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“We’re on drugs,” Buck tells him somberly. “That’s what Athena says. You ever been on them, Eds? Drugs?”
They’re sat on the floor of the locker room, where it’s cool and quiet.
“I’ve been… adjacent to drugs.” Eddie frowns. “Never tripped though.”
“Not even, like, peyote?”
“Racist much?”
“How is that racist? Peyote is indige—indigna—indignantgeous to southwestern Texas and so are you, Edmundo.”
“No peyote. Not really my… escena.”
“Your a-whata?”
“My…” Suddenly he can’t remember the English.
“Oh, your scene. I got you, dude, I’m very lingual.” Buck pats his thighs and guides Eddie’s head down to rest on his lap. It’s comfortable, maybe more comfortable than it should be. He looks up into Buck’s bright blue eyes, and his chest flutters like a cathedral full of bees.
Bees?
It’s cool in the locker room, but they’re both sweating like microwaved bread. Eddie searches for his hands, uncertain where they’ve gone to, and finds the left one clutching Buck’s wrist. He squints, wondering dimly if his fingernails owe him money.
Now there’s a strained cast to Buck’s face. “S’amatter?” he asks, wishing he could locate his right hand so he could use it to smooth out the worried line between Buck’s eyebrows.
“I’m trying not to yawn,” Buck says, through gritted teeth.
“Why?”
“’Cause then all the memories will get out.”
“I’ll help you find them in the morning,” Eddie promises. He’s finally tracked down his right hand, sitting idly on the floor, and he reaches up to untangle Buck’s eyebrows.
He jabs him in the eye instead.
“Fuck!” Buck yelps, flinching away, head slamming back against the lockers with an almighty bang. “What’d you do that for, Eds?”
“Eyebrows.”
“Oh.”
“We’ve been here a long time,” Eddie reflects, listening to the passage of time all around them. Empires crumble and glaciers melt, stars die and oceans evaporate, here on the dusty desert planes of Mother Earth, Madre Tierra, where hot eruptions of young love gift the miracle of life, children are born, children, Christopher among them, children born and raised, stricken infirm, and die of old age—
He bursts into tears. From the way his eyes ache, he guesses it’s not for the first time.
“What’s wrong, Eddie?” Buck is cradling his skull tenderly in his two big hands, and Eddie hides his wet face in Buck’s palm. “Tell me what the matter is, and we’ll fix it.”
“Christopher,” he chokes. “He’s gonna die, Buck. One day. Some day. He’ll die, he’ll fucking die, when he’s fucking old…”
“Don’t be stupid,” Buck snaps. “Christopher’s Superman. He’s never gonna die.”
Eddie nods. He sees the sense in that. “Don’t leave me alone with my thoughts,” he begs plaintively. “I’ve been alone with them the entire… Cretaceous period.”
“The Cretaceous period.” Buck nods wisely. “You mean the extinction event.”
“The asteroid.”
“In the Yucatán. Cooked the dinosaurs alive.”
“Mass extinction.”
“How’d you get out alive?” Buck asks.
“My family’s from Juárez,” he says.
“That’s good. I’m really glad, Eddie.”
“Me too.”
They lapse into silence. Buck runs gentle fingers through his hair, and he sighs with contentment. Everything is honey-slow and just as sweet. He raises his hand and this time he manages to stroke Buck’s forehead without putting his eye out. “Jesus Christ,” he says wonderingly, “your skin is soft.”
Buck flushes a charming pink, his skin growing hotter under Eddie’s palm. His mouth opens and closes a few times. Then he swallows and says thickly, “I love your face. I love your fucking face, man.”
Eddie melts like a glacier in the Arctic.
In fact, he liquefies so fast he wonders if he’s pissed himself, and he mentions as much to Buck.
Buck reaches down and paws at his crotch. “Nah, dude. You’re good. Totally dry.”
“Thanks, brother.”
“We should call 911,” Buck suggests, after they’ve passed a few more epochs in comfortable silence.
“We’re at 911,” Eddie reminds him. “We live there.”
Chimney materializes before them, a golden aura radiating from his skin.
“Officer Vasquez is going to drive you home,” he says, voice resonating strangely through space and time.
“But we are home,” Eddie says, from where he’s sprawled across Buck’s lap.
They’re hauled unceremoniously to their feet and escorted out of the locker room. “That’s Officer Vasquez,” Chimney says, indicating the uniformed officer waiting by the ladder truck. “Don’t give her too much trouble, you hear me, boys?”
Buck bounds across the firehouse, but Eddie finds himself still rooted to the spot. He clenches his entire head and focuses on moving… to no avail. He becomes extremely aware of his hands again, and how he hasn’t felt them in a long time. They’ve become detuned to static, which is inconvenient.
“Eddie, c’mon!” Buck calls. “You’re going home with me.”
