Chapter Text
Drowning. It’s a feeling Buck is intimately familiar with after the tsunami all those years ago. Water burning his lungs, putrid water stinging his cuts, leaving his skin feeling slimy and unfamiliar for days after.
In the days following the tsunami the death tolls wracked up. Loved ones got more and more desperate for news, at some point even bad news became good enough. The news of their loved ones being dead became better than the not knowing.
The not knowing if the person who used to lay face down on their bed as they gave them back massages and told them they were loved was now face down in a puddle of water. Their body slowly taking on water and becoming a bloated, unrecognizable version of themselves. Not knowing if their person was lost, desperate to find home but unable to free themselves from their watery grave. If there even was a body left to return home.
Was it better to return home and have a few moments with family, then leave them once more, or was it better to never come back at all? Was it selfish to want one more long, lingering gaze into the eyes of your partner? Or one more moment to marvel at the people you grew together?
Some people after the tsunami made it home on tired legs, relief clear on their faces, only to never wake up the next morning. Never to cook their family another breakfast, never to watch the sunrise, never to have that first sip of morning dark roast glide bitterly down the back of their throats ever again.
Secondary drowning is what they called it. When your lungs carry the impact hours after you’ve been freed. Slowly killing you from the inside out, eating away at your lung function. By the time most people realize what’s happening, it’s already too late, they never make it to the hospital.
It’s a fate worse than dying in the tsunami, at least in Buck’s opinion. While it might be joyful for the person suffering, to have one last hurrah, it’s not fair to those you leave behind. The ones who thought, “This is it. You’re safe now, we can start to rebuild, nothing terrible was lost.” It’s a lie built around an unattainable fantasy, never to be achieved.
As much as Buck knew, logically, that Eddie needed to go to Texas, to repair his relationship with Chris, it still felt as if he had been thrown into the murky tides of the tsunami once more. No Christopher in sight no matter how hard he searched. Eddie only reachable through a phone screen. The rest of his 118 family felt like they were an ocean away.
That wasn’t the worst part though. After Abby, after those months spent waiting around for her, a ghost in her home, a vestige of what she left behind. Buck swore he would never cling on to someone like that again. Never settle for slowly dwindling and increasingly infrequently phone calls, separated by distance and time zones. He, pinky, promised himself he wouldn’t be left behind again, waiting for no one to come back.
Yet here he was, this time he wasn’t waiting. He didn’t believe for a second Eddie was coming home. Christopher needs him, Buck knows Eddie should be in El Paso. But he still feels the echoes of laughter that flowed through Eddie’s home, he swears he can hear it when he sits on the couch. He can even smell Eddie burning toast if he inhales deeply enough. But then the air in his lungs turns into the sinewy water of the waves that once pulled him under, and even years later he is drowning once more.
Buck goes to work, tries to act like everything is normal, nothing has changed. Chim shows him a picture of Jee and invites him over for tea parties to try and cheer him up, kids always make him feel better, right? But Buck’s kid, or the closest thing he has ever felt to someone he could one day call his kid, no longer lives near him. And it hurts, viscerally, to even look at a happy family anymore. It’s not fair, none of this is.
The hurt doesn’t go away no matter what he does. Dr. Copeland says he should try making new friends, and Maddie agrees. So he tries. He takes Ravi to a bar and they chat, but nothing feels worth talking about besides the only people he can’t have. Tommy is at the bar and Buck resorts to coping mechanisms he said he would never use again. It doesn’t help. Then Tommy throws his biggest fear in his face, that his feelings for Eddie are more than platonic. But that couldn’t possibly be true, Eddie is straight.
So Buck lashes out like a cornered animal and when he is done he pushes everything down into that tiny box in his mind reserved for unspeakable truths. Truths so damaging that if they were to get out of their metaphorical prison Buck doesn’t know what he would do, doesn’t want to even think about it. He slots his definitely non-existent feelings right next to that motorcycle crash he definitely didn't cause on purpose. Because those thoughts are wrong. Buck is fine. At least that's what he keeps telling himself.
Bobby tries to help him too, they spend more of their time off calls experimenting with new recipes in the loft’s kitchen. Buck’s favourite taste tester isn’t there to steal the veggies Buck chops, Chim picks up the slack. Hen offers for him to join her, Karen and Athena for wine nights. It doesn’t feel right when the long cooled off seat he takes around the table used to belong to Eddie. Eddie was the one who went to wine nights because in Karen’s words “he’s just one of the girls”.
It feels like everyone is trying to replace Eddie in his life. To help Buck take his mind off him, but Buck doesn’t want Eddie’s presence to leave. He wants the extra veggies to wilt and rot on the counter. He wants Eddie’s seat to remain vacant. He wants for everyone to feel how horrible life is without his best friend so they may all suffer with him. Instead, they act like life moves on when Buck’s world has stopped ticking. Time is no longer a linear property, but just a blob. The days of the week are merely there to tell him when to go to work, when to call Eddie, when it is time to try and breathe again instead of drowning in this perpetual sorrow.
Buck makes a choice. He can’t stand the feeling of his slow impending doom, the quiet suffocation he feels by his day-to-day life. So Buck packs his jeep. He’s not running away from his problem this time time, but running towards his future, to his family.
The drive is long, twelve hours, and Buck is jittering with energy the whole way there even though he hasn’t had a single ounce of coffee. He didn’t tell anyone he was leaving. He just left. Worried they would try and talk him out of it, or worse, encourage him to go because they, falsely or course, believe that Buck is enamoured by Eddie.
He’s cruising on the interstate when he receives a call. Bobby. He wants to know if Buck would like to have dinner with him and Athena.
“Umm, about that Bobby, I’m not really there anymore”, he replies, biting his lip.
“Not here? Are you spending the night at Maddie’s?”
“No, I’m…. driving to El Paso”
“Oh.” The line goes dead for a considerable time, so much so that Buck would think Bobby had hung up if it weren’t for the proud, fatherly voice that filters through his phone moments later.
“Good luck, Kiddo”
“Thanks D- Thanks Bobby” Buck squeaks out.
The phone beeps not a minute later signifying the end of the impromptu admission of Buck current whereabouts. As much as he deterred himself from telling the 118 and company where he was going, he has to admit, even only to himself, that he felt much lighter having it out there in the world.
The air felt heavier the longer the drive went on, but Buck’s lunges felt lighter than they had in weeks. Like the thought of being with the loved ones he missed so dearly could teach him how to breathe once more, ridding his lungs of the corrion done since Eddie and Chris's departure. As if the water drowning him had evaporated into the air.