Chapter Text
There’s a reason Buck keeps hooking up at work.
It’s… maybe not a good reason. But it is a reason.
That reason is four years old, three feet tall, and the center of Buck’s universe. But also, more pressingly in context, a resident of Buck’s apartment. And he can’t go out on his nights off anymore, because he’s spending so many fewer nights at home and he really, really doesn’t want to miss any more. And hooking up with someone in the middle of the day isn’t really within most people’s schedule.
So, work hookups. Not professional, not really smart, but it’s where he’s landed.
Until, that is, he gets fired for it.
Now the thing is, Bobby knows about the four-year-old at the center of Buck’s universe. Bobby knows and is firing Buck anyway, because he’s blown through all of his chances, but there’s a look in his eye like he really, really wishes he didn’t have to do this.
It’s luck that has Buck still at the station when the call comes in. It’s luck that dispatch and police need someone and a free fire engine. It’s luck that Hen points them Buck’s way.
There’s an odd look in Sergeant Grant’s eye as Buck talks to the little girl and her mom when it’s all over. Buck doesn’t have the time or energy to wonder about it in the moment, too caught up in trying to talk up how brave and resourceful the daughter was so that in the long term this doesn’t become a haunting, traumatic memory. He gets a high five and a watery smile from the kid for his troubles.
“You were good with her,” Sergeant Grant says, not really bothering to hide the note of surprise in her voice.
Buck shrugs. “She’s a little older than mine, but a lot of the same tricks work on big kids, you know?”
“You have a daughter?” says Sergeant Grant.
“Oh,” Buck replies. Of course she doesn’t know. He’s not entirely sure Hen and Chim have put it together, and he talks about Peanut all the time. “Yeah! Marnie, she’s four.”
“Huh,” says Sergeant Grant. She’s got this curious look that Buck isn’t quite sure how to interpret. “Take care of yourself, Buckley.”
“Uh, yeah,” says Buck.
He and Sergeant Grant hadn’t gotten off on the best foot. He knows she’s friends with Hen, but he hasn’t interacted with her much outside of getting really defensive over a baby whose mother tried to flush her down a toilet. And, like, he gets that the mom was also a kid and felt trapped and maybe he shouldn’t have tried to deny her care, but like – Buck gets a little touchy about child abandonment, okay?
All of this is to say that he is shocked to arrive back at the station to his job back and – apparently – a glowing review from Sergeant Grant. He really, really is. But he’s grateful.
“I won’t let you down,” Buck promises Bobby.
Bobby studies him. “I know you won’t, kid. I think you’ve learned your lesson. Now get dressed, your shift’s not done yet.”
Hen catches Buck on his way to the locker room. “You want to tell me why Athena Grant just asked me if I’ve ever met your kid?”
“Probably because she just found I have one,” Buck says, shrugging. “I think she was surprised.”
“Buck,” Hen says. “Are you fucking with me right now?”
“I talk about her all the time!” Buck says.
“What?” says Hen, startled.
“Marnie Maddie,” says Buck, fishing his phone out to show Hen his lock screen. “I call her Peanut.”
“Peanut is a human person?” says Hen.
“I – yes?” Buck says. He glances down at his phone to double check that the image on his lock screen is still his then-three-year-old daughter hanging upside-down on the playground and grinning at the camera.
“Not a puppy,” Hen continues.
“No?”
Hen stares at Buck for a long moment, then turns on her heel to walk upstairs. “Chim! Did you know that Peanut is a human child and not a small animal?”
“Buck’s Peanut?” Chim calls back, leaning over the railing. “No? Is she not a dog?”
“No!” Buck replies. “She’s a preschooler!”
“What?”
Buck shakes his head and goes into the locker room to change. He’s sure he won’t hear the end of this any time soon.
The thing is, it’s not even that good of a story. Buck spent three years wandering the country and sleeping around, which finally caught up with him here in LA. He was bartending, and one of his hookups showed back up to slam a positive pregnancy test down on the bar. He’d waited until she left to scrub the bar top down. That moment changed his life – Olivia had said this is your fault, so it’s going to be your problem. She didn’t want a kid, and would have put Marnie up for adoption if Buck hadn’t wanted to raise her, but had the – reasonable – expectation that even if they put the baby up for adoption, Buck would have her back through the pregnancy and help pay for stuff. Especially after Buck decided that he did want to keep the baby.
