the second rule of holes

At the end of their first date Shannon had kissed his cheek, her mouth soft and cold and smelling like strawberry-kiwi lipgloss, and she’d said, you’re not like any of the other boys, are you, but she'd said it like it was a compliment.
He doesn’t know why he’s remembering that now. He hasn’t thought about it in years and years.
-
Eddie processes. It doesn't go all that well.

Notes:

The first rule of holes states: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
The second rule of holes states: When you stop digging, you will still be at the bottom of a hole.
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This is a companion / sequel to like a hole in the ground. That piece can be read as a standalone, but this one will not make sense if you haven't read that first.

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Work Text:

They don’t talk about it.

Eddie knows they should talk about it. He knows it would be the mature, responsible thing to do. And Eddie is mature, Eddie is responsible, those are practically his two defining characteristics, so he keeps opening his mouth, but each time the only thing that comes out is air, or a quiet “uh” sound. Like all the possible combinations of words just get stuck in his throat in one big ball that threatens to block his airway.

So Eddie says, “Hey do you want to watch the new M. Night Shyamalan movie?” and Buck says, “Oh hell yeah.”

The thing is. If they talk about it. Then Eddie is going to have to think about it. He’s going to have to start with “hey so remember when you were trapped under a giant pile of rocks last week?”, going to have to think about the tiny half moon thumbnail of Buck’s face peeking out way far below him, always somewhere Eddie can never quite get to him, always dangling there just out of reach. He knew it was the rain but Eddie would swear there were a couple of seconds on that gurney where Buck’s body started to go cold, and it was the same gurney, and Eddie had thought- he knew, knew they sterilized everything top to bottom every time, but he couldn’t shake the thought there was a fleck of her blood stuck somewhere in a hinge they’d missed, because it was the same gurney-

Besides. It’s not like they don’t talk. They talk all the time.

In fact if Eddie goes longer than four hours without checking in with Buck, he starts thinking about Buck’s face when he said I told you I loved you and you just stopped talking to me, and that’s just. Not a thing Eddie needs to be thinking about. So Eddie makes sure that they are talking. They text for the whole three days that Buck is laid up in bed alternating between heating pads and ice baths, and then the whole week after that when Buck is stuck on light duty and practically chewing through the walls. Buck sends him funny flashmob videos, gifs of baby giraffes learning to walk, ’20 Delicious Tofu Recipes You Can Make in Under 20 Minutes’. Eddie sends him pop sci pieces, a picture of a cool cloud he saw, 5 Hamstring Stretches for Muscle Soreness.

One time, when Eddie checks their chat, the three typing bubbles pop up, and stay there for a long time, and then disappear again without any message coming through.

Eddie immediately sends Buck an article about how hummingbirds metabolize oxygen at a rate fifty times faster than an Olympic sprinter.

And it’s not like they don’t hang out. They hang out even more than before now that Marisol is out of the picture, and if Eddie still has an unanswered text from her from eight days ago that just says really Eddie?, then, well, that’s not anybody else’s business. He doesn’t even feel that bad about it, or he does, because she was very nice, and very pretty, and it doesn’t make him feel fantastic that those are the only two qualities he can name. But it’s hard to remember to feel bad when Buck is hanging out in his living room trying (and failing) to build Stonehenge out of empty soda cans on the coffee table, or sitting with his feet tucked up under him reading a book on chimpanzee ethics, God only knows where Buck finds these books, or letting Chris beat him in Mortal Kombat like it’s some newfangled video game and not something Eddie is well aware Buck has been playing since he was 8 years old.

It’s just that it doesn’t seem that important to focus on anything else when the two of them are watching the Shyamalan movie on the couch and Buck dozes off not quite on Eddie’s shoulder but close to it, his breath drifting over warm and damp onto the side of Eddie’s neck. And Eddie doesn’t move or think too loud in case something makes the whole thing splinter, so he just sits there until his leg is cramping and his arm is numb, because he knows it will all fall apart if he makes a sound.

Christopher goes on a second date. At least it’s the same girl this time. He’s all awkward and sulky right up until he asks Eddie if his hair looks okay and Eddie has to blink back tears because that’s his baby, that’s his baby. He remembers Chris at birth, 5 lbs 11 oz, how he slept on Shannon’s bare chest and didn’t even cover her whole sternum. Now he’s a moody little asshole who doesn’t even say thanks when he gets out of the car.

He drops Chris off at the mall to meet a girl who is wearing absolutely insane amounts of mascara, the girl’s mom chaperoning from 20 feet behind and pretending not to eavesdrop, trying to recapture the glory days of her own teenagehood, why anyone would want to do that Eddie has no idea. Once he’s back in the car he immediately calls Buck.

“It’s too soon to tell him to use protection, right?” Eddie says instead of hello. He hears Buck huff out a laugh.

“I don’t know, maybe wait til the third date?” Buck says. “I know he’s a heartthrob, but 13 is pretty young...”

“I was 5 years older.” Eddie says darkly, and he can hear the face Buck is making, his eyebrows all pulled together and his mouth open a fraction as he tries to figure out what to say to that.

“Well, you know your kid.” Buck says finally, like he isn’t- like Buck isn’t- and for a second Eddie is filled with some kind of tar. Something heavy that twists in the middle of him and makes him want to say, yeah, I do, don’t know why I called you then. But he just says “Yeah” and Buck sighs.

“Eddie, it’s going to be okay.” Buck tells him. “It really will be, it’s only the movies. He’s a good kid with a good head on his shoulders. He just happens to also be a teenager.”

Eddie knows he’s right. Thankfully Chris has only recently discovered his right hand and will likely not be impregnating any mascara-laden eighth graders any time soon. And Eddie knows he should feel grateful, actually, that Chris stomps around and sulks and rolls his eyes, because it means he feels safe enough to do that, Eddie can’t remember ever talking back to his own father. The thing is that Christopher is not mature, he’s not responsible, he’s not like Eddie, and while it scares the shit out of him, Eddie can only really view that as a good thing.

Buck is just sitting there quiet on the line and Eddie knows better than to say any of that. He knows what kind of an overcompensating no-Eddie-you’re-amazing response that’s going to get him. Instead he just asks Buck if he’s kept up with the Great British Bakeoff, and by the time Eddie gets home Buck is already sitting in his living room eating popcorn with his tongue like a chameleon.

On Eddie’s own first date, with Shannon of course, they’d gone iceskating. He’d been terrified he was going to trip and impale her on one of his skates. They’d held hands and drank hot chocolate. She’d been beautiful in the cold. He’d wanted so badly to impress her, wanted so badly for her to think he was worthwhile, but he couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to say to her, what girls would ever want to talk about or hear. Instead he’d just held her hand and listened to her the whole time and thought how impressive she was, 14 years old and angry at everyone and everything. At the end of the date she’d kissed his cheek, her mouth soft and cold and smelling like strawberry-kiwi lipgloss, and she’d said you’re not like any of the other boys, are you but she’d said it like it was a compliment.

He doesn’t know why he’s remembering that now. He hasn’t thought about it in years and years.

“Do you think there are types of people?” Eddie asks, and Frank hmms, considering.

“I think there are patterns of behavior we all fall into.” Frank says.

“So ruts, then.”

Frank shrugs.

“Some people would say the self is just a pattern of behavior.” He says, but his eyebrow is quirked up.

Eddie takes the bait.

“Sounds like you don’t think that.”

“No.” Frank says. “No, I think there’s a difference between what we do and who we are.”

The fact that Buck is on a first name basis with Christopher’s physical therapist shouldn’t be surprising, and it isn’t, exactly, but it still makes Eddie’s chest twinge when Buck says “Amanda! How are you!” and starts asking about her triplets, which, whoops, Eddie did not know there were three of them.

Eddie was maybe angling for this; he maybe not-so-secretly wanted Buck to come when he mentioned offhand that he had to take Christopher to PT tomorrow afternoon, was maybe not-so-secretly pleased when Buck said “Want me to pick you up?”. In years past they would have bothered with an excuse. Buck would have said Well how are you going to park that monster vehicle downtown and Eddie would have said Easily, because I can actually parallel park unlike some people. Nowadays Eddie just says “Yeah, four is great”.

Christopher doesn’t bother hiding his relief when Eddie informs him Buck is driving, because, well, okay. Eddie can get a little anxious at the physical therapist. Chris only has to go every couple of months so they can lecture him about keeping on top of his exercises and make sure his muscle mass is remaining stable. But every time Eddie is sure that they’re going to tell him something is terribly wrong, even though that’s really not the job of a physical therapist.

He just feels like- like he missed the big one. The appointment where Shannon sat there with a fussy baby on her lap and got told words like movement disorder and developmental delay. He was there for the third surgery but not the first two, and he can’t shake the certainty that somewhere out there someone is keeping score. Some cosmic force, some divine retribution is going to wake up one day and go hey. Hey, you know what would be funny?

So yes, he gets a little paranoid, hovers a little too much. Amanda has been a saint in tolerating his neuroses, but he knows she would rather he at least remain in his chair. And this time he manages to, mostly because Buck is sitting there next to him. Eddie can almost forget the fact that he is being managed like a cranky toddler because Buck is so goddamn good at it. Buck sprawls out next to him, their knees bumping, flips open Architectural Digest to a luxurious Cape Cod mansion, and immediately says “way too much teal”. Turns the page and says “hate that carpet”, and fine, Eddie looks away from where Amanda is measuring Chris’s grip strength, and yeah, it’s a really ugly carpet.

“I just don’t get how you could have all that money and make a choice like shag carpeting.” Buck says. “I mean, I guess if you’re not the one who has to clean it...”

Amanda is having Chris stand on one leg without his crutches. Chris is wobbling, his face twisted up in trepidation, and Eddie says “Yeah man, probably”, is about to get up, when Buck says:

“You ever think about moving?”

That gets Eddie to looks back at Buck, who’s just smiling placidly.

“Moving?”

“Yeah, to somewhere bigger, maybe somewhere with a guest room. Like, what if you want to have visitors?”

And right, Buck has got to be pretty sick of the sofa. He’s been on it more nights than not lately, not that Eddie is complaining. But it can’t be as comfortable as an actual mattress, even if Eddie kind of likes having Buck right there in the middle of the house. Likes getting a glimpse of Buck’s socked feet if he gets up to get a glass of water in the middle of the night.

And okay, having a little more space would always be nice. It would be great if Eddie could get enough shit out of the garage to actually park the truck in there. But Eddie- Eddie really doesn’t want to move. They’d pulled up to California, carrying only what could fit in the car, and Eddie had walked Christopher around from room to room. He’d lifted him up so he could see in all the cabinets and on top of the fridge, and for the first time in years Chris had seemed a little less freaked out, a little more interested in the world around him. And it had felt different. It hadn’t felt like Shannon’s house that Eddie was just staying a couple of weeks at a time in, Shannon’s bed that he just happened to be sleeping in.

“Uh.” Eddie says.

