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At first, Eddie thinks he’s imagining his phone ringing, or dreaming it. Buck had been texting him so much since they first got to that laboratory fire, keeping him abreast of the situation since both of them hate watching the news, that it only makes sense that the sound of it ringing would seep into his subconscious.
A lull and he’s rolling over. Sinks back down. His breathing evens out…
The ringing starts again, paired with the shrill metallic urgency of his phone vibrating on his nightstand, and he throws his hand out to grab it so it doesn’t wake Chris, hitting the silence button as he does.
Karen’s name lights up the screen and his heart jumps into his throat. Karen doesn’t call often, and she definitely doesn’t call at 11:32 at night.
“Karen–”
“Buck’s fine,” she starts with, and he relaxes back into his pillow, just a bit. “Sorry no one’s updated you in a few hours, we–we just got back from the hospital, and–”
A deep, shuddering breath. Eddie sits up, throws his legs over the side of the bed.
“Karen.”
A whimper. “Eddie. I’m so sorry.”
“Karen, who–” His vision goes spotty for a moment, even in the dark. “What. I thought everyone got out–”
“Bobby.”
She sounds so small and so far away, like the distance between LA and El Paso is the same as the Earth and the moon.
“It’s Bobby, Eddie. He didn’t make it out.”
Eddie’s heart dislodges from his throat and crashes like a boulder into the very pit of his stomach, weighing him down, down, until he’s sliding from his bed onto the floor, landing with a soft thump. The base of his spine burns from rubbing against the bed frame but he barely registers it.
Bobby didn’t make it out.
There was a tear in his oxygen line, Karen tells him, her voice trembling and stretched thin. It was there from the start, and he didn’t tell anyone until everyone was out, safe, being decontaminated, ready to pack up and leave and call it a day. Buck found out first, then Athena. Makes sense. Son and wife.
Bobby didn’t make it out. Bobby didn’t make it out alive. Bobby is dead.
“Oh, God,” Eddie manages, throat clicking over the words that are no louder than a whisper. Karen is making similar sounds on the other end, but she keeps herself together enough. Like a CNO showing up on his doorstep.
“Oh, God,” he says again, then thinks nonsensically through the violent pounding of his heart in his ears, He told Buck first. Buck was there. Buck was there. Buck will need him.
Karen reads his mind. Sucking in a trembling breath, keeping her voice low so she doesn't wake Denny and Mara, she says, “Um, I wouldn't–” Another whimper. Eddie can feel his own clawing its way up his throat but he swallows it down, squeezes his eyes shut as tight as they'll go. “Buck isn't–he's not doing good. No one is, but. He's safe, he's with Maddie. Um, Ravi is here with me. Athena is at the hospital with Hen and Chim.”
And Eddie is here, 800 miles away.
“Don’t call him,” he says, more a statement than a question.
“If he was–if he was able to talk, he would’ve been the one to call you instead of me, you know that.”
“Mm.”
“Eddie, I am so sorry you had to find out this way.”
Eddie pulls his knees up and drops his head down, letting out a sob in the muffled vacuum between legs and body. He can’t wake Chris. He can’t get up. He wants to get in his car and drive through the night but he’s fused to his bedroom floor, the shitty, creaky floorboards that are sanded down with wear in some spots and water-stained in others.
There’s a beep in his ear. Another call coming through, but not on his end.
“Eddie,” Karen says, sniffling, clearing her throat, pulling herself together. “Eddie, I–Hen is calling, I–”
“Go,” he tells her, the word a ball of phlegm. “Tell her–”
He whimpers again. Puts his head back down.
Bobby didn’t make it out.
“Yeah, I will. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“Goodnight. I love you, we love you.”
“Mm.”
The call ends, and before Eddie knows what he’s doing, he’s reeling his arm back and chucking his phone at the wall. It leaves a mark in the shitty paint job, clatters to the floor. He lets out a swear as the moonlight, the streetlights, the floodlights from the house next door glance off the pebbles of glass now littering his bedroom floor.
He covers his mouth with his hand as something uglier than a swear tries to escape. His head is both heavy and light, his chest both stutteringly tight and so empty, so heaving. Eddie does not panic, but sometimes he does.
The bedroom door is locked. A bad habit he started when he first moved back to El Paso, alone in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar neighborhood. He’s a firefighter, a veteran, a grown man, but he still felt the need to lock his bedroom door at night. He never locked it with Chris around, just in case his kid needed him in the middle of the night. Never locked it except for that one time.
This time, Buck isn’t here to kick the door down, and Eddie doesn’t think he’s able to stay quiet enough.
“F–fuck,” he says to no one, spittle between his teeth and bottom lip, chin trembling, and the floodgates open.
Bobby is dead Bobby is dead Bobby is dead he is here he wasn’t there he couldn’t save–
The doorknob jiggles and Eddie puts his hand over his mouth again, pressing, squeezing, tears and snot dribbling over his knuckles. His eyes ache as he stares at the door, willing it to just be a figment of his imagination.
“Dad?”
“Fuck,” Eddie says again into his palm. Maybe he'll go away. Back to bed.
“Daaad.”
He takes his hand away. Clears his throat once, twice. “What, Chris.”
