Archive of Our Own ^beta

Buck’s keys hit the entry table with a horrible clang, tearing at his already fried nerves.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, shedding his jacket. He’s at the fridge, pulling out a pressed juice before Taylor can close the door behind her. There’s something restless under his skin, something that makes him want to get in his Jeep and just drive past state lines in a way he hasn’t in years.

Taylor’s scoff rings through the apartment, and she rolls her eyes as she rests her hands on the island between them. She’s wearing a ring on her right hand, a thin silver band. Buck thinks about Bobby saying he got Athena a ring for their first Christmas, and tries to imagine putting one on Taylor’s left hand.

He doesn’t think he could fit his entire life in a duffle bag anymore, and for the first time in years it makes him itchy instead of warm.

“You don’t want to talk?” Taylor’s eyebrows are hovering around her hairline, but she’s smiling to lessen the bite.

His hand tightens around his juice. Eddie always teases him for them, comments about Buck being a real LA boy, but Taylor always steals his favourite green one. Buck tells himself that means they’re compatible. “Taylor, just drop it.”

“No.” Taylor’s eyebrows drop, her mouth flattening into a tight, serious line. And maybe at this point Buck should know better — should know that Taylor Kelly doesn’t drop anything — but he’s not quite sure he knows anything at all, actually. Because he was so sure that he knew Eddie and— “You talked to Eddie and then all of the sudden you were…like this. Did something happen with Christopher?”

Taylor’s forehead creases, the same way it always does when Christopher comes up. She’s trying, he knows. She’s trying to move past her discomfort around kids, to respect Buck’s bond with Christopher even if she can’t understand it. She’s been trying, everyday; Buck can see it.

He just wishes she didn’t have to try so hard. He just wishes he didn’t have to try so hard to be okay with it.

“No. God, no. Christopher’s fine.” Physically, at least, because Eddie said Christopher was worried about his safety, and that he was having nightmares again, and Buck — he knows how to connect the dots. And he doesn’t even blame Eddie for making this choice, because he knows he’d have made the exact same one if he thought it would help Christopher. He just — he just kind of wants to run. “He — Eddie quit.”

Taylor’s expression doesn’t change. “Okay?”

Buck shakes his head, setting his juice down a little too hard. Some of the bright orange liquid sloshes over the top and hits the back of his hand. Taylor tracks the movement, unimpressed. “He’s leaving the 118, Taylor.”

“Okay, I get that. But people quit their jobs everyday. It isn’t the end of the world.”

It isn’t the end of the world. It’s not and — and not everything is about you, Buck but — he can’t quite get his heart rate to slow down. It’s not the end of the world — and it’s not about him at all — but it feels like the end of the world. It feels like Eddie said I’m leaving you.

He hasn’t talked to Dr. Copeland in six months.

“You don’t get it,” he says, firm. Taylor raises her eyebrows, unconvinced. “Eddie loves being a firefighter.”

Taylor shakes her head, and the look in her eyes is almost pitying. “People love things all the time. Doesn’t mean they can have them.”

There is absolutely no reason why that should knock Buck flat on his ass — why it should feel like a physical dagger in his chest — but it does anyway.

Because he loves Maddie, and she left. Because he loves Chim, and he left. Because he loves Eddie, and he’s leaving. As much as he understands and respects their choices, as much as he doesn’t blame them for a fucking second, they keep leaving.

Because he can see himself meaning it when he says love you to Taylor someday soon, and she’s right in front of him, trying so hard, and it’s not enough. He still has this awful, restless feeling under his skin. He still wants to knock Eddie’s door down and beg him to stay. He still wants to call Maddie until she picks up. He still wants to scream until something breaks.

For the first time in years, Buck just wants to drive.

“Yeah,” he says, anyway, and the fight leaves him him a rush.

This is how it goes: Taylor says something that settles under Buck’s skin, uncomfortable, and nine times out of ten he shakes it off and keeps going, but sometimes he pushes back. Sometimes, when he’s worked too many hours or gone too long without seeing Christopher or sends too many texts to Maddie that go unanswered, he pushes back. Usually, because she’s Taylor, she gives as good as she gets and then some, but sometimes she laughs it off, rolls her eyes, and tells him he’s being too serious. And no matter the steps in between, they end here: Buck tired and worn down, Buck giving up and giving in. Buck, too willing to let things go if it means he doesn’t have to watch someone else leave.

He screws the top on his juice and puts it back in the fridge, licking the spilled liquid off the back of his hand; it’s too bitter. The heat in his apartment is too high, like it always is these days, Taylor constantly fiddling with the thermostat in two pairs of socks, but Buck’s pretty sure he’s freezing cold.

“I’m just — gonna go to bed, I think.”

Taylor’s mouth bends into a small frown, her eyes narrowed. This is the part where, if she were Eddie, she’d push until Buck just spit out what he was really thinking.

She doesn’t; she only nods.

Buck slides into bed alone, listening to Taylor move around downstairs. The soft click as she pulls down a glass, the opening and closing of the fridge, the sound of her laptop booting up, her nails tapping against keys. It’s a reminder that he’s not all alone, and he tries to hold onto it, tries to fan the spark of it into real flames, but it only sits, stale and cold, in the centre of his chest.

He spends too long tossing and turning, that restless feeling begging him to get up and run until he can’t anymore, but eventually he wades into that soft space between sleep and awake where he’s not quite sure what’s real and what’s the product of his imagination. At some point the bed shifts, Taylor settling in next to him, and he wades briefly away from unconsciousness only to slide right back under.

Buck wakes up slowly, and the first thing he notices is that his comforter is way thinner than it was when he went to sleep. The second thing he notices is that he’s alone.

He blinks his eyes slowly open, and instead of brick there’s a completely bare, unfamiliar white wall. In front of it there’s a stack of books on the floor, uneven and seconds away from toppling over, half of the spines marked with a bright white library sticker.

The weirdest thing: he recognizes all of them, remembers reading them and buying the non-library ones, can even remember exactly where most of them are on his shelves right now. But the copies in front of him are way too new: spines untouched, missing water damage and sticky notes and dog-eared edges.

Buck frowns, instantly unsettled. He makes a move to roll over and nearly falls right the fuck off, because instead of the queen size bed he fell asleep on, he’s now in a twin. He hasn’t had a twin bed in years, and he definitely hasn’t slept with someone in one in at least that long.

He pushes himself into a sitting position, glancing around the room and — it’s definitely not the room he fell asleep in, definitely not his loft. It’s a studio apartment, with the world’s tiniest kitchen in one corner and an open door leading to a bathroom in another. He could fit the entire thing in his living room.

What, he thinks, the actual fuck.

He pats around the bed in search of his phone and comes up empty. Another, more thorough look around the apartment reveals a white cord plugged into the stove (what the fuck), connected to a phone resting on the sliver of counter space the kitchen offers.

Buck throws off the — he can’t in good faith call it a comforter; it’s barely a sheet — and stumbles to his feet. He went to sleep in shorts and a t-shirt, but now he’s standing in this weird apartment in heart-covered boxers and absolutely nothing else.

And his leg is — his leg is smooth and scar free. There’s a pucker of white scar tissue over the knob of his knee, from a particularly nasty wipe out on his bicycle when he was a kid, but that’s all.

He realizes, suddenly, that it doesn’t hurt at all. Not even the constant, faint ache he’s come to associate with good days, days where the pain is barely more than background noise.

His hands land on his bare stomach, like the touch may be enough to shock him out of whatever…fucking batshit hallucination he’s in, and discovers he doesn’t have any tattoos. And he’s…skinny. Where he’s used to finding firm muscle, hard-earned from hours at the gym and at work, he finds only soft, unscarred skin.

He really can’t stress this enough: what the fuck.

He brushes off whatever’s going on with his body — swallows down the reflexive bile — and crosses the apartment to reach for his phone. Surely, he thinks, he’ll find answers there.

Except that it is definitely not his phone. It’s — Christ, Buck’s pretty sure it’s an iPhone 4, the smallness of it foreign in his hand, the massive bezels and honest-to-God home button glaring. Buck hasn’t seen an iPhone 4 in at least eight or nine years. Not even Eddie, technophobe extraordinaire, is still holding onto a phone this old.

Where the hell is he?

He thumbs at the home button, awkward and out of practice, and the screen fills with — Jesus H. Christ — a selfie of a much, much younger Buck. This Buck has lemon-juice bleached hair, frizzy curls hanging over his forehead, and eyebrows raised high in the worst fuckboy pose Buck’s seen in years, all pursed lips and squinty eyes. If Buck had to guess, he’d put the Buck in the picture at eighteen or nineteen years old. He doesn’t remember this specific picture, but he took so many back then that they’ve all blurred into one big embarrassment.

Buck’s metre for weird hits the top and then crumbles when he manages to look away from the relic from his deep dark past and sees the date: Monday, August 9.

He frowns, thumbing at the slide to unlock bar for the first time in who even knows how long — of course there’s no password — and is instantly hit with a screen of ancient app icons. He ignores all of them in favour of the calendar app, where a grid of August 2010 appears.

There’s a sinking kind of understanding starting to settle in Buck’s gut, something like Chim’s voice in the back of his head chanting holy shit holy shit, but he sweeps it deftly away. He tries to swipe out of the app from the bottom of the screen three times before he hits the home button and navigates to his texts. They all say 2010.

There’s a text thread from someone named Dick that, based on context clues alone, must be the phone owner’s — his? — boss, and several monosyllabic text threads from obvious hookups and, all the way at the bottom, a text thread from the contact Maddie.

His breath stutters, briefly, before he presses his thumb firmly over it.

For several long, painful scrolls it’s just blue, unanswered texts: Hey, Mads! Did you get the postcard I sent??; I just met the cutest dog!! Her name was Maddie haha; Happy birthday Maddie! Love you x; Hey, Maddie…Can you just tell me if you’re okay? But, at the very top of the thread, dated to just under a year ago, there’s actual back and forth. Nothing super interesting or revealing, mostly confirmation of times and places, but enough that it makes tears sting at the corner of Buck’s eyes.

Whatever the fuck is going on — whatever trip back in time he’s taken — it’s not really all that different at all. He’s woken up in…in fucking 2010 apparently, and he’s lost all his muscle and all his tattoos and all of his physical trauma, but he’s still got a phone full of unanswered texts to his sister.

The difference is, he realizes suddenly, that he knows now why Maddie’s not responding.

The sudden, sharp and icy-hot rage that settles in his gut at the idea of Maddie, back in Pennsylvania without him, without anyone to protect her, overrides everything else. If he’s — if he’s really somehow gone back to 2010, and the how hardly matters at this point, then maybe the why is so he can save his sister the way he couldn’t when he lived through this the first time.

Except, he realizes halfway through shoving his — incredibly pain free — legs into the first pair of rumpled black jeans he sees, that something’s off. Because 2010 puts him at nineteen, and at nineteen he was still living at home and still talking to Maddie every few weeks. And the keys to the Jeep are on the top of the fridge, but Maddie didn’t give him those until 2012.

He doesn’t actually know where he is.

He’s pretty sure at this point that the studio is his, but he doesn’t recognize it at all, so it can’t be from his past. He didn’t have an apartment in 2010, and neither did any of his friends. At best, he had some buddies with dorm rooms that he could crash in, but none of them had kitchens or private bathrooms. And the view from his window is definitely not of Pennsylvania, at least not any part he’s familiar with.

He thinks he might be starting to panic, and then knows he’s starting to panic when he fumbles for his ancient phone and opens up the maps app. It takes long enough to open that his hands start to shake a little, and it’s a miracle that he manages to hold onto the phone at all when it finally does, only to show him a map of El Paso.

The stupid apartment doesn’t have a single chair, so he stumbles backwards until the backs of his knees hit the bed and he can sink onto the mattress.

He’s in 2010, apparently nineteen, and in El Paso. Even if he had already been travelling in 2010, he never lived in Texas. Which means, assuming this isn’t just the most vivid dream he’s ever had, he’s somehow both time-travelled and ended up in an…alternate reality. And he can’t even talk to Chimney about it.

Not only does this 2010 phone not have Chimney’s number — and the only phone numbers Buck has memorized are for Bobby, Maddie, Eddie, and Christopher’s school — but even if he did know Chimney’s current number, there’s no way it exists yet. He’s not even sure where Chimney would be in 2010.

The only person he knows in El Paso in 2010 is Eddie.

He drops his head into his hands and says to the empty room, “Jesus Christ.”

His voice sounds different. Not massively, but just enough to make his skin crawl.

A look through his phone and a paper calendar he has pinned to his fridge tell him he has a job, but that he isn’t working until tomorrow night. His stomach turns over, briefly, at the realization that he has no idea how long he’s going to be here.

He only ever remembers nineteen and the following years that made up his early twenties with bitter melancholy, years filled with nothing but desperate, painful loneliness that he tried to patch with girls and booze and travel. And Buck’s current life — he might be lonely again, he might be missing Maddie again, he might be down a brother and almost down a best friend, he might be holding desperately onto a girlfriend he’s not entirely sure he likes, but it’s still better than being twenty years old again.

Someone in the apartment next door starts blasting music, loud enough for Buck to feel the vibrations through his feet. It takes him a minute, but eventually he figures it out: it’s fucking Ridin Solo by Jason Durelo.

Buck doesn’t make it to the end of the song before he decides he can’t be in his awful, awful apartment anymore.

He still wants to go after Maddie — even if the timeline and the details are off, she’s still not answering, which spells out Doug quite clearly — but when he gets in the Jeep the tank’s empty and a stop at an ATM tells him he has $16 in his bank account. So a plane ticket to Pennsylvania is out. At nineteen he wouldn’t be above hitchhiking, but at thirty-back-to-nineteen he’s pretty sure it’s a bad idea.

If he’s stuck here for longer than a day, Buck tells himself, he’ll start saving. He’ll sell his phone and do whatever else it takes to get to Maddie. He’ll track down Chimney in the goddamn Yellow Pages and bring him for backup, since this nineteen year old body will definitely need it, and he’ll save his sister.

But for now he has $16 and no fucking clue where he is.

El Paso is big, and Buck’s used to big cities, obviously, but physically he feels two years too young to be travelling on his own, and he clearly has some kind of life here — a boss, a rotation of hook ups — that he knows absolutely nothing about. He walks for ages, passing by diners and cafes that he doesn’t recognize, but that he’s sure he probably frequents when he’s not in some weird body swap, time travel, alternate dimension, hallucination situation.

(And is it possible that maybe this nineteen year old, alternate universe Buck woke up in 2021, in bed next to Taylor? It’s a question Chim would have, but Buck can’t actually think about that for longer than a second or he’ll go insane, so he doesn’t.)

People even wave at him. Not a lot, just an older woman taking out the trash and a young mom pushing a stroller and a jogger with his dog, but enough that, unless El Paso is just stupid friendly, it’s clear Buck has been in El Paso for longer than the four hours he’s been awake.

It’s also very clear, the more diners and cafes and fast food places he passes, that he’s in desperate need for some food.

He checked his fridge before he left the apartment, and all he had found was one very suspicious container of Chinese takeout, a pile of Taco Bell hot sauce packets, and a half empty six pack of Mickey’s. He doesn’t have a real comforter, but he has a little bowl on top of his fridge filled with Mickey’s riddle caps. He has two fake IDs in his wallet: one decent one with his real name on it, and the McLovin one from Superbad. Because nineteen year old Buck sucks just, so hard.

Eventually, he makes it to a gas station. It’s already past five, since this Buck is apparently someone who sleeps in until two in the afternoon, and if he doesn’t eat something soon — even if that something is a dollar hot dog from a gas station — he might start biting people. He survived most of his twenties on gas station food; he can do it again.

Or, he’s like, eighty percent sure he can. Because the hot dog, once he’s handed over a crumpled dollar bill he found in his back pocket to a bored looking cashier and stepped back into the real world, looks and smells so much worse than he remembers. He’s been spoiled by Bobby’s cooking, by his own cooking, for too long.

He’s so busy hyping himself up to eat the saddest meal he’s had in the last four or five years that he nearly walks right into the guy sitting on the curb right in front of the gas station door.

“Shit, man, sorry,” Buck says, stepping to the side, and his weird, uncanny valley voice is still hard to hear.

The guy lifts his head from where he’s had it buried in his hands and—

And he’s ten years younger, almost scary skinny and clean-shaved, missing the tattoos Buck’s used to seeing, but it’s — there’s no denying that this guy is Eddie Diaz. Buck nearly swallows his tongue.

He realizes, suddenly, that he’s never even seen a picture of Eddie before he moved to LA. All of the pictures in Eddie’s house are of Christopher, or Christopher and Shannon, or Christopher and Buck. There’s one or two that include Eddie, but only after the LA move. Nothing from his wedding, no baby pictures of Christopher that involve Eddie, and definitely none from before Christopher. Like Eddie didn’t exist until Christopher was born, or until he started at the 118.

Except that he’s right in front of Buck now, in this weird version of 2010.

“Holy shit.” It’s out before he can stop it, hitting the pavement between them and making Eddie’s brow furrow, confused.

“What?” His voice is different, too. It’s — fuck, Buck can’t be sure with only the one word, but he’s pretty sure he’s got a bit of an accent. Buck’s going to pass out if one more batshit wild thing happens to him.

“Uh, sorry. You just — look exactly like a friend of mine.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, but his expression doesn’t clear, and now that Buck’s had his moment to freak out over seeing Eddie, ten years younger, he can see that Eddie’s…kind of losing it.

