catchy catchphrase

"It's Buck." He hears her inhale over the line, the prepared barrage of questions at the tip of her tongue. He speaks before she can begin asking, because he's pretty sure he knows what she's thinking. "He's not- well. He's not injured. But-"

He pinches his brow, looks at the closed door of his office where he had made Buck go after their conversation. He's pretty sure Buck thinks that it's because he doesn't trust him around the ambulances, but Chimney is more worried about the way Buck looked like he was about three seconds from unwraveling in the loft. He's pretty sure that if Eddie had come up and caught Buck crying, he would start demanding answers before Buck was ready to give them.

"But what, Howie?" Maddie demands.

"He asked me to fire him," the words tumble out of him, clumsy the way they always seem to when he's letting go of a secret. It's not a secret this time, of course. Not anymore. "Because he almost stole fentanyl from the ambulance."

The line is silent for a moment, then Maddie barks out a small bubble of laughter. "You're joking."

"I'm not."

"Buck wouldn't-- he's not--" the humor rapidly drains from Maddie's voice as she realizes that he's serious. "What?"

"Apparently, it's been going on since New Mexico."

"That's-- that was barely two months ago. How did he--"

"You know it's possible for someone to develop a dependency in weeks, Maddie." Chimney says. "And apparently the docs had him on some pretty heavy opioids."

"He didn't tell me." Her voice sounds a little faraway. "I-- I asked, but he just said that they were giving him something for the pain. I-- I didn't ask for more, because--"

"Because it's happened before, and he was fine." Chimney knows. Chimney was in the same boat. He feels the same churn of guilt in his gut. "Yeah. We all did, I bet. He said he didn't tell anybody about it. Not you--"

"Not even Eddie?"

"Not even Eddie."

A crackle of a sigh. "Oh, Evan."

"He told me, Maddie," Chimney reminds her, because he can hear the self-recrimination in her voice. "He realized when it was getting bad, and he told me before he did anything irreversible. He asked for help."

Her voice is thick as she replies. "Yeah, he does that." Chimney lets her breathe for a moment, counting the seconds before her inhales and her exhales. He feels, with the inevitability of a rising tide, the moment when she switches into fixer mode. "So? What are we doing to help him?"

Chimney, for the first time after his conversation with Buck, grins. That's his wife.

2. eddie

He calls Eddie into his office before telling the rest of the team.

"Hey, Cap," Eddie raises a brow at him as he walks in, eyes shifting to Buck sitting in the corner of the room, fingers tangled in his lap and eyes looking down. "What's up? What's Buck doin' here? If you're signing us up for another round of firefighter olympics, I gotta tell you that you're gonna have to pay Tia Pepa for her babysitting services while we're gone."

It does not, in fact, escape Chimney's notice that Eddie said we. He glances at Buck, who flinches, just a little. Eddie notices too, and his brows draw together in a worried line. He glances at Chimney.

"I need you to drive Buck to my place," he says. "Maddie's taking a half-day, so she'll meet you there. You'll have the rest of the shift off, paid."

Eddie blinks. "Uh, why?" he asks. He looks at Buck. "Are you sick or something? Did that sushi get to you that much?"

Chimney feels his heart twist a little at the guilt in Buck's eyes, and he speaks so his brother doesn't have to. "I'd feel better," he says. "If Buck had an active medical personnel around him, in case his detox symptoms lead to any sudden side effects."

He can see Eddie absorbing the words, the way his eyes widen when the implications hit him. Eddie looks at Buck, who slowly, carefully, looks back at him. They feel like they're having a conversation in that stare, and Chimney would make fun of them for it at any other time, but he remembers seeing Maddie for the first time after she almost walked into the ocean and just needing her to know, to understand.

"Withdrawal." Eddie says, a little flatly. He's still looking at Buck, and there's a ghost of a smile on Buck's face, small and self-deprecating. Chimney remembers, suddenly, the words spare parts.

