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When Buck moves out, Eddie helps him pack.
They go through the house together, first sorting everything into two piles. One for Buckley, one for Diaz. The closet, the silverware drawer, the dishes, the tools, the books. A million little miscellaneous odds and ends, carefully categorized. Un-enmeshing, un-blending.
They make quick work of it, the packing. They’re good at that. Sorting clothes. Stacking boxes. Being a team.
Eddie takes over tape duty. Packing tape is so loud, especially the solid, dependable extra sticky kind. The adhesive ripping from the plastic makes this hollow, violent, screaming kind of noise. When it’s separated, Eddie has to mind it carefully, laying it with precision across the top of the cardboard box that he’s sealing, or else it will stick to itself and be wasted. It’s tedious. It’s frustrating. It’s fitting.
Eddie has a few records that he’s bought over the last couple of months, albums he’s found at the flea market or ordered online, one record that Buck bought for him. Those are staying at the house. The record player’s going with Buck. Eddie will have to buy one for himself. He’s not going to. The records are probably going to go into the closet, but only once Buck leaves.
He doesn’t tell him this. He packs away all of Buck’s records, keeping only his out. They listen to The Stranger all the way through, three times. It makes the house feel emptier, somehow. All that whistling, all that crooning.
Eddie finds a bicycle, too, buried underneath a bunch of old boxes in the shed. A mountain bike, with wide tires and a thick frame. It’s kind of old, likely bought secondhand to begin with, and it’s been sitting unused for long enough that the chain has become unhinged and slightly rusty. He remembers Buck riding it over one time, his giant figure comically balanced on it. They’d ended up having a couple more beers than intended, so he’d stayed the night, driving to the station with Eddie in the morning, taking an uber straight back home after his shift. It became one of those things they had meant to do, having Buck come and take his bike back. They’d never remembered. That was years ago.
“You can keep it.” Buck says now with a shrug, “Don’t really bike anymore. Too many cyclist-related calls.”
Eddie nods. The bike will stay in the shed, untouched. Likely until he moves. Or he’s not here anymore, and someone has to come and clean out his things. Maybe Buck, more likely his sisters. Christopher, possibly. He'll be all grown up, but still weighed down by his late father’s baggage.
But that could be a long time from now. Eddie could live a long, long life before he inevitably dies alone.
Buck isn’t moving very far away, so he can start bringing things over to his new place once he gets the keys, which is about a week before he moves. There are a hundred little goodbyes in that week. Eddie helps Buck pack a carload of his things and watches him drive away about a half-dozen times before the last time. He waves to Buck from his front yard every time.
Buck is leaving. That’s fine. He’s an adult. He can live wherever he wants. He can abandon his bike. He can take back his blender and his baking supplies. He can start sleeping on the couch again. He can shrug Eddie off when he puts his hand on Buck’s shoulder. He can stop responding to every text that Eddie sends him, if he wants. Eddie has no claim on him.
Eddie helps with a smile. He acts like a grown-up.
He’s been acting like a grown-up since he was a child. And it’s starting to get really fucking old.
On his last night in that house, Buck makes dinner for the three of them. Homemade pizza, the good kind. Baked on a pizza stone, on the grill. Eddie brings him beer, sits on the plastic chair, and watches him work. Chris sits with them and tells them about his swim team. Lately he's been sticking to a one-word, one-syllable script, but not tonight. Tonight, Chris is talking and talking, like if he talks enough, maybe Buck will stay. He keeps looking at Eddie, trying to read what’s happening from his face, still taking his cues from his father.
He makes Buck promise to take him to that concert they were talking about, to play that new video game with him, to still come by, on occasion. Buck assures him that he will, and even Eddie believes him.
The food is incredible. It’s homemade dough, basil from the garden, fresh tomatoes from the farmers market, parmesan from the corner store, minced garlic, salt and olive oil. It’s simple, but it’s thought out. It feels like an apology and is presented as a thank you.
They settle, after that, into the same kind of easy company that they’ve kept with one another for the last seven years. Eddie can almost bring himself to imaging that this will be what it is like every night, forever.
His cheeks are flushed, and so are Buck’s, both of them sitting in the early evening sun. He feels sun-warmed, beer-warmed, melted. Dangerously sappy.
Chris gets up to use the bathroom inside, leaving the two of them alone on the porch, staring out at the bougainvillea. Buck is stunning, sweat shimmering on the tips of his eyelashes and the ends of his curls, eyes squinting back the orange sunlight. His eyes look pale, almost a translucent gray. Looking at Eddie, who is looking back at him.
There’s an affectionate, intense silence between them. Eddie’s so close to saying something. He’s not sure what. The words aren’t coming out, but they sit in his mouth like an overgrown wisdom tooth, something to be painfully extracted.
“I’m gonna miss you.” He surprises himself. It’s true, so true, but it’s incomplete. Eddie’s looking away when he says it. Buck smiles a smile that looks like a wince. He’s trying too hard to do something, to affect some emotion on his face. Eddie can’t tell what, can’t read him. God, how distant they have gotten from each other.
“Well, you’ll see me at work.” Too flat, too direct, this lands like a blow. Buck tries to soften it, but it comes out high-pitched, too much like a lie. “And, you know, around.”
Eddie sighs. “I know, I know.”
Buck is gone the next morning, before Eddie wakes up, his stuff moved out long before.
Eddie cries a lot, now. Not just because he’s sad, although that’s certainly part of it. More like something has cracked open inside of him. Years of conditioning, finally worn down enough to be forgotten. He could say that it started after Bobby died, and that’s true, but it’s more accurate to say that it started after the building collapse. Something about coming home—about really coming home, for good—has lowered his defenses.
Little cries. Not big, heaving sobs. Just tears leaking from his eyes, springing up out of nowhere, like a summer drizzle on an otherwise sunny day.
He cries at the grocery store, in front of the fresh flowers. The hydrangeas are so lovely, would look so beautiful on his kitchen table. And he can buy them just because he wants to, just because he’s alive. He does. They stay there, in a glass of water that he changes diligently, for about a week before they die.
He cries in the ambulance when Hen tells him that he’s done a good job. Breaks down, right in front of her. Apologizes for being unprofessional. She looks at him for a second in confused horror, clearly not expecting this reaction from him. Then she just pats him collegially on the shoulder and slowly climbs out of the ambulance, like she’s backing away from a bear in the woods.
He cries when he measures Chris’s height, sees that he’s grown another two inches. He’s too old. He’s perfect. Eddie wishes that Chris could go back to being tiny again. Eddie loves him so, so much, just as he is.
Eddie cries in the car when he hears Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, because it makes him think of that last week with Buck. Eddie cries during a stupid commercial for a stupid beer, because Buck likes beer. Eddie cries during therapy, a lot, talking about Buck. Eddie cries at the farmer’s market, because he sees two big heirloom tomatoes next to one little tomato, and it reminds him of the little kinda-sorta family he had for a time with Buck.
And the worst part is, he doesn’t understand why, why, why this is happening.
All of his other breakups—not that this is a breakup, per se—were, if nothing else, very understandable. Things with Shannon never worked to begin with. They were too young, too miserable with each other. He didn’t love Ana the way she wanted him to. Marisol—well, that was a shitshow.
But Buck? He can’t understand why Buck left.
Especially since it wasn’t even like that.
Except—no. Nevermind.
It starts one night, a few days after Buck leaves.
Chris is away, sleeping over at one of his friend’s houses. Eddie can’t sleep. It’s too quiet. Not silent, but city quiet. Just the low white noise of a distant highway; a car alarm somewhere; a siren that isn’t his problem; a dog barking, then losing interest. He misses the snoring, misses the tell-tale creak of familiar weight shifting on the wooden floors, the groan of the bathroom tap turning on and off. The house is empty, so fucking empty.
(Was it this empty for Buck, when they were in Texas? Probably not. Buck fills up every room he’s in, shines golden light on every crack and every crevice.)
