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They’re off-line for an hour, deep into a forty-eight and cooling off from a pile-up that had Eddie scrubbing the smell of burning rubber from his skin just twenty minutes ago. The station’s near-silent now, in the middle of the night— he could probably sleep if he wanted to, but.
Sleep’s out of the question.
Instead: he’s slowly sinking further into the once-plush, now-worn out cushions of the couch up in the loft, leg beginning to cramp just a little bit, staring ahead at the turned-off tv and trying so, so hard not to move his hands, staying still, still as a statue so as not to disturb—
Then there’s the sound of a coiled spring squeaking in protest to his side, and Eddie whips his head around in time to watch Hen plop herself into the armchair, legs slung over the armrest and head thrown back dramatically. “We need new furniture up here,” she groans. The springs creak with every shift, and Eddie considers telling her to please stop moving, but cuts himself off before the words spill out.
Thankfully. He’d never hear the end of it.
“Oh.” Hen’s staring at him now, eyes trained around his midsection, flitting up to look Eddie right in the eyes, one brow raised, and back down again.
“How’s Chim?” Eddie asks before Hen can say anything else.
She regards him, curiously. “He’s fine,” she says, drawing out the word like it’s a question, “pretty sure he fell asleep before he was even lying down, but he’s fine.”
“Does not surprise me.”
“You’re not sleeping, though,” Hen says. An accusation, almost, that says what the hell is happening here, except she’d need to ask Buck: it was Buck who sat down next to Eddie and, with only a you mind if I just—, turned to his side to lie down with his head pillowed on Eddie’s thigh and proceeded to tilt Eddie’s world on its axis; it was Buck who managed to pencil in one whole answer to a crossword clue before the little book of puzzles dropped, inelegantly, to his chest, his tired eyes drooping closed.
“No, I’m not,” Eddie tells Hen, spiking his tongue with a little extra snark. If only just to distract himself from everything else, from how he feels like he hasn’t moved a muscle in ten minutes, from how plainly it must be written on his face that he wants to shift, just a little, and watch as Buck sleeps with his head turned inwards, nose nearly brushing the fabric of Eddie’s shirt. His ear is digging into Eddie’s thigh.
Because— of course Eddie wants to. He wants to look, wants to comb through Buck’s damp hair with his fingers and feel the frisson of Buck purring like a cat against his leg, wants to lay his hand on Buck’s chest, feel the even rise and fall of his breathing, the solid muscle, the softness of his stomach, the shape of his ribs.
Maybe, if Hen weren’t boring a hole into his side, he would reach for some of it, let his hand hover over where Buck’s heart is beating. Press against his birthmark with this thumb, watch as Buck’s eyes open, bleary and bright, bright blue.
It must be obvious. He’s too tired to hide anything.
Buck shifts in a way that makes Eddie freeze and the crossword book threaten to slide to the side from where it lays abandoned on his chest, so Eddie reaches to catch it before it falls to the ground. It’s half filled-in already from past downtimes, because whenever it’s not his phone in Buck’s hands it’s this, right here in the loft, in the engine, while waiting for Bobby to finish cooking dinner. He has ink smudged on his hands, sometimes. On his lip, once.
Eddie had watched him chew on the back of the pen for a whole minute before bolting, that time.
He scans the clues, book held a little awkwardly against the armrest of the couch. There’s Worn by firefighters or legs that makes his mouth tick into a grin, HOSE in Buck’s neat scrawl; Cruise: ___ Business which should be RISKY but Buck has left empty, which makes Eddie smile so wide he has to bite the inside of his cheek.
Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie sees that Hen is on her phone, but he still feels watched. Suddenly desperate to fill the silence just to dissolve that tense anticipation where he’s just waiting to be interrogated, he quickly scans the page for things left unanswered, and quietly prompts, “four words. ‘Wanting tree’.”
Hen hums, considering. “Pine.” Her gaze, pointed right at Eddie, is so piercing he almost feels it in his chest.
“Okay.”
“You don’t want to write that down?” Hen asks.
A spike of— something, like a prickling at the back of his neck. Like he’s been caught. “Buck will want to finish it,” Eddie tells her, still looking at the incomplete crossword instead of at his friend. Though he doesn’t miss the way she closes her eyes and shakes her head, a little exasperatedly.
“So, we’re just not going to talk about…” Hen pauses and points, vaguely, in the direction of Eddie’s lap with her phone, “that.”
Eddie ignores her, and since he’s been caught out anyway, and because it’s Hen and he knows she won’t actually judge him for it, finally looks down instead, at the mess of dirty blond curls against the deep blue of his uniform pants; at Buck, his sleep-parted lips, the way his eyelashes rest against his cheeks, fluttering just slightly. Buck must be dreaming.
“No,” he says, voice so low he thinks Hen might not even catch it, not taking his eyes off Buck. He hears Hen sigh, mutter under her breath. She doesn’t say anything else to him, but it’s hanging in the air anyway. “There’s nothing to talk about,” Eddie goes on despite himself.
“You say that,” Hen tells him, “but, you know.”
He hesitates— thinks, for a moment, about telling her about that ache in his chest, something unsettling and familiar all at once spreading over the entirety of him, the way his fingertips feel like they’re on fire, electrified, magnetized and drawn to Buck. What he ends up saying is, “don’t know what you mean.”
And instead of replying, Hen’s eyebrows draw together in a way that looks almost like pity, but, deep down, Eddie knows it isn’t.
Deep down Eddie knows a lot of things.