The doorknob jiggles again. “Let me in.”
Eddie should get up, unlock the door. He shouldn't keep Christopher locked out, but. But. He can't move, can barely breathe. Christopher already heard him, he doesn't need to see him, too.
With every last ounce of energy and coherency left in him, he musters out, “Go back to bed. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. I heard a crash.”
“Chris,” he pleads. “Go.”
The last word crackles and shatters on his tongue, and he holds his breath, listening, waiting, hoping.
Just when he thinks his teenage son actually listened to him, the doorknob jiggles one last time and the door opens. Christopher peeks his head in, hair a mess, glasses off.
“Dad?”
Eddie’s shock puts up a dam. He knows this house is more on the fixer side of fixer-upper, but–
“How did you get in here?”
Christopher comes in, shutting the door behind him. He has his phone in hand, screen glowing, and Eddie’s chest constricts at the sight.
Does he know? Who told him? He hopes someone did. Karen, Denny, anyone. Eddie doesn’t think he could bear–
“I picked your lock,” he says with an aborted shrug, and Eddie blanches again.
“You–” he wipes his face, smearing tears, hot and sticky, over his skin. “Where’d you learn that?”
Another half shrug and Christopher is grabbing onto his shoulder and the bed to lower himself to the floor. He lands almost in Eddie’s lap, and just like when he was a kid, smaller and more willing to be held by his dad, bony knees and sharp elbows dig into all of Eddie’s worst spots.
He grabs his kid, his baby, his fourteen-year-old that finally came home, who wants him to be his dad again, and breaks, just a little.
Christopher lets him sob into his Minecraft shirt, passively patting at the back of his head.
“I'm sorry,” Eddie says, clinging, grabbing, pulling. “I'm sorry I woke you up. Scared you.”
“You didn't wake me up and I don't get scared anymore. Just FYI.”
“Why were you up? It's late. You have school.”
“I'm not going to school tomorrow.”
Yeah, probably not.
“Chris,” Eddie chokes out. The position Christopher is in can't be comfortable, but neither of them move. “Do you know?”
Christopher takes a deep breath, blows it out as a sigh. Sounding much older, wiser. He's been through so much. Too much. Enough to send Eddie into an earnest spiral. He clings harder.
“I was texting Buck because we always play video games when he gets off shift but–he wasn’t answering.” He says in a rush, “Maddie called me.”
“Maddie?”
“Aunt Maddie.”
“I know–” Eddie shifts so Christopher can’t feel how hard his heart is jackhammering in his chest. He feels himself on the edge of something seismic. “What did she–say?”
Christopher rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. He frowns. “All she said was Buck was sleeping and that I should check on you. So I picked your lock.”
Eddie digs his fingers into him, hard enough to bruise, probably, but Christopher doesn’t seem to notice; he holds Eddie back just as hard.
“So you picked my lock.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to break the door down like Buck did.”
They’re quiet for a few moments, the only sounds being Eddie’s ragged breathing and a dog outside. The white noise machine from Christopher’s room, the fridge.
Eventually, Christopher says, voice low, “You don’t have to tell me what happened if you don’t want, Dad.”
He whimpers. “I have to. Chris–I. Oh, bud.”
“It’s okay,” he consoles. “It can wait until morning. Or later. I’m not going to school, you know. We have all day.”
A half-sob, half-laugh. He has so many phone calls he needs to make tomorrow.
Christopher shifts in his lap and takes Eddie’s face in his hands. They’re so close their noses are almost touching, and it reminds Eddie of when he was little and they’d give each other Eskimo kisses.
“Dad,” he says seriously. His eyes are glossy in the dark and it turns Eddie’s stomach. How many times is he going to break this kid’s heart? “It’s gonna be okay.” He drags out the word and presses his forehead briefly to Eddie’s. He’s so cool, and Eddie is so hot. He’s wet with sweat all over, his head is starting to pound, but no more tears form.
“We’re always okay,” he agrees. He straightens out Christopher’s shirt and drags his fingers through his blond curls. Those same blond curls that would make him and Shannon laugh. Where did he get those? they would joke. When he got older he used to think they made him look like Buck.
God, Buck. He knows who he’s calling first.
His eye catches his mangled phone across the room and he sighs.
“I don’t think I can sleep on the floor, though,” Christopher says.
Eddie doesn't think the cold, unforgiving floor is going to release him from its clutches, but he collects Christopher into his arms and gets up, gets back into bed. Everything is easier when it’s the two of them.
Christopher takes his side since it's still warm and drags Eddie by the collar of his damp shirt until they're in each other's space again. Instinctually they curl around each other, slotting into easy, familiar place like Jenga blocks. Christopher makes himself small, bringing his gangly legs up and tucking his head under Eddie’s chin.
“I love you, bud,” Eddie whispers, so quiet he might as well have mouthed it.
Christopher wriggles a little, snuggles deeper. “Yeah, I know. Love you too.”
Eddie pulls the blankets up around them, he buries his face in Christopher's hair, and whatever was threatening to make its way up stills in his throat. Dies on his tongue. Crawls back into that ugly, wretched place deep within him until morning.
For now, they sleep.