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Dr Copeland had told Buck, once, gently, that he has a tendency to hurt himself with intimacy. Who he’s intimate with; who he’s not. How he’s intimate with them. He’d wanted to laugh it off, but she’d also brought that up, too, and so he had just sat there quietly, thinking, bizarrely, of Dr Wells, the therapist who had told him that Devon was not his fault, and then rode him where he was sat on the couch.
“Maybe,” he had allowed, quietly.
Dr Copeland had smiled at him, a little sadly, like maybe she knew exactly what he was thinking. “I just want you to think about it,” she said.
And he had, even though he tried not to. Tried not to think about how Ali had been growing her hair out back to strawberry blond when she told him, “I need to go to Boston, for work,” and how he drove her to the airport, held her hand and told her he’d wait for her to get back. How he found girls through a dating app where he went by a pseudonym and his only profile picture was a shirtless mirror selfie with his face cropped out, and still asked them out for coffee afterwards. How they’d cup his cheek, touch a finger to where their lipstick had smudged against the side of his mouth; smile at him, sympathetically, like he was a little kid asking about death.
You were really good. But let’s not ruin it by getting to know each other.
How he’d curl his fingers into fists when he went to touch Eddie’s shoulder. How he’d claim the seat next to him in the firetruck every time, to brush their arms and knees together through their uniforms.
It’s something that sits in his head always, like a cobweb he can’t quite clear out just yet, but he doesn’t get it, not really, until he’s at a jewellery store, buying an engagement ring.
*
He doesn’t tell anyone. Mostly because he knows they’re gonna try to talk him out of it. He tells himself that they have no reason to know, that it’s his business, his life, his relationship, but he also knows he’s avoiding the looks too. He gets it, okay? It’s weird timing – Eddie’s just left, taking what feels like half of Buck with him, but this is—this is nothing to do with Eddie. This is Buck, wanting to propose to Taylor, because—
Because he loves her.
Eddie—Eddie has nothing to do with this.
He can almost picture the look on Maddie’s face, the person second only to Ed—to Taylor—who knows him best. Are you sure you’re doing this for the right reason? she’d say, only Maddie is somewhere halfway across the country, and she doesn’t know, and she doesn’t have to, not until Taylor’s said yes and there’s a ring around her finger and Buck can keep an arm around her waist at parties in the leather skirt she wears when she’s trying to be professional or make a good impression, feeling a little like the bars of the theme park ride he’d had pressed into his chest when Devon—
He is. He is doing this for the right reasons. He wants Taylor in his life forever. How is that so hard to understand?
So the jeweller smiles wide at him and says, “Who’s the lucky girl?” and Buck purposely doesn’t think about Eddie in his house across time, probably doing a movie night with Chris – Madagascar, most likely, because the last time they talked Chris was researching lemurs for a school project and Eddie likes Ben Stiller. They used to do movie nights together, the three of them, come hell or high water, no matter whether any of them had had a bad day or Buck and Eddie were on the rocks, Buck would still show up at six with take-out and ice cream—
The worst part is that Buck thinks if he asked, Eddie would still let him come. He’d say, of course. Chris misses you. Because it’s always about what Chris wants, how Chris missed him, how Chris can’t wait, and never about whether Eddie felt the same.
But Buck can’t. Because Eddie’s left the 118 but if Buck’s being honest, they weren’t really okay before then, either. Work had been the only thing connecting them: clock in, day in day out, side by side in the trenches. In his more selfish times Buck misses it, because it was the trenches that tore them apart in the first place, the same way the bullet tore open Eddie’s shoulder and Buck stood in front of him with his blood in his mouth, but—
But in the trenches they were them. They were Buck and Eddie. A team.
Buck’s not even sure they’re friends, right now.
He tells himself it’s why he doesn’t ask Eddie, about what he thinks. About whether he should propose or not. Eddie has never been Taylor’s biggest supporter, but he’s always been Buck’s. He’d give an honest answer; would be too selfless to think that this had anything to do with him.
Because it doesn’t.
But he can’t, now, because they’re not really speaking, not because they’re mad or angry, but because Eddie got shot and they didn’t talk about it and then they got held hostage and they didn’t talk about it and then Buck was in the hospital going out of his mind and heard another gunshot and they never fucking—
“Sir?”
It’s the jeweller. Buck blinks at her; realises he never answered.
Her smile comes a softer, now, brow creasing in the beginnings of concern. “Is everything okay, sir?”
Buck imagines kissing Taylor’s hand with the engagement ring on: imagines it would probably taste like Eddie’s blood. “Everything’s fine,” he says. “It’s for my girlfriend. Can I see that one?”
*
The ring is white-gold, with a cluster of tiny diamonds along the band. Maddie would probably like it; so would his mom. It matches Taylor’s favourite earrings, so Buck thinks she might too.
