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Dying is a wild night and new road.
— Emily Dickinson
It's a really good day.
Okay — it's a little too humid, and one passenger wouldn't stop talking about conspiracy theories, and he hasn't heard from Buck in a few hours, but overall, it's been a good day.
Eddie has his son back in his house. He's hearing the stories from school firsthand now. He gets to help with school projects and say goodnight every night. Plus, he got a $70 tip from some rider. A good day.
Now, Christopher's working on his homework at the dining room table while Eddie makes dinner. He never realized how much he missed this until it was gone, until the table felt empty without math worksheets spread out on its surface, and Chris digging his pencil into the varnish when he thought Eddie wasn't looking. He pretends he's not looking now.
Eddie's seriously considering calling Buck again to ask if he's supposed to let the sauce get this thick in the recipe, but maybe three missed calls would be a little much. Buck's probably busy; he is on shift today, after all.
Unfortunately, it's the fact that Buck's on shift that makes him want to call again. It's only been a few hours since Buck's last text — some joke about Jurassic Park to tell Chris — but he worries. Eddie doesn't panic, okay? He does, however, worry. It feels earned when the team keeps getting themselves struck by lightning or capsized on a cruise ship or held hostage on a bus. Yeah, that was a fun call to get.
He's trying not to let himself worry. He's trying to focus on thinning out the sauce when his phone lights up, Buck's name across the top of his screen. Eddie feels the relief wash through his veins as he swipes the answer button so fast he almost knocks over the pot.
"Buck!" He exhales. "Hey, I was just about to call you, actually."
Buck is silent on the other end of the line, and Eddie's worry comes back tenfold. It turns all that relief into stone. It makes him a statue.
"Buck?" he asks and holds his breath.
"E-Eddie," Buck's voice breaks over the line.
Eddie drops the wooden spoon as his muscles fail him. Something is wrong in a way it's never been before. He can hear it.
"Buck?" Eddie asks. He turns the stove off, his muscles jerking like they don't want to cooperate. Something's wrong. Something is so wrong.
Eddie makes his way out of the kitchen. Chris shoots him a look as he passes and Eddie tries to manage a grin, something to soothe his son, but it doesn't sit right on his face. Chris doesn't look comforted. Eddie has to walk out anyway. He has to know what news he's breaking before he does it.
Eddie doesn't speak again until he's in the living room, away from prying ears.
"Buck, what's happening?"
The sound Buck makes sounds ripped from his throat. It's closer to animal than human. Eddie thinks maybe it was supposed to be his name, but it just sounds painful.
He knows what happened. He wants to believe he's wrong. He wants to believe that this is some anxiety working its way through his body. He wants to be catastrophizing, but he knows.
"Who?" He asks.
"Bo-" Buck breaks off in a guttural cry. It's a sound that has no place in Buck's body, in his ever-optimistic voice. It's pain, unadulterated. Eddie wants to take it away, but there's no space to hold it with his own grief slowly working its way up his bones.
"Bobby," Buck chokes out. "Bobby's dead."
Eddie knew it was coming, but it hits him all the same, taking him out at the knees. He's on the couch. He doesn't know when he sat down. There's a ringing noise coming from somewhere. His vision is blurry. He doesn't realize why until he blinks, and the tears make their way down his cheeks.
This isn't real. Bobby doesn't die. Bobby's their pillar, the best of them. He was supposed to see May graduate college. He was supposed to get so many years with his family. God, Athena. They were supposed to have more time. Eddie was supposed to have more time. He was supposed to come home to LA one day to one of Bobby's homecooked meals and that smile that let Eddie know he was proud. He was supposed to tell Eddie that he made the right decision. Bobby was supposed to get his second chance. They all were.
"Eddie?"
He hears the sound come from the ground. His phone's sitting there fractured, but his limbs don't want to work to pick it up.
"Eddie," Buck's voice almost — God, he whines through the speaker, and Eddie picks up the phone without even thinking about it.
"I'm here," he says. "I'm here, Buck."
Eddie can do this. He can be a good man in a storm. That's his job. When the world ends, Eddie stands there and lets someone else hold onto him. He can set aside the grief that's wrapping his throat in a vice grip to take care of someone else. To take care of Buck.
He wasn't there for Bobby. He can be there for Buck.
Eddie listens to Buck cry on the other end of the line. He has so many questions. He wants to know how. He wants to know why, but he doesn't think Buck can put the words together to answer him. His breaths are too quick, too close together. He's crying until he chokes on it.
