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Saying that it had fucked Eddie up to watch Buck go limp on the line at the top of the ladder and remain unresponsive after Chim started CPR would be an understatement. Saying that it fucked him up to watch Chim scream down at Buck’s unconscious body, to drive in the rain to Cedars not knowing if Buck’s heart had started again, to hold in air until he could feel Buck’s pulse, would be the understatement of the year. Maybe the decade if it had been that long since Shannon died.
Eddie knows he remembers more than Buck does, since he was in the coma, but sometimes Eddie wonders how he made it through that week. It’s only flashes now that come in uncomfortable reminders in the middle of the day, picking Chris up from school, or in the middle of a shift when equipment shifts in just the right way to throw Eddie back into the hours he waited in the ER waiting room until the fingernails he digs into his palms bring him back to reality.
He’s always been good at hiding things, though—out of survival as a kid, then as revenge to his parents, and out of caution when he first moved to LA. It’s something he hasn’t been able to shake and something that serves him well. Bobby only knows that Eddie was just as shaken by Buck’s coma as everyone else.
But he hates lying to Buck. He hates it. He’s never done it before, at least not longer than a few weeks when he was in the fight club, but ever since Buck sat at his kitchen table with his face in his hand, half-pouting and blue eyes shining, asking if Eddie remembered anything from being shot…
Eddie couldn’t meet Buck’s eyes when he told him that he only remembers flashes and how much pain he was in. He lied right through his teeth about remembering Buck’s hand reaching for him, clinging to it, wondering if Buck had been shot too, and the face frozen in his memory—his blood all over Buck’s clean shirt and pink lips, shocked and scared. How could he tell Buck? How could he say any of that?
He used it as an excuse to say “three minutes and seventeen seconds” on that night, wearing a suit that felt like a costume for a functioning adult, when it was really close to seven. He only counted the three-seventeen until Chim started CPR. It was almost four more before Eddie’s hands were the ones to bring him back.
Buck doesn’t know that either. Eddie never told him and he knows that if Buck did know, it would have been from Bobby, and Bobby wouldn’t have been able to give that detail without breaking down.
Eddie has been lying to Buck. He knows it isn’t the same thing, not by a long shot, starting and ending with the matter of sharing a last name, but he feels a lot like when he was lying to Shannon. Or lying to Christopher about Shannon.
Sometimes Eddie wants to slam his head against a wall with the Shannon of it all. It’s inescapable, the way he can see her face morphing with Buck’s hooked up to a ventilator, the bloody clothes he was handed and packing a bag for when Buck woke up, the hollowness ringing in his ears at her funeral being the same as when he watched Buck clawing at the pavement with his leg pinned, the same momentary suspension of all time in the split second he saw Christopher’s glasses around Buck’s neck and didn’t know if he had a son anymore, wanting to fix the broken look in Buck’s eyes when he showed up on Eddie’s doorstep after learning about his brother just as badly as he wanted to comfort Shannon when her mom got diagnosed—
The only reason he’d ever believe in a universe that can curse people is the curse on him, to time all tragedy in a neat little line, one after the other, or entwined enough to make it impossible to untangle for his flawed brain.
Maybe it’s because he’s been lying to Buck. Not telling him just how much being shot changed everything, not telling him that his heart was started again because of Eddie, not telling him that ever since that night, Eddie can’t stop thinking about Buck dying.
Even after Buck returns to work, seemingly good as new, and everyone is slightly on edge for the next few shifts, Eddie can’t stop seeing it. Thinking about it. He closes his eyes in fond exasperation in the middle of a shift and then he sees Buck’s body hanging there. He doesn’t get to a light switch right away and when he fumbles for it, he feels Buck’s still chest beneath his closed, pumping fists. He puts Christopher to bed and he hears the ECMO beeping in the deafening silence.
But it’s been two months and Eddie is doing okay. He’s doing better than he was last week, and that was better than the week before, so he takes deep breaths and reminds himself that Buck is alive and well whenever he closes his eyes to sleep. He makes adequate dinners for Chris when Buck isn’t there, puts him to bed without the funny voices Buck does to make Chris laugh, and sleeps in an empty bed like he’s done for the past six years.
