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Once, when he was five and they still lived in El Paso, Christopher wandered away from Eddie in the grocery store.
He remembers it now like it was yesterday, a memory that has only brightened with time. A rare free afternoon in the spring, the usual Texas heat, coveted hours that he could spend with his son away from the critical eyes of his mother. Over a year since Shannon left, and his mom still acting like he can’t take care of his own kid. But it was a warm day and Eddie was feeling brave and he wanted to see Christopher so badly, to really see him and spend time with him and not be interrupted constantly with reminders of all the ways he was falling short.
It was nothing special, unless you were Eddie, to whom it was everything: a stop at the transportation museum to look at the train models; Christopher chattering away and pointing out all the ones that he liked the best and the places where the track diverged; and then an hour at the playground where Eddie swiped sunscreen onto Chris’ little nose and pink cheeks before he let him do all the things Helena would fuss over; and then the grocery store for ice cream bars, because it was cheaper than going out somewhere and Chris was only five and he didn’t care where his ice cream came from, just that Dad was eating it with him.
A perfect day, until Eddie turned around in the freezer aisle and Chris was gone.
Cold dread dripped over him, awash with panic, much icier than the blast of air from the freezer door that Eddie left hanging open as he spun in a tight circle.
“Christopher?” he called uselessly— twenty-three and spiraling, feeling a kind of panic that no combat could touch.
“Christopher?” he calls again. It’s ten years later on a typical sunny day in Los Angeles. The open door in front of him creaks on its hinges and smells like the rubber of the school bus, and it gapes just like that other day, so long ago now. A distant past that Eddie had never thought he’d need to revisit.
The sun warms his shoulders, but he might as well be standing in the freezer aisle again for the frigid shiver of cold panic that creeps over him, dripping along his spine. He searches with his eyes against the light, the words of the bus driver beating on a loop through his head. He didn’t get on.
“He didn’t get on?” he hears himself repeat.
The driver shakes his head. Eddie’s sure he knows this guy’s name, but at the moment he can’t think of anything but Christopher— his perfect face; the way his blue eyes swim behind his glasses; the look he gets when he knows he’s saying something so funny that Eddie can’t reprimand him. He’s not five and little anymore, but he’s Eddie’s. And he’s not here. He didn’t get on.
He didn’t get on.
Eddie steps back, half stumbles, and turns blindly. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but the bus driver calls out to him and when Eddie doesn’t respond, he continues on his route. Eddie can’t really fault him for that. He has other kids to get home to their own parents, kids who got on the bus, and he probably thinks that it’s all a misunderstanding and that Eddie’s teenager will get in trouble later for not telling his dad he went to a friend’s or stayed after school. It probably happens all the time— missed texts and forgetful kids and parents who are so busy they half-listen.
Eddie’s chest is wound so tightly he can’t breathe.
He digs his phone out of his pocket and unlocks it. It’s Chris he calls first, and it rings and rings and Eddie’s chest gets tighter with every empty drone before it clicks to the voicemail that Eddie has told him a million times to set up.
“Nobody leaves a voicemail anymore, Dad.”
But if he’d done it, Eddie would be hearing his kid’s voice right now. There’s a flare of anger in the back of his throat, there and gone like lighting a match. It’s as angry as Eddie gets these days.
A voice comes to his mind unbidden. Aren’t you a very angry man, Firefighter Diaz?
Eddie is not sure he ever really was.
He tries and fails to steady his breath and turns around again as if Christopher might appear out of thin air amongst the dog-walkers on this corner and the families at the playground adjacent to the bus stop. Their house is only a two-minute walk from here, just around the corner, and Eddie knows that Chris likes the independence of it, the way it makes him feel to arrive alone in the afternoons and let himself into the house.
Fifteen, Eddie thinks. It’s not so far from five, joyful to be allowed on the swings when Grandma is too worried to let you try it.
He presses another button on his phone, and this time listens to one and a half rings from the other line. Buck, of course, picks up so quickly.
“Hey, Eddie!”
“Buck.”
There’s a beat. It’s maybe half a second, not longer than one, and it’s enough for Eddie to hear the sharp intake of breath from the other side of the phone and to know that his voice gives him away. At the very least, it does to Buck, who has known Eddie more deeply than anyone else in all the ten years that separate the grocery store from the bus stop.
“What’s wrong?”
