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Buck puts a splash of almond milk in his morning coffee because that's how his best friend in 10th grade did it. He never uses cruise control because a date crashed her car from a failed sensor & he's been too nervous to trust the technology since. He only uses the left bottom burner of his stovetop because his favorite babysitter only used that one when she'd make mac & cheese when his parents had forgotten to leave something for dinner the 16 year old could actually cook for the two of them to eat.
Buck knows that he's a mosaic of a person. He's a tapestry of experiences & lessons learned through simply living the best life that he can. He picks & chooses little pieces of everyone he's ever loved & absorbs them into himself. It started when he was young, trying to absorb pieces of his parents personalities so he could maybe feel a fraction of the love they showered on Maddie.
He learned piano because his mom always talked about how beautiful it sounded & how she wished that she had created more musically inclined children. He learned how to change the oil in his first car because his dad had expressed frustration about the cost of oil changes at the local shop. He learned what got attention & what didn't. He learned how a bump bought him a popsicle & an hour with mom watching crappy talk shows, while a broken bone could earn him a week's worth of parental devotion.
He learned how to break & to bleed, but also how to put himself back together & start all over again. Sometimes under the cover of darkness he'll wonder to himself if being created for spare parts is why he feels so settled when he's in pieces. If to the very core of his being he knows that he's not supposed to be whole, senses that he's not even supposed to exist. He was only born to save someone & he wonders sometimes if he'll ever manage to save himself from being crushed under the weight of that knowledge. A knowledge he was never even supposed to have.
The trend of absorbing from others continued as he grew older & left the hold of his family for something fresh, something new. He spent years trying to find himself while other kids his age slaved over books & walked stages to get fancy pieces of embossed paper. Buck decided against that for himself, took Maddie's offer of escape & began to turn himself into a new person.
He learns how to properly open a coconut while sleeping on beaches in the southeast, becomes fluent in Spanish & Portuguese while in South America, & learns how to change horseshoes on a ranch out west.
His first hookup on his journey of “self discovery” shows him how to get a coffee stain out of white fabric & he's never used a bottle of bleach since. His roommate at his favorite hostel taught him how to make friendship bracelets for bartering with others passing through. To this day he still gifts them to friends & family. His life is a labor of love, a roadmap of everything he's experienced.
He learned how to touch & be touched too. He may be so far removed from the player he used to be that it feels like another life, but he still remembers the tricks of the trade. He vividly remembers the first girl who huffed & forced his hands to the right places, who taught him how to give pleasure that was as good as he received. She taught him how to not be selfish, how to give as much as he took. He's always prided himself in never leaving a hookup looking for more, always being a satisfying experience for his partners.
He sometimes even thinks about the guy he hooked up with drunk that one time while out of the country. The man no older than himself with tanned skin & a killer smile who bought Buck too many tequila shots & dragged him out to the darkened pier by the ocean. He listened to the waves & breathed in time with their crash on the sand, the noises of the beach swallowing what he thought was a secret he'd never tell. It's the guy he pushed to the back of his mind when he moved back to the states & couldn't hide behind a sunburn & a case of beer anymore. It's the guy who's advice & whispered words he learns to recall as he ventures into darkened nights he never thought he'd let himself have again. He learns about himself that night & even though it takes years to do so, he'll relearn that same lesson again in his own quiet house, the sounds of the ocean miles away.
He joins the 118 & becomes a tapestry of his found family. He learns about spices from Bobby that now live in his cabinet at home. He makes lasagna once a week & thinks about his surrogate father & how lucky he is to have this. He keeps a stack of soft hoodies in his closet after Chim wrapped one around his shoulders when he was sick. Sometimes he cuddles into them when he has a particularly tough shift & needs to feel comforted. He even picked at Hen enough to learn about her secrets. Now he knows how to make himself feel the most comfortable in his clothing & she's let her street style influence him more than it maybe should have.
He learns a lot from his failed relationships too. LA seems to bring a tremendous amount of heartbreak, but each one places him on the next path for his life. Abby teaches him more emotional things. Teaches him how to live with someone & meld their life with yours. Teaches him how to read the quiet signs of silent dissatisfaction.
