Archive of Our Own ^beta

Buck, very subtly and very, very deftly, convinces Eddie to gently ditch the Homes.com agent, at least momentarily. He nonchalantly suggests that Eddie should look at Airbnb instead, because after all, Chris might want to be back home soon after they manage to work things out and Eddie can’t know that the thing will take ages. 

So, yeah, Airbnb it is. 

And all it takes is a one-hour conversation, more or less.

Because Eddie listens. Of course, Eddie listens to Buck. 

On a deep, emotional level, Eddie even knows why. He knows that he listens to Buck because he loves him, but he doesn’t have the emotional capacity to dissect the kind of love that he is subjected to. 

So, Buck is his best friend and he loves him. Buck has been the only single constant in his life for the past seven years and he loves him. Buck loves his son as if he were his own and he loves him. Buck is his safe space and he loves him. Buck is the home he runs to and the shoulder he leans on and the back he’s always watching and he loves him.

Eddie knows he loves Buck. His love for Buck is like the gaudy red of the 118 firetruck and the California summer sun. And yet there’s something that shines a tad brighter than all that: Christopher.

His love for Christopher has never been up for discussion in Eddie’s life. Not when he found himself being a father at twenty, not when he was overseas fighting a war he didn’t have the slightest interest in to provide for his family, not when he was working three jobs and his wife had left him, not when he left his suffocating parents to give him a better life in L.A. (where he didn’t have anyone except a firehouse waiting for him), not when he had to give him up to his own parents because he screwed things up. 

That’s why he has to leave Los Angeles now, if even temporarily. That’s why he is pushing through the pain of leaving Buck behind as if he were a limb that they’re cutting off of him raw. That’s why he’s ignoring the piece of his heart that is begging him to stay: because he has to get back to the other half of it. 

“I’m not leaving you,” he says, squeezing Buck’s shoulder, his thumb pressing on Buck’s pulse point steadily, like he has done so many times over the years, so much that he wants to claim that spot of Buck’s neck as his and solely his. 

He needs to say it because he sees the pain in Buck’s eyes and he has never been able to look in the face of Buck’s pain without doing something, anything, to dull it. Eddie doesn’t want Buck to think he’s being left behind once again, even with the knowledge that it is not what’s happening, knowing that this is exactly what Buck is feeling. 

This is exactly what it feels like, Buck wants to say. Exactly. “I know,” instead he says. 

“Just get the kid back, yeah?” He adds, forcing out a smile that does not quite reach his broken blue eyes.

Because there’s something else that shines as bright as the 118 firetruck red and the California summer sun, and it’s something that Eddie has barely acknowledged during the course of the years, and that’s Buck’s love for him.

Buck’s love for Eddie transcends time and space and stupid grocery store fights and call center stints and meaningless relationships. And maybe even Buck’s own bisexuality awakening, which feels trivial if compared to the magnitude of the feelings that Eddie has brought to the surface. 

Buck has always loved Eddie, no matter what. And Eddie knows that. To the same exact extent that Eddie knows he loves Buck. But there’s something that Eddie is completely oblivious to: Buck would let himself be crushed if that meant seeing Christopher and Eddie Diaz happy, healthy, and together, where they belong, exactly as they are meant to be.

So that’s it. Eddie has rented a small place that’s just four blocks away from his parent’s house, and it’s just for two weeks. He has requested two weeks of PTO instead of straight away putting in a transfer to another station and the suitcase he has packed is half the weight of his heart. 

His heart is so heavy and his hand doesn’t want to come off of Buck’s shoulder. So much so that he ends up brushing it down Buck’s whole arm until he gets to Buck’s hand. 

Maybe he’s completely crazy, maybe he has lost it all altogether. He has to squeeze, to feel Buck’s warmth for one last time before he gets in his truck and starts the worst trip of his life. 

And that’s something, coming from someone who’s been to war. Who’s been to hell and back.

“I have to ask you something,” he dares to ask, while he is still holding Buck’s fucking hand. He is holding Buck’s hand but he can’t find it in himself to care or be embarrassed. 

They’ve never held hands before but he needs this. 

“Yeah?” Buck sounds so choked up that Eddie is about to give it all up, to call his parents and demand that they bring his son home right now because his heart should be whole, not two halves hanging loose, desperately waiting to be reunited.

“You gotta be careful.”

He punctuates his statement with another squeeze on Buck’s clammy and cold hand. 

Buck’s hands are never cold and were not cold when he started to whisper to him. When have they gone cold? Is it the pain? 

It’s gonna be okay.

It’ll all work out, in the end.

That’s what Eddie tries to tell himself. Over and over, like a broken record. 

Buck tries to deflect, as usual. He musters all of his strength to put a cheeky grin on. “I always am,” reminds Eddie, who doesn’t believe him for a second. 

Eddie huffs a laugh, puffs of breath coming out sharp and erratic, irregular. He chooses to abandon Buck’s hand in favor of pointing a finger to his chest, stern and almost angry. “No heroics without me, Buckley.”

Buck is going to cry. And he doesn’t want to cry. So he deflects some more. Pretends to chuckle while he is actually swallowing back bitter tears. “Why? You jealous?” He raises his eyebrows too, at that, for good measure.

“Buck.”

Eddie’s hand is now spread out on his chest, feeling his fluctuating heart rate, the heart pounding wildly behind every rib. 

“You know I wouldn’t, Eddie.”

He’s serious now.

There’s so much more behind those words, so much that Buck wants to say but that he doesn’t, for Christopher’s sake, for Eddie’s sake. 

You know I wouldn’t make you lose me, not when you’re not here to see it’s not your fault, not when you’d blame yourself for the rest of your days, he wants to say.

You know I wouldn’t leave you, even if I feel like you’re leaving me.

He puts his hand over Eddie’s, on his own heart, and begs the universe to bring this man back to him, squeezes a little, “You have to go now,” forces himself to say, even if he’s internally screaming staystaystay pleasepleaseplease.

“Yeah, I do…” Eddie nods, shoulders slumped and eyes watery. “Just… I’m– uh, I’ll miss you.”

I love you, he wants to say. But not like this. Not before admitting that to himself first.

Buck smiles now, his face genuinely breaks into a sad smile. 

“Okay,” he sniffles, half chuckles, and then drags Eddie in a tight hug. “I’m gonna stop you now, or you’re never leaving,” he teases Eddie.

Little does he know that with his hot breath on the shell of his ear, Eddie doesn’t want to move at all. 

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right, I’ll see you soon anyway, right?”

God. What is he doing? He’s seeking reassurance from the person who needs it the most.

Buck is the one who is left behind and he is the one begging for another chance.

“Sooner than you think, bud.”

Buck sends him away with a wink while trying to subtly sniffle and he has to suppress the urge to scream into his hands, right over the steering wheel of his truck. 

It’s gonna be okay.

It’ll all work out, in the end.

Los Angeles is more or less twelve hours away from El Paso if you want to drive and Eddie, for some reason, decided he wanted to go on a little solo road trip to get back in Texas. Which is wild because he usually hates driving and always prefers it when it’s Buck who drives him around.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? 

Buck isn’t there. 

Buck isn’t there and Eddie doesn’t want anyone else to be in his space, even if it’s just another fellow passenger of a random flight from LAX to ELP. 

He wants to wallow and wants to do that on his own, in the privacy of his truck. Thanks. 

God, he hasn’t even left California and he wants to call Buck already, just to hear his voice, to hear some of his facts, to make him giggle and hear his cute laugh. 

Fuck. When has Buck’s laughter become cute to his ears?

His life is a joke.

He misses him. God, he already misses him.

But–

It’s gonna be okay.

It’ll all work out, in the end.

Christopher.

That’s what he has to focus on. He has to get Chris back, to get his son’s trust back. 

He can do that.

One deep breath in, one deep breath out.

Buck’s shift starts in three hours. He knows that he would crumple if he let himself feel the void that’s consuming him but at the same time, he’s dreading the moment he has to enter the station and face the fact that there will be no Buckley and Diaz, hey! exasperated call during the pre-shift briefing with Bobby, but just a soft, maybe pitying hey, Buck. 

That’s the flaw in his apparently perfect plan. 

His job has always been a way to get his mind off things. The moment he steps foot into the firehouse, the outside world ceases to exist and he can focus on his job, on simply doing his job. 

That, however, was true until Eddie Diaz was assigned to the 118 and Buck was forced to come to terms with how amazing he is. 

Now, every moment he spends at the station reminds him that whatever he is doing is something that he would have turned into a two-man job, to do it with Eddie. So there’s no escaping the pit of misery he’s slipping into. He can’t rely on his job to forget about his private despair, because that despair is following him wherever he goes.

He pretends to not see the sympathetic gaze that every single member of the team directs his way from time to time, pretends it doesn’t sting when even Ramirez and Johnson sadly smile at him. They’ve barely ever interacted, for God’s sake.

He sighs and keeps washing the engine. After all, he chose this for himself. He helped Eddie go to Texas and he asked Bobby to give him as many shifts as possible because he couldn’t bear the thought of being alone with his own mind, his own broken heart. 

He’s three calls into the shift and six hours away from the end of it (which is also six hours from the beginning, but he doesn’t want to think like that because he has decided that he won’t calculate time as how long it has been since Eddie left, instead he’ll focus on how long it is until Eddie will be back) when his phone rings, and he scrambles to get it from the pocket of his pants even if it’s not that difficult.

It might be Eddie.

God let it be Eddie, he thinks.

It’s Eddie.

“Eddie.”

He sounds breathless and he feels ridiculous and on any other day he would have led with something like “Already missing me, uh?”

Except–

Except that there’s too much at stake to make jokes now, so he goes with something that’s been on his mind for… forever, probably.

EddieEddieEddie.

“Hey, Buck.”

Eddie’s voice is soft and for a split second Buck is certain there must be a new crack in his heart because for reasons unknown he’s reminded of the time zone difference that will soon separate them. Maybe he will want to call Eddie but then he’ll have a look at the time and think that probably even just one hour could make the difference, that maybe Eddie could be sleeping already, and–

“Can I call you if I can’t sleep?” Is somehow what he ends up blurting out, against his goddamn will.

He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him but knowing that there are several (too many) miles between him and Eddie is making him blur the lines.

Eddie chuckles on the other side, still so fondly. “Yeah, Buck, of course… actually–”

He pauses and Buck has been on the other side of that pause so much to know what it means.

“Actually?” He presses.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I figured your voice might help.”

Eddie confesses and Buck has to bite his lower lip so hard that it starts matching the firetruck's paint. 

Please come back, please come back to me.

“Oh– uh, yeah, we’re here, just back from a call… where are you?”

And if that’s not what will break Buck, Buck doesn’t know what will. Not knowing where Eddie is… well, he feels a shiver down his spine.

“Somewhere in Arizona… an old-ass motel along the road…” Eddie trails off, sounding funny but not even remotely amused.

Buck has retreated to the bunk room by now, he feels a worrying sense of panic rushing through him for some reason. “Eddie,” he admonishes his friend. “Where are you?” 

And the other man chuckles, and Buck honestly would melt. 

“I’m okay, Buck… I just– I was around Tucson and couldn’t fight the sleep so I figured El Paso would still be there in the morning, you know?” 

