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They argue about it for exactly thirty seconds.
“Two beds,” Buck says, already halfway back toward the parking lot to grab their bags as the words leave him.
Eddie pauses beside the front desk, glancing at the tired-looking clerk holding a credit card in his fingers, and then over at Bucks retreating back. “It’s midnight.” He says and Buck turns back to him with a pause.
“We’re leaving before sunrise and we've shared worse. Why are we booking the more expensive room? It's like,” he looks down at the little screen in front of him, “$150 more expensive. We can do one bed.”
Buck studies him for a second, then huffs out a laugh and rubs at the back of his neck. He looks like he wants to argue but really can't find an argument he knows could win. “Yeah. Okay. One bed.”
And that’s that. Eddie is going to be sharing a bed with his best friend in a shady motel in the middle of nowhere desert.
They’re halfway back to LA after the firefighter competition in Nashville Chim had sent them to be a part of. He'd said that if any partnership could bring home the gold, it was theirs. They're sunburned and bruised riding that strange post-adrenaline haze that leaves everything feeling both sharper but also a little unreal. The after of the competition and leftover adrenaline aiding in the heightened feelings of it all.
It ended up being just Buck and Eddie unable to keep their eyes open anymore that caused them to pull into the parking lot. Up to a roadside motel with flickering neon signage above it and doors that open directly onto the parking lot. The lot had been full of other, more well worn, trucks when they pulled in and the buzzing neon had pulled them straight into the front door like moths to a flame. The idea of relaxing a bit and real sleep had been too tempting for them to do anything else other than book a room.
Eddie drops his duffel against the wall when they get inside. The room smells faintly of some type of cheap industrial cleaner and 40 years worth of dust. Beige stucco walls. A floral comforter that’s seen better days, cigarette burns obvious along the edges. One lamp throwing tired yellow light across everything. Making it look like they've been transported into an 80s horror movie.
Buck immediately goes for the AC unit, playing at the controls as the window unit sputters.
“If this thing makes that high-pitched ringing noise all night I’m sleeping in the truck. I don't care how hot it is.”
Eddie snorts softly and leans back against the door, letting it thump shut behind him. His head falls back against the wood as he sighs, just a smidge of tension draining out of him.
He tells himself he’s just tired. That's the only reason he's moving slowly, like his legs are made of lead. The only reason he feels like he's swimming through jello and stuck running in place.
They’ve done this before. Shared space. Shared beds. Passed out shoulder to shoulder after long shifts with hard calls or on road trips or after natural disasters that threaten to tear them apart. It's natural for them and it's never been a problem. Neither one of them has ever felt like they needed to explain it away or somehow justify it.
Except something feels different tonight. Eddie just can't understand why.
They agree on the tiny place across the street for something quick to eat before settling in for the night. It's a 24 hour diner so they expect greasy food, bottomless coffee, and the joys of feeling truly anonymous. Buck grabs his toiletry bag as he turns towards the bathroom with a nod.
"I'm disgusting so I'm going to shower first,” he says with a sigh. “Try not to fall asleep on me.”
Eddie raises an eyebrow. “You’re the one who almost collapsed during the awards ceremony.”
“That was strategic,” Buck calls over his shoulder. “got me out of all the awkward small talk.”
Eddie watches him disappear into the bathroom with a laugh, smiling despite himself.
He sits on the edge of the bed, scrolling through his phone without really seeing anything. He just needs something mindless. Something that gets his mind off of everything physical. His knees ache. His shoulder still remembers every impact from the obstacle course two days ago. His muscles feel hollowed out in that familiar way that comes from pushing just a little too hard. And he plans to power through it, he does. But underneath it all is something quieter. Something that unmoors Eddie, that's been there for a long time but he just hasn't known what to call it.
The shower kicks on, water rattling through thin pipes. It takes a few minutes but eventually steam curls from underneath the closed door, Buck’s off key voice floating through the paper thin walls.
Eddie sets his phone aside and leans back on his hands, staring up at the ceiling.
He thinks about Christopher, staying completely by himself for the first time, Hen agreeing to keep touching base with him. About how proud Chris had been when Eddie told him they’d placed second for the whole competition. About Buck laughing so hard he nearly choked on his water when they played the two of them tripping in the relay just hours before. He thinks about Buck’s hand clapping his shoulder after they crossed the finish line together for that relay, breathless and grinning despite being dead last.
He swallows. He stops his thoughts before they can deepen. He can't follow that thought. So he doesn’t. Doesn't even let himself try.
The bathroom door opens.
Buck steps out with damp hair curling at the ends and a towel wrapped around his waist, the edges sitting low on his hips. Steam follows him into the room and Eddie almost laughs at how cinematic it all is. But then he's stepping into the room and across to his duffle water beads sliding along his shoulders and collarbones, tracing slow paths down his chest and into the divots in his back.
