Chapter Text
The station was too quiet.
Not in the way that was usually welcome – no blaring alarms, no radio calls crackling through static, no controlled chaos of laces hitting tile or turnout coats being pulled on with urgency. That kind of quiet felt earned. This one didn’t. This one stretched too thin over the bones of the building, like skin on something that had already died and didn’t know it yet.
Buck sat at the long table in the loft, fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee that had gone lukewarm at least ten minutes ago. He hadn’t sipped it. Didn’t plan to. He just needed something to hold.
Across from him, Eddie was reading something on his phone, thumb occasionally swapping the screen. Hen was on the couch, feet tucked up under her, talking softly with Karen on the phone. Chim was in the kitchen, humming under his breath as he packed up the leftovers from breakfast that Buck had cooked but barely remembered making.
It all looked normal. It even sounded normal if you didn’t think too hard. But everything was wrong in the way that mattered most.
Bobby wasn’t here.
He hadn’t been for months now.
And no one was pretending anymore.
That was maybe the worst part – no pretending. No stiff smiles or carefully chosen words or long pauses in the conversation when someone said his name. Chim made jokes again. Hen laughed at them sometimes. Eddie cracked smiles that reached his eyes. Ravi didn’t look like he was constantly walking on eggshells anymore. They all had their little tethers, things that kept them moving.
Hen had Karen and Denny and Mara. She went home to a full table, to after school pickups and bedtime stories and the kind of dinners Bobby used to invite them all to. Eddie had Christopher, finally back from El Paso after months of indecision and fear, and Buck watched the way Eddie clung to him – how everything inside Eddie that had been hollow since the Kim Incident had started to refill, grain by grain. Chim had Maddie, and Jee-Yun, and now the new baby, RJ. Robert Nash Buckley-Han , for christ’s sake.
Buck couldn’t say the name out loud.
Not the way Chim could, not with that proud, pained smile and the way he glanced at Buck every time he said it, like he was waiting for the younger to flinch.
Sometimes he did.
Buck’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it at first. The world outside didn’t feel like it wanted anything to do with him lately. Eventually, though, he pulled it out and looked down at the screen.
Maddie:
Hope you have a good shift today. Love you ❤️
He didn’t reply. Not because he didn’t love her back – he did, fiercely – but because her words didn’t land the way they should have. Hope you have a good shift.
It didn’t feel like the day had started yet. It didn’t feel like anything had, let alone his shift .
He thought, briefly, about what he used to do after the coma. After the lightning strike, when things didn’t feel quite tethered to the ground. When the walls around him looked like they were made to be part of some kind of staged production and even the sound of his own breath felt like it was too even to be true. He’d text Bobby back then, every morning like clockwork. Real or not real? he used to send.
And Bobby would always answer, with some variant of Real. You’re here. I’m here.
Until he wasn’t.
So Buck didn’t text him anymore. Not after two weeks of his Real or not real? ’s went unanswered by a Very Dead Bobby.
Now, there was no one to answer. No one who knew how to make it feel solid again.
‘Buck, you gonna eat that?’ Chim’s voice cut through the haze, light and gentle.
Buck looked down. His plate was still full – eggs congealed, toast cold. He didn’t remember it being his. Like someone else had sat down there before him and left it behind. He blinked, then shook his head.
‘You can throw it out.’
‘You sure? You made it.’
He shrugged. ‘Not really hungry.’
Chim hesitated, then gave a small nod and took the plate. He didn’t push. No one did anymore. They’d stopped tiptoeing. Not because they didn’t care, but because they’d each made their peace in their own ways.
Grief did have a timeline afterall, apparently.
Paths, too. And Buck… Buck must’ve taken the wrong trail somewhere and gotten lost.
He stood and wandered toward the engine bay. The air down there was cooler, and he welcomed the slight chill, the way it pricked against his arms even through the long sleeves. The rig stood silent, gleaming red and white under the lights, waiting for a call that hadn’t come.
Waiting, like him.
He leaned against it and closed his eyes.
It was hard to explain, even to himself, what he was still waiting for . It wasn’t for Bobby to come back – Buck wasn’t delusional. He’d been there, on the other side of the glass. He’d been there,down the hall and on the floor as Athena got the chance to say goodbye, his hands shaking, voice going hoarse from screaming he wasn’t able to hold back.
He was gone.
And still… Buck waited.
‘You okay?’ Eddie’s voice, behind him.
Buck opened his eyes but didn’t turn. ‘Yeah.’
‘You’re not.’
Buck breathed in through his nose. ‘Why ask if you’re just gonna ignore my answer?’
There was a long pause. Not angry, not tense. Just quiet.
Eddie stepped up beside him, leaned on the rig too. The two of them, shoulder to shoulder.
‘You wanna go for a run later?’ Eddie asked. ‘After shift?’
Buck tilted his head slightly. ‘Why are you offering?’
‘Because I think it would do you some good, Buck. And you always used to come anyway.’
Buck didn’t say yes. But he didn’t say no either. That was how most things went now – half answers, incomplete agreements, decisions suspended in air.
Eddie didn’t push.
They stood in silence until the alarm sounded – a call, finally. Something to do. Someone to be . And Buck moved before he thought, already reaching for his gear.
It wasn’t a serious call. A potential gas leak in an office building that had turned out to be a false alarm. The building had been evacuated just in case, waited with the evacuees in the parking lot while people in hazmat uniforms handled the rest. A couple of nervous secretaries, one older man in a suit who insisted he needed to keep working. Buck watched Hen talk to him, her calm, practiced tone easing the man’s panic. She had this way of handling people – like Bobby did.
He used to watch Bobby in moments like this. The way he’d step into the middle of chaos and make space for everyone to breathe. The way people listened when he talked, believed him, even if they didn’t see the logic behind what he was saying just yet
Buck stood back now. Didn’t step forward. Didn’t try.
He knew he didn’t have it in him.
Later, back at the station, Chim’s phone buzzed, and Buck saw the way his face lit up. Probably a photo from Maddie. A picture of Jee, or Robert-Nash-Buckley- Fucking -Han.
Buck turned away before he had to hear the name again.
He found a quiet spot in Bobby’s office – now technically Chim’s, though he hadn’t really used it for anything other than official meetings with people outside of the 118 – and sat down on the sofa opposite the desk. His own phone buzzed this time. Another message from Maddie.
Maddie:
RJ smiled today. Like, really smiled. We think it’s because Jee kept singing that dinosaur song to him. You should come see! 😆
Buck stared at the message.
He wanted to go. He wanted to be part of it. He wanted to be there, but something heavy pressed against his chest and wouldn’t let him move. He hovered over the screen.
Then, without thinking, he opened a new message thread. Not to Maddie. Not to Chim. Not to Hen, Ravi, Eddie. Not to anyone who could reply.
Buck:
Real or not real?