Archive of Our Own ^beta

tired and worn from the patterns i've carved
i will do better in the morning
i'm afraid of who i'd be without you
i will do better in the morning
twisting up smokes, i'm in control
'til the fire burns out my miniature vacation
but i'm always left with the taste in my mouth
i will do better in the morning

— "better in the morning", birdtalker

Eddie feels a little like a divorcee. 

With Shannon—well, he never got to that point. Her dying right after saying the words I think we should get a divorce seemed like a cosmic sign that he would never get one. That the next person he was with would be it. And then Ana came and went, and Eddie took that as another sign, this one saying that there wouldn’t be a next person. It would be Eddie and Christopher, and honestly, he was fine with that. Everyone else seemed to be fine with it, too. 

And then Buck—well. He didn’t actually do anything, nothing he hadn’t already been doing for years, but still, something shifted in Eddie. He broke up with Ana, and it felt like the power was back on, not just in the city but inside himself, too, because suddenly, he allowed himself to soak in the feeling he got every time he looked at his best friend. A feeling that is decidedly not friendship.

Which would be fine, usually. Eddie considers himself a master at repression—he’ll thank his parents for that one day—and is more than happy to lock his emotions into a see-through box in the back of his mind. Look, don’t touch. That’s Eddie’s standard policy for dealing with things he has absolutely zero desire to actually address.

Except, Buck is too ingrained in Eddie’s life for him to be locked in a cage like a fucking zoo animal that can be prodded at while Eddie’s drunk or in therapy. Eddie can’t hide away his feelings because Buck is here, all the time—with him, with Christopher, with both of them in their strange little family unit that’s been built up over the years since the Diaz’s moved to Los Angeles.

Buck’s here—and then he’s not.

Eddie knows it’s his fault. Not for leaving the 118—that was a decision that he had to make, that he has to remind himself every morning when he sees the t-shirts hanging in his closet, the hoodie over the back of the chair, was the right choice—but for not telling Buck beforehand. He knew that Buck would try to talk him out of it, knew he’d tell him that being with the 118 is important, too. That what Eddie wants is as important as what Christopher does. And Eddie couldn’t handle that. Not when he already felt like he was taking too much from the world. Because he had Buck, and he had his son and his job, and he was, for the first time, starting to be happy again.

(" Do you think ,” Frank asked during their first session, thumb rubbing over his bottom lip, “that you’re afraid to be happy?”

“I don’t think I remember what it feels like enough to be afraid of it,” Eddie admitted quietly .)

And then Eddie went and ruined it. He’d ripped the rug from under Buck’s feet, had done it knowing how he is when it comes to being left. Eddie knows all of Buck’s traumas, all of his fears, and he still—left.

He still left.

So, it isn’t surprising that Buck is acting like—well, like they broke up. They did, in a way, Eddie supposes. His relationship with Buck isn’t romantic—Eddie’s still trying hard not to be bitter about that fact—but they were still closer than best friends. They were basically co-parenting Christopher together. Buck’s in his goddamn will , for Christ’s sake. They’re so entwined in each other’s lives that Buck’s appointments are written on the calendar in Eddie’s kitchen, just in case it interferes with Chris’s robotics club or Eddie’s therapy sessions. Chimney would call them co-dependent. He would be correct, but—whatever. It works for them.

Worked . Because now, Buck is asking for—visitation of all things.

“I can pick him up on Thursday after school,” Buck is saying on the other end of the line, and Eddie imagines him puttering around the kitchen, cooking dinner for Taylor. Something hot and jealous stirs in his gut at the thought. Buck’s asking to take Christopher on the LA Zoo’s bird walk alone, something they were planning on doing, all three of them, but now—

Eddie blinks at his kitchen, barely used since Buck stopped coming over for longer than twenty minutes after the Christmas party. Eddie stares at the roasting pan in the sink, the frog-mouthed soap holder that Buck bought at a farmer’s market because it reminded him of Eddie.  “He has PT,” Eddie says. It isn’t a no; it’s just— alone. It’s where the divorcee thing comes in. Eddie feels like he’s negotiating custody with his bitter ex-husband.

(Which—if Eddie ever managed to convince Buck to be his husband, he would never let him go.)

Buck makes a noise in the back of his throat, nearly sounding offended. “I know,” he says. Something clinks, metal against metal. “I didn’t just delete the Google Calendar link.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Eddie says, unable to keep the defensiveness from his tone. “I was just—reminding you.”

“Yeah, well,” Buck says, and Eddie can picture the line that’s appearing between his eyebrows as he undoubtedly frowns. He wants to rub it away. Kiss it away, maybe. “I was thinking I’d pick him up on Thursday, take him to the appointment, and then he can stay over at my place, and we’d go to the zoo on Friday since he’s got the day off.”

“Oh,” Eddie says. He’d definitely planned on taking Christopher to the movies on Friday since he also has a day off from his new job at the academy, but he knows which one his son would like more. He sees Eddie all the time now—Buck is a commodity that only comes around a few times a week. 

“You haven’t….” Buck trails off. Eddie tucks his phone between his ear and shoulder and walks to the sink. He pokes the frog soap-holder, begins picking out the pieces of Buck that still exist in his kitchen—the novelty apron that says no bitchin’ in my kitchen hanging over the door; the spice rack filled with spices Eddie didn’t even know existed; the air fryer Buck brought over one day and never took home; the fancy two-tiered fruit bowl on the table—and waits for Buck to collect himself. “You haven’t taken me off his documents, have you?”

Eddie’s eyes flick up to the ceiling, down to his sock-covered feet. They’re covered in umbrellas. He’s pretty sure they’re Buck’s. “Is this—do you mean the will?”

He can practically see Buck shrug. “Sure,” he says, nonchalant. Eddie knows it’s a facade, wishes he was in front of Buck so he could shake some sense into him. “And his pickup list, his doctor’s forms.”

“Why would I—” Eddie cuts himself off, pressing his lips together.

“Well, you don’t need me anymore,” Buck says. Eddie wasn’t thinking about throttling him before, but he definitely is now. “Since you’re not at the 118. You don’t need your—backup plan or whatever.”

“My backup plan ,” he repeats. “You think—”

A door opens somewhere in Buck’s apartment, and then Taylor’s voice is filling up the line, murmurs of hey, baby, and how was work , and it takes everything in Eddie not to throw his phone across the kitchen. Buck says, “Is that a yes to picking up Christopher?”

The words backup plan are running through his mind on a loop, but Eddie forces his mouth to move. “Yeah. Yeah, he’ll like that.” 

They need to—talk. They need to yell at each other, or cry at each other, or just—manage to be in the same room with one another without silence filling the space so thick he could drown in it. But now Buck’s scheduling visits with his son, and Eddie isn’t invited so maybe. Maybe Eddie’s lost his chance.

Backup plan . As if Buck isn’t the most important person in his life besides Christopher.

( “Why did you add Buck to your will?” Frank asked thirty minutes into their session, hands folded in his lap. “I know they’re close—that you two are close—but that’s a lot to ask of someone.”

Eddie stared at his hands and then at the picture of the desert Frank had hanging on the wall. “I didn’t have to ask,” he said. “I just knew that Buck would. That he would want to.”

“And why’s that?” Frank asked. He sounded like he already knew the answer.

“Because I love him,” Eddie said. Frowned. Rubbed a hand over his face. “Because he loves Christopher.”

“Not you?”

“No, he loves me,” Eddie said, his tone careful. Like Frank didn’t know all his dirty secrets already. “Just not—not the way I love him.”

Frank hummed. “Have you asked him?”

“I don’t need to.” Eddie shook his head, sighing when Frank tilted his chin in question. “I don’t need to know. What I have is enough.”

“You think that,” Frank said, “until it comes crashing down, and you realize you didn’t actually have much at all.” )

“Cool,” Buck says, clipped. “I’ll bring him home on Friday night.”

When Eddie hangs up, his breathing is fractured, broken, stilted. He struggles to take in a deep breath, choking on it. It feels like a message. A sign. Another omen from a universe he doesn’t believe in.

Eddie can’t breathe, and he feels very, very alone.

***

To be honest, Eddie isn’t even sure how she gets his number. 

He lifts the phone to his ear, hovering in Christopher’s doorway. It’s Friday afternoon. Buck and Chris are at the LA Zoo without him, and Eddie is trying very hard not to be bitter about it. Things are—fine. Buck picked Chris up from school yesterday, even supplied Eddie with a perfunctory picture of him with pasta sauce on his nose at dinner time post-physio, and Eddie went to bed feeling like his house was a little too quiet.

But things are fine. They’re fine.

“Hello?” he says, staring at the pile of LEGOs that are pushed under Christopher’s bed, hidden out of sight. He didn’t even look at the number before he picked up, accustomed to just answering in case it’s something with Christopher.

“Eddie,” and it’s Maddie’s voice on the other end of the call, sounding a little out of breath but not overly panicked. “It’s Maddie.”

“Yeah,” Eddie replies. He’s never spoken to her on the phone before, wonders who gave her his number. Not that he minds, obviously. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she echoes. “Everything’s fine. I just—”

Eddie wanders through his house as he allows Maddie to collect her thoughts. They don’t talk, really, not unless Buck is in the hospital or hurting or being Buck, but she said everything’s fine, so—everything’s fine. Buck’s not injured. Christopher is fine. Maddie is—calling him for a reason he hasn’t figured out yet, and Eddie is alone in his silent house. 

It’s fine. Honestly.

“I’m outside your house, actually,” is what she ends up saying. Eddie’s head snaps up, looking out the window in the living room, and sure enough, Maddie’s black sedan is parked in front of Eddie’s place, headlights off, windows rolled up. He can see Maddie, too, but she’s just a smudge, a silhouette in the driver’s seat.

“Okay,” Eddie says. “Did you—want to come inside?”

Eddie sees Maddie move in what he assumes is a head shake. “No,” she says quickly. “I mean, I do, but I—can’t.”

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Eddie asks, frowning. “Do you need me to call Chim or Buck—”

“No,” Maddie repeats. “No, it’s—I’m okay. I promise. I just…if I come inside, I’m probably going to start crying, and I’m really, really tired of crying.”

Eddie hasn’t cried in—ages, actually, but he thinks he knows what Maddie means. “I understand,” he says, sinking down onto the couch. He turns his body so he can still see Maddie’s car through the window, watching just in case. “We can—the phone is fine. Good, even.”

Maddie huffs out what might be a laugh. “When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t expecting to park myself outside my little brother’s best friend’s house,” she says.

“Me neither.”

Another laugh. Bizarrely, Eddie thinks he’s winning at something. As if making Maddie—Maddie, who’s gone through absolute hell these last few months and who deserves to be happy and kind and loved—laugh is something that he can learn to be good at. 

“I had a session with my therapist this morning,” Maddie ends up saying, and Eddie balances his chin on a fist, making a noise of acknowledgment. “I woke up feeling—wrong. Like there was an itch I couldn’t scratch or dirt I couldn’t get out from under my nails. And I told Dr. Greene about it, and she suggested that I talk to another parent. Someone who might be able to empathize with what it’s like to feel like—like you’re not doing a good job.”

If it came from anyone else, Eddie would think it’s an insult, a slight on his parenting skills, but he knows that isn’t what Maddie means. She means— I know you’re trying your best too , and that makes something inside Eddie’s chest squeeze.

