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The Grant-Nash door swings open at 1AM on a Friday morning to find Athena staring at Buck standing on the porch of the house, soaked in rain, streaked with mud and what looks like ash, and holding a small bundle in his arms.
“Buck.” Athena says flatly.
Buck holds out the wiggling bundle towards her. A tiny pair of triangular ears poke out of the little blanket, followed by a furry grey head embedded with big blue eyes. Athena stares at the cat. The cat stares back.
“Meow,” the cat tells her, in an almost exasperated tone that feels familiar in a way that she can’t put her finger on.
Buck grins at her, all breathless relief. “It’s Bobby!”
If you asked Buck Buckley about the series of events that led to him standing in front of the newly-built Grant-Nash house, clutching a small kitten with the spirit of his (former?) captain inside of it, he would tell you that it all started in Chicago.
To be fair, Buck would argue that he did not, in fact, intend to discover the existence of ghosts when he took a job at a construction site. He was mostly just looking for a quick job, a few bucks (ha!) so he can sleep somewhere other than the jeep for once, because he just went through another goddamn growth spurt and his neck was not thanking him for it.
The job was fine, manual labor amongst a coterie of other people who seemed to want to keep to themselves. Then-Evan was new, so he was on the shittiest, most miserable shifts alongside all the other poor motherfuckers who couldn't wiggle out of it, and his days were mostly lift, heave, repeat.
It was on one of these days that the foreman asked him to close the site for him after hours, which Evan was pretty sure wasn't allowed, but whatever. It was around 3am, the site was dark and the sounds of the city had that muffled quality it took on at night, as if someone had put cheap noise-cancelling headphones over it all. Evan checked over the equipment, made sure all the safety mechanisms were in place, and was locking the door when heard a noise coming from inside the zone, where nobody was supposed to be.
Now, is it a smart idea to go into a dark construction zone at night, not knowing what the noises were? Absolutely not, Evan was not being paid enough to risk life and limb like this. On the other hand, this was back when Evan was twenty-one, living out of his jeep, Maddie had stopped responding to his messages, and his general demeanor towards life was an (un)healthy ‘might as well fuck around, don’t really care what I find out’.
All this to say that Evan ran towards what was increasingly sounding like the noises of a fight, rounded a corner, and saw a man in a dark leather duster wrestling a ghost. And losing.
“What the fuck,” Evan says, already picking up a loose cylinder of metal and running towards them.
Like he said, you can’t find out unless you do enough fucking around.
Long story short, Buck ended up getting a few lessons on the basics of exorcisms and the supernatural from that guy in thanks for saving his life. After that, it didn’t come up all the time, but apparently one dip into the supernatural meant you couldn’t really stop noticing it all around you. Buck never quite fully joined any covens or packs or other pockets of magical communities around America, but he sometimes did a few exorcisms, helped sneak a werewolf cub back to his parents after animal control caught him, tended bar for a coven in Peru because they needed to leave for a while to complete some full moon ritual.
It was weird, sure, but the odd jobs gave him a bit more cash, and word of mouth travels fast when you have a few tricks up your sleeve and are willing to travel, so all in all Buck considered it just another fun tidbit from his twenties. Another useful trick in his back pocket that usually didn't come up.
He’d sort of dropped off doing anything like that after joining the 118, because he stopped traveling once he’d found what he was meant to do. He still sprinkled salt across windowsills, threw a rotisserie chicken under the nearest bridge, and chatted with the nice maybe-witch that owned the bookstore down the street, but it wasn’t something that was a big part of his life. Obviously not something that he shared with the 118.
And then Bobby died.
Necromancy is kind of like sex, in that people didn't really like to talk about it, and a lot of people didn't really know what they were doing, but everyone had strong opinions about it, and a lot less people were doing it than you’d think. And a lot of it involved a not insignificant amount of body parts and weird religious undertones.
Okay, so maybe the metaphor is getting a little out of hand.
Point is, Bobby dies, and Buck decides that he has earned the right to go a little off the rails about it. To be a little weird about it. The main thing, though, is that he decides to do it in a productive way.
Because fuck ‘they need you’, okay? Buck is well aware when Bobby is trying to stave off Buck doing anything particularly Buck-ish (reckless, ingenious, on a sliding scale of suicidal) in his absence, and he doesn't appreciate being manipulated like that.
So he does take care of everyone as much as he can, but he takes time for himself, too. Lets everyone think that he’s disappearing for crying jags or ‘processing grief’.
Instead, Buck makes a few calls, picks up a book, and rents out a warehouse.
