Archive of Our Own

Eddie follows Buck into the ambulance, his heart in his throat.

It happens in flashes: the pain on Buck’s face; the way he looks around to be sure Eddie is still there as paramedics lift him up onto the stretcher; the satellite phone, Buck’s scratchy voice assuring Maddie that he’s fine, he’s fine. Eddie only really comes into himself once he’s sitting crammed in next to the stretcher, a spot he’s taken a million times but usually in a uniform.

He thinks of Shannon, and then stops himself.

“We’ll run some fluids in an IV,” one of the medics says, and Eddie moves before he can think.

“I’ll lay it,” he says. His voice comes out firmer than he means for it to, and he immediately dials back as the two paramedics look up at him in surprise. “I— I’m a paramedic,” he explains. His tongue is thick in his throat. “Do you mind?”

He’s not sure at first that they’re going to let him, but they do. He doesn’t know what it is about him that convinces them, but they switch spots with him and he’s thankful.

Buck watches as he snaps blue gloves over his hands, the latex steadying his fingers like little else. Maybe the paramedics understand this, maybe they feel that way, too. Maybe there’s some sort of code among them. Whatever it is, Eddie is glad.

Buck’s eyes meet his as Eddie opens a bag that’s organized, comfortingly, just like his own back home in LA.

“You don’t have to do that,” Buck offers.

“No,” Eddie agrees. “I want to. Let me see your hand.”

Buck obliges without a fight. He’s breathing steadily. There’s a pulse ox on his other side and his vitals are fine. He’s okay.

Eddie runs through a series of motions that are now second-nature to him. It will not be the first time he’s laid an IV in Buck’s hand. The first time, they’d been under a velvet sky and Buck had been screaming in agony and Eddie had just lost his wife. He’d knelt on the asphalt of an intersection in Los Angeles and he’d taken one side of Buck and gently pressed a needle into his hand, into his vein, hoping that it would matter, hoping that he wasn’t losing someone else too.

It feels so long ago now, and at once not long ago at all. If he blinks, it could be that same night all over again. At least he could do something, he’d thought then. He’d laid an IV and then flipped Buck’s hand over and held it.

At least he can do something, he thinks now. He lays an IV. He peels the gloves off again, disposes of them neatly. He flips Buck’s hand, and holds it.

“You know,” Buck starts.

The paramedics have deemed Buck in good hands for the ride to the hospital. It’s just the two of them in the back now. Bizarrely, after all of this, neither of them are in any imminent danger. There are no sirens. No rush. There’s no shouting or frenetic energy. They are just sitting in the back of an ambulance, the same way Eddie does at work all the time now that he’s a paramedic, now that he isn’t Buck’s partner anymore.

“Hm?”

Buck looks at him, his expression unshuttered. He’s beaten up, bruised, bloody. But he’s Buck, through and through.

“This isn’t really what I imagined when I said a road trip would be fun,” he says.

Eddie huffs a laugh, tilting his head back. It’s pounding, has been all day. He hadn’t really noticed until now.

“Always an adventure with you,” he sighs.

In his hand, Buck’s shifts. His fingers squeeze once, then twice, like a reminder.

“Are you okay?” he asks. His voice is softer now, scraped and raw but more like his own. The paramedics had given him some water, which had tamped down the worst of it.

“Me?” Eddie scoffs, opening his eyes again and looking at him, only to find his expression wide open and earnest. It takes hold of Eddie’s lungs, squeezing them tightly. “Jesus, Buck,” he sighs.

Buck frowns. “You’re hurt,” he says.

Eddie had lied to him once. Years have passed since then, now. Since that night in Eddie’s dim gray kitchen when Buck had asked him what he remembered about getting shot. The lie came out of his mouth before he could think about it, before he could question why he didn’t want to remember. It wasn’t about lying to Buck, he can see that now. It was about lying to himself.

But he does remember. Buck over him, wildeyed and splattered with blood. The rush of terror and panic that he’d felt, the words out of his own mouth concern for Buck even as he was the one bleeding.

“I’m okay,” he says now, back in the present day in an ambulance in New Mexico. Back in front of Buck. “Just banged up from the crash.”

“Right,” Buck says. Then he shakes his head a little, tilts it back and closes his eyes. Eddie watches, his curls flattened, his pale lashes casting a shadow over his bruised cheek in the harsh light of the ambulance as it trundles over the road. “What a day.”

Eddie lets out a breath, a laugh tumbling with it in spite of everything.

“Like I said,” he repeats. “Always an adventure with you, Buckley.”

Buck grins. It’s weak, but there, a facsimile of his usual beaming smile but every bit as much Buck. After today, it loosens something in Eddie’s chest.

He turns his head in Eddie’s direction. Though the adrenaline must be fading, and though he must be in pain, he still looks alert. Eddie is helplessly grateful, clinging to it. He isn’t sure how he might react if Buck were to start fading now, but he thinks it would be more drastic than he’s comfortable with.

“Hey,” Buck says, his voice pitched tender.

“Hm?” Eddie replies.

They are still holding hands, Eddie’s palm up and Buck’s palm down, their joined fingers against the scratchy sheet on the stretcher beneath Buck, near his hip. Buck is looking at him, clear blue eyes soft and knowing.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” he says.

Eddie’s throat closes up, a sharp telling sting at the back of it that he forces down with a hard swallow.

“Anytime,” he says.

And like this, another moment slips through his fingers.

At the hospital, Eddie is chastised by the same nurses and doctors he saw earlier, in what feels like a lifetime ago. He doesn’t register much of what they’re saying to him, though. There’s definitely something about the window, but he knows all that already and doesn’t think they really expect to be getting through to him.

He’s focused, primarily, on listening to Buck.

Buck, who can’t help groaning in pain as he’s examined. Every sound sets off alarm bells in Eddie’s head, but he reminds himself that being awake and alert enough to express pain is better than several alternatives.