“So I stole Howie’s phone and got your number, and then I drove here,” she continues. “And now I’m sitting in front of your house.”

“Thank you for coming,” Eddie says. It isn’t the comfort Maddie is seeking, not quite, but it’s what he’s feeling. “For trusting me.”

Maddie’s laugh is a little wet. “Buck always talks about you, you know,” she says, politely ignoring the noise that hiccups out of Eddie’s mouth. “From the moment he met you, he’s been saying the same thing—that you’re a good dad. And I just—I wonder. I feel like the biggest bitch for wondering, but I do, I wonder—”

“If I am?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah,” she says. “Isn’t that messed up?”

“No,” he replies, shaking his head. “I wonder it too, sometimes.”

( “Where does that perception come from?” Frank asked, tilting his chin in a way that reminded Eddie a little bit of his father.

“Where do you think?” Eddie replied.

“Humor me.”

“Starts with don’t drag him and ends with down with you ,” Eddie said, eyes on the ceiling. “Started before that, probably, but—yeah. Boils down to that, I guess.”

“And you think it’s true?”

“You don’t?” When Frank didn’t reply, Eddie sighed through his nose, pulling at the skin at the corner of his eye. “I know I love my son. And I know he loves me. But sometimes I wonder if I’m—irreversibly ruining him or something.”

“Did Christopher do something to make you feel that way?” Frank asked.

“What he said at Christmas—I can’t let him down, again,” Eddie said. “I can’t worry him like that.”

“Did you talk to him about it?”

Eddie was silent for the rest of the session .)

Maddie makes a little snuffling sound. “I think you’re a good dad, Eddie.”

“And I think you’re a good mom,” he says, hoping she can hear how much he means it. “Jee-Yun is lucky to have you. Buck is lucky to have you.”

“Buck,” Maddie says, and the name sounds fond on her tongue, warm and homey and loved. “Let’s talk about Buck.”

“I thought we were talking about how bad of a dad I am?” Eddie says if only to try and steer them away from this conversation. He doesn’t want—to be scolded, or something, by Buck’s older sister. Doesn’t want to carry another person’s guilt on his shoulders.

Maddie clicks her tongue. “You’re the one that brought him up, you know.”

“To make you feel better.”

“Well, it worked,” she says, a little brighter, and Eddie watches her drum her fingers on the wheel through the window. “And now I want to talk about my baby brother.”

Eddie presses a thumb to the bridge of his nose and rubs. “Okay,” he says, because his other option is hanging up, and that seems—like the wrong choice, actually.

“I’m not going to give you the shovel talk,” Maddie says. “Mostly because I think Buck would kill me, probably, but also because I don’t think you need it.”

“Maddie—”

“Just listen, Eddie,” Maddie says, and it’s a tone his mother’s used on him more than once, but it’s laced with warmth and fond exasperation, too. “He’s been miserable since you left work.”

“I haven’t exactly been feeling terrific either,” Eddie says, and it’s the first time he’s actually admitted that to anyone but Frank. To everyone else—Chim and Hen and Bobby—he’s fine. He’s good, even, with his job at the academy and all the free time he now has to spend with Christopher. But with Maddie—somehow, he feels like he can be halfway honest. Maybe because she knows what it feels like to leave for the right reasons. To go to protect the people you love.

“Then why stay away?”

“It’s for Christopher,” Eddie says, and the argument sounds lackluster on his tongue. Like every time he says it, it gets a little less true. “To make sure he’s happy.”

“Are you happy?” Maddie asks, sounding so much like Buck that Eddie’s phone creaks in his hand. “Because you’re allowed to be, you know. I learned that in therapy.”

Eddie chokes on a laugh. “I am happy,” he says weakly.

“But you could be happier.” It isn’t a question. Maddie hums when Eddie stays silent, says, “Do you want to know what I think?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re going to tell me anyway.”

“I think,” Maddie says, because someone had to raise Buck the way he is, “that you’re afraid.”

“You sound like Frank,” Eddie says.

Maddie keeps going like he hasn’t said anything. “I think you’re afraid of letting yourself be fully happy. Because you’re scared it’s going to end. Because you’re scared you’re going to ruin it.”

Eddie blinks at the shape of her car in the distance. She’s looking back at him and lifts a hand in a half-hearted wave that Eddie forces himself to return. “Have you thought of getting your degree to become a shrink?”

He thinks Maddie smiles. “I was scared too,” she says softly. “Scared that I was going to—hurt Jee-Yun, or ruin her, or be like my mother was to Buck and me. I was terrified that I was going to mess things up so irreparably that Jee and Chimney would never forgive me.”

“But you came back,” Eddie says. 

“But I came back.”

And—oh. Oh. Eddie realizes what she’s saying. I was scared of ruining things, and I came back anyway. I chose to love them anyway. Eddie swallows around a lump in his throat.

“Just because you’re scared of screwing up,” Maddie says, “doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to try.”

“Maddie,” Eddie says and stops. He doesn’t know how to finish the thought. How to say what he wants to. What he’s been trying to say for months.

I’ll leave, so no one else has to.

The thought hits him like a baseball bat to the stomach, something hot and liquid curling around his spine. Because that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? It’s not that Eddie’s afraid of being abandoned—he knows that the people in his life want to be there—but he still runs because—it’s easier to leave than to be vulnerable. It’s easier to say I’m leaving the 118 than it is to say I feel like I’m drowning and I’ve forgotten how to swim .

It's easier to say if something happens to me, Christopher will be taken care of by you than it is to say You’re my future and my son’s future, and I’m trying to make sure you know it.

It's easier to say goodbye than it is to say I love you .

“I came back to my family because loving them was more important to me than my fear of losing them,” Maddie says, gentle. “You should go back to yours. Back to Buck.”

“Buck isn’t—”

“Oh please,” Maddie cuts him off. She sounds so much like Adriana and Sophia that Eddie makes a silent vow to never let them meet, half-afraid of the force they’d make altogether. "I see the way you look at him, Eddie. It’s how Chimney used to look at me.”

If the way Eddie looks at Buck is anything like the way Chim would look at Maddie before they got together, then Eddie’s a lot more hopeless than he realized. He nearly says that but instead bites on the inside of his cheek hard enough that it sparks pain. “He’s with Taylor.”

Maddie makes a noise that might be a scoff. “You know, she took the day off today?” She doesn’t wait for Eddie to answer. “Buck told me last night. He told her about his 48 off, how he was going to spend it with Christopher, and how she decided to take today off too to spend it with him. Told him that Christopher would be okay if she tagged along to the zoo.”

Eddie makes a face. Christopher would be—okay with it because somehow, Eddie managed to raise the kindest and most polite kid in the world, but he wouldn’t be pleased. Not with Taylor, a virtual stranger to him, tagging along on his day with Buck.

She must know he’s wrinkling his nose because she laughs. “He said no if you’re wondering,” Maddie says, and Eddie was, but he won’t admit to that. “Said that it was his and Christopher’s day, and that she should spend the free time relaxing by herself.” 

Eddie pictures it—Buck telling his girlfriend no, so he could spend solo time with Chris. It warms something deep inside his chest, twists his inside around into a thick, coiled knot. 

“He chooses you and Chris all the time,” Maddie says, understanding and gentle. “Why don’t you choose him, too?”

“It’s not that easy, Maddie,” he says, and it sounds like a plea.

“I think it is,” she says. “If you let it be, I think it’s as easy as telling him to come home.”

Eddie swipes a hand over his face. “Home,” he echoes. It’s just this side of pathetic, the way his voice sounds, but it’s Maddie. Maddie, who called because she wanted to know if Eddie ever feels like a bad father, Maddie, who kept talking to him because she’s—good, and kind, and she raised Buck to be the same way. Maddie, who’s responsible for creating the person Eddie loves in every way that matters. “I think it’s too late for that.”

“He’s at the zoo right now,” Maddie says, “with a boy that is legally his, a boy he loves like his own. He’s there, with your son, because he loves him, and he loves you, and he loves the family he built with the two of you.” She pauses, and Eddie suddenly wants to go out to her car and hug her, just to feel someone pressed against him in a way that feels like hello and not goodbye . “I don’t think it’s too late for anything. And I know my brother—he’s not the most patient of men,” she huffs a laugh, “but he’d wait for you, forever.”

“I feel like you should hate me,” Eddie says. “For hurting him.”

“You didn’t do it on purpose,” she says, even though he did, maybe a little, and they both know it. “And anyway—you’re going to fix it.”

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

“I am,” Maddie says, resolute. “Because I know you, Eddie Diaz.”

The thought almost makes him smile. Because she doesn’t, not really, but it almost sounds like I want to know you more, despite the things I’ve already seen . He’s still new at the whole ‘therapy and talking about his feelings’ thing, but he’s getting better, so it only sounds half-insecure when he says, “Are you sure you want to?”

“Yes,” she says. “Because I know my brother, too. I know what he wants. And it isn’t to follow Taylor Kelly around for the rest of his life.” 

It hangs between them for a long moment, long enough that Eddie starts to get a crick in his neck from the way he’s tilting it to look at the ceiling, staring at the water stain from the time the roof started leaking during a nasty storm. He thinks that Maddie’s going to let him go, now, drive home and let Eddie hold onto this conversation for—forever, probably, but instead, she puffs out a little breath, and Eddie lifts his head in time to watch the front door of her sedan swing open.

“I’m coming inside,” she says, sounding more sure of herself than she did when Eddie first picked up the phone. “And we’re going to drink tea and watch The Princess Bride and eat popcorn.”

Eddie meets her at the front door. He swings it open, smiles softly down at her from the other side of the threshold, doesn’t put down his phone. They’re not friends, not really, and yet—Eddie doesn’t feel the need to lie or puff out his chest or pretend to be anything but a single dad in sweatpants and a holey shirt that’s stained with mustard on the collar. “I think I can handle that,” he says, into the phone and right to Maddie, who grins with all her teeth. “If you don’t mind the mess.” 

He’s not talking about his house, and she knows it. 

Maddie hangs up the phone, reaches out to gently pat Eddie’s chest. “We’re parents, Eddie. We clean up messes every single day.” 

And it’s simple, and it’s true, and Eddie just—nods. Smiles and lets her inside. He stares at the spot in front of his house that Buck’s Jeep usually occupies, that’s currently taken by his sister, and thinks that if he made this mess, he could unmake it too. He just has to figure out how to say the words. How to say them to Buck.

Come home , and I love you, and I’m sorry . They fold over his tongue like promises, confessions, pleas. Eddie closes the door and leans against it and—he’ll figure it out. He always does.

***

Eddie wakes up screaming on a cool Wednesday morning and thinks—yeah. This checks out.

He can’t remember the nightmare, really. Something about the shooting, he thinks, if the dull ache in his shoulder says anything. He gets a glimpse of blonde hair speckled with red before the dream leaves him entirely. Eddie is left blinking into the darkness, heart hammering away in his chest.

Sweat sticks his sleep shirt to his back uncomfortably, a thick second skin that he desperately wants to shed off. Somewhere else in the house, a clock ticks idly, and Eddie can hear the traffic going past his open window, a gentle hum beneath his ragged breathing. Christopher is at Hen and Karen’s for a midweek sleepover, thank God, so it’s just—Eddie. In his too silent house, with his goddamn fucking trauma, and he—

He picks up the phone without thinking about it. 

