Chim tries her best not to think about Buck’s sister, honestly. When she’s first mentioned, the slow drip feed of information she’s been using to try and understand her overexcitable puppy of a teammate, Chim pictures a Buckette, as Athena suggests, playfully shivers and tells Hen there’s two of them! But the more she hears about her— Maddie, she knows now, wonders if she’s a Madison or a Madeline or what— the more she can’t help but be intrigued.
When Buck needs extra sets of hands to move Maddie into her new apartment, Chim volunteers partially out of the instinct to help and solve problems that drives her to being a paramedic, but also… a little bit because of her aching curiosity. Sue her! She wants to know! She’s nosy, has always been. Halle Han, expert at sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong, or so Hen tells her. (Fondly, now, but Chim recalls vividly the way Hen had spit it when she’d stepped in it and told Karen she was dead. That one had taken some groveling.)
The thing is, Chim hadn’t expected Maddie Buckley to be gorgeous. To be a head shorter than her younger brother, with dark, sharp eyes that catch everything happening around her and a smile that makes Chim a little weak in the knees. And she’s charming, too, which is unfair— kind and smart and silly even as her past follows her like a specter. Chim makes an offhand Mission Impossible joke and she doesn’t get it and all she can think is I could show her. We could watch it together.
Uh-oh.
But Maddie’s spooked, that’s easy to see even without the story behind her tense shoulders and nervous shifting. So Chim resolves to go slow— to be patient— and not to count her out before they can really get to know each other. So she doesn’t flirt, not really, just rolls up her sleeves and gets to work. She’s sweet to Maddie the way she might be to anyone, budding crush or not, and hopes the considering glint in Maddie’s eye is interest.
The more she gets to know Buck’s sister, the easier it is to realize she’s worth the effort. Chim isn’t afraid to take whatever this could be at her pace, if only Maddie’ll be open to it. First, Chim has to test the waters.
She gets her moment after Maddie first learns about the rebar incident, after the dust of sharing a crazy story settles and Maddie’s gaze flickers with understanding as it traces Chim’s scar.
“My girlfriend,” she says, careful not to lean too heavily on the words even though she’s waiting for Maddie’s reaction with baited breath, “she never came to visit me in the hospital.” The retelling of it catches in Chim’s chest, and she’s surprised at the way she has to swallow down her grief at the memory. She pushes down the thought and ignores it, trudges on. “The 118 was really— they stepped up, y’know?”
Maddie takes her hand and nods. “I’m glad they did,” she says after a moment, warm and tender and not even flinching at the pronoun. “I don’t think anyone should ever have to— to feel alone like that.” Chim sees the way the words get stopped up in her throat, the emotion she blinks back at it all. She doesn’t know everything about Maddie’s past, not by a long shot, but she knows enough to know Maddie has more than enough experience with being alone.
She nods, uncertain over the new territory. Chim never wants to walk on eggshells with Maddie, to make her feel broken, but she also doesn’t want to say something stupid and ruin whatever careful steps they’ve been taking together. “I think,” she says slowly, “that I always kind of leave a gap between myself and other people. And it’s something I’ve been trying to get better at with the team, but it’s… I’m not exactly surprised Tatiana left, y’know?”
She watches Maddie’s face twitch into a little frown. “She shouldn’t have left you like that, in the hospital, going through who knows what— you’re not a perfect woman, Halle Han, but that doesn’t mean you deserve… grief.”
“Well,” Chim begins, a little flustered at her full name coming at her, “I think the same could be said about you, Maddie Buckley.”
Maddie blinks, an inescapable tension crawling up her spine. Chim loosens her hold on Maddie’s hand, not wanting to trap her, and after a long, still moment, Maddie flexes her fingers against the back of Chim’s hand, an apology and a thank you all in one.
So she’s made Maddie aware of the possibility, or of Chim’s interest in women at the very least, which, knowing Maddie, hasn’t clicked as interest in her. Chim thinks Maddie is the kind of person who can’t imagine good things happening to her— not that she’s confident she’s a good thing, but. The point stands.