He doesn’t think he’d notice if he didn’t know Eddie, but the tension in his shoulders and the faint tremor in his hands and the tight line of his jaw all spell out Eddie, on the edge. Now that he’s spotted it, he can’t stop seeing it: the way Eddie’s breath hitches, a little; the way he presses the flat of his palm against his chest; the way he swallows too hard.

“Hey, are you okay, man?” It’s a herculean task not to say his name, not to reach out and grip his shoulder until it relaxes.

Eddie blinks up at him, still sitting slumped on the curb, and for a second Buck thinks he might tell him to fuck off, but then his eyes fall shut and there’s something — aching and painfully vulnerable in the bend of his mouth, the faint tension in his brow. “My…um, girlfriend, I guess. She’s pregnant.”

“Holy shit,” Buck says, again, and it’s enough to make Eddie laugh, as wet and sad as it is.

But this Eddie doesn’t realize just how big of a holy shit moment this is for Buck. For Buck who loves Christopher so much it’s rearranged everything inside of himself. For Buck who thinks about Christopher first thing in the morning and last thing at night more often than not. For Buck, who ten years in the future (or something like that) will sit next to Eddie and listen to him say no one will ever fight for my son as hard as you.

Eddie can’t realize just how big of a holy goddamn shit moment this is for Buck, who has somehow ended up standing in front of Eddie on the day he found out about Christopher. There’s a fist wrapped tight around Buck’s stomach, his hunger immediately forgotten.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, staring at the ground between his feet. “Holy shit.”

Buck hesitates, but only for a second before he’s lowering himself onto the curb next to Eddie. There’s a solid bit of space between them, but if Buck were to shift his leg enough he’d be able to to hit Eddie’s knee with his own. “Do you, uh, wanna talk about it?”

Eddie turns to him with raised eyebrows, and the look of pure sardonic scepticism is so familiar that Buck almost forgets who and where they are for a second.

He can’t hold back the bark of laughter. It’s enough to earn him Eddie’s first smile of the day, a brief bend to his mouth that drops almost as soon as it appears. Buck shoves his free hand in the space between them. “I’m Buck,” he says, “so now we’re friends and you can tell me all about your drama.”

Eddie laughs, a surprised sound that disappears long before his smile does. He puts his hand in Buck’s and it’s softer than Buck remembers, missing callouses. “I’m Eddie.” Buck bites his tongue against the urge to say I know.

Eddie looks out over the pumps, empty save for an old, rusted pickup truck Buck assumes belongs to this young Eddie. He’s quiet for a long moment, long enough that Buck’s starting to think he’s not going to say anything at all, but then he says, “Where’s your car?”

“Oh, uh.” It’s truly, spectacularly embarrassing to admit, “At home. It’s outta gas and I have like, ten dollars to my name, so. I walked.”

Eddie doesn’t seem to judge, or even pity him, he only ducks his head and chuckles. It’s not as deep as Buck remembers. Buck is going to lose his mind, soon. “Listen, I — uh, I know this really cheap diner. They do this three dollar early bird thing, and it’s way better than that shitty hot dog.” He gestures at the hot dog Buck’s somehow still holding onto, despite having forgotten entirely about it, and he’s wearing an amused smirk that Buck knows as well as the back of his hand. “So, um — I can drive?”

It is beyond insane to see Eddie nervous. It’s not overly obvious, but he’s stuttering more than Buck’s used to, his shoulders hunched around his ears. There’s no defiant confidence, no steady look in his eyes. Buck superimposes this Eddie with the Eddie he first met, sure of himself in the back of an ambulance as he extracted a bomb from someone’s leg. It makes him a little dizzy.

He wants to make a joke about Eddie being a bad driver, but he’s not supposed to know Eddie that well, so he just pushes himself to his feet, tosses his awful hot dog (mourns the dollar spent) and offers Eddie a hand.

It’s weird. This Eddie — this skinny, clean-shaved, small Eddie — is all nervous energy. Not like Buck is all nervous energy; no bouncing knees or obvious fidgeting or scattered attention, but all subtle tics Buck doesn’t think he would notice if he wasn’t so attuned to his Eddie.

This Eddie rubs his thumb against his bottom lip and glances warily at the door every single time it opens and shifts his jaw. He doesn’t know how, but he just knows that this isn’t purely the result of Shannon’s revelation. He just knows that Eddie’s learned how to contain this nervous energy between this moment and Buck’s present, ten years from now.

The diner Eddie brought them to is classic fifties imitation, the walls covered in licence plates and pictures of Marilyn Monroe and old school movie posters. The waitstaff wear poodle skirts and bright polos. There’s a jukebox in the corner, which two kids have been feeding quarters and requesting Great Balls of Fire at least as long as Eddie and Buck have been sitting in their corner booth.

They order a basket of fries to share and argue about splitting a burger for long enough that their waitress starts laughing before Eddie puts his foot down — and Buck nearly chokes, reminded already of Dad Eddie. Their waitress reappears only a minute later with their drinks — a water for Buck; a coke for Eddie — and then Buck watches Eddie close down.

He stays friendly, but with an almost manic edge to it as he asks after Buck’s life — Are you from here? Oh, Pennsylvania, what’s that like? Got any pets? — and deftly avoids the matter at hand. It’s an Eddie move for sure, avoiding an uncomfortable conversation, but an entirely un-Eddie-like tactic. His Eddie would just let them sit in silence until Buck brought it up, and then tell him to drop it once he did. This chatty Eddie is strange, but in a way that makes something bittersweet bloom behind his chest bone.

He wonders when Eddie started filtering himself.

“Eddie,” Buck says, interrupting Eddie in the middle of an explanation of the work he did on his truck’s engine last week. He has four years of experience in making Eddie talk about what’s bothering him; a change in method isn’t going to stop him. “Your girlfriend’s pregnant.”

Eddie visibly bristles, his shoulders twitching and his hands stilling where he’s been gently rolling his glass between them. Buck worries, for a split second, that he’s been too direct. It’s what he would do with his Eddie, but his Eddie is his best friend in the world and has been for four years. To this Eddie, Buck’s a stranger.

Eddie deflates a second later, staring down at his drink. He was doing a good job of hiding it, but the tension’s back in the corner of his mouth, in the line of his eyebrows. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

Buck’s eyebrows raise. His Eddie talks about Shannon, as often as he can, but exclusively around Christopher so he never thinks they’re forgetting her, and never about their life before Chris. He’s never mentioned what it was like before Christopher, and Buck’s never asked.

Their waitress reappears, sliding their basket of fries and burger onto the table. The burger’s already cut in half, on two separate plates. It’s enough to startle Buck and Eddie out of their suddenly tense moment to laugh, thanking her.

Eddie ignores his half of the burger in favour of the fries, but Buck removes the top of his half so he can pick out the pickles.

“We could have said no pickles,” Eddie says, frowning. He seems genuinely worried about Buck having pickles on his burger. Buck wants to walk into traffic.

“Oh, uh, no it’s fine.”

This Eddie, Buck realizes, doesn’t know that Buck always gets pickles on his burgers, because he hates them but Eddie and Christopher both love them. Because he hates them, but his Eddie always grins wide enough to crinkle his eyes when Buck drops his pickles on the edge of Eddie’s plate.

“Here,” he says, and he transfers his pile onto Eddie’s plate.

And this Eddie grins, wide enough to crinkle his eyes. Buck ducks his head to hide a blush.

They eat in a faint, comfortable silence for a few minutes, and if Buck closes his eyes he might be able to convince himself he’s back in his time, his reality, having a quiet lunch with Eddie while Christopher’s at school.

He looks up and the image shatters. This Eddie’s too young, too skinny, his hair too short.

Eddie’s right in front of him, but Buck misses him so bad he can almost taste his blood on his tongue. He remembers Eddie saying I’m leaving the 118 and thinks he should probably get used to the feeling.

They each polish off their halves of the burger, and Buck starts picking at the fries when Eddie starts again, “She was my girlfriend. When we were in high school – Shannon, that’s her name.”

Buck glances up, watches Eddie pluck a straw from the the centre of the table and slowly, carefully tear the edge of the wrapper. “We dated in high school, but when we graduated she wanted – she didn’t want to be held down, you know? She wanted to have the freedom to do what she wanted without worrying about a boyfriend. And she’s been saving up to go to school out of state as long as I’ve known her. Her plan has always been to get the hell out of Texas. UCLA or Penn State or NYU. She never wanted to be tethered here. So, we agreed to end it.”

Eddie shrugs, a darkly amused breath escaping through his nose. “But my parents, they liked that I had a serious girlfriend. They…worry sometimes…I don’t know. They just liked that I had a serious girlfriend, even though they can’t stand Shannon. A girlfriend they hate has always been better than no girlfriend at all, so we never told them about the break up. And we still – you know, whatever, hook up sometimes, but it’s just casual. Neither of us have the time to date around, we trust each other, it just makes sense to blow off steam, whatever.”

“And now she’s pregnant,” Buck finishes. “But you’re not together, and she never wanted to stay in El Paso.”

“Pretty much.” The straw wrapper has turned into confetti under Eddie’s slow, methodical hands. “It’s – I know she wants this baby. She’s always wanted babies, it was one of those things we never really agreed on: she wanted a whole litter, and I was never really sure.”

“Why not?” He remembers Eddie saying I love this one when Buck told him he loves kids, but he also remembers how good he is – how patient and kind he is – whenever there’s kids around the station or Christopher has a sleepover.

Eddie shrugs again, a jerky movement of his shoulders. “I don’t know. I just…I don’t think I’d be very good at the…being a dad thing.”

It’s all Buck can do not to shake him. He wants, desperately, to tell Eddie he’s the best father Buck’s ever met, to tell him about his perfect child who loves him so much. He swallows it all down.

“Eddie. Everyone thinks they’re gonna be a bad parent. But–” Buck shakes his head, moves his water to the side so he can rest his forearms on the table between them and lean forward. “But look, you met me less than two hours ago at a gas station and the second you heard I was broke you offered to feed me. That? That’s a fatherly instinct. You’re already doing way better than my dad ever did.”

Eddie blinks, his eyes glassy, and his mouth bunches to the side, classic Eddie Diaz packing away an emotion before it spills out of him. His eyes drop from Buck’s, land somewhere around Buck’s wrists. “I don’t know,” he says. “I already feel like I’m failing. Shannon has – she’s gonna have appointments and stuff and I have basic coming up, I won’t be able to go to some of them –”

“You already enlisted?”

“What?”

Buck’s mouth opens and closes uselessly for a second. “Um. I just mean, you enlisted before you found out about all of this?”

The confused bend of Eddie’s eyebrows remains for another moment before it clears. “Yeah. Yeah, like, a couple weeks ago. I – I don’t know. It’s good money and they’ll pay for school, if I ever decide to go, and…It was just the only good option for me. The easiest way to get out of El Paso. Fuck, why am I even telling you any of this?” Eddie drops his head in his hands, the line of his shoulders tight. Buck’s instinct is to reach across, to run the flat of his palm down the length of his spine until something unwinds.

He keeps his hands firmly to himself.

And the thing is: he probably could get away with it, in that way where dreams never really have consequences. Because Buck’s pretty much decided that it is a dream. It has to be. It’s just — just Buck’s brain taking everything he knows about Eddie, and about Shannon, and presenting him this invented past where he can be with Eddie on one of the scariest days of his life and offer him support he might not have had.

His dreams about Eddie usually go a little different, is all.

Buck kicks him under the table instead, just a gentle nudge of his toe against Eddie’s shin. “Because I’m a super fucking friendly guy. People are always falling over themselves to share their secrets. Don’t worry, you’re not the first.”

Eddie laughs, a sound like it’s being dragged out of him against his will, and kicks Buck right back. He lifts his head from his hands, but rubs at the corner of one eye with a firm knuckle. It’s a tic Buck recognizes, and it hits him somewhere tender.

“You’re going to be a really good dad,” Buck says, as sincere as he can manage without doing something stupid, like bursting into tears. “I just have this feeling. Maybe I’m psychic.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, laughing again just as Buck intended, and steers the conversation toward a baseball game Buck definitely did not see in either version of 2010, but that Eddie is more than willing to recap in great detail.

They finish off their fries and their drinks and make easy conversation, almost like they’ve been best friends for four years, and by the time Buck thinks to check the time another two hours have passed. They flag down their waitress, who waves off their apologies about hoarding the table for so long, and then they make her watch as they argue over the bill long enough that she offers to pay.

In the end, they split it down the middle and leave a generous tip.

Outside, they loiter uselessly by the diner’s entrance for a second until Eddie pauses, working his jaw in the way that, in Buck’s reality, means he’s putting his words in order. “How old are you?” he asks, finally, eyes narrowed.

Buck almost says thirty, muscle memory, but bites it back at the last second. “Uh, nineteen.”

His eyes stay narrowed, lips folding into his mouth, and it’s a quintessential Eddie Diaz Making a Decision face, but just a bit to the left. He looks so young. “Okay, I really shouldn’t do this. Like holy shit I should not do this, but I’m going —” he breaks off, just as his voice cracks down the middle, and he clears his throat. There’s a defiant look in his eyes when he starts again, “I’m going to be a father and a soldier soon, my clock on bad decisions is running out. So. My cousin left some booze in my truck, do you want to get absolutely plastered with me before my life ends?”

And Buck’s never been able to say no to Eddie Diaz.

Eddie’s giggling, nearly falling off the swing. Buck has to propel his own swing towards him so he can steady him with a hand on his shoulder, but he’s laughing nearly as hard. The bottle of tequila, courtesy of Eddie’s cousin, is empty at their feet after an hour of passing it back and forth.

It took less to get Buck drunk than he thought it would, not used to his nineteen year old tolerance anymore, so he stopped taking any real swings early on, but Eddie just kept going. And the thing is, Buck’s never seen Eddie truly wasted. He’s seen him tipsy, and he’s even seen him high, though Buck was pretty far gone himself at the time so he doesn’t remember much. But he’s never seen him wasted.

He can’t say he expected Eddie to be a giggly drunk, but he really is. He’s laughing at the smallest of things and then laughing at himself for laughing and then laughing at Buck for laughing at him. It’s the most Buck’s seen him laugh, maybe ever, but it’s all booze soaked and blurry. Buck can’t even remember whatever it was that set them off this time, only knows that Eddie’s bicep is warm under his hand and the chain on the swing is cold where it presses against his shoulder.

Eddie drove them to a park, one that he promised was within walking distance to both of their apartments, since it’s a bitch to get a taxi around here after eight. Buck had to bite his tongue before he said something stupid like, what about Uber?

The park was already empty when they showed, the sun already rapidly disappearing beyond the horizon. It’s since fallen to complete darkness, only the streetlights casting a faint glow, enough for Buck to see the glint of Eddie’s grin, the flash of his bright eyes.

Eddie’s right in front of him, but Buck misses his Eddie so much that he thinks he’d already be crying if he was just one shot deeper.

Their laughter fades away, and Buck drops his hand once he’s sure Eddie isn’t going to suddenly tumble off his swing. Eddie’s bottom lip juts out in a pout, setting wide puppy dog eyes on Buck, who’s nearly drunk enough to shout what the fuck like he’s been wanting to since he woke up.

“You don’t drink often,” Buck guesses, unable to reign in the stupid grin he’s had on his face since roughly three drinks in.

Eddie shakes his head, and then immediately winces. “No. I work a lot, and —” a hiccup “— my sisters say I’m kind of a control freak, so. And also, I drank too much at my first highschool party and threw up in my friend’s mom’s vase.”

Buck’s laughter rings through the empty park, enough to set Eddie off again. “You didn’t,” Buck crows, twisting his swing until he can face Eddie full on.

Eddie copies him, grinning wide enough to squint his eyes almost completely shut. “I did. I felt so bad that I bought her a new vase, and then I bought her new flowers for the vase every week for like, a month.”

“Of course you did,” Buck laughs, bending nearly double at the waist.

Their legs are twisted in the sand, their knees bumping together, and the top of Buck’s head grazes Eddie’s elbow on his way back up. Eddie’s laughter seems to die in his chest, there one minute and gone the next. He’s blinking wide eyes at Buck, his mouth parted, his eyes dark.

It’s the closest they’ve been since they met, at least this version of them, and when Buck licks his lips, Eddie’s eyes track the movement.

“Have you ever — uh.” Eddie laughs, a blush rising up the back of his neck as he shakes his head. There’s something about his expressions, this twenty-one year old Eddie, that’s just…lighter. More open, in a soft-youthful way, like he hasn’t yet learned how to fully shield his hand. And Buck’s been on the receiving end of Eddie’s softness, more times than he can count, but not this quickly into knowing him.

“Have I ever what?” Buck prompts, when Eddie doesn’t try again. He thinks he knows the rest, but he has to hear it.

Eddie’s looking resolutely at Buck’s shoe when he says, “Have you ever, um, hooked up with a guy?”

Buck doesn’t have to worry about the rules of this weird dream anymore, actually, because he’s going to die in the middle of it.

Nineteen year old Buck, at least the one Buck remembers, hadn’t, but Buck says, “Yeah, yeah I have,” anyway. Because thirty year old Buck has, and he’s pretty sure there’s nothing this young Eddie needs more than someone who understands, who relates and who will take this secret desire of his and meet him in the middle instead of shying away or outright dismissing it.

