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Eddie hadn’t been able to sleep well for years.
As a child, his insomnia had the shape of sin and smoke.
The priest’s sermons burned holes in his mind, filling it with the idea that a single glance —too long, too curious— could condemn him. So every night, when the house fell silent, Eddie would feel the flames rise under his skin. He’d toss and turn, whispering prayers he didn’t understand, terrified that God was watching, that his body would ignite just for looking at one of his classmates with too much warmth in his eyes.
As a teenager, sleep became an enemy with a familiar face.
It mocked him from the mirror, from the reflection of a boy whose body reacted the wrong way to a friend’s touch. He would stare at himself, eyes hollow, and think, who are you supposed to be? The more he tried to scrub the feeling away —the guilt, the confusion— the more it clung to him like sweat after a long run under the Texan sun. Night after night, his bed turned into a confessional of thoughts he couldn’t speak aloud.
Then came Afghanistan and the absence of sleep became a survival tactic.
He’d lie awake, staring at the makeshift ceiling of his tent, counting the seconds between heartbeats, between explosions, between one breath and the next. He told himself he was alert because soldiers needed to be, but deep down he knew the truth —he was afraid of what sleep might show him.
The faces of the men who didn’t make it.
The call that never came from Shannon.
The son growing up without his father.
The guilt that whispered that maybe, just maybe, dying over there would’ve been easier than coming home broken.
When he finally did come home, the insomnia followed. It wasn’t the war that kept him awake —it was Christopher.
The small body curled up in bed, the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. Eddie would watch him, terrified that if he closed his eyes, even for a second, he’d miss something. A sound, a breath, a sign. He memorized every detail —the way Chris wrinkled his nose when he was dreaming, how he mumbled nonsense before surrendering to sleep. Eddie didn’t dare blink.
The nights were too short to waste on rest.
Los Angeles was supposed to be a new beginning, but new beginnings don’t come with instructions. The city buzzed too loud, the air felt too different, and Eddie’s mind refused to shut off.
When he started at the 118, he couldn’t sleep for a whole other reason —because the station was full of people who seemed to know what they were doing, while he still felt like an imposter wearing borrowed confidence. The adrenaline kept him awake, the fear of messing up even more so.
And then life kept throwing its punches —Shannon’s death, Buck’s accident, the well, the gunshot, the futile attempts to patch over Christopher’s longing with mother figures who never fit. Each event peeled another layer off his ability to rest.
Sleep stopped being rest —it was confrontation. Every time he closed his eyes, he was dragged into the echo chamber of what-ifs and could-have-beens.
That’s why, for years, his mornings began the same way —with a desperate reach for coffee, the liquid stand-in for peace.
At least until Buck started staying over more often.
It began innocently —Buck on the couch, claiming it was closer to the kitchen, or that he wanted to help get Chris ready for school. But gradually, home stopped being a word with separate addresses. Eddie started noticing that the nights were quieter when Buck was there. That his breathing evened out when he could hear Buck’s from across the hall. That the house didn’t creak as much when two heartbeats shared its silence.
And then, one night, Eddie stood by his bedroom door.
“Don’t sleep on the couch, man. You’ll ruin your back.” He said, almost too casually.
Buck hesitated for half a second before following him in. No questions, no awkwardness —just that easy, instinctive trust that had always existed between them.
“Did you know dolphins sleep with one eye open?”
Buck’s voice floated through the dimness, soft and lazy, as if carried by the air itself.
He sat propped against the headboard, his phone screen casting fleeting glimmers across his face. The faint light from the hallway slipped through the half-closed door, tracing his profile with a soft golden hue —his jaw, the curve of his lips, the small furrow between his brows when he read something that made him think.
Eddie stirred, the words barely reaching through the heavy fog of sleep. His head sank deeper into the pillow, the sheets tangled around his legs. A small smile ghosted across his mouth before his eyes even opened.
“What’s that about?” he asked, his voice trailing between drowsiness and calm, a voice that belonged only to the quiet hours —low, rough-edged, real.
Buck’s chuckle broke the silence; it was that low, warm sound Eddie had come to recognize —the prelude to something both ridiculous and oddly endearing.
“You’re like a dolphin, Eds,” Buck murmured, tilting his head, still half-focused on the light from his screen. “You’ve been sleeping with one eye open your whole life. Watching. Guarding. Never letting yourself rest completely.”
The words drifted through the room, gentle but weighted, and Eddie felt them settle somewhere deep in his chest. He huffed a laugh, a small snort that was meant to sound dismissive but instead came out tired —truth clinging stubbornly beneath it.
He didn’t need to say Buck was right. Buck always was, when it came to him.