He'd stopped roaming when Marnie was born. He didn’t find his way to firefighting immediately – he’d still been bartending, and he’d picked up a few other jobs along the way, before stumbling into firefighting almost by accident – and when Marnie was born he was living in a sad little apartment that wasn’t really large enough for two people. Fortunately, at the time, Marnie was pretty small and not particularly mobile.
Now that she’s four – and definitely mobile, she’s fast – a lot of Buck’s money goes to a pretty nice two-bedroom apartment and the nanny who looks after her when he’s at work outside of daycare hours. He’d waffled for a long time about that, because he didn’t want to hire someone he thought he’d fall into bed with, and he ended up finding a guy a little bit younger than Buck himself with a degree in early childhood education who gets along great with Marnie and is safely off of Buck’s radar for hookups.
It's not that exciting.
“You know,” Chimney says when Buck gets upstairs. “I always was surprised you weren’t a teen dad.”
“Still wasn’t,” Buck points out. “She was born when I was twenty-two.”
“Wow,” says Chimney. “And is her government name Peanut Buckley?”
“Marnie,” says Buck. “Marnie Maddie Buckley.”
“Oh, that’s – alliterative,” Hen says. She sounds like she really is trying to compliment it, but is falling a little short.
Buck shrugs. “I know it’s a little weird. But I picked the two names separately and didn’t realize they’d be a little silly strung together until I was already committed. Maddie is my big sister’s name.”
“Why not Madeline or Madison or whatever as the middle name?” Chim asks.
“Maddie isn’t short for anything. We were ‘not a nickname family.’” says Buck. He tilts his head, considering. “I think my parents may hate fun.”
“Every time you tell me something about yourself, I feel like I understand less,” Hen says.
Buck is glad to have his job back, or to have been fired and rehired in so little time that the firing part doesn’t actually count, but he finds himself counting down the minutes until the end of his shift. He likes Hen and Chim well enough, but they don’t know each other that well yet, and he’s reaching his limit for being teased about something they don’t really understand.
At least Bobby’s mostly been staying out of it. But he also definitely did know that Marnie was a human child.
Still, it’s nice to get to the end of his shift knowing there’ll be another, and nice to get home to the four-year-old at the center of the universe.
When Buck gets to his apartment, Marnie is deep in an explanation about frogs at the kitchen table while her nanny, David, cuts up fruit. He’s nodding at all the appropriate times, and as Buck kicks his shoes off he hears him ask a leading question that gets her going again. That had been Buck’s other main criterion when he’d been looking for someone to watch her – no one who would shut Marnie down when she’s excited about something. Buck grew up in a house where, despite Maddie’s best efforts, his enthusiasm was mostly looked at as a burden, and never wants Marnie to feel that way.
“What’cha talking about, Peanut?” Buck says from the kitchen doorway.
“Daddy!” Marnie says, delighted. She wriggles out of her chair and darts across the room to throw her arms around his legs. “You’re home!”
“I’m home!” Buck agrees. He scoops Marnie up, swinging her up over his head before settling her on his hip. “Did you do anything fun at school or with David while I was gone?”
“I got a book about frogs at the library!” Marnie chirps. “Daddy! Daddy, did you know frogs can be colors? Not just green?”
“I didn’t know that,” Buck says. “We’ll have to read your book together later.”
“It’s in her room,” David says. He finishes cutting up the fruit and rinses his hands off. “She’s also got some art projects she wanted to show you that are still in her backpack, which at this point I understand means that there’s a reasonable chance they’ll live in there for eternity.”
Buck laughs. He’d be offended if it weren’t true, but – well, David isn’t wrong. “We’re working on object permanence as a team, I guess.”
“You’ll get it someday, champ,” says David. “Do you need me to hang out a little longer so you can nap today?”
“Nah,” says Buck, “it was a pretty chill shift. Thanks – see you tomorrow.”
“See you,” David says. “Bye-bye, Marnie!”