Eddie’s breath catches before he can stop it. Because Buck is standing in front of Eddie like temptation incarnate, wet and nearly naked as he digs around for a change of clothes. He walks by Eddie and he smells like cheap soap, a bit of lingering sweat and something that's uniquely Buck. Eddie goes a little week at the knees about it.
And look, he’s always known Buck is attractive. That’s not new. It’s objective. Clinical even. It's a fact in the same way that gravity is. Buck is a good looking guy. He's conventionally attractive and you’d have to be blind not to see it.
But tonight that lands differently. Because Eddie starts to notice things he usually wouldn't let himself linger on. Like the way the dark lines of Buck's new tattoos scatter across his shoulders, how his stomach flexes when he reaches for his bag, the way droplets of water cling stubbornly to the curve of his jaw, catching in the day old stubble.
Buck talks about the hot water like it’s a minor miracle while toweling his hair, completely unaware of the way Eddie has gone utterly still behind him. He threatens to drop the towel with a minor clumsy moment and Eddie has to force his gaze back towards Buck's face.
“Yeah,” Eddie says absently, hoping that he's agreeing with something correctly as Buck rambles about the hot water while turning to rummage through his duffle.
Eddie watches muscles shift beneath skin. His eyes travel down towards the edge of the towel, taking in the gentle curve of Buck's ass and going lower to take in his thighs
He tells himself to stop. To look away.
He doesn’t.
Buck drops the towel for a moment to pull on a pair of boxers and reaches for a shirt while Eddie momentarily reboots.
A button down flies out of the bag. It's a slightly worn, soft white button down. One decorated with little brown stripes and that would cut up on Buck a little too high so it gave the illusion if he moved wrong that it might be cropped in some way.
Something about it hits Eddie wrong. He's not expecting it and it's not immediate. It's a fair sense of deja vu that tugs in his chest, building the longer that he stares.
Buck shrugs into it casually, leaving it unbuttoned and open while he digs for a pair of jeans. The fabric moves at an odd angle, catching the yellow light just right–and Eddie knows. It's sudden and like the floor has fallen away from him.
His stomach drops out.
The room tilts.
He’s not in a motel anymore.
He’s on asphalt that’s hot against his skin even through the long sleeve uniform shirt. He can't focus and the world narrows to pressure and white hot pain and a haze that won't fade. His ears ring. His chest burns with every shallow breath. He tastes copper.
Buck is above him.
Buck’s face is pale, eyes blown wide, red splattered across his face like the world's most terrifying freckles.
“Hey, hey, stay with me,” Buck says, and he wants to scream out as he feels hands pressing against his shoulder. Bucks voice doesn't feel steady, not like it usually does at a scene. It's threaded with panic, trembling and breaking a part as he speaks. “Stay with me, c'mon Eddie.”
Eddie tries to answer and can’t. There’s blood soaking into the gurney beneath him. He can feel it spreading, warm and wrong. He reaches up as Buck leans closer. He lifts a hand or at the last tries to. He feels his eyes start to roll back as he shoves a few words past his chapped lips. “Are you hurt?’
Buck looks down and gives what feels like the most hollow laugh, barely a huff. “No–I. I’m–I’m okay. You–hang on.” His voice cracks and Eddie's screams, or at least he thinks he's does, and the world goes black
That shirt.
Buck was wearing something just like that.
White fabric with thin brown pinstripes. Open collar. The way it framed Buck’s throat when he bent over Eddie, trying to keep him tethered to the world. Trying to keep whole even when the world was trying to suck pieces of him away.
Eddie’s heart slams against his ribs as the motel room blurs back into existence, his lungs burning as they try to remember how to work.
Air comes in sharp, uneven bursts. His hands start to shake violently. Heat crawls up his spine, followed by a wave of cold that leaves him dizzy and nauseous.
He slides off the bed without realizing he’s moving and his knees hit the carpet hard. His back meets the mattress as he folds in on himself, arms wrapping around his middle like he can physically hold himself together. His head falls between his knees and he wills himself to breathe, to try and keep breathing.
His vision swims again. He feels the way the memory wants to take hold and pull him back in
No.
No. No. No
No, no–
“Eddie?”
Buck’s voice cuts through the fog. He's suddenly right there, so very close and Eddie aches to reach out even though he can’t move.
Eddie doesn't answer. Doesn't think he can. His vision tunnels and his pulse roars in his ears. The room feels too small, the air too thick, his skin too tight. He feels pulled in too many directions at once and he still feels the asphalt under his fingertips. It makes him want to claw at his own palms and attempt to rid himself of the feeling even though he knows it wouldn't help.
He feels Buck drops beside him after a moment, jeans forgotten in a pile by his duffle.