Eddie exhales. “Please tell me Christopher is with you.”
He knows before Buck speaks that the answer is going to be no. They’ve been here before. Eddie barely got a word out then, before Buck was soothing every frantic fear he had. The panic that seized him that night had been eased so quickly by the knowledge that Chris was safe with the person Eddie trusts most in the world.
Today is different.
There’s a muffled shuffling on Buck’s end of the line, and then his voice with a familiar, urgent note. “Why would Christopher be with me?” he asks, too steady, intentional.
It feels years delayed, like the inevitable downfall he’s been waiting for, the thing that just chases.
“Fuck,” Eddie hisses. “Okay. Um— I— he didn’t get off the bus. I have to—”
“I’ll drive you,” Buck says. Eddie can already hear the way he’s moving, the quickness to it, the frantic edge that he’s trying to keep buried.
Eddie has known for a very long time that Buck cares about Christopher, loves Christopher, in a way that is bigger and more than most anyone else in the world barring Eddie himself. He has never allowed either of them to name this, but it’s never needed a name, either. Buck just shows up, again and again.
“I don’t even know where to go,” Eddie says.
“Call the school,” Buck answers. “In case he’s still there. I’ll try Chris again on my way to you, and then we’ll go from there.”
Again, he said. He knows what Eddie has done before Eddie has a chance to think of telling him.
Eddie can do nothing but listen. It’s what they do, but it feels wrong and distant and fuzzy now. The school tells him that Christopher is not there. He knows the receptionist like he knows the bus driver, her blonde hair and the nametag he forgets. Didn’t he get on the bus? they ask him. Eddie wants to scream and instead he drops to the sidewalk curb and shrugs out of his jacket, suddenly overwarm and sweating. He thinks he hangs up on the blonde receptionist.
It is Christopher’s first year of high school. Eddie used to always drive him, and if he couldn’t then Carla did. But fifteen since September, and Eddie wrapped around his finger, Christopher is persuasive. The bus has been a constant source of conversation. It makes Eddie nervous in a way that is ridiculous. Was ridiculous. Seemed ridiculous. But here he is on the curb, no Christopher, so maybe Eddie was right after all.
When he was Christopher’s age, he learned to drive and how to steal, even if he never actually did it. He’d figured riding the bus was a small concession. The school bus. Kids Christopher’s age in other places rode city busses and learned to drive. Eddie didn’t want to be controlling like his father, overbearing like his mother. Most of all, he didn’t want to drive Chris away. Not again.
“Eddie.”
When Eddie hears his own name, it’s like Buck has said it more than a couple of other times. When he looks up, Buck is crouched down in front of him and Eddie thinks, through a fog, that he’s going to hurt his bad knee.
Otherwise, Buck looks angelic. The sun sinks slowly behind him, a mocking mark of passing time, time that Eddie doesn’t know where his baby is. It shines on the lightest strands of Buck’s curls and illuminates his skin the color of fresh bedsheets, and it sinks into him like it’s made of the same thing he is. His eyes are blue like water, the pure kind, shimmery and inviting and invoking of sweet summer.
Eddie takes a trembling breath and realizes that there are tears in his eyes by the feel of their hot, sharp prick.
Buck softens, and his palm covers Eddie’s knee with a warm and familiar pressure.
“What did the school say?” he asks.
He is too calm entirely.
Eddie shakes his head. “They said he got on the bus, but he didn’t,” he explains, words on top of each other. “He didn’t— he wasn’t on the bus. I told him he could ride the bus and I—”
“Okay,” Buck nods. “Maddie says there haven’t been any 911 calls yet but she’s on it. Athena is meeting us at your house. Chim and Ravi are out in the rig already. They’re gonna check all the usual spots, I told them. Come on.”
It won’t be until so much later that Eddie wonders how Buck did all of that in ten minutes or less.
Eddie looks around helplessly at the park that looks so normal. “What if—”
Buck seems to read his mind. “If he’s going to go anywhere, it’ll be home. Let’s go.”
Home, home, home.
It’s been almost a year now since that morning that Christopher arrived on a plane from El Paso. The roads were busy, and Christopher fiddled with the radio dial in Pepa’s car, which Eddie was borrowing. His Prius was sitting outside a house he still hated, months into buying it, in Texas. His Denali belonged to someone else by then and wasn’t his at all, and sometimes he imagined that the person driving it had a family and they all lived under one roof.