As if sleepwalking, Eddie finds himself in the shed. Animals are rustling in the garbage bins outside, snakes and raccoons and rats, maybe. He turns on a light, hoping that none have found their way into the shed. None appear as he lifts the old bike from the pile in the back and sets it on its kickstand in the yard.
He gets the toolbox from one of the shelves, the one that he uses for car repairs, which he inherited from his abuelo. Makes quick work of his assessment. A couple of the gears need tightening and lubrication, which are easy fixes. The wheels are flatter, but they don’t appear to be leaking air. It’ll need a new chain and a pump, which he’ll get at the bike shop a few blocks away.
Fixing it up takes only a few hours, spread across the next couple of days. Soon it’s roadworthy enough to list online.
The first offer Eddie gets for the bike is a pretty sizable lowball; the next one is reasonable, but the buyer ghosts him. A third buyer offers more than the asking price, but asks him to meet them at a strange parking lot at an odd hour. It seems like a pretty good way to get mugged, so Eddie declines. When he finds a guy who seems legit, offers a decent price, and actually follows through, it feels like a miracle.
Eddie agrees to meet Mike S. at the library parking lot at noon on a Saturday. When Eddie pulls up, the man who looks like Mike’s profile photo is leaning on a beat-up Subaru. He looks thrifty, but definitely outdoorsy. He’s already wearing his helmet, like he’s going to take the bike straight from there. Eddie pulls up one spot over, careful not to intimidate the man by pulling up too quickly.
He parks, jumps out, and introduces himself, shaking Mike’s hand—a firm, solid handshake—before going to get the bike out of the bed of his truck. He shows it to Mike in the middle of the parking space between their two cars.
He’s still got a grip on it when Mike starts making pleasant conversation. They chat, a bit, about biking trails and road safety, about Eddie’s kid and Mike’s kids, who are just entering kindergarten. Eddie tells him about the zoo, not far from here and good for kids, talking around Buck's presence in all of his stories.
But then Mike asks the question. “So, why are you getting rid of it?”
There are many easy answers to this question. He could say that doesn’t have the space, or that he doesn’t really ride, or that it seems a waste to let it sit. He could say that he needs the money, although that would be both untrue and awkward to say to a stranger. He could even say that he’s seen too many road accidents to feel safe on a bike, but that might make Mike think twice about his purchase.
“It’s not mine,” he says instead.
“Oh?” Mike looks confused.
“I didn’t steal it. To be clear. It belongs to my, uhm—he moved out. Left it behind. Didn’t want it. So now I’m selling it. To you.”
“Oh, okay.” Mike’s face is clearly straining to hide his discomfort. There’s an awkward, lingering silence, like he’s trying to decide what to say. “Hey, man, I get it,” Mike’s voice is gentle when he finally breaks the silence. “Divorce is hard.”
“Oh, uh, I’m not—we’re not divorced.” Eddie's voice comes out a bit too high.
“My bad. Separated, then?”
Eddie doesn’t know how to respond. Calling them “separated” implies that they were married. He understands this. But it’s also the closest word to how it feels, the unnaturalness of it, the pain of it. Like they’re two bonded cats who’d imprinted on one another, and then been cruelly adopted into different homes. Like two halves of one buckandeddie, wrenched violently apart.
Eddie corrects him, nonetheless. “It’s—We’re—he’s my best friend. Just my best friend. And he was living with us for a while, but he moved out.”
Mike nods sheepishly “I’m sorry for assuming.”
“It’s fine.” Eddie could stop there. He doesn’t. “He’s bi, but I’m supportive. I mean, we’re cool about that. I’m straight, but, you know, an ally.”
Mike clearly doesn't know how to respond to this over-explanation. “Uh huh. Cool. Coo-ool.” He looks at his watch performatively. “So, uh, what’s your venmo?”
Right. The sale. The bike. Buck’s bike.
Eddie is hit with the sudden feeling that he can’t let it go, no more than he can bite off his own finger.
“I’m gonna keep it. I’m sorry.”
This is all he says before he lifts the bike off the ground and throws it back in his truck bed. He climbs in the front seat and drives away, leaving a baffled Mike in his wake.
It’s been years since Eddie last rode a bike. Likely before Christopher was born, and, even then, he knows he didn’t do it that often.
He was always too busy, always rushing off to dance practice, always watching his sisters. His parents had discouraged it, always worried about him getting injured and screwing up his chances at some championship or another, their voices always in his head, making him nervous. As an adult, however, he now wonders if they were really worried about the freedom that it offered him, the ability to go anywhere and be anything he wanted.
In middle and high school, he’d used his bike on the weekends to go to the lake with his friends, but only occasionally, when he couldn’t get a ride. Once he’d gotten his driver’s license, he’d practically forgotten his old bike, leaving it for long stretches of time, untouched in the garage. Then he’d become a father. There was no gradual transition from childhood into adulthood for him, just a sudden drop, as if off of a cliff.
But he’s got a bike now, and a helmet that he bought at the repair shop right after ditching Mike in that parking lot, so he might as well start again.
The first time he goes out, it takes a minute for him to adjust to the balance, to the speed, to the gears. Traffic is terrifying, too, all these big unwieldy trucks and fast little cars, treating him and his bike less like a breakable human and more like a frustrating obstacle.
He goes slowly, sticking to the sides of the roads, diligently using his hand signals. He goes around the block, once, getting honked at by a minivan in the process. He feels like a baby deer, wobbling on new legs, having to adjust to the terror of being the most hunted thing in the woods.
It’s odd for him, being graceless at something. It makes him want to do it all the more.
There’s something about how much attention this requires, how much focus he needs in order to stay upright, how much he has to listen to his body, listen to his surroundings. It’s meditative.
He takes a second to steady himself as he pauses in his front of his house, then goes again. He switches to a higher gear, feeling a bit steadier, a bit smoother, a bit faster. He goes further, finding a quiet street to go down, sticking his hand out, feeling it float through the wind that flows in a steady stream against his body. The breeze cuts coolly through the bright LA summer sun, filling his lungs as he breathes in.
He meanders his way back home, moving without purpose, moving by whim. He can’t remember the last time he did that.
And so he starts, over the next week or so, taking the bike out when he can. His odd work schedule means that there are hours, now, when he’s home alone, his son at school, his best friend nowhere to be found. Even in El Paso, he had work to occupy his days. He has more free time now than he's ever had in his life.
There's a bike path, not far from his house. Just about a ten minute ride. It goes through a park, winding around trees and bushes in easy, serpentine curves. Fine blue-grey gravel, crunches like sand underneath his tires. His favorite part is the manmade duck pond, just after a bank of trees, the one that's always catching the ever-shifting light. It never looks the same as the last time he saw it. The path follows along its edges, beside the bushes and the metal benches with their little memorial placards. People stop here, sit a while, read or nap or hold hands with their loved ones. Maybe one day he'll learn how to paint so he can have an excuse to sit here for hours and just look at the pond.
Eddie goes early this morning. It's just him and the birds and the reverent hush of the wind through the trees. The park makes him think of Buck—although, to be fair, everything makes him think of Buck.
Back when Buck was still his best friend, back when they were regularly talking, back before they spent whole shifts ignoring each other, Buck would sometimes tell Eddie about his childhood in Pennsylvania. A feral child, leaves in his hair, set loose in the woods, finding whatever mischief he could and poking it with a stick—that's how Eddie imagines Buck as a kid.
On some level, it's hard for him not to romanticize the idea of Buck's childhood, just a little bit. He wonders what it was like to grow up without so much responsibility, with nothing but time and the woods for company. So different from his childhood, as a serious, neat little boy with a perpetual stomachache. Overscheduled, always trying to keep the chaos of the world from his sisters.
This is unfair, he understands. He knows about the bad stuff, or at least some of it—the neglect, the loneliness, the assumption Buck still holds that he is unwanted, unloved. He can guess around the edges, too, at the things Buck hasn't told him. An ordinary, easy childhood usually only produces so many scars, many fewer than Buck has. Eddie thinks about that a lot, too, thinks about how a person can grow up feeling like they need to be screaming in pain before they can be heard.