The confession’s enough to make Eddie’s wide, wet eyes dart to Buck. The stark emotion on his face — the downturned eyebrows, the parted mouth, the soft eyes — makes something in Buck unravel. He’s seen a thousand expressions on Eddie’s face — fear and annoyance and joy and anger — but never this. He doesn’t even have a name for it, something flayed open and raw.

“What if — we could — just once —” Eddie’s jaw clenches, cutting himself off, and Buck knows exactly what he’s trying to ask. Eddie’s hands twitch, a little, but he doesn’t drop them from the swing chains, doesn’t make a move towards Buck.

But Buck knows he wants to.

And — and Buck’s lost track of the times he’s wanted to kiss Eddie. When they were posturing in the gym on Eddie’s first day, when they pulled the bomb out of that man’s leg, when Eddie remembered his drink order the first time, nearly everytime Eddie ever said good morning after a night spent on his couch. And he might, technically, be nineteen, but he feels thirty, and Buck’s wanted to kiss Eddie more times than he can count, but he doesn’t want to kiss this twenty-one year old, and he doesn’t want to kiss Eddie like this. Not even in a dream, if that’s what this is.

Because he’s not Buck’s Eddie, and because Buck has a girlfriend back in 2021, and because in a couple of months Eddie will be married.

“We shouldn’t,” he says, treading carefully. He doesn’t want what he’s pretty sure is the first time Eddie’s ever admitted to wanting something like that to be a rejection, but it has to be, so he can at least make it kind. “You have Shannon.”

Eddie’s eyes fall shut, like the reminder of Shannon and everything else is a physical blow. Buck can almost see Eddie put himself together, a slow motion version of what he’s used to. “I have Shannon,” he confirms. “My parents are probably going to want me to marry her, when they find out.”

Buck’s shoulders sag, something like guilt weighing them down. Guilt that he knows Eddie’s future, or at least he thinks he does, and he knows exactly how that marriage ends, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

“You don’t want to?”

Eddie frowns, hard, at the ground. “I don’t know. Maybe if…I don’t know. I think I could want to, but I’ll never know now, because it’s not going to be my decision.”

Buck bumps his knee into Eddie’s and keeps it there, a steady warmth. “You can’t tell your parents no?”

He shakes his head, a frustrated noisy breath through his nose. “I don’t mean just them — I mean, telling my parents no doesn’t really work out either, but. There’s a kid involved and…this is what you do when there’s a kid involved. You marry the girl, you support her. And — God, I already love that kid, is that crazy? I don’t even know them and it’s been like, twelve hours since I found out, but I love them.”

Buck blinks against sudden tears. It’s hard — it’s physically painful — to be in this reality where Christopher doesn’t exist yet, where Buck can’t track him down and give him a hug or ask about his newest school project.

“It’s not crazy,” Buck says, hardly a whisper, but it’s loud in the silence of the park.

Eddie’s mouth twists, bunches tightly, but he doesn’t look up from where their knees are touching, Buck’s black denim against Eddie’s light wash jeans. “So, I’m never gonna know if I want to marry Shannon, because I’m not doing it for her or even for me. I’m doing it for that kid. It’s — whatever I may have…wanted,” and here he looks up, meets Buck’s eyes, and Buck knows exactly what he’s not saying, “it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Eddie,” Buck says, too desperate. “What you want still matters.”

“Not if it’s at their expense.” Eddie laughs, wet and self-deprecating. “No kid needs their dad having some kind of…crisis.”

“Eddie,” Buck says again, but Eddie’s climbing to his feet, unsteady in the sand until Buck gets a hand on his elbow.

“It’s late,” Eddie says. “We should…go home.”

Buck wants to argue — wants to sit Eddie down and explain to him how great he is, how great his son is, how he can have anything he wants — but his buzz has faded to a cottony headache and Eddie’s face has shuttered closed. So Buck nods, and they stumble across the sand.

They’re not far from Eddie’s apartment, a place he shares with two other guys he barely knows, so they leave Eddie’s truck behind and Buck steers an unsteady Eddie to his building. It’s across the street from Buck’s, and yet they’ve never managed to cross paths before in the canon of this weird dream-hallucination-alternate universe. It makes his chest ache, faintly.

“Hey,” Eddie says once they stop at his door, quiet and heavy-lidded and not quite as drunk as he was a bit ago. “Thank you. Seriously, this is — um. I just really needed this today, and you — you’re kinda amazing, so thank you.” There’s an absolute bonfire in the centre of Buck’s chest, but before he can stutter out any fumbled response, Eddie tilts his head and something flashes in his eyes. “Even if you did reject my offer to hook up.”

Buck’s laugh is too loud in the quiet of the dark, his head thrown back with the force of it. When he looks back to Eddie, his eyes are dark and hovering around Buck’s throat. He knows this has to be a dream, but on the odd chance that this is a real, functioning reality that will continue on once Buck leaves it behind — if he leaves it behind — he feels kinda bad for killing this Buck’s chances with this Eddie.

“You’d just regret it tomorrow,” he says, smiling softly.

Eddie’s mouth bends into a smile, but it’s distinctly sad, and his eyes are painfully soft in a way that’s almost too familiar. “I don’t think I would, actually.”

“Eddie.”

He shakes his head, hand already wrapped around the door handle. “Don’t worry about it, Buck.”

“Wait,” Buck says, just as Eddie’s pulling the door open, and Buck can’t help himself from stepping into his space, sliding his arms around Eddie and pulling him to his chest.

Eddie’s tense for a second, like he might pull away, but he sinks into it only a moment later, his hands fisting into the fabric over Buck’s shoulder blades. Buck feels it when Eddie lets out a breath, feels the way it shudders on its way out. His nose is cold where it burrows into Buck’s neck. Something in Buck unwinds, and they stand there like that, gripping each other like the other might disappear at any second, for far longer than is probably appropriate.

Finally, they pull apart, and Eddie’s eyes are glassy as he blinks, shaking his head. Buck’s got tears stinging in the corner of his eyes, burning his throat.

“I’m really glad I met you,” Buck says, and it’s truer than Eddie can possibly know.

Eddie’s jaw tenses, the flat line of his mouth twitching. “I am, too. Goodnight, Buck.”

“Goodnight, Eddie.”

Buck stands there until Eddie disappears up the stairs, out of Buck’s sight, and then he drags himself across the street to his terrible studio, strips to boxers, crawls under his sheet, and he goes to sleep.

This time, when Buck wakes up, he immediately knows he’s in the loft. The mattress is familiar, as is the way the sunlight hits his face at just the same angle and direction he’s used to.

His chest relaxes, the instant anxiety lessened. It was just a strange, vivid dream, the weirdest he’s ever had, but it’s done now. He’s back in his time and his apartment and his body.

Except, he realizes once he blinks open his eyes, he’s alone. It’s not just that Taylor’s already woken up and gone on with her day, because her nightstand is bare, and the bunny slippers that she always leaves by the TV stand are gone, and her side of the bed is completely untouched.

Once those abnormalities are revealed, the rest slide into place: his comforter is dark grey, not light blue; his TV stand is black, not a dark wood stain; there’s a full length mirror in the corner that he’s never seen before.

He finds his phone under his pillow where it belongs, and it’s only one iPhone model behind just like it should be, but it’s black not red, and when he clicks the screen on his lock screen is a black and white photo of the 118 engine, not the picture of Christopher petting an alpaca that he’s used to. At least, he thinks faintly, even as anxiety starts to rise in his chest, it’s not another fuckboy selfie.

He’s a little desperate, anyway, when he searches for the picture he keeps on his nightstand.

It’s still there: the picture of everyone at the 118 Christmas party he and Athena put together, gathered together in front of a long table full of food, even in the same black picture frame. Except. Except, he realizes with a sinking feeling, that Christopher isn’t in it, and neither is Eddie or his abuela. Everyone else is accounted for, even in the same places he remembers them being, but they’re huddled closer together to make up for the spaces the Diazes have left.

Buck’s given up on asking the universe what the fuck is happening, so he returns to his phone. It says Wednesday, December 1. His password’s the same — Maddie’s birthday — and the calendar app says 2021, so. At least it’s the same year, just a few weeks back. But when he switches over to his camera roll there’s no pictures of Eddie or Christopher. There’s no pictures of Jee-Yun, either. There’s pictures of the team, and plenty of Maddie, but all of the pictures of the Diazes and his niece have been replaced with thirst traps.

He swipes over to his messages next, his heart in his throat, and he can’t find Eddie’s contact anywhere.

But his text thread with Maddie isn’t just unanswered blue bubbles. The last text is actually from Maddie to him, timestamped for late the night before: Chim says he can definitely beat you in a leg race, and before you ask I’m not picking sides. He scrolls through their texts, all familiar, light-hearted back and forths, and finds no reference to Jee anywhere. His texts with Chim are the same — teasing, light-hearted, Jee-less.

He searches his text, types in Jee-Yun and gets no results. Tries Jee and only gets a couple of references to the Jeep. He tries Eddie and Christopher next, but all of the results are about the movie IT and Christopher Nolan.

Buck lets his phone fall to his lap, and his hands are shaking a little when he runs them through his hair. His body is the same: his hair the right length, all of his tattoos accounted for, and when he peels back the comforter to check, his leg has all of the right scars. The pain’s back, too, and even though it’s only a faint ache today, his twenty-hours of relief have spoiled him.

He’s in the right year, and the right place, but something is once again off, fundamentally wrong. Because he’s in 2021, in LA, in his body, but this version of him doesn’t have a niece and doesn’t have an Eddie.

Where is Eddie? He must exist, but he’s obviously not at the 118 with Buck. Maybe in this reality Bobby didn’t beat out the station 6 captain, and Eddie’s somewhere else in LA without him. But…but the 118 runs into other stations all the time, there’s no way they went four years without running into him and…and there’s just no way Buck met Eddie for even a second, even in passing, and didn’t keep him.

So, Eddie can’t be with station 6. Maybe he’s not in LA at all. Maybe he accepted an offer from a station in Chicago. Or maybe he never made it to the fire academy at all, maybe he never got discharged.

Except that the idea of Eddie back in Afghanistan, on another tour, makes Buck want to do something drastic.

He fumbles for his phone again, and his hands are a little shaky, but he manages to type Edmundo Diaz into Google on his first try. There isn’t much, just some locked Instagram and Facebook pages with no profile pictures because no matter the alternate reality dreamscape he’s in, Eddie’s aversion to social media is a constant. But near the middle of the first page is an article from an El Paso news station: Staff Sergeant Edmundo Diaz receives Silver Star for heroic efforts in Afghanistan.

Buck’s shoulders relax infinitesimally. He’s not sure where Eddie is, but he’s at least not at war.

He can’t find any other information about Eddie or Christopher on the first page of Google, but his alarm goes off before he can check station 6’s roster. A look at his calendar says he has a shift, just twelve hours. His first reaction is an almost buzzing excitement — a shift with Chimney back, finally — but it’s blown over by instant dread only a second later.

His first shift with Chimney back, but his first shift without Eddie. A twisted version of his near future.

Buck leaves his phone behind, the article about Eddie still open, and gets ready for his day.

Buck walks into the 118 a few minutes early, itchy and restless. It’s the most normal thing to happen to him in something like thirty hours, walking into the station, but this reality is just different enough to set him on edge. Everything where he’s expecting it, but to the left.

Like when he runs into Ravi on his way in, except that Ravi’s on his way out.

“Yo, what are you doing, Probie?” Buck says, catching him with a hand on his shoulder.

Ravi blinks at him, wide eyes owlish and a little afraid, like he used to be in the early days. But he hasn’t looked at Buck like that in weeks. “Um,” he says, eyes darting around like he’s looking for help. “Going home? My shift’s over.”

Buck’s eyes narrow, his head tilting to the side. “Your shift’s over? But A shift’s starting now.”

“Um.” Ravi blinks some more, his shoulders twitching a little under Buck’s palm. Buck drops his hand, coming to the slow realization that Ravi’s another one of those things that’s just a little off in this reality. “Okay? I’m on B shift.”

“You’re on B shift? You’ve always been on B shift?”

Ravi’s eyebrows pinch, his expression rapidly shifting from slightly afraid to slightly concerned. “Yes? Are you okay, dude?”

Buck shakes his head, blinking hard to reorient himself. So no Ravi. It makes…a bit of sense, if there’s no Eddie at the 118 that means Eddie wasn’t shot, which means they didn’t need someone to fill his spot. And if there’s no Jee that means Maddie didn’t get sick, which means Chimney never followed her. Which means work’s the same, just a bit further to the left than he thought.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Ravi says, eyebrows high and tone a little mocking as he walks away. Buck’s pretty sure he hears him whisper absolute weirdos under his breath.

“Buckaroo,” a voice calls from Buck’s left, and Chimney’s hand is landing on his shoulder even before he can turn his head. He’s grinning and snapping his gum, sunglasses resting easily on the bridge of his nose.

Buck’s breath stutters in his chest. He remembers the last time he saw Chim, the teary anger, the desperate pain. This Chim is as far from that as it gets: cheery and smiley.

“Chim,” Buck says, and it comes out too breathy, too awed.

Chim’s smile twitches, a little confused. “What were you doing bothering the B shift probie?”

Buck shakes his head, bumping his shoulder into Chim’s as they make their way to the locker room just because he can. He has half a mind to call out of work and just…sit next to Maddie, wherever she is, and stare at her for a while.

“Nothing,” he laughs, trying for normal. “Just a little hazing.”

Chim’s bag hits the inside of his locker with a thud, his laughter ringing through the room. Buck can’t stop smiling, like an absolute idiot. He’s missed Maddie like a limb, his love and worry for her so large it nearly eclipses everything else, but he missed Chim just as much, enough that he almost doesn’t want to leave this reality behind if it means he can have him back.

Except that this reality doesn’t have Jee-Yun or Eddie. And Buck can find Eddie, probably, and Jee-Yun’s birth might just be a few years off, like his travels were in the last reality. He can probably even convince Bobby to get Ravi onto A shift. Buck can get all of the people he loves back where they belong here, but — but it won’t be the same.

Just like the young Eddie from yesterday was so familiar, but not the same, this Chimney looks and sounds and laughs exactly like Buck’s, but he’s not Buck’s Chim. As much as what happened hurt — still hurts — it’s a part of their relationship now; they’re not stronger yet for it, but they will be. This Chimney has never broken down in front of Buck, has never thrown a punch at him, has never followed Maddie across the country.

“Jesus, Buck,” Chimney says, laughing just as Buck pulls his shirt over his head. “I thought you were telling them to ease up on the maiming.”

“What?”

He turns to Chim with a frown, who mimes a cat scratch in his direction. Buck nudges his locker door open further, where he has an actual mirror on the back that he absolutely doesn’t in his reality, and twists until he can get a glimpse of his back. Which is covered in faint red scratches.

It’s not an entirely unfamiliar sight, but not since before Abby. He woke up alone, and the loft was missing all of Taylor’s things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean this Buck doesn’t have a partner. Except that Chim’s phrasing kind of suggests that he’s talking about more than one person, and Buck remembers scrolling past several unsaved contacts when he was searching through his texts, and his camera roll is approximately 50% thirst traps.

Buck’s shoulders slump, his eyes skittering away from his marked back. So, in this reality Buck’s blackslid right into Buck 1.0 round two. It almost makes him miss the bowl full of Mickey’s bottle caps and the sun-bleached hair of 2010.

“Buck?” Chimney’s frowning at him, already in his uniform.

“Uh, yeah.” Buck shakes his head, reaches for his shirt. “I’m just — trying to sleep around less.”

Chimney snorts, leaning against the locker next to Buck’s — Eddie’s locker, normally; Buck hasn’t seen who it belongs to now, but he hates them on principle. “You say that like, once a week.”

“Yeah, well, I thought I meant it this time.”

He hasn’t spent much time thinking about Taylor’s role in this reality, too preoccupied with Eddie and Jee-Yun’s absence, but he didn’t see her name in his phone either. He’s not sure what it is about this reality that stopped him and Taylor from happening. Did he give up on Buck 2.0 after their initial hookups, so he never bothered to try again with her? Or did he try again, but Eddie was never shot, so Taylor never saw him in the worst moment of his life, and it fizzled out? Did he date Ali at all?

The alarm goes off, interrupting Buck’s spiral. It’s pure instinct to slam his locker closed and take off in the direction of the engine. Chim’s hand lands on his shoulder as they file into the engine, Bobby relaying what dispatch has said from the front and Hen fiddling with her sleeve in her usual spot.

And it’s completely normal, almost like he’s gone a few months in the past, before Chim left. Except that there’s an empty seat where Eddie belongs.

Buck looks away.

It’s a twisted kind of practice, going through a shift with the 118 without Eddie.

Buck doesn’t seem to have a partner at all, and Hen and Chim make a couple of off-handed jokes about Buck’s inability to keep one in or out of work that make him think he’s been through a few of them, unsuccessfully. And he knows he’s…easily threatened, maybe too protective of his spot at the 118, but he worked it out with Eddie. It’s not like he can’t play well with others, he just…needs an adjustment period.

Or, he thinks a little sullenly, after three calls where he keeps looking over his shoulder expecting to see Eddie, flinching every time he remembers where he is, maybe he just needs Eddie.

It’s ten hours into a twelve hour shift before they get more than twenty minutes of downtime. Hen makes her and Chim coffee while Bobby disappears into his office to make a call about Harry’s upcoming birthday party, and Buck sulks at the dining table, missing someone no one around him knows.