It’s easy to navigate to the favorites menu in his contact, to click on the familiar name, to press his phone to his ear like it’s nothing. And maybe—maybe six months ago, it would have been nothing. Except now, months after the shooting, Eddie isn’t sure he’s allowed to make this call.

He lets it ring anyway.

Except once the line connects, it isn’t Buck’s sleep-rattled voice that comes through. It’s someone else, someone distinctly feminine.

“Hello?” Taylor says, yawning.

“This is Buck’s phone,” Eddie says, because he’s nothing if not eloquent. He doesn’t even have it in him to wince; his heart is still drumming a violent rhythm against his ribcage, his breath still shredded and coming too quick.

Taylor’s quiet for a long moment, and Eddie briefly wonders what she looks like sleeping in Buck’s bed—is her hair up? Is she wearing one of his shirts? Is she wearing anything?—and then he quickly shuts down that train of thought, unwilling to work himself into a panic attack at the thought of—that. He thinks, distantly, that Frank would be proud of him. Finally, she says, “Hi, Eddie.” 

And it’s a question and an answer all at once, like somehow she’s been expecting this call. Which—makes no sense, really, because this is Buck’s phone, and it’s 3:32 AM according to the digital clock on Eddie’s bedside table, but he hasn’t tried understanding Taylor Kelly yet, doesn’t really plan on it either.

“Is Buck okay?” Eddie asks. He knows how obvious he sounds, the way that his voice catches in his throat and his words crack down the middle, but he doesn’t care. 

“He’s fine,” Taylor says. “He’s showering.”

Eddie has no interest in knowing what Buck would need to have been doing recently to warrant a 3:00 AM shower. “Oh.”

“Is everything alright?” she asks. “Is Christopher okay?”

He bites down on something unkind. Maybe he doesn’t like Taylor—for reasons that are green with jealousy and desire and annoyance—but he doesn’t think she’s a bad person, really. She obviously understands that Christopher is important to Buck, that he comes first, always. Still, hearing his son’s name in Taylor’s mouth makes something shiver up his spine, uncomfortable and a little bitter. “Christopher is fine,” he forces himself to say, because Taylor’s waiting for an answer.

“Okay,” Taylor says, drawing out the word. “So, why are you calling?”

It’s not rude, actually. In fact, it’s a perfectly normal question to ask someone who’s calling your boyfriend’s phone in the middle of the night, but Eddie bristles anyway. If the nightmare hadn’t already set him on edge, Taylor’s voice certainly would. 

“I just—” Eddie starts. Stops. How can he tell her he had a nightmare and woke up thinking Buck was dead? How can he say I needed to call your boyfriend because my head is so fucked up that I can’t fall asleep without talking to him? Finally, he settles on, “I didn’t realize the time.”

Taylor makes a noise of disbelief. “Right,” she says. They’re both quiet for a long moment, their breaths—Taylor’s soft, Eddie’s jagged—the only sounds through the line. They’re silent for so long that Eddie nearly startles at her voice. “You can’t keep doing this to him, you know.”

“Doing what?” he asks, only sounding a little defensive. 

“Leading him on,” Taylor says, voice low. “Jerking him around with—promises of Christopher, and fatherhood, and—”

“I’m not jerking him around,” Eddie interrupts, a hot fire licking its way up his spine. He thinks of Buck saying the words backup plan and feels a little bit sick because—how the hell did everything get so twisted? “I’m not—dangling my son in front of him because I think it’s fun. Christopher is as much his as he is mine.”

“Except he’s not,” Taylor replies, and it’s a voice he’s never heard her use. There’s almost—compassion in it like she’s giving a little kid bad news. “He’s not, and you’re letting him think that he can have—something he can’t.”

(“Do you ever think,” Frank asked conversationally, “that what you’re doing to Buck is unkind?”

Eddie’s head snapped up, eyebrows furrowing. “What?”

“Treating him like a co-parent,” Frank elaborated. “Like a partner.”

“We are partners,” Eddie said, only a little bit petulant. He knew exactly what Frank meant but deflected anyway. 

“Sure,” Frank said. “But you’re not together.”

“Thank you for the reminder.”

Frank shrugged. “I’m just saying—look at it from Buck’s point of view. You’re giving him everything he wants—your words, not mine—and yet you’re leaving a key part of it out.”

Eddie made a noise in the back of his throat. “And what’s that?”

“You, Eddie.”)

Eddie looks up at his blank ceiling, mouth twisting into a bitter frown. “You don’t know what he can and can’t have,” he says, because it’s late, and he’s tired, and his heart hasn’t quite settled down. He shouldn’t—say anything, really. He should just hang up, go find the melatonin that Buck left in his bathroom cabinet, fall back asleep. But he doesn’t. Instead, Eddie says, “You don’t know what I have or haven’t given him.”

“Look,” Taylor says shortly. “Buck is—I see a future with him. I want things to work between us, and we can’t have that if you keep getting in the way.”

Eddie huffs out a mirthless laugh. “I think that’s a conversation you should be having with him.”

“Calling him at three in the morning, asking him to watch your son—”

“I don’t ask Buck to do anything,” Eddie says. Maybe he’s recanting his earlier belief that Taylor isn’t a bad person, actually. “He loves Christopher.”

“Yeah.” Eddie imagines Taylor frowning and gets a sick sort of pleasure from it. “That’s the issue.”

“Tay?” Buck’s voice is distant but definitely audible, and Eddie has to close his eyes to stop himself from imagining him stepping out of the bathroom post-shower for his own sanity. “Who’s calling this late?”

Taylor’s voice is further away when she says, “Eddie,” and Eddie only has a moment to realize that she’s passing the phone to Buck. There’s a brief moment where Eddie entertains the idea of hanging up, but he knows that would cause Buck more panic than just—getting this over with.

You’re the one that called him, idiot , Eddie thinks to himself miserably. 

“Eddie?” Buck says, tinged slightly with panic. “Is everything okay? Is Chris—”

“He’s fine,” Eddie says, a little hollow. “Everything’s fine. Just—” 

“Nightmare,” Buck says, and it isn’t a question. “The shooting?”

“I think so,” he replies, scrubbing a hand over his face. “It’s not a big deal. I just—called without thinking.”

“You can always call,” Buck murmurs, and it sounds a little bit like a lie. Like as soon as the words leave his mouth, Buck knows they’re not true. 

“Right,” Eddie says because it’s better than getting into—everything they need to get into in the middle of the night. He has so much to say— I miss you, and I love you, and come home —and they’re on the tip of his tongue, but Taylor is right there, and Buck is. 

Not his.

“I should probably go,” Eddie says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. Exhaustion pulls at his eyelids, but he knows it’ll take him ages to fall back asleep. It always does, when there isn’t a warm body next to him, something to remind him that he isn’t back on that street. “Chris has school in the morning.”

“I thought he was at Hen and Karen’s?” Buck asks, quiet.

Eddie blinks, making out the shape of the book Buck left on his dresser. It’s a collection of essays from some naturalist he enjoys, and he only left it in Eddie’s room to try and convince him to read it. “How’d you know that?”

“He texted me goodnight,” he says. “Sent a picture of him and Denny in the bunk beds.”

“Oh.” Eddie wipes a hand over his face. Backup plan , a voice mocks. How can you think you’re anything but a parent to him ? “Well, I have work, anyway.”

“Right.” He’s silent for a moment, Taylor murmuring something that Eddie can’t make out, and then Buck says, “I’ll let you go, then.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Night, Buck.”

“Night, Eddie.” 

Come home , he thinks. 

The line goes dead before he has a chance to say anything else.

 *** 

He’s halfway through a normal, boring, eight-hour shift when he gets the call.

Eddie’s sitting at his desk, looking over the arson investigation reports he made up—part of his job is creating scenarios for trainees, which is a hell of a lot more boring than it sounds—when his phone starts to ring. He glances at it quickly, ready to ignore it if it isn’t about Christopher, and then does a double-take when he sees Buck’s face staring back at him.

His contact picture for Buck is a photo of him and Christopher, Chris wrapped around Buck’s neck, head propped on his shoulder. It was taken at a trip to the observatory last summer, a candid that Eddie looks at far too much for his own sanity. It’s incredible how much Chris looks like Buck , sometimes, as if he somehow managed to superimpose his own features on the little boy. But it isn’t just the curly hair and the bright eyes—it’s the mannerisms too, the way Chris holds himself and argues and laughs—all of that is Buck.

Eddie nearly misses the call, he spends so long looking at the picture.

He scrambles to answer, swiping a thumb over the screen and lifts his phone to his ear. “Are you okay?” Eddie winces as soon as he says it, wondering when that became his go-to when it came to fielding calls from Buck. 

Buck scoffs. “Why do you just assume I’m hurt?” 

“Ladder truck,” Eddie says instantly. “Blood clot. Tsunami. Being held hostage at gunpoint.”

“Only two of those things happened at work,” he replies, probably rolling his eyes. It feels halfway normal.

“50% — I don’t love your odds.” Eddie pauses then, the smile slipping off his face. “You didn’t actually answer the question, you know.”

And Buck—doesn’t answer. He doesn’t hang up, either, just breathes on the other end of the phone. Eddie knows him well enough to know what that means.

Eddie pulls the phone from his ear and hits the FaceTime button without saying anything. It rings once, twice, and then Buck’s face fills his screen. A breath punches out of Eddie—it’s the first time he’s seen him in a week and a half, and he looks—beautiful, actually.

He’s also covered in scrapes and bruises.

“ This is why I assume you’re hurt,” Eddie says, his voice wobbling a little too close to fear. He realizes, suddenly, that he didn’t prepare himself for this. Eddie left the 118 to protect Christopher, but in doing that, he can’t protect Buck. He can’t make sure he gets to safety. Can’t make sure he gets home . The thought knots high in his throat, burns behind his eyes. If Eddie had been there—

“It’s nothing,” Buck says. He turns his head slightly, and Eddie sees angry red marks snaking up his neck and jaw, bright and shining with ointment. “Just some road rash.”

 “Just some—” Eddie cuts off with an incredulous puff of air. “What happened ?”

“It’s nothing,” he repeats, sounding less convinced than the first time. Buck looks back into the camera, shrugs with a self-deprecating smile. “Some idiot was trying to pull a stunt. Dragged me down with him. It’s fine.”

“Moved from nothing to fine,” he says, eyebrow lifting. “Maybe I’ll get the truth out of you yet.”

Buck’s smile falls. “Anyway, I’m just calling to tell you not to come to the hospital.”

Eddie pauses. Blinks. Says, “Uh, what?”

He waves a hand dismissively. “The nurses—they were talking about calling my emergency contact, and I haven’t changed it yet, so. Just wanted you to know I’m fine before you leave work in a panic.”

And Eddie’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth. “Changed it?” he echoes, like them switching their emergency contacts from being each other is the most unfathomable thing in the world. It kind of is, to be honest. 

God. Eddie should probably book another appointment with Frank. 

Buck’s eyes flick away. “Yeah, I mean—with Taylor in my life now, and—“

“Right.” Eddie says it harsher than he means to, but the image of Taylor-fucking-Kelly holding a vigil at Buck’s bedside is laughable, their apparent I love yous be damned. “Of course.”

Buck looks startled at Eddie’s tone, and he opens his mouth, closes it again. Some shifts across his face, and then his expression shutters closed, cool indifference in his eyes as he looks back at Eddie. “You have something to say, Eddie?”