The jeweller offers it in a bridal set, which apparently means the wedding ring is included: can nestle directly above. A matching set. It’s probably more economical – something like buying breath mints or protein bars in bulk, the way Eddie does for that cereal brand that he hates but Buck and Chris love – but for some reason looking at the matching ring, the one he’ll slide onto Taylor’s hand at the wedding reception – the wedding reception, fuck – has something cold and a little numbing like panic spread in his chest. His mouth is open to say, “Yes,” but the jeweller takes one look at his face and gently puts the ring back down.
His relief is like an antiparalytic and nearly as crushing as his guilt. He pays, tucks the ring box in the pocket of his pants, and leaves. Then does a U-turn into the alley next door and has a panic attack.
Afterwards, he wonders if this is what it was like for Eddie with Ana, at the thought of a future together. Reckons that maybe all those movies and TV shows watched lied to him about love, if this is what it’s felt like for both of them.
Hates Eddie, for one moment, for being brave enough to say no.
*
It’s been weird, around the 118, without Eddie around. Buck’s always known that it was gonna be like this, constantly feeling the way he does when he’s walking down stairs and thinks there’s one more step than there really is and jolts his ankles hitting the ground prematurely, but it’s one thing to know it in theory and another entirely to know it in practice.
There are two new firefighters, now. Ramirez, a transfer from out-of-state – and Bosko, from the 136. Buck tries not to hate them on sight, but it’s a tricky thing, because Ramirez speaks with Eddie’s accent, and Bosko doesn’t stop looking at Buck, like she can unpeel the layers of him and get to the fleshy vulnerable undersides. The two of them were never friends – not even really acquaintances, and barely coworkers either, because she returned to the 136 almost as soon as Buck got his job back. But Buck knows that she and Eddie were, and pretty good ones.
She watches Buck too knowingly, eyes sharp. Buck wonders what Eddie told her about him: if he told her anything.
At dinner, he sits next to Hen and across from Bobby, the last two remnants of his family that haven’t fractured off and disappeared. Ravi is on his other side, chatting eagerly to Bobby about how he brought some of the leftover tandoori chicken from last shift back home and that his parents had both been decently impressed. “Mom says that you can just balance the kashmiri with yoghurt and sugar to balance the spiciness if you want to get the red colour without food dye,” he’s saying, “but Dad says that all the restaurants use food dye anyway.”
Bobby nods. “Do they toast the spices separately?”
“Mom usually just buys the pre-ground stuff.”
Bobby writes this down, in his little notepad. Chimney bought it for him for his birthday, mostly as a joke: a small spiral notepad that can fit in the palm of his hand, the cover reading FAMILY RECIPES! Bobby uses it all the time. Buck sort of wants to cry, looking at it now.
He’s had his time to grieve and rage and process. Now: now, he just misses his family.
“Man, am I glad I transferred here,” Ramirez says. “I’ve never had a captain cook for me before. Back at my old firehouse everyone used to bring their own separate dinners.”
He’s sat at the head, where Eddie used to sit. Buck knows it’s irrational to dislike him, but he does anyway.
“Well, we do things as a team here,” Bobby says. “I told myself that we weren’t going to be like the other firehouses: we were going to be a family.”
It’s a speech Buck’s heard him give before, and also usually the quickest way to get him teary-eyed. It’s kinda funny, but also not, because he spent most of his childhood feeling like a ghost in his own home, his parents always seeming to look right through him, or over his shoulder, like they were expecting someone else, so the fact that aged twenty-nine, seventeen jobs, two totalled cars and three countries under his belt, he finally found a place he belonged – it meant the world to him. These people aren’t just his coworkers, nor are they even just his friends. They’re his friends, forever and always.
But.
But Chimney’s not here. But Maddie’s not here. But Ramirez is sat in Eddie’s old seat and Bosko keeps looking at him like she knows something he doesn’t, like she’s waiting for him to crack, and—
Fuck. Eddie’s not here.
Buck should call him, tonight. Buck should call him, and tell him he misses him, and Chris, and his tiny messy kitchen with the burners that don’t switch on properly without a lighter and the cupboards that squeak when they open and his living room with the couch they’ve laughed and cried and slept on over probably dozens of times and Christopher’s bedroom and the fucking bathroom but mostly he misses the steadfast, sure knowledge that they were it, that no matter what happened they had each other, and each other’s backs, and—
And now Bobby is saying, “we were going to be a family” when half their family isn’t here, and Buck’s getting that itchy-crawly feeling again, that spreading, discomfiting numbness in his chest like when the jeweller offered the wedding ring as well, and Buck thinks that the movies and TV shows must have been lying about love, because this can’t be it, this can’t be it, this can’t fucking be it. There has to be more than this: than a sister who has left for the second time, a friend who has followed her and left the firehouse unsettlingly silent in his absence. More than a best friend who quietly slips from his life. Not in anger or fury or heartbreak, but apathy. A healed-over bullet wound, and Buck’s inability to drink red wine anymore.
He’s gonna propose tonight, he thinks. Taylor will be home: she’s not working tonight. He’ll make her dinner, light a candle. Offer her the ring, and then she’ll say yes, and he’ll slide the ring onto her finger, think of the wedding band that settles on top of it, and then it’s at least one forever he has secured. At least one thing he hasn’t fucked up.
