all the rays of light

“I thought you were staying with Eddie,” she says. He looks soggy. There’s really no other way to describe it. “Why do you need to live in my apartment?”
“I was,” he says, and she expects him to elaborate on what’s changed, but he doesn’t. It’s not the first time she’s wondered what’s going on there, but she always felt it was none of her business. It isn’t her business. Which is why half of said business should not be standing in her kitchen right now, looking like a gigantic lost puppy.

Buck needs a place to live. Athena has a room.

Notes:

-- make sure to have the Creators Style/work skin enabled!
for context, this fic is written under the assumption that Athena is still living in the apartment we see her & Bobby living in in S8A, which inexplicably vanished into thin air after those episodes but logically still has to exist somewhere off-screen.
small warning before you go in: this fic is set (almost) right after 8x18, with a few of the things from the montage sequence still happening on-screen. because of this, it deals with the grief surrounding Bobby’s death quite a lot, though I will say it’s not overly dark in tone. the entire concept is quite silly and it's definitely written with that in mind!
title from Lorde’s “secrets from a girl (who’s seen it all)” :-) enjoy!

Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s an otherwise unremarkable evening when someone suddenly knocks on Athena’s door.

The sound is so gentle that at first, she thinks she might have imagined it, but then the knock comes again, more confident this time. She goes over all the possible options of who it might be as she pads across the linoleum apartment floor over to the front door– one of her kids? A neighbor, perhaps? – so that by the time she’s removing the chain, she’s fairly sure she won’t be surprised by whoever's on the other side.

But then she still is, because she opens the door to find Evan Buckley.

“Hey,” Buck says. He looks disheveled and more than a little rain-soaked. There's a gray duffel bag slung over one wet shoulder. “I know this is kind of strange, but would it be okay if I stayed here a couple of days?”

“Absolutely not,” Athena says.

⋆★⋆

Despite herself, she invites Buck in. He tracks water and mud all over her hallway and it’s starting to feel like a worse idea with every passing second, but since the man has clearly lost his mind, it seemed like the courteous thing to do. Protect and serve, and all that.

“I thought you were staying with Eddie,” Athena says to him. He looks soggy. There’s really no other way to describe it. “Why do you need to live in my apartment?”

“I was,” Buck says, and she expects him to elaborate on what’s changed, but he doesn’t. It’s not the first time she’s wondered what’s going on there, but she always felt it was none of her business. It isn’t her business. Which is why half of said business should not be standing in her kitchen right now, looking like a gigantic lost puppy.

“I’m still waiting for the part where you explain why you’ve suddenly become my problem.”

He has the dignity to look somewhat bashful, an expression that looks almost uncanny on a man his size. Then he starts rambling like a madman, and all maternal affection she feels for him disappears like snow under the spring sun. “Right, well, obviously I’d go to Maddie first, but as you know, she and Chim have a newborn. I can’t do that to them. And, well, Ravi isn’t an option because– because he doesn’t like how much I talk about– because he doesn’t like how much I talk. And Hen I could maybe convince, probably, but Karen’s just too sensible–”

“And I’m not?”

“Come on, Athena, please. I know you’ve got the space, and it would just be temporary. I won’t be in your way, I promise.”

She’s already rolling her eyes, when he throws in the most compelling argument she’s heard so far. “Okay, here’s an idea. Let me cook you dinner. And you can decide afterwards.”

She stares at him, into those too-hopeful eyes, then throws up her hands. “Fine.”

She really wished he didn’t look so excited.

⋆★⋆

Unfortunately for Athena, dinner is incredible.

She didn’t even know the sparse ingredients in her kitchen could turn into this , an incredible creamy fettuccine dish. Cooking had mostly been Bobby’s thing. She knows how to cook, of course, cook exceptionally well, even– but since Bobby had a true passion for it, he was typically the one to make their dinners every night. She really enjoyed the evenings where their shifts aligned and they got the opportunity to cook together, but she can’t say she ever minded the days she came home from work to a mouth-watering smell already wafting through their house.

So it’s not that she doesn’t know how to cook, but she did get a little bit used to it being Bobby’s thing, maybe. And now, with no husband or kids to feed, it doesn't really matter much what she puts on the table. All of this to say, the past few weeks have consisted mostly of TV dinners.

She twirls some of the fettuccine around her fork, the finely cut vegetables tangled up in the small nest of pasta. It’s the nicest meal she’s had since the funeral, she thinks. Maybe it was a calculated move on Buck’s part, cooking what she knew was one of her late husband’s dishes in her kitchen in an effort to make her change her mind.

She looks up at him, his head ducked, clearly ruminating on something while shoving his food around his plate like it has personally offended him. She doesn’t think he’s the calculating type.

“Did your mom never teach you not to play with your food?” She asks, mostly as a way to break the awkward silence. He was amicable enough while he was preparing the dish, but halfway through, he’d suddenly grown quiet in a way she didn't associate with Buck.

“Uh, no, she didn't really like me,” he says, still absentmindedly assaulting the pasta with his fork.

“Ah.”

Another uncomfortable silence.

“Food’s good,” she tries again, a few bites of pasta later.

“Bobby’s recipe,” Buck admits.

“I know.”

Buck’s shoulders hunch. He looks up at her again, jaw clenched like her husband’s name alone is enough to bring him to the brink of tears. She knows that look. She sees it a lot lately, mostly in bathroom mirrors when she’s trying to collect herself.

Strangely, at that moment, she feels thoroughly seen by this peculiar man her husband loved like a son. Because while everyone else who was there that day has a stable partner to lean on, or whoever it was Ravi had called, Buck and Athena have both been spinning out, no one to close their arms around them and keep them from going completely off the rails. On top of that, they were the only ones who had been separated from Bobby by a pane of glass, forever left wondering if things would have been different if they had been on the other side of it.

She can’t gauge if that’s the reason he’s here tonight. But she knows she hates the absence of footsteps around the home, no kids or husband around for the first time in over two decades, and she knows she really hates eating TV dinners.

Before she can change her mind, she invites Buck to stay.

She wonders when she’s going to regret it as soon as the words have left her mouth.

⋆★⋆

She sets Buck up in the guest room. The fact that he'd only brought a duffel bag assures her that he won’t be staying too long, if all his belongings are still at Eddie’s place. The room is not big, but there’s a bed (it’s a trundle, actually, so both of her kids can sleep here when needed), a nightstand with a lamp, and a dresser with three heavy drawers.

The room typically belongs to Harry, but he hasn’t slept here for weeks now. He left behind a few very teenage belongings: some comic books, a soccer ball, a lone sock, but not much else: most of Harry’s belongings were either with Michael, or had burned to a crisp. Anyone hoping to find a reflection of his personality the way you usually would in someone’s bedroom would be sorely disappointed.

Buck sets his duffel down next to the dresser, and inspects the comic book Harry left on top of it. “You know, I was always more of a Spider-Man guy myself.”

“See it as an opportunity to broaden your horizons. Explore the wide spectrum of English literature.”

Buck smiles at her. “You know what, I just might.” He puts down the issue of Superman. “Thanks again. You sure Harry won’t mind? This is his room, I assume?”

“It was,” Athena confirms. “Or is, I suppose. But he’s been staying with May for a little while now. Just for fun,” she adds, so he doesn’t get the wrong impression about what kind of mother she is.

Prior to Bobby’s death, he had temporarily moved in with May to ‘get used to the idea of moving out’, which Athena knew was just code for wanting to reap all the benefits of the college experience while not having any of the obligations. Athena tried to shut down the idea immediately, of course, but Bobby had convinced her it could be genuinely good for Harry, and that it expressed a level of trust in her kids, something they would appreciate going into adulthood.

(Most of all, though, it was about cultivating their sibling relationship, even if Bobby would never admit to that. He was not going to let Athena do anything to prevent May and Harry from becoming as close as they could possibly be.)

So, to her own surprise, she found herself agreeing to it– though only after checking May’s calendar thoroughly and making sure Harry would not distract her from finals or other important deadlines. She checked in with them constantly at first, and Harry stayed with Bobby and Athena on the weekends for a number of reasons: to simply enjoy each other’s company, to keep him away from any alcohol-fueled college parties, but most of all so Athena could make sure he was diligently keeping up with his online classes. He was still enrolled in the high school he had transferred to when he moved in with Michael and David, and he’d decided that taking part in their online curriculum was easier than switching back once again to the school he had been attending in LA.

And then Bobby died, and, well, nothing was ever the same.

Both her children had stayed with her after his death and around the funeral, and after that their schedule had become a little inconsistent. She still saw them regularly, but it was mostly just dinners now.

She didn’t think Harry was ever supposed to stay this long, but if May didn’t mind, and this was something that made him happy in the middle of this complete nightmare– well. It was fine, of course. At least with Harry, she knew she could still talk to him whenever she wanted. She couldn’t say the same for the other most important man in her life.

“That’s really cool,” Buck says, maybe just to assure her he doesn’t think she’s an absent mother, something she’s very recently learned is a sore topic. She could probably easily figure out the details there, if she cared enough.

“Yes,” she agrees. “I’m really glad they get along so well. To me, it just seems like they’re always pulling each other’s hair, but I’ve been told that’s a normal display of sibling love.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’re an only child,” Buck says, like it’s the most interesting fact in the world. “That’s quite rare, actually, only about twenty percent of the US population doesn't have a sibling.”

Athena hums, a little unsure what to do with this information. “Is that so.”

“Yeah,” he says. “You know, it's hard to express what it’s like, having a sibling. Maddie and I, we’re– well, we’re not the most typical siblings, I don’t think. But the way I love her is like– I don’t know, I don’t think it’s something you can really fully understand if you don’t have a sister yourself.”

Athena nods. “I get that,” she says, and she means it. “Kind of like how you don’t know what it’s like to have kids. Or a husband.”

Buck’s smile falters ever so slightly. "Y–yeah. Exactly.”

Sensitive topic, apparently, though she's not sure why.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Athena says, feeling like it’s probably best to leave the conversation right here. “Get settled. Let me know if you need anything.”

“I will,” Buck says. “Thanks, Athena.”

With a nod, she closes the door behind him.

⋆★⋆

She doesn’t see much of Buck after that, even though he has the next 24 hours off, because he was still in bed by the time she left for work. She’s not going to judge the strange hours he keeps; she’s very familiar with how the chaotic nights at the firehouse make it nearly impossible to get anything resembling a sleeping pattern in.

Between waking up to what felt like an empty apartment and being tasked with a particularly puzzling case at work (who knew some people felt so passionately about lawn ornaments?) she’d almost forgotten about Buck entirely. It’s only when she gets back in her car, garden gnome thieves safely handcuffed in the back of her colleague’s patrol car, that she’s reminded of his existence. When she grabs her phone, the lock screen is filled with a series of texts.

Evan Buckley: Hi I saw the kids were coming over for dinner tonight; On the calendar; I could cook if you want to? Dont have much else to do anyway; Also I took out the trash and watered the plants the ones on the windowsill were not doing well

She wonders if she should tell him she’s perfectly capable of handling dinner and her plants herself. She’s used to doing her own groceries and cooking (well, reheating) her own meals, and, okay, she forgot about the plants, but she would’ve noticed their sad state soon enough.

But frankly, her hands hurt from having to wrench a gnome from a woman’s iron grip, and she’s already exhausted even though it’s barely noon, so she decides against telling him to stop overcompensating. The entire situation is ridiculous enough anyway, so she might as well indulge in Buck’s weird-ass urge to be her butler.

She answers his texts quickly, efficiently, and comprehensively:

You: 👍
Evan Buckley: Cool See you tonight 😊

⋆★⋆

May and Harry arrive only thirty minutes later than they said they would, which is quite an improvement from last time, so Athena resists the urge to berate them for being late at all. Instead, she merely greets them with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Maybe she’s imagining it, but it feels like they’ve both started hugging her a little tighter, lately.

“Smells nice in here, mom,” May says, referring to the fragrance of herbs floating in from the kitchen. She's not entirely sure what Buck is making, actually. He had picked up a few ingredients on the way home from an apartment showing, and was already hard at work by the time she got home herself.

“Sorry we’re late,” May says. “Harry doesn’t know how to use Google Maps.” She casts a sideways glance at her brother.

“I use Apple Maps,” Harry shoots back. “And I wouldn’t have to figure it out if you were smart enough to remember how to drive to Mom’s place, which you’ve done like a million times by now.”

“There’s been construction!” May protests, absentmindedly dropping her purse on a nearby chair, her car keys still in her hand. Her pink keychain bounces around as she gestures with her hand. “It’s kind of impossible to remember if it changes literally every single time I– who are you? ”

Buck waves, a little self-consciously, from where he's quietly emerged from the kitchen, a tea towel thrown over his shoulder. “I’m Buck,” Buck says.

“I know that,” May says. “I meant more like, what are you doing here. At my family dinner.” She doesn’t make it sound much like a question.

“Uh,” he says, looking at Athena for help. “I thought they knew.”

Okay, so maybe she had not yet told her kids about their roommate situation. But only because she had not quite figured out a way to explain it without sounding insane. Which she would, eventually, because it is not insane, and neither is she.

“Well, now they do,” Athena says, noncommittal, and starts digging through a nearby drawer for napkins. She’s sure she put them in here somewhere.

She can feel May and Harry’s eyes trace her movements, but she ignores them.

Harry looks between his mom and Buck. “So… Uh, what are you doing here?”

May still looks puzzled, the same face she’d pull when she was doing homework as a kid, stumped by a particularly difficult math problem or something of the like. Then her face drops in horror. “Oh, mom don’t tell me–” she cuts herself off, shaking her head wide-eyed like she can’t even say it out loud.

Athena stops searching the drawer, waiting for May to elaborate. “Don’t tell you what?”

“Ohhh,” Harry says, like he finally gets it, and his face promptly twists like he’s smelled something rotten. “God, mom, I know it’s been rough since– but like, him? No offense,” he quickly adds, shooting Buck an apologetic look. Buck doesn’t really react to what Athena assumes must have been an insult if it was so quickly followed by an apology. It’s probably because he can follow this conversation about as well as Athena can.

May attempts to collect herself. “I mean, uh, I guess we just want you to be happy, of course, but–”

“It’s just a shock,” Harry adds.

“Yes,” May nods. “Yes. A shock.” She’s still nodding. She looks like a bobblehead.

“It’s just fast–”

“And he’s– well, he’s Buck.”

“I’m so confused,” Buck whispers.

“You and me both,” Athena says. “Yes, Buck is my roommate. I get that it’s odd, but surely it’s not entirely reprehensible?”

May finally stops nodding. Her mouth falls open a little bit instead, and her and Harry breathe twin sighs of relief, the poorly-concealed concern immediately falling from their faces.

“Oh!” she says, then laughs, and Harry does the same, releasing a long Ohhhhhhh instead. “Yeah, that’s– yeah. Uh? Hm,” he mumbles, and Athena is pretty sure she can hear May mutter an ohthankgod somewhere in there, too.

Athena raises an inquisitive eyebrow at them.

“Okay, that's…” May blinks twice. “Still weird, actually, but whatever. Explain it over dinner, I’m starving.”

“I’m not,” Harry says. “I just experienced the worst nausea of my life. I’m going to need like, five minutes for it to settle.”

“Uh, well, not that I get what’s going on,” Buck says, “but the casserole is still in the oven, so we’ve got some time until it’s ready. Athena told me to assume you’d be late.”

It finally clicks for Athena. The realization hits her like a semi truck. “Wait. You didn’t think me and him –” Her face twists in horror.

She looks at Buck, who at that moment also realizes what her kids have been implying.

To Buck’s credit, he’s considerate enough to mainly just look baffled, his mouth opening and closing like a fish while he desperately tries to get it to form the right words. “Wh– I– that’s not –”

“Wouldn’t be your first white firefighter boyfriend,” Harry points out.

Athena gasps. “He’s– he’s–” she stutters, trying not to sound hysterical. “Look at him!” She eventually settles on, gesturing towards Buck like that’s enough of an explanation. Buck stands helplessly in the archway, one of Athena’s floral aprons tied around his waist. “I could be his mother,” she adds, to make her outburst slightly less insulting for Buck. Judging by the look on his face, it’s probably too late for that.

“Yeah, and that’s his type,” May says.

Buck flushes. “Wh– what? Who told you that?”

“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Harry says lightly, like it’s a fun fact, and starts listing people on his fingers. “Geriatric dispatch lady, geriatric helicopter guy…”

“That’s two! Two isn’t a type!” Buck protests.

“You can draw a line through two points,” May counters, a smile at her lips, Harry snickering behind her.

Athena sighs. “Buck, I think you need to check on your casserole. And Harry, I know you didn’t just call me geriatric.” Harry throws up his hands in self-defense.

Buck nods, grateful for the exit. “Y-yeah, I’ll, uh, do that.”

When he turns away, she tries her best to give her kids a berating stare. Instead, she finds it impossible to do anything except mirror her children’s smiles.

“Go set the table.”

Dinner passes easily, though it's admittedly a little weird with Buck there. But the food is good, and Athena is glad to catch up with her kids. May talks about her upcoming presentation (she's anxious, but she knows she will ace it anyway), Harry about online high school (more difficult than real high school, because they actually check all of your work). Buck and Athena share some stories of their own, Athena of her garden gnome incident (perplexing) and Buck of this morning’s apartment viewing (horrific).

It reminds Athena that she's supposed to be selling the house, and the thought fills her with, not for the first time, an odd discomfort. She doesn’t dwell on it, though, and barely thinks of it for the rest of the evening. The feeling will have passed by tomorrow's open house, anyway.

⋆★⋆

She cancels the open house.

Her real estate agent doesn’t appreciate it, and tries calling her repeatedly. She ignores the calls, because she’s at work, and then she ignores them when she gets home, too, because she feels like ignoring them. She’s paying him too much money to not sell her house, anyway. He’ll live.

Buck has one of his 24-hour shifts, so her apartment is quiet again, every little sound bouncing off the walls and floors and returning twice as loud. She shrugs off her uniform in the bedroom, switching into her sweats, then turns on the lamps one by one on her way to the kitchen. The thought of cooking herself a meal crosses her mind, but then she remembers there’s still some of last night’s leftovers in the fridge. Athena reheats them in the oven, not the microwave, because she’s not an animal, and then eats them at her dinner table in silence.

The apartment is tiny compared to her house, but it still feels too big, the floors too cold no matter how high she turns up the thermostat.

She decides to call Michael, as she has most days since Bobby’s passing. They talk about Harry’s homework and David’s job and the weather and a lot of things that aren’t grief, but it’s hard not to think about it, when he’s the only husband out of three whose voice she can still hear whenever she wants to, but somehow that still doesn’t mean she didn’t lose him, too.

Afterward, she crawls into an empty bed, and cries until she falls asleep.

⋆★⋆

The next evening is one she’s been looking forward to.

She’s got everything set up perfectly, as she always does: she’s on the couch, pillows arranged to perfection for maximum comfort. She’s in her softest clothes, the fluffy socks May got her as a Mother’s Day gift on her feet where they’re propped up, well-deserved after a long day of work. In her right hand, there’s a glass of white wine, in her left, her phone with Twitter already open.

Yes, the most beautiful day of the week has finally come: a new episode of her favorite show is airing.

Somewhere behind her, she notices Buck emerging from the guest room, his footsteps heavy on the linoleum floor. She pays no attention to it, too engrossed in the story to pay it any mind. Then he starts hovering behind her, and it becomes a little harder to ignore, but she doesn’t comment on it.

“What are we watching?” Buck asks eventually, leaning on the back of the couch.

“My show,” Athena says, as politely as she can, though she doesn’t make an effort to look back at him. “It’s called Gone Bad . We’re on season two, episode six, though, so you’ve missed quite a bit.”

“Oh, right,” Buck says. “I think I've heard of that before.”

She expects him to take a hint and leave her to her favorite ritual of live-tweeting the entire ordeal while drinking a pleasant amount of wine, but instead, he sits down next to her. “Oh, okay,” she mumbles, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Not for the first time, Buck reminds her of one of those massive hounds that is somehow convinced they’re a lapdog. Athena is allergic to dogs.

She quickly taps out a reply to a particularly good take she sees on her timeline, and then she puts her phone away, directing her full attention back to the screen.

Athena prepares herself to answer a million questions, because Buck seems like the type to fall asleep during a movie and then ask her who the main character is, but she’s pleasantly surprised to find he watches it mostly in silence with her.

“She’s a housewife, but she’s got herself wrapped up in organized crime by accident,” she explains eventually. “The other two women are her sister and her friend, and they’re trying to get out, but she, the redhead, she’s actually really good at it.”

“So she’s trying to keep them involved in it, while the other two want out,” Buck infers.

Athena nods. “Exactly.” They watch as the red-haired woman strikes a deal with the gang leader. Then, in the next scene, she explains it to her sister like she had no choice in the matter.

“Why doesn’t she just let her sister and friend get out, and stay in the criminal circuit herself?” Buck asks.