It all passes in somewhat of a blur. They’re both being kept overnight, which is okay. The sun had already set by the time they made it to the hospital anyway, and Eddie is sort of grateful that at least they won’t have to go out and find somewhere to stay for the night.

“Mr. Diaz?” a nurse asks him impatiently at some point.

He snaps back to her, reluctantly pulling his attention from craning his neck around her to look at Buck— who is, incidentally, in the same spot that Eddie had found empty just that morning or a lifetime ago, depending on how you looked at it.

“What?” he asks. “Sorry.”

She sighs. “I asked you if these are Mr. Calderon’s missing clothes.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, glancing down at himself. Off to his left, Buck snorts and Eddie glances over to find his view of Buck now unobstructed. Buck is grinning, looking at him.

“Did you steal someone’s clothes?” he asks.

“Well, my name isn’t Hector,” Eddie grumbles as Buck laughs. The sound reaches down and takes Eddie’s heart in its palm. He looks back at the nurse, lowering his head to look through his lashes and tapping into what he hopes is a well of charm. “I am sorry about that,” he offers.

She shakes her head. “Both of your belongings were recovered from the scene of your accident,” she says, looking between them. “We’ll have those brought in for you and then we’re going to need Mr. Calderon’s clothes back. I’m told they are now evidence.”

Buck snorts again, and Eddie tries to muster up the ability to glare at him but finds it impossible. The sight of his face has, in the last day, become too precious to him, too much of a relief.

They’re each checked over more thoroughly and given new bags of IV fluids— in Buck’s case, additionally, an antibiotic. Eddie listens to what the doctor has to say more closely about Buck than about himself, which amounts to a couple of broken ribs, an already receding fever, and mostly cuts and bruises.

Additionally, two burns. One on the side of his neck, more severe, and another on his left leg.

Eddie is met with a vision, then. Remembers the cattle prod that Buck had used to disarm Earl in the heat of their confrontation, and realizes with a sudden and sickening roll of his stomach that it had also been used against Buck.

Buck, for his part, takes all this information in stride. He just nods along, looking calm— the real kind, Eddie notes, not the kind that’s a front. For the most part, he feels the same way and he’s grateful. He’s under no illusion that this won’t ever hit them, both of them— but he would much prefer it to happen once they’re home.

In the meantime, they dutifully take their matching doses of Tylenol, each of them refusing higher level painkillers, and then they are— finally— offered trays of dinner.

“Yes,” Buck answers, nodding for both of them. “Please.”

At this, they’re left alone in the otherwise empty room and Eddie finally looks over at Buck— who, like himself, is dressed now in his own clothes, the same pajamas that he’d been wearing at their hotel in Nashville. It feels impossible now that it had been just a few days ago that Eddie was trying to convince him to go out and see the town.

In hindsight, he finds that he has a strange longing for that evening. He wishes he could go back to it and if he had the opportunity he thinks he would take Buck’s path. He would let him stay in his pajamas and not push so hard. He would order room service and watch tapes of firefighter games and Buck would be safe, unburned, untouched, between the walls of a midlevel hotel room in Tennessee.

He shakes it off, reminds himself that despite it all Buck is safe now, too.

“The food here is really bad,” he says. “Just so you know. I mean, like, take regular hospital food and make it worse.”

Buck drops his head back against his pillow. “I don’t care,” he says. “The last time I had food in front of me I had to throw it at my kidnapper.” He peeks one eye open, looking at Eddie. “And then I didn’t even get away. I should have at least eaten the grilled cheese.”

Eddie laughs, startled but ultimately unsurprised. There’s something warming in his chest, the more they talk. “Well,” he offers. “The sheriff stole my applesauce, so…”

“What?” Buck says, amusement coloring his still-scratchy voice.

“Wait.” Eddie grins, then carefully swings his legs over the edge of the bed. The fluid and the painkillers are doing a lot for him, as they also seem to be for Buck. In clearing out the pain and fatigue from his system, it’s as if there’s room— at least for tonight— for this all to be kind of funny.

He makes his way over to Buck’s bed, and Buck shifts to accommodate him, and they find themselves sitting facing one another in the artificial light. The truth is, this is something that Eddie loves about Buck. He’s reminded, suddenly, of the summer of 2019.

That year, Eddie had spent so many hours at Buck’s loft in between his various appointments and Eddie’s admittedly boring shifts at work without him. They had developed inside jokes that summer that largely revolved around the bombing of fire engines and were so horrible to listen to that they had to swear to each other that they wouldn’t ever repeat them to another soul.

They were already close— very close— but in hindsight Eddie thinks that this summer was the point of no return in their friendship. The point when he began to lose sight of where the threads of himself ended and the threads of Buck began, as they interwove their lives and the sound of their laughter grew indistinguishable.

They were truly inseparable after that, and have been ever since.

They’re interrupted by the arrival of two trays of hospital food in beige plastic. Everything here is beige, in fact. It makes Eddie feel imprisoned.

He says as much to Buck when they’re alone again, whose blue eyes light up in that way that they always do when he’s about to make a joke. Eddie could survive on that look right now, terrible hospital food or otherwise.

“Hey,” Buck says. “At least there are no bars on the window like I had.”

Eddie laughs, hard enough that it rattles his bruised chest. “No,” he says, smiling as he avoids Buck’s gaze. “I should know, I climbed out of this one.”

Buck gasps, audibly delighted. “Eddie Diaz,” he says. “Are you an escaped fugitive?”

Eddie smiles. “You laugh,” he starts, “but they really thought I murdered you there for a minute.”

Buck, bolstered by the food that he’s already started digging into as Eddie cautiously peels the wrapper off of a sandwich of his own that looks horribly dry, adjusts himself to be a little more upright, his expression eager. “Wait,” he says, his mouth full. “Start from the beginning.”

Eddie shakes his head a little. “Are you sure you want to hear this?” he asks.

Buck looks genuinely aghast. “Are you kidding?” he asks when he’s swallowed. “Yes. Come on, tell me everything.”

Eddie smiles, amused, as Buck takes another big bite. “You might want to slow down on that,” he advises, gently pushing Buck’s cup of water closer to him.