Eddie sounds so tired and Buck wants nothing more than wrapping him in his arms and never letting go. Anyway, he lets out a breath, because at least Eddie is physically okay, and is being responsible. He can breathe.

“Okay, uh, I– I’m sorry you’re alone, you know?”

Buck should really stop saying these things or end the call or… anything, really. 

But he can’t.

He does wish he could be there with Eddie. Hell, maybe he should have gone with him. But, how would have that gone down? What would have his role been?

“Not your fault, Buck,” Eddie gently reminds him.

“Not yours either, though.”

Because Buck always knows and, God, Eddie loves him so much. He’s not starting his dissection on his love in a lonely motel room in Arizona but he knows he loves this man who knows exactly how his mind works. Buck knows that Eddie still blames himself, and will forever blame himself.

“Mhm…” He can’t bring himself to say anything else. 

“Eddie.”

“Thank you, Buck.”

“I didn’t do anything…”

Eddie smiles.

You exist, he thinks.

It’s gonna be okay.

It’ll all work out, in the end.

Even if he’s in a cold, isolated room in another state. Alone.

“I always appreciate you,” he lets out, honestly. His voice is a little bit weird, Buck thinks, but doesn’t dwell on that.

This is their first phone call since Eddie left and Buck already has, unconsciously, compared it to the first times Abby used to call him. 

He is a mess.

He lets out a wet chuckle. 

“The bar is very low, then, Diaz,” he teases.

And Eddie knows. He knows exactly what’s going on in Buck’s mind because as much as Buck knows him, he knows Buck just as well.

“Shut up, Evan.”

He is still chuckling but Buck feels the severity of those words and it hits him square in the chest. 

“Eddie–”

“I’m gonna sleep, okay? Call me if you need to, I got my ringtone set up for you.”

Buck’s brain blue-screens for a beat or two. He showed Eddie to exclude contacts from the do not disturb mode of his phone so long ago that he forgot about it, but he has always thought that Christopher is the only person whom Eddie has on that list. He is apparently included too.

His hands tremble slightly and he feels like a schoolboy with his first crush.

“Oh– okay, thank you… I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

“‘Course. Stay safe, okay?”

Buck closes his eyes and sighs loudly. “Yep, always.”

“Good.”

Buck leaves the firehouse with the prospect of going back to the loft literally dreading the moment he will be alone in there, surrounded by walls that have never been a home. And he doesn’t know why it’s any different now. This has happened plenty of times before. It shouldn’t feel like there’s a knife ready to stab him in the chest or like he’s missing a limb. 

Except that it makes sense.

He opens his front door, sees a loaf of banana bread sitting on his counter, and feels mocked, as if bakery goods could be capable of making fun of him. Dropping on the armchair he sighs and laughs at himself because he used to stress bake until Eddie dropped the Texas bomb on him, and now baking couldn’t be further from his mind. Actually, now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t want to do anything else except go to work and wait for Eddie to be back.

So he goes to sleep, alone. 

He’s used to that. He’s not used to knowing that, if he wants to, he can’t drop everything and run to 4995 South Bedford Street. The place would be empty.

And it’s the first time it has happened in seven years.

Eddie squints as some ray of sunshine hits his eyes. 

What a way to wake up. 

This room couldn’t be cheaper if they tried, with the moldy carpeted floor and the cracked curtains. 

He huffs and checks his phone. 

It should be seven in the morning in L.A. now and Buck was on a shift yesterday so he doesn’t call him, but God does he want to. 

And it’s his first thought too. His brain is definitely not having mercy. At all.

He misses him and thinks it’s pathetic and absurd. 

They’ve literally hugged less than twenty-four hours ago and he’s already acting like he’s overseas and doesn’t have a way to get in touch with his best friend. The more he thinks about it, the more he feels like he might be forced to face the magnitude of his feelings towards Buck, sooner than he may prefer.

He makes the call while he waits for his breakfast in a diner along the way. Buck picks up after three rings.

“Morning, Buck.”

“Hey, Eds.”

It’s gonna be okay.

It’ll all work out, in the end.

Breathing is a little bit easier.

Buck yawns and Eddie feels warm and fuzzy even if the boot he’s sitting at isn’t all that comfortable. 

“Sorry I woke you up–” he leads with, but Buck cuts him off immediately.

“No, uh– I wasn’t sleeping. What about you?” 

Eddie shakes his head with a fond smile and silently thanks the waiter for his pancakes with a nod, before answering. He’s sure Buck was sleeping, can hear that in his voice.

“Just ordered pancakes, I’m sure yours are better though…” he teases. 

Is he kidding though? 

His phone starts buzzing weirdly and soon he finds that Buck has requested a FaceTime call. 

He chuckles and fixes his hair before accepting the call (that stays between him and God). 

“What? You had to check?” He teasingly asks.

Buck is rubbing his eyes with the hand that’s not holding the phone and Eddie should not find his unruly hair so damn cute but he does. He swears he can see a small blush creep up on his friend’s face too, but that’s a thought for another time.

Having Buck’s company, if even through a phone screen, still feels incredibly good. 

Then Buck shrugs and flips the screen instead of verbally answering. 

Eddie sees that he’s having breakfast too and that about shatters his already unsteady heart. 

God. Buck FaceTimed him to have breakfast together. What are they? Long-distance lovers?

“Oh, you– I see,” he chokes out. “What do you have there?” 

He feigns a nonchalance that does not belong to him in the slightest.

Buck smiles and takes a bite of something that Eddie can’t exactly identify. Then proceeds to talk through a mouthful and Eddie knows he’s fucked when he wishes he were there, instead of somewhere in Arizona. 

“You’re disgusting,” he tells Buck, while Buck explains that he’s eating leftover banana bread and Eddie can see the way he’s (admittedly disgustingly) chewing, and he’s hit with the realization that he’s been dreading since he dropped everything — mustache and every carefully crafted façade — and started dancing in his living room not long ago: he wants this man and this man only for the rest of his life.

And he doesn’t care if he can’t have him, if Buck somehow doesn’t want him back, he doesn’t care about the way Buck has to stay in his life as long as he doesn’t have to find out how to navigate through life without Buck.

The road trip to Texas has solved one of his many problems, it seems. He’s come to terms with his love.

His eyes are shining because Buck is rambling about the glares Ramirez kept sending his way during his last shift and he wants, wants, desperately wants. 

He hopes Buck doesn’t pick up on his weird behavior.

“Do they really suck?” 

He blinks, his own cheeks are definitely rosy at this point. He can see that in the small corner of his screen. 

“Uhm, what?” He sheepishly asks.

Buck’s brows are pinched together. “The– the pancakes… you’re not eating.”

Eddie’s stomach is assaulted by butterflies, how could he?

And what could he say? Yeah, sorry, I looked at you eating like a disgusting animal and realized I love you an unbearable amount, what can we do about that?

Nope.

“Oh, no, they’re okay, I guess? It’s just… they– had some local sweets at the motel… I guess I’m not that hungry,” he tries to play it cool, but he knows that Buck can see right through him.

Buck tilts his head, unfairly tugging at Eddie’s heartstrings. “Well, I’d eat them for you if I were there.”

He is smiling, Eddie can see that, but he also sees a flash of hurt and pain pass through his eyes and wishes they were not FaceTiming. Maybe, on a regular phone call, he couldn’t have spotted Buck’s hurt so quickly. Or maybe… well, maybe they’re just that in sync.

“Well, I really wish you were, you know? Would save me from the shame of leaving the plate full…” Eddie decides to joke around. He can’t afford to be honest, not right now. 

He hears a laughing noise from the other side of the call and for a moment closes his eyes, before looking back at the time. If he leaves now, he’ll probably be in El Paso around the time Chris comes home from school.

And he plans on telling Buck just as much but then Buck starts rambling about a call they had at a chocolate factory in the outer suburbs of L.A. and he can’t even remember what he was supposed to be doing if not listening to his best friend yap like his life depended on it.

Eddie arrives in El Paso around the time Buck knocks on Maddie’s door. 

He still thinks that she and Chimney faked a date to get him to spend some time with Jee, maybe in a desperate attempt to stop his wallowing, but anyway, he takes the offer and sends a selfie of him and his sweet girl (his own words) to Eddie as soon as his sister is out of the door.

Eddie likes the message, something that he rarely does, but Buck’s genuine smile squishing against Jee’s face is enough to make him melt on any other day, so now, with almost 800 miles between them, he has no chance. 

He is glad that Buck has the support, that he is not alone, that Maddie and Chimney, and probably the whole 118 realize that he took Eddie’s temporary departure badly, but part of him wants to call him and talk to him right now. Because the streets are too familiar, the air is exactly like he remembered, everything seems to take him back to ten years ago, and it isn’t a good kind of familiar, it feels terrifying, he feels suffocated, like he’s on the verge of a precipice and there’s nothing holding him back. 

He wants Buck to talk to him through what looks an awful lot like a panic attack, wants to hear his voice that always acts like a soft balm whenever he is in distress, especially when he finds himself in front of his rented house and sees the disgustingly familiar street that’ll eventually take him to his parents’. 

Is it gonna be okay?

Will it all work out, in the end?

The house is well furnished, enough to make whoever rents the place feel at home. Eddie realizes he can’t stay in Texas when he inspects the place.

There’s a poster on a beige wall that reads “home sweet home” over the silhouette of the Texas state and he is hit with sudden clarity. He’ll never feel at home until he’s not with Christopher and Buck. There’s no home if one of them is missing. They are his home, not some piece of well-adorned concrete, no matter where in the world.

Not El fucking Paso in fucking Texas.

He sends a photo of the couch to Buck, because Buck is still the only one constant on his mind, without saying anything. He honestly doesn’t know what he wants to say. 

I miss you.

My couch is your couch.

You should be sitting here.

With me.

Buck doesn’t immediately text back, but he expects that.

He braces himself and gets back in the truck to start the short drive to his parents’ house, barely twenty minutes later.

“Eddie.”

Any other mother, in any other universe, where things are not fucked up, would probably be squishing her own son to death if she found him on her doorstep unannounced, knowing that he lives almost a thousand miles away. 

In this universe, where everything is fucked up for Eddie, Helena Diaz opens the door and looks like she’s seen a ghost, like the thought of her own son visiting her (when she has basically taken away said son’s son, by the way) is unfathomable. 

Eddie can feel the hatred, the disgust, the distant fear (that he’s going to get his own son back, probably — as he should) and it hurts, but he lets it hurt for barely a moment. Then, he faces a hard truth: he’s here to fight a war. One that he should not be fighting, against an enemy that should be on his side no matter what. But he’s going to win, even if he has to come out of it in shreds.

“Mom,” he nods, faking a smile to see how far she’s willing to go.

Helena Diaz recoils slightly, almost flinches.

Maybe she had forgotten that her son was Eddie, not Christopher Diaz. “What are you doing here?”

Eddie’s eyebrows graze his hairline on their own accord. She isn’t even pretending to be polite, she is not inviting him to come in, and she’s not opening any doors, both physically and metaphorically. Well, two can fight. “Well, I figured I could come here to talk to my son, as you clearly have no intention of helping.”

