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As soon as the squad car drove away, sirens wailing, Eddie pulled him into a tight embrace.
Buck hugged him back, a little bemused, and patted his shoulder a few times.
“What was that all about?” he said, when Eddie finally released him.
“There was a gun pointed at your head,” Eddie said, in the tone of voice he employed when Buck was being exceptionally thick. “You could’ve been shot.”
“Oh, that.” His heart might have skipped a beat or two when Lola produced the pistol, but he hadn’t been afraid for his life or anything. He’d even felt a little comical, standing up there in the classic hands-up-don’t-shoot pose, at the mercy of a middle-aged woman in a bathrobe. And then they’d locked eyes, him and Lola, and he knew her.
He hadn’t been lying. He knew exactly how she felt.
Only difference was, Lola had gotten her big romantic happy ending. Even if she was taken away in handcuffs afterward.
Eddie was still staring at him, looking pissed as hell.
“She didn’t mean any harm,” Buck said. “She wouldn’t have pulled the trigger on me.”
“She was out of her goddamn mind,” Eddie snapped, stuffing his stethoscope back in his bag. “You have no idea what she was capable of.”
“Simmer down there, Eds. No harm, no foul.”
“You really piss me off sometimes, Buckley, you know that?” Eddie stalked off towards the ladder truck, and Buck jogged after him, utterly perplexed.
“Eddie—”
Eddie spun around so sharply that Buck collided with him, and they had to clutch at each other to regain their balance. Buck thought he could hear Hen snickering from the sidelines. Eddie pushed him away gently enough, only to take a step back and fold his arms.
Buck mirrored him unconsciously, tucking his hands behind his biceps and squaring his shoulders.
“I mean, Jesus, Evan, do you even know what a gun is?” Eddie demanded, and Buck wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke shoot out of his nostrils.
But he got it now, at least he thought did. Eddie was a soldier, he’d been to war, and in warzones, people shot to kill. They didn’t wave guns around for fun, or because their husbands didn’t see them the way they wanted to be seen. Eddie thought he was being cavalier about it, Adrenaline Junkie Buckley, with his nine lives and his stupid blind faith in his own unassailability.
“It’s not that I wasn’t taking it seriously,” he said. “I just knew where Lola was coming from, okay? It was like intuition or something. I knew she wasn’t gonna shoot me.”
“You can never know, Buck,” Eddie said, but he sounded slightly mollified. “You did a nice job with her, though. You were like a hostage negotiator, the way you talked her down.”
“Thanks man. But I was just, you know, being honest. Speaking from the heart.”
Eddie rolled his eyes.
“I mean, the stakes aren’t always life or death, even in our line of work.” He knew he was on thin ice here, doling out advice. Sure, he’d been on the job a year longer than Eddie had, but Eddie was also a good three years older than him, and a decorated combat veteran. “Like, sometimes you just gotta meet people on their level. Lola wasn’t the Taliban or an enemy combatant, she just wanted somebody listen to her, look her in the eye, and tell her things were gonna be okay. And—and you can do that here, ’cause this is Los Angeles, not Fallujah.”
“Fallujah is in Iraq, you fucking moron.” But Eddie was grinning as he said it, and he clapped Buck warmly on the shoulder as he walked away.
They sat next to each other on the ride back to the station, as had become their custom. Bobby, Chimney, and Hen were surprisingly complimentary of his performance up there on the bridge, and if Eddie disagreed with them, he kept his thoughts to himself. Buck preened under the attention, of course he did; it was rare enough that one of them said “good job” without also calling him reckless or stupid or insubordinate in the same breath.
“Well, when push came to shove, it was Norman who really saved the day,” he said modestly. “But what the hell was that whole, like, performance? With the song? Was that supposed to mean something?”
Chim and Hen exchanged incredulous glances.
“Oh, c’mon, Buck!” Chim exclaimed. “Say Anything?”
“Say what?”
“Say Anything! Cameron Crowe, 1989, starring John Cusack? The boombox scene?”
Buck looked over at Eddie, who shrugged back at him, just as clueless.
“You guys are killing me!” Chimney groaned. “It’s a classic. Seriously, do yourselves a favor, go home and watch it tonight.”
*
“Well?” he said later, as they were changing out of their uniforms. “What d’you say, we grab some takeout and have a movie night with Christopher? See if it lives up to the hype?”
Eddie smiled, his eyes going soft and tender the way they always did when Buck suggested an activity with Christopher. “I’d like that,” he said. “But we better check that it’s appropriate for him first, don’t need any more nightmares after the Watership Down fiasco.”
“The Watership Down fiasco?”
“My abuelita got him the DVD ’cause she thought it was a cute animated movie about rabbits. Turns out it’s a super violent allegory about war. Chris has been afraid of rabbits ever since; he still has nightmares about sweet little bunnies tearing each other to ribbons.”
