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Buck opened the front door to the smell of sharp peppers frying on the stove. It was a welcome sound after the last few days in the Diaz house, quiet mornings and restless evenings, cracked drywall and bloody knuckles.
He slipped into the kitchen to see Bobby poking a spatula around a saucepan, but he looked up as Buck’s keys clattered onto the counter.
“Carpool line went well?”
“Oh yeah,” Buck huffed, closing his eyes to bask in the scent of breakfast cooking, the sound of oil sparking in the pan. It was a gentle sort of quiet, one he had missed over the last few — days, weeks, months? Even the fire station wasn’t the same, not with so many holes in the roster, filled with unfamiliar faces and kiss-swollen lips. Something under his breastbone tightened, and then released as Bobby began to hum a little tune under his breath, vaguely familiar to the pop songs on the radio.
Buck eased down into one of the chairs at the little wooden breakfast table. “Somehow I had forgotten how brutal that traffic route can be.”
“Forgotten or just blocked out?” Bobby teased, a gentle grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Do you want tomatoes with your peppers and eggs?”
“Yeah, thanks Cap.” Before he could stop himself, Buck looked around the kitchen, then peered out the door into the living room, where he could see a bundle of blankets on the floor, the edge of what could only be a half drunk mug of coffee. “Is Eddie up and moving?”
Bobby paused over the stove, the smile falling from his mouth and into an almost-but-not-quite frown. “He’s up.” The words were careful, measured, holding back. And Bobby seemed to realize this because he quickly added, “He’s okay. Just…restless.” That, Buck knew, was a new normal for Eddie.
The last few days had been rough, to say the very least. Ever since Buck had kicked in the bedroom door to find his best friend cracked open and shattered with a fucking hammer, he had listened as Eddie paced up and down the hall, his feet carrying him to Christopher’s bedroom, out to the kitchen to gaze listlessly out the window, and just outside his own room before repeating the whole cycle over again.
Only once had Buck found Eddie within his bedroom, hands clenched at his side as he gazed at the punched-out holes in the wall, dust cleared off the floor but the gaping wounds left staring back at them.
Want to patch it up? Buck had asked.
No, Eddie had said, and that was that.
“How are you feeling?” Bobby asked in a too-soft voice, reminding Buck of the weeks after the shooting, after the well, after Daniel and his mother and Maddie and Chimney… Like he was hoping Buck would look him square in the eye and show him all the ugly parts that lived between his ribs. “I can — stay here, you know. If you need to get home.”
Buck couldn’t think of anything worse, actually. But Bobby’s words were pointed in a way that told him that he had a pretty damn close idea as to the Taylor-and-Lucy shaped problem lurking in Buck’s personal life.
“I’m happy here,” Buck said. “I — I’m needed here.” Because what would he find back at the loft, if not more tiptoeing around the boogeyman in the living room, in the kitchen, in-between his sheets.
“Okay,” Bobby said simply. Buck, he wanted to say, surely. Buck, in that annoying reproachful, entirely too well-meaning tone that Cap had. But instead of saying it, he simply turned back to the peppers.
Buck had to give the older man credit, he had to admit. Most people, if one of their youngest coworkers called them in the early gray hours of Friday morning asking for time off all while sounding more-or-less like he’d been clobbered over the head, might panic or at the very least ask endless amounts of probing questions.
But all Buck had to say was —
It’s Eddie, Cap. He’s — he had a really bad night.
And Bobby had come, armed with enough groceries to feed them for a week and a quiet shoulder for Buck to lean on somewhere between opening the door and bundling a still yawning Christopher into the Jeep. They — he, Eddie and Christopher — had limped through the weekend just the three of them, but come Monday morning…
Well, Buck hadn’t wanted Eddie to be alone, especially after a night of pacing, of yet more tears, frustrated walls slamming up right in Buck’s face as Eddie shuddered apart on the couch.