“Well, my eye keeps closing on its own lately,” Eddie replied after a moment, his voice softer, his body sliding a little further down the mattress, instinctively closer to the warmth radiating from Buck’s legs. His tone carried a hint of something that wasn’t quite gratitude, not quite surrender. “It must be your fault.”
Buck grinned, lowering his phone just enough to look at him.
“My fault?” he repeated, pretending to sound offended, though his hand had already found its familiar place in Eddie’s hair, fingers combing through it in slow, aimless circles. “I just exist, and you decide to use me as a human heater.”
The rhythmic motion of Buck’s hand was hypnotic, like the ocean’s ebb against the shore —steady, grounding. Eddie let out a quiet chuckle, lifting one hand to tap Buck’s leg before leaving it there, as if his body had chosen the spot deliberately and refused to move.
“Don’t complain,” he murmured into his pillow, his words slurred with sleep. His fingers gave Buck’s leg a small squeeze. “You love an excuse not to move for hours.”
Buck tilted his head, eyes softening as he looked down. Eddie’s breathing was already beginning to even out, his chest rising and falling with the calm rhythm of someone who —finally, impossibly— felt safe.
“Yeah,” Buck whispered, his voice barely audible. “I love it.”
Silence followed, but it wasn’t empty.
It was the kind that draped itself over them like a blanket, soft and weightless.
The kind that didn’t demand conversation but hummed quietly with everything unspoken between two people who had long since run out of need for words. The world outside the room could have been burning, and neither would have noticed.
Eddie turned slightly, his face half-buried in the pillow. His eyes stayed closed, but his voice came out in a faint murmur.
“Did you know you talk a lot when you can’t sleep?”
Buck smiled —the kind of smile that was half sheepish, half nervous, the kind that came from being caught in the act of caring too much.
“Yeah? Well, someone has to keep the conversation going, since you always fall asleep in the middle of the story.”
Eddie’s lips curved into a sleepy grin. He shifted closer, the space between them narrowing until his head found that perfect place between the pillow and Buck’s body —where warmth met steadiness.
“Maybe because your stories are boring,” he mumbled, teasing, though his words were already dissolving into the slow drag of sleep.
“Hey!” Buck’s protest came quick but softened when he saw Eddie’s expression —eyes fluttering, a faint smile still tugging at the corner of his lips. That small, peaceful curve did something to him, something Buck didn’t have a name for. His chest felt too tight, too full, as he watched Eddie drift —safe, content, unguarded.
He lowered his voice instinctively, not wanting to disturb the fragile quiet that had settled around them.
“Good night, Eds.”
From the borderlands of sleep, where dreams and reality blurred into something warm and endless, Eddie’s reply came in a low murmur, as if pulled from somewhere deep within him.
“Good night, Buck.”
And that night Eddie slept without interruptions. No nightmares. No jolts awake. No ghosts of war, or guilt, or loss pacing in the dark corners of his mind.
Because for the first time in years, he wasn’t afraid to close his eyes.
He knew, without having to think about it, that someone else was awake enough for both of them.
Just like the nights Buck stayed home, those little bedtime conversations had begun to take on a life of their own.
What once were fragments —half-spoken words drifting in the dark— had started to bloom into something deeper. They weren’t just passing time anymore, they were learning each other through the language of quiet.
It had started with small things.
A murmured comment about the day.
An observation about the sound of the rain against the window.
Jokes told half asleep.
Their voices filled the space between heartbeats, soft and unguarded, while the rest of the world slept outside their four walls.
Tonight was one of those nights.
The air in the room was still, heavy with that rare, shared peace that only ever existed after the chaos of long shifts and longer silences. The lamp on the nightstand was off, leaving only the faint glow of Buck’s phone screen to paint fleeting light over the sheets, over his jaw, over the mess of curls falling across his forehead.
“Did you know the Milky Way smells like raspberries?” Buck said suddenly, the words spilling out in that distracted, offhanded tone of someone sharing an absurd secret with the universe.
His thumb kept idly swiping across the screen, as if the statement had come out of nowhere —like a shooting star appearing in the middle of a dream.
Eddie stirred, half-asleep, half-listening, his body naturally leaning more against Buck than against the mattress. The warmth of him was grounding —his steady breathing, his heartbeat beneath Eddie’s ear.
He lifted his head just enough to meet Buck’s eyes, their color muted by the dim light, before surrendering back against his shoulder.
“How do you know that?” Eddie murmured, his voice deep and drowsy, dissolving into the kind of tone that only existed in the soft hours before dawn.
“I don’t know. I read it. Or maybe I dreamed it,” Buck replied, shrugging, as if there were no real difference between a scientific fact and something his mind might have conjured at three in the morning.
