Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Forget-me-nots. A five-petaled flower. Myosotis sylvatica. Do not forget me. Myosotis means mouse ear. He supposes the little petals look like mouse ears.

Forget-me-nots are hardy little flowers, surviving harsh winters. Although hardy, it, too, falls victim to disease like anything else. Powdery mildew—full of it unknowingly, covering the petals, the surface of where you grow—to avoid infection, do not look at it head-on; water from the edge.

There’s rust, too—the spores opening up and releasing the sickness—best to avoid water altogether. Best to avoid it altogether.

Forget-me-not, as it creeps up the floorboards and eats the home from the inside out. The house crumbles, rotted on the inside. Although the outside looks lovely. He supposes that’s true, too. Little mouse ears and rotted wood can exist at the same time.

It lives on for all the wrong reasons. Instead, it creaks the floorboards as you walk on them. And that second last step on the staircase that you and the rest purposely avoid.

Myosotis means mouse ear in Greek. Do-not-forget-me. Sorry about the creaky stairs. Sorry about the crumbling house. Sorry you’re just finding out now.

He supposes it’s easy to remember what you never knew. It’s easy to forgive, too.

“How do you know you won’t forget about me?” he asked, sitting on Maddie’s bed. In her room. The soon-to-be guest room. Because Maddie’s moving away. She told him so in her Jeep.

Maddie stopped moving. He could see it, even with her back to him. Looking back, it’s unmistakable that Maddie was trying to approach him and his question delicately. But at that moment, he thought for a split second that she was angry and upset at him. She still wasn’t moving, her back turned and her hands deep in her dresser as she replied, “What do you mean?”

“When you go away,” he swallowed, attempting to push the lumps and aches down to the pit of his stomach so it dissolves in the acid, turning to ash and nothingness. “How do you know you won’t forget about me?”

He remembers now how heavy the question was—is. He remembers the suffocating weight that filled the room and filled them too. It wasn’t and isn’t an unfamiliar question. He used to ask the same thing every time Maddie would tuck him in each night. It was different each night, the way he asked and the way Maddie answered, but he was still asking the same thing, and Maddie was still answering the best way she knew how.

But that time, with Maddie’s hands packing up her room to move away, to move away from him, the question became real. A real thing, not just the fear of the distant monsters in the closet and under his bed, but a real thing. Fear of real things, things like people forgetting about him, Maddie leaving and never coming back, rejection, love, attention, fitting in, making friends, the nurse’s office, the gym locker room, his parents, Maddie leaving and forgetting him.

“Evan,” Maddie said as she turned around, her eyes soft and sad, downturned and glistening. It wasn’t fair. Maddie doesn’t get to leave without him. Maddie doesn’t get to leave him here with them. “I could never forget about you.”

Even back then, he knew it was a stupid question, especially for a thirteen-year-old to be asking. He knew then, rationally, that Maddie wouldn’t forget about him. But that childish fear, the part of him that can only see what’s in front of him and react, that part of him, that fear lives on.

He hummed and looked away from Maddie. He was both believing and unbelieving—doubtful and lacking faith in the guaranteed, like a helpless devotee, questioning and uncertain. Maddie had proven time and time again, morning after morning, day after day, that she wouldn’t forget about him, and yet still, he doubted. He still needed her reassurance of her existence. It made him feel guilty. He still feels guilty about it.

“You don’t believe me,” Maddie responded knowingly, disappointment evident. At the time, he thought the disappointment was directed at him, at Evan. But now he knows that it was disappointment at everything else. Everything but him. But Evan.

Maddie walked up to him, crouching in front of him, seeking his eyes with a hand placed cupping the left side of his face, thumb touching his birthmark. “Evan,” she said with such solidity and vigour that he immediately met her big, sad eyes. “I could never forget about you. Never ever. I think about you all the time. Even when I can’t see you.”

“Really?” he whispered. He wanted so desperately to believe. But the thought of Maddie or anyone thinking about him when he was out of sight felt so foreign, so manufactured, a lie beautifully stitched together. Attention that he could not see, thoughts of him, worry for him. Any amount of attention he could not feel in the moment felt insurmountable. Who could possibly be thinking about him if he’s not in front of them demanding it?

“Really,” Maddie said, turning the liquid disbelief into something more solid. Solid like the slush that coats the streets after a March snowfall. “I thought about you all day, every day, when you went to that sleep-away camp last summer. I think about you all the time. Even when you’re right in front of me.”

He remembers watching the air fill her throat, bullying through the heaviness, “I won’t forget about you. Okay? You’re my little brother! How could I ever forget that?” A teasing smile, thumb pressed gently to his birthmark.

He believed her. The slush becomes something more icy and solid.

He believed her, but he wondered. He still questioned. Still a useless devotee, a futile believer. Who will tuck me in at night if not you? Who will help me pack my lunch in the morning, if not you? Who will take me swimming? Who will help me with my homework and the poster board I need for class, if not you?

If not you, if not you, if not you. If not you? He didn’t ask her then. He won’t now. He still wonders.

That’s what Maddie had said all those days ago in her Jeep, “You can call me whenever you need me.” That’s what Maddie said in her Jeep, moving away from him. You can call me whenever you need me.

But that’s the thing, he always needs Maddie. There’s never a moment when he doesn’t need her. And it reminds him how right Doug was. Needy and pathetic. But when do you stop needing air? When do you learn to live without the thing that’s kept you alive?

I always need you, he wanted to say. When do you stop needing the thing you’ve always had? When do you stop needing when the needy neediness is all you really are?

Stop being so needy, Evan. That’s what Mom said. It’s what Dad said, too. Whenever you need me. All he does is need and need and need. Crave and crave and crave. Claw and claw and claw his way up without really knowing why. Because he has to want something. He has to need it.

Evan always needs, even when he doesn’t know what he needs. He’s a yearning, desperate, clawing thing that’s not rabid enough to be put out of its misery but just violent enough to be shoved outside with the other crazed and needy things that live in the night. Needing and wanting to be let inside, scratching at the front door with his own bloody, beating heart between his teeth as a gift. An offering that no one wants to clean up.

You can call me whenever you need me, she said. Doesn’t Maddie get it? He always needs. That’s been the issue all along.

Needing Maddie to be here is an unconscious thing. Something his brain does without reminding, like breathing. Like begging. Like pushing and pulling until it all breaks just for the sake of it. He’s always been good at that, always been good at pushing the limits and pulling them to make it fit.

Maddie stood up, hand on his shoulder. “We can call, like, every day if you want, okay? I promise.” She held up her pinkie. A promise.

They linked pinkies, the heavy air giving up slightly, letting itself melt away.

Maddie moved away to Boston with Doug. She and Evan called every day. He looked out his bedroom window whenever they talked, peering over into the neighbours’ backyard. Maddie and Evan would talk and talk, and Evan would look out his bedroom window, cordless phone pressed to his cheek until the buttons left manufactured patterns on his skin. He would trace the backyards with his eyes, circling back to Mrs. Danforth’s garden full of little blue flowers with yellow centres.

Maddie moved away to Boston with Doug, but she and Evan called every night. He remembers the routine and how much he looked forward to the call each day, pushing through school because he knew he would talk to Maddie later.

Maddie moved away to Boston with Doug. They called whenever Evan needed to, whenever they both wanted to.

They called every day until Doug picked up the phone one night. Until Doug picked up and ruined the routine, the comfort of it all with his mean-sounding laugh and icy voice through the phone line. “Calling Maddie again, huh? Right… and you’re thirteen? Dontcha think you should’ve grown out of that by now?” He laughed after he said it. He laughed as Evan sputtered over the phone, trying to explain himself to the man who took away his sister.

“Don’t embarrass yourself, Evan. Being this desperate and needy… It’s not a good look.” Doug laughed again. Evan could feel his face heat up with something pure and raw. He stayed silent on the line as Doug nailed the last words into the coffin with a mocking voice, soaked in superiority and cruelty, “Bye, Evan.” A scoff, a huff, line dead, dial tone.

Evan stayed by his bedroom window, clutching the cordless phone to his cheek, letting the buttons press into the flesh meanly, pinching his skin. He stood there, looking into Mrs. Danforth’s backyard and the little blue flowers and imagined what the petals would feel like between his fingers.

He stopped calling Maddie after that. Only answered when she called. Only called her when he felt like everything was crumbling and falling apart.

Doug never picked up Maddie’s phone again.

Even though he stopped calling Maddie, the routine never stopped. He sat by his bedroom window every night, cordless phone in hand, looking out at Mrs. Danforth’s flower beds with the little blue flowers and their yellow centres.

He still sat there, sometimes on the floor, sometimes on his creaky bed, with the manufactured buttons of the cordless phone pressed to his face, listening to the mocking sound of the dial tone, cruel and mechanical like Doug’s laugh. He looked out the window, phone harshly pressed against his cheek, dial tone droning, and wondered. He wondered about Maddie. Wondered if she was happy and relieved that he stopped calling—stopped being so needy and pathetic. He wondered if the dial tone ever stopped buzzing. Wondered if his parents cared. Wondered what those blue flowers with the yellow centres were called in Mrs. Danforth’s backyard.