"I'm not okay," Buck says to him, and it should be a full sentence except for how, between the two of them, it sounds like a continuation of a conversation that has been lying stagnant. "But- I guess you and Chris won't have to worry about food poisoning, at least."

A huff escapes Eddie, almost automatic. He closes his eyes for a moment, opens them again. "Come on," he says, walking towards Buck.

Buck blinks when Eddie extends his arm to him, blue eyes glancing towards it, then back up at Eddie. Slowly, hesitantly, he takes his hand. Chimney watches Eddie help Buck brace himself as he gets up, the way his fingers wrap around Buck's palm like he's terrified of letting go. He knows the feeling.

He doesn't comment when Eddie turns to him again, hand still wrapped around Buck's. "I'll get him home safe, Chim," he promises.

"I'll keep you to that, Diaz," Chimney replies. "Get our guy home."

Eddie nods, once, sharp. He tugs at the hand still holding Buck's, which Buck has been staring at with mild disbelief. "C'mon," he says. "Let's get you in the truck. I have to call Pepa and get her to drop Chris off at Maddie's after school."

Buck's head whips up at his words, his eyes red-rimmed and shiny in the same way that Maddie's was, the first time she held Jee-yun in her arms after Boston. "Eddie--" he croaks.

Eddie looks at him, something too tender for the firehouse in his gaze. "You're not getting out of movie night just because you're feeling sick, Buckley," he says, and his eyes are shiny too, watching Buck like he can't believe he's still in front of him. Chimney has to look away, swallow the lump in his throat.

He looks back in time to see Eddie tugging Buck's hand again, and Buck walks with him this time, both of them leaving Chimney's office hand in hand, barely seeming to remember that he's still there. Chimney shakes his head as the doors close, closes his eyes on a smile.

Idiots. He can't wait to present them with the paperwork he found in Bobby's old file drawer.

3. hen

"I would fire you in a heartbeat, huh?"

Chimney looks up from where he's sitting on the porch, smiles wanly when Hen setting herself down next to him. He catalogues automatically the shift of her body, the careful way she holds herself. In his mind, the part that has become accustomed to captaincy thinks about shift accommodations and PT schedules. The part of him that is a paramedic thinks about hormone levels and strained muscles and accessibility devices. The part of him that is always, always her best friend shifts so she can lean comfortably against his shoulder.

"Oh, shut up," he says, rolling his eyes. He nudges her shoulder, and she nudges back. "He asleep?"

"As asleep as he can be." She sighs, a long breath into the evening air. The sunset stretches over the sky in front of them, lighting Buck's porch in shades of red and gold. Chimney remembers how proud Buck had been of his place when he first showed it to them. How delighted he'd been by the wide yard and wooden furnishings and warmly-lit rooms. Chimney had been quietly proud of him, too, even as he'd joked about dogs and big backyards.

It's still a beautiful place, now, but Chimney knows its corners for different reasons. He wishes he couldn't catalogue the exact colors of Buck's couch cushions because he needed to look through them for stray pills and orange bottles.

"I'm glad he talked to you," Hen says, after a few moments.

Chimney looks down at his hands, clasped over his knees. "I'm glad, too."

"I didn't-- I don't know what I would've done, if it had been me in your place."

He snorts. "You would've done exactly the same thing," he tells her. "You're susceptible to the Buckley eyes too."

"Not as susceptible as you are," Hen says, which is fair enough. She hums. "Were you this scared for me, last time?"

Chimney glances at her. Hen hadn't said anything when Chimney had first told them, just looked at him with the same quietly heartbroken eyes as everybody else. But he's seen the ways she looked at Buck afterwards, with a quiet sort of understanding that hums between them.

"Of course," Chimney says, eventually. "Actually, I might've been more scared, considering that you just collapsed in front of me."

Hen sighs. They both look forwards. "It's hard."

"It is."

"It would've been harder, if he didn't tell you."

"I couldn't have helped him, if he'd let it go on until it hurt the job."

He catches her look, bumps their shoulders together again. Hen rolls her eyes, then sighs. Puts her head against his shoulder.