Hen slides into the seat next to Chim, passing along Chim’s favourite mug in Buck’s reality and this one: a white mug that says I HEART DILFS in a glittery pink text. Buck remembers the day he brought it in, months before Maddie got pregnant, and the way he had showed it off and saluted Eddie with it. “This one’s for you, Diaz,” he’d said, dropping a dramatic wink, and Eddie had turned around and walked away.

Buck drops his head onto the table, his forehead hitting the wood with a thud.

“What’s going on, Buckaroo?” Hen asks, voice as sympathetic as ever, even with the hint of amusement.

“He’s been like this all day,” Chimney says in a stage whisper.

Buck lifts his head to glare, heatless and ineffective in the glow of Chimney’s smug grin. It’s so stupid, but Chimney teasing him is almost enough to make him tear up.

“Nothing’s going on,” Buck insists, but he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “But — I have a weird question to ask,” Buck starts, avoiding Hen and Chim’s eyes in favour of watching his hands fiddle with his phone. “Or like, a hypothetical.”

He doesn’t have to be looking in their direction to know they’re exchanging a glance. “Okay,” Hen says first, and when Buck looks up they’re both smiling, amused. “Go for it.”

“Okay,” he says, breathing in and taking a second to put some of his racing thoughts in order. “Okay, so, let’s say you go to bed tonight, in your normal bed in your normal apartment, and then tomorrow you wake up and you’re— you’re ten years in the past.”

“Like time travel,” Chim says, leaning forward with an interested gleam in his eyes. “Back to the Future sorta thing, but accidentally.”

“Karen would say that’s not possible,” Hen says, bringing her mug to her mouth. “Yet.”

Buck kind of wants to kiss them on the mouth for going along with this insane line of questioning.

“Kind of. But it’s not the past you remember. Like, you’re in a different city then you were in your past, and some…events have already happened that weren’t supposed to for a few years. So, it’s ten years ago, but it’s different.”

“So like an alternate dimension.” Chimney’s nodding, exactly as excited about this as Buck thought he would be.

“Or a dream,” Hen says, the voice of reason, gesturing vaguely with her mug. Chim boos faintly.

“Yeah, something like that. What would you do? What do you think it would, like…mean?”

Chimney leans back in his seat, eyebrows narrowed like he’s really thinking it through.

“I guess I would see just how much of this reality is like the past that I remember,” Hen says. “Maybe I’d look for people from my future.”

Chimney points at her in agreement. “Usually these waking up in a different time or reality plots are trying to tell the main character something about their present that’s not working. So I’d see what it is about this past that I don’t have in the present.”

Buck thinks about Eddie, twenty-one and folded in on himself in front of a gas station. “Okay, so what if — what if in this past, you run into someone you’re not supposed to meet until way later, and it’s — it’s a really important day for them, like a totally life changing day that you’ve only ever heard about.”

“Someone that’s important to me in the present?” Hen asks. Chimney kind of looks like he wants to take notes, his hands fidgeting on the table in a way they rarely do.

“Like — the most important to you in the present.”

“So, Maddie,” Chim says, and then gestures to Hen, “or Karen.”

Buck’s mouth opens, useless for a second, because — well. He wants to say it’s more like what Hen and Chim are to each other but…but he’s pretty sure Chim doesn’t spend most of his free time with Denny, and he’s definitely sure Hen hasn’t put Chim in her will. And he can’t really explain what Eddie is to him to these people who have never met him. So. Whatever.

“Um, sure. But — uh, but in the present things with Maddie or Karen are…complicated. You’re not…together and there was…an accident, they were hurt pretty bad and you were there and now…now you just haven’t been able to talk about it.”

Hen and Chimney exchange a glance, all raised eyebrows and silent conversation, before Chim’s turning back to Buck. “Is this hypothetical about you? Because legally you have to tell us.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Hen scoffs. “But he should anyway, because we’re his friends and medical professionals.”

Buck laughs, shaking his head. “No, no, it’s…this book I’m reading. I’m trying to guess the end.”

Hen and Chim share another look, but ultimately let it go. And Buck could tell them, and they might even believe him — Chimney, at least, would definitely believe him, if only to be involved in the adventure — but he…he’s not sure how he would tell them without spilling all of his guts, without revealing things he’s not even sure he’s hiding.

Besides, there’s not enough time left in their shift for Buck to explain Eddie and Christopher and also the girlfriend he has at home.

“Well, obviously it means I’m supposed to talk to Maddie about what happened,” Chim says, in a tone that sounds like duh, “and then get her back. Full sci-fi romcom.”

Buck leans back, blinking a little dumbly at him. He holds himself back from saying, okay, but what if you had a girlfriend? And Maddie was never yours to begin with? And also Maddie’s like, super repressed and probably needs therapy. “But — what if you didn’t go back to your present?”

Hen frowns. “You mean what if I’m stuck in the past?”

“No, like…you go to sleep and you wake up…and you’re back in the present but it’s a different present. One where you never met Maddie or Karen.”

“Ah,” Chimney says, nodding seriously, “like a weird, twisted version of A Christmas Carol.”

Hen points at him, nodding along, but Buck only frowns. “Like what?”

Chimney rolls his eyes. “Christ. Come on, Buck. Dude gets visits from the spirit of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come to remind him of what his life was like and show him how it might end up if he stays on the same path.”

“Oh, like Ghosts of Girlfriends Past?”

Chim and Hen blink at him, and then Hen’s ducking her head and laughing into her coffee just as Chim throws his head back and groans at the ceiling. “I don’t even have anything to say to that.”

“I’d find Karen, obviously,” Hen says, once her laughter dies out. “In my different present where I don’t know her, I’d find her.”

“Definitely,” Chim agrees. “Obviously whatever’s happening to me is about fixing our relationship, so I’d find her and see what’s going on with her life in this reality.”

Buck nods, flipping his phone over and over again in his hands. Find Eddie. Simple enough, except that he could be anywhere.

“How do you think you’d make it stop? The reality hopping, I mean.”

Chim snorts, cradling his mug between two hands so all Buck can see is DILF, like a weird, heavy-handed foreshadowing. Buck just wants to go home. “Obviously it’ll stop once I realize what I’m doing wrong in my reality.”

“Right,” Buck says, leaning back in his seat. Easy, then.

Buck’s loft is just as stale and lifeless in this reality as it is in his own. It’s maybe even more lifeless, all of his furniture dark and cold and all traces of Christopher gone. There’s no crayon drawings on his fridge, no extra set of crutches hanging out by the bathroom, no gummy snacks in his pantry.

He’s itchy with how much he hates it.

His 2010 studio was one thing: it was awful, but it was entirely different, somewhere he’d never been before, and Buck could pretend he was just visiting. But he knows this loft, and he’s even made peace with everything he hates about it in his own reality, but only because he’s managed to cover it up with Eddie and Christopher and Taylor.

And he somehow has none of that here.

He does a search through his texts for Taylor’s name, but comes up empty, which either means he never met her or his semi-regular purging of texts deleted her memory from his phone. There’s no pictures of her in his camera roll or his Instagram, and they’re not following each other.

But she follows Albert and — Buck doesn’t even know what to do with that, actually, so he closes out of Instagram entirely and swipes over to a folder of apps labelled with — Christ — the water droplets emoji. It is, unfortunately, exactly what he expected: half a dozen dating apps.

There’s really no denying he’s still firmly Buck 1.0 in this reality. His phone was muted during his shift like always, but he unlocked it at the end of the day to find a wall of notifications from unsaved numbers, some subtly inquiring after his plans for the evening but some just straight up asking if he was down to fuck.

He’s at least smart enough to turn off notifications for the dating apps, because the first one he opens has a list of incredibly Not Safe For Work messages. He ignores them in favour of his profile, and it feels like going back in time, even more than waking up in 2010 did. It’s virtually no different from his profile from four years ago: the pictures are different, newer, but in similar poses, and the bio’s different, but it’s still a joke about his goddamn firehose.

He swipes away, meaning to go to the next app — surely he’s got a Hinge profile that isn’t the worst thing he’s ever seen — but his attention snags on a familiar logo.

The thing is, in his original Buck 1.0 phase he had a lot of dating apps, but he never had Grindr. He didn’t hook up with guys much at all, really. There was just…something different about his attraction to men, something he wanted to keep close to his chest, something he didn’t feel comfortable putting online. It wasn’t — he’s always been out, or at least he’s never been intentionally in the closet, but…but it was just different.

This Buck seems to have a different opinion, because he’s got a Grindr profile with very clear intentions. His face isn’t even in any of his pictures, mostly ab shots, except for one picture of his actual ass in a pair of grey briefs. It’s clear he uses the app, too, because there are replies to messages in the app from Buck, more nudes than Buck ever remembers sending.

He closes out of the app and slides his phone across his kitchen island, away from him.

It’s not that he’s judging this reality’s Buck, because he’s definitely not. He might be…sad that he’s still having meaningless hookups, that he’s still trying to patch all of the holes in his life with sex, but he’s not judging.

It’s just…weird, seeing messages and photos from him but not from him. It feels, almost, like he’s cheating on Taylor just by being in this body, the subject of dick pics sent only a couple of days ago and with those marks on his back.

He needs to get out of the loft, so he grabs his jacket and pockets his phone and tries not to have a breakdown in his elevator.

There’s a Starbucks across the street, just like always, and at least that’s familiar without any baggage. There’s even the same powder blue Volkswagen Beetle in the same spot it’s always in on weekday nights, with the same bimbo rights bumper sticker. It’s ridiculous, but the sight of it is enough to make Buck’s shoulders relax, ducking his head to laugh as he pushes through the door.

And he walks directly into a broad chest.

He has no time to react, can only watch, wide eyed, as the full, hot cup of coffee in the guy’s hand tips over and spills all over this stranger’s chest.

“Fuck, I am so fucking sorry,” Buck says, eyes on the growing dark stain across the guy’s grey shirt, and he’s just thinking that it looks weirdly familiar, when the guy sighs and Buck’s head jerks up and —

It’s not a stranger; it’s Eddie. Of fucking course it’s Eddie.

Buck’s mouth falls open, useless, as Eddie holds his shirt away from his chest, wincing slightly.

He looks — he looks exactly like Buck’s Eddie, except that he’s nearly got a full beard, and his hair’s longer, curling at the ends and hanging over his forehead. The bags under his eyes are deeper, the tired creases in the corner of his eyes harsher. He’s Eddie but…somehow more tired, more on the edge.

“I’m so sorry,” Buck repeats, once he’s managed to avoid swallowing his tongue. “Let me just…” Buck scrambles to pull as many tissues as he can from the closest dispenser and presses them against Eddie’s chest. Eddie’s brow furrows, his mouth pursing slightly, and Buck realizes belatedly that he might be acting a little too familiar, touching a little too much for the strangers Eddie thinks they are.

But it’s like Buck’s had some quiet, invisible tension in his spine the entire day, and now that Eddie’s close enough to touch it’s disappeared.

“It’s fine,” Eddie bites out, and even if Buck didn’t know him so well it makes him dizzy sometimes, he’d know he’s lying. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No,” Buck says, taking Eddie’s now empty cup from him and tossing it blindly in the trash. “No, it’s not. I’m — I’m gonna get you a new coffee and then, listen, I live across the street; I can lend you a new shirt and wash this one.”

Eddie’s shoulder tense. Or, they were already tense, so they somehow visibly tense further. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I really do,” Buck says, and he’s already walking to the empty cash, where the barista is trying and failing to suppress laughter.

He orders an iced green tea for himself and a replacement black coffee with three sugars for Eddie, who frowns at him. “How did you know my order?”

Buck blinks. Because of course he knows Eddie’s order, even though Eddie almost never gets coffee from Starbucks, preferring the little cafe by his house where all of the waitresses know him and Buck by name, except that maybe they don’t in this reality, where Eddie doesn’t know Buck at all.

“Uh, lucky guess?”

The barista snorts as she slides their drinks across the counter.

Buck tries to focus on the cold condensation of his drink and not the way his heart’s trying to beat right out of his chest. Because this is so much harder than meeting a young Eddie; that Eddie was familiar, but visibly different in appearance and personality, and this one…This one has the exact same frown, the same tension, dialled up a bit but just the same. He just doesn’t know Buck at all.

It’s wrong, wrong in a way that hits even harder than waking up in Texas in the year 2010, standing in front of a version of Eddie that’s so close to his own but ultimately isn’t. He wants to cry with how much he misses him.

“Thanks for this,” Eddie says, gesturing with his coffee. He doesn’t seem to notice that Buck’s having a mild breakdown right in front of him, or he’s choosing to ignore it, and that — the fact this Eddie doesn’t know him well enough to pick out nearly every thought that crosses his mind — is salt in a wound. “But I should really get going.”

“No,” Buck nearly shouts, like a lunatic, and just barely manages to stop himself before he grabs Eddie’s arm. Eddie’s eyebrows spike upwards. “Sorry, I just — I feel really bad. My apartment’s literally across the street, it’s no trouble at all. And that coffee was crazy hot, it must have burned a little. I’m…I’m a firefighter, I can — I don’t know —”

“You’re a firefighter?”

Buck’s stomach clenches, a fist wrapping around his gut. “Yeah, with the 118.” And if he’s trying to fish for information, well, that’s what Hen and Chim told him to do, kind of.

Eddie’s jaw shifts, and it takes Buck a second to realize he’s trying to decide if he wants to tell Buck something. It’s been so long since Buck’s been on the receiving end of that look — since Eddie hesitated before showing Buck a picture of Christopher, years ago — that he’s out of practice in reading it.

“I’m a firefighter, too,” he says, finally, and Buck’s heart stutters pathetically in his chest.

“Really? What station are you at?” Buck shifts, tries not to sound too weird when he adds, “I don’t think I’ve seen you around.”

“Station 6,” Eddie says, and Buck’s stomach takes a quick plummet before Eddie clarifies, “in El Paso.”

And Buck — Buck hadn’t really considered that Eddie might have stayed in El Paso. It makes something acidic climb up his spine, the idea of Eddie spending the last four years battling with his parents.

Buck realizes, suddenly, that he has no idea what happened to Shannon in this reality. Is she alive, somewhere in LA without Eddie? Is she back in El Paso? Did she never leave at all?

There’s really no cool way to say hey, is your wife dead? so he forces a teasing grin. “Must’ve been a long drive just for a Starbucks.”

Eddie snorts, finally smiling. Buck wants to take a picture or learn how to draw so he can paint a freaking picture of it. “I’m just visiting for my abuela’s birthday.”

Buck doesn’t say it’s not her birthday for a couple of days because that would be an insane thing to say, so he only nods. “Well, I can’t send her grandson back to her with a huge stain and a potential burn, so.”

Eddie shakes his head, laughing. Buck pictures his heart expanding in his chest.

“You’re relentless,” he says, and he doesn’t sound as fond as he usually does but he doesn’t sound like he wants Buck to shut up and go away either. Buck beams, too wide.

“Just so you know, if you’re planning to murder me,” Eddie says, as he follows Buck out of the Starbucks and across the street, “I was in the army.”

Buck laughs the hardest he has in days.

It’s almost painful, seeing Eddie in this loft that’s been stripped of all of his fingerprints, and worse still when Eddie hovers around the entryway instead of beelining to Buck’s fridge like he usually does.

He hasn’t been at the loft at all lately though, not since Taylor started spending more and more nights here, so it doesn’t sting as bad as it could.

Buck waves him in, fiddles around the kitchen uselessly as he sets down his drink and his keys and tries to remember what normal people do with their hands when they have the alternate universe version of their best friend who doesn’t know them standing in their apartment. He settles for shoving them in his back pockets, which is definitely not the right move but the only one he can think of, and rocks back on his heels.

Eddie raises his eyebrows, and there’s a small, reluctant smile tucked away in the corner of his mouth, like he finds Buck absolutely ridiculous.

Buck swallows. “Um, I’m gonna — find you a new shirt.”

“Okay.” Eddie’s smile widens, his amusement growing, and Buck’s so fucked.

It wasn’t this bad, he thinks as he awkwardly edges around Eddie on his way to the stairs, with young Eddie. Maybe because young Eddie was going through something huge of his own, or maybe because young Eddie was different enough that Buck could nearly trick himself into pretending he was someone else, or maybe because Buck’s never seen Eddie with a beard before and it’s messing with his brain.

Or maybe because the last time he saw his Eddie, he was saying I’m leaving the 118, and now all Buck wants to do is handcuff himself to any version of Eddie he can find so he can never be out of reach.

It’s pure muscle memory to open the bottom drawer of his dresser, where he typically keeps an extra set of penguin-themed pyjamas for Christopher and some of Eddie’s LAFD shirts. It’s filled with work out clothes and resistance bands instead.

He closes the drawer with maybe a little too much force, and picks a shirt at random.

He doesn’t realize he’s picked out one of his own LAFD shirts, with BUCKLEY across the back, until Eddie’s holding it out in front of him and laughing. “I think this might count as desertion,” he says, “Firefighter Buckley.”

Buck can’t quite hold back a booming laugh, far louder than Eddie’s dumb joke deserves and half-hysterical. Firefighter Buckley. Jesus Christ. “Just Buck, actually,” he says, remembering finally that Eddie doesn’t actually know his name.

“Eddie,” he returns, and Buck’s gonna lose his actual mind if one more alternate universe Eddie introduces himself to him.

Or he’s gonna lose his mind right now, because Eddie’s pulling off his stained shirt. And — Buck’s seen Eddie shirtless more times than he can count. He knows Eddie’s hot. He’s even seen Eddie shirtless since having a girlfriend, and he’s gotten real good at not caring.