Mrs. Danforth wasn’t his biggest fan. Not since he broke one of her dining room windows with a rebellious baseball three years ago. Now, he wonders if he had it all wrong. Maybe, just maybe, Mrs. Danforth wasn’t a big fan of Margaret and Philip Buckley. Because they ignored a boy so desperate for attention and love that he took to playing dangerous games with dangerous consequences. That boy who pulled dangerous stunts until they blew up in his face, inhaling the ash until he felt his lungs and throat burn with it. Until those dangerous stunts broke Mrs. Danforth’s dining room window.

Maybe, just maybe, she disliked his parents. The parents who were supposed to keep a boy like him from pathetically lashing out in the only ways he knew how—destroying everything else in his wake.

He decided one night that he needed to know what those little blue flowers with the yellow centres were called, Mrs. Danforth’s dislike for him be damned.

The door shut quietly behind him, and his heart thumped in his ears and fingertips, building up the courage to speak. To ask the question that ate him alive each night.

“Mrs. Danforth?” he called out gently. He wondered if he should apologize again for the broken window. He remembers deciding against it, remembering something his mom and dad used to say. Something about letting dead dogs lie and staying dead.

Mrs. Danforth looked up from her front lawn flower beds, dirt smeared across her cheek, her gardening gloves caked in mud and mulch. “Yes?” she replied, her voice easing some of the tension in his chest.

“I—can I ask you a question?” He fiddled with the hem of his shirt, twisting a loose thread around the tip of his finger over and over again until he cut off blood circulation, his skin turning pale.

“Well, that depends…” Mrs. Danforth started, a small smile tugging at her lips and a twinkle in her eye. She readjusted her muddy gardening gloves. “What kind of question?”

Nerves bullied their way up his throat. He swallowed around them harshly. “A question about—about the blue flowers with the yellow centres? The ones in your backyard…?” he trailed off, his voice rising at the end, a silent question asking if he was welcome or not.

Buck remembers her teeth splitting across her face, reflecting the sun, her eyes sparkling with warmth and an age-old excitement. “I thought you’d never ask. Let’s go look, shall we?”

Her knees cracked as she stood up, and she beckoned him forward with a mud-covered gardening glove outstretched toward him. He took it. Because it was being offered. And he hadn’t had anyone to hold since Maddie moved away.

He discovered the little blue flowers with their yellow centres are called forget-me-nots. Mrs. Danforth fixed the dining room window, and the baseball that smashed her window was sitting on her fireplace mantle. He wondered how she could find laughter and joy amongst his destruction. Evan questioned how the rogue baseball doesn’t serve as a sore reminder of a window destroyed, the original lost and replaced by some cheap, unwanted alternative. He still wonders.

Mrs. Danforth got him to sign the baseball on her back porch with a flowy, ink-filled pen. He signed it, scratchy handwriting and all, apologizing when he smudged the ink with his thumb. She laughed and waved him off, still laughing as she brought it inside to put back on her fireplace mantle, “Where it belongs,” she said.

Mrs. Danforth’s laugh was a different kind of laugh. Different from Doug’s self-appointed authority and mocking tone. So different from his parents’ forced and practiced ones—a practiced performance for anyone who was looking, even though no one ever was.

Her laugh sounded a bit like Maddie’s. The laugh she had before Doug and now after him.

As Mrs. Danforth came through the screen door, holding two ice-cold Diet Cokes. She handed him a can. Evan watched as the water droplets fell onto the wooden planks of her back porch. She winked at him, cracking open the can with a hiss and a pop.

“Their scientific name comes from a Greek word that means little mouse ears,” she explained as they peered over the flowers, coke cans in hand, freezing their fingertips.

“Little mouse ears? Why?” he asked, the words jerked out of him roughly.

Her laugh twinkled out into the garden. Like wind chimes. “Because their petals look like little mouse ears, don’t you think?” She looked at him from the corner of her eye, delicate wrinkles outlining her lived joy. Laugh lines and crow’s feet. A life well lived, laughter and joy filling it to the brim. The type of life he prays for, even though he doesn’t really believe in God like that. But he prays for it. He prays for a home, a home full of laughter. He prays for a few flower beds, too. He prays for someone else next to him, everyone he loves to be close by. He prays for a love made. He prays for a family.

He prays for a life well lived. A life where his own face is the evidence of joy, of laughter. Where his own happiness can be traced to the crow’s feet surrounding his eyes.

He prays for laugh lines.

“I guess so,” he mumbled, then took a sip from his pop can. His parents never bought drinks like this. He relished in the sugar as it coated the length of his throat like a layer of sugar film, all syrupy and sticky.

He looked at the little blue flowers. He looked and imagined how the petals in all their mouse-ear-like glory would feel between his fingertips. He wanted to touch it. He wanted the feeling to be indisputable, tangible and held between his thumb and pointer finger. “Can—” he paused. He swallowed, pushing the saliva down his sugar-coated gullet, “Can I touch them?” he stuttered, “I promise I’ll be gentle.” He added quickly, feeling a deep urge to defend himself. To prove he’s not the same destructive, needy little boy his parents see. Not all the time, anyway.

“Of course,” Mrs. Danforth replied. She answered as if it was easy, as if it was easy to trust him, of all people, with something delicate and fragile. She answered as if it was easy to trust him with her beloved flower beds and the precious things on her fireplace mantle.

And he was gentle. He was oh-so-gentle. As gentle as he knew how to be at thirteen years old. He watched his hands shake as they approached the petals. He knew that Mrs. Danforth could see them tremble, but he didn’t want to break anything, especially the forget-me-nots with mouse ears for petals. This wasn’t another dining room window. It’s alive, and if he fucked this up, then once it’s dead, it stays dead. And he can’t fix that. He can’t replace that. That’s something he undeniably knows. He knows that now. He knows he can’t be what his parents lost.

The petals felt like silk between his fingers, thin as paper, like tissue paper. He imagined what mouse ears would feel like. He supposes the feeling is similar. He imagines they would be anyway. He would bet his life on it.

He stayed there, in Mrs. Danforth’s backyard, past dinner. He knew his parents wouldn’t come looking for him, and he was right. It seemed that Mrs. Danforth knew they weren’t looking, too. But she checked her watch and looked past the gate, just in case. Evan never bothered. And when it hit seven o’clock, Mrs. Danforth took matters into her own hands and made him a grilled cheese with another crisp Diet Coke in her hand, the water and condensation dripping off the edges like she had just pulled it out of an ice bath. Maybe she had.

The grilled cheese was crispy, thick sourdough bread grilled until golden-brown perfection; the orange cheese melted and stretched from his mouth with each bite. And when he finished his grilled cheese, Mrs. Danforth gave him her uneaten half.

Once Evan finished chewing, Mrs. Danforth asked, “Do you know how forget-me-nots got their name?”

He shook his head, eyes wide, ready to hang on to every word Mrs. Danforth might offer him. Ready to clamp down with his teeth and eat away at her words so they can become his. So he can replace the indigestible parts of himself with something wanted, soft, effortless, loving. Helpful.

And he wanted to know. He wants to know everything so he can fill the suffocating silence. Like a row of ready-to-fire bullets prepared to deflect the disappointment that he knows is unavoidable. Because if he just keeps talking, then maybe no one will have the opportunity to cut him off, to get rid of him when they’ve had enough of his pathetic neediness.

She told him a story from an old German folktale about a knight. “A knight in shining armour,” she said, her fingers wriggling through the air. Like Glinda the Good Witch, he imagined glitter and shine all around her, “A knight in shining armour picking flowers by a river for his love.”

“His ‘love’?” Evan questioned. “Like his girlfriend?”

Mrs. Danforth laughed. Laughed like Maddie.

“Yes, his girlfriend.”

Mrs. Danforth continued. The story morphed into a warning, a lesson to be learned about straying too close to the edge of the river with a dangerous current. She told him how the knight fell into the current, the icy water surrounded by blue five-petaled flowers with yellow centres. “The knight fell, his heavy armour tipping his body forward. He tumbled and crashed into the river.” It sounded rehearsed. Like she had told this story before. He remembers now that Mrs. Danforth has her own children somewhere out there. “The current pulled the knight beneath the surface—”

“He swam to shore, right? He’s a knight; he has to be strong enough to swim through the current.” Evan was filled with rapt attention, desperate for the words Mrs. Danforth was willing to say and willing to give him. Distantly, he felt bad for interrupting. But he just needed to know. There’s that word again. The need. Need, need, need. The neediness coursing through him.

It shocked him, briefly, just how attached he was getting to this faceless and nameless knight in a German folktale. But the knight couldn’t just die. He was doing something good. He was good. Why would he have to die for that?

Mrs. Danforth looked at him, something sad flashing in her eyes. “Well, of course, the knight fought valiantly against the tide,” she continued, upping the dramatics, seemingly trying to lighten Evan’s evident fear. “But his armour was too heavy. It weighed him down.”

He couldn’t help but interrupt again. It was just so wrong. And Evan was desperate to change the inevitable ending. “His armour is supposed to protect him, Mrs. Danforth. How could it be his armour?”