And Eddie really, really does. He stands up, logs out of his computer, and walks into the break room. One look at Ivy, the kind-faced admin lady that’s always trying to ask Eddie out for coffee, and she’s gone, taking her coffee with her. Eddie slouches into a plastic foldout chair in the corner, watches as Buck’s face remains carefully impassive, thinks about talking to Maddie and Taylor, and he just—says what’s on his mind. 

“First the backup plan and now this,” he says, gesturing wildly with his free hand. “It’s like—fuck, man, I know I threw you by leaving, but I wasn’t—cutting you out of my life. I wasn’t trying to put up a wall. I wasn’t trying to—“ Eddie pauses, sucks in a deep breath. “You are my best friend, Buck. You are Christopher’s best friend. That doesn’t change if I’m not at work, or if I’m not in California, or if I’m not in this fucking plane of existence, okay? That doesn’t change ever . You are part of this family, however screwed up it might be right now. You are—Buck, you are loved and wanted and appreciated. I’m sorry if we—if I—don’t show you that enough.”

( “Do you ever think about talking to Buck?” Frank asked, rolling a squishy, stimulation ball between his hands. They started playing catch about ten minutes ago when Frank got the idea that Eddie might talk a little more freely if he was distracted.

“I talk to Buck all the time,” Eddie said, frowning a little. 

“Not really,” Frank replied. He tossed Eddie the ball, letting it sail through the air in a high arch. 

He caught it in one hand, squeezed it between his fingers. It molded under Eddie’s touch, straining to accommodate the movement. Eddie stared at it, wondering what it was like—to be able to bend with the wind like a goddamn redwood or something. “We talk,” Eddie said, defensive. “Just—we don’t need to talk about that kind of stuff.”

“I think,” Frank said, catching the ball easily when Eddie threw it a little too hard back, “that you’re afraid if you start talking, you won’t stop. ”)

Eddie stops speaking, breath coming sharply. The silence hangs heavy in the space, the drip drip drip of the academy’s shitty coffee maker nearly deafening. Eddie wants to apologize, or maybe keep talking—because Frank, apparently, is psychic, or maybe just a very good therapist—but he just waits.

In his defense, Buck did ask. 

Buck’s mask flickers, surprise and shock breaking through. His mouth drops open and snaps shut again, the click of his teeth audible. “I—don’t know what to say, actually.”

“There’s a first for everything,” Eddie says, breathless. He wants to march down to whatever hospital Buck’s at and just—touch him. Hold him. Tell him this in person so he can watch the realization dawn on Buck’s face, watch him realize how much Eddie loves him. 

Except, it doesn’t come. Buck’s expression shudders, slipping back into passivity. “I should probably go. They’re discharging me soon.”

“Buck,” Eddie says. He nearly cringes at how much it sounds like begging. “You are not replaceable, all right? And you aren’t a backup plan.”

His shoulders lift toward his ears, the white material of the hospital gown bunching up around his pale neck. “Kinda hard to think that when you literally made me your what-if scenario.”

Eddie’s quiet for a long moment, long enough that a nurse comes in to take Buck’s blood. He’s quiet as Buck chats idly with the nurse about the weather— gonna be another scorcher, I bet— and he’s quiet when the nurse hits on him— you’re cute, even with all those scratches— and he’s quiet when they’re alone again, as he tries to match his racing heartbeat to Buck’s on the monitor. 

“Is that what you think I did?” Eddie says at last, eyes boring a hole into the seam of his black dress pants. He reaches his free hand up and tugs at the tie around his throat, feeling choked all of a sudden. “That I put some—condition on caring about Christopher?”

Buck shrugs, and Eddie knows that’s a yes. 

Eddie bites down on the inside of his cheek, hard. Things have been so fucked for so long, and it all comes back to the will. But Eddie—Eddie wouldn’t change a thing. Because he made the right choice when he made Buck Christopher’s legal guardian, his parents’ opinions be damned. He meant what he said that day in the hospital—no one in the world will fight harder for Chris than Buck will. Then Buck has .

It all comes back to the will, and Buck needs to know . He needs to understand. And Eddie is tired of them tiptoeing around it. 

“I didn’t—it wasn’t meant to make you think that you could only love Chris if I was dead,” he says. Eddie nearly stops when he sees Buck flinch, but he channels his inner-Frank and powers through. “It was meant to make you realize that you’re his favorite person. That you’re practically his dad.”

Buck’s breath catches in his throat, a hiccupping sound that echoes through the Facetime call and into the empty break room. “Eddie—“

“You don’t think we all see it?” he continues, needing to get this out. If he doesn’t do it now, he’s pretty sure he won’t. “How much you love him? We all see it. Chris sees it.” Then, quieter. “I see it.”

“I’m sor—“

“Don’t you dare fucking apologize,” Eddie snaps, sharper than he intends. He deflates immediately, shoulders slouching. “I’m not mad at you for loving my son, Jesus.”

“I’m not trying to replace you,” Buck says, voice tight.

“Did you think Ana was trying to replace Shannon?” he asks, tilting his chin up, so he doesn’t have to look at the pain written across Buck’s face. “That I was trying to replace her?”

“Of course not—”

“It’s the same thing. You’re not replacing me.”

“Ana—Shannon—they were your—” Buck stumbles through the thought before finally settling on, “I’m just your best friend.”

Eddie scoffs. “You’re not just anything,” he says. “Ana wasn’t replacing Shannon; you’re not replacing me. Chris can have two dads, twenty uncles and aunts, and a hundred cousins for all I care. He has his weird little family, and it’s good . He’s loved. You love him, right?” It comes out as more of a demand than Eddie means, but whatever. He’s beyond frustrated that they’re having this call over a Facetime call while Buck is in the hospital, a call they’re only having because Buck wants to—write Eddie out of his life or something.

“Of course I do,” Buck says, sounding offended that Eddie even asked.

“Then love him,” Eddie says, and it sounds like he’s pleading. It sounds like he’s saying love me . “Don’t leave him.” Don’t leave me . 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Buck says quietly. Then, “You’re the one who left.”

“I didn’t leave you,” Eddie says, even though they both know he’s lying. “I left the job.”

“Right.” Buck chews on his bottom lip, tongue darting out to swipe at a cut that splits it open. Eddie tracks the movement, glances away. “You left the job because Christopher said to you— Dad, I don’t want you to be a firefighter anymore. Right?”

Eddie’s silence answers for him.

“That’s what I thought,” Buck says with a humorless laugh. “You tell me to love him, and yet you make these unilateral decisions without so much as asking him if that’s what he wants.”

Eddie, suddenly, isn’t sure whether they’re talking about Christopher or Buck. “He wants me to be safe,” Eddie says softly. He’s explained this to Buck before—told him what Chris said at Christmas, told him that leaving the 118 is what would give his son peace of mind. 

“He wants you to be happy , you idiot,” Buck says, sounding just as frustrated as Eddie’s feeling. He scrubs a hand over his face, hissing when his palm collides with the road rash. Eddie winces in sympathy, wishing more than anything that he was there. That the hospital had called before Buck had and Eddie had shown up, that Eddie had taken him home, that he’d applied Neosporin to the wounds like in one of the weird, drunken nurse fantasies he sometimes had.

“I am happy,” Eddie says, and it sounds false on his tongue. “I’m happy that Christopher isn’t scared.”

“You’re so fucking infuriating,” Buck grumbles, shaking his head. “You know as well as I do that shit isn’t guaranteed. That just because you’re not running into the fire anymore that you’re safe. What happens if you get rear-ended, huh? What if the ceiling collapses at the academy, or some random mugger corners you with a gun, or god-forbid another natural disaster sweeps through LA? You can’t avoid dying by pretending it isn’t a possibility, Eddie.”

“Then what do you suggest I do, Buck?” Eddie says, rubbing at the ridge of his eyebrows. He’s exhausted all of a sudden, the fight drained out of him. 

“Let me have your back.” It’s a broken plea, cracked right through the middle, and Eddie lifts his eyes slowly, meeting Buck’s glassy gaze. “Let me get you home safely.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” Eddie whispers. “You can’t—make that promise.”

“I can try,” Buck replies. He bites down on his lip; it splits back open, bright red blood beading along the cut. He licks it away, grimacing at the taste. “You know I’ll always try.”

Eddie’s quiet for a long minute, just watching Buck. Buck watches him back, and they just—sit there, in silence, staring at each other. Eddie has so much he wants to say—to ask, to confess—but he can’t. Buck’s with Taylor. Buck is—happy, apparently. Buck deserves more than what Eddie has to offer.

( “You do that a lot, you know,” Frank said. They opted to do their session outside today, moving alongside each other through the park near Frank’s office. “Say that Buck deserves more.”

“He does,” Eddie said simply, watching a bright yellow bird flutter from branch to branch.

“Did you ask?”

Eddie glanced at him. “You know I didn’t.”

“Then how do you know?” Frank asked. He paused next to a bench and put on the brakes for his wheelchair, gesturing for Eddie to sit. “You can’t just make that decision for him.”

“It’s not a decision anyone has to make,” Eddie said, folding himself onto the bench. He stared out at the trees, watching birds and squirrels and dragonflies buzz around. “Because it’s not a thing that’s going to happen.”

“Because you won’t let it,” Frank said knowingly. “Because you refuse to let it be a possibility.”

And Eddie nodded. “Yeah. I do.” )

So, instead of telling Buck everything, he just nods. Says, “Get home safe, Buck,” and hangs up the phone.

A breath leaves his lips, and still—Eddie feels like he’s gasping for air.

***

Eddie finally, finally, listens to Frank.

Not about Buck—that is. A non-issue. It’s the biggest, most painfully obvious non-issue in Eddie’s life because it exists under his skin like a sliver of wood that refuses to come out, teetering just left of painful if he thinks about it too hard. Their—fight, or whatever that was the day Buck was in the hospital—still lingers between them, a thousand unsaid things hanging within it. Things that start with love and end with you and wouldn’t be reciprocated if Eddie somehow managed to get them out. They’re still doing their weird dance with Christopher, still not talking about the things that matter, still pretending like things are fine when they’re so obviously not.

So no—it’s not about Buck. 

“Buddy,” Eddie says once he’s got Christopher’s breakfast all sorted out—Cheerios and sliced bananas, a Diaz family specialty. Buck’s coming by in ten minutes to pick up Chris for a day at the natural history museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, letting Eddie live the divorced, dual custody life he and Shannon never had a chance to experience. “Can we talk?”

Through a mouthful of cereal, Christopher says, “Sure, Dad.”

Eddie pours himself more coffee, pausing at the counter. He adds two sugars and a splash of cream before realizing that he’s fixing Buck’s coffee, not his own. Eddie takes it with no sugar and milk, but Buck—

Eddie takes a sip and decides he doesn’t hate it. He thinks, somehow, that Frank would call that progress.

He slips into the chair opposite Christopher, drumming his fingers on the table. “It’s about—me.”

Something shifts on Chris’s face, his expression going carefully blank. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Eddie says, and he’s only lying a little bit. 

“Is Buck okay?” Christopher asks, a notch appearing between his eyebrows. Eddie leans forward, smooths it away with his thumb.

“Buck’s fine too,” Eddie replies. “Everyone’s fine.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, bud,” he says. “But I think we should talk about my work.”