“Because she can’t admit to herself that that’s what she actually wants,” Athena says, remembering a particularly good Twitter thread she saw on the subject. “It’s so far from who she thinks she should be, that she keeps making these excuses for herself for why she supposedly has to keep getting them all involved in it. She’s awful,” Athena says with a laugh, “but I can’t lie, she’s my favorite because of it.”

“Okay, well, that seems a little unfair to the people around her,” Buck huffs, and it’s… unexpected. Really, she doesn’t know Buck like that, but he never stuck Athena as the judgmental type. It’s a trait that doesn’t go well with being a first responder.

“It is,” Athena shrugs. “But she’s struggling too. She’s trapped in this awful marriage with an awful husband, constantly underestimated and overlooked. And now, she finally found something she’s good at, and she’s kind of addicted to it, even though it’s hurting everyone she cares about. She’s doing it out of emotion, not out of rationale.”

Buck contemplates that. They watch in silence again.

“Do you think they should forgive her?” he asks, eventually, after they’ve cut to commercial.

Athena turns to him. She doesn’t think this is about the show. “I think that if she talked to them, they could understand where she was coming from. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that she's unwillingly involved them in several federal crimes.”

“Right,” Buck says. “So… No?”

“Well, I don’t think it’s so black-and-white. Just looking at the facts, you’d probably say they should hate her. But her sister and friend have such a deep love for one another, that even if they find out, they might still rather want to figure something out that works for all of them.”

Buck nods. “But she’s too caught up in herself to see that, and now she’s just making everything worse,” he says, rather irritatedly, and Athena thinks to herself, oh, this is definitely not about my TV show.

“Essentially, yes,” Athena says. “You know, since you’re so interested, all the other episodes are on Netflix. Maybe you should watch it, and see what you think then.” She mostly says it to tease him, but to her surprise, Buck agrees. “Yeah, I might. Kinda reminds me of the telenovelas I’d watch with Eddie and Chris. Just completely… Wild.”

“ Wild is right,” Athena says, and she genuinely feels a little bit giddy, as she always does when she gets to talk about her current TV obsession. “I mean, every episode is just a ride . I’m telling you, I’ve watched a lot of TV in my time, but none of it hits quite like Gone Bad . You know, there was an episode where– well, I shouldn’t spoil anything, you should just watch it from the start.”

“I’ll just finish this episode with you first,” Buck says. “That okay?”

“Only if you get me another glass of wine,” she says, offering him her empty glass. He takes it, and for the first time, she’s genuinely happy to have him around. “Use the reusable ice cubes!” She calls after him, when he’s already halfway out the room. “I don’t want my wine to be watered down!”

Buck gives her a thumbs up, and disappears into the kitchen. She leans back against the couch, and allows herself to laugh, just for a few seconds, at the bizarreness of her life. Sometimes life gives you lemons. She knows that. But this? This is a lime. Or a grapefruit. Or a strawberry. Or broccoli. And she tried to make lemonade, but when you try to make lemonade with broccoli, it apparently turns into a thirty-three year old bachelor in her kitchen putting a little plastic ice cube in her wine.

She tries to imagine what Bobby would say, if he heard of this. He would find it ridiculous, of course. And more than a little bit funny. He would make one of those sarcastic jokes about it, for sure, just to see the look on her face. She smiles to herself as she imagines his reaction.

Finally, Buck emerges from the kitchen, two wine glasses in hand. He sets one down on the coffee table in front of Athena, and keeps the other one himself.

Athena tucks her feet under her body, and they watch the rest of the episode.

⋆★⋆

The next day, she meets Hen for lunch. It’s a nice spot downtown, where the waitstaff is friendly and the menu is so excellent she always takes ten minutes to decide what she wants. She and Hen aren’t regulars, exactly, but they’ve been here often enough she has a favorite spot, a table in the back of the restaurant where she swears the chairs are just a little bit softer. They managed to snatch it today, and it’s setting up to be a perfect afternoon, or as perfect as they can be, these days. The food is good, the conversation is light, and the chairs are just so, so soft. Hen avoids the topic of the house, which Athena is grateful for. She’s no longer sure how she feels about selling it, and she doesn’t feel like interrogating that feeling either.

When Hen goes to the bathroom, Athena looks at her phone for the first time in a while. There are several texts from Buck. It strikes her as odd enough that she stops to read them, operating under the assumption that if he’s texting her when they constantly see each other at home, it must be something urgent.

This, she is wrong about, of course.

Evan Buckley: It is okay if I use your Netflix? I want to watch Gone bad; Well ive been watching it all morning but I kinda feel weird about still using eddies account; OK if not
You: It’s fine, just make your own profile so it doesn’t mess up my suggestions.
Evan Buckley: Thank you i will
You: Did you watch episode 5 yet?
Evan Buckley: I did!!!; Athena it was crazy why would she kiss him!!!
You: I mean, have you seen him?
Evan Buckley: It was a rhetorical question that man is so fine; I can’t lie I would also risk it all
You: That’s what I’m saying!; We need to get you a Twitter account when you’re caught up. You would do numbers with my oomfs.
Evan Buckley: Not sure what an oomf is but I’m down

When she looks up from her phone screen, Hen has returned. A waitress stops by and serves them the coffee they'd ordered. Something about her reminds Athena of May, not in appearance, but in demeanor. She makes a mental note to call her daughter tonight.

Athena thanks the waitress for her coffee, and takes a bite of her complimentary cookie. “I love these,” Athena says, savoring the taste. It’s lemon flavored, tangy and sweet all at once.

“They should let us order them in bulk,” Hen agrees.

“Oh, I’d be this restaurant's number one sponsor,” Athena chuckles. She inspects the half she hasn’t yet eaten, and wonders if she took it home, Buck would be able to figure out the recipe. Maybe another time, she thinks, as she pops it in her mouth.

The next few moments pass in comfortable silence, the one that comes with years-long friendship. The chatter of the other guests is a pleasant white noise while she and Hen stir creamer into their coffee.

“Hey, so, ‘Thena, I just wanted to, uh, check in with you, I guess,” Hen says eventually.

Athena raises her eyebrows. “Check in with me how?”

“Just like… Are you okay?” Her tone is sincere, but not overtly cautious in the way most people have been talking to her over the past few weeks. Like she's a scared animal that needs to be coaxed out of hiding, instead of a perfectly intelligent grown woman.

“Am I okay,” Athena echoes. Her cup of coffee, which was on its way to her mouth, hangs suspended in midair. It’s not an unusual question. She’s heard it more in the last few weeks than she has in the entire rest of her life, she’s pretty sure, but it’s unexpected coming from Hen, who usually just confronts her head-on with whatever’s on her mind.

“Yeah, I mean, you know. No one expects you to be fine so soon. And it would be okay if you're still struggling.”

Athena stares at her. Hen’s face is suspiciously innocent behind her big glasses. Her cup of coffee sits untouched between them.

“Right,” Athena says. “I don't think anyone said it wouldn't be.”

“Yes,” Hen nods, “I mean no,” she shakes her head. “No one said that. So if something was wrong, you know you could talk about it.”

Athena keeps staring. Hen just smiles kindly at her, too strained to be natural.

Then it clicks. “This is about Buck being my roommate.”

“It's not… Not about Buck being your roommate?” Hen tries.

Athena leans back in her chair. “You think I've lost my damn mind!”

“Okay, going forward, I would like us both to remember that it was you who said that,” Hen says, placing both of her hands on the table. “Not me.”

“Hen, I am fine ,” Athena says, exasperated. She puts down her cup a little too forcefully. A few drops of coffee make their way onto the white tablecloth, blooming like two brown flowers as they sink into the fabric.

“Are you fine, or is Buck your roommate? Because I'm hearing two conflicting statements,” Hen says, and she finally sounds normal again, teasing her in the way she’s used to. For her personal comfort, Athena tells herself Hen is laughing with her, not at her.

Athena glares at Hen.

“Wh– don’t look at me like that!” Hen says. “Just tell me the perfectly logical explanation for why you’re living together, and I’ll let it go.” She picks up her cup of coffee, and takes a sip.

“He needed a place to live, and I had space,” Athena shrugs. “Simple as that.”

Hen sends her a pointed look from behind the rim of her cup. It leaves the impression she doesn’t think it’s as simple as that. “I’m seriously supposed to believe that?”

“Well, yes,” Athena says. “Because that’s all there is to it.” She figures that if she says it with enough confidence, she will eventually start to believe it herself. She decides to add another sugar to her coffee, just so she has an excuse to stir it, the metal of the spoon making an inharmonious clinking noise against the ceramic.

“Buck, who we all know, that Buck, who once stole a fire engine to have sex in–” “I’ve been told that was many years ago–” “ That Buck is currently living in your actual apartment. Where you also live,” Hen adds, just for clarity.

“Correct,” Athena says coolly. She stops stirring. “He cooks, he does the dishes, and he doesn’t disrupt my life, so it’s all fine by me. He’s apartment hunting anyway, with any luck he will be gone by the weekend.”

“God, when you put it like that, it just sounds like you’ve got yourself a free live-in chef,” Hen says.

Athena motions with her hand as if to say, there you go . “It’s really not that crazy,” she says.

Hen nods, though she doesn’t seem fully convinced. “So… Where’s he sleeping?” She asks, her voice a little careful.

A chill runs down Athena’s spine. “Henrietta,” she says. “Please don’t tell me you’ve been operating under the assumption that he’s been sleeping in my bed.”

“It’s that or your underage son’s bed,” Hen points out.

“Well, when you put it like that!”

Hen laughs. “Sorry! Sorry. I’m just teasing. I know you’d sooner make him sleep on the floor. So, the guest room?”

“Yes,” Athena confirms. “It’s empty anyway.”

Hen nods. “So… Harry’s still not coming home yet, then?” She asks. There’s a note in her voice Athena can’t quite identify.

“He doesn’t want to come home,” Athena simply says.

“Athena,” Hen sounds incredulous. “He’s your son. You can just tell him to come home.”

“I’m letting him have his freedom, which he asked for,” Athena says, a little defensively. She’s not sure why her parenting is being criticized, all of a sudden.

Hen’s mouth opens, then closes, like her mouth and her thoughts are in disagreement on what she should say. A second later, she finds the words, but they still sound unsure. “Is that… Really what this is about?” Athena blankly stares at her, because she genuinely has no idea what she’s getting at.
“What else would it be about?”

Hen looks at her, brown eyes calculating behind her glasses, like she’s internally debating whether she should speak her mind or keep the peace. Athena sends her a skeptical look, waiting for Hen to challenge her, though she’s not sure why she wants her to. To stop feeling like everyone’s walking on eggshells around her, maybe.

Instead, Hen drops it. “Nevermind,” she says. “It’s nothing.”

“Hmm.” It’s obviously not nothing.

For a beat, they just stare at each other through the steam of their coffee. Hen first breaks the eye contact, then the silence.

“So…’” Hen sighs. “Wait, did I tell you about Mara yet?”

Hen knows damn well she didn’t tell her about whatever is going on with Mara. But, fine. She’ll bite.

“What about Mara?” Athena asks, sounding as sincere as she can.

“Well,” Hen says, her tone excited. “We’re almost ready to officially adopt her.”

“What?” Athena gasps, and damn it, she wants to be mad at Hen for using this news so efficiently to dissolve the tension, but she can’t be. She’s just too delighted. “That is incredible! Do you have a date yet?”

“Next Wednesday,” Hen says, unable to keep herself from breaking into a face-splitting grin. “Not even a full week from now. You know, Mara’s just buzzing. She’s barely been able to sleep.”

“I bet,” Athena says. “Congrats. I’m so happy for you. You must be thrilled.”

“Well– yeah,” Hen says, her voice pitching up a little with uncertainty. She nods her head sideways. “But also just… Scared, you know. We’ve gone through so much with these kids. It’s like I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to barge in and tell me it’s not happening. I mean, I don’t think I’ll fully be able to let myself believe it until we’ve actually signed the documents.”

“I understand that,” Athena says. “Lord knows your family has endured far too much. But do you really think that’s the kind of parent Mara needs right now? An uncertain one?”

“No,” Hen sighs. “Of course, I’d rather be jumping with joy alongside her, and I’m trying her best to convince her that I am. I don’t think she’s noticed yet, at least. And I’m really glad she’s not feeling that same anxiety, but it’s been keeping me up, both the being scared and having to act like I’m not.” She picks at her nails. “You know, Karen and I have been thinking of throwing her a party to celebrate, but I’m too scared we’ll just have to call it off.”

Athena wraps both hands around her cup. It’s pleasantly warm against her cold hands. “So you’d rather not celebrate this at all?”

“I just don’t want to disappoint her. She’s had such a rough life already. I don’t want to… Throw all that in her face, even if it’s by accident.”

“You think she will be disappointed by a party?” Athena laughs. She sets down her cup, and puts her hand over Hen’s on the table. “Listen to me. Just do it. And if something goes wrong, which it won’t ,” she says, giving Hen’s hand a little squeeze for emphasis, “you’re still throwing a little girl a party to let her know how much you love her, and how badly you want her to be a part of your family.” She lets go of her hand and leans back in her chair. “If that’s the worst case scenario, I think you’ll be fine.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Hen says, with a smile. She exhales, and her shoulders sink with relief. “Thanks, Athena.”

“Let me know if you need my private chef to prepare you anything,” she says.

Hen laughs, the sound as familiar to Athena as her own voice. “I will. Does he really just cook whatever you say?”

“I mean, probably? I haven’t really given him any requests yet, but on the first day, he also took out the trash and watered my plants. And now he’s even watching Gone Bad .”

Hen’s mouth falls open. “Oh my God ,” she says.

“I don’t even know,” Athena laughs. “I mean–” she starts, but she’s laughing too hard to get any more words out. And Hen is laughing with her, just at the ridiculousness of the entire situation, the concept of Buck being her roommate. Maybe cackling is a better description for the sound they’re making, hysterical and loud, and it goes on and on until she’s wheezing “wait, wait, I can’t, I had two babies–” which only makes Hen laugh even harder. There are tears streaming down both their faces, the first good ones in weeks.

She never ends up finishing her sentence.

⋆★⋆

That night, Athena wakes, as she often does, with a gasp and a jolt. The images from her dream are still crystal clear in her mind: a weird combination of a lab and a cruise ship, at both day and night, paradoxical as only dreams can be. Bobby was there, of course, dying, as he often was in her dreams.

(Not always, though. Sometimes he was alive, and those dreams were worse to wake up from than the nightmares.)

Strangest of all, perhaps, she remembers a cake being there, the smell so strong in her dreams it lingers now even as she's woken up.

Wait, no. She's not dreaming. Her apartment actually smells of cake.

She curses Evan Buckley’s name as she slips on her dressing gown and slippers, wondering, not for the first time this week, what exactly is wrong with him. Firefighters usually have mandatory counselling sessions; surely someone has figured it out by now.

She opens her bedroom door, and pads down the hall towards the glow at the end of it. The kitchen lights are turned on, and sure enough, there Buck stands, dressed in what she knows are his night clothes and her floral apron.

Buck is– she wants to say zesting lemons, but that word implies a certain gentleness and care in his approach. This looks more like citrus assault.

“What did those lemons ever do to you?” Athena asks.

Buck’s head whips up, noticing her for the first time. “Did I wake you?” He asks, giving his lemon victims a moment's relief.

“No” she says truthfully. “I had a– a dream.” Buck clearly doesn’t believe her, though, because his guilty expression doesn’t change. For some reason she doesn’t fully understand, she decides to take pity on him, and adds: “Though I will say there was a cake in it.”

“Okay,” Buck says, though she doesn’t think he believes her. She’s not entirely sure why he’s under the impression she would lie to make him feel better.

Buck didn’t turn on all the lights, just one of the sconces on the wall, so half of the room is cast in darkness, the other half primarily lit by the warm lamp of the oven. She peers inside of it, inspecting its contents. Sure enough, a half-baked cake is in the middle, the source of the aroma of warm spices currently wafting through the apartment.

“Carrot cake,” Buck explains. “I’m still working on the icing. It's nice with a little zest in it.”

Athena hums approvingly. For what it's worth, it does smell amazing.

“Do you usually do your baking at” – she glances at the clock – “3AM? I mean, does the moonlight have a certain effect on the batter that I'm unaware of?”

Buck huffs out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh. “Uh, no, not usually at night, just when I need a distraction,” he admits. “Which is sometimes at night. It doesn't usually wake anyone, though. I wouldn't have done it if I knew it would disturb your sleep, I promise,” he says.

“You didn't,” she repeats, then sticks a finger in his half-finished bowl of icing. “Oh, that's nice ,” she says, when she tastes the perfect combination of tangy and sweet. The compliment earns her a grin from Buck.

“Right!” he says. “The trick is getting the ratio of water and lemon juice just right.”

“It’s really good. I need to remember that.”

“I can send you the recipe,” Buck says.

“Does it also work during the day?” Athena asks, which Buck answers with a good-natured eye roll.

“So,” she says, casually leaning against the kitchen island. “What's going on with you and Eddie?”

Buck stops dead in his tracks, the lemon and zester coming to a standstill. If she wasn't completely certain it was about his friend just yet, Buck confirms it by going bright red. The color of his birthmark deepens with it, something she’s only recently noticed happens anytime he blushes. It's funny how you can still learn new things about people after knowing then for years.

“What makes you think this is about Eddie?” Buck says, carefully laying down the zester like it’s a weapon he doesn’t trust himself with.

“Hmm, let’s see,” Athena says, and starts listing things. “You show up at my front door, asking if you can live with me, with no real explanation for why you can't live with Eddie anymore. I know it's not the fact that he only has two bedrooms, because you lived on that man’s couch for months. He also hasn't shown his face here even once, even though you two are typically attached at the hip. It could be that you're only inviting him over when I'm not home, but you've been so polite and careful not to overstep that that seems unlikely to me. So, clearly, something went down between you two.

“Then we watch a show together, and within the first five minutes you get strangely upset by some interpersonal conflict playing out on screen, which makes me feel like you relate in some way. So there's clearly something bothering you in your social life, and it clearly has to do with him, and for some reason you’re taking it out on the lemons. How’d I do?”

Buck just stares at her.

“Also,” she adds, “Henrietta told me you two were being weird at work.”

“Have you ever considered becoming a detective instead?”

“Putting together clues is not reserved for detectives. You know this. Don't deflect.”

Buck hesitates. “You sure you want to hear about this?”

Athena eyes the timer on the oven. “Seems like you've got eleven minutes. Better start talking.”

He inclines his head. It makes him look boyish, like that messy twenty-six-year-old she met on the job what feels like a lifetime ago.

“Okay,” he says. “It's… So… Sorry, I'm trying to figure out where to start.” He drums his fingers against the countertop while he thinks. “Right, so, I guess it started a few months ago? When he went to El Paso. I don't know how much you know about that?”

Athena tries to remember what Bobby told her. “He went to find his kid, who was staying with his grandparents after he had a fight with Eddie. The same grandparents who aren't particularly approving of Eddie.”

Buck nods. “Yeah, so, when he did that, I didn't love it, you know? I get that Christopher needed him there in person, if only to know he was willing to do anything for him. He's an amazing dad, that part didn't surprise me. And I love Chris to death, so for Eddie to do whatever makes him happiest, I could never be upset about that. But he made it all sound so easy. Like he didn't even care that he was leaving everyone behind.”

“Leaving you behind, you mean,” Athena corrects him.

“I– fine. Yeah. Leaving me behind.”

Buck sighs, and leans back against the countertop next to Athena. He stares at the blank wall opposite them. They're shoulder-to-shoulder now, or they would be, if they were anywhere near the same height.

“So,” he continues, “I hate it, but I lo– but he's my best friend, so I support him. I throw a fit about it first, and we fight, and it makes me realise I'm kind of being a dick because it's obviously really difficult for him too. So I shove my own feelings aside and I do everything I can for him.”

“Which is how you ended up subletting his house,” Athena deduces. “You gave up your apartment out of guilt over a single fight?”

“Uh, I wouldn't say that,” Buck says. “More like, we’ve been best friends for years, and I just wanted to help him out.”

“Ah. So guilt over being a bad friend and the fight.”

He glances at her sideways, but can't keep a straight face when she notices her smiling.

“Sure. Yeah. So, then he's in Texas, and I hate every part of it, but I'm being nice about it. So nice. So supportive. We FaceTime, like, six times a day for weeks” – six times a day? Athena thinks, but files it away for later – “and not even once I give in to the urge to make a snide comment about how he's being stupid and needs to come home to his real family, because I get that he's in a difficult situation. So I keep supporting him, giving him advice, and he manages to make some real big improvements with Chris, so I'm happy for him. And then– then–”

He exhales shakily, and a sense of dread creeps over Athena, because she knows where this story is headed next. She doesn't really want to hear it, if she's completely honest.

Buck clears his throat, but when he speaks again, his voice is still noticeably less steady than before.