“Bye-bye, Davey!” Marnie says, leaning back to watch him leave upside-down.
“Okay, Peanut,” Buck says, “we’ve got the whole day together. Do you want to go to the park or the zoo?”
“Zoo!” Marnie cheers. “I want to look for frogs!”
Buck laughs. “Alright, we can do that.”
So they go to the zoo, and they spend almost an hour watching the frogs and reptiles alone. Marnie is a curious kid but usually has a hard time focusing, until they get somewhere like this and she locks in, hooked on every word Buck reads off of the informational signs and on every minute movement the animals make. She reminds Buck a lot of himself when he was a kid in so many ways, and all Buck can do is hope and pray he’s doing a better job of handling her than his parents did with him.
Buck loves days like this. Someday, Marnie will probably think that she’s too cool to hang out with her dad like this, so Buck fully intends to embrace and enjoy it as long as he can. They read every single sign they come across, and when Marnie starts to get tired, Buck swings her up onto his back so she can peek over his shoulder at the animals. They end their visit with ice cream, because this is the first Saturday Buck’s had off in weeks and he feels like making it up to Marnie a little.
The adjustment to firefighting has been easier in some ways than how they were living before, harder in others. On one hand, he’s working longer, stranger hours than he ever did before. On the other, his time off is better suited to actually spending time with his kid when she’s not at school. He can afford the nicer apartment they’d been scraping by in before a lot more comfortably, can afford to pay David to watch Marnie outside of school hours while Buck works, and actually has pretty good health insurance. It was a rough start, but they’ve got it mostly figured out now.
The first real test of that, though, comes a few weeks later, when Buck has his first real loss on a call. Devon wasn’t the first person to die in front of Buck on the job – unfortunately, that’s just the nature of the job – but he was the first person Buck should have been able to save and just… couldn’t.
He isn’t handling it well.
He really doesn’t want to bring it home to Marnie, but he’s drowning in it and he doesn’t know how to shake it. Everyone keeps telling him that he’ll figure it out, he’ll wrap his head around it eventually even if he may never get over it exactly
Bobby points him in the direction of a department therapist, in the hope that working through it with a professional will help.
It – doesn’t.
“Hey, Bobby?” Buck says, tentative. He’s side-by-side with Bobby in the firehouse kitchen, carefully chopping veggies for dinner. He’s not very good at it yet.
“What’s up, Buck?” Bobby replies.
“If, hypothetically, a therapist initiated sex with a client during a session,” Buck says, carefully not looking at Bobby, “the client should maybe report that, right? That’s not – like, ethical?”
“What?” Bobby says, low and serious.
“’Cause, like, I feel like my, uh, sex perspective is a little skewed, and –“
“Buck,” Bobby interrupts. He’s set down what he was working on and turned to face Buck with a serious expression, and Buck knows that because Bobby doesn’t say another word until Buck does the same. “Did your therapist assault you?”
“Well, that’s kind of what I’m asking, I guess,” Buck says, ducking his head.
Bobby sighs. He doesn’t seem disappointed, which Buck had worried about a little bit, just frustrated and maybe a little sad. “Yes, Buck. If that happened, you should report it. That’s – no. That should never have happened, I’m sorry.”
Buck shrugs. “It was fine. I mean, I figured it was probably ethically dubious, but, like, I probably leave upwards of half of my sexual encounters feeling like shit, so –“
“Buck,” Bobby says, sounding pained.
“Right, TMI,” says Buck.
“No – no,” Bobby says, “you’re not supposed to leave any of your sexual encounters ‘feeling like shit.’ You know that, right?”
Buck shrugs again. “Well, it can’t be great every time.”
“You need to take better care of yourself, kid,” Bobby says. “This situation aside – this was different, and we’ll handle that – if having all this sex doesn’t even feel good, then why do it? Why engage in something that makes you feel worse?”
“Well, the other shit I used to get into to feel something has been mostly off the table since Marnie was born,” Buck says, combing his fingers through his hair. “I’m the only parent she’s got, so I can’t, you know, die.”
Bobby stares at him.
