Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

like winning the lottery /or finding God in your sock drawer. 

I think love is something

that happens to other people--nebulous,

distant, an invention of the movies; I think love

is like death / as in,

it happens to everyone but you

until it happens / to you,

and then where else could you be

but in love?

-Michael Gray Bulla, I Think Love is Something that Happens to Other People

If Eddie believed in the universe, he would think that this is proof of what happens when he lets himself waver. He doesn’t get to do that—do reckless things like stare at Buck’s lips and lean forward and maybe even…— because this is what happens. But he doesn’t believe in the universe, so he thinks they’re just unlucky. It’s not any more comforting.

The energy between them on shift was electric—fragile, but electric. Eddie felt like a teenager again, but also—nothing like that at all. In the early months with Shannon, he remembers the giddy feeling he would get from being around her, but he thinks now that that might have just been from getting attention from somebody that he admired, thought was cool—far too cool for him. It doesn’t make it any less important, but it was different.

What was between him and Buck, what was always between them, Eddie thinks, but what just made itself uncompromisingly known today, was different. It felt… wild almost, like something bigger than either of them, a wildfire that you could only hope to contain and never put out. They had been near silent in the engine, both of them only speaking when spoken to, but it wasn’t awkward. Their knees brushed against each other like always, and every time was like a shock through Eddie’s body. Buck would catch his eye and he would smile and look away, before looking back and seeing him still watching him, smiling back. It was ridiculous, really, to be in his thirties and acting like this, but it felt like nothing he’d ever felt before, so he allowed it.

When they got to the call—a hiker stuck in a ravine— they sobered up a bit, becoming the well-oiled machine that they are. Bobby instructed Buck to harness up for the ropes and he did, nearly skipping over to grab his equipment. Eddie watched him with a fond smile, waiting for Bobby’s next instructions.

Maybe they didn’t sober up completely. Googly eyes, Maddie had said.

Once Buck was harnessed, they put the ladder in position and began to lower him down. It was an easy rescue, one that they didn’t even all need to be there for. The hiker was in good shape, no injuries and probably just slightly dehydrated, he was just lost and didn’t want to want to stray too far from the highway trying to find his way back. It was a good call, and they were happy to help.

Buck disappeared beyond the edge of the cliff and the last thing that Eddie saw was the small, proud smile that he wears whenever he gets to do something like this. Eddie watched the ropes, and Buck went down. It was good, everything like it should’ve been.

Then, the wind picked up.

It wasn’t something to be concerned about immediately, but Bobby radioed Buck to be careful—keep intentional foot holds on his way down. Eddie heard Buck’s voice over the radio, a light scoff and then yeah, yeah, I got it Cap.

It was the last he heard of Buck’s voice before the wind picked up and slammed him into the side of the cliff.

They all gasped, running over to the edge. When they looked down, they saw Buck’s figure below, hanging onto the side of the cliff. He looked mostly unharmed, and Eddie let out a sigh of relief.

“We need to bring him up Cap,” Hen said.

Bobby shook his head.

“What happens if the wind picks up again?” he responded. “I don’t wanna risk him hitting the side again.”

“So we lower him down,” Chim said. “Have him wait down there and go the long way around to get him.”

They all considered it. It wasn’t ideal, still risking him losing his grip and hitting the cliff again, but he was closer to the bottom than the top. It was definitely better than having him try to hold on until the wind stopped, because who knew when that would be, and the plants that he was holding onto could go at any minute.

Eddie watched as Bobby did the same math before nodding once.

“Alright,” he said. “Start lowering him down.”

He was about to go to his radio to let Buck know the plan when they all heard a grunt.

They scrambled to look over the edge only to see Buck being swung to hit the side again. His body looked more limp than last time, and the wind had come back with a vengeance. Eddie couldn’t do anything but watch as Buck was swung around on the ropes like a rag doll, hitting the side of the cliff repeatedly.

“We need to lower him!” Somebody was yelling.

“It’s caught!” Somebody yelled back. Eddie looked over. It was. The rope had gotten tangled on a branch. Buck was risking terrible injuries being slammed into the cliffside like this for who knows how long, or worse, he was risking compromising the stability of the cliff. Who knew how stable it was, whether the whole thing would go and take Buck and the rest of them with it. Eddie knew what Bobby was going to say next.

“Cut the rope,” he near whispered, but they all heard it. Eddie couldn’t see the grave faces of his team— too busy staring over the edge of the cliff, unseeing, but he could imagine them.

In the end, they were all spared the task of having to do it themselves. In the split second after Eddie’s eyes focused back on Buck, still limp, still swinging wildly, he saw him bring up a hand to the rope, something shiny in his grasp.

The rope broke, and Buck went careening down the cliff.

He was closer to the bottom. The rope was stuck. It was a good call.

It was a good call.

Eddie sunk to his knees.

“We need to go get him!” Voices filtered in.

“It’s too dangerous to send another person down! We get in the truck and we go the long way.” This voice is eerily calm, but Eddie can hear the barely disguised tightness in it.

“He needs medical attention now. Who knows what that fall did to him.” A softer voice, but still sharp.

“I’m not risking another life,” Bobby says. “Let’s go.”

“Eddie?” Hen asks, and Eddie feels a pressure on his shoulder. “Come on.”

“I need to get to him,” he whispers, and it sounds like it’s coming from somewhere outside of his body. “I need to… I need him.”

“I know,” Hen whispers back, gently tugging on his shoulder. “We’re going to right now, come on.”

Eddie nods numbly, allowing himself to be steered towards to engine. They all pile in, listening to Bobby bark instructions about the fastest way down there. They have to drive for a while. There’s a reason they didn’t do it this way the first time.

Finally, the truck comes to a stop. Eddie stands by as Hen and Chim run to the ambulance, grabbing their bags and two stretchers. Bobby comes to stand next to him. They don’t say anything, but the enormity of what they might have lost is loud enough on its own.

They have to hike a bit to get to him. Eddie doesn’t know how long—it doesn’t matter. He would walk for years to get to him.

When they get there, the scream reemerges in Eddie’s throat. Hen and Chim rush forward, but he stays frozen a few feet away. Buck had landed on his front, and when Hen and Chim turn him over his face is bruised and cut up, almost completely covered by blood and dirt. It’s the only part of his body visible under all of his gear, and Eddie can only imagine how bad the rest of it is.

“I’ve got a pulse!” Chim yells, and next to him, Bobby lets out a breath.

“Breathing is weak,” Hen says. “We should intubate him, stabilize this fracture, and get him to the hospital as soon as possible.”

“Copy that,” Chim responds, and they get to work.

Eddie watches them, the seamless way they work, the way Chim knows what Hen’s going to ask for before she even does. There’s a problem intubating him, something about a fracture, so they trach him instead. They grab a cloth from their bag and wrap it around Buck’s middle. Pelvic fracture, Eddie’s medic brain whispers. Probably a fractured jaw too.

He barely registers it, too focused on Buck’s face. It’s mostly obscured by Chim, but Eddie drinks in what he can see. A flash of his nose, a bit of his brow. It’s all he has, and he holds onto it with both hands, refusing to let go. Like he should’ve done on the ropes. He was supposed to watch Buck’s back. That was his job and he failed. And now he’s useless, standing by as other people take care of him. That’s his job too, and he can’t do it.

After a few minutes, Hen and Chim roll him onto the stretcher and they begin the walk back. The hiker, who had been silently standing by, refuses a stretcher and they let him. Eddie doesn’t know that he could carry anything right now, much less a grown man.

Eddie walks next to Hen and Chim, carrying Buck between them, and when Buck’s hand falls from where it had been resting, Eddie grabs it, careful not to jostle the IV. He holds it tightly the whole way back, probably hard enough to hurt if Buck could feel anything at all. He wordlessly climbs into the ambulance when they get there, and nobody protests. Bobby stays behind with the hiker to check him over and wait for the other ambulance they requested. Eddie recognizes the look on his face—the need to do something, be useful, so that you aren’t crushed by the reality of your world crashing around you. He’s been like that before. He’s not now. He can’t do anything but exist— can barely even breathe.

The ride to the hospital is punctuated with Hen and Chim’s conversation, their constant checking and rechecking of Buck’s vitals, but Eddie doesn’t say a word. He sits next to him and holds his hand.

He doesn’t look at him. Can’t look at him with the blood and bruises and tube sticking out of his neck. His mind supplies him with an image of him just before he went down. Hair golden in the sunlight, smile wide and proud. It’s cruel but he doesn’t push it away, refusing to let his strongest image of Buck be a battered version of him that could be dead for all he knows.

When they get to the hospital, they all jump down, and Eddie almost protests when Buck’s hand is pulled out of his before he remembers where they are. He lets go, and his chest restricts, like a band has been tightened around it. Buck is wheeled through the doors, and Eddie is left standing outside of them.

Somebody steers him into the hospital, and he waits.

Somebody hands him a cup of coffee, and he waits.

Somebody comes and sits next to him, brushing their shoulder against his, and he waits.

He doesn’t know how long it is, but eventually somebody comes out, calling for the family of Evan Buckley.

They all stand up and the nurse frowns, looking between them all.

“Is one of you Eddie Diaz?” She asks, and Eddie awkwardly steps forward.

“Okay,” she says. “I have an update on Mr. Buckley’s condition if—“

Eddie cuts her off.

“You can tell it to everybody,” he says. “We’re his family.”

He doesn't even stop to consider the implications of the fact that she asked for him. Not Maddie, not Bobby, but him. It’s too big. He pushes the thought away.

“Alright,” she says softly. Widow gloves, Eddie’s brain says. “He sustained serious injuries in the fall. His surgery to repair the internal damage was successful, but he still has multiple fractures. We’ll need to take him in for another surgery tomorrow—the doctors think that they can fix the wrist fracture and jaw fracture at the same time, but he’ll need an additional surgery to put in the external fixation for his pelvis.

“Additionally…” here she pauses, looking around before taking a deep breath and continuing. “He sustained serious head trauma. Right now, he’s sedated, but the doctors won’t be able to be sure what condition he’s in before he wakes up.

“If he wakes up.”

Oh.

Eddie listens to all of this with a straight face, unflinching posture. He hears noises from those around him, sobs and questions, but Eddie tunes them all out.

If he wakes up.

Eddie walks away and sinks back into his seat, where he remains, staring at the wall until somebody gets him up and ushers him out of the hospital and into a car. He ends up at Maddie and Chim's house, where they lead him to the guest room and he collapses.

He doesn’t fall asleep so much as pass out. All he can think about is how, less than twenty four hours ago, he was going to do something crazy in the kitchen, and Buck was maybe going to let him.

Eddie wakes up after a few hours of fitful sleep. It’s dark outside—he has no idea what time it is, can barely even remember how he got here, to this unfamiliar room in his friends’ house that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. He almost laughs about that. It’s so funny, how they are. They would all die for each other, have almost died for each other, on multiple occasions, but he hasn’t even seen all of their house.

He bets that Buck has seen this room.

The thought lurches him forward, chest tight and throat constricted like he might throw up. He would bet that Buck has slept in this very bed, after a late night of babysitting Jee, or hanging out with Maddie, or just… for any reason at all. Suddenly, the thought of Buck in the bed that he’s in is too much, and he launches himself out of it, landing roughly on his feet.

He steadies himself, warding off the incoming panic attack that he can feel in his bones.

He looks back at the bed. Imagines Buck in it. Soft, under the covers—curls peeking out and face loose. Buck does this thing when he sleeps, like he’s trying to burrow his way inside of the mattress. He’s a large man but he sleeps curled up in position that should be uncomfortable, but is somehow the only way that he can fall asleep. Eddie knows, because he’s watched him do it too many times to count. Even in those tiny bunks at the station, Eddie can look over and see him curled up, dead to the world with his hand clutched in the blanket.

He always does that too, grips the blanket like somebody is going to take it from him. He does that with everything, Eddie thinks, holds on and doesn’t let go. He wonders what it felt like for him to have to let go. To reach up and cut that rope, go into free fall when his instinct is always to hang on.

He wonders if he was scared.

At that thought, Eddie rushes out of the room to the bathroom, dry heaving over the toilet.

Nothing comes out, but the porcelain feels nice against his face. Grounding.

On the floor of the bathroom, he thinks about it again.

If he was scared, falling. Or if it was so fast that he had no room to be. He wonders if he was already unconscious by the time he hit the ground or if he passed out on impact. He wonders if he was awake, before they found him. Scared and alone.

He wonders if he trusted that they would get to him in time. He wonders if he knew that Eddie would move heaven and earth for him, would do anything just to see him again.

Eddie heaves himself off the floor, wobbling a bit on his feet. He doesn’t remember the last time he ate, but the thought of trying rolls his stomach again, so he decides that it’s a problem for later. He splashes water on his face, and walks through the house, stopping by the  guest room on shaky legs to grab his phone from the nightstand.

He gets out of there as fast as he can, nearly sobbing with relief when he sees his truck parked on the street.

He makes a mental note to find out who brought it here and thank them profusely, once he remembers how to talk. Maddie and Chim’s cars are both in the driveway, and he hopes that they’ll understand why he left without saying anything.

Grabbing his keys from the table by the door, he flees. He drives to the hospital, even though he’s sure visiting hours are over. He just needs to be close. To be breathing the same air as Buck, even if it’s filtered and stale and probably not even the same air at all.

He needs to be with him. Buck shouldn’t have to be alone, ever.

He’s greeted by a different nurse than last time.

“Family of Evan Buckley,” Eddie says gruffly as he reaches the desk. The nurse doesn't even flinch at the horrible quality of his voice.

“Right,” the nurse says, looking something up on the computer. “Visiting hours don’t start until seven but…”

“I know,” he replies. “I just wanted to see if there’s an update.”

The nurse frowns.

“And you are…?”

“Eddie Diaz.”

The nurse nods, checking the computer again. Whatever she sees there must satisfy her, because she moves from around the desk to stand with him. She smiles up at him, grabbing his arm lightly to lead him over to the chairs.

After they sit, she says softly, “There are no changes, Mr. Diaz. He’s still recovering well from the surgery, and they’re still planning to take him in again today.” There’s a pause and then she says carefully, “brain function is still the same.”

Eddie nods, looking at her without really seeing.

“You can wait here until visiting hours,” she says after it becomes apparent that Eddie isn’t going to reply. “Is there somebody that we can call for you while you wait?”

He knows what she’s getting at. He must look horrible, and it must be concerning, him showing up here in the middle of the night, looking like he could keel over at any moment.

And of course, the logical answer to her question is yes. There’s no shortage of people that would drop everything to be here with him.

But still, he croaks out a no, because the only person that he wants, the only person that he needs, is already here. Unreachable and untouchable, but here.

She nods, and leaves him be.

Chapter Text

After hours of waiting, doing nothing but staring at the wall, Eddie gets a call.

It’s Chris. Eddie checks the time—it’s barely six in the morning, only seven in El Paso. Eddie frowns—it used to be a chore to get Chris out of bed before ten, and now he’s calling at seven? He has no emotions left to feel, but there’s a dull pang in his chest at the idea of another thing about Chris changing without him. He considers not picking up. He doesn’t want to tell Chris, but he doesn’t think he’d be able to talk without sounding like something is horribly, horribly wrong. He hasn’t said a word to anyone since the nurse.

In the end, he picks up, standing up to pace as he does so.

“Dad,” comes Chris’ voice through the speaker. “Are you with Buck? He told me if I wanted to call I’d have to do it early because you guys have a shift, but he isn’t picking up and that’s weird because—”

Eddie listens as he cuts himself off with a sharp breath.

“Dad?”

Eddie almost falls to his knees again. Chris woke up early, just to talk to Buck. Buck never doesn’t pick up to the point that the one time he doesn’t, Chris is panicked. There was no way he was ever going to be able to keep this from him. He can’t protect him from this, and part of this honesty thing means not trying to so hard—not if it means lying.

“Chris,” he starts, and Eddie hears him gasp sharply.

“Something happened,” Chris whispers. It’s not a question.

Eddie chokes out a sound, scrambling to find purchase on the nearest wall. He lands against it heavily, shoulder first, tightly gripping his phone with his other hand.

“Yeah,” he gasps, and it’s barely a word. “Yeah, something happened.”

“What?” Chris asks, and he sounds wrecked, but steadfast.

“Chris I—” He doesn’t know if he can say it, the awful truth of it. That he was on the ropes, that Eddie was supposed to be watching him. How he fell. How his body made a horrible noise when it landed, audible even over the wind and the distance. How he had looked, lying at the bottom of that cliff, broken and small. How he had looked when they got to him. The blood that covered his face, the unnatural angle of his limbs. How cold his hand had felt.

