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Buck’s lying on his back on the floor of the living room, surrounded by the detritus of a successful night babysitting, and he’s crying.
Hen and Karen have picked up the last of the kids and Chris is crashed in his bedroom, exhausted from an afternoon and evening with a house full of kids who aren’t his cousins, but close enough. And Buck is left with paint on his cheeks and ketchup on his shirt and a raw hole behind his ribs.
It’s quiet now, but echoes of bright laughter still ring in Buck’s ears. Denny and Chris rolling their eyes at Buck when he tells them no video games for the day, until they discover the new (and very expensive) Lego sets Buck purchased for them for just this occasion. Mara teaching Jee-Yun watercolor painting with the workbooks Hen had left with them between movies and snacks, leaving blotches of color on the towels Buck set out to project the furniture. Robby’s happy little gurgles when Buck joins him for some well-deserved tummy time.
It had been a really, really good day.
And now Buck’s crying and that’s how Eddie finds him, on his back with hot tear tracks sliding down his temples into his hair.
“Whoa what happened?” Eddie asks, rushing around the couch to Buck. The coffee table’s been pushed aside to the fireplace; thick paper with paintings and drawings of flowers and clouds and stick people lay strewn about the room.
Buck swallows and it’s a thick, choked sound in the now-quiet house. “Bobby should be babysitting, not me.”
It’s harder to say the words looping through his rapid-fire mind than it should be.
Eddie’s shoulders relax a fraction, and he slowly sits down on the floor near Buck’s head, leaning back against the couch.
Buck hasn’t cried since the lab, since he broke his vocal cords against his pain in a dark tunnel, alone with no one to hear him split apart. When he finally came back out into the world, eyes red with burst blood vessels, he felt stripped dry of tears, drained and threadbare. A wrung-out wash cloth.
Over the months, he’s been through denial, anger, bargaining, depression. Barreling his way through headfirst. They were old friends of his anyway, and he met them with raging familiarity.
But acceptance danced out of his reach, around a sharp corner and out of sight.
“You’re great at this,” Eddie offers. “The kids all love you.”
Buck scoffs. He doesn’t mean to, but he does. Denial refusing to go quietly.
“Hey,” Eddie chides. “You’re great with them. You’ve been – Chris loves you.”
Babysitting isn’t hard. Buck finds the kids easy to be around, even the babies, whatever jokes Chim likes to make about them having the same mental age. The kids are all id – instinct and impulse before building the cage of the superego. Their needs are simple: food, water, sleep, safety, security. Buck can provide that, he’s good at providing and caring. He can give them dinner and wrap them in blankets and keep them entertained with stories and toys until their parents pick them up. Until he gives them back and becomes just Buck again.
But Bobby could provide that 10-fold, and more.
As much as he complained, he never much minded being man behind during Halloween at the station, handing out candy and safety tips to smart-ass kids. He liked meeting them where they were, matching middle-school snark with 30-something insight.
But Bobby knew it was what he needed at the time, not to be out on the engine running calls with the team. Because Bobby knew him even when he didn’t want to know himself.
Buck puts his hand on his sternum, gives pressure. “It feels incomplete.”
Six months later and something’s still missing – at the station, in the engine, in the kitchen. Inside of Buck. His own father is still alive, and it doesn’t matter because that’s not the point. It’s not what he needs. And maybe if he could start to find acceptance, he could close the gap between the him before and the him now. But he can’t.
“You feel incomplete,” Eddie observes, so kindly it hurts.
Another wash of tears burns down his face, ungovernable. Buck sucks in a breath, his nose feels hot, his lips swollen. There’s probably a lot of snot. He’s pretty sure the last time he cried in front of Eddie he was actively being crushed underneath a fire engine worrying about his life and limb, and he barely remembers that whole night, so it doesn’t count.
“Fuck.” Buck rubs his knuckles hard against his sternum.
Out of the corner of his eye he can see Eddie’s hand move, like he wants to reach for him, but the angle’s wrong and he’s too far away. Buck feels stuck to the floor, weighted down and a thousand pounds of salt water and bones.
But maybe it’s good. If he was a desert before, a husk propped up in dress blues and turnouts, maybe he’s been refilled enough with play dates and movie nights and family dinners in new shapes to cry once more.
He doesn’t notice Eddie moving again until there’s a body lying on the floor next to him, shoulder to shoulder, a foot knocking against his. If his nose wasn’t so stuffed he might be able to smell Eddie’s shampoo.
Fairness is a concept Buck’s warred with most of his life, never understanding his parents’ resentment and his sister’s abandonment and, later, his brother’s entire existence. And now, now knowing he’s alive because someone else isn’t. Because someone he loved picked him over themselves. Because Bobby was Bobby and could never be anyone else.
And it’s not fair.
“I can’t hold on to this,” Buck says. Gasps, really.
“You don’t have to.” Eddie’s voice so soft, a reassurance. A permission.
Buck doesn’t know if he wants Eddie to hold his hand or say something more or clasp his shoulder and tell him it’s all going to be fine. Or if this, right here, this moment on the floor of his favorite house, is enough. But if there’s anyone left who can knit his ribs back together and keep him cracking apart like thin pond ice under pressure, it’s probably Eddie.
Buck takes a slow, deep breath. Relaxes his hand and rests it on his stomach. He closes his eyes and when he focuses, he can hear Eddie matching his breathes. Steady. Acceptance will come eventually, he just has to let it.