She has the audacity to look offended, almost hurt, as if she were the one with any right to be upset by this whole shitshow.

She scoffs, right in his face. 

“Chris is at the park with your dad, and you– you can’t just barge in here and demand to see him without–”

Eddie sees red. “My son,” he shouts, so loud that his mom takes a step back.

“To see my son,” he repeats, lifting a finger. 

A cunning barely there smile pops up on his mother’s face and he feels the need to throw up.

“Was he your son when you brought that woman to your house, Edmundo?” 

She tries to sound upset, maybe sympathetic, but Eddie can see right through her, and she’s enjoying the whole thing too much to be anything but ecstatic. She has been waiting for this moment for ages, she has been waiting for the moment she could be able to throw all of his mistakes in his face, he can see that so clearly.

He opens his mouth to retort, something inside him is begging to scream because nobody has ever listened, nobody ever listens. Except Buck. 

Buck always listens.

But this isn’t Buck.

This is his mom, and he’s about to tell her everything, whether she likes it or not.

“I did not–”

He’s interrupted by the sound of crutches hitting the pavement behind him and he freezes on the spot. 

Fuck. It has been months. He hasn’t heard this sound in months and it feels like a lifetime of pain is finally hitting him at the same time.

He thinks he’s about to collapse. His mother won’t help him, clearly. But then something else happens.

He hears Chris’ shy voice, the one he had almost forgotten, as his son is now a teenager, which means confidence and smugness are always on the agenda. 

“Dad?” He sounds so unsure that Eddie hates himself some more, and that’s saying something, considering the amount of self-hatred he usually carries around. 

He slowly, ever so slowly turns around and finally sees him, standing there, in front of him, after months of video calls and stupid texts and 800 miles which always felt like way too many. 

“Chris,” he whispers, feeling breathless and the happiest he’s been in forever, probably.

He slowly approaches him and then crouches down to look into his eyes, even if he swears Chris got taller, and that breaks his heart. “Can I–” he has to swallow the tears. “Can I hug you, Chris?” 

He doesn’t realize it’s Chris who throws himself in his arms until his nose is buried in his son’s hair, and he smells different, but always the same. This is always going to be his baby, no matter what.

He squeezes him so tight that for a bit he thinks that Chris would usually tell him to let go, but Chris doesn’t and he stays exactly there, knees hurting, pressed onto the concrete, and face buried in his son’s hair.

“I love you so much, Chris, you have to know. I’m so sorry, I missed you so much, I miss you so much,” he starts to mutter when he feels two smaller fists grip his sweater. 

Maybe that’s the good thing to say or maybe it is not, either way, Chris doesn’t immediately pull away and he sure as hell won’t, so it is only because of his mother that they have to part, eventually.

“Christopher!” She yells, arms crossed and a pissed look on her face. “You’ll catch a cold out there, come inside.”

Eddie is still trembling when he gets Chris’s crutches from the pavement to give them back to him, his hands are shaking and he feels like someone is mercilessly punching his stomach. 

Christopher doesn’t look at him and he starts fearing the worst. But they hugged, that must mean something, right?

He follows Chris towards the door, but instead of inviting him inside as he expects her to do, his mother tells him to go away.

She puts a hand on Chris’ shoulder, curled protectively around his own son, to the point that Eddie feels a twisted sense of pain assaulting his stomach. “You can call tomorrow, we’re busy today,” she tells him.

“But, Mom, I’ve just–”

“Eddie, we have plans,” she cuts him off abruptly, and Christopher looks at him as if he wishes he could say something but he stays quiet. “You can call tomorrow and we’ll see.”

We’ll see.

She’s really putting herself between him and his own kid. 

God. How fucked up is this?

He tries. He tries anyway. He has to.

“Chris–”

“Eddie.”

It’s his father who’s spoken. Eddie has been so lost in his own bewilderment that he has barely noticed him. His head turns so fast he thinks he’ll get whiplash. “What?”

“Let’s…” he looks like he’s trying to find the right words and Eddie can’t recall a time where he ever weighed his words. He chooses to look at Christopher and tilt his head and Eddie somehow gets it.

“I’ll call tomorrow first thing in the morning, okay?” 

Chris finally looks at him, eyes huge and… hopeful (or maybe that’s Eddie’s delusion speaking) so he thinks he made the right choice.

“Okay,” Helena sighs but he doesn’t even acknowledge her, gaze fixed on his son. 

“I’ll see you soon, then,” he unsurely tells Christopher specifically. “Love you.”

Is it gonna be okay?

Will it all work out, in the end?

There’s so much tension gripping his stomach, his lungs, his whole body when he gets back in the truck that he has to grip the steering wheel extra hard to not burst into tears.

But the dam breaks as soon as he checks his phone and finds a string of texts from Buck.

Fuck. What he wouldn’t give to be in his arms right now… 

Buck would just need a simple touch, even a brush of his fingers, and everything would be alright. 

In hindsight, Eddie wonders how he didn’t realize he is in love with the man sooner. 

He can’t text back right now. He would blurt out something like please come here, please I need you, pleasepleaseplease.

They end up eating dinner on FaceTime because this is apparently a thing that they do: eating together through a video call. 

Eddie spends the first twenty minutes of their talk fighting against the urge to cry, and Buck fights the urge to get on the first plane to El Paso.

Then, Buck moves to the kitchen to get some honey garlic chicken ready and Eddie patiently waits for his takeout order to arrive.

“Promise me you won’t live off take-out, man,” Buck says teasingly, while he casually stirs something that Eddie can’t really see from the other side of the screen. 

And that actually warms Eddie’s heart so much that for a moment he forgets that he is in another state and that his parents probably hate him.

He chuckles and unashamedly looks at Buck’s rosy cheeks and his furrowed brows and his pinched lips. He’s so beautiful.

“You know I can’t do that, bud.”

“Eddie.”

Buck has both hands on his hips and Eddie feels suddenly hotter. 

“Okay, okay, I’ll do my best.” He raises his hands in mock surrender and Buck squints at him.

“Don’t make me come there to feed you, Diaz.”

Eddie’s heart rate quickens. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Buck,” he winks.

Buck sighs, but there’s a soft smile on his face. 

A rather noticeable frown only comes out while Eddie is eating his beef taco and Buck receives a text that makes him huff right in front of the camera.

“What’s up?” Eddie asks around a mouthful.

And Buck takes the opportunity to throw his words right back at him. “That’s disgusting, Eddie.”

Eddie chuckles but still waits for his friend to explain.

“Bobby asked me to cover for someone from the B shift tomorrow morning…”

“Now?” 

“Well, it’s an emergency, I guess…” Buck tells him while he texts Bobby that he will be there.

“You call me if things go south with your mom though, okay?” Then he adds, pointing a finger at the screen, begging Eddie to call him if he feels like he did today.

The other man simply nods, not fully convinced. 

“I think she hates me, I mean– I knew that already but…”

Buck’s heart breaks for Eddie but he waits for him to continue, before speaking.

“Actually seeing that? That shit hurts.”

And well, Buck has always known that Eddie trusts him. Hell, he trusts him with Christopher, his most valuable “possession”. But hearing Eddie’s vulnerability coming straight from his mouth, so freely and so easily makes Buck fall in love. 

He’s pretty sure that Eddie would never admit that to anyone. Maybe Frank is a possibility, but still…

“I’m sorry, Eds…”

“Eh…”

He thinks Eddie is now fidgeting with a napkin because he’s looking down.

“But you don’t deserve that, you know that, right?” He feels the need to say.

He would probably encircle Eddie’s wrist in a hand if he were there. Eddie doesn’t look like he believes that. Buck knows he doesn’t.

“Eddie.”

“Don’t I?” Is Eddie’s harsh retort.

“No, you don’t,” Buck gently reminds him. “I’ll tell you as many times as you need me to. You only–” 

He takes a breath because he fears that what he’s going to say might change things.

“You deserve nothing but love, Eddie,” he devotedly declares. 

And surprisingly, the world keeps spinning, no lightning strikes him again and Eddie is still looking at him like two seconds ago.

Actually, his cheeks look a little bit red and Buck is proud of that.

“Tell that to my parents,” he scoffs, bitterly. But Buck sees right through his indignant facade. 

At least he’s accepting the sentiment, he thinks.

“They suck, and– hey, we can get mine and yours to meet up, they’d have a blast, I’m sure!” He excitedly offers, hands open towards the camera as if Eddie were right there in his kitchen with him (as he should be).

Eddie laughs and Buck thinks I did it, yes.

“You’re ridiculous.”

I love you.

It’s gonna be okay.

It’ll all work out, in the end.

“I’m right, Eddie.” Buck punctuates every word comically hitting the table with a finger and Eddie keeps giggling at his antics.

“They’d have to fight real hard for the top asshole spot.” 

This doesn’t get Eddie to stop cackling. Instead, he laughs even louder and Buck is seriously considering getting in the Jeep to drive all the way to El Paso because waiting for the next flight is unacceptable.

“Buck,” he fakes indignation but Buck sees the glint in his eyes.

“Try to tell me I’m wrong, Eds, I’m waiting.” He jokes. He feels like they’re discussing their in-laws and his heart flutters a little. 

Then he realizes that Eddie has gone suspiciously silent and frowns. So he nudges him, if even virtually. 

“Hey…”

“Sorry, just thinking.”

“About?”

Eddie looks around, at this empty kitchen, full of kitchen utensils that do not belong to him, two empty chairs across from him that seem to mock him, and the dim lights coming from the adjacent room that cast a dusky glow over him. 

He’ll feel so lonely once he ends this video call. 

That’s a realization that startles him.

“You’re keeping me company,” he shrugs, praying that he’s not revealing too much.

Buck smiles, and a particular, special kind of warmth spreads through him. “Well, I miss you too, so…” he reasons, as if Eddie didn’t feel like someone is punching his stomach every time Buck tells him he misses him.

“I– I know this is the right thing, you know?” Eddie explains. “But…”

“It’s hard.” Buck finishes the thought for him. 

“Yeah, because…”

Because I miss you and I love you and I want you and I need you.

“I wish my parents would help, you know?” 

Buck nods. He knows the feeling but he can only imagine what Eddie is going through because Christopher is involved in this. 

“You have me, okay?”

What can he say, after all? This is true, anyway. This is something he can promise.

“I know this sucks but, Eddie, you just made a mistake. You made one mistake, and you absolutely didn’t deserve this. You told me yourself that your parents are standing in your way, instead of helping you, so– so you– uh, don’t forget that, okay?” He adds, looking straight into the screen.

“Buck–”

“No, I don’t wanna hear that, you’re gonna fix this because everyone deserves another chance and you– you love your son and your son loves you, and nothing– nothing else matters, okay?”

Eddie deflates slowly, sighing, love dripping from every word of Buck’s. He’s so damn lucky and he doesn’t know how that happened. 

“He loves you too, you know?” 

Out of all the things that are swirling around his head, this is what he ends up telling Buck. 

And Buck nods but doesn’t look too convinced. 

“And I love him so much, Eddie, I really do, but I–”

I love you more, he’s about to confess. 