“Dad,” Chris’ voice cuts off the horrible carousel of images flashing through his mind, but barely. “Just tell me if he’s gonna be okay.”

There’s silence again, and the images come back.

Eddie had once restarted Buck’s heart with his hands. He was unable to stay away from him. He remembers the feeling, the tether that dragged him from the drivers seat of the ambulance to Buck’s gurney. When Buck was hanging from the ladder, when Eddie had opened his eyes and gotten his bearings from being thrown backwards and saw him like that, he felt it. He had climbed to the top with no equipment, grabbed the role and pulled. He tried to pull Buck up to him. It was stupid, and not thought out, and unprofessional. It was the only thing that felt right. In the ambulance, driving, he wondered if those seconds had cost Buck his life. If the few seconds when Eddie’s head wasn’t right, when all he could think was I need him closer, I need to see him, weren’t the difference between Buck living and dying. But the tether kept pulling and he was hopeless to do anything but follow it. He remembers how, even when surrounded by other medical professionals, he had been so sure that he was the one that could bring him back.

How he was right.

Buck’s ribs had cracked under his hands, and his body had remained stiff. Even after Eddie felt his heart beating under his skin, a fragile, precarious thing, but there nonetheless, he hadn’t been able to rid himself of the feeling. How hard he was pushing, how cold Buck’s skin was, how still. How it felt when his bones gave way under Eddie’s strength, the crisp break that nearly startled Eddie from his rhythm despite feeling it countless times before.

Now, it all blurs together. Broken ribs, broken jaw, stopped heart, weak breathing. Internal damage, crushed leg.

When Buck was stuck under the ladder truck, he had screamed. Eddie couldn’t get the sound out of his head for days. Eddie was holding his hand. It was so new then. The feeling in his chest when he was around Buck. Maybe not love yet, but a precursor that felt just as frighteningly beautiful. It was so soon after Shannon, and Eddie had been bowled over by how similar the tragedies felt in his chest. Yellow shirt in the road, dark figure under a truck. The loss of something old, familiar, and the near loss of something new, taken before it was allowed to become what it could be.

Eddie was holding his hand, and Buck had screamed, tightening his grip on Eddie like his life depended on it. Maybe it had, in a way.

Buck didn’t scream when he fell. The last Eddie heard of his voice was a static filled quip through his radio.

“Dad,” Chris says again, and he sounds desperate this time. “Please.”

“Sorry,” Eddie whispers, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before opening them again. He lets the harsh fluorescent lighting of the hallway burn his retinas for a second, grounding him to the moment, before he speaks again. “His injuries were bad, Chris,” he starts. “Some fractures but— the main concern is the head injury, right now. They don’t know if he’ll wake up.”

Chris is silent. Eddie strains his ears for… anything. Heavy breathing, or sobbing, something, but there’s nothing.

“Chris…” he tries.

“I’m coming,” comes Chris’ voice. It’s sharp. All whispering and quivering is gone, replaced by an abrupt determination.

“Chris, you don’t have to—” Eddie starts, because this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Chris was supposed to come back because he wanted to, not for… not for this. Not to possibly say goodbye.

“I’m coming,” Chris repeats, and then Eddie hears rustling and the sound of a door opening.

Eddie listens as he hears his mom’s voice, saying something in a cheery voice that he can’t make out.

“I need to go back to LA,” Chris says, and his mom’s voice stops abruptly.

“What?” He hears her ask, voice suddenly shrill.

“I need to go back to LA,” Chris repeats, voice still sharp. “Buck is hurt and I need to be there.”

“Buck—” His mom says it questioningly, like the word is completely unfamiliar to her. Like Eddie hasn’t told her about him, and that Chris hasn’t surely at least mentioned him.

There’s more commotion, and more voices. Eddie hears his dad’s voice added to the mix, but he can’t make out words. He stands in the middle of the hallway, slumped against the wall, desperately trying to imagine the scene playing out.

Then, a voice comes through, loud enough to be heard from wherever the phone had been left.

“I need to be there!” Chris nearly screams. “I haven’t been there and now he’s hurt and I have to go back! Buck needs to know…”

He trails off, sobs overtaking him, and Eddie hears vaguely comforting noises coming from his mom.

“He needs to know that I need him to come back,” he sniffs, voice still slightly raised but quickly losing steam.

It’s quiet, then.

“Eddie?” His dad’s voice comes through the phone, startling Eddie with the proximity. He feels guilty, almost like he was eavesdropping, before remembering that first of all, Chris is his son, and second of all, he had left the line open on purpose.

“Hi, Dad,” Eddie murmurs.

“Eddie, what is going on?” he asks. Eddie can’t parse his tone, and he has no energy to either.

“It’s exactly what Chris said,” he explains tiredly. “Buck got hurt at work. It’s… bad, and we don’t know what’s going to happen. Chris wants to come.”

“Buck,” his dad says shortly, and Eddie can’t help but roll his eyes.

“Yes, Dad, Buck,” he nearly snaps. “My partner at work, my best friend. You’ve met him and I’m sure Chris has talked about him.”

Ramon makes a noise, and Eddie barrels forward.

“He’s important to Chris, and Chris is important to him too,” he says, trying desperately to keep his voice from rising. “And if Chris wants to come see him you need to let him, and—”

He’s cut off from the rest of his speech by Ramon’s voice.

“Okay,” he says, surprisingly gentle. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, and the fight immediately drains from him. He slumps even further against the wall. “Okay.”

“I’ll look into tickets and let you know.”

“Okay,” Eddie says again, still slightly numbed, but also amped up on unused adrenaline from the fight he thought was coming. “Let me know what you find and I’ll send the money for it. Whenever is fine—I’ll have some days off.”

Ramon hums.

“Is Chris okay?” He asks.

“He’s with your mother,” he answers. “He cried himself out in her lap, I think.”

Eddie’s heart clenches again. He’s glad that somebody was there for Chris, to hold him and wipe his tears, but he can’t help the strain that happens every time he’s reminded that it isn’t him.

“Okay,” It’s all he has left to say. “Thanks, Dad.”

Ramon mumbles something about going to look for tickets, and they say goodbye.

About ten minutes later, once Eddie has slumped back onto a chair, Ramon texts him with some flight options.

Eddie chooses the earliest one without even looking at the price. Ramon texts him back saying that he’s booked the tickets for Chris and Helena, and Eddie likes the message, out of energy for anything else.

Chris is flying in tonight. He allows the thought to warm him, even if it’s nothing like what he wanted. In less than twenty-four hours, he’ll be able to hold his son in his arms. And they’ve been doing better lately, so maybe Chris will even let him kiss the crown of his head.

Eddie wonders how much taller he’s gotten.

When visiting hours finally arrive, and with it the 118 and Maddie, he finds that he can’t go into the room. They all go after checking in on him, pairing off to go in, but he stays put. All of this waiting, only to be too much of a coward to actually see Buck.

He just doesn’t want this to be his memory of him, if something happens.

Buck is bright and beautiful. He is everything light in the world. He’s laughter in the halls of his house and a hand on his shoulder when he needs it. He’s bright eyes in a dark kitchen and a smile across the engine. Buck is alive, more alive than anything or anybody that Eddie has ever known. He walks into a room and suddenly, it’s like everybody turns their heads towards him, like they can’t help it— can’t resist soaking up some of the warmth that radiates off of him. His smile, his laugh, the way he throws his body around without a care in the world, it’s all so, so beautiful. It takes up so much space, in the best way.

He wants to remember him that way, not unmoving in a hospital bed. Maybe it makes him a coward, but he just can’t. It nearly broke him, last time after the lightning, and, though he didn’t think it was possible, he feels even more fragile now.

He paces around the hospital while everybody else does various things— Hen and Chim leaving to check on the kids, Maddie and Bobby holding vigil by Buck’s room, but now he can’t handle being here.

He doesn’t want to see Buck. He doesn’t know what that means about him, but he doesn’t care. Chris will want to— he’s sure, and so he’ll deal with it then. Right now, the thought of seeing Buck like that makes the edges of his vision go blurry. Even thinking about it, he’s brought back to the ladder truck, to the lighting strike, to Buck’s body at the bottom of the cliff, and he just can’t do it.

He can’t be here.

He texts Bobby that he’s leaving, and he goes home and waits for his son. He knows Buck would understand.

After hours of waiting, of doing nothing, and then doing everything to keep himself busy, he finally gets in the car to go to the airport.

He gets there early enough to park and walk in, pacing nervously as he waits for them to emerge from the gate he triple-checked was the one they’d be coming out of.

Finally, he sees his mom’s neat head of hair in the crowd, accompanied by Chris’ wild curls.

He rushes towards them, and, as soon as he sees him, Chris is doing the same, crutches clicking wildly on the ground and nearly taking out a woman’s roller bag.

They crash into each other, with Eddie pulling Chris into his chest and Chris wrapping his arms around Eddie has tight as he can.

“Hi mijo,” he whispers, pressing a kiss into his hair.

“Hi Dad,” Chris whispers back, tightening his hold even further.

Eddie releases him, just an inch, so that he can look at him. His hair is shorter than when he left—almost certainly his mom’s doing, with her insistence on neat haircuts, and he has new glasses. He is a bit taller, closer to Eddie’s height than he had been when he left, but Eddie finds that he doesn’t care as much as he thought he would.

He’s so glad to have him back that everything else seems small in comparison.

Over Chris’ head, Helena waves at him, and then gestures towards the bathroom. Eddie nods, and she disappears into the line of people outside of it.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” Eddie whispers, pulling back and holding Chris by his shoulders. “But you know that you don’t have to be— and that you can go back whenever you want.”

Chris shakes his head fervently.

“I wanna stay, Dad,” he says, same tight, determined voice as he had over the phone. “For good.”

“You don’t have to Chris,” Eddie starts, desperately wanting to make sure that this is what he wants. That it’s his decision, not something made of guilt, or confusion, or fear.

“Dad,” Chris says sharply. “I want to. I was going to ask to come home anyway. That’s what I wanted to talk to Buck about— I wanted to figure out when a good time was to tell you, and what to say.”

Eddie can’t help it. He sobs, pulling Chris back into his chest.

“Dad…” Chris whines. “You’re making a scene.”

Eddie just laughs wetly, and Chris doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t know what to feel. It’s so much at once— Buck being hurt, Chris coming home, Chris wanting to stay, the knowledge that he was going to, anyway.

The fact that Buck isn’t here to enjoy this with him.

In the end, he gives up trying to name it, and just hugs his son to his chest.

Eventually, Helena comes out, and he gives her a brief hug. It’s stiff. Eddie’s sure he hasn’t heard the end of this.

Still, he puts on a smile and leads them to the car, unable to keep his eyes off of Chris, willing his mind to believe that this is really happening.

Once they’re on the highway, he extends an olive branch.

“Thanks for bringing him,” he says, looking out the windshield.

“Mm,” she says in response, a sort of acknowledgment, but nothing more.

He thinks she might leave it at that, and he thinks that she might be okay with it, but then she says, “he wouldn’t have it any other way.”

This time Eddie makes a noise of agreement, not sure why the air suddenly feels so fragile.

“He loves Buck.”

“Yes,” Helena says, something tight in her voice—the calm before the storm. “He seems quite… attached.”

And something about the way she says it, the way she uses attached like it’s a dirty word, has Eddie on edge.

“Like I said, he loves him. Buck’s been there for him a lot.”

“Sure,” she allows, and Eddie hopes to god that she’ll leave it there, but of course, because this is Helena Diaz, he knows that she won’t. “He talked about him all the time. Buck this, Buck that.”

And then, because Eddie inherited his cruelty from her, she says, “he might’ve talked about him more than you.”

Eddie takes a deep breath, and his hands tighten on the steering wheel. It’s not that he’s upset at the implication. He knows it’s probably even true, and he still thinks that he deserved it, despite Chris’ apologies and Buck’s assurances that he doesn’t deserve constant punishment for what he did. But no, it’s fine. He loves Buck too. He has no problem with there being more of him in the world through Chris’ stories, Chris’ reverence.

It’s the way she says it. Like it should not only hurt him, but threaten him. Like something is out of order here, and he’s not man enough to even know it, or do anything about it.

And then, because he knows how to hit where it hurts too, he says, “yeah, he told us that he would’ve gone to Buck instead of you guys if he hadn’t wanted a change of scenery so bad.”

It’s not the truth, but it’s close enough. He doesn’t want her to know the truth, that him and Buck are so intertwined that Chris can’t think of one without the other, that to hurt Eddie he had to hurt Buck too. It’s not hers. It’s his and Buck’s and Chris’.

Helena inhales sharply, and then he hears her turn to look at him.

He keeps his eyes on the road.

“Do you have an explanation for the fact that this… this man is seemingly so tied to your son? As to why Chris was calling him multiple times a week, why he felt the need to drag himself back to a state he fled just because this man was hurt?”

“First of all, mom,” Eddie starts, struggling to keep his voice low enough to not wake Christopher. “Buck isn’t hurt he’s in the hospital with injuries he might not wake up from.”

And he hates it. He hates the way that he uses Buck’s condition as a jab against his mom, but this is what she makes him do. He doesn’t know how else to be around her, so he just keeps doing it.

“And second of all, he’s not some man, he’s my best friend.”

Helena lets out a quiet laugh, like it’s childish to say that, or like it means nothing. Like Buck might as well be a person who walked in off the street and claimed Chris as his own while Eddie did nothing to stop it.

“Well your best friend seems to have an awful habit of getting himself hurt,” she says sharply, and Eddie’s eyes go unfocused for a second from the sheer rage he feels hearing his mom talk about this like it’s something disconnected from Eddie. Like Buck isn’t possibly dying right now and doesn’t deserve better than being fodder in their argument.

“And I can’t help but be concerned about the fact that Chris seems to be overly attached to a man that he seemingly trusts more than his own father, and might not even stick around to—”

“Enough,” Eddie cuts her off sharply, whipping his head back to check if Chris is still asleep before barreling on. “He’s not just some… some man that Chris is attached to because I wasn't there, or whatever you’re trying to say. He earned Chris’ trust, and he takes it seriously. He’s been there for both of us and I need you to stop talking about him like he’s— random, or irrelevant.

“He’s my best friend,” he gasps out. “And he’s in the hospital right now.”

Helena deflates slightly beside him, like she realized that she stepped over a line, but he continues, unable to keep himself from defending Buck, from defending the family they created.

“But he always fights to come back,” he grits out, having to fight to keep his breathing steady and his eyes on the road. “Always.”

“Eddie…” her voice sounds quieter now, and Eddie knows that she’s gonna switch into mom mode where she pretends like she’s only ever had him and Chris’ best interests at heart. Like she’s not looking for every opportunity to find a flaw of Eddie’s and twist it into proof that Chris should be kept far away from him.

“Thanks again for bringing Chris home,” he says shortly, nearly crying in relief when he sees the hotel Helena booked coming up.

“Well,” she starts, and there’s her previous voice back, any traces of softness gone. “I’m not sure we could call it that.”

“He wants to stay,” he responds. “He told me.”

“I know, but I still think we should discuss it.”

“What is there to discuss?” He nearly shouts, voice shrill as he pulls into the parking lot.

“Don’t you think that this is proof of what your dad and I have been saying,” she begins, voice disturbingly calm, “about the dangers of your job, and the instability that Chris is faced with here?”

“Would you stop using Buck as proof that you should take Chris away?” He nearly begs. He doesn’t know how much more of this he can take, these constant references to Buck, how far gone he is, when he’s barely been able to think about it himself.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” there’s the other voice back. Eddie is getting dizzy trying to keep up. “But it’s dangerous, what you do, and I’m sorry that I’m not reassured that the person picking up the slack that your job leaves is a person doing the very same thing.

“I’m sorry I’m not reassured that Chris’ support system consists only of you, and your best friend who by all accounts has trouble keeping just himself alive.”

That sits in the truck for a moment. The condescending way she said best friend, like it’s a joke. The rest of it. Like Buck getting hurt is his fault, an inconvenience that those around him have to deal with.

“Get out,” he says flatly.

“Eddie, we need to—”

“Get out,” he says sharply, turning to look at her for the first time since getting in the car. She looks the same as always. Put together, neat, careful. Her face is passive, almost blank, like what they’re discussing has no effect on her. He knows this is her strategy, to be the calm one, so that whoever she’s fighting seems crazy and out of line. He’s done.

He just stares at her, defiant, until she finally sighs, looking put out, like he’s a child that won’t back down from a fight, and she’s decided it’s easier to just let him tire himself out than try to reason with him.

She nods once, then gets out of the door, taking her small bag and purse with her in one fell swoop.

“Tell Christopher I said goodnight,” is all she says before gently closing the door behind her. She doesn’t even slam it.