Christopher’s nose wrinkles, mouth twisting. “Is this about you quitting being a firefighter?”

Eddie nods. “You know why I did it, right?”

“Because of what I said at Christmas.” Christopher shrinks in his seat a little, poking at the sliced banana with his spoon. “I made you quit your job.”

“No, mijo,” Eddie says, reaching over to run a hand through Chris’s curls. “You were right. It’s scary. Thinking about not coming home to you.”

“But you saved people,” Chris says quietly, eyes cast downward. “I didn’t want you to stop doing that. I just wanted you to not get hurt.”

You can’t avoid dying by pretending it isn’t a possibility. That’s what Buck had told him. Delicately, Eddie says, “I’m always going to come home to you, Christopher.” It’s a promise he shouldn’t make, one that he can’t possibly keep, but he says it anyway. “Always, okay? But kiddo, I’m your Dad. It’s my job to worry about you.”

“I want to take care of you too,” Christopher says. “Like Buck does.”

Eddie’s breath punches out of him, and he has to close his eyes for a moment to ground himself. Then, for a brief second, he lets himself think—of Buck coming to the house in five minutes and walking right through the door, right into the kitchen. Of Buck wrapping his arms around Eddie’s waist from behind and pressing a kiss to his t-shirt covered shoulder. Of Buck being here, with them, forever.

( “If you think about the future,” Frank asked, tapping his pen against the notepad on his lap, “What do you see?”

“Christopher,” Eddie said immediately. Then, quieter. “Buck.”

“And yet,” Frank said, in his annoyingly cryptic voice.

“And yet what?” he snapped. Eddie scrubbed a hand through his hair, not bothering to apologize. Frank had heard worse from him over the last two months.

“You see him in your future, and yet you won’t tell him how you feel.”

“I never said how I saw him.”

“You didn’t have to.” Frank paused for a moment, watching Eddie. Eddie watched the clock on the wall, suddenly itching for the session to be over. He knew, without a doubt, he was going to hate whatever Frank was about to say. “I have a theory.”

Eddie grunted in reply.

“We’ve established you don’t think you deserve Buck,” he said, nodding when Eddie grunted again. “But I think you don’t think he deserves you, either.”

Eddie’s eyes snapped up. “Buck deserves everything—”

“But not your baggage, right? Not your trauma? Not your—how did you put it? Your fucked up emotional damage?”

Eddie slumped back on the couch. That was how he’d put it during their first session. “What’s your point?”

“Buck’s a grown man, Eddie,” Frank said. “Stop treating him like he’s your child.”)

Christopher pokes his cheek after a long moment. “Where’d you go, Dad?”

“Just thinking, kiddo,” Eddie murmurs. He opens his eyes, smiles gently at his son. 

There’s a knock at the door. It’s Buck, has to be Buck, but he knocks. He’s had a key practically since they’ve known each other, has never done anything but walk right in. Even these last few months, since Eddie left the 118, he’s used the key. 

And now, he knocks.

Maybe this is more of an issue than Eddie’s letting himself believe.

Eddie looks over his shoulder and stares at the front door through the kitchen. He waits for a long moment, hoping, begging, praying that Buck will use his key. That he’ll swing open the door and things will be normal, or close enough to it that Eddie can ignore the sense of wrongness that’s stirring in his gut. A wrongness he knows is his fault. Eddie waits, and waits, and—

Buck knocks again.

“Dad,” Christopher says, just on this side of concern. 

Eddie stands up, brushing a hand over Chris’s head, and walks to the door. He rests a hand on the knob and takes a deep breath before swinging it open, coming face-to-face with Buck. His eyes are rimmed red, the paper-thin skin beneath them bruised purple. A question—maybe a demand—sprouts on Eddie’s lips, but he holds it back when Buck looks past him toward Christopher in the kitchen.

Ah , Eddie thinks. We’ve moved on to not talking at all, then .

“Are you ready to go, Chris?” Buck asks, making no move to step into the house. Instead, he rests a hand on the doorframe, sways forward a little like he’s drawn by an invisible string, but then he’s straightening back up. “We’ve got some mammoths to meet.”

An excited laugh peels from Christopher, and the telltale sounds of his crutches come from behind Eddie, but he doesn’t look. He continues staring at Buck, like Eddie can somehow worm his way inside his brain and figure out what’s going on. What put that look on Buck’s face. 

Buck doesn’t look back.

He gathers Christopher’s bag, tossing it over his shoulder, and then waits for Chris to walk out the front door, throwing a joyful see you, Dad! over his shoulder as he makes his way to the Jeep. Eddie watches as Christopher climbs in, a seasoned pro, watches as Buck’s jaw ticks as he does the same thing, and he opens his mouth to say something when Buck just nods.

“Have a good one,” Buck says, and then he disappears into the Jeep too. The two of them pull away, Chris waving at Eddie through the window, and Eddie is alone.

For an hour, he manages to keep himself busy—he tidies the kitchen and vacuums and throws Christopher’s bedding and sheets into the wash. He watches one of the Curse of Oak Island episodes that has somehow made its way into his recorded TV. He drinks a cup of stale, acidic coffee. He scrolls through the TikTok videos Ravi has been sending him since he left the 118, sends a few back. He texts Karen, setting up a wine night, and then Maddie, setting up a play date for Christopher and Jee that’s more for him and her. He abandons his gross coffee and the crappy show and decides he needs to scrub everything off his skin to get rid of the feeling Buck’s have a good one left on him.

It's not until he’s out of the shower, warm and bright pink from the loofa Maddie gave him, that sees he missed a call from Buck. Instantly, his heart is in his throat, but he knows that if something was wrong, Buck wouldn’t have left it as a single call and a voicemail. He forces his pulse to settle as he walks into the kitchen, typing in the password to his voicemail box and hitting the one key twice to confirm he wants to listen to the new, unheard message.

“Hey, Eddie,” Buck says, sounding a million miles away and right next to him at the same time. “Nothing’s—wrong. Chris is fine. He’s watching one of the live excavations. He’s having fun. I’m not.” There’s a bitter-sounding puff of air, halfway to a laugh but failing in execution. “I mean, I’m with Chris, so I’m good, but.”

Buck is silent for a long moment on the voicemail, so long that Eddie has to pull his phone away from his ear to make sure it hasn’t died or exploded or ceased to exist. But it’s still on, and he hears Buck’s breath hiccup in his chest and presses it back to his cheek.

“I broke up with Taylor.” The words woosh out of him like they’re being tugged on a string. Eddie chokes on nothing, bites down on his tongue to stop from doing something like crying. Or fist-pumping the air. “Two nights ago. I broke up with Taylor, and I think I did it for you.” Another laugh, this one more hysterical than angry. “Isn’t that ridiculous? I had a girlfriend who loved me, who I was supposed to love back, and I sat her down at my kitchen island and I said— you’re important to me, but when I go to sleep and I think about the future, it’s not you I see .”

Eddie slides down the wall and sits down hard, pain ricocheting up his tailbone and spine. He bends his knees, listens to them crack, pulls them into his chest like he’s eight years old again. He puts the phone on speaker, rests it on one of his knobby kneecaps and lets his head fall back against the wall with a dull thunk . Eddie thinks about his conversation with Taylor, the night he called Buck after his nightmare. The way she said, I see a future with him . A sentiment that Buck, apparently, doesn’t reciprocate. 

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Buck says, and Eddie imagines him wiping one of the sleeves of his baby blue sweater over his nose, chasing away a sniffle that hasn’t appeared yet. “We haven’t—spoken, really, since Christmas. And I know that’s my fault, at least a little, but I don’t know how to talk to you without being fucking furious, Eddie. I don’t know how to look you in the eye and pretend that things are fine because they’re not. Because you almost died, and then you left, and everyone looks at me like you’re—dead, or something, and I—” Buck cuts himself off. Eddie imagines he’s shaking his head, biting his lip, watching Christopher with an expression that Eddie recognizes from the mirror. “I know we talked, that day I was in the hospital. But I’m not really sure we said anything, you know? Or maybe we said so much that we don’t know what to do with it.”

Buck sighs. “I should probably go before I say something I don’t mean to,” he says. “You should probably delete this.” And then he hangs up, the silence heavier than the weight of forty feet of dirt bearing down on Eddie from above.

The lady in Eddie’s voicemail box says press 9 to save, and he hits the key so fast the phone nearly slips out of his hands. The message gets saved, and Eddie thinks about listening to it again, just to hear the words, I think about the future and it’s not you I see in his ear like Buck’s whispering it to him as if it’s a promise or a confession or maybe both.

He doesn’t, though. Instead, Eddie sits there for another long moment, staring at the grout on his tiled floor and the scuff marks next to it, at the long legs of the table and the hoodie swung over the back of a chair that he’s pretty sure reads Buckley and not Diaz . Then, once Eddie’s certain he’s going to have an ache in his spine for the rest of the day, he lifts himself off the floor and grabs his keys, tapping the call icon next to one of his contacts. It rings once, and then twice, and then—

“Eddie?”

“Hey, Frank.”

“This is my personal number,” Frank says, and he sounds—impressed, actually, that Eddie’s using it. Frank gave it to him during their first real session—the first one that wasn’t mandated by Bobby—and said if you ever need me in between appointments, I’ll make time for you . Eddie’s never used it before, instead sticking to the bi-monthly sessions he booked with the red-haired receptionist that always reminded him a little bit too much like Taylor.

“I’m aware,” Eddie says, a little dryly. “I’m the one who called it, after all.”

Frank doesn’t take the bait. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’m not calling to talk about the Dodgers game.” Frank is silent, as he is wont to be, and Eddie’s eyes flick to the ceiling in a half-hearted attempt at an eye-roll. “I need advice,” he says eventually, once he’s sure Frank isn’t going to offer any retort. 

“Lucky you,” Frank says. “I have a degree in that.”

Eddie rocks back on his heels, leaning a hip against the counter. Outside, Daphne from next door is sitting on her porch, reading a book with a suspiciously familiar cover. Eddie’s pretty sure he’s seen Buck reading the same one and has a sudden, fleeting thought about whether or not Buck’s started a book club with the people in his homeowner’s association. “Buck broke up with his girlfriend.”

Frank, to his credit, doesn’t sound surprised when he says, “Does that change things for you?”

“No,” Eddie says, automatic. But then he pauses because— does it change things for him? Buck broke up with Taylor and did it because he didn’t see a future with her.

Huh. Maybe—maybe. 

“Maybe,” Eddie acquiesces. “I don’t know.”

“Well,” Frank says, and he sounds a little smug. “That’s an improvement from our last eight sessions.”

“I just—there’s a lot we haven’t talked about.” 

“Because you’ve chosen not to talk about it,” Frank says. “Right?”

“Right,” Eddie says, only a little bitter. “Because it wasn’t—a thing, before.”

“But it’s a thing now.”

“I guess,” Eddie says. It’s more of a question than an answer. “It might be? I don’t—I don’t know what to do with this.”

The door to Frank’s office clicks open, and Eddie hears a soft, your three o’clock appointment is here before it shuts again. Frank says, “I think there are two options.”

Eddie hums in response, eyes closing.

“You either continue choosing not to talk about it,” Frank says and stops. It sounds like he’s giving Eddie an out—like he’s saying I won’t judge you if this is your decision . He’s giving Eddie permission to be a coward. To let Buck slip between his fingers.

