like he was wildly unaware of whyEddie would be calling him at all. °Hey, man -."

"Their mom died?"

Chris sat up straighter, be it because of the question, or the tone of Eddie's voice. Chimney winced audibly, "He didn't call you?"

"No, he didn't call me." Eddie threw his hands to the sky. "And he's not answering his phone now."

"Yeah," Chim let out a long sigh. "They're at the airport. They're heading to Pennsylvania to help their dad with stuff."

"He hates Pennsylvania."

Chris gave him his full attention, then, because there was only one person they knew from there. Well, two, consdering, but neither of them really knew Maddie all that well. Eddie stared back at him and then blinked away. This… wasn't something for Chris to really hear from a one-sided phone call. "What the hell happened?"

Softly, a door shut on Chimney's end of the phone. Eddie searched Christopher's face, not for the first itme wondering when his little boy had decided to go and grow up. The kid that used to cudddle with him every night had learned to hate him, to keep a careful distance, and though Eddie had tried so hard, he had turned into his father. What else was he supposed to do? His father had been the only example he had. Abuelo had died when Eddie was ten, and he had looked at raising Chris the way he had helped with Adriana and Sophia. But Shannon hadn't been Helena and Eddie, at the start, hadn't been Ramon and… he had been nineteen and, now, at thirty-three, he realized just how young that actually was.

He hadn't even been old enough to drink and yet he was married with a baby on the way. Making decisions when he didn't know how to rent a car.

Chris looked so much Shannon, but he acted so much liek Eddie. Angry. Eddie knew that anger like it was his own, because it had been. Another Diaz man, cursed with so much anger and nowhere to put it. He looked concerend now, though. Worried. Scared. Thirteen.

His heart wasn't something that he had inherited from Eddie.

"Heart attack." Chim said slowly, sounding drained and tired. Of course he was, Eddie told himself, Maddie was his pregnant wife and Chim felt everything for everyone, but especially for her.

"Ironic." Eddie muttered.

"Huh?"

Eddie waved away the question with a scoff. It had been up to him, he would have advised Buck to be a little bit angrier with both of his parents after everything had cooled down. He deserved to feel that anger all the way down to the hurt it manifested from. But anger wasn't comfortable, and Buck wasn't a vindictive person and it wasn't Eddie's palce to do anything but support him, so he carefully kept his opinion to hismelf. But it was ironic, that Buck had died by a lightning bolt to his heart, and Margaret Buckley (along with her husband) had broken a little boy's heart so many years ago and, yet, Buck had come back despite the odds with all of himself intact and her heart had killed her.

That was a… dark thought.

Eddie shook himself. "How long ago?"

It mattered, even if Eddie didn't really know why. Him and Buck didn't really do a lack of communication. Buck hadn't really been all that hard to crack in the beginning - he had really just been waiting for someone to listen. But he had been distant since Eddie left, okay on the surface so as not to make him worry, and enthusiastically supportive but so, so.. quiet. Like he was back to the start, so afraid of being too much that he was holding himself back. Don't worry about me, he'd say, focus on Chris.

"Thursday."

"Thursday?" It was Saturday. It had been at least two days.

Chim winced again, "Yeah," he drew out. "You really didn't know?"

"No!" Buck had texted him about Maddie's nursery set-up, a new recipe he was trying for honey buns, and an article about egregores. He hadn't sent a single text about his freshly dead mother and going back to his hometown he had never talked about to arrange a funeral. If he had Eddie would have… would have….

Would have done what?

He glanced at Chris. Told him not to go? Bought a plane ticket? Been just one more person expecting him to act a specific way?

There was a reason Buck didn't want him to know.

Slowly, Eddie sat himself down on the front porch step and dug his fingers into his eyes. "Is he… okay?"

"I don't know." Chim said with a click of his tongue. "He seems fine, but, you know… numb. Like he's avoiding it. Their dad had him tell Maddie and I don't think he's really stopped to think about it since."

"Why did he have him tell Maddie?"

"He couldn't tell her himself, apparently," Chim snorted bitterly. "Maddie's pissed about it."

Distantly, Eddie recognized Chris edging closer. "That's not fair." Eddie moved aside and Chris only paused a moment before settling on the step next to him. He glanced to Eddie's phone to his face and he didn't push him away when Eddie rubbed a hand over his knee before snatching it back to drum against his own. "How's Maddie?"

"Sad." Chim groaned. "Worried. Mad, you know? I'm going to meet them with Jee on Monday but Bobby couldn't really wiggle time for both me and Buck to be there for the whole thing." Because of Eddie. Because Eddie had fucked off to Texas and… and what? He wouldn't have been able to go even if Eddie was there. If it was between him and Chim going with them, Chim, Maddie's husband, would have won out over Buck's best friend. He still would have been on the outside. Still would have had to stay behind, useless.

I needed a partner.

Slowly, Eddie shut his eyes and breathed out.

Buck wasn't Shannon, and he was ten times the man Eddie was, and Eddie had learned more about being a person from him than he had anyone else.

If this was how he wanted Eddie then… "Is Buck okay?" Chris whispered, a familiar, understanidng misery in his eyes.

What exactly was the right way to answer that? Eddie tried to never lie to him, or to never, at least, lie to him when honesty could be easily achieved. But really, Eddie couldn't say yes when Buck hadn't spoken to him about it. Sure, he might seem fine, but Buck would seem fine while actively dying (he had before), so Eddie put no stock in fine until he spoke to him himself. But…. "I don't know." He murmured, pulling his phone away from his ear so that Chim's rant about how worried he was about Maddie and Buck and the situation faded to a small whisper.

Chris glanced at his phone again, "Call him."

Eddie almost laughed, "I tried that already." He resisted rolling his eyes. "He's taking a page out of your book and ignoring me."

"I'm not ignoring you." Eddie gave him a look and Chris flushed with a stubborn set of his lips. Sure, he wasn't ignoring Eddie now that he had literally made it imposisble again by showing up on his parents' doorstep, but Chris had been in a way that was scarily reminicent of his late mother. They both knew it. It was probably harsher than Eddie needed to be towards him. He was just a kid. A thirteen-year-old -. "I'll call him."

He even fished his phone out of his hoodie pocket to do it. "He's on a plane, Chris." Eddie felt a surge of pride, though, at the way he was willing to try. Was that Eddie in him? It might have been Shannon. Was probably, oddly, Buck. The guy who had literally and metaphorically broken down their door.

Chris frowned even harder. "That's dumb."

Eddie snorted.

Well, he wasn't wrong.

"Listen, Eddie, I've got to go make Jee dinner." Chim interrupted before Eddie could fully forget he was on the phone at all.

"What?" Eddie blinked and glanced at his watch. "Oh, right. Yeah. Don't worry." He had walked right out in the middle of his post dinner attempt at negotiating time with his own son with his parents.

"I'll, uh, let you know when I hear anything."

"Yeah, right, I'll, uhm… do the same."

"Hey," Chimney paused. "We miss you, man."

Not for the first time, Eddie wondered if he had made the right choice. It was a leave of absence, not a resignation. Bobby told him to file it if he decided to stay, even if Eddie had sold his house nad was renting one in El Paso, ten minutes from his parents and five from Abuela. LA, with the 118, was probably the closest to a home he'd ever get to building himself. But Christopher was what made him a person, and Eddie would go where Chris took him.

But he missed them. Like he left a part of his soul at the station, in his old kitchen, in Buck's stupid, impractical loft. "Yeah, I… miss you too."

They hung up, and Chris stared his knees and Eddie couldn't shake the feeling of something being innately wrong. He wanted to march over to Buck's stupid loft and… make him talk, maybe, even if Eddie wasn't that great at doing that. Hug him, definitely, because he was pretty sure Buck needed about twenty. Buck was a good wait it out type. Eddie would give him a hug, clean his kitchen, get him a drink, and in ten minutes he'd be opening up. Lifting the top off his vulnerability and pouring himself out.

But Eddie couldn't do that, though, because he was in Texas and Buck was heading to Pennsylvania, and he wasn't answering his phone.

Angry, with himself, Buck, the situation, absurdly, with his son, Eddie sighed. At least let me know when you get there. He sent the message before he could stop himself.

Chris chewed on his lip. "We should go." He glanced at Eddie from the corner of his eye. "So he's not alone."

"You have school starting soon." A shitty school, if Eddie did say so himself. What kind of school let a kid enroll without a legal parent's permission? Shannon hadn't even been around and Eddie had had to either sue her for custody or get her to sign the paperwork too. He hadn't signed over guardenship rights as far as he knew.

Eddie had been arguing with his parents about that since he had gotten there. "And he's not alone, he has Maddie." Which was better than nothing, really, except Eddie wondered how much time Buck would spend worrying about her in comparison to himself.

Christopher's eyes darkened. "It's like you don't even care."

Eddie pulled back in insult, "Of course I care."

"No, you don't." Chris snapped. "If you cared -."

"If I didn't care -."

"You're just sitting here!" Chris exploded. "Doing nothing!"

"I'm taking care of you!" Eddie had tried to explain it over and over again during the past weeks. Sometimes, it was like he heard him, and sometimes it was like Chris was so determind to be mad that he didn't care. Someone had to be the enemy, and apparently Eddie made a good punching bag. "What am I supposed to do, Chris? Get on a plane and leave you here?" Eddie shook his head and Chris opened his mouth to say something Eddie knew would stab. "No," Chris snapped his mouth shut with an angry scowl. "I'm not going to let you convince me to do that again."

Christopher angrily groaned and pushed off the stair, the door slamming behind him as he stomped inside.

Eddie was pretty sure he was doing everything wrong. That he had done everything wrong every second of every day. His eyes stung with unshed tears and he wanted to stomp after him, to apologize again for fucking up so bad. He wanted to go insdie and scream at his parents and Sophia and call up Adriana and scream at her too. He wanted to…

Call Buck.

He didn't want him to fix Chris, he wanted him to fix him. The way he always did.

But Buck was broken right now too and….

Okay.

His phone vibrated with the message.

Eddie let his head fall forward nad rest against his knees. He stayed out there long past Christopher's bedtime.

No one came out to check on him, but he heard them laughing inside.

The night chill bit into his skin.

At least Texas had always felt the same.

—

Buck's childhood home was a two story, six bedroom, three bathroom, colonial style yellow house at the end of a cul-da-sac full of six bedroom, three bathroom colonial homes. It had an attic, a converted and finished basement, and a big enoug yard that Buck used to run suicides from end to another during the football off season. Maddie's bedroom had been on the second floor, his parents had the master bedroom on the first, and Buck's had been in the basement since he was thirteen and the renovations had finished. The second floor - aside from Maddie's room - had become his parents domain. His old bedroom became his mother's craft room, the playroom had become the guest room, and the office had stayed the office, but with a newer, cooler, faster computer.

It was a little weird that his parents had left his old bedroom the way it had been when he was nineteen.

A giant map of the world ont he wall with the tacks he had gotten from a teacher on each place he wanted to visit, Maddie and Doug's wedding picture on his bookshelf, his old iPod touch still plugged into the dock. He took a picture of it and sent it to Hen, sure she would laugh, even if he wasn't sure why.

Maddie had gone up to her room for a nap, their father had looked old and sad and weirdly put together. He had asked if Buck wanted dinner and Buck had said yes until he stepped inot the kitchen and had seen his own face, smiling and squishing Maddie and Chim under each arm. He had made an excuse that he actually wasn't all that hugnry. His father didn't ask questions, he merely shrugged and let him shuffle away down to the basement.

Buck wasn't acutally sure he had ever seen his father cook before.

How did his parents even get that picture to print it off and hang it on the fridge? Why did they do that? Why would they want that?

Buck drummed his fingers on the back of his phone and stared up at the ceiling.

It all felt so… dumb. Stupid. Ridiculous. Pointless.

There was a mirror in the corner of the room with pictures stuffed into the corners of the frame. Buck's old girlfriend, his old college roommate. People he hadn't spken to in twelve years. People who had never reached out beyond a like or two on his Facebook profile updates. He winced and rolled onto his other side, a hollow ache in his shin that was always there when he was tired nowadays. His doctor told him the only connection it had to his old injury was mental, but Buck thought he was full of shit. It absolutely hurt where the screws had been.

He was both so tired and wide awake.

His phone vibrated. Why? Did you go to a 24 hour one?

The message was clear, even if Eddie didn't say it. Don't forget to eat.

Buck groaned but decided to listen.

The third step up from the basement door still squeaked. Buck used to hide money and weed in that step until he left. He didn't covered it in his haste to go and he sort of assumed his parents would have fixed it but they must have forgotten. Put it back in it place and pulled the door shut. But the room didn't have the smell of dust and it looked like it had fresh sheets so they must have, at least, kept things clean on purpose.

The basement door opened into a hallway, smack between the foyer and the kitchen.

He went into the foyer.

Margaret was staring at him.

Or, rather, her wedding picture was.

Buck stared at her, as young as he had been when he left, smiling and pretty and looking so much like Maddie when she had been that age. And it was like she was staring back, judging him for who he had become since the last time this picture saw him.

Buck backed up and treaded on someone's foot. "Ow!" Maddie yelped, although her hands were gentle even when she shoved him away.

"Shit, sorry." He apologized hastily and turned to catch her as she balanced on one foot to shake out her toes.

"No," She waved off, "It's my fault. I shouldn't have snuck up on you."

Or maybe he shouldn't have been standing in the doorway having a staring match with his mother's wedding photo.

Maddie watched him through her eyelashes, a tiny smile on her lips. "You hungry?" She asked after a moment. "I ordered pizza."

It was ridiculously relieving to not have to go back into the kitchen. ""What pizza? Normal pizza?"

"Extra olives." Maddie cackled at Buck's scowling face and tugged him in close. "Extra cheese and veggie. "We," she pat her belly, "Thought you might be hungry too."

Buck quirked a smile, reminded of the time he had gone to Maddie and Doug's after a game that no one had gone to. It had been two in the morning, Buck had been a combination of high off the endorphins of the game and high from the blunt he had split with a few guys behind the Price Chopper. When no one had come to pick him up, Buck had rode his bike to the convenience store and spent a hundred dollars on Doritos, Power Aid, and whatever the homeless woman in the parking lot wanted. Maddie had just gotten off of her shift in the emergency room, and Doug had fallen asleep on the couch and she had ordered the both of them a pizza and listened to him recount the game like she actaully cared. She had waited until his eyes were no longer red to send him to bed in their guest room. And then she had waited until the morning to lecture him about being reckelss while Doug had stood over her shoulder shaking his head to disagree with everything she was trying to drill into him. When Maddie had caught him, she had pretended to be annoyed. But they had spent the next few hours laughing, in good spirits.

He wondered if she had good memories of him like Buck did. He wondered what it meant about him that he had so many and still hated him so much it hurt sometimes. He didn't know who he had that he could talk to about that. Buck was pretty sure he was the fucked up one to be thinking of that at all. "Course." He slung an arm over her shoulders and tugged her into the living room to drop in front of the television. Their reflections glowed back at them - thirty-two and forty-one; nine and seventeen. Maddie tilted her head to rest against his shoulder and pressed her free hand on her bump. "How'd you nap?"

She whined, "This one wouldn't stop moving."

"Awe." Buck poked her belly right next to her fingers. "They're stuck in LA time."

She slapped at his hand but pulled it to the rounded part next to her belly-button. "Can you feel that?" It was light. A small flutter against his skin. Sometimes Buck pretended he could feel the baby kick just to make Maddie smile. "I swear, Buck, they only stop when you or Chim are around."

"Well," Buck preened, "That's because I'm the favorite uncle."

Maddie snorted, "Obviously." She flushed. "Don't tell Albert."

"Oh, I'm so telling Albert." They had a bracket going. So far Buck was winning after bringing Jee-Yun to a cat cafe and helping her campaign to get a kitten by sending Maddie a ridiculous amount of pictures of her posing with every cat there.

"It's weird isn't it?" Maddie said after a moment of companionable silence. "She was always here." Pointedly, she glanced down at his shoes and bumped their shoulders together. "She'd have yelled at you for wearing those inside."

Their mother had always been yelling at him but he supposed she was right. Buck had just forgotten he was wearing them. Everyone had so many rules when it came to shoes (when it came to everything, really). Maddie needed them off at her house too, and Hen didn't really care, but Athena would have turned lethal if he wore his dirty shoes on her clean carpet. Eddie sort of always wore shoes in his house, because Chris did and it made things easier for him to move around and feel less… isolated, if they both did. After the engine, Buck's doctor had advised him about the importance of stability and support and he guessed he just sort of always wore them too.

Carefully, he kicked them off and under the television. "Sorry." He muttered like Margaret Buckley was going to appear and lecture him again.

Maddie stared at him like he had just done something completely out of character. "You okay, Buck?" She asked quietly.

The last thing he wanted to do was concern her. "Yeah, Maddie, I'm okay." And, besides, he wasn't lying. He was fine. He had been a lost worse. This was no relearning how to walk.

She didn't look like she believed him. "You don't have to be."

"I know."

"She's… she was your mom too."

Was she? Sort of, maybe. Genetically. She had given birth to him, bandaged his scraped knees, made sure he had a roof over his head and food in his belly. He had told Maddie that she had raised him and he meant that. But Maddie wasn't mom, either. She was just… Maddie. And Margaret was just Margaret and Buck didn't really feel sad about it, he just felt sick. "You know, she used to read you these books growing up. The… critter series? You loved them. Dressed up as a critter for Halloween."

Slowly, Maddie unfolded herself from his side and Buck's vision tilted sideways. He swallowed around a dry throat, crossed his arms and stared at the new, old picture of a little boy with a gap toothed smile wedged between the large pink frame of Maddie's baby picture and the smaller, plain navy frame of Buck in Kindergarten. The same color hair as Buck, the same brown eyes as Maddie, hair slightly curled but too short to know if he had that too. The perfect mix of both of them. His mother had emailed him a picture, once, in case he wanted to know what Daniel had looked like. There's plenty more, she had written, if you want me to scan them for you to look through.

Buck had felt sick then too.

He had thrown up in the sink and Taylor had been more alarmed that he was trying to clean it up than the reason why. It's just a picture.

Sometimes he missed her. Taylor hadn't been that bad. Just… a work in progress. But who among them wasn't one?

Sometimes he missed Daniel when he never even got to meet him. "Do you remember that year you dressed up as the red Power Ranger?" Maddie had been continuing like Buck was paying attention.

He blinked back to her and away from Daniel's smile. "Green."

"What?" Maddie stared at him and then her eyes widened, a flush rising to her cheeks. "Oh -."

"I didn't like the red ranger." Buck continued without acknowledging that she had made a single mistake at all. "The green ranger was cool, because he started off bad -."

"And was really good the whole time." Maddie chewed her lip. "Buck, I'm sorry."

"For what?" He asked brightly. "Easy mistake."

"No -."

"Maddie, it's fine." He laughed around the sting at the corner of his eyes. He didn't know why he was acting this way. Buck had been mistaken for Daniel his entire life. At least it made sense now. At least he knew who he was being mistaken for. "I don't care." Still, she stared at him, and then at Daniel's picture and when Buck turned on the television so that they could exist in silence together without a well of memories pooling between them, she didn't stop him. He pretended not to notice that she had started to softly cry, because she kept wiping at her cheeks like she didn't want him to know. But when he pushed closer she didn't do anything but pull him in firm.

There wasn't any room for Daniel to live between them. Buck wasn't sure when that had disappeared or if it had ever been there in the first place.

-

"You know," Sophia said thoughtfully from her spot leaning against the doorframe, half in the living room and half in the kitchen. "You could just make him go back home with you."

Hen had said the same thing back in the beginning. You know you're the dad, right? You can make him come home. It didn't sound any more appealing coming from Sophia, even if Eddie knew they both had a point. He glanced up at her and then back down to the forms his father had asked him to look over from the company he was supposed to be retired from. "Dad wouldn't let us talk like that to him." She continued.

