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Buck has always felt that his life moved cyclically in some ways. His susceptibility to abandonment, his need for approval, his heart-on-his-sleeve outlook on life. It all went ‘round and ‘round, highs and lows burning brighter on each uptake.
He figured that eventually he would acclimate himself to the pain.
Nothing, however, could have prepared him for the ache that Eddie Diaz left in his bones. He felt his absence in the way he breathed, in the flutter of his eyes morning and night, in each step he took, in the worried glances of his friends, in the wistful silence that followed accidentally making his coffee the sickeningly sweet way Eddie liked.
It didn’t help that traces of Eddie could be found everywhere he looked. Living in his house, it was impossible to escape the scent of his lavender laundry detergent, the likely now gross purple toothbrush he left behind, the weirdly distinctive impression of his body on his side of the couch.
His side of the couch, Buck thinks with an internalized eye roll. It’s simply Buck’s couch now.
Despite this fact, Buck refuses to sit anywhere apart from the far right side, unwilling to let even a toe tip past the middle cushion. The thought of the cold he would find there fills him with dread.
But, like every cycle, everything comes back around. Time is the cruelest thief. It heals and destroys. The sun rises, the sun sets. The clock ticks and ticks and ticks. Birth, life, death. Loving, leaving, healing.
‘Round and ‘round and ‘round.
All of this to say, Buck should have seen it coming.
One way or another, the healing stage always came back around. Whether in the conventional form of
self care or time, or in the less conventional form of another person, someone to care for and hold tight, like everything else, it inevitably circles back.
“Buck!” Chimney exclaims, startling Buck from his early morning trance of dramatized yearning and lack of coffee. It’s far too early for his enthusiasm, Buck thinks. Ironic coming from him, he knows, but said enthusiasm has scarcely found him without an open ear to spout his nonsense into, without a shoulder to bump into, without a knee to knock into, without Eddie.
“What’s up?” he asks, his eyes dropping to the lit up phone Chim has clutched between his fingers.
“You think I should go for round two of Mr. April?” Chim asks, chipper as he never fails to be at the mention of his accomplishment.
He reaches up and shoves the phone far too close to Buck’s face. He backs away with a grimace and takes the phone into his own hands. Big, bold letters read “Firefighter Calendar” and “Charity” exactly as they had all those years ago.
The thought of submitting himself for the yearly LAFD calendar hadn’t crossed his mind once since Eddie’s probationary year. Getting crushed by a ladder truck, caught in a tsunami, and nearly losing all of your friends to a lawsuit doesn’t really motivate a guy to have a sexy photoshoot. It’d honestly slipped his mind.
“I don’t know, Chim. Dad bod might’ve gotten to you in the last 7 years, don’t you think?” he jokes, patting Chim on the stomach with a smirk.
“Shut up, Buckley,” he rolls his eyes and smacks Buck’s hand away. “I’m serious. You think I should do it?”
“Do what?” Bobby approaches, his uniform pristinely unwrinkled and tucked. He smiles at Chim as he awaits his answers.
“Submit pictures for the firefighter calendar.”
“Go for it, man. Why not?” he grins. They both watch the self-consciousness take over his eyes as he dips his head. Just as it had all those years ago.
“Little greedy, Chim,” Buck jokes as an attempt at wiping that look away with a combination of a furrow of his brows and a petulant pout. “Already won once and going for it again. You’re really going to take that opportunity from a fellow firefighter? Shame, shame, shame.” He shakes his head, his hands resting on his hips.
“How about you try then, Buck? You know, since you didn’t make the cut last time,” he snarks back, hardly containing the playful grin that he reserves typically for Buck.
“Ouch,” Buck grins, clutching his chest with a fake wince.
Hen joins the group then, strutting up next to Bobby. “What are we talking about?” she asks, adjusting her purse on her shoulder as she speaks.
Something about the yellow shirt she’s wearing, edges lined with white, sparks a warmth in his gut. A memory attempts to break past the barrier of his subconscious but fails. His nose scrunches in frustration.
“The firefighter calendar,” Chim grins widely, her words surely already predicted in his mind.
