buck realizes, when he’s pulling up to the curb outside athena’s place to drop off maddie and chim and eddie, that maybe he shouldn’t have been driving—if these are even his hands on the steering wheel.

when he tells them all good night, it sounds like someone else is speaking. he can feel the vibrations of his voice in his chest, his throat, his mouth, and he must say the right thing because no one looks at him weird, but he can’t help but wonder if, instead of a man, he’s an inanimate speaker, and always has been, and everyone’s just been too polite to say anything to him about it.

this isn’t the first time he’s felt like this, like he should know that he’s real, but it feels like he’s watching his life happen to someone else, like his life is a movie, like he’s a robot trapped on the inside of a bag of meat, like if he tries hard enough he’ll wake up and realize none of this really happened, and the realness can finally begin.

the thing is, he used to be able to text bobby when it happened, for a dose of reality, and now he can’t, and that’s the problem.

if he says anything about it, it’ll be, oh, buck’s making everything about himself again, or, buck’s having a mental break and should be fired from his job (and lose his health insurance) without a second thought. because that’s what chim said tonight, wasn’t it? if buck had a problem that affected his work, no questions asked, fired. or—would it be because he didn’t speak up about it the first time it happened, because anything past that would be lying?

nobody asked me, hen had asserted. nobody checked in after bobby died, because everyone was in their own bubbles, and she didn’t want to add to anyone’s grief. but—buck is pretty sure that wasn’t true. he remembers checking in with everyone, trying to get a read on what they might need.

because bobby had said they were going to need buck.

but—what if he hadn’t, actually? what if he’d just thought he had? what if he’d dreamed it? he’s pretty sure it was real, but what if it wasn’t? her words could have been his words. was she wrong, or has he totally misremembered the past year?

he probably shouldn’t drive the rest of the way home like this. he should probably leave his truck here and get an uber. but that would only lead to more questions, that might result in him being fired, and he can’t—

he can’t text bobby, so he does the next best thing, which is to put on the greatest hits of springsteen, and roll his windows down to let in some fresh—as fresh as it can get in LA—air, and head toward a drive-thru for a root beer and some fries.

— —

he makes it home. he showers and brushes his teeth and tries not to think about how uncomfortable it is to look himself in the face in the mirror. who is this man. he locks up the house for the night and burrows into his sweatshirt and finally feels like he’s not going to shake apart by looking for answers.

he takes in a deep breath, then lets it out.

his text chain with ravi is probably the safest to start. ravi wasn’t there tonight, he’s on vacation, so it feels like a more neutral place to start. buck scrolls back, back, back some more until—there.

ravi hadn’t really taken buck up on his repeated offers to talk about it, but just as buck remembered doing, there it is, in print: asking how ravi’s doing, how he’s feeling, if he needs anything, offering support. buck doesn’t really get why ravi wouldn’t talk to him about it—after all, why not talk to someone who was there, who understands?—but the guy’s work/life boundaries are pretty ironclad, so maybe that’s just part of it.

chim, athena, maddie, may, harry, even karen: it’s the same story. for the most part, he didn’t get much in the way of nibbles on the line, but he tried. at least he got bachelor mondays with may and harry out of it.

he sees the letters and words on the screen and they all make sense. they look real. and that wouldn’t be true if this was a dream, right? if this wasn’t real?

he feels a surge of trepidation as he stares down the threads he has with eddie and hen, the two people who have made him doubt his perception of reality about this. eddie was mad, back in the spring, that buck didn’t specifically ask how it felt to get the phone call about bobby—but if that was bothering eddie, how that felt, then why didn’t he just mention it when buck asked how he was doing, if he wanted to talk about anything?

and hen, who buck had trusted countless times over the years for her honesty and understanding, had obviously lost patience every time she saw buck coming to ask her how she was doing, every time she replied to one of his texts. how does she get away with telling him, buck, you need to stop, then being angry that he took her at her word and stopped? was he supposed to violate the boundary she set? and—how is he supposed to know, if someone is telling him the opposite of what they want?

how is he supposed to know what’s real and what isn’t, if the information he has to process isn’t true? if everything is the opposite of what it appears? people care, but will take away your job without a second thought? people get mad at you for asking how they’re doing, then say that you never asked in the first place? people say they’re your best friend, your family, but don’t seem to actually like anything about you?

buck burrows further into his blankets and crams his pillow around his ears and wishes, truly, that this is just another coma dream.

but: he can’t deny that it’s night, right now.

I tried after 8x06, after Bobby's death, or Hen chosing not be Captain, Hen and the whole illness plot, Madney having nothing to do even with a new careers & baby (that mind you was written to be part of the closing scene of the last season), and a bunch of other stuff, because I liked this show. A lot. Even before bucktommy.

But now you have a whole storyline in season 6 with Connor and Kameron searching for Buck because he's an amazing guy who cares about people, has a big heart, right? He is a good person and was perceived as such. That's the mark he leaves on people, which is why Connor reach him out. And Buck is capable of doing something selfless for these friends, and the only thing he asks of them is that they take good care of that child (that they asked for and wanted). To love that kid anyway. So theoretically that child could have the childhood that Buck couldn't have himself. Buck brings a baby to parents who were suffering from its absence (an indirect mirroring of Buck being born to keep a child alive but not being able to, but now being able to give life to a child to these parents).

But now? Now it's like, "we thought we wanted you as a donor because you were such a great guy, but actually your genes created a monster kid, so there must be something wrong with you too, and maybe we should have looked for someone better to donate to." And this is followed with the parents dying and now "this child will be your responsibility, because only someone as problematic as him could give this kid the home his needs."

Why did they decide to do this?

Buck having a biological child with no ties to a living mother, so they wouldn't have to deal with the connection between Buck and a former LI, was it really so important to them? Buck couldn't bond/identify with any other child who didn't have his genes to be seen as "a mini Buck"?

And the worst part is that it will work. Because just like the montage of the 118 reuniting to take care of Buck in 9x15, the moments between Buck and Theo, which will be cute, will make people overlook every flawed build-up to those moments appear on screen.

And that's one of the reasons why Tim Minear isn't concerned with building the narrative in a meaningful way, even for "9-1-1 the shark on a highway show" standards. Because he imagines a scene that he knows will sell, whether it's "The 118 are always there to look after each other" or "Big guy and his cute kid find a home together," and he knows people will eat it, fall for it, and eventually overlook the narrative problems that preceded those moments.