It’s not until the night at karaoke that Chim starts to feel that thrumming in her chest, the certainty that this could be something, might already be. Maddie is shining under the lights, loose and light and goofy with her in a way that feels like a hard-earned win. They dance around each other on stage, giggling and singing, and for all Chim’s concerned, there might not even be anyone in the audience. The applause at the end, paired with a few whistles, jars her from her reverie, and she suddenly realizes she’s out of breath.
Chim believes in chivalry, so she offers a hand to help Maddie offstage, thrilled at the easy way Maddie grips tight and the little bounce in her step as she hits the ground. They’re both tipsy, not quite drunk and not quite sober, and they return to their beers with bright smiles on their faces.
“When I was a kid,” Maddie says, pausing for a long pull from her bottle, “I had this friend— best friend, really— Sarah. I was, like, obsessed with her. And it was mutual, I think.”
Chim bites down on her smile imagining it, hums to let Maddie know she’s listening.
“But then, there was this other girl, and she was also a Sarah, which I guess was like a big thing or whatever,” Maddie continues, and Chim can’t help her laugh then, even as Maddie chastises her with a knock of their shoulders. “And suddenly, Sarah B and Sarah S— that’s my best friend and the other one— were, like, inseparable. It made me kind of crazy, y’know? Like, certifiable. I begged my parents to change my name to Sarah for a month.”
Chim gasps, the sound sliding easily into new bubbles of laughter. “The high school girl bestfriendship,” she says, once she’s recovered, pressing one hand teasingly over her heart, “I know it well.”
Maddie heaves out a dramatic sigh. “God, were we all that messy?”
Chim grins. “Hey, speak for yourself. I stayed messy.”
Something flits across Maddie’s expression, then, only so open and vulnerable with the addition of booze, and Chim feels like an intruder for having witnessed it. But she recovers quickly enough, propping her chin up on her fist, elbow on the bar top.
“Well,” she says, like she’s coming back around to a point, “I didn’t realize until college that it was, uh, not exactly the kind of irrationality prompted by best friends. I had a boyfriend in high school, so I didn’t even think— it’s not like my parents were explaining the distinctions between queer identities, y’know?”
She has an inkling as to what kind of parents the Buckleys were from Buck, less so from Maddie, but if Chim is right, she thinks there wasn’t much sitting down to talk happening at all in that household, birds and the bees or otherwise.
Still, it’s easy to trace the lines of Maddie’s story. Chim has something similar, the first time she realized she could date a woman— though hers involves Kevin and a dare and she doesn’t come off especially well in it.
“Who was she?” She asks, because she’s curious but also because Maddie has gotten lost in her own thoughts for a second. The question drags her back out to Chim’s side and she smiles ruefully at being caught out, at Chim’s politeness in not mentioning that she’d retreated.
“Maya,” Maddie says, something like the ache of nostalgia painting the word, “she was my lab partner in intro to biology. She was a physics major and it was just a pre-req for her major, but I adored it.”
“And her?” Chim asks, teasing, and Maddie rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, of course. We never dated or anything, not officially, but there was a semester-long…” She pauses, wiggles her head a little like she’s shaking loose the right word. “Situationship? Is that? God, I’ve been talking to my brother too much.”
Chim bursts out into bright laughter at that. She’s sure Buck has had his fair share of not-quite relationships, wonders how forward he’s been with those stats to Maddie.
“Sounds about right,” she replies, taking another swig from her bottle. “The realization that leads to more… fruitful experiences in the future.”
The hum of electricity in Maddie’s movements dies down ever so slightly, another fleeting expression passing over her face. “Yeah,” she says, after a beat too long.
Christ, Chim thinks, is she capable of not stepping in it? She hates to be the cause of that look on Maddie’s face, even for a second. She knows there’s something happening— present tense? Past?— with Maddie and an ex-husband, knows he must be the reason she’s so tense and nervous, the reason she seems hesitant to settle down in LA even at the beckoning of her younger brother. Maybe she’s unwittingly reminded Maddie of that whole affair.
“Well then,” Chim decides, hoisting her beer bottle in the air, “a toast. To the women who helped us realize we were… bi?”