“Like, what if your sisters want to come visit?” Buck continues on. “Or your parents? Although for them maybe it’s better if they’re in a hotel-“

“You don’t mind sleeping in the living room?”

“Huh? Oh no way, it’s super comfortable, better than my bed actually. I swear those cushions are Tempurpedic or something. But, you know, for other people.”

“Right, yeah.” Eddie says. “Other people.”

“But no, I’m chill.” Buck says with a shrug. “I mean, I’ll go wherever you and Chris go, so.”

“Oh.” Eddie says.

And finally Amanda is motioning them over to tell him that Chris is right on track, everything looks good, and yes, Buck, thanks for asking, the girls did have a great fourth birthday. And Buck drives them all back home, humming and tapping along on the steering wheel to the top 40s radio. Eddie tries to ask Chris questions about the appointment and Chris gives monosyllable answers, and Eddie catches Buck’s gaze in the side mirror for a second, Buck smiling a little, and Eddie can’t help smiling back.

Eddie has hobbies. He hits the gym, he goes for runs. He’s pretty sure Frank would say neither of those count as hobbies, but Eddie likes the solitary nature of it, likes running until his breath is even and rhythmic and the only thing he has to think about is his feet. The issue is that Eddie- Eddie isn’t great with people. Or, he is, people like him just fine, and he likes them too mostly. He doesn’t mind them at work, he gets along with the guys great at the pickup game. When there’s a rubric it all makes sense.

The problem is more when there’s no path to follow. He knows he comes off as aloof or unfriendly then, but he just genuinely can’t think of things to say. Nothing in his head really seems worth sharing. Shannon used to get so annoyed at him, can’t you just talk about how your day went she’d say, but when he was at home, his days were always boring and the same, and when he was away, well, he didn’t want to upset her.

He thinks that might have been why he stuck with church for as long as he did. Nothing more devout than sitting in silence. It’s why he likes Bobby, who would have made a damn good priest in another life. Bobby has a way of asking questions that doesn’t feel like he’s prying. Like it’s all just chatting and it doesn’t matter if Eddie says anything important or not, just casual conversation, low stakes. Which Eddie appreciates, because stakes are already high enough with Bobby trying to show him how to make meringues for Chris’s bakesale, why Chris decided on meringues Eddie will never know. Probably something to do with a girl.

“Okay, so you want stiff peaks-“ Bobby is saying, like that means anything to Eddie, and at some point Bobby stops looking at the mixing bowl with raised eyebrows and starts looking at Eddie with raised eyebrows, and he says “So how are things with Marisol?”

“Oh, we broke up.” Eddie says, and Bobby takes the mixing bowl from him to finally beat those eggs into submission.

“Ah, sorry to hear that.” He says. “Too much of the big man for ya?”

“Something like that.”

It was actually just that Marisol had left her driver’s license lying around and Eddie had picked it up, and thought I had no idea that was her middle name. And then he couldn’t remember if she’d ever told him that or not, and Marisol- Marisol at least deserved someone who could remember basic facts about her.

“Well.” Bobby says. “If the relationship didn’t have a future, then you did the responsible thing by ending it.”

“Yeah.” Eddie says. Eddie would swear that Bobby is doing the same thing to the eggs that Eddie did, but for some reason, it works when Bobby does it.

Eddie says: “The nun thing was a lot. I guess it kind of freaks me out, the idea of somebody watching all the time.”

“We talking about God or marriage?” Bobby says dryly. Eddie doesn’t know what kind of face he makes in response to that but Bobby laughs.

“It’s not just somebody watching.” He says. “It’s somebody watching and offering grace.”

“Right.” Says Eddie.

Tries to remember what, exactly, grace is supposed to feel like.

The good news is that it isn’t weird at work any more. Some might argue that it was in fact Eddie who was making it weird. Eddie might have to concede that point, but the good thing about is that since now he’s not, it isn’t. They’re back to family dinner, back to good-natured ribbing in the back of the cab and Eddie is glad. He meant what he said about the camaraderie. His unit was the one thing that had made it all survivable. Until, well.

The bad news is that industrial accidents are the worst. He’s seen a lot of shit in his life and nothing quite beats them. The guy is already dead when the 118 gets there, torso shredded by an industrial fan blade. Eddie would like to say at least it was quick, but it probably wasn’t. There’s not much to do other than bag him as carefully as possibly, trying to minimize organ spillage- Bobby is speaking to the foreman in a clipped tone that would read as calm to anyone else, but Eddie knows that guy is definitely going to prison.

Buck is talking to the coworker who was on shift with him and watched it happen, the poor man sitting on an empty cable spool with a shock blanket wrapped around him. They always look so forlorn like that. The man is shaking like a leaf and Buck is crouched on his haunches next to him. He meets Eddie’s eye and just gives a tiny little shrug. Eddie’s at the point in his life where intestines just make him think ugh, gross. It can be hard to remember that other people don’t feel similarly.

“Do you have someone you could call?” Buck is saying quietly, and the man nods jerkily.

“My wife.” He says. “I should- call my wife- I should- God there was so much blood- There was so much- Is it always like that?”

Yup. Eddie thinks.

“Let’s get you checked out, sir.” He says instead. “Get you something that will calm you down, does that sound good?”

Eddie was nineteen years old the first time he watched someone die. Guy took a large caliber to the trachea and all they could do was keep him alive long enough for it to hurt.

For years in the post office or the grocery store, when people thanked him for his service, he’d look at them and think: occipital vein, external jugular vein, internal jugular vein, carotid artery-

“So when do I stop seeing you?” Eddie says. “When am I normal again or whatever?”

Frank sighs.

“Well, normal is a spectrum.” Frank says. “We all fall somewhere in the middle with a certain amount of natural fluctuation. My goal is to help my patients balance.”

He smiles that I’m-so-understanding smile, always so compassionate.

“It would probably help if you had more than one leg.” Eddie says. Frank looks at him over his glasses.

“Often when we misplace aggression, it really comes from a source of grief.” Frank says mildly.

“Uh huh.” Eddie says.

At some point Eddie realizes he can’t remember what Shannon looked like when they were kids. There are pictures all over the house, but they’re all pictures of her and Chris or pictures of the three of them together. None from before. She had her nose pierced, which counted as a scandal in El Paso, but he can’t remember which side.

He knows he remembers her at the lake rolling around in the back of his truck, freckles on her shoulders. He knows he remembers her at her dad’s funeral, stony-faced and full of too much rage to cry. He knows he remembers her smoking hidden cigarettes behind the church. But when he thinks of Shannon the image is always hazy. The woman she became superimposes on top of the girl, the absolute exhaustion she was always wearing like a layer of sediment.

When Buck lets himself in Eddie is going through his wedding photos. He forgot how many there are. There’s the pile that he’s showed Chris before: There’s one of them putting the rings on, Eddie’s head bowed, the veil falling softly over Shannon’s face. There’s one of the bouquet toss, everyone scrambling and laughing. And then there’s the other pile, blurry or weirdly lit or full of people making strange expressions. Eddie’s mom in the background watching him like a hawk like she thought he was going to turn tail and start sprinting.

He can hear when Buck realizes what he’s doing, the way his footsteps sound when his weight shifts and his posture changes. Eddie doesn’t look up.

Buck comes over to the coffee table and picks up one of the photos.

“Scrapbooking?” He says finally, that casual, jocular tone to his voice. His deescalation voice.

“Something like that.” Eddie says. Buck studies the picture he’s holding. Eddie knows that one: they’re cutting the cake, hand in hand on the cake knife, one shoulder of Shannon’s poofy wedding dress slipping down like it was never properly tailored. Eddie is grinning at her with way too much gel in his hair. His knuckles are white on the knife handle.

“You look...” Buck says. Eddie is sure he’s going to say happy, or in love, or something. Buck says: “Young.”

“I wore my prom tux.” Eddie says and he can’t help the weird laugh that bubbles out of him. Buck stops and swallows. He puts the picture down and tugs the one that Eddie is holding out of his grip. It’s the photo of him and Shannon at the altar. When he’d pulled back the veil she’d been stone-faced and pale.

“Just nervous.” She had whispered, her lips bitten raw. “Love you.”

“Love you too.” He had whispered back, their endless call and response.

“In ninth grade.” Eddie says, and he sees Buck look at him out of the corner of his eye. “In ninth grade, we had this math teacher who wore a toupee, and he was terrible, like just the fucking worst, he used to love to make the girls cry. And one time he made Juliana Rodriguez cry, and Shannon threw her chewing gum into his toupee from all the way across the room. Nearly got suspended. She was always... like that.”

“Loyal.” Buck says, all hesitant and gentle. Eddie snorts.

“Trouble.” He says. “Everyone thought so. God, the way people used to look at her. My parents always made her feel like she was just white trash. And Shannon tried with them, she really did, but... You know, when I was deployed, my mom once asked her if she wanted to leave Chris with them and go off to college, can you believe that? Like she wasn’t his mother, like she wasn’t my wife, like our whole marriage was just- just a broken condom.”

Buck hisses a breath through his teeth.

“That’s...” He says. “Neither of you deserved that. You were just doing the best you could with a tough situation, they should have been more supportive.”

And Buck means well, but- A tough situation. Like she wasn’t, like Shannon hadn’t been- There is an unpleasant twist inside Eddie, familiar, the one that makes him want to say yeah Buck, you got a lot of experience with commitment?.

Eddie swallows it. Eddie is good at doing that. Eddie doesn’t say anything.

He picks up another photo at random from the table. One of him and Shannon dancing at the end of the night. In the photo she is slumped into his chest with exhaustion, him barely holding her up, the whole thing too heavy for either of them to carry for another second. She’d been so scared and so goddamn brave. Just looking at her had made him feel sure. Made him forget that split-second when he saw her walking down the aisle toward him, and there had been a- a door closing somewhere inside him. One that he hadn’t even known was open in the first place.

He puts the photo back down. Starts shuffling them all back into the shoebox. And it’s only because he isn’t looking at Buck that he can say:

“I snuck out on the honeymoon. Not even a real honeymoon, just 3 days in a hotel in Las Cruces, but. She was asleep and I left. I went out to the parking lot and I called the recruiter, asked if I could bump up the date to start basic.”

He is so ready for Buck to flinch. Because it wasn’t just Shannon he left. And if there is one thing in this world that Eddie is certain of, it is that Buck loves Christopher. Of course he does. Christopher is so wonderful, so good, so worthy. Christopher deserves the world, and all he’s got is Eddie. Eddie’s mom would have cried if she’d ever found out the timing of everything, she’d have cried and never spoken to him again. Why don’t you go be a hero in the kitchen and grab your son a juice box.

Buck just sighs.

“Yeah.” He says. “I think I probably would have done the same thing.”

Buck would not have. Buck would be a damn good husband, and a damn good father. He would never, ever leave anyone behind.

But still. It’s nice of him to say.

