Chapter Text
It starts with a knock. Not loud, but deliberate. Like someone unsure if they’re welcome. The sound echoes through the hangar of the 118 firehouse.
Buck’s head turns before anyone else’s, as if he already knows who it is just by the sound. He’s halfway off the couch, a mix of excitement, fear, and boredom from waiting around for the familiar bell churns in his stomach, unsettled. Then a voice calls out:
“Grimm?” A commanding voice calls out. “Grimm, you in there?”
Hen, sitting on the arm of the couch, book firmly in her lap, frowns and glances at Chimney. “Grimm?” she repeats, unfamiliar with the word in this context. It tastes strange on her tongue. Bitter. Sour. Painful.
In an instant, the man sitting next to her stands up and shifts, changing within a millisecond. The grinning golden retriever, who cracks dumb jokes and radiates with hopeful optimism, disappears. This man is different. His shoulders stiffen, pulling up towards his ears. His eyes narrow as he scans the loft, alert to the strange voices. Tension coils around him like a drawn bowstring, ready to snap, ready to fire.
“Evan Buckley!” a different voice calls out, louder this time. “Is Evan Buckley here?”
Buck’s already racing down the stairs when Bobby steps out of his office. The firefighters, confused but intrigued, lean over the loft railings, watching as three strange men stand in their hangar. They’re worn, battle-aged, but unmistakably familiar to Buck. They look confused, taking in the room, but they straighten up as they see their man racing down towards them.
“You son of a bitch,” the tallest one grins. Buck laughs breathlessly, pulling him into a firm handshake-hug. The others join in, slapping each other’s backs loudly and trading half-joking insults, thrown towards one another like children at a playground.
Hen, standing in the loft, eyebrows furrowed together, tries to read Bobby’s expression, always looking towards their Captain for some form of information in the dark, but he looks as lost as she feels. A breath is shared amongst the team as uncertainty settles in the air.
“What the hell are you guys doing here?” Buck laughs, but there’s a serious edge in his voice that shifts the introductions into something sharper, more focused, more… like work.
“Not for fun, unfortunately.” The oldest one says, shaking his head, while his lips settle in a tight line. There’s sadness behind his eyes, but steel quickly replaces it before anyone can read into it. “It’s always nice to see you, kid, but we’re here for something else.” He hands Buck something. It’s a folded packet - photos, judging by the shape. Buck takes the package carefully. The team watches as he opens it, and the room falls quiet. The loudness of a Navy group disappears as quiet whispers replace it. A form of secrecy and silence that’s unfamiliar to the firehouse.
They talk for a while, no one can tell for how long, all too captivated by the new situation to stop and think of time. But it feels too long, but also too short for the group of Navy Soldiers, when Buck looks towards the loft. His eyes dart quickly between the firehouse members before landing on Bobby.
“Hey, Cap, I got some people I want you to meet.” He says loudly, echoing through the room, and Bobby responds with a firm nod towards Buck and a simple wave, an open invitation for the group to join them upstairs. Bobby’s unsure if it’s curiosity, protectiveness, or fear that courses through his body, but he tries to push it down. He has to remain focused.
The group of new men walks quickly, firm steps, as if not used to the soil under their feet, and within a minute, the men are in the loft. Hen moves over to the group, but not before stealing a quick glance at the photo Buck is holding gently in his hands. There are navy fatigues peeking out. A voice pulls her from her thoughts before she can truly place what she’s just seen.
“Lieutenant Carlsen. Former leader of the SEALs team that Grimm served in." The man gazes at the team as he talks. There’s no judgment, anger, or bitterness in his gaze, just wonder, curiosity. “He was one of the best,” He smiles fondly towards Buck, eyes landing on the boy, scanning him up and down as if taking in that he’s there. He lifts his hand for a second, as if reaching out for the man, like if he touched him that would make it true, he was truly there, before putting his hand into his pocket.
