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“You didn’t ask. None of you did. And I know, you’re all in your little bubbles of grief and sadness. And I get it, he was your husband and he was our captain, but he was my friend. While I was so worried about all of you, were any of you even a little bit worried about me? How’s Hen doing? Yeah. A question nobody was asking.”
The intervention was already intense. Maddie snapping at Chim, Karen at Hen, and then Chim - as he always does - targeted Buck with a personal shot that felt an awful lot like a dig at his lawsuit. Then he and Eddie snapped at each other.
It was all too much, Buck didn’t want to be here for any of this. He feels for Hen, he really does, but this is a personal issue between their captain and his employee, and their own friendship. Why is the whole family there? Not even the whole family, because Ravi was purposefully left out, for some reason.
But when Hen starts talking about how no one had been there for her…Buck’s final thread, the one he's held together for almost a year, finally snaps.
“He was my FATHER.” He stands slamming his hand on the table, everyone’s heads swinging towards him in shock. “Hen, I’m sorry, I really am. But everything you just said was bullshit. I was at your house constantly, bringing food, wine, checking in. I did that for ALL of you. For MONTHS, because he asked me to. And not a single person gave a shit when I disappeared into my grief. None of you asked what happened in that lab, what it was like. It was all just blame.” He looks directly at Eddie when he says that part. “You want to talk about being ALONE, Henrietta? I started going to confession to try to talk to him. Hell, I thought he was in my house, and you all made fun of me for it. The ONLY person who bothered to extend a hand was Ravi, who strangely enough wasn’t even invited tonight. So don’t complain to me about being alone or that no one reached out, Hen. Because I did. I did and you didn’t care that I was hurting too.”
He starts to walk away from the table, but turns around. “You know, the last time this happened, I felt so incredibly alone, so desperate to get my family back that I sued. And I thought we were past all that. But you guys shut me out just as fast, in the exact same way, after Bobby died. Maybe I should have taken the hint. Because clearly, nothing I do for you will ever be enough to matter.”
“Buck…” Eddie calls after him, but he’s already closing the front door to Athena’s house. He’s done.
-
“Shit.” Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose. “He’s right, you know. Hen, I can’t possibly imagine how lonely it feels for you right now, and I’m not going to invalidate what you just said by saying you can’t feel that way. But I’ve asked you, more than once, about your rash and how unsteady you’ve seemed. I tried to ask you about your tremors after I delivered that baby for you too, and you shut me down. But you were the one who pointed out the grief surveys Buck was doing on all of us, and mocked him for it. So I KNOW you know he was there for you. And he’s the one who keeps us sitting at that dinner table every shift so that we don’t float away. What have any of us done for him except mock him?”
“Has it been that bad?” Karen asks. “He always seems like his normal sunny self when I see him.”
“Of COURSE he does. Because that’s who Buck is. I think he’s been shouldering all of it, for all of us, this entire time. And Chim, you’ve been worse than anyone. If I hear another 'Like Buck' out of your mouth one more time, I’m going to file a harassment report with HR.” He points at their captain. “Your jokes aren’t jokes anymore. They are mean-spirited bullying, and it needs to stop. Now.” He scoots his chair in. “Athena, thank you for the lovely evening. I need to go make a few things right.”
“Eddie, wait.” Maddie stops him. “What did he mean? When he said Bobby asked him to?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t asked him about that night either.” He sighs. “This really is the lawsuit all over again. Excuse me.”
-
He slams his front door so hard he hears the glass panels rattle, his chest rising and falling fast with his rage.
“I am not ok, Bobby! They don’t need me, they never did!” He shouts at the ceiling. Hen had sat there and said no one had cared about her, no one had reached out. But he had. Over and over and over and over again. And it mattered so little that she just, what, forgot about it all?
He walks over to the fridge to grab a beer, but his legs give out, and he slides down the cold stainless steel, taking magnets and pictures with him. Buck stares at the images of his family on the floor, drawings from the kids, things he had put up there with such pride. His FAMILY. But what is he to them?
Nothing. He’s never been anything to them. He might as well be the ghost in his attic for all they care.
His door swings open. “Buck? Buck!”
Of course Eddie is here. He’d feel just guilty enough to follow him out of Athena’s, or the group elected him to come. “Go away, Eddie.”
The man runs into the kitchen, seeing him on the floor, and drops to his knees. “Buck.”
“You just gonna keep saying my name over and over? Go away.”
“You were right. Everything you said - you were right, and I’m sorry.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t show up here with Chris in tow. That’s usually your go-to apology.”
“Alright, I deserved that.”
Buck just huffs.
Eddie leans back against the cabinets. “I never actually apologized for that night, did I? We didn’t talk about it.”
“No.”
“Can we? Please?”