Eddie’s lips curved into a small, sleepy smile.
It was ridiculous, of course it was —but that was what he loved about Buck. The way he could take something absurd and make it sound like a possibility. Like something worth believing in.
He let out a soft laugh, that barely-there sound that vibrated against Buck’s neck as he shifted closer. The scent of him —soap, smoke, something faintly metallic from the station— anchored Eddie in the moment, pulling him further from the edge of his sleepless thoughts.
“You definitely dreamed it,” he said, his voice muffled against Buck’s skin, warm with amusement. A yawn slipped out before he could stop it, his body sinking heavier into the mattress, into him.
Buck chuckled softly, the sound low in his chest, and reached out to brush a hand through Eddie’s hair. His fingers lingered at the nape of his neck, tracing idle patterns there —gentle, unhurried, like a lullaby without sound.
“Well,” Buck whispered after a beat, his tone softer now, more deliberate. He tilted his face slightly, just enough that his lips brushed against Eddie’s forehead in a ghost of a kiss. “Then promise me that someday we’ll go smell the universe.”
The absurdity of it made Eddie’s chest tighten —not with laughter this time, but with something else. Something tender and sharp and impossible to name.
Because only Buck could say something like that and make it sound like a promise worth keeping.
Eddie laughed softly, that rare laugh that only Buck could pull from him —the one that came from deep inside, not the polite kind he used at work or with strangers. It was quieter than a whisper, more dream than sound, and yet it filled the room like light.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he let the laughter fade against Buck’s collarbone, breathing in, breathing out, memorizing the rhythm of it. His mind, usually crowded with what-ifs and guilt and ghosts of the past, felt strangely still.
’Maybe the universe doesn’t smell like raspberries,’ Eddie thought drowsily, ‘but maybe it feels like this.’
Like warmth.
Like Buck’s voice in the dark.
Like the quiet certainty that, for once, he didn’t need to keep one eye open.
“Yeah… okay. Someday.” He murmured smiling into Buck’s shoulder, almost too softly to hear.
And Buck’s arm tightened around him just slightly, as if sealing a pact neither of them knew how to name.
Outside, the night pressed against the windows, vast and silent and full of stars —while inside, two men lay in the dark, inventing constellations between them.
Another night, exhaustion settled over them like a heavy blanket.
It wasn’t the kind that could be fixed by sleep —it was the kind that came from carrying too much for too long. Both of them had spent the day in the field, their bodies aching from the calls, their minds frayed at the edges.
By the time they made it to Eddie’s bed, neither had the strength to pretend anymore.
There was no distance tonight, no careful arrangement of limbs. They were tangled before they even realized it, their breathing syncing with the steady rhythm of the ceiling fan. The room was dim, the world reduced to warmth and heartbeat and quiet.
And maybe it was that exhaustion, that raw closeness, that tore the last of their walls down —because when Buck spoke, his voice wasn’t the usual shade of lightness he used to hide behind. It was low, weighted, the kind of tone people only use when they’re too tired to lie.
“Sometimes,” he began, his words barely breaking the silence, “when the loft is too quiet… I feel the past coming back.”
Eddie stayed still, only his breath moving against Buck’s shoulder. Buck’s voice trembled, not from fear, but from honesty.
“It’s like—” Buck hesitated, searching for words. “Like it fills the rooms, you know? The echoes. The kind of quiet that reminds you of everything you didn’t have.”
His hand kept tracing slow lines along Eddie’s back, fingertips moving in circles that didn’t seem to have an end or a beginning.
Sometimes, the touch pressed a little harder, as if he were reminding himself that Eddie was real, solid, alive —that he wasn’t alone in some cold apartment full of memories.
Eddie could feel the tension beneath that gentle movement —the ghosts hiding under Buck’s skin. The little boy who had waited by the window for parents who never came home. The man who had built a life out of helping others while quietly forgetting how to take care of himself.
So Eddie listened.
Silent, still, the way he wished someone had listened to him once.
His fingers rested against the soft fabric of Buck’s T-shirt, feeling the slow rise and fall of his chest. His hand sank slightly, pressing into the warmth of him in a wordless answer. I’m here.
Buck’s voice softened, almost hesitant.
“What do you do when your past screams at you?”
He didn’t look at Eddie as he asked it. The question hovered in the dark between them, fragile and dangerous, like a match waiting to be struck. His hand stopped moving —as if afraid he’d gone too far, as if bracing for Eddie to pull away.
But Eddie didn’t.