A sad, knowing smile. It made Evan feel stupidly young. “Of course, his armour is supposed to protect him. But sometimes,” Mrs. Danforth paused and looked somewhere past Evan’s head. “Sometimes our armour, our protection, does the opposite of what it’s intended for. Sometimes, it gets in the way of us saving ourselves.”

Evan watched the condensation slide down the pop can and infect the wooden porch beneath it with its sickness.

“But that doesn’t mean you can stop wearing your helmet while riding on that bike of yours! Or your skateboard.” Mrs. Danforth said, and that sad smile persisted. Young and stupid. Naive and needy.

“So the knight just…dies? He dies while getting flowers for his girlfriend?”

Mrs. Danforth looked back towards the little flowers, and because Mrs. Danforth looked, so did Evan. “The knight did manage to say one last thing to his love.”

“His girlfriend,” Evan corrected without thinking because this whole ‘love’ thing was too mushy and gushy for his taste.

Her laugh was shocking at first. The utter genuineness of it, the way it shook Mrs. Danforth’s entire body for a moment. It was so much like Maddie’s. Missing Maddie was a constant. Is a constant.

“Yes, his girlfriend,” she conceded, her face smiling, full of laugh lines. “Do you want to know the last thing the knight said?”

Did Evan want to know—? “Yes!” Too eager. Too needy. He cleared his throat, something he learned from his father, “Yes. Yes. I want to know what he said.” He can hear his mother’s voice chastising him for his lack of manners. “Please.”

Mrs. Danforth looked at him. Really looked at him. She looked into his eyes and saw him. His presence, his physical form, the space he took up. The whole of it. The whole of him. “The knight breached the surface of the water one last time,” she touched one of those blue, little mouse ears. Evan did the same because why wouldn’t he? “And the knight called out and said: Forget me not!”

It was silent for a moment, as he thought, and still thinks about it. He supposes the knight got his wish, forever immortalized in a folktale, his final words given to the flower he died trying to get. Forever unknowingly remembered by the poor fucker planting the flowers, the same ones that he died for, clutched in his hand, metal fingers slicing through the stems and petals. It’s sweet and a little messed up, the memory of the knight forever intertwined with the cause of his death. It’s like a fucked up joke. The knight’s life is forever defined by his death. Life and Death are intrinsically within his body. He could not truly Live without his Death.

“Wouldn’t the knight say it in German? ‘Cause it’s a German story?” he asked.

Mrs. Danforth laughed, breezy and full of wind chimes—like the ones that hung over her back door, “I guess he would have.”

The two of them had a routine going. Sometimes, they met on the front lawn. They would eat dinner together, always the same; grilled cheese sandwiches on thick sourdough bread and stringy, gooey cheese. Sometimes, Mrs. Danforth would get him to water the flowers. And she always let him touch all the petals. And she let him ask her to tell him the forget-me-not story over and over again, a constant attempt to recreate that first evening. The German knight constantly dying in Mrs. Danforth’s backyard, over and over and over again.

Then, he got the news. News that Mrs. Danforth was downsizing and moving away. He cried in front of her that night, Doug’s words repeating over and over again in his head. Needy and desperate.

He wanted to call Maddie. Wanted her to comfort him like she used to. He needed to call and demand her attention.

He doesn’t.

He cried in front of Mrs. Danforth, clutching the too-cold Diet Coke and the greasy grilled cheese stupidly. He wasn’t hungry anymore.

They hugged for the first and last time that night. He realized then just how frail she was, how paper-thin she felt, like flower petals between his thumb and pointer finger—like one slight move would have sent her toppling over, all ripped and torn.

It was September. And he remembers racing home from school on his bike to catch Mrs. Danforth before she left forever. He wore his helmet that day because Mrs. Danforth told him to. Evan had hoped that she would notice and recognize his good behaviour—had hoped that maybe if he was good enough, it would convince her to stay. He remembers ripping around a corner and seeing her in the passenger seat of a moving van.

Mrs. Danforth stuck her head partially out of the truck window, her arm outstretched toward him as he skidded to a halt abruptly on the sidewalk. She called out, a smile split across her face, one final wish, a forever dying, “Forget me not!”

His smile cracked across his face like an egg, reluctant and against his better judgment, but her smile was infectious. And he called out to her, “Forget me not!” Pausing before he tacked on one last “Bye!”

He heard her wind chime laugh one last time, her frail arm sticking out of the window as the van turned the corner and left forever and ever.

And he listened. He thinks of Mrs. Danforth every time he sees a small blue flower. And every time he sees a knight in shining armour on TV or in one of Christopher’s books. He thinks of her when he hears someone speaking German, even though she never spoke a lick of it. He thinks of her every time he sees an artfully gardened and tended flower bed. “Forget me not!” she said. And Evan listened, even when she told the same story over and over again. He made sure to pay attention whenever she spoke. So he listened. And he listens still.

Vergiss mein nicht!

Forget me not, ‘O Lord!

A call! A demand! For when the knight dies, for when his loved ones look and search for his body, for when the flowers grow upon his grave and at the site of his death. A forever call! A forever dying! A forever yearning! A forget-me-not!

Doctors say that to get a proper night of sleep, you should avoid blue light for an hour before bed. Buck knows this. He’s painfully aware of it right now because it’s past 2 AM, and the blue light from his laptop screen makes his eyes feel itchy and dry. Dry like a desert, prickly like a cactus, like pins and needles throughout his entire body.

He’s aware that he should turn the brightness down. He knows he should sit up properly, plug in his dying laptop and go to bed. Because it’s past two in the morning, and he has a shift tomorrow. And his back is aching from slouching against his bed frame and lacklustre pillows. He knows this position isn’t good for his back, which means it’s not good for his hips. Which really means it’s not great for his leg. His bad leg. The one that still feels like it’s trapped underneath the firetruck sometimes. And his arms are starting to get really stiff from the way they’re bending to reach the keyboard.

Buck’s aware of all of it, and yet…

He can practically hear Doctor Copeland’s voice crackling through the screen, reminding him gently of the importance of having a proper night routine. She reminded him each session. She even sent him articles to prove the facts, knowing Buck loves a good research binge.

It’s 2 AM, and Buck feels guilty. He’s staring at his too-bright laptop screen, letting the blue light dry out his eyes, prickling the back of his eyelids with little cactus needles. Letting his eyes turn to sand, rolling and tumbling around in his eye sockets.

It’s 2 AM, and Buck feels guilty. Guilty for not listening to Doctor Copeland and ignoring her scientifically proven advice. Guilty for wasting her time and simultaneously wasting his own. Guilty for wasting resources, stealing and taking Doctor Copeland’s time from someone who actually needed it. Stealing Doctor Copeland’s time from someone who would listen to her instead of ignoring it like he is now.

In his defence, Buck did try for a week after Doctor Copeland sent the articles. But after a while, he couldn’t be bothered. Sleep seemed like such a small sacrifice for more time. More time for something other than fitful sleep.

Time, time, time. Time for something else, for something new. Time that he never seems to have enough of during the day with LA’s sunny skies and fluffy clouds. It’s always a race against the clock. A countdown, a never-ending scoreboard. A game he’s always rigged to lose.

Buck knows he should really already be asleep. Because it’s 2 AM, and he has to get up early tomorrow. But he can’t, not when he has things to do, things to figure out. And it’s not his fault. It’s not his fault that Christopher asked for Buck’s help with his latest research project. And it’s not his fault that Ancient Greece is really fascinating. Who could blame him for watching video after video, especially when Hank and John Green’s voices are perfect for narration and keeping his short attention span entertained? And really, the late-night YouTube rabbit hole just happened. Buck didn’t fall down the hole on purpose. It just happened. And the minutes just kept ticking by, and then the hours just slipped between his fingers like water. And it’s not his fault that his adblock stopped working, and YouTube forced Buck to sit through a thirty-second ad about Mother’s Day gifts.

And, listen, Buck has nothing against Mother’s Day. He agrees that mothers and women all over should be recognized and celebrated for their hard work. He supports women, okay? He’s got a reminder on his calendar for International Women’s Day to text Maddie, Hen, and Athena when the day comes! Hell, he got drunk with the three of them last International Women’s Day and texted all his ex-girlfriends wishing them all the best! It’s just that…Mother’s Day and Margaret Buckley…is complicated.

Buck hasn’t gotten his mom a Mother’s Day gift yet. He hasn’t even thought about it until now. And to be completely honest, he hasn’t gotten her anything in years. Because Buck was running around the world trying to find himself in his Jeep, his passport practically living in his pocket, and she and Dad never called or reached out, so why would Buck? And then he nearly died. He was almost crushed to death by the fire engine, and they stayed in Hershey, away from him. And he’s never felt the urge to give them anything. Not until they give him a reason to.

But now. Now, Buck knows about Daniel. Now, he wants Jee to have grandparents. Because, while Margaret and Philip were never good parents to him, maybe they can be good grandparents. And Jee deserves everything and every opportunity for a life packed with love and care. Jee deserves a huge, loving family. Even if Buck and Maddie never got that. Because Jee deserves everything Buck and Maddie didn’t get, even though they deserved it too. They still deserve it.

