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Eddie Diaz’s hands clenched around the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip.
He wasn’t sure if he could do this.
He wasn’t sure if he could handle it.
Buck had been gone for almost 5 years now, and Eddie hadn’t ever stepped foot in this place.
He’d been drunk off his ass the day of the funeral, and Maddie had made him go home and go to bed after the service was over, so he’d never actually been to the grave.
Not going to the grave had almost let him pretend that it didn’t exist. That he hadn’t killed the love of his life over some petty anger.
But once he stepped out of his truck, he wouldn’t be able to pretend ever again.
Eddie had tried forgetting. That’s all he had done for the better part of 4 years.
That’s why he’d gotten so deep into drugs that he couldn’t find his way out.
That’s why he’d drank half a damn liquor store before trying to drive and ended up getting pulled over for a DUI 15 feet from his driveway.
That’s how DCFS had taken Christopher from him.
Thankfully, they’d been kind enough to let Eddie have some input in who his son would be placed with, and he’d been able to avoid getting Christopher sent back to Texas by begging Bobby and Athena to be his fosters.
Losing his son had been the wake-up call that Eddie had desperately needed, and he’d checked himself into rehab once he was let out from his 3 months in jail.
He was out now. He was clean. Had been for nearly 6 months.
Today was a special day.
His son, his baby boy, turned 13 today.
It was his first birthday back with Eddie, and the kid had asked for only one thing.
Just one.
He’d asked to go see Buck.
Eddie hadn’t been able to tell his son no.
So here they were, sitting parked in a large cemetery with a massive oak tree standing tall and opposing over the truck.
Eddie could already see the stone from where he sat.
It was tall and beautiful, kind of like the man it was supposed to represent.
The man that Eddie had let down.
No one blamed him.
Eddie was Buck’s 3rd call, and it was very likely too late to save him by the time he’d called Eddie, anyway, so all of the blame got pushed onto Chimney and Bobby.
Eddie hated that.
He hated the fact that no one seemed to hate him as much as he hated himself.
Because he deserved their hate.
He deserved their anger.
But he didn’t get it from anyone, not even Maddie.
No.
They’d all heard about the way that Bobby, Chim, and Hen had found him clinging to Buck’s body.
Hell, Maddie had been on the phone. She’d heard him screaming Buck’s name.
She’d heard him begging the man to wake up.
She’d heard the 3 tortuous little words that he’d practically screeched when Bobby finally succeeded at prying the pale body out of his arms.
Eddie let out a shaky breath and gripped the steering wheel even tighter.
Finding Buck like that… it had broken something in Eddie that he knew he’d never be able to fix.
It had killed off every part of him that mattered.
His heart still beat, but his spirit shriveled up and died the day that Buck was lowered into the ground.
“Dad?” Christopher asked hesitantly from the passenger seat.
Eddie sent his son what was supposed to be a reassuring smile, but he knew it had ended up as more of a grimace.
“We don’t have to do this.” Christopher said quietly. “Not if you don’t want to.”
Eddie took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “W-We can do it. Come on.”
With that, Eddie peeled his hands off of the steering wheel and opened his door.
Eddie’s heart caught in his throat the second his feet hit the pavement of the little roadway.
He was so close to Buck.
Closer than he had been since the funeral, when he’d broken down into a sobbing mess in front of Buck’s casket and had to be led back to his seat by Hen.
Christopher came around the truck and grabbed one of Eddie’s hands tightly, eyes never leaving the shiny stone near the base of the massive tree.
With a shaky breath, Eddie forced himself to take a step forward.
And then another.
And another.
It seemed like hours before the father and son came to a stop before the stone.
A weathered firefighter helmet sat in front of the stone, almost buried in the pile of dead roses that someone had brought 2 months ago on the anniversary of the truck bombing.
Buck hadn’t really been a fan of roses. He’d always preferred carnations, but Eddie only knew that thanks to a drunken conversation about 3 months after he’d started at the 118. Buck normally tried to pretend that he didn’t like flowers at all.
“I miss him.” Christopher whispered, after the pair had been looking silently at the stone for nearly 10 minutes.
Eddie swallowed a lump in his throat. “Me too, Mijo.”
“It’s not fair.” Christopher said with a sniff. “Dad, it’s not fair. Why did Buck have to die?”
‘He didn’t.’ A little voice in the back of Eddie’s head whispered.
