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Eddie wakes up disoriented.
He’s on Buck’s sofa, blanket kicked halfway off—because the house is warmer than he used to keep it, knows Buck runs cold—it’s still dark, and he’s not sure what woke him up.
He checks his phone, squinting at the light: it’s just past three in the morning. Huffing an annoyed breath at himself, Eddie drops his head back down onto his borrowed pillow. His alarm won’t go off for another five hours.
They don’t even need to be up that early. He and Chris won’t have to be at Burbank until midafternoon, they just wanted to have the morning with Buck before heading—
Heading back to Texas.
The stiff leather of the sofa creaks under Eddie as he tugs the sheet back up to his shoulder and rolls onto his side, hoping that sleep will have mercy and take him back. It’s been a while since insomnia has given him trouble. This doesn’t really feel like that, but Eddie knows that if he gives himself any space to start thinking about tomorrow, he might not stop. And he does actually want to be rested in the morning.
He’s just gotten through three-quarters of a mindfulness deep-breathing exercise that tends to work for him when he hears it.
Just a small sound down the hall.
It’s only Eddie and Buck in the house tonight, Chris having spent his last night with Pepa before she brings him back for breakfast. So he knows which room it came from.
Buck is an active sleeper. He snores, he kicks, he mumbles and talks and rolls. It’s not unusual to hear him in the bunks or down the hall or in the loft above him. It doesn’t usually wake Eddie up though. They’re comfortable sounds, familiar.
Eddie listens, tries to hear past the white noise machine.
He hears it again.
Frowning, he levers himself up to get away from the noise dampening of the sofa, but he can’t make out what kind of sound it is.
Eddie feels adrenaline pick up his heart rate. He’s not scared , he knows, logically, that everything is probably fine. He spends a minute or two trying to convince himself that it’s nothing. Buck isn’t a kid. He doesn’t need Eddie to check on him. But Eddie…
He hears another muffled sound.
After everything, Eddie thinks he needs to. If not for Buck’s sake; then his own.
Rubbing absently at his sternum, Eddie pads softly down the hall to the doorway that used to be his bedroom.
It’s closed, which—Eddie’s not sure he’s seen Buck shut it at night once since he’s been here. He remembers, suddenly, being on the other side of this door.
This close, the shuddering sound coming from the bedroom is instantly identifiable as something hurt. Eddie is immediately on high alert, reaching for the doorknob, suddenly terrified that it will be locked.
He stills, though.
He and Buck had smoothed things over—mostly by simply moving forward—but they haven’t really talked about it. Haven’t had time, or maybe they’ve been avoiding it. Eddie’s not sure he’s welcome. If Buck wants space.
He thinks again about being the one behind the closed door. Thinks about Buck being willing to break it down to get to him. To be there for him. To pick him up and make sure it didn’t all end there on the floor with a baseball bat and bloody knuckles.
Eddie turns the knob.
The wave of relief that crashes through him when it offers no resistance is overwhelming.
He takes a breath and pushes the door open silently.
The room is dark. Eddie can just barely make out the shape of Buck curled up in the bed, back to him. He’s shaking.
Eddie doesn’t have to watch for long before he hears the gasping breaths, the wet choking. It does take a second before Eddie realizes that Buck has his arm clutching a pillow over his head, smothering the sounds, but also himself.
Buck, who is so quick to emotion, loud with it too, who wears his heart on his sleeve, who lost one of the most important people in his life… He’s been going through the motions, Eddie realizes. At the funeral he was just stoic. Afterwards he was quiet and sturdy. Even when they fought in the kitchen three nights ago, it’s like he was empty. Outside of himself. Absent.
Eddie hasn’t seen him cry.
Eddie hasn’t seen him feel anything .
That’s what makes him push through the doorway. It’s what drives him to the edge of the mattress. It’s the thought that has him curling over Buck’s rattling body and peeling the pillows away from his head, making Buck startle and tense. Laying down behind him. Wrapping an arm around his middle. Pressing a palm flat to the center of his heaving chest.
They don’t do this. They sit shoulder to shoulder on the couch or in the rig, they give affectionate slaps to the back, knock wrists on a call, the occasional hug when it’s needed. Not this, though.
But Eddie doesn’t know what else there is.
“I’ve got you, bud,” Eddie whispers, throat tight as he presses his forehead against the clammy skin at the back of Buck’s neck, “it’s okay, I got you,”
The sound that tears from Buck’s chest makes Eddie’s throat hurt with sympathy, it’s jagged and raw and comes out bloody and clawing. It stutters on its way, and Buck’s chest hiccups and shakes under his hand.