But he doesn’t say any of that aloud. He just bites his lip, keeps quiet, and doesn’t text Eddie.
*
(The thing is, is this:
Buck really fucking misses his best friend.
He misses Eddie. He misses Christopher, and Carla, and Abuela, and Pepa, and he misses Eddie’s house, and Eddie’s hardass couch, and Eddie’s outdated DVD collection and how he burns water and lives off freezer meals, and he misses helping Chris with Math homework and cooking dinner with them and he misses staying up after Chris has gone to sleep in the living room, he and Eddie nursing beers, murmuring to each other until the sun has completely set and the room is only lit by the dull glow of the ceiling light, turned all the way down to low.
He misses being Eddie’s partner on calls. He misses being Eddie’s best friend off them. He misses being Eddie’s colleague, his confidant, his fucking co-parent, and it’s selfish to think, but on his worst days:
He hates him, just a little. Hates him for leaving. Hates him for not being selfish; for not sticking it out.
Hates him for being the kind of father Philip Buckley could never dream of becoming.
It’s irrational, just like his dislike for Ramirez and his wariness of Bosko and the fact that he can’t sleep much anymore, but, in his most private thoughts, on his worst days, he thinks that’s why he buys the ring. I think you might use intimacy to hurt yourself, Dr Copeland had told him, gently, and Buck didn’t get it, because he’s not Buck one-point-oh anymore, doesn’t sleep around, doesn’t look at women like they’re something to be sweet-talked into bed. And he likes sex, is good at it, too, probably the only thing other than fighting fires that he’s good at, only—
Only that’s probably it.
Because he—he misses Eddie, like he missed his leg, and his job, and his purpose after the fire-truck. He misses him not abstractly like he misses Daniel, but keenly, like he misses Maddie. He misses him enough to know that—
That—he loves him.
Because Buck has always shown up to love like he does to a barn fire: too late. Only in absence. And now he’s got an engagement ring like a lead stone in his pocket, for a girl who left him standing in a parking lot with his fly still unbuttoned, lips stinging, because he wasn’t enough for Eddie to stay.
He pulls over, on his way home because he thinks he’s having another panic attack, and rests his head against his steering wheel. Breathes a little bit, even though he kind of wants to die.
He should text Eddie. He should break up with Taylor. He should try Maddie one more time.
But he doesn’t do any of that. Just pulls himself together, pulls himself back on the road, and drives the rest of the way home.)
*
Taylor is wearing the leather skirt, when they have dinner. She’s just come from work: sat at his counter, twirling noodles expertly with chopsticks, while Buck fumbles with a fork. They’re in silence, the only sound the scrape of utensils against their plate, and it’s companionable, probably, comfortable, but Buck feels like he has a metal rope winding tighter and tighter around his neck. His food congeals halfway down his throat. Is he gonna throw up?
“They’ve put me on the story about those daytime robbers,” Taylor says. She’s holding a floret of broccolini between her chopsticks; her face is framed by two red strands of hair. She’s got a drawer in Buck’s dresser; Buck has two in Eddie’s. He can see the strap of her bra in the gaping collar of her shirt, hot-pink against her pale skin like an angry lash. She’s smooth there, collarbones cool like stone fountains.
Buck doesn’t think he knows her mother’s name. His hand slips, robotically, into the pocket of his pants.
“It’s a step up at least from weather,” she’s still saying, and then Buck slides the ring across the counter. “Though I can’t say I’ll miss the...”
Her eyes fall on the ring box, and the words fade. Her gaze stutters; goes wide, unseeing.
“You can’t say you’ll miss the…?” Buck says.
But something’s wrong, because she’s not smiling.
“Taylor?” he says, carefully.
“What—what are you doing?” Her face has gone pale. Her eyes are wide. She glances between him and the ring box. “What is that?”
No one can ever accuse Buck of being the most intelligent person in the room – but he knows that this isn’t going the way he’s planned. “It’s.”
It’s an engagement ring. I’m asking you to marry me.
The words stick in his throat; congeal, like glue.
“It’s,” he tries, again.
“Buck, what…”
“I’m,” Buck says, and the word lodges. “I’m. Asking you—”
“No.”
It comes out in an ugly burst. Buck blinks.
No.
“No,” he echoes.
In all of his planning, in all his agonising and deliberation and stressing, he hadn’t accounted for this. Hadn’t accounted for this: that she might not say yes.
“No,” Taylor says again, and it’s more determined this time, the final nail in the coffin. Her eyes are still a little wide: shock. Confusion. Something almost like anger. The trifecta of emotions you want to see on the girl you’re asking to spend the rest of your life with. “Why—”
She doesn’t finish her sentence. Buck isn’t really sure he wants her to.
He snaps the ring box closed, abruptly. It echoes, in his too-big, too-white kitchen. “No,” he says again. “Right. I’m—sorry.”
“Buck—”
“I’m just gonna—”
“Why are you doing this?”
She looks—mad, now. Angry. “What?”