Buck has shifted a little closer, like if Eddie wanted to reach out and touch him, grab his shoulder, grab his hand, then he could. That’s the thing about Buck, he’s always just an arm’s reach away.

Eddie clears his throat.

“Hey, have you had lunch?” Eddie says.

Eddie misses summer in El Paso. Well, he doesn’t really, because summer in El Paso always came with sweaty days spent lifeguarding and nights spent at dances in a church basement with Shannon, the teenagers trading a flask around in the bathroom, always Eddie so very conscious of where on her body he was putting his hands.

And there are things he likes about summers in LA. The block-wide cookouts. The packs of surf rats in board shorts. The throbbing bass of lowriders around the corner. He’s acclimated, he thinks, made himself a- what was it, a nest here, and the last time he went back to Texas, god the amount of bullshit bumper stickers he saw-

“Whenever I stop talking for 20 seconds you start going on a face journey.” Buck says. “You ever notice that?”

They’re sitting at the edge of Bobby and Athena’s pool, the Labor Day BBQ winding down in the background. Swim trunks drying off, feet dangling in the water. Eddie flicks water at Buck, his body loose with maybe one more margarita than he should have had as in the background Denny runs by with a lit sparkler.

“We’re firefighters and we’re giving the kids sparklers?” Eddie says instead of answering, Buck grimacing and shaking the water out of his hair.

“It’s job security.” Buck says, leaning back on his elbows. “That’s what they don’t tell you about firefighting. If there are no fires... then what do we fight?”

“Be sure to thank your local arsonist today.” Eddie says. Buck laughs, low and easy, that bright grin on his face like he thinks Eddie is actually funny, actually that interesting, actually something Buck wants to watch, and Eddie wants- wants to sling Buck’s arm up over his shoulders and nuzzle in. He wants to smell the spot where Buck’s hair meets the top of his ear. Eddie is certain it would smell like sweat and chlorine and the way the asphalt smells when the day has been long and hot and the sun has finally gone down.

Maybe he’s a little tipsier than he thought.

Eddie focuses down on his own toes under the water, the way the strange blue-green shadows move across them. He remembers teaching Sophia how to swim, holding her up and telling her to kick kick kick kick. He doesn’t remember with Christopher, Shannon must have taught Christopher-

“You don’t seem like you like it.” Buck says suddenly.

“Huh?”

“When you get all- lost in thought like that. You don’t look like it makes you happy.”

Eddie opens his mouth. And now, now for some godforsaken reason is almost when it rises up on his tongue like a taste in his mouth. Almost when he says hey, why did you? Why do you? Because he understood it from Shannon, that was necessity. And he understands it from his parents, that’s duty. And he understands it from Chris, that’s safety. But he just can’t figure out why Buck would, when he has choices. He has options. There’s no pregnancy test or genetic legacy or parent-child bond.

He doesn’t need to be doing it. There’s no obligation at all.

“Do you ever miss Pennsylvania?” Eddie asks, and Buck gives a wry smile.

“Not even a little.” He says. “Besides, everything’s out here now, isn’t it?”

Eddie follows his gaze to where Maddie is wiping ketchup off of Jee-Yun, and Chimney is wiping ketchup off of Maddie. Chris is sitting in a patio chair on his phone (what else?). Hen and Karen have their heads tucked together in the background whispering to each other. Bobby’s laugh echos from inside the house.

The edge of Buck’s little finger presses against Eddie’s on the concrete.

“Yeah, guess so.” Eddie says.

Eddie should go see if they need help cleaning up inside. But Buck’s skin is warm, even if it’s just at that tiny point of contact. So for just a moment Eddie lets himself sit there. Sun just gone down. Air smelling like the grill. Bug bite itching on his ankle. They’re sitting in the middle of the backyard but there’s something inherently private about a summer evening, like nobody could see them at all.

Eddie’s pretty well versed in the nightmares by now. This one isn’t even really a nightmare, just a bad dream. One that leaves a weird taste in his mouth when he wakes up groggy and disoriented at 2am. He can’t quite remember it. Something about a car, a dress, a sense of something missing. The details slip away the longer he lays there. The images of the dream go but the feeling remains, sitting there and watching something move away from him into the dark.

He gets up to get a glass of water. He has one on his nightstand but he just needs to be out of his bedroom for a second. Too much staring at the shadows of the bushes outside his window. Shannon once climbed out of that window. He bought new sheets and bedding afterwards. But he could hardly replace the window.

The kitchen is the same comfortable dim it always is at night. The green glow of the microwave clock. The clink of a cold glass and cold water. In the living room Buck is snoring. Not quietly. Eddie’s feet take him to the doorway and he watches for a minute. The bedsheet is wrapped tight around Buck’s chest, one of his arms pinned up under his head to expose the curve of his bicep, the valley of his armpit, the swell of his ribcage before it disappears into the blankets. Inhale exhale. Inhale exhale.

He listens to Buck. Eddie’s lived in a tent with 11 other men and nobody ever made the noises Buck makes. The other guys would put a pillow over your face if you got too loud. Every second of sleep was too precious.

Weird to think that at some point everybody exhales and never inhales again.

Eddie doesn’t know at what point he moves closer but he does, coming to stand next to the couch with his empty water glass held loosely in his hand.

Buck stirs and sighs, stops snoring. His eyes crack open a sliver.

Eddie is about to- apologize, or make a comment about Buck sounding like a chainsaw or something. But Buck just looks soft and concerned as his eyes blink open all the way.

“Everything okay?” He says. Eddie nods, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Fine, just couldn’t sleep.” Eddie says and Buck yawns, half sitting up and pulling his feet in to make room for Eddie. Eddie sits, sets the water glass on the coffee table. The nightmares used to make him shake, but it’s not so bad now. Now it’s just the quiet pit in the middle of him.

“You wanna talk about it?” Buck says, his voice all sleep-raspy.

“Not really.” Eddie says. If they talk about it, Buck is probably going to try and make him feel better.

Eddie doesn’t always want to feel better.

Buck half relaxes back against the couch, his head falling back against the seat.

“I had a crazy dream.” Buck whispers. “There was a... horse? And I think Obama was there? The two of us were on a call or something...”

“Sounds like a Monday.” Eddie says.

Buck huffs a quiet laugh.

“Yeah, just about. Hey, when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

It’s not the non-sequitur that Eddie was expecting. In his experience the things people usually say in the middle of the night are the things that are too large or too small to see the light of day. He’d woken up to Shannon crying once or twice, pretended to be asleep. He’d said this isn’t working once, and Shannon had said nothing.

“I don’t know.” Eddie says. “Still a firefighter, probably. I mean, we’re every little kid’s dream, right? Big shiny red truck, loud noises...”

“...sexy helmets.” Buck finishes. “We are pretty cool. Me, I wanted to be a movie star. Or a rock star. I didn’t really know there was a difference. I just liked the idea of walking around, everybody knowing your name, strangers on the street coming up to say how amazing you are... When I was really little Maddie would dress me up and pretend we were on the red carpet.”

In the kitchen behind them the refrigerator continues its low hum. It occurs to Eddie that he’s never seen childhood photos of Buck, not a single one. They must exist, right? Somebody must have taken them. Maddie, if no one else. She must have taken them even if she couldn’t keep them.

“Soccer player.” Eddie says, drowsy, half there. “I wanted to be a soccer player.”

It’s true. He’d loved soccer. Loved the rare occasions when his father was home and he would sit there and watch soccer in his big armchair, and Eddie would creep over across the carpet to sit on the floor by his knee, and boo when he booed, and cheer when he cheered.

Eddie had liked playing soccer too, the coordination of it, the single minded purpose, the way everybody worked together and it felt like being a part of something. And he’d liked the uniforms, the shiny shorts, his number big on his back like something he could be proud to be. Had liked the smell of the grass and the lightning fast dribble of the ball between his feet, and how all the boys around him had shouted over here over here, like they wanted him to look at them, like him looking at them was a good thing.

“Fancy feet, huh?” Buck says with a quiet laugh. “Bet you were good, too.”

Through the blankets between them Eddie can feel how warm Buck is, the line of his shins pressed against Eddie’s hip. Eddie has always been a twitchy sleeper. He never liked sharing a bed, not with Marisol, not with Ana, not with Shannon. But sleep is creeping up on him again now.

“I was okay.” Eddie says, a yawn slipping into his words.

“Mm, to be honest I don’t think I ever liked football that much as a sport.” Buck says. “I know I played it for years and years, but mostly I just liked the social stuff, you know? All the popularity and parties or whatever. Honestly what really seemed fun, Maddie used to do jazz dance. Always kind of wanted to give it a shot, but I’d have gotten so much shit for it. She tried to teach me some of the moves but I was just too bad at it...”

Buck’s voice is floating off, words dipping in and out.

“...never knew it was all in the glutes, they make it look so easy...”

Eddie’s eyes drift shut.

The ice-maker rattles, and Eddie blinks awake again.

It hasn’t been that long, right? Can’t have been. Still dark out there.

No more words, just the sounds of the two of them breathing. He and Buck have sort of... folded in on each other on the sofa, Eddie’s nose pressed into Buck’s shoulder. The long stretch of Buck’s throat visible above him, the shadow of his Adam’s apple more pronounced in the dim light.

Buck squints down at Eddie, wipes sleep out of his eyes with one hand. He has such a strange expression on, almost melancholy. This close Eddie can see the individual hairs of his stubble, the fan of his lower eyelashes against the thin skin under his eyes. His eyes look grey in the dark instead of blue, grey and black with tiny streaks of darker grey, and for just a second. For just a second, Eddie leans in a few millimeters, because he wants a better look.

Buck’s breath ghosting along his face. It’s warm. It doesn’t feel like anything’s real right now. There’s no world out there, just this one dark room.

A car passes outside. And the rest of the world is out there again. All those people sleeping or reading or working or whatever it is they’re doing at 4am. All the families at home, couples curled together in their beds.

That was the thing Eddie remembered about sharing a bed. When they woke up, you did too.

Eddie gets up.

“Hey.” Buck says, reaching out like he wants to grab Eddie’s hand. “You okay?”

“Fine.” Eddie says, or his voice says, but it sounds strange to him. Doesn’t sound like his voice. “I’m pretty tired. Think I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Eddie.” Buck hisses. Buck always an arm’s distance away, and Eddie- Eddie turns and walks out of the room. And Buck can hardly call after him, can hardly yell, it’s the middle of the night.

Eddie knows that if he turned around, Buck would still be behind him, would still be reaching.

Eddie doesn’t sleep. He stares at the ceiling. He stares at the wall. When dawn comes he thinks it might be making fun of him, and Eddie doesn’t want to get out of bed. But Chris is out there, and Eddie needs to make sure he gets ready for school, and so Eddie gets up.

Eddie finds Chris already dressed, Buck making scrambled eggs while Chris messes around with his phone.