It's a miracle, then, how Buck became the kind of person that he is, the person who advocates for other people, for himself so easily. He does it on instinct, he does it like he's breathing. Eddie cannot comprehend how he does it, how he speaks what he feels so loudly, so clearly, so sincerely. Buck is a revelation.
And, fuck, does Eddie miss him.
It winds him, this particular pang of missing Buck, sharp and sudden, rather than the constant dull sadness that come with his absence. He's by the pond, now, and stops his bike by the duck pond, sits on a bench. He lets the light early morning light hit his face, warm and gentle. Breathing in, breathing out. It takes a second, adjusting to stillness after being in motion. A light breeze tickles his face, like the wind is breathing with him.
He hears a car alarm go off in the background, distantly, somewhere. He used to jump at noises like that, used to be so, so overwhelmed at the world when he got back from being overseas. It doesn't phase him now, nor does it rustle the ducks lazily swimming in the pond. They're used to the noise of the world.
Eddie stays where he sits until his calves start to tighten, which isn't very long. He gets back on his bike, rides along down the path again.
He's more lost in his thoughts than usual, more reliant on his nascent muscle memory to get him home. He tries to focus on the trail, on the circular repetition of peddling, on the shift in his weight as he makes his slow, wide turns, but he thinks of Buck, nonetheless.
He thinks of the sound of those mornings when they were all together, Buck listening to the radio and humming to himself as he cooked them breakfast, the clatter of Chris's crutches in the hallway letting them know he was awake.
He thinks of how easy it was to sleep, feeling the familiar warm weight of the other person in the bed next to him, the sound of his breathing lulling him to sleep. He thinks of those nights when they went back and forth, never quite deciding on which movie to watch, hours passing, no one noticing the time. He thinks of that tiff they got into over how best to get rid of the wasps nest on the front porch, both of them laughing even as they argued.
He thinks of muddy sneakers on the shoe rack in the hallway; of Buck muttering Keys, Phone, Wallet to himself before he'd leave, always almost forgetting one of them; of carrying two glasses of water with him as he went to bed; of dishes done together.
Eddie cannot recall a time when he was happier than those two weeks he spent living in his little house with his best friend and his son before he realized that Buck was leaving.
And it occurs to him now that this might have been it, might have been the happiest he will ever be, for the rest of his life.Even if he finds someone else to be with, even if he has a perfectly good life, it will always be missing something fundamental because it will be missing him. It will always be missing Buck.
Because Eddie is in love with him.
Holy shit. Eddie is in love with his best friend.
This thought pops into his head seconds before he crosses from the trail back onto the road, rocking him to his core, realigning everything else he thought he knew. Which might be why he forgets to look both ways before he crosses the street.
Which might be why Eddie doesn't see the car coming from the other direction until it's already hit him.
His first thought, once his brain catches up to this sudden change in situation, is that, as far as bike-related accidents go, this isn't that bad. He was wearing a helmet, which is most important. The car mustn't have been driving that fast, because he isn't thrown very far. He didn't hit his head during the fall, at least not violently (it occurs to him that he might have hit his head badly enough that he's forgotten, but this seems unlikely. If he's broken any bones, at least nothing's poking out. The skin on his arms and legs has been scraped and burned by the friction with the road when he slid (he must have slid, at least a little bit), but it he's still got the vast, vast majority of it. He's got the bike between his legs, although it's laying down now. This is because he's laying down. He's on the ground.
His second thought is ow fuck fuck fuck oh god oh god this hurts so fucking much.
The driver of the car is getting out now. She's screaming, likely out of shock more than out of a genuine reflection of how badly he looks. Eddie tries to say something, tries to reassure her, but the wind's been knocked out of him. His lungs feel tight, and he's gasping for air for what feels like several minutes before he finally chokes out his words.
"Call. 911."
The woman stops screaming for long enough to comply, frantically yelling at the voice on the other end. Eddie thinks he recognizes the person she's speaking to, but can't quite place it. The woman comes over to him, slowly, like he might attack. She touches his shoulder, as if checking that he's still alive. He's not sure what she's trying to do, and he's pretty sure she doesn't know either. She's apologizing to him, over and over again, like a chant. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't see you, I'm so sorry."
"'m okay," he rasps out, trying to comfort her. She looks at him like he's insane.
"I hit you with my car. Oh God, I hit you with my car." There's a little bit of his blood on her light pink jeans, a smear where she must have bumped into him. Her panicked face is framed by a light blonde bob, giving her a kind of halo as she leans down to fret over him. He hears the dispatcher on the phone calls her ma'am.
"'ts okay."
This isn't one of those times when he's been in so much pain and shock that he's blacked out—no, he feels every second of waiting for help to arrive, the baking of the asphalt underneath him, the blood dripping hot onto his wicking tank top.
When he was shot, the pain was greater, yes, but it had a single point of origin. An impact site from which the hurt emanated, radiating down through his muscles and ligaments and bones. This just hurts, everywhere: his misaligned shoulder and his rapidly swelling right forearm; his bruised ribs and his scraped torso; his legs splayed out, one of them dully and pointedly throbbing.
It occurs to him that he might die here, might bleed out internally from one of his many injuries. What a cruel joke that would be, both him and Shannon dying in basically the same way. If he believed in ghosts, he could see her organizing this, some revenge from beyond the grave for ruining her life. He'd deserve it, he thinks, but she wouldn't do that.
It could be a curse, if curses were real. Maybe everyone in his family is doomed to die by getting hit by a car. He should warn them, Buck and Chris. Warn them about what, though? Cars? No shit.
(It only dawns on him later that this curse probably wouldn't apply to Buck, since he isn't family, at least not officially)
When the ambulance arrives, minutes later, it's from the 118. Because of course it is—he's in their service zone. It's B-shift, obviously, so at least he only knows them tangentially. Two confident, professional paramedics rush to his side, along with a probie. Collins and Roberts, if he recalls correctly. He doesn't know the other one's name. They don't really interact much.
"Shit, it's Diaz," says Collins as she leans over, placing a brace on his neck.
"Is that a medical term? Is it bad?" asks the woman who hit him with her car.
"Ma'am, I'm gonna need you to step back." The probie puts his arm out, gently guiding her away from the scene.
Collins keeps working on him, checking his vitals, while Roberts gently disentangles his limbs from the bike, sliding him so that he's laying flat on the ground.
"I don't think I hit my head." Eddie answers the question before either one of them can ask it.
"They'll confirm that at the hospital," Roberts assures him, as if Eddie doesn't already know.
Roberts drives the ambulance, while Collins and the probie work on him in the back. None of his wounds are life-threatening, from what they can tell, just painful. They give him something for that.
"Do we have his emergency contact?" the probie asks, like he's not in the room, "Should we call them?"
Eddie remembers who his emergency contact is. He considers telling them not to call him, telling them to let him change it. He's got Tia Pepa's phone number memorized, and he's got her new address in his phone, if that's not smashed. He'd fill out the paperwork, right here, right now. But he'd get blood on the clipboard, and she'd probably still call his current emergency contact, anyways.
Collins takes a second, types something out on an iPad, then looks at it funny. "Uhhh, it's Buckley. His emergency contact is Buckley." Collins announces.
"Wow. I knew they were close, but, damn." The probie is talking about Eddie like he isn't there, isn't conscious. Eddie will have to pull him aside at shift change some time and have a discussion with him about not doing exactly that. "Does he not have any family members? I mean, I like you guys and all, but…"
Collins smacks him on the arm. "Shut up, probie. He's right there."
"I'll call him at the hospital." Roberts yells from the drivers seat, before muttering something that sounds like Fuckin' A-shift.
Eddie barely registers being admitted into the hospital, being poked and prodded and scanned.
