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The nightmares don't really keep Buck from sleeping. He'll wake up startled, with a ball of tangled, grey emotions in his gut, and have trouble going back to sleep.
But he sleeps. Just… not a whole lot. The sleep he does manage to get is never quality. Stressful dreams prevent your body from actually resting.
But he doesn't wake up screaming, or in a cold sweat, or crying. Sometimes he has shakes for a little while afterwards, but that's typically due to the intense environmental shift after a very bad dream.
His nightmares also aren't specific to his traumas. He doesn't have dreams about tasting Eddie's blood, or hearing gunshots, losing Chris in a tsunami, not finding Maddie in time. Instead, his dreams vaguely resemble feelings related to those moments. Mundane things that feel the same – losing Chris in a store, Eddie tripping, Maddie crying.
But of course, there are outliers in everything. They're just rare – that's what makes them outliers.
So when Eddie is drowning in snow, and Chris is being chased by a man that looks suspiciously like Buck's father, and Maddie is a little girl again, but with an adult Doug, vulnerable to his power and size, Buck wakes up in a panic.
He's still in bed, but his eyes fly open, and his breath feels hot, his lips and mouth dry. He knows that he has to distract himself, lest the images get stuck in his mind, so he sneaks out of the bunkroom and makes his way towards the kitchen.
He tries his hardest to lose himself in a podcast, but he can't bring himself to focus on it. He downs glass after glass of ice cold water as he stares out the window, into the light polluted LA skies.
When the bell rings, nobody questions Buck being the first in the truck.
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You forget the vast majority of your dream in the first ten minutes of being awake – as long as you don't try to recall it. The problem with a speedy mind and intrusive thoughts? You don't have to try to recall it. So he ends up with Doug's blood covered hands and Christopher's glasses around Eddie's neck and a myriad of other images in his head for the rest of the shift.
It still doesn't keep him from sleeping.
He does, however, wake up that night in the same situation.
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Buck rarely has nightmares that affect him like that, so having two in a row is extreme.
He's scared to go to bed the next night. Logically, he knows that being anxious about it nearly guarantees another bad night, but that thought has the opposite effect that Buck wanted it to.
So he tries to stay up, on his phone, on a wikipedia spiral until his eyes droop shut.
He wakes up again, except this time Box Jellyfish and Fukushima were part of the dream too. So much for distraction.
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After two weeks of restless nights, Buck finally gives in, allowing himself to relent to his immediate future of horrible sleep and increased anxiety.
Then he's crashing at the Diaz house, and he wakes up from a particularly bad dream regarding Christopher. He pulls out his phone and starts looking at photos before the realization hits him – Christopher is just down the hall. He could go check on him right now.
So he does. His sock clad feet step and slide over the floor as he quietly makes his way through the dark. When he gets to Christopher's room, he turns on the hallway light so he can see the young boy's face.
He's peacefully asleep. His nose is scrunched up, like something specific but not bad is happening in his dream. His hair disarray, his left foot hanging off the bed, his mouth open.
Then, from behind him, Buck hears an all too familiar sound. He hadn't noticed the shallow breathing coming from Eddie's room until it changed pace, slowing down but becoming ragged.
Buck knows that's what he sounds like when he wakes up from a bad dream.
So he turns off the hallway light and quietly makes his way over to Eddie's door, knocking lightly with his knuckle.
"Yeah?" Eddie's voice is soft and weak from the other side of the door.
"Can I come in?"
"Yeah."
Buck opens the door to find Eddie still laying down in bed, his hands balled into fists near his head and his bottom lip quivering. The blanket is askew, which is abnormal for Eddie, because he normally sleeps without much movement.
"What was it about?" Buck watches as Eddie hesitates.
"You. Don't wanna talk about it."
Buck huffs out a laugh. "Mine was about you, too. Mainly Chris, actually." We're fucking messes . "Could I…?" Buck gestures loosely towards the bed. He's not entirely sure what he's asking for, but he knows that close proximity would help him a lot.
"Yeah," Eddie breathes out. "That would be great." And he turns his back to Buck, facing the middle of the bed and lifting up the covers on the other side.
Buck rounds the bed, gently slipping himself under the covers and turning onto his side, looking at Eddie. From this close, he can see the thick gloss covering Eddie's eyes.
Buck shifts slightly closer. "Can we…?"
"Yeah," Eddie breathes again, "thank you."
Buck shifts closer and lets Eddie curl into his chest. It only takes a moment for their reservations to drop and for their arms to come up around each other.
Buck doesn't remember falling asleep, but he wakes up happy. In his arms is a sleeping Eddie, his breathing deep and even and a small smile on his face. Like this, with his body so pliant and his face completely smooth, you'd think Eddie has never experienced stress in his life. But Buck hears Chris clanging around, and he has to get up.
