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Assistant: Title: hold me like we're going home.
        Author: happyhauntt gooondocks 
        Chapter: 1/7 
        Summary: Buck leans into Eddie’s touch, just for a second, before clearing his throat. “They want me to take temporary emergency custody. Just until better arrangements are made.”
  The loft falls eerily silent. It would be almost comical, the way the entire team has simultaneously held their breath, if he didn’t feel like a lead weight was resting on his shoulders.
  Hen, ever pragmatic, is the first to recover. She looks at him with an expression Buck can only call cautious, gentle and kind around the edges. “Temporary?”
  “I couldn’t abandon her.” He can feel something just behind his teeth, waiting to spill out, but he can’t quite name it. “Not if I could do something about it.”

  (or, buck fosters a traumatised teen and together they start to heal.)
        Contents: Chapter 1: there are places you belong you've never been before.
    

    


      
        
          
          (See the end of the chapter for  notes.)
          
      
  

  
  
    
      
  "where do you go when you run out of homes? 

   how do you restart again? 

   guess you let go and embrace what you can't know, 

   there are places you belong you haven't been" 
  
   SEPT 2018. 
 
       BUCK KNOWS, ALL TOO WELL, THAT NOTHING IS SET IN STONE.
     Not a single day in your life is guaranteed. You can wake up in the morning perfectly healthy, and get hit by a truck at lunchtime. You can swear to yourself,  tomorrow I’ll tell my crush I like them, and then see a post on Insta about their shiny new engagement.      You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and end up in the middle of a natural disaster. Faulty wiring and drunk drivers, cracks in the pavement and random acts of God, Buck has seen it all. He  knows.  His whole job has wired him to expect the unexpected. He  knows any number of things can appear out of the blue and turn your world upside down.     And yet.     Four days after the earthquake that rips downtown Los Angeles in half, Buck gets a call.     It’s the middle of a gruelling twenty-four hour shift when he finally has an opportunity to check his phone, hopping off the engine as it pulls into the app bay. There’s still grit stuck beneath his fingernails and when he shakes his head, a fine cloud of concrete dust puffs out of his hair. He knew the clean-up after a natural disaster would be enormous and exhausting, hours spent sweating in his turnout gear as bodies are pulled from beneath the rubble and debris starts to be cleared away, but the reality of it has been truly brutal.     Rescues have turned into recoveries, black tents set up as makeshift morgues in the street. A faint nausea settled in the back of Buck’s throat a few days ago that has yet to ease. Three showers and a week’s worth of sleep, and he might start feeling halfway normal again.     But it’s the middle of a shift, and his phone is buzzing in his pocket, so he simply hangs up his turnout coat and heads to answer it in the relative privacy of the bunkroom.      He’s not quite sure what to expect, at first. It’s a Pennsylvania number that flashes up on the screen, and not one he’s familiar with. Maddie hasn’t talked to him in years, not since she tossed him the keys to freedom and watched him leave Hershey in his rearview mirror. None of his postcards have ever gotten a response, but he never changed his number, either.      Could it be Maddie? It’s certainly not his parents, Buck’s sure about that, and there’s no one else left in his hometown who’d be reaching out to him. He severed those ties a long time ago. He can’t quite bring himself to regret that.      Perched on the edge of one of the bunks, he takes the call. “Hello?”     “Oh!” The voice on the other end of the line sounds surprised he even answered. Something clatters in the background, followed by a whispered curse. “Oh, hello! Is this Mr Evan Buckley? I didn’t think this would go through, I’ve tried a few times already this morning but the line keeps dropping.”      “Uh, it— it is, yeah,” Buck replies, brows drawn. “Sorry, service has been a little spotty since the earthquake… Can I help you?”      “I forgot about the earthquake,  sh@t  —” Another crash, then a thin  whoosh that might be paperwork scattering to the floor. Buck wonders how someone can forget about a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, but it doesn’t exactly sound like the voice on the phone is having a great day. “Sorry, sorry! It’s a nightmare down here. My name is <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON>, I’m a social worker at DCFS here in Pennsylvania.”     Buck blinks. “Don’t worry about it,” he says absently.  Social worker? It explains the frazzled edge to the woman’s voice, at least, but why would a social worker from back home be calling him? “Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate.”     “You have  no  idea.” Lydia’s voice dips like she’s toeing the line between sanity and a full-on breakdown. A little more paper shuffling flutters down the line, and then she releases a sigh so deep that Buck can almost  feel her exhaustion. “Overworked, underfunded, the usual. Sh@t, sorry! I’ll get to the point.”     