He was stabilized in the ambulance, his dislocated shoulder set, his cuts covered and wrapped. The emergency room staff look him over, run some scans, give him some pain meds, and send him to wait in a bed for the doctor. He takes their lack of urgency as a sign that he's probably going to be fine.
The meds hit him hard, making his brain go all fuzzy and light, his pain drawing distant and unreachable. Time becomes sticky and slow. He occupies himself by staring up at the little dots on the ceiling tiles, trying to make pictures from them. A lion. No, a face. No, a cloud—is that cheating? Can you say that any abstract shape looks like a cloud?
The doors to his hospital room fly open. "Oh, thank God."
So there's Buck.
He's wearing street clothes, a pastel blue short-sleeve button-down over a white tee and a pair of khaki cargo pants. He looks so put-together, so comfortable, so nice. He is so nice. The nicest person ever. Eddie can see a bit of his stomach poking out through his shirt, and gets the urge to splay his palm across it, to rub big circles like he's washing a window. Then he'd ask him about the cloud thing. Buck's probably already thought about the cloud thing.
He's so big. He's like the moon. He could block out the sun. You'd need sunglasses to look at him. A Buck-lar eclipse.
"Hey, you," he sing-songs, trying to sit up and look around. If Buck is here, maybe he brought Chris. Maybe the Buck-lar eclipse is blocking out the son. Now that's funny. He should tell Chris that. "Christopher?"
"He's at school. Maddie's going to pick him up after, and bring him over." Buck smiles reassuringly, rushing over to him, gesturing for him to lay back down. Eddie doesn't comply.
"Oh noooo. He must be so worried. After everything that happened with his mom, you know." He whispers the last part like it's a secret.
"Yeah, Eddie, I know. I was there." He sighs, scanning his eyes over Eddie, silently assessing the damage. "Chris is fine. I spoke to him, so he knows you're okay."
"That's good."
"Yeah, he's good." Buck chuckles a little. "Although, he did want me to get a video of you hopped up on pain meds."
"Why? I'm being normal right now." Eddie says, stretching out his left hand to run his fingers across Buck's bicep.
"I'll be sure to tell him that. Now, will you please stop trying to sit up?" Eddie lays back. Buck nods approvingly. "That's better."
Some distant part of Eddie feels like maybe he should stop staring at Buck, but then he wouldn't be able to see Buck's face. It's so, so lovely. Every part of him is sunshine.
Buck sits down on the chair next to Eddie's bed, leaning in to be close by him,"So, now can I ask when exactly you gained an interest in riding your bike?"
"It's your bike."
Buck scoffs. "I know that. I just never pictured you as a cyclist."
"Well clearly I'm not very good at it." Eddie retorts.
Buck rolls his eyes, having to bite his lip to stop himself from smiling.
Eddie remembers what he wanted to ask Buck. "Hey, if you were looking for shapes in some abstract pattern, like something like a cloud but not a cloud specifically, would it be cheating to say that that thing looks like a cloud? You know, since clouds are the things people usually look for shapes in?"
Buck considers this."Yes. Now why were you riding your bike?"
Eddie moves his hand hand to Buck's head, pinching one of his curls. Pulling it, letting it stretch out, then releasing it so it bounces back. God, his hair is so soft. "It's your bike," he mumbles.
"Okay, Eddie. I feel like you're avoiding answering me." There's a light, teasing tone in Buck's voice. "So now I really want to know the answer.
Eddie is starting to get annoyed. How is he not getting this? "No, I mean I started riding it because it was your bike."
"I'm not sure what you—"
"Why have you been avoiding me?" It's so pathetic, so vulnerable when it comes out of his mouth. Maybe if he wasn't so high right now, he'd have a little bit of shame about it.
Buck looks at Eddie for a long moment, then. His eyes are a shifting sea, all different kinds of blue at once. He doesn't say anything.
There's a knock at the door. Buck gets up from his seat. A doctor comes in, tells them that Eddie's all in the clear, most likely, but it'll probably be a hard month or so of recovery. Buck listens, asks questions. Eddie watches him, reverently, barely paying attention to anything that the doctor says.
"We'll keep you overnight for monitoring, but we're expecting that your boyfriend will be able to take you home in the morning." She smiles at Buck as she says it. His mouth opens, like he's about to say something, but Eddie interrupts him.
"Sounds like a plan. Thanks, doc."
She nods, gathers her things, and exits the room.
Buck wipes his hands down his face, looks at Eddie, and shakes his head.
An hour or so later, Chimney and Maddie usher Chris into the room. Eddie composes himself, or at least tries to. Buck stands and pulls him into a tight hug, then lets him go so that Chris can lean down to hug Eddie. Eddie kisses the top of his head.
"You're okay?" His son sounds so little when he says it.
"Yeah, Chris, I'm okay." This seems to reassure him. Chris sighs, relieved.
Buck pulls out the chair, and gestures for Chris to sit down. He does, and reaches into his backpack to pull out his phone and start recording. Chimney makes a gesture for Chris to put his phone down, and Chris casts a glance at his father.
"Gotta do what he says, kid. He's the captain." Eddie points at Chimney.
"Oh, he really is high." Chimney mutters a bit too loudly to Maddie, who doesn't react. She's leaning back against the doorframe, arms folded, watching her little brother studiously. Not aggressive, just protective.
Eddie turns to his son. "You weren't too worried, were you?"
"Not really. I figured if it was something really bad, Buck would've come in person." Chris smiles up at Buck, who ruffles his hair. "Plus, this was bound to happen sooner or later. You're really bad at cycling."
"Pfffhhh. I'm not bad at it. I just haven't done it a lot."
"Which is why it's weird that he's started now." Buck does that little gesture with his arm, the little scoop-and-extend for emphasis, like he's unrolling his arm, like he's presenting a princess at a ball. It drives Eddie nuts when he does that, like it clicks with something in his brain. Buck turns to Chris. "Why is he starting now?"
"Not fair, you can't just press the kid for information." Eddie complains. "It's against the rules."
"What rules?"
"The—you know, the rules of parenting."
"I didn't know there were—"
"He's having a midlife crisis," Chris answers Buck's original question drily, but his answer is directed to Maddie and Chimney, as if explaining his father's behavior.
"I'm thirty-five, kid. That's not mid-life." Eddie protests. Buck just shakes his head.
Eddie's never met anyone who's able to sleep as soundly in a hospital room as his son. He tunes it out, all of it—the beeps and tones, the humming of the machinery, the constant brightness, the nurses coming in and out. The kid just kind of rolls with it, the way he always does.
But Eddie remembers how frightening it was, when he was still just a baby, this tiny, wrinkly thing, hooked up to wires and tubes, enduring surgery after surgery. So much for one little body to go through. Maybe he just needed all that sleep so badly that everything else was just secondary.
It's been an exhausting day for Chris. He's passed out, now, folded over Eddie's chest. Eddie cards his fingers through his son's hair.
"He's gotten so big." Eddie murmurs.
"I remember when he was small enough that I could carry him like a backpack." Buck is staring at him, too. "And not even a very heavy one."
Buck has been in Christopher's life for more than half of it, now, in many ways a parent to him, as well. Eddie's not sure when that happened, when he slotted so seamlessly into that place in their lives. It's like he's always been there. Sometimes Eddie wonders if there was always an empty space there, a place that was always meant to have Buck in it.
"You never answered my question, by the way." Eddie says, leaning his head back against the pillow.
"Hmm?"
"Why you're avoiding me."
Buck smiles softly. "Yeah. You're being really weird right now."
"You're being weird. You've been being weird since you moved out." Eddie says the last part lightly, and is surprised, a bit, when Buck makes a face like a grimace. I'm sorry. I take it back.
Buck sniffs. "You're really high, man."
"Yeah, and?"
"And I'm not sure if I want to have this conversation with you right now." Buck says it like it's painful to even be near this topic.
"But we're going to have it, right? You're not going to just keep avoiding me forever?"
Buck is trying to be quiet, but his voice is still sharp. "I'm not sure what you want me to—"
Chris stirs, shifting a little bit, blinking his eyes open. They both stop talking.