“What difference does it make now, Eddie? You’re only here because I finally lost my temper in public. Who sent you? Maddie? Athena?”
“Neither. I ripped the table a new one after you left. Because you were RIGHT, Buck. And you weren’t the only one who had been checking on Hen. I have been trying to get her to talk to me for weeks. So while she may be feeling lonely, a lot of that is her own doing. It’s why I sided so much with Chim, not just because of the - “
“Eddie, please don’t say it again. I honestly can’t tell if you don’t remember or if you’re doing it to hurt me, but don’t say it again.”
He furrows his brow. “What? How does that hurt you? It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“That answers the question then.” He presses his palms against his eyes for a moment. “Think back to the lawsuit, what you shouted at me in mediation.”
He watches the realization dawn across Eddie’s face. “Oh, god, Buck. I’ve done it again. Why do I keep DOING this?” He holds his hand up before Buck can speak. “That was a rhetorical question, don’t do the emotional labor for me.”
Eddie stands up and puts his palms out. “Come on, let’s get off the floor. This is going to take awhile and your leg will start bothering you.”
Buck lets his friend drag him to his feet, but instead of letting go, Eddie drags him into a full body hug. “You matter more than anyone in the world to me except Christopher, Buck. We’re going to talk, and I want you to be honest with me, no matter how much you think it’s going to hurt me. OK?” He pulls back a little. “We should have done this a long time ago.”
He’s led to the couch, and Eddie sits down next to him, his legs bent so that he’s facing him. “I said a lot of things to you that night, I was trying to be vulnerable, let you see my grief so that maybe you’d let me see yours. But all I did was push you further inside, didn’t I?”
“Why did it matter what I said, Eddie? You were going to leave for El Paso again. I’d lost you once, barely learned to survive without you, and then Bobby died. You acted like it didn’t matter, it wasn’t a big deal that you were going back.” He shrugs. “I didn’t matter enough for you to stay. So why try?”
“That’s not even the least bit true.”
Buck gives him a dirty, nonbelieving look. “You didn’t even bother to tell me you were taking the job. I had to find out about it through the grapevine, and then when I was upset about it, you told me AGAIN that I was making it all about me, how selfish I was, that whole 97 acts bullshit. Like I didn’t have a right to my own feelings.”
“You feel everything so deeply, Buck, and it scares the hell out of me.”
“Why?”
This time it’s Eddie who rubs his face. “Because I…” He shakes his head. “I think we should come back to that later. I’m not dismissing it, I just…there’s other things we need to talk about first.”
That pisses him off a little bit. “What things then does Eddie Diaz want to talk about?”
“What happened in the lab, Buck?”
“No.”
“You wanted us to ask. I’m asking.”
“I wanted you to ask THEN. I wanted you to ask instead of blaming me for what happened. Instead of standing in that kitchen and telling me that it was my fault, and if you had been here, he wouldn’t have died!”
-
A wounded noise comes out of Eddie’s mouth. Because that’s exactly what he said to him that night. The guilt was consuming him, he wasn’t trying to blame Buck, he blamed himself. But to his friend, yeah, it absolutely would have sounded that way. “I never blamed you, not really. I blamed myself for not being there. For breaking everything so badly that I wasn’t with the team when you went into that place.”
“You couldn’t have saved him either, Eddie.”
“No, I know that. But I would have been there with him. I would have been there for you after.”
Buck shrugs again. “Not like Chim or Hen have been, and they were here. She was right about that, everyone was a mess. And I get it. But no one knows. No one knows what it was like to be there, to watch him wait until I was standing in front of him to shut the quarantine door and remove his mask. To see that dark blood trickle down his pale face. To…to hear him…”
Holy fuck.
“They didn’t quarantine him? I thought the military did it.”
“No. He hit the button himself.”
Eddie reaches out and puts a hand on Buck’s collarbone. “Tell me, all of it, please.”
He shakes his head, but he does. He tells him every painful second of that night in the lab - watching Bobby shut himself away, revealing the illness, his final words, his dismissal. Buck tells him about his collapse in the hallway and how he knows he was dragged out but he doesn’t know by whom, or how he even got home that night. That he didn’t speak to anyone for three days because he could hardly leave his bed. And no one, not a single person, checked on him.
“Tommy took you home.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he’s the one who called me that night. He said you were fine, that you just needed rest.”
“Why didn’t you call me, Eddie?” His eyes are so sad.
“Because I took his word for it. I thought you needed space, and would call me when you were ready. And I had to take care of Chris. He really struggled for a minute. So did I.”
“Yeah, well, Tommy’s never really had my best interests at heart, especially when it comes to you. Keeping you away from me was kind of his prerogative then.”
“What do you mean?”