Please do, Buck thinks. He feels for her, he does, but the grime on his skin is starting to itch and he’d love to snag a quick shower before the alarm goes off again.     “Mr Buckley, we were wondering if you’d be willing to take immediate emergency custody of your niece, Morgan.”     Expect the unexpected.  Buck is no stranger to sudden change.     But  holy sh@t.        When Buck stumbles out of the bunkroom fifteen minutes later, he feels a little bit like someone put his brain through a blender.     A mountain of information was heaped on top of him at breakneck speed — he doesn’t know Lydia at all, but he’d bet money on her having a pretty intense caffeine addiction — and it’s left his thoughts reeling, his head flooded with a buzzing static.     He won’t lie and say he hadn’t short-circuited a bit at the words  emergency custody  and  niece.  His heart had leapt right into his throat, pulse stuttering as it made a valiant attempt to crawl out of his mouth. A million possibilities skittered through his mind, each more catastrophic than the last, and all he could think was  Maddie Maddie what’s happened to Maddie?      Maddie had a kid? A real, actual child out there in the world, belonging to his sister, and they were calling  him  because  something must have happened —     Buck’s hands had turned numb, but he hadn’t dropped the phone. It took a few moments to tune back into Lydia’s caffeinated chirping, but the moment he did, his heart started to settle back into a normal rhythm.
       I’m not sure if you’re aware, Mr Buckley, but a few years ago, your cousin Diana passed away suddenly. 
     He remembers that. A cursory email had appeared in his inbox with details about the funeral, but he’d still been in Peru at the time and hadn’t been able to make it.     Buck sighs and scrubs a hand through rough curls, fingers tangling in what’s left of his hair gel and dislodging a fresh cloud of cement dust. His nose wrinkles as it flutters to the ground.     The rest of the team is in the kitchen as he makes a break for the coffee maker. Most of them are freshly showered, he thinks, but the buzzing in his head is so loud that he hardly notices until someone is pushing a mug of fresh coffee into his hands.     “ Buck.” Warm, dark eyes swim into his field of vision. Judging by the furrow in Eddie’s brow, this isn’t the first time he’s said Buck’s name. “Everything okay?”     Well.     Isn’t  that  a loaded question.     The rest of the team is watching him, he can feel it. Four pairs of eyes scorch his skin with their concern. If he closes his eyes, he’ll be able to picture the pinched expression on Bobby’s face, clouded over with worry.     Buck isn’t sure he can take that right now.     He raises the mug to his lips, swallowing a big gulp of too-hot coffee to steel himself.     “Who was on the phone?” Eddie takes a step back as he asks the question, resting his hands against the counter. Still lingering close enough to reach out and touch, if Buck wanted to, but no longer crowding his space.     Eddie isn’t asking to be nosy, Buck knows that. In the few weeks they’ve worked together, Buck has learned that the newest addition to the 118 is a pretty private guy. He doesn’t tend to pry into other people’s business, and plays it pretty close to the vest.     Hell, the team only learned about Eddie’s kid a few days ago, and that was only because of the catastrophic earthquake, which Buck admits is a pretty unique set of circumstances.     So he knows Eddie isn’t asking for no reason, and the concern stitched into the lines of his skin makes Buck feel warm all over.     He tries not to think about why.     “Come on, Buck,” Chimney says, a little less delicately, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”     Buck bites back a dry laugh. That’s an apt description, at least. He definitely  feels haunted.     “My cousin died,” he says, finally, as he sets the mug down on the counter. Before they can fall on him, their mouths full of condolences, he adds, “A few years ago, don’t worry, that’s not— not what the call was really about.”     Memories of Diana come to him in brief flashes. A swish of blonde hair and a boisterous laugh that had made his parents wince. Buck hadn’t known her very well; she’d been around Maddie’s age  and he only ever saw her around the holidays, but not since he was a young kid.     There was some kind of family feud, he thinks. His parents and Diana’s didn’t get along — which, fair enough, because Buck can’t exactly blame anyone for struggling to get along with his parents.     He certainly doesn’t.     But there was one Christmas, when he was five or six that sticks out in his mind. The two of them had tucked into the space behind the Christmas tree and ate a whole bowl of stolen pudding, giggling all the while.     Buck spent most of that night being horribly sick,  but, hey, his kid-brain had counted it as a win.     Last he heard, she got married and moved to Philadelphia. If they were invited to the wedding, his parents never mentioned it. It must have been well over a decade ago now. Long before he left Hershey, at least.     “That was a social worker who called.” Buck swallows past the sudden tightness in his throat. “Diana had a daughter. She’s been, uh, bounced around the system for a while now. DCFS has been trying to contact family members, but it seems like there aren’t— Their options have been pretty limited. Apparently Diana made a pretty specific request in her will, and social services are doing their best to honour it, but it’s been… difficult, I think.”     Understatement of the century. Buck chews on his lower lip. From the brief rundown Lydia gave him, there have been nearly a dozen group homes and foster families, not to mention other relatives who’d declined to take the kid.     Sympathy bolts through his chest like an ice pick to the heart. He knows a little about being unwanted.     Hen raises an eyebrow. Her voice floods with pity when she asks, “There are other family members who could take her, though, right?”     “There  were,  yeah,” Buck nods. “A couple of cousins, an aunt and uncle on Diana’s side, but they all refused custody. And… and Diana requested, specifically, that my parents  don’t  get custody. From what I’ve been told, it’s been kind of a mess.”     Lydia had actually used the word  sh@tstorm.      Buck hadn’t commented on her lack of professionalism. After hearing a little about the tangled web of bureaucracy she’s had to deal with the last few years, he thinks  sh@tstorm isn’t a strong enough word.     Bobby frowns. It pulls the concerned wrinkle of his brow even deeper. “Why didn’t she want your parents to take custody?”     Isn’t that the million dollar question? Buck breathes out between his teeth, slow and even, as if that will ward off the tension creeping up his spine.     “I don’t know.”     His relationship with his parents is… Well, he won’t take Lydia’s route and say ‘sh@tstorm’, but it’s fairly complicated. It isn’t something Buck likes to examine too deeply. Most of the time, it’s like prodding a fresh bruise to keep it from healing. He knows better than to go digging through all those messy feelings in his chest, hates the cold, sticky feeling he gets when he thinks about them.     But they kept him alive. They kept Maddie alive. He didn’t starve, his clothes were always clean and new, he had a comfortable bed to sleep in and a roof over his head. Personal feelings aside, there isn’t any reason he can think of for Diana to deny his parents custody of her daughter. To stipulate in her will that,  specifically, the Buckleys aren’t allowed to take care of her child.     But she did.     And here they are.     A hand settles on his shoulder, warm and firm, squeezing slightly. When Buck looks up, Eddie’s watching him. Something settles down in his chest, curls up behind his ribs to rest for a moment. It feels safe.     It’s odd, Buck thinks. Eddie appeared in his life less than a month ago, and already it’s hard to imagine a time he wasn’t there.  You can have my back any day, he’d said, and Buck has felt the steadying, easy presence of him every day since.     Buck isn’t sure how to feel about it. Doesn’t know how to pull back, when all he wants to do is reach out with clinging, desperate hands and hold it tight. He’s never had this, this—  depth to any of his friendships before, this immediate connection that’s knocked him completely sideways.     (Alright, so  immediate  is a stretch, since he spent most of their first shift together grappling with his insecurities and lashing out, but under twenty-four hours is still pretty f@ck@ng  instant by comparison to the rest of Buck’s life, so. Semantics.)     Never in his life has he had a friendship like this. The rest of the team cares about Buck, sure. More often than not, he feels like the stray kid they adopted off the street, but they  care. Hen and Chim are like older siblings, ribbing him mercilessly at every opportunity and affectionately indulging his hyper-focused research spirals. Bobby, the pillar of stability he has lacked all his life, a guiding hand to temper his worst impulses.     But Eddie is… Eddie feels like  his, in a way the others don’t.     Any friendships in Buck’s life have been fleeting. For years he was drifting, aimless. from state to state and country to country, seeking some kind of  home that he could never find until he joined the 118. Connections were brief and shining, lips and hands and heat to fill the gaping hole in him for an hour or two, but nothing that ever lasted. No one that ever stuck around.     There’d been Connor, for a little while. They’d been friends. A friendship of convenience, perhaps, and even that had fizzled out in the end, as Buck found less and less satisfaction in his transitory existence.     Everything else in his life feels temporary. But something about Eddie feels permanent, somehow and that is f@ck@ng terrifying.     He flashes a smile in Eddie’s direction, small but sincere. Watches Eddie nod in return.     “What happens now?” Eddie asks.     Buck had asked the same thing.  What will happen if I don’t take her?      But even as the words left his mouth, Buck had known he couldn’t refuse. Couldn’t fathom the idea of a kid out there in the world, alone and unwanted and abandoned by everyone, and turning away when he could have helped.     