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They’re safe. They’re okay. Bobby and Athena are alive and they brought them home. Everything is fine.
Except there’s a tremor in Buck’s hands that refuses to ease. There’s a tension is his muscles that he just can’t let go of. His heart is still beating too fast even now, as he lays on his bed with eyes that won’t close without seeing the water.
The water, everywhere, surrounding him. Drowning him.
He gasps for breath and it feels like a reflex - like coming up for air after being sucked under. Like a desperate, manic thing.
He’s safe, he knows that. Knows he was never really in much danger anyway. But the sound of it all - the waves, the rain, the crashing and the thundering - it echoes in his head, ricochets through his bones. It lives inside of him, he guesses, even after all these years. That fear, the exhaustion, the crippling terror of finding the surface only to realise that Christopher was gone.
He rubs at his sternum, tries to breathe deeply, tries to blink away the memories of the day the water nearly took everything from him.
He sees Eddie’s face next.
The expression he wore when he realised that his son was missing. And then today, in the helicopter - a split second that nobody except Buck even noticed - when he closed his eyes and clenched his fists, fighting back the demons that no one else could see. The flashbacks of another time, another life: a helicopter going down in the middle of the Afghan desert.
They fought through it because they had to. Because it’s their job. Because Bobby and Athena needed them and there wasn’t a force on this earth that could have stopped them from going after their family. From saving them.
But now, in the quiet, suffocating stillness of his loft, Buck feels like he might just break apart.
The panic still lingers in the spaces between his fingers and the clench of his jaw. He can feel it slithering along his spine like a serpent, winding around and around until he can barely stand the force of it. The taste of salt is thick and cloying in his mouth, making his throat burn and his teeth chatter. The sounds and the smells are on a loop in his head, and the inside of his eyelids are playing a highlight reel of the day the tsunami hit - a horror movie tailored just for him.
He takes a breath, and then another, but it still doesn’t feel like enough - still feels like the oxygen has been stolen from his lungs, and the room, and the whole goddamn planet.
He scrambles out of bed. Shoves his feet into the first shoes he can find and pulls a hoodie on his over his head right before he leaves. He thinks he locks the door behind him, but he can’t remember and he doesn’t care either way - there’s nothing inside that loft that can’t be replaced.
There’s the jeep, and the middle-of-the-night-quiet Los Angeles streets. Only one red light and three green, like the universe knows he’s in a rush - like she knows that he’s holding his breath. The slamming of the door behind him. The crunch of gravel beneath his feet.
The hollow knock at a door that Buck could draw from memory. The click of a lock, and the squeak of aging hinges.
Eddie stands there in an LAFD hoodie, plaid pyjamas bottoms, and bare feet. He’s rumpled and exhausted, but alert enough that Buck knows he wasn’t sleeping. His hand shakes as he reaches up to push it through his hair, and the smile that he offers to Buck is so understanding that it soothes the cacophony of noise inside his head.
“Come in,” Eddie says without hesitation.
And Buck takes his first full breath in hours.
He hadn’t thought to call or text, and if he’d shown up at anyone else’s house in the middle of the night he may have worried about being turned away. But not here, not Eddie’s home where Buck is always welcome - always wanted. Buck’s lighthouse in the middle of a storm.
He kicks his shoes off by the door and makes himself comfortable in his spot on the couch. Eddie takes his place beside him, close enough that their thighs touch and their elbows knock together every time they move. The closeness settles something inside of Buck: a restless, nagging thing that had been insisting he check up on Eddie without Buck even realising that’s what it was asking for.
“Sorry,” Buck says into the silence, “for showing up like this.”
He can feel Eddie shrug as he says, “You know you’re always welcome here.”
Buck can’t help but laugh, shaking his head slightly in disbelief. He turns to look at Eddie at the exact moment that Eddie turns to look at him, and they’re a little too close but neither of them pull away.
“It’s the middle of the night,” Buck points out, but Eddie just smiles.