"Look who's awake." Buck says softly, reaching out to pat his back.
Chris groans. "What time is it?"
Eddie clears his throat, adjusting the pitch of his voice. "Almost time for you two to head out."
"Visiting hours?" Chris mumbles groggily. He knows the drill.
"Mhmm."
Buck sits up a bit straighter. "You and I are gonna head back to your place in a few—"
"—and I'll pick you up after school." Eddie finishes the sentence.
"So I still have to go to school tomorrow?" Chris groans, but there's a teasing note in his voice. "Even after my beloved father got hit by a car?"
"Yes." Buck and Eddie say it in unison.
"I mean, I didn't get hit by a car that badly," Eddie adds. Chris gives him a look, the kind he gives Eddie when a joke is so bad it doesn't even warrant a response.
"I'll make you pancakes tomorrow morning," Buck offers, "That sound like a deal?"
Chris nods.
"C'mon, get your stuff. You and Buck have gotta get out of here before the night nurse yells at me." Eddie pats his son on the back.
"Yeah, okay." Chris grabs his crutches and stands reluctantly.
"Hey, I love you, kid."
"I love you, too," Chris grumbles back as he walks away, too much of a teenager to say it enthusiastically but too sweet of a kid not to say it at all. At the doorway, he stops, turns his face to his father, and says, casually, "You should ask the nurses for more blankets when they come by. It gets pretty cold here at night."
Eddie smiles back. "You're the greatest kid in the world, you know that, right?"
Chris laughs, and says "Whatever, Dad." He then turns and keeps going out the door. Buck follows behind him, Chris's backpack slung over his shoulders.
"See you tomorrow?" Eddie calls after Buck.
His answer is clipped and formal, modulated for Chris's benefit. "Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow."
Unlike his son, Eddie is a perpetually light sleeper. He could say that it's because of his time in the military or the fire department, but, realistically, he's always been a bit of an insomniac.
When he was a kid, any little thing would wake him, sometimes only the dripping of the faucet or the light from his sister's bedroom. And when he was awake, he'd start worrying about anything, about his father making it to Sofia's dance recital, or his mother yelling at Adriana for forgetting to clean her room, or if he had forgotten to complete some critical part of his homework.
And he'd be awake, panicked energy coursing through his veins, sleep a distant fantasy. Spiraling and spiraling in the kind of terror that a person only has when they're nine years old and know that they need to sleep, or else they'll be useless the next day at school. He'd try to will himself to be tired, to get over it, but it never worked. He was the kind of boy who perpetually had bags under his eyes.
Except when he slept over at his abuela's house. Then he'd sleep like the dead and wake up feeling revived. She just has that way about her, a strong kind of grace that soothes a person to their core, a reassuring protectiveness. The next time he'd gotten that kind of sleep was the first night that Buck had stayed over, filling his house with his frenetic light.
This night, in the hospital, sleep eludes him. Hospitals are noisy, chaotic places, usually difficult for insomniacs. Eddie sleeps for an hour here and there, but this isn't a particularly restful place for him. He just wants to go home.
By the time Buck shows up to give him a ride home, it's nearly mid-morning and Eddie is crawling out of his skin. The doctors examine him again, and come to the conclusion that it looked worse than it actually was. No internal injuries, no concussion, nothing seriously broken, just very bruised. The pain meds have mostly worn off, and the ache is insistent, but not unbearable. He'll have to wear his arm in a sling and have to stay off his foot for a week or so. It'll suck, but it'll get easier in a few days, and he'll likely be back to work in about a month.
When Buck enters the room this time, it's cautiously, gently, like he'll break Eddie even more if he makes any sudden movements. Eddie doesn't know why he didn't see it before, why it took him so long to see what was right in front of him. Every cell in his body jumps at seeing him, electrified. Every inch of him is so much of him, so very him. It's just Buck. And Just Buck is the most incredible thing in the world.
Buck's voice is low and quiet as he asks, "Hey, how are you feeling?"
"Like I got hit by a car." Eddie smiles back.
The ride home is nearly silent, just the gentle rocking of the jeep on the smoothly paved LA municipal streets. Eddie should say something. He doesn't know what.
"We were supposed to be working today" is what he finally says at a stoplight.
"Yeah. Chimney was able to change around some schedules, give me the day off to take care of you. And you obviously weren't coming into work today."
"Eh, I think I could've managed it."
Buck doesn't respond, just keeps tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the music. Eddie just stares, trying to puzzle him out. Buck is stewing, but that's about all Eddie can figure out. He's beautiful, even as he stews, his forehead pinched and his mouth pursed in determination. Eddie wants to kiss him so badly, but this probably wouldn't go over well, as pissed as he seems.
Traffic isn't bad—this is after the workday starts, for most people—so it doesn't take them long to get home. Buck pulls the jeep in front of the house precisely and with ease. Most people don't notice this about Buck, but he's a really good driver. Eddie figures he's had a lot of practice, having crossed the continent the same little jeep. He's attentive, has the natural hand-eye coordination that comes with his job. He puts it into park.
Eddie lifts his hand to the door handle, starts lifting himself to get out.
"What are you doing?" Buck cuts him off.
Eddie looks at him, annoyed already. "Getting out of the car?"
"Like hell you are." Buck's tone is tough. It doesn't suit him. He sounds like a lapdog that's trying to be a guard dog. "You're not supposed to put weight on your foot."
"It'll just be for a second." He doesn't know why he's arguing. He can get out of the car whenever he wants, however he wants. "I mean, I was able to get to the car, remember?"
"Yeah, on crutches." Buck argues back.
Eddie sighs, calming himself. "The crutches are in the back. I just need to grab them and—"
"And screw up your leg even more?"
"Come on, Buck, don't be ridiculous."
"I'm not being ridiculous. You're being ridiculous." Buck thinks for a minute, fixing his hard stare on Eddie. "I'm gonna carry you out."
"Carry me out? Buck, I'm a 35-year-old, six-foot-tall man. I can handle getting out of a car."
Buck scoffs. "Uh, not right now you can't. And I'm taller than you."
"You're going to drop me."
Buck's answer is sincere. "I haven't before."
Eddie can't argue with that. "Fine, but just to the couch. And if you start to trip, you're putting me down."
Buck jumps out, runs around the car, and opens Eddie's door. "Okay, let's see how we're going to do this." He puts one arm under Eddie's knees, another one on his back, squats down, and lifts him, bridal style. It's effortful, this lift, and not particularly comfortable for Eddie, anyways.
"If you put me down and just go get the crutches, I can—"
"Too. Late." Buck is stumbling, waddling, adjusting his grip. It's less Eddie's weight that's the trouble for Buck, and more the awkward angle at which he's holding him. They must look ridiculous to the neighbors.
"You know, when you carried me the last time, it was over your shoulder," Eddie offers.
"Yeah. Well. When I carried you last time," Buck huffs out a breath, teasing, "you complained less."
"I had just been shot." Eddie is laughing, now, big gulps of air puffing in and out, smarting his bruised ribs.
Buck is laughing, too, trying hard to keep Eddie off of the ground. "Fuck, I don't think I can keep at this."
"Pfhh then put me down!"
"Shit, okay" They hadn't even made it a few steps, not even onto the walkway. Buck lowers Eddie, as gently as possible, onto his feet. Eddie slings an arm around his shoulders, and Buck wraps his arm under Eddie's injured one, holding him up by the torso. They work together seamlessly, moving swiftly from the walkway, up the front steps, and to the living room, where Buck deposits Eddie on the couch.
Eddie adjusts his body, shifting so that his injured leg is laying across the couch. Buck flits around, grabbing pillows from the bedroom, an ice pack from the kitchen, bandages from the medicine cabinet.
He kneels in front of Eddie's foot, wrapping it, putting the ice pack on it, placing it gently onto the pillows. Rest, ice, compression, elevation. Automatic.