The computer screen is really burning his eyes. And he has so many tabs open he can’t keep them straight anymore. He’s gone from looking at overpriced, tacky jewelry to scratchy-looking sweaters to corny mugs that his mother would hate. And now he’s looking at flowers.

Flowers are good. Flowers are right between everything and nothing.

Fuck. Buck hasn’t done anything for Mother’s Day in years. He has no idea what he’s doing.

He remembers elementary school and the crafts and cards he would make for Mother’s Day in art class. Buck would follow every instruction, follow the lesson, follow the steps to fucking perfection. He would give the cards, crafts, and little creations with his heart clumsily ripped out of his chest and placed inside to give to his mother. He would present them to her every Mother’s Day for years without fail, praying and hoping that this would be the year. This will be the year that she holds the card with my heart inside and holds it gently. This will be the year she cares and puts the card and my beating heart on the fireplace mantle next to her delicate and precious little things. This will be the year, the day that will change everything.

But it never was the year, the day, or the moment that changed everything as he envisioned and imagined and hoped. His mom never really cared, not in the way that Buck wanted. The younger Buck wanted his mother’s praise, attention, and love blatantly expressed to him. But his mom never really cared. She would get that faraway look in her eyes. The look that Buck finally understands. The look he’s able to place, put away and define. The dismissive and painful look—painful for both of them. Painful because his mom is remembering her dead son by looking at her other son, the one with the beating heart. Painful because Evan didn’t understand what he was doing wrong. Wondering why his hard work and red, blood-filled heart weren’t enough to get her love and attention.

He doesn’t hold a grudge against her. Or his father. A part of him knows he should. Knows that he should hold them accountable. Part of him wishes he could hold the grudge; he wishes he could hold onto it—hold it until it hardens in his chest, hold it behind his ribs until it gives him something priceless and precious. Until all the pressure and fucked up parts create a diamond. Until the pressure and pain turn the grudge into something sparkling and worthwhile. Until he can hold the proof of his pain in his calloused hands. Evidence that he can make something beautiful. Proof that he made something with his anger that he can look at with pride. Something to shove in his parents’ faces and say, look! I made something with your pain.

Buck wishes he could stay angry at them. A large part of him says they deserve his anger, and a large part of him agrees. He wishes he could move on from them. Completely forget about them forever. Throw it all back in their faces and ask them how much they like it? To see how much they like being ignored and forgotten? Even though they forgot about him when he ran around all over the world. And his parents didn’t do or say anything about it.

But that mindset never really lasts. Buck always comes back. He comes back because sometimes, sometimes, just for a second, they see him. Sometimes, for a split second, they look at him and see something priceless and worthwhile. Sometimes, they see something precious and delicate—a diamond. It’s never for long, and it always reverts back to the beginning; faraway looks and unknowingly cruel words. But even then, Buck’s anger always melts away when they look at him for that split second.

It’s really just repeating everything Buck has tried so hard to get past—this whole push and pull. This pattern of anyone showing Buck any semblance of love and attention, and he’s pushing his way back in, and then they pull him through to the other side and move on. And then it starts all over again.

Love and attention. Buck still doesn’t really understand the difference between the two. What is love if it’s not someone paying attention to you? And isn’t someone giving all their attention to you even when it’s just for a second, a short moment, love? Forty-five minutes of attention fucking someone, or someone fucking him in the back of his Jeep, isn’t that love? Seven minutes in heaven with a girl from his tenth-grade English class with a name he can’t remember but with a face and moment that he thinks about every time he kisses someone new, isn’t that love? Breaking his arm, then a leg while skateboarding and his parents waiting on his beck and call for a few days—isn’t that love? Isn’t it all just love?

Someone giving you their full attention, even for a split second, isn’t that love in its own right? In its own way?

Buck has loved everyone he’s ever laid eyes on. And in the privacy of his own mind, he likes to think that everyone else is the same way—that they’ll love him when they see him, just like he loves them and hopes everyone gets everything they’ve ever needed and wanted.

Buck has loved everyone he’s ever met. And he’s met his parents. And he loves him, even if it’s from a distance.

Buck has loved everyone he’s ever met, and he loves his parents because they’re not just everyone else. They’re his parents. And he’ll always want something from them, even though he knows they can’t give it to him.

They’re his parents in some hypothetical way, in theory, but never in practice. For short moments, they’ve been parental, but never parents. Not in the way he needed. It’s all push and pull with them. And Buck’s too stuck in it now to leave or forget. It’s stitched into his skin and bones. He’s too stuck to ever really crawl his way out, not when maybe this is the time his mom will care about the Mother’s Day card and the craft he made to fucking perfection. He always has to try one more time because what if this is the time that it works? What if this is the card she’s wanted all along, and it was just all wrong before? What if he had it all wrong?

He can’t let them go because then, it’s official. If he gives up, he’ll never have another opportunity to try and get them to care, to see. If he cuts and snips the last threading strings between them, then it’ll be over. It means that he has truly and completely given up on them. It means he’s given up on them being parents and Buck being their son. But he wants to be their son. Buck wants to fit into their lives and the small, delicate space between their ribs and hearts. He just doesn’t know how.

It’s always been blatant that Buck doesn’t know when to let go—when to quit. It happened so plainly with Abby and almost everyone else since her. He felt like a pathetic abandoned dog near the end, waiting for her to come and feed him the scraps of her limited love. It was so embarrassing when he realized it so late, when everyone else seemed to know months before him. And even then, with Abby never saying a word until the train crash, until she was forced to look at him and face him, he still loves her. He still misses her dearly and distantly. Buck still can’t hold a grudge over her. He still wishes he could call. He prays that she’ll pick up on the second ring and pretend she misses him like they used to do. Even though she doesn’t and she didn’t. It’s not like how Buck missed her with every fibre of his being. He wishes they could have played pretend for a little longer to ease the sting—just so she could have at least taken the leash and collar off his neck.

Buck can’t hold a grudge against Abby.

He can’t hold a grudge against anyone.

He’s stupidly devoted to the point of self-destruction. And he’s too loyal to break the habit.

And Buck can’t hold a grudge against his parents. If he quits on them, the what-ifs will keep him up at night. What if I hadn’t given up on them? What if I stuck it out for a little bit longer? Would things have changed? What if, this time, they’ll see me?

What if he missed something? What if he forgot to try something? What if that was the answer to getting them to care about him in the way he truly and desperately wants?

It’s the what-ifs that make him hold on—even though it’s usually always over and time to let go. It’s the what-ifs that have Buck scrolling through flower delivery services in Hershey on his laptop at 2 AM. Even though he has a twenty-four-hour shift at nine. Even though Mother’s Day isn’t for another two weeks. And he hasn’t gotten his mom a Mother’s Day gift in probably over ten years. Because there’s a little boy’s voice in the back of his head with a voice that sounds an awful lot like Evan, and it makes him think: what if? That little boy’s voice that says things like—You should get Mom flowers. That’s probably the reason why she doesn’t talk to you. It’s all because you haven’t gotten her flowers. And you haven’t given her a Mother’s Day gift in years; it’s all a reminder that you’re not enough for her. And maybe this will be the time that it fixes everything. Maybe this will be the thing that makes them love you like they love Daniel.

That little boy’s voice is so convincing. What if, what if, what if. And now he’s researching which flower shops will deliver in Hershey. And it’s that little boy’s voice that’s got him searching for the meaning of all the flowers in the bouquets so that he sends her something that means love, thankfulness and everything sweet and forgiving. He’s searching for flowers even though the older voice in his head, the one full of hurt and defeat, reminds him that she doesn’t deserve any forgiveness or sweetness.

Buck knows his mother won’t search for the meanings of the flowers he sends her. She wouldn’t even think to.

And now he’s stumbled across some hippie mommy blogger’s YouTube channel telling Buck and the other thousands of viewers what roses mean and daisies and tulips—Maddie loves tulips. Mom hates tulips. She hates how short their blooming period is.

Or does she hate lilies? Or was it another flower that Buck can’t remember? He should really do some more research into flowers. The mommy blogger calls it the language of flowers, and it’s actually really fascinating—and Jesus Christ, Buckley, stay on track—what flowers does Mom hate?

He needs to know which flowers his mom hates because it’s not about knowing what Mom likes. It’s knowing what to avoid. It’s knowing how to navigate her and Dad. Knowing how to walk down the stairs without stepping on the second-to-last stair that creaks so he can sneak out and then drink himself stupid at some high school party until he crashes on some stranger’s couch. Knowing that breaking his wrist will ensure he has his parents’ attention and love for a week. Knowing that breaking his leg or foot will get him two weeks of attention. Knowing that when he catches the stomach flu, Mom will avoid him until he’s completely healed. And Dad will get angry more easily, his voice rising over nothing and everything until Mom returns to normal. It’s knowing that Maddie is the only one who takes care of him when he’s puking his guts out. Until Maddie moves out. And then it’s just him pushing his own hair back and shaking on the bathroom floor, deliriously sweating the fever out. It’s about knowing what to avoid. And knowing what works and what doesn’t.