“Same rules apply.”
And that’s…yeah. That’s how they are. How they’ve always been, and - Buck hopes to any and every god that may exist - how they always will be.
There’s nothing either of them could ask of each other, that they wouldn’t go to the ends of the earth to provide. No problem too big, no distance too far, no burden too heavy. It doesn’t matter what, or when, or why; Buck and Eddie will always have each other’s backs.
“Thank you,” Buck says, because all other words escape him. And it’s not enough - a measly thank you - but he thinks Eddie knows what he means anyway.
“Are you okay?”
It’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? The answer is obvious, considering they’re both sitting here in the middle of the night without a moment’s sleep between them. But that isn’t what Eddie is asking, not really. He knows that Buck isn’t okay, just like Buck knows that Eddie isn’t either.
What he’s asking is if Buck wants to talk about it. If he wants to say the words out loud so the heaviness on his shoulders weighs a little less.
A few months ago the answer would have been no. A few months ago, the question might have never even been asked at all. But things are different now - they are different now. Since the lightning strike, since the three minutes and seventeen seconds where Buck’s heart had fallen still inside of his chest.
Life is too short to spend it afraid of being vulnerable. Afraid of being seen. And there’s no one in the world who sees Buck like Eddie does, so completely. He stands unflinchingly in front of all of Buck’s ugliness, and he doesn’t ever turn away.
“No,” Buck admits. “Not really. Are you?”
“No,” Eddie says. “I’m not.”
Because of course they’re not. How could they be?
“The helicopter?” Buck asks, and Eddie nods.
“The water?” Eddie asks, and Buck hums in affirmation.
They make a right pair. Between them they have more traumas than they can count on both of their fingers and toes. There’s childhood trauma, and war zones, and bombs. Collapsing wells, and tsunamis, and snipers. There’s loss, and grief, and guilt, and regret.
They’re walking museums of all their traumas - all their fears. There are signposts pointing to every splinter buried beneath their skin, every fracture in their bones, every place where they’ve been changed irreparably. It takes a special person to take the time to know all of their hurts, to learn about each and every one and treat them with gentle hands.
They’re that person for each other.
They’ll always be that person for each other. Even when it’s three in the morning and they’re tired down to their bones. Maybe especially then.
“I just - the waves, you know? And the rain, too. The sounds of it all. The taste and smell of the salt. Every time I close my eyes, I’m coming up for air and Chris is gone, or I see your face and - and…”
“He’s safe, Buck,” Eddie reminds him. “Chris is safe, and I’m safe, and so are you.”
Buck nods his head. He knows - he knows that, but it doesn’t stop the flashbacks. It doesn’t prevent him from running through every alternative scenario where Chris wasn’t found, where Buck destroyed more lives than just his own.
“You can come with me to pick him up from Pepa’s tomorrow, if you want?” Eddie suggests.
And that - that is something that helps. Seeing Chris in the flesh, holding him close even though he’s ’too old’ for hugs now, apparently. And Eddie offering it to him…Eddie understanding what he needs without Buck even having to say it out loud. Eddie knowing Buck, right through to the core of him.
That’s what it is to be seen. To be known, and cared for, and loved.
“Please.”
“Of course,” Eddie whispers, and the words burrow beneath Buck’s skin.
Silence settles between them for a moment, but there’s a crackle of energy in it - the apprehension of knowing there’s more to be said.
Buck waits, and he waits, and he waits.
He knows Eddie finds it a little harder to open up, to be honest about how he’s feeling. But he also knows that Eddie just needs a little bit of patience, a little bit of grace. He’ll get there eventually - he always does - it just takes him a little while to find the words. To find the bravery.
War zones are easy compared to the minefield of emotions that live inside of him.
“I can still smell the fuel,” Eddie begins. “The smoke, and the blood. I can feel the way my stomach dropped as we started to fall, and I can hear the split-second of silence when the engine and the propeller stopped.”