An empty heart in an empty bed pretending he’s holding someone in his arms.
Eddie writes down his thoughts, journal his dreams, but the pages stay empty. He hasn’t been able to describe how it all feels. Like he’s trapped with nowhere to go. With no escape.
And then it becomes real, the fear he’s been trying to articulate.
It’s eleven in the morning and his shift has been peaceful so far. Boring without Buck since he had to switch with someone to make it to a dentist’s appointment. Bobby didn’t even blink; Buck hates the dentist and the anxiety of having reschedule is even worse than what he feels once he’s there. On their way to a call, Eddie wonders if everyone else knows that. Or if it’s just him. Him and all his knowledge about everything Buck.
Something doesn’t feel right when he gets out of the truck. He sees Athena managing traffic and her hair is different than when he last saw her, and when he turns around to work with Ravi and secure the driver who hit a few pedestrians, Ravi is staring at someone across the street.
Eddie can’t stop and think about if this intersection is familiar because Chim and Hen are frantic around whoever Ravi is staring at. Bobby is nowhere to be seen. Athena is behind him and her gasp is loud enough to shock him to his feet, pushing Ravi’s shoulder to get a better vantage point.
Ravi spins on his heels and blocks Eddie’s view with both palms pressed onto his uniform. “Eddie…” Ravi tries, and another voice creeps into Eddie’s mind. Buck, trying to stop him from seeing something at a scene.
Eddie takes a step back and debates shoving Ravi when a hand lands on his shoulder. He turns and sees—
What the fuck.
“Shannon?” he whispers.
She’s in a firefighter’s uniform—no, one from the 118, the same one he’s wearing, and she looks like—well, if she wasn’t dead, she’d look halfway to it, with the horror all over her face. She doesn’t answer him.
She turns her eyes in the same direction as where Ravi was looking. Eddie turns to follow and Ravi isn’t there to stop him anymore. Chim is rushing towards him like he did the day that—
No, no, no, no.
Eddie breaks into a run and barrels past Chim and his increasing protests until he reaches Hen, kneeling on the ground next to someone in a C-collar, partially blocking them, but Eddie knows those pants. He knows those shoes.
Hen stands and backs up in the way Eddie has seen her do a dozen times when she can’t help a patient anymore, when there’s no hope or help for them anymore, when all she has to do is wait for death to strike before she can move on.
Eddie’s gut is swept out from under him, falling as far as the seventh floor loft he knows so well, with Buck’s bloodied face on the ground before him.
He doesn’t have control over what his body does, but he’s screaming and grasping at the pavement that’s ripping his fingertips. He tries to be gentle when he pushes the hair from those open crystal-clear blue eyes.
He wants to hold him, and he can’t. There’s rope being thrown around his neck to pull him away and he has to get it off, he has to break it, he has to break free. Eddie has to touch him again, just once, just to—to save him, to do anything. To restart his heart.
Eddie’s hands are tied once his throat is free. He can scream but he can’t reach out, and he knows what it’s like to hold that body in his arms, breathing and alive, even if asleep, and he just wants to reach for it, however impossible and however much he knows all of that is in the past.
Eddie’s hands are pulled farther and farther away, and he kicks and screams but no one saves him, no one saves the man he loves who’s dying on the street, no one stops his body from being tied down to metal tracks. No one comes to cut him loose before there’s an engine rumbling in the distance, and everything is—
Eddie pants into his pillow in the darkness of his bedroom, throat raw from…screaming?
He sits up and strips of his sweat-soaked shirt and pants, walking to the windows and peeking out the curtain, to find he was dreaming.
Eddie takes a deep breath and stares at the tree outside his window. He’s in LA, not in combat. He’s at home, with Christopher, in his room, not back on the street with Shannon being loaded into the ambulance, or at the hospital waiting for Buck to wake up, and he’s safe, sure, but is—
Fuck being closed-off. He needs to know. He needs to know if Buck is okay and he needs to know now, because this is never-ending, and if he can’t…
By the time his emergency contacts are glaring up at him, Eddie’s hands are shaking. He presses his thumb onto Buck’s number until it dials and he sits back down on the edge of his bed to try and breathe. His chest is being pushed in by something heavy, something he’s imagining and can’t get rid of.