Buck laughs bitterly. “It’s stupid, never mind. He’s just an asshole. I’m surprised he even bothered to call you, honestly. But I'm not surprised in the least that he told you not to reach out.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He viewed you as competition, Eddie. Used that exact word.”
“When you broke up? He said that?”
“We hooked up after you went to El Paso. I was drunk and stupid and needy.” Eddie starts to make a comment. “Don’t. Ok? I know. He said a bunch of bullshit about how we could get back together now that the competition was out of the way, we fought, and I thought, ‘Good. I’ll never have to see this asshole again.’ Until Chimney was dying and I needed a Hail Mary.”
“He was glad I left, and TOLD you that. He’s an even bigger dickhead than I thought.”
“Mm. So yeah, he was jealous of you, wouldn’t have wanted you to call me.”
“I would have, otherwise. I wanted to. I looked at my phone so many times over those few days, thinking maybe I’d accidentally turned it on silent, missed a call or a text. I was so damn worried about you. I should have reached out, but he told me you were fine, just to give you time. I knew better. I should have known better.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“You can ask me anything you want.”
“Why didn’t you come home? Why did it take you two weeks?”
“I’d love to blame it on Chris. And it was partly - I didn’t want to leave when he was struggling so much. We were on such tender footing as it was, finally getting our relationship back. But mostly, I didn’t want to face you. Or them. I wasn’t there when he died, what right did I have to be there in the aftermath of it all?”
“I’m glad you weren’t with us. I’m so glad, Eddie. I don’t know what I would have done if you were in there too. I already went up against the FBI and the Army. But if I thought I was going to lose both Bobby AND you? I’d have burned the world down.”
Why does that feel like some kind of confession?
“You know I would have done the same thing, if it were you in there?”
Buck just shakes his head, staring forward, not speaking for awhile. “I did my best, after. To do what he said. But the harder I tried, the less anyone wanted me around, the less anyone needed me. No one came to dinner anymore or talked to me at work. No one texted me back when I reached out. Athena wouldn’t even open her door when I dropped food off for her. Which, I kind of understand her not wanting to see me. But I needed her, you know? She was the only one who could have understood what it was like.”
“And she shut you out.”
“I mean, she shut everyone out, but yeah, it sucked.”
“Buck, did you ever think maybe he didn’t mean it the way you think he did?”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe he was just telling you we needed you to stay alive.”
Buck’s face flashes with pain. “No.”
“We don’t - or at least, I don’t - need you to be anything except yourself, Buck. And I don’t even mean the smiley, giving, do-everything-for-everybody Buck. Just you. The only reason I even survived Texas was because you were there for me every second. Texting or calling, picking up when I needed you - which was a lot. You were just Buck, my friend. And that’s all I needed. Those kitchen facetimes were the best, honestly, where we didn’t even talk that much, just cooked together. Or the nights we fell asleep on the phone.” He takes Buck’s hand. “I don’t need you to do anything except just be next to me.”
Buck lets out a sob, tears flooding down his cheeks as he tips his head onto Eddie’s shoulder. “Ok. Ok, C’mere.” He lets go of his hand long enough to wrap his arms around the man, encouraging him to curl up closer to him. There’s a question he wants to ask, but not til he settles down. So he just waits him out, rubbing his back as he cries.
Finally, Buck pulls away. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. You don’t have to do this alone anymore, bud. But now I have a question for you.”
“Ok.”
“Why did you leave? I told you that you could stay.”
“I knew you were just being polite. You and Chris needed your space. Plus…” Buck shakes his head.
“I wasn’t just being polite. I really did want you there, Buck. We would have made it work.”
“I couldn’t sleep on the couch forever, Eddie.”
“You didn’t have to! I offered you the other half the bed multiple times.”
Buck gets a wounded look on his face and looks away, his breath shuddering like he might cry.
“Buck?”
“I think you should go.”
“I’m not leaving just because the conversation gets too difficult.”
His voice is bitter when he looks at him and says, “I don’t want to scare you with my big feelings.”
Fucking hell. Ok then. “YOU do not scare me. But the way you feel things? Yeah, it scares me, but not the way you think. It scares me because it makes ME feel things. Big things. And I’m not used to that. I’m pretty good at NOT feeling things, in fact. But I can’t seem to stop, anymore. Honestly, I’m a little afraid I’ll scare you with mine.”
Eddie sees the confusion and alarm cross his friend’s face. “I don’t know what we are talking about anymore.”
He threads his fingers through Buck’s. “I’m in love with you.” Buck hisses in a breath, his head snapping up. “I have been for a minute. It’s fucking terrifying how much I love you.”
“You…fuck…yeah that has to be scary for you. Have you talked to anyone about it?”
“Ironically? Hen. She knows everything there is to know. I think that’s why it hurts so badly that she didn’t trust me with her shit too.”
“I’m sorry, that’s not fair at all.”
