Chapter Text
Loving Buck is easy.
It always has been.
Loving Buck is something Eddie’s been doing, consciously and subconsciously, for years now. It’s the easiest part to understand. Loving Buck is telling him, You can have my back anytime and hearing him say, Or, you know, you can have mine. Loving Buck is friendship, understanding—always having someone in his corner. It’s watching him bond with his son and feeling all the fondness in the world. It’s holding his hand after a fire truck exploded on him. It’s being there through his recovery, trying to help him understand that he’s so much more than what his broken heart—full of needs for love and acceptance—tells him he is.
Loving Buck is hurting but never blaming him when he says he lost his son. It’s telling him that there’s no one in this world he trusts his son with more than him. Loving Buck is feeling the anger of not being able to reach him during the time he needed him most—it’s being buried alive and hearing his voice. Loving Buck is remembering his hand on his arm, pulling him closer, even if he can’t remember much else after being shot. It’s deciding to let him know he’s given him the most precious part of him to ensure he understands he’s needed and loved, not whatever his insecurities tell him he is.
Loving Buck is panicking, only to find him there, picking up the pieces and keeping him from breaking further apart. It’s seeing him die and counting down every second until his heart starts beating again—three minutes and seventeen seconds.
Loving Buck is stolen glances, bumps of shoulders and legs, laughs, fun, and family dinners with him and Christopher.
Loving Buck is the easiest part.
Everything else is hard. Accepting that he’s been living a lie all this time is hard. Accepting that he’s hurt others—that he’s hurt his son—because he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror and see the person truly staring back—
It’s hard. It’s hard. It’s hard.
Everything he’s been taught about living, about what it means to be a man—none of it makes sense anymore.
Maybe it never had. And that’s why he’s never been good at it—thats’s why everything around him is crumbling.
“I don’t think you should keep this to yourself,” Hen says during a shift, after he finally musters the courage to tell someone the truth. She was the obvious first choice because… because she could understand what he’s going through, he thought. And maybe that’s bad, maybe he’s burdening Hen with something she didn’t ask for, but—
Eddie just grunts in response, his hands grinding hard over his face, as if he thinks he can just disappear if he presses hard enough. Then he feels her hand surround one of his arms, and he looks up at her soft, understanding expression—full of love, without a hint of someone who thinks she’s being given a burden.
Loving Buck is easy; accepting himself is not. Going through the memories of all his failed relationships and finally realizing why they all went wrong—like a punch to the face he can see coming but can’t dodge.
Shannon is the first one. But she always is. The ghost of all that should have been and that could never be. He loved her—he’s sure of that. He remembers being a teenager, seeing the fire in her eyes, and thinking if he had to be with anyone, it would be her. She gave him Christopher. His heart. And he’ll always be grateful to her for that. But he also knows that he ran away at the first opportunity—and now, all the excuses he told himself then are falling flat.
Their relationship had been over long before she died, but he still clung to it because the alternative was coming to terms with all that he couldn’t afford to be.
Loving Buck is easy, and that’s why Buck can never know.
Just the thought of hurting him, of breaking him the way he’s broken everyone else who’s tried to get close, sends Eddie spiraling into the darkest parts of his mind. It makes him think about grabbing that bat again and breaking much, much more than just the walls in his bedroom.
For a moment, he considers God, religion, and wonders if everything wrong with him traces back to what he’s been taught since childhood. And that’s how he finds himself one evening, standing in front of a giant church door, hands stuffed in his pockets, unable to make the first step forward. As if that door is a point of no return—as if he’ll be struck down the moment he steps inside.
“You know Buck better than anyone else, Eddie,” Bobby says while they sit in his kitchen, handing him a warm cup of coffee. Bobby looks at him the same way Hen did: eyes soft, understanding, and full of love. “You know you could never lose him.”
But Eddie doesn’t know. All he knows is that he’s messed up so many times he doesn’t even trust himself to get it right anymore.
Still, loving Buck is easy because it just is. Because Buck will look at him once and understand without a word. Because Buck will scoot closer, offering comfort just by sharing his warmth. Because Buck will smile at him, and everything wrong in Eddie’s life will disappear, if only for a moment. Because Buck will invite himself over that same night, not wanting Eddie to be alone.
So Eddie hopes. He hopes that he can be easy to love, too. He hopes that Buck can accept this part of him, even if he doesn’t feel the same. And Eddie, for the first time in forever, prays to God to forgive him—just this once.
“Buck,” Eddie says, his heart racing in his chest, pounding so loudly in his ears that he can barely hear anything else. And Buck just looks at him, waiting. His expression is soft, understanding, and full of love.
“I’m in love with you.”