You’re our last shot, Lydia had replied, and the blunt, flustered edge of her voice had turned sad. She’d sounded young, and Buck wouldn’t be surprised to learn if Morgan’s case was one of the first she took on.     They’d called Maddie, he learned. Reached out to her, Lydia said, but she’d declined to take custody, too. That had thrown Buck for a loop, because he can’t imagine a world in which Maddie would do that. Maddie, his big sister, who all but raised him. Maddie, a nurse, who saw the worst of the world on a daily basis and still had the biggest heart of anyone he’d ever met.     Maddie, who’d said  no to this.     It doesn’t sit right with him, but he hasn’t talked to his sister in years. Maybe things have changed. Maybe Doug put his foot down. He knows he shouldn’t make any rash assumptions because circumstances change all the time. He just doesn’t  know.     It still doesn’t feel right, though.     Buck leans into Eddie’s touch, just for a second, before clearing his throat. “They want me to take temporary emergency custody. Just until better arrangements are made.”     The loft falls eerily silent. It would be almost comical, the way the entire team has simultaneously held their breath, if he didn’t feel like a lead weight was resting on his shoulders.     Hen, ever pragmatic, is the first to recover. She looks at him with an expression Buck can only call cautious, gentle and kind around the edges. “Temporary?”     “Uh-huh.”     He hasn’t done anything, but Buck feels a bit like he’s been caught red-handed, half-expecting to be scolded. Hen’s watching him the way she does on calls, a few seconds before he does something dangerously reckless and she’s trying to telepathically talk some sense into him.     Because in the end, Buck knows who he is. So do they. They all know who he is, and what he’s capable of, and raising a kid just  isn’t one of them.     He wants and wants and  wants,  something under his skin itches with it but he doesn’t know  what,  yet. For a long time he tried to find it in s@x. Craved that pale imitation of intimacy in the hope that one day it would stitch him back together. Weighed down by his insecurities, examining every facet of his personality and feeling deficient at every turn. Running headfirst into every reckless venture he could find just to  feel something.     He isn’t what anyone needs, not long-term. Especially not a vulnerable kid. He’d only do something to f@ck them up even more.     But looking out for one temporarily, allowing them a reprieve from the endless barrage of shit the last few years have thrown at them by giving them a safe place to land, just for a little while?     He can do that. He thinks he can do that.     “You think this is a mistake.” It’s a statement, not a question. Buck doesn’t mean to, but his whole body seems to droop at the realisation. He hadn’t quite thought how much the team’s approval would mean to him, and without it, this whole situation feels suddenly hopeless.     Within a second, all four of them start to protest.     “Buck, no!” Hen’s shaking her head. “That’s not what I meant.”     “It’s just— This is  huge, Buck.” Chim spreads his hands wide, flailing a bit.      Bobby nods sagely. “It’s a big responsibility for anybody to take on.”      Especially you.  Bobby doesn’t say it, but Buck thinks that's what he means. It’s a big responsibility, and you’re  just not capable.       He’s changed, though. He can do this..No longer Buck 1.0, the reckless adrenaline junkie who would throw himself into burning buildings without a second thought and stole the firetruck for random hookups.     (He still throws himself into burning buildings, but he does think  twice about it now. Most of the time.)     There’s been a software update. He’d met Abby, found someone who liked him despite all his flaws and broken, jagged edges, who’d seen beneath his facade to the soft, desperate boy that just wanted to be  wanted. And while that whole thing is…  complicated,  right now — it’s been months since they last talked for longer than a text thread, even longer since their last phone call, and Buck’s coming to the slow, stinging realisation that maybe everyone else is  right, that when she kissed him goodbye at the airport it was final for her, but he’s not quite ready to admit that to himself yet — but it’s fine.     He’s living in her apartment but it’s fine.     He’s agreed to take in an orphaned teenager for an unspecified length of time, but it’s  fine.      He’s living in his absent girlfriend’s one-bedroom apartment with a teenager coming to stay, a teenager who’s been shuffled from care home to care home for years as a victim of the system. A  kid who’s had very little stability in her life and, for some utterly baffling reason, the universe has decided that  Buck is the person to take care of her for now.     “Uh, Buck?” Chimney’s squinting at him. “You look like you’re gonna throw up.”     A low groan punches out of Buck, and he folds himself over the countertop, arms folded, face tucked into the crook of his elbow in the hope that it will muffle a second, much louder groan.
       What the f@ck was he thinking? 