As soon as Eddie sees her figure disappear through the door, he lets out a quiet sob. He can barely breathe, and all he can think, the only thing, is how much he wishes Buck was here. How Buck isn’t here to see Chris come home, how Buck isn’t here to calm him down after this fight.

How if Buck was here, none of this would be happening, and Chris would’ve just come home anyways. Maybe him and Buck could’ve driven out to get him. Together.

They could’ve made a trip out of it, enjoying being able to be three of them again. Chris and Buck would’ve talked him into seeing all kinds of roadside attractions and he would’ve pretended to be annoyed, but they’d all know it wasn’t real. Buck would have some itinerary to stick to, insisting on driving for most of it because he knows Eddie doesn’t like to. He wouldn’t have been able to keep the smile off his face, and when he would look over to Buck in the driver’s seat, he would see the same thing reflected back at him. Chris’ laugh would’ve filled up the car and they would’ve been happy.

Instead they’re here, and Eddie’s in the driver’s seat fighting off a panic attack when a voice breaks through his thoughts.

“I’m sorry Abuela said all of that,” Chris says quietly, and Eddie turns around to look at him so fast he almost gets whiplash. Chris is looking at him with clear eyes, an apologetic look on his face.

“You…” Eddie can barely speak, but he tries. “You heard that?”

Chris nods.

“Just the end,” he says, looking anywhere but Eddie. “I should’ve said something.”

“No, bud,” Eddie immediately placates. “It’s not your place.”

“But I should’ve!” Chris exclaims, brows furrowed behind his glasses. “She was talking about Buck like… like he isn’t important and I should’ve told her the truth!”

“Hey,” he says, craning his arm back to rest on Chris’ knee. “It’s not your place to stand up for us, okay? We can take care of ourselves.”

“Buck can’t,” Chris sobs, and Eddie sees a tear make its way down his cheek.

Eddie scrambles to get his seatbelt off, wrenching open the car door and making his way to the backseat.

“Hey, hey,” he says, squeezing in next to Chris and enveloping him in his arms.

Chris goes easily, not one bit of fight in him.

“I know, I know,” he says, holding Chris to his chest and stroking his hair as sobs wrack his body. “But I’ve got him, okay? I’ve got his back, you don’t need to worry.”

Tears fall from Eddie’s eyes, too, but he manages to keep it together. He knows how to do this, how to be strong because somebody else can’t. Especially Chris.

Holding him in his arms, he’s hit with another wave of gratitude that Chris is back. Not just because he missed him, though there’s always that, but because it helps him know what to do. He can’t make Buck open his eyes, and he can’t protect Chris from this pain, but he can defend Buck, he can comfort Chris.

Eventually, they go home.

Chris doesn’t even look at his own room, instead making his way to Eddie’s. Chris hasn’t slept in his bed in years, not since the tsunami, and Eddie is so, so happy that neither of them will be alone tonight.

Laying in bed with Chris on the other side, he's happy, more generally, that he’s not alone in this. His grief, his all-encompassing love for Buck, can seem too big sometimes, like he might drown in it. But he looks over at Chris and knows that he’s not alone, not in his grief nor in his love. Chris is feeling this just as acutely as he is, this hole in their family, and while he wishes neither of them were dealing with it, he’s glad they’re doing it together.

It won’t be like last time, he tells himself, with Shannon. He can’t try to protect Chris from this, hide the truth of it from him. No, Chris is too old for that, and Buck is too present. He’s in this very room with them, in the smell of lemon coming from the reed diffuser he insisted Eddie needed in his room, more literally, he’s in the photo that Eddie keeps in his nightstand, grinning at the camera with his arms around Eddie and Chris, taken at one of Bobby and Athena’s barbecues.

He’s there in the enormity of love that they both feel for him, like it’s a physical thing, a presence hovering over the bed. He’s there in the love that Eddie knows Buck has for them, something that doesn’t go away just because he can’t open his eyes and show them.

He’s everywhere, but he’s also not here where he should be, and the thought constricts Eddie’s breathing as he tries to sleep. But, he thinks, Chris is here, and Buck would be happy to know that, even if he’s not here to enjoy it. Eddie lets himself be happy about that, if nothing else, and finally drifts off to sleep to the sound of his son’s light breath.

Chapter Text

I love you.

I say your name all the time when you're not around

just to put more of you in the world.

-C.T. Salazar, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking

Eddie sends Helena home the next day.

He and Chris go out to brunch with her, after Eddie had double, triple, and quadruple checked that Chris was okay with it.

Helena tries to perform niceties, but Eddie cuts that off before they can even open their menus.

“Mom,” he says, not sharply, but quick enough that she snaps her head up to look at him. “Chris wants to talk about something.”

“Okay,” she responds, smiling that sickly sweet smile of hers, voice dripping with honey. “What is it, sweetie?”

Chris clears his throat, looking down at his hands, and Eddie reaches over to lay a hand on his shoulder. Chris takes a deep breath and looks up at Helena. God, Eddie is so proud of this kid.

“Abuela,” he starts. “Thank you for letting me stay with you guys.”

Helena keeps smiling, but Eddie can see the cracks forming in it.

“It meant a lot to me,” Chris continues, hands clenched in front of him. “But I’m ready to stay home now.”

Helena sucks a breath between her teeth, and Eddie unconsciously tenses his body, already aware of what’s coming.

“Sweetie,” she says. “I know that you’re worried about your dad’s… friend, but I don’t want you to make a rash decision because you’re scared.”

Like he did by running to you in the first place? Eddie thinks, tightening his hand on Chris’ shoulder. When you encouraged it because you finally got what you wanted not because it’s what was best for him?

The thought shocks him, so different from how he’s allowed himself to think about the situation ever before. The voice in his head, the one insisting that it was unfair, sounds painfully like Buck’s. It was something he said to him all of the time, especially in the early days after Chris left. That just because Chris wanted to leave didn’t give his parents the right to swoop in and take him without so much as a conversation about whether it was really best. That kids get angry and make harsh decisions sometimes but it doesn’t mean that they should be able to act on them without the adults in their lives considering it fully. Sometimes, vitriol would drip into Buck’s voice as he would talk about it, insisting that Eddie’s parents were taking advantage of the situation and just happened to luck out in that it was what Chris wanted at the time. Eddie used to defend his parents, saying that they were right and that he was dragging Chris down with him and they were protecting Chris from Eddie. Now, he’s finally letting himself consider that Buck was right. That letting his parents take Chris just because he asked them to in a moment of anger shouldn’t have been the end of the conversation.

He doesn’t say any of that though, because this is Chris’ moment. At the core of his decision to let his parents take Chris was Eddie’s desire to let him exercise his autonomy, to never trap his kid the way that he felt trapped as a child. Now, he’s beginning to see how his own resentment and self-hatred had clouded his judgment. Chris deserves someone who will let him make his own decisions, within reason, and somebody who will fight for him.

Buck was right. And now he’s not here for Eddie to thank him.

He tunes back into the conversation before he can start tearing up.

“Buck's not just dad’s friend,” Chris is saying, voice tight. “He’s family, and I missed him.”

So much for not tearing up.

“And I missed Dad,” Chris says. “I missed being home with them and I was gonna ask to come back anyways.”

Eddie watches as Helena furrows her brow, taking all this in.

“I understand that, Chris,” she responds. “But you asked to leave in the first place for a reason, and I just want to make sure that this is what you actually want.”

Eddie can’t take it anymore. He looks over to Chris, who is deflating in his seat, and decides that this is the time to step up and protect him, not to leave him to defend himself. This is the time to defend both of them.

“Like you did when he asked to go live with you guys?” Eddie cuts in, doing everything he can to keep his voice low and even. “Did you check if it was what he actually wanted then? Did you consider if going hundreds of miles away from his support system, his friends, his home was what was really best for him, or did you just jump on the chance to prove the point you’ve been trying to make since Shannon left?”

Helena gasps, and Chris shrinks into himself at the mention of Shannon.

“Chris wants to come home, mom,” he continues. “We’ve talked about it, really talked about it, and we have been for a while. You need to trust that I know what’s best for my son, and that he knows too.”

“And that this Buck does too, I presume,” Helena whispers sharply, smiling slightly when Eddie’s eyes go wide.

He knows what she’s trying to do by mentioning Buck like that. The way she’s trying to undermine everything that they’ve built by implying that Buck is unimportant, useful only as proof of Eddie’s inability to handle anything on his own.

He’s about to jump in to defend Buck, to defend their family, when Chris beats him to it.

“He does,” Chris nearly shouts. “Buck’s always been there for us and— and for me. Why do you keep making it sound like he doesn’t matter?”

At the sight of the tears in Chris’ eyes, Helena immediately leans back in her seat, fight completely seeped out of her body. She almost looks embarrassed.

There’s a beat. A long moment when Helena narrows her eyes and looks between the two of them like she’s trying to calculate something.

“If this is what you want,” she says slowly. “Then okay.”

Chris looks over to Eddie with a small smile and Eddie smiles back. It’s a win, and they need a win right now.

“And I do hope that he gets better,” she says in that same careful tone, speaking to no one in particular. “Me and your dad would love to meet him properly someday.”

That, finally, is what makes the tears start to drip from Eddie’s eyes. It’s as close to an apology as he’s ever going to get from her, and like he said, he needs a win. He finds himself hoping that he does get to introduce them, even though they’ve already met multiple times, once at Eddie’s promotion ceremony, again, on their way back from the wildfires and finally, when Buck was there as his parents took his whole life away.

He wants to introduce him as more than that, though. More than a firefighter in a sea of firefighters, or as the person inexplicably at Eddie’s side during the worst moment of his life. He wants to introduce him as part of this family that they’ve made, part of EddieandChrisandBuck. Before, he wanted nothing more than to keep Buck and everything that ever mattered to him as far away as possible from his parents as possible. Now, he would give anything for the chance to suffer through an awkward dinner with Buck at his side.

The rest of brunch passes as smoothly as possible, and afterwards, Eddie drops Helena back at her hotel. She tells him that she’ll buy a plane ticket for early the next morning, and that she can just Uber to the airport. The politeness that’s been hammered into him since birth wants to protest against that, but he overpowers it, for once. He doesn’t want to go to the airport, he wants to be at the hospital as soon as visiting hours start, and he knows that Chris wants the same thing.

Eddie watches as Chris hugs Helena goodbye in the parking lot and she whispers something into his ear. Then, it’s his turn, and he pulls her into a perfunctory hug. He’s exhausted, and he needs this part to be over. It’s complicated, the thing between Helena and Eddie, how they simultaneously know each other so well, well enough to always hit where it hurts, but also not at all. In the future, he thinks maybe he’ll have energy to keep trying with her. But right now, he just wants to be alone with his son without the fear that she’s going to take him away again.

“Thanks for bringing him,” he says again, and she nods against his shoulder.

“Of course, Edmundo,” she murmurs. “Keep me updated on your friend, I really do hope that he wakes up.”

Eddie tightens his hold on her briefly. He recognizes an olive branch when he sees one.

“Of course,” he repeats. “Maybe once he’s better we can plan a trip down to El Paso, all three of us.”

Helena tenses, and Eddie can feel the way that the idea of the three of them still rubs her the wrong way, but she doesn’t say anything.

“That would be wonderful,” she says as she pulls away. Eddie thinks it only sounds like she’s half-lying.

Eddie and Chris drive to the hospital in silence. Eddie wonders if he should say something, but it’s not a bad silence, so he doesn’t. They still have a lot to talk about, and it’s not all okay between them, but they were a united front at the restaurant, and that has to count for something. Even when he’s lying in a hospital bed, Buck is still always with them, bringing them together, enveloping them in his love for both of them. Giving Eddie the courage to stand up for himself and Chris the strength to ask for what he needs.

And then, because he knows Buck would want him to, he tries to give himself some credit too. He did his best to balance his needs with Chris’, his resentment for his mom with Chris’ relationship with her. He doesn’t know if he did a perfect job, but he tried, and he knows that Buck would be proud of him. He’s proud of himself too, even more proud of the kid sitting next to him. He wishes Buck was here to see it.

Eddie doesn’t know if it’s a good idea to go straight to the hospital fresh off an emotionally charged brunch, but he doesn't think that either him or Chris could stay away from Buck much longer.

It’s only been two days since it happened, a day since Chris has been home. It feels like a lifetime. He can already feel the way that Buck is becoming memory—his smile more like a picture, his laugh a faint echo in Eddie’s mind, and it scares him. He needs to see him, just so he can confirm that he’s real, that he’s still alive. That Eddie didn’t make him up.

Eddie and Chris pull into a parking spot at the hospital and sit in silence.

Finally, Eddie asks “are you sure—” and it’s cut off by the sound of Chris opening up the car door and clambering out. Eddie follows, and they silently make their way into the hospital. Eddie hasn’t been here since he backed out of seeing Buck, since that awful, awful morning, and his stomach clenches at the memory of it and the night before that all bleeds together. The sight of Bobby waiting for them by the nurses station does little to calm him down.

“Hey,” Bobby calls, voice subdued, and Chris, polite as ever, walks up to greet him.

Bobby holds out his arms and Chris lets him hug him, relaxing into the hold slightly.

“It’s good to see you,” Bobby says as he lets Chris go. “I’m so sorry that it’s like this.”

Chris just mumbles something, and Bobby looks up at Eddie, that same pitying, tragic way that he’s been looking at him since Buck went down.

“You guys want to see him?” He asks, and Eddie and Chris both make noises of affirmation. They follow Bobby down the hall in silence, and Eddie can feel how tense Chris is under his hand on his shoulder.

Bobby stops outside of a room and gestures for them to go inside, murmuring something about finding Athena. Eddie walks in front of Chris and stands in front of him, shielding him from the room for just a second longer.

“Remember what I told you,” he says, and Chris just listens to him with a blank look on his face. “It’s… bad. There’s the wires and the tubes and the external fixation. Are you sure—“

His question is cut off again, this time by Chris glaring defiantly up at him.

“I want to see him, Dad,” he says, jaw tight. “He needs to know that I came back.”

Eddie nods once, tightly, and moves aside so Chris can walk in.

When Eddie rounds the corner, Maddie looks up at both of them.

“Chris,” she gasps, standing up. “Hey.”

She looks between Chris and Buck, and then between Eddie and Chris, and then back at Chris and Buck.

Eddie and Maddie watch as Chris slowly walks forward, collapsing into the seat that Maddie had been occupying.

His hand instantly find Buck’s, and his shoulders shake with the exhale that he lets out. It’s easy to forget sometimes, how young Chris still is— between all of the drama and how much he’s grown from the little boy he was when they first moved to LA. He acts so mature, and he is, and Eddie makes sure to treat him like he is, but he’s also still so young. His shoulders still have the narrowness of childhood, and his arms are skinny where they reach out for Buck.

“Hey Buck,” he whispers, and Eddie has to choke back a sob. “It’s me. It’s Christopher.”

He’s silent for a few moments, and steady beeping from the monitors fill the room.

“I—um, I came back,” Chris continues. “I know you said that I don’t have to be sorry for leaving, but I still am.

“I was just so mad… and scared and I thought that leaving would make me feel better. But the whole time I was gone, especially before I started talking to Dad, the only thing that made me feel better was talking to you.”

Chris lets out a choked sob, and Eddie instinctively lunges forward to comfort him. A hand on his wrist stops him. He looks over and sees Maddie watching him with a careful look. She shakes her head, and he understands. This is between Buck and Chris, and he needs to do this. Chris knows that he’s here if he needs him.

“I came back, Buck,” Chris says, and Eddie notices, not for the first time, how in Chris’ mouth Buck sounds like Dad. “So now you need to come back, too.”

Chris collapses, still gripping Buck’s hand in his, and Eddie takes that as his cue to rush forward. He kneels in front of Chris, enveloping him in his arms, and Chris goes easily, leaning against him and sobbing into his shoulder.

“He has to know I came back,” he sobs, voice barely legible.

“He knows, mijo,” Eddie whispers, even though he doesn’t know if he believes it.

Chris lifts his head, looking between him and Maddie, who had come to hover over them, resting her hand on Buck’s ankle.

“He does,” Maddie says, somehow sensing Eddie’s inability to keep making promises he doesn’t believe in. “Yeah, Chris, he knows, and he loves you so much that even if he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter, because he loved you just as much even when you were across the country.

“Trust me,” she chokes out, holding back tears of her own. “I would know.”

Chris nods, and Eddie moves back so she can come between them, wrapping Christopher in her arms. Eddie remembers Buck telling him that Maddie gives the best hugs. That a hug from her can make even the worst day feel okay, and now Eddie can see that same magic working on Chris. His breathing slows, and his grip on Buck’s hand loosens slightly.

“You remind me so much of Buck,” Maddie says eventually, pulling slightly away from Christopher so she can look at him.

