Chapter Text
“Have you eaten anything yet?” Maddie closes the door to the loft with a soft click as Buck makes his way to the couch.
“No.” Buck puts his good arm on the cushions and levers himself slowly down. “Not since dinner last night. Not much of an appetite, though.”
Buck hears her sigh from the kitchen. “It’s quarter to four in the afternoon, Buck.” There’s silence, and Buck closes his eyes. “I’m gonna make you toast.”
He let the sounds of Maddie moving around his kitchen drift over him as he kicks his legs up on the coffee table. He’s exhausted. The house fire call had caught them just before shift change at eight AM, and then spending six hours in the hospital wasn’t exactly restful, either.
They’d done some x-rays to confirm what Chim, Hen, and Eddie had all told him already—a broken clavicle—and then he’d waited for a little while Eddie carried on a fairly one-sided conversation about the newest cartoon Christopher had gotten into. A nurse had come in to re-set his shoulder, during which Buck had gritted his teeth and squeezed Eddie’s hand so hard he was almost surprised he hadn’t crushed it. Then they’d waited some more, watching re-runs of Wheel of Fortune on the tiny TV in the corner and making horrible guesses, and Eddie hadn’t yet dropped his hand. Buck didn’t ask him to. Then he’d gotten fitted for a sling, and that was about when Maddie had shown up, followed quickly by Hen, Chim, and Bobby.
Maddie had fussed and worried for a little before setting out to get his discharge paperwork in order. Chim had cracked a joke about him being high as a kite (which—not as a kite), Hen had ruffled his hair and called him a big damn hero, and then they’d both left with promises to call tomorrow and check in. Bobby had not so much asked as informed Buck that he and Athena would be cooking dinner for him tomorrow night, and afterwards they’d talk about a timeline for when he was getting back to work. The explicit emphasis on when was a little heavy-handed, but Buck appreciated it more than he could say. Then, Bobby had turned to Eddie and said, “I’ll drive you back to the station so you can change and get your car.”
And Eddie had looked startled, for a second, and he’d looked at Bobby and then down at where he was holding Buck’s hand (still) and then at himself and the uniform he was still wearing, suspenders over the undershirt, heavy turnout coat draped over the back of his chair, and then back at Bobby. They stared at each other for so long that the loopy part of Buck wondered if they’d become telepathic and he just hadn’t noticed. Then Eddie sighed and said, “Yeah, okay,” and he’d squeezed Buck’s hand before he pulled away. “I’ll see you later,” he’d said, and if Buck wasn’t still being actively dosed with morphine he might have had an easier time deciphering the look on Eddie’s face, but then again—Eddie was pretty damn good at being unreadable, even to Buck.
But everyone had left, and Maddie had come back with a doctor and paperwork, and she’d driven him back to the loft and was now pressing a plate with buttered toast and sliced up strawberries into his single functional hand.
He immediately tears up.
“Shit—” Maddie crouches and puts her hands on his knees. “Buck, are you okay? What hurts?”
He sniffs, a little pathetically. “You sliced the strawberries.”
She furrows her brow, the concern still firmly there. “I always do that.”
“I know,” Buck says, and he wills himself to not cry but it seems to be futile. “You always slice them for me.”
Maddie’s face crumples a little and she brings a hand up to his face. “Oh, Evan,” she says, wiping the stray tears from his cheeks. “You’re still a little bit high, aren’t you?”
Buck nods. “Yeah,” he says thickly. She sits next to him on the couch while he eats his toast and strawberries with one hand.
“Chim told me what happened.” Maddie tucks a knee up and turns to face him. “How you saved that little kid.”
Buck shrugs his right shoulder carefully and takes another bite of toast.
“I bet his parents are really glad he’s okay.”
Buck blushes and looks down. “Maddie…” he trails off.
“I just mean—” She huffs, looking for the words. “I’m really proud of you.”
“Maddie.” So much for not crying.
“I am. You—I should say it more. And not just for being good at your job and saving people. I’m really proud of… who you are, and the people you’ve found.” She sighs and looks off to the side, remembering. “It used to be just me to patch you up. To take care of you. And I guess I knew, but I don’t think I really realized that it’s not just me, anymore.” She puts a hand on his leg. “I’m really proud of you. You have this whole big family that you found, and you made, and you held onto, and it’s beautiful.” She smiles at him, bright and a little wobbly around the edges.
“We,” he says. “We have this whole big family. It’s yours, too.” The smile wobbles more and Maddie carefully wraps an arm around him, hand on the back of head, tucking him under her chin the way she did when they were young. “I’m proud of us,” Buck mumbles into her shirt.
She laughs, it vibrates through her chest, and it sounds a little bit wet in a breathless, happy sort of way. “I’m proud of us, too.”
Maddie sticks around for about another hour, insisting on washing dishes and then aimlessly cleaning until Buck manages to convince her he’s fine and tells her to go home and have dinner with Chimney and Jee-Yun. She sets him up with a glass of water and his next dose of painkillers and kisses him on the cheek before she goes.
Buck aimlessly channel surfs for a little while—it’s that awful time of day where it’s too late to take a nap but he’s exhausted so he’ll hold out until 9 PM at least—until his phone buzzes next to him.
Edmundo
(7:36 PM) you’re STILL at the hospital???
Buck puzzles at the text for a minute before he responds.
no? discharged right after u left (7:37 PM)
maddie drove me home (7:37 PM)
He waits for a moment, but there’s no response, not even the three dots popping up to indicate typing. He sighs and drops his phone beside him, turning half his attention towards the episode of Forensic Files he’s ended up watching.