“This is a terrible idea,” everyone Buck had talked to had said, because they were all party poopers. Buck, making a circle of gravedirt and blood, would like to state for the record that he is well aware.
Still. It’s Bobby. It’s Bobby.
The moon is full outside, and the pitter-patter of rain feels…right, for the occasion. Buck clasps his hands together.
“Please,” he prays, not to any god that Bobby or Eddie might’ve believed in, but to something beyond that. The universe itself. Bobby, maybe. After all, everyone said that even with the perfect rite, the dead only returned if they were willing.
He flicks the lighter on, drops it onto the circle. Outside, there is a flash of thunder.
Everything goes bright, then dark. Buck is blown backwards by the heat that suddenly flares up. In the back of his mind, he hopes that the 118 will not have to pull his charred corpse from this place.
But the fire dies down. The rain continues to fall. Buck lifts his hand from his eyes.
“Meow,” says the tiny grey kitten in the middle of the circle that was absolutely not there three seconds ago.
Buck stares. The kitten stares back. It is a very familiar stare of mild displeasure.
“...Bobby?” he ventures.
“Meow.” the cat that is probably Bobby agrees.
Athena moves her stare to Buck, then back to the cat. It dips its head in what could be a nod, or just a normal cat movement. Because it’s a normal cat. Probably.
The clock ticks over to 1:01. Athena pinches her nose. Sighs.
“Come in,” she says, stepping back into the hall. “And if you track any mud into my new house, I will throw both of you out into the rain.” Buck and the alleged Bobby Nash both look at her with big blue eyes. She narrows her eyes back. “No matter how cute you are.”
The kitten Buck is claiming to be Bobby meows at her in a way that she is now conditioned to relate to the way that her husband hums in agreement when she rants after a long day. Buck holds him with almost comical care, tip-toeing his shoes off, then his socks, and padding his way down her hallway with easy familiarity. It would feel presumptuous, coming from almost anyone else, but Buck has the same pass that May and Harry do, makes the house seem a little less suffocating the way only her kids can.
They sit in the living room, where Athena makes Buck wait for her to get him a towel and a warm mug of hot cocoa, because she will not have him catch his death of cold while in her home.
“Thanks, ‘thena!” he grins at her, making no move to pick up the steaming mug from the table, presumably because of the small ball of fur in his hands. As if knowing this, the little kitten makes a rrrrreow noise and hops neatly onto the couch beside Buck, almost polite in the way it promptly sits and curls its tail around itself. It is, Athena is forced to notice, a very Bobby-esque move.
“Now,” she says, sitting down herself. “What’s this about Bobby being a cat?”
Buck tells the truth. He doesn’t know how else to do it. Athena listens the whole time, expression inscrutable.
“I think I can fix it!” Buck concludes, waving his hands in a placating gesture. “I just- it’ll take me some time, but I’m pretty sure I can make him human again. He’ll be a cat for um, a day or two! A week, at most. I’m 99% sure.” The cat that is perhaps Bobby meows. Buck’s smile twitches slightly.
“Ninety,” he corrects.
Athena takes a beat to collect herself. “You’re telling me,” she says slowly. “That magic is real.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been in contact with a magical community since before you started at the 118.”
“Yup.”
“And that you leveraged those magical contacts to…bring my husband back from the dead.”
“I mean, I did the hard part myself, but yeah.”
“...as a cat.”
“I did say I only knew a few tricks.”
Athena presses her hands to her face, and for a moment Buck reaches out, concerned, hand hovering over her shoulder. Then she looks up at him again, and hugs him so tightly that it forces his breath from his lungs.
“I don’t know what we did to deserve you, Evan Buckley,” she says.
“What do you mean you can’t keep him with you?” Buck exclaims.
Athena gives him a Look. “Harry is allergic to cat hair,” she says. “I’m not keeping my baby out of the house, Buck.”
“But-” Buck splutters. “This is Bobby’s house too!”
“Not while he can’t reach the kitchen cabinets, it’s not.”
As if to prove her words, there’s a clattering sound from the kitchen. Buck and Athena look at each other, then at the empty space where Bobby was. They run to the kitchen.
One of the kitchen cabinets is open, and there below is Bobby, who is currently meowing despondently underneath a box of spices.
“Bobby!” Buck scoops him up, while Athena turns over the box. He checks him for injuries, while Bobby bats him in the face with the closest expression a cat can have to exasperated. Buck wrinkles his nose back, then looks at Athena. She’s looking at the box in her hands with the strangest expression on her face.
“Athena?”