“You might want to hurry up,” Buck bites back with a nod to Eddie’s sandwich. “Before I take yours, too.”

Eddie doesn’t say that he would give it to Buck in a heartbeat, and in turn Buck takes the cup of water and waits a moment before biting off another corner of sandwich.

“Athena is the one who told me to climb out the window,” he offers, just to see Buck’s reaction. It doesn’t disappoint— his eyes widen comically.

“You’re joking,” he says. “Athena turned to a life of crime for me?”

“No,” Eddie laughs, around the flash of feeling that it lights up in his chest. He wants to say yes. Wants to tell Buck that they all would have, no questions asked. “I’m the one who was doing the criminal activity.”

Buck smiles. “Was it really criminal if Athena was telling you to do it, though?” he asks thoughtfully.

“Do not diminish my part in this, Buckley,” Eddie warns. He’s sure that the little smile on his face undercuts his point, but he can’t help it and wouldn’t want to.

This feeling— laughing and joking with Buck— is more important to him right now than anything else. It settles over him like a balm, making everything else feel okay in the light of it.

“Would you have done real crime?” Buck asks.

Eddie flickers backwards, mere hours, remembering his hand on the trigger of a gun. Buck, he realizes, has no idea how ready he was to pull it.

“It was close there for a minute,” Eddie says evasively.

He watches as Buck shrugs one shoulder minutely, small enough not to hurt himself. Eddie’s paying close attention, waiting, but his eyes don’t cloud over or darken as he says, “She would have deserved it.”

Recognizing the opening, Eddie risks leaving this door propped open a little. “I have no doubt,” he offers.

Buck looks up at him. For a moment, Eddie thinks he might be about to say something deeper than where they’ve waded so far. Instead, he smiles again, leaning in toward Eddie like they’re the only two people in on a conspiracy. It often feels this way between them, but right now Eddie is acutely aware of it.

“She put me in pajamas, man,” he whispers.

Eddie blinks. “What?”

Buck nods sagely. “Pajamas,” he repeats. “I woke up in this kid’s bedroom, right? No idea where I was or where you were, and I was in these… kid pajamas.”

“Wait,” Eddie says, confused. “Kid pajamas? Did they—”

“No, no,” Buck says. “My size, but like—” He gestures vaguely to his own chest, assuming Eddie will follow him— which, of course, Eddie does. “Kid pajamas.”

It’s not funny. None of this is funny, not really. But in the same way that at a certain point it became funny that Buck had been crushed by a ladder truck, they’re both looking at each other now and it’s starting to become a little funny.

“Kid pajamas,” Eddie repeats faintly.

Buck’s mouth twitches. His nose follows. He’s seconds from breaking, Eddie can tell.

“Were they patterned?” Eddie asks, knowing what he’s doing.

At this, Buck’s composure cracks. He laughs— real and full-chested, unrelenting even though it visibly aches to do it, and the sound floods through Eddie like sunlight, like Los Angeles, like gold.

Eddie can’t help laughing, too. It’s a little hysterical, a little insane, but here they are— both battered, sharing a hospital bed, in stitches.

“They—” Buck gasps, trying to hold it together. “They had—”

“What?” Eddie presses, almost giggling now. “They had what?”

“Cowboys,” Buck wheezes. He reaches out, his hand on Eddie’s drawn-up ankle, and doubles over in laughter. “They had cowboys on them.”

A fresh wave of laughter rolls over Eddie, light in his chest. “Oh, my god,” he breathes, sniffing. “Do you think—”

“What?” Buck asks, still grinning.

Eddie shakes his head. “Do you think they knew about your bullriding record?” he gets out.

Buck howls with laughter and Eddie can’t help but grin.

“Oww,” Buck groans, leaning back with a hand pressed to his ribs as he tries desperately to catch his breath and collect himself.

“Careful,” Eddie chides.

“Careful?” Buck repeats. “You’re the one who started this.”

“Still,” Eddie says.

There’s a new lightness between, carved out by the weightlessness of the moment. It won’t last forever— it never does. But it’s something, this moment. A little pocket of light and the joy of Buck’s laugh and the knowledge that despite all the odds they both made it out again.

He doesn't know the full scope of what Buck experienced over the course of the day. He might never know, and if he’s honest he isn’t sure he wants to. He got the basics from the reluctant Sheriff before they left the scene— the guy unable to meet his eye, Eddie half-listening because his mind was on getting back to Buck. He’ll hear whatever Buck wants to tell him, whenever that is. But what matters is really this part: Buck’s chest, rising and falling. Buck’s voice, slowly recovering. Buck, laughing and himself beneath the bruises and the scrapes.

What matters to Eddie tonight in New Mexico is the same thing that has always mattered to Eddie: that Buck’s heart is beating and that they are in it together. In this case, cramming into one hospital bed is more than enough for him.

“Here,” Buck says, breaking the silence with a small smile. Across the tray between them, he hands over to Eddie his little cup of applesauce, unopened. “Now we’re even.”

Eddie smiles, takes it, and peels back the lid. “Yeah,” he says. “Even enough for me.”

Against all odds, the sun is shining when they set off toward home and out of New Mexico.

It’s strange, Eddie thinks. How the world just keeps on turning. How every day the world wakes up. How if one thing had gone slightly different yesterday, he’d be living in a world without Buck in it— but it hadn’t, and here they are in a beat-up piece of junk coasting along the highway, going home.

They had both crashed last night, still crammed into one hospital bed after they’d eaten. Eddie had thought someone would force them apart, or at least try, but it hadn’t happened. He gets the sense that they were mostly there overnight as a precaution and partially as a courtesy, but whatever it is he was certainly not going to complain.

Eddie had slept soundly, pressed against Buck.

This morning, they hadn’t talked about it. They hadn’t talked about much of anything, really, until they were crammed into the car together and had already made good time over three hours and two stops for Buck to walk around as ordered.

