Chapter Text
"She said they weren't bad people so I'm guessing they weren't abusive?"
It felt like a bucket of ice water had just been dumped on Buck's head. Chimney's question hit Buck harder than he ever thought it would. He hadn't thought about his parents in a decade, hadn't seen or talked to them in longer. He had stopped flinching away from the phantom hands long ago, stopped squirming when Bobby squeezed his shoulder or Chimney patted his back, learned that Hen's hugs were unconditional and loving, and absolutely thrived when any of them showed him affection. Most of all, he loved when Eddie pressed a knee into Buck's during meals at work, or when he sat far closer than necessary in the firetruck, he preened when the love of his life his best friend squeezed his bouncing knee or let his hands linger longer than normal for two "platonic best friends". Buck had stopped trying to prove his worth to his fire family since the lawsuit, and stopped trying to find fulfillment through useless hook-ups since before he met Eddie. Now, Buck was happy, his everlasting smile was no longer just a mask, and he felt /right/ in his own skin. His life was finally at a place where he you felt like he belonged, but at the mere mention of his parents, Buck felt like his walls were falling down.
Somehow, Buck managed to keep his face neutral as he answered Chimney.
"No, no, they weren't. They were just absent, you know?" Buck answered quickly. "I mean, they were in the house. They were cooking meals, washing clothes, usual stuff. Just it always felt like they were a million miles away."
"Huh, that must've been weird." Chimney mumbled.
No Buck thought miserably, not weird. Torturous.
"I just figured they liked each other more than they liked us. They weren't great with kids."
Buck hadn't technically lied. HIs parents weren't great with kids, no they were actually terrible. His parents cooked meals, and did laundry, at least before Maddie left, then it stopped being done for him, it hadn't helped that Maddie was the one doing the cooking and household chores most the time, in fact she cared more about him then anyone ever had. Like Buck said, their parents liked each other more than they liked their kids, at least more than they liked Buck. His parents were absent... half of the time. The other half... well, Buck didn't like to think about the other half. He hated thinking about the nights spent in his frozen room, shivering and starving, about the belts snapping down on his already purple body, or the fists pummeling towards him, about the cigarette butts being put out on his thighs or hands, his neck or arms. He hated thinking about the crisscrossing scars on his back from when he... scratch that, he couldn't think about that night, about where his dad's hands had been, the belt against his hands, the fire poker burning, where his father's cigarette... But it wasn't abuse. Sure it was painful, and shitty, and Buck never wished that on anyone else, but it wasn't abuse, right?
It was discipline. Or at least that's what his parents said. A beating or a burn when he was reckless or when he made excuses or got in his dad’s way. He was stripped of all his belongings, locked in his room and denied food when he got a poor grade or wasn't neat enough or asked for new things. He was disciplined because he was wrong, he wasn't enough, he was too much, it was his fault.
So Buck shoved it all down. He tried to be the perfect son that his parents wanted. He shut his mouth, ignored his ADHD, and tried to be what they wanted.
His parents' voices followed him into his adulthood. Even after getting his ADHD properly treated, and years of therapy, some days the voices of his parents echoed in his head telling him he didn't deserve all that he had in life, that he was tainted, wrong, disgusting. That he was worthless, unwanted, and unworthy of love.
Buck was just glad his parents weren't a part of his life anymore, after all, Maddie had always been a better parent than them anyways.