“...Sri Lankan cinnamon,” she says, nonsensically. When Buck looks at her questioningly, she lifts the box, revealing the name of the spice written in Bobby’s handwriting over the box. Her eyes are soft. “It was his secret ingredient for hot cocoa. I forgot.”
Buck’s eyes widen. “He must’ve smelled it from my cocoa!” he looks down at Bobby, who nods his little cat head.
Athena moves closer, runs a hand over Bobby’s head. Buck realizes, in that moment, that she’d been holding back on starting to believe his crazy story until this exact moment. He’s pretty impressed, actually. She did very well pretending to go along with what she must’ve thought were the ravings of a man in the midst of a mental breakdown.
“So,” he says. “Can he stay with you?”
Athena looks up at him, eyes red at the edges. “Still no,” she says.
Buck splutters. Bobby meows in a way that can only be interpreted as a laugh. “Where am I supposed to take him, then!?”
“Buck,” Chimney says, coming up the loft stairs. “Why is there a cat in the station.”
“Station cat,” Buck explains.
“I did not approve a station cat.”
“We all did,” Hen informs him from the sofa. “Majority rules.”
“Are you starting a coup against me? Is that what this is?”
“Yes, Chim,” Buck says from the kitchen. “We start with the cat, and next thing you know Hen’s the interim captain.”
“Hen refused the position!” Chim splutters. “I offered!”
“It was my secret plan all along,” Hen tells him.
“A man who refuses a cat is not fit to be a captain,” Eddie intones, not looking away from where he’s leaning against the railing, staring at Buck cooking with a small cat nudging against his elbow.
Ravi nods sagely. “Sun Tzu.”
Chimney throws up his hands. “Okay! Fine!” he splutters. “I guess we have a station cat now! Everyone happy?”
A chorus of nods. Chimney sighs. “I gotta figure out if there’s paperwork for approving a station pet now,” he groans. “The paybump was not worth this shit.”
A meow. Chimney looks down. The cat is bumping their little head against his knee, which is cute but not surprising. The surprising part is the slip of paper in its mouth. Chimney leans down, takes it out, gives the cat a pet, because it’s not their fault that his station is full of traitors.
He looks at the paper. Frowns.
“Buckley,” he says. “Did you let your cat into the captain’s office to troll me?”
He waves the pet approval form at Buck. Buck stares at him guilelessly. “Do I look like I could do that?” he asks, all innocence.
“I fuckin’ hate this circus,” Chimney informs the loft at large. The cat meows, as if in commiseration.
Hen would like to state for the record that she loves cats. She also loves winding up her best friend, so this is really a win-win situation.
“Aren’t you adorable,” she coos, scritching the cat under his chin. The cat lets her for a bit, before turning away, weirdly like it’s being polite. She looks at Buck, who’s looking up something on his phone that involves a lot of muttering under his breath. She really does not want to know.
(Who is she kidding, she totally wants to know. But it’s fine, knowing them, it’ll come out at some point.)
“What’s the little guy’s name, anyways?” she asks him. Buck looks up, startled.
“Bobby,” he says, then looks a little like he regrets saying it.
The entire loft freezes.
Ravi is the first one to react. “Did you name. The cat. Bobby.”
“...no.”
Eddie looks at him, all concerned doe eyes, apparently taking a break from thirsting over Buck beside a small cat to worry about Buck’s mental health. “Buck…” he says. “You just happened to find a cat named after Bobby?”
“Uh, no?”
Chimney throws his hands into the air. She’s pretty sure he’s two gestures away from dislocating at least one shoulder. “Are you having a breakdown?” he demands. “Do I need to put you on mental health leave?”
Buck’s spluttered “What, no!” comes two seconds before Hen’s reflexive “Well, that doesn’t seem like a good idea, historically speaking.”
That makes everyone stare at her instead.
“Did you just make a lawsuit joke?” Buck demands. “Hen! Too soon!”
“It’s been like six years, get over it!”
“Oh my god.”
“So are we ignoring Buck’s potential mental breakdown, or what?” Ravi asks.
Buck sighs loudly. “I am not having a mental breakdown,” he informs everyone. Even the cat meows in disbelief at that.
“Bobby would beg to differ,” Eddie tells him. Buck glares at the cat.
“I know.”
The cat meows again, and Buck immediately stops glaring. It is, Hen admits, a very Bobby move.
Chimney sighs, rubs his temples. “You know what? I don’t want to deal with the paperwork for whatever is going on with you,” he says.
Buck rolls his eyes. “It’s not my fault he’s named Bobby,” he whines. Eddie pets his shoulder, looking less worried but still extremely gay. Hen decides not to point out how long his hand lingers on Buck’s biceps.