At the second stop, Eddie leaves him outside to circle the car on their second doctor-mandated stop at a rest area along the highway and goes inside to use the bathroom. It’s empty and quiet, every step echoing off the walls. After he washes his hands, he pauses long enough to look at himself in the mirror and winces at the sight. It’s not the first time he’s seen himself, but it’s the first time he’s paused to really look. The light in the bathroom is rough and harsh, and his reflection is a wreck: dirty hair; violet circles under his eyes; dried but bloody cuts and scrapes that the cleaning up from the hospital could only do so much for.

But he’s here, driving home with Buck. That’s what matters. That they’re going to make it back to LA, back to Christopher, back to the 118. Both of them, the way it should be.

There was no other alternative, not for Eddie, but the relief of knowing that it’s real sweeps through him so hard that it could knock him off his feet every time he thinks about it. He feels more fragile today, in some ways. Already, his head is feeling some better, even if the concussion symptoms are lingering. He can think more clearly, and has to squint less. The aches all over his body are sort of worse, but in a duller way. He won’t complain— he’s seen Buck with his shirt off, so he knows that by comparison he’s doing just fine.

Which is why he’s less than impressed, when he returns to the car, to find Buck in the driver’s seat.

He leans over the open door, his hand braced on the car, and looks down at Buck’s waiting face.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks.

Buck smiles, like he thinks his flirting is going to get him anywhere with Eddie. “Driving.”

“Absolutely not, Buck,” Eddie replies immediately.

Buck, clearly, has already planned his argument. He holds out his battered hands, ready to start ticking off points with his fingers. These glimmers of him, things that are so Buck, shine bright like glass in the sun.

“You have a concussion,” he starts, ticking off one finger, then getting ahead of himself and moving ahead with a second before he adds, “and I don’t. You also have something wrong with your shoulder, and don’t even try to tell me you don’t because they did not blind me, Eddie.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “God, you’re dramatic.”

“I’m dramatic?” Buck squawks.

“I recall you very recently asking me to stab you in the neck with a fork,” Eddie says drily.

“Okay,” Buck defends, abandoning his counting and holding his hands up. “You were the one who was being dramatic first. I know you were hungry.”

“Besides the point,” Eddie replies flatly. “You’re not driving. C’mon, out.”

Buck, honest to god, pouts at him. “I feel bad,” he tries.

“Well, don’t,” Eddie replies. He waves his hand, beckoning, and steps back. “You got kidnapped, I drive. That’s the deal.”

Buck huffs, stubborn as ever. “I’m already sitting,” he says, like this might tempt Eddie in his favor. “It’s going to hurt me worse to get up.”

Eddie crosses his arms, even though it kind of hurts to do so. “You should have thought about that before you sat down, then,” he says. Then, he offers Buck a hand. “Come on.”

Finally, with an eyeroll that rivals anything Eddie’s teenage son can produce, Buck takes his hand and lets Eddie help him up out of the driver’s seat.

A few minutes later, having switched and lowered themselves into what Eddie would call the correct seats in the car, they’re pulling back onto the highway, the sun shining bright overhead.

Buck shifts, settling further into the seat, and lets out a soft little pained sound. Eddie glances over at him, finding it harder and harder to keep his eyes off of him at any given moment.

“You okay?” he ventures.

“Yeah, yeah,” Buck assures him. “Just a bad position. ‘s good now.”

He glances over at Eddie, and Eddie knows him so well that it’s easy to anticipate he’s going to say something. He waits him out, and eventually Buck does.

“I’m sorry about what those guys said to you in the diner,” he says.

Whatever Eddie might have expected, it certainly wasn’t that.

“What?” he asks, looking briefly over at Buck. “That was not your fault, Buck.”

“No,” Buck muses. “I guess I just meant— you know, I’m sorry it happened at all.”

Eddie sits with this for a moment. He has not, until this moment, considered that Buck might feel responsible. It’s only now that he’s thinking about that he considers why. He’d taken it at face value, even in the moment, that they were speaking to both of them. He hadn’t looked at it any more deeply than that.

“It’s okay,” he says gently, now. His eyes adjust as the sun slants into the car. “Some backwoods bigot assuming we’re a couple is the least of my worries, Buck.”

Buck nods, appeased and placated. He’s pliant about these things. Eddie understands that it’s because his only real concern was being sure that Eddie wasn’t hurt by it. Eddie thinks about the sheriff, about the things he’d said, and decides it’s better if he keeps that part to himself.

Next to him, Buck tilts his head back and Eddie dares another, slightly longer look. The sun is dancing over his face, light catching the blonde of his facial hair and turning it to gold as the desert slips by beyond the window. His lashes flutter as he shuts his eyes, turning his face to the warmth and the light.

For the first time, Eddie imagines him locked up somewhere. His chest tightens. He’d avoided thinking about it the whole day, devoting every bit of space in his head to finding Buck and leaving none for imagining what he might be going through.

Now, he thinks about the bits and pieces of it that he knows. These parents, this mother driven to psychosis by grief; a child’s uninhabited bedroom. Eddie squirms at the thought, remembering the way that he’d left everything of Christopher’s untouched while he was in Texas. It’s nowhere near the same thing, but the comparison bothers him anyway.

Had Buck stood at the bars of those windows, Eddie wonders? Had he wondered, even for a moment, whether Eddie would give up on him? Had he wondered if he would ever get out of there, or if he would ever feel the sun and the fresh air on his face, like he’s doing now?

Seized by the panic of the thought, Eddie reaches for the worn out button on the window controls. He’s not even sure that they’re going to work, but he presses down anyway, and there’s a click and a mechanical whir as Buck’s window cracks open, breaking the barrier between Buck’s upturned face and the fresh air outside.

It makes the car louder than Eddie would like and there’s a faint tar-like scent that comes from the highway. But Buck— Buck wiggles a little in his seat and lets out a pleased soft hum, a faint smile on his face lit by bright, warm sunlight.

That’s more than worth it to Eddie.

After a moment, Buck turns to him, still smiling, air still brightening the car around them.

