Chapter Text
“You’re exhausting.”
It really is always about you, isn’t it?
You acted out like you always do.
and
Maybe it's time you learn a lesson again: how to be alone.
Surrounded by the unpacked boxes in the empty house, Buck realized something.
There’s no life for him left here in Los Angeles.
Not after everyone slowly pushes him out from their lives, with Bobby and Athena busy rebuilding their lives, Eddie moving back to Texas and immediately ghosting him, and Chim, Maddie, and the Wilsons forming their own family unit, leaving him outside and alone.
At first, he made excuses for them. Bobby was busy and tired rebuilding the house after the fire; Chim, Maddie, and the Wilsons were too preoccupied with Mara and the drama around it. Eddie is too busy trying to fix things with Christopher.
But work became a place of nods and quick, almost absent-minded glances, people making plans without him. His attempts to reach out were rejected, sometimes even ridiculed.
He wished he had the courage to apologize to Tommy.
But after what happened that morning, he had ruined everything between them, scattering what scant chance of reconciliation there was.
That conversation with Maddie was the last straw.
Learning how to be alone.
As if he hadn't spent most of his life before Los Angeles alone, looking for some place to call home. How his last attempt to reach out, asking to be seen, to his own sister was met with rejection, that flicker of discomfort in her eyes, and the quiet pity.
Her final words were the death knell he never saw coming.
He honestly thought LA would be the one.
And now surrounded by the shambles of his life, he could only feel the cold.
Sitting now on the cold wooden floor in the living room, he stared at his phone.
No missed calls.
No messages.
No one was ever going to reach out to him.
No one would ever even notice if he disappeared.
So, that night he made a decision. One that might save him from the suffocating silence threatened to drown him.
He packed slowly. Packing only the essentials, leaving everything else that would weigh him down.
He would donate them to charity, he thought as he taped the boxes close. There’s always someone who would need this more than him.
When the sun rose over the house, he put the last of the boxes in his jeep.
Clothes, important documents, his KitchenAid mixer, and the binder of recipes he had worked on for the past few months. The photobook that's full of memories. Tommy’s LAFD Air Support hoodie he hasn't had the heart to return after their breakup.
He then walked around the quiet neighborhood, giving away the baked goods in his fridge to everyone on that street, smiling vacantly as they thanked him for the kind gift.
He called his landlord and told him he was cancelling the sublet and forfeiting his deposit as an apology.
He called Goodwill and arranged for pickup for the things he’s donating.
He called HR and tendered his two-week notice, citing mental health and an application to take his PTO for the next two weeks; he had almost three months' worth accumulated at that point.
He didn’t leave a note for them.
Not because he didn’t want to be found, but because he didn’t think anyone would look.
He drove away from the house that was never his, but before he could leave LA for good, there was one last thing he needed to do.
He drove to 118.
Thankfully B Shift had returned from a minor call, and Captain Whitmore was available.
He told him he had quit and left LA, asking out of courtesy for him not to inform Bobby and A Shift until they’re back online after the 96 off. The captain, fond of the reincarnated chaos and frankly worried for the young man, agreed, wishing him luck on his future endeavors.
Evan Buckley left Los Angeles, California, on a sunny March 23 2025.
He had no destination in mind, only driving aimlessly north.
Maybe he’ll find what he was looking for someday.