“Why did you ask me that?”
“Why did I ask you to marry me?”
This is all going wrong. He had a plan, she wasn’t meant to say—
“You’re—you’re not meant to do this,” she says. “You can’t just spring this on me—”
“Spring? We live together—”
“Do you know how much bigger marriage is?”
Big. Lifelong. A commitment. “Kinda why I asked you.”
Her eyebrows draw in. She looks—devastated. Furious. “That’s not fair,” she says. “You can’t just—”
She stops. Buck thinks that maybe this is what it’s like to go fully numb. “Just what?”
“Is this what you want?” she says. “To marry me?”
“Of course I do! I just fucking asked you!”
“Do you? Really?”
He’ll hysterically think, later on, when he’s not in the thick of it, that this is probably shaping up to be the worst proposal in history.
“I’m going to ask you something,” she says, “and I want you to be really honest with me.”
He asked her to marry him, and she said no. He has nothing left to lose, after this. “Okay.”
“Do you love me?”
The question disarms him. Because his first instinct is yes, because they’ve been dating for six months, now, and Taylor stays around most nights, and they carpool to work sometimes, go grocery shopping, share a shower and a bed and a bathroom cabinet. His sheets smell of her; her clothes smell of him. (Except her leather skirt, which she gets dry-cleaned.) It is every instinct to say yes, because this—this is all he’s ever wanted, right?
“Of course I do,” he says. He feels himself getting mad now too. “Of course I love you, why would I want you to marry me—”
“You didn’t ask me if I even wanted this!”
He stares at her. “I… just did?”
“Not as a proposal! Ever! You—you never even asked me, before, if I would want this, if I would want—”
“If you would want a future with me?”
“Yes!” she shouts, and Buck reels backwards. His kitchen is not like Eddie’s: full of live and character, burnt peeling linoleum near the burners, yellow tiles, a fridge covered in magnets and photos. Buck’s kitchen is too shiny. There’s too much room for echo. He hears yes like a resounding smack. “We’re not—this wasn’t—we don’t want to get married! We were just having fun!”
“Fun,” Buck repeats. Somehow this hurts even more.
To her credit, her face falters. “If I had known—”
“I’m your boyfriend.”
“Not my husband!”
Buck is thirty-one this year. “I want a family, Taylor.”
“And you thought that I did too?”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t know if I ever want to get married.”
And Buck just proposed. With some distance, he can imagine finding this funny. Now, he sort of feels like someone is scooping his insides out. He doesn’t know if it’s grief or relief. “Right,” he says, a little hollowly.
For the first time, Taylor looks at him, really looks at him, and her face doesn’t soften, because she’s Taylor, but it does something close, the anger leaving it all at once in a rush. She carefully, hesitantly, reaches out, closes her hand over his forearm. Buck flinches at the contact, her hand at once too small and too cold and too smooth, and something complicated crosses her face. “I didn’t,” she says, and then nothing else, for a moment. “I didn’t think this was something you wanted.”
Buck exhales, humourlessly. “You know that I’ve been—”
“With me. I mean.”
And that—surprises him. “What?”
“This was—this was never going to be it for you, Buck.”
“You told me you loved me.”
“I do,” she says, and he believes her, because he thinks for the first time he’s realising that for Taylor Kelly, this is all she’s going to give. That he was waiting for a softness and affection that would never come. “And I think you actually might love me too. But we…”
“Were just having fun,” he finishes, flatly. “Yeah. You said.”
“Were never going to last,” she says, instead, which. Oh. “We’re not compatible, Buck. Not long-term. I thought you knew that.”
He blinks at her. “I—I just fucking proposed to you.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that now,” Taylor says, with an eye-roll, and it’s almost like he can pretend everything’s normal, the two of them playfully bitching at each other over dinner, but—it’s not, because it never has been, because they were apparently never compatible, not in the long-term, only—
Only, when she touched him, he felt like he was back in that bathroom stall. Felt like he was back standing in that carpark, still hard in his pants, belt still unbuckled. He slept with her because she was beautiful, and smart, and a little mean where Abby was soft and Ali was cute, had red hair and a name that didn’t begin with an A, but she slept with him because he was there. Because he would. Because it was convenient. “Better than my vibrator,” she’d said to him, afterwards, with a brisk dismissive pat to the chest as she one-handedly pulled her trousers back on, and had walked away without even giving him her number.
And sure, it’s been more than two years since then, a little less, since the carpark, but Buck can’t shake the feeling that not much has changed. That they share half a life with each other, but Taylor’s still holding him at arm’s length. He’s introduced as a boyfriend at work events, but as friend everywhere else. She doesn’t visit the firehouse; the one time he tried to visit her office to take her to lunch, she’d met him outside, jerked him off in his car and then disappeared back inside before he could even pull his pants back up.
The part of his brain he’s frozen numb since being with her unthaws a little. Like maybe it had known it all along.
I think you might use intimacy to hurt yourself. Fuck. What?