When he's done, he stands wordlessly and turns away. Eddie calls after him, making him pause.
“Alright, now can we have a conversation about why you’ve been avoiding me?” Eddie asks.
Buck pretends he hadn’t heard him, and makes a beeline for the kitchen. “I think we’re out of milk. I should go get some.”
“Buck. Buck—“ Eddie hears a door slam. He’d chase after him, if not for his injured and carefully wrapped leg.
When Buck returns, fifteen minutes later, he barrels past where Eddie is sitting, one leg up on the couch, waiting patiently for his return. Eddie places both his legs on the ground, carefully, stands.
Wobbly on his crutches, Eddie trudges towards him. Buck is in the kitchen, putting the milk in the refrigerator, trying to look busier than he is. He doesn't look up when Eddie comes in.
Eddie clears his throat. “We need to talk.”
“What’s there to talk about?” The milk is in the fridge, now, so Buck has busied himself with re-arranging the spice cabinet.
“Come on, Buck—“
Buck stops. “I’m serious, Eddie. What exactly do you want me to say?”
“An explanation would be nice," Eddie says, walking over to him.
“An explanation for what?” Buck returns to his busywork.
Eddie searches for the words. “I don’t know, maybe this silent treatment you’ve been giving me?”
“What silent treatment? I literally just carried you out of a car.” Buck says, slamming a jar of coriander on the counter.
“And I appreciate that," Eddie counters, "But I’m talking about the last few weeks.”
“Okay—“ Buck sighs, “I’ve been trying to give you some space, okay?”
“I never asked you for space.”
Finally, Buck looks at him.“You didn’t need to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry, I just—I think it would be healthy—” He says it like it's so reasonable.
“What are you talking about?”
“—for both of us to get some space.”
“Why do we need space?”
“Because it’s a little weird, Eddie." Buck snaps, “Don’t you think it’s a little bit weird that I was living in your house—“
“I don’t think that’s weird.” Eddie interjects
“—sleeping in the same bed as you, raising your son with you—“
“Why does that have to be weird?”
“Because I’m not your fucking boyfriend, Eddie!” He’s yelling now. “Okay? And—and people were starting to ask questions, okay?”
A flare of confused, protective anger roils in Eddie's chest. He sets his crutches on the counter and hops closer to Buck. “What people? Who was asking questions?”
“That doesn’t matter.” Buck says this in a way that makes Eddie think it matters a great deal. “What matters is that I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep acting like we’re married when we’re just two best friends who live together and work together and raise a kid together. Maybe you can, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re straight, Eddie." Buck says it with such finality. "You can just be my friend. And I—I can’t keep doing this.” He pushes out of the kitchen.
“Fuck, is that what this is about?” Eddie shouts.
“You’re being cruel, Eddie.” Buck calls out to him. There’s a soft kind of clattering, the slow woosh of clothes being put in a bag. Eddie grabs his crutches and follows him, awkwardly, into the living room. It takes him a moment. He’s not used to moving like this.
“Where are you going?” Eddie asks, deflated.
“Back to my apartment." He stops. "I was going to stay for the next couple of days, you know. Make sure you’re alright. But I’m not exactly sure that that’s the best idea for either of us right now.”
“Buck, just—just stop, okay?” Eddie moves closer, even Buck shoots him a look of contempt. “Just tell me what is going on.”
Buck stops, leaning into his suitcase and whispers something unintelligible.
“What?”
“You were run over by the elf.” Something in Buck's voice makes it sound like he knows this is a ridiculous thing to say.
“What?” Eddie repeats, incredulous.
“The Christmas elf hit you with her car.” Buck says it like he's admitting something shameful.
Eddie throws his hands up. “Alright, I’m lost.”
“I met her, the woman who hit you with her car. In the waiting room. She stayed. Wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Okay?”
“Eddie, I knew her. I fucking knew her.” Buck sighs. “Do you remember that Christmas thing we went to with Christopher, right after you guys first moved here?”
“Uhh, vaguely?” Eddie walks closer, around the coffee table. They're standing next to each other.
Buck turns to face him. “Well, there was a woman, there, working as one of Santa’s elves. And there was a moment—she assumed Chris was our son. You and I.”
“Oh?” Eddie isn't quite sure how to respond
“I didn’t correct her, Eddie. And it was before everything, before I even knew I was bi. I’ve been replaying that moment again and again lately.” Buck stops. “And then she hit you with her fucking car.”
“So you’re saying that you’re leaving me because I was run over by an elf?" This is it. This is officially the worst, most ridiculous breakup that Eddie's ever had. If it wasn't so devastating, it'd be a little bit funny.
“Eddie, that’s not—"
“—Because from what I remember you left me well before then.” Eddie leans on his crutches.
“That’s the fucking point, Eddie. This has been going on for—for what? Eight years? On some level, we’ve been playing pretend with each other for eight years. I’ve been playing house with you for eight years. I think it’s time I moved on." Buck's voice is cracking as he says it, like he's on the verge of tears. "But you just keep reaching out, like you always do.”
“I didn’t reach out. I got hit by a car.” Eddie's voice is small.
“Yeah, and I came running.” Buck looks at him with big, bloodshot eyes. He goes quiet for a long time. Eddie doesn't move, doesn't breathe. “You know, if you don't love me back the way that I need you to, I need you to let me go, Eddie. ‘Cause god knows I’m never going to do it.”
“Don’t ask me to do that, Buck." Eddie steps closer.
Buck breathes. “Then tell me what the hell it is that you—"
Eddie kisses him.
Faltering on his bad leg, falling into the brick wall of the of the other man. Lips brushing lips, soft at first, the tentative first steps across a border. It’s a twenty-story drop. It’s the easiest letting go in the world. It’s the bravest thing he’s ever done, but it’s as easy as waking up on a sunny morning.
Buck kisses him back, harder now, more intense, more bruising. Eddie feels every millimeter of it. Eddie pokes his tongue out, just a little bit, Buck sucks it in. Eddie is feverish, shaking and warm, wondering for a second if Buck can feel his heartbeat through the veins on the inside of his bottom lip as he runs his tongue across Eddie’s teeth. Eddie’s not sure what to do with his hands at first, paralyzed by the little shockwaves that bloom out from wherever Buck touches him. He settles on cupping Buck’s face in his hands, stubble rough against his palms and the skin around his mouth, pulling him deeper, closer.
Buck snakes a hand underneath his shirt. His touch is light, but it's enough to send a sharp pang of pain radiating through his torso.
Shit. His ribs. Eddie sucks in a hiss.
It's enough to break the spell. Buck pulls back, sharply.
"I can't believe I just did that." Buck whispers, "I can't—fuck, I'm so sorry."
"Buck, it's fi—" It occurs to Eddie mid-sentence that Buck isn't talking about accidentally touching his bruised ribs.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Eddie. Shit. I need to go." He's frantic, now, grabbing his suitcase, "Tell Chris I'm sorry that I couldn't come with you to pick him up. I'm sorry. I have to go."
"Buck, wait. Stop. Wait. Buck, just—just talk to me."
It's too late. He's already out the door.
The rest of the day passes in a blur. Eddie picks Chris up from school as usual, expects disappointment but finds that Buck already texted him his apologies, promised to take him to the movies to make up for it. Buck and Eddie might be fighting, but Buck is going to be in Chris's life, forever. Eddie feels silly to have ever doubted that.
Tia Pepa comes over to check on Eddie and make the two of them dinner. If she takes note of Eddie's preoccupation, of Buck's conspicuous absence (which she most certainly notices), she doesn't remark on it, just makes Eddie take his Advil.
Eddie keeps checking his phone for a notification that never comes—no apology, no explanation, no Can we talk? He gets a text at dinner and jumps up, breaking his no-phones-at-the-table rule. It's just Hen, checking up on him. It's appreciated, but it's not who he wants to hear from.