“Really?” Chris gasps, looking at Maddie in awe.

“Yeah,” she says, nodding and placing her hands on his face, rubbing her thumb over his eyebrow, the way that Eddie’s seen her do with Buck countless times. “Really.”

Christopher’s face breaks out into a blinding smile, and he ducks his head, looking bashful at the attention in a way that so Buck it sends Maddie into tears again.

She cradles him close to her chest for another moment, running her hands through his curls as she calms herself down. Eddie just looks on, amazed that he was able to raise a kid like this, and amazed that somebody else noticed what he’s thought for years, but never mentioned because it came to close to revealing a truth he holds too close to his heart to ever say casually.

Later, Chris is sleeping with his head pillowed in Eddie’s lap, and Eddie and Maddie are looking on at Buck in silence.

“You’re right you know,” he finally says. In the corner of his eye, he sees her turn her head his direction.

“About him being like Buck,” he clarifies, looking pointedly down at Christopher so he doesn’t have to look at Maddie’s tear-filled eyes, scared it’ll topple him over into tears again and that he’ll never get the chance to explain this to her. He doesn’t know why it feels so important to do this now, but it does. “I know it sounds crazy, because Buck’s only known him since he was seven but—”

He has to stop himself here to breathe, ending the sentence in a choked off sob.

“God, sometimes,” he continues, speaking lower, nearly whispering to keep his voice from cracking. “Sometimes I feel like he’s from Buck as much as he’s from me and Shannon.”

Finally he turns to look at Maddie and, predictably, her eyes are shiny with tears, but she’s not looking at him like he’s saying anything ridiculous. She just nods, reaching over to take his hand and grip it tight.

“Sometimes he’ll do something, you know, cock his head a certain way when he doesn’t get something, or give me a look when I do something stupid and I just think— that’s him. There he is.” He takes a breath.

“And it isn’t just mannerisms that he picked up, it’s—it’s him, who he is—so much of it just feels like Buck. He’s just so, so good you know?”

Maddie keeps nodding, like she somehow knows exactly what he means even thought he feels like he’s doing an awful job of communicating the enormity in his chest.

“He’s so kind and he’s so… so stubborn with his love, so generous with it and— that wasn’t me, and that wasn’t Shannon— she loved hard, but it was different, somehow. I used to think it was uniquely Christopher, before I met Buck, and I still think that but somehow it also feels like— like it’s him.

“Watching the two of them together… it just makes so much sense. Sometimes I feel like I was put on this Earth to bring the two of them together. I can’t believe there was ever a time where they weren’t in each other’s lives, and the thought that— that that will happen again… God—”

He cuts himself off again, tears fully streaming down his cheeks. Maddie squeezes his hand again, making him look at her. Instead of the platitudes he thought she was going to offer him, which he’s honestly getting tired of, she just says:

“You know, when Evan was little, he was just like that. Just so, so, kind,” she smiles, getting a fond, faraway look in her eye. It’s the happiest Eddie has seen her since Buck got hurt.

“I remember one time, my high school boyfriend broke up with me and I was so upset about it. I came home and just stormed up the stairs, and went to my room for hours. I was probably planning to never come out.

“My parents didn’t even notice, “ she adds a little ruefully. “But Evan, he noticed right away, despite being, like, seven at the time. I was up there for maybe fifteen minutes before there was a knock at my door. I wanted to tell him to go away, you know? Tell him that whatever he needed could wait but it was Evan, so I told him to hurry up and come in.

“He was standing there with a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon,” here, her voice cracks and she has to release her hand from Eddie’s grasp to reach up and wipe her eyes, “because he wanted to make me something and it was the only thing that he knew how to cook.”

The last vestiges of the dam holding Eddie together breaks here too, watching all of the love that Maddie has for her little brother come pouring out like this. He barely keeps himself from sobbing at the image of a younger Buck, who in his mind’s eye looks kind of like Christopher with no glasses and a birthmark, standing in the kitchen making the only dish he knows how to make for his big sister for the sole purpose of cheering her up, while their parents remain oblivious to the boundless love and pain being shared between their kids.

It makes him feel a little crazy, like he has to do something. He doesn’t know what. Maybe go back in time and find that kid— small, and young, and fragile, and good— and give him a hug. Tell him that the way he feels now won’t be forever. One day he’s going to have a family so big, and he’s going to be loved so much, that he won’t know what to do with it.

He also wants to go back in time and find Maddie. Tell her that she’s doing more than she should ever have to. Tell her that the little brother she loves so much is going to grow up and be a good, kind man, with so much love to give the world. That she did good, giving him a space to be that, despite the world making it so difficult for them.

“Watching Christopher,” Maddie starts again, having to try a few times to get it out through her tears, “it’s like seeing that kid again, and it just reminds me of everything that he’s gone through and how he’s stayed so, so kind throughout it all.”

“That’s all that I want for Christopher,” Eddie whispers.

“You’re raising a great kid, Eddie,” she says, seriously, genuinely, like it’s really important to her that he believes it. “He has all of the best parts of all of his parents. And so much that’s so special and unique about just him on top of that. He’s amazing, really.”

Eddie nods, and then, almost impulsively, he reaches over and takes Maddie’s hand back in his.

“Maddie,” he says, matching her imploring tone. “Thank you for everything that you did to make Buck who he is.”

“Eddie,” she whispers, shaking her head. “I told you, he was just like that. I didn’t do anything.”

Eddie shakes his head too, squeezing Maddie’s hand.

“If I have any part in this fantastic kid,” he nods to Chris, and then looks back with tears in his eyes. “Then, you have a part in Buck, okay? He loves you so much, and he needed you, and you did everything you could. Thank you. Because of you the man that—”

He takes a breath, steeling himself.

There’s no point now— all of the lying and denying and thinking himself in circles, it all seems so stupid now, so pointless. He lets the breath go.

“The man that I love is that man that I love. And my kid gets to be raised by the best person I know. Don’t downplay your part in that. Buck wouldn’t want you to.”

Finally, Maddie nods, closing her eyes and taking a breath before reaching over and entangling the hand that isn’t already in Eddie’s in Buck’s.

“Ironic,” Maddie says, chuckling a little wetly. “Because he’s always downplaying his part in Christopher’s life. I just love the kid, Maddie,” she says, in a truly awful impression of Buck’s voice, “That’s it. I’m just doing what anybody would do.”

Eddie laughs too, rolling his eyes.

“He just doesn’t get it, does he?” He asks, suddenly feeling heartbroken all over again despite the brief lightness in his chest. “How much he means?”

Maddie sighs, looking over at Buck with the same feeling written on her face.

“I think he just needs reminding sometimes,” she looks back over, smiling at him. “You do it a lot.”

“Not enough.”

Maddie shrugs.

“Maybe not. But…”she trails off and gets a mischievous look in her eye, reminiscent of Buck when he’s about to suggest something he knows is dumb, but also knows that Eddie would never say no to. “If you tell him everything that you just told me—especially that one little bit about how you’re soooooo in love with him and think of him as a father to your child and want to marry him and be a family forever, maybe…”

“Hey I didn’t—” he starts but is silenced with one look from Maddie.

“If you tell him all of that,” she continues, like nothing happened. “Maybe he’ll start to believe it, more than he would ever let himself before.”

Eddie takes this in, thinking about how true what Maddie said is. Not just about him being in love with Buck, or thinking of him as a father to Christopher, which is old news at this point, but the rest. He never let himself imagine a future where the things he feels would be anything other than a secret. Anything other than something that could potentially threaten what they have, drive away the most important person in his life. For the first time he lets himself think of it as something that could bring him closer to the life that he wants. A future with Buck and Chris, with the three of them as an unquestionable family, where nobody, especially not Buck, would ever doubt their place or leave.

“What if it ruins everything?” He hears himself whisper before he even knows what he’s saying.

“Eddie,” is all Maddie says, and now, finally, after this entire conversation, is when she decides to look at him like he’s being ridiculous, like he just described an impossible outcome that doesn’t even deserve to be considered.

“It doesn’t matter,” he decides. “Not unless he wakes up.”

“He will,” she says, and there’s that platitude that Eddie feared. “Look at what he has to come home to.”

Coming from her, after this entire conversation, it doesn’t feel empty, or like false hope. It feels real, possible. And even though he still can’t quite bring himself to believe it, not until he knows for sure. He lets himself sit with the possibility— let’s himself imagine, only in the dark recesses of his mind, in ways that he would never verbalize unless Buck opened his eyes, a future where he gets everything he’s ever wanted.

Chapter Text

There's a theory

that says you don't exist

unless someone calls

& you respond

-Sam Sax, Hydrophobia

When Buck does wake up, it’s an awful thing. Eddie finds himself wishing that he didn’t— not yet. He wishes that he didn’t wake up until his bones had time to heal themselves, and his body could handle the waking world. He wishes for this despite the medical knowledge that certain things can’t heal without use, and that Buck would be much worse off if this was the case. He wishes for this despite knowing the hell that it would be for himself and the rest of Buck’s family.

But when he weighs that against… this. It almost feels worth it. Just so Buck wouldn’t have to be in this pain. Eddie would endure anything if it meant that Buck wouldn’t ever be in pain.

It happens when he’s alone with Buck, and he at least takes that for the small miracle that it is.

He’s lying with his head on the bed, and Buck’s hand grasped in his, like he always is these days. Every once in a while Buck will twitch, or even make some kind of noise, and every time, there’s a split second where he thinks this is it. But it never is.

It’s torture really, but he never misses the opportunity to hold Buck’s hand despite this.

He’s half asleep when he feels another twitch. He’s getting better at making the moment of hope fleeting, so he tries to run through the reminders in his head from the doctor’s, from Hen, and from his friends reminding him of these reminders: that it’s just a response. It doesn’t mean anything.

The pounding excitement in his chest is just beginning to go away when there’s a second twitch. Except that this twitch is more like a squeeze, and it’s lasting longer than any movement ever has before.

He jumps up, hovering over Buck to check for any other sign of life.

“Buck?” He asks, almost whispering as he finds his voice. “Buck? Hey, can you hear me?”

There’s no sign from the rest of him, but his hand grips Eddie’s again, and he can’t tell if he’s imagining it or if it really is more insistent this time.

“Nurse!” He calls, refusing to let go of Buck’s hand.

When he comes rushing into the room, Eddie spins around to look at him, knowing that the look in his eye must be wild, desperate.

“He squeezed my hand,” he says, and the nurse immediately deflates.

“Listen Mr…” he has to pause for a second to remember his name, but eventually finds it. They’ve all been in here a lot. “Diaz. Somebody should have explained about the automatic reactions patients sometimes have in situations like these…”

“No, no,” Eddie waves him off. “Somebody did. I get it, okay? And I’m telling you that this isn’t that. I know the difference.”

The nurse winces. He’s the one that’s been on call the most when Eddie’s here, his schedule, unfortunately for him, lining up with the obsessive firefighter who spends every free moment he has holding the hand of a man who might not even love him back, who may not even wake up, or else bringing his son in to do the same.

It’s also because of that very sad, very pathetic fact, that Eddie is confident that he knows the difference.

“Just,” he pleads, knowing how he seems. Frantic and obsessive. Finding signs of life where there’s only death. “Check. Please.”

The nurse nods, flashing him a kind smile before walking over to check Bucks vitals, same as they’ve been for days, and his sedatives, which they were assured were light enough to allow him to wake up naturally.

He flashes the light over Buck’s eyes, and as he does, Buck squeezes his hand again.

“He did it again!” Eddie gasps, and the nurse turns to look down at the chart.

“Looks like you might be right, Mr. Diaz,” he says, genuinely seeming happy that this crazy civilian was right. “I’m seeing signs of conscious brain activity, much higher than we’ve seen before.”

“So what does this mean?”

“I can lower his sedatives slightly to give him a stronger chance of fully waking up but,” he pauses here, looking up from his notes to level Eddie with a serious gaze. “It might not be pretty. He’s gonna be in a lot of pain, even despite the sedatives, and he’ll likely be very confused. That coupled with the traumatic nature of his injuries and his severe lack of motion… we have to weigh this against the benefits of having him conscious.”

Eddie nods, thinking it through.

“He wants to wake up,” he says eventually, only partially confident that it’s the right call. He could wait for Maddie or Bobby, ask their opinion, or else give Buck more time to wake up to a slightly more healed body. But, he decides that he should take this chance, because who knows when he’ll get it again? He thinks of the joy that will erupt on Christopher’s face if he can pick him up from school today and tell him that Buck’s awake. “We should help him.”

The nurse nods. It’s still baffling to Eddie that he has the ability to make these calls but that, too, is what Buck wanted. The hospital lawyer had showed it to him in person, the place where Edmundo Diaz was written neatly in the box designating a medical power of attorney. He had just chuckled, thinking of the place where Evan Buckley is written in his own will and advance directive and thought what a pair we are.

Now, it feels far too real. But the nurse already lowered his sedatives, so there’s nothing to do but wait.

After a few moments, Buck squeezes his hand again and this time, when Eddie snaps his gaze up to his face, his eyes are twitching too. He rushes up, hovering his hands over the side of Buck’s face and again, tries saying his name.

“Buck? Hey it’s me, it’s Eddie, do you think you can open your eyes for me?”

All at once, Buck’s body pulls taut and his eyes snap open. He stares up at the ceiling, unseeing, and Eddie finally breaks and lays his hand on Buck’s cheekbone.

“Hey,” he says softly. “It’s good to see you.”

Buck’s eyes move to his, but they stay in that same large, unseeing state. Eddie waits, hovering just inches away from his face, expecting him to smile, or grunt, or something.

Instead, it all seems to set in at once. Buck’s eyes widen even further and he frantically tries to move his head to look around. He’s making these awful, pathetic groans as he does so, clearly trying to talk, realizing that he can’t, and getting freaked out even further.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Eddie says, trying to simultaneously hold Buck’s head in place, and make him look at him. “Buck, it’s me, okay? You’re in the hospital and you can’t talk right now. I promise it’s gonna be okay but you have to relax for me.”

Buck turns to him with wild eyes, clearly beginning to comprehend but still more scared than Eddie’s ever seen him. He makes an imploring groan, and tries again to cock his head down to look at the rest of his body.

“Hey,” Eddie tries again, but it’s completely ignored as Buck continually tries to lift his head up and fails. “Buck, you need to calm down okay, listen to me!”

At the slight raising of Eddie’s voice, Buck softens, still trying to crane his neck but also allowing Eddie to gently hold it in place.

“Do you know who I am?” he starts easy.

Buck slowly, carefully nods. He tries to open his mouth to say something, presumably his name, but he gets stuck on the e syllable. At this, Buck looks distressed and tries again.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Let’s stick to nodding and shaking your head, okay?”

Buck, ironically, starts shaking his head emphatically, letting out distressed grunts and moans that have tears springing to Eddie’s eyes.

“Buck, you had an accident at work,” he says, loudly enough to be heard over Buck’s noises. “You broke your jaw and it’s wired shut right now. You can’t talk right now but I promise it’s temporary, okay?”

Buck furrows his brow and nods his head slowly. Eddie lets out a sigh of relief, loosening his grip on Buck’s head.

“There’s some other stuff, too, so you can’t move too much. I know this is scary but you’re gonna be okay.”

For some reason, this freaks Buck out more, and he starts trying to lift his head again in earnest. He must jostle his wrist before Eddie can stop him, because he lets out a hiss of breath and falls back against the pillows, moaning slightly.

“Jesus, Buck I—” he hovers his hands again, trying desperately to help but not knowing what he can possibly do in this situation.

“Okay,” a voice startles him, and he realizes that it’s the nurse from earlier. He had forgotten that he was even in the room. “I think that’s enough for today.”

He starts walking towards Buck’s IV and Buck, despite being in assumedly blinding pain, tracks the movement. He looks at Eddie with wide eyes, shaking his head and making noises Eddie is quickly beginning to understand mean no.

Eddie’s about to break and tell the nurse not to put him out again, despite the obvious evidence that this is too much for Buck right now, because of how scared Buck looks. Eddie was right— he wanted to wake up, and despite being in pain and being confused beyond his limits, Buck hates having his choices taken away.

But, Eddie also loves him, and was trusted to do what’s best for him. He’s going to hurt himself if he keeps trying to speak and look around and move and do all of the things that Eddie desperately wants him to, but knows he can’t. He sighs, and waves a hand at the nurse, gesturing him towards the IV.

Buck looks up at him, betrayed.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, running his thumbs over Buck’s cheekbones. “You’ll wake up again soon. I promise.”

Buck glares daggers at him, looking disbelieving, but also progressively more tired.

“I’m sorry, I promise, I’m sorry, I'm sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbles over and over again. He leans down to rest his face in Buck’s hair, whispering it into the curls he loves so much. When he finally lifts himself up, Buck is asleep, and the nurse is gone.

