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It’s a slow night for Eddie—four rides in the past two hours is a lot less than he’s used to, but the city feels quiet today. There’s some sense of foreboding, like the universe is trying to prepare him for something. Eddie’s not sure, because he’s not superstitious, and the universe does not scream, thank you very much, but for some reason, Eddie just wants to be home right now.
Home in LA, not here, but his home is with Christopher, and that’s good enough for him.
Eddie stares at his app, waiting for another ride to ping, but instead, it stays quiet. He was bargaining for a long night, as Chris is already asleep, and Eddie needs the money to facilitate his move back to LA—even if he knows Buck will let him crash in his house because that’s just how Buck is. Eddie can set up in the living room, or something—so he’s been staying out late to Uber gangs of drunk people, and people getting off work into the wee hours of the morning.
“Fuck it,” Eddie sighs, logging out of the app and taking himself offline, punching in his home address-–because even though he’s been driving around El Paso, he’s still getting used to driving there—into his directions app. Eddie sighs and cracks his neck, turning on the seat heaters to ease the ache in his ass and back from being stationary so long after being on the go for so long at his old job. He’s about to put his stupid little Prius into drive, hand on the gear shift and foot on the break when his phone buzzes with three incoming texts.
[buck]
hgey
are yiory home yet?
pls tellm emfuthat ur gonna behome soon eddie
Eddie raises an eyebrow at the texts, because while Buck isn’t the best texter—I have elastic thumbs, Eddie! They go where they want, okay?—this seems a bit much. There’s a pit of worry starting to form in his stomach, like a black hole opening and eating every sensible thought trying to form in Eddie’s head. Fuck, is Buck okay? Is he drunk? He usually gets worse at texting when he’s drunk.
Eddie grabs his phone from the holder, opens the chats, and licks his lips. His directions app is talking to him in five hundred feet, take a right but Eddie puts it out of his mind, ignoring the robotic voice trying to guide him home.
[Eddie]
Hey, I’ll be home in fifteen minutes.
You good? Call me if you need to talk, man.
Clear, easy, and not panicky. Because Eddie does not panic, even when it comes to Buck—and, wow, that’s a boatload of unsaid and unspecified things that Eddie has been putting off, hiding behind the other boatloads of other shit he needs to unpack eventually. He’s been ignoring it since he got to El Paso and the distance between him and Buck has been felt viscerally—it’s worse than the lawsuit, because he could still see Buck then. Of course, FaceTimes and constant texting help, but all he wants to do is hug Buck, knock their shoulders together, exchange glances at scenes, and work seamlessly together. He misses it.
He misses Buck.
[buck]
nono
gethome first
call them
then*
Eddie frowns, licking his lips as he goes to type out a response, but something is urging him to just… get home. He thumbs up the text instead, tosses the device back on the phone stand, and swings out of his parking spot, where he’s been waiting in the center of town for the past thirty minutes, a lot faster than he should.
It’s okay, though, because the streets of El Paso are quiet, the lights are green at every intersection, and there’s no cops to pull him over when he does twenty over the speed limit because something is urging him in the back of his mind to get home, get home, call Buck, get home.
Getting home is usually a thirty-minute drive, but Eddie makes it just shy of twenty.
-
Ring ring
“Come on, Buck.”
Ring ring
“Christ, Buck, pick up.” Eddie is pacing; he knows he is, but thankfully, his room is on the other side of the house where he won’t wake Chris up with his panicked pacing. Buck should be picking up right now, but he’s not. The ringing of the tone is making his chest feel tight and his heart squeeze, because why isn’t Buck picking up?
Ring ring
“Fuck,” Eddie whispers. There’s an urge to pull his phone away from his ear, disconnect the call and redial till Buck answers, but he’s too scared to miss the click of the receiver when the call is picked up and accepted.
Ring ri-
“Eddie,” oh, lord, that’s a whimper—something that makes his throat tight, his eyes widen, and his heart pick up. He’s heard that whimper before, when Buck shakes apart and cries so hard he heaves for air and vomits.
What the hell happened?
He must’ve said it out loud, because Buck stifles an ugly gasp into the receiver, all tinny and aching. “B-Bobby,” he croaks, chokes out as if speaking pains him.
Bobby? What happened with Bobby?
“Buck, what’s going on?” He’s keeping his voice level, mind falling into protect, assess, analyze mode, hoping the soothing tone of his voice will help Buck tell him what the hell is happening. “C’mon, talk to me.”