     “She’s thirteen.” Is another earthquake happening or have his legs just turned to jello? “You’re right, I can’t do this. How do you take care of a thirteen-year-old? What does a thirteen-year-old even  need?”      Buck’s good with kids. Or, well, he thinks he is. He hasn’t really spent a whole lot of time around them in his life, but he’s hung out with Eddie’s son twice since they met a few days ago, and Christopher seems to like him. More than once, Hen has likened him to a golden retriever, and that playful nature has helped children warm up to him when he meets them on calls.     But those are  kids  and Chris is  seven  and Buck isn’t sure how this situation will be different, he just knows it  is.      He hears Hen mutter something, catches onto the word  spiralling, before firm hands are tugging him out of the kitchen. Buck allows himself to be pulled along, and then Bobby’s depositing him on the nearby couch. Buck allows himself to sink into the cushions. He wonders if they’ll swallow him whole.     His captain settles opposite, perching on the coffee table with one hand resting on Buck’s knee. Chimney sweeps into view, pressing a cold glass of water into his hands before dropping onto the couch alongside him. The hand that drops onto his shoulder belongs to Hen, and Eddie hovers at the edge of it all, arm folded loosely across his chest.     The weight of Bobby and Hen’s hands, the warmth of Chim at his side, even the steady stance Eddie has adopted— all of it grounds him. The hummingbird thrum of his pulse starts to settle. A drop of condensation dribbles down his thumb and the sensation doesn’t make him want to cry.     “I should’ve said no.”     “Buck.” Hen’s voice is flat. He can feel her  shut the f@ck up stare on the back of his neck. He loves her so much for that.     Shaking his head, he says, “No, I should’ve. What do I know about kids? Hell, most of the time  I still feel like a kid. But I just… I couldn’t, right? How could I?”     He pauses, half-expecting a quip from Chim about his immaturity, but it doesn’t come. Instead, all he hears is a quiet hum, a small bob of the head. He doesn’t know a whole lot about the personal lives of his teammates beyond their immediate families but he suspects, given how little they’re mentioned, that none of them have great relationships with their parents.     If anyone’s going to understand, he thinks, it might be them.     “I couldn’t  abandon her.” He can feel something just behind his teeth, waiting to spill out, but he can’t quite name it. “Not if I could do something about it.”     Bobby pats his knee, and something loosens inside his chest that he hadn’t noticed had gone tight the minute he answered the phone. “We know, kid. You’re doing the right thing.”     Buck knew that already, knew in his bones that this was the  right thing to do, but hearing it out loud reassures him more than he thought it would.     “What you’re doing is incredibly selfless,” Bobby continues, in that gentle no-nonsense tone of his. “It won’t be easy, but I'm sure you’ll be just fine.”     “And besides,” says Chimney, face spreading into his familiar shit-eating grin, “you’re gonna have no problem bonding with a teenager. Maybe you’ll finally be able to beat someone at Mario Kart.”     There it is. Just like that, Chim shatters the tension, and Buck can’t help but laugh at the joke, tipping his head back against the couch.     “When is she arriving?” Bobby asks.     “Two days. Her name is Morgan.”     The social worker had glossed over a number of background checks he’d have to go through, an interview with someone from DCFS in L.A. to verify his suitability for custody, a huge pile of paperwork, not to mention that Morgan will have to fly out from Pennsylvania. If you ask Buck, two days doesn’t seem like enough time at all, but judging by how flustered Lydia had sounded on the phone, the situation seems pretty desperate.     “Alright,” Bobby nods. “Well, first things first I’ll talk to Athena. See if May wouldn’t mind helping out a little with some of the teen girl stuff. She and Morgan sound pretty close in age.”     Buck swallows. Yeah, he’s not sure he’d know what to get for a teenage girl even with a gun to his head.     “As for the rest of it, you’ve got us to help you out. Most of us are parents, we’ve got enough experience between us to figure this out.”     Hen snorts. “And when in doubt, we’ll deploy Chim. Who knows, maybe bad jokes will win her over.”     Chimney squawks. “My jokes are  great!”      “Sure, Chim.”     “We’ve got you, Buck. You won’t be alone in this,” Bobby says with a squeeze of his knee.     Buck knows nothing is set in stone. He  knows that. Natural disasters happen and the universe doesn’t always have its shit together and sometimes, sometimes it’s just bad luck. Buck knows that.     But he hopes, as Hen and Chim bicker in his ear and Eddie tries not to laugh and Bobby heads off to the kitchen in the vain hope of making lunch before the alarm goes off again, that this one thing might be.
  
  

    
      
        
        
          thank you for reading!!! kudos and comments feed my soul <3come and scream with me on tumblr where this fic is rebloggable'
User: Summarize the chapter based on the content provided, ensuring to follow the set format and emphasize key aspects within the specified length.
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