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Funny how a couple cemetery visits and a living funeral can light a fire under you.
Eddie’s phone conversation with his mom was only a week ago. Looking at the calendar on the fridge that morning, he thought he and Christopher wouldn’t make the trip until the summer, and now here they are, 40,000 feet in the air and halfway to Texas.
“We’ve got time.” Well, they’ll have an extra hour of it anyway, Eddie thinks as he winds his wristwatch back to El Paso time.
Chris has dozed off in the seat next to Eddie, his ipad still in his lap. It’s Friday evening, not very late yet, but after a typically hectic week plus the frenzy of getting ready for a last-minute trip, it’s no surprise that Chris is worn out. Eddie feels the same way. He’s had two busy shifts, including one with a major structure fire that kept them on the scene from dusk to dawn. A few days off work is just what he needs.
A few days away from the firehouse won’t hurt either. If Eddie had to hear Buck bring up Natalia one more time, he might have gone outside and broken something with a Halligan.
Eddie crosses his arms over his chest and slides down slightly until his knees hit the seat in front of him. The Natalia situation (as he’s been calling it) insists on buzzing in head like a trapped wasp. She and Buck have been texting since they met for coffee. A lot. Even Chimney got tired of hearing about it after a while, and he’s the biggest goddamn enabler of oversharing at the 118.
As for Eddie, the whole thing is just… irritating. Buck wouldn’t listen when Eddie warned him against dating someone from a call again—much less someone who thinks that dying is “cool,” which is the very last thing Buck needs to hear. Eddie can’t see how it’s going to end well. Buck needs some fucking therapy, not a death-obsessed girlfriend. Best case scenario is the infatuation runs its course quickly, on both sides.
Eddie closes his eyes and focuses on the drone of the engines. The cabin is dim and quiet, with only half of the seats occupied. It only takes a few minutes for him to slip into a doze.
Eddie sleeps… and dreams.
At first, he’s on the couch in the loft of the station, with the rest of the team vaguely present in the background. He can hear the hum of their conversations but not their words, either because they’re either too far away or speaking too softly. Buck’s in the kitchen, cooking or cleaning, and even though Eddie isn’t watching him, his awareness is tuned to Buck like a radio signal. Everything else is static.
It should be comforting and familiar, but it isn’t. Some kind of fury is slowly igniting beneath Eddie’s skin. It makes him want to scream until his throat feels raw. He craves the visceral satisfaction of driving his fist into someone’s gut—but no, he doesn’t do that anymore. He has to stay on the couch until the feeling passes and hope no one notices that he’s seething.
The dream shifts, and now Eddie is in a different kitchen with Buck. Whose kitchen? It’s unfamiliar, poorly lit and smelling faintly of burnt food. Buck has his back turned, but Eddie can tell he’s amused about something. No, not amused—happy. Eddie feels a deep certainty that this happiness is wrong, though. It’s frustrating, maddening that Buck can’t see it. He needs to see it. Eddie moves to place himself in front of Buck, only an arm’s length away, so that Buck can’t help but see him.
God, Buck’s smiling. Stop, Eddie tells him. Just stop! He takes Buck by the shoulders, but the blissful smile remains. Trying to shake him does nothing, either. Buck feels as immovable as stone, and Eddie’s desperation grows and grows until he’s digging his fingers into Buck’s flesh. And then Eddie’s voice seems to dry up in his throat, like a trickle of water on hot asphalt, so that he can’t even talk anymore.
Helpless and enraged, Eddie does the only thing he can think of to stop Buck’s mouth from making that awful smile: he surges forward and kisses him hard.
The shock of it wakes Eddie with a jolt just as the plane dips in the air, momentarily making him weightless. Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. He grips his knees while his heart crashes around within the fuselage of his ribcage. He can still feel Buck’s shoulders in his grip, Buck’s lips against his own.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
The fasten seatbelt sign pings above him as the plane starts to descend. Christopher sleeps on, his head tilted towards the window, and Eddie watches him until he feels— Well, not calm, but no longer quite so shaken up. What the hell kind of dream was that?
Definitely one that Eddie doesn’t want to dwell on. He shakes his shoulders loose with one more deep breath.
When he sees the flight attendant making his way down the aisle, Eddie gently takes the ipad from Chris’s lap and slips it back into their carry-on bag. He gets a glimpse of the lights on the ground as he stands to put the bag in the overhead compartment. Somewhere below are the dusty streets and baseball diamonds that mapped out his childhood. The sunbaked landscape that felt so wide and big until he came back from the other side of the world. The house that he bought for Chris and Shannon, then sold before it ever became a home.