“Buck.”
“Yeah?”
“Why did you move out?”
It’s the first time the corner of his mouth lifts all night. “Because I was trying not to be in love with my straight best friend, and living in close quarters like that was impossible.”
“Talk about irony.”
“You kept asking me to share your bed, Eddie. I couldn’t…there was no way I could do that. It was breaking my heart.”
“I think I’ve done enough of that over the years. I’d very much like to put the pieces back together that I broke…if you’ll let me.”
Buck looks down at their joined hands. “I don’t know where we go from here. I love you, Eddie. Think I probably always have. But I can’t keep doing this, going in circles like this, where something happens and you scream and point your finger at me because anger is easier than any other emotion. I can’t keep losing you over and over.”
“It’s something I’m working on with Frank. A lot of it has to do with everything I’ve been bottling up for so long.” He holds up their hands. “Mainly, that I’m gay, and I spent my whole life trying not to be. He says you’re the one person I feel like I can be vulnerable with, and that’s why I take it out on you so much. That doesn’t make it ok or fair. But I’m aware of it now, and I’m trying to funnel it into healthier emotions.”
“That sounds positive.”
“It’s not an overnight thing, you know how therapy goes. One step forward, two steps back. Anger was the only appropriate emotion for a man to show according to Ramon Diaz. I have a lot of bad habits to break. The grief hasn’t helped. Look at me, please?” He waits until Buck turns his head. “I can’t promise that I’m not going to struggle with anger anymore. But I can promise to be more open about what I’m thinking and feeling, have more conversations like these so it doesn’t get to that point. And maybe we set some kind of safe word or something so you can call me on it. Something to tell me I need to go cool off before we talk more.”
“I like that idea. So if I say, like, I dunno…persimmon…it means we need to stop and walk away for a bit.”
“Persimmon?”
“Yeah, I dunno, they were on sale at the grocery store. But when are we ever going to actually talk about persimmons?”
“Persimmon, it is. And when we are ready to talk again?”
Buck thinks for a moment. “We could text a green heart emoji? But we both have to send it. If you send me a green heart and I’m not ready to talk yet, then we don’t go back to that conversation until I give it to you. And visa versa. Life may happen around us, but until there are two green hearts, the argument is on pause.”
“I think Frank would be really proud of us for this boundary.”
“It seems healthy.”
“It does.”
“Buck?”
“Mm.”
“Can I kiss you?”
Those blue eyes meet his, red-rimmed, and a little fearful. He hasn’t taken down the wall yet, not completely, but he nods, and Eddie lifts up on his knees so he can lean in closer, running his thumbs over the salty tear tracks on his cheeks. “I know we still have a lot to work through. But I love you. And I’m not going anywhere. We’re gonna get through this, ok?”
The man nods again, and Eddie lays his lips across his gently, wanting Buck to come to him for more if he so chooses.
He does. His hands wrap around Eddie’s waist drawing him in until they are chest to chest, and it doesn’t take him long to deepen the kiss, raising up onto his own knees and tilting Eddie’s head back. It’s fucking magical, more than he’d anticipated feeling from this, and he can’t help but moan a little as Buck licks across his tongue. He pulls at Eddie until he’s straddling him, unfolding his long legs to the floor, and brushing his fingers just under his shirt across the skin of his lower back.
They could keep going. Eddie can feel him through both pairs of jeans, and the urge to rock forward is overwhelming. But both of them are too vulnerable now, so he puts a hand on Buck’s chest, touching their foreheads together. “Not tonight.”
“Oh, sorry, yeah I guess that’s probably a little fast for your first time.”
Eddie laughs. “No, that’s not why. Trust me, I want you. But everything we’ve just gone through tonight, especially you - I just think we should probably not. Right now, anyway.”
“Healthy boundaries.”
He nods. “Healthy boundaries.”
“Will you stay, though? With me?”
“Yes. I’d give anything to be able to hold you.”
“Ok. Up.” Buck slides him off his lap so they can both stand, and he takes his hand and walks him down the hall to his bedroom. “You want a pair of sweats?”
“Or we could just sleep in our boxers.” He shrugs. “I want to feel your skin on mine. Think I need you close.”
“Me too.”
They strip down, grinning a bit as they both let themselves admire each other in a way they’ve held back from. Eddie blows out a breath as he runs a hand over that big muscular chest. “That boundary is hard not to step over now that you’re in front of me. You’re so beautiful, Buck.”
“The feeling is mutual. But you’re right, not tonight. Let’s go to bed.”
They lay down, Eddie pulls him in close, and kisses him softly. “Thank you for opening up to me. I know it has been hard. But you have me. You are not alone anymore.”
Buck doesn’t say anything back, just tucks his face into Eddie’s neck, and holds onto him tighter.
It’s all gonna be ok.