“I don’t know, Mijo.” Eddie said in a choked voice.
Christopher looked up at Eddie, then back at the stone. He then nodded, seemingly coming to some sort of decision, and turned around to walk back towards the truck.
Eddie turned to follow him, but Christopher had other ideas. “I know you’ve never been to see him. Bobby and Athena brought me a few times. I’ve talked to him. You never have. He’d want you to.”
Eddie gaped at his son, so the boy continued. “I know you won’t say what you need to say if I can hear you, so I’m going back to the truck. Talk to him.”
Eddie watched his son go, then turned back to the shiny stone.
That’s all it was. A big slab of stone with Buck’s name on it.
It wasn’t Buck.
It wasn’t some sort of mystical connection between this world and whatever place Buck had gone to.
It was just a piss poor replacement for a person who had meant so much to Eddie.
But he knew that Christopher was right.
Buck… Buck would want Eddie to be here. Would want Eddie to talk to the stone as if his best friend could still hear him.
“H-Hey, Buck.” Eddie said quietly.
What else could he even say?
‘Hi, how are you, sorry I got you killed’?
‘Hello, I’m not sure what afterlife you went to, but I hate you for not taking me with you’?
Somehow, Eddie didn’t think Buck would like either one of them, no matter how true they were.
“It’s um. It’s been a while.”
Understatement. Eddie hadn’t been within a mile of Buck in over 4 years.
In the grand scheme of things, that wasn’t too long, but it was 4 times as long as Eddie had gotten to spend with Buck in life.
It was hard to believe that he’d only gotten a year with Buck, before everything. Before the lawsuit and the events that had followed.
Eddie was at a point in his life now where he had known Buck as a dead man longer than he had known him as the lively ray of sunshine he used to be.
It wasn’t right.
It was unnatural for Buck to be anything but happy and chattering away.
He shouldn’t be capable of laying still for 4 years.
And yet, Eddie had helped ensure that he was.
“I, uh.” Eddie cleared his throat. “I don’t know how to do this. I’ve never had to do this before, you know. I-I mean I used to talk to Shannon’s grave sometimes, but it’s different with you. I loved her, I really did. But I wasn’t in—”
Eddie cut himself off, and placed a hand on the top of the cold stone. “I wasn’t in love with her. I wanted to be. God, I wanted to be so bad. But I wasn’t. And I only know that, because… because I never felt about her the way I feel about you.”
Eddie sniffed and crouched down in front of the stone.
It was a nice one. One of those fancy ones with a picture on the glossy surface.
It was Buck’s service picture, because of course it was. Buck had never been so proud of anything in his life as he was of being a firefighter. He’d be happy that Maddie had picked that one.
Buck’s head was tilted to the side just slightly, showing off his birthmark in a way he usually only did when he was trying to flirt, and his mouth was ticked up at the corner in a slight smirk.
It was an expression Eddie had seen on his face many times, and seeing it on the stone hurt more than words could ever express.
“I can’t believe this is real.” Eddie whispered to the stone. “It shouldn’t be real. You shouldn’t be gone. I shouldn’t be here. We shouldn't be here. We should be somewhere else. Like the zoo or that planetarium you wanted to go to. They, uh, they hadn’t opened it yet, remember? You were so excited that you marked the grand opening on the calendar on my fridge.”
Eddie’s lips twisted in despair. “It’s open now. I’m taking Chris there later. For you. Because I know you would’ve done it already if you hadn’t… if you hadn’t died. You should be going with us. We should be going together. You should ramble all about the planets and stars, and I’ll pretend that I don’t care what you’re saying, but I will. I always did.”
Eddie sniffed. “A-And then we’ll go out for dinner. Maybe that Italian place you like. Christopher’s old enough now he might understand when you tell him the story about your date there with Abby. A-And I’ll tell you to slow down and stop talking with your mouth full so we don’t have to do a reenactment.”
“Then we’ll go home.” Eddie swallowed thickly. “You’ll tell me I have to pick the movie because it’s my house. Really, you just can never make up your mind about what to watch, and you want me to make it up for you. And I’ll make the popcorn, obviously. It’s still one of the few things I don’t burn.”
A tear rolled down Eddie cheek, but he did his best to ignore it. “Chris is old enough now that I wouldn’t have to go for a Disney movie, but I still would, because I know how much you love them. I know how big and bright your smile will be the second the Disney logo comes up on the screen. God, I would give anything to see that smile again, you have no idea.”
