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By the time they make it back to the station, Eddie is visibly shaking.
He looks down at his trembling hands and has to clench them into fists to try and hide it. He just…he needs a minute. Needs some room to breathe, some space to get his head back on straight and his emotions in control before he absolutely loses it. He needs to reel back all of his too-big feelings and find a way to shove them back where they belong: locked way, way deep down inside of him, where nobody else can see them.
He heads for the roof - ignoring Chim’s voice calling after him - but he doesn’t even make it that far. He collapses in the stairwell, sinking down to sit on a step because his legs can’t hold him up any longer.
Eddie hasn’t thought about the lightning strike since that night with Buck in his kitchen, when they’d scratched the surface but stemmed the bleed before they could discuss all the things they’d spent so long not saying. Not because he’d forgotten about it, or anything as preposterous as that. No, Eddie very deliberately hasn’t thought about it because he can’t. Every time he’s ever come close he would get that icy feeling of dread in his chest, as if his heart was sinking like a lead balloon. His breaths would come too shallow and too quick, and he’d get a tingling sensation in his fingers like they were about to go numb. He would push the thoughts away - bury them down, down, down, like he’s so good at doing - because he was never brave enough to face the reality of them.
But today, on the Hotshots set, Eddie came face to face with his worst nightmare, all over again.
Except it wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t monsters under the bed or running in slow motion while you’re being chased; it was real. It had happened. It had happened to Buck, and to Eddie, and to see it again…to be confronted with it so abruptly, without any time to steel himself against the memories of that night? Eddie had almost collapsed to his knees then and there.
He saw someone hanging from a ladder truck, and he saw Buck. It didn’t matter that, logically, he knew better, or that the weight in his hands wasn’t his best friend. It didn’t matter that the guy was some stunt double named Reed. Because, as he’d scaled the ladder, he’d felt Buck’s name bubbling up inside of him. He’d had to swallow it back down so he didn’t scream it, like he had done back then. Back when it was Buck’s life quite literally hanging in the balance. When it had felt like Eddie’s was, too.
And it’s hard to know that the goddamn tv show is just a highlight reel of all their most painful moments. It’s hard to see one of the worst nights of Eddie’s life being used as a source of entertainment, as if Buck’s life isn’t sacred. As if his death wasn’t a tragedy that Eddie didn’t think he would be able to survive. It makes him feel bitter, and angry, and raw, like his chest has been cracked wide open and his beating heart is on display for everyone to see the scars that decorate it.
He props his elbows on his knees, drops his head down between his shoulders, and runs his hands through his hair. He tugs on the strands like the pain of it might distract him from the memories flickering across the insides of his eyelids like a movie he can’t skip. It doesn’t work, though.
He sees Buck’s smile when Eddie said, ”Go get ‘em, cowboy,” before he went up the ladder. He sees the look of horror on Bobby’s face, right before he sees Buck’s lifeless body hanging. He hears the echo of his own voice as he screamed, and screamed, and screamed for him, and he hears the crack in Chim’s voice when he said there was no shockable rhythm. He feels the terror when Bobby pulled him away, and then the creaking of Buck’s ribs as they broke beneath Eddie’s hands.
He tries to blink away the sights, and cover his ears to block out the sounds. It almost feels like when he was newly back from Afghanistan, and anything and everything would trigger a flashback. He feels brittle, breakable.
His hands over his ears are muffling his surroundings so Eddie doesn’t hear the footsteps getting closer, but he sees the boots that suddenly appear in front of him, just a couple of steps down from where he’d sunk to the floor. And he’s not really ready to face anyone yet, but there’s an aglet missing from the laces of the left boot so Eddie looks up anyway.
Buck is wearing a concerned expression, with his brows furrowed and his mouth twisted. Eddie tries to smile, but he thinks it probably ends up being more of a grimace.
“Hey,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. It sends a shiver down his spine because it sounds like he’s been screaming, and the last time he did that, it was Buck’s name on his lips.
“Hey,” Buck replies. “Can I sit with you?”
Eddie nods his head, shifting to the right so he can lean against the wall while Buck slots into place by his side. He’s so…so big, these days. Bigger, and broader, and still somehow softer, than Eddie is used to seeing him. It kind of has his brain all fuzzy, with thoughts of priests, and fruit juice, and seeking joy. There isn’t much room for the both of them, so their hips are pressed together and their shoulders bump every time they take a breath. It feels good - feels grounding.
“Is - I mean. Are you okay?”
Eddie laughs. “No,” he says, a little too honest. Then he sighs, and continues with, “Yes. I’m okay. I just…just needed a minute.”
“Do you, um, wanna talk about it? Whatever’s wrong?” Buck offers, because of course he does.