Twenty-five minutes on the 405 Northbound between LAX and the house on South Bedford street. More for traffic, but in theory twenty-five minutes for Chris to settle in the seat and flip through the radio and for Eddie to think about how it felt to be there with him, to be in the car together and in California where it felt like he could breathe.
He had rested his wrist on the wheel and watched the cars crawl by and the palm trees drift in the breeze. Los Angeles had always felt to Eddie— even as a kid, before he’d moved here— like a different world from Texas. It had been inconceivable to him that they shared a state line, and it only felt more and more and more impossible. Until one day he was thirty-two and the house he’d raised his son in was Buck’s now, kind of, and everything was all wrong all over again.
And then, on the 405, he’d looked over at Chris. He was wearing sunglasses, and they made him look older.
“I’m glad you were willing to come,” he’d admitted. “I think it’ll really be good for Buck to see you.”
Chris was quiet for a long moment, and Eddie watched his fingertips drum on his knee through the denim of his blue jeans.
“I want to come home, Dad,” he said.
Eddie stops in the middle of the driveway. It’s two minutes, so they had walked back. Time is moving slowly and quickly all at once, like Eddie is somewhere else, somewhere farther away than the other planet that is El Paso.
Buck’s truck is still at the bus stop and Eddie’s is here, innocuous. He traded in the Prius as soon as he and Chris were settled. It’s not the same truck, but it’s close, and it’s his. The day he brought it home from the dealership, back last summer when Buck was still staying with them, he’d had the wayward thought that now he was the guy with his family intact. He had not lingered there long, but the feeling had remained in his chest anyway.
He turns to Buck now in the bright sun of the afternoon, feeling like everything he knows and everything that matters to him exists on nothing by the sharp ledge of a cliff. The fall, inevitable.
They have moments, Eddie knows, before Athena will be here and they’ll be swept up in questions that might have no answers. Moments, if that, for Eddie to be alone with the only person on the planet who he knows he can lash out at.
“Where is he, Buck?” he asks.
It doesn’t come out sparkling and angry and flinted the way he means for it to, but rather weak, the words bending like a storm ravaged tulip stem threatening to collapse.
Buck takes one step closer to him. “We’re going to find him, Eddie.”
“Where is he?” Eddie asks, his voice thick. “He’s not with me and he’s not with you, and—” His breath catches. “I don’t know where he is.”
Buck reaches for him, but Eddie shakes his head. He wants. That’s always been kind of the problem. Buck, for his part, seems unfazed by this. He’s unfazed by a lot of things when it comes to Eddie, maybe more than he should be.
“We are going to find him,” Buck insists, and Eddie shakes his head.
“How?” he demands, running a frantic hand through his hair. “Where do we even— he was at school. He knows he’s supposed to take the bus home and nothing else. He wouldn’t—”
“Hey,” Buck interjects. “Everyone is looking for him already, and- and- and Athena is— you know, she’s the best, and we’re gonna find him.”
It’s the first time Buck’s voice wavers.
Eddie tells Athena everything. It’s only when he’s laying it out for her, answering her detailed questions, that it even occurs to him to think about Abigail. After he explains everything as it happened— from the courtroom to when she’d left his house after their awkward encounter— he watches Athena’s face shift and become guarded.
After that, Alex is there briefly and Athena talks to her, too. Buck paces in the kitchen and Eddie watches him from the dining room as he appears and disappears around the doorway, talking lowly into his phone so that Eddie can hear his voice but not make out what he’s saying. Eddie thinks back.
Buck, in this house. There are too many occasions to count, even to begin. When Eddie’s parents had stepped over the threshold with Eddie’s heart walking between them; when the door had shut behind them; when the car had pulled out of the driveway and taken Christopher with it and there had been that horrible, full silence.
It had been Buck who caught Eddie before he hit the floor on his knees.
He’d thought— afterward, when he woke up the next morning with his head pounding, and Buck had still been silently there— that it was the worst he could feel, and he’d been wrong.
Maddie tells Buck there is still nothing.
Chim and Ravi come up empty.
Eddie turns to Buck at one point, still before sundown, and says— “We should go look for him.”
Athena stops them both. Eddie goes out into the backyard, muffles the clash of his teeth into the fabric of his jacket, and screams. Afterward, he and Buck sit in the driveway for a while and Eddie picks at the skin around his thumbnails.