Like that was the attitude in Christopher's voice when Eddie told him to tank his grandparents for lunch. "Yeah, well," Eddie hummed absently. "None of us talk to dad that much anymore."

Sophia snorted, "Like you two don't have weekly, I don't know, manly bonding phone calls."

"It's not weekly." Eddie corrected and scowled at the foreman's handwriting. Sophia plopped down next thim, kicking her sock clad feet up on the coffee table and disrupting Eddie's paper pile. "Hey," he shoved her feet off and onto the floor with a clatter. Sophia grunted with pouting glare. "You know better."

She rolled her eyes. "It's like nothing ever changed."

"Nothing changed," Eddie agreed. "You were never allowed to put your feet on the table."

She watched him from the corner of her eye. "Mom doesn't care."

"Yes, she does," Eddie sat back in his seat and sighed. "She just knews you listen to me better than her."

Sophia's lips twitched into a hint of a smile. Eddie did miss them, both of his sisters. He had spent so much time worrying about them that it was second nature. Though Sophia - the baby - was twenty-fove now, and Adriana was twenty-nine with a husband and two babies. They were always one and five, Eddie was always turning down hanging out with friends to babysit and his first date with Shannon had been to Sophia's dance recital. "I was always way more worried about disappointing you than I was mom and dad."

"Remember when you got caught drinking in high school?"

"Uh, yeah," Sophia wrinkled her forehead at the memory. "They called you in Afghanistan."

"It was two in the morning."

"Yeah, well, I always listened to you," Carefully, she nudged his ankle with her toes. "So… why doesn't he?" She jerked her head towards the back yard, where Chris was playing soccer with Ramon and Sophia's newest boyfriend. Nate was a nice guy. A bit dumb, but nice. His sister could do better but, well, Nate made her happy.

Eddie groaned and shook his head with a shrug, "I don't want him to be scared of me like were dad."

"So you'll let him walk all over you?"

"I want him to want to come home, Sophia. Not… for me to force him."

"He's a kid, Eddie. He doesn't really get to decide that, does he?" Wordless, unsure of what exactly he was supposed to say, Eddie only shrugged. "You know they think he's going to be here forever, right? Like… Nate and I are looking at apartments and mom said it's great because that means they can knock down that wall and make him a bigger room."

Eddie's chest burned.

His parents still had his wedding picture hanging up. He had been so scared and Shannon had worn a secondhand dress and Eddie's shoes had pinched his toes. His parents looked so proud.

Eddie couldn't imagine Chris getting married at nineteen.

Adriana hadn't gotten married until last year. She had already had both of her children. His parents hadn't made her get married to avoid living in sin.

"I really messed up, Sophia."

"Yeah, you did." She agreed with big, wide, honey eyes. "You shouldn't have let him come back here with them."

"I shouldn't have…" He swallowed around the ache in his soul. "I shouldn't have…" He shrugged.

They all knew what happened. Sophia snorted, "It's not like you wanted it to happen."

"It still happened."

"So what?" She asked bluntly. "You feel like you have to be punished so you're letting a thirteen-year-old do it?"

Eddie shut his eyes. "You don't get it."

"I don't think you get it."

"I've messed up a lot." Eddie said slowly. "Not just… with this."

"Hey, listen, I know you're not perfect. But Chris is never going to get over it if you keep letting him be mad about it." She shook her head. "Maybe it's time you two actually talk about the problem."

"I've tried. He's not talking."

"So call someone that will make him." She pointed outside. "Because that? Eddie they're doing right now the same thing they did when we grew up and putting all the hard shit onto you, instead of being our parents themselves."

"That's not what happened." But Sophia had clearly said her part already and left him alone to think it over. She only paused to roll her eyes at him over her shoulder, retreating back into the kitchen and leaving her words behind like a parting shot.

She was right, though, sort of. Sometimes Eddie thought his parents forgot he was their kid too, and not a hired parent they could just shoo away at the end of the day.

Funeral's on Thursday, Chim's incoming text said. Nothing else.

Eddie stood up, opened the back door and interrupted Ramon's goal dance with a sharper than needed, "Chris."

Christopher looked at him, brows furrowed.

They looked lik a family. More like father, son, and observing mother than Eddie ever had. Except Chris squinted in the sun and his expression was all Shannon. Eddie swallowed. "Want to check in with Buck?"

Chris perked up like Eddie had just said the magic words. He surged forward, pushing past Helena's insistent hand to slow down and took Eddie's phone with a mumbled, "Thanks, dad" as he walked back indoors.

It felt like a victory of some sort. Like Eddie had been chosen to be listened to. "Buck's mom died." His parents faded back into grandparents and Helena was staring at him like Eddie had just issued a challenge. He shrugged, stuffed his hands in his pockets and confidently announced, "Funeral's Thursday I'm going to book our tickets for Wednesday."

Helena blinked.

Ramon glanced between them. "When will you be back?"

Eddie shrugged again. It felt like rebellion. Foreign and intoxicating and a dangerous game to be waging. He stuck out his chin and looked his mother in the eye when he spoke, though. "Don't know yet." He said and rocked on his heels. "We'll stay as long as he needs us."

Helena breathed in sharp.

Eddie slamed the door shut and turned around quickly, so that they couldn't see the twist of his mouth.

"Buck!" Chris all but shouted through the phoneline. He hadn't greeted Buck like that in a while. Since… well Eddie wasn't really sure when he stopped. Maybe after running to him int he pandemic. When Buck called Eddie immediately and they talked about something Eddie didn't really know about. The novelty of him wore off some time between a tsunami and Eddie getting shot. Buck had just become another inevitability in Christopher's life.

Until he wasn't anymore.

He hadn't seen him in two months.

They used to see each other several times a week. All three of them. The last time they had all been in the same room Chris had been leaving and Eddie… Eddie knew how much he owed Buck for literally saving his life over and over again, but he was pretty sure it was only Buck's hand on his shoulder that had stopped him from crumbling into tiny pieces.

He was never going to be able to thank him properly.

Eddie was also sure he would never forgive himself for being just one more person in a long line of people to leave him behind.

But was different, wasn't it? He hadn't cut contact - absolutely never could - and he wasn't… he wasn't… "Dad told me about your mom," Chris cut to the chase with none of the careful tenderness Eddie handled Buck with most of the time. Eddie winced and smoothed his thumb over his brows. "Are you okay?"

Buck would stutter out an answer. A hestitant - "I-I'm okay, yeah, I'm okay, Chris don't worry about me." Because he didn't want to worry anyone, but he especially didn't want to worry Chris and because, probably, Eddie supposed, Buck didn't know how he felt. Greif was weird, and god forbid Eddie try to be the person to judge him for how he expressed it. At least he wasn't joining a fight club and... and moving back to his hometown he had worked so hard to get away from. They weren't the same, and Eddie had been chasing after Chris, not some random dream (and Buck had helped him find the house, actually. Had done the virtual tour with him, looked over the paperwork like he understood any of it and asked all the vetting questions Eddie forgot about). Buck would never go back to Pennsylvia.

Would he?

And what did it matter if he did? What say did Eddie have in any of it? Buck was a grown man and Eddie didn't even live in LA anymore either. He had been the one to mix things up between them. The one to take away movie nights and breakfast after working out. He couldn't very well stop Buck from doing anything when he had been the one to leave first.

"Yeah," Chris said with a tone Eddie didn't think he had heard from him that often before. He sighed, disappeared down the hallway with Eddie's phone and sat down in a kitchen chair. His feet touched the ground now. The last time they had lived in Texas together, Chris' toes had hung suspended over it. "I get it. I didn't really know how to feel either."

Either.

He was such a good kid. Eddie wished every single day that Shannon had been able to meet the person he was becoming.

She would have been so mad that he came back. That Eddie let Chris go with his parents. They spent so long trying to get us to give them him, she would say, and you just hand him over?

He's a kid, Eddie would argue, not currency.

Eddie leaned his shoulder against the wall and watched from a safe distance. He didn't really know how to fix anything, didn't really have any idea on where to even start or what to do in most situations. But this, he thought, he had done okay with. Not Chris moving to Texas, not following after him, but Buck. Introducing him to Buck, trusting Buck, putting him in his will, making him part of their family. If Eddie had done one thing right it was that. And if that was the only right thing he had ever done in his entire life well… he was okay with that.

Chris spoke some more, and Eddie let his words glaze over his ears because they weren't for him and he knew with such a giant ache in his chest that if Chris had never lost Shannon in the first place, he never would have been able to relate in any way, shape or form to how Buck was feeling. Eddie didn't want him to relate. He wanted Shannon there, to watch Chris grow, to watch Eddie grow. Her and Buck would get along like a house on fire. They would get started on a show they both liked and go on and on for hours without ever needing to stop. If Eddie had known, back then, he would have introduced them. Had Buck over for dinner, invited Shannon to the park. He wouldn't have worked so hard to keep them separate out of the fear that the Eddie taht they both individually knew wouldn't live up to expectations.

Maybe things would have been different.

Maybe… "Yeah," Chris glanced over his shoulder with a little smile teasing his lips. "Dad's right here."

Eddie pushed himself off the door jam and caught his phone when Chris tossed it. Weird, Eddie hadn't thought Buck would want to talk. Talk talk. On the phone talk. "Hey," he greeted easily.

"I think that's the nicest he's sounded talking to you since moving out there." Buck said easily, like nothing was going on that was notable at all, like Christopher wasn't carefully taking stock of Eddie's face as the screen door slid open and his mother ducked back into the house and made her way over to them. Eddie didn't have to turn around to see who it was, he knew it was her just by the shift in the air. "Things are going good?"

"They're…" Eddie shrugged and his shoulders tensed at the hand his mother rested between them, Helena moving around his body to bustle in the kitchen. "Work in progress."

"Oh."

Buck sounded off. Eddie knew it was a fair assessment, that of course Buck would sound off when his mother was dead, but he hadn't really expected it. Eddie's non-answer was an answer to his question, but it was obvious Buck was looking for a way out of anything else Eddie was going to ask him at the moment. Seven years of living out of each other's pockets had at least taught Eddie how to read him. "Christopher," Helena said in the same way she used to say Edmundo, "I thought I told you to clean up the living room and help your grandfather with the grill."

The living room was fine, and Ramon was happily manning the grill outside with Nate. Eddie frowned and Chris rolled his eyes where only Eddie could see. They shared a small, comiserating smile between them and it felt like a victory. "Yes, grandma."

"And Eddie, honestly," Helena continued like she didn't notice he was still on the phone. "Are you going to help clean up at all? There are still so many dishes in the sink!"

"I'll let you go." Buck said with an audible wince. "You, uhm… sound…" Busy.

Eddie shook into himself, "Mom, I'm on the phone." Eddie told her and when she glanced over her shoulder to give him a wide-eyed look that would usually have had him cowering and hastily hanging up with an apology Eddie only shared one back at her.

"If you're going to be eating here -."

"Maybe we'll go out." Eddie shrugged and Buck breathed on the other side of the phone. "Buck, give me a minute, okay? Don't hang up."

"Okay?"

Helena crossed her arms. "Eddie, I understand your friend is going through a lot." She said patiently. Kindly. "When my mother died, I was all over the place, just ask your father." Christopher's eyes ping-pinged between them. "The universe doesn't give us more than we can handle."

Christopher flinched. It was barely there, but it was a flinch. Eddie saw Shannon in his mind, her smile turned towards the sun, her fingers trailing lightly over his skin, her kiss pressed against Chris' forehead, soft and loving. He thought of Buck, so obviously confused over all of it, the hurt he had been after Daniel that he refused to ever really put a name to. He had shown up to the station, broken and bleeding out of fresh wound none of them could treat because it wasn't physical. Shannon's death at broken a part of Eddie and a part of Chris and… that wasn't a gift. It wasn't… were they supposed to thank the universe for giving them something like that? He looked from the dishes, to Christopher, to the way Buck had said oh. "Do the dishes yourself, mom." Eddie said with a straightening of his spine and a shake of his head. "Chris, you might want to start packing, okay? I'm going to get flights for us after I get off the phone."

"Flights?" Both him and Buck echoed at the same time. In the same tone. "

"Funeral's Thursday." Eddie said with a confidence he only slightly felt. "Of course we're going to be there, Buck."

—

Chim arrived on Wednesday, which Buck only knew because Jee-Yun had yelled his name the moment he stepped back in the house with his father after a three hour long meeting with the funeral director. There were flowers to be picked out, pictures to be collected to be displayed around the funeral home for the wake, catering to be decided on. Maddie had picked out the perfect dress for Margaret to be buried in, their father had asked if she could be buried with a stuffed rabbit Buck knew never belonged to him and Maddie and a locket he also knew he had gotten her in third grade with their pictures inside of it. The director had asked if they wanted to see her, and Buck had been rooted to the seat while Philip agreed and squeezed his shoulder until he stood up too.

His mother was very much dead, alright.

It still felt like she was following him around, grading him on how he behaved.

Buck caught Jee-Yun before she could collide with his legs, swinging her up and onto his hip for a full, squeezing hug. He was always surprised at her strength, the way she clung and held on like her life depended on it. "Uncle Buck," she sang into his shoulder and stayed there, kicking her little feet against his sternum.

Chim followed after her and waited in the hallway with a small wave at his hip.

For the first time in a week, Buck felt like he might cry.

It was ridiculous. He had spent three days missing Doug of all people and then Chimney had shown up and Buck had realized it was him he had actually been missing at all. Daniel was dead, Doug was dead, his mom was dead, and Chimney Han was standing in his parent's hallway shaking his father's hand and holding onto his sister and… Buck had always felt alone in this house, but Chimney had never made him feel like anything other than family. "Hey, Buckaroo." Chim said softly, solumnly.

In these walls, he had never been anything other than Evan. His mother's picture in the foyer glared. "Hey." Buck smiled until the sting in his eyes disappeared.

Chimney didn't say anything else. No platitudes, no how are you, nothing. He merely rested a hand on Buck's bicep and left it there, his thumb drawing a comforting line over from Buck's arm to his daughter's back. Buck knew he got it, in a way that no one else really did. Maybe Maddie. Probably Maddie. I didn't know how to feel either. Buck wanted to bash his head against a wall. Why had he told Christopher that? "Evan," Philip interuppted and he looked tired, old, grey around the edges. "Would you…?"

"Yeah," Buck almost whispered, cleared his throat and repeated himself. "Yeah, dad, of course."

He had taken on the brunt of the cooking anyway. Maddie could do it, but every time she looked at their mother's mixing bowl she got teary eyed and the garlic in the fridge made her throw up. She, instead, sat on the stool and watched him work (and whenever he used garlic, hid in the living room). Philip smiled at him, his blue eyes watery. "Your mother…" He pursed his lips. "She would have loved to have you in the kitchen with her."

And there was the nausea.

Buck swallowed around it.

Okay. He'd make himself a salad and make sure he ate that before locking hismelf in his room like he was twelve and scroll on his phone until falling asleep, just mildly too cold like he always was in the basement. He set Jee-Yun on her feet and let Maddie stop him for a hug, her arm snug around his waist and his around her shoulders, pausing to drop a kiss to her forehead before letting her go. Buck half expected Chim to say something, a tease to settle him into his bones, a joke to pass the time. A reminder that things were still normal even if he felt like a mirage of himself.

That wasn't fair of him to expect, though.

Buck retreated to the kitchen, Jee-Yun’s giggle a juxtaposition to the silent her posing on the refrigerator door. Buck had her drawings on his back at home. Her picture in a frame on his trinket shelf in his bedroom. He opened the fridge and survived the contents.

He needed to put in a grocery order. Philip forgot to eat if Buck didn't remind him, and Maddie was eating for two. He should make some casseroles. Something easy to reheat.

His phone vibrated insistent in his pocket. Without looking at the screen, knowing it was Eddie or Bobby, he answered. "Do you think anyone would care if I made another pasta dish for dinner tonight?"

"Depends how much you mix it up." Buck jerked almost violently away from the refrigerator. It slammed shut and started a rapid beat of his heart. "Hey, Evan."

Two months ago, all Buck had wanted was for him to call. To show he cared. To check in. To tell him that he wasn’t actually easy to leave. "Tommy." He swallowed. "H-hey. Hi. Uhm…" He furrowed his brow at Maddie's smile in the picture at his eye height. She had been in her… junior year? Margaret's handwriting curled over emergency numbers on a magnetic notepad in the corner. "Why… why are you calling?"

"I heard about your mom." Tommy said patiently. Always so patient. Like Buck needed things explained to him until he didn't. Until it was this has been fun and kissing him in his apartment and Abby. Buck’s vision tilted and he sat down, the kitchen floating like it was under water. "Just wanted to make sure you're okay."

Buck was going to throw up.

He laughed instead, draping his hand over his eyes. Margaret's laugh echoed his and ricocheted against the windows. Don't call him. Eddie had told him not to and Buck had listened. He had listened long enough that Tommy's voice had swapped from a balm to a piece of sandpaper. "I'm…" Buck laughed again, groaning loud and low in the back of his throat and flipped his phone upside down on the kitchen counter. Tommy's voice was a soft echo, and Buck was always so startled whenever he realized how easily someone who used to be so comforting could turn into something stale.

It was rude to leave him unanswered. He turned the phone back around and watched the numbers tick higher and higher. How long could he go before Tommy would hang up? Once, after Eddie had been shot, Buck had stayed on the phone with him in complete silence for most of a day. An illusion of company. They just did errands around each other, a hang-up from COVID when company was so sparce. Buck put the phone on speaker. "-there?"

"Chim just got in today," Buck said and tried to reign in his unnecessary mirth. He dragged a hand down his face. "I don't know what to make for dinner."

"Order out." Tommy said like it was an easy choice. "There's must be something you've missed since you moved back."

There really wasn't. For a time, Buck had missed his room. His friends. The comfort in his old high school and the streets he had walked on every single day to his first fast food job. But he had a local coffee shop in LA, and a park he went running at, and a corner store where the owner knew he name. He had never missed a friend the way he missed Hen.

Had never missed his parents like he did Bobby.

Had never missed anyone like he missed Eddie.

He pushed himself into standing with a sigh. Buck wasn't going to order out, it would cost entirely too much to feed all of them with their picky pallates. He had grown used to maknig something edible with thrown together ingrediants, today's meal wouldn't be all that different from left over day at the sation. Buck grabbed the singular left over pepper and onion and began to chop. "What happened?" Tommy asked after a moment of silence. "It must have been sudden. She seemed so healthy at Chimney's wedding."

That had been nearly a year ago. Health was a measure that could decline rapidly. He shrugged, remembered Tommy couldn't see him, and verbally shrugged instead. "Heart attack." In the back of his mind, he registered Maddie in the doorway, Philip a hair's breath behind her.

She didn't like Tommy. Maddie was nice enough not to say anything about it - he was Chim's friend and had been important to Buck - but he knew her. She hadn't liked him much since the first time she met him, liked him even less once he dumped Buck. He's stupid, Maddie had said. You can do so much better.

Tommy whistled, "Damn." He paused, Maddie paused, Philip continued around her. Buck ducked his head and pretended he didn't notice either of them. "How are you doing?"

Buck held himself back from shrugging again. I don't know how to feel, he had told Chris. Why had he told Chris? Chris was a kid, it wasn't his job to deal with all of Buck's… Buck-ness.

Now can I ask you how you're doing? Eddie was always so stupdily patient with him, espeically when Buck didn't deserve it.

Tommy….

"Hey, listen, I've got to go." He didn't, but his father had paused by the backdoor staring out at the yard like he was seeing something beyond the glass. Buck knew that expression from years of making the same one at his own reflection. He looked at Maddie, found her looking back at him with her lips in a grim little line, and nodded.

"Dad?" She tentatively tried.

Philip's shoulders jumped once, twice, and then shook violently, his face crumbling.