“I’m not, you know, actively suicidal anymore, is the thing,” Buck continues, because his mouth won’t stop moving. “But it’s hard to separate the adrenaline junkie stuff I used to get into from that, so I’ve been trying to steer clear, and – anyway. The sex works the same, in the end, even if the feeling is sometimes just well, that sucked.”
“Buck,” Bobby says again.
Buck shrugs. Again. “It’s fine.”
Anyway, failed attempt at therapy aside Buck does eventually settle with Devon’s death, and he thinks he does a decent job of not showing how devastated he’s been to his four-year-old.
The team meet Marnie for the first time under less-than-ideal circumstances. They’re in the hospital with Chim, who was impaled straight through the skull with a length of rebar in a highway accident. He’s alive, which is a miracle. There’s a real chance he’ll make a full recovery, which is even more of a miracle.
Buck, Hen, and Bobby are sitting with him while they wait for his – parents? Maybe? His emergency contacts – to arrive, none of them willing to leave him alone, when Buck’s phone rings.
He pulls it out of his pocket to decline the call, only to have the heart stopping discovery that it’s Marnie’s school calling at ten o’clock in the morning. He steps into the hall to answer.
“You’ve reached Evan Buckley,” Buck says, trying to sound calm and professional.
“Hi, Mr. Buckley, this is Viola Buchanan from the front office at Marnie’s school.” Buck knows Ms. Buchanan; she’s the receptionist he’s dealt with most often. “I’m calling to let you know that Marnie took a fall on the playground this morning and hurt her wrist. It’s probably nothing serious, but paramedics were called, and school policy is to have any significant at-school injuries evaluated at the ER.”
“Right, that’s – that makes sense,” says Buck. “Where are they taking her?”
Which is how Buck ends up downstairs at the very same hospital while his four-year-old gets her first x-ray. One of her teachers had ridden to the hospital with her, which Buck appreciates, though she seems surprised by how quickly Buck meets them there. It ends up being just a minor sprain, thank goodness, but Marnie is understandably a little bit clingy after, the whole thing having been overwhelming and a little scary, so Buck doesn’t take her back to school.
“Hey, Peanut, do you want to come up and meet my friends?” Buck asks, scooping Marnie up onto his hip.
“Here?” Marnie says. She tilts her head to one side, curious.
“My friend Chimney was in a car accident last night,” says Buck. “He got hurt, and we were visiting him when your school called me. He’s still sleeping, but you could meet Bobby and Hen?”
“Okay,” says Marnie.
Hen and Bobby are in the waiting room when Buck and Marnie get back upstairs.
“His parents made it,” Bobby says. “Apparently traffic is still more of a nightmare than usual, after the crash last night.”
“One of those complicated cleanups, I guess,” says Hen.
“Still no sign of Tatiana?” Buck asks. Bobby had called Chim’s girlfriend at the same time as his other contacts, the Lees, but they hadn’t heard back from her and she hasn’t shown up.
“Not yet,” Hen says. “Now, who’s this little sweetheart?”
Marnie, usually a pretty social kid, tucks her face into Buck’s shoulder shyly.
“Hey, c’mon, Peanut,” Buck says, bouncing her a little. “Say hi. This is Bobby, he’s my captain at the fire station, and Hen, she’s a paramedic. Like the ones who helped you this morning!”
“Hi,” Marnie says.
“It’s been a rough morning,” says Buck. “I wish you hadn’t inherited my clumsiness, kiddo.”
Marnie giggles.
Bobby is watching them with something Buck can’t identify in his expression.
“Anyway, Bobby, Hen – this is Marnie Maddie Buckley,” Buck says. He kisses the side of Marnie’s head, just above the ear. Her soft, wispy golden-blonde curls are escaping her little pigtails a bit. “Who, as you can see, is a human child and not a dog.”
Marnie taps Buck’s chest to get his attention. “Daddy.”
“Yeah, Peanut?”
“If I was an animal,” she says matter-of-factly, “I would be a frog, not a dog.”
Buck laughs. “Of course, my mistake.” He turns his gaze back to Hen and Bobby. “My apologies – Marnie Maddie Buckley, who is a human child and not a frog.”
“Hello, Marnie,” says Hen.