He took a slow breath, feeling the weight of the question settle deep inside. Then, with the kind of gentleness that came only after years of learning to control his own strength, he slid his hand down Buck’s side. The tips of his fingers followed the curve of his ribs, not to soothe, but to anchor.
He pulled him a little closer before answering.
“I let it scream,” he said quietly. The words were rough, pulled from somewhere deep and old.
There was a pause —long enough for Buck to almost miss the rest.
“But I don’t answer anymore.”
He nuzzled his face against Buck’s shoulder, breathing him in. It was grounding. Real.
Silence followed again, the kind that didn’t need to be filled. The kind that said I heard you, without needing proof.
Then Buck shifted —a rustle of sheets, a soft exhale— until his arms were around Eddie, holding him close. Their legs tangled somewhere beneath the blanket.
The air between them thickened, not with tension but with something warmer, deeper, unspoken.
Eddie’s thoughts drifted, slow and quiet.
He realized he wasn’t used to being held like this —not out of duty, not as comfort for someone else, but simply because. He’d spent so long being the protector that he’d forgotten what it felt like to be the one someone wanted to protect.
This is what safety feels like, he thought, surprised by the realization. Not silence, not solitude. Just this.
Buck’s breath brushed against the side of his neck, steady, grounding.
And in that fragile stillness, the room filled with something thicker than darkness —something warm, steady, unnamed.
It wasn’t love yet, not in the way either of them had learned to define it. But it was close enough to make the air hum.
Maybe it was the promise of it.
Or maybe it had always been there, just waiting for both of them to stop running long enough to notice.
Another night found them in the same place —the bed barely big enough for the two of them, the room dim and quiet, filled with that kind of stillness that only appears after the world outside has fallen asleep. The city’s noise barely reached them,all that remained was the soft hum of the fan and the lazy rhythm of their breathing.
Eddie was on his side, facing Buck, half-draped over him in that way that had become second nature. Buck’s arm was looped around his back, fingers tracing idle shapes that left trails of warmth on his skin through the thin fabric of his T-shirt.
Their conversations always started the same way —small, harmless comments that grew into something bigger without them noticing.
Tonight, it was about Christopher.
They talked about how much he’d grown, how his laugh seemed to fill every corner of the house. How he’d developed a sharp sense of humor, quick and unfiltered, that made Buck laugh until he couldn’t breathe. How he’d gotten so popular lately that he practically disappeared from home most evenings, his phone buzzing every few minutes with messages from friends.
Eddie spoke softly, a mix of pride and melancholy lacing his voice.
“Sometimes I blink and he’s taller. Smarter. Kinder. It’s like he just… skipped a few steps. I used to have to tell him everything —now he tells me how to handle things.”
Buck chuckled at that, his fingers still tracing along Eddie’s back.
“Yeah, he’s definitely your kid. The whole serious face, that little sigh he does when he thinks you’re being ridiculous—”
“He gets that from you,” Eddie interrupted, though there was no bite in his tone. His lips curved into a small, amused smile, but his eyes softened when he said it.
Buck laughed quietly, the sound low and familiar in the dark.
“Nah. He’s you through and through. I just got lucky enough to tag along for the ride.”
Eddie wanted to say something to that, but words often failed him when it came to Buck —when it came to the way he’d walked into their lives and quietly stitched himself into the seams of it, until Eddie couldn’t imagine what home used to sound like without him.
For a moment, their voices faded, replaced by the rhythm of the night —the fan spinning above them, the sheets rustling as they shifted slightly closer. Buck’s thumb brushed slow circles against Eddie’s ribs, a touch that felt more like reassurance than habit.
Then, in the middle of that silence, Buck’s voice came again —softer now, uncertain.
“Hey…” He stopped short, licking his lips, his gaze flickering down toward Eddie.
Eddie lifted his head, his mind still half-asleep, and looked up at him through heavy lashes.
“Something happen?” he asked, his voice rough and low, more instinct than curiosity.
Buck shook his head, but his eyes gave him away —that same look he got when something was too big to fit into words.
“Nothing,” he whispered. Then, lowering his head just slightly toward Eddie, he exhaled a breath that trembled at the edges. “Just… thanks for letting me be a part of it.”
The words landed softly, but their weight hit Eddie like a wave.
For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He watched Buck’s face —open, sincere, so painfully earnest— and something in him ached, deep and familiar.
Because Buck didn’t see it.
He didn’t see that he wasn’t just a part of it.
He was it.
Eddie swallowed hard, feeling the tightness in his throat. His chest constricted with all the things he wanted to say but couldn’t —how Christopher’s laughter had grown louder because Buck was there, how the house had become lighter, how he had become lighter.
How the silence after a long shift didn’t hurt anymore because Buck filled it.
