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“You don’t miss me.”
Eddie goes still in the midst of restocking an already stocked ambulance. He’s not trying to convince Hen of anything this time. He’s just learned he can’t survive in Buck’s space knowing he’s no longer welcome in it, let alone wanted. Can’t survive watching Buck, out of the corner of his eye, pull away from Eddie to avoid touching him. Once upon a time Eddie and Buck would do the restocking together, working without words unless it’s a day they fit. Those days usually coincide with clipboard Buck making an appearance, because Eddie can tell he sometimes needs a list full of lines cutting words in half in order to feel settled in his own skin.
Once upon a time, Eddie wouldn’t feel so wretchedly lonely that he’d rather sit in the ambulance alone, occupying his hands to occupy his mind—even if he can’t help but carry on an imaginary conversation with Buck, question and answer, reciting Buck’s little pneumonic devices for medical items in his head.
But now the ambulance is Eddie’s space. Everything is changing, and nothing he’s tried has fixed it, and after a point he decided it was something he would never be able to make better. It’s why he knows it’s something he’s done, something he’s completely unaware of but has been brewing inside Buck for too long. And if Buck needs to remove the pot from the burner—needs to get away from Eddie—to make the water calm, so be it. If that’s what Buck needs from him this time, no matter how much it hurts, Eddie will give it to him. There is very little he can say no to when it comes to Buck.
Maybe Buck simply blames Eddie for not being there when Bobby died. It doesn’t seem like something Buck would think, but then, Eddie’s not sure he knows him anymore.
It’s why, when Buck says that, Eddie turns slowly toward him there on the station floor, framed perfectly centered by the open doors, as if he calculated exactly where he wanted to stand before he approached. And Eddie could say, “What?” Could ask for clarification, to see if Buck retracts what he’s blurted out. Could give Buck an easy out by saying, “No, I don’t.” Could continue to provide what Buck has asked for and assuage his guilt in one fell swoop.
But what Buck’s just said sounds like an accusation, and Eddie can feel the anger he’s kept locked up so tight inside his chest suddenly come to life, a fire fed tinder. And he’s suddenly just . . . exhausted. Exhausted by the song and dance. Exhausted by trying to pretend he doesn’t hurt like a bullet wound, doesn’t ache like his back after too many nights on the couch. (He and Buck never shared a bed when Buck lived with them. The bed feels too empty anyway.)
So when Buck says, “You don’t miss me,” Eddie says, “Yes, I do,” and watches surprise bloom on Buck’s face. And the fact Buck thought Eddie wouldn’t miss him, wouldn’t feel his absence like a phantom limb, like a promise broken, is frankly more upsetting than the absence of every touch. Eddie had thought Buck knew him like the back of his hand. Knew how important he is in not only Eddie’s life, but Chris’s. How important he is to Eddie.
Because maybe he’s got this paramedic thing down, and maybe he enjoys working with Hen. But it doesn’t mean he doesn’t miss how things used to be. Eddie came back to an LA that doesn’t have Bobby, and apparently also to an LA that doesn’t have Buck.
And it hurts. It hurts so much that, some nights, he sits on the floor of his bedroom for hours, hand pressed to his mouth to keep from waking Chris up, reliving the moment he got the call, and wants to spread the hurt. Wants to make someone else carry it, even if just for a little while, to ease the load off his own shoulders. And he hopes, desperately, that Buck will take some of the burden. Will help keep Eddie afloat.
He always used to, and Eddie’s just too fucking tired to let this go.
So he says, “Yes, I’ve missed you,” and watches Buck’s shoulders slump even as Eddie’s suddenly feel a little lighter. Not by much—that’s only a tiny fraction of everything he wants to say to Buck, to tell him—but enough to feel the difference.
And it’s that lost weight that makes it easy enough to take a breath and say, “I miss you so much I’m half-tempted to sell my house just so I can ask you for a place to stay until I find a new one. So screw you for thinking I don’t.”
And Buck looks like Eddie just leapt out of the back of the ambulance in an alien costume again. Eddie turns away, digging through a cardboard box without even registering its contents.
“Eddie,” Buck says, and stops there. His shoes squeak on the floor. There’s a rustle of fabric, like he’s just folded his arms over his chest. But he doesn’t say anything more.
“If that’s meant to be an apology, I do not accept it.” Eddie’s fingers close around a spare resuscitator and he closes his eyes. He can’t look at Buck right now and hope to not lose it in the middle of a damn twenty-four they’re only four hours into. “I’ll do anything you want, Buck, but I won’t . . . lie to myself. Won’t hide what I’m feeling. You don’t get to ask that of me, not when it’s taking everything I have to just keep it fucking together until you’ve finally decided you’re done trying to push me out and asking for space without giving—”
“I didn’t ask you for space.”
Eddie scoffs. “Right, of course not. No, you just decided you’d take it—without even talking to me first. Without letting me ask why you need it and then trying to help.” He squeezes the bag, listening to air hiss in and out, in and out. “Didn’t realize I’d lost you right alongside Bobby while I was in El Paso. But it’s what you want, and I learned long ago I can literally not deny you anything, so I’m just—”
The sound of a boot on metal cuts him off, and then he’s being shoved away, deeper into the ambulance, his hip hitting the gurney, and the doors are swinging shut. It’s far from dark in here, but it’s a decent enough suggestion of it that his senses seem to heighten, to the point he’s not sure if it’s his own heartbeat he hears or Buck’s. And he can smell him, that warm, citrusy scent that always calls to mind nights on the couch, feet kicked up on the coffee table close enough that every so often their ankles brush. It smells like nostalgia, like a thing he’ll never get back. It doesn’t feel like he appreciated it enough until it was suddenly gone, because he didn’t even realize it could be taken away from him at all.