Buck cut off whatever Tommy's reply was, noting to apologize later (maybe) and pushed the cutting board back from the edge of the counter, forgetting about the knife he was holding and the veggies that fell in a splatter onto the tabletop (at least it wasn't the floor). The blade knicked at the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, leaving a thin trail of red in it's wake. Maddie was tehre before Buck was, bundling Philip to her chest and cradling him there as her own eyes misted. Buck was a final puzzle piece, maybe. A set of arms big enough to pull them both in. It was awkward to hug his father, his sweater should have been scratchy but was soft instead, and Buck had probably hugged Bobby more than he had hugged his father.

"Oh," Philip sobbed, and clung to each of them with one hand in the back of their shirts. "Our kids."

Am I supposed to choose between you and my son?

Buckswallowed around the part of him that wanted to pull away. It was… foreign, to feel his father drag him closer.

Maddie dropped her head onto Philip's, her nails lightly scratching against the back of Buck's hand. "It's okay," she said like she was speaking to the both of them. "It's okay, dad." He wondered if she had comforted their parents after Daniel. If either of them had comforted her. If anyone had comforted him. When Shannon had died, Eddie had curled himself around Chris whenever things became too much for a child to understand. He had spent more time in Christopher's bed than his own for a few months. Buck had held Bobby during his struggle with sobriety. Maddie after Doug. Had held Hen when she was scared about Karen and Denny. Had held Eddie when he was scared of himself. And after it all, he had felt whole while squeezing them together.

Now he just felt empty.

Maddie wrapped her pinky around his and left it there. If Buck squinted, her could see Daniel in the trees outside, dancing on the edge of their woods, his laugh on the wind.

He wanted to scream.

Twenty minutes and their father had shuffled off to bed with an apology and Maddie had swallowed thickly and lowered herself into a chair at the kitchen island to "help" him cook. Buck busied himself at the sink, washing his hands until the sting between his fingers registered against his mind. "Shit." He muttered and watched the water turn pink as it washed away the blood that kept welling up.

Like he could smell blood - or like he had been watching both of them from where he sat next to Maddie and rubbed her back - Chim's head snapped up. "You good?" He asked and was out of his seat before Buck could say he wasn't. Was.

Whatever.

Buck had been thirteen and smashed his elbow on the pavement and Doug had been the first person to knock on his door and make sure he was okay. He had set it, and sternly told Buck that he was worrying Maddie too much and to lighten up, he had no reason to be so upset and… Chimney watched him trace a fingr over the cut and carefully reached around him to shut the water off. "It's clean, Buck." He waited until Buck turned around and met Maddie's wide-eyed gaze. "Come on," Chim tugged. "Let me see it."

Sometimes, Buck would rather Chim see an injury than Hen. If he had to choose, he'd choose either of them, most of the time. Hen was gentle, and she didn't really ask many questions, but Chim was soft in a different way. Stern when he had to be, but understanding like someone who only knew his story through Maddie was.

If he had to pick, every time he'd pick Eddie.

"What did you do?" Chim asked with a wince. "Try to cut off your own fingers?"

"It just happened when I was cooking." Buck defended with the eye-roll Chim was expecting. Maddie rolled her lips tighter together.

"Evan." She chided softly.

Not Buck.

This was for her brother, not Buck.

Buck… hadn't really grown out of it like he had pretended he had. "It was just an accident." It had been, he wasn't even lying. "Promise, Maddie."

Chimney only hummed and took care of it. It only really looked bad because of the location and the sting did what it always did and kept him rooted in the present. Present him, kind of hated himself. Buck quietly thanked Chim and turned back to the stove. Twelve minutes later, with tension and sadness in every inch of her, Maddie spoke again, Jee-Yun sitting in the chair next to her and Chimney on the other side rubbing her back. "You can't be doing that again, Buck."

He wanted to place his entire hand, palm side down, in the frying pan and turn the heat all the way up until his ears stopped ringing. Buck flexed his fingers and breathed in deep. Held it in his lungs until it burned and then he let it out. "It's not…" Maddie licked her lips. "It's not okay."

"Eddie's coming in for the funeral." Buck told the frying pan. "He's bringing Chris."

The only sound in the kitchen was sizzling vegitables and Jee-Yun's soft, lilting song to her Barbie doll as she brushed her hair. It was like Maddie and Chim were holding their breath, waiting for him to say more. There wasn't really anything else to say, though. Buck hadn't done anything on purpose, and Eddie was coming in for the funeral, apparently, and, for some reason, Buck's hands were shaking worse than they did when he walked miles and miles after the tsunami.

Chim cleared his throat. "That's… that's great, man. How have things been in Texas? Everything going okay with Chris?"

Buck shrugged. He felt like that was all he had been doing lately. "I guess." He nudged the veggies off the burner. "Oh… dinner's done. I'm…" Vaguely, he waved behind himself toawrds the basement.

He didn't really wait for anyone to ask him to stay. Maddie would, or Jee-Yun would have asked him to play with her, and they all knew Buck would give in. But eating with everyone felt like a chore, and Eddie coming felt like the worst thing Buck had ever asked him to do.

And he hadn't even asked him to do it.

—

"So," Helena sat down next to him, the glasses she brought with her softly echoing on the wooden table as she set them down. Eddie wanted to it the glass of iced sweet tea that was for him off the table like he was a child throwing a temper tantrum. Instead, he squinted out at the sunset, crossed his ankles under the table, and tapped his phone in a nervous pattern under his fingers. "Just like that, huh? Taking him back to LA."

"I'm not taking him back to LA." Eddie barely resisted rolling his eyes. "We're going to Pennsylvania."

"Even so," She said patiently. "You can't keep doing this, Eddie."

"I'm -."

"You can't keep uprooting him." She spoke softly, her voice pleading him to understand. "Eddie, a child needs stability."

"It's a funeral, mom." Eddie said plainly. "I'm not… someone died."

Helena waved a hand, "Yes, your friend's mother. And Buck is a really good friend, Eddie I know this."

"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him."

"I know, he bought your house."

"Renting." Eddie corrected, because the distinction felt like it mattered, somehow. "And that's not what I meant."

It was like his mother only listened to him half of the time. And they were much too alike, really, always knowing where the buttons were to push. "Christopher doesn't need to go to another funeral, Eddie." She said in a whisper. "No more funerals, hosptials… he's been to enough in a short lifetime."

He had, Eddie agreed with her completely. He had been to too many, and it was probably why he hated Eddie now, for dragging him into all of it. But he was his son and this was Buck and… "He wants to go." Eddie said hopelessly. "What am I supposed to do? Tell him he can't?"

"Yes," Helena impressed. "Eddie, you are his father. He wants to go because he thinks you want him to."

"No," Eddie argued because he knew he was selfish, but if there was one thing he wasn't going to let anyone do it was make it out like Christopher never had any choices. All Eddie had done is give him choices. Do you want your mother around? Do you want to go to school here? Do you like Carla? Do you like Buck? Do you want to try surfing, skateboarding, mathletes, asking out that girl? Do you want to go with them? "He wants to go because Buck is important to both of us."

"Even Shannon knew…" Helena cut herself off with an angry shake of her head, her hair flapping around her face and brushing over her shoulders. Shannon had told him she was pregnant at this table, and he had told her he was going to marry her in the back of his old pick-up truck, and Chris had taken his first steps in Helena's living room and Eddie had shut himself in his bedroom when he got home from Afghanistan and thought about killing himself so much that Shannon had called a hotline for him. "Eddie he is your son." She continued. "But he's not yours."

It felt like a slap.

Eddie felt himself physically recoil. "What?"

Helena looked at him with tears in her eyes. "We raised him," she explained and covered his hand with hers. "You and Shannon, you were too young, you got married too young." They had made him get married. Well… expected them to. His father had sat him down when he told them Shannon was pregnant and given him Abuela's ring. Do the right thing, son. Eddie hadn't wanted to, but otherwise Christopher was going to be a sin and Eddie had always been a sinner, but Chris had never been anything but a miracle. "And then you were in Afghanistan." Eddie had been accepted on a baseball scholarship to Penn State his senior year of high school. He had been so excited, he was pretty sure he still had the acceptance letter in his old bedroom somewhere, and then Shannon had told him and a recruiter had talked to him about benefits and the pay and… "And you're a hero, Eddie," she said with a shake of his shoulder. "But you never were much of a father. We used to think you and Shannon would grow into it but, well…" She gestured as if that could explain what had happened between them. Eddie shut his eyes and tried to swallow down his prickling tears. "There's nothing wrong with throwing in the towel, Eddie. It doesn't mean that you love Christopher any less."

Eddie loved Christopher more than he loved, perhaps, anything in the world. Certainly more than he loved himself. More than he loved his parents. More than he loved Sophia and Adriana and their children. More than he loved his job and his home and Buck. He would give Chris anything, had given him everything and… he shook his head and swallowed down the hurt that lodged his throat. "Can I ask you something?" He directed towards the trees.

Helena nodded and smoothed her thumb over his knuckles.

Eddie poked his tongue into the tip of his canine. Did you mean it? If you're pissed than be pissed.

You lied to me.

I needed a partner and you weren't there.

"When did you decide that I wasn't your kid anymore?" He asked the old truck in the drive way - navy blue and rusted, he had changed out the oil when he first arrived, fixed the broken stair on the porch, replaced the rotting pipes in the basement. It was just what he had always done, and it wasn't a problem except that Eddie would never ask Chris to do any of them. That was what he was for. What paid, skilled labor was for. He would teach him, only if he asked, but he wouldn't expect it of him.

Helena's hand came up to crade his cheek, her nails scraping gently at his stubble and her familiar eyes gazing softly into his own. Whne he was little, Eddie used to run to her for comfrot, but Sophia's pregnancy had been tough for her, and Eddie had been given a long talking to by Ramon about his adapting role in the family. The big brother, the oldest, the most reponsible. They would need his help, and Eddie had always wanted to be a big boy and help. He had made sure Adriana was fed, while his father made sure Helena was and Helena made sure Sophia was. He had struggled learning how to read, because the only person that made sure he was sounding out words correctly was Pepa. Abuela had watched him make lunch for him and Adriana, fill up Sophia's bottle, and put the dishes in the sink and told him he was a good boy. A good brother. A good son.

Shannon had always wanted him to do more for her and less for them. He had spent his allowance on Sophia's dance outfits, had used the money from his first job to buy Adriana a reliable car. Had saved up all year to buy them prom dresses because, sure, it wasn't essential but it was important. She had never really liked Helena. This should be their job, she had said, not yours. In turn, his parents hadn't really liked Shannon much either, especially once Christopher came around and Eddie was overseas and his entire check - besides what he needed - was being routed into her bank account.

Eddie wasn't sure if loving and liking were the same thing anymore. He wasn't really sure if he liked Helena much either, anymore. Liked who she expected him to be. Who he had tried to make himself into to make her happy. "You will always be my son, Eddie." She said sternly, like she was offended he would even ask. "You just… you and Shannon were too young to be expected to take on parenthood. We never should have put that on you."

It physcially ached to hear, because Eddie had never considered any part of being a parent to be a burden. Him and Shannon, they had had their issues, and Eddie didn't have a single belief that they were great at being parents. They had done the best they could with the material they had. His parents had helped babysit, Shannon's mother had been too sick to be much help but when she was, Eddie would admit that he would have rather her watch Chris sometimes. She went over to their house to do it, used the things they owned. The moment Eddie would drop Chris off with his mother, he'd somehow end up in a new outfit and eating food he shouldn't. Him and Shannon might not have loved each other all that much in the end, but they had loved Christopher - Eddie loved Christopher so much that it was sometimes scary. No, it was scary, because the world had such an incredibly capacity to cause harm and absolutely no part of his son deserved any of it. Eddie had caused him harm, over and over again, but he had to keep trying to be better, right? He couldn't just give up, throw in the towel, let his parents… take over after he put in all of the hardwork to get the two of them to this point.

Eddie deserved to be able to fight for him. Chris deserved to be fought for. "I love him."

Helena smiled sadly, "No one said you didn't, Eddie." She soothed. "But you also hurt him."

"I'm trying to fix it."

"Maybe it's too late to fix."

"I can't believe that."

"It doesn't always matter what you believe in, Eddie. This is about Chris. About what he deserves."

"He deserves me to not give up on him, and I never will." Eddie shook off her hand from his cheek. "And I deserve things too."

Helena sighed, "You don't get it, Eddie. It can't be about what you deserve."

"I deserve you and dad to support me while I try to fix things with my son." Eddie spoke over her, thinking, oddly, of Buck standing in the firehouse, telling them all about Daniel with such a palpable hurt in his frame. Spare parts. His parents had given up, lived in their grief so long they forgot they had a reason to live. Eddie wanted to be a lot of things, he didn't want to be the Buckley's. Buck had asked them for therapy, and they had done it, for a time. But then… Eddie had been shot, and Maddie disappeared, and when Buck stopped trying so did they. "Don't I?"

"You need to do what's best for him."

"I am trying to," Eddie insisted. "That includes not making decisions for him. Like you're trying to do right now." He set his jaw and shook his head. "I know this is how you treat your kids, mom, but it's not how I treat mine. You can't make me give up on him. And you can't make him do anything that he doesn't want to." Buck hadn't had to say it, but Eddie knew it was the fact this his parents didn't keep pushing to fix things between them that hurt. That Buck so desperately wanted them to care enough to keep trying. To….

"But you can make him go to Pennsylvania." Helena shot back with a snort like an insult.

"I'm not making him go there." Eddie groanted. "It was his idea."

—

Buck hadn't gotten high since he officially joined the LAFD. Technically, since, around a week before then, actually, when Connor had shared his stash and they had shared a joint on the porch late at night. It wasn't something that Buck had done frequently before then, either. He had done it more when he was younger and the guys on the football team met up behind Shaws after every game to start the night off right.

He didn't know why his parents had never thrown out his old stash. And he was also pretty sure it wasn't that good of an idea to get high off a joint that was over ten years old but, well… when in Rome.

Or on his parents roof or whatever.

He puffed in, held it tight in his lungs and then blew out towards the stars, resting his head against the meat of his arm and arching his back just enough to feel it pop before relaxing it back down again. If Maddie saw him, she was going to be so mad.

Like she wasn't the one with the bigger habit. Buck scoffed and laughed softly to himself - it was her refrigerator that had the gummies from the distillerly, not his. But Buck was always supposed to be better - than her, than Daniel, than fuck knows who else. He didn't feel better than any of them. Granted, he supposed he was beating the dead kid since he was successfully thrity-two and Daniel was forever nine.

His phone buzzed by his hip, and Buck had set his notifications to only be essential personel after accidentally accepting Tommy's call - Bobby, Eddie, Hen, Chim, Maddie. No one else really mattered. No one else really reached out to him, actually, aside from them. Karen had texted to send her regards, and Ravi had sent him something really heartfelt, actually, abuout how losing someone wasn't really losing them that Buck was pretty sure a quote from someone but, aside from them, his phone was full of scattered notifications from people Buck barely even knew. Lucy, sending him an instagram post, the notifcation he had set up years ago on Taylor that he had forgotten to turn off telling him about her new story, a snapchat from Kameron (notably, not Connor who had, apparently, left again (and it twisted Buck up inside, to know that he had helped bring a child into this world to a father that was too scared to keep trying) that was probably of the baby eating something adorable, a TikTok from Denny. "Where the hell are you?" Chim asked breathlessly, confused and a tinge worried and Buck was sorry for it, really, only a mellowed out kind of sorry that he wasn't quite sure was from shock or the ten year old weed.

"Roof." Buck gestured like Chim was looking at him, up to the sky and then back down to his hip.

"You're not going to jump, are you?"

Buck snorted, "No." It was really only funny because they both knew that he would have years ago.

But he had a wake to go to the next day, and a funeral the one after that, and Buck couldn't very well leave Maddie to bury another brother, could he? Chimney hung up and Buck let his hand and phone fall back onto his stomach and then Chimney was popping up beside him through the window in the attic. His arms strained as he pushed himself up, and Buck helped the final bit of the way to a smile. "Hey," Chimney huffed and sniffed at the air. "Are you smoking?"

"Shh." Buck told him before dropping back down to his previous position on his back looking up at the dark night sky. "Don't tell Maddie."

"Don't tell Bobby." Chimney corrected and yanked the joint out of Buck's loose fingers to take a tentative huff himself, stiffling a cough into his elbow as he let back out the smoke. "Fuck, man, how old is this shit?"

"I don't know," Buck shrugged with a snicker. "Like, over ten years."

"Fuck," Chimney lit up again and coughed again. "This is not the good stuff."

"You don't have to keep hitting it."

"Oh yes I do," Chim hit at his hip until Buck was shuffling to the side, making room for him in the center. Chimney didn't lay down, but he sat back on his bottom, legs outstretched in front of his body, weight resting on his palms. "They're talking about watching home videos tonight."

"I didn't think we had any of those."

"I saw them in your dad's closet when I was helping him earlier." Chimney explained. "There's a whole box of them."

Buck reached over himself to pluck back the joint, place it between his lips, and puff up at the sky. "It'll be cool for you to see Maddie when she was little." Because there probably wasn't going to be much of him in those. His stomach twisted at the hope that there would be anyway, but Buck knew the memory keeping portion of being a parent tended to die out in time for the youngest child, and that was in healthy families that liked each other.

"Your dad said she was just like Jee."

Buck shrugged, "Hell if I know."

Chimney glanced at him sideways. "She's worried about you." He said after Buck got comfortable again.

"Maddie?" Buck scratched at his nose. "She doesn't have to be."

"I'm a little worried about you too." Chimney nudged his shoulder as he said it. "You've been like this since Eddie left."

Buck rubbed his bandaged hand against his chest like he could dislodge the pain of Eddie left from his soul and throw it into the yard. "Been like what?"

"Distant." Chim explained. "Risky. Buck 1.0."

"I'm not stealing the engine to hook up."

"Yet." Buck rolled his eyes. "Really, Buck, we, uh… we know it's been hard, yeah? Tommy broke up with you, what happened with Maddie, Eddie moving." Chimney shrugged. "And now this? I know you and your mom weren't close, but losing a parent…."

"I think I was sadder when Doug died." Buck said and he would swear up and down it was the weed that was making him say it, and not anything part of him that actually wanted Chimney Han to know. "And I know that's fucked up, right? Because he was an asshole and he's fucking lucky it was Maddie that killed him and not me, because there wouldn't have been a body to bury, you know? But," Buck shrugged. "I knew him longer than I knew Daniel. He went to my high school graduation. Taught me how to ride a bike - an actual bike, not a…" He made a revving noise with his mouth. "You know."

Chimney blinked, "Yeah."

"And, like, of course I miss Eddie. He's… Eddie. But he's where he needs to be and I can't, like… say I'm more important than that."

"But he's coming for the funeral."

"Yeah, he should be here tomorrow." Buck shrugged. "But then it's just… what? Say goodbye again?" Absurdly his eyes watered and Buck groaned, handed off the joint for Chimney to stub out and burying his face in the heels of his hands. "I'm really tired of saying goodbye to people."

"I get it," Chim said with a sigh. "When Albert moved back to Korea…"

"It's not the same." He knew he sounded petulant, childish, even. But it wasn’t the same. Albert was… Albert was… he was Maddie moving to Boston and sending him away. Eddie was… he was Eddie. He was movie nights and late night conversations in the kitchen. He was long drives and sunsets on the beach against the hood of Buck’s Jeep with a lukewarm beer from the trunk. He was early morning runs and food truck festivals and the warmest hugs Buck had ever received.

He was everything. In a neat, beautiful package.

"No," Chimney said, studying the side of his face like everything Buck had ever felt and thought was written on it. Carved into his skin. Tattooed on his cheeks. "I guess it's not."

"Why are you two on the roof?" Maddie asked from the grass below and Chimney yelped, flailing and nearly rolling himself off the roof. Buck caught him around the knee with a snorting laugh and below them, Maddie squeaked as though preparing herself to try and soften his fall.

Buck smothered his laugh into Chimney's back. The other man's elbow smashed into his side. "Traitor." He muttered as if Buck hadn't just saved his life. He pat Buck’s hand. "Thanks."

"Four times." Buck reminded him cheekily, like he was actually keeping any sort of count.