He leaves a secret kiss on Eddie's temple before he unwraps himself and gets up.
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"Buck?" Eddie walks into the kitchen, just having returned from taking Chris to school. Buck lowers the water so he can hear Eddie better while he continues doing the breakfast dishes.
"Yeah, man?"
"Last night… that was nice. It, uh. It helped. A lot." Buck's not surprised by the trepidation in Eddie's voice, but he is surprised by the fact that he's talking about his emotions and needs in the first place.
"Tell me about it. I haven't slept that good in weeks." Buck then considers for a moment, he hasn't slept that well in… "hell, months."
"I was wondering if…" Buck turns off the water and dries his hands off, turning his full attention to Eddie. Eddie's shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back again, hands both fidgeting from inside the pockets of his sweats. "Could we do that again?"
"Hell yeah."
"Tonight?"
Every night. "Yeah, for sure, Edds."
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Buck sleeps perfectly fine, his dreams still aren't dandelions and butterflies, but he doesn't feel the nasty ball of tangled grey in his soul when he wakes up. Eddie seems to be doing the same.
They don't talk about it, but they spend the next three nights together in Eddie's bed.
Buck hadn't realized how different it was, and how accustomed he had gotten to the bad dreams in the first place, until they're on shift. He wakes up from a relatively tame dream, Eddie being held at gunpoint by a man who somehow looks both like Doug and like Buck's father, and he wakes up hyperventilating.
He's never woken up that stressed after a nightmare. Not in a while, at least. It occurs to him that the nightly stress probably helped him get desensitized.
Before he can think about much more, there's a weight setting towards the foot of his bunk, and a hand resting over his ankle, through the blanket. "You okay?"
Of course Eddie would know. Eddie probably has a Buck Radar that pinged to wake him up. That's if he wasn't already awake from his own bad dream.
Buck lets out a sigh and whispers, "will be." Then Buck ponders on something for a moment before blindly reaching out into the pitch black and grazing Eddie with his fingertips. "Do you think you can…?"
Eddie quietly stands up and pulls back Buck's covers. The two of them barely fit in the bunk, but they've been pressed together for the last several nights anyway.
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When they're woken up by the bell, no one says anything.
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"Is it bad that I'm practically codependent on sleeping with you, now?"
Eddie laughs from his side of the kitchen table. "No. But I'm in the same boat, so I'm probably biased."
So they keep doing it.
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Chris doesn't say anything, either. He's young enough to accept changes without overthinking them too much, but he's old enough to know not to pry when he's curious. Buck's sure that Chris has wondered, but he's not saying anything. He just quietly moves Buck's spare toothbrush and hair gel to Eddie's bathroom.
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Buck.
In the haze of sleep, Buck feels a light pressure on his arm.
Buck.
The voice starts to sound like Eddie's, and the pressure starts to feel like a hand attempting to shake Buck awake.
Buck, please.
The broken sound in Eddie's voice is what finally snaps Buck into consciousness.
"Edds? Eddie, you okay?"
Through the dim lights in the bedroom, Buck can barely see Eddie shake his head.
"Shit. C'mere." Buck adjusts himself onto his back and manhandles Eddie's stiff body until he's laying on Buck. His hand comes up to clutch Buck's shirt, next to where his head is on Buck's chest, and Buck holds him as tight as he can without hurting him. "What happened?"
"It was bad, Buck."
"That's what I'm here for." Buck means it in every way. Buck starts rubbing his hand up and down Eddie's back, trying to soothe him with his words.
He doesn't even realize that he's doing it until Eddie questions it. "What's with the pattern, man?"
His hand stills for a moment on Eddie's back before continuing.
Pat, rub, scratch.
Buck chuckles to himself at the way his subconscious fluttered to that pattern, even though he's never used it on anyone before.
"Uh, Maddie…" Buck feels the corners of his lips twitch up. "When I was a kid, and I had nightmares. I'd go crawl in her bed. She would do this thing, we called it pat, rub, scratch , for obvious reasons." The obvious reason being that that's exactly what the movements are. Pat three times, rub three circles, scratch three times. Repeat.
Buck feels Eddie's cheeks broaden, like he's smiling into Buck's shirt. The smile is audible in Eddie's voice when he says, "I like it."
Buck feels something warm, akin to soulmate, flutter through his chest.
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"Be straight with me, Buck," Hen quietly says when they're alone.
"Don't think I could do that even if I wanted to," Buck snorts.
Hen smiles like a proud sister before continuing. "Fitting," she quietly says, more to herself. "Are you and Eddie a thing?"
"A thing like… a romantic thing?" Buck should probably be more taken off guard by the question, but he's not.
"Yeah."
"No."
"What's up with the bed sharing, then?" Hen's voice is soft and genuine, she's not skeptical or judgmental, just curious.
"It's a bad dream thing. The closeness helps. I don't really know how to explain it." Hen nods softly, understanding.
