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There’s an emptiness in the house that isn’t Eddie’s anymore, but isn’t really Buck’s, and isn’t quite theirs, either. It’s the left-behind hollowness that lingers when someone is gone - that clings to a person like smoke, even long after the fire has been put out.
Their grief is the biggest thing in the room, the house, the whole damn world. It expands to fill every corner, changes shape to slip beneath doors and follow them everywhere they go. It’s a heaviness in their lungs when they try to breathe, a weight on their backs when they try to walk. There’s no place they can hide from it, nowhere to run that will ease the breaking inside of them. No option but to feel every earth-shattering second of it.
Buck looks so small as he leans back against the kitchen cupboards. Fragile in a way Eddie has never seen him before, not even in a hospital bed.
He’s hunched in on himself, head hanging low and shoulders curled inwards like he’s trying to protect himself. Like he’s trying to make himself small so the hurting can’t find him. Trying to shrink away from Eddie, or the world, or his grief. It’s a devastating sight, one that rocks Eddie to his core, because he’s never seen Buck look this…this broken before.
He doesn’t know what to say.
He knows what grief feels like. He is more than familiar with the way its serrated claws cut into your flesh and never want to let you go. The way it changes you so completely that you’re never quite the same after the bleeding is done. Eddie is aching too, after all. It feels like there’s a wound inside of him that he knows, no matter how much time passes, will never fully heal.
But this is different for Buck - bigger, and louder, and more brutal.
It’s his father who is gone, the only one who ever mattered at least. The only one who’s worth missing. And while both Eddie and Buck have spent a long time grieving parents who are still alive - parents they never even really got to have - they have never had to grieve one who is gone. Who is dead. Who can’t ever come back.
Eddie watches him for a minute, cataloging the exhaustion on his face: dark circles beneath his eyes, sallow skin, a sadness to him that Eddie has never once seen before in all his years of knowing Buck. It’s a vicious thing, grief. And watching someone that you…that you love be torn apart by it, is the cruelest kind of helplessness. There’s nothing you can do, no words you can say, that will ever take the pain of it away.
There’s an oppressive silence in the air, and then. Buck’s shoulders start to shudder, and the cry that is torn from his chest is a mournful one. A cracked open, agonised wail that splits Eddie down the middle - that shatters his heart, and his lungs, and his bones.
“Buck,” he murmurs, as he closes the distance between them.
Eddie folds Buck into his arms. Rests a careful hand on the back of his head and lets Buck burrow his face in Eddie’s neck. He holds him as tight as he can, beating heart against beating heart, in the hope that he can absorb some of Buck’s pain - that he can carry it inside his own chest so the weight isn’t so much for Buck to bear.
He knows he can’t, of course. And even if he could, Eddie isn’t sure if there’s enough room inside of him with all the space his own heartache is taking up.
But he tries anyway. He doesn’t let go. And soon Buck’s arms find their way around Eddie’s waist, his hands - big, and warm, and grasping - finding purchase in Eddie’s shirt and holding on for dear life. Buck’s breath is hot and damp against Eddie’s neck, and his tears roll down Eddie’s skin and disappear beneath the collar of his dress shirt. It’s the closest they’ve ever been, and isn’t it ironic that it’s happening now? That it’s taken this.
“I’ve got you,” Eddie whispers, even though his voice breaks.
He lets Buck fall apart in his arms, finally, for the first time since Bobby’s heart stopped beating. They’ve all cried, all had their own moment where it felt like their world was being ripped apart at the seams, but not Buck. Not since that first moment in the lab.
Until now, Buck hasn’t shed a single tear.
Through the shock, and the grief, and his ever-present need to be useful - to fix things - Buck has been the one holding everyone else up. He spent the first three nights on Athena’s couch, taking care of her, and May, and Harry. He held her hand as she signed all the necessary paperwork, and sat by her side as she planned his funeral. He cradled May in his arms as she sobbed, and then he drove Harry around for hours so he could cry without making his mom hurt even more.
He visited Chim and Hen every day - was only a phone call away for Maddie, and Karen, and the kids.
He’s been so strong for so long, and now - alone with Eddie - he finally gets to unravel, trusting that Eddie will be the one to hold him together. And it’s an agonising privilege, to be the person Buck finally lets himself cry in front of. It’s one that Eddie doesn’t take lightly.
“It’s okay,” Eddie lies, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “It’ll be okay. “
“He’s gone,” Buck whispers, his breath tickling Eddie’s throat.
The words make Eddie wince - make his heart feel like an open wound.
“I know,” Eddie says.
“I couldn’t save him, Eddie,” Buck sobs. “I couldn’t - I couldn’t do anything. All those times he’s saved me, and I - I failed him.”
“You didn’t fail him,” Eddie says instantly. “You didn’t fail him, Buck. There was nothing more you could have done.”
Eddie can feel Buck’s head shaking in the crook of his neck, can feel his hands grasping even tighter in his shirt. Eddie doesn’t know what to do for him - he doesn’t know how he could even begin to make this better. This devastation has been silently festering inside of Buck, and now it’s all pouring out in one heartbreaking confession.
Eddie can feel him take a large, gasping breath. And suddenly he knows what Buck is about to say before the words even leave his mouth:
“It should have been me.”
“No.”
“Eddie. Eddie it should have-”
“No.” Eddie silences him. “No, shut up. You don’t get to say that to me. Okay? You don’t get to say that, because when I saw the news - when I saw that someone was - was dead, all I could think-”
Eddie leans back, and the cracks in his heart splinter like broken glass when Buck whimpers at the separation. But he takes Buck’s face between his trembling hands, because he needs to look him in the eyes as he says this.