Buck has never met a problem he doesn’t want to fix, or a hurt he doesn’t want to heal. He’s got the biggest heart of anyone that Eddie has ever met - so big that his goodness shines out of him like little beams of sunlight. It feels warm, just being close to him, and Eddie has never once taken that for granted.
“The call,” Eddie begins, letting out a full-body sigh. “It was just hard, is all. Too close to home.”
Buck is quiet for a beat too long, and Eddie turns his head to look at him. HIs brow is furrowed again, but seemingly in confusion this time. When he looks at Eddie, the blue of his eyes - the softness in them - is startling.
“With Reed?” He asks.
And suddenly it dawns on Eddie that Buck doesn’t know. He never saw what Eddie had to see - never had to live through it, because his heart had stopped beating. He got to the set today and simply saw another call, not a mirror image of the very thing that still tears Eddie from sleep. Eddie doesn’t know if he should let Buck bask in his blissful ignorance or tell him the truth and risk instigating a capital-C Conversation, that might just force Eddie into revealing some of his too-big feelings.
But, before he has to make a decision, the alarm blares out through the firehouse. Buck sides, but places his hands on his knees and forces himself to stand up. He turns back around to Eddie and holds his hand out in offering.
“Come on,” Buck says, curling his fingers. “Let’s go save the world. We can talk about this later, okay?”
So Eddie takes Buck’s hand.
Eddie is…he’s not moping, exactly. He’s just had a great video call with Christopher that’s left him feeling lighter than he has done in, well, months. He’s got a bottle of orange juice and a bottle of cranberry juice in the fridge, and he picked up a box of those mini brownies when he popped into the store earlier. He’s not moping, he’s just…just fragile, right now. Still reeling a little from seeing a man hanging from a ladder truck by a harness, and that man not being Buck but still feeling like him anyway.
He’s sitting on the couch, a half full bottle of beer in his hand as he peels off the condensation-damp label, and he’s not quite sure what to do with himself.
He wants to talk to Buck about the way that he’s feeling - wants to tell him exactly what happened today - but he’s not sure if he can. Or, more importantly, he’s not sure if he should. Buck has finally gotten over the abruptness of his breakup, and Eddie doesn’t want to give him anything else to stew over. He doesn’t ever want to be the reason that Buck experiences more hurt.
Eddie sighs, tipping his head onto the back of the couch and looking up at the ugly popcorn ceiling, that still has dried slime stuck to it after a Chris-and-Buck-shaped mishap a couple of months ago. It brings a smile to his face, and Eddie doesn’t shove it down - doesn’t push away the happiness that the memory brings with it. He’s allowed this, he reminds himself. He’s allowed to feel good, even though he’s made mistakes. Punishing himself just makes everything worse, not just for Eddie, but for everyone around him.
A knock at the door startles Eddie, but before he even has a chance to get up from the couch someone is walking into his house. He already knows who it is, but he turns to look over his shoulder anyway.
Buck is hovering in the doorway with an unsure look on his face, like he isn’t sure if he’s welcome or not. And that…that’s just insane, actually, because there’s never a time or a world where Buck wouldn’t be welcome here, in Eddie’s home. In the home that he’s built with Christopher, and with Buck, and with all of the love that they share between them.
“Hey,” Eddie greets him. “Are you coming in, or are you just gonna stand there all night?”
“I, uh. I wasn’t sure if you wanted company.”
Eddie shrugs his shoulders. He doesn’t, really, but, “I always want to hang out with you.”
The uncertainty disappears from Buck’s face, and in its place there’s a sweet smile and a warm blush, like a sunburn across the bridge of his nose. It makes him look so soft that Eddie can’t help but smile back, and the word joy floats around inside of his head like a pinball.
And then Buck fully steps into the room and Eddie sees what he’s carrying.
“Did you rob a bakery on the way here?”
Buck looks down at the tupperware in his arms. “I, uh, I did a little baking.”
“A little?” Eddie scoffs in disbelief. Then, “Okay, what did you bring me?”
“Um, a loaf of banana bread, some lemon and poppyseed muffins, and a batch of snickerdoodle cookies.”
And, okay, well. Eddie isn’t complaining at all, actually. He’s quite grateful for it. It’s just that, when Tommy first fucked up and fumbled the best thing that’ll ever happen to him, Buck kind of spiralled for a minute. Not really about Tommy, but about being left again. About falling behind. About the fact that it felt like the life he’s always wanted for himself was beginning to slip out of reach. And he’d baked about it. Baked a lot. Like, a concerning amount, if Eddie is being honest.
So, he figures the flicker of concern is entirely justified as he takes in the literal stack of containers Buck has brought of him.
“Are you…okay?” Eddie asks, as Buck places the tupperware down onto the coffee table and takes a seat on the couch beside him.
“I bake when I’m stressed,” Buck says, dismissively waving a hand. “It’s a thing, now.”
“And you’re stressed because…?”
