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He knows he shouldn’t.
Of course he knows he shouldn’t. In spite of popular, general opinion, Buck is not an idiot.
He’s not even doing anything wrong. The doctor said to take them when the pain flared up. And it has been flaring, all over.
He aches.
It’s like the lightning strike all over again. Which doesn’t make sense, but also does.
Sometimes he wonders whether he really did wake up from the coma. Now more than ever, after Derek became another name he has to shed like skin he outgrew.
The point is this:
Buck aches. All over, all the time. It’s there when he wakes up, gets worse as the day drags on, no matter what he does.
And the pills help.
He’s on a proper cocktail now—emergency anxiety meds, because he started having panic attacks and nightmares that leave him calling someone to get his grip on reality back, low-dose anti-depressants because he apparently seems like he needs them, and now…
The painkillers.
Low-dose, too, at first. They didn’t do shit.
He should tell the team.
Chimney needs to know, in case something happens on a call. And he’s not doing anything wrong, he knows he’s not. He’s doing what his doctors told him to do.
Buck doesn’t end up telling anyone.
Three weeks after he was kidnapped, Chim sends him home early. He woke up the entire station when he screamed his way out of a nightmare. Told him to take the rest of the week off, too, to maybe talk to his doctors again.
Someone had called Bobby to calm him down.
Bobby, who is supposed to be enjoying his retirement.
Bobby, who is now sitting at the kitchen table in Buck’s new house.
Bobby, whom he has barely seen since he got back to work.
There’s shame pooling in his gut as he busies himself with the coffee maker.
He can hear Bobby pick up one prescription bottle after the other, probably eyeing them all critically.
His hands are still shaking. They haven’t really stopped, not unless he desperately needs them to, since he got back. It’s just… another part of the gift that keeps on giving.
“You sure you don’t want to talk about it?”
“I’m fine.”
“Buck—”
He surprises himself with how fast he turns around, slamming Bobby’s cup down on the table so hard they both flinch.
“I’m fine.”
He knows he’s not the most convincing right now. The raised eyebrow on the other man’s face still stings, though.
“It was a nightmare,” Buck says as he lets himself fall onto the chair opposite Bobby. Doesn’t even bother trying to hide the wince that comes with the careless motion. “Nothing else to say.”
“You were inconsolable until I showed up.”
“I just got confused—”
“Kid, if you’re having trouble sleeping, that’s understandable.”
Buck looks down at his own cup instead of keeping his eyes on Bobby, who takes one of his hands.
“I’m not.”
“Evan—”
“I’m really not! I sleep fine,” when the pain doesn’t keep him up. “We all get nightmares sometimes.”
Bobby leaves it be after that. The shame keeps curdling in the pit he calls his lower abdomen, though. Especially when he has to ask Bobby to open his painkillers for him because his hands are shaking too bad to do it himself.
He knew it was a problem when he had to switch doctors for the first time.
Hell, he knew it had been a problem when he ran empty and everything got worse.
It’s just—
He needs it.
Needs the sleep, the calm, the easy smile on his face.
Buck should probably talk to Bobby.
But it’s not like he’s actually—
He isn’t—
It’s not an actual problem. He’s never high at work, he hasn’t crossed that line and isn’t planning to.
He’s fine.
He’s just taking the pills like he’s supposed to.
By the time he storms out of that office without a refill script, he knows it’s already too late. Knows he should have talked to Bobby when he had the chance, the wherewithal to do it.
Because, now, all he can feel is shame.
In all its festering glory.
So Buck does the only thing he can do.
He goes to work and waits for the nausea to settle.
And, maybe, some part of him has already convinced itself that this is what he deserves.
///
It’s dark out when he gets the call.
He’s had an uneventful day. There’s been a lot of those since he retired.
Athena is out on shift, and he’s just putting together a light dinner, making some tea, when the ridiculous ringtone Chimney had insisted he give himself sounds through their home.
It’s not like the man only ever calls for one reason. Not even while the team is on shift. There’s all a lot of possibilities, here—paperwork he’s unsure about, asking for ideas for practice drills, asking his opinion on how they handled a call. But somehow, Bobby knows this is different.
The edge of desperation in Chim’s voice when Bobby answers does nothing to assuage his worry.
“Hey, Bobby.”
He sounds tired, most of all. But it’s there.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Cap?”
Chimney doesn’t even give the usual groan at the nickname, and it’s the final nail in the coffin of this being a social call.
“Can you—is Athena home with you?”
“She’s on shift, she won’t be home until tomorrow morning.”
There’s a slight curse, whispered so softly that Bobby can’t even make it out.
“What’s going on?”
“Listen, I—I need you to come to the station and pick up Buck. Bring him home. Stay with him until one of us or Maddie gets off work.”
Bobby almost drops the knife he was using.