Move. His legs start moving so abruptly that the air sings around him. Everyone is staring, and Eddie realizes he did it too fast. Easy there Usain Bolt, he tells himself, and self-corrects to a much slower pace. Watching his breath, nice and casual, yeah, you got this, amigo. Except now he’s moving too slow, isn’t he? But this is the speed he chose and he’s too mortified to change again and now it’s gonna take him five minutes to cross the room. He starts to panic. Buck and Chimney and Officer Vasquez are watching him, frowning and sweaty, traversing the 15 feet between them like it’s a wooden plank on the Crystal Maze.
Oh, Jesus.
Then he’s airborne, upside-down. Buck has him in a fireman’s hold and is sprinting them out of the firehouse, across the parking lot. Eddie’s mind escapes his body and watches their flight from somewhere high above, cheering them on.
When his mind and body reunite, he and Buck are belted into the back seat of a police cruiser. Buck and the cop—Officer Vasquez, he reminds himself—are exchanging inane pleasantries.
“… and that’s how I left the land of the giants and came to live among humans,” Buck says.
“That’s a very unusual origin story, Firefighter Buckley,” says the cop. “What about you, Diaz?”
“Wha—” his mouth is very dry, and he feels cornered. Why is she talking to him? He’s in the back of a police car; he must be in trouble. Doesn’t he have the right to remain silent? “Whataboutmewhat?”
“Oh, is that a Texas drawl I detect?”
And dawgs, you know Eddie’s down for the southwest solidarity vibe, he is, but this is the last thing he fucking needs right now.
“Yeshi,” he says with a goalkeeper’s glove in his mouth, lost somewhere between yes and sí.
“Mexican? First gen? Where’s your family from, hon?”
He has to think about it. “Jua,” he says, and stops. He just told Buck, it should be on the tip of his tongue. “Jua… Jua… JuaaaaAAAAaaarez,” he... yodels.
Por el amor de Dios. The other two are looking at him like he’s sprouted an extra head.
Officer Vasquez starts talking about growing up in San Antonio, about being a Chicana in law enforcement, about run-ins with ICE, Buck is nodding earnestly, serving I’m-Your-White-Ally face, and Eddie’s giving it his all, he really is, but he keeps losing the thread of what they’re saying. Now they’re going on about Los Angeles, so he starts nodding frantically, yes yes yes, and the cop is saying something about moving to LA, how it can be a real scenic change—escena, escena, his brain chants—but it can also be the making of you if you keep your eyes open to new experiences.
He’s pretty sure she’s talking about drugs.
She looks back at him in the mirror and asks him if LA is everything he thought it wou—
“YES I LIKE IT I THINK IT’S BUENO ME GUSTA”
He’s been paying such fierce attention that he mis-timed his reply and badly modulated his volume. Officer Vasquez flinches; Buck looks at him pityingly.
His sphincter contracts with shame.
Eddie’s still sweating profusely when the car finally stops and they stagger out of it, him and Buck. Eddie catches a glimpse of his reflection in the tinted window and recoils from the sight. When did he turn into such a mutant?
A mutant with a gland problem and low-grade arthritis in both legs.
They’re in an apartment now, or maybe they’ve fallen into a West Elm catalogue.
“It’s Abby’s place,” Buck says defensively.
“The vibes are off, man.”
They sit on the floor to laboriously unlace their boots, then come to an unspoken consensus that standing would entail too much effort so they crawl to the bedroom, still clutching the gigantic water bottles someone must have given them back at the station. Buck heaves himself onto the mattress then extends a hand down to Eddie, lying helpless on the floor like a beached whale. It takes their most enhanced maneuvers to get him up on the bed with Buck, but once he’s there, things calm down a little and the adrenaline begins to ebb.
“D’you think the dinosaurs will come back for revenge?” Buck whispers.
It’s a troubling thought.
Eddie zeroes in on Buck’s mouth and decides it’s really fucking exquisite, the most exquisite set of lips he’s ever seen on anybody, man or woman.
“What’s your body fat percentage?” Buck asks.
“…the fuck should I know?”
“You wanna listen to some music?”
He doesn’t recognize what’s coming out of Buck’s Bluetooth speaker, but it’s amazing and utterly profound. He feels warm and tingly and expansive, coasting along those psychic chasms of sound. He reaches for Buck and they cling to each other. Fingers digging into biceps, hard enough to bruise. He hasn’t had this kind of contact with anyone in… eternities. But god, he’s missed it. Buck isn’t his wife—hell, they’ve only known each other a few months—but that doesn’t seem to matter. He burrows into Buck’s warmth, tucking his face into the crook of his neck as they soar through dazzling, multihued soundscapes.
It’s an exhilarating journey.
Several Ice Ages later, they’re flat out on their backs, staring up at the ceiling, glassy-eyed and haunted.
“D’you think we’ll ever sleep again?” Buck says.
“I doubt it.”
“Fuck, dude.”
“My abuela’s gonna kill me when she hears about this.”
“Athena said it’s not our fault. We were dosed.”
“Still gonna kill me.” His eyes well up. “I miss Christopher. He’s just… he’s amazing, you know?”
“I really admire that kid.”
“He never complains, not even when… Tough kid.”
“Brave kid.”