“And then he's back for the funeral, but those two weeks, I was alone. And I know that's selfish, know he has a kid and bills and a house, but I– I needed him,” he admits. “I needed him. Needed my best friend. But I don't tell him that, because he doesn't need to hear that, I just pick him up from the airport, two full weeks later, while also trying to keep the rest of the team from going completely insane with grief. And I, I know I'm getting it wrong, because no matter how many web pages on how to help your loved ones in a period of grief I read, none of it works, and I still have to talk down a drunk Chimney from the rooftop minutes before the funeral.”

Athena feels some color drain from her face. She didn't know that detail.

Distantly, selfishly, she wishes she had heard of this a few days ago, when she was still upset at him. It would have dulled the sharp knife now wedged between her ribs. She could have been mad at the idea of him wanting to throw his life away after Bobby sacrificed himself for him. Now she just wants to curl up and cry.

“Sorry,” Buck says, noticing her expression. “I guess you didn't know that. You okay?”

“It's fine,” Athena lies. “Go on.”

Buck hesitates, but goes on with his story.

“Right, so, I'm trying,” he says, and Athena tries her best to turn her attention back to his story, pushing down her thoughts of Chimney. Just treat it like a case at work , she thinks, though she’s aware it’s not quite the same. “I’m really trying. But a few days after the funeral, Eddie and I fight again. He says I'm being selfish, that I'm making it all about myself.”

Athena frowns. “Sounds to me like you're doing the opposite.”

“I guess, but– I think I can be, a lot of the time. Selfish, I mean. And that combined with the grief just made him lash out, even when it wasn't really deserved at that moment.”

“Well, it's kind of you to be so understanding, but did he actually apologize for it?”

“He flew his kid across state lines overnight just so I could see him again.”

“Wow,” Athena says. “Okay.”

She wasn't sure what she thought Buck and Eddie had going on, but it wasn't– this. She knew their friendship was intense, but this is something else entirely. Offering your best friend an entire child as an olive branch is… Well, she can't say she's ever felt the urge to do something like that for Hen. Or anyone else, for that matter.

“So,” Buck continues, “He decides to permanently move back to LA again, eventually. Because Chimney tells him to. Which– okay. Sure. Not like I've been begging him for months and months to do the same and getting berated for it every time. I'm just happy he's here at all.

“But I guess it's been on my mind because one day we're doing the dishes, and we're both just exhausted from work and I make a little comment about it and we– it wasn’t a full-blown fight, not like the time before, but we say a few some nasty things to each other. And later, when we've cooled off, we both apologize. But I just ask him, why is it that when you're hurting, you get to lash out, but I don't? Why do you accuse me of being selfish when I just spent months burying my feelings, just so they don't make you uncomfortable? And he doesn't really have an answer. Just says he's sorry. And I'm like, well, maybe I don't want you to be sorry. Maybe I want you to stop acting this way, so I can actually talk to you when I'm hurting. Because you're my best friend, and we’re grieving, and we need each other. And then I'm just fed up, so I pack my bag and leave, because I can’t stand being under the same roof if I can't talk to him anyway. And, well, you know the rest.”

Athena considers it. Her mind is whirring with the information. She's pretty sure that if you listened closely, you could hear the neurons firing, though the late hour prevents her brain from running at its usual speed. She has lots of thoughts she thinks are best not to voice out loud, the main ones being ‘so let me get this straight, you genuinely think this is normal friend behavior?’ and ‘ huh?’ and ‘ these absolute freaks…’

Instead she chooses something more appropriate to say, because he clearly doesn't need any of that right now. It’s clear he’s thought about this a lot, hardly needs a hand in overanalyzing it all, but an outside perspective does sound beneficial at this point. If only to keep him from spiraling any further.

“Do you think you’re running from him, or punishing him?” Athena asks.

Buck contemplates her words, his brow furrowed, true-blue eyes fixed in a distant stare underneath it. “I… Is there a difference?”

“Let me rephrase that,” she says. “Is the reason why you’re living here, and not with him, because you don’t ever want to be in the same house as him again?”

“What? No. Of course I’d rather be with him and Chris,” Buck answers, and he has the guts to say it like it’s obvious. It’s too late for any of this.

Athena nods. “So you’re punishing him.”

“I guess,” Buck says. “So–”

Before he can finish his sentence, the oven timer starts beeping, the sound exceptionally shrill in the dead of night. Athena and Buck both wince at the volume.

“I was supposed to sleep through that?” Athena asks, while she blindly pushes every single one of the oven buttons until one of them makes the noise stop.

“I was going to turn it off before it could make any noise, obviously ,” Buck says, and grabs her blue oven mitts from a drawer. He had familiarized himself with the details of her kitchen setup at an alarming speed, she thinks.

“I’m sure. Good luck with your cake, Buckley,” Athena says. She decides to take the exit route that’s been presented to her. “I’m going back to bed. See you in the morning.”

“Yeah, goodnight,” Buck says. She thinks she’s given him enough to chew on for the rest of the night, anyway.

Right as she’s leaving the kitchen, Buck calls her name. “Athena.” She turns around and looks at him expectantly.

“Do you think– I mean, Maddie and Tommy–” he hesitates, trying to search for the right words. Then he shakes his head. “Nevermind. It’s nothing. Uh, goodnight.”

She doesn't press him on it. Maybe she would have if it wasn't 3AM. “Goodnight, Buck. Don’t burn your cake.”

“I won’t.”

Notes:

hello! thank you for making it to the end of the first chapter, i hope you enjoyed reading it :-) next chapter will be up on sunday, then the next on wednesday again, the entire thing is finished except for the last rounds of edits so i feel fairly confident making that promise (it's currently sitting at 23k, if you're curious). see you soon!!
the texting skin i used was made by the incredible Azadaema and can be found here: https://archiveofourown.info/works/22703617

Chapter 2: Chapter 2

Notes:

thank you so much for the lovely response on the first chapter!! genuinely so so surpised and delighted by everyone's kind words ilysm 😭😭💞💞

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

“Buck, are you ready?” Athena calls, car keys in hand. She’s by the front door, tapping the tip of her shoe against the floor, ready to go for the past ten minutes.

“Just a second!” Buck calls back, from somewhere in the kitchen.

Athena sighs. “You said that a second ago,” she mutters, making her way over to him. Buck’s still busy dusting cookies with powdered sugar, white clouds billowing up as he taps against a sieve.

“I thought you had finished those up this morning,” Athena says. The air is sweet on her tongue as she breathes in.

“That was the first layer of sugar,” Buck informs her. “I have to add a second now they’ve cooled down.” He’s wearing a black sweater, and though the sleeves are pulled up, she knows he’s going to show up to Mara’s party covered head to toe in a faint white dust if he keeps going like this.

“Where’s your apron?” Athena asks. “Or, my apron, I should say.”

“Oh, uh, I guess I forgot,” he says, looking up from his cookies at Athena. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

“Famous last words,” she says, as she watches him finish up the last few, and start carefully transferring his work to nearby Tupperware boxes.

“Mexican wedding cookies?” Athena asks.

Buck nods. “Yes. Though they’re actually called polvorones ,” he says, holding up one of the cookies like a professor giving a lecture. “And they’re Spanish in origin, not Mexican, though the traditional Spanish recipe is slightly different from how we usually make them in the US. In Mexico they do have these cookies called polvorones rosas though, which are somewhat similar, and there’s also a Filipino variation–”

Athena waves her hand. “As interesting as the history of your baked goods is, please save it for the car,” Athena says, impatiently eyeing the clock. They were supposed to leave fifteen minutes ago.

“Right,” Buck says, going back to work. “Sorry.”

“Let me help you with that,” Athena says, and starts putting the rest of them away.

“Where’s your apron?” Buck teases, and she elbows him in revenge. He clearly didn’t expect her to, because he fumbles the cookie he was holding, and it falls against his chest, where it leaves a big white imprint.

Buck looks down at it. Athena looks up at it. She wants to be annoyed, because they’re already late and a change of clothes will add another few minutes, because she told him to wear an apron and he had the guts to mock her for it, because who uses icing sugar when they're wearing black .

Instead, she finds a laugh bubbling up inside her, and before she can help it, it’s already left her mouth. Buck takes it in stride, chuckling with her as he grabs a nearby dish towel and starts wiping away at it.

“You need to dab at it, wiping will only push it deeper into the fabric,” she tells him. “Let me.” She holds out her hand.

“Are you aware I’m thirty-three years old?’ Buck asks, but hands her the dish towel anyway.

“Maybe if you started acting like it, I would,” she retorts as she dabs at his sweater. Sure enough, the sugary imprint disappears easily.

He reaches for the polvorones again, but Athena slaps away his hand like they’re explosive. “No, let me pack up the last few. You go put on your shoes.”

He puts his hands up like she's arresting him, and leaves the room backwards.

⋆★⋆

The weather is pleasant enough that they’re set up in the backyard, the spring sun warm against Athena’s skin where it filters through the trees. The kids are on the lawn, chasing each other or, in the case of Denny, Jee-Yun and Christopher, bent over a single smartphone, watching as Denny demonstrates how to play some phone game. Athena doesn’t think Jee is old enough to fully understand it yet, but she seems pleased enough to be staring at the flashing colors on the little screen. There are a few children present who Athena has never seen before, presumably Mara’s school friends, seeing as they’re around the same age as her. She remembers when her own children were that small, still scraping their knees and making daisy chains. The memory makes her smile.

The 118 is here, of course, and Athena’s a little surprised to see that includes Ravi. Historically he’s not been present at these types of events, but then again, that was before everything that went down at the lab. Guess once you prove yourself to be willing to take a charge of domestic and international terrorism for the team, you finally start getting invited to all the parties.

The first few minutes after arrival are occupied by lots of greetings and hugs: first Karen, Hen and of course Mara, and Denny too eventually, after Karen berates him for being on his phone at his sister’s party, clearly not believing him when he tries to explain the concept of being on your phone ‘together’. It’s only when she sees Chimney alone that Athena realizes Maddie is the only usual guest not present, which makes sense, as she’s had a baby not even two weeks ago.

There are several tables set up with food and drinks, the sides of them decorated with pink and yellow ribbons, the bright colors matching the balloons in the trees which gently wave in the wind. A few feet away from her, Buck is putting his baked goods with the rest of the sweet treats, but only after giving Christopher a hug which involves fully picking him up and spinning him around. Judging by the amount of candy, cake, and other treats, he and the other kids are going to be bouncing off the walls within the hour. She’s grateful she doesn’t have to personally handle any sugar crashes today.

“Ooh, Mexican wedding cookies!” Hen says, as Buck unpacks his (well, Athena’s) Tupperware. “I love those. You’re the best.”

“It’s not a wedding, but close enough, I think,” Buck says with a smile, transferring them onto the pink paper plate Hen has put down for him. Athena can’t tell for sure from where she’s standing, but she’s fairly sure there’s an image of a Disney princess on it.

“Those aren’t even actually Mexican,” Eddie grumbles from somewhere beside her, unaware that Athena can hear him. She doesn’t think much of it at first, but then she wonders what the odds are that Buck baked these cookies with the express purpose of irritating Eddie with their incorrect name.

Then Buck smiles over his shoulder at Eddie, a quick flash of white as bright as a lightning strike, and she has her answer.

She’s not sure which is more baffling: that Buck, at his big age, is pulling Eddie’s pigtails, or that it’s seemingly working, because as soon as Buck has left Eddie makes a beeline for the passive-aggressive cookies.

He takes one, then two, and Athena wonders if he finds the entire ordeal a little bit flattering, maybe. In a way, it is: how many people can say they’re known so thoroughly that their friend can successfully push their buttons with a simple cookie?

Either way, it’s clear Buck is the only thing on his mind, with how he’s staring at him in a way that’s somehow both forlorn and resentful at the same time. He manages to quickly wipe the look (and some powdered sugar) off his face when Karen approaches him to talk, but for a second, it was abundantly clear Buck is not the only person with a grudge.

⋆★⋆

“I think you have something on your face.”

“You know what, I’m not even surprised,” Chimney says, as he opens his phone camera to assess the damage. He wipes at a grayish mark, something that looks like dirt or soot or food coloring, until it goes away. “Thanks for letting me know. But I’ll be honest, I’ve just completely given up on being clean at this point. Two minutes after a shower and there’s a stain somewhere, courtesy of my toddler or my baby or, if I’m lucky, my incredible wife, who’s never patient enough to wait until her lipstick is all the way dry.”

Athena chuckles. “How are they? Maddie and your little one?” She asks. It still feels a little odd to call him Bobby.

“He's good,” he says, nodding. “He cries more than Jee did as a newborn, but everyone's assured us that's normal. Maddie is doing well, too, she’s feeling a lot better than she did with Jee at this point, and her doctors are monitoring her closely so they can make sure her thyroid doesn’t act up again. I’m not going to lie and say I’m not anxious, but I think we’re okay.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” Athena says. “You know, Harry was much fussier than May at first, but he was a far easier toddler. Maybe when he’s Jee’s age, you’ll even be able to wear clean shirts again.”

“That’s good to know. Definitely looking forward to that moment,” Chimney says lightheartedly. “Hey, speaking of crying babies, how's Buck? Has he driven you crazy yet?”

Athena snorts. “You know, every time I think I'm finally going to lose it he hands me a freshly baked cookie, and I forget about it entirely.”

“Huh,” Chimney says with a grin. “That's funny, I'm pretty sure that's the exact same method he uses on Jee-Yun.” It draws the exact laugh from Athena he’d been looking for, his expression turning pleased when the joke lands as intended.

It’s almost hard to imagine this is the same Chimney she saw so thoroughly torn apart by grief just barely a week ago. If she didn’t know better, she would have guessed nothing was wrong, the way he’s smiling and joking as he always does, radiant as the afternoon sun. She’s not going to make any assumptions, though. Athena knows better than anyone that appearances aren’t everything.

“And… Have you been alright, too?” Athena asks, hoping her tone isn’t too obvious.

“Have you?” Chimney counters, because he knows exactly what she’s getting at.

She nods her head to the side. “Fair enough.”

They look out at the party together. The dancing children, the firehouse members laughing at some inside joke of theirs, all surrounded by a bright blur of color and joy.

“I’m as okay as I can be,” Chimney finally concedes. “Which is to say, not really. Just like everyone else here. But I’m not going to let that ruin the fun.”

There’s no air of sadness, no dark gloom that hangs over the garden. It’s just a party like any other. It’s both a relief and a betrayal.

“I’m sorry for questioning you like this,” Athena says, because she knows how she’s grown to hate these questions, where answering with the truth feels like you’re disappointing the person who’s asked. “But Buck accidentally mentioned that you were– that you had a rough time, right before the funeral. And I just wanted to check in with you.” She absentmindedly twists the diamond of her wedding ring around her finger.

“Oh,” Chimney says. “That was…” He shakes his head, huffs out a dry laugh. “Not my best moment, so to say. But I… Well, I’ve already admitted I’m not fine, but I’ve processed things a bit more since then, at least. I’m doing better.”

“I’m glad,” Athena says. “Let me know if it ever gets too heavy again.”

“You too. I'm here for you,” he says, and she knows he means it, but he has a wife and a baby and his own grief, too, so Athena doesn’t think she’ll take him up on it.

Chimney looks like he’s going to follow his promise up with a question, but before he can, they’re approached by Mara. The girl skips towards her and Chimney, the twists in her hair bouncing with every step. She’s grinning from ear to ear, clearly enjoying being the center of attention for the afternoon. “Athena, have you signed my book yet?” She asks.

“Your book? I believe I haven’t,” she says. She turns towards Chimney. “Excuse me. Clearly, I have urgent business to attend to.”

He gives her a polite nod as she takes off with Mara, who leads her to a big book, spread open on the second or third page. Various guests have written messages to Mara in different colored pens, some short, some long. She recognizes Buck’s chicken scratch, which has recently started to make appearances on her grocery list, and Karen’s beautiful, loopy cursive.

Hen offers Athena a cup with pens in it, no doubt usually a part of Mara’s extensive crafting collection. The girl herself has already disappeared again, probably off to find the next guest who's yet to leave a message.

“We're doing it as a nice memory of the occasion,” Hen explains. “There's no real script for adoption parties, so we're just kind of making things up as we go. We thought this would be nice, to have everyone leave a message for her.”

“It is,” Athena says. Hen’s eyes crinkle behind her glasses when she smiles.

Athena picks a red pen and writes a short message for Mara, that she's happy for her and wishes her and her family all the love and luck in the world.

She almost signs it ‘ Athena & Bobby ’ reflexively, but catches herself at the last moment. She has to turn the ampersand into a heart to cover it up.

After that, Athena decides it’s time to dig into the slightly excessive amount of treats Karen and Hen have laid out on the tables. It’s clear they spared no expense when it came to the food: there’s virtually everything, from popcorn to pretzels to M&M’s and, of course, the cookies Buck baked for a bet between Hen and Athena he personally isn’t aware he was involved in. She takes a plate, one that pictures Cinderella and Ariel alongside some new-fangled Disney princess she doesn't recognize, and goes over her options. She’s definitely craving something sweet. She decides it’s high time to try Buck's cookies, but when she looks in their direction, she sees Eddie and Buck are blocking off any access to the polvorones.

Looking at them, you wouldn't guess there's any bad blood. They look completely at ease, Buck casually leaning on the table with one hand as they talk. Eddie is angled towards him as if being pulled in by a force field. Like there's a magnet in Buck’s chest pulling at his own, and they’re seconds away from snapping right back into place, next to each other, where they belong.

Eddie’s earlier irritation at Buck is completely absent from whatever conversation they’re having. If she listens intently, Athena might actually be able to make out the words they’re saying.

“Have you tried one of my cookies yet?” Buck asks. “Authentic Mexican cuisine. Thought you might appreciate that.”

She can practically hear Eddie narrow his eyes. “There’s nothing Mexican about those cookies, and you know it.”

Look, she's not eavesdropping, just… Taking her time deciding which treat she wants. While overhearing a conversation that's happening next to her. There are many nuances to the humble chocolate chip cookie, but how do they compare to the complexities of the brownie? Many things to be considered.

“Really?” Buck asks. “I had no idea.”

“Asshole,” Eddie says, with an audible smile. “Can’t believe you would bake forty cookies just to mildly irritate me.”

“Can’t believe you’d pretend to leave for Texas just to get your son at the airport instead.”

“Still thinking about that, huh?”

“Kind of hard to forget,” Buck says. “Which I think was your exact goal.”

Oh, what’s this? Lemon bars. Now, that is a game-changer. This clearly makes the decision even more arduous than it was before. How will Athena ever make up her mind? Best to take her time to thoroughly consider all the different facets of lemons. And bars.

The laughter fades from Eddie’s voice, his tone becoming more sincere. “He misses having you around at home, you know.”

“ Chris misses me,” Buck echoes. He sounds slighted.

“Chris,” Eddie says. “Does not work forty-eight-hour shifts with you. C’mon Buck, I said I was sorry, I just don’t know what– I don’t know what else you need from me.”

Buck takes a beat to respond. He sounds strained when he does. “I was going to move out soon anyway, right? Not like there’s any place to stay except your couch.”

“No,” Eddie admits. He says it like the start of a sentence, but he fails to come up with something to follow it.

“So what… What is it you’re asking?”

Athena has taken to simply piling several different treats onto her plate. A chocolate chip cookie, a brownie, a lemon bar, red velvet cake, rocky road, and– well, she’s not actually sure what the last thing she grabbed is, but she’s sure it’ll taste fine. Anything to keep her hands looking busy. Which they are. Very busy.

“I need you to stop pushing me away,” Eddie says, his tone is more hushed than before, but he says the words with such force Athena can still make them out clearly.

Buck laughs mirthlessly. “I'm not pushing you away, Eddie, all I did was move out of your house.”

“Then why does it feel like you are?” Eddie asks.

“I'll leave you to figure that one out yourself.”

A pause. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Nevermind.”

“It’s clearly not nothing ,” Eddie says, and he packs the sentence with so much venom Athena thinks it’s time for her to leave. Besides, it’s becoming really obvious that she’s been lingering for far too long at the table, and if anyone catches her… Not eavesdropping, it’s bound to be embarrassing.

She doesn’t really need to hear the conversation, anyway. Something tells her Buck will tell her all about it later.

As she finds a place to sit with her pile of baked goods, she reflects on the thought. She kind of can’t believe that’s actually where her life is at now. Caught up in Bobby’s colleague’s personal drama, not for any work-related reasons, but just because she invited him to sleep in her son’s empty bed.

She’s too caught up in her reverie to really take note of where she sits down, so she’s a little surprised to find herself next to Eddie’s son. He’s right at that age where she’s shocked to find how much bigger he's gotten every time she sees him, seemingly growing a head taller every month. If he wasn’t already taller than her before he left for Texas, he certainly is now.

The boy is watching Buck and Eddie intensely, clearly picking up on how hostile their body language has become. Eddie’s shoulders are tight, and she can see the hard set of Buck’s jaw even from several feet away. She knows Buck is something of a father figure to the boy; no doubt he hates seeing them fight. Eddie said as much, anyway.