There’s a smile finding its way back onto Maddie’s lips as she joins her, and Chim finds herself thrilled to have put it there. “Bi,” she confirms, and then, with zero regard for Chim’s heartbeat, she adds, “and to more… fruitful experiences in the future,” and winks.
They clink bottles and Chim knocks back another large gulp of beer, hoping to settle the red rising in her cheeks, but she can’t mind too much, not when Maddie’s wearing that infuriatingly proud little smirk.
After that, it feels like she’s constantly embarrassing herself around Maddie. The line between friends and dating seems to keep shuffling around, and it’s got Chim about full to bursting with nerves. She loves being Maddie’s friend, really, but now that the promise of… fruit seems to be on the table, it’s hard to ignore. Buck points it out, the man incapable of seeing an elephant in a room without voicing it, and he’s not the only one. Hen keeps raising her eyebrows at Chim in that meaningful way she has, like she knows something she doesn’t. But Chim knows, okay, like she can’t get it out of her head knows. It’s just that she’s waiting for Maddie to take the next step, waiting for her to be ready.
Permanently bent on surprising her, Maddie finds Chim in the station bay, while she’s pretending to scrub the same spot on the truck for as long as humanly possible.
“Hal,” she calls, lips quirking up when Chim jumps ever so slightly. People have been calling her Chim or Chimney ever since she got stuck in one, with only Mr. and Mrs. Lee ever really using her first name, and she’s been not so subtly avoiding them for long enough that it seems strange to be referred to that way. Nobody’s ever called her Hal, though, the shorthand for Halle living just on Maddie’s tongue, and Chim likes it that way.
“Maddie!” She replies, anxiety fighting with her genuine joy to see the other woman. “Did I know you were coming? Are you looking for Buck?”
Maddie’s bouncing on her toes ever-so-slightly as she shakes her head. “No and no,” she says, stepping closer. “I’m here for you. I wanted to— to tell you something.”
Chim abandons all pretense of work, tucking the rag in her back pocket and letting all her attention rest on Maddie. “Hit me.”
“You’re so—“ Maddie cuts herself off, hums like she’s searching for the right word. “Kind, Hal, you’re so kind. The kindest woman I’ve ever met, maybe. Like a beating heart of a person, god, and it’s… and you’ve been so patient with me.“
Chim’s heart picks up into double-time. “You deserve patience, Maddie,” she says, hears Maddie’s desperate little scoff in response. “I told you, I’ll give you all the time in the world.”
Maddie runs her hand along the back of her neck, sighs. “I know,” she says quietly, and Chim knows she means it. “I trust you.” She laughs a little, like she’s shocked she’s even said the words. “I trust you, Hal— and that’s, that’s bigger than all the other stuff.”
Chim steps closer. “That’s all I want,” she says, meaning it, but Maddie steps closer, hooks one finger into Chim’s belt loops and plays with the fabric.
“All you want?” She teases, and Chim blinks.
“Maddie?” She asks, because she needs to be certain, needs to be sure.
“Because I keep looking at those stupid rolled up sleeves of yours and your smile and thinking that— that I might want something else, too, if that’s okay.”
“Anything,” Chim breathes, and she means it.
Maddie pulls her into a kiss, then, curling her free hand into the hair at the nape of Chim’s neck and toying with it. For a moment, Chim is sure she’s dreaming— she’s probably had this one before— but then Maddie’s tongue swipes gently at the seam of her lips and drags her back down to Earth.
When they finally pull apart, aware of the eyes on them, Maddie’s baby brother among them, Maddie is smiling and Chim is smiling and then they’re both laughing. Chim rests her forehead against Maddie’s shoulder for a second, just to let her brain catch up with the rest of her body, and feels Maddie vibrate with her laughter.
“To be clear,” Maddie says, after Chim’s recovered, “I’m ready. For whatever this looks like with you, with us. So, Halle Han: can I take you out to dinner this weekend?”
Chim grins brightly, bounces up onto her toes to stamp a quick kiss to Maddie’s lips again now that she can. “It would be my distinct honor, Maddie Buckley.”
She can hardly hear herself think for the raucous applause.