Because that’s somehow true. Not completely, obviously — he can’t quantify love, nobody can. But, as much as Buck thinks that Christopher is the most important person and that they should always put him first, he thinks he is allowed to love Eddie more than everything because he trusts Eddie to love Christopher exactly as he deserves to be loved. 

He takes a deep breath and sadly deflates, shoulders slumping heavily. “I just wish I could be there.”

That’s not the whole truth but not a lie either. 

Eddie grimaces. “You’re not the only one, I guess,” he admits.

Please come here he wants to scream.

Buck tenderly breaks into a small smile, somehow too cute to be a grown man in his thirties.

If Buck were still somehow unsure about his feelings for Eddie, he would have no doubts left about them in the morning, the day after their shared dinner on FaceTime. Because they didn’t stop at that. They went as far as moving their video call to bed, after getting ready to sleep (separately, thank you very much) and they must have fallen asleep while talking about Buck’s last hyperfixation (which does not involve baking, he wants everyone to know that) because he finds his phone dead beside him between the sheets.

The battery must have dropped during the night. God only knows for how long the call must have gone on. But that is a thought that makes his heart flutter wildly while he gets ready to head to work because if he doesn’t remember ending the call and falling asleep, it means that Eddie spent who knows how long watching him sleep.

Jesus. His heart aches. He wants to fucking teleport himself to Texas right now, instead of going to the station and helping the B shift. 

Anyway, he diligently hops into the firehouse more or less one hour later, greeting everyone as if he didn’t wish he were two states away.

He has already texted Eddie, because Eddie wants to go to his parents’ house to talk to them while Christopher is away, but he must be sleeping so he waits for his phone to beep like a pining teenager in love and much to his chagrin, every one of his temporary teammates seems to have noticed. 

He just hopes that no one will confront him about it, especially when the bell rings and they find themselves packed together in the back of the firetruck. 

Working alongside anyone who’s not on the A shift isn’t Buck’s favorite activity, even if he will never admit that out loud. However, today everything seems to piss him off. 

Four hours into the shift and he feels like exploding. He even complains to Bobby through text. Maybe he’s just extra stressed, and nervous, and worried. Because Eddie has only told him he was at his parents’ and now he isn’t answering his texts and he is frustrated and he wants to sleep and and and—

“Buckley!” 

Someone’s calling him and he hates that everyone seems to forget that he hates going by Buckley.

Why can’t they just call him Buck?

It’s Torres. He rolls his eyes before the guy even approaches him.

“What was that?” 

“What was what?” Buck genuinely has no idea what he’s talking about and he doesn’t even care.

“Oh–” 

Then he remembers. But luckily, the captain, Williams, calls for Torres and tells him to meet in his office.

He was about to use an electric saw on a car wreckage. The sparks would have started a fire over the spilled gasoline if Buck hadn’t stopped him. 

Apparently, Buck’s loud No, no, stop, what are you doing? wasn’t much appreciated.

That’s just one of the things that pissed him off.

There was Fisher who was slow at getting the hose when they were going up the ladder and Morales who looked like it was her first day seeing a gurney. And then again Torres messing up the harness before a rope rescue. 

God, Buck is tired, or more like… exhausted.

He’s alone on the loft couch when he tries to close his eyes, pretending Hen or Chimney will soon come to tease him, that, hell, Eddie will maybe soon join him, when the bell rings again. And it’s apparently a huge fire, this time, and he thinks that the universe may have it in for him. And Eddie still hasn’t texted him back.

He sends a text from the truck, just in case this takes long and Eddie wonders where he has ended up. 

omw to a big fire, hope youre okay, ttys

It’s a school. It’s a fucking school. Of course, it is. He hates his job on days like this, when the possibility of failing, of losing lives entails mourning a young life, a kid. 

He hates everything while he gets his mask on but he particularly hates Helena and Ramon Diaz who took the most important people of his life away from him and now he’s left wandering around the streets of Los Angeles without any remnants of his heart.

He hates them with a passion because he wants Eddie to be right there with him, to fist-bump him and tell him that they can do it, that they are the best, to maybe call him cowboy again, to have his back. Instead, he is alone. 

Morales goes in with him, actually. 

But Buck is alone. 

Painfully, agonizingly alone.

The school is oddly, eerily quiet when they enter the building. Fire rarely is. Fire roars, engulfs everything it finds in its path without qualms or hesitation, and it’s loud. Even the wake of destruction that it so often leaves behind is so terribly loud. And yet Buck can’t hear a single sound once they step into the first room.

He’s midway through his standard “LAFD, call out!” call when his radio crackles and he hears the captain’s voice.

The building is an abandoned school, for God’s sake. They were just doing construction work today so people evidently assumed there would be kids, and he doesn’t understand how they couldn’t get the information from dispatch. The construction workers were already out by the time the fire spread. Why didn’t they know? Did anybody know? Buck is probably feeling a thousand emotions at the same time, all of his senses are dialed up to eleven, but part of the adrenaline that had kept him running starts to crash down. 

At least until he’s coming down the stairs, Morales has already reached the others who are gathered by the firetruck and he hears the radio crackling. 

“There’s a man trapped in the parking lot of the adjacent building.”

He looks around as soon as he’s out of the building and spots the parking area entrance and instinctively clicks on the radio.

“Copy. Going downstairs, cap.” 

He’s been trained for this. This is his job, his life. It was just an instinct that kicked in. Except that maybe he isn’t thinking much, because he goes there alone. 

He doesn’t wait for anyone to follow him, because he’s used to someone always following him, to someone being there no matter what. He’s used to Eddie, to Eddie acting like he’s his personal shadow, used to Eddie like Eddie is one of his limbs.

But Buck is alone. 

Painfully alone.

Blood pumps wildly in his veins, and his vision is laser-focused on finding the victim and getting him out but there’s so much smoke that even with his flashlight, seeing through it is difficult. 

It’s scorching hot and he’s pretty sure there are roaring flames behind the fire doors which lead to the stairs (because the building looks like it’s connected to the school that’s currently on fire) so he needs to be fast. 

He takes a small sigh of relief when he spots both Morales and Torres behind him. At least he’s not alone anymore, and he starts calling for the victim, yelling at him to call out, to help them locate him, when he spots the car who’s stuck under a collapsed beam, at the back of the parking lot.

They quickly get to him and assess the situation, and the damage, trying to figure out a way to get him out without causing more harm. 

“We’re gonna get you out, sir,” Buck assures him when he starts coughing and seems to be panicking as the minutes pass by.

“His leg is bleeding heavily, Buckley,” Torres tells him, not caring about the victim possibly hearing that, and Buck is seriously regretting his decision to say yes to Bobby the day before.

He tries to dislodge the steering column that’s in the way and quietly hisses under his breath. “I know.”

“Get a gurney, do something, instead of watching me!” He adds. 

And in retrospect, he’d admit that he may have sounded a bit bitchy, but he thinks he can be justified, alright? 

His life sucks at the moment, he’s here to help his own captain and he misses Eddie and– maybe the universe doesn’t agree, doesn’t even try to see his point.

Morales shouts a simple all-clear, removing some debris from their path so that Buck and Torres can set the man down on the gurney but while they are halfway through their way to the exit, something starts creaking behind their backs.

Buck momentarily lets go of the gurney to look behind so when the first rubbles start to fall, both his teammates are already out of the building, not noticing a single thing.

And that’s when he remembers something he learned one eternity ago at the fire academy: beams that heat up during fires could press up against their uncompromising boundaries, potentially breaking their connections and causing floors to collapse. 

Eddie always tells him that his brain is wired differently, and that’s probably the reason why he is recalling random information about structural firefighting while he’s in grave danger. Eddie is always looking at him fondly, even when he’s rambling, even when he’s trying to comfort a victim and he ends up trauma dumping on them. Eddie’s eyes are always so warm. Buck didn’t know that a look could be soft and warm before he met Eddie.

There’s a loud crash, and then so much pain.

Wait, why is he thinking about Eddie?

A deep rumble makes him shiver, and sharp white hot pain courses through his abdomen.

Someone is screaming. Why are they screaming? Is he screaming? His head is throbbing.

And his arm– oh God, his arm hurts like hell. 

He must have passed out while recalling basic firefighting training and some of Eddie’s fondest looks because he rouses when he hears this persistent voice calling for him. 

The first thing he consciously realizes is that he can’t move his right arm, but when he tries to move to get a better look at it, he screams in agony. 

“Buckley!”

It’s fucking Torres, because, of course, it is. Just his luck. He wakes up impaled on a piece of rebar and the first thing he hears is his annoying coworker. 

“Buckley, stay– stay still, we can’t– we can’t get to you now, how’s it looking?” He asks, his voice frantic and dripping with panic.

And he wants to answer, he wants to tell Torres to stop screaming too, because his skull is throbbing, but he feels a bit too lightheaded and he’s also pretty sure his arm fracture is a compound one. He’s wheezing and thinks he’s about to pass out again. His eyelids feel so heavy and breathing is so, so difficult. 

But Torres does not give up. “Buckley, for fuck’s sake, report!”

He tries to grip his radio with his left arm and it takes an ungodly amount of pain to do it. He emits a scream so loud that for a moment he’s worried the rest of the building might collapse on him too.

Eddie.

Fuck.

Eddie.

He can’t die. He has to text Eddie.

“This is– Buckley,” he pants into the radio. He has to stop for a second to catch his breath, before going on. “I– I can’t move, a piece of–”

Why is breathing so hard? Fuck.

“A piece– uh, rebar is stuck in my– uh, I don’t–”

He can’t go any further than that without blacking out again and feels any trace of consciousness slip away while thinking about why he can’t die because Eddie is waiting for him.

I have to ask you something.

You gotta be careful.

It’s the B shift captain’s voice that brings him back. 

“–ukley, Buckley, Buckley, come on! Nash won’t let me live this down, open those eyes!”

Buck would snort in amusement if that didn’t entail the rebar shifting between his abdominal bleeding flesh. He imagines Williams fearing Bobby’s wrath and it’s honestly hilarious. 

He should tell Eddie. 

Fuck fuck fuck.

Eddie.

He tries to lean against the wall, at least to get some support for his head, but that only gets another whimper out of him. He grunts because he can’t die, but he can feel life slipping through his fingers, his undershirt getting soaked with blood, his vision blurrier and blurrier as time passes by.

Pressing on the radio feels like a Herculean task but he can’t die, he promised Eddie.

“‘m bleeding,” he mutters. “My arm is– is broken,” he slurs, while a heavy, heavy weight settles on his chest, making it difficult to even think about breathing. 

Torres keeps yelling, but Buck doesn’t get why. Or maybe it’s just Buck’s head that hurts as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to his skull, splitting it into two.

“Torres–” he eventually manages to breathe out when the man keeps asking question after question. “I swear to,” he stops for a beat because even keeping his good arm upright is too much effort, “fucking God,” and he grunts. “If you don’t shut up–”

Buck thinks that Torres laughs, but he can’t exactly tell through the radio and his wrecked state. Maybe he’s snorting. Either way, if he gets out of this, he’s–

No, no no no.

He has to get out of this.

Eddie doesn’t know that he loves him. He has to text him back. Eddie has to take Chris home and he has to cook for them. He can’t die in a dusty mash of concrete while the love of his life is in another state. He wants at least Eddie to kiss his cheek, if he has to die today. 