"Can you breathe, Buck?" Eddie pleads. His voice is breaking. "Come on, in and out."
Buck wheezes on the other line, and Eddie shuts his eyes against it like a child trying to hide. If he can't see the monster, it can't get him.
Bobby was always his— he was Eddie's hope at the end of the day. To see all that Bobby lost and all that he found on the other end, he made it seem possible. Bobby was the first shoulder Eddie cried on after Shannon died, and he's never really stopped leaning there.
Chris pokes his head into the living room, and Eddie doesn't know what he sees, but it's apparently enough. It's one of Eddie's great failures — how well Chris knows grief, how Eddie sees his son recognize it on his face like he always knew it'd be coming back.
Eddie presses the phone to his chest, feeling the sounds Buck still makes on the other line in his ribcage.
"I'll come talk to you in a minute," he pleads. "Just a minute. Please."
Chris nods, stilted, and goes back into the kitchen. Eddie needs— he just needs a fucking breath. He needs this to not hurt, it hurts, and Buck hurts, and in a minute he has no choice but to let his son hurt.
When he lifts the phone back to his ear, Buck's breath is still choppy, but at least he's breathing at all.
"Are you— who's with you?" Eddie asks.
"I'm at your house," Buck replies, giving up any pretense.
"No one's there with you?"
"They're all— God, I was the only one who didn't get hurt. I don't know why, I wish—"
"Don't say that," Eddie bites. "Just— no. Bobby wouldn't—"
He cuts himself off with a stangled noise because Bobby wouldn't want that. He wouldn't, he wouldn't, but he can't want anything anymore.
"Eddie," Buck says. Wheezes. Whimpers. "Please."
"Yeah," Eddie agrees. He knows. He can do this much. "I'm coming, Buck. Okay? I'm coming, but first, I have to go let Chris know and buy a flight. Is anyone able to be with you?"
"No, I'm— It's—"
"Okay, okay. Just try to get some rest, okay? I'll be there. I'm coming."
Buck makes some sound between an affirmation and a sniffle. Eddie doesn't want to hang up the phone, but he has to. He has to pack. He has to clean the pot on the stove. He has to tell his son what happened in a way that makes sense when this doesn't make any sense at all.
Eddie draws out his goodbye with comforts, trying to give Buck something to cling to. Maybe trying to give himself something all the same.
It's unfair, it's unthinkable. It's Bobby. The most loyal, the most reliable, the most kind, the most devout—
Eddie's not sure he believes in anything that would rip Bobby away like this.
Still, for the first time in years, he lets his head drop forward, lets his hands come together, and Eddie prays.
—
Eddie never forgot what this feels like: to be sent somewhere by grief. LA is huge, but it's everywhere. It's cloaking the buildings and smothering the road. The tires are going to slip in it. He only packed one carry-on, but it's heavy with the weight of the black suit tucked inside. He passes a fire station in the Uber, and he tightens his fists on the legs of his pants until his knuckles go white. It's not even one they worked with. It doesn't matter anyway.
Chris is at Pepa's. Eddie didn't want to leave him, didn't want to let Chris feel any grief that Eddie wasn't there to carry for him, but he also knows how Chris sees Buck. Sure, Chris may have grown up since the days when Buck was almost mythic to the kid, but he's still Buck. He's sturdy. He pulls Chris from tsunamis and gives him a safe place to talk. Eddie never wants to discourage his son from showing emotions, but he doesn't quite want to force him to see Buck shatter yet, either.
It's past midnight when Eddie reaches the porch of his old home, Chris hopefully tucked away in Pepa's guest room where none of this can reach him.
The second the car slows down in front of the house, the door opens, and Buck stands there. It doesn't look like he slept. He seems small now. Scared.
Eddie barely makes it up to the front door when Buck reaches out, grabs a fistful of Eddie's shirt, and collapses into him. Eddie wraps his arms around Buck as tight as he can. This is what he does. He holds himself together. He holds Buck up when this grief wants to take him to the ground. It can't have him. He's Eddie's now.
Buck is shuddering against Eddie's chest, and Eddie feels his own limbs shivering without his permission. It's not cold, not here. It should be. The whole world should probably be ending, but everyone else on this street is peacefully asleep. None of them have any idea. None of them hear the sirens.
"Let's go inside, yeah?" Eddie asks after a minute.