“Hey,” he says, in that soft yet urgent way that's become so normal, so comforting when Eddie panics. “Hey, I’ve got you.”
Warm hands find Eddie’s shoulders and he flinches back at the touch.
“Eddie, look at me.”
Eddie shakes his head, eyes squeezed shut as the room shimmered away again into something colder, more terrifying.
“I can’t– I–” he tries to say something to explain, but the words dissolve into another broken breath.
Buck shifts closer then, sitting on the floor with his back against the bed and pulling Eddie into him so his shoulder presses into Buck’s chest. It's an intimate position, Eddie's fully aware of it. Buck's bare thighs are wrapped around him, chest pressed into his back like a warm, all encompassing, grounding weight.
“That’s okay,” Buck murmurs, an answer to whatever words Eddie said. He can't remember what they were. He's stuck between the then and now, and he can't break free no matter how hard he tries, no matter how many times he closes his eyes. “That’s okay. Just breathe with me.”
Buck demonstrates slowly.
“In through your nose. Out through your mouth.”
Eddie tries to follow. His lungs stutter through the motion and he wants to scream to cry, to know why this is so hard. But he just keeps trying to breathe. And Buck doesn't rush him. He never does. He just pulls Eddie closer to him, lets him melt into the touch.
“You’re here,” Buck says quietly after a few minutes when Eddie has finally calmed enough that he can understand what's being said. “You’re safe. We’re in the motel. We just got back from the competition. You beat me on the ladder climb and I’m still mad about it.”
A shaky sound escapes Eddie. It might be a laugh but it's hollow and he's unsure if that punched out, pathetic sound can count as one or not. He feels the way Buck's arm tightens around his shoulders instinctively and he continues to melt into it. He's one big bowl of Eddie jello. Or at least he's trying to be.
“That’s it,” Buck says, voice still low and warm at the shell of his ear. “Stay with me.”
The panic loosens in uneven waves, leaving him in sections and falling away as the time passes. Eddie focuses on Buck’s breathing, on the solid warmth of his body, on the steady cadence of his voice. And slowly, painfully, the world straightens and rights itself. He takes one final deep breath and lets his eyes flutter open. Buck is right there when he does.
Always right there. Always right where he needs him to be yet somehow so far out of reach.
Buck searches his face like he’s checking for fractures no scan could ever show. He watches as the taller man swallows, Adams apple bobbing as he keeps searching, like he's trying to understand what happened, how panic had gripped this tight, this quickly in an unassuming hotel room.
“You okay?”
Eddie swallows. His throat burns. “Yeah,” he whispers, the words feeling like razor blades in his esophagus. “I–I think so.”
Buck doesn’t look convinced.
“What happened?”
Eddie stares at the carpet for moment then lets his eyes trail to Buck's shirt, gaze locking onto one of the pearlescent buttons. His chest tights again automatically but he pushes it down. He holds steady and sighs.
“That,” Eddie says quietly, nodding toward Buck. “Your shirt.”
“My shirt?”
Eddie takes another breath, still trying to stay steady against it all.
“It's uh– it looks like– it reminds me of…that day.”
Understanding dawns slowly across Buck’s face. He looks down and it feels like he's seeing it for the first time, the similarities.
“Oh,” he breathes and Eddie feels as he shrugs out of it, throwing it behind them and into the abyss of the seedy motel room. It leaves him in a pair of loose boxers and a tight undershirt, strong arms wrapped tightly around Eddie and he breathes deeply yet again, this time for a slightly different reason.
“I don’t remember everything,” Eddie keeps exposing, trying to give Buck more, trying to make him understand. And he wonders, distantly, if this could be a way to say it, to show what all Buck means to him.
“Not clearly, at least. But I remember you. Your eyes. Your voice. You kept–you kept telling me to stay. And I–”
Buck’s jaw tightens but Eddie powers through, not giving him the chance to interrupt.
“I thought I’d dealt with it. I thought I was past it. But seeing you like that–wet hair and that button down and I just–my brain just…”
He trails off. He can't think of more words to explain it, to make sure that the other man understands how important it is, how deeply Eddie feels it.
Buck is quiet for a moment. Like he's taking it all in.
Then he says, very softly, “I was terrified.”
Eddie looks up. Their eyes meet. Buck's soft blue is shining, dampness caught in his lashes.
“I didn’t tell anyone that,” Buck admits. “I was supposed to be the calm one at that moment. And Mehta asked me if I was okay and I couldn't even answer until he was gone, until no one could hear me say no. Because I couldn't think of a world where you weren't there anymore.”
Something cracks open in Eddie’s chest at the words. They've talked about the shooting before, sure. But in a nebulous way. The same way one might talk about a dinner you shared years ago, reminiscing about old memories. Because that's all he's wanted it to be for so long. A memory. But it's never been just that. And Eddie has spent too long being a caretaker. Being the strong one. Leaning into being a dad when there was nothing else to hide behind, trying to hold himself together even when it seemed impossible.