“You always tell Chris not to do that,” Buck says mildly.
“Yeah, well.”
The silence between them stretches and yawns as the light of day begins to fade. Eddie turns to Buck, searching his face.
“It’s my fault,” he says.
Buck looks back at him, that look on his face.
“It is,” Eddie insists.
“Eddie.”
Eddie shakes his head and swallows hard. The truth weighs on him, a steady pressure that sits relentlessly in his throat and on every nerve ending in his body, lighting him up with shame and livewire fear.
“I let that girl-” he starts, his voice cracking as he shakes his head and twists his features.
“You were trying to help,” Buck says softly.
“It doesn’t matter!” Eddie snaps, looking up at him and watching his face blur. “Don’t you get that?”
He is angry, suddenly. Maybe the lawyer was right, and maybe when his mom told him that Christopher would be safer in Texas or off of the playground equipment, she was kind of right, too. Maybe Eddie does drag him down, even when all he ever wanted was to keep him close.
“Yeah,” Buck says. His voice is surprisingly hard all of a sudden. “What, you think I don’t? You think I’m not—”
“Not what?” Eddie snarls. “Come on, Buck.”
Buck shakes his head and looks down at the driveway. “Scared,” he answers. “I’m scared, too, Eddie.”
Eddie is quiet for a long moment, and then Buck looks over at him. It’s getting dark outside, and Eddie thinks of Christopher— out there somewhere, anywhere. He could be hurt, alone. The thought of it makes Eddie ache all over, a persistent deep feeling that could have him clawing out of his own skin if he isn’t careful to hold himself in place.
“He’s never scared of anything,” he whispers, looking out into the street and nodding to the asphalt. “Tried to run into the street the day we moved here. I mean, I turned my back for two seconds.”
The shadow of something like a smile flickers lightly over Buck’s features, barely there at all.
“Um, during the— the tsunami,” Buck ventures. “I asked him how he does it. You know, that attitude he had all the time.”
“Before he was a teenager,” Eddie adds softly.
Buck shrugs. “He said, uh— just keep swimming. Like Dory.”
Eddie recalls the way Buck had looked that night— scratched up, weak, bleeding. Still on his feet until the moment he knew Christopher was safe.
“I can’t lose him, Buck,” Eddie whispers. Sitting here, without him, it’s hard not to feel like he already has.
“We’re not giving up,” Buck tells him. “We’re gonna find him.”
On that day in the grocery store, Eddie had heard those very words.
“We’re going to find him,” the manager assured him. The front doors were locked and other customers were looking and Eddie was beside himself, a voice in the back of his head reminding him that Shannon would never have lost their son in the grocery store.
He’d been half-convinced that someone had taken him. Imagining himself storming the streets to get him back and then thinking, much later, that he was ridiculous for picturing it at all, because soon after that Christopher had been located sitting calmly behind the lobster tank adjacent to the butcher counter with his crutches next to him. Eddie had scooped him up and hugged him so tight he couldn’t breathe, and then he’d set him on his feet and looked up into his face and asked—
“Christopher, what were you thinking, wandering away from Daddy like that?”
And Christopher had said, “I wanted to talk to the lobsters.”
And their ice cream had been free, and Eddie had felt like the worst parent in the world, but ultimately they’d sat in the back of his beaten pickup and promised each other they wouldn’t tell Grandma and Grandpa about this little adventure, which made Christopher laugh so hard he doubled over and Eddie couldn’t help but laugh, too, because it was all just a little mistake, after all.
On that day in the grocery store, Christopher was missing for eight minutes.
On this one, he is missing for over eight hours.
It’s a blur from the moment that Athena storms out of Eddie’s house with purpose in her steps. She doesn’t try to stop them this time, and Buck produces Eddie’s keys out of seemingly nowhere. Later, Eddie won’t remember the drive. He won’t remember the details of what Athena said to them— the ins and outs of why they believe Chris is in a motel room across town. He won’t remember anything Buck said, or getting in or out of the car or how Athena had looked at them when she threatened them within inches of their lives to stay put in the parking lot.
He’ll remember the way the red and blue lights had looked on Buck’s anxious face as they stood next to each other. He’ll remember the way his heart climbed into his throat and stuck to the back of his teeth. He’ll remember the way the door opened, just a moment after Athena went in, and Christopher stepped out of it.