Taylor’s face gentles, just a little – like maybe she knows what he’s thinking. “We like each other. We get on well. But we—I can never give you what you need, not forever. And you can’t either, not for me. We’d only grow to hate each other.”
“But—” But I love you. But I’m not sure. But you’re the only fucking thing I’m allowed to chain down because Eddie and I aren’t speaking.
Jesus. Maybe he needs more therapy than he thought.
“You said it yourself, Buck,” she says, and he hates the way she’s speaking to her, like how all the girls used to speak to him. Pitying. Oh honey, you know this was a one-time thing, don’t you? “You want the whole nine yards. You want marriage, a family, a white picket fence. I can’t give that to you. I don’t want to give that you. I’m twenty-seven; I still spend most of my time reporting on fucking weather. I don’t want to be tied down. I like casual; I’m good at it.”
“I do too.”
“No, you don’t.”
No, he doesn’t. It’s why he always asked them to stay.
“Besides,” she adds, lightly, in the way she does when it’s really not that light at all, “I was never going to compare to Eddie.”
To—
“Eddie?” Buck says. “What—what does he have to do with this?”
Eddie has nothing to do with this. Why does Eddie keep fucking popping up?
Taylor gives him a look that’s almost sympathetic. “Everything, Buck. He has—everything to do with it.”
“He—”
“You want a family? You have a family. Eddie and his kid have been your family for as long as I’ve known you. You have everything but the white picket fence with that man. I was fun, and a break, and I thought we both knew that, but—I knew I was never going to be it for you, not like he was. And I was okay with it.”
Until Buck pulled out a fucking ring.
“And I think maybe you know that too,” she says, quietly.
Jesus. He needs so much therapy.
He doesn’t think he can find anything to say; just stares at her silently. He can’t quite find the words to say how he feels: that he’s sorry. That he’s hurting. That he thought he loved her but he knew he loved Eddie more. That Maddie’s gone and Chimney’s gone and Eddie’s gone and he feels like he’s splintering into pieces as he loses the only family he’s ever had.
That he thought that maybe, just maybe, he could get this one thing right.
But the words don’t come, so he just keeps staring at her, the ring box cutting grooves into his palms, and after a stifling silence that feels like it simultaneously lasts too long and not long enough at all, Taylor just nods. “Okay, well,” she says, quietly. “I think I’m gonna head home.”
He nods, because it’s all he can do. Because what is he going to ask her to do – stay? After she just turned down his fucking wedding proposal? Hysterical laughter bubbles in him at the thought, at what’s just happened – what the fuck. He’s just been turned down. He’s not even sure he wants her to stay. He’s not sure what he’s feeling now.
All that he does know is that he’s pretty sure he’s meant to be sadder than this.
He follows her to the door anyway, because it’s polite, and because she’s a guest, even if she isn’t his—girlfriend. Friend. Whatever—anymore. Or is she? What’s the protocol for this kind of thing?
“Should I,” he says, when she turns to look at him, buttoning her coat, “…call you?”
The side of her mouth ticks up, wryly. He realises, for all his flippancy, that this probably isn’t much easier for her. That she’s not having the sexuality-cum-existential crisis that comes with proposing to a girlfriend because your best friend left you, but she loved him, probably more than he loved her.
Just in her own, detached way.
“Probably not,” she says.
“Yeah,” Buck says. “That makes sense.”
She nods, and then, to his surprise, reaches up, fits her hand to the side of his face. It’s still too small, too cold. He wonders if maybe she’s just cool all over. “Look after yourself, Superman,” she says.
“You too, Taylor.”
One last smile – and then she’s gone.
And for the first time in what feels like months, something eases in his chest,
Buck’s not really thinking when he grabs his keys: only that he knows who he wants to see right now.
*
Eddie isn’t wearing shoes when he opens the door. His socks are the gag gift ones Buck got him a couple of years ago, that say I PUT OUT with a flame emoji beneath it. It had been the time that Eddie was still hooking up with Shannon behind Christopher’s back, which in retrospect was maybe the beginning of the very slow sexuality-cum-existential crisis, because Buck doesn’t suppose Hen ever felt that way when Chimney started seeing Maddie.
He’s worn them almost threadbare now, anyway. His big toe pokes out on one foot; his heel the other.
“Buck,” he says, at which point Buck has to peel his eyes away from his socks to meet his eyes. He looks—confused, to see him, but not unhappily no. Something like relief flares in Buck’s chest, as well as something a little like hope too. “You knocked.”
It’s good to know that they’re both focusing on what’s important, now. “I didn’t,” Buck says, and doesn’t know how to finish the sentence in a way that feels adequate, but Eddie’s always been good at unspooling his stuck words, and nods.
“Do you want to come in?” he says, after a moment, and he moves aside to let him in as he says it like he already knows the answer. Buck steps in, toeing off his boots by the door by a pair of Christopher’s sneakers, one upturned, flashing a red patterned sole.
“Is Chris asleep?” he says.
