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There's a look that both Maddie and his parents get when he comes home bloody and bruised.
It's the look that you'd think a stray, limp and weak animal would get—a fawn learning to walk with legs too long and thin to carry it's own weight. Something reserved for things below you, that you tilt your head downwards to look at. Something you forget by the end of the day.
And when those eyes catch on him when he walks through the door, Evan smiles with bloodied teeth. They tuck him in and feed him soup, clean his wounds and kiss his forehead, all with those same eyes. Evan doesn't want to tear his gaze away from his parents' faces as they stare down at him—because on the occasion they do look at him any time he's not crying out in pain, the look in their eyes isn't even this shy imitation of love.
But this imitation of love is the best thing Evan's ever felt.
The pain is just the means to an end. He jumps off a too high swing, closes the car door on his fingers, crashes his bike too many times to count—and it doesn't stop hurting. He still cries when his nose gushes blood all over the pavement, still stares at the red liquid as if it's foreign to him, even if it should be a usual sight at this point.
He's never liked the bloody noses or the bile in his mouth or the sting in his eyes. Didn't like when kids sat on top of him to stop him from moving, nor when they slammed their fists into his face.
But now, with Maddie's room empty and Dad clenching his fists so tightly a vein shows, Mom turning those shining, pitiful eyes away from him as Dad's fist shoots out—
The ache in his jaw is welcome, the throb of his nose comforting and the scabs where his nails dig into his palms almost fulfilling. He wishes he was back under those kids, crying out with each blow, the weight on his chest suffocating him until he can't remember the disappointment on his teacher's face—now on Mom and Dad.
He doesn't get the look he did when he was a kid anymore. He gets frowns and sighs, frustrated turns away and fists raised as if fighting the urge to beat the sense into him. The pain becomes the best part of the cycle, the part he looks forward to when he's on the motorcycle and when he's picking fights with his classmates.
He hasn't gotten the look he needs so badly in a long time, and the next time he sees something close to it, he's at a gas station and a pretty woman slides up next to him at the drink section. She grabs a beer, then offers one to him.
"I'm not old enough to buy it," he says.
She smirks and when Evan finishes buying a soda and walks out, she's waiting for him and swirling the two open cans of beer by the alley. She still has that smirk, but also that look in her eye—like watching a fawn struggling across the street and pressing the gas.
Evan follows that gaze, and follows her into the alley. She digs her nails into his chest and it's the best he's felt since Maddie left and since his parents stopped looking at him.
In the 118, it feels… different—letting girls lead him to the bathroom or take him home as he's allowed for years.
He still goes to bars and flirts back at any girl who looks his way with those eyes, but there's almost a type of shame to it when Hen asks what kept him up last night, or how Chimney looks at him when he spots a red mark on his neck.
It's inappropriate. Textbook inappropriate, to partake in and to talk about. So he doesn't, and the 118 doesn't bring it up either. He knows they know and they know Captain Nash knows.
It doesn't stop him, but it reminds him of when Mom turned away and Dad clenched his fist before backhanding him across the face. He doesn't know what to do with that, so he still finds himself grinning uncontrollably when a girl looks at him in that familiar way. He still laughs breathlessly when they dig their nails into his skin or bite his neck.
He doesn't remember when he started liking the pain of it all—when it became almost as good as the pleasure, when he asked them to dig their teeth and nails in harder. It's earned him a few strange looks, sure, but they oblige and Buck could get lost in the stinging of his eyes.
Then, after a night that put a pep in his step that next morning, Chimney caught him by the shoulder in the locker room accompanied with a, "Woah, what the hell did that?"
It took Buck a moment to realize he was staring at the red streaks on his forearm. He washed the blood off earlier that morning, but the scabs were fresh and bright against his skin.
"It ain't that bad, Chim," Buck shrugs, then sends him a teasing smirk. "What, too gross for your sensitive taste?"
