because, evan

bobby is a childless parent and buck is a parentless child but you can get more specific than that and point out that they're missing the same period of time of those relationships. i'm not doing the full maths but Bobby jr. was around 11 or 12 when he died and Maddie tried her best (as a child herself) to nurture Buck until she left when he was again around 11 or 12. so when buck and bobby meet they jump into a father/teen dynamic. bobby literally teaches buck to tie a tie, did we miss him teaching him to shave off screen? i'd believe it.

so when i look at the lawsuit arc what i see is teenage rebellion. buck is pushing at the edges of bobby's love for him. he grew up with with parents who had one specific condition for their love and he failed that before he could talk. so now he does have an adult who does love him without conditions and truly wants the best for him he can't understand that there aren't edges this time, that bobby will love him regardless, because when there wasn't edges before it was because there wasn't love. but as an adult he has access to much more permanent and destructive means of rebellion than stomping to his room and slamming his door, even though that's essentially what he's doing.

as for bobby, there's obviously the guilt over being the cause of buck's harm (he wasn't) which gets all mixed up in his guilt over the apartment fire. then on top of that, he's a father trying to stop his child from making his mistakes. it's my understanding that most parents have a moment during their child's teen years where they realise they need to make their own mistakes because that's how you learn and grow. bobby is an amazing father but he didn't get the opportunity to get that far before now and he handles it clumsily.

but it's not buck calling him, it's maddie, and there are no baseball bats in his room in el paso but he can feel the holes crumbling open in his walls anyways. he doesn't want to pick up the phone. he picks up the phone.

"eddie," maddie says, her voice strange and uncanny through hundreds of miles. he doesn't hear maddie's voice over the phone, unless he's facetiming with buck and she's in the background and buck tells her to say hi and she does, with a roll of her eyes and a smile caught in her voice shared between the two of them, the one that says hi, hello, what a ridiculous person it is that we love, what a wonderful thing it is to be loved by him.

her voice doesn't sound like that now. it's trembling, a little, shaky at the edges. the first responder worn down into something like a fissure in a shard of glass, and eddie is already prepared for the sharp edge to bleed him dry.

"maddie?" he says, because that's what you're supposed to say when you don't know already that the world is breaking in some way. because eddie is good at pressing the blindfold over his eyes and pretending he hasn't already tripped off a ledge into a long, long fall.

maddie inhales shakily over the line. "i-- i didn't want you to find out from the news," she says, then falls silent for a moment. "there was a call, and--"

and maddie is calling eddie now. in the middle of the night. maddie's face appeared on his phone screen, instead of the picture of buck smiling in his apron and glowing in the kitchen light. eddie knows. eddie doesn't want to know. he doesn't want to know.

"no," he says, and maddie's words falter, stop. the silence hangs between them, a blade hovering above his throat, the executioner's axe for every one of his sins. "no, maddie, don't--"

don't do this to me. not now, not here, not while my body is alive and breathing and his isn't. don't do this when my son is sleeping down the hall and has to wake up in a world where half of the world beneath his feet will suddenly be gone. don't do this when i can't crawl beneath his corpse. don't. don't. don't.

"eddie," maddie says again, and eddie wants to throw his phone at the wall like a child, make a world where the words won't come true if he never hears them.

"i can't," he gasps, and every breath is hitched, because the person who reminded him of how to breathe is not on the other end of the line.

"i'm sorry," maddie says, and there are real tears in her voice now, a sort of helplessness. she doesn't know how to help him through this. the person who does is not here. eddie has to do it himself, the way he's almost forgotten how to.

eddie closes his eyes, presses his hand over his mouth. maddie lets him shake for a moment, two.

"tell me," he says.

her voice is gentle. "i'm sorry, eddie. bobby's gone."

When he gets up and reaches the kitchen, he sees Eddie and Theo make breakfast while dancing to "Shut up and dance"

Theo stands on the breakfast bar, holding Eddie's hands while dancing.

YOU.

O.

P.