Buck answers with a sleepy groan and an “Eds?” that has tears bursting from Eddie’s eyes in uncontrollable waves. “Everything okay?”
Eddie can only gasp, words unable to slip through his sobs even if he had words to offer. He doesn’t have an excuse and he can’t just say why he called. Can he?
“Eddie?”
He can’t answer because he can’t lie to Buck again, but he can’t vocalize the truth either, not when the truth is that fearing Buck’s death means something more than not wanting to lose your best friend.
“What’s going on?” Buck’s voice is clearer now, wide awake.
“Buck, I—I can’t—” Eddie’s throat is tightening in tandem with his chest no matter the breaths he takes, slower and deeper each time. He knows what this is; he’s been through it before.
“Slow down, Eddie. I can’t understand you,” Buck answers in a soft voice.
Eddie pays attention to the sounds in the background: shuffling fabric, foots on stairs, the rattle of keys and maybe a door closing, and then it all goes quiet—an echo chamber with just his breathing and Buck’s.
“You still there?” Buck asks.
“Y-yeah,” Eddie gasps. “I’m—I’m going crazy. I don’t know…”
There’s a beep on the other end before Buck’s footsteps start up again, a sound that Eddie starts timing his breaths with.
“I need…” he starts again.
Another beep and the sound of a door opening and closing.
“I’m getting in the Jeep,” Buck explains, keeping his voice quiet. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
At his declaration that didn’t depend on Eddie having to ask, the wind is pushed from Eddie’s lungs in a giant sigh of relief. It makes it easier, now, to—
“I need you,” Eddie whispers, squeezing his eyes shut and running his hands along the blanket at his side to remind him of where he was.
“I’ll be right there, I promise,” Buck whispers back. “Just hang on.”
Buck wants to chew on his nails, but he refrains to keep both hands on the wheel. He taps his fingers on it in a senseless pattern that just increases in speed the closer he is to Eddie’s house, and he barely shuts off the Jeep before he’s leaping out of it and sprinting to the door.
He takes a deep breath and unlocks the front door as calmly as he can manage, not wanting to wake Chris up, and closes it behind him. His hands shake as he takes off his shoes, drops his keys on the table, and walks down the hall. When he opens the door to Eddie’s room, it goes easily. Nothing blocks it from the other side.
Eddie is on the edge of his bed near the end, with his elbows on his knees and head in his hands, bathed in the light of the dim lamp, and he looks up when Buck opens the door.
Nothing is amiss—nothing is on the floor, turned over, broken—nothing except the expression on Eddie’s face paired with dried tears and a tensed forehead. He looks appropriately emotional for being unable to speak through his sobs not ten minutes prior, not like…
A sigh eases its way from Buck’s lungs from the sight of Eddie’s relatively calm face.
Eddie must see it. His mouth drops open and then he’s shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Buck. I should’ve…”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Buck reassures him, grabbing the doorknob to swing the door shut, looking away from Eddie for a second to close it without making a sound. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
He looks back and Eddie is trembling, fresh tears rolling down his cheeks. “I’m not. I’m really not.”
Buck’s heart breaks for him and steps closer, tentatively, not knowing what Eddie needs right now. “It’s alright, I’m here anyway. Whatever you need, I—”
Eddie shakes his head again. “You know I’ve been struggling to not idolize Shannon, to start being realistic about what we were. And ever since she died and I realized how close we come to death every day, I’ve been scared of losing you, and now it’s…” He trails off and sniffles.
Oh, no. Buck knows what this is about and he’s…oh God. It’s not that he’s been ill-prepared for any of the conversations he’s had with people about watching him in the coma, it’s that Eddie is the only one that hasn’t approached him. Yet.
Buck’s luck has run out. He can’t lie now, not if Eddie asks him.
“Now it’s not a fear, it’s real.” Eddie’s tears come in stronger waves and he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes to stop it.
Buck doesn’t care if Eddie didn’t ask for it—he kneels in front of him and takes his hands to pull them from his hands. “Hey, it’s okay. Cry as much as you need.”