Chimney doesn't laugh, face pinched like he tasted something bad. It wipes the smile off Buck's own, and he steps away from Chimney's outstretched hand with a frown. He's about to reach for the door when Chimney starts with, "Buck—" and his hand shoots out to grab his forearm with a grip hard enough to keep him in place. The scratched to hell arm.
Buck winces, a small noise for a small pain, but Chimney takes his hand back as if he was burned. Buck looks back at him and his worried face. "Shoot, sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."
It's the way he says it, or the way his expression shifts between frustration and concern. It's something about it all, maybe, that makes Buck pause. It didn't hurt, not even enough to warrant such a fearful reaction from Chimney, and it's so foreign that Buck is almost puzzled.
Chimney's still staring at him with this new, odd look. Buck blinks himself out of whatever daze it put him in, and shakes his head minutely. "It's, uh—fine. I'm gonna…" Buck doesn't finish before he's already swinging the door open and rushing out, hand raising to mimic how Chimney had grabbed his arm.
He's does it again and again, and still doesn't understand that damn face Chimney made. He forces himself to stop when Chimney glances at him each time throughout their shift.
A girl approaches him as he leaves the firehouse, and he's in her bed that same night. Rather than fall asleep with her head on his chest, he laid awake and stared at the ceiling. He tried to imagine what scenario was going through Chimney's head to make him look at him like that, and it's blank. He tries to write it off as a one off thing, something Buck doesn't need to think about anymore.
But then Captain Nash looked at him that way, too—right before he fired him.
He's assigned to therapy, a lady called Dr. Wells. It almost felt nice when he was talking about the rollercoaster with her, but with her lips on his, he thinks this works better than what Captain Nash had thought would work for him. What he thought would happen here, what he thought Buck could be.
Because this is what he's good at, not emotions, or whatever Captain Nash had placed his faith into. He digs his nails into the old scabs on his forearm when he sees Captain Nash again. He half expects him to clench his fist and—
He doesn't ever want to see that familiar disappointment in the lines of Captain Nash's face, nor that weird look both he and Chimney have begun to show more often. He tries not to look them in the eyes much now, and when Hen looked at him too closely next, he made sure to turn his back before he could spot that fucking expression again.
Because he knows what they're thinking, what their minds can imagine he's going through. But the truth would both disappoint and disgust them, because the truth is something people don't talk about—and he can't stand the idea of them and their prying eyes judging the person Buck really is. The attention-seeking version he never really outgrew.
So he keeps his head down and tries not to think about what that foreign look could really mean. The one Maddie might've looked at him with, in the quieter and slower parts of his memories. The ones where it's just the two of them on the curb, her hands wiping tears and snot off his face, the one where she's handing him keys next to the Jeep.
Things were going great until his leg, then the lawsuit.
He wasn't finding himself at bars waiting for someone to come along for the night, not anymore and not for the past few months. He would feel great about it. He should.
But with the 118 ignoring him and looking away from him all the time, it feels like his clothes are too tight and his hair is too long—like something's wrong with him whenever their eyes do find him. Like they're looking for something wrong for an excuse to ball their fist and drive it into his face.
He doesn't know when the metaphorical last straw of his newfound self respect snapped, if it was Eddie grimacing and turning away at Buck's third feeble attempt at getting even a one-word response or if it was Bobby barking orders at him and looking for any reason to be mad as if Buck was a spoiled child who couldn't do anything right. Maybe that glint in his eye was all too familiar, and Eddie's frown was too hard to look at, but Buck ended up at a stool in a dark and dingy bar anyway.
It's one he overheard Athena talking to Bobby about, a bar where crime seems to be it's most common customer. It wasn't that Buck was really seeking something dangerous out, not really. He just spotted it after the fifth rough day in a row and decided why the hell not. It doesn't matter that he deliberately walked past his favorite spot where the bartenders know him. At least it's something to do rather than stare at a TV pretending to not be thinking about Hen's awfully loud sigh or Bobby's goddamn yelling.