“He should be,” Eddie says, and Buck smiles, because Chris is getting old enough to know that bedtime is a social construct made up by his dad, and there have been a few occasions he’s been caught with a book or his Switch after lights outs, and fuck, Buck still has them. He still has this much. Eddie’s face does something a little complicated, then, and Buck frowns, until he says, “Do you want to—see him?”
There’s a lump in Buck’s throat, all of a sudden, that feels a lot like every I love you he’s ever choked back in Eddie’s presence. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d—like that.”
Eddie carefully leads him down the hall to Christopher’s room; cracks open the door as silently as he can. It’s dark in here, Christopher fast asleep, little face turned towards them, eyes closed, hand curled into a loose fist by his head, and Buck hovers in the doorway, just watching him. Watching this clever brilliant miracle of a kid, Eddie’s kid, asleep and safe in his bed. You have everything but the white picket fence with that man, Taylor’s voice says in his head, and Buck thinks, fuck you.
He doesn’t know how long he stands there in the doorway, watching him, but when he manages to finally swallow down the lump in his throat and turn back around, Eddie’s there, offering him a beer. “You want?” he says.
Buck wants. “Yeah, thanks.”
They collapse on the sofa, the wheezy, hardass sofa, at opposite ends, curling up automatically like parenthesis. One of Eddie’s feet tuck beneath him; Buck sees how the fabric of his socks has worn almost transparent on the underside.
“Oh, man,” Buck says, after one sip. “This tastes like piss.”
“They ran out of our brand,” Eddie says. “I had to settle.”
“We should settle. In court.”
Eddie snorts. “On what basis?”
“For how bad it is.” Because he’s on dangerous territory anyway, he knocks their feet together. “Hey, I’m an expert in lawsuits, don’t you remember?”
“Christ, don’t remind me,” Eddie says, and they both drink, just for that shit. “And I thought the custody battle with Shannon was hard.”
It’s been a while, since the lawsuit, but Buck still twinges with guilt. “Eddie, I—”
Eddie points the bottle at him. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I don’t think I can forgive myself.”
“Hey, I thought you were meant to leave the self-flagellation to the actual Catholics here?” Eddie says, and Buck rolls his eyes, because it’s cute Eddie is calling himself an actual Catholic when the only times Buck has heard God’s name from his mouth has been in vain. “Buck, we’ve moved past it.”
“Have we?”
Eddie’s hand stills. There’s a pause, and then his dark eyes flick to him. “Have we?”
Buck’s throat works. He scratches at the damp paper label on the beer bottle with the edge of his thumbnail. “I don’t know.”
At least with the lawsuit it was pretty cut and dry. Buck was being selfish; only really thinking of himself. Good intentions and a fucking stupid execution. But what is this? Eddie’s selfish because he’s thinking of his son? Distance because if Frank is anything like Dr Copeland, Eddie was told to talk about it, the shooting – and then they never did?
Eddie’s gaze flickers. The paper gives way easily beneath Buck’s scratching; gathers in rows beneath his nails. “Did something happen tonight?” he says, softly.
The ring is still in his pocket. He wonders if he can refund it; wonders if the jeweller gets a lot of requests for refunds. The thought makes him kinda sad, so he tries not to think about it; just blows out a breath, and takes another swig of his beer. “I proposed.”
There is a pause.
“You,” Eddie says, finally, “proposed?”
“Yeah.”
“To—Taylor?”
Buck takes another long swig. “Yep.”
He risks a glance at Eddie when the silence grows long again, who is staring down at the coffee table in front of him, eyebrows drawn together. He looks—kinda pissed off too. But also confused, and something like—
Sad. He looks sad.
“She said no, by the way,” Buck says, when Eddie doesn’t ask. “In case you were wondering.”
“I gathered,” Eddie says, and he still looks like he’s just been hit over the head with a frying pan, but it’s so Eddie, and Buck’s also had a fucking exhausting day, so he laughs. “You didn’t show up looking like you were preparing for the stag.”
“You know in some places they call it a buck’s night,” Buck says. The irony has, in fact, not been lost on him. Eddie glances at him. “So. I guess maybe I should have seen it coming. Perpetual bachelordom, I mean.”
“Buck.”
He sighs. “Yeah.”
“Why—” And Eddie looks like he’s trying to find the most civil way to phrase it. Despite himself, Buck has to smile. “I mean—”
“Why did I do it?”
Eddie nods.
Buck sighs again. “That was Taylor’s first question, too.”
“What did she say?”
“That she didn’t want to get married. That I should have asked her. That we wouldn’t have worked.”
Eddie looks like he’s trying his hardest not to agree. “I’m sorry.”
“I mean, she wasn’t wrong.”
“No?”
He can feel Eddie’s gaze on the side of his face. Buck slumps forward, putting his head in his heads. The beer bottle is still loosely in his fist; the cold glass presses against his temple. “In a way I’m kinda—relieved?”
“That she said no?”
“Is that insane?”
“No,” Eddie says immediately, and Buck wants to crumple, a little, at this unequivocal support. “But maybe—”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe that you proposed at all.”
He doesn’t know the fucking half of it. “Yeah.”