“I have! It hasn’t solved anything!” Eddie’s voice strains with desperation. He doesn’t take his hands out of Buck’s. “I keep crying and trying to move on but I can’t get it out of my head, Buck!”
“Get what out of your head?”
“You!” His voice cracks. “I drove that ambulance to the hospital with your dead body in the back and couldn’t stop thinking about how I hadn’t tried to save you. I couldn’t save Shannon either, because Hen and Chim, they—they did their best, but—”
“Breathe,” Buck soothes, running his thumbs over Eddie’s hands.
Eddie hiccups through his tears. “And if I didn’t try and they couldn’t save you, I would regret it forever, so when we stopped and got out, I—” He takes in a deep breath, shaking and uncontrolled. He’s not looking into Buck’s eyes. “I shoved Chim out of the way and got on your gurney to do CPR myself. I looked into your…”
His eyes snap to Buck’s and well up with more tears. “I couldn’t see those eyes,” he whispers. “I looked at your face and you were dead, just like Shannon, and I didn’t care about anything else until I cracked a few ribs and restarted your heart.”
Buck wants to reel from that. Wants to let himself be shocked, wants to fall over, wants to lean into Eddie’s legs on either side of his shoulders, and write fucking poetry about Eddie restarting his heart physically years after restarting it when Abby left.
He doesn’t do any of that. He can’t. Eddie’s face is broken and full sobs wrack his chest now as he tips into Buck’s steady kneeling figure.
“I got you, I got you,” Buck murmurs and hugs him, trying to balance and keep Eddie from slipping off the bed.
“I can’t keep going without—” Eddie hiccups again, twice then three times as he tries to catch his breath.
Buck runs a hand up and down his back with gentle shushing sounds.
“Without confronting that,” Eddie finishes.
Buck thought he knew were this was going, and he still might, but—confronting? What? Is this why Eddie called? Because he hasn’t been facing the fear of Buck dying, since the lightning strike?
“I know I’m not making any sense.” Eddie senses his confusion and sniffles, tears slowing again. “I’m sorry for scaring you."
“It’s okay, Eddie. I’m glad you called.” Buck keeps holding him until Eddie’s arms shift to properly hug Buck’s neck and sigh into his hair. When Eddie’s breathing has become steadier, Buck tries again, asking, “What’s going on?”
“I can’t lose you,” Eddie mumbles into the side of Buck’s head. “I keep seeing myself grieving you like I grieved her, except it wouldn’t be the same if you died tomorrow, because we aren’t.” He stops abruptly and inhales, a sharp whistling sound. “Like that.”
Oh. Buck is starting to get it. He wondered the same thing, a few years ago when Eddie was shot, and he had to justify to himself that—“Grief is grief. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.”
Even if it would hurt Buck in a different way. Now that he knows how much Eddie means to him. And he hates to think of Eddie grieving him the way he grieved Shannon, because he watched that in real time, and it…
Buck squeezes Eddie tightly, thankful for the presence of his body and his warmth, and the fact that he’s breathing, when Eddie pulls away to look Buck in the eye.
Eddie shakes his head rapidly. “No, Buck. It’s the exact same. We were…complicated when she died, yeah, but I loved her. And I love you. I’d say it’s the same, but it’s more, it’s so much more. And I’m driving myself crazy thinking about you dying without you ever knowing that, because to me, it’s so obvious.”
Buck thinks he might be dreaming right now. The way Eddie feels about him is more than what he felt for—
“There’s no other option. No other universe exists where I’m not in love with you,” Eddie rambles on, unaware of Buck’s internal panic attack.
Holy shit.
“And I can’t keep trying to go back for what I had with Shannon, I can’t keep wanting that, not when you’re right here, not when I only do it because I don’t think I can have you. I need you to tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Buck’s voice goes all high and airy because he can’t get enough air into his lungs. Hope is searing its way into his airways like a brand.
Eddie’s hands are still cupping the back of his neck from when he backed out of their embrace. “That I can have you. I need you. I can’t lose you.” His thumbs tighten on Buck’s increasingly warm skin. He starts to look unsure. “Or if you…”
Buck doesn’t let him finish. “Eddie.” He grabs Eddie’s face between his hands and leans in, pushing their foreheads together. “You can have me. You’ll always have me.”