He orders another drink, sliding a few dollar bills across the bar when a hand stops his.
"I'll cover it," a voice by his ear says, smooth and stern, and a familiar one. It takes a moment for Buck to recognize it from a call earlier that week, a car crash where the passenger had asked for his number after being pulled out of the car. He looks over at the guy, unassuming and average—but his eyes.
He has that look, the one Buck hasn't indulged in in months. It makes Buck freeze in a way that he didn't know he can. It almost feels like fear, but that can't be, it's not that. Buck's lips tug into a smile, one he can't seem to fight.
"Car crash, right?" He grins, tipsy and all too drunken to be genuine, but as much of an invitation as he can manage past the odd feeling right now. The guy takes it easily, sliding into the stool beside him, and now there isn't a reason to leave. So he sits and listens to the guy, talking and talking as if trying to keep the conversation going with only one person.
Buck doesn't let himself imagine that the guy is flirting, no. It doesn't matter, really. He's never—not with a guy, and his head is too loopy to decide this kind of shit right now. To tap into that part of his head that's been left to rot. If it wasn't up to him, and god, does he want the choice taken away from him more than anything, he would do anything to just get Bobby's voice out of his head. Eddie's furrowed eyebrows, Hen's awkward glances away, Chimney's frown—
His drink slides over to him and the bartender turns away to tend to another drink. Buck's already so drunk he doubts he even needs to drink any more in order to find himself passed out in the gutter somewhere, so he just stares down at it while the guy keeps rattling on.
But the guy stops, digs into his pocket, and Buck watches as the guy tugs out his phone—but the phone slips out of his grip and lands somewhere behind Buck. "Oh shit, sorry. Could you get that for me, man?" There's something in his tone that would make anyone hesitate, and it should make him hesitate. But Buck slowly lets out his breath, blinks hard, and gets up to grab it anyway. He does, then turns to the guy again just as he's bringing his hand away from Buck's drink.
And there it is. Buck could laugh at how pathetically bad the display is, but he sits back down and hands the man his phone. He stared at the drink, the fizz bubbling oddly and the color maybe a little different than it was before. He keeps staring at it, something heavy in his stomach that's clogging any distinct emotion from giving him an idea of what to do. And that's just it, isn't it? He doesn't know what to do. And not having to decide what to feel, to decide what to think or fear—
Buck blinks at the drink.
Bobby yelling, Eddie looking away—
He lifts the drink and downs it before he can regret it. And soon, he hopefully won't remember to regret it at all.
The guy's still talking, hand on his shoulder as if to keep him seated. And that's probably true, so Buck stays still. It isn't long before the familiar feeling of drunkenness shifts into something hazy and dense, to the point where Buck has to consciously hold his head up. And when it's hard to clench his hand or to shift away from the guy's arm dragging him off the stool with a fake, "Woah, looks like you got too drunk, huh," does Buck start understanding the feeling he first got when he saw the guy's eyes. And it's harder to deny that it's fear when the man starts to make his way to the exit, Buck leaning in his shoulder and stumbling to keep up with the way he's rushing out. They catch a few gazes from the other people there whose eyes follow them out and it's when the wind hits his face does Buck really feel that tug in his stomach.
The guy leads him to the parking lot behind the bar, hands hard and digging into his skin on his shoulder. They go to the end of the lot, past some broken down rotting cars and a police car—then finally to a sparking clean minivan. Buck closes his eyes against the guy's shoulder, blocking out the light and maybe hoping for some essence of comfort from whatever he's feeling right now. The back doors open with a jostle and Buck almost yelps when he's pushed on his back in the seat.