“Hi Hen,” Marnie says.
“You know,” Hen says, “I have a son who’s just a little older than you are, his name is Denny. We should get you two together for a playdate sometime, I bet you’d get along. He loves frogs.”
“I love frogs!” chirps Marnie. Hen grins.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Marnie,” Bobby finally says. He’s been watching, silent, that still difficult-to-read note in his expression.
Marnie waves to him, that open-close hand gesture that only little kids seem to use. “Hi, Bobby. My dad thinks you’re cool.”
“Excuse me,” Hen cuts in, after just long enough that it becomes abundantly clear that neither Bobby nor Buck know what to say to that. “Are you implying that your dad does not think that I’m cool?”
Marnie giggles. “I don’t know. But I think you’re cool, ‘cause you’re a girl firefighter and that’s way cooler than being a boy firefighter.”
“Oh, I think we’re going to be friends, Marnie Buckley,” Hen says. “Chim’s going to be so bummed he missed this.”
“Well, he’ll get to meet her soon,” Buck says firmly. Chimney is not going to die.
“Yes, he will,” Bobby agrees, just as firm.
And, for what it’s worth, he does. He pulls through the worst of it, and as soon as he’s up for it, Buck makes a point of bringing Marnie to meet him so that he can see that she exists and also a bit as a distraction from the fact that his girlfriend dumped him the instant things got real.
Chim is still out when the plane crashes. This is both good and bad; he’d be helpful, certainly, but Buck is also grateful that he’s spared this horror.
Buck ends up charged with carrying a little boy out as he thrashes and fights to get back to his mom, who Bobby is trying to unpin from between her chair and the one in front. The boy is older than Marnie, probably seven or eight, and he’s breaking Buck’s heart. He’s screaming for his mom, fighting as hard as he can with his little body to claw back to her.
He hands the boy off to the paramedics on the beach, having talked him down from his initial panic.
“Your mom’s in good hands with Bobby, okay?” Buck promises, the only promise he can make. “He’s gonna do everything he possibly can to get her out.”
And then he finds himself standing on the beach, staring back at the plane that Bobby still hasn’t evacuated. He must still be in there with the mom.
Buck wants Bobby to make it out of this. But almost as much, he finds himself thinking of the mom, of the way he’d feel if he were in an emergency like this with Marnie and how hard he’d want to fight to get back to her. He goes back into the plane.
Bobby is pissed off with him, but Buck’s never been great at following directions anyway, and together they get the mom free and back to her kid.
When Buck gets home, he scoops Marnie up and holds her for a very long time.
A few shifts later, and Bobby doesn’t show up. Bobby is never late. Hen and Buck stop by his apartment to check on him and find him passed out drunk in his lifeless, empty apartment. Even before he tells them what, it’s clear that something truly, heartbreakingly terrible happened to Bobby before he came to LA.
Buck and Hen do what they can to help, but most of that is just listening and trying to help hold him together.
In the midst of all this, Buck has started seeing someone. Or – not seeing someone, is perhaps more accurate. Abby, the dispatcher from the home invasion that got Buck his job back, had called to check in after he’d been interviewed when Devon died and they’ve been talking ever since. It’s been flirty and there’s definitely romantic potential there – and Abby is older, so him having a kid hasn’t been an immediate turn-off when it comes to an actual relationship – but Buck is hesitant to meet her in person. He likes her, he really likes her.
But in Buck’s life, liking someone – or, more accurately, someone liking him – has never survived falling into bed. And meeting someone he likes, especially in a date-like setting, has never ended without falling into bed.
So they’ve been talking on the phone. Buck, being twenty-six, is usually more of a texter, but Abby prefers phone calls and it’s kind of nice to actually hear her voice.
When they do meet, it’s not under great circumstances. Abby is the primary caretaker of her ill, aging mother, and her ill, aging mother has managed to slip out of their apartment. Abby had called him in a panic, and Buck had dropped Marnie off at Hen and Karen’s for an emergency playdate with Denny.
So that’s how Buck meets Abby, and also Abby’s mom’s home health aide, Carla, and also – eventually, thank goodness – Abby’s mom.