But Buck’s eyes go, instantly, to where his Eddie has a still-red scar over his shoulder, and the skin’s completely smooth. He still has the scar on the other shoulder, another one a bit lower, but they’re white and faded, years old.

He’s known that it had to be the case, but it’s still a punch to the gut, the realization that this Eddie wasn’t shot in front of Buck in the middle of the street. That this alternate version of Buck never tasted this Eddie’s blood in his mouth.

And Buck’s of two minds: devastated at a life spent without Eddie, and desperately grateful Eddie being far away meant he was never hurt.

“Thanks again,” Eddie says, and when Buck blinks he’s not covered in Eddie’s blood but standing in front of alternate universe Eddie wearing Buck’s name across his back. “But you didn’t have to do this. It’s definitely not my first time being covered in stains; I’ve got a kid.”

Another punch to the gut, hearing Eddie refer to Christopher as a kid to Buck. He busies himself with collecting Eddie’s stained shirt, turning to where his laundry unit’s tucked inside a cupboard. He has no idea what his face is doing, but he doubts it’s normal.

“I love kids,” he says, fighting for a casual tone.

“I love this one,” Eddie says, an echo of a past life, and Buck has to close his eyes for a second, his hand hovering uselessly around the washer door.

Buck takes his time setting up the washer, works on getting himself together enough to join Eddie on the other side of the island, accepting the phone he’s slid across the granite for Buck’s inspection.

“His name’s Christopher, he’s ten.”

Christopher’s his lockscreen, just like he is in Buck’s reality, but this isn’t a picture that Eddie took of Christopher at the 118, with Hen and Chim barely visible in the background and Buck’s hand on Chris’ shoulder. This is Chris alone, standing in front of a school with his backpack on and grinning with all of his teeth.

It’s all he can do to grin back at Eddie, to tuck away all of his desperate longing to have Christopher with them. “Congrats on the crazy cute kid.”

Eddie ducks his head, directing his smile at the counter as he takes his phone back.

Christopher being ten means his birth kept with Buck’s normal timeline, unlike Jee. But there was no one else in the photo — no Shannon, no potential new El Paso girlfriend.

It’s maybe not his smoothest move to lean his elbows on the counter and ask, “Did his mom come to LA, too?”

Eddie’s eyebrow twitches upward, an amused bend to his mouth for only a second before his expression turns distinctly complicated. “Uh, no — she passed away a couple of years ago.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Buck says, shoulders slumping.

He had hoped…maybe something about Eddie not being in LA would have altered everything else just enough to save Shannon. That maybe if Buck didn’t get to have Eddie in this life, at least Eddie would get to have Shannon.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, one of his palms sliding over his scruff, which — is still a lot for Buck to handle, personally.

“So, it’s just you and Christopher in El Paso?”

Buck winces as soon as the words hit the air between them, but Eddie’s already raising his eyebrows, grin amused and a little surprised. “Are you hitting on me?”

“No,” Buck groans, burying his head in his hands, as Eddie’s laughter rings around the kitchen. “That came out wrong. I’m not — I’m not hitting on you.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, but he doesn’t sound like he believes him, and when Buck lifts his head he’s still smirking. “So it just sounds like you’re hitting on me?”

“I’m not. I — I mean, obviously you’re hot, and I am interested in men, but I —” He nearly says I have a girlfriend, except that in this reality, he doesn’t. He still feels like he does, though, so he shakes his head. “I’m just…being friendly? Oh, fuck you, man,” he says, once Eddie starts to laugh, a familiar deep sound that fills Buck’s horrible kitchen. “Forget it, I don’t wanna know anything about your life.”

“Dramatic,” Eddie accuses, not for the first time in Buck’s life, but for the first time in his. Buck’s stomach clenches, his strange sadness without a clear direction.

“It’s not…just me and Christopher, but I don’t…” Eddie shakes his head, a familiar wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. “My parents, uh, help out a lot. Chris stays with them during the week and with me on the weekends.”

“What?” It comes out too harsh, too sharp, Buck knows from the way Eddie’s eyes widen if nothing else. But — But Buck knows why Eddie ended up in LA. Buck knows maybe more than anyone just how much Eddie has never wanted Christopher to be raised like he was, stifled under his parents’ thumb, because Eddie put it in writing that Christopher would go to his best friend before he’d ever go to Eddie’s parents.

He even knows a little bit about that last blow out fight before Eddie packed his bags and brought Christopher across state lines. He knows that they wanted Christopher for themselves, their second chance with a son they could be proud of, and that Eddie refused.

Except that in this reality he didn’t. Or maybe he tried but something happened that made him go back. Maybe he never applied for stations in LA at all. Maybe Shannon never left El Paso, so Eddie never followed her. Whatever the sequence of events, they led to Eddie, here in Buck’s kitchen only visiting LA, with exhaustion stitched into every line of his body and seeing Christopher only on the weekends.

Buck’s so furious about it he thinks he could walk all the way to Abuela’s to give the Diazes a piece of his mind.

“Sorry,” he says, struggling to keep some of that fury out of his voice. “I just — sorry but that’s bullshit.” Eddie’s eyebrows hit his hairline, and his expression is distinctly taken aback, but there’s a bit of amusement under everything. “You’re a great father; there’s no reason he shouldn’t be with you full time.”

“I’m a great father?” Eddie repeats, his head tilted. “You don’t even know me.”

Buck shifts, leaning away from where he’s been resting his hands on the kitchen island and shrugging helplessly. “Yeah, well, you’re a firefighter.”

Eddie’s expression is definitely amused now. “So, I’m a great father because I’m a firefighter?”

“I mean — no, not because —” Buck shakes his head, gesturing uselessly with fluttering hands. “I just know you’re a good dad, okay? I’ve got, like, a feeling.”

He thinks about young Eddie, drunk on a swing set saying I already love that kid and whatever I may have wanted doesn’t matter anymore. Even Eddie at twenty-one, not even a father yet, had been ready to do anything for Christopher. And this may all be a dream — may all just be Buck’s subconscious putting words in Eddie’s mouth — but it may not be.

Buck’s pretty sure he could wake up in the middle of a Star Wars movie tomorrow, in the body of one of those furry things, and Eddie being a great father would still be a constant.

“A feeling,” Eddie repeats, dubious but clearly amused. “Well, thanks for that feeling, but you don’t really know my situation.”

Saying but I know you isn’t really an option here, in this world where Buck’s technically only known Eddie for a little under an hour.

“Maybe not,” Buck agrees, however reluctantly. “But I’ve got this other feeling that says you haven’t had anyone tell you you’re a good dad, or that you deserve better.”

Eddie’s brow furrows, his mouth bunching to the side. Buck can see the tight line of his jaw. And it’s strange — seeing Eddie with all of his guards up, his eyes hard and closed off in the face of Buck’s fumbled affection. This is supposed to be the part where Eddie’s eyes go gooey soft, and Buck recites every aquatic animal he knows until he can be normal about it.

“Listen,” Buck says, swallowing hard, “do you have to be back soon?”

Buck watches Eddie pull himself back together, watches him clear his expression. Something aches behind Buck’s breastbone. “No, Christopher’s already in bed so — no, I don’t have to be anywhere.”

“Okay.” It’s stupid, how relieved Buck is, but he’s sick and tired of watching Eddie walk away from him. “Then I’m ordering us a pizza, you can argue with the wall about it.”

It helps to catalogue the differences between this Eddie and the one from Buck’s reality. There’s the obvious ones, like the goddamn beard and the terrible exhaustion Buck can’t quite look away from, but also things that take a minute to reveal themselves, like the fact that this Eddie folds his pizza slice independently of Buck’s influence and doesn’t like olives.

And that this Eddie is absolutely dogshit at video games.

“Come on, dude,” Buck says, leaning back into the couch with a laugh after he beats Eddie soundly in yet another round of Mario Kart, “you have a ten year old; you cannot be this bad.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, and Buck’s Eddie would probably reach out to push Buck’s shoulder and then linger there, his hand warm and comforting. Or at least he would before Taylor. But this Eddie keeps his hands to himself, which is…fine.

“Christopher doesn’t play video games,” Eddie says, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. “My mom —”

“Right,” Buck cuts in, before he has to hear anymore about Eddie’s mom’s parenting.

He’s only met the Diaz parents a couple of times — during Shannon’s funeral, briefly in Texas, over the phone when Eddie was recovering — but he remembers the way Helena hovered around Christopher, the way she cut up his food and replaced his glass with a sippy cup and frowned when Buck lent him his phone to look up a word.

It’s not — Buck’s glad Christopher will never have to doubt that the people around him love him, but — but Eddie was right. If Eddie’s parents tried to fight Buck for Chris, he’d do anything it took.

“My parents didn’t let us play video games either,” he says, instead of starting a new game. Eddie tilts his head, curious, and it’s weird that this Eddie doesn’t already know all of the sticky, horrible details of Buck’s past. “No TV, either.”

“Well, you grew up okay,” Eddie says, but he’s lacking conviction.

Buck can’t quite help the laugh that bubbles out of his chest, his head thrown back briefly with the force of it. Eddie has no fucking idea, not about any of Buck’s reckless stunts or ill-advised phases or the fact that Buck is currently forty-something hours into what might be a full-scale hallucinary breakdown.

“I grew up into an endless rotation of mental breakdowns in a trench coat, actually,” Buck corrects. Eddie’s laugh is almost the same as he remembers, just a little deeper. “I just mean that…keeping a kid from playing games isn’t necessarily the gold standard for parenting.”

Eddie’s eyebrows raise, and he looks around pointedly. “Call it a feeling,” he says, dry, “but I don’t think you have any kids.”

It hits and burrows somewhere tender, the growing bruise from looking at Christopher everyday and thinking he’s not my son, but he will be if Eddie dies and he’s my son, but only if the worst thing imaginable happens. And in this reality Christopher doesn’t even know who he is. And in this reality he doesn’t even have a niece.

“No, I don’t,” he admits, and it hurts. “But I think — I think it’s obvious you love your son, and I think that what you want for him matters.”

Eddie’s quiet for a long moment, staring at his knee where there’s a small rip in the denim. Finally, he shifts, the tension in his shoulders not bleeding out but rearranging itself. “I — my parents wanted to take him from me a few years ago, right before I finished at the academy. I was working a lot and I — whatever, they just didn’t think I was…enough for him, but I didn’t want him to be raised like I was. My ex-wife, she left the year before to take care of her mom in LA, so I was going to accept an offer for a firehouse here, follow her, but…” Eddie’s shoulder twitches again, his jaw clenching.

“She came back. Her mom had died and she wasn’t handling it well…she just missed her son, so she came back to El Paso. My parents — God, they hated her, but with her back they backed off a little. And then, uh, there was an accident and she passed and it — was hard. I wasn’t — I just needed — whatever, it doesn’t matter, my parents decided I couldn’t handle it and this time — there was no arguing.”

Eddie laughs, suddenly, a sharp bark. He buries his head in his hands. “And I have no fucking clue why I’m telling you any of this.”

Buck’s own laugh is a breathless huff, nearly silent. It’s an echo when he says, “Because I’m a super fucking friendly guy. People are always falling over themselves to share their secrets. Don’t worry, you’re not the first.”

Young Eddie had laughed and kicked Buck’s shin; this Eddie rolls his eyes and snorts, reluctant.

“Listen, needing support, needing some help — that doesn’t make you a bad father.” It’s not the first time he’s said this to Eddie, but it’s the first time this Eddie’s heard it. The twitch of his eyebrow tells Buck he’s just as resistant to hearing it as ever. “That’s not — it’s not enough reason to write you off.”

Eddie finally meets his eyes and — there it is, Eddie Diaz doe eyes. They’re different — more guarded, less heart-stoppingly intense, but they’re the closest Buck’s gotten from this worn down version of Eddie. He wants to burrow under Eddie’s skin.

Eddie looks away first, with an amused huff and a shake of his head. He gestures at Buck with the controller. “Start the game, Buckley.”

So Buck starts the game.

And it’s — it’s not like it was with the young Eddie, that version of him that hadn’t yet learned how to put up walls, that was willing to meet Buck’s familiarity in the middle.

This Eddie is all walls. Making him laugh is like pulling teeth, but it gets easier as the night goes on, as Buck continues to beat him in Mario Kart and eventually offers him a beer.

It’s not like it is with his Eddie, different in a way that makes Buck ache somewhere deep. But he’s there, right in front of him, and slowly his smiles come easier and some of the tension in his shoulders eases.

And eventually Eddie’s shirt finishes drying, and the pizza runs out, and Buck beats Eddie for the seventh time, and Eddie — somewhat reluctantly — says he should get going. Buck doesn’t beg him to stay like he kind of wants to, and instead — very reluctantly — walks him to the door after he’s changed back into his own shirt and returned Buck’s.

They don’t hug like Buck and young Eddie did, but Eddie puts his number into Buck’s phone and squeezes his shoulder before he leaves. Buck hasn’t fixed Eddie’s life — hasn’t moved him out of El Paso with his own hands like he wants to — but he thinks maybe it helped, for Eddie to hear someone say he’s enough on his own.

And Buck closes the door before he has to watch him walk away.

Buck, once again, wakes up in another unfamiliar bed.

This one is firmer than he’s used to, and the sun hitting his closed eyes is coming from a completely different direction, and his pillow smells different. And also, there’s an arm draped over his waist.

It’s not Taylor’s, he knows even before he opens his eyes, because it’s much heavier than her’s, and she hates being the big spoon. He blinks his eyes open, looks down, and it’s very clearly a masculine arm.

He has the split second thought that maybe he got stuck in that strange present, that maybe he got wasted after Eddie left and found a hookup on Grindr. It would explain the strange bed. But he knows that he wouldn’t cheat on Taylor, not even in his dreams.

So he’s in another strange reality, in bed with a strange man.

Except, he realizes suddenly, it’s not a strange man at all, because this arm has a familiar tattoo.

Buck’s chest seizes, panic stirring in his gut, but before he can jump to his feet and hide in the bathroom or maybe jump out of a window, Eddie groans behind him, and buries his face in the back of Buck’s neck.

“Too early,” Eddie mumbles, and his lips brush over Buck’s skin, inciting a full body shiver that makes Eddie laugh, something Buck feels more than hears. The next touch to Buck’s neck is a deliberate kiss, the soft press of Eddie’s mouth over the very top of Buck’s spine.

“Drama queen,” Buck manages to say, relying on muscle memory to tease Eddie, even while the rest of him is trying not to absolutely lose his mind.

The first universe he wakes up in where he already knows Eddie, and Eddie’s in his fucking bed. Eddie’s in his bed and kissing his neck and sliding his hand up Buck’s bare chest, drawing him closer.

Eddie’s mouths along the slope of Buck’s neck, over the curve of his shoulder and then back up again. The heat that stirs in Buck’s stomach is visceral, but accompanied immediately by acidic guilt.

Because he’s had dirty dreams about Eddie before, mostly the kind that made it difficult to look Eddie in the day the next day, but some soft like this, but not since he started dating Taylor. And he’s getting less and less sure that this is a dream at all. His dreams have never felt like this — like he’s being fully enveloped in Eddie; like every point of contact burns — and they’ve certainly never lasted this long.

He just doesn’t know the rules for cheating in alternate dimensions, but he knows he doesn’t want to bend them.

Eddie’s hand slides from Buck’s chest to ghost over his ribcage, touch light enough to send another shiver down Buck’s spine, and then his fingers are tightening over Buck’s hip and pulling him back until —

Jesus Christ.

Buck’s breathless gasp earns him a smile that he feels against his shoulder.

“We have less than thirty minutes until Christopher’s alarm goes,” Eddie says — whispers, fucking purrs, what the fuck. “Think we can make it work?”

“Eddie,” Buck says, but it comes out like a whine as Eddie’s hand slides further down, “we can’t—”

A cry cuts through the room.

Eddie and Buck freeze, Eddie with his hand half under Buck’s boxers — shitting goddamn motherfucker — and Buck with his bottom lip caught between his teeth. There’s a moment of ringing silence, and then the crying restarts in earnest. It’s not Christopher, Buck knows that immediately, because he’s pretty sure it’s a baby.

Okay, he thinks, trying desperately to put his thoughts in an order that isn’t holy fuck jesus christ eddie’s hands fucking shit what the fuck, so maybe they’re babysiting Jee-Yun. That would — make sense. Eddie and Buck have babysat Jee-Yun together in his reality, even without sleeping together.

Eddie, at least, doesn’t find the crying baby a surprise at all. He only groans a little, retracting his hand — motherfucker goddamn — and rolling away.

“It’s your turn,” he says, and Buck turns onto his back to watch him pull on a shirt. It’s there and gone in a second, but he’s pretty sure this Eddie has more tattoos. “I’ll get Christopher up.”

Eddie sends a grin in Buck’s direction, and it’s one of the easiest, softest smiles Buck’s ever seen him wear. He leans over Buck, supporting himself with one hand next to Buck’s pillow, and Buck turns his cheek before Eddie’s mouth can land on his. Instead, Eddie kisses high up on Buck’s cheek, a soft touch that leaves bone-deep warmth in its wake.

“Morning breath,” Buck explains, weakly, when Eddie pulls away to frown at him.

Eddie’s face splits into a grin, amused, and he spares a moment to pat Buck’s cheek gently before he straightens. “I’ve kissed you through way worse, babe, but okay. Go deal with our daughter before she brings the house down.”