The next morning, Eddie wakes up early, makes breakfast, takes Chris to school, makes an appointment for PT, goes to the grocery store, folds his laundry, dusts the living room, and paces the house dozens of times, all without hearing anything from Buck. He feels hopeless, helpless, unmoored. He's had silence from Buck before, but it's never felt this loud.
Maybe he could have done something differently, something that wouldn't have made Buck run away. Maybe it was a bad kiss—it didn't feel like a bad kiss, but maybe Eddie was remembering it wrong. Maybe he could have been clearer about how he felt, said what he meant instead of deflecting so damn much.
Maybe it would have helped if Eddie had told Buck that he was not, in fact, straight. Because, well, Eddie isn't straight. There. He doesn't just have best-friend feelings for Buck, he has love-of-his-life feelings for Buck. Whatever that means going forward, that's the truth.
At around noon, Eddie gets another notification on his phone. He sees it immediately—he's been checking his texts obsessively for the last twenty-something hours. It's not from Buck. It's from Chimney. He's been summoned.
It's never felt quite right, coming into the firehouse in the middle of the day, wearing plainclothes that he isn't going to immediately change out of, interrupting a shift in progress. People stop what they're doing and stare at him, his footsteps echoing through the hall.
"Hey, Eddie. Good to see that you're on your feet." Hen greets him, hugging him gingerly. She holds him a beat too long, and whispers in his ear, subtly nodding her head to the ambulance, where his replacement is standing, polishing the bumper. "Get your shit together and get back as soon as you can. Monroe is a nice guy and all, but he's basically useless."
He nods, and she pats him gently on the back. "Good to see you too, Hen."
The walls of the captain's office are glass, so Eddie can see the back of Buck's head. He's already in there, sitting still while Chimney rifles through some of the papers on his desk. Eddie takes a moment to compose himself, then heads inside.
Buck's head snaps up to look at him, then back at Chimney, betrayed. "What's he doing here?"
"Hi Buck," Eddie says softly, then nods his head to Chimney, "Captain."
"Take a seat, Diaz." Chimney is grimacing. Eddie gets this tight feeling in his stomach, like he's been called into the principal's office—a thing which never actually happened to him as a kid, and which he knows, from different stories he's heard, happened to Buck quite frequently.
Chimney clears his throat, sighs. "Now, I understand that you two have been having some personal problems."
"I can assure you, Captain, we will be fine," Eddie says, gesturing to Buck and himself, "at work, at least."
Buck nods, "If you're worried about, uhm, that thing I told Maddie about—
''—wait, what did you tell Maddie about?" Buck wouldn't out Eddie, Eddie's sure of that. Buck wouldn't do that. Not Buck.
"That—that thing that happened." Buck's face is turning red. "You know."
"You told Maddie about that?" Eddie can't hide his betrayal, his shock.
"Well, yeah—" Buck says it like it's obvious.
Fuck. There's no way. Eddie must be misunderstanding. Even so, he forgives him, reflexively.
"Stop. Both of you." Chimney puts up a hand. "You know, believe it or not, I'm actually not concerned about this affecting either of your job performances. You both are fine firefighters, and I trust you will keep it professional at work."
"So then why the ambush, Chimney?" Buck asks.
"Again, it's not my place to intrude into your personal lives." Chimney's voice gets very quiet, and he leans in, "But let's be honest. This is the most friend-cestuous place I have ever worked. And I used to work at a karaoke bar." He says the last part like it should mean something to Buck and Eddie. Apparently Buck understands, since he nods knowingly.
Chimney continues "So when you two are fighting, whether or not I want to be involved, I become involved. Especially when one of you—" he looks pointedly at Buck, "—starts barging into my house and annoying my wife at all hours of the day."
"She's my sister. I can annoy her whenever I want" Buck protests.
"Not when you become needier than the newborn, Buckley." Chimney sighs. "You know, what I'm trying to say is that you two need to figure out whatever the hell is going on between you two and you need to leave my wife out of it. Or at least give her a night off. Okay?"
Eddie isn't listening. He just has this cold, sinking feeling in his gut. Because if what he thinks is true is, in fact, true, then his relationship with Buck is done. Because there's no one who loves Buck more, who knows him better, who wants better for him than Maddie. And if she doesn't think this relationship can work, then maybe it can't.
"Buck," he says at a whisper, "was Maddie the one who said that our relationship was weird?"
Chimney clears his throat, "Well, that would be a bit out of character for her, but I'm sure she'd have her reas—"
"What? No." Buck is quick and firm.
"Then who was it?" Eddie asks.
Buck sighs. "Fine. It was Tommy."
Eddie is confused. "Wait, when did you last see Tommy?"
"At—at the funeral."
Chimney cuts him off. "Why was Tommy Kinard at Denny's hamster's funeral?"
"I didn't see him there." Eddie adds.
Buck corrects them. "No, not Ham Rockwell's funeral. Bobby's funeral."
Now Eddie is really pissed. "Tommy told you our relationship was weird at Bobby's funeral?"
"No, no. That wasn't when he said it." Buck looks embarrassed. "It was before then. It was—it was while you were in El Paso."
"So after you two broke up? Buck, I thought you were past that guy. He was awful to you."
"Well, yeah, but—" Buck turns red, "Okay. Listen. I had gone out with Ravi, and, and, I'd had a couple of drinks, and—and I was really lonely, and I —" Buck mumbles something unintelligible.
"What?" Eddie presses.
"I slept with him, okay?" Buck snaps "Is that what you wanted to hear? I missed you, so I slept with my ex."
Chimney's eyebrows go up.
"Okay?" Eddie feels a lick of jealousy, but pushes it down. "You're entitled to sleep with whoever you want. It's not like you were cheating on anyone." He's trying to sound so reasonable that it comes off like he's overcompensating.
"You're not getting it." Buck looks at Eddie bewildered, desperate, like Eddie is under-reacting. "I slept with him, and then he said that our relationship was weird."
"That's—" Eddie doesn't know how to react to that information, "—Okay? Tommy's a dick. We all know that."
Chimney nods.
Buck is stumbling over his words. "Yeah, but—but. God. He implied that I was in love with you. And he made it sound, so, so salacious. Like I was obsessed with you or something."
"Buck, I don't think that's fair —" Eddie jumps to Buck's defense.
"And then I had to go and prove him right by kissing you."
"What?" Eddie says.
Chimney nods, knowingly. He's heard this version of events before.
"Buck, that's not what happened." Eddie's voice is direct, firm.
"Wait, it's not?" Chimney turns to face Eddie.
"I kissed you, remember?" Eddie snaps. "I kissed you, and—and then you ran out on me. You fucking left me standing there like a goddamn fool."
"No, no, no. You didn't kiss me. That's impossible. Eddie. You're straight." Buck is insistent.
"No, I'm not." It's the first time Eddie's said it out loud. "I'm not straight, Buck."
There's a minute of silence as this admission hangs in the air. Buck's face is blank. Eddie can feel all of the color draining from his own. He knows there's a gravity to what he just said. He feels the impact of it. But he is surprised by how little he regrets saying it.
Chimney clears his throat. "Uhhh, congratulations? We're all very proud of—"
Eddie cuts him off. "Thank you, but now's not the time."
Buck looks unconvinced.
Eddie continues. "Buck I literally kissed you. Does that seem like something a straight person would do?"
Buck is silent for a long time, as if not sure how to respond."That's—that's beside the point." He turns back to Eddie, regaining his posture. Buck's next question seems like a non-sequitur. "Do you really not care that I slept with Tommy?"
"Hold on—" Chimney interjects, trying to get this meeting back on track.
"Are you trying to argue that I'm both straight and that, as a straight man, I should be more concerned with my best friend's sex life?" Eddie continues, unfazed.
"Well, yes." Buck says with confidence.
Eddie throws his hands up."Okay, I'm not sure that I'm following."
"I mean it's not a big deal." Buck's tone makes it clear that it is, in fact, a big deal. "I just thought you would be more upset about that."
"That you had sex with another consenting adult in the privacy of his home? Am I supposed to be upset about that?" Eddie can feel himself overcompensating.