“This is good, right?” he asks.

It’s the same thing he’d said before, before the diner, before everything. Eddie’s chest seizes, but his heart sort of soars.

Only Buck, he thinks, could see it like that. Nobody else Eddie knows now or has ever known has that capacity for softness, for simplicity and joy. Not like Buck does. All of a sudden, not even sure what exactly it means, he can’t stand to not be touching him.

He reaches out, lays a gentle hand on Buck’s thigh, and feels him relax beneath his touch entirely.

“Yeah, Buck,” he says softly, squeezing lightly, a reminder like Buck’s hand in his had been in the ambulance yesterday. “This is good.”

Buck smiles, lays his hand over top of Eddie’s, and turns his face back into the sun.

They make the remainder of the drive back to LA with the windows rolled down.

By the time they pull into Buck’s driveway, it’s almost evening. The heat of the day has faded, leaving a subtle chill in the air as the shade of twilight creeps over the house. As he shuts the car off, a faint tension leaves Eddie’s shoulders, and Buck turns a tired smile in his direction.

“We made it,” he says.

The weight of it is not lost on Eddie. Intermittently over the course of the drive, his hand has rested on Buck’s leg. Now, he reaches out and squeezes very gently just above his knee.

“We made it,” he repeats back. “Welcome back.”

“You, too,” Buck says, smiling softly.

Back when they had set off in Nashville— what feels like ages ago now, when they’d first realized their arrival home would be delayed— Eddie had arranged for Hen and Karen to drop Christopher off with Pepa, who had agreed to keep him until Buck and Eddie got home.

Today, during one of their many walking stops, Eddie had called her and filled her in on the bare details, given her their estimated arrival time, and asked if she would meet them at Buck’s with Chris.

Christopher, who has an extra key to Buck’s house the same as Eddie does, now appears in the doorway, backlit by the warmth of the house behind him.

At the sight of him, Eddie hears Buck’s breath catch.

There’s no time to press for details, though: Christopher makes his way with his crutches down the walkway toward them, and Eddie rushes to get out of the car. He’s slightly less worse for wear than Buck is, and he wants Chris to see him first, like a pre-course to seeing Buck’s more alarming face.

“Hey, bud,” he says, stepping around the car and biting back a wince from moving too fast.

Christopher hesitates, taking him in, and then looks beyond him. Buck is easing himself out of the car, and though the shadow of twilight hides some of it, there’s no mistaking how banged up he is.

Chris looks back at Eddie, who opens his arms. A moment later, he’s got an armful of his baby, who’s not so much a baby anymore, and in that moment is when something just barely starts to crack.

“What happened?” Chris asks, his voice muffled in Eddie’s hug.

Eddie kisses the top of his head, nestles the sound of it in his curls. “We’re okay,” he assures him. “Wanted to tell you about it in person, but we’re fine. We’re okay.”

Chris sighs.

Behind them, there’s a shuffling sound and the shutting of the car door. Christopher pulls away from Eddie then, and meets Buck halfway down the walk.

Eddie watches as Buck holds his arms out, much the same way that Eddie had just done, and accommodates Chris in a big, warm hug. There’s nothing out of place about it at all: despite the fact that Eddie knows it must be painful, Buck is visibly careful to make sure he hugs Christipher with all the same enthusiasm that he ever has.

He wraps him up tightly, encompassing his growing teenage body in his much taller, stronger frame, and Eddie blinks hard.

Now that they’re home, now that the drive is done, now that he’s standing here watching Buck whisper into Christopher’s hair words that are too soft for Eddie to hear: it begins to hit him.

A threatening, gnawing anxiety works its way slowly up into Eddie’s throat. But later, he tells it. There’s plenty more to focus on now.

He sets about gathering their bags from the car as Pepa appears in the doorway of Buck’s house with her hands on her hips. She regards them a little bit scathingly, her keen gaze lingering on the piece of junk in Buck’s driveway, and then she sighs.

“What are we going to do with you two, huh?” she asks.

And then she hugs Buck, careful and sure, and Eddie watches him stiffen and then melt.

“Come, cariño,” she says, in the midst of moving from Buck to Eddie, making it unclear which of them she’s talking to. “Christopher and I made dinner.”

“That’s the best thing we’ve heard all day,” Buck says.

When Eddie looks at him, he’s smiling again.

They settle in Buck’s dining room on Buck’s insistence, even as Pepa offers to plate them food for the living room. Eddie gets it— Buck is always one to want everything to feel normal. And for a little while, it does. Pepa fusses over them both and they eat. Buck laughs and they talk and for a couple of hours everything is more than okay.

They fill Christopher in when he asks questions, but they keep it light. It comes off more like a crazy story than a trauma, but Eddie understands that it’s what Buck needs it to be, at least for now. If Chris wants to press, Eddie will tell him later.

Pepa offers to stay and do the dishes for them, but Eddie waves her off as if this is his own house. He’s never thought twice about it. He has his bag from Nashville and Chris has his from staying with Pepa, so they’re more than set to spend the night at Buck’s.

Buck is on Facetime with Maddie on his phone, still in the dining room, so Eddie walks Pepa outside to her car. It’s fully dark now, and he shivers a little bit, unnerved. It’ll fade, he tells himself. It always does.

Pepa watches him carefully.

“Edmundo,” she says. “You will be taking care of yourself after this, yes?”

Eddie nods, softening. “I will, Pepa, I promise,” he says. “Thank you for dinner, and for keeping Chris.”

“Ah,” she says, waving her head. “It was nothing. Chris is no trouble. It’s you who causes the problems around here.”

Eddie smiles. “Not Buck, of course,” he says.

“No,” Pepa teases. “Never.” She tilts her head at him, her gaze flickering back to the glowing windows of Buck’s house. “Is he alright?” she asks.

It’s a hard question.

Faced with it, Eddie has to admit that he doesn’t really have the answer, at least not yet.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “It’s been…” He shakes his head. “I’m not sure either of us can tell yet, honestly.”