“No phones at the table.” Eddie says automatically and Chris scowls and puts it away. Buck slides a plate of eggs over to Eddie, and Eddie finally dares to look at him, finds Buck looking right back. A good amount of confusion there, but mostly just that awkward, desperate concern that Buck is so good at. Eddie eats the eggs. Buck watches him.

“Are they... alright?” Buck says. Like he could really have messed up scrambled eggs that much.

“They’re good.” Eddie says. Buck fidgets with a dish towel.

“You’re a really good cook.” Eddie says, the words just tumbling out of him, and Buck looks surprised, and even Chris, messing around with his phone underneath the table this time, glances up.

“Thanks.” Buck says, beaming, all the unhappiness evaporating off him in an instant. “It took me a while to learn, though.”

Eddie messes with the bits of egg left over on his plate.

“Maybe I’ll get there someday.” Eddie says.

“Well.” Buck says. “I bet I’d like it.”

Chris’s phone is back above the table in a blatant display of disrespect. Eddie is going to have to institute some kind of mealtime phone lockbox policy, but it does mean that Chris isn’t looking when Eddie collects the dishes. He grabs Buck’s empty plate away from him before he can wash it himself. Eddie lets two of his fingers press into the back of Buck’s hand below the counter, hidden from sight.

“Do you believe in God?” He asks Frank and Frank laughs at him.

“Me? God no.” Frank says, and it sets Eddie just enough off kilter, the laughter not dismissive, just genuinely amused. Eddie was expecting a little more prevaricating, more “everybody has their own beliefs” kind of stuff. He’s never heard anybody be so upfront about it.

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

“Why would it?”

“I don’t know, isn’t that why people believe, like psychologically or whatever? They want there to be meaning and order, they find it comforting.”

“And do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Find order to be comforting.”

Eddie fingers the medal around his neck. St. Christopher, who carried Christ across the river. Patron saint of travelers, of the lost.

The Romans cut his head off. They always made sure to emphasize that in Sunday school.

“Of course.” Eddie says. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Buck was made for the beach. He was practically designed to run slow motion through the sand, girls in bikinis swooning. Eddie mocks him for it, calls him Baywatch. Buck laughs and asks which one of them is Pamela Anderson. He burns like a lobster though, even if Maddie does keep reminding him to reapply sunscreen.

“You’d think you’d have gotten the hang of this by now, after how many years in LA?” Eddie says, when Buck comes over to have Eddie get the spot on Buck’s back that he can’t reach.

“What, and miss the free back rubs?” Buck says. The patch between his shoulder blades where he’s getting burned is flushed pink, and when Eddie brushes sunscreened fingers across it, they leave brief trails of pale skin behind. Buck’s spine is made up of curves and bumps, its own little landscape. Eddie wants- he has a picture, an image of sinking all five fingers in, what kind of a pale shape that would leave behind. He clicks the cap of the sunscreen bottle shut and says “There ya go”.

Buck is off again to go help Jee-Yun and Chimney build a sandcastle. Maddie is reading her book under the umbrella. Eddie has sunglasses on in the glare.

So if he lets himself watch Buck digging in the sand, the glint of the water behind him so bright it’s hard to focus, laughing with his head thrown back like he doesn’t care that his neck is exposed, like he likes feeling the sun there, then, well. Nobody can see Eddie’s eyes.

It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be that big of a deal at the time. Just a biker who swerved off a pier and is stuck treading water clinging to one of the pilings, and Buck strapped into the harness, and Eddie on the winch to lower him down to get the guy all nice and easy. It’s run of the mill stuff. Eddie isn’t really paying attention beyond what’s necessary, and what’s necessary is watching Buck disappear over the side of the railing, hanging above open water, but Eddie knows how to do this, Eddie has done much worse than this, so it’s fine.

Or it would be fine, until the winds pick up.

It’s not fair that fire season in LA is the most beautiful season, the sky deep blue enough to fall into. Soon the air will be too thick with smoke to breathe, soon schools will close, but for now the only omen is the Santa Ana winds that rattle the railings of the pier. The hot breeze picks up paper, picks up plastic bags, picks up Buck dangling from the rope and slams him into the side of the pier. Buck gives a muffled yelp and immediately Chimney is yelling over the side, and Buck’s voice is crackling back through the radio,

“I’m fine I’m fine, just got kind of tangled on some rusty rebar. The rope is stuck, just give me a second and I can-“

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and starts offering unhelpful advice. Why is it procedure to tell people to stay calm? Eddie is pretty sure that’s never actually kept anyone calm. Not that it matters because of course Buck is calm, Buck practically thrives on this shit. Bobby is telling Eddie to give it more slack, no, wait, give it less slack, Chimney squabbling with Buck into the walkie talkie.

The wind comes rattling through again, jostling Buck around some more, the rope shifting against rusted metal. The air pushes hard against Eddie. The pier groans.

The rope snaps. Eddie feels it snap in his hand.

It probably would have been fine. Buck is a strong swimmer, it’s not that far of a drop. But Eddie isn’t thinking about that. He’s not really thinking about much of anything, just the rope in his hand, and how the rope burn ate through his gloves, and he couldn’t pull Buck up the ladder, he was literally not physically strong enough, but he’d still kept trying-

“Can I get another line?” Buck’s voice says over the radio. “Maybe triple secured this time?”

And everyone is rushing over to where Buck is clinging to the underside of the pier like a spider monkey, and it turns into a multi-stage rescue operation, one team getting Buck back into a secured harness and up again, one team coordinating with the Coast Guard to get the guy out of the water, and then it’s just autopilot, just work, assessing for hypothermia, for water aspiration, getting the guy to the hospital.

It’s fine, everyone is fine. Buck doesn’t seem phased, he laughs about it, makes some joke about hanging in there. He’s unhurt, just has kind of a scrape along his shoulder, nothing too bad, but Eddie’s eye catches on it in the locker room. It’s not like he hasn’t seen Buck worse than this. It’s not like he hasn’t seen Buck covered in strange fractal burns, hasn’t seen him coughing up blood, but. The scraped skin looks pink and tender, one layer removed, a little closer to the inside. The world matches, feels a little rawer than usual, sounds a little louder, colors a little nauseating. It leeches into Eddie, nameless agitation.

It’s only later after the shift is over, nothing more exciting for the rest of the day than a fender bender and a sprained wrist, that Eddie feels how deep it’s sunken into him, the parking lot lights too bright as he and Buck walk back to their cars. Still that hot inland breeze blowing in from the east, it will blow all night for days and days. When the sky gets thick enough with smoke, the sun turns dark gory red, the sunsets drip with viscera. It’s not here yet but it’s on its way and it itches, it scratches under his skin, and Eddie wants- Eddie wants- Eddie says:

“Come over.”

Buck frowns, looks a little surprised, understandable, it’s almost midnight.

“It’s been kind of a long day...” He says, trailing off, but it’s settling into Eddie’s teeth, it’s in his bone marrow, he wants to scrape it out of him, he wants to claw it out, he wants, but he can’t and it itches.

“Come over.” Eddie says again, and Buck just looks at him.

“Okay.” Buck says. “Okay, be there in 15.”

And Eddie drives home thinking about- thinking about the laundry he needs to do, thinking about what groceries he’s out of. Chris is at a friend’s house tonight which is good because they won’t keep him up, not that they ever do, they’re good at watching TV with the subtitles on. Not that it would matter, because it’s late, they’re just going to probably drink a beer and go to bed, but still, it’s good Chris isn’t home, even if Eddie isn’t exactly sure why that is.

He barely has time to take his jacket and his shoes off before Buck is there too. The sound of his key in the door makes Eddie’s throat do something, and then Buck’s in the front hallway, and he says “Hey, are you good?” when Eddie should be asking Buck that. But Buck does seem okay, kind of beat, but no more so than usual after a shift. He looks normal standing there in the hallway, regular, human, breakable, vulnerable, nothing more or less than he normally is, and Eddie wants... Eddie doesn’t know what he wants. Eddie goes to the kitchen and Buck trails behind him and Eddie realizes he never answered the question.

“Oh yeah, fine.” Eddie says, “Just tired.”

And Buck says “Yeah, okay” hesitantly, takes the beer Eddie offers, their fingers tangle together on the bottle for a second before Eddie pulls his hand away because it sits with him strangely, reminds him of something, buzzes strangely at his skin, and Eddie wants-

Buck drinks, and Eddie watches him, the bob of his throat, the slow swallow. Eddie drinks too, cold and bitter in his mouth, and Buck says “Fair warning, if you put a movie on I’m gonna fall asl-“ and Eddie kisses him.

He catches Buck mid-word and feels the soft puff of air against his mouth, the smothered syllable. Their teeth click together and it’s a little clumsy, a little painful. Buck makes a startled sound and catches Eddie’s face with both hands like he’s anchoring himself, catches and holds him there. And then they’re just kissing, face to face, body to body. Buck tastes like one sip of beer and mostly like a long day, and it doesn’t feel like a thought, it doesn’t feel like the inside of Eddie’s head, Eddie wants, Eddie wants, Eddie wants to fall like losing his balance. He bites Buck’s lips open and slides his tongue into Buck’s mouth.

Buck responds with a soft noise from somewhere near the base of his throat, his hand sliding up from Eddie’s jaw into his hair. Eddie’s hand on the side of Buck’s neck is digging in, each fingertip pressing into the muscle, and Eddie is embarrassed by the noises he is making, the wetness, the breath catching, but then he forgets to be embarrassed when their tongues meet because it doesn’t feel anything like shame at all, it feels accurate in a way nothing ever does, completely material, one hand fisted in the front of Buck’s T-shirt, Eddie walks him two steps back to push him up against the fridge. Buck goes, stumbling, pliant, and Buck says against his mouth “Eddie”, but that’s it like that’s all he wanted to say, just his name.

But he says it again, “Eddie”, and he catches Eddie with a forearm across his chest and pushes him back a few inches, and Eddie goes, and he’s glad he did because then he can see Buck’s face, see his mouth all pink and spit-shiny, see his eyes all dark, and Buck says,

“I think- maybe we should talk about this.”

Eddie can’t think of a worse idea. He is- hurtling, a million miles an hour, he is hard and aching, he wants to rip all his skin off. The second he starts talking he doesn’t know what’s going to come pouring out of him but he knows it won’t be anything good, knows it would just the kind of sticky black tar that clogs him up, and Eddie says,

“I don’t want to talk.”

Buck’s chest hitches but he says:

“I know but-“

But Eddie drops his head and starts working at a spot on Buck’s neck with his teeth, biting it lightly and then soothing it with his tongue. Buck’s hands are in Eddie’s hair and he makes an ah noise, and his hands fist in Eddie’s hair hard, and Eddie- stops, maturity, responsibility-

Except Buck doesn’t say anything, just lets out a long shaky exhale, and tugs at Eddie’s hair again, pulling him forward, not away, and oh, okay. Eddie goes back to the previous spot and Buck whines, his hips jerking forward a millimeter. Eddie grabs him at the waist and pushes him back against the fridge so that he can’t move, presses their bodies together, slots his leg between Buck’s knees, feels Buck’s hard cock pressed up against his thigh, his own in a similar position, and he wants- to take Buck apart, wants to dissemble him into all his separate pieces so that he can look at them, he doesn’t like having things stuck where he can’t see them.