Maybe he’s delirious, if he’s thinking about Eddie kissing his cheek, maybe he has lost too much blood.

“–getting to you soon.”

Fucking Torres.

Of course, it’s him who crashes his deathbed daydream. 

He doesn’t think he understands what Torres is telling him, but he feels droplets of hot liquid slipping down his cheeks, reaching his throat and creating an uncomfortable sensation, a stark contrast between the sweat and the dust that covered him during the collapse. 

He’s crying, probably. It makes sense. 

He wants to see Christopher. And Eddie doesn’t know how loved he is and Buck doesn’t want to die without telling him or without squeezing Chris in his arms until the kid starts protesting. 

He doesn’t want to die but he feels like unlike all the other times he’s been on death’s door, today he’s about to cross the threshold. 

So he tries to sit upright, hoping to stop the bleeding. Honestly, nothing makes sense anymore, at this point. He’s frantically trying to save his own life without any help or means to do so. 

He cries out in pain, probably bawling his eyes out in the process, so much so that his throat soon joins the list of the things that are torturing him, but he manages to get on his ass, against the cold wall. 

And that probably wasn’t his best idea because he passes out again. His head is swimming, he doesn’t know what is real and what he is dreaming. Everything comes across as a fuzzy memory, a distant vision that he’s desperately trying to bring into focus. 

Maybe he’s dead, maybe he’s asleep and he’s having yet another nightmare. 

“Eddie,” anyway he whispers because Eddie knows what to do. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him but Eddie would surely know what to do. 

“Sorry, Buckley, you’ll have to settle for me.”

Torres? What’s Torres doing in his personally crafted alternate reality? 

“Not you,” he thinks he blurts out, trying to bat his hands away but all he gets in response is someone taking his coat off, dislodging his arm, and eliciting a loud shriek of pain from him. (They have to put a splinter on him, whether he likes it or not.)

That pain and the adrenaline that follows wake him up enough to bring into focus Torres, Williams, and Morales. 

Oh, are they there? Is he dead? Where is Eddie?

“Eddie? Am I dead?”

Williams sighs, even if Buck can’t properly hear him. “We’re getting Diaz for you as soon as we get out of here, okay? You just have to stay awake kid, keep those eyes open,” he almost pleads. 

If Buck were more alert or probably not trying to not drown in the pain, he’d snort at the captain’s kid. 

Distantly, Buck thinks that only Bobby has ever called him kid and that is how it is, how it has to be. 

He does his best to keep his eyes open, even if it’s still hard. He feels clammy and– cold. Yeah. He’s so cold.

“Why’s so–” his teeth chatter slightly, “cold in here?” He mumbles, unaware of how alarming that sounds to his current teammates, in his state.

Then he’s on a gurney, and they must be giving him some morphine because he feels the prick of an IV line in his hand and then the pain going blissfully numb. 

And– wait, is Torres holding his hand? Is he in the ambulance? He’s so completely out of it that he blacks out once or twice, or maybe he’s just constantly floating between life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness.

He hopes he doesn’t die. He doesn’t want to die and doesn’t want to die alone. Not without Eddie.

Torres is there with him but Buck is alone because Eddie is in Texas and he is in L.A. while he bleeds out and is scared. 

He closes his eyes, he wants to rest. Eddie will forgive him. Eddie has always forgiven him. Eddie is the best.

“Stay awake, Buckley, come on.” 

He thinks it’s Torres speaking, but he doesn’t care. He’s tired.

Eddie is dragging his feet to his parents’ house front door. He can’t believe he once used to feel safe and loved in this place, if even for a short while. Now, just thinking about that door opening makes him shudder. 

He thinks that twenty-year-old Eddie would never believe that his parents would snatch his son away from him at his first mistake. He knows why Christopher called them and he knows that Christopher had every right to be upset, he will probably never forgive himself. But he will also never forgive his parents. Because they are the adults in this situation and they should have helped Christopher through the whole ordeal, not gotten him away from it, away from home, from the only parent he has left on Earth.

So he knocks on the door and dreads the moment he’ll be face-to-face with his mother.

“Mom, hello.”

It’s a strangled sound, nothing like he usually sounds. 

She, on the other hand, sounds exactly like Eddie was expecting her to.

“Eddie, well– uh, come in.”

She is hesitant. And Eddie should be surprised, bewildered, but he really is not.

His dad greets him giving the task a tad more attention, but it’s just a handshake regardless. 

Anyway he–

“Are you out of your mind, Edmundo?”

He doesn’t have the right to speak, apparently.

Wow.

“I came to see my son, Mom. Why is that so crazy to you?” 

They’re all sitting in the living room, but Eddie is on the other side of the coffee table and it painfully reminds him of the time the same two people sat across from him and told him that he would drag his son down with him if he didn’t give him up. 

Guess they got what they wanted, in the end.

He’s about to start spiraling.

Buck.

Why isn’t Buck here? Why didn’t he beg Buck to follow him? 

Fuck.

He would take his hand and squeeze it, no matter what his parents would think.

“Eddie?”

Oh. He must have zoned out 

“Sorry– what?” He has to ask, even if he hates it.

“See? You are mentally unstable, you thought you had seen your dead wife, and you brought her–”

Eddie’s blood starts boiling and he interrupts her abruptly, without thinking twice.

“I was grieving! That is what I was doing! And I’m back in therapy because I want to be better, for me and my son, because I care – unlike you,” he didn’t exactly want to throw that last sentence in but it’s not like it isn’t true. Maybe they care about Chris but they never cared about him and they haven’t started now anyway.

Ramon and Helena Diaz both gasp but he’s on a roll and he won’t stop. 

“And not once you asked me,” he points a finger to his own chest for emphasis, “me, your son, your fucking son, how I was feeling, how I was doing!”

“I came clean, I told that woman everything and I was ready to never see her again. And I– I would have cut things off with Marisol as well, if– if– it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you never cared, you only came and took Chris because that’s all you’ve ever wanted to do.”

He doesn’t think he’s breathing when he stops talking. He’s panting and his hands, cold and clammy, are shaking heavily. 

“You never asked, never,” he whispers, brokenly, feeling like ten-year-old Edmundo who was robbed of his childhood to be the “man of the house” all over again.

“You’d know, you know, and you could have helped me, and my son, but you never cared about me, it was never about me, was it?” 

Ramon interrupts his rant and puts one hand towards him as if he were a spooked animal ready to attack. “Eddie, listen–”

But Eddie shakes his head. “No, I don’t wanna listen to your bullshit. I just want my son back, and if I have to move out here to be in his life, I will, because I love him more than anything,” he tells them, pointing a finger at them both. “But this will never be my home, and it will be your fault, not mine.”

Well. He wasn’t expecting to go off on them like this. Not now at least. He knew, he has always known, since the moment Christopher left L.A. that he would explode or break down, and this is apparently the moment he decided to explode.

“We are… sorry,” his dad says, and that’s honestly a lot. To be fair, Eddie didn’t think these words were in his father’s vocabulary. 

Anyway, he doesn’t care. And apparently, his mother doesn’t either.

She clears her throat and shifts uncomfortably on the couch. “Well, can you say we were totally wrong, though, Eddie?”

“Helena–” Ramon tries to cut her off but she relentlessly throws her words at Eddie who looks completely disheveled.

“The kid called us because–”

Eddie sees red again. “Yeah, he called you because he was upset. And you should have called me! You’re my fucking parents, have you forgotten that?” 

That seems to stop her. She has a deep crease on her forehead which resembles the cricks in Eddie’s heart. 

“When can I see my son? I’m gonna get him after school.” 

He’s tired of arguing; it’s useless anyway.

They talk about Christopher's schedule until Eddie gets up, ready to leave, and Helena decides she has to try to get between her son and her grandson one last time. 

“What can you even offer him if he ever wants to come with you? You don’t have a family in Los Angeles.”

Buck.

Buck is family.

Buck’s eyes have always been home.

Buck is home and family.

He takes one deep, deep breath and then turns around to face the door. He has one hand on the doorknob already when he decides to change his life forever, probably. 

“I don’t have any here either, do I?” 

“Eddie.”

He would have left but it’s his father who calls his name so he stalls, facing the door, waiting for something else to happen, but then his phone rings and he doesn’t even think about not answering. 

He wishes he could turn back time the moment he hears the voice coming from the other side.

“Hello, is this Eddie Diaz? This is L.A. General…” 

There’s only one person they could be calling him for unless he is the emergency contact of some random person he doesn’t know about. And that’s why his ears start ringing as soon as he hears the voice, effectively making it impossible for him to really understand what’s being said.

“Excuse me, could you, uh–” his blood runs cold while he tries to not go over a thousand different scenarios, one worse than the next one, all that while standing in his parents’ doorway after the biggest argument they’ve ever had.

He only picks up a few words. 

Crush injury.

Compound fracture.

Rebar.

Abdomen.

Flatlined.

Surgery.

Not looking good.

He doesn’t remember how he ended the call, nor what he told the nurse. He just knows he has to find the quickest way to bring himself to Los Angeles right now, even if he has to walk to the airport. Hell, he’ll crawl to L.A. if it means getting to Buck right now.

Then, he remembers his parents are standing right behind him while he is still looking at his phone screen as if someone might come out of it and tell him it’s all just a fucking joke. 

It’s his dad who speaks.

“Eddie? What’s going on?” He carefully asks, words coated with a reverence that Eddie finds very difficult to believe in.

He is trembling. His whole body is shaking. This can’t be happening. Buck can’t die. 

This can’t be it. This can’t be real. 

He can’t even put his phone back in his pocket because of how much his hand is shaking. 

And he doesn’t want to speak because he doesn’t want to put those words out there.

“I– uh…” he feels a bead of sweat down his spine, even if it’s cold outside and the front door is still open.

“Buck– Buck is– he got, uh, hurt at work.” 

Wow. He managed to blurt out a whole sentence without passing out. 

“It’s– it’s real– bad. I– I gotta go,” he adds, stuttering all the way through the sentence and swallowing down the tennis ball-sized lump that’s been growing in his throat. 

He’s one second away from breaking down and sobbing. 

At least until Helena Diaz snorts in front of him, mumbling something like “of course…” and he completely loses it. Raw pain loses its place to anger. 

In one split second, he is in his mom’s personal space, and that must look so bad that from his peripheral vision, he sees his dad getting closer to them. 

She stops smiling, smirking, whatever she was doing until three seconds before.

“You better hope that nothing happens to Buck, because I swear to fucking God you’ll never see me or my son ever again if something happens to that man while I’m here because of you,” he hisses, through gritted teeth and buckets of tears in his eyes. 

He’s honestly surprised that his cheeks are still dry but there’s so much pressure behind his eyeballs that he fears they’re about to pop out of his skull, somehow explode. 

His mom, in turn, is speechless. She’s looking at him as though this is the first time she sees him, and maybe it is, because not even two minutes before, she was smugly ready to suggest that Eddie was ready to drop everything, Chris included, to run back to his own things, and now she’s gaping at her son because she’s probably smarter than she lets on.

“You’re in love with this man, aren’t you?” She asks, voice full of disgust.

