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Eddie really tries to keep speaking Spanish. Despite living in LA, which is still largely populated by Spanish-speaking people, it’s nothing compared to living in Texas and surrounded by family who spoke it and still speak it every day. Even his mother’s Swedish side could not diminish the dominant Hispanic side. She too spoke mostly Spanish and Eddie had been the first person in the family to marry a non-Hispanic person, not because of prejudice, but because that’s how they were raised and that’s who everyone fell in love with.
He tries to teach Christopher and he retains some words, but being immersed in the language and culture just isn’t enough anymore, even with Pepa and Abuela trying their best where they can.
Dating Ana feels like coming home, his time seriously dating someone his family would approve of, which is positive for the first couple of weeks until Eddie realizes what exactly that entails. So they break up and it’s pretty amicable and after his near-death experience with the rifle, like being back in combat, he’s tired of pretending to himself that he’s satisfied dating her. Dating her, too, feels exhausting, just like coming home, and he’s tired of being tired.
So he moves on.
He talks to Abuela and Pepa during his recovery about creating a culture again. They both have friends and people that they see either from church or in the neighborhood who invite them over for little get-togethers where everybody only speaks in Spanish and they spend half the morning cooking and there’s always dancing music in the backyard and it feels so much like home sometimes without all of the bad parts that he can’t even go, paralyzed by a desperate want for someone to share that with, something he never truly had with Shannon or Ana.
(He catches himself slipping into Spanish during shifts sometimes, commands and curses rolling off his tongue before he can even think of slipping into English. Mostly everyone is used to it now and asks him to repeat himself, the little Spanish they know that they’ve picked up from various places only carrying them so far. But Buck, strangely, always seems to understand him, laughing when he swears and following his command before he can repeat it in English. Eddie knows he lived in South America for however long, so it’s probably just something he picked up, but it strangely makes Eddie’s stomach swoop every time, enjoying that Buck understands him completely, not just half of him.
(Ana, the Hispanic side; Shannon, him as a person, to an extent.
But Buck, fully.)
He’s always enjoyed that about Buck, their synchronicity regardless of language barriers, always moving together with a simple hand gesture or gaze. He never had this with Shannon or Ana, a sort of simplicity that comes naturally, an understanding that doesn’t need words. But with Buck, there is no pushing, there is no learning curve, they just get one another in a way no one has ever gotten Eddie and in a way he’s not sure anyone has ever gotten Buck.)
Getting shot was a catalyst for multiple reasons.
He breaks up with Ana and sits in his living room as Buck makes dinner, humming to himself as he cooks and Christopher does his homework at the table. He watches them through the archway as Buck puts the pasta into a dish, shaking his hips slightly. Christopher asks him a homework question and Buck guides him to the answer, so casually, like he does this every day. And he does. He’s here almost every day, completely wrapped up in the Diazes and their daily life. Eddie can’t even remember the last day he went without seeing Buck, even before the shooting. Buck is so involved in their life that he’s become a permanent fixture and it’s hard to remember what it was like before.
He breaks up with Ana and Buck washes his hair as they both stand in the shower. Showering together is nothing really new, they’ve done it before for timely reasons at work and after Buck broke his leg, but never like this. Eddie has seen Buck naked before and vice versa, but there is a quiet intimacy passed between them like a secret as Buck runs his hands over the parts of Eddie’s body that Eddie can’t reach and then some. It’s not sexual, strangely so, but something different, something more.
He breaks up with Ana and tells Buck for the second time that there’s no one he trusts more with his son. He’s already on every form possible, a consequence of late nights and opposite shifts, but the knowledge that Christopher will be taken care of and that Buck will be the one to do it, it makes him feel secure, at home, for the first time in a long time, like LA has been his home all along, like he finally belongs here.
He breaks up with Ana and he falls.
Hard.
He doesn’t think he could love Buck more than he already does.
Yet, Buck always surprises him.