The doctor comes in to talk to him about an hour after Buck wakes up. His eyes are still teary, red-rimmed, he’s sure, and he must look awful. But, hey, he figures, it’s probably what they’ve come to expect from him.

“So what does it mean?” He asks, voice husky with tears and disuse.

“It means,” the doctor says, near whispering. Eddie can’t tell if it’s for him or out of some strange respect for the man unconscious next to them. “That we’ll give him some time, and try again.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything, so she pushes forward.

“This is a good thing, Mr. Diaz,” she presses, reaching forward and touching his arm lightly. “He woke up, and he seemed lucid, right?”

He nods numbly. He guesses. If being out of his mind with pain and confusion, unable to even ask for help or scream is a good thing.

“For next time, we’ll know the right level of meds to give him so he can wake up and not be in so much pain,” she continues. “And we’ll be able to confirm that his brain function is normal. It’s trial and error, Mr. Diaz.”

He scoffs. Buck’s not a lab rat. He should never be in pain, or be subjected to anything that’s not perfect for him.

But he knows that his anger is irrational. He sighs, making eye contact with the doctor for the first time.

“I assure you,” she says, still holding his arm in that condescending, yet comforting, way that medical professionals have. “We are doing everything we can for your partner.” Eddie’s heart jumps at the word, but he does his best to stay focused. “And I don’t say this lightly, but I am incredibly hopeful about his outcome.”

Eddie doesn’t know if she’s supposed to say that if she doesn’t know for sure, but he takes the reassurance anyway. She’s right, that this is a good thing. A week ago they didn’t know if he was going to wake up. Now, he has. Now, they’ve gotten confirmation of his brain function. He’s on the road to coming back to Eddie, and Eddie tries to trust it.

He knows, through, that he won’t, not fully. Not until Buck is by his side, completely, where he belongs.

The next time Buck wakes up, Maddie and Christopher are there. The doctors had kept his sedation just low enough so that he can wake up if he can, but high enough that he usually doesn’t.

A few days after the first time, Buck squeezes his hand again, and Eddie nearly sobs, both with relief and with fear. It was so awful last time, and Eddie can’t bear that happening again. But he also doesn’t know how much long he can take not being able to see proof that Buck’s alive, that he’ll be okay, so he signals for the nurse again.

He asks Maddie to take Chris outside, and she nods, clearly reluctant but understanding that he shouldn’t have to see this. He promises to tell her as soon as Buck’s really awake.

This time, when Buck opens his eyes, a small smile plays on his lips when he’s finally able to focus on Eddie.

“Hey,” he whispers, and Buck squeezes his hand in response. “What do you remember? Don’t try to talk.”

He adds this on at the end, terrified at the prospect of Buck trying to talk and freaking himself out again.

But Buck just frowns at him and cocks his head slightly and oh, Eddie thinks, right, yes or no questions.

“Sorry," he laughs, and Buck smiles a bit again. It’s tight and close-lipped, but it softens something inside Eddie all the same. “Do you remember what happened last time you woke up?”

Buck frowns again, looking around as if to confirm, but he nods, and Eddie exhales, glad he won’t have to re-explain anything.

“Okay,” he says, letting himself relax slightly and launching into an explanation of everything that he can think of. “So it’s only been a few days. Your jaw is still wired, but the doctors are saying they should be able to remove them in a few weeks. Your right wrist is broken so we’ll have to figure out a way for you to talk that’s not writing—I think Chris has a few ideas— and the doctors are hopeful that—”

He’s cut off by Buck squeezing his hand again, making a frantic noise in the back of his throat.

“What?” Eddie asks desperately, looking all over for a source of pain and coming up empty. “What— what happened?”

Buck just squeezes his hand again, looking at him with wild eyes. He's trying to say something, and Eddie leans closer to try to understand him.

Finally, he's able to make out a hard c sound and he understands.

“Oh!” he exclaims, and Buck’s eyes widen, full of hope. “Chris! Yeah, he’s back. He, um, came back as soon as he heard you were hurt.”

Buck’s eyes widen in horror this time, and Eddie rushes to explain.

“He wanted to come back anyway,” he says. “This just sped up the process, okay? I promise. He said he was gonna ask to come home that same day.”

Buck relaxes slightly, and Eddie watches as he goes through the same process that he did. Horror, that something so terrible brought him back, worry, that it was only out of guilt, and then finally, more than anything, joy, that he’s finally home.

“He's here,” Eddie tells him, smile creeping up his face. “He and Maddie are just outside, do you wanna see them?”

Buck nods emphatically, and Eddie’s smile widens.

“Okay, just give me one sec.”

He has to practically pull his hand out of Buck’s grasp, but he relents, overjoyed at the prospect of seeing his sister and Chris.

When Eddie walks back in with them, his whole face lights up, and Eddie is sure that if it weren’t for the wires, he would be smiling one of his megawatt smiles that could thaw ice. As it is, the entire room still brightens.

“Buck!” Christopher exclaims, rushing over to his side. Eddie watches as he carefully hugs him, avoiding the worst of the bruising and being careful not to jostle him.

When he pulls back, Buck is clearly struggling not to try to say something.

“I know you can’t talk right now,” Chris says, bringing a gentle hand up to cup Buck’s jaw. Buck leans into it, tears shining in his eyes. “But I’ve been thinking about it, and if you practice, I bet you can type one handed into your phone and then we can read it. And we can also get one of those text-to-speech apps for you in case you need to get our attention, like if we’re across the house or something.”

Buck, who had been nodding along the whole time, freezes.

Eddie just chuckles, walking over to place his hand on Chris’ shoulder.

“As soon as they let you out of here, you’re coming home with us," he says, and that, finally, is what makes the tears fall down Buck’s cheeks.

Maddie rushes up then, grabbing a tissue to wipe at the tears, and Buck bats her hands away so he can pull her into a hug.

“I missed you,” Maddie whispers into his chest, and Buck makes some kind of noise of agreement. “I was so worried.”

Chris moves then, sliding himself into the space between Maddie and Buck, and Buck huffs out a laugh.

“I missed you too," Chris whispers. “I’m sorry for leaving, but I’m back now. Thanks for coming back too.”

At that Buck tightens his one armed hold around him and Maddie steps back, coming to stand next to Eddie.

They watch as Chris stays glued to Buck’s side, telling him about his ideas for keeping Buck occupied in the hospital with matching tear filled eyes.

Maddie reaches down and grabs his hand, and he squeezes, silent understanding passing through them.

Eddie nearly sobs with relief, watching them. It’s been so long, since he’d seen that sight. His favorite in all the world. His two favorite people, together.

Now, finally, it’s like everything is getting back to how it should be. He nearly collapses under the weight of it. The relief, the exhaustion, all of it.

Buck is back. Chris is back. His family, the one he cobbled together with his own hands, and fought for harder than he’s ever fought for anything, is finally whole again.

He wobbles a bit, and Maddie catches him, smiling as she leads him to a chair.

She goes to get the nurse and some water for Buck, and Eddie just watches. Finally, Buck looks up from where he was watching Chris’ phone, and their eyes meet. Buck’s eyes crinkle as he beams at him as much as is possible with his mouth closed, and Eddie laughs at the effort. They stay like that for a moment, just looking at each other, that same steady, silent understanding passing between them like it always does. Then, Maddie comes back in and Buck looks away.

Eddie doesn’t though, doesn’t think he could if he tried, and looking on at Buck with Christopher glued solidly to his side, his heart stitches back together from the abuses of the past weeks—the past months, really. All of a sudden, there’s light back in his world.

He’s not looking away for a second.

Chapter Text

The weeks Buck spends in the hospital are uneventful, almost painfully boring, if not for the fact that he almost died, again. Even that runs the risk of becoming monotonous, which is how Buck knows that he needs to go home right away, because being cooped up in the hospital is making him think crazy things like that.

It’s not monotonous, its miraculous. But even more miraculous is the fact that every weekday after school, Carla brings Chris over, and every time that Eddie isn't on shift, he’s right by his bedside. Even more miraculous is how much he loves them, and how much they love him back.

During the day, when Chris is at school and Eddie is at work and everybody else is busy, he does nothing but try not to lose his mind. The nurses are kind, and they come in and talk to him whenever they have the chance, but he can’t really talk back and it usually frustrates him more than anything. With Eddie, Chris, and Maddie, he’s developed something of a shorthand, so he doesn’t have to type out every single thing he has to say. Unsurprisingly, it works best with Eddie.

Without him here to translate, he feels lost, unmoored. The nurses are nice, and they make sure to only ask him questions that he can nod, shake his head, or write out short answers to, but it sometimes just makes him feel worse. Especially because he doesn’t really have much to say, what with the current state of his life being contained to four walls, but he would still like the option.

Hen, Chim and Bobby visit too, as do Karen and Athena, but Buck can almost not stand the pitying looks that everybody gives him. He knows it must be unsettling, seeing him like this, completely silent when he’s usually the guy that can fill up any space with his voice, but it’s worse for him. He’s tired of one sided conversations, of that moment when somebody says something to him and then waits for him to respond, only to remember that he can’t and awkwardly try to switch the topic.

He can really only stand to be around Maddie, Chris and Eddie. Chris, because he could never not want to be around that kid, and he missed him so badly that it doesn’t even matter to him that he has to just scroll and point when he wants to talk about the Wikipedia binge he went on while he waited for him to come visit, or the fact that he can’t react properly when Chris tells him about his day. Maddie is a tough one, because she still gets that pitying look all the time, but he deals with it because it’s Maddie and he’ll never not feel comforted by her presence. And Eddie because, well, it’s Eddie.

He always knows just what to do. The right way to pose a question so that Buck knows that Eddie genuinely wants to hear his answer, but will understand if it takes him a while to write it out. The right questions to ask the doctors and nurses, and just the right amount to push when he needs to stand up for Buck. He knows when Buck needs to be around people, and the exact second that it gets too much for him and it’s time to start ushering everybody out of his room. He knows that Buck could never get tired of Eddie’s presence, and he knows the right way to hold his hand until the very last moment before he needs to leave.

It’s the day before his final surgery to get his external fixation out, and he’s in a bad mood. The nurses that are usually charmed by him are avoiding him, and Buck can see the concern in one of their faces as he watches her talk to Eddie outside his room.

“Hey,” Eddie says as he walks in, all forced casualty. “Hear you’ve had a bit of a day.”

Buck just rolls his eyes, and Eddie chuckles, coming to sit down next to him.

“Even Melinda is scared to come in and check your vitals before surgery, and I didn’t know that woman could be scared of anything.”

Buck rolls his eyes again, but it’s a bit weaker.

He grabs his phone and types out Buck whisperer? and shows it to Eddie.

Eddie reads it and smiles, shaking his head slightly.

“No, no,” he says jokingly, sarcasm dripping in his tone. “They just thought they’d wait until I was here to check you out and give you an update because they felt like it.”

Buck smiles a bit at that. It’s become an inside joke between he, Eddie, and the nurses. How Buck lights up when Eddie’s around. How even if he’s having a bad day, a few words from Eddie will have him cooperating in seconds.

It’s funny, except that it makes Buck’s heart ache.

It’s really not funny at all.

“Okay, seriously,” Eddie starts, tone immediately becoming serious. “What’s going on? Your last surgery is tomorrow, this is a good thing.”

The smile immediately drops off Buck’s face. He uses his lack of ability to talk to his advantage, putting his phone down and looking away from Eddie.

“Buck don’t give me that, tell me what’s going on.”

When Buck still doesn’t respond, Eddie stands up, walking over to the bed to gaze down at Buck.

Buck is helpless to do anything but meet his gaze, and he immediately softens under it.

Buck whisperer is right.

“Are you scared?” Eddie asks, and usually Buck would bristle at the implications of such a question, but under Eddie’s sure and steady gaze, he just nods.

“It’ll be okay,” Eddie grabs Buck’s non-broken wrist from where it lays on the bed, tracing small circles into his hand with his thumb. “Pretty soon you’ll be coming home with us, starting PT, getting these stupid wires out, and then, before the rest of us know what hit us, you’ll be back at work talking up a storm and fighting us over the cool rescues.”

Buck smiles slightly, but it’s weak. The thought of all of that— PT and healing and recovery, all to just try to get back to a job he doesn’t know if he’ll get cleared to do, sounds exhausting.

Of course he wants to. He misses being out there almost as much as he missed Chris, but it’s also the thing that almost took him away from everything, everyone. And of course, his doctors are mostly confident in a full recovery, but that isn’t a promise that he’ll be back to where he was. They warned him a week ago, with Eddie sitting protectively by his side, that there was a chance he wouldn’t be able to go back. He would definitely walk again, almost surely run again, but everything else, the sheer amount of strength and stamina needed to do their job? There was a chance, a real chance, that it was gone to him forever.

“Woah,” Eddie’s voice breaks through his thoughts. “Where’d you go?”

Buck’s eyes focus again, and he realizes that he’s just been staring at the wall next to his bed for who knows how long. It’s something he’s been doing a lot more recently, since waking up. Because he can’t talk, he spends more time than not alone with his thoughts. Even if he communicates with somebody, he’s still the only one that knows exactly what he means to say.

So, he spends a lot of time lost in his own head. It’s not necessarily new, but usually he would voice at least some of it, or some incomplete version of it. He used to be the kind of person that physically couldn’t stop himself from talking about what he was thinking, even when he wished he could. Now, that problem's been fixed for him.

“Listen,” Eddie is saying, bringing up a hand to lightly touch Buck’s jaw, gently guiding his eye line back to Eddie’s. Once Buck makes real eye contact, he continues, but his hand never leaves his jaw. “I know it’s a lot, okay? But it won’t be like last time, I promise. You’ve got me, and Chris, and we’ll be with you every step of the way.

“And even if you can’t come back to work, you’ll still have us, and everyone. We’re not going anywhere.”

A tear leaks down Buck’s cheek, and Eddie adjusts his hand to wipe it away. Buck keeps making eye contact as he nods, and Eddie smiles softly down at him.

“I know this sucks,” he whispers. “But we’re in this together.”

Buck nods again, and Eddie nods back before gesturing to the nurses hanging around outside of his room that he’s finally ready to let them start checking him for surgery.

He’s cleared for surgery tomorrow, and Eddie stays with him through the entire debrief, holding his hand tightly as the doctor explains everything.

It’s just a surgery to remove the external fixation, and overall there’s very little concerns about the surgery itself. Still though, Eddie bombards the doctor with questions, asking her details about potential risks and the recovery process until she’s blue in the face and clearly getting annoyed.

Buck smiles, watching the way Eddie calmly interrogates his surgeon while his hand stays firmly locked in Buck’s. Nobody’s ever taken care of him quite like this, and it makes his insides melt, just a bit.

Finally, Eddie turns to him and asks if there’s anything he wanted to ask, and he just shakes his head serenely. The surgeon breathes a sigh of relief.

To be honest, he hadn’t been listening to most of that, content to put his trust in Eddie. It’s a bit much, hearing about the details of the surgery, and his broken bones, and the whole recovery process— he knows it’s important, but he knows that it helps calm Eddie to know as much as possible. So, he thinks, win-win.

When the doctor finally leaves, Buck just looks to Eddie with a small smirk on his face.

“What!” He says, a bit defensively. “This is important!”

Buck just nods, smile widening as much as it can with his stupid jaw wired shut, and Eddie smiles back.

It’s moments like these when Buck thinks, maybe.

Maybe he means as much to Eddie as he means to him. No, he corrects, he knows that that’s true. But in moments like these, he lets himself hope that it might be in the same way. Maybe, as badly as Buck wants everything with Eddie, home and family and forever, he wants it too.

He falls asleep that night with Eddie’s hand wrapped around his and he thinks about being seen, and being known, and best of all, being loved.

The surgery goes smoothly, and Buck kicks himself for every second of his life that he spent not being appreciative of not having metal bars sticking out of his bones.

The next step is to start taking short walks around the hospital, and it’s about as humiliating and frustrating as Buck had expected. He can barely walk to the nurses station without his legs feeling weak beneath him, and he almost can’t believe that he used to run up flights of stairs with fifty pounds of gear on his back.

Chris, of course, makes everything better, enthusiastically joining in on Buck’s PT and walks whenever he can, telling him stories about his own PT, and how annoying he knows it can be. Eddie joins him too, but Buck prefers when he doesn’t, because he still feels that spike of shame when he can’t do something simple like walk a lap, and he hates having Eddie see it. He knows it doesn’t matter, and that it shouldn’t bother him, but it does, and he still prefers to have Eddie waiting in his room when he gets back instead of being with him the whole time.