He squints through his eyelashes as the man climbs on top of him, smiling that same dumb grin he had when he put his hand on top of Buck's to pay for his third drink. But he has that glint in his eyes too, and it's good enough of a comfort for Buck to not regret his decision enough to push against the intrusion. He tries to focus on the feeling of it all—the way the guy grabs his wrists with little gentleness and ducks his head as he bites along Buck's jaw and neck. But he's breathing too hard and his heart is beating too damn fast for him to focus on anything but that fucking feeling in his stomach. That fear. Bobby's voice is missing now and the silence of his head feels so much worse.
When the guy's hands undo his button-up shirt and find the zipper of his pants as he scoots in between Buck's legs, he clenches his eyes and hopes it hurts bad enough that he forgets how scared he is.
But the weight on top of him dissapears before the man can tug them down and the harsh bite of wind hits his bare face and chest. He winces, hands now free and able to cover himself from the cold. It isn't until the light is turned off with a click does Buck realize what's happening. He looks past his arms shielding his face, vision blurred with tears he didn't notice he had, and blinks when someone's leaning up to him, eyes flitting down his body.
Athena looks back to his face, expression pinched and jaw taught. Buck stares up at her and his eyes sting when his mind catches up to the look everyone seems to have when they look at him. Buck tries to get up, but his eyes are fluttering and Athena pushes him back down with a gentle hand on his chest. It isn't until his vision begins to blacken does he understand why.
Athena's hand cradling his face is the last thing he feels before it all goes away.
When he peels his eyes open, already blinded by the bright lights of the firehouse, he at least has the gall to regret every decision he's made in his last few intact memories.
The couch he's been put and bundled with blankets on doesn't do much for his aching back and splitting headache. When he tries to shield his eyes, it takes a few seconds for his hand to actually come up to his face. His inner elbow has a bandage on it and he's wearing different clothes than he was last night. Last night. He remembers Athena's expression, frown deeply etched into her face, being pressed down in that car and raising that glass to his lips—
"Buck? Are you awake?"
A gentle touch grasps the hand he's holding above his face and he jumps, only now noticing the woman leaning over him, gnawing on her lip.
"Hen?" He blinks at how disconnected he feels to his body, words slurred and tongue heavy. "Wh't—happ'ned?"
With Hen's expression dropping so fast, maybe it was the wrong thing to ask, or wrong way to speak—to make it obvious that he can't make his body follow his directions. But she sighs, one of her slow and long ones, holding his hand tightly and drawing it to her chest.
"What do you remember?"
Enough.
"Bar. 'Thena."
Hen gives him a clipped nod, then looks around as if debating something and looking for an answer, but doesn't seem to find it. She starts anyway, "Athena dropped you off here. You've been sleeping for fourteen hours—" Buck almost chokes on his own spit. "—because you passed out under the effects of Rohypnol. Roofies."
Buck simply grimaces, and Hen looks so sad at that.
"So I'm guessing you remember that much. Athena told us what she saw. She—she didn't know what really happened though, Buck," Hen's grip tightens. "So neither do we. Your clothes are in Bobby's office. Athena wants to talk to you about it later."
He can already guess what she wants from him, and that thought alone makes his head spin. He wants to ask why he's here and not at a hospital, knowing Athena and laws and shit, but that's far more legal conversation than Buck's willing to handle or learn right now.
"You—you don't need to tell us anything, but Buck," Hen drops her head and Buck finds himself missing her sad gaze just a little bit. After a moment, she picks it back up and her eyes are shining. And they look just like— "Are you okay?"
Buck can only stare at her.
"Don't look at me l'ke th't."
Hen's brows furrow as if she's confused, and it scares Buck even more. He pushes himself further against the couch cushions.
"Why—why do you all do th't? Stop it," Buck sounds like the whining child he was years ago. "You think I w'nna be like this? I-I know you all hate it, hate me for it—but what else c'n I even do right—"
"What are you saying?"
Buck flinches, whipping his head up to look at where Eddie's standing, joined by Bobby and Chimney. And they all have that fucking face.