“B…Bobby’s dead.” The wail that follows the sentence knocks Eddie off his knees, has him stumbling back till his ass is firmly planted at the end of his bed, sinking into the mattress. “O-Oh, god, Eddie, he’s gone, Bobby’s dead-”
“What?” The sound that comes out of his mouth sounds foreign to him, not him, but Eddie knows it is, because nobody else is in the room with him. “Buck, what do you mean? Are-” What is Eddie supposed to say in this situation where his best friend is telling him his ex-captain is dead?
“W-We responded to a lab fire, a-and this terrible scientist made some virus have a ninety-minute incubation phase instead of two weeks, and we didn’t know that. T-Then there was an explosion, and Chimney got infected, and we had to find the lady who made the virus because she took the antiviral, Eddie. She fucking took it to sell to some Big Pharma to cash in on a possible global pandemic, but we found her, somehow. A lot of illegal stuff, don’t ask. But, we… we got it back in time, y’know? We got there, we spent the entire day running around LA, had a fucking helicptoer chase to act as a decoy, and Athena got it to them—Chimney’s okay, Hen’s okay, Ravi okay’s, everyone else was supposed to be okay.”
Eddie feels as if he’s been dragged into an alternate universe, because what? There’s so much to unpack there, but Eddie knows it isn’t over, because Buck is hiccuping and sobbing in the way that’ll eventually lead to him hyperventilating and spiraling into a panic attack, and Eddie isn’t there for it. He’s stuck in fucking El Paso with parents who are disappointed in him, a son who is still rewarming up to him because even though he’s here with Eddie, it doesn’t fix everything miraculously.
“T-Then, god, Eddie, he locked himself in the lab. He figured out his airhose was compromised from the blast, and he’d been hiding symptoms for hours. Hours, Eddie. He… he knew he was dying, and he told me I was gonna be okay, Eddie. Then he told me he wanted time with his wife, and I had to go. How can I be okay without him, Eddie? How am I supposed to survive without Bobby, Eddie?” Eddie belatedly realizes he’s crying, tears spilling down his cheeks, leaving wet, burning tracks.
“Buck-,” Eddie rasps, cupping his mouth to hold back the scream he feels bubbling. What is he supposed to say to this? There are no words to describe this—the grief that’s building in his throat is choking him, flashes of memories with Bobby, everything the man had done for him over the seven years he’d been at the 118. Bobby had been like a father to him as well, a figure he could look up to, could confide in, and he knew it was like that for Buck, but more. Bobby was the father neither of them had—the one who took the burden off their shoulders instead of being the one to put it there. He was the one to teach Buck how to tie a tie, and the one to let Eddie breathe since he set foot stateside after his discharge, clutching a medal box so tight it still has some damage, and licking his three bullet wounds.
“We were all supposed to come out of that stupid lab okay, Eddie. We weren’t supposed to not be able to say goodbye to our captain. This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Buck weeps, and Eddie craves to be by his side, to sink into each other’s embraces and cry it out—it’s all he wants right now. “Eddie, please, I-... come home, please, I can’t do this without you, I can’t do this with you eight hundred miles away from me.” Buck is begging, pleading for him, and Eddie is a weak, broken man.
“Okay,” he agrees, even though he has no idea how he’s supposed to juggle all of this. “Okay, Buck… I’ll… I’ll figure it out, okay?” It’s all he can do because Eddie needs to be strong. After all, Buck can’t be right now. He wasn’t even there, but Buck was and just had to watch the only father the blond had sent him away before he died.
“Come home to me, Eddie, please,” Buck cries, and cries into the phone, and Eddie cries with him, rocking his heels back and forth to sway with the motions, to give himself some sort of self-soothing as his shoulders sag with the grief, and Eddie feels sick.
He was supposed to come home, be welcomed back with one of Bobby’s excellent meals, reunite with the 118 and Buck, and now, he’s coming home for a funeral, with their captain gone, and everyone else lost in grief.
“Buck,” Eddie whispers after time passes, because it has in the blink of an eye. “I’ll be there soon, okay?” Buck whimpers something affirmative, beyond words and teetering into pure exhaustion. “I’ll see you soon,” Eddie mutters only when Buck’s cries stop, and his airy snores filter through the phone, because that’s when Eddie feels strong enough to hang up.
He has to go wake Chris up.
He has a road trip to start, and Eddie is grabbing his duffel to pack, a school to call when the sun is high in the sky, and a team to get back to, and reality to confront because none of this feels real, and Eddie feels like he’ll be waking up after he dozed off in his car waiting for people to haul around El Paso and everything will be okay.
Eddie doesn’t bother with pinching himself to see if this is a dream or not, because the overwhelming pain coursing through his body is enough to tell him the answer: it’s real.