Ali teaches him how to cook the perfect burger on a stovetop, & that's why he still hasn't invested in a grill. She breaks his heart a little bit, but he learns that not everyone can handle this job & what it means for the family left behind every day. Not everyone has the heart to let the person they love jump into danger & not be able to question it.
He thought he truly loved Taylor. She taught him how to dance beyond awkward prom night waltzing & showed him how to pick colors that actually fit together. She taught him how to get to the truth, even if it hurts. When he finally had to let her go, she taught him how to guard his heart, how to not trust so flippantly.
Natalia “saw him,” or so he thought. She taught him not to put his heart on his sleeve, how to not put his desires & fantasies all into another person who could never fulfill them. She taught him how to embrace death instead of fear it, though. He can't come near putting a price on that knowledge. It's too valuable to him.
Tommy is something different. He brings those old pushed back memories to the forefront of his brain. It's not love, he doesn't know if it ever could be. But, it's good. Tommy teaches him to relax, to follow his impulses in a safe way. He's been so afraid to follow the instincts that have gotten him in trouble so many times, but Tommy helps him channel those wants into something healthy, into something he can enjoy without the danger of death hanging over his head.
Tommy also teaches him what he truly wants, where all those desires inside him are leading. It's the breakup that teaches him that exes don't need to hate each other, can still care deeply for each other even when you take romance out of the equation. There's a special type of thankfulness he feels for that, one he can't offer anyone else.
Then…well…then there's Eddie. To Buck, Eddie is everything. Eddie easily slotted into place in Buck's life. He shoved himself & Christopher into the dark spots of Buck's heart & they fit there like perfect little puzzle pieces. They taught Buck to love, to fear, to want.
Eddie alone? He's taught Buck more lessons than he'll ever care to admit. How to put his own ego aside, how to slow down & think before jumping into action, how to love with abandon & without fear. It's a greedy thing, he thinks, the way he wants to keep Eddie & all those lessons close to his chest, hold it all there so it's hidden from the world around them & no one else can learn those lessons. Because Buck wants to be the only one. The very core of him churns with discomfort at the idea of another person learning from Eddie, of Eddie knowing them in all the ways he knows Buck.
He learns from Eddie's exes the same way he learns from his own. Shannon teaches him how to mourn for someone else, how to put aside your history with someone to help the others who loved them deeply. Ana teaches him how easy it is to dedicate yourself to the Diaz boy's, how easy it is to want to fit into the family, but how difficult it is to make your spot there. And Marisol. She teaches him the most important lesson of all. She teaches him about what it means to love Eddie, about what jealousy truly looks like, how ugly it can be to experience.
Eddie teaches him to repress. How to fight. How to ignore. They might not be the most healthy lessons, but they're well rounded. He learns to accept a punch, but also to land one equally as hard back. He learns to push bitter things down, but also how sweet they can taste coming back up. He learns to turn his head from things he doesn't want to think about, but also how to double back & take it once you physically can't stand to keep looking away. Every “bad” lesson is wrapped in a better one so Buck can't come close to feeling like those hard times don't matter or that they didn't help shape him in good ways.
Eddie teaches him how to live outside of his own body. When a bullet ripped through the sky & Buck thought he was going to lose his best friend; he learned to exist beyond himself, beyond his fear. He never thought he'd willingly throw himself beneath a fire truck, never lay beneath one of his own accord. He'd never admit it to anyone but his therapist, but there were days that even being near the truck would bring back the visceral fear & pain from the bombing.
With Eddie, he learned to push that aside, to slide his body underneath multiple tons of metal, to reach forward, to try, to help. Hands slick with blood & a mind empty of anything other than Eddie are what push him forward, what saves Eddie's life. Buck learns from Eddie that he truly can save people with his own bare hands, even without being draped in the armor of his uniform.