“Is he hurt? Did he have another nightmare?”
“No, not really, just… just come as fast as you can, okay? I’ll explain more when you get here.”
“Howard,” he takes a deep breath so he doesn't say anything he’ll regret. “I need you to tell me what’s going on.”
“No can do, Bobby. Not over the phone. I’ll have Hen call Athena so you can focus on driving. See you in a bit.”
Chimney hangs up on him with that.
Bobby abandons his food in favor of getting to the station as fast as traffic laws allow.
The drive is endless.
His mind spins with a billion possibilities. It’s not like Buck’s been the poster boy of health, recently.
He knows it’s unfair to think like that. The kid had been through hell in New Mexico, and the few times they’d seen each other since, it was all Bobby could do not to hover and probe at him like it was still his job.
(It was never actually his job. He knows that, too. But when they were still working together, it was easier to explain it like that. That he was just being a good captain, just keeping an eye on a member of his team, someone who’d proven his need to self-destruct over and over again.
It was more than just duty. He knows it. The rest of the team knows it. Hell, Athena and even Harry and May know it.)
He’s been to the station a lot since he retired. Family dinners, on Chim’s insistence. There’s one coming up later this week, because even though the man had done his best, he couldn’t get the team off shift for the anniversary of the lab incident, so they were going to go offline for an hour or two, sometime in the evening, and have dinner together.
Something churns in Bobby’s gut at the thought that Buck might not end up being there for it.
His usual parking spot is empty when he gets there. Old habits die hard, he supposes.
Bobby has to talk himself into actually leaving the car. He needs to know what happened, and Chimney said that the kid wasn’t hurt, but still—
In the end, he exits for the sole purpose of not being alone in the unknown anymore. Barely registers Athena’s cruiser as he walks past. It’s parked crookedly, half on the sidewalk, and Bobby knows from that alone that she was worried she’d get here too late for something.
The light in the station is dim. It’s quiet. Which isn’t a novelty, not really; it’s late in the evening, they’ve been on shift all day. Most of them are probably off in the bunks getting some shut eye.
Athena is waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt the pit in his stomach deepen just by looking at his wife, didn’t think he ever would, but tonight—
He barely manages to choke out a greeting before he’s hugging her. Before he has to ask,
“What are you doing here?”
She just takes his face between her hands, a soft kiss ghosting his lips that has him smiling despite himself.
“Hen and Chim figured you might need some moral support. Go on upstairs. I’ll wait until you need me.”
“Athena, I don’t understand what’s—”
“They’re gonna tell you. It’s—it’s not good news. But you can’t lose your head up there, okay? Promise me that.”
The only thing he can do is nod.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
She lets him go after a few more seconds. It’s long enough that Bobby can see the slightest sheen of tears in her eyes, the smallest break of composure.
It isn’t long enough to make his heart feel less like it’s about to explode out of his chest.
Despite the fact that he’s on the lookout for him, the first thing Bobby spots in the loft isn’t the kid.
It’s Eddie, knuckles white around a coffee mug, that, if memory serves, is technically Buck’s; face serious, eyebrows knit together. Hen is talking to him, softly, whispering like she’s trying not to wake someone. She looks just as anxious as Bobby feels. They both just nod, subdued, in greeting. Nothing like the enthusiastic hello’s he’s grown accustomed to, even if he checked in with them during a rough shift.
The pit in his stomach just keeps growing.
Two seconds later, there’s a hand on his shoulder, and it’s just Ravi, but he jumps anyway.
“Cap said to tell you he’s waiting in the office. We’ll stay with Buck, he’s just resting on the couches for now,” he tells him, in the same hushed tone Hen is using just across the room.
Bobby nods, numbly so, and he knows he’ll have to walk past the kid to get to Chimney.
His stomach starts to turn when he does. Buck seems to be sleeping, restlessly so, a frown etched onto features that seem almost gaunt.
And Bobby—
Bobby has to will himself not to run a hand through the sweat-slicked curls, not to linger. Not to listen to the instincts screaming at him that this looks a little too familiar.
He’s probably just sick.
(Buck being sick would not be cause enough for Athena to drive here in a frenzy.)
Chim is on the phone with Maddie when he enters, her voice coming through his speakers loud and clear. His brows are furrowed, eyes closed, shoulders tense, and he is rubbing his temples with both hands.
He barely looks up before he interrupts her as she’s talking about how soon she can get off work,
“Bobby’s here now, I have to go. Just… stay at work, finish out your shift, and you’ll see him when you’re done. We’ve got this, Maddie. We’ve got him.”
He sounds even more tired than he did not even thirty minutes ago, when Chimney’d hung up on him without anything even remotely resembling an explanation.
“Take a seat.”
So much for pleasantries.
“Chim—”
“Sit down, Bobby. You don’t want to hear this standing up.”