“So this is what happens when I’m gone for a month,” he says. “You propose.”
He’s joking, but it’s frighteningly close to the actual truth. “You’re about eighty percent of my impulse control.”
“Yeah?” Eddie glances at him as he takes another swig from his bottle, tilting his head back to catch the dregs. His neck is long and amber in the fading light. “I could have spared you the thousand dollars, at least.”
“Says the guy who bought a truck because he had rage.”
“Cheaper than a prenup,” Eddi says, which, yeah, fair. “Can I see it?”
“See what?”
“The ring.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure.” Buck produces it, slides the box across the table to him. It had felt so big, curled into his hand under his kitchen counter, but now on Eddie’s coffee table, in Eddie’s hand as he picks it up, carefully pops it open, it feels… smaller. Less scary. “Pay special attention to the pear cut.”
“Oh, yeah,” Eddie says, “it’s a pear cut, all right.”
They both glance at each other, and snort. They have no fucking idea what they’re talking about.
“You know,” Buck says, “there’s a cut called—asscher?”
Eddie raises an eyebrow, delightedly. “You’re joking?”
“No, I swear. The jeweller asked if I had a preference and I nearly did it just because of the name.”
“Is it really pronounced like that? Ass-cher?”
“No, I think it’s—I think it’s more like asher, but it’s spelled like ass, A-double-S.”
Eddie snorts, and takes another sip of his drink. “Taylor would have loved that.”
“Yeah,” Buck says. “Good thing she didn’t take the ring, then.”
Their glance feels a little heavier, this time. Because no. She didn’t take the ring. Buck bought a ring she said no too.
He should be sadder about this, probably. He shouldn’t be laughing and joking on his best friend’s couch, feeling lighter than he has in months, not even two hours after Taylor said no to a future with him. But this is the first time he and Eddie have—hung out, like this, in a while, since Eddie quit, really, and there’s a lot they haven’t spoken about still hanging in the air like ghosts, but—
But right now, Buck has this. He has this moment, here, with Eddie.
“What’s your reason, then?” he says.
Eddie glances at him. “My reason?”
“That your first question was why.”
For a moment, Eddie doesn’t respond; just touches his finger to the rim of his beer bottle, in thought. There is a pause, in which Buck isn’t sure he is going to respond, and then, finally, he says, “I didn’t think she was right for you.”
“You just didn’t like her,” Buck says. Which maybe should have been the first sign.
“No,” Eddie says; amends, “Okay, maybe a little,” when Buck gives him a look. “But also… she’s cutthroat, you know. Kinda mean. And you’re…”
He trails off. Buck raises an eyebrow. “You calling me weak, Diaz?”
“Gentle,” Eddie blurts, and Buck gets that clogged-throat feeling again, where he has to physically trap the words behind his teeth like a cage so they don’t spill out. “You’re… gentle. And good. And I didn’t think that she could—that she could take care of you. The way you deserved to be.”
There’s pressure against the back of Buck’s eyes. Distantly, he’s aware that this is probably not how friends should talk about each other, especially not friends who are on the rocks and using the guise of the night to pretend they’re not, that there’s nothing to talk about, but he’s looking at Eddie, and Eddie’s looking at him, and he hears Dr Copeland say, I think you might use intimacy to hurt yourself, and how Taylor would touch him like he was just another warm body, and how Eddie is now sat at the other end of the couch, telling him that he’s good, he’s gentle, he deserves to be taken care of; how their heels are touching. How Eddie’s still wearing the socks that Buck gave him three years ago.
He lets himself think, you’re my family, and I love you, and for the first time doesn’t punish himself for it.
And he’s not that brave, or stupid, not yet, because Eddie really is eighty percent of his impulse control, but he’s so fucking sick of hurting himself by biting back words he means and kissing mouths he doesn’t, and so: he lets their feet nudge together a little closer. Lets himself say, “I miss you.”
Eddie’s face softens. “I’m still here.”
“Not really,” Buck says, “not the way you used to be,” and when Eddie reaches for his hand, he lets him. His nails still have damp paper beneath them. “I’m sorry if that’s selfish.”
“I miss you too,” Eddie says. “Fuck, Evan. I miss you all the time.”
“Even now?”
Eddie squeezes his hand. Their grip is a little damp, from the condensation from their bottles. Buck doesn’t think he can let go if the world ended. “It’s less, now.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been much, lately.”
“I probably haven’t made it easy.”
“No,” Buck admits, and Eddie lets out a damp strangled laugh. “I sorta hate you, most days.”
“I hate myself,” Eddie says. “Fuck. Buck. I hate cars so fucking much.”
It’s enough to startle a laugh out of Buck – a real one, that hurts his ribs a little. It’s been a while since he laughed like this. “Of all professions, you went into—”
“It’s the only other thing I have experience in!”
“You’re right, it was someone else that was in the army—”
“Nowhere cares about that. I need a degree.” They both pull faces, at that. “Yeah. I know.”
“I hear there’s a spot at a firehouse downtown,” Buck says, because he’s gotta hurt himself somehow. “They’re down a firefighter – need a replacement.”