“Can I offer you one of these?” Athena asks, holding out her overstuffed plate to him. “I just couldn’t decide what I wanted, but looking at it now, it’s a bit too much sugar for me.”

Christopher tears his eyes away from his father. He looks at Athena, a little surprised that she’d strike up a conversion with him, but he takes her up on the offer. “Sure,” he says, taking the cookie from her plate. Athena decides to start with the lemon bar. It’s always been one of her favorite desserts.

“Are you enjoying being back in LA?” Athena asks, and Chris nods, pleasedly chewing on his sweet treat. His eyes occasionally flick towards the scene of premarital divorce playing out at the table, but for the most part he seems sufficiently distracted by Athena’s diversion.

“Yeah, it’s really nice to see everyone again. I guess I didn’t even really realize how much I missed everyone ‘til I got back.” He pauses. Tentatively, he adds, “I missed Buck, though.”

“He missed you too, I’m sure,” Athena says. “He talks about you constantly.” It’s not a lie; Buck mentions Christopher so often it briefly made her question if he had another, adult friend called Christopher who she never heard of before. But no, he was actually talking about the gangly fourteen-year-old in front of her. Guess Buck doesn’t just show up as something of a father when needed, but as a friend sometimes, too.

Christopher hesitates. “And, um, I miss Bobby. Really miss him. I’m sorry about what happened.”

Athena manages a sad smile, just barely. “I really miss him too,” she says.

“Uh, my mom… She also died.” Christopher looks down at his lap, where his hands are nervously fidgeting with half of the remaining cookie, spreading crumbs on his jeans. “And I know it's maybe not the same, but… It gets easier, eventually. I still miss her a lot, but I'm just not always upset about it anymore, at least. So you'll be okay.”

She doesn't feel the need to tell him that this isn't her first time losing someone she loves, not even the first time losing a partner. She’s too moved by Christopher’s desire to comfort her. At the same time, her heart breaks for him, so young yet so intimately familiar with grief that he feels qualified to give advice on it.

“Thank you, sweetheart. That's good to know.”

Christopher nods. His light brown curls bounce on his forehead, and he briefly reminds her of Buck, not just physically, but also in mannerisms. She wonders how often they get mistaken for father and son. If she didn't know any better, she would have made the same assumption.

He looks up. “Do you like living with Buck?” Christopher asks, and Athena picks up on the implicit question: Is he doing okay?

Athena nods. “Yes, we get along quite well, and he’s an excellent cook. Though he baked a cake in the middle of the night once, and it woke me up,” she adds, with a little smile.

“Oh, yeah, he does that,” Christopher laughs. “Sometimes, in the morning, there would randomly be a cake. I kind of miss when he used to live with us, but dad said he got tired of sleeping on the couch.” Christopher strikes Athena as far too intelligent to buy into such an obvious lie, but she doesn’t press it.

Christopher rattles on. “I definitely miss his cooking most of all. Dad's not as sh– bad at it as he used to be, but Buck's, like, on another level. Sometimes my aunt Pepa comes over, and she's great too, but dad… Well, he tries, but it's just not the same.”

Athena chuckles. “You poor thing. You know, if he ever makes something you really don’t like, you should just text Buck. I’m sure he will be at your doorstep with a meal within seconds.”

“Yeah, probably,” Christopher says. “He’s cool like that.”

Denny comes running across the grass, towards Athena and Christopher.

“Chris!” he says. “Mara and I are gonna play Brawl Stars, you want to join? We got some of her friends to download it too, we can do it with six people.”

“Sure,” Chris says, and reaches for his crutches. “Bye, Athena!” he says, as he follows Denny to the group of kids all sprawled out on the grass.

“Bye!” She calls after him.

Athena sighs, and tilts her head back, drenching her face in sunlight. It really is a lovely day. Perfect for a celebration like this. She watches the partygoers, the kids caught up in their phones, though they’re apparently playing a game together. Buck is deep in conversation with Ravi and Chim, Eddie is talking to Hen and Karen. The entire 118 together. Almost.

Athena tries her best to push down the thought she’s been fighting all day one last time, like a balloon she’s trying to keep underwater, but she finally loses the fight. It floats up, and now there’s only one thing on her mind: she wishes Bobby could see this.

He would’ve poked fun at her for eavesdropping, then eaten half of the treats on her plate while telling everyone some story from his early firefighting days. Then, he would have swung her out onto the lawn, probably, gotten her to dance with him to whatever pop song’s playing on the tiny speakers.

It’s just wrong. Everyone who’s supposed to be here is here, except for Bobby, because he’s in a grave. And it would almost be fine if it was just this one party, but it’s not. It's the first of so many milestones he will have to miss out on, which Athena will have to celebrate by herself, all while acting like half of her isn't missing. The world ought to have stopped when he died, but inexplicably, it’s still turning. No matter how hard she tries, she just can’t make sense of that.

She hears a screech of laughter, either from Mara or one of the other girls. The sound is inexplicably ear-piercing. Athena tries to ignore it, but suddenly the sun feels too hot on her skin and her lemon bar is sticking to her teeth and the colors are too bright for her eyes and she needs to get out.

Years of experience with stealthy escapes comes in useful. She disappears into the house, taking herself in to the kitchen, where it’s blissfully quiet and cool. Athena digs through the cabinets until she finds herself a glass to fill up with water, but she ends up just holding the edge of the sink in a white-knuckle grip, grasping at it like a lifeline.

Consciously, she knows this will get easier with time, or at least it will stop hurting every day the way it does now, everything she sees a reminder of her loss. She's been through this before with Emmett, so she knows how the pain fades eventually. It turns into an old injury, only acting up when she tries to put weight on it, healed underneath a thick scar. As of right now, that doesn’t bring her much comfort, though. The thought of Bobby slowly fading from the forefront of her mind is sickening. She doesn't want to let go. She shouldn’t have to let go.

Three people present at this party were also in that lab that day. All of them are still alive, but Bobby isn’t. How does that make sense? Hell, how is it possible that every adult here has nearly died at least once, if not two, three, five times, yet Bobby’s the only one dead? How is she supposed to just accept that?

She’s trying to coach herself through some deep breaths, but it’s not really working. She doesn’t really understand how breathing is supposed to fix the fact that her husband died, anyway. But right now isn’t the time, or the place, so she’s trying the stupid breaths despite herself. She’s almost achieved something that doesn’t sound like ragged gasps when she hears the creak of a door on her left, followed by a voice.

“Athena, you okay?”

Athena tightens her grip. “I’m fine. Just getting a glass of water.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

She finally looks at Buck. Guess her escape was a lot less subtle than she had intended it to be, because he looks genuinely concerned, eyes big and blue like he’s pitying her. She can’t stand it. Six near-death experiences, this one. And when they’d teamed up to save his sister, she actually made it out alive.

“Athena, I can–”

“Does he know you're in love with him?”

Buck looks as though she slapped him clean across his face, stunned and mortified all at once. “I'm– what?”

“Don't be obtuse, Buckley, it's obvious.” She loosens her grip.

His demeanor switches in seconds, from concerned to defensive, like an animal putting up its quills. “Except I’m not,” he counters, with so much conviction Athena has no choice but to laugh out loud.

“You genuinely expect me to believe that?”

“Eddie's straight,” he retorts. “He had a wife.”

“Michael had a wife. Me ,” she reminds him.

Buck has the guts to genuinely look angry, which might have been her goal. Go on , she thinks.

“That’s not– Eddie’s straight ,” Buck repeats. If that’s his only argument, he’s going to lose this fight very quickly.

“And you’re not,” Athena reminds him. “So let me ask you again. Does he know that you are in love with him?”

Buck stares her down, or at least tries to, because Athena’s stare is just as unwavering and twice as cold. Buck’s jaw is set in a hard line, and she can tell he’s sizing her up. He’s not usually the type to go for the jugular, but for a split second she wonders if he might surprise her.

Instead, he turns his head, breaking their eye contact, and relents.

“No.”

She almost finds it impossible to believe this is the first time someone’s called him out on this, when it’s so, so obvious, so clearly embedded in every conversation they have, in every minute decision Buck makes. Yet somehow, based on the way this conversation is going, it has to be.

“So stop being stupid,” Athena says, in pure disbelief she has to spell this out, “and tell him.”

“It’s not that easy,” Buck says through gritted teeth, and she ought to be intimidated by his sheer size, but she finds that she’s not.

Athena scoffs. “I can assure you, it is.”

That struck a nerve. “What do you even know about us?” Buck says. “You have no idea– no idea! It’s been seven years, I can’t just–”

“Oh, please!,” she says – shouts, almost – "You have the love of your life right there! Go to him!” She gestures at the door.

“It’s not that simple –”

“Unless he’s in a grave,” she spits, “It really is . ”

She waits for him to bite back, snap his teeth and berate her for using Bobby’s death so cheaply, just to prove a point. Instead, his face twists across several emotions in just a few seconds and Buck – sweet, stupid, emotional Buck – he just deflates, like one of the pink party balloons attached to the trees.

“Athena,” he says, gentle, the opposite of what she wants.

“Don’t,” she says. She tries to pack the word like a punch, but her voice betrays her, wavering on the single syllable. “Don’t,” she tries again, but it doesn’t work, and she finally loses the fight to the sob she’s been trying to fight back. The tears in the corners of her eye fracture the daylight, and it bursts into tiny rainbows at the edges of her vision.

She grips the sink again, bending her head down like it’s going to do anything to shield her from the raw emotion she’s feeling. Buck takes the empty glass and fills it up for her, which she accepts with a shaky hand. She tries her best to focus on the cool sensation as it goes down, one sip at a time.

Buck steadies her, or at least tries to, with a hand on her back, and she can't help but selfishly wish it was Bobby's hand, or even Michael’s or Harry’s or May’s, because as much as she loves her second family, she really misses her first. Even if she really believes it’s best that they don’t have to see her like this.

They stay for a few more hours after that. Buck offers to fake a headache so they could have an early exit, but Athena decides instead to hide her puffy eyes behind her aviators and try to enjoy the afternoon. It’s this or being grief-stricken alone at home, and only one of those options has lemon bars.

Buck and Eddie spend the rest of the day orbiting each other like planets around the sun, not interacting but so obviously still connected. She wonders if it’s obvious to everyone else, too; how most of what they do is seemingly about the other. Maybe Athena’s just paying special attention to it now she has to hear about Eddie daily. Guess Buck’s obsession is so strong it’s starting to rub off on her.

They only leave after the sky has cycled through all its colors, from azure to rose to tangerine to the deep blue of nighttime, the same navy color of both Buck and Athena’s uniforms, the ones they're wearing when they meet each other in the kitchen at the next crack of dawn. Buck makes them both breakfast, and the smell tricks Athena’s half-awake brain into thinking Bobby’s alive and cooking for her for half a second. She doesn’t dwell on it. Buck packs the food up for them to eat on the road, and then they’re off, ready for another blissfully ordinary day of putting their lives on the line.

⋆★⋆

“I've been wondering, what's going on with your house?” Buck asks, a few days later, entirely unprompted. They just finished up loading the dishwasher, and Athena is digging through the cabinet trying to find the detergent.

“Don’t tell me you’re interested in buying,” Athena says, as she finally finds one of the pods she was looking for. “I’ve been told your credit score is three.”

“Wh– who told you that? Nevermind. No, I mean like, I haven’t heard you talk about it once, and I guess I was just wondering how things were going.”

“Things are great,” Athena says, technically not a lie. She puts the detergent pod into the dishwasher and presses a few buttons on the touch screen interface.

“So you’ve got a buyer?” Buck asks.

“No,” Athena admits. The dishwasher is beeping at her, telling her she’s done something wrong. Athena sighs and presses a few more buttons.

“Do you need help?” Buck asks, as he watches her smash at the interface.

“I’ve got it,” Athena, who very much has not got anything, says. The dishwasher beeps at her again, as if it’s calling her out on it. “This stupid… One day it works just fine, and the next, it’s like it’s turned evil. I can’t figure it out.” Bobby never had any issues with the contraption, but, well, she can’t exactly ask him to come and fix it.

“Eddie’s the same,” Buck says, waving her away. She relents, and watches as he presses several buttons in quick succession. Sure enough, the dishwater beeps affirmingly at him. “He’s not a big fan of all this Hildy stuff. Says it’s unnecessarily complicated.”

“And he’s right!” Athena says. “I mean, why does my dishwasher need Wi-Fi?”

“Because we’re living in the future,” Buck says with a grin, and shuts the dishwasher, which thankfully immediately starts running. He leans back against the counter. “So, you’re keeping the house?”

“I didn’t say that,” Athena says.

“Oh.” Buck frowns. “But I thought you just said you weren’t selling it.”

“I said I had not yet sold it.”
“Does nobody want to buy it?”
“No,” Athena says, almost offended. “I didn’t say that either. It’s an excellent property, I’ve been told. We put a lot of effort into designing it, and it certainly paid off.”

Buck tilts his head sideways. “So… What’s the problem?” She’s got his full attention now.

“I just… Need a bit more time,” she says, with a dismissive wave of her hand. She fully intends to leave it at that, already half turned around to leave the kitchen, but this is Buck she’s talking to.

“I get that,” Buck nods. “I mean, it must be weird to let go of this house you expected to spend the rest of your life in.”

“Yes,” Athena says, with a nod.

“And… The last project you worked on with Bobby.”

She presses her lips into a thin line. “That too.”

He looks at her carefully, like he’s thinking of how to approach this issue. As if she’s a wild horse he’s trying to convince he’s harmless, arm outstretched for her to sniff his hand.

“You know, when Eddie moved to Texas, I couldn’t stand being in his house at first. Because being in that house, without him there, kind of affirmed to me that he was gone.”

“So you’ve told me,” Athena says.

“But then, eventually… It was kind of nice too. I stopped seeing all the places he wasn’t and started seeing all the places he was. Like, oh, this is that spot in the garden he’d love to sit, this is that wall we patched up together once. Stuff like that. I’m not saying it’s the same–”

“It’s not. Your man crush went to Texas for a month. My husband died.”

“I know,” Buck says, apologetic. “I know. But, I guess what I want to say is… It might be nice, eventually, to have him all around you like that. Even if it isn’t right now. I know that for me, being at the station is still kind of hard at the moment, but I don’t think it will feel that way forever.”

Maybe Buck’s got her more figured out than she thought, because deep down, she knows that this is exactly what it’s all been about. Part of her feels like she has to move on, wants to get rid of everything that hurts as soon as possible. But then there’s also a desperate voice in the back of her head that tells her to hold on to everything, the few scraps of him she has left, and she’s not sure which urge to give in to.

“I worry,” she says carefully. “That if I hold on to everything I have left of him, it will never stop hurting. I know what lies ahead of me. I know what this grief will be like, because I lost my fiancé before. And I… I just don’t want it.” She knows how she sounds. Like a petulant child whining about something minute like not wanting to eat their vegetables, begging for someone bigger than her to take away the issue. She’s tried to take it up with God, but He doesn’t work like that.

“And getting rid of the house means getting rid of a reminder of Bobby,” Buck fills in. “So why haven’t you sold it yet?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says.

Buck keeps his gaze steady, like he sees right through her, and waits for her to elaborate.

She relents. “I suppose… It’s because at the same time, I want to keep as much of him as I can,” she admits, forcing her lips into a wry smile to keep them from wobbling. “I want the pain to be over, but I also never want to move on.” She shrugs, but she knows she failed at making the gesture look natural. “I mean, is that too much to ask?”

Buck nods at her in understanding. They’re similar in that way, maybe. Claw marks in everything they’ve ever let go of. He grants her a forced smile, a twin to her own, more a shield than an actual display of humor. He’s probably doing it for her. Buck doesn’t seem too concerned with hiding his feelings, not in the way she is.

Maybe it should be odd that this is the first time they’ve talked about Bobby’s death like this, when it’s quite obvious it’s also the reason why they’re here, together, in the first place. Buck had a fight with Eddie, Athena had a spare room, sure, but that was never what this was about.

“What would you do?” She asks. “I know Bobby was… He was more than just your boss.” It’s the easier way to cover it.

“I don't know,” Buck says honestly. “I don’t have a clue what to do. In any sense. I’ve never lost someone like this. Not even like, a– a grandparent or something. And I know death is also a part of life, but I didn’t know– I didn’t even know the whole world could just feel… Wrong. It’s all just,” he chokes out with a wet laugh. “Wrong. You know, I keep having to convince myself he's actually gone. Sometimes I'll catch myself thinking, ‘ I’m going to tell Bobby about this’ . Like he's gonna come back eventually.”

“I know what you mean. I keep expecting him to walk through the front door,” Athena confesses. She looks at the stove, the place she often imagines him standing, somewhere between a daydream and a memory. “But he never does.”

She doesn’t feel equipped to deal with grief. Whenever there’s a problem she’d rather fix the issue proactively, or, if she can’t, distract herself until whatever she’s feeling has gone away without ever having to look straight at it. Grief doesn’t work like that. You can’t fix it, and you can’t ignore it. Lord knows she’s tried to avoid it by devoting all her energy to her work, but the problem is, this is just everywhere. She can’t outrun it, because it’s all around her, the same way his love was when he was still alive. There’s nowhere she can look without seeing Bobby.

“You know, you’re the only one who lost a husband, but you’re not the only one who lost Bobby,” Buck says. “And I know– I know it's different for you. I’m– I’m not saying it’s not–”

Athena huffs out something that passes as a laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re going to give me the ‘you’re not alone ’ speech”

“Guess I am,” Buck says, with a half-smile. “It’s so cliché, I know, I kind of dismissed it at first too. I mean, Eddie had to threaten me a little bit to hammer that point home, so.”
“You two really are batshit insane, I hope you know that.”

Buck laughs, more genuinely this time. “Yeah, maybe we are. But really. It’s gotten a little bit easier, since I’ve stopped trying to handle it all by myself. And, you know, it might also be nice for everyone else to see you’re struggling in the same way. Makes them feel a little less alone, too.”

“When did you get so wise?” Athena asks.

“I don’t know. Don’t get used to it,” Buck says, and Athena laughs.

“Thank you, Buckaroo. And I’m sorry I was so ugly to you yesterday.”

“Anytime.”

⋆★⋆

“You’re up early,” Athena says, when she runs into Buck in the kitchen the next morning. She has another twelve-hour shift ahead of her, but anyone on their free day logically would not be awake at this hour.

“Apartment showing,” Buck says, holding a steamy cup of coffee like it’s his lifeline. He looks scruffy, barely awake. “Two in a row, actually, which is why it’s so early. The realtor managed to squeeze me in before everyone else.”

Athena digs through her cupboard for a travel mug. It’s overstuffed, but she can’t get herself to get rid of any of the novelty mugs proclaiming she’s the ‘World's Best Mom! ’ or something of the like, much less the one for the ‘ No. 1 Dad ’. She can’t actually recall if it was a gift for Michael that he left behind, or if the kids got it for Bobby. When she tries to picture it being used, she can see both of their hands wrapped around it.

“Still haven’t found anything you like, then?” Athena asks, pouring herself a cup of coffee. She’s grown to blindly assume that if Buck’s drinking the stuff, there’s some left in the pot for her, too. They’re still far from being settled into a routine – too often she’s had to berate him for using up all the hot water or leaving his dirty dishes on the counter instead of in the dishwasher – but these small moments of harmony are becoming more and more frequent, at least.

“No,” Buck sighs. “I have no idea why it’s so hard. I’ve never picked a place by myself before, so I don’t exactly know what I’m looking for. Just something that feels right, I guess.”

“I don’t think you can filter on Zillow for that. Maybe if you should think of a more reasonable demand, like a heated indoor pool or something,” she says, while putting the rubber lid on her hot cup.

“Yeah, I know,” Buck says, ducking his head. “Just gotta keep trying, I guess.” He puts down his empty mug next to the sink, but then quickly transfers it to the dishwasher when he notices Athena’s eye starting to twitch.

“Well, good luck with your search,” Athena says, picking up her car keys. She said it in lieu of a goodbye, but Buck isn’t finished talking just yet. He never is.

“I’m also seeing Eddie today.”

Athena whips back around. “Oh?”

“I’m not– I’m not gonna do anything crazy, if that’s what you’re wondering.” His eyes shift around. “Just... Wanted to hang out with him. And Chris. And I guess I’ll just figure it out from there.”

“Sounds like a good place to start,” Athena says.

“Yeah. It’s something, at least.” Buck says.

She genuinely feels a little bit proud of him. Only a little, though, because she can’t actually be proud of him until he does something about that crush of his.

“As long as you’re home before Gone Bad starts,” she says, and Buck smiles.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

⋆★⋆

The episode has long ended, but their bottle of Sauvignon Blanc hasn’t. Or, well. Their second bottle.

Buck’s scrolling through his Twitter feed with an admirable intensity.