Buck sighs. “Because you’re stressed, but you bolted right after shift before I could talk to you,” he admits. “And I wanted to give you space, if that’s what you needed.”
The thing about Buck-and-Eddie is that they know each other inside and out, and yet sometimes they still struggle with talking about things. Anything that feels a little too big - a little too real - gets tabled. Gets pushed down, and ignored, and repressed, like if they don’t talk about it then it isn’t real. They did it with the well, even after Eddie saw the footage of Buck screaming and digging for him. They did it with the sniper, too, and then the will. With the lightning, and with Kim, and even with Christopher, whose absence has felt like a cavern between them.
They get each other…they can sit in total silence and understand each other completely, but. But some things need to be said out loud. Some things need to be talked about. And while they’re better at it than they used to be, sometimes things still slip through the cracks. Sometimes one or both of them clam up. So Eddie can’t blame Buck for stress baking instead of just calling, really.
“I wasn’t running from you, I just. I guess I don’t really know how to talk about it,” Eddie says honestly.
“What happened?” Buck asks, so gently that Eddie can’t help but turn to look at him.
He’s sitting sideways, his leg pulled up onto the couch with his ankle tucked beneath his knee so he’s facing Eddie. He’s got that look on his face - the really intense listening look that he gets, that makes the recipient of it feel like the most seen person in the world.
“When he was hanging from the ladder truck?” Eddie says, and Buck nods for him to keep going. “It was like when you got struck by lightning. When you…when you died.”
Eddie’s voice breaks, and his eyes well with tears, and he has to squeeze them closed so he can try and get a hold of himself. There’s no one in the world who he feels safer with than Buck, and he’s not scared of showing his soft underbelly to him. But if he doesn’t get his feelings in check, there’s no way he’s going to be able to talk about this.
“I…what?”
“You - you were hanging like that, from your harness. Just completely lifeless.”
“God, Eddie,” Buck sighs, reaching out a hand to rest it on Eddie’s thigh. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I was on the floor because of the current travelling down the ladder, and I saw Bobby’s face first. God, Buck. It was like the look he gave me after Shannon died. And then I looked up, and I saw you, and…”
“Eddie.”
“I lost it, y’know?” Eddie says, but Buck doesn’t. He has no idea because no one has ever told him this. “I climbed back up the ladder, and I was - I was screaming your name. And I couldn’t…I couldn’t pull you up because you were just. Just dead weight.”
His voice breaks again when he says dead, and he feels Buck’s hand tighten on his leg - feels him shift closer until his knee is poking into Eddie’s thigh, and his other hand is resting on the back of Eddie’s neck. He rubs his thumb back and forth along Eddie’s hairline, and it settles some of the trembling in his bones.
“You died, Buck. I had my hands on your chest, and I couldn’t feel your heart beating.You were gone, and I couldn’t fucking breathe.”
“I’m here,” Buck reassures him. “I’m right here.”
“But you weren’t,” Eddie reminds him. “For three minutes and seventeen seconds you weren’t here; you were dead. And the second I saw that guy hanging, it’s like I was back there. Like I was re-living it all over again.”
Eddie knows he has PTSD from Afghanistan. From the helicopter crash, but also survivor’s guilt, too. He also knows that getting shot by the sniper retraumatised him. But, he thinks that almost losing Buck - actually losing Buck - is a whole other trauma in itself. It’s a thing that lives inside of him now; an echo that never stops, only getting quiter the further away that it moves. It’s a deafening roar today, though.
“I didn’t know,” Buck says. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to go through that, and I’m sorry today was triggering for you.”
Eddie elbows him gently. “It’s not your fault, Buck. You just - you don’t know what feels like, to see…to see you-“
“-I do, Eddie,” Buck whispers.
Eddie finds his gaze again. He sees the stormy seas hiding in his irises - the pain, the fear, the ghosts, like his eyes are the windows into a haunted house. Buck chews on his bottom lip, and Eddie has the urge to reach up and use his thumb to pull it from between his teeth. He slips his fingers beneath his thigh instead, so he doesn’t do something reckless.
“I watched you get shot,” Buck whispers. “I felt your blood on my face and in my mouth, and then I watched your eyes roll back into your head as you collapsed. I know, Eddie.”
Silence descends upon them, so thick that Eddie could chew on it if he tried. He remembers back to that night in his kitchen, when they’d talked about it, but only just. Only surface-level things that weren’t too painful, like digging jagged fingernails into an open wound. He remembers what he said about not remembering, and he feels guilty now, for the lie.
And it’s not like he’d wanted to lie to Buck, but he just didn’t know how to tell the truth. Because if he had done - if he’d told Buck what he did remember about that day in the middle of downtown LA, then it would have forced Eddie to confront feelings he hadn’t even begun to understand back then. Feelings that were hot and syrupy, sticking to the inside of his ribs, and his heart, and his lungs. Feelings that he would have run from then, but now, maybe, he thinks he might like to run towards instead.