“He still is,” Bobby says quickly, breaking the tension in the air, and the man averts his gaze to look at Bobby, smiling as if he had passed some form of test the firehouse didn’t know existed.
“You must be the captain, Bobby Nash?” He continues, as if there was never an interruption by the other man, like the tension was never there, and the smile on his lips vanishes as the last proof of the quiet battle between the two father-figures disappears.
“That’s me,” Bobby responds, nodding. He holds out his hands, and for a mere second, he worries the other man is not going to grab his, but the two are quickly joined.
“Do you know what’s going on with the fires in this district?” The other man, Carlsen, lets go of the handshake and tilts his head slightly. It’s as if he knows the answer, but waits to see what the other might have to say.
Bobby's jaw tightens as he glances up and down the other man. Based on Buck’s body language and the speed at which he hugged him, Carlsen and his men were trustworthy, but that does not stop the creeping doubt in his head, which he again tries to shut down quickly.
“I’ve heard things,” he says finally, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “There’s been an increase in fires in strange and uncommon places. Office buildings are tied to companies that don’t exist. Unmarked leases. Fires starting in weirdly specific places, as they want to put the buildings in the ground quickly. No one wants to say anything out loud, but there are a lot of rumors running around.”
“They wouldn’t.” One of the other guys opens his mouth before Bobby can finish his sentence. He’s shorter with brown hair firmly brushed on his head. A name tag is stitched onto his uniform. It’s worn, tearing apart at the edges, but the name is carefully sewn, as if someone cared, someone created it, and it was a form of love from home, even the hardest of men could not push away. Simonsen. That was his name, if the name tag was correct. “Not if this is what we think it is.” Simonsen continues.
“What do you think it is?” Hen asks, narrowing her eyes as she looks the men up and down, never one to be intimidated by a badge, gun, or bravado. She can see the men behind it all. The boy who carefully sews his name plate on, with emotion in every stitch that would never reach his mind. The guy whose smile lit up the room the moment he saw Buck, laughing freely in a way it feels like he had not in a while. The man who seems so proud of Buck, despite being far away for so long, despite not being part of his life back home, like Buck was, and always will be, family.
“We think it’s one of ours. Ex-military. She’s burning evidence that would point us in the direction of whatever it is she’s hiding.” Simonsen continues, looking directly at Hen, but there’s no anger in his eyes. They’re just… cold. They’re empty, and she can’t read anything he doesn’t want her to. He’s the emotionless machine that Buck said he never wanted to be. She understands why now. He might just be a boy, but his eyes still send a chill down her spine.
“But it’s just a guess,” Carlsen finishes firmly, looking towards Simonsen with a stern glare. “No confirmation. There’s just a familiar pattern, filled with bodies.”
There’s a brief silence as the reality of what this might be settles in the group, but Bobby quickly chimes in. “So, you really were a SEAL?” He asks Buck quietly, shifting the focus.
All color leaves Buck’s eyes, and it’s replaced by something harder, something resembling steel-grey. He gives a wet laugh, nodding and looking at Bobby. “It was easier to let you think I was just some dumb kid,” he murmurs, hands fidgeting with his LAFD shirt. “Than to explain I was anything else,” Bobby hums softly in response, not unkindly, a form of support in the darkness surrounding them.
“Grimm,” Hen repeats the word she had heard earlier, testing it. Her jaw clenches around the word. Still doesn’t feel like him. It’s bitter, twisted, and foul. Nothing, she would describe the man in front of her. The man she has known for years, though she guesses there’s a lot she doesn’t know about him.
“Yeah,” he responds. “Grimm’s my second and most infamous callsign in the SEALs.” His voice has gone flat now, the quiet wetness and other emotions tucked neatly just below the surface, as his hands go still by his side. The words “emotionless machine” run through Hen’s head.
“Death and plague follows where I go,” Buck adds with a shrug, as if it doesn’t matter, as if the words don’t still haunt him to this day. “You guys call me a chaos magnet, always ending up in some form of trouble, but I suppose they had dibs on the name first.”