It’s a tense, stressful day, but Buck is glad that he can help.
It’s also the start of a shift in Buck’s relationship with Abby. It feels less hypothetical and more like a direction they’re really going, toward dating for real and having a place in each other’s real lives. It’s still far, far too soon to introduce Abby to Marnie, but when Buck finally asks Abby on a real date, for the first time ever he sits down to talk about the idea of dating with Marnie.
“Hey, Peanut, can you sit with me for a minute?”
Marnie, halfway between the kitchen and her bedroom with a sandwich cracker in her mouth and her favorite stuffed toy – a pangolin that Buck had gotten her for the sheer novelty of finding it, named Scales – tucked under her arm, pauses. “Yeah, okay.”
She crawls onto his lap on the couch. She’s rapidly approaching five years old, but she still feels so small when he holds her like this. Some of that is probably because Buck himself is quite tall, and there’s a reasonable chance that Marnie won’t be even as an adult. Her mother is pretty short, and all of the women in Buck’s family are pretty small, too.
“I want to talk to you about something,” says Buck.
“Okay?” says Marnie.
“Our family is just you and me,” Buck says.
“Yeah,” Marnie replies, drawn out and tilted up like a question.
“And no matter what else happens, it’ll always be you and me,” Buck says. “But I met someone recently who I really, really like, and I’m going to start going on dates with her.”
“Are you in love, Daddy?” Marnie asks, tilting her head.
“Not yet,” Buck says honestly. “It doesn’t quite work the same way as the movies in real life. Usually, you figure out you like each other and spend some time together, and then you fall in love.”
“Oh,” says Marnie. “But you like her?”
“I do,” says Buck. “Now, sometimes grown-ups will try going on dates and they won’t fall in love, or it doesn’t last forever. So I’m going to wait until we’re sure it’ll stick to introduce you, but I wanted you to know what’s going on.”
“Okay,” Marnie says after a moment of consideration. She pats Buck’s chest. “I hope you fall in love, Daddy.”
“Thanks, Peanut,” Buck says, pressing a kiss to the part in her hair, right between her two messy little buns. “I hope so, too.”
And he really, really thinks he might.
He arranges another playdate with Denny for the night of his first date with Abby, since the two kids had apparently gotten on like a house on fire.
It is – somewhat incidentally – a Valentine’s day date, and Hen and Karen insist that they’re cool with taking both kids for the night as long as Buck doesn’t mind returning the favor on a less hectic day for a date. They have a settled, established enough relationship that going out on a day like this is more trouble than it’s worth, and Buck honestly longs for a relationship as grounded and comfortable as theirs seems to be.
Buck thinks maybe he could get there with Abby. He really, really likes her, in a way he hasn’t really let himself feel before.
He invites Abby to Chim’s welcome back party, because the others have been curious about her and it’s as good a reason as any to get her to the firehouse. It’s strange to see her there, in the mix of all of the other people he’s started to let himself get close with and care about, but nice.
Hen gives him a funny look when he introduces her, but never explains. Chim, honestly, seems a little bit jealous. Bobby –
Bobby is difficult to read at the best of times, Buck has found. He’s a surprisingly closed book, despite the way he presents himself. Buck can relate, he supposes. But Bobby has another one of those odd expressions that Buck only ever seems to see directed at himself; not disappointed but something close to it, even with a smile on his face.
Anyway, Abby at the fire station goes pretty well, all things considered. And then Buck finds himself getting ready for his date at the station, too, with how his shifts shook out, which means that there are witnesses to his complete and utter inability to tie a fucking tie.
Bobby ends up helping. Sends Buck off with an affirmation and some advice and a warm feeling in his chest from being cared for in such a subtle, quiet way. Buck’s dad never bothered to teach him how to tie a tie, it probably never even occurred to him that he probably should.
(The older Buck gets, the further he gets into parenting the four-year-old at the center of the universe, the more aware he is that his parents were kind of shit.)
Bobby doesn’t judge him for not knowing, just shows him. Leaves him feeling mostly confident about tonight, and the future.
The date starts really strong. The restaurant is nice, Abby is gorgeous, and Buck is nervous but it’s good nervous. Excited nervous.