“He’s out back,” Bobby murmured after a few more minutes of quiet. “Just by the way.”
“Thanks, Bobby.”
Sure enough, when Buck stepped out onto the little back porch that overlooked the even smaller scrap of yard behind the duplex, there was Eddie. He was still dressed in his clothes from yesterday, Buck noted, but his hair was rumpled, his cheeks ragged with stubble. The shadows under his eyes had somehow sunk even deeper since Eddie’s collapse some days prior. Or, the Tipping Point, Buck’s brain had rather unhelpfully labeled it, because what else do you call what unequivocally was a mental breakdown birthed from years and years of anguish.
Eddie let out a sigh when Buck settled on top of the stairs next to him. His knuckles were still scabbed over, the nail beds ragged and torn from — from what Buck hadn’t dared himself to picture. He simply couldn’t bear to add another memory, however imagined, from that terrifying night.
“You know, breakfast is inside,” Eddie said lightly, but Buck can hear the shaking tapering off the words. He opted for a change of subject.
“Christopher’s science teacher is a piece of work. Mr. McCall, is it?” he informed Eddie, and was delighted when a ghost of a smile graced Eddie’s face. Any little moments of happiness Eddie was able to find, Buck was beyond willing to give. He would walk barefoot over hot coals if it meant Eddie could smile just one more time.
“What happened now?” Eddie’s eyes weren’t quite on Buck, instead fixed somewhere across the way, where a squirrel was digging through the shrubs, hoping for an easy meal. Above them, a plane distantly roared, and in front of the house, rush hour cars rumbled by.
Buck blew out a heavy breath of air. “He decided that it would be a good idea to come out in the middle of the carpool line to talk about Christopher’s topic for the science fair. It’s apparently ‘too advanced.’” He held up fingers to make little air quotes around the words, just for added emphasis.
Eddie’s gaze slowly slid from the yard to Buck. “Too advanced,” he repeated, his nose scrunching up in that way it always did when he was confused. He looked so much like his son, and Buck ached for the sheer comfort of it all.
“Fingerprint analysis isn't until the eighth grade. Apparently.”
“Well, he wants to do it,” Eddie said, still frowning.
“That’s what I said!”
“You told McCall that?”
“Sure did. You’ll probably get an email.”
“Great,” Eddie muttered, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees. “I’ll be sure to forward it to you.” He opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something else, but then in the next moment he promptly clamped it shut. Buck wondered not for the first time when the distance between them became so apparent.
Some days, it was as if Eddie was carved from marble, unmoving and utterly blank — except, of course, to Christopher. Other days, he bled freely in Buck’s arms, begging desperately for it all to stop.
Buck didn’t like to think about those days if he could help it. Even if they were the closest thing to an honest conversation that he’s had with Eddie in a year. He let his eyes travel over Eddie’s face as his stifled a yawn, then dragged his hands over his face. Eddie was doing that more too, had been for a while, if only Buck had noticed —
Stop that. He could almost hear Maddie’s voice in the back of his head. He hadn’t talked to his sister about the last few days, hadn’t told anyone except for Bobby, but he knew what she would say. It’s not your fault. You’re not a mind reader, Evan.
And he knew that, he truly did. But it didn’t stop the wave of guilt when he took stock of the bags under Eddie’s eyes, the loose hang to his shirts that wasn’t there just a few months ago.
Too wrapped up in his own bullshit until it was very nearly too late.
“You want to shower?” Buck asked, forcing his voice to be firm and steady — a safe harbor for Eddie, now and always.
“Not really.”
“You’ll feel better,” Buck continued on, already leaning over to nudge Eddie’s shoulders with his elbow. “I promise.”
“Buck…” Eddie sighed. “Can we just – can I just – ”
Buck waited as Eddie tried to find his words.
“I need more time,” he finally said.
“Of course,” Buck said gently. “For?”