“-all I could think was please don’t let it be him,” Eddie confesses.
It feels wrong to say it out loud - it feels like a betrayal. Every single member of the 118 is Eddie’s family; he’d walk through fire for them, take a bullet for them, risk his life for them. He’d trade places with Bobby right now if he could. But. Buck is Buck, and while this is agony - while losing any of them would feel like a rib torn from his body - losing Buck would destroy Eddie beyond recognition. It might just kill him.
“I need you here, okay? We all do,” Eddie whispers. There are tears streaming down his face, and his voice breaks as he says, “Bobby would be happy that you’re here. That you’re safe.”
“It hurts.”
“I know. I know, but he’s with you, Buck. He’ll always be with you. With all of us.”
Eddie’s still not sure if he believes in god or heaven, but he knows that Bobby does. And he knows if anyone deserves a spot there, then it’s him. This man who turned a bunch of misfits into a family - who gave Chim and Hen their best friends, and who gave Buck and Eddie to each other.
“There are so many things I didn’t say, Eddie. So many conversations we didn’t get to have. I didn’t tell him - I didn’t tell him that-”
He sounds frantic now. His voice is desperate and hoarse, and his hands are like claws as he wraps them around Eddie’s wrists. He’s holding him so tightly that it almost hurts. Eddie doesn’t even consider letting him go.
“He knew, Buck. He knew how much he mattered to you.” If there’s one thing Eddie is certain of, it’s that.
“I know,” Buck says, slowly raising his head so he can look in Eddie’s eyes. “I know, and now I need you to know, too.”
His pupils are so wide that his eyes look like an ocean of blackness. They’re red and swollen, and there’s a single tear clinging to his lashes. There are drying tracks running over his cheeks and down his neck, and his lips are bitten raw from where he’s spent the entire day trying to hold back his sobs.
He looks heartbroken, and beautiful, and Eddie loves him so much he thinks he might just crumble beneath the weight of it.
It’s been a long time coming, this thing that’s crackling between them. It’s lived there since the moment they met - a livewire just waiting for the right kind of spark - and the moment Eddie drove away from him to leave for El Paso, he knew. He knew what he was walking away from, and he spent every moment away from him counting down the days until he could make it back - until he could come home. But-
“Buck, we don’t have to do this right now-”
“We do,” Buck insists, a panicked, frantic thing. “We do, because I might not wake up tomorrow. Your plane might crash on the way back to Texas. A meteor could fall from the sky and kill us all. There’s not enough time, Eddie. There’s not enough, and I-”
“Buck-”
“Eddie.” His aching bleeds into the word, turning Eddie’s name into a broken prayer.
He leans forward, presses his forehead against Eddie’s like he’s trying to merge them into one being. Like he can’t possibly get close enough. Their noses brush together, and their breath mingles in the space between them, and right now the only thing louder than their heartbreak is their love. For each other, for their son, for their team. For Bobby.
“We have time,” Eddie promises. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You can’t promise me that. You and Chris are going back to Texas, you’re-”
“-we’re not,” Eddie interrupts. “We’re not going back, we’re staying here. We’re home now, Buck. We have time.”
It hadn’t even been a question, not for either of them. Eddie had seen the news and was already packing his things when he got the call from Buck. He didn’t say anything except for Bobby’s name - a wretched, broken wail - and Eddie knew. He knew their lives had just changed irreparably, and he knew there was only one place he needed to be. One person that he needed to hold.
By the time he’d dragged his bag out into the living room, Christopher was already waiting there with his own. “Let’s go home,” he’d said, and that was that. They both knew where they belonged.
On their way to the airport Eddie had text his family to let them know what was happening. His parents hadn’t been happy, of course, but everyone else was in Eddie’s corner. Adriana and Sophia had promised to pack up all of Chris and Eddie’s things - said they’d handle everything from calling the movers, to selling Eddie’s house and car. They love him effortlessly, and they know that Eddie loves Buck. That he loves the 118.
“You’re staying?” Buck asks, hopeful and hesitant all in one, and still so close that his breath tickles across Eddie’s lips like a caress.
“Always, Buck. We’re not leaving you again.”
It’s a promise. One Eddie doesn’t ever intend to break. They’ll be eighty years old, with their hands intertwined between them as they rock back and forth on their porch. They’ll have a house full of grandkids and great grandkids, and a life that has been wild and beautiful and together. Eddie is absolutely certain of it.
Buck sighs and his whole body sags in relief, as if that was the one thing still forcing him to hold his breath. He melts into Eddie. From their foreheads, to their chests, to the tips of their shoes, they’re pressed together like two halves of one whole. One heart split into two bodies; it only beats properly when they’re together.
They don’t have to say the words. I love you is in every beat of their heart. It’s shining out of them like sunbeams, warming the icy chill in each other’s veins.
And then they just breathe. For a moment, this is all there is.
The rest of the world isn’t going anywhere. The anger, and grief, and pain, and sorrow will still be waiting for them later, tomorrow, when it doesn’t feel so completely insurmountable. It’s something that won’t ever leave them, something they won’t ever forget. Bobby’s loss will be as much a part of them as his life was. It will linger - a hole in their hearts where all the love they never got to give him lives.
But, for now, they just get to hold each other.
For a little while, they can have something that doesn’t hurt. They’ve earned that.