He keeps learning from the people around him. He learns from the people he doesn't see often, the people who support the ones he loves. He learns from Carla how to support Chris's needs when he isn't sure of his own skills. He learns from Maddie how to hold a baby correctly when he's afraid his clumsy hands will break his niece. He learns from Josh how to let loose & be himself outside of a relationship. He learns from Ravi how to start his own generational wealth so he can give back when the time comes.
After he's struck by lightning he has to relearn so much. About himself, about his family, about life itself. He hides from it a lot, falls into Natalia instead of into his family or friends. He's embarrassed by it now, looking back. But then? He needed that relationship, he needed to learn about death & life & how those things interact. He needed to see the grim side of what it meant for his heart to stop, backdropped against what it meant to bring life into the world; to see his own eyes reflected back at him & the newness of that, the hope of it.
He learns his greatest lesson accidentally & under the heavy fog of trauma. It's funny, he'll think later after it's all settled under his skin with an easy warmth. He never seems to stumble onto things like this by accident. He normally has to work for the things that just come naturally to others. But, as he's being held gently, treated with care, concern, & unmatched love…he realizes that this was a complete accident. It wasn't a lesson he ever saw coming until it was standing in front of him.
He's sitting on a plastic hospital chair at the end of a call. He hasn't moved for what feels like hours, but the clock on the wall says they only wheeled the gurney in 45 minutes prior. He barely feels Bobby laying a hand on his shoulder or Maddie running through the double doors & straight into his arms.
“I worked on him as hard as I worked on you,” Chim would whisper later that night, so soft Buck almost didn't hear him. “I swear, Buck. I did everything, everything. ” He'd learn from that moment that he wasn't the only one who cares deeply, he just shows it more on his face than the others.
He learns that there's no greater horror than finally knowing yourself & suddenly feeling like the rug’s been pulled out from underneath you. He also learns that when you break into a million pieces the family you've built, regardless of blood, are there to scoop everything up & try to glue you back together. He learns, though, that there's absolutely nothing that can hold you together when you've come to the conclusion you love someone only to see them look small & helpless in a too big hospital bed, eyes closed & barely hanging on.
Buck learns that living in a hospital chair is a special type of hell, especially with previous injuries & your own chronic pain to manage. He learns that you have to lie to stay in a room past visiting hours. From that, he learns the word ‘husband’ rolls too easily off of his tongue as he looks at Eddie's unconscious form on the bed next to him. He learns that he doesn't feel guilty about the lying if it means he can call Christopher & let him know that his dad is okay, that he's being taken care of. Buck learns during that time how special Eddie is to him, & how the feelings he just seemed to unlock are only so strong because they've been there forever, just hidden.
Buck is a mosaic of all the people he's loved & lost. But what Buck can't be is a tapestry woven by Eddie's own fingers & left unfinished. So, he stays & hopes & even prays. He learns deep relief when Eddie opens his eyes & he's taught what it means to be truly loved when he's yanked down onto a hospital bed that's too small for two grown men. But he finds he doesn't mind.
He learns what it's like to be held like he's a fragile thing, like he's something precious. He learns that Eddie's lips taste like cinnamon gum & that his good date cologne mixes with Buck's own perfectly. He learns that Eddie wants to hold him close to his chest, feel his heartbeat under his fingertips.
He learns every inch of Eddie's skin & Eddie does the same to him. He learns that the noises previously hidden under the crash of ocean waves can sound equally as beautiful as the nature that once smothered them. He easily learns what love actually looks like & he learns to let Eddie fix the broken pieces of mosaic that are his life. He lets the man fill the gaps with him & with Christopher & their unending, unparalleled love.
So, now, Buck puts a splash of almond milk in his morning coffee because that's all Eddie keeps in the fridge. He doesn't use cruise control because Eddie likes to know he's actually in control behind the wheel. He uses the bottom left burner of his stovetop because Eddie says it's the easiest one to cook Chris’s mac & cheese on so the cheese disperses evenly. And, Buck refuses to deny Christopher anything.
Buck knows he's a mosaic of a person, made lovingly by the hands of Eddie Diaz.