“I mean, I love reading everyone’s takes on the episode, but sometimes it’s like they’re speaking a different language. I mean, what does this even mean?” Buck asks, then reads a Tweet out loud. “ They were really reheating season 1 nachos tonight but the microwave kinda cooked it unevenly but it still tastes good. Two hundred and six likes. What?”

Athena hums. “Means that this episode reminded them of last season, and they enjoyed it, though they feel like it didn’t quite capture that vibe completely right.”

Buck looks up from his phone, entirely perplexed, staring at her like she’s just divided by zero. “...How?”

Athena waves a dismissive hand. “You’ll learn. Two weeks and you’ll be fluent.”

Buck doesn’t seem convinced, but he puts his phone away, swapping it out for his half-empty wine glass. He’s gotten the hang of her ritual pretty well: he’s dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt that hangs loosely off his frame, somehow still oversized despite his broad shoulders. She should get him to make her a snack next week, she thinks. It would really level up the whole thing.

“Okay, can I just– can I talk about Eddie for a little bit?” Buck says, and Athena sighs.

“Is there anything I can do to stop you, or is this another one of your rhetorical questions?”

Buck covers his face with his free hand. He’s flushed a pleasant shade of pink that’s barely hidden by the blue hues of the evening, either from the alcohol or the conversation. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, this just happens when I drink these days. You know, one time, Ravi–”

“Ravi? I thought we were talking about Eddie!”

“No, but one time, we went out, right after Eddie had left town, and he got so annoyed by me talking about Eddie the entire time that he literally abandoned me with my ex-boyfriend.”

Athena scoffs, pretending to be deeply offended on Buck’s part. “That is a terrible friend. What did you do?”

“Oh,” Buck laughs, like he only just remembered the second half of the story. “Oh, I hooked up with my ex.”

“Oh my–”

Buck is giggling like it’s the best joke in the world. “In Eddie’s house.”

Athena and Buck stare at each other in stunned silence. Then they burst out laughing. “What!” Athena gasps. “What is wrong with you!” she smacks him on his arm playfully for added emphasis.

“Oh my God, and that was the first night I could sleep there. And I didn’t even realize it was about Eddie. Like, at all. Not even when Tommy directly accused me of it.” He looks at her in amazement, as if he’s hearing the story for the first time, too.

“Your brain,” Athena says. “Fascinates me.”

“Oh my God,” he laughs. “ Oh my God ,” he says again, but with a groan this time, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he’s suddenly got a headache.

“Athena, I need you to tell me the truth.” He removes his hand and looks at her intently. “Am I stupid?”

“Yes,” Athena says decisively.

“Not helping.”

“Yes, and also, I’ve had that thought many times over the past two weeks.”

Buck sighs, pushing a hand through his already unruly mop of curls. “What am I going to do ,” he laments, sinking deep into the couch. He has on a pair of fuzzy socks like Athena, though she’s not sure where he found them.

“Here’s an idea,” Athena says, and Buck perks up, ready to receive whatever sage advice she has for him. “Literally anything.”

Buck deflates back into the couch. “I hate you.”

“You could sleep on the street, if you want.”

“I mean, you’re the best Athena and also I love you.”

These days, she’s starting to see all those traits that made Bobby so fond of Buck, the softer counterpart to the bullheaded professional side of him Athena’s always been more acquainted with. It’s hardly a secret that he’s overly passionate, but it shows so differently when there’s no imminent danger. He’s more troubled by all that loving than she could have expected. A gentle giant whose heart is still too big for his body.

“Okay,” Athena says, deciding to take pity on him. “I do have an actual idea. And it might sound a little bit crazy, but I need you to bear with me.”

“Uh-huh,” Buck says, suspicious. He’s nursing his wine glass, the flush on his cheekbones seemingly deepening with each sip he takes.

“How about…” Athena pauses for dramatic effect. “You talk to him.”

Buck sighs heavily, like he’s feeling all the grievances in the whole world all at once. “I can’t. I would if I could , but I can’t. Not with this.”

“Why not?” Athena asks.

Buck shakes his head. “It’s just… I can’t. Like, I kind of tried this afternoon, but it’s too hard to explain without…” He makes an abstract motion with his hand. “Going there.”

Athena looks at him for clarification. Surely he didn’t expect that he’d be able to bring this up without her wanting to know the details.

“Okay, basically, it’s just… He wants me to be the most important person in his life, right? And I want that too. I’m like–” he sighs, like he’s upset at himself for being willing to admit it. “I’m stupidly in love with him. Of course I want that.”

“So where’s the problem?” Athena asks. “If you both want the same thing?”

“I mean, there isn’t one. There wasn’t one. Because I just never thought about it too hard, we’re just Buck and Eddie, you know, best friends, a friendship for the ages. But now I know that to me, it’s… Not that. And now, every time I see him, and we act like that, it’s just like, oh, right, this is what I can’t have. Or well, I guess I do have it, of course, but– sorry, it’s hard to explain.”

“No, I think I get it. He basically wants you to act like his boyfriend without calling it that.”

Buck huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, I guess. And I was fine with that, until I figured out that I wanted him to be my actual boyfriend. So now I’m just– hyperaware. I can see that these fights we’re having, they’re basically all because of this. When I pull away, he loses his mind, because I no longer act like his best– like his bo– like his best friend.”

Athena hums in understanding. “But there’s also no real established obligations, or boundaries…”

“Because it’s not like that,” Buck says. “Because he doesn’t actually want me to be his boyfriend.”

Athena takes another sip of her wine. It’s pleasantly dry on her tongue. “Well, I thought we just concluded that he did.”

“You know what I mean,” he says, sounding more dejected than cutting. “He doesn’t see it that way. So I’ve been trying to put some space between us, because I can’t stand it. The whole… Both having him and not having him.”

“And how has that been going for you?” Athena asks. “Trying to create that distance?” She already knows the answer, she just thinks he needs to hear himself say it out loud.

“I feel like I’ve been losing my goddamn mind,” Buck confesses with a dry laugh. “I mean, I don’t think he’s figured out why I’ve been doing it, at least, he just thinks it’s because of the fight. Even if the fight was also kind of about this, he still doesn’t know that. So at least I don’t have to worry about him suspecting anything, but for me–” Buck looks down. He’s tapping his heel against the floor repeatedly. “Yeah, it’s… It’s awful”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Athena says. “Sounds like you’re in a tough spot.”

Buck swirls his wine glass, worrying at his lip. “Yeah.”

“I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but it sounds to me like you only have one option.”

Buck shakes his head, then looks at her, his eyes strikingly blue and just the slightest bit red-rimmed. “No,” he says decisively. “I’m not telling him. I can’t lose him, he’s my best friend. He’s– he’s more than that. He’s everything. And there's Chris, you know, this is bigger than just the two of us.”

“What makes you so sure you will lose him if you do?” She puts her elbow on the back of the couch, leaning into her hand as she looks at Buck. “You’re extraordinarily close, and it seems to me that it’s very unlikely he would react badly. From what you’ve told me, the only thing that’s ever upset him is you pulling away, like you’re doing now.”

“I don’t know,” Buck says. “Maybe before, I could’ve, but… Something has shifted since he came back from El Paso. And I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it feels like we’re on this– this constant tightrope. Like there’s something in the air every time we talk. Maybe he suspects something anyway, I’m not sure. But I’m just too terrified of upsetting the balance, especially now, when everything’s so– when we’re all still grieving."

He hardly has to explain that feeling to her.

“Would you have done something different, if it weren't for Bobby?” Athena asks. It's a question she's been asking herself a lot, lately. Often it feels entirely useless, no point in ignoring reality, but sometimes it proves to be a worthwhile thought experiment.

“I… I don't know,” Buck says, furrowing his brow. “Maybe. Probably. It's just– I can’t lose another person. And it feels so much more important to be able to show up for Chris, more than it already did. Since– I guess I know what it’s like now. If I… disappeared.”

Guess Athena judged their relationship correctly, then. Something of a father figure when needed, but just a friend when needed, too. Just like Buck and Bobby.

“And you don't think he feels the same about that? About wanting to keep you close, especially now, and about Chris needing you?”

“Well… Yeah, probably.” Buck rolls the stem of his wine glass between his fingers. “But that's exactly why I can't go around taking risks and changing things between us. Not now.”

Athena can hardly argue with that. She knows the feeling of desperately wanting to cling to everything she has left of the time when everything was still right. Intentionally bringing on another change feels completely counterintuitive right now.

Still.

“I think they already have changed,” Athena says, as gentle as she can. ”I think everything has.”

“Yeah,” Buck sighs. “God, yeah, you’re right. And normally he would be the one I’d talk to about this, but now I can’t. And I hate it. I hate it so much.” His hands are curled tightly into fists on his thighs.

There’s one question Athena has been meaning to ask, that she’s been waiting for the right moment for. It’s been on her mind since the party, really. She still sees the image of the two of them so clearly in her mind: Buck and Eddie, in the middle of the garden, looking at each other like they’d hardly notice if the rest of the universe suddenly ceased to exist. Like it would be enough, if it did, but they still had each other.

“And you don’t think it’s possible…” She trails off, leaving Buck to fill in the rest.

“Is what possible?” Buck asks, but he realizes what she means as soon as he’s said it. “Oh, Athena, no . No. Eddie’s straight.”

“But he wants you to be his boyfriend.”

“Well, yes,” Buck says. “But in a straight way.”

Athena thinks that if she were to look inside Buck’s head, she would find another heart instead of a brain. It’s the only possible explanation for why he’s so, so sweet, and so, so dumb.

“I don’t even know why I’m still talking to you,” she sighs.

“Okay, I– I know how it sounds. But trust me on this. I know him better than you do. And besides, he was–”

“Married to a woman?” Athena fills in. “Doesn’t say much, we’ve been over this. And besides, didn’t you have a string of girlfriends yourself? Being with women doesn’t mean you can’t like men.”

“Okay,” Buck says, sounding very much like it’s not okay. “But there’s still literally nothing to indicate he… Likes men.”

“Right,” Athena says, pointing at him like he’s made a brilliant point, which he hasn’t. “So, do you remember two minutes ago, when we established he wants a boyfriend?”

“Athena,” Buck whines.

“Buck,” she says, like she’s reprimanding one of her children. “There are two possible outcomes here. Either you tell that man you love him, and he tells you he feels the same–”

“That’s not–”

“Don’t interrupt me. It’s either that, or he does not feel the same, but at least he’ll finally understand why you’ve been acting like an insane person who attempts to communicate with him using baked goods, and you can go back to acting normal,” she says. “Or, well, what’s normal for you two, anyway.”

“I’m scared he won’t want that,” Buck says. “I’m scared that if he knows, he will get uncomfortable and pull away. I can’t bear that. I can barely stand it as is.”

“The alternative is this , Buckaroo,” Athena says. “Unless you do something about it, you’ll stay in this limbo– and in my apartment– forever. Ignoring it might have worked for the past seven years, but that’s over now. You can’t go back anymore. You know that.”

“Yes, but…” Buck looks down. “I’m scared,” he repeats.

Athena shrugs. “Guess you’re gonna have to be brave, then.”

⋆★⋆

You: Are you being brave?
Buck: No
You: Buck.
Buck: Give me a break ive been nauseous about this all day; Well this or last nights wine; We just had dinner I’ll talk to him soon I promise
You: I’d hope so.
Buck: If this all backfires horrifically im blaming you; And crying on your couch and drinking all your rose and killing myself
You: You can’t kill yourself. The mid-season finale of Gone Bad is next week.; Remember, he loves you.; And I’m willing to bet $5 that it’s not in a platonic way but that’s besides the point.
Buck: ATHENA????
You: Go talk to your best friend.

Athena puts her phone away, the screen locking itself with a click.

“He’s so ridiculous,” Athena says, with a small laugh. “I mean, he’s like a lovestruck teenager in the body of an adult man.” She plugs her charger into her phone, and sits down on the side of the bed, careful so she doesn’t disturb the sheets she’d so carefully made this morning. “But maybe that’s a bit hypocritical of me to say. After all, that’s the way you made me feel, too.”

Bobby’s portrait stares back at Athena silently from his nightstand. It’s a nice picture, one she took on a summer evening in their garden. He’s sitting in a chair wearing a green polo, smiling at Athena behind the camera. It’s a real smile, not a picture smile, left over from whatever joke she had told him seconds before pressing the shutter button. The setting sun colors the entire image with a soft orange haze, catching in his hair and eyelashes like bits of gold leaf.

“I remember our first date. You told me afterwards you were so nervous, and that you were so proud of yourself for not letting it show, but I knew, of course,” she laughs. “But I wasn’t going to convince you otherwise. I didn’t want you to think it was anything other than excellent.”

Bobby smiles at her, a knowing glint in his eye.

“I miss you, baby,” she says, tracing the side of the picture with her fingers. The wood is smooth under her fingers. It’s the exact same color as Bobby’s eyes, the warm brown of chestnuts and autumn and coming home. She sighs. “And we need to talk about the house.”

Notes:

hello thank you for making it to the end!! i hope you liked it <3
i forgot to mention this in chapter 1’s notes, but ‘Gone Bad’ is (quite obviously) based off NBC’s Good Girls, a show that i really enjoyed in its earlier seasons. i genuinely think Athena would like it a lot, obviously for the melodramatic crime aspect, but also for the way it portrays motherhood as a complex experience and not just like, a given for any woman over 25 ( which is something that obviously also shows up in athena’s character, especially in the earlier seasons, which is what initially made me love her. im not even a mom myself i just really love good portrayals of women in media 🫶)
also i read the wikipedia article for polvorón in two different languages for this chapter and then read like 10 different cooking blogs’ recipes......... i might actually have to make them now.
(also also...... it's definitely not sitting at 23k anymore)
edit to say the next update will probably be sunday, not wednesday! I had an epiphany and need to rehash the entire chapter I fear but it will all be worth it in the end I promise. <3

Chapter 3: Chapter 3

Notes:

hi! sorry for the late update. basically what happened was that i had an epiphany and felt the need to add "a few" "small" changes which ended up being 7k words which literally doubled the remaining chapter in length. this would have been fine except i also started a new medication which temporarily made my eyesight blurry (???) so it was kind of hard to type for a while because i lowkey couldnt see. i wish i was lying. but fear not my vision is back and so am i!!!!!
bc it got so long i decided to break it up in the middle, so it's going to be 4 chapters instead fof 3. shoutout to the person who commented saying they were sad it was just going to be 3 chapters, THIS ONE'S FOR YOU <3

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The next morning, the front door slams open, and Buck runs through the apartment like a storm.

He makes a beeline for the guest room, almost crashing into Athena in the hallway. She just barely manages not to spill her cup of Oolong all over herself.

“Well, good morning to you too!” She calls after him.

“Sorry, ‘Thena!” he calls back, and then there’s a noise like he’s tearing her guest room apart. She goes to the door opening, careful not to stand in the frame of it lest he body checks her like a rugby player on his way out.

“Late for work?” she asks, as she watches Buck dig frantically through his belongings, leaving a disaster in his wake.

“Yes,” he says, as he stuffs a few items into the bag he uses for work. “I mean, basically everything I own is still at Eddie’s, except everything I have to take to work, of course, and I was gonna leave early this morning, but we–” he finally turns around to look at Athena, as if he’s only just realized who he’s talking to. “We got. Uh. Distracted.”

Athena sips her tea, a knowing smile pulling at her lips. It’s been a permanent fixture since he didn’t come home last night. “I’m guessing you owe me five dollars.”

Buck smiles, wider than she’s ever seen him, so bright it could be blinding. It splits his face in two and transforms him into someone else entirely, someone stripped free of all of his fears and anxieties and grief.

“Yeah,” he says, with a laugh. He puts his hand against his forehead, as if it’s all only just sinking in now. “Holy fuck. You were right. He– he kissed me,” he says, dropping his hand. He looks at her, that 500-watt smile still on his face, and Athena finds it to be contagious, unable to keep herself from smiling back at him so hard she can feel it in her cheeks.

“He kissed me,” Buck repeats. And then he walks over to Athena, and wraps her up in a hug so enthusiastic she can barely keep her tea from spilling over. He lifts her up until she’s on her tiptoes, laughing into his shoulder. “Be careful!” she exclaims, and he puts her down, but only to press a kiss to her forehead, cradling her skull with two large hands.

“Thank you,’ he says. “I never would’ve– I wouldn’t have found the courage without you. I’ll– I’ll tell you all about it later, I promise, but I’m so, so late–”

“Go,” Athena says, the laughter still in the back of her throat. “Go,” she says, and Buck runs back out the front door with a spring in his step.

⋆★⋆

He ends up telling her the entire story over a large batch of homemade scones.

They aren’t an anxiety-bake, just something Buck thought she might enjoy munching on while he gives an account of the entire event, like how you bring popcorn to a movie. Buck was right about that, of course, but she really didn’t need the scones to enjoy this. Athena would be lying if she said she wasn’t dying to know every detail of what went down that night. To her own surprise, she had gotten rather invested in their love story. It was hard not to be, when Buck’s sitting in front of her, positively buzzing with excitement.

“Alright,” she says, looking intensely at Buck across the table. “Details. Now.”

He grins at her widely, and starts recounting the evening.

He starts his story off in a way that affirms to Athena that her encouraging text wasn’t unwarranted. As she had expected, Buck spent the entirety of dinner with Eddie anxiously bouncing his leg, and pretending he wasn’t. Eddie, in turn, was kindly pretending not to notice Buck pretending not to anxiously bounce his leg. Buck would have liked to trick himself into thinking he genuinely didn’t take note of it, but he knew him too well for that. It was too obvious, the way Eddie’s energy also grew more nervous as the evening passed, the storm brewing in Buck making its way into his friend’s head as well. He was just glad that Chris wasn’t home to witness it.

So after their meal, when the dishes were done and they were both on the couch with a cold beer in their hands, each nervously picking at the label, Buck had turned to Eddie and said, “I need to talk to you.” He’d put it off, wanting to enjoy as much of their life before this confession as possible, but he found that there was very little of it left. They were on a precipice, and though Buck did not know what was hiding below, he also knew that there was nothing left if he tried to turn back.

Eddie had looked at him with a mix of curiosity and concern, and Buck had folded and unfolded his hand into a fist several times until he’d blurted out, “ I think I’m in love with you. ”

(Then, he’d corrected himself, because ‘I think’ was vastly underselling it, though he was unable to tell Athena what exactly his confession had turned into in the end, the anxiety of the moment too intense to hear the words coming out of his mouth over the sound of his heart drumming in his ears. I am in love with you. I know I’m in love with you. I’ve always been in love with you. Something like that.)

It wasn’t how he meant to start, and it threw him off completely. Both of them, actually. He’d meant to slowly invite Eddie from the land into the water, letting him get used to the changing temperature one step at a time; instead, he’d shoved him in.

And at that point, well. Might as well push him under entirely.

“And I think you’re in love with me.”

⋆★⋆

“I’m– what?” Eddie says.

“This wasn’t how I meant for this conversation to go,” Buck says in a small voice. He’s aware his mouth lives a life of its own sometimes, talking before thinking, but this– this might be a new low.

“No, I– how do you mean?” Eddie says. Implores, really. It throws Buck for a loop. He prepared himself for Eddie to respond with anger, or disgust, or rejection, but not with this. A plea. Like he genuinely wants to understand where Buck is coming from.

He didn’t mean to put the blame on Eddie like this. This was supposed to be about how Buck feels about Eddie. Not about how Buck thinks– hopes, actually, because he’s obviously just fooling himself here– Eddie feels about Buck. These are Athena’s overdrawn conclusions making their way out of his mouth, not his own.

“I mean like– I don’t mean it, what I mean is, you act like it, sometimes. This is about the fight,” Buck tries again, but Eddie just looks more confused, his frown getting deeper. Buck's getting it all wrong, the entire conversation. He wants to make it stop, trace his thumb over the lines in his forehead until they're smoothed out, anxious expression wiped from Eddie's face.

“It's– so, okay,” Buck breathes. He forces his racing mind to slow down. “I think why I've been upset at you is because you're the most important person in my life. And you don't seem to realize that.”

“Buck,” Eddie says, incredulous. He puts his beer bottle down on the end table with a soft clunk , turning his full attention towards Buck. “You're my best friend. Of course I realize that.”

“No,” Buck says. “I don’t think you do. Or, well, you don’t act like it at least.”

“Okay,” Eddie says. His stare heavy on Buck in a way that makes him feel interrogated, like Buck is the one that’s off-base here. It’s irritating enough that it grounds him. He’s reminded of what he came here to do, what conversation they’re supposed to be having.

“So… So what, you feel like I don't appreciate you enough?” Eddie asks. His eyes search Buck's face, like the answer can be found somewhere in the grooves of his expression, if only he looked close enough.

“No,” Buck shakes his head. “It's more like… Like, for example, you get in all these relationships, right? Which is fine. But the way you talk about it is like… Like you just need a wife, or a girlfriend, like it’s the one thing you’re missing–”

“Well, yes,” Eddie says, sounding less defensive than Buck expected him to. It comes out more like a line he’s rehearsed for a play, a little too practiced to still sound natural. “I want a stable home. For me and for Christopher to have someone to rely on. Surely you don’t have a problem with that.”

