Work Text:
The locker room was quiet. Most of the crew had already left, their goodbyes echoing faintly throughout the station. Buck sat, slowly unlacing his boots like each tug required more energy than he had. He doesn't look up when Eddie walks in. Doesn't acknowledge when the hesitant footsteps get closer. Doesn't stop getting ready to leave and go home. Buck isn't surprised by Eddie's arrival. He’s known this moment was coming; he could only avoid Eddie for so long before he was inevitably tracked down.
“I was out of line before,” Eddie said, voice low and uncertain.
Buck let out a breath, more of a sigh than anything. “When exactly?”
“The other night, in the kitchen," Eddie spoke haltingly, " that thing I said, about you making everything about yourself.”
Buck chuckled humorlessly. “That thing you said? You mean the same thing you said 2 months ago when I was trying to wrap my head around you leaving? The same thing you said back when I was trying to explain my side of the lawsuit? Or when you-“ He stopped himself, took a deep breath, and shook his head before continuing. “It's not a thing you said, Eddie. It's a thing you keep saying.”
Eddie sits down across from him, elbows on his knees. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”
Buck finally looks at him, eyes dull and tired. “You say that, man. But if you didn’t mean it, you wouldn’t keep saying it.”
Silence stretched between them. Eddie opened his mouth as if to speak again, but closes it quickly, at a loss for words.
Buck doesn't have the same problem, “I get it. I’m a lot. I always have been. People have been telling me that since I was a kid. My parents, Maddie—hell, even Bobby sometimes. But you?" Buck looks at Eddie with something a little like misery in his eyes, "I thought I could be me around you. I thought I’d finally found someone that didn’t think I was too much. I thought wrong.”
“No. Buck, come on. I—”
“If you really think that,” Buck cut in, pain starting to bleed through his weariness, “that I-I’m selfish, that I only think about myself and that I make everything worse, then… why are we even friends?”
“Because I don’t!" Eddie pleads, desperate to cut off that line of thinking, "I don’t think that. I’m just - I'm not great at expressing myself. You, you’re a lot, yeah, and you can be overwhelming sometimes but not because you’re selfish. It’s because you care so much and that, well, it scares the hell out of me and I just," Eddie sighs pausing to gather his thoughts, "I just don't know what to do with it sometimes.”
Buck gives him a tired smile, the kind that doesn’t reach his eyes. “That’s just a nice way of saying I’m exhausting.”
“No,” Eddie says firmly. “It’s a way of saying I’ve got my own crap to deal with and sometimes I take it out on the people who deserve it the least.”
Buck doesn’t respond right away. He looks down at his hands, thumb fiddling with the cuff of his sleeve. “I want to believe you.”
“Then believe me.”
“I can’t,” Buck whispers. “Because I did. I did the first time. And the second. But now I can’t. I can’t unhear it. I mean, you say things like that once in anger? Fine. Twice? Maybe. But Eddie, you keep saying these things. Again and again and again. So it must be true. You must really think I’m selfish and exhausting and that I make everything about myself and now I just keep wondering when you’ll say it next. When I’ll hit that invisible line and suddenly I’m too much all over again. ”
Eddie’s eyes burn. “I’m sorry.” He says desperately, like he needs Buck to hear it. Like he's never said anything more true.
Buck nods slowly, then stands up, slinging his duffel over his shoulder. “I know. I’m just tired, Eds. I need space. I’m not mad. I’m just… done trying to convince people I’m worth putting up with.”
He walks out without waiting for a reply.
Eddie doesn’t stop him. He just sits there, alone, wondering if maybe this time he’d finally said something he couldn’t take back.