Eddie is content to be wherever he wants him, and he never makes a big deal about it. He knows they’re trying to be helpful, but the nurse’s habit of acting like he just ran a marathon when all he did was walk ten paces without passing out makes him sick to his stomach. He used to jump off of cliffs and save people from moving vehicles, and now it’s an achievement the day that he leverages himself out of bed by himself. Eddie just shows his support silently, a small smile and a clap on the shoulder and Buck has never been more grateful for him.

Finally, a week after his last surgery, when Eddie and Maddie have somehow convinced his doctors that being at home will improve his recovery by improving his mental health, or whatever, he’s allowed to leave.

Eddie listens as the doctors bombard him with information and questions for a change, taking it in stride and assuring them that his house, with all of it’s modifications for Chris, is uniquely equipped to support Buck in his recovery and that Eddie, with his medical knowledge, is perfectly capable of taking care of him. Once they’re satisfied, Eddie and Buck are left alone, and there’s nothing left to do but sign the papers and leave.

Eddie turns to him with a wide smile, and Buck tries to reciprocate it. He is so, so excited to leave this damn hospital, but something else is keeping him from letting himself fully enjoy the thought of going home.

Mainly, that he isn’t going home. He’s going to the place that he’s thought of as home for as long as he’s known it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s actually his. This will be a lot. He will be a lot. Eddie has a fourteen year old son that he’s just adjusting to being a family with again, and a full time job that’s as stressful as it is rewarding. He doesn’t need this on top of it.

Buck, who will barely be able to walk to the kitchen on his own, much less stand long enough to cook. Buck, who will have endless appointments and check-ups to get to, and no way of driving himself. Buck, who can’t even speak and can barely move, and won’t be able to carry his weight around the house like he’d gotten used to doing to make up for his constant presence.

If he even thought there was a chance he would survive on his own at the loft, he would be ordering an Uber to take him there before anybody could protest. But, he wouldn’t, so he has no choice but to burden his best friend and hope that it will be while before Eddie gets sick of him— before he inevitably resents him.

Or, even worse, discovers the truth of Buck’s longing. Because, honestly, Buck has no idea how it’s still a secret. If these past few weeks have proven anything, it’s that Eddie can read him like an open book. Where Buck usually needs sentences, paragraphs even, to explain something to most people, Eddie gets it without Buck even having to start writing. And it’s always been like that with them, a silent look saying more than an hour-long conversation would with anyone else.

So, he has no idea how he’s made it this far concealing his bloody, beating heart that belongs to Eddie, especially with how vulnerable he’s been forced to be lately, but he isn’t going to complain. He just hopes that whatever he’s been doing keeps working, and that if Eddie does find out, he’s at least kind in his rejection.

“Buck,” Eddie’s voice cuts through his thoughts, for probably the tenth time in a week. “Whatever you’re over there frowning about, stop.”

Buck raises his hands innocently, but Eddie just places his hands on his hips and levels him with the glare. Buck drops his hands, looking up at Eddie sheepishly.

Eddie reads his mind, as always.

“Buck,” he starts, coming to stand next to his bed. “We want to have you. Chris is really excited that he won’t only be able to see you during visiting hours, and him and Carla have already started working out what cooking you can help with with one hand. While sitting down. It’s not really much, to be honest, but they’re working on it.”

Buck snorts a laugh at that, and Eddie keeps going.

“And me, Carla, Maddie, and Bobby have already worked out your appointment schedule, and before you even start—” he holds up a hand as if to cut Buck off, even though Buck is fully incapable of interrupting even if he wanted to. Which he did, but that’s beside the point.

“We want to do that, too,” Eddie continues. “Everybody loves you Buck, and it makes them feel better to help.

“As for me…” Eddie trails off here, and Buck cocks his head, waiting eagerly for what he’s gonna say next.

“Honestly, I never want to let you out of my sight again,” Eddie murmurs, voice low in the space between them. “So, really, you’re doing me a favor.”

Buck scoffs at that.

“Evan,” Eddie says sharply, and Buck’s breath catches. “I just want to take care of you, like you’ve been doing for me this whole summer. Can you just let me?”

Buck is dumbstruck, staring at Eddie with wide eyes.

“Actually,” Eddie says, still quiet, still careful in that laser-focused way of his. “You’ve been doing it since the day we met. So stop worrying and just come home. Come be where you belong so I can take care of you like you deserve.”

Buck is, for the only time in his life, okay with the fact that he can’t speak. Because he wouldn’t be able to anyway. All he can do is stare, and when all Eddie does is stare back, never taking it back, or adding any qualifiers to the statement, Buck just nods dumbly. Eddie smiles back at him and, oh, Buck thinks, this is dangerous.

This is a five alarm fire, a building that’s foundation is blown, an unstable cliffside. And Buck, like always, is running full force into it, unable to stay away.

When they walk through the front door, Buck instinctively flinches, fearing the welcome home party that’s become a bit of a tradition. However, when he walks in, all he sees is Carla and Chris sitting at the table, smiling at him as he enters.

He turns to Eddie briefly, eyebrow raised. Eddie bumps his shoulder into his, ushering him inside with a hand on the small of his back, steadying him.

“I figured it was a little early for the whole welcome home thing,” he murmurs. “Maybe in a few weeks.”

Buck breathes a sigh of relief, and Eddie smiles, knowing that he did the right thing.

Chris launches himself up from the table, wrapping his arms around Buck’s waist. Buck, trying to overcorrect for the incoming pressure, tenses. This, more than Chris’ perfectly gentle arms, causes a spike of pain to go through his body, traveling from his hips to his ribs. Chris wrenches back as he gasps in pain, looking horrified.

Buck breathes, trying to wave it off, but Carla and Eddie both descend on him with concern. Eddie places his hands on his shoulders and looks at him with wide eyes, but Buck just nods his head, trying to smile to indicate just how okay he is.

Eddie frowns, and uses the hands on his shoulders to lead him towards the couch.

“Okay,” he says, voice carefully light. “Come sit before Carla tries to hug you too and you pass out.”

Buck rolls his eyes as Chris laughs, but he lets himself be steered towards the couch. He’s exhausted, even just the walk from the car to the house taking it out of him.

“As if I could ever do anything to hurt my Buckaroo!” Carla calls from where she’d gone to the kitchen.

She comes back in holding a few glasses with some kind of smoothie in them.

“So, here’s what we’ve been working on,” she says, setting the glasses down on the coffee table. “I know you’re still on a liquid diet, and I’m sure you’re sick of smoothies, but I figured it doesn’t have to be all bad.”

Buck glares at her, and she smiles.

“It’s a good thing you perfected that glare long before you broke your jaw,” she deadpans, and Buck can’t help himself from smiling. “I’m not saying it’ll be great, but me and Chris have been trying out a few different recipes to see if we can make it a bit better.”

Buck softens at that, and he feels his eyes start to tear up.

“Oh!” Carla cries, resting a hand on his thigh. “Honey, it’s no big deal at all!”

Buck places his hand over hers, squeezing it in what he hopes is understood at the thank you that it is.

Carla laughs, chuckling as she says, “why don’t you try the smoothies before you get too emotional?”

Buck smiles through his tears, gesturing for her to pass them to him.

They’re, unsurprisingly, really good. Or as good as a smoothie can be when all you’ve had for weeks are smoothies, but they’re much better than what he was getting at the hospital, and the gesture itself makes them taste that much better.

Carla leaves after his eyes start drooping, and Chris comes to take her place on the couch. He stays curled up at his side while they spend an hour watching a documentary as Eddie fumbles around in the kitchen.

He must fall asleep at some point, because when he wakes up Chris is gone, and Eddie is gently touching his shoulder to wake him up.

“Hey,” he’s saying softly. “Sorry to wake you but it’s time for dinner and meds.”

Buck complies, too tired to even be mad about the fact that ‘dinner’ really means a smoothie. Eddie watches him drink it and Buck just shoots him a look.

“Sorry,” he says, hands up placatingly.

Buck rolls his eyes and looks away. It’s still too much, sometimes, being vulnerable like this, even in front of Eddie. He feels so helpless, so useless, that he wishes he could scream. But, of course, he can’t and that makes him feel even more helpless and useless. He’s completely at the mercy of the people around him and, he knows, that if he had to be at the mercy of anyone he’s glad that it’s Eddie—and Carla and Maddie and the 118, but still. He’s the guy that fixes things. The rock for other people. It’s not supposed to be the other way around.

“I’m glad you’re here, Buck,” Eddie whispers as he takes the glass away from Buck and hands him his meds.

Buck hears the meaning underneath it. He’s not just glad that he’s here, in this house, but he’s glad that he’s here as in, alive. Buck is too. He’s so grateful for both that even in his worst moments of frustration and anger, that feeling never fully goes away.

Buck nods, grabbing Eddie’s hand as he goes to pull it away. Just like with Carla, he squeezes, trying to communicate the depth of his feelings through such a simple gesture. It’s not enough, but then, he thinks, words wouldn’t be enough either.

Eddie squeezes back, and they look at each other for a moment, something soft and unnamable in the air between them. Buck can feel the meds kicking in, and he leans forward so that he can keep focusing on Eddie’s face.

Then, Eddie does something confusing, and leans forward too. They stay like that, inches apart, until Eddie frowns and, like he’s coming to his senses, shakes his head and pulls away.

“Alright,” he says, and his voice has an odd, crackling quality to it. “Let’s get you to bed before the meds knock you out and I have to carry you.”

Buck’s glad he can’t talk, because if he could, he wouldn’t be able to promise that he wouldn’t say something crazy like that wouldn’t be so bad or I’d like to see that. But he can’t, so instead he lets Eddie pull him up off the couch and lead him towards his bedroom.

It’s only once he’s under the covers that he realizes the gravity of what Eddie’s done. He’s considering protesting, but he’s so, so tired, and the sheets smell like Eddie and feel more comfortable than anything he’s known for weeks, so he just smiles at Eddie as he turns off the lamp and whispers a quiet goodnight Buck into the darkness.

A week into being home from the hospital, Buck wakes up screaming. Or he would if he could, but he can’t so instead he wakes up forcing air out of his mouth and fighting against the wires keeping his jaw shut.

He’s shaking, with a cold sweat over his whole body and he can’t breathe. He was dreaming about falling. And falling, and falling, and falling. He was dreaming about never hitting the ground and instead falling forever while Eddie looms above him, hand outstretched, and never able to reach him. He was dreaming about watching Eddie get smaller and smaller above him while he fell farther and farther away.

He tries to get up, but he forgot about his wrist, so he ends up putting too much weight on it and falling back against the pillows gasping in pain. Still though, he feels like he has to get up— laying down is too much like falling right now, and he still can’t breathe, and he doesn’t know what will happen if he doesn’t move. Panic grips him, thoughts of never being able to move or hyperventilating and passing out, only to be found in the morning by Eddie or Chris who will have to see him like that— it’s horrifying, and he can’t stop panicking long enough to think about how to do anything other than roll over and launch himself off the bed, hoping he somehow lands on his feet.

Of course, he doesn’t, and he instead lands on his left shoulder and hip. That sends a new burst of pain through him, right through the part of his pelvis that’s still healing, and he thinks that maybe he’s fucked up his healing irrevocably, which only sends him deeper into his panic.

“Buck?” An alarmed voice calls, and Buck groans, equal parts embarrassed and grateful to be found like this.

“Buck!” The voice says again as its carrier rounds the bed and finds him on the floor. “Buck, oh my god, what happened?”

Buck groans again, and suddenly there are strong hands on his shoulders, easing him up off the floor to be propped up against the bed. The movement hurts him even more, hips protesting against the pressure and his wrist screaming as it gets jostled.

Buck still can’t breathe, and he can’t see Eddie, all he can register is pain and panic, and he desperately claws at his mouth with his working hand, as if he could remove the wires through sheer force of will so he can get just one, normal, full breath.

“Okay, baby, okay, just give me one second,” the voice is babbling as it gets farther and farther away. Buck’s breathing gets even tighter because of that, but soon it’s closer again, and there are hands against his jaw. “Okay, you need to stay still for me baby, can you do that?”

Buck does his best, and then Eddie’s fingers are forcing his lips open and there’s something metal in his mouth, and then— relief.

Buck opens his mouth, really opens his mouth, and takes huge, gasping breathes. Eventually, Eddie’s face comes into focus, and Buck starts to feel the pressure from Eddie's hands against his shoulders. His grip is tight, and his face is worried, pulled into a frown as he traces his eyes all over Buck’s face.

“Breathe for me, you’re okay, baby, just breathe,” Eddie is saying, voice low and steady.

Buck finally feels like he’s back in his body, and he reaches up a hand to grip Eddie’s on his shoulder. He nods, and Eddie breathes a sigh of relief, head dropped down below his shoulders.

“Does anything hurt?” Eddie asks as he moves his free hand down to tenderly cradle Buck’s wrist.

Eddie only cut some of the wires, Buck feels, so he still can’t talk. Maybe on a different day, or in a different room with a different person crouched before him, Buck would have lied. But it’s Eddie, so he just nods slightly moving his wrist to indicate it, and then removes his hand from Eddie’s to hover over the part of his hip that he’d landed hardest on.

Eddie nods, frown finding its way back to his face.

“We should probably take you in,” he says, and Buck deflates. “They’ll need to rewire your jaw and probably take some scans to make sure you didn’t break anything.”

Buck nods defeatedly, and Eddie moves his hands up to cradle Buck’s face.

“Are you okay?” He asks, all concern and big, brown eyes.

Buck nods again.

Eddie frowns, but accepts it.

“Okay, you can tell me more later,” he concedes, and then goes to stand up. Buck’s hands instinctually fly up to Eddie’s wrists, holding them in place.

“Hey,” Eddie whispers. “I’m just gonna go wake Chris up and tell him we’re taking a family trip to the ER, okay?”

Buck shakes his head frantically and Eddie smiles.

“He won’t mind, Buck,” he says, reading his mind. “I’ll let him sleep in tomorrow and skip school.”

Buck loosens his grip slightly, still not liking it, the way that he’s now ruined the sleep of the entire household, but he knows that it’s a losing battle.

Eddie gently pulls his hands from Buck’s grasp, brushing his finger over Buck’s birthmark as he stands up. Buck hates being left alone, but there’s nothing that he can do but wait for Eddie to get back.

After a few minutes, Eddie comes back in the room, and he lifts Buck up from the floor, gently placing him on his feet.

“You’ve lost weight,” he murmurs, and it sounds like it was for himself and not for Buck to hear.

Buck did hear though, so he just deadpans, using his working hand to pantomime holding a smoothie and lifting it to his mouth.

It gets a small laugh out of Eddie, but his frown is still deep.

He knows Eddie didn’t mean anything by it, but it still hurts to be reminded. He can feel it. Could feel it as soon as he woke up in the hospital, and it’s only gotten worse since. The way he’s wasting away, the once strong muscles in his legs now struggling to hold him upright, the padded muscles in his arms and chest dwindling down and becoming corded and tight in a way that reminds him of being a teenager.

And it shouldn’t matter—except that it does. Because he worked hard, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to again. It matters because he molded his body into something that saves people—lifts them out of crushed cars and carries them out of burning buildings, and now that’s gone. It matters because that was the body that would still lift Chris up and spin him around even when he grumbled about being too old for it, and the arms that would wrap around Maddie to make her feel as safe as she made him feel. It matters because he can feel that slipping out from under him just like everything is, and it’s too much.

Eddie just looks at him softly, hands squeezing his arms.

“You’ll get it back,” he whispers, and Buck wants to scream what if I don’t because it doesn’t just mean his muscles and his strength, and Eddie can’t promise that. Instead, he nods, because all he does nowadays is nod, and Eddie shifts so he can help Buck walk through the house and into the car.

The hospital visit is predictable. Eddie was right—rewiring and scans. Luckily, he didn’t fuck anything up any worse than it already was, and he’s sent home around 6am with an upped dose of pain meds and a look to Eddie from the doctors that says don’t let it happen again.

When they get home, Chris goes off to his room to get some sleep, and Buck and Eddie head back to Eddie’s bedroom.

He gets under the covers, wincing as every movement jostles something that’s broken, and Eddie looks on with his hands out like he can help Buck with every single thing. Once Buck’s settled, he looks up at Eddie and sees his face going through a complicated series of emotions. Finally, he sets his jaw, and it lands on determination.

“What happened?” He asks, and Buck groans, closing his eyes to indicate how much he does not want to talk about this.

Eddie doesn’t give up though, grabbing Buck’s phone from the nightstand and unlocking it, forcing it into Buck’s hand with the notes app open.

Buck rolls his eyes, but relents. He figures it’s the least he can do after waking Eddie up in the dead of night and making him spend hours with him at the hospital.

Bad dream, he types. Couldn’t breathe, tried to get out of bed, fell.