“I remember reaching for you,” Eddie tells him.
“What?”
“I don’t remember falling, but I remember lying on the floor and seeing your face. I remember reaching out for you, thinking just one last time. I wanted to touch you one last time.”
Buck makes a noise in the back of his throat, and Eddie can’t help himself. He slips his hand out from beneath his thigh and reaches out, using it to cover the hand that Buck has already placed on Eddie’s leg.
“I don’t remember most of it…”
“But you said-”
“-I know,” Eddie says. He’d told Buck he couldn’t remember anything. “I know. But - but I remember you. I remember seeing you covered in blood and thinking you were hurt.”
“You asked me,” Buck recalls. “You asked if I was hurt, and I didn’t know the answer at first. All I could think about was keeping you alive.”
“You did. You did keep me alive.”
“And you brought me back to life.”
Because that’s what they do for each other - that’s who they are for each other. They have each other’s back, they risk everything, would give anything, all to keep each other safe. To keep each other breathing, and unharmed, and happy.
“I’ll always fight for you,” Eddie promises.
“And I’ll always fight for you,” Buck says. “No matter what.” And the words are so sincere that it almost brings tears to Eddie’s eyes.
He thinks of Father Brian’s words of wisdom. He thinks about him telling Eddie to take care of himself first, before he tries to take care of others, kind of like those safety demonstrations on an airplane, telling you to put your own mask on before helping anyone else. He thinks about being told to seek joy…being told that he’s allowed to. And he’s been an expert at denying himself things for as long as he can remember, but now he lets himself look at Buck - at the pink in his cheeks that blends into his birthmark, the softness of his curls, the look in his eyes that makes Eddie feel like he matters. Like he’s worthy.
He thinks about joy, and then he thinks about Buck, and it takes him the length of a heartbeat to realise that they are the same thing. Every joyous moment in Eddie’s life has contained Christopher, or Buck, or both.
This is as far from frivolity that Eddie can get. It’s not dancing in his underwear, or drinking juice, or eating brownies. It might just be one of the biggest decisions that he’s ever made in his life, but he makes it anyway.
“I love you,” he says. It’s not a slip of the tongue, not something said in the heat of the moment. It’s a choice. “I’m in love with you.”
“You, um. What?”
Eddie can’t help the laugh that slips from between his lips. “Yeah, I was shocked, too,” he admits. “I didn’t, um - didn’t know that I even could feel like that.”
“About a man?” Buck asks softly. Carefully, like he’s treading on thin ice.
“About anyone,” Eddie confesses. “I - I loved Shannon, but. But it didn’t feel like this. She was my best friend, but you’re…you’re everything.”
Eddie’s spent his whole life in service, even before the army. He’s always pushed his own needs down and put everyone else’s first. He’s been doing it for so long that he’d forgotten how to want - he’d forgotten how to recognise the longing inside himself. He’d spent a lifetime hiding behind a mask, pretending to be something he’s not. Only it wasn’t pretending, not really, because he hadn’t known. Hadn’t known that he was…gay.
But he does know, now. He knows that he’s been trying to give Christopher the picture-perfect family to make up for everything he’s lost, and he knows that it never could have worked. He knows that he denies himself the things that feel good because he doesn’t feel worthy of them.
He knows that he loves Buck.
“I don’t want to wait for another tragedy to tell you. I don’t want to risk never getting the chance. We’ve almost lost each other too many times.”
“Eddie,” Buck murmurs, barely even audible.
He turns his hand over so it’s palm up, and he laces their fingers together. Then he’s leaning forwards while pulling Eddie in, and he’s resting his forehead on Eddie’s. He can feel Buck’s breath on his lips and Eddie licks them to try and steal a taste of him. Buck’s hand squeezes the back of Eddie’s neck as they breathe each other in, and Eddie has to bite down on his bottom lip to keep the whine from slipping out.
“You…do you mean that?” Buck asks breathlessly. “You love me?”
“I love you,” Eddie repeats. “I promise.”
Buck presses further forward, but stops just sort of kissing Eddie. This time Eddie can’t stop the whimper that tumbles from his mouth, and Buck groans in response.
“Can I kiss you?” He asks. “Please. Tell me I can kiss you.”
“Yes. Yes you-”
Buck kisses him.
It’s so sweet that it makes Eddie’s teeth ache. It’s gentle, and tender, and Eddie feels it travel all the way through his body. He’s never had a kiss like this before. He didn’t even know they could feel like this - like warmth, and sunlight, and peace, and home. Like finally settling into a body that has never quite belonged to him, not until now.
“I love you, too,” Buck murmurs against Eddie’s lips. “I love you so much.”
And Eddie feels so much joy, it’s like he’s bursting with it.