He wanted to tell him that Buck wasn’t just another presence in their lives; he was the pulse of it. The gravity that kept everything from spinning apart.
But the words were too big, too dangerous to name in the stillness of the night.
So instead, Eddie sighed —slow, careful— and pressed his face into Buck’s chest. The steady thump of Buck’s heart filled his ears, grounding him, calming the storm in his head.
“Thanks to you for staying,” he murmured, his voice barely audible.
His fingers curled slightly against Buck’s shirt, a silent plea to hold on.
That was how Eddie said the things he couldn’t. Through weight, through warmth, through quiet.
Buck didn’t answer, but his arm tightened around him, the gesture speaking louder than any words could. His fingers traced once more over Eddie’s back, slower now, until their breathing fell into rhythm again.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full —full of everything they hadn’t said, full of everything they already knew.
Eddie stayed like that, listening to the soft heartbeat beneath his ear.
He thinks he’s just a part of it, he thought, eyes fluttering closed. But he’s the reason it exists at all.
The darkness around them thickened into warmth, wrapping them both in a wordless understanding —something heavier than comfort, lighter than confession.
Something that, if either of them had dared to name it, might have sounded an awful lot like love.
The nights kept unfolding between them like pages from the same book —full of quiet companionship, shared warmth, and the kind of peace that only exists when two people stop pretending they aren’t searching for the same thing.
Sometimes they talked for hours, words spilling softly into the dark.
Those conversations could be heavy, touching the raw parts of their pasts —the things they never said aloud, the wounds they had learned to live with. But somehow, when they said them to each other, those wounds didn’t sting as much. They were met with quiet understanding, with gentle hands and the kind of touch that said I’ve been there too.
Other nights, their voices drifted without purpose.
They’d talk about movies, food, or things that made no sense just to hear each other laugh, to fill the space with something lighter. Sometimes they didn’t talk at all —just breathed in sync, letting the silence do the speaking for them.
And then came the night when the rain returned.
It wasn’t a storm —just that steady, whispering drizzle that made everything feel softer, slower. The world outside blurred through the window, streetlights melting into streaks of gold and gray.
Eddie lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, tracing invisible shapes against the sheets with restless fingers.
Sleep refused to find him.
His body was still, but his mind… his mind was chaos.
Beside him, Buck’s voice filled the space, low and animated, pulling him from the edge of his thoughts. He was talking about one of his new obsessions —a documentary about sharks, of all things. Something about migration patterns, feeding habits, how their skin was made up of tiny tooth-like scales.
It was typical Buck —passionate, overflowing, his words tumbling one over another in excitement. And Eddie tried to listen, he really did. But somewhere between “apex predator” and “countershading camouflage,” he stopped hearing words at all.
He just looked at him.
At the curve of Buck’s lips when he smiled mid-sentence. At the way his hands moved when he explained something —always too big, too expressive, too Buck. The dim light of the room turned his features soft, golden, almost unreal. His eyelashes cast faint shadows on his cheeks. His eyes —bright even in half-darkness— seemed to hold everything Eddie had ever needed and never dared to ask for.
And something inside him finally clicked into place.
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t brave.
It just was.
Before he knew it, Eddie pushed himself up slightly, placing his hands on either side of Buck’s body, hovering close enough to feel the warmth of his breath. For a split second, he hesitated —heart pounding, lungs too tight— and then he leaned down.
The kiss was clumsy, uncertain, unbearably tender.
Their lips met softly, almost afraid of breaking something. A brush at first —testing, trembling— then a sigh that wasn’t one or the other but both. The sound was soft, fragile, and then… silence. The kind of silence that swallows the world whole.
Eddie could feel Buck’s heartbeat beneath his palm, wild and uneven, matching his own. He could taste the faint sweetness of coffee still lingering on Buck’s lips, could feel the warmth of his breath ghosting against his cheek.
When they pulled apart just an inch, Buck didn’t move away. He just stared at him, eyes wide, searching, lips parted as if he’d forgotten how to speak.
“Did you know…” Buck began, voice unsteady, a shy smile breaking through.
Eddie huffed a quiet laugh, his forehead still pressed against Buck’s.
“If you come up with another weird fact, I’ll kiss you to death.”
Buck’s grin deepened, nervous and electric all at once.
“Then shut me up.”
Eddie didn’t think twice. He leaned in again, and this time there was no hesitation, no fear. Just want —deep, dizzying want.
They didn’t speak again that night.
They didn’t need to.
Because in the rhythm of their breaths and the rain against the glass, in the heat between their bodies and the way they fit together as if they’d always known how —their last late night talks said it all.