Eddie reads this all with a neutral expression, like it’s exactly what he expected. And then, with his jaw still set, he turns around and starts walking away. Buck is confused, a little hurt at the fact that Eddie asked in the first place and now apparently doesn’t care, but then his breath is taken away.

Eddie just walks to the other side of the bed and slides in like he’s done it a million times before. And, well, he has. But not with Buck on the other side of it. Buck turns and frowns at him, and Eddie, looking shy for the first time, shrugs.

“No way am I leaving you alone in here after what just happened,” he explains, like it’s simple, like it’s easy.

And maybe, Buck thinks, it is. This is just an extension of his caretaking, like how he would let Chris sleep in his bed after the tsunami. It’s a practicality, something that makes sense. To Eddie, it doesn’t mean all of the things that it means to Buck. To Buck, the thought of waking up tomorrow next to a sleep-rumpled Eddie makes his heart do flips in his chest. It makes him want. It makes him feel like all the things that he’s ever desired are right within his grasp, but not quite. It’s torture, if torture could be sweet, and comforting, and safe.

Maybe to Eddie, it’s just sharing a bed with your friend out of necessity.

Still, Buck just smiles and turns away. He could never deny himself this. Even if it does feel like he’s being mocked, the universe dangling everything he’s ever wanted right in front of his face, just to remind him that he’ll never actually have it.

Chapter Text

The first thing Buck says when he gets his wires removed is predictable. It’s the only thing he can say, and the only thing he ever wants to say.

The doctor cuts the last wire, pulls it out of his mouth, and tells him to try out his jaw, but to take it easy.

Buck stretches it a few times, reveling in the feeling of being able to open it more than a centimeter, and turns his head to the side.

Eddie is there, because Eddie is always there.

Eddie smiles at him, a small, hopeful thing, and Buck smiles back.

“Eddie,” he breathes, and his voice is gravely and horrible-sounding with disuse, but Eddie smiles even bigger at the sound, like it’s the best thing he’s ever heard.

“Hey,” he gasps out, standing up and rushing over to Buck’s side. He lays a gentle hand on his jaw, eyes tracking all over Buck’s face.

“Are you seriously double checking Dr. Ramirez’s work right now?” Buck asks, and Eddie startles.

“Fuck,” he says, ducking his head and flashing an apologetic smile over his shoulder at the doctor. “I forgot you can call me out on things now.”

Buck smiles at him, and it’s a real, actual smile. Not a closed mouth one so he wouldn’t scare people with his wires, or a tight one because he’s in pain. A real, authentic smile that only Eddie knows how to bring out in him. He’s missed the way that it pulls at his mouth, and the way that every time he flashes it, Eddie matches him in intensity.

“You missed it,” he responds, and he means to tease. But Eddie’s eyes go dark, and his grip tightens slightly on Buck’s jaw, almost like he forgot his hand is still there.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “I did.”

Buck sputters then, realizing that he no longer has the excuse of a wired jaw for why he can’t muster up any sort of response to things like that. Eddie is ridiculous, he thinks, with the way he says things that shoot right to the center of him like they’re nothing. Like he says them everyday and they’re unremarkable.

And sure, he has been saying them more often, but it will never make them anything but remarkable, completely ruining Buck’s ability to form a sentence.

Luckily, he’s saved, because the doctor clears his throat and Eddie jumps away from him like he’s been burned. Buck just smirks at him, and Eddie rolls his eyes in response. Turns out the doctor still had more to check.

Buck forgot that he was even in the room.

The days after Buck gets his wires out are better, which means they’re also worse. Being able to talk again it’s like— like he’s finally a participant in his own life again.  Like things aren’t just happening to him. It’s amazing, but it also makes it so that he’s even more aware of how deep in it he’s gotten.

It’s painful, how idyllic it is. He goes to sleep every night in Eddie’s bed and, despite the fact that neither of them have the excuse of Buck’s wired jaw to use anymore, Eddie sleeps next to him every night that he’s not on shift. He wakes up in the morning and finds Eddie there with him, or else in the kitchen with Christopher. He eats breakfast with them in the morning, and he hangs out with Christopher after school. He eats dinner with them, and then he hangs out on the couch until bedtime, and then he does it all over again.

When Eddie’s on shift, they text all the time. It’s for both of them, he knows. Eddie, constantly worried about Buck being home alone during the days despite the fact that he’s okay to walk around, and prepare easy meals, and even clean now, and Buck, constantly worried about Eddie being on shift when he’s not there to watch his back.

It’s good, too good, and Buck doesn’t get good things. Not things that last. Soon, he’ll be fine, and he’ll have no reason to monopolize the Diaz’s home and love anymore. Soon, he’ll be cleared to drive, okay to take himself to all of his appointments. Soon, he’ll have enough stamina to grocery shop, cook real meals for himself, and change his own dressings. He can feel his time here running out, like a constant timer hanging over his head.

Every time he hangs out with Eddie and Chris, laughing over dinner, or nodding solemnly as Chris relays the latest drama at his school, all he can think is enjoy this while it lasts.

He feels selfish, like a leech, sucking up the love that they’re offering him as if it’s his, when it’s not. One day, a day that’s getting closer and closer, he’ll be back in his loft. He’ll go to sleep alone and wake up alone, and it’ll be even worse than it was before, because now he knows what it’s like. He knows what it’s like to have a family, to feel the warmth of somebody coming home to you every day. It’s not his, but knowing that logically doesn’t do anything to calm the thumping in his chest. It’s so much worse to have something and lose it, than to never have it at all, he thinks at his worst. At his best, he thinks he’s just lucky to have been allowed inside at all.

It comes to head a week and a half after getting out his wires out.

Maddie had driven him to his appointment, and Eddie was going to pick him up. It was a rough appointment, one that had him hanging onto his kindness by his fingernails to not snap at the physical therapist. He had graduated to jogging on the treadmill, but only for small distances, and only under a watchful eye. He was already exhausted, and when he checks the screen, it shows that he had only run half a mile. The sight frustrates him, and it makes him even more upset when the therapist sees him slowing down and comes over to turn it off.

He almost snaps at her that he can keep going, but he doesn't, and he calls that progress. Instead, he smiles at her politely as she takes him through his stretches, and makes small talk as she made notes on his chart.

Then, a nurse, sticks her head in the door and says, “Mr. Buckley, your husband is in the waiting room whenever you’re ready,” and what’s left of his sanity flies out the window.

And listen, he knows. He knows how him and Eddie seem to people, especially now, but even before. Their comfort with each other, the flirtatious tone their teasing takes on. The way they gravitate towards each other in any room, and the fact that they can usually speak without words. The fact that they can often be found out in public with Chris, both of them sharing fond looks and parental advice. He knows. And every time he’s been confronted by it, he just smiles, usually not correcting people unless it’s necessary. That’s selfish too, he knows, but he can’t help it. The idea that people see him, and see Eddie, and think that they could ever be together, that Eddie would ever choose him, is too sweet. It’s addicting, and he usually lets himself sit in it, in the alternate reality where he and Eddie call each other husband, and Chris is his son in anything more than feeling, and he’s wanted the way that he wants.

Today is no different. He nods at her, politely takes the paperwork that the therapist hands him, and walks out the door. Eddie is waiting for him, and, even despite his awful mood, his heart lifts at the sight of him.

Eddie looks like he was going to say something, but drops it upon seeing Buck’s face. Instead, Eddie walks up and bumps their shoulders together, waving at the nurses as they leave. Buck is silent the whole way home, and Eddie doesn’t push him. Buck is glad, because Eddie is probably assuming that it was just a bad session, and it was, but Buck isn’t sure that he can keep the rest quiet anymore. He doesn’t know that, if pressed, he would be able to lie instead of spitting his entire heart out onto the floor. No, Eddie, I’m not okay and it’s because a nice nurse just assumed that you were my husband and I didn’t correct her because I’m horrible and selfish and I don’t know how to not want things that I can’t have. I’m not okay because this, here, feels like you’re mine, but you’re not, and that fact is breaking me a bit more each day.

He doesn’t say any of that, and instead asks Eddie if he can drop him off at Maddie’s, saying he’d like to see Jee. Eddie frowns for a second, but relents, and when they get there, he reaches over and grabs Buck’s wrist before he can get out of the car.

“Let me know if you wanna talk about it when you get home,” he says, and Buck nods, shooting him a slight smile before all but scrambling out of the car.

Home.

Eddie called it home. Like it was not just Buck’s too, but theirs. He needs to get this in check, before he destroys everything that he has. He can’t keep being like this—getting weak in the knees at an assumption from a stranger or a slip of the tongue from Eddie. He needs to fix this.

He walks up the stairs to Maddie’s, and tries not to think too hard about how Eddie doesn’t pull away until Chim opens the door for him.

“Hey, Bu—,” Chim starts, but he cuts himself off at the look he must see on Buck’s face. He grimaces, and then nods tightly.

“I’ll get Maddie,” he says instead, and Buck gratefully walks in to sit on the couch and wait.

As soon as Maddie walks into the room, saying something about how he thought he’d be with Eddie, Buck breaks.

“I fucked up, Maddie,” he blurts out, and then she’s rushing over to his side. She stares at him with her big, pleading eyes, and he can’t help the tears that leak out.

“Oh,” she gasps, throwing an arm over his shoulder and pulling him close. “What happened?”

“I—” he can’t say it. Saying it will make it real, and if it’s real, he can never take it back. But he also can’t keep holding this in, so he takes a deep breath, and then says it. The thing that’s been weighing on him for months, probably years. Maybe since that first day. The thing that would change everything, ruin everything.

“I’m in love with Eddie,” he blurts out in one word before devolving back into tears—big ugly gasps and full body shakes.

Chim, who had chosen that moment to walk into the living room with two waters, promptly turns back around.

“Oh, oh, Evan,” Maddie whispers, tightening her hold on his shoulders. “Buck, it’s gonna be okay.”

He shakes his head furiously.

“No, no it’s not, because I can’t keep being around him, but I don’t know how to stop. Being around him this much, like this, it’s driving me crazy, Maddie. I feel like I’m losing my mind, but it’s also everything I want, him and Chris, but it’s not okay, because it’s not mine, and fuck, I love him so much.

“I’ve never loved anyone like this,” he whispers. “And I’m gonna fuck it all up.”

Maddie shushes him, pulling him down so he can lay against her chest with his head tucked underneath her chin like he used to when he was little, and all he can do is sob and sob and sob, wetting the fabric underneath him as Maddie presses kisses into his hair and whispers soothing words that he can’t understand, but that comfort him all the same.

When he finally calms down, he draws away from Maddie and finds her staring down at him with an unreadable expression on her face.

“Buck,” she says softly. “Why do you think you’re gonna mess it up?”

“Because I mess everything up,” he responds, wiping at his face with his good hand. “And he doesn’t feel the same way, so I just need to learn to live with this, but I don’t know how.”

“How do you know?” She presses, and Buck laughs.

“He just doesn’t, Maddie,” he says, and her eyebrows tighten. “Trust me, things don’t work like that for me.”

He thinks back to the night before he broke up with Tommy. The night everything had felt so fragile, but also so full of hope. How Eddie had looked hovering over him, how he had really, really, thought that it was about to happen. How his chest had cracked open, and he hadn’t been able to pretend anymore. The way he resolved to break up with Tommy right then and there, no matter what happened. He remembers how it felt to realize that Eddie was drunk, that he probably had no idea what he was doing, or saying. How that had been confirmed by Eddie not remembering, and never acting that way again.

Until of course, the night before he fell.

But he doesn’t know what that was about. His memories are so tangled with how it felt to fall. To make that decision to cut the line, and everything that came after. He doesn’t know, and if Eddie wanted him, really wanted him, well, he was living in the guy’s house. He’s had plenty of opportunities, and he hasn’t done more than act like his nursemaid.

“I know Eddie doesn’t want me, Maddie,” he whispers. “And I just need to be okay with that."

Maddie’s face keeps doing something completely incomprehensible, eyebrows tight and mouth firmly pressed closed, but she relaxes eventually, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair.

“Okay,” she says. “So what do you wanna do? Is it too much, being there? You can always stay with us.”

Buck shakes his head. As much as it’s hurting him—tearing him apart a little more each day— he can’t leave them, not yet. That’s his family, his home, and he needs to appreciate every second of warmth he’s allowed to have.

“No,” he mutters. “It’s okay. I’ll be good to be on my own soon, and then I can move out.”

Maddie frowns. Buck assumes that it’s because she doesn’t like the idea of him living on his own right now, but then she says, “if that’s what you think is best, then okay. But I think you should talk to Eddie about it.”

Buck frowns too, searching Maddie’s face for an explanation.

“About moving out? Why?”

Maddie just shrugs, still carding her fingers through her hair.

“Because,” she says, and she has this look in her eye that Buck hasn’t seen in a long time. Like how she used to look at Buck across the dinner table when mom and dad said something cruel, and Buck could tell that she was already coming up with a plan to make him feel better. Like she knows something that he doesn’t, but that he’ll know soon.

“I think maybe things aren’t as set in stone as you think,” she continues cryptically. “And that at the very least, Eddie deserves to know why you’re leaving, after everything.”

“I can’t just tell him,” Buck gasps, horrified.

Maddie shrugs again, and it’s starting to infuriate him.

“Maybe you can,” she says, still with that impossible look in her eye. “Or at least some of it.”

Buck keeps staring at her with a horrified expression, and Maddie smiles.

“Eddie deserves to have a say in this, too,” she explains.

“I’ve already made him take on too much,” Buck responds. “I can’t make him deal with this, too.”

“Has he ever acted like it was too much?” Maddie asks, and Buck rolls his eyes.

“No, but—”

“No buts,” Maddie interrupts. “He loves you, Evan, and I’m not saying that it’s in the exact same way that you do, but he loves you, and when you love somebody that way, nothing is ever too much, okay? Not even this.”

Buck starts to protest, but she cuts him off again.

“When I ran away,” she starts, and Buck immediately goes silent, heart clenching like it does anytime he remembers that awful, empty period of his life. “I thought for sure that Howie would never forgive me. That I had had finally done it— found the thing that would break that sweet, caring man and drive him away forever.”

She takes a deep breath, and then locks eyes with Buck, small smile on her face.

“But I hadn’t. Because he loves me. Even before we got back together, he assured me that I was family. That there was nothing I could do to break that. Howie is my best friend—my family— before he’s anything else. And Eddie is yours. That man loves you, Evan. And you should give him more credit than you’re giving him right now.

“I’m not saying you have to tell him more than you want, but you should at least talk to him instead of just grabbing your stuff and running as soon as you can drive. You both deserve it.”

Buck sighs, feeling thoroughly reprimanded, but he nods, conceding her point, and Maddie’s smile widens like it always does when she’s right about something.

“I’ll try,” he groans, and she wraps him up in another hug.

He spends the rest of the day with Maddie, Chim, and Jee, and it loosens something in his chest. He was withdrawn, the whole time his jaw was wired, and he tries to make up for it now. He plays with Jee and jokes with Chimney, and towards the end of the afternoon, he feels the pull of the thread that keeps him tied to the Diaz house. It feels like wanting to go home, and he’s helpless to do anything but listen to it.

He texts Eddie asking for a ride back, and when he shows up, Maddie gives him a huge hug in the doorway. She fixes him with a look, and he ducks under her hard gaze. He walks out of her house with conviction. He’s going to talk to Eddie, be as honest as possible about this without ruining everything. And it’s going to be okay because, like Maddie said, he and Eddie love each other, even if it’s in different ways.

As soon as he gets in the car, and Eddie turns to him with a bright smile, the conviction evaporates out of his body. Eddie looks beautiful like this, bathed in the light of the setting sun, his hair soft and ungelled, his hands loose on the wheel. His eyes are honey gold, and Buck loves him. Buck loves him, and he can’t have him, and he doesn’t know what to do with the enormity of it all.

For now, he does what he always does, and he smiles back, melting at the way that Eddie’s own smile softens and his eyes light up. Eddie asks him about Maddie and Jee, and Buck tells him, and it’s so easy, and it’s so good, and Buck loves him.

Chapter Text

You know that love? That falling-to-your-knees love?

That where'd-the-water-go love? That

hold-me-close-I'll-never-leave-I-know-your-favorite-

coffee-creamer love? That what-we-talk-about-when-we-

talk-about-love love? You ever felt that? I mean,

really felt any of that? / Yeah, tell me again

how you feel it. Yeah, tell me again / how it fills

the chest, fills the head, fills the 

lungs. Tell me

again 

what it means to find God in your sock drawers. Tell me

again. 

-Michael Gray Bulla, I Think Love is Something that Happens to Other People

Something is wrong with Buck. Something is wrong with Buck, and Eddie doesn’t know what it is, or what to do about it and it’s driving him crazy.