“The problem is that you have someone to rely on,” Buck snaps. “You have that. I'm here. I've been here this entire time. But you don't even see it.” He can feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Weeks of biting his tongue around Eddie has put him on edge. He puts his bottle away too, scared he might break the glass with how tightly he’s got his fist around the neck.

“You seriously don't think I realize how much you've done for us?” Eddie asks, with genuine disbelief. “You think I don't see how much you mean to him? I put you in my will –”

“Exactly,” Buck says. “I feel like– like you do these things, but you don't even see the implications. God, I didn't want to fight with you again–”

“No, no, let's hear it. What implications?” He's trying to say it like a challenge, like he's inviting him to a duel, but it's obviously just poorly concealed curiosity. Poorly concealed to Buck, anyway. Maybe someone who's not in his will would've fallen for it.

“Do you ever think about how it makes me feel that you essentially treat me like a life partner, but never acknowledge that fact? Like, oh, thanks for parenting my son, but I've got to get back to meaningless girlfriend number three now–”

“I– well, you don't acknowledge it either, Buck!” Eddie says, a little hysterical. He stands up from the couch, and takes a few steps into the room until he’s in the middle of it, curling his hands into frustrated fists.

Buck follows him, more automatically than consciously. “No,” he says. “I guess I don't, but…”

Eddie whips back around, facing Buck. “We don't talk about it,” Eddie says, somewhere between angry and desperate. It’s the same expression he’d had during the fight after Bobby’s funeral. “Don't put this on me. We've never talked about it.”

“And now we are,” Buck says. There’s an arm’s length between them. “I’m not burying this, too.”

“I never asked you to bury your feelings,” Eddie says. “Have you even considered that I might prefer you to be honest with me instead? So I actually know what's going on in your head when you stop talking to me for weeks? Buck, why didn't you tell me this?”

“Because every time I do talk to you, you start a fight!” Buck retorts. It comes out sharper than he had intended.

Effs huffs out an irritated sigh. “If I'm upset with you, I'm going to let you know. That's what friendship is, I'm supposed to be able to be honest with you. Sorry for wanting to rely on– on my best friend–”

“You don't rely on me like I'm your best friend,” Buck snaps, pointing an accusatory finger at him that Eddie usually is rather fond of using himself. “You rely on me like– like I married you, or something, and if I’m not permanently by your side, I’m neglecting my duties. Except I didn’t. I didn't promise you anything like that.”

Eddie stares at him in silence. It’s like Buck can physically feel the weight of his gaze, a soft pressure against his skin as though Eddie is caressing him.

The fight withers from Eddie’s voice, just a little. “I didn't know that was a problem.” It’s not an accusation. It’s just a statement.

“It wasn't,” Buck admits. They’re still looking at each other, eye contact so intense it makes Buck feel exposed, like Eddie’s trying to lay every inch of him bare. He would be lying if he said he didn’t like it.

A miniature expression crosses Eddie’s face, the slightest twitch of his eyebrows, like he’s trying to hold off on the real thing. “But it is, now?”

Buck sighs. “I… Yeah. Maybe.”

He blinks. It’s followed by a tiny, shallow nod. “...What changed?”

“Me,” Buck says honestly. “My feelings. I can’t chase you forever, Eddie.”

He can’t look at Eddie while says it, not with the way he feels his face heat up. “You know, I– I was just going to tell you all this because I wanted you to know why I’d been distant, so we could maybe figure something out, but I… I don’t think I can do that, actually. I don't think I can go on like this.”

“Buck,” Eddie says softly. “Come on.” The lamplight pools in his eyes, the cheap bulbs turning into pure gold where it sinks into the brown.

“I wanted to stay, for you, for Chris, but I think I need– I need space.” It’s words he never quite imagined leaving his mouth, not aimed at Eddie, anyway, but it feels like the truth. Like how you sometimes need an amputation. “And I– I really wish I didn't have to do this, but this is… This is what’s best.”

“How?” Eddie asks. He doesn’t bother hiding how distraught he is. “How could pulling away possibly be good for us? When has it ever been good for us?” The part of Buck’s brain that only ever wants to hear that someone needs him to stay lights up like a Christmas tree. Silver linings. “We just lost Bobby, and now you want to push me away, too? Don’t tell me you’ve been enjoying these past few weeks. Don’t even try and convince me it hasn’t been tearing you apart, too.”

“It has,” Buck shoots back. “Of course it has. It’s been a nightmare. I hate not having you around.”

“So why– why would you stretch that out even longer?” He gestures with his hand into the living room. His eyes glitter, but only like broken glass. “Why would you walk in here, and lay out all the reasons why everything between us feels wrong, and then not allow me to do anything about it?”

“Because, Eddie, it’s all just a matter of time anyway,” Buck says, and maybe that's what this has all been about. “You’ll leave eventually–”

“I won’t,” Eddie says through gritted teeth, as if he’s offended by the notion. Buck has to do everything he can to fight back a spiteful laugh. “You can’t just quit your job and sue the city every time you get scared, Buck, let’s work this out–”

“What does it even matter to you?” Buck cuts in. “Because as I remember it, you have no ties in LA.” He can feel the old pain rise up, like he’s picking at a scab. When he was a kid, he could never resist it, always walking around with traces of blood caked under his fingernails.

“That’s not fair,” Eddie says. His eyes narrow with either anger or disbelief. “Fucking hell Buck, you think that was easy for me? You think I just woke up one day, thought to myself, Hey, you know what sounds fun? Going back to the place that made me miserable for nearly three decades, leave my job behind, leave all my friends behind, leave you behind. Finding out Bobby’s dead from a phone call –”

“You sure made it look easy,” Buck counters.

“I know you don’t believe that.” Eddie says, agonized, like it’s the most cutting thing he’s said so far. “I know you know me better than that.”

Buck shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I know how this ends.” He’s seen this film play out a million times before, the final plot twist predictable from the start. Everyone goes, sooner or later. Eddie, who can’t even see what they are to each other, will hardly be an exception. “If you’re just waiting for– for a girlfriend to come and replace me anyway, then we might as well save ourselves some time and cut to the chase.” The words leave a bitter aftertaste on his tongue.

“Jesus, Buck, you just spelled out every reason why you’re the most important person in my life, that I need you, and you still can’t see it?” There’s a five-alarm five behind Eddie’s eyes.

“I can see it,” Buck snaps. “I just don’t think you can. I don’t think you want to.”

“Of course I do, Buck, don’t be stupid ,” Eddie snarls. “Of course I see it. How can I not. You’re everything to me. You’re all I want. You’re– you’re–” He tries to search for the right words, but he can’t seem to find them, taking short breaths in between stuttered syllables.

“Oh, am I, now?” Buck asks, cynical and awful. He can't help it.

“Yes,” Eddie hisses. “God, yes, of course–”

Buck laces his words with as much venom as he can. “Then, for once, start acting like it.”

In response, Eddie crashes his lips against Buck’s.

Before Buck can fully compute the magnitude of the moment, that they're kissing, that Eddie is kissing him, he finds himself answering the kiss. It’s more instinct than a conscious decision, the way birds know to sing at dawn or the sun knows to sink behind the horizon every evening. He melts into it, Eddie’s hand against his jaw being the only thing that steadies him.

The swipe of Eddie's tongue against his bottom lip makes him shiver. It kickstarts something inside his chest, and he eagerly opens his mouth for Eddie to take all of him he wants, all he’ll have. Buck feels his hands roam over his body, clutching and grabbing aimlessly like he’s wanting to hold on to every inch of Buck he can find.

Maybe that’s what sends Buck into overdrive, or maybe it’s the sound Eddie makes when Buck twists his fingers into his hair, or maybe it’s that this kiss is terrifying and beautiful all at once, everything he’s felt in the past few weeks wrapped up into one enormous, agonizing, magnificent moment. This could be the start of forever or the last time he’ll ever feel happiness, but he can’t figure it out now, because Eddie’s got two fingers under the back of his t-shirt and he needs his entire brain to process it.

With his mind shut off, desire takes over. The kiss turns hard. Hungry. He finds himself drawing Eddie in by his hips, wanting to push their bodies together, be as close as possible, closer than that. He wants to merge all their cells together, lock them into this embrace forever.

He digs his fingers into Eddie’s flank while their mouths slide against each other, hot and wet and impossibly perfect. The sensation of Eddie’s tongue against his own is almost too much for Buck to comprehend, but it’s still not enough. He clutches at his jaw, communicating something he barely understands himself, but Eddie does. Of course Eddie does.

He immediately answers the question Buck didn’t know he was asking. Eddie kisses him with more insistence, shifting from passion into sheer desperation, teeth grazing against Buck’s lips in a way that sends a spark through him which finds its home somewhere low in his abdomen. He gasps into the pocket universe between their mouths, stars sparkling behind his closed eyelids. He feels so good he wonders if it should be possible, if it should be allowed.

“Eddie–” he starts, when they break apart, gasping for breath, but the rest of the sentence dies quickly when Eddie presses his lips to the line of Buck’s jaw, and starts a long trace of kisses down his neck. When Buck lets out a desperate sound, somewhere between a sigh and a moan, he can feel the sharpness of Eddie’s teeth against the soft flesh as he smiles. Buck wishes he would bite down there, leave a bruise or a scar or a flesh wound, anything to remember this moment by.

He doesn’t, though, merely comes back up for another crushing kiss, one that sends Buck stumbling backwards from the sheer force. He extends an arm out backwards towards the arm of the couch for balance, but misses.

Buck decides not to fight it, letting himself fall back onto the couch, dragging Eddie down with him. He ends up on his back, Eddie hovering over him, the medal on the chain around Eddie’s neck dangling between them.

He knows Eddie. Knows him better than anyone or anything else in the universe. He has tasted his blood and died in his arms. But he’s never seen him like this before, wild and flushed and completely undone, looking like Buck’s end and beginning all at once.

He can’t have this. He’s not supposed to have this.

“Eddie,” he says again. He makes sure to put up a hand against Eddie’s jaw this time to keep him from straying elsewhere. It’s the most valiant effort of Buck’s life.

“Eddie,” he pants. “What’s– what are you–”

“What’s wrong?” He asks, and he sounds like Eddie, but he looks completely different from anyone’s Buck’s seen before. Maybe his brain just can’t compute it, that it’s Eddie, his Eddie, that’s currently looming over him like an angel about to fall.

“What are you doing?”

Eddie freezes, just momentarily. “What does it look like I’m doing, Buck,” he says eventually, but it’s enough to kill the moment, put out the fire that was building between them. He retreats to the other end of the couch. Buck shuffles into an upright position. He feels sick.

“Don’t tell me you’re just doing this for me,” Buck says. Eddie laughs, sardonic and quick. It only unsettles Buck further. “Eddie, I don’t want you to pretend–”

“It's not pretending. It's the opposite of pretending.” He’s not looking at Buck. “I've been pretending my whole life, but never with you, and that’s the whole problem here, actually.”

“What– what do you mean?” Buck’s not following. It feels like a dream, actions and sentences strung together in a way that makes no sense.

“What do you think it means, Buck? What has this entire conversation been about?” He says it with the impatience of an aggravated teacher, tired of his pupils not understanding him after explaining the same thing ten times. Thing is, Eddie hasn’t explained himself even once.

Buck’s heart is still racing in his chest, fast and unbalanced as a frightened horse. It ought to be supplying his brain with blood, but it doesn’t seem to be, with the way Buck can’t seem to summon the right thoughts to make any sense of the situation.

“I thought you were straight,” he says eventually, as he has so many times before. He knows it’s stupid, but it’s the only thing his brain can conjure up at the moment.

Eddie laughs. The sound is short and harsh. “Even after everything we just did–” he shakes his head. “Congrats, man, I genuinely think you’re the last person on earth who still thinks that.”

“Eddie,” Buck says again, pleading. All the euphoria of the kiss has evaporated, so far gone Buck is starting to think he might just have imagined the whole scene, if not for the remaining tenderness of his lips.

“Eddie, please. What’s going on?” He wants to understand, he really, really wants to understand, but as of right now it just looks like Eddie's losing his mind in front of him, and it's fucking terrifying.

Eddie bows down his head, raking a hand through his hair. His hands stay at his jaw as he rests his head in his hands, fingers clasped like a collar to keep himself in check.

“It’s, uh… It’s been going on since El Paso,” he says. His voice sounds distant, as if he’s speaking through a tin can telephone.

“Okay,” Buck says. “Okay, so– so talk me through this. Forget everything else. Talk to me like I'm your best friend.”

“You are my best friend,” Eddie says, as if that was the question. He’s still speaking to the floor.

“Yeah. So… Let's talk.” He wishes he could move closer to Eddie, but he doesn’t want to risk it. “What’s– what’s happening here?”

“I mean, it’s– it started before El Paso, but that's what got me to think, I guess.” He lifts his head, resting his arms on his knees, and he stares off into the empty space of the living room. “Going back there made me realize where I came from, you know, uh, my environment and upbringing. It gave me all these ideas about who I ought to be, husband, father, prodigal son. And I guess I just… Ran with that.” His voice is wavering. Whether it’s from the adrenaline of the kiss or anxiety, Buck doesn’t know.

“Okay,” Buck says. “But you are all of those things. A husband and a father and a son.”

“Well… Yeah,” Eddie says, in a tone that lets Buck know his response was the wrong one. It fills him with a sense of dread. He really wants to understand this.

“I guess what I mean is that I've always had this… This idea of what I'm supposed to be. And I've always tried to be that person. But all my life, I've known I've been getting it wrong. And I thought that was because I didn't play those roles right, that I just had to try harder, or something. But now I don't…” He’s tapping his fingers against his leg rapidly, quick as the heartbeat of a mouse. “I think it's not that. Maybe. I think it's the opposite.”

“The opposite as in…”

After a beat, Eddie nods. Like the small movement took a considerable effort. “Yeah, I’m– I think I’m gay. I know I am, actually.”

Buck tries to ignore the feeling of the world shifting under his feet. Like another earthquake has hit the city, 7.1 in magnitude.

“And I think there’s– I know there’s always been signs, but I’ve always looked the other way. Because that’s not what I was supposed to be. And I guess you’ve… You’ve always been in the middle of that.” Eddie finally looks at him. He looks shaken, pale like a phantom of his former self.

“Why didn't you tell me you were struggling with this?” Buck asks, because he’s obviously been thinking about this a lot to be able to explain it so well. He knows it sounds a little petulant. Eddie doesn't owe it to him to pour out every single one of his thoughts in Buck’s presence, but that doesn't keep Buck from wanting to drink them. “You know I'm here for you. Always.”

“We’re talking about it now,” Eddie says, echoing Buck’s words from early on in their conversation. It’s a poor attempt at humor, but effective enough in getting the point across. Can’t really talk about these things until you’re ready. Or until you’ve lived with your late boss’ widow for a week and she’s convinced you to finally get your shit together. Or until you’ve impulsively made out with your best friend and it forces you to look things in the eye.

“I’m sorry you caught up in… In all this,” Eddie says, catching Buck's gaze with his own. “I think in trying to push away this part of myself, I pushed you away too, sometimes. Didn’t really… Let myself look at us. See it for what it is.”

“Like with the flight?” Buck asks.

Eddie tilts his face like a cat. “...The flight?"

“The one… You were going to get on a red-eye, right after the building collapse. And you only stayed because Chim told you to. Not me.”

Eddie’s eyebrows twist ever so slightly, amusement and confusion flickering across his face. “That’s what you're focusing on?” Buck doesn’t think it’s that weird. He apologized for everything else, but not for this. It seems a logical thing to focus on.

Eddie must notice Buck’s expression, because he says, “Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry about the flight. I didn’t mean to hurt you with that. It’s not like I wasn’t thinking about you when I decided to stay in that moment. Okay?”

“Okay,” Buck says. Something inside him eases.

“Good. But what I was aiming at was more like… The lashing out, and taking you for granted. I love you, Buck, I really, really do, and I need you to know that, because that’s pretty much the only thing I’m sure about anymore–”

“I know,” Buck says. He means it. “I promise I know. I just needed to hear you say it.”

“Okay. Okay, good,” Eddie says, with a nod.

Eddie sighs. He’s bouncing his leg, eyes turned towards the ground again. “I want to do better by you. And I wish I could promise you that, I really want to, but I–”

“Hey,” Buck says softly.

“– I fuck things up. Constantly. And I think if I face this it will make me fuck things up less often, maybe, but I can’t promise you anything.”

Finally, Eddie looks at him again, eyes big and distraught. He wants to wipe the expression from his face. He wants to burn down the world that made him feel this way. He wants to be there for every fuck-up until they both die.

“I want to be there for every fuck-up until we both die,” Buck says, because there’s no point in holding back these thoughts anymore.

“You sure about that?” Eddie asks, a weary little smile on his chapped lips.

“Yeah,” Buck says. “As long as you return the favor.”

“I can do that.”

They stare at each other in silence for a second, unsure where to go from here. Then Buck reaches out, and Eddie accepts, allowing Buck to put an arm around his shoulder. Buck can smell his shampoo and cologne.

They sit there together for a while, in silence, wrapped into an embrace. It feels a little bit odd, because this is not their usual kind of intimacy, and that in itself feels ridiculous after they’ve just shared the heaviest, hottest kiss of Buck’s life.

Still, that does not mean that this situation isn’t also novel to them, cuddling for the sake of cuddling. They might sling an arm around each other every now and then, share a lingering goodbye hug, but this is different. It’s not something that feels like it should be allowed. Because it crosses their one unwritten rule, maybe: don’t acknowledge that you’re in love with him.

But they’ve clearly already crossed that line, so here they are. Eddie leans into his touch, nestling his head in the crook of Buck’s neck. It makes all Buck’s hairs stand on end, static from the bolt of electricity coursing through his body.

He rubs a thumb over Eddie’s arm. He can feel the hard muscle beneath it. He wonders how many times it’s saved his life. It feels like it’s saving his life right now.

“Everything sucks without you, by the way,” Eddie mumbles, from somewhere right below Buck’s chin.

“I saw you yesterday,” Buck points out. He turns his face to the side, ever so slightly, so a few strands of Eddie’s hair tickle his nose. It takes every ounce of self-control he has not to breathe in, let the chemicals of his hair gel move into his lungs.

“You know what I mean. I wish you'd let me talk to you instead of just pulling away. I wish we'd had this conversation two weeks ago.” He can feel Eddie’s body heat, even through the fabric of their clothes. It feels like coming home on a snow day.

“I wasn't ready two weeks ago,” Buck admits. “I needed time. And at least four long conversations with Athena.”

“I didn't know you two were so close,” Eddie says. He doesn’t bother hiding the hint of jealousy in his voice. Buck would be lying if he said he didn’t like it.

“We kind of are, now. She gives good advice. Though she also made fun of my crush on you, like, the entire time.”

Eddie chuckles. “Yeah, that’s– that’s fair, I think. It’s pretty embarrassing for the both of us.” Buck feels the laugh reverberate in his own chest, nestling somewhere between his ribs, a low rumble transferred directly from Eddie's body into his own. He wishes he could slot their ribcages together so it’s always like this.

“Wait,” Buck says. “Wait, so you're– you– you’re in love with me.”

“You know, it’s really taking a lot of effort to hammer that point home,” Eddie comments. He lifts his head, so they can look at each other. It’s hard to miss the flush on his cheeks. “But yeah. Yeah, I am.”

He’s no longer Buck, the best friend, now. He’s just Buck, hopelessly in love. There's a kaleidoscope of butterflies in his stomach.

“I can't believe Athena was right,” he says.

Eddie raises his eyebrows at him. “You're still thinking about Athena right now?” He puts his hand up against Buck's chest, fingers splayed out, and studies it as if he's testing out if it will lay there or pass right though.

He must be able to feel Buck's heart trash around. It's beating harder now, like it's trying to escape his chest and tuck itself into Eddie's palm. When he removes it, his fingertips stray for a few seconds, and then he leans away from Buck’s embrace entirely.

Buck lets his arm fall, and then retracts it. He feels instantly cold.

“I think you and Christopher are the only two things I've ever been certain of,” Eddie says, leaning against the back of the couch, once Buck’s arm doesn’t block him from it anymore. “But I… I’m still figuring this out.”

“You realized you're gay minutes ago,” Buck says, his voice gentle. “I don't think anyone expected anything else.”

“I just– I don't really know how to… Do this. It’s all very new.” He looks up, as if he’s quietly asking God or the ceiling fan for guidance.

“I know,” Buck says. “I don’t want you to rush into anything. I know I practically just dragged you out of the closet there.”

Eddie huffs out a laugh. “Yeah. I clearly needed that, though, so. Thanks.” He pulls a hand through his hair again, messing it up even more than it already was. Absentmindedly, Buck remembers that he’s the one who messed it up. It feels surreal.

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Buck says.