Buck tugs him back up to kiss again, and it can’t be Eddie who is making those noises, those needy little noises as he works a hand down between them to cup the shape of Buck’s cock through his jeans, and he wants to see but he can’t get the button open without looking, and he can’t look unless he stops kissing, and he can’t do that, not when Buck kisses filthy, like he’s dying of thirst and the only water in the world is the spit in Eddie’s mouth. Buck is panting open-mouthed against his lips, and Eddie is eclipsed by want, flooded by the rising tide of it, and Buck says “Yeah, Eddie, fuck-“ and Eddie gives up on the hand and just presses them together as tightly as he can, Buck’s leg coming up to wrap around Eddie’s thigh, each breath a rolling motion, Buck’s thigh shuddering beneath his cock, too much fabric between them, he wants to feel Buck pressed wet and leaking against him, wants to smear himself in it, he wants-

Buck hisses “Eddie” and Eddie feels the leg around his thigh lock up, feels Buck’s breath against his mouth turn deep and ragged, feels Buck strain and grind against him, a rush of sticky heat between them. Eddie wants to eat it, wants to pull Buck out and lick him clean so he can taste it in the back of his throat, wants to swallow him down, wants to literally swallow him whole, Eddie wants, the throbbing surge of it pulsing out from where they’re locked together.

He wants them both naked and pressed skin to skin. He wants Buck writhing under him. Eddie wants to fuck him. Eddie wants to get fucked. He doesn’t care, he just wants, he’s nothing but want, all the want coiling up in him and spilling over and Eddie thinks have and he comes, pleasure racking through him, eyes screwed shut, Buck’s hands still in his hair. He chases it, rutting Buck into the fridge, pushing and pushing, like he could possible phase them together, push all the way through. Until it’s too much and he’s just gasping against Buck’s mouth, eyes screwed shut, air passing back and forth between them.

He breathes.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Eddie breathes.

Eddie’s body feels- warm. Kind of floaty. Kind of far away. Buck’s hands have slid down to rest on his hips. Buck is still, their faces very close together, and when Eddie opens his eyes, he’s looking at Eddie with kind of a nervous expression, looking like he’s ready to flinch.

“Hi.” Buck says finally, cautious.

“Hi.” Eddie whispers.

“Are you- are you okay?” Buck says.

Eddie is sweaty, and the night air is cool against the back of his neck. The sense of unreality isn’t unpleasant but it is strong. Like he’s stumbled into some secret pocket of existence where the normal rules don’t apply.

“Yeah.” Eddie says.

“Okay.” Buck says slowly. “We don’t- we don’t have to talk now. But maybe, maybe later we could...”

“Yeah.” Eddie says.

And then Buck almost smiles, one he’s holding back like it might try to rip its way out of him chestburster-style, looking down at his feet, his hands still on Eddie’s hips.

“Can I-“ Buck says. “I’m gonna take a shower. And also, I might need to borrow a pair of sweatpants.”

“Yeah, sure. I’m- I’ll shower too.”

Buck just nods and waits. Eddie doesn’t move until Buck finally takes his hands off of Eddie’s hips. Then Eddie takes a step back and lets him go.

He grabs the sweatpants while the hallway shower runs, leaves them hanging on the doorknob for Buck. Goes to attend to his kind of gross sticky self in his own bathroom. He has a moment of panic there standing under the water, a moment where he starts thinking about what’s going to happen when he gets out of the shower, a moment of thinking oh God holy shit what the fuck, but even that doesn’t feel real. Feels like he’s slipped into some alternate version of reality, because there is no way this is the same shower it always is, and the same bathroom. He’d felt this way after the car accident, walked around his house and known he was in a different layer of the universe now, one she would never be in-

The water shuts off in the other bathroom, and Eddie breathes. Scrubs at his face and takes time to wash his whole body. Takes his time getting dressed. Exhaustion has settled into his spine and all he wants to do is lie down somewhere soft. Nothing else matters other than being somewhere dark and quiet.

When he leaves the bedroom to finally find Buck, he finds him on the couch already asleep. Sprawled out like there’s really no difference between this and his own apartment, like he really does belong there.

Eddie goes back to his bedroom.

Eddie sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.

It should be weird. Eddie expects it to be weird, is ready for it, but it’s not. Buck is the same. He’s just as friendly when they’re out at bars, just as competitive when they’re playing pool, just as affectionate when he slings an arm around Eddie to harass him afterwards. Eddie keeps waiting for something to change, something to shift, but the only noticeable difference is that sometimes they catch each other’s eye and Buck goes a little pink at the tips of his ears.

Four days later in an empty parking lot, Eddie reaches across the gear shift and finally gets his hands on him, gets to see what Buck looks like in an orange sodium streetlight, grip tight on Eddie’s shoulders, lip bitten as he tries so hard to be quiet.

“Okay.” Buck says after, still breathing hard, “Okay, now can we talk-“

Eddie kisses him instead, unravels that thought from right off his tongue.

They still tease. They still snap at each other after a shitty shift. They still make stupid jokes about things that don’t matter. Buck still laughs, still smiles, still grins, still flirts.

He just sometimes looks at Eddie a little different. Sometimes there’s something heavy hiding at the corners of his eyes.

And then he blinks and it’s gone, and Eddie can rest easy knowing it was just a phantom, just a trick of the light.

Inside the entryway of Buck’s apartment, Buck says: “Eddie.”

Just that, just his name.

Eddie gets down on his knees in the hallway. Buck doesn’t say anything else.

And then in the backseat of the Jeep, and on the couch when Chris is away at a sleepover, and in the hall shower that’s way too small for two people, Buck moans, Buck gasps, and Buck doesn’t say anything at all.

“The nightmares haven’t... gone away.” Eddie says. “They’re better, but I still feel...”

Frank waits and waits and Eddie doesn’t finish that sentence. Frank folds his hands in his lap.

“Well.” Frank says. “The thing about PTSD is that it’s very treatable. But it’s not curable. My job, my whole career isn’t to fix people. It’s to provide sustainable tools to allow people to access their own experience. Do you feel like have healthy tools?”

“Oh, yeah.” Eddie says. “Yeah, definitely. Super healthy.”

It starts with a coaster. They’re at Ravi’s birthday drinks (how old is he turning, sweet 16? Hen asks), and Eddie is standing at a table with Chim drinking a pint, and he doesn’t have a coaster. Eddie considers going up to the bar to grab one, but it’s kind of crowded up there, and it’s not like it’s a nice tabletop anyways, so it doesn’t really matter. Even if it always kind of bothers him to drink without a coaster, makes him feel irresponsible and like his abuela is going to appear to scold him, and then Buck approaches from the bar, carrying Modelos for everybody, and he slides a coaster under Eddie’s drink right before Eddie sets it down. Buck doesn’t even say anything.

And then there’s his hazelnut coffee creamer. Eddie has his sins, god knows he’s done enough wrong in his life, and he thinks that his reliance on hazelnut coffee creamer is a fairly mild vice, but he’s also pretty sure he’s the only one at the 118 who drinks it. So it’s weird that the creamer bottle keeps replacing itself, Eddie only has to buy it every month or two, until he catches Buck tucking an extra bottle into the fridge.

“You don’t even like that stuff.” Eddie says, frowning.

“Yeah, but you get grouchy without it.” Buck says.

“I do not-“ Eddie says, but Buck is already walking away laughing at him.

“Do I get grouchy without my coffee creamer?” Eddie asks Hen.

“That disgusting hazelnut crap?” Hen says. “Absolutely.”

And then there’s the night where they’re watching Planet Earth on the couch, and Buck is lying with his head in Eddie’s lap, and Eddie’s getting pretty invested in the journey of this one meerkat, and he glances down and Buck isn’t watching the screen, just looking right up at Eddie.

“What, did I miss a spot shaving or something?” Eddie says, feeling the underside of his chin.

Sometimes Buck looks at him and it’s like they’re both underwater, like everything between them is a soft constant pressure Eddie can feel on his skin. Sometimes Buck looks at him and Buck looks so... sad.

“No, you’re good.” Buck says.

Three nights later, Chris is at a friend’s, and the two of them spend the night at Buck’s apartment. Eddie hates that apartment, all modern open concept, no personality, no coziness, but it has a bed that Eddie has never slept in, that Eddie has no attachment to, and that counts as a luxury.

They wind up fucking in the morning when Eddie wakes up before the alarm to feel Buck watching him, not in a weird way, just quiet. Their heads on the same pillow, and it seems easy then to lean in and press their mouths together, breath a little stale, hands a little sleep-clumsy. He almost never gets to see Buck like this in the daylight, all pinned down under him in long lines and warm edges, arching and hissing and making pretty noises, doesn’t get to see Buck’s eyelids flutter and his throat work as he rides the edge, as he says “please, I, yeah, there, please”, as he spins out toward orgasm and says “Yeah, right there, I love you, oh my God” loses his words into just sounds.

And it doesn’t- it doesn’t have to mean- but afterwards, when Eddie comes hard and fast and collapses forward onto Buck’s chest, Buck’s legs still locked around his waist, Eddie catches his breath and breathes in the smell of sweat, sex, bodies. Buck just traces his fingers over one of Eddie’s eyebrows over and over again, petting down the side of his face, skimming across his nose, drifting across Eddie’s lips, like Buck wants to catalogue him, wants to touch Eddie everywhere nobody has ever touched him before, wants to make it matter, make it count.

In Eddie’s bedroom, the dark shadows of the bush outside still wave across the window. In Eddie’s bedroom, the other side of the bed is always cold.

“I see him everywhere.” His abuela had said, months after his abuelo died. “In the car, in the dining room. It’s like whenever I’m not really looking, he’s right there.”

Eddie has never seen Shannon once. He has waited. He has stared at the backs of long-haired women in the grocery store, hoping that his periphery will fool him. She is never there. Only the space of her, the thing that isn’t.

Shannon, throwing rocks at his window like they were in a teen drama. Shannon, tears coursing down her face as she said all shaky and firm I’m keeping it and he’d almost asked if she was sure. Shannon, getting into a catfight in the high school hallways. Some girls never know when to stop talking. Shannon caught frozen on a blurry video screen, Chris on her lap with his thumb in his mouth. Can you say hi for dada? Can you say hi?

Shannon under him. The way her breathing would change when she got close. Shannon next to him, Which dress do you like better? Shannon ahead of him, I swear if I’m late to fifth period because of you- Shannon on top of him, love you baby. And he’d say it, he’d say it every time.

Love you too. Love you too. Love you too.

Buck is beautiful when he’s asleep, mouth cracked open, curl of hair falling over his forehead. Buck is beautiful when he’s awake, laughing, swearing, stuffing his face, peering down at his book.

