Chapter Text
Buck doesn’t put music on right away.
It’s not a decision so much as a habit he hasn’t shaken yet—waiting for Eddie to pick something, or to complain about his choices, or to reach over and steal the aux without asking. None of that happens. The road hums beneath the tyres, long and flat, and the silence stretches.
Eddie keeps his eyes on the road. One hand rests at the top of the steering wheel, steady, precise. He looks the way he always does when he’s trying to be fine: composed enough that Buck almost believes it.
“You good?” Buck asks eventually, because that’s still allowed.
Eddie nods. “Yeah.”
It lands like a period. Conversation over.
Buck shifts in his seat, glancing out the window as Nashville slips further behind them. The long way home had seemed like a good idea at the time—less crowded, less rushed. Easier.
Now it just feels like distance.
He opens his mouth, then closes it again, the words settling heavy in his chest. Whatever space there is between them lately, it isn’t loud enough to fight. It just exists.
The car keeps moving. Neither of them reaches for the radio.
*
Eddie tells himself he’s tired.
That’s the simplest explanation. The firefighter games had been loud, crowded, relentless — good in the way noise can be good, a distraction big enough to drown out everything else. Chris is safe. Abigail’s overstep had been exactly that: an overstep. Nothing more. No charges, no harm done. Just a teenage girl trying too hard and a father who overreacted.
Chris is fine.
He repeats that like a prayer.
The road stretches out ahead of them, flat and endless, the late afternoon sun cutting long shadows across the windshield. Buck is in the passenger seat, one knee bouncing faintly, hands folded loose in his lap like he doesn’t quite know where to put them.
They’ve been talking. Technically.
Logistics. Timelines. Whether they’ll make it past the state line before dark.
They haven’t been… close.
That’s the part Eddie doesn’t know what to do with.
It isn’t a fight. It isn’t even distance you could point to. It’s just the absence of something that used to be automatic — the easy overlap of words, the shared looks, the way Buck would lean across the centre console without thinking. Now there’s a carefulness to him. A space Eddie doesn’t remember asking for.
Relief sits heavy in Eddie’s chest — Chris is home, safe, laughing again.
But beneath it, something else hums.
A prickle at the base of his skull. The sense of being observed. Twice in Nashville he’d turned sharply, convinced someone had been standing too close behind him, only to find strangers passing through the crowd. Once in the hotel lobby he could have sworn he saw someone watching from across the room — older, rigid, eyes fixed too long.
He hadn’t said anything.
Stress. Fatigue. The comedown after adrenaline.
That’s all it is.
He checks the rearview mirror again anyway.
There’s nothing there but open highway.
Buck shifts beside him. “You okay?”
Eddie keeps his eyes on the road.
“Yeah,” he says, steady. Measured. Convincing.
The prickle doesn’t go away.
*
They make it another hour before Buck shifts again.
It’s subtle at first — the kind of movement most people wouldn’t clock. A stretch of his leg. A roll of his shoulder. The way his jaw tightens just slightly before he looks out the window.
Eddie notices.
He always notices.
“You need to switch?” Eddie asks, eyes still on the road.
Buck shakes his head too quickly. “I’m good.”
That knee starts bouncing again.
Eddie exhales through his nose. “Buck.”
“I said I’m good.”
It’s not sharp. Not yet. Just tired.
Eddie tightens his grip on the steering wheel. “You’ve been shifting for the last twenty minutes.”
“And?” Buck shoots back, finally looking at him. “I’m allowed to move.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“You don’t have to monitor me.”
That lands harder than it should.
Eddie’s jaw flexes. “I’m not monitoring you. I’m asking if you’re in pain.”
Buck goes quiet for half a second. Then: “It’s fine.”
Fine.
Eddie hates that word.
He flicks his gaze over, just long enough to see the stiffness in Buck’s shoulders, the way he’s holding himself too still now — like movement would prove something.
“You don’t have to push through it,” Eddie says, softer. “We can stop.”
Buck laughs under his breath. Not amused. “You think I can’t handle a drive?”
“That’s not what I—”
“It’s always that with you lately.” Buck’s voice rises, not loud but frayed. “You look at me like I’m about to break.”
Eddie blinks. “I don’t.”
“You do.”
The car fills with the sound of the engine and nothing else.
Eddie swallows back the instinct to defend himself. He’s not looking at Buck like he’s fragile. He’s looking at him like—
Like he matters.
But he doesn’t say that.
Instead he says, measured and careful, “You were hurting.”
“I’m always hurting,” Buck replies, too fast. Then, like he regrets it, he looks away again. “It’s manageable.”
Eddie doesn’t miss that. The admission. The resignation.
Guilt creeps up his spine, hot and unwelcome. He isn’t trying to make Buck feel weak. He’s trying to keep him safe. He’s trying—
He doesn’t know what he’s trying anymore.