There’s another new tattoo peeking out from the leg of his boxers, clearly resting on his inner thigh, but wrapping around toward the back, where Buck can see only a few dark lines and —

Buck’s brain catches up and skids to a stop. Daughter? That’s —

Buck’s on his feet and struggling into the first shirt he sees — LAFD, with DIAZ on the back, so at least they’re still firefighters — before he can freak out anymore. They’re not in Eddie’s house — or, they’re not in Buck’s Eddie’s house, and this is starting to get a little confusing — so the layout is instantly unfamiliar. The door to Eddie’s bedroom — their bedroom? He needs severe help — still leads into a short hallway, but instead of Christopher’s room being directly across, there’s a door covered in stickers.

There’s also a wooden sign hanging from a nail that says Lottie.

Buck pauses with his hand on the door knob, tightening his grip until his hand stops shaking. There’s — his daughter is behind the door. And — and he’s spent months trying and failing to come to terms with the fact that Christopher’s not his son — that he’s only Buck’s son if — and now…

Now, when the baby — when Lottie — takes a brief break from screaming, Buck can just barely hear Christopher’s sleep-rumpled laughter, and Eddie’s muffled response. Now, he’s woken up in a reality where Christopher is his son, and he has a daughter. A little girl he’s never met, somewhere beyond this door, who he loves in a way that makes him dizzy, sight unseen.

He pulls in a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and opens the door.

It’s simple and clean: a white crib against one wall, underneath a painting of a fire engine where someone’s clearly painted over the number and replaced it with 118; a plush armchair in the opposite corner; a wooden chest next to it covered in paint-handprints and Maddie’s familiar writing labelling each hand — Chris and Denny and Harry and Jee-Yun; photo ledges mounted to multiple walls displaying picture books. The walls are a pale green, the floor under Buck’s feet covered in a dark green rug.

He can hardly take a full breath, and when he reaches the crib any air he can manage to take in leaves him in a rush.

She’s probably just under a year old, but she still seems so small, just a tiny little thing squirming around in a onesie and babbling as she gears up for another bout of screaming. Her little mouth opens and that’s enough to prompt Buck into action, scooping her into his arms and shushing softly.

He’s operating purely on instinct and his minimal experience with Jee, bouncing his knees lightly and rubbing the flat of his palm over her small back. She’s huffing heaving breaths, her tiny little hands fisted tightly in his shirt, as Buck sits them down on the armchair.

It’s almost hard to look at her, with the way his sudden desperate love presses at his seams.

He’s had time to adjust to his love for Christopher — his all encompassing, dizzying, heart-stopping love for Christopher. He’s had time to expand his chest to fit all of it, to expect the way it grows every single day beyond what he thought he was capable of.

But this little girl — it’s all at once, the way his love for her hits him, and he understands exactly what young Eddie had meant when he said he loved Christopher before he was even born. It’s not more than Christopher — Buck’s not sure he’s physically capable of loving anything or anyone more than Christopher, more than jumping into a tsunami after him — but it slams into him from a different direction.

She’s stopped crying in favour of wrapping her tiny fist around Buck’s index finger as he bounces her gently on his knee. She doesn’t look like either of them, not the way Jee looks a little bit like Maddie and a little bit like Chim, and Buck’s desperate to know every single thing about her. Did they adopt her? Was she a safe haven baby that they couldn’t let go of? Lottie’s definitely short for Charlotte — how did they decide on that? Was it already her name? Was it Christopher’s suggestion?

Buck has a flashbulb fantasy of Christopher with his arms around this tiny little baby, telling Buck and Eddie she should have a C name to match him.

Lottie pulls Buck’s finger, stronger than Buck expected of her, and Buck has to blink against stinging tears. He presses a kiss against her forehead, where dark hair is standing straight up, not long enough to lay flat. She smells like a baby, but she also smells a bit like Christopher, a bit like Maddie.

Her hand lands on Buck’s cheek in an uncoordinated baby smack, and when Buck laughs she laughs right back at him.

Christopher’s slumped over a bowl of cereal, resting his temple against the wall, when Buck carries Lottie — diaper changed, dressed in a new onesie Buck found in her dresser that says if you think I’m cool you should meet my uncle that has Chim’s name all over it — out to the kitchen.

He’s older, this Christopher, in a way that’s immediately more obvious than Eddie or Buck’s ages. He’s noticeably taller, even sitting down, in a lanky teenager way, with a mess of darker curls and wireframe glasses. When he mumbles a muffled ‘morning, Buck in response to Buck’s greeting, his voice is several octaves deeper than Buck’s familiar with.

It almost hits harder than meeting a younger Eddie or his alternate universe daughter, seeing Christopher growing up in this reality where Buck gets to be a part of it.

Eddie slides a bowl of oatmeal — Buck’s favourite overnight oats recipe, covered in chia seeds and blueberries and walnuts — in front of Buck and places a small plate of cheerios on the tray of Lottie’s high chair.

And Buck knows he’s grinning like an idiot as Eddie takes his seat between Lottie and Christopher with a bowl of cereal to match Chris, but he can’t help it. There’s so much love in every square inch of this house, palpable even in the easy silence of breakfast. It’s the kind of morning — the kind of home and life — that Buck’s always dreamed of.

Even when he was trying to patch up the holes his parents had made in him with meaningless sex and reckless stunts, this was what he hoped to end up with. He just — he didn’t think he’d ever make it this far. He’s always been too easy to leave, too much to keep around. Self-destructive and reckless and immature.

He can’t imagine what it was this version of Buck did to end up here, and it’s almost selfish of him to reap the benefits of this life he did nothing to earn.

Buck manages to squeeze a hug out of Christopher before he disappears to his room to get changed for school, smacking obnoxious, Eddie Diaz style mwah kisses to the side of Christopher’s head even as he squirms away, too cool for morning hugs.

“Gross, Buck,” Christopher says, but he’s grinning over his shoulder on his way out of the kitchen. “Save it for dad.”

Eddie’s laughter brightens the kitchen considerably, prompting a blubbering giggle from Lottie as she slams gentle fists onto her nearly empty plate of cheerios. He pushes away from the table, collecting empty plates, and Buck ducks his head when Eddie leans over so his kiss lands on the top of his head instead of his mouth.

He keeps his head ducked so he doesn’t have to see the frown he knows he’s put on Eddie’s face. Because he’s a horrible, selfish coward squatting in someone else’s perfect life. He busies himself with handing Lottie some of her runaway cheerios, her gummy grin lighting Buck up from the inside.

“Is something going on?” Eddie says, and the genuine worry in his tone is enough to make Buck’s gaze swing towards him. He’s leaning back against the kitchen sink, arms folded across his chest in a way that makes his biceps press against the sleeves of his shirt. “You’ve been dodging kisses all morning, which feels like a red flag from the guy who woke me up yesterday with a…” Eddie’s voice drops into a whisper, glancing surreptitiously at Lotte, “blow job.”

Buck chokes on a breath, a flush rising up his neck.

“No, no. Nothing’s...going on. I’m just feeling kinda gross.” There’s no normal way to say sorry, alternate universe/dreamscape life partner, but I have a girlfriend and also you’re amazing, but you’re not my Eddie and I can’t let you steal my first kiss with him, assuming I get to kiss him before I die. “I think I’m coming down with something, I don’t wanna give it to you.”

The tension doesn’t quite bleed out of Eddie’s expression, but he nods and crosses the distance between them to press a firm kiss to Buck’s forehead. Buck kind of wants to cry. “Okay. You should stay home, get some more sleep or read or have one of your fancy baths. I’ll drop Christopher off at school and take care of groceries.”

Buck can’t quite stop himself from blinking up at Eddie, smiling a little as he says, “But you’re awful at grocery shopping.” It’s true in his reality — he gets bored with the process, frustrated by the crowds, never remembers what to get — so Buck’s banking that it’s true in this one, too.

Eddie grins, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, but not when I have your fool proof grocery list. And we’re gonna have to go back soon for Jee’s birthday party, so we can grab anything I inevitably miss then.”

“Okay,” Buck relents, his shoulders slumping under the comforting weight of Eddie’s hand, resting in that dip between his neck and shoulder. It’s familiar, a place Eddie’s held a dozen times before, but it’s somehow different here and now, with the feeling of Eddie’s mouth against his forehead still burning.

“Dad,” Christopher’s voice calls from somewhere near the front of the house, in the dry tone Buck’s learning to associate with an incoming burn, “if I’m late for school because you’re making out with Buck again I’m telling Uncle Chim.”

Eddie’s amused exhale hits the narrow space between them, his hand sliding up until he can cup Buck’s face and trace his cheekbone with his thumb. “Sure you don’t wanna risk infecting me to make out a little? You know, just to spite our kid?”

Buck laughs, pushing gently at Eddie’s hips until he steps away. “Go,” he says. “That’s not an empty threat and Chimney will never let us live it down.”

Eddie only makes it three steps before he’s turning back, smacking mwah kisses over Lottie’s face until she’s scream-laughing and then sliding his hands in Buck’s hair. He tilts Buck’s head back, the pressure firm enough to make heat pool in Buck’s weak, weak gut, and presses a feather light kiss to the hinge of Buck’s jaw.

“I know what you’re doing,” Christopher shouts, “and it’s really gross!”

Eddie laughs, walking backwards out of the kitchen. He winks at Buck as he says, loud for Christopher’s benefit, “Goodbye, love of my life. I’ll be counting the seconds until we see each other again.”

Christopher’s groan drowns out Buck’s resulting, breathless laughter and Lottie’s babbling giggle.

The house is instantly quieter once the front door closes, cutting off Christopher and Eddie’s back and forth. There’s only the quiet hum of the fridge and the thump of Lottie’s fist against her tray.

And Buck, frankly, needs to know everything he can about this crazy perfect life this alternate version of him has as soon as possible. So, he lifts Lottie from her high chair and carries her around the house on his hip, letting her tangle her tiny fists in his hair like handles while he investigates.

The house is somewhere between Eddie’s house and Buck’s loft: still a cozy bungalow, but larger, and more open concept. There’s a lot of things Buck recognizes: Eddie’s old couch that Buck’s slept on more times than he can count; Buck’s TV stand; the same framed pictures of Christopher and Shannon on the mantle; Eddie’s odd collection of magnets; Sophia’s newest article printed out and pinned to the side of the fridge just like always; even the picture of Buck and Christopher at the zoo taped to Christopher’s door.

But there’s a lot of new, too. Eddie’s magnets have expanded, and Sophia’s article is joined by a magnetic fact a day calendar, the top of which says love you - eds x.

He finds the adoption papers for Lottie with both Buck and Eddie’s names framed in the nursery, and on his bedside table he finds the adoption papers for Christopher with his name similarly framed, black marker over the glass in Christopher writing that says love you buck (BFF and dad).

There’s pictures everywhere: pictures of Christopher and Buck; of Christopher, Eddie, and Buck; of Christopher and Lottie and Jee-Yun in every combination; of Maddie and Buck; of the 118 in every combination. Pictures of Eddie and Shannon’s wedding, both of them way too young, visibly nervous; of Eddie in a high school baseball uniform, a bat slung over his shoulders; of Eddie, Sophia, and Adrianna as kids with their arms around each other, faces covered in dirt.

Pictures of Buck and Eddie in a dozen configurations, among a dozen people, but always side by side, Eddie nearly always with a hand somewhere on Buck.

And then there’s the wedding photos.

Because Buck’s wearing a ring. It’s a simple silver band, nothing crazy, but when he twists it around his finger something dark peeks out from underneath it, and when he pulls it towards his first knuckle, he has a tattoo. He knows, even without having seen anything, that Eddie’s ring is hiding a similar tattoo.

And the pictures of the wedding appear everywhere: on the mantle next to the pictures of Chris and Shannon, there’s one of Christopher standing next to Eddie at the altar, the best man; hanging in the hallway there’s one of Maddie, Chim, Buck, and Eddie, Buck and Chim wrestling while Maddie and Eddie pose for the camera; on Eddie’s nightstand there’s the money shot, Buck and Eddie in black suits kissing under an archway with Bobby teary-eyed and grinning behind them.

Buck’s lockscreen in this world is a picture of Christopher and Lottie, but his background when he unlocks his phone is the picture from Eddie’s nightstand.

So, Buck didn’t just wake up in bed with Eddie, and he didn’t just wake up as a father to two, he woke up as a husband.

It’s almost too much, he thinks, sitting on the edge of the bed he apparently shares with his husband, his daughter yanking at the collar of his shirt — the shirt that still says DIAZ on the back, and he had assumed it was Eddie’s, but now he’s not sure. He has a husband and a family, and there’s a whiteboard calendar in the kitchen filled with Christopher’s social obligations and Lottie’s appointments and plans with Maddie and Chim and Hen and Karen and —

And he has everyone and everything he loves, here in this strange reality.

In the first two he didn’t have Eddie in his life at all. In the first he met Eddie when his world was collapsing, and in the second he met Eddie when he was stuck in a life that was suffocating him. He knew — or he could guess — why Buck ended up there. Eddie in crisis, Buck there to support him when no one else was.

But this? As far as Buck can tell, Eddie’s life here is perfect. He’s always smiling, always on the edge of laughing, generous with his touches and open with his affection. There’s reminders for both Buck and Eddie’s therapy appointments on the calendar.

This Eddie doesn’t need anything from Buck.

Except that Chimney said, Obviously it’ll stop once I realize what I’m doing wrong in my reality. So maybe this isn’t about what Eddie needs from Buck; maybe this is about what Buck’s missing. A family and a house that feels like home and steady ground beneath his feet.

A world where he doesn’t want to get in his Jeep and drive until something settles. A world where he doesn’t want to set fire to everything around him just to watch it burn. A world where he can talk to Eddie, instead of standing by while Eddie says I’m leaving the 118.

He just doesn’t know how to make it happen.

“My daughter could definitely beat your daughter in a leg race,” Chimney says, leading Eddie to the table with a basket of muffins in his hands.

“My daughter is ten months old, Chim,” Eddie says, glaring heatlessly at Chim as he slides into the empty seat next to Buck, “and she could still beat your daughter.”

Maddie laughs, pausing in the very involved game of wiggling fingers she’s been playing with a babbling Lottie to accept the kiss Chimney presses to the top of her head. “You flipping wish, Diaz,” she says, in a coo-y baby voice as she returns her attention to the baby at the table.

And Buck’s maybe having a hard time looking away from his sister. It’s been two worlds without her, his attempts to follow Chimney home yesterday denied at every turn, and weeks without her in his own world. He missed her so much, unpracticed in being without her after years of finally having her back, that he didn’t realize how difficult it was to breath without her until she was in front of him.

He hugged Maddie for maybe a few seconds too long when they arrived for lunch, his arms tight around her shoulders and his nose buried in her hair. She smells the same, even in this strange world where Buck gets to have everyone and everything he loves.

“Buck,” Eddie says, his arm coming to rest easily on the back of Buck’s chair, “tell them our daughter would beat Jee in a race.”

Our daughter. It’s gonna be a miracle if Buck can make it through this day without crying.

“Lottie would kick Jee’s butt, it’s true.”

Maddie and Chim roll their eyes nearly as one, and Maddie tosses a muffin at Buck’s chest with the suggestion to please shut up.

It feels too good to be true, the easy conversation. Chim and Eddie bickering over the latest Marvel movie Buck’s never heard of, Maddie and Buck regaling Lottie with increasingly incomprehensible baby talk.

Hen calls Chim an hour in and by the end of the call they’ve planned two nights out, one with Chim, Hen, and Buck, the other with Maddie, Karen, and Eddie, for a night where Christopher and Denny have an overnight field trip. The Lees, apparently, are more than willing to take both Jee and Lottie.

Buck manages not to burst into tears every three seconds, when Eddie rests his hand on Buck’s thigh under the table and when Maddie smiles at him and when Lottie babbles something that’s almost a word and Eddie crows, hear that, Chim? Our daughter’s a genius, but just barely.

“Daddy,” Jee calls, stumbling out of her room once they’ve finished the salad Chimney made, a pirate hat sitting crooked on the top of her head. Her growth is the most obvious, the most heart-stopping, her hair full and wavy like Maddie’s but dark like Chim’s and wrestled back into two french braids. She’s so much taller, gap-toothed and speaking full sentences, only a couple of years younger than Christopher was when Buck first met him.

“Yes, Captain?” Chim says, sweeping Jee up to sit on his knee. Maddie tugs at one of her braids and Lottie waves her arms, babbling nonsensically until Jee reaches forward to shake her hand.

“Will you and Uncle Eddie play with me?” she asks, turning Buckley puppy dog eyes on Chim and Eddie in turn. “I need princesses for a pirate tea party.”

Chim looks up at Eddie in question, but Eddie’s already pushing back from his seat, dropping a kiss on Lottie and Buck’s heads in turn.

“Let’s go, Captain Jee,” Eddie says, grinning at Jee-Yun as he steals her from Chim’s lap, manoeuvring her gently over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry that makes her scream laugh and thump tiny fists against his back. “Tea’s getting cold.”

Chim laughs, pausing only long enough to kiss Maddie, high-five Lottie, and dig his knuckles into the top of Buck’s head before he’s following after Eddie and Jee, calling dibs on the blue tiara.

“Ease up on the heart eyes, Evan,” Maddie says, but she’s smiling softly when Buck manages to tear his eyes away from Eddie’s retreating back, “you’re gonna give me cavities.”

Buck’s more smug than he probably deserves to be when he says, “Sorry I have a hot husband.”