His skin is pale, and he’s digging his nails into the meat of his thighs. Buck wants to reach out and stop him, but he won’t yet - not until Eddie has finished, until he’s purged all of the memories from his mind. Instead, he presses his leg and shoulder into Eddie’s like a solid, silent show of support. Unwavering.
Buck feels the moment some of the tension seeps from his body. He feels the way Eddie leans into him, just a little, like Buck is the crutch that Eddie needs in order to make it through this.
“For a minute, it felt like I was lying in that desert again. Like I was dying.”
“But you didn’t die, Eddie,” Buck tells him. “You’re still here. You made it home to Christopher.”
It’s probably a reflex, the way Eddie reaches up to play with the St Christopher medallion that he wears around his neck like a promise. To himself, and to Chris. A reminder of what’s waiting for him at home, and why he always has to fight to make it back.
The patron saint of travellers is fitting, given all the lives that Eddie has lived and all the paths that he has walked on.
“But I couldn’t save the rest of them.”
Buck shakes his head in disagreement. “You got them out, Eddie. They made it home because of you.”
Buck knows how much he struggles with that, with the fact that he’s the only one left standing. It’s a weight he’ll always carry with him, even though it doesn’t belong to him. He’s got a bad habit of shouldering things that aren’t his burden to bear. His heart is just too big.
“I know,” Eddie says. “I know, I just - forget, sometimes.”
“We do our best with what we have, and what comes after that…we can’t control it.”
It’s the hardest, most important lesson to learn when you’re a first responder: you deal with whatever is in front of you, and then you let it go.
You fight the fire, you get them out, you treat the injury…and then you walk away. You have to, or it’ll kill you. And it feels impossible at first, when your instinct is always to help - to do as much as you possibly can in every given situation - but if you want to survive the job, then you have to find a way. You have to find a way to keep the what-ifs from burying you.
“I know,” Eddie says, and it’s a promise - a reassurance that he isn’t usually sitting on this. Wouldn’t be today, if it wasn’t for everything that they’ve just been through.
“We’re okay,” Buck tells him. “Both of us. We survived. Everything, all of it - we made it through. We’re here.”
Here, in this life. In this moment. In this home, on this couch, together.
Buck is convinced that everything in his life - every moment, every hurt, every heartache - was always leading him here. To Los Angeles, and to the 118, and to Eddie and Christopher. He thinks, if someone had told him when he was a teenager that this is how his life would turn out, he wouldn’t change a damn thing.
Every awful thing that Buck has had to survive has been worth it for this, right here. This life he’s building with this family that love him unconditionally. With Eddie.
“We’re here,” Eddie agrees. “And I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Buck turns to look at him, but Eddie’s gaze is already fixed on his face. There are dark shadows under his red-rimmed eyes, messy scruff on his cheeks and jawline, and a gentle smile teasing the corners of his mouth upwards.
He looks so lovely that Buck could cry.
And the thing is, Buck loves him. Loves him in all the ways you can love a person. As someone he admires, as a friend, as a partner. As the great love of his life. And for a while - and especially now, in this moment, as Eddie looks at him like that - Buck thinks maybe he feels the same way.
“Buck,” Eddie says, his name barely even a whisper on his lips.
“Yeah?”
“I-I..”
“I know,” Buck says. “I know. Me too.”
The words are there, on the tips of both of their tongues, but this isn’t the moment for them. Not when they’re exhausted, and cracked wide open - fragile in ways that neither of them particularly enjoy.
But.
Buck tips his head forwards, closer and closer until Eddie meets him halfway. Their foreheads rest against each other, their noses kissing in the most gentle of caresses. They share the air between them, taking slow and steady breaths, and their lips are so close that they’re almost touching, but not quite. Not yet.
The crashing of waves falls silent when Eddie’s fingers tangle with Buck’s. It feels like still, calm waters. Like peace.
When they kiss he doesn’t taste sea salt, he just tastes Eddie.