Eddie starts crying again, but now, it doesn’t freak Buck out. He’s close to tears himself, so he closes his eyes and breathes in the smell of Eddie’s fresh pajamas and the familiarity of his bedroom. Of his home. Buck’s home.
“I’ve got you,” Buck whispers, hoping Eddie will remember the phrase how he uses it tonight and not when Eddie was bleeding out. Buck guides him up the bed until he can put Eddie’s feet beneath the covers and pull up the blankets.
Buck only lets go of him long enough to turn off the lamp and climb in on the other side of the bed, immediately sliding into Eddie’s outstretched arms and soothing him through the continued tears slipping from his closed eyes.
“I’m yours, Eddie,” Buck says into Eddie’s hair while he runs a hand through it. “I’m yours.”
Hen is startled out of a deep sleep by a slap on her arm, unmistakably from her wife.
“Phone,” Karen mumbles, still half-asleep.
The next thing Hen realizes is a sound not from her alarm, but from a call. She groans and regrettably lets go of Karen to roll over and pick up her phone. The caller ID has her shooting up in bed and swatting at Karen’s side.
“It’s Buck,” she manages, barely masking the panic in her voice right before she answers the phone. “Hello? Is everything okay?”
“Hey, Hen. Yeah, I’m good.”
“You sure?” Hen looks over at Karen, now facing her wife with enough attention to draw a frown on her lips. “You’re calling at…” she trails off and looks at the clock. “Three in the morning because you’re good?”
Before Buck can answer, Karen mouths, “Why is he not calling Eddie?”
The thought strikes a note of terror into Hen’s heart.
“I promise, I’m fine. Not in the hospital or even on my way there. I just need to ask a huge favor.”
“Anything.” Hen doesn’t even hesitate, though she’s grateful for her heart rate returning to normal.
“Can you be here in the morning to get Christopher to school?”
His use of here has Hen pausing. “Wait, you’re at Eddie’s house?”
“Yeah, he’s…”
“Please tell me he’s not in the hospital.”
“No, no, he’s fine, physically, just. I need to be with him. I am with him, and I don’t really want to—”
“Leave his side,” Hen finishes, never breaking eye contact with Karen. She doesn’t put the phone on speaker, since the sound quality would be noticeable on Buck’s end, but she does turn the volume up and angle the phone for Karen to hear. “Okay, what time do you need me there?”
“Thank you so much, Hen, really.” He draws in a breath to steady his voice. “Uh, I can probably get him up. Eddie won’t notice if I’m gone for five minutes. Chris has to leave at 7:45, so—”
“Buck,” Hen stops him again to repeat herself. “What time?”
“He’s up at 6:30.”
“Then I’ll be there at 6:25, silent as a church mouse. The spare key is still in the plant pot on the step?”
“Yeah,” Buck sighs. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. It’s what family is for.”
“Still,” Buck says, relief creeping into his voice. “And please don’t mention this to anyone. Besides Karen, obviously.”
“Of course, Buck. Now get back to sleep. I’ll be there in the morning.”
While wildly curious, Hen knows better than to ask questions that Buck probably wouldn’t know how to answer—such as why, if not for a physical emergency, Eddie would need to call someone in the middle of the night, why he’d call Buck, or what could lead to Buck being concerned enough to call Hen for this.
She can put a few pieces together, especially since Eddie did this exact thing back when he was at Dispatch, though with a few more…injuries to show for it. With that in mind, and because Eddie took Buck’s recent stint in the hospital the hardest—for obvious reasons—she’s mainly just concerned for her friend’s wellbeing, however capable are the hands that are taking care of him at the moment. And Buck’s hands are quite capable.
Buck thanks her again and hangs up, so Hen changes her alarm and puts her phone down to lay beside her wife again, whose eyes open again when the mattress shifts.
“I suppose we’re lucky he called for this while Denny is on a trip,” Karen says mid-yawn.
“I’d do it anyway,” Hen answers, snuggling into the blankets and wrapping an arm around Karen.