He knows he’s right. Still, it takes another ten seconds of staring at each other in dead silence before Bobby does so.
“Buck came to me earlier tonight. Asked me to fire him.”
“What does that have to do with him looking like he’s running a fever in the loft?”
Please, don’t let this be what I think it is, not this, anything but this.
(He knows. He knows the symptoms like the back of his hand, knows exactly why Athena told him he has to keep his wits about him no matter what, why she's here in the first place, why the station is offline in what should be a busy time. He knows. Some part of him has known for weeks that they might end up here, ever since he first saw the cocktail of meds Buck had been put on.
He still needs Chimney to actually say it, to crush the childish hope he’s still holding onto.)
“Buck asked me to fire him because,” and his former subordinate takes a deep breath before he continues. “He almost stole fentanyl off the rig.”
Chimney keeps talking. Not that Bobby can hear it over the ringing in his ears and his own laboring breaths, but he keeps talking.
It’s not that he’s surprised.
He wishes he could be.
“I—I need to—,”
He can’t even finish the sentence, but Chim just nods.
“Maybe let him sleep for a little while longer before you take him home? He’s…”
In withdrawal.
Neither of them manages to actually say the words out loud.
Bobby nods once, curtly, and then he’s already out of the office, on his way towards the kid.
By the time he’s crouched in front of him, unable to resist the urge to pull his blanket back up as Ravi watches them with knowing eyes, his thoughts have faded into background noise.
He knows what’s coming for him the next time he gets a quiet minute, knows he’ll have to keep himself busy for as long as possible and find a moment to process once the worst is over, but for now, he can just focus on Buck.
On the way he shivers even in light sleep.
“I’ve got him now,” he whispers to the firefighter watching him from the other side of the sofa.
“I know.”
That smile is still on his lips. He doesn’t move.
Behind him, in the kitchen, there’s movement. Maybe Hen finally convinced Eddie to go and lay down in the bunkroom for a while.
Bobby watches Buck sleep for what feels like hours. Realistically, it’s probably more like ten minutes, but still. With every shaky rise and fall of his chest, his own breathing calms down just a little. Athena appears behind him after a while—tells him that she has to get back to work, but to call if they need anything, if he needs her.
///
Buck wakes up slowly. He’s cold, and he aches, and it takes him a minute to remember why, exactly. It’s not long before he realises that someone is holding one of his shaking hands. He gingerly opens an eye, because the hand on his own feels familiar but he can’t quite place it, and—
His stomach turns violently the second his eyes find Bobby’s.
The older man is already there, holding an emesis bin like he’s not even surprised and Buck—
He—
This is not what was supposed to happen.
Chim was supposed to fire him, maybe ridicule him, exile him from the firehouse forever, sure.
Not… not this rallying of the troops.
Especially not call Bobby in to take him home.
Bobby shouldn’t be anywhere near this.
It’s a fight, but somehow he manages to free himself from his blanket even as Bobby whispers his protests, and stands up on two shaky legs. He’ll drive himself home.
Buck makes it all the way to the stairs before there’s a hand on his wrist, stopping him.
“What are you doing, kid?”
“I’m going home.”
There’s a sigh, and he’s not really sure which one of them it came from, but his resolve crumbles ever so slightly when he sees the look on Bobby’s face.
“I just—,”
He starts, but his former Captain is quick to interrupt him.
“You’re in no state to drive, Buck. And, besides, do you really think we’re just gonna let you…”
Buck would love to get mad at the fact that he can’t even say it out loud, but he can’t. He knows the feeling.
Twenty minutes later, they’re in the car, and Buck has an emesis bin on his lap just in case. It takes him five minutes to realise that they’re going in the wrong direction.
“This isn’t—”
“You’re staying with us for now.”
Bobby’s hands tighten on the steering wheel.
“I can stay with—”
“No.”
“What about my—”
“Maddie will bring you some fresh clothes once she’s off shift. For now, you can have some of mine.”
Buck bristles at the thought of being handled, being managed like a problem they need to solve.
“But what about—”
“Jesus, kid, just accept the damn help for once. We can reassess once the others have cleared your place, okay? THis is just… the safest option for now. For both of us.”
Buck focuses on keeping the nausea at bay in lieu of looking at Bobby for the rest of the drive.
The first night in the Grant-Nash house is quiet. Buck accepts the clothes Bobby hands him, agrees to take a shower, nibbles at the food he’s handed, drinks the water.
He tries not to think too hard about how he ended up here, tries to will himself to believe it’s like any other night after a rough shift where Bobby dragged him to his place instead of letting him go home on his own, or when he was sick and failed spectacularly at hiding it, or any of the billion times he’s been here since New Mexico.
They both end up falling asleep on the couch, Buck’s head in Bobby’s lap, a calloused hand soothing his headache by carding through his hair.