She nods her head, then pats him lightly on the cheek. “I’m a call away if you need anything,” she reminds him, as if he hasn’t known this most of his life. It still warms him, though. “Take care of both of you, okay?”

Eddie nods. “Thank you,” he says, then leans in and kisses her cheek.

When he goes back inside, Buck is standing at his kitchen sink, running water over dishes. Christopher is sitting at the table, and he glances skeptically over at Eddie as he enters the room.

“I tried to tell him not to,” Chris says.

Buck turns, catching sight of Eddie with a faintly guilty look.

“What are you doing?” Eddie asks him.

“Dishes,” Buck replies.

“No,” Eddie says flatly.

Buck huffs. It’s immediately, notably different from the banter they’d engaged in earlier. Sharper, more genuine. Eddie feels the shift instantly.

“I can rinse a few of my own dishes, Eddie,” he says.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” Eddie replies evenly. He’s treading carefully, trying not to upset him. He realizes— too late, as Buck looks over at him with a dark expression— how condescending he sounds.

“It’s my house,” Buck defends.

“I know that,” Eddie replies. “Listen, just— just until tomorrow, okay? I’m not saying you can’t do it, just leave it until tomorrow and then we’ll do it together. Nobody wants to do the dishes after a ten hour drive either way, Buck.”

Buck hesitates, but ultimately he nods.

“I need a shower anyway,” he says. He glances between them. “Are you guys staying here?”

“I thought we would,” Eddie answers carefully.

Buck’s shoulders relax, though his face remains neutral, and Eddie is assured he’s making the right choice here.

“Okay,” he says. “The guest room is made up for you, Chris. All yours, okay?”

His voice is notably softer for Christopher. Eddie can’t fault him for that. No matter what else is going on, no matter how either of them are feeling, this has always held true.

“Thanks, Buck,” Chris says.

What’s new, now that he’s older, is how soft Christopher’s voice can get for Buck. It tears through Eddie, cracking him further.

He follows Buck through to the bathroom.

He knows he shouldn’t, somewhere deep down, but he’s doing it before he can stop himself. It’s as if his body operates without him, out of a deep seated need to be close to Buck.

But in the same way that being home and off the road has unsettled him, it seems to be doing the same to Buck, because he stops in his tracks and turns to glare at Eddie.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Eddie, caught off guard, pauses. “I thought you might need help,” he says.

Wrong move. Buck rolls his eyes and means it this time. “I don’t,” he says. “Eddie, listen. I just want to take a shower and go to bed, okay?”

Panic threatens at the back of Eddie’s throat. “You’re hurt,” he hears himself say. “I can help. I can—”

“I’m not a kid, Eddie,” Buck says, his eyes flashing. He sighs, reaching up to scrub his hand over his face before he remembers that it’s covered in bruises, the movement aborted as the deeper meaning of his words settles in on Eddie and twists something painful in his stomach.

“I know,” Eddie says. “You’re not.”

Buck exhales, closes his eyes. “Can you just— back off?”

It stings. It shouldn’t, but it does. Eddie is too raw and feels too guilty for it not to, and he hasn’t been away from Buck for more than a moment since getting him back in his sights. The thought of going with Christopher to Buck’s guest room or even to the couch makes him feel itchy all over.

“Yeah,” he says, swallowing dryly against a scratchy throat. “Okay.”

He steps out of the room before Buck can have a chance to say anything else.

He can’t help pausing to listen, though. He stands in the hallway, back to the wall, and waits as the shower turns on. Chris wanders in and finds him there. His blue eyes are softer than usual and as discerning as ever.

“You okay, Dad?” he asks.

Eddie musters up a nod and a little smile for him. “I’m okay,” he assures him. “C’mere.”

Chris allows him to wrap his arms around him for a second time that evening, and melts into his embrace.

“You should have told me when you called,” Chris says softly.

Eddie rests his cheek against his curls. “You’re right,” he offers softly. “I’m sorry. I forget you’re growing up on me sometimes.”

Chris settles closer against him. Eddie thinks about Bonnie and Earl again— and more importantly, about Buck. Losing Christopher would break him, he knows that. But taking someone else, forcing another person into the void left behind. That’s unfathomable to Eddie, impossible to wrap his head around.

Taking Buck is even more so. They couldn’t have known, not really, not like Eddie does, who they were taking. But they had seen them. They’d seen him with Buck. They’d known that they were taking Buck from someone.

That’s the part that has been lingering at the back of his mind the most, bothering him. They’d taken Buck from him, on purpose. Had it been because they were arguing? Would it have been different, if they’d seen how much he loves Buck, or if they’d sat the other way around, if it had been plain to them on his face?

Then again, Eddie thinks grimly, apparently it had been plain enough for everyone else in the room.

He shakes himself out of this train of thought and squeezes Christopher gently.

“You’re a good kid,” he murmurs, kissing his head again.

Chris shakes his head. “You’re sentimental,” he says. Then he hesitates, pulling back and looking at Eddie and then the closed bedroom door and then Eddie again. “Is Buck okay?” he asks.

Eddie’s chest squeezes again.

“He will be,” he says. He does believe this, know this, because whatever it takes he will always want to make sure of it.

Behind the wall, the water shuts off.

“You take the guest room,” Eddie says. “I’m going to shower in there but then I’ll take the couch.”

Chris accepts this without question, which Eddie is glad for.

He takes clothes out of his bag and quickly showers in Buck’s guest bathroom while Christopher changes into his pajamas. The shower is hot and fast and painful. He imagines that Buck is having much the same experience, and it makes his stomach twist again.

He hates all of this as much as he’d thought he would, but he wants to respect Buck’s space. He doesn’t ever want Buck to feel like he’s being held hostage with Eddie, doesn’t ever want to push him into pushing back, so far as to make Buck push him away. It’s the last thing Eddie has ever wanted to do to him, and especially not now.