The ghost of Eddie’s laugh lingers on his lips, a small, unconscious smile that Buck wishes he could capture like a firefly. “I just have no idea how to get this right,” he sighs, the smile withering with his words. “I can’t afford to hurt you again, Buck, I can’t have you put this weird distance between us again where I can tell you’re pissed off, but you won’t let me talk to you. We need to– to–”

“Let’s just… Breathe for a minute,” Buck says, seeing the way Eddie’s eyebrows are knitting together in the center. “I think I need a second to, uh. Process everything.” Frankly, he’s still not entirely convinced this all isn’t one long dream.

“Yeah,” Eddie says through a laugh. “Yeah. Say that.”

“Decide later,” Buck offers. “I'll stay here tonight.”

Eddie nods. “Yeah. That sounds good."

“I’ll take the couch.”

“Okay.”

⋆★⋆

“That’s it? Don’t tell me you’re just going to leave the story there!?” Athena exclaims. “We’re just getting to the good part.”

“Well, you already know how it ends,” Buck says, in between bites of his scone. They’re both on their fourth or fifth one. They really are rather good.
“Buckley,” Athena says sternly. “I’ve listened to you whine about this man for weeks on end, if you’re not going to give me every juicy detail–”

Buck laughs. “Fine, fine.”

⋆★⋆

The next morning is remarkably easy.

Buck wakes up to the sound of Eddie messing around in the kitchen. He finds him by the coffee maker, two mugs already on the counter while the water drips though. The homey smell of ground beans fills the air.

He’s reminded of the time he and Chris bought Eddie a smart coffee maker as a prank. After returning it, Eddie became even more attached to his ancient drip model. Even now the spring at the top is broken, he refuses to replace it. Seeing it back in its rightful spot after Eddie came back from El Paso filled Buck with a strange sense of ease.

“Morning,” Buck says, as a way of announcing his arrival. “Sleep well?” Buck did, actually, on the too-small couch in the curtainless living room. Eddie’s too-small couch and curtainless living room.

“Not a wink. Work is definitely going to be interesting today,” Eddie says, a statement supported by the deep circles under his eyes that are revealed when he turns his face toward Buck. His hair is unruly as it always is in the mornings, before he can gel it into submission. Buck’s always preferred it like this. It feels more real, in a way. Or maybe he just likes it because it’s a version of Eddie that the outside world doesn’t get to see, a version of him he gets to keep for himself, just a little bit.
“Sorry,” Buck says.

Eddie shakes his head. “Don’t be. I needed the time to think.” The coffee maker quiets down, indicating it’s finished, so Eddie grabs the pot and pours them both a mug. Buck stares at his back while he does it. His red shirt and tan skin are warm against the teal-and-white kitchen, like a fire in winter.

“What time is Chris coming back?” he asks, as Eddie turns around and hands him a mug.

“Not until after our shift,” Eddie says. Their fingers graze each other, just barely. “He’s heading right to Pepa’s from Tom’s house, so we don’t have to worry about that.”

“Alright.”

“I’m glad his LA friends didn’t forget about him,” Eddie muses. Buck can’t help but notice how small the coffee mug looks in Eddie’s big hands. “I was worried about that for a little while.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

This is the main difference between them, Buck thinks. Eddie can do small talk easily the morning after a life-changing kiss, wait until after they have some food in their stomachs to start any other momentous conversations. Buck, on the other hand, can’t. His feelings are too big for his body, and if he tries to keep them inside, it just feels like he’s going to explode.

Eddie knows this, of course.

“You wanna talk about it?” he says. He sounds casual, like this isn’t going to change the course of their entire lives, one way or the other. He sips his coffee like it’s a morning like any other.

“Yes,” Buck says, relieved. He’s still hovering by the table, while Eddie leans back against the counter. He doesn’t bother sitting down. He doesn’t think he can.

“Okay,” Eddie says. He inhales deeply. For Buck’s sake, or maybe his own, he cuts to the chase. “I want this. Want you, I mean.” Buck’s heart skips a beat. “But I’m not going to stand here and pretend I’ve got it all figured out. I’ve got nothing figured out, actually.”

Buck nods. “I know. I don’t expect you to.” He tries to take a sip of coffee, but he can’t really get it down. He puts it down on the table, useless anyway.

Eddie nods behind his own cup, still firmly clutched in his hand. “The problem is that I can’t afford to fuck this up. We need each other. Especially now.”

“I know,” Buck says. “It's why it took me so long to talk to you. Can't lose another person, not now. And, you know. Chris.”

“Chris,” Eddie agrees. It’s the kind of wordless conversation they’ve become a little too reliant on, maybe, but it serves them just fine this morning.

So that's it, then. End of story. It all was a little too good to be true, anyway.

“But,” Eddie continues. “I… I don’t think we ever really fuck things up,” he says, with a little shake of his head. “Or, well, we do. Both of us. But we always figure it out, is what I mean. Can’t say that about anyone else.”

“Yeah.”

“So…” He nods his head to the side, and casually swirls the coffee around in his cup. “I don’t think it will be easy, exactly. Or maybe it will be, because it’s us, and it wouldn’t be much different from anything else we’ve been doing for the past…”

“Seven,” Buck fills in.

“Seven years,” Eddie says. He inhales. “I’m going to need you by my side while I figure this out no matter what. But if you’d be willing to take a shot on me, then… We could figure it out together.”

It’s strange to see Eddie question himself like this. He’s not like Buck, someone who figures things out by speaking them out loud. Usually, when Eddie talks about something, he’s already made up his mind– whether he’s already solved the problem or decided it’s a lost cause, even if it’s not always that black-and-white.

It’s good to be invited in on the decision like this.

“I think we should,” Buck says, nodding.

Eddie's eyes trace up, becoming more hopeful with every inch. “Yeah?” Eddie says, a little smile tugging at the right corner of his lips. Buck wishes he could kiss it off him, find out the way it tastes.

“Yeah,” Buck says back. Their eyes meet, starry blue against wide-eyed brown.

Eddie puts his cup of coffee next to him on the counter. It’s an invite.

Eddie’s only a few feet away, but it feels like miles when he crosses the distance.

The air is electric. The light in the kitchen can’t just be from the dewy morning sun, which is too soft, too gentle to be what’s on every surface of this room right now. With every step that he takes, it becomes more noticeable. If you listened closely, you could hear it sizzling like a wire, Buck thinks, but he’s too focused on hearing every breath that leaves Eddie’s mouth, escaping through the little gap where his lips are parted like a keyhole in the door to the rest of his life.

Their height difference isn’t particularly noticeable, not usually, but it is when they’re as close together as they are now, breathing in the same air. Buck can smell the shampoo in Eddie’s hair, the traces of coffee on his tongue. He wants to lick it out. He could.

Eddie tilts his head to the right, ever so slightly, like it matters. Even if he broke all of Buck’s teeth, this would still be the kiss of a lifetime. He would still thank him for it.

But it’s Eddie, who only ever wants to do right by him. So it’s soft, instead, as sweet as last night’s kiss was passionate. A warm press of lips against Buck’s own, while Eddie’s calloused hand finds his cheek, cradling him.

They pull apart, momentarily, barely an inch that still feels too big a distance.

“Okay?” Buck asks in a whisper. He looks at Eddie through his lashes, counting every freckle on his skin.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, or almost says, because Buck swallows down the word before he can fully finish it.

It’s not a first kiss, not technically, but it feels like it. It’s a beginning, a moment so pivotal it will forever be a line in Buck’s life that separates it into ‘before’ and ‘after’. He’s reinvented, right there, on the cool tiles of Eddie’s kitchen. Nothing will ever be the same again.

The kiss is greedy, and it has every right to be, after all this time. There’s nothing repressed about the way Eddie’s teeth graze against Buck’s bottom lip, the way he parts his mouth for Buck to deepen it. Buck pushes him back against the counter, and he can feel Eddie smile against his lips.

“Eager,” he says, and Buck does all but deny it, pressing another hot kiss to his mouth. Eddie leans into it, pulling Buck close while he lets his hand travel from Buck’s jaw up into his hair. He tightens his fingers, drawing out an obscene sound that’s only muffled by Eddie’s tongue. Buck shifts his hips–

⋆★⋆

“Actually, I think that’s enough information for today,” Buck says, ending his story mid-sentence.

“Right there in the kitchen?” Athena asks, more impressed than anything. “Oh, that’s freaky. Good for you.” She raises her scone at him in praise.

“Speaking from experience?” Buck teases.

Athena merely smiles, and takes another bite.

Buck laughs. “Ooh! Good for you. ”

“Thank you.”

“I mean, it was just–” Buck starts, then cuts himself off. “No, okay, I won’t. This is all the juicy details you’re getting. Until the next bottle of wine, at least.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” says Athena. “One drop of alcohol and you start monologuing about that man like you’re starring in a play about his life.”

“Guilty as changed,” Buck says cheerily, not at all bothered by the accusation. He sounds a little proud of it, even. “Hey, we’re still on for next week, right?” he asks, taking a bite of his scone.

“Of course," Athena says. “And you better not cancel on me.”

Buck grins, the apples of his cheeks high and rosy. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Notes:

hello! thank you for making it to the end! hope you enjoyed this small detour into buck's mind :-)
in case you did not read the start notes or tuned out when i started talking about vision-altering prescription drugs, this ISN'T the last chapter. chapter 4 will be posted soon, probably later this week (though i am not planning on starting any other strange medications i'm still scared to mention a specific day now but Soon)
anyway!! thank you as always for your lovely comments, even if i don't respond directly know i am giggling and blushing at all of them. i love you. MWAH THANK U FOR READING SEE YOU SOON

Chapter 4: Chapter 4

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The following day, the kids come over for dinner. Athena spends the afternoon cooking, intentionally picking a dish that would take up a decent amount of time, mindfully enjoying the routine of it all: washing the vegetables, peeling them, chopping them up. Turning on the heat, frying the onions and garlic, adding the rest. Prepping the baking dish, adding the sauce, adding in the lasagna sheets. It feels good to create something.

“So, no Buck today?” Harry asks from his usual spot at the dinner table. No matter when or where, he and May still automatically sit opposite each other when food is going to be served, much like how if they’re in the back of a car it’s May on the left, Harry on the right. It’s funny how those little habits stick, minute decisions made years ago turned into unbreakable rules.

She sets down a plate of lasagna in front of him, Bobby’s recipe. He taught it to her years ago in their old kitchen, though he’d fiddled with the measurements for months afterward until he got it exactly right. She’s not sure if this is the same as what he’d finally settled on.

“No,” Athena says. “Buck had other plans.” Most people would assume it was impossible for Buck and Eddie to become even more joined at the hip than they already were. Most people were recently proven wrong.

Seeing her kids' faces makes her think of her grandmother. When she was a child, she would always beg Athena to visit again soon before she had never left the door. At the time, she thought she was being dramatic, but she gets it now. Every second spent with her children feels precious.

She sits down, and decides it’s best if she gets straight to the point.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about,” Athena announces.

“Uh-oh,” Harry says immediately, his fork already halfway to his mouth. He bites down, immediately burning his mouth.

“It’s obviously boiling hot, dude. Mom took it out of the oven maybe three minutes ago,” May says, as she watches Harry chew and breathe in at the same time to try and dull the pain with something between amusement and reprehension. The twist of her eyebrows relaxes as she turns back to Athena. “What is it, mom?”

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Athena says. “About… Where I’ve been at, so to say.”

“Okay,” May says, sounding suspicious. “In what way?”

Athena taps her nails against the table. She’s just trying to find the right way to say it.

These kinds of conversations used to happen with Michael or Bobby here, and she feels a little bit out of her depth, in a way. She’s gotten somewhat used to having someone else to fill in the blanks.

“It’s about the house,” she says. This clearly grabs May and Harry’s attention, because they both look at her expectantly with a new kind of focus. “I don’t think I’m going to sell it.”

“You changed your mind? Again?” Harry asks, having swallowed his bite of white-hot pasta. He wisely puts his fork down to let the rest of his dish approach a more edible temperature.

“I know I’ve been going back-and-forth on it quite a lot,” Athena says through a small laugh. “At first, I just thought, you know, it's still the same land you two grew up on, where I watched you take your first steps, even if the house itself is different.” she says, recalling her earlier sentiments about the whole ordeal. “That’s a lot of memories that seemed worth keeping. But then I started worrying that the new house… That it would just be a reminder of loss, instead.”

May’s nods, empathetic as always, that shining quality of hers that made her the ideal dispatcher. “That it would remind you of Bobby, you mean?” She asks.

“Yes,” Athena says. “Because I built that house with him, with the intention of growing old there together. And now we won’t.”

May and Harry look at her quietly. It’s a little weird for her to lay her feelings bare like this, especially when it comes to anything related to Bobby’s death. She’s felt so isolated by it she’s been pushing everyone away, seeing no real point in talking about it when she’s the only one carrying this pain of becoming a widow. But the thing is, she’s not. Not really.

“...So, what’s changed?” Harry says, his voice soft.

“Buck,” Athena admits with a laugh. “He made me see that it might actually be nice to live in the house, because it’s one of the few things I have left of Bobby. To be surrounded by him, so to say, even now he’s gone. I think I’ve been running, a little bit. Trying not to see the grief.”

Harry and May eye each other, agreeing on something unspoken.

May, forever the eldest sibling, takes it upon her to voice their shared thought. “Well… Yeah,” she says, a little carefully. “That’s kind of what you do.”

Athena raises her eyebrows.

“You're our mom,” Harry says, with a sideways smile. “We know you better than you think. This is like when dad came out, and you tried to pretend it wasn’t happening for a while.”

“Yeah. It’s like, you either fix the problem immediately, usually with a warrant and a gun, but if you can’t, you just kind of… Act like it isn’t there.” May says, and Harry nods in agreement. It surprises her, but it really shouldn't. They’ve spent their entire lives with her, the only two people who have. Of course they know her better than anyone else.

“But, wait,” Harry says. “I thought you said you were going to sell the house because you thought it was too big for you alone.”

“I did say that, yes,” Athena agrees.

Harry and May look at her to elaborate. She does not appreciate the prodding raise of their eyebrows.

Oh, fine, then. “It was an excuse,” she finally admits. “But, at the same time, not entirely untrue. Which brings me to the other thing I wanted to discuss with you.” She sucks in a breath. “Harry, I would like you to move back in with me.”

“...Are you sure?” He asks, his hesitation audible. “I thought… I don’t know, I thought you maybe didn’t want me to.”

Athena looks at him in disbelief. “Why would I not want you to? You’re my son.”

Harry shrugs. “Well, I don’t know. At first you and Bobby were building this dream life, which you made very clear didn’t involve us. And then… I don’t know. It seemed like you didn’t really want us around much. That you needed space to process everything, I mean.”

“I did feel that way at first,” Athena admits. “But I think I was wrong. It felt like I was protecting you, but I might have been doing the opposite.”

“Protecting us from what?” May asks, brown eyes full of concern.

“Myself,” Athena says. “My grief. It’s not been pretty.” She thinks of now she lashed out at Buck, how she’s been picking fights with Hen for no real reason.

“No one expected it to be,” May says. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I know, but… I’ve been through this before. With Emmett. And it’s not the same situation, but I knew from the start what this kind of loss does to a person. What it turns me into, I didn’t want to drag you into this– this darkness with me.” She remembers the time after Emmett’s death, the hopeless despair she lived in for months. She’s older now, more acquainted with loss, but she would be lying if she didn’t feel it following her around at all times, lurking over her shoulder, ready to strike. It does, sometimes. She just wanted to make sure that when it did, it wouldn’t be at her kids.

“We lost him too, mom,” Harry says gently. “I know that it’s different for you, but…”

“He was our dad,” May fills in.

It’s such a simple sentence, but it still lights up the whole world every time she hears it.

“I know that now,” she says. “Lord knows that trying to handle it all by myself only made things more difficult for everyone. And I’m sorry if you needed me, and I wasn’t there. I was only doing what I thought was right.”

Harry and May look at each other across the table, communicating something unspoken. “We’ve had each other,” Harry says. “So we’re okay.”

“As okay as we can be, at least,” says May. “We just want you to be okay, too.”

She reaches across the table and takes both her kids’ hands into her own. Harry reaches out his free hand towards May, and she takes it, so they’re all connected, her and her family.

“I will be,” she assures them. “As long as I have you.”

They each give her hand a little squeeze, and then they let go.

“So, it’s up to me if you’re gonna keep the house?” Harry asks. “Kind of a big decision. I don’t even have my high school diploma yet.”

“And he’s failing math,” May says.

“May!” Harry exclaims in alarm. “You weren’t gonna tell her that! Mom, it was just one test, I promise,” he pleads. “I’ll fix it next time.”

“Ah– Harry! You better get straight to work, young man,” she scolds. She’s still his mom, after all. “But no, it’s not just up to you. Even if you did move back in, I’m prepared for you to move out within a few years at most anyway, maybe just a few months, even. Though you’re welcome to stay for longer, of course.” She says, with a look. “But I think if you were there, just for a little while, it would help me settle in. Make it feel more like a home than a brand-new shiny house. Now, you don’t have to decide right now–”

“Mom, of course,” Harry says, before she can even finish her sentence. “Don’t be crazy. I love living with you. And I’m kind of over staying with May, anyway. She doesn’t even do my laundry.” He smiles at his sister, who gives him a good-natured roll of her eyes.

“The offer is open to you too, of course, May,” Athena says. “I don’t expect you to take me up on it, but maybe you could visit on the weekends again. Settle back into that old routine.”

“I’d like that,” she says.

Athena sighs with relief. “Well, I think I’ve made up my mind, then.”

“Wait,” Harry says. “Is Buck moving in with us, too?” Harry asks.

“No,” Athena says. “I believe he’s arranged something else. Thankfully.”

“Finally found an apartment he likes?” May asks.

She feels a knowing smile pull at her lips. “Something like that.”

⋆★⋆

Athena’s only been to Eddie’s house a few times in her life. Typically, 118 get-togethers are hosted by either Hen and Karen or her and Bobby, though she knows there were an odd few occasions that took her to South Bedford Street which she can’t recall in detail right now. She tries to think of it as she rings the doorbell. A birthday, perhaps?

While she waits for someone to open the door, she takes her time to study the exterior of the house. Even though she was married to an architect for years, she’s only really started paying close attention to the buildings around her since designing her new home. Eddie’s place is nice, built in the mission revival style that’s common in the area. She’s more partial to modernist architecture herself, but she can appreciate the classic arches and stucco walls.

She’s busy inspecting the door (which is made out of a really nice, warm shade of wood– is it oak? Elm?) when it opens to reveal Buck. He’s wearing a soft pink hoodie, and he looks more well-rested than she’s seen him in weeks, his eyes seemingly a brighter shade of blue than she’s used to.

He greets her with a hug, and invites her in. On the inside, the house is cluttered, boxes with items stacked up high in the corners of every room. There’s a bookshelf filled to the brim, books stacked on top of it, and virtually every surface is covered in various objects and trinkets.

“This is cozy,” Athena says, as Buck takes her to an overcrowded living room. There’s a single couch but a few too many living chairs, one of which is currently occupied by Eddie.

“If you think this is bad, you should see the bedroom,” Buck says. “It’s the only space we don’t necessarily need to be accessible for Chris, so it looks like an episode of Hoarders in there. Anyway, white or rosé?”

“You know it’s got to be white,” Athena says, and Buck disappears into the kitchen with a smile.

“We’re still deciding what to keep, since we now have doubles of everything,” Eddie explains, as she wrings herself between the arms of two chairs to be able to greet him. “We were supposed to move the extra chairs away before you came, sorry.”

Eddie, too, looks different, his hair less tightly gelled back than it usually is, falling loosely in his face instead. She can see his smile lines even in the twilight.

“Don’t worry about it. Hi, Eddie,” she says and she pulls him into a warm hug. “How are you?”

“Better now I’ve got Buck under my roof again,” he says. He probably intended it to be a sort of joke, but he doesn’t do much to hide the genuine fond look he sends in the direction of the kitchen.

“That’s good to hear. May sends her regards, by the way. She still thinks fondly of your time together at dispatch.”

Eddie looks a little surprised. “Well, I can’t say I miss the job, but the people were great. Most of them, anyway. How is she?”

“Good,” Athena says, catching Eddie up with some stories of her studies and the job she’d picked up at a local animal shelter. It's nice to have so many stories of her kids again.

Buck appears again soon after, holding a tray with a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a casserole dish.

She gives Buck a look. “Are those literal nachos?”

“Seemed fitting enough,” Buck says, with a wink that leaves Eddie visibly confused. “Here, sit down.”

“Is Christopher not home?” Athena asks, as she takes place on the couch. She hasn’t seen the boy anywhere yet.

“He is, but he’s fully engrossed in a game of Fortnite, whatever that means,” Eddie says. “I’ve learned to not even try to speak to him when he’s in gamer mode. It’s all very serious.”

“You know, I thought living in the same house as Chris would mean I’d actually get to see him more often, but he’s always either hanging out with his friends in real life or online,” Buck says, as he fiddles with the remote. “Kid’s like, crazy popular.”

