Work Text:
This would be easier, Eddie thinks, if he were something to Buck.
Sleep lets go of him slowly here. He knows the angle of the sun through the blinds across his face before he opens his eyes. It’s late morning, sinking toward afternoon, the house sunk into the quiet of a weekday off work. The familiarity sits on him like a second blanket; he’s been waking up here for more than seven years.
He doesn’t have to open his eyes to know what’s changed.
Eddie lived what feels like a lifetime in this room. When he wakes up here, two months after leaving forever, it’s to a bed that smells like Buck.
Buck is asleep beside him. Eddie opens his eyes and there he is: face relaxed in sleep, one arm folded up under his head, hair flattened against one side of his head.
It’s a relief that Buck’s still asleep. This is the first morning that Eddie got here—two days ago—that Buck slept later than him.
Eddie is something to Buck. He knows that. It’s not a fair thought, to look at Buck right now and wish things were different. He’s plenty of things to Buck. He’s his best friend. He’s been his best friend for coming up on eight years now, something two months in Texas hasn’t done anything to diminish. He is—was—his work partner, a role he can’t think too hard about right now without feeling a wave of guilt.
He’s Buck’s first call, when something happens.
It hasn’t exactly been the moment for fair thoughts. Not when Eddie booked a same-day flight two days ago. Not when Eddie’s back in Los Angeles weeks—months—sooner than he ever imagined.
Not when Bobby’s been dead since Tuesday.
Eddie watches Buck breathe in his sleep, his chest rising and falling. He thinks about it.
He’s something to Buck. He isn’t what he could be.
I miss you all the time, Buck said, two weeks and change ago. In the rocking chair on the back porch of his Texas house, Eddie leaned back.
I know, Eddie said. I miss you too.
I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was going to feel like this, Buck said, and Eddie closed his eyes.
He thinks about himself. About him, the imaginary Eddie in his head that figured out what he wanted before he was eight hundred miles away, and he imagines that he would know how to do this. A different Eddie, one who knows what Buck needs and can give it to him.
It’s another world. It’s a dangerous—and pointless—path to go down. It’s a fantasy, but out of all the what if’s Eddie’s been turning in his head since he picked up the phone Tuesday night, this might be the one that hurts the least.
He thought about the other ones anyway. It was impossible to stop himself. Sitting crammed into a middle seat on the plane, wondering: if Eddie had been there, would anything have been different?
It’s been easier, since Eddie got back, to focus on Buck’s grief. On taking care of him. Buck’s been making an attempt at putting on a brave face, at being helpful, calm, when he’s around Chimney, when he goes to Athena’s apartment. At home, with Eddie, his grief spills out, borderless.
Eddie thinks he’s going to feel it soon. He suspects—knows—that it’s a mistake to try to put it off. But here, with Buck, it’s been hard to do anything else.
The cruel joke is, it was Bobby who got Eddie through his grief the last time. His first real grief, after Shannon. Lots of people helped, or tried to, but Bobby was the first person who seemed to really understand. It’s unfair, trying to find his way through grief again without Bobby to guide him.
Maybe, Eddie said. He felt far away from himself—eight hundred miles from Buck, a hundred more from his own body, from Texas and the house and his life. Maybe, when I’m back. We could talk about it.
Buck laughed, a strained sound. What, about how much I missed you?
Yeah, Eddie said. About how much we missed each other. Or just about, I don’t know. Us.
There was a long pause.
Buck makes a quiet noise in his sleep. He moves on his side, shifting closer to Eddie in the bed.
They’ve been sleeping together since Eddie got here. Just that—sleeping, side by side, like kids on a sleepover. Eddie didn’t mean for it to happen. Eddie expected—meant—to be crashing on the couch. That was the way of things, back when this had been Eddie’s house. Instead, that first night, they’d gotten ready for bed side-by-side in the little bathroom. Instead, Buck had looked at Eddie in the dark hallway and asked him to stay.
In the light of day, Buck’s been trying to be everything for everyone. When Maddie goes to the hospital with Chimney, Buck’s watching Jee. When May calls asking questions about work forms and access to the firehouse, Buck never lets his phone ring more than twice. It’s different at home. Alone, when there’s no one but Eddie to see, he slips.
It’s intimate in a way Eddie wasn’t prepared for. It’s been almost eight years. He and Buck have seen each other through what felt like everything two people could experience. Holding Buck when he cries, rubbing his back until he falls asleep for what Eddie suspects is the first time since Tuesday, waking up to his quiet breathing. Seeing the moment when his face is relaxed in sleep, the moment when he wakes and remembers all over again. Every day, it’s a new feeling. Eddie hadn’t thought, until recently, that there were many new feelings left between the two of them.
Eddie, Buck said.
Eddie liked how Buck said his name. He’d made an art out of learning different ways Buck said it, since all of Buck got whittled down to a voice in Eddie’s ear. He liked the way Buck said it when he answered the phone, a bright, round Eddie! filling up the line. He liked the quiet, testing way Buck said it, when neither of them had said anything in a while. He even liked the way Buck said it when he was pissed at him, compressing Eddie down into a point, sharp even at a distance of eight hundred miles.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Buck say his name quite like this.
It’s a small relief that Eddie figured out he loved Buck two weeks ago.
He hasn’t said it yet. It wasn’t the right time, that night on the porch in the dark. Neither of them said anything they couldn’t go back from, not when they were still states away. Eddie thought they would have plenty of time. To hold it, think it over, carry it around. Until they were back together.
Instead, together came too soon. It hasn’t been the right time now, either, when they’re both wading knee-deep in grief. But it’s been something for Eddie to hang onto, these last couple long days, long nights. Falling asleep next to Buck, waking up next to him in the morning. Today, getting a few minutes to watch Buck sleep, face slack and easy for the first time since Eddie’s seen him. Looking at Buck and thinking, I love him .
He wants to see Buck happy. He’d like to be the one making him feel that way. Right now, happy feels about as distant as El Paso ever did.
They aren’t what they were when Eddie left. They aren’t quite what Eddie thinks they’re going to be. They’re something different. Something miserable and gentle and here, moving and breathing and leaning on each other in the room that was Eddie’s, is Buck’s.
The funeral’s tomorrow. Eddie’s not sure what’s going to happen after that. He’s got a lease and a son in El Paso; he doesn’t have a job that’s going to miss him, but he’s got bills to pay and a kid living under his parents’ roof again. He’s got Buck, trying to be everything to anyone who needs him during the day and crying his way through the night. He can’t stay here. He’s not sure how he’s going to leave.
The sun climbs higher outside the window. The lines of light across Buck’s face stretch. Eddie lies still and watches.