Eddie wants to touch him all the time.

An hour and a half north on the 101 there is a b-n-b in Ojai that has a lone peacock wandering around. It’s a nice place, a bunch of tiny cottages set around a courtyard with a fountain, getting to be the off season so it’s not that crowded. Chris is on a school trip to Catalina Island for a few days, he’ll come back freckled and talking about sea turtles, and so there’s no barrier, nothing to stop Eddie when when Eddie says “Hey, wanna go somewhere new?”

And Buck’s smile nearly cracks his face in half before he tamps it back down and says “Yeah, sure, like where?”

With every passing mile Eddie watches Buck- unfurl. Stretch out his shoulders. His grin ease itself onto its face. Buck talks about Peru, says he misses the food. Talks about Wyoming, says it all felt a little too Brokeback. Talks about breaking his arm jumping out of a tree as a kid trying to freak Maddie out.

Eddie keeps a hand on Buck for most of the drive. Splayed across Buck's knee, his shoulder, resting on the back of Buck's wrist. He feels so solid under Eddie’s fingers.

They pull in just before sunset, get tacos for dinner and eat them in the room. It’s a nice place, white-washed adobe walls, tile floor. A shower big enough for two people that Eddie slips into behind Buck after dinner, endless hot water, he loves hotels. He loves that Buck doesn’t bother being quiet when Eddie gets to his knees and takes Buck in his mouth and works him right up to the brink, pulls off at the last second because he doesn’t want this part to be over yet. Turns off the water instead and drags Buck dripping wet onto the bed instead, skin steam-flushed, tasting like soap.

Eddie bites wherever he wants, Eddie marks him up, and Buck whimpers and whines under him, says please and please until he isn’t saying anything at all, eyes glassy and unfocused as Eddie works him open with his fingers. When he sinks in and they’re pressed all the way together he can feel Buck’s heartbeat around him, and Buck is barely saying anything, just yeah and don’t stop and Eddie, his name all drawn out and broken on the second syllable, just Eddie, and Eddie, and Eddie says you can say it, you can say it and Buck says I love you like the words are being dragged out of the middle of him, I love you, I love you, I love you so fucking much-

Afterwards, Buck dozes against him, and Eddie traces the bump of each vertebrae, pets the soft hair at the nape of Buck’s neck, counts the divots of his ribs.

He tries to commit it all to memory. He tries so hard to make it stick.

The morning sunlight creeps in all pink and yellow through the bougainvillea outside. The air conditioner hums. Under the starchy sheets the hair on Buck’s legs is scratchy and soft against Eddie’s and Eddie could spend the rest of his life in that big white bed with Buck’s head lying on his chest. He never needs to move again.

Buck fidgets.

“Do they do room service?” He says. “I’m like. Pretty hungry.”

Eddie laughs. Kisses the top of his head because he can.

“No.” He says. “But if you put pants on there’s a nice breakfast spot half a block down.”

“Pants schmants.” Buck says, but he gets up and starts rooting through the miscellaneous clothing items on the floor. Eddie hates that they’re not touching any more, wants to pick Buck up by the scruff of his neck and drag him back to bed with his teeth, but he savors watching Buck, the pale lines of him, the swell of his ass, his shoulder, the ripple of his stomach as he pulls a shirt on.

Buck frowns. One sock in his hand.

“How did you know about the breakfast spot?” He says.

“What?”

“The breakfast place. You said- you said you’d never been here before.”

Eddie, getting out of bed, pauses. Both bare feet on the cold white tile floor.

“I never said that.” He says.

“No, you-” Buck says, his voice taking on a new, more insistent edge to it. “You said- you said ‘hey, want to go somewhere new?’”

Eddie just looks at him. Buck in the morning light, hair sticking up in the back, one sock on. There’s a bite mark hidden under his shirt on his collarbone from last night where Eddie had said mine. Eddie had known it was a lie at the time, he just hadn’t cared.

Eddie had known he would never get to keep him.

“You’ve been here before.” Buck says, and his mouth is drawing into a small straight line, his voice is flattening.

Eddie nods.

“A couple of years ago.” He says, and his voice just comes out in the threadiest whisper.

Buck just stares at him. And stares and stares and stares.

“Oh my god.” He says all strangled. “Jesus fucking Christ, it was with her, wasn’t it. Shannon. You came here with her.”

Eddie doesn’t say a word. Just watches. Buck has always been so- so complete in his body. He inhabits his whole self when his shoulders lock up, when his elbows draw tense in to his sides, fingers flexing and unflexing.

“Eddie, tell me it’s not the same room.” Buck says. “For the love of God, just tell me it’s not the same room."

Eddie’s mouth is dry. His throat hurts, like there’s something stuck in there, but whatever it is, it won’t come out. Even the air hurts when it leaves him.

“Two doors down.” He says finally. All creaky and breaking. And Buck just stands completely still. Not moving. Not breathing.

Then he shudders, like something is releasing, like the string that was holding him upright snapped, and he bends over and starts grabbing things off the floor with a jagged precision.

Eddie is used to Buck bleeding. He knows Buck shouting, knows him crying, knows him living inside pain like a verb.

This is not that.

“What are you doing?” Eddie says, getting up.

“Leaving.” Buck says in a clipped tone.

“You- Come on, I drove-“

“I’ll take a fucking Uber.”

“Buck. Please. It’s going to be like $300-“

And Buck laughs.

“Do you really think.” He says. “Do you really think I care about $300 right now? God I am such a fucking idiot, so fucking stupid-“

“Hey.” Eddie says. “Hey, no, hey-“

He is over to Buck in two strides and Buck twitches, flinches back and away.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Buck says. “Do not touch me right now. Just- you know, you really think you hit rock bottom at what, 25? And then you think great, made it through, no more stealing firetrucks to have sex in, no more chlamydia, you claw your way back into being a functional fucking human being- and then you find out you’re your goddamn coworker’s mistress-“

And really it’s just the way he spits those last two words. Like that’s what this is, like either of those words applies to them, when Buck knows, when Buck knows that Eddie- that Eddie-

“It’s really not that big of a deal.” Eddie says.

Buck’s whole arm jerks, and for a moment Eddie is absolutely certain that Buck is going to punch him in the face. Instead Buck’s face just twists up into a snarl.

“I’m not one of your girlfriends, Eddie.” He sneers. “You don’t get to just lie back and pretend.”

“What does that mean?”

“What does that- Eddie, you’re a ghost haunting your own goddamn life! How the fuck did you think this was gonna work? How the fuck did I think this was gonna work?”

“Buck-“

“Shut the fuck up.” Buck says. His chest is heaving and his eyes are wild and glassy. “You think I’m just gonna move into the... the Shannon shrine? You think I’m just gonna cook you breakfast and blow you in the kitchen? She is dead, Eddie, she is dead, and you- you- you never even liked her in the first place!”

Buck’s mouth snaps shut and he stands there trembling, every inch of him vibrating with- with something.

“No.” Eddie says, and his voice is- this cannot be happening, not to him, not now, not like this- “No, you’re wrong, I loved her.”

“I know you fucking loved her!” Buck yells. “We all know you fucking loved her, it’s all you’ll ever fucking talk about! But Jesus Christ Eddie, you have got to know that you- that she-“

“She was my wife.” Eddie says and he is teetering, he is right at the edge of something that doesn’t have a bottom, a fall that has been waiting for him for a long, long time.

Buck, watching him, deflates. And he’s watching Eddie like he’s watching something dissolve into dust.

“I know you loved her.” Buck tells him. “I believe you, I really do. But Eddie, the two of you, did she- would it have ever worked?”

The defenses are immediate. The justifications endless. Neither of them had planned on it. She was trying her best. They were both young. She wasn’t ready. He shouldn’t have left.

He shouldn’t have left.

“I don’t... I don’t know.” Eddie says, his voice too quiet to his own ears, just the remnant of something left behind. Buck takes half a step forward. Fingers twitching like he wants to- but he raises a hand and scrubs it through his hair. Grabs his sweatshirt from the back of the chair and throws it in his duffle bag.

“Yeah.” Buck says. “Yeah, I figured.”

Zips up his duffle bag. Slips out the front door. Stops in the doorway for a second, looking over his shoulder, brow furrowed, eyes wet.

“I don’t think.” Buck says. “I don’t think I want to see you again for a while.”

And then it’s just Eddie standing there half-naked in a hotel room.

Just Eddie standing there alone.

Eddie breathes.

They had stayed in room 107. It was just for one night, right before Shannon thought she was pregnant again. They didn’t talk much.

They had sex in the morning. It was the last time he’d ever touched her. He had known the noises she would make before she made them. He had known the expressions on her face before he looked.

“Love you.” Eddie had said afterwards.

He’d waited.

Shannon had just reached out and put her hand on his cheek, her thumb brushing over his lips.

He had waited, as she flatlined on on that gurney. He had waited at the morgue, when she was quiet with the sheet pulled over her. He had waited for her, standing on the cemetery grass, feeling her stillness, her silence.

Eddie had lied. He remembered the shooting. He remembered the whole thing.

The sound, a sharp crack, nothing more familiar in the world to him than that sound. A sense of force, of split-second pressure, and then a slow pain.

That was when he knew. Fast pain was good. When the pain came slow, when it took its time, that meant things were ending.

He’d been confused. Buck had been speckled. Like someone hit him with a paint balloon, like Chris got carried away in the finger paints department. The look on Buck’s face had been just... so lost.

When Eddie fell, the world was loud in a way that didn’t make sense. He could see the flecks of broken glass on the asphalt. He could see the pool of his own blood growing. Could see the look of horror on Buck’s face, that kind of down-deep horror of staring at some kind of unforgivable truth, the kind Eddie knew best. It didn’t belong there. Didn’t belong on Buck, didn’t get to touch him, and Eddie wanted to reach out and wipe it away.

When the world started getting darker, Eddie fought. He did, he really did, because he’d promised. He wanted to see his son grow up. He wanted it more than anything. Eddie had fought to stay with everything in him, everything he had.

And then at some point he’d realized that everything he had wasn’t going to be enough.

And Eddie had been so, so relieved.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to have one moment where he knew that even God wouldn’t get to judge him, there wasn’t any more weight, he’d finally committed to breaking all his promises, breaking everyone’s heart, he didn’t have to try any more.

It wasn’t fair to know just what kind of a coward he was and then still wake up. Still have to just keep on living.

Chris picks at his dinner these days, says he isn’t hungry. Eddie knows that isn’t true, knows that Chris would eat four burgers if Buck was there, if it wasn’t just Eddie. But it is just Eddie, and Chris picks at his quesadilla, and Eddie waits one small bite at a time, and they sit there in silence.

When Chris is finally done, Eddie grabs his plate, and Chris goes to get up but Eddie says “Hey, no, sit down”. And Chris gives him such a look. Eddie is certain for a moment that Chris won’t, that he’ll storm off to sulk somewhere else. But Chris sits.