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Buck's not 100% sure what it is about sleeping with Eddie that makes his nights so much smoother. It could be the physical closeness, knowing he's not alone, the oxytocin released with the cuddles. The way he feels seen, and cared about, and loved. Buck knows that his love for Eddie comes into play here, he's just not sure how much.
After weeks of sharing a bed, Buck starts to realize that his love may not be one sided.
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He wakes up to stress stress stress. A bomb went off in the firehouse, Eddie was there, Eddie lost his leg. Chris was there too, drowning in the smoke, and Bobby was being held at gunpoint in the ambulance.
Before he's even aware of what's happening, he feels a familiar rub on his back. Then a scratch.
Pat, rub, scratch.
Eddie remembered…
Buck sniffles into Eddie's shoulder and shakes.
The environmental shift between an intense nightmare and reality often messes with Buck. But this? Waking up with Eddie doing the fucking thing?
The thing that Buck told him about once? Buck did it for him once? And here Eddie is, doing it for Buck. As Buck takes in everything around him, he begins to realize that Eddie probably started doing it while Buck was still asleep.
He lets out a sob.
"I love you." It's wet and muffled into Eddie's shoulder, and Buck can't even bring himself to feel any remorse about the slipped confession.
"I know," Eddie whispers. "I love you, too." Eddie pulls Buck closer, squeezing with his arm before continuing the pattern.
Buck falls asleep seamlessly.
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They don't address it the next morning. Buck really doesn't know how to. They go to work like usual, change like usual, work seamlessly together like usual, but Buck feels the shift.
That's how he knows it's real, and that they meant it the same way. Even without talking about it, Buck can feel the shifted energy around them.
Later that day, their touches start lingering. Hands fall on body parts that are more intimate than the situation requires. A hand on a hip as one walks by, a hand on a neck after fixing the collar of a shirt. Fingertips tracing patterns on a leg as heads fall together in the truck.
"I meant it," Buck whispers into Eddie's neck that night, when they're crammed into a bunk.
"I did too," Eddie quietly responds. Buck feels a kiss on the top of his head, and he nuzzles into Eddie's neck in response.
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"Let's go on a date," Buck suggests three nights later, in Eddie's bed.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Buck shifts under the covers and curls his limbs tighter around Eddie.
"Where?"
"I don't fucking care, Edds," Buck says softly.
Buck hears a soft chuckle from his friend. "We should make Bobby cook something for us. Dress up and have a candlelit dinner at home or at the apartment." Home or the apartment, Buck smiles at the implication.
"That sounds nice," Buck smiles into Eddie's bare chest.
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"I gotta talk to you about something…" Buck mentions, over dinner. They're both dressed up nice, Eddie in a dark button down and nice jeans, Buck in a pink button down and some khakis. They're in the loft – Carla at home with Chris – for their first date.
"Yeah?" Eddie's eyes light up, diverting his full attention to Buck and turning his palm over on the table for Buck to hold.
"My lease is up in six weeks."
Eddie hums and nods before responding, "was this place furnished? Or is the furniture yours?"
"All mine."
"Damn, we'll have to get a storage unit."
They... they didn't even discuss Buck moving in. Just the mention of his lease ending was enough for Eddie to agree.
It makes sense, they've spent weeks in the same bed – Eddie's bed – every night. Buck rarely comes here now. But still…
"...yeah?" Buck knows he sounds vulnerable and hopeful, his eyes start to blur, an obvious sign of glassiness.
Eddie's smile widens and he flips their hands over. He starts dancing his fingertips over Buck's wrist and palm as he says, "yeah. Of course."
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"Here's the HR paperwork, boys." Cap walks up to them with a folder in his hand. "There's also a form in there for Buck to change his personal address. Get these to me by the end of the day, please." Bobby pats Buck on the back and gives Eddie a look that resembles we'll be having the shovel talk, later, and heads back to his office.
"What was that?" Hen asks from the couch, eyeing them both skeptically.
"The HR paperwork for our relationship, it's mandatory," Eddie starts. "And Buck's moving in."
Buck shrugs with a smile when Hen turns her attention to him. "I thought you said you weren't a thing?"
"We weren't," Buck laughs. "Now we are."
Hen quietly mutters a "wow" before smiling wide and getting up to hug them each separately.
"Happy for you two."
Buck is happy too.
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After a long, grueling shift, Buck and Eddie pick up some fast food (that neither of them enjoy) and eat it on the way home.
After showers and changing, they lay in bed, neither of them able to sleep.
"Wasn't your fault," Eddie whispers into Buck's hair.
Buck stays quiet.
Then he feels it.
Pat pat pat
Rub rub rub
Scratch scratch scratch
And Buck lets out a silent sob. There's no tears, no loud sounds, but everything else that the body does when crying.
Eddie Eddie Eddie