"I gave you a niece."

"Maddie gave me a niece." Buck corrected.

"Maddie," she said from below. "Wants you both to get down and come to dinner, already."

They complied, Chimney with much more grace than he had originally shown and Buck with a grunt as his knee protested the hard landing. Dinner was from a pizza place, Buck sharing his overly sauced cheese pizza with Jee-Yun with Philip staring at him for much longer than necessary as he turned down the slice of pepperoni he tried to put on his plate. "It's your favorite." He said and kept it outstretched, the cheese slowly pooling off the slice and onto the table between them. Buck tried to catch it before it could splatter but it was too late, it hit the table with a wet squelch.

"He's vegetarian, dad." Maddie cleaned it up. Eddie always ordered a veggie, with no olives, or sometimes a spinach and feta with extra feta when he was feeling charitable and Chris wasn't eating any. Buck wasn't picky enough to expect separate meals, but Bobby was always nice enough to make them anyway.

Philip swallowed and slowly lowered his hand. "Right," he whispered. "I remember your mother saying something about that."

It struck Buck as odd, as did most of the week, that his mother would remember. She had seemed passively fine with it at Maddie's wedding, telling him he needed to eat more and dumping a large bowl of salad in front of him. He didn't really remember telling her that fact, or Maddie telling her it either, but maybe it had come up back when they had first visited and Maddie had carefully made pasta sauce without meat. He didn't know. He didn't know why it was strange that she'd remember, that she'd tell Philip and expect him to remember too. Why it felt so strange that he didn't. "It's okay." Buck said lamely and struggled to eat the two slices of pizza he had taken.

His ten year old high really did not last long enough.

Dinner, like Buck always remembered it being, was a stilted, much too long affair. They ate, passed around small talk, and Maddie kept giving him this look across the table that said that she had long since figured out what exactly him and Chim had gotten up to, and then they were sitting in the living room, Jee-Yun on the couch between her parents, her head resting on Maddie's belly, and Philip in the armchair, and Buck on one he kept on the boarder. A wooden kitchen chair that he used to climb on top of, pretending that the floor was lava, or that he was a prince in the midst of a daring rescue, when no one else was around. He considered making his excuses, ducking out of the room and calling Bobby or Hen or Ravi or, if he was desperate enough, Tommy. But his bones were liquid pooling onto the floor and Eddie was thousands of feet in the air with Chris and Buck had be ready, for some reason, for whenever he landed.

He sat in the chair backwards, imagining his legs were shorter like they used to be and hovering over the floor, and not always so long now that they always traced the carpet unless he conciously decided they wouldn't. Philip would ruffle his hair when he came home from work and Buck was sitting like that at the kitchen table, trying to figure out his homework. Margaret would yell at him to sit right. Buck would grumble but do what he was told and it would, somehow, make the work so much more difficult to do sitting the right way around.

Bobby had once asked him why he was reading upside down during his probationary year but told him he didn't have to move when he went to do so - it's just Buck, Hen had said with a shrug and kicked a pillow at his head. If it made it easier, who really cared? "I've got gagets and gizmos a plenty," Buck didn't lift his head. "I've got whozits and whatzits galore."

"Oh, gosh," Maddie said from the seat and Buck looked at her instead. Her trembling fingers, her teary eyes. "Is that…?"

She looked over at him, he looked at the screen.

He planted his feet squarely on the carpet. "You were so cute." Chimney cooed at his wife.

Margaret was holding a baby, and Buck must have been the baby because Maddie was, about, ten, and there was another little boy that looked closer to eight with short, messy curls the same chestnut as her holding onto Margaret's free hand and singing along at the top of his lungs to Part of Your World like it was the gospel. Maddie on the screen was giggling. Maddie on the couch was crying.

They looked happy. Margaret leading the choir, Daniel lending the backup, Maddie coming in with an effortless harmony and little baby Evan laughing like it was the best day of his life. It probably was, really. Buck didn't think he had ever been that happy.

There was no way that baby was him.

"Hard to believe you turned into such a sasquatch." Chim threw over his shoulder in a tease.

The world was off it's axis. Tilting dangerously to the side to knock them off. Daniel grabbed Evan's little hands and shook them until Margaret was handing him to Maddie, and she was holding Daniel, twirling him in giant circles around the kitchen. Evan turned his face into Maddie's hair, mesmerized by her face like he always had been and she kisses the mark over his eye and sang directly to him and…. "She always used to sing to you." Philip said. Baby Evan reached for Margaret as she passed by with Daniel, like he wanted her to give him his turn again but she breezed right past him and Maddie, her gaze stuck firmly on the ghost in her arms.

Buck stood up calmly from the kitchen chair and slunk from the room without anyone noticing until he shut the door to the bathroom and, then, he promptly threw up into the toilet.

—

"Dad," Christopher called from the bathroom, a familiar mild panic in his voice. Eddie glanced at the door from where he was sitting on the second queen sized bed in the room, technically a pull-out couch where he had fallen asleep after arriving for two hours and then nearly rolled off when his alarm cut blaring through the air. He could just barely make out Chris standing in front of the mirror, artlessly twisting his curls. When they were in Los Angeles, Buck had come over one night to show him the proper tecnique - which he had garnered from the hairstylist Karen had suggested he go see when he mentioned growing his own hair back out. Chris had kept up with it as best as he could, but Helena had said she couldn't find the right hair gel for him to use at the grocery store and had refused to buy it. Eddie had got it for him off Amazon, instead. Hit that subscribe and save button and forgotten the first few times to change the address so that it went to the right place. "I forgot my tie."

Eddie laughed softly - of course he did, because this was Chris and he always forgot something. A tie, a shirt, a shoe, one time, his crutches, another time, his entire school bag. Eddie had had to get him into the habit of checklists and then he still needed to verbally check some times. It was perhaps his fault Chris had forgotten it, but, Eddie wasn't entirely sure it was really all that important if he remembered it in the first place. Buck hadn't really mentioned anything being formal attire, and Chim had cooberated by saying the wake was probably going to be more business casual than anything else. Still, Chris forgot his tie and that could mess up his entire planned outfit, Eddie was sure, and he remembered being thirteen and having a panic attack because he didn't have the right shoes for the right event so… he got it. "I packed an extra." He grabbed it from his bag and knocked softly against the door.

Chris bit his lip in the mirror, his eyes a little bit misty. "Thanks." Softly, the fabric fell from Eddie's fingers and into his own, and the tie he put together was sloppy but, more or less, decent enough.

"Hey," Eddie was caught on the misty eyes, though. "What's up, Chris?"

Chris swallowed hard, "It's nothing." He waved off with a frown. "I'm okay."

What was he supposed to do? It wasn't really Eddie's place to push so much anymore, was it? The wedge between them had been of his own making, whether he knowingly built it or not. Helena had a point - Eddie was the adult, Chris was the child, and Eddie had been the one to monumentally mess things up. He swallowed, "I'm not." He said after a moment and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Funerals suck. This isn't… this isn't how I thought I'd see Buck again."

Chris toyed with the tie with his fingers. "Yeah," he agreed softly. "Me neither." He blinked and rubbed roughly at his cheek. "Do you think he's okay?"

"I don't know," Eddie shrugged. "He's Buck. He'll be okay."

"It's his mom." Christopher argued slowly.

It had been Chris' mom too. Eddie's wife. Almost ex-wife. First love. Only love, maybe. Eddie didn't really understand what Buck was going through, he couldn't. But Chris… Chris did. He had been there. And when Shannon had died, and Eddie hadn't been enough, Buck had been there to smooth things over. "Yeah," Eddie nodded. "It's his mom."

It was like they both agreed, Christopher watched him over his shoulder in the mirror and smiled a sad little thing and Eddie couldn't help smiling back, reaching out and clasping his shoulder. For a moment, Chris lingered, leaning back into his touch and sighing. "Funerals suck." He said with a grimace. "Let's get this over with."

Eddie snorted and pushed away from the bathroom doorway.

The funeral, technically, was the next day. They had arrived just in time for the wake, which was being held at an old, converted home in the middle of a suburb. The Uber driver had arrived early, which they never would have done in Los Angeles, but charged about as much to drive ten miles down the street. Eddie held the door open for Chris to climb out of when they arrived, softly commented on the tall curb, and smiled in a thank you that the driver didn't offer back. He would have thought they were in the wrong place if it wasn't for the sober air of the funeral home and Margaret Buckley's picture blown up on a white piece of cardboard by the front door. "Hello," greeted as man in black. "Here for the wake?"

"Yes," Eddie craned his neck to… try and see someone he recoginized, but everyone looked slightly like Buck and very much not like him at all. He was probably standing near the casket, Eddie theorized, if that was a thing they were doing, at the end of a processional full of shaking hands and condolences on deaf ears. Wakes were a time to say goodbye, but Eddie didn't really have anything at all to say to the mother of his best friend except, maybe, thank you? For giving birth to him? Even though Eddie knew that his birth wasn't really shrouded with joyous memories.

"Right through here," The man said and gestured into the room. "We have Margaret at the front to pay your respects."

Christopher lingered just a step behind him, a hair too close, but comfortable all the same. Margaret looked like Buck, in a round-faced sort of way. The same curls, same eyes. The woman Eddie had met years ago and the one in the picture looked vastly different in tones of brightness, though. She had been older when she was at the station, in the picture she had Maddie's smile and shine. In her picture, she was holding three children. Well, holding. Her hand was on the waist of the smallest, her other around the shoulders of the skinniest and Maddie was the only one that really looked like Maddie, although Eddie supposed he could see the Buck he knew in the one-year-old's little cherub cheeks. He was holding on with both hands to Maddie's skirt, smiling up at her with just as much adoration as he looked at her now. Maddie, Daniel, Buck.

Maddie, Daniel, Evan.

Daniel was separate even in the picture. Watching his siblings from afar, Margaret's body keeping them away from each other.

Chris laughed softly and tugged at Eddie's sleeve to point at the baby Evan. "How'd he get so big?"

Eddie pursed his lips to keep from laughing himself. "Ate a lot of spinach."

Chris stiffled his giggle behind a fist.

The procession line wasn't very long. When Abuelo died, Eddie remembered standing in that line for hours, holding onto Sophia and Adriana's hands to keep them from running off, and grabbing Abuela a chair when she started crying so hard she could no longer stand. There were about ten people in line, pausing softly in front of the burgandy coffin with bowed heads and Maddie was sitting down, her hand on her belly and Chimney behind her. It was like a magnet, though, to find Buck in the midst of it. Slightly to the side, the furthest away from the coffin and the last in line to shake hands and take well wishes. He looked too big for the room, too small for his slumped, tired shoulders and he was doing a very good job of watching his shoes and pretending to be watching the people in front of him.

It was uncouth, and Eddie could hear Helena in his head the entire time telling him not to break tradition or make a scene but that wasn't Buck even if it looked like him. But it was Buck and Buck was his… Buck and there was a tether that Eddie had frayed himself.

He pat Chris on the shoulder so that he knew where he was shifting to follow, and Eddie was pretty sure Philip saw them first, keen eyes unaware of who exactly was crashing his wife's wake and, smoothly, Eddie cut the line, waving briefly at Chim when the man made a noise of acknowledgement. "So sorry, for your loss." An older woman said and squeezed Buck's much larger hand. "Your mother spoke about you so much, Evan. She was so proud of you."

Buck flinched like the words were a jagged knife and his smile was so fake Eddie was pretty sure it could melt right off his face. For a moment, he considered pushing Chris in front of him.

For a moment.

Buck was watching his shoes. "Thank you for coming." He said blandly.

"Buck." Eddie said his name.

His eyes shot up.

His eyes welled up.

It wasn't like a movie, Buck didn't rush to meet him, Eddie didn't catch him. He didn't wail and scream and drop like his strings were cut. He choked on Eddie's name and they met in the middle, nearly whacking a bystander as they tried to make their way forward in line. "You didn't have to come." Buck said into the space near Eddie's ear.

"Shh," Eddie soothed, hooking his chin over his shoulder and pulling him in tighter against his chest. "I'm glad we did."

He didn't know what did it, the hug or seeing Christopher over Eddie's shoulder, but something had Buck breathing what must have been his first deep breath in a week and then turning his face into Eddie's neck as he shook apart on the exhale. Contrary to how Buck did everything else, he was a very quiet crier, like he had grown too used to keeping his tears under cover. He shook, and he cried, and Chris made a noise in the back of his throat and shuffled closer, his hand fumbling over the wrist Buck had on Eddie's back and then finding his knuckles to smooth his thumb over. He was a good kid. A great kid. A better kid than Eddie deserved.

Buck was a better man than Eddie could ever dream of being.

He didn't know how long they stood there, probably long enough to be awkward to maneuver around, but eventually Eddie simply couldn't stand on his tip-toes anymore and had to drop down onto his heels and take a tiny step back. Chris caught him, and then stepped in front of him, tugging Buck down until he was hunched over and wrapping his arms tight around his neck. "Hi, Buck." He said into the skin at his neck.

"Hey, kid." Buck sounded more like himself now, at least, even if that was choked up and stuffy. "You're going to be taller than me, soon."

He'd been saying that since Chris was seven, but Eddie noticed with a blink that Chris might not ever be taller than Buck, but he might end up taller than Eddie - already comfortable at Buck's chest height, head at his shoulders. Chris hung on, and for a moment Eddie was pretty sure Buck held tighter, squeezing his eyes shut tight enough that only a tear escaped and rolled down his cheek.

Without thinking, Eddie caught it with the pad of his thumb, gentle over the crease of his cheek. Buck blinked open his eyes, ocean blue with a hint of red in the whites. "I missed you." He said to both of them.

It felt like both a stab to his heart and a soothing warm blanket over his soul. Slowly, Eddie smoothed his thumb to the corner of his eye and then back to the side of his nose, a caress to his skin. "I missed you too." Chris answered for the two of them. He hadn't known Buck for very long, but he had gone to Shannon's funeral. He had stayed solumnly near the back and picked Chris up in a big, warm hug, and after everyone but Eddie's family had left, Buck had sat next to him in front of her casket and let Eddie cry with his chin to his chest like he had been the one to kill her. Buck had stayed until Eddie didn't have any tears left to shed, and he hadn't ever brought it back up, even when Eddie was being an asshole and deserved to have it shoved in his face. Two months later, and Eddie hadn't been able to do anything to help him while he was stuck under that engine but hold his hand.

Eddie kissed the side of Christopher's face and then, before he could second guess himself, pressed his lips to Buck's too. Eddie could feel his eyelashes against his cheek. He wasn't dumb enough to not know why that was something worth noticing.

Maddie was watching them, her eyes glittering and Philip was watching them too, curiosity and pursed lips. Maddie nodded in solidarity, recognition, approval, maybe. Thank you, it seemed to say, thank you for having him.

Eddie nodded back. Don't thank me, he hoped it said. He's more than I deserve.

"Want some air?" Eddie whispered, concious of the mingling crowd around them.

Buck nodded, and swiped at his nearly dry cheeks, dislodging Eddie's hand and leaving it hanging limply at his side. "Sure, yeah, okay." He sniffled, wrapped an arm over Christopher's shoulders (who rested against his side, slinging his own around Buck's waist) and led the way.

Eddie stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep from doing something stupid like hold his hand, and by the time he thought better of it Buck was a good three steps ahead. He put a hand on his back instead, falling into step beside him. Chris wasn't between them anymore - Chris, Buck, Eddie - a trio with Buck smooshed in the middle.

Dare he say it, a family.

—

"Hey," Maddie slipped into the open seat on the bench beside him. It wasn't that Buck was avoiding her so much as he was avoiding the entire… after the wake dinner thing. He felt like he was floating, standing over his mother's dead, lifeless body and staring at her face like she was going to open her eyes and tell him to go back to bed. She didn't look real, dead people never did (Buck had a theory, actually, that they weren't since whatever had kept them alive - a soul, heart, whatever - was gone), but somehow his mind had started superimposing her face and Daniel's face and Doug's face on the face of the victims in the tsunami, drifting by on the waves, seared into his memory and nightmares. Maddie's touch lingered on his arm, her ankle nudging against his on the ground. "Where's Eddie and Chris? I wanted to thank them for coming."

"Uh," Buck gestured back inside towards the two story house they had grown up in. Technically, Eddie had disappeared to get Buck something to eat, because he was apparently worried about that, and Chris had been comendeered by Jee-Yun the moment she saw a kid she even vaguely recognized. Eddie would come back eventually, and Chris would probably break away from Jee-Yun the moment he could, and Buck should probably think about entertaining them, about showing them around Hershey, the house, looking through childhood photo albums like Maddie had been doing with Chim. "Eddie's getting me something to eat."

"Good," Maddie brushed her fingers through his hair and he was helpless against holding himself back from leaning into it. If this was how grief felt when it was Margaret who died - the woman who gave birth to him - he didn't even want to imagine how it would feel if he were to lose Maddie. He had had a taste of that, with Doug, and Buck had had to find her and save her because there simply wasn't a world without her in it. Maddie had been there since literally day one. It wasn't fair that one day he'd have to start counting the days without her. "You haven't really been doing that since we got here."

Buck snorted, a little bit offended, "I've been eating."

"You've been barely eating." Maddie corrected.

"Everything feels like I'm going to throw it up." Buck shrugged. "I'm not going to eat if I'm just going to be sick."

He had only really been sick once, the day before, but his point was made. He was nauseaus, and eating didn't exactly help things. "You like control." Maddie hummed and tweeked a curl. "Food's something you can control." Maybe their mother had drilled that into him too - Buck had always needed to be healthy, Margaret couldn't handle him in the hospital, and she had counted his calories longer than he had. That had only increased with the coaches at school when he joined the football team, and again when he joined the academy, and Buck figured he had just… never really stopped, only slowed down. When things got hard, he'd find himself counting more, and… "Doug pointed it out." Maddie swallowed and Buck counted his own heartbeat in his ears. "Chim told me what you guys talked about yesterday. I…" She breathed in slowly. "I miss him too sometimes."

Buck looked over to her sharply. "You shouldn't." He told the side of her face that was carefully not looking in his direction. He grabbed for her hand, running his calloused fingers over the smooth skin of her palm. Maddie tilted her head to meet his eyes, a coy, wet smile playing at her lips. "Maddie, you shouldn't."

"But I do."

"And I… I… I shouldn't."

"But you do." Maddie shrugged helplessly. "Buck, it's okay to miss the people that hurt us. I… I loved Doug, and a part of me will always love him, I think. He… deserved what happened to him."

"He deserved worse."

Effortlessly patient, Maddie reached up to brush her hand down to cradle his jaw. Maddie always looked at him the same, Buck realized. It didn't matter how old he got, or how much he towered over her. She always looked at him the same way - like he was something precious and deserving of… of everything she had to give him and more. Buck had always wanted to prove her right. He was scared he never would be able to. Maybe she was scared, too, that he even felt like he had to prove it in the first place. "You're probably right." She admitted with a little laugh. "But there were good times, right? In between all the bad."

Like Doug teaching Buck to drive, like the game nights at their coffee table, like the time Doug picked him up from practice and helped him with his biology homework. Doug was a horrible man, but for a long time, Doug had been the only brother Buck had known. "I love you," he told her and wished he could explain to her just how much that love was. "More than I… more than I could ever miss him."

Maddie blinked, her lips trembling and a tear rolling down her cheek. "I love you too." She answered as easily as she always had. Like she never even had to pause for a second to think it over. She had left for him, Buck remembered, in a distant sort of way. "You are… the best thing mom and dad… ever gave me."