“Helena,” now Ramon is really ready to step between his wife and his son, but Eddie thinks that maybe he’d choose him, this time.

But Eddie is tired and fucking terrified. 

“Of course I am,” is all he dignifies them with, before slamming the door with so much force that its noise echoes through the house.

Eddie doesn’t pray. Eddie spends five hundred dollars for the first plane ticket to LAX and doesn’t even bother with packing himself a bag.

What a sight he must be: a man wandering through the El Paso airport departure lounge with no luggage, eyes bloodshot, face completely red from trying to suppress the tears, and a pair of hands that can’t stop shaking even if his life depended on it.

He decides to call Bobby, because Bobby must know, right? Bobby always knows. Bobby can help him take a breath.

“Bobby, what– what happened?” 

He knows he probably sounds like a madman, both to Bobby’s ears and to the bystanders’ eyes, but he couldn’t bring himself to care even if he tried.

He has always been there. Through the truck bombing, the embolism, the tsunami, hell, even the after the lawsuit. And then through the lightning strike and the bridge collapse. If he recalls all of Buck’s close calls, he has always, always been there, one way or another. And now that things look so different, look so bad, he can’t believe he is two states away. 

He should have known better than leaving him, he should have told his parents to bring his son home, no matter how angry Chris may have been, he shouldn’t have broken the most important promise he made. 

He promised Buck he’d always have his back, and he simply didn’t. He simply wasn’t there when Buck needed him and this is another thing to put on the list of things he’ll never forgive himself for. 

Even if, if Buck doesn’t wake up, and his son still refuses to see him, he doesn’t–

Bobby’s voice echoes through his mind, shocking his system.

“Eddie, Eddie, are you still there?”

Is he?

Is everything going to be alright, after all? He doesn’t have a clue.

“Ye– yeah, Bobby, I–” he whimpers. He fucking whimpers on the phone with his captain, and it’s absurd and ridiculous that it’s Bobby’s voice that breaks him but if he allowed himself the opportunity to process things, he’d understand that this is the first time he has felt like he can let go, since knowing about Buck.

He starts sobbing, so violently that Bobby can’t do anything except sit there and listen to him breaking down on his own, in a crowded airport, with no promise of patching things up on the horizon. 

“Eddie, will you breathe with me, please?” Then Bobby begs him because there’s nothing else he can do, from a waiting room in Los Angeles while one of his men is in Texas and the closest thing he has to a son is between life and death.

“I can’t, I–” Eddie hiccups, “Bobby, it’s– I can’t lose him, he’s–”

A concerned man approaches him out of nowhere, forcing him to end his call with Bobby, with the promise to call him as soon as possible before the plane departs. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but– uh, is everything alright? I saw you and thought I might check on you…” he says, sitting on the chair next to his. 

Eddie realizes there and then that he doesn’t even have a backpack, anything at all, really. Just his passport, his phone, wallet, and keys. God, what did he do? 

“I– I–” he has to stop sobbing desperately. That’s something that he has to do if he doesn’t want this man to call 911 for him.

So he stops to take a deep breath (not that he manages to, he thinks he’s hyperventilating, if he’s honest) and then turns to look at this stranger who’s got this concerned look in his eyes.

“Sorry, I’m a mess,” he blurts out, trying to wipe his eyes with the back of his ends when he remembers he doesn’t have anything with him. 

The man smiles at him. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m a medic, I think you’re in a bit of panic there, so…”

He pauses for a second, and Eddie chuckles wetly because Buck believes in the fucking universe and apparently the universe is sending him his twenty-year-old self back in aid because this man can’t be older than twenty-five, is a medic, and has a US army backpack with him. “Thought I might come to see what’s going on.”

“I was an army medic too,” he slurs, still trying to catch his breath. The panic has subsided a little, but he’s still on edge, obviously.

“My– my best friend– I’m a firefighter now,” he knows he probably won’t make sense. He isn’t trying to. He’s just vomiting words until he manages to take a full breath (maybe he won’t until he sees Buck). 

“He’s a firefighter too, we’re– we are– he’s my… he’s everything. I can’t lose him and he– he got hurt while I wasn’t there and I–” 

Well, so much for calming down. He’s panicking even more. He feels like there’s a grip around his throat, someone’s squeezing his lungs, pushing onto his chest until his ribs are dust. It fucking hurts.

This can’t be their end. When they haven’t even begun.

“I don’t want to lose him,” he settles for whining, crying again, face redder than before, chest heaving until this army medic stranger puts a hand on his back and starts rubbing it.

“I’m sure he’ll fight hard to come back to you, you know?” The stranger tells him, and instead of helping Eddie, this pushes him to cry even more. 

He doesn’t even care about the people who he’s sure are watching him at this point. “But I wasn’t there, you don’t understand!”

“I’m sure he loves you enough to forgive you for that, wouldn’t you forgive him?” 

Eddie stops desperately bawling his eyes out for a second, so now he’s sniffling while this man patiently waits for his answer. “I was here trying to get my son back and he– he helped me, he helped me leave him, oh my God…”

He hides his face in his hands because he’s tired of being watched. 

Then the stranger shocks him. “See? He loves you a lot, he’ll come back to you.”

Eddie turns to look at him, straight in the eyes, his weeping momentarily on pause. 

“I– I don’t know–” he stutters.

“Isn’t he your boyfriend?” The stranger asks, brows furrowed and all.

He’s honestly confused and Eddie can’t exactly blame him. 

He can only chuckle, in a sad, melancholic way. “Oh, no, he’s my best friend. We– uh, I don’t know, I just–”

How can he explain what Buck means to him? How could he ever find the words and how could he do that now?

“You love him,” the stranger tells him, matter-of-factly. “I get that, I married my best friend too.”

He’s smiling, thinking about his wife, or husband, Eddie doesn’t know. 

Can he have the chance to have Buck? To marry him? To call himself Buck’s husband? God, he wants nothing more. 

“I wish I could do that,” he whispers, while fresh tears grow in his throat, bringing bile with them.

He suddenly wants to throw up, because the prospect of his life without Buck in it is the most frightening, terrifying thing that he’s ever had to elaborate.

The two hours he spends on the plane to LAX are the longest hours of Eddie’s life. For a while, he thinks that flying in a military helicopter in the Valley of Death was a much more comfortable experience. 

The first time he feels like he can at least try to breathe is when the plane touches down and he can read Bobby’s text that simply says waiting for you.

He’s finally back in California and he’s going to see Buck soon. 

Buck isn’t dead. He can breathe a little bit easier. Even if there’s a looming voice in the back of his head that keeps saying Buck isn’t dead yet.

Bobby worries he’s seeing a ghost when Eddie enters the hospital waiting room. He’s so distraught and looking so disheveled that Bobby fears he’s going to collapse if they don’t help him right now.

“Eddie,” he immediately gets up and walks to him. And Eddie is so tired of crying, his eyes kind of hurt, so he doesn’t, but he hiccups.

“Bobby, what–” he fakes the composure he wishes he had, and clears his throat that feels scratchy as hell. “What do we know?” 

He keeps clearing his throat, desperately hoping to keep the tears at bay. His captain is probably seeing right through him, so much so that he drags him to sit on a chair.

“I’ll get you a coffee, and– when was the last time you ate?”

Eddie shakes his head and keeps looking at his shaky hands in his lap. “I’m good.”

Oh, sure. Great even, fantastic, Bobby thinks.

“I’ll be right back and talk to you, okay?”

“Yeah…” 

Not like I got anywhere to go, not like without Buck I have anywhere to be, anyone to be.

Bobby comes back a few minutes later but to Eddie, it feels like half an eternity. He thinks he has the whole waiting room memorized by the time the other man comes back to him and shoves a sandwich in his hands.

“Eat this, c’mon.”

He gives it back. “Not hungry,” he mumbles. “Tell me about Buck,” begs, taking the coffee cup.

Bobby sighs heavily and thinks he’ll convince the man to eat sometime later. 

“I’m sorry it had to be a nurse to call you, but I didn’t know yet and the B shift didn’t think to call you. I would have done it myself,” he tells Eddie. 

Eddie blinks blankly and doesn’t even want to begin to unpack why his captain thinks he should have been informed of Buck’s condition by his teammates. He doesn’t have the energy to think about the implications. Even if they’d be true. 

“They were extracting a man from his car in the parking lot of a building that was in flames, and…” Bobby pauses, physically recoiling at the memory of Captain Williams reporting to him. “Buck was the only one left in the parking lot when the building started to collapse.”

Eddie thinks Bobby sounds choked up and that makes his skin crawl. The man didn’t sound so upset even when Buck was struck by lightning.

Then something catches Eddie’s attention and grips at his lungs. “He was alone?” He breathes out, horrified, eyes full of unshed tears. He feels like there’s a monster clawing at his insides, trying to turn him into shreds.

“No, no. I mean, when the building collapsed, yeah, he was. But then they–”

Eddie huffs, hits the wall behind him with the back of his head repeatedly. “Fuck, I’m the worst,” he declares. 

“Eddie, Eddie, what are you talking about?” Bobby wants to understand but Eddie is so lost in his grief and his self-deprecation that he can’t follow his captain’s voice.

He left Buck. He left Buck alone and Buck needed him. 

Buck was alone when–

“What happened to him? I don’t… I don’t think I remember what the nurse said.”

He closes his eyes and braces for impact. 

“Broken arm, probably he fell on it,” Bobby begins. “A piece of rebar pierced his abdomen, so he lost a lot of blood…”

The man’s voice wavers and Eddie has to grit his teeth to not start sobbing again. 

He’s clenching his fists so hard his knuckles have gone white. 

“And has a grade three concussion, was in and out of it for a while, then completely bla–”

“Please stop.”

He audibly gulps, slumps forward with his elbows on his knees, and wipes his cheeks.

Some tears made it out.

“I–” he gestures around with one trembling hand. Then tries to clean his face with the back of it, and keeps sniffling, fighting to properly breathe.

“He’s still in surgery?”

God, why is time passing so damn slowly?

Bobby grimaces. “I don’t know, they still don’t tell me anything and–”

Maybe they will talk to him, Eddie thinks. He’s Buck’s emergency contact after all.

Eddie doesn’t say that anyway. He just waits. He wants to ask where Maddie is, if she knows, where Chim and Hen are, but he can’t bring himself to speak. He’s sure Bobby took care of everything.

And he’s about to apologize because he’s completely useless and he sees that Bobby is struggling but a nurse comes looking for him. 

“Edmundo Diaz? Any family of Evan Buckley?” 

Eddie has never been more terrified and more relieved at the same time in his life. He stops taking in air the moment he sees the woman and awkwardly stands up because… he doesn’t know why. He just–

“It’s me, I’m Eddie Diaz, please, please–”

She cuts him off with a smile, she knows already. “He’s– he’s out of surgery…” She pauses for a beat and Eddie mentally prays.

Please say he’s okay, please say he’s okay, please say he’s okay.

“Can I see him?” His plea is pained and his eyes are about to start leaking again.

Bobby takes his arm with one comforting hand. “Eddie…”

“You can see him, but we had to– uh, put him in a medically induced coma. His body needs time to heal.”