He looks away, even when Buck moves closer.
“You don’t miss me,” Buck says, and Eddie squeezes the bag again, the hiss of air overloud. “You can’t miss me.”
“What did I literally just say, Buck?”
“But you’re—you’re fine. You’re laughing with Hen, and going to the movies with her, and reading her fucking mind like you used to do—”
When he cuts himself off, Eddie slowly turns his head to face him. He knows every expression Buck is capable of making. This one screams of something lost, like a kid watching his balloon float off into the sky, never to return.
“Are you serious?” Eddie asks.
“I—er, yes.” Buck looks away. “It’s—I mean, obviously you’re friends, but it’s . . . You don’t even tell me you’re doing those things with her. Before, you’d at least invite—”
The bag hisses again. Eddie chucks it into the box and folds his arms over his chest, tucking his hands out of sight. “Why the hell would I have? You’re the one who wanted space, Buck, not me.”
“I didn’t want space!”
“Could’ve fooled me! Why else would you have moved out, huh? Why else would you start dodging my calls? Why else would I have to dangle Chris’s name in front of you to get you to come over for a single dinner? Why else would you”—he’s stepping forward before he even knows he’s going to, jabbing his finger into Buck’s face, a mirror to a night that felt too fraught, a night that Eddie thought he’d found a way to help mend only to realize his efforts amounted to nothing, that Buck was yet another person he’d failed—“do everything short of walking around in a plexiglass box to avoid even touching me? I know what it looks like when someone needs space, so don’t put words in my mouth to suit your story.”
And they’re standing close. Close enough that Eddie can feel the heat of Buck’s body, feel every single one of Buck’s breaths curl against his chin. He watches Buck’s eyes flick back and forth between his, and then down at the hand Eddie didn’t realize he’d fisted in his shirt. Eddie yanks his hand away, resisting the overwhelming desire to smooth out the wrinkles on Buck’s chest. To seek out Buck’s heartbeat, the one Eddie once knew as well as his own. The one Eddie would give anything to memorize again.
But he meant what he said. If Buck needs space, and that’s the only thing Eddie can give him, he’ll give it. No matter how much it hurts.
“I’m not moving away from you now, Eddie,” Buck says, quiet, and it’s not said unkindly, but Eddie feels it like a barb all the same.
“Well good for you,” Eddie sneers, but when he moves to step past Buck and leave this too-small space behind, Buck’s hand snaps out, palm flat to Eddie’s chest, not grabbing him but making sure Eddie feels it, and it knocks a breath from Eddie’s lungs. He’s wrapping a hand around Buck’s wrist before he can stop himself, but not to drag his hand away. To hold it there, to make sure he doesn’t let go. And he can feel Buck’s pulse, his fingertips pressed to his radial artery, every expansion of it with each beat of his heart. It’s fast—faster than Eddie knows it usually is. He wonders if Buck can feel Eddie’s race, too.
“I didn’t—” Buck’s gaze fixes on where his hand lays flat to Eddie’s chest, and his fingers flex, brows twitching. He sucks in a shaky breath, then meets Eddie’s gaze. “I didn’t realize that’s what it felt like. Losing Bobby and—and me.”
Eddie scoffs, though the sound gets tangled in his throat. “Clearly.”
“Just thought you needed space from me. Thought I was t-too much.”
“For me?”
Buck audibly swallows, and then he jerks a nod. “Yeah.”
Eddie feels his mouth drop open. “Did I make you think that?”
“No, it’s . . .” He drops his gaze back to Eddie’s chest. Eddie felt the thud of his own heartbeat, too, battering against his ribcage as if it hopes to free itself. To splat on the floor in all its raw, bloody gore and make Buck look at it for longer than a second. Maybe then he’ll realize what he means to Eddie. Maybe then he’ll stop telling himself that Eddie needs anything less than the full summation of one Evan Buckley.
“Buck,” Eddie says, “you’re my—you matter to me, you dummy, why would I think you’re too much?” and Buck squeezes his eyes shut for a count of three, then pries them open to meet Eddie’s gaze. There’s still tension in his shoulders, still a little weariness in his gaze, but Eddie can see him trying. And it shakes the fear loose from Eddie’s chest.
So when Buck says, “I’m babysitting Jee and Robert Nash tomorrow night,” it’s the last thing Eddie expects, but he’s nodding before Buck can even finish asking: “You wanna come over to help? J-just you and—and me.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, and he smiles, dragging his fingers from Buck’s wrist to the back of Buck’s hand, and he laces their fingers and squeezes, just once. Whatever this is between them is nowhere near fixed, but at least it’s no longer wholly broken. And yeah, he already had plans with Hen tomorrow night, but he knows she’ll be relieved to not have to listen to him mention Buck at least once every minute. She certainly won’t miss him breaking the no phones rule at the movie theatre so he can jot down shark facts he hopes he’ll one day get to share with Buck. “I’d like that, Buck.”
And Buck smiles, too, and squeezes Eddie’s fingers back. Just once.