“Jesus, really?” Buck didn’t like the sound of that.
“Abuela felt really terrible about the whole thing. She doesn’t read English very well, so she looked at the back of the box and thought it was some kind of fairytale.” Eddie was scrolling on his phone. “Okay, says here it’s rated PG-13 for sexual content, language, and ‘mature themes.’”
“Oh.” Buck’s heart sank, his vision for a perfect evening with the Diaz family going up in a puff of smoke. “Too much for him?”
“Yeah, probably. But it’s fine, we can watch it after he goes to bed. And if it gets too late, you know you’re welcome to stay over.”
Buck brightened instantly.
He followed Eddie home in his jeep. They stopped off for Chinese, ordering all of Christopher’s favorites, and picked up a six-pack for later. Christopher was ecstatic to see them both, flinging his crutches away so he could wrap his arms around Buck’s neck. Buck lived for Christopher’s hugs, he really did. Nobody was ever happier to see him than Christopher was, and that kid had the most infectious smile, his throaty little giggle almost bringing tears to Buck’s eyes, every damn time.
“How was school, Superman?”
“It was great! In art class we made papier-mâché puppets, and mine was Wolverine! The googly eyes kept falling off, but Ms. Stevens said she’d fix them with a glue gun.”
“That’s awesome, buddy.” Buck rummaged through the cupboards, getting out plates and glasses. “I can’t wait to see your Wolverine. After you bring him home, we can put on a puppet show for your dad.”
“You’ll help with the voices?”
“I’ll help with the voices.”
He winked at Eddie over Christopher’s head. But Eddie wore the strangest expression on his face, like he’d just pinched a nerve.
“If your dad says it’s okay,” Buck amended hastily, wondering if he’d crossed some kind of invisible line.
Something flickered in the depths of Eddie’s dark eyes. Then he seemed to shake off whatever was bothering him. “Dad says it’s great.”
Buck narrowed his own eyes at Eddie, not quite believing him, but Eddie had busied himself with unparceling their food. The moment passed, buried in a flurry of excited chatter from Christopher as he regaled them with stories from his day, and Buck and Eddie gave him an abridged version of the Lola incident, leaving out the public nudity and assault charges.
Chris was less happy when he realized they were going to keep hanging out after he went to bed, and petitioned strongly to be allowed to join them. But Eddie remained firm. A tantrum was brewing when Buck suddenly remembered the present he’d picked up for Christopher the other day and dashed out to his jeep to retrieve it. It was an illustrated copy of The Wind in the Willows, a book he’d loved as a child and honestly still kind of did.
He read the first chapter to Chris, doing all the voices, Mole and Rat, and then stepped back to let Eddie kiss his son goodnight and switch off the light.
“Well played,” Eddie said, when they were settled on the couch with the six-pack in front of them. “You’re a natural, voices and everything. And thank you, by the way. For the book. He’s gonna love it. Especially ‘cause you’re the one who gave it to him.”
Buck rubbed the back of his neck, feeling weirdly bashful all of a sudden. “I think Christopher might be my favorite person in the world.”
“Mine, too.” Eddie bumped their knees together. “Okay, let’s see if this flick lives up to the hype, yeah?”
It took Buck half an hour and a few beers to get into it properly; the movie seemed like your boilerplate teen rom-com, with the good girl falling for the well-meaning slacker. He and Eddie both perked up a little at the kickboxing scenes, wincing and whistling when John Cusack got his nose crushed, but there wasn’t much more to it than that. He wished John Cusack’s character would up his style game; did he really expect to get the girl wearing the same scuzzy band t-shirt every day? He’d never heard of The Clash. He looked them up on his phone during one of the boring parts when John Cusack was arguing with his friends and scrolled through song titles, some of which seemed familiar. He pressed play on one called “Rock the Casbah” and dimly recognized the opening riff; he’d definitely heard it somewhere.
Beside him, Eddie stiffened. “Can you not?”
“Sorry.” He hit pause and stuck his phone back in his pocket. Eddie didn’t usually complain if he talked during a movie, but maybe playing music was too much interference. “I got distracted, sorry, sometimes I fall into these holes where I can’t stop looking stuff up and—”
“It’s not that.” Eddie drummed his fingers against the armrest. “That, uh. That song. When I was in Afghanistan. They used to blast it in the helicopters taking off from Bagram. To, like, fuckin’ amp us up for combat and killing hajjis.”
“Eddie, shit.” He wanted to punch himself in the face. Eddie never volunteered anything about his service overseas. Buck had gotten the story of the silver star when they were tripping their balls off on LSD a couple months ago; Eddie hadn’t meant to tell him. The acid had tricked it out of him, and Buck respected that it was an accident. They hadn’t spoken of it since, even as they’d grown closer and taken root in each other’s lives. “I’m really fucking sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Eddie reached over, patted his leg. “Just took me by surprise, hearing it. I don’t mind the song. Army got it wrong, anyway. One day I looked up the lyrics, and it’s not even a war jam, it’s just about playing music.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, man, I watched the music video.”