Maddie laughs, kicking her socked feet up onto the edge of Buck’s chair. “I have a hot husband, too, and I manage to get through lunch with my darling brother without drooling the entire time.”

Buck can’t really explain to his sister that he’s only been married for a few hours, that in his reality he hasn’t heard from Maddie or Chim in weeks and he has a girlfriend he cares about, but knows he’ll never marry. He can’t explain that he doesn’t think he’ll ever end up here for real, that he’s trying to memorise every single moment so he can make this rare, bone-deep joy last. At least, he can’t explain any of that without Maddie having him committed somewhere.

“I’m really glad to see you,” he says, and his tone’s too sincere by half, if the way Maddie’s eyes go soft and concerned is anything to go by. He’s not sure if Maddie and Chim ever left in this reality the same way they’re currently gone in his, if this version of Buck had to miss them the way he has, but he still says, “I—I’m just glad you’re here and we’re together and — happy.”

Maddie’s feet drop from Buck’s chair as she leans forward, reaches her hand across the table to wrap gentle fingers around Buck’s wrist. “I am, too,” she says. “I might tease, but I’m really proud of you, Evan. You’ve grown so much and you’ve come so far.”

“Maddie,” Buck laughs, and it’s a little wet and choked, but Maddie’s eyes are glassy so it evens out.

“I’m serious, Buck. A few years ago, God — I remember how hurt you were about Abby, and then how…how hard you were trying with Taylor.” Buck blinks, his heart taking a quick plummet; he’s collected every piece of information he can find about this reality with the fervour of a man starving, but he’s never even looked for anything about Taylor. He’s nearly forgotten about her entirely. “I’m just proud of you for fighting for Eddie, for this life.”

“Fighting?” he asks before he can stop himself, brow furrowing. For all of his snooping, he’s found nothing about how they got here.

Maddie doesn’t find the question strange, at least. “Yes, Evan, fighting. I don’t mean that Eddie didn’t work for this too, obviously he did, I just mean…it would have been so easy for you and Eddie to let everything that happened to you stop you from loving each other, but you didn’t. You both worked so hard, and I’m so proud of you.”

Buck has to swallow twice to avoid bursting into tears, flipping his hands around until he can hold Maddie’s hands back. She’s not wearing a ring, and there’s no wedding pictures anywhere, but when her sleeve bunches up Buck can see a tiny tattoo on the inside of her wrist, a simple C.

“Maddie,” Buck starts, and Maddie hums, tilting her head, “if you…uh, if you woke up tomorrow and you were…in a different reality, one where you and Chim weren’t together — you knew each other, you were…best friends, but you weren’t together — what would you do?”

Maddie’s eyebrows pinch together, something like concern tinting her expression. “Why am I waking up in a different reality?”

Buck’s shoulder twitches, his head shaking briefly. “You just are. It’s a hypothetical, Maddie.”

Maddie rolls her eyes, and even that’s enough to make Buck’s chest tight with how much he’s missed her — how much he still misses her, the Maddie from his world.

Her voice is steady, nearly a mirror of Chimney’s from another reality, when she says, “If I woke up without Chimney I would fight like hell to get him back, obviously.”

Buck’s shoulders slump, an ever-present lump in his throat growing larger, and he thinks he’s starting to put the pieces together.

Eventually, Jee-Yun lets Eddie and Chim go, and they return to Buck and Maddie decked out in fluffy tutus and plastic tiaras. Buck makes Eddie pose while he takes pictures, even as he whines that Buck does this every time, grinning all the while.

Lottie starts crying just as they’re packing up to leave, and when Buck goes to change her diaper Eddie stops him with a hand on his chest. “I got this,” he says, pressing a kiss to Buck’s birthmark. “You were on diaper duty this morning.”

Buck nearly cries, like a big baby, and Maddie sends him a secret, teary grin of her own on her way to the kitchen.

They pick Christopher up from his friend’s house, and Eddie tries to help with his homework but mostly has Christopher talk him through it as he does it on his own, and Buck makes dinner as Lottie pretends to help, banging teething rings on the table in time with Buck’s chopping. It’s the best evening Buck’s had, maybe in his entire life, easy and compainable and warm.

They put Lottie to bed right after dinner, a well-worn routine that Buck only stumbles through a little. It’s almost like working a call with Eddie, not needing to talk at all to know exactly what the other person wants, what they’ll do next.

Christopher puts himself to bed, now, but he lets Buck and Eddie indulge themselves with tight hugs, and Buck tells himself, if he ever goes back to his reality, he’ll savour every single bedtime story he gets to read to Christopher.

It’s barely eleven, Buck finishing up the dishes, when Eddie comes up behind him, his chest warm against Buck’s back as his hands slip around Buck’s waist. His five o’clock shadow scratches gently against Buck’s neck, and he remembers the last Eddie, with his beard and tired eyes and strained smile.

“Okay,” Eddie says, quietly into the side of Buck’s neck as he rocks back, his hands sliding up Buck’s back until they can rest on Buck’s shoulders and steer him towards their own bedroom. “Kids are all in bed, it’s our turn now.”

Buck puts up only the barest of fights, laughing softly and tilting his head back to nudge it against Eddie’s temple. “Aw, come on, old man. You don’t want to paint the town red?”

It’s immediately strange, following Eddie into his — their — bedroom at the end of the night instead of making up the couch, and Buck has no idea what to do next.

But Eddie’s laugh is warm and it burrows into the centre of Buck’s chest as Eddie turns away to slip his shirt off his head. And Buck was right earlier, he does have new tattoos. There’s neat script over his ribs that Buck can’t read from here and a cluster of flowers over his shoulder and something else on his hip that disappears under his waistband before Buck can identify it.

And he has round, faded scars on both shoulders. So this version of Buck and Eddie made it through the shooting. Buck remembers Maddie saying you both worked so hard and something inside of him twists tighter.

“Buck, Jee-Yun is a ruthless tea party host. I don’t even have the energy to let you have your way with me tonight.”

It’s not the first or even the fifth time Eddie’s made a causal reference to their sex life, but it makes Buck’s breath stutter in his chest all the same. He can’t help but think of the twenty-one year old Eddie who could barely admit he might want to be with a man, who had already written off ever acting on it.

God, Buck’s going to buy himself something stupid expensive if he gets through this weird science fiction nightmare without crying.

“Hey,” Eddie says, and suddenly he’s crouching in front of where Buck’s sitting on the edge of their bed, his hand on Buck’s knee and his huge doe eyes searching Buck’s face. “Are you okay? You’ve been off all day, and I know some days are hard, but we promised we’d talk about them anyway.”

Buck’s chest twists into a knot. Because that’s — that’s more than Buck probably deserves, someone — and not just someone, but Eddie, who is good and selfless and has had enough bad days of his own — to sit in Buck’s unknowable sadness with him.

For the first time in hours he thinks about Taylor, but it’s just her voice in his head saying not everything’s about you, Buck.

“I’m…I’m just happy,” Buck says, and it cracks down the middle. He doesn’t even know how to put it to words, this burning joy in his chest that threatens to spill out of him every time he looks at the ring on his finger, the kids this version of him gets to raise, the house this version of him gets to wake up in every single day. He’s so fucking happy it’s turned right back to sad. “I guess I didn’t think I’d ever get to be this happy —” doesn’t think his version of Buck will “— I guess I’m not sure I deserve it.”

Eddie’s mouth pinches into a frown, his brow furrowed as he shifts closer and wraps both of his hands around Buck’s, squeezing. “Baby,” he says, soft, and it’s not the first time he’s called Buck that today, but it turns something inside of him to mush anyway, “of course you deserve it. You and I — we’ve been through way too much, together and apart, to not deserve this.”

Buck clenches his jaw, blinking hard against the tears he’s been holding back for something like twelve hours. It’s almost cruel, having to hear this from a version of Eddie that doesn’t know him — that knows and loves a different Buck.

“I’m scared to go to sleep,” Buck admits, barely a whisper, and Eddie’s frown deepens, concern for Buck in every line of his face. “I’m worried I’ll wake up and this will all be gone.”

“Buck,” Eddie says, something desperate in his voice, “Evan. I’m not going anywhere.”

Buck manages to hold back a wince through pure force of will. Because Eddie has no idea — Eddie has no idea that he’s already left, that Buck’s stuck in some kind of dimension-jumping nightmare where he has to watch Eddie leave him again and again.

And he can’t explain any of that, so he says, lowly, “Everyone leaves eventually, Eddie.”

“And then they come back,” Eddie says, barely missing a beat. Buck has the feeling this is not the first time Eddie’s had to reassure him of this, but if he’s tired of tending to Buck’s traitorous, damaged brain he doesn’t show it. “I came back, and I’m not going anywhere if I can help it.”

“But — what if you can’t help it.” Eddie’s mouth pinches, and Buck knows exactly where Eddie’s brain has gone, so he’s quick to add, “I don’t mean — what if — what would you do, if tomorrow morning you woke up and you were…somewhere else? In…a different reality where we weren’t…this. We weren’t together, we were…back where we were before, wanting something we thought we couldn’t have?”

Eddie’s frown only deepens, but he doesn’t question Buck’s rapidly deteriorating sanity. “I’d find you,” he says, like it’s the easiest choice he’s ever made. “No matter where I woke up, what — reality or time or whatever — I’d find you. There’s no world where I’m not in love with you. There may be worlds where I’m still scared of it, or I’m not even aware of it, or whatever, but in each of them I’m in love with you.”

Buck’s fight against his tears fails, his next blink sending one on a hot path down his cheek. Eddie’s thumb is there instantly, gently swiping it away. “You don’t believe in the universe,” Buck says, voice tight.

Eddie’s grin is amused; beautiful. “No, I don’t. But I believe in you. Because just like there’s no world where I’m not in love with you, there’s no world where you don’t save me — not just from a crazy sniper in the middle of LA, but from myself — from my own…self-imposed loneliness.”

“Eddie,” Buck says, desperate, as Eddie rocks up onto his knees so he can press his mouth against Buck’s cheek, catching tears before they can reach his chin. “You fucking romantic.”

Buck feels more than hears Eddie’s laugh, pressed against Buck’s cheek. Eddie’s hand slips into Buck’s hair, tugging lightly just for the sake of it. “You love it.”

Buck can’t quite force any words past his too tight throat, so he only nods, twines his arms around Eddie’s shoulders until he can pull him into a hug. He can’t — he won’t kiss Eddie, not when he has a girlfriend somewhere out there waiting for him, and not when he’s technically not Buck’s husband, but he can sink into the warmth of Eddie’s arms and pretend this is something he can have one day for real. He can convince himself that he’s brave enough to fight for this.

Buck wakes up in his own bed, in his own loft, with Taylor next to him.

The sudden, heart-stopping grief is almost too much, the resulting guilt just as bad.

He remembers going to bed next to Eddie, remembers Eddie turning his back to him and pulling Buck’s arm to his chest. “My turn to be the little spoon,” he had said, trapping Buck’s hand between his warm chest and his own hand, and Buck had buried his smile in the top of Eddie’s spine.

But it was just — it was just a series of incredibly intense, vivid dreams. It was just his broken brain offering him poisoned gifts: his worst fears and greatest desires. It doesn’t mean anything, other than he’s gone too long without therapy.

Even if he remembers the phantom-dream feeling of Eddie’s arm, a heavy weight over his waist like it really happened. Even if he remembers the warmth of Eddie hugging him from behind while he washed dishes, the sound of a little girl’s laughter, and the pictures in the hall from a wedding Buck’s never had and —

And he can’t keep pretending he doesn’t want that wedding. He can’t keep pretending that he might, one day, want that wedding with Taylor, that every time he thinks about the future he’s not thinking about Eddie and Christopher and never about her. He can’t keep waiting for the day he says love you and means it.

Taylor smiles at him, blinking open her eyes a second after Buck. Her hair’s sleep rumpled, and she’s wearing one of Buck’s old LAFD shirts. He can’t see it, but he knows it says BUCKLEY across the back and — and he doesn’t want her to be wearing his name. He remembers a different version of Eddie in the same shirt — and he remembers a different version of him in Eddie’s, or maybe his own — and he wants —

He flinches away from the thought, instantly wants to double back and convince himself that he wants Taylor to have his name, because Taylor’s smart and beautiful and she wants him.

But sometimes he thinks the thing he likes best about her is that she hasn’t left.

And he realizes, all at once, that in all of his different…dreams or realities he missed Maddie and Chim and Eddie, but he never missed Taylor. He had forgotten all about her half of the time. But he never for a second stopped thinking about Eddie.

He says, “I think we should break up.”

Taylor blinks, her smile falling between one second and the next. “What?”

“I —” Buck shifts, pushing himself into a sitting position as Taylor rolls to her feet, putting distance between them. “I think we should break up.”

Taylor shakes her head, brows hard, furious lines over her sharp eyes. And maybe Buck should have waited until they hadn’t literally just opened their eyes, but — too late now. It’s a bite when she says, “Is this about Eddie quitting his fucking job?”

Buck flinches. It’s been — one night, or three days, or whatever — but it feels like it’s been years since he stood in front of Eddie at a Christmas party and heard him say I’m leaving the 118. And it’s not — he’s not even upset about it anymore, not really. Or, he’s not upset about the decision itself, he’s upset that Eddie had to make it at all. He’s upset that six months ago Buck held Eddie’s life in his hands and they’ve let it tear them apart.

Chimney had said, Obviously it means I’m supposed to talk to Maddie about what happened and then get her back, and Maddie had said, If I woke up without Chimney I would fight like hell to get him back, and Eddie had said, No matter where I woke up, what — reality or time or whatever — I’d find you.

He doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life negotiating his own happiness. He doesn’t want to keep impaling himself on intimacy until he can pretend there’s nothing wrong with him. He wants to fight for the people he loves, and he wants to be brave, and he wants to be happy.

“No, it’s not about Eddie.” Because it’s not; it’s about Buck being sick and tired of being afraid. And Buck’s a fucking cliche, because he sits in his familiar queen bed and he meets Taylor’s burning eyes and he says, “It’s not you, it’s —”

Taylor barks out a laugh before he can finish, her glare sharp enough to puncture. “Oh, I know it’s not me,” she says, and she sounds exactly like she did three years ago. Sharp and confident and biting. “It’s you. Poor, damaged Evan Buckley who can’t handle something not being about him.”

“That’s not fair,” Buck says, barely a whisper. It’s not the first time she’s said something like that, but it’s the first time he thinks he might not deserve to hear it. “That’s not — what does that have to do with this?”

“Eddie quitting wasn’t about you,” she says, and her voice is steady, “and you can’t handle it, so you’re running like you always do.”

“That’s not what’s happening.” Buck stumbles out of bed, faces Taylor’s shuttered expression from across the rumpled expanse of the bed. This bed that doesn’t feel like his. This loft that doesn’t feel like his. “It’s not about — can you seriously say you can imagine marrying me one day?”

Taylor’s anger slides away in favour of wide, wide eyes. “What?”

“You love me,” Buck says, soft, and tries to soothe the desperate ache in his chest with the knowledge that no matter how this ends, they had some love between them. “But if I proposed, what would you say?”

“How the hell have you gone from breaking up with me to proposing in less than five minutes?”

“I’m not — answer the question, Taylor. Would you seriously say yes if I proposed right now?”

Taylor shakes her head, a frantic movement that makes her hair flutter around her shoulders. “I — no. No, I wouldn’t. I’m not — I don’t know if I ever want to get married.”

It’s not a shock. It’s what Buck’s known this entire time; it was just easier to ignore it, to pretend it didn’t matter. It still stings a little to hear. “And kids?”

“Kids?” Taylor’s hands come up to rub at her eyes, head shaking. It’s seven o’clock in the morning. “I don’t — I don’t want kids. You know I don’t want kids. And it wasn’t a problem until Eddie —”

“It’s not about Eddie,” Buck interrupts, the sharpest he’s ever been with Taylor. Because they don’t fight, not really. Taylor pokes or prods, almost like she’s looking for a fight, and Buck sometimes pushes back, but never more than once. Buck, so scared of being alone, so scared of having to deal with his own thoughts, lets it all go. He tucks Taylor’s comments somewhere deep inside of himself to gorge himself on later, and he lets it all go and he tells himself that’s what relationships are, sacrifices and compromises. But he thinks he’s changed his mind.

“It’s about us,” he says, watching as Taylor rolls her eyes, folds her arms across her chest. “It’s about — I want to be a dad, and I know you don’t want kids, but I thought—”

“That I would change my mind?” Taylor snaps, and there’s real anger in the bite of her tone. “That you would be the one to change my mind?”

“No, no, of course not. I just — I thought I would change my mind. But — we don’t want the same things, and we…we make each other worse. Don’t you want to be with someone who makes you better?”

Taylor's jaw sets, her cold eyes narrowed. “That’s the difference between us, Buck. I like myself just fine how I am. I don’t need anyone to make me love myself.”

Buck’s eyes fall shut, the blow hitting exactly where she intended it to. And maybe a few days ago that would have been enough to send Buck spiralling completely, enough to make him beg her to stay or to send him straight to the Jeep with a duffle bag full of clothes.

But — but he’s starting to think she’s wrong. That Buck doesn’t need someone that will make him love himself, but that he just wants someone who will love him even when he doesn’t like himself. That will hold his hand and support him while he figures it all out.

I know some days are hard, but we promised we’d talk about them anyway. That’s what he wants.