Nothing could have stopped Eddie then, not even the spin of the earth beneath them, as he took off across the cracked pavement and closed the distance between himself and his son with Buck right behind him.
“Christopher,” he gasps, reaching for him.
How is it possible, he wonders, that he looks just the same as he did early this morning before school? How is it possible he’s wearing the same clothes and he’s just as warm and alive; that his heart beats the same way it had before; that Eddie, too, is unchanged and that watching his whole life flash before his eyes had not altered absolutely everything about their existences?
How is it possible that it feels the same now as it had when Chris was found just around the corner, looking at the lobsters?
Christopher clings to him.
“Oh, my God,” Eddie breathes, holding him tightly. “Chris. Oh, thank God.”
Activity swirls around them, noise and lights and input. Eddie feels nothing but the tightness of Christopher’s fingers around the fabric of his shirt and the way he buries his head in his shoulder; the softness of his curls under Eddie’s hand.
“Dad,” he says, his voice soft and wavering.
“I got you,” Eddie whispers to him. “It’s okay. I got you, you’re safe.”
Christopher sniffs against his shoulder and Eddie only reluctantly pulls back, just enough to look at Christopher’s face and to notice that Buck is standing between the two of them and the door, blocking them both from the view of anyone who passes through it.
“Are you hurt?” Eddie asks, ducking his head to look at Christopher’s face. “Did she hurt you?”
Chris scrunches his nose, and Eddie reaches for his glasses, lifting them gently off of his face. Before he can even turn, Buck is there, reaching for them. There’s no space in Eddie’s chest for the way he feels, the way it all spills over and overlaps.
“I’m okay,” Chris says, but his eyes shift.
“Chris,” Eddie whispers. “Hey, look at me.”
He reaches out then, and touches Christopher’s jaw. It’s all angles now where there used to be softness, and Eddie is awash, suddenly, with a tide of gratitude. To watch him grow; to see his angles.
His cheek is red; irritated even in the dim light. If it were brighter, Eddie thinks it would have been noticeable immediately. His chest goes tight all over again as he cradles his baby’s face in his hand.
“Honey, did she hit you?” Eddie asks.
Chris nods a little. “I’m okay,” he says. “It was just that.”
Eddie wants to rage. But he wants to hold his son more; wants tenderness and bending tulip stems and to weep with the sheer relief that Christopher is standing in front of him, a little unsteady and mostly unharmed and perfect.
“Come here, let me see,” Eddie hums, tilting Christopher’s face into the light and watching a film reel of all his childhood scrapes and bruises, the papercuts and the surgery and the bad pain days and the skateboard incident and everything in between.
“Is he hurt?” Buck frets, unable to contain himself as he steps just a little closer to peer over Eddie’s shoulder at Chris. “There’s an ambulance—”
“No,” Chris objects, his eyes finding Buck even as Eddie holds his face still. His voice is muffled slightly by Eddie’s gentle squish of his jaw. “I’m fine. She only slapped me because I told her you were definitely not going to let her come to dinner now.”
Eddie could almost laugh, if he weren’t so near to crying.
“No,” he agrees, drawing Chris closer again. “I’m definitely not. Come here.”
At this, Christopher melts into him. Eddie holds him tighter, and buries his face against his soft curls. He’s distantly aware that Buck is talking in low tones with Athena, and with this distance he’s also so thankful that there’s someone else to do it.
Someone to call when your kid doesn’t make it off the school bus. Someone who will sit with you and be scared. Someone who won’t leave you alone, not even when it’s over.
Christopher’s breath catches beneath Eddie’s hand on his back and Eddie rubs soothing circles into his shoulder.
“You’re okay, baby,” he whispers to him. “I’ve got you. You’re safe now, you were so brave.”
Chris shakes his head a little. “I’m sorry,” he whispers against Eddie’s shoulder, low and muffled enough that Eddie almost misses it.
“No, hey,” Eddie soothes. “Sorry for what?”
Chris tilts his head back with tears in his blue eyes, and for a moment Eddie can only see a three, four, five year old. A little baby, one who’s never been lost before. One who has never been hurt or shown the worst parts of the world.
“I got in her car,” Chris says. “I thought—”
“Oh, Chris,” Eddie breathes. “That doesn’t matter. It’s not your fault, okay?”