He needs to know. He needs to know so this works.

And before he’s aware of what he’s doing, he’s opening up his phone and texting Maddie.

And then he remembers it’s two in the morning, and Maddie could be asleep because he doesn’t remember if Maddie has a shift right now. And Jee’s been having trouble sleeping recently, and Buck could have just woken Maddie up over a stupid question about flowers at 2 AM. And Buck really doesn’t want to be the reason that keeps Maddie up now, especially for a question that could be easily answered later. And, and, and.

And he’s just about to try and go back in time to unsend the message when Maddie texts back.

Of course, Maddie sees straight to the core of him, immediately knowing why he’s really asking. And, of course, she knows he has a shift tomorrow. She’s always been on top of things like that. Things like times and places. Things like Buck’s schedule and where he has to be.

He hopes he didn’t wake her up over this. Buck’s not sure if he can take any more guilt right now.

Buck thumbs over the glowing keyboard of his phone, illuminating the skin, making it seem like he’s glowing from the inside out. He squints at the screen, typing and deleting and then typing again. He kind of wishes he could just call Maddie. But that would mean she wouldn’t let him avoid answering any of her questions like he’s trying to do right now. And he doesn’t know how to explain what he’s feeling right now or the guilt he’s trying to swallow whole.

Ding! His phone rings out again, the screen lighting up once more.

Oh shit. He really spaced out there.

Buck chews nervously at his bottom lip, the guilt eating away at his liver and stomach. Eating away at his liver and stomach lining like the alcohol he used to drink back like medicine at those high school parties, surrounded by people who didn’t care about him or know him. Drinking the liquor back like water for attention from the clamouring crowd. Drinking the poison back like oxygen to puke his guts out in the morning, so Mom avoids him, and Dad yells at him. Because then, at least Mom’s thinking about how much she can’t look at him. Because at least Dad feels something towards him. Because at least his mother’s avoidance means she’s comprehending that he’s alive. At least his father’s yelling means he’s angry at Buck and seeing him.

Relief crashes into Buck like a wave. Guilt about waking Maddie up and his recent years of slacking for Mother’s Day would’ve killed him. Well, not kill him. But it would have made him feel even more awful, and he doesn’t know if he can handle that right now. Not when he has a shift tomorrow with Chim. And then Buck would’ve felt guilty for waking up Chimney’s soon-to-be wife with a dumb question about flowers and Mother’s Day. And Buck would inevitably end up spilling to everyone that he hasn’t gotten his mom a Mother’s Day gift in years, and saying it aloud would make everything even worse. And then it would really be about how Buck woke Chimney’s soon-to-be wife up in the middle of the night with a stupid question about flowers because he’s a lousy son who hasn’t gotten his mom a Mother’s Day gift in over a decade.

Fuck.

But! It’s all okay. Maddie’s awake and on her lunch break. And Buck didn’t wake her up. He only has one thing to feel guilty about right now.

Well, he could find other things to feel guilty about. There’s plenty—

Ding! Buck’s phone flashes with light once again.

His thumbs are a blur as he responds.

Buck can practically hear Maddie’s voice as he reads her message. I know you were. Her all-knowing older sibling voice. The voice Buck has only ever heard her use with him. It makes him feel special. It makes him feel seen.

Screw feeling special. Screw feeling seen. And screw Maddie’s all-knowing elder sibling bullshit. Buck has no idea how to answer this. He settles with:

Mother’s Day is a loaded day for Buck. Of course, Maddie knows that because she’s all-knowing and because she was the one who held Buck together when his gift was rejected year after year. Because she was the one who told him that his cards and crafts were awesome. She was the one to put the little gifts up on the shelf upstairs that their parents never really walked past. It wasn’t the fireplace mantle, but it made him feel like his work was on display. Maddie was the one who did that.

It takes Maddie a second to reply, the three dots appearing, then disappearing. But it’s clear Buck’s not getting a good night’s sleep tonight anyway. Not at this rate anyway, so he doesn’t mind the wait.

Buck knows that Eddie will give him a look tomorrow during their shift when Buck comes into the station eager but yawning. Excited like he is for every shift, but exhausted.

It’s not like Buck dislikes being watched by Eddie—attention and love have always felt the same to him—but he always feels guilty when he stays up like this, making Eddie worried and watchful. He doesn’t want Eddie to worry. Even if the worry and attention make him feel loved in some fucked up way he still hasn’t worked through.

The us versus them isn’t there; it isn’t said. But it’s there, in between the lines. It’s there, between the screen and his fingertips. And Buck loves her all-knowing older sibling bullshit. He loves that Maddie is here again. He loves that she’s back and here to do this with him, and wants to do this with him. He loves that she’s kind enough to not ask why over text.

It feels like Buck has suddenly been punched in the stomach, all the oxygen leaving him, his stomach falling. Buck feels like he’s been hit with an intense wave of grief. Missing. Missing something. Grieving someone. He doesn’t know why exactly. Maddie’s at work. Bobby is with Athena, and Athena is with Bobby. Eddie’s home with Christoper, both of them probably soundly asleep. Hen is home with her family. So is Chim; he’s with Jee. His mom and dad are in Hershey like they always are. Everyone’s here. Everyone’s where they’ve always been, where Buck wants them, needs them to be. But he’s grieving; looking at Maddie’s message, her eternal understanding, everything she gave up for him, everything she does for him and how everything’s changed, he feels grief. Intense, all-consuming grief. Debilitating grief. He feels paralyzed by it. Overwhelmed with it.

The grief is swallowing him whole. It’s holding his heart in its calloused hand, clutching it and holding him hostage. Threatening him with spilling over and crushing his heart in the process.

He doesn’t know what to do. He has to go to bed. And he has a shift tomorrow, but he doesn’t know where to put his grief before the time comes. And he has to text Maddie back.

Maddie immediately starts typing back after Buck’s messages are sent. He watches his thumbs hover and twitch over the keyboard, begging him to type something. Because it feels like Buck’s grieving. And he needs reassurance. He wants to see everything typed out in straightforward, clear letters so that Maddie sees them. And so he can look at the response.

As Maddie’s message sends, so does Buck’s.

They don’t say I love you a lot. But it’s undeniably true. Buck knows that Maddie loves him, and she knows that he loves her. But he wants to see it typed out and there, so he can reread it over and over again. So he can reread it every time he needs to remind himself.

Maddie’s reply is quick and almost instantaneous.

Buck feels so much grief. He feels so much want for something he can’t name. He feels like he’s eternally missing something. Yearning for something he’s never had. Or yearning for something he’s always had and didn’t know until it was too late.

He’s exhausted as he walks into the station, just as he predicted last night. And he slept through two of his alarms, and he didn’t have enough time to eat or do his hair. And Buck forgot to bring his hair gel. Now, he’ll spend the twenty-four-hour shift with unruly and untamable hair.

The shift turnover is quick and practiced like always. Buck gets changed and heads upstairs to the kitchen, where he hopes and prays someone has breakfast cooking.

Everyone is already here: Bobby, Hen, Chim, and Eddie. Buck is usually one of the first to arrive for a shift other than Bobby, and Buck’s ‘lateness’ will not go unnoticed by the four of them, each sending Buck their respective questioning looks.

Buck refuses to answer or submit to their silent questions. And their caring but stifling looks. He hates not telling them things. But Buck doesn’t even know what to say. Or how he would explain. Something like: A YouTube ad sent me into a spiral about Mother’s Day, and I spent close to three hours of my night learning about the language of flowers and how I could send my mom a bouquet for Mother’s Day that doesn’t seem too overwhelming, revealing, and desperate for attention and love. That’s probably too much for a Friday morning, even for him.

It would only lead to Bobby giving Buck a look, and then that would make Buck feel guilty for making Bobby worry. And that will only make Buck think of The Lawsuit. And that always makes Buck feel guilty all over again, desperate and overcompensating for Bobby’s approval by working himself to the bone around the station to make up for his guilt. Whenever Buck does that, it seems to make Bobby even more worried.

Bobby makes Buck feel young and childlike in ways he hasn’t felt since childhood. And Buck doesn’t know what to do with that because he’s an adult. And Bobby and the others shouldn’t have to worry about him. Buck hates that he makes them worry. And it kills Buck that he preens under that attention. Under all that concern and love. It kills him that he takes pleasure in it; in some fucked up way. He doesn’t want to make them worry. But attention and love have always felt the same to him.

They’re all still sending him looks, and Buck refuses to acknowledge them, so he asks, “Coffee?”

Bobby gives him a look, and one of those small Bobby smiles, “Brewed and waiting for you in the pot.”

“Thank God.”

Buck pours the freshly brewed coffee into his designated mug. The mug he won playing Hot Potato Secret Santa at the station two years ago is covered in butterflies and ladybugs.

Chimney clears his throat, “Late night, Buck?” Chim sends a teasing look to Hen, and they both grin ruefully.

“Shut up, Chim,” Buck replies smoothly.

Even with his back turned, Buck can practically hear the amused smile on Bobby’s face, “Play nice, children,” he says, the stove top sizzling.