“I want to talk to you about something.” Eddie says. Chris eyes him warily. “It’s just- I need to tell you-“

“I know.” Chris says.

Eddie blanches.

“No, Chris, what I’m trying to say-“ He says.

“I already know about you and Buck.” Chris says. “It’s really obvious.”

Eddie can’t feel his hands. Or the rest of his body, actually. The only thing that seems real, seems physically there, is his son sitting across the dining table glaring down.

“You know.” He says, and his voice sounds so strange. Chris picks at a mark on the tabletop.

“Why hasn’t he been around lately? He texts me all the time but he won’t talk about you.” Chris says. “Did you do something?”

Eddie’s mouth opens and then closes. Chris scratches hard at the stain with his fingernail, and then when Eddie doesn’t answer, Chris looks up. He looks right at Eddie.

“Is this why Mom left?” He says in a flat voice.

“What?”

“Is. This. Why. Mom. Left.” Chris’s face tightens more with each word.

“No.” Eddie says immediate, instinctive. “No, your mom left because- because she was unhappy, because-“

“Because you made her unhappy, so she left us?”

“Chris.” Eddie says weakly. “She left me, not you. She never wanted to leave you.”

“But she did!” Chris says and suddenly he’s shouting. “She did leave! First she left, and now Buck’s gone, and you just- you just drive people away! You make them leave me!”

“Whoa, hey, no!” Eddie says again. “Buck’s not- he’s not gone, okay, he still loves you, he’s still around-“

“Bullshit.” Chris says.

“Chris! Hey!” He says, but Chris gets up, starts storming away from the table.

“It should have been you.” Chris yells. “It should have been you, not her. At least she never lied.”

Eddie sits there in shellshocked silence. The slam of the door echos through the whole house.

Eddie breathes.

Eddie requests a transfer.

The 271 is nice. Professional. Friendly, even.

Eddie misses home.

The clock in Frank’s office ticks. Eddie listens. Frank listens to it too.

They could probably spend the whole session in silence and Frank would be fine with it. He’d say something like, sometimes just sharing a mutual experience is what makes us feel nurtured. Condescending prick.

There had been a therapist at the VA for the first few weeks after Eddie was discharged. A shiny new medal and a pat on the back. He’d hated her and her tweed blazer. She was young, and she’d always looked at him with too much pity, too much pathology. I think my wife is going to leave me he’d said, and she’d said Sometimes it takes the amygdala several months to return from a state of a hyper-arousal.

He’d gone home and Shannon had dumped Christopher into his arms and vanished for 24 hours, left behind only a breadcrumb trail of Snapchats of her at bars, her friends' houses.

“What the fuck.” He had shouted when she finally stumbled back home. “What the fuck, Shannon.”

“Oh, sorry.” She had said. “Guess I thought it was a two-way street.”

The clock in Frank’s office ticks.

“I think my wife hated me.” Eddie says.

“What makes you say that?” Frank says.

“She used to tell me she hated me.”

“Ah.” Frank says. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”

Eddie chews on his tongue.

“I should feel bad.” Eddie says. “I should feel- really guilty, shouldn’t I? I mean. She was my wife.”

“We aren’t here to talk about you should feel.” Frank says. “We’re here to talk about how you do.”

“I feel...” Eddie says slowly. “I feel kind of like I hated her too.”

Frank nods.

“Okay.” He says. “That’s a good place to start.”

Eddie will go if Buck wants him to go. He will. It’s just, Eddie never got the chance. From start to finish, from “anyone ever call you Diaz?” to “I don’t think I want to see you again”.

Eddie never did manage to say it, did he.

23 unanswered texts. 12 unanswered calls. He couldn’t leave a message, couldn’t spill everything inside him into a voicemail box. And he’s not- he’s not trying to do anything with this. He’s not trying to get anywhere. It’s just that Buck deserved to hear it.

Eddie just should have said it, that’s all.

He knocks on Buck’s door and Maddie answers.

“Oh.” Eddie says. “Hi.”

Maddie just glares at him.

“How much did he...” Eddie says, and Maddie gives him a look of unadulterated disgust.

“He doesn’t want to see you right now.” She says, clipped.

“Oh.” Eddie says. “Right. Yeah, I- Sorry, I’ll go. I’ll go.”

He takes a step backwards but can’t quite get his feet to turn all the way around, can’t quite get himself to turn away from the door.

Maddie waits.

“I’ll leave.” Eddie says again. “I will, I promise, just- give me a second, I’m trying, I’ll go-“

All that rage, all that hate on Maddie’s face softens a little.

“Can you just.” Eddie says. “Tell him I’m sorry.”

He manages it somehow, manages to pivot around to face back down the stairwell.

“Eddie.” Maddie’s voice says softly from behind him. He looks over his shoulder. She’s come out of the apartment doorway and closed the door behind her, standing on the doormat watching him with her arms folded.

“I’m not going to tell him that.” She says.

“Right.” Eddie says. “I- I understand, okay.”

“He’s not- He can’t talk to you.” Maddie says.

Eddie clears his throat.

“I know.” He says.

“It’s not fair to treat him like that just because you’re scared.” Maddie says.

“I know.” He says again. “I’m sorry. I’m so- He doesn’t have to-

And Maddie just looks at him. All that righteous anger melting into something softer and heavier.

“When I left Jee, I tried to kill myself.” Maddie says. And Eddie stops short, all his tripped apologies drying up in his mouth. Maddie doesn’t look upset. Or, well, she does, her eyes wet, her mouth drawing down hard, but she holds her cardigan wrapped gently around herself, she meets his eyes with a firmness.

“Jesus.” Eddie says. “I had no idea, I’m so sorry, Buck never said-“

“Buck doesn’t know.”

And again he’s stopped short, just staring at Maddie.

“I just thought.” Maddie says. “I was just so tired of feeling like- like a failure. Like I was bad at everything, all the time, and it didn’t matter how hard I tried, and anything I hadn’t already done wrong was just waiting to happen. I just- I just wanted to leave. I just wanted to sleep.”

“You’re not-“ Eddie says feebly, and Maddie shoots him a look that says shut up.

“Chimney came after me.” She says. “He found me, and he brought me home. And he was so, so angry. I hurt him so, so much. And I know Jee doesn’t remember, but I don’t think- I don’t think she’ll ever really forget either. And I did that. That was me.”

“Oh.” Eddie says.

“I’m just saying.” Maddie says. “I get why it’s easier to leave. Or push people away.”

“I just.” He says, and maybe it’s the exhaustion, maybe it’s the years of grief, maybe it’s all of it and nothing at all. “I’m so sick of failing.”

“Well, it’s not going to stop.” Maddie says, and Eddie huffs out an exhausted harsh laugh because yes, he is well aware-

“No, sorry, what I mean is.” Maddie says. “You’re going to have to find a way to deal with it.”

“All I do is hurt people, all the time.” Eddie says, it just comes tumbling out of him.

And Maddie says:

“Yeah.”

And Eddie says:

“It can’t be like this. This can’t just be the way it is. How is anyone- how is anyone supposed to live with that?”

“When I came back.” Maddie says. “When I came home. I was a mess. I couldn’t stop crying. I was so, so guilty. And I asked Chimney if he would forgive me, if he could ever find a way to forgive me.”

“I’m trying. I really am trying to apologize-“

“He said no. And he said that that was okay.”

Eddie is quiet for a while. Maddie just watches him.

“Why are you telling me this?” He says finally, and Maddie shrugs.

“You get to decide that.” She says.

Two days of silence, of Chris darting out of rooms when Eddie comes in, staring down at his desk when Eddie comes to check on him. Once Eddie hears Chris’s voice talking in his room, too muffled for Eddie to hear the words, but with his forehead to the door there’s the quiet tones of Buck’s voice coming out of the phone on the other side.

Eddie leaves them to it.

Three days of silence and Eddie goes to check on Chris doing his homework, because he can’t make Chris talk to him but he can make Chris do algebra. Chris is sitting at his desk, and he slumps when Eddie appears in the doorway, his pencil dropping onto his paper. Such skinny shoulders. Such a skinny kid. Oh, how Eddie worries.

“I’m sorry for what I said.” Chris says. “I didn’t mean it.”

“I know, mijo.” Eddie says. “It’s okay.”

“Please don’t be mad at me.” Chris says and Eddie’s heart hurts. He comes into the room to sit at the foot of Chris’s bed. Walls covered in car posters, science posters. Somewhere in a box under the bed are all the books Eddie used to read to him.

“I’m not mad at you.” Eddie says. “I promise. And you weren’t- you weren’t wrong. That is... partially why she left me.”

Chris is quiet, his feet kicking at the floor.

“It’s not- it’s not a big deal. I don’t care at all about that.” Chris says. “It’s just. If that’s why she left you. Why did she leave me?”

“Oh, Chris.” Eddie says. And Chris looks up at him like Eddie might actually have an answer.

Eddie’s heart breaks. His baby, his baby, what did she do to his baby?

“I don’t know.” Eddie says.

“Did she leave me because of... me? Because I’m- how I am?” Chris says, too old to cry without being embarrassed, so he’s wiping it away and Eddie is filled with such sudden, such blinding rage, such a white hot force of it. He stands, but he doesn’t move any closer, doesn’t know what Chris wants, what Chris needs, if they’re even the same thing.

“No.” Eddie says fiercely. “No, she left because of her.”

“In her letter, she said my life couldn’t be good with her in it.” Chris says. “Why did she say that?”

Eddie knew Shannon for almost half his life, fifteen years and change. He loved her for just about that long. He knew every fact and figure there was to know about Shannon. Height, weight, eye color, any number of hair colors. Knew about her love for 5 Seconds of Summer and her tattoo she’d lied about her age to get. Knew about her shitty dad and her kooky mom, knew about all her hopes, how she’d wanted to be a marine biologist when she was 13, how she’d kissed another boy when they were 17 and she’d felt so bad about it she threw up. He knew about her fear of house centipedes, about the eczema she got on her elbows, about her weird aversion to balsamic vinegar.

She was as familiar to him as the back of his eyelids, and just as dark.

He was always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. He could never quite figure out her sense of humor. Sometimes she would cry at movies he never would have thought she’d cry at. Sometimes she’d look at him with a thoughtful flat expression that he could never read.

“I don’t know.” Eddie says again. He’s crying too but he just lets it happen, lets it run down his face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

Chris makes an awful hiccuping sob.

“I wish she wasn’t dead.” He says.

“I know.” Eddie says. “She...”

He’s going to tell Chris that she loved him. Eddie believes that, knows it to his core. He’s going to tell Chris that she did the best she could.

But he’s not actually sure that that’s true.

The truth of it is. The truth is that when he tries to put himself in Shannon’s head, he can’t do it. When he tries to see the world how she must have seen it, there’s nothing there. He doesn’t know how she really felt about motherhood, about marriage, about him, about Christopher, about the world around her, about herself. He doesn’t know how she felt about anything at all.

