Chapter Text
He left. And he didn’t come back.
It was difficult, God, of course it was difficult. It was like losing everything, saying goodbye to the warmth of the sun, knowing it’ll be a feeling never to be attained again.
Hell, what was he thinking? He was coming back. He was going to Texas, grabbing Chris, and coming home. Home to LA. Home to the 118. Home to Buck. Although he didn’t know where he stood on that front anymore.
He left Buck. Obviously, for good reason. But he knew Buck. He knew all the details of his face, how his biggest tell he wasn’t feeling right about something was his birthmark scrunching ever so slightly. He knew Buck wasn’t taking this well. He should’ve held him longer in the hug. He should’ve told Buck everything he meant to say, everything that had been rattling inside his brain for seven years.
He didn’t know then. Eddie didn’t know how deeply his love for Buck ran. He didn’t know until he was four hours outside of LA city limits, and driving towards a future with his son.
******
“Well, as a new recruit on our team, we’d like to invite you out for drinks.” Eddie’s new captain, Captain Harold, suggests. Eddie had been on his first 12 hour shift with his new crew, which didn’t seem right to say. The 118 was his crew, was his family. But he abandoned them all two weeks ago.
That’s how Eddie finds himself in a dimly lit, cowboy firefighter bar. He rolled his eyes when he walked in, seeing the mechanical bull that was being fired up by a lanky, dark haired man in a cowboy hat. How typical.
Eddie finds his ‘crew’ and is handed a beer. A beer that tastes bitter, and wrong. He can’t explain how.
“So, Eddie, is that short for something? Eduardo?” His new partner Elisa, asks, sitting across from him in the booth.
So is your full name Eduardo?
“No, it’s uh, Edmundo. After my abuelo.” Eddie knocks back the last of his drink, and fidgets with the label. Eddie fights back the memories of the last time his new team had asked him about his name, and how it all ended.
“Why’d you come out here anyway? People were saying you were from LA, I don’t know anyone who would leave LA to come back to shitty El Paso.” Derrick scoffs, one of the paramedics in the station that’s been giving him weird looks all day. Maybe its a territory thing again, Eddie hopes not.
“My son, actually. His grandparents live out here and he wanted to be closer to them.” Eddie hates giving out personal information, everybody knows that. He just can’t wait to not have to tell this damn lie anymore. It eats at him from the inside, knowing how much he hurt Christopher, how he basically forced his son away from him because he wished for one last moment with his mother. Traumatizing him forever.
“You got a kid? Why’s this the first time we’re hearing about this?”
“How old is he? I bet he’s a cutie.”
“Can we schedule a playdate with my kid? Cane just will not get out of the house, I swear that kid loves Fortnite more than me.”
This is why Eddie doesn’t share personal information.
Another round of drinks get delivered, and Eddie takes no time popping the cool liquid down his throat. Memories of Buck sitting in the engine, memories of Buck sitting on his couch, memories of Buck drunk and hazy in a dimly lit bar like this one.
He needs to get a grip. Buck is 800 miles away. He’s not here. He can’t be here. Eddie left him and his puppy dog eyes behind.
After feeling loosened up, Eddie starts rambling. About Buck. To his new team. The new team that hasn’t said ‘I’ve got your back’ or anything of the sort. Apparently it’s a thing most firefighters don’t say? Eddie’s puzzled by that one.
“I left my partner back in LA, that was the rough part.” Eddie takes a swig. “But me and Buck had so many good nights together, I’ll never forget them.” He smiles wide, remembering the last time he and Buck got into a dancing match at the house. “One time, we were drunk off our asses and just danced around the living room, belting out songs he introduced me to, so only he would actually know the words.” Eddie cackles, obviously feeling the liquid courage course through his brain.
“That’s so sweet, I wish I had someone to do that with.” Elisa makes a sad pout at her bottle.
“You know, El, I show you my songs all the time and yet, you never wanna dance or sing with me.” Derrick playfully snaps back. He backs away just in time to miss a teasing slap on his arm by Elisa.