Eddie didn’t say anything, and Buck wondered if he even knew the answer.
“Did Christopher ask about me?”
Buck blinked. “What — today?”
Eddie’s eyes fluttered shut; his lashes were so full and dark against the sallow seep to his cheeks. “Today. Yesterday. Whenever.”
If Buck listened hard enough, he could just about hear another crack forming in Eddie’s heart, a sliver falling away to be lost around their ankles, amid the dust and overgrown weeds of the tiny garden.
“Of course he asked,” Buck said, reaching out with a hand to grip Eddie’s shoulder. He had been so scared that first night to touch the other man, the mere thought of Eddie flinching away from his hands enough to terrify him to his core. But eventually, whispers of fingers turned to gentle touches and entirely too familiar motions of undressing, redressing, you need to eat please please please —
Perhaps one day Buck will be brave enough to embrace him.
“He’s worried about you,” Buck said, soft, finally finding the words. “You know he’s worried.”
“He shouldn’t be,” Eddie muttered, and Buck bit his lip to stop the noise of despair threatening behind his teeth. They’d had this conversation before — that first morning after. Afterwards, all Buck had wanted to do was reach back in and find whoever put it into Eddie’s head that he wasn’t worth worrying over, and shake them.
“Chris knows you’re trying. You told him about Frank, so — so he knows.”
“He heard me,” Eddie said abruptly. And for a wild moment Buck thought he was talking about the night Eddie took a baseball bat to his home, but then Eddie goes on.
“Last night. I was having a..nightmare. You were asleep in the chair. But I woke him up, and he came to check on me, and he looked at me like — like — ” Eddie’s voice cracked, and his eyes brimmed with sudden tears.
“He didn’t recognize me,” Eddie said after a moment, his voice steadying as he fought for — control, Buck thought. “My son looked at me and didn’t know who I was.”
Of course Buck had noticed Eddie was having nightmares. How could he not? That first night he sat wide awake gazing at Eddie, crumpled on the sofa from exhaustion and even then he shook and trembled through his sleep. Buck hadn’t asked for details and Eddie hadn’t said, but he could guess what the dreams were about — soaked in blood and well-water, he was sure.
“He knows you,” Buck murmured, his grip on Eddie’s shoulder tightening. He wanted, so very badly, to wrap his arms around Eddie and never let go, if only to protect him from whatever shadows cross him at night. “He’s just scared.”
“Of me,” Eddie said bitterly.
“No,” Buck said then, fiercely. “Never of you.”
“Then what?” Eddie whispered. He looked at Buck, jaw set into a firm line and eyes endlessly sad. “What else could he be scared of?”
“Losing you,” Buck suggested. “Of you being hurt. Eddie, he loves you so much.”
The thought of losing you is terrifying, he wanted to say. If I woke up tomorrow to a world without you, a part of me would die with you. Eddie, I —
And those were three words he’s never allowed himself to think, because if he did then the whole house of cards would come collapsing down on top of them, and it really would be Buck’s fault after all.
His hand on Eddie’s shoulder loosened, then fell, and Eddie let it go. Buck didn’t know where he picked up the capacity for uncertainty around Eddie, but the past year came and went, and here they were. They were sitting so close that they were very nearly sharing breaths, and Buck hoped beyond hope that could be enough.
“Can you eat?” Buck asked, when Eddie was silent for another long minute.
“Bobby still here?” Eddie croaked. When Buck nodded, he sighed, and Buck watched as the gentle lines of his despair tightened into a firm mask. On days like today, Buck couldn’t help but worry that Eddie might just float away from them entirely, washed away by the swelling tide.
But then — Eddie picked himself up from the steps and looked down at Buck with that same faraway look his eyes, his hands balled into his pockets. And Buck was so, so very proud of him for simply standing there, though he was never sure how to quite put it into words. But he is, and he thought Eddie knew that.
“Okay,” Eddie said, determined. “Let’s do this.”