“So this is where you’re from,” Buck said when they had stopped here after helping fight the wildfires in San Angelo. He said it grandly, as if the sprawling desert and rugged mountains around El Paso might hold some kind of secret key to Eddie’s psyche. They’d only stayed one night before driving on, so there was no time to show Buck and Hen any of his old stomping grounds. Eddie wasn’t feeling particularly nostalgic at the time, anyway. Too many of his memories are tainted by remorse and regret.
Eddie buckles himself back into his seat. Is Buck out with Natalia tonight? Like a mosquito bite he can’t help scratching, Eddie imagines Buck smiling at her across a restaurant table, blue eyes bright and cheek dimpling. He probably feels comfortable with her already, having bonded over death or whatever. They might get so carried away talking that their meals get cold before they notice. Maybe Natalia will reach across the table for his hand at some point, and Buck will let her, easy as that.
Easy as that. Eddie’s emotions from his dream flare back up within him, hot and ugly, and he finally recognizes them for what they are.
He’s jealous.
He’s been jealous ever since he and Buck visited Marie’s grave at the cemetery. Eddie can’t even laugh at himself about it. He doesn’t want Buck’s face to light up when he talks about Natalia. He doesn’t want to hear how she makes Buck feel—about himself or about his death. And he doesn’t want her to occupy even the smallest corner of Buck’s life.
But what does Eddie want?
Before he can venture into that minefield, Chris begins to stir and the pilot’s voice comes over the intercom, announcing their imminent arrival in El Paso.
*
“What are you doing out here alone?”
Eddie turns to see his abuela stepping out onto the front porch, backlit by the lamps in the living room behind her. “Just getting some fresh air. And a few minutes of quiet. We had a full house all day.”
“Everyone’s glad to see you and Christopher.”
“We’re glad to see everyone,” Eddie replies easily, “but you’d think the family hasn’t got together in years by the way they all talked at once.”
“People have busy lives. Sometimes a special visitor is just the excuse they need to catch up, hmm?”
Isabel eases herself down into the rocking chair beside him. She’s noticeably frailer than the last time Eddie saw her and it sends a pang of grief through him. But her smile is as sweet as ever and she still pinched his cheek with strong fingers when she kissed him hello.
“What’s the matter, Eddito?” she asks after a stretch of silence.
“Nothing’s the matter.”
“No, mijo. A grandmother can always tell,” Isabel says, reaching over to pat his knee. “And I have known you your entire life. Did Pepa send you on another date?”
Eddie shakes his head with a rueful smile. “You heard about that, huh? No more dates yet, but I’m sure Tía Pepa is screening candidates as we speak.”
“And you don’t want her to? Don’t you want a little romance in your life?” she asks teasingly.
“I’m not sure anymore.”
Isabel tilts her head to give him a serious look. “She’s trying to help you.”
“I know. Pepa’s not the problem.”
“So what is it? Tell me what is hurting.”
“Mi corazón.”
Eddie tries to play it melodramatically, placing his hand over his heart and batting his eyes, but Isabel sees right through him. She clicks her tongue sadly.
“Oh, Eddito, I’m sorry. What will you do?”
“Nothing,” Eddie answers, looking away. “Learn to live with it.”
*
What does Eddie want?
He’d been thinking about it before his abuela joined him on the porch. The night sky is clear and so is the air, so there are more stars visible than in L.A. Not that Eddie was looking at them. As soon as he was finally alone, everything he’d been dodging since their plane landed last night became impossible to ignore any longer—his dream and the uncomfortable truth it might have unlocked.
Is Buck what he wants?
That question slams Eddie into what he’s always considered to be the idle thoughts he’s had around certain men—in school locker rooms and Army barracks (and maybe firehouses, too). The covert glances and twinges of yearning. He’s been careful to shut them down immediately, never letting them take hold in his mind. They felt wrong. Not a sin (he didn’t believe that), more like a breach of trust. Thinking that way about your teammates and fellow soldiers was inappropriate and not something they’d want him to do, to say the least.
Now Eddie realizes that he hasn’t been protecting anyone but himself with his supposed self-discipline. They weren’t idle thoughts at all. His therapist would undoubtedly call it repression. And he’d be right, wouldn’t he? Well, it’s caught up with Eddie now, just like it always does.
After his abuela goes back inside, Eddie is ready to acknowledge it. He does want Buck—and he wishes he didn’t. Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s hopeless.
So this is where you’re from.
Eddie stands on the front steps of his parents’ house and looks out into the night. He’s from the desert, a place where everything wavers and shimmers in the sun at a distance, no matter how hard you look at it. A place where the heat bleeds out of the air at night, leaving you shivering.
A dry and merciless place, perfect for burying your heart in the sand before you leave.