Chapter Text
Laying in bed, Buck stared blankly at the ceiling. He knew that he should really get up, but what was the point? Since the lawsuit, he had nowhere to go, no one to see. No one to even text. No one to notice if he spent all day in bed.
He had gone to see Mackey the previous day to back out of the lawsuit, but the conversation hadn't gone well. Mackey had insisted that Buck shouldn't make any rash decisions, that he should think it over first. Take the weekend. Of course, Mackey had been perfectly happy to enable Buck's rash decision making when it benefited him.
Much as Buck wanted to march down to the office and insist that he would not be continuing with the lawsuit, it was a Saturday. The place wouldn't even be open.
With a groan, Buck rolled over and forced himself out of bed. He might not have anything to do, but his body still required water unfortunately.
As he stepped into the kitchen, he noticed a manilla envelope lying on top of his mail on the floor by the door. Scooping up the mail, Buck tossed most of it on the side table and frowned at the envelope. It didn't have an address on it, just his name written in blocky sharpie letters. Tearing it open, Buck pulled out the first thing his hand touched.
It was a photo of a naked man.
Buck nearly dropped the thing. But then his mind caught up to process it and he realised it wasn't just some man.
It was him.
18 year old Evan Buckley with his hands bound above his head. Utterly naked other than the ropes strapped across him in tight patterns. He poured out the rest of the envelope onto the kitchen table, watching the photos slide across the surface. Every single one was a picture of him, though some involved another person. All of them obscene by most people's standards.
The last thing to fall out of the envelope was a note.
Written in the same blocky letters were the words, 'Want to keep your secret? Stick with the lawsuit.'
Buck sat heavily on a chair staring at the photos in disbelief. He didn't even recognise some of them, though every one was clearly him. Where the hell had Mackey even found them?
Then he started laughing. It was an odd, almost hysterical sound, creaky with disuse. Of all the sleazy fucking lawyers in the city, Buck just had to pick the one that would stoop to blackmailing him.
It took him the better part of an hour to decide what to do.
The thing was, Mackey had misunderstood him. Admittedly it would kill him to have anyone see those photos, to know what he had done. But every time he even considered continuing the lawsuit he thought of the anger on Eddie's face, of the disappointment on Bobby's. Of the way Chim had let the elevator door close and Hen couldn't even meet his eye.
No matter how much he hated the idea of his friends knowing this particular uncomfortable section of his past, Buck wouldn't hurt them just to keep his secret.
Anxiously, he rubbed his hands against the thighs of his jeans as he thought. If he wanted to deal with this properly, he would need to take it to the police. Not Athena, he couldn't stand the idea of discussing all of this with Athena. And if he just went to the station there was a good chance he would run into her. She would want to know what he was doing there, and Athena didn't back down from a mystery until it was solved.
Still, Buck had worked as a firefighter for long enough that he had made other connections in the police. He searched through a drawer until he found the card he'd been given by Detective Wyndham. Months ago Buck had worked with him when he'd had to give a statement about an incident. It had been while he was working with B shift, picking up some hours as a favour, so the rest of his team hadn't been involved.
Buck put the number in his phone and looked at it. If he did this, then eventually people would know. People would look at him differently. Bobby would… Buck couldn't even begin to think of how Bobby would react.
If he did this it might be blowing up what was left of his life. But Buck was the one who had started this by filing the lawsuit. It was time to face the consequences for his own mistakes.
-
The next few hours were a whirlwind. Wyndham took him seriously, but Buck quickly learned that the police didn't deal with blackmail, especially when there were large sums of money involved. So the case was immediately handed to a contact Wyndham had with the FBI.
Then, early Sunday morning, Buck found himself headed out to meet with the FBI agent. The envelope was awkwardly hidden in a satchel, as though people might know what was in it if they saw it. He made his way to the bench out near a hiking trail that the agent had told him to find, feeling like he was in some shitty low-budget spy movie.
"Mr Buckley?" A woman asked a few minutes after he sat down. She was dressed casually for an agent, but she had a certain air of competence about her that said she knew what she was doing.
"Yeah." Buck said cautiously, watching her take a seat beside him.
"Agent Kahan." She offered her hand out to shake.
That matched the name he had been given by Detective Wyndham, so he shook her hand.
"Did you bring the evidence?" She asked.
"Yeah." Buck took the envelope from his bag. "I used gloves to put everything back but I did touch it before I knew what it was."
Agent Kahan nodded. "I understand." She put her own gloves on before she opened the envelope to look inside.
"The pictures are… graphic." Buck warned her awkwardly though she had undoubtedly seen worse.
Kahan nodded sharply. "I'm going to be honest with you Mr Buckley-"
"Just Buck." Buck said quickly. "You can call me Buck." He couldn't take being called Mr Buckley on top of everything else that was happening.
"Alright, Buck. It's unlikely we will find anything to connect Mackey to this. As obvious as it seems to you, we need hard evidence to prosecute."
Buck sighed. "Then what can we do?"
"That will depend on you."
Buck raised an eyebrow. "Me?"
"If you would be willing, I would like you to continue with the lawsuit for the moment so we can collect evidence." Kahan turned her serious stare on him.
Buck was stunned. "Seriously."
"I wouldn't suggest this if I thought it would put you in significant danger. But you would need to wear a wire and play along with him."
Brushing a hand over his hair, Buck tried to think. "For how long?"
"Hopefully not long. Until we have enough to get a warrant, then we can search his hard drives."
Buck was silent as he considered it.
"Listen, I get the feeling that you aren't the only person he has done this to. It's he's this comfortable dropping off an envelope at your apartment and assuming you will comply, he almost certainly has experience. I want to nail this guy to the wall."
"Yeah." Buck said slowly, thinking of the look on Eddie's face as Mackey weaponised Shannon's death. "Yeah okay. Let's do it."