“I know you would.” Karen turns around to resume their earlier cuddling position and sighs once she’s comfortable with Hen’s hand drawn up against her chest. “Let me know if you or any of the Diazes need anything.”
“And Buck?” Hen snorts.
“Didn’t you hear me say any of the Diazes?” Karen suppresses a chuckle before she yawns again. “Okay, quiet now. Sleepy time.”
Hen smiles into the kiss she presses to the back of Karen’s neck.
Christopher wakes up to a gentle hand on his leg through the blanket. He opens one eye, facing the window, and wonders why Dad isn’t saying anything or shaking his shoulders.
“Hey, Chris.” An unfamiliar voice greets him instead.
Well, not entirely unfamiliar. That would have him screaming for the rooftops and scrambling for the flip phone in his nightstand for emergencies. He’d qualify a stranger breaking into the house an emergency.
But it’s Hen perched at the foot of his bed, giving him a smile that reminds him of how Mom used to look at him when she thought he wasn’t looking, and that’s when it hits him.
Why isn’t Dad waking him up?
Almost as if she’s anticipating the question, or maybe moms really can read minds, Hen pats his leg and trades her smile for a shake of her head. “Your dad is just fine, he’s sleeping in the other room. Buck is with him.”
Chris narrows his eyes. That’s not that unusual, but the last time he had someone else waking him up on a school day when both his dad and Buck were in the house was…
Oh.
“Why are you here, then?” It slips out a little harsher than Chris meant it.
Hen doesn’t seem to notice or mind. “Buck called me late last night and asked me to help get you to school this morning so he could stay with your dad and make sure he slept.”
That…sounds reasonable. He thinks. Maybe Dad just needs a break. He has more questions, though.
“What happened last night?” Christopher continues, now sitting up and rubbing his eyes.
Hen gets up and opens the curtains a few inches to let some light inside. “I don’t know.”
Chris stares at her.
She shrugs. “I can’t lie to you. I honestly don’t know.”
“Is he…” Chris doesn’t know how to ask this one. He wasn’t woken up from any noise, but that doesn’t mean anything. “Did…?”
Hen sits back down, closer to him this time. “Buck said your dad was physically fine. You know if they had to, they would have gone to a doctor or the hospital and called me or someone else much earlier.”
He doesn’t know how much she knows of the last time this happened, but given that everyone him and Dad know are all tied together at the hip, he wouldn’t be surprised if she knew every detail. Her words are a little reassuring.
Only a little.
Hen pulls out her phone and clicks the screen a few times before she shows it to Chris. On it is a text from “Buckaroo” that reads: “Note for Chris is on my nightstand. Thanks again.”
She lets him read it a few times before she takes her phone back and smiles. “Wanna check on them from the doorway while I grab the note?”
Chris nods. Ten minutes later, he’s creaking the door open to his dad’s bedroom just enough to peer through before he remembers Hen has to get inside. She does, with eerily silent footsteps, and retreats to stand behind him once she has the post-it in hand.
Sure enough, Dad and Buck are in the bed, both sound asleep and tangled together. Over the blanket and Dad’s torso is Buck’s arm while his head is only visible by a few tufts of hair sticking out from the back of Dad’s neck. Dad’s face, on the other hand, is completely visible from the hall light casting a dim glow on his skin, cheek smushed against the pillow with a peaceful expression on his face.
Hen’s hand lands on his shoulder and gives a comforting squeeze. “See?” she whispers. “Safe and sound.”
Eddie wakes to a familiar smell pressed against his face—a soft texture that he reaches out to pull between his fingertips, and—
He opens his eyes and leans back to find himself pressed close to Buck, the other man’s arm thrown over Eddie’s waist and hugging him tightly. Encasing his sleeping body like he was made to do it.
And those crystal blue eyes are open now too, blinking slowly as Buck wakes up. He takes a second like he always does in that hazy state of confusion and sleep, smiling once he sees Eddie still in his arms.
Eddie ducks his head to put it back against Buck’s chest and breathe in the scent of his pine tree detergent. It always reminds him of Christmas and his one trip north, the one time he’s ever seen snow.