“Gets it from his dad,” Eddie says, beaming with paternal pride.

“Sure, honey,” Buck says with a polite pat on his arm.

Buck finds the right channel, proven by a little ad bumper for their show letting the viewers know it will start after the break. It’s clear that whoever’s in charge is very aware of what keeps the audience watching, because it’s a rather gratuitous shot of the villain-slash-love interest, the one Buck had developed a small TV crush on.

“Ah. I see why you’re watching this now,” Eddie says from behind the couch, in a tone that lets her know that comment wasn’t directed at her. She snorts, because he’s right, and Buck retorts with a, “hey, now.”

“It’s not just me,” Buck says, an admirable attempt at saving himself. “Even if he’s just in one scene, the people on my timeline post GIFs and videos of that moment for the whole week.”

“I’m sure that has nothing to do with you liking each and every fancam that crosses your feed,” Athena says.

“Look, I just appreciate art,” Buck says. “And sometimes that art is an edit set to a Charli XCX banger which zooms in on this guy's glistening abs a bunch of times.”

Eddie blinks. “I understood about two words in that entire sentence.”

“Don’t worry, Bobby didn’t get it either,” Athena says.

“You should join,” Buck says. Eddie hesitates, like he’s almost going to take him up on it, but then eventually decides against it. “No, it’s alright. You guys have fun.”

From the corner of her eye, she sees Eddie press a kiss to the top of Buck's curls, then retreat to do something elsewhere. It's hard to miss the dumbfounded look of happiness on Buck's face that lingers long after he's gone.

After the episode has ended, Eddie joins them on the couch again. They’ve limited themselves to a single bottle of wine this time, because if last week taught her anything it’s that they’re all far too old for any heavy drinking now. The headache was– well, it got Buck and Eddie together, so she can’t exactly say it wasn’t worth it. But unless there’s another tragic romance that desperately needs to be sorted out, she’ll be taking it slow for the foreseeable future.

“Man, I don't even know what I’m going to do with my life until the second half of the season drops,” Buck whines, dropping his head on Eddie’s shoulder. “It’s like, taken over my brain. I constantly dream about this show, you know that?”

“Oh, I know,” Eddie says. “You talk in your sleep.”

“I do not.”

“You really do.”

Ah, young love. Athena hasn’t third-wheeled this hard since college.

“Well, I know what I’m going to do,” Athena says, to remind Buck and Eddie that she’s still present before they start drinking the wine out of each others’ mouths, or something of the like. “I have a massive house, and basically no furniture. The kids have been helping me decorate, but Harry is strangely particular about his interior design choices. Took me three weeks to find a dining table, and he made me return it.”

“Funny,” Eddie says, gesturing at their overstuffed room. “We have the exact opposite problem.”

“Just let us know if you need anything, even if it’s just temporarily,” Buck offers. “Especially chairs. No one’s ever supposed to own this many chairs.”

She does not want Buck’s bachelor pad chairs, because they’re kind of ugly. But it’s sweet of him to offer.

“That’s kind of you,” Athena says. “I’ll let you know.”

“Ooh, speaking of the new house,” Buck says, looking excited in a way that usually does not bode well for her. “I got you something.”

"Oh?" Athena asks.

“Let me grab it real quick,” he says, practically bouncing off the couch. He’s gone in the blink of an eye, disappeared behind one of the doors. Athena looks at Eddie for clarification, but he simply gives her a knowing smile.

“I wanted to thank you, by the way,” Eddie says, rolling his beer bottle between the palms of his hands.

“For?” Athena asks. “Babysitting your boyfriend?”

“That too,” Eddie says with a laugh, though it comes out sounding a bit anxious. “But what I meant is, Buck says he wouldn't have talked to me if you hadn't convinced him, and I– really needed him to. Don't think we would have gotten to the point we're at now if he hadn’t. So, uh, thanks for that. Not sure if he already said that to you.”

“He has,” she said. “Many times. Do you have any idea how much that man talks about you? He's obsessed.”

Eddie looks younger when he smiles, like some of the horrors of his life have been stripped away. “I’m sure.”

“No, I’m deadly serious. He has a problem.” Eddie laughs like she’s joking. She’s really not.

At this point, Buck has told her the story at least six-and-a-half times, in varying degrees of detail. When he formally moved in with Eddie, she thought it would be over, but then they ran into each other on the job and he brought it up again, standing on the side of the road chattering away about Eddie, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his friends (and Eddie himself!) were hard at work trying to free a woman from a car with a broken lock. When he and Athena had to go their separate ways after the situation was handled, he made sure to text her the rest of the story from where he had left off.

“I mean, he was just rambling like a madman,” Eddie sighs wistfully, and Athena thinks, not you too . She’s happy for them, she really is. She’s the first to admit she’s grown rather fond of Buck over the past few weeks, and she really loves the two of them together. She was actually quite excited to hear about the details of their real life rom-com at first.

That was six recollections ago, though.

“And the whole time, it just felt like the world was tilting sideways. I guess I needed him to confront me with it head-on to stop denying it.”

“Were you denying it, or just unaware?" Athena asks. It's a question that’s crossed her mind since her and Buck's wine night.

“Both?” Eddie sighs. “I mean, I really only started to suspect that it was something… Different, when I was in El Paso. When being without my best friend felt like losing a limb. I’d never felt that way about my girlfriends before. Hell, sometimes I’d even be a little relieved if I didn’t have to see them.” He laughs, a short and self-loathing sound.

Athena rests her head on her hand, elbow on the back of the couch. “And in those moments, you never questioned if there might be something else going on?” It’s not an accusation, just genuine curiosity.

“Not before Texas,” Eddie says, but then changes his mind. “Or, well, maybe deep down. But I just pushed it away. Didn’t really want to get near that can of worms.”

Athena hums. “Thought that if you just pretended to be someone else hard enough, it would all go away by itself.”

“Yes, exactly,” Eddie says, a little surprised. “How did you…”

“Michael,” Athena answers. “You know, if you want, I can give you his phone number. Might be nice to talk to someone who’s been where you are. I know Buck didn’t come out until later in his life either, but it’s different when you’ve had a wife and a kid.”

“Yeah. It is,” Eddie admits. “And you know, he’s– his relationships with women were genuine. Mine… I don’t think they were.” He stares down at his bottle like he’s scrying, as if staring at the reflective surface long enough will make it so the answer reveals itself.

“He still loves me, you know,” Athena says, thinking of her oldest friend, Bobby’s partner in crime, the only person felt she could safely express her grief to for weeks. “Just not in a way that works for a marriage. But it doesn’t mean that marrying him was a mistake, or that I resent him for it, even if it was upsetting when he first came out to me. It’s just the way life went for us.”

Eddie doesn’t respond, just nods like he’s mulling it all over in his head. She doesn’t expect him to lay the details of his marriage bare to her; they’re honestly barely more than close acquaintances. He drums his fingers against his bottle, then finally looks back up at her. “That’s… That’s good to hear. Thank you. I’d really appreciate it if you could send me his number.”

“I will,” Athena says.

“I guess I want to make sure that you don’t think I was like… Toying with Buck’s feelings, or something,” Eddie says. Buck must have spoken fondly of Athena that Eddie feels the need to justify himself in front of her like this. “I just had some shit to figure out. Still do. I was just so deep in denial about everything that I didn't even realize I was kind of being a dick to him this whole time.”

“The only real opinion I have on the situation right now, is that you’re being a bit hard on yourself,” Athena tuts. “It's not like you can overcome three decades of repression in one evening. You’ve made some big steps in the past week. I’m proud of you, and I hope you are too.”

Eddie musters a smile. “Thanks. I’m trying to be.” Whatever part of his brain that’s dedicated to Buck – which is most of it, if he’s anything like his boyfriend – takes back over, and he trips back into the story. “He didn’t even think I could return his feelings, you know that? Just stood there catastrophizing the entire situation. He was saying all these things about having to leave, that it would be best for both of us, and the entire time I was just thinking, ‘ why don’t you just stay? No one told you that you couldn’t stay. ” Took me a second to realize I meant forever, but when I did–”

“You kissed, and it was magical,” Athena fills in. “Your hair was very soft under his fingers and your laugh sounded like forever.”

Eddie smiles like a teenager noticed by their crush for the first time. “He actually said that?”

“He did. If I didn’t know any better, I’d assume he was writing poetry about you in his free time.” Athena pauses. “Actually, I wouldn’t put it past him. You should check his notes app.”

“Ah,” Eddie nods, like he’s suddenly gained a deep understanding of Athena. “You think we’re insane.”

“No,” Athena says. “I know you’re insane.” Eddie laughs. “But it’s not a bad thing,” she adds.

Somewhere down the hall, a door clicks. Shortly after, it’s not Buck, but Christopher who appears, using the wall to support himself.

“Hey buddy,” Eddie says, craning his neck to look at his son. “Going to sleep?”

“Yeah,” Chris says, leaning on the back of one of the chairs to support himself. “Just saying goodnight. Where’s Buck?”

“Trying to find the surprise he’s got for Athena,” Eddie says. Athena raises her eyebrows in inquisition, but he doesn’t let on any more details than that. “He lost it somewhere in the mess, I think.”

“Ooh, wait, I want to see her reaction,” Chris says excitedly, plopping down on the chair he’d been leaning on.

“Sure,” Eddie says, returning his smile. “But you need to go mimis soon. It’s late.”

Chris rolls his eyes in a very teenage fashion, but agrees with a “yeah, yeah,” which only sounds a little bit dismissive. Athena knows it’s the best reaction you’re going to get out of them at that age.

“So, Chris, are you taking good care of my old roommate?’ Athena asks. The question makes Christopher light up instantly.

“Yeah. For sure. He’s great,” he says with a grin that makes Athena’s heart melt just a little bit. “I thought it would be different, maybe, now dad and him are a thing, but it kind of feels the same as always. I guess not that much has changed.”

Eddie blinks at him in surprise. “I didn’t know you were worried about that.”

“I mean more like…” Christopher tries to find a way to explain himself adequately. “Like, when you and Ana started dating, it was different from when she was my teacher. So I thought, you know, maybe it would be the same with Buck, somehow. But so far it’s kind of the same as always.”

“Well, things might still change eventually,” Athena says. “I remember when Bobby first moved in with us, it took a little bit of time for him to start being a stepdad instead of just mom’s boyfriend. To figure out how to fill that role, so to say.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Chris says, either too tired or too teenaged to fully ponder her suggestion right now. “But, you know, it’s just Buck. I think he’s always just going to be my… Buck.”

“Of course,” Athena says, smiling sweetly at him. She’s not entirely sure what that entails, but from what she’s seen, it can hardly be a bad thing.

As if summoned by their conversation, Buck finally reappears, holding a gift box.

“Got it!” he says, emerging from what Athena assumes is his and Eddie’s bedroom. He shakes the box in anticipation. “Sorry, took forever to remember where I’d put it. We have two houses’ worth of stuff in one house, it’s kind of hard to find literally anything in here.”

“During our next 92 off, we’re fixing our entire life,” Eddie vows.

Christopher raises his eyebrows. “Didn’t you say that about your last 48 off?”

“Hey Chris, aren’t you supposed to be asleep by now?” Buck says, with a smile so wide Athena thinks it barely even qualifies as teasing. Buck hands her the box as he sits down next to Eddie on the couch, knees touching in a way that’s not strictly necessary.

“Soon,” Chris says, stifling a yawn. “Just wanna see Athena’s reaction first.”

Athena studies the box she’s been handed, still processing the surprise of being handed a gift at all. The box is decently sized and has a massive bow wrapped around it, which is tied into a flower of ribbons.

“What is this for?” She asks, surprised.

“Open it,” Buck says. Anticipation is written all over his face, his bright smile a twin to Christopher’s. Once again, she’s struck by how much the two look alike.

Athena carefully pulls the ribbon, and it comes loose. She opens the box to reveal a book, one that looks a little like the book Mara had at her party, though the cover is a clothbound brown rather than pink. It’s decorated with a delicate black line drawing, giving it a classic, first-edition look.

Athena carefully takes it out of the box, then opens it on one of the first few pages. The second she does, it becomes clear what it is she’s holding.

“It’s all of Bobby’s recipes,” Buck explains. “All the ones he taught me, anyway. I thought you might like having them all written down.”

“Buck,” she says, softly, because it’s all she can muster. She traces over the pages with her fingers, trying to take it all in. “Thank you.”

Buck nods. “Thought it might make a good addition to your new kitchen,” he says, casually, like she’s not holding what must be hours upon hours of work. She wonders when he even had the time to make it, but then again, this is Buck she’s talking about– infinitely passionate, always busy with something with all the fervor of a raging fire.

“It is,” she says. “Come here,” she says, standing up to pull him into a hug. For the first time, she’s thinking of how she’ll genuinely miss having him around. She doesn’t fully let go of him as they pull apart, holding his brightly smiling cheeks between her hands instead, just barely resisting the urge to pinch them. “Aw, I might actually miss you a little bit,” she admits. “Promise you’ll visit from time to time?”

“I’d like that,” Buck says, and Athena finally lets go of his face.

“Good. That invite also extends to you, by the way,” she adds, aimed at Eddie and Christopher. That little family unit Buck’s loved for years and years, finally his to keep.

“You better keep him for life now, after I put so much hard work into getting you all together.” She’s mostly joking.

“Not a problem,” Buck laughs. He catches Eddie’s eyes in the dim light. They look at Christopher with mirrored expressions, like he’s all their shared hope and joy wrapped up into one person. The way only a parent could.

“No,” Eddie agrees. “I think we’re good.”

Notes:

thank you so much for reading this entire thing!!! i hope you liked it <3 thank you everyone for your very sweet comments, even if i do not reply individually know i am reading and smiling at every single one of them. this really was so much fun to write and it's so crazy to me so many people read and enjoyed it!! 😭💛
also, i am trying out twitter! come say hi :-)

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Inspired_and_Tired on Chapter 1 Wed 28 May 2025 08:56PM UTC

i giggled (and cried. also cried) my way through this entire fic. bobby is in heaven clapping his hands maniacally watching this all go down.

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1. roseblushvision on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 07:56AM UTC
  
  THANK YOU that is exactly the vibe i was going for <33 anything to do bobby proud i miss him so bad
  
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Chopina on Chapter 1 Wed 28 May 2025 10:15PM UTC

He finally told him. Because Buck is Eddie's emotional punching bag, and he can't receive the same treatment.
Buck did the angry-couple thing.
If he only talks to Christopher, it must seem like the most awkward separation process.
If we follow the usual, Eddie will think of Shannon and try to deny the obvious. Either Eddie starts taking control of his life, or Athena, now closer to his dynamic, will guide him down a new path. A less toxic one, because throughout the series, Eddie has his moments of being an idiot, and Buck stays.

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hbics on Chapter 1 Wed 28 May 2025 10:30PM UTC

i’m obsessed with this. i can’t wait for the next two chapters <3 <3
i’ve been really yearning for fic that gets into the nitty gritty of where they are at in their grief post-season and this scratched the itch beautifully. and the whole thing felt so in character for both of them i’m in love with it

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1. roseblushvision on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 08:08AM UTC
  
  thank you thats such a compliment!! that was definitely the motivation behind this fic, 8x17 has been rattling around in my brain ever since i saw it i feel like it really solidified for me that the grief theyre all feeling could prove to be really interesting storytelling-wise for s9 (even if im still manifesting bobby being alive in a government lab somewhere) so it was very fun to dig into that a little bit <3
  
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Creaturesays_what on Chapter 1 Wed 28 May 2025 10:43PM UTC

This is amazing and I had no idea that I needed this specific Athena’s POV and day-to-day life so badly. I’m loving her perspective on the Buck (and Eddie) situation as well.

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alxxi on Chapter 1 Wed 28 May 2025 11:20PM UTC

Those couple of minutes when Athena's kids thought Buck was her new boytoy absolute perfection like really mom this is how you're choosing to crash out

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Chopina on Chapter 1 Wed 28 May 2025 11:49PM UTC

I love your story. There should be more where Buck demands reciprocity from Eddie.
He did the right thing by leaving and talking to Athena.

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Dubiousculturalartifact (222Ravens) on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 12:36AM UTC

This is such a deeply unhinged concept [affectionate] and you’re executing it amazingly!

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1. roseblushvision on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 07:58AM UTC
  
  mwah thank you <33
  
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Raineismyname on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 12:56AM UTC

ouuuuu this is goodddd

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1. roseblushvision on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 07:59AM UTC
  
  *tucks hair behind ear debby ryan style* thank you <3
  
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the_99th_problem on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 02:12AM UTC

<3

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Firebird191x on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 07:05AM UTC

I’m loving this so far!

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captainragtag on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 02:00PM UTC

oh, you have an incredible Athena voice! best I've read. (may and harty voices are great too!) you've balanced her no nonsense not-putting-up-with-this attitude with her compassion and her curiosity perfectly. this is so fun, you added so many good character details, the wine and tweet session with her favorite show, the way harry and may are always a little in her thoughts even in trivial ways, her thoughts about chim.
I LOVE the view of Buck through her eyes. I love their dynamic, the way she's like what's wrong with him anyway and then is like whatever I definitely don't wanna know and *then* is like fine then move in/join my hobby/tell me what your whole deal is, over and over. it was so funny that she was just like "ugh he better not ask about my show" and then when he didn't was inmediately like "let me tell you about my show".
excited for the rest!

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1. roseblushvision on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 07:41PM UTC
  
  thank you this is such a lovely comment!!!🥲🥲💞💞 i love athena a lot so i'm glad i was able to do her justice, when i first got into the show i definitely expected buddie to be the main appeal to me but then i found myself latching onto athena instead (though i did clearly get infected with the buddie virus eventually, and thus this fic was born). i love the way she toes the line between self-assured and stubborn. she's not quick to admit when she's not certain about something, not even to herself, so instead she usually does this thing where she'll switch up on her feelings very quickly without really acknowledging that she's doing it which makes her really interesting to me. combine that with her husband's fake son who she fondly thinks of as an idiot and you've got a perfect dynamic i think <3
  
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eirabach on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 03:54PM UTC

What a perfect athena voice! I hardly ever see her pov in fic and this is a real treat

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distractionpie on Chapter 1 Thu 29 May 2025 05:10PM UTC

Ooh this is a really interesting concept and Athena brings a interesting point of view to the situation because she knows Buck and Eddie but is also that bit more removed from both of them so she's looking at the details without having got used to them the way the others had.
Your emotional positioning of Buck he is really satisfying, he has tried to be supportive and he hasn't always got it right and both Buck and Eddie have valid points, but Buck seems to be doing more of the emotional compromising and Eddie reacts negatively when he doesn't. I am very sympathetic to how Buck describes his response to their latest argument because apologies can resolve a conflict but repeated apologies for instances of the same pattern of behaviour become meaningless if the pattern doesn't change.
I'm intrigued to see how this conversation with Athena might influence how Buck acts next. On one hand Buck can't just hide out with Athena forever, but the binary she implies, that if his want isn't to never be around Eddie again then he's just punishing Eddie, is a binary that ignores that wanting temporary space and time is an option. And it's interesting bc my gut interpretation was that the suggestion that Buck was punishing Eddie was an implication that unless he wants to cut himself off from Eddie he's being unreasonable to act in a way that rejects their current status quo, but coming from Athena with her canonical relationship with the consequences part of the justice process the implications are more complicated.

Last Edited Thu 29 May 2025 05:11PM UTC

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magegirl8 on Chapter 1 Fri 30 May 2025 04:05AM UTC

Ok. Ive JUST started reading this fic but I have to stop and comment because Buck offering to cook dinner for Athena is LETHAL because he learned to cook from Bobby and it'll be like eating her dead husband's cooking again it'll be so close yet so far and I'm DYING I CAN'T HANDLE THIS.

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Wildehack (tyleet) on Chapter 1 Fri 30 May 2025 05:13AM UTC

Your Athena POV is PHENOMENAL. thank you so much for this!!

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magegirl8 on Chapter 1 Fri 30 May 2025 05:20AM UTC

Fabulous! Give me 14 of 'em right now!

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icesculptures on Chapter 1 Fri 30 May 2025 08:25AM UTC

i adore this <3 buck & athena’s relationship is so special to me and i love the way you write them!!

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lexahw18212 on Chapter 1 Fri 30 May 2025 01:33PM UTC

“ Not for the first time, Buck reminds her of one of those massive hounds that is somehow convinced they’re a lapdog. Athena is allergic to dogs.”
I cackled! Can’t wait for the next chapters :)

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toomanyteapots on Chapter 1 Sat 31 May 2025 10:48AM UTC

oooh this is really really good, thanks so much for sharing! I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes :D

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Buddie_Butterflies on Chapter 1 Sun 01 Jun 2025 08:48PM UTC

Did the writers forget that Harry is only 17 years old? He is my kids age pretty sure he would still have a room in my house if I was Athena. He would be a Jr in high school going into his senior year for season 9.

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