"When the hell did that stupid kid become smarter than me?" She asks, half-grumbling and all love.

Chimney snorts, presses his cheek to her head. Takes her hand and feels its steadiness under his fingers. Tomorrow they will have a shift, and she will smile at him in her uniform, and he will smile back.

"Don't worry," he says, conspiratorial the way children on playgrounds are, grinning in anticipation of the laughter he knows will fill the space around them. "He still can't finish a sudoku puzzle by himself."

4. buck

"I hate this."

"I know."

"It's so fucking hard."

"I know."

"I just want it to be over."

"I know."

"I miss being me."

"I know."

"I don't get why you didn't fire me. I'm gonna be useless anyways."

"Because I need someone to bully at the station, obviously."

"Chim."

"Buck."

"It's too fucking hard."

"That's too fucking bad."

"Why did I do it? I'm a fucking first responder. I helped Bobby. I should--"

"You were in pain, and traumatized, and an asshole doctor in New Mexico didn't bother to warn you before handing you high doses of highly addictive medication. It happens, Buck. It happens to first responders pretty often, actually."

"I was gonna steal from the fucking ambulance. Someone could've died."

"You didn't. You came to me."

"You should've fired me on the spot."

"No."

"You fired Hen. Why won't you just do it? Just put me out of my misery? This is worse, you know that? Thinking that I might get back, that I might-- get better. The hoping is worse."

"It's not hope, Buck."

"Then what is it?"

"Belief."

"..."

"I believe in you, Buck. I believe that you'll never give up. Even when you're vomiting blood or have all the bones in your legs crushed or when you're fucking struck by lightning. You'll fight to come back to us."

"Because I need you guys."

"Because we need you."

"Chim..."

"Now rinse your mouth, Buckley. Your breath stinks."

"You are such an asshole."

"I know."

"...thanks."

"...always."

+1. bobby

Chimney has chicken-scratch handwriting.

It's been a problem his entire life. His Korean letters look like shit, and his English just as hopeless. He's gone through classes where professors sent his papers back with a flat look and, once, a request that he invest in a typewriter. The fire chief has long since conceded to all of Chimney's reports being done in PDF, just to save everyone the headache.

Still, he presses the nib of a dark pen onto cream-color paper, traces out the words as careful as he can.

He's keeping down solids again. Ate half a container of pho, noodles included. I've never seen May that emotional over noodles.

The dark lines bleed onto the page, sink onto faintly-weathered lines.

He watched a nature documentary with Christopher while Eddie and Maddie argued over whether to give him apple cider or chamomile tea. I had to be the tie-breaker. I told them just to give him tropical punch in a kid's juice pouch, and they punched me on either shoulder.

One page, then the next, creased carefully at the spine, dates along the corner.

He laughed at one of Ravi's TikToks, and Ravi and Harry practically tripped over recreating the dance in real life, just to make him laugh again.

The good days--

He asked Hen if she could help him bake something. They made scones. I wanted to grab some but apparently Denny inhaled all of them.

The bad--

He wouldn't leave his room all day. Athena said she sat with him in silence until Eddie came to take over.

And the ones in-between.

He walked to the porch and sat outside for a long time. I think he missed the sun.

Every night, Chimney sat down and wrote, opening a black-covered journal to a new page. Keeping dutiful track of Buck's progress. Nobody asked him about it. Nobody knew, except for perhaps Athena, who had handed him the journal with quiet understanding in her eyes, what he was writing about.

He keeps asking for you, Chimney writes. Every day. When it's hard, he asks for you.

There are other things he wants to write. I hate you for leaving him to do this without you and I wish I had been there when it was you and I don't know if there's any point in doing this. But he doesn't, because this is not what this is for.

One day, he will fill the last page of the book, write on the back inside cover I gave him his uniform back. He laughed in the locker room. He saved people on calls. He waves at your picture every time he passes it.

And, on the last line of the last page of a journal with one hundred and forty eight spaces left untouched, Chimney will write one last line, press the book closed, and plan a trip to a patch of land to visit an old friend.