Buck hunched down and wished he was smaller, small enough to curl up against her side like he used to be, but he had long outgrown a comfortable way to hide in Maddie's shadow, and she had never wanted him to much anyway but… she tugged him down by the neck until he was resting bent against her shoulder. Maddie kissed above his eyebrow, against the birthmark that he used to be teased about in school, and her breath tickled the hairs above his ear. Buck wiggled his arm until it was around her back and resting against her hip and he breathed against the fabric of her shirt until the tears that had been building in his eyes had dried up and then he pulled back, let her tug at his hair and tugged on hers in the same manner. "Sorry," Eddie said from behind them on the porch, the door held open by Philip's hand and their father's eyes a weird combination of misty and apprehensive. Eddie side stepped out of his way, sent him a bland smile of gratitude and swiftly presented his bounty of a full plate of potatoes and pasta salad and a glass of water. "You need to eat."

Maddie took the glass for him and stole a sip. "You do need to eat."

"You need to eat." He grumbled but took the plate out of Eddie’s hands. "Thank you." He mumbled and speared a potato.

Eddie didn't say anything until Buck had eaten two whole mouthfuls. "So, like, your dad knows you don't eat meat, right?" He asked, hands in his pockets and eyes looking at the closed door through his lashes. Honestly, Buck was shocked Philip was allowing them to hide out, but maybe it had always been Margaret to call them inside to attend to guests and, with her gone, Philip had forgotten how to tell them they were being impolite. "He looked at me really weird when I didn't take any salad."

"I told him not to put chicken in it." Maddie groaned and crossed her ankles. "Do you want to sit down, Eddie?"

He waved her question off and turned so that he was beside them instead of in front, grabbing onto Buck’s cup of water and holding on his knee as he perched himself on the arm of Buck's chair. He was so close Buck could feel the heat of him through his thigh. If he just tilted his head to the side… Eddie probably wouldn't even do anything, really. Once, back when Buck had still been with Tommy, they had been watching a movie with Eddie and Chris and Buck had fallen asleep on what he thought had been Tommy's shoulder but had really been Eddie's. Neither of them moved him, and when he had apologized to Eddie he had only blinked and asked him what he was saying sorry for.

Maybe Tommy had been right about the whole… competition thing. Maybe.

He pushed his shoulder into Maddie's instead. She also took his weight willingly, her leg twisting to wrap around his bad one. "How's Texas been?"

"Oh, uh," Eddie scratched the back of his neck and Buck, bizarrely, realized that this was the longest him and Maddie had ever really had a conversation together. "It's Texas." He said vaguely and laughed self conciously. "I forgot how hot it is."

"Oh my god," Maddie said in agreement. "I forgot how cold it gets here. I had to beg Chim to pack me an extra sweater because I left all of mine at home."

"You could have used one of my hoodies." Buck protested around a mouthful.

She swatted his shoulder in admonishment, "And what would you have done? Froze?" She scoffed. "No, you need them a lot more than I do."

Buck pushed their shoulders together once before he rested himself more heavily against Eddie’s firm thigh. "I know how to use the washer, Maddie. I'm not really a child."

"You just eat like one." She teased. "Eddie, did he ever tell you about his weird obsession with green m&ms as a kid?"

Eddie snorted and shifted so that he was sitting more comfortably on the arm of the chair, one foot on the cushion behind Buck’s back and the other on the cushion in front of him. Buck absolutely did not think about how the position must look from the outside, Eddie was only sitting and he had turned to face Maddie, which was the polite thing to do. It didn't mean anything. "Why green?"

"They taste better!" Buck insisted.

"What, the green food dye really does it for you?" Eddie's eyes sparked, that familiar light of a tease on the lines of his smile. "Or did you just have a thing for the green M&M?"

"Everyone had a thing for the green M&M."

Maddie wrinkled her nose, "Ew!"

Buck scoffed, but it was the happiest he had been in… In… well, since Eddie had moved. Which was probably horrible of him, to be a day away from their mother's funeral, eating a plate full of pasta salad that had way too much mayonnaise and potatoes with absolutely no seasoning because his father couldn't remember he was vegetarian, and he was happy. Not that he was in Pennsylvania again, not even that Margaret was gone, but that Maddie was teasing him, and Eddie was sitting with him like they didn't know the concept of personal space still, and Christopher was sticking his head out of the door and shuffling out to join them and…. He was a horrible son. A horrible son.

Because if this was what it took to get them back?

Buck couldn't exactly say that he was sad about it. And he didn't know what else that made of him but horrible.

"Your dad's being a jerk, Chris." Buck tattled to get Eddie’s hands on him, shoving lightly at his back and, lingering, maybe, a second longer than they should have.

Chris shook his head with a twitching smile. "He does that sometimes." Buck watched for the sting of it from the corner of his eye but Eddie only rolled his in Christopher's direction and Chris only smiled back. Some of the nerves in his stomach dissipated. "Why are you only eating potatoes?"

"Why are you jealous?"

"I can't have a plate of potatoes."

"Literally no one is stopping you." Eddie waved towards the house. "You're the one that didn't want anything."

Chris wrinkled his nose, "They're not even good potatoes."

"Chris," Eddie sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Sorry." He apologized to Maddie and Buck like either of them had a problem with the honesty.

But Eddie had just come back from Texas, and Buck had noticed a trend of Eddie apologizing for breathing whenever he got back from spending an extended amount of time with his parents. He waved him off. "It's fine." Maddie accepted with a laugh.

"It's not like he's wrong." Buck shrugged and pressed back into Eddie’s… legs, tilting his head up to glance at him shortly. "They're not great."

Eddie smiled, that small, almost private one that said, I know what you're doing. "Why are you still eating them if they suck?" Chris asked with a grunt.

"Uh," Buck began.

"Because Buck keeps forgetting he has to eat to survive." Eddie interrupted.

"Because if I don't finish what's on this plate, I think Maddie and your dad will tube feed me all the way back to LA."

"No," Maddie protested. "Chimney will."

Chris barked out a laugh, a sound Buck hadn't heard without a screen separating it for months. It did something to him, something more complicated than picking out a casket and flowers. It felt almost similar to watching his mother dancing in the kitchen, hearing Daniel's voice for the first and only time through a speaker and knowing it would forever be tattooed on his mind. Buck placed the plate on his knee and grabbed onto Eddie’s ankle without thinking. He squeezed it and Eddie squeezed the back of his neck in return and it felt like understanding. Like solidarity. Like he got it, the mix of misery and joy and the one foot making a home completely outside of his body.

Thankfully, Buck had learned how go comfortably live in discomfort long before he had met Eddie and Chris.

—

Buck's childhood home was perfectly decorated. Eddie didn't know why that was what he had first noticed, except that not a single thing was out of place. The pictures were at perfect right angles, all the frames the same size, not an ounce of dust on any surface. Buck was easy to pick out on the wall, from the birthmark to the smile. Blue eyes where everyone else but a different little boy had brown. Buck didn't look like Daniel. He didn't really look like any of them, but if Eddie had to, he'd say Buck looked the most like his mother. They had the same round face, the same nose, the same shadow of sadness in their eyes.

Eddie found it a bit hard to believe that someone like Buck grew up in a house like that.

Not that… it was a nice house. Two floors, a big yard, a three car driveway. It should have been the place where someone had a good childhood. There was a playground at the end of the street, they had driven by an elementary school on their way there, and there were kids at least in every other home.

But it was fake, wasn't it? Picture perfect until someone looked at the picture and realized it was staged.

That was it, Eddie realized. That was it. It was staged. It was fake. The smile Buck wore in the pictures as he was growing up, the tidy corners and spotless carpet. It wasn't real. It wasn't… Chris would leave his shoes haphazard in the hallway at home, and even Buck's loft used to have clutter everywhere. They had blankets and clothes that weren't clean stuffed in the corner of bedrooms and that one dusty patch on the back of the television because they both kept forgetting that it was there whenever they cleaned. They had freshly baked cookies on the oven and dishes in the sink that would sit overnight to "soak" while they cracked open a beer and fell asleep on the couch.

It was a difference between a house and a home - the difference between lived in and loved in. "Eddie," Philip Buckley had that air about him that most middle aged fathers had. Or at least, the same air that Ramon had. Chin up, back straight. He never would say anything directly to be part of the problem, but he would never say anything to stop the problem from happening either. Not that that was Philip, no… if Eddie was remembering correctly, both of Buck's parents had always been… a whirlwind. "Short for… Edward?" Philip guessed and smiled kindly over at him as he poured himself some water.

Christopher was with Buck in the kitchen, and from Eddie's spot by the unlit fireplace mantle he could see the two of them in perfect view. They were trying to find Chris something to eat, or maybe trying to find Buck something to do, at the least, catching up on their own. He watched Chris rest a hand on Buck's back as he ducked into the fridge, and Eddie wished that Shannon could see the man he was becoming. That he could take a picture of it, somehow, to show her. "No," Eddie shook his head and smiled reflexivly at Chimney as he slid beside him with a playful nudge of his elbow. Eddie nudged him back.

"Edmundo." Chimney parroted in a tease that was familiar. He and Hen used to say Eddie's name like that whenever he was in trouble. "Hey, man. Wish we weren't seeing each other again because of this."

"Yeah," Eddie wished they weren't either. "How's, uhm -."

"It's a very nice thing of you to do," Philip said conversationally and sipped carefully at his glass. Eddie smiled tightly at him.

"Oh, don't… don't mention it." He shrugged. "When my wife died I… barely held on. Buck, you… no one really deserves to go through that alone. It's the least I can do for him."

Philip hummed, "How long ago did you lose your wife?"

"Oh," Eddie blew out a puff of air and did the math in his head. "Around six years ago now. Chris was… seven."

"So young." Philip clicked his tongue and shook his head. "And he's doing okay now?"

"Yeah," No, maybe. He was doing better now, anyway. Although Chris still had his moments of missing Shannon, same as Eddie did. She was gone, and there wasn't any way to bring her back. "He's got a good support system."

"Buck's really stepped up." Chimney said with a tiny puff of his chest. Eddie blinked over at him in surprise. Wordless, Chim shrugged.

"He's our best friend."

Philip hummed again. In the kitchen, Chris was laughing, and Buck was doing it too, eyes crinkled at the corners and lips upturned as they leaned into each other's space. Eddie smiled too, clapped Chim on the arm and prepared to join them and figure out just what was so funny. Philip stopped him with a shift into his space, foot placed to rest on the carpet in front of him so that Eddie would have to curve to get around him and out of the conversation. Eddie knew that move. Buck did it too.

It was much more endearing when Buck did it. "How long have you and my son been dating?" Philip asked innocently.

Behind him, Chimney started choking on his water.

Eddie flushed, the tips of his ears pinking, "We're, uhm…" He cleared his throat. "We're not. Dating. We're not dating, sir."

Philip frowned, his eyebrows turning in. "No?" He asked. "You were at Maddie's wedding."

Chimney's voice was much too high when he defended, "We're friends too, Mister Buckley."

"Yes," Philip said slowly. "But Evan brought a boyfriend."

"Tommy." Eddie rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. "He brought Tommy."

"Yes, yes," Philip waved off. "But I know my son, Edmundo -."

"Eddie, please. Just call me Eddie -."

"And neither Margaret nor I were shocked to hear that they ended things. Margaret always said she knew there was something about how he spoke about you that told her where his heart lies."

"I…" Eddie opened and closed his mouth.

"Evan wears his heart on his sleeve," Philip continued. "He got that from Margaret, I swear." He laughed wetly with a fond shake of his head. "He's a good boy, we did a good job with him."

They had barely even given him a hug when he scraped his knees. The only thing Buck got from them was passive suicidal tendancies, a habit of harming himself for attention, cripling self-esteem issues and a fear of abandonment so bad that Eddie was genuinely shocked he didn't avoid people altogether in order to avoid triggering it. Everything else, everything good and wonderful and spectacular about Buck, he had taught himself. "Uh," Eddie shared a wide eyed, oddly humorous look with Chimney. It wouldn't be a good idea to say anything rude to Philip the day before his wife's funeral, would it? Eddie held his tongue. He had been where Philip was, making idle conversation about his child in an attempt to cover up his shattered heart inside his chest. He missed his wife. He had his son. The love for one of them obviously outshone the other. "Yeah." Eddie agreed. "Yeah, he's a great guy."

"Yes," Philip agreed. "He is."

Over his shoulder, Chimney shrugged with wide, unsure eyes. I don't have any idea what's happening, he mouthed. Eddie shrugged back, neither did he, and he was the one that was being subjected to this part of the conversation. "Mister Buckley…" Chimney tried. "Why don't you -."

"Evan has always believed that he is worth less than what he deserves." Philip said with a stubborn gaze.

It crawled under Eddie's skin. He shuffled his feet, "No offense, sir, but who's fault is that?"

Chimney choked again.

Eddie instantly regretted it. "Sorry," he winced. "Sorry that was… I'm sorry for your loss."

"The best thing that Margaret was to me, son," Philip contiued like Eddie hadn't spoken at all. "Is the mother of our children. The second best thing, was my best friend." He shook his head, "I know you probably don't like us at all, if you're even a fraction as kind as my son tells us you are. It means a lot that you were willing to put that aside in order to be there for him."

"Of course," Eddie breathed and furrowed his brow. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Philip," An older woman in a sleek, black belted dress interrupted, her hand steady on his arm. "Sorry to interupt…." Still, she steered him away from the conversation and Chimney's blank, mildly hysterical pronunciation of what was that was enough to push Eddie into the kitchen and away from every one else entirely.

"Were you talking to my dad?" Buck asked when Eddie slumped into a seat at the kitchen island and hid his burning face in his hands.

"Yes." Eddie mumbled into his palms. "I think I called him a deadbeat."

Christopher whistled, "Damn, dad."

Buck said nothing and, when Eddie finally peaked through his fingers at him, was only raising both of his eyebrows in question. "It's a long story." It wasn't that long, really, only the idea of repeating to Buck that his father thought they were dating seemed a tad bit embarassing considering that they… weren't. "I didn't mean it."

"Yes, you did."

"I said I was sorry."

Buck conceeded. "You probably did that too." He sighed and turned back towards the refrigerator, hands on his hips. "I could just make you something, Chris."

Christopher perked up, "Could you?"

Buck shrugged. Eddie shook his head. "No," he told the both of them sternly. "Buck, sit down. Chris, stop being picky, there's a ton of food you can eat, Buck's not your personal chef."

"He could be," Chris said with a twitching smile. "If he wanted to be."

For some reason, when he held out his hand for a high five Buck gave him one with a small, satisfied laugh of his own. It was so familiar, the whole thing in the kitchen, that Eddie almost forgot where they were and why they were there. Except it wasn't Jee-Yun's drawings on the fridge, or Eddie's sugar jar dangerously close to the end of the counter - it was a picture on basic laser jet printer paper of Buck, Maddie and Chim from the wedding hanging on by a magnet proclaiming the beginning of the Gettysberg Address and a father's day card signed with a squiggly J and Maddie and Chim's name. It was like looking at the past and the future at the same time. Buck didn't belong here, but Buck wouldn't be standing there if the whole thing meant nothing to him. He had just lost his mother and here he was, hiding out in his old childhood kitchen making jokes with Eddie's kid. He hadn't been eating, he probably hadn't been sleeping all that much either, and his cuticles were bitten to shit. He had a cut on his hand and had gotten high off of old weed that he was lucky didn't make him sick. He was….

He was Buck.

Eddie never really needed him to be anything else. "Dad," Chris said eagerly. "Buck's bedroom was in the basement. Can my bedroom be in the basement?"

Considering Eddie didn't have a basement… "No, your bedroom can't be in the basement." But it felt like a spark of possibility. He was talking like he wanted Eddie's input in the decision. Like he wanted to come home. To come to Eddie's home again. To stay there, not with his grandparents. If it was the basement or living with Helena and Ramon again, Eddie would buy a house that was only basements - entirely underground. Whatever it took to make it so that Chris would come back home. "But -."

"They get drafty," Buck interrupted before Eddie could do something ridiculous like offer to become a mole just to get Chris to move back in with him. "And it's not like it was all that much fun. Like, I barely had a window."

Eddie blinked up at him, blinked over at Chris, and the welling up emotion in his eyes and he twisted his fingers together in shapeless fists on the countertop. "It's like you were Cinderella." He joked blandly, unsurprised that his half-hearted humor barely hit the mark.

Buck was kind enough to smile, at least. "Never got a glass slipper."

"It's just your turnouts."

His eyes sparkled and Buck ducked his head, his cheeks dusted with pink. "Or a prince."

"Prince's are overrated." Eddie said with a snort. "Honestly? You'd hate the royal life."

"I don't know," Buck hummed. "Three square meals a day, someone to do all of my stuff for me. I could get a corgi."

"Or ten."

"Or twenty."

"Oh my god," Chris gasped and sat up excitedly. "You could get a kangaroo!"

"I could totally get a kangaroo."

"Buck," Eddie said around a laugh. "You don't know how to take care of a kangaroo."

"If he's a king, dad, he can just pay someone to know for him."

"I know things." Buck spoke at the same time, his tone that indignant one that popped out whenever Eddie insinuated he didn't know what he was talking about. "I know how to read."

"I never said you didn't?" Eddie cocked his head to the side, "You were going to school for teaching, not zoology."

Chris wrinkled his nose, "You went to school?"

"No," Buck rolled his eyes. "I just spawned as a full grown adult." He scoffed. "Yes, I went to school."

"He was pretty good at it too." Maddie said from the doorway, reaching out to nudge her brother with the tips of her fingers. "Dad, uh… needs your help with something in his office."

It was miniscule, with Maddie looking at the well-wishers lingering in the sitting room Eddie wasn't shcoked she missed it. It was just a small, barely there moment in time where Buck hung his head, suspended, his smile stretched across his lips but gone from his eyes, replaced with a bone deep exhaustion that Eddie hadn't seen in him since… since he had come back to life. Since he was sitting in Eddie's kitchen, asking him about what it was like when he got shot. Buck had looked like that when Eddie had told him that he remembered nothing, which hadn't exactly been true, but how was Eddie supposed to explain that he didn't remember seeing anything, but he remembered the ghost of Buck's hands on his body, the sound of his voice yelling at him to hold on, the red streaked across his cheek. How could he explain that and not tell him what it all meant? And not blow everyhing up? "Buck…" Eddie began, soft enough that only he heard him and Buck stared at him through his lashes and begged for something Eddie didn't know how to give.

Maddie turned back and Buck blinked, the pleading gone and replaced with nothing but obediant love. He kissed Maddie's head and promised to be back soon, disappearing from the kitchen and down the hallway. He disappeared into the door at the end, and he didn't come out until Christopher had eaten an entire plate of cold, soggy pasta and half the guests had filtered out. When he did reappear, it was with a noticable slump to his shoulders, and he kept his head down as he stumbled his way to another door entirely. Eddie frowned and followed him, half expecting a bathroom and shocked, instead, that he was at a staircase.

The basement.

Buck's old bedroom.

He was sitting on the steps, about halfway down, breathing raggedly deep, eyes squeezed shut and hands gripping tightly at the roots of his hair. Eddie didn't know what to say, and so he said nothing much at all aside from a soft, "Stop that." He tugged on Buck's wrists until he let up and, intead, pressed himself until he was almost folded in half to hug his knees.

"He wants me to do the eulogy." Buck said some time later.

Eddie didn't really know what to say to that either. He swallowed and squinted down at the bed covered in shadow. Up the stairs, in the hallway, Philip's frame was sillouteted in shadow as he observed them. Anger, stubborn and familair, tore at his gut. "Do you want to get out of here?" He asked in a quiet, steady voice.

Buck choked on a wet laugh and pushed his forehead more firmly into his knees. "Please."

—

"I didn't really feel like doing the eulogy when my father died either," Bobby said from the other side of the phone and Buck resisted the urge to scoff, speading out his legs so that he could cross his ankles. He was in sweatpants that were a bit too short, and a hoodie that was a bit too long, but if he tucked his nose in the collar it smelled like home. Like the laundry detergent with the baby on the bottle that Eddie always bought because it was hypoallergenic, and just that little bit of spice that Eddie's clothes always smelled like. He tugged down the sleeves until they covered the heels of his hands and sunk further into the chair. "It's hard… when you don't really have anything nice to say."

"I have nice things to say," Buck argued, probably for the sake of arguing. "I just… don't know how to say them."