Christopher bites his lip, his eyes shifting back in the direction of the hotel room. “I think— I think she’s just… sick,” he offers, then looks back up at Eddie. “Is she going to jail?”
Eddie sincerely hopes so.
“I don’t know yet,” he admits. Then he brushes Christopher’s curls back from his head. “Are you okay?” he asks.
Chris nods, looking slightly unsure as his eyebrows crease. Without his glasses, he looks unbearably young.
“I think so,” he says. “She said she wasn’t trying to hurt me. But I don’t have my crutches.”
Eddie is not sure he will ever forgive himself— but as it has been since he became a parent, he moves that feeling aside.
“Okay. We’ll, um—”
“I’ll check with Athena,” Buck interjects. “See if they have your crutches.”
“Okay,” Eddie breathes as Buck steps away from them, refocusing on Chris. “You promise me she didn’t do anything else to hurt you? You would tell me, right?”
Chris nods. “She wasn’t trying to hurt me,” he says.
Buck reappears then, crutches in hand. Eddie thinks back to when Chris first got them— how grown-up he looked, all of a sudden, sort of in the same way as when he’d gotten his first haircut and suddenly looked more like a boy than a baby.
“Good to go whenever,” Buck says softly to Eddie as he absently reaches out to help Chris with one of the crutches. “Athena says she’ll need a statement from him but that it can wait until he’s ready. She has Abigail in custody.”
Chris looks up, his eyes on Buck. “What’s going to happen to her?” he asks.
Buck reaches out like he can’t help it, touching Christopher’s shoulder gently. “Athena says you can ask her about it when she sees you,” he explains.
He reaches out again and sets Christopher’s glasses back onto his face, his touch devastatingly tender as he untucks one of Chris’ curls from around the frame at his ear. The lenses of the glasses, which were smudged when he took them, gleam in the light now.
Eddie swallows hard.
“Alright,” he says, trying not to feel as if everything about him is unraveling as he draws Christopher’s attention back to him. “Let’s get you home, okay?”
Beneath his hand, Chris tenses.
Sharing a glance with Buck, Eddie ducks his head to look into his son’s face. “Is there something wrong?” he asks. “You don’t want to go home?”
Chris hesitates, worrying his lip between his teeth, and Eddie wonders how much his heart can take— then, in the same breath, resolves that the answer is anything, everything, as long as Chris is here and safe.
He tilts Christopher’s head up slightly with the softest touch.
“Hey,” he says. “You can tell us. Whatever you need, okay?”
Chris swallows. “Can we stay at Buck’s tonight?” he asks, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “I just…”
The rest goes unsaid, but Eddie understands. The thought of going back to a place where Abigail had been, just yesterday evening— it feels like a lot to him, too. Their home, while full of their lives, might take a little bit getting used to again.
“Of course,” Eddie assures him. “We can go to Buck’s.”
It only occurs to him then that he had not felt the need to ask. But by that time, Buck is already nodding his head, a touch more enthusiastic than maybe the situation calls for. The glimpse of normalcy reaches Eddie like the glimmer of oasis’ edge, blue and miragelike.
“Are you hungry, Chris?” Buck asks gently. “We can— whatever you want, okay?”
Christopher nods, then tilts his head through his glasses. “Can we go to In-N-Out?”
And so they slip— back into a dreamlike version of a normalcy that has Eddie reeling. This, too, will blur in his memory: the stop at his own house where Eddie runs inside to collect the few things they need for a couple of days at Buck’s and returns to Chris laughing at something Buck has said, twisted around in the driver’s seat to talk to him, and the sight nearly bowls him over, the sound of Christopher’s laugh enough to make his throat itch and his eyes burn; the In-N-Out drive-through and the obscene amount of food they’re laden with, its scent permeating the car; the sight of Buck’s house like a warm beacon as his headlights sweep over the facade of the house and it welcomes them, almost as if nothing ever happened at all.
Buck takes a call from Maddie, who tells him that she’s passed on the news of Christopher’s safe return to everyone else who needs to know, and they all settle into Buck’s warm and cozy living room to eat.
Chris digs into a burger with abandon and says, “You don’t think about packing snacks for your kidnapping,” through a mouthful of cheese and bread.
There’s a beat of silence, and then— impossibly, dazzlingly— they’re all in stitches. It’s a little on the side of hysterical, but Eddie’s ribs ache as Chris grins brightly and Buck struggles to catch his breath, and it’s— everything. Everything.