He’d been so focused on himself on getting through it all and just being able to live that he'd never realized just how badly Buck was breaking alongside him. They've never been great at communicating, he knows that. And he knows that Buck is equally as capable of talking, that he hid things too that he pushed things down into place no one could see. But it doesn't stop Eddie from wishing he had seen. From thinking he should have.
“I’m sorry.”
Buck shakes his head immediately. “No. Don’t. You don’t apologize for surviving. I'd go through it all again if it meant still knowing you were here, that you made it.”
Buck hesitates, then reaches up and gently brushes his thumb beneath Eddie’s eye, wiping away a tear Eddie hadn’t realized had even fallen.
“You scared me,” Buck says. “But you also changed something in me. After that, I couldn’t just–”
Eddie’s heart stutters and he feels his eyes widen, his pulse kick back up in his chest. Because it almost sounds like…he shakes his head. He can't go there, he can't let himself think about it. He can't want like that. And he knows for certain that the universe or God or whatever power is controlling their lives wouldn't let him have it even if he let himself. But he's a glutton for punishment so he asks, quietly,
“What do you mean?”
Buck exhales and Eddie feels it against his cheek with how close they've gotten. “Eddie– you have to– you have to know. You do–you know, right?”
Eddie just shakes his head and Buck laughs. Actually laughs. But it's not a bright, joyous thing. It's hollow, cracked around the edges. Like someone told a joke but there's no humor in it. It's sarcastic and hurt and Eddie isn't sure how to take it.
“I mean somewhere between you getting shot and you coming back to work, I realized you weren’t just my best friend. You were,” he paused and sucks in a breath. “You're my person, Eddie. You've–I think you always have been.”
Eddie stares at him. The room dims around them, impossibly quiet. Buck looks down, avoiding Eddie's eyes.
“I didn’t say anything because you had Christopher to worry about. And Ana was still there. You had–you had a whole life and I didn’t want to disrupt it. And Taylor was–she was there and it was fine and I figured that it would work itself out in the end, that I could be happy with just staying the way I always did. And so I just– I learned how to love you quietly. And then…I found myself, I figured it all out and I still–I just– after Tommy I figured you knew and you just–that you didnt–”
Eddie’s chest feels too full suddenly. He thinks of every time Buck showed up without being asked. Every lingering look. Every way Buck made space for him. He thinks of how wrong it felt whenever Buck would date other people, the simmering rage that was barely contained when Tommy stepped into the picture, like he was claiming something that Eddie had thought belonged to him.
He lets out a shaky breath. It's now or never. Buck is all but handing him everything. He's handing Eddie his heart and all he needs to do is reach out and take it.
“I thought I was too late,” he admits slowly. “When you started seeing Tommy. I thought that was it. I missed my chance and I was too fucked up in my own head to do anything about it before then.”
Buck looks up sharply. “Eddie–”
“I didn’t understand what I was feeling,” Eddie says, not letting Buck interrupt. If he was going to say this it had to come out at once, in one rush or he knows he'll never get the nerve back.
“I just knew it hurt. And tonight, watching you walk out of that shower like that, my brain finally caught up with my heart I think. It's just– it's a lot.”
Buck’s eyes soften.
“You love me.” It's not a question. It's like he can see through all the words and cover right down to the deep meaning.
Eddie nods.
“I do.”
Buck leans forward and presses his forehead to Eddie’s.
“I love you too.”
They stay like that for a moment, basking in it. Then Buck kisses him. It happens slowly, carefully, Buck asking for permission even as Eddie is giving it, melting into it. His hands curl into Buck's undershirt and Buck's hands come up to cradle his face, the of his right hand reaching back to grab at the base of his neck, fingertips tangling in Eddie's hair. It's sweet and careful and overly intimate despite the lack of heat behind it. He knows that will come later. The wanting. And he nearly chokes on the knowledge of more to come.
When they pull apart, Eddie is smiling through tears as they fall onto his cheeks, and he can't help but notice that he's not alone as he brings a hand up to brush away the tear tracks on Buck's face.
It takes a few more minutes, but Buck eventually stands first and offers Eddie his hand. Eddie takes it without question and he lets Buck squeeze once gently before he finishes changing. He doesn't go far but he does change his shirt, throwing the button down into the trash can in the corner of the room and pulling on a pair of loose dark wash jeans in one smooth move.
“C'mon,” he says with a smile after checking his curls in the mirror. “Let’s go get dinner.”
Eddie takes one deep breath and laces his fingers with Buck's, letting himself be led out of the motel and into the warm desert air.
And for the first time in a long time, Eddie feels like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.