And Eddie—hasn’t been able to breathe since Christmas. Since the shooting, probably. Since Shannon died, since his mother said don’t drag him down with you , since Afghanistan, since he was a fucking child and couldn’t do anything right by his parents. He hasn’t taken a full deep breath since he was small and he was allowed to—cry and feel and love unequivocally, wholly, without conditions.

Frank gives Eddie an out, and he doesn’t take it.

“What’s the other option?”

It sounds like Frank is smiling. “You be brave.”

And then he hangs up because he’s late for an actual appointment, and Eddie stands in his kitchen for a minute or five or ten, the phone still pressed to his ear with the dial tone going, Frank’s words rolling around in his head like a fucking tumbleweed. Be brave be brave be brave .

Eddie looks at the fancy fruit bowl and says, out loud into his empty kitchen, “Bananas.” Because—he is still kind of a coward, really. There’s a grandiose idea in his head about driving to the La Brea Tar Pits and finding Buck and Christopher and sweeping Buck into a kiss right in front of a fucking woolly mammoth, but—he needs bananas for Christopher’s breakfast tomorrow because Buck won’t be here to cook pancakes, probably.

So, he grabs his car keys and his wallet and steps out of his house, locking the door behind him. There’s a part of him that hopes Buck will beat him home so that he’s forced to use his key, but he wonders if that’s just wishful thinking. There’s another part of him that thinks of using his key to Buck’s apartment, an apartment he hasn’t been in since Chimney left with Jee-Yun to find Maddie, but that’s definitely wishful thinking. Buck would—kick him out. Take back the key. Feel ambushed. 

He can’t risk that, so Eddie—

Eddie goes to the grocery store. 

***

Six miles from his house, he steps into the air-conditioned Trader Joe’s that he thinks is too expensive but Buck likes. He wanders through the aisles, not used to doing this alone, and begins to pick up things he definitely doesn’t need—peanut brittle that gets stuck in his teeth and organic date syrup that he mostly thinks has pretty packaging and a bouquet of bright pink and orange tulips that remind him a little of Texas, a little of Buck. Eddie adds them all to his basket and makes another loop.

He's about to pull out his phone and—listen to the voicemail again, probably—when a hum emits from the speakers above. There’s a sharp crackle, a burst of interference, and then the lights blink out like they were never on in the first place.

Zombie apocalypse. Where would you go to hunker down? A voice that sounds suspiciously like Chimney says inside his head. Trader Joe’s—can’t beat the organic milk selection.

Eddie huffs out a laugh that’s more strained than he’d like to admit. He was standing in the cereal aisle, looking at four-dollar grainless granola, and now he’s standing in the cereal aisle wondering if this is another sign.

Maybe he should start believing in the universe after all.

To his left, an old woman who’s using her cart as a cane says, “Well, isn’t that something.”

Eddie looks over at her, barely able to make out her shape in the dark. She looks at him too, lifts a hand in what looks like a wave. Eddie returns it. “You okay, ma’am?” he asks. He figures it’s something Buck would do. 

“Wonderful,” she says, and it sounds like the truth. “It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

“I can’t say anything else like this has happened to me today,” Eddie says conversationally, and it sounds like a lie. Because—the voicemail. The voicemail was—something. 

“A handsome boy like you?” the woman says, tutting. “I’m sure exciting things happen all the time to you.”

Eddie laughs, the sound untethered from his body. “Can you even see me?”

“I can tell,” she says knowingly. “Call it a woman’s intuition.”

“I’m Eddie,” he finds himself saying because apparently, this is his life. Making friends with an old woman inside the too-expensive Trader Joe’s with his basket full of things he put in knowing Buck would like them because he’s too afraid to just—call.

“Rosemary,” she says. “It’s nice to meet you, Eddie. You don’t usually come here, do you?”

He wonders, briefly, if there’s a weird Trader Joe’s cult that he isn’t part of, where everyone knows everyone so long as they all eat organic lettuce and drink fair-trade coffee. “No,” he says, blinking into the dark. It’s getting easier to see the longer the lights stay off. “My partner usually does the grocery shopping here.”

And it just—rolls so easily off Eddie’s tongue, as if things haven’t been ruined since Christmas, as if Buck was still regularly spending the day and night and weekend at the Diaz house, as if he’s still doing the grocery shopping and the cooking while Eddie cleans and does small repairs. He says it like—it’s true. 

He says it, and it sounds like the truth.

Something in Rosemary’s voice brightens. “What’s their name?” she asks, and Eddie catches a flash of teeth as she grins. “Maybe I know them.”

Eddie dug this grave. He can lie in it too. “Uh, Buck. Evan.”

“Evan,” Rosemary says, her voice curling around the name in a familiar way. “Tall, blonde, beautiful birthmark?”

“That’s him,” Eddie says, just this side of choked.

“Lovely boy,” she says, and it sounds like approval. Something squeezes around Eddie’s heart like a stress ball. “He’s good for you.”

Eddie laughs, just a little, as he says, “You don’t know me.”

“No,” she agrees. “But your partner—Evan—he’s kind. We all see it, when he helps us bring out groceries to our cars or gives us the last of the opal apples or lets someone cut in front of him in line because they have less in their carts,” and yeah, Eddie definitely thinks Trader Joe’s is a cult now. Rosemary says, “A boy like that wouldn’t give himself to just anyone. So—he’s good for you. And you must be good for him, too.”

Eddie squints into the darkness and the stranger who apparently knows Buck well enough to speak for him, and then down at his basket, which is full of bananas and peanut brittle and date syrup and the fucking flowers that he wants to thrust into Buck’s hands, and he thinks—holy shit.

I think I did it for you.

Eddie has repeated Buck’s sentiment about the future being Taylor-less over and over, has listened to Buck’s voice in his head say it, and yet he doesn’t register what Buck said before that until he’s standing in front of a display of rolled oats with Rosemary to his left and an endless dark aisle to his right. It isn’t until the whole world is dark again that the weight of Buck’s words dawns on Eddie—Buck said he broke up with Taylor because of him.

Not because—for. Buck broke up with Taylor because he didn’t see a future with her and Buck broke up with Taylor for Eddie.

And he has no goddamn idea what to do with that.

The lights turn on. An announcement comes over the speakers apologizing for the temporary outage, ensuring the customers that everything is back to normal and they can continue shopping as they were , and remember to check out the Inside Trader Joe’s wherever you get your podcasts. 

Eddie finally gets a good look at Rosemary. She’s hunched over her cart, smiling brightly up at the fluorescents, like they’re the best thing she’s seen all day. He looks at her gray-streaked hair and her Pomeranian-covered blouse and her bright pink nails and thinks I could probably kiss you on the mouth .

“I was right,” Rosemary says, looking at him. “You are handsome.”

Eddie chokes on a laugh. It sounds a little watery to his own ears, but he doesn’t care. For the first time in—months or years, maybe, Eddie feels like something is loosening in his chest. “You’re very kind,” he says. He thinks absently that Rosemary would be great friends with Abuela if she’s already this friendly with Buck.

“My husband would call me insatiable,” Rosemary muses. She drops a box of nut-free granola into her cart and moves forward until she’s standing right next to Eddie. She’s at least a foot shorter than him, probably more stooped over the way she is, but she leans up anyway, patting Eddie on the cheek. “You should start coming with your Evan,” she says softly, a smile tilting up her lips. There are wrinkles all over her face, and Eddie imagines they’re from years and years of that same smile. “He always looks a little lonely when he’s here.”

And then she’s off, wobbling down the aisle toward the dairy-free yogurts. He watches her go, mouth open a little, and Frank’s voice rattles inside his brain. Be brave be brave be brave . He thinks I did it for you . He thinks I love you .

Eddie takes his basket to the self-checkout and scans his items through, pausing at the flowers to just stare at the bright blooms. Buck has two shirts in these colors, he thinks. He wonders if that’s why he chose them in the first place.

“Do you want me to wrap those for you?” a green-haired boy says, tonguing at the ring that’s pierced through his lip. 

Eddie stares at the flowers and then at the boy, before thrusting them forward awkwardly. “Thanks,” he says, once the employee’s taken the tulips from him and begun wrapping them in brown paper. 

“Hope they like the flowers,” he says before digging his phone out of the pocket of his apron.

“Me too,” Eddie says quietly as he collects his bags. He half-stumbles back to the truck and climbs inside ungracefully, tossing the paper bag full of random shit onto the passenger seat before leaning his head back against the headrest, eyes trained on the roof.

The flowers stay in his lap. He pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket and navigates to his text thread with Buck. The last message is from Eddie, just says— still on for movie night? It was sent two days ago. Buck hadn’t replied, and at the time, Eddie wondered if it was just another thing that was different between them, but now he knows—two days ago, Buck was breaking up with his girlfriend. 

For Eddie.

He taps on the call icon before he loses his nerve. There’s some part of him that’s aware that all of the meaningful conversations he’s had with Bucks in the last few weeks have happened over the phone, that whatever is left hanging between them is so dense they can’t stand to talk about it in person, so Eddie cuts himself some slack. He can be a little cowardly, right now. With what he’s about to do.

The phone rings, and rings, and rings, and Eddie is somewhat glad he gets Buck’s voicemail. Payback, or something equally as petty. Buck’s voice comes through— There’s a 90% chance I’ve lost my phone, so leave a message and I’ll call you back when I find it —and Eddie thinks no, he’s just watching our kid learn about the Ice Age.

“Hey, Buck,” Eddie says, and his own voice sounds so perfectly normal that he wants to cry, just a little bit. “Nothing’s wrong,” he echoes, “I just—was grocery shopping and the lights went out, and I talked to Frank and I just. Needed to call you. But I’m glad you didn’t pick up because you—you can’t interrupt me, and I can—get this out, I guess, without worrying that you’ll say something I don’t want to hear.”

Eddie scrubs a hand over his face, hard enough that it feels like he’s shaking his brain around a little. He tugs at his hair, looks at himself in the rearview mirror, sees eyes rimmed red and chapped lips and a scruff he didn’t shave this morning. 

“I really shouldn’t do this over the phone—on a fucking voicemail , of all things, but I—” 

Eddie breaks off with a choked noise. He’s sitting in the parking lot of Trader Joe’s, for Christ’s sake. Peak of romance, Diaz , he thinks, and then laughs. Buck deserves so much better than this. Then him . But Frank said be brave, and Eddie is—really, really fucking trying. 

“But I love you. I’m in love with you. And I want you to come home.”

He sucks a breath in between his teeth, wipes a hand over his eyes. God, that conversation with Maddie seems like it was years ago, but the words echo inside his head anyway— come home come home come home . He wants and he wants and he wants, and he says, “I want you to use your key and not just stand in the doorway. I want you to come inside. I want you to tell me about that microhistory of salt you’ve been reading, or about the nature detective from the podcast you were listening to last week, or just whatever’s on your mind. I want you to sleep in my bed and cook in my kitchen, and I want you to stay Buck, not because you’re a backup, but because you’re my future.”

Eddie hiccups, mouth dry and heart racing. “You are—everything. To me, to Christopher. I love you. And I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to tell you. But I’m telling you now.” He pauses, phone creaking in his hand as he clenches it tight, and says, “I hope I’m not too late.”

Eddie hangs up, folds himself over the steering wheel, and breathes for the first time in weeks.

***

When Eddie gets home, the house is empty.