Chimney throws his hands up in defence when Buck turns around, stirring his coffee. Chimney is already chomping down on a piece of gum with an amused glint in his eye. He clearly thinks that Buck was up late with Natalia, even though that’s impossible because she and Buck broke up over a week ago. So there’s no one to have a late night with.

Buck hasn’t told anyone that he and Natalia broke up yet. He doesn’t really see a point in it right now. The breakup didn’t hurt per se; it’s more of a sore reminder of another relationship that failed, another thing that Buck couldn’t hold onto or convince to stick around. The relationship was fun. Helpful—made death feel like something conquerable because Natalia conquered it with straightforward directness and unashamed questions. She isn’t phased by death, its reality or its concept. She wasn’t phased by his death.

She wasn’t phased when she touched him, a man perpetually dying, a man who was Dead. He died, stopped breathing, the cells dying, the brain shutting down, eyes lightless, a deadweight for three minutes and seventeen seconds. She wasn’t phased by it. In fact, she welcomed it. She held his Death in her hands, cupped all the death within him in her palms, and she asked. What did you see? Did you feel anything—the death? What does death feel like? Do you still feel it? Does it grip you tight and keep you half-dead, half-alive?

Describe it to me. Hold me like death holds you. I’ll hold you like the strange comfort of Death itself. A beautiful woman clad in a sundress and dainty jewelry, big eyes looking into you, through you, she has come to collect you.

Oh, how he desires to be collected.

And she did. Natalia did collect him in a way. They never got to Death. Death with a capital D. The body, the woman who conquered Death. Buck never died with Natalia. But they did the next best thing—she held Buck on the brink, held him by the scruff of his neck as he leaned and looked over the edge of the cliff. She let him soothe the suicidal edge of himself. The edge that finds comfort in the danger, the stomach rolling, heart dropping, head pounding, aching limbs kind of danger. The suicidal type of danger. Seeking the comfort the crashed motorcycle and broken limbs gave him. Natalia held him by the scruff of his neck as he leaned over the cliff to see what was at the bottom. And when he got too close, just before his heart and head dropped permanently, dead at the bottom of a canyon of bones and suicidal boys, she would pull him back. Back to the act of Living. Living with a capital L.

And then she would let him crawl back to that same edge, that same cliff, looking down and seeing a reflection of himself, ready to fall and for the stomach-rolling and heart-clenching suicide. And they would do it all over again. Fucking and kissing on the edge of Death. At the edge of a wobbly cliff, cracking and crumbling beneath them, rolling away just in time before the whole thing falls into a canyon full of dead boys and Death herself.

It felt like she wanted to take some of his death for herself. Like she was trying to pull it out of him to dissect it and eat it so she could feel it within her. It felt good. Felt good that someone wanted all that death for themself, that someone wanted it. That there’s a part of Buck, something intrinsically him, the undeniable death that lives in his core, that someone finds desirable. Natalia wanted it. She wanted that death to live in her. And he selfishly hoped that she would take it, that she could take it so that it wouldn’t be a part of him anymore.

She didn’t manage to get it all out of him, not from a lack of trying. She tried and tried and tried. Sometimes, it felt like she was getting it out of him, replacing His Death with Her Life. It didn’t work in the end. It’s all still intrinsically part of him.

He tried to tell Eddie that. But not really. I just feel like she gets me. And it was a lie then, still a lie now. Natalia didn’t get Buck. She didn’t understand all of him, like the lighter parts of him, like Christopher and Eddie. She didn’t understand them. But she welcomed the death, the bottomless pit that lives and licks up his spine. She wanted those parts of him, the dark and disgusting, the vile and confusing. The part of him that says the truth, the truth that he can’t Live without Death. Capital L and D. Like God. Like Him. Like a name. It’s all capitals.

And it is true. Buck can’t live without death. He was born because of Death. And lived it. Daniel was dying. And so Evan was born. And Daniel is dead. He died. Buck tried. But Daniel is still dead. So very dead. And Buck lived. He survived. He was born because of death. And he’s not sure how he can ever leave that behind. Not when the ghosts of two dead boys live in the soft spots between his ribs and heart.

So, yeah. The relationship was helpful. Useful. Productive. A change of pace. A change of pain. Like when his leg is throbbing with the phantom fire engine balanced on top of it. And he starts to press into pressure points, making it hurt more, but it’s better than the throbbing. This pain is something he’s doing on purpose; Buck’s controlling it. He’s pressing the meat of his thumb into the flesh of his own leg until it bruises, releasing the pressure with his own fingers. Because the sharp pain is better than the repeating pluses of throbbing.

Natalia was like that. Like fingers pushing into his temple pressure points to try and relieve a pounding headache. She pressed into the Death, made him look at it head-on, eyes wide open, or with his eyes wide shut, looking at the death that would materialize on the backs of his eyelids.

With her, he could talk about it, about the whole dying thing and how sometimes it feels like he’s dying over and over again in his own body, the cells dying and coming back to life. And Natalia would look at him in bed, at the kitchen island, on the beach, in a yellow sundress, in nothing but her underwear, or wearing nothing at all, on the back of his eyelids and say, “We’re always dying, Buck. Everyone is born alive, and then they start to die. You’ll die today and tomorrow and yesterday and forever.” And then she would trace over his heart with her fingernails, leaving goosebumps and burning cells in their wake, “It’s a consistent thing, Buck. Isn’t it nice?”

And it is kind of nice. It makes Natalia sound crazy when he thinks about it out of context like that, all the things she said about death and Him. Him as in Buck, as in Life. As in the whole fucking thing. It sounds like she was prepping Buck for a fucking autopsy. And she kind of was. But it was kind of…nice? Attractive? Nice that she knew death like that. She would lay him down and touch and inspect every part of his body, filling him with goosebumps, holding him still and reminding him that he’s alive.

Jesus Christ. There’s something wrong with him.

Buck’s still not sure. But it relieved something within him—loosened his core. Made his brain all sloppy and misty and electrifying and alive. Like they were teasing Death together. It was nice to hear about his own death like that. To learn that he died and it was interesting to someone, not just traumatic for everyone involved. To hear and see the concept and reality of death laid out so plainly.

And the consistency of death is kind of nice, in a distant way. Nothing about life is certain except the dying part of it. Everything has to end as much as Buck doesn’t want things to. But it’s a fact that things die. Nothing is making sense, but things still die, and that’s something he and everyone else can always guarantee.

Jesus. He sounds clinically insane. If anyone in the firehouse knew what he was thinking, they would rip him a new one. If they heard about all this death talk… Buck doesn’t want to even think about the betrayed and horrified looks they would all give him. Eddie would be livid. Probably wouldn’t talk to him for a day or two out of pure horror. But that’s what was nice about Natalia. She didn’t get scared of death talk like that. Hell, she didn’t just welcome it; she encouraged it. Buck could’ve said anything about Death, and Natalia would have heard him out without judgment.

So, yeah. Natalia helped him through the lightning strike and His Death. Until the novelty of it wore off. Until all they really did was fuck and die over and over again. It wasn’t very productive anymore. And then they mutually broke it off. And now Buck spends his nights researching Ancient Greece and the language of flowers.

He really doesn’t want to get into the breakup pity and pats on the shoulder with better luck next time looks right now. Not when he has better things to worry about and focus on, like what flowers to get his mother and how to navigate his complicated feelings about Mother’s Day.

As Buck settles on one of the bar stools, Bobby wordlessly starts piling up a plate of scrambled eggs and hash browns for him, “Thanks, Cap.”

Bobby nods and hums and says, “No problem, Buck.” He looks Buck in the eye and then gives him a once over, seemingly running through a mental checklist and ensuring that Buck has all his fingers and limbs. Buck’s grateful that Bobby doesn’t ask what he clearly wants to ask in front of everyone. Especially because Buck has no idea how to answer.

Buck can feel someone else’s eyes on him and knows it’s Eddie. He’s familiar with Eddie’s looks and evaluating glances. It always makes Buck feel so vulnerable—like Eddie is taking Buck apart with one look, brick by brick. Like Eddie is pulling at one of Buck’s loose threads and tugging until the whole of him unravels.

Even though Buck knows it’s coming, Eddie’s voice startles him, “Your hair looks different today…” Buck hears the barstool creak as Eddie turns his body toward him, bringing his attention and evaluating stare right to Buck.

It’s not a question because Eddie’s right, but Buck feels the urge to defend and explain himself and to fill the silence that’s fallen upon them. “Uh, yeah.” He looks at Eddie beside him, his own coffee mug in his grip. Buck looks him in the eye and watches Eddie’s pupils dilate, the black swallowing the deep brown. Buck feels his cheeks flush red, heat rising up his neck. Attention. All he’s ever really wanted was attention.

Buck clears his throat, blinks his eyes, and tries to will the blush away. “Yeah, I, uh, ran out of time to do my hair this morning.” He runs his hand over his hair self-consciously and feels a sheepish smile creep up on his face.

Chimney lets out a teasing wolf whistle, “Must have been a really fun night if you ran out of time to do your hair, huh?”

Hen whacks Chimney’s arm with a smile, rolling her eyes and whispering, “Shut up, Chim.”