“Just tell me if you need to stop,” Eddie says finally.
Buck nods once. “Yeah.”
They don’t look at each other.
The space between them feels bigger than the centre console.
Outside, a car lingers a little too long in their blind spot before drifting back.
Eddie tells himself he imagined that, too.
*
The argument settles into silence, heavy and unfinished.
Buck stares out the window. Eddie keeps his eyes on the road.
The sun dips lower, bleeding orange across the horizon. The highway thins out. Fewer cars. Longer stretches of nothing.
Eddie tells himself he’s fine.
Then Buck shifts again.
It’s smaller this time. Controlled. Deliberate.
Eddie watches it in the reflection of the windshield — the stiffness in his jaw, the way his fingers curl slightly against his thigh like he’s grounding himself through it.
He shouldn’t have pushed.
He shouldn’t have made it a thing.
A flicker of red catches his peripheral vision.
Neon.
Up ahead, just off the highway — a low, L-shaped motel with a blinking VACANCY sign and two trucks parked out front. The kind of place that looks temporary even when it isn’t.
Eddie’s grip tightens.
It would be smart.
They’re both tired. It’s getting dark. The road is emptying out in a way he doesn’t like. And there’s that prickle again — the sense of being watched, of something sitting just behind his shoulder.
Stress, he tells himself.
Still.
He signals.
Buck straightens. “What are you doing?”
“We’re stopping.”
“For gas?”
“For the night.”
Buck turns fully toward him now. “Eddie.”
“It’s late.”
“It’s six.”
“We’ve been driving since this morning.”
“I’m fine.”
There it is again. Defensive. Sharp.
Eddie doesn’t look at him this time. If he does, he might hesitate.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” he says, keeping his tone even. “We can finish the drive tomorrow.”
Buck lets out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “This isn’t about the drive.”
Eddie pulls into the gravel lot.
The tyres crunch.
The neon hums faintly overhead.
He cuts the engine.
Silence drops heavy inside the car.
Buck’s voice is quieter now, but no less tight. “You don’t get to decide I can’t handle it.”
Eddie turns to him finally.
“I’m not deciding that.”
“Feels like you are.”
The space between them feels charged — not with anger, but with something rawer. Something neither of them has said out loud.
Eddie wants to tell him:
I don’t like how tight your shoulders are.
I don’t like how tired you look.
I don’t like that something feels wrong and I can’t fix it.
I don’t like that we aren’t… us lately.
Instead he says, “It’s one night.”
Buck looks at him for a long second. Searching. Frustrated.
“Yeah,” he says finally, opening his door. “One night.”
The neon flickers once overhead.
Eddie has the sudden, irrational feeling that they’ve just stepped into something they won’t step back out of the same way.
He tells himself that’s exhaustion talking.
He doesn’t check the rearview mirror this time.
*
The lobby smells faintly of old carpet and burnt coffee.
There’s one key ring already hanging on the wall behind the desk. The clerk doesn’t look up much when he hands over two others.
“Rooms twelve and fourteen,” he says. “Ice machine’s out.”
Buck shifts his weight beside Eddie but doesn’t comment.
Two rooms.
Of course.
It shouldn’t feel like anything.
Outside, the air is cooler than Eddie expects. The neon hums softly overhead, washing everything in thin red light. Their doors sit a few feet apart, identical, unremarkable.
Buck unlocks his first.
Eddie stands there a second too long.
They used to share hotel rooms without thinking about it. One bed or two didn’t matter. It was practical. Easier. Automatic.
Now there’s a pause where that assumption used to be.
Buck breaks it first. “You sure you don’t want the one closer to the office?”
“I’m fine,” Eddie says.
The word tastes familiar. Hollow.
Buck nods once. Keys jangling in his hand. “Yeah. Okay.”
There’s a thousand things sitting unsaid between them — apologies that never formed, questions that never landed, the argument still hanging in the air like humidity before a storm.
“Goodnight,” Buck says finally.
Eddie studies him for a fraction too long. The tightness around his eyes. The careful neutrality.
“Night.”
Buck turns. His door opens. Shuts.
The click of the lock echoes louder than it should.
Eddie exhales slowly, turning toward his own room.
That’s when he sees it.
Headlights sweep across the far wall of the motel, bright and white, cutting through the red neon wash. The beam slides across Buck’s door. Across Eddie’s chest. Across the cracked asphalt.
A car pulls in slow.
Gravel crunches under its tyres.
Not hurried. Not hesitant. Just… deliberate.
Eddie goes still.
It’s nothing, he tells himself. A late traveller. A trucker. Someone like them.
The engine idles a second longer than necessary before shutting off.
Silence follows.
Too complete.
Eddie realises his hand is still wrapped around his key.
He forces himself to move. Unlocks his door. Steps inside.
He doesn’t look back.
The lock slides into place with a soft metallic snap.
Outside, a car door opens.
And then closes.