“I-I-I—,” Buck chokes, thick and congested and wet, “I—,”
His breath catches in his throat again, high and reedy and frantic, and his hand grabs at Eddie’s against his sternum, like he’s not sure if he wants to press him closer or push him away. Like he’s scared and lost and—
And hyperventilating, Eddie realizes.
“Buck, hey,” Eddie’s eyes are wet, he sniffs, pressing in tighter against Buck’s back, “You gotta breathe, man, breathe ,”
Buck chokes again, “C-Can’t—can’t—,”
“You can,” Eddie insists, breathing in deeply so that Buck can feel his chest expand, holds it, then exhales all the way, using his hand to press down on Buck’s ribs, encouraging him to empty his lungs in kind, “you can , come on, you know the drill. Follow me,”
Buck’s heart is beating rabbit-quick and grief-heavy against Eddie’s palm. Eddie’s is breaking all over again.
Overcome by the urge to hold on even more, Eddie locks his calves around one of Buck’s, and bullies his other arm between Buck’s neck and the pillow, letting Buck rest against his bicep, Eddie’s forearm coming across Buck’s collarbone, fisting the front of his shirt.
He squeezes.
Buck breaks .
He sobs harder than Eddie has ever seen anyone cry in his life. He shakes apart and chokes and heaves and tries and fails to catch his breath in Eddie’s arms. He cries like he’ll never stop. He cries like the world is ending. Maybe it is. Everything he knew is going to change into something different. Something is ending. Has ended.
The tears that have been pooling in Eddie’s eyes threaten to fall, too.
“S-S-Sorry,” Buck stutters out between heaves, congested and wobbly, “I’m sorry, I-I’m sorry,”
“It’s okay,” Eddie hushes him, rubbing his knuckles against Buck’s sternum, “It’s okay, I promise,”
Buck just shakes his head, struggling to catch his breath, to reply—probably trying to refute, Eddie assumes.
“Tell me later, Buck,” Eddie soothes, tries to calm himself down too, “it’s okay, you can tell me later,”
Buck just shakes his head again, but doesn’t try to say anything else.
It takes a while, but Eddie is eventually able to coax Buck’s breathing back to something less concerning. He’s still crying, but it’s quiet.
In the dark, Buck whispers, “He left,”
Eddie doesn’t reply. There’s nothing to say. He just presses in closer, draws circles against Buck’s chest and hopes it’s a comfort, until Buck says:
“He said I’d be okay but—,” Buck’s chest shudders, “I’m—I’m not, I—,”
He’s trying to say something, Eddie doesn’t know what. So he doesn’t hush him or give him any platitudes. Eddie lets him search for the words that he’s been struggling with for who knows how long.
“He lied, I’m—I’m not—,”
A confession.
“I can’t fix it, Eddie,”
Another.
And then he says:
“He didn’t—,” a cough, a hitching breath, “He didn’t ask for help, he—,”
Eddie nods.
“He asked for help, before. I-I told him to ask for help but he-he didn’t, he didn’t tell me, he didn’t let me help he—,”
Eddie’s not entirely sure he gets it, what lines Buck has connected in his own mind, but he can feel how much it hurts. How much weight he’s put on himself.
“He sent me away ,” Buck finally sobs, shattering all over again, “H-He sent me away—,”
“I know,” Eddie whispers, even though he doesn’t, “I know,”
The grief is clawing its way back up his throat. He burns with it.
“He made me leave , he—,” Buck cries and cries and gasps and heaves, “H-He sent me away, he made me leave ! I don’t—I don’t leave , Eddie, he—I love him and he made me go and-and then he left and I-I-I hate him for it—,”
Eddie presses his tears into the back of Buck’s shirt.
“Eddie—,” Buck gasps, chokes, “Eddie I-I can’t—,” sobs again, confesses: “I don’t—I can’t do this without him, he—,”
“I know,” Eddie rasps, twining his fingers with Buck’s where they’ve been holding on, “I know, Buck, but you have to, okay? We have to,”
Buck squeezes his hand. Eddie holds on.
Buck takes another shuddering breath and whispers, “You’re leaving,”
“I know,” Eddie breathes, knocks his forehead against Buck’s back, repeats, “we have to,”
“I know,” Buck says, just as softly, “I know,”
They breathe together for a while, punctuated by sniffling and the occasional hiccuped breath.
And then Buck murmurs, “Stay,”
Eddie squeezes his eyes closed, feels cracked wide open when he says, “Buck—,”
Buck just grabs his hand tighter, presses it harder into his chest, and interrupts, voice cracking, desperately, “Tonight —I-I just mean tonight. Please—Please, just—just tonight,”
And that, somehow more than anything that’s been said, is what breaks him.
Eddie lets out one shuddering sob, breathes in harshly, and nods, nose pressed against the ridges of Buck’s spine. Nods again. Clears his throat, “Yeah, okay. I’ll stay,”