"I know things with your mother were tense."

"They weren't tense… they just… were." Buck mumbled, picking at a the corner of the bandage Chimney had put over the cut on his hand. "I just don't get why it has be me, you know? If anyone knows her best, it's going to be my dad. Maddie would probably do a better job. I'm not good with words, Bobby, you know I'm not."

Bobby laughed, a soft scoffing one that Buck knew would have had him reaching out to rest his hand on his shoulder and squeezing if he was there. He must have been a good dad, he was to May and Harry whenever Buck saw them together. He never made Buck feel dumb or sick like his own parents did. He never would have tried to take Chris away, like Eddie's, belittling everything about him until Eddie started to believe it might actually be true. "You're fine with words, kid." He soothed patiently. "But you're right, it shouldn't have to be you." In California, back at home, it was around seven at night, which meant that Bobby was probably cooking, or at the most, cleaning up from an early dinner. He had had Buck around the new house once it was finished to help him bless the new kitchen. Athena had taken a picture and sent it to the family group chat Buck didn't know how he had snuck into, and Michael had answered back about how jealous he was and then answered with a picture of the cutest dog Buck had ever seen (so he was pretty sure he wasn't actually jealous). "Have you talked to Maddie about it? We know she'd do it if you told her you didn't want to."

Buck groaned, "She'd do it because she'd feel like she has to."

"And that's different from how you feel..?"

"Because it is." Buck said stubbornly and poked his cut because he couldn't poke Bobby. It throbbed in annoyance in response. Like he was watching, Buck could have sworn he could feel Eddie's eyebrows raising disapprovingly. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't and, sure enough, Eddie was only lounging on the bed in the room, arm thrown over his eyes and chest moving slowly up and down as he took what Chris called a dad nap to the tune of Bob's Burgers. Chris, though, was watching him, eyebrow raised in a mockery of his father and pen hovering suspiciously over the page on his sketchbook. Buck stuck his tongue out at him, and Chris answered back with one of his own. "Listen, Maddie has enough she has to deal with. I-I can do this one thing."

"You don't want to do this one thing."

"I mean, who does?" Buck asked with a snort. "My mom was so lost in her grief over Daniel she was already dead, like, thirty years ago." It stung the moment it left his mouth and when Buck opened his mouth to say more, nothing but a near silent whine came out. His eyes stung. He suddenly wished Eddie was awake, that he was watching with that frown that told Buck he hid absolutely nothing from him. That Maddie could sigh that little, sad, Oh Evan sigh of hers and wrap her arms around his neck like a scarf. Buck curled his good leg into himself and wrapped his arms it instead. "That's not fair." He said into his knee cap.

Bobby didn't sigh like Maddie did, and he wouldn't look at him like Eddie tended to, and he was all the way in California while Buck was in Pennsylvania, but he knew he was worried about him, and that he had been the entire time Buck had said the words aloud to him. My mom's dead. How does that make you feel? Do you want to talk about it? Bobby sighed and Buck winced, well aware that he had just given himself away in a manner he hadn't at all meant to. "I don't think you're wrong, kid."

Buck frowned and he wished he could take any and all of it back. Of course Bobby would understand his parents, in a way Bobby had been his parents. He had lost his children, his wife, and himself in an apartment fire and Buck had… Buck hadn't really done anything to help him heal from that except be a thorn in his side. Be someone who needed his guidance. Buck had needed a parent and Bobby had needed a child and so they had formed this thing between them that wasn't quite family but it would be an insult to say it was anything but. "Wrong and fair -."

"You're allowed to be angry with your parents for the way they weren't your parents when you needed them to be." Bobby spoke over him, calm but demanding. "Are you still at your father's house?"

As though Bobby could see him and would have opinions, Buck flushed. "No." He chewed on the corner of his nail. "Eddie has a hotel and…" He glanced over at where the other man was still sleeping, his chest rising slow and comfortable and he matched his breathing to it, for a moment. Felt his eyes grow heavy and rested his head against his arm. "I don't know, just needed an escape."

"I'm glad Eddie could be there."

"Yeah," Buck thought about it, really thought about it, and he wasn't sure if glad was the right word for what he was feeling. He was happy Eddie was there, but also painfully unhappy that Eddie was involved in this part of his life at all. He was happy to see him, but dreading having to give him back up when it was all over. Eddie had come because Buck had needed him, not because he wanted to be there and Buck couldn't even blame him for it because it wasn't like he wanted to be there either. He had come, had brought Christopher with him, and it was the most loved Buck had ever felt while also reminding him of how much of a heavy burden he tended to be. Shut up, Eddie would say, and he'd say it over and over again until Buck listened for once in his life. "Me too." Even if it meant that Eddie was going to see all of him. Including the messy parts that Maddie didn't even get to see all that much. With Eddie there, it didn't feel so much like something he couldn't handle.

"Why don't you get some sleep, Buck? You sound exhausted."

Buck hummed, "Eddie starfished on the bed."

"Use him as a pillow." Bobby said around a laugh. "Or just move him. You've done that before."

He had done that before. Just straight up shoved Eddie off the couch in the rec room one time during quarantine and had narrowly avoided being punched in response (although, not really. Eddie hadn't really been trying to hurt him). "Maybe." Buck sighed. "I should probably make sure Chris doesn't, like… pay per view porn or something."

Bobby barked out a laugh and Buck felt one bubbling up inside to echo it.

When he slipped back inside, toed off his shoes, and sat himself down on the bed next to Eddie's starfished body he felt about twenty percent better than he had before. Here, he could pretend none of it was happening. Here… Eddie curled into him, turned his head so that his nose was smashed up against Buck's thigh and wrapped an arm around his knee and stayed there and Buck breathed it in. The way Chris barely glanced at them, but when he did it was with a tiny smile. The way Eddie softly snored, the quiet television in the background. He sunk down a little bit further into the pillows and shut his eyes.

For the first time all week, Buck slept.

__

The day of the funeral had already started out awkward.

Okay, so, really, the day of the funeral had started out fine. Eddie had woken up at around four in the morning, but that wasn't really all that abnormal for him since he was nineteen. Chris had fallen asleep at an odd angle in his bed, but he had taken off his glasses so Eddie didn't consider it that big of a deal. Buck had been sleeping on his front, a hand heavy on Eddie's chest, fingers tangled in the chain of his medal and rising and falling with each of Eddie's breaths. He should have moved him, probably, but Eddie had only, instead, watched the lines of his face for any sign of the heavy devistation that had been weighing him down the day previous. It was gone when he was sleeping, and only back slightly when he had woken up and actually eaten breakfast with them.

It was back at the funeral home. Buck acted like everything was normal, even in his nice black suit and stick straight tie that he hadn't untied the night before, only tightened at the knot while studiously not looking himself in the eye in the mirror that morning. He hugged Maddie, hugged Chim, and artfully stole Jee-Yun to avoid hugging his father with more than one arm for a quick two seconds. "How did you sleep?" Maddie asked him lightly, feigning disinterest horribly.

For a moment, Eddie wondered if she knew they had slept together. Well… together like… actually in the same bed. She wouldn't have cared, but Eddie imagined she would have been a lot more coy if it wasn't for their current situation.

Buck shrugged, tickled Jee-Yun's cheek, and said "Fine. Good," with an easy, crookedly handsome smile. Maddie beamed and when she turned glassy eyes on Eddie it was only to mouth thank you with so much passion Eddie didn't know what to do with it but shrug helplessly. He hadn't done anything, not really.

He had slept fine. He had slept good. And it wasn't Eddie that had helped him do it, only Eddie that had given him a place to rest that wasn't in a house he was pretty sure Buck had never called home. "Evan," Philip called from his spot beside the funeral director - middle aged man that looked a little bit like a corpse himself. He waved the man after him, stepped a bit too close into Buck’s space and Eddie caught him, when Buck subconsciously took a step back. "Mister Kaye, this is our son - my son - Evan. He's going to be doing the eulogy."

Maddie's head snapped around so fast Eddie was briefly concerned about her neck. Slowly, Buck placed Jee-Yun on the ground and watched her run off to tackle Chim's shins. Eddie wanted to tell him to breathe. Instead, he rested his hand on his back and tapped a rhythm with his fingers. 1-2-3-4, -2-2-3-4. "Nice to meet you, Evan." Mister Kaye held out his hand for Buck to shake and he did, firmly, before dropping it to his side. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Mhm."

"Dad -" Maddie began.

"The eulogy will be given around the middle point of the ceremony, after the priest does his speech, and your father welcomes guests. It's usually only five or so minutes, give or take. Do you have it written down anywhere? I can make sure it's ready for you at the podium."

"Buck," Eddie shifted just a tad bit closer into his space, pressed his fingertips harder against his spine. "Breathe."

Buck breathed in, held it for a best in his lungs, and then breathed out. Christopher was watching them from Eddie’s elbow, attentively frowning as though he had just figured it all out. Eddie had given Shannon’s eulogy. Had talked about meeting her, their first date, their plans with Chris. He imagined giving that responsibility to his son, when he was still there to do it himself, and he burned at the guilt in it. Chris swallowed and when Eddie met his gaze he blinked hastily and scrubbed at his wet eyes.

Chris hadn't really been there for this part of things with Shannon. He had been too young and Eddie had been too capable. No one Christopher's age should have had to be behind the scenes of a funeral. Buck was a grown man, but still none of it seemed right. "I didn't…" Buck twisted his fingers. "I didn't write anything."

His father stopped in his tracks. "You didn't write anything?" He repeated duly, like the thought hadn't occurred to him as something that could be done. "Evan."

"I-I didn't have time."

"You didn't have time to write your mother's eulogy?"

"Dad," Maddie cleared her throat. "Just -."

"No," Buck said with a roll of his shoulders, always so much braver than Eddie could ever dream of being. He was obviously uncomfortable and yet he was jumping into the deep end anyway. Without floaties on if it turned out he couldn't swim.

Or maybe Eddie was the floaties, or the lifeguard or whatever. Maybe they all were. Him, Maddie, Chimney, Chris. Observing to see if he needed help in the water but not interfering if all he needed was to learn the strength of the tide. "Evan, I asked you to do one thing for her." Philip's voice cracked. "One last thing."

"I can't… I can't do this thing." Buck said around a tight voice. "I-I can't, dad. I can't."

"That is understandable," Mister Kaye said soothingly. "We have some generic prompts someone can fill out, or we could open it up to all attending to share some memories."

"That one." Maddie pounced. "That one sounds great. Doesn't it, dad? It sounds more like what mom would have wanted."

Philip said nothing to her in response, too busy staring at Buck like this was the worst affront he had ever given. Eddie was tense for him. He had lived years underneath looks like that. The difference was, Buck didn't deserve them. "I can't believe you would do this, Evan. I have never been more disappointed in you."

Buck flinched. Chris loudly cleared his throat, "Buck, can you show me where the bathroom is?"

"What?"

Eddie pushed him forward before he could think about denying it. "Go," he told him with an eye-roll to remove any illusion of tension that could have danced between them. It wouldn't be nice to snap at Buck's father during his wife's funeral, Eddie told himself. But when he turned back he saw Maddie with Mister Kaye going over the timeline and Philip Buckley looking at him with a soft simmering rage in his eyes. "Sir." Eddie nodded shortly and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

"Is this your doing?" Philip asked when Eddie tried to side-step him to stand closer to Chimney. "Did you tell him to say no?"

Annoyance spiked at Eddie's ears. "Sir, my wife died. Almost seven years ago now. I know what you're going through."

Philip's defensive shoulders sunk, "It's been hard."

"I know," Every single day without Shannon had felt like a chore in the beginning. But that was the beginning, when she had left. When she had died Eddie had felt horrible, if only because of how easy it was to go back to a life without her in it. "So trust me when I say that I would never be talking to my son, who just lost his mother, the way you've been talking to yours."

Holding Jee-Yun to his knees, Chimney whistled low. "Ballsy." He muttered from the side of his throat.

Belatedly, Eddie wondered what Buck would have said if he had heard him. He had said once, that while he was used to no one really doing much of anything when his parents said or did something wrong, he also wished Maddie would just once tell them to stop instead of simply misdirecting the conversation. It was a safe diversion tactic, it would pull the attention away from him, but safe clearly wasn't always soething Buck wanted. Eddie could sympathize. He found himself wishing too that, if people like Pepa and Abuela, Adriana and Sophia, thought the way his parents spoke to him was so wrong that they'd do something about it instead of allowing it to keep happening. Here's to breaking the cycle, Buck had also said. Back then, Eddie had only snorted. Breaking what cycle? Eddie felt like he was trapped in a hampster wheel, sometimes. Doomed to go around and around and around again until he just got too tired trying to find a day out and collapsed.

For a moment, Eddie was pretty sure Philip was going to say something in response. His expression of insulted anger was so familiar to Buck's that Eddie thought, for a moment, that he was looking at him - older and more wrinkled, sweatervest instead of cardigans and… and would that make Eddie his father? He had always been a confusing spitting image of Ramon Diaz - same hair, same eyes, same nose, same future, same past.

Philip didn't say anything at all. He only pursed his lips together and grunted, shuffling after Maddie like, without Margaret around to tell him where to go or what to do, he didn't know how to function. Maybe Eddie was being mean, him and Shannon had been separated for a while before she had died, and even he had suffered without her around. Without the possibility of her being around again. He didn't miss her as much anymore, except when he did, and then it was all encompassing. Chris would do well in school, or Eddie would hear a story she'd like, and he would want nothing more to tell her, only to realized he couldn't. The grief would hit hard and weird and off center and it would be two in the afternoon and Eddie would be crying over a stuffed lion like it had just happened again.

Eddie understood grief. But he also understood Christopher's grief. Well, he understood it as much as he could. Shannon hadn't been his mother, she had been his wife - would have been his ex-wife if she hadn't died. Their grief wasn't the same, it was different shades of the same color.

He didn't think he'd ever be able to understand the Buckley parents. It didn't suddenly change just because one of them was dead.

The funeral itself was a quiet affair - Maddie held Jee-Yun on her lap and cried into her hair, Chimney rubbing at her spine with a strong hand the entire time. Philip kept his eyes turned down to his knees and tears dripped onto his pants to form a pattern. There was a picture of Margaret, young and smiling, Maddie on her left, Daniel to her right, and Buck no where to be seen. Halfway through the service, Christopher laid his head on Eddie's shoulder and shut his eyes. The entire time, Buck looked straight ahead, eyes on the casket, dry and focused. Like if he paid attention enough, the grief would miss him entirely.

I don't know how to feel, he had said.

Two years ago, this funeral could have been his. Buck could have died in that coma, Eddie would have had to have been the one to tell the doctor's not to keep trying anymore as his medial proxy, Maddie would have lost two brothers, Chimney probably would have quit, Bobby would have gone with Buck, dead at the end of a bottle and Eddie… He reached over his fingers loose around Buck's wrist and squeezed until he was breathing in, glancing in question at Eddie's face. He didn't know if he understood it, or if he was thinking the same thing. This could have been one of them. Margaret had died of a heart attack, Buck had been struck by lightning, Eddie had been shot. Very easily, if the situation had even been slightly different, this could have been them.

Buck weaved their fingers together, palm to palm, and Eddie shuffled closer until they were pressed tightly together. Shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, ankle to ankle. Chris followed, his eyes keen on their hands when Eddie blinked down at where he was still resting on his shoulder. Eddie kissed his hair, and Christopher managed a twitching little smile and, in two hours, the funeral was finished and all that was left was the odd, mournfully loud, lunch. There was no graveside visit, no moment of throwing soil down onto a casket. They wheeled Margaret out, and Philip disappeared with the funeral director and Buck let go of Eddie's hand only when Maddie turned to him to hug him tight and cry into his chest, her fingers swiping at his cheeks like he had cried at all.

__

__

"Hi," Buck didn't jump, of course he didn't jump when there was absolutely no reason for him to jump. He did, however, spill just a little bit of his tea on the knee of his sweatpants that was probably going to stain. He swore softly to himself, dabbed at the spot with a papertowel uselessly and frowned at Christopher with his eyebrows.

The boy snickered, wiping at his nose with his much too long shirtsleeve and shuffling awkwardly forward until he could drop next to Buck on the porch, his legs dangling from the edge. "What are you doing up still?" Buck glanced at his watch to make sure it was a valid question to ask. It was, he noted to himself, sighing in relief. It had only been half an hour since he had decided he couldn't sleep and made himself a tea to hold while he looked up at the dark, dark sky.

Chris shrugged, "I couldn't sleep." He poked Buck in the shoulder. "Why are you still up?"

Buck smirked ruefully, "Couldn't sleep."

"Yeah," Chris agreed. "Dad snores."

It startled a laugh out of Buck, "He's not that bad." Christopher was staying upstairs in the guest room anyway, Chim, Maddie and Jee-Yun sharing her old room, and Buck and Eddie bunking together in his old basement hideaway. He had offered it to Chris, remembered the hidden weed and realized he didn't know what else Christopher might find if he stayed in that room alone and promply shut himself down. No, Chris couldn't have his old bedroom to himself, there was still plenty of Evan that someone like Chris didn't need to know.

"You're just saying that because you snore too."

Which was… fair. Buck let him have it - normally he would have kept the argument going for entertainment's sake, but Buck was tired even if he wasn't sleeping, and everything in the world felt weird and stale and like a part of a dream that he didn't know how to wake up from. Nothing was good and nothing was bad and Buck wanted to scream into the night and crawl underneath twenty covers and never come back out again. He wanted to go for a twenty mile run and let the waves pull him under the ocean. He wanted to go out to a bar and go home with a girl or a boy or whoever and he wanted to do something so stupid like… his best friend was sleeping in his bed and his mother was dead and everyone he couldn't live without was under one roof and Buck wanted to both embrace it all and burn it to the ground.

So he had woken up. And he had made himself tea and left his phone on the bedside table because he didn't trust himself not to do something stupid like sign up for Tinder or set up a date with Tommy when he got home or call Taylor or doomscroll on Abby's Instagram like a fucking creep. Buck had left Eddie snoring against his pillow and walked outside barefoot, avoiding the creaky parts of the staircase and the floor like it was still 2010 and he was sneaking out for a party because he didn't trust himself not to do something like take advantage of his friend just because he wanted to feel like a person again. He breathed in the cool night air and winced at the way his knee pulled when he straightened it out of its bent position and…. "It's okay to be mad at her," Chris said in a mumble. Buck looked at him sideways, a frown pulling at his lips. Chris wasn't looking at him, but at the hands in his own lap, twisting the fabric of his shirt the same way Eddie twisted his palms when he was nervous.

"I'm not mad at her." Buck wasn't really anything.

"I'm still mad at mom." Chris whispered into the night. "And… and that's okay, right?"

"Oh," Buck blew out. "Yeah, bud, that's okay. What… what happened with your mom… it was complicated and messy and… you're allowed to feel complicated and messy about that."

"I'm still mad at dad too." Chris said.

That… Buck rolled his lips. "Chris…"

"Not for… well, I guess I'm mad he lied, you know? He keeps lying."

"Your father -."

"I know he loves me." Chris shook his head with a hard eye-roll. "It's dad, that's like all he does."

"Okay?"

"It's like he's always trying to keep mom safe. Like she didn't choose to leave us."

"Your mom died, Chris. She didn't really… have a choice in that."

"You came back." He pointed out stubbornly. "But that's not what I'm talking about. Before. She left us before. And then she came back and she left again and dad just let her."

"He didn't just let her."

"Yes, he did."

"You don't get it." Buck insited. "Chris, you're a kid. You were a younger kid back then."

"And then he met that other woman and -."

"Chris, your dad was nineteen when he had you." Buck spoke over him, something he tried so desperately to not ever do. But he hadn't been able to fix things before Chris went to Texas, and he probably wasn't going to be able to fix things now, but it was worth a try, wasn't it? Worth a conversation. "Do you know what I was doing at nineteen? What most people were doing at nineteen?"

"He's not nineteen anymore."