“Good morning,” Buck mumbles. He cradles the back of Eddie’s head with one hand and runs the other up and down his back, voice deep and crackling with sleep and emotion.
Eddie tilts his head and sighs into the sliver of space he has between Buck’s chest and the mattress where his next words can be heard more clearly. “Morning, Evan.”
He half-expects Buck to stiffen around him, or maybe his movements to still on his back or in his hair, but Buck’s fingers keep playing with the strands at the back of his neck like this is normal for him. For them.
And maybe it is. Eddie knows that for him, this is the most natural and easy thing he’s done.
But last night—or way earlier that morning—is hazy in Eddie’s memories. Most of his nightmares are like that by the time the sun comes up: his brain’s way of helping him forget some nasty reminders of combat or whatever else it conjured in his dreamland.
Eddie takes a deep breath in along with the scent of Buck’s sweater, and shifts until he can sort-of make eye contact with Buck. “Were you able to make sense of what I said last night? I just—”
Buck nods.
“I don’t remember everything, except, uh…” Eddie hesitates. “The dream. I remember the dream.”
Buck’s blue eyes stare back at him, open and waiting, patient and accepting whatever Eddie was ready to share. There’s a bit of a worried crease between his eyebrows that pulls the skin of his birthmark inward.
“You died, in it. Just…” Eddie releases a [shaky] breath and closes his eyes. “Just like Shannon did. I couldn’t do anything to help you.”
He feels Buck’s thumb on his cheek, wiping away a tear he hadn’t even realized had escaped.
“Eddie, hey,” Buck whispers, shifting his hand to hold Eddie’s face. “Look at me.”
Eddie’s helpless but to listen. Buck is close to him now, their faces perfectly aligned and eyes looking into each other’s—full of worry, that intimate knowledge of what the other needs, the reassurance that only the other can provide.
“I’m okay.” Buck hands over that reassurance like he’d do it a thousand times over. “I know it was scary, alright, and I know. I know what it’s like to not wonder if the one you love is gonna wake up again. But I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Eddie’s tears come in stronger, at the gentle care in which Buck is holding and talking to him, at the reeling mention of ‘one you love’ dropped so casually, and he clings to Buck through it all, until his tears are slowing and he can breathe again.
“Last night,” Buck whispers, “you said something that I’ve thought a million times.”
Eddie wipes his eyes and blinks. “What?”
“That no matter what lives we have, no matter who we are, no matter what universe we’re in, I’ll always be in love with you.” Buck’s hand on his cheek moves again until his thumb is tracing Eddie’s lips as if they’re made of glass. “I’m not letting go of you, now or ever, if I can help it. You can have me, Eds. However you want me.”
There’s more to his last few words than someone else might think, but Buck isn’t talking to someone else. He’s talking to Eddie, who knows that when Buck offers his heart to someone and says they can do whatever they want with him, it’s because he’d rather someone have him in some way than none at all. Even if it’s not the way he wants.
But this time, Eddie knows it’s because Buck trusts him. He trusts Eddie to take care of his heart, to treat him better than he’s treated anyone else, to tell him what he needs to hear and not just what he wants to hear. Because he knows Eddie loves him and trusts him the same way.
And Eddie would say something equally sweet and romantic back, except he said it all last night and he’d rather repeat it when he can do it without crying, and he’d like to do something about Buck’s face being so close to his own.
Eddie reaches for the back of Buck’s neck to hold him close and bring their lips together in a slow kiss with none of the hesitance he’s always had in first kisses. Buck immediately kisses him back like he knows every inch of Eddie’s mouth and body that’s under his hands.
Buck’s lips are just as sweet as Eddie had imagined. Eddie kisses him until he can’t breathe anymore, and when he pulls back to take another breath, he kisses Buck again. He fights against the blankets covering them to move over Buck, legs tangling, torsos lined up, and to feel every piece of the curls on Buck’s head.
It’s a kiss he could stay in forever, in this pine-scented bedroom, with the soft lips of the man underneath him, holding each other with tender fingers and sure hands. With every movement, Eddie is more certain of this being the last first kiss he’ll share with anyone. More certain that this love will be his only one from here on out, the one that pushes him forward when he needs it and holds him back when he needs to be patient.
