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Hen and Chimney let their conversation slip away as they climbed the stairs to the loft. Normally at this time of night (chores done, but too soon to really slip away to catch some sleep in the bunks), Buck and Eddie could be found camped out by the TV, discussing something Christopher related. Other times they’d be playing whatever fighting game they currently were trying to best each other at.
But tonight, it was near silent. The quiet sounds of the dishwasher carried across the space. And while the boys were present, they weren’t doing anything that they’d usually be doing.
Eddie leaned back against one end of the couch, eyes closed with a very small smile dancing across his lips. At the other end of the couch, the paramedics could see one of Buck’s legs propped up against the arm, the other resting towards the floor.
Hen crept around the couch to get a good look at them both. She quickly realized that Eddie wasn’t as asleep as she thought. His hand carded through Buck’s curls at a slow but steady pace. Buck was dead to the world, head tilted in a way to block out the light from the muted TV.
She wasn’t exactly surprised. Buck had taken the brunt of their last call, having to scale a rocky cliffside alone several times in high wind. It wasn’t the most dangerous rescue he’d been involved in (not even in the last week, if she counted the annoyed camels roaming through Hollywood, not exactly happy with their current predicament), but it was exhausting. The people he was rescuing didn’t want to wait, instead they all tried to grab him at once. It was an ordeal that Buck handled with grace, but by the time the fifth and final person was topside (the only uninjured one, she mentally added), he was about ready to collapse.
As for Eddie, she knew that he was finally sleeping through the night without waking with nightmares. In the six months since the shooting, since they nearly lost him, Buck rarely reported a quiet night from the Diaz house, where he was still basically living, according to a recovering Maddie. And today marked only his third week back to full duty. He was entitled to rest.
She picked up a few blankets and moved as silently as she could over to the boys. Eddie cracked open an eye, made eye contact, then shut it with a content sigh. She carefully tossed one of the blankets over Buck, giving him a quick once over to make sure he was just sleeping and not actually in pain. The other she held out to Eddie, who quietly had reached out for it.
He never stopped playing with Buck’s hair, keeping him calm and asleep.
Eddie blinked over his eyes one last time and mouthed out a thanks. She gave him a smile and a quiet, “sleep well.”
Chimney was still standing by the stairs as she crept away from their boys, now joined by Bobby and a visiting Athena. Bobby gave her the worried father look, but she shook her head.
All was well, and she wasn’t going to let anyone wake the boys. They deserved their sleep.