And now he never will.

“She fucked up.” Eddie says, and maybe it’s the curse word that makes Chris look at him, actually look right at him, but maybe not. He looks so young. He looks so small. He looks closer to adulthood than Eddie has ever seen him. “You don’t have to be okay with that.”

“I hate her.” Chris says. “If she wasn’t dead I would never talk to her again.”

And Eddie says, “Okay.”

“I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.” Chris says, choking on it now, spitting sobs. “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.”

“I know.” Eddie says.

Eddie still remembers the pure panic of Chris crying as an infant, somebody needed to do something to make it stop. Later, when Chris was older and he was scared of monsters under the bed, he’d cling to Eddie with those sharp little fingers, and all Eddie could ever feel was helpless, all Eddie could ever be was a failure. What kind of parent couldn’t comfort their own child?

“Dad.” Chris says, and Eddie crosses the room in a stride and pulls him close to his chest.

Chris cries. Eddie lets him.

Eddie likes working on the Chevelle. The Chevelle always makes sense. It’s kind of the same thing as running, or the gym, frowning down at a problem with the timing belts, or on his back under the car holding a wrench between his teeth, where the only thing he has to think about are his hands and how they’re going to fix the problem that’s right in front of him. He likes it when he gets to live in his hands.

He’s thought about getting it in some of the car shows. He doesn’t really know what the process for that is like, but. That could be fun, right? Not that he thinks anybody would care either way, but still. Eddie’s kind of proud, that’s all. Kind of wants to show her off. Kind of wants somebody to come take a look at what he’s building.

Eddie stares at the ceiling. Eddie stares out the window. Eddie stares at his shoes.

It occurs to Eddie to wonder why Frank wanted to be a therapist in the first place.

Eddie’s never asked. He’s never said much of anything to Frank without being prompted. He always holds Frank hostage on some kind of wild goose chase, grilling Frank about the state of the universe like Frank has any of the answers. Like Frank is finally going to say the thing that makes it all make sense, like Frank really can do anything other than just sit there and listen.

Frank waits.

Eddie stares at Frank.

“So I’ve been having sex with a man.” Eddie says like it’s the middle of a conversation, like they’ve been doing this all along. Frank doesn’t react at all other than to smile and nod slightly.

“Alright.” Frank says. “Let’s talk about that.”

They’re nice at the 271. After work drinks. Games of ultimate frisbee.

Eddie could like them. He really could. Nguyen is quiet and thoughtful, and Olson is a hot mess, and Wieczenski is an idiot.

Eddie could be alright there. Eddie could find a way to be alright there.

Three weeks in at after work drinks, Wieczenski corners Eddie while he’s waiting for the bartender.

“So.” He says. “No ring.”

“Uh.” Eddie says. Wieczenski definitely does have a ring on, and Eddie is immediately looking for exits.

“No! No, oh my god, sorry.” Wieczenski says, turning a deep red. “I have a sister, see.”

“Oh.” Eddie says after a beat. “Oh! Right. Thing is, I don’t know if I’m exactly her type.”

“Oh.” Wieczenski says. And then, “Oh. I actually also have a brother too, you know-“

Eddie snorts and Nguyen appears.

“Did the HR training mean absolutely nothing to you?” She says.

“HR?” Wieczenski says, blinking innocently. “What’s that?”

Eddie drinks his beer and laughs.

After thirty-seven days, Buck sends Eddie a gif of a baby elephant playing in an inflatable pool. Eddie has to go to the bathroom to try and control how much his hands are shaking.

He sends Buck an article about a new planet scientists think they found where it rains ethanol.

After thirty-nine days, Buck sends Eddie a picture of a pig standing in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard with a traffic cone stuck on its head. Why is it always me, his caption reads.

Eddie sends a picture of a car with a window they had to break to get to the fire hydrant it was blocking. It’s always easier when you can just smash shit. He texts back.

After forty-three days, Buck texts: Can we talk?

After forty-three days and three seconds, Eddie texts back: Yes.

They meet on a park bench. Neutral, classic, borderline cliche. Buck looks- fine. Eddie has been so worried, has been stalking Buck’s Instagram for clues that he’s eating enough, sleeping enough, that Eddie hasn’t ruined him. But now Buck looks okay. Maybe slightly darker circles under his eyes, but he’s walking, he’s upright, he sits on the bench next to Eddie and tilts his face back in the sun for a second and he’s still there, still solid, still going.

They don’t say anything for a long, long time.

Then Eddie clears his throat and says “Hi,” all unsure, and Buck’s eyes flutter open and he looks at Eddie.

“Hi.” Buck says simply.

“It’s- it’s good to see you. You look- good.”

Buck looks him up and down, a little bit of a melancholy twist to his mouth.

“You too.” He says.

“Yeah.” Eddie says. “I guess.”

They watch the open lawn in front of them, a woman playing with her dog.

“Quiet at the 118 without you.” Buck says finally and Eddie snorts.

“Watch out for the Q-word.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Buck says. “But still.”

Buck doesn’t say anything stupid like you didn’t have to go. Eddie appreciates that.

“I’m sorry.” Eddie says after a little while and Buck sighs, doesn’t look over at him.

“I know you are.” Buck says.

“No, I mean. I’m sorry about the hotel, but I’m sorry about more than that. I’m sorry that I didn’t- that I never-“

“Yeah. I get it.”

“I’m gay.” Eddie says, and Buck looks over at him, a little startled, exhales out through his teeth quietly.

“Okay.” Buck says. “That’s- congratulations, I mean. I’m happy for you.”

“I just-“ Eddie says. “I just wanted to say...”

He trails off.

“Chris misses you.” He says, picking at a spot on his jeans. “I know you two talk on the phone and stuff but it’s not the same."

“Oh.” Buck says. “Yeah, I really miss him too. I’ll- I’ll come by this week, maybe take him to the movies or something if that’s cool with you.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Okay. Cool.”

Eddie smooths out the thread he’s tugged loose.

“I miss you too.” Eddie says, and Buck lets out a shaky breath.

“Yeah.” He says, and Eddie’s heart lurches.

“All the time.” Eddie says, and Buck breathes in through his nose, rubs one hand over his eyes.

“I don’t think-“ Buck says. “I actually can’t- I should go.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I- I’m gonna.”

“Okay.”

Buck stands up, shoulders hunched, like he’s trying to draw himself all the way in.

“I’ll see you around.” Buck says to Eddie, and he’s standing up and Eddie is still sitting. With the sun behind Buck’s head, it makes it hard to look him in the face, makes it sting, and Buck is just a silhouette, an outline of a larger thing. It hurts to look right at him, glare burns Eddie’s eyes, Eddie looks anyways. Eddie says:

“I love you.”

Buck pauses.

“I love you.” Eddie says again. “Or I’m in love with you, however you want to say it. I think about you all the time. I want you all the time. I think you’re- you’re the best person I know. I think you’re funny and kind and smart and you care about everyone and everything, and when I’m around you I feel like a better person, not because you make me a better person or anything, that’s not what I’m saying, but just. I look at you and I see what people want to be. I. I look at you, and I see what I want the world to look like.”

Buck’s mouth is open and his eyes are wet.

“Oh.” He says.

“It’s- okay.” Eddie says. “You can go. It’s not- I’ll be okay, eventually. I will be.”

“Eddie.” Buck says, and his face is wet too. “You can’t just- you can’t just say something like that to me. That’s not- that’s not fair.”

“Yeah, I know.” Eddie says. “And I’m sorry for that too. But I’m not- I don’t mean anything by it. I’m not trying to... I just. I needed to say it. And you deserved to hear it.”

“You.” Buck says. “You hurt me. I’m not- I haven’t been okay, Eddie, you really fucked me up.”

And even if that sits like a lead weight in Eddie's stomach, even if Eddie kind of wants to die, he says:

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

“The shit that you pulled.” Buck says. “You treated me like- like it was a foregone conclusion. Like that was the only way it was going to go.”

“I know.” Eddie says again. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t about you.”

“I know that!” Buck says. “Or- I’m working on it. I’m trying to know it wasn’t me. But Eddie. Eddie you can’t treat you like that either.”

Eddie’s eyes prickle.

“Oh.” He says. “You really- meant that, huh.”

And Buck slumps.

“Of course I meant it. Of course I still- I always will. It doesn’t matter where you go or what you do. I might not always be okay with it, but I’m still- I’m still going to love you.”

“Oh.” Eddie says, and Buck makes a wounded noise.

“Eddie.” Buck says, and again, “Eddie.”

Buck reaches.

Eddie goes.

Messy. They’re both crying. Tastes like snot. Middle of the park on a Tuesday morning, a bunch of teenagers getting high by the bathrooms, an old lady pushing a baby in a swing. Nobody looks over.

After all, there’s not much of anything to see.

The first night Buck spends in Eddie’s bedroom, Eddie is stiff and uncomfortable. Always staring at the window.

Buck grabs Eddie and rolls him over so that they’re facing each other.

“You think too loud.” He tells Eddie, and burrows his knee between Eddie’s, his face into Eddie’s shoulder.

Eddie huffs out a laugh. Does his best to sleep.

The first morning that Buck leaves Eddie’s bedroom, he makes French toast and Christopher eats 5 pieces.

“You need to chew before you swallow.” Eddie tells him.

“Oh, sorry, I’m used to trying to eat your cooking as quickly as possible.” Chris says, and Buck, the betrayer, laughs.

“It’s not that bad.” Eddie says.

“Did he ever make you spaghetti with ketchup?” Buck says.

“That was one time, and I misread the bottle-“

Buck is laughing at him openly. Eddie glares, but he doesn’t mean it, not when Buck is grinning like that, all wide and open, standing in the kitchen with a sticky spatula in one hand. Eddie’s mouth tastes like maple syrup, and Buck is snickering into his hand, and Eddie can’t even maintain his fake-glare-

“Obvious.” Chris says under his breath, not looking up from his phone.

Eddie blinks at Chris.

A car horn honks outside.

“Gotta go, carpool’s here!” Chris says and scampers. Then he sticks his head back through the front door.

“Love you Dad love you Buck!” He yells and then he’s gone again.

Eddie stares at Buck. Buck stares at Eddie.

“Thank Christ they’re only 13 once.” Eddie says, leaning his head back against the fridge.

“True, but they’re also 14 once, and 15 once, and 16 once-“

“Oh my God stop it.” Eddie says. “I can’t take much more of this.”

“That’s not true, you love it.” Buck says. “Emergency responders thrive on cortisol. The stress keeps us alive.”

Buck is leaning on the countertop in a position of total ease. He wipes a crumb into his hand and tosses it into the sink, sticking the syrup-y spatula in his mouth.

“Yeah.” Eddie says. “Guess so.”

“Oh you guess so-“ Buck says, and Eddie laughs.

He reaches out and catches Buck by the waist, and pulls him in.

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