“You know—” she starts, her incoming rant about misogyny and stereotypes and male-dominant fields cut short as all three of them tilt their heads, their eyes glued starkly to something behind Buck.
Buck spins around, expecting to find a walk-in, or the unexpected beginnings of a rare LA rain, or even one of his colleagues flat on their face.
Instead, he finds Eddie.
For a long moment, Buck thinks he’s reached a point of no return in his insanity. When he turns back to gauge the looks on everyone else’s face, however, what he finds is even worse. Confirmation.
His stomach drops.
“Eddie?” he asks, turning back, his voice smaller and weaker than he’d ever have liked to hear from himself.
Buck had never understood what people meant when they said “deafening silence.” Now, he did. There was sound, of course. The faraway sound of a flushed toilet, the faint wind blowing in through the large bay doors, even the hitching of his own breath. None of which reaches his ears, though, a sharp ringing overwhelming his senses.
“Surprise?” Eddie said hesitantly, the blank look on Buck’s face clearly making him sweat.
Then, without thought, his feet began moving him forward, picking up speed as he approached. He must look pathetic, desperate even, to anyone watching, but he can’t bring himself to care even the slightest bit.
Buck watches panic flicker through the glint of his eyes, presumably afraid of what Buck’s intentions are, but he doesn’t flinch away for a moment, the complete and total trust he has in Buck taking over.
He reaches Eddie quickly, and when he does, his mind itself still hasn’t caught up to what his intentions actually are. His body pulls him forward as if Eddie is a magnet who has been out of range, whose attraction has only grown stronger with the distance. As if Buck is a forgotten ear piercing entering the room of a running MRI machine, unwanted and dangerous.
His arms wrap around Eddie before his momentum slows. Eddie’s knocked off his feet for a moment, forced to catch himself a step backward from where he stood. His arms follow, coiling around Buck’s waist to stabilize himself.
Buck tucks himself into the crook of Eddie’s neck, inhaling the scent he finds there. Something about it is off, not wholly the Eddie he knows, but it’s as close as he’s gotten since the first time he washed Eddie’s bed sheets after he left, so he dips his nose deeper. Somewhere in his subconscious, he is ashamed of his uninhibitedness, but he finds that his body has no intention of listening to his mind.
“Buck,” Eddie says quietly, for only Buck to hear. It tickles the back of his neck, and he shivers. Buck doesn’t acknowledge him with a response, but he pulls him impossibly closer. “Buck.”
“Eddie,” Buck replies, and the word feels familiar but foreign at the same time.
He doesn’t know why Eddie is here, if it’s permanent or a surprise visit, but Buck thinks irrationally that if he never relents to outside forces, if he keeps Eddie here in his arms until the building around them crumbles and they take their last breaths, that he will never be able to leave him again.
“Evan,” Eddie says louder. Buck freezes beneath Eddie’s touch. “I’m back. We’re back.”
Buck doesn’t know what he’s meant to do. He wants to scream and cry. He wants to pull Eddie closer, tie a leash to him, so that even if his words are a cruel, cruel joke, he can’t get away again. He wants to push him away and start a fight over nothing. He wants to be all Buck about it; be pathetic and stupid and make it all about him. But he can’t even move.
Eddie indulges him, however, so he doesn’t bother himself too much with the prospect.
A tear falls. His eyes burn with it.
“I missed you so bad, Eddie,” he breathes out, his voice chock full of emotion. His voice goes higher on his name, and tears pool behind his eyelids.
“I missed you too, Buck,” Eddie tells him, rubbing at his back. “More than you know.”
That’s when he decides to pull back. His touch, his warmth, his words all becoming too much at once. Eddie doesn’t let go of his waist as if he’s equally afraid of letting go.
“Now, um, not to ruin the moment, but,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, his other hand still heating up the skin beneath Buck’s shirt, “we kind of need a place to stay…?”
Buck laughs, his face still wet with tears. Eddie laughs alongside him, and all of the built up sadness and frustration and loneliness washing away without a second thought at the sight of his cute little canines sticking out between his lips.
Smiling ear to ear, Buck says, “You’re always welcome.”