One mental breakdown at a time.
“What’re you looking up?” Eddie asks, leaning against Buck on the station couch. It’s been a q-word shift, and if Eddie believed in jinxes he might believe that cat Bobby is a sign of good luck.
Buck doesn’t look up from his phone. “Grave robbing.”
Eddie, who has known Buck for eight years and loved him for nearly as long (a recent realization, he’s working on it, if by working on it you mean walking into walls trying not to ogle his best friend and love of his life. Chris has been insufferable. Hen has been worse), chooses not to panic at these admittedly very worrying words.
“Why?” he asks, calmly.
“A project.”
“...need some clarification there, bud.”
Buck looks up. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I won’t be doing any grave robbing.”
Eddie considers being concerned about the inflection. Chooses not to. What would Buck even do? It was Buck, he wouldn’t do anything wrong. He has a medal of valor!
“Let me know if you need anything?” he asks instead, nudging Buck’s shoulder. Buck looks at him, eyes clear and blue and beautiful, happier than he’s been in a while. That cat really has been good for him, even if his naming choices were insane.
“Always,” Buck says, grinning so big and sweet that Eddie leans closer despite himself. What was the worst that could happen?
A blur of grey, and Eddie hisses and jerks away as a small claw lands on his pant leg. Bobby the cat looks up at him with the most judgmental eyes he’s ever seen on a cat. Honestly, it might rank in the top ten most judgmental eyes he’s ever seen, period.
“What the fuck,” he says.
Buck sighs. “No PDA in the station,” he explains.
“What?”
He scoops the cat up, and it should be illegal for someone to look that adorable holding a small animal. It almost makes Eddie not process what he said.
But he does. He blinks, flushing. “Wait, what?”
“I think I can get you back properly,” Buck informs Bobby. Bobby nudges his head against Buck’s arm, and it feels so much like his quiet approval that Buck feels alit with it. He stirs the ground beef in the pan some more, smells it, then tosses it in a bowl with the rice and lentils.
Bobby watches him toss in the spices. “I have a friend,” Buck explains. “Who can- um. I don’t want to call it graverobbing, but--” a little wiggle of the fingers, a little shake of a teaspoon. “-- you know.”
Bobby looks at him judgementally. “It’ll be fine!” Buck insists. He keeps adding spices by muscle memory, and he doesn’t notice his mistake until Bobby meows in such sharp judgment that his hand freezes on the third teaspoon.
“Shit,” he says.
Bobby turns towards him.
“I can explain.”
A meow.
“I usually only make it like this at Eddie’s place!”
Bobby slowly steps over to the mixing bowl.
“Bobby, please-” Buck hisses, eyes wide and panicked. Bobby stares at him with big blue cat eyes, gives a slow mrrrrrp, and bats the bowl off the counter.
“What the fuck?” Ravi asks, pausing on his way to the stairs.
Bobby stares at Buck accusingly. Buck hangs his head. “I added too much paprika,” he explains guiltily.
Ravi opens his mouth, closes it. Walks away.
Eddie’s head pops up. “Did you say paprika? I love paprika.”
“I know,” Buck says miserably. Bobby just stares at him implacably, and Buck can read the words in his eyes as clear as day: don’t fuck with my recipe because of your big gay crush.
“I know,” Buck repeats, even more sheepish. He picks up the bowl, and finishes the casserole with the right amount of paprika. If he passes a little shaker of extra to Eddie at the table- well, Bobby can’t begrudge him that much, at least.
Ravi would like to say for the record that they make it almost 48 hours without a single call. He’s pretty sure it’s because of the cat. Even if calling him Bobby feels deeply weird.
It’s at hour forty that the bell finally rings, and they all rush into the engine with the energy of a group who’re half-relieved to be finally doing their jobs. It’s a minor fire in a small store clustered in a corner of the city, one of those indie bookshops that Ravi always means to go to but never quite gets around to.
Buck hops out first, jogging towards the young woman in front of the store, face faintly lined with soot. “Monica!” he says. Oh, he knows her.
“Buck,” she greets back. Behind them, Ravi inspects the store. It looks like the fire’s already out, but looking around wouldn’t hurt.
“What happened here?” Chimney asks her.
“Some assholes were dealing with things they don’t know how to control,” she grouses. “I usually keep an eye out for this kind of stuff, but it got a bit out of hand.”
“Are they around?” Chimney looks around, Hen and Eddie at his shoulders, ready to take a look at her. Eddie looks a little put out, and Ravi decides judiciously not to think about why.