Eddie turns his body toward the table again but keeps his head looking at Buck. His hands hold his coffee cup, capable fingers wrapped around ceramic, “It looks good, Buck. You should wear it like this more often.”

The self-conscious blush returns with a vengeance, and Buck can’t help but look away from Eddie.

“Yeah, Buck! I like the curly look. It looks nice!” Hen says genuinely, gesturing with her fork. Chimney nods alongside her in that encouraging expression of his, and Bobby just keeps looking at Buck.

Buck can still feel Eddie’s eyes on him. He’s not sure what to do with it. Buck always wants attention. But Buck never seems to know how to handle it when he finally gets it.

“Thanks, guys,” Buck clears his throat nervously, “I’ll think about it.” And he means it. He always wants to know what his family thinks. Buck shoots Eddie another look out of the corner of his eye. Eddie’s still looking. Buck has no idea what it means.

It feels like an eternity when Eddie finally turns his head away from Buck to take a sip of his bitter coffee, black like he always has it. Sometimes, Buck can convince him to put a dash of cinnamon in it. He wonders if Eddie did it this morning.

Buck’s blush dies down eventually, and the conversation flows easily between them as it always does, comfortable, familiar, and soothing. As the last of breakfast tapers off, Bobby looks at Buck and points at the vacant couch across the floor. He has his don’t argue with me face on. Buck’s too tired to even try and argue against it.

That same wave of grief he felt last night rushes through him once more as Bobby raises an eyebrow. A wishing and yearning, all-encompassing grief. He’s grieving something he doesn’t know how to name. Because he never had it. Or maybe he’s always had it.

It’s just that Bobby knows Buck so well. He knows that Buck hates sleeping in the bunks during the day, and he knows Buck hates feeling separated from the team even when he’s exhausted like this. Bobby knows Buck so well that he directs him without words. Bobby directs him to the couch, a place surrounded by people. A place where Buck can feel needed.

He feels like he might drown in it, the grief and longing for something he can’t name. And if he’s not careful, it might just swallow him whole, consume his whole bloody, beating heart and hold it forever in its mouth. Holding him hostage in grief, making sure he feels every aching second of it.

“Thanks, Bobby,” Buck manages to rasp out.

Bobby responds just as quietly, “No problem, Buck.”

And then he’s heading for the couch.

Eddie wordlessly follows. He always follows, and Buck follows him. It’s consistent knowing that Eddie is always there.

It’s consistent. Buck knows what’s coming, and he’s too tired to try and stop it.

The two of them sit down, Buck first and then Eddie, their shoulders touching, solid and constant. Eddie’s shoulder pressing against his makes Buck feel real. Like his body holds weight. Like he isn’t floating away in the waves of his unnamed and unknown grief.

With their coffee mugs placed on coasters, Eddie looks at Buck, shoulders knocking against each other. “Please don’t tell me you stayed up last night researching for Christopher’s project.”

Buck knew it was coming. He knew Eddie would see right through him and waste no time asking. Because Eddie’s direct and efficient. Eddie isn’t good with verbalizing. But he does it because Buck needs it. Buck could lie and say that Chris’ project was the only reason, but Eddie is looking at Buck with his big brown eyes, all concerned but simultaneously amused, and Buck hates lying to Eddie, so Buck doesn’t. And Eddie puts in so much effort to talk to Buck the way he knows Buck needs. And Buck hates lying to Eddie; Buck doesn’t want to throw all of Eddie’s effort back into his face. So he tells the truth. “It was…only part of why I stayed up last night.”

Eddie simply looks at him and knocks their shoulders together again, this time with more pointed and directed intent. He looks up at Buck through his long eyelashes. Buck’s stomach flip-flops dangerously like it always does when Eddie looks at him like that. “What was the other reason?” Eddie asks quietly, trying to keep the conversation as private as possible. As private a conversation can be while in the 118 firehouse.

Doctor Copeland told Buck to not lie if he hates doing it so much. It’s the one thing from therapy that he’s been able to keep doing consistently. He never lies because he wants to; Buck just never knows how to explain so he can tell the truth.

Buck clears his throat, “Mother’s Day is coming up,” he states plainly, aiming for light and easy but landing somewhere heavy and loaded instead.

“Ah.” Eddie leans back against the cushions, their shoulders creating friction and warmth from the movement. Buck watches Eddie nod, immediately understanding in his own complex way.

That’s the thing about Eddie. He doesn’t push. He doesn’t pull at Buck until he opens up and tells him what’s on his mind. Eddie lets Buck sit with it. He gives Buck time to gather his words. Time until they’re the right ones. Eddie knows that sometimes Buck needs time. He needs to be given a chance.

Eddie knows that Buck doesn’t need incessant pulling and pushing. He knows that Buck just needs faith and patience and maybe one or two looks for good measure.

Buck swallows harshly around his tongue. And the words leave his mouth like a flood, “I haven’t gotten my mom a Mother’s Day gift in years—and I know that sounds awful. A-and I know it makes it seem like I don’t love my mom or, or—”

“Buck,” Eddie interrupts, his voice slicing through the air, slicing Buck right down the middle, “I know you. You don’t have to explain yourself. Not to me.”

Oh. Buck’s stomach does that fluttery flip-flop thing again, like a beached fish trying to get back into the water. He releases a sigh through his mouth, “O-okay. Yeah,” he swallows visibly. “Okay.”

They meet eyes, and Eddie smiles encouragingly. And if it were anyone else, if it were anyone but Eddie, Buck might even say that Eddie almost looks smitten—

“I just.” Buck stops. He takes a breath. He lets the words come and string themselves together, “I used to make stuff for her every year, you know? Like cards and stuff when I was little and…” Buck feels his whole body shrink in on itself. He takes up so much space. It’s moments like these where he wishes he didn’t. “All that stuff, the cards and gifts—they never worked.”

His brain is rattling away like an old space heater, trying to come up with something else to say. Some other way to explain it to Eddie. And that’s when Buck feels a warm hand gently hold the meat of his thigh.

It’s a gentle pressure. The type that Eddie is always so willing to give Buck. A hand on his shoulder, thumb sweeping. A warm hand on his thigh, thumb and fingers steady. They stay silent, with only the pregnant pressure of Eddie’s warm hand to fill the silence. The silence presses against them heavily and is all-consuming. Daniel. Philip and Margaret’s respective grief. It’s a moment of quiet, still air for Buck’s grief too. The grief that controlled his life for so long without even fully knowing of its existence. The grief of Daniel, an older brother. The grief of never having the parents he should have had, then and now.

Buck lets himself breathe out. He allows himself to take comfort in Eddie’s silence and his warm hand. He lets himself take it. “And I spent last night googling flower shops and all the flower meanings to send my mom a bouquet.” He sighs again, worn out and resigned.

He watches Eddie nod out of the corner of his eye, Eddie’s head bobbing up and down like a buoy bouncing in wave-filled waters. Eddie’s like an anchor, a navigation point for Buck’s life. A point for Buck to revolve around and swim back to. Buck doesn’t know how he survived all those years without Eddie’s anchor for Buck to come back to time and time again.

Eddie nods again. Eddie is like an anchor, a buoy. “And?” he asks, his eyes meeting Buck’s, “What did you decide?”

It’s a simple question. But it’s helpful. Eddie’s pointing Buck in the right direction, guiding him through the storm, like a landmark for Buck to build around, “Well,” Buck lets his head fall back against the couch, looking up at the repetitive and comforting wooden beams. Repetitive and steady, like Eddie’s hand still on his thigh. Buck counts the seconds. He counts the wooden beams like always when Bobby tells him to sleep on the couch. One, two, three. Circle back to the center, circle back to Eddie. One, two, three, four. Start again. Find Eddie. Find the warmth. “Well,” he starts again, voice horse. He clears his throat, “Me and Maddie—she, we’re,” Buck swallows. “We’re gonna send flowers together. From—from the both of us.”

Turning his head away from the wooden beams, Buck looks at Eddie, his neck still leaning on the couch. Eddie looks back, his big, brown eyes open and comforting. Buck feels his stomach flip-flop again.

Eddie nods again, head moving up and down, his eyes never leaving Buck’s. “That’s good, right?”

Eddie is like a landmark, definitive and consistent. A lighthouse. An anchor.

It is good, right? Buck feels stupid. He feels guilty for taking up Eddie’s time like this. Foolish for taking up Eddie’s time over something as silly as this. He feels fragile. He feels vulnerable. He feels small. Buck can’t look at Eddie’s genuine face anymore, his genuine face with his big, Bambi eyes. He’s so tired. Buck looks away, back to wooden beams that don’t look at Buck like that. With concern and attention, the way Eddie does. “I guess so.”

“You guess so?” Eddie asks incredulously, bringing his head to the forward, trying to get in Buck’s line of vision again. The weight of Eddie’s hand still on Buck’s thigh increases sturdily.

Buck can see one of Eddie’s eyebrows raised and questioning. He sighs, already submitting to Eddie. He’s never had a backbone when it comes to Eddie. Buck turns his head to face him again. Eddie doesn’t move away; their faces are close. If it were anyone else, it would be too close. But it’s Eddie. Sometimes, it feels like Buck can’t get close enough to Eddie. “It shouldn’t be this hard to send her flowers.”