Before Buck can shout at them too, Eddie shakes his head as if to stop him before he says any more. His jaw clamps shut.
"Buck, are you serious?" Chimney hesitantly asks. His jaw shifts as if working through what to say next before he starts to gesture to each of them. "You think we're, what, judging you? Buck—we don't care about that. We don't care what you do with yourself as long as you're happy. We're—we're scared, Buck."
Scared. Buck could go his entire life without hearing that from Chimney ever again.
"We were scared when you came here with new marks all over you every day. We never judged you for it, we just didn't want it to mean—" Chimney can't finish, the rest of the sentence lodged in his throat as if the words are too painful to say.
Buck can't sit here and listen to this, not silently and not calmly. "Stop. Just… why were y'u scared?"
"Because of this, Buck!"
It isn't Bobby's newfound usual bossy yells, no. It's something deep and guttural, traces of something Buck's only heard a few times before—once in Bobby's old apartment on his couch while he was sobbing in Buck and Hen's arms, and then on the rooftop and then—
"Because one day you'd be hurt so bad, and we wouldn't even know. Because—because I know I can't stop you from doing this to yourself, and one day you wouldn't stop someone from doing it either. Why were you there? You knew what could happen, I know you did—I know you, Buck."
The words make Buck freeze. His mind draws a blank, processing and rolling the confession over in his head so many times he forgets to think of a response before Bobby ducks his head.
"Did you really think we were judging you—all this time?"
"I just…" Buck whispers, voice something small and scared, something he hasn't been in a long time. "I wanted you guys… to look at me the way my parents did. The way everyone else does. Like… like it's easy to pretend you love me."
The room delves into tense silence. Buck has to look down at the bandage on his inner arm and try hard to not press down on it, for something to focus on rather than what must be running through their heads. The quiet is worse than Bobby's yelling, Dad's clenched fist and Mom's head turning away from him—
Hen's arms are wrapping around his shoulders and before he can blink, she pulls him to her chest. It's warmer than the blankets and Buck can't seem to pull away despite how selfish it would feel to cling to her. So he doesn't hug her back, because that's too far—even for him.
But then there's another weight on him, and another, and Buck blinks his eyes open just as Eddie grabs onto where Chimney and Bobby have held Hen and him together. Buck's stomach feels like it's fighting itself to decide what to feel, or it's feeling something he doesn't quite understand yet. He can only stare up at them, slack jawed and wide eyed.
"It's not easy to pretend, because we do love you. You may be a reckless and sometimes annoying idiot, but we don't have to pretend because we still fucking love you. We—we look at you and see someone we love in danger. I—I don't know if it was your parents who made you think that—that you could only be loved in short periods of time. That's not true. You have to understand that it's not true."
Hen's voice is so, so soft. The tone a person would use on an injured fawn left on the side of the road as they picked it up and cradled it. Maybe it's that, or the way Bobby rests his soft palm on his jaw, or how Chimney rubs the scars on his forearm or Eddie's warm breaths hitting his face—Buck doesn't try to stop the tears this time. They trail down his face and he doesn't know if the cries he hears are his own as the arms around him tighten.
He doesn't care if it's selfish, not with the warmth he had forgotten from all those years ago, Maddie's arms around him and her pressing kisses to his tear streaked face. It's not happiness, not really, but it's better than anything he's ever felt. Better than the nails in his skin, teeth in his neck and blood in his mouth. He wonders how he survived so long without it, and maybe he didn't. But now—he doesn't worry about it as he presses his face against Hen's chest and hugs them back.
He looks up at her through his eyelashes and spots that look that the entire 118 now share, and he can't help the smile that his lips tug into. He thinks it feels a lot better than his parents' looks ever felt, than that woman's at the gas station or all those girls' or that man at the bar.
This look is just like Maddie's. And maybe he wished that pitying look his parents shared was this one, and maybe things would be a lot different if it were. But even now—Buck thinks he's the happiest he could be, right in this moment.