It is, for about ten minutes, the best date Buck has ever had in his life.
When he wakes up in the hospital later and the whole thing is explained to him, it still probably qualifies as the best date he’s ever had. Abby is with him for a while when he first wakes up, and she’s the one who tells him what happened and that she’d saved his life. It’s sweet and Buck appreciates her being here, but she can’t stay forever.
Buck is alone for a while, after Abby leaves for work. It’s actually a bit of a relief, because he didn’t want to be on his phone while she was here, but he also needs to apologize profusely to the Wilsons for not making it back to pick Marnie up last night.
He’s in the middle of drafting his emphatic, if winding, apology, when there’s a tap at the door.
Bobby is in the doorway. “Hey, kid, you up for visitors?”
“Yeah,” says Buck. “Sure, I’m not getting anywhere with this anyway.”
Bobby nods, but doesn’t actually immediately step into the room. Instead, he steps to one side, to let –
“Marnie?” Buck says, surprised.
She darts into the room and crawls up on the bed next to him. “Daddy!”
“Hey, gentle,” Bobby says, with the air of a reminder. Like they’d talked about it before they came here.
“You,” says Buck, looking from Marnie to Bobby and back, “you’re here?”
“Of course I’m here, Daddy,” Marnie says, that air of childhood certainty in her words. “Bobby says we’ve gotta make sure you’re not too bored here.”
“Oh, Bobby says,” Buck echoes. He’s staring up at Bobby, now. Marnie has Scales with her, and she’s busying herself with tucking him under Buck’s arm.
“Uh-huh,” Marnie says absently.
“I stopped by last night, naturally.” Bobby is Buck’s emergency contact right now, though he has Buck’s last known phone number for Maddie in case the worst happens. “But once I’d filled them in on your important details, I realized that Marnie would probably be expecting a pickup sooner than later, and I thought – Hen and Karen would have kept her for the night, but I thought she might be more comfortable at home, if you were out of commission.”
“So you – you took care of her?” Buck says, dumbfounded. He believes that Karen and Hen wouldn’t have begrudged him a medical emergency on his date, but to have Bobby go so far out of his way to make sure that Marnie was looked after, was comfortable and content, feels earthshattering. No one but Maddie has ever cared enough about him to go out of their way like this. “Without a second thought?”
“I’m sorry if I overstepped, Buck –“
“No!” Buck blurts. “No, I – thank you. Thank you. We’ve been on our own so long, I – I’ve never had anybody else to fall back on. I – I really appreciate you doing that. You didn’t have to.”
“I know I didn’t, kid,” says Bobby. “But I knew I could help. It wasn’t any trouble to do it, and I would’ve done it even if it were. We look after our own.”
“Thanks,” Buck says again. “Hey, Peanut, did you have fun with Bobby?”
“Yeah!” chirps Marnie. “He made mac-and-cheese in the oven!”
“That’s pretty cool,” says Buck. “He’s a good cook, don’t you think?”
“Way better than you,” Marnie replies.
Bobby is visibly stifling a laugh as Buck says, “Hey, that’s not nice. I’m still learning!”
“But you’re a grownup,” says Marnie.
“I’ll tell you a secret, kiddo,” Bobby says, “you never stop learning new things. Even grownups.”
“If you say so,” Marnie says skeptically.
“Well, I do,” says Bobby. “Alright, kiddo, you keep an eye on your dad, and I’m going to go see when we’ll be able to break him out of this place.”
“Okay!” says Marnie.
All told, Buck is only out of work for a handful of days after almost choking to death on his first date with Abby, which feels very lucky. He’s back just in time for the full moon, which is a wild, wild shift. He rescues a kid right around Marnie’s age from one of those big claw machines, pulls a tapeworm out of a guy’s butt, and is present but not as helpful as he’d like to have been for like three different ladies giving birth at a nighttime pregnant yoga class. Buck would’ve assumed the full moon thing was just a superstition, but he’s definitely having a weird enough day to believe it.
A few days later, late in the night on a much more normal shift, Buck comes up into the station loft to find Hen with her head in her hands on the couch.