He pulls out the photo he had tucked in his pocket, the same one the firehouse saw him receive earlier. It shows Buck in a navy uniform, dirt-smudged, an arm draped over a teammate's shoulders. Both are grinning. It’s almost haunting to see them so happy amid so much death and misery.
“I was Wiki’d first,” Buck adds again with a small laugh this time, his teammates smile at him, their happiness diminished but still visible. “Always providing some useless piece of information. Full of random trivia. If you were stuck with me for a minute, you’d get Wiki’d.” He shakes his head, but it’s obvious to everyone there who knows him so well that there’s fondness there. Then he straightens, growing quiet.
“Y’know, you never get a good nickname until later. Not until you’ve earned one.” He looks down at the photo again, eyes softening. His thumb runs over the face of the other man in the picture. “This was Top Hat. He wore one once on leave, just to mess with the rest of us. He tried to convince us it was in fashion.” He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Grief. Loss. “The name stuck around.” The words “He never had the chance to earn another one.” goes unspoken, but is understood in the group. A few quiet smiles pass around the room.
“I was Patches.” A new voice pipes from the side. Everyone turns to see Eddie, whose presence had almost faded into the background. His voice is quiet. Distant. Wary. It makes sense, an army man, he knows what the SEALs are. And what they might do.
Buck's eyes brighten a little. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” Eddie replies, a smile tugging on the edges of his lips. “Patching up morons like you SEALs all day led to that name.” Eddie looks at the man, his partner, the person by his side through it all back on home soil, as he says it. He knows it’s the same man as before. The same person who would get lost in a documentary with his son. The same man who would be there for him if he had a rough day. But, in the light of the new information, a new form of respect enters his chest that he hadn’t felt before. He knew what it was like to be at war, to return home not knowing anything. Eddie wasn’t alone.
Carlsen steps forward again, breaking the moment before anyone can say anything else.
“We didn’t just come for old times’ sake.” He glances towards Buck, then Bobby. “We came to ask if he’s ready to come back. There’s a job to finish now.”
Buck tenses in response, lips pressed into a line. His jaw clenches, eyebrows furrowed and the man suddenly looks deep in thought.
Bobby doesn’t answer for him, just looks towards the kitchen. “You want to stay for dinner first?” He asks, half out of habit, half out of hope - hope to understand and know the people his oldest son considers family.
“Appreciate it but no. We don’t sit still for long. Just needed to know if Grimm’s still in there.” Carlsen replies.
The SEALs exchange nods. There are more handshakes before the welcomed intruders leave the loft, but there are no goodbyes said as the room grows quiet. There’s a form of certainty in the dullness, certainty that they will see each other again.
It’s finally Chim who breaks the silence in the loft. “You gonna do something?” he asks.
Buck is still staring at the photo in his hands as he gently folds it and tucks it safely into his pocket.
“Yeah,” he says quietly in response, voice almost breaking, cracking at the edges. “I have to.”
“Why?” Hen asks, voice soft, despite knowing the answer.
Buck breathes in. “Because of Jack. My fiance.” He swallows. “We were supposed to have a life after this. He died on that mission.” His voice cracks slightly. “That was our last deployment before coming back to the states. Before I became Buck again and left Grimm behind. I need it to mean something. I need his death to be something other than a black hole.”
No one speaks, a quiet understanding filling the loft. The proof of a life lived before the firehouse.
Bobby walks up beside him, placing a steady hand on his shoulder. “Do you want me to send you home early?” He asks, voice gentle. There’s no anger or rush in it, just understanding that this is something bigger than the firehouse, something more important than what they might do at work that day.
Buck looks up at him. And for the first time in a long time, his eyes are calm. Steady. Firm. Decided.
“No,” he says. “But I’ve got a mission to complete so, after this shift I’m going to need a couple days off.”