Eddie let his hand rest on Buck’s knee a moment longer, as if to reassure him that he wasn’t mad. Buck bit his lip and nodded, and then Eddie took his hand away.
He felt his face heating up when John Cusack and the girl had sex in the back of the car, which was ridiculous because it was totally PG-13 sex. Like you could barely see anything; they’d gotten much more of an eyeful from Lola earlier that day. But it still felt kind of awkward, watching people have sex while sitting next to Eddie. He was acutely aware of Eddie’s solid presence beside him. Christopher usually sat between them when they watched a movie. He was hyperconscious Eddie’s hand, wrapped loosely around the neck of his bottle. Eddie’s thighs, splayed wide and easy, their knees just millimeters apart. Buck realized he was holding his breath, as if any slight movement on his part might attract Eddie’s attention, clue Eddie in to how freaking weird he was being right now, just because two movie characters were getting it on in the back of a car.
Then the scene ended, and he could breathe again.
Not long after, the girl, Diane, was telling John Cusack that maybe they should spend some time apart. Buck groaned in sympathy. “Tough break, dude.”
“He’ll get her back, man. They always do in the movies.”
“But not in real life?”
Eddie didn’t respond. Buck wondered if he was thinking about Shannon. Shannon had agreed to do the school interview; Eddie hadn’t disclosed anything more on the subject. Something had kept Buck from prying further, but maybe—
John Cusack was standing outside Diane’s window, holding a boombox over his head.
“Oh shit!” Buck punched Eddie’s arm. “That’s the—that’s the song, right? The one Norman played for Lola! I get it now, that’s what he was doing with Athena’s radio, he was recreating this scene!”
They laughed, fist-bumped.
“This song blows, though,” Buck said.
“It kinda does,” Eddie agreed.
“He should’ve picked something more upbeat.”
“’Rock the Casbah,’” Eddie said.
“It is pretty romantic, though.”
“Sure, if you go in for that kind of thing.”
“You didn’t think it was romantic?”
Eddie shrugged. “Big gestures don’t fix everything.”
“Hang on.” Buck was confused. “Are you talking about Norman or movie guy?”
Eddie shrugged again.
“Eddie?”
“Forget it, man.”
*
“Are you crying?” Eddie said as the credits were rolling.
“Absolutely not,” Buck said, blinking furiously. “I just… really love happy endings, okay?”
“I’m not sure that was a totally happy ending,” Eddie pointed out. “I mean like, her dad’s in prison. And how long do you think they’ll last, honestly?”
“Eddie,” Buck said, “you’re ruining it.”
Eddie slouched deeper into the sofa. He was doing the closed-off, clenched-jaw thing that meant Eddie at his most stubborn and intractable. It drove Buck nuts.
“You’re such a hater. Who hates happy endings? Only you, Edmundo, I swear you’re the only person on the planet who hates happy endings. You’re such a misanthropomorph.”
“I think you mean—…that’s definitely not the right word.”
“Whatever.”
“…misántropo.”
“That’s not English.”
“I can’t remember the English,” Eddie said. “Misántropo. My abuela’s been known to throw it at me before.”
“See, I’m right, even abuela agrees with me. You’re a total…”
“Misanthrope. There, that’s the English. My brain gets scrambled sometimes. Abuelita and Pepa are after me to speak more Spanish with Christopher, they’re afraid he’s not growing up bilingual enough.”
“You’re changing the subject,” Buck said. “We’re still talking about why you hate happy endings.” He knew he should let it go, irritating Eddie was never a good idea, but he was like a dog with a bone. “Is this about Shan—”
“I don’t hate them,” Eddie interrupted. “I just don’t think they’re very realistic, that’s all.” He drained the last of his beer and started picking at the label.
“Well, you have to work for them sometimes, but why not keep the hope alive?”
“And how did that work out for you, Buck?” Eddie asked. He didn’t say it meanly. Just like he already knew the answer.
“Badly,” Buck admitted.
“Yeah.”
“But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in them,” he ploughed on. “You never know, you know? If it’s gonna work out or not. But if you try, you might just get your happy ending.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Eddie said.
“You’re the worst.” He extended his arm across the back of the sofa, and to his surprise, Eddie rested his head back against it. This had never happened before. Chris was a great cuddler, so sometimes their limbs ended up tangled together as they snuggled Christopher between them. But he and Eddie didn’t… cuddle… just the two of them. It felt kind of nice, though, the weight of Eddie’s head on his arm. Comfortable. Easy. He studied Eddie’s profile from the corner of his eye. The jutting brow, the strong chin, the vulnerable expanse of his throat.
It felt fucking amazing, actually.
“I could fall asleep like this,” Eddie murmured. “Should we put another movie on?”