Historically, he’s been good at it. He’s good at waiting for Buck to come to him. He’d done it after the lighting strike, even when everyone else was knocking on his door. He’d refused— politely— Maddie’s request to add him to her schedule of people checking on Buck, because he’d known that Buck would come to him when he needed him. And he’d been right, then.

Now, strangely, he can’t bring himself to do it. He rushes through his shower, brushes his teeth, switches places with Chris and tells him goodnight, stealing another kiss while Chris is feeling charitable. He goes into the kitchen and fills a glass of water. He stands and stares at the pictures on Buck’s refrigerator— the ones of Jee and baby Nash; the one of Christopher when he was still so much smaller; the other, newer one taken last summer.

Eventually, he can’t stand it anymore.

He fills another glass and digs out some Tylenol from Buck’s junk drawer, right where he knows it will be because they’ve had several lazy debates on the subject. Buck thinks the junk drawer is for anything; Eddie draws the line at medication, which he believes belongs at minimum in the bathroom.

With these offerings, he walks through the quiet house past Christopher’s quiet retreat in the guest bedroom, and eases himself through Buck’s bedroom door.

The sight that he finds there is not quite what he’d expected.

Buck is sitting on the edge of the bed, his fingers clenched in the fabric of his comforter, his shoulders curled forward. He looks small, so much smaller than he should be able to look, and even from the doorway Eddie can see that his breathing is shallow, his back and chest rising and falling with rapid, aborted breaths.

His heart leaps into his throat and he crosses the room in a few quick steps, leaving the water and pills on the side-table and immediately turning his full attention to Buck.

“Buck?” he asks, ducking his head to get a look at his pale face with little regard to how it pulls at his sore muscles. “Hey. What’s wrong? Does something hurt?”

Buck startles at his presence, like he wasn’t expecting Eddie at all, and looks up at him in muffled surprise. His blue eyes are still clear and alert, but red around the edges now in a way that makes Eddie ache.

“No,” he says, his voice small. “I’m fine.”

Eddie frowns, gently putting a hand on his shoulder and the other on his jaw, tilting his head up without even pausing to think about what he’s doing— the instinct overriding it, all the things he’s buried for Buck over the last day and a half coming rushing to the surface and into his fingertips.

“You’re crying, bud,” he says. “What’s wrong? Are you sure you’re not—”

It happens all at once, right in the middle of Eddie’s sentence. Whatever Buck has been holding back seems to come to the surface, too, and he crumbles beneath the touch of Eddie’s hands, curling in on himself and bursting into tears.

Eddie’s chest tears open at the sound.

“Oh, Buck,” he whispers.

Later, he won’t really remember climbing into bed with him. One second, he’s standing and the next he’s there, wrapping his arms around Buck. It’s awkward but in a way that doesn’t matter, a jumble of limbs.

Looking like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, Buck reaches up and wraps a death grip around Eddie’s forearm, pinning his arm across his chest as his blunt, torn fingernails dig into Eddie’s skin.

“Eddie,” he whimpers, his fingers scrabbling at Eddie’s skin. “I’m sorry. I’m— I—”

“Oh, baby, you’re okay,” Eddie murmurs. It comes to him naturally— some combination of loving Buck and fifteen years as a parent and who he is at his core, when he’s not holding back. “It’s okay. You’re okay, Buck. I’ve got you.”

Buck turns his face against Eddie’s neck and sobs— heaving, broken things that rattle his frame and tug at Eddie and make him want to shatter, too. But he doesn’t. He stays where he is, Buck curled up against him, and threads his fingers soothingly through Buck’s soft curls, scratching lightly against his scalp.

“Eddie,” Buck whispers, his voice splintering and breaking.

“I know, honey. It’s gonna be okay,” Eddie breathes against the crown of his head. “I got you.”

“I’m sorry,” Buck sobs.

“Shh,” Eddie whispers, petting his hair. “You have nothing to be sorry for, bud. You’re okay.”

“No,” Buck whimpers, suddenly frantic, pulling back in Eddie’s arms and wincing all in one motion. “No, you don’t understand.”

“Okay, take it easy,” Eddie soothes. “I’m listening, Buck, you can explain it to me, just— don’t move so fast, you don’t need to hurt yourself.”

He pauses, watching as Buck’s chest heaves with breath between sniffling tears, and then reaches out and puts his hand on Buck’s shoulder. He’s done the same thing in the same spot a million times before, but it feels different now, somehow.

“There you go,” he says. “Deep breath and then— then you can tell me whatever it is you want me to understand, alright? I promise, I’m listening.”

Buck takes a shuddering breath, then screws his eyes shut. It tugs visibly at all the bruises on his face, and Eddie aches at the sight of it. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t dare to do anything that could upset the balance here. Buck opening up about anything after the last year isn’t something that Eddie can afford to take lightly. For that matter, he wouldn’t want to. Not now, and not before, either.

Buck tries to breathe in, fails, and tries again. This time it catches, and he exhales shakily.

“Take your time,” Eddie soothes.

Buck shakes his head. “I don’t want to push you away anymore,” he whispers.

Eddie nods. Beneath the wall of his chest, his heart races. “Okay,” he whispers. “How about this?”

He shifts backwards in Buck’s bed then, newly determined, until he’s leaning against the pillows. With this, he opens his arms, tapping lightly at the unbruised skin around Buck’s elbow.

Buck watches him doubtfully.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, his voice small.

“Don’t worry about that,” Eddie soothes. “C’mere.”

Buck hesitates, but ultimately gives in. He leans into Eddie’s chest and Eddie is careful not to wince when it does pull. It’s worth it. Buck relaxes into him and with the first steady breath through his chest, Eddie does, too.

“Okay,” he says softly. “Do you still want to tell me?”

Buck nods, his breath tremulous. He seems so small, suddenly, injured and leaning against Eddie.

“I—” he starts. “You’re gonna be mad at me.”

Eddie almost laughs, the notion of it so ridiculous in this moment. “Buck,” he says instead, reaching up to brush a damp curl off of his forehead and twisting to meet his eyes. “There’s never been a time in our lives that I was less likely to be mad at you.”