After they’ve calmed down, Christopher fills them in. He seems okay, all things considered, and more concerned about Abigail than Eddie might have expected. His account of what had happened in the eight hours that he was missing is straightforward enough, though Eddie knows him well enough to know that the way he glances at the door is far from nothing.
Buck offers him everything he has in the house, and Chris makes his way through three brownies to Eddie’s one. Afterwards, he steps into the bathroom to change and Eddie drops his head against the back of the couch in the new silence, suddenly and entirely exhausted.
Buck settles next to him, his weight familiar. Eddie lolls his head to the side and opens his eyes to look at him.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” Buck echoes, his voice worn. “How are you holding up?”
Eddie exhales. “He’s safe,” he says softly, listening to the sounds of Chris moving through the wall. “That’s all I need.”
Buck nudges him lightly, his socked foot against Eddie’s calf. “And some sleep,” he adds.
Eddie snorts softly. “Can’t hurt,” he agrees. “But I’m actually not sure I’m ever going to sleep again after this.”
“Yeah,” Buck breathes. “You and me both.”
Something like guilt ebbs in, and Eddie looks more intently at him. “I’m sorry about before,” he says, but Buck is already shaking his head.
“No, come on,” he says. “Your kid was missing. Anything you say cannot be held against you.”
The words come to Eddie’s mouth unbidden. “Our kid,” he says softly.
Buck’s head jerks up, and Eddie shrugs.
“I mean,” he amends, “I know it’s not like that with us, and— I mean, I know he’s my kid. But I just mean you’ve been—” He shakes his head, gathering himself. “Neither of us would be here without you, Buck. I just mean I know that you love him like I do.”
Buck blinks fast. “That’s—” he starts, and then nods his head. “Yeah. I do.”
“Thanks for letting us stay,” Eddie says softly.
Buck cracks a smile at that. “My favorite houseguests," he says, and then reaches over to squeeze Eddie’s knee lightly before he moves to get up.
Something in Eddie’s chest loosens, just a little bit.
It’s after midnight when Christopher emerges and stands in front of them, looking vaguely anxious.
“Hey, bud, you okay?” Eddie asks, turning to look at him fully. He looks young and tired, and Eddie wants nothing as much as he wants to wrap him up in his arms and hold him tight.
“Uh, yeah,” Chris answers.
Eddie doesn’t quite buy it, but the last thing he wants to do is push.
“Well,” Buck says. “Sleeping arrangements are all up to you. I’ve got the bed and the pullout couch, and if you want you can share my room with your dad or— I have the air mattress, too, if you guys don’t want to share.”
Chris shifts on his feet, holding his balance in Buck’s living room doorway.
“What’s up, Chris?” Eddie asks gently.
Chris glances between them. “Um,” he says, his cheeks pink. “Can— is it okay if we all sleep out here?”
Eddie feels the breath leave his lungs, but it’s Buck who’s closer to Chris; Buck who reaches out and pulls him into the hug that he looks like he needs. Eddie watches them, his throat tight, as Buck drops a soft, easy kiss into Christopher’s wild curls.
“Whatever you want,” Buck assures him.
“I just want you both here,” Chris says. His voice is small enough that Eddie barely hears him, but it cuts like silver.
He gets up before he can think, and then he’s next to them and Buck wordlessly opens one arm to him. It’s funny, Eddie thinks as he steps into them both, how right something can feel after a day that has been all wrong.
“We’re not going anywhere,” he whispers into his baby’s hair, closing his eyes and allowing himself to believe in it, too.
The truth is that things have not been exactly the same between him and Buck, lately. Eddie thinks about that as they work seamlessly to set up the sofa bed and the air mattress, quietly turning Buck’s living room into an approximation of a bedroom for all of them. It’s not tension, exactly. It’s more like something that’s left unsaid, like missing a step and stumbling. A lot of it can be attributed to the year they’ve all had— losing Bobby, all the changes in all of their lives, everything they’ve had to adjust to.
But there’s something else. Maybe something more. It’s not something they’re going to be able to talk about today— maybe not even soon, because both of them will be focused on Christopher. But maybe that’s the crux of it, too. That they don’t have to speak about it to know. That Buck always answers the phone on the second ring, and that there’s nobody else Eddie allows himself to be angry with.