"No, but he is a human being." Buck shook his head. "He made a mistake. And he's been paying for that mistake for the past year. He didn't try to hurt you."

"Still did."

"Yeah," Buck agreed with a helpless shrug. "But you hurt him too."

Christopher's eyes flashed. "I didn't hurt him."

"You ignored how many phone calls?" Buck posed with a raised brow. "You moved in with your grandparents. Went to a whole other state to get away from him."

"He deserved it."

"He deserved your anger." Buck nodded. "He doesn't deserve your disrespect."

"He did it first."

"And you're a kid." Buck told him. "You don't get to say one second that you're upset that your mom hurt the two of you and just remove him from the equation of who was hurt. I get you're upset, no one told you that you can't be, but at some point it stopped being upset and started being a self imposed punishment. Do you even like Texas?"

Chris frowned and kicked the back of his heel against the porch. "I don't know."

"Do you even like living with your grandparents?"

"Not really."

"So why are you still in Texas? You could have told either of us you wanted to come back and we would have gotten you."

"He never asked." Chris insited. "He never asked if I wanted to stay. He just let me stay."

Buck groaned and threw his head back to look up at the sky. "Oh my god," he said to whoever was listening. "Chris, I don't know what you want me to do here, bud. You're mad at your dad because he lied. He deserved to have you runaway."

"I didn't runaway."

"I mean, it's a genetic trait at this point, what hope did you have there?" Buck winced at himself the moment he said it. "I'm sorry, that was mean."

"That was mean."

"But Chris, you're mad he lied, you're mad he didn't want you to go, and you're mad he didn't tell you to come home? All I wanted was parents who cared even a fraction as much as your dad cares about you."

"You're always going to be on his side."

"There aren't sides here, Chris. Everyone is just trying to do what they think is best for the next person and accidentally harming them instead. You wanted your dad to learn a lesson, he didn't want you to grow up hating your mother. My mom didn't want me to grow up in Daniel's shadow, and I didn't want her to hate me. Everyone lost here. There's no winning or losing, there's just giving up. And I don't think you actually want your dad to give up on fixing things with you or you wouldn't be out here telling me that you're still mad at him."

Chris frowned, a deep line pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Is that why you're here?" He asked, just the barest amount of annoyance slipping into his voice. "Because you want to fix it?"

Buck barely restrained himself from a full bodied flinch. That was what he did, wasn't it? He fixed things. Over and over. Broke them and then messily tried to fit them back together. One of the books he had poured over a few years back talked about family roles and how they impacted all the way from childhood to adult. Buck had always thought of Maddie as the peacekeeper, the golden child, the parentified oldest daughter. Buck had been the scapegoat. The invisbile problem. The unwanted burden on a mourning family. He didn't know how that translated to him always trying to keep things from breaking, except that breaking things never actually got Buck anything but lonliness. Doctor Copeland had said his ability to psychoanalyze was excellent, but, ultimately, unhelpful. Buck shook his head with a bitter laugh of his own, "There's nothing to fix here anymore, bud. That's kind of the problem."

--

--

Buck came back inside with the smell of wind on his skin. Eddie pretended he didn't notice, stubbornly refusing to roll himself over on the matress in fear of… what? Making sure Buck didn't suffer alone? Hadn't that been the whole reason he had gotten on a plane to Pennsylvania in the first place? Eddie hand't known the moment Buck had gotten out of bed, but he did know, from the glow of the clock, that he had been gone for quite some time. He had given himself a countdown clock until he went looking for him, but Buck had opened the door to his old basement bedroom ten minutes before Eddie was about to make any moves. And then he was stuck, rooted to the spot, counting Buck's uneven shuffle across the floor until they just stopped altogether. Unmoving.

Eddie planted his hand on the bed and pushed himself onto his back. Buck sighed, chin to chest, and he looked so tired, like he had back after he had died and slept on Eddie's couch for ten hours. Eddie had had to move his legs, hadn't bothered telling Christopher to be quiet because Buck would have slept through another earthquake, and had fielded around twenty concerned phone calls from Maddie regarding his whereabouts and wellbeing. "Hey."

"Sorry I woke you up," Buck mumbled and toed off his shoes. He screwed up his face when the left one got stuck, dropping down into his desk chair with a huff to more gently bend at the waist to untie and slip it off.

"You didn't wake me up." He had. Well, his absence had. Eddie had been sleeping perfectly fine until he had realized Buck wasn't in bed with him. "You okay?"

I'm okay. Buck would say he was okay when actively dying. He had said that, actually. Instead, though, he was apparently choosinng honesty and shrugged, "Chris was up." He said either in a way of explaining or in a hope of distraction.

Eddie frowned, "He was?"

"He might still be, actually." Buck clarified. "But I dropped him back off at the guest room."

"Thank you?"

"We talked." Buck bit at his bottom lip, leaving a thin line of red in the wake of his teeth. "You know he's mad that you act like Shannon didn't hurt you, right?"

Eddie flinched. He hadn't known that, not really. And as much as Buck usually said things bluntly, he was usually better at sugar coating what Eddie needed to hear. Especially when it came to Shannon and Chris. "She's his mom. I don't want him to hate her."

"He's not going to hate her just because you tell him that she hurt you when she left." Buck rolled his eyes. "You two are like the same kind of brick wall."

"Yikes," Eddie whistled and yanked back the covers on the other side of the bed. "You're only this mean when you're tired."

"I'm not mean." Still, he stood up to shuffle to the bed and dropped down delicately next to him. Eddie waited util he had snuggled into the pillow to say anything else, but Buck beat him to the punch. "I'm just saying," he said softly, the light from the one lone window casting a shadow across the blues of his eyes. "You both like… worry so much about making the other upset that you end up not saying anything at all."

Eddie groaned and slumped down into the mattress next to him. "I know. I'm working on that."

"You know he hates Texas."

"He doesn't hate Texas."

"He doesn't like living in Texas." Buck said slowly. "I don't like living in Pennsylvania."

"I know." Eddie said softer, quite suddenly struck with the image of Buck at Christopher's age, huddled in this same room while the rest of his family slept soundly upstairs. Alone. Separate. His parents had let him set up his room so far away fromm them and Eddie had let Chris run away to Texas. It wasn't the same but….

On his side, Buck shrugged. "Don't be my mom, Eddie. He wants you to keep giving a shit enough to tell him the truth."

Eddie half turned to him, his heart heavy for the boy in Texas, the one in the guest room, and the one that had grown up in this room. Laid in this bed. "What's going on, Buck?" He asked in a whisper, reaching out a tentative hand to lay in the small space between them.

There were a thousand things Eddie thought that he might say. He had been prepared for a while for a Buck breakdown, for the moment he would crumble. They were so close to it, dancing on the edge. But it was familiar, somewhere they had been before and somehow managed to avoid. They were bound to fall off at some point, and Eddie didn't know how to stop them from smaking painfully into the rocks at the bottom. He expected him to yell, maybe. To cry. To shove Eddie off the bed and throw things around the room like a toddler throwing a tantrum. To tell Eddie just how tiring he was, how tiring everything had been lately. How much it actually hurt, to have Eddie run away to Texas and not look back. Instead, he stared, something incomprehensively familiar in his eyes, and blew out, slow and measured through his nose.

"I love you." Buck said like it was something they had ever said to each other before.

Eddie's heart lept in his chest. Just because they hadn't said it, didn't mean it wasn't true. "I love you too."

Buck's smile was small, but so sad that Eddie almost had to look away. What had he said wrong? What had he done wrong? "Okay."

Buck pushed himself to the other side. "Wait." Eddie blinked and reached for his spine. "Buck, what -?"

He shook him off. "Go to bed, Eddie."

"No, Buck -."

"My mom's funeral was ten hours ago." Buck spoke over him, stern in a way he so rarely was. "Go to bed." He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes glistening, unshed tears gathering at the corners and catching in the moonlight. "Please?"

Please.

Eddie could push it. He should have pushed it. He should have… "Okay," he swallowed around the desperate pounding in his chest. "Goodnight, Buck."

"Night." He croaked back.

Eddie stared at the back of his head until his breathing evened out, and then he stared some more, suddenly unsure of what love even meant. He loved Buck, of course he did. He was his best friend. Eddie had never had someone in his life like Buck. If anyone asked him who his favorite people on the planet were, it would have been Christopher and then Buck. He didn't really know when it had happened, only that it had been somewhere between Shannon's funeral and that one time Buck had shown up when Eddie was elbows deep in grief and declared he was taking Chris to the zoo to get him out of the house. He had brought back Eddie's son with a smile on his face that he hadn't seen since Christmas, and take out, and he had told Eddie to go take a shower and cleaned his entire kitchen and started doing laundry. And Eddie hadn't known what to do, he never knew what to do, not when Buck had shown up when Shannon had died, or when he hadn't left when Eddie was healing after being shot, or when he had sublet his house so that Eddie could get to Chris faster and he certainly didn't know what to do now. Buck loved him, so what? Eddie loved him too. Love could look like a lot of things to a lot of different people and Eddie didn't have to explain it to anyone, even himself.

Except love was a funny word, wasn't it? Four letters for something so big. Was that even the right thing? Did Eddie love him? Was love what had driven him to book a plane and defy his mother and… he loved Christopher, he had loved Shannon even when she was pushing him away, and he sometimes felt like the only person that ever really saw him was Buck. Like love wasn't even the right way to put things between them. Like one moment Eddie hadn't had him in his life and then the next he didn't know what he would ever do without him.

He pulled himself closer, wrapped a strong, tentative arm around Buck's back and held his breath until Buck's hand find his wrist and looped there, holding him back. Eddie inhaled on his exhale and fluttered his eyes closed.

Love.

Of course that was what it was.

"Dad?" He woke up a few hours later, Buck still peacefully sleeping beside him. Eddie didn't remember falling asleep, and he didn't remember moving in that sleep, but apparently he had, his hand still resting over Buck's heart, Buck's fingers still wrapped around his wrist. He blinked at Christopher in the doorway, his curls strewn around his head and his glasses askew.

"Morning, bud." Eddie cleared his throat and untangled his hand free to rub at his eyes. "You okay?"

Chris shrugged, "Maddie wants to know if you guys want breakfast." Chris stared at him, and Eddie stared back and wondered if this… nothing was something he was going to have to explain. Only it wasn't nothing, was it? Because it was Buck and it had been Buck for close to seven years now, and he had snuck so secretly into Eddie's chest that he no longer knew where he began and Buck ended.

"Uhm…" Eddie scratched at his stubble with his free hand. "I'll be right up, bud."

Breakfast seemed so trivial in comparison to everything else that was going. But Eddie supposed that was just the way things were. Life went on. Life always went on. Shannon died, and Eddie had had to wake up the next day and tell Christopher to eat, to get ready for school a few weeks later, to clear the table. Humans survived off of routine, and Eddie didn't really know Maddie, but he supposed hers wasn't all that different than the rest of theirs. Make breakfast, eat breakfast, make sure the people she considered herself responsible for also ate breakfast. He was sure that asking him was more of a formality than anything. They got along fine, but sending Chris down to see if they wanted anything was probably because she wanted to know if the other half of they was even awake.

The other half.

Jesus, when did that become a normal thing to refer to them as? Two halves of a whole… what? Partnership?

Buck shifted. Not a lot, but enough that Eddie knew he was more awake than he seemed. Which was fair, considering Chris didn't really know how to whisper even at his age. He didn't open his eyes, but he seemed to realize he was holding Eddie's wrist and squeezed once before loosening his grip. Making it easier for Eddie to pull away.

Eddie didn't want to pull away.

Chris shrugged, scuffed his shoe on the ground, and stayed put. "Ev…" Eddie blinked at him. "Everything okay?"

Christopher frowned, "Yeah." He agreed and then promptly shook his head. "No." He shrugged. "I don't know."

"Okay?" Eddie slowly sat up, moving his hand for only a moment before placing it right back where it had been before, over Buck's beating heart. He noticed him looking through slits in his eyes and quirked his lips in a quick smile. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Buck yelled at me."

Eddie raised his brows. "When?" Beside him, Buck silently groaned and turned his face into his pillow, which put him much closer to Eddie's thigh and wouldn't have fooled anyone into thinking he was still sleeping if Eddie hadn't thought to cover for him. "He's still sleeping, Chris, it's fine."

Chris narrowed his gaze and bit at his lip. "Last night."

Right. Buck had… mentioned last night. He wants you to keep giving a shit enough to tell him the truth. "He didn't yell at you." Eddie could count on maybe one hand the amount of times Buck raised his voice in any situation that wasn't an emergency. It didn't happen. He was careful to never yell, even when a situation called for it. Out of the two of them, Eddie was the yeller. Buck just knew how to casually tear someone apart without screaming in their face. It was only entertaining to watch when it wasn't happening to him.

"How would you know?" Chris stubborned. "You weren't there."

He wasn't, so he supposed Chris was right, he didn't know. Except he did and… it probably wouldn't help their trust if Eddie broke it. "What happened?" Eddie asked instead of pushing the issue.

"I told him it's okay to be mad at his mom. He lied and said he wasn't mad at her."

"Chris…" Eddie shook his head. "It's not a lie."

"It is a lie." Chris insisted. "He can be mad at her!"

"He can be, but he's not."

"How do you know?"

"Because he told me." Eddie slowly rested his hand on Buck's back, counting his breaths even as the other man turned his face towards him to blink blue eyes against the pillow case. "And because I know him."

"Well, I'm mad at her." Chris said petulantly. "You don't know everything, dad."

"Apparently not." Eddie raised his brows. "Why are you mad at her? You never even met her."

"Because she left us!" Chris crossed his arms bitterly, tears in his eyes. "I mean, because she left Buck. Again. And that's not fair."

"Oh." Eddie breathed out, Buck squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face more firmly into his pillow. "Chris… Bud."

Chris shook his head and set his jaw. "No."

"Come here."

Chris didn't step closer, but he didn't really have to when Eddie was already pushing himself up to stand and gathering him in his arms before he could pull away. And it was a miracle of mircales, maybe, or perhaps it was just his son needing comfort and knowing Eddie would always give it because he hugged back, arms tight around Eddie's waist, and shoulders shaking under his hands. He was so much taller now than he had been when Shannon had died, and double the size he had been when she had first left with only pointless letters in her wake. He had always wondered why she didn't talk to Chris about it when she came back into their lives, told him why. Hen had said that maybe she felt too embarassed by it all, Karen had mumbled maybe it was because she wanted an easy out again and she knew Eddie would never make her do anything she didn't want to do. Including owning up to it. Including…. "I know," He said and kissed the top of Christopher's head. "I was mad at your mom for a long time too." And he'd probably always be mad at her, at least a part of him. There were about a dozen things Shannon could have done besides leave them behind. Eddie had been messed up too, he hadn't been a good husband. Or a good partner. And he had struggled with even being a father but… she could have divorced him. Taken Chris with her. Gone on a vacation. Given them a few phone calls.

Leaving Eddie was one thing. Leaving Chris was something he didn't think he'd ever be able to forgive.

He didn't think it was his place to forgive her for that.

Chris breathed in a shuddering breath against his chest and hugged him tighter. "Why aren't you mad at her now?"

Eddie breathed out and shrugged, "I don't know, Chris. She… gave me you. And… I guess she's dead. Seems a little pointless to be mad at a dead woman. Can't even take her to a group therapy session to work some things out."

The laugh wasn't his desired effect, but Chris choked on one all the same, and Buck, from the bed, huffed softly too. "I'm still kind of mad at you." Chris whispered, like he was afraid that, admitting it outloud, would mean Eddie wouldn't pay any attention to it.

It stung. Of course, it stung. But it wasn't like… it wasn't like Eddie didn't deserve it. He had messed up, majorly but he was trying to make things better and…. "That's okay," Eddie said on an exhale. "I'm still mad at me too."

"I'll get over it." Chris told him in a matter-of-a-fact tone. "When we get home." Chris tilted his chin up just the bit that he needed to look Eddie in the eye. "I can still come home, right, dad?"

Eddie wanted to claw out his own throat. He cleared it until he could talk around the lump that made a home there. "Of course you can. You-you can come home whenever."

Chris tentatively beamed at him.

"I'm not sleeping on the couch." Buck mumbled into the skin of his hands, apparently tired of pretending to be asleep. But he was happy for them, Eddie could tell that by the look on his face. Soft, open… almost yearning to be a part of it and still keeping himself carefully separate.

Chris looked around for something to throw and, when he found nothing he deemed adequate, threw himself, relishing with a loud laugh at Buck's grunt when he caught him inches away from colliding with painful places. "Shut up." Chris told him in a joke.

"I sold your bed."

"No." Chris looked at Eddie, though, for confirmation. "He didn't, right, dad?"

"I don't know what Buck did with your stuff." Eddie shrugged unhelpfully. "I put all mine in a storage unit."

"By storage unit he means the basement."

"Chris," Eddie said with a tiny glare that Buck innocently smiled in the face of. "He's ticklish on his left side."

He balked, Chris cackled, and Eddie found himself lighter, in spite of the lingering misery of the night before.

--

--

Buck started the conversation the only way he knew how. Well, okay, not the only way he knew how, but the way he most wanted to. Simultaneously, he placed the mug of steaming hot decaf coffee (because it was, like, Maddie's third cup and Chim would murder him and make it look like an accident if he knew Buck was letting her have more than her alloted 12oz of caffiene a day) and told her with a beam in his voice and on his face, "Eddie and Chris are moving back to LA."

Sharply, Maddie jerked her gaze back up to him. "O-Oh." She blinked. "Is that… is that a good thing?"

"That's a great thing."

At his response, she smiled, her eyes crinkling at the edges. "Well, then I'm happy for him. For both of them." She reached over and squeezed his hand between both of hers, her nails lightly digging into his skin. "For all of you."

"Yeah," Buck ducked his head and bent so he could rest his elbows on the kitchen counter. They had had many moments here, the two of them. Their parents left them alone in the kitchen more times than they kept them company, Buck was usually on dish duty after meals and Maddie had helped him through many homework crisis' at the kitchen island. This felt normal, almost rehearsed. It didn't escape him how much time they still spent in kitchens together, usually eating propped against the counters of their own homes, jokes in the air between them, and privacy something they sought to break from now, instead of encourage. "I'm going to have to find somewhere to live again, but, hey, it's not like Eddie would kick me out. There's always the couch."

"You're not sleeping on the couch." Maddie rolled her eyes. "Why don't you guys just be roommates?"

"It's a two bedroom, Maddie." Buck snorted. "Where would Chris sleep?"

She stared at him, and then stared some more, her smile slowly fading into a familiar, confused and, if possible, mildly upset frown. "You didn't talk about it." She said and Buck knew it. He knew the It she was talking about even if he was too much of a coward to speak it aloud.

He swallowed. "Talk about what?" He turned from her to grab his own mug to hold between suddenly clammy hands.

"Buck." She said his name so softly, just like Maddie always used to whenever he did something that devistated her.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"There's a lot to talk about."

"And now isn't really the time to talk about it." He bit on the inside of his cheek. "You know, if there was anything to talk about."

"So you're going to move out?" Maddie echoed. "Instead of tell him how you feel?"

"How I feel isn't exactly relevant to the situation."

"So you do feel a way about… you know?"

"Why are you acting like you don't know?" Buck shot her a barely concealed look of annoyance. "What? You want to hear me say it?"

"Yes," Maddie insisted, familiar eyes pleading. "Buck, he came all the way out here. For you."

"Because we're friends."

"Hen's your friend." She pointed out. "She's not here."

"That's because Bobby can only approve so much time off." Buck shook his head. "She'd be here if she could be."

They both would, probably. And they would have all gone to the wake and funeral, and Hen would have helped him come up with a half assed eulogy instead of making Maddie do it and Bobby would have been having a weird, tense interaction every day with Philip that Buck would pretend he didn't understand. "But she's not." Maddie insisted. "Josh is my best friend, but he's not here either."

"That's different."

"How?" She prompted. "You just said Eddie's your friend and he's just doing what friends would do. Josh is my friend, he's not here."

