Work Text:
As Eddie stands over Bucks grave he realizes a lot of things.
He stayed by his side for so long and now all he wants to do is lie by his side for even longer.
He thinks he finally realizes what Bobby implied that day at the hardware store.
When he asked Eddie how he made his relationship with Shannon happen and Eddie told him that
he didn't. He wasn't searching for a relationship when he found Shannon, so when he met Marisol
again, he was so very sure that this was fate. (Sue him for starting to believe in all this higher power crap, it's all Buck's fault anyways).
His hand glides over the grass. Over Buck.
He should've known that Bobby never meant Marisol.
If only he knew what Bobby meant sooner. Then maybe they could've had the time to make what
they already had into something so much more.
Something Eddie so desperately craved to hold in his poor and calloused hands again.
Something so good and beautiful.
Maybe this was always supposed to be his fate.
Maybe the universe was laughing at him.
Laughing how he is failing his life.
How he failed him.
Eddie's pretty sure that Bobby always knew something that Eddie didn't.
That he always saw something.
Something which was buried so deep in his heart.
Sealed away by his father’s voice.
By his small-town priest.
By his army days.
By his indescribable love for Shannon.
And in the end, sealed away by his own cowardly hands.
He lays down next to Buck, his hand firmly gripping onto the grass over him.
He remembers how jealous he felt when Buck told him he was dating Ali.
Taylor.
Natalia... God how much he hated her. How she apparently made Buck feel like she saw him.
Cause she didn't.
None of them ever truly saw Buck the way Eddie saw him.
Buck with his stupid blond curls he always hid behind hair gel.
His stupid soft and bright and beautiful smile when he told Christopher about a legendary and
mythical city called Kitezh.
The way he always made home cooked meals for their little family.
And doesn't that bring him right back to Bobby, who told him in the dim kitchen light, that he
doesn't seem to have a problem committing to certain things.
God he should've seen the signs so long ago.
Eddie turned around on the grass, lying right on top of Buck.
God how he wishes he could wake up and all this would just be a sick dream, created by a figment
of his cruel mind.
He closes his eyes and wishes, so desperately that when he wakes up, he's lying in his bed on top of
Buck. Comforted by his mysteriously always warm body.
“I'm not thattt warm, it's not my fault you're always so cold Eddie” Buck laughs as Eddie
intertwined their feet more than a human body should be capable of and pressed his side against
him.
Looking back at it now.
They were each other’s everything.
Except Eddie doesn't want to think like that.
“Were” Eddie says out loud.
No matter how many years Eddie might have to live on without Buck, he will always be his
everything. He doesn't want to think of Buck in the past tense. Doesn't really want to acknowledge
that he is gone at all.
Maybe if he walks home, Buck will greet him at the door, all smiley like always and welcome him
inside, like Eddie's coming home to him.
Although deep down, Eddie knows that he won't be there.
Knows that soon he has to do something he never dreamed he'd have to do.
He needs to call his lawyer, who has already called him twice.
He knows why.
The person who was supposed to take care of his son if he dies is now dead.
Eddie doesn't want to change it.
Removing his name feels so final.
It feels like he's finishing the last chapter of his favorite book. Buck.
He's not ready.
He thinks he never will be.
If he's being truly honest, he kind of just wants to die himself.
Right here. Next to Buck.
…
He can't.
He's still needed here.
Christopher needs him.
With that final thought Eddie stands up. He stands there for a while longer, just staring.
Cause maybe he's still alive down there. Maybe this is all a prank, and he will jump out the bushes
and they'll laugh and bump their shoulders,
Maybe then Eddie would finally get to say...
... “I love you too” ...
and maybe then he wouldn't be met with silence.
March 17, 2024; Four years later
Now when Eddie stands in front of Buck's grave he's smiling.
Laying down next to him he finally feels something again.
Christopher is now 18 and Eddie feels like, hopes, that he will understand.
That he's not going to be mad at him or at Buck and that later on, when anybody asks him about his
parents, he will be able to say that they all, all three of them, loved him so very much.
This time when he looks over to Buck, he feels content and honestly doesn't even feel the sting of
the blade as it slides inside him. He closes his eyes and hopes that his blood will seep through the
ground and intertwine with Buck.
The next time he opens his eyes he finally sees who he's wanted to see for so long.
“Come on Eddie” Buck says, smiling at him like he understands.
Like he would've done the same.
So, when Eddie stands up, he blurts out the words, which have been bubbling in his throat ever
since he found Buck lying almost dead on the floor.
Buck who told Eddie that he loved him. Buck, who selfishly couldn't wait for Eddie to say them
back.
“I love you too Buck”
Buck takes his hand.
Eddie doesn't know if this is just a coincidence or if he knew which hand Eddie used to lay on his
grave.
But in that moment Eddie doesn't care.
He hopes that in another universe they could've lived together.
He also hopes that in every universe they die together.
As they both fade away, he looks back at Bucks’ grave and wishes that the space next to him will be
filled with Eddies grave.
Eddie doesn't regret following Buck, just how Buck never regretted following him into that
ambulance.
He smiles and finally he gets his happy ending.
His fate.