Eddie feels Bobby’s grip tighten around him. Probably he’s about to fall and his captain is trying to keep him up. He doesn’t know. He only cares about Buck.

“Evan has–”

“Buck,” he uselessly interjects. “His name, I mean, he goes by Buck.”

She blinks at him, probably speechless, but Eddie is far from her first distressed partner. “Okay, Buck has to recover, and we don’t know how long that may take, but things are looking good.” She smiles kindly.

Things are looking good?

Maybe there’s a chance everything can still be alright?

“Can I see him? Please I have to see him now.”

Buck is loud and bright and he takes up space and is joyful and giggles at funny jokes. Buck is this good, giant man who manages to fit into the hearts of every single person he meets, somehow acting like sunshine personified on most days, and Eddie doesn’t know if he’s slightly biased, but life, with Buck in it, is much more worth living. 

Buck turned Eddie’s life upside down like a hurricane and now Eddie can’t stay still, let alone on his own. 

He isn’t proud of how he never spent more than a few minutes at a time at his best friend’s bedside when the lightning struck him, but he couldn’t face the reality of a world where he couldn’t hear Buck’s voice whenever he wanted to.

But this time there’s something that couldn’t keep him away from his best friend even if facing such reality is a harsh jab at his heart.

“I’m so sorry,” he weeps on Buck’s hand. Because Buck now looks so small and helpless and this is not how Buck should look ever, with his chest wrapped in white gauze and his arm in a cast and his face half full of bruises and scratches. 

Eddie has sat directly on the mattress because he couldn’t bear the thought of any more distance between the two of them and then took Buck’s left hand in both of his because he needs to feel that he is still there, still breathing, still somewhat warm. 

Bobby left him alone, Eddie doesn’t remember what he told him, doesn’t remember when that happened. He only knows that they were together with Buck and suddenly he’s alone with Buck.

“I should–” he whimpers, to no one, actually — because Buck is sleeping — “have been there. I’m so sorry, Buck.”

He brings Buck’s knuckles to brush against his cheek and takes a deep breath, the first one in ages, probably. 

“You– you have to be okay, okay?” He mutters, completely slumped on Buck, only paying attention to his bruises, and his wound underneath the gauze. 

He sniffles because sometime along the way he’s started crying again. (He honestly doesn’t remember a time when his eyes haven’t been watery, today…)

“I can’t do it without you, Buck, you know that, I’m– you have to know that, even if I left.”

The hug Buck enveloped him in, before he left for Texas, comes to his mind and he sobs again, like a child who’s lost his mother and doesn’t know what to do with life anymore. 

He wants so badly to be able to hug Buck and never let go. He wants to encircle Buck’s waist with his arms from behind and hide his face in Buck’s neck, drowning in his smell. He wants to drown in Buck, until the world outside and his own thoughts are just background noise, until every ounce of pain that has ever brushed him is blissfully numbed by Buck’s presence. 

He wants, right now, to dive head first into Buck’s chest, close his eyes, and pretend that Buck is his and he is Buck’s, but there are wires and tubes and the bandages that keep the surgery wounds covered, and he can’t do anything except tighten the hold on his best friend’s hand, brushing the back of it against his stubbled cheek, until he can breathe a little bit easier. 

It takes a lot. 

But the weight on his chest never lifts. 

Buck’s eyes remain closed, after all.

Eddie stays until it’s way past visitors’ hours and way past the time he should be in his bed, sleeping, at home.

But Buck is his home.

That was as clear as midday sunshine when he was in Texas already.

Eddie stays.

Chris FaceTimes him when he should be in bed, sleeping, in Texas.

And Eddie frowns, then his heart flutters and he leaves the room, leaning against the thick glass separating Buck’s room from the outside world. Rationally he knows Buck isn’t going to suddenly wake up but he has to keep an eye on him regardless.

“He– hey Chris,” he stutters, hoping that his eyes are not too bloodshot.

He is about to ask his son why he’s awake, why he is calling him, and if his grandma knows about this, when Chris surprises him.

“How’s Buck?”

Chris sounds so alarmed that it breaks Eddie’s heart more than any silence he has had to endure during their calls ever since his son moved away.

He doesn’t know what to say, what does he say?

Chris is tired of waiting, though. 

“Dad? What happened to Buck?” He sounds angry and annoyed, but Eddie would recognize that undertone of fear anywhere, anytime.

Taking a breath, he glances through the windows and places a trembling hand on it. “He got, uh, hurt at work, but–”

“I– I’m sorry I left, Chris, but–”

“I don’t care, Dad, just let me talk to Buck!” 

Eddie knows that Christopher knows that Buck won’t be able to talk to him. He’s been through enough to recognize how serious a situation may be, based on how it sounds on his dad’s lips.

“He’s in a coma, Chris,” Eddie has to confess. “But– but it’s an induced one!” He’s quick to add, to reassure Christopher or himself, he doesn’t know.

“He’s gonna wake up,” he whispers. Because it’s a truth as much as it is a hope. And he would break his own heart and his son’s in the process, in case Buck–

“I wanna come home,” Chris decides, shocking Eddie and every single coherent thought out of his mind. 

Eddie gapes making a good impression of what a goldfish, high as a kite, would look like, probably. “You– you what?”

“Dad, I need to see Buck, then we’ll see.”

Okay.

One deep breath in, one deep breath out.

Eddie thinks he’s going to pass out.

We’ll see.

Well, he can work with that.

“Really?” He whines.

“Dad.”

“Okay, yeah, of course, Chris. I– I love you.”

He doesn’t know why he says that. He feels like he needs to.

Anyway, how can he leave Buck?

Instinctively, he enters the room and plants himself on the edge of the bed again, but this time, he uses his free hand to brush Buck’s curls off of his forehead, instead of taking his hand. And he must have some kind of look on his face, because, from the other side of the screen, Chris sighs.

“You can get me when he wakes up, but that must be the first thing,” he tells his dad.

How does he know?

Eddie debates with himself. “Is that okay?” 

“Yes, Dad, it’s okay…” Christopher rolls his eyes and Eddie has more than one million questions but he knows better than to ask them now.

He’ll take what he can get. And then he’ll deal.

Buck’s touch has become such an integral part of Eddie’s life that he only realized he was missing it when they couldn’t see each other because of the stupid lawsuit. And that more or less happened with Buck’s facts, Buck’s voice, and his actions in general.

As time has gone by, Eddie has found himself addicted to Buck, but the universe has been cruel enough to make him realize why at the worst of times.

Now, Eddie wants to cry every time Buck’s hand twitches. Because of course, it’s a reflex, but his heart breaks a little every time Buck doesn’t actually open his eyes.

He doesn’t say much, he just stays glued to Buck’s side, leaving the room only for Maddie. Then he’s usually on the chair by the bed, or on the bed itself. 

And he doesn’t talk to Buck. He has just begged him to be okay and to forgive him because he wasn’t there and he’ll never forgive himself. 

Then he just stays there and takes his hand and squeezes it and then brushes his fingers through Buck’s hair and then fights the urge to kiss his birthmark.

He breaks down on the third day, when he’s probably slept a grand total of twelve hours after the first full night of sleep in Texas, and the doctor decides they can wean Buck off the sedatives.

The first time Buck blinks, Eddie is alone with him and he’s sure he’ll end up in another hospital bed because of how fast his heart is beating. Maybe it’ll crack a rib. 

He calls a nurse, and Buck blinks some more, but he doesn’t look at Eddie, he seems to be looking right through him. 

Please come back to me.

“Why isn’t he speaking? Why–”

They get him out with a gentle “Sir, please, wait outside.”

It turns out that Buck’s pupils respond to light, and he apparently hears them but maybe– his brain isn’t processing things? 

Eddie doesn’t know but he starts panicking, at least until they let him back inside.

“It’s normal for patients like him to be slowly regaining consciousness, don’t stress him but don’t worry about it too much,” the doctor eventually tells him.

Eddie nods. 

I’ll just sit here and die inside, thanks, he thinks.

He breaks down because he asks Buck to blink and raise a hand and Buck does as told but the moment Eddie tries to tell him anything else, his stare is painfully blank. 

“Can you say anything?” He pleads.

Don’t stress him echoes in his head.

“Anything at all, please.”

But Buck doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, just blinks and turns his head towards him but then closes his eyes again and Eddie kind of awkwardly hugs him sideways, burying his face between the pillow and Buck’s neck, and cries.

“Please,” he weeps. “Please, baby,” he whispers brokenly, like it’s a secret between him and the universe and Buck doesn’t have to know but the universe has to bring Buck back to him.

Eddie spends half of the day sitting outside Buck’s room, staring into the void, not even bothering with eating, while Bobby and Maddie keep Buck company with a sympathetic smile. 

And he feels horrible. But he’s tired of crying and if he sees more of Buck's unresponsive behavior, he’ll start sobbing again.

Then, when he’s worked up the courage to go to grab a cup of coffee, Maddie comes looking for him.

“He’s looking for me? He asked about me?” His strangled voice must sound funny, or maybe it’s his eyes that look like they’re about to bulge out of his head, because Maddie chuckles.

“Yeah, Eddie, he is.”

And Eddie runs.

“Buck,” he breathes out as soon as Buck turns to him with a tired grin ready to split his gorgeous face into two. 

“You’re here?” 

Eddie wants to smooth Buck’s frown with his lips, yell at him that of fucking course he’s here — where else should he be? — and then yell some more because if a building is about to collapse, you run out of it, for God’s sake, why stalling? 

Instead, all he does is launch himself at Buck and cradle his head with one arm, squeezing his face into his chest, until Buck starts chuckling. He hears it against his chest, vibrating, full of fucking life, impossibly warm, sweet. 

“Buck,” he sobs, in Buck’s hair, and that’s so new, that maybe he won’t even have to worry about any possible love declarations, because as much as they’ve been close, attached at the hip, and maybe acting like a pair of codependent lovers, their actions never reached such extent. They’ve never gone so far. 

This is probably what each one of them would have wanted after every brush with death of theirs, but everything they denied themselves all the same, for some reason.

Buck clings to the back of Eddie’s hoodie with his good hand. It becomes a fist. He doesn’t want to let go. “You’re here, I–” he slurs, voice still hoarse from days of disuse.

“Eddie.”

Eddie shivers and feels his own blood tremble in his veins, dancing with happiness, pure and unadulterated.

He pulls away just to look at him, to lock eyes with him, and suddenly the best thing that has ever happened to him is there in front of him. It’s clear as day.

Eddie knows that he loves Christopher more than anything, more than life itself, probably. That’s implied. So if he lets that out, Buck is just the best thing that has ever happened to him, the best he’ll ever have. 

And he wants.

He’s just… he’s paralyzed with fear.

But Buck is not. Buck has come back from the dead yet another time and the man he wants is in his arms and he will go and take him.

Eddie feels the fist that was on his back slowly dissolve into a caress until that hand slowly crawls along his chest and then makes it to his face, his cheek.

He’s been shaking since Buck asked for him and then saw him awake and alert, but now he’s trembling for a whole new reason. The adrenaline that courses through his veins is new and all-encompassing. He leans down so faintly, like he’s drawn to Buck like a magnet, and closes his eyes because suddenly everything is too much, in the best way possible.