"Josh has a demanding job."

"Doesn't Eddie?"

"He's an Uber driver." Buck rolled his eyes. "That's not exactly on a strict schedule."

Maddie groaned and threw her head into her hands, tugging softly at her hair. "Oh my god," she moaned. "It's like you hate me."

"Now who's being dramatic." He muttered sardonically. "Listen, Maddie, it's okay, alright? I get it. I know what you're saying. But just because I might feel a certain way, doesn't mean that Eddie has to too. And I'm not going to push him to get him to… I don't know, live in this fantasy world I've made up where everything works out the perfect way I want it to." She squinted at him through her fingers, her mouth tipped in a quivering frown and her eyes sad. "It just doesn't always work out that way for people. And, let's be honest here, Maddie." He shrugged with a laugh. "Since when does it ever work out like that for me?"

"Why couldn't it?" She asked in a whisper. "Just for once, why couldn't you allow it to work out for you?"

"You know what mom and dad used to say," he smiled almost bitterly at her, almost baring his teeth in a reckless sort of mockery. "I'm just too good at… not being good. For much of anything."

Her face fell, "Evan… That's not true -." A box, with a puff of dust spraying up from the cover, split them apart, and Buck leaned back with a small cough as he waved it away from his face.

"Maddie," Philip breezed by, reaching around Buck to grab a mug of coffee for himself and all but nudging him out of the way to grab for the sugar bowl. He watched him put in one, two, and then four scoops of sugar and a splash of cream before nodding towards the box he had placed on the counter between where Buck had been and where Maddie now was. "I found a box of your mother's old recipes. I thought you would like to take them home with you."

"Oh, uhm," she blinked between the two of them and Buck held her gaze for a moment before dropping it completely. He turned his back on the two of them to shuffle over to the kitchen sliding door that looked out towards the yard. They still had his old swing set and, currently, Jee-Yun was playing on the slide with Chimney behind her, her laughs echoing in through the house. Chris was on an old lounge chair, legs kicked over the arm and phone hanging in his face. Eddie was… somewhere, having his own tense conversation with his mother. Buck had heard the beginning of it, although not the end. The mom, we need to talk, before he ducked away for privacy. Buck had wanted to follow, just to offer some semblance of support, but Eddie had waved him away and clearly Maddie had wanted to talk. "I didn't know mom had recipes."

"They're mostly her mother's, actually." Philip explained. "From when she used to own that bakery."

"I forgot Nana owned a bakery." Maddie said with nostalgia in her voice. Buck had never met Nana. Then again, he hadn't ever really met anyone aside from their parents and their friends. He didn't know if he had family that was surviving outside of Maddie and Philip. He had found out about Daniel the last time Maddie was pregnant - he supposed it was only fitting he find out about some other secret family now that she was pregnant again. It could be like a tradition. He laughed softly at himself. "Buck," she called his attention back to her. "Do you want to look at some of these? Nana had this chocolate cake that could rival that bakery on Sudbury."

"Yeah, sure, uhm," the front door opened and shut, and Eddie's footsteps were as familiar as a breeze. It was like something inside of him straightened up, as though Evan retreated and Buck stepped back into the forefront and he straightened his shoulders and directed his next question to his dad. "Hey, is Daniel's grave close by?"

Philip flinched, Maddie's eyes widened almost comically down at the recipe book in her hands and Eddie stopped short in the kitchen doorway, turning his entire body to look at Buck incredulously. Concerned. What? He mouthed.

Buck didn't pay him any mind. Mostly because Philip hadn't answered yet. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I'm just thinking, since I haven't really been able to pay my respects in, like… thirty something years, it might be nice to go. Say hi. Leave him a piece of cake or something."

It came out harsher than he meant it to. Truthfully, Buck didn't really know why he was asking in the first place. On one hand, Daniel had been a human being, and he deserved to be remembered by his family and not swept under the rug because it was easier than dealing with the pain of losing him. On the other, maybe it was easier to deal with the Daniel of it all than it was the dead mother, or the conversation Maddie wanted to have that Buck wanted nothing to do with. Or maybe it was just Buck being Buck - confrontational, angry, full of so much hurt with nowhere safe to put it. His mother had died, and there was still so much she had never thought to tell him about, and everyone was acting like it was all normal. Like the circumstances around them were normal and not devistating and alienating and…. "That would be nice, actually." Philip said after a moment. No, he could picture his mother saying. No it wouldn't. Evan, you're not going. Daniel is dead, there is no reason to give a gift to the dead. Visiting him isn't going to bring him back. Don't you think I would have done it if it could? Don't you think I would have traded places? Buck didn't know what it meant that he almost wished she had. But Margaret wouldn't have been the type to make that call. She would have done everything exactly the same as she always had, only maybe not made whatever choice it was that meant that Buck was alive and Daniel was dead. "Your… your mother, actually, is resting beside him."

Which meant that… Buck had been right there. He had been right there and Maddie had been right there and Philip had been right there and no one had said anything or done anything or… that deep, age old anger swelled up in his belly, mixing with a pain so deep he didn't know where it was coming from. Where does it hurt? Hen would ask. Buck would just shake his head and say everywhere and he'd mean it.

It hurt everywhere. In every part of him. In every vein and bone and joint. In every movement and fiber and memory. How close was their mother's grave to Daniel's? Had it been behind him or in front of him? Why hadn't anyone said anything?

How could no one say anything?

"We could make a day out of it," Philip said almost happily. Like now that the gig was up, he was elated to get to talk to them about their dead brother who was laid to rest beside their dead mother. Maddie's breath caught loudly in her throat. "Before you kids leave."

The world was swimming, his heart was pounding in his ears and it sounded like his mother's voice, Evan, Evan, Evan. Why are you like this, Evan? This is your fault, Evan. Evan, you keep making everything so hard. "Buck." It was barely a whisper, soft enough that it could have been missed - but wasn't, if the way Philip glanced at him over his shoulder and did a did a visible double take and the way Maddie's eyes were watering, her shaking hand covering her mouth. Eddie took one step closer, and then stopped when Buck's mug slammed loudly onto the counter, a bit of coffee sloshing over the edge and landing, somehow on his wrist. It might have burned, but it probably didn't.

"I…" Maddie swallowed. "Why didn't you say that, dad? When we were… why didn't you say that?"

Because Maddie had been ten, and Buck had been one and… if he was going to stay, he was going to do something ill advised, like punch his dad or the wall or walk right through the glass screen door and never stop walking. Instead he pushed past Philip's bulk and over to the kitchen doorway, stopping only because Eddie didn't move and if there was an innocent party in all this, it was Eddie. Brown eyes held his own, a worry in them that Buck could die in, and then slowly he nodded, stepped aside, and let Buck barrel on back towards the front door.

--

--

"I thought you knew." Philip said distantly, a plea in his voice that was so familair to Helena's we're trying here, Eddie, the least you could do is try too. Eddie wasn't really paying attention to him, though. The last time Eddie had seen Buck's parents was at Chim and Maddie's wedding, and the time before that he hadn't really seen Buck around them so much as witnessed the aftermath of finding out about Daniel in the first place. He had been heartbroken, a shell of a little boy in a grown man's body and neither of them - none of them - had been the ones to help him pick up the pieces of who he was. Not that Eddie thought he could take the credit for that either, really. That bad been a Buck thing. Every single time Buck healed, it had been Buck healing on his own.

All Eddie had ever done was give him a safe place to do it.

But how could he give him a safe place here? His childhood home wasn't exacly safe, not when there were clear shadows lurking at every corner. There were pictures on the walls of manufactured happiness, images Buck didn't have repeated in his own place and stories Buck had never seemed important enough to tell Eddie about. But there were things he knew that the rest didn't. Things that clicked into place for him that were left blank and blinking for Maddie and Philip.

Buck hadn't asked about Daniel because he really wanted to know. He had asked because it was easier to be angry than it was to be hurt. Because, if he was hurt, then they were going to hurt with him.

Only now it was a deeper hurt than he had expected. Eddie couldn't blame him for being angry, he couldn't blame him for being irrational and doing odd things. Death was weird, death when you had such a complicated relationship with death and dying was weirder, and Buck had always had an issue with people acting normal when things clearly were far from it. So he needed space, a moment to get his head back on straight, a breath of fresh air alone. He had his phone, and it wasn't like Buck was ever all that difficult for Eddie to find.

But this was… he put his hands in his back pockets and rocked on his heels. Awkward? Maybe, but Eddie didn't exactly feel like it was right to leave Maddie and Philip alone either. "Maddie," Philip said pleadingly. "I really did think you both knew."

"How would we know, dad?" Maddie spit out with viscious anger. "You never told us."

"But you visited him."

"When I was ten." She shook her head and their anger were twins of each other - Maddie and Buck and not for the first time Eddie realized just how much Buck had learned from her. "And then I wasn't even allowed to talk about him! How would I know?"

Philip hung his head low between his shoulders. "We did our best."

"You barely even tried."

Yeah, Eddie was done.

He sidestepped the older man who looked so alike Buck and nothing like him at all, and opened the backdoor. The air was sticky and warm on his face, and it smelled like rain, but Chimney looked up with a welcoming smile all the same, even if his face showed that he knew something had to have been happening inside. "Chris," Eddie called and his son looked sideways at him, a question on the curve of his lips. "Stay with Chim okay, bud? I'll be… we'll be back."

"We?" Chim asked carefully, catching Jee-Yun under her armpits and swinging her onto his hip. "Everything okay?"

Would it be better to lie to him? Probably not. "No." Eddie shrugged. "I got my phone, okay? Call if you need me. We shouldn't be gone too long."

"Where are you going?" Chris asked curiously.

Eddie puffed out his cheeks and shrugged. "I have to find out where Buck went first."

Buck wasn't hard to find. Then again, he never really was. He hadn't gone all that far, either, it looked as though his steps had carried him as far as the playground at the end of his old street and even then they had stopped him at the swings, and in an impressive display of flexibilty he had pulled a knee up to his chest on a leather seat and let the other leg push him gently back and forth, foot resting solely on the ground. His hands were loose on the metal chain, and his eyes weren't seeing much at all, and Eddie took a moment to both sigh and breathe in relief at the gate before stepping up to sit on the empty swing next to him. On the track, there were a few runners, a few kids were playing on the slides, and there was a group of teenagers playing a game of basketball on the otherwise empty court. "You didn't get very far." Eddie commented lightly.

Buck's lips twitched. "I wasn't really trying to."

A lie. Buck had spent his whole life running away until he found somewhere he felt safe and comfortable and they both knew that Eddie only knew that because he had done the same thing. "Sure," Eddie let him have it.

Buck's lips twitched again, a shadow of a smile pulling at Eddie's heartstrings. "How was your mom?" Buck asked quietly.

Eddie groaned, "Well she's not happy." He told him. "And I'm pretty sure she doesn't believe a thing I'm saying, but I think she'll figure it out when we stop back in El Paso and start packing."

Buck snorted a tiny laugh, "That will be fun." He paused and stopped himself from swaying, slowly lowering down his leg with a wince so that it too rested on the ground. "Need back-up?"

"Need it? Nah," Eddie shook his head. "Want it?" He contemplated, cocking his head to the side and watching Buck from the corner of his eye. "I don't think I'll ever say no to that."

"Hey, you've already seen my childhood trauma dump." Buck said with a sardonic twist of his lips. "Show me yours."

"Oh, you've seen plenty of mine already, Buck."

The silence stretched between them was a comfortable blanket, a weight that settled onto Eddie's lap rather than his shoulders and made a home there long before he recognized what was happening to stop it. Buck was his best friend, but he was more than that. He was… home, a pathetic, corny sort of way. Chris was Eddie's heart, but Buck was Eddie's home. Eddie didn't miss home and mean California or Texas - he missed home and he missed Buck's laugh, his cooking, his stupid facts, and silly little dance he did whenever he saw a butterfly and didn't want it to touch him. "You ready to talk about it?" Eddie asked softly and watched him out of the corner of his eye.

In the distance, like an omen, thunder rumbled, echoing across the night sky.

The kids on the slide yelped and started in a run towards their parents on the bench. No one else hustled to move, though. It had been soft enough they weren't yet concerned.

"I don't know why I keep thinking that… things will be different. I don't know why I asked in the first place."

"You're mad." Eddie told him with a shrug. "It makes sense. With everything…."

"I am mad." Buck agreed.

"That's okay."

"I'm always mad." He shook his head and looked up towards the sky. "I'm really tired of being mad, Eddie."

"So maybe it's time you try being something else." He said after a moment of quiet contemplation.

"I don't know what else I am."

"Hurt." Eddie squished his lips together with a shrug. "I think you're more hurt than you are mad. And, maybe you're a bit of both. But, uhm, if there's anything Chris has taught me, it's that the two of them… like to get a little bit mixed up."

"Chris taught you that?"

"Chris taught me everything." Eddie said with a laugh that Buck echoed, loud and sharp, another rumble of thunder kicking it back to them, a breeze picking up a strand of hair and blowing it across his face. Eddie smiled at him sideways and Buck smiled back, a bit more of his normal self peaking into his expression. "You know I love you too, right?"

His smile turned hesitant. "I…" He looked away. "I know." He agreed in a soft, almost resigned voice.

"Buck," Eddie reached out to tug at the metal on his swing until he looked back up at him, which, considering how stubborn he was, was a bit later. "I need you to hear me, okay?" Buck furrowed his brow but nodded all the same. "I love you."

"I love you too." That was the instant answer, but Eddie could tell, he could tell, that Buck still wasn't allowing himself to listen all the way.

Well, Eddie had always been just as reckless as Buck was, he was just better at hiding it. "Then you won't be mad when I do this, huh?" He tightened the muscle in his arm until he could pull Buck's swing closer.

"Do what?" Buck asked and received an answer in only a matter of moments. It was clear Eddie caught him off guard, a hand on his neck to guide him closer, his fingers brushing over soft light stubble. Eddie kissed him, and startled him, but Buck had always been quick on the uptake and even quicker to grab whatever was given to him and hold onto it tight with both hands. In this case, that something was Eddie's wrist and his shoulder, holding him steady so that neither of them would go falling from the swings and make a fool of themselves in a playground.

Eddie had never really kissed a boy before, unless that time in eigth grade counted, and Buck - as far as Eddie knew - had only ever kissed Tommy (in the case of boys) but Eddie didn't need to kiss a thousand people to know that it was good. That it was better than good. That it felt like the single most natural, nerve wracking thing he had ever done. The bravest thing Eddie had ever done was become a father, and get married, and join the army. It had been to move to Los Angeles, to go to therapy, to join the LAFD. Kissing Buck wasn't brave, falling in love with him wasn't brave either.

It was the most natural thing he had ever done in his life.

--

--

In the end, they didn't make it to the cemetary - Maddie and Chim did, but Buck hadn't noticed the text message come through when they asked. It was his own fault, really, or maybe not his fault at all, because Eddie was distracting when he wanted to be and somehow making out in his childhood bedroom was probably one of the hottest things anyone had ever done with him. He hadn't been paying attention to his phone, and he knew Maddie would give him hell about it later when she figured it all out, and he'd probably be mad about not going to at least pay his respects once he got home but…. He hadn't really known Daniel, and Buck was pretty sure he still didn't really know his mom and would never even get a chance to now.

He didn't go to the cemetary, but later that night, when everyone was asleep, Buck did find himself awake again, Eddie softly snoring next to him, an arm slung around Buck's waist and a small well of drool on his pillow. Buck got up, not because he wanted to, but because he felt like he needed to do it. Needed to walk around his childhood home like a shadow one more time, uninterrupted.

It was always going to be hard to believe, Buck was pretty sure, that Eddie actually said I love you too and meant it the same way Buck did. There wasn't going to be anyone else, not for him, and if there was ever a time when this weird dream ended Buck would deal with the fallout in a… totally healthy and controlled manner. But why worry about the end when things had just begun? Buck shook himself as he walked slowly up the basement stairs, shrugging open the door and stepping into the hallway. He could hear Maddie and Chimney talking in quiet voices - if he wanted to, he could join them and neither of them would be all that upset. He had used to do that with Maddie and Doug when they would stay over, but Buck had been younger then and Doug had minded, even if he rarely said anything around Buck about it. The television was on and it sounded like it was coming from his parents' room, a laugh track echoing off the walls. Buck paused to peek into Christopher's room, and he was sleeping, starfished like Eddie usually did on the bed, a YouTube video about ghost hunting casting his face in shadow.

He turned around and there was his mother.

Or, rather, there was a picture of his mother. She was smiling, three kids surrounding her, Maddie over her shoulder, Evan on her lap, and Daniel sitting at her feet. It must have been a newer addition, or one at least that Buck had never noticed the entire time he had been there because that part of the wall had certainly been empty when Buck had grown up in the house. His breath hitched in his chest and he tugged Christopher's door closed until it clicked, only taking a brief moment to lean back against it and stare into his own face.

Same birth mark, but it wasn't the same smile. Same eyes, but they were looking up at Maddie instead of at his mother. It wasn't at all shocking that Margaret was firmly looking at Daniel, and Maddie was watching over them all, her hand lying loose over baby Evan's little shoulder.

She had always been a good mom.

An even better sister.

A near perfect daughter.

"I don't think it's fair." Buck whispered to Margaret's image like it was her standing at the end of the hallway and not no one at all. "You got to quit every single time, instead of… try to make things better with me." He searched her face, the lines so familiar, but the expression so hopeful and happy and unfamiliar to him. She never looked at him like that. "I know I'm not the son you wanted, but I'm the son you got and I would… I would never make…." He shook his head and swallowed, glancing behind him to make sure that he was still alone and Christopher's door was still closed. When he turned back it was like she was looking right at him, listening for one time in her whole, dead life. "I don't hate you, mom. But I don't… I don't think I'm going to be able to miss you the way I'm supposed to either."

--

--

"You ready to go in?" Eddie gripped the steering wheel tight and stared at his parents house like it was a warzone he was scared to step foot back in. He knew both of his parents had seen him already, the curtains were open and his father's back was to him, in the kitchen but they had turned around when the car had turned down the driveway and Eddie wasn't sure if they weren't coming out to usher them in because they were afraid of what he would do, or if they were pretending to be courtious by letting him have a moment with Chris alone. Which was shocking, since they didn't ever really want Eddie to have any time with Chris alone lately. "We can always just buy you guys new stuff."

"With what money?" Eddie teased tensely back, and Buck snorted with a shake of his head and wry smile.

"I have a credit card that's not maxxed out."

"A single credit card." Eddie whistled. "Chris, we're rich."

Chris laughed, bright and happy in the daylight. Leaving Pennsylvania had been tough, if only because of how not tough it had been. Buck hadn't hugged his father, but he had spent a good twenty minutes hugging Maddie goodbye like they weren't going to be seeing each other in a few days. Chimney had promised to help move Eddie's things back into the house when they got back home, which meant, Eddie was sure, that the entire team would be there when they got home with a welcome party. "I could just do it." Buck offered for the tenth time. "You guys can stay out here."

"No," Eddie denied just as quickly as he had every other time. "Chris, you ready?"

"Been ready, dad."

He sucked in a deep, centering breath. "Okay." He blew it out and pushed open the car door. Buck rounded from the passenger side to stand beside him. "I can do this."

"You can totally do this, Eddie." Buck reassured. "You've done, like, thousands of more difficult things."

"Maybe not thousands."

"Like a billion." Chris countered.

"Come on," Buck rubbed at the space between his shoulders, his palm warm and comfortable. "We're in this together."

"Together."

Like magnets they found each other, fingers making a home in the spaces between and palms pressing tightly. Buck squeezed his hand and his lips brushed a soft kiss against the freckle just under his eye. To their side, Chris grumbled at the display, but the smile betrayed him. "Come on, dad." Chris tugged on his sleeve. "I want to go home already."

Eddie opened his eyes and accepted the warmth that spread across his chest. "Okay." He slowly stepped forward. "Let's get our things and go home."