Buck doesn't reply, but Eddie guides them both through the door and to the bedroom. Maybe he'd thought about them together in this room before, but never like this. It wasn't supposed to be like this.
He settles Buck down under the sheets, pulling them up around his still-trembling body and kneeling down to card a hand through his hair. Buck still hasn't said anything, but his noises ricochet off the walls. Small. Defeated.
Eddie wants to say something. Wants to tell him it's okay, but Buck's not a child. They both know it's a lie.
"You should go to sleep," he says instead, running his hand over Buck's head one more time.
Eddie moves to stand up, but Buck grabs his shirt again. He might ruin it. Eddie will let him stretch and tear all his shirts if it makes it any easier.
"Stay?" Buck asks.
And— yeah. There's no other option.
"Of course," he murmurs. "Yeah, I'll stay."
Eddie's bag is off in the corner, so he grabs clothes from Buck's drawers instead. Stays in his line of vision. Doesn't go anywhere Buck's eyes can't follow.
This hurts. It's one of the worst moments of Eddie's life, and it always will be. In the morning, when he wakes up and this isn't a hyperrealistic nightmare, when he can't grab his phone and call Bobby under the guise of asking a question when they both know he's just checking in, Eddie will break. But right now, Buck is tired and half-delusional, and he's clinging to Eddie like he'll drown if he doesn't. Eddie can't slip under, too.
Once he gets in Buck's sleep clothes — the LAFD shirt with holes in it that Eddie always loved because it smells like Buck, but it also feels like him in a way — he settles under the covers on Buck's other side. Buck rolls over to face him and buries his head in Eddie's chest, and Eddie wraps an arm around him. It feels like he's doing something, like he can protect Buck from anything at all.
If he'd been here, if Eddie hadn't been off in El Paso fixing his own mess, could he have protected them then? Could he have done something differently? Could the butterfly effect have been enough? Would Buck be feeling this? Would Bobby be at home with his family now?
It's only after the small cries have stopped and Eddie thinks Buck might actually have drifted off that the man in his arms speaks again.
"Do you think I'll wake up this time?" Buck nearly whispers. Eddie might not have caught it if he wasn't so attuned to Buck.
"What?" Eddie asks.
"Last time — the coma dream — Bobby was dead. But then I woke up. He played cards with me."
"I think it's real this time," Eddie murmurs into Buck's hair. It's the worst thing Eddie's ever had to say. Buck answers with another sob. Maybe Eddie should get him some water, but he doesn't want to leave Buck right now.
"I'm not ready for this."
"I— I don't think you ever are," Eddie answers honestly. He's certainly not ready for this.
"I don't know how to do this without him."
Bobby once taught Eddie how to live through grief. Once told him that one day, you wake up, and it's not the first thing you think about. He was right, as he usually is — was — but it feels wrong now. It feels like this will never be anything other than impossible.
"We'll figure it out," Eddie promises, brushing his lips over the top of Buck's head. It's not a kiss, not exactly, but it is something. It's more. Buck's breath stutters for a second before it evens out again.
"He told me— he said he loved me," Buck whispers. A secret. A confession. It was the last thing he said, and I— I didn't say it back."
"He knew," Eddie assures him. "He always knew."
"I just stood there. I couldn't do anything to help him."
Buck's words are starting to rip from his throat again, so Eddie ghosts his hand over Buck's back in some semblance of comfort. He has to clear his throat and blink away the tears before he replies.
"He never blamed you," Eddie says softly, his words slightly muffled against the crown of Buck's head. "He always just wanted you to be okay."
"Well, I'm not."
"You will be. We will be."
Buck doesn't reply this time. He just cries until Eddie's favorite shirt is thoroughly ruined, sticking to his skin with tears and snot, and Eddie rubs his back through the whole episode. He hopes Buck doesn't notice how his own chest stutters, the catching breaths, the sobs he's barely keeping at bay.
Buck drifts off eventually, cries himself into exhaustion. Eddie's close behind, but he doesn't want to close his eyes. The morning will be a new world, one that he never thought he'd really have to face, no matter how dangerous things got. Bobby was a mythic force. Bobby always got them home and followed close behind. Eddie knows grief in a way Buck's never had to, so he knows what they wake up to. He knows they'll be finding their footing for the rest of ther lives, but tonight he has this — Buck in his arms, asleep and safe. Tonight, that has to be enough.