It’s in the never-ending comfort and softness of the bed he’s sharing with the love of his life that makes Eddie forget about what he’s doing and yawn. Right into Buck’s mouth.
Their lips separate with bursts of laughter and Buck just shakes his head. “You’re lucky I’m not easily offended.”
Eddie keeps laughing, realizing he’s basically crawled on top of Buck, and doesn’t give a single shit.
Buck leans forward to give him another brief kiss. “Why don’t we get you some coffee, hmm?” Gently, he pushes Eddie off of him and onto the mattress. “You go to the bathroom and maybe put some clothes on; I’ll start it.”
Eddie looks down at himself and realizes he’s only wearing the fresh sweatpants he put on before Buck came over last night. He hadn’t been cold enough during the night to notice since he was cuddled up to Buck, a human furnace, that he was shirtless.
Buck grins at him and gets up to head for the door.
Eddie rolls over and sits up, glancing at the clock on his night stand. “Wait. Is Chris at school already?”
“I called Hen.” Buck comes back from the doorway to stand in front of Eddie. “She got him up, got him ready, took him to school.”
Eddie’s mouth almost falls open.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything to her,” Buck reassures him, leaning in to press a kiss to Eddie’s bedhead before turning for the door again. “Not that it makes a difference. She has a sixth sense about these things.”
Eddie snorts a laugh to an empty room before going to the bathroom. He fixes his hair to look less like a bird’s nest and brushes his teeth before returning to his room and finding a hoodie to pull over his head while he navigates the hall.
“You remember what I said…” He wanders into the kitchen, stuffing his hands into the pocket of his hoodie, “when Maddie left for Boston? And Chim followed?”
Buck turns to scan Eddie’s figure—and the hoodie on him that most definitely belongs to Buck—with the usual fondness in his gaze, and tilts his head. “You said a lot of things back then. All helpful.”
Eddie tries not to blush at the realization of how blind they’ve been. If Buck’s been looking at him like that for years…
“Yeah, maybe. I’m talking about when I told you that no matter how much you wanted to help Maddie, the kind she needed wasn’t what you could give her.”
“It was Chim.” Buck hands Eddie a full mug of coffee.
“Exactly.” He takes it and wraps both hands around its warmth. “Anyway. I think maybe we’ve been doing the same for each other for a lot longer than we’ve realized.”
Buck starts another brew for himself and faces Eddie when he’s pushed the button. The crease between his eyebrows is back with significantly less concern than earlier. “You’re not just talking about last night.”
“No.” Eddie takes a slow sip of his coffee, keeping his eyes locked onto Buck’s. “You’ve been my first call for years. During the breakdown, yeah, but…for everything else. For non-emergencies. Emergencies. To talk, to cry, to talk shit, hell—” He laughs. “To complain about both our parents every holiday season.”
Buck smiles at that.
Eddie puts his mug down beside the Keurig and takes both of Buck’s hands. He loves being almost the same height as him. “We didn’t know how to name it, but we’ve been doing what Maddie and Chim have been doing. Athena and Bobby, Hen and Karen—for years. Being each other’s support in a way that no one else can be. And I think that’s…”
“What makes us us,” Buck finishes, leaning forward until his forehead is almost touching Eddie’s.
“Yeah,” Eddie whispers. “And I’ll never stop thanking you for it. For just…always being here. Unconditionally. Even when I’m a mess.”
“Oh, Eddie.” Buck takes a hand out of Eddie’s to hold the side of his face instead. “You never have to thank me.”
Eddie lifts an eyebrow. “But you would thank me? For being there when you’re a mess, when no one else understands, to love you and give you space in my life when you think you deserve nothing? Because I do all those things.”
“Point taken.” Buck rolls his eyes. “You’re welcome. And thank you.”
The laugh that comes from Eddie then lightens him almost as much as the smile and the man in front of him. He shakes his head. “Shut up.”
Eddie pulls at Buck’s waist until they’re pressed against each other in the kitchen, the one that’s hosted every conversation imaginable and now holds them in the safety and comfort of each other’s embrace, and Eddie kisses him with everything he can’t put into words.