He goes into the store instead, to her voice saying “I didn’t notice, I was busy leaving myself.”
The store is mostly intact, from what he can tell. Shelves and shelves of books at various stages of wear, some looking older than others. It’s a bit haphazard looking, books that look like they could be pretty valuable, leather-bound and gold-foiled, sitting side by side with mass-produced paperbacks. Not like Ravi’s one to judge, though. His sister has openly wept once at the state of his own bookshelf. Apparently organizing by color was unhinged or something.
Ravi wanders deeper inside, looking for the source of the fire. It comes from a small storage space in the back of the shop, behind some heavy-looking shelves. Ravi opens the door, fully expecting to just see smolders.
Instead, an arm grabs him around the neck, and he’s dragged into the room.
“What-”
“Shut up,” a man says into his ear. “You’re gonna stay here, and you’re gonna keep quiet until we finish what we came here for.” Ravi feels the tip of something sharp against his side, and he chooses not to speak. The A-shift really did suck ass sometimes. On what other shift would he get taken hostage checking out a minor fire?
He gets roughly turned around, and sees another man in a hoodie looking frantically through the shelves. Weirdly, these ones weren’t just full of books. There were other things here too, crystals and wooden boxes and jewelry.
None of which were what the guys were looking for, going by the frustrated sounds they were making.
“Um,” Ravi tries. “You know that I have to report back to my captain, right?”
A nudge at his side. “You’re gonna keep quiet.”
Or what? Ravi isn’t stupid enough to say. He’s surprised at how almost boring being a hostage is. He’s pretty sure it’s a bad sign that he’s been infected by the rest of the team.
“Ravi?” he hears from outside. The hold around his neck gets tighter.
“Who is that.” the guy demands.
Before Ravi can inform him, the door swings open, and Buck stares at the scene in front of him. “What-”
Several things happen in quick succession.
Buck shifts his body into a ready position, the guy holding Ravi starts to shout something, and the guy looking through the shelves yelps as a tiny grey blur falls on top of him.
“Ravi!” Buck shouts, tackling Ravi in an extremely Buck move. The guy holding him yells, and Ravi can feel something slide against his turnouts as he collapses to the floor, Buck on top of him. Behind them, there’s a crash, a pop, and the smell of sage and smoke.
Buck sits up. “Bobby!”
Ravi blinks rapidly at him, confused. “Is there a fire?”
“We’re clear,” a voice that is clearly a hallucination says. Ravi tries to roll over, is impeded by Buck’s heavy-ass bulk. Then he isn’t, because Buck is scrambling over his body, and he turns just in time to see Buck barrelling into what is clearly a very alive, very nonplussed, very naked Bobby.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think to ask Monica,” Buck bemoans, two weeks after Bobby becomes human again.
Bobby hums, bemused, and keeps stirring the bechamel on the stove. The burners in his new house were very shiny and new, and he’s glad that he’s alive to use them.
“I mean, I was gonna rob your grave!” Buck is chopping up spinach as he speaks, quick and easy.
“Maybe don’t say that in a house with my police sergeant wife,” Bobby advises him.
Buck shrugs. “Athena would let me off,” he says. “If it was for you.”
Bobby laughs, not disagreeing. “She’d let you off because she has a soft spot for you,” he says. He looks at Buck, bright and alive and not under harsh lab lights. He is so glad he is here with him in this moment. “I’m glad you didn’t have to dig up my grave, kid.”
Buck smiles at him, then looks down, fiddling with his apron strings. “I was worried,” he admits. “Everyone said- you can only really bring someone back if they want to come back.”
“You didn’t think I’d want to come back?”
A shrug. “I mean, I know you love the team, and Athena and May and Harry and Michael, but I- I know there was Marcy, over there. And your kids. It wasn’t a guarantee.”
And Bobby has to turn off the stove at that, walking over to put a hand on Buck’s shoulder, catching his eyes. “It was a guarantee,” he promises, watching the smile come over Buck’s face. “I’ll always come back for my family. For you.”
He lets out a huff of laughter as Buck throws his arms around him at that, clinging and joyous the way that they all love him best. After a few long moments, there’s a knock at the door, and Bobby lets go of Buck to slide an arm around his wife’s waist.
“You almost ready?” she asks him. “Everyone’s here, and we’re waiting for the guest of honor.”
Bobby looks at Buck, who grins at him. “I’ll finish it up here,” he says. Bobby smiles at him, turns back to Athena, nods.
“Lead the way,” he tells her, and he goes out to meet the rest of his family for what will be, God and apparently Buck willing, far from the last time.