“Yeah but we wouldn’t always do stuff like that.” Eddie sits up straighter, putting his elbows on the sticky bar table. “Okay so, there was this one time that we were so drunk, I was basically hanging off of him coming out of the bar, and we walk out and see his Jeep has got a boot on it! Alright, so then he’s freaking out, obviously, and I’m like ‘where’s your spare?’. And I kid you not, five minutes later, the spare is on, we’re driving down the road, and the old tire? It’s still sitting on the side of the curb…with the boot still on!”
The whole table erupts in laughter, everyone telling Eddie he’s got the best stories. That no way he put the spare on just because his car had a boot. Eddie swears up and down.
He feels a pang in his chest. He only has stories now, and he won’t be making any new ones.
A few hours later, Eddie finds himself basically dripping with sweat. He rode the bull, plastered. Came back to the table and told more stories about Buck. Enough stories that everyone came up with an excuse to leave.
But it definitely wasn’t because Eddie kept talking about Buck. No, of course not. Derrick and Elisa were heading out, together by the way (Eddie needed to figure out what was going on there), saying something about a movie they wanted to watch. Captain Harold was heading back to the wife before she came looking for him, and the rest of the crew that were still there mentioned vaguely something about an early shift.
Everyone knows you don’t go out a night before an early shift.
Eddie finds himself practically blackout drunk, calling an Uber. He stood out in the night air, still warm, he thinks, LA even got chilly at night.
******
Eddie crashes into his bed. His bed he brought from the home that Buck currently occupies. The bed that Buck has definitely woken up in a few times (we all have nightmares now and again).
Bucklebunny: hope ur shift went well! sent 6:01pm
Azzmundo: vry 👍 sent 2:37am
Bucklebunny: why r u up so late ???
Azzmundo: ur up ths lte 2
Bucklebunny: omg ur so drunk
Azzmundo: nooooo
Bucklebunny: call?
Incoming call.
“Heyyyyyyy, Buckley!!! You made it!” Eddie practically yells into the empty void of the house.
Buck chuckles on the other end. Eddie will never forget that sound. “Yeah, I made it, Eds. Have you had any water?”
“Water? I hardly know her.” Eddie falls into a fit of giggles.
“Eddie.” Buck pleads, and Eddie could never say no to that.
“Nooo Buck, I haven’t had any water. I got drunk, you don’t drink water when you wanna get drunk.”
“Why did you wanna get drunk?”
“I was talking about you alllllll night! The team loves you! When you come and visit you gotta meet em!” Eddie rambles. “Remember that time we all went horse riding and you got the farty one! That was sooo funny!”
Buck’s quiet “Oh” can barely be heard, but it brings Eddie back to the real moment. Not the one in his head, the one where he and Buck are mere 20 minutes apart, and talking on the phone like any other night. No, he needs to be in the present.
“Sorry.”
“No, Eds, it’s fine. I’m-I’m glad you’re having fun with your new team. Really, I am.” Buck pauses a moment, and drops his voice, “You deserve it.” That’s the voice Buck only uses when he’s thinking about something he doesn’t want to think about, the voice he only hears when Buck’s defeated, and has nothing else to say.
“I miss you.” Eddie blurts out. He doesn’t mean to. The emotions in his chest rise, rise as far as his blood alcohol level, and unexpectedly erupt from his mouth in the one thing he was trying not to say. Something they don’t say. It feels like too much, feels too knowing, feels like other words Eddie longs to say.
“I miss you too.” Buck says after an agonizingly long moment. Eddie’s heart rate races, faster than it already had been. Buck misses him too.
“’m sorry I left you like that. Should’ve asked you to come with or somethin’”
Eddie checks that the phone didn’t disconnect with how long Buck had been silent. Just when he takes his phone away from his ear, he hears Buck sigh.
“You had to go after Chris. I’ll never blame you for that.”
“But-but we have this…thing…and it-it feels wrong to leave you behind. Y’kno, like that.” Eddie mumbles, his head hung low to his chest. The dark void of sleep starts to roll credits behind his eyes.
“I-I know, but you had to do it. Right?”
The next thing Buck hears is a freight train rolling through the speaker. Wait, no, that’s just Eddie snoring.