“I think we should break up,” Buck says, a third time, and Taylor’s laugh is bitter as it rings through his horrible, cold loft.

“No fucking shit.”

It’s possibly the most awkward twenty minutes of Buck’s life, standing by as Taylor gets changed and packs up what she can, quietly furious. They don’t say a word, not even when Taylor stomps down the stairs and Buck limply follows.

At the door Taylor reaches into her bag, fumbles with her keys until the key to Buck’s loft slides off the ring. The clang when it hits the entry table, right next to Buck’s keys, tears at already fried nerves.

“I really am sorry, Taylor,” Buck says, some part of him still desperate to keep some connection to Taylor alive. He remembers trying to be her friend, remembers that he really did like her, once, but the memories are stale.

Taylor rolls her eyes. “That’s nice,” she says. “Say hi to Eddie for me.”

Taylor slams the door shut, and the force of it rattles the entry table.

Carla’s the one that opens Eddie’s door when Buck knocks, her eyebrows high on her head.

“Now what are you doing knocking on this door, Buckaroo?”

Buck laughs, shifting on his feet. He doesn’t think for a second that Carla doesn’t have some idea of the strange tension Buck and Eddie have forced onto themselves, that she doesn’t have a very good guess for why he might be knocking.

He’s saved from having to force out an answer, anyway, when Christopher rounds the corner, his eyes going wide and bright when he catches sight of Buck.

“Buck!” he cheers, grinning with all of his teeth, and he looks exactly like he did the last time Buck saw him. But Buck blinks and he sees the older Chris, with the deep voice and the wireframe glasses, and Buck’s chest aches with the knowledge — the proof — that Christopher’s growing up faster than Buck or Eddie can keep track.

He doesn’t hug Buck every time he sees him now, getting older and less interested in physical affection with his dad’s best friend, but Buck’s just lived through two worlds where Christopher wasn’t in his life at all, and one where he was fully and completely his son, so he’s a little more emotional than normal and can’t help himself from sweeping Chris into a hug. Christopher, for his part, doesn’t wiggle away and hugs back just as hard as always.

“Hey, buddy,” he says, quietly into Christopher’s hair. He smells just the same as he always does — like strawberry no tears kid’s shampoo and Eddie’s cheap laundry detergent and something uniquely Chris — and it makes Buck want to cry, just a little bit.

Christopher only lasts a couple more seconds before he’s wiggling away, laughing to soften the blow as his feet hit the ground.

“Buck?”

Buck tears his gaze, reluctantly, away from Christopher’s grin, and Eddie’s leaning against the doorway. He’s wearing grey sweatpants, a spaghetti stained green t-shirt, his hair a mess, and he’s the most beautiful man Buck’s ever seen.

The Eddie that was stuck in El Paso, with his goddamn beard, and the Eddie he was married to, with his easy smiles, were beautiful, too, but — They had nothing on the real deal.

“Hi,” Buck says. He can’t bite back the grin that splits his face.

Eddie’s eyes narrow, and Buck knows he wasn’t expecting to see a smiling Buck post-quitting, but his mouth bends into a mirroring smile anyway. “Hi.”

“God help us,” Carla says, shaking her head as she places a hand against Christopher’s back and steers him towards the door. He giggles, calling out goodbyes to Buck and Eddie over his shoulder, and then Buck and Eddie are alone.

It’s awkward for a second, neither of them sure what to do next, but only until Eddie tilts his head back and spins on his heel. “I’ve got laundry to fold,” he says over his shoulder, “you can keep my company, if you have nothing else to do.”

Buck follows him into the living room, and there is in fact a basket of laundry on the coffee table, a small pile of folded clothes next to it. It’s a scene he’s seen a hundred times before, Eddie sitting on the couch and folding Christopher’s shirts, frowning because he’s bored and hates chores.

But it twists something different inside of him now. Different now that he has these memories — fake or not — of these different lives they could have had — that they can still have. Different now that he’s broken up with his girlfriend.

He turns away from it, busies himself with examining the pictures on the mantle. They’re just as he remembers: Shannon and Christopher on the beach, baby Christopher in Shannon’s arms, Christopher and Buck at the zoo. He blinks and he remembers all of the pictures from that last world, pictures of a little girl and of a wedding Buck’s never had. He blinks again and they’re gone.

It’s a strange type of mourning, because he wouldn’t trade his Eddie and his Christopher for anything. And he even knows he wouldn’t want to stay in that other life, wouldn’t want to live in that perfect life without having done the work to earn it. But he mourns it all the same, the easy joy.

“Hey,” Buck says, forcing himself to look away from the picture of Christopher and Buck at the zoo. Eddie makes a sound of acknowledgement, but doesn’t look up from his laundry. “When you were in high school did you get too drunk and throw up in your friend’s mom’s vase? And then buy her flowers every week for a month because you felt bad?”

Eddie’s head jerks up, eyes a little wide. “I—yeah, how did you know that? Have you been talking to my sisters?”

“No — well, yeah, but that’s not how I know that, I…I’ll tell you one day, maybe.”

For all of Eddie’s pragmatism, Buck’s pretty sure that he’d believe him, but he’s not sure he wants to bear this strange, desperate piece of his soul just yet. If he has anything to say about it, Eddie and Buck will have the rest of their lives to deliver pieces of their soul to each other, no matter what their relationship is.

“Okay,” Eddie says, his eyebrows high on his forehead. He’s smiling, soft and amused, but Buck can see the tension in his shoulders, the tired lines in the corner of his eyes.

And Buck — Chimney said the reality jumping would end when Buck figured out what he was doing wrong in his reality, and he knows it was this: seeing Eddie straining under the weight of the world — seeing both of them punish themselves at every turn — and not doing anything about it.

So Buck takes a breath, takes a step closer to Eddie until he’s standing directly across from him, only the coffee table and a basket of laundry between them, and he says, “You existed before Christopher.”

Eddie’s mouth pinches into a frown, and his hands drop into his lap as he leans back against the couch. “I know that.”

“Do you?” Buck asks, shoving Eddie’s laundry out of the way so he can sit on the edge of the coffee table. Their knees bump, and Buck remembers sitting on a swing set with a young Eddie, but only for a second before Eddie meets his gaze and Buck forgets everything that exists beyond the brown of Eddie’s eyes. “Because you never talk about your life before Chris, before LA. And you — God, Eddie, you’re the best father I’ve ever met, but you’re more than that. You’re…you’re a person outside of being Christopher’s father. You can want things for yourself and not just for Chris.”

Buck watches Eddie swallow, watches his jaw set. “Buck, what’s this about? If you’re trying to talk me out of quitting, it’s too late — there’s a reason I didn’t tell you before —”

“No, I—well, I do think quitting’s a mistake but I mean — I just…I had this dream, okay?”

Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up, his mouth bending into a smile that’s meant to be amused, but Buck can see the fraying edges. “You had…a dream? Is this something I want to hear about?”

“Yes. Yes, you do, because — because in it you — I — we…we were married, and Christopher…there was adoption papers, he was…my son and we…we had a daughter and there were all of these pictures on the walls of this life we had and we were so happy and then I woke up and I broke up with my girlfriend.”

“Buck,” Eddie says, straightening with wide eyes. His hand lifts, like he might put it on Buck’s knee, but it folds into a fist and lands on his own thigh instead. Buck mourns the touch.

Buck shakes his head, pressing his knee into Eddie’s as he shifts closer to the edge of the table. “No, shut up, I should have broken up with her months ago. I didn’t — I wasn’t being fair to her. I was trying so hard to hold onto her because…because you were shot and because Maddie and Chim left and…everyone was leaving and I just didn’t want to be alone and she wanted me but. She — I think she did love me, but…but she loved me because I chased after her, just like I loved her because she came back.”

“Buck,” Eddie starts, his brow furrowed in something like concern.

“No,” Buck interrupts. “My turn for the big speeches.”

Eddie laughs, startled, but waves at Buck to continue, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“In that dream — in that dream you loved me, even when I was being…weird and distant, you just wanted to be there for me. I know…I know it was just a dream, I’m not trying to…proposition you or something, I just…It just made me realize that…settling for Taylor wasn’t fair to her or to me. I couldn’t be with her just because I didn’t want to be alone.”

Eddie tilts his head, a concerned pinch to his eyebrows as he leans forward with his elbows on his thighs. He’s still not touching Buck. Buck struggles to remember the last time he touched Buck on purpose at all.

“Buck, what…what does this have to do with Christopher? I’m not leaving you, okay? You’re not alone.”

Buck swallows, closing his eyes and taking in a deep breath before he says, “You’re not leaving but…but I want to be around you literally every second of everyday. If I could shrink myself down to the size of a mouse and live inside of your pocket I would. No matter what. And if — you don’t need to be a firefighter for me to want…to be around you. But I can’t just sit here and let you be miserable.”

“I’m not…miserable,” Eddie says, and the set of his jaw is tight, but his voice is brittle.

“You love being a firefighter, Eddie. It’s your life.”

“I love Christopher more—”

“So do I,” Buck interrupts, firm, the purest truth he knows. “If Christopher asked I would never step foot in a firehouse ever again. But did he ask you? Did you ask him if this is what he wants?”

He remembers young Eddie saying whatever I may have wanted…it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s not sure if he did anything to help that young Eddie, but he can help this one.

Eddie ducks his head, staring downward as he twists his fingers together. It’s all Buck can do not to reach out and smooth his hand over the line of Eddie’s shoulders until something relaxes.

He’s silent for a long, long time before Eddie lifts his head, and there’s something desperately soft in his eyes when he says, “We were married? In your dream?”

“Yeah, like, super married,” Buck says, laughing as he shakes his head.

Eddie laughs, the force of it squinting his eyes briefly shut. “What the hell does super married mean, Buck?”

Buck tries and fails to bite back a grin, gesturing uselessly. “We had real rings and tattoo rings and...and, uh, adoption papers. I adopted Christopher, he was — he was my kid, too, for real, not just in case.”

“Wait.” Eddie blinks, his expression very quickly turning downwards. “Just in case? What does that mean?”

“Come on, Eddie,” Buck says, blowing out a breath and forcing a smile that feels self-deprecating even as it slides into place. “We know I’m the back up plan.”

“What? Buck, are you kidding me?” Eddie’s eyebrows pinch, something like anger in the set of them. “You’re not — I am not your parents.”

“I-What? I know that.” Except for Maddie, there’s no one in Buck’s life further from his parents than Eddie. It’s difficult for Buck to even consider them in the same breath.

Eddie shakes his head and — finally — his hand lands on Buck’s knee, squeezing. The touch burns like nothing else.

“No you don’t, if you think — if you think I consider you just in case for anything. I choose you, okay? I choose you, Evan, on purpose. I didn’t put you in my will to make you Christopher’s backup parent, I put you in my will because you already are Christopher’s parent, but…” Eddie shakes his head again, a soft snort of laughter hitting the air between them. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we have the most ridiculous relationship ever. I needed to put it in writing so if something happened no one would doubt that you belonged with him. If handing you adoption papers while we both had girlfriends wouldn’t be the most insane thing anyone could ever do I might have tried it.”

“Eddie,” Buck says, and his laugh is more hysterical than anything, imagining Eddie handing him adoption papers less than twelve hours after Taylor kissed him in his loft.

He’s not sure if it would change anything, so soon after scrubbing Eddie’s blood off of his face in a hospital bathroom, when everything around him was too loud and too bright and too much. He thinks it might have made him hold onto Taylor tighter, with Ana waiting for them in Eddie’s living room.

“I’ve had that dream,” Eddie says, suddenly.

Buck’s head jerks up, his eyes wide and glassy. “What?”

Buck tries to picture Eddie meeting a nineteen year old Buck, with his sun bleached hair and his reckless desire for attention. Tries to imagine what it might have been like, walking away from his parents’ flippant disregard and right into Eddie’s steady, endless support.

“The one where we’re married,” Eddie explains, and he’s smiling a little too soft. It would be too easy for Buck to fall into it. “I’ve had that dream. I wake up in bed and you’re…already there. You have a ring, and there’s a picture on my nightstand of a wedding I’ve never had, and when you see I’m awake you kiss me right there,” Eddie’s thumb taps a spot under Buck’s left eye, where on Eddie there’s a freckle, “and then you kiss me a lot more,” Buck’s laugh is wet, and when a tear slips free Eddie’s thumb is still there to catch it, “until Christopher runs in demanding breakfast and…I’ve had that dream.”

“Eddie,” Buck breathes, his hands landing on Eddie’s chest, sliding up until they rest on the sides of Eddie’s neck. He can feel it when Eddie swallows, and his gentle grip tightens briefly in response. “I broke up with my girlfriend.”

Eddie’s mouth twitches into a grin. “Fucking thank God, I couldn’t stand her.”

Buck’s laugh is a surprised bark, shaking his shoulders until he bends forward, resting his forehead on Eddie’s chest. Eddie’s hand slips from his cheek to slide into his hair, fingers scratching gently against Buck’s scalp. Something in his spine relaxes for the first time in maybe his entire life.

“We have to talk about, like, so much,” Buck says, the words muffled in the fabric of Eddie’s shirt. “And you need so much therapy.”

He feels the rumble of Eddie’s laughter against his forehead, the press of Eddie’s fingers against the back of his neck. “Probably,” he agrees, turning his head into Buck’s hair. “But you broke up with your girlfriend.”

“I broke up with my girlfriend,” Buck echoes. “It sucked.”

He needs to call Dr. Copeland, he knows, after months of radio silence. He needs to tell her about the shooting, and about the will, and about the way he sometimes woke up in the middle of the night with Taylor in his arms and felt like he might throw up. About the way Taylor said that’s the difference between us…I don’t need anyone to make me love myself; about how she wasn’t right, but she wasn’t completely wrong either.

About the way Taylor said is this about Eddie quitting his fucking job, and about how she wasn’t right, but she wasn’t completely wrong either.

“You quit your job,” Buck says, finally lifting his head to meet Eddie’s eyes, but the firm hand on the back of his neck doesn’t let him go too far.

“I quit my job,” Eddie agrees, worrying at the inside of his cheek. “It sucked.”

“I don’t want you to be miserable.” Buck slides his hands down, back over Eddie’s chest. If he’s still enough, he can feel Eddie’s heart beating. He remembers pressing his hands to Eddie’s chest, remembers the thick slide of blood between his fingers. He presses harder, focuses on the movement that proves Eddie’s alive.

Eddie’s hands migrate to Buck’s jaw, his grip tightening until he can tilt Buck’s head, pressing their foreheads together. Buck’s next breath is a shudder.

“I don’t —” Eddie cuts himself off, takes in a deep breath that expands his chest beneath Buck’s hands. “I don’t know if I’m the kind of person who gets to have what he wants.”

Buck’s eyes fall shut, his fingers twisting in Eddie’s shirt. “Do you think I am?”

Eddie lets out an amused breath through his nose, tilting his head until his nose slides along Buck’s cheek, their mouths only a breath apart. “Yes. Obviously.”

Buck laughs, nearly silent. “Well, I don’t know if I am, but I know you are, so — so maybe we can work on believing in it for ourselves, but first we can believe in it for each other.”

“Sap,” Eddie accuses, and Buck’s eyes are still closed, but he can picture Eddie’s teasing grin.

“I have a feeling you’re gonna be way worse.”

Eddie’s thumb presses into Buck’s cheek, the pressure of it nearly obscene. “Probably,” he agrees.

And Buck — Buck’s waited long enough, he thinks. “God, Eddie,” he groans, “can we work on all of our trauma tomorrow? If you don’t ki—”

The rest of the word gets swallowed, Eddie’s mouth on his in the span of a breath, hot and insistent and all encompassing. Buck’s hands fist in Eddie’s shirt, pulling him closer even as he presses in, and Eddie’s hands slide back into Buck’s hair, gripping just this side of too tight, dragging a desperate whine out of Buck.

Eddie kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, until Buck’s breathless and panting and nearly out of his mind.

When they part it’s only far enough to breathe, their chests heaving, and they only last a second before Eddie’s kissing his cheek, the ridge of his eyebrow, the hinge of his jaw.

“Have you considered,” Eddie says between kisses, his mouth sliding down Buck’s neck, “also quitting your job?”

Buck’s laughter is a punched-out noise, one that shifts into a bitten off moan when he tilts his head back and Eddie’s teeth graze against his neck. “Too soon,” he says, wrapping tight fingers around the back of Eddie’s neck.

Eddie drags his mouth away from Buck and leans back enough to aim a brillant grin at him. Buck wants the image of it tattooed on the back of his eyelids. “Sorry, will it help if I tell you I love you?”

Buck’s heart stops — stutters — restarts. There’s no world where I’m not in love with you. Buck’s starting to believe it.

He matches Eddie’s grin, feels the edges of it squint his eyes. “Yes, but only because I love you, too.”

Eddie’s grin grows, somehow, and he buries it into the side of Buck’s neck.

Maddie and Chim still aren’t home, but they will be soon, and Eddie’s still not at the 118, but Buck has faith he will be again, soon. Buck’s keys are in his pocket, his Jeep waiting in Eddie’s driveway, and he doesn’t want to drive anywhere at all.

Buck wakes up the next morning in Eddie’s bed, and for a second his heart stops, thinking he’s woken up in another unfamiliar world.

But the phone under his pillow has the same picture of Christopher, and the date on the screen is exactly what it should be, and when Eddie turns over in Buck’s arms, he kisses Buck on the mouth and says, “Can we work on our trauma after you make breakfast?”

And Buck’s exactly where he should be.