Eyebrows furrowed, mouth downturned, Eddie gives Buck a look. One of his looks that Buck still can’t decipher, even after all these years. “So what if it’s hard, Buck? Who said it can’t be hard?” Eddie sounds genuinely curious as he asks.

Jesus. His tongue feels like rubber in his mouth. Like he’s chewing on it, carving his tongue with his own teeth like he’s chiselling the words out as he bites down over and over again. “I should want to send her flowers, shouldn’t I, Eddie?” Buck runs his left hand through his ungelled hair, tugging it lightly. “I should feel grateful for her! Sh-she bought me a couch and—” He pauses, letting his hand fall back to his lap, “She’s my mom,” he whispers, voice raspy and hoarse.

The thumb of Eddie’s hand on Buck’s thigh starts to sweep back and forth soothingly in a pattern. One, two, three. Circle back to Eddie. One, two, three. Find the warmth. “Yeah, Buck. She bought you a couch,” Eddie huffs, voice sarcastic. “A couch that sucks.” Eddie sends Buck a pointed look, his thumb moving back and forth.

Eddie’s not wrong. The couch his mom got him is not… his favourite. Buck looks down at his hands and Eddie’s sheepishly. He can feel his face flushing red. Of course, Eddie sees right through him. And Eddie has sat on the couch. He knows firsthand how uncomfortable the thing is.

“And yeah, she’s your mom, but it’s still allowed to be difficult.” Eddie squeezes the meat of Buck’s thigh gently, oh-so-gently, and holds it there, “There’s no rules here, Buck. If it’s hard, then it’s hard.”

Buck feels himself deflate, and some of the guilt he’s been feeling falling away, too. It can be difficult. He lets the thought roll around in his mind as he nods unevenly. “Okay.” With an audible swallow, Eddie squeezes Buck’s thigh again, “Okay.” He nods one last time, trying to convince himself. Because he is.

Eddie smiles oh-so-gently, “And plus, you and Maddie are sending flowers.” Eddie’s toothy smile cracks across his face, “Together.”

Technically, Eddie’s statement is empty. It’s just a repetition of Buck’s previous words. It’s lacking substance, technically. But Buck understands because Eddie knows that Buck has Maddie at his side through this, and that means something. Eddie knows that Maddie being there and here means the world to Buck. Eddie knows that Maddie smoothes and eases everything out. Maddie and Buck are sending Mom flowers from both of them. Together. Eddie knows that Buck understands. He knows that the words sound empty and lack meaning and substance, but to them, they say everything.

“Thanks, Eddie,” Buck rasps out. It feels like he’s been scraped hollow like someone’s scooped out all his insides with a spoon like a jack-o’-lantern. Husky and hollow. Empty and sensitive. Echoing and repeating. It feels like one wrong move, and the candle will tip over and light his empty husk of a body on fire, lighting up like dry grass in the desert.

Eddie lifts his hand from Buck’s thigh. He waves his now empty hand, pushing away Buck’s thanks with a smile. Buck can still feel the weight of Eddie’s hand, like a tattoo, a phantom pain, a deep ache right to the bone. Buck wants to grab the hand and bring it back down to him. He almost does.

Something flashes in Eddie’s eyes, across his whole face, indiscernible to anyone else but so clear and obvious to Buck, like Eddie, too, feels the emptiness in his palm. Like he’s grieving it—the touch—like Buck is.

Eddie’s hand, big and warm, rises again and settles on the back of Buck’s neck. Buck suppresses a shivery, trembling feeling that starts to build and a buzzing noise at the back of his throat.

The hand at the back of his neck squeezes oh-so-gently. Like Eddie’s cradling Buck. Because Eddie’s the last thing keeping Buck upright and alive, keeping him away from the cliff edge. Eddie squeezes and scruffs Buck by the neck and looks Buck directly in the eyes. “Take a nap. You look exhausted, bud.”

Bud. Only Eddie calls him that, and Buck doesn’t think he’ll ever let someone else call him that. It’s the way Eddie says it. Like he means it. Because he does mean it. Buck is Eddie’s bud, his best friend. His only best friend. And Eddie is Buck’s best friend. His bud: even though Buck never calls him that because it’s what Eddie calls Him. Buck. His Best Friend. Buck is Eddie’s. Buck belongs to—with Eddie.

There’s something more to it, something Buck has never been able to verbalize or explain beyond the glowing feeling that resides within him whenever Eddie is near. Whenever their shoulders meet and brush. Whenever their eyes meet from across the room. It’s like heat and light and something heavy that lifts him up to the clouds and the blue of the sky. Like a feathery touch. And then a deep, gripping pressure on his upper shoulder.

It makes Buck feel like he’s gonna burst open with the feeling of it all, spilling guts and gore everywhere, showing everyone the gaping, empty cavity behind his ribs and beside his lungs. The space where his heart should be. Because Buck has always been holding his heart in his fist, in his teeth, held tight but waiting and willing between his sharp canines. Buck’s heart has always lived outside of his own body, and he’s tried and tried, but he can never get it back inside to the contained guts and gore and blood beneath his skin. He never knew where to put his heart down or who to give it to until he met Eddie. Ever since that day of the earthquake, when Buck watched Eddie spin Christopher around in his arms, his soft, soft hair falling over his eyes, Buck felt his jaw unlock, and he watched as his own heart fell into Eddie’s open palms, ready to take the weight of it.

He can feel the way his jaw unlocks now, teeth no longer grinding as Eddie looks at him and says Take a nap. You look exhausted, bud. And then Buck’s jaw unclenches like a flip of a light switch. Like the second hand of a clock moving, Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick, and the teeth split apart, like a door hinge creaking and opening, his tongue rolling out. Like Eddie said, drop it with a firm voice and a hand scruffing him by the neck.

Drop it. Hand on the nape of his neck, scruffing and holding him steady. Drop it, bud.

And Buck drops it. He always drops it. He always drops it when Eddie’s telling him to. Jaw opening with a click. Click-clack. Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick. A ticking time bomb. Running against the clock, running against the wind. Running a race, he’s always rigged to lose.

Always loose. Always torn apart and open. Always bloody and bare, everything on display. The guts and bloody gore of him all. You’re an open book, Buck. Someone said that to him once. It was Hen, he thinks. Or was it Chimney? Bobby? Or maybe Connor all those years ago in Peru? No, it couldn’t be from then. He wasn’t Buck then. He was still stuck with the old name. The old face: clad in a puka shell necklace and sun-bleached hair. You’re an open book, man. You wear your whole heart on your sleeve. Maybe it was Connor or some other roommates he doesn’t talk to anymore. But Connor and the other guys didn’t know that he actually lived with his heart clenched between his teeth, the valves still moving, the body still pumping, pulsating, burning and twitching, ba bump ba bump ba bump against his tongue.

Ba bump ba bump ba bump.

Drop it, bud.

It makes him feel like—something. Something. Something with a capital S. He’s not sure. Buck shivers. He can’t help it anymore. He trembles, a rumble starting at the nape of his neck, reverberating outward until it leaves through the soles of his feet and the top of his head. Eddie watches. He always watches. Buck always watches as Eddie’s pupils dilate, watching as the sweet, sweet ochre of Eddie’s irises becomes swallowed with something heavier and huskier. Buck shivers again, his whole body shaking.

Buck’s been silent for too long, a beat, a moment too long, the shiver wracking through him, panting and breathing heavily in Eddie’s face. “Yeah, yeah,” Buck laughs out finally. Eddie’s face is unmistakable in his relief. “I gotta get you and Bobby off my back somehow.”

With a twinkling laugh, Eddie shoves Buck’s shoulder lightly and playfully and lets go of Buck’s neck. It’s quiet and genuine. A laugh and a moment just for the two of them.

And Buck is tired, even though his mind is bounding from one thing to the next, trying to find another thing to stress about. He tries to ignore it and forces himself to count the ceiling’s wooden beams, refamiliarizing himself with its imperfections. One, two, three, four, five. Repeat it until it gets old. Eddie hasn’t left yet, his shoulder still pressing against Buck, the phantom touch of Eddie’s hand on Buck’s neck and thigh. One, two, three. Return to the warmth of Eddie’s shoulder. Buck repeats it until he feels his eyelids pull downward.

Blinking slowly, Buck distantly feels his head slump to the right onto the cushion of Eddie’s warm shoulder. One, two, three. Return to Eddie.

If Buck were less tired, he wouldn’t let this happen. He wouldn’t let himself be vulnerable like this at work. But Buck is that tired. And he’s feeling selfish. He wants to take what’s in front of him and see if Eddie or anyone pulls it back and pushes him away. The exhaustion’s pulling Buck back into old habits, testing everyone to see what they do. He wants to see if Eddie will let him. Because he’s selfish. And he’s never really been able to break the habit of testing everyone around him. Testing them to see if they stay. Testing to see if they’ll let him take it. So Buck lets himself rest on Eddie’s shoulder.

And Eddie lets him take. Eddie lets him rest.