They talk about Christopher for a long time. He can’t stop crying, but it’s okay because Buck wipes his tears away for him. Anyhow, they’re happy tears, because Chris is so fucking fantastic, and he’s so fucking lucky to be Chris’s dad, and Buck might be the best friend he’s ever had, his friend with the beautiful mouth and the bright blue eyes.
“Hey Eddie?”
“Yeah, Buck?”
“How’d you get your silver star?”
The words drop from Buck’s mouth like iridescent marbles. Eddie watches them roll away and disappear under the bed. How’d you get your silver star? He rummages through the detritus of his brain and extracts his stock answer. “I was only doing my job.”
“Bullshit,” Buck says, prodding him in the chest. “Cap said it’s awarded for exceptional valor or heroism in combat, so clearly you weren’t just doing your job.”
“I…”
He’s still flying, too high for this conversation. Gravity always lets him down when he needs it the most.
“I…”
The world flickers under a hail of anti-aircraft fire. He fumbles for the St Christopher medal, safe on its chain around his neck, and clutches it for dear life. Fighting with everything he’s got to keep the past at bay. The veil between then and now is porous in the best of times and this is emphatically not the best of times when he’s been tripping balls for god knows how long—
“Our helicopter was shot down in the desert.” He barely recognizes the voice coming out of his mouth. “I got my unit out before the insurgents blew it up. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Buck repeats. “Jesus Eddie, you saved them all.”
“Greggs died.” His chest caves in a little.
“Eddie—”
“I couldn’t leave him behind. But he died anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We were all shot to pieces. Pinned down. Out of ammo. Bleeding out. Enemy closing in. Christopher… I missed him the whole time I was over there, of course I did, but I missed him so bad when I was dying.”
“Except you didn’t die.”
“Rescue mission got there just in time.” The artillery fire is fainter now, just an echo in his mind. He kisses the medal and tucks it back under his shirt. “Chris kept me alive.”
“Damn right.” He doesn’t object when Buck slides a finger under the collar of his shirt and lifts the medal out again, rolling closer to study it.
“What is it? I’ve always wanted to ask.”
“Saint Christopher medallion. Shan—Chris’s mother gave it to me right after he was born. Patron saint of travelers, to bring me back home again.”
“Seems like it worked.”
“No, that was all Chris. Medal’s just a symbol to remind me.”
Eddie can’t remember the last time he’s talked this much. Talked about himself. He’s tripping, tongue loosened with chemicals, or else he’d never say this shit aloud. He never told Shannon how close he actually came to death that night in the desert, how he was saying goodbye to Christopher when the helicopters arrived.
And now he’s gone and told Buck.
His skin feels too tight. He pulls away.
“You okay, man?”
Eddie sits up, wondering if he’s about to hurl. Or cry again. Solid tears. Too big and hard to get out. They press back into his skull. He can only breathe with his mouth open. He wants to tell Buck that he only told him about Chris and dying and not dying because he’s fucked up right now. That Buck can never repeat this, ever, not to Bobby or Chim or Hen or anyone, because then everyone will look at him different when they know how weak he is on the inside.
“Eddie?”
He grunts. He’ll be sick if he opens his mouth.
There’s pressure on his hand.
He looks down. Buck is squeezing his fingers. He looks up. Buck’s eyes are on him, bright and steady, and suddenly Eddie knows with every fiber in his being that his secret is safe with Buck. The nausea recedes, and his skin stops throttling his bones.
There’s a greyish light filtering in through the blinds.
“Sun’s coming up,” he says.
Buck lets go of his fingers. “You want breakfast? I can make us breakfast.”
“I could eat,” Eddie says.
“Cool.” Buck springs into action. Eddie watches him hop out of bed and rifle through the dresser for a pair of sweats. He tosses another pair at Eddie, who slips them on, unable to recall when either of them took their pants off in the first place. He hopes it wasn’t before they got to Buck’s—Abby’s—apartment. Fleetingly, he wonders if it’s weird that he and Buck spent the last twelve hours together, without their pants, in Buck’s sort-of-ex-girlfriend’s bed. It’s only weird if you make it weird, Diaz, he tells himself, and follows Buck into the kitchen.
Buck is already cracking eggs into a skillet. “Give it another couple hours,” he says cheerfully, “and we’ll be safe and sober. I’ll drive you to your aunt’s to pick up Christopher, and then we can take him to school.”
Eddie stares at him, astonished by the sheer generosity of the offer. He meant to take an uber to the station and collect his truck, but with traffic there’s no way he’d make it to Pepa’s in time to catch Christopher before school. And here is Buck, Evan Buckley, offering up his morning like it’s nothing, so Eddie can see his son—
But Buck has turned scarlet and is busying himself with the eggshells. “You can take him to school, I didn’t mean to, like, invite myself along, I don’t have to come or anything, I know you wanna see Chris and it would probably be an imposition—”
“Buck.” He cuts through the babble. “Thank you. Chris will be over the moon. You’re all he talks about these days.”
“Yeah?” Buck smiles, and something warm and bright unfurls its wings inside Eddie’s chest. “Well, in that case, I’d be delighted.”