“You’re okay, you’re really okay?” He pleads, whispering ever so softly, while a lone tear drops from his eye and falls on Buck’s cheekbone.

He feels a bucket of tears press behind his eyeballs but he doesn’t have the time to cry again because Buck slightly leans forward, pushing himself up a little, to kiss him. 

Buck’s breath hitches, even if he is the one who kissed Eddie. 

He feels warm all over, the pain in his arm long forgotten, the fear that he’d never have this just a distant memory. His lungs are clenching around the air he’s desperately trying to breathe in but there’s something that’s much better than ordinary oxygen and that is Eddie. Eddie who is kissing him so tender and apprehensive at first, but who then dives in and turns the kiss into something languid and desperate. 

It’s gonna be okay.

It’ll all work out, in the end.

He’s still so gentle, even while their lips devour each other. His fingers are tangled in Buck’s hair from one hand, while with the other one he starts touching him all over, starting with brushing his thumb on his birthmark, so softly that Buck is sure he will melt. 

His stomach feels all tingly and he wishes he had both his hands to hug Eddie, to drag him down onto him and squish them together, and his desperation, his raw desire to feel him all over him must be obvious, because Eddie ends up breaking the kiss to chuckle against his lips and Buck thinks he must have died and gone to heaven because there’s no way that this is his life, that this is how he gets to feel, what he gets to have. He gets to love his best friend. 

“Baby,” Eddie laughs, pulling away, because Buck looks so dazzled and blown away when he opens his eyes and Eddie can’t believe that he’s finally figured it out, figured everything out. 

Buck’s eyes are watery, and Eddie’s are full of unshed tears, but unlike the last time both cried, they couldn’t be happier, now. 

Eddie’s forehead ends up brushing against Buck’s cheek, making him snap out of his trance. He chuckles so happily, sighs, hugs Eddie a bit tighter, and takes a deep breath. 

He loves this man so fucking much he wants to shout it from this hospital rooftop.

“I’m okay, Eddie, breathe,” he tells him because he knows why Eddie is reacting like this. 

Eddie nods and takes advantage of his position to kiss his neck again and again until Buck is laughing, begging him to stop.

“Eddie, you’re tickling me, c’mon–”

Eddie shakes his head, smiles against Buck’s soft skin, and keeps trailing kisses along his neck until he reaches his jaw and then goes back to his mouth, but he doesn’t kiss him, he just stays there with their lips brushing against one another, breathing him in until he can’t keep it down anymore.

“I– I love you, not– not like,” he pulls back because he thinks he has to look into Buck’s eyes for this. 

Buck’s eyes are dancing with mischief though. He’s grinning like a young, young boy, but he looks so happy that Eddie will take anything just to get this look on him.

“Not like– I’m your friend Eddie, you know?”

Eddie knows this must sound ridiculous, but he’s suddenly so nervous. His hands are sweating, clammy, and cold, and he wishes that somehow Buck just understood the magnitude of his feelings, without him needing to fumble over words like a schoolboy with his first crush.

Buck is just staring at him though, amused, with his head tilted and his good hand squeezing Eddie’s. 

“I love you like– like I need you in the room all the time, you know?” Eddie grimaces, because he’s suddenly reminded of all the FaceTime calls they had while he was in Texas and thinks he doesn’t want that ever again. “Like, if you could just– stay always with me, I would be okay with that– I– I want that.”

He’s launching into another weird confession but Buck has mercy, and however, he desperately needs to kiss him after this declaration. 

He tugs on Eddie’s hand to bring him closer. “I love you too,” he mumbles, smiling, while a part of him thinks that for a second, while he was impaled in that parking lot, he wasn’t sure he’d get Eddie to hear these words.

Eddie’s heart is beating wildly while he asks for useless clarification. “Like– like–”

Buck fondly rolls his eyes. “Like I want you in the room all the time, like I was dying and all I could think about was that I hadn’t told you that you are loved, so much loved, Eddie.”

Eddie stays still and silent for a few seconds, until his tears finally start spilling freely down his cheeks relentlessly, until Buck brings him down to his chest, half on his shoulder, where his presence doesn’t bother the bandages. 

Buck kisses his head and leaves a succession of kisses in his hair. “I love you so much,” he whispers. 

Eddie closes his eyes and thinks that he wants to marry his best friend; maybe he needs to be Buck’s husband like he needs oxygen, but he’s going to tell him later. 

They have time.

It’s gonna be okay.

It’ll all work out, in the end.

Buck nearly bawls his eyes out when Eddie tells him that Christopher wants to come home, Eddie nearly bawls his eyes out when the doctors tell them that Buck can come home.

“Babe, would you stop?” 

Buck sounds fondly exasperated while he looks at Eddie who tries to keep a semblance of calm. He takes his hand and pulls him until Eddie’s sitting on his bed.

“Can you– uh, would you come with me to get Chris?” Then Eddie asks because there’s nothing he wants as much as being with the two of them together. 

But Buck smiles at him and shakes his head. “You know it’d take too long, Eds, c’mon, I’ll be fine.”

“They’re discharging you tomorrow, Buck, he can wait a week or so, can’t he?” 

The other man comically chuckles, and kisses Eddie right between his nose and his upper lip, just because he can, now. It’s uncentered and hurried, the kind of kiss you get when you know you have all the time in the world to add another one and then another one and yet another one.

“You know you want him home right now, Eddie, I’ll be on your couch waiting, you can even get someone to babysit me, okay?” Buck offers.

Eddie’s face lights up. “Really?”

Buck huffs. “Well, if you have to, I’ll take that, yeah.” He rolls his eyes a little but he means it. Maybe he’d do the same if the roles were reversed.

Eddie’s hands are shaking when he goes to pick up Buck from the hospital. He feels like, ever since he got the phone call about Buck’s accident, his hands haven’t stopped shaking, if he’s honest. But it’s okay. Buck makes him feel like a teenager in love for the first time. Maybe he is in love for the first time, but he won’t dwell on the thought too much. It doesn’t matter. What matters is Buck.

His mind is a scrambled mess of Buck Buck Buck, but it’s all happy and carefree. 

It’s something incredibly new, for Eddie.

He’s still the same, and yet a whole new man.

“Hey, Buck.”

Buck is sitting on the edge of the bed, feet dangling off the mattress, looking like an adorable grown child rather than the six-foot-two huge man that he is, and Eddie is devastatingly in love with him, so he takes a moment to appreciate the view before approaching him.

“Hey, Eddie,” Buck’s face breaks into a smile, bright and happy, slightly teasing.

“What are you doing there?” Then he frowns because he’s apparently waiting for his kiss and Eddie is stalling.

Eddie cackles when he theatrically exposes his cheek and taps it with a finger. “I’m waiting, Edmundo.”

“Call me Edmundo one more time and watch me as I’ll never kiss you ever again, Buckley.”

Eddie closes the distance between them in two strides and keeps laughing even when Buck’s good arm wraps around his hips, dragging him closer, when he wraps his own arms around Buck’s neck when Buck laughs like a brat and teases him.

“And who should believe that?”

Eddie shuts him up with a kiss, soft and syrupy, strokes his cheeks and then his birthmark, then just rests their foreheads together and breathes in. “I– I’m so,” he exhales, sighs, and suddenly feels all choked up. 

“Baby?”

Buck found out that he blatantly loves using pet names for Eddie, he’s been calling him baby and babe approximately since the day after they kissed the first time. And he plans on doing so forever. Because Eddie is his best friend, but there’s something about calling him baby that reminds him that he was so lucky to get his best friend and the love of his life rolled into one.

Eddie seems to like it, anyway. So Buck feels free to call him however he likes.

Eddie shrugs and smiles a little. “I just– I thought I had lost you, and now… I’m glad that you’re okay, Buck, I love you, like I really love you…”

Buck almost giggles. “Yeah, you only told me a thousand times.”

“Fuck you, Buck.”

It’s gonna be okay.

It’ll all work out, in the end. 

Buck is laughing his head off in Eddie’s arms and Eddie is free to kiss his face wherever he wants. And he does. 

They’re going home and Buck is staying with him indefinitely. 

Christopher is coming home.

Eddie is home.

Eddie’s sleep has always been troubled, but ever since the whole mess with Christopher happened, he couldn’t get one night of sleep without incurring at least one nightmare.

The worst thing has been falling asleep, partly because he didn’t want to fall asleep because he knew he would dream and partly because he just couldn’t shut his brain off. 

That’s why he doesn’t remember the last time he slept peacefully, the last time he woke up and felt relaxed, and refreshed. 

Now, though, Buck is lying sideways on the bed between his legs, back pressed against his chest, Eddie’s laptop with a movie long forgotten somewhere on the mattress, and Eddie is struggling to keep his eyes open.

Buck’s unruly curls tickle his nose and his sweet, familiar smell is suffocating him in the best way possible, his arms are tightly wrapped against him and Eddie feels so warm that he fears he’s going to melt soon, turning into liquid syrupy mush, sunshine warmth spreading through him. 

“You sleeping?” He murmurs against the shell of Buck’s ear out of nowhere, before sleep claims him.

“Uh– nah…” Buck tells him, squeezing one of his hands with the only hand he can use. 

He is, Eddie fondly thinks.

“I’m sorry I left, you know?” He says anyway.

The blanket that’s covering them is slowly slipping away so Eddie takes the chance to pull it back up again, but Buck turns slightly in his arms as much as he can, shuffling it around in the process.

“What?” He frowns.

“I mean… when I went to Texas, I’m sorry,” Eddie elaborates, without moving an inch. In fact, he presses more into Buck, basking in the warmth he radiates and the blanket cocoon they ended up in. 

“Eds, look at me.”

“When they– when they called me, I– I lost it,” Eddie keeps going, trying his hardest to not cry. His voice wavers though, and Buck wishes his right arm weren’t stuck in a cast, so he could swipe a thumb over Eddie’s lower lip. 

“It’s okay, I’m okay, we’re here, look, this is better than FaceTime, right?” 

Buck tries to lighten the mood and Eddie falls for it. He laughs, pressing a kiss on Buck’s birthmark. “I never want to FaceTime you ever again,” he solemnly vows.

“Wow, Eddie, that’s harsh… was it something that I did?” Buck pretends to be offended, and Eddie fondly huffs, chuckling before adjusting their position so that Buck is back with his back pressed against his chest.

“You’re not allowed to leave me ever again, Buck, so no need for FaceTime,” Eddie explains, with a kiss on the back of his head.

“Fair warning though,” Buck jokes. “I’m a lot of work.”

He’s joking but he’s also pretty serious and Eddie is an expert in everything Buck, so he just tightens his hold and “Yeah, yeah, but mine, don’t worry,” adds, making Buck release a relaxed puff of breath.

After all, he’s already planning on marrying Buck, what’s “a lot of work” going to do to deter him from having this? He’s already planning to ask him to move in as soon as Christopher is under the same roof as theirs. 

“I love you, Eds.”

“Yeah, but I love you more, Buckley.”

They both chuckle at that, but not once second-guess the sentiment behind their words. They’ve known that’s their truth ever since day one. 

It’s okay.

It all worked out, in the end.