It started that day at physical therapy, when Buck had asked to go to Maddie’s after. Eddie had told himself that it was a rough session, but even he didn’t really believe that. Now, it’s just getting worse. Eddie doesn’t know how to explain it, and so he can’t talk to anybody about it. It’s not necessarily something noticeable— a pattern or a specific thing that screams something is wrong. It’s just— it’s a look that Buck gets. A turn in the corner of his mouth, a tightness around his eyes. A look that emerges when he thinks no one is looking. He glances around like a cornered dog, and he draws his shoulders in like he’s trying to make himself smaller, no matter the size of the space. It’s brief, and when Eddie looks at him, it disappears as if it was never there. But Eddie sees it, and he can’t ignore it.

He wants to ask about it but also… isn’t sure if he should. Buck just almost died again, and is only at the beginning of a long, long journey, and he could maybe chalk it up to that, but he knows Buck, and he knows that isn’t it. But he also doesn’t want to add to his stress, or to make him feel corned when he’s already had so much autonomy taken from him.

Of course, it’s Chris that forces him to confront it.

“What’s wrong with Buck?” He asks bluntly on the way to school one day.

Eddie sputters.

“What do you mean?”

Chris just rolls his eyes, clearly not impressed with Eddie’s put-on obliviousness.

“You know what I mean,” he huffs. “He’s being weird. Quiet at dinner and he’s spending all that time with Maddie.”

“Maddie’s his sister,” Eddie responds dumbly.

“I know that,” Chris is getting more and more worked up, turning all the way in his seat to stare at him. “But he doesn’t usually go to her house almost every day for hours. Does he?”

Eddie shakes his head.

“And he should be glad that he got his wires out, and that his PT is going well and all of it! But he seems sad. Even worse than after the firetruck.”

Eddie whips his head to Chris before remembering to look back at the road.

“You remember that?”

“I was eight, Dad. Not two.”

“No, I know,” Eddie starts. “I just mean… you remember how he was?”

Eddie had tried to protect Chris from it, at the time. It was so soon after Shannon’s death, and he didn’t want Chris to have to see someone he loved, someone he regarded as something close to a hero, even before the tsunami, in such a rough state. But, as he’s being reminded again and again, Chris has always been more perceptive then he gives him credit for.

“He was depressed,” Chris answers simply.

Eddie just nods, throat too tight at the memory of Buck refusing to get out of bed, of him Maddie and Bobby working in shifts to go over to his apartment and making sure he was eating enough, not pushing himself too hard in PT. Of how much it hurt to watch him recover from all of that, only to cough up blood and have everything taken from him again. How Eddie had tried so hard to help him, but felt like he had nothing to offer after being hollowed out by Shannon’s death. How he had given him the only thing he had, the only thing that had kept him afloat during those months. How Buck had lightened up in Chris’ presence, and Eddie’s heart had loosened for the first time since that awful day in the street.

“But this is different,” Chris continues, unknowing or uncaring of Eddie’s turmoil. “I can tell.”

“I know,” Eddie finally relents. “You’re right, buddy, but I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Have you asked him?” Eddie can hear the eye roll in his voice as he asks. For a second he wants to scoff, explain how things are more complicated than that. But he stops himself, reminding himself that Chris knows. He knows how complicated things are, and how hard life can get, but he’s wiser than Eddie in a lot of ways, still young enough to not be hardened, but smart enough to know that sometimes it really is that simple.

“No,” Eddie admits, pulling up to Chris’ school.

Chris just looks at him, raising his eyebrows at him briefly before getting out of the car.

Eddie spends the drive home in silence, not even bothering to turn the radio on. Chris is right, he should just ask. He decides, right there, that if Buck is home when he gets there, which he should be because he’s pretty sure Maddie is working, he’ll do it.

He has no idea what to expect, but this is Buck. He loves him, even though he’s barely had a chance to think about that revelation through the whirlwind of his recovery. It’s just been there the whole time, an undercurrent to everything he did, leading him right towards Buck every time. Really not so different from how it’s been the entire time he’s known him.

When he gets home, he sees Buck’s Jeep in the driveway, and simultaneously feels relief, and undeniable dread at the prospect of talking to him. Buck had just been cleared to drive, and as far as Eddie knew, hadn’t tested it out yet. Eddie’s glad that he didn’t decide to try today.

When he walks into the house, it smells heavenly.

“Hey,” he calls out, following the noises he hears in the kitchen. When he crosses the entry, there’s Buck, working on what seems to be a metric ton of cookies.

“Hey,” he responds, not even turning to look at Eddie.

“What’re you making?” He asks, forcing his voice to sound casual.

“S’mores cookies,” Buck says, sounding all too casual himself. “Chris mentioned that he wanted to try them, and I kinda went down a rabbit hole trying to find the best recipe.”

At that moment, all of the tension leaves Eddie’s chest, replaced by overwhelming fondness. Whatever it is, they’ll be okay, he thinks—no, he knows. The same feeling from the car comes back, the knowledge that he loves Buck, this time along with the security that Buck loves him too, loves Chris, even if it’s not in the same way. They’ll be okay.

With this, he begins the conversation before he loses his nerve.

“So,” he starts, leaning against the counter. He sees Buck’s back tense up, but he continues. “I can’t help but notice that you’ve been a bit on edge lately, and I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

All he gets in response is a mumble from Buck, one he can’t distinguish.

“What?”

He’s rewarded with more silence, and resolves himself to just wait it out. It takes a while, but Buck relents.

“I think I should move out,” is what he finally says, spitting it all out in one word and turning around to face Eddie.

It takes Eddie a second to parse and then— then his brain is in overdrive. Any reassurance he had felt before is gone, replaced with dread at the thought of Buck being out of his reach. Again. His brain forces images of Buck lying at the bottom of that ravine at him, reminding him of the feeling of not being able to get to him, not being able to save him.

“Wha— What?” He chokes out, after seconds of silence, seemingly startling Buck, who immediately ducks his head and looks away, gaze landing somewhere to the right of Eddie’s head.

“I just,” Buck says, quietly, like he doesn’t want to disturb some silence. Like he’s not allowed to take up space in the kitchen that’s practically his own. “I’m better now, you know? I can walk and drive and— I’m fully okay to get myself to my appointments and cook for myself and—”

And that’s when Eddie realizes. Oh, he thinks, relief flooding through him as he realizes what this is about.

Buck is still rambling on about how capable he is of taking care of himself, how nobody needs to worry about him anymore, when Eddie cuts him off abruptly.

“Buck,” he says sharply. Buck snaps his eyes back to Eddie’s, but his head is still ducked slightly. He looks up at Eddie from under his eyelashes, looking like a dog that is just waiting, expecting, to be sent out to sleep in the cold.

The sight breaks Eddie’s heart, and he starts over, making his voice much softer this time, taking a step closer to Buck.

“Buck,” he says, ducking his head too to hold his gaze. “Do you really think that you’re not allowed to be here unless you’re hurt?”

Buck’s eyes widen, and he starts sputtering.

“No, no it’s not that I— I just don’t want to put you out, Eddie. I mean you’ve done so much for me, sticking with me through all of this. It’s a lot.”

He seems to consider this, before lifting his head to look Eddie in the eye, more determined than Eddie’s seen him this entire conversation.

“It’s too much. I’m too much.”

He says it like it’s an indisputable fact, like he’s telling Chris that the largest earthworm ever found was twenty-two feet long, or telling Maddie that he loves her.

“Jesus, Buck,” he responds, shaking his head and trying so, so hard to keep his voice level so that Buck doesn’t think that he’s mad at him.

Buck just looks at him, still wearing that spiky-strong determination on his face like a mask.

“If you wanna leave, you can leave, you don’t need to, like, ask me permission or something,” he begins, deciding to start somewhere safe. “You’re an adult, and if you say that you’re good to be on your own, I trust you.”

Buck takes this in, but it doesn’t do anything to make him look like he doesn’t have a gun held to his head, and somebody telling him to say things that he doesn’t mean as genuinely as he can muster.

“But,” he continues, equally determined now to make sure that Buck knows he’s allowed to stay, if he wants. Forever. “That doesn’t mean that you have to be. We want you here, Buck. You’re a part of this family and the only reason that I ever want you to leave is if you really, really want to. Not because you think you have to, or that you should.”

Buck just keeps staring, and maybe there’s a few cracks in the mask, but it’s still firmly in place. Eddie frowns. He really thought that was it— just Buck, like always, somehow not knowing that he belongs in places that have his love built into their foundations.

“I should, though,” he says. “Leave, I mean.”

“What? Why?” Eddie is genuinely lost now, completely out of his depth, and all he wants is to wrap Buck in a blanket and never let him leave again. He wants to fold him into his life even more than he already is, if that’s even possible. He wants to wipe that look off of his face with his lips, and he wants to go to sleep every night with Buck curled next to him.

“I can’t—” Buck starts, and cuts himself off with a strangled gasp. “I can’t have this. This isn’t mine.”

And finally, that look is gone from his face. But it’s not replaced with anything that Eddie wants to see. Instead, pure misery is left in its place.

“What do you mean? Of course you can have this!” He says it a little too frantically, a little too loud, but he needs Buck to understand.

Buck just looks at him with some twisted version of amusement on his face, like it’s somehow funny that Eddie doesn’t, or can’t, understand what he means.

“No, Eddie, I really can’t.”

He takes a step back, placing space back in between them. Impulsively, Eddie moves to chase after it, but stops himself. Buck takes a deep breath, closing his eyes, like he’s steeling himself for something.

When he opens his eyes, they’re dark, like he’s expecting to lose everything that he’s ever had, and is okay with it.

“This isn’t mine,” he says again. “Not in the way that I want it to be. And I thought that I could be okay with it but I— I can’t anymore. It’s too much, being here, being so, so close, but still not getting it.”

“We’re too much?” Eddie asks in a small voice, latching onto the only part of Buck’s words that he can comprehend.

“No!” Buck says, eyes almost pleading with Eddie to figure out what he means. “No, never. You guys are— God, you’re everything. I never thought that I would get to have this. But that’s the problem, okay? I— I messed up. I started believing that I could really have this. Do you see what I’m saying?”

Eddie shakes his head slightly, trying to figure out the distinction that Buck is trying to draw between what he already has and what he wants. He comes up blank.

Buck lets out a little groan, less like he’s annoyed at Eddie and more like he’s frustrated with himself.

“I didn’t want to have to— But I guess you should know.”

He says this like he’s deciding something. He looks down at his hands, nods to himself, and then looks back at Eddie.

“Do you remember what Bobby always says? About how having kids is like walking around with your heart outside of your chest?”

Eddie nods, mind running in overdrive trying to follow the turn that this conversation has taken.

“I— I feel that. When he said that I just thought, oh, that makes so much sense. But it doesn’t. Or— Or it does but it shouldn’t make so much sense to me. I don’t have kids. I don’t have a heart outside of my chest. Except that I do.

“Chris is— he feels like that. But I don’t get to just say that. I don’t get to just decide that something is mine.”

“But you can, Buck,” Eddie finally interjects, finding his voice again at the prospect that Buck isn’t allowed to think of Chris as his own. “You can think of Chris that way. I think of you two that way.”

That stops Buck right in his tracks. Eddie barrels on.

“You just have no idea, do you? How much you mean to that kid? How much you mean to me? Ever since Shannon died I’ve been trying so hard, so desperately, to be enough for Christopher, and to try to give him the idea of a family that I always had.

“But that was so, ridiculously stupid of me. Because you were there the whole time. I was looking all of these other places, trying to mold myself in all of these different ways, and the whole time, you were standing right there. You were helping me put him to bed, and cooking dinner for us, and coordinating your weekends around what park Chris wanted to check out. You’ve done as much for him as I have and—“

He holds up his hand, cutting Buck off in the middle of whatever self-deprecating, horrible thing he was about to say.

“Don’t tell me that it’s not true. It doesn’t mean that it’s in the same way, of course not. But that’s what being a parent means. No two parents are there for their kid in the same way. It doesn’t make either one of them not parents.

“If I can still be considered his dad, after missing out on so many years of his life, then why shouldn’t you? You never left him, not really. You’ve been there for him since the day you met him.”

During his entire monologue, Buck’s eyes have been slowly welling up with tears. When Eddie finally finishes he lets out a puff of air, and leans back against the counter, eyes trained on the floor.

When he finally speaks, it’s in this tiny, near-silent voice.

“Eddie I don’t—“ he clears his throat. “You have no idea how much that means to me. And I don’t know if I believe you, but I’m gonna try to be deserving of that. I promise. I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will,” Eddie says, matching his tone. “Now will you stop with all this and say that you’ll stay?”

Buck keeps his eyes trained on the floor while he slowly shakes his head.

“No,” he says in that awful voice that Eddie never wants to hear again. “No, I think that I should still leave.”

“Buck!” Eddie is exasperated now, with no clue how to reign this conversation in, how to make Buck stay.

“It’s not just Chris, Eddie,” Buck says, leaning all of his weight against the counter now. “I need to leave because it’s too much to be around you. I can’t keep staying here living out this fantasy when I know that one day you’re going to find a real partner, and I’ll still just be the best friend, and it’ll be over.”

“Buck what— what are you saying?”

“I love you, Eddie,” Buck says miserably, voice cracking in the middle. “I’m in love with you. And being around you like this, like everything I want but not quite, it’s killing me.”

“Oh,” is all Eddie can say.

“Yeah,” Buck chuckles lowly. “Oh.”

“You really do have selective hearing, don’t you?”

Buck lifts his head, cocking it slightly to the side.

“What did you think I meant by all that talk about missing out on what’s right in front of me? It’s not just about Chris for me either.”

Buck looks like he’s not breathing, and Eddie’s starting to get worried that if he doesn’t wrap this up the night will end with him performing CPR.

“Having you around this much, this way, has felt too good to be true for me too, Buck. I was going to tell you but I— I don’t know… I didn’t want you to be pressured while you were still recovering or something, and… I was scared.

“But I’m not scared now, Buck. If I had known how much this was hurting you I never would have waited so long to tell you.”

He takes a step closer, crowding into Buck’s space so that if he stands up straight from his rag doll position against the counter, they would be chest to chest.

“Don’t go,” it’s so simple, so easy to say now that he has Buck in front of him like this. He can’t believe he waited this long. That he was worrying about putting pressure on Buck or scaring him away when this whole time, it was what he needed to hear. He keeps doing that. He resolves to never wait too long to tell Buck anything ever again. “I never want you to leave. I want this family to be our family and I never want you to think that you don’t belong in it.”

“Don’t—” Buck starts, cuts himself off, and starts again. “Don’t say that if you don’t mean it. Don’t say that if you don’t mean it how I think you do.”

His eyes are big, pleading. Eddie takes his face in his hands and they snap to his.

“I mean it, Buck,” he says, trying to instill his voice with all of the love and devotion he feels. “Everything you want, you can have.”

Buck sucks in a breath, and leaves his mouth hanging slightly open, eyes searching Eddie’s face like he really doesn’t believe what he’s seeing.

“It’s yours,” he says it like a confession, like a promise. “I’m yours.”

“Eddie…” Bucks says, so lowly that Eddie wouldn’t hear it if he wasn’t inches away from his mouth.

“Can I prove it to you?” Eddie asks, feeling bold. He can see the hope in Buck’s eyes, sees it as a reflection of his own wanting that has been just under his skin for so long, longer than he even knew. He knows in this moment that he won’t ruin anything, because he knows Buck better than he knows himself, and now that he can see it, he doesn’t know how he ever didn’t.

Buck’s eyes go even wider, and he slowly nods, like he still doesn’t believe what’s happening but is finally starting to.

Eddie uses his hands on Buck’s face to finally, finally, bring their lips together, and Buck tastes like the cookies he baked, and the iced tea he had been sipping on, and the feeling of coming home after a long day and knowing that you don’t have to be anything but exactly what you are anymore.

It’s long, and lingering, and sweet, and when Eddie pulls away, Buck still has that awestruck look on his face.

“You mean this?” is all he asks, but it seems perfunctory, like he already knows the answer and just needs one final confirmation.

“I mean this,” he runs his hand further into Buck’s hair, coming to rest at the nape of his neck. “I’m in love with you, too. Have been forever.”

Buck nods again, and looks down, furrowing his brow slightly as he clearly tries to make sense of everything in his mind. Eddie reaches up and smooths the crease between his brow with his thumb, moving it over his left eyebrow to rub at the shock of pink that he’s always been so enamored with.

At that, Buck’s face finally relaxes, and he looks back at Eddie.

“Okay,” he says simply. And he wraps his arms around Eddie’s shoulders to bring him back in for a kiss.