There was some part of him that believed Buck’s Jeep would be waiting in front of the house, a part of him that spent his formative years being the younger brother of two very romantically-inclined sisters, but that part of him is let down at the very obvious absence of Buck. 

Eddie steps into the house, toeing off his shoes at the rack. He hangs up his jacket on the hook, places his keys on the side table, and just—breathes. In, out. Once, twice. He closes his eyes and leans a shoulder against the wall, sagging slightly. Even though Buck isn’t here, Eddie feels—lighter. Freer. He drops the grocery bag onto the floor, squeezes a hand around the stems of the wrapped tulips and—

“Hey.”

Eddie yelps loud enough that he can feel the back of his neck heat up in embarrassment. “Motherfucking— Buck? ” Eddie asks once his eyes fly open and he finally takes notice of Buck sitting at the dining room table, a cup of steaming tea in his hands. “What are you—where’s Christopher?”

“Visiting Maddie and Jee-Yun,” Buck says, staring down at his tea. From the smell, it’s that weird calming blend he buys a few times a year from Etsy and keeps in Eddie’s cupboard, right next to the package of chamomile Eddie pretends to hate. “He missed them, so I dropped him off.” He looks up. “And then I walked here.”

Two miles. That’s how far it is from Maddie’s. “Why?”

Buck eyes him, biting on the inside of his cheek. “I got your voicemail.”

“I got yours,” Eddie says, and it’s an echo from a conversation years ago.

“Yeah, I figured.” Buck uses his toe to nudge the chair across from him, pushing it out from the table. It’s an offer, the most Buck’s given him to work with in weeks.

Eddie takes it. He slides into the other chair, places the flowers on the table, and watches carefully as Buck takes a sip from the mug. The mug was a gift from Christopher, made from green LEGO holes that could stick actual LEGO pieces onto it. Right now, there’s a fireman figurine climbing up the side, right between Buck’s fingers. It feels oddly like a sign. Maybe a big fuck you , actually.

“So,” Eddie says, once he’s pretty sure the silence is spread so thin that it reaches every corner of the house. The rest of his sentence—you broke up with Taylor—gets lodged in his throat, so he swallows instead, letting the word hang limply in the air.

Buck, to his credit, doesn’t react to the awkwardness. He doesn’t react at all, actually. Instead, he drinks his stupid Etsy tea and stares at a divot in the table from when Eddie tried to help Chris with a science project and ended up burning a mark into the wood with a glue gun and just—says nothing. 

Be brave , says the Frank-sounding voice in his head. 

Fuck you, his own voice echoes back.

“So,” Eddie tries again because Frank is a stubborn bastard, even in his subconscious. “The Tar Pits.” And then he winces, because—really? 

Buck looks up, then, half his face hidden behind the stupid LEGO mug. He raises an eyebrow, birthmark twitching. “You want to talk about La Brea?”

No, Eddie thinks. “Yes,” he says. Because talking about anything but the La Brea Tar Pits means talking about the voicemails. About Eddie’s voicemail. About Buck saying I broke up with Taylor and I think I did it for you and Eddie saying I want you to come home.

Home. A breath punches out of Eddie. Buck came home.

Buck opens his mouth to say something—probably to entertain a conversation about the Tar Pits and the museum and whatever cool facts he and Christopher learned about mastodons—but Eddie makes a noise that sounds a little like wait and a little like a gasp. Buck’s mouth closes, and he looks a little alarmed, but he obviously understands that Eddie is going through—something. So he waits. 

And waits.

And waits.

Finally, Eddie says, “I met Rosemary.” It’s not actually what he means to get out, but he supposes it’s something. A starting point, at the very least.

“Rosemary,” Buck says slowly. “From—you went to Trader Joe’s?”

Eddie nods. “I wanted to get bananas,” he says, a little lamely.

“Target wasn’t doing it for you anymore?”

“I got—weird, gluten-free and vegan and free-range shit,” Eddie says, staring up at the light fixture above their heads. “And peanut brittle. Which somehow might be nut-free. I couldn’t actually tell.”

“You hate Trader Joe’s,” Buck says, and when Eddie looks at him, he can’t read the expression on his face. Can’t tell what Buck’s thinking. “You always refuse to go with me.”

“Yeah.” Eddie nods. “But you left this morning, and I need bananas, and I just—went to the store you’d go to.”

“Why?” Buck asks, voice quiet. He’s only across the table, but he feels miles away. 

“Come on, Buck,” he replies. “You know why.”

“Maybe,” Buck says. He folds his hands around the mug, the tip of his index finger disappearing into one of the LEGO holes. “Tell me anyway?”

And Eddie—looks at him. Looks at his best friend; the way his blue sweater makes his eyes brighter, the way his lips are full and pink and shiny when his tongue darts out to wet them, the way he looked hunted this morning and now looks—cautious. Like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Eddie looks at Buck and thinks, be brave . 

He wonders, absently, if he’s allowed to tip Frank. If he manages to get through the rest of today, he might just try to do it anyway.

“Because I thought I could walk through the aisles and it would be like shopping with you,” Eddie says, dropping his gaze. He picks at the piece of clear tape that holds the brown paper wrapping the flowers together, peeling it up, and then sticking it back down. “I thought that I could—pretend, for a minute, that things were normal.”

“But they’re not,” Buck says, and it isn’t a question.

“They haven’t been for a while,” Eddie replies. 

They’re both silent for a minute, and then Buck says, “Then let’s.”

Eddie glances up, frowns. “Let’s what?”

“Make things normal.” Buck shakes his head, rubs a hand over his hair self-consciously. “I wasn’t lying in my voicemail. I’m fucking furious at you, Eds,” he says, and the nickname makes something hiccup in Eddie’s chest. “But I miss you more than I’m mad at you. So let’s—be normal.”

“Did you change your emergency contact?” Eddie asks instead of asking anything eloquent. He bites on the corner of his mouth after the question leaves his mouth, but he doesn’t take it back.

Buck stares at him for a moment, assessing, until he finally shakes his head. “No. Did you?”

“Wasn’t even a thought that crossed my mind.” It isn’t meant to be a jab at him, but Buck flinches anyway. Eddie pushes forward, resisting the urge to stand and make his way to Buck’s side. “I didn’t change any of Christopher’s documents, either, if you’re wondering. You’re still stuck with us.”

“Stuck with you,” Buck echoes, half-incredulous. “Is that how you think I feel?”

Eddie bites on the inside of his cheek. “You seemed to have no hesitation wanting to get rid of me as your emergency contact,” he says, and this time it is meant to hit. “I figured—“

“You’re an idiot, Eds,” Buck says, shaking his head. 

“You’ve said that already,” he replies. “When you were in the hospital.”

“And you keep proving me right.” Buck stares down into his tea, eyebrows drawn together. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

Eddie scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m trying to,” he says eventually, looking at his hands. Wondering how to fix the things he tore down with them. “I’m trying to understand you. Understand what you—want.”

A choked sound leaves Buck’s mouth, and when Eddie looks up, he sees him blinking rapidly, like he’s trying to force tears back into his eyes. “What I want,” Buck echoes. “What I—you went to Trader Joe’s.”

Still, not a question. “Yeah.”

“You called me from the parking lot of a grocery store you hate, and you said—you told me that you wanted me to come home.”

Eddie’s fingers wrap around the flowers, the brown paper crumpling under his touch. He should put them in water, really. Does he even have a vase? The last time he got flowers was after Shannon died, and those all came in vases but did he keep any of them? Did he—

“Eddie.”

His eyes snap up to Buck, who’s staring at him with a set jaw. It’s a look Eddie knows well—determination. Like he knows what he wants. Like he’s going to get it. 

Eddie’s mouth goes dry, and he resists the urge to avoid Buck’s gaze. 

Be brave , he thinks. Be brave and come home .

Huh. Maybe Maddie didn’t mean it just for Buck—maybe she was telling Eddie to find his home too. 

“Buck,” he says, and it’s only a little choked. 

“You told me to come home,” Buck says quietly. His eyes are bright blue and rimmed with red, and Eddie’s pretty sure he’s never been more beautiful. 

“That’s not all I said,” Eddie manages to say. 

“No.” And Buck smiles, just a quirk of his lips. “You’re kind of a dick, you know. For telling me over voicemail.”

“I wasn’t planning on telling you at all,” Eddie says. “You’re lucky I managed it.”

Just as quickly as it appeared, Buck’s smile falls. “Why weren’t you going to tell me?”

Eddie lets out a laugh, bordering between incredulous and hysterical. “You have a girlfriend, Buck.”

“Had.”

“Well.” Eddie shrugs. “Still.”

“Still what?” Buck asks, leaning forward slightly. “How long have you—?”

Eddie raises his shoulders in another shrug. “A while,” he says quietly, tilting his chin up to stare past Buck into the living room. There’s a science project on display that Buck helped Christopher build in September, before things got so weird between them. Eddie can almost picture Buck on the living room carpet, assembling the experiment to see whether or not music affects plant growth. They’d grown five different bean seeds, and Eddie had looked at Buck carefully piling soil in the pots and thought, I love him . After, when Buck had left and Eddie was staring at the new plants on his windowsill, he had realized it wasn’t the first time he’d thought it. That it wouldn’t be the last. Eddie says, “Maybe—after Shannon died, after the lawsuit, you just…became part of our lives. And you didn’t leave.”

“I still haven’t,” Buck says softly.

Eddie’s laugh is a little wet. He scrubs a hand over his face, the roughness of his stubble scratching his palm. “No. I did.”

“Why?” he asks, and Eddie has to close his eyes to stop himself from doing something embarrassing, like—sobbing at the softness of Buck’s voice or going over and sitting in his lap just to feel close to him again. “Why’d you leave? And not—don’t blame Chris. Because you said—you said that I was stuck with all you when I tried to leave. And I know you meant that. I know Chris scared you, but he’s—he doesn’t want this, Eddie. He doesn’t want you to be unhappy.”

Eddie makes a pained noise in the back of his throat. 

“So why did you leave?” Buck says.

“It was easier,” Eddie forces himself to say. He thinks about Maddie, about her coming home despite being afraid, and wonders how he can be such a coward when she wasn’t, after everything she faced. “To say goodbye, than to let anyone else do it first.”

“No one was saying goodbye to you, Eds,” Buck says, and his voice sounds like it’s cracked in two. 

“After the shooting,” Eddie starts, then stops, sucking in a deep breath between his teeth. “After the shooting, it felt like I was untethered, you know? Like no matter what, I couldn’t find my footing. And I was slipping, and Ana wasn’t helping, and you were so fucking concerned, I just—decided it would be easier. To leave before someone else decided that they should.”

“Eddie—”

“I broke up with Ana because it was unfair of me to keep—leading her on when I knew it wasn’t working. And I quit work because—because eventually, I was going to snap, or something. Someone was going to get hurt.” Eddie’s eyes lift to Buck. “ You could have gotten hurt.”

“So leaving—not having my back—made more sense than just fucking talking to me?” Buck asks, his voice pained. 

 “I couldn’t talk to you,” Eddie says. “I couldn’t—”

“Why?” Buck interrupts, standing up from his chair. He walks over to the other side, perches on the edge of the table, right next to Eddie. “Why couldn’t you talk to me? Did I—”

“No,” Eddie says quickly, shaking his head. “You didn’t do anything, I just—if I talked to you, I’d have to tell you that I—”

That I’m in love with you . The words die on his tongue, but Buck seems to understand.