In the meantime, they fold blankets over Buck’s pullout couch and carry pillows from the hall closet and then take turns in the bathroom— and it’s strange, Eddie thinks as he sits on the edge of the foldout bed and watches Buck appraise the air mattress— how he’s never stayed over at Buck’s before but it feels like home, anyway.
Chris seems to feel similarly. He flops onto Buck’s pullout couch with no ceremony, and Eddie looks at him and feels like he should be on his knees at some altar somewhere, thanking everything he can think of for the fact that he’s here, that his chest rises and falls and the mark on his cheek is barely visible.
“Are you sure about the air mattress?” Eddie asks, looking at Buck. “Your knee—”
“Is fine,” Buck answers dismissively. “And it’s double height, see? I’m sure.”
He’s similarly unceremonious as he drops himself onto the air mattress, then snuggles in beneath a blanket and tucks his arm behind his head, spreading out so far as to take up more space than what exists.
He turns his head and looks up at them both, fond eyes landing on Christopher and staying there. “Comfy,” he grins, and Chris laughs, and it’s all suddenly so worth it.
They settle. Chris shifts until he’s close to Eddie, much closer than he usually allows himself to be these days. His glasses rest on Buck’s coffee table, pushed against the wall, and he curls up next to Eddie and rests his head on his shoulder. Eddie tilts his cheek until it presses into Christopher’s curls, and they both let out a breath.
“Everybody comfy up there?” Buck asks.
“Yeah,” Chris answers, his voice soft.
“Lights off?” Buck asks. Eddie checks, and he’s still looking at Christopher, who nods in agreement.
A moment later, Buck stretches up to the lamp that’s still on, and the room plunges into soft darkness. Eddie, pressed against Christopher, waits for his tension, but it never comes.
In the quiet, he just curls in closer. Eddie reaches up, gently smoothing his hand over his curls, pushing them gently back off of his head the way he used to, when Chris was much smaller. Christopher lets him. Buck breathes in deep enough to hear.
“Are you sure about this choice?” Eddie stage whispers, leaning in close to Chris. “You know he snores, right?”
“Hey!” Buck objects, but Chris laughs and Eddie feels it deep in his chest.
“I know,” Chris answers. There’s a pause, and then he softens. “That’s okay.”
“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. He kisses the side of Christopher’s head as they listen to Buck adjust his weight.
Chris turns his head, looking on the verge of sleep, and seeks out Eddie’s gaze. “Dad?” he asks.
“Yeah, honey.”
“Thanks for coming to find me,” Chris whispers.
Eddie swallows hard and squeezes him tight. “You know I’ll always come to find you, Chris.”
“I know,” Chris mumbles. “You too, Buck.”
“Anytime, kid,” Buck answers, his voice tender in the dark.
Eddie kisses Christopher’s cheek then, willing to risk pushing the boundaries of his affection after the day they’ve had. Chris not only lets him do it, but leans into it.
“I love you,” Eddie whispers. “So much.”
Chris smiles; Eddie feels it more than sees it, the way Christopher’s smile takes up his face.
“I love you too,” he breathes.
Within moments, he’s asleep.
Eddie lets out a breath, feeling the way Chris breathes deep against him. He leans his head back slightly, and from the new angle he finds that he can meet Buck’s gaze in the dim light from the window blinds, the glow from the streetlamps illuminating Buck’s familiar features.
He looks back, soft.
“He asleep?” he whispers, almost inaudible.
Eddie nods.
“Good,” Buck says, affection in every letter.
Eddie hesitates, just for a moment, and then holds out his hand. Because he and Chris are pressed together and the pullout bed is small, there’s enough space that he can reach with his fingertips and if Buck were to reach out—
He does, and their hands tangle against the edge of the mattress as Christopher sleeps between them.
Eddie squeezes lightly. “Buck.”
“Hm?”
“Thank you,” Eddie whispers.
Buck shakes his head, his curls smushed into his pillow. “Anytime,” he answers, and squeezes back.
Not today, Eddie thinks. And not tomorrow, which will be for pancakes in Buck’s kitchen and taking Chris to speak to Athena and figuring out where they go from here. But soon. And for now, there’s this— their knuckles brushing, Chris sleeping soundly between them. It’s enough.
When sleep does come, it’s easier than Eddie had imagined.