The other half of his attention is preoccupied with Eddie. (Which—some fraction of his attention is always preoccupied with Eddie. Has been since the day they met.) Because Eddie had been—not weird, at the hospital, or at least not weird enough to warrant the label weird. More like… a step to the left of regular Eddie. He was quieter, he hovered, a little, he wouldn’t stop holding Buck’s hand. Which, well, Buck isn’t stupid, he knows that explosion could have left him a lot worse off and Eddie cares about him and he’s just worried. Buck was much the same in the few weeks he stayed at the Diaz house after the shooting.
But Eddie had also kept looking at him. Long and lingering and heavy, and Buck had no idea what it meant. There were also the pointed looks exchanged with Bobby and the silent conversation over his head in the hospital when Bobby offered to drive Eddie back to the station, and—yeah. Buck’s a little preoccupied with Eddie.
He’s just about to send a text, some innocuous get home ok? that is easily construed as normal, friendly concern and definitely does not indicate the fact that Buck is literally always thinking about Eddie when—there’s a knock at the door.
Buck blinks. Who would be knocking on his door?
The knock comes again, not louder, or softer, just—there.
“Coming!” Buck yells, and he gets up off the couch, swings the door open with his right hand, and is face to face with— “Eddie.”
The man in question slips past Buck and into the apartment, careful not to brush his bad arm.
Buck stands still for a moment. “You have a key,” he says. He closes the door.
Eddie is standing in the center of the loft, facing away from him. Buck swallows. “Eddie,” he says again. “Why, uh, why are you here?” And then— “Oh, god, is Chris okay? Where—”
Eddie turns around. “Chris is fine. He’s at the—”
“—the sleepover at Dylan Price’s house, right. I totally forgot.”
Eddie gets a weird look on his face, lips parted and brow a little creased. “Right.”
Buck clears his throat. “So, uh. Not that I’m not, y’know, happy to see you, I’m always happy to see you, but… what are you doing here, man?”
Eddie blows out a breath and opens his mouth to answer, but Buck cuts him off.
“Are you mad at me? Because—Eddie, you were there, we did everything right, there wasn’t—”
“Am I—am I mad at you?” Eddie repeats incredulously. He shakes his head. “God, you’re such an idiot.”
Buck just stands there. He thinks—again—that he’s missed a step.
Eddie runs both his hands over his face, rubs his eyes like he does when he’s toeing the edge of overwhelmed. Buck feels untethered and a little helpless.
“I thought you were coming home,” Eddie says, ending on a quiet, rueful laugh. “I got home, and I thought you would be there, but you weren’t.”
Buck opens his mouth. It takes a moment for the words to come. “Did… you want me to be there?”
“Of course I wanted you to be there!” Eddie steps closer. “I always—” he swallows. “You almost died, Buck. You’re hurt.”
“Yeah,” Buck says slowly. “But I’m okay.”
“I know that,” Eddie replies, crossing his arms across his chest like he’s holding the two sides of his ribcage together. He takes a deep breath and looks up at the ceiling, screwing his mouth up to the side, working the words together in his mouth.
“Eddie.” Buck steps closer. He tentatively puts a hand on Eddie’s forearm. There’s a tense moment where Buck thinks he’s overstepped. Then, Eddie relaxes with a sigh, uncrossing his arms and catching Buck’s hand in one of his own, bringing his other arm up so that he’s cradling the hand in both of his own.
Buck, distantly, thinks that no one has ever held his hand like this. Eddie’s looking down at it, one thumb brushing methodically back and forth across his first knuckle, the other gently resting on the curve of his wrist. Eddie sighs and looks at Buck’s hand like it’s—Buck doesn’t even know what. He’s not sure he has words for it.
“The house exploded and you were just lying there.” Buck’s heart clenches. “You were right behind me, and then you were just lying there, and it was only a second but I swear—my vision went all blurry and I forgot how to breathe.”
“Eds…” Buck whispers, because he’s intimately familiar with that feeling, that all-encompassing terror, and he’s spent the last few years telling himself it was always an overreaction, a symptom of his too-big and too-squishy heart that he never figured out how to control.
Eddie stares resolutely down at their hands. “So, I just wanted to—have you, for a little while longer, because for a second there I thought I wasn’t ever going to be able to again.”
Buck feels like the world has stopped—like even the dust around them is suspended in midair, held in perfect limbo, weightless, not even daring to breathe.
But then the refrigerator kicks on somewhere off to Buck’s right. And Eddie is here, in Buck’s apartment. A car honks, outside. The TV volume is still on low.
“I love you,” Buck says. Eddie is here, in Buck’s apartment. He flips his hand and tangles his fingers in Eddie’s. “I’m okay.”
Eddie meets his gaze, a fledgling hope shining like something precious, hollow-boned and delicate, almost too fragile to look at.
Buck looks, he sees, he takes hold of it and breathes into it life anew. “You can have me,” he says.
The kiss is soft, and chaste, and nearly isn’t a kiss at all but a sharing of breath because they are both smiling too wide to do much kissing at all.
“Can I take you home?” Eddie whispers when they are leaning their foreheads against one another. “Let me take care of you.”
Buck nods, knowing that Eddie can see the way his chin wobbles even though he does his best to suppress it. He presses forward for another kiss.
Eddie meets him halfway.