He nods, a slight bob of his head. “Which you weren’t planning to do.”

“Right,” Eddie says quietly.

“What changed?”

“Therapy,” he replies, and something unknots in his chest at the laugh Buck lets out. “Frank is—a fucking madman, actually, but he does make sense, sometimes. Your sister helped, too.”

Buck’s mouth twists into a confused frown, and Eddie wants to kiss it away. He realizes that he’s close enough to, and he sits on his hands to stop himself from reaching out. “Maddie?”

“She told me to tell you to come home,” Eddie admits. “It took me a while, but I listened, eventually.”

Buck’s eyes go a little soft. “And I did. Come home, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “You did.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, Eddie’s neck craning back so he can maintain eye contact with Buck sitting on the table. He twists a little so he isn’t tucked under the table anymore, hands still tucked beneath his thighs. The clock in the kitchen ticks loudly, and something buzzes beneath his skin, but he can’t—move, because there’s still so much left to talk about. So much left to work through. Because Eddie broke this, and now he has to fix it, somehow. 

“You could have told me,” Buck says, and Eddie realizes that they’re both avoiding the words. Like saying them outside of a voicemail message makes them real. “I would have—”

“You had a girlfriend,” Eddie objects weakly. Hope curls beneath his lungs in the direction that sentence could have gone. Hope he isn’t allowed to feel yet.

“I broke up with her,” Buck says, tilting his head slightly. “And I told you why.”

I think I did it for you . It had been the thing that spurred Eddie’s confession, but the doubt still lingers. Like it’s a house of cards one breath away from being knocked down. “I thought—maybe that was because of what she said.”

“What she said?” Buck echoes.

“About how—I was like, dangling Chris in front of you. That I was making you choose between her and us.”

Buck blinks down at him. “She said that?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “That night I called, when she picked up.”

“I didn’t know that,” Buck says quietly. “I didn’t—I would’ve—” he cuts himself off by pressing his lips together in a tight line. 

“You would’ve?” Eddie prompts, because he’s kind of curious to know how that sentence ends.

“Broken up with her sooner,” Buck says. 

Eddie breathes out between his teeth. “Because—of that?”

“Because she insinuated that Chris is anything other than my number one choice,” he says quietly. “That—that there’s even a choice to begin with. I couldn’t choose Taylor, because I never stop choosing Christopher. Never stop choosing you .”

“Buck,” Eddie says, no idea where he’s going with the thought. 

“Eddie,” Buck replies easily, looking down at him. “Come on, man.”

I think I did it for you . “Buck,” he says again because his brain is kind of gel at this point. He’s pretty sure it’s going to start leaking out of his ears, actually. “Buck, you—”

“Me,” he agrees. Buck pushes off the table and kneels in front of Eddie’s chair so that they’re practically eye level, his hands resting on Eddie’s knees for balance. 

Eddie’s breath catches in his throat. His own hands stay firmly beneath his thighs, but he thinks that if he pulled them out, they’d be shaking. 

“I broke up with Taylor,” Buck says, the words soft. He’s looking at Eddie like he—hung the fucking moon, or something, “for you.”

“Because you—” Eddie doesn’t finish the thought, just stares at Buck in front of him, with his blue eyes and his pink lips and his insufferably handsome face. He thinks Buck knows what he means anyway, because he always knows what Eddie means. Always knows what Eddie needs or wants or craves. He always knows Eddie, right down to his bone marrow. “You said you couldn’t look at me without being angry,” Eddie manages. “But you’re looking at me now.”

“I’m not an asshole,” Buck says, and his lips tilt into a grin, “so I won’t say it over voicemail like some people .” He squeezes Eddie’s knees, shifts his hands a little bit up so they’re resting on his thighs, the touch burning through Eddie’s jeans. “You are everything, Eds. To me, to Christopher. You are—so much, all the time, and yeah, I’m still angry about—everything we haven’t talked about—but if you think for one second that outweighs how much I—”

Eddie kisses the words right out of his mouth. His hands find their way to Buck’s face, somehow, cradling his jaw like it’s something delicate. It’s a chaste kiss, a dry press of their mouths, but it warms something deep inside Eddie. 

He pulls back, Buck’s breath puffing over his lips. Eddie’s eyes stay closed, his forehead tilted against Buck’s. “Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. 

“Liar,” Buck replies, “you just wanted to steal my romantic confession away from me.”

Eddie blinks open his eyes, leaning back slightly. His hands stay cupped on Buck’s face, and he runs a thumb over his cheekbone lightly, relishing in the way Buck shivers at the touch. “I didn’t get a chance to have my romantic confession,” he says, thumb pressing into Buck’s lower lip.

“Screw you, you didn’t,” Buck says on a laugh, his lips tilting beneath Eddie’s finger. He drops his voice into a frankly offensive imitation of Eddie’s as he says, “ I’m telling you now, I hope I’m not too late .”

“Fuck off,” Eddie groans, dropping his hands so he can shove at Buck’s shoulders. Buck teeters, hands coming up to grab Eddie’s wrists. He presses his thumb into Eddie’s pulse point, stroking softly. “I don’t sound like that.”

“You do, a little,” Buck says, and it’s all fond. “It’s okay, though. I love you anyway.”

Eddie’s hands slip from Buck’s shoulders into the soft hair at the base of his skull. He drags his fingers over Buck’s scalp, scratching lightly, and says, “That’s—good.”

Buck raises an eyebrow. “Good,” he echoes. “That’s all I get?”

And Eddie smiles, and breathes, and says, “Pretty sure you could ask me for anything right now and you’d get it.”

“Anything, huh?” Buck says. His hands slide up Eddie’s thighs to bunch in the material at his hips, dipping beneath his shirt to rest on the bare skin of his waist. “And if I asked for everything?” 

“You already have it,” Eddie says, and it sounds like a promise. A vow. “You have for a while, actually.”

“Eddie,” Buck says, squeezing him lightly. “I want—everything, with you. With Chris. And I don’t know how to—to ask for that.”

“Baby,” Eddie murmurs, reaching a hand up to touch Buck’s birthmark, the corner of his eye, the bow of his lip. Buck shivers under him, pressing in closer so he can brush a kiss over Eddie’s temple. “You don’t have to ask,” he says, dragging his thumb on the paper-thin skin beneath Buck’s eye. “You can just have it. Have us.”

“Eds—”

Eddie leans forward and presses another soft kiss to Buck’s lips. He only lets it last a second, smiling when Buck chases him as he pulls away. “I know we still have—a whole lifetime worth of shit to talk about, and we should probably do like, couple’s therapy, or something, but this— you —Buck.” He pauses, pulls back to see Buck’s eyes a little glassy, a little wide. “Buck. You are it for me, okay? I wasn’t lying on the phone. I—I want you to stay in our lives because you belong here. Because you’re ours . You’ve been ours for a lot longer than I realized.”

Buck stares at him for a long moment, eyes searching, until he finally stands up, pulling Eddie with him. Eddie goes readily, steadying himself with his hands on Buck’s elbows. There’s a question on his tongue that he doesn’t get to ask because Buck’s taking his face in his hands and slotting their mouths together.

It’s deeper than their first and second, tongue and teeth and smacking noises that should be gross but are actually kind of intoxicating. Eddie’s hands slip up Buck’s arms to wrap around his shoulders, and Buck’s slip into Eddie’s back pockets, pulling them flush against each other. Buck licks inside his mouth like a starving man, and Eddie thinks, yeah, maybe he should thank Adriana and Sophia for all the romance movies they made him watch growing up because now he knows what it feels like to kiss the love of his life. He knows that it feels like—well, like coming home.

Shit. Maybe he should buy Maddie some flowers.

Buck pulls away, looking a little wrecked. “I love you,” he says, voice hoarse. “I’m so fucking in love with you, Eds, you don’t even—”

“I do, a little,” Eddie says, tilting forward to rub their noses together. “If it’s anything like how I feel about you, I think I have some idea.”

“How’d you get to be such a romantic?”

“Telenovelas and older sisters, mostly.”

Buck smiles, his teeth poking out. “You’re an idiot.”

“But you love me,” Eddie says, and he grins too, tangling a hand into Buck’s curls, free of gel. 

“I do,” Buck says, soft and delicate, a puff of air on Eddie’s lips. “You haven’t said it yet.”

“Excuse me,” Eddie says, mock-affronted. “I said it first.”

Eddie can practically feel the eye roll. “Over voicemail, Eds. That doesn’t count.”

“Fine,” he replies, leaning his head back so he can look at Buck fully—the slope of his nose, the fullness of his lips, the way his eyes are bright blue, and the prettiest fucking things Eddie’s ever seen. “I love you. I love that you’re kind of dorky, with your book about extinct ecosystems that you’re reading to Christopher. I love that you’re best friends with Daphne from next door, even though she can’t stand me for some reason. I love that you think the color green is ugly, even though you’re wrong. I love that you snort a little, in your sleep, and that if you drink anything besides water right before bed, you have the weirdest fucking dreams. I love that you’re like a dad to Christopher, that you love him the way I do.” Eddie pauses, brushing at the wetness that’s pooling in Buck’s lashes. “I love that you choose us, over and over again. I love you because you chose us. Because you let us choose you too.”

“I need to call your sisters,” Buck says, and he’s smiling, eyes watery but bright, “to thank them for raising you to be such a fucking sap.”

“I hate you,” Eddie says, but he pulls Buck in closer, rests his forehead against his, sways slightly so he can slide his mouth against Buck’s. It sounds like I love you when he says it, the way it’s fond and warm and full of so much fucking joy that Eddie could probably choke on it.

“You don’t,” Buck says, and he sounds so sure that Eddie—

Eddie just grins. They have so much to talk about, so much to work through, but this—here—is enough for now. Because Buck is home. Buck came home because Eddie asked, because Eddie loves him and he loves Eddie and— 

“No,” he says, pressing his smile against Buck’s in a kiss that’s ruined by their grins. It doesn’t matter, though. They’re in Eddie’s dining room, holding onto each other like they’re afraid to let go because they’re—they’re home. They’re okay. They’ll be okay. “I really, really don’t.”

Buck kisses Eddie once on the lips, then the cheek, then the shell of his ear, before he hooks his chin over Eddie’s shoulder, squeezing him into his chest. Eddie goes willingly, wrapping his arms around his—boyfriend, partner, fucking soulmate, and just. Breathes. 

“Thank you,” Eddie says into the soft skin at Buck’s jaw, where he presses his lips before murmuring, “for coming home.”

“Thanks for telling me to,” Buck replies. He draws idle shapes on Eddie’s back on top of his shirt, hearts and stars and circles that make shivers run up his spine. Then, after a long moment in silence, Buck says, “Are those flowers?”

Eddie pulls back, glancing at the table. The tulips—he almost forgot about the tulips.

He grabs the wrapped flowers and thrusts them at Buck, scratching the back of his neck as he watches Buck wrap his long, pale fingers around the brown paper. “They’re—for you.”

Buck’s eyes shine as he peels back the paper, bringing the tulips to his nose. “You bought me flowers?” When Eddie nods, Buck grins. “Okay, give me your sisters’ numbers. Seriously, I need to start a group chat or something—”

And when Eddie captures his lips into another lingering kiss, the words dying in Buck’s mouth, he thinks, welcome home . 

For once, it feels like the truth.