Buck huffs at that, but it doesn’t have the heart of the night before. It’s okay. They’ll get back there. Eddie will wait.

There’s a lot Eddie is willing to wait for.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You can tell me.”

Buck looks down, his brow furrowing a little as he picks at his already raw cuticles. “You told me before,” he starts, his voice shaking. “That I wasn’t expendable.”

Eddie’s breath catches. “Yeah.”

Buck looks up at him. “I believed you. But since Bobby, I— I don’t know. It’s harder now.”

Eddie’s chest caves in. “I know, Buck.”

Buck looks down again, his face twisting. He’s visibly trying not to cry and Eddie can feel the catch of his breath in his back.

“I heard you,” he says hollowly. “They heard you. I was tied up and— and they heard you get there. They realized it was you.”

Eddie tenses. Thinking about Buck bound and alone, even now that he’s safe and in Eddie’s arms, makes him want to cry.

“Okay,” he whispers.

“I kept thinking about Chris,” Buck whispers back. “About— after you were shot, he was so scared. For months. I told them not to let you find me. I told them I would stay there if they would convince you to leave. So you could go home to Christopher.” He looks up, blue eyes wet. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I know it’s not what you wanted me to—”

“Buck, Buck, hey,” Eddie interrupts.

Beneath the wall of his chest, there are fireworks erupting. The image of Buck comes to him in crystal clarity— facing death, facing a life of captivity, an endless isolation in a world that wasn’t his, and facing it as bravely as ever. For Eddie. For Christopher.

“I’m sorry,” Buck says again, his voice tiny now.

“Oh, honey,” Eddie sighs. “Come here. Nobody is mad at you. I’m not mad, Buck. I’m so sorry, bud, come here.”

Buck collapses into him. It hurts— and Eddie is sure that it hurts Buck, too— but he wouldn’t trade a single ache.

He wraps Buck up closely, until it’s hard to tell where one of them ends and the other begins. In his arms, Buck slowly relaxes, and Eddie rubs his chest very gently, then presses a kiss to the side of his head.

Something between them is changing, Eddie realizes. Maybe they won’t be able to talk about it for a while, especially now. They both need to heal. But in the light of all this, it doesn’t seem to matter so much.

What might have scared Eddie a week ago, a few days ago, feels wildly insignificant now. If anything, the inevitability is a sudden, silverlined comfort.

“Buck,” Eddie breathes. “You did so good. You were so brave.”

“I wasn’t,” Buck whispers.

“You were,” Eddie says gently, but firmly. “You were.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Then Buck, tilting his head into Eddie’s, takes a breath in.

“Can I tell you something?” he asks. “Because I— I told Bonnie and then I wished I hadn’t. She was the first person I had said it to and I…” He trails off, then gathers himself. “I wished I had told you when I had the chance.”

Eddie’s stomach rolls and he shuts his eyes, breathing Buck in.

“You have the chance,” he whispers. “Tell me.”

“I think…” Buck starts. “I don’t know who I am without Bobby.”

Eddie nods, his chest aching so deep that it has nothing to do with bruises. Finding that there’s nothing he knows to say to this, he turns his head into Buck’s curls and presses another kiss there.

“Okay,” he whispers. “So we’ll find out together.”

Buck turns in his arms until Eddie can see his face— bruised and battered, but beautiful and soft, the same long nose and soft cheeks and blue eyes with soft pale lashes.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Buck says, his eyes earnest.

Eddie reaches out, brushing his curls back off of his forehead. “You can’t, Buck,” he says gently. “Not by yourself. But— we can do it together.”

Buck looks at him, a long, deep look.

“Eddie,” he says, his voice warm now. “You have to know— I—”

Eddie nods, his own throat closing up. “I know, baby,” he soothes. “I know. We’ll figure that out together, too. Whenever you’re ready, I’m here. Okay?”

Buck blinks at him, a soft caught look.

“You promise?” he croaks.

Eddie smiles. “I promise,” he whispers.

And Buck breathes in, deep, all the way to the base of his lungs.

He breathes out again, and it’s later. Much later, when the night has passed and the morning has come and days and weeks of healing have piled up on top of each other and he and Eddie are back in his bed, just like that night.

In the wake of his kidnapping, Eddie had stayed next to him so long that their lives became enmeshed. Eddie was there when he went to sleep and there when he woke up and there when he was restless.

They shared breakfasts and dishes. Buck went back to work; had setbacks; went back again. Eddie and Christopher moved in and out of the house daily, slotting into Buck’s life in a way that was somehow both new and familiar.

Little by little, Buck found himself.

And now, he’s in bed with Eddie, and there’s not a bruise to be found on either of them. The kidnapping— and more than that, everything that it had uncovered— will stay with Buck forever.

But one of the things that had become unburied in New Mexico was this— and looking back, Buck thinks that he would gladly take everything else if it meant that he would be this version of himself, a little ways down the road: a version of himself who is wrapped up in his best friend in the early light of morning, watching as the sun slips in through the window and catches Eddie’s perfect face in its golden grasp as he rises to wakefulness.

He blinks and takes Buck in, a soft smile appearing on his features beneath messy dark hair and sleepy brown eyes.

Buck smiles at him, then leans in and kisses his nose.

“Good morning,” he says.

“Mm,” Eddie answers, shifting closer and burying his face against Buck’s shoulder. “Too early.”

Buck’s chest rumbles with a laugh that comes easier these days. Easier than before the kidnapping, and certainly easier than before he’d realized that Eddie Diaz was the love of his life.

“Right on time,” he corrects gently. “Come on, sleeping beauty. I’ll make you coffee.”

Eddie grins, coming to life a little more as Buck coaxes him out of bed. “Kiss first,” he relents, and Buck beams, catching Eddie’s jaw with his fingertips and tilting his head up.

With that, he kisses him thoroughly, well practiced and without hesitation. Eddie opens up to him, not a shred of self-consciousness.

And like this— together, easy— Buck and Eddie face another mundane day, in a life built one morning at a time.