Eddie’s knees started protesting the crouched position, so he shifted until he was kneeling in front of the stone instead. “We’d probably get through one movie at the max before Chris went to go play video games, but you and I, we’ll start another one anyway. Probably Mulan, because you know I love it when you sing along with the music.”
There were some dried leaves against the base of the stone, and Eddie reached out to brush them away. “I never really cared for the movie as a whole. It’s not bad, I just don’t do Disney. But I started to love it, because you love it, and I’ll probably bawl like a baby if I ever try to watch it again. I don’t think I could do it. Sit there and watch it without you turning to poke my chest every time Shang says ‘I’ll make a man out of you’ or fluttering your eyelashes during A Girl Worth Fighting For. I… I think that might be the thing that kills me, Buck.”
A tear dripped down from Eddie’s jaw and landed on the pile of dead roses. “After the movie, I’ll convince you to stay over. It never took much. I think part of you just never wanted to leave, and I’d have been perfectly fine with you staying there forever. You’ll make breakfast in the morning. Pancakes, because Chris will beg for them, like always.”
“Fuck, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything as bad as I want that.” Eddie leaned forward until his forehead was touching Buck’s on the stone. “I know it’s my fault. And I know I have to live with it, but dammit, I can’t. I’m trying so hard, but I c-can’t. I can’t do this without you.”
Eddie’s breath hitched in his throat. “I’d give everything I had if you just… if you just came back to me. I promise I’ll do it all differently. I’ll tell you I love you every single day, and I’ll kiss that smile off of your lips every chance I get. I’ll swing by on the way home from shift every so often and grab some carnations, and you’ll be so happy you won’t even be able to pretend you don’t love them.”
“We’ll be the most insufferable couple ever. Constantly embarrassing our boy. He’ll pretend to hate it, but he’ll just be glad we finally figured things out.” Eddie closed his eyes. “We’ll go somewhere with a view of the ocean, because I know you still love it even after the tsunami. And I’ll get down on one knee for you, just like I am now, and I’ll ask you to stay with me for the rest of forever. Because I don’t just want a lifetime with you, Buck, I want everything. Every speck of time the universe has to offer.”
One of Eddie’s hands came up and traced over the engraving that spelled out Buck’s name. “You’ll say yes, I hope.”
More tears rushed down Eddie’s face until he could no longer ignore them. “I want it so bad. I want you so bad. I don’t want to be here without you. Fuck, why didn’t you just call 9-1-1? Why did you even try to call us? You knew we were angry. You knew we were being assholes. Why did you bet your life on us?”
Eddie’s hand lightly smacked the polished stone. “And why didn’t I fucking answer the phone? Why? I didn’t hate you, Buck, I swear I didn’t. I could never hate you. I loved you so damn much, even then. I think that’s why I was so angry, and I—”
A sob left Eddie’s mouth. “I killed you. I let my anger get the better of me, and I killed you. I’m the one that deserves to be in that box, not you. Never you.”
Eddie buried his face in his hands, and rocked back and forth on his knees as wracking sobs ripped through his body, 4 years’ worth of bottled up pain bursting out of him in a single moment.
Everything he’d worked so hard to suppress since getting clean, every aching thought that had driven him to drinking in the first place, came back with a vengeance.
He’d fucked up and gotten the love of his life killed.
Why did he get to live when Buck died?
Why did Buck have to die at all?
Nothing about the situation was fair or right.
Eventually, Eddie managed to stumble to his feet.
His eyes were red and puffy and his heart still broke with every beat it took, but something about him felt lighter than it had since the day he’d found Buck’s body.
Moving forward would be hard. Nearly impossible. And the only reason he was willing to try, was because he couldn’t face Buck in whatever afterlife existed without being able to say he’d given it his best shot.
So he’d do it.
He had to do it.
He had to live, no matter how much it hurt, because Buck didn’t get to.
“I love you.” Eddie whispered hoarsely. “And I’m sorry.”
With that, Eddie put his hands in his jeans pockets and walked away from the grave.
Walked back to a life that his best friend would never get to live.
"Are you okay?" Christopher whispered when Eddie climbed back into the truck.
Eddie swallowed, then sent Chris what felt like his first genuine smile in forever. "I... think I will be."