“You okay?” he asks tentatively. He doesn’t join her immediately, puttering his way through the process of making himself some hot chocolate like he’d originally come up for.
“You’re a single dad,” Hen says, which doesn’t really follow.
“That’s right,” Buck says.
“What’s the custody situation with Marnie, if you don’t mind me asking?” says Hen.
Buck sighs, sitting on the chair nearest Hen and pulling his knee to his chest. “Just me, sole custody. Her mom and I weren’t in a relationship – hell, we were barely even friendly by the end – and she’d made it clear to me from the day she told me she was pregnant that she didn’t want an abortion, but she didn’t want the baby, either. I don’t think I’ve seen her since the day Marnie was born.”
“I see,” says Hen.
“Is something up with Denny?” Buck guesses. “He’s adopted, right?”
“His biological mother is my ex,” Hen tells him quietly. “She’s just recently gotten out of prison on parole, and she’s suing us for custody.”
“Shit,” says Buck. “I wish I could help, or – or like, give you advice, but – frankly, if Olivia walked back into my life and wanted to be involved with Marnie at all, I have no idea what I’d do.”
“I guess the thought counts for something,” says Hen.
“Good luck,” Buck offers. Then, “Uh, do you want some hot chocolate, too?”
Hen lets out a soft, soft laugh. “Sure, Buck. I’d love some.”
There’s nothing Buck can really do for Hen besides have her back. There’s nothing Buck can do for Abby as things get harder with her mom but stick it out. He’s doing everything he can and it still doesn’t feel like enough.
Abby’s mom dies.
It is not a surprise, but that doesn’t make it any easier. Buck is trying to have Abby’s back as much as he can, helping her plan the funeral and get things organized and generally just being there for her to lean on. He was upfront with Marnie about the situation: his girlfriend’s mom died, and he’s trying to take care of her as much as possible.
Marnie is four-going-on-five, so her concept of mortality is still developing, but she understands enough. She can wrap her head around it at least a little bit, at least enough to understand that Abby is very sad and needs a little bit of extra help around the house for a while. She’s content to play with Denny – whose moms are glad for the distraction for him as they sort through their own complicated life – or, increasingly, to spend time with Bobby while Buck is with Abby, trying to help.
And then Abby decides she needs to leave. To go on the trip she and her mom never took, nominally, but also to find herself. It’s an open-ended, vague thing, and Buck knows what that means.
She’s leaving, and she won’t be coming back.
Abby never says as much, in fact goes so far as to imply repeatedly that she will come back to LA and to him, but Buck has been left behind before, and he knows how this ends.
He drives her to the airport, kisses her goodbye, and then gives himself fifteen minutes to cry in the cell phone lot.
“Are you okay, Daddy?” Marnie asks at bedtime that night, reaching up with the hand that isn’t curled around Scales to touch his cheek.
“Of course I’m okay, Peanut,” says Buck.
“You look sad,” she replies, quiet.
“Remember how, when I told you I was going to start going on dates, I said that sometimes grownup relationships don’t stick?” Buck asks. Marnie nods. “Well, you know that the friend I’d been spending time with just lost someone really important to her, and sometimes that makes people – makes them rethink what they want to do in their lives. So she decided to move away and go on an adventure, which is really exciting for her. But that means that she and I aren’t going to spend time together anymore.” He sighs. “So I guess I am a little sad. But you know what, Peanut?”
“What?” says Marnie.
“I liked Abby a lot,” Buck says. He thinks he may even have loved her, but he’s not about to explain that to his four-year-old. “But I’ve still got my family, and I don’t need anybody else in the world.”
“Do you want Scales tonight?” Marnie asks, slow and sleepy. “He always makes me feel better when I –“ she yawns, “I’m sad.”
Buck leans down to kiss Marnie’s forehead. “You hold onto him, Mar. I’ll be okay. Thank you.”
“Love you, Daddy,” Marnie yawns, softer still.
“I love you, too, Peanut,” Buck replies.
And he wasn’t lying to Marnie – the heartbreak of Abby leaving is a fresh wound, but it’s one that will heal eventually. And in the meantime, he’s got Marnie, and he’s even got something of a family at the 118, and the future is still looking bright.