Chimney sighs, helpless. "I'm getting a feeling that this has gone beyond the point of being productive—"
"Does it make it worse that it was in your house?" Buck goads.
Eddie tries not to take the bait. "No, I —wait, you fucked that man in our house?"
"Yeah, Edd—"
"Alright!" Chimney snaps. "I fucking quit, okay? I'm done. I've had it." He stands abruptly. "Enough with the paperwork. Enough with the back and forth with command. Enough with the long hours and the never seeing my family. I'm fucking calling it."
Chimney starts shoving things into his bag, starting with his framed photos. "You know, I never wanted this job to begin with. I was happy being a paramedic. But then Hen turned it down for some fucking reason, and I felt this—this obligation to Bobby's memory to take over. And then we find out that he isn't even fucking dead."
He grabs the nameplate on his desk and rips the card that says Captain Howard Han out of it.
"So then I'm like, Oh good, he can take over again. But no, he decides that now is the best time to retire." Chimney slings a bag over his shoulder. "And suddenly I'm here playing marriage counselor to my brother-in-law and our second-best paramedic."
"Hey!" Buck jumps to Eddie's defense.
"It's cool. Hen's his best paramedic," Eddie whispers. If Chimney hears, he doesn't react.
"And I don't fucking care! I don't care! I don't!" Chimney's voice is high. He's yelling, ranting. Eddie has never seen him like this. "I don't care about Ravi needing time off to go visit his parent's chalet in Switzerland. I don't care that Collins has been eating all of Roberts' lunch salad. And I especially do. not. care. about. Tommy. Kinard's. sex. life. I'm done. I'm done!"
He storms out of the office. "Hen! You're captain now," he calls out.
"What?" Her voice is distant, coming from the loft.
"Too late. I'm not going to be captain anymore. It's you or nobody."
"Oh, uh, okay." She yells back.
She's in the captain's office in a second, assuming her position at the head of the desk with grace and authority. "I guess I'm the captain, now," she mutters to herself.
She looks up, and sighs. "You two," she says, pointing at Buck and Eddie, "I'm not exactly sure what you did this time, but go home and figure it out for yourselves."
"What? Why?" Buck protests.
She glares at them. "You broke Chimney."
They don't speak as Eddie trudges through the station, back towards the alley where he parked his car.
"Wait." Buck calls. Eddie's heart falls to his knees, expecting another confrontation. "I need a ride."
Eddie scoffs, turning around. "Don't you drive?"
"I carpooled with Ravi today." Eddie pauses and waits for him to catch up, but Buck doesn't follow. "It's gonna be a minute. I need to change. Do you mind waiting?"
Eddie shrugs, and watches him turn around and jog to the locker room. Eddie can't wait here, in the station. He gets this weird feeling, the kind he'd get as a little kid when he'd be sick and need to be picked up from school. Every time, without fail, he knew that he would get a lecture from his parents about the importance of toughing it out. It's one of many parenting choices from Helena and Ramon that Eddie can't comprehend.
He walks through the alley where he's parallel-parked, climbs into the front seat, and waits, staring at nothing in particular. There's a weed growing up through one of the cracks, in the pavement, along the wall of the building directly across from the station, a little fleck of green in the blue-grey. Eddie watches it, moving a little in the draft between the buildings. Eddie tries to center himself, breathing in when the weed turns this way, breathing out when it turns that way.
His car door opens on the passenger side. "Want me to drive?" Buck offers.
"I'm fine," Eddie asserts, "But thanks."
Buck is silent as they pull out of the alley, watching the road as they merge into traffic. Eddie has to be the one to start the conversation.
"Do you think we really broke him?"
Buck shrugs. "He'll be fine. I think he's been wanting to do that for a long time." He casts a glance back at Eddie, then turns back to look out the window.
When Buck speaks again, it's quiet, hesitant. "So you're really not upset about the Tommy thing?"
Eddie watches his tone carefully. This feels like a test. "Do you want me to be upset about it?"
"Yes? No?" Buck groans. "I mean, I don't just want you to be upset about it because you think I want you to be upset, okay?"
"Hmm." The air feels thick between them. Eddie notices his leg bouncing up and down, tries to steady it. He changes the subject. "Do you want me to drop you off at your place?"
It takes Buck a long time to respond. "You know, you've never actually been to my place. That's kind of weird."
"You never invited me."
"You could've asked."
"Could I, Buck?" Eddie asks. "You stopped talking to me."
"Yeah, well, I didn't want you to just—" Buck sighs "—disappear from my life."
"Really? Because I was under the impression that you wanted me to let you go." The words come out bitter.
"No, Eddie, I—look, I'm sorry if I gave you the silent treatment. And I'm sorry if I made it seem like I no longer want to be your friend. I do. It's just—you go through life acting like you never have any choices. Like things just happen to you." Buck swallows, looking for words. "And then I moved in and I just knew. If I stayed, I was going to be another thing that you were going to just learn to live with."
Eddie says his next words, deadly quiet. Nothing hurts quite like seeing Buck hurt. It doubles him over, makes him fold. "That's not true, Buck,"
Buck's voice is soft, desperate. "Then tell me what is true. Because I can't keep guessing."
Eddie pulls the car over to the side of the road, puts it in park. He can't look at the road, can't look at Buck. He's staring at the little leather bumps in the steering wheel.
Buck grabs his face with his hands, lifting Eddie's face to his like he's holding "Come on, Eds, talk to me." Buck's voice is so soft, so gentle.
That's the thing that always breaks Eddie, that always makes his tough, calloused parts go to mush. His eyes go misty, his vision blurring. Buck runs his thumb across Eddie's cheek, wiping away something wet.
"Eddie, I need you to tell me what you want."
The words come out immediately. There is no safer place than this car. Eddie can say it, and it will be okay. He will be okay.
"I want you to come home. I'm asking you to come home. I want you. I love you. I miss you. Please. Come home."
Buck breathes out through his nostrils, his smile still light and loving, still warm, like the first ray of light to touch the ground in the morning.
"Well," he smiles, "why didn't you just say that?"
And Eddie just can't help but kiss him.
One month and two weeks later, Eddie helps Buck unpack. They'd originally decided to take things slow, but Ravi was able to find a sub-letter for Buck's old place quickly enough, and he was spending most nights at South Bedford street anyways, so hey, fuck careful. Eddie just wants to be happy.
It's easier, this time, since all of the things that he brought with them already have their place; they have just enough room in the silverware drawer, just enough room in the cabinets for the dishes, the perfect amount of gaps in the bookshelves to fit his books.
It doesn't take them very long to get all of the necessities put away, but they're finding that they have a lot of duplicates—two beds, two couches, two TV stands. They take a trip, together, their little family, to one of the nicer kinds of mid-range furniture stores, the ones with big showrooms. Find a couch they all love, one with deep, comfortable seats and tough leather, sturdy enough to last for years. They do the same for the other things they have duplicates of, and list them.
Mike S. on Facebook Marketplace shows interest in one of the two TV stands, but abruptly ghosts Buck when he changes his profile picture to include Eddie. Eddie has to explain this to Buck, who nods his head throughout the entire story, like all of Eddie's actions were perfectly rational. It doesn't take them long to sell the furniture, anyways.
Eddie takes his records out from under the bottom of the closet. They've haven't even been there long enough to gather anything more than the thinnest layer of dust. Eddie pulls one out, puts it on. His leg feels better, more stable, more solid, and his arm was back at one-hundred-percent weeks ago. His son is in the living room, reading a book; his boyfriend is in the kitchen, pouring two glasses of white wine, cutting up orange slices to stick in their drinks
Tonight is a dancing night. He'll spin his boyfriend around, kiss him, and embarrass their son, who will roll his eyes and take his book to go read in his bedroom.
Then they'll sit together, Eddie and Buck, and drink wine on the back porch. Holding hands, watching the bougainvilleas in the orange light of sunset, looking at each other, and talking about nothing in particular.