His tone is joking, the way he does when he’s expecting Eddie to riff off him – oh really, what’s his name? Credentials? Did I hear he was good-looking? – but instead, Eddie’s face goes sad. He leans against the back of the couch, closing his eyes. “I don’t think you know how much I miss it.”
Oh. Buck can take a gander. “I might have some idea.”
Eddie’s eyes open; watch him, carefully.
“It’s not the same without you there,” Buck says. He shouldn’t be saying any of this – he can’t talk Eddie out of protecting his own kid. At the end of the day, there’s little he wouldn’t do for Christopher, either. But he can’t help himself. “I—we all miss you.”
“I can’t,” Eddie whispers. “Not yet.”
Buck shrugs. “I know,” he says. “I was just being hopeful.”
Eddie watches him for a long moment. There’s almost what looks like a sheen of tears in his eyes, gone as quick as Buck notices; was maybe just the headlights of a passing car outside. But finally, he exhales. “You’re going to kill me, Buckley,” he says; and squeezes his hand, as he uses the other to drain his beer. “You’re staying?”
It’s probably not sensible – he has work, and his place is closer. And in the cold light of morning, away from the haze of night, the multiple elephants in the room will be harder to ignore. They’ll have to talk about them, if he stays, but—he finds he can’t bring himself to care. He hasn’t stayed over for so long; is surprised by the want that grips him, at the idea of sleeping on Eddie’s hard couch, waking up to Christopher’s chatter in the morning. Having breakfast in the kitchen together. “If that’s okay.”
“Of course,” Eddie says. “Anytime.”
It’s a platitude that gets thrown around a lot, anytime, but—on Eddie, Buck might just believe it.
“I’ll make up the sofa,” Eddie says, and Buck can dream of a day where one day he might get to share Eddie’s bed instead, but—baby steps. For now, he can allow himself this. He can allow himself comfort from a man he loves. He can reward himself, this time. “Can you get the bottles?”
“Yeah, sure,” Buck says, and takes them both from the coffee table, walking them to the glass recycling bin under Eddie’s sink. The kitchen looks the same as always, if more harried: dirty plates gathering in the sink, two empty dish soap bottles against the wall. A fleck of sauce on the white wall behind the burner.
There’s a new photo on the fridge, though. The one taken on Christmas, before Eddie announced his leaving, in the hour where Buck had thought that for all he’d lost this year, things might be okay. It was of the two of them kneeling down in the grass, arms around Christopher, who is grinning at the camera. Buck is wearing a Santa hat; Eddie’s eyes are a little sad. But his hand is tight around Buck’s shoulder, the other tight around Christopher, and Buck—
Buck is gripping him back. Like maybe he’d known that he was about to lose him.
He swallows the knot in the back of his mouth, and moves back into the living room, where Eddie has finished unfolding a comforter over the couch. “I’ve left some sweats in the bathroom, if you want to change,” he says.
I love you, Buck thinks. “Thanks.”
“Hey, uh,” and he steps close, now, until they’re less than a foot apart, and his hand finds that spot between Buck’s shoulder and neck, the Important Talk Spot, the Eddie Spot. His eyes are gentle. “Are you okay? Really?”
Buck nods. “I’m okay,” he says, softly; finds he kind of means it, too. “Thank you, Eddie.”
Eddie pulls him into a hug, then, which is not something they do a lot, but Buck: Buck melts, into it, going boneless, arms coming around Eddie’s back. Scrabbling for purchase, gripping, like he did back in the Christmas photo, tucking his nose in the matching Eddie Spot on Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie smells of laundry detergent and casserole and Christopher. He smells of home. Buck kinda wants to cry.
“I’m glad you came here tonight,” Eddie murmurs, into his hairline.
Buck’s throat gets thickly knotted again. “Me, too.”
They have to pull away, eventually, and Buck goes a little cold all over at the absence, even as Eddie keeps a hand on his shoulder. He smiles at him, softly, tiredly. “Sleep well, man,” he says, and then—drags his hand up, to Buck’s face; cups the side of it, briefly, gently. The place where Taylor’s hand had been, only larger, warmer, rougher. It’s only for a moment, and then he’s taking it away, completely unself-consciously, like it had been instinct, and Buck aches with it, this need for Eddie. “See you in the morning.”
“…Yeah,” Buck says, intellectually, and he watches as Eddie shuffles off to his room before he drops down onto the sofa. His face is still warm where Eddie’s hand was. He runs his own hand over it; feels the prickle of his stubble, the lines of his face; imagines what Eddie felt.
The ring is still on the coffee table. He picks it up, carefully, cradles it in his palm. It’s tiny. The diamond gleams at him.
He imagines, years from now, a different ring, in a different box, on a different hand. He imagines a future that isn’t resigned; a future that’s happy. Anticipated. A future where he can look at Eddie at the other end of